The Shadow of the Past Part 35

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 fiancee 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 pa.s.s.

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."

"G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstance,"

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 pa.s.sion. 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 pa.s.sed the open door so that he might, unseen, have watched her go by.

But Honor did not come.

b.u.t.ter 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.

b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter Tom that the baas was angry.

Matheson was not thinking of b.u.t.ter 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 pa.s.sion. 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 b.u.t.ter 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.