“Good-bye,” she wrote, “good-bye! We can never meet again, and it is better that we never should in this world. I believe that there is another. If there is I shall wait for you there if I have to wait ten thousand years. If not, then good-bye for ever. Think of me sometimes, for I have loved you very dearly, and as nobody will ever love you again; and while I live in this or any other existence and am myself, I shall always love you and you only. Don’t forget me. I never shall be really dead to you until I am forgotten.—J.”
She lifted the paper from her knee, and without even re-reading what she had written thrust the pass back into her bosom and was soon lost in thought.
Ten minutes later Jantje, like a great snake in human form, came creeping in to where she sat, his yellow face shining with the raindrops.
“Well,” whispered Jess, looking up with a start, “have you done it?”
“No, missie, no. Baas Frank has but now gone to his tent. He has been talking to the clergyman, something about Missie Bessie, I don’t know what. I was near, but he talked low, and I could only hear the name.”
“Is there a sentry before Baas Frank’s tent?”
“About three hours and a half after sundown” (half-past ten).
“Let us wait half an hour, and then you must go.”
Accordingly they sat in silence. In silence they sat facing each other and their own thoughts. Presently Jantje broke it by drawing the big white-handled knife and commencing to sharpen it on a piece of leather.
The sight made Jess feel sick. “Put the knife up,” she said quickly, “it is sharp enough.”
Jantje obeyed with a feeble grin, and the minutes passed on heavily.
“Now, Jantje,” she said at last, speaking huskily in her struggle to overcome the spasmodic contractions of her throat, “it is time for you to go.”
The Hottentot fidgeted about, and at last spoke.
“Come with you!” answered Jess starting, “why?”
“Because the ghost of the old Englishwoman will be after me if I go alone.”
“You fool!” said Jess angrily; then recollecting herself she added, “Come, be a man, Jantje; think of your father and mother, and be a man.”
“I am a man,” he answered sulkily, “and I will kill him like a man, but what good is a man against the ghost of a dead Englishwoman? If I put the knife into her she would only make faces, and fire would come out of the hole. I will not go without you, missie.”