Tales of South Africa Part 7

Towards evening Hendrika's eyes and ears were fastened intently upon the road from Inkouane. Surely her husband must soon arrive! There was water there, and he would hasten back, knowing the struggle with thirst his dear ones were fighting through. Yes, undoubtedly he must be here soon. But hour after hour slipped by; the red sun sank, the night came, the stars sprang forth in their armies, and presently the moon rose as fresh and serene and gracious as though she had never seen one hour of suffering upon the tired earth. All was still upon the veldt. There was not even the occasional deep breathing of the oxen as they lay by the trek chain, for the oxen were far away, all but the three dead beasts which lay near, and had already become offensive.

At eight o'clock, Hendrika, who had been nursing little Barend by the fire since dark, gave him--for he was now clamourous again--the last kommetjeful of weak coffee. She had nothing better to give the child; the water was none too sweet, and was better boiled and made into coffee than drunk alone. After this Barend was put to bed on the wagon-kartel, and the sheepskin kaross thrown lightly over him.

Again Hendrika got down from the wagon and stood by the fire. There had been a bitter struggle agitating her bosom for hours past, and now the time was come. She must smother her stiff Dutch pride, and go as a suppliant to Schalk Oosthuysen and beg for a little water for her child.

Her own thirst, heightened by the oven-like heat and the long day of waiting and anxiety, was intense, and Andries, the Hottentot--faithful and uncomplaining though he was--was in like plight. These things were as nothing; their sufferings could be borne for another day and night; but Barend, her beautiful, sunny little Barend, with his now flushed cheeks and feverish skin and hoa.r.s.e voice--he must be saved pain at all cost. Her mind was made up. She looked across to the fire by the other wagon. There sat Schalk sullenly, his figure bulking against the blaze, smoking his big pipe as usual.

Hendrika walked steadily across and up to the firelight. Only the Boer sat there; his servants were already asleep under the wagon. Schalk turned in his chair and looked up at his visitor as she approached. It was not a pleasant face to-night. The man was evidently in a sullen, obstinate fit of temper at the general outlook, and his aspect was discouraging enough. Hendrika broke the silence.

"Meneer Oosthuysen," she said, rather hurriedly for her, "I have come to beg some water. My boy is sick and feverish, and my _vatje_ is empty.

I have not a drop of water left. I expected my husband back this evening with a fresh supply; he has not arrived, and there are no signs of him. You can help me, can you not?"

A curious expression flitted over the impa.s.sive countenance of the Boer: it pa.s.sed like a fleeting shadow, but the firelight just caught it.

"Hendrika Van Staden, why should you come to me now?" he said. "All was over between us, you said; and I wanted to see your face no more. I have scarcely enough water for myself and my men for another day. My oxen may not be back, the Lord knows when! In these times one must look after oneself. Your husband will be back by morning, no doubt, and your boy can wait till then. No, I cannot help you. Allemaghte! why should I, indeed? All my troubles come from you. You have treated me scurvily in the past; my turn has come now!"

The last few days of suffering and disaster--for he had already lost heavily among his cattle--seemed to have changed the man's nature. All his evil impulses had come uppermost.

Hendrika argued, pleaded, threatened, cast away her pride and implored Oosthuysen, by all the memories of their youth together, to help her, even with a beaker or two of water. But all of no avail. The Boer sat grim, obstinate, ferocious, and would not be moved.

In despair she sought her wagon again. A terrible night followed.

Barend was awake long before the light with raging thirst in his throat.

The mother bathed his hands and brow with vinegar, moistened his lips with it, did all she could to soothe and comfort him: it was of slight avail. The fever increased; the poor sufferer's cries for water were incessant. What Hendrika went through during that dreadful night no pen can tell. The desert was a h.e.l.l; the stars above mocked her; the moon gleamed in contemptuous serenity; the airs whispering through the bush pa.s.sed idly by, t.i.ttering their light gossip one to another. Where was G.o.d, that He could let her child suffer so? Surely, surely, all the Predikants and the Doppers and the rest of them were wrong! There could be no G.o.d, and the Bible was a lie! Sometimes, when Barend fell asleep for a few minutes, she prayed and wrestled with her agony, and fifty times sprang up thinking she heard her husband's approach.

At dawn Oosthuysen was stirring, and got down from his kartel. Hendrika had been watching like a hawk for this. She hurried swiftly across, and in rapid sentences told him of her child's danger. She fell on her knees before him--this proud, beautiful, strong woman, whose boast had been that she could have had every Boer of the Transvaal at her feet-- and begged him in a flood of tears to give her some water and save her child. At this moment, even after these scores of hours of fatigue and thirst and bitter suffering, and under the grey morning light, the woman looked very beautiful, worn and dishevelled though she was. Her _kapje_ was off, and her golden hair, unfettered by the usual tight Dutch cap, crowned her with a strange glory.

The Boer was visibly moved.

"Hendrika," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "I love you still. Yes, I love you more than ever. I will give you all the water I have. Allemaghte!

Yes, I'll foot it without water to Inkouane if you will leave your husband and come away with me. We can trek far to the north and make a home of our own. Come, Hendrika! After we reach Inkouane, your husband will be behind for his cattle, and we can get away; and if you like, bring the boy too. There is the water," pointing under his wagon, "nearly a vatjeful; you shall have it all. Think well of what I say.

We have been happy before, and can be happy again."

Hendrika sprang to her feet with flashing eyes.

"You must be mad," she said, with fierce scorn, "to dream of such a thing! Can you think so ill of me? No, _schelm_, scoundrel that you are, you know you cannot! Is this your final answer. Do you still refuse me water?"

"I do," he returned; "_unless_..."

She turned away with a fierce, hopeless gesture, and left him.

How Hendrika Van Staden pa.s.sed the next eight hours she could never satisfactorily describe, even to herself. Slowly the hot day came up, and slowly pa.s.sed upon leaden wings. Andries was sent out to scour the bush for any bulbs or roots that might contain moisture. But, alas!

just in this locality none such could be found. Meanwhile, Barend rapidly grew worse; the fever pressed more hardly upon him, the thirst became more intolerable; convulsions were succeeded by coma. It seemed that the end was near. The water-bearers from Inkouane still tarried; every moment became more distracting, more agonising, for the wretched mother.

Suddenly a terrible thought flashed through her brain, and no sooner was it conceived than her mind was made up. She went softly to her wagon, took down her husband's Martini-Henry carbine from the hooks on which it reposed, drew it from its lion-skin cover, and pulled two cartridges from a bandolier; one she pushed into the breech of the carbine, the other she thrust into her bosom, and then, carrying the gun behind her, she walked straight across to Oosthuysen's camp. The Boer happened to be sitting in the shade at the back of the wagon, and heard nothing of her approach till her voice rang sharply through the hot air.

"Meneer Oosthuysen, I want you!"

Schalk sprang up with alacrity. No doubt, he thought to himself, he had conquered. His vile offer was to be accepted. There was a strange set look in the woman's beautiful eyes as he faced her. Her head was thrown back in the way he knew so well of yore, her white throat was displayed, her arms were behind her back. A little defiant, perhaps, in her yielding, but still she was to be his. Never, he thought, had she looked more n.o.ble.

"Schalk," she said, in her firm, clear voice, "I must have that water."

"Well," he replied, "it is yours. You know my terms."

"Almighty G.o.d!" she gasped; "then you _will_ have it! See here, this gun is loaded. If you hand me half your water, I'll forgive all your brutality; if not, I'll shoot you dead. Choose, and in one instant!"

The Boer evidently imagined it was a mere case of "bluff," and he grew angry.

"I tell you," he cried, "you shall have not one drop of water unless you swear to leave your husband and come with me! Those are my last words."

"Your last indeed!" echoed Hendrika, in a deep, low voice. Her carbine went up. The Boer made one dash to disarm her, and in the same instant her forefinger pressed the trigger and a bullet crashed through Oosthuysen's brain. He fell forward and lay there in the sand without another motion, stone-dead.

Scarcely noticing the body, Hendrika went straight to the water _vatje_ for which she had done this terrible act. She lifted it from the hook, and, exerting all her strength, carried it across to her wagon. Then, procuring brandy, she mingled water with it, and with a teaspoon poured some of the mixture between the parched lips of her half-lifeless child.

In ten minutes there were signs of returning consciousness, and presently Barend opened his eyes. Her child was saved, and the woman's heart, spite of the deadly horror that was upon her, echoed faint thanks. She had saved her boy, but at what a price! In half an hour Barend was so much better that she was able to leave him dozing quietly, and once more she betook herself to Oosthuysen's camp. The Boer's Kaffirs had returned, and were standing over the dead body, talking and gesticulating in an excited way. Hendrika walked straight up to them, and, first picking up her carbine, said in a firm voice, "Yes, the Baas is dead. He refused me water, and I shot him. It was my child's life or his. You had better go on to Inkouane and tell his friends to send back for the wagon."

The natives, awed by her manner and the words she spoke, slunk away, and, picking up their blankets and a.s.segais and a little store of water, struck into the bush, glad to be quit of this terrible woman.

As soon as they had departed, all Hendrika's stock of firmness vanished.

She had been overwrought these forty-eight hours past. Now the tension had become too great. She knelt beside the dead body of Oosthuysen and wept in an agony of remorse, pity, and tenderness.

Why had she slain this man, with whom for years she had been a.s.sociated in childhood? She remembered, ah! so well, their pleasant homes in Marico, the fertile valleys, the fair uplands, and the pleasant treks four times a year to _Nachtmaal_ (communion) at Zeerust. Her tears flowed afresh. Presently she became calmer, climbed into Oosthuysen's wagon, and took down a blanket, which she placed reverently, almost tenderly, over the dead body.

At that instant the dulled crack of a rifle-shot came from the direction of the Inkouane road! Another! Alas! Hendrika knew what they meant.

Her husband was approaching, water was at hand, help near. Now the full horror of her position smote upon her and froze her blood. All this terrible crime might have been avoided if but those shots had been heard one short hour ago. Her heart stood still, and she fell forward in a deathlike swoon beside the body of the man she had slain.

When Piet Van Staden rode up five minutes later and found his wife lying in a dead faint beside the yet warm corpse of Schalk Oosthuysen, even his dull Dutch nature was stirred and harrowed. What in G.o.d's name could it all mean?

Presently, with the aid of brandy and water, Hendrika came to herself, and was able to tell her terrible story. It was a great shock to her husband; but he had a strong faith in his wife's character, and he understood well enough that only the direst straits and the prospect of the almost instant death of their child could have induced her to take the blood of a fellow-creature upon her hands.

They buried Oosthuysen's body that evening, and covered the grave with thorns, and set a strong _scherm_ of thorns about it to keep off the wild beasts. During the night their oxen came in, and they trekked next day, with doubt and trepidation in their hearts, for Inkouane, where dreadful scenes were enacting. The pits had been meanwhile choked up with dead oxen, which had been cut out piecemeal; and now, the scant mess of foul blood and fouler water being exhausted, men, women, and children were enduring agonies of thirst. Men in such case were not likely to be hard judges: their one thought was for their own safety.

Piet and his wife, therefore, having reported the full circ.u.mstances of Oosthuysen's tragic death to the Boer leaders, were bidden to betake themselves away and never trouble the expedition again. Glad enough they were to escape thus lightly: blood for blood is usually the cry of people in a state of semi-civilisation such as these Trek-Boers.

And so, like Hagar of old, the Van Stadens pa.s.sed out into the wilderness, and won their way with much toil and suffering to the Okavango River, beyond Lake N'gami. But Hendrika never shook off her trouble, or the feeling that unwittingly she had wrecked her husband's life and doomed themselves to a weary banishment. Day by day she grew paler and more listless; her old fire and spirits had left her and could not be recalled, and, by the time they reached the marshes of the Okavango, she was utterly unfit to cope with the deadly fever of that unhealthy land.

At last, thin and worn and weak, the merest shadow of the once proud Transvaal beauty, she could travel no longer. They outspanned under a big Motjeerie tree, and there, tended by her husband and the still faithful Hottentot, Andries, and with Barend's hand in hers, she pa.s.sed from life into the unknown.

Hendrika Van Staden sleeps, as sleeps many another stout and heroic.

Dutchwoman who has yielded up her soul in Africa, in the dim wilderness, beneath the great Motjeerie tree, amid whose spreading oak-like leaf.a.ge the wild doves of the forest coo soft requiem. In the still solitudes around wander free and undisturbed the great game of the veldt she loved so well. And at night to the fountain near her grave come the tall giraffe, the mighty elephant, the painted zebra, the sinuous tawny lion, the tiny steinbok, and many another head of game, to quench their thirst.

What fitter resting-place could be hers? And if, indeed, Hendrika erred in the supreme trial of her life, what mother, what true woman, would have done otherwise? Who shall judge her? who cast a stone?

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A LEGEND OF PRINCE MAURICE.

It was Christmas-time at the Cape, when many a man and woman of British blood, jaded by the sun and drought of an up-country life, flocks down to the sea. Cape Town and her charming suburbs were crowded; and the pleasant watering-places of Muizenberg and Kalk Bay were thronged with folk dying once more to set eyes on the blue ocean, to inhale the fresh breezes, and to remind themselves of their own sea-girt origin. From every corner of South Africa--from the old Colony, the Free State, the Transvaal, from far Bechua.n.a.land--they had come. You might see sun-scorched wanderers from the far interior, hunters, explorers, prospectors, and pioneers. Some had come to restore broken health; some to taste again the sweets of civilisation, to spend hard-won money; or, perchance, an enthusiast might be seen who had been attracted south a thousand miles and more by the week's cricket tournament on the Western Province ground at Newlands.

Cape Town was at her best and bravest. Adderley Street was as crowded as Bond Street in June; and upon every hand were to be seen and heard pleasant faces, cheery voices, and the hearty greetings of friends long severed by time and distance.