F.E. Mills Young (continued 2)

The railway curved sharply, winding in and out among the hills, so that from the window the tail of the train was visible, seeming like a second train cutting the first in the middle. Beyond Hutchinson the line was being repaired. A row of white tents alongside the rails, with their owners squatted in the openings having breakfast, caused Matheson a queer, unaccustomed stab of envy. This was what he ought to be doing—useful work for the country, instead of using the metals to career about on a fool’s errand.

The train had slowed down. He leaned farther out of the window and shouted to a sunburnt man who stood astride outside his tent, with a tin mug in one hand and part of a loaf in the other.

“You, Saunders!” he yelled. “What ho! Want an extra hand down there?”

The person addressed as Saunders grinned amiably; and another man came to the opening of the tent and stood behind him, interested, stripped to the waist, and towelling vigorously.

“Tumble out,” shouted Saunders. “I dare say we could make use of you.”

And then the train left the white tents and their tanned owners behind; and Matheson drew in his head with a feeling of sharp dissatisfaction with life, and thought of these men enviously, until the steadily increasing warmth of the day brought back to his memory the stuffy unbearableness of heat accumulated under canvas; and his imagination pictured anew the treeless, sunbaked nature of the land where those jolly cool-looking white tents were pitched. It wasn’t after all much of a picnic.

He arrived at De Aar about noon, and went to the hotel, and had a bath and changed before sitting down to lunch. He had not been in this Karroo town before, and it struck him as fine and picturesque and altogether characteristic. The country was flat and open, and the veld greener and less drought-stricken.

It was a commercial hotel that Holman had recommended, run by Dutch people and patronised principally by the Dutch. Matheson shared a small table with a Jew, who owned a store in the town and took his meals at the hotel but did not sleep there. The Jew was not expansive; but he showed a ready courtesy when approached on any subject, and was emphatic in his agreement with Matheson’s disparagement of the weather.

“It is a land of drought,” he finished, and refilled his glass from the bottle at his elbow. “I have known the drought hold on the Karroo for two years. But the land won’t die. There’s water a long way below the surface.”

“Well have to bore for that some day,” Matheson said.

“Oh! they do bore—on the farms.”

“It wants doing on a more extensive scale.”

“Yes; but there’s the difficulty of finance again. Who is to provide the money?”

Matheson lifted his brows.

“If a man finds a gold mine, he’s quick enough as a rule to find the capital for exploiting it. The Empire’s fairly wealthy.”

The other appeared doubtful.

“She did not become so through speculation,” he ventured.

“That’s no argument,” the younger man contended. “Something has been written, you know, against wrapping certain possessions away in a napkin. If one undertakes responsibility it’s up to one to turn it to the best account—otherwise leave it alone.”

The Jew relapsed into an acquiescent silence, from which Matheson presently dug him to inquire if he knew a farm named Benauwdheidfontein.

“No.” He looked up curiously. “I wouldn’t like to take a farm with a name like that,” he said.

“It’s something of a mouthful certainly,” Matheson agreed.

“Oh, that! Many Dutch homesteads have long names... But—Benauwdheidfontein! ... No! that’s bad.”

It became clear to Matheson that it was something the name suggested, rather than the word itself, to which the speaker objected.

“What does Benauwdheidfontein stand for?” he inquired.

The Jew thought for a moment.

“Literally the word, I believe, means uneasiness, anxiety; but it conveys rather more than that. It suggests being at odds with life—cornered, as it were—having reached the limit of endurance. Fear lurks in the word. It’s a name with a sinister meaning—an unlucky name, we should call it.”

“I am not much of a believer in luck, are you?” Matheson said. His listener smiled.

“It depends on the hour, the place, and the circumstance,” he replied, and helped himself to cheese, which he proceeded to despatch in an abstracted manner, and with an air of being wishful to escape further conversation.

Matheson finished his lunch, and interviewed the proprietor.

“Can you provide me with a conveyance that will take me to Benauwdheidfontein?” he asked.

“Benfontein—Mr Krige’s place? Oh! yes,” was the response. “It’s a long drive. You won’t want to start for a couple of hours, I suppose?”

Upon Matheson’s replying that the hour of departure was a matter of indifference to him, the proprietor fixed it for four o’clock, when the great heat would be decreasing, and driving across the veld could be undertaken with less discomfort. He seemed anxious to do his best for his guest.

“Will I put a gun in the cart?” he asked. “With luck, you should see some birds as you travel. There is good sport on the flats.”

Matheson accepted gratefully. If Krige could offer something in the way of shooting, his stay at Benfontein would not lack compensation. He regretted that he had no gun with him. But on a farm a spare gun is usually available, the etiquette of the veld being strictly in accord with the principle of the traveller’s right to hospitality, which includes the enjoyment of one’s goods—providing always that he does not travel on foot.

Chapter Nine.

It was manifest to Matheson on his arrival at Benfontein that he was not expected. He had taken it for granted that Holman would inform these people of his coming, and instead he found it necessary to explain himself to the swarthy young Dutchman who came out of the house, when the cart drew up beside the big aloes that formed a hedge dividing the garden from the veld, and strolled leisurely forward with no great display of eagerness to receive the traveller. He descended from the Cape Cart and faced him.

“Is it Mr Krige?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the Dutchman, and regarded him with something like distrust blended with dislike, and waited for further enlightenment.

“My name’s Matheson,” the visitor announced, and, perceiving that the name conveyed nothing to his listener, he added: “I thought Holman would have prepared you for my visit. Perhaps I had better give you his letter, which will explain things.”

He felt in his pocket for the letter, and presented it. Krige, taking it in the left hand, deliberately extended the right.

“That is all right,” he said. “I did not know. A friend of Mr Holman is very welcome.”

He spoke in Dutch to the coloured driver, who climbed down from the cart and started to take out the horses. One of Krige’s boys sauntered forward to his assistance; and a woman, who, judging from the likeness between them, was Krige’s sister, appeared on the shadeless stoep, and looked on with detached interest at the scene beyond the aloe hedge. Matheson judged her to be about thirty. She was swarthy, like her brother, with a deepening brown on the neck that suggested a strain of native blood somewhere in the Krige ancestry. Her eyes were very dark, and sombre in expression, which robbed them, as it robbed her face, of actual beauty, and lent both a tragic, almost a sullen air. Looking at her a stranger would pronounce unhesitatingly that hers had been a tragic life. At least it was a life which had known tragedy, and had nursed its bitterness throughout the years.

Krige conducted Matheson on to the stoep and presented him to his sister. From the way in which she unbent, as her brother had done, at the mention of Holman’s name, he concluded that in this household Holman was held in very warm regard. The mantle of his popularity descended in some measure upon himself.

“Come inside and rest,” said Miss Krige. “You will be hungry. We will be having supper just now.” She scrutinised him for a second. “I expect you are tired,” she added; “it’s a long drive from De Aar.”

He disclaimed undue fatigue, and followed her into the house, where bustling preparations were going forward in the guest chamber, which the younger girl had hastened to get ready as soon as the Cape Cart came within sight. The bed had to be made, and the room dusted. There were seldom visitors at Benfontein; and the great four-poster bedstead remained usually shrouded in dustsheets, under which the feather mattress humped itself protestingly, and fell into depressions where some heedless touch had deflated its bulging surface.

The younger Miss Krige, who was called Honor, treated the feather mattress as a conscientious cook might treat dough, the lightness of which depended on the energy of her kneading, with the result that the bed lost the appearance of an anaemic mountain and assumed quite reasonable dimensions of a sufficient flatness to warrant its claim to being a couch to repose upon. Then she fetched water and towels, and ran away to her own room to smooth her disordered hair, and, since her house frock was decidedly shabby, to make other alterations in her toilet calculated to improve her appearance, as her energetic ministrations had improved that of the bed. Honor took a greater interest in travellers than her sister. She was five years younger; and the sorrow which had touched their lives had touched hers more lightly, and left, not so much a bitterness, as a deliberately cultivated grievance to germinate in the furrows it had made.

Matheson was taken to the living-room, which struck him when he entered it as one of the pleasantest rooms he had ever seen—it was so essentially homelike. A blending of English and Dutch taste, and a feminine love of the beautiful, with inadequate resources at command, made the room in its bare cool simplicity invitingly restful and pleasing. There was not an article in it, save an old Dutch dresser, of any value. The dark, beeswaxed floor had no covering other than one or two golden jackal skins, shot, and roughly dressed, on the farm, and a large sheepskin mat. The chairs were reimpe bottomed, that is laced with strips of hide instead of cane, which makes a more durable and infinitely more comfortable seat. There were a few Madeira chairs with cushions in them, and a profusion of veld flowers, flowers in bowls and any available vessel—splashes of colour against the cool dark woodwork of the panelled walls.

In one of the low chairs a woman was seated, sewing. She looked about sixty, a well-preserved comely woman fair complexioned and essentially English in type. Her dear blue eyes met the blue eyes of the stranger with a cordial light of welcome in them, as she rose and came quickly forward and shook hands.

“We do not see many travellers at this season,” she remarked in her soft English voice, “which makes your visit doubly welcome. You have had a long drive.”

“Yes,” he said; “but the air is extraordinarily light. I didn’t find it too hot. It must be wonderful here in the spring.”

“It is,” she agreed. “The next time you come to Benfontein you must choose your season better. We aren’t always drought-stricken. We boast a fine climate really.”

“I think it’s topping,” he said. “And,”—he looked about him—“I think this is just the jolliest room I’ve ever seen.”

His wandering gaze, travelling critically about the room he professed such warm admiration for, was abruptly arrested when it reached the doorway, where it remained transfixed, caught by a vision of such surprising beauty that for quite an appreciable while he remained staring and speechless, until suddenly recalled to the present by the sound of Krige’s foot moved with some impatience on the wooden floor.

“It’s perfect,” he finished his encomium with, and faced his hostess again with an enigmatic smile. “I thought that as soon as I saw it.”

The vision hereupon entered through the doorway.

“My daughter, Honor,” Mrs Krige said.

The vision confronted Matheson now, a tall graceful girl, with bright hair that suggested the sunlight, and eyes that were like brown pools, dark and shadowed, and splashed with a lighter shade as though the sunlight penetrated here too and sported in their brown depths. It was a lovely face; Matheson found it flawless. He was amazed at her beauty, at the soft transparency of the fair skin, and her quiet self-possession. She held out a cool, aloof hand.

“You know all about me,” she said, “but no one enlightens me... English?—of course.”

He was not sure whether it was his imagination, but he fancied he detected some hostility in her voice as she pronounced his nationality. Her tones rang odd and rather hard.

“Matheson by name, cosmopolitan by disposition,” he returned easily—“like yourself.”

“Oh! I’m Dutch,” she said quickly.

“Mr Matheson is a friend of Mr Holman,” her mother explained.

Honor’s smile became more friendly.

“You ought to have told me that at the beginning,” she said. “It makes a difference.”

“Isn’t that a little rough on me?” he asked.

“I don’t see that. It’s an introduction. Mr Holman is a good friend. It is a long time already that we have known him.”

“Honor has known Mr Holman since she was a child,” Mrs Krige interposed. “That was before we came to Benfontein, when we lived in the town. Lately we have seen little of him. Andreas, I expect Mr Matheson would like to go to his room. We shall have supper shortly. If you are only half as hungry as I was the first time I drove across the flats,” she added, turning again towards the guest, “you must be very ready for it.”

Alone in the plainly furnished bedroom, dominated by the great four-poster, which recalled gruesome suggestions of a hearse, Matheson fell to thinking pleasantly about Honor Krige. It was extraordinary what a change the sight of her had put upon the face of things. He no longer experienced boredom at the prospect of spending a week, or even two weeks, at the farm. He hoped the reply to Holman’s communication would be delayed—the nature of the communication no longer mattered. Of what account was the overthrow of governments, or other and more wily knavery, when set off against daily intercourse and companionship with beauty’s self? He felt equal at the moment to participating in a crime if to do so were to win a smile of genuine appreciation from Honor Krige. Not that he imagined Honor, or any member of her family, to be steeped in infamy. If the brother were a political firebrand, he doubted that the women were infected with the disorder. They seemed to be quiet and homely folk.

The Kriges meanwhile were discussing him, while Honor and a little Kaffir girl laid the table for the supper which Freidja Krige was cooking.

“He is nice looking,” observed Honor, having dispatched Koewe to the kitchen for plates. “I am going to be nice to him.”

“Don’t be too nice,” advised her brother drily. “We do not know anything about him. We must be discreet.”

“He is a friend of Mr Holman,” she urged, as if that constituted a claim to their consideration.

“He only comes on business from Mr Holman,” he said. “It is best not to be hasty.”

Mrs Krige glanced swiftly at her son.

“Andreas,” she said, “is he on political business for Mr Holman?”

“As a messenger only. He brought me a letter.”

“Mr Holman would not send any but a trustworthy messenger,” she replied, and became silent as the Kaffir girl returned with the plates, and set them in a pile on the table for Honor to arrange.

“Place the chairs, Koewe,” said Honor—“straight, picannin schelm. That will do. Now go and help young missis in the kitchen.”

She swung round and faced her brother.

“What does Mr Holman say about him?” she asked.

“Very little,” Krige answered in his deliberate way. “I gather from the letter that he trusts him simply because he is new to the country, and has no knowledge of Dutch.”

“Ah!” said Honor, and gazed thoughtfully through the open window out upon the dried-up garden. “I wonder why he should carry letters for Mr Holman?” she mused.

Chapter Ten.

It was possible that Andreas Krige was a man of many ideas; he was not a man of many words. For the better part of an hour Matheson sat on the stoep and smoked in company with him, and waited in confident expectancy for the remark which, he calculated roughly, fell on an average once in every fifteen minutes from Krige’s lips. The remark, when it came, was not profound. His own conversational efforts partook of the nature of a monologue, which Krige punctuated at long intervals with grunts; a short grunt fitting like a comma into a pause, and a longer grunt putting a period to the talk. He emerged from these periods usually with one of his infrequent observations.

It occurred to Matheson later, thinking over that quiet hour on the stoep, that Krige, by his silence and those occasional sympathetic grunts, had deliberately encouraged him to talk, had indeed urged him on to talk while observing himself an intentional reticence. But this did not strike him at the time, perhaps because his mind was so intent on Honor Krige, whom he could hear moving about inside the room they had left by means of the long window near which their chairs were placed, that it held no space for other reflection.

He wondered why the women did not come out and join them. He wanted to talk to Honor, who was bright and animated and decidedly more companionable than her dark and silent brother. Krige did not interest him. And yet the long, loose-limbed figure reclining in the chair appealed to him as symbolic of the silence, the secrecy, the rugged simplicity of the veld, which daily exacted from him so much of energy and sweat and labour, and yielded its grudging return, rather as the man himself drew out of others more than he ever gave. The nature of the veld was in his blood. That is a characteristic of the Boer; he is as much a part of the soil as the coloured man, when it comes to wide spaces—to the veld which he has named. Krige suggested the solitudes, and the rude and primitive toil which Adam bequeathed his sons.

One thing he said during their talk stuck in Matheson’s memory. It was the least simple remark he had made.

“We do not get many engineers this way,” he said. “To-morrow I will ask you to lode at the wells. That windmill you see from here is out of order.”

It was rather a cute way, Matheson decided, of testing the truth of his claim to his profession.

After a while Mrs Krige emerged from the house with her elder daughter, and the talk became general and more ready. But still it seemed to Matheson that without Honor the party was not so much incomplete as lifeless: her presence made for him the atmosphere of the place.

And then, quite unexpectedly and silently, she appeared among them, and stood in the open window of the sitting-room, leaning her shoulder against the frame. She came so softly to the window, and took up her position there without remark, that Matheson realised her presence only through that extra sense which apprises one of the nearness of another person through the medium of a wordless transmission of thought. He turned his head abruptly, and found her behind him, and stood up. Their eyes met. In the dusk amid the shadows of the unlighted room behind her she suggested to his imagination, in her pale and slender beauty, a moon’s ray—the night seemed lighter for her coming.

“Please sit down again,” she said without moving.

“But I can’t sit while you stand,” he returned. “Come and take my chair.”

“Thank you; but if I wanted to sit I should bring a chair with me—there is one at my back. If you won’t sit down again you will oblige me to go in.”

He resumed his seat with a promptness which was a sufficient guarantee of his unwillingness to provoke her into acting as she proposed, and at the same time he moved it so that without turning he could see her where she stood. He rather liked to see her there so close to him in the dusk. It was immaterial whether she talked; to sit and watch her was so good in itself. But Honor did not remain silent long.

“What do you think of our Karroo nights?” she asked in her quiet, intense voice.

“You have put a difficult question,” he returned. “It is so impossible to express what one feels without seeming extravagant. A night like this is—just wonderful. There’s something... I can’t put it into words... it grips.”

She smiled suddenly and leaned forward looking into the night.

“I have a feeling when I stand here,” she said, “and look away across the veld into the deep purple and primrose of the evening sky, that I am gazing into the heart of Africa—a heart which opens and reveals many things. The past unfolds like a picture before the mind. I wonder if you will ever see into the heart of the veld? ... I wonder whether any Englishman could look so deep?”

“But surely,” he protested, “many Englishmen have loved this land?”

“Coveted, not loved,” she insisted. “Does one ever hurt what one loves?”

In his surprise he forgot that the speaker was herself partly English, that her mother, a silent listener to their talk, was a compatriot of his own. His patriotism was aroused by this aspersion; as the sole representative of his country, he was bound to meet and repudiate it.

“I think your attack is most unjust,” he said, a shade of resentment in his tones. “If you reflect a while I believe you will admit as much. Great Britain has done more for this country than any other nation.”

“She has annexed land,” the cool, dispassionate voice admitted—“she continues to annex. Wherever we have settled, she has followed and turned us out. She can do this—because of the power behind,—her strength lies across the seas.”

“Oh, come!” he said, and regretted his ignorance of South African history. “It is quite elementary knowledge that the Netherlands sold the Cape Colony to Britain in the early part of the nineteenth century.”

A cold little smile crossed her features.

“Oh! yes,” she said; “we were sold—we know that—after hundreds of us had bled for the land. They sold us because they knew they couldn’t hold the land. Then we left the colony which we had founded at the Cape a century and a half before, and trekked as far as Natal. When we had made that colony, the British annexed it... It was always trekking and then annexation and then trekking once more. We left the coast and struck inland, and crossed the Orange River in search anew of a home. Again we were driven on—beyond the Vaal. There we founded our Republic.”

The low, evenly modulated voice never raised its tones, but an increasing bitterness crept into them at this point.

“The Transvaal was rich in minerals. That was sufficient. The Transvaal was annexed by the British. But the Boers were stronger now, and they could endure this persecution no longer. They fought for their Republic, and bought it again dearly with their blood at Majuba Hill. But the feeling of insecurity remained. There was friction between the two white races, and jealousy, and much bitterness. Still you coveted our land. You never rested until, backed by the power across the seas, you fought again for it—and won.”

Matheson was amazed. When the quiet voice ceased speaking, in the pause that followed, the shrill noise of the crickets broke with disconcerting insistence and troubled the ears. Only Andreas Krige moved. He did not speak; he stood up abruptly, and pocketed his pipe, and went inside, passing his sister without appearing to notice her.

Matheson was interested, intensely interested—and hurt.

“Isn’t all this you have been telling me a distortion of facts?” he asked.

“No,” she answered. “It is just a bald summary of the principal events in the history of the Colony since its beginning.”

“I am sorry I am so ignorant of these things,” he said. “A man ought to read up the history of a country before he visits it. I’m at a disadvantage. That only matters in as far as it prevents my answering you. I am hearing only your side. You have made out a good case... There’s always injustice where the interests of races conflict. If one went back far enough, I imagine one would find the greatest injustice has been meted out to the natives.”

“Oh, the natives!” Her voice sounded her contempt. “You British always fall back on the natives. It’s your unfailing retort that you administer more wisely and more humanely than we do.”

“It’s a fairly sound argument,” he returned with greater assurance. “No nation in the world can colonise as we can.”

“Honor,” Mrs Krige interposed gently, “it is an abuse of hospitality to attack a guest.”

Again the pale fleeting smile crossed Honor’s features. She glanced down at the man, who sat with face half averted looking towards the deepening purple of the sky, the colours of which never fade entirely on the Karroo even in the pallid hour of the dawn.

“I am making no attack,” she answered. “I am exposing the bleeding heart of Africa for him to see.” She came closer to him. “Can you see? ... blood and hatred, blood and hatred—the price of every morgen of this land.”

He looked up, immeasurably perplexed and discomposed. He had persuasion that he ought to say something, offer some protest, put up something of a defence; but he felt hopelessly inadequate. There was nothing he could find to say except:

“We don’t hate. As a race we are healthy: grievances do not fester with us; they heal.”

“I know,” she said. “You pride yourselves on that. You don’t bear malice. But in your generosity you incline to overlook the fact that this patronising attitude insults the object of your benevolence. You say tolerantly: ‘The Boer is not half bad; he’s useful; and anyway there is no getting rid of him. He is here for always. We will let bygones be bygones and not bear ill will,’—forgetting that the cause for ill will is on his side rather than on yours, and showing surprise that he does not respond, and appear obliged to you. You should learn to remember—to forget too easily causes suffering to others.”

“Honor!” Mrs Krige interposed again.

Honor passed swiftly behind Matheson’s chair and approached her mother.

“I think at least you should bear in mind,” Matheson said quietly, “that your mother is an Englishwoman.”

“My mother is Dutch,” Honor replied quickly, and put an arm about her mother’s shoulders and drew close to her.

Something in that protective gesture, in the tones of the proud determined young voice, and in the older woman’s acquiescent silence, acted like a silencing hand laid on Matheson’s lips. He felt tragedy in the air. She had said that she was revealing the bleeding heart of Africa to him—she was doing more; he was gazing on the stark, unlovely body of the past, disinterred from its too shallow grave by the morbid passions which are born of hate.

And yet he could not understand. How came this daughter of an Englishwoman to feel thus bitterly towards her mother’s people?—and why did the mother acquiesce in the condemnation of her country? It was as perplexing as it was distressing. Across the turmoil of his thoughts, a thing irrelevant and yet not without its significance in relation to the present disturbing scene, a speech the Jew had made at lunch that day flashed with startling clearness; and he recalled, besides the words, the distaste in the speaker’s tones when replying about Benauwdheidfontein: “It suggests being at odds with life... fear lurks in the word. It’s a name with a sinister meaning—an unlucky name.”

Possibly the Kriges were at odds with life. Could it be that Honor, beautiful, young, intelligent, was at odds with the life which for her was only beginning? It could not be. The sorrows that embitter are encountered usually farther along the road: they are not the skies of spring and summer which are overcast.

His gaze, lingering upon her figure, as she stood in the dusk with her arm about her mother’s shoulders, lifted to her face which in the fading light showed little more than an outline. It was, he decided, some fanciful touch of the twilight that gave to her features the expression of earnest entreaty he imagined he saw in them; her eyes shone with a softness in such direct contradiction to the hostility of her words, the proud aloofness of her manner, that he knew it for a trick of the twilight. No woman who felt so bitterly against his country could turn so soft a gaze upon an Englishman.

“You are a little startling in your vehemence, Honor,” Freidja Krige observed, speaking for the first time since her sister’s advent had snapped the desultory general conversation, which Matheson had found so unenlivening, and flung the bombshell of her complaining into the void.

Honor laughed quietly. The deep emotions that had swayed her and provoked her attack, were subdued; she had her feelings well in hand now.

“I haven’t startled any one really,” she said. “But—I have made Mr Matheson angry.”

A new quality had come into her voice. She gave Matheson a gesture of appeal. It was as though she wished to assure him that there was nothing personal in her attack, that she did not hold him responsible for the national crimes of which she complained. She excepted him, as she excepted her mother. They had been born English, they couldn’t help that. He might even be an estimable person in despite of it.

“Not angry,” he contradicted, and rose, moved, not so much by a desire to stand, as a feeling that he wanted to be more on a level with her, wanted to face her on equal ground; seated he was at a disadvantage. “What you have said has given food for thought I’d no idea; ... One doesn’t think enough about these things. It’s only when one comes face to face with it that one gets a sense of what lies beneath the surface. We are too easily satisfied with a superficial view. One should look deeper.”

Honor’s arm fell from her mother’s neck and hung at her side. She did not move nearer, but she turned more directly towards him.

“You will look deeper,” she said with conviction.

Suddenly a smile broke over her face.

“I have shown you something of the tragedy of the veld,” she added. “To-morrow, if you are willing to rise with the sun, I will show you something of its beauty and its charm. The Karroo is at its best when the day is young.”

If he were willing... He would have risen in advance of the sun to have set forth in her company on any quest.

Chapter Eleven.

When he went to his room that night Matheson was in too great a state of excitement to sleep. For some time he made no show of seeking the enveloping couch prepared for him by Honor’s capable hands, but remained at the open window looking out at the dark quiet beauty of the night, less in contemplation of the scene that stretched its uncertain outline to the far horizon than in a retrospective reverie, during which not only all that the Dutch girl had said, but all the concentrated bitterness of voice and expression, came back to him with the disconcerting effect of a blow which he could neither avoid nor return.

She had struck at him deliberately with intent to wound, and she had succeeded in that, and something more—she had succeeded in interesting him enormously.

In any circumstances he would have admired her; but it was something deeper than admiration she awoke in him, something more vital in quality, something which gripped and disquieted and provoked surprisingly, seeming part of the fierce passionate nature of the country, part of its unrestraint, its intensity, its rugged honesty. No woman had ever roused in him emotions so profound.

He was immeasurably perplexed and perturbed, and extraordinarily curious. One thing seemed fairly certain as an outcome of this visit to Benauwdheidfontein with its altogether unforeseen results; he would not leave this farm on the Karroo, to which he had journeyed against his inclination on an errand of doubtful honesty, unchanged by his experiences. He felt while he stood at the window and considered these things that his whole outlook on life was altering, and in the transition stage was altogether out of focus. Odd that in a few hours a man’s view of life should change.

He turned away from the window and undressed slowly and climbed into bed, where he lay fretting in uneasy wakefulness on his mountain of feathers.

Before the rising of the sun he was up and dressed and waiting on the stoep for Honor Krige. She came out and joined him with the first flushing of the sky, the sudden brightening and deepening of the colours in the east came swiftly and noiselessly, so that she was close beside him before the sound of the light footfall on the concrete floor apprised him of her approach. He brought his head round sharply and surveyed her with critical, curious eyes, eyes which held a flash of reawakened interest in them as they rested in a close scrutiny upon her face, shaded by a white sun-helmet. She wore a riding-skirt, and carried a whip in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other.

“I thought you would prefer to take this out here,” she said, and gave the cup into his hand.

“Thank you.” He greeted her formally when he had relieved her of the cup. “You are riding?” he said.

“Yes. We always ride on the veld.” She beat her skirt softly with the whip, and looked up at him with a faint smile. “You are early. I hope you slept well?”

“I scarcely slept at all,” he answered. “I was thinking... You set me thinking. I believe you intended that.”

Without denying this, she answered, looking away from him:

“At least I did not wish to spoil your rest.”

He stood sipping his coffee and regarding her the while. He decided that hers was the most beautiful face he had ever beheld; no pictured face that he could recall surpassed it, and among living faces it was more flawless than any he had seen.

“I’ll make up for that to-night,” he returned. “I don’t believe even an uneasy conscience could rob me of sleep two nights in succession.”

He finished the coffee, and carried the empty cup inside and put it down on the round oak table in the living-room. Honor made no effort to prevent him. She looked after him without moving, and remained silent until he returned and confronted her with an inquiring lift of the brows.

“Suppose I couldn’t ride?” he asked.

She evinced surprise. Not ride! Every man rode.

“You do,” she asserted.

“As luck has it... but there are plenty of quite respectable persons in England who don’t,” he informed her. “Getting on and off busses in motion is a more useful accomplishment with us. To each country its own customs! Do we start now?”

“Yes; we will walk across to the stables.” She flashed a smile at him. “I am afraid we will have to saddle our own horses; there won’t be any one about so early as this.”

The business of getting the horses out took time. The sun was above the horizon when Matheson led them into the open, followed by Honor, who had done her share of the work. He held his hand for her, and assisted her to the saddle. Then he mounted himself. Honor sat quietly, with her face turned, and watched the performance. She had not expected him to be clumsy; his size and weight notwithstanding, he conveyed the impression that whatever he did he would do well. At least, she reflected, when, having gained the saddle, he brought his horse abreast of hers, his seat was good.

“Which direction do we take?” he asked.

She lifted a hand and pointed with her whip to some flat-topped hills far away, but standing out in the clear dry atmosphere, sharply defined against the blue cloudless sky like hills seen through a powerful glass.

“We will ride to the south,” she said, “towards the tafel-kopjes yonder.”

He looked down into her eyes.

“And there we shall find the beauty and the charm you promised?”

Honor returned his gaze with grave composure.

“That depends on yourself,” she answered. “All this,” and she indicated the wide and arid landscape, which, with the night dews still lingering on its gaping surfaces and sapless vegetation, sparkled in the early sunshine with a glitter as of silver and gems, “appeals to people differently. Some see in it beauty, and others only barrenness—but always it is impressive. It hurts or it pleases, according to the mood.”

“But you believe I shall see its beauty,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she answered; “I believe that—otherwise, I would not have suggested your coming.”

They rode in silence for a while. Momentarily the sun gained power; the freshness of the early day yielded to its burning ardour, was caught up and enveloped in its heated embrace; the dew on the scant vegetation sparkled a moment and the next was absorbed; and the hot yellow stones basking in its rays revealed unexpected streaks of colour and fanciful patterns and quaint veinings, as they caught the refracted rays, and transmitted them, and gave back some of their assimilated heat into the shimmering air.

The soil became more sandy the farther they rode, and more arid; wide bare patches of sand appeared, and again other patches sparsely covered with dry brown scrub. An occasional ostrich, suggestive of farms in the neighbourhood, wandered over the sunbaked ground, and pecked at the little stones. Here was Africa—the real Africa—untamed, barbaric, fiercely splendid, and cruel in its callous disregard of life.

Matheson’s gaze travelled over the scene, travelled to the distant hills, and rested there. A dark shadow like a black stain lay upon the hillside, the curious effect of some unseen cloud. In his imagination it seemed a significant, even a sinister, shadow. He watched it for a time, but it moved so slowly that it did not appear to move at all, but to be in reality a black stain on the face of the land. He removed his gaze, and when later he looked again the shadow had passed.

“This is the real thing,” he said—“the key to Africa. The Karroo is the small sister of the Sahara.”

Suddenly, moved by some unaccountable emotion, he turned towards her swiftly.

“How can you endure living here?” he asked. “The loneliness... Heavens! the loneliness... It suggests a world in the making. The beauty! ... Yes, I acknowledge the beauty, the terrible beauty of it. But—how often do you see a human face besides your own?”

She broke into a quiet laugh.

“Not often. But then, we are busy; we don’t trouble about such things. The blood of the old Voortrekkers runs in our veins. At least there is freedom here.”

“Gods! I should say so,” he responded, and fell to contemplating once more the sameness of those leagues upon leagues of interminable, sun-scorched veld, with its dried-up water-courses, its gaping fissures, and scrubby blackened bush, among which at long intervals pushed the smooth green fingers of the milkbush, and the stunted, gnarled trunks of the butterbloem, yellow as though smeared with sulphur, with bell-shaped flowers blooming on long blood-red stems. Boulders of iron-stone broke the sameness, and an occasional hill, rounded or peaked, not rising gradually but seeming to have been dumped down there, or happened otherwise by accident.

Honor’s eyes rested dreamily upon the scene.

“You should see it after the rains fall,” she said. “It is wonderful then.”

“It is wonderful now,” he returned. “I have never beheld anything so extraordinarily moving and impressive.”

“But you don’t like it,” she said quickly.

“Oh, like! ... the term scarcely applies. I couldn’t live here... I’d be afraid to live here—not physically, of course. I mean it’s so immense, so unpeopled. The Karroo is jealous of life; it crushes it. I’d go down under the spell of it. I can imagine a man falling into the habit of talking aloud to himself here—for company.”

“One need not live alone,” she said.

“You love the solitudes,” he said, looking at her wonderingly.

“Yes; I suppose I do. I love the veld... It is my blood—that intense love of the land.”

Her eyes, looking out from the shade of her helmet, dwelt with intense appreciation upon the shimmering landscape. All the wonder and the beauty and the richness of the plain, which appeared now but a blackened waste, was known to her. To the unobservant gaze the scene might wear the semblance of an arid desert; but to one familiar with it through the different seasons the drought-stricken sterility which held the veld in a relentless, strangling grip was but the period of waiting when the land rested in expectation of the coming gift of life. With the rains the richness concealed in her dry bosom would spring forth and blossom prodigally, and the desert would be a garden, teeming with life.

“Love of the land!” she repeated softly. And added, after a moment: “Have you ever breathed air so good as this?—so light and clear and dry? There’s health in every breath of it. One could see to the ends of the earth through air so pure and clear. There is health here, and freedom.”

“It is a savage land,” he said suddenly—“but it grips. It is the savagery which gets hold of one. I feel I want to tame it.”

She laughed, and pointed upward where a vulture with great wings outspread flew heavily in the blue, sensing its prey.

“Could you tame the aasvogel,” she asked, “till it ceases to be a carrion bird and eats from your hand? Could you teach the jackal to respect the lamb?—or the snake to forget its venom? I would hate to see this land subdued.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. There was something in herself which, if not exactly savage, was at least untamed, he reflected. Without thinking she had quickened her horse’s pace. Matheson rode faster to keep up with her.

“I have disappointed you,” he said.

“Oh, no!” she contradicted quickly. “It wasn’t to be expected that you would feel as we do about the veld... But you see deeper than many Englishmen. You will love the land yet.”

He made no answer to this. Had he put his thoughts into words, they would have claimed to love the land already. It was amazing how surely and firmly it had got a hold on his imagination. It was not only with his arrival at the farm, he told himself, that he had felt this extraordinary influence; but since he had come to Benfontein he had acquired a new sympathy with, and a deeper understanding of, the country. Honor Krige was teaching him that, and other things.

He had set forth that morning to behold the beauty and the charm of the veld; and, insensibly, while he gazed upon this sun-scorched sameness, the mystery and the beauty of it were revealed to him. The translucent air, quivering in the sunlight like some glad and living thing, was wondrously soft and stimulating; eye and brain cleared with its magic healing; the mind became surprisingly alert and receptive of new impressions. The sandy soil lost its aridity, and disclosed numberless unsuspected shining beauties; it glittered as with many gems, and revealed in places unexpected shades and colours, and curious, infinitesimal insect-life creeping and pushing upon its white surface. The dry sluits and water-courses, proclaiming moisture where it would appear that moisture was unknown; the cairns of yellow stones, piled high in rude and strange formation; the yellow and red of the butterbloem, crude intense colours in an intense atmosphere under the hard blue of the sky; the occasional oddly-shaped kopjes; the distant oasis of some lonely farm; each struck a separate note of beauty in this strange, uncivilised scene—a beauty that was fearful and fiercely assertive, that crushed the senses, that again attracted and held surely by the unfailing magnetism of elemental and sincere things. And over all the parched nakedness of the land the sun flung its golden radiance, a yellow flame that quivered through the hot air and pierced into the earth.

Matheson knew while his eyes lingered upon it all that he would in very truth love the land.

And then he turned his head suddenly and met Honor’s eyes. She was smiling softly, but she did not speak.

Chapter Twelve.

Freidja Krige went many times to the window to look for the riders’ return. She had prepared the breakfast; the sarsates were cooked and ready to be served, and Andreas had come in from the land and was waiting with extraordinary patience for the meal, which usually made its appearance with his own. He glanced up from an agricultural journal he was reading when for about the fourth time his sister came through from the kitchen and took her stand by the window and looked out across the veld.

“They must have ridden far,” he observed.

“They are coming now,” she said—“walking the horses. I expect they find it hot. I’ll make the coffee, Andreas, and bring in your porridge.”

He shook his head.

“I will wait,” he said.

Mrs Krige entered the room, and her son rose and kissed her uneffusively but with affection. She stood at the window and watched with him the slow advance of the riders.

“It’s so hot,” she said. “They should have got back half an hour ago. Honor ought to think of these things.”

“Why does Honor ride with a stranger?” he asked. “I consider it unnecessary. He can ride on the farm with me.”

Mrs Krige raised surprised eyes to his.

“I see no reason for objecting,” she returned. “I think we may trust Honor.”

He lifted his loose shoulders heavily.

“It is always wise to go slow,” he said.

Then he caught up his hat and stepped out on to the stoep and went to meet the horses.

Honor slipped from the saddle, and relinquished the reins to him, making some remark about the warmth of the day to which he made no response. He shifted the rein to his left hand, and raised the right, which he proffered the guest.

“You had better dismount,” he said. “I will take the horses to the stable.”

Matheson offered a protest; at least he would accompany him; but Krige was firmly insistent. Finally Matheson swung himself from the saddle and followed Honor to the house, while Krige, whistling for a boy as he went, led the horses away.

Matheson had a persuasion that for some reason or other Krige did not like him. He had felt that on the stoep the previous night. Why, he wondered, should a man dislike another of whom he knew nothing, whom he met now for the first time? It was not reasonable. Racial prejudice possibly influenced him to some extent. It was obvious that as a family the Kriges were antagonistic to British supremacy; but that in itself seemed insufficient to justify personal animus, particularly in view of the fact of Mrs Krige’s nationality. Having regard to that last point, the attitude of the family towards all things British puzzled him. He felt that in her quiet acceptance of her children’s view, this Englishwoman displayed a strange disloyalty. It would have been altogether finer and more natural had she, through her marriage, attempted to bring the two white races in the Colony into closer and more sympathetic relations. She might have inculcated in this new generation a love for the best ideals of both races. In doing which she would have rendered a greater service to South Africa than in fostering racial jealousy, would have accomplished some worthier end than the poor satisfaction born of harbouring bitter feeling and petty distrust.

He resented this lade of patriotism in a countrywoman of his own, it forced him into a strong and quite sincere opposition. Love of country is the moral backbone of the individual; a vaunted contempt for one’s birthright is a tacit admission of unworthiness of the privilege it confers.

He stepped on to the stoep in Honor’s wake, and went along to his room and entered by the window.

“Don’t be long,” Honor called after him. “We are late.”

He made what haste he could; and entered the living-room to find the delayed breakfast steaming on the table, and every one obviously waiting amid a savoury smell of coffee and grilled meat Honor was not present. She came in when the rest were seated, looking cool and beautiful and fresh in a white muslin frock with blue ribbons, that drew Andreas Krige’s eyes in her direction in silent disapproval.

“I am sorry to be so late,” she said. “We rode farther than I intended. It was all so interesting that I did not think of the time.”

“What was interesting?” Freidja asked.

Honor looked across at her sister with a show of faint surprise.

“I was interested in watching Mr Matheson’s appreciation,” she said.

“Mr Matheson will not find much to appreciate on the Karroo at this dry season,” Freidja returned. “My! there’s nothing but burnt scrub to be seen. Don’t you wonder,” she asked, turning towards him, “how anything grows here?”

“I admit,” he replied, “that it occurs to me to doubt whether results justify the outlay. You are up against pretty well everything, aren’t you? Farming in this country must entail endless labour.”

“We do fairly well with ostriches,” Krige interposed. “If you care about it, I will show you our birds. I am making a speciality of the new breed, the feathers of which have a natural curl. They are very handsome.”

“Thanks; it will interest me immensely,” Matheson said. “Besides, there is the well. I am to look at that to-day.”

“Andreas,” Mrs Krige remonstrated, “we must not trespass too much on Mr Matheson’s good nature. I think he will be glad to rest a little. There are other days.”

Her words, seeming to imply an acceptance of his continued presence on the farm, pleased Matheson. He was very ready to stay as long as they were willing to entertain him. Krige had not yet referred to the purpose of his visit; he had made no mention of the letter which he was to carry away. Matheson was undecided whether there was a motive in his reticence, or whether he took it for granted that he was in Holman’s confidence and therefore in no need of enlightenment.

In response to his mother’s remark Krige simply said:

“The well will keep till another time.”

He did not after that make any observation unless directly appealed to, but despatched his breakfast in grave preoccupation, and left the table before the rest. Mrs Krige turned her face to look after him as he went out through the window; and Matheson was struck by the light of affection which shone in her eyes as they followed the tall figure till it disappeared from view.

“He works so hard. There is no one to help him,” she said, and sighed.

“He is interested in his work,” Freidja put in quickly. “As for hard work, every one works hard on a farm.”

Involuntarily her glance travelled in her sister’s direction. How did Honor purpose making beds and helping with the dinner in that frock?

Honor proceeded leisurely with her breakfast, as though work were the last thing to concern her. It did not concern her for the immediate present. With the finish of breakfast the visitor must be disposed of; he would sit in the garden in the shade of the pepper trees—her mother would see to that; then she would slip out of her clean frock and get through the morning’s work and dress again. It was quite simple, entailing merely a little additional trouble. Honor did not object to trouble of that nature, and visitors were rare.

“You shame my idleness, Miss Krige,” Matheson said. “I don’t see why I should be told off to rest. I think I’ll go and have a look at that well.”

Honor laughed.

“You know you just long to sit in the shade and smoke,” she said.

And Freidja, who, like Andreas, disapproved of her sister’s easy familiarity with the stranger, replied that she thought her brother would prefer to accompany him when he inspected the wells.

“You see,” he said, and turned in protest to Mrs Krige. “I am not allowed to do anything. Every one insists upon encouraging my natural indolence.”

He would have been very willing to sit in the garden had Honor consented to sit with him; but, breakfast over, Honor disappeared with her sister; and Mrs Krige, explaining that they had duties to attend to, offered to show him a pleasant corner in the shade of the trees, where he would feel as cool as it was possible to feel in such warm weather.

She led the way into the garden. There were chairs under the trees, and a primitive wooden seat formed with roughly sawn logs, which served the double purpose of a seat and table. Beyond the garden were lucerne beds, and beyond these again was a fencing of wire confining a number of Krige’s best birds. It was neither a restful nor a pretty garden; it was burnt up and sunbaked like the surrounding veld, save for one long bed below the stoep which was planted with flowers and carefully tended. Some one who loved flowers cared for these and watered them.

“It is not pretty,” Mrs Krige said. “We had a beautiful garden when we lived in the town. I miss it.”

“It would be difficult,” he replied, “to make a beautiful garden with so poor a supply of water. But the trees are fine. Trees in this country are more acceptable than anything else.”

She looked about her with a vague discontent in her eyes, eyes which held at times, which held now, a haunting expression of sorrow.

“Yes, trees are good,” she agreed. “Do you observe that so far as the gaze can reach there is not one patch of shade except just here?—not a bush, only that small clump of prickly-pear yonder to throw its scant shadow on the ground? Sometimes there are mirage trees. One wonders...”

She broke off without completing the sentence and seated herself in one of the chairs.

“I want to talk to you,” she said. “It is long since I met a fellow-countryman. I have become so identified with the Dutch that the few English friends I possessed have dropped away one by one. In this country a divided allegiance is impossible. I belong to my husband’s people—my admiration and sympathies are all with them. You can’t understand that,” she added, with a swift look into his grave eyes. “I saw last night while Honor talked that you failed to understand. I believe it was your restraint then that decided me to attempt to explain what is to you incredible. You didn’t understand; but I saw that you were trying to understand.”

He sat forward with his hands between his knees, and gazed very intently into her face—an earnest, pleasant face with patient eyes.

“No; I don’t understand,” he said. “It’s puzzled me a lot. You see, your daughter disclaimed your nationality, and you offered no protest. That’s un-English. You can’t change your nationality at will; it’s as much a part of yourself as the colour of your eyes. We are proud as a race of our nationality. We are the finest nation in the world. I’m not for giving preference to any other. I don’t say I’d talk like that to a foreigner—unless he challenged me; and then,” he smiled slightly, “I’d probably be emphatic.”

Mrs Krige caught something of his humour, and smiled in sympathy. Deep down in her heart, so jealously hidden that she almost doubted its existence there, the undying love for her own people kept its place in spite of the sadness and injustice her life had known.

“I felt as you do at one time,” she said—“oh! for long after I was married. My husband was a Free State Boer—one of the old type, a little narrow and prejudiced, but a good man—an excellent husband and father. My married life was very happy.”

She folded her hands on her lap and turned aside her face and looked away with reminiscent gaze over the sunlit landscape. Possibly she saw anew those long dead years passing before her mind like the mirage trees of the veld which appear only to vanish again. Matheson watched her curiously, anticipating something of her story. How many persons in that country, he wondered, had been hurt by the conflicting interests of the two white races?

“And then,” she added quietly, “all the happiness came to an end... everything came to an end with the war—with those three bitter years of struggle and hatred. The British were wrong—very wrong. I believe if I had not been married to a Dutchman I should have felt that. It is a black mark against our national honour.”

He noticed with faint surprise that in her condemnation of her country she associated herself with it for the first time—it might have been unconsciously, or it might have been that, in condemning it, some instinct of race caused her to identify herself with its disgrace. There was a suggestion of a desire to defend in that simple connection, to defend what she could not condone.

“You don’t know,” she said—“no one could know who was not directly concerned—all the injustice of the war... I lost my husband, I lost my son—not fighting; it wouldn’t have been so hard had they died fighting for their independence. They were both prisoners, in an internment camp near Matjesfontein. And they died there. My boy was delicate. I don’t know... I suppose things were rough and he needed care. He developed consumption, and died and was buried there. I was not allowed to see him. I have never seen his grave.”

Her voice was slightly tremulous, but she betrayed no other sign of emotion, and resumed quietly with only a brief pause:

“His father died later. I think myself his heart was broken.” She lifted protesting eyes. “Is it worth it? ... these broken hearts and broken lives—the price of territorial gain! It is too much to pay for any country’s aggrandisement. And the bitterness to me lay in the knowledge that it was my own country inflicting this injustice on a weaker people. I cannot convey all I suffered. I was treated with great indignity—a prisoner in my own house, where I remained with my three youngest children. I wasn’t allowed outside the house save by permit, and it was with difficulty I obtained that. I insisted on seeing the officer in charge, and informed him I was an Englishwoman. He was very rough with me, and told me to be careful or I might find myself interned also.

“Oh! I cannot describe the misery and the hopelessness of that time. I don’t know how I lived through it; but one learns to endure. Now you know why I am bitter, why my children are bitter, against the English. They have nothing to teach them love of reverence for England—the nation that made them orphans, and treated their mother harshly. These wrongs live in the memory—they embitter life.”

“Yes,” he said, and was silent. It was so difficult to say anything in face of what he had heard. It was because he saw her point of view so clearly, sympathised with her in her sorrow, that he found it impossible to attempt to point out that she was taking an altogether wrong view. Her judgment was biassed. In no question concerning the community is the individual point of view the one to be considered. But one can’t say these things to a woman who has suffered deeply.

Suddenly he put out a hand and laid it upon hers. There was something in his action, in the firm reassuring grip of his fingers, that moved her more than he knew. It was as the outstretched hand of a fellow-countryman gripping hers in the wilderness; it conveyed hope and comfort.

“I say, I’m awfully sorry,” he said. He pressed her hand firmly and then released it and sat looking away from her, considering a while.

“It’s so often the case,” he said presently, “that authority gets into the wrong hands. Men find themselves in responsible positions who are not fitted for responsibility, and they make a mess of things. In war, of course, injustice is inevitable; it’s not possible to discriminate. Aren’t you being unjust in your turn by impugning all Englishmen because one, or even more than one, during a time of intense mental strain, treated you without consideration?” ... She made no response; and he continued almost immediately:

“You know, you impress me tremendously. You’ve made me intensely interested in these matters. I’ve not thought about these things before. I’ve stood apart from public questions—they haven’t seemed to be any affair of mine. But there’s where we make a mistake. Every question that concerns one’s country concerns the individual. The honour of the Empire is in our keeping. Men and women don’t bear that in mind sufficiently; we ought to have it in mind continually. It should be as much to us as personal honour, which most of us rate highly. Take this country, for instance, where old wrongs rankle and old wounds remain unhealed, it’s people like yourself who have the power to effect the healing process. You could do it—you, and others in this land which is so vitally important a part of the Empire. There is no wound of that nature which cannot be healed.”

He felt that he had not touched her. She remained manifestly unmoved and outside it all. She lived with the memories of the past.

“You may heal wounds and there will remain a scar,” she answered. “And for amputation cases there is no remedy.”

“You mean,” he said, “that in your alienated sympathies your patriotism has suffered amputation? Fellow-countrywoman, I am not going to believe that. You have tucked it away out of sight, and are cheating yourself into believing it isn’t there because you no longer see it. Well, I’ll tell you what you’ve done for me.” He smiled suddenly. “You have called my patriotism into being. I’d forgotten I had so precious a possession till you showed it to me.”

“I!” she said, amazed.

“You... and your daughter. For the greater part of last night I lay awake thinking over Miss Krige’s unpalatable history lesson. I don’t know enough about these things to judge whether it was altogether accurate, but I imagine she has got hold of facts—though, of course, there are two ways of presenting facts, and she is obviously biassed. But, anyway, what she said helped me to see the Dutch point of view, and it is essential for the complete understanding of a subject to see the view of either side; there is admittedly always something to be said for both. And she taught me besides that there are two principles which a great nation would do well to adopt—to forget the injuries it sustains, and to remember the wrongs which it inflicts upon others. In my opinion that is what we, as a nation, do. Aren’t we proving that in the way in which we administer this Colony? The Dutch can suffer no injustice under the existing system of independent government.”

Then suddenly he remembered that Krige was opposed to the present government. A light of understanding flashed across his brain. Krige was a revolutionary. He was working in concert with other malcontents against law and order and the existing state of affairs; and he, an Englishman, had allowed himself to be used as a tool towards this end. He wondered what the Kriges thought of him, if they considered him a dupe?—or worse?

In quick embarrassment he glanced at Mrs Krige. Unless she believed him to be a dupe, she must take him for a contemptible humbug. Her face told him nothing; its expression was sad and infinitely remote. After all, it was rather brutal to pursue the subject further. This stirring up of painful memories could serve no good purpose. More than a decade had passed since the sword had been sheathed; but it takes all of that time to realise the extent of the hurt; afterwards the mind readjusts itself and finds a new balance.

Chapter Thirteen.

Matheson had been over a fortnight at Benfontein before the question of his departure was touched upon, even then it was left to him to broach the subject. Day after day he expected Krige to make some reference to the purpose of his coming; but Krige ignored the matter. Every one behaved exactly as though the visit were an ordinary event, and the visitor at liberty not only to choose the hour of his departure, but to defer it as long as he pleased. They made him quietly welcome, and treated him after the first few days almost as a member of the household.

He was able in return to render Krige good service on the farm; several small matters he found needing attention which, with the aid of certain tools on the farm and others which Krige borrowed from a neighbour, he managed to accomplish fairly satisfactorily. It gave him a comfortable sense of squaring accounts. He had no wish to be indebted to the Dutchman for anything.

He felt differently in regard to the women—to Honor and her mother, at least. With the confidence the latter had reposed in him she had extended her friendship also, extended it in so frank a manner that he could be in no doubt about it. And Honor... Well, Honor was quite a separate consideration. He did not care to analyse his feelings in regard to Honor. He had an idea that it was safest not to dwell on this subject. But it was obvious that Honor as well as her mother felt kindly towards him. She went out of her way at times to reveal this amiable state of her feeling for him—considerably and unnecessarily out of her way, Freidja Krige opined. The elder sister stood aloof with Andreas, and looked on at the development of this unequal friendship, of which she disapproved, notwithstanding that she also entertained for their guest a liking she had not believed possible in the case of an Englishman.

Matheson had disarmed their antagonism by reason of his moderation. Even Krige opened out as the days passed, and seemed to find some pleasure in the other man’s company. The furtive distrust, so noticeable at first, disappeared from his manner entirely. He became altogether more sociable, and lost much of his taciturnity and blossomed into unexpected speech at times, a thing as surprising and unlooked-for as the sudden flowering of the Karroo following its period of barrenness.

But his speech never even directly hinted at Holman’s business. Matheson began to believe that he did not intend to send any return message through him. Finally he broached the subject himself one evening during the inevitable hour spent in Krige’s society on the stoep after supper. This quiet hour, devoted to smoking and fragmentary talk, had ceased to bore him. Krige was not loquacious at any time, but he had become more companionable; and, in his silent and rather tragic reserve, he was an interesting personality. The people who are slow of speech are not often stupid.

“It’s time, I suppose, that I was thinking of moving on,” Matheson observed apropos of nothing, breaking in indeed upon a protracted pause. “It’s so jolly here that I’m inclined to trespass on your hospitality. In return I hope, if there’s anything I can do for you when I get back, you will not hesitate to mention it I shall be seeing Holman, I expect, pretty soon. Perhaps you have a message you’d like me to carry?”

He surveyed Krige interrogatively; and Krige, after a long minute during which he continued to smoke meditatively as though he had not heard, suddenly took the pipe from his mouth, and lifted his eyes without moving any other part of him, and said, in lieu of answering the question:

“Are you tired of the farm already?” Matheson felt surprised, possibly he showed it. “No; I’m not tired of the farm. I thought I had made that clear. But I do not wish to outstay my welcome, and I have been here two weeks.”

“If you can stay a little longer,” Krige observed, “I shall have a message which I shall be glad for you to carry to Mr Holman. We will be sorry when you leave Benfontein. There is no need for haste unless you wish to go.”

That was precisely what Matheson did not wish; he was very willing to remain as long as they showed equal willingness to have his company. Each day as it passed made the thought of leaving less agreeable: there was no doubt about it in his mind any longer; some influence had gripped him powerfully; he was in the throes of a great emotional crisis—the result of the magnetic power which Honor Krige exercised over him. Nothing which he had ever experienced equalled in intensity his feeling for her. Was it love? He did not know. If it were love, it was different in quality from any other emotion of the kind he had known. The thought of possession, of spending his life with her, had not entered his mind—such a thought would have struck him then as presumptuous. A royal princess would not have appeared to him more inaccessible than this Dutch girl with her beauty and her ideals and her ingrained prejudices—prejudices that stretched, an artificially fed gulf of bitter waters, between them.

“I think you are wonderful,” he said to her one day.

They were seated under the pepper trees in the garden, and the sun, which was declining, slanted its rays through the fern-like foliage and played in bright patterns on her face and dress. She turned her face, with the sunlight playing upon it, towards him, and her eyes smiled mockingly.

“I suppose many men have told you so?” he added self-consciously.

“I meet so many men on the Karroo who are likely to tell me those things,” she answered. “How often have you said that to other girls?”

“Not once,” he answered truthfully.

She laughed, and the laugh sounded frankly incredulous.

“But—there is some one? ... There must be someone.”

He was sensible anew as he met her gaze of the barrier which divided them. And inexplicably her words called up the memory of a pair of brown, disapproving eyes; of a rock-strewn coast and moonlight upon the sea; of moonlight striking through the oleanders in a quiet road and falling upon a serious, upturned face; of the feel of soft lips meeting his...

“Isn’t there some one?” the sceptical voice persisted.

And he answered slowly:

“I—don’t—know.”

He wondered why until that moment he had not given Brenda a thought. The more dominating personality of Honor, with her surprising beauty, had submerged the other affair entirely. In less than a month he had almost forgotten the girl of the beach.

“Ah!” Honor exclaimed, and the note of disbelief was still distinguishable in her voice. “There is always some one.”

He found himself wishing almost fiercely that he had not admitted that state of doubt, but had repudiated promptly the suggestion conveyed in her question. He had put himself in a false position. There was not the slightest foundation for her supposition. It even crossed his mind to explain this—to go into details. He had a profound conviction that it would be prejudicial to his interests to leave matters in this unsatisfactory, indeterminate condition.

While he was weighing these important considerations, Honor abruptly snapped his chain of thought with a wholly irrelevant remark about the sunset; and he realised with a sense of mingled regret and relief that the time was past in which any explanation was possible. Honor never encouraged personalities, as he had noticed before; whenever the talk showed a tendency to slip to a more intimate note than usual she speedily brought it back to the impersonal.

He ignored the sunset. He did not even glance towards it.

“When are you going to show me more of the beauty of the Karroo?” he asked. “You have never taken me for a second ride.”

“Oh!” she cried, and he wondered whether it were simply the glow of the setting sun that flushed her cheeks so brightly. “We have ridden every day.”

“We have ridden, yes—but never alone since that first morning. The magic of the solitudes is not found among crowds.”

“Crowds!” murmured Honor, with a suspicion of laughter in her voice.

“Don’t tease,” he entreated. “You know exactly what I mean. One mind not entirely in sympathy with another can create its multitudes. Won’t you go with me again alone in search of the truth and the mystery which make the beauty of the veld? I want to see these things with your eyes.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because of your wonderful insight. One person looking into a puddle would see only the mud at the bottom, and another would perceive sufficient beauties of light and shade to transform even mud into a glorious substance. You have the gift of imagination—which is merely another term for being able to see truth. Teach me to see it also. I begin to believe that my destiny has led me here that I may learn that of you.”

“To see truth!” she said, and regarded him thoughtfully. “I wonder if you are being sincere? One doesn’t learn those things from another human being. But I’ll ride with you—to-morrow. Rise an hour earlier, and we will start before any one is about.”

She stood up suddenly and faced the west.

“See!” she said. “The sun has gone. I must go in and see about supper.”

He stood up also, and interposed himself in her path and looked down into her face, flushed with the sunset, and very fair and earnest in expression.

“I am always entirely sincere with you,” he said. “You mustn’t ever again question my sincerity.”

Honor appeared surprised, even a little startled; his outburst was unusual and unexpected, and his manner was very insistent. Without intending it she had hurt him; she regretted that.

“I was mistaken,” she acknowledged generously. “I believe that you are sincere.”

Then she left him, standing in the path feeling a little surprised at himself, and went swiftly up to the stoep and entered the house. For the first time in her life she had experienced shyness in a man’s presence.

Matheson remained for a while in a state of indecision; then he went indoors and stayed in his room until supper was ready. From his window he watched Krige ride away, as he had done on several occasions during the past week. That the business upon which he rode was important, Matheson judged from the fact that Krige dressed with care on these evenings, and discarded the veldschoens he used daily about the farm for highly varnished black boots; his clothes also were black. Invariably he rode away in advance of supper, and seldom returned before eleven o’clock, which was late for a man who rose daily with the sun.

Matheson was undecided whether these journeys were taken in pursuance of revolutionary or matrimonial designs. Krige did not wear the air of a lover; but a man may cherish romance who does not cut a romantic figure. It was difficult to imagine Krige in ardent mood; yet the picture of Krige as a married man and a father, seemed perfectly natural and likely; he was not the type of man who remains single.

No reference of his absence was ever made by the other members of the family; only his place at the supper-table was not set for him, which omission, with the agreeable substitute of the company of Mrs Krige and one of her daughters for Krige’s silent presence on the stoep after supper, marked the general acceptance of the fact.

Matheson experienced an increasing curiosity as to the nature of these journeys. Some inward prompting suggested that the message for Holman depended upon these nightly pilgrimages; and into his mind the first misgivings as to the honourableness of acting as intermediary in this business insinuated themselves, and gave him food for much unpleasant thought. A man has no sort of moral right to traffic in his honour.

Chapter Fourteen.

When Honor appeared on the stoep the next morning, dressed for the ride and carrying the early cup of coffee, the horses were saddled and waiting below the stoep, and Matheson stood in the path beside them doing something to his stirrup leather. He left what he was doing and came up the steps and joined her.

“That’s too bad,” she cried; “you’ve done all the work this morning.”

“No,” he contradicted, taking the cup from her hand. “You made the coffee. I call that sharing. But I have been waiting a good while.”

“It’s early though,” she said, and looked beyond the aloe fence to where the dew spread its silvery cobwebbed veil along the ground.

“Yes; it’s early.”

He drank the coffee slowly, standing beside her watching the soft colour deepening her clear skin, and the look of pleased expectancy shining in her eyes. He wondered whether she too knew the satisfaction which he was feeling in anticipation of their uncompanioned ride? It was not possible that she felt it in the same degree.

He put down the empty cup and assisted her to mount.

“Which direction do we take to-day?” he asked. “Last time we rode to the south.”

“So you remember?” She looked up, smiling, “There isn’t any choice to-day. I have a letter to carry for Andreas to Cornelius Nel. The Nels’ farm is about five miles from here. You will see it when we top the rise.”

“Isn’t it somewhat early for making calls?” he asked.

“We need only leave the letter,” she said. “We will stop there on our way home. It is possible they will want us to stay to breakfast; but if you prefer—”

“Oh, please!” he interrupted. “It’s for you to decide.”

“Yes. But you don’t understand. Cornelius hates the English; his brother, Herman, is different. Often they do not speak for months as a result of political disagreement. The farm is jointly theirs, but they have separate houses.”

“In that case,” he said, smiling involuntarily, “if we remain to breakfast, it would seem wise that you should breakfast with Cornelius and I with Herman. Are they married, by the way?”

“Cornelius is.”

“And does Mrs Nel share her husband’s prejudices?”

Honor reflected a moment. Then unexpectedly she broke into a laugh.

“Mrs Nel is of the opinion that had the Lord intended the different peoples of the earth to remain on friendly terms. He would never have contrived the confusion of tongues.”

“Ah!” Matheson’s smile broadened. “There is a good deal to be urged in defence of her argument,” he said.

“Do you know,”—Honor glanced at him swiftly—“I believe they will like you. You have none of the irritating characteristics of the average Englishman.”

“Look here!” he remonstrated. “When you disparage my countrymen, you disparage me. I wish you wouldn’t say those things. I don’t know how far you are in earnest, but I can’t take it as a compliment when you dissociate me from my country. Why not practise a little forbearance?”

“I think we will not remain to breakfast with the Nels,” was all she said in response, and rode on with her face turned from him and her chin held high.

Matheson felt exasperated. The qualities which appealed to her, tolerance and a sympathetic understanding, were inexplicably entirely lacking in herself: she did not desire to take any but a personal view. The injuries which she, with her family, refused to forget were ancient scars now; but they kept these scars from healing by constant probing, indifferent to the fact that the unhealed wound is painful only to the sufferer. She had not any sense of fair play, he decided, for all her English blood.

It was rather a silent ride they took that morning. Matheson, sensible of the tension, of the curious thrill of antagonism which he felt was common in both, held to his point stubbornly and refused to make overtures. He was not in the wrong; it was not for him to offer reparation.

His thoughts crystallised round her while he rode. He attempted to get a clearer insight into her mind. To grasp her point of view, and that of other Boers who thought and felt as she did, seemed to him essential in order to live harmoniously with these people. But her outlook was so circumscribed, so amazingly egotistical. This grievance was like every other thing which becomes a personal matter—a cult narrowed down to pettiness, which alienates even its sympathisers by the selfishness of its aims. He failed to understand how a beautiful nature could become corrupted by bitterness. It spoilt her, as all abnormal qualities must spoil what is simple and direct.

Honor brought her head round presently and met the eyes which he turned in response to her movement from the contemplation of steel-blue distances seen between his horse’s ears, to fix them upon her face.

“You came out in search of truth,” she said, with a suggestion of irony in her tones. “Have you found it?”

“No,” he answered bluntly. “How can I find what you refuse to show me?”

She flushed brightly and made no answer. After a moment or so he said:

“I think you are a little vexed that I asked you to ride alone with me this morning.”

“No,” she contradicted quickly, “no. There is no reason why I should not wish to ride with you. The first ride we took was at my suggestion. I have taken pleasure in watching your interest.”

Matheson felt while he looked at her that he had never been so baffled by any one in his life; her psychology was altogether beyond his understanding. On the whole he enjoyed that ride, though what constituted the enjoyment he would have been at a loss to explain. Possibly the assurance he felt, even in the moment of her annoyance, that despite her prejudices she realised, perhaps admitted to herself, that he had a hold upon her which threatened to weaken those carefully fostered antagonisms, was a sufficient satisfaction. He was certain of her interest in himself, and this gave him unbounded pleasure. His reciprocal interest was advancing with amazing rapidity. One soft look from those eyes which held a smile in them would cause him a thrill of happiness such as he had never known before. She excited him. Also her influence set stirring within him the beginning of a new responsibility which had for its ultimate object the complete reconciliation of her people with his own. It was unthinkable that Honor and he should remain enemies. The two races had buried their grievances and become united. But there were factions on both sides which remained outside the Union. He hated to think of Honor placed in one of these camps of irreconcilables. She was altogether too fine for that company. That sort of thing, racial jealousy, was what the undereducated man and woman mistook for patriotism. It is the lowest intelligences which keep alive the sense of injury.

While these new thoughts were shaping themselves in his mind, another idea presented itself which seemed to open out a way to some sort of an understanding. The solution lay with Herman Nel—the Boer who did not hate the English, and wrangled with his brother on the strength of his convictions. He must talk with Herman Nel. From him he might receive much useful information.

When he arrived at this determination they were already within sight of the farm. As they came nearer Honor pointed with her whip to a round cob building with a grass roof, which stood apart from the homestead and the outbuildings, as though, like its owner, it withdrew from what it failed to agree with, maintaining a comfortable isolation on open ground that defied surprise.

“That is the rondavel,” she explained, “which Herman Nel built for himself when his brother married. It’s small, but it is very comfortable. When he marries he will have to enlarge it.”

“Is he thinking of marrying?” Matheson asked.

“Oh, yes. He wants to marry Freidja. But just now they have quarrelled.”

“It would appear that he has a quarrelsome disposition,” Matheson said.

“No.” She smiled ever so faintly. “He is rather like yourself—he exasperates other people.”

“Ah!” He smiled too. “I should like to meet Mr Herman Nel.”

Mr Nel came out from his rondavel at that moment, stood for a second or so looking in their direction, and then came swiftly towards them. Honor, who was riding in the direction of the homestead, changed the horse’s course and went to meet him. It occurred to Matheson that she would have preferred to avoid the meeting; she did not seem pleased.

Nel came on unhesitatingly. When a short distance off he raised his wide-brimmed hat and flourished it; and Matheson observed that his hair was turning grey; grey showed also in his short pointed beard. He was a man of middle height and spare build, rather handsome, with an alert expression, and clear blue eyes with a humorous twinkle in them. The twinkle in them faded when they rested upon Matheson. It appeared to Matheson that they refuted Honor’s assertion of their owner’s bias in favour of the English. Nel’s face expressed curiosity, and something which looked very like contempt, as it lifted to his own. He transferred his attention almost immediately to Honor.

“So it’s you?” he said, shaking hands. “I gathered from Andreas last night that some one would be over from Benfontein in the morning. I was on the watch to intercept you.”

“I am afraid you are disappointed,” Honor said with a laugh.

“Not disappointed, but not wholly satisfied,” he answered. “How are they all at home?”

She made some reply in Dutch, which Matheson failed to understand, and which did not seem to afford Nel particular pleasure. He made no response, but looked somewhat dejected. Honor turned abruptly and brought Matheson into the conversation by effecting an introduction.

“Mr Matheson,” she explained, as the two shook hands, “is staying at Benfontein.”

“Yes, I know.” The tone was short and lacked cordiality. “Mr Holman’s friend, eh?”

For the first time since his arrival in the district Matheson heard Holman’s name spoken without friendliness; also the speaker gave it an un-English pronunciation; he had noticed that previously with the Kriges, and had put it down to the Dutch accent. It might be, he reflected, that Nel was jealous of Holman’s popularity at Benfontein.

“I was admiring your curious dwelling as we rode up,” he said. “You’ve built on the native style. I like it.”

Nel was vain about his house: he unbent a little.

“You must come and see it,” he said. “Look in on your return. If I am not there, go inside. There are no secrets—it is open to inspection.”

He looked towards Honor.

“You will be staying to breakfast? ... Leentje expects you.”

Honor hesitated; and Matheson, observing her hesitation, explained the difficulty.

“Miss Krige doesn’t trust me sufficiently to allow me to breakfast with her friends,” he said, smiling. “We belong to opposite camps. Couldn’t I inspect the rondavel while she delivers her message?”

“So!” said Herman Nel, obviously at a loss to understand the position. “I thought you would have business with Cornelius. But I will be very pleased if you will breakfast with me instead. They will not let Miss Krige leave until after breakfast.”

He laid a hand on the sweat-darkened, satin neck of Honor’s horse; and the beast turned its head and nosed him with friendly interest. The hand moved with the slow, rhythmic, caressing touch of the animal lover. He looked up at Honor smilingly.

“There will be a lot for you to see. The baby has cut his first tooth; that is perhaps the most important thing. When you have seen everything and have had breakfast, come to my bachelor quarters and eat meiboss with us. I will take care of Mr Matheson.”

Still Honor appeared reluctant. Matheson could not but notice it; it seemed as though she hesitated to leave him with Herman Nel.

“I think I ought not to stay,” she said.

“I think you will not be able to leave,” Nel replied. “When Leentje tells me a thing is to be so, I accept it; it is less unpleasant to do that I like peace. You will not forget that I am expecting you to meiboss, and that I may not stay too long by my house?”

“Cornelius will think it strange, perhaps, that Mr Matheson should breakfast with you,” Honor suggested.

“If Cornelius gives you to understand that he is either surprised or displeased, extend the invitation to meiboss to him and Leentje,” he replied.

She laughed, and flicked the reins a little vexedly, and rode on.

Nel kept pace beside the second horse. Matheson, despite his protest, dismounted and walked on the other side.

“Is this your first visit to this district, Mr Matheson?” he asked.

“It is,” he answered. “And I believe that in the short time I have been here more thought and experience have been crowded than during any other period of my life—certainly any period of like duration.”

The eyes of the two men met in a long steady scrutiny. Nel was the first to withdraw his gaze.

“That is interesting,” he replied slowly—“and surprising; so little happens here. But the less that happens the more time there is for thought. In my rondavel I have much leisure for thinking; but staying by Benfontein you are in good company. They are nice people, the Kriges—yes!”

The undoubted distrust with which Nel viewed him was forced anew on Matheson’s notice. He realised clearly that it would be necessary to allay this distrust before he could hope to gain his confidence. The man on the other side of the horse was shrewd, and it was not altogether surprising that he should entertain doubts of the Englishman’s honesty of purpose. He knew the errand that had brought him there, and formed his judgment in accordance with his knowledge. Matheson’s claim that he belonged to a different camp puzzled him considerably. He regarded the speaker as a liar. Men who work evil stealthily are not addicted as a rule to truth.

“We will leave your horse in the shade of this tree,” he said. “My boy will see to him until you are ready to start.”

He called for the boy, and then led the way inside.

Chapter Fifteen.

The rondavel was curious rather than beautiful. It was built entirely on the native principle, save that it had a fireplace and properly constructed chimney. In the centre four uprights of timber supported the roof—young trees which had been felled and barked under Nel’s supervision. The roof was of wattle and reed, the thatching of which had been done entirely by native women because in Nel’s opinion they understood the work thoroughly. The mud floor, smooth and of a perfect evenness, was subjected regularly to the unsavoury process of smearing—washing over the surface with a weak solution of cow-dung. This is less unpleasant than it sounds, and is admittedly the best treatment for mud floors; it prevents crumbling and unevenness of surface. Upon the floor were one or two good skins. A curious curtain of strips of hide attached to the supports divided the hut into separate apartments. Nel held aside this reimpe curtain and disclosed his bed.

“When I go to bed,” he explained, “I draw the curtain back; then my sleeping apartment is quite spacious.”

Behind the rondavel a second and smaller hut had been erected. This served as a kitchen and his boy’s quarters; and from this hut presently a Kaffir appeared and spread a cloth on the round table, and brought in the breakfast. They took their seats.

“You would have fared better by my brother’s house,” Nel observed, helping his guest to porridge with which raw cream was served. “I live simply here. It suits me. There are buttered mealies to follow—and biltong, if you care for it. It’s quite good eating cut fine—a pocket-knife is best for the purpose. I’ll cut you some to eat with bread and butter.”

“Thanks,” Matheson answered. “I call it excellent fare. For myself I should be satisfied with the porridge and that fine water melon to finish with.”

“Yes!” Nel regarded the huge green fruit that furnished the centre of the table. “We grow good melons—a very pleasant and refreshing fruit. It makes a nice confit, too. My sister-in-law is very clever in that way. It is she who keeps me supplied with meiboss, and other agreeable preserves.”

He went into a dissertation on the unsurpassed excellence of Dutch housewifery, and extolled the Dutchwoman’s knowledge in all branches of cookery, and the special preparation of the produce of the country. Matheson was not particularly interested in the subject; but the speaker and his quaint abode and curious mode of living interested him enormously. He had imagined that all Dutchmen were phlegmatic; slow of speech, slow of thought, heavy in their humour, and violent in temper. This Dutchman was altogether different from any type he had met. Instinctively he liked him. He had a feeling that Nel was predisposed towards reciprocating this liking; but the man was cautious. He talked continuously; and while he talked he was quite plainly taking stock of his visitor—thinking him out. He could not place the Englishman, and was frankly puzzled. The Englishman was agreeable, and seemed honest; but an honest man does not undertake a dishonourable mission.

“I expected to see you at the meeting last night,” he said presently.