CHAPTER VII
THE SIN OF VROUW BOTMAR
When the meat was cleared away I bade Suzanne go to bed, which she didmost unwillingly, for knowing the errand of these men she wished to hearour talk. As soon as she was gone I took a seat so that the light ofthe candles left my face in shadow and fell full on those of the threemen--a wise thing to do if one is wicked enough to intend to tell liesabout any matter--and said:
"Now, here I am at your service; be pleased to set out the business thatyou have in hand."
Then they began, the lawyer, speaking through the interpreter, asking,"Are you the Vrouw Botmar?"
"That is my name."
"Where is your husband, Jan Botmar?"
"Somewhere on the veldt; I do not know where."
"Will he be back to-morrow?"
"No."
"When will he be back?"
"Perhaps in two months, perhaps in three, I cannot tell."
At this they consulted together, and then went on:
"Have you living with you a young Englishman named Ralph Mackenzie?"
"One named Ralph Kenzie lives with us."
"Where is he?"
"With my husband on the veldt. I do not know where."
"Can you find him?"
"No, the veldt is very wide. If you wish to see him you must wait tillhe comes back."
"When will that be?"
"I am not his nurse and cannot tell; perhaps in three months, perhapssix."
Now again they consulted, and once more went on:
"Was the boy, Ralph Mackenzie, or Kenzie, shipwrecked in the _India_ inthe year 1824?"
"Dear Lord!" I cried, affecting to lose my patience, "am I an oldKaffir wife up before the Landdrost for stealing hens that I should becross-questioned in this fashion? Set out all your tale at once, man,and I will answer it."
Thereon, shrugging his shoulders, the lawyer produced a paper which theinterpreter translated to me. In it were written down the names of thepassengers who were upon the vessel _India_ when she sailed from a placecalled Bombay, and among the names those of Lord and Lady Glenthirsk andof their son, the Honourable Ralph Mackenzie, aged nine. Then followedthe evidence of one or two survivors of the shipwreck, which stated thatLady Glenthirsk and her son were seen to reach the shore in safety inthe boat that was launched from the sinking ship. After this came aparagraph from an English newspaper published in Capetown, dated nottwo years before, and headed "Strange Tale of the Sea," which paragraph,with some few errors, told the story of the finding of Ralph--though howthe writing man knew it I know not, unless it was through the tutor withthe blue spectacles of whom I have spoken--and said that he was stillliving on the farm of Jan Botmar in the Transkei. This was all that wasin the paper. I asked to look at it and kept it, saying in the morningthat the Kaffir girl seeing it lying about the kitchen had used itto light the fire; but to this day it is with the other things in thewaggon chest under my bed.
When the paper was done with, the lawyer took up the tale and told methat it was believed in England that Lord Glenthirsk had been drowned inthe sea, as indeed he was, and that Lady Glenthirsk and her son perishedon the shore with the other women and children, for so those sent by theEnglish Government to search out the facts had reported. Thus it cameabout that after a while Lord Glenthirsk's younger brother was admittedby law to his title and estates, which he enjoyed for some eight years,that is, until his death. About a year before he died, however, someonesent him the paragraph headed "Strange Tale of the Sea," and he was muchdisturbed by it, though to himself he argued that it was nothing but anidle story, such as it seems are often put into newspapers. The end ofthe matter was that he took no steps to discover whether the tale weretrue or false, and none knew of it save himself, and he was not mindedto go fishing in that ugly water. So it came about that he kept silentas the grave, till at length, when the grave yawned at his feet, andwhen the rank and the lands and the wealth were of no more use to him,he opened his mouth to his son and to his lawyer, the two men who satbefore me, and to them only, bidding them seek out the beginning of thetale, and if it were true, to make restitution to his nephew.
Now--for all this, listening with my ears wide open, and sometimesfilling in what was not told me in words, I gathered from the men beforethey left the house--as it chanced the dying lord could not have chosentwo worse people for such an errand, seeing that although the son washonest, both of them were interested in proving the tale to be false.Since that time, however, often I have thought that he knew thishimself, and trusted by the choice both to cheat his own conscienceand to preserve the wealth and dignity for his son. God, to whom he hasgone, alone knows the truth of it, but with such a man it may very wellhave been as I think. I say that both were interested, for it seems, ashe told me afterwards, that the lawyer was to receive a great sum--tenthousand pounds--under the will of the dead lord for whom he had donemuch during his lifetime. But if Ralph were proved to be the heir thissum would have been his and not the lawyer's, for the money was partof his father's inheritance; therefore it was worth just ten thousandpounds to that lawyer to convince himself and the false lord that Ralphwas not the man, and therefore it was that I found him so easy to dealwith.
Now after his father was dead the lawyer tried to persuade the son totake no notice of his dying words, and to let the matter rest where itwas, seeing that he had nothing to gain and much to lose. But this hewould not consent to, for, as I have said, he was honest, declaring thathe could not be easy in his mind till he knew the truth, and that if hedid not go to find it out himself he would send others to do so for him.As the lawyer desired this least of anything, he gave way, and they setout upon their journey--which in those days was a very great journeyindeed--arriving at last in safety at our stead in the Transkei; for,whether he liked it or not, his companion--who now was called LordGlenthirsk--would not be turned aside from the search or suffer him toprosecute it alone.
At length, when all the tale was told, the lawyer looked at me with hissharp eyes and said, through the interpreter:
"Vrouw Botmar, you have heard the story, tell us what you know. Is theyoung man who lives with you he whom we seek?"
Now I thought for a second, though that second seemed like a year. Alldoubt had left me, there was no room for it. Ralph and no other was theman, and on my answer might hang his future. But I had argued the thingout before and made up my mind to lie, though, so far as I know, it isthe only lie I ever told, and I am not a woman who often changes hermind. Therefore I lied.
"It is not he," I said, "though for his sake I might wish that it were,and this I can prove to you."
Now, when I had told this great falsehood, prompted to it by my love forthe lad and my love for Suzanne, his affianced wife, my mind grew as itwere empty for a moment, and I remember that in the emptiness I seemedto hear a sound of laughter echoing in the air somewhere above the roofof the house. Very swiftly I recovered myself, and looking at the menI saw that my words rejoiced them, except the interpreter indeed, whobeing a paid servant coming from far away, from the neighbourhood ofCapetown I believe, had no interest in the matter one way or the otherbeyond that of earning his money with as little trouble as possible.Yes, they smiled at each other, looking as though a great weight hadbeen lifted off their minds, till presently the lawyer checked himselfand said:
"Be so good as to set out the proofs of which you speak, Vrouw Botmar."
"I will," I answered, "but tell me first, the ship _India_ was wreckedin the year 1824, was she not?"
"Undoubtedly," answered the lawyer.
"Well, have you heard that another ship called the _Flora_, travellingfrom the Cape I know not whither, was lost on this coast in the samemonth of the following year, and that a few of her passengers escaped?"
"I have heard of it," he said.
"Good. Now look here," and going to a chest that stood beneath thewindow, I lifted from it the old Bible that belonged to my grandfatherand father, on the white pages at the beginning of
which are written therecord of many births, marriages, deaths and other notable events thathad happened in the family. Opening it I searched and pointed to acertain entry inscribed in the big writing of my husband Jan, and in inkwhich was somewhat faint, for the ink that the traders sold us in thosedays had little virtue in it. Beneath this entry were others made by Janin later years, telling of things that had happened to us, such as thedeath of his great-aunt who left him money, the outbreak of small-poxon the farm, and the number of people who died from it, the attack of aband of the red Kaffirs upon our house, when by the mercy of God we beatthem off, leaving twelve of their dead behind them, but taking as manyof our best oxen, and so forth.
"Read," I said, and the interpreter read as follows:
"On the twelfth day of September in the year 1825 (the date beingwritten in letters) our little daughter Suzanne found a starving Englishboy in a kloof, who had been shipwrecked on the coast. We have taken himin as a gift of the Lord. He says that his name is Rolf Kenzie."
"You see the date," I said.
"Yes," answered the lawyer, "and it has not been altered!"
"No," I added, "it has not been altered;" but I did not tell them thatJan had not written it down till afterwards, and then by mistake hadrecorded the year in which he wrote, refusing to change it, although Ipointed out the error, because, he said, there was no room, and that itwould make a mess in the book.
"There is one more thing," I went on; "you say the mother of him youseek was a great lady. Well, I saw the body of the mother of the boywho was found, and it was that of a common person very roughly clad withcoarse underclothes and hands hard with labour, on which there was butone ring, and that of silver. Here it is," and going to a drawer I tookfrom it a common silver ring which I once bought from a pedlar becausehe worried me into it. "Lastly, gentlemen, the father of our lad was nolord, unless in your country it is the custom of lords to herd sheep,for the boy told me that in his own land his father was a shepherd,and that he was travelling to some distant English colony to follow histrade. That is all I have to say about it, though I am sorry that thelad is not here to tell it you himself."
When he had heard this statement of mine, which I made in a cold andindifferent voice, the young lord, Ralph's cousin, rose and stretchedhimself, smiling happily.
"Well," he said, "there is the end of a very bad nightmare, and I amglad enough that we came here and found out the truth, for had we notdone so I should never have been happy in my mind."
"Yes," answered the lawyer, the interpreter rendering their words allthe while, "the Vrouw Botmar's evidence is conclusive, though I shallput her statement in writing and ask her to sign it. There is only onething, and that is the strange resemblance of the names," and he glancedat him with his quick eyes.
"There are many Mackenzies in Scotland," answered Lord Glenthirsk, "andI have no doubt that this poor fellow was a shepherd emigrating with hiswife and child to Australia or somewhere." Then he yawned and added, "Iam going outside to get some air before I sleep. Perhaps you will drawup the paper for the good lady to sign."
"Certainly, my lord," answered the lawyer, and the young man went awayquite convinced.
After he had gone the lawyer produced pen and ink and wrote out thestatement, putting in it all the lies that I had told, and copying theextract from the fly-leaf of the Bible. When he had done the interpretertranslated it to me, and then it was that the lawyer told me aboutthe last wishes of the dying lord, and how it would have cost him tenthousand pounds and much business also had the tale proved true. Nowat last he gave me the paper to sign. Besides the candles on the table,which being of mutton fat had burnt out, there was a lamp fed withwhale's oil, but this also was dying, the oil being exhausted, so thatits flame, which had sunk low, jumped from time to time with a littlenoise, giving out a blue light. In that unholy blue light, which turnedour faces ghastly pale, the lawyer and I looked at each other as Isat before him, the pen in my hand, and in his eyes I read that he wascertain that I was about to sign to a wicked lie, and in mine he readthat I knew it to be a lie.
For a while we stared at each other thus, discovering each other'ssouls. "Sign," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "the light dies."
Then I signed, and as I wrote the lamp went out, leaving us in darkness,and through the darkness once more I heard that sound of laughterechoing in the air above the house.