Divination

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Title:     Divination
Author: Arthur Shearly Cripps [More Titles by Cripps]

I have a friend who lives some miles away, among fantastic rocks and crimson-flowered Kaffir trees. I was over at his homestead one day in Christmas week last year and found that he was absent. He was sleeping at a trading-station to east, the boys said, and would not be back for a day or so. But he had left word with them to give me supper should I come. So I had time to notice a change.

Three or four very cool and fresh water-colors adorned his walls. They were pinned up there under a trophy of harness. Under each oblong of paper was a title in old English characters. One was named 'Sundown.' another 'Sun-up' these both showed the homestead not as it was now in mid-summer, but as I remembered it in late winter or early spring, with some of the trees in full flower.

The other picture showed a charming group of children variously colored among the rocks. I feasted my eyes on it for quite a long while, noting its detail, which bewildered me. Surely no such scene had been witnessed lately in all South Africa. Yet I knew the rocks of the scene; they were close by, and the children were painted some of them with familiar-looking faces. The title underneath was 'Innocents.'

I did not see my friend for a week or so after that, and when I did I did not think at first to ask about the pictures. However, he began to tell the story of them himself. He was talking about men on the road, a class with which he had a large acquaintance, having lodged many of them. 'I had one here last week,' he said, 'a white man in clean white ducks. He stopped two nights, and went outside painting most of the days. He gave me three pictures. He could paint, couldn't he? I couldn't catch his name, and he said he wasn't sure where he was going to stop next. But he went up the Rosebery Road, and seemed to know his way about. He hadn't got a bag, and he traveled very light just a blanket or so and a loaf of bread and a cup. I shouldn't think he'd come to much harm, would he?' I shook my head. 'He could paint, couldn't he?' he said, glancing up at the pictures. I nodded. 'That's a fancy picture,' I said; 'that of the children a pretty fancy. I wonder what it means.' My friend Dick meditated. 'I don't see much wrong in the painting anyhow,' he said.

The picture was indeed a pretty fancy there were children white and black in it, and lambs and kids. The white children were mixed up with the black curiously. One little sturdy Mashona carried a white child in his arms. A white boy with fair hair, aged nine or ten, carried a Mashona baby in a goat's skin strapped to his back. The light of dawn was in the picture a cool summer dawn. Between the rocks and the red-sprayed trees of our country was, as it were, a lawn, close-bit by much feeding into a fair copy of an English lawn. I looked hard at the picture.

'Those two Mashonas are like the children that were burnt in a kraal this way,' I said pointing. 'I tried to dress their burns but they both died.' Dick looked up as I pointed, but he said nothing. He eschews dwelling on painful subjects very often, I notice. 'Don't you think that they are like?' I asked.

'Kaffir children favor one another,' Dick said sagely. He stood watching the picture on the faded wall in silence. Then we dropped the subject. But the mystery of it remained for me.

A week or two after, that mystery multiplied. Dick was expecting visitors, and he asked me over to meet them. The male visitor was an official I used to know of old; he was to bring his sister with him this time, and the sister I did not know. She was a charming person; one who had been in the country a long time ago and left it, but had come back again now to be married and to make a home in Rosebery. She had reached the homestead about mid-day, the same day that I came over in the late afternoon.

After tea and before dinner we walked down to the cattle-kraal, all four of us. Then, when Dick and her brother were ahead she began to question me about that water-color on the wall. I told her what Dick had told me. 'He told me that himself,' she said, 'but I didn't understand.'

'I thought I knew two of the children,' I said, 'but Kaffir children seem much alike to our English eyes, don't they? They seemed to me to resemble two quite little children I used to come and see. They were badly burnt near here.'

She started.

'Did they get better?' she asked. I shook my head. She started again. 'Listen,' she said. 'Two children to whom I used to be nursery-governess were murdered in the "Rebellion" on a farm close to this very place. They were staying with their mother's elder sister. Please do try and tell me this. Why are these portraits, life-like portraits, of those two children in this picture?'

I stared at her rather stupidly. Then Dick came to us we, were close up to the cattle-kraal and called us to come and see his young stock, and talked to us about them.

'I don't think I'll tell the children's mother,' she said to me. I was then saying good-night to her in the bright moonlight outside the homestead door some hours afterwards. 'They live in the colony now, she and her husband. Telling her might reopen deep wounds. It wouldn't do any good at all probably, would it?'

'That depends,' I said, 'on the mother's point of view. You're sure about the likeness?' She gave a sort of sob.

'Trust me for that,' she said. 'I was very fond of them of Claude and Polly.'

This last dry season, by the ordering of God, that mother came our way herself. She was on a pilgrimage of her own. Dick sent over a messenger hot-haste to tell me that a lady was at his place and had asked for me. She wanted me to spare the morning to-morrow if I possibly could. She would have me come on an expedition with her and talk over something that she had in her mind to do. Couldn't I sleep at Dick's homestead that night?

I could. I came over about nine o'clock I suppose, walking in a fresh south-easter with a half-moon to light me. Dick was smoking outside in the yard when I came.

'The lady's tired,' he told me. 'She's turned in already. She's got a lad with her. He's inside. Come in and have some supper.'

The stranger rose up as I came in, and I greeted him. He was a tall, fair boy, whose face I seemed to know. He told me that he had driven his mother down, as I sat over my supper. I glanced up at the wall curiously before I had finished. The picture was not there.

'I thought it was better out of the way,' Dick said when his guest had gone to bed. 'I didn't know how she might take it. It's the mother of those poor little Scotch children come to see the place. Wants to put up a gravestone or monument or something, poor lady!'

Then I knew where I had seen the stranger boy's face. It was the image of his dead brother's face in the picture, the white piccaninny that carried the Mashona baby. I whistled softly.

'Who painted that picture?' I said. 'I know all yon told me. But did that chap ever come down the road again? I never asked you.'

'No,' said Dick, 'I don't know to this day any more about him.'

I sat silent.

'She wants you to go over to the place with her to-morrow,' Dick said. 'You know the place, don't you? It's only about three miles away up the old wagon road; you've been there, haven't you?'

'Yes,' I said. 'There's a wooden cross where they're buried or should be. I had it renewed two years ago. Didn't I ever tell you about it? Haven't you been there yourself lately?'

'No,' said Dick. 'I don't fancy the place somehow. But I was asking about it only this afternoon. The boys tell me there are some trees there still; white men's trees.'

'Yes,' I said, 'yellow peach-stocks and one gumtree you get it against the skyline looking up from the spruit. The old pole and daub house dropped to pieces long ago. I do hope that cross is standing all right still. I blame myself for not having seen about it this last year or two.'

The cross had fallen down and the place looked generally forlorn when we reached it next day. I was troubled about my companion. She was fair and tall and quiet. When she did talk on the way she talked about commonplace subjects. But when she saw the forsaken place and the displaced cross the veil fell. She clutched her son's arm hard, and I left them together. I went off with the Mashona boy and the mules out of the way. I had no inspiration at the moment what to say or what to do. I did not come back for half an hour.

She told me on the drive back that she wanted to provide somewhat of a memorial. 'It's been left too long,' she said. 'But you can understand how sore I was before and how I shrank from coming.'

She told me that one great grief of hers was that she had no good likeness of her children as they were at that dreadful time. I was embarrassed and silent. 'What can I do to help you?' I was thinking over and over again, 'Shall I show the picture? Yes, right or wrong, I must.'

I didn't know how to begin to tell her about it. I prayed for words. Then I began in curt crisp sentences to tell her. 'You may not like it. You must not be disappointed,' I said. 'Why?' she asked. But I did not try to explain. I would let the picture plead its own point of view. When we were back I asked Dick for it, and I knocked at her room door and gave if to her.

Then I went out and watched a team ploughing, till Dick called me in.

At lunch the guests were very quiet and subdued, but seemed quite cheerful. Afterwards, before I started for home, she came and talked to me alone.

'Is this the scene of the picture?' she asked me, as she led me across the yard. 'This grass plot between these rocks and those trees?'

'Yes, it's just here apparently,' I said. 'You see that great tree there. One can hardly mistake it.'

'I remember the spot long ago,' she said. 'I came down to my sister's to leave the children with her for a country holiday just before that time. We were staying at that place we went to this morning; they called it Happy Valley, and we drove over to this place where there was a store. It was only a month or two before the time May Day, I think. I remember my children playing hide-and-seek here with the piccaninnies; yes, playing other games too.' Her lips quivered, but she went on quite steadily.

'Those piccaninnies in that picture do you know any of their faces?'

'Yes,' I said, 'I knew two that were burnt, and did not get better; two I used to come and see. And Dick says he recognizes two or three little chaps that have died since he came here to live after the "Rebellion" was over.'

'And how do you explain it?' she asked gently, 'this vision of dead children so charmingly colored, so color-blind from a South African point of view?'

I thought before I spoke.

'It is, I believe, a real Vision,' I said. 'The one who painted it, whoever he was, saw more than we most of us see. Possibly he was the seventh son of a seventh son. Very apparently he had a pure heart. The picture was painted on Innocents' Day. I have verified the date. You see he has called it "Innocents." It was painted in the children's old playing-place. He saw them in their new life with the beauty of things South African like a good dream about them, and the stupidity of things South African passed from them like a bad one.'

She did not speak for quite a long time. I feared I had hurt her somehow. But at last she spoke and reassured me.

'Yes, I think you understand how the picture came to be and what it means. I used to be dreadfully bitter about the Mashonas. I try not to be now. Couldn't you build on my account a little school or a little church in that forlorn place? There are some villages near by, aren't there? Couldn't you call it for me the Mission of the Innocents? I'd like to ask my host if he'll give you the picture for the church should you build it for me. In my house I should be shy about hanging it. I am afraid people might scoff at it behind my back in their South African way, and I couldn't bear that easily. I know in my heart of hearts it's true that Picture as true as it's beautiful. They're all happy now, likely enough happy together. They were not likely to have been happy in the same ways had they grown up in South Africa.'

[The end]
Arthur Shearly Cripps's short story: Divination

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