Part 17

"Don't be frightened," he said. "I know who you are. I 'll take you safely where you want to go."

He spoke in tones as matter-of-fact as he could make them, for his professional eye told him that the woman was at the limit of her endurance and could support no further surprises. But he took in the pretentious style of her dress with the dust upon it and the fact that she was in company with the tramp upon a path that led to the railway and wondered darkly. It was almost inconceivable, in spite of the situation in which he found her, that she could be running away from her husband in favor of the creature who now lay in the road, moving his limbs tentatively and watching with furtive eyes to see if it was safe to sit up.

Mrs. du Preez moistened her lips. "I got nowhere to go, now," she said.

"Then you 'd better go home," said Kamis. "Rest a little first--there 's plenty of time, and it 'll be cooler presently. Then I 'll take you back."

He turned to look over his shabby tweed shoulder at Boy Bailey and addressed him curtly.

"You can go now," he said.

Boy Bailey sat up awkwardly, with an expression of pain, as though it hurt him to move. He had not yet mastered the change in the state of affairs and attempted to temporize till matters should define themselves.

"I 've got to see first if I can stand," he said. "It's all very well, but you can't slam a man down on his funny-bone and then order him to do the goose-step."

"Hurry," said the Kafir.

Mr. Bailey passed an exploring hand about his shoulder. "Ouch!" He winced. "Broken bone," he explained. "You say you 're a doctor--see for yourself. And anyhow, I want a word in private with the lady."

Kamis took two deliberate steps in his direction and--

"Hey!" yelled Boy Bailey, and scrambled to his feet. "What d'you kick me like that for, you black swine?"

He backed before the Kafir, with spread hands in agitated protestation.

"Kickin' a man when he 's down," he cried. "Is that a game to play? All right, all right; I 'm goin', aren't I? You keep where you are and let me turn round. No, you stop first. I 'm not goin' to be kicked again like that if I can help it."

Kamis came to a halt.

"Next time I see you, I 'll murder you," he promised. "Murder you." He paused at Mr. Bailey's endeavor to save his dignity with a sneer. "Don't you believe that?" he asked. "Say--don't you believe I 'll do it?"

Mr. Bailey's sneer failed as he looked into the black face that confronted him. By degrees the sheer sinister power that inhabited it, lighting it up and making it imminently terrible with its patent willingness to kill, burned its way to his slow intelligence. His pendulous underlip quivered.

"Don't you?" repeated the Kafir, with a motion of his shoulders like a shrug. "Don't you believe I 'll slaughter you like a pig next time I see you? Answer--don't you believe it?"

"Ye-es," stammered Boy Bailey.

The Kafir's deliberate nod was indescribably menacing.

"That's right," he said. "It's very true indeed. And you remember what I paid you fifty pounds for, too. A word about that, Bailey, and I 'll have you. Now go."

A hundred paces off, Boy Bailey halted, to get breath and ideas, and stood looking back.

He waited, watching the Kafir bring Mrs. du Preez to a condition in which she could stand again and bear the view of the backward road coiling forth to the featureless skyline, and thence to further and still featureless skylines, traversing intolerably far vistas that gave no sign of a destination. With his returning wits, he found himself wondering what arguments the man had to induce her to brave her husband.

As it happened, there was need of none. The woman was broken and beyond thought. She was reduced to instincts. The homing sense that sets a wounded rock-rabbit of the kranzes crawling in agony to die in its burrow moved in her dimly; she could not even summon force to wonder at the apparition of the English-speaking, helpful Kafir. Under the practised deftness of his suggestion and persuasion she rose and put her limp arm in his, and they moved away together, following their long shadows that went before them, gliding upon the dust.

"There they go," said Mr. Bailey bitterly. "There they go. And what about _me_?"

He saw that the Kafir propped the exhausted woman with his arm and helped her. He was protecting and assured, a strength and a shield. Almost unconsciously Boy Bailey followed after them. He could not have given a reason for doing so; he only knew that he was very unwilling to be left alone with his bruises and his sense of failure and defeat. In less than a quarter of an hour, the veld that had been comfortingly empty had become lonely. He went on tiptoe, with long ungainly strides and much precaution to be unheard.

He followed perhaps for half a mile and then the Kafir looked back and saw him. Mr. Bailey stopped within speaking distance.

"I was coming to apologize," he called. "That 's all. I lost my temper and I want to apologize."

The Kafir let Mrs. du Preez sit down and came walking back slowly. When half the distance to Mr. Bailey was covered he broke suddenly into a run. For some seconds Mr. Bailey abode, his mind racing, and then he too turned and ran as he had never run before. With fists clenched and head back, he faced the west and fled in leaps, and as he went he emitted small squeals and fragments of speech.

"My mistake," he would utter, through failing breath. "As long as I live, I 'll never--I swear it--I swear it. O-o-oh. You 're very--hard--on me."

The Kafir had ceased to run when Mr. Bailey turned to flee. He stood and watched him go, unpursued and terrified, with the dust spirting under his feet like the smoke of a powder-train. Then he went back and aided Mrs. du Preez to rise and together they set out again.

The last of Boy Bailey was a black blot against the sky; he was too far off for Kamis to see whether he still ran or stood. It merely testified that a degenerate human frame will stand blows and much emotion and effort under a hot sun and yet hold safe for further evil the life within it. Man of all animals is the most tenacious of his existence; he lives not for food but for appetite. What was assured was that the far blot that represented Boy Bailey was still avid and still unsatisfied. He had not even gratified his last desire to apologize.

The sun dawdled over the final splendid ceremony of his setting, drawing out the pomp of departure while night waited in the east for his going with pale premature stars. The small wind that clears the earth of the sun's leavings of heat sighed about them, and produced from each side of their path a faint rustle as though it stirred trees at a little distance. Above them the sky began to light up with a luminous powder of stars, that strained into radiant clearness before the west was empty of its last pink stain. They went slowly, Mrs. du Preez leaning heavily on Kamis' arm, and still faithfully carrying her bundle. She had not spoken since they started. She went with her eyes on the ground, and unequal steps, till the evening breeze touched her and she lifted her face to its gentle refreshment.

She had to sit down every little while, but she was stronger after the setting of the sun, and it was not till the night had surrounded them that she spoke.

"When I saw you first," she said suddenly, "the sun was in my eyes. And I thought you was--_black_?"

"Yes?" said Kamis. "That wasn't the sun," he said slowly. "I am black."

"But--" she hesitated. "I don't mean just black," she said vaguely. "I meant--a black man, a nigger."

She was peering up at him anxiously, while her weight rested in his arm.

"Well, wouldn't you have let a nigger help you?" asked Kamis quietly. "Isn't it a nigger's business, when he sees a white woman in trouble, to do what he can for her? One of your farm niggers, now--wouldn't you have called to him if he 'd been there?"

"Yes," fretfully. "But I thought _you_ was a nigger."

"I 'm a doctor," said Kamis. "I was at schools and colleges in England. The English Government gives me hundreds of pounds a year. You 're quite safe with me."

"It was the sun in my eyes," she murmured uncertainly. "I said it was the sun."

"No, it wasn't the sun," he said. "You saw quite well. I am a nigger."

"How can a doctor be a nigger?" she asked. "Niggers--why, I know all about niggers. You can't fool me."

"I won't try," answered Kamis. "But--one thing; you 've got to get home, haven't you? And you can't do it alone. You wouldn't refuse to let a nigger help you to walk, would you?"

"No," she said wonderingly. "I _got_ to get home. I got to."

"All right," said Kamis. "Then look here. Take a good look and satisfy yourself. There 's no sun now to get in your eyes."

He had halted and drawn his arm from hers. A match crackled and its flame showed him to her, illuminating his negro features, and her drawn face, frowning in an effort to comprehend. He held it till it burned to his fingers and then dropped it, and the darkness fell between them again like a curtain.

"Now do you see?" he asked. "A Kafir like any other, flat nose, big lips, woolly hair, everything--just plain Kafir; but a doctor none the less. The Kafir will help you to walk and the doctor will see to you if you find by and by that you can't walk any further. Will that satisfy you?"

She did not answer immediately; she stood as though she were still trying to scan the face which the match flame had revealed. She was searching for a formula, he told himself with a momentary bitterness, which would save her white-skinned dignity and yet permit her to avail herself of his services.

Then her moving hand touched him on the arm, gently and unexpectedly, and she answered.

"You poor devil," she said. "You poor devil."

Kamis stood quite still, her timid touch upon him, the ready pity of her voice in his ears. Mingled with his surprise he felt a sense of abasement in the presence of this other outcast, so much weaker than he, and he could have begged for her pardon for the wrong which his thoughts had done her.

"Thank you," he said abruptly. "Thank you, Mrs. du Preez. It's--it's kind of you. You shall be very safe with me."

It was a strange companionship in which they went forward through the night, he matching his slow steps to her weariness, with her thin arm, bony and rigid through the cloth sleeve, weighing within his. She was too far spent for talk; they moved in a silence of effort and desperate persistence, with only her harsh and painful breathing sounding in reply to the noises which the darkness evoked upon the veld. Every little while she had to sit down on the ground, and at each such occasion she would make her small excuse.

"I 'll have to take a spell, now," she would say apologetically. "You see, I was walking since before noon."

Then her arm would slide from his and she would sink to earth at his feet, panting painfully, with her head bowed on her bosom and her big hat roofing her over. Thus she would remain motionless for a space till her breath came more easily, and then the hat would tilt up again.

"I could move on a bit, now, if you 'd give me a hand up."

Her courage was a thing he wondered at. Again and again, as the hours spun themselves out, she rose to her feet, groped for his sustaining arm, with her face a pallid disk against the shadow of her hat, and faced the cruel miles. Her feet, in her smart town boots, tormented her without ceasing; her strength was drained from her like blood from an opened vein; and the slowness of their progress protracted the dreary horror of the road that remained to be covered. At times she seemed to talk to herself in whispers between sobbing breaths, and his ear caught hints of words shaped laboriously, but nothing that had meaning. But she uttered no complaint.

At one point where she rested rather longer than usual, he tried to find out what she expected at the journey's end.

"Have you thought what you 'll say," he asked, "when you get home?"

She raised her head slowly.

"I don't know," she answered. "I--I got to take my gruel, I suppose. Whatever it is, I got to take it. It 's up to me."

It was the sum of her wisdom; those free-lances of their sex add it early into the conclusion that saves them the futile effort of evading payment for the fruit they snatch when the world is not looking. After the fun, the adventure, the thrill, comes the gruel, and they have to take it. It is up to them. By the short cut of experience, they reach thus the end and destination of a severe morality.

"He can't shut you out, at any rate," said Kamis, half-aloud.

"Can't he?" she said. "Can't he, though! Can't stand there feelin' noble and righteous and point to the veld and shut the door with a big slam? You don't know him."

She rose again presently, clicking her tongue between her teeth at the anguish of her swollen and abraded feet.

"The Boers got sense," she said. "A person 's a fool to go on foot."

It was the only reference she made to her pain and weariness.

It was long past midnight when they came at last past the sheds behind the farmhouse and saw that there was yet a light in the kitchen. The window shone broad and yellow in the vague bulk of the house, and as they lifted their faces towards it, a shadow moved across it, grotesque and abrupt after the manner of shadows, which seem to have learned from men how to mock their makers.

"That 's Christian," said Mrs. du Preez, whispering harshly.

"Are you afraid?" asked Kamis. "Will you sit here while I go and speak to him first?"

"No," she replied. "No use. This is where I get what's comin' to me. I wish I wasn't so done up, though. If he knew, I believe p'r'aps he 'd let me off till the morning. But he doesn't know, and it wouldn't be him if he did."

"Better let me speak to him first," urged Kamis. "I could tell him--"

"No," she said again. "No use dodging it. We 'll go to the back door; I 'd rather have him shut that on me than the front."

Near the door she drew her arm away from the Kafir's and left him standing to one side, while she approached and knocked upon it with the back of her hand. She meant to eat the dreaded gruel alone.

Silence succeeded upon her knocking, and then deliberate footsteps within that came towards the door. A pair of bolts were thrust back, crashing in their sockets. Mrs. du Preez gathered her sparse energies and stood upright as the door opened and the figure of her husband appeared, tall and black against the light inside which leaked past him and spilt itself about her feet. For some moments they stood facing each other, and neither spoke.

There was drama in the atmosphere. The Kafir standing without its scope, watched absorbedly.

"Christian," said Mrs. du Preez, at length; "it's me."

"Yes." The Boer's deep voice was grave. "Where have you been?"

She lifted her shoulders in a faint hopeless shrug.

"I ran away," she said. "Like I said I would. But I wasn't up to it."

"You ran away," he repeated slowly. "With that Bailey?"

"Yes, Christian. But--"

Christian caught sight of the dark figure of the Kafir and started sharply.

"Is that him there?" he cried. "Is that Bailey?"

"No, no," she answered eagerly. "That 's--that 's a Kafir, Christian; he helped me to get back. He came up when I was too tired to go any further, and Bailey was starting to kick me to get my money away from me--I 've got it here, Christian, all safe--an' he knocked Bailey over and chased him off. If it hadn't ha' been for him--"

"What?" Christian interrupted strongly. "What did you say? Bailey was going to--kick you? You was too tired to walk and he was going to kick you?"

"Yes, Christian. And if it hadn't ha' been for this Kafir, he would ha' done. I was sitting down, you see, and he got mad with me and wanted me to hand him over the money. So when I screamed--what did you say, Christian?"

"I swore," answered the Boer.

"Oh," exclaimed Mrs. du Preez, as though she apologized for interrupting. "And then the Kafir came up. If it was n't for him, Christian, I 'd--I 'd ha' had to die out of doors. I could never have managed to get back by myself."

The effort merely to stand upright taxed her sorely, but she went on doggedly to praise the Kafir and to try in her confused and inadequate tongue to convey to the Boer that this Kafir was not as other Kafirs. Her small voice, toneless and desperate, beat on pertinaciously.

"He 's a doctor, Christian," she concluded. "He 's been educated an' all that, an' he speaks English like a gentleman. And he 's been a white man to me."

"Yes," said the Boer. His mind was stuck fast upon one point of her story. "Yes. But--you said Bailey was going to _kick_ you--out there all alone by yourselves in the veld?"

It daunted him; his intelligence shrank from the picture of that brutality unleashed under the staring skies.

"Yes, Christian," answered Mrs. du Preez submissively.

"Here--come in," he bade abruptly, and stood aside to make room for her to pass. "Come in. Come in."

It was a couple of seconds before she fully comprehended. She made a small moaning sound and began to totter. The Boer took her by the arm.

"Wait," he said curtly, over her head, to the Kafir, and led her within.

Kamis waited, leaning against the wall of the house. He had brought his task to an end and the finish had arranged itself fortunately; it had been worthy of his pains. The Boer had been startled from his balance; he had seen that nothing he could do would bear an equality with Boy Bailey's natural impulses; pardon and generosity were the only course left open to him. The work was complete and pleasing; and now he had leisure to feel how weary he was. He shut his eyes with an exhausted man's content at the relaxation of effort, and opened them again to find the Boer had returned and was standing in the doorway. He started upright, amazed to find that sleep had trapped him while he leaned and was aware that the Boer made a sudden and indistinct movement. Something heavy struck the ground at his feet.

He looked down at it where it lay, white and rounded, and recognized Mrs. du Preez's bundle, for which Boy Bailey had been ready to kick her into dumbness. Without addressing a word to him, the Boer had tossed him that double handful of money.

It took him a moment to realize what had taken place.

"What's this for?" he demanded then, possessed by a sudden anger that forgot he spoke from the mouth of a negro to ears of a white man.

"It is true you speak English, then?" said the Boer. "That is money--about a hundred pounds. It is for you. Pick it up."

"Pick it up yourself," retorted the Kafir. "I don't want your money."

"Eh?" The Boer did not understand in the least. "It is for you," he repeated. "A hundred sovereigns, because you have been good, very good, to the Vrouw du Preez. It is in that bundle."

The Kafir turned on his heel. "Take care of your wife," he said shortly. "If you worry her now, she 'll be ill. Good night."

"Here," cried the Boer, as Kamis walked away. "Here, boy, wait. Come back."

Kamis halted. "I 've plenty of money," he answered. "I 'm not Boy Bailey, you know."

"Come here," called the Boer.

Kamis did not move, so he stepped down and went forward himself. The Kafir's last word stuck in his thought.

"No," he agreed. "But who are you? Man, why don't you take the money?"

"If I were a Boer, I should take it," answered Kamis. "I 'd pick it up from a dunghill, wouldn't I? But, then, you see, I 'm not a Boer. I 'm a Kafir."

"What do you want, then?" demanded Christian.

"Oh, nothing that you can give," was the retort.

"Well--but you must have something," urged Christian. "You--you have saved my wife."

"And you haven't even said 'thank you,'" replied the Kafir.

"I threw you the money," protested Christian. "It is a hundred pounds. But--well--you have been good and I thank you."

The Kafir laughed. He knew the mere words created an epoch, for Boers do not thank Kafirs. They pay them, but no more. Strange how a matter of darkness abrogates a difference of color. It would never have happened in the daytime.

"You 're satisfied, then?" he inquired.

"Me?" The Boer was puzzled. "You will take the money now?"

"No, thanks. I 'm too--oh, much too tired and hungry to carry it. You see, I brought your wife a long way."

"Yes," said Christian. "She said so--a very long way. I will wake the boys [the Kafirs of the household]. They will find you a place to sleep and I will make them bring you some food."

"No, thanks," said the Kafir again. "I don't speak their language. You--you haven't a man who speaks English, I suppose?"

"No," said Christian. "You want--yes, I see. But--you 'd better take the money."

"I don't want it."

"But take it," urged the Boer. "A hundred pounds--it is much. Perhaps it is more; I have not counted it. If it is less, I will give the rest, to make a hundred pounds. You will take it--not?"

"No." The answer was definite. "No--I won't take it, I tell you."

"Then--" Christian half-turned towards the house, with a heaviness in his movements which had not been noticeable before. "Come in and eat," he bade gloomily. "_Gott verdam_--come and eat."

The Kafir checked another laugh. "With pleasure," he said, and followed at the Boer's back.

The Boer stooped to pick up the bundle of money where it lay on the earth and led the way without looking round to the kitchen where he had left his wife. The Kafir paused in the kitchen door, looking in, acutely alive to the delicacy of a situation in which he figured, under the Boer's eye, as part of the company which included the Boer's wife. He waited to see how Christian would adjust matters.

The table was spread with the materials of supper. Mrs. du Preez had a chair by it, and now leaned over it, with her head resting on her arms, to make room for which plates and cups were disordered. Her flowery hat was still on her head; she had not commanded the energy necessary to withdraw the long pins that held it and take it off. In her dust-caked best clothes, she sprawled among the food and slept, and the paraffin lamp on the wall shed its uncharitable glare on her unconscious back.

Christian dumped the heavy little bundle on the table beside her and she moved and muttered. He called her by name. With a sigh she dragged her heavy head up and her black-rimmed tragic eyes opened to them in an agony of weariness. They rested on the waiting Kafir on the doorway.

"You 've brought him in?" she said. "Christian, I hoped you would."

"He is going to eat with me," said Christian, with eyes that evaded hers.

"Yes," she said dully.

"And you go to bed," he urged, with an effort to seem natural. "You--you're too sleepy; you go to bed now. I 'll be up soon."

"But, Christian," she protested, while she wrestled with the need for slumber that possessed her; "I got to speak to you. There--there 's something I want to say to you first about--about--"

"No." His hand rested on her shoulder. "It's all right. There 's nothing to say; I don't want to hear anything. It 's all right now; you go on up to bed."

She rose obediently, but with an effort, and her hands moved blindly in front of her as she made for the door, as though she feared to fall.

"Good night, Christian," she quavered. "You 're awful good. An' good night, you"--to the Kafir. "You been a white man to me."

"Good night," replied Kamis, and made way for her carefully.