第23章 CHAPTER VIII(2)

You thought he could not make me understand, but he did, he did, you old fool! I know enough English for that. You be here," shouted the Dutchwoman, "when the morning star rises, and I will let my Kaffers take you out and drag you, till there is not one bone left in your old body that is not broken as fine as bobootie-meat, you old beggar! All your rags are not worth that--they should be thrown out onto the ash-heap," cried the Boer-woman; "but I will have them for my sheep. Not one rotten hoof of your old mare do you take with you; I will have her--all, all for my sheep that you have lost, you godless thing!"

The Boer-woman wiped the moisture from her mouth with the palm of her hand.

The German turned to Bonaparte, who still stood on the step absorbed in the beauty of the sunset.

"Do not address me; do not approach me, lost man," said Bonaparte, not moving his eye nor lowering his chin. "There is a crime from which all nature revolts; there is a crime whose name is loathsome to the human ear-- that crime is yours; that crime is ingratitude. This woman has been your benefactress; on her farm you have lived; after her sheep you have looked; into her house you have been allowed to enter and hold Divine service--an honour of which you were never worthy; and how have you rewarded her?-- basely, basely, basely!"

"But it is all false, lies and falsehoods. I must, I will speak," said the German, suddenly looking round bewildered. "Do I dream? Are you mad?

What may it be?"

"Go, dog," cried the Dutchwoman; "I would have been a rich woman this day if it had not been for your laziness. Praying with the Kaffers behind the kraal walls. Go, you Kaffer's dog!"

"But what then is the matter? What may have happened since I left?" said the German, turning to the Hottentot woman, who sat upon the step.

She was his friend; she would tell him kindly the truth. The woman answered by a loud, ringing laugh.

"Give it him, old missis! Give it him!"

It was so nice to see the white man who had been master hunted down. The coloured woman laughed, and threw a dozen mealie grains into her mouth to chew.

All anger and excitement faded from the old man's face. He turned slowly away and walked down the little path to his cabin, with his shoulders bent; it was all dark before him. He stumbled over the threshold of his own well-known door.

Em, sobbing bitterly, would have followed him; but the Boer-woman prevented her by a flood of speech which convulsed the Hottentot, so low were its images.

"Come, Em," said Lyndall, lifting her small proud head, "let us go in. We will not stay to hear such language."

She looked into the Boer-woman's eyes. Tant Sannie understood the meaning of the look if not the words. She waddled after them, and caught Em by the arm. She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had never done it again, so she took Em.

"So you will defy me, too, will you, you Englishman's ugliness!" she cried, and with one hand she forced the child down, and held her head tightly against her knee; with the other she beat her first upon one cheek, and then upon the other.

For one instant Lyndall looked on, then she laid her small fingers on the Boer-woman's arm. With the exertion of half its strength Tant Sannie might have flung the girl back upon the stones. It was not the power of the slight fingers, tightly though they clinched her broad wrist--so tightly that at bedtime the marks were still there; but the Boer-woman looked into the clear eyes and at the quivering white lips, and with a half-surprised curse relaxed her hold. The girl drew Em's arm through her own.

"Move!" she said to Bonaparte, who stood in the door, and he, Bonaparte the invincible, in the hour of his triumph, moved to give her place.

The Hottentot ceased to laugh, and an uncomfortable silence fell on all the three in the doorway.

Once in their room, Em sat down on the floor and wailed bitterly. Lyndall lay on the bed with her arm drawn across her eyes, very white and still.

"Hoo, hoo!" cried Em; "and they won't let him take the grey mare; and Waldo has gone to the mill. Hoo, hoo, and perhaps they won't let us go and say good-bye to him. Hoo, hoo, hoo!"

"I wish you would be quiet," said Lyndall without moving. "Does it give you such felicity to let Bonaparte know he is hurting you? We will ask no one. It will be suppertime soon. Listen--and when you hear the clink of the knives and forks we will go out and see him.

Em suppressed her sobs and listened intently, kneeling at the door.

Suddenly some one came to the window and put the shutter up.

"Who was that?" said Lyndall, starting.

"The girl, I suppose," said Em. How early she is this evening!"

But Lyndall sprang from the bed and seized the handle of the door, shaking it fiercely. The door was locked on the outside. She ground her teeth.

"What is the matter?" asked Em.

The room was in perfect darkness now.

"Nothing," said Lyndall quietly; "only they have locked us in."

She turned, and went back to bed again. But ere long Em heard a sound of movement. Lyndall had climbed up into the window, and with her fingers felt the woodwork that surrounded the panes. Slipping down, the girl loosened the iron knob from the foot of the bedstead, and climbing up again she broke with it every pane of glass in the window, beginning at the top and ending at the bottom.

"What are you doing?" asked Em, who heard the falling fragments.

Her companion made her no reply; but leaned on every little cross-bar, which cracked and gave way beneath her. Then she pressed with all her strength against the shutter. She had thought the wooden buttons would give way, but by the clinking sound she knew that the iron bar had been put across. She was quite quiet for a time. Clambering down, she took from the table a small one-bladed penknife, with which she began to peck at the hard wood of the shutter.

"What are you doing now?" asked Em, who had ceased crying in her wonder, and had drawn near.

"Trying to make a hole," was the short reply.

"Do you think you will be able to?"

"No; but I am trying."