 Chapter 2 part 12 of the story of an African farm by Olive Shreiner. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Sally McConnell in Betty's Bay, South Africa, in April 2010. Gregory's Womanhood. Slowly over the flat came a cart. On the back seat sat Gregory, his arms folded, his hat drawn over his eyes. A calfaboy sat on the front seat driving, and at his feet sat Doss, who now and again lifted his nose and eyes above the level of the splash-board to look at the surrounding country. And then, with an exceedingly knowing wink of his left eye, turned to his companions, thereby intimating that he clearly perceived his whereabouts. No one noticed the cart coming. Waldo, who was at work at his carpenter's table in the wagon-house, saw nothing till, chanceing to look down, he perceived Doss standing before him. The legs trembling, the little nose wrinkled, and a series of short, suffocating barks, giving utterance to his joy at reunion. M, whose eyes had ached with looking out across the plain, was now at work in the back room, and knew nothing till, looking up, she saw Gregory with his straw hat and blue eyes standing in the doorway. He greeted her quietly, hung his hat up in its old place behind the door, and for any change in his manner or appearance he might have been gone only the day before to fetch letters from the town. Only his beard was gone, and his face was grown thinner. He took off his litigators, said the afternoon was hot in the road's dusty, and asked for some tea. They talked of wool and the cattle and the sheep, and M gave him the pile of letters that had come for him during the months of absence. And of the thing that lay at their hearts neither said anything. Then he went out to look at the crawls, and at supper M gave him hot cakes and coffee. They talked about the servants, and then ate their meal in quiet. She asked no questions. When it was ended Gregory went into the front room and lay in the dark on the sofa. "'Do you not want a light?' asked M, venturing to look in. "'No,' he answered, then presently called to her. "'Come and sit here, I want to talk to you.' She came and sat on a footstool near him. "'Do you wish to hear anything?' he asked. She whispered. "'Yes, if it does not hurt you.' "'What difference does it make to me?' he said. "'If I talk or am silent, is there any change?' Yet he lay quiet for a long time. The light through the open door showed him to her where he lay with his arms thrown across his eyes. At last he spoke. Perhaps it was a relief to him to speak. To Blomfontein in the Free State, to which through an agent he had traced them, Gregory had gone. At the hotel where Lindl and her stranger had stayed, he put up. He was shown the very room in which they had slept. The coloured boy, who had driven them to the next town, told him in which house they had boarded, and Gregory went on. In that town he found they had left the cart, and brought a spider and four greys, and Gregory's heart rejoiced. Now indeed it would be easy to trace their course. And he turned his steps northwards. At the farmhouse where he stopped, the worms and hunters remembered clearly the spider with its four grey horses. At one place the boar-wife told how the tall blue-eyed Englishman had bought milk, and asked the way to the next farm. At the next farm the Englishman had bought a bunch of flowers and given half a crown for them to the little girl. It was quite true, the boar-mother had made her get it out of the box and show it. At the next place they had slept. Here they told him that the great bull-dog, who hated all strangers, had walked in in the evening and laid its head on the lady's lap. So at every place he heard something, and traced them step by step. At one desolate farm the boar had a good deal to tell. The lady had said she liked a wagon that stood before the door. Not asking the price the Englishman had offered a hundred and fifty pounds for the old thing, and bought oxen worth ten pounds for sixteen. The Dutchman chuckled, for he had the salt-rim's money in the box under his bed. Grigory laughed too in silence. He could not lose sight of them now, so slowly would they have to move with that cumbrous ox-wagon. Yet when that evening came and he reached a little way side in, no one could tell him anything of the travellers. The master, a surly creature, half-stupid with boar brandy, sat on the bench before the door smoking. Grigory sat beside him, questioning, but he smoked on. He remembered nothing of such strangers. How should he know who had been here three months and months before? He smoked on. Grigory, very wary, tried to awake his memory, said that the lady he was seeking for was very beautiful, had a little mouth, and tiny, very tiny feet. The man only smoked on as sullenly as at first. What were little, very little mouths and feet to him? But his daughter leaned out in the window above. She was dirty and lazy, and liked to lull there when travellers came, to hear the men talk. But she had a soft heart. Presently a hand came out of the window, and a pair of velvet slippers touched his shoulder, tiny slippers with black flowers. He pulled them out of her hand. Only one woman's feet had worn them. He knew that. "'Lift earlost summer by a lady,' said the girl. "'Might be the one you're looking for. Never saw any feet so small.' Grigory rose and questioned her. They might have come in a wagon and spider. She could not tell. But the gentleman was very handsome, tall, lovely figure, blue eyes, wore gloves always when he went out. An English officer, perhaps. "'No, Africana, certainly.' Grigory stopped her. "'The lady?' "'Well, she was pretty, rather,' the girl said. Very cold, dull air, silent. They stayed for it might have been five days, slipped in the wing over against the stoop, quarrelled sometimes, she thought. The lady. She had seen everything when she went in to wait. One day the gentleman touched her hair. She drew back from him as though his fingers poisoned her. Went to the other end of the room if he came to sit near her. He called out a learn. Cold wife for such a handsome husband, the girl thought. She evidently pitied him. He was such a beautiful man. They went away early one morning, how or in which way the girl could not tell. Grigory inquired of the servants, but nothing more was to be learnt. So the next morning he settled his horse and went on. At the farms he came to, the good old worms and tantas asked him to have coffee, and the little shoeless children peeped out at the stranger from behind the uddens and gables, but no one had seen what he asked for. This way and that he rode to pick up the thread he had dropped, but the spider and the wagon, the little lady and the handsome gentleman, no one had seen. In the towns he faired yet worse. Once indeed hope came to him. On the stoop of an hotel, at which he stayed the night in a certain little village, they walked a gentleman, grave and kindly looking. It was not hard to open conversation with him about the weather, and then had he ever seen such and such people, a gentleman and a lady, a spider and wagon, arrive at that place? The kindly gentleman shook his head. What was the lady like? he inquired. Grigory painted. Hair like silk and floss, small mouth, underliped very full and pink, upper lip pink but very thin and curled. There were four white spots on the nail of her right hand and forefinger, and her eyebrows were very delicately curved. The gentleman looked thoughtful, as trying to remember. Yes, and a rosebud tinge in the cheeks, hands like lilies, and perfectly so raffic smile. That is she! That is she! cried Grigory. Who else could it be? He asked where she had gone to. The gentleman most thoughtfully stroked his beard. He would try to remember. Were not her ears? Yes, such a violent fit of coughing seized him that he ran away into the house. An ill-fed clock and a dirty barman standing in the doorway laughed aloud. Grigory wondered if they could be laughing at the gentleman's cough, and then he heard someone laughing in the room into which the gentleman had gone. He must follow him and try to learn more, but he soon found there was nothing more to be learnt there. Poor Grigory. Backwards and forwards from the dirty little hotel where he had dropped the thread to this farm and to that road, Grigory, till his heart was sick and tired. That from that spot the wagon might have gone its own way, and the spider another was an idea that did not occur to him. At last he saw it was no use lingering in that neighborhood and pressed on. One day, coming to a little town, his horses knocked up, and he resolved to rest them there. The little hotel of the town was a bright and sunny place, like the jovial face of the clean little woman who kept it, and who trotted about talking always, talking to the customers in the taproom, and to the maids in the kitchen, and to the passers-by when she could hail them from the windows, talking, as good-natured women with large mouths and small noses always do, in season and art. There was a little front parlor in the hotel, kept for strangers who wanted to be alone. Grigory sat there to eat his breakfast, and the landlady dusted the room and talked of the great finds of the diamond-fields, and the badness of maidservants, and the shameful conduct of the Dutch parson in that town to the English inhabitants. Grigory ate his breakfast and listened to nothing. He had asked his one question, had had his answer, now she might talk on. Presently a door in the corner opened and a woman came out, a Mozambika, with a red handkerchief twisted round her head. She carried in her hand a tray with a slice of toast, crumbled fine, and a half-filled cup of coffee, and an egg, broken open, but not eaten. Her ebony face grinned complacently as she shut the door softly, and said, Good morning. You are not going to leave her rarely, Ayah, are you? She said. The maids say so, but I'm sure you wouldn't do such a thing. The Mozambika grinned. The husband says, I must go home. But she hasn't got anyone else, and won't have anyone else. Come now, said the landlady, I have no time to be sitting always in a sick room, not if I was paid anything for it. The Mozambika only showed her white teeth good-naturedly for answer, and went out, and the landlady followed her. Grigory, glad to be alone, watched the sun shine as it came over the fuchsias in the window, and ran up and down on the panel door in the corner. The Mozambika had closed it loosely behind her, and presently something touched it inside. It moved a little. Then it was still. Then moved again. Then through the gap a small nose appeared, and a yellow ear overlapping one eye. Then the whole head obtruded, placed itself critically on one side, wrinkled its nose disapprovingly at Grigory, and withdrew. Through the half-open door came a faint scent of vinegar, and the room was dark and still. Presently the landlady came back. "'Lift the door open,' she said, bustling to shut it, but a darky will be a darky, and never carries a head on its shoulders like other folks. "'Not ill, I hope, sir,' she said, looking at Grigory when she had shut the bedroom door. "'No,' said Grigory, "'No.' The landlady began putting the things together. "'Who?' asked Grigory, is in that room. Glad to have a little innocent piece of gossip to relate, and someone willing to hear it, the landlady made the most of a little story as she cleared the table. Six months before a lady had come alone to the hotel in a wagon, with only a coloured leader and driver. Eight days after a little baby had been born. If Grigory stood and looked out at the window he would see a blue country in the graveyard. The close by it was a little grave. The baby was buried there. A tiny thing only lived two hours, and the mother herself almost went with it. After a while she was better, but one day she got up out of bed, dressed herself without saying a word to anyone and went out. It was a drizzly day, a little time after someone saw her sitting on the wet ground under the blue country, with the rain dripping from her hat and shawl. They went to fetch her, but she would not come until she chose. When she did, she had gone to bed, and had not risen again from it. Never would, the doctor said. She was very patient, poor thing. When you went in to ask her how she was, she said always, better, or nearly well, and lay still in the darkened room and never troubled anyone. The Mozambika took care of her, and she would not allow anyone else to touch her, would not so much as allow anyone to see her foot uncovered. She was strange in many ways, but she paid well, poor thing, and now the Mozambika was going, and she would have to take up with someone else. The landlady prattled on pleasantly, and now carried away the tray with the breakfast-things. When she was gone, Gregory leaned his head on his hands, but he did not think long. Before dinner he had ridden out of the town to wear on a rise a number of transport-wagons were outspanned. The Dutchman, driver of one, wondered at the French's eagerness to free himself of his horses. Stolen perhaps, but it was worth his while to buy them at so lower price. So the horses changed masters, and Gregory walked off with his saddle-bag slung across his arm. Once out of sight of the wagons he struck out of the road and walked across the filth, the dry, flowering grasses waving everywhere about him. Halfway across the plain he came to a deep gully, which the rain torrents had washed out, but which was now dry. Gregory sprang down into its red bed. It was a safe place, and quiet. When he had looked about him he sat down under the shade of an overhanging bank, and fanned himself with his hat, for the afternoon was hot and he had walked fast. At his feet the dusty ants ran about, and the high red bank before him was covered by a network of roots and fibres washed bare by the rains. With his head rose the clear blue African sky, at his side with the saddle-bags full of a woman's clothing. Gregory looked up half-plantedly into the blue sky. "'Am I? Am I Gregory Nazian's and Rose?' he said. It was also strange. He, sitting there in that sloot in that up-country plain, strange as the fantastic changing shapes in a summer cloud, at last tired out he fell asleep with his head against the bank. When he woke the shadow had stretched across the sloot and the sun was on the edge of the plain. Now he must be up and doing. He drew from his breast-pocket a little sixpony-looking gloss, and hung it on one of the roots that stuck out from the bank. Then he dressed himself in one of the old-fashioned gowns, and a great, pinked-out collar. Then he took out a razor, tuft by tuft the soft-brown beard fell down into the sand, and the little ants took it to line their nests with. Then the glass showed a face surrounded by a frilled cap, white as a woman's, with a little mouth, a very short upper lip, and a receding chin. Presently a rather tall woman's figure was making its way across the felt. As it passed a hollowed-art anteep it knelt down, and stuffed in the saddle-bag with the man's clothing, closing up the anteep with bits of ground to look as natural as possible. Like a sinner hiding his deed of sin, the hider started once and looked around. But yet there was no one near save a meerkat who had lifted herself out of her hole, and sat on her hind legs, watching. He did not like that even she should see, and when he rose she dived away into her hole. Then he walked on leisurely, that the dusk might have reached the village streets before he walked there. The first house was the smith's, and before the open door two idle urchins lulled. As he hurried up the street in the gathering gloom, he heard them laugh long and loudly behind him. He glanced round, fearingly, and would almost have fled, but that the strange skirts clung about his legs. And after all it was only a spark that had elighted on the head of one, and not the strange figure they laughed at. The door of the hotel stood wide open and the light fell out into the street. He knocked, and the landlady came. She peered up to look for the cart that had brought the traveller, but Gregory's heart was brave now he was so near the quiet room. He told her he had come with the transport-wagons that stood outside the town. He had walked in and wanted lodgings for the night. It was a deliberate lie, glibly told. He would have told fifty, though the recording angel had stood in the next room with his pen dipped in the ink. What was it to him? He remembered that she lay there, saying always, I am better. The landlady put his supper in the little parlour where he had sat in the morning. When it was on the table she sat down in the rocking-chair, as her fashion was, to knit and talk, that she might gather news for her customers in the tap-room. In the white face, under the queer, deep-fringed cap, he saw nothing of the morning's traveller. The newcomer was communicative. She was a nurse-pipe profession, she said, had come to the transport hearing that good nurses were needed there. She had not yet found work. The landlady did not perhaps know whether there would be any for her in that town. The landlady put down her knitting, and smote her fat hands together. If it wasn't the very finger of God's providence, as though you saw it hanging out of the sky, she said, here was a lady ill and needing a new nurse that very day, and not able to get one to her mind, and now, well, if it wasn't enough to convert all the atheists and free thinkers in the transport, she didn't know. Then the landlady proceeded to detail facts. I am sure you will suit her, she added. You are just the kind. She has heaps of money to pay you with. Has everything that money can buy, and I got a letter with a check in it for fifty pounds the other day, from someone who says I am to spend it for her, and not to let her know. She's asleep now, but I'll take you in to look at her. The landlady opened the door of the next room, and Gregory followed her. A table stood near the bed, and a lamp-burning low stood on it. The bed was a great fore-poster with white curtains, and the quilt was made of rich crimson satin, but Gregory stood just inside the door with his head bent low, and saw no further. Come nearer. I'll turn the lamp up a bit, but you can have a look at her. A pretty thing, isn't it? said the landlady. Near the foot of the bed was a dent in the crimson quilt, and out of it Doss's small head and bright eyes looked knowingly. See how the lips move. She's in pain, said the landlady. Then Gregory looked up at Watley on the cushion. A little white, white face, transparent as an angel's, with the cloth bound round the forehead, and with soft short hair tossed about on the pillow. We had to cut it off, said the woman, touching it with her forefinger, soft as silk, like a wax doll. But Gregory's heart was bleeding. Never get up again, the doctor says, said the landlady. Gregory uttered one word. In an instant the beautiful eyes opened widely, looked around the room and into the dark corners. Who is here? Whom do I hear speak? Gregory had sunk back behind the curtain. The landlady drew it aside and pulled him forward. Only this lady-man, a nurse by profession, she is willing to stay and take care of you if you can come to terms with her. Lindell raised herself on her elbow and cast one keen scrutinising glance over him. Have I never seen you before, she asked? No. She fell back, where really? Perhaps you would like to arrange the terms between yourselves, said the landlady. Here is a chair, I will be back presently. Gregory sat down with bent head and quick breath. She did not speak and lay with half-closed eyes, seeming to have forgotten him. Will you turn the lamp down a little, she said at last? I cannot bear the light. Then his heart grew braver in the shadow, and he spoke. Nursing was to him, he said, his chosen life's work. He wanted no money, if she stopped him. I take no service for which I do not pay, she said. What I gave to my last nurse, I will give to you. If you do not like it, you may go. And Gregory muttered humbly, he would take it. As she tried to turn herself, he lifted her. Ah! A shrunken little body, he could feel its weakness as he touched it. His hands were to him glorified for what they had done. Thank you, that's so nice. Other people hurt me when they touched me, she said, thank you. Then after a while she repeated humbly, thank you, they hurt me so. Gregory sat down trembling, his little you-lamb, could they hurt her? The doctor said of Gregory four days after, she is the most experienced nurse I ever came in contact with. Gregory standing in the passage heard it and laughed in his heart. What need had he of experience? Experience teaches us in a millennium what passion teaches us in an hour. A cather studies all his life the discerning of distant sounds, but he will never hear my step, when my love hears it coming to her window in the dark over the short grass. At first Gregory's heart was sore when day by day the body grew lighter and the mouth he fed took less, but afterwards he grew accustomed to it and was happy. For passion has one cry, one only, oh, to touch thee, beloved. In that quiet room Lendl lay on her bed with the dog at her feet, and Gregory sat in his dark corner, watching. She seldom slipped, and through those long, long days she would lie watching the round streak of sunlight that came through the knot in the shutter, or the massive lines poor on which the wardrobe bristed. What thoughts were in those eyes? Gregory wondered, he dared not ask. Sometimes Doss, where he lay on her feet, would dream that they too were in the cart tearing over the felt with the black horses snorting and the wind in their faces, and he would start up in his sleep and bark aloud. Then awaking he would lick his mistress's hand almost remorsefully and slink quietly down into his place. Gregory thought she had no pain, she never groaned. Only sometimes when the light was near her he thought he could see slight contractions about her lips and eyebrows. He slipped on the sofa outside the door. One night he thought he heard a sound, and opening it softly he looked in. She was crying aloud as if she and her pain were alone in the world. The light fell on the red quilt and on the little hands that were clasped over her head. The wide-open eyes were looking up, and the heavy drops fell slowly from them. I cannot bear any more, not any more, she said in a deep voice. Oh God! God! have I not borne in silence? Have I not endured these long, long months? But now! Now, oh God, I cannot! Gregory knelt in the doorway listening. I do not ask for wisdom, not human love, not work, not knowledge, not for all things I have longed for, she cried. Only a little freedom from pain, only one little hour without pain. Then I will suffer again. She sat up and bit the little hand Gregory loved. He crept away to the front door and stood looking out at the quiet starlight. When he came back she was lying in her usual posture, the quiet eyes looking at the lion's claw. He came close to the bed. You have much pain tonight? He asked her. No, not much. Can I do anything for you? No, nothing. She still drew her lips together and motioned with her fingers towards the dog who lay sleeping at her feet. Gregory lifted him and laid him at her side. She made Gregory turn open the bosom of her nightdress that the dog might put his black muzzle between her breasts. She crossed her arms over him. Gregory left them lying there together. The next day when they asked how she was she answered, Better. Someone ought to tell her, said the landlady. We can't let her soul go into eternity not knowing, especially when I don't think it was all right about the child. You ought to go and tell her doctor. So the little doctor, edged on and on, went in at last. When he came out of the room he shook his fist in the landlady's face. This time you have any devil's work to do, do it yourself! He said, and shook his fist in her face again and went away swearing. When Gregory went into the bedroom he only found her moved, her body curled up and drawn close to the wall. He dared not disturb her at last after a long time she turned. Bring me food, she said. I want to eat. Two eggs and toast and meat, two large slices of toast, please. Then Gregory bought a tray with all that she had asked for. Sit me up and put it close to me, she said. I am going to eat it all. She tried to draw the things near her with her fingers and rearranged the plates. She cut the toast into long strips, broke open both eggs, put a tiny morsel of bread into her own mouth, and fed the dog with pieces of meat put into his jaws with her fingers. Is it twelve o'clock yet? She said. I think I do not generally eat so early. Put it away, please, carefully. No, do not take it away, only on the table. When the clock strikes twelve I will eat it. She lay down, trembling. After a while she said, give me my clothes. He looked at her. Yes, I am going to dress tomorrow. I should get up now, but it's rather late. Put them on that chair. My collars are in the little box, my boots behind the door. Her eyes followed him intently as he collected the articles one by one and placed them on the chair as she directed. Put it nearer, she said. I cannot see it. And she lay watching the clothes with her hand under her cheek. Now, open the shutter wide, she said. I am going to read. The old, old tone was again in the sweet voice. He obeyed her, and opened the shutter and raised her up among the pillows. Now, bring my books to me, she said, motioning eagerly with her fingers. Look at the large book and the reviews and the plays. I want them all. He piled them round her on the bed. She drew them greedily close her, her eyes very bright, but her face as white as a mountain lily. Now, the big one, off the drawers. No, you need not help me hold my book, she said. I can hold it for myself. Gregory went back to his corner, and for a little time the restless turning over of leaves was to be heard. Will you open the window? She said, almost querulously. I throw this book out. It is so utterly foolish. I thought it was a valuable book, but the words are merely strung together. They make no sense. Yes, so, she said with approval, seeing him fling it out into the street. I must have been very foolish when I thought that book good. Then she turned to read, and leaned her little elbows resolutely on the great volume, and knit her bras. This was Shakespeare. It must mean something. I wish she would take a handkerchief and tie a tack around my head. It aches so. He had not been long in his seat when he saw drops fall from beneath the hands that shaded the eyes onto the page. I am not accustomed to so much light, it makes my head swim a little, she said. Go out and close the shutter. When he came back, she lay shriveled up among the pillows. He heard no sound of weeping, but the shoulders shook. He darkened the room completely. When Gregory went to his sofa that night, she told him to wake her early. She would be dressed before breakfast. Nevertheless, when morning came, she said it was a little cold, and lay all day watching her clothes upon the chair. Still, she sent for her oxen in the country. They would start on Monday and go down to the colony. In the afternoon, she told him to open the window wide and draw the bed near to it. It was a leaden afternoon. The dull rain clouds rested close to the roofs of the houses, and the little street was silent and deserted. Now and then a gust of wind eddying round caught up the dried leaves, whirled them hither and thither under the trees, and dropped them again into the gutter. Then all was quiet. She lay, looking out. Presently the bell of the church began to toll, and up the village street came a long procession. They were carrying an old man to his last resting place. She followed them with her eyes till they turned in amongst the trees at the gate. Who was that? She asked. An old man, he answered, a very old man. They say he was ninety-four, but his name I do not know. She mused awhile, looking out with fixed eyes. That is why the bell rang so cheerfully, she said. When the old die, it is well they have had their time. It is when the young die that the bell's weep drops of blood. But the old love-life, he said, for it was sweet to hear her speak. She raised herself on her elbow. They love life, they do not want to die, she answered. But what of it? They have had their time. They knew that a man's life is three score years and ten. They should have made their plans accordingly. But the young, she said, the young cut down cruelly. When they have not seen, when they have not known, when they have not found, it is for them that the bell's weep blood. I heard in the ringing it was an old man. When the old die, listen to the bell, it is laughing. It is right, it is right, he has had his time. They cannot ring so for the young. She fell back exhausted. The hot light died from her eyes, and she lay looking out into the street. By and by, stragglers from the funeral began to come back and disappear here and there among the houses. Then all was quiet, and the night began to settle down upon the village street. Afterwards, when the room was almost dark so that they could not see each other's faces, she said, it will rain tonight, and moved restlessly on the pillars. How terrible when the rain falls down on you! He wondered what she meant, and they sat on in the still darkening room. She moved again. Will you presently take my cloak, the new grey cloak from behind the door, and go out with it? You will find a little grave at the foot of the tall blue-gum tree. The water drips off the long-pointed leaves. You must cover it up with that. She moved restlessly as though in pain. Gregory assented, and there was silence again. It was the first time she had ever spoken of her child. It was so small, she said. It lived such a little while, only three hours. They laid it close by me, but I never saw it. I could feel it by me. She waited. Its feet were so cold, I took them in my hand to make them warm, and my hand closed right over them. They were so little. There was an uneven trembling in the voice. It crept close to me. It wanted to drink. It wanted to be warm. She hardened herself. I did not love it. Its father was not my prince. I did not care for it, but it was so little. She moved her hand. They might have kissed it one of them before they put it in. It never did any one harm in all its little life. They might have kissed it one of them. Gregory felt that someone was sobbing in the room. Later on in the evening, when the shutter was closed and the lamp lighted, and the raindrops beat on the roof, he took the cloak from behind the door and went away with it. On his way back he called at the village post office and brought back a letter. In the hall he stood reading the address. How could he fail to know whose hand had written it? Had he not long ago studied those characters on the torn fragments of paper in the parlour? A burning pain was at Gregory's heart. If now, now at the last, one should come, should step in between. He carried the letter into the bedroom and gave it to her. Bring the lamp nearer, she said. When she had read it she asked for her desk. Then Gregory sat down in the lamp-light on the other side of the curtain and heard the pencil move on the paper. When he looked round the curtain he saw she was lying on the pillow, musing. The open letter lay at her side. She glanced at it with soft eyes. The man with the languid eyelids must have been strangely moved before his hand sat down those words. Let me come back to you. My darling, let me put my hand round you and guard you from the world, as my wife they shall never touch you. I have learnt to love you more wisely, more tenderly than of old. You shall have perfect freedom. Lindle, grand little woman, for your own sake, be my wife. Why did you send that money back to me? You are cruel to me. It is not rightly done. She rolled the little red pencil softly between her fingers, and her face grew very soft yet. It cannot be, she wrote. I thank you much for the love you have shown me, but I cannot listen. You will call me mad, foolish, the world would do so. But I know what I need, and the kind of path I must walk in. I cannot marry you. I will always love you for the sake of what lay by me those three hours. But there it ends. I must know and see. I cannot be bound to one whom I love, as I love you. I am not afraid of the world, I will fight the world. One day, perhaps it may be far off, I shall find what I have wanted all my life, something nobler, stronger than I, before which I can kneel down. You lose nothing by not having me now. I am a weak, selfish, earring woman. One day I shall find something to worship, and then I shall be nurse, she said. Take my desk away, I am suddenly so sleepy. I will write more to-morrow. She turned her face to the pillow, it was the sudden drowsiness of great weakness. She had dropped asleep in a moment, and Gregory moved the desk softly, and then sat in the chair, watching. Hour after hour passed, but he had no wish for rest. He sat on, hearing the rain cease, and the night settled down everywhere. At a quarter-past twelve he rose, and took a last look at the bed, where she lay sleeping so peacefully. Then he turned to go to his couch. Before he had reached the door, she started up, and was calling him back. Are you sure you have put it up, she said, with a look of blank terror at the window? It will not fall open in the night. The shutter, are you sure? He comforted her. Yes, it was tightly fastened. Even if it is shut, she said in a whisper, you cannot keep it out. You feel it coming in at four o'clock, creeping, creeping, up, up, deadly cold. She shuddered. He thought she was wondering, and laid her little trembling body down among the blankets. I'd dreamed just now that it was not put up, she said, looking into his eyes, and it crept right in, and I was alone with it. What do you fear? He asked tenderly. The grey dawn, she said, glancing round at the window. I was never afraid of anything, never when I was a little child, but I have always been afraid of that. You will not let it come into me. No, no, I will stay with you," he continued. But she was growing calmer. No, you must go to bed. I only a work with a start, you must be tired. I am childish, that is all. But she shivered again. He sat down beside her. After some time she said, Will you not rub my feet? He knelt down at the foot of the bed and took the tiny foot in his hand. It was swollen and unsightly now, but as he touched it he bent down and covered it with kisses. It makes it better when you kiss it. Thank you. What makes you all love me so? Then dreamily she muttered to herself, Not utterly bad, not quite bad. What makes them all love me so? Kneeling there, rubbing softly with his cheek pressed against the little foot, Gregory dropped to sleep at last. How long he knelt there he could not tell, but when he started up awake she was not looking at him. The eyes were fixed on the far corner, gazing wide and intent with an unearthly light. He looked grand fearfully. What did she see there? God's angels come to call her. Something fearful. He only saw the purple curtain with the shadows that fell from it. Softly he whispered, asking what she saw there. And she said in a voice strangely unlike her own. I see the vision of a poor weak soul striving after good. It was not cut short, and in the end it learnt through tears and such pain that holiness is an infinite compassion for others. That greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them. That she moved her white hand and laid it on her forehead. Happiness is a great love and much serving. It was not cut short, and it loved what it had learnt. It loved and—was that all she saw in the corner? Gregory told the landlady the next morning that she had been wondering all night. Yet when he came in to give her her breakfast she was sitting up against the pillars looking as he had not seen her look before. Put it close to me, she said, and when I have had breakfast I am going to dress. She finished all that he had bought her eagerly. I am sitting up quite by myself, she said. Give me his meat. And she fed the dog herself, cutting his food small for him. She moved to the side of the bed. Now bring the chair near and dress me. It is being in this room so long and looking at that miserable little bit of sunshine that comes in through the shutter that is making me so ill. Always that lion's paw, she said, with a look of disgust at it. Come and dress me. Gregory knelt on the floor before her and tried to draw on one stocking, but the little swirl and foot refused to be covered. It is very funny that I should have grown fat since I have been so ill. She said, peering down curiously, perhaps it is want of exercise. She looked troubled and again. Perhaps it is want of exercise. She wanted Gregory to say so too, but he only found a larger pair and then tried to force the shoes oh so tenderly onto her feet. There, she said, looking down at them when they were on with the delight of a small child over its first shoes. I could walk far now, how nice it looks. No, she said, seeing the soft gown he had prepared for her, I will not put that on. Get one of my wife dresses, the one with the pink bows. I do not even want to think I have been ill. It is thinking and thinking of things that makes them real, she said. When you draw your mind together and resolve that a thing shall not be, it gives way before you. It is not. Everything is possible if one is resolved, she said. She drew in her little lips together and Gregory obeyed her. She was so small and slight now it was like dressing a small doll. He would have lifted her down from the bed when he had finished, but she pushed him from her, laughing very softly. It was the first time she had laughed in those long dreary months. No, no, I can get down myself, she said, slipping cautiously onto the floor. You see! She cast a defiant glance of triumph when she stood there. Hold the curtain up high, I want to look at myself. He raised it and stood holding it. She looked into the glass on the opposite wall, such a queenly little figure in its pink and white, such a transparent little face, refined by suffering into an almost angel-like beauty. The face looked at her. She looked back, laughing softly. Doss, quivering with excitement, ran round her barking. She took one step towards the door, balancing herself with outstretched hands. I am nearly there, she said. Then she groped blindly. Oh, I cannot see! I cannot see! Where am I? She cried. When Gregory reached her she had fallen with her face against the sharp foot of the wardrobe and cut her forehead. Very tenderly he raised the little crushed heap of muslin and ribbons and laid it on the bed. Doss climbed up and sat looking down at it. Very softly Gregory's hands disrobed her. She will be stronger tomorrow and then we shall try again, he said, but she neither looked at him nor stirred. When he had undressed her and laid her in bed, Doss stretched himself across her feet and lay whining softly. So she lay all that morning and all that afternoon. Again and again Gregory crept close to the bedside and looked at her, but she did not speak to him. Was it stupor or was it sleep that shone under those half-closed eyelids Gregory could not tell? At last in the evening he bent over her. The oxen have come, he said. We can start tomorrow if you like. Shall I get the wagon ready to-night? Twice he repeated his question. Then she looked up at him and Gregory saw that all hope had died out of the beautiful eyes. It was not stupor that shone there, it was despair. Yes, let us go, she said. It makes no difference, said the doctor, staying or going, it is close now. So the next day Gregory carried her out in his arms to the wagon which stood in spanned before the door. As he laid her down on the cartel she looked far out across the plane. For the first time she spoke that day. That blue mountain far away let us stop when we get to it, not before. She closed her eyes again. He drew the sails down before and behind and the wagon rolled away slowly. The landlady and the niggers stood to watch it from the stoop. Very silently the great wagon rolled along the grass-covered plain. The driver on the front box did not clap his whip or quarters, oxen, and Gregory sat beside him with folded arms. Behind them in the closed wagon she lay with the dog at her feet, very quiet with folded hands. He, Gregory, dared not be in there. Like Hagar, when she laid her treasure down in the wilderness, he sat afar off. For, Hagar said, let me not see the death of the child. Evening came, and yet the blue mountain was not reached, and all the next day they rode on slowly, but still it was far off. Only at evening they reached it, not blue now, but low and brown, covered with long, waving grasses and rough stones. They drew the wagon up close to its foot for the night. It was a sheltered, warm spot. When the dark night had come, when the tired oxen were tied to the wheels, and the driver and leader had rolled themselves in their blankets before the fire, and gone to sleep, then Gregory fastened down the sails of the wagon securely. He fixed a long candle near the head of the bed, and lay down himself on the floor of the wagon near the back. He leaned his head against the cartel, and listened to the chewing of the tired oxen, and to the crackling of the fire, still overpowered by wariness, he fell into a heavy sleep. Then all was very still in the wagon. The dog slipped on his mistress's feet, and only two mosquitoes creeping in through a gap in the front sail, buzzed drearily round. The night was grown very old, when from a long peaceful sleep Lindler woke. The candle burnt at her head. The dog lay on her feet. But he shivered. It seemed as though a coldness struck up to him from his resting place. She lay with folded hands looking upwards, and she heard the oxen chewing, and saw the two mosquitoes buzzing drearily round and round, and her thoughts ran far back into the past. Through these months of anguish a mist had rested on her mind. It was rolled together now, and the old clear intellect awoke from its long torpor. It looked back into the past. It saw the present. There was no future now. The old soul gathered itself together for the last time. It knew where it stood. Slowly raising herself on her elbow, she took from the sail a glass that hung pinned there. Her fingers were stiff and cold. She put the pillow on her breast, and stood the glass against it. Then the white face on the pillow looked into the white face in the glass. They had looked at each other often so before. It had been a child's face once looking out above its blue pinnacle. It had been a woman's face with a dim shadow in the eyes, and a something which had said, We are not afraid, you and I. We are together. We will fat, you and I. Now, to-night, it had come to this. The dying eyes on the pillow looked into the dying eyes in the glass. They knew that their hour had come. She raised one hand and pressed the stiff fingers against the glass. They were growing very stiff. She tried to speak to it, but she would never speak again. Only the wonderful yearning light was in the eyes still. The body was dead now, but the so clear and unclouded looked forth. Then slowly, without a sound, the beautiful eyes closed. The dead face that the glass reflected was a thing of marvellous beauty and tranquility. The grey dawn crept in over it, and saw it lying there. Had she found what she sought for, something to worship? Had she ceased from being? Who shall tell us? There is a veil of terrible mist over the face of the year after. End of Chapter 2, Part 12 Chapter 2, Part 13 of the Story of an African Farm by Olive Shreiner. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Sally McConnell in Betty's Bay, South Africa, in April 2010. DREAMS. Tell me what a soul desires, and I will tell you what it is. So runs the phrase. Tell me what a man dreams, and I will tell you what he loves. That also has its truth. For whoever from the earliest childhood to the latest age, day by day, and step by step, the busy waking life is followed and reflected by the life of dreams. Waking dreams? Sleeping dreams. Weird, misty, and distorted, as the inverted image of a mirage, or a figure seen through the mountain mist, they are still the reflections of a reality. On the night when Gregory told his story, Waldo sat alone before the fire, his untasted supper before him. He was wary after his day's work, too wary to eat. He put the plate down on the floor for Doss, who licked it clean, and then went back to his corner. After a time the master threw himself across the foot of the bed without undressing, and fell asleep there. He slept so long that the candle burnt itself out, and the room was in darkness, but he dreamed a lovely dream as he lay there. In his dream, to his right rose high mountains, their tops crowned with snow, their sides curved with bush and bathed in the sunshine. At their feet was the sea, blue and breezy, bluer than any earthly sea, like the sea he had dreamed of in his boyhood. In the narrow forest that ran between the mountains and the sea, the air was rich with the scent of the honey-creeper, the tongue from dark green bushes, and through the velvety grass little streams ran pearling down into the sea. He sat on a high square rock among the bushes, and dindle sat by him and sang to him. She was only a small child with a blue pinafore and a grave, grave little face. He was looking up at the mountains. Then suddenly when he looked round, she was gone. He slipped down from his rock and went to look for her, but he only found her little footmarks. He found them on the bright green grass and in the moist sand, and there where the little streams ran pearling down into the sea. In an art, in an art and among the bushes where the honey-creeper hung, he went looking for her. At last, far off in the sunshine, he saw her gathering shells upon the sand. She was not a child now but a woman, and the sun shone on her soft brown hair, and in her white dress she put the shells she gathered. She was stooping, but when she heard his step she stood up, holding her skirt close about her, and waited for his coming. One hand she put in his, and they walked together on over the glittering sand and pink shells, and they heard the leaves talking, and they heard the waters babbling on their way to the sea, and they heard the sea singing to itself, singing, singing. At last they came to a place where there was a long reach of pure white sand. There she stood still, and dropped on to the sand one by one the shells that she had gathered. Then she looked up into his face with her beautiful eyes. She said nothing, but she lifted one hand and laid it softly on his forehead, the other she laid on his heart. With a cry of suppressed agony Waldo sprang from the bed, flung open the upper half of the door, and leaned out, breathing heavily. Great God! It might be only a dream, but the pain was very real, as though a knife ran through his heart, as though some treacherous murder had crept on him in the dark. The strong man drew his breath like a frightened woman. Only a dream, but the pain was very real, he muttered, as he pressed his right hand upon his breast. Then he folded his arms on the door, and stood looking out into the starlight. The dream was with him still. The woman who was his friend was not separated from him by years, only that very night he had seen her. He looked up into the night sky that all his life long had mingled itself with his existence. There were a thousand faces that he loved looking down at him, a thousand stars in their glory, in crowns and circles and solitary grander. To the man they were not less dear than to the boy they had been, not less mysterious, yet he looked up at them and shuddered, at last turned away from them with horror. Such countless multitudes, stretching out far into space, and yet not in one of them all was she. Though he searched through them all to the farthest faintest point of light, nowhere should he ever say she is here. Tomorrow's sun would rise and gild the world's mountains and shine into its thousand valleys. It would set, and the stars creep out again. Year after year, century after century, the old changes of nature would go on, day and night, summer and winter, seed time and harvest, but in none of them all would she have part. He shut the door to keep out their hideous shining, and because the dark was intolerable, lit a candle, and paced the little room faster and faster yet, he saw before him the long ages of eternity that would roll on, on, on, and never bring her. She would exist no more. A dark mist filled the little room. Oh, little hand, oh, little voice, oh, little form, he cried. Oh, little soul that walked with mine. Oh, little soul that looked so fearlessly down into the dips. Do you exist no more for ever, for all time? He cried morbidly. It is for this hour, this, that men blind reason and crush out thought. For this hour, this, this, they barter truth and knowledge, take any lie, any creed, so it does not whisper to them of the dead that they are dead. Oh, God! God for a year after! Pain made his soul weak. It cried for the old faith. They are the tears that fall into the new-made grave that cement the power of the priest. For the cry of the soul that loves and loses is this, bridge over death, blend the here with the here after, cause the mortal to robe himself in immortality. Let me not say of my dead that it is dead. I will believe all else, bear all else, endure all else. Mattering to himself, Waldo walked with bent head, the mist in his eyes. To the soul's wild cry for its own there are many answers. He began to think of them. Was there not one of them all from which he might suck one drop of comfort? You shall see her again, says the Christian, the true Bible Christian. Yes, you shall see her again. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened, and the dead were judged from those things that were written in the books. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. Yes, you shall see her again. She died so, with her knee unbent, and her hand unraised, with a prayer unuttered, in the pride of her intellect and the strength of her youth. She loved and she was loved. But she said no prayer to God. She cried for no mercy. She repented of no sin. Yes, you shall see her again. In his bitterness Waldo laughed low. Ha! he had long ceased to hearken to the hellish voice. But yet another speaks. You shall see her again, says the nineteenth-century Christian, deep into whose soul modern unbelief and thought have crept, though he knows it not. He it is who uses his Bible as the pearlfishers use their shells, sorting out gems from refuse. He sits his pearls off to his own fashion, and he sits them well. Do not fear, he says, hell and judgment are not. God is love. I know that beyond this blue sky above us is a love as wide spreading, over all. The all-father will show her to you again. Not spirit only. The little hands, the little feet you loved, you shall lie down and kiss them, if you will. Just arose, and did eat and drink, so shall she arise. The dead, all the dead, raised incorruptible. God is love. You shall see her again. It is a heavenly song, this of the nineteenth-century Christian. A man might dry his tears to listen to it, but for this one thing Waldo muttered to himself confusedly. The thing I loved was a woman proud and young. It had a mother once, who, dying, kissed her little baby, and prayed to God that she might see it again. If it had lived, the loved thing would itself have had a son, who, when he closed the wary eyes, and smoothed the wrinkle forehead of his mother, would have prayed God to see that old-faced smile again in the hereafter. To the son, heaven will be no heaven if the sweet worn face is not in one of the choirs. He will look for it through the phalanx of God's glorified angels, and the youth will look for the maid, and the mother for the baby. And whose, then, shall she be at the resurrection of the dead? Oh, God! Oh, God! What a beautiful dream, he cried. But can any one dream it, not sleeping? Waldo paced on, moaning in agony and longing. He heard the transcendentalist's high answer. What have you to do with flesh, the gross and miserable garment in which spirit hides itself? You shall see her again, but the hand, the foot, the forehead you loved, you shall see no more. The loves, the fears, the frailties that are born with the flesh, with the flesh they shall die. Let them die. There is that in a man that cannot die. A seed, a germ, an embryo, a spiritual essence. Higher than she was on earth, as the tree is higher than the seed, the man than the embryo, so shall you behold her, changed, glorified. High words ringing well, there are the offering of jewels to the hungry, of gold to the man who dies for bread. Bread is corruptible, gold is incorruptible. Bread is light, gold is heavy. Bread is common, gold is rare. But the hungry man will barter all your minds for one morsel of bread. On God's throne there may be choirs and companies of angels, cherubim and seraphim, rising tear above tear, but not for one of them all does the soul cry aloud, only perhaps for a little human woman, full of sin, that had once loved. Change is death. Change is death, he cried. I want no angel, only she, no holier, and no better, with all her sins upon her. So give her me, or give me nothing. And truly does not the heart love its own with the strongest passion for their very frailties? Heaven might keep its angels if men were but left to men. Change is death, he cried. Change is death. Who dares to say the body never dies, because it turns again to grass and flowers? And yet they dare to say the spirit never dies, because in space some strange unearthly being may have sprung up upon its ruins. Leave me. Leave me, he cried, in frantic bitterness. Give me back what I have lost, or give me nothing. For the soul's fierce cry for immortality is this, only this. Return to me after death the thing as it was before. Leave me in the hereafter the being that I am today. Grab me of the thoughts, the feelings, the desires that are my life, and you have left nothing to take. Your immortality is annihilation. Your hereafter is a lie. Waldo flung open the door and walked out into the starlight, his pain-stricken thoughts ever driving him on as he paced there. There must be a hereafter, because a man longs for it, he whispered. Is not all life from the cradle to the grave one long yearning for that which we never touch? There must be a hereafter, because we cannot think of any end to life. Can we think of a beginning? Is it easier to say I was not than to say I shall not be? And yet where were we ninety years ago? Dreams. Dreams. Ah, all dreams and lies, no ground anywhere. He went back into the cabin and walked there. Hour after hour passed, and he was dreaming. For mark you men will dream. The most that can be asked of them is but that the dream be not in too glaring discord with the thing they know. He walked with bent head. All dies. All dies. The roses are red with the matter that once reddened the cheek of the child. The flowers bloom the fairest on the last year's battleground. The work of Death's finger cunningly read over is at the heart of all things, even of the living. Death's finger is everywhere. The rocks are built up of a life that was. Bodies. Thoughts. And loves die. From where springs that whisper to the tiny soul of man, you shall not die? Ah, is there no truth of which this dream is shadow? He fell into perfect silence. And at last, as he walked there with his bent head, his soul passed down the steps of contemplation into that vast land where there is always peace. That land where the soul gazing long loses all consciousness of its little self, and almost feels its hand on the old mystery of universal unity that surrounds it. No death. No death, he muttered. There is that which never dies, which abides. It is but the individual that perishes, the whole remains. It is the organism that vanishes. The atoms are there. It is but the man that dies, the universal whole of which he is part reworks him into its inmost self. Ah, what matter that man's day be short, that the sunrise sees him and the sunset sees his grave. That of which he is but the breath has breathed him forth and drawn him back again. That abides. We abide. For the little soul that cries aloud for continued personal existence for itself and its beloved, there is no help. For the soul which knows itself no more is a unit, but as a part of the universal unity of which the beloved is also a part, which feels within itself the throb of the universal life, for that soul there is no death. Let us die, beloved, you and I, that we may pass on forever through the universal life. In that deep world of contemplation all fierce desires die out and peace comes down. He, Waldo, as he walked there, saw no more the world that was about him, cried out no more for the thing that he had lost. His soul rested. Was it only John, think you, who saw the heavens open? The dreamers see it every day. Long years before the father had walked in the little cabin and seen choirs of angels and a prince like unto men but clothed in immortality. The son's knowledge was not as the father's, therefore the dream was new-tinted, but the sweetness was all there, the infinite peace that men find not in the cankered kingdom of the tangible. The bars of the real are set close about us. We cannot open our wings, but they are struck against them and drop, bleeding. But when we glide between the bars into the great unknown beyond, we may sail forever in the glorious blue, seeing nothing but our own shadows. So age succeeds age, and dream succeeds dream, and of the joy of the dreamer no man knoweth but he who dreameth. Our fathers had their dreams, we have ours, the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist. End of Chapter 2, Part 13, Chapter 2, Part 14 of the Story of an African Farm by Olive Shreiner. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Sally McConnell in Bettys Bay, South Africa, in April 2010. Waldo goes up to sit in the sunshine. It had been a princely day. The long morning had melted slowly into a rich afternoon. Wands had covered the karoo with a heavy coat of green that hid the red earth everywhere. In the very chinks of the stone walls dark green leaves hung out, and beauty and growth had crept even into the beds of the sandy furrows and lined them with weeds. On the broken sod walls of the old pigsty, chickweeds flourished, and ice-plants lifted their transparent leaves. Waldo was at work in the wagon-house again. He was making a kitchen table for M. As the long curls gathered and heaps before his plane, he paused for an instant now and again to throw one down to a small naked nigger who had crept from its mother who stood churning in the sunshine and crawled into the wagon-house. From time to time the little animal lifted its fat hand as it expected a fresh shower of curls. Till Doss, jealous of his master's noticing any other small creature but himself, would catch the curl in his mouth and roll the little caffer over in the saw-dust, much to that small animal's contentment. It was too lazy an afternoon to be really ill-natured. So Doss satisfied himself with snapping at the little nigger's fingers and sitting on him till he laughed. Waldo, as he worked, glanced down at them now and then and smiled, but he never looked out across the plane. He was conscious without looking of that broad green earth. It made his work pleasant to him. Near the shadow at the gable the mother of the little nigger stood churning. Slowly she raised and let fall the stick in her hands, murmuring to herself a sleepy chant such as her people love. It sounded like the humming of far-off bees. A different life showed itself in the front of the house where Tant Sunny's cot stood ready and spanned, and the poor woman herself sat in the front room drinking coffee. She had come to visit her step-daughter, probably for the last time, as she now weighed two hundred and sixty pounds and was not easily able to move. On a chair sat her mild young husband nursing the baby, a pudding-faced, weak-eyed child. You take it and get into the cot with it! said Tant Sunny. What do you want here, listening to our woman's talk? The young man arose and meekly went out with the baby. I am very glad you are going to be married, my child! said Tant Sunny, as she drained the last drop from her coffee-cup. I wouldn't say so while that boy was here. It would make him too conceited, but marriage is the finest thing in the world. I've been at it three times, and if it pleased God to take this husband from me, I should have another. There's nothing like it, my child. Nothing. Perhaps it might not suit all people at all times, as well as it suits you, Tant Sunny, said M. There was a little shade of weariness in the voice. Knocked suit. Everyone! said Tant Sunny. If the beloved Redeemer didn't mean men to have wives, what did he make women for? That's what I say. If a woman's old enough to marry and doesn't, she's sinning against the Lord. It's a wanting to know better than him. What does she think the Lord took all that trouble in making her for nothing? It's evident he wants babies. Otherwise, why does he send them? Not that I've done much in that way myself, said Tant Sunny sorrowfully. But I've done my best. She rose with some difficulty from her chair and began moving slowly towards the door. It's a strange thing, she said. But you can't love a man till you've had a baby by him. Now there's that boy there. When we were first married, if he only sneezed in the night I boxed his ears. Now, if he lets his pipe ash come on my milkcloths, I don't even lay a finger on him. There's nothing like being married. Said Tant Sunny as she puffed towards the door. If a woman's got a baby and a husband, she's got the best things the Lord can give her, if only the baby doesn't have convulsions. As for a husband, it's very much the same who one has. Some men are fat, and some men are thin. Some men drink brandy, and some men drink gin. But it all comes to the same thing in the end. It's all one. A man's a man, you know. Here they came upon Gregory, who was sitting in the shed before the house. Tant Sunny shook hands with him. I am glad you're going to get married, she said. I hope you'll have as many children in five years as a cow has calves, and more, too. I think I'll just go and have a look at your soap pot before I start, she said, turning to M. Not that I believe in this new plan of putting soda in the pot. If the dear father had meant soda to be put into soap, what would he have made milk bushes for and stuck them all over the felt as thick as lambs in the lambing season? She waddled off after M. in the direction of the built-in soap pot, leaving Gregory as they found him, with his dead pipe lying on the bench beside him, and his blue eyes gazing out far across the flat, like one who sits on the seashore, watching that which is fading, fading from him. Against his breast was a letter found in a desk addressed to himself, but never posted. It held only four words. You must marry M. He wore it in a black bag round his neck. It was the only letter she had ever written to him. You see if the sheep don't have scab this year, said Tant Sunny as she waddled off to M. It's with all these new inventions that the wrath of God must fall on us. What were the children of Israel punished for if it wasn't for making a golden calf? I may have my sins, but I do remember the Tenth Commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayst live long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. It's all very well to say we honor them, and then to be finding out things that they never knew, and doing things in a way that they never did them. My mother boiled soap with bushes, and I will boil soap with bushes. If the wrath of God is to fall upon this land, said Tant Sunny with the serenity of conscious virtue, it shall not be through me. Let them make their steam wagons and their fire carriages. Let them go on as though the dear Lord didn't know what he was about when he gave horses and oxen legs. The destruction of the Lord will follow them. I don't know how such people read their Bibles. When do we hear of Moses or Noah riding in a railway? The Lord sent fire carriages out of heaven in those days. There's no chance of his sending them for us if we go on in this way, said Tant Sunny sorrowfully, thinking of the splendid chance which this generation had lost. Arrived at the soap pot, she looked over into it thoughtfully. Depend on it you'll get the itch or some other disease, the blessing of the Lord, or never rest upon it, said the poor woman. Then suddenly she broke forth. And she, 82, and goats and rams and 8,000 morgan, and the rams real Angora and 2,000 sheep, and a shop-horn bull, said Tant Sunny, standing upright and planting a hand on each hip. Im looked at her in silent wonder, had cannubial bliss and the joys of motherhood rarely turned the old woman's head. Yes, said Tant Sunny, I had almost forgotten to tell you, by the Lord if I had him here. We were walking to church last sacrament Sunday, Pete and I. Close in front of us was old Tant Trana, with dropsy and cancer and can't live 8 months. Walking by her was something with its hands under its coat tails. Flap, flap, flap and its chin in the air and a stick-up collar and the black hat on the very back of the head. I knew him. Who's that? I asked. The rich Englishman that Tant Trana married last week? Rich Englishman. I am a rich Englishman, him. I said, I'll tell Tant Trana a thing or two. My fingers were just in his little white curls. If it hadn't been the blessed sacrament, he wouldn't have walked so surka, surka, curka anymore. But I thought, wait till I've had it. And then, but he sly fox, son of Satan, seed of the Amalekite, he saw me looking at him in the church. The blessed sacrament wasn't half over when he takes Tant Trana by the arm and out they go. I clap my baby down to its father and I go after them. But, said Tant Sonny regretfully, I couldn't get up to them. I am too fat. When I got to the corner he was pulling Tant Trana up into the cart. Tant Trana, I said. You've married a cather's dog? A hot-and-tot's brucky. I hadn't any more breath. He winked at me. He winked at me. Said Tant Sonny, her sides shaking with indignation. First one eye and then the other. And then drove away, child of the Amalekite. Said Tant Sonny. If it hadn't been the blessed sacrament. Lord, Lord, Lord! Here the little bush girl came running to say that the horses would stand no longer, and still breathing out vengeance against her old adversary she laboured towards the cart. Shaking hands and affectionately kissing him she was, with some difficulty, drawn up. Then slowly the cart rolled away, the good-brawl woman putting her head out between the sails to smile and nod. M. stood watching it for a time, then as the sun dazzled her eyes she turned away. There was no use in going to sit with Gregory. He liked best sitting there alone, staring across the green caroo. Until the maid had done churning there was nothing to do. So M. walked away to the wagon-house and climbed on to the end of Waldo's table and sat there swinging one little foot slowly to and fro while the wooden curls from the plane heaped themselves up against her black print dress. Waldo, she said at last, Gregory has given me the money he got for the wagon and oxen and I have fifty pounds beside that once belonged to some one. I know what they would have liked to have done with it. You must take it and go to some place and study for a year or two. No, little one, I will not take it, he said, as he planned slowly away. The time was when I would have been very grateful to anyone who would have given me a little money, a little help, a little power of gaining knowledge. But now I have gone so far alone I may go on to the end. I don't want it, little one. She did not seem pained at his refusal but swung her foot to and fro the old wrinkled forehead more wrinkled up than ever. Why is it always so, Waldo, always so? She said, we long for things and long for them and pray for them. We would give all we have to come near to them but we never reach them. Then, at last, too late just when we don't want them anymore when all the sweetness is taken out of them, then they come. We don't want them then, she said, folding her hands resignedly on her little apron. After a while she added, I remember once, very long ago, when I was a very little girl my mother had a workbox full of coloured reels. I always wanted to play with them but she would never let me. At last one day she said I might take the box. I was so glad I hardly knew what to do I ran round the house and sat down with it on the back steps but when I opened the box all the cottons were taken out. She sat for a while longer till the cafe maid had finished churning and was carrying the butter towards the house. Then M prepared to slip off the table but first she laid her little hand on Waldo's. He stopped his planing and looked up. Gregory is going to the town tomorrow. He's going to give in our bands to the minister. We're going to be married in three weeks. Waldo lifted her very gently from the table. He did not congratulate her. Perhaps he thought of the empty box but he kissed her forehead gravely. She walked away towards the house but stalked when she had got halfway. I will bring you a glass of buttermilk when it's cool," she called out and soon her clear voice came ringing out through the back windows as she sang the blue water to herself and washed the butter. Waldo did not wait till she returned. Perhaps he had at last really grown wary of work. Perhaps he felt the wagon-house chilly for he had shuddered two or three times though it was hardly likely in that warm summer weather. Or perhaps and most probably one of his old dreaming fits had come upon him suddenly. He put his tools carefully together, ready for tomorrow, and walked slowly out. At the side of the wagon-house there was a world of bright sunshine and a hen with her chickens was scratching among the gravel. Waldo seated himself near them with his back against the red brick wall. The long afternoon was half spent and the copy was just beginning to cast its shadow over the round-headed yellow flowers that grew between it and the farm-house. Among the flowers the white butterflies hovered and on the old crawl mounds three white kids gambled and at the door of one of the huts an old grey-headed kappa woman sat on the ground mending her mats. A barmy, wristful peacefulness seemed to rain everywhere. Even the old hen seemed well satisfied. She scratched among the stones and called to her chickens when she found a treasure, and all the while clucked to herself with intense inward satisfaction. Waldo as he sat with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms folded on them looked at it all and smiled. An evil world, a deceitful, treacherous, mirage-like world it might be, but a lovely world for all that and to sit there gloting in the sunlight was perfect. It was worth having been a little child and having cried and prayed so that one might sit there. He moved his hands as though he were washing them in the sunshine. There will always be something worth living for while there are shimmery afternoons. Waldo chuckled with intense inward satisfaction as the old hen had done. She over the insects and the warmth. He over the old brick walls and the little bushes. Beauty is God's wine with which he recompenses the souls that love him. He makes them drunk. The fellow looked and at last stretched out one hand to a little ice-plant that grew on the sod-wall of the stye. Not as though he would have picked it, but as it were in a friendly greeting. He loved it. One little leaf of the ice-plant stood upright and the sun shone through it. He could see every little crystal cell like a drop of ice in the transparent green and had thrilled him. There are only rare times when a man's soul can see nature. So long as any passion holds its revel there, the eyes are holding that they should not see her. Go out, if you will, and walk alone on the hillside in the evening. But if your favourite child lies ill at home or your lover comes to-morrow or at your heart there lies a scheme for the holding of wealth, then you will return as you went out. You will have seen many things as you went out. You will have seen nothing. For nature, ever like the old Hebrew God, cries out, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Only then, when there comes a pause, a blank in your life, when the old idol is broken, when the old hope is dead, when the old desire is crushed, then the divine compensation of nature is made manifest. She shows herself to you. So near she draws you that the blood seems to flow from her to you through a still uncut cord. You feel the throb of her life. When that day comes that you sit down, broken, without one human creature to whom you cling, with your loves the dead and the living dead, when the very thirst for knowledge through long-continued thwarting has grown dull, when in the present there is no craving and in the future no hope, then, oh, with a beneficent tenderness, nature enfolds you. Then the large white snowflakes as they flutter down softly one by one, whisper soothingly, rest, poor heart, rest. It is though our mother smoothed our hair and we are comforted. And yellow-legged bees as they hum make a dreamy lyric, and the light on the brownstone wall is a great work of art, and the glitter through the leaves makes the pulses beat. Well to die, then, for, if you live, so surely as the years come, so surely as the spring succeeds the winter, so surely will passions arise. They will creep back one by one into the bosom that has cast them forth and fasten there again and peace will go. Desire, ambition and the fierce agonising flood of love for the living they will spring again. Then nature will draw down her veil with all your longing you shall not be able to raise one corner, you cannot bring back those peaceful days. Well to die, then. Sitting there with his arms folded on his knees, his hat slouched down over his face, Waldo looked out into the yellow sunshine that tinted even the very air with the colour of right corn, and was happy. He was an uncouth creature with small learning, and no prospect in the future but that of making endless tables and stone walls, yet it seemed to him, as he sat there, that life was a rare and very rich thing. He rubbed his hands in the sunshine. Ah, to live on so year after year, how well! Always in the present, bringing each day glide, bringing its own labour and its own beauty, the gradual lighting up of the hills, night and the stars, firelight and the coals, to live on so calmly, far from the paths of men, and to look at the lives of clouds and insects, to look deep into the heart of flowers, and see how lovingly the pistol and the stamens nestle there together, and to see in the thorn pods how the little seeds suck their life through the delicate, curled up string, and how the little embryo sleeps inside. Well, how well to sit so on one side, taking no part in the world's life! But when great men blossom into books looking into those flowers also, to see how the world of men too opens beautifully, leaf after leaf. Ah, life is delicious! Well to live long and see the darkness breaking and the day coming, the day when soul shall not thrust back soul that would come to it, when men shall not be driven to seek solitude because of the crying out of their hearts for love and sympathy. Well to live long and see the new time breaking. Well to live long. Life is sweet. Sweet. Sweet. In his breast pocket, when Slate used to be, there was now a little dancing shoe of his friend who was sleeping. He could feel it when he folded his arm tight against his breast, and that was well also. He drew his hat lower over his eyes and sat so motionless that the chickens thought he was asleep and gathered closer around him. One even ventured to pick at his boot, but he ran away quickly. Tiny yellow fellow that he was, then were dangerous, even sleeping they might awake. But Waldo did not sleep, and coming back from his sun-shiny dream stretched out his hand for the tiny thing to mount. But the chicken eyed the hand as sconce and then ran off to hide under its mother's wing, and from beneath it sometimes put out its round head to peep at the great figure sitting there. Presently its brothers ran off after a little white moth, and it ran out to join them, sluttered away over their heads. They stood looking up disappointed and then ran back to their mother. Waldo through his half-closed eyes looked at them, thinking, fearing, craving those tiny sparks of brother life. What were they? So real there in that old yard on that sun-shiny afternoon. A few years where would they be? Strange little brother spirits. He stretched his hand towards them, for his heart went out to them. But not one of the little features came near him, and he watched them gravely for a time. Then he smiled and began muttering to himself after his old fashion. Afterwards he folded his arms upon his knees and risked his forehead on them. And so he sat there in the yellow sunshine, muttering, muttering, muttering to himself. It was not very long after when M came out of the back door with a towel thrown across her head and in her hand a cup of milk. Ah! she said coming close to him, he's sleeping now. He'll find it when he wakes and be glad of it. She put it down upon the ground beside him. The mother hen was still at work among the stones, but the chickens had climbed about him and were perching on him. One stood upon his shoulder and rubbed its little head softly against his black curls. Another tried to balance itself on the very edge of the old felt hat. One tiny fellow stood upon his hand and tried to crow. Another had nestled itself down comfortably on the old coat-sleeve and gone to sleep there. M did not drive them away, but she covered the glass softly at his side. He will wake soon, she said, and be glad of it. But the chickens were wiser. End of chapter 2 part 14 End of the story of an African farm by Olive Shreiner