The Story Of An African Farm

Olive Schreiner

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780868522456
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Olive Schreiner's landmark novel, a South African classic, takes place in the rural Karoo towards the end of the 19th century. The Story of an African Farm evokes the bleakness and beauty of the arid landscape, which forms the backdrop for the stories of Lyndall and Waldo, unlikely soul mates whose lives reflect their frustrated quest for a better reality and their dreams of self-fulfillment. Originally published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron, the novel caused a sensation when its author was revealed to be a woman. Victorian readers were intrigued by the novel's forthright feminism and sensitivity to all forms of oppression. An informative introduction by literary scholar Cherry Clayton discusses the literary, cultural and philosophical background to the novel.

Part One

PART ONE

1. Shadows From Child-Life

1

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 an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.

In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the centre a small, solitary ‘kopje’ rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round iron-stones piled one upon another, as over some giant’s grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its tone, 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 sun-flowers. On the zinc roof of the great open waggon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moon-light glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till 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 farm-house, 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; nor 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 waggon-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 grey-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 tool-box 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! 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 gone 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 flood.

‘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 grovelled 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-coloured 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, till 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 step-daughter, 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 possibly 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 round 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 demeanour, 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 as...