A Vendetta of the Desert Part 2

Uncle Diederick, judging from the extent of his practice, ought to have made a fortune,--and he probably would have done so had he been paid for his services in cash instead of in kind. He was really a useful personage and saved many a life. His absorbing taste for medicine and surgery--joined to his undoubted natural ability, would have made him a successful if not an eminent pract.i.tioner had he had the necessary training.

When a boy he had obtained possession of an old book upon anatomy, and from this he gained a fair general knowledge of the human frame. Later he acquired a manual of simple surgery and another of household medicine (as practiced in the Eighteenth Century), and upon these was founded his professional eminence. These books were kept strictly in the background, their size and binding not being impressive, but the old Italian herbal was invariably referred to in the presence of the patient before diagnosis was completed.

Even at this day every Boer woman in the outlying districts who has reached the age of forty, considers herself competent to treat all of the ills that flesh is heir to. Her pharmacopoeia is a limited one, consisting, as it does, of some seven or eight drugs, all more or less violent in their effects upon the human organism. In her choice of these in prescribing she is guided solely by her intuitions. A century ago the number and quant.i.ty of drugs at her disposal was more limited, and therefore the mortality from this cause was less than at the present day.

But Uncle Diederick was a quack of a different cla.s.s. He knew well enough that in a large number of cases the best chance of recovery lay in leaving Nature quite to herself. Like Paracelsus, however, he had to live down to the prejudices of his age. Many a bulky bottle of nasty but innocuous mixture did he prescribe to amplitudinous _tanta_ or corpulent _oom_, whose only complaint was the natural result of too much exercise of the jaw-bones and too little of the arms and legs.

The old women looked upon Uncle Diederick with jealousy, but they could not help admitting that in surgery, at all events, he was far their superior. In the case of a broken limb or a wound from a Bushman's poisoned arrow he was the first person thought of,--if the accident occurred within a radius of a hundred miles of his dwelling. Many a miserable sufferer has been brought to the "hartebeeste house" from distances that entailed a week's travelling over wretched roads in a jolting wagon.

In medicine Uncle Diederick did not by any means stick to the orthodox pharmacopoeia; he supplemented the few crude drugs in general use by a number of decoctions and infusions of different herbs, the properties of which he had learnt from Hottentots and captive Bushmen,--with whom he often managed to make friends.

As the effect of these remedies was quite equal in violence to that of those in common use, and as there was an added element of mystery about them, Uncle Diederick's treatment was generally popular. The Boer does not believe in any medicine which is not administered in large doses and which does not act as a kind of physiological earthquake upon the invalid.

Uncle Diederick was a widower with an only daughter. He had lost his wife soon after marriage, and, contrary to the general custom, had not remarried. Jacomina, his daughter, was a comely damsel of seventeen, whose keen and practical interest in her father's pursuits boded a terrible future for her prospective husband and family. It was she who presided, like another Medea, over the brewing of the decoctions; it was she who neatly bound up and carefully stored away the different kinds of dried herbs from which these decoctions were made. In fact she knew almost as much as her father did about the healing art. Where she shone brightest, however, was in collecting payment for her father's services.

Many suitors had laid their hearts at Jacomina's substantial feet, while she, on her part, cherished a pa.s.sion for the handsome, melancholy Adrian van der Walt, Gideon's son. Adrian likewise admired her, but his diffidence kept him from definitely telling her so, or doing more than gaze at her in deep but hopeless admiration whenever he thought himself un.o.bserved in her company. For many months Jacomina had put forth all her arts to bring Adrian to the proposing point, but his unconquerable shyness always stood in the way of the desired result. At a distance Adrian was brave enough, but in the presence of his beloved his courage fled. On several occasions he had pretended to be ill in order to have an excuse for visiting the "hartebeeste house," when the nasty decoctions he received from the hands of Jacomina tasted as sweet as nectar.

One day Uncle Diederick was sitting just inside the door of his dwelling engaged in the commonplace occupation of mending his saddle. From the road behind the kopje at the foot of which he dwelt came the rattle and rumble of an approaching wagon. He at once hid the saddle in a corner under a sheep skin, went over to his table, opened the herbal volume and began poring over its pages. It was thus that he was usually found by his patients. Jacomina was on the watch. Shortly after the wagon came in sight she put her head in through the doorway.

"Pa,--it is Aunt Emerencia's wagon; she is sure to be coming for some more medicine for her _benaudheid_."

Aunt Emerencia descended from the wagon through the back opening of the tent by means of a short and strongly built ladder and, leaning heavily on a stick, approached the "hartebeeste" house. She was a stout woman with a very pale face, the flesh of which seemed loose and flabby.

Jacomina felt the strongest animosity towards the visitor, who was a widow and was suspected of harbouring matrimonial designs upon Uncle Diederick.

After a friendly but breathless greeting Aunt Emerencia sat down on a stool and, being fatigued and warm from the exertion of walking up the slope from the wagon, pulled off her _cappie_ and began fanning herself with it. After a few minutes Uncle Diederick came forward briskly. He sat down, asked Jacomina to go and brew some coffee, and then, in his most sprightly manner, began talking to and complimenting his visitor.

"No, no,--Uncle," she replied, deprecatingly, to some flattering remarks on his part,--"Although I may be looking well, I am very, very sick.

Being on my way to Brother Sarel's I thought I would outspan here and get some medicine."

"That's right--I am glad to see you, even though you are not well.--But a cup of coffee will do you good."

"Yes,--I will be glad to drink a cup, Uncle. I have brought you a couple of pumpkins which you will be glad to have; they are from some new seed which Jan Niekerk got from Stellenbosch last year."

Jacomina, afraid to leave her father for long alone with the suspected siren, kept darting in and out between the stages of the coffee-making.

"Jacomina, my child," she said in a wheezy aside, "call to the _schepsel_ and tell him to bring in two of the biggest pumpkins." Then she turned to Uncle Diederick:

"Uncle, I am sick, very sick. After I eat my heart goes just like an old churn--and I dream--_Alle Wereld_, how I dream. Last night I dreamt that Nimrod built the Tower of Babel on my chest."

Just then a small Hottentot came staggering in with two immense pumpkins, which he laid on the floor; then he went and stood just outside the door. Uncle Diederick cast a careless eye upon them, smiled almost imperceptibly, and then began very deliberately, to light his pipe.

"Are these not beautiful pumpkins?" asked Aunt Emerencia.

"They are fairly large; but I am surprised at Nephew Jan taking the trouble to bring that kind of seed all the way from the Cape. There is plenty of the same kind here."

"Truly?" she said in a tone of injured surprise. Then she called to the Hottentot, who, mindful of previous experiences, had remained close at hand.

"Here, _schepsel_,--bring in a bottle of that honey from the front chest. Yes, Uncle,--you would not believe how I have suffered since I finished that last medicine I had from you. This bottle of honey is from the bees' nest Piet took out from the _Da.s.sie's_ Krantz last week."

The honey was placed alongside the pumpkins. Uncle Diederick did not even take the trouble to glance at it. He went on silently puffing at his pipe.

"Don't you like honey, Uncle?"

"Yes,--but it is very plentiful this year, and I am tired of it."

Aunt Emerencia groaned audibly.

"_Schepsel_,--fetch that new pair of _veldschoens_ from the side-bag."

"Yes," she continued, addressing Uncle Diederick--"and you would not believe what a pain I get here, just below my breast. These drops I got from Aunt Susannah did me no good whatever."

In the meantime Jacomina was busy trying on the _veldschoens_, which turned out to be by no means badly made. Uncle Diederick continued smoking, calmly and silently.

"Do they fit, my child?" he asked without turning his head.

"Yes, Pa,--they fit well."

At once Uncle Diederick laid down his pipe and began attending to his patient. He felt her pulse; he thumped, prodded and sounded her until she groaned and grunted. She was a woman who, for nearly thirty years, had eaten and drunk largely, and who never took the least exertion that she could avoid. Her malady, from which she chronically suffered, was simply indigestion in an acute form.

"Here, Aunt,--take half a cupful of this whenever you feel bad."

He took down from the shelf a large black flask, which had originally contained gin, and handed it to the invalid, who grasped it greedily.

"Uncle,--these _veldschoens_ are a beautiful pair.--This bottle holds so few doses and I get sick very often."

Uncle Diederick had returned to his seat and his pipe. He took not the slightest notice of what Aunt Emerencia said. She, knowing by experience that there was no chance of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g another bottle out of the physician, arose with the apparent intention of taking her departure. But first she tried another move.

"_Alle Wereld_," she said in anguished tones, putting her hand to her side at the same time--"here is the pain again; can you not give me a dose now, Uncle?"

"Yes, Aunt,--certainly. Jacomina, bring me a corkscrew and a cup."

These implements were soon brought and placed upon the table. Uncle Diederick took the corkscrew and approached the sufferer.

"Come, Aunt--give me the bottle and I will open it for you."

"But, Uncle,--I do not like to open the bottle whilst on the road. It is so liable to spill."

Uncle Diederick returned to his chair, the inscrutability of his visage somewhat modified by a palpable wink. Aunt Emerencia, after a few supplementary groans, stated that she felt a little better and would defer taking a dose until another bad attack came on. Then she took her ponderous course back to her wagon.

The sun was nearly down when the clattering hoofs of a galloping horse was heard on the road. A few minutes afterwards Gert Dragoonder dismounted, and, without waiting to remove the saddle from his smoking horse, hastened to the door of the "hartebeeste house."

"Well, _schepsel_," said Uncle Diederick, "it is easy to see that you have been riding your master's horse. For how far has the Devil been chasing you?"

"Baas must hasten," replied the Hottentot, breathlessly, "or it will be too late. My master has got a bullet in the shoulder and he has bled plenty."

"A bullet in the shoulder--that's bad. What an accident! Let's see,-- to which of the loving brothers do you belong?"

"Baas Gideon is my baas. But it was not an accident; baas Stepha.n.u.s shot my baas with his own gun."