Chapter 6

"'And you might carve a verse on my headboard,' the old man went on. 'Cornel has only his name and dates, and no doubt he counts on my having no more. His board is only painted; see that you carve mine.'

"'I do not carve letters very well,' began Andries, 'but--'

"'Oh, you carve well enough,' said the old man. 'Very well indeed, considering. You won't have to do very much. There are plenty of short verses in the Psalms, and some--very good ones, too--in Proverbs. The Predikant will soon choose a verse of the right sort. Say a verse, Andries; it is not much.'

"'I will see to it,' said Andries.

"Then Piet, whose mind was a dunghill, had a horrible thought. 'But what about the water?' he cried, for the stream from which they took their drinking-water ran past the foot of the hill.

"'You must draw your water higher up, answered the old man. 'If I were not about to die, Piet, and therefore under a need to judge not, lest I be judged, I would cut down your oxen and sheep for that. Go out; I will say what I have to say to Andries.'

"When Piet was gone he went on. 'Remember, Andries, a bare four foot, no more. I would not wish to be late when the dead arise. Just four foot of cool earth, and a black coffin with plenty of room in it.'

"'I will take care,' replied Klein Andries.

"'Very well, do as I have told you, and I shall be very well off. I shall sleep without pain till the last day, and perhaps dream in peace about the verse on my head-board and the round tops.'

"Although I like a man to take it bravely, I can very well understand that that week must have been a terrible one for Klein Andries, who, though a good lad, and a wealthy man at this day, never was particularly quick at taking up an idea. He went about with a bowed head and empty eyes, like a man in mortal shame; and I believe that never since has he quite cast off the load his father laid on him. Not that I see any harm in the affair myself.

"Well, in proper course the day came, and Andries van der Linden lay in his bed between the fresh sheets, propped up with fine clean pillows. His people had come from near and far, for the curious story was well known, and they were proud of their kinsman. They crowded the room in which he lay, all in their best clothes, a little uneasy, as most folks are on great occasions, and all very quiet.

"Old Andries van der Linden was free from pain, and spoke to them all in very cheerful and impressing words. As he lay among his pillows with his white hair thrown back and his beard on his breast, he was a fine man to see--a picture of a good and a brave man. He read aloud from the Bible, and then prayed awhile, giving out his words grandly and without a quaver. Then he shook them all by the hand and bade each one good-bye.

"'Now, Andries,' he said, and lay back smiling.

"Klein Andries stood at the foot of the bed with his rifle resting across the rail, but he dropped his head with a sob.

"'I cannot,' he said, 'I cannot.'

"'Come, Andries,' said the old man again. 'Come, my son.'

"Then Klein Andries caught his breath in his throat and steadied the rifle. The old man lay calmly, still smiling, with fearless eyes.

"'Close your eyes,' said Andries hoarsely, and as the old man did so he fired.

"The windows of the room were blown outwards and broken, but the shot was a true one, and the work was well and workmanlike done."

"It must have spoiled the sheets," observed Katje.

VASCO'S SWEETHEART

"As to that," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, answering a point that no one had raised, "it has been seen over and over again that sin leaves its mark. Do you not trust or avoid a man because there is honor or wickedness in his face? Ah, men's faces are the writing on the wall, and only the Belshazzars cannot read them.

"But the marks go deeper than a lowering brow or a cruel mouth. Men may die and leave behind them no monuments save their sin. Of such a case I remember one instance.

"Before my second husband was married to his first wife he lived out yonder, on the Portuguese border, and in the thick of the fever country. I have not seen the place, but it is badly spoken of for a desolate, unchancy land, bad for cattle, and only good to hunters. My second husband was a great hunter, and died, as you know, through having his body crushed by a lion. The people out there are not good Boer stock, but a wild and savage folk, with dark blood in them.

"I only know this story from my second husband, but it took hold of me, as he used to tell it. There was a family in those parts of the name of Preez. No relation to the Du Preez you know, who are well enough in their way, but Preez simply,--a short name and a bad one. They were big holders of land, with every reason to be rich, but bad farmers, lazy hunters, and deep drinkers. The Kafirs down there make a drink out of fruit which is very fiery and conquers a man quickly, and these people were always to be seen half drunk, or else stupid from the stuff. Old Preez, the father, in particular, was a terrible man, by all tellings; full threescore and ten years of age, but strong, fiery, and full of oaths. My second husband used to say there was something in the look of him that daunted one; for his hair and his beard were white, his face was savagely red, and his eyes were like hot coals. And with it all he had a way of looking on you that made you run from him. When he was down with drink and fever he would cry out in a terrible voice that his mother was a queen's daughter and he was a prince."

"I have heard of the people you speak of," I said. "They are half-Portuguese, and perhaps the old man was not wholly lying."

"Um! Well, prince or not, he married in his youth a woman of the half-blood, and begot of her a troop of devils. Five sons he had, all great men, knowing not God and fearing none of God's works. And after them came a daughter, a puling slip of a thing, never meant to live, whom they did to death among them with their drinking and blaspheming and fighting.

"My second husband told me tales of that family that set my blood freezing. He had his own way of telling stories, and made you see pictures, as it were. Once, he used to say, for a trifle spoken concerning them and their ways, they visited a missionary by night, dragged him from his bed, and crucified him against his door, while his wife clung to the old man's knees and besought the mercy they never gave and never got. Even the wild folk of the countryside were stricken with the horror and impiety of the deed; and it says much for the fear in which the Preez family were held that none molested them or called them to account.

"In the end the eldest of the five sons took a mind to marry and to leave some of his accursed stock to plague the world when it should be delivered from him and his brothers. They cast about for a wife for him, and were not content with the first that offered. They had their pride, the Preez, and in their place a fair measure of respect, for among the wicked, you know, the devil is king. From one farmhouse to another they rode, dragging forth women and girls to be looked at like cattle. Many a tall, black- browed hussy would have been content to go away with Vasco Preez (such was his unchristian name), but he was not willing to do right by any of them.

"They were returning home from one of these expeditions when they passed a lowly house beside the road with no fence around it. But before the house a girl stood on the grass, with her kapje in her hand, to see the six big men ride by. She was little and slim, and, unlike the maidens of the country, whitish, with a bunch of yellow hair on the top of her head and hanging over her ears. The others would have passed her by, judging her unworthy even an insult, but Vasco reined in his horse and shouted a great oath.

"'The woman for me!' he cried. 'The woman I was looking for! I never knew what I wanted before.'

"The others halted to look, and the girl, frightened, ran into the house. Vasco got down from his horse.

"'Fetch the filly out,' shouted the old man. 'Fetch her out and let us see her paces.'

"Vasco walked straight into the little house, while the others waited, laughing. They heard no screams and no fighting, and presently out comes Vasco alone.

"He went over to his horse and mounted. 'There is nothing to wait for,' he said. 'Let us be getting on.'

"'But the girl?' cried one of his brothers. 'Is she dead, or what?'

"'No,' said Vasco, 'but she would not come.'

"'Would not come!' bellowed the old father, while the others laughed. 'Did you say she would not come?'

"'That is what I said,' answered Vasco, sitting his horse very straight, and scowling at the lot of them.

"'He has a fever,' cried the old man, looking from one to another. 'He is light in the head. My faith! I believe the girl has been beating him with a stick. Here, one of you,' he roared, turning on them, 'get down and kick the girl out of the door. We'll have a look at the witch!'

"Koos, the youngest, sprang from his saddle and made towards the house; but he was not gone five paces before Vasco spurred his horse on to him and knocked him down.

"'Keep off,' he said then, turning to face them all, as Koos rose slowly. 'If I cannot bring the girl out none of you can, and you had better not try. Whoever does will be hurt, for I shall stand in front of the door.'

"And he went straight to the house, and, dismounting, stood in the doorway, with his hands resting on the beam above his head. He was a big man, and he filled the door.

"'Hear him,' foamed the old father. 'God, if I were as young as any of you, I would drag the girl across his body. Sons, he has defied us, and the girl has bewitched him. Run at him, lads, and bring them both out!'

"'They all came towards the house in a body, but stopped when Vasco raised his hand.

"'I warn you,' he told them--'I warn you to let the matter be. This will not be an affair of fighting, with only broken bones to mend when it is over. If I take hold of any one after this warning, that man will be cold before the sun sets. And to show you how useless this quarrel is, I will ask the girl once more if she will come out. You all saw her?'

"'Yes,' they answered; 'but what is this foolery about asking her?'

"'You saw her--very well.' He raised his voice and called into the house, 'Meisje, will you not come out? I ask you to.'

"There was silence for a moment, and then they heard the answer. 'No,' it said; 'I will stay where I am. And you are to go away.'

"'As soon as may be, my girl,' called Vasco in answer. 'Now,' he said to the men, 'you see she will not come.'

"'But, man, in the name of God, cast her over your shoulder and carry her out,' cried the father.

"'Vasco looked at him. 'Not this one,' he said. 'She shall do as she pleases.'

"Then they rushed on him, but he stepped out from the door, and caught young Koos round the middle. With one giant's heave he raised him aloft and dashed him at the gang, scattering them right and left, and knocking one to the ground, where he remained motionless. But Koos lay like a broken tool or a smashed vessel, as dead men lie. And all the while Vasco talked to them.

"'Come on,' he was saying. 'Come all of you. We shall never do anything but fight now. I see plainly we ought to have fought long ago. Bring her out, indeed!'

"They paused after that, aghast at the fury of the man they were contending against. But the old man gave them no rest.

"'Get sticks,' he cried to them--get sticks and kill him.'

"They dragged beams from a hut roof, and one of them took a heavy stone. Vasco stood back and watched them till they came forward again.

"The one with the stone came first, but it was too big to throw from a distance, and he dared not go near. The others approached with caution, and Vasco stood still, with his hands resting as before at the top of the door. They were bewildered at his manner, and very cautious, but at length they drew near and rushed at him.

"Then a most astonishing thing happened. With one wrench Vasco tore the thick architrave from the wall, a beam as thick as a man's thigh, and smote into the middle of them. Where he hit the bone gave and the flesh fell away, and as they ran from before him the wall fell in.

"Down came the wall, and with it the heavy beams on the roof. The old father, cursing over a broken arm, heard the girl scream, and saw the wreck come crashing about Vasco's shoulders till he disappeared below it. And then, where the house had been stood a ruin, with two souls buried in the midst of it.

"It steadied them like a dash of cold water. However they might fight among themselves, they were loyal to one another. Besides the old father, with his broken arm, there was only one other that could put a hand to the work, and together they started to drag away the beams and bricks and stones that covered Vasco and the girl.

"I know they were wicked men who are in hell long since, but I cannot contain a sort of admiration for the spirit that fastened them to their toil all that long night,--the old man with his broken arm, the young one with a dozen horrid wounds. As the sky paled towards morning, they discovered the girl dead, and leaving her where she lay they wrought on to uncover Vasco.

"When they found him he was crushed and broken, and pierced in many places with splinters and jagged broken ends of wood. But he had his senses still, and smiled as they cleared the thatch from above his face.

"The old man looked at him carefully. 'You are dying, my son,' he said.

"'Of course,' answered Vasco. 'Is that Renault?' He smiled again at his brother. 'So there are two of you alive, anyhow. How about the others?'

"'Two dead,' answered his father. 'And the other will not walk again all his days. You are a terrible fighter, my son.'

"'Yes,' answered Vasco, in a faint voice. 'It was the girl, you see.'

"'She was a witch, then?' asked the old man.

"'No,' said Vasco smiling. 'Or perhaps, yes. I do not know. But I will fight for her again if you like.'

"'Oho! so that is it,' and the old man knelt down beside him. 'Now, I see,' he said. 'I never guessed before--did not know it was in you. My son, I ask you to forgive us.'

"'I forgive, but where is she?'

"'Dead. No, it was none of our doing. You did it,--the roof fell on her. We will lay you together.'

"'Do so,' replied Vasco. 'I think I am dying now.'

"'Yes,' answered the father. Your face is becoming gray. Your throat will rattle in a minute. Look here; this is what my mother used to do.'

"'And he did thus," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, giving a very good imitation of the sign of the cross.

"But that was not a bad ending," cried Katje. "I think it was beautiful. I hope Vasco and the girl went straight to God."

The Vrouw Grobelaar sighed.

THE PERUVIAN

FROM her pocket Katje produced stealthily a clean-scoured wish-bone. The Vrouw Grobelaar was sleeping in her chair with tight-shut eyes. So I took one end of the bone, and we broke it, and the wish remained with Katje.

"Wish quick," I said.

She puckered her pretty brows with a charming childish thoughtfulness.

"I can't think of anything to wish for," she answered.

"Wish to be delivered from the sin of playing with witchcraft and dirty old bones!" The suggestion echoed roundly in the old lady's deep tones, and we, startled and abashed, looked up to find her wide awake, and in her didactic mood. The Vrouw Grobelaar never slept to any real purpose. One might have remembered that.

"Yes, witchcraft," she pursued. "For if bones are not witchcraft, tell me what is? When a Hottentot wants to find a strayed ox, he makes magic with bones, doesn't he? And the bones of a dead baboon are dangerous things too. Katje, throw that bone away."

Katje, who hated to be found out, threw it over the rail of the stoop into the kraal. When the good Vrouw had kept her steady eye on me for a few seconds, I threw my half after Katje's.

"I thought so," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, with a twitch of the lips like a smile stillborn.

"It's only a game," said Katje plaintively. "There's no harm in it."

The old lady shook her head.

"There's harm in things you don't understand," she pronounced. "There's harm in failing in love, for instance, if you don't know what you are doing. But witchcraft is worse than anything. You've seen how hard it is to make a Kafir doctor show his tricks. That's because he's never certain which is master, he or the devil. I knew a man once, a Peruvian, who burned his fingers badly."

A Peruvian, for the Vrouw Grobelaar, was any one for whose nationality she had no name. In Johannesburg it means a Polish Jew; in this instance I believe the man was a Greek.

"He was a smouser" (pedlar), she went on, "a little cowering man, with a black beard and a white face, who spoke Kafir better than he spoke the Taal. He sold thimbles and pills and hymn-books to the wives and daughters of Burghers, and grand watches and cheap diamonds to the Kafirs. It was a dirty little trade, and there was nothing about the man that streaked it with nobility. I remember a Scotch smouser, who was called Peter Piper, who sold pills like a chemist, and everybody liked him and respected him, till he had his great dispute with the Predikant at Dopfontein. But this little man was like a slimy thing made to crawl on its belly; and many is the time he would have been sjamboked from a door, were it not for--well, I don't know. But he was such a mean helpless thing, that, when he shrank away and looked up, with his white eyes staring and his lips parted, not the most wrathful Burgher could lift a whip.

"And even as he seemed to fear everything, the Kafirs certainly feared him. Kafirs, you know, go naked to all the little winds, and the breezes that will not hurt a thatch carry death to them. They are deaf to God. but the devil has but to whisper, and they hear. They bought shameful watches and sleepy diamonds from the Peruvian, as they kill a goat at the flowering of the crops--to appease something that might else visit them in the night. It was a thing much spoken of, and since even among the Burghers there are folks who dirty their fingers with magic and wish-bones--ay, you may well pout!--perhaps this had something to do with the fact that he was never flogged to the beacons and kicked across.

"In fact, there grew up about him a something of mystery, uncanny and not respectable. The little plodding man who went so meekly past our gates had a shadow one feared to tread on.

"You won't remember, but you will have heard of, the terrible to-do there was when Freda van der Byl disappeared. She was a most ordinary girl, perhaps eighteen years old, with a fine appetite, and nothing whatsoever about her that was strange or extraordinary: and yet one night she was missing, and it has never been set past doubt who saw her last. She was on the stoop in the afternoon, ate well at supper, went out then in the usual way to the hut where the tobacco-sacks were, and never came in again. She disappeared like a flame blown out, with never a spoor to give direction to those that sought her, without a shred of clothing on a thorn-bush to hint at a tale. She seemed to have fled clean out of the world--a big ten--stone girl with red hair melted like a bubble.

"And how they hunted for her! Old Johannes van der Byl and his sons went through the country like locusts, and with them were a mob of relations and friends, and some prospectors from the Hangklip who betted about it. Every kloof was scoured, every Kafir stad and kraal turned inside out, and the half of them burned. Their ponies streaked the long grass of the veld for miles; the men, their loaded rifles in hand, were abroad late and early; and yet they never found even a shoe-sole or a shred of hair to give them a clue. The witch-doctors would have been glad enough to find her, for they were flogged from morning to night, and Barend van der Byl beat the life out of one who did not seem to be doing his best. If Freda had been anywhere in the veld she would have been found, so fervently did the Kafirs hunt her in order to get a little peace and security.

"But nothing availed; no trace of her came to light, and even the women of her family grew tired of weeping. But one hot dusty afternoon, when her brothers Jacobus and Piet were riding home from the fruitless search, they came upon the Peruvian sitting under a bush smoking his yellow cigarettes. He glanced up at them as they went past, slavish as ever, yet still with that subtle significance of mien that made him noteworthy, and suddenly Jacobus reined up.

"'Piet,' he called, pointing with his sjambok. Look--our last chance!'

"Piet did not understand.

"'We have been cutting the Kafir doctors into ribbons,' explained Jacobus, 'and they were no good. But here is a wizard, and a white one, who won't wait to be flogged. If he can do nothing, then there is nothing to do. Let us bring him along, Piet.'

"Piet was a fat youth, deadly strong, who never spoke while there was work to do. He merely dropped from his saddle and caught the Peruvian deftly by the back of the neck. The smouser, of course, whined and squirmed, but Piet was the man who broke the bullock's neck at Bothaskraal, and he made no difficulty of tying the little man's wrists to his off stirrup. All his trinkets and fallals they left behind, and riding at a walk, talking calmly between themselves of the buck with wide horns that the Predikant's cousin missed, they dragged the little smouser to the homestead.

"'Several of the men had already come back, and when they heard Jacobus's plan, some were openly afraid and wished to have the Peruvian set loose. But Oom Johannes cursed at them and smacked Jacobus on the back.

"'My daughter is lost, and evil tongues are active about her,' he roared. 'I want her back, and I don't care how she comes. Come to supper, Jacobus; and afterwards you shall take your smouser into a hut and persuade him.'

"It was not an easy thing to make the Peruvian understand what was wanted of him. But by and by, when he had been argued with in Dutch and Kafir, and shown a skull that was found in a kloof, and the dol oss, and a picture in the Bible of the Witch of Endor, he suddenly grasped the idea, and grinned. Piet spat on the ground as the white teeth gleamed through the greasy black beard.

"'Yes, perhaps I can do that,' said the Peruvian, in the Taal. 'Perhaps, but one cannot be sure. You will pay, eh?'

"Jacobus wanted to threaten, but Oom Johannes would not have it.

"'Find my girl,' he said, 'and you shall be paid. Fifty pounds for any news of her, more if she is alive and well.'

"But the smouser explained that he could only find her if she were dead.

"'I can get her to speak, perhaps,' he said. 'More? No!'

"At last Jacobus and Piet took him into one of the big huts and gave him the little lamp that he demanded. He set it in the middle of the floor, and when they pulled to the door behind them the big domed hut was still almost dark, save for the ring of quiet light in the centre that flickered a little.

"'I wish he could do this kind of thing when I'm not there,' grumbled Jacobus, who hated creepy things.

"'Hush! be quiet!' commanded the Peruvian, and the two young men sat down, very close together, with their backs to the door.