The Shadow of the Past Part 21

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

"Is _your_ love strong enough to throw down barriers?" she asked.

"There aren't any barriers on my side to knock over," he answered, smiling.

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

"Yes!" he said, and waited, feeling curious and oddly chilled. The excitement of his pa.s.sion died down before her strange composure.

"If you renounce your country, and become one of us," she said; "if you fight--supposing it comes to fighting--on our side, I will marry you.

That is my condition."

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

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

Without looking at him Honor went swiftly and silently out through the window and along the stoep. He remained quite still, looking after her, a feeling of finality, of flatness, weighing upon him, and a queer sense of loss, which was not after all loss because he had never possessed, never been near possession; until that morning the hope of proprietorship had not entered into his thoughts of her; pa.s.sion had not before gripped him. It was odd, he reflected, how swiftly and unexpectedly the factor of pa.s.sion had entered and provoked this crisis.

The whole thing was an amazement; and it left him a little dazed, with a sensation of plunging into sudden darkness after being in the light.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Every one is late this morning," she replied. "Mr Marais is only now awake, and Honor is lying down with a headache. Even Andreas was late.

I think there is thunder in the air; the weather has been very oppressive these past few days; it upsets one."

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

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

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

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

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

"She has told you?" he finished.

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

"No," he answered almost fiercely, "because her mind is preoccupied.

She's obsessed with a sense of her wrongs, with a longing for revenge, which she miscalls patriotism. Mrs Krige, I'd give the world to undo the injury that has been done a young, impressionable, and beautiful nature. Honor was made for love, and she puts love outside her life.

Her life holds other interests."

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

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

"Yes," she said. "Yes--I know. I'm sorry."

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

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

They stepped on to the stoep in silence. Freidja was in the living-room, superintending Koewe who was bringing in the breakfast.

She came to the window and admonished them good-naturedly.

"Ach! I don't know what is the matter with every one this morning," she said. "The breakfast has been cooked a long time already, and only myself to eat it. Andreas has not come in yet, and Oom Koos says he will be ready just now--which means in about half an hour, perhaps.

Meanwhile the porridge cools, and the chops are burnt. What has got all of you?"

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

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

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

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

"Yes," he said. "I'm going back."

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

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

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

"If I followed your example," Oom Koos retorted, "I would not be that.

The wise man who would guard his sheep from the jackals, sees to it that they are safe in the kraals each night. A Kaffir will murder his father and his mother for their few paltry possessions."

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

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

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

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

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