"You kid, go there. You kid, fetch this or bring that. You kid, go to the drift for water, or take the besom and sweep the stoep, or scrub out the room there--do you hear, you kid?" These orders came thick and fast when at last she was old enough to work; and she was old enough when she was very young, and did work like a little beast of burden. A real mother's heart--all mothers are not real ones--would have ached to see the dirt and bruises on the delicate childish limbs, and the vermin that crawled under the yellow rings of hair. How to be clean and tidy n.o.body had ever shown her, though she had learned by instinct other things.

That it was best to bear hunger and pain in silence, lest worse befell.

That a truth for which one suffers is not as good as a lie for which one gets a bigger roaster-cake, or the sc.r.a.pings of the syrup-can. That to little, weak, and feeble creatures of their race grown human beings can be marvellously cruel. That the devil lived down in the kraals with the natives, and that G.o.d was a swear. It is a wonder that she had not sunk into idiocy, or hopelessly sickened and died, neglected, ill-used, half-starved as she was. But when the little one might have been six years of age, the Lady began coming. And after the first time, with very brief intervals of absence, she came every night.

V

As soon as you lay down on the sack of straw in the corner of the outhouse, slipping out of the ragged frock if the weather were hot, or pulling the thin old horse-blanket over you if the night were a cold one, keeping your eyes tight shut, for this was quite indispensable, you looked into the thick dark, shot with gleams of lovely colours, sometimes with whirling rings of stars, and gradually, as you looked, all these concentrated into two stars, large and not twinkling, but softly radiant, and you were happy, for you knew that the Lady was coming.

For she always came, even when you had been most wicked: when you were sent to bed without even the supper-crust to gnaw, and when your body and arms and legs were bruised and aching from the beating they told you you deserved. The stars would go a long way off, and while you tingled and trembled and panted with expectation, would come back again as eyes.

Looking up into them, you saw them clearly; the rest of the person they belonged to arrived quite a little while after her eyes were there. Such eyes--neither grey, nor brown, nor violet, but a mingling of all these colours, and deepening as you gazed up into them into bottomless lakes of love.

Then her face, framed in a soft darkness, which was hair--the Kid never knew of what colour--her face formed itself out of the darkness that framed those eyes, and a warm, balmy breath came nearer, and you were kissed. No other lips, in your short remembrance, had ever touched you.

You had learned the meaning of a kiss only from her, and hers was so long and close that your heart left off beating, and only began again when it was over. Then arms that were soft and warm, and strong and beautiful, came round you and gathered you in, and you fell asleep folded closely in them, or you lay awake, and the Lady talked to you in a voice that was mellow as honey and soft as velvet, and sounded like the cooing of the wild pigeons that nested in the krantzes, or the sighing of the wind among the high veld gra.s.ses, and the murmur of the little river playing among the boulders and gurgling between the roots of the tree-fern. You talked, too, and told her everything. And no matter how bad you had been, though she was sorry, because she hated badness, she loved you just as dearly as she did when you were good. And oh! how you loved her--how you loved her!

"Please," you said that night when she came first--you remember it quite well, though it is so long ago--"please, why did you never come before?"

And she answered, with her cool, sweet, fragrant lips upon your eyelids, and your head upon her breast:

"Because you never wanted me so much as now."

"Please take me back home with you," you begged, holding her fast. And she answered in the voice that is always like the sigh of the wind amongst the tree-tops and the murmur of the river:

"I cannot yet--but I will come again."

And she does come, and again and again. By degrees, though she comes to you only at night, when the outhouse is dark, or lighted only by the stars or the moonshine, you learn exactly what the Lady is like.

She wears a silken, softly-rustling gown that is of any lovely colour you choose. The hue of the blue overarching sky at midday, or the tender rose of dawn, or of the violet clouds that bar the flaming orange-ruby of the sunset: or the mysterious robe of twilight drapes her, or her garment is sable as the Night. The grand sweep of her shoulders and the splendid pillar of her throat reveal the beauty of her form even to the eyes of an untaught, neglected child. Her face is pale, but as full of sunlight as of shadow, and her eyes are really grey and deep as mountain lakes. The sorrow of all the world and all its joy seem to have rolled over her like many waters, and when she smiles the sweetness of it is always almost more than the Kid can bear.

Who is the Lady!

She has no other name than that. She is very, very good, as well as beautiful, and you can bear to tell her when you have been most wicked, because she is so sorry for you. She can play with you, and laugh so softly and clearly and gaily that you, who have never learned but to dread grown people's cruel merriment, join in and laugh too. When she laughs the corners of her eyes crinkle so like the corners of her lips that you have to kiss them, and there are dimples that come with the laughter, and make her dearer than ever.

Who is the Lady, tall, and strong, and tender? That dead woman lying out there under the Little Kopje was small, and slight, and frail. Who may the Lady be? Is she a dream or a mere illusion born of loneliness and starvation, physical and mental? Or has Mary, the Mother of Pity, laid aside her girdle of decades of golden roses, her mantle of glory, and her diadem of stars, and come stepping fair-footed down the stairway that Night builds between Earth and Heaven, to comfort a desolate child lying in a stable who never heard the story of the Christ-Babe of Bethlehem?

You ask no questions--you to whom she comes. You call her softly at night, stretching out your arms, and the clasp of her arms answers at once. You whisper how you love her, with your face hidden in her neck. The great kind dark that brings her is your real, real daytime in which you live and are glad. Each morning to which you waken, bringing its stint of hunger and abuse and blows renewed, is only a dreadful dream, you say to yourself, and so can face your world.

Oh, deep beyond fathoming, mysterious beyond comprehension is the hidden heart of a child!

VI

One afternoon when the Kid was quite as tall as the broom she swept the stoep with she had gone to the drift for water. It was a still, bright, hot day. Little puffs of rosy cloud hung motionless under the burning blue sky-arch; small, gaily-plumaged birds twittered in the bushes; the tiny black ants scurried to and fro in the pinkish sand of the river beach. She waded into the now clear, sherry-pale water to cool her hot bare limbs, and, bending over, stared down into the reflected eyes that looked back out of the pool.

Such a dirty little, large-eyed, wistful face, crowned by a curling tousle of matted, reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid little figure, with thin drab shoulders sticking out of a ragged calico frock.

She was quite startled. She had never seen herself in any gla.s.s before, though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the wall of the bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there were swing toilet-gla.s.ses in the tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirred in her, whispering in the grimy little ear, "_It is good to be clean_,"

and with the awakening of the maidenly instinct the womanly purpose framed.

She put off her horrible rags, and washed herself from head to foot in the warm clear water. She took fine sand, and scrubbed her head. She dipped and wrung and rinsed her foul tatters of garments, standing naked in the shallows, the hot sunshine drying her red-gold curls, and warming her slight girlish body through and through as she spread her washed rags to dry on the big hot stones.

There was a man's step on the bank above her, there was a rustling sound among the green bushes. She had never heard of modesty, but she cowered down among the boulders, and the heavy footstep pa.s.sed by. She hid among the fern while her clothes were drying, put them on tidily, and went back with her filled water-bucket to the hotel. How could she know what injury the kind peremptory voice, bidding her be foul no longer, had done her!

But thenceforwards a new cruelty, a fresh peril, attended her steps.

Bough and the white woman of the inn had quarrels often. She was no wife of his. He had not brought her from Cape Colony. When the hotel was built he had gone up to Johannesburg on business and on pleasure, and brought her back with him from an establishment he knew. He was generally not brutal to her except when she was ailing, when he gave her medicine that made her worse, much worse--so very ill that she would lie groaning upon a foul neglected bed for weeks, while Bough caroused with the coloured women and the customers in the bar. Then, still groaning, she would drag herself up and be about her work again. She did not want to go back to the house at Johannesburg. She loved the man Bough in her fashion, poor bought wretch.

She had quarrelled with him many times for many things, and been silenced with blows, or curses, or even caresses, were he in the mood. But she had never quarrelled with him about the Kid before. Now when he bought some coloured print and a Boer sunbonnet, and some shifts and stockings of a traveller in drapery and hosiery, and ordered her thenceforwards to see that the girl went properly clothed, a new terror, a fresh torture, was added to the young life. The woman had ignored, neglected, sometimes ill-used her, but she had never hated her until now.

And Bough, the big, burly, dark-skinned man with the strange light eyes, and the bold, cruel, red mouth, and the bushy brown whiskers, why did he follow her about with those strange eyes, and smile secretly to himself?

She was no longer fed on sc.r.a.ps; she must sit and eat at table with the man and his mistress, and learn to use knife and fork.

She outgrew the dress Bough had bought her, and another, and another, and this did not make Bough angry; he only smiled. A man having some secret luxury or treasure locked away in a private cupboard will smile so. He knows it is there, and he means to go to the hiding-place one day, but in the meantime he waits, licking his lips.

The girl had always feared Bough, and shrunk from his anger with unutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy hand was more bearable than his smile and his jesting amiability. Now, when she went down to the kraals on an errand, or to the orchard or garden for fruit or vegetables, or to the river for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious, padding footsteps coming after her, and would turn and pa.s.s him with downcast eyes, and go back to the inn, and take a beating for not having done her errand. Beating she comprehended, but this mysterious change in the man Bough filled her with sick, secret loathing and dread. She did not know why she bolted the door of the outhouse now when she crept to her miserable bed.

Once Bough dropped into her lap a silver dollar, saying with a smile that she was getting to be quite a little woman of late. She leaped to her feet as though a scorpion had stung her, and stood white to the very lips, and speechless, while the big silver coin rolled merrily away into a distant corner, and lay there. The frowzy woman with the bleached hair happened to come in at that moment; or had she been spying through a crack of the door? Bough pretended he had accidentally dropped the coin, picked it up, and went away.

That night he and the woman quarrelled fiercely. She could hear them raging at each other as she lay trembling. Then came shrieks, and the dull sound of the sjambok cutting soft human flesh. In the morning the woman had a black eye; there were livid weals on her tear-blurred face. She packed her boxes, snivelling. She was going back along up to Johannesburg by the next thither-bound transport-waggon-train that should halt at the hotel--thrown off like an old shoe after all these years. And she was not young enough for the old life, what with hard work and hard usage and worry, and she knew to whom she owed her dismissal....

Ay, and if she could have throttled or poisoned the little sly devil she would have done it! Only--there would have been Bough to reckon with afterwards. For of G.o.d she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of hers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskers and the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him, blubbering freely, when at the week's end the Johannesburg transport-rider's waggons returning from the district town not yet linked up to the north by the railway came in sight.

Bough poured her out a big gla.s.s of liquor, his universal panacea, and another for the transport-rider, with many a jovial word. He would be running up to Johannesburg before she had well shaken down after the journey. Then they would have a rare old time, going round the bars and doing the shows. Though, perhaps if she had got fixed up with a new friend, some flash young fellow with pots of money, she would not be wanting old faces around?

Then he turned aside to pay the transport-rider, and the exile dabbed her swollen face with a rouge-stained, lace-edged handkerchief, and went out to get into the waggon.

The girl stood by the stoep, staring, puzzled, overwhelmed, afraid. A piece of her world was breaking off. As long as she could remember anything she had known this woman. She had never received any kindness from her; of late she had been malignant in her hate, but--she wished she was not going. Instinctively she had felt that her presence was some slight protection. Keeping close in the shadow of this creature's frowzy skirts, she had not so feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, and the padding, following footsteps had kept aloof. As the woman pa.s.sed her now, a rage of unspeakable, agonising fear rose in her bosom. She cried out to her, and clutched at her shabby gay mantle.

The woman s.n.a.t.c.hed the garment from her hold. Her distorted mouth and blazing eyes were close to the white young face. She could have spat upon it. But she snarled at her three words ... no more, and pa.s.sed her, and got into the waggon.

"Halloa, there!" said Bough, coming forward threateningly, "what you rowing about, eh?" But no one answered. The girl had fled to the boulder-cairn, and the woman sat silent in the waggon, until the weary, goaded teams moved on, and the transport-train of heavy, broad-beamed vehicles lumbered away.

But the little figure on the cairn of boulders covering the dust of the bosom from whence it had first drunk life sat there immovable until the sun went down, pondering.

"_Missis now, eh!_"

What did those three words mean?

Then Bough called her, and she had to run. She served as waitress of the bar that day, and the men who drove or rode by and stopped for drinks, chatting in the dirty saloon, or sitting in the bare front room, with the Dutch stove, and the wooden forms and tables in it, that they called the coffee-room, to discuss matters relative to the sale of cattle, or sheep, or merchandise, stared at her, and several made her coa.r.s.e compliments.

She refused to touch the loathly-smelling liquor they offered her. Her heart beat like a little terrified bird's. And she was horribly conscious of those light eyes of Bough's following, following her, with that inscrutable look.

When the crowd had thinned he came to her. He caught her arm, and pulled her near him, and said between his teeth: