Once more we clung together and kissed, muttering broken words, and then she tore herself from my embrace and was gone.  But oh! as I heard her feet steal through the dew-laden grass, I felt as though my heart were being rent from my breast.  I have suffered much in life, but I do not think that ever I underwent a bitterer anguish than in this hour of my parting from Marie.  For when all is said and done, what joy is there like the joy of pure, first love, and what bitterness like the bitterness of its loss?

Half an hour later the flowering trees of Maraisfontein were behind us, while in front rolled the fire-swept veld, black as life had become for me.

CHAPTER VII

ALLAN’S CALL

A fortnight later Marais, Pereira and their companions, a little band in all of about twenty men, thirty women and children, and say fifty half-breeds and Hottentot after-riders, trekked from their homes into the wilderness.  I rode to the crest of a table-topped hill and watched the long line of wagons, one of them containing Marie, crawl away northward across the veld a mile or more beneath.

Sorely was I tempted to gallop after them and seek a last interview with her and her father.  But my pride forbade me.  Henri Marais had given out that if I came near his daughter he would have me beaten back with “sjambocks” or hide whips.  Perhaps he had gained some inkling of our last farewell in the peach orchard.  I do not know.  But I do know that if anyone had lifted a sjambock on me I should have answered with a bullet.  Then there would have been blood between us, which is worse to cross than whole rivers of wrath and jealousy.  So I just watched the wagons until they vanished, and galloped home down the rock-strewn slope, wishing that the horse would stumble and break my neck.

When I reached the station, however, I was glad that it had not done so, as I found my father sitting on the stoep reading a letter that had been brought by a mounted Hottentot.

It was from Henri Marais, and ran thus:—­

“’Reverend Heer and friend Quatermain,—­I send this to bid you farewell, for although you are English and we have quarrelled at times, I honour you in my heart.  Friend, now that we are starting, your warning words lie on me like lead, I know not why.  But what is done cannot be undone, and I trust that all will come right.  If not, it is because the Good Lord wills it otherwise.’”

Here my father looked up and said:  “When men suffer from their own passion and folly, they always lay the blame on the back of Providence.”

Then he went on, spelling out the letter: 

“’I fear your boy Allan, who is a brave lad, as I have reason to know, and honest, must think that I have treated him harshly and without gratitude.  But I have only done what I must do.  True, Marie, who, like her mother, is very strong and stubborn in mind, swears that she will marry no one else; but soon Nature will make her forget all that, especially as such a fine husband waits for her hand.  So bid Allan forget all about her also, and when he is old enough choose some English girl.  I have sworn a great oath before my God that he shall never marry my daughter with my consent.