The Story of an African Farm
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The Story of an African Farm

Olive Schreiner

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The Story of an African Farm

Olive Schreiner

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About This Book

In writing the first great South African novel, Olive Schreiner drew on childhood memories of life on the isolated African veld to fashion a powerful indictment of the rigid Boer and English social conventions of her day. This 1883 bestseller, published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron, was greeted by both praise and condemnation for its feminist views on women's status and on marriage, and for its unorthodox critique of dishonesty and hypocrisy in the doctrines and practices of `respectable` Christian church people.
The tale begins with three childhood playmates growing up on a sheep farm: Waldo, son of the farm's kindly and pious German overseer; Em, the stolid but kind English stepdaughter of Tant' Sannie, the farm's Boer owner; and Lyndall, Em's spirited orphan cousin. As the story follows the friends to adulthood, basic conflicts are enacted both internally and externally. Em's ardent fiancé falls in love with the beautiful but troubled Lyndall, who flouts social pressure to marry. Waldo struggles with his boundless yearning for spiritual fulfillment and for the stimulation that knowledge brings, as well as his need for warm human companionship.
Lyndall's fierce efforts to wrest from the world a life for herself, and the affects her insight and courage have on others, make a gripping tale. This eloquent portrayal of loves damaged by societal repression retains its power more than a century after its first publication. Today's readers will welcome this inexpensive edition of a literary landmark.

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Information

Publisher
Dover Publications
Year
2013
ISBN
9780486115702
Topic
Literatur
Subtopic
Afrikanische Literarische Sammlungen

Part I

I. Shadows From Child Life

The Watch

THE full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted karroo bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk bushes with their long, finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.
In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the center a small, solitary kopje rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon the other, as over some giant’s grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad, fleshy leaves. At the foot of the kopje lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffir huts; beyond them the dwelling house—a square, red-brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind of dreamy beauty, and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran before the house, and which enclosed a bare patch of sand and two straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great, open wagon house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, until it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished silver.
Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the solitary plain.
In the farmhouse, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant’ Sannie, the Boer woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.
She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes, and the night was warm and the room close, and she dreamed bad dreams. Not of the ghosts and devils that so haunted her waking thoughts; not of her second husband, the consumptive Englishman, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich camps, nor of her first, the young Boer; but only of the sheep’s trotters she had eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in her throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side, and snorted horribly.
In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the shutter, the white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as day. There were two small beds against the wall. In one lay a yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a face of freckles; but the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep.
The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes and looked at the moonlight that was bathing her.
“Em!” she called to the sleeper in the other bed, but received no answer. Then she drew the cover from the floor, turned her pillow, and pulling the sheet over her head, went to sleep again.
Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the wagon house there was someone who was not asleep. The room was dark; door and shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged, lay sleeping soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms folded, and his bushy gray and black beard rising and falling on his breast. But one in the room was not asleep. Two large eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small hands were smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He drew the quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but a great head of silky black curls and the two black eyes. He stared about in the darkness. Nothing was visible, not even the outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table, on which lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went to bed. No one could tell where the toolbox was, and where the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child in the complete darkness.
At the head of his father’s bed hung a great silver hunting watch. It ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began mechanically to count. Tick—tick—tick—tick! One, two, three, four! He lost count presently, and only listened. Tick—tick—tick—tick!
It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it ticked a man died! He raised himself a little on his elbow and listened. He wished it would leave off.
How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down? A thousand times, a million times, perhaps.
He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better.
“Dying, dying, dying!” said the watch; “dying, dying, dying!”
He heard it distinctly. Where were they going to, all those people?
He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head; but presently the silky curls reappeared.
“Dying, dying, dying!” said the watch; “dying, dying, dying!”
He thought of the words his father had read that evening—“For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”
“Many, many, many!” said the watch.
“Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
“Few, few, few!” said the watch.
The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in one direction; then they came to the dark edge of the world, and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past—how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless millions of China and India, they were going over now. Since he had come to bed, how many had gone!
And the watch said, “Eternity, eternity, eternity!”
“Stop them! Stop them!” cried the child.
And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God’s will, that never changes or alters, you may do what you please.
Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy’s forehead. He climbed out of bed and lay with his face turned to the mud floor.
“Oh, God, God! Save them!” he cried in agony. “Only some; only a few! Only for each moment I am praying here one!” He folded his little hands upon his head. “God! God! Save them!”
He groveled on the floor.
Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone over! Oh, the long, long future, in which they would pass away! Oh, God! The long, long, long eternity, which has no end!
The child wept, and crept closer to the ground.

The Sacrifice

The farm by daylight was not as the farm by moonlight. The plain was a weary flat of loose red sand, sparsely covered by dry karroo bushes, that cracked beneath the tread like tinder, and showed the red earth everywhere. Here and there a milk bush lifted its pale-colored rods, and in every direction the ants and beetles ran about in the blazing sand. The red walls of the farmhouse, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls of the kraals, all reflected the fierce sunlight, until the eye ached and blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The two sunflowers that stood before the door, out-stared by the sun, drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like insects cried aloud among the stones of the kopje.
The Boer woman, seen by daylight, was even less lovely than when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was damned. Less lovely, too, by daylight was the dead Englishman’s child, her little stepdaughter, upon whose freckles and low, wrinkled forehead the sunlight had no mercy.
“Lyndall,” the child said to her little orphan cousin, who sat with her on the floor threading beads, “how is it your beads never fall off your needle?”
“I try,” said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger. “That is why.”
The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing a shabby suit, and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands and nodding his head prodigiously when pleased at anything. He stood out at the kraals in the blazing sun, explaining to two Kaffir boys the approaching end of the world. The boys, as they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and worked as slowly as they possible could; but the German never saw it.
Away, beyond the kopje, Waldo, his son, herded the ewes and lambs—a small and dusty herd—powdered all over from head to foot with red sand, wearing a ragged coat and shoes of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes looked out. His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes, concealing completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small figure. His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to move far; they gathered around every little milk bush as though they hoped to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps. He himself crept under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of the kopje, stretched himself on his stomach, and waved his dilapidated little shoes in the air.
Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he produced a fragment of slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceeding to put down a sum with solemn and earnest demeanor, he began to add it up aloud: “Six and two is eight—and four is twelve—and two is fourteen—and four is eighteen.” Here he paused. “And four is eighteen—and—four-is—eighteen.” The last was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped from his fingers, and the slate followed it into the sand. For a while he lay motionless, then began muttering to himself, folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might have been asleep, but for a muttering sound that from time to time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at him; but it was long before he raised his head. When he did, he looked at the far-off hills with his heavy eyes.
“Ye shall receive—ye shall receive—shall, shall, shall,” he muttered.
He sat up then. Slowly the dullness and heaviness melted from his face; it became radiant. Midday had come now, and the sun’s rays were poured down vertically; the earth throbbed before the eye.
The boy stood up quickly, and cleared a small space from the bushes that covered it. Looking carefully, he found twelve small stones of somewhat the same size; kneeling down, he arranged them carefully on the cleared space in a square pile, in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag where his dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large slice of brown bread. The boy took them out and turned the bread over in his hand, deeply considering it. Finally he threw it away and walked to the altar with the meat, and laid it down on the stones. Close by in the red sand he knelt down. Surely, never since the beginning of the world was there so ragged and so small a priest. He took off his great hat and placed it solemnly on the ground, then closed his eyes and folded his hands. He prayed aloud.
“Oh, God, my Father, I have made Thee a sacrifice. I have only twopence, so I cannot buy a lamb. If the lambs were mine I would give Thee one; but now I have only this meat; it is my dinner meat. Please, my Father, send fire down from heaven to burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it shall be done. I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
He knelt down with his face upon the ground, and he folded his hands upon his curls. The fierce sun poured down its heat upon his head and upon his altar. He knew what he would see when he looked up—the glory of God! For fear his very heart stood still, his breath came heavily; he was half suffocated. He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself. Above him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there were the clumps of silent ewes and his altar—that was all.
He looked up—nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue overhead. He looked around in astonishment, then he bowed again, and this time longer than before.
When he raised himself the second time all was unaltered. Only the sun had melted the fat of the little mutton chop, and it ran down upon the stones.
Then, the third time he bowed himself. When at last he looked up, some ants had come to the meat on the altar. He stood up and drove them away. Then he put his hat on his hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about his knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass. The glory of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he would see it.
“My dear God is trying me,” he said; and he sat there through the fierce heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited when the sun began to slope; and when it neared the horizon, and the sheep began to cast long shadows across the karroo, he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays touched the hills until the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the meat far, far away into the field.
He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He reasoned so: “God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came. I am like Cain—I am not His. He will not hear my prayer. God hates me.”
The boy’s heart was heavy. When he reached the kraal gate the two girls met him.
“Come,” said the yellow-haired Em, “let us play ‘coop.’ There is still time before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the kopje; Lyndall and I will shut eyes here, and we will not look.”
The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep kraal, and the boy clambered halfway up the kopje. He crouched down between two stones and gave the call. Just then the milker came walking out of the cow kraal with two pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffir.
“Ah!” thought the boy, “perhaps he will die tonight, and go to hell! I must pray for him, I must pray!”
Then he thought, “Where am I going to?” and he prayed desperately.
“Ah! This is not right at all,” little Em said, peeping between the stones, and finding him in a very curious posture. “What are you doing, Waldo? It is not the play, you know. You should run out when we come to the white stone. Ah, you do not play nicely.”
“I—I will play nicely now,” said the boy, coming out and standing sheepishly before them; “I—I only forgot; I will play now.”
“He has been to sleep,” said freckled Em.
“No,” said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him; “he has been crying.”
She never made a mistake.

The Confession

One night, two years after, the boy sat alone on the kopje. He had crept softly from his father’s room and come there. He often did, because, when he prayed or cried aloud, his father might awake and hear him; and none knew his great sorrow, and none knew his grief, but he himself, and he buried them deep in his heart.
He turned up the brim of his great hat and looked at the moon, but most at the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just before him. They glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just like his own heart—cold, so hard, and very wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full of little bits of glass, that hurt....

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