Kafir Stories: Seven Short Stories

by W. C. Scully

VI.

About three years after the tragedy just related, a native man and woman lived together in a lonely hut close to the mouth of the Bashee river, They were clad in the savage garb common to the uncivilised natives. The woman was of a much lighter complexion than the man, and she carried, slung on her back, an emaciated child with a badly deformed spine. On her face and body were many scars, most of them healed up, but some still raw, and evidently of recent infliction. Samuel Gozani and Martha Kawa had wandered far since leaving the mission. They had gone together to the kraal of the headman, Samuel's father, in Gealekaland, but Samuel's violent temper had led to his being driven away. His father gave him a few goats, and his other relations told him to depart and return no more. So he and Martha built a hut far from other men, and cultivated a small field of maize, millet, and pumpkins. Samuel's temper grew worse under the stress of his solitary life, and Martha suffered much from his ill-treatment. Shortly after an act of particularly brutal violence on his part she was confined, and the poor little baby, a boy, was found to be hopelessly deformed. According to native custom, such a child would have been destroyed, but when Samuel suggested this, the mother blazed out into such wrath that he did not refer to the subject again. It soon became apparent that Samuel—sometimes, at least—was insane. He seemed hardly ever to sleep, and he remained days without speaking, One day, on entering the hut, he savagely kicked the child, which was lying on a mat just inside the door, to one side. The poor little thing set up a thin, piteous squeal, which, when the mother heard it, roused her to a pitch of tiger-like fury. She rushed at Samuel and flung him backwards out of the door. Incensed to madness, he sprang at her, dashed her down on the floor, and held her with his hands at her throat, and his knees pressing violently on her stomach. He held her thus for some seconds, then sprang up, rushed out of the hut, and disappeared into the bush.

The wretched woman lay senseless for some time, and when she regained consciousness she felt that she had sustained some serious internal injury. It was early in the forenoon when the deed was done, and in the afternoon her body began to swell, and she suffered violent pain. She had, as a matter of fact, sustained a severe internal rupture. She managed to crawl over to where the child lay, still wailing, and she gave it the breast to still it. Then she began to suffer from violent thirst, but there was neither water nor milk in the hut. Owing to Samuel's bad reputation no one ever came to his dwelling, and thus Martha had no chance of succour before his return, which she now longed for. The sun went down, and she lay in agony, watching the dying daylight. She lay through the long, slow hours of the night, unable co move, and with the poor little child tugging at her in vain, and fitfully wailing from hunger and cold, for the fire had long since gone out. When morning broke she became delirious; later on she became unconscious, and remained so all day. When Samuel returned at sundown, driving home the little flock of goats, she appeared to be at the last gasp. He was, to do him justice, much shocked at what he saw. Samuel at once ran down to the river and fetched some water, a little of which, poured down Martha's parched throat, restored her to consciousness. He lit a fire and sat down near her, giving her a sip of water now and then. He even wrapped the child up in a tanned calf skin, and then went out and caught a she-goat, which he flung to the ground, and tied by its extended legs to two poles of the hut, which were about six feet apart. He then placed the chilled and starving child where it could suck one of the teats. The goat struggled and withheld its milk, but Samuel held it down and kneaded the udder until the draught came, and the child drank long and deeply.

When the mother saw this, she smiled faintly, and just afterwards she fell quietly asleep. The child also slept, so Samuel released the goat and returned to his seat.

The fire flickered up and showed by fits and starts the inside of the hut. There lay the dying woman, her deathlike face drawn and haggard from her long agony, breathing very shortly, the beginning of the death rattle being audible. There lay the child, half covered by the skin, its lips parted in the ghastly semblance of a smile which was due to the indigestion caused by a heavy meal of unusual food, and there sat Samuel with wide open eyes, looking down into the fire without seeing it.

Outside the stars glittered down through the cool June air upon the lovely valley, rich in forest and flanked by gently-swelling, grassy hills. The tinkling murmur of the river which, after rainless months, had shrunk to the dimensions of a streamlet, except in the long, deep reaches, stole up from where it ran, crystal clear, over a low, rocky bar.

Suddenly Martha opened her eyes and spoke in a thin, far-away voice—

"Samuel."

He started, and, moving to where she lay, bent over her.

"Samuel," she said, "I am dying—now! now!" (She spoke English, a thing neither of them had done since they had left the mission.) "Perhaps it is true—what they used to teach us—perhaps Jesus did die for us.—Samuel—I love you—and you have killed me—but if I find— Jesus—I will ask—him—to let you come!"