Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases: Seventeen Short Stories. Gibbon Perceval

of a dirty takhaar bijwohner on his own farm. He went mad about the girl, and thought her quite different from all other girls, though she had a troop of untidy sisters like herself galloping wild about the place. I will own she was a well-grown slip of a lass, tall and straight, and all that; but she had a winding, bending way with her that struck me like something shameless. For the rest, she had a lot of coal-black hair that bunched round her face like the frame round a picture; but there was something in the color of her skin and the shaping of her lips and nostrils, that made me say to myself, 'Ah, somewhere and somewhen your people have been meddling with the Kafirs.'

      "Black? No, of course she wasn't black. Nor yet yellow; but I tell you, the black blood showed through her white skin so clearly that I wonder Stoffel Mostert did not see it and drive her from his door with a sjambok.

      "But the man was clean mad, and, spite of all we could do—spite of his uncle, the Predikant; spite of the ugly dirty family of the girl herself—he rode her to the dorp and married her there; for the Predikant, godly man, would not turn a hand in the business.

      "Now, just how they lived together I cannot tell you for sure; for you may be very certain I drank no coffee in the house of the bijwohner's daughter. But, by all hearings, they bore with one another very well; and I have even been told that Stoffel was much given to caressing the woman, and she would make out to love him very much indeed.

      "Perhaps she really did? What nonsense! How can a bijwohner's baggage love a well-to-do Burgher? You are talking foolishness. But anyhow, if there was any trouble between them, they kept it to themselves for close upon a year.

      "Then (this is how it has been told to me) one night Stoffel woke up in the dark, and his wife was not beside him.

      "'Is it morning already?' he said, and looked through the window. But the stars were high and bright, and he saw it was scarcely midnight.

      "He lay for a while, and then got up and drew on his clothes—doing everything slowly, hoping she would return. But when he was done she was not yet come, and he went out in the dark to the kitchen, and there he found the outer door unlocked and heard the dog whining in the yard.

      "He took his gun from the beam where it hung and went forth. The dog barked and sprang to him, and together they went out to the veld, seeking Katrina Ruiter.

      "The dog seemed to know what was wanted, and led Stoffel straight out towards the Kafir stad by the Blesbok Spruit. They did not go fast, and on the way Stoffel knelt down and prayed to God, and drew the cartridges from the gun. Then they went on.

      "When they got to the spruit they could see there was a big fire in the stad and hear the Kafirs crying out and beating the drums. The dog ran straight to the edge of the water, and then turned and whined, for there was no more scent. But Stoffel walked straight in, over his knees and up to his waist, and climbed the bank to the wall of the stad.

      "Inside the Kafirs were dancing. Some were tricked out with ornaments and skins and feathers; some were mother-naked and painted all over their bodies. And there was one, a gaunt figure of horror, with his face streaked to the likeness of a skull, and bones hanging clattering all about him. They capered and danced round the fire like devils in hell, and behind them the men with the drums kept up their noise and seemed to drive the dancers to madness.

      "And suddenly the figures round the fire gave way, save the one with the painted face and the bones; for from the shadow of a hut at the back of the fire came another, who rushed into the light and swayed wildly to the barbarous music. The newcomer was naked as a babe new born; wild as a beast of the field; lithe as a serpent; and crazy to savageness with the fire and the drums.

      "Madly she danced, bending forwards and backwards, casting her bare arms above her, while the horror who danced with her writhed and screamed like a soul in pain.

      "Stoffel, behind the wall, stood stunned and bound—for here he saw his wife. He thought nothing, said nothing; but without an effort his hand ran a cartridge into the gun, and leveled it across the wall. He fired, and the lissome body dropped limp across the fire."

      Frikkie Viljoen rose in great wrath.

      "This is how you talk of my sweetheart, is it?" he cried. "Well, I will hear no more of your lies." And he forthwith walked out of the house.

      "Look at that!" said the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I never said a word about his sweetheart."

      COUNTING THE COLORS

      THE horizon to the west was keen as the blade of a knife, and over it all the colors swam and blended in an ecstasy of sunset.

      "There is more blood than peace in a sky like that," observed the Vrouw Grobelaar from her armchair on the stoop. "When I was a child, I never saw a mess of fire in the west but I thought it betokened the end of the world. Ah, well, one grows wiser!"

      "Green is for love," said Katje. "Do you see any green in the sunset?" I saw a mile of it edging on a sea of orange and a mountain of azure.

      "Where?" demanded the old lady. "Oh, that—that's almost blue, which means sin in marriage. But naming the colors in the sky is a wasteful foolishness, and the folk that are guided by them always tumble in the end. When Jan Uys was on his death-bed, he said Dia had always been counting the colors with the Irishman, and that's what caused all the trouble."

      Katje sighed.

      "He was a man of sixty," the unconscious Vrouw continued, "and a Boer of the best, with a farm below the Hangklip, where my cousin Barend's aunt is now. He was a rich and righteous man, too, and as upstanding and strong as any man of his age that I ever saw. He had buried four good wives, so nobody can say he wasn't a good husband, but he had a way with him—something heavy and ugly, like a beast or a Kafir—which many girls didn't like. His fifth wife was Dia, who came from Lord knows where, somewhere down south, and she was only sixteen.

      "I believe in fitting a girl with a husband when she is ripe, and sixteen is old enough with any well-grown maid. But in the case of Dia, it is a pity somebody did not stop to think. She was more than half a child; just a slender, laughing, running thing that liked sweets and peaches better than coffee and meat, and used to throw stones. She threw one at my cart, with her arm low like a boy, and hit my Kafir on the neck, and then squeaked and ran to hide among the kraals. Yes, somebody should have stopped to think before they coupled her to big Jan Uys, with his scowl and his red eyes and white beard, and his sixty hard years behind him."

      "I should think so, indeed," was Katje's comment.

      "What you think is of no importance," retorted the old lady sharply. "I think so, and that settles it. Well, it did not take long for Dia to lose all the froth and foolishness that were in her. The child that was more than half of her nature was simply trampled to death, for Jan Uys had a short way of shaping his women-folk. She used to cry, they say, but never dared to rebel, which I can understand, knowing the man and the way he had of giving an order as though it were impossible for any one to disobey him. In particular, she could not learn to make cheese, and spoilt enough milk to feed a dorp on.

      "'Very well,' he said, 'if you cannot make the cheese the Kafir woman shall do it. And you shall do her work at the churn-handle. I want no idlers in my house.'