initial commit of ebook 1458HEADmain

1 files changed, 893 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1458-0.txt b/1458-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cc4180
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1458-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,893 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1458 ***
+
+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.
+
+At last the time for my going came. I was to leave the next day. Some
+one I knew gave a party in my honour, to which all the village was
+invited.
+
+It was midwinter. There was nothing in the gardens but a few dahlias and
+chrysanthemums, and I suppose that for two hundred miles round there
+was not a rose to be bought for love or money. Only in the garden of a
+friend of mine, in a sunny corner between the oven and the brick wall,
+there was a rose tree growing which had on it one bud. It was white, and
+it had been promised to the fair haired girl to wear at the party.
+
+The evening came; when I arrived and went to the waiting-room, to take
+off my mantle, I found the girl there already. She was dressed in pure
+white, with her great white arms and shoulders showing, and her bright
+hair glittering in the candle-light, and the white rose fastened at her
+breast. She looked like a queen. I said “Good-evening,” and turned away
+quickly to the glass to arrange my old black scarf across my old black
+dress.
+
+Then I felt a hand touch my hair.
+
+“Stand still,” she said.
+
+I looked in the glass. She had taken the white rose from her breast, and
+was fastening it in my hair.
+
+“How nice dark hair is; it sets off flowers so.” She stepped back and
+looked at me. “It looks much better there!”
+
+I turned round.
+
+“You are so beautiful to me,” I said.
+
+“Y-e-s,” she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; “I’m so glad.”
+
+We stood looking at each other.
+
+Then they came in and swept us away to dance. All the evening we did not
+come near to each other. Only once, as she passed, she smiled at me.
+
+The next morning I left the town.
+
+I never saw her again.
+
+Years afterwards I heard she had married and gone to America; it may or
+may not be so--but the rose--the rose is in the box still! When my faith
+in woman grows dim, and it seems that for want of love and magnanimity
+she can play no part in any future heaven; then the scent of that small
+withered thing comes back:--spring cannot fail us.
+
+Matjesfontein, South Africa.
+
+
+
+
+III. “THE POLICY IN FAVOUR OF PROTECTION--“.
+
+Was it Right?--Was it Wrong?
+
+A woman sat at her desk in the corner of a room; behind her a fire burnt
+brightly.
+
+Presently a servant came in and gave her a card.
+
+“Say I am busy and can see no one now. I have to finish this article by
+two o’clock.”
+
+The servant came back. The caller said she would only keep her a moment:
+it was necessary she should see her.
+
+The woman rose from her desk. “Tell the boy to wait. Ask the lady to
+come in.”
+
+A young woman in a silk dress, with a cloak reaching to her feet,
+entered. She was tall and slight, with fair hair.
+
+“I knew you would not mind. I wished to see you so!”
+
+The woman offered her a seat by the fire. “May I loosen your cloak?--the
+room is warm.”
+
+“I wanted so to come and see you. You are the only person in the world
+who could help me! I know you are so large, and generous, and kind to
+other women!” She sat down. Tears stood in her large blue eyes: she was
+pulling off her little gloves unconsciously.
+
+“You know Mr.--” (she mentioned the name of a well-known writer): “I
+know you meet him often in your work. I want you to do something for
+me!”
+
+The woman on the hearth-rug looked down at her.
+
+“I couldn’t tell my father or my mother, or any one else; but I can tell
+you, though I know so little of you. You know, last summer he came and
+stayed with us a month. I saw a great deal of him. I don’t know if he
+liked me; I know he liked my singing, and we rode together--I liked him
+more than any man I have ever seen. Oh, you know it isn’t true that a
+woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he
+liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has
+never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him
+about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn’t you say
+or do anything for me?” She looked up with her lips white and drawn.
+“I feel sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be
+a woman!” The woman looked down at her. “Now I hear he likes another
+woman. I don’t know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and
+writes. Oh, it is so terrible, I can’t bear it.”
+
+The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against
+her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and looked at
+the younger woman. “Yes,” she said, “it is a very terrible thing to be a
+woman.” She was silent. She said with some difficulty: “Are you sure you
+love him? Are you sure it is not only the feeling a young girl has for
+an older man who is celebrated, and of whom every one is talking?”
+
+“I have been nearly mad. I haven’t slept for weeks!” She knit her little
+hands together, till the jewelled rings almost cut into the fingers. “He
+is everything to me; there is nothing else in the world. You, who are so
+great, and strong, and clever, and who care only for your work, and for
+men as your friends, you cannot understand what it is when one person is
+everything to you, when there is nothing else in the world!”
+
+“And what do you want me to do?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know!” She looked up. “A woman knows what she can do. Don’t
+tell him that I love him.” She looked up again. “Just say something to
+him. Oh, it’s so terrible to be a woman; I can’t do anything. You won’t
+tell him exactly that I love him? That’s the thing that makes a man hate
+a woman, if you tell it him plainly.”
+
+“If I speak to him I must speak openly. He is my friend. I cannot fence
+with him. I have never fenced with him in my own affairs.” She moved as
+though she were going away from the fireplace, then she turned and said:
+“Have you thought of what love is between a man and a woman when it
+means marriage? That long, long life together, day after day, stripped
+of all romance and distance, living face to face: seeing each other as
+a man sees his own soul? Do you realize that the end of marriage is to
+make the man and woman stronger than they were; and that if you cannot,
+when you are an old man and woman and sit by the fire, say, ‘Life has
+been a braver and a freer thing for us, because we passed it hand in
+hand, than if we had passed through it alone,’ it has failed? Do you
+care for him enough to live for him, not tomorrow, but when he is an
+old, faded man, and you an old, faded woman? Can you forgive him his
+sins and his weaknesses, when they hurt you most? If he were to lie a
+querulous invalid for twenty years, would you be able to fold him in
+your arms all that time, and comfort him, as a mother comforts her
+little child?” The woman drew her breath heavily.
+
+“Oh, I love him absolutely! I would be glad to die, if only I could once
+know that he loved me better than anything in the world!”
+
+The woman stood looking down at her. “Have you never thought of that
+other woman; whether she could not perhaps make his life as perfect as
+you?” she asked, slowly.
+
+“Oh, no woman ever could be to him what I would be. I would live for
+him. He belongs to me.” She bent herself forward, not crying, but her
+shoulders moving. “It is such a terrible thing to be a woman, to be able
+to do nothing and say nothing!”
+
+The woman put her hand on her shoulder; the younger woman looked up into
+her face; then the elder turned away and stood looking into the
+fire. There was such quiet, you could hear the clock tick above the
+writing-table.
+
+The woman said: “There is one thing I can do for you. I do not know if
+it will be of any use--I will do it.” She turned away.
+
+“Oh, you are so great and good, so beautiful, so different from other
+women, who are always thinking only of themselves! Thank you so much.
+I know I can trust you. I couldn’t have told my mother, or any one but
+you.”
+
+“Now you must go; I have my work to finish.”
+
+The younger woman put her arms round her. “Oh, you are so good and
+beautiful!”
+
+The silk dress and the fur cloak rustled out of the room.
+
+The woman who was left alone walked up and down, at last faster and
+faster, till the drops stood on her forehead. After a time she went up
+to the table; there was written illegibly in a man’s hand on a fragment
+of manuscript paper: “Can I come to see you this afternoon?” Near it was
+a closed and addressed envelope. She opened it. In it were written the
+words: “Yes, please, come.”
+
+She tore it across and wrote the words: “No, I shall not be at liberty.”
+
+She closed them in an envelope and addressed them. Then she rolled
+up the manuscript on the table and rang the bell. She gave it to the
+servant. “Tell the boy to give this to his master, and say the article
+ends rather abruptly; they must state it is to be continued; I will
+finish it tomorrow. As he passes No. 20 let him leave this note there.”
+
+The servant went out. She walked up and down with her hands folded above
+her head.
+
+*****
+
+Two months after, the older woman stood before the fire. The door opened
+suddenly, and the younger woman came in.
+
+“I had to come--I couldn’t wait. You have heard, he was married this
+morning? Oh, do you think it is true? Do help me!” She put out her
+hands.
+
+“Sit down. Yes, it is quite true.”
+
+“Oh, it is so terrible, and I didn’t know anything! Did you ever say
+anything to him?” She caught the woman’s hands.
+
+“I never saw him again after the day you were here,--so I could not
+speak to him,--but I did what I could.” She stood looking passively into
+the fire.
+
+“And they say she is quite a child, only eighteen. They say he only saw
+her three times before he proposed to her. Do you think it is true?”
+
+“Yes, it is quite true.”
+
+“He can’t love her. They say he’s only marrying her for her rank and her
+money.”
+
+The woman turned quickly.
+
+“What right have you to say that? No one but I know him. What need has
+he of any one’s rank or wealth? He is greater than them all! Older women
+may have failed him; he has needed to turn to her beautiful, fresh,
+young life to compensate him. She is a woman whom any man might have
+loved, so young and beautiful; her family are famed for their intellect.
+If he trains her, she may make him a better wife than any other woman
+would have done.”
+
+“Oh, but I can’t bear it--I can’t bear it!” The younger woman sat down
+in the chair. “She will be his wife, and have his children.”
+
+“Yes.” The elder woman moved quickly. “One wants to have the child, and
+lay its head on one’s breast and feed it.” She moved quickly. “It would
+not matter if another woman bore it, if one had it to take care of.” She
+moved restlessly.
+
+“Oh, no, I couldn’t bear it to be hers. When I think of her I feel as if
+I were dying; all my fingers turn cold; I feel dead. Oh, you were only
+his friend; you don’t know!”
+
+The older spoke softly and quickly, “Don’t you feel a little gentle
+to her when you think she’s going to be his wife and the mother of his
+child? I would like to put my arms round her and touch her once, if she
+would let me. She is so beautiful, they say.”
+
+“Oh, I could never bear to see her; it would kill me. And they are so
+happy together today! He is loving her so!”
+
+“Don’t you want him to be happy?” The older woman looked down at her.
+“Have you never loved him, at all?”
+
+The younger woman’s face was covered with her hands. “Oh, it’s so
+terrible, so dark! and I shall go on living year after year, always in
+this awful pain! Oh, if I could only die!”
+
+The older woman stood looking into the fire; then slowly and measuredly
+she said, “There are times, in life, when everything seems dark, when
+the brain reels, and we cannot see that there is anything but death.
+But, if we wait long enough, after long, long years, calm comes. It may
+be we cannot say it was well; but we are contented, we accept the past.
+The struggle is ended. That day may come for you, perhaps sooner than
+you think.” She spoke slowly and with difficulty.
+
+“No, it can never come for me. If once I have loved a thing, I love it
+for ever. I can never forget.”
+
+“Love is not the only end in life. There are other things to live for.”
+
+“Oh, yes, for you! To me love is everything!”
+
+“Now, you must go, dear.”
+
+The younger woman stood up. “It has been such a comfort to talk to you.
+I think I should have killed myself if I had not come. You help me so. I
+shall always be grateful to you.”
+
+The older woman took her hand.
+
+“I want to ask something of you.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“I cannot quite explain to you. You will not understand. But there are
+times when something more terrible can come into a life than it should
+lose what it loves. If you have had a dream of what life ought to be,
+and you try to make it real, and you fail; and something you have killed
+out in your heart for long years wakes up and cries, ‘Let each man play
+his own game, and care nothing for the hand of his fellow! Each man for
+himself. So the game must be played!’ and you doubt all you have lived
+for, and the ground seems washing out under your feet--.” She paused.
+“Such a time has come to me now. If you would promise me that if ever
+another woman comes to seek your help, you will give it to her, and try
+to love her for my sake, I think it will help me. I think I should be
+able to keep my faith.”
+
+“Oh, I will do anything you ask me to. You are so good and great.”
+
+“Oh, good and great!--if you knew! Now go, dear.”
+
+“I have not kept you from your work, have I?”
+
+“No; I have not been working lately. Good-by, dear.”
+
+The younger woman went; and the elder knelt down by the chair, and
+wailed like a little child when you have struck it and it does not dare
+to cry loud.
+
+A year after; it was early spring again.
+
+The woman sat at her desk writing; behind her the fire burnt brightly.
+She was writing a leading article on the causes which in differing
+peoples lead to the adoption of Free Trade or Protectionist principles.
+
+The woman wrote on quickly. After a while the servant entered and laid a
+pile of letters on the table. “Tell the boy I shall have done in fifteen
+minutes.” She wrote on. Then she caught sight of the writing on one of
+the letters. She put down her pen, and opened it. It ran so:--
+
+“Dear Friend,--I am writing to you, because I know you will rejoice to
+hear of my great happiness. Do you remember how you told me that day by
+the fire to wait, and after long, long years I should see that all was
+for the best? That time has come sooner than we hoped. Last week in Rome
+I was married to the best, noblest, most large-hearted of men. We are
+now in Florence together. You don’t know how beautiful all life is to
+me. I know now that the old passion was only a girl’s foolish dream.
+My husband is the first man I have ever truly loved. He loves me and
+understands me as no other man ever could. I am thankful that my dream
+was broken; God had better things in store for me. I don’t hate that
+woman any more; I love every one! How are you, dear? We shall come and
+see you as soon as we arrive in England. I always think of you so happy
+in your great work and helping other people. I don’t think now it is
+terrible to be a woman; it is lovely.
+
+“I hope you are enjoying this beautiful spring weather.
+
+“Yours, always full of gratitude and love,
+
+“E--.”
+
+The woman read the letter: then she stood up and walked towards the
+fire. She did not re-read it, but stood with it open in her hand,
+looking down into the blaze. Her lips were drawn in at the corners.
+Presently she tore the letter up slowly, and watched the bits floating
+down one by one into the grate. Then she went back to her desk, and
+began to write, with her mouth still drawn in at the corners. After a
+while she laid her arm on the paper and her head on her arm, and seemed
+to go to sleep there.
+
+Presently the servant knocked; the boy was waiting. “Tell him to wait
+ten minutes more.” She took up her pen--“The Policy of the Australian
+Colonies in favour of Protection is easily understood--” she
+waited--“when one considers the fact--the fact--;” then she finished the
+article.
+
+Cape Town, South Africa, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Dream Life and Real Life, by Olive Schreiner
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1458 ***