Uncle Diederick lived in a structure known in South Africa as a
"hartebeeste house." Such a structure suggests a house of cards in its
most rudimentary form--when one card is laid against another and thus an
edifice like roof without walls is formed.
The house looked indeed like a roof with a very high pitch, from under
which the walls had sunk away until it rested on the ground. Thickly
thatched, and closed by a vertical wall at the end opposite the door, it
was very warm in cold weather and, in spite of the want of ventilation,
fairly cool in the heat of summer.
The end farthest from the door was fitted up with shelving, and the
shelves were loaded with bundles of dried plants and jars, filled with
tinctures, infusions and decoctions. In front of the shelves stood a
table and a bench,--the former bearing an ordinary pair of grocers'
scales, and an immense volume which the sage always referred to before
prescribing. This volume was a translation into Dutch of a collection
of herbalistic lore published in Italy in the Sixteenth Century; it was
looked upon by Uncle Diederick's numerous customers with almost as much
respect as the Bible.
Uncle Diederick, judging from the extent of his practice, ought to have
made a fortune,--and he probably would have done so had he been paid for
his services in cash instead of in kind. He was really a useful
personage and saved many a life. His absorbing taste for medicine and
surgery--joined to his undoubted natural ability, would have made him a
successful if not an eminent practitioner had he had the necessary
training.
When a boy he had obtained possession of an old book upon anatomy, and
from this he gained a fair general knowledge of the human frame. Later
he acquired a manual of simple surgery and another of household medicine
(as practiced in the Eighteenth Century), and upon these was founded his
professional eminence. These books were kept strictly in the
background, their size and binding not being impressive, but the old
Italian herbal was invariably referred to in the presence of the patient
before diagnosis was completed.
Even at this day every Boer woman in the outlying districts who has
reached the age of forty, considers herself competent to treat all of
the ills that flesh is heir to. Her pharmacopoeia is a limited one,
consisting, as it does, of some seven or eight drugs, all more or less
violent in their effects upon the human organism. In her choice of
these in prescribing she is guided solely by her intuitions. A century
ago the number and quantity of drugs at her disposal was more limited,
and therefore the mortality from this cause was less than at the present
day.
But Uncle Diederick was a quack of a different class. He knew well
enough that in a large number of cases the best chance of recovery lay
in leaving Nature quite to herself. Like Paracelsus, however, he had to
live down to the prejudices of his age. Many a bulky bottle of nasty
but innocuous mixture did he prescribe to amplitudinous _tanta_ or
corpulent _oom_, whose only complaint was the natural result of too much
exercise of the jaw-bones and too little of the arms and legs.
The old women looked upon Uncle Diederick with jealousy, but they could
not help admitting that in surgery, at all events, he was far their
superior. In the case of a broken limb or a wound from a Bushman's
poisoned arrow he was the first person thought of,--if the accident
occurred within a radius of a hundred miles of his dwelling. Many a
miserable sufferer has been brought to the "hartebeeste house" from
distances that entailed a week's travelling over wretched roads in a
jolting wagon.
In medicine Uncle Diederick did not by any means stick to the orthodox
pharmacopoeia; he supplemented the few crude drugs in general use by a
number of decoctions and infusions of different herbs, the properties of
which he had learnt from Hottentots and captive Bushmen,--with whom he
often managed to make friends.
As the effect of these remedies was quite equal in violence to that of
those in common use, and as there was an added element of mystery about
them, Uncle Diederick's treatment was generally popular. The Boer does
not believe in any medicine which is not administered in large doses and
which does not act as a kind of physiological earthquake upon the
invalid.
Uncle Diederick was a widower with an only daughter. He had lost his
wife soon after marriage, and, contrary to the general custom, had not
remarried. Jacomina, his daughter, was a comely damsel of seventeen,
whose keen and practical interest in her father's pursuits boded a
terrible future for her prospective husband and family. It was she who
presided, like another Medea, over the brewing of the decoctions; it was
she who neatly bound up and carefully stored away the different kinds of
dried herbs from which these decoctions were made. In fact she knew
almost as much as her father did about the healing art. Where she shone
brightest, however, was in collecting payment for her father's services.
Many suitors had laid their hearts at Jacomina's substantial feet, while
she, on her part, cherished a passion for the handsome, melancholy
Adrian van der Walt, Gideon's son. Adrian likewise admired her, but his
diffidence kept him from definitely telling her so, or doing more than
gaze at her in deep but hopeless admiration whenever he thought himself
unobserved in her company. For many months Jacomina had put forth all
her arts to bring Adrian to the proposing point, but his unconquerable
shyness always stood in the way of the desired result. At a distance
Adrian was brave enough, but in the presence of his beloved his courage
fled. On several occasions he had pretended to be ill in order to have
an excuse for visiting the "hartebeeste house," when the nasty
decoctions he received from the hands of Jacomina tasted as sweet as
nectar.
One day Uncle Diederick was sitting just inside the door of his dwelling
engaged in the commonplace occupation of mending his saddle. From the
road behind the kopje at the foot of which he dwelt came the rattle and
rumble of an approaching wagon. He at once hid the saddle in a corner
under a sheep skin, went over to his table, opened the herbal volume and
began poring over its pages. It was thus that he was usually found by
his patients. Jacomina was on the watch. Shortly after the wagon came
in sight she put her head in through the doorway.
"Pa,--it is Aunt Emerencia's wagon; she is sure to be coming for some
more medicine for her _benaudheid_."
Aunt Emerencia descended from the wagon through the back opening of the
tent by means of a short and strongly built ladder and, leaning heavily
on a stick, approached the "hartebeeste" house. She was a stout woman
with a very pale face, the flesh of which seemed loose and flabby.
Jacomina felt the strongest animosity towards the visitor, who was a
widow and was suspected of harbouring matrimonial designs upon Uncle
Diederick.
After a friendly but breathless greeting Aunt Emerencia sat down on a
stool and, being fatigued and warm from the exertion of walking up the
slope from the wagon, pulled off her _cappie_ and began fanning herself
with it. After a few minutes Uncle Diederick came forward briskly. He
sat down, asked Jacomina to go and brew some coffee, and then, in his
most sprightly manner, began talking to and complimenting his visitor.
"No, no,--Uncle," she replied, deprecatingly, to some flattering remarks
on his part,--"Although I may be looking well, I am very, very sick.
Being on my way to Brother Sarel's I thought I would outspan here and
get some medicine."
"That's right--I am glad to see you, even though you are not well.--But
a cup of coffee will do you good."
"Yes,--I will be glad to drink a cup, Uncle. I have brought you a
couple of pumpkins which you will be glad to have; they are from some
new seed which Jan Niekerk got from Stellenbosch last year."
Jacomina, afraid to leave her father for long alone with the suspected
siren, kept darting in and out between the stages of the coffee-making.
"Jacomina, my child," she said in a wheezy aside, "call to the
_schepsel_ and tell him to bring in two of the biggest pumpkins." Then
she turned to Uncle Diederick:
"Uncle, I am sick, very sick. After I eat my heart goes just like an
old churn--and I dream--_Alle Wereld_, how I dream. Last night I dreamt
that Nimrod built the Tower of Babel on my chest."
Just then a small Hottentot came staggering in with two immense
pumpkins, which he laid on the floor; then he went and stood just
outside the door. Uncle Diederick cast a careless eye upon them, smiled
almost imperceptibly, and then began very deliberately, to light his
pipe.
"Are these not beautiful pumpkins?" asked Aunt Emerencia.
"They are fairly large; but I am surprised at Nephew Jan taking the
trouble to bring that kind of seed all the way from the Cape. There is
plenty of the same kind here."
"Truly?" she said in a tone of injured surprise. Then she called to the
Hottentot, who, mindful of previous experiences, had remained close at
hand.
"Here, _schepsel_,--bring in a bottle of that honey from the front
chest. Yes, Uncle,--you would not believe how I have suffered since I
finished that last medicine I had from you. This bottle of honey is
from the bees' nest Piet took out from the _Dassie's_ Krantz last week."
The honey was placed alongside the pumpkins. Uncle Diederick did not
even take the trouble to glance at it. He went on silently puffing at
his pipe.
"Don't you like honey, Uncle?"
"Yes,--but it is very plentiful this year, and I am tired of it."
Aunt Emerencia groaned audibly.
"_Schepsel_,--fetch that new pair of _veldschoens_ from the side-bag."
"Yes," she continued, addressing Uncle Diederick--"and you would not
believe what a pain I get here, just below my breast. These drops I got
from Aunt Susannah did me no good whatever."
In the meantime Jacomina was busy trying on the _veldschoens_, which
turned out to be by no means badly made. Uncle Diederick continued
smoking, calmly and silently.
"Do they fit, my child?" he asked without turning his head.
"Yes, Pa,--they fit well."
At once Uncle Diederick laid down his pipe and began attending to his
patient. He felt her pulse; he thumped, prodded and sounded her until
she groaned and grunted. She was a woman who, for nearly thirty years,
had eaten and drunk largely, and who never took the least exertion that
she could avoid. Her malady, from which she chronically suffered, was
simply indigestion in an acute form.
"Here, Aunt,--take half a cupful of this whenever you feel bad."
He took down from the shelf a large black flask, which had originally
contained gin, and handed it to the invalid, who grasped it greedily.
"Uncle,--these _veldschoens_ are a beautiful pair.--This bottle holds so
few doses and I get sick very often."
Uncle Diederick had returned to his seat and his pipe. He took not the
slightest notice of what Aunt Emerencia said. She, knowing by
experience that there was no chance of screwing another bottle out of
the physician, arose with the apparent intention of taking her
departure. But first she tried another move.
"_Alle Wereld_," she said in anguished tones, putting her hand to her
side at the same time--"here is the pain again; can you not give me a
dose now, Uncle?"
"Yes, Aunt,--certainly. Jacomina, bring me a corkscrew and a cup."
These implements were soon brought and placed upon the table. Uncle
Diederick took the corkscrew and approached the sufferer.
"Come, Aunt--give me the bottle and I will open it for you."
"But, Uncle,--I do not like to open the bottle whilst on the road. It
is so liable to spill."
Uncle Diederick returned to his chair, the inscrutability of his visage
somewhat modified by a palpable wink. Aunt Emerencia, after a few
supplementary groans, stated that she felt a little better and would
defer taking a dose until another bad attack came on. Then she took her
ponderous course back to her wagon.
The sun was nearly down when the clattering hoofs of a galloping horse
was heard on the road. A few minutes afterwards Gert Dragoonder
dismounted, and, without waiting to remove the saddle from his smoking
horse, hastened to the door of the "hartebeeste house."
"Well, _schepsel_," said Uncle Diederick, "it is easy to see that you
have been riding your master's horse. For how far has the Devil been
chasing you?"
"Baas must hasten," replied the Hottentot, breathlessly, "or it will be
too late. My master has got a bullet in the shoulder and he has bled
plenty."
"A bullet in the shoulder--that's bad. What an accident! Let's see,--
to which of the loving brothers do you belong?"
"Baas Gideon is my baas. But it was not an accident; baas Stephanus
shot my baas with his own gun."
Uncle Diederick gave a long, low whistle. "Well, I always said it would
come to murder between those two. Here, Danster,--saddle up my horse.
Is the bone broken?"
"The bone is coming out in big lumps," said Gert, with the exaggerative
rhetoric of his race, "he has lost about a bucketful of blood and there
is a hole in his shoulder you could put your fist into. Baas must make
haste and bring his very best medicine."
"H'm.--If all that is true, it is the Field Cornet that they should have
instead of me. However, I suppose I must go."
By this time the horse had been driven into the little kraal at the side
of the homestead. Uncle Diederick went to the shelf and took down a few
bottles, bundles of dried herbs and bandages. Then he selected from a
camphor-wood chest a few home-made splints and rough surgical
appliances. All these he packed carefully into his saddle-bags. After
bidding a very matter-of-fact farewell to Jacomina, and telling the
Hottentot to rest his horse for the night and return home quietly next
day, he started on his long, lonely ride.