Between Sun and Sand Part 16

But where were his wife and children? Some faint flickering memories of what had occurred during his delirium came back to him, and he arrived at a true inference regarding their absence. He was glad. It was terrible to be alone, but the dread of meeting his wife and telling her--as he felt he inevitably must when next he saw her--of what he had done, kept him from calling her. He felt quite sure that she and the children were in the wagon, close at hand.

The darkness was full of terrible and menacing shapes; huddled figures crouched all over the floor. The far, faint yowl of a jackal sounded from the direction of the dunes; it reminded him of Nathan's hoa.r.s.e, despairing scream when he realised that he was abandoned to die of thirst. The mat-house, with its population of mysterious shadows and huddled shapes, became intolerable. Better the sense of freedom outside under the accusing stars, where a man can get away from the thing that seems to crawl to his feet as though to clasp his knees. He lifted the door-flap and stepped out into the night.

The Hottentot servants had inhabited a scherm about fifty yards to the rear of the camp. Hottentots often sit up more than half the night, chatting, laughing, and dancing. Mrs Bester, for the sake of keeping the neighbourhood quiet, had told the servants to move their scherm farther away. They had, accordingly, taken their belongings to the other side of a little knoll about two hundred yards away, on the right-hand side of the camp. Here they might hold their nocturnal jollifications to their hearts' content without disturbing anybody or anything except the meerkats in the adjacent burrows.

A wandering stranger from Great Namaqualand had arrived during the course of the evening. This man had a ramkee upon which he performed with skill. A few months previously he had visited Namies, and had one night listened to Gert Gemsbok playing his favourite tune. Being struck with admiration of the melody, he had picked it up. He was now popularising it among the dwellers of the Desert, for he played it at every scherm he visited.

Coffee had been made of burnt rye, a sheep had died on the previous day; thus the scherm contained the materials for a feast. The company had been dancing to a series of inspiriting reels, but were now resting a s.p.a.ce from their laborious leapings and gruntings. The stranger was playing Gert Gemsbok's tune as an interlude to the reels. A bright fire of candle-bushes was burning. All but the ramkee player were lying down resting behind the scherm fence.

When Koos Bester stepped out of the mat-house he at once experienced a sense of relief. His head was bare and the cool breeze which wandered over the Desert refreshed his brain. The stars could, he found, pity as well as accuse; the night seemed to take compa.s.sion on his misery. He looked round to the back of the camp in the direction of where the scherm of the servants had been, and was relieved to see no light. He wanted to be free--even of the suggestion of the presence of another human being--until he had rearranged his distorted faculties. The sandy road led past the camp; he turned to the right and paced slowly along it, with bent head.

He stopped short, for a sound of horribly familiar music reached his ear; then he started and gasped, for the glow of a fire smote his eyes, coming from behind the little knoll. Being to windward of the knoll, he could not exactly distinguish what tune was being played. He knew that the instrument was a ramkee--that, in itself, was sufficiently horrible.

A cold hand seemed to steal into his breast and gradually close upon his stricken heart. He stood rigidly still and tried to catch the tune exactly. He strained every nerve with this end, but the breeze freshened slightly, and only an indefinite tinkle reached him. In the midst of his reeling consciousness only one idea stood firm--he must go closer and determine who the player was and what the tune that was being played. He pressed his hands convulsively to his ears and stepped, crouching, towards the knoll.

He reached the knoll and cautiously raised his head till he was able to see over its top. The musician was sitting with his back towards the watcher, and just inside the scherm. Against the diffused glow of the embers--for the flame had died down--the outline of his head and shoulders stood clear and black. To the mind of Koos came the certain conviction that he was looking at the ghost of the man he had murdered.

With a supreme effort of despairing will he tore his shielding hands away from his ears, and the unmistakable tones of the dead man's music crashed like thunder into his brain.

Then Koos Bester's madness returned upon him, and he fled away noiselessly across the Desert sands in the direction of the dunes.

It was long before he paused, for the fever in his brain prevented him from feeling fatigue. At length, as he was running over the roofs of a city of Desert mice, the ground gave way beneath his foot and he fell.

The shock rendered him almost senseless. After a few minutes he sat up, pressed his hands to his temples, and began to grope in the haunted s.p.a.ces of his darkened intellect for some clue to guide him.

He looked around. The dew-washed air of the Desert night was clear as crystal, the pulsing stars were domed over him sumptuously. He dug his hot hands into the cooling sand and lifted his faced to meet the soft, refreshing breeze.

The Hottentots at the scherm had evidently thrown another armful of candle-bush upon the embers, for a bright flame shot up and momentarily increased in volume. Koos gazed at it, fascinated. As the fire grew brighter he thought it was rushing toward him with terrific speed. The flames had been sent from h.e.l.l to consume him quick. Like Abiram, G.o.d had doomed him for his crimes to go down alive into the pit. He sprang to his feet with a terrible cry, and again fled onwards in the direction of the dunes.

When he again paused he was wading in the heavy sand on the flank of the main dune. He had ascended slightly and thus could overlook a large area of the Desert. The cold breath which circles around the world as the precursor of the dawn was stealing over the plains. The rain had fallen recently upon this side of the Desert, and many of the Boers had sent their stock, in charge of herds, to graze on the track of the shower. The scantily clad Hottentots awoke to the chill, so they began to light fires. Here and there, at immense distances apart, he could see the sudden leapings of the flames from the easily kindled candle-bushes. To the demented brain of the fugitive it appeared as if the whole Desert were full of fiends seeking him with torches, far and near. Where the Milky Way dipped to the horizon the thronging stars seemed each a torch lit at the nether flame, and borne by a searching demon. In among the sinuous dunes he might escape. If he could but reach Inkruip he might creep down the water-shaft and hide. They would never think of looking for him there. In the icy water he might cool his scorched brain.

He stumbled on, crossing dune after dune and ploughing through the sand as with the strength of a giant. In one of the hollows he came to a clump of low bush. Into this he crept for hiding. He lay p.r.o.ne, completely covered, and looking out through a narrow opening. The morning star tipped the back of the dune he had last crossed and thrilled through the clear atmosphere with almost super-stellar brilliance. Koos took this for the torch of a tracking fiend, and again rushed forward with a scream of agonised dismay. His only possible refuge now was under the ground at Inkruip.

The sun arose and scorched his bare head. He was now almost unconscious; he simply pressed forward in obedience to a blind, animal instinct--a sort of momentum generated by the terror which had pa.s.sed away with the darkness.

It was an awful day, not a breath of wind could be felt, but the sun smote down from a pitiless heaven in all the fulness of its torrid might. Koos pressed blindly up the side of a steep, high dune--his breath coming in husky, choking gasps. Then something seemed to explode in his head with the sound like that of a cannon, and he fell upon his face in the sand.

He had one blinding flash of consciousness, during the continuance of which he seemed again to live through all his lifetime and see anew everything he had ever seen. The minutest trifles of former experience became distinctly apparent, as the smallest details of a landscape show up when lightning flashes near and vividly on a dark night. Then came the darkness which men call death.

As soon as ever day broke the spoor of the missing man was found and followed. Mrs Bester, a.s.sisted by her old father, inspanned four horses in the cart and drove on behind the trackers. When she reached the dunes she found that the horses could take the cart no farther, so she outspanned the team and tied the legs of each animal together to prevent it from straying.

She sat through weary hours in the broiling heat. Early in the afternoon one of the Hottentots returned with word that her husband's dead body had been found. The horses were at once inspanned, and the cart taken by a roundabout course to the vicinity of where it was lying.

It was late at night when she arrived at the camp, with the corpse of her husband tied, stiff and stark, on the seat beside her.

Next day two constables came with a warrant for Koos Bester's arrest, but he had gone before a higher tribunal than that of the Special Magistrate.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A CONVERSION, A WEDDING, AND SEVERAL OTHER THINGS.

Max, being heir to his brother's estate, was now well off. Old Schalk, mindful of his account as standing in the books at the shop, felt obliged to be civil. Max was, and felt himself to be, master of the situation.

No longer the shy, diffident dreamer of a few months back, Max developed a keenness and apt.i.tude for business which came as an unpleasant revelation to those who tried to get on his blind side. In fact Max had no blind side--he seemed to have eyes all round his head.

He soon satisfied himself of one thing, namely, that a business such as his, unless the legitimate gains were supplemented by the profits of the illicit trade in wild ostrich feathers, would not pay at Namies. Not seeing his way towards following Nathan's dangerous methods, he determined to wind up the business as it stood, and reopen in some spot in Southern Bushmanland were the farmers were in better circ.u.mstances, and where communication with more civilised parts was neither so difficult nor so uncertain. However, he kept these conclusions strictly to himself.

There was one drawer in the little iron safe of which Nathan had always kept the key. Upon opening this he found, to his astonishment, doc.u.ments which showed that there was a balance to his credit in one of the Cape Town banks of over a thousand pounds, and that the stock, which was worth several hundreds more, was fully paid for. He was a rich man.

The diamonds were worth a considerable amount--but these he would have to keep until he could go to Europe before he could realise them.

Amid the flux and reformation of his character his love for Susannah never changed. It was probably owing to this that he did not, under his recent experiences, lose all faith in human nature. He now felt that he was in such a position that he could marry whenever he wanted to. As a measure of policy he allowed, at this juncture, the Hattinghs to have a little more credit, and the quality of the coffee dispensed so lavishly by Mrs Hattingh from the scherm--to all comers--improved very much in consequence. He made up his mind that as soon as Susannah became his wife he would write off the whole of the Hattingh account as a bad debt, and afterwards take care that no further credit was given in that quarter.

"I will marry you as soon as ever you like," said Susannah to him one day; "but you must first become a Christian; then I know Uncle will not refuse."

Max had not the slightest objection to doing this. He had left his people when but a child, and had thus never acquired that pride of race which so distinguishes the average Jew, and which often causes him to cleave pa.s.sionately to the observances of that religion which still keeps Israel a separate people, even after all faith in dogma may have perished.

Max had come in contact with no Jews except Nathan and others of his cla.s.s. These had earned the young man's unmitigated contempt. As to Christianity--he looked upon its profession as a mere matter of convenience. The only Christians whom he knew were very sincere in their faith, and would have looked upon any one harbouring the slightest religious doubt as being worse than heathen Bushmen, yet their religion did not appear to have the slightest effect upon their conduct. The case of poor old Gert Gemsbok had set Max thinking deeply upon these matters, and the conclusions he arrived at were only negative ones.

The mind of Max, from utter want of culture, was probably not well fitted to deal with the higher problems. Had it been so he might easily have seen that the so-called Christians who inhabited Bushmanland were really far more like Jews than the worshippers in any modern synagogue on Sat.u.r.day, for they looked upon themselves as the Almighty's chosen people, and felt that the heathen had been given to them as their inheritance, even as the Hitt.i.tes, the Hivites, and other unhappy tribes had been given for spoiling unto the followers of Moses. In this essential of all Christianity worth the name the love of one's kind, irrespective of colour or cla.s.s, the Boer certainly fails. On the other hand, his att.i.tude towards the inferior race is almost exactly that of the Old Testament Jew, with, however, one important reservation--he does not look upon it as a sacred duty to destroy them, nor does he do so unless he considers that they have provoked destruction by refusing to obey his behests.

Max possessed a useful native faculty for arranging evidence, digesting it, and deciding impartially thereon. He brought this faculty to bear upon the question of religion, with the result that he made up his mind that the two religions he had had some experience of were equally true and equally false. Certainly he had very little evidence, one way or another, to go upon. His surroundings, rather than he, were responsible for this. Probably, moreover, the religious sense was absent from his organisation. His natural impulses were good, he had no ideals or aspirations. He looked upon most of the people with whom he came in contact with a kind of mild contempt. He saw clearly in them weaknesses of which he himself was free. Thus, without being in any way conceited, he felt instinctively that he was superior to the generality of those he met.

Life with Susannah appeared good to him, and he would not let the faint and mainly instinctive scruples which he felt about professing a religion he did not believe in, stand in the way of the realisation of his happiness. So he borrowed a Catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church from Old Schalk and began to read up towards his conversion.

He found that without any further explanations he had come to be looked upon as Susannah's accepted lover. It was, of course, a.s.sumed that he was to be baptised and received as a Church member as soon as possible.

By collusion with Mrs Hattingh he managed so that some feminine habiliments of very superior quality, which came with his last consignment of goods from Cape Town, were purchased for Susannah. Her lover had, accordingly, the pleasure of at length seeing Susannah dressed in a manner which did something like justice to her beauty.

Max caused two commodious mat-houses to be put up at the back of the shop, on the site of poor old Gemsbok's scherm. These he furnished simply but comfortably.

In the course of a few months the Reverend Nicholas Joubert received a call at Garies from a young Jew, who stated that he had abjured the errors of Judaism and wished to embrace the Christian faith. Although his face seemed familiar, Mr Joubert did not at first recognise the convert. However, he eventually recalled--or said that he recalled-- having seen him at Namies. As the convert stated that the services held by Mr Joubert were the only Christian ones he had ever been present at, the minister naturally enough attributed this remarkable conversion to the efficacy of his own personal ministrations, and was favourably disposed to the neophyte accordingly--especially as the latter answered all questions put to him most discreetly and knew his Catechism so well.

No obstacles intervening, the preliminary steps towards Church membership were at once taken, and Max returned without delay to Namies.

He took back with him some books, with the contents of which he had to make himself familiar. Before leaving he made an arrangement of terms in which the minister, for a consideration, agreed to make his next visit to Bushmanland at a much earlier date than usual, and to solemnise a certain confirmation and a wedding--the confirmed party being the bridegroom--on the same day.

This programme was carried out. Max and Susannah were married. There were very few Boers in the vicinity of Namies just then, so the wedding was an extremely quiet affair. The short honeymoon was spent in Old Schalk's wagon (lent for the occasion) at Agenhuis, a water-place about forty miles away. In the midst of his raptures Max found time to effect a favourable deal in fat-tailed sheep, which were just then very much in demand by the travelling agents of the Cape Town butchers.

Very soon after his marriage Max began to make arrangements for winding up his business. He had heard of a spot on the southern margin of the Desert where rains fell with comparative regularity, and where a profitable trade might be done in salt from the neighbouring "pans."

Here he determined to establish a business. Old Schalk did not like the idea of his leaving Namies, but Susannah raised no objection whatever to his doing so.

It is not many years since all this happened. To-day, at a certain place where there is a well which affords a copious supply of very pure water, in the northern part of the Calvinia Division, there stands a small but comfortable house built of red brick. Over the front door is a signboard bearing the legend: "Max Steinmetz, Allegemene Handelaar en Produkten Kooper." ["General Dealer and Produce Buyer."] Behind the counter you may see Max, and sometimes Susannah. Playing about outside, whenever the weather is cool enough, may be noticed several small, dark-eyed children of remarkable beauty. Max has changed in appearance more than Susannah. The sedentary life and close application to business has made his shoulders stoop somewhat and given deepening lines to his face. He is still handsome, but, somehow, one feels that Raphael would no longer have cared to paint his portrait.

Susannah is as pretty as ever, and has acquired a touch of refinement which was wanting before. On the other hand, her features have a suspicion of dawning sharpness which they lacked in the old days at Namies.

Max has prospered. The moral trade in salt gives smaller profits than did the immoral trade in wild ostrich feathers, but it is safe, and there is no heavy legal penalty hanging like a Damocles sword over the head of the trader. The business now supports a clerk--a young Englishman of good education but indifferent lungs, and who was ordered a karoo climate by the doctors.