F.E. Mills Young (continued 3)

He spoke with some abruptness, and fumbled in his pocket for his knife, which he opened deliberately, keeping his gaze fixed on Matheson’s face the while.

“It is the first I have heard of any meeting,” Matheson replied. “I suppose Mr Krige attended?”

“Yes. You think it wise to keep away, eh?”

Matheson stared hard at the speaker. The shrewd eyes withdrew their gaze and fixed themselves on the dried buckflesh which was being finely sliced with the sharp blade of the clasp knife. Matheson felt incensed.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “I wasn’t invited to attend. Why should it seem to you wise that I should keep away?”

Nel went on quietly dicing the biltong.

“When a man sells his country he does not usually attend the auction,” he said.

Matheson’s head went up with a jerk. It was the most astonishing moment in his life. Here was a man whose hospitality he was partaking of, with whom a minute before he had been in amicable conversation, accusing him of one of the worst crimes in the calendar; and for the life of him he could not tell whether the accusation were just or not. That was the worst of it, the most serious side of the business; he did not know the extent of his responsibility.

He raised his hand, prepared to bring his clenched fist passionately down on the table; but his arm dropped to his side, the hand fell open loosely. He sat back in his seat and stared amazedly at the composed face of the man who accused him of a thing so vile, so absolutely unthinkable.

“I think, Mr Nel, you will have to take that back,” he said quietly, “or prove your words.” And then, losing for a space the grip he had managed to get on his feelings, he burst out with some vehemence: “Damn it! What the devil do you mean?”

Nel pushed the plate of biltong towards the middle of the table, pocketed his knife, and sat forward, leaning with his arms on the cloth.

“You resent my words,” he said. “Why should you? Are you not the paid messenger of a German secret agent?”

“Holman! ... You mean Holman? Holman is—”

“A German,” interrupted Nel coolly. “In the Colony perhaps it suits him to pass as British. If you had read the letter you delivered to Andreas Krige you would have seen that he signs himself Holmann. That isn’t the English way of spelling the name.”

“You’ve read the letter?” Matheson asked quickly.

“No.” Nel smiled drily. “I saw only the signature. They do not trust me with the letter—no! When they can they keep me from their meetings. But last night I attended. I attend to talk common sense. They do not like common sense; they do not listen. When I talk Andreas Krige closes his eyes; when I have finished he opens them again and resumes as though I had not spoken.” The Boer became suddenly excited. “It’s devil’s work you are engaged upon, Mr Matheson. I am not surprised you feel shame to acknowledge your part in it.”

Matheson leaned his arms on the table also and brought his face close to the speaker’s. With an effort he controlled his temper. He was on the fringe of a discovery; he did not wish to prejudice his chances of learning what was so vitally important that he should know by rousing the other to anger. To learn more of this secret business was all that mattered for the present. In those days the fact that Holman was German was not in itself significant, but it was remarkable that he should conceal his nationality and pass as British. The whole thing in its lying secrecy wore a very sinister look.

“It seems rather much to ask you to believe, Mr Nel, that I am less well informed than yourself as to the nature of this business of Holman’s. He told me it was political; and I gathered that it was some party squabble. I consented to act as the bearer of his letter in part payment of a sum of money I owed him. I also undertook to keep my mouth shut. But in opening it to you I cannot be said to be giving information. You, know more than I do. It would seem I have been assisting in what is contrary to the interests of the Empire. I would let my hand rot off before I applied knowingly to such work.”

Nel shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t care that for the British Empire,” he said, snapping his fingers. “It’s working against the good of this country that concerns me. Look at this country, prosperous and free and developing rapidly. South Africa was never more prosperous. The conditions for the white races are favourable to all alike. We in South Africa enjoy as great liberty and freedom as any country; yet men like Krige and Cornelius—ah! and older and more responsible men whom I could name if I would—would plunge the country into bloodshed out of a bitter spirit of revenge. They have a sense of personal grievance; they seek to wipe it out with no care nor compunction for the wrong they will do others. We can’t get anything through war that we haven’t got. It is merely nominal privileges they seek. They want to separate South Africa from the British Empire. Even if they succeeded, what would they gain? Do they imagine they would be allowed to keep so great a prize? ... There is only one sure means of conquest.” He smiled, a slow, quiet smile. “It isn’t warfare... Propagation... that is the secret We multiply; and I tell you surely we will people South Africa. Your people come and go, but the Boer lives by the land. South Africa is his Fatherland. I bid them to have patience; but they want to see in this generation the result of the seed which lies in the womb of the future.”

“It’s rebellion, then, that is hatching?” Matheson said.

The present concerned him much more vitally than the future. The future of South Africa he believed was quite secure; there was little need to worry about that. He reflected for a space.

“The overthrow of the government... Yes; I begin to understand.”

Again he was silent, staring into the Dutchman’s flushed, earnest face. Nel’s eyes, alight with patriotic zeal, returned his gaze.

“I would do anything,” the Boer said—“anything in the world, to crush this spirit of rebellion—to rid the land of it for ever. There must be an end of racial bitterness. The welfare of the country depends upon the co-operation of Dutch and British. The Boers must learn to crush down personal feeling. The best men have done that in the interests of the Fatherland. What matters it, the flag we prosper under? The country belongs to the people who live in it. It’s personal feeling that is at the bottom of this discontent. There is no patriotism in it. It is not the wrong done them as a people, it’s the personal grievance that rankles. The whole spirit of rebellion is fed on personal animus. These men would injure their country out of a spirit of revenge. There is no sense in it; it is childish.”

He paused, and scrutinised Matheson closely for a moment or so.

“You say you are not wilfully assisting in sowing seeds of discord throughout the Union, yet you admit being in the pay of a man who has carried on this devil’s work for years. One day we will reap the harvest; and the result will be that brother will be against brother, friend against friend. A bloody civil war is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. Think well before you meddle again in what you don’t understand. I will give you a message to bear to your friend, Mr Holmann: tell him from me that he is a damned scoundrel.”

“I shall probably have a similar message to deliver to him on my own account,” Matheson answered. “I am obliged to you for enlightening me. And I can only say that I hope you believe me when I give you my word of honour that I had not the remotest suspicion of what you have informed me. I’m amazed. Of course, I’ve heard the Kriges’ story; I know they feel bitterly towards the British. But I imagined they voiced a quite insignificant minority.”

“They voice a minority—but not insignificant. Mostly this madness—for it is madness—shows itself among the most ignorant of the backveld Boers, in whom racial prejudice dies hard. They are not properly civilised, these men. They want freedom—freedom from taxation, from laws, and restraints. They are of the pioneer breed. They make good trekkers, but they don’t submit kindly to government. The men who lead them know better; but they are actuated by jealousy and hate. They are mad with hate, just mad; and a madman who isn’t under restraint is a danger to the population.”

With surprising suddenness Nel’s face softened wonderfully, the anger died out of his eyes.

“I get carried away,” he said apologetically. “I feel strongly, Mr Matheson. This matter is the one subject of dissension between me and my brother. Cornelius, like Lot’s wife, cannot look forward because some evil influence impels him always to turn back towards the shadow of the past.”

He put out a hand as though he waved the subject aside, and returned to his neglected duty as host.

“Come!” he said. “You are not eating. You mustn’t starve yourself because I talk too much.”

He passed the plate of biltong to his visitor and helped himself at the same time.

“The best guarantee that I accept your word that you acted in ignorance,” he said presently, “is that I have spoken as freely as I have. If you would, you could help largely in counteracting the evil influences that are working to undermine the peace of this country.”

He paused; and Matheson, looking up to inquire in what way he could be useful, discovered the searching eyes scrutinising him anew with disconcerting attentiveness. He laughed quietly.

“I don’t believe you are very sure of me yet,” he said.

“Oh! yes, I am... as sure as a man can be of another whom he knows so slightly. What I would say to you is, go back—you can do no good here—go back, and help to instil in the minds of your own countrymen a feeling of greater kindliness towards the Dutch. The racial bitterness is not all on our side. A little forbearance, a more generous spirit—what you call fair play, will lead to a better understanding. I believe that under tactful and sympathetic conditions of government the spirit of rebellion which exists to-day, which will exist for some time while men turn to look back at that shadow of the past, will eventually die out; and the union of the two white races in South Africa will become cemented. The prosperous future of the country depends on that. It is one camp; there must be no enemies in it.”

His mouth lifted at the corners humorously.

“This farm is an example of dissension in the camp,” he said. “I build myself a rondavel, with a rope ladder leading to the roof which I can draw up after me. When we have eaten I will show you. No one knows of that retreat. I have kept my secret; then, when I do not wish to be found, I climb into my secret chamber, and they look for me in vain. My rondavel has a double roof.”

Matheson looked up with surprise at the innocent-looking grass roof, while Nel observed him smilingly.

“A child with a toy!—eh, Mr Matheson?” he said. “I was just a big boy when I planned my house.”

Chapter Sixteen.

Nel showed something of the disposition of a boy when later he revealed to Matheson the secret of his rondavel. He fixed his rope ladder to a beam in the roof, mounted, and, removing a part of the thatch, disappeared into the obscurity beyond through the opening he had made. For a moment his face showed in the opening, smiling down on Matheson, who stood below watching the proceedings with interest.

“Follow me,” he said. “It is quite spacious up here, but somewhat hot. And there are cockroaches.”

Matheson swarmed up the ladder after him, and thrust his head and shoulders through the opening and looked about him. It was difficult to see anything in the gloom, but after a while he made out Nel’s figure seated with the shoulders against the thatch. It was not possible to stand upright; the room at its highest point was not above five feet; but there was space enough for three or four persons to sit with ease, and a certain amount of ventilation came through holes in the grass roof.

“One would not perhaps use it for a sitting-room,” Nel said; “but it is a good hiding place.”

“Excellent,” Matheson replied. “No one would suppose, judging from the exterior, that there was space enough between the roof for a room like this. It’s deceptive from below.”

“Yes. I decided on a high roof for coolness, and the double thatch for the same reason. It was an afterthought to make use of the space between. I planned this loft, and elaborated it until it developed into my secret chamber. The movable thatch and rope ladder I made myself. I will ask you to descend now. It would not distress me if Miss Krige surprised my secret, but I would not have it generally known.”

Matheson, as he observed Nel unhitch his ladder and fold it up and thrust it inside a chest which stood on the floor, realised that this display of confidence was Herman Nel’s way of showing that he trusted him, that he accepted his word as to his ignorance of the nature of the enterprise he had so heedlessly embarked upon. It was a practical proof of faith in his future discretion.

They resumed their seats and discussed South African politics and the future of the country, until the arrival of Honor, with Cornelius, his wife, and the baby, broke up their talk.

Mrs Nel was a heavily made woman, dark complexioned and far from handsome. Cornelius had married her for no physical attraction, but for the many domestic qualities for which she was justly renowned. The baby was not handsome either; but it was good, and in Cornelius’ opinion a good baby was preferable to a pretty baby. He, himself, was rather like his brother, only taller and more stoutly built.

Matheson was introduced, and the newcomers shook hands.

“Why did you not come to my house?” asked Cornelius. “My wife and I would have been very pleased.”

Matheson explained that the rondavel had interested him, that Mr Herman Nel had kindly invited him to breakfast, and he had been glad to accept Mrs Nel laughed when he finished speaking.

“Ach! Herman lives like the Kaffirs,” she said. “There is never anything to eat by his house. You will be hungry just now.”

“Indeed, we fared sumptuously,” Matheson answered.

“And we have not finished,” Herman Nel put in. “We are about to taste some of your very good meiboss. Come and join us.”

Mrs Nel took some meiboss, and allowed the baby to suck a small piece, which it did with considerable enjoyment. She listened complacently to the general appreciation of this delicious preserve which she made according to a recipe that had been in the family for generations. Mrs Nel’s meiboss was unrivalled.

“Lekker!” she said to the baby. “It is lekker, eh?”

She put her fingers in the jar and drew out another piece. For the first time since she had entered Honor looked in Matheson’s direction, looked with a quick gleam of hostility in her eyes, as though expecting to detect in his expression something of the amusement she believed he experienced at the Nels’ expense. His steady gaze as it met hers disarmed her resentment. If it was a little unusual to thrust one’s fingers into a jar the contents of which others were sharing, it was a practice for which a precedent could be claimed. He helped himself from the jar and passed it to Honor.

“Jolly good stuff,” he said. “I don’t know when I have tasted anything half so good. Made with apricots... They’d like this in England.”

Mrs Nel proceeded to ply him with elucidatory questions about England.

“It is always raining there,” she announced by way of comment.

“The sun is to be seen on occasions,” he returned. “Also cases of heat apoplexy have been known. Still, it is drier on the Karroo.”

“Ach, the Karroo! Generally we have a drought here. One wishes the Lord had distributed things more evenly. But no doubt. He had His reasons. It would not be well for us to have everything as we would like.”

The conversation hung after that, until Herman Nel revived it by a discussion of the various accepted methods for raising water: he put forward certain projects of his own in this connexion which Cornelius and Matheson disposed of as impractical. Cornelius was inclined to accept the drought, as the unenlightened Boer accepts scab and other evils, as a visitation of Providence which it would be futile as well as impious to attempt to evade. He was a fairly prosperous man, but the profitable working of the farm was largely owing to the more energetic younger brother, whose keener intelligence and sound judgment co-operated successfully with the other’s undoubted skill in, and knowledge of, all branches of farming. Cornelius disapproved of many of his brother’s advanced, and what he termed English, ideas; but he was quick to appreciate the advantage when he reaped a profitable return on them. He was shrewd enough to recognise that alone he could not have achieved the prosperity he enjoyed.

The conversation shifted from wells to motor-cars. This convenient means of transport had found its way on to many farms. It linked up scattered districts and decreased distances enormously. Herman Nels spoke of getting a car, but his brother, and his brother’s wife, opposed the idea energetically.

“My! I would never trust myself in one of those things,” Mrs Nel declared emphatically, unconscious that her decision was in her brother-in-law’s opinion an argument in favour of the thing she depreciated. “It was never intended that we should rush through the air like that.”

“And yet there is the railway,” Matheson reminded her.

“Ach! the railway has its uses. But it does a lot of damage. Do you remember, Cornelius, when a spark from the engine fired your good trucks loaded with forage? And the Government would give no compensation, because no one actually saw the spark that set it alight come from the engine. As though it could have been fired any other way! Ach né! the railway is no good. The Lord gave us oxen for beasts of burden.”

“A bit slow in the going, aren’t they?” Matheson suggested.

“Those who travel slowly travel surely,” she answered conclusively.

“I would like a car if we could afford one,” Honor said. “But nothing is so good as a horse.” She looked at Matheson, and added: “We ought to be mounting.”

He rose promptly, and a general move followed. When he was on his feet Cornelius delivered himself of the weighty reflections which had kept him silent during the recent discussion.

“The railway is very well; but it should make full compensation for all loss. The railway is controlled by the government; the government is controlled by the capitalists. That is not good, no!”

“The landowner is something of a capitalist himself,” Herman Nel put in drily.

His brother bent on him a look of heavy displeasure.

“The landowner in the future will represent the power of this country,” he said, and closed the argument by lighting his pipe.

Every one accompanied the visitors outside, and watched them mount and ride away. Herman Nel assisted Honor to the saddle, and while he remained with his hand on the rein he looked up at her and said quietly:

“Carry my love to Freidja.”

He did not seem to expect an answer, for he stepped back as he spoke; and Honor made no response, only when the other adieux were spoken and the horses started, she looked back at the man standing apart from the rest and smiled at him as she rode away.

For a while Matheson and his companion rode in unbroken silence. He was busy with the thoughts which Herman Nel’s disclosure had set fermenting in his brain. The course he would follow was plain. But it was not easy after the Kriges’ courtesy to leave them summarily; it was not possible, he felt, to do so and refuse to carry Krige’s message without causing offence. The risk had to be taken however. He could no longer lend himself to the furtherance of a matter which he now admitted freely he had not approved of from the first. He ought never to have allowed himself to be mixed up in the affair. It was not easy to draw back; it was less easy to rid himself of the influences which, spreading over three weeks of intimate daily life with Honor—for it was always in Honor his thoughts centred—affected him powerfully, changing all his view of things, altering his entire perspective. It was amazing what a grip this girl had succeeded in getting on his imagination. Try how he would he could not shake his thoughts clear of her. Abruptly he glanced in her direction. She rode with the reins loose on the horse’s neck; her face, which was partly averted, wore an air of abstraction, the eyes fixed with unfocussed vision upon the distance. She too seemed to have much to occupy her thoughts.

“I say!” he said, and broke off suddenly, not knowing after all what he intended saying.

She turned her face and looked towards him with gravely inquiring eyes.

“I’ve got to go away,” he jerked out after a pause. “I’ve got to get back. This is very pleasant, but... it has to come to an end.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and looked a little puzzled—“of course. We expected you would be leaving shortly. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to go.” He was insistent on this point. “I regret going—immensely.” He paused, and added after a thoughtful moment: “For some reasons I regret that I ever came.”

“That is not very kind,” she said. “No,” he allowed; “it doesn’t sound kind. But... you know. You understand... I’ve been here too long.”

“I think,” she said, breaking the short embarrassed silence with a remark so apposite that he was considerably taken aback, “that Herman Nel’s company has affected you. I did not wish to leave you with him.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“He is a man who holds mistaken ideas,” she replied. “In my opinion he is a very fine man,” he returned, a note of quiet admiration in his voice. “But I don’t see what grounds you have for assuming my mind to be so responsive to tutelage. I am not more readily impressed than most people.”

She laughed in some amusement, but made no comment on his speech. It flashed into her mind to wonder whether he was so fixed in his opinions that she would fail to sway him if she essayed the task? And thinking so, and looking up with the laugh still in her eyes, she surprised so warm an expression of admiration in his glance that her cheeks burned under his look. She turned her face away. It seemed to her that in his eyes she had read an answer to her thought.

“You do not go to-day?” she asked presently.

“No,” he answered sharply.

A conviction that he ought to go without delay assailed him with irritating persistence. With the moment for decision, the thought of leaving Benfontein became less easy; he did not want to go. He believed that she was aware of his reluctance, that in a measure she shared it. He felt her will joining with his to oppose his decision.

“Then at least we can have one other ride together,” she said softly.

“Yes.” He flicked at the flies that were worrying the horse, and did not look at her. “We will have one last ride together—since you are good enough to propose it.”

“That is my way of showing I am sorry for being disagreeable,” Honor observed.

Which remark, calling for contradiction, making too a special claim upon his gratitude, moved him to express warm appreciation of her consistent kindness, and his deep regret at the thought of departure. He did not intend to have any misunderstandings on that head. He wanted to make it quite clear that it was in relation to herself the approaching separation affected him so gravely. He was busy with his explanation, and getting, as he was aware, somewhat deeply involved in an analysis of emotions that threatened, while leading nowhere in particular, to leave him presently stranded high and dry above the watermark of conventional intercourse, when Honor interrupted him, snapping effectually the chain of his ideas.

“Visitors!” she cried.

The displeased ring in her voice, the vexed surprise of her expression, were eloquent of her resentment at this unlooked-for event. They were nearing the homestead. Matheson, intent upon his companion to the exclusion of everything, failed, until roused by her exclamation to a closer observation, to see the low buggy standing in the shade of the big aloes. A Kaffir stood by the horses’ heads. He presently led the animals towards the stable, and the buggy, bumping into the open, showed a heavy list on the driving side which witnessed to the girth of the owner beneath whose weight the springs had all but collapsed. This familiar sight drove the vexation out of Honor’s eyes. She smiled suddenly.

“It’s Oom Koos,” she said—“Oom Koos Marais. That’s all right. I feared it might be a stranger.”

On the whole, Matheson decided on reflection, the presence of the newcomer would facilitate rather than hinder his departure.

Chapter Seventeen.

Oom Koos Marais was a Boer of the old style, who had acquired what little education he possessed, as he had acquired other things during the leisurely course of a frugal, industrious, and accumulative span of fifty odd years, unaided and by dint of his own perseverance and his lack of all pretence. Most men trusted Oom Koos; Oom Koos in turn trusted no man, and only one woman—his wife. He concealed his wealth in his house; read his Testament; did not flog his Kaffirs, because he had grown too stout and the power had gone from his arm; and was bitterly opposed to the Scab Act. Apart from this, he was an amiable, simple-minded man, of staunchly conservative principles, with a big heart, and certain fixed ideas of life which no argument could unsettle. Any one who attempted to convince Oom Koos against his judgment inevitably arrived at the cul-de-sac which prohibited further progress when Oom Koos broke in gently with the relevant impertinence: “As my old father used to say, I have my good sight and my good hearing, which remain unaffected when men talk foolishness.”

Oom Koos was partaking of a late breakfast when Matheson rode up with Honor. Honor dismounted and went inside, and Matheson took the horses to the stable, a privilege he had insisted upon after the first ride, off-saddled, and then returned to the house to find the newcomer smoking a big calabash pipe near the open window of the living-room, sending heavy wreaths of blue smoke into the air through which his big face looked serenely like a setting sun obscured by clouds.

Andreas, with his hat on, about to depart to his work, delayed his start in order to introduce Matheson when the hitter appeared on the stoep; and, following upon the introduction, a huge hand, having first waved aside the smoke-cloud which obscured the vision, was slowly extended, a hand which looked capable of felling an ox, and assuredly of gripping another heartily, and Matheson felt a moist palm lying in his, and was almost ashamed of his own strong grip in returning the flabby handshake.

“Moiré, Mynheer!” said Oom Koos.

Matheson replied to this greeting in English, explaining, apologetically that always he had been a fool at languages, and that he did not speak the taal.

“You will not have been long in the country, eh?” Oom Koos said pleasantly, as one who considered the taal the language of the country, and its acquirement the natural outcome of residence therein. “Do you think of becoming a farmer?”

“Mr Matheson takes more interest in gold than in mohair,” Honor put in, with the tiniest shade of malice in her smile.

Oom Koos farmed two thousand morgen and principally ran goats on the land. At Honor’s speech his face lost its amiable complacency, his expression darkened.

“That is all the English care for,” he said abruptly—“to make big holes in the ground and take the gold and leave the holes. Ja.”

“Miss Krige does me an injustice,” Matheson protested. “The mines lured me only for a brief while. Engineering is my profession. I go back to it when I leave here.”

“So!” remarked Oom Koos, and smoked reflectively. “Do you make a long stay at Benfontein?” he asked.

“I have made a long stay,” Matheson answered. “I leave to-morrow, if that is convenient to Mrs Krige.”

“To-morrow, eh? I am going by De Aar to-morrow. If it suits you, I will be very pleased to drive you.”

This arrangement was so entirely convenient, and so satisfactory in that it fixed the day and settled definitely the time for his departure, that Matheson’s reluctant acceptance of the kindly intentioned offer sounded somewhat ungracious even in his own ears. He was amazed at himself. Here was an offer which exactly suited his plans, and which relieved the Kriges of the necessity of driving him into town, and he felt resentful at having to avail himself of it. At the back of his mind had loomed the hope that Honor would drive with him to De Aar. For some reason of her own Honor appeared equally dissatisfied with the arrangement. She listened to Matheson’s halting acceptance, and to her mother’s mildly uttered protest against this sudden departure, with thinly disguised impatience, breaking in on Mrs Krige’s expressions of regret.

“It all depends on what hour you start, Oom Koos. Mr Matheson has an engagement to ride with me to-morrow morning,” she announced.

“Certainly. I am not forgetting that,” Matheson said promptly.

Oom Koos looked from one to the other and smoked deliberately and smiled.

“Mijn Maachtij!” He delivered himself of a deep breath. “I have been young myself, Honor. When you release Mr Matheson I will drive him to the town. That shall not interfere with your pleasure.”

Inexplicably, now that his departure was definitely fixed, though the responsibility for its settlement was his, Matheson chafed at the thought of going, and felt quite unjustly aggrieved with the worthy Dutchman’s amiable endeavour to suit his convenience. He considered Oom Koos officious. And then he fell to blaming Honor. Why had she not attempted to dissuade him that morning? Why had she taken the announcement of his departure so calmly, showing an indifference that seemed to indicate that his going affected her no more than the going of any other chance visitor? Simply she had appeared not to care; and that hurt him. Bidding good-bye to her would not, he knew, be an easy matter for him. It would have consoled him somewhat to know that it would not have left her unaffected. He had a persuasion that though he was leaving Benfontein it would not be for ever: some day he would travel again in that direction; and the next time he came it would not be on another man’s business.

The thought of that unfinished business harassed him not a little. He had yet to inform Krige that he had reconsidered his offer to carry a message for him to Holman, that it was uncertain when he would see Holman. It was an awkward explanation to make, involving unpleasant possibilities, and raising invidious suggestions; but there was no prospect of evasion; it had to be done. It was not possible, he felt, to go into this before a third person; he must mention the matter to Krige privately. Usually no difficulty to private talk presented itself. In ordinary circumstances he would have deferred it till the evening, and said what was necessary during the half-hour when he was left to the uninterrupted enjoyment of Krige’s society; but the arrival of Oom Koos complicated matters. His best chance of seeing Krige alone he believed was after the newcomer had gone to bed. He decided to await his opportunity, and put the affair aside with the quick impatience that characterised his treatment generally of unpleasant matters. After all, the man could not oblige him to carry his communications. If no alternative offered he could at least refuse point blank at the last moment.

As the day wore on two things became dear to Matheson: that the enormous Dutchman belonged to the same faction as Krige, and that his visit to Benfontein had some connexion with Holman’s communication. He saw Oom Koos, with the letter in his hand and his big glasses on his large nose, seated at the table in the living-room poring over its contents during the quiet hour of the hot afternoon when he himself was resting in the shade of the trees, and inclined, but for his interest in Oom Koos’ doings, to sleep.

After a while Mynheer Marais came out and joined him, lowering his great bulk with heavy cautiousness into one of the cane chairs.

“You take your ease,” he said. “That is well in this country. It is very warm, eh?”

“A Turkish bath would seem cool by comparison,” Matheson replied.

“So! You like the heat? ... No!” Oom Koos chuckled, and mopped the perspiration from his florid brow. “It makes some men thin, while others prow fat—according how they take their ease. But you like the country?”

“Yes; the country’s all right,” Matheson replied without enthusiasm.

“It is a fine agricultural country,” Oom Koos proceeded. “South Africa has a great future. Oh, ja! There will be more gold got out of mohair than out of the ground. You cut the wool and it grows again; the ground yields its minerals, and that is finished. If you ever travel by Three Sisters come to my farm—any one will tell you where Oom Koos Marais lives. I and my good wife and my good son will make you welcome.”

“Thanks. It’s very kind of you.”

Matheson’s tone was non-committal. He was undecided whether Oom Koos accepted him as a friend, or was merely trying to sound him in respect to his opinions. Possibly Krige had told him that he was uncertain as to his views. If Krige felt any curiosity in this matter he had not revealed it; he had never, even indirectly, tried to get information from him. Oom Koos’ next remark settled his indecision.

“You are a friend of Mr Holman, I hear? He is also my very good friend.”

Matheson faced him more directly.

“I am no friend of Mr Holman,” he replied. “I have some acquaintance with him. The little I know of him does not reflect to his credit.”

The big Dutchman evinced surprise, but of so mild a nature and untinged with any resentment, that it struck Matheson the surprise was not altogether genuine.

“So! You amaze me, Mr Matheson. I have always believed that to be a very good man,” he declared. “It is a proof that men are not lightly to be trusted. You are not perhaps mistaken; ... Ach, né! A man should select his friends, as he selects his wife, with consideration for their virtues.”

Matheson smiled broadly.

“A good many of us would be fairly lonely if that rule were applied,” he said.

Whereat Oom Koos laughed gently, refusing in his amiable good nature to take this cynical conclusion seriously. And after that he talked of farming, and the increasing export trade in mealies, and the excellence of his mohair.

As a result of their conversation it did not surprise Matheson that he was debarred from bearing any part in the conference that took place between the two Dutchmen that same evening. With the finish of supper when, according to custom, he went out on the stoep to smoke, instead of being accompanied by Krige, he discovered Mrs Krige following in his wake, cutting him off from the others, who remained seated at the table which Honor, assisted by Koewe, was clearing.

“Mr Marais wants to talk business with Andreas,” Mrs Krige explained.

When the white cloth was removed the two men drew their chairs closer about the table; and the hum of their voices, with the pungent smell of Oom Koos’ calabash, assailed the senses insistently, and afforded reasonable grounds for Mrs Krige’s suggestion that they should move their chairs farther along the stoep. Matheson accordingly moved them beyond sight of the room and its inmates, where the sound of voices reached them muffled and indistinct, and the powerful scent of Boer tobacco ceased from being an offence.

“He is the kindest dear in the world,” she said; “but he does smoke vile tobacco. And he prefers to smoke inside. The smell of it hangs about the room for days.”

Freidja came out and joined them, and after a long interval Honor made her appearance on the stoep, tired and rather cross and unnaturally silent. She had been making bread, and still wore her sleeves rolled above the elbow. Matheson’s glance fell admiringly to the round white arms, and then lifted to the fair face which even in the fading light showed plainly its owner’s discontent.

“Come and sit down,” he said.

“No.” She stood with her shoulders flattened against the wall of the house, and did not move. “I want air. How hot it is!”

“You are tired, Honor,” Mrs Krige said. “It has been a trying day.”

The ghost of a smile flickered across Honor’s face.

“It has,” she agreed. And Matheson felt that she included him in the day’s list of trying experiences.

“I think you tire yourself with riding so much before breakfast,” Freidja observed.

In the jagged state of Honor’s nerves her temper was not proof against this. She turned sharply in her sister’s direction.

“Some one had to ride to the Nels’ farm,” she retorted. “I hadn’t any choice since you wouldn’t go.”

She emitted a short, vexed laugh, and moved abruptly.

“I am going into the garden to search for what I shan’t find.”

Matheson rose promptly.

“I say,” he cried, “that sounds interesting. Let me go with you and help in the search... May I?”

She looked at him uncertainly.

“You don’t know what I am wanting to find,” she said.

“Well, whatever it is, two people are more assured of success than one.”

“All right.” Honor preceded him down the steps. “I am going in search of my lost temper,” she announced over her shoulder.

Freidja looked after the two figures disappearing in the obscurity of the shadowy garden, and her face hardened as the sound of a laugh was borne bade to their ears on the motionless air.

“I think it is well that Mr Matheson leaves to-morrow,” she said, and turned in sullen protest towards her mother.

Mrs Krige, looking deep into the shadows, answered nothing.

Chapter Eighteen.

No opportunity for talking with Krige offered itself to Matheson that night; he left him still earnestly conferring with Oom Koos when he went to bed. Honor assured him that they would probably remain so until the day broke. They did. He heard Mynheer Marais going heavily to bed in the dawn; heard later Mynheer Marais’ loud snoring which sounded so plainly through the thin wall that he was prevented from getting further sleep.

He rose early, and dressed to the accompaniment of Oom Koos’ trumpeting, and went quietly out by the window and along the stoep. The window of the living-room remained open, as it had been left overnight, in despite of which the fumes of Mynheer Marais’ pipe hung about the room even as Mrs Krige had described, a coarse heavy smell of stale tobacco.

Matheson halted at the window and thrust his head inside and sensed the atmosphere. Then he stepped within. On the floor beneath the table, where presumably it had fallen and been overlooked, lay the letter Holman had written to Andreas Krige. He recognised the neat legible handwriting without difficulty; he had studied it to some purpose coming along in the train, and he knew the greyish-blue tint of the paper. The letter was not in its envelope, nor could he see the envelope anywhere in the room.

He stooped deliberately and picked up the written sheet of paper, and stood by the table with the mysterious document in his hand. There was no thought in his mind of reading it; it was, he knew, written in Dutch; but he had a wish to satisfy himself in regard to the signature; and he opened the letter and turned to the second page and looked at the name which footed it—K. Holmann. There was no doubt about that; and yet he had seen Holman sign his name at least a dozen times, and on no occasion had he affixed the second N. Herman Nel was right: the man was a scoundrel, and engaged in devil’s work.

So absorbed was he, while he stood there by the table turning the letter in his hands, so deeply plunged in thought, piecing what he had recently learnt with the imperfectly remembered past which recurred in fitful and broken consecutiveness; episodes and fragments of speech, all relevant to the main issue and seldom joining on to one another, darting into his mind with the quick unexpectedness, the blinding bewilderment of a lantern flashed out of darkness into the eyes; so fiercely angry at having lent himself to this man’s nefarious schemes—schemes which while Herman Nel had talked he had inclined to doubt, considering them too wildly improbable for credence, and which now he doubted no longer; so intent was he upon the problem of how he should act in regard to this knowledge which had come to him unsought, that he did not hear the door open, nor see the figure standing in the opening, quietly observant of him. It was not until the draught caused by the open door fluttered the paper in his hand that he looked up; and immediately he became aware of Honor watching him from the threshold, a cold little smile on her face and a look of scorn in her deep eyes.

She came forward into the room, closing the door behind her. Matheson was so surprised by the strange manner of her entry, and by the scornful disapproval of her look, that he remained motionless and silent, staring at her, with the open letter crushed in his hand.

“It is my brother’s letter you have there, I believe?” she said.

He relinquished it to her.

“It was on the floor,” he explained.

“I understood you had no knowledge of Dutch,” she said. “You gave us to understand that... but you were reading the letter.”

Matheson flushed darkly.

“I have no knowledge of Dutch,” he answered. “I have not read the letter—if I were sufficiently curious, and also sufficiently dishonourable to wish to do so, I could not. I was interested in the German signature of a man I always believed to be English.”

She still, he saw, disbelieved him. He had never felt so passionately angry with any one in his life before.

“If I had read the letter I doubt whether it could give me more information of this miserable business than I have already,” he added in tones like edged steel.

“We will see,” she rejoined, and spread the letter on the table, while he remained in a cold amazed silence, and read it aloud.

“My dear Andreas,—

“I am in communication with Piet van der Byl, and friendly burghers in the F.S. You will be glad to hear that we have every reason to hope for a good response in the event of such happenings as are predicted. The northern and eastern areas are sympathetic. Every quarter which I have tapped responds with the most encouraging readiness. I have little doubt that the desire which lies so near to our hearts will be achieved entirely to our satisfaction and sooner than we expect.

“The messenger who delivers this has no knowledge of the taal. He is, I believe, a fool, who can be bought over if judiciously approached. You can safely send by him an answer to this. I shall be glad to have some account of the attitude your district takes up, and the names of any men who are likely to be of service to the cause. The time is not yet fulfilled when our expectations can be realised, but I feel it approaching, and it is well to be prepared.

“Faithfully yours,

“H.K. Holmann.”

When she had finished reading Honor folded the letter deliberately and looked up.

“You have gained a little information, haven’t you?” she asked; and Matheson realised that she referred to the insulting allusion to himself in the letter.

Why she had read the letter to him he failed to understand; he could not divine her reason. Quite possibly she was not moved by any reason; some swift inexplicable impulse more probably governed her action. He believed that already she regretted having yielded to this impulse; he read signs of a growing distress in her look.

“I have gained a little information,” he answered—“nothing that matters. I wish I could feel obliged to you for this unlooked-for display of confidence, but unfortunately it doesn’t carry any sort of conviction. You’ve no trust in me; your words prove that. You think, with the writer of the letter, that I’m a fool who can be made use of, and who isn’t dangerous, who doesn’t in short count—”

“No,” she interrupted in a low voice. “No!” He went on as though he had not heard her. “In one sense you are right—I’m not dangerous. Simply I could not, if it lay in my power, injure you. Whatever you did—and I believe you contemplate something hateful—I could only stand by silent, and regret the misconception which is leading you on to this miserable folly. You are led away by others—by men who have some ignoble end to serve, and are using you, as one of them has used me, as a tool.”

She lifted her head proudly and looked him steadily in the eyes, and answered with a quiet, and what appeared to him absurd dignity:

“I am led by patriotism and a hatred of injustice, Mr Matheson—not by any man.” He made an impatient movement. “You are ignorant of the very rudiments of patriotism,” he said. “You have educated yourself to one end, and you go forward blindly, seeing nothing of the evil of this flame of hate you are helping to fan into a conflagration—intent on an impossible goal.”

“Not impossible,” she insisted. “You are altogether mistaken,” he went on. “You won’t admit that, of course. Most persons with a grievance are unreasonable; they become obsessed with the one idea. You imagine you are out for reform. Even if you were sincere in believing that, you are too clever not to know that reforms don’t come about the way you are working. Impulsive reform leads to reaction. Change to be enduring must be gradual. That—the right sort of reform—is taking place every day; it goes on year by year. Injustice was deported long since. We are making all the compensation possible.”

She rested a hand on the table and leaned towards him, a gathering resentment smouldering in her eyes.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You can’t put yourself in our place—in the place of any of these people who have suffered. What right have you to talk of these things? You haven’t lost your birthright. If you had,”—she smiled faintly—“I am quite convinced you would fight for its recovery.”

“You haven’t lost your birthright either,” he replied—“and some of you know it.”

Herman Nel’s words leapt suddenly to his mind: “A country belongs to the people who live in it.” South Africa belonged to the South African. The British Empire could not, did not desire to, dispute that.

She turned aside and went to the window and stood there, her air a little drooping as though she were weary, her eyes travelling listlessly across the shining wonder of dew-drenched sunlit veld.

“What’s the good of talking?” she said. “I’ve tried to show you—to make you see our side. At one time I thought I was succeeding. But you don’t understand.”

“I appreciate the hurt, but not your remedy,” he answered. “You would start a rebellion for a grievance. No successful upheaval was ever based on so paltry a foundation. Nothing worth achieving can be brought about by unworthy methods. Look here!” He joined her at the window, and stood beside her scrutinising her partly averted face. “You don’t know how much this means to me... your part in it. I’m not concerning myself for the present with anything outside that I hate the idea of your becoming obsessed with this cult of revenge. I hate it—in connexion with you. You are splendid and sweet; you are too good for that sort of thing—altogether. Miss Krige—Honor, don’t waste anything so precious as life by living in the past: the present is so good—so tremendously good. Don’t spoil it.”

He possessed himself of her hand and gripped it firmly, holding it between both his.

“I’m a blundering idiot. I’m saying all the wrong things. Be patient with me,” he entreated. “I know you’ve been hurt—badly hurt. I’d like to make reparation, if that were possible... and it isn’t. But I do care... Honor, you know I care...”

A soft colour crept into her cheeks, deepened, spread to her brow and throat. There was a quality in his voice, in his touch, which was unmistakable. She was unprepared. He had come perilously near, she felt, to hating her that morning. She had realised his anger and been unmoved by it; his tenderness affected her deeply; but she managed to control her emotion.

“You have been very considerate always,” she returned quietly—“and impartial I’ve liked that in you. Whatever happens, I believe that in our hearts you and I will remain friends—even if we don’t meet in the future.”

“Oh! we shall meet,” he said confidently.

But she shook her head and smiled faintly and made no reply in words.

“Do you mean you would rather we didn’t meet?” he asked, in tones of hurt surprise.

“No; not that.”

She attempted to withdraw her hand, but he prevented her, and she desisted.

“What then?” he asked, and was conscious of a sudden overmastering passion for her. A fierce desire to seize her and crush her in his arms wellnigh swept him off his balance. Hunger for her gripped him and hurt him like a physical ache. He wanted Honor at that moment more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

“Nothing can keep us apart but your own wish... nothing. Honor, I want you... I love you.”

His voice shook. He pulled her towards him a little roughly and threw an arm about her and held her close.

“Dear! ... my beautiful dear!” he said. “I love you. Do you love me? ... a little?”

The soft colour deepened in her face. She looked up at him and smiled; then her eyelids drooped over the shining eyes.

“I like you,” she admitted. “Ah!”

The disappointment occasioned by this mild concession betrayed itself in his voice. With her intense nature, so lukewarm a response was almost a rebuff.

“That isn’t strong enough to throw down the barriers,” he said. He took her face between his hands and gazed deeply into her eyes. “I love you more than life. Haven’t you something a little better than liking to give me in return? Honor, I want to marry you.”

For a moment she was silent. Her breath fluttered nervously between her parted lips; her eyes lifted to his, fell, lifted to his again.

“Is your love strong enough to throw down barriers?” she asked.

“There aren’t any barriers on my side to knock over,” he answered, smiling.

“Are there not?” Her face was grave now, and purposeful, her gaze steadfast. She put up her hands and clasped his wrists. “I will marry you—on one condition.”

“Yes!” he said, and waited, feeling curious and oddly chilled. The excitement of his passion died down before her strange composure.

“If you renounce your country, and become one of us,” she said; “if you fight—supposing it comes to fighting—on our side, I will marry you. That is my condition.”

He still held her face between his hands, and now he drew it nearer, pressed his face to her face, kissed her tenderly upon the brow, pushed her face gently away.

“You ask more than you expect me to give,” he said. “You wouldn’t make such a condition if you loved me...”

Without looking at him Honor went swiftly and silently out through the window and along the stoep. He remained quite still, looking after her, a feeling of finality, of flatness, weighing upon him, and a queer sense of loss, which was not after all loss because he had never possessed, never been near possession; until that morning the hope of proprietorship had not entered into his thoughts of her; passion had not before gripped him. It was odd, he reflected, how swiftly and unexpectedly the factor of passion had entered and provoked this crisis. The whole thing was an amazement; and it left him a little dazed, with a sensation of plunging into sudden darkness after being in the light.

Chapter Nineteen.

There was no ride that morning. Feeling disinclined to remain indoors Matheson left the house and went for a walk, hoping to rid himself in some measure of his depression. He passed beyond the aloe boundary, and continued his way beside the ostrich camps, keeping at a respectful distance from the wire fencing behind which the great birds stalked aimlessly, craning their long necks forward and regarding him malevolently out of their large soft eyes.

He watched them with a detached interest, and reflected on the many occasions he had accompanied Honor when she fed them, carrying the basket of mealies for her and standing by while she threw the corn. He had chaffed her on account of her fear of the fierce clumsy birds. Fear had seemed so altogether foreign to her nature. They had strolled over the veld often at sunset, and listened to the ostriches’ cry to the departing day; had walked on over the rise and looked down in a pleasant and intimate companionship upon the homestead, softened and beautified in the evening light, upon the serried ranks of the mealie stalks, and the cluster of native huts dotted about near the kraals. They had been pleasant walks those. There was no doubt about it, they had had some good times together. And now it was all ended—in a moment, like the collapse of a pack of cards.

He quickened his pace, ruminating as he went. What exactly had happened? It was not, he felt, only prejudice and racial animosity that divided Honor and himself. Save in very exceptional cases, a woman does not exalt hate above love. There was something behind, something which he did not understand. He began to believe that he had been mistaken in thinking that she cared. She had never cared. She felt merely interested in him, as she might feel interested in any stranger coming for a time into her uneventful life. There was no more in it than that.

He returned to the house when it was approaching the breakfast hour, returned reluctantly, an unaccustomed feeling of nervousness, which increased as he came nearer, seizing him, causing a dryness of the throat and giving a furtiveness to his look. He did not know how he should face Honor—what they would say to one another. He experienced an absurd regret that she had her seat next his at table. It was not possible to sit beside any one and remain silent.

In the garden he saw Mrs Krige. She was looking out for him; and immediately from her face he divined that she knew. It puzzled him why this fact should occasion him relief rather than embarrassment. Perhaps the expression in her eyes as she came towards him assured him of her sympathy.

“I am not late, I hope?” he said, as he joined her. “I have been taking a last walk.”

“Every one is late this morning,” she replied. “Mr Marais is only now awake, and Honor is lying down with a headache. Even Andreas was late. I think there is thunder in the air; the weather has been very oppressive these past few days; it upsets one.”

“Yes,” he agreed, following her talk only imperfectly, but grasping the reference to Honor which seemed to point to the unlikelihood of his seeing her again before he left. It was difficult to realise that he had actually seen Honor for the last time.

“I am sorry you are going,” Mrs Krige said presently. “I have so enjoyed your visit. Your being here has made me a little hungry for my own people. I haven’t talked so much English for six years. It may be years before I speak it again.”

“I think,” he returned, looking at her curiously, “you punish yourself heavily.”

He could not forget that it was from her mother Honor had learned her bitter creed. He found it difficult to forgive that. Of all these people whom he had met up here, so jealous of any infringement of the rights of the Dutch, so zealous in support of their claim to a national status, there was only one good patriot among them, and he was Herman Nel. It was such men as Nel who would make South Africa a great country.

Suddenly, while they walked towards the house, he found himself speaking of his proposal to Honor, and her rejection of his suit.

“She has told you?” he finished.

“Yes,” Mrs Krige admitted. “I am sorry about it. Honor will never marry; she does not think of it. Since you’ve been here I’ve fancied at times... But she isn’t like most girls; she never gives it a thought.”

“No,” he answered almost fiercely, “because her mind is preoccupied. She’s obsessed with a sense of her wrongs, with a longing for revenge, which she miscalls patriotism. Mrs Krige, I’d give the world to undo the injury that has been done a young, impressionable, and beautiful nature. Honor was made for love, and she puts love outside her life. Her life holds other interests.”

The slow tears gathered in Mrs Krige’s eyes. “You are blaming me,” she said... “I know you blame me.”

“I blame no one,” he answered, and felt savage with himself for hurting her to no purpose. “I’m feeling sore. This thing cuts, you see...”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes—I know. I’m sorry.”

She wiped her eyes quickly, unwilling that he should witness her emotion, and added presently:

“If Honor had given a different answer I should have been glad.”

They stepped on to the stoep in silence. Freidja was in the living-room, superintending Koewe who was bringing in the breakfast. She came to the window and admonished them good-naturedly.

“Ach! I don’t know what is the matter with every one this morning,” she said. “The breakfast has been cooked a long time already, and only myself to eat it. Andreas has not come in yet, and Oom Koos says he will be ready just now—which means in about half an hour, perhaps. Meanwhile the porridge cools, and the chops are burnt. What has got all of you?”

Andreas came into sight while she spoke, and walking with him was Herman Nel. Nel had ridden over on an errand of peace which, as Freidja knew, was connected solely with herself. She flushed on catching sight of him, and retired to the kitchen, where she remained until Nel, having shaken hands all round, and not seeing her, and feeling obviously very much at home at Benfontein, went in search of her, and returned after some while carrying the dish of chops and followed by his fiancée, both of them looking thoroughly happy, and Freidja appearing, to Matheson’s amaze, softened and entirely womanly and rather shy.

Mynheer Marais came in after the rest, and he and Herman Nel indulged in some amicable wrangling across the breakfast table. Mostly the conversation was carried on in English in consideration of Matheson’s presence, but occasionally it drifted into Dutch when the speakers grew excited; and then Matheson was glad to sit in silent preoccupation, deaf to the unintelligible sounds, indifferent to his surroundings, seeing only a fair upturned face with eyes that were entirely beautiful looking into his; and behind it, setting off the fair face with the shining eyes and the sunny hair, glowed the dark wood panelling of the old room, warmed with the newly risen sun. That picture he knew would live in his mind for ever.

“So you leave to-day?” Herman Nel said, turning and addressing him unexpectedly.

Matheson, looking towards the speaker, met the shrewd friendly eyes scrutinising him attentively as they had done across the small table at the rondavel.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m going back.”

“You’ll have a lot to say about the fertility of this district,” Nel remarked and laughed. “Come in the spring next time, Mr Matheson. We are rather proud of our veld then. When you are again in these parts I will be pleased if you will stay with me at my rondavel. You have seen what accommodation I have to have to offer; it is sufficient. If at any time you come and I am not there, enter and take possession. I never lock my house.”

“No,” interposed Oom Koos before Matheson could reply. “He tries to live like the Kaffirs; and the Kaffirs, who steal everything they can lay their filthy hands on, are baang to touch his goods because they think him white witch-doctor. But one day there will come a Kaffir who is not afraid.”

“I go on the principle,” Nel replied, “that evil hides instinctively from those who are not in search of it, but reveals itself impudently where it realises its presence is suspected. Oom Koos has lost more goats than I ever possessed. It is well for Mr Marais that he is a richer man than I.”

“If I followed your example,” Oom Koos retorted, “I would not be that. The wise man who would guard his sheep from the jackals, sees to it that they are safe in the kraals each night. A Kaffir will murder his father and his mother for their few paltry possessions.”

“Occasionally,” Nel returned quietly, “the white man commits worse crimes than that: he will murder his own people and rob his unborn child. But we style his crime differently. It is the tide one affixes to an act which proclaims it a crime or a virtue.”

As though aware that he was treading on difficult ground, warned possibly by the steady look from Freidja’s sombre eyes, he turned again to Matheson and skilfully directed the talk into a safer channel.

“I like the native,” he said. “I always fight his battles. He is not highly developed mentally; he is largely instinctive; but his instincts on the whole are good.”

“The mental inferiority, I suppose,” Matheson ventured, “is the result of his want of civilisation. He is coming on rapidly, don’t you think?”

“He advances undoubtedly. But I think the mental inferiority strikes deeper than that. I believe myself that eventually the black races will become extinct. Wherever the white man penetrates the effect becomes marked in succeeding generations.”

“In my opinion that is regrettable,” Matheson observed. “I am in favour of race preservation.”

“Yes! Well, so am I. The dark man has his uses.”

“He is a lazy schelm,” put in Oom Koos, his customary amiability temporarily eclipsed behind his disapproval of the talk. “And the English are spoiling him. They give him too much money. Wages go up yearly; and the higher the wage the less he works.”

“That’s the rule all up the scale, isn’t it?” Matheson asked with a laugh. “It’s a sign of civilisation, anyway.”

“This country is only in the making,” Krige remarked, in his slow unexpected way of breaking in upon a conversation in which he had taken no previous part. “European principles don’t apply out here.”

“One has to live in this country for many years,” Mrs Krige threw in, loyally supporting her son’s statement, “before one begins to understand it; and even then there is always much to learn.”

Which obvious remark put a period to the conversation, and when the talk revived ethnological discussion was tacitly tabooed.

With the finish of breakfast Oom Koos announced his intention to start. It was a long drive to De Aar, and he had business to transact there. He did not consult Matheson. He went with Andreas Krige to the stables to superintend the inspanning of his horses, and later drove up to the fence of spiky aloes and waited for his passenger in the patch of shade which they cast along the ground.

Matheson flung his things into a suit-case and hurried out. They were all there, grouped about the spider, with the exception only of Honor; but that exception meant everything to him. An overwhelming regret seized him. He was going away—she was allowing him to go—like a stranger, without so much as a touch of the hand, without a word of farewell. He rebelled against this. He resented it All these people would wonder—they would understand perhaps. He imagined he detected satisfaction in Andreas’ eyes, and suspected Oom Koos’ habitual twinkle of being assumed at his expense. Rage, which was in part misery, gripped him, and filled him with a desire to do something violent, which was none the less imperative because of its futility and utter absurdity. He had to make an effort at control before he could face these people calmly, and climb quietly to his place beside the massive Dutchman and respond to the chorus of farewells.

In his angry misery he forgot that he had had no talk with Krige about the message he had promised to carry for him. It did not occur to him until after the horses started to wonder why Krige had made no reference to this matter. When he thought about it, it struck him as significant, this ignoring of the subject. Possibly Honor had warned her brother against taking the course he had intended. It did not matter anyway. That was finished. He was leaving the farm with the sinister name, and carrying away with him a sense of the ill luck which was associated with its strange title.

He turned in his seat to look back at the low white building, gleaming in the brilliant sunlight with a hard dazzling effect which hurt the eyes. Somewhere behind the gleaming walls, beyond the wide open windows, Honor hid from him—complex and beautiful and incomprehensible—a bright life overshadowed with the tragedy of the past.

Chapter Twenty.

It was Matheson’s intention to return to the work—to the old firm, if it would take him back—which at Holman’s instigation he had thrown up for the uncertain but more attractive methods of livelihood which speculation, under the expert tutelage of the German, offered. It seemed a long time since those days of careless adventurous living, though the actual period was under a month. He had thought so much, thought more deeply, during that month than he had ever done before. And he had felt things—understood with a wider sympathy than he had any idea he possessed. It was not so much that he had developed, as that he had tumbled by accident upon those unexplored mental regions which remain in cases of indulged indolence often unsuspected. The discovery had only now come about, but his feet had unconsciously turned into the road on the morning when he had first seen Brenda Upton, and been moved to unaccustomed self-analysis by the criticism in her eyes. It had pulled him up. He had not before considered himself or life seriously; the sense of responsibility had not touched him.

From that time onward he had felt his way forward, as an explorer might, curious and heedful, observant of every fresh surprise of the unfamiliar way, inquiring, acquisitive, immensely interested. And now he had received a check, the most serious check he had met with in life. It was not very clear how this would affect him; it was bound to leave a deeper impression on his mind than anything that had gone before. For the present he was conscious only of a feeling of defeat, of exasperated misery, that moved him to the same insensate anger that a man tortured with toothache feels sometimes towards the cause of his discomfort.

It was not Honor he was angry with; it was the systematic perversion of ideals, and the hypocrisy which exalted this mischievous doctrine into something fine and ennobling that enraged him. He saw Honor as a bright soul following blindly the path into which others had directed her steps, following it tirelessly, the brightness fading and the beauty of her fading with it as her nature became more warped and embittered with the years. No nature, however fine and sweet, can pursue a policy of revenge without hurt to itself.

During the greater part of the long drive from the farm to the hotel at which he had lunched on his arrival, Matheson sat wrapped in his own gloomy meditations, while Mynheer Marais smoked his huge calabash and grunted encouragement to the horses at frequent intervals, occasionally turning to address a remark to his silent companion.

It was plain to Matheson that Mynheer Marais did not trust him; he was reserved and guarded in his speech, confining himself to such safe topics as the climate and the uncertain distribution of the rainfall, and the visitations of God in the form of drought and other ills peculiar to the country.

“You will go back to England some day, perhaps—eh?” he suggested—“and will talk of these things and be glad you are out of the sun.”

“I don’t think that at all likely,” Matheson replied. “It is my intention to colonise.”

Oom Koos scrutinised him closely and smiled and stroked his horses’ flanks gently with the whip.

“When you have made much money you will return to England,” he said confidently. “That is what all the English do. Ja.”

Which speech tended only to harden Matheson in his resolve to remain in the country and do his part towards furthering British interests there. Why should a man regard this, or any, country simply as a place in which to accumulate wealth? The ultimate purpose of a man’s life rightly planned was to found a home and carry on: the getting of wealth should be concomitant and subordinated to that idea. Herman Nel had placed his hand upon the very heart of truth when he asserted that the secret of conquest lay not in destruction, but in the production and safeguarding of life. To pass on leaving one’s life work finished with one’s own brief span is to fail in the greatest achievement possible to the individual.

At the hotel Matheson and Mynheer Marais separated. The big Boer was well known in the town, and as soon as he appeared on the stoep of the hotel he was accosted by some Dutch acquaintance, with whom Matheson left him exchanging greetings in the taal.

Later he saw Oom Koos again for a few minutes after lunch; and then, accompanied by his friend, Oom Koos departed for the town, which was the last Matheson saw of him, a huge, ungainly, genial figure, talking and gesticulating freely, walking heavily amid the dust that stirred lazily about his big feet as he disappeared in the golden haze of the sultry afternoon.

Matheson experienced a curious and inexplicable loneliness after he had watched the lumbering figure of the Dutchman out of sight. The going of Oom Koos closed the Benfontein episode finally. He felt as though a door had been slammed in his face and the key turned in the lock.

The same feeling of loneliness, that sense of being shut out, clung to him after he left De Aar. It remained with him throughout the journey to Johannesburg. But with the sight of the straggling town, of its innumerable buildings and red streets, its busy crowded station, other emotions held him, and obliterated for a time the strange unaccustomed sensation of being adrift and without bearings. At least he could find his bearings here. He knew very well what he intended to do.

He drove to his old rooms and settled in. Then he went straightway to ascertain if there was any likelihood of getting back with his old firm, and was more successful than he had anticipated. The firm had a big Government contract at Cape Town and was glad to take him on in connexion with the work. That settled the uncertainty as to his future finances.

He returned to his rooms considerably lightened in spirit, and with as many daily papers as he could procure. He had been living out of the world, and had not the remotest idea of what was going on in it. There is nothing so isolating as existing without newspapers. Beyond a Dutch paper, principally concerned with agricultural matters, which Andreas received once a week, no newspaper, so far as Matheson was aware, ever found its way to the farm.

Having read his papers, which contained nothing of particular interest—the country was still recovering from the stupefying effects of the great strike and the subsequent deportations, and did not appear to have altogether regained its breath—he went out again for the purpose of hunting up Holman and having a plain talk with him. He found him in the private room he called his office, where he transacted business principally through the medium of the telephone, and received the few callers who penetrated the mysteries of the winding passage and outer premises which led to the rather squalid quarters he inhabited at the lower end of the town.

He was, Matheson learned on arrival from the youthful clerk, who seemed to do little beyond guard the inner sanctum and scan the daily news, engaged for the moment. Since no one emerged from the inner room while he waited, and no one was present when a few minutes later, in response to the ring of a bell, he was conducted by the clerk to the presence, the inference was that the engagement was telephonic. Holman was alone, seated at his desk. His hand fell from the receiver as the door opened and closed upon his visitor. He swung round on his swivel chair and welcomed Matheson cordially.

“You never sent me any word,” he said. “When did you arrive? I’ve been expecting you daily for the past week. You haven’t hurried.”

He could not fail to notice the very obvious fact that his extended hand was ignored, nor that the cordiality of his manner received no response. He waved the neglected hand in the direction of a seat.

“Sit down,” he said, and crossed one leg over the other and regarded Matheson closely, fidgeting idly and with a suggestion of nervousness in the quick, uncertain movement of his fingers, with the pen on his blotting pad. “Now, let me hear all about it,” he resumed.

Matheson seated himself.

“Well, in the first place,” he said, leaning forward with his hands upon his knees, “I had better state at once that I know a good deal about this damnable business... not through the Kriges... there was a sort of conspiracy to keep me in the dark—Krige never talked to me. I learned what I know from Herman Nel. Nel called you a damned scoundrel... and I endorse his sentiments. Have you anything to say to that?”

He paused. Holman ceased fidgeting with the pen and clenched his hand on the blotter and sat quite still, smiling faintly.

“No. I don’t see that any comment of mine would avail anything. Of course you don’t expect me to applaud your opinion. Simply, I refuse to consider it. What you have learned from Herman Nel doesn’t interest me either. Nel was never a recipient of my confidence. He knows nothing whatever about me.”

“You are mistaken; his knowledge is more complete than you imagine. It was from Nel I learned that you are German, and not a British subject as I supposed.”

“Did I ever assert that I was British?” Holman interrupted him to inquire.

“Not to me. But I understood you were. You led me somehow, whether intentionally or not I can’t say, to understand that. And you spell your name in the English way, and sign the double n only when you correspond with your Dutch friends. I saw that in your letter to Krige.”

“So you read the letter I entrusted to your safe keeping?” Holman said with a flash of anger. “Then it was a lie when you said you couldn’t read Dutch?”

“It was nothing of the sort. I leave the lying to men practised in the art, like yourself. I saw the letter. I did not read it... but it was read to me. Had Nel’s statement needed corroboration I had it in your own words. You are helping to stir up bad feeling among the Dutch. You are inciting the dissatisfied Boers to open rebellion—Heaven knows why!—or the devil, to whom Nel gives the credit of the direction of this affair. What you expect to gain by it personally is your secret, but you must realise that it is a hopeless business for them in any event. A handful of farmers can’t fight a great organised nation with any hope of success.”

Holman smiled.

“You are talking arrant nonsense, you know,” he said. “If it wasn’t such absolute nonsense it would be offensive. There was not a sentence in my letter to Krige that even hinted at rebellion; there is not a sentence in my letter—not a word, for that matter, that I could not explain satisfactorily if I recognised any necessity for an explanation. Nel didn’t tell you, I suppose, while he was engaged in aspersing my character, that there is a feud of long standing between us which is principally of his making?”

“He told me nothing,” Matheson replied, “beyond what I have stated, and the further fact that you have been carrying on this underhand intrigue for years. What your game is remains to be seen. You have got some stake in this. It isn’t just philanthropy and sympathy with the poor Boer that actuates you. Time will show, perhaps. In the meanwhile with men of Herman Nel’s type in the country, I don’t think you will accomplish much. As regards my own share in this, I can only say that your estimate of my intelligence as expressed in your letter would seem to fit I have been a fool. But you overestimated my complaisance—my conscience is not for purchase, however high the price.”

“You misread that,” Holman said, not looking at him. “I don’t deal in consciences. I fancied you were likely game to fall to the lovely Honor’s charm. That was in my mind when I watched you fooling about with that girl on the beach. You will agree, I imagine, that I would be scarcely likely to engage in a dangerous intrigue in co-operation with a girl like Honor?”

“I prefer,” Matheson answered brusquely, “to leave Miss Krige’s name out of this. I didn’t, as a matter of fact, come here to discuss this ugly business, but merely to explain my reasons for not fulfilling my undertaking, and to return your advance, minus my travelling expenses. That,” he said, rising and placing a note on the desk, “finishes everything between us.”

“As you will, of course.” Holman made a gesture with his shoulders. “It seems useless for me to say anything. I don’t attempt explanations twice. You have taken an outrageous tone and closed every door upon a possible understanding.”

“I understand as much as is necessary,” Matheson replied. “I’m on watch now. If any ill results follow upon your mischievous activities you can regard me as an enemy. I’ll track you down, and fix the thing on you.”

Holman rang the bell at his elbow sharply.

“I really can’t waste time while you talk nonsense,” he said. “Your abuse of me is absurd. If it were less ridiculous I should resent it more effectively.”

He turned back to the desk as the door opened to admit the clerk, and, speaking over his shoulder, curtly directed the astonished youth to show the visitor out Matheson, when he emerged from the winding intricacies of the airless passage into the sunlight, had a feeling that he had not so much closed that episode as broken an insincere friendship and started an open feud.

Chapter Twenty One.

The meeting with Holman and the latter’s reference to the girl of the beach brought Matheson’s memory with a swing back to Brenda and his promise to her. In all these weeks he had not thought of her twice, nor looked at the address she had given him at his request. He took it out when he got back to his rooms, and considered the wisdom of writing to her in a calm, detached way, and with a view to possible developments.

Finally he decided that he would write, and did so, asking for news of her. He despatched his letter, and waited in a state of curious uncertainty for her reply. When the reply did not come this uncertainty as to the real state of his wishes yielded to a very genuine disappointment. It was no longer a matter of indifference to him; he wanted to hear from her, wanted her friendship.

Some months later, after he was back in Cape Town, his own letter was returned to him through the post office, with the unsatisfactory information pencilled upon it. “Gone away, address not known.” He had waited too long; it was not possible now to get into touch with her.

He was sorry for this. He found himself wondering why she had left Mrs Graham, where she had gone. He worried about her. It was not easy to put his anxiety into words, but he had a feeling, strengthened possibly by the fact that she had left no address behind, that the loss of her former post was in the nature of a disaster. It couldn’t, he reflected uneasily, be consequent on that moonlight walk... She had so feared being late, and he had displayed impatience at having to hasten. Perhaps after all she had been late... It was beastly unjust that a little thing like that should have such disproportionate results. He wondered why women didn’t combine and insist upon fairer conditions. Even a companion should be privileged to count certain hours of the day her own.

And then for a time he forgot Brenda again in the interests of his work, and the distraction of new friendships made under the auspices of Macfarlane, an engineering acquaintance resident in Cape Town. There was a man from Port Elizabeth, named Aplin, whom he met first at the docks and with whom he became rather intimate. Aplin was round visiting his people; and there were two pretty cousins whom he took about who evinced a quite flattering interest in Matheson, and invited him to tennis and tea, and met him on occasions by agreement in town in the middle of the morning for ices and coffee. They were merry, high-spirited, Colonial girls, who brought just that bright touch of femininity into his life which he needed at the moment, an easy encouraging friendliness that was not intimate enough in character to set throbbing the pain of the recent hurt, but was sufficiently appreciative and competitive to be agreeable. These girls were not in the least intellectual, but they had plenty of small talk and were pleasant to look at. Matheson enjoyed going to the house. It was somewhere, to go out of working hours, where he could feel sure of a welcome and of being amused.

At no period of the acquaintance did he entertain any deeper sentiment than that of friendship for either of them; but they both took a kind of proprietary interest in him and let him see it. At the same time they showed a similar interest in Aplin, and one or two men who frequented their tennis court. They were quite frankly matrimonial in intention. Their limited and rather commonplace lives shaped them for the one inevitable destiny, failing which there was no resource, no visible outlet.

“You go out there a good deal,” Macfarlane warned him one Saturday, meeting him on the tram for Rondebosch with a racquet under his arm. “You’ll be engaged before you know where you are.” He laughed, a jolly good-natured laugh. “They tried to catch me at one time. It’s Rosie you had better be careful of.”

When Matheson reached the house and entered the garden he saw Rosie in the path, stooping over a flower-border. He had met her like this before and believed the encounter accidental, but Macfarlane’s words, coming back to him, illumined his understanding. Rosie turned with a little start and straightened herself and came towards him. She looked quite pretty and entirely unconscious, and she held some blue flower in her hand the name of which he did not know.

“How nice!” she said. “I didn’t guess it was you when I heard the gate. I was picking flowers.”

She held the sample one up to him as evidence of her occupation.

“You shall wear it in your buttonhole. It matches your eyes.”

He stood while she pinned it in for him, and found some difficulty in keeping the amusement out of the eyes which matched with her flower. She stepped back to admire the effect of her handiwork and flashed a coquettish glance at him, and then returned to admiring the effect.

“That’s awfully kind of you,” he said. “I feel tremendously smart.”

“You look festive,” she admitted. “Blue suits you. I’m glad I happened to be in the garden when you arrived.”

There was only one obvious reply to this obvious speech. Matheson made it perfunctorily.

“It is I who have the greater reason to be glad,” he said. “I don’t think any one has ever given me a flower before—certainly no one else has been kind enough to pin one in my coat.”

“I’m glad I’m the first,” she said, and flashed another look at him, and walked on by his side. “I am not considered generous with my favours,” she added mendaciously... “but the colour of the flower suggested you. I like blue eyes.”

Matheson laughed at that.

“I prefer brown eyes,” he said, and was amused at the smiling satisfaction of the brunette face close to his shoulder.

“Well, of course,” she returned, “one usually admires opposite colouring. That’s only natural.”

Her speech somehow set him thinking of the fairest face he had ever seen. The picture of that fair face framed in the sunlit hair, with the dark woodwork of the old room for a background, was so vividly before him that it was not surprising his attention wandered from the empty little person at his side, whose flow of frivolous chatter went on uninterruptedly, and covered while it did not disguise the fact that he had grown suddenly dull. Then May appeared unexpectedly from behind some flowering shrubs, and took charge of him and conducted him to the tennis court, where Aplin and another man were playing singles, while Mrs Aplin sat in a rustic summer-house overlooking the court, a self-effacing chaperon, beaming complacently upon the young people, with an indulgent eye lit with maternal pride for her girls. There were no other girls present. As Rosie explained, if they invited too many people they never got any play themselves.

It was all very jolly and homelike, Matheson considered. He played with both girls in turn. May lit a cigarette for him between the sets, and Mrs Aplin fussed over him during tea, and was confidential with him later in regard to her daughters’ tastes and accomplishments and general amiability.

“They are such favourites with every one,” she confided with emphatic earnestness. “A friend whose girls are not popular asked me recently the secret of my training... what plans I adopted in bringing my girls up that made them so generally liked? I told her that I had brought them up to play games.” She regarded Matheson quite seriously, with a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. “They play games... every game... well. What more is required of a girl? All this nonsense about higher education... It’s so unnecessary. And study is bad for the eyes; it makes girls frown; and a girl with a frown doesn’t look so much studious as bad tempered. Let them play games and look nice; that’s all that is requisite.”

“It’s the sort of idea I started out with,” Matheson returned, beating his tennis boot softly with his racquet and idly watching the pipe-clay rise in little clouds. He laughed suddenly. “I don’t know about looking nice, but I had a fancy for playing games. Life itself seemed a game. But it isn’t. And playing games doesn’t provide one with a banking account.”

“Of course it’s different for men. I don’t advocate games for every one,” she assured him gravely. “But girls don’t need to think about banking accounts.”

“Some of them must,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise.

“I wasn’t speaking of that sort of girl; I meant my own girls,” she answered in a tone that opened up all the social distances before Matheson’s amazed vision.

“I think responsibility unsexes a woman,” she added; and her bewildered listener felt that the final nail had been driven into the coffin containing the discredited remains of the girl-worker’s claim to respectability.

That was the tone of the Rondebosch household; and the head of the house, whose flourishing business made this comfortable despite of everything save leisure possible to his womenkind, showed his appreciation of their views by spending as little time under his roof-tree as was compatible with his position in relation to the family. Matheson had met Mr Aplin only once when he dined at the house. Macfarlane called him morose, but Matheson rather liked the silent, heavy, bored-looking man whose presence his wife and daughters managed to eclipse.

“It was seeing the old man among them scared me off,” Macfarlane informed him. “Any man who marries one of them can look forward to becoming like that. He’s a cipher in the house. They do well to keep him in the background as a rule. But there’s lots of money. If a man isn’t particular in other respects... there you are.”

Money undoubtedly swelled the train of the Aplin girls’ admirers; but it was not a sufficiently powerful magnet to attract Matheson. As he explained one day in a burst of confidence to Macfarlane, he could not dispense altogether with brains in a life-partner.

“They are pretty,” he allowed,—“and jolly nice to talk with for an afternoon, but they have no more intelligence than kittens. Imagine how fed up a man would get! And looks don’t last. Though, apart from that, I’d grow weary to death of the inanity long before the looks were faded. I want more than either of them could give from my wife.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Macfarlane returned lazily, “that I’m so keen on matrimony. A man has a lot better time while he’s single.”

“That’s all very well,” Matheson argued; “but the world can’t be run on those lines. I mean to marry. I want to have a wife and children and some stake in the country.”

“You’re going ahead a bit,” Macfarlane laughed. “What’s changed you? You weren’t keen on responsibilities at one time... You are changed, Matheson. You’ve changed a lot during the last few months... A girl—eh?”

“A girl—yes.”

Matheson was silent for a moment or so; and the other man, observing him closely, drew his own conclusions from his gloomy face.

“That’s past and done with though. She hasn’t any part in this. I want to marry... It has nothing to do with being in love. I’ve been thinking about things... getting hold of a sort of idea of what my special job in life is. I am going to colonise—in earnest. I’m going to own land in the country, and raise a family on it if it’s possible, and try for a seat in the Legislative Assembly and have a voice in matters.” He looked up, met Macfarlane’s astonished, questioning eye, and smiled drily. “You think I’m talking over my hat,” he said.

“I think you are taking on something of a job,” was all Macfarlane vouchsafed.

They were seated after dinner in a quiet corner of Macfarlane’s stoep which fronted his small bachelor bungalow. It was a Sunday afternoon, warm and still, and until their present conversation roused them from their lethargy they had both seemed more inclined to drowse than talk. Matheson, who was smoking, threw away his cigarette in order to give his whole attention to his subject.

“I was on a Dutch farm before I came down,” he said, “staying among Dutch people—some of the disaffected Dutch—”

“There are a good many of that breed,” Macfarlane interposed.

“They’ve got a case,” Matheson said.

“Oh! they’ve got a case,” Macfarlane allowed—“but it’s against their own interests to insist upon it. The men with brains recognise that. It’s among the more ignorant Boers that the disaffection spreads. I don’t fancy it is worth worrying over.”

“Possibly not. But it’s always desirable to stop the spread of contagious disease.”

“What remedy have you to propose?” Macfarlane inquired.

“Tact. I’m of the opinion that it is because most of us refuse to recognise their case that the ill feeling spreads. I’ve talked with them... It’s a real sense of injustice at the back of their minds that rankles. They aren’t all of them actuated by blind hatred.”

Macfarlane looked doubtful.

“Well, there may have been injustice,” he allowed. “But the position out here was impossible, as any one who wasn’t a sentimentalist would acknowledge. After all, it’s a British Colony, and there wasn’t room for a rival power. We paid hard cash for the privilege of settling, and our right received international recognition. We’ve done more for the development of South Africa than the Boers ever could. If they owned the country some greater power would step in and take it from them. They aren’t, you see, a nation.”