my angel! my wife!”
“Isn’t it dreadful?” said Tant Sannie, as the blows were repeated fiercely. “He has got a letter; his wife is dead. You must go and comfort him,” said Tant Sannie at last, “and I will go with you. It would not be the thing for me to go alone—me, who am only thirty-three, and he an unmarried man now,” said Tant Sannie, blushing and smoothing out her apron.
Upon this they all trudged round the house in company—the Hottentot maid carrying the light, Tant Sannie and the German following, and the Kaffer girl bringing up the rear.
“Oh,” said Tant Sannie, “I see now it wasn’t wickedness made him do without his wife so long—only necessity.”
At the door she motioned to the German to enter, and followed him closely. On the stretcher behind the sacks Bonaparte lay on his face, his head pressed into a pillow, his legs kicking gently. The Boer-woman sat down on a box at the foot of the bed. The German stood with folded hands looking on.
“We must all die,” said Tant Sannie at last; “it is the dear Lord’s will.”
Hearing her voice, Bonaparte turned himself on to his back.
“It’s very hard,” said Tant Sannie, “I know, for I’ve lost two husbands.”
Bonaparte looked up into the German’s face.
“Oh, what does she say? Speak to me words of comfort!”
The German repeated Tant Sannie’s remark.
“Ah, I—I also! Two dear, dear wives, whom I shall never see any more!” cried Bonaparte, flinging himself back upon the bed.
He howled, till the tarantulas, who lived between the rafters and the zinc roof, felt the unusual vibration, and looked out with their wicked bright eyes, to see what was going on.
Tant Sannie sighed, the Hottentot maid sighed, the Kaffer girl who looked in at the door put her hand over her mouth and said “Mow-wah!”
“You must trust in the Lord,” said Tant Sannie. “He can give you more than you have lost.”
“I do, I do!” he cried; “but oh, I have no wife! I have no wife!”
Tant Sannie was much affected, and came and stood near the bed.
“Ask him if he won’t have a little pap—nice, fine, flour pap. There is some boiling on the kitchen fire.”
The German made the proposal, but the widower waved his hand.
“No, nothing shall pass my lips. I should be suffocated. No, no! Speak not of food to me!”
“Pap, and a little brandy in,” said Tant Sannie coaxingly.
Bonaparte caught the word.
“Perhaps, perhaps—if I struggled with myself—for the sake of my duties I might imbibe a few drops,” he said, looking with quivering lip up into the German’s face. “I must do my duty, must I not?”
Tant Sannie gave the order, and the girl went for the pap.
“I know how it was when my first husband died. They could do nothing with me,” the Boer-woman said, “till I had eaten a sheep’s trotter, and honey, and a little roaster-cake. I know.”
Bonaparte sat up on the bed with his legs stretched out in front of him, and a hand on each knee, blubbering softly.
“Oh, she was a woman! You are very kind to try and comfort me, but she was my wife. For a woman that is my wife I could live; for the woman that is my wife I could die! For a woman that is my wife I could—Ah! that sweet word ‘wife’; when will it rest upon my lips again?”
When his feelings had subsided a little he raised the corners of his turned-down mouth, and spoke to the German with flabby lips.
“Do you think she understands me? Oh, tell her every word, that she may know I thank her.”
At that instant the girl reappeared with a basin of steaming gruel and a black bottle.
Tant Sannie poured some of its contents into the basin, stirred it well, and came to the bed.
“Oh, I can’t, I can’t! I shall die! I shall die!” said Bonaparte, putting his hands to his side.
“Come, just a little,” said Tant Sannie coaxingly; “just a drop.”
“It’s too thick, it’s too thick. I should choke.”
Tant Sannie added from the contents of the bottle and held out a spoonful; Bonaparte opened his mouth like a little bird waiting for a worm, and held it open, as she dipped again and again into the pap.
“Ah, this will do your heart good,” said Tant Sannie, in whose mind the relative functions of heart and stomach were exceedingly ill-defined.
When the basin was emptied the violence of his grief was much assuaged; he looked at Tant Sannie with gentle tears.
“Tell him,” said the Boer-woman, “that I hope he will sleep well, and that the Lord will comfort him, as the Lord only can.”
“Bless you, dear friend, God bless you,” said Bonaparte.
When the door was safely shut on the German, the Hottentot, and the Dutchwoman, he got off the bed and washed away the soap he had rubbed on his eyelids.
“Bon,” he said, slapping his leg, “you’re the cutest lad I ever came across. If you don’t turn out the old Hymns-and-prayers, and pummel the Ragged coat, and get your arms round the fat one’s waist and a wedding-ring on her finger, then you are not Bonaparte. But you are Bonaparte. Bon, you’re a fine boy!”
Making which pleasing reflection, he pulled off his trousers and got into bed cheerfully.
VII
HE SETS HIS TRAP
“May I come in? I hope I do not disturb you, my dear friend,” said Bonaparte, late one evening, putting his nose in at the cabin door, where the German and his son sat finishing their supper.
It was now two months since he had been installed as schoolmaster in Tant Sannie’s household, and he had grown mighty and more mighty day by day. He visited the cabin no more, sat close to Tant Sannie drinking coffee all the evening, and walked about loftily with his hands under the coat-tails of the German’s black cloth and failed to see even a nigger who wished him a deferential good morning. It was therefore with no small surprise that the German perceived Bonaparte’s red nose at the door.
“Walk in, walk in,” he said joyfully. “Boy, boy, see if there is any coffee left. Well, none. Make a fire. We have done supper, but—”
“My dear friend,” said Bonaparte, taking off his hat, “I came not to sup, not for mere creature comforts, but for an hour of brotherly intercourse with a kindred spirit. The press of business and the weight of thought, but they alone, may sometimes prevent me
