Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases | Page 2

constrained the sufferer to howl. And I
have seen her come to meet a man--well, me, with the readiest lips and
the friendliest hand in the world. Oh, Katje was like a blotch of color in
one's life; something vivid, to throw the days into relief.
A stranger to the household might have put down Katje's behavior
towards the Vrouw Grobelaar as damnable, no less; and in the early
days of my acquaintance with the family I was somewhat tempted to
this opinion myself. For she not only flouted the old lady to her face,
but would upon occasion disregard her utterly, and do it all with what I
can only call a swagger that seemed to demand a local application of

drastic measures. But Katje knew her victim, if such a word can be
applied to the Vrouw Grobelaar, and never prodded her save on her
armor. For instance, to say the Kafirs were overdriven and starved was
nothing if not flattery--to say they were spoiled and coddled would
have been mere brutality.
With it all, the Vrouw Grobelaar went her placid way, like an elephant
over egg-shells. Her household did her one service, at least, in return
for their maintenance, and that was to provide the old lady with an
audience. It was in no sense an unwilling service, for her imagination
ran to the gruesome, and she never planted a precept but she drove it
home with a case in point. As a result night was often shattered by a
yell from some sleeper whose dreams had trespassed on devilish
domains. The Vrouw Grobelaar believed most entirely in Kafir magic,
in witchcraft and second sight, in ghosts and infernal possession, in
destiny, and in a very personal arch-fiend who presided over a material
hell when not abroad in the world on the war-path. Besides, she had
stores of tales from the lives of neighbors and acquaintances: often
horrible enough, for the Boers are a lonely folk and God's finger writes
large in their lives.
I almost think I can see it now--the low Dutch kitchen with its plank
ceiling, the old lady in her chair, with an illustrative forefinger uplifted
to punctuate the periods of her tale, the embers, white and red, glowing
on the hearth, and the intent shadow-pitted faces of the hearers, agape
for horrors.
There was a tale I heard her tell to Katje, when that damsel had seen fit
to observe, apropos of disobedience in general, that her grandfather's
character had nothing to do with hers. The tale was in plaintive Dutch,
the language that makes or breaks a story-teller, for you must hang your
point on the gutturals or you miss it altogether.
"Look at my husband's uncle," said the old lady. "A sinful man, forever
swearing and cursing, and drinking. His farm was the worst in the
district; the very Kafirs were ashamed of it when they went to visit the
kraals. But Voss (that was the name of my husband's uncle) cared
nothing so long as there was a horse to ride into the dorp on and some

money to buy whiskey with. And he drank so much and carried on so
wickedly that his wife died and his girls married poor men and never
went to stay with their father. So at last he lived in the house, with only
his son to help him from being all alone.
"This son was Barend Voss, a great hulking fellow, with the strength of
a trek-ox, and never a word of good or bad to throw away on any one.
But his face was the face of a violent man. He had blue eyes with no
pleasantness about them, but a sort of glitter, as though there were live
coals in his brain. He did not drink like his father; and these two would
sit together in the evenings, the one bleared and stupid with liquor, and
the other watching him in silence across the table.
"They spoke seldom to one another; and it would often happen that the
father would speak to the son and get not a word of answer--only that
lowering ugly stare that had grown to be a way with the boy.
"I think those two men must have grown to hate each other in the
evenings as they sat together; the younger one despising and loathing
his father, and the father hating his son for so doing. I have often
wondered how they never came to blows--before they did, that is.
"One morning old Voss rode off to the dorp, and Barend watched him
from the door till he went out of sight in the kloof. All the day he was
away, and when he came back again it was late in the night. Barend
was sitting in