Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases: Seventeen Short Stories. Gibbon Perceval

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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. …

СКАЧАТЬ