A Vendetta of the Desert

William Charles Scully

"A Vendetta of the Desert"

Chapter One.

The Power of the Dog.

Old Tyardt van der Walt, head of the family of that name, came of good Netherlands stock. His grandfather had emigrated from Holland with his family in the middle of the Eighteenth Century and settled at the Cape. He bought a farm in the Stellenbosch district and there commenced life anew as a wine farmer. The family consisted of his wife, a son and several daughters—all of whom married early. At his death the farm descended to his son Cornelius from whom, in course of time, another Tyardt inherited it.

The last-mentioned Tyardt forsook the settled and fertile environs of Stellenbosch and trekked forward to seek his fortune in the unknown and perilous wilderness. A story is told as to the reason for this migration which, though it has no direct bearing on the story which is to be recorded in this volume, is interesting enough in itself to merit relation.

There was, it is said, a gruesome legend connected with the van der Walts. It dated from the times of William the Silent and was to the following effect:—The head of the van der Walt family of that period lived in the town of Maestricht. He was a man of solitary habits. In his youth his wife had deserted him for another. He had been passionately attached to her, and he never recovered from the blow, but lived the rest of his days in solitude.

Years afterwards, when he was quite an old man, a son of the man who had wronged him—a young and zealous Lutheran preacher, came to live in his vicinity. This preacher was in the habit of visiting in disguise families of his co-religionists in the Provinces where the Spaniards held complete dominion. He had a dog that had been trained to convey cypher messages from place to place. Van der Walt betrayed this preacher to the authorities, with the result that he was captured and sentenced to be burnt alive. The betrayer was among those who crowded round the stake to gloat over the agonies of the victim. The dog had followed its master and, seeing his evil case, set up a piteous howling. The Spaniards, judging the heretic to be a wizard, and the dog his familiar spirit, caught the unhappy animal and bound it among the faggots at its master’s feet. Just as the pile was lit the preacher lifted up his voice and cried aloud:—

“Gerrit van der Walt,—for thy black treachery to a servant of the Lord, thou shalt die in misery within a year and a day. Thy soul shall wander homeless for ever and shall howl like a dog as the harbinger of misfortune whenever it is about to fall upon one of thy blood.”

It has been declared on respectable authority that from and after the death of Gerrit, which took place under miserable circumstances within the period named by his victim, a dog which was never seen would howl around the dwelling of any van der Walt about to die, for the three nights previous to the passing of his soul. Thus a new terror was added to the death-bed of any member of the family.

The following account of the last occasion when this warning howl was heard is firmly believed by the few surviving descendants in the direct line. It is taken from an old manuscript which purports to date from the year in which the incidents related are alleged to have taken place.

Towards the end of the last century, Tyardt’s father, Cornelius van der Walt, lay ill in bed, but no one imagined that his illness was likely to be fatal, until one night after supper the dreaded howl was heard under his window. The sick man, filled with terror, arose to a sitting posture in his bed, and called Tyardt, who was his eldest son, before him.

“If that dog be not shot by you before the day after to-morrow,” he said, “I will make my will anew and dispossess you of everything that the law will allow me to leave to others.”

Next day Tyardt brooded long and deeply over the occurrence. He did not love his father, so the old man’s death would have caused him no regret, but he knew that the threat would be carried out.

There was an old and tattered family Bible on the loft, with a strong and heavy metal clasp. This clasp Tyardt broke into fragments about the size of ordinary slugs, and with them he loaded his gun, using portions of the leaves as wadding.

As soon as night fell he stole quietly out and posted himself among the branches of a small tree which grew just in front of the window of the room in which his father lay.

The night was pitch dark; a damp fog had rolled in from the sea and covered everything. Tyardt had not long to wait before a long, low howl, which curdled his blood with dread, arose from just beneath him. Terrified as he was, he thought of the property at stake, so he hardened his will to the purpose and carefully cocked his gun.

There could be no mistaking the exact locality from which the howling came; it was almost at his feet. He fired, and a horrible, half-human yell followed the report of the gun. Then came a sound of scuffling upon the ground. Soon a light was brought from the house, and then Tyardt descended from the tree.

Beneath lay the huddled, bleeding figure of an old man of hideous aspect, clad in a garb unknown at the Cape but which, it was afterwards thought, suggested some wood-cuts in an old book brought out by the last-deceased van der Walt from Holland. A sheet was thrown over the horror, and the trembling family sat up, waiting for, but dreading, the light of day. It was not until after the sun had arisen that they ventured to go out and visit the scene of the tragedy,—but no trace of the body could be seen; nor was there any sign of the blood which had so much horrified the beholders on the previous night.

There appeared to have been no doubt as to the main facts having occurred; slaves, servants, and, in fact, every member of the household except the sick man, had seen the body. The mystery was never solved; no body was ever found; no one from the neighbourhood was missed, nor, so far as could be ascertained, had any man resembling the description of the body ever been seen in the neighbourhood.

Cornelius van der Walt died during the following night, but without altering his will. Tyardt, however, took the matter so much to heart that he became a changed man. He came to hate the neighbourhood, and, leaving the farm in the hands of his mother and a younger brother, he set his face to the northward. He purchased two wagons, packed them with his goods, and, with his young wife and three small children, plunged into the unknown wilderness. After having passed some distance beyond the farthest outposts of civilisation, he at length halted high up near the head of a valley where the Tanqua River gorge cleaves the southern face of the Roggeveld mountain range. Here he built a homestead and took possession of the ground surrounding it for some miles. From the large numbers of elands which haunted the hills he named his new home “Elandsfontein.”

For some time he was left to enjoy the solitude for which his nature craved; but he lived long enough to feel himself inconveniently crowded when neighbours established themselves at distances of from fifteen to twenty miles from him on each side. However, he still drew comfort from the thought that beyond the mountain chain which frowned down upon his homestead on the northward, the vast, unoccupied desert lay—and appeared likely to lie for ever unappropriated. Moreover, it was certainly convenient to have the assistance of the aforesaid neighbours in hunting Bushmen, with whom the surrounding mountains were infested.

The occurrence of the night before his father’s death affected the character of Tyardt van der Walt permanently. For years he could never bear to be alone in the dark;—he suffered from the dread that the horrible creature he had shot would re-appear to him. This man, who did not know what fear of any material thing meant, was for long an abject slave to dread of the supernatural, and fell into a state of piteous terror if a dog howled within his hearing after dark.

It is said that his death was, after all, caused by the howling of a dog. During one of his periodical fits of nervous depression he felt unwell and, under his wife’s persuasion, went to his bed one day a few hours before the usual time. That night a dog howled on the hill across the valley; the sick man, as soon as he heard it, turned his face to the wall, saying that his summons had come. He refused to take any nourishment, and died in the course of a few days.

Strange,—that the crime of over two centuries back should have sent its baleful influence across the ocean wastes and the desert sands to drag a man who was blameless in it to his doom.

No stouter-hearted men than those of the van der Walt stock ever took their lives into their hands and faced, with unflinching eye, the dangers of the desert which they helped so mightily to reclaim. It is, however, an extraordinary fact that no member of this family in the direct line could ever hear the howling of a dog after nightfall without being reduced to abject terror.

Chapter Two.

How the Brothers Quarrelled.

Tyardt van der walt left a widow, two sons—Stephanus and Gideon—who were twins, and three daughters. As is usual among the Boers, the daughters married early in life; they have nothing to do with this story.

The beginning of the quarrel between the twin-brothers dated from years back—from the time when they went down with a wagon load of game peltries and other produce to Stellenbosch and there fell in love, instantaneously and unanimously, with Marta Venter, their fair-haired cousin, whom they met in the street, coming from Confirmation class. Stephanus, the elder twin, had a slightly looser and glibber tongue than Gideon; besides, he was probably not so much in earnest as the latter; so, other things being equal, his suit was practically bound to prosper. When, after advantageously selling their load in Cape Town, the brothers inspanned their wagon and started for home, Stephanus and fair-haired Marta were engaged to be married and the darkened heart of Gideon was filled with a love which, in spite of many shocks and changes, never wholly died out of it.

The wedding took place at the next Nachtmaal, Gideon managing, by means of some pretext, to avoid being present. Soon afterwards old Tyardt cut off a portion of the farm and handed it over to his married son, who thereupon built a homestead and began farming on his own account.

It was some time before Gideon could bring himself to meet his sister-in-law without embarrassment; however, an accidental event cleared the way for what appeared to be a complete reconciliation. One day, when the brothers happened to be camped with their wagons on the southern bank of the swollen Tanqua River, waiting for the flood to subside, Stephanus, against his brother’s advice, ventured into the current and was swept away. Gideon dashed in to the rescue and saved his brother’s life at the risk of his own. After this the old friendly relations were, to all appearances, firmly re-established.

These brothers strikingly resembled each other in both disposition and appearance. Both were large, handsome, keen-featured men, with flashing black eyes and choleric tempers. There was only one slight difference apparent: under strong excitement or deep feeling Gideon became morose and taciturn,—Stephanus excited and talkative.

Shortly after old Tyardt’s death the quarrel broke out afresh. The portion of the farm assigned to Stephanus was secured to him by will; the remaining extent was bequeathed to Gideon. The shares of the daughters in the estate were paid out in stock. Elandsfontein was a large farm and was naturally divided into two nearly equal parts by a deep kloof running almost right through it. In dry seasons this kloof contained no water, but on the side which had been assigned to Stephanus there was a small spring situated in a rocky depression which was filled with scrubby bush. From this a pure, cool stream flowed. Immediately after issuing from the scrub this stream lost itself in a swamp; near its source, however, it had never been known to fail in the most severe drought.

Although the spring was about a hundred paces from the dividing line, a clause had been inserted in the will of old Tyardt, in terms of which the water was to be held as common property between the owners of the farm; thus stock from Gideon’s land were to be allowed to drink at the spring whenever circumstances required.

Within a very few years after old Tyardt’s death the land was smitten by a heavy drought and the Elandsfontein spring soon proved unequal to the demands made upon it from both sides. Then strife of the most embittered description resulted between the brothers. The dispute was the subject of a law suit before the Supreme Court at Cape Town, but no satisfactory settlement was arrived at. As a matter of fact—owing to the clumsiness with which the will was drawn—no settlement was possible without concessions on both sides, and neither brother would concede so much as a hair’s breadth.

The feud between the brothers became a scandal to the neighbourhood; in fact they could hardly meet without insulting each other grossly. On several occasions they had come to blows. The climax was reached when, in response to a formal call, they appeared before the court of elders of the Dutch Reformed Church at Stellenbosch. After due enquiry had been made into the causes of the quarrel the brothers were called upon to tender hands to each other in token of reconciliation. This they both refused, in insulting terms, to do. Then the sacred and highly respectable precincts of the vestry became the scene of an unseemly brawl, and the brothers were formally excommunicated.

Some time before this, and shortly before matters became hopelessly embittered, Gideon had married Aletta du Val, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. There was little love on Gideon’s side, for he had never got over his first passion for his fair-haired cousin.

One fateful morning in early summer Gideon placed the saddle upon his horse, took down from the rack his long-barrelled “roer,” his bandolier of greased bullets and his powder-horn, and started for a ride along the western boundary of his farm.

His flock of flat-tailed sheep were kraaled at an outpost which was in charge of a Hottentot herd, and he wished to count them. This flock was in the habit of drinking every morning at the stream which had caused so much strife, for the weather had been dry for some months, and the rivulet which sometimes ran in the dividing kloof had long since disappeared.

The day was hot, but not oppressively so. Every now and then a breeze sweet with suggestion of the distant western ocean would breathe refreshingly over the arid land, acting like a tonic on all who inhaled it.

The tulip-like cups of the sweet-scented gethyllis blossomed out in rich masses from the hot sand on the wayside, the wild notes of the chanting falcon seemed to fill the sky as the birds circled round the highest points of the cliffs that flanked the valley; the hoarse call of the sentinel baboons echoed from the black bluffs.

On reaching the kraal Gideon found that the sheep had been turned out earlier than usual. Then he rode to the spring and found it evidenced by the spoor, which lay thick about the water’s edge, that the flock had already been watered. Wondering at the reason for this manifestation of activity on the part of the usually-lazy Hottentot herd, he lit his pipe and stood for a moment or two enjoying the cool shade which surrounded the spring, after the heat of the ride.

A slight sound caused him to turn his head and then he saw old Gert Dragoonder, the herd, step out from the cover behind him. Gert had been on the point of falling asleep when his master’s arrival had startled him.

After ascertaining from the Hottentot that the flock of sheep were grazing safely behind the big bluff—well away from the dividing line—Gideon handed over to him his horse and told him to take the animal up to the sheep kraal and fasten it to a bush. The sea-breeze was freshening and he meant, when the air became cooler, to take a turn on foot among the rocks high up on the mountain side, in the hope of getting a shot at a rhebok. Gideon lay back under a bush and finished his pipe; then he turned upon his side and fell asleep.

He awoke to the sound of a foot step and opened his eyes. Before him, on the other side of the spring, he could see Stephanus, who had just dismounted from his horse. The animal began to graze, its bridle hung and trailed upon the ground as it wandered on, cropping the herbage, until it crossed the dividing kloof. When the animal had passed well over the boundary Gideon arose stealthily, seized his gun and hurried towards the horse with the intention of seizing it. But Stephanus, who now noticed his brother for the first time, rushed forward and grappled with him, and the two fell struggling to the ground.

Stephanus, being slightly the stronger of the two, managed to get Gideon under; then he twisted the gun from his adversary’s grasp, sprang away to one side and looked back with a mocking smile.

Stephanus cocked the gun and again looked at Gideon who, having risen to his feet, was trembling and livid with rage. Stephanus knew that he had the law on his side; it had been laid down in the judgment of the court that although Gideon had the right to drive his stock to drink at the spring, he had no right to approach it for any other purpose. Up to this not a word had been spoken; Gideon was foaming with impotent fury; Stephanus, feeling that he was master of the situation, had managed to keep his anger within bounds.

“See the Jackal caught in his own trap,” he tauntingly shouted. “My Hottentot wants an old gun to shoot baboons with; this one will just do.”

“You are nothing but a bastard jackal, yourself,” yelled Gideon in reply. “You are very brave because you have my gun in your hand; put it down and I will take that dirty beard of yours to stuff my saddle with—if it would not give the horse a sore back.”

Stephanus, now in a transport of ungovernable fury, flung the gun away from him,—into the scrub,—and sprang towards his brother. But the gun, after crashing through the branches, went off, and Gideon fell to the ground with his shoulder torn open by the bullet.

Stephanus, his anger now completely gone, and feeling as if the events of the past few minutes had completely wiped out the black rancour which had darkened so many years, knelt at the side of his unconscious brother and cut away the coat and shirt from the neighbourhood of the wound. Then he tried to staunch the flowing blood with strips of cloth which he tore from his own garments.

The wound was a terrible one; the bone had been splintered, and portions of it were visible at the spot where the bullet had emerged. Stephanus made balls of moss which he tied up in linen rags and bound over the gaping mouths of the hurt. Then he fetched water in his hat from the spring and flung it into the pallid face of the sufferer, who thereupon slowly began to revive.

When Gideon opened his eyes they rested upon his brother’s face for a few seconds without recognition, and then an expression of the most bitter hatred dawned upon his countenance and gradually distorted his features until they became almost unrecognisable. The sound of approaching footsteps was heard, and immediately afterwards Gert Dragoonder appeared. The Hottentot had seen Stephanus approach the spring and then, after a short interval, heard the shot, so he returned to see what had happened. When Gideon saw Gert, he raised himself painfully on the elbow of his uninjured arm and gasped out in a voice horrible to hear:—

“Gert—come here—you are my witness—the man, there—my brother—he shot me.—There lies my gun in the bush—he threw it there to hide it—I shall die of this.—Go to the Field Cornet—He tried to murder me—I am already a dead man.—He must hang—”

Here he fell back once more in a faint Stephanus turned to the Hottentot who, thinking that his master was dead, was stealing away with the keenest terror depicted on his countenance.

“Here, Gert,—take my horse and ride to the homestead—tell your mistress to send men with poles and sacks, and to send for Uncle Diederick at once. Wait,—when you have told the mistress, ride off yourself on my horse as fast as you can for Uncle Diederick.”

Uncle Diederick was an old Boer who lived about half a day’s journey away,—to the westward, and who had a reputation which extended all over the country side as a bone-setter and herbalist.

The Hottentot galloped off, and Stephanus again turned to the wounded man, who by this time had recovered consciousness. When Gideon’s glance again fell upon his brother’s face, his features, already twisted by the agony which he endured, took on an expression of diabolical malice, fearful to behold. Stephanus spoke gently to him once or twice, asking if he were comfortable, but Gideon closed his eyes and maintained an obstinate silence.

After about an hour had elapsed a party of people from the homestead arrived, carrying poles, skins and sacks. Out of these a litter was soon formed. When Gideon was lifted from the ground he groaned in anguish and half-swooned. Again he rallied, and his eyes, blazing with hate, fell again upon his brother.

“Remember”—he gasped—“if I die, he shot me.—There lies my gun—he threw it there to hide it—”

Gideon insisted on the gun being sought for and removed from the scrub before he was borne away, groaning and cursing, upon the improvised litter. Stephanus attempted to accompany him, but was driven away with imprecations.

Stephanus returned to the spring and sat down on a stone, his head bowed over his clasped hands. He sat in this posture for some time; then he arose, stood erect for a few moments and fell upon his knees. The crisis of his life had come upon him; he stood upon that spiritual eminence from which men see good and evil and must distinguish one from another as clearly as one distinguishes night from day. The tangled sophistry which his mixed motives weave to blind the wrong-doer, who often would fain do right if he but knew how, was cut by the sword to which the Apostle of the Gentiles likened the Word of God. It was his Day of Judgment; he was the judge, the accuser and the accused.

When Stephanus van der Walt arose from his knees he felt that his sins had fallen from him as the slough falls from a snake when the sun of Spring wakens it from its winter sleep. His heart was burning with a deep and fearful joy,—his brain was braced with giants’ strength to a sublime resolve.

In the exaltation of his newly acquired faith Stephanus knew for a certainty that Gideon would not die of the accidentally inflicted wound, and he thanked God for the agony that would purge his brother’s soul of its share in the mutual sin.

Then, with head erect and springing steps he wended his way homewards.

Chapter Three.

Blind Elsie.

Stephanus had two children, both daughters. Sons had been born to him but they died in infancy. His elder daughter, Sara, was seventeen years of age at the time of the encounter at the spring; Elsie, the younger, was eight. She had been blind from her birth.

Sara was comely to look upon. Tall and dark, with strongly marked features, she resembled her father in appearance to a remarkable degree. Little Elsie took after her mother; she was of fair complexion, with long locks of dead-gold hair which took a wonderful depth of colour in certain half-lights. Her eyes were very strange and in no way suggested blindness. They were of a deep steel-blue colour, but in the lights which made her hair wonderful an amber tone would shimmer up through the blue and give forth startling gleams and flashes. This peculiarity was especially noticeable when the child was under the influence of strong excitement.

Elsie was a silent child and possessed a calm and happy nature. Her faculty for finding her way about in the utter darkness in which Fate had hopelessly placed her was almost miraculous. Strangers, seeing her eyes and noticing the sure and fearless way in which she went abroad, would often doubt the fact of her blindness, but, as a matter of fact, she was incapable of perceiving even the faintest glimmer of light.

The soul of this blind child with the sweet inscrutable face, expressed itself in a passionate love for her father, and from the day upon which it came home to the strong, dour, hate-preoccupied man that this being who seemed the very incarnation of sunlight was doomed to walk in darkness all her days, he had wrapped her in a protecting love which was almost the only influence that kept him human, and which was the salvation of his better nature.

Her touch—the mere flicker of her fragile, pink fingers upon his rugged forehead or his brown hand—would cool, for the time being, his hottest resentment; the renewed hatred born of an encounter with his brother would sink abashed before the unconscious glance of her deep, sightless eyes. When she crept upon his knee and laid her yellow head against his breast it was as though the Peace of God were knocking at the door of his heart.

Elsie possessed intelligence far in advance of her age and circumstances. It seemed as though she never forgot anything that befel her or that she had heard. With a strange, uncanny intuition she would piece together with extraordinary correctness such fragments of disjointed information as she acquired, and thus gain an understanding of matters almost as soon as she became aware of their existence. The blind child’s position in the household was a peculiar one. Over her father, neither her mother nor her sister had any influence. Of late years an almost hopeless estrangement had grownup between Stephanus and his wife. Sara loved her mother, but for her father she felt little else than fear. He was passionate and violent with all except Elsie; with her he was invariably gentle and reasonable.

Thus it came to pass that Elsie became, as it were, the arbiter of the domestic destinies; neither her mother nor her sister ever attempting to direct her. For several years she had been a law unto herself as well as to the household. Few children could have stood this and remained unspoilt; in Elsie’s case strength seemed to come with the strain.

When Stephanus returned home after the encounter with Gideon he found the blind child waiting for him under a large mulberry tree. This was her accustomed trysting-place; here Elsie would sit for hours when her father was away, waiting, with the pathetic patience of the blind, for his return.

She advanced to meet him, guided by the sound of his footsteps, and took his hand.

“Father,—why are you so late—and where is your horse?”

“Late,” he repeated, musingly—“yes, it is late, but not too late.”

The child’s intuitive sense prevented her from questioning further. The two walked silently towards the house. Elsie was puzzled; for the first time she was conscious of something in her father which she not only could not understand—but which filled her with wonder and dread.

At supper Stephanus, contrary to his wont, ate but little. None of the others spoke to him. It was the custom of the household for all to refrain from speech in Stephanus’ presence whenever the feud reached one of its crises. Supper over Stephanus arose and left the room. Elsie followed him; she took his hand and led him to the mulberry tree, at the foot of which a rough bench had been made out of the débris of a superannuated wagon. Stephanus sat down and Elsie seated herself upon his knee. Then she passed her hands softly over his face, as though reading his features with her finger tips.

“Father—you are not angry—but what has happened? I cannot read your face.”

“Angry—no, my child; I shall never more be angry.”

“Strange—you seemed to have changed to-day; your voice has got so soft and your hand throbs. Your face”—here she again passed her hands softly over his features—“feels happy—although you are not smiling.”

“My child,—one does not smile when one is happiest. Yes I am happy, for God has forgiven me my sins and whitened my heart.”

“Do you no longer hate Uncle Gideon?”

“No, my child—all that is past.” Elsie sat silently nestled against her father’s side until long after the others had gone to rest. The soft touch of the night wind made the leaves of the mulberry tree whisper as with a thousand tongues. To Stephanus they seemed as the tongues of angels welcoming him to his place among the saved. To blind Elsie they sang that the feud which had made her father’s life full of trouble was at an end; that he and she were happy together under the stars which she had never seen. Happiness seemed to descend upon her like a dove. Its poignancy fatigued her so that she sank to sleep.

Chapter Four.

Uncle Diederick.

Uncle Diederick lived in a structure known in South Africa as a “hartebeeste house.” Such a structure suggests a house of cards in its most rudimentary form—when one card is laid against another and thus an edifice like roof without walls is formed.

The house looked indeed like a roof with a very high pitch, from under which the walls had sunk away until it rested on the ground. Thickly thatched, and closed by a vertical wall at the end opposite the door, it was very warm in cold weather and, in spite of the want of ventilation, fairly cool in the heat of summer.

The end farthest from the door was fitted up with shelving, and the shelves were loaded with bundles of dried plants and jars, filled with tinctures, infusions and decoctions. In front of the shelves stood a table and a bench,—the former bearing an ordinary pair of grocers’ scales, and an immense volume which the sage always referred to before prescribing. This volume was a translation into Dutch of a collection of herbalistic lore published in Italy in the Sixteenth Century; it was looked upon by Uncle Diederick’s numerous customers with almost as much respect as the Bible.

Uncle Diederick, judging from the extent of his practice, ought to have made a fortune,—and he probably would have done so had he been paid for his services in cash instead of in kind. He was really a useful personage and saved many a life. His absorbing taste for medicine and surgery—joined to his undoubted natural ability, would have made him a successful if not an eminent practitioner had he had the necessary training.

When a boy he had obtained possession of an old book upon anatomy, and from this he gained a fair general knowledge of the human frame. Later he acquired a manual of simple surgery and another of household medicine (as practiced in the Eighteenth Century), and upon these was founded his professional eminence. These books were kept strictly in the background, their size and binding not being impressive, but the old Italian herbal was invariably referred to in the presence of the patient before diagnosis was completed.

Even at this day every Boer woman in the outlying districts who has reached the age of forty, considers herself competent to treat all of the ills that flesh is heir to. Her pharmacopoeia is a limited one, consisting, as it does, of some seven or eight drugs, all more or less violent in their effects upon the human organism. In her choice of these in prescribing she is guided solely by her intuitions. A century ago the number and quantity of drugs at her disposal was more limited, and therefore the mortality from this cause was less than at the present day.

But Uncle Diederick was a quack of a different class. He knew well enough that in a large number of cases the best chance of recovery lay in leaving Nature quite to herself. Like Paracelsus, however, he had to live down to the prejudices of his age. Many a bulky bottle of nasty but innocuous mixture did he prescribe to amplitudinous tanta or corpulent oom, whose only complaint was the natural result of too much exercise of the jaw-bones and too little of the arms and legs.

The old women looked upon Uncle Diederick with jealousy, but they could not help admitting that in surgery, at all events, he was far their superior. In the case of a broken limb or a wound from a Bushman’s poisoned arrow he was the first person thought of,—if the accident occurred within a radius of a hundred miles of his dwelling. Many a miserable sufferer has been brought to the “hartebeeste house” from distances that entailed a week’s travelling over wretched roads in a jolting wagon.

In medicine Uncle Diederick did not by any means stick to the orthodox pharmacopoeia; he supplemented the few crude drugs in general use by a number of decoctions and infusions of different herbs, the properties of which he had learnt from Hottentots and captive Bushmen,—with whom he often managed to make friends.

As the effect of these remedies was quite equal in violence to that of those in common use, and as there was an added element of mystery about them, Uncle Diederick’s treatment was generally popular. The Boer does not believe in any medicine which is not administered in large doses and which does not act as a kind of physiological earthquake upon the invalid.

Uncle Diederick was a widower with an only daughter. He had lost his wife soon after marriage, and, contrary to the general custom, had not remarried. Jacomina, his daughter, was a comely damsel of seventeen, whose keen and practical interest in her father’s pursuits boded a terrible future for her prospective husband and family. It was she who presided, like another Medea, over the brewing of the decoctions; it was she who neatly bound up and carefully stored away the different kinds of dried herbs from which these decoctions were made. In fact she knew almost as much as her father did about the healing art. Where she shone brightest, however, was in collecting payment for her father’s services.

Many suitors had laid their hearts at Jacomina’s substantial feet, while she, on her part, cherished a passion for the handsome, melancholy Adrian van der Walt, Gideon’s son. Adrian likewise admired her, but his diffidence kept him from definitely telling her so, or doing more than gaze at her in deep but hopeless admiration whenever he thought himself unobserved in her company. For many months Jacomina had put forth all her arts to bring Adrian to the proposing point, but his unconquerable shyness always stood in the way of the desired result. At a distance Adrian was brave enough, but in the presence of his beloved his courage fled. On several occasions he had pretended to be ill in order to have an excuse for visiting the “hartebeeste house,” when the nasty decoctions he received from the hands of Jacomina tasted as sweet as nectar.

One day Uncle Diederick was sitting just inside the door of his dwelling engaged in the commonplace occupation of mending his saddle. From the road behind the kopje at the foot of which he dwelt came the rattle and rumble of an approaching wagon. He at once hid the saddle in a corner under a sheep skin, went over to his table, opened the herbal volume and began poring over its pages. It was thus that he was usually found by his patients. Jacomina was on the watch. Shortly after the wagon came in sight she put her head in through the doorway.

“Pa,—it is Aunt Emerencia’s wagon; she is sure to be coming for some more medicine for her benaudheid.”

Aunt Emerencia descended from the wagon through the back opening of the tent by means of a short and strongly built ladder and, leaning heavily on a stick, approached the “hartebeeste” house. She was a stout woman with a very pale face, the flesh of which seemed loose and flabby. Jacomina felt the strongest animosity towards the visitor, who was a widow and was suspected of harbouring matrimonial designs upon Uncle Diederick.

After a friendly but breathless greeting Aunt Emerencia sat down on a stool and, being fatigued and warm from the exertion of walking up the slope from the wagon, pulled off her cappie and began fanning herself with it. After a few minutes Uncle Diederick came forward briskly. He sat down, asked Jacomina to go and brew some coffee, and then, in his most sprightly manner, began talking to and complimenting his visitor.

“No, no,—Uncle,” she replied, deprecatingly, to some flattering remarks on his part,—“Although I may be looking well, I am very, very sick. Being on my way to Brother Sarel’s I thought I would outspan here and get some medicine.”

“That’s right—I am glad to see you, even though you are not well.—But a cup of coffee will do you good.”

“Yes,—I will be glad to drink a cup, Uncle. I have brought you a couple of pumpkins which you will be glad to have; they are from some new seed which Jan Niekerk got from Stellenbosch last year.”

Jacomina, afraid to leave her father for long alone with the suspected siren, kept darting in and out between the stages of the coffee-making.

“Jacomina, my child,” she said in a wheezy aside, “call to the schepsel and tell him to bring in two of the biggest pumpkins.” Then she turned to Uncle Diederick:

“Uncle, I am sick, very sick. After I eat my heart goes just like an old churn—and I dream—Alle Wereld, how I dream. Last night I dreamt that Nimrod built the Tower of Babel on my chest.”

Just then a small Hottentot came staggering in with two immense pumpkins, which he laid on the floor; then he went and stood just outside the door. Uncle Diederick cast a careless eye upon them, smiled almost imperceptibly, and then began very deliberately, to light his pipe.

“Are these not beautiful pumpkins?” asked Aunt Emerencia.

“They are fairly large; but I am surprised at Nephew Jan taking the trouble to bring that kind of seed all the way from the Cape. There is plenty of the same kind here.”

“Truly?” she said in a tone of injured surprise. Then she called to the Hottentot, who, mindful of previous experiences, had remained close at hand.

“Here, schepsel,—bring in a bottle of that honey from the front chest. Yes, Uncle,—you would not believe how I have suffered since I finished that last medicine I had from you. This bottle of honey is from the bees’ nest Piet took out from the Dassie’s Krantz last week.”

The honey was placed alongside the pumpkins. Uncle Diederick did not even take the trouble to glance at it. He went on silently puffing at his pipe.

“Don’t you like honey, Uncle?”

“Yes,—but it is very plentiful this year, and I am tired of it.”

Aunt Emerencia groaned audibly.

“Schepsel,—fetch that new pair of veldschoens from the side-bag.”

“Yes,” she continued, addressing Uncle Diederick—“and you would not believe what a pain I get here, just below my breast. These drops I got from Aunt Susannah did me no good whatever.”

In the meantime Jacomina was busy trying on the veldschoens, which turned out to be by no means badly made. Uncle Diederick continued smoking, calmly and silently.

“Do they fit, my child?” he asked without turning his head.

“Yes, Pa,—they fit well.”

At once Uncle Diederick laid down his pipe and began attending to his patient. He felt her pulse; he thumped, prodded and sounded her until she groaned and grunted. She was a woman who, for nearly thirty years, had eaten and drunk largely, and who never took the least exertion that she could avoid. Her malady, from which she chronically suffered, was simply indigestion in an acute form.

“Here, Aunt,—take half a cupful of this whenever you feel bad.”

He took down from the shelf a large black flask, which had originally contained gin, and handed it to the invalid, who grasped it greedily.

“Uncle,—these veldschoens are a beautiful pair.—This bottle holds so few doses and I get sick very often.”

Uncle Diederick had returned to his seat and his pipe. He took not the slightest notice of what Aunt Emerencia said. She, knowing by experience that there was no chance of screwing another bottle out of the physician, arose with the apparent intention of taking her departure. But first she tried another move.

“Alle Wereld,” she said in anguished tones, putting her hand to her side at the same time—“here is the pain again; can you not give me a dose now, Uncle?”

“Yes, Aunt,—certainly. Jacomina, bring me a corkscrew and a cup.”

These implements were soon brought and placed upon the table. Uncle Diederick took the corkscrew and approached the sufferer.

“Come, Aunt—give me the bottle and I will open it for you.”

“But, Uncle,—I do not like to open the bottle whilst on the road. It is so liable to spill.”

Uncle Diederick returned to his chair, the inscrutability of his visage somewhat modified by a palpable wink. Aunt Emerencia, after a few supplementary groans, stated that she felt a little better and would defer taking a dose until another bad attack came on. Then she took her ponderous course back to her wagon.

The sun was nearly down when the clattering hoofs of a galloping horse was heard on the road. A few minutes afterwards Gert Dragoonder dismounted, and, without waiting to remove the saddle from his smoking horse, hastened to the door of the “hartebeeste house.”

“Well, schepsel,” said Uncle Diederick, “it is easy to see that you have been riding your master’s horse. For how far has the Devil been chasing you?”

“Baas must hasten,” replied the Hottentot, breathlessly, “or it will be too late. My master has got a bullet in the shoulder and he has bled plenty.”

“A bullet in the shoulder—that’s bad. What an accident! Let’s see,—to which of the loving brothers do you belong?”

“Baas Gideon is my baas. But it was not an accident; baas Stephanus shot my baas with his own gun.”

Uncle Diederick gave a long, low whistle. “Well, I always said it would come to murder between those two. Here, Danster,—saddle up my horse. Is the bone broken?”

“The bone is coming out in big lumps,” said Gert, with the exaggerative rhetoric of his race, “he has lost about a bucketful of blood and there is a hole in his shoulder you could put your fist into. Baas must make haste and bring his very best medicine.”

“H’m.—If all that is true, it is the Field Cornet that they should have instead of me. However, I suppose I must go.”

By this time the horse had been driven into the little kraal at the side of the homestead. Uncle Diederick went to the shelf and took down a few bottles, bundles of dried herbs and bandages. Then he selected from a camphor-wood chest a few home-made splints and rough surgical appliances. All these he packed carefully into his saddle-bags. After bidding a very matter-of-fact farewell to Jacomina, and telling the Hottentot to rest his horse for the night and return home quietly next day, he started on his long, lonely ride.

Chapter Five.

The Triumph of Gideon.

Gideon, suffering great agony, had been carried home and laid upon his bed. He adhered firmly to the false accusation which he had brought against his brother, and the whole world, or that portion of it which knew the van der Walts, believed in Stephanus’ guilt.

The Field Cornet, who lived only some twenty miles away, was sent for, and arrived during the night. He took down the wounded man’s statement in writing and then went over and arrested Stephanus. When the written statement was read over in Stephanus’ presence to the wounded man, he adhered to it still and, having by that time somewhat rallied from the shock, gave a supplementary account of what had transpired in such clear, circumstantial and deadly detail, that all present were convinced of its truth. Stephanus maintained absolute silence. Uncle Diederick did his duty as well, and probably as successfully, as if he had been a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. After removing every splinter of bone and carefully cleansing the gaping wound, he laid a cooling, antiseptic compost of herbs all over the injured parts. As Gideon’s constitution was perfectly clean and healthy, he made a rapid recovery. The shoulder joint was, however, so seriously injured, that the arm was henceforth of little use.

Marta and Sara were thrown into terrible distress by the arrest of Stephanus. Elsie, taking her impressions of the situation from her father’s mental state, retained her serenity, but was puzzled at the turn things had taken.

Stephanus remained quite unmoved when the Field Cornet announced that he would have to make him a prisoner and take him to Cape Town, there to await his trial.

A day’s delay, to enable him to put his affairs in order, was all that he asked for. This was granted, so he counted his sheep and cattle, assembled his servants,—whom he made promise to serve their mistress faithfully during his absence,—and wrote to the husband of his eldest sister to ask that his nephew, a lad of seventeen, whose services had recently been offered to him, might be sent to assist in managing the farm. The letter was sent off by a special messenger, as his brother-in-law lived only a little more than a day’s journey away.

The Field Cornet having acquainted Marta with the main facts of the case, she shared in the general belief in her husband’s guilt.

On the evening before Stephanus’ departure for prison, the family sat down to their last meal together, and at its conclusion Stephanus did a thing which he had left undone for years past: he called upon those assembled to kneel down and pray. Then he offered up a petition that God might forgive him his many misdeeds and grant him and all present patience to bear whatever punishment might be justly meted out to him.

Elsie then took his hand and the two went out to the seat under the mulberry tree, where they sat until half the night was spent. Few words passed between them, and the parting which was to take place on the morrow was hardly referred to.

The unhappy women broke down completely at the leave-taking in the grey of the early morning. Stephanus maintained his composure until it came to bidding farewell to Elsie. The child clung to him convulsively, and her clasp had to be detached by force. Then the father’s anguish was terrible to behold.

The trial took place at the criminal sessions of the Supreme Court in Cape Town, some four months afterwards. The prisoner’s family went down in their wagon to be present at it.

Gideon gave his false evidence with composure, and Gert Dragoonder, the Hottentot, corroborated him strongly. Stephanus pleaded “not guilty,” but otherwise made no defence. When the court found him guilty not a muscle of his face betrayed the least emotion. After the judge had sentenced him to be imprisoned for ten years with hard labour, he quietly remarked that he had been justly punished. When he was removed from court it was noticed by those present who knew him that his step had a spring and his eyes a brightness which had never been noticed before.

Gideon enjoyed one wild moment of exultation when his brother was led away to a living grave. Then he turned to leave the court-room, from which the people were emerging in a struggling crowd,—the trial just concluded having closed the proceedings for the day. In the vestibule he stood aside to let the congested crowd flow past. A woman whose bent head was concealed in a long “cappie,” and who led a young girl by the hand, was forced against him. The child, frightened by the crowd, seized his hand and held it fast. When the crush slackened he turned, looked down, and found himself gazing into the glowing, sightless eyes of little Elsie, the blind girl he had damned his soul to orphan. Then he glanced up and met the eyes of the woman whom he loved still, although he had not seen her face for years. There was something different to the reproach he expected in her look; he seemed to read in it an appeal for forgiveness of the wrong which she imagined her husband had done him, and to see the flicker of a love answering his own, which filled him with dismay. The mute appeal in her eyes was worse than any reproach could have been, and the fact that his perjury had made her worse than widowed seemed to crush him to the earth.

In another moment Marta and Elsie had followed the last of the crowd and Gideon found himself alone. Then the nobility of the mien of the man whom, innocent, he had sent forth to a doom more sorrowful than death came back to his mind with such dread distinctness that it excluded everything else.

Suddenly it seemed all unreal;—could it be a dream? No—there was the court-room—he could see it through the open doorway before which he was standing. He stepped forward on tip-toe and looked in. Involuntarily his eye sought the prisoners’ dock—the spot where his twin-brother had stood with rapt, unmoved face and heard the pronouncement of his doom. His strained brain easily conjured up the figure in all its menacing nobility, and before the vision he felt abased to the dust.

Had there been another human creature present, Gideon would have cried aloud a confession of his sin, but he stood alone with the hideousness of his own transgression.

Then a reaction set in and he staggered from the room grasping wildly at the shred of comfort which lay in the realisation of the fact that the man whom he had hated through so many bitter years had now been taken out of his life. A strange duality was set up in his consciousness:—it seemed as though the man he had seen undergoing sentence, although still his brother, was no longer the Stephanus who had used him so despitefully. Thus his mind was buffeted hither and thither by a gusty storm of conflicting emotions.

So the long-looked-forward-to triumph of Gideon van der Walt sank foully smouldering upon its own ashes, and he entered into that hell out of which there is seldom redemption.

Chapter Six.

Gideon and Marta.

Night had almost fallen when Gideon reached his homestead on the seventh day after the trial. He had been, throughout the whole journey, a prey to the keenest misery. In the short and broken sleep which visited his distracted brain the image of Stephanus as he had last seen him, haunted his dreams. The dauntless mien and the noble courage with which his brother had met his doom; the puzzled, pathetic expression upon the face of the blind child; the belated revelation of love combined with a terrifying appeal for forgiveness which he had read in the face of the woman for whom his passion had never died, swept over the field of his consciousness like clouds across a storm-swept sky. He felt no remorse for what he had done; on the contrary, his inability to enjoy the revenge he had long panted for, was the cause of redoubled resentment against his enemy.

After greeting his family with forced cheerfulness, Gideon drank a cup of coffee and at once retired to bed, saying that he felt fatigued after his long journey. His wife, Aletta, was not deceived by his demeanour, but there was that in his face which caused her to forbear asking any questions.

Next morning Gideon tried to avoid everybody, and it was not until midday that Aletta contrived to satisfy her painful suspense in regard to the result of the trial. He was then standing at the back of the wagon-house with bent head and an air of painful preoccupation. He did not hear her approaching footsteps. When she laid a hesitating hand upon his arm he started as though he had been struck, and looked at her with troubled eyes.

“Gideon,” she said in a low and hurried tone—“tell me about Stephanus.”

“The wolf is in a trap,” he said with a savage laugh—“for ten long years he will have to bite the door before it opens.”

“Ten years”—repeated Aletta in an awed whisper—“poor Stephanus; I did not think it would have gone so hard with him.”

“Aletta,” he broke out wrathfully, “are you taking the part of this wolf—this jackal in a man’s skin, against me?”

“No—no—Gideon,—I do not take his part;—but ten years is such a long time.—And I was thinking of Marta and the children; they will never see him again.”

“And a good thing too. The murdering wild beast should have been hanged.”

In reality the wives of the brothers had, all through the weary course of the feud, been inclined to take the parts of their respective brothers-in-law against their husbands. Each, brought into daily contact with the black rancour displayed by her husband, had thought that the feeling could not possibly be so bad on the other side.

Weary as had been the days to Aletta and Adrian, those which followed were wearier still. A black cloud seemed to brood over the household. No one ever smiled. Each avoided the eyes of the others as though fearful of what the eyes might read or reveal. At each cheerless meal the silent, invisible presence of Stephanus seemed to take its seat; in the brightest sunlight its shadow seemed to darken the house.

More than once Aletta had been on the point of suggesting that advances might be made to Marta in her loneliness, but Gideon had lately got into the habit of bursting into such fury on the slightest provocation, that Aletta was afraid of irritating him and held her peace.

Gideon, also, had more than once thought of going to visit his sister-in-law, but the dread of again meeting what he had read in her eyes on the day of the trial held him back. It was currently known that Marta was in bad health and that Uncle Diederick had been called in to prescribe for her more than once.

Thus the weary days dragged on through three weary years, but the stricken household kept no count of time. In material things Gideon prospered. Each season the years came with unusual regularity, and his flocks and herds increased until he became rich among his fellows.

One day two figures were seen approaching from the direction of Stephanus’ homestead. They turned out to be those of the blind girl, Elsie, and a very diminutive Bushman lad named Kanu, who had grown up on the farm. Kanu had been captured as a child, years before, in the course of an exterminating raid upon some Bushman depredators at their stronghold in an almost inaccessible part of the Roggeveld Mountains.

Kanu was about sixteen years of age. From her early childhood he had devoted himself to the service of the blind girl; at last his devotion had grown to positive worship. In Kanu’s company Elsie would wander far and wide, over mountain and plain, in perfect safety.

The Bushman had picked up a smattering of Dutch, but still spoke his own tongue fluently, for there were a number of semi-domesticated Bushman servants on the farm—captives from different raids. Such raids were, no doubt, sometimes rendered necessary by the plundering propensities of the pygmy sons of Ishmael, but there was another side of the question:—where Bushmen were plentiful the Boers did not, as a rule, find it necessary to purchase slaves.

The blind child was led by her guide to the front door of the house, which stood open. The day was hot and the family were sitting at table, trying to hurry through their dismal midday meal. Elsie crossed the threshold without knocking and stood at her Uncle’s side. Her hair hung below her waist in a rich, yellow mass, and her eyes gleamed as they always did under the influence of excitement, and in appropriate light. The three sitting at the table sat and gazed at her in silent and startled surprise.

“Uncle Gideon,” she said in a clear, piercing voice.

“Well,” said Gideon in a voice of forced roughness, “what do you want?”

“My mother bids me tell you that she is dying, and that you must come to her at once.”

Gideon rose to his feet, his face twitching. Elsie slowly turned, held out her hand for the guiding twig which Kanu extended to her, and stepped swiftly forth.

Within the space of a few minutes Gideon sprang on a horse and galloped off in the direction of the homestead where the woman he loved lay dying. Marta sent one of the servants to fetch a span of oxen, and soon followed her husband, in a wagon.

When Gideon arrived at Marta’s homestead he could at once see that directions had been given as to the details of his reception. As he ascended the steep flight of steps which led to the voorkuis the door swayed open and revealed the weeping figure of Sara, his niece. Walking on tip-toe she beckoned to him to follow her, and led the way to an inner room, the door of which stood ajar. Gideon entered, every nerve in his body tingling with apprehension. Sara softly closed the door behind him, and then he heard her retreating footsteps upon the clay floor of the passage.

The dying woman lay propped up in bed, her cheeks flushed and her lips parted in a smile of loving welcome. She looked, for the moment, not more than twenty years of age. Her face carried Gideon back to the spring morning of long ago, when he met her for the first time, walking under the budding oaks of the Stellenbosch street. With a last, pathetic effort of coquetry, the poor remnant of her once-beautiful hair was spread over her shoulder. Her hand appeared for an instant from under the bed-clothes; it looked like the hand of a skeleton in a livid glove.

Gideon stood for a space looking into the smiling eyes of the woman whom he loved and sunning himself in their dying glow. The soiled years seemed to shrivel away like a burnt-up scroll, the past lived again in a borrowed glamour of lost joy that had never existed and his withered heart expanded like a rose in summer.

With a long-drawn sigh he sank to his knees at the side of the bed and pressed his lips hurriedly upon the tress of silky hair; then he drew hurriedly back, startled at his own temerity. Marta turned her head slightly until she could see his face. Her eyes became softer with the dew of happiness and a smile hovered upon her lips. Then she spoke:

“Listen—I am dying;—will you take my children and care for them?”

Gideon could not speak; he nodded his head and she proceeded:

“I only knew you loved me when it was too late... I waited for you to speak—then they said that you loved someone else—”

Gideon’s brain was busy recalling the long-past. Every obscure detail of the days of his brother’s courtship and his own bitter disappointment came back to him with strange distinctness. How had the misunderstanding arisen; who was to blame?—“Stephanus always hated you and I loved you all the time—Aletta need not know—I only tell you now that I am dying—”

Gideon tenderly took the wasted hand and laid it against his rugged cheek.

“My children—I love them—Let them not suffer for their father’s sin—”

“Wait, Marta,” said Gideon in a strained and trembling voice, “I must tell you—”

“There is nothing to tell—I know it all.—He got to know I loved you and he tried to kill you.—Forgive him, if you can, for my sake—”

“Wait, Marta,—I must tell you the truth—you are wrong—I must tell you the truth, even if it kills us both.”

The dying woman’s lips became compressed, and the colour began to fade from her cheeks. Gideon tried to move so that her eyes, full of startled interrogatory and the pain of apprehension, might not rest upon his face whilst he made his confession, but they followed and held his spell-bound. Then in a hoarse, broken murmur he said:

“Stephanus shot me by accident—I accused him falsely—because I hated him all my life.”

When he ceased speaking he drooped his head and hid his face among the bed-clothes next to Marta’s shoulder. A slight shudder went through the woman’s frame and then she ceased to breathe. Gideon kept his head bowed for a long time. When, by a torturing effort he lifted it, he saw a dead, ashen face lying on the pillow at his side,—the face of an old woman who seemed to have died in sharp agony.

When Gideon left the chamber of death he moved like a man in a dream. Mounting his horse mechanically he allowed the animal to stray homewards at a walk. He met the wagon in which Aletta was hurrying to the death-bed as fast as the team of oxen could bring her, but he passed it without recognition.

The pathway led past the spring, the scene of the three-years’ past tragedy. The day was hot and the horse turned, aside to drink as was its wont. It was not until the animal paused and bent its head to the water that the rider recognised the locality. He was quite calm and the environment in which he found himself seemed appropriate to his mood. He dismounted when the horse had finished drinking, led it away to a spot where it could graze, a few paces distant, and then returned to the water-side.

He went over the whole scene anew. There was the spot where he had sat sleeping; he stepped over and sat there again, in the same attitude. There Stephanus had approached through the bushes; yonder was the place where the struggle for possession of the gun had taken place and where he had ignominiously sunk to the ground beneath his brother’s superior strength. A little to the right was the green tussock upon which Stephanus, after wrenching the gun from his grasp, had stood and looked insulting defiance at him. He recalled the face which bore such a detestable resemblance to his own, and remembered its look of triumphant hate. He recalled the taunting words that Stephanus had uttered and his own insulting reply. Again he felt the sickening torture of the crashing bullet tearing through flesh and bone. Involuntarily he lifted quickly the half-crippled limb; a torturing twinge shot through it and almost made him scream.

His thoughts swung back—searching among the mists of old memory for a clue to the one that had wrecked his life by telling falsehoods about him to the woman he loved, and who, he now knew for the first time, had loved him. Who could it be? None but the brother whose life he had been fool enough to save and who had always been his evil genius.

The scene he had just lived through was too recent for him to take in its full significance. He knew that he had caused Marta’s death by his confession—which he now bitterly regretted having made, and he wondered if they should meet in the next world whether she would hate him for what he had done. He had left the house of death with the full intention of confessing his transgression and expiating it in the fullest manner. It was not that he had made any resolution to this effect, but rather that a full confession, with its consequences, seemed to be the only possible outcome of what had happened.

Now, however, he determined to maintain silence. It was not that he dreaded the consequences of a confession to himself—his life was too full of misery for him to dread that—but rather that his somewhat waning hate of his brother had been reinforced by Marta’s words, and he could not bring himself to abate a jot of that brother’s bondage. Had it been possible to confess his sin without benefiting Stephanus by so doing, he felt that he would have told his tale to the first human creature he met, were it only a Bushman.

He had saved his brother’s life; it was not much, after all, to demand ten years of that life for the exigencies of his revenge. Stephanus, of course, deserved his punishment richly. What business had he to interfere with the gun at all? Every despiteful act,—every provocative detail, every maddening annoyance to which Stephanus had subjected him during the long, hate-blackened years of the feud, came back and grinned at him.

He found himself wondering whether anybody had been listening at the door when he made his confession, and the sudden dread of this contingency took precedence of every other consideration for the time. Well,—if he had been overheard he would abide by the result and make a full confession; if not his lips should remain sealed.

After the funeral, which Gideon attended with outward calmness, Aletta remained at the homestead for a few days arranging for the removal of the two girls. Uncle Diederick, who had been called in professionally, but had arrived on the scene after Marta’s death, said a simple prayer over the grave which was dug on the hill-side just behind the homestead. Sara was convulsed with grief, but Elsie hardly shed a tear. She and her mother had always been strangers; now the blind child’s utter ignorance of convention kept her from feigning a grief she did not feel. Gideon’s mind was now so far relieved, that he had no longer the fear of anyone having overheard his confession.

Uncle Diederick arranged to come and live at Stephanus’ farm and manage it for the benefit of the two children, until Stephanus’ release from prison. Accordingly, the “hartebeeste house” was abandoned—Jacomina having, in the meantime, carefully packed up all the drugs, herbs and surgical appliances in boxes and skin bags, and placed them in the wagon.

Thus, within a week of Marta’s death Uncle Diederick and his daughter were settled in their new dwelling. For months afterwards weary invalids from a distance continued to arrive at the “hartebeeste house” and to learn to their dismay that the physician had departed and left no address.

Chapter Seven.

How Gideon Wandered, and how Elsie Overheard his Prayer.

At the period at which the action of this story is laid the only settled parts of the Cape Colony lay well to the south of the rugged mountain chain, the eastern portion of which is called the “Roggeveld” or “Rye land.” It was in a valley which cleft the range that the farm of the van der Walts was situated.

The Boer has ever been intolerant of near neighbours; he likes to feel that the utmost expanse his glance can sweep over is his, to use or neglect as suits him. He has a great objection to any habitation being within sight of his homestead.

For centuries the government tried to prevent the expansion of the Colony to a distance from the central authority at Cape Town, but the efforts were as useless as though one were to try to control quicksilver on a slanting board with the hand. The enactment of the most stringent laws was of no avail to prevent the more adventurous spirits from seeking their fortune in the vast, mysterious hinterland. Such men looked upon the heathen as their inheritance and on the wilderness as their portion.

Steadfast in his narrow faith, tenacious as steel to his limited purpose, valiant as any crusader that charged the Saracens on the plains of Palestine, the primitive Boer was of the texture of the strongest of the sons of the earth.

Such a typical Boer was Tyardt van der Waldt, the father of Stephanus and Gideon. He had come to this lonely valley down which the yet-unpolluted Tanqua stream flowed through its waving sedges,—far beyond the camp of the boldest pioneer. His wagon was his castle of strength; he trusted in the Lord of Hosts, and he kept his powder religiously dry. He found hill and valley stocked with the great beasts of the desert, and on the blood of these he slaked his nature’s needs, thanking God for the draught. Upon the mountain side roamed the noble eland; in the thorny copses the stately koodoo herded,—wild cattle with which Providence had stocked the pasture for his use. Here was his Canaan. More fortunate than Moses, he possessed it,—whilst vigour yet thrilled his foot and hand.

At night the deep-rumbling growl of the marauding lion would be heard in the scrub below the cattle-kraal, and the trembling touch of wife and children as they clung to him, made the strong man rejoice in his strength. Every considerable mountain-cave harboured his Amalekite, the Bushman,—and him he hewed in pieces before the Lord whenever opportunity offered.

To the Northward of the Roggeveld the wide and usually waterless plains of what is yet known as Bushmanland stretched away indefinitely. Arid as these plains are, and apparently always have been, they supported an enormous amount of animal life. Many of the larger fauna of South Africa can exist for an indefinite time without drinking; some, such as the gemsbok or oryx, can dispense with it altogether, owing to the instinct which teaches them to dig for succulent tubers in the arid sand dunes, from the surface of which every vestige of vegetation may have disappeared.

Many a time had Tyardt van der Walt trekked over the mountain chain with his wagon and penetrated a few days’ journey into the waste. Then he would return with a load of game of kinds different from those found among the mountains. A sense of danger, which is the salt of life to some natures, lent zest to these expeditions. This danger was by no means imaginary; the bones of many an adventurous Boer have been gnawed by the jackals of Bushmanland.

Gideon had, as a boy, accompanied his father upon some of the later of these expeditions. Now, when his load of unrecognised remorse hung heavily upon him, he sighed his tired soul towards the vast and vague unknown which lay, rich in the glamour of the unknown and the mysterious, beyond the frowning mountain rampart. There, he had come to think, Peace must surely have her habitation; into that solitude the ghosts of men and things could not follow. He put his wagon in order, loaded it with provisions and ammunition enough to last for several months, and went forth into the wilderness.

Aletta, reminiscent of disasters, opposed the idea, but Gideon was not to be withheld from his purpose. The mind of the unhappy wife, in whose heart love for her husband still dwelt, in spite of half a lifetime of neglect, was full of apprehension. Many were the current tales of Boers who had gone northward upon hunting trips, as her husband was now about to go, and who never again had been heard of. Lured by the fugacious verdure upon the shining track of some vagrant thunderstorm which had filled the “pans” with water, and made them look like silver shields strewn upon some tourney-field of the gods, they had ventured farther and farther, forgetting that the thirsty sun was busy behind them, drinking up the moisture and cutting off their retreat. Other narratives told of cheerful camp-fires with men sitting around them, tired after a long day’s hunting. Suddenly would come a silent flight of deadly arrows. Then would the fires be hurriedly quenched, and a volley fired at random into the darkness in the vain hope of smiting a foe as subtle as a serpent, as nimble as a swallow and as noiseless as a ghost. Afterwards the homeward struggle of a few desperate survivors,—those still unwounded trying to alleviate the agony of their dying comrades, well knowing that their every step would be doggedly followed by an implacable enemy, seeking a fitting opportunity of inflicting further slaughter by the same cruel means.

However, after Gideon’s departure, life at Elandsfontein took on a deep peacefulness. The reaction from the constant dread of violence on Gideon’s part was such a relief that something like happiness seemed as though it were about to dawn upon the stricken home.

Aletta learned, to her surprise, that the domestic relations in Stephanus’ household had never been satisfactory. Bit by bit she learned from Sara things which threw a strange light upon Marta’s home life. It appeared that for the past two years Marta had not been right in her mind. She had been in the habit of sitting silent and alone for days together, not answering when spoken to, and refusing to eat. Ever since her husband’s conviction she had manifested the strongest objection to his name being mentioned. This had naturally had the effect of estranging Elsie completely from her. Even Sara, to whom the mother had formerly been passionately attached, had recently been treated with indifference.

The two girls now seemed to find in the woman who had always hitherto been lonely, what they had missed in their own mother. Aletta had always felt the greatest pity for Stephanus; knowing, as she did, the provocation he had sustained, and the rancour Gideon had shown. A sympathetic bond was thus set up between the three, and the ever-present sorrow was shorn of some of its more painful features.

Insensibly Elsie became the centre of the household. She was now twelve years of age. In spite of the fact that her intellect as well as her intuitions had developed to a strange and almost unnatural extent, her stature and features were still those of a very young child. With her pallid and spiritual countenance, and her yellow hair hanging in a thick mass below her waist, the blind girl with the wonderful eyes startled and impressed all who saw her, and seemed, in her rugged surroundings, like a being from another world.

Elsie’s aunt and sister seemed to take a pride in decking out her strange beauty with whatever they could obtain in the way of simple finery, such as infrequent wandering hawkers brought to the lonely homestead. Even in those days traders used to wander over the land with wagons loaded with simple necessaries, and there always was a box full of such things as women take delight in, the contents of which were looked upon almost with awe by the simple daughters of the wilderness. The best material in the simple stock would be purchased for Elsie’s dress;—the brightest ribbon for her hair.

Kanu, the Bushman, was still her guide as she wandered about at will. He would have long since followed the fashion of his kind and fled back to the wilderness that gave him birth had it not been for his attachment to Elsie. One characteristic of the blind child was that she was utterly fearless. She seemed to dread nothing. One thing alone seemed to cause her any uneasiness:—the hoarse roaring of the baboons with which the black rocks that crowned the mountains on either side of the Tanqua valley abounded. She seemed to read a menace in the guttural tones, and a pained expression could be noticed upon her face whenever they were heard.

Gideon returned safely after an absence of four months. His expedition had been successful in some respects; he had slaughtered much game; he had brought back all his cattle and horses. But the peace he had gone to seek had eluded him. In the daytime, whenever the divine rage of the chase was upon him, he would almost forget the past,—but at night, which is the season in which those who love the desert feel the full force of its mysterious and almost rapturous calm, the memory of his sin hovered over him like a bat and kept sleep and rest from his tired soul. Sometimes he would seem to catch glimpses of the sad face of the Peace-Angel hovering pityingly afar,—desiring but unable to succour him from his tormentor.

After he had spent a month or two at the farm Gideon again became violently restless. Elsie’s presence seemed to cause him keen discomfort. When he spoke, as he seldom did whenever he could maintain silence, the sightless eyes of the child would train themselves upon his face, until the guilty man found himself overcome by a sense of inquietude which drove him away from the range of the accusing look.

A party of restless spirits visited Elandsfontein on their way northward in search of adventure and large game. Gideon at once made up his mind to join them. He had been wishing for another opportunity of getting away, but had dreaded going again alone. The shadow of the feud had caused an estrangement between himself and the neighbouring farmers such as made it impossible for him to join any of the hunting parties got up from time to time among his acquaintances. But these people were strangers; the occasion offered the very opportunity he had sought. The hunters were poor, their cattle and horses were of inferior quality and their stores were meagre. Gideon was rich, and his joining the expedition suited the strangers as well as it suited him. So Gideon van der Walt once more set his course towards the wilderness, in the vain hope of finding the footsteps of Peace.

Nearly a year elapsed before he returned; he looked then at least five years older than when he had started. He had penetrated farther into the wilderness than any European had previously done, and his course could almost have been followed from the whitening bones of the game he had slaughtered. But the boundless desert had proved to be as close a prison to his guilty soul as the valley where stood his home. He had quarrelled with his companions and came home alone. But almost immediately the old restlessness fell upon him, and he longed anew for the wastes. This time, however, he would go alone. He blamed his companions for most of the dissatisfactions of his last excursion. It was springtime when he returned; he would go forth once more when the first thunderstorms trailed over the desert. Perhaps Peace dwelt farther away than he had yet reached. He would find her dwelling even if to do so he had to traverse the length of the continent, and reach that Egypt of which he had read in the Bible, where the Lord loosed the Children of Israel from their bitter bondage.

A few days before Gideon’s projected departure Elsie and Kanu were resting in the shade close to the spring in the kloof, after a long ramble on the mountain side. It was afternoon and the sun smote hard upon the drowsy earth.

“I see the Baas coming this way again,” said the Bushman. “I wonder why he comes here so often.”

Elsie, although no doubt of her father’s guilt had ever formulated itself in her mind, had developed an instinctive distrust of her uncle. Perhaps it was because he had done what she had never experienced from another—persistently avoided all communication with her.

“It is a strange thing,” continued Kanu, in a whisper, “but I saw him coming from here yesterday with the tears running from his eyes.”

It was Elsie’s habit to sit, silent, motionless and absorbed in her thoughts, for long periods. In her present situation she was completely concealed by the fringe of thick scrub which grew around the margin of the spring. The Bushman instinctively crept into concealment close behind her and lay with every keen sense alert and a glint of curiosity in his bright, restless, suspicious eyes.

The heavy, tired foot-fall of Gideon thudded nearer and nearer until he stood,—motionless, with folded arms and downcast head, at the side of the still, clear pool. His intent look seemed to pierce the dark and limpid depths as though searching for a sign. He stood thus for several minutes; then he dropped heavily upon his knees and covered his face with his hands.

Then issued from the lips of Gideon van der Walt a prayer such as one might imagine being uttered from the heart of a lost soul upon whom the brazen gates of the Pit have closed for ever. His petition was that God might give him forgetfulness and sleep,—just a little slumber when he laid himself down and folded his hands upon his breast in the night time.—Just a little forgetfulness of the past when the sun sank and all the world except himself lost itself in happy dreams or happier unconsciousness.

Then he poured out his guilt in words which, although broken and incoherent, left no possible doubt as to their significance. He bargained with his Maker: His brother’s life,—the life which he had saved,—was it not, in a sense, his to dispose of? And although Stephanus had not done the deed for which he was suffering punishment, had he not, by his heinous hate protracted through long years, deserved the heaviest chastisement that it was possible for him to receive?

From all this storm of agonised and incoherent sophistry, only one clear idea reached the understanding of blind Elsie,—the innocence of her father—the knowledge that he was suffering cruel punishment for a crime he had never committed. Until now she had never doubted her father’s guilt. Knowing the provocation he had received, she had made excuses for him, and her very soul had moulded itself on the conception that he was suffering just retribution for a broken law. The conviction of her father’s guilt had never diminished her love for him. On the contrary, its effect was to heighten her affection to the most exalted pitch. And now,—to know that he was innocent. The clash of joy and indignation in Elsie’s brain was such as almost to make her swoon.

Gideon arose from his knees and wandered slowly away with bent head and set face. He felt that his prayer had not been answered. Every outburst of this kind had seemed to rivet anew the shackles which bound him to his load.

Elsie and Kanu sat still until the sun sank, and then arose. Mechanically the blind child put forth her hand for the guiding willow-wand which she knew would be stretched out for her grasp. As the pair walked slowly towards the homestead the dusk was glooming down. Elsie’s brain was in a whirling turmoil when she set forth. Only one thought stood fast, and that was as moveless as a rock in a stormy sea: To save her father—that was the task to which her mind set itself. But how? For the first time she bitterly regretted her blindness. Poor, ignorant child, shut up in a cavern of formless darkness,—what could she do? But before half the homeward road had been traversed, the turmoil of her mind had ceased and her thoughts had crystallised around a purpose as hard as steel.

At the supper-table it was noticed that the blind child’s face was paler and more set than usual, and that the lustre of her eyes was like red, molten gold,—but no word escaped her lips. It surprised Aletta and Sara to find that Elsie did not reply when spoken to, but she had been so long a law unto herself that no particular notice was wont to be taken of her peculiarities.

Supper over, she did not, as was her wont, go at once to her bed in the little room at the end of the front “stoep,” where she was in the habit of sleeping alone, but sat in the “voorhuis” until all the others had gone to rest. This was only “one of Elsie’s ways,” which were different from other people’s. To her the darkness had no more terrors than the day.

Next morning no trace of either Elsie or Kanu could be found. This circumstance was only rendered remarkable by the fact that her bed had not been slept in, and that a warm cape of brayed lambskin which she was in the habit of wearing in cold weather, as well as a loaf of bread from the “voorhuis” cupboard and a large piece of mutton from the kitchen, had disappeared.

Search was made, but no trace of the missing ones could be found. Word was passed on from farm to farm,—from one lonely squatter’s camp to another, until the whole country side for hundreds of miles was on the alert. The mountain haunts of the Bushmen were ransacked—with the usual accompaniment of slaughter and pillage,—the secret places of the desert were searched,—but without success. Had Kanu been found he would have been shot at sight—so great was the indignation against him. Poor Kanu was tried, found guilty, and sentenced for the crime of kidnapping; fortunately, the defendant made default.

Thus another fold of shadow was added to the gloom which wrapped the stricken household. Gideon, whose mind was ever on the alert upon the devious planes of thought, speculated upon the mystery through the preconception that it contained some element which had been lost sight of. Knowing Kanu as he did he could not conceive that the Bushman would have harmed Elsie. An idea took root in his brain which bore a sudden fruit of deadly fear. Setting spurs to his horse he left the search-party on the hill-side and galloped down to the spring at the margin of which he had made his wild confession. Under a thick curtain of shrub a few yards from where he had knelt he found the undergrowth crushed down as though someone had recently sat upon it, and, close by, where a mole had thrown up a heap of loose earth, was the print of a small foot, freshly indented. The discovery turned him sick with horror.

In a few minutes, however, he laughed at his ridiculous fears. Nevertheless, a speculation which, he persuaded himself over and over again was quite preposterous, kept persistently coming back and grinning at him,—even after it had been driven away over and over again with contumely, by his better understanding.

The days came and went with dreary monotony. One by one the search-parties returned from their fruitless seekings. After hurried preparations Gideon again set face towards the burning northern deserts, and resumed his vain quest for the habitation of Peace.

Chapter Eight.

Elsie’s Quest.

The excitement consequent upon the battle of Blauwberg and the conquest of the Cape by England had just died down, and the inhabitants of Cape Town were involuntarily coming to the conclusion that the English were not such stern tyrants as they had been led to expect.

Juffrouw du Plessis and her two daughters were sitting in their garden behind the oleander hedge, through an opening in which they could look out over the lovely expanse of Table Bay. The cottage, embowered in oak trees and with the north front covered by the soft green foliage of an immense vine, was built upon one of the terraces which lead up to the foot of Table Mountain, and which have, long since, been absorbed by the expanding city.

Behind the cottage the frowning crags of the massive mountain had hidden their rigour beneath the “Table Cloth” of snowy cloud, whose tossing, ever-changing folds and fringes were flung like foam into the blue vault of the sky by the boisterous “South-Easter” which had given it birth. But in spite of the turmoil overhead, no breath of rude air disturbed the halcyon quiet which seemed to have spread a wing of wardship over the dwelling.

An old slave who, notwithstanding his wrinkled skin and frosted hair, was still of powerful frame, was working with great deliberation among the flowers,—where large cabbage-roses lifted their heads high over violet-bordered beds that were sweet with mignonette and gay with pinks. The Juffrouw was of Huguenot descent and showed her French origin in the alertness of her movements and the sensibility of her features. She was the wife of a merchant who carried on a flourishing business in the city.

“Mother,” suddenly said Helena, the younger girl, “while you were out this morning I met a blind girl with the longest and yellowest hair I have ever seen.”

“A blind girl.—Where was she?”

“On the footpath behind the house.”

“And where did she come from?”

“I do not know; she would not tell me. I think she must be mad, for she said she was going to talk to the Governor and she asked me where he lived.”

“What an extraordinary thing.”

“Yes. She was walking with a little Hottentot man, who was leading her by means of a stick. She said they were both very hungry, so I gave them some bread and milk. I left them sitting at the side of the path, eating, and when I went back to look for them they were gone.”

Elsie and Kanu sat at the side of a stream in a deep ravine in the western face of the Drakenstein Mountain range. Around them was a mass of dense scrub which was gay with lovely flowers. The child drooped wearily as she sat with her swollen feet in the cool, limpid water. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, her lips parted, and her eyes shone with strange brilliancy. It was the morning of the sixth day after they had stolen away from Elandsfontein. Kanu looked gaunt with hunger. Famine seemed to glare out of his hollow eyes. In spite of the proverbial toughness of the Bushman, he was almost in the last stage of exhaustion. A belt made of twisted bark was tightly bound around his waist, and a bundle of grass and moss, rolled into a ball, was forced between it and his body, over the abdomen.

“Kanu,—how much farther do you think Cape Town is?” asked Elsie in a tired voice.

“I have heard the people say that the town lies under a big mountain with a flat top,” replied the Bushman,—“I can see such a mountain far away across the sand-flats. We will reach it to-morrow night if your feet do not get too sore.”

The child drew up her feet from out of the water and passed her fingers gently over them. Even this slight touch made her wince. She threw back her head with a movement of impatience. Her eyes were swimming in tears. Beside her, on the grass, lay a pair of tattered veldschoens.

“Kanu,—do you think we will reach there in time to see the Governor to-morrow night?”

“I do not know; we might not be able to find his house in the dark,—and perhaps he goes to bed early.”

“But, Kanu,—everyone must know the Governor’s house, so you can knock at the first door we pass and ask where it is.”

“Yes,—we can try.”

“But, Kanu,—I must get my father out of prison at once when we arrive. I am sure the Governor will come from his house and open the door as soon as I tell him,—even if he is in bed and asleep when we get there.”

“I do not think you will see Baas Stephanus to-morrow night,” replied the Bushman, after a pause.—“I heard from a man who had been there that the prison is not in Cape Town but in a place they call an island, in the sea.”

Elsie hid her face in her hands and burst into a passion of tears. She had held out against hunger and fatigue, against exposure to chilling rain and scorching sun, her thoughts strained to the conception of “Cape Town” as an objective. Often, when she was swaying with exhaustion, the words “father”—“Cape Town”—murmured half under her breath, would brace her flagging sinews. And now it was bitter to hear that her father was not in Cape Town after all, but farther off still. She had set her heart on meeting him immediately after her arrival. The Governor was sure to be a good, pitiful man;—otherwise the great king across the sea, who now owned the whole country, would not have sent him to rule the land. As soon as ever she had told her tale, he would tell one of his soldiers to take her down at once to the prison, which he would open with a big key. Then her father would look round and, seeing his little blind daughter, would know that she had saved him,—which was more than people with good eyesight had been able to do.

Over and over again the poor little child had rehearsed the scene of the meeting in her mind. The groove was well worn, and she followed the details accurately, step by step. She knew the feel of the big key; she had asked the kind Governor to let her hold it, and then that she might carry it down to the prison, instead of the soldier,—but the Governor said that he could not do this because it was against the law to let anyone have the key unless he were a soldier carrying a big gun. Then the long walk down the street,—and how the soldier walked too slow, and how she knew without being told the direction of the prison. Everything was quite clear until the key grated in the lock, as the key did in the lock of the barn at home,—and the heavy door swung back on its hinges. At this point imagination died in a swoon of bliss.

However, Kanu comforted her with the assurance that the island was close to Cape Town; he was quite sure his informant had told him it could be seen from the city. But she had to surrender the hope of seeing her father immediately after her arrival, and she felt that her former conception of the meeting and its prelude would have to be somewhat modified. She had rehearsed the scene so often that it had become utterly real to her; to alter it now gave her the keenest pain.