The Story of an African Farm Part 18

The boy's face was white now. His eyes were on the ground, his hands doggedly clasped before him.

"What, do you not intend to answer?"

The boy looked up at them once from under his bent eyebrows, and then looked down again.

"The creature looks as if all the devils in h.e.l.l were in it," cried Tant Sannie. "Say you took them, boy. Young things will be young things; I was older than you when I used to eat bultong in my mother's loft, and get the little n.i.g.g.e.rs whipped for it. Say you took them."

But the boy said nothing.

"I think a little solitary confinement might perhaps be beneficial,"

said Bonaparte. "It will enable you, Waldo, to reflect on the enormity of the sin you have committed against our Father in heaven. And you may also think of the submission you owe to those who are older and wiser than you are, and whose duty it is to check and correct you."

Saying this, Bonaparte stood up and took down the key of the fuel-house, which hung on a nail against the wall.

"Walk on, my boy," said Bonaparte, pointing to the door; and as he followed him out he drew his mouth expressively on one side, and made the lash of the little horsewhip stick out of his pocket and shake up and down.

Tant Sannie felt half sorry for the lad; but she could not help laughing, it was always so funny when one was going to have a whipping, and it would do him good. Anyhow, he would forget all about it when the places were healed. Had not she been beaten many times and been all the better for it?

Bonaparte took up a lighted candle that had been left burning on the kitchen table, and told the boy to walk before him. They went to the fuel-house. It was a little stone erection that jutted out from the side of the wagon-house. It was low and without a window, and the dried dung was piled in one corner, and the coffee-mill stood in another, fastened on the top of a short post about three feet high. Bonaparte took the padlock off the rough door.

"Walk in, my lad," he said.

Waldo obeyed sullenly; one place to him was much the same as another. He had no objection to being locked up.

Bonaparte followed him in, and closed the door carefully. He put the light down on the heap of dung in the corner, and quietly introduced his hand under his coat-tails, and drew slowly from his pocket the end of a rope, which he concealed behind him.

"I'm very sorry, exceedingly sorry, Waldo, my lad, that you should have acted in this manner. It grieves me," said Bonaparte.

He moved round toward the boy's back. He hardly liked the look in the fellow's eyes, though he stood there motionless. If he should spring on him!

So he drew the rope out very carefully, and s.h.i.+fted round to the wooden post. There was a slipknot in one end of the rope, and a sudden movement drew the boy's hands to his back and pa.s.sed it round them. It was an instant's work to drag it twice round the wooden post: then Bonaparte was safe.

For a moment the boy struggled to free himself; then he knew that he was powerless, and stood still.

"Horses that kick must have their legs tied," said Bonaparte, as he pa.s.sed the other end of the rope round the boy's knees. "And now, my dear Waldo," taking the whip out of his pocket, "I am going to beat you."

He paused for a moment. It was perfectly quiet; they could hear each other's breath.

"'Chasten thy son while there is hope,'" said Bonaparte, "'and let not thy soul spare for his crying.' Those are G.o.d's words. I shall act as a father to you, Waldo. I think we had better have your naked back."

He took out his penknife, and slit the s.h.i.+rt down from the shoulder to the waist.

"Now," said Bonaparte, "I hope the Lord will bless and sanctify to you what I am going to do to you."

The first cut ran from the shoulder across the middle of the back; the second fell exactly in the same place. A shudder pa.s.sed through the boy's frame.

"Nice, eh?" said Bonaparte, peeping round into his face, speaking with a lisp, as though to a very little child. "Nith, eh?"

But the eyes were black and l.u.s.treless, and seemed not to see him. When he had given sixteen Bonaparte paused in his work to wipe a little drop of blood from his whip.

"Cold, eh? What makes you s.h.i.+ver so? Perhaps you would like to pull up your s.h.i.+rt? But I've not quite done yet."

When he had finished he wiped the whip again, and put it back in his pocket. He cut the rope through with his penknife, and then took up the light.

"You don't seem to have found your tongue yet. Forgotten how to cry?"

said Bonaparte, patting him on the cheek.

The boy looked up at him--not sullenly, not angrily. There was a wild, fitful terror in the eyes. Bonaparte made haste to go out and shut the door, and leave him alone in the darkness. He himself was afraid of that look.

It was almost morning. Waldo lay with his face upon the ground at the foot of the fuel-heap. There was a round hole near the top of the door, where a knot of wood had fallen out, and a stream of grey light came in through it.

Ah, it was going to end at last. Nothing lasts forever, not even the night. How was it he had never thought of that before? For in all that long dark night he had been very strong, had never been tired, never felt pain, had run on and on, up and down, up and down; he had not dared to stand still, and he had not known it would end. He had been so strong, that when he struck his head with all his force upon the stone wall it did not stun him nor pain him--only made him laugh. That was a dreadful night.

When he clasped his hands frantically and prayed--"O G.o.d, my beautiful G.o.d, my sweet G.o.d, once, only once, let me feel you near me tonight!"

he could not feel him. He prayed aloud, very loud, and he got no answer; when he listened it was all quite quiet--like when the priests of Baal cried aloud to their G.o.d--"Oh, Baal, hear us! Oh, Baal, hear us! But Baal was gone a-hunting."

That was a long wild night, and wild thoughts came and went in it; but they left their marks behind them forever: for, as years cannot pa.s.s without leaving their traces behind them, neither can nights into which are forced the thoughts and sufferings of years. And now the dawn was coming, and at last he was very tired. He s.h.i.+vered and tried to draw the s.h.i.+rt up over his shoulders. They were getting stiff. He had never known they were cut in the night. He looked up at the white light that came in through the hole at the top of the door and shuddered. Then he turned his face back to the ground and slept again.

Some hours later Bonaparte came toward the fuel-house with a lump of bread in his hand. He opened the door and peered in; then entered, and touched the fellow with his boot. Seeing that he breathed heavily, though he did not rouse, Bonaparte threw the bread down on the ground.

He was alive, that was one thing. He bent over him, and carefully scratched open one of the cuts with the nail of his forefinger, examining with much interest his last night's work. He would have to count his sheep himself that day; the boy was literally cut up. He locked the door and went away again.

"Oh, Lyndall," said Em, entering the dining room, and bathed in tears, that afternoon, "I have been begging Bonaparte to let him out, and he won't."

"The more you beg the more he will not," said Lyndall.

She was cutting out ap.r.o.ns on the table.

"Oh, but it's late, and I think they want to kill him," said Em, weeping bitterly; and finding that no more consolation was to be gained from her cousin, she went off blubbering--"I wonder you can cut out ap.r.o.ns when Waldo is shut up like that."

For ten minutes after she was gone Lyndall worked on quietly; then she folded up her stuff, rolled it tightly together, and stood before the closed door of the sitting room with her hands closely clasped. A flush rose to her face: she opened the door quickly, and walked in, went to the nail on which the key of the fuel-room hung. Bonaparte and Tant Sannie sat there and saw her.

"What do you want?" they asked together.

"This key," she said, holding it up, and looking at them.

"Do you mean her to have it?" said Tant Sannie in Dutch.

"Why don't you stop her?" asked Bonaparte in English.

"Why don't you take it from her?" said Tant Sannie.

So they looked at each other, talking, while Lyndall walked to the fuel-house with the key, her underlip bitten in.

"Waldo," she said, as she helped him to stand up, and twisted his arm about her waist to support him, "we will not be children always; we shall have the power, too, some day." She kissed his naked shoulder with her soft little mouth. It was all the comfort her young soul could give him.