Dream Life and Real Life

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Dream Life and Real Life

A Little African Story

by Olive Schreiner

Author of "The Story of an African Farm" and "Dreams"

Dedication.

To My Brother Fred,

For whose little school magazine the first of these tiny stories--one of
the first I ever made--was written out many long years ago.

O.S.

New College, Eastbourne,
Sept. 29, 1893.

Contents.

I. Dream Life and Real Life; a Little African Story.

II. The Woman's Rose.

III. "The Policy in Favour of Protection--".

Kopjes - In the karoo, are hillocks of stones, that rise up singly or in
clusters, here and there; presenting sometimes the fantastic appearance of
old ruined castles or giant graves, the work of human hands.
Kraal - A sheepfold.
Krantz - A precipice.
Sluit - A deep fissure, generally dry, in which the superfluous torrents of
water are carried from the karoo plains after thunderstorms.
Stoep - A porch.

I. DREAM LIFE AND REAL LIFE; A LITTLE AFRICAN STORY.

Little Jannita sat alone beside a milk-bush. Before her and behind her
stretched the plain, covered with red sand and thorny karoo bushes; and
here and there a milk-bush, looking like a bundle of pale green rods tied
together. Not a tree was to be seen anywhere, except on the banks of the
river, and that was far away, and the sun beat on her head. Round her fed
the Angora goats she was herding; pretty things, especially the little
ones, with white silky curls that touched the ground. But Jannita sat
crying. If an angel should gather up in his cup all the tears that have
been shed, I think the bitterest would be those of children.

By and by she was so tired, and the sun was so hot, she laid her head
against the milk-bush, and dropped asleep.

She dreamed a beautiful dream. She thought that when she went back to the
farmhouse in the evening, the walls were covered with vines and roses, and
the kraals were not made of red stone, but of lilac trees full of blossom.
And the fat old Boer smiled at her; and the stick he held across the door,
for the goats to jump over, was a lily rod with seven blossoms at the end.
When she went to the house her mistress gave her a whole roaster-cake for
her supper, and the mistress's daughter had stuck a rose in the cake; and
her mistress's son-in-law said, "Thank you!" when she pulled off his boots,
and did not kick her.

It was a beautiful dream.

While she lay thus dreaming, one of the little kids came and licked her on
her cheek, because of the salt from her dried-up tears. And in her dream
she was not a poor indentured child any more, living with Boers. It was
her father who kissed her. He said he had only been asleep--that day when
he lay down under the thorn-bush; he had not really died. He felt her
hair, and said it was grown long and silky, and he said they would go back
to Denmark now. He asked her why her feet were bare, and what the marks on
her back were. Then he put her head on his shoulder, and picked her up,
and carried her away, away! She laughed--she could feel her face against
his brown beard. His arms were so strong.

As she lay there dreaming, with the ants running over her naked feet, and
with her brown curls lying in the sand, a Hottentot came up to her. He was
dressed in ragged yellow trousers, and a dirty shirt, and torn jacket. He
had a red handkerchief round his head, and a felt hat above that. His nose
was flat, his eyes like slits, and the wool on his head was gathered into
little round balls. He came to the milk-bush, and looked at the little
girl lying in the hot sun. Then he walked off, and caught one of the
fattest little Angora goats, and held its mouth fast, as he stuck it under
his arm. He looked back to see that she was still sleeping, and jumped down
into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way
and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were
two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other
was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat
with the navvy's long knife, and covered up the blood with sand, and buried
the entrails and skin. Then they talked, and quarrelled a little; and then
they talked quietly again.

The Hottentot man put a leg of the kid under his coat and left the rest of
the meat for the two in the sluit, and walked away.

When little Jannita awoke it was almost sunset. She sat up very
frightened, but her goats were all about her. She began to drive them
home. "I do not think there are any lost," she said.

Dirk, the Hottentot, had brought his flock home already, and stood at the
kraal door with his ragged yellow trousers. The fat old Boer put his stick
across the door, and let Jannita's goats jump over, one by one. He counted
them. When the last jumped over: "Have you been to sleep today?" he said;
"there is one missing."

Then little Jannita knew what was coming, and she said, in a low voice,
"No." And then she felt in her heart that deadly sickness that you feel
when you tell a lie; and again she said, "Yes."

"Do you think you will have any supper this evening?" said the Boer.

"No," said Jannita.

"What do you think you will have?"

"I don't know," said Jannita.

"Give me your whip," said the Boer to Dirk, the Hottentot.

...

The moon was all but full that night. Oh, but its light was beautiful!

The little girl crept to the door of the outhouse where she slept, and
looked at it. When you are hungry, and very, very sore, you do not cry.
She leaned her chin on one hand, and looked, with her great dove's eyes--
the other hand was cut open, so she wrapped it in her pinafore. She looked
across the plain at the sand and the low karoo-bushes, with the moonlight
on them.

Presently, there came slowly, from far away, a wild springbuck. It came
close to the house, and stood looking at it in wonder, while the moonlight
glinted on its horns, and in its great eyes. It stood wondering at the red
brick walls, and the girl watched it. Then, suddenly, as if it scorned it
all, it curved its beautiful back and turned; and away it fled over the
bushes and sand, like a sheeny streak of white lightning. She stood up to
watch it. So free, so free! Away, away! She watched, till she could see
it no more on the wide plain.

Her heart swelled, larger, larger, larger: she uttered a low cry; and
without waiting, pausing, thinking, she followed on its track. Away, away,
away! "I--I also!" she said, "I--I also!"

When at last her legs began to tremble under her, and she stopped to
breathe, the house was a speck behind her. She dropped on the earth, and
held her panting sides.

She began to think now.

If she stayed on the plain they would trace her footsteps in the morning
and catch her; but if she waded in the water in the bed of the river they
would not be able to find her footmarks; and she would hide, there where
the rocks and the kopjes were.

So she stood up and walked towards the river. The water in the river was
low; just a line of silver in the broad bed of sand, here and there
broadening into a pool. She stepped into it, and bathed her feet in the
delicious cold water. Up and up the stream she walked, where it rattled
over the pebbles, and past where the farmhouse lay; and where the rocks
were large she leaped from one to the other. The night wind in her face
made her strong--she laughed. She had never felt such night wind before.
So the night smells to the wild bucks, because they are free! A free thing
feels as a chained thing never can.

At last she came to a place where the willows grew on each side of the
river, and trailed their long branches on the sandy bed. She could not
tell why, she could not tell the reason, but a feeling of fear came over
her.

On the left bank rose a chain of kopjes and a precipice of rocks. Between
the precipice and the river bank there was a narrow path covered by the
fragments of fallen rock. And upon the summit of the precipice a kippersol
tree grew, whose palm-like leaves were clearly cut out against the night
sky. The rocks cast a deep shadow, and the willow trees, on either side of
the river. She paused, looked up and about her, and then ran on, fearful.

"What was I afraid of? How foolish I have been!" she said, when she came
to a place where the trees were not so close together. And she stood still
and looked back and shivered.

At last her steps grew wearier and wearier. She was very sleepy now, she
could scarcely lift her feet. She stepped out of the river-bed. She only
saw that the rocks about her were wild, as though many little kopjes had
been broken up and strewn upon the ground, lay down at the foot of an aloe,
and fell asleep.

...

But, in the morning, she saw what a glorious place it was. The rocks were
piled on one another, and tossed this way and that. Prickly pears grew
among them, and there were no less than six kippersol trees scattered here
and there among the broken kopjes. In the rocks there were hundreds of
homes for the conies, and from the crevices wild asparagus hung down. She
ran to the river, bathed in the clear cold water, and tossed it over her
head. She sang aloud. All the songs she knew were sad, so she could not
sing them now, she was glad, she was so free; but she sang the notes
without the words, as the cock-o-veets do. Singing and jumping all the
way, she went back, and took a sharp stone, and cut at the root of a
kippersol, and got out a large piece, as long as her arm, and sat to chew
it. Two conies came out on the rock above her head and peeped at her. She
held them out a piece, but they did not want it, and ran away.

It was very delicious to her. Kippersol is like raw quince, when it is
very green; but she liked it. When good food is thrown at you by other
people, strange to say, it is very bitter; but whatever you find yourself
is sweet!

When she had finished she dug out another piece, and went to look for a
pantry to put it in. At the top of a heap of rocks up which she clambered
she found that some large stones stood apart but met at the top, making a
room.

"Oh, this is my little home!" she said.

At the top and all round it was closed, only in the front it was open.
There was a beautiful shelf in the wall for the kippersol, and she
scrambled down again. She brought a great bunch of prickly pear, and stuck
it in a crevice before the door, and hung wild asparagus over it, till it
looked as though it grew there. No one could see that there was a room
there, for she left only a tiny opening, and hung a branch of feathery
asparagus over it. Then she crept in to see how it looked. There was a
glorious soft green light. Then she went out and picked some of those
purple little ground flowers--you know them--those that keep their faces
close to the ground, but when you turn them up and look at them they are
deep blue eyes looking into yours! She took them with a little earth, and
put them in the crevices between the rocks; and so the room was quite
furnished. Afterwards she went down to the river and brought her arms full
of willow, and made a lovely bed; and, because the weather was very hot,
she lay down to rest upon it.

She went to sleep soon, and slept long, for she was very weak. Late in the
afternoon she was awakened by a few cold drops falling on her face. She
sat up. A great and fierce thunderstorm had been raging, and a few of the
cool drops had fallen through the crevice in the rocks. She pushed the
asparagus branch aside, and looked out, with her little hands folded about
her knees. She heard the thunder rolling, and saw the red torrents rush
among the stones on their way to the river. She heard the roar of the
river as it now rolled, angry and red, bearing away stumps and trees on its
muddy water. She listened and smiled, and pressed closer to the rock that
took care of her. She pressed the palm of her hand against it. When you
have no one to love you, you love the dumb things very much. When the sun
set, it cleared up. Then the little girl ate some kippersol, and lay down
again to sleep. She thought there was nothing so nice as to sleep. When
one has had no food but kippersol juice for two days, one doesn't feel
strong.

"It is so nice here," she thought as she went to sleep, "I will stay here
always."

Afterwards the moon rose. The sky was very clear now, there was not a
cloud anywhere; and the moon shone in through the bushes in the door, and
made a lattice-work of light on her face. She was dreaming a beautiful
dream. The loveliest dreams of all are dreamed when you are hungry. She
thought she was walking in a beautiful place, holding her father's hand,
and they both had crowns on their heads, crowns of wild asparagus. The
people whom they passed smiled and kissed her; some gave her flowers, and
some gave her food, and the sunlight was everywhere. She dreamed the same
dream over and over, and it grew more and more beautiful; till, suddenly,
it seemed as though she were standing quite alone. She looked up: on one
side of her was the high precipice, on the other was the river, with the
willow trees, drooping their branches into the water; and the moonlight was
over all. Up, against the night sky the pointed leaves of the kippersol
trees were clearly marked, and the rocks and the willow trees cast dark
shadows.

In her sleep she shivered, and half awoke.

"Ah, I am not there, I am here," she said; and she crept closer to the
rock, and kissed it, and went to sleep again.

It must have been about three o'clock, for the moon had begun to sink
towards the western sky, when she woke, with a violent start. She sat up,
and pressed her hand against her heart.

"What can it be? A cony must surely have run across my feet and frightened
me!" she said, and she turned to lie down again; but soon she sat up.
Outside, there was the distinct sound of thorns crackling in a fire.

She crept to the door and made an opening in the branches with her fingers.

A large fire was blazing in the shadow, at the foot of the rocks. A little
Bushman sat over some burning coals that had been raked from it, cooking
meat. Stretched on the ground was an Englishman, dressed in a blouse, and
with a heavy, sullen face. On the stone beside him was Dirk, the
Hottentot, sharpening a bowie knife.

She held her breath. Not a cony in all the rocks was so still.

"They can never find me here," she said; and she knelt, and listened to
every word they said. She could hear it all.

"You may have all the money," said the Bushman; "but I want the cask of
brandy. I will set the roof alight in six places, for a Dutchman burnt my
mother once alive in a hut, with three children."

"You are sure there is no one else on the farm?" said the navvy.

"No, I have told you till I am tired," said Dirk; "The two Kaffirs have
gone with the son to town; and the maids have gone to a dance; there is
only the old man and the two women left."

"But suppose," said the navvy, "he should have the gun at his bedside, and
loaded!"

"He never has," said Dirk; "it hangs in the passage, and the cartridges
too. He never thought when he bought it what work it was for! I only wish
the little white girl was there still," said Dirk; "but she is drowned. We
traced her footmarks to the great pool that has no bottom."

She listened to every word, and they talked on.

Afterwards, the little Bushman, who crouched over the fire, sat up
suddenly, listening.

"Ha! what is that?" he said.

A Bushman is like a dog: his ear is so fine he knows a jackal's tread from
a wild dog's.

"I heard nothing," said the navvy.

"I heard," said the Hottentot; "but it was only a cony on the rocks."

"No cony, no cony," said the Bushman; "see, what is that there moving in
the shade round the point?"

"Nothing, you idiot!" said the navvy. "Finish your meat; we must start
now."

There were two roads to the homestead. One went along the open plain, and
was by far the shortest; but you might be seen half a mile off. The other
ran along the river bank, where there were rocks, and holes, and willow
trees to hide among. And all down the river bank ran a little figure.

The river was swollen by the storm full to its banks, and the willow trees
dipped their half-drowned branches into its water. Wherever there was a
gap between them, you could see it flow, red and muddy, with the stumps
upon it. But the little figure ran on and on; never looking, never
thinking; panting, panting! There, where the rocks were the thickest;
there, where on the open space the moonlight shone; there, where the
prickly pears were tangled, and the rocks cast shadows, on it ran; the
little hands clinched, the little heart beating, the eyes fixed always
ahead.

It was not far to run now. Only the narrow path between the high rocks and
the river.

At last she came to the end of it, and stood for an instant. Before her
lay the plain, and the red farmhouse, so near, that if persons had been
walking there you might have seen them in the moonlight. She clasped her
hands. "Yes, I will tell them, I will tell them!" she said; "I am almost
there!" She ran forward again, then hesitated. She shaded her eyes from
the moonlight, and looked. Between her and the farmhouse there were three
figures moving over the low bushes.

In the sheeny moonlight you could see how they moved on, slowly and
furtively; the short one, and the one in light clothes, and the one in
dark.

"I cannot help them now!" she cried, and sank down on the ground, with her
little hands clasped before her.

...

"Awake, awake!" said the farmer's wife; "I hear a strange noise; something
calling, calling, calling!"

The man rose, and went to the window.

"I hear it also," he said; "surely some jackal's at the sheep. I will load
my gun and go and see."

"It sounds to me like the cry of no jackal," said the woman; and when he
was gone she woke her daughter.

"Come, let us go and make a fire, I can sleep no more," she said; "I have
heard a strange thing tonight. Your father said it was a jackal's cry, but
no jackal cries so. It was a child's voice, and it cried, 'Master, master,
wake!'"

The women looked at each other; then they went to the kitchen, and made a
great fire; and they sang psalms all the while.

At last the man came back; and they asked him, "What have you seen?"
"Nothing," he said, "but the sheep asleep in their kraals, and the
moonlight on the walls. And yet, it did seem to me," he added, "that far
away near the krantz by the river, I saw three figures moving. And
afterwards--it might have been fancy--I thought I heard the cry again; but
since that, all has been still there."

...

Next day a navvy had returned to the railway works.

"Where have you been so long?" his comrades asked.

"He keeps looking over his shoulder," said one, "as though he thought he
should see something there."

"When he drank his grog today," said another, "he let it fall, and looked
round."

Next day, a small old Bushman, and a Hottentot, in ragged yellow trousers,
were at a wayside canteen. When the Bushman had had brandy, he began to
tell how something (he did not say whether it was man, woman, or child) had
lifted up its hands and cried for mercy; had kissed a white man's hands,
and cried to him to help it. Then the Hottentot took the Bushman by the
throat, and dragged him out.

Next night, the moon rose up, and mounted the quiet sky. She was full now,
and looked in at the little home; at the purple flowers stuck about the
room, and the kippersol on the shelf. Her light fell on the willow trees,
and on the high rocks, and on a little new-made heap of earth and round
stones. Three men knew what was under it; and no one else ever will.

Lily Kloof,
South Africa.

II. THE WOMAN'S ROSE.

I have an old, brown carved box; the lid is broken and tied with a string.
In it I keep little squares of paper, with hair inside, and a little
picture which hung over my brother's bed when we were children, and other
things as small. I have in it a rose. Other women also have such boxes
where they keep such trifles, but no one has my rose.

When my eye is dim, and my heart grows faint, and my faith in woman
flickers, and her present is an agony to me, and her future a despair, the
scent of that dead rose, withered for twelve years, comes back to me. I
know there will be spring; as surely as the birds know it when they see
above the snow two tiny, quivering green leaves. Spring cannot fail us.

There were other flowers in the box once; a bunch of white acacia flowers,
gathered by the strong hand of a man, as we passed down a village street on
a sultry afternoon, when it had rained, and the drops fell on us from the
leaves of the acacia trees. The flowers were damp; they made mildew marks
on the paper I folded them in. After many years I threw them away. There
is nothing of them left in the box now, but a faint, strong smell of dried
acacia, that recalls that sultry summer afternoon; but the rose is in the
box still.

It is many years ago now; I was a girl of fifteen, and I went to visit in a
small up-country town. It was young in those days, and two days' journey
from the nearest village; the population consisted mainly of men. A few
were married, and had their wives and children, but most were single.
There was only one young girl there when I came. She was about seventeen,
fair, and rather fully-fleshed; she had large dreamy blue eyes, and wavy
light hair; full, rather heavy lips, until she smiled; then her face broke
into dimples, and all her white teeth shone. The hotel-keeper may have had
a daughter, and the farmer in the outskirts had two, but we never saw them.
She reigned alone. All the men worshipped her. She was the only woman
they had to think of. They talked of her on the stoep, at the market, at
the hotel; they watched for her at street corners; they hated the man she
bowed to or walked with down the street. They brought flowers to the front
door; they offered her their horses; they begged her to marry them when
they dared. Partly, there was something noble and heroic in this devotion
of men to the best woman they knew; partly there was something natural in
it, that these men, shut off from the world, should pour at the feet of one
woman the worship that otherwise would have been given to twenty; and
partly there was something mean in their envy of one another. If she had
raised her little finger, I suppose, she might have married any one out of
twenty of them.

Then I came. I do not think I was prettier; I do not think I was so pretty
as she was. I was certainly not as handsome. But I was vital, and I was
new, and she was old--they all forsook her and followed me. They
worshipped me. It was to my door that the flowers came; it was I had
twenty horses offered me when I could only ride one; it was for me they
waited at street corners; it was what I said and did that they talked of.
Partly I liked it. I had lived alone all my life; no one ever had told me
I was beautiful and a woman. I believed them. I did not know it was
simply a fashion, which one man had set and the rest followed
unreasoningly. I liked them to ask me to marry them, and to say, No. I
despised them. The mother heart had not swelled in me yet; I did not know
all men were my children, as the large woman knows when her heart is grown.
I was too small to be tender. I liked my power. I was like a child with a
new whip, which it goes about cracking everywhere, not caring against what.
I could not wind it up and put it away. Men were curious creatures, who
liked me, I could never tell why. Only one thing took from my pleasure; I
could not bear that they had deserted her for me. I liked her great dreamy
blue eyes, I liked her slow walk and drawl; when I saw her sitting among
men, she seemed to me much too good to be among them; I would have given
all their compliments if she would once have smiled at me as she smiled at
them, with all her face breaking into radiance, with her dimples and
flashing teeth. But I knew it never could be; I felt sure she hated me;
that she wished I was dead; that she wished I had never come to the
village. She did not know, when we went out riding, and a man who had
always ridden beside her came to ride beside me, that I sent him away; that
once when a man thought to win my favour by ridiculing her slow drawl
before me I turned on him so fiercely that he never dared come before me
again. I knew she knew that at the hotel men had made a bet as to which
was the prettier, she or I, and had asked each man who came in, and that
the one who had staked on me won. I hated them for it, but I would not let
her see that I cared about what she felt towards me.

She and I never spoke to each other.

If we met in the village street we bowed and passed on; when we shook hands
we did so silently, and did not look at each other. But I thought she felt
my presence in a room just as I felt hers.

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