shin a few times and started on his subject, and although Frans and I cleared our throats awkwardly at different parts, and Sannie looked on the floor with her pretty cheeks very red, the young painter explained everything about that picture and what it meant to him.
“It’s a dream I have had for a long time, now,” he said at the end, “and always she comes to me, and when I put out my arms to clasp her to me she vanishes, and I am left with only her memory in my heart. But when she comes the whole world is clothed in a terrible beauty.”
“That’s more than she is clothed in, anyway,” Frans said, “judging from what you have told us about her.”
“She’s a spirit. She’s the spirit of the veld,” De Swardt murmured, “she whispers strange and enchanting things. Her coming is like the whisper of the wind. She’s not of the earth at all.”
“Oh, well,” Frans said shortly, “you can keep these Uitlander ghost-women of yours. A Boer girl is good enough for ordinary fellows like me and Schalk Lourens.”
So the days passed.
John de Swardt finished a few more bits of rock and drought-stricken kakiebos, and I had got so far as to persuade him to label the worst-looking one “Frans Welman’s Farm.”
Then one morning he came to me in great excitement.
“I saw her again, Oom Schalk,” he said, “I saw her last night. In a surpassing loveliness. Just at midnight. She came softly across the veld towards my tent. The night was warm and lovely, and the stars were mad and singing. And there was low music where her white feet touched the grass. And sometimes her mouth seemed to be laughing, and sometimes it was sad. And her lips were very red, Oom Schalk. And when I reached out with my arms she went away. She disappeared in the maroelas, like the whispering of the wind. And there was a ringing in my ears. And in my heart there was a green fragrance, and I thought of the pale asphodel that grows in the fields of paradise.”
“I don’t know about paradise,” I said, “but if a thing like that grew in my mealie-lands I would see to it at once that the kaffirs pulled it up. I don’t like this spook nonsense.”
I then gave him some good advice. I told him to beware of the moon, which was almost full at the time. Because the moon can do strange things to you in the Bushveld, especially if you live in a tent and the full moon is overhead and there are weird shadows amongst the maroelas.
But I knew he wouldn’t take any notice of what I told him.
Several times after that he came with the same story about the Veld Maiden. I started getting tired of it.
Then, one morning when he came again, I knew everything by the look he had in his eyes. I have already told you about that look.
“Oom Schalk,” he began.
“John de Swardt,” I said to him, “don’t tell me anything. All I ask of you is to pack up your things and leave my farm at once.”
“I’ll leave tonight,” he said. “I promise you that by tomorrow morning I will be gone. Only let me stay here one more day and night.”
His voice trembled when he spoke, and his knees were very unsteady. But it was not for these reasons or for his sake that I relented. I spoke to him civilly for the sake of the look he had in his eyes.
“Very well, then,” I said, “but you must go straight back to Johannesburg. If you walk down the road you will be able to catch the Government lorry to Zeerust.”
He thanked me and left. I never saw him again.
Next day his tent was still there behind the maroelas, but John de Swardt was gone, and he had taken with him all his pictures. All, that is, except the Veld Maiden one. I suppose he had no more need for it.
And, in any case, the white ants had already started on it. So that’s why I can hang the remains of it openly on the wall in my voorhuis, and the predikant does not raise any objection to it. For the white ants have eaten away practically all of it except the face.
As for Frans Welman, it was quite a long time before he gave up searching the Marico for his young wife, Sannie.
THE MUSIC MAKER
OF COURSE, I KNOW ABOUT HISTORY – Oom Schalk Lourens said – it’s the stuff children learn in school. Only the other day, at Thys Lemmer’s post office, Thys’s little son Stoffel started reading out of his history book about a man called Vasco da Gama, who visited the Cape. At once Dirk Snyman started telling young Stoffel about the time when he himself visited the Cape, but young Stoffel didn’t take much notice of him. So Dirk Snyman said that that showed you.
Anyway, Dirk Snyman said that what he wanted to tell young Stoffel was that the last time he went down to the Cape a kaffir came and sat down right next to him in a tram. What was more, Dirk Snyman said, was that people seemed to think nothing of it.
Yes, it’s a queer thing about wanting to get into history.
Take the case of Manie Kruger, for instance.
Manie Kruger was one of the best farmers in the Marico. He knew just how much peach brandy to pour out for the tax-collector to make sure that he would nod dreamily at everything Manie said. And at a time of drought Manie Kruger could run to the Government for help much quicker than any man I ever knew.
Then one day Manie Kruger read an article in the Kerkbode about a musician who said that he knew more about music than Napoleon did. After that –having first read another article to find out who Napoleon was – Manie Kruger was a changed man. He could talk of nothing but his place in history and of his musical career.
Of course, everybody knew that no man in the Marico could be counted in the same class with Manie Kruger when it came to playing the concertina.
No Bushveld dance was complete without Manie Kruger’s concertina. When he played a vastrap you couldn’t keep your feet still. But after he had decided to become the sort of musician that gets into history books, it was strange the way that Manie Kruger altered. For one thing, he said he would never again play at a dance. We all felt sad about that. It was not easy to think of the Bushveld dances of the future. There would be the peach brandy in the kitchen; in the voorkamer the feet of the dancers would go through the steps of the schottische and the polka and the waltz and the mazurka, but on the riempies bench in the corner, where the musicians sat, there would be no Manie Kruger. And they would play “Die Vaal Hare en die Blou Oge” and “Vat Jou Goed en Trek, Ferreira,” but it would be another’s fingers that swept over the concertina keys. And when, with the dancing and the peach brandy, the young men called out “Dagbreek toe!” it would not be Manie Kruger’s head that bowed down to the applause.
It was sad to think about all this.
For so long, at the Bushveld dances, Manie Kruger had been the chief musician.
And of all those who mourned this change that had come over Manie, we could see that there was no one more grieved than Letta Steyn.
And Manie said such queer things at times. Once he said that what he had to do to get into history was to die of consumption in the arms of a princess, like another musician he had read about. Only it was hard to get consumption in the Marico, because the climate was so healthy.
Although Manie stopped
