Chapter Sixteen.
Gideon’s Flight to the Wilderness.
After Gideon had become somewhat accustomed to Elsie’s presence that awe with which she had at first inspired him began to lessen. Now that he meant to go away finally nothing she knew or could do mattered to him very much. He was fond of Aletta in a way,—more or less as one is fond of a faithful dog, but she was the only being in the wide world who cared for him, so he felt the prospect of parting from her very keenly. He determined to make a full confession of his transgression to her before leaving, feeling persuaded that thenceforth she would look upon him with abhorrence and thus would not sorrow at his departure. The thought that he was about to destroy his patient wife’s regard for his lonely self was not the least of Gideon’s troubles.
He tried to carry off his distress with an air of unconcern which, however, did not deceive anyone. As the preparations for his departure were being hurried towards completion he became more talkative than usual. Aletta, at the near prospect of the parting, was sunk in the depths of misery. Adrian and his wife who resided with Uncle Gideon, now and then visited the homestead. Jacomina had refused to leave her father, on the pretext that her assistance in his medical practice was indispensable. The true reason was, however, that she wanted, if possible, to prevent him marrying again.
Elsie, to whom the night was as the day, continued her old habit of wandering abroad after all the others had gone to bed. She invariably dressed in light colours and used to flit like a ghost among the trees. Gideon had dubbed her “White Owl,” and he never addressed her as anything else.
Two days before Gideon’s intended departure the three were sitting at breakfast. A messenger who had been despatched to the residence of the Field Cornet, some forty miles away, was seen approaching. Gideon was in one of his forced sardonic moods.
“Aletta,” he said, “your eyes are red again; have you been boiling soap?”
“No, Gideon; it is not only the steam from the soap-pot that reddens the eyes.”
“Has the maid spoilt a batch of bread? If she has, her eyes ought to be red and not yours.”
“No, Gideon,—the bread has been well baked.”
“What is the matter, then? Sunday, Monday and Tuesday your face is like a pumpkin when the rain is falling; Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the water is still running; Saturday it is not dry. Did you ever laugh in your life?”
“It is long since I have heard you laugh, Gideon.”
“I? I can laugh now,—Well,—you have never seen me weep.”
“Would to God you did rather than laugh like that.”
“Uncle Gideon,” said Elsie, “one day your tears will flow.”
“When will that day come, White Owl?”
“When my father’s prison doors are opened.”
Gideon glared at her, terror and fury writ large upon his distorted face. Just then a knock was heard; Aletta arose and went to the door where she found the returned messenger, who had just off-saddled his horse. She came back to the table and silently laid a letter before Gideon who, when he recognised the handwriting started violently. After looking at the letter for a few seconds he picked it up as though about to open it; then he flung the missive down and hurried from the room.
“Elsie,” said Aletta in agitated tones, “here is a letter from your father.”
Elsie sprang to her feet.
“Read it,—read it,—Aunt,” she said, “perhaps the prison doors are open.”
Aletta opened the letter with shaking fingers and read it aloud laboriously and in an agitated voice:—
“My Brother Gideon,
“In three days from now I shall once more walk God’s earth—a free man. Because I worked well and did as I was bidden without question, my time of punishment has been shortened. From our cousins at Stellenbosch I have obtained a wagon and oxen, by means of which I shall at once hurry home. When this reaches you I shall be well on my way. My first business must be to see you.
“We two have a reckoning to make together. It will be best that we be alone when it is made.
“Your brother,
“Stephanus.”
Aletta uttered a moan and bent forward with her face on the table. Elsie, with a rapt smile on her face stood up and laid her hand upon her aunt’s shoulder. Then a hurried step was heard and Gideon entered the room.
Seeing the letter lying upon the table where it had fallen from his wife’s nerveless hand, Gideon picked it up and hurriedly read it through. Then, with a curse, he flung it down.
“Aletta,” he cried, “I am going at once. I cannot meet him. God—why was I born this man’s brother?—Nine long years thirsting for my blood.”
“It is not your blood that he wants, Uncle Gideon,” said Elsie in a calm tone.
“Yes,—yes, Gideon,” said Aletta, “go away for a time. I will keep him here and try to soften his heart.”
“Yes,—keep him here for a time—for only a little time—but I shall go away for ever. I shall go where never a white man’s foot has trod, and when I can go no farther I will dig my own grave.”
“Do not go, Uncle Gideon,” said Elsie, “stay and meet him.”
“Silence, blind tiger’s cub that wants my blood. Get out of my sight.”
“You will not go so far but that he will find you,” said Elsie as she moved from the room. “He will have his reckoning. He does not want your blood.”
“Aletta, I have told them to inspan the wagon and start. Put in my food and bedding at once. When the wagon has gone we will talk; I will follow it on horseback. I have things to tell you that will make you hate me and wish never to see my face again.”
“Nothing could make that happen.—Gideon, I know—”
“Wait,—let me see when this letter was written—Christ! it is thirteen days old,—he must be nearly here—”
Gideon rushed from the room and began to hurry the servants in their preparations for departure. The oxen had just been driven down from their grazing ground high on the mountain side. The wagon had been hurriedly packed with bedding, water, food and other stores. The mob of horses were driven in from the kraal; Gideon gave hurried directions to the Hottentot servants as to which were to be selected. Soon the wagon was lumbering heavily up the steep mountain track towards the unknown, mysterious North, in the direction where Gideon had so sorely and vainly sought for the dwelling-place of Peace.
The horses were now caught and Gideon’s favourite hunting steed saddled up. The spare horses were led after the wagon by a Hottentot after-rider. Then Gideon entered the house to take farewell of his wife.
He bent down and kissed her almost passionately on the lips.
“Aletta,” he said, “you will not understand me; nobody could. What I have done will seem to you the worst of sins;—yet to me it was right—and yet it has hung like a millstone about my neck all these years.”
Aletta seized one of his hands between hers.
“It will fall from you if you repent,” she said.
“Repent. Never. He deserved it; I would do it again to-morrow. Aletta,” (here he moved towards the door, trying to disengage his hand) “Stephanus never meant to shoot me; the gun went off by accident. I accused him falsely and he has suffered all these years for a thing he did not do. Now,—good-bye.”
He again tried to escape, but Aletta held him fast.
“Come back, come back, Gideon,—I have known this for years.”
“Known it?”
“Yes,—and so has Elsie, although no word of it has passed between us.”
“Do not think that I regret it; do not think that I repent. He deserved it all, and more. Think of all he did to me.—And yet I fear to meet him.—That blind girl—she wants to dip her white fingers in my blood—and yet I do not fear his killing me. Do you know why I am running away from him?”
“Yes, you fear to meet his eyes.”
“That is it,—his eyes. I am not afraid of death at his hands—although I suppose God will send me to burn in Hell for doing the work He keeps for His own hands.—And he means to kill me when he finds me—the White Owl knows it—but his eyes—Nine years chained up with blacks, thinking the whole time of his wrong and his revenge.—You remember how big and fierce his eyes used to get in anger.—I have seen them across the plains and the mountains for nine years, getting bigger and fiercer. They are always glaring at me; I fear them more than his bullet.”
“Yes, Gideon, it is well that you go away for a time. I will try what I can do. He is getting to be an old man now and anger does not burn so hotly in the old as in the young. I will not speak to him now, but when he has been free for a time I will kneel to him and beg him to forgive for Marta’s sake, and Elsie’s. Elsie does not hate you, Gideon.”
“She must, if she knows what I have done to her father. She hates me. You heard what she said about his having his reckoning. Were his anger to cool she would light it anew with those eyes of hers that glow like those of a lion in the dark. But anger such as his does not cool.”
“Gideon, you are wrong about Elsie; she loves her father, but she will not counsel him to take revenge. Oh, Gideon, we are old now, and this hatred has kept us in cold and darkness all our lives. One little, happy year; then the first quarrel,—and ever since misery and loneliness. If he forgives, you will come back. Do not take away my only hope.”
“He will never forgive.”
“I will follow him about and kneel to him every day until he forgives. Then you will come back and we will again be happy—just a little happiness and peace before we die.”
“Happy, Aletta? There is no more happiness for us. He—he killed our joy years back, for ever. I go away now and I shall never return. Get Adrian and his wife to come and live here. For years I have known that this would happen. At first I hoped that he would die; then I knew that God was keeping him alive and well and strong to punish me for doing His work. I have made over the farm and stock to you; the papers are in the camphor-wood box. Good-bye,—we must never meet again.”
“My husband, the desert, holds spoor a long time. The sand-storm blots it out for a distance, but it is found again farther on. When Stephanus forgives I will follow you and bring you back.”
“No, Aletta, we will meet no more. When I die my bones will lie where no Christian foot has ever trod.”
“Gideon, on the day when Stephanus forgives I will go forth seeking you, and I will seek until I find you or until I die in the waste.”
When Gideon van der Walt reached the mountain saddle at the head of the kloof, across which the track which led into the desert plains of Bushmanland passed, he turned and took a long look at his homestead. Then his glance wandered searchingly over the valley in which his life had been passed. There it lay, green and fertile,—for the south-western rains had fallen heavily and often during the last few months. The black, krantzed ranges glowed in the noontide sun. The last spot his eye rested upon before he crossed the saddle was the little patch of vivid foliage surrounding the spring on the tiny ripples of which his life and the lives of so many others had been wrecked. Just on the edge of the copse the stream seemed to hang like a bright jewel, as the sunlight glinted from the pure, limpid water.
As Gideon turned away his eyes grew moist for an instant, and he felt a queer, unbidden feeling of almost tenderness for the brother with whom among these hills and valleys he had played and hunted in the days of his innocence, creeping like a tendril about his heart. But he crushed the feeling down, and rode on with his hat pressed over his eyebrows.
On the other side of the mountain pass the outlook was different. He was on the north-eastern limit of the coast rains. Bushmanland depended for its uncertain rainfall upon thunderstorms from the north in the summer season. But for two years no rain had fallen anywhere near the southern fringe of the desert, so the plains which stretched forth northward from Gideon’s feet were utterly void of green vegetation.
To one familiar with the desert the sight before him had an awful significance; it meant that there was no water, nor any vegetation worth considering for at least a hundred and fifty miles. Gideon had known, by the fact of the larger game flocking down into the valleys, that Bushmanland was both verdureless and waterless, and that anyone who should attempt to cross it would incur a terrible risk.
But nothing before him could compete for terror with what he was fleeing from. Setting spurs to his horse Gideon passed the wagon; then he rode ahead at a walk, the patient oxen following with the rumbling wagon, upon his tracks.