The Complete Oom Schalk Lourens Stories. Herman Charles Bosman
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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. And the next thing I knew was that there lay, within reach of my hand, a small white rose.
I shall always remember the thrill with which I picked up that rose, and how I trembled when I stuck it in my hat. I shall always remember the stir I caused when I walked into the kitchen. Everybody stopped drinking to look at the rose in my hat. The young men made jokes about it. The older men winked slyly and patted me on the back.
Although Fritz Pretorius was not in the kitchen to witness my triumph, I knew he would get to hear of it somehow. That would make him realise that it was impudence for a fellow like him to set up as Schalk Lourens’s rival.
During the rest of the night I was a hero.
The men in the kitchen made me sit on the table. They plied me with brandy and drank to my health. And afterwards, when a dozen of them carried me outside, on to an ox-wagon, for fresh air, they fell with me only once.
At daybreak I was still on that wagon.
I woke up feeling very sick – until I remembered about Grieta’s rose. There was that white rose still stuck in my hat, for the whole world to know that Grieta Prinsloo had chosen me before all other men.
But what I didn’t want people to know was that I had remained asleep on that ox-wagon hours after the other guests had gone. So I rode away very quietly, glad that nobody was astir to see me go.
My head was dizzy as I rode, but in my heart it felt like green wings beating; and although it was day now, there was the same soft wind in the grass that had been there when Grieta flung the rose at me, standing under the stars.
I rode slowly through the trees on the slope of Abjaterskop, and had reached the place where the path turns south again, when I saw something that made me wonder if, at these fashionable finishing schools, they did not perhaps teach the girls too much.
First I saw Fritz Pretorius’s horse by the roadside.
Then I saw Fritz. He was sitting up against a thorn-tree, with his chin resting on his knees. He looked very pale and sick. But what made me wonder much about those finishing schools was that in Fritz’s hat, which had fallen on the ground some distance away from him, there was a small white rose.
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