“He did not come back for eleven months after you had passed,” she continued in her sad relentless voice. “My baby was here when he returned—so of course he knew. But he said nothing. I feared terribly for the child at first, but in the end I came to think that he did not care. Then, one day, when my fears were all asleep, he disappeared, taking my baby with him for three days. Grietje and I roamed the veld seeking them, and on the night of the third day as we drew near home again we heard the child crying, and coming in we found it with its lovely little face all swollen and black from the poisons he had put in. He was lying on the bench laughing, and called out to me as I came in:
“‘There is your love child. But she will have to do without love.’”
“I was worn out with weeping and wandering for three days and nights, but when he said those words I rushed over to him and killed him. I killed him with these hands.” She looked down on the hands lying on her lap.
“I tore his throat open and his life ran out with his blood,” she said softly.
Carden had no words. He stood looking at the little pale strong hands that were used to smell of apple blossom, and listening like a man in a dream. But it was a bad dream. A nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his days! He was not sure now that those days would be many, that his life too was not passing with every word spoken by that gentle, fateful voice.
“Grietje and I buried him over there under the tree. No one else knows but Xsosa who watched us at the burying in the dead of night.”
Darkness had suddenly enfolded the land. No stars brightened the vapouring gloom but occasionally the fire threw out a blood-red finger showing Grietje cuddling the child to her bosom, crooning some Kaffir lullaby over its head.
“What is to be done,” muttered Carden, in the voice of a man who has come to the end of all ways. He looked at her, but her face was, as ever, hidden in the cappie. He had not seen it once in all this terrible hour and now he knew he would never see it.
“What is there to do?” she said sombrely. “Grietje and I must stay here, with him, until we grow old and die.”
“But... the child?”