Ralph took his friend’s body across the river next morning, and buried it reverently beneath a big giraffe-acacia tree by the wagons, and set up a wooden cross in that lone wilderness. He took with him, too, the great horns of the buffalo by which Bill had come to his untimely end. Then slowly and painfully he made his way down-country, the saddest, loneliest man in Africa, and presently reached England.
It is some years ago now, but Ralph has never forgotten that last scene and Bill’s impressive words. Often, whether he be in the far wilderness—to which he still periodically returns—or at home, in the park, or at his club, or in his own sanctum, surrounded by many a goodly spoil of the chase, he thinks of his comrade’s last words, and sees before him every incident of that dying sunset beyond the Okavango River.
But of the Great Secret,—of that mystery which Bill so earnestly desired to pierce,—Ralph has never yet heard.
Chapter Eleven.
The Story of Jacoba Steyn.
Jacoba Steyn lives with her brother Hans and his wife and numerous family on a remote farm far up in Waterberg, to the north-west of the Transvaal. She is, although now well on in middle age, a spinster—a rather remarkable circumstance among the women of the South African Dutch. For Jacoba is, as Dutch Afrikanders go, not uncomely, and few Boer women of her looks and condition in life escape, or desire to escape, from the joys and cares of matrimony. You would never think, to look at Jacoba Steyn nowadays, that there was much of romance or sentiment in her nature. She is now a stout spinster of forty-seven, thick and square of figure, and, as she takes her kapje off, you may note the grey threads showing thick in her dull brown hair. Yet Jacoba cherishes within her broad breast a very real and very tender romance, as all her relations and some few of her friends know.
Thirty years ago there came into the life of this staid, sober-minded Boer woman a bright gleam of passion, which ever since has illumined her quiet existence. That romance will never fade from her heart. Its tender memory shapes and tinges almost every act of her working, everyday life. It softens those somewhat rude asperities of manner which the average Boer housewife usually exhibits. It gives that kindly content which shines forth from the blue eyes and upon the homely features of spinster Jacoba. All the ragged, rough, and noisy crew of children—there are nine of them—of her brother Hans call in Tant Jacoba for the settlement of quarrels and the drying of tears. Her renown as a peacemaker has a far wider field than that of her somewhat sharp-tongued sister-in-law, the mother of all this unruly brood. Until ten years ago many of the neighbouring Boers of Waterberg—bachelors and widowers—still cherished the hope and belief that Jacoba Steyn was to be induced into the bonds of matrimony. Jacoba was still on the right side of middle age; she was far from ill-looking in the eyes of a Dutch farmer; a certain air of refinement, peculiar to herself, distinguished her from all her fellows. And she had flocks and herds of her own, running upon her brother’s veldt, as well as some good tobacco “lands,” which yielded no mean profit each year. The few cows and goats set apart for Jacoba in her infancy, according to the ancient patriarchal Boer plan, had increased and multiplied. Jacoba Steyn’s stock always had luck, and throve handsomely; and so at the age of thirty-seven she was still looked upon as an excellent match. But Jacoba had throughout her life steadily refused all offers of marriage. It was very exasperating to her family in her younger days, and a complete mystery to the Boer men who knew little of her earlier life. Gradually it dawned upon the minds of these slow-witted Waterberg Dutchmen that in real sober truth Jacoba Steyn was not to be won, that she was vowed to spinsterhood, and that some unaccountable attachment of her girlish days prevented her from ever accepting another man’s attentions.
When she had reached the age of forty, her youngest brother, Hans, with whom and whose family she had, since the death of her parents, always lived, ceased to urge upon her to take a husband. It was hopeless, and, after all, Jacoba’s cattle, goats, and savings would be a great help to the children at some future time. And so, at the age of forty-seven, Jacoba had outlived the attentions of bucolic swains, and the strong and even forcible recommendations of her own family, and was left to pursue unmolested the tenor of her quiet existence. She helped Lijsbet, her brother Hans’s wife, with her unwieldy family, performed more than her share of the household duties, and wore always a look of quiet happiness upon her broad, pleasant face. Twice or thrice a year she trekked with the family to Nachtmaal (Communion) at Pretoria. After all, Jacoba was a woman, and even she, weaned though she was from the hopes and fears and commoner frets of the world, could not find it in her heart to deny herself the pleasure of a few days in the Boer capital, the sight of shops and winkels (stores) and English folk, the joys of attendance in the Dutch Reformed Church, and some little intercourse with the predikant (pastor). The predikant knew something of Jacoba’s strange story; he was a man of some refinement and much sympathy; and it did the quiet Dutchwoman good to have a talk with the minister she had known so long. Sometimes on the calm Sunday evenings up in Waterberg, when the cattle and goats are kraaled for the night and the still veldt lies golden beneath the kiss of sunset, when the bush koorhaan (bustards) are playing their half-hour of strange aerial pranks and evolutions yonder, just outside the dark fringe of bush, Jacoba wanders from the low homestead and sits up above the Falala River, dreaming upon an old, old tale. That tale was once full of mingled memories—bitter-sweet. You may tell now, from the clear, tender look on the good woman’s face, that her thoughts are mainly pleasant ones. Time and she have healed, or nearly healed, her once bruised heart. Jacoba’s tale is a simple one. Yet it has its romantic side. It is not widely known even in Waterberg, and it may perhaps be worth the telling.