Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases | Page 9

they took him home on one of our horses, for his
own was fit to die from the night's work.
"That was the last I ever saw of Fanie. It was as though he went from
us to God. He kissed me on both cheeks when he went away; he kissed
us all, but me first of all, and held both my hands. I think he must have
liked me too,--don't you think so, Katje?" "'Yes," said Katje softly.
"He went down the road between my brothers with his head bent like
an old man's, and I watched him out of sight, and I was very, very sorry
for him. I don't think I cried, but I may have. He was a fine tall man.
"One night my brothers came in just as I was going to bed, and one
stood in the door while the other whispered to my mother. She looked
up and saw me standing there.
"'Go to bed,' she said.
"'What is it?' I asked.
"'Go to bed,' said my brother.
"'No.' I said. 'Tell me, is it Fanie?'

"My brother looked at me and threw up his hand like a man who can do
no more. 'Yes,' he said.
"Then I knew, as though he had shouted it out, that Fanie was dead. I
cannot say how, but I knew it.
"'He is dead,' I said. 'Bring him in here.'
"So they went out and carried Fanie in with his clothes all draggled and
his beard full of mud. They laid him on the table, and I saw his face. . . .
Dear God! . . There was terror on that face, carven and set in dead flesh,
that set my blood screaming in my body. Sometimes even now I wake
in the night all shrinking with fear of the very memory of it.
"But there is one thing more. We went about to put everything in order
and lay the poor corpse in decency, and when we started to pull off his
veldschoen, as I hope to die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood
still wet on the toe.
"I think God's right hand was on my head that night that I did not go
mad.
"I heard the tale next morning. My brothers, coming home, found him ...
it . . . in a spruit, already quite dead. There was no horse by, but his
spoor led back a mile to where the horse lay dead and stiff. When it fell
he must have run on, ... screaming, perhaps, . . . till he fell in the spruit.
I would like to think peace came to him at the last; but there was no
peace in the dead face."
The Vrouw Grobelaar dropped her face on to her hands, and Katje
came and passed an arm of sympathy and protection around her.
THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN
The Vrouw Grobelaar had no opinion of Kafirs, and was forever ready
to justify herself in this particular.
"Kafirs,' she said, 'are not men, whatever the German missionaries may

say. I do not deny we have a duty to them, as to the beasts of the field;
but as for being men, well, a baboon is as much a man as a Kafir is.
"Kafirs are made to work, and ought to work. Katje, what are you
laughing about? Did not the dear God make everything for a purpose,
and what is the use of a Kafir if he is not made to work? Work for
themselves? Katje, you are learning nothing but rubbish at that school,
and I will not have you say such things. How could the Burghers work
the farms if they had not the Kafirs? Well, be silent, then.
"Oh, I know the Kafirs. I have seen hundreds of them--yes, and for the
matter of that, thousands. Just beasts, they are,--nothing--else. Did you
hear how the Vrouw Coetzee came to die? Well, I will tell you, and you
will see that we must hold the Kafirs with a hand of iron or they will
destroy us.
"It was a time when Piet Coetzee was away making laws in Pretoria,
and the Vrouw Coetzee, who was only married one year, was alone on
the farm with her little baby. There were plenty of Kafirs to do the
work; but, you see, there was no man to have an eye to them, and take a
sjambok to them when they needed it. So one day the Kafirs came in
from the lands and would not work any more.
"Why wouldn't they work? How should I know? Who can tell why a
Kafir does anything? Perhaps a witch-doctor had come among them.
Perhaps the German missionaries had been talking foolishness to