From The Four Winds/The Spirit of the Karroo

by John Galsworthy

 

THE SPIRIT OF THE KARROO.

 

'Oh! the trail is hot, and the heart is black,
Sleuth, and stealth, and a hard-gripped blade!
Over the shimmering sage-green brush,
Under the lea of the kopje's rise.
Winding the skein of the narrow track.
Sleuth, and stealth, till the debt is paid!'

 

...........

 

Greed, Hate, Jealousy, these three, and the greatest of these is Jealousy.

Now this is true according to Euclid, who says that the greater contains the less: it is also true that in 1891—was it? Pietris Vanhiever—

••••••

'My—ahh—my a—a a,' yawned a—large gaunt silver-backed jackal out of the long grass by the side of a little stone kopje. Anon he raised his head and licked his gums in a slow and appreciative manner, as if a pleasant thought had occurred to him. The night was drawing in over the sandy plain, Namaqua partridges were flitting to the half-dried waterhole, the spring-bok were drawing together, and forming serried squadrons against the possible attack of such as Silverback of the stealthy foot and hungry fang; and from the Englishman's camp hard by came the smothered grunt and squeal of the mules beginning with rapture their evening feed out of the leather trough slung to the ggon pole.

The stones of the kopje moved, and an aged one-eyed hyæna slunk out into the grey-green growth that surrounded his home. He sidled deprecatingly till within speaking distance of the jackal, and said in a whisper, the huskiness of which was born of much midnight prowling and many an unholy meal:

'Is there meat in the wind, friend, that thou lickest so thy good red gums and white teeth? If perchance it be so, I pray thee remember thy old comrade, the widower and one-eyed.'

'Meat,' snarled the jackal, 'ay, ay, but meat is for those who can see;' and casting a sneering glance at the bleared face of his visitor, he resumed his careful watch on the camp.

'Peradventure it is mule, O crafty one?' said the old reprobate, leering covetously towards the newly-lighted fire that threw the encampment into sharp relief against the fast gathering darkness.

'Bah!' said Silverback, 'mule! mule is good enough for prowling one-eyed vagabonds, but not for me. I would sooner chase a young buck through the long night than eat a plaguey salt beast like mule.'

'Ow—ah,' sighed the hyæna, 'your Swiftness may indeed speak so, having legs of steel and jaws like cast-iron traps; but to one who has fasted these many days, being old and forsaken, mule and meer-cat 'tis all the same, it goes into the stomach—what more can I expect, who am old, and nigh to my end?' and he rolled his eye imploringly at Silver-back.

'Well, well,' said the latter somewhat mollified, 'I say nothing; for two nights have I watched and hunted, and what I have seen, I have seen.' With this enigmatical remark he sat up, and regarded his aged companion with a critical glance. 'Truly he is old,' he said to himself; 'he cannot count greatly on a division, and having a certain experience of graves, perchance he may be of service, the hoary old sinner. Watch with me if you will,' he snarled aloud.

So bidden, the one-eye joined the two eyes, and with them glared on steadily and patiently through the dark at the white man's camp.

 

'When you've finished supper, Dan, saddle me Hopper's horse; I'm going to have a try in the dark at that last lot of buck we saw this afternoon.'

The speaker, a long, careless-looking Englishman, with blue eyes and a fair beard, sat kicking his legs over the side of the waggon and smoking a short pipe with much contentment after his supper.

Dan Vanhiever, a swarthy half-caste, part Kaffir, part Boer, with a slight limp, rose at once from his recumbent posture with his feet to the fire, and assisted by a Hottentot boy, with many a hoarse 'Yuip, Schelm!' detached and saddled the much-resenting grey, who, with his companion Waltong, was taking alternate bites at the fodder and the mules from either side of the leather trough.

'Good-night, boys! keep the fire going, so that I can find my way back; so long!' The Englishman swung himself into the saddle, and taking his rifle, rode away on the back track of the waggon.

Early to sleep is the rule on the veldt, and two of the three followers left in the camp turned their toes to the fire and slumbered noisily.

The third, Pietris Vanhiever, sat forward, his hands on his knees, his swarthy, black-browed face flushed and scowling, a smouldering light in his eyes;—or was it only the reflection from the blazing fire, on to which he heaped plentifully the gathered brushwood?

Presently he stood up, glancing stealthily at his companions, his hand on a long knife in his belt,—a picturesque figure, in red shirt, blue jean trousers, widening and opening in the seam towards the foot, and sewn with hair, and the wide-brimmed felt hat of South Africa.

'Ah, Boss! two nights have I watched, and two days have I fasted, and now I will make an end,' he muttered in Dutch between his teeth, and bent down to see if both men were asleep. Then he crept noiselessly out of the camp circle, and stooping almost double, ran swiftly as a man runs who knows the end and purpose of his going.

 

Silverback turned his sardonic mug towards his ghoul-like neighbour, and with a twirl of his brush, as much as to say, 'I told you so,' stole out of the shadow of the little kopje and followed silently on the trail. With every hair on his bristly back standing up in unholy eagerness, with his one eye and his few remaining teeth staring with greed, the ancient reprobate grunted the magic word 'Man,' and hobbled cautiously after the jackal....

 

The long Englishman, glancing from side to side, rode carelessly and slowly along the track left by the broad wheels of the waggon. Once he unslung the Winchester he carried on his right arm, and fired two or three shots, but seemingly at random. The track took a sudden turn to the left, round a slight rise in the ground; once past, this he urged the grey into a canter, turning round in his saddle to see that he was not followed.

'Can't be seen from the waggon here,' he said to himself; 'not that it matters much, though—their manners are disgusting, and assuredly morals they have none. Covering my trail is much the same as going to church in the old country for the benefit of the servants,' he added with a laugh.

The light from the risen moon was fairly strong, and the track, luckily free from meer-cat holes, lay straight over the veldt towards a large broken group of sandy red rocks of curious formation. Their irregular outlines took weird and mysterious shapes in the half light, and their happening in the vast flat desolation of the Karroo gave them the appearance of being the creation of some saturninely fantastic spirit. The track ran so narrowly between two of the biggest rocks that a driver could touch them on either side of him with his whip. Out of the red soil of the rock on the one side grew a giant Cokerbôm tree, old as the world itself, projected in a stiff uncompromising rigidity over the track. The Englishman, riding rapidly beneath, reached up and plucked a spiky, inhospitable leaf.

'Tough old beggar!' he soliloquised, sucking his finger, 'you'll be growing here when I'm dead and gone, and all's blue; in a couple of thousand years you may be a foot or so taller if you have luck; rum things, trees—wonder if they have souls?'

He emerged into the open veldt again, and another half hour's canter brought him within sight of an isolated piece of civilisation; the lengthy, low, white buildings of an outlying Boer ostrich-farm, in a square enclosure, dotted with carefully fostered and unwilling plane and eucalyptus trees.

'Steady!' he muttered, 'she said last night she'd be at this end—yes, and that's the tree. He reined in his horse. 'There she is, by heaven! What a blessing to find a woman punctual; but then she isn't a woman, only a girl—poor child!'

With a half sigh he swung himself from the saddle, and, leading his horse, stepped forward to where, shrinking in the shadow of a couple of trees just on the outside of the enclosure, stood a slip of a girl in a white dress with a dark cloak thrown over it. Her grey eyes lost their look of fright, and devoured him, as he fastened his horse to a branch; with a low cry, almost a moan, of delight, she straightened herself and sprang into his arms.

'How long have you been here, Liebchen mein?' He spoke in Africander, with an occasional German word.

'O my King, I came as soon as the house was quiet and I could steal out. I came like a mouse, with my heart in my mouth, and two hours I have waited and suffered, but now—now—O my Lord and King, I live, and the darkness is overpast—see, I have brought all that I have, as thou badest me.' She lifted a slight bundle wrapped in a light rug, and placed her other hand timidly, with oh! so light a touch, upon his beard. 'Is my Lord' (she used a word that in Africander means also husband) 'pleased with his servant?'

Her face flushed painfully and anxiously. Truth to tell, he did not look over-pleased—he stood looking pitifully first at the bundle, then at the slight figure that leaned so lovingly, and yet so timidly, against him, and the shadow of an almost seriousness came over the careless blue eyes. He put his hand on the long fair hair, and said gently:

'All that my pretty does is good, and shall she not be rewarded?' He raised her chin, and kissed her eyes and lips. 'Yet I am sorry too, for I have been thinking, and it cannot be to-night—I can't take you away to-night, child.'

Her head drooped and she shivered. 'Not to-night—not to-night? But my Lord promised me.'

'Yes, child, I know, but there are many things I didn't think of that I must do before we go away. I must go back to Cape Town and put things straight. Cheer up, sweetheart, 'tis only for a fortnight, or three weeks at most, and then I will come and take you away for good and all.'

'I'm afraid—so afraid. If my Lord leaves me, he may forget, he will see other women, and I am so poor and little—let me come now, my King, only to be near thee—I won't ask more, just to be near thee—let me come.'

'Dear child, be reasonable—think a minute, think of the waggon. I can't leave that, and we should be followed and overtaken at once, and there'd be the devil to pay. Then think of my men—I don't want my little flower amongst rough swine like the Vanhievers.'

'Vanhiever!' The girl shrank out of his arms, and stood staring wildly at him. 'What Vanhiever? not Pietris—not Pietris?'

'Ay, Pietris and Dan—what ails you, child?'

'My God! O my God!' She sprang back to him, and threw her arms round his neck, and drew his head down to hers with a gesture of protection.

'He doesn't know, does he? Tell me, he doesn't know?'

'What is the matter, you funny child? You're shaking all over! Who doesn't know, what?'

'He, Pietris. Don't you know? Didn't you hear? He was my lover. I was betrothed to him,—him that I hated, and he swore to kill any one that came between. Did not my Lord know?'

Her voice fell again, and she spoke in a terrified whisper.

He flung his head back. 'Not I,' he said, with a laugh.

'The hog, to raise his eyes to you! Well, dear, it's all right, he knows nothing;'—then, as a thought struck him, he went on with a sort of relief, 'but don't you see, that settles it, it can't be while he's with me—won't do at all.'

'No, no, and O, my Love, be careful—don't come here again. You don't know him; he is a devil, and the child of devils.'

She clung to him despairingly.

'A11 right, my darling, trust me. I'll make tracks for Cape Town to-morrow, and you must promise me to be a good child and keep a brave heart, and then—think, only two weeks—three at the longest—there, there.'

She lay resting in his arms, her face buried against his shoulder, stifling the sobs that would come; then, raising her head, she said quickly and passionately:

'Go, my Lord, go, and quickly; thou may'st be missed, and remember, he is a devil—yes, a devil. In three weeks thou wilt return.' She looked full in his face. 'Go, and by this—and this—do not forget thy servant.'

She put her lips to his and kissed him passionately twice.

'No, my darling, no.' There was a husk in his throat, and the careless gaiety of his voice was shaken. He mounted and rode away, looking back at the slight figure leaning against the tree, with hands clasped to her breast in a dumb agony.

After he lost sight of her, he rode for some time silently, his head drooping; then, as a man will who has been much on the veldt, he began talking to himself disjointedly:

'Poor little thing!—I don't know—I don't know—am I a most awful brute, or what am I? What am I going to do? Devil only knows—this is a mess, my boy, whichever way you look at it. She's a sweet child, but—my God, for always, and then—my people—and then—the world—and then—her people, umm—Boers, bah! Brutes! Too many "and then's"—Strikes me I've been a fool—a dashed fool. Well, can't be helped; what's to be done now, that's the point?'

The grey tossed up his head and neighed—they were fast nearing the rocky island in the desert of sand and scrub.

'What's to be done? cut and run? My Gad, it's blackguardly, but que uoulez vous? it's wise.—Go back to her? Poor little thing! I'd like to, fast enough, I'm fond enough of her now, but—always a d——d "but," and this time a devil of a d——d "but."' The grey stumbled, and his thoughts were jerked into another train. 'That swine Pietris! The impudence of the brute! Leave her—that means—to him—By gum! I can't stand that—it's not on the cards at all—to him, the blackguard! By George, no! I shall have to go back to her, oh! decidedly I shall have to go back, and the sooner the better, and, d——n it, I'm glad of it.'

He urged the tired horse forward with voice and heel, and entered the narrow passage between the giant rocks.

••••••

There was silence where the venerable Cokerbôm tree, from under its grim red-grey protectors through unnumbered centuries, laid a gnarled and fantastic shadow across the moonlit track. That little world of rocks and sand, of scanty brush and tree, held its breath. In the death-like stillness the spirit of the Pass seemed to be straining to catch an approaching sound.

A long, deep-drawn, hissing breath, and again that brooding silence, while the moonlight played for an instant on the silver tongue waiting in the mesmerised space for its brief repast. Along a knotted, spikey branch Pietris Vanhiever crouched, grasping in his hand a naked, long-bladed knife; his sinewy arm, on which the dark swollen veins stood out like cords, was stretched so as to give full play to a swift and sudden blow. His teeth bared in hungry expectation, every nerve strained in eager listening, he waited for the fulfilment of his vow, and the satisfaction of that passion of jealousy, which, after his two days of absolute bodily starvation, dominated his half-caste being to the extinction of every other feeling.

Presently there came within the ken of his hungry spirit a muffled regular sound drawing rapidly nearer—without doubt the footfall of a horse on the soft sand. His black eyes gleamed under their heavy brows with a sombre fire, and gripping the branch more closely, he swung his arm once, twice, backwards and downwards, then drew it close to the branch again and waited.

'Loppety, loppety, loppety' came the swing of that peculiar three-legged canter that was steadily and virtuously making for the Englishman the first stage of that route that should put his little girl—his own property—for ever out of the reach of such swine as Pietris Vanhiever.

'That he, forsooth—he—good Lord! it's almost comic—certainly quite impossible!—Yes, this big Kopje's the first landmark—shall see the camp fire from the other side—unless the lazy hogs have let it out—hallo'...

The silent scream of the thirsty knife backwards and downwards, the hollow groan, the soft thump of the body on the sand, the frightened snort and sudden wheeling of the riderless horse, the hiss and dart of the destroyer on his prey—these things are written in the dumb records of the giant and changeless tree.

The sound of the grey's hoofs fleeing back in the direction from whence he had come had faded away before Pietris raised himself from the body of his enemy.

Dead, oh! undoubtedly dead; the good knife had gone home just below the left shoulder—no need of a second blow—a famous place, that. Yet he was sorry too—it would have been good to have struck again, and yet again, and—ah! that hated face! should he crush it shapeless with his heel, staring up at him careless and proud even in death? Should he? Should he? The Kaffir blood in him surged in waves to his heart, the desire to mutilate and mangle his enemy smote him sore. Not with his boot, though—no—no—leave signs—besides, too soft; only Veldt schoens; no—the knife again, blade or handle—all the same. He leant over and strained at the handle; as he strove to draw it from the wound, the eyes of the dead man seemed to roll and fix themselves on his. With a cry of superstitious terror he recoiled, and to his vision, maddened by passion, weakened by physical exhaustion and starvation, the blanched lips of the corpse moved in the old smile of cynical mockery.

A nameless dread seized upon him—the white man in him, that had given the nerve and passionate resolution for the steadfast fulfilment of his vow, gave place in a moment to the unreasoning, superstitious savage.

The man's body was dead—he knew that assuredly—but his spirit was alive and there—that proud and sneering spirit that he could not slay. He shrank back and crouched in a huddled heap against the rock, watching with fascinated gaze the movements of his enemy.

Now, to a diseased and distorted vision moonlight plays queer tricks with things. The tortures of the damned came upon Pietris Vanhiever, and, greatest torture of all, he was deprived of the power of flight. It seemed to his terror-ridden brain that the spirit through those eyes was drawing him slowly—slowly—to the body of his victim, there to hold him to eternity. Then a fresh horror came upon him, and the devil of superstition turned his thoughts to the tales crooned to him by his Kaffir mother, in the half light of the evenings, at the door of the native hut. The tales of the spirit of the Karroo, the Great Spirit, that comes to the souls of men whose lives and blood are spent upon the Karroo's breast, and gathers them to itself; the legends of the woe and ruth that befall the living man who looks upon the gathering of that harvest; and he shook with the cold fear that seized upon, and paralysed, his limbs and knees. So minutes and hours went by, and the moon dropped low behind the great rocks, and a black darkness came over the pass of death, and ever the white upturned face held him through the blackness in a stupor of terror, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, save only, in those staring, shining eyes, the spirit of his enemy.

Ah—h—h, what was that?—at the end of the Pass, what was that?—white, silent through the darkness—what was it? Lieber Gott, what was it? Coming, white and terrible, yes, coming to the harvest.

'Ah'—and screaming aloud in superstitious horror, ' The spirit of the Karroo! the spirit of the Karroo! ' he fell back heavily in a dead swoon....

Hopper's horse, stumbling in the blackness against something soft lying athwart the narrow track, bent down his head and sniffed, then with a snort of terror and disgust wheeled round and vanished for the second time riderless into the night.

••••••

The breath that stirs over the Karroo before the first streak of dawn, straying into the heart of the great Kopje, stirred the soft down on the tips of Silverback's ears, and played faintly with the beard on the dead man's face.

'The dawn is at hand, O Lord of the far-smelling nostrils and steel-like jaws, would it not be well to bite and sup, if but just a little, for surely this be dead also, he has not moved these two hours.'

'Try and see,' snarled the jackal.

The hyæna drew back his grizzled snout with a grunt of disgust and alarm.

'The Mother of all hyænas forbid! I touch a whole man, fresh, that also might yet be living! Nay, nay, but do thou, who knowest not fear, make trial and see if he be really good corpse, and no longer two-legged demon, and I will withdraw a while and keep good watch at the hinder end.'

'Coward!' grumbled the jackal, watching him shrink to the outside of the Kopje. 'But as for me,' he grunted to himself, 'the day is at hand, and my stomach calls loudly.'

Licking his long red gums, he stole forward from his lurking place in the crumbled sand, and set his white fangs in the fleshy part of Pietris' leg, not omitting to beat a rapid retreat, in case of unexpected developments.

The murderer's death-like swoon was not proof against the meeting of those steel-like jaws. He groaned uneasily, and rolling round, raised himself stiffly and slowly to a sitting posture.

'A thousand devils!' he muttered, rubbing his leg, from which the blood flowed freely, 'what fool's game is this?'

Then his bewildered eyes in the fitful grey glimmer, that before the coming of the dawn forced itself into the recesses of the Kopje, fell on the upturned face of the Englishman. With a start Pietris sprang to his feet, recollection of the events and the horror of the night coming with a rush to his awakening mind. He staggered, then shrinkingly crept forward, and, bending over the body of his victim, looked long and fearfully into the glazed eyes.

'It is gone!' he muttered, 'gone, gathered—and I—woe is me!—ruin and death—I have seen the harvest;—well, there is no more fear in that trash,'—he spurned the prostrate body,—'except for this'—and stooping, with a great effort he wrenched the knife from the wound. He plunged it into the ground, and, wiping it carefully, replaced it in his belt. His eye in stooping caught the fresh spoor of Silverback and his companion.

'Gott sei dank!' he muttered, 'there needs no burial here,' and his eye followed the spoor into a cave at the rock base. Once again he looked at the helpless corpse, and a thought came into his mind. He rolled from the side of the rocks a large stone, rubbed on it some of the blood still dripping from his own leg, and placed it close to the head of the dead man—then: 'It will be thought he fell, and struck his head, for soon there will be but bones,' he said with a grin; then with a muttered oath, and a hurried look around and back, half of fear and half of hate, he fled painfully and wearily, but with noiseless steps, towards where in the far distance the embers of the camp fire still cast a red glow, and whence an occasional grunt from a half-slumbering mule was borne towards him on the breath of the dawn. Rapidly and wearily he fled, in the misty half light, and behind him in the darkness rose and fell the unearthly yowl—the jackal's grace before meat.

'The feast begins,' he muttered, and as answering cries came from the scrub to the right and left of him, 'Good eating, all of you!—this was he born for.'

••••••

'Not guilty' was the verdict; 'guilty, but not enough evidence,' the comment of the Court, for Hopper's horse, a gaunt silverbacked jackal, and a Cokerbôm tree were not asked to give testimony.

To this day, if you should chance to take Pietris Vanhiever with you on a shooting trip, do not over your camp fire discourse on native superstitions pertaining to the Karroo—it is calculated to upset an otherwise good hunter.