Chapter Nine.
The Last of the “Old Woman.”
Max had no taste for slaughter. The hunter’s instinct, which makes so many otherwise humane men cruel, was not in him. He therefore felt it no privation that he was unable to leave the shop and join the hunters as he had done in previous years when the trek had taken place. On the other hand he felt with satisfaction that he could now see more of Susannah, her uncle being out of the way, and he made the most of his opportunities in this respect.
Max was rapidly developing from a boy into a man, and many of the little traits specially characteristic of modern Israel began to show themselves in him. Of Old Schalk he stood in awe; the brutal directness of the way in which the old Boer uttered all his thoughts frightened him. Mrs Hattingh, however, had ceased to impress him since the day she had obtained the dresses for her granddaughters fraudulently and on the strength of his attachment to Susannah. Max felt that he held her at a moral disadvantage, and she tacitly acquiesced in this.
Max spent every evening while Old Schalk was away at his sweetheart’s side. He told her of his legacy, and around this nucleus they began to weave plans for the future. Max had saved a little money out of the small salary which his brother allowed him. He thought seriously of leaving Nathan’s service as soon as the latter returned, and setting up on his own account as a hawker.
His first notion was to buy some stock and set up as a Trek-Boer, but Susannah put a decided veto upon this proposal. The prospect of being married to a man who spent most of his life in wandering about with a cart and four donkeys was almost equally unattractive. The latter alternative might, however, lead to something better eventually. Susannah was in no hurry; she told her lover plainly that although she was prepared to wait indefinitely for him she would not marry until he could give her a proper home.
Late one night, after Max had returned home to the shop, he heard a knock at the door. He found Gert Gemsbok standing before the threshold. The old Hottentot stepped in, and, as usual, sat down on the floor.
“Baas Max, I want to tell you a secret.”
“Yes; what is it?”
“Baas Max, when I was living down on the bank of the river I one day picked something up.”
“Yes; what was it?”
“You have been kind to me and I can trust you. Here is what I picked up.”
Gemsbok handed over to Max the smallest of the six diamonds. He had, after careful consideration, determined to trust his master so far, with the view of realising part at least of his valuables.
Max took the stone and looked carefully at it. He knew well enough that it was a rough diamond; as a child in Cape Town he had often seen illicitly obtained stones of this kind handed round among the Jews who frequented the lodging-house where he stayed for a short time upon his arrival in the colony. The gem weighed about eight carats; it was of good water and perfect shape.
“I found it,” continued Gemsbok, “hidden in a boot which came down in the flood, just above the Augrabies Falls. I know, for I have worked at the diamond fields, that I should be sent back to the tronk if that stone were found on me, so I thought you might sell it and give me half the money. If you will do this it will satisfy me.”
Max considered for a while, and then decided that this was a matter for his brother to deal with. He knew well enough that the possession of diamonds which could not be satisfactorily accounted for was a criminal offence severely punishable. The law was to Max a thing very dreadful. He had never seen its manifestations, but he had heard of Willem Bester and others who had broken the law and suffered grievously in consequence. Nathan, however, as was proved in his ostrich-feather dealings, held the law in sovereign contempt. Nathan was the man to deal with a matter such as this; Max would have none of it. In the meantime, however, he agreed to keep the stone in the small iron safe and to advance Gemsbok some coffee, sugar, and tobacco, for the delectation of himself and his “Old Woman,” as the latter always called her, upon its security.
But the “Old Woman” had no long enjoyment of the luxuries, for two days later, when Gemsbok came in from the veld with his flock, he found that she was dead. She had passed away in her sleep. Gemsbok expressed himself to Max as being glad that the poor old creature had breathed her last. She had, he said, suffered so much of late, and now she would never feel pain or privation any more. He dug a hole in a sandy gully behind one of the smaller kopjes and there the poor, unlovely corpse was laid. In spite of her physical sufferings the quaint old creature had spent a very happy time at Namies. She had enjoyed a sufficiency of fairly wholesome food, besides the occasional trifles in the way of coffee, sugar, and tobacco which Max’s bounty supplied her with. These had afforded her the keenest and, perhaps, the only enjoyment she was capable of feeling.
Gemsbok, in spite of his repeated declarations that he was glad the “Old Woman” was gone, did not appear to be happy. No matter how bright the fire of candle-bushes, the scherm was lonely at night—even an old woman so broken down by rheumatism and poverty of blood that she could not use her limbs and was hardly capable of carrying her food to her mouth, was better than no human companion at all.
Gemsbok had now no companion but his dog, which was an animal as friendless as its master. All day long alone in the veld, under the changeless Desert sky; all night long alone in the scherm, under the unregarding stars. Man is a gregarious animal, and the burthen of one’s own presence galls as only those burthens do which carry as dead weight the broken shackles of one of Nature’s disregarded laws.
Sleep was difficult to get. It had been usual for the old couple to remain awake talking half the night through. Lying awake alone proved to be a very different thing. He moved his scherm to another spot; that did not improve matters, so he moved it back again. He no longer enjoyed his coffee or tobacco. The average man almost invariably gets to love anything totally dependent on him—no matter how unlovely it may be. Some loves are not recognised in anything like their fulness until the removal of the thing loved leaves a void which can never be filled.
A Hottentot is naturally among the most sociable of beings; Gert Gemsbok was no exception to the rule of his race in this respect. He had, however, made no friends among his own race at Namies. He could not visit the scherms of the other Hottentots; all were in the service of Trek-Boers, and the boycott against him was strict. As a protest against Max’s unheard-of conduct in keeping such a man in his service, all the Boers had given strict injunctions to their servants to have nothing to do with the informer against Willem Bester. Besides, Gemsbok was; morally and intellectually, far in advance of all with whom he might, under other circumstances, have associated. Aristotle’s aphorism as to the effect of solitude upon man is very true, and Gert Gemsbok had not become a beast in his exile.
Max noticed that now the old man never lost an opportunity of being near him. In the evenings, whenever Max happened to be in the shop, Gemsbok would come in, sit on the floor, and tell of his experiences. He thus told the true story of his life in detached fragments. And what a tale it was! what a lurid record of long-drawn, strenuous suffering made bearable, at first by the memory and afterwards by the companionship of a kindred mate! One night the old man told Max that he did not expect to live long; he felt his time had nearly come and he had no wish to prolong an existence which was now more than ever a weariness.
He did not, he said, care much whether he obtained any of the proceeds of the sale of the diamond or not; he had no desire now except to get enough food for himself and an occasional bite for his dog. The “Old Woman” was gone, and the sooner he too went the better.
His music now was all in a minor key; no more reels and jigs that made one long to caper. The old, stock melody ran through all he played, making it like an endless, barbaric fugue—weird and melancholy. His nocturnal performances sometimes made the dog leap out of the scherm and howl despairingly at the stars. In accompanying Oom Schulpad his hand seemed to have lost his cunning. The old fiddler would, however, sit for long periods, astonished and uncannily fascinated by the eerie tones scattered by the saddened strings of the ramkee.