The Story of an African Farm Part 43

"Yes," said Em, turning quickly from him.

"Where is she? I had one letter from her, but that is almost a year ago now--just when she left. Where is she?"

"In the Transvaal. I will go and get you some supper; we can talk afterward."

"Can you give me her exact address? I want to write to her."

But Em had gone into the next room.

When food was on the table she knelt down before the fire, turning the cakes, babbling restlessly, eagerly, now of this, now of that. She was glad to see him--Tant Sannie was coming soon to show her her new baby--he must stay on the farm now, and help her. And Waldo himself was well content to eat his meal in silence, asking no more questions.

"Gregory is coming back next week," she said; "he will have been gone just a hundred and three days tomorrow. I had a letter from him yesterday."

"Where has he been?"

But his companion stooped to lift a cake from the fire.

"How the wind blows! One can hardly hear one's own voice," she said.

"Take this warm cake; no one's cakes are like mine. Why, you have eaten nothing!"

"I am a little weary," he said; "the wind was mad tonight."

He folded his arms, and rested his head against the fireplace, whilst she removed the dishes from the table. On the mantelpiece stood an inkpot and some sheets of paper. Presently he took them down and turned up the corner of the tablecloth.

"I will write a few lines," he said; "till you are ready to sit down and talk."

Em, as she shook out the tablecloth, watched him bending intently over his paper. He had changed much. His face had grown thinner; his cheeks were almost hollow, though they were covered by a dark growth of beard.

She sat down on the skin beside him, and felt the little bundle on the bench; it was painfully small and soft. Perhaps it held a s.h.i.+rt and a book, but nothing more. The old black hat had a piece of unhemmed muslin twisted round it, and on his elbow was a large patch so fixed on with yellow thread that her heart ached. Only his hair was not changed, and hung in silky beautiful waves almost to his shoulders.

Tomorrow she would take the ragged edge off his collar, and put a new band round his hat. She did not interrupt him, but she wondered how it was that he sat to write so intently after his long weary walk. He was not tired now; his pen hurried quickly and restlessly over the paper, and his eye was bright. Presently Em raised her hand to her breast, where lay the letter yesterday had brought her. Soon she had forgotten him, as entirely as he had forgotten her; each was in his own world with his own. He was writing to Lyndall. He would tell her all he had seen, all he had done, though it were nothing worth relating. He seemed to have come back to her, and to be talking to her now he sat there in the old house.

"--and then I got to the next town, and my horse was tired, so I could go no further, and looked for work. A shopkeeper agreed to hire me as salesman. He made me sign a promise to remain six months, and he gave me a little empty room at the back of the store to sleep in. I had still three pounds of my own, and when you just come from the country three pounds seems a great deal.

"When I had been in the shop three days I wanted to go away again. A clerk in a shop has the lowest work to do of all the people. It is much better to break stones; you have the blue sky above you, and only the stones to bend to. I asked my master to let me go, and I offered to give him my two pounds, and the bag of mealies I had bought with the other pound; but he would not.

"I found out afterward he was only giving me half as much as he gave to the others--that was why. I had fear when I looked at the other clerks that I would at last become like them. All day they were bowing and smirking to the women who came in; smiling, when all they wanted was to get their money from them. They used to run and fetch the dresses and ribbons to show them, and they seemed to me like worms with oil on.

There was one respectable thing in that store--it was the Kaffer storeman. His work was to load and unload, and he never needed to smile except when he liked, and he never told lies.

"The other clerks gave me the name of Old Salvation; but there was one person I liked very much. He was clerk in another store. He often went past the door. He seemed to me not like others--his face was bright and fresh like a little child's. When he came to the shop I felt I liked him. One day I saw a book in his pocket, and that made me feel near him.

I asked him if he was fond of reading, and he said, yes, when there was nothing else to do. The next day he came to me, and asked me if I did not feel lonely; he never saw me going out with the other fellows; he would come and see me that evening, he said.

"I was glad, and bought some meat and flour, because the grey mare and I always ate mealies; it is the cheapest thing; when you boil it hard you can't eat much of it. I made some cakes, and I folded my great coat on the box to make it softer for him; and at last he came.

"'You've got a rummy place here,' he said.

"You see there was nothing in it but packing-cases for furniture, and it was rather empty. While I was putting the food on the box he looked at my books; he read their names out aloud. 'Elementary Physiology,' 'First Principles.'

"'Golly!' he said; 'I've got a lot of dry stuff like that at home I got for Sunday-school prizes; but I only keep them to light my pipe with now; they come in handy for that.' Then he asked me if I had ever read a book called the 'Black-eyed Creole.' 'That is the style for me,' he said; 'there where the fellow takes the n.i.g.g.e.r-girl by the arm, and the other fellow cuts it off! That's what I like.'

"But what he said after that I don't remember, only it made me feel as if I were having a bad dream, and I wanted to be far away.

"When he had finished eating he did not stay long; he had to go and see some girls home from a prayer-meeting; and he asked how it was he never saw me walking out with any on Sunday afternoons. He said he had lots of sweethearts, and he was going to see one the next Wednesday on a farm, and he asked me to lend my mare. I told him she was very old. But he said it didn't matter; he would come the next day to fetch her.

"After he was gone my little room got back to its old look. I loved it so; I was so glad to get into it at night, and it seemed to be reproaching me for bringing him there. The next day he took the grey mare. On Thursday he did not bring her back, and on Friday I found the saddle and bridle standing at my door.

"In the afternoon he looked into the shop, and called out: 'Hope you got your saddle, Farber? Your bag-of-bones kicked out six miles from here.

I'll send you a couple of s.h.i.+llings tomorrow, though the old hide wasn't worth it. Good morning.'

"But I sprung over the counter, and got him by his throat. My father was so gentle with her; he never would ride her up hill, and now this fellow had murdered her! I asked him where he had killed her, and I shook him till he slipped out of my hand. He stood in the door grinning.

"'It didn't take much to kill that bag-of-bones, whose master sleeps in a packing-case, and waits till his company's finished to eat on the plate. Shouldn't wonder if you fed her on sugar-bags,' he said; 'and if you think I've jumped her, you'd better go and look yourself. You'll find her along the road by the aasvogels that are eating her.'

"I caught him by his collar, and I lifted him from the ground, and I threw him out into the street, half-way across it. I heard the bookkeeper say to the clerk that there was always the devil in those mum fellows; but they never called me Salvation after that.

"I am writing to you of very small things, but there is nothing else to tell; it has been all small and you will like it. Whenever anything has happened I have always thought I would tell it to you. The back thought in my mind is always you. After that only one old man came to visit me.

I had seen him in the streets often; he always wore very dirty black clothes, and a hat with crepe round it, and he had one eye, so I noticed him. One day he came to my room with a subscription-list for a minister's salary. When I said I had nothing to give he looked at me with his one eye.

"'Young man,' he said, 'how is it I never see you in the house of the Lord?' I thought he was trying to do good, so I felt sorry for him, and I told him I never went to chapel. 'Young man,' he said, 'it grieves me to hear such G.o.dless words from the lips of one so young--so far gone in the paths of destruction. Young man, if you forget G.o.d, G.o.d will forget you. There is a seat on the right-hand side as you go at the bottom door that you may get. If you are given over to the enjoyment and frivolities of this world, what will become of your never dying soul?'

"He would not go till I gave him half a crown for the minister's salary.

Afterward I heard he was the man who collected the pew rents and got a percentage. I didn't get to know any one else.

"When my time in that shop was done I hired myself to drive one of a transport-rider's wagons.

"That first morning, when I sat in the front and called to my oxen, and saw nothing about me but the hills, with the blue coming down to them, and the karoo bushes, I was drunk; I laughed; my heart was beating till it hurt me. I shut my eyes tight, that when I opened them I might see there were no shelves about me. There must be a beauty in buying and selling, if there is beauty in everything: but it is very ugly to me. My life as transport-rider would have been the best life in the world if I had had only one wagon to drive. My master told me he would drive one, I the other, and he would hire another person to drive the third. But the first day I drove two to help him, and after that he let me drive all three. Whenever we came to an hotel he stopped behind to get a drink, and when he rode up to the wagons he could never stand; the Hottentot and I used to lift him up. We always travelled all night, and used to outspan for five or six hours in the heat of the day to rest. I planned that I would lie under a wagon and read for an hour or two every day before I went to sleep, and I did for the first two or three; but after that I only wanted to sleep, like the rest, and I packed my books away.

"When you have three wagons to look after all night, you are sometimes so tired you can hardly stand. At first when I walked along driving my wagons in the night it was glorious; the stars had never looked so beautiful to me; and on the dark nights when we rode through the bush there were will-o'-the-wisps dancing on each side of the road. I found out that even the damp and dark are beautiful. But I soon changed, and saw nothing but the road and my oxen. I only wished for a smooth piece of road, so that I might sit at the front and doze. At the places where we outspanned there were sometimes rare plants and flowers, the festoons hanging from the bush-trees, and nuts and insects, such as we never see here; but after a little while I never looked at them--I was too tired.

"I ate as much as I could, and then lay down on my face under the wagon till the boy came to wake me to inspan, and then we drove on again all night; so it went, so it went. I think sometimes when I walked by my oxen I called to them in my sleep, for I know I thought of nothing; I was like an animal. My body was strong and well to work, but my brain was dead. If you have not felt it, Lyndall, you cannot understand it.

You may work, and work, and work, till you are only a body, not a soul. Now, when I see one of those evil-looking men that come from Europe--navvies, with the beast-like, sunken face, different from any Kaffer's--I know what brought that look into their eyes; and if I have only one inch of tobacco I give them half. It is work, grinding, mechanical work, that they or their ancestors have done, that has made them into beasts. You may work a man's body so that his soul dies. Work is good. I have worked at the old farm from the sun's rising till its setting, but I have had time to think, and time to feel. You may work a man so that all but the animal in him is gone; and that grows stronger with physical labour.

"You may work a man till he is a devil. I know it, because I have felt it. You will never understand the change that came over me. No one but I will ever know how great it was. But I was never miserable; when I could keep my oxen from sticking fast, and when I could find a place to lie down in, I had all I wanted. After I had driven eight months a rainy season came. For eighteen hours out of the twenty-four we worked in the wet. The mud went up to the axles sometimes, and we had to dig the wheels out, and we never went far in a day. My master swore at me more than ever, but when he had done he always offered me his brandy-flask.

When I first came he had offered it me, and I had always refused; but now I drank as my oxen did when I gave them water--without thinking. At last I bought brandy for myself whenever we pa.s.sed an hotel.

"One Sunday we outspanned on the banks of a swollen river to wait for its going down. It was drizzling still, so I lay under the wagon on the mud. There was no dry place anywhere; and all the dung was wet, so there was no fire to cook food. My little flask was filled with brandy, and I drank some and went to sleep. When I woke it was drizzling still, so I drank some more. I was stiff and cold; and my master, who lay by me, offered me his flask, because mine was empty. I drank some, and then I thought I would go and see if the river was going down. I remember that I walked to the road, and it seemed to be going away from me. When I woke up I was lying by a little bush on the bank of the river. It was afternoon; all the clouds had gone, and the sky was deep blue. The Bushman boy was grilling ribs at the fire. He looked at me and grinned from ear to ear. 'Master was a little nice,' he said, 'and lay down in the road. Something might ride over master, so I carried him there.' He grinned at me again. It was as though he said, 'You and I are comrades.

I have lain in a road, too. I know all about it.'

"When I turned my head from him I saw the earth, so pure after the rain, so green, so fresh, so blue; and I was a drunken carrier, whom his leader had picked up in the mud, and laid at the roadside to sleep out his drink. I remember my old life, and I remember you. I saw how, one day, you would read in the papers: 'A German carrier, named Waldo Farber, was killed through falling from his wagon, being instantly crushed under the wheel. Deceased was supposed to have been drunk at the time of the accident.' There are those notices in the paper every month.

I sat up, and I took the brandy-flask out of my pocket, and I flung it as far as I could into the dark water. The Hottentot boy ran down to see if he could catch it; it had sunk to the bottom. I never drank again.

But, Lyndall, sin looks much more terrible to those who look at it than to those who do it. A convict, or a man who drinks, seems something so far off and horrible when we see him; but to himself he seems quite near to us, and like us. We wonder what kind of a creature he is; but he is just we, ourselves. We are only the wood, the knife that carves on us is the circ.u.mstance.

"I do not know why I kept on working so hard for that master. I think it was as the oxen come every day and stand by the yokes; they do not know why. Perhaps I would have been with him still; but one day we started with loads for the Diamond Fields. The oxen were very thin now, and they had been standing about in the yoke all day without food, while the wagons were being loaded. Not far from the town was a hill. When we came to the foot the first wagon stuck fast. I tried for a little while to urge the oxen, but I soon saw the one span could never pull it up. I went to the other wagon to loosen that span to join them on in front, but the transport-rider, who was lying at the back of the wagon, jumped out.

"'They shall bring it up the hill; and if half of them die for it they shall do it alone,' he said.

"He was not drunk, but in bad temper, for he had been drunk the night before. He swore at me, and told me to take the whip and help him. We tried for a little time, then I told him it was no use, they could never do it. He swore louder and called to the leaders to come on with their whips, and together they lashed. There was one ox, a black ox, so thin that the ridge of his backbone almost cut through his flesh.