Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales

by Arthur Shearly Cripps

'So little done, so much to do, So many worlds, such things to be.'

'Where shall we go to this week?' he went on. 'I've got a week off from the Cook's combination. You'll give me the one week, won't you Shall we go to Dhlo-Dhlo or Nanatali or Sinoia Caves? It's the curse of our Cook's tour that it's mopped up the sacred places I did want to see in a decent way the Grave, and the Temple, and the Falls.'

'Yours is the very snobbery of pilgrimage,' I told him sternly. 'There are surely shrines on the veld that have never yet got into a Chartered Company's guide-book.' I told him of a modest set of ruins out our way. I couldn't well come with him in any direction, north, south, or east or west, as he seemed to think I could. I might get in five days between Sunday and Sunday, if he chose our own neighborhood. He seemed glad enough to agree.

We cut food down and loads, and we started. We camped within the precincts of the shrine, hard by a place where a fire-fused chalice had been dug out. Ours was a fair camping-ground. A ring of kopjes about it wore the sun's colors. To the east a spruit was in sight, overhung in that autumn month by the mists of morning. Within those precincts we dreamed some temple-dreams on two golden afternoons, and slept temple-sleep on two very shiny nights.

'My reformed pilgrimage has justified itself,' Vine told me on the morning that we left, when we were making for my station.

'Wait a bit,' I said. 'We are arriving if all falls well, this very night at another shrine. We have not done with our Pilgrims' Way.'

That night we came to the farm-house where the Kents farmed and missionized. I had expected Vine to like it and them, but I had not guessed how much attracted he would be. The Kents were not up-to-date, and they dressed as some people dressed in England twenty-five years before in the period of their leaving home.

So Mrs. Kent wore on that night a chocolate-brown Liberty costume of a Burne Jones pattern. Miss Kent was only twenty-two, and wore rose-color, but the design of her dress was her mother's own. Kent wore an eighties collar with old-oak plaid and a red tie, I did not like his taste.

Vine sat and watched them with a reverential sort of gaze. He asked Kent when they were going home, thoughtfully. But Kent told him that they did not think of going home again, only up the coast to Zanzibar, or down to Inhambane, when they wanted change and holiday. 'That's splendid,' said Vine emphatically. 'Don't go home. It's not what it used to be. I feel sure you would not like it.'

After supper we had music, and Kent kept on singing, at Vine's particular request. I did not take much notice of what he was singing till Vine came and spoke to me. Then I saw how excited he was, and I listened with attention.