For more than twenty-four hours Meredith lay in the long stupor produced by concussion of the brain. It was some way past the middle hours of the second night that the first glimmering of reason came back to him. He seemed to awake, as it were, in a fresh world. His body and limbs seemed curiously light; everything was strange. It was not unpleasant to lie thus, with eyes shut, awaiting new impressions. Presently a pair of soft lips kissed his brow and cheek, and he heard a woman’s voice, in a strange tongue, which yet he understood. “My darling!” said the voice, “my love! come back to me, come back to me. Ah! Heer God, bring him back to his senses, and make him well and strong again. Hendrik, my Hendrik, I cannot bear to see you lie like this. Come back to your Jacoba, or I shall break my heart.” There was a little sob, and then Meredith felt warm tears falling upon his face, and the lips pressed his brow again, this time more passionately. He could not move, much less make answer to the strange appeal which, as if through the mists of a dream, he now heard. But he felt somehow that it was pleasant to rest thus and to hear these things, to feel soft kisses and the tender caress of a hand that now and again stroked his own, or smoothed his brow.
In a fortnight’s time Meredith was slowly recovering. His bones were healing, his pulses beat a thought more firmly. He knew now all about that strange night, when his mind first wandered back into the chambers of life again. He knew that Jacoba loved him, and the thought troubled him. Had he been wise? Had he done well to make so great a friend of this simple Dutch child, to have her so much about with him? Ought he to have kissed her? to have wandered in the dusk with her, arm-in-arm, or with his arm round her waist? All these questions returned again and again to his mind and sought answer.
One quiet morning, as he lay on the kartel there under the tent-sail, they two were alone in the camp. The men were out hunting; Vrouw Steyn and Hans were down at the river, washing; the native servants were scattered. Juno, the pointer, lay by her master’s bedside, as she always did; and, as Jacoba came in under the tent and sat down in the wagon-chair, something in Juno’s affectionate eyes, now turned from Jacoba’s face wistfully to her master’s, seemed to ask a question. Meredith returned Juno’s look, and then spoke.
“Jacoba,” he said, taking the girl’s hand, “I want to tell you something. I ought to have told it you before, I am afraid. If I had known what I think I know now, I would have done so. I shall be leaving you very shortly – as soon as I am well enough to start. I have to be back in England before Christmas, because early next year I am going to be married. That is what I ought to have told you before. Forgive me, Jacoba; I never dreamt that our friendship was turning in another direction. I heard you say something the other night, just when my senses were coming back, which makes me think that I have done wrong in not telling you of all this before. I have been selfish and unfair. You must forgive me, Jacoba, and forget all about the past two months, though, indeed, it will be hard for me to forget the pleasant days we have had together. Don’t! don’t cry, my dear; I am not worth it, and you will forget it all soon enough.”
Jacoba, seated in her low chair by the bedside, had buried her face in Meredith’s hand and her own as he neared the end of his speaking, and was now sobbing heavily. Presently she mastered herself, dried her tears a little, and spoke.
“Perhaps, Hendrik,” she said, “you ought to have told me. But, indeed, it would not have much mattered. I loved you ever since I set eyes on you the first evening we met. And I should have loved you just the same, even if you had told me that very evening that you were promised to another. Yet all the time we have been together – these weeks that have gone so quickly – I knew, Hendrik, that indeed our ways lay differently; that your world was a different world to mine; that I was to you nothing but a child – a playmate. Yet your friendship even has been so sweet to me that never, never shall I forget these nine weeks with you by the Lake River.” Once more the girl dried her tears. Her face was clearer now. “But there,” she went on, “that is enough about myself. Presently, when I can bear it, you must tell me all about your wife that is to be, and your future. We have lived together so much in the happy present that I never cared to speak or even to think about your leaving us.” There were voices heard approaching the wagons. Jacoba kissed passionately Meredith’s hand, which she still held within hers, laid it gently by his side, and went to her kartel at the end of the big tent-wagon.
And so the Boer maiden’s dream was ended. Meredith quitted the camp and trekked for the Cape a little later, after a friendly and even affectionate farewell with the Steyn family. A sad heart was Jacoba’s as the captain’s wagon moved away south-eastward, and the last crack of the great whip sounded through the hot morning air. Sadder yet was it when the captain, after kissing Vrouw Steyn and herself, climbed into his saddle and rode away. There were tears even in Meredith’s eyes as he departed.
And so Jacoba, with the tenacity of her race, has cherished that first love of hers, and steadily refused all others in its place. No Dutchman can ever supplant that dear image which, long years ago, she set up within her maiden heart. The bright girl of seventeen has changed to the middle-aged woman of forty-seven, yet that early love and its memories have remained ever constant within her, and will go with her to her grave.
The smart English captain of 1859 is now a grey but still handsome veteran with a grown-up family of his own. You may usually see him sitting comfortably in an easy chair at the Naval and Military Club towards afternoon.
Major-General Meredith has an excellent memory for the details of his old stirring hunter’s life. I sometimes wonder if he recalls also that other brief episode on the far-off Lake River. I am inclined to think he does. But he can little imagine that for his sake Jacoba Steyn remains a single woman to her last hour.