Part 12 (1/2)

A small, bush--br.i.m.m.i.n.g _kloof_ was crossed. Through it sped a small stream, plas.h.i.+ng over a rocky bar into a pool around which nodded a sleepy forest of ferns. Jacomina put her head out of the back of the tent. Then she sprang from the back of the wagon and went to examine the grot. She found a flat ledge, out of range of the spray, which made a most convenient seat, so she sate herself down and contemplated the scene.

Jacomina liked the scenery so much that she determined to stay for a few minutes, and then follow the retreating wagon. Anon she thought she would wait a little longer and get Adrian to give her a seat as he came past. The Hottentot driver had seen her dismount, so her father would know that she had not fallen off and got hurt, at all events.

She sat among the ferns for a good half-hour before she heard the shouts of the driver urging on the labouring team. Then the wagon laboured through the _kloof_, and Jacomina peered through the ferns as it pa.s.sed her.

Adrian was walking behind the wagon, with long, slow strides and bent head. Jacomina was just about to arise and call out to him when he lifted his face at the sound of the plas.h.i.+ng water, hesitated for a few seconds, and then stepped towards the grot.

Jacomina knew, instinctively, that the hour she had long hoped for had come; that her lover was at length to be caught in the toils which she had, half-unwittingly, set for his diffident feet,--and the knowledge filled her with a feeling of bashfulness to which she had hitherto been a stranger. Thus, when Adrian walked heavily through the fern and almost touched her dress before he perceived her, she felt covered with confusion.

Adrian started as though he had seen a ghost. Jacomina lifted a blus.h.i.+ng face and gave him an instantaneous glance from her bright eyes--made brighter now by a suspicion of tears. Then she bent her face forward upon her hands and began to sob.

Adrian was bewildered. This was something he had never thought the matter-of-fact Jacomina capable of. Something must be very wrong indeed. But he felt no longer awe, and his shyness was swept away in a tide of pity. There was room on the ledge for two; Adrian sat down next to the distressed damsel and endeavoured to comfort her.

”What is it, then, Jacomyntje,--has your Pa been scolding you?”

Jacomina nearly gave herself away by indignantly repudiating the bare notion of her succ.u.mbing to anybody's scolding, but she remembered herself in time. After a partial recovery she was seized by another paroxysm of sobs, in the course of which she pressed one hand across her eyes and allowed the other to droop, limply, to her side. No observer of human nature will be in doubt as to which hand it was she let droop.

Adrian, after a moment's hesitation, nervously lifted the hand and pressed it slightly. As it was not withdrawn he increased the pressure.

The sobbing calmed down somewhat, but the head remained bowed in an apparent abandon of hope.

”What is it, Jacomina; tell me why you are weeping.”

”Ach, Adrian,--I am so unhappy.”

This was getting no farther forward. The sobbing again recurred, and the fingers of the sufferer took a tight grasp of those of the consoler.

Then the afflicted form swayed so helplessly that Adrian felt bound to support it with his arm, and in a moment the head of Jacomina reposed quietly upon his breast.

”What is it, 'Meintje; tell me?”

There was no reply. Adrian looked down upon the sorrow-bowed head and felt that the growing la.s.situde of the girl called for firmer support, which was at once forthcoming. The experience was new and alarming but, taken all round, he liked it. Jacomina was no longer formidable; in a few moments he forgot that he had ever been afraid of her.

”Come, Jacomyn', tell me what is the matter.”

”Oh, Adrian,--I am afraid to tell you for fear you would despise me.”

”Despise you? No, you know I could never do that.”

”I am so unhappy because--because you used to like me so much, and now you never speak to me.”

Jacomina had now come to believe in the genuineness of her own woe, so she fell into a flood of real and violent tears. Adrian gradually gathered her into his arms, and she allowed herself to be consoled.

After a very few minutes a full understanding was arrived at; then Jacomina recovered herself with remarkable rapidity, and recollected that the wagons were far ahead. Adrian's shyness had by this time completely gone, so much so that Jacomina had some difficulty in getting him to make a start. In fact she had to escape from his arms by means of a subterfuge and dart away along the road. Her lover did not lose much time in following her. The course was interrupted by amatory interludes whenever the wayside boskage was propitious, so it was not before the outspanning took place that the wagons were reached.

When the blus.h.i.+ng pair stood before Uncle Diederick, that man of experiences did not need to have matters explained to him.

”Well, Jacomina,” he said, ”I'll have to see about getting a wife myself now. But you need not be afraid on account of Aunt Emerencia; no one, who is not a fool, buys an old mare when he can get a young one for the same price.”

Uncle Diederick, who had not been to Cape Town since the days of his early youth, was very much impressed by everything he saw, but by nothing so much as the chemists' shops. He never got tired at gazing at the rows of bottles with their various coloured contents. He wandered from one drug emporium to another, until he made the acquaintance of an affable young a.s.sistant who dispensed with an engaging air from behind a counter deeply laden with wondrous appliances and enticing compounds.

This young man loved experiment for its own sake, and he had a wide field for the exercise of his hobby among the poorer cla.s.ses, who usually came to him for panaceas for their minor ills.