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 hills with
his heavy eyes.
“Ye shall receive—ye shall
receive—shall, shall, shall,” he muttered.
He sat up then. Slowly the
dulness and heaviness melted from his face; it became radiant.
Midday had come now, and the sun’s rays were poured down
vertically; the earth throbbed before the eye.
The boy stood up quickly, and
cleared a small space from the bushes which covered it. Looking
carefully, he found twelve small stones of somewhat the same size;
kneeling down, he arranged them carefully on the cleared space in a
square pile, in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag
where his dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large
slice of brown bread. The boy took them out and turned the bread
over in his hand, deeply considering it. Finally he threw it away
and walked to the altar with the meat, and laid it down on the
stones. Close by in the red sand he knelt down. Sure, never since
the beginning of the world was there so ragged and so small a
priest. He took off his great hat and placed it solemnly on the
ground, then closed his eyes and folded his hands. He prayed
aloud:
“Oh, God, my Father, I have made
Thee a sacrifice. I have only twopence, so I cannot buy a lamb. If
the lambs were mine, I would give Thee one; but now I have only
this meat; it is my dinner meat. Please, my Father, send fire down
from heaven to burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto
this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it
shall be done. I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
He knelt down with his face upon
the ground, and he folded his hands upon his curls. The fierce sun
poured down its heat upon his head and upon his altar. When he
looked up he knew what he should see—the glory of God! For fear his
very heart stood still, his breath came heavily; he was half
suffocated. He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself.
Above him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there
were the clumps of silent ewes and his altar—that was all.
He looked up—nothing broke the
intense stillness of the blue overhead. He looked round in
astonishment, then he bowed again, and this time longer than
before.
When he raised himself the second
time all was unaltered. Only the sun had melted the fat of the
little mutton chop, and it ran down upon the stones.
Then, the third time he bowed
himself. When at last he looked up, some ants had come to the meat
on the altar. He stood up and drove them away. Then he put his hat
on his hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about
his knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass. The glory of
the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.
“My dear God is trying me,” he
said; and he sat there through the fierce heat of the afternoon.
Still he watched and waited when the sun began to slope, and when
it neared the horizon and the sheep began to cast long shadows
across the karoo, he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays
touched the hills till the sun dipped behind them and was gone.
Then he called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and
threw the meat far, far away into the field.
He walked home behind his flock.
His heart was heavy. He reasoned so: “God cannot lie. I had faith.
No fire came. I am like Cain—I am not His. He will not hear my
prayer. God hates me.”
The boy’s heart was heavy. When
he reached the kraal gate the two girls met him.
“Come,” said the yellow-haired
Em, “let us play coop. There is still time before it gets quite
dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the kopje; Lyndall and I will shut
eyes here, and we will not look.”
The girls hid their faces in the
stone wall of the sheep-kraal, and the boy clambered half way up
the kopje. He crouched down between two stones and gave the call.
Just then the milk-herd came walking out of the cow-kraal with two
pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffer.
“Ah!” thought the boy, “perhaps
he will die tonight, and go to hell! I must pray for him, I must
pray!”
Then he thought—“Where am I going
to?” and he prayed desperately.
“Ah! this is not right at all,”
little Em said, peeping between the stones, and finding him in a
very curious posture. “What are you doing Waldo? It is not the
play, you know. You should run out when we come to the white stone.
Ah, you do not play nicely.”
“I—I will play nicely now,” said
the boy, coming out and standing sheepishly before them; “I—I only
forgot; I will play now.”
“He has been to sleep,” said
freckled Em.
“No,” said beautiful little
Lyndall, looking curiously at him: “he has been crying.”
She never made a mistake.
The Confession.
One night, two years after, the
boy sat alone on the kopje. He had crept softly from his father’s
room and come there. He often did, because, when he prayed or cried
aloud, his father might awake and hear him; and none knew his great
sorrow, and none knew his grief, but he himself, and he buried them
deep in his heart.
He turned up the brim of his
great hat and looked at the moon, but most at the leaves of the
prickly pear that grew just before him. They glinted, and glinted,
and glinted, just like his own heart—cold, so hard, and very
wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full of little
bits of glass, that hurt. He had sat there for half an hour, and he
dared not go back to the close house.
He felt horribly lonely. There
was not one thing so wicked as he in all the world, and he knew it.
He folded his arms and began to cry—not aloud; he sobbed without
making any sound, and his tears left scorched marks where they
fell. He could not pray; he had prayed night and day for so many
months; and tonight he could not pray. When he left off crying, he
held his aching head with his brown hands. If one might have gone
up to him and touched him kindly; poor, ugly little thing! Perhaps
his heart was almost broken.
With his swollen eyes he sat
there on a flat stone at the very top of the kopje; and the tree,
with every one of its wicked leaves, blinked, and blinked, and
blinked at him. Presently he began to cry again, and then stopped
his crying to look at it. He was quiet for a long while, then he
knelt up slowly and bent forward. There was a secret he had carried
in his heart for a year. He had not dared to look at it; he had not
whispered it to himself, but for a year he had carried it. “I hate
God!” he said. The wind took the words and ran away with them,
among the stones, and through the leaves of the prickly pear. He
thought it died away half down the kopje. He had told it now!
“I love Jesus Christ, but I hate
God.”
The wind carried away that sound
as it had done the first. Then he got up and buttoned his old coat
about him. He knew he was certainly lost now; he did not care. If
half the world were to be lost, why not he too? He would not pray
for mercy any more. Better so—better to know certainly. It was
ended now. Better so.
He began scrambling down the
sides of the kopje to go home.
Better so! But oh, the
loneliness, the agonized pain! for that night, and for nights on
nights to come! The anguish that sleeps all day on the heart like a
heavy worm, and wakes up at night to feed!
There are some of us who in after
years say to Fate, “Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you
will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were
children.”
The barb in the arrow of
childhood’s suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense
agony.