F.E. Mills Young (continued 5)

From some unexplained, and indeed inexplicable, reason, he had shrunk from being seen off on this journey by his fiancée. She had proposed being at the station for that purpose; but he had raised so many difficulties that she had reluctantly given way to his obvious wish for solitude; and when the time for departure came there was no one on the platform to speed his going.

He felt relieved at this; nevertheless the mood in which he started was heavy, overcast like the day which, bright with promise in the dawn, had later clouded darkly with every prospect of a gathering storm. The darkness of the day fitted his mood. Not since the hour when he had turned his back upon the white walls of Benfontein and driven beside Oom Koos Marais across the blackened veld, had he experienced such heaviness of spirit. Some unexpected spring of emotion had been uncovered by this turning back, and its bitter sweet waters were bubbling to the surface in a succession of reawakened memories which he had cheated himself into believing were buried for ever. No one has ever succeeded in burying memory in a sufficiently deep grave; however untiringly one labours over its interment, the first chance breeze of some recurrent thought or seeming likeness, blows back the loose soil and discovers the stark form that had been laid to final rest. Memory ranks with the immortals: it is vain to attempt to bury what cannot die.

Matheson thrust these reminiscent thoughts from him as he travelled northward, and tried to concentrate upon the immediate prospect of his meeting with Holman. It was his intention to hire a horse at De Aar and ride out to Nel’s farm and take possession of the rondavel. A saddle horse would be a necessity to him; he could not appropriate to his use any of Cornelius Nel’s horses. It was moreover possible that the horses on the farm had been commandeered, and had been taken when their master left to join Maritz. This he found later was the case: the farm had been stripped of everything that could prove of use to aid the rebellion.

The rondavel, however, remained as its owner invariably left it, fully provisioned, and fit for immediate habitation. One servant was left in charge of things, a light-coloured Kaffir who answered to the name of Butter Tom by reason of his fair skin, which, the colour of old parchment, suggested a mixture of alien blood. Butter Tom had been Nel’s body servant in the old days, and he recognised and greeted Matheson with a broad smile of welcome.

“Me take the baas’ horse,” he said. “The baas will find everything he want by the rondavel. Me come bimeby and get the baas something to eat.”

Matheson swung himself out of the saddle.

“Well, I’m hungry, and that’s a fact, Butter Tom,” he said.

The Kaffir gazed at him reproachfully the while he took the reins in his hand.

“Me not fat,” he said seriously, rebuke in his tones and a grave anxiousness in his questioning eyes.

Matheson did not attempt an explanation of the mistake: the native ear was confused with the unfamiliar English. He looked closely at the well-knit figure and smiled.

“No; so I see,” he said. “You get me supper pretty quick, Butter Tom. I’m plenty hungry.”

Whereat Butter Tom laughed quietly. To be plenty hungry was something he did understand.

Matheson entered the rondavel and took a survey of his temporary quarters. Everything was as Nel had left it, neat and orderly; the bed behind the reimpe curtain was made as though in preparation for immediate use: the atmosphere and appearance of the hut suggested a recent occupant. There were a pair of boots, which did not belong to Nel, which were not only smaller but more fashionable in make, under a chair; and on the brightly polished surface of the circular table lay a familiar object—a meerschaum pipe, with quaintly carved bowl, which he remembered to have seen Holman smoking innumerable times. The pipe had lain on the desk beside his hand during their last interview in the dingy office at Johannesburg. It was intolerable presumption, he reflected, that this German whom Herman Nel held in such deep abhorrence should make free with the tatter’s possessions, and pollute in its owner’s absence his home with his treacherous presence.

On the appearance of Butter Tom he made inquiries, and elicited the information that Baas Holman did occasionally use the rondavel, though he had not been there for some days.

“If he come again,” the Kaffir announced sturdily, setting a dish of buttered mealies gently down upon the snowy cloth, “me tell him this baas come from my baas. I serve this baas only. Baas Holman come with the missis two moons since.”

So Cornelius Nel’s wife had lent her brother-in-law’s house to his enemy. Indirectly Holman was responsible for the breach between the two brothers; he had been the evil genius of Cornelius as well as of Andreas Krige. Leentje Nel was aware of Herman’s dislike; her conduct therefore in lending his rondavel to the object of his aversion seemed to Matheson peculiarly detestable: it betrayed an utter absence of good taste on her part in offering, and on his in accepting, in the owner’s absence hospitality which would not have been extended had Herman Nel been on the spot.

But the fact that Holman used the rondavel, that, having left part of his property there, he meant presumably to return at no distant date, promised well for the meeting he sought with this man who had compassed so much evil and evaded himself any dangerous participation therein. He had no wish to go to Benfontein for the purpose of facing him; it would please him better if Holman descended upon him at the rondavel, where, secure in the knowledge of his right in being there, he would have the advantage over this German, whom Herman Nel would have shot like a jackal as an act of simple justice.

He cautioned Butter Tom not to speak of his presence at the rondavel, and bade him be on the alert against surprise; he had no wish to be caught unaware. More particularly he dreaded discovery by Cornelius Nel’s wife: a man when he is an enemy is openly an enemy, but a woman can be secretive and very bitter. Usually she makes the more relentless foe.

Butter Tom, with the limited intelligence and blind loyalty of his race, understanding only that this baas who was the friend of his baas did not wish his whereabouts known, was satisfied to keep watch without other explanation: the wish of the baas was a command; it was of itself a sufficient reason why he should guard against intruders. Save when engaged on his duties as servitor, he seldom stirred from his post of observation in the shade of the wall, where he squatted on his haunches, and smoked the tobacco which Matheson provided, and kept a vigilant eye on the approaches to the rondavel.

When he was confident that he was unobserved, even by his faithful henchman, Matheson took the precaution to look in the chest where Nel kept the rope ladder with which he mounted to his secret chamber. He felt reassured on finding the ladder rolled up in its accustomed place. No one beside Nel, unless perchance he had disclosed the secret to his fiancée, knew of that hiding place in the roof. In the event of a surprise visit, he intended to make use of his knowledge. He could from the upper chamber observe without being seen all that went on in the room below, could listen without fear of detection to any conversation that was being carried on.

Later, he experimented with the ladder, fixing it as he had watched Nel fix it to the cross beam in the roof. He climbed up it, and removed with very little difficulty the thatch door, and crawled through the opening, closing the thatch behind him. When closed there was a thin division in the thatch through which it was quite easy to look into the room beneath. Satisfied with this trial that he was safe against surprise, he made the descent and rolled up the ladder and returned it to the chest.

The next few days were spent in anticipation of a visit from Holman, who did not appear. Until dusk each day he remained a voluntary prisoner within the rondavel; after sundown he left Butter Tom in charge and ventured forth in search of exercise; Butter Tom was to watch for his return and warn him by signal in the event of a visitor during his absence. But the days passed and left him in undisputed possession of his quarters. If he meant to see Holman it began to look as though he would have to go to Benfontein after all.

This continued immunity from intrusion rendered him less cautious in his actions. He took to sitting outside the hut, and one afternoon went for a walk while it was yet daylight in defiance of being observed by any one on the farm. There was no reason why he should not be seen, save his own wish to surprise Holman. But beyond a native herd and one or two Kaffir women, he met no one; and he returned to the rondavel towards the hour for supper revolving in his mind whether or no he should set forth for Benfontein on the morrow?

It was a matter for surprise to him on nearing the rondavel to find Butter Tom, whom he had left guarding the entrance, no longer at his station. It was the first sign of defection Butter Tom had given; the Kaffir’s negligence set him wondering whether in trusting him implicitly he was acting altogether wisely? He looked about for some sign of him, and discovering none, concluded that he must be in the smaller hut preparing the evening meal, having settled, in his indecision between the rival claims of these separate duties, on the primary importance of attending to the baas’ food.

Matheson entered the rondavel expecting to find the table laid for supper; but no preparation for the meal had been attempted, and no sound came from the native quarters. The rondavel remained to all appearance as he had left it.

And yet, despite the fact that the place was empty, that there was no evidence of any one having been there during his absence, a sense of uneasiness held him—a feeling of being observed, though there was no one visibly present, which was acutely disquieting. Without understanding his reason in doing so, he crossed to the chest beneath the window where the rope ladder lay concealed, and lifted the lid. For a second or so he remained there motionless, holding back the heavy lid with his hand, staring into the empty chest. Some one had been there before him: the rope ladder was gone.

Chapter Thirty.

Abruptly Matheson dropped the lid, faced about and looked up. The sensation of being observed, of not being, for all that the hut appeared to be empty, alone, was explained. Some one—he had no means of knowing who—was familiar with Nel’s secret. Whoever it was, it appeared very certain that he was at the moment watching him from the room above, was aware moreover through his incautiousness that the hiding place was equally well known to the man who stood staring up at the movable thatch in amazed and thwarted curiosity.

To Matheson it was the most astonishing and perplexing moment in his life. He remained riveted to the spot staring, staring helplessly at the innocent-looking grass roof, trying to discern the intruder; seeing no one and hearing no sound of movement, yet acutely aware that some one lay concealed in the roof, some one who had thought to hide from him, who was undoubtedly even then observing him, secure in the knowledge of remaining himself unseen.

Matheson felt his disadvantage and stood for a space irresolute. The sensation of being furtively observed was uncanny. He had no means of knowing whether it were an enemy who hid thus, or some one who, like himself, enjoyed Nel’s confidence and hesitated to discover the secret to a stranger, even though the stranger by his action had made it clear that he shared the knowledge with him.

The uncertainty was nerve-racking. To continue in ignorance of the identity of the intruder he felt to be impossible: by some means or other he must ascertain who it was who lay concealed up there and gave no sign of his presence. While the unseen person had the advantage in one respect, the greater advantage of holding him there virtually a prisoner was his. He drew a chair out from beneath the table and seated himself astride it, and taking a revolver from his pocket, leaned with his arms folded on the back of the chair and his gaze lifted to the roof.

If the intruder’s purpose were innocent the chances were he would proclaim the fact rather than remain a prisoner at the other’s pleasure; if, on the other hand, it was Holman who had concealed himself there he was likely to be armed also, in which event the advantage would again lay with him.

Matheson sat rigid and very much on the alert, and awaited developments. In the unnatural stillness the ticking of the watch in his pocket was distinctly audible. There was no other sound. But that he felt the presence of the unseen watcher through that sense which apprises one of the nearness of another human being, he would have doubted whether any one could be in the upper chamber, so absolutely still did he remain. By making it so obvious that he suspected his presence, Matheson had thought to provoke the other into giving some sign; every moment he expected to see the thatch open; but there was no movement from above; whoever was hiding there had no wish to be discovered.

The minutes dragged wearily. An hour passed in watchful suspense. He wondered why Butter Tom did not come with the supper. It was after the usual time, but there was no preparation for a meal. This neglect on the part of Nel’s trusted servant puzzled him. It was not, he believed, accidental: there was treachery afoot. Whoever the mysterious visitor was, he had by some device or other got rid of the Kaffir. The device must have been fairly plausible to have deceived Butter Tom, prepared as he was against surprises of this nature; that the Kaffir had willingly entered into a conspiracy against him he did not for a moment believe.

He felt that he must speak, must question this hidden person—force him into making some sign—into revealing himself. It was impossible to sit through the night with his finger on the trigger of his revolver, waiting for he knew not what; alert and wakeful in the darkness, with the concealed foe above like some hidden danger ready to strike. At least he would get a light and wait for darkness to overtake him and add the uncertainty of gloom to the perils of the situation.

There was a lamp on the table. He moved towards it, taking the precaution always to face the danger, and holding his revolver in readiness against a surprise attack. The business of removing the globe and striking a match thus hampered took time. It was still quite light in the rondavel, though the shadows were falling quickly; he had no difficulty in seeing clearly. His glance travelled continually from the lamp he was occupied with to the roof, some instinct warning him that the utmost vigilance was necessary for his safety. During the brief moment while he struck a match and held it to the wick, his attention temporarily diverted, he became aware of a sudden noise, so faint and so instantly ceasing that, had his senses not been so keenly alive to any sound, he might have fancied himself mistaken in supposing he heard more than the rustling of the wind without. Instantly his eyes lifted to the roof, his hand arrested in the act of lighting the lamp, the match spluttering out between his fingers. The thatch had moved ever so slightly, and through the aperture thus made he saw distinctly the muzzle of a gun pointing in his direction.

It was the work of a second to spring aside. The report from the gun followed his movement. Quick as thought he levelled the revolver and blazed away at the opening in the thatch. There was a second loud report from the gun. He felt the sting of the bullet in his shoulder. The revolver dropped from his hand to the floor. Dazed with the noise as much as by the pain of the wound, he remained for a moment inactive, till, brought sharply back to the realisation of his danger, he stooped, moved by a passionate anger at the outrage, and seized the fallen weapon in his left hand and fired again at the opening.

The grass panel slid back noisily, and with an oath, the discharged gun in his hand, a man dropped from the roof on to his shoulders, bringing him to the ground with a force that partially stunned him. Bewildered and dazed though he was, Matheson was quick to appreciate the fact that his assailant was lighter in weight than himself. With the consciousness of his own superior muscular strength the power returned to his arms. He forgot his wound; his brain cleared surprisingly, became active and extraordinarily keen. The man, vainly trying to pin him down while he raised the empty gun to use as a club, was Holman; and Holman he knew was no match for him physically.

He flung aside the revolver and seized his assailant by the throat. Holman loosened his grasp on his own weapon for purposes of self-defence, and struck wildly at the fierce, resolute face that stared back at him with the grim determination of implacable enmity in the eyes. He struck at these eyes blindly; again and again he struck with little effect; then with a snarl of rage he flung himself across the other man and fixed his teeth in his neck. Matheson felt sickened: hate of the man maddened him. It was like fighting with a wild beast, this horrible struggle with a creature that tore and bit, and uttered a snarling whine between the parted lips that was scarcely human in sound. He choked the whine into silence under the pressure of his fingers till the desperate resistance slackened, the limp body dropped inert. One minute more and he would squeeze the life out of him and fling his body out on the veld.

A fierce exhilaration thrilled him. For the first time in his life the lust of killing held him; he was dominated by a passion greater, more brutal in quality, more relentless, than anything he had felt before. He experienced a savage joy in the thought of taking life. All of evil which this man had accomplished to his knowledge flooded his brain and inflamed it while he held him pinned powerless to the ground, and stared pitilessly into the protruding, agonised eyes from which terror even could not drive the malevolent hatred they expressed.

And then in a moment everything was altered. With a swiftness, a silence, a curious unreality, that suggested an apparition rather than a human presence in the stupefying unexpectedness of its approach, a woman’s figure emerged out of the shadows, as though, lurking there invisible, it now assumed shape for some definite purpose, and detaching itself from the gloom, became significant, alive, compelling—a power, a deterrent power, quiet and insistent, with eyes that blazed horrified reproach into the surprised, upturned gaze of the man who, kneeling there with murder in his heart, yet let his fingers insensibly relax their grip, and slowly rose to his feet, and stood shaking from head to foot like a man seized with an ague, as he faced fully the woman whom he had last seen on the morning when he had asked her to be his wife.

While he faced her all the love he had ever felt for her surged anew in his heart, till the pain of it was wellnigh unbearable. What was she doing there? And why had she through her coming saved the life of a scoundrel whose destiny overshadowed her own?

Without speaking, she passed him and approached the prostrate figure and knelt beside it on the mud floor. At her touch Holman stirred, groaned once, and sat up. He stared about him wildly, and, seeing Matheson, caught at Honor’s dress as though for protection, and shrank further away. Matheson stood and surveyed their grouping with a numb sensation of utter weariness stealing over him. He was too physically used up even to think connectedly. Holman was choking and spluttering. He caught his breath on a sob, and turned his face and spat noisily on the floor. Doubtless he felt a necessity for expectorating; but the act appealed to Matheson as disgusting, and unseemly in Honor’s presence. He expected her to wince. Observing that she made no sign of repugnance, he wondered whether her compassion exceeded her fastidiousness; and felt vaguely disappointed in her for showing so great a forbearance.

Very gently she loosened the injured man’s collar, and assisted him to an easier position, tending him with such solicitude that Matheson, watching her in surprised silence, was moved to a yet greater hatred of the man whose life her coming had spared. Could she be so completely dominated by racial antagonism as to be dead to every other consideration? It seemed to him that the tragedy of her mother’s life, the division between the Nels, who in every respect save their sense of right in allegiance to opposite causes, were fraternal in feeling, could not fail to have some effect on her. He could not understand her attitude of unrelenting enmity. Even allowing that from her point of view his country had done her people a real injury in the past, surely she must realise that in this struggle for right against tyranny, every country which spent its strength in the defence of the weaker nations was to be honoured for the sacrifices it was called upon to make? For any injustice Great Britain had been guilty of in the past she was making a splendid atonement.

While he pondered these things, dizzy from the effects of his wound and the recent struggle, Honor rose to her feet and confronted him with so kindly a look that he was led to believe that her solicitude for Holman went no deeper than a womanly compassion which any suffering would excite—which she might have shown towards himself had his condition seemed to call for sympathy. She had not observed that he was hurt. In the gathering dusk the blood that was soaking through his coat showed only as a dark stain which passed unremarked in the agitation of the moment.

“Go,” she said in a quiet voice, and lifted an arm and pointed towards the open doorway. “Your presence excites him. You have hurt him. What had he done to you that you should seek to kill him?”

“Honor!” he said, and hardly recognised his own voice, so hoarse and strange it sounded in the stillness. He made a step towards her, gazing hungrily into the beautiful, upraised face. “Honor!” he repeated dully.

He saw, without appreciating in his dazed condition the significance of the action, Holman groping upon the floor for his gun, saw him feel in his pocket for ammunition. He was aware that the man was loading the gun; but he paid no heed to that in the stress of emotion that gripped him in the presence of this girl whose power over him exceeded any other influence that had ever swayed him. He saw the blood warming the pale face while he gazed at it with such strained and eager intensity, and noticed the look of distressed embarrassment in her eyes, the sudden shrinking away before his approach. There was neither dislike nor distrust in her look, only a quick, unaccountable nervousness which he attributed to the unexpectedness of their meeting, with its tragic and ugly introduction.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “You didn’t come as a friend. You thought to do him an injury... I know... You hate him because of the letter I foolishly read to you. I made a mistake—but I thought I could trust you.”

“A damned Englishman is never to be trusted,” Holman’s voice broke in raspingly behind her. “He’d sell you all... Why couldn’t you blasted English keep out of this war?” he demanded aggressively. “It’s not your quarrel. You’ve come in for selfish ends, and you’ll get shot to pieces for interfering when you weren’t called up.”

Honor turned her head suddenly at a sound from his direction. Looking over her shoulder she saw the gun raised to his shoulder, his finger crooked round the trigger.

“Stand aside,” he commanded her roughly.

She swung round quickly and faced him, standing resolutely between him and the man he would have shot down before her eyes.

“I will never let you do that,” she said firmly. “You can only shoot through me. We may be rebels, we aren’t murderers, Heinrich.”

He lowered the gun, scowling at her, and answered nothing. Matheson laid a hand on her arm and pushed her aside. Something in the calm proprietary tones, despite the service she had rendered him, goaded him to fury. There was a quality in her look and manner when addressing the German that roused him to a pitch of jealous bitterness which he was unable to control. Still gripping her shoulder, he stared into her eyes.

“What’s he to you?” he asked harshly. “Why do you interfere? What is this German spy to you, other than an enemy?”

“He has never been my enemy,” she answered proudly. “We Dutch have the virtue of gratitude, and he has served our cause faithfully. Be careful how you miscall my husband to me.”

For a long moment he continued to stare at her, incredulous, angry, amazed; then he seized her left hand and raised it and saw, encircling her finger, the plain gold band which proclaimed her married state.

Without a word he dropped her hand, and turned abruptly and walked unsteadily from the hut out into the warm dusk; and as he went, stumbling and feeling his way like a man suddenly blinded, a sound reached his ears, the sound of a man’s sneering laugh of triumph. A wave of unrestrained passion swept over him. He stood still, hesitated, and looked back: then, still stumbling as he walked, he hurried on into the shadows.

Chapter Thirty One.

What happened to him during his hurried flight from the rondavel Matheson never knew. He was conscious only of walking, walking heavily and unseeingly, forward into the dusk, when night abruptly overtook him and wrapped him in a darkness more complete than anything he had ever imagined. When again it was light he woke, with an unrefreshed feeling and a sense of having been victimised by an ugly dream of extraordinary vividness, to find himself lying comfortably in Herman Nel’s bed in the rondavel, with an utter absence of any knowledge of how he came there. He could not recollect going to bed overnight.

Resting quietly on the pillow in semi-wakefulness, his drowsy thoughts occupied themselves with speculating on what had happened. Little by little the events of the previous evening recurred to him, but always with that dreamlike sense of unreality that left him unable to determine what was actual and what only imaginary. The sudden sharp pain of his wound which, when he moved abruptly, he felt for the first time since waking, brought bade clearly to his memory the scene of the struggle with Holman and Honor’s intervention, assuring him that this was no dream but ugly reality. He had seen again the woman he loved; had been unfaithful in thought to the woman who loved him; had been at death-grips with his enemy; and now lay sick from the wound he had sustained—more side in mind than in body, conscious chiefly of the stupefying fact that this woman whom he loved so dearly was the wife of the man he had sought to kill, that that fact rendered his enmity innocuous; he could not strike at Honor through any one she loved.

While he lay there, staring at the daylight through partially closed lids in a misery so acute that his physical suffering seemed as nothing compared with the anguish of his mind, he became aware that he was not alone. Seated at some distance from the bed, engaged on work the nature of which puzzled him to determine for a time, till he made out that she was busy rolling and stitching bandages, was Mrs Krige, looking very much as he had last seen her, her expression sad but calm in its earnest confidence, and with a new purpose in the patient eyes. Her thoughts, as she rolled the strips of linen to be used for the men who were fighting for their right to recognition as an independent race, were with her dead husband, her dead son, and the son who had gone forth to strike for the old Republics. For the moment she had forgotten the patient she was there to nurse; he had slept so long, had lain since waking so quiet that she fancied him sleeping still.

A slight movement on his part caused her to look up, and she surprised his gaze riveted on her and on the work in her hands, and read in the mute inquiry in his eyes the questions he would have asked.

Swiftly and noiselessly she laid aside her work, and rose and approached the bed, carrying a cup filled with milk, which she held to his lips. He drank the contents and lay back again on the pillow and regarded her with the hint of a smile in his eyes.

“I little thought when last we parted to meet you again like this,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been giving trouble. And I’m filled with curiosity. It puzzles me to understand how I came here—in bed. The last thing I recall is walking on the veld.”

He raised himself slightly on his elbow and surveyed her with an expression of perplexed inquiry. Her presence was another surprise amid the rush of amazing events. To wake and find her seated in the room, as quietly established as if she were in her own home, occasioned him greater wonderment than anything that had befallen.

“I wish you’d enlighten me,” he said. “I want to know how you came to be here.”

“Don’t you think you had better lie still and just accept things?” she suggested. “I am here to look after you. You will feel better after a good rest.”

“But I can’t rest,” he persisted. “I keep wondering about things. I want to know... please.”

“Butter Tom brought you in,” she said. “You dropped from exhaustion. The wound in your shoulder... It bled rather much.”

“But that doesn’t account for your presence,” he said. “Butter Tom didn’t fetch you to my aid?”

“No.” She turned aside and busied herself at the table. “I’m staying with Mrs Nel,” she added after a moment’s pause for reflection. “It wasn’t far to come, you see.”

It was not difficult to fill in the blanks in her halting explanation. Matheson lay back on the pillow and was silent for a time, while Mrs Krige, believing that his curiosity was satisfied, resumed her seat and her occupation. Matheson watched her from the bed, rolling and stitching the strips of linen and placing the finished bandages in orderly rows on the table. There was something significant and disturbing in the calm methodical process; it worried him unaccountably.

Actuated by a sudden resolve, he moved his shoulder to test how far it incommoded him. It felt stiff and painful, but he had an idea that if he could get to the station he would be able to manage the journey to Cape Town. It was become a matter of urgent importance to him to get away back to the coast. There was nothing he could accomplish by remaining; and to remain in Honor’s vicinity was intolerable. He put up a hand and felt his shoulder. It had been bandaged with a skill that suggested hospital training. He wondered who had done him this service. Curiosity prompted him to inquire.

“Some one has dressed my wound,” he said. “Was that you?”

“No.” Mrs Krige looked up quickly. “Hadn’t you better lie quiet?” she said.

He picked at the coverlet with impatient fingers.

“I can’t,” he answered. “I can’t rest. I want to be up and out of this. If I had a conveyance I could get to the station, and the rest would be easy. There’s nothing much the matter with me. This wound—it’s trifling. Besides, I must get back.”

“In a day or so,” she answered soothingly. “Is it so irksome to have me waiting on you for so brief a time?”

He smiled faintly.

“You are making me out ungrateful. It isn’t that, believe me... You are so kind; I know you will forgive my seeming ungraciousness. It is really important that I should return to the coast. There is some one in Cape Town who expects me. I am going to be married shortly.”

He was conscious as he said this of the sudden brightening of Mrs Krige’s face. She glanced towards him with eyes that expressed interest and an immense relief.

“I’m so glad,” she said.

She got up and moved away to the window, and remained with her back towards the bed, so that Matheson was no longer able to watch her face. She was, as he was perfectly aware, thinking of the confidence he had once reposed in her, when he had talked to her of his hopeless attachment for Honor, and had seemed to reproach her for the misdirection of Honor’s views. Those days appeared far away now; so much had happened in the interval; and yet the distress of them was painfully alive.

“Tell me about her... her name, and where she lives,” Mrs Krige said presently, without turning round. “You know I’m interested. I always hoped that—that something of the sort would happen.” She faced about and came back to the bed and sat down beside it. “I wish I knew her. Help me to know her through you... Talk to me about her. If you describe her I shall have a picture of her in my mind.”

The pleasant eyes bent upon him were so kind and inviting of confidence; the voice, asking for details of the girl he was so soon to marry, expressed such real sympathy and understanding, that Matheson found himself confiding in her fully the story of his engagement and the events which had led up to it. He painted the worth of his little fiancée in no mean colours, and admitted his own good fortune in having won the most priceless of all possessions, a good woman’s earnest love. But he did not speak of his own love. Possibly the mother of Honor understood that for him the shadow of the past lay darkly yet across the sunlit prospect of this later love, and, lingering, obscured the brightness of the newly won happiness in the gloom of unforgettable things. But no shadow hovers eternally in life’s sky: the darkest clouds must pass.

He told her of Brenda’s home life, and touched upon the sadness of her girlhood, and the plucky fight she was putting up when he met her.

“She’s such a brave, bright little soul,” he finished. “I want to make up to her if I can for the things she’s missed. I’m going to devote my life to that end. Only sometimes I doubt...”

He broke off and moved restlessly on the pillow, and looked up to discover the kind, comprehending eyes scrutinising him attentively, and flushed beneath their gaze.

“She’s such a capital chum,” he said. “I’m not really worthy of her.”

“Oh! I think she stands a fair chance of being very happy,” Mrs Krige observed with conviction. “And from what you have told me, I should say you have been fortunate enough to discover the right woman. A big nature and a warm heart comprise a generous dowry. I would like to meet her.”

He looked pleased.

“Yes,” he said; “you would like her. Perhaps, some day—when all this beastly fuss is over...” He put out his unhurt arm and took her hand. “It’s such a pitiful mistake,” he muttered. “Why did you let him join?”

She shook her head.

“It was not my doing,” she answered. “Andreas felt the call. Life leads us whither we must go. When a person has something taken from him which he prizes, he endeavours to recover what he has lost. That is how it is with us.”

“But it isn’t any sort of use,” he urged. “Besides, it is only a nominal loss. The country belongs to the people who live in it. Ask Herman Nel. They won’t succeed, you know—Andreas, and the others.”

“God knows!” she answered. “General de Wet will never rest until he has hoisted the flag in Pretoria. They are brave men, and they have right on their side.”

“Well, of course, it’s all according to the point of view,” he conceded. “But Botha is a brave man—and Herman Nel. They too have right on their side. It’s a sad business when there is division in the household.”

“Yes,” she admitted, and glanced involuntarily at the bandages upon the table, and sighed. “Each war that befalls lays a foundation for the next. Men don’t consider the ties of blood when the question of fighting arises.”

“And women cease to consider the claims of love in like circumstance,” he returned grimly.

She had no difficulty in following his meaning. Her face clouded momentarily.

“That depends largely on the woman’s outlook on life,” she answered. “With some women love is all-satisfying; but the woman with the highest conception of love does not allow her ideals of life to be dominated by passion. It is not always the woman who loves least who puts love outside her life. But—you’ve talked enough.” She got up abruptly and returned to the table and her former occupation. “If I allow you to discuss these matters, your temperature will run up, and I shall be blamed.”

“Blamed by whom?” he asked.

She bent her head lower over her work and answered quietly:

“Both my daughters have been through a course of hospital training.”

“In preparation for this rebellion?” he suggested with a touch of irritation in his tones.

“In preparation for the rising of their people,” she replied with a gentle dignity of manner that rebuked his anger.

He made no answer, but lay still in a thoughtful silence and watched her while she worked.

Chapter Thirty Two.

The day wore slowly away. No one visited the rondavel. Although he knew the wish to be preposterous, Matheson nevertheless felt a strong desire to see Honor. He did not want to talk to her; he merely wished to see her. He would have been satisfied had she entered to confer with her mother, and left again without paying any heed to him—had she even passed the open door so that he might, unseen, have watched her go by.

But Honor did not come.

Butter Tom appeared at regular intervals, moving with unnecessary caution on tip-toe, his bare feet, always noiseless, making no sound on the smooth floor. He brought food for Mrs Krige, and soup for the sick baas, and laid and cleared the table with surprising swiftness and care. Butter Tom’s mind was troubled with regard to the baas’ accident. He felt himself blameworthy in having failed to keep guard. But the young missis with the face that was like a lily in the moonlight had sent him with a message to the farm. He had not liked to refuse to do her bidding: now he wished that he had refused. His own baas when he returned would be displeased with him, and the sick baas would reproach him; there would be no tobacco and no more good English money for him.

He stole repeated furtive glances towards the bed; but the baas lay with his gaze fixed on the open doorway and never looked his way. That was proof enough for Butter Tom that the baas was angry.

Matheson was not thinking of Butter Tom: he had ceased to wonder at the latter’s defection; subsequent events had blotted that out for the time. All his mind now was intent upon Honor to the obliteration of everything—Honor, who, apart from her marriage, was lost to him, and should have ceased to occupy his thoughts. In allowing this obsession to hold him he knew that he was behaving discreditably; but a man, though he may control his emotions up to a certain point, cannot always entirely subdue them: desire confronted with the object which inspires it can become an overpowering passion. Out of her presence, with distance and the knowledge of the hopelessness of his love separating them, he had grown resigned to the inevitable; but the sight of her again, the sound of the rich soft voice, the touch of her, had been more than he could bear with stoicism. He was moved to a sick longing for her, a longing which overlooked another man’s prior claim, and the claim of the girl who loved and trusted him. If occasionally the memory of Brenda obtruded itself, he thrust it aside with a sick man’s irritably impatience towards disturbing thoughts. Brenda had no place here. This side of his life was a thing apart, a slice of life detached and complete in itself. Here in this odd corner of the world he had experienced all the romance he was to know: it began here, and ended when he left. He would dig its grave and bury it when he went away. There was nothing else left to do.

He worked himself into a fever as the day advanced, and, flushed and restless, turned continually on the pillow and stared out at the hot sunshine that flooded the world without, and poured in through the opening of the rondavel and lay, a golden stream, along the shining floor. No trees surrounded Nel’s hut to shade it from the fierce rays of the sun, and the days were sultry at that time of the year.

Mrs Krige sat beside him and fanned him with untiring patience. The slow regular movement of her arm worried him; but he was grateful to her, and he appreciated the faint draught thus created: when she paused to rest the heaviness of the atmosphere oppressed him so that he felt almost suffocated. It was a relief when the sun went down, and the sky, blood-red from the afterglow, reflected luridly upon the darkening veld; though the dusk, as it closed in slowly, robbed him of his final hope of seeing Honor. Honor would not come to him... Perhaps it were wiser so.

He fell asleep after a while, and woke later to find the rondavel dimly illumined by the lamp which, turned low, was screened from the bed. He was alone. The quiet figure which he had last seen seated at the table rolling those endless strips of linen, was no longer there. Mrs Krige had left and had taken with her the result of her long hours of industry; there was nothing, save the fan lying on the chair beside the bed, to remind him of her presence. He wondered whether Butter Tom remained within call, or if he were entirely alone. The thought of being alone troubled him, why he did not know. He hesitated to call the Kaffir for fear of receiving no response; doubt, he felt, in the uncertainty of any one being near, was preferable to knowledge.

For a while he lay and watched the dimly burning lamp, and watching it lost consciousness of his surroundings in sleep once more.

When he woke again the dawn was breaking, and the cool fresh air of the early morning stole softly in through door and windows and fanned his fevered brow. He drank in long breaths of it eagerly, and looking forth at the increasing brightness, as it forced its way inside the silent room and slowly dispelled the shadows lurking there, he was made suddenly aware of another shadow that was not a part of the night, that did not vanish with the darkness but assumed more definite shape, appeared, while never moving, to draw nearer to him, to become less shadowy as the lesser shadows fled. It was a trick of the imagination he believed that formed out of the shadows in the dusky room the slender woman’s figure which he descried dimly outlined against the reimpe curtain, with the dawn touching the pale hair, and falling wanly on the white still face. Was it a dream, he wondered; and feared to move for fear the dream would fade.

Quietly he lay and watched, feasting his eyes on the vision; and momentarily the day waxed brighter, and the shadowy form grew more distinct, took more substantial shape, became instinct with life and movement.

Slowly the reimpe curtain fell into place. With soft, inaudible footfall Honor advanced and stood beside the bed and looked down on him, a gentle solicitude in her steady eyes. He did not speak. He was afraid still that if he moved or made a sound she might vanish as unexpectedly as she had come. He could not have borne the disappointment had she suddenly turned and left him.

And then she spoke. Her voice broke the spell and sent the blood coursing once more madly through his veins. This was no dream. He was awake, and Honor stood there in the dawn beside his bed.

“You have slept well,” she said. “You are better?”

“I am quite fit,” he answered. “It was all I needed, a good sleep. How did you come? I never heard you enter.”

She laughed softly.

“I’ve been here with you all night.”

“You’ve been here? ... all night?” His tone was eloquent, eyes and voice bespoke his disappointment. “And I never knew! To sleep like that... and you here!”

“If knowledge of my presence would have kept you awake, I am glad you did not know,” she said. “You were a little feverish. We did not like to leave you alone. But you’ve slept well.”

She touched his neck lightly with her hand, the dear soft hand he longed to hold and kiss—the hand which he had taken and almost flung from him when he first heard of her marriage.

“The fever has gone,” she added. “You will soon be all right.”

“I’m all right now,” he insisted. “I feel quite fit. It’s awfully good of you to have bothered, but you ought not to have sat up; it wasn’t necessary.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she returned, “how badly you were hurt. I didn’t realise at first that you were hurt. I am sorry... I want you to—forgive that injury.”

“Oh, that!” he said, and thought of the greater injury Holman had contrived. “I ran that risk with my eyes open. I’m not counting that.”

She fell on her knees beside the bed and laid her two hands with swift impulsiveness upon his breast.

“I know,” she said, speaking very quickly and in lowered tones, her face close to his, the soft eyes holding his eyes filled with an eager pleading which it was difficult to resist—“I know you and Heinrich are enemies... For that matter we are enemies—you and I—”

“No,” he interrupted sharply... “No... You and I, enemies! ... Honor...”

“Ah!” she breathed softly, and the hands on his breast pressed more firmly. “I didn’t mean that—not actually. Always in my heart I’ve known that couldn’t be. You’re my—”

“Lover,” he interjected hoarsely.

She winced and her face went white.

“Friend—my dear friend,” she corrected, but so gently, and with so little real conviction in her voice that it was rather as though she admitted his definition of the relationship. “You are my friend. You must remain my friend... I want to keep—just that.”

There were tears in her eyes now. She did not attempt to hide them: they welled there, priceless diamonds from a mine of ungathered wealth, welled, and overflowed, and fell on the man’s breast. Matheson lay still, staring at her, and made no response.

“This is the last time we shall meet,” she went on quietly, striving after and regaining something of her old composure. “You must not come this way again. It would have been better for us both if you had not come now. Why did you come?”

“I did not expect to see you,” he replied, and evaded her eyes.

“I will tell you,” she said. “You are seeking Heinrich—to kill him. You meant to kill him...”

“I don’t know.” He moved uneasily. “I suppose that was it. He’s a spy. He has been guilty of the worst form of sedition... I didn’t know—how should I?—that—that you— Oh! my God! Honor, I would rather you had died than married him.”

“Hush!” She placed a finger on his lips and silenced him. “You mustn’t say those things to me. All that he has done he has done with my approval—for me and mine. He has worked for the Dutch cause for years...”

“And because of that,” he interrupted savagely, “you felt it necessary to reward him with all that you had to give... As though he hasn’t been well rewarded by his country, which pays its spies well for spreading sedition. And you’re no longer Dutch—you are a German subject. You’ve renounced your people by your marriage. He’ll renounce them too when it suits him.”

She drew back, hurt and angry.

“I am not German,” she contradicted proudly. “Heinrich’s interest is identical with mine.”

“Oh, well!” he said wearily. “It doesn’t matter anyway. At least it isn’t any business of mine. I’m sorry... but being sorry won’t undo things. Your feet are on the road now which they always wanted to travel. And you can’t see whither it is tending...”

“Can you?” she asked scornfully.

“I see it leading to disappointment and sorrow,” he returned. “This pitiful rebellion which you have assisted in bringing about is going to make a sad difference in this land. And only hurt can come to you. It is going to throw a still darker shadow across your path. My dear, I’m grieved about that. If it were possible I would sweep all the shadows out of your life and leave it fair and untroubled; but that is a power no human will can compass. Why couldn’t you leave the bitterness of strife to men, and turn your thoughts to gentler things? It’s unnatural for women to cherish hate. Hate never accomplished anything but destruction. In this case it will be the destruction of your hopes and ambitions.”

“We must win,” she asserted doggedly. “This is our chance. We are bound to seize it. Your country can’t send big armies to fight us now: you have bigger armies against you. You will lose this war, and we shall come again into our own. If only all the Dutch were with us! ... I can’t understand those Boers who go over to the British. It isn’t loyal; it is abject servility.”

“You are altogether mistaken,” he said. “You don’t understand the position. It isn’t a question of going over to the British, but of protecting this country from a serious menace. These men lode deeper than you do; they have the welfare of the country at heart; they have bigger stakes to occupy themselves with than nursing a spirit of revenge. They think for the future generations—for their children, whose heritage this country is. You are thinking only of your grievances: you live in the past. The maker of history must live in the future. Can’t you see, Honor, that you are fighting for your generation to the hurt of the generations to come? The statesman may not reckon for his own brief span; he has to look ahead.”

She made no verbal response, but looked at him with quickening interest, her dark eyes glowing, the breath coming quickly from between her parted lips. Matheson caught her wrist and held it firmly while he talked.

“What will it benefit you,” he asked, “to hoist your flag over the body of your brother, and the bodies of the sons and husbands of women who think with you? Life is too good a thing to spill it wantonly at the feet of a bloodless ideal. And you are too good and fine and gentle to waste your life in hate.”

“Not hate,” she corrected, the hot tears welling afresh. “Patriotism is not hate. Aren’t you ready to spill your blood for your country?”

“You’ve got me there,” he said, and smiled. “I’m going to defend this country from German avidity, anyhow.”

“Ah!” she cried. “You preach against hate, yet you hate the Germans. That isn’t consistent. You do hate the Germans?”

“Yes,” he admitted; “I suppose that’s true. But I never hated a German before their bestial ravishment of Belgium. I never imagined anything so brutal could defame the prestige of a great nation. They will never live that down. The things they’ve done... And the spying and underhand work... Yes, I hate them all right.”

“You hate Heinrich,” she persisted.

“I hate the things he has done.”

“I know,” she said. “But what he has done, he has done for me. Always, when I was still a child, he loved me. Can you wonder that I feel grateful to him? I am sorry you hate him. I don’t want harm to come to him through you... not through you. Promise me that you will go away and never seek to harm him in the future... Promise me that—for my sake.”

Had Matheson not already realised that the punishment of Holman was no longer work for him he must have yielded to the earnest entreaty in Honor’s voice and eyes, as with nervous insistence she urged her request that he would spare her husband; but her pleading stabbed him, and excited afresh his enmity towards the man.

“There is no need to wring promises from me,” he said, a hardness he could not prevent steeling his voice. “The fact that he is your husband is sufficient. Had I known that sooner I should not be here now. As it is, more harm has come to me than to him. It was not compassion on his side that prevented him from murdering me.”

“He was desperate,” she pleaded; “he feared you. He fears you still.”

“Perhaps,” he exclaimed with angry suspicion, “he sent you to intercede for him?”

“No,” she cried quickly—“not that I came because—because—” Her voice broke on a sob. “You are so hard,” she said. “I cannot touch you. Have you no pity—for me?”

“Pity!—for you?” he cried, and raised himself sharply in the bed. “My God! I love you, and you know it... What need have you to ask for pity? Rather should your compassion go out to me. I give everything... and take nothing away with me—nothing.”

Suddenly she bent over him, her eyes alight, her face transformed with a tender spiritual beauty that held him spellbound, breathless, drinking in her beauty with his eyes. Leaning towards him she pressed her lips to his.

“Something,” she whispered—“not much—but something to take away, and to keep, from me...”

Chapter Thirty Three.

The sunlight flooded the rondavel and played in a golden radiance about Honor’s figure. The gleam of it was in her hair; it shone dazzlingly on her white dress, and sparkled with a hard brilliance on the plain gold circlet on her finger. Matheson caught the glint of the ring, and from that moment it seemed to him that all the light in the room became contracted and centred in that narrow band, darting forth its refracted rays with a fiery challenge that hurt the eyes.

He put up a hand to shut out the sinister gleam of it, and lay quiet and in silence. Honor had risen and moved away from the bed. She stood with her face partly averted, watching the beauty of the sunrise through the uncurtained open window. An immense embarrassment held her, an embarrassment that made itself felt and in which the man shared. A sense of wrongdoing robbed them both of all pleasure in that long caress in the dawn, when their lips had met and lingered in the first kiss they had interchanged. He had kissed her once before on the brow; that kiss had been one of renunciation; the kiss he had given her that morning held the quality of passion in its eager warmth, a passion to which the woman was not insensible, to which she had in a measure responded. It had been the act of a moment in obedience to the impulse of the moment, and it left them both a little overcome and excited and enormously self-conscious.

Honor was startled. There was an expression akin to fear in the eyes that looked out at the sunlight, a warm colour in the beautiful face as if the rosy light in the sky had caught and flushed her cheeks. Her breathing was hurried, and the hand hanging at her side, the hand with its shining circlet, clenched and unclenched itself nervously. What had she done?—she, the bride of a few weeks. It was her fault, entirely her fault; she had always known that he loved her—had realised when she kissed him that she was touching fire. And yet after all what harm was there in what had passed between them? Why should she deny him that small satisfaction? She turned impulsively towards him, and stood transfixed, surprised and disconcerted at the sight of him lying with his eyes shielded by his hand. Why did he lie like that? Why would he not lode at her?

“Mr Matheson!” she said softly.

He uncovered his eyes immediately and met her inquiring gaze.

“Oh, hang it all!” he exclaimed. “Why don’t you call me Guy? We’ve got beyond formalities.”

He turned on his elbow.

“Come here,” he said. “I can’t talk to you from a distance. It’s all right. I’ll not forget again. I’ve been seeing that damned ring on your finger till I’m wellnigh blinded by it. It stands between us. I’m not likely to forget that. And there’s something else between us—something... I ought to have remembered sooner. But the sight of you...”

He broke off with jerky abruptness. Honor, observing him wonderingly, drew nearer in obedience to his wish, and seated herself in the chair near the bed. She folded her hands in her lap, and the ring was hidden from him. He noticed that, and wondered if she concealed it intentionally.

“I want to get away,” he said. “You must help me. I want some kind of conveyance... You’ll see to it? ... It doesn’t matter about this morning... After I leave I shall never see you again. I wish I had not seen you—ever. I wish I could forget you, but I know that is out of the question. I’ll never forget... your face... your voice... these will live in my memory. I am going to be married almost immediately, to the best little girl who ever loved a man not worthy of her. I’ve a warm affection for her—a warm affection, and an immense respect... but I have given the best of myself to you. That fact I am afraid is going to spoil life for both of us—for her and for me, I mean.”

“Need she know?” Honor asked quickly, in a voice that was not quite steady.

“She knows already. I had to tell her that before asking her to be my wife.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh! I’m sorry.”

She was silent for a moment; then she burst forth with a sudden soft vehemence that surprised him. He fell to listening, wondering, while he watched her working face, as expressive of the emotion that swayed her as the full rich tones giving voice to the flow of resentful thoughts that expressed their owner’s discontent with life, why this complicated business of life and love should be dependent upon infinitesimal human needs; why the disconnected individual existence should act and interact upon each separate existence it came in contact with until certain lives became interwoven with its own and, in adding to its completeness, divorced it from its former state of comfortable detachment? To love much is to suffer much; to love not at all is to remain unacquainted with happiness. And it is never a matter of choice: the lover is fashioned by circumstance; he is not his own creator.

“I think you were unwise to tell her,” Honor said, speaking low, and looking away from him, gazing abstractedly at the golden path that stretched from the doorway to her feet with wide unseeing eyes. “Your confidence only aggravates the wrong. Life hurts enough.” She pressed her hands the one upon the other tightly in her lap, and her face was sad. “Life has its beginning in pain; it struggles painfully through the years to the inevitable end. We regard life dishonestly; we’re afraid to face the truth. We speak of the beauty of Nature, her kindliness and compassion; and we look about us and behold the drought, and the beasts dying of hunger and thirst; that is not beauty, it is ugliness: we see men striving in a hated rivalry, competing always—killing one another; that is not kindliness; kindliness is not born of the lust of hate. Throughout creation, from the meanest organic life to the highest, one thing preys upon another and kills in order to live; that is not compassion. Beauty and serenity exist only in inanimate objects. Perhaps that is why inanimate nature endures while we pass away.

“I love this land,” she added, in soft impassioned accents, “as a woman loves her child. I wish I were a man that I could fight for it. Your country in annexing ours tears my child from my arms. And you talk to me of the futility, the wrong, of my wish to reclaim it... Go back to the girl who loves you, marry her, and have children of your own; and then perhaps you will understand. She will forget when her first child lies in her arms that its father’s love was ever given elsewhere. And you will forget too. No human passion is so acute that time cannot dim its keenness. I want you to forget. I want you, if you ever think of me, to think of me kindly as a friend.”

“Friend!” he ejaculated scornfully.

“It’s the sweetest word in all the English language,” she returned gently, “when it is applied sincerely.”

“That may be,” he admitted, and thought how ill the term applied in his case.

It incensed him that she could talk in that dispassionate manner about friendship with his burning kisses hot upon her lips. He believed that she was dissembling for the purpose of hiding from him her real feelings. He had never really understood her. She was capable of an immense reserve; not once in their most intimate moments had she permitted herself to be entirely frank with him.

“Perhaps in the future,” he said, “I may come to regard this thing with the same cool detachment as yourself; but I can’t think of you as a friend—yet. And it is dishonourable for me to think of you in any other way. I hadn’t heard of your marriage. I can’t get used to the idea. It seems to me fantastic and unreal I met Herman Nel in Cape Town; he never mentioned it.”

“I doubt whether he knew of it,” she answered. “Herman has not been to Benfontein for some months. Freidja is away nursing. She has quarrelled with him.”

“Is she going to spoil her life and his?” he asked with sharp impatience, recalling Nel’s face with its slightly wistful smile when the Dutchman had spoken to him of the rupture of his engagement.

Honor looked surprised.

“No,” she said. “After the war she will marry him. She loves him. Herman is a good man, and he is Dutch. They will live here.”

“And you?” he asked. “Are you going to forsake Benfontein?”

She smiled at the question. The farm on the Karroo was more precious to her than the fairest places of earth. She had come to Benfontein as a child. Every tree and kopje, every flower that blossomed in the veld, was dear to her with the priceless value of long familiar things. To quit Benfontein would be to tear herself up by roots too deeply set to bear such ruthless transplanting.

“Heinrich is working the farm for Andreas in his absence,” she explained; “he rents half the farm. We shall build a house for ourselves on the land, and I shall live near my mother. When Andreas marries, she will come to us.”

“You make plans,” he said, surprised at her confidence in the future. “One cannot think beyond the present these days. I do not look so far ahead.”

“I forgot,” she said, glancing at him swiftly. “You are going to fight—against us...”

“I am going to join Botha’s force as soon as I am married,” he answered.

“You’ve talked with Herman... He has persuaded you?”

Her tone held a note of suspicion. For all his talk of love for her, he had not been ready to yield to her persuasions. He was even prepared to fight against her people, to look upon her people and herself as rebels. That was not consistent with love.

“Herman has persuaded you,” she said again.

“He helped to convince me, I admit.”

“I tried to convince you,” she said quickly. “I did my utmost to prove to you the justice of our cause... Why couldn’t you at least have kept out of it? Why must you strike at me?”

“Oh! Honor,” he protested. “You look at this thing so differently. It isn’t a personal question at all.”

“It is,” she cried passionately—“between you and me.” She leaned towards him, her face quivering, and flushed with angry shame. “No one knows better than you do all this means to me. I’ve told you so much. I’ve trusted you. And in return—in return you take up arms against me. You talk of love—you, who cannot be true either to the woman you profess to love, or to the woman you are pledged to marry! Your love is not worthy any woman’s acceptance.”

“I’ve deserved that,” he replied, with a quick change of colour, and averting his gaze from the stormy reproach in her eyes. It came to him in a swift illuminating flash that intense natures such as Honor’s were not only difficult to understand, they were difficult also to deal with; possibly they would be difficult to live with.

He found this fresh mood disconcerting and distressing. And the reproach to his honour came ill from her. He felt suddenly very tired. He needed food. In her excitement she had forgotten the nourishment that stood ready for him on the table, slowly cooling while they talked.

“It isn’t altogether my fault,” he asserted with almost sullen insistence. “I’m not myself. I’m unnerved. You come to me when I’m altogether unprepared, and—my God! how the sight of you tempts me! But you are hard, Honor. All that is gentle in your nature has been deliberately suppressed.”

“I’ve been tutored in a hard world,” she replied oddly. “It is well, perhaps, that I am hard. A woman needs an armour of steel to protect herself from the selfishness of men’s love I believed in you once... I cared... You know I cared. But you wanted everything, and would give nothing. That is your way. For men like Beyers and Christian de Wet I would die, if it would benefit them at all. They are brave men with a single purpose in life. You call them rebels; we regard them as heroes. Had you joined us, I would have done anything for you. Instead, you side with the men who are trying to defeat our cause. Can you wonder that I am bitter when you speak to me of love and strike with the other hand?”

She got up abruptly, and stood for a moment irresolute, looking down at him, the anger dying slowly out of her eyes.

“It isn’t any use—it isn’t any use at all to speak of these things now. You will go your way, I mine. But it might have been so different. Last year, when you went away, I hoped you would change your mind and come back. I didn’t know then of this girl. Heinrich told me about her. You went back to her, and my influence ended.”

So Holman had enlightened her about Brenda. Doubtless he had done so in order to prosper his own suit. It was a card he would not have scrupled to play.

“I could never have embraced your cause,” he said gently. “I know what you have suffered, and I feel for you. But the affairs of nations are outside individual grievances. One has to accept a broader outlook. I shall never forget that I owe it to you that I learnt to see your point of view so clearly that I look upon this movement less as a rebellion than the persistence in a righteous if mistaken cause by a people who have never known discipline. In relying upon Germany you rely upon a ruthless enemy; the protection of the British flag alone secures your independence. This Colony is governed largely by the Dutch, in the interests of the Dutch collectively with the British, and for the good of the native community. You cannot improve on that. Let well alone, Honor, and heal old wounds. Herman Nel’s method of winning is the better and surer way.”

“Ah, Herman!” she said, and smiled. “Herman is a dreamer.”

“He dreams sanely,” he answered with conviction.

“Which means that he thinks as you do.”

She moved away to the table and took up the neglected food.

“See what a bad nurse I make,” she said, assuming a lighter manner. “I would starve you while I attempt to show you the error of your ways. It would appear that where you are concerned I must fail in everything.”

She brought the cup to the bedside. He took it from her hand and drained the contents eagerly.

“You were famished,” she said reproachfully. “Yet you wouldn’t ask me for food.”

“I hate to give so much trouble,” he answered. “If you wouldn’t mind calling Butter Tom presently, I will get up and dress with his assistance. It’s all humbug, my lying here, and taking slops. I could eat an ox.”

“I’ll dress your wound first,” she said. “That is something I can do for you better than Butter Tom.”

“You dressed it before?” he asked. “I wondered. I thought possibly I owed that to you. Honor...” He looked at her appealingly. “You are not going to let us part with a sense of ill will between us? I want to believe that when I am gone you will sometimes think kindly of me.”

Honor did not at once reply. She stood With the empty cup in her hand, the sunlight warming her face, shining on the white surface of the vessel into which she gazed in thoughtful abstraction, brightening her whole figure, and the room which formed a quaint and fitting background for this girl who belonged to the wilds, and whose beauty suggested always to the man who watched her sunlit spaces and warmth and the scent and the winds of the veld. She lifted her gaze suddenly and met his eyes.

“Don’t let us talk of these matters,” she said. “It is wiser with the coming of morning to cease to dwell on the dreams which belong to the night that is past. I’ve dreamed my dreams—you too. We are awake now, and the day calls us to other activities. Just for a moment while sleep drugged our senses we forgot. But we are neither of us people who forget for long the path of honour.”

His gaze fell before her steady eyes. She was right. Their paths in life were no tractless ways; they stretched straight ahead, clearly defined and mile-stoned with duties, leading always in opposite directions to the accepted goal—the goal of individual endeavour which contributes its effort to the unending scheme of life.

Chapter Thirty Four.

There was a thoughtful look in Honor’s eyes when, leaving Butter Tom to the unaccustomed task of valeting the wounded baas, she stepped forth into the sunshine and walked with a certain weary reluctance towards the homestead. She was tired with her overnight vigil, and the emotional scene in the rondavel was succeeded by a feeling of exhaustion and nervous reaction. For the first time within her knowledge the thought of her cause failed to sustain her; and more than once the question formed itself in her mind whether after all this sacrifice of life were justified even in the securing of national independence? She had never doubted before. She had been as positive of the right and the urgency of their cause as she had felt certain of its ultimate success. Despite Herman Nel’s opposition, she had believed, until results proved the error of her hopes, in the whole-hearted co-operation of the entire Dutch community. Heinrich had assured her that the Boers would rise to a man. The treaty of Vereeniging was but another scrap of paper which the Teutonic mind lightly disregarded. Honor had disregarded it also, as a contract signed under compulsion by the leaders against the will of the majority; she felt that it was in no sense binding on the Dutch as a whole. Matheson’s statement that they were a people who had never known discipline stuck in her mind. Broadly it was true. The Boer does not submit readily to being governed, even by his own leaders. It is a nation in the making, without any of the traditions of an older race to guide it, but with sufficiently fine ideals from which to evolve traditions of its own. Clear-sighted men, like Nel, realised that there was nothing to be gained by fighting; the peaceful development of the country would best serve their interests.

That morning, in a state of physical and mental fatigue, Honor allowed her thoughts to dwell for the first time on the possibility of failure. Matheson had shaken her confidence; and in reminding her that her own brother’s life might be sacrificed to the cause she so ardently espoused, he had caused her enthusiasm a rude check. She had not considered the toll in human life that would be exacted: the grim ugliness of war had been lost sight of in the dazzling prospect of victory. It did not seem to her possible that Andreas could be killed. If that should happen, the triumph of their cause would prove a hollow mockery, and her mother’s tragic life would end in added sadness. It was too big a price, Honor felt in her overwrought and dispirited mood—too big a price to pay even for victory.

As she neared the homestead, coming towards her, she recognised her husband. She was unprepared to meet him there at that hour. He had ridden over from Benfontein. She wondered a little impatiently what brought him. His presence there so early in the morning disconcerted her. Although he was aware that she was sharing with her mother the care of the sick man, and had given her permission to dress Matheson’s wound and aid Mrs Krige with her professional knowledge, his acquiescence had not included sitting up with the patient at night: he had supposed she would sleep beneath Leentje Nel’s roof. It never occurred to him that Matheson’s case called for particular care. The wound was not serious—a flesh wound only; he saw no reason why the women should make a fuss over a mere scratch. In his opinion his own hurt called for greater consideration. His throat was sore and swollen; he had difficulty in swallowing. But Honor had expressed little sympathy with him. She had left him alone all night to care for the man who had injured him. He felt resentful; and he was angry with her because of her concern for the Englishman. What was this cursed Englishman to her that she should feel it her duty to tend him?

“You are over early,” she said, when she came up with him. “I didn’t expect you.”

“So I supposed,” he answered roughly, and turned and walked back beside her. “I’ve been to the farm. Leentje told me you were at the rondavel. I was going to fetch you. What were you doing there? I don’t choose that my wife should spend the night with any man, sick or well.”

She flushed warmly.

“Some one had to watch beside him,” she said with immense restraint. “There was no one else to do it.”

“Absurd!” he replied angrily. “The nigger is good enough to wait on him. There was no one to look after me.”

“You were not so badly hurt,” she returned, in a voice which despite its quiet tones should have warned him of her rising anger. She did not look at him; her eyes searched the landscape ahead of her, and rested with tired satisfaction on the dew-drenched sparse vegetation, cobwebbed with silver threads.

“I feel sick enough,” he said savagely. “But that’s nothing to you. Leentje Nel wouldn’t nurse her husband’s murderer.”

Honor smiled briefly.

“You are very aggressively alive for a murdered man,” she said. She touched his sleeve diffidently. “Don’t be cross, Heinrich. I’m tired—so very tired. And this morning I am racked with anxious fears—fears for Andreas—fears for the cause. The country is not with us.”

Holman made an angry gesture and spat upon the ground.

“White-livered curs!” he muttered. “Everything was in our hands. They’ve sold us—these pitiful Boers. They’re afraid for their blessed skins.”

Her anger flamed forth at this unjustifiable aspersion on the part of a man who was taking only an inactive share in the war. At no period in their history had the Boers earned that reproach—the people who had paid in blood for their right to a place in the dark continent.

“That comes ill from you,” she said. “At least, we don’t shirk the fighting. Men who fear for their skins don’t take up arms against one another. There is evidence enough in this district alone to refute your accusation of cowardice. There isn’t a farm within miles of us but some of its men have joined the fighting.”

“But they don’t hang together,” he persisted sullenly.

“They don’t all think alike,” she allowed; “but they possess the courage of their different convictions, and the courage to fight for them.”

“I spoke in the heat of the moment,” he conceded ungraciously. “It makes me sick to see this great opportunity wasted. You have your chance now to secure independence; it may never come again. And men like Botha and Smuts are simply tying your hands. Leentje has received a message from Cornelius; it came through this morning. Colonel Brand has sent an insulting letter to de Wet. Everywhere Botha’s following is superior to our forces. Our commandoes are simply giving way and fleeing before them. It’s a rout, unless they combine and stand firm; but they give way before the opposition they didn’t anticipate. They aren’t putting up anything of a fight.”

“Cornelius and Andreas won’t give way,” she said proudly.

“Cornelius and Andreas are but two men,” he answered bitterly; “and the voices of two men in a commando are apt to be drowned by the rest.”

Honor walked on without speaking; and in her thoughts the phrase beat insistently: “What will it benefit you to hoist your flag over the body of your brother?” Hot tears welled in her tired eyes, her steps dragged wearily. It did not seem to her at the moment to matter much which side won if only Andreas came through.

“Oh, this war!” she said sadly... “This war! it tears at the heart-strings. Nothing can make good to a woman for the lives of the men she loves.”

“Oh, that!” he returned indifferently. “I didn’t expect to hear such talk from you. That’s the view of the sentimentalist. One doesn’t reckon lives with so much at stake.”

So much at stake! What stake could be greater than the flower of the nations’ manhood which was being sacrificed?

In the farmhouse when they reached it commotion reigned. Leentje Nel was talking in loud excited tones, and two of the children, who were frightened by the noise and whom their mother had slapped soundly in her anger, added their cries to the uproar which greeted Honor’s arrival. Mrs Krige was doing her utmost to restore peace. When Honor entered she found her mother with one wailing child in her arms and another clinging to her skirt, soothing them as best she could, while Leentje held forth bitterly on the pestilential English—the English who had promised to protect them, and who instead had set English magistrates over them to harass them with fines, and make life intolerable, so that they couldn’t flog a native even without having to pay for it in hard cash. Such a state of things could not be endured. The South African Dutch would not submit to being ruled any longer by the pestilential English. The English would be beaten by the Germans, and then South Africa would belong to the Boers.

It struck Honor while she listened as a wholly inadequate and very paltry reason for which to risk valuable lives. It was not any reason at all; it partook rather of the nature of a long-cherished revenge for past wrongs which later events had ceased to justify. Matheson had summed up the situation correctly: the country was governed for the benefit of the white races impartially and for the good of the native community. That state of affairs could not in any event be improved upon.

Leentje turned eagerly as Honor entered, followed by her husband, and, confident of her audience, broke forth anew.

“Here’s a pretty letter from Cornelius,” she cried, and flourished the paper in Honor’s face. “His commando is retreating. They run like buck before the hunter. Naturally they expected the South African Dutch to stand as one man to crush this unholy scandal. When they find through the ungodly policy of Botha that they are opposed to their own people they give way. The men are surrendering, Cornelius says, individually and in small parties. Pah! May the Almighty desert these cowards in their hour of need. May they die and rot and be prey for the jackals. And those Dutch who won’t give up their horses to them, and everything else they possess, may they rot likewise and die miserably. Our men are short of mounts, short of ammunition, short of everything.” Her voice rose to a shrill scream. “For years we have been planning this, and when the hour strikes nothing is ready. Every horse on this farm is commandeered. There is only the miserable horse the cursed Englishman brought with him. That must be taken. If you had the courage of Jael, Honor, the Englishman would never leave the rondavel to fight against us.”

Swiftly, on an impulse, she turned towards Holman, the fire of inextinguishable hate in her eyes.

“Why don’t you shoot this English dog for us? We are only women; but if you won’t do this thing, I will.”

Holman shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“You will have the English magistrates after you, Leentje,” was all he said, purposely goading her.

She smiled grimly.

“The English magistrates won’t frighten me,” she said. “They are set over the districts to cow the men.”

She folded the letter in her hand and thrust it savagely in her bosom, and stared meaningly at Honor.

“‘She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer,’” she quoted softly. “‘Blessed shall she be above women in the tent... The mother of Sisera cried through the lattice. Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?’ ... There is work here worthy of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.”

Slowly, without speaking, Honor left the room. She passed through into the kitchen, and from the kitchen went out into the hot unshaded yard. For a minute or so she waited, as one who expects to be followed, then, with steps as light and fleet as a fawn’s, she sped away in the direction of the rondavel.

Chapter Thirty Five.

Butter Tom was busy outside the rondavel shaking the dust from the skin mats which covered the floor. He glanced up at Honor’s approach, and smiled with a cautious deference that concealed his vague distrust of her more effectually than it hid his nervousness. The missis with the face of a lily in the moonlight possessed the cunning of a devil. Already she had worked evil towards the baas he served. Her appearance now he believed portended further evil. He was afraid of her with the unreasoning fear of a man who realises his inability to resist a superior will. If she commanded him to do a thing, he would do it because he dared not refuse. He likened her to the fleet-footed powers of evil which outdistanced the chameleon, the tardy messenger of the gods, who failed through its dilatoriness to deliver the World from the ills which afflict mankind. She came towards him swiftly, as evil travels, with the speed of the wind, and halted beside him, warmly flushed and panting for breath. Butter Tom gathered up his mats, and, grinning nervously, prepared to retreat with them; but Honor stayed him with a gesture.

“Put those down,” she said authoritatively, “and go to the stable quickly, and fetch out the old spider which Baas Herman uses. Inspan Baas Matheson’s horse without loss of time. The baas will drive to the town, and you will drive him there and bring the spider back. Do you understand?”

“Ja, missis. Me take the mats inside, then me go.”

For a second it seemed as though she would not permit this delay; then with another gesture she signified her consent to the disposal of the mats, but bade him be quick as she would wait for him.

Butter Tom retired within, and spread his mats carefully on the floor. The baas was attempting to shave himself with the razor grasped in his left hand, and was making a sorry business of it. He looked round at Butter Tom’s entrance to inquire who it was he had heard talking outside the hut.

“Young missis will send Butter Tom to the stable,” the Kaffir vouchsafed, with an appealing look at the baas in the hope that the latter would raise some objection to his obeying the strange behest.

But the baas, letting the razor fall, and receiving it without comment from the dark hand which hastily forestalled his request by returning it to him, merely said:

“If the young missis wants you, go at once.”

Then he resumed the business of shaving himself with a hand considerably less steady than before. What need had Honor for employing Nel’s servant? And why had she returned?

As if in answer to his unspoken questions. Honor entered the rondavel, having satisfied herself that Butter Tom had departed to do her bidding. She entered with a certain hesitation, and seeing Matheson’s occupation, advanced with greater assurance and took the razor from his unresisting hand.

“There isn’t any time for this,” she said. “You can get this done in the town. In a few minutes Butter Tom will have the spider ready. It’s a long drive for one horse, but you must do it, and you must start at once.”

“But why?” he asked, amazed. “It is early. Half an hour can’t make much difference anyway; and I look such a ruffian.”

She closed the razor with a snap. As she did so Leentje’s words recurred to her with a new and more sinister meaning. “She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer.” ... A razor was quite as effective a weapon as a hammer in the hand of jael. Quickly she returned the razor to him, contemplating him with thoughtful anxious eyes. Instinctively she knew that she must not apprise him of his danger. He would not flee before a German, nor even from a modern Jael.

“There is no time to lose,” she said. “They might raise objections to my lending the spider. I am giving you the only chance of a conveyance. If you don’t take it now you will have to wait until you can ride into town; and quite possibly your horse will be commandeered. All the horses on the farm have been taken.”

“Nel’s horses—yes,” he said. “But they can’t take mine.”

“They won’t ask your permission,” she answered. “Please do as I ask you. The spider belongs to Herman; you need not scruple to use it. Butter Tom will drive you... Reward him well; he will possibly be blamed when he returns.”

She did not think it necessary to inform him that Butter Tom would most probably be flogged for obeying her orders. Holman would wreak his vengeance on the Kaffir because he would not dare to reproach her. She had known him flog a Kaffir before; it was his method of enforcing a discipline he could not otherwise maintain.

“But such haste partakes of the nature of flight,” he objected. “I don’t really see the need for it.”

“You wanted to get away before,” she reminded him. “You asked me to help you. This is the only way in which I can help. If you delay it will be embarrassing for me. You are well enough to travel, aren’t you?”

Again she scrutinised him closely, with renewed anxiety in her gaze. He did not look equal to a great deal of fatigue. Never before had he felt so painfully conscious of weakness; but he made light of it.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “It isn’t that... Of course, if you think it best, I am ready to start at once.”

Her relief at his compliance was manifest. She was nervous and unstrung, and the sudden reaction shook her fortitude. She turned her face aside to hide its emotion from him; but he saw the tears in her eyes, and was immensely disconcerted at the sight of this distress which he failed altogether to understand. He advanced a few paces towards her, hesitated, and stood irresolute, regarding her with an exasperated sense of his own inadequacy.

“I say!” he said awkwardly. “Don’t! ... Please, don’t... I’m awfully sorry that my presence has so upset you. I’ll go. I’ll go at once, Honor.” Then a doubt crept into his mind. He approached quite close to her and put out a hand and touched her sleeve. “You want me to go?” he asked.

“Yes,” she cried quickly—“yes... Of course.” She moved away. “Drive straight for the town,” she added. “And don’t spare the horse.”

Without once looking at him she left the rondavel, hiding her tear-wet face from him, and hurrying away in the sunshine with steps as fleet as those she had used in coming, but followed a less direct route for the purpose of allaying suspicion as to where she had been in the event of meeting any one on the way back. She had done her utmost for him; his safety was now his own affair.

Matheson remained for a while inactive, watching her retreating figure. He followed her to the doorway, and stood in the brilliant sunshine, looking after her, as she sped away with never a backward glance, the gold of the sunlight upon her and the morning wind ruffling her hair.

Innumerable doubts troubled him while he stood there, doubts which she had set fermenting in his brain. She was not happy. The change in her was very marked. When he had first met her she had been afire with enthusiasm and eager interest in life; now she was a woman, grave and thoughtful, on whom cares and responsibilities pressed heavily. She had sold her birthright of joy, sacrificing it to a long-cherished dream of vengeance; and already she was discovering how unsatisfying was the bargain she had made. Nel was right. There was a predestination in these matters beyond human control.

A sense of utter futility gripped Matheson, a sort of sick disappointment more distressing than physical nausea. His passion for Honor assumed a new significance: it became less personal—more of a formal worship of beauty for beauty’s sake than the love of man for woman for simple and primitive ends. He realised that temperamentally they were entirely opposed, as the north wind is opposed to the south, the east to the west. In no circumstance could they have mated with felicitous results. He had loved her beauty and the quick fire of her imagination; she had attracted him as the fierce untamed land she loved attracted him, by reason of its untrammelled freedom, its unconquerable savagery and beauty. But these qualities do not make for the sublime happiness of domestic peace. The human need demands something more satisfying than passionate discords in its relations with life. A man may enjoy climbing to exalted altitudes; but he lives preferably in the valleys among quiet and orderly things.

It seemed to Matheson that he saw life clearly for the first time. He was regarding things from the detached standpoint of an unbiassed onlooker—regarding himself, as a person takes note of some acquaintance and determines his place in the scheme of the universe. He had a place, quite unimportant and prosaic, but with certain clearly defined duties and work to perform. Always he came back to that. There was work for him to do—work for every one. He had been idling in the backwaters of good intentions long enough. Too often a man idles away his best years in dreaming, and overcrowds his middle age with much that might have been accomplished during his youth. Youth is the period for activities; and most surely is youth the time for marriage—useful marriage for the raising and rearing of healthy and beautiful children.

Then, breaking in sharply upon his musings, came the sound of wheels and the noise of Butter Tom’s guttural exhortations to the recalcitrant bony horse which Matheson had hired at De Aar, and which, accustomed to the saddle, displayed mule-like tendencies between the shafts. Butter Tom sawed at the reins and swore at it in Kaffir, while Matheson looked on with apathetic indifference, thinking drearily of the long drive before him in the heat, with his wounded shoulder and the useless right arm for which Honor had improvised a sling from a scarf of her own.