C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Shadows from Child Life
By Olive Schreiner (1855–1920)
T
In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the centre a small solitary “kopje” rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon another, as over some giant’s grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones; and on the very summit a clump of prickly pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the “kopje” lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffir huts; beyond them the dwelling-house,—a square red brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind of dreamy beauty; and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which inclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great open wagon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished silver.
Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain.
In the farm-house, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant’ Sannie, the Boer-woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.
She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes; and the night was warm, and the room close: and she dreamed bad dreams,—not of the ghosts and devils that so haunted her waking thoughts; not of her second husband, the consumptive Englishman, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich camps, nor of her first, the young Boer, but only of the sheep’s trotters she had eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in her throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side and snorted horribly.
In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the shutter, the white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as day. There were two small beds against the wall. In one lay a yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a freckled face; but the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep.
The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes, and looked at the moonlight that was bathing her.
“Em!” she called to the sleeper in the other bed, but received no answer. Then she drew the cover from the floor, turned her pillow, and pulling the sheet over her head, went to sleep again.
Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the wagon-house, there was some one who was not asleep. The room was dark; door and shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged, lay sleeping soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms folded, and his bushy gray-and-black beard rising and falling on his breast. But one in the room was not asleep. Two large eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small hands were smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He drew the quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but a great head of silky black curls, and the two black eyes. He stared about in the darkness. Nothing was visible; not even the outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table on which lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went to bed. No one could tell where the tool-box was, and where the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child in the complete darkness.
At the head of his father’s bed hung a great silver hunting-watch. It ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began mechanically to count. Tick—tick—tick! one, two, three, four! He lost count presently, and only listened. Tick—tick—tick—tick!
It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it ticked, a man died! He raised himself a little on his elbow and listened. He wished it would leave off.
How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down? A thousand times, a million times, perhaps.
He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better.
“Dying, dying, dying!” said the watch; “dying, dying, dying!”
He heard it distinctly. Where were they going to, all those people?
He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head; but presently the silky curls reappeared.
“Dying, dying, dying!” said the watch; “dying, dying, dying!”
He thought of the words his father had read that evening: “For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”
“Many, many, many!” said the watch.
“Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
“Few, few, few!” said the watch.
The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in one direction; then they came to the dark edge of the world, and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past—how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless millions of China and India, they were going over now. Since he had come to bed, how many had gone!
And the watch said, “Eternity, eternity, eternity!”
“Stop them! stop them!” cried the child.
And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God’s will, that never changes or alters, you may do what you please.
Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy’s forehead. He climbed out of bed, and lay with his face turned to the mud floor.
“O God, God! save them!” he cried in agony. “Only some; only a few! Only, for each moment I am praying here, one!” He folded his little hands upon his head. “God! God! save them!”
He groveled on the floor.
Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone over! Oh, the long, long future, in which they would pass away! O God! the long, long, long eternity, which has no end!
The child wept, and crept closer to the ground.
T
The Boer-woman seen by daylight was even less lovely than when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was damned. Less lovely, too, by daylight was the dead Englishman’s child, her little stepdaughter, upon whose freckles and low wrinkled forehead the sunlight had no mercy.
“Lyndall,” the child said to her little orphan cousin, who sat with her on the floor threading beads, “how is it your beads never fall off your needle?”
“I try,” said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger, “That is why.”
The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing a shabby suit, and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands and nodding his head prodigiously when pleased at anything. He stood out at the kraals, in the blazing sun, explaining to two Kaffir boys the approaching end of the world. The boys, as they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and worked as slowly as they possibly could; but the German never saw it.
Away beyond the “kopje,” Waldo, his son, herded the ewes and lambs,—a small and dusty herd,—powdered all over from head to foot with red sand, wearing a ragged coat, and shoes of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes looked out. His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes, concealing completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small figure. His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to move far; they gathered round every little milk-bush as though they hoped to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps. He himself crept under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of the “kopje,” stretched himself on his stomach, and waved his dilapidated little shoes in the air.
Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he produced a fragment of slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceeding to put down a sum with solemn and earnest demeanor, he began to add it up aloud: “Six and two is eight, and four is twelve, and two is fourteen, and four is eighteen.” Here he paused. “And four is eighteen—and—four—is—eighteen.” The last was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped from his fingers, and the slate followed it into the sand. For a while he lay motionless; then began muttering to himself, folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might have been asleep but for a muttering sound that from time to time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at him; but it was long before he raised his head. When he did he looked at the far-off hills with his heavy eyes.
“Ye shall receive, ye shall receive,—shall, shall, shall,” he muttered.
He sat up then. Slowly the dullness and heaviness melted from his face; it became radiant. Midday had come now, and the sun’s rays were poured down vertically; the earth throbbed before the eye.
The boy stood up quickly, and cleared a small space from the bushes which covered it. Looking carefully, he found twelve small stones of somewhat the same size; kneeling down, he arranged them carefully on the cleared space in a square pile, in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag where his dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large slice of brown bread. The boy took them out, and turned the bread over in his hand, deeply considering it. Finally he threw it away, and walked to the altar with the meat, and laid it down on the stones. Close by, in the red sand, he knelt down. Sure, never since the beginning of the world was there so ragged and so small a priest. He took off his great hat and placed it solemnly on the ground, then closed his eyes and folded his hands. He prayed aloud:—
“O God, my Father, I have made thee a sacrifice. I have only twopence, so I cannot buy a lamb. If the lambs were mine I would give thee one: but now I have only this meat; it is my dinner-meat. Please, my Father, send fire down from heaven to burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it shall be done. I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
He knelt down with his face upon the ground, and he folded his hands upon his curls. The fierce sun poured down its heat upon his head and upon his altar. When he looked up he knew what he should see,—the glory of God! For fear, his very heart stood still, his breath came heavily; he was half suffocated. He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself. Above him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there were the clumps of silent ewes and his altar—that was all.
He looked up: nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue overhead. He looked round in astonishment; then he bowed again, and this time longer than before.
When he raised himself the second time, all was unaltered. Only the sun had melted the fat of the little mutton-chop, and it ran down upon the stones.
Then the third time he bowed himself. When at last he looked up, some ants had come to the meat on the altar. He stood up, and drove them away. Then he put his hat on his hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about his knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass. The glory of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.
“My dear God is trying me,” he said; and he sat there through the fierce heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited when the sun began to slope; and when it neared the horizon and the sheep began to cast long shadows across the karroo, he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays touched the hills, till the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the meat far, far away into the field.
He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He reasoned so: “God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came. I am like Cain,—I am not his. He will not hear my prayer. God hates me.”
The boy’s heart was heavy. When he reached the kraal gate the two girls met him.
“Come,” said the yellow-haired Em, “let us play ‘coop.’ There is still time before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the ‘kopje’; Lyndall and I will shut eyes here, and we will not look.”
The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep kraal, and the boy clambered half-way up the “kopje.” He crouched down between two stones, and gave the call. Just then the milkherd came walking out of the cow kraal with two pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffir.
“Ah!” thought the boy, “perhaps he will die to-night, and go to hell! I must pray for him, I must pray!”
Then he thought, “Where am I going to?” and he prayed desperately.
“Ah! this is not right at all,” little Em said, peeping between the stones, and finding him in a very curious posture. “What are you doing, Waldo? It is not the play, you know. You should run out when we come to the white stone. Ah, you do not play nicely.”
“I—I will play nicely now,” said the boy, coming out and standing sheepishly before them; “I—I only forgot; I will play now.”
“He has been to sleep,” said freckled Em.
“No,” said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him: “he has been crying.”
She never made a mistake.
O
He turned up the brim of his great hat, and looked at the moon, but most at the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just before him. They glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just like his own heart,—cold, so hard, and very wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full of little bits of glass that hurt. He had sat there for half an hour, and he dared not go back to the close house.
He felt horribly lonely. There was not one thing so wicked as he in all the world, and he knew it. He folded his arms and began to cry—not aloud: he sobbed without making any sound, and his tears left scorched marks where they fell. He could not pray: he had prayed night and day for so many months; and to-night he could not pray. When he left off crying, he held his aching head with his brown hands. If one might have gone up to him and touched him kindly—poor ugly little thing! Perhaps his heart was almost broken.
With his swollen eyes he sat there on a flat stone at the very top of the “kopje”; and the tree, with every one of its wicked leaves, blinked, and blinked, and blinked at him. Presently he began to cry again, and then stopped his crying to look at it. He was quiet for a long while, then he knelt slowly and bent forward. There was a secret he had carried in his heart for a year. He had not dared to look at it; he had not whispered it to himself; but for a year he had carried it. “I hate God!” he said. The wind took the words and ran away with them, among the stones, and through the leaves of the prickly pear. He thought it died away half down the “kopje.” He had told it now.
“I love Jesus Christ, but I hate God.”
The wind carried away that sound as it had done the first. Then he got up, and buttoned his old coat about him. He knew he was certainly lost now; he did not care. If half the world were to be lost, why not he too? He would not pray for mercy any more. Better so—better to know certainly. It was ended now. Better so.
He began scrambling down the sides of the “kopje” to go home.
Better so,—but oh, the loneliness, the agonized pain, for that night, and for nights on nights to come! The anguish that sleeps all day on the heart like a heavy worm, and wakes up at night to feed!
There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, “Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.”
The barb in the arrow of childhood’s suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.