Chapter Twelve.
The Bondage of Koos Bester.
Max’s mourning for his old friend was deep and sincere. The heart of the young man, from its first awakening, recoiled from the sordidness of most of those with whom he had come in daily contact, and clave to the best within its reach—this by virtue of its natural intuitions. For a time it seemed as though a blank had been created which could never be filled. The evenings spent in the shop when Oom Schulpad and Gemsbok had contended like a couple of troubadours—the weird tales of his experiences during the six years of his banishment from the tents of men, which the old waif had related with such tragic and truthful pathos—his devotion to his miserable old wife, that decayed relic of womanhood, which was as tender as ever his love could have been for the companion of his early years—all these dwelt in the mind of Max and tinged it with what he deemed would be an abiding sadness.
On the other hand the acquisition of the five diamonds had materially improved his prospects. He hid them in a safe place and determined not to mention the fact of their existence to any one but Susannah. They were stones of very pure water, averaging about ten carats each in weight. Max knew that they must be very valuable, but he was unable to guess their worth. He made up his mind that he would have to take them to Europe and realise them there.
Even Oom Schulpad seemed to be depressed by the old Hottentot’s fate. When he now came to see Max of an evening he did not bring his violin. The two would just sit and smoke in silence, each well aware of what was filling the thoughts of the other. To Max it seemed as if the ghost of the slain man haunted the room on these occasions, asking why his only friends had not taken vengeance upon his slayer.
Oom Schulpad did not believe very much in anything outside the circle of his experiences—certainly not in ghosts. He had attained to a philosophy which might be summed up in a phrase—“Never interfere in anything that does not directly concern you.” His stock formula into which the foregoing principle had crystallised was—“No man should ever rub resin on any but his own bow.”
“But,” he continued one night after reiterating this phrase several times, “I mean to scratch Koos Bester’s nose with a certain piece of resin which I have in my pocket. He had no business to put his big hands upon any man who could make music like that, Bushman or no Bushman.”
Max pricked up his ears and looked at the old fiddler with a question in his eyes.
“I know Koos,” continued Oom Schulpad, “and if he does not bark his shins as well as his nose against the lump of resin which I will put in his path—well, I’m no fiddler and the Bushman knew no music. He said my back was like a springbuck’s when it ‘pronks,’ did he, and that my mouth was as poisonous as a sand-adder’s? Also he broke the ramkee—to say nothing of killing the old Bushman.”