He Snaps
"I have found something in the loft," said Em to Waldo, who was listlessly piling cakes of fuel on the kraal wall, a week after. "It is a box of books that belonged to my father. We thought Tant Sannie had burnt them."
The boy put down the cake he was raising and looked at her.
"I don't think they are very nice, not stories," she added, "but you can go and take any you like."
So saying, she took up the plate in which she had brought his breakfast, and walked off to the house.
After that the boy worked quickly. The pile of fuel Bonaparte had ordered him to pack was on the wall in half an hour. He then went to throw salt on the skins laid out to dry. Finding the pot empty, he went to the loft to refill it.
Bonaparte Blenkins, whose door opened at the foot of the ladder, saw the boy go up, and stood in the doorway waiting for his return. He wanted his boots blacked. Doss, finding he could not follow his master up the round bars, sat patiently at the foot of the ladder. Presently he looked up longingly, but no one appeared. Then Bonaparte looked up also, and began to call; but there was no answer. What could the boy be doing? The loft was an unknown land to Bonaparte. He had often wondered what was up there; he liked to know what was in all locked-up places and out-of-the-way corners, but he was afraid to climb the ladder. So Bonaparte looked up, and in the name of all that was tantalizing, questioned what the boy did up there. The loft was used only as a lumber-room. What could the fellow find up there to keep him so long?
Could the Boer-woman have beheld Waldo at that instant, any lingering doubt which might have remained in her mind as to the boy's insanity would instantly have vanished. For, having filled the salt-pot, he proceeded to look for the box of books among the rubbish that filled the loft. Under a pile of sacks he found it--a rough packing-case, nailed up, but with one loose plank. He lifted that, and saw the even backs of a row of books. He knelt down before the box, and ran his hand along its rough edges, as if to assure himself of its existence. He stuck his hand in among the books, and pulled out two. He felt them, thrust his fingers in among the leaves, and crumpled them a little, as a lover feels the hair of his mistress. The fellow gloated over his treasure. He had had a dozen books in the course of his life; now here was a mine of them opened at his feet. After a while he began to read the titles, and now and again opened a book and read a sentence; but he was too excited to catch the meanings distinctly. At last he came to a dull, brown volume. He read the name, opened it in the centre, and where he opened began to read. It was a chapter on property that he fell upon--Communism, Fourierism, St. Simonism, in a work on Political Economy. He read down one page and turned over to the next; he read down that without changing his posture by an inch; he read the next, and the next, kneeling up all the while with the book in his hand, and his lips parted.
All he read he did not fully understand; the thoughts were new to him; but this was the fellow's startled joy in the book--the thoughts were his, they belonged to him. He had never thought them before, but they were his.
He laughed silently and internally, with the still intensity of triumphant joy.
So, then, all thinking creatures did not send up the one cry--"As thou, dear Lord, has created things in the beginning, so are they now, so ought they to be, so will they be, world without end; and it doesn't concern us what they are. Amen." There were men to whom not only kopjes and stones were calling out imperatively, "What are we, and how came we here?
Understand us, and know us;" but to whom even the old, old relations between man and man, and the customs of the ages called, and could not be made still and forgotten.
The boy's heavy body quivered with excitement. So he was not alone, not alone. He could not quite have told any one why he was so glad, and this warmth had come to him. His cheeks were burning. No wonder that Bonaparte called in vain, and Doss put his paws on the ladder, and whined till three- quarters of an hour had passed. At last the boy put the book in his breast and buttoned it tightly to him. He took up the salt pot, and went to the top of the ladder. Bonaparte, with his hands folded under his coat-tails, looked up when he appeared, and accosted him.
"You've been rather a long time up there, my lad," he said, as the boy descended with a tremulous haste, most unlike his ordinary slow movements.
"You didn't hear me calling, I suppose?"
Bonaparte whisked the tails of his coat up and down as he looked at him.
He, Bonaparte Blenkins, had eyes which were very far-seeing. He looked at the pot. It was rather a small pot to have taken three-quarters of an hour in the filling. He looked at the face. It was flushed. And yet, Tant Sannie kept no wine--he had not been drinking; his eyes were wide open and bright--he had not been sleeping; there was no girl up there--he had not been making love. Bonaparte looked at him sagaciously. What would account for the marvellous change in the boy coming down the ladder from the boy going up the ladder? One thing there was. Did not Tant Sannie keep in the loft bultongs, and nice smoked sausages? There must be something nice to eat up there! Aha! that was it!
Bonaparte was so interested in carrying out this chain of inductive reasoning that he quite forgot to have his boots blacked.
He watched the boy shuffle off with the salt-pot under his arm; then he stood in his doorway and raised his eyes to the quiet blue sky, and audibly propounded this riddle to himself:
"What is the connection between the naked back of a certain boy with a greatcoat on and a salt-pot under his arm, and the tip of a horsewhip?
Answer: No connection at present, but there will be soon."
Bonaparte was so pleased with this sally of his wit that he chuckled a little and went to lie down on his bed.
