The Story of an African Farm Part 3

"There was a living man called Bonaparte once," said she of the great eyes.

"Ah yes, I know," said Em--"the poor prophet whom the lions ate. I am always so sorry for him."

Her companion cast a quiet glance upon her.

"He was the greatest man who ever lived," she said, "the man I like best."

"And what did he do?" asked Em, conscious that she had made a mistake, and that her prophet was not the man.

"He was one man, only one," said her little companion slowly, "yet all the people in the world feared him. He was not born great, he was common as we are; yet he was master of the world at last. Once he was only a little child, then he was a lieutenant, then he was a general, then he was an emperor. When he said a thing to himself he never forgot it. He waited, and waited and waited, and it came at last."

"He must have been very happy," said Em.

"I do not know," said Lyndall; "but he had what he said he would have, and that is better than being happy. He was their master, and all the people were white with fear of him. They joined together to fight him.

He was one and they were many, and they got him down at last. They were like the wild cats when their teeth are fast in a great dog, like cowardly wild cats," said the child, "they would not let him go. There were many; he was only one. They sent him to an island on the sea, a lonely island, and kept him there fast. He was one man, and they were many, and they were terrified at him. It was glorious!" said the child.

"And what then?" said Em.

"Then he was alone there in that island with men to watch him always,"

said her companion, slowly and quietly. "And in the long lonely nights he used to lie awake and think of the things he had done in the old days, and the things he would do if they let him go again. In the day when he walked near the sh.o.r.e it seemed to him that the sea all around him was a cold chain about his body pressing him to death."

"And then?" said Em, much interested.

"He died there in that island; he never got away."

"It is rather a nice story," said Em; "but the end is sad."

"It is a terrible, hateful ending," said the little teller of the story, leaning forward on her folded arms; "and the worst is, it is true. I have noticed," added the child very deliberately, "that it is only the made-up stories that end nicely; the true ones all end so."

As she spoke the boy's dark, heavy eyes rested on her face.

"You have read it, have you not?"

He nodded. "Yes; but the Brown history tells only what he did, not what he thought."

"It was in the Brown history that I read of him," said the girl; "but I know what he thought. Books do not tell everything."

"No," said the boy, slowly drawing nearer to her and sitting down at her feet. "What you want to know they never tell."

Then the children fell into silence, till Doss, the dog, growing uneasy at its long continuance, sniffed at one and the other, and his master broke forth suddenly:

"If they could talk, if they could tell us now!" he said, moving his hand out over the surrounding objects--"then we would know something.

This kopje, if it could tell us how it came here! The 'Physical Geography' says," he went on most rapidly and confusedly, "that what were dry lands now were once lakes; and what I think is this--these low hills were once the sh.o.r.es of a lake; this kopje is some of the stones that were at the bottom, rolled together by the water. But there is this--How did the water come to make one heap here alone, in the centre of the plain?" It was a ponderous question; no one volunteered an answer. "When I was little," said the boy, "I always looked at it and wondered, and I thought a great giant was buried under it. Now I know the water must have done it; but how? It is very wonderful. Did one little stone come first, and stop the others as they rolled?" said the boy with earnestness, in a low voice, more as speaking to himself than to them.

"Oh, Waldo, G.o.d put the little kopje here," said Em with solemnity.

"But how did he put it here?"

"By wanting."

"But how did the wanting bring it here?"

"Because it did."

The last words were uttered with the air of one who produces a clinching argument. What effect it had on the questioner was not evident, for he made no reply, and turned away from her.

Drawing closer to Lyndall's feet, he said after a while in a low voice:

"Lyndall, has it never seemed to you that the stones were talking with you? Sometimes," he added in a yet lower tone, "I lie under there with my sheep, and it seems that the stones are really speaking--speaking of the old things, of the time when the strange fishes and animals lived that are turned into stone now, and the lakes were here; and then of the time when the little Bushmen lived here, so small and so ugly, and used to sleep in the wild dog holes, and in the sloots, and eat snakes, and shot the bucks with their poisoned arrows. It was one of them, one of these old wild Bushmen, that painted those," said the boy, nodding toward the pictures--"one who was different from the rest. He did not know why, but he wanted to make something beautiful--he wanted to make something, so he made these. He worked hard, very hard, to find the juice to make the paint; and then he found this place where the rocks hang over, and he painted them. To us they are only strange things, that make us laugh; but to him they were very beautiful."

The children had turned round and looked at the pictures.

"He used to kneel here naked, painting, painting, painting; and he wondered at the things he made himself," said the boy, rising and moving his hand in deep excitement. "Now the Boers have shot them all, so that we never see a little yellow face peeping out among the stones." He paused, a dreamy look coming over his face. "And the wild bucks have gone, and those days, and we are here. But we will be gone soon, and only the stones will lie on here, looking at everything like they look now. I know that it is I who am thinking," the fellow added slowly, "but it seems as though it were they who are talking. Has it never seemed so to you, Lyndall?"

"No, it never seems so to me," she answered.

The sun had dipped now below the hills, and the boy, suddenly remembering the ewes and lambs, started to his feet.

"Let us also go to the house and see who has come," said Em, as the boy shuffled away to rejoin his flock, while Doss ran at his heels, snapping at the ends of the torn trousers as they fluttered in the wind.

Chapter 1.III. I Was A Stranger, and Ye Took Me In.

As the two girls rounded the side of the kopje, an unusual scene presented itself. A large group was gathered at the back door of the homestead.

On the doorstep stood the Boer-woman, a hand on each hip, her face red and fiery, her head nodding fiercely. At her feet sat the yellow Hottentot maid, her satellite, and around stood the black Kaffer maids, with blankets twisted round their half-naked figures. Two, who stamped mealies in a wooden block, held the great stampers in their hands, and stared stupidly at the object of attraction. It certainly was not to look at the old German overseer, who stood in the centre of the group, that they had all gathered together. His salt-and-pepper suit, grizzly black beard, and grey eyes were as familiar to every one on the farm as the red gables of the homestead itself; but beside him stood the stranger, and on him all eyes were fixed. Ever and anon the newcomer cast a glance over his pendulous red nose to the spot where the Boer-woman stood, and smiled faintly.

"I'm not a child," cried the Boer-woman, in low Cape Dutch, "and I wasn't born yesterday. No, by the Lord, no! You can't take me in! My mother didn't wean me on Monday. One wink of my eye and I see the whole thing. I'll have no tramps sleeping on my farm," cried Tant Sannie blowing. "No, by the devil, no! not though he had sixty-times-six red noses."

There the German overseer mildly interposed that the man was not a tramp, but a highly respectable individual, whose horse had died by an accident three days before.

"Don't tell me," cried the Boer-woman; "the man isn't born that can take me in. If he'd had money, wouldn't he have bought a horse? Men who walk are thieves, liars, murderers, Rome's priests, seducers! I see the devil in his nose!" cried Tant Sannie shaking her fist at him; "and to come walking into the house of this Boer's child and shaking hands as though he came on horseback! Oh, no, no!"

The stranger took off his hat, a tall, battered chimneypot, and disclosed a bald head, at the back of which was a little fringe of curled white hair, and he bowed to Tant Sannie.

"What does she remark, my friend?" he inquired, turning his crosswise-looking eyes on the old German.

The German rubbed his old hands and hesitated.

"Ah--well--ah--the--Dutch--you know--do not like people who walk--in this country--ah!"

"My dear friend," said the stranger, laying his hand on the German's arm, "I should have bought myself another horse, but crossing, five days ago, a full river, I lost my purse--a purse with five hundred pounds in it. I spent five days on the bank of the river trying to find it--couldn't. Paid a Kaffer nine pounds to go in and look for it at the risk of his life--couldn't find it."

The German would have translated this information, but the Boer-woman gave no ear.

"No, no; he goes tonight. See how he looks at me--a poor unprotected female! If he wrongs me, who is to do me right?" cried Tant Sannie.