Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases | Page 7

"You see?" she said.
"Yes," replied Katje, very quietly.
THE AVENGER OF BLOOD

The Vrouw Grobelaar entered in haste, closed the door, and sat down
panting.
"If my last husband were alive," she said--"if any of them were alive,
that creature would be shot for looking at an honest woman with such
eyes," and she cast an anxious glance over her shoulder.
"What is it?" demanded Katje.
"That old Hottentot hag." responded the old lady. "She looks like a
witch, and I am sure she is a witch. I would make the Kafirs throw her
on to the veld, but you can't be too careful with witches. Why, as I
came in just now, she was squatting by the door like a big toad, and her
eyes made me go cold all through."
Katje made a remark.
"What! You say nonsense!" The old lady pricked herself into an
ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of pride. Beware
of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches in the Bible, and weren't
they horrible and wicked? Didn't King David see the dead corpses
come up out of the ground when the witch crooked her finger, like dogs
running to heel? Well, then!
"Oh, I know," continued the old lady, as Katje tossed a mutinous head.
"They've taught you a lot in that school, but they didn't teach you belief.
Nor manners. You're going to say there are no witches nowadays."
"I'm not," said Katje.
"Yes, you are," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I know you. But you're
wrong. You don't know anything. Young girls in these days are like
young pigs, all squeak and fight, but no bacon. Didn't the brother of my
half-brother's wife die of a witch's devilry?"
"I'm sure I don't know," returned hapless Katje.
"Well, he did. I'll tell you." The old lady settled herself comfortably and

lapsed into history.
"His name was Fanie, and he was a Van der Merwe on his father's side,
but his mother was only a Prinsloo, though her mother was a Coetzee,
for the matter of that. He wasn't what I should call good--at least, not
always; but he was very big and strong, and made a lot of noise, and
folk liked him. The women used to make black white to prove that the
things he did and said were proper things, although they'd have
screamed all night if their own men-folk had done the same. They say,
you know," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, quoting a very old and
seldom-heard Dutch proverb, "that when women pray they think of
God as a handsome man.
"What I didn't like about him was his way with the Kafirs. A Kafir is
more useful than a dog after all, and one shouldn't be always beating
and kicking even a dog. And Fanie could never pass a Kafir without
kicking him or flicking his whip at him. I have seen all the Kafirs run to
their kraals when they saw him riding up the road.
"There was one old Kafir we had,--very old and weak, and no use at all.
He used to sit by the gate all day, and mumble to himself, and seem to
look at things that weren't there. His head was quite white with age,
which is not a common thing with Kafirs, as you know; and he was so
foolish and helpless that his people used to feed him with a spiked stick,
like a motherless chicken. And in case the fowls should go and sit on
his back while he crouched in the sun, as I have seen them do, there
was a little Kafir picaninny, as black as a crow, that was sent to play
about near him every day. Dear Lord! I have seen those two sitting
there, looking at each other for an hour on end, without a word, as
though both had been children or both old men. Nobody minded them:
we used to throw sugar to the picaninny, and watch him fighting with
the fowls for it, rolling about on his little black belly like a new-hatched
duckling himself.
"Well, Fanie, ... it was horrible. . . .
"I don't like to think of it to this day. He came over one day in a great
hurry to tell us that August de Villiers, the father of the Predikant at

Dopfontein, was choked with a peach-stone. He was riding very fast,
and as he came near the house he rode off the road and jumped his
horse at the wall. And as he came over, up rose the little picaninny right
under his horse's hoofs. 'Twas a quick way to die, and without much
pain, no doubt; but a most awful thing to see. The horse stumbled on to
him, and I can remember now how his knee, the