The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories

by W. C. Scully

“Next morning we started for Pretoria, and there we both got on the bend. In a week all our money was spent, and we were then kicked out of the hotel. Next day me and my mate got blaming each other, and it ended in my giving him a most almighty hammering, after which we parted.

“I hung about Pretoria for a while, loafing mostly, and doing odd jobs. Then I got work in the country again, and when it was finished, went back to Pretoria and drunk out what I’d made. This sort of thing went on for about five years—a few months’ work at which I’d earn a bit of money—then a couple of weeks’ spree. After this a loaf around looking for jobs and picking up whatever I could get.

“You’re right, sir, sometimes I was in very low water. I’ve lived with the niggers in the locations at the lower end of Pretoria, and I’ve seen some queer sights. I lay ill in a hut there once for three months, and never had a doctor near me; a woman just physicked me with roots, and did me a power of good. When I got better I swore off drink for the twentieth time, and then, as luck would have it, I dropped on a Dutchman who wanted a house built. He lent me a couple of pound to buy clothes with, and then loaded me up on his wagon and took me to his farm, which was not very far from Middleburg.

“After the job, which took me four months, was finished, instead of going back to Pretoria I thought I’d drop round and see how little Hessie and the others on the farm where I’d got my first job over five years ago, were getting on. I’d more than twenty pound in my pocket, and as I’d nearly died through spreeing after I was sick a few months back, I made up my mind to keep on the straight, at all events for some little time to come.

“So I bought an old pony and a secondhand saddle from the man I’d been working for, and then I rode into Middleburg, where I got a bran-new rig-out at one of the stores. Next day I went on to Hessie’s farm. The old man and the old woman were away visiting, and the children, who were nearly all standing outside, had grown so that I hardly knew one of them. It seemed funny that none of them knew me from a crow.

“I just hitched my horse on to a stake, and went straight up to the front door. Not one of the children had recognised me, so they just lolled about and took no notice, same as Dutch children pretty nigh always does. The door was open, but I knocked, meaning to ask for Hessie, and after I’d seen her and got a cup of coffee, to go back to Middleburg. Just then, after I’d knocked, there came down the passage a tall, strapping young woman with the prettiest face I’d ever seen. She shook hands same as the Dutch always do with strangers that come on horseback, and asked me to come inside, so inside I came. I sat down on the old ‘bank’ (sofa) with the straight back and the bottom of crossed thongs, that looked just as if no one had sat on it since I’d left the farm, and then I began to ask the young woman about Hessie. When she heard my voice she gave a start, and then jumped up and called out in her own language: ‘Why it’s Vellum,’ so it turned out to be Hessie after all. She just ran at me, holding out both her hands, and laughing and blushing. Well, in less than no time I was talking to her about all sorts of things, and drinking cups of coffee as hard as ever I could. I could now speak Dutch quite well, but she’d hardly give me a chance to speak at all, being so full of questions, and asking another before I’d had time to answer the one. She was a wonderful pretty girl—very plump, with brown eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks. I’d never have known her again. She kept saying she wondered how it was she’d not known me, and then she’d get quite sad like, and say she thought I looked terrible old, and asked me if I’d had lots of trouble. I said yes, and then she pressed me to tell her what my trouble was. I told her a long yarn about my father and mother having died, and myself having been laid up for three months with fever (which was my name for the ‘rats,’ and worse). I felt so bad at deceiving her, that I was sorry I’d come back. All at once she jumped up and ran out of the room. When she returned her cheeks were very red, and her eyes bright. After a while I noticed that she had put on the belt I’d sent her long ago as a good-bye gift, and then that it was still nearly new. Then she called in her brothers and sisters, and we all shook hands, and they made me welcome all round.

“Well, she made me off-saddle my horse, and would hear of nothing but that I must stay for the night. It was just a piece of luck my finding any one at the farm, because the old man was preparing to shift to another farm up near Lydenburg, which he had bought. That evening we sat up late in the ‘voorhuis’ (parlour), and talked to one another long after every one else had gone to bed. Hessie told me all about herself, how she had missed me, and how she used to wonder where I was, and whether we’d ever meet again.

“I lay that night, not in the little outside room that I’d used before, but in the big strangers’ room, where there was a four-poster with a feather-bed so thick and soft that a bigger man than me might have got lost in it. Will you believe me, sir, when I tell you that I didn’t sleep a wink? I just lay awake thinking of the life I’d been leading and the things I’d done, and feeling as if I’d made everything I touched dirty. Then the way I’d had to lie to the girl made me feel so hot that I’d to kick off all the blankets, and that ashamed, that if I’d known where to find my saddle and bridle I’d have stole out and cleared.

“Next day the old man and the old woman turned up, and right glad they were to see me, too. They said I must stay on for a spell. Then the old man remembered that he wanted some building done at the other farm, so he asked me to go there with them and take on another job. This I agreed to do, and Hessie was that glad, her eyes just danced.

“In about a fortnight’s time we packed the wagons and started for the new farm, which lay in the mountains about fifteen miles, just as the crow flies, to the westward of Lydenburg. We reached there in four days, and I began building at once with bricks from some old walls which we broke down. There was a sort of a shanty already standing, but the old man wanted a bran-new house put up, and I took on the contract to do the mason-work, assisted by his boys. What with brick-burning and laying the foundation, it promised to be a six months’ job.