Blue Aloes

Blue Aloes, by Cynthia Stockley

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Title: Blue Aloes Stories of South Africa
Author: Cynthia Stockley

Release Date: September 10, 2007 [eBook #22568]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLUE
ALOES***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

BLUE ALOES
Stories Of South Africa
by

CYNTHIA STOCKLEY
Author of "Poppy," "Wild Honey," etc.

G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press 1919
Copyright, 1919 by Cynthia Stockley

CONTENTS
BLUE ALOES
THE LEOPARD
ROSANNE OZANNE
APRIL FOLLY

Blue Aloes
The Strange Story of a Karoo Farm
PART I
Night, with the sinister, brooding peace of the desert, enwrapped the
land, and the inmates of the old Karoo farm had long been at rest; but it
was an hour when strange tree-creatures cry with the voices of human
beings, and stealthy velvet-footed things prowl through places
forbidden by day, and not all who rested at Blue Aloes were sleeping.
Christine Chaine, wakeful and nervous, listening to the night sounds,
found them far more distracting than any the day could produce. Above
the breathing of the three children sleeping near her in the big room, the

buzz of a moth-beetle against the ceiling, and the far-off howling of
jackals, she could hear something out in the garden sighing with faint,
whistling sighs. More disquieting still was a gentle, intermittent tapping
on the closed and heavily barred shutters, inside which the windows
stood open, inviting coolness. She had heard that tapping every one of
the three nights since she came to the farm.
The window stood to the right of her bed, and, by stretching an arm,
she could have unbolted the shutters and looked out, but she would
have died rather than do it. Not that she was a coward. But there was
some sinister quality in the night noises of this old Karoo farm that
weighed on her courage and paralyzed her senses. So, instead of
stirring, she lay very still in the darkness, the loud, uncertain beats of
her heart adding themselves to all the other disconcerting sounds.
Mrs. van Cannan had laughed her lazy, liquid laugh when Christine
spoke, the first morning after her arrival, of the tapping.
"It was probably a stray ostrich pecking on your shutters," said the
mistress of Blue Aloes. "You are strange to the Karoo, my dear. When
you have been here a month, you'll take no notice of night noises."
There was possibly truth in the prophecy, but Christine doubted it.
There were also moments when she doubted being able to last a week
out at the farm, to say nothing of a month. That was only in the night
watches, however; by day, she found it hard to imagine any
circumstances so unpleasant as to induce her to leave the three little van
Cannan children, who, even in so short a time, had managed to twine
their fingers and their mops of bronze hair round her affections.
The tapping began again, soft and insistent. Christine knew it was not a
branch, for she had taken the trouble to ascertain; and that a stray
ostrich should choose her window to peck at for three nights running
seemed fantastic. Irrelatively, one of the children murmured drowsily in
sleep, and the little human sound braced the girl's nerves. The sense of
loneliness left her, giving place to courageous resolution. She forgot
everything save that she was responsible for the protection of the
children, and determined that the tapping must be investigated, once

and for all. Just as she was stirring, the soft sighing recommenced close
to the shutters, followed by three clear taps. Christine changed her
mind about getting out of bed, but she leaned toward the window on
her elbow, and said, in a low voice that trembled a little:
"Is any one there?"
A whistling whisper answered her:
"Take care of the children."
With the words, a strangely revolting odour came stealing through the
shutters. The girl shrank back, all her fears returning. Yet she forced
herself to speak again.
"Who is it? What do you want?"
"Mind the boy--take care of the boy," sobbed the whistling voice, and
again the foul odour stole into the room. It seemed to Christine the
smell of something dead and rotten and old. She could not bear it.
Hatred of it was greater than fear, and, springing from her bed, she
wrestled with the bolts of the shutters. But when she threw them open