The Story of an African Farm Part 13

"I will leave it neat. They shall not say I did not leave it neat," he said. Even the little bags of seeds on the mantelpiece he put in rows and dusted. Then he undressed and got into bed. Under his pillow was a little storybook. He drew it forth. To the old German a story was no story. Its events were as real and as important to himself as the matters of his own life.

He could not go away without knowing whether that wicked earl relented and whether the baron married Emilina. So he adjusted his spectacles and began to read. Occasionally, as his feelings became too strongly moved, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed: "Ah, I thought so! That was a rogue! I saw it before! I knew it from the beginning!" More than half an hour had pa.s.sed when he looked up to the silver watch at the top of his bed.

"The march is long tomorrow; this will not do," he said, taking off his spectacles and putting them carefully into the book to mark the place.

"This will be good reading as I walk along tomorrow," he added, as he stuffed the book into the pocket of the greatcoat; "very good reading."

He nodded his head and lay down. He thought a little of his own troubles, a good deal of the two little girls he was leaving, of the earl, of Emilina, of the baron; but he was soon asleep--sleeping as peacefully as a little child, upon whose innocent soul sorrow and care cannot rest.

It was very quiet in the room. The coals in the fireplace threw a dull red light across the floor upon the red lions on the quilt. Eleven o'clock came, and the room was very still.

One o'clock came. The glimmer had died out, though the ashes were still warm, and the room was very dark. The grey mouse, who had his hole under the toolbox, came out and sat on the sacks in the corner; then, growing bolder, the room was so dark, it climbed the chair at the bedside, nibbled at the roaster-cake, took one bite quickly at the candle, and then sat on his haunches listening. It heard the even breathing of the old man, and the steps of the hungry Kaffer dog going his last round in search of a bone or a skin that had been forgotten; and it heard the white hen call out as the wild cat ran away with one of her brood, and it heard the chicken cry. Then the grey mouse went back to its hole under the toolbox, and the room was quiet. And two o'clock came. By that time the night was grown dull and cloudy. The wild cat had gone to its home on the kopje; the Kaffer dog had found a bone, and lay gnawing it.

An intense quiet reigned everywhere. Only in her room the Boer-woman tossed her great arms in her sleep; for she dreamed that a dark shadow with outstretched wings fled slowly over her house, and she moaned and s.h.i.+vered. And the night was very still.

But, quiet as all places were, there was a quite peculiar quiet in the German's room. Though you strained your ear most carefully you caught no sound of breathing.

He was not gone, for the old coat still hung on the chair--the coat that was to be put on when he met any one; and the bundle and stick were ready for tomorrow's long march. The old German himself lay there, his wavy black hair just touched with grey thrown back upon the pillow.

The old face was lying there alone in the dark, smiling like a little child's--oh, so peacefully. There is a stranger whose coming, they say, is worse than all the ills of life, from whose presence we flee away trembling; but he comes very tenderly sometimes. And it seemed almost as though Death had known and loved the old man, so gently it touched him.

And how could it deal hardly with him--the loving, simple, childlike old man?

So it smoothed out the wrinkles that were in the old forehead, and fixed the pa.s.sing smile, and sealed the eyes that they might not weep again; and then the short sleep of time was melted into the long, long sleep of eternity.

"How has he grown so young in this one night?" they said when they found him in the morning.

Yes, dear old man; to such as you time brings no age. You die with the purity and innocence of your childhood upon you, though you die in your grey hairs.

Chapter 1.IX. He Sees A Ghost.

Bonaparte stood on the ash-heap. He espied across the plain a moving speck and he chucked his coat-tails up and down in expectancy of a scene.

The wagon came on slowly. Waldo laid curled among the sacks at the back of the wagon, the hand in his breast resting on the sheep-shearing machine. It was finished now. The right thought had struck him the day before as he sat, half asleep, watching the water go over the mill-wheel. He muttered to himself with half-closed eyes:

"Tomorrow smooth the cogs--tighten the screws a little--show it to them." Then after a pause--"Over the whole world--the whole world--mine, that I have made!" He pressed the little wheels and pulleys in his pocket till they cracked. Presently his muttering became louder--"And fifty pounds--a black hat for my dadda--for Lyndall a blue silk, very light; and one purple like the earth-bells, and white shoes." He muttered on--"A box full, full of books. They shall tell me all, all, all," he added, moving his fingers desiringly: "why the crystals grow in such beautiful shapes; why lightning runs to the iron; why black people are black; why the sunlight makes things warm. I shall read, read, read," he muttered slowly. Then came over him suddenly what he called "The presence of G.o.d"; a sense of a good, strong something folding him round. He smiled through his half-shut eyes. "Ah, Father, my own Father, it is so sweet to feel you, like the warm suns.h.i.+ne. The Bibles and books cannot tell of you and all I feel you. They are mixed with men's words; but you--"

His muttering sank into inaudible confusion, till, opening his eyes wide, it struck him that the brown plain he looked at was the old home farm. For half an hour they had been riding in it, and he had not known it. He roused the leader, who sat nodding on the front of the wagon in the early morning sunlight. They were within half a mile of the homestead. It seemed to him that he had been gone from them all a year.

He fancied he could see Lyndall standing on the brick wall to watch for him; his father, pa.s.sing from one house to the other, stopping to look.

He called aloud to the oxen. For each one at home he had brought something. For his father a piece of tobacco, bought at the shop by the mill; for Em a thimble; for Lyndall a beautiful flower dug out by the roots, at a place where they had outspanned; for Tant Sannie a handkerchief. When they drew near the house he threw the whip to the Kaffer leader, and sprung from the side of the wagon to run on.

Bonaparte stopped him as he ran past the ash-heap.

"Good morning, my dear boy. Where are you running to so fast with your rosy cheeks?"

The boy looked up at him, glad even to see Bonaparte.

"I am going to the cabin," he said, out of breath.

"You won't find them in just now--not your good old father," said Bonaparte.

"Where is he?" asked the lad.

"There, beyond the camps," said Bonaparte, waving his hand oratorically toward the stone-walled ostrich-camps.

"What is he doing there?" asked the boy.

Bonaparte patted him on the cheek kindly.

"We could not keep him any more, it was too hot. We've buried him, my boy," said Bonaparte, touching with his finger the boy's cheek. "We couldn't keep him any more. He, he, he!" laughed Bonaparte, as the boy fled away along the low stone wall, almost furtively, as one in fear.

At five o'clock Bonaparte knelt before a box in the German's room. He was busily unpacking it.

It had been agreed upon between Tant Sannie and himself, that now the German was gone he, Bonaparte, was to be no longer schoolmaster, but overseer of the farm. In return for his past scholastic labours he had expressed himself willing to take possession of the dead man's goods and room. Tant Sannie hardly liked the arrangement. She had a great deal more respect for the German dead than the German living, and would rather his goods had been allowed to descend peacefully to his son. For she was a firm believer in the c.h.i.n.ks in the world above, where not only ears, but eyes might be applied to see how things went on in this world below. She never felt sure how far the spirit-world might overlap this world of sense, and, as a rule, prudently abstained from doing anything which might offend unseen auditors. For this reason she abstained from ill-using the dead Englishman's daughter and niece, and for this reason she would rather the boy had had his father's goods. But it was hard to refuse Bonaparte anything when she and he sat so happily together in the evening drinking coffee, Bonaparte telling her in the broken Dutch he was fast learning how he adored fat women, and what a splendid farmer he was.

So at five o'clock on this afternoon Bonaparte knelt in the German's room.

"Somewhere, here it is," he said, as he packed the old clothes carefully out of the box, and, finding nothing, packed them in again. "Somewhere in this room it is; and if it's here Bonaparte finds it," he repeated.

"You didn't stay here all these years without making a little pile somewhere, my lamb. You weren't such a fool as you looked. Oh, no!" said Bonaparte.

He now walked about the room, diving his fingers in everywhere: sticking them into the great crevices in the wall and frightening out the spiders; rapping them against the old plaster till it cracked and fell in pieces; peering up the chimney, till the soot dropped on his bald head and blackened it. He felt in little blue bags; he tried to raise the hearth-stone; he shook each book, till the old leaves fell down in showers on the floor.

It was getting dark, and Bonaparte stood with his finger on his nose reflecting. Finally he walked to the door, behind which hung the trousers and waistcoat the dead man had last worn. He had felt in them, but hurriedly, just after the funeral the day before; he would examine them again. Sticking his fingers into the waistcoat pockets, he found in one corner a hole. Pressing his hand through it, between the lining and the cloth, he presently came into contact with something. Bonaparte drew it forth--a small, square parcel, sewed up in sail-cloth. He gazed at it, squeezed it; it cracked, as though full of bank-notes. He put it quickly into his own waistcoat pocket, and peeped over the half-door to see if there was any one coming. There was nothing to be seen but the last rays of yellow sunset light, painting the karoo bushes in the plain, and s.h.i.+ning on the ash-heap, where the fowls were pecking. He turned and sat down on the nearest chair, and, taking out his pen-knife, ripped the parcel open. The first thing that fell was a shower of yellow faded papers. Bonaparte opened them carefully one by one, and smoothed them out on his knee. There was something very valuable to be hidden so carefully, though the German characters he could not decipher. When he came to the last one, he felt there was something hard in it.

"You've got it, Bon, my boy! you've got it!" he cried, slapping his leg hard. Edging nearer to the door, for the light was fading, he opened the paper carefully. There was nothing inside but a plain gold wedding-ring.

"Better than nothing!" said Bonaparte, trying to put it on his little finger, which, however, proved too fat.

He took it off and set it down on the table before him, and looked at it with his crosswise eyes.

"When that auspicious hour, Sannie," he said, "shall have arrived, when, panting, I shall lead thee, lighted by Hymen's torch, to the connubial altar, then upon thy fair amaranthine finger, my joyous bride, shall this ring repose.

"Thy fair body, oh, my girl, Shall Bonaparte possess; His fingers in thy money-bags, He therein, too, shall mess."

Having given utterance to this flood of poesy, he sat lost in joyous reflection.

"He therein, too, shall mess," he repeated meditatively.

At this instant, as Bonaparte swore, and swore truly to the end of his life, a slow and distinct rap was given on the crown of his bald head.

Bonaparte started and looked up. No riem or strap, hung down from the rafters above, and not a human creature was near the door. It was growing dark; he did not like it. He began to fold up the papers expeditiously. He stretched out his hand for the ring. The ring was gone! Gone, although no human creature had entered the room; gone, although no form had crossed the doorway. Gone!

He would not sleep there, that was certain.

He stuffed the papers into his pocket. As he did so, three slow and distinct taps were given on the crown of his head. Bonaparte's jaw fell: each separate joint lost its power: he could not move; he dared not rise; his tongue lay loose in his mouth.

"Take all, take all!" he gurgled in his throat. "I--I do not want them.

Take"--