Flower o' the Peach. Gibbon Perceval

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СКАЧАТЬ vanish in abrupt motion. It was strange to stand beside one and hear from within the crying of an infant and the soothing of a mother, both invisible, arriving from the void on one hand and bound for the void on the other, with the Karoo not even an incident in their passage. Paul wondered whether one day that infant might not pass through again, with trousers and a mustache and a cigar, and another trouble to perturb him and cards and partners to do the soothing.

      He arrived well in advance of the time of the train, and tied his docile horses to the hitching rail beside the road. Within the station there was the usual expectant group under the dim lamps, the two or three men who attended to the tank, a Cape Mounted Policeman, spurred and trim, and a few others, besides the half-dozen or so mute and timid Kafirs who lounged at the end of the platform. The white men talked together and shivered at the cold of the night; only the Cape Policeman, secure in his uniform great-coat, stood with legs astraddle and his whip held behind his back, a model of correct military demeanor in the small hours. Paul noted the aggressive beauty of his attitude and his fine young virility, and stared somewhat till the armed man noticed it.

      "Well, young feller," he drawled. "You haven't fallen in love with me, have you?"

      "No," answered Paul, astonished.

      Two or three of the bystanders laughed, and made him uncomfortable. He did not fully understand why he had been spoken to, and stared at his questioner a little helplessly. The policeman smacked his boot with his whip.

      "Nor yet me with you," he said. "So if you want to stare, go and stare at something else. See?"

      Paul backed away, angry and shy, and moved down the platform to be out of the sound of their voices. The things that people laughed at were seldom clear to him; it seemed that he had been left out of some understanding to take certain things as funny and laugh at them. His mother's mirth, breaking startlingly out of unexpected incidents, out of words spoken without afterthought, out of little accidents and breakages, always puzzled him. It was as little to be understood as her tears, when she would sit silent through a long afternoon of stagnant heat, and burst suddenly into weeping when some one spoke to her.

      He came to a standstill at the point where the station roof ended and left the platform bare to the calm skies. The metals gleamed before his feet, ranging out to the veld whence the train would come. He listened for the sound of it, the low drum-note so like the call of the gourd-drum at the farmhouse door, which would herald it even before its funnel dragged its glare into view. There was nothing to be heard, and he turned to the Kafirs behind him, and spoke to one who squatted against the wall apart from the rest.

      "Is the train late?" he asked, in the "Kitchen Kafir" of his everyday commerce with natives.

      The black man raised his head at the question, but did not answer. Paul repeated it a little louder.

      The native held his head as if he listened closely or were deaf. Then he smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the black circle of his shadowed face.

      "I 'm sorry," he answered, distinctly; "I can't understand what you say. You 'll have to speak English."

      It was the voice of a negro, always vaguely musical, and running to soft full tones, but there was a note in it which made it remarkable and unfamiliar, some turn which suggested (to Paul, at any rate) that this was a man with properties even stranger than his speaking English. He thrilled with a sense of adventure, for this, of course, was the mad creature of the shepherd's tale, who sang to himself of nights when the moon rose on the veld. If a dog had answered him in set phrases, it would not have been more amazing than to hear that precise, aptly modulated voice reply in easy English from the mouth of a Kafir.

      "I – I 've heard of you," he said, stammering.

      "Have you?" He remembered how the old shepherd had spoken of the man's smile. He was smiling now, looking up at Paul.

      "You 've heard of me – I wonder what you 've heard. And I 've seen you, too."

      "Where did you see me? Who are you?" asked Paul quickly. The man was mad, according to the shepherd, but Paul was not very clear as to what it meant to be mad, beyond that it enabled one to see things unseen by the sane.

      The Kafir turned over, and rose stiffly to his feet, like a man spent with fatigue.

      "They 'll wonder if they see me sitting down while I talk to you," he said, with a motion to the group about the Cape Mounted Policeman. His gesture made a confidant of Paul and enlisted him, as it were, in a conspiracy to keep up appearances. It was possible to see him when he stood on his feet, a young man, as tall as the boy, with a skin of warm Kafir black. But the face, the foolish, tragic mask of the negro, shaped for gross, easy emotions, blunted on the grindstone of the races of mankind, was almost unexpected. Paul stared dumbly, trying to link it on some plane of reason with the quiet, schooled voice.

      "What was it you were asking me?" the Kafir inquired.

      But Paul had forgotten. "Don't you speak anything but English?" he demanded now.

      The Kafir smiled again. "A little French," he replied. "Nothing to speak of." He saw that the lad was bewildered, and turned grave at once. "Don't be frightened," he said quickly. "There 's nothing to be frightened of."

      Paul shook his head. "I 'm not frightened," he answered slowly. "It 's not that. But – you said you had seen me before?"

      "Yes," the Kafir nodded. "One evening about a fortnight ago; you didn't notice me. I was walking on the veld, and I came by a dam, with somebody sitting under the wall and trying to model in clay."

      "Oh!" Paul was suddenly illuminated.

      "Yes. I 'd have spoken to you then, only you seemed so busy," said the Kafir. "Besides, I didn't know how you 'd take it. But I went there later on and had a look at the things you 'd made. That 's how I saw you."

      "Then," said Paul, "it was you– "

      "Hush!" The Kafir touched him warningly on the arm, for the Cape Policeman had turned at his raised voice to look towards them. "Not so loud. You mean the head? Yes, I went on with it a bit. I hope you didn't mind."

      "No," replied Paul. "I did n't mind. No!"

      His mind beat helplessly among these incongruities; only one thing was clear; here was a man who could shape things in clay. Upon the brink of that world of which the station was a door, he had encountered a kindred spirit. The thought made him tremble; it was so vital a matter that he could not stay to consider that the spirit was caged in a black skin. The single fact engrossed him to the exclusion of all the other factors in the situation, just as some sight about the farm would strike him while at work, and hold him, absorbed and forgetful of all else, till either its interest was exhausted or he was recalled to his task by a shout across the kraals.

      "I did n't mind at all," he replied. "How did you do it? I tried, but it wouldn't come."

      "You were n't quite sure what you were trying for," said the Kafir. "Was n't that it?"

      "Was it?" wondered Paul.

      "I think so." The Kafir's smile shone out again. "Once you 're sure what you mean to do, it 's easy. If I had a piece of clay, I 'd show you. There 's a way of thumbing it up, just a trick, you know – "

      "I 'm there every evening," said Paul eagerly. "But tell me: do other people make things out of clay, too – over there?"

      His arm pointed along the railway; the gesture comprehended sweepingly the cities and habitations of men. The idea that there was a science of fingering clay, that СКАЧАТЬ