The Shadow of the Past Part 7

He broke off and dropped back on the sand and lay staring up at the stars.

"It's a rotten nuisance, anyway," he finished.

It was later than they had supposed when eventually they rose to retrace their steps; in the enjoyment of the present they lost count of time; and it was with something akin to dismay that Brenda learnt on consulting his watch by the light of the moon that it was approaching eleven o'clock. It would complicate matters if the others got home from their walk before her.

"We'll have to hurry," she said.

"It's so simple to hurry over the rocks, isn't it?" he returned with grim humour. "What, after all, can any one say if you are late?"

She did not explain that it was not hard words she feared, but the loss of her post and character, two important matters to a girl dependent on her own efforts.

"Please," she said, "let us be as quick as possible."

And so the return journey was made with none of the pleasant lingerings, the pauses to admire beauties that sprang unexpectedly to the gaze, the brief halts for agreeable wrangling or more intimate talk, the longer pauses when they did not talk but stood side by side and gazed out to sea in a sympathetic silence that needed no expression; these pleasures had to be foregone in the effort to overtake time.

The necessity for haste irked Matheson; the girl at his side was conscious of his irritation and distressed because of it.

"It is such a pity," she said, as they emerged upon the road, "to have to spoil things."

He caught the note of apology in her voice, its half breathless appeal to his forbearance, and his irritation vanished in a smiling satisfaction.

"By Jove!" he cried, nearly breathless too. "I never believed you'd keep the pace up. Let's put the brake on a bit. It can't make a difference of more than five minutes either way now. I can't talk, scampering along like this."

When they reached the road where she was staying, instead of parting at the corner, he accompanied her, as he had on the first morning, to the side gates. Before opening the gate he drew her into the shadow of the oleanders against the fence, and, having looked cautiously up the road and down, and ascertained that no one was within sight, he slipped his hands behind her shoulders and held her for a moment and looked into her eyes.

"It's good-bye this time," he said, and hung on a significant pause.

She remained very quiet and still under his hands, and made no response.

"You let me kiss you on the beach," he said, "but..." He bent his face towards hers. "Won't you kiss me?" he asked.

For a moment she hesitated; then she lifted her face swiftly, and her lips met his, shyly and a little shamefully, in a caress which brushed his eager lips as lightly as one of the pink petals that fell, fragrant and unheeded, about them. She broke away from him; and he turned without a word and opened the gate and looked after her as she slipped through and sped up the path, a slim white figure, with the moonlight splashed upon her hair and face.

The night had not been without its perfect moments for him too.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

At the last moment Holman decided that he was unable to see his friend off by train on the journey he was undertaking at his request; an engagement prevented him from getting to the station in time. They met at breakfast; but very little was said in reference to the journey or its mission, the details of which had been discussed overnight.

Matheson had the letter and his directions. His destination was a farm some twenty miles to the west of De Aar. He would leave the train at the junction and complete the journey by road, obtaining a conveyance at a hotel which Holman recommended.

The prospect of the journey bored him. He was sufficiently familiar with the line to be able to judge fairly accurately the amount of discomfort he might expect from travelling in summer; and the idea of staying for a fortnight, perhaps longer, on a farm with Dutch people was distasteful.

"What, in h.e.l.l," he asked desperately, "shall I do with myself? I don't even speak Dutch."

"Nor write it?" Holman asked, without looking at him.

"Haven't any knowledge at all of the fool lingo. You might as reasonably expect me to talk in Kaffir."

"I'm not expecting anything," was the response. "But I thought you might have picked up a few words--some fellows show a surprising facility in acquiring the taal. But it's not important. The Dutch mostly speak English. The Kriges do, anyhow. Mrs Krige is, as a matter of fact, English by birth."

"Come, that's better," Matheson said complacently. "It const.i.tutes a link. I'll know how to talk to a fellow-countrywoman."

"I wouldn't insist too much on the point of nationality," the other threw in with a note of caution in his tones. "She's Dutch now, and so are all her children."

"In law, yes," Matheson agreed. "There are kids, then?"

"Oh! they are all grown up. It is her son you are going to see. The old man died years ago."

He changed the subject with some abruptness, and spoke of his own arrangements, and planned their next meeting. He would wait in Johannesburg; Matheson, when he turned up, would discover him in one of the usual haunts. They could then square their account finally. And if there was any little service that it lay in his power to do the other, he would be glad to be called upon to perform the same.

Later, when he was seated in the train, Matheson recalled this tentative promise and the peculiar emphasis of its utterance; and it occurred to him that Holman inclined to exaggerate the service he was rendering. He leaned back in a corner of the compartment, which he had to himself, and thought over things. The importance of this trumpery party intrigue was a.s.suming disproportionate dimensions. The flicker of doubt in his mind developed steadily, while he sat staring from the window at the changing scenery, pondering the matter deeply. He did not altogether believe the reasons Holman had alleged in explanation of the secrecy of the mission and the need for caution. His talk of overthrowing the government hadn't rung true. Moreover, men don't attempt the overthrow of governments by stealth; that is usually a noisy business which revels in publicity and insists upon the limelight. There was something behind it all, something which had not transpired, which conceivably might never transpire so far as he was concerned.

He regretted his ignorance of the taal. In the light of his growing suspicion it occurred to him that his disclaimer of all knowledge of Dutch had given Holman satisfaction. Whatever the tatter's business was with Andreas Krige it was not his wish that his messenger should learn it.

He took out his pocket-book, and examined the letter which lay inside the cover. The direction told him nothing. The name of the farm was Benauwdheidfontein. It had taken him some time to get anywhere near the p.r.o.nunciation--Benaudtfontein was the best he could do; but Holman had told him the Kriges cut it down to Benfontein.

He put the letter back, having examined it from all angles, as one might examine a curiosity, and returned to his former occupation of staring unseeingly from the window while revolving matters in his brain, a form, of mental exercise that was unusual with him. Thinking bored him; he did not often encourage the habit. But this business roused his curiosity; he was beginning to be more interested than he ever remembered being in another man's affairs.

And then suddenly there flashed across his mind, allaying its distrust, the thought that these people were partly English. That to a great extent took from the sinister aspect of the thing. Quite possibly he was on the track of a mare's nest It might be merely some raining transaction of more or less doubtful honesty that Holman was communicating with Andreas Krige about Holman made a good thing of buying and selling shares--particularly selling. Krige might be in with him, or about to be bled by him. He would be able to judge better of that when he saw the man.

He dismissed the matter from his mind and read for a while; but the blistering heat in the sun-scorched compartment made it difficult to concentrate the attention on anything for long. And there was no escape from the heat, not even when night fell, bringing darkness without coolness to the earth, and a hushed silence, penetrated by the insistent, shrill chirp of the crickets and the intrusive rush of the train through the night-shadowed land.

He slept about eleven, and awoke to a golden sunrise and another cloudless blue day. But the breadth of the early day was fresh and sweet and wonderfully pure. He drew it into his lungs, leaning from the carriage window, surveying the parched landscape, and the gaping fissures in the almost dry beds of the river, along the banks of which the th.o.r.n.y mimosa grew, the reluctant dewdrops hiding in the hollows of its shrivelled leaves from the too searching rays of the sun.

The railway curved sharply, winding in and out among the hills, so that from the window the tail of the train was visible, seeming like a second train cutting the first in the middle. Beyond Hutchinson the line was being repaired. A row of white tents alongside the rails, with their owners squatted in the openings having breakfast, caused Matheson a queer, unaccustomed stab of envy. This was what he ought to be doing-- useful work for the country, instead of using the metals to career about on a fool's errand.

The train had slowed down. He leaned farther out of the window and shouted to a sunburnt man who stood astride outside his tent, with a tin mug in one hand and part of a loaf in the other.

"You, Saunders!" he yelled. "What ho! Want an extra hand down there?"

The person addressed as Saunders grinned amiably; and another man came to the opening of the tent and stood behind him, interested, stripped to the waist, and towelling vigorously.

"Tumble out," shouted Saunders. "I dare say we could make use of you."

And then the train left the white tents and their tanned owners behind; and Matheson drew in his head with a feeling of sharp dissatisfaction with life, and thought of these men enviously, until the steadily increasing warmth of the day brought back to his memory the stuffy unbearableness of heat acc.u.mulated under canvas; and his imagination pictured anew the treeless, sunbaked nature of the land where those jolly cool-looking white tents were pitched. It wasn't after all much of a picnic.

He arrived at De Aar about noon, and went to the hotel, and had a bath and changed before sitting down to lunch. He had not been in this Karroo town before, and it struck him as fine and picturesque and altogether characteristic. The country was flat and open, and the veld greener and less drought-stricken.

It was a commercial hotel that Holman had recommended, run by Dutch people and patronised princ.i.p.ally by the Dutch. Matheson shared a small table with a Jew, who owned a store in the town and took his meals at the hotel but did not sleep there. The Jew was not expansive; but he showed a ready courtesy when approached on any subject, and was emphatic in his agreement with Matheson's disparagement of the weather.

"It is a land of drought," he finished, and refilled his gla.s.s from the bottle at his elbow. "I have known the drought hold on the Karroo for two years. But the land won't die. There's water a long way below the surface."

"Well have to bore for that some day," Matheson said.

"Oh! they do bore--on the farms."

"It wants doing on a more extensive scale."

"Yes; but there's the difficulty of finance again. Who is to provide the money?"