Читать книгу A Vendetta of the Desert - W. C. Scully - Страница 13

Gideon, suffering great agony, had been carried home and laid upon his bed. He adhered firmly to the false accusation which he had brought against his brother, and the whole world, or that portion of it which knew the van der Walts, believed in Stephanus’ guilt.

The Field Cornet, who lived only some twenty miles away, was sent for, and arrived during the night. He took down the wounded man’s statement in writing and then went over and arrested Stephanus. When the written statement was read over in Stephanus’ presence to the wounded man, he adhered to it still and, having by that time somewhat rallied from the shock, gave a supplementary account of what had transpired in such clear, circumstantial and deadly detail, that all present were convinced of its truth. Stephanus maintained absolute silence. Uncle Diederick did his duty as well, and probably as successfully, as if he had been a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. After removing every splinter of bone and carefully cleansing the gaping wound, he laid a cooling, antiseptic compost of herbs all over the injured parts. As Gideon’s constitution was perfectly clean and healthy, he made a rapid recovery. The shoulder joint was, however, so seriously injured, that the arm was henceforth of little use.

Marta and Sara were thrown into terrible distress by the arrest of Stephanus. Elsie, taking her impressions of the situation from her father’s mental state, retained her serenity, but was puzzled at the turn things had taken.

Stephanus remained quite unmoved when the Field Cornet announced that he would have to make him a prisoner and take him to Cape Town, there to await his trial.

A day’s delay, to enable him to put his affairs in order, was all that he asked for. This was granted, so he counted his sheep and cattle, assembled his servants,—whom he made promise to serve their mistress faithfully during his absence,—and wrote to the husband of his eldest sister to ask that his nephew, a lad of seventeen, whose services had recently been offered to him, might be sent to assist in managing the farm. The letter was sent off by a special messenger, as his brother-in-law lived only a little more than a day’s journey away.

The Field Cornet having acquainted Marta with the main facts of the case, she shared in the general belief in her husband’s guilt.

On the evening before Stephanus’ departure for prison, the family sat down to their last meal together, and at its conclusion Stephanus did a thing which he had left undone for years past: he called upon those assembled to kneel down and pray. Then he offered up a petition that God might forgive him his many misdeeds and grant him and all present patience to bear whatever punishment might be justly meted out to him.

Elsie then took his hand and the two went out to the seat under the mulberry tree, where they sat until half the night was spent. Few words passed between them, and the parting which was to take place on the morrow was hardly referred to.

The unhappy women broke down completely at the leave-taking in the grey of the early morning. Stephanus maintained his composure until it came to bidding farewell to Elsie. The child clung to him convulsively, and her clasp had to be detached by force. Then the father’s anguish was terrible to behold.

The trial took place at the criminal sessions of the Supreme Court in Cape Town, some four months afterwards. The prisoner’s family went down in their wagon to be present at it.

Gideon gave his false evidence with composure, and Gert Dragoonder, the Hottentot, corroborated him strongly. Stephanus pleaded “not guilty,” but otherwise made no defence. When the court found him guilty not a muscle of his face betrayed the least emotion. After the judge had sentenced him to be imprisoned for ten years with hard labour, he quietly remarked that he had been justly punished. When he was removed from court it was noticed by those present who knew him that his step had a spring and his eyes a brightness which had never been noticed before.

Gideon enjoyed one wild moment of exultation when his brother was led away to a living grave. Then he turned to leave the court-room, from which the people were emerging in a struggling crowd,—the trial just concluded having closed the proceedings for the day. In the vestibule he stood aside to let the congested crowd flow past. A woman whose bent head was concealed in a long “cappie,” and who led a young girl by the hand, was forced against him. The child, frightened by the crowd, seized his hand and held it fast. When the crush slackened he turned, looked down, and found himself gazing into the glowing, sightless eyes of little Elsie, the blind girl he had damned his soul to orphan. Then he glanced up and met the eyes of the woman whom he loved still, although he had not seen her face for years. There was something different to the reproach he expected in her look; he seemed to read in it an appeal for forgiveness of the wrong which she imagined her husband had done him, and to see the flicker of a love answering his own, which filled him with dismay. The mute appeal in her eyes was worse than any reproach could have been, and the fact that his perjury had made her worse than widowed seemed to crush him to the earth.

In another moment Marta and Elsie had followed the last of the crowd and Gideon found himself alone. Then the nobility of the mien of the man whom, innocent, he had sent forth to a doom more sorrowful than death came back to his mind with such dread distinctness that it excluded everything else.

Suddenly it seemed all unreal;—could it be a dream? No—there was the court-room—he could see it through the open doorway before which he was standing. He stepped forward on tip-toe and looked in. Involuntarily his eye sought the prisoners’ dock—the spot where his twin-brother had stood with rapt, unmoved face and heard the pronouncement of his doom. His strained brain easily conjured up the figure in all its menacing nobility, and before the vision he felt abased to the dust.

Had there been another human creature present, Gideon would have cried aloud a confession of his sin, but he stood alone with the hideousness of his own transgression.

Then a reaction set in and he staggered from the room grasping wildly at the shred of comfort which lay in the realisation of the fact that the man whom he had hated through so many bitter years had now been taken out of his life. A strange duality was set up in his consciousness:—it seemed as though the man he had seen undergoing sentence, although still his brother, was no longer the Stephanus who had used him so despitefully. Thus his mind was buffeted hither and thither by a gusty storm of conflicting emotions.

So the long-looked-forward-to triumph of Gideon van der Walt sank foully smouldering upon its own ashes, and he entered into that hell out of which there is seldom redemption.