Richard Dehan - The Dop Doctor

That patch of sandy earth brought a handsome price, paid down in good English sovereigns – the coinage that is welcome in every corner of the earth, save among the scattered islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, where gin, tobacco, and coffee are more willingly taken in exchange for goods or souls.

The Englishman was business-like. He fetched pen and ink and paper out of that jealously closed-up waggon, drew up the deed of sale, and had it witnessed by the Boer driver and the white woman at the hotel.

He had made up his mind. He would bury her, since it must be, and then fetch the clergyman. Knowing him on the road, or returning to the fulfilment of his promise, she would not mind lying there unblessed and waiting for six lonely days and nights. He whispered in her deaf ears how it was going to be, and that she could not doubt him. He swore – not dreaming how soon he should keep one vow – to visit the grave often, often, with his child and hers, and to lie there beside her when kind Death should call him too.

Then he left her for a moment, and sent for the Kaffir driver and the Boer to come, and, with him, dig her grave…

But Smoots Beste was already in hog-paradise, lying grunting on a bench in the bar, and the Kaffir had gone to the kraals with the Cape boys. The English officer looked at the rowdy landlord and the loafing men about the tavern, and made up his mind. No hands other than his own should prepare a last bed for her, his dearest.

So, all through the remainder of the long day, streaming and drenched with perspiration, which the cold wind dried upon him, he wrought at a grave for her with spade and pick.

It should be deep, because of the wild-cat and the hungry Kaffir dogs. It should be wide, to leave room for him. The ground was hard, with boulders of ironstone embedded in it. What did that matter? All the day through, and all through the night of wind-driven mists and faint moonlight, he wrought like a giant possessed, whilst his child, lulled with the condensed milk and water, in which biscuits had been sopped, lay sleeping in the tavern upon a little iron bed.

He had had the waggon brought close up to the wired enclosure. All the time he worked he kept a watch upon it. Did claws scrape the wide wheels or scurrying feet patter across the shadows, he left off work until the voracious creatures of the night were driven away.

The pale dawn came, and the east showed a lake of yellow… When the great South African sun rose and flooded the veld with miraculous liquid ambers and flaming, melted rubies, the deep, wide grave at last was done.

He climbed out of it by the waggon ladder, struggling under the weight of the last great basketful of stones and sandy earth. He dumped that down by the graveside, and went to the waggon and removed all stains of toil, and then set about making the last toilette of the beautiful woman who had so loved that everything that touched her should be pure, and dainty, and sweet.

He had dressed her silken, plentiful, squirrel-brown hair many times, for the sheer love of its loveliness. With what care he now combed and brushed and arranged the perfumed locks! He laid reverent kisses on the sealed eyelids that his own hands had closed for ever; he whispered words of passionate love, vows of undying gratitude and remembrance, in the shell-like ears. He bathed with fresh water and reclad in fragrant linen the exquisite body, upon which faint discolouring patches already heralded the inevitable end. When he had done, he swathed her in a sheet, and fetched a bolt of new white canvas from the store-waggon, and lined the grave with that.

And then he placed a narrow mattress in it, and freshly covered pillows, and brought her from the waggon, and to the grave, and carried her down the light wooden ladder, and laid her in her last earthly home, with a kiss from the lips that had never been her husband's. It was so cruel to think of that. It was so hard to cover up the cold, sweet face again, but he did it, and lapped the sheet over her and brought the canvas down. Remained now to fill in her grave and fetch the man whose mouth should speak over it the words that are of God.

But first – fill in the grave.

The cold sweat drenched him at the thought of heaping back those tons of earth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inert matter the bodily beauty that he adored. He felt as though her soul hovered about him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at his garments with imploring, impalpable hands.

The thing must be done, though, before the sordid life stirred again under the roof of the tavern, before the vulgar faces, with their greedy, prying eyes, should be there to snigger and spy.

He loaded a great basket with fine gravelly sand, and carried it down and laid it on her by handfuls. What were his livid, parched lips muttering? Over and over, only this:

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …"

Soon the white swathed-up form was hidden with the sandy gravel. That was a terrible pang. It wrenched the first groan from him, but he worked on.

More and more of the sandy gravel, but for precaution the stones must lie above. Should the voracious creatures of the night come, they must find the treasure in impregnable security. That thought helped him to lay in the first, and the second, and then greater and greater stones. He was spent and breathless, but still he laboured. He tottered, and at times the tavern and the veld, and the waggons on it, and the flat-topped distant mountains that merged in the horizon, swung round him in a wild, mad dance. Then the warm salt taste of blood was in his mouth, and he gasped and panted, but he never rested until the grave was filled in.

Then he built up over it an oblong cairn of the ironstone boulders, made a rude temporary cross out of a spare waggon-pole, working quite methodically with saw and hammer and nails, and set it up, under the curious eyes he hated so, and wedged it fast and sure. Then he knelt down stiffly, and made, with rusty, long unpractised fingers, the sacred sign upon his face and breast. He heard her still, asking him in that nearly extinguished voice of hers, to pray for her.

"Dicky!.."

Ah! the tragedy of the foolish little nickname, faltered by stiffening lips upon the bed of death!

"Catholics pray for the souls of dead people, don't they? Pray for mine by-and-by. It will comfort me to know you are praying, darling, even if God is too angry with us to hear!"

He held her to his bursting heart, groaning.

"If He is angry, it cannot be with you. The sin was mine – all mine. He must know!"

Later she awakened from a troubled sleep to murmur:

"Richard, I dreamed of Bridget-Mary. She was all in black, but there was white linen about her face and neck, and it was dabbled dreadfully with blood." The weak, slight body shuddered in his embrace. "She said our wickedness had brought her death, but that she would plead for us in Heaven."

"She is not dead, my beloved; I heard of her before we left Cape Colony. She has taken the veil. She is well, and will be happy in her religion, as those good women always are."

"I was not one of those good women, Richard – "

He strained her to him in silence. She panted presently:

"You might have been happy – with her – if I had never come between you!"

He found some words to tell her that these things were meant to be. From the beginning …

"Was it meant that I should die on these wild, wide, desolate plains, and leave you, Richard?"

He cried out frantically that he would die too, and follow her. Her dying whisper fluttered at his lips:

"You cannot! Think! – the child!"

He had forgotten the child, and now, with a great stabbing pang, remembered it. She asked for it, and he brought it, and she tried to kiss it; and even in that Death foiled her, and her head fell back and her eyes rolled up, and she died.