Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases
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Perceval Gibbon >> Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases
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"What is it?" demanded Katje.
"That old Hottentot hag." responded the old lady. "She
looks like a witch, and I am sure she is a witch. I would
make the Kafirs throw her on to the veld, but you can't be
too careful with witches. Why, as I came in just now, she
was squatting by the door like a big toad, and her eyes
made me go cold all through."
Katje made a remark.
"What! You say nonsense!" The old lady pricked herself into
an ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of
pride. Beware of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches
in the Bible, and weren't they horrible and wicked? Didn't
King David see the dead corpses come up out of the ground
when the witch crooked her finger, like dogs running to
heel? Well, then!
"Oh, I know," continued the old lady, as Katje tossed a
mutinous head. "They've taught you a lot in that school,
but they didn't teach you belief. Nor manners. You're going
to say there are no witches nowadays."
"I'm not," said Katje.
"Yes, you are," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I know you.
But you're wrong. You don't know anything. Young girls in
these days are like young pigs, all squeak and fight, but
no bacon. Didn't the brother of my half-brother's wife die
of a witch's devilry?"
"I'm sure I don't know," returned hapless Katje.
"Well, he did. I'll tell you." The old lady settled herself
comfortably and lapsed into history.
"His name was Fanie, and he was a Van der Merwe on his
father's side, but his mother was only a Prinsloo, though
her mother was a Coetzee, for the matter of that. He wasn't
what I should call good--at least, not always; but he was
very big and strong, and made a lot of noise, and folk
liked him. The women used to make black white to prove that
the things he did and said were proper things, although
they'd have screamed all night if their own men-folk had
done the same. They say, you know," said the Vrouw
Grobelaar, quoting a very old and seldom-heard Dutch
proverb, "that when women pray they think of God as a
handsome man.
"What I didn't like about him was his way with the Kafirs.
A Kafir is more useful than a dog after all, and one
shouldn't be always beating and kicking even a dog. And
Fanie could never pass a Kafir without kicking him or
flicking his whip at him. I have seen all the Kafirs run to
their kraals when they saw him riding up the road.
"There was one old Kafir we had,--very old and weak, and no
use at all. He used to sit by the gate all day, and mumble
to himself, and seem to look at things that weren't there.
His head was quite white with age, which is not a common
thing with Kafirs, as you know; and he was so foolish and
helpless that his people used to feed him with a spiked
stick, like a motherless chicken. And in case the fowls
should go and sit on his back while he crouched in the sun,
as I have seen them do, there was a little Kafir picaninny,
as black as a crow, that was sent to play about near him
every day. Dear Lord! I have seen those two sitting there,
looking at each other for an hour on end, without a word,
as though both had been children or both old men. Nobody
minded them: we used to throw sugar to the picaninny, and
watch him fighting with the fowls for it, rolling about on
his little black belly like a new-hatched duckling himself.
"Well, Fanie, ... it was horrible. . . .
"I don't like to think of it to this day. He came over one
day in a great hurry to tell us that August de Villiers,
the father of the Predikant at Dopfontein, was choked with
a peach-stone. He was riding very fast, and as he came near
the house he rode off the road and jumped his horse at the
wall. And as he came over, up rose the little picaninny
right under his horse's hoofs. 'Twas a quick way to die,
and without much pain, no doubt; but a most awful thing to
see. The horse stumbled on to him, and I can remember now
how his knee, the near knee, crushed the little Kafirs
chest in. The little black legs and arms fought for a
moment, and then the horse struggled up, and he was dead.
"Fanie seemed sorry. He couldn't help killing the
picaninny, of course, and perhaps we had grown rather
foolish about him, having watched him and laughed at him so
long. So Fanie got off his horse and came in to tell us the
news.
"When we went out the horse was standing at the door where
Fanie had left it. But the old Kafir was kneeling by the
steps fingering its hoofs, which were all bloody, and as
Fanie came forward he put out his hands and left a little
spot of blood on Fanie's shoes.
"Fanie stood for a moment, and his face went white as paper
over his black beard. He knew, you see. But in a flash he
went red as fire, and lashed the old man across the face
with his whip. The old man did not move at all; but my
brothers held Fanie and called to the Kafirs to come and
fetch the old man away. Oh, but I promise you Fanie was
angry, as men will be when they are obliged to be good by
force.
"Well, that was all that happened that day. Fanie went
away, and we all saw that he galloped the horse as fast as
it could go. But down by the kraals the Kafirs who were
carrying the old man stopped and watched him as he went.
"Well, in a few days most of us forgot the ugly business,
though the little picaninny used to walk through my dreams
for a time. Still, blood-kin are blood-kin, and Kafirs are
Kafirs, and one day Fanie came over to see us again and we
gave him coffee. He told us a story about a rooinek that
bought a sheep, and the man gave him a dog in a sack, and
he paid for it and went away, and we all laughed at it. He
was very funny that day, and said that when he married he
would choose an old woman who would die quickly and leave
him all her farms. So it was late and dark before he up-
saddled to go away.
"Well, he was gone a quarter of an hour when we heard
hoofs, galloping, galloping, hard and furious, coming up
the road. And as we opened the door a horse came over the
wall and Fanie tumbled off it and came rushing in.
"We all screamed. He was white like ashes, and wet with
sweat, and trembling so that he could not stand.
"'Fanie,' cried my sister, 'what is it?' and he groaned and
put his face in his hands.
"By and by he spoke, and kept glancing about him and
turning to look behind him, and would not let one of us
move away.
"'There was something behind me,' he said.
"'Something?' we all asked.
"'Yes,' he said. 'Something . . . dead I It followed me up
here, and I could not get away from it, spur as hard as I
would. I think it is a death-call.'
"Then we were all frightened, but we could not help wanting
to hear more.
"'No,' said Fanie, 'I did not see it, nor hear it even, but
I knew it was there.'
"'It was a sign,' said my mother, a very wise old woman.
'Let us all thank God.'
"So we thanked God on our knees, but I'm sure I don't know
what for.
"Then Fanie told us all he knew, and that was just nothing.
As he came to the kloof he was afraid of something in front
of him. He said he felt like a man in grave-clothes. So he
turned, and then the ... whatever it was . . . seemed to
come after him; so he galloped and galloped as hard as the
horse could lay hoof to the earth, and prayed till his
heart nearly burst. And then, not knowing where he was
going, he jumped the wall and came among us. We were all
silent when he had told us.
"Then Oom Jan spoke. He was very old, and seldom said
anything.
"'You have done murder!' he said.
"'If I talk till my mouth is stopped with dust I shall
never be able to tell how cold I felt about the heart when
I heard that. For the little picaninny came plain before my
eyes, and oh! I was all full of pity for Fanie. I liked him
well enough in those days.
"He stopped with us that night. He would not go away nor be
alone, so he slept with my brothers, and held their hands
and prayed half the night. In the morning they took him
home on one of our horses, for his own was fit to die from
the night's work.
"That was the last I ever saw of Fanie. It was as though he
went from us to God. He kissed me on both cheeks when he
went away; he kissed us all, but me first of all, and held
both my hands. I think he must have liked me too,--don't you
think so, Katje?" "'Yes," said Katje softly.
"He went down the road between my brothers with his head
bent like an old man's, and I watched him out of sight, and
I was very, very sorry for him. I don't think I cried, but
I may have. He was a fine tall man.
"One night my brothers came in just as I was going to bed,
and one stood in the door while the other whispered to my
mother. She looked up and saw me standing there.
"'Go to bed,' she said.
"'What is it?' I asked.
"'Go to bed,' said my brother.
"'No.' I said. 'Tell me, is it Fanie?'
"My brother looked at me and threw up his hand like a man
who can do no more. 'Yes,' he said.
"Then I knew, as though he had shouted it out, that Fanie
was dead. I cannot say how, but I knew it.
"'He is dead,' I said. 'Bring him in here.'
"So they went out and carried Fanie in with his clothes all
draggled and his beard full of mud. They laid him on the
table, and I saw his face. . . . Dear God! . . There was
terror on that face, carven and set in dead flesh, that set
my blood screaming in my body. Sometimes even now I wake in
the night all shrinking with fear of the very memory of it.
"But there is one thing more. We went about to put
everything in order and lay the poor corpse in decency, and
when we started to pull off his veldschoen, as I hope to
die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood still wet
on the toe.
"I think God's right hand was on my head that night that I
did not go mad.
"I heard the tale next morning. My brothers, coming home,
found him ... it . . . in a spruit, already quite dead.
There was no horse by, but his spoor led back a mile to
where the horse lay dead and stiff. When it fell he must
have run on, ... screaming, perhaps, . . . till he fell in
the spruit. I would like to think peace came to him at the
last; but there was no peace in the dead face."
The Vrouw Grobelaar dropped her face on to her hands, and
Katje came and passed an arm of sympathy and protection
around her.
THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN
The Vrouw Grobelaar had no opinion of Kafirs, and was
forever ready to justify herself in this particular.
"Kafirs,' she said, 'are not men, whatever the German
missionaries may say. I do not deny we have a duty to them,
as to the beasts of the field; but as for being men, well,
a baboon is as much a man as a Kafir is.
"Kafirs are made to work, and ought to work. Katje, what
are you laughing about? Did not the dear God make
everything for a purpose, and what is the use of a Kafir if
he is not made to work? Work for themselves? Katje, you are
learning nothing but rubbish at that school, and I will not
have you say such things. How could the Burghers work the
farms if they had not the Kafirs? Well, be silent, then.
"Oh, I know the Kafirs. I have seen hundreds of them--yes,
and for the matter of that, thousands. Just beasts, they
are,--nothing--else. Did you hear how the Vrouw Coetzee came
to die? Well, I will tell you, and you will see that we
must hold the Kafirs with a hand of iron or they will
destroy us.
"It was a time when Piet Coetzee was away making laws in
Pretoria, and the Vrouw Coetzee, who was only married one
year, was alone on the farm with her little baby. There
were plenty of Kafirs to do the work; but, you see, there
was no man to have an eye to them, and take a sjambok to
them when they needed it. So one day the Kafirs came in
from the lands and would not work any more.
"Why wouldn't they work? How should I know? Who can tell
why a Kafir does anything? Perhaps a witch-doctor had come
among them. Perhaps the German missionaries had been
talking foolishness to them. Perhaps it began at a beer-
drink with some boasting by the young men before the girls.
Who can say? But however it was, they came in and sat down
before the house, and just waited there.
"Vrouw Coetzee came out with her baby on her arm and spoke
to them; but not one moved a finger or answered a word.
They sat still where they were and watched her, and others
came from the huts and sat down too, until there were close
on a hundred Kafirs before the house. Vrouw Coetzee watched
them come, and as she stood in the door the two Kafir girls
who worked about the house pushed her aside and went and
sat down too.
"Then Vrouw Coetzee, looking at the dumb black faces and
white eyes, got frightened and went backwards into the
house and closed the door. She put down the baby and drew
the iron bar across the door inside. From there she went to
the door at the back, and to all the windows, and closed
and secured them as far as possible. Then she took down the
old elephant-gun from the wall, and finding Piet's pouch
and the bullets, she loaded it and laid it on the table.
All the time the Kafirs made no sign, and from the keyhole
she saw them still sitting in silence, watching the house.
"When midday came she made some food ready to eat, and then
came a bang at the door.
"'What is it you want?' she cried, without opening.
"'Liquor!' cried one of the Kafirs. 'You have some brandy
in the house. Give it to us, or we will come and take it
and kill you at the same time.'
"'I have no brandy,' she cried, 'and when my husband comes
back I will tell him to shoot you all.'
"The Kafirs laughed, and one of the house-girls called out,
'There is brandy; we have seen it.'
"Then the Kafirs all began to shout together, and banged
the door with their knobkerries. 'Give us the brandy!' they
shouted, and she heard a stone smash through a window
against the shutters.
"The Vrouw Coetzee was a brave woman, and she hated Kafirs;
but, looking at the baby, she thought it best to give them
the brandy.
"'Stand away from the window,' she cried, 'and I will put
the brandy outside; but if one of you comes near me I will
shoot.'
"So she placed the brandy on the sill outside the window.
The Kafirs were standing about in groups, looking very
fierce, but they saw the elephant-gun and did nothing. But
as she barred the shutter again, she heard them rush up and
snatch the bottles.
"Watching through the keyhole of the door, she saw them
troop off to the huts, shouting and capering and waving the
bottles in the air. They came to the door no more that day,
but she heard them howling in the kraal as the brandy began
to inflame them.
"When it got dark she sat down with her face to the door,
her child in her arms. The howling of the Kafirs was wilder
than ever, and shrieks of women mingled with the uproar.
The Vrouw Coetzee trembled there in the dark as she
remembered stories of the Kafir wars, and how the Kafirs
had treated the white women and children they caught on the
farms.
"Late in the night the Kafirs came back and commenced to
hammer on the door again.
"'Give us more brandy,' they shouted.
"'I have no more,' she said. 'I have given you all.'
"'You lie!' they screamed. 'If you do not give us more we
will come and kill you and tear your baby to pieces.'
"Then the Vrouw Coetzee began to tremble, and, putting down
the child, took the big gun in her hands.
"'That is you, Kleinbooi,' she cried out, recognizing the
voice of one of the Kafirs. 'Why do you behave like this?
What will the baas say when he comes back?'
"'We do not care for the baas,' they replied. 'If you do
not give us the brandy we will break in your door.'
"'I have no more,' she said again, and straightway the
Kafirs commenced to hammer at the door.
"The Vrouw Coetzee raised the gun to her shoulder and
pointed it at the door. Her arms were trembling so that she
could not keep it steady; so, going close up to the door,
she rested the muzzle on the iron bar. Then she pulled the
trigger.
"The gun went off with a roar and filled the room with a
stifling smoke. The baby began to cry, but she paid it no
attention till the gun was loaded again. Then, as she
snatched up her child and soothed it, she heard wailing and
screaming from outside, where the heavy bullet had done its
work.
"The Kafirs left her at peace for about an hour, and the
noise of the wounded sank to a sobbing. At last a voice
hailed her again.
"'We will kill you now,' it said. 'You have shot two men,'
and she was assailed with a string of horrid names such as
only a Kafir can think of.
"'Where are you?' she called, terrified.
"'Here,' came the reply, and a little stone fell down the
chimney.
"'I will shoot!' she screamed, taking up the gun; but the
Kafir on the roof answered with only a laugh.
"'It will do no good,' he replied. 'We shall kill you, burn
you in a fire slowly, scald you with boiling water, cut you
in little pieces,' and he went on to threaten the lone
woman with the most fiendish and ghastly outrages, such as
I dare not even give a name to.
"The low devilish voice on the roof went on. 'And your
baby, vile thing! You shall see it writhe in the flames,
and hear it cry to you, and watch the blood spout from its
skin. You shall see the dogs tearing it, while you lie in
anguish, powerless to aid it. Yes, we will kill the child
first, and slowly--slowly! It shall cry a long time before
it shall die at last.'
"Then the Vrouw Coetzee, calling aloud on God, pointed the
gun and fired through the roof. There was a laugh again,
and before the smoke cleared a big Kafir dropped down the
wide chimney and rushed at her.
"Her gun was empty, but the Vrouw Coetzee was the worthy
wife of a good Boer, and she raised the heavy weapon and
struck him down. He rolled, face upward, on the floor, and
as he lay she struck him again. He kicked once or twice
with his legs and clutched with his hands; and then he lay
still and died.
"It was their plan, you see, that she should fire off her
gun and then be taken before she had time to recharge it.
"'Have you got the woman, Martinus?' called a Kafir from
outside.
"'No,' cried the Vrouw Coetzee; Martinus has not got the
woman, for I have killed him. Who comes next?'
"There was a while of silence then, till she heard them
moving about again and talking among themselves. Not daring
to think what they would do next, she stood hearkening,
with the great gun on her arm. At length came a sound that
froze the blood in her body. She heard the sheet-iron on
the roof grate as it was dragged off. Then she dropped the
gun at her feet and knew that her time was come.
"I cannot tell you in so many words what she did in the
next minutes, for my tongue refuses the tale. But the
Kafirs did not get into the house. By this time the news of
their doings was gone abroad, and as the roof was being
taken off the house, some Burghers arrived with guns, and
with them my husband. Of course they shot most of the
Kafirs that they could find, and then, being unable to get
any answer to their shouts, they broke in the door of the
house and entered.
"My husband used to weep as he told of what they found. The
Vrouw Coetzee was sitting in a chair, smiling with her eyes
closed, and her baby was lying in the crutch of her left
arm. Her right hand was on his little soft throat--his face
blue and swollen, and his little arms stretched out with
tight closed fists. He was quite dead, but warm yet, for he
had missed life by but a few minutes.
"No, the Vrouw Coetzee was not dead. She died a year after;
but all that while she went witless, always smiling and
seeming to look for something.
"So you see that, after all, a Kafir is--Katje, what are you
crying about?"
PIET NAUDE'S TREK
On Sunday afternoons the Vrouw Grobelaar's household gave
itself up, unwillingly enough, to religious exercises. The
girls retired to their rooms in company with the works of
certain well-meaning but inexpressibly dreary authors, and
it is to be inferred they read them with profit. The
children sat around the big room with Bibles, their task
being to learn by heart one of the eight-verse
articulations of the 119th Psalm, while the old lady
meditated in her armchair and maintained discipline. Those
were stern times for the young students: to fidget in one's
seat was to court calamity; even to scratch oneself was a
risky experiment. David got little credit as a bard in that
assembly.
But the work once done, the stumbling recitation dared and
achieved, there were compensations, for the Vrouw Grobelaar
was then approachable for a story. To be sure, the Sunday
afternoon stories were known to all the children almost by
heart, but what good tale will not bear repetition? The
history of Piet Naude's Trek was an evergreen favorite, and
bore a weighty moral.
The old lady began this story in the only possible way.
"Once upon a time, long before the Boers came to the
Transvaal, there lived a man named Piet Naude. He was a
tall, strong Burgher, with a long beard that swept down to
his waist, and a moustache like bright gold that drooped
lower than his chin. His eye was so clear that he could see
the legs of a galloping buck a mile away; his hand was so
sure that he never wasted a bullet; and his heart was so
good and true that all the Burghers loved him and followed
him in whatever he did.
"Well, when the English came to the Burghers and wanted
them to pay taxes for their farms that they had won in
battle from the Kafirs, all the men in Piet Naude's country
were very angry and said, 'Let us take our guns and shoot
the English into the sea, so that the land will be clear of
them.' Everybody was willing, and but for Piet Naude there
would have been a great and bloody war, and all the English
would have been killed.
"But Piet Naude said, 'Brothers, have patience. When we
fought the Kafirs we beat them, but many of us were killed
also. If we fight the English, many more will be killed,
and we are not too many now. But I will tell you what we
will do. We will not pay this tax. We will inspan our oxen
and load up our wagons, and we will take our sheep and our
cattle and our horses, and trek to the north until we find
a place where we can live in peace; and thus we shall have
a country of our own and pay no taxes to anybody.'
"As soon as the Burghers heard this they were agreed, and
chose out Piet Naude to lead them to the new country. So
when the English came to collect the tax they found nobody
to pay, but only an empty country, with trampled cornlands
and burned homesteads, and wild Kafirs living in the
kraals.
"But Piet Naude and his Burghers trekked steadily on with
the wagons and the cattle,--sometimes through a fine level
country full of water and game, and sometimes through a
savage wilderness of rocks and dangerous beasts. The sun
scorched them by day and the mists froze them by night;
some died by the way, and some were killed by lions, and
some bitten by snakes. But month after month they held on,
crawling slowly over the desolate face of that great new
country, till at length the ragged weary men cried out and
said they would go no farther.
"'Let us go back to the grass-lands and water,' they said,
'and let us live there, else we shall die, forgotten of
God, in this inhospitable wilderness.' But Piet Naude
wrought with them, saying, 'Let us keep good hearts and
hold on. In time we shall surely come to the best place of
all, where we shall gain cattle and sheep and prosper all
our lives.' And after he had talked with them for a long
time, and shamed them with their weakness, they were
persuaded, and once again they faced the great unknown
country and trekked on.
"But one hot day one of the Burghers who had ridden away to
look for meat came galloping back. 'Over yonder,' he said,
pointing with his hand, 'there is a wide kloof, with a
stream in it. There is grass there as long and thick as the
best pasture of our farms, with trees and wild fruit, and
everything plentiful and beautiful. Without doubt it will
lead us to such a place as we have been seeking.'
"So the wagons were turned aside, and they went forward to
the kloof, all the Burghers uplifted with hope, and the
very oxen pulling their best. But Piet Naude said nothing,
for he had a strange doubt in his heart, and he rode on
anxiously. And when they came to the kloof they saw that
all the Burgher had said was even less than true. The veld
underfoot was soft and tender as satin, and the grass was
fresh and green. On each side the tall hills cast back the
sun, so that the beautiful cool shade fell like a blessing
on their scorched faces. There was wild hemp {dagga} for
the Kafirs to smoke; and wild apricots running over the
stones; water splashing, clear and fresh, beside the way;
mimosa-trees to give wood for the fires; and everywhere
they saw the spoor of every kind of buck. The Burghers were
overwhelmed with gladness, and pushed on gaily.
"On the next day the kloof widened out, and they came forth
into a most wonderful plain girt round with steep cliffs,
and all overgrown with grass and trees. At a little
distance they saw cattle grazing wild, and big herds of
buck roaming in the open. Birds started without fear from
under their feet, and in the streams fish swam plain to
see.
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