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Updated: May 26, 2025
Before I could answer there came from her lips such a torrent of indignation as I had never heard before. "What is she saying?" asked Ralph again, who could not understand one word of Dutch. "She seems put out." "It is my great-grandmother, the Vrouw Botmar," I faltered, "and she does not understand I have never told her." "Ah! I see.
Your father came to seek me in the place you know, and was carried home badly wounded for his pains, but whether he lived or died I cannot tell you, but I heard that your mother, the good Vrouw Botmar, is very sick, for things have so fallen out lately that her mind is troubled, and she flies to drink to comfort it."
Still there is truth in it, for Jan Botmar, my husband, he who was the strongest man among the fathers of the great trek of 1836, when, like the Israelites of old, we escaped from the English, our masters, into the wilderness, crouches in the corner yonder a crippled giant with but one sense left to him, his hearing, and a little power of wandering speech.
"Vrouw Botmar," he said, blinking at me like an owl, "it is my duty to reprove your irreverent language even at this festive board, for a word must be spoken both in and out of season, and without respect of persons. Vrouw Botmar, I fear that you do not remember the Third Commandment, therefore I will repeat it to you," and he did so, speaking very slowly.
Then they began, the lawyer, speaking through the interpreter, asking, "Are you the Vrouw Botmar?" "That is my name." "Where is your husband, Jan Botmar?" "Somewhere on the veldt; I do not know where." "Will he be back to-morrow?" "No." "When will he be back?" "Perhaps in two months, perhaps in three, I cannot tell."
"'No, not yet, he said presently, 'for if you grow silent, how shall I learn where you have hidden Suzanne Botmar? "'Suzanne Kenzie, wife of the Englishman, butcher, I answered again. "'Also, he went on, grinding his teeth, 'I desire that you should die slowly. Then he called some of his men, and they carried me in a kaross to this place.
A few whispered words, the changing of a ring, and one long kiss, and these two, Ralph Kenzie and Suzanne Botmar, were husband and wife in the eyes of God and man. Ah! me, I am glad to think of it, for in the end, of all the many marriages that I have known, this proved the very best and happiest.
"Wait a bit, father I beg your pardon, Jan Botmar," said Ralph in a clear and angry voice; "it is my turn now, for you may remember that when we began to talk I had something to say, but you stopped me. Now, with your leave, as you have got off the horse I will get on." Jan slowly sat down again and said: "Speak. What is it?"
After this came a paragraph from an English newspaper published in Capetown, dated not two years before, and headed "Strange Tale of the Sea," which paragraph, with some few errors, told the story of the finding of Ralph though how the writing man knew it I know not, unless it was through the tutor with the blue spectacles of whom I have spoken and said that he was still living on the farm of Jan Botmar in the Transkei.
Now my story goes back to that night at the stead when I, Suzanne Botmar and my husband, Jan Botmar, were awakened from our sleep to learn that our daughter had been carried off by that mad villain, Piet Van Vooren, and that her husband Ralph lay senseless and wounded in the waggon at the door.
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