Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases Part 6

"This went on. The Irishman blew up his dynamite and talked with Dia and played with her. Jan, watching, saw the color had returned to her cheeks and the life to her eyes. He came into the kitchen once and she was singing. She stopped suddenly.

"'Why do you not go on?' he asked, with his little red eyes staring at her.

"She had nothing to say, and he went away, to go down to the dam. The Irishman was sitting on an ant-heap away in the sun, and Jan pa.s.sed him without speaking, and walked down to the place of explosions. He was looking at the marks of fire on the rocks, when it seemed to him he heard a shout, and he saw, as he turned his head, that the Irishman was standing up. But he made no beck, and Jan walked along. When he looked again the young man had both hands to his head. Jan shaded his eyes to watch him.

"Moore walked a few paces to and fro, stood still, and then, with a start, commenced to run furiously down to where Jan was standing. He ran with long strides and very fast, and was soon beside the old man, and seized him by the arm.

"'Out of this!' he cried. 'Out of this! The holes are loaded, and ye've sixty seconds to save yer life.'

"Jan stood still. 'Why did you not tell me before?' he asked; but the other did not answer, but only dragged at his arm.

"Jan shook his hand off. 'I have a mind to stay,' he said in a calm voice. 'If Dia is made a widow, you will know how to look after her.'

"'And that's true!' cried the Irishman. 'But you shan't make a murderer of me.'

"And he drew back his fist and knocked the old man down.

Catching him by the collar, he dragged him to the shelter of a big boulder, flung him close to it, and lay down on top of his body. In the next moment the blast went off, and the gust of fire and rocks and earth roared and whistled through the air above them. The sound struck them like a bludgeon, and they lay for a while, stunned and deafened, while pieces of stone slid and tinkled on the boulder that had sheltered them. At last they rose.

"'I made a mistake and I am glad,' said Jan.

"'Will you shake hands with me?'

"'I will not,' was the answer.

"'So be it. But there can be no need to tell Dia of this.'

"The Irishman nodded, and that afternoon, again, he and Dia were in the garden, throwing stones at a sardine-tin on a stick to see who could hit it first. Dia knocked it down easily, and Jan, sitting indoors with his coat off, heard them laughing.

"At supper that night he looked up to Dia.

"'This coffee has a sour taste,' he said.

"'Mine hasn't,' said the Irishman.

"'Try mine, then,' said Jan, and pa.s.sed Dia his cup to hand to him. She fumbled in taking it and dropped it on the floor. The new cup that she poured out for him had no sour taste.

"For several days after that there was a sour taste in many things that he ate and drank, and he complained of it each time.

"'You must be getting ill,' Dia said.

"'It is possible,' he answered, watching her. 'I have felt very strange of late days.'

"He saw the color leave her cheeks, and a light come into her eyes.

"'What can it be?' he said. 'Should I have a doctor, do you think?'

"'I am afraid of doctors,' she answered. 'Let me give you some of my herb medicine.'

"He drank what she brought him and put the cup down.

"'I was hard to you once. Dia,' he said, 'I have been sorry since.'

"That night he sent a mounted Kafir for his brother, and when, at noon next day, that brother came, Dia and her Irishman were already gone. But Jan would not have them hunted.

"'I whipped her once,' he said, 'and I am paid for it.'

"His brother, a great simple soul, was dumbfounded.

"'Do you mean that she has poisoned you?' he demanded.

"The dying man shook his head.

"'They used to count the colors,' he said. 'There was much of love in the colors, but there was nothing of me. Let them go!'

"And so," concluded the Vrouw Grobelaar impressively, "he died, and it all came of counting the colors in the sunset, which is a warning to you, Katje--"

"To count colors," interrupted that maiden hotly. "I think the old wretch got just what he deserved."

THE KING OF THE BABOONS

The old yellow-fanged dog-baboon that was chained to a post in the yard had a dangerous trick of throwing stones. He would seize a piece of rock in two hands, stand erect and whirl round on his heels till momentum was obtained, and then--let go. The missile would fly like a bullet, and woe betide any one who stood in its way. The performance precluded any kind of aim; the stone was hurled off at any chance tangent: and it was bad luck rather than any kind of malice that guided one three-pound boulder through the window, across the kitchen, and into a portrait of Judas de Beer which hung on the wall not half a dozen feet from the slumbering Vrouw Grobelaar.

She bounced from her chair and ballooned to the door with a silent swift agility most surprising to see in a lady of her generous build, and not a sound did she utter. She was of good veld-bred fighting stock, which never cried out till it was hurt, and there was even something of compa.s.sion in her face as Frikkie jumped from the stoop with a twelve-foot thong in his hand. It was, after all, the baboon that suffered most, if his yells were any index to his feelings. Frikkie could smudge a fly ten feet off with just a flick of his whip, and all the tender parts of the accomplished animal came in for ruthless attention.

"He ought to be shot," was Frikkie's remark as he curled up the thong at the end of the discipline. "A baboon is past teaching if he has bad habits. He is more like a man than a beast."

The Vrouw Grobelaar seated herself in the stoop chair which by common consent was reserved for her use, and shook her head.

"Baboons are uncanny things," she answered slowly. "When you shoot them, you can never be quite sure how much murder there is in it. The old story is that some of them have souls and some not: and it is quite certain that they can talk when they will. You have heard them crying in the night sometimes. Well, you ask a Kafir what that means. Ask an old wise Kafir, not a young one that has forgotten the wisdom of the black people and learned the foolishness only of the white."

"What does it mean, tante?" It was I that put the question.

Katje, too, seemed curious.

The old lady eyed me gloomily.

"If you were a landed Boer, instead of a kind of schoolmaster," she replied, witheringly, "you would not need to ask such a question. But I will tell you. A baboon may be wicked--look at that one showing his teeth and cursing--but he is not blind nor a fool. He runs about on the hills, and steals and fights and scratches, and all the time he has all the knowledge and twice the strength of a man, if it were not for the tail behind him and the hair on his body. So it is natural that sometimes he should be grieved to be such a mean thing as a baboon when he could be a useful kind of man if the men would let him. And at nights, particularly, when their troop is in laager and the young ones are on watch among the high rocks, it comes home to the best of them, and they sob and weep like young widows, pretending that they have pains inside so that the others shall not feel offended and turn on them. Any one may hear them in the kloofs on a windless night, and, I can tell you, the sound of their sorrow is pitiful."

Katje threw out a suggestion to console them with buckshot, and the Vrouw Grobelaar nodded with meaning.

"To hate baboons is well enough in the wife of a Burgher,"

she said sweetly. "I am glad to see there is so much fitness and wifeliness about you, since you will naturally spend all your life on farms."

Katje's flush was a distress signal. First blood to the Vrouw.

"Baboons," continued the old lady, "are among a farmer's worst enemies. They steal and destroy and menace all the year round, but for all that there are many farmers who will not shoot or trap them. And these, you will notice, are always farmers of a ripe age and sense shaped by experience. They know, you may be sure. My stepsister's first husband, Shadrach van Guelder, shot at baboons once, and was so frightened afterwards that he was afraid to be alone in the dark."

There was a story toward, and no one moved.