The Shadow of the Past Part 13

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

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

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

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

"No; I don't understand," he said. "It's puzzled me a lot. You see, your daughter disclaimed your nationality, and you offered no protest.

That's un-English. You can't change your nationality at will; it's as much a part of yourself as the colour of your eyes. We are proud as a race of our nationality. We are the finest nation in the world. I'm not for giving preference to any other. I don't say I'd talk like that to a foreigner--unless he challenged me; and then," he smiled slightly, "I'd probably be emphatic."

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

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

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

"And then," she added quietly, "all the happiness came to an end...

everything came to an end with the war--with those three bitter years of struggle and hatred. The British were wrong--very wrong. I believe if I had not been married to a Dutchman I should have felt that. It is a black mark against our national honour."

He noticed with faint surprise that in her condemnation of her country she a.s.sociated herself with it for the first time--it might have been unconsciously, or it might have been that, in condemning it, some instinct of race caused her to identify herself with its disgrace.

There was a suggestion of a desire to defend in that simple connection, to defend what she could not condone.

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

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

"His father died later. I think myself his heart was broken." She lifted protesting eyes. "Is it worth it? ... these broken hearts and broken lives--the price of territorial gain! It is too much to pay for any country's aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. And the bitterness to me lay in the knowledge that it was my own country inflicting this injustice on a weaker people. I cannot convey all I suffered. I was treated with great indignity--a prisoner in my own house, where I remained with my three youngest children. I wasn't allowed outside the house save by permit, and it was with difficulty I obtained that. I insisted on seeing the officer in charge, and informed him I was an Englishwoman.

He was very rough with me, and told me to be careful or I might find myself interned also.

"Oh! I cannot describe the misery and the hopelessness of that time. I don't know how I lived through it; but one learns to endure. Now you know why I am bitter, why my children are bitter, against the English.

They have nothing to teach them love of reverence for England--the nation that made them orphans, and treated their mother harshly. These wrongs live in the memory--they embitter life."

"Yes," he said, and was silent. It was so difficult to say anything in face of what he had heard. It was because he saw her point of view so clearly, sympathised with her in her sorrow, that he found it impossible to attempt to point out that she was taking an altogether wrong view.

Her judgment was bia.s.sed. In no question concerning the community is the individual point of view the one to be considered. But one can't say these things to a woman who has suffered deeply.

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

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

"It's so often the case," he said presently, "that authority gets into the wrong hands. Men find themselves in responsible positions who are not fitted for responsibility, and they make a mess of things. In war, of course, injustice is inevitable; it's not possible to discriminate.

Aren't you being unjust in your turn by impugning all Englishmen because one, or even more than one, during a time of intense mental strain, treated you without consideration?" ... She made no response; and he continued almost immediately:

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

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

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

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

"I!" she said, amazed.

"You... and your daughter. For the greater part of last night I lay awake thinking over Miss Krige's unpalatable history lesson. I don't know enough about these things to judge whether it was altogether accurate, but I imagine she has got hold of facts--though, of course, there are two ways of presenting facts, and she is obviously bia.s.sed.

But, anyway, what she said helped me to see the Dutch point of view, and it is essential for the complete understanding of a subject to see the view of either side; there is admittedly always something to be said for both. And she taught me besides that there are two principles which a great nation would do well to adopt--to forget the injuries it sustains, and to remember the wrongs which it inflicts upon others. In my opinion that is what we, as a nation, do. Aren't we proving that in the way in which we administer this Colony? The Dutch can suffer no injustice under the existing system of independent government."

Then suddenly he remembered that Krige was opposed to the present government. A light of understanding flashed across his brain. Krige was a revolutionary. He was working in concert with other malcontents against law and order and the existing state of affairs; and he, an Englishman, had allowed himself to be used as a tool towards this end.

He wondered what the Kriges thought of him, if they considered him a dupe?--or worse?

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

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

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

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

Matheson had disarmed their antagonism by reason of his moderation.

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

But his speech never even directly hinted at Holman's business.

Matheson began to believe that he did not intend to send any return message through him. Finally he broached the subject himself one evening during the inevitable hour spent in Krige's society on the stoep after supper. This quiet hour, devoted to smoking and fragmentary talk, had ceased to bore him. Krige was not loquacious at any time, but he had become more companionable; and, in his silent and rather tragic reserve, he was an interesting personality. The people who are slow of speech are not often stupid.

"It's time, I suppose, that I was thinking of moving on," Matheson observed apropos of nothing, breaking in indeed upon a protracted pause.

"It's so jolly here that I'm inclined to trespa.s.s on your hospitality.

In return I hope, if there's anything I can do for you when I get back, you will not hesitate to mention it I shall be seeing Holman, I expect, pretty soon. Perhaps you have a message you'd like me to carry?"

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

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

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

That was precisely what Matheson did not wish; he was very willing to remain as long as they showed equal willingness to have his company.

Each day as it pa.s.sed made the thought of leaving less agreeable: there was no doubt about it in his mind any longer; some influence had gripped him powerfully; he was in the throes of a great emotional crisis--the result of the magnetic power which Honor Krige exercised over him.

Nothing which he had ever experienced equalled in intensity his feeling for her. Was it love? He did not know. If it were love, it was different in quality from any other emotion of the kind he had known.

The thought of possession, of spending his life with her, had not entered his mind--such a thought would have struck him then as presumptuous. A royal princess would not have appeared to him more inaccessible than this Dutch girl with her beauty and her ideals and her ingrained prejudices--prejudices that stretched, an artificially fed gulf of bitter waters, between them.

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

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

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

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

"Not once," he answered truthfully.