Perceval Gibbon

“ I had seen the cruelty of the work in its traces on Kornel, and knew how little it gave and how much it took; but with this first trial of it came the realization, never lost since, of how gallant a man I had chosen to stand between me and the world, and how much I owed him. I had not time to think a great deal, for the torture of brick-making is partly in the tact that while it wrenches the body, it joins the mind to its infinite triviality. If you think, you do not pack the mud as it must be packed, and the sun crumbles your bricks to dust. It is no task for a real man at all ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ah, Katje, girls are light things; but I truly think that in those days few Boer maids had much mind for trivial matters in their loves when once the man was found right and sound. Even at this length of time I have a thrill in remembering Kornel: a big man, and heavy, with thick shoulders, but very quick on his feet, and eyes that were gray, with pleasant little puckers at the corner. He sat far back in his saddle and lolled to the gait of the horse easily; such men make horse-masters, and masters of women. That is to say, they are masters of all. ”

“ 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." ”

“ I am tired of being alone, and I cannot nurse the wrong done me by my own flesh and blood. You and Christina had better come out to the farm and live with me.'
"'And leave my business?' asked Kornel.
"'Oh, there is mud and water on the farm, if your business pleases you,' retorted my father. 'But out there we do not take the bread out of the mouths of Kafirs.'
"'I see,' answered Kornel briefly; and I, who watched him, knew from his voice that there was to be no truce after that, that we should still earn our livelihood by the mud bricks. ”

“ A dozen feet from her all was blurred and not to be distinguished, but it seemed to her that many people moved round about her, and now and again there was a rustle of hushed voices, as of folk who met stealthily and spoke with checked breath. In the dimness shapes moved, faintly suggested to her eyes, and presently, though she had no thrill of fear, a loneliness oppressed her that nearly made her weep. She was not as one that has no comrade in the world, for such a one is at least kin by blood and flesh to all others. She was alone, as a living man in a tomb is alone. ”

“ On each side the tall hills cast back the sun, so that the beautiful cool shade fell like a blessing on their scorched faces. There was wild hemp {dagga} for the Kafirs to smoke; and wild apricots running over the stones; water splashing, clear and fresh, beside the way; mimosa-trees to give wood for the fires; and everywhere they saw the spoor of every kind of buck. The Burghers were overwhelmed with gladness, and pushed on gaily.
"On the next day the kloof widened out, and they came forth into a most wonderful plain girt round with steep cliffs, and all overgrown with grass and trees. ”

“ But Stoffel walked straight in, over his knees and up to his waist, and climbed the bank to the wall of the stad.
"Inside the Kafirs were dancing. Some were tricked out with ornaments and skins and feathers; some were mother-naked and painted all over their bodies. And there was one, a gaunt figure of horror, with his face streaked to the likeness of a skull, and bones hanging clattering all about him. They capered and danced round the fire like devils in hell, and behind them the men with the drums kept up their noise and seemed to drive the dancers to madness. ”

“ I tell you, my girl, that things are not quite so simple as you take them to be. Even a herd of swine can house a devil, mark you. A bit of stick in the path can be a puff adder, and there are spells tucked away in the words of the Psalms even. And the spruit! Why, you crazy child, a spruit is just the place for things to lurk in wait. Yes, slippery things that have no name in man's speech. Even the Kafirs know of a spirit that lives in a pool."
Katje laughed, "Oh, Tagalash!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of those days which come in the throng of the summer, when the sun is an oppressor, ruthless and joying in pain, when the earth is dead with heat and dryness and the very air forbears to take a freedom I When they came down the slopes beyond the crest, the flanks and rumps of the horses were slimy with running sweat, and red nostrils spoke of distress. The dead man sat in the saddle with a thin show of eyeball under each lowered lid, and a gleam of teeth above the sunken lower lip, yet for all the world like one that follows a purpose, like one guiding himself to a steadfast end. ”

“ It is a true charm that, my kleintje.'"
"Good old Tagalash!" remarked Katje cheerfully.
THE HOME KRAAL After sunset on a summer's day, when evening has overcome the oppression of the still heat and breezes grow up like thoughts, the world of veld becomes odorous, and every air has its burden of unforgettable scents.
As we sat in the stoop, steeped in a flood of shadow, looking down over the kraals to where the grasses are ever green about the spruit, the Vrouw Grobelaar spoke gently. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The others will travel miles and miles as soon as they see him, and never come back again.'
"'It makes me sick to think of it,' said Shadrach. 'Surely you know some other way of scaring them?'
"The old Kafir shook his head slowly, but the yellow man ceased to smile and play with the straw and spoke.
"'I do not believe in that way, baas. A Shangaan baboon'—he grinned at his companion—'is more easily frightened than those of the Drakensberg. I am of the bushmen, and I know. If you flay one of those up yonder, the others will make war, and where one came before, ten will come every night. ”

“ But for an idle man it becomes the air he breathes. He is all-dependent on it, and it is a small and breakable thing.
"Look how men have been wrecked upon a morsel of pink-and- white, how strong brains have scattered like seed from a burst pod for a trifle of hunger in a pair of eyes! I remember many such cases which would make you stare for the foolishness of men and the worthlessness of some women. There was the Heer Mostert, Predikant at Dopfontein, who fell to blasphemy and witchcraft when his wife Paula was sick and muttered emptily among her pillows." ”

“ As he said this, I noticed the uneasiness that kept him from meeting my eye, for in truth it was a sorry employ to put his strength to,—a dirty toil, all the dirtier for the fact that only Kafirs handled it in Dopfontein, and the pay was poor. From our door one could always see the brick- making going on along the spruit, with the mud-streaked niggers standing knee-deep in the water, packing the wet dirt into the boxes, and spilling them out to be baked in the sun or fired, as the case might be. There was too much grime and discomfort to it to be a respectable trade. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I had not yet turned out ten bricks when he saw me, and paused in his melancholy work.
"'Stop that!' he cried, and scrambled out of the spruit to where I stood. 'I suppose,' he went on, 'you would like your father to know that I had suffered you to work for me like a Kafir.'
"'Kornel!' I cried in horror.
"But he was white on the cheek-bones and breathing hard, and I could not soften him.
"'Rich man's daughter or poor man's wife,' he said, 'you are white, and must keep your station. It is my business to sell myself, not yours. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”