Kafir Stories Part 4

He entered the hotel at which he had formerly boarded and lodged for several years as a bachelor. The faces he saw were all strange, but the building was just the same. It was evident that neither the doors, the windows, nor the verandah had been renewed since he had seen the place last. The same atmosphere of mustiness permeated the premises; the ill-laid flags forming the floor of the stoep still with lifted edges lay in wait for unaccustomed feet. He knew those flags, and the old habit of stepping high when he walked on them returned. He even remembered, as he walked along, the places where it was safe to tread and those to be avoided.

The servant showed him to his room, the same he had occupied twenty years ago. Twenty years; good G.o.d! what a long time. He was then twenty-six years old--and now. How many things had happened in those years. The servant lit the candle, and Kellson looked round the room.

Yes; just as he had expected; there was the same furniture. The wall-paper was different, that was all. He pa.s.sed his hand over the foot of the iron bedstead and drew out one of the slides of the old, rickety chest of drawers. How many people had slept in that bed since that morning when he had here packed his portmanteau before carrying it out to the post-cart.

He went to supper, and recognised familiar objects at every turn. These recognitions hurt him so much that he could hardly keep from crying out. He feared to lift his eyes lest he should see some old acquaintance in the shape of a fly-blown picture grinning at him. The proprietor of the hotel and his family were all absent at church, and for this small mercy Kellson was devoutly thankful. Supper over, he strolled out into the silent village street. He could not, however, endure the sensations which he experienced, so he hurried back to his room. The transfiguring moonlight had conjured up the ghost of his youth, and it mocked and gibed at him cruelly.

Kellson was a bad sleeper, but he went to bed early so as to rest his weary limbs. He lit his pipe, and then tried to read, but the mists of nineteen years gathered between his eyes and the page, so he blew out the candle and lay still with his eyes wide open and no thought of sleep. The whole weight of the past seemed to press on and crush him, whilst the stress of the present prevented his dropping the load and resting. Moreover, numbers of those wretched cur dogs that swarm in most South African villages were now barking in all directions, the full moon and the warm night drawing out more than the usual contingent.

Kellson's official residence was on a hill just beyond the other end of the village, and he determined, without waiting for the arrival of the waggons with his effects, to buy next day enough furniture for one small bedroom which he would occupy, still taking his meals at the hotel. He would thus be away from the horrible dogs. He meant to board at the hotel until the arrival of his wife. His wife t why must he think of her with such bitterness? Why must he look forward to her return from her trip to Europe with uneasiness and dissatisfaction? It was the old story--incompatibility of temper, or rather of temperament.

He had married at the age of thirty-eight, nine years ago. His wife was now twenty-eight. She was one of those women who can be got at only through their feelings--never through their reason. In her a pa.s.sionate longing for motherhood had absorbed every other wish. She had money of her own and had gone to spend a year in Europe. When she left, Kellson experienced a deep sense of relief; a whole year's freedom seemed endless at the beginning, but now two-thirds of the time had gone by swiftly, and in about four months she would be back. How he dreaded her return and the recommencement of the old discordant life. Kellson was, no doubt, in some respects a difficult man to live with, but he nevertheless would have made a reasonable, sympathetic woman moderately happy. His habit was to act reasonably according to his lights in all his daily relations, both official and domestic. His wife was an extremely emotional person, who could be persuaded to do a thing, or leave it undone, as the case might be, by arguments based upon conventionalism or generosity, but never by those drawn from justice or reasonableness. Kellson had at first set himself the task of showing her the saving graces of reasonableness, but he soon gave the attempt up in disgust. But things would have come all right between them had there only been a child.

Kellson had not been a successful man. At the beginning, his career promised well. Fifteen years previously he had been ahead of most men of his own term of service, but now others--some of them considerably his juniors--had forged past him. He had noticed all his life that he seldom carried any important enterprise to a successful conclusion. Up to a certain point, he usually achieved rapid success, but then difficulties unseen before arose one after the other, and failure, or else only success very much qualified, resulted. He had often endeavoured to find out the reason of this, but had not been able to do so. He came to the conclusion that there was some weak strand in the fibre of his character, but where this lay, or how to strengthen it, he was unable to discover or devise.

His transfer to Marsonton, although it involved no curtailment of salary, was really a reduction in point of status. At his last station he had taken a. stand upon a matter in which the prejudices of a large and influential cla.s.s had been against him. The Government considered he had been injudicious, and transferred him. He did not much mind; all that troubled him, was the nuisance involved in packing up and moving his books and furniture. His conscience was quite clear; he had done what he thought: to be his duty. Yet he was honest enough to admit that however right the abstract principle was, its application in the particular circ.u.mstances involved may have been injudicious. His ideal of official responsibility was a very high one, and during the whole twenty-seven years of his service he had never done a shady thing; neither had he ever allowed fear of the consequences to deter him from pursuing what he considered to be the right course.

All things come to an end, and so did that Sunday night which Kellson spent at the hotel. In the early morning he took a brighter view of things. After breakfast he went up to the Public Offices, and, to the astonishment of the clerks, introduced himself as their new chief. He had not mentioned who he was at the hotel, and consequently no one knew of his arrival. It being Monday, there was a heavy roll of cases for trial, and when the one attorney and the two agents saw Kellson take the bench, they were much chagrined at having been done out of the pleasure of presenting the usual florid address.

Of the criminal cases to be heard, only one was of any importance, namely that of a young coloured man charged with burglary. His name was John Erlank. He had evidently more of European than of any other blood in his veins; his hair was straight and black, and his complexion light yellow. But the most striking thing about him was the beauty of his eyes. They were black, large and deep. Although clearly showing signs of vice and dissipation, there was something prepossessing in his appearance; a kind of natural refinement was visible through his evident degradation and in spite of his obviously cringing manner.

Kellson could not imagine whose face it was that the prisoner's suggested. Although little more than a lad, Erlank had a bad record.

From early youth upwards he had been a criminal, and several convictions for different crimes were now formally proved against him.

He had in this particular instance been committed to take his trial before the circuit judge by the previous magistrate, before whom he had fully admitted his guilt, but the Attorney General had now remitted the case hack to the magistrate's court for disposal under the "Extended Jurisdiction Act." Guilt being fully admitted by the prisoner, all Kellson had to do as magistrate was to read over the depositions and pa.s.s sentence. He considered the case to be one in which severity was due, so after telling the man he was one on whom exhortation or advice would be thrown away, he pa.s.sed the highest sentence allowed by law, that is two years' imprisonment with hard labour and a flogging of thirty-six lashes. It was characteristic of Kellson that the prisoner's prepossessing appearance had the involuntary effect of making the sentence more severe, or rather, perhaps, of making the magistrate more stern in his estimate of the criminality.

At about four o'clock, Kellson had disposed of all the cases, and was thus free for the rest of the afternoon, so he left the office and walked up towards his official residence. He had asked the Chief Constable to see to the fitting up of his room, and he now went to look over the premises. For a long time he was unable to dismiss the face of the prisoner Erlank from his memory, it seemed to be almost as familiar to him as the houses of the street along which he was walking.

The village had hardly changed since he had last seen it. It is one of those places that do not grow because they happen not to be on any one of the great highways to the North. One or two old fogeys came up and greeted Kellson in the street--men he had known well in the old days, now so changed as to be almost unrecognisable. He pa.s.sed the little room which had been used in the old days as a public library and reading-room. It was now shut up, and almost in ruins. He thought of how he used to run over from the office and flirt with the librarian, a very pretty girl, long since married. He pa.s.sed another house and caught his breath short. It was that in which she had lived--the girl he had loved in his youth, and who had loved him. He had left her in a state of uncertainty as to his intentions, and after keeping up a warm correspondence for some time, they had gradually become estranged, the estrangement commencing on his side. Why had he acted like this, he asked himself bitterly. He had dreaded something or another, he could not quite define what it was. He remembered how she, who had been as Steel to others, was like wax in his hands. He remembered----Ah, G.o.d what a lot he remembered.

He arrived at the residency after walking up the hill. The exercise made him puff. In the old days he used to run up steeper gradients, now it sometimes distressed him to walk on level ground.

The gate and the fence were new, but the verandah, the door and the windows, as in the case of the hotel, were the same he had known in the old days. He opened the door and walked in, his footsteps sounding hollow in the empty house.

Kellson stood in the pa.s.sage. He had left the front door wide open so as to admit the light. The air of the empty house seemed dense with the essence of the past. He went into every room, pausing for a few seconds in each, and then entering the next on tip-toe. He stood in the dining-room, before the fireplace. He had sat where he now stood on so many evenings of winter days whose suns had set with his youth. The barren hearth was full of ghostly flames which struck a chill into his heart.

There was the room opening to the left, which Mabel and Vi, the little twin daughters of his former chief, used to occupy. He seemed to hear the laughter of the children echoing from some far-off paradise of the past, before the portal of which a stern-browed Fate stood to prevent his entering. The shutters of the dining-room window had been thrown open. A memory-ghost prompted him to unfold one of them. On its inner surface, painted over, he found the heads of the tacks with which he had nailed the programme of the farewell dance given in honour of his promotion by his chief. Where were the dancers? Gone like the music to which their feet had kept time.

His bed had been placed in the room formerly occupied by the children.

This pleased him; the ghosts of Mabel and Vi were more bearable than the other ghosts. He looked in to see that all he required had been provided, and then he walked over the premises outside, old recollections smiting him like whips at every turn. He went into the stable and touched the ring to which "Bob," an old pony, the joint property of the two little girls, used to be tied. The tennis-ground was over-grown with gra.s.s--his predecessor's family evidently had not cared about tennis. He recognised most of the trees in the garden. The old vine at the side of the house was green and full of unripe grapes.

It was the only thing that had a cheerful look.

Kellson returned to the hotel, and found that several of the inhabitants of the village had called and left cards. After supper, he walked up again to the residency, and found the Chief Constable there, he having come to see whether the arrangements made were satisfactory.

Kellson was much relieved to find he had company. He had dreaded entering the house alone in the dark. There was an old rustic seat under the verandah, and on this Kellson and the Chief Constable sat and talked for half an hour. Then the latter said "Good night" and left.

Kellson remained sitting on the rustic seat, feeling in a better frame of mind. The Moon rose over the big mountain in front of the house and distant about five miles. The soft moonlight made the landscape wonderfully beautiful. The whole mountain was draped in snow-while, clinging mist, except the very summit, over which the Moon was hanging.

The peacefulness of the hour stole into his heart, and his brain calmed down. The mountain suggested to him the past, and the pure, white mist shrouding it seemed like vapour risen from the merciful waters of Lethe. The Moon suggested hope, vague and undefined, lint still hope.

With the swing as of a pendulum his consciousness swept back from the dark night of despondency and bathed its wings in light. Then his soothed spirit felt the need of sleep, so he entered the house and began to prepare for bed.

The waggon-road from the village scarped around the slope at the back of the house, and he heard the clatter of a waggon pa.s.sing along it.

The noise irritated him sorely--he could not tell why. Soon it ceased, and he wondered why the waggon should have stopped where it did. A few minutes afterwards he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, so he paused in his undressing, wondering irritably who was coming to disturb him. Then he heard a light tap at the front door.

Taking a candle, he went to the door and opened it. He saw before him a woman. She was coloured, but of mixed race, the European element evidently preponderating. She was elderly--certainly over forty years of age--very thin; and she stooped somewhat. Her face was drawn and haggard, but her eyes were still beautiful--black, large, and deep. She was decently but poorly dressed.

"Good evening, sir," she said, speaking Dutch.

"Good evening," replied Kellson. "What do you want?"

"I beg your pardon. Sir, coming at this time to trouble you. I only came because I am in great grief. But do you not know me?"

"No," said Kellson, after scanning her features carefully; "I do not remember you. What is your name?"

"I am Rachel, sir."

"Rachel," he said, sharply; "not Rachel Arends?"

"Yes, Sir, I was Rachel Arends, but I married Martin Erlank, the blacksmith of Ratel Hoek, just after you left, long ago."

Kellson turned sick at heart. Here was a reminder of a thing he had fain forgotten, come to drive away the peace he had just acquired. Here was the ghost of a sin of long ago, which had put on flesh and blood and come back to haunt him. It was horrible. He looked at the woman-- she returned his gaze timidly for a moment, and then humbly drooped her head. Her manner and att.i.tude suggested woe and utter humility. Then a wave of kindness and pity swept through him. Here was a fellow-creature with whom he had tasted the sweets of sin, long ago. Her youth, and all of her that he remembered, had been left behind by the hurrying years.

Only one thing was clear, she was in trouble and she wanted his help.

He would succour her if he could.

"Come in," he said to her kindly; and she followed him into the empty dining-room. He closed the shutters, and placed the candle on the window-sill. Then he fetched the only two chairs out of his bedroom. He placed one for her, and sat in the other himself.

"Now, Rachel," he said in a kind voice, "what can I do for you?"

Rachel tried to speak, but sobs choked her. Kellson sat and watched her, trying to imagine the course of the change in her appearance through the nineteen years. Where had her beauty gone to--the clear yellow of her cheeks, through which the red seemed to burn, making them look like ripe nectarines. Where was her graciously curved bosom? Ah!

"Where are the snows of yester-year?"

"Oh, Sir," she said at length, "I have come to you about my son whom you punished today."

Kellson now for the first time remembered that the surname she had given him was the same as that of the prisoner whom he had so severely sentenced. He could now decipher the suggestion in the eyes, which had so puzzled him.

"Was that your son?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir. I know he is bad, and it is his conduct that has made an old woman of me. But I thought you might do something for him. I do not mind about the two years' imprisonment--that may do him good--but the thirty-six lashes."

"Oh, Sir, his skin has always been so tender, ever since he was a little baby. It is quite white and soft under his shirt. For the love of G.o.d, do not flog him. I did not know he was to be tried to-day, or I would have come before. When I heard you were coming I felt sure he would have had mercy."

"My poor woman," said Kellson, his heart pierced by Rachel's agony, "what can I do? I have no power to alter the sentence. He had been convicted so often before that I felt bound to punish him severely."

"I know. I know he deserves it, but for the love of G.o.d, take off the lashes. Oh, Sir, you cannot flog him. Bad as he is, I love him best of all my children, and all the others are good."

"What can I do?" said Kellson, deeply distressed. "The sentence is pa.s.sed. I have no power to change it."

"Oh, Sir, do you not understand--must I tell you? I thought you would have known."

"What do you mean?"

Rachel again burst into violent weeping, and swayed to and fro in her chair. For some time she could not speak, Kellson sat and looked at her, a vague feeling of uneasiness stirring in him. At length she became calmer, and sat still--her hands pressed to her face. She stood up, looked fixedly at Kellson for a moment, and then fell un her knees before him.

"Save him, save him from the flogging," she said hoa.r.s.ely, "he is your son."