The Story of an African Farm Read online

  Chapter 1.II. Plans and Bushman Paintings.

  At last came the year of the great drought, the year ofeighteen-sixty-two. From end to end of the land the earth cried forwater. Man and beast turned their eyes to the pitiless sky, that likethe roof of some brazen oven arched overhead. On the farm, day afterday, month after month, the water in the dams fell lower and lower; thesheep died in the fields; the cattle, scarcely able to crawl, totteredas they moved from spot to spot in search of food. Week after week,month after month, the sun looked down from the cloudless sky, till thekaroo-bushes were leafless sticks, broken into the earth, and the earthitself was naked and bare; and only the milk-bushes, like old hags,pointed their shrivelled fingers heavenward, praying for the rain thatnever came.

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  It was on an afternoon of a long day in that thirsty summer, that on theside of the kopje furthest from the homestead the two girls sat. Theywere somewhat grown since the days when they played hide-and-seek there,but they were mere children still.

  Their dress was of dark, coarse stuff; their common blue pinaforesreached to their ankles, and on their feet they wore home-madevelschoen.

  They sat under a shelving rock, on the surface of which were stillvisible some old Bushman paintings, their red and black pigments havingbeen preserved through long years from wind and rain by the overhangingledge; grotesque oxen, elephants, rhinoceroses, and a one-horned beast,such as no man ever has seen or ever shall.

  The girls sat with their backs to the paintings. In their laps were afew fern and ice-plant leaves, which by dint of much searching they hadgathered under the rocks.

  Em took off her big brown kapje and began vigorously to fan her red facewith it; but her companion bent low over the leaves in her lap, and atlast took up an ice-plant leaf and fastened it on to the front of herblue pinafore with a pin.

  "Diamonds must look as these drops do," she said, carefully bending overthe leaf, and crushing one crystal drop with her delicate little nail."When I," she said, "am grown up, I shall wear real diamonds, exactlylike these in my hair."

  Her companion opened her eyes and wrinkled her low forehead.

  "Where will you find them, Lyndall? The stones are only crystals that wepicked up yesterday. Old Otto says so."

  "And you think that I am going to stay here always?"

  The lip trembled scornfully.

  "Ah, no," said her companion. "I suppose some day we shall go somewhere;but now we are only twelve, and we cannot marry till we are seventeen.Four years, five--that is a long time to wait. And we might not havediamonds if we did marry."

  "And you think that I am going to stay here till then?"

  "Well, where are you going?" asked her companion.

  The girl crushed an ice-plant leaf between her fingers.

  "Tant Sannie is a miserable old woman," she said. "Your father marriedher when he was dying, because he thought she would take better care ofthe farm, and of us, than an English woman. He said we should be taughtand sent to school. Now she saves every farthing for herself, buys usnot even one old book. She does not ill-use us--why? Because she isafraid of your father's ghost. Only this morning she told her Hottentotthat she would have beaten you for breaking the plate, but that threenights ago she heard a rustling and a grunting behind the pantry door,and knew it was your father coming to spook her. She is a miserable oldwoman," said the girl, throwing the leaf from her; "but I intend to goto school."

  "And if she won't let you?"

  "I shall make her."

  "How?"

  The child took not the slightest notice of the last question, and foldedher small arms across her knees.

  "But why do you want to go, Lyndall?"

  "There is nothing helps in this world," said the child slowly, "but tobe very wise, and to know everything--to be clever."

  "But I should not like to go to school!" persisted the small freckledface.

  "And you do not need to. When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go;you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; butI," said Lyndall, "will have nothing. I must learn."

  "Oh, Lyndall! I will give you some of my sheep," said Em, with a suddenburst of pitying generosity.

  "I do not want your sheep," said the girl slowly; "I want things of myown. When I am grown up," she added, the flush on her delicate featuresdeepening at every word, "there will be nothing that I do not know. Ishall be rich, very rich; and I shall wear not only for best, but everyday, a pure white silk, and little rose-buds, like the lady in TantSannie's bedroom, and my petticoats will be embroidered, not only at thebottom, but all through."

  The lady in Tant Sannie's bedroom was a gorgeous creature from afashion-sheet, which the Boer-woman, somewhere obtaining, had pasted upat the foot of her bed, to be profoundly admired by the children.

  "It would be very nice," said Em; but it seemed a dream of quite tootranscendent a glory ever to be realized.

  At this instant there appeared at the foot of the kopje two figures--theone, a dog, white and sleek, one yellow ear hanging down over his lefteye; the other, his master, a lad of fourteen, and no other than the boyWaldo, grown into a heavy, slouching youth of fourteen. The dog mountedthe kopje quickly, his master followed slowly. He wore an aged jacketmuch too large for him, and rolled up at the wrists, and, as of old, apair of dilapidated velschoens and a felt hat. He stood before the twogirls at last.

  "What have you been doing today?" asked Lyndall, lifting her eyes to hisface.

  "Looking after ewes and lambs below the dam. Here!" he said, holding outhis hand awkwardly, "I brought them for you."

  There were a few green blades of tender grass.

  "Where did you find them?"

  "On the dam wall."

  She fastened them beside the leaf on her blue pinafore.

  "They look nice there," said the boy, awkwardly rubbing his great handsand watching her.

  "Yes; but the pinafore spoils it all; it is not pretty."

  He looked at it closely.

  "Yes, the squares are ugly; but it looks nice upon you--beautiful."

  He now stood silent before them, his great hands hanging loosely ateither side.

  "Some one has come today," he mumbled out suddenly, when the idea struckhim.

  "Who?" asked both girls.

  "An Englishman on foot."

  "What does he look like?" asked Em.

  "I did not notice; but he has a very large nose," said the boy slowly."He asked the way to the house."

  "Didn't he tell you his name?"

  "Yes--Bonaparte Blenkins."

  "Bonaparte!" said Em, "why that is like the reel Hottentot Hans plays onthe violin--

  'Bonaparte, Bonaparte, my wife is sick; In the middle of the week, but Sundays not, I give her rice and beans for soup'--

  It is a funny name."

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

  "Ah yes, I know," said Em--"the poor prophet whom the lions ate. I amalways 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 likebest."

  "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 allthe people in the world feared him. He was not born great, he was commonas we are; yet he was master of the world at last. Once he was only alittle child, then he was a lieutenant, then he was a general, then hewas an emperor. When he said a thing to himself he never forgot it. Hewaited, 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 thepeople 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. Theywere like the wild cats when thei
r teeth are fast in a great dog, likecowardly wild cats," said the child, "they would not let him go. Therewere many; he was only one. They sent him to an island on the sea, alonely island, and kept him there fast. He was one man, and they weremany, 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 nightshe used to lie awake and think of the things he had done in the olddays, and the things he would do if they let him go again. In the daywhen he walked near the shore it seemed to him that the sea all aroundhim 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. Ihave noticed," added the child very deliberately, "that it is only themade-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 whathe thought."

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

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

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

  "If they could talk, if they could tell us now!" he said, moving hishand out over the surrounding objects--"then we would know something.This kopje, if it could tell us how it came here! The 'PhysicalGeography' says," he went on most rapidly and confusedly, "that whatwere dry lands now were once lakes; and what I think is this--these lowhills were once the shores of a lake; this kopje is some of the stonesthat were at the bottom, rolled together by the water. But there isthis--How did the water come to make one heap here alone, in the centreof the plain?" It was a ponderous question; no one volunteered ananswer. "When I was little," said the boy, "I always looked at it andwondered, and I thought a great giant was buried under it. Now I knowthe water must have done it; but how? It is very wonderful. Did onelittle stone come first, and stop the others as they rolled?" said theboy with earnestness, in a low voice, more as speaking to himself thanto them.

  "Oh, Waldo, God 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 clinchingargument. What effect it had on the questioner was not evident, for hemade 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 withyou? Sometimes," he added in a yet lower tone, "I lie under there withmy sheep, and it seems that the stones are really speaking--speaking ofthe old things, of the time when the strange fishes and animals livedthat are turned into stone now, and the lakes were here; and then of thetime when the little Bushmen lived here, so small and so ugly, and usedto sleep in the wild dog holes, and in the sloots, and eat snakes, andshot the bucks with their poisoned arrows. It was one of them, oneof these old wild Bushmen, that painted those," said the boy, noddingtoward the pictures--"one who was different from the rest. He did notknow why, but he wanted to make something beautiful--he wanted to makesomething, so he made these. He worked hard, very hard, to find thejuice to make the paint; and then he found this place where the rockshang over, and he painted them. To us they are only strange things, thatmake 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 hewondered at the things he made himself," said the boy, rising and movinghis hand in deep excitement. "Now the Boers have shot them all, so thatwe never see a little yellow face peeping out among the stones." Hepaused, a dreamy look coming over his face. "And the wild bucks havegone, and those days, and we are here. But we will be gone soon, andonly the stones will lie on here, looking at everything like they looknow. I know that it is I who am thinking," the fellow added slowly, "butit seems as though it were they who are talking. Has it never seemed soto you, Lyndall?"

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

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

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