Book of Ghosts — 32 - The White Flag, part 1
THE WHITE FLAG
A percentage of the South African Boers--how large or how small that percentage is has not been determined--is possessed of a rudimentary conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may, under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.
If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest protoplasm of one.
He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had cattle and horses, also a wife and grown-up sons and daughters.
When the war broke out Jacob hoisted the white flag at the gable, and he and his sons indulged their sporting instincts by shooting down such officers and men of the British army as went to the farm, unsuspecting treachery.
Heerendorp by this means obtained an evil notoriety, and it was ordered to be burnt, and the women of Jacob's family to be transferred to a concentration camp where they would be mollycoddled at the expense of the English taxpayer.
Thus Jacob and his sons were delivered from all anxiety as to their womankind, and were given a free field in which to exercise their mischievous ingenuity.
As to their cattle and horses that had been commandeered, they held receipts which would entitle them to claim full value for the beasts at the termination of hostilities.
Jacob and his sons might have joined one of the companies under a Boer general, but they preferred independent action, and their peculiar tactics, which proved eminently successful.
That achievement in which Jacob exhibited most slimness, and of which he was pre-eminently proud, was as follows: feigning himself to be wounded, he rolled on the ground, waving a white kerchief, and crying out for water.
A young English lieutenant at once filled a cup and ran to his assistance, when Jacob shot him through the heart.
When the war was over Van Heeren got his farm rebuilt and restocked at the expense of the British taxpayer, and received his wife and daughters from the concentration camp, plump as partridges.
So soon as the new Heerendorp was ready for occupation, Jacob took a large knife and cut seventeen notches in the doorpost.
"What is that for, Jacob?"
asked his wife.
"They are reminders of the Britishers I have shot."
"Well," said she, "if I hadn't killed more Rooineks than that, I'd be ashamed of myself."
"Oh, I shot more in open fight.
I didn't count them; I only reckon such as I've been slim enough to befool with the white flag," said the Boer.
Now the lieutenant whom Jacob Van Heeren had killed when bringing him a cup of cold water, was Aneurin Jones, and he was the only son of his mother, and she a widow in North Wales.
On Aneurin her heart had been set, in him was all her pride.
Beyond him she had no ambition.
About him every fibre of her heart was entwined.
Life had to her no charms apart from him.
When the news of his death reached her, unaccompanied by particulars, she was smitten with a sorrow that almost reached despair.
The joy was gone out of her life, the light from her sky.
The prospect was a blank before her.
She sank into profound despondency, and would have welcomed death as an end to an aimless, a hopeless life.
But when peace was concluded, and some comrades of Aneurin returned home, the story of how he had met his death was divulged to her.
Then the passionate Welsh mother's heart became as a live coal within her breast.
An impotent rage against his murderer consumed her.
She did not know the name of the man who had killed him, she but ill understood where her son had fallen.
Had she known, had she been able, she would have gone out to South Africa, and have gloried in being able to stab to the heart the man who had so treacherously murdered her Aneurin.
But how was he to be identified?
The fact that she was powerless to avenge his death was a torture to her.
She could not sleep, she could not eat, she writhed, she moaned, she bit her fingers, she chafed at her incapacity to execute justice on the murderer.
A feverish flame was lit in her hollow cheeks.
Her lips became parched, her tongue dry, her dark eyes glittered as if sparks of unquenchable fire had been kindled in them.
She sat with clenched hands and set teeth before her dead grate, and the purple veins swelled and throbbed in her temples.
Oh!
if only she knew the name of the man who had shot her Aneurin!
Oh!
if only she could find out a way to recompense him for the wrong he had done!
These were her only thoughts.
And the sole passage in her Bible she could read, and which she read over and over again, was the story of the Importunate Widow who cried to the judge, "Avenge me of mine adversary!"
and who was heard for her persistent asking.
Thus passed a fortnight.
She was visibly wasting in flesh, but the fire within her burned only the fiercer as her bodily strength failed.
Then, all at once, an idea shot like a meteor through her brain.
She remembered to have heard of the Cursing Well of St. Elian, near Colwyn.
She recalled the fact that the last "Priest of the Well," an old man who had lived hard by, and who had initiated postulants into the mysteries of the well, had been brought before the magistrates for obtaining money under false pretences, and had been sent to gaol at Chester; and that the parson of Llanelian had taken a crowbar and had ripped up the wall that enclosed the spring, and had done what lay in his power to destroy it and blot out the remembrance of the powers of the well, or to ruin its efficacy.
But the spring still flowed.
Had it lost its virtues?
Could a parson, could magistrates bring to naught what had been for centuries?
She remembered, further, that the granddaughter of the "Priest of the Well" was then an inmate of the workhouse at Denbigh.
Was it not possible that she should know the ritual of St. Elian's spring?
--should be able to assist her in the desire of her heart?
Mrs. Winifred Jones resolved on trying.
She went to the workhouse and sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference with her.
She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the well; but the intensity of Mrs. Jones, her vehemence in prosecuting her inquiries, and, above all, the gift of half a sovereign pressed into her palm, with the promise of another if she assisted Mrs. Winifred in the prosecution of her purpose, finally overcame her scruples, and she told all that she knew.
"You must visit St. Elian's, madam," said she, "when the moon is at the wane.
You must write the name of him whose death you desire on a pebble, and drop it into the water, and recite the sixty-ninth Psalm."
"But," objected the widow, "I do not know his name, and I have no means of discovering it.
I want to kill the man who murdered my son."
The old woman considered, and then said: "In this case it is different.
There is a way under these circumstances.
Murdered, was your son?"
"Yes, he was treacherously shot."
"Then you will have to call on your son by name, as you let fall the pebble, and say: 'Let him be wiped out of the book of the living.
Avenge me of mine adversary, O my God.'
And you must go on dropping in pebbles, reciting the same prayer, till you see the water of the spring boil up black as ink.
Then you will know that your prayer has been heard, and that the curse has wrought."
Winifred Jones departed in some elation.
She waited till the moon changed, and then she went to the spring.
It was near a hedge; there were trees by it.
Apparently it had been unsought for many years.
But it still flowed.
About it lay scattered a few stones that had once formed the bounds.
She looked about her.
No one was by.
The sun was declining, and would soon set.
She bent over the water--it was perfectly clear.
She had collected a lapful of rounded stones.
Then she cried out: "Aneurin!
come to my aid against your murderer.
Let him be blotted out of the book of the living.
Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!"
and she dropped a pebble into the water.
Then rose a bubble.
That was all.
She paused but for a moment, then again she cried: "Aneurin!
come to my aid against your murderer.
Let him be blotted out of the book of the living.
Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!"
Once more a pebble was let fall.
It splashed into the spring, but there was no change save that ripples were sent against the side.
A third--then a fourth--she went on; the sun sent a shaft of yellow glory through the trees over the spring.
Then someone passed along the road hard by, and Mrs. Winifred Jones held her breath, and desisted till the footfall had died away.
But then she continued, stone after stone was dropped, and the ritual was followed, till the seventeenth had disappeared in the well, when up rose a column of black fluid boiling as it were from below, the colour of ink; and the widow pressed her hands together, and drew a sigh of relief; her prayer had been heard, and her curse had taken effect.
She cast away the rest of the pebbles, let down her skirt, and went away rejoicing.
* * * * * It so fell out that on this very evening Jacob Van Heeren had gone to bed early, as he had risen before daybreak, and had been riding all day.
His family were in the outer room, when they were startled by a hoarse cry from the bedroom.
He was a short-tempered, imperious man, accustomed to yell at his wife and children when he needed them; but this cry was of an unusual character, it had in it the ring of alarm.
His wife went to him to inquire what was the matter.
She found the old Boer sitting up in bed with one leg extended, his face like dirty stained leather, his eyes starting out of his head, and his mouth opening and shutting, lifting and depressing his shaggy, grey beard, as though he were trying to speak, but could not utter words.
"Pete!"
she called to her eldest son, "come here, and see what ails your father."
Pete and others entered, and stood about the bed, staring stupidly at the old man, unable to comprehend what had come over him.
"Fetch him some brandy, Pete," said the mother; "he looks as if he had a fit."
When some spirits had been poured down his throat the farmer was revived, and said huskily: "Take it away!
Quick, take it off!"
"Take what away?"
"The white flag."
"There is none here."
"It is there--there, wrapped about my foot."
The wife looked at the outstretched leg, and saw nothing.
Jacob became angry, he swore at her, and yelled: "Take it off; it is chilling me to the bone."
"There is nothing there."
"But I say it is.
I saw him come in----" "Saw whom, father?"
asked one of the sons.
"I saw that Rooinek lieutenant I shot when he was bringing me drink, thinking I was wounded.
He came in through the door----" "That is not possible--he must have passed us."
"I say he did come.
I saw him, and he held the white rag, and he came upon me and gave me a twist with the flag about my foot, and there it is--it numbs me.
I cannot move it.
Quick, quick, take it away."
"I repeat there is nothing there," said his wife.
"Pull off his stocking," said Pete Van Heeren; "he has got a chill in his foot, and fancies this nonsense.
He has been dreaming."
"It was not a dream," roared Jacob; "I saw him as clearly as I see you, and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag."
"Accursed flag!"
exclaimed Samuel, the second son.
"That's a fine way to speak of it, father, when it served you so well."
"Take it off, you dogs!"
yelled the old man, "and don't stand staring and barking round me."
The stocking was removed from his leg, and then it was seen that his foot--the left foot--had turned a livid white.
"Go and heat a brick," said the housewife to one of her daughters; "it is just the circulation has stopped."
But no artificial warmth served to restore the flow of blood, and the natural heat.
