Part 46 (2/2)
She did not think--she had not suffered. Be pitiful, now that her hour has come!”
The thick voice of the Boer woman broke out again:
”Did ever I miss of the Nachtmaal? Alamachtig, no! Virtuous as Sarah have I lain in the marriage-bed--never a sly look for another, and my husband with dropsy-legs as thick as boomstammen, and sixty years upon his loins.
Thou knewest, and yet the joy of my life is taken from me. Where wert Thou, O G.o.d of Israel, when they killed my little Dierck?”
The Mother-Superior leaned to her, and threw a strong, tender arm about the fleshy shoulders. She said, speaking in the Taal:
”Hush, hus.h.!.+ Remember that He gave the joy before He sent the sorrow. And we must submit ourselves to the Holy Will.”
The Boer woman snorted:
”As if I didn't know that better than a Papist. Look you, have I shed one tear?” She blinked hard bright eyes defiantly. The Mother went on in that velvet voice of hers, making the uncouth dialect sound like the cooing of an Irish dove:
”Better that you had tears, poor mother! Ah! best to weep. Did not our Lord weep over His dearest city, and for His beloved friend? And when He pitied the Widow of Nain, do you think His eyes were dry? Ah! best to weep.”
She strove to wrench herself away, shouting:
”He raised Lazarus from the dead for Mary his sister, and she had been a shameless wench. And He gave the other back her boy. What has He done for me?”
The sisterly arm held her fast; the great grey eyes looked into hers, wet with the tears that were denied to her.
”He has given you an Angel to pray for you in Heaven.”
She snorted rebelliously:
”His mother wants him down here.... And what is Heaven to little Dierck, when he could be sailing his boat in the river-pools, and playing at driving the span?”
But she let the Mother-Superior take him from her, and dropped her great arms doggedly at her sides, watching still dry-eyed as they laid him down, and Saxham stooped above him, feeling at the pulseless heart. She saw the doktor shake his head and lay down the little hand. She saw the Mother-Superior coax down the eyelids with tender, skilful fingers, and put a kiss on each, making the Sign of the Cross on the still, childish breast, and murmuring a little prayer. She would have screamed to avert the defiling, heathen thing from him, but the memory of the sister-embrace and the sister-look held her dumb.
It was only when they were stripping him for the last sad toilet, and the cherished top and half a dozen highly-prized marbles rolled out of the pocket in the stumpy little round jacket she had made out of a cast-off garment of his father's that her bosom heaved, and the fountains of her grief sprang from the stony soil. She wept copiously, and found resignation. Soon she was sufficiently herself to scold a prodigally-minded spinster relative who had proposed that Little Dierck should be coffined in his new black Sabbath suit.
”But you old maids have no sense, no more than so many cabbages. Little angels in the hemel can fly about in clean nightgowns--look in the grandfather's big picture-Bible if you don't believe me. But live boys can't loop about without breeches. So I'll lay these by for the next one.”
x.x.xIII
Roasting hot Christmas has gone by, with its services and celebrations, its sports and entertainments, its meagre feasting, and its hearty cheer, a bloodless triumph followed by the regrettable defeat sustained in the battle of Big Tree Fort. To-day the Union Jack hangs limp upon the flagstaff that rears its slender height over Nixey's, and the new year is some weeks old. The blue, blue sky of January is without a single puff of cloud, and the taint from the trenches is less sickening, unmingled with the poisonous fumes of the lyddite bursting-charges, and the acrid odour of smokeless powder. It is Sunday, when Briton and Boer hold the Truce of G.o.d, and the church-bells ring to call and not to warn the people, and sweet Peace and blessed Silence brood over the shrapnel-scarred veld. The aasvogels feast undisturbed on bloated carca.s.ses of horses and cattle lying on the debatable ground between the Line of Investment and the Line of Defence, the barbel in the river leap at the flies, and partridge and wild guinea-fowl drink in the shallows, and bathe in the dry hot sand between the boulder-stones.
The Market Square is populous with a chatting, sauntering crowd of people, who enjoy the luxury of using their limbs without being called on to displays of acrobatic agility in dodging trundling sh.e.l.l. There are Irregulars and B.S.A.P., Baraland Rifles and Town Guardsmen. There are the Native Contingent from the stad, and a company of Zulus, and the Kaffirs and the Cape Boys with their gaspipe rifles that do good service in default of better, and bring down Oom Paul's Scripturally-flavoured denunciations upon Englishmen, who arm black and coloured folk to do battle for their own sable or brown or yellow rights. These have donned odd garments and quaint bits of finery to mark the holiday, and every white man has indulged in the luxury of a comprehensive wash, a shave with hot water, and a change of clothing, if it is obtainable. Also, drooping feminine vanity revives in hair-waves and emerges from underground burrows of Troglodytic type, arrayed in fluttering muslins, and crowned with coquettish hats, which walk about in company with ragged khaki and clay-stained duck and out-at-elbows tweed, and are proud to be seen in its brave company.
Husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, lovers and sweethearts, meet after the week whose separating days have seemed like weeks, and visit the houses whose pierced walls and roofs, that let the white-hot suns.h.i.+ne in through many jagged holes, may one day, so they whisper, holding one another closely, shelter them again in peace. Home has become a sweet word, even to those who thought little of home before.
And many who were sinful have found conviction of sin and the saving grace of repentance, and many more who denied their G.o.d have learned to know Him, in this village town of battered dwellings, whose streets are littered with all the grim debris of War.
Nixey's has not come scathless through the ordeal. The stately brick chimneys of the kitchen and coffee-room have been broken off like carrots, and replaced by tin funnels. Patches of the universal medium, corrugated iron, indicate where one of Meisje's ninety-four-pound projectiles recently plumped in through the soft brick of the east wall end, and departed by the west frontage, leaving two holes that might have accommodated a chest of drawers, and carrying a window with it. Mrs.
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