At last, thin and worn and weak, the merest shadow of the once proud Transvaal beauty, she could travel no longer. They outspanned under a big Motjeerie tree, and there, tended by her husband and the still faithful Hottentot, Andries, and with Barend’s hand in hers, she passed from life into the unknown.
Hendrika Van Staden sleeps, as sleeps many another stout and heroic. Dutchwoman who has yielded up her soul in Africa, in the dim wilderness, beneath the great Motjeerie tree, amid whose spreading oak-like leafage the wild doves of the forest coo soft requiem. In the still solitudes around wander free and undisturbed the great game of the veldt she loved so well. And at night to the fountain near her grave come the tall giraffe, the mighty elephant, the painted zebra, the sinuous tawny lion, the tiny steinbok, and many another head of game, to quench their thirst.
What fitter resting-place could be hers? And if, indeed, Hendrika erred in the supreme trial of her life, what mother, what true woman, would have done otherwise? Who shall judge her? who cast a stone?
Chapter Seven.
A Legend of Prince Maurice.
It was Christmas-time at the Cape, when many a man and woman of British blood, jaded by the sun and drought of an up-country life, flocks down to the sea. Cape Town and her charming suburbs were crowded; and the pleasant watering-places of Muizenberg and Kalk Bay were thronged with folk dying once more to set eyes on the blue ocean, to inhale the fresh breezes, and to remind themselves of their own sea-girt origin. From every corner of South Africa—from the old Colony, the Free State, the Transvaal, from far Bechuanaland—they had come. You might see sun-scorched wanderers from the far interior, hunters, explorers, prospectors, and pioneers. Some had come to restore broken health; some to taste again the sweets of civilisation, to spend hard-won money; or, perchance, an enthusiast might be seen who had been attracted south a thousand miles and more by the week’s cricket tournament on the Western Province ground at Newlands.
Cape Town was at her best and bravest. Adderley Street was as crowded as Bond Street in June; and upon every hand were to be seen and heard pleasant faces, cheery voices, and the hearty greetings of friends long severed by time and distance.
On the evening of the 23rd December, a young man sat in his pleasant bedroom in the annexe of the International Hotel, which lies rather out of the heat of the town on the lower slopes of Table Mountain. It was an hour before dinner, and the young man sat in his shirt-sleeves before the open window, idly smoking a pipe, and feasting his eyes on the glorious view that lay before him.