The Shadow of the Past Part 18

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

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

His brother bent on him a look of heavy displeasure.

"The landowner in the future will represent the power of this country,"

he said, and closed the argument by lighting his pipe.

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

"Carry my love to Freidja."

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," she agreed, and looked a little puzzled--"of course. We expected you would be leaving shortly. I'm sorry."

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

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

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

"Why not?" he asked.

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

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

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

"No," he answered sharply.

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

He felt her will joining with his to oppose his decision.

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

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

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

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

"Visitors!" she cried.

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

"It's Oom Koos," she said--"Oom Koos Marais. That's all right. I feared it might be a stranger."

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

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Oom Koos Marais was a Boer of the old style, who had acquired what little education he possessed, as he had acquired other things during the leisurely course of a frugal, industrious, and acc.u.mulative span of fifty odd years, unaided and by dint of his own perseverance and his lack of all pretence. Most men trusted Oom Koos; Oom Koos in turn trusted no man, and only one woman--his wife. He concealed his wealth in his house; read his Testament; did not flog his Kaffirs, because he had grown too stout and the power had gone from his arm; and was bitterly opposed to the Scab Act. Apart from this, he was an amiable, simple-minded man, of staunchly conservative principles, with a big heart, and certain fixed ideas of life which no argument could unsettle.

Any one who attempted to convince Oom Koos against his judgment inevitably arrived at the cul-de-sac which prohibited further progress when Oom Koos broke in gently with the relevant impertinence: "As my old father used to say, I have my good sight and my good hearing, which remain unaffected when men talk foolishness."

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

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

"Moire, Mynheer!" said Oom Koos.

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

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

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

Oom Koos farmed two thousand morgen and princ.i.p.ally ran goats on the land. At Honor's speech his face lost its amiable complacency, his expression darkened.

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

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

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

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

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

This arrangement was so entirely convenient, and so satisfactory in that it fixed the day and settled definitely the time for his departure, that Matheson's reluctant acceptance of the kindly intentioned offer sounded somewhat ungracious even in his own ears. He was amazed at himself.

Here was an offer which exactly suited his plans, and which relieved the Kriges of the necessity of driving him into town, and he felt resentful at having to avail himself of it. At the back of his mind had loomed the hope that Honor would drive with him to De Aar. For some reason of her own Honor appeared equally dissatisfied with the arrangement. She listened to Matheson's halting acceptance, and to her mother's mildly uttered protest against this sudden departure, with thinly disguised impatience, breaking in on Mrs Krige's expressions of regret.

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

"Certainly. I am not forgetting that," Matheson said promptly.

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

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