A Vendetta of the Desert Part 12

A small, bush--br.i.m.m.i.n.g _kloof_ was crossed. Through it sped a small stream, plashing 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 plashing 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 blushing 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 blushing 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.

As Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel, Uncle Diederick sat on a high-legged stool in the chemist's shop, drinking in greedily the lore which fell from the young man's lips, and making notes of the same in a tattered pocket-book, with a very stumpy pencil. Thus Uncle Diederick widened his medical knowledge considerably, until he felt that all worth knowing of the healing art was now at his command. The young man was the only one who suffered; his moral character became sadly deteriorated owing to the reverence with which Uncle Diederick regarded him, and the wrapt attention with which every essay of his was observed and recorded.

Eventually Uncle Diederick placed an order worth about ten pounds at the shop, and obtained copious directions as to treatment of the different maladies which the contents of each bulky bottle might be expected to cure.

The wagons had outspanned on the mountain slope, not far below the du Plessis' dwelling. Jacomina was much impressed at the luxuriousness of Elsie's surroundings and the quality of the stuff of which her garments were made. Gertrude and Helena tried to be civil and attentive to Jacomina and Adrian but--well, Jacomina was not long in seeing that the two town-bred girls were much more attractive than she was herself, and she did not care to appear at a disadvantage before her lover. Elsie she did not at first feel jealous of. As she expressed it to Adrian, the blind girl reminded her of the great peak at the head of the Tanqua valley, when it was covered with snow in winter. One day, however, she observed a look upon Adrian's face as he was regarding his cousin, which made her resolve to hurry on the wedding at all hazards.

At the lower end of Plein Street was a shop, a mere contemplation of the contents of which filled Jacomina's soul with satisfaction. It was a large emporium, specially stocked and arranged for the purpose of supplying the needs of the farmers visiting the metropolis. At this establishment produce of all kinds was purchased, the value being usually taken out in goods--a double profit thus being secured by the management. Everything--from hardware to drapery, from groceries to hymn-books could here be purchased.

It was at the establishment described that Uncle Diederick and Adrian had disposed of their respective loads of produce, and Jacomina had had a certain sum placed to her credit in the books. Each day she would spend several hours wandering through the store, from one bewildering room to another, and now and then making a small purchase after such protracted deliberation and examination as drove the a.s.sistants well over the bounds of distraction. The object which most fascinated Jacomina was a dummy attired in gorgeous bridal array and enclosed in a glazed frame. This model, strange to say, bore a remote resemblance to Jacomina herself, and might have easily pa.s.sed for an intentional likeness had its inane simper been changed into a smart and decidedly wide-awake expression.

No youthful artist hovered, fascinated, before Milo's Venus so devotedly as did Jacomina before this gla.s.s shrine in which seemed to be housed the G.o.ddess of Love. She breathed no conscious prayer to the deity; yet it was in one of her ecstasies of worship that an inspiration came to her which eventuated in propitiously bringing about the end she had in view.

Jacomina fell into bad spirits, and grew cold to her lover. Adrian became distressed and redoubled his attentions. Jacomina one day arranged so that she met Adrian on his way to the city. She tried to avoid him, but he pursued her and persuaded her to accompany him for the sake of the walk, which was to be to the shop of perennial attractions.

As the pair entered the establishment, Jacomina hesitated for an instant, bent her head and seemed as though about to retrace her steps into the street. A wild hope surged up in the breast of a counter-clerk who had seen her approach, and now thought he was going to have a respite.

Adrian became perplexed and bent over Jacomina's bowed head with solicitude. Then, with a mighty effort she managed to raise a blush; lifting her face, when she had succeeded, to that of her lover for a ravishing instant. After a pause she allowed herself to be reluctantly drawn into the building.

Before the door, which led into the drapery department--which Adrian had not previously visited, stood the shrine, and from it the G.o.ddess beamed down upon the pair with inane benignity. Adrian caught a glimpse of the ravishing form, and was at once struck by the resemblance it bore to his beloved. A wild tumult seethed up in his ingenuous breast. Just like that, he felt, Jacomina would look if similarly attired. The embarra.s.sed damsel moved away, causing consternation behind the counter she approached, and left her spell-bound adorer gaping.

Adrian transacted his business with masculine prompt.i.tude, and then sought for Jacomina, whom he found at a counter absorbed in the examination of many coils of ribbon. But she had executed the real business she had visited the shop for to her entire satisfaction, so she went away with her lover at once, leaving behind her a general sense of relief.

Adrian tried to steer his course for an exit past the shrine, but Jacomina knew it would be a better move to get out by another door.

When they were in the street Adrian began to refer to the subject which had caused such a ferment in his bosom:

"Jacomyn--that girl in the white dress. I wonder who made her. She looked just like you."

"Ach, Adrian,--how can you joke so?"

"Jacomina,--she's really just like you, only not half so pretty. I--I-- I'd like to see you in a dress like that, Jacomina."

"Ach, Adrian,--how can you talk like that? It's only town girls that ever dress like that and then only--"

"But, Jacomyn,--when we get married you might buy that very dress and put it on. I--I--I wonder if they'd sell it. They might easily make another for the figure in the gla.s.s case."

Jacomina sighed deeply, and looked down with an air of mingled dejection and confusion.

"That dress will be old before I will want it," she said.

"How can you talk like that? Why, I want you to put a dress like that on very soon."

Jacomina sighed deeply and did not speak for a while. Then she sadly said--raising, as she spoke, her eyes to Adrian's emotion-lit face:

"I know that my father will go to live at the old place as soon as we return, and it will be years and years before he will ever come to Cape Town again. No, Adrian,--you had better forget me, and look out for some girl whose father will be able to bring her to Cape Town soon. I do not want you to be bound to one who may have to keep you waiting such a long, long time."

The sentence ended with a sob. They had now reached beyond the outskirts of the dwellings, and were on a pathway which meandered between patches of scrub. At an appropriate spot Jacomina darted in behind a thicket, sank with every appearance of exhaustion on to a stone, and burst into tears.

"Leave me,--leave me,"--she sobbed, as her lover, fondly solicitous, attempted to console her. "I have had a dream; I know I shall never be able to come to Cape Town again. Go away, Adrian, and find some girl who will not have to keep you waiting for years and then die without making you happy."