Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases Part 25

"'Now,' said Kornel, when he had put the money in my hand, 'get what you need for a dinner that will tickle the ou pa's stomach, and a bottle of whiskey. There never was a deacon that did not suffer from some complaint that whiskey would ease; and I'll get into what clean clothes I have and go to look for him.'

"So I bought the dinner. I was willing enough to suffer the emptiness to come, if only I could wipe from my father's memory his impression of my man's poverty; but all the same, in case he should refuse to visit us, I bought things that would last long enough to serve ourselves until the thirty shillings should have been earned. They made a good show: for I have never been a fool in the matter of food, and I knew my father's tastes. I promised myself that his dinner should be his chief memory of that day, at all events. He was, I fear, the kind of man who remembers his good dinners better than anything else.

"It was a long time before they came, and I had given up all hope of the visit when I heard their voices. Or rather, it was Kornel's voice that I heard, in a tone of careless civility, like one who performs a casual duty of politeness. He was talking nonsense in a slow drawl, and as they picked their way from the road to the house my father looked up to him in a kind of wonder.

"'The evenings are pleasant here,' Kornel was saying. 'We have a little time to ourselves then, for people have learned at last not to trouble us much. One sees the sun go down yonder across the hills, and it is very pretty, Now, on the farm, n.o.body ever knew how handsome the sunset is.

We were like Kafirs on the farm; but life in the town is quite different.'

"He chattered on in the same strain, and my father was plainly dazed by it, so that his judgment was all fogged, and he took the words at their face value. I noticed that my father seemed a little abashed and doubtful; it was easy to see that this was the opposite of what he had expected.

"He greeted me with a touch of hesitation in his manner; but I kissed him on the forehead and tried to appear a fortunate daughter--smiling a.s.suredly, you know, glad to exercise hospitality and to receive my father in my own house. It was not all seeming, either; for I had no shame in my condition and my husband's fortune,--only a resentment for those who affected to expect it.

"'You are looking well,' said my father, staring at me.

'How do you like the life you are living?'

"Kornel smiled boldly across to me, and I laughed.

"'I was never so happy in my life,' I answered--and that, at any rate, was true.

"My father grunted, and sat listening to the gentle flow of talk with which Kornel gagged him the while I busied myself with the last turn of the cooking and set the table to rights. But he glanced at me from time to time with something of surprise and disapproval; perhaps a white woman with no Kafir servant had never met his eyes before.

Kornel did not miss the expression of his face.

"'We will show you something new in the dinner line,' he remarked knowingly. 'There are things you can't teach to a Kafir, you know.'

"'What things?' demanded my father.

"'Ah, you shall see in a moment,' answered Kornel, nodding mysteriously. 'Christina will show you. Have you ever heard of a ragout?'

"My father shook his head. Neither had I; but I held my tongue.

"'Well,' said Kornel, 'a ragout is a fowl cooked as Christina has cooked it. It is a very favorite dish among the rich men in Johannesburg. If you will draw up your chair to the table you shall see.'

"It is true that I had a good hand with a fowl, stewed in a fashion of my own, which was mainly the outcome of ignorance and emergency; but it was very fortunate that on that day of all days the contrivance should have turned out so well. It was tender, and the flesh was seasoned to just the right flavor by the stuff I stewed with it--certain herbs, Katje, and a hint of a whiff of garlic. Garlic is a thing you must not play with: like sin, you can never undo it, whatever forgiveness you win. But a leaf or two bruised between two clean pebbles, and the pebbles boiled with the stew, spices the whole thing as a touch of devil spices a man.

"You maybe sure I was anxious about it, and watched Kornel and my pa as they started to eat. Kornel swallowed his first mouthful with an appearance of keen judgment; then he winked swiftly to me, and nodded slightly. It was his praise of the dish. Oh, if you had known my man, you would not need telling that that was enough for me. My father commenced to eat as though curious of the food before him.

He gave no sign of liking or otherwise; but presently he squared his shoulders, drew his chair closer to the table, and gave his mind to the matter.

"'That's right, walk into it,' said Kornel. "'It is very good indeed,' said my father, eating thoughtfully, and presently I helped him to some more. Kornel gave him soda- water with whiskey in it, and thereafter there were other things to eat--nearly thirty shillings' worth. After that they sat and smoked, and drank the strong coffee I made for them, and pa.s.sed the whiskey bottle to and fro between them. All the while Kornel babbled amiably of foolish things, sunsets, and Shakespeare and the ways of women, till I caught myself wondering whether indeed he relished the change from the wide clean veld of the farm to this squalid habitation of toil.

"'I suppose,' said my father at last, when Kornel had finished talking about sunsets,--'I suppose a ragoo, as you call it, is very expensive to make?'

"'I really couldn't say,' answered Kornel. 'But I should think not.'

"'H'm; and you think a Kafir could not be taught to make them?'

"Kornel laughed. 'I should be sorry to try,' he said.

"My father pondered on that for a while, smoking strongly and glancing from time to time at me.

"'I'm growing an old man,' he said at last, 'and old men are lonely at the best.'

"'Some seem to wish it,' said Kornel.

"'I say they are lonely,' repeated my father sharply. 'I have no wife, and I cannot be bothered with getting another at my time of life.' He shook his gray head sadly. 'Not that I should have to look far for one,' he added, however.

"Kornel laughed, and my father looked at him angrily.

"'If it had not been for you,' he said, 'I should still have had my daughter Christina to live with me. I am tired of being alone, and I cannot nurse the wrong done me by my own flesh and blood. You and Christina had better come out to the farm and live with me.'

"'And leave my business?' asked Kornel.

"'Oh, there is mud and water on the farm, if your business pleases you,' retorted my father. 'But out there we do not take the bread out of the mouths of Kafirs.'

"'I see,' answered Kornel briefly; and I, who watched him, knew from his voice that there was to be no truce after that, that we should still earn our livelihood by the mud bricks.

"'You will come?' asked my father.

"'Good Lord, no!' replied Kornel. 'You would weary me to death in a week, I don't mind being civil when we meet, but live with you! It would be to make oneself a vegetable.'

"My father heard him out with a grave face, and then rose to his feet. There was a stateliness in his manner that grieved me, for when a man meets a rebuff with silence and dignity he is aging.

"'You are right, perhaps,' he said. 'I don't know, but you may be. Anyhow, I have enjoyed an excellent meal, and I thank you. Good-bye, Christina!'

"When he was gone, Kornel turned to me.

"'It is evident you cannot have both a husband and a father,' he said; 'but I am sorry for the rudeness, kleintje. He is a greater man than I.'

"'I think you might have made it otherwise,' I answered, for my heart ached for my father.

"He shrugged his shoulders. 'You must manage to forgive me,' he said. 'I have a thousand dozen bricks to make, and that will be punishment enough.'

"'But you will not start again tonight!' I cried, for it was already the thin end of evening, and he was taking off his clean clothes.

"'A thousand dozen is a big handful,' he answered, smiling.

'There's nothing like getting a grip on the work ahead.'

"So in a few minutes he was down in the water again, and the mud flew as he worked at the heart-breaking task he had taken upon him. After all, the ragout was expensive to make. It came dearer than we expected.

"Late into the night he held on, though thrice I went out to the bank of the stream to beg him to quit it and come to bed. There was a great pale moon that night, which threw up the colors of things strongly, and I have yet in my mind-- and my heart--that picture,--the stained water, and the bank of gray mud over it, and between the two my Kornel bent over the endless boxes, vehemently working with no consideration for the limits of his strength. His arms gleamed with the wet, and were ceaseless; he might have been a dumb machine, without capacity for weariness. If he had toiled before, now he toiled doubly; there was a trouble in his mind to be sweated out and a debt of money to be repaid. And also, like a peril always near at hand, there was the thin margin that stood between us and starvation.

"When he came to bed at length, he lay down without the greeting he was wont to give me--lapsed into his place beside me with the limpness of a man spent to the utmost ounce. He slept without turning on his side, his worn hands, half-closed, lying loosely on the quilt. Yet within an hour after daylight he rose with narrow, sleep-burdened eyes, fumbled into his clothes, and staggered out to the spruit again, to resume his merciless work with the very fever of energy. The Kafirs that worked leisurely on the next plot stopped to look at him and to wonder at the speed with which the rows of drying bricks lengthened and multiplied. I saw them pointing as I stood at the door, heavy-hearted and anxious, and envied the ease of their manner of life, and the simplicity that could be content with such work at such a wage. Yes, I have envied Kafirs, Katje; there are times for all women when we envy the dead.

"But it was the day after that that the trouble came upon us, great and violent and unawaited. Kornel had been up at daybreak again, working as strongly as ever, though his mouth was loose with the strain and his face very yellow and white. The drying and the dry bricks were lying on the ground in long rows, and some which were hard were already stacked to make room for others. It was a tremendous output for one man in the time it had taken; and when the Kafirs turned out, gabbling and laughing as usual, they stopped to look in surprise at our plot and the great quant.i.ty of bricks. They gathered in a group, and talked among themselves and pointed, and presently I was aware there was something toward. One of them in particular,--a great brown brute, with bulky shoulders and huge arms, seemed to be concerned in the affair; he stared continually towards Kornel, and talked loudly, his voice running up into the squeak of a Kafir when he is excited, or angry, or afraid; and presently he stepped over our border line and walked down to the bricks. He was jabbering to himself all the time as he stooped and picked up bricks and examined them closely, and glanced down to the spruit where Kornel was still working.

"I watched him, but I said nothing, hoping he would go away before Kornel saw him; but he kept on, and presently my man looked up.

"He saw the Kafir at once, and climbed up the bank pretty quickly. There was something like a smile on his face, a look as though he had found the relief he needed. He walked swiftly over to the Kafir.