Part 1 (1/2)
Blue Aloes.
by Cynthia Stockley.
The Strange Story of a Karoo Farm
PART I
Night, with the sinister, brooding peace of the desert, enwrapped the land, and the inmates of the old Karoo farm had long been at rest; but it was an hour when strange tree-creatures cry with the voices of human beings, and stealthy velvet-footed things prowl through places forbidden by day, and not all who rested at Blue Aloes were sleeping.
Christine Chaine, wakeful and nervous, listening to the night sounds, found them far more distracting than any the day could produce. Above the breathing of the three children sleeping near her in the big room, the buzz of a moth-beetle against the ceiling, and the far-off howling of jackals, she could hear something out in the garden sighing with faint, whistling sighs. More disquieting still was a gentle, intermittent tapping on the closed and heavily barred shutters, inside which the windows stood open, inviting coolness. She had heard that tapping every one of the three nights since she came to the farm.
The window stood to the right of her bed, and, by stretching an arm, she could have unbolted the shutters and looked out, but she would have died rather than do it. Not that she was a coward. But there was some sinister quality in the night noises of this old Karoo farm that weighed on her courage and paralyzed her senses. So, instead of stirring, she lay very still in the darkness, the loud, uncertain beats of her heart adding themselves to all the other disconcerting sounds.
Mrs. van Cannan had laughed her lazy, liquid laugh when Christine spoke, the first morning after her arrival, of the tapping.
”It was probably a stray ostrich pecking on your shutters,” said the mistress of Blue Aloes. ”You are strange to the Karoo, my dear. When you have been here a month, you'll take no notice of night noises.”
There was possibly truth in the prophecy, but Christine doubted it.
There were also moments when she doubted being able to last a week out at the farm, to say nothing of a month. That was only in the night watches, however; by day, she found it hard to imagine any circ.u.mstances so unpleasant as to induce her to leave the three little van Cannan children, who, even in so short a time, had managed to twine their fingers and their mops of bronze hair round her affections.
The tapping began again, soft and insistent. Christine knew it was not a branch, for she had taken the trouble to ascertain; and that a stray ostrich should choose her window to peck at for three nights running seemed fantastic. Irrelatively, one of the children murmured drowsily in sleep, and the little human sound braced the girl's nerves. The sense of loneliness left her, giving place to courageous resolution.
She forgot everything save that she was responsible for the protection of the children, and determined that the tapping must be investigated, once and for all. Just as she was stirring, the soft sighing recommenced close to the shutters, followed by three clear taps.
Christine changed her mind about getting out of bed, but she leaned toward the window on her elbow, and said, in a low voice that trembled a little:
”Is any one there?”
A whistling whisper answered her:
”_Take care of the children._”
With the words, a strangely revolting odour came stealing through the shutters. The girl shrank back, all her fears returning. Yet she forced herself to speak again.
”Who is it? What do you want?”
”_Mind the boy--take care of the boy,_” sobbed the whistling voice, and again the foul odour stole into the room. It seemed to Christine the smell of something dead and rotten and old. She could not bear it.
Hatred of it was greater than fear, and, springing from her bed, she wrestled with the bolts of the shutters. But when she threw them open there was--nothing! Darkness stood without like a presence, and seemed to push against the shutters, trying to enter as she hastily rebarred them.
Something was stirring in the room, too. With hands that shook, she lit the candle and, by its gleam, discovered Roderick, the eldest child, sitting up in bed, his red-gold mop all tumbled, his eyes, full of dreams, fixed on her with a wide stare. She crossed the room, and knelt beside him.
”What is it, darling?”
”I thought my nannie was there,” he murmured.
”Your nannie?” she echoed, in surprise, knowing that ”nannie” was the common name for any black nurse who tended and waited on them. ”But she is in bed and asleep long ago.”
”I don't mean _that_ one. I mean my nannie what's dead--Sophy.”
The girl's backbone grew chill. She remembered hearing that the children had been always minded by an educated old Basuto woman called Sophy, who had been a devoted slave to each from birth up, and because of whose death, a few months back, a series of English governesses had come and gone at the farm.
She remembered, too, those fluty whispers that resembled no human voice.
”Lie down, darling, and sleep,” she said gently. ”I will stay by you.”