Produced by Charles Klingman VROUW GROBELAAR AND HER LEADING CASES SEVENTEEN SHORT STORIES BY PERCEVAL GIBBON AUTHOR OF SOULS IN BONDAGE NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. MCMVI Copyright, 1906, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published, January, 1906 TO MY WIFE CONTENTS UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION THE DREAM-FACE THE AVENGER OF BLOOD THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN PIET NAUDE'S TREK LIKE UNTO LIKE COUNTING THE COLORS THE KING OF THE BABOONS MORDER DRIFT A GOOD END VASCO'S SWEETHEART THE PERUVIAN TAGALASH THE HOME KRAAL THE SACRIFICE THE COWARD HER OWN STORY UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION The Vrouw Grobelaar, you must know, is a lady of excellent standing, as much by reason of family connections (for she was a Viljoen of the older stock herself, and buried in her time three husbands of estimable parentage) as of her wealth. Her farms extended from the Ringkop on the one side to the Holgaatspruit on the other, which is more than a day's ride; and her stock appears to be of that ideal species which does not take rinderpest. Her Kafirs were born on the place, and will surely die there, for though the old lady is firmly convinced that she rules them with a rod of iron, the truth is she spoils them atrociously; and were it not that there is an excellent headman to her kraals, the niggers would soon grow pot-bellied in idleness. The Vrouw Grobelaar is a lady who commands respect. Her face is a portentous mask of solemnity, and her figure is spacious beyond the average of Dutch ladies, so that certain chairs are tacitly conceded her as a monopoly. The good Vrouw does not read or write, and having never found a need in herself for these arts, is the least thing impatient of those who practice them. The Psalms, however, she appears to know by heart; also other portions of the Bible; and is capable of spitting Scripture at you on the smallest provocation. Indeed she bubbles with morality, and a mention of "the accursed thing" (which would appear to be a genus and not a species, so many articles of human commerce does it embrace) will set her effervescing with mingled blame and exhortation. But if punishment should come in question, as when a Kafir waylaid and slew a chicken of hers, she displays so prolific an invention in excuses, so generous a partiality for mercy, that not the most irate induna that ever laid down a law of his own could find a pretext for using the stick. She lives in her homestead with some half-dozen of nieces, a nephew or two, and a litter of grandchildren, who know the old lady to the core, cozen and blarney her as they please, and love her with a perfect unanimity. I think she sometimes blames herself for her tyrannical usage of these innocents, who nevertheless thrive remarkably on it. You can hardly get on your horse at the door without maiming an infant, and you can't throw a stone in any direction without killing a marriageable damsel. They pervade the old place like an atmosphere; the kraals ring with their voices, and the Kafirs spend lives of mingled misery and delight at their irresponsible hands. I do not think I need particularize in the matter of these youngsters, save as regards Katje. Katje refuses to be ignored, and she was no more to be overlooked than a tin- tack in the sole of your foot. She was the only child of Vrouw Grobelaar's youngest brother, Barend Viljoen, who died while lion-hunting in the Fever Country. At the time I am thinking of Katje might have been eighteen. She was like a poppy among the stubble, so delicate in her bodily fabric, and yet so opulent in shape and coloring. She was the nicest child that ever gave a kiss for the asking (you could kiss her as soon as look at her), but she was also the very devil to deal with if she saw fit to take a distaste of you. I saw her once smack a fathom of able- bodied youth on both sides of the head with a lusty vigor that constrained the sufferer to howl. And I have seen her come to meet a man--well, me, with the readiest lips and the friendliest hand in the world. Oh, Katje was like a blotch of color in one's life; something vivid, to throw the days into relief. A stranger to the household might have put down Katje's behavior towards the Vrouw Grobelaar as damnable, no less; and in the early days of my acquaintance with the family I was somewhat tempted to this opinion myself. For she not only flouted the old lady to her face, but would upon occasion disregard her utterly, and do it all with what I can only call a swagger that seemed to demand a local application of drastic measures. But Katje knew her victim, if such a word can be applied to the Vrouw Grobelaar, and never prodded her save on her armor. For instance, to say the Kafirs were overdriven and starved was nothing if not flattery--to say they were spoiled and coddled would have been mere brutality. With it all, the Vrouw Grobelaar went her placid way, like an elephant over egg-shells. Her household did her one service, at least, in return for their maintenance, and that was to provide the old lady with an audience. It was in no sense an unwilling service, for her imagination ran to the gruesome, and she never planted a precept but she drove it home with a case in point. As a result night was often shattered by a yell from some sleeper whose dreams had trespassed on devilish domains. The Vrouw Grobelaar believed most entirely in Kafir magic, in witchcraft and second sight, in ghosts and infernal possession, in destiny, and in a very personal arch-fiend who presided over a material hell when not abroad in the world on the war-path. Besides, she had stores of tales from the lives of neighbors and acquaintances: often horrible enough, for the Boers are a lonely folk and God's finger writes large in their lives. I almost think I can see it now--the low Dutch kitchen with its plank ceiling, the old lady in her chair, with an illustrative forefinger uplifted to punctuate the periods of her tale, the embers, white and red, glowing on the hearth, and the intent shadow-pitted faces of the hearers, agape for horrors. There was a tale I heard her tell to Katje, when that damsel had seen fit to observe, apropos of disobedience in general, that her grandfather's character had nothing to do with hers. The tale was in plaintive Dutch, the language that makes or breaks a story-teller, for you must hang your point on the gutturals or you miss it altogether. "Look at my husband's uncle," said the old lady. "A sinful man, forever swearing and cursing, and drinking. His farm was the worst in the district; the very Kafirs were ashamed of it when they went to visit the kraals. But Voss (that was the name of my husband's uncle) cared nothing so long as there was a horse to ride into the dorp on and some money to buy whiskey with. And he drank so much and carried on so wickedly that his wife died and his girls married poor men and never went to stay with their father. So at last he lived in the house, with only his son to help him from being all alone. "This son was Barend Voss, a great hulking fellow, with the strength of a trek-ox, and never a word of good or bad to throw away on any one. But his face was the face of a violent man. He had blue eyes with no pleasantness about them, but a sort of glitter, as though there were live coals in his brain. He did not drink like his father; and these two would sit together in the evenings, the one bleared and stupid with liquor, and the other watching him in silence across the table. "They spoke seldom to one another; and it would often happen that the father would speak to the son and get not a word of answer--only that lowering ugly stare that had grown to be a way with the boy. "I think those two men must have grown to hate each other in the evenings as they sat together; the younger one despising and loathing his father, and the father hating his son for so doing. I have often wondered how they never came to blows--before they did, that is. "One morning old Voss rode off to the dorp, and Barend watched him from the door till he went out of sight in the kloof. All the day he was away, and when he came back again it was late in the night. Barend was sitting in his usual place at the table scowling over his folded arms. "Old Voss had not ridden off his liquor; and he staggered into the house singing a dirty English song. He had a bottle in his hands, and banged it down on the table in front of his son. "'Now, old sheep's head,' he shouted, 'have a drink and drop those airs of yours.' "Barend sat where he was, and said not a word--just watched the other. "'Come on,' shouted old Voss; 'I'm not going to drink alone. If you won't take it pleasantly I'll make you take it, and be damned to you!' "Barend sat still, scowling always. I dare say a sober man would have seen something in his eyes and let be. But old Voss was blind to his danger, and shouted on. "The younger man kept his horrid silence, and never moved, till the father was goaded to a drunken rage. "'If you won't drink,' he screamed, 'take that,' and he flung a full cupful of the spirit right in the young man's face. "Then everything was in the fire. The two men fought in the room like beasts, oversetting table and lamp, and stamping into the fire on the hearth. Barend was mad with a passion of long nursing, and hewed with his great fists till the old man fell heavily to the ground, and lay moaning. "Barend stood over him, glowering. 'Swine!' he said to his father; 'swine and brute! get you out of this house to the veld. You are no father of mine.' "But the old man was much hurt, and lay where he had fallen, groaning as though he had not heard. "'I will have you out of this,' said the son. 'If you are come to die, die on the road. I had wished you dead for years.' "So he wound his hand, with the knuckles all over blood, in the old man's white hair, and threw open the door with his other hand. "'Out with you!' he shouted, and dragged him down the step and into the yard. Yes, he dragged him across the yard to the gate; and when he unfastened the gate the old man opened his eyes and spoke. "'Leave me here,' he said, speaking slowly and painfully. 'Leave me here, my son. Thus far I dragged my father.'" The Vrouw Grobelaar, to point a weighty moral, turned her face upon Katje. But that young lady was sleeping soundly with her mouth open. THE DREAM-FACE "I wish," said Katje, looking up from her book--"I wish a man would come and make me marry him." The Vrouw Grobelaar wobbled where she sat with stupefaction. "Yes," continued Katje, musingly casting her eyes to the rafters, "I wish a man would just take me by the hand--so-- and not listen to anything I said, nor let me go however I should struggle, and carry me off on the peak of his saddle and marry me. I think I would be willing to die for a man who could do that." The Vrouw Grobelaar found her voice at last. "Katje," she said with deep-toned emphasis, "you are talking wickedness, just wickedness. Do you think I would let a man--any man, or perhaps an Englishman--carry you off like a strayed ewe?" "The sort of man I'm thinking of," replied the maiden, "wouldn't ask you for permission. He'd simply pick me up, and away he'd go." At times, and in certain matters, Vrouw Grobelaar would display a ready acumen. "Tell me, Katje," she said now, "who is this man?" Then Katje dropped her book and, sitting upright with an unimpeachable surprise, stared at the old lady. "I'm not thinking of any man," she remarked calmly. "I was just wishing there was a man who would have the pluck to do it." The Vrouw Grobelaar shook her head. "Good Burghers don't carry girls away," she said. "They come and drink coffee, and sit with them, and talk about the sheep." "And behave as if they had never worn boots before, and didn't know what to do with their hands," added the maiden. "Aunt, am I a girl to marry a man who upsets three cups of coffee in half an hour and borrows a handkerchief to wipe his knees?" Now there could be no shadow of doubt that this was an open-breasted cut at young Fanie van Tromp, whose affection for Katje was a matter of talk on the farms, and whose overtures that young lady had consistently sterilized with ridicule. The Vrouw Grobelaar was void of delicacy. "Fanie is a good lad," she said, "and when his father dies he will have a very large property." "It'll console him for not adding me to his live stock," retorted Katje. "He is handsome, too," continued the old lady. "His beard is as black as--" "A carrion-crow," added Katje promptly. "Quite," agreed the Vrouw Grobelaar, with a perfect unconsciousness of the unsavoriness of the suggestion. "And he walks like a duck with sore feet," went on Katje. "He is as graceful as a trek-ox, and his conversational talents are those of a donkey in long grass." "All that is a young girl's nonsense," observed the old lady. "I was like that once myself. But when one grows a little older and fatter, and there is less about one to take a man's eye,--a fickle thing, Katje, a fickle thing,-- one looks for more in a husband than a light foot and a smart figure." Katje was a trifle abashed, for all the daughters of her house, were they never so slender, grew tubby in their twenties. "Besides," continued the worthy Vrouw, "your talk is chaff from a mill. It must come out to leave the meal clean. Perhaps, after all, Fanie is the man to carry you off. I think you would not take so much trouble to worry him if you thought nothing of him." The Vrouw Grobelaar had never heard of Beatrice and her Benedick, but she had a notion of the principle. "I hate him," cried Katje with singular violence. "I think not," replied the old lady. "Sometimes the thing we want is at our elbows, and we cannot grasp it because we reach too far. Did I ever tell you how Stoffel Struben nearly went mad for love of his wife?" "No," said Katje, unwillingly interested. "He was something of a fool to begin with," commenced the Vrouw Grobelaar. "He chose his wife for a certain quality of gentleness she had, and though I will not deny she made him a good wife and a patient, still gentleness will not boil a pot. He was a fine fellow to look at; big and upstanding, with plenty of blood in him, and a grand mat of black hair on top. He moved like a buck; so ready on his feet and so lively in all his movements. He might have carried you off, Katje, and done you no good in the end. "He was happy with his pretty wife for a while, and might have been happy all his life and died blessedly had he but been able to keep from conjuring up faces in his mind and falling in love with them. Greta, his wife, had hair like golden wheat, so smooth and rippled with light; and no sooner had he stroked his fill of it than he conceived nut- brown to be the most lovely color of woman's hair. Her eyes were blue, and for half a year he loved them; then hazel seemed to him a better sort. I said he was a fool, didn't I? "So his marriage to Greta became a chain instead of a union, while the poor lass fretted her heart out over his dark looks and short answers. He was shallow, Katje, shallow; he had the mere capacity for love, but it was a short way to the bottom of it. You will see by and by that the men who deserve least always want most. Stoffel had no right to a woman at all; when he had one, and she a good girl, he let his eyes rove for others. "So he went about his farm with his mind straying and his heart abroad. If you spoke to him, he paused awhile, and then looked at you with a start as though freshly waked. He saw nothing as he went, neither his wife with the questions in her eyes that she shamed to say with her lips, nor the child that crowed at him from her arms. He was deaf and blind to the healthy world, to all save the silly dreams his poisoned soul fed on. "Well, wicked or not, it is at least unsafe not to look where one is going. This was a thing Stoffel never did: since he overlooked his wife, it was not to be expected he would see a strand of fencing-wire on the ground. So he rode on to it, and down came his horse. Down came Stoffel too, and there was a stone handy on the place where his head lit to let some of the moonshine out of him. He saw a heavenful of stars for a moment, and then saw nothing for a long time. Save--one strange thing! "When life came back to him he was in his bed very sore and empty, and very mightily surprised to see himself alive, after all. He was exceedingly weak and somewhat misty as to how it all had happened. But one thing he seemed to remember--more than seemed, so strong, so plain, so deep was his memory of it. He thought he recalled pain and blindness, and a sudden light, in which he saw a face close to his, a girl's face, pitiful, tender, loving, and charged with more than all the sweetness of beauty that his sick heart could long for. The thing was like one of those dreams from which one wakes sad and thoughtful, as when one has overstepped the boundary mark of life and cast an eye on heaven. "It was no face that he knew, and he turned on his pillow to think of it. He could not believe it was a dream. 'It was a soul,' he said to himself. 'I knew, I was sure, that somewhere there was such a face, but it only came to my eyes when I was on the borderland of death. If ever God gave a thing to a mortal man, he should have given me that woman.' "So with such blasphemous thoughts he idled through the days of his sickness, very quiet, very weak, and kind to his wife beyond the ordinary. Of course she, poor woman, knew nothing of the silly tale, and when her husband gave her those little caresses one would not withhold from an affectionate dog, she blessed God that he was come to himself again. You see, Katje dear, that as a man demands more than he can claim with right, a woman must often make shift with less. It is well to learn this early. "Stoffel grew well in time, and got about again. But the stone had made less of a dent in his skull than the face in his heart, and he was changed altogether. He served a false god, but served it faithfully. He was very gentle and patient with every one, almost like a saint, and he took infinite pains with the work of his farm. He would hurt no living thing--not even so much as lash a team of lazy oxen. You would have thought Kafirs would have done as they pleased with him, but they obeyed his least word, and hung on his eyes for orders as though they worshipped him. Kafirs and dogs will sometimes see farther than a Christian. "Meanwhile Greta came to die. It was a chill, perhaps, with a trifle of fever on top of that, and it carried her off like a candle-flame when it is blown out. She died well-- very well indeed. None of your whimpering and moaning and slinking out of the back-door of life when nobody is looking; nor that unconscious death that shuts out a chance of a few last words. No; Greta saw with her eyes and spoke with her mouth to the last, then folded her hands and died as handsomely as one would wish to see. She prayed a trifle, as she should; forgave her brother's wife for speaking ill of her, and hoped her tongue would not lure her to destruction. I have heard her brother's wife never forgave her for it. "On the last day she sent everybody out of the room save only Stoffel, and him she held by the hand as he sat beside the bed. She knew she was drawing to her end (the dying always know it) and feared nothing. But there was a matter she wanted to know. "'Stoffel,' she said when they were alone, won't you tell me now who that woman is?' "'What woman?' said Stoffel amazed, for of his dream in his sickness he had spoken to no living soul. "She stroked his hand and shook her head at him. Ah, Stoffel,' she said, 'it is long since I first made place for that woman, and if I grudged her you, I never grudged you her. I was content with what you gave me, Stoffel; I thought you right, whatever you did, and I go to God still thinking so. All our life, Stoffel, she prevailed against me, and I submitted; but now, at this last moment, I want to have the better of it. Tell me, who was it?' "And Stoffel, looking on the floor, answered, 'I swear to you there was no woman.' "She replied, 'And ere the cock crows thou shall deny me thrice.' She turned her head and looked at him with a pitiful drawn smile that would have dragged tears from a demon. 'Was she dark, Stoffel? I am fair, you know; but my hair--look at it, Stoffel,--my hair is golden. Did you never notice it before? She was tall, I suppose? Well, I am something short, but, Stoffel, I am slender, too. Will you not so much as tell me her name, Stoffel? It is not as if I blamed you.' "A truth, hardly won, is always set on a pile of lies. 'How do you know there was a woman?' asked Stoffel. "'How?' she repeated. 'How I know! Stoffel, you never had a thought I did not know; never a hope but I hoped it for you, nor a fear but I thought how to safeguard you. I never lived but in you, Stoffel. "'Let us speak nothing but the truth now,' she went on. 'You and I have always been beyond the need for lies to one another, and as I wait here for you to tell me, I have one hand in yours and the other in Christ's. Let me not think hardly of her as I go.' "'You would not curse her?' he said quickly. "'Not even that' she answered, smiling a little. 'And if you will not tell me, I will die even content with that, since it is your wish.' "'Listen,' said Stoffel then. And forthwith, looking backwards and forwards in shame and sorrow, he told the tale. He told how he saw a face, which laid hold on his life ever after, how it governed and compelled him with the mere memory, and hung in his mind like a deed done. And he also told how he hoped after death to see that face with the eyes of his soul, and dwell with it in heaven. "When he had finished he cast a glance at his wife. She was lying on her back, holding his hand still, and smiling up to the ceiling with a pleasant face of contentment. "'Can you forgive me?' he cried, and would have gone on to protest and explain, but she pressed his hand and he was silent. "'Forgive you!' she said at last. 'Forgive you! No; but I will bless you for all of it. So it seems I have won after all, but now I wish I had let be. It was no spirit you saw, Stoffel. There was a woman there, and while you lay white and lifeless she held you in her arms, and bent over you. And just for one moment you opened your eyes and saw her, while her face was close to yours. Then you died again, and remained so for a day and a night Was there love in her eyes, Stoffel?' "'Love!' cried Stoffel, and fell silent. "In a minute he spoke again. 'I am helpless,' he said, 'and you are strong. But, curse and hate me as you will, you must tell me who this woman was.' "'A little time since it was I that asked,' she said, 'and you would not tell me.' "'I beseech you,' he said. "'You shall never ask twice,' she answered gently. 'I will tell you, but not this moment.' "So for a while they sat together, and the sun began to go down, and blazed on the window-panes and on the golden hair of the dying woman. She lay as if in a mist of glory, and smiled at Stoffel. He, looking at her, could not lack of being startled by the beauty that had come over her face and the joy that weighed her eyelids. "She stirred a little, and sighed. Stoffel cast an arm round her to hold her up, and his heart bounded woefully when he felt how light she was. Her head came to his shoulder, as to a place where it belonged, and their lips met. "'Shall I tell you now?' she said in a whisper. "Stoffel did not answer, so she asked again. 'Will you know, Stoffel?' "'No,' he answered. 'I'm cured.' "'I will tell you, then,' she cried. 'No,' he repeated. 'Let it be.' "So together they sat for a further while, and the time grew on for going. She was to die with the sun; she had said it. And as they sat both could see through the window the sun floating lower, with an edge in its grave already, and the rim of the earth black against it. The noises of the veld and the farm came in to them, and they drew closer together. "Neither wept; they were too newly met for that. But Stoffel felt a dull pain of sorrow overmastering him, and soon he groaned aloud. "'My wife, my wife,' he cried. "She rested wholly on his arm, and shivered a little. "'Stoffel,' she said in a voice that henceforth was to whisper forever, 'Stoffel, you love me?' "'As God sees me,' he answered. "'Listen,' she said, and fought with the tide that was fast drowning her words. 'That face--you--saw . . . was . . . mine!' "She smiled as his arm tightened on her, and died so smiling." There was silence in the shadowy room as the tale finished, until it was broken by the Vrouw Grobelaar. "You see?" she said. "Yes," replied Katje, very quietly. THE AVENGER OF BLOOD The Vrouw Grobelaar entered in haste, closed the door, and sat down panting. "If my last husband were alive," she said--"if any of them were alive, that creature would be shot for looking at an honest woman with such eyes," and she cast an anxious glance over her shoulder. "What is it?" demanded Katje. "That old Hottentot hag." responded the old lady. "She looks like a witch, and I am sure she is a witch. I would make the Kafirs throw her on to the veld, but you can't be too careful with witches. Why, as I came in just now, she was squatting by the door like a big toad, and her eyes made me go cold all through." Katje made a remark. "What! You say nonsense!" The old lady pricked herself into an ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of pride. Beware of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches in the Bible, and weren't they horrible and wicked? Didn't King David see the dead corpses come up out of the ground when the witch crooked her finger, like dogs running to heel? Well, then! "Oh, I know," continued the old lady, as Katje tossed a mutinous head. "They've taught you a lot in that school, but they didn't teach you belief. Nor manners. You're going to say there are no witches nowadays." "I'm not," said Katje. "Yes, you are," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I know you. But you're wrong. You don't know anything. Young girls in these days are like young pigs, all squeak and fight, but no bacon. Didn't the brother of my half-brother's wife die of a witch's devilry?" "I'm sure I don't know," returned hapless Katje. "Well, he did. I'll tell you." The old lady settled herself comfortably and lapsed into history. "His name was Fanie, and he was a Van der Merwe on his father's side, but his mother was only a Prinsloo, though her mother was a Coetzee, for the matter of that. He wasn't what I should call good--at least, not always; but he was very big and strong, and made a lot of noise, and folk liked him. The women used to make black white to prove that the things he did and said were proper things, although they'd have screamed all night if their own men-folk had done the same. They say, you know," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, quoting a very old and seldom-heard Dutch proverb, "that when women pray they think of God as a handsome man. "What I didn't like about him was his way with the Kafirs. A Kafir is more useful than a dog after all, and one shouldn't be always beating and kicking even a dog. And Fanie could never pass a Kafir without kicking him or flicking his whip at him. I have seen all the Kafirs run to their kraals when they saw him riding up the road. "There was one old Kafir we had,--very old and weak, and no use at all. He used to sit by the gate all day, and mumble to himself, and seem to look at things that weren't there. His head was quite white with age, which is not a common thing with Kafirs, as you know; and he was so foolish and helpless that his people used to feed him with a spiked stick, like a motherless chicken. And in case the fowls should go and sit on his back while he crouched in the sun, as I have seen them do, there was a little Kafir picaninny, as black as a crow, that was sent to play about near him every day. Dear Lord! I have seen those two sitting there, looking at each other for an hour on end, without a word, as though both had been children or both old men. Nobody minded them: we used to throw sugar to the picaninny, and watch him fighting with the fowls for it, rolling about on his little black belly like a new-hatched duckling himself. "Well, Fanie, ... it was horrible. . . . "I don't like to think of it to this day. He came over one day in a great hurry to tell us that August de Villiers, the father of the Predikant at Dopfontein, was choked with a peach-stone. He was riding very fast, and as he came near the house he rode off the road and jumped his horse at the wall. And as he came over, up rose the little picaninny right under his horse's hoofs. 'Twas a quick way to die, and without much pain, no doubt; but a most awful thing to see. The horse stumbled on to him, and I can remember now how his knee, the near knee, crushed the little Kafirs chest in. The little black legs and arms fought for a moment, and then the horse struggled up, and he was dead. "Fanie seemed sorry. He couldn't help killing the picaninny, of course, and perhaps we had grown rather foolish about him, having watched him and laughed at him so long. So Fanie got off his horse and came in to tell us the news. "When we went out the horse was standing at the door where Fanie had left it. But the old Kafir was kneeling by the steps fingering its hoofs, which were all bloody, and as Fanie came forward he put out his hands and left a little spot of blood on Fanie's shoes. "Fanie stood for a moment, and his face went white as paper over his black beard. He knew, you see. But in a flash he went red as fire, and lashed the old man across the face with his whip. The old man did not move at all; but my brothers held Fanie and called to the Kafirs to come and fetch the old man away. Oh, but I promise you Fanie was angry, as men will be when they are obliged to be good by force. "Well, that was all that happened that day. Fanie went away, and we all saw that he galloped the horse as fast as it could go. But down by the kraals the Kafirs who were carrying the old man stopped and watched him as he went. "Well, in a few days most of us forgot the ugly business, though the little picaninny used to walk through my dreams for a time. Still, blood-kin are blood-kin, and Kafirs are Kafirs, and one day Fanie came over to see us again and we gave him coffee. He told us a story about a rooinek that bought a sheep, and the man gave him a dog in a sack, and he paid for it and went away, and we all laughed at it. He was very funny that day, and said that when he married he would choose an old woman who would die quickly and leave him all her farms. So it was late and dark before he up- saddled to go away. "Well, he was gone a quarter of an hour when we heard hoofs, galloping, galloping, hard and furious, coming up the road. And as we opened the door a horse came over the wall and Fanie tumbled off it and came rushing in. "We all screamed. He was white like ashes, and wet with sweat, and trembling so that he could not stand. "'Fanie,' cried my sister, 'what is it?' and he groaned and put his face in his hands. "By and by he spoke, and kept glancing about him and turning to look behind him, and would not let one of us move away. "'There was something behind me,' he said. "'Something?' we all asked. "'Yes,' he said. 'Something . . . dead I It followed me up here, and I could not get away from it, spur as hard as I would. I think it is a death-call.' "Then we were all frightened, but we could not help wanting to hear more. "'No,' said Fanie, 'I did not see it, nor hear it even, but I knew it was there.' "'It was a sign,' said my mother, a very wise old woman. 'Let us all thank God.' "So we thanked God on our knees, but I'm sure I don't know what for. "Then Fanie told us all he knew, and that was just nothing. As he came to the kloof he was afraid of something in front of him. He said he felt like a man in grave-clothes. So he turned, and then the ... whatever it was . . . seemed to come after him; so he galloped and galloped as hard as the horse could lay hoof to the earth, and prayed till his heart nearly burst. And then, not knowing where he was going, he jumped the wall and came among us. We were all silent when he had told us. "Then Oom Jan spoke. He was very old, and seldom said anything. "'You have done murder!' he said. "'If I talk till my mouth is stopped with dust I shall never be able to tell how cold I felt about the heart when I heard that. For the little picaninny came plain before my eyes, and oh! I was all full of pity for Fanie. I liked him well enough in those days. "He stopped with us that night. He would not go away nor be alone, so he slept with my brothers, and held their hands and prayed half the night. In the morning they took him home on one of our horses, for his own was fit to die from the night's work. "That was the last I ever saw of Fanie. It was as though he went from us to God. He kissed me on both cheeks when he went away; he kissed us all, but me first of all, and held both my hands. I think he must have liked me too,--don't you think so, Katje?" "'Yes," said Katje softly. "He went down the road between my brothers with his head bent like an old man's, and I watched him out of sight, and I was very, very sorry for him. I don't think I cried, but I may have. He was a fine tall man. "One night my brothers came in just as I was going to bed, and one stood in the door while the other whispered to my mother. She looked up and saw me standing there. "'Go to bed,' she said. "'What is it?' I asked. "'Go to bed,' said my brother. "'No.' I said. 'Tell me, is it Fanie?' "My brother looked at me and threw up his hand like a man who can do no more. 'Yes,' he said. "Then I knew, as though he had shouted it out, that Fanie was dead. I cannot say how, but I knew it. "'He is dead,' I said. 'Bring him in here.' "So they went out and carried Fanie in with his clothes all draggled and his beard full of mud. They laid him on the table, and I saw his face. . . . Dear God! . . There was terror on that face, carven and set in dead flesh, that set my blood screaming in my body. Sometimes even now I wake in the night all shrinking with fear of the very memory of it. "But there is one thing more. We went about to put everything in order and lay the poor corpse in decency, and when we started to pull off his veldschoen, as I hope to die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood still wet on the toe. "I think God's right hand was on my head that night that I did not go mad. "I heard the tale next morning. My brothers, coming home, found him ... it . . . in a spruit, already quite dead. There was no horse by, but his spoor led back a mile to where the horse lay dead and stiff. When it fell he must have run on, ... screaming, perhaps, . . . till he fell in the spruit. I would like to think peace came to him at the last; but there was no peace in the dead face." The Vrouw Grobelaar dropped her face on to her hands, and Katje came and passed an arm of sympathy and protection around her. THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN The Vrouw Grobelaar had no opinion of Kafirs, and was forever ready to justify herself in this particular. "Kafirs,' she said, 'are not men, whatever the German missionaries may say. I do not deny we have a duty to them, as to the beasts of the field; but as for being men, well, a baboon is as much a man as a Kafir is. "Kafirs are made to work, and ought to work. Katje, what are you laughing about? Did not the dear God make everything for a purpose, and what is the use of a Kafir if he is not made to work? Work for themselves? Katje, you are learning nothing but rubbish at that school, and I will not have you say such things. How could the Burghers work the farms if they had not the Kafirs? Well, be silent, then. "Oh, I know the Kafirs. I have seen hundreds of them--yes, and for the matter of that, thousands. Just beasts, they are,--nothing--else. Did you hear how the Vrouw Coetzee came to die? Well, I will tell you, and you will see that we must hold the Kafirs with a hand of iron or they will destroy us. "It was a time when Piet Coetzee was away making laws in Pretoria, and the Vrouw Coetzee, who was only married one year, was alone on the farm with her little baby. There were plenty of Kafirs to do the work; but, you see, there was no man to have an eye to them, and take a sjambok to them when they needed it. So one day the Kafirs came in from the lands and would not work any more. "Why wouldn't they work? How should I know? Who can tell why a Kafir does anything? Perhaps a witch-doctor had come among them. Perhaps the German missionaries had been talking foolishness to them. Perhaps it began at a beer- drink with some boasting by the young men before the girls. Who can say? But however it was, they came in and sat down before the house, and just waited there. "Vrouw Coetzee came out with her baby on her arm and spoke to them; but not one moved a finger or answered a word. They sat still where they were and watched her, and others came from the huts and sat down too, until there were close on a hundred Kafirs before the house. Vrouw Coetzee watched them come, and as she stood in the door the two Kafir girls who worked about the house pushed her aside and went and sat down too. "Then Vrouw Coetzee, looking at the dumb black faces and white eyes, got frightened and went backwards into the house and closed the door. She put down the baby and drew the iron bar across the door inside. From there she went to the door at the back, and to all the windows, and closed and secured them as far as possible. Then she took down the old elephant-gun from the wall, and finding Piet's pouch and the bullets, she loaded it and laid it on the table. All the time the Kafirs made no sign, and from the keyhole she saw them still sitting in silence, watching the house. "When midday came she made some food ready to eat, and then came a bang at the door. "'What is it you want?' she cried, without opening. "'Liquor!' cried one of the Kafirs. 'You have some brandy in the house. Give it to us, or we will come and take it and kill you at the same time.' "'I have no brandy,' she cried, 'and when my husband comes back I will tell him to shoot you all.' "The Kafirs laughed, and one of the house-girls called out, 'There is brandy; we have seen it.' "Then the Kafirs all began to shout together, and banged the door with their knobkerries. 'Give us the brandy!' they shouted, and she heard a stone smash through a window against the shutters. "The Vrouw Coetzee was a brave woman, and she hated Kafirs; but, looking at the baby, she thought it best to give them the brandy. "'Stand away from the window,' she cried, 'and I will put the brandy outside; but if one of you comes near me I will shoot.' "So she placed the brandy on the sill outside the window. The Kafirs were standing about in groups, looking very fierce, but they saw the elephant-gun and did nothing. But as she barred the shutter again, she heard them rush up and snatch the bottles. "Watching through the keyhole of the door, she saw them troop off to the huts, shouting and capering and waving the bottles in the air. They came to the door no more that day, but she heard them howling in the kraal as the brandy began to inflame them. "When it got dark she sat down with her face to the door, her child in her arms. The howling of the Kafirs was wilder than ever, and shrieks of women mingled with the uproar. The Vrouw Coetzee trembled there in the dark as she remembered stories of the Kafir wars, and how the Kafirs had treated the white women and children they caught on the farms. "Late in the night the Kafirs came back and commenced to hammer on the door again. "'Give us more brandy,' they shouted. "'I have no more,' she said. 'I have given you all.' "'You lie!' they screamed. 'If you do not give us more we will come and kill you and tear your baby to pieces.' "Then the Vrouw Coetzee began to tremble, and, putting down the child, took the big gun in her hands. "'That is you, Kleinbooi,' she cried out, recognizing the voice of one of the Kafirs. 'Why do you behave like this? What will the baas say when he comes back?' "'We do not care for the baas,' they replied. 'If you do not give us the brandy we will break in your door.' "'I have no more,' she said again, and straightway the Kafirs commenced to hammer at the door. "The Vrouw Coetzee raised the gun to her shoulder and pointed it at the door. Her arms were trembling so that she could not keep it steady; so, going close up to the door, she rested the muzzle on the iron bar. Then she pulled the trigger. "The gun went off with a roar and filled the room with a stifling smoke. The baby began to cry, but she paid it no attention till the gun was loaded again. Then, as she snatched up her child and soothed it, she heard wailing and screaming from outside, where the heavy bullet had done its work. "The Kafirs left her at peace for about an hour, and the noise of the wounded sank to a sobbing. At last a voice hailed her again. "'We will kill you now,' it said. 'You have shot two men,' and she was assailed with a string of horrid names such as only a Kafir can think of. "'Where are you?' she called, terrified. "'Here,' came the reply, and a little stone fell down the chimney. "'I will shoot!' she screamed, taking up the gun; but the Kafir on the roof answered with only a laugh. "'It will do no good,' he replied. 'We shall kill you, burn you in a fire slowly, scald you with boiling water, cut you in little pieces,' and he went on to threaten the lone woman with the most fiendish and ghastly outrages, such as I dare not even give a name to. "The low devilish voice on the roof went on. 'And your baby, vile thing! You shall see it writhe in the flames, and hear it cry to you, and watch the blood spout from its skin. You shall see the dogs tearing it, while you lie in anguish, powerless to aid it. Yes, we will kill the child first, and slowly--slowly! It shall cry a long time before it shall die at last.' "Then the Vrouw Coetzee, calling aloud on God, pointed the gun and fired through the roof. There was a laugh again, and before the smoke cleared a big Kafir dropped down the wide
{'title': 'Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases: Seventeen Short Stories by Perceval Gibbon', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}