It was here we noticed Frank had something on her mind which she wished to communicate to us. We said nothing to assist her, although we had a strong suspicion of what was coming. One morning she began: “Well, I want to tell you something.” She didn’t get any further, for we interrupted with “Oh, we know; you are going to marry Mr A—, whom you met on the diamond fields last year, and we are to dance at the wedding. Didn’t you think any one suspected? Why, my dear, it was very plain to us that he was to be your future husband long before you thought so yourself!” After we had congratulated her, we inquired how soon the event was to take place. She proposed having the wedding from the cathedral at Grahamstown, as we had many warm friends living there. So the matter was settled for the time being.
One evening a musical friend of our host, a gentleman from Port Elizabeth, and a violinist of no mean order, joined our circle, and we sat for hours listening to his music. After treating us to some choice selections, he began to play some of the songs of the farm Kafirs, who were listening about in numbers. They had learned to sing at their Sunday-schools in the town such hymns as “Hold the Fort,” etc, and took up the airs and began to sing, after their manner, in a chanting drone. Soon the sound of their own voices and the strains of the violin wrought them up to a high pitch of excitement, and they began to walk around us in a circle, keeping time with their hands, feet and head. Before long the musician, who had a touch of the grotesque in his humour, placed himself at the head of the procession. The music grew faster and faster, and the monotonous tramp of the Kafirs quickened gradually into a wild war dance. The scene which followed baffles description; there was the musician scraping away like an infernal Paganini, producing tones from his fiddle that seemed to excite the Kafirs to a pitch of frenzy. We joined in the singing, and sang at the top of our voices, while the black men, dancing, whirling, shouting, and gesticulating, grew wilder and wilder in their antics. The music suddenly ceasing, they sank exhausted to the ground. It was a weird scene in the moonlight, and one we shall long remember.
Our stay at Grasslands came to an end all too soon, and we looked long and lingeringly at familiar objects as we were driven back to town in Mr M—’s handsome Cape cart behind a dashing span of horses.
Chapter Eighteen.
Soon after our return to Grahamstown we put the finishing touches to everything we had left undone toward making the wedding a joyous occasion. The bride’s white satin dress and veil were made by the hands of a competent dressmaker. There was a dress for Eva, as chief bridesmaid, which consisted of soft trailing drapery, and one for me, who was to take a place in the organ loft, and sing on the occasion. The day arrived, bright and smiling. The wedding bells pealed from the tower of the cathedral. The “sympathising” and well-wishing friends were gathered within when the bridal party arrived. The knot was tied, and as the bells pealed forth the bride passed out on her husband’s arm; an old crone stood in the door and showered blessings on her.
As soon as congratulations were over, the wedding breakfast eaten, and the usual rice and lucky slipper flung after them, they took the train for a short vacation in a mountain hotel on the Zuurberg, whilst we bade good-by to friends around us, and flew away the same night to the sea at Port Elizabeth, five hours distant by rail.