over the place were queer, heavy shadows. I didn’t like the look of them. I remembered stories I had heard of the witches of Abjaterskop, and what they did to travellers who lost their way in the dark. It seemed an easy thing to lose your way among those tall trees. Accordingly, I spurred my horse on to a gallop, to get out of this gloomy region as quickly as possible. After all, a horse is sensitive about things like ghosts and witches, and it was my duty to see my horse was not frightened unnecessarily. Especially as a cold wind suddenly sprang up through the poort, and once or twice it sounded as though an evil voice were calling my name. I started riding fast then. But a few moments later I looked round and realised the position. It was Fritz Pretorius galloping along behind me.
“What was your hurry?” Fritz asked when I had slowed down to allow his overtaking me.
“I wished to get through those trees before it was too dark,” I answered, “I didn’t want my horse to get frightened.”
“I suppose that’s why you were riding with your arms round his neck,” Fritz observed, “to soothe him.”
I did not reply. But what I did notice was that Fritz was also very stylishly dressed. True, I beat him as far as shirt and boots went, but he was dressed in a new grey suit, with his socks pulled up over the bottoms of his trousers. He also had a handkerchief which he ostentatiously took out of his pocket several times.
Of course, I couldn’t be jealous of a person like Fritz Pretorius. I was only annoyed at the thought that he was making himself ridiculous by going to a party with an outlandish thing like a handkerchief.
We arrived at Willem Prinsloo’s house. There were so many ox-wagons drawn up on the veld that the place looked like a laager. Prinsloo met us at the door.
“Go right through, kêrels,” he said, “the dancing is in the voorhuis. The peach brandy is in the kitchen.”
Although the voorhuis was big it was so crowded as to make it almost impossible to dance. But it was not as crowded as the kitchen. Nor was the music in the voorhuis – which was provided by a number of men with guitars and concertinas – as loud as the music in the kitchen, where there was no band, but each man sang for himself.
We knew from these signs that the party was a success.
When I had been in the kitchen for about half an hour I decided to go into the voorhuis. It seemed a long way, now, from the kitchen to the voorhuis, and I had to lean against the wall several times to think. I passed a number of other men who were also leaning against the wall like that, thinking. One man even found that he could think best by sitting on the floor with his head in his arms.
You could see that Willem Prinsloo made good peach brandy.
Then I saw Fritz Pretorius, and the sight of him brought me to my senses right away. Airily flapping his white handkerchief in time with the music, he was talking to a girl who smiled up at him with bright eyes and red lips and small white teeth.
I knew at once that it was Grieta.
She was tall and slender and very pretty, and her dark hair was braided with a wreath of white roses that you could see had been picked that same morning in Zeerust. And she didn’t look the sort of girl, either, in whose presence you had to appear clever and educated. In fact, I felt I wouldn’t really need the twelve times table which I had torn off the back of a school writing book and had thrust into my jacket pocket before leaving home.
You can imagine that it was not too easy for me to get a word in with Grieta while Fritz was hanging around. But I managed it eventually, and while I was talking to her I had the satisfaction of seeing, out of the corner of my eye, the direction Fritz took. He went into the kitchen, flapping his handkerchief behind him – into the kitchen, where the laughter was, and the singing, and Willem Prinsloo’s peach brandy.
I told Grieta that I was Schalk Lourens.
“Oh, yes, I have heard of you,” she answered, “from Fritz Pretorius.”
I knew what that meant. So I told her that Fritz was known all over the Marico for his lies. I told her other things about Fritz. Ten minutes later, when I was still talking about him, Grieta smiled and said that I could tell her the rest some other night.
“But I must tell you one more thing now,” I insisted. “When he knew that he would be meeting you here at the dance, Fritz started doing homework.”
I told her about the slate and the sums, and Grieta laughed softly. It struck me again how pretty she was. And her eyes were radiant in the candlelight. And the roses looked very white against her dark hair. And all this time the dancers whirled around us, and the band in the voorhuis played lively dance tunes, and from the kitchen there issued weird sounds of jubilation.
The rest happened very quickly.
I can’t even remember how it all came about. But what I do know is that when we were outside, under the tall trees, with the stars over us, I could easily believe that Grieta was not a girl at all, but one of the witches of Abjaterskop who wove strange spells.
Yet to listen to my talking nobody would have guessed the wild, thrilling things that were in my heart.
I told Grieta about last year’s drought, and about the difficulty of keeping the white ants from eating through the door and window-frames, and about the way my new brown boots tended to take the skin off my toe if I walked quickly.
Then I moved close up to her.
“Grieta,” I said, taking her hand, “Grieta, there is something I want to tell you.”
She pulled away her hand. She did it very gently, though. Sorrowfully, almost.
“I know what you want to say,” she answered.
I was surprised at that.
“How do you know, Grieta?” I asked.
“Oh, I know lots of things,” she replied, laughing again, “I haven’t been to finishing school for nothing.”
“I don’t mean that,” I answered at once, “I wasn’t going to talk about spelling or arithmetic. I was going to tell you that –”
“Please don’t say it, Schalk,” Grieta interrupted me. “I – I don’t know whether I am worthy of hearing it. I don’t know, even –”
“But you are so lovely,” I exclaimed. “I have got to tell you how lovely you are.”
But at the very moment I stepped forward she retreated swiftly, eluding me. I couldn’t understand how she had timed it so well. For, try as I might, I couldn’t catch her. She sped lightly and gracefully amongst the trees, and I followed as best I could.
Yet it was not only my want of learning that handicapped me. There were also my new boots. And Willem Prinsloo’s peach brandy. And the shaft of a mule-cart – the lower end of the shaft, where it rests in the grass.
I didn’t fall very hard, though. The grass was long and thick there. But even as I fell a great happiness came into my heart. And I didn’t care about anything else in the world.
Grieta had stopped running. She turned round. For an instant her body, slender and misty in the shadows, swayed towards me. Then her hand flew to her hair. Her finger pulled at the wreath.
