The Shadow of the Past Part 38

He needed food. In her excitement she had forgotten the nourishment that stood ready for him on the table, slowly cooling while they talked.

"It isn't altogether my fault," he a.s.serted with almost sullen insistence. "I'm not myself. I'm unnerved. You come to me when I'm altogether unprepared, and--my G.o.d! how the sight of you tempts me! But you are hard, Honor. All that is gentle in your nature has been deliberately suppressed."

"I've been tutored in a hard world," she replied oddly. "It is well, perhaps, that I am hard. A woman needs an armour of steel to protect herself from the selfishness of men's love I believed in you once... I cared... You know I cared. But you wanted everything, and would give nothing. That is your way. For men like Beyers and Christian de Wet I would die, if it would benefit them at all. They are brave men with a single purpose in life. You call them rebels; we regard them as heroes.

Had you joined us, I would have done anything for you. Instead, you side with the men who are trying to defeat our cause. Can you wonder that I am bitter when you speak to me of love and strike with the other hand?"

She got up abruptly, and stood for a moment irresolute, looking down at him, the anger dying slowly out of her eyes.

"It isn't any use--it isn't any use at all to speak of these things now.

You will go your way, I mine. But it might have been so different.

Last year, when you went away, I hoped you would change your mind and come back. I didn't know then of this girl. Heinrich told me about her. You went back to her, and my influence ended."

So Holman had enlightened her about Brenda. Doubtless he had done so in order to prosper his own suit. It was a card he would not have scrupled to play.

"I could never have embraced your cause," he said gently. "I know what you have suffered, and I feel for you. But the affairs of nations are outside individual grievances. One has to accept a broader outlook. I shall never forget that I owe it to you that I learnt to see your point of view so clearly that I look upon this movement less as a rebellion than the persistence in a righteous if mistaken cause by a people who have never known discipline. In relying upon Germany you rely upon a ruthless enemy; the protection of the British flag alone secures your independence. This Colony is governed largely by the Dutch, in the interests of the Dutch collectively with the British, and for the good of the native community. You cannot improve on that. Let well alone, Honor, and heal old wounds. Herman Nel's method of winning is the better and surer way."

"Ah, Herman!" she said, and smiled. "Herman is a dreamer."

"He dreams sanely," he answered with conviction.

"Which means that he thinks as you do."

She moved away to the table and took up the neglected food.

"See what a bad nurse I make," she said, a.s.suming a lighter manner. "I would starve you while I attempt to show you the error of your ways. It would appear that where you are concerned I must fail in everything."

She brought the cup to the bedside. He took it from her hand and drained the contents eagerly.

"You were famished," she said reproachfully. "Yet you wouldn't ask me for food."

"I hate to give so much trouble," he answered. "If you wouldn't mind calling b.u.t.ter Tom presently, I will get up and dress with his a.s.sistance. It's all humbug, my lying here, and taking slops. I could eat an ox."

"I'll dress your wound first," she said. "That is something I can do for you better than b.u.t.ter Tom."

"You dressed it before?" he asked. "I wondered. I thought possibly I owed that to you. Honor..." He looked at her appealingly. "You are not going to let us part with a sense of ill will between us? I want to believe that when I am gone you will sometimes think kindly of me."

Honor did not at once reply. She stood With the empty cup in her hand, the sunlight warming her face, shining on the white surface of the vessel into which she gazed in thoughtful abstraction, brightening her whole figure, and the room which formed a quaint and fitting background for this girl who belonged to the wilds, and whose beauty suggested always to the man who watched her sunlit s.p.a.ces and warmth and the scent and the winds of the veld. She lifted her gaze suddenly and met his _eyes_.

"Don't let us talk of these matters," she said. "It is wiser with the coming of morning to cease to dwell on the dreams which belong to the night that is past. I've dreamed my dreams--you too. We are awake now, and the day calls us to other activities. Just for a moment while sleep drugged our senses we forgot. But we are neither of us people who forget for long the path of honour."

His gaze fell before her steady eyes. She was right. Their paths in life were no tractless ways; they stretched straight ahead, clearly defined and mile-stoned with duties, leading always in opposite directions to the accepted goal--the goal of individual endeavour which contributes its effort to the unending scheme of life.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

There was a thoughtful look in Honor's eyes when, leaving b.u.t.ter Tom to the unaccustomed task of valeting the wounded baas, she stepped forth into the sunshine and walked with a certain weary reluctance towards the homestead. She was tired with her overnight vigil, and the emotional scene in the rondavel was succeeded by a feeling of exhaustion and nervous reaction. For the first time within her knowledge the thought of her cause failed to sustain her; and more than once the question formed itself in her mind whether after all this sacrifice of life were justified even in the securing of national independence? She had never doubted before. She had been as positive of the right and the urgency of their cause as she had felt certain of its ultimate success. Despite Herman Nel's opposition, she had believed, until results proved the error of her hopes, in the whole-hearted co-operation of the entire Dutch community. Heinrich had a.s.sured her that the Boers would rise to a man. The treaty of Vereeniging was but another sc.r.a.p of paper which the Teutonic mind lightly disregarded. Honor had disregarded it also, as a contract signed under compulsion by the leaders against the will of the majority; she felt that it was in no sense binding on the Dutch as a whole. Matheson's statement that they were a people who had never known discipline stuck in her mind. Broadly it was true. The Boer does not submit readily to being governed, even by his own leaders. It is a nation in the making, without any of the traditions of an older race to guide it, but with sufficiently fine ideals from which to evolve traditions of its own. Clear-sighted men, like Nel, realised that there was nothing to be gained by fighting; the peaceful development of the country would best serve their interests.

That morning, in a state of physical and mental fatigue, Honor allowed her thoughts to dwell for the first time on the possibility of failure.

Matheson had shaken her confidence; and in reminding her that her own brother's life might be sacrificed to the cause she so ardently espoused, he had caused her enthusiasm a rude check. She had not considered the toll in human life that would be exacted: the grim ugliness of war had been lost sight of in the dazzling prospect of victory. It did not seem to her possible that Andreas could be killed.

If that should happen, the triumph of their cause would prove a hollow mockery, and her mother's tragic life would end in added sadness. It was too big a price, Honor felt in her overwrought and dispirited mood-- too big a price to pay even for victory.

As she neared the homestead, coming towards her, she recognised her husband. She was unprepared to meet him there at that hour. He had ridden over from Benfontein. She wondered a little impatiently what brought him. His presence there so early in the morning disconcerted her. Although he was aware that she was sharing with her mother the care of the sick man, and had given her permission to dress Matheson's wound and aid Mrs Krige with her professional knowledge, his acquiescence had not included sitting up with the patient at night: he had supposed she would sleep beneath Leentje Nel's roof. It never occurred to him that Matheson's case called for particular care. The wound was not serious--a flesh wound only; he saw no reason why the women should make a fuss over a mere scratch. In his opinion his own hurt called for greater consideration. His throat was sore and swollen; he had difficulty in swallowing. But Honor had expressed little sympathy with him. She had left him alone all night to care for the man who had injured him. He felt resentful; and he was angry with her because of her concern for the Englishman. What was this cursed Englishman to her that she should feel it her duty to tend him?

"You are over early," she said, when she came up with him. "I didn't expect you."

"So I supposed," he answered roughly, and turned and walked back beside her. "I've been to the farm. Leentje told me you were at the rondavel.

I was going to fetch you. What were you doing there? I don't choose that my wife should spend the night with any man, sick or well."

She flushed warmly.

"Some one had to watch beside him," she said with immense restraint.

"There was no one else to do it."

"Absurd!" he replied angrily. "The n.i.g.g.e.r is good enough to wait on him. There was no one to look after me."

"You were not so badly hurt," she returned, in a voice which despite its quiet tones should have warned him of her rising anger. She did not look at him; her eyes searched the landscape ahead of her, and rested with tired satisfaction on the dew-drenched spa.r.s.e vegetation, cobwebbed with silver threads.

"I feel sick enough," he said savagely. "But that's nothing to you.

Leentje Nel wouldn't nurse her husband's murderer."

Honor smiled briefly.

"You are very aggressively alive for a murdered man," she said. She touched his sleeve diffidently. "Don't be cross, Heinrich. I'm tired-- so very tired. And this morning I am racked with anxious fears--fears for Andreas--fears for the cause. The country is not with us."

Holman made an angry gesture and spat upon the ground.

"White-livered curs!" he muttered. "Everything was in our hands.

They've sold us--these pitiful Boers. They're afraid for their blessed skins."

Her anger flamed forth at this unjustifiable aspersion on the part of a man who was taking only an inactive share in the war. At no period in their history had the Boers earned that reproach--the people who had paid in blood for their right to a place in the dark continent.

"That comes ill from you," she said. "At least, we don't shirk the fighting. Men who fear for their skins don't take up arms against one another. There is evidence enough in this district alone to refute your accusation of cowardice. There isn't a farm within miles of us but some of its men have joined the fighting."

"But they don't hang together," he persisted sullenly.

"They don't all think alike," she allowed; "but they possess the courage of their different convictions, and the courage to fight for them."

"I spoke in the heat of the moment," he conceded ungraciously. "It makes me sick to see this great opportunity wasted. You have your chance now to secure independence; it may never come again. And men like Botha and s.m.u.ts are simply tying your hands. Leentje has received a message from Cornelius; it came through this morning. Colonel Brand has sent an insulting letter to de Wet. Everywhere Botha's following is superior to our forces. Our commandoes are simply giving way and fleeing before them. It's a rout, unless they combine and stand firm; but they give way before the opposition they didn't antic.i.p.ate. They aren't putting up anything of a fight."

"Cornelius and Andreas won't give way," she said proudly.

"Cornelius and Andreas are but two men," he answered bitterly; "and the voices of two men in a commando are apt to be drowned by the rest."

Honor walked on without speaking; and in her thoughts the phrase beat insistently: "What will it benefit you to hoist your flag over the body of your brother?" Hot tears welled in her tired eyes, her steps dragged wearily. It did not seem to her at the moment to matter much which side won if only Andreas came through.

"Oh, this war!" she said sadly... "This war! it tears at the heart-strings. Nothing can make good to a woman for the lives of the men she loves."

"Oh, that!" he returned indifferently. "I didn't expect to hear such talk from you. That's the view of the sentimentalist. One doesn't reckon lives with so much at stake."

So much at stake! What stake could be greater than the flower of the nations' manhood which was being sacrificed?