The Shadow of the Past Part 10

But the feeling of insecurity remained. There was friction between the two white races, and jealousy, and much bitterness. Still you coveted our land. You never rested until, backed by the power across the seas, you fought again for it--and won."

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

Matheson was interested, intensely interested--and hurt.

"Isn't all this you have been telling me a distortion of facts?" he asked.

"No," she answered. "It is just a bald summary of the princ.i.p.al events in the history of the Colony since its beginning."

"I am sorry I am so ignorant of these things," he said. "A man ought to read up the history of a country before he visits it. I'm at a disadvantage. That only matters in as far as it prevents my answering you. I am hearing only your side. You have made out a good case...

There's always injustice where the interests of races conflict. If one went back far enough, _I_ imagine one would find the greatest injustice has been meted out to the natives."

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

"It's a fairly sound argument," he returned with greater a.s.surance. "No nation in the world can colonise as we can."

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

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

"I am making no attack," she answered. "I am exposing the bleeding heart of Africa for him to see." She came closer to him. "Can you see?

... blood and hatred, blood and hatred--the price of every morgen of this land."

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

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

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

"Honor!" Mrs Krige interposed again.

Honor pa.s.sed swiftly behind Matheson's chair and approached her mother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I haven't startled any one really," she said. "But--I have made Mr Matheson angry."

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

"Not angry," he contradicted, and rose, moved, not so much by a desire to stand, as a feeling that he wanted to be more on a level with her, wanted to face her on equal ground; seated he was at a disadvantage.

"What you have said has given food for thought I'd no idea; ... One doesn't think enough about these things. It's only when one comes face to face with it that one gets a sense of what lies beneath the surface.

We are too easily satisfied with a superficial view. One should look deeper."

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

"You will look deeper," she said with conviction.

Suddenly a smile broke over her face.

"I have shown you something of the tragedy of the veld," she added.

"To-morrow, if you are willing to rise with the sun, I will show you something of its beauty and its charm. The Karroo is at its best when the day is young."

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

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At least I did not wish to spoil your rest."

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

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

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