Mafeking Road Read Online Free Page B

said), I remember another time when it rained. And there was a girl in an ox-wagon who dreamed. And in answer to her dreaming a lover came, galloping to her side from out of the veld. But he tarried only a short while, this lover who had come to her from the mist of the rain and the warmth of her dreams.
    And yet when he had gone there was a slow look in her eyes that must have puzzled her lover very much, for it was a look of satisfaction, almost.
    There had been rain all the way up from Sephton’s Nek, that time. And the five ox-wagons on the road to the north rolled heavily through the mud. We had been to Zeerust for the Nagmaal church service, which we attended once a year.
    You know what it is with these Nagmaals.
    The Lord spreads these festivities over so many days that you have not only got time to go to church, but you also get a chance of
going to the bioscope. Sometimes you even get a chance of going to the bar. But then you must go in the back way, through the dark passage next to the draper’s shop.
    Because Zeerust is a small place, and if you are seen going into the bar during Nagmaal people are liable to talk. I can still remember how surprised I was one morning when I went into that dark passage next to the draper’s shop and found the predikant there, wiping his mouth. The predikant looked at me and shook his head solemnly, and I felt very guilty.
    So I went to the bioscope instead.
    The house was very crowded. I couldn’t follow much of the picture at the beginning, but afterwards a little boy who sat next to me and understood English explained to me what it was all about.
    There was a young man who had the job of what he called taking people for a ride. Afterwards he got into trouble with the police. But he was a good-looking young man, and his sweetheart was very sorry for him when they took him into a small room and fastened him down on to a sort of chair.
    I can’t tell what they did that for. All I know is that I have been a Boer War prisoner at St. Helena, and they never gave me a chair to sit on. Only a long wooden bench that I had to scrub once a week.
    Anyway, I don’t know what happened to the young man after that, because he was still sitting in that chair when the band started playing an English hymn about King George, and everybody stood up.

    And a few days later five ox-wagons, full of people who had been to the Zeerust Nagmaal, were trekking along the road that led back to the Groot Marico. Inside the wagon-tents sat the women and children, listening to the rain pelting against the canvas. By the side of the oxen the drivers walked, cracking their long whips while the rain beat in their faces.
    Overhead everything was black, except for the frequent flashes of lightning that tore across the sky.
    After I had walked in this manner for some time, I began to get lonely. So I handed my whip to the kaffir voorloper and went on ahead to Adriaan Brand’s wagon. For some distance I walked in silence beside Adriaan, who had his trousers rolled up to his knees, and had much trouble to brandish his whip and at the same time keep the rain out of his pipe.
    â€œIt’s Minnie,” Adriaan Brand said suddenly, referring to his nineteen-year-old daughter. “There is one place in Zeerust that Minnie should not go to. And every Nagmaal, to my sorrow, I find she has been there. And it all goes to her head.”
    â€œOh, yes,” I answered. “It always does.”
    All the same, I was somewhat startled at Adriaan’s remarks. Minnie didn’t strike me as the sort of girl who would go and spend her father’s money drinking peach brandy in the bar. I started wondering if she had seen me in that draper’s passage. Then Adriaan went on talking and I felt more at ease.
    â€œThe place where they show those moving pictures,” he explained. “Every time Minnie goes there, she comes back with
ideas that are useless for a farmer’s daughter. But