Swallow

SWALLOW

Then I looked at Ralph and saw that he also was very ill at ease, struggling with words which he did not know how to utter. I noted, moreover, that Suzanne touched his hand with hers beneath the shelter of the table as though to comfort and encourage him. Now watching these two men, at last I broke out laughing, and said, addressing them:

“You are like two fires of green weeds in a mealie patch, and I am wondering which of you will be the first to break into flame or whether you will both be choked by the reek of your own thoughts.”

My gibe, harmless though it was, stung them into speech, and both at once, for I have noticed, however stupid they may be, that men never like to be laughed at.

“I have something to say,” said each of them, as though with a single voice, and they paused, looking at one another angrily.

“Then, son, wait till I have finished. Almighty! for the last twenty minutes you have been sitting as silent as an ant-bear in a hole, and I tell you that it is my turn now; why, then, do you interrupt me?”

“I am very sorry, my father,” said Ralph, looking much afraid, for he thought that Jan was going to scold him about Suzanne, and his conscience being guilty caused him to forget that it was not possible that he should know anything of the matter of his love-making.

“That is good,” said Jan, still glaring at him; “but I am not your father.”

“Then why do you call me son?” asked Ralph.

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“Almighty! do you suppose that I sit here to answer riddles?” replied Jan, pulling at his great beard. “Why do I call you son, indeed? Ah!” he added in a different voice, a sorrowful voice, “why do I when I have no right? Listen, my boy, we are in sore trouble, I and your mother, or if she is not your mother at least she loves you as much as though she were, and I love you too, and you know it; so why do you seek to make a fool of me by asking me riddles?”

Now, Ralph was about to answer, but Suzanne held up her hand, and he was quiet.

“My son,” went on Jan with a kind of sob, “they are coming to take you away from us.”

“They! Who?” asked Ralph.

“Who? The English, damn them! Yes, I say, damn the English and the English Government.”

“Peace, Jan,” I broke in, “this is not a political meeting, where such talk is right and proper.”

“The English Government is coming to take me away!” exclaimed Ralph bewildered. “What has the Government to do with me?”

“No,” said Jan, “not the English Government, but two Scotchmen, which is much the same thing. I tell you that they are travelling to this place to take you away.”

Now, Ralph leaned back in his chair and stared at him, for he saw that it was little use to ask him questions, and that he must leave him to tell the tale in his own fashion. At last it came out.

“Ralph,” said my husband, “you know that you are not of our blood; we found you cast up on the beach like a storm-fish

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and took you in, and you grew dear to us; yes, although you are English or Scotch, which is worse, for if the English bully us the Scotch bully us and cheat us into the bargain. Well, your parents were drowned, and have been in Heaven for a long time, but I am sorry to say that all your relations were not drowned with them. At first, however, they took no trouble to hunt for you when we should have been glad enough to give you up.”

“No,” broke in Suzanne and I with one voice, and I added, “How do you dare to tell such lies in the face of the Lord, Jan?”

“When it would not have been so bad to give you up,” he went on, correcting himself. “But now it seems that had you lived you would have inherited estates, or titles, or both.”

“Is the boy dead then?” I asked.

“Be silent, wife, I mean – had he lived a Scotchman. Therefore, having made inquiries, and learned that a lad of your name and age had been rescued from a shipwreck and was still alive among the Boers in the Transkei, they have set to work to hunt you, and are coming here to take you way, for I tell you that I heard it in the dorp yonder.”

“Is it so?” said Ralph, while Suzanne hung upon his words with white face and trembling lips. “Then I tell you that I will not go. I may be English, but my home is here. My own father and mother are dead, and these strangers are nothing to me, nor are the estates and titles far away anything to me. All that I hold dear on the earth is here in the Transkei,” and he glanced at Suzanne, who seemed to bless him with her eyes.

“You talk like a fool,” said Jan, but in a voice which was full of joy that he could not hide, “as is to be expected of an

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ignorant boy. Now I am a man who has seen the world, and I know better, and I tell you that although they are an accursed race, still it is a fine thing to be a lord among the English. Yes, yes, I know the English lords. I saw one once when I went to Capetown; he was the Governor there, and driving through the streets in state, dressed as bravely as a blue-jay in his spring plumage, while everybody took off their hats to him, except I, Jan Botmar, who would not humble myself thus. Yet to have such clothes as that to wear every day, while all the people salute you and make a path for you, is not a thing to be laughed at. See boy, it just comes to this: here you are poor and little, there you may be rich and much, and it is our duty not to stand in your road, though it may break our hearts to lose you. So you had best make up your mind to go away with the damned Scotchmen when they come, though I hope that you will think kindly of us when you get to your own country. Yes, yes, you shall go, and what is more, you may take my best horse to ride away on, the thoroughbred schimmel, and my new black felt hat that I bought in the dorp. There, that is done with, praise be to God, and I am going out, for this place is so thick with smoke that I can’t see my own hand,” and he rose to go, adding that if the two Scotchmen did not want a bullet through them, it would be as well if they kept out of his way when they came upon the farm.

Now in saying that the room was thick with smoke Jan lied, for both the men’s pipes went out when they began to talk. But as I knew why he lied I did not think so much of it. To tell the truth, at that moment I could see little better than he could, since, although I would have poisoned those two Scotchmen

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before I suffered them to take Ralph away, the very thought of his going was enough to fill my eyes with tears, and to cause Suzanne to weep aloud shamelessly.

“Wait a bit, father – I beg your pardon, Jan Botmar,” said Ralph in a clear and angry voice; “it is my turn now, for you may remember that when we began to talk I had something to say, but you stopped me. Now, with your leave, as you have got off the horse I will get on.”

Jan slowly sat down again and said: “Speak. What is it?”

“This: that if you send me away you are likely to lose more than you bargain for.”

Now Jan stared at him perplexedly, but I smiled, for I guessed what was to come.

“What am I likely to lose,” he asked, “beyond my best horse and my felt hat? Allemachter! Do you want my span of black oxen also? Well, you shall have them if you like, for I should wish you to trek to your new home in England behind good cattle.”

“No,” answered Ralph coolly, “but I want your daughter, and if you send me away I think that she will come with me.”

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“My mind is, mother,” she answered very quietly, “that I wish to obey you and my father in all things, as is my duty, but that I have a deeper duty towards Ralph whom God gave me out of the sea. Therefore, if you send away Ralph without a cause, if he desires it I shall follow him as soon as I am of age and marry him, or if you keep me from him by force then I think that I shall die. That is all I have to say.”

“And quite enough, too,” I answered, though in my heart I liked the girl’s spirit, and guessed that she was playing a part to prevent her father from sending away Ralph against his will.

“All this is pretty hearing,” said Jan, staring from one to the other. “Why, now that I think of it, I never heard that you two were more than brother and sister to each other. Say, you shameless girl, when did all this come about, and why do you dare to promise yourself in marriage without my consent?”

“Because there was no time to ask it, father,” said Suzanne, looking down, “for Ralph and I only spoke together this morning.”

“He spoke to you this morning, and now it seems that you are ready to forsake your father and your mother and to follow him across the world, you wicked and ungrateful child.”

“I am not wicked and I am not ungrateful,” answered Suzanne; “it is you who are wicked, who want to send Ralph away and break all our hearts.”

“It is false, miss,” shouted her father in answer, “for you know well that I do not want to send him away.”

“Then why did you tell him that he must go and take your roan horse and new hat?”

“For his own good, girl.”

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“Is it for his own good that he should go away from all of us who love him and be lost across the sea?” and choking she burst into tears, while her father muttered:

“Why, the girl has become like a tiger, she who was milder than a sheep!”

“Hush, Suzanne,” broke in Ralph, “and you who have been father and mother to me, listen I pray you. It is true that Suzanne and I love each other very dearly, as we have always loved each other, though how much we did not know till this morning. Now, I am a waif and a castaway whom you have nurtured, and have neither lands nor goods of my own, therefore you may well think that I am no match for your daughter, who is so beautiful, and who, if she outlives you, will inherit all that you have. If you decide thus it is just, however hard it may be. But you tell me, though I have heard nothing of it till now, and I think that it may be but idle talk, that I have both lands and goods far away in England, and you bid me begone to them. Well, if you turn me out I must go, for I cannot stay alone in the veldt without a house, or a friend, or a hoof of cattle. But then I tell you that when Suzanne is of age I shall return and marry her, and take her away with me, as I have a right to do if she desires it, for I will not lose everything that I love in the world at one stroke. Indeed nothing but death shall part me from Suzanne. Therefore, it comes to this: either you must let me stay here and, poor as I am, be married to Suzanne when it shall please you, or, if you dismiss me, you must be ready to see me come back and take away Suzanne.”

“Suzanne, Suzanne,” I interrupted angrily, for I grew jealous of the girl; “have you no thought or word, Ralph, for any save Suzanne?”

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“I have thoughts for all,” he answered, “but Suzanne alone has thought for me, since it seems that your husband would send me away, and you, mother, sit still and say not a word to stop him.”

“Learn to judge speech and not silence, lad,” I answered. “Look you, all have been talking, and I have shammed dead like a stink-cat when dogs are about; now I am going to begin. First of all, you, Jan, are a fool, for in your thick head you think that rank and wealth are everything to a man, and therefore you would send Ralph away to seek rank and wealth that may or may not belong to him, although he does not wish to go. As for you, Ralph, you are a bigger fool, for you think that Jan Botmar, your foster-father here, desires to be rid of you when in truth he only seeks your good to his own sore loss. As for you, Suzanne, you are the biggest fool of all, for you wish to fly in everybody’s face, like a cat with her first litter of kittens; but there, what is the use of arguing with a girl in love? Now listen, and I will ask you some questions, all of you. Jan, do you wish to send Ralph away with these strangers?”

“Almighty! vrouw,” he answered, “you know well that I would as soon send away my right hand. I wish him to stop here for ever, and whatever I have is his; yes, even my daughter. But I seek what is best for him, and I would not have it said in after years that Jan Botmar had kept an English lad not old enough to judge for himself from his rank and wealth because he took pleasure in his company and wished to marry him to his girl.”

“Good,” I said. “And now for you, Suzanne; what have you to say?”

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“I have nothing to add to my words,” she replied; “you know all my heart.”

“Good again. And you, Ralph?”

“I say, mother, that I will not budge from this place unless I am ordered to go, and if I do go, I will come back for Suzanne. I love you all, and with you I wish to live and nowhere else.”

“Nay, Ralph,” I answered sighing, “if once you go you will never come back, for out yonder you will find a new home, new interests, and, perchance, new loves. Well, though nobody has thought of me in this matter, I have a voice in it, and I will speak for myself. That lad yonder has been a son to me for many years, and I who have none love him as such. He is a man as we reckon in this country, and he does not wish to leave us any more than we wish him to go. Moreover, he loves Suzanne, and Suzanne loves him, and I believe that the God who brought them together at first means them to be husband and wife, and that such love as they bear to each other will give them more together than any wealth or rank can bring to them apart. Therefore I say, husband, let our son, Ralph, say here with us and marry our daughter, Suzanne, decently and in due season, and let their children be our children, and their love our love.”

“And how about the Scotchmen who are coming with power to take him away?”

“Do you and Ralph go to the bush-veldt with the cattle tomorrow,” I answered, “and leave me to deal with the Scotchmen.”

“Well,” said Jan, “I consent, for who can stand up against so many words, and the Lord knows that to lose Ralph would

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