OLIVER SCHREINER STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM 2008 – All rights reserved Non commercial use permitted The Story of an African Farm by Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner) Preface. I have to thank cordially the public and my critics for the reception they have given this little book. Dealing with a subject that is far removed from the round of English daily life, it of necessity lacks the charm that hangs about the ideal representation of familiar things, and its reception has therefore been the more kindly. A word of explanation is necessary. Two strangers appear on the scene, and some have fancied that in the second they have again the first, who returns in a new guise. Why this should be we cannot tell; unless there is a feeling that a man should not appear upon the scene, and then disappear, leaving behind him no more substantial trace than a mere book; that he should return later on as husband or lover, to fill some more important part than that of the mere stimulator of thought. Human life may be painted according to two methods. There is the stage method. According to that each character is duly marshalled at first, and ticketed; we know with an immutable certainty that at the right crises each one will reappear and act his part, and, when the curtain falls, all will stand before it bowing. There is a sense of satisfaction in this, and of completeness. But there is another method--the method of the life we all lead. Here nothing can be prophesied. There is a strange coming and going of feet. Men appear, act and re-act upon each other, and pass away. When the crisis comes the man who would fit it does not return. When the curtain falls no one is ready. When the footlights are brightest they are blown out; and what the name of the play is no one knows. If there sits a spectator who knows, he sits so high that the players in the gaslight cannot hear his breathing. Life may be painted according to either method; but the methods are different. The canons of criticism that bear upon the one cut cruelly upon the other. It has been suggested by a kind critic that he would better have liked the little book if it had been a history of wild adventure; of cattle driven into inaccessible kranzes by Bushmen; "of encounters with ravening lions, and hair-breadth escapes." This could not be. Such works are best written in Piccadilly or in the Strand: there the gifts of the creative imagination, untrammelled by contact with any fact, may spread their wings. But, should one sit down to paint the scenes among which he has grown, he will find that the facts creep in upon him. Those brilliant phases and shapes which the imagination sees in far-off lands are not for him to portray. Sadly he must squeeze the colour from his brush, and dip it into the gray pigments around him. He must paint what lies before him. R. Iron. ... "We must see the first images which the external world casts upon the dark mirror of his mind; or must hear the first words which awaken the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by his earliest efforts, if we would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the passions that will rule his life. The entire man is, so to speak, to be found in the cradle of the child." Alexis de Tocqueville. ... Glossary. Several Dutch and Colonial words occurring in this work, the subjoined Glossary is given, explaining the principal. Alle wereld! - Gosh! Aasvogels - Vultures. Benauwdheid - Indigestion. Brakje - A little cur of low degree. Bultong - Dried meat. Coop - Hide and Seek. Inspan - To harness. Kapje - A sun-bonnet. Karoo - The wide sandy plains in some parts of South Africa. Karoo-bushes - The bushes that take the place of grass on these plains. Kartel - The wooden-bed fastened in an ox-wagon. Kloof - A ravine. Kopje - A small hillock, or "little head." Kraal - The space surrounded by a stone wall or hedged with thorn branches, into which sheep or cattle are driven at night. Mealies - Indian corn. Meerkat - A small weazel-like animal. Meiboss - Preserved and dried apricots. Nachtmaal - The Lord's Supper. Oom - Uncle. Outspan - To unharness, or a place in the field where one unharnesses. Pap - Porridge. Predikant - Parson. Riem - Leather rope. Sarsarties - Food. Sleg - Bad. Sloot - A dry watercourse. Spook - To haunt, a ghost. Stamp-block - A wooden block, hollowed out, in which mealies are placed to be pounded before being cooked. Stoep - Porch. Tant or Tante - Aunt. Upsitting - In Boer courtship the man and girl are supposed to sit up together the whole night. Veld - Open country. Velschoen - Shoes of undressed leather. Vrijer - Available man. Contents. Part I. Chapter 1.I. Shadows From Child Life. Chapter 1.II. Plans and Bushman Paintings. Chapter 1.III. I Was A Stranger, and Ye Took Me In. Chapter 1.IV. Blessed is He That Believeth. Chapter 1.V. Sunday Services. Chapter 1.VI. Bonaparte Blenkins Makes His Nest. Chapter 1.VII. He Sets His Trap. Chapter 1.VIII. He Catches the Old Bird. Chapter 1.IX. He Sees A Ghost. Chapter 1.X. He Shows His Teeth. Chapter 1.XI. He Snaps. Chapter 1.XII. He Bites. Chapter 1.XIII. He Makes Love. Part II. Chapter 2.I. Times and Seasons. Chapter 2.II. Waldo's Stranger. Chapter 2.III. Gregory Rose Finds His Affinity. Chapter 2.IV. Lyndall. Chapter 2.V. Tant Sannie Holds An Upsitting, and Gregory Writes A Letter. Chapter 2.VI. A Boer-wedding. Chapter 2.VII. Waldo Goes Out to Taste Life, and Em Stays At Home and Tastes It. Chapter 2.VIII. The Kopje. Chapter 2.IX. Lyndall's Stranger. Chapter 2.X. Gregory Rose Has An Idea. Chapter 2.XI. An Unfinished Letter. Chapter 2.XII. Gregory's Womanhood. Chapter 2.XIII. Dreams. Chapter 2.XIV. Waldo Goes Out to Sit in the Sunshine. THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM Part I. Chapter 1.I. Shadows From Child-Life. ... The Watch. The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted karoo bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with their long finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light. In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the centre a small solitary kopje rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon another, as over some giant's grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the kopje lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffer huts; beyond them the dwelling-house-- a square, red-brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind of dreamy beauty, and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which inclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great open wagon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished silver. Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain. In the farmhouse, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant Sannie, the Boer- woman, rolled heavily in her sleep. She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes, and the night was warm and the room close, and she dreamed bad dreams. Not of the ghosts and devils that so haunted her waking thoughts; not of her second husband the consumptive Englishman, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich-camps, nor of her first, the young Boer; but only of the sheep's trotters she had eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in her throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side, and snorted horribly. In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the shutter, the white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as day. There were two small beds against the wall. In one lay a yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a face of freckles; but the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep. The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes and looked at the moonlight that was bathing her. "Em!" she called to the sleeper in the other bed; but received no answer. Then she drew the cover from the floor, turned her pillow, and pulling the sheet over her head, went to sleep again. Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the wagon-house there was some one who was not asleep. The room was dark; door and shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged, lay sleeping soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms folded, and his bushy grey and black beard rising and falling on his breast. But one in the room was not asleep. Two large eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small hands were smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He drew the quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but a great head of silky black curls and the two black eyes. He stared about in the darkness. Nothing was visible, not even the outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table, on which lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went to bed. No one could tell where the toolbox was, and where the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child in the complete darkness. At the head of his father's bed hung a great silver hunting watch. It ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began mechanically to count. Tick--tick--one, two, three, four! He lost count presently, and only listened. Tick--tick--tick--tick! It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it ticked a man died! He raised himself a little on his elbow and listened. He wished it would leave off. How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down? A thousand times, a million times, perhaps. He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better. "Dying, dying, dying!" said the watch; "dying, dying, dying!" He heard it distinctly. Where were they going to, all those people? He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head: but presently the silky curls reappeared. "Dying, dying, dying!" said the watch; "dying, dying, dying!" He thought of the words his father had read that evening--"For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in thereat." "Many, many, many!" said the watch. "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." "Few, few, few!" said the watch. The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in one direction; then they came to the dark edge of the world and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past--how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless millions of China and India, they were going over now. Since he had come to bed, how many had gone! And the watch said, "Eternity, eternity, eternity!" "Stop them! stop them!" cried the child. And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God's will, that never changes or alters, you may do what you please. Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy's forehead. He climbed out of bed and lay with his face turned to the mud floor. "Oh, God, God! save them!" he cried in agony. "Only some, only a few! Only for each moment I am praying here one!" He folded his little hands upon his head. "God! God! save them!" He grovelled on the floor. Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone over! Oh, the long, long future, in which they would pass away! Oh, God! the long, long, long eternity, which has no end! The child wept, and crept closer to the ground. ... The Sacrifice. The farm by daylight was not as the farm by moonlight. The plain was a weary flat of loose red sand, sparsely covered by dry karoo bushes, that cracked beneath the tread like tinder, and showed the red earth everywhere. Here and there a milk-bush lifted its pale-coloured rods, and in every direction the ants and beetles ran about in the blazing sand. The red walls of the farmhouse, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls of the kraals, all reflected the fierce sunlight, till the eye ached and blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The two sunflowers that stood before the door, out-stared by the sun, drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like insects cried aloud among the stones of the kopje. The Boer-woman, seen by daylight, was even less lovely than when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was damned. Less lovely, too, by daylight was the dead Englishman's child, her little stepdaughter, upon whose freckles and low, wrinkled forehead the sunlight had no mercy. "Lyndall," the child said to her little orphan cousin, who sat with her on the floor threading beads, "how is it your beads never fall off your needle?" "I try," said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger. "That is why." The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing a shabby suit, and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands and nodding his head prodigiously when pleased at anything. He stood out at the kraals in the blazing sun, explaining to two Kaffer boys the approaching end of the world. The boys, as they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and worked as slowly as they possibly could; but the German never saw it. Away, beyond the kopje, Waldo his son herded the ewes and lambs--a small and dusty herd--powdered all over from head to foot with red sand, wearing a ragged coat and shoes of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes looked out. His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes, concealing completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small figure. His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to move far; they gathered round every little milk-bush, as though they hoped to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps. He himself crept under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of the kopje, stretched himself on his stomach, and waved his dilapidated little shoes in the air. Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he produced a fragment of slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceeding to put down a sum with solemn and earnest demeanour, he began to add it up aloud: "Six and two is eight--and four is twelve--and two is fourteen--and four is eighteen." Here he paused. "And four is eighteen--and--four--is--eighteen." The last was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped from his fingers, and the slate followed it into the sand. For a while he lay motionless, then began muttering to himself, folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might have been asleep, but for the muttering sound that from time to time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at him; but it was long before he raised his head. When he did, he looked at the far-off