The Story of an African Farm Part 12

"I wish you would be quiet," said Lyndall without moving. "Does it give you such felicity to let Bonaparte know he is hurting you? We will ask no one. It will be suppertime soon. Listen--and when you hear the clink of the knives and forks we will go out and see him."

Em suppressed her sobs and listened intently, kneeling at the door.

Suddenly some one came to the window and put the shutter up.

"Who was that?" said Lyndall, starting.

"The girl, I suppose," said Em. "How early she is this evening!"

But Lyndall sprang from the bed and seized the handle of the door, shaking it fiercely. The door was locked on the outside. She ground her teeth.

"What is the matter?" asked Em.

The room was in perfect darkness now.

"Nothing," said Lyndall quietly; "only they have locked us in."

She turned, and went back to bed again. But ere long Em heard a sound of movement. Lyndall had climbed up into the window, and with her fingers felt the woodwork that surrounded the panes. Slipping down, the girl loosened the iron k.n.o.b from the foot of the bedstead, and climbing up again she broke with it every pane of gla.s.s in the window, beginning at the top and ending at the bottom.

"What are you doing?" asked Em, who heard the falling fragments.

Her companion made her no reply; but leaned on every little cross-bar, which cracked and gave way beneath her. Then she pressed with all her strength against the shutter. She had thought the wooden b.u.t.tons would give way, but by the clinking sound she knew that the iron bar had been put across. She was quite quiet for a time. Clambering down, she took from the table a small one-bladed penknife, with which she began to peck at the hard wood of the shutter.

"What are you doing now?" asked Em, who had ceased crying in her wonder, and had drawn near.

"Trying to make a hole," was the short reply.

"Do you think you will be able to?"

"No; but I am trying."

In an agony of suspense Em waited. For ten minutes Lyndall pecked. The hole was three-eighths of an inch deep--then the blade sprung into ten pieces.

"What has happened now?" Em asked, blubbering afresh.

"Nothing," said Lyndall. "Bring me my nightgown, a piece of paper, and the matches."

Wondering, Em fumbled about till she found them.

"What are you going to do with them?" she whispered.

"Burn down the window."

"But won't the whole house take fire and burn down too?"

"Yes."

"But will it not be very wicked?"

"Yes, very. And I do not care."

She arranged the nightgown carefully in the corner of the window, with the chips of the frame about it. There was only one match in the box.

She drew it carefully along the wall. For a moment it burnt up blue, and showed the tiny face with its glistening eyes. She held it carefully to the paper. For an instant it burnt up brightly, then flickered and went out. She blew the spark, but it died also. Then she threw the paper on to the ground, trod on it, and went to her bed, and began to undress.

Em rushed to the door, knocking against it wildly.

"Oh, Tant Sannie! Tant Sannie! Oh, let us out!" she cried. "Oh, Lyndall, what are we to do?"

Lyndall wiped a drop of blood off the lip she had bitten.

"I am going to sleep," she said. "If you like to sit there and howl till the morning, do. Perhaps you will find that it helps; I never heard that howling helped any one."

Long after, when Em herself had gone to bed and was almost asleep, Lyndall came and stood at her bedside.

"Here," she said, slipping a little pot of powder into her hand; "rub some on to your face. Does it not burn where she struck you?"

Then she crept back to her own bed. Long, long after, when Em was really asleep, she lay still awake, and folded her hands on her little breast, and muttered--

"When that day comes, and I am strong, I will hate everything that has power, and help everything that is weak." And she bit her lip again.

The German looked out at the cabin door for the last time that night.

Then he paced the room slowly and sighed. Then he drew out pen and paper, and sat down to write, rubbing his old grey eyes with his knuckles before he began.

"My Chickens: You did not come to say good-bye to the old man. Might you? Ah, well, there is a land where they part no more, where saints immortal reign.

"I sit here alone, and I think of you. Will you forget the old man? When you wake tomorrow he will be far away. The old horse is lazy, but he has his stick to help him; that is three legs. He comes back one day with gold and diamonds. Will you welcome him? Well, we shall see. I go to meet Waldo. He comes back with the wagon; then he follows me. Poor boy?

G.o.d knows. There is a land where all things are made right, but that land is not here.

"My little children, serve the Saviour; give your hearts to Him while you are yet young. Life is short.

"Nothing is mine, otherwise I would say, Lyndall, take my books, Em my stones. Now I say nothing. The things are mine: it is not righteous, G.o.d knows? But I am silent. Let it be. But I feel it, I must say I feel it.

"Do not cry too much for the old man. He goes out to seek his fortune, and comes back with it in a bag, it may be.

"I love my children. Do they think of me? I am Old Otto, who goes out to seek his fortune.

"O.F."

Having concluded this quaint production, he put it where the children would find it the next morning, and proceeded to prepare his bundle. He never thought of entering a protest against the loss of his goods; like a child, he submitted, and wept. He had been there eleven years, and it was hard to go away. He spread open on the bed a blue handkerchief, and on it put one by one the things he thought most necessary and important--a little bag of curious seeds, which he meant to plant some day, an old German hymn-book, three misshapen stones that he greatly valued, a Bible, a s.h.i.+rt and two handkerchiefs; then there was room for nothing more. He tied up the bundle tightly and put it on a chair by his bedside.

"That is not much; they cannot say I take much," he said, looking at it.

He put his knotted stick beside it, his blue tobacco bag and his short pipe, and then inspected his coats. He had two left--a moth-eaten overcoat and a black alpaca, out at the elbows. He decided for the overcoat; it was warm, certainly, but then he could carry it over his arm and only put it on when he met some one along the road. It was more respectable than the black alpaca.

He hung the greatcoat over the back of the chair, and stuffed a hard bit of roaster-cake under the knot of the bundle, and then his preparations were completed. The German stood contemplating them with much satisfaction. He had almost forgotten his sorrow at leaving in his pleasure at preparing. Suddenly he started; an expression of intense pain pa.s.sed over his face. He drew back his left arm quickly, and then pressed his right hand upon his breast.

"Ah, the sudden pang again," he said.

His face was white, but it quickly regained its colour. Then the old man busied himself in putting everything right.