The Shadow of the Past Part 8

Matheson lifted his brows.

"If a man finds a gold mine, he's quick enough as a rule to find the capital for exploiting it. The Empire's fairly wealthy."

The other appeared doubtful.

"She did not become so through speculation," he ventured.

"That's no argument," the younger man contended. "Something has been written, you know, against wrapping certain possessions away in a napkin. If one undertakes responsibility it's up to one to turn it to the best account--otherwise leave it alone."

The Jew relapsed into an acquiescent silence, from which Matheson presently dug him to inquire if he knew a farm named Benauwdheidfontein.

"No." He looked up curiously. "I wouldn't like to take a farm with a name like that," he said.

"It's something of a mouthful certainly," Matheson agreed.

"Oh, that! Many Dutch homesteads have long names... But-- Benauwdheidfontein! ... No! that's bad."

It became clear to Matheson that it was something the name suggested, rather than the word itself, to which the speaker objected.

"What does Benauwdheidfontein stand for?" he inquired.

The Jew thought for a moment.

"Literally the word, I believe, means uneasiness, anxiety; but it conveys rather more than that. It suggests being at odds with life-- cornered, as it were--having reached the limit of endurance. Fear lurks in the word. It's a name with a sinister meaning--an unlucky name, we should call it."

"I am not much of a believer in luck, are you?" Matheson said. His listener smiled.

"It depends on the hour, the place, and the circ.u.mstance," he replied, and helped himself to cheese, which he proceeded to despatch in an abstracted manner, and with an air of being wishful to escape further conversation.

Matheson finished his lunch, and interviewed the proprietor.

"Can you provide me with a conveyance that will take me to Benauwdheidfontein?" he asked.

"Benfontein--Mr Krige's place? Oh! yes," was the response. "It's a long drive. You won't want to start for a couple of hours, I suppose?"

Upon Matheson's replying that the hour of departure was a matter of indifference to him, the proprietor fixed it for four o'clock, when the great heat would be decreasing, and driving across the veld could be undertaken with less discomfort. He seemed anxious to do his best for his guest.

"Will I put a gun in the cart?" he asked. "With luck, you should see some birds as you travel. There is good sport on the flats."

Matheson accepted gratefully. If Krige could offer something in the way of shooting, his stay at Benfontein would not lack compensation. He regretted that he had no gun with him. But on a farm a spare gun is usually available, the etiquette of the veld being strictly in accord with the principle of the traveller's right to hospitality, which includes the enjoyment of one's goods--providing always that he does not travel on foot.

CHAPTER NINE.

It was manifest to Matheson on his arrival at Benfontein that he was not expected. He had taken it for granted that Holman would inform these people of his coming, and instead he found it necessary to explain himself to the swarthy young Dutchman who came out of the house, when the cart drew up beside the big aloes that formed a hedge dividing the garden from the veld, and strolled leisurely forward with no great display of eagerness to receive the traveller. He descended from the Cape Cart and faced him.

"Is it Mr Krige?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the Dutchman, and regarded him with something like distrust blended with dislike, and waited for further enlightenment.

"My name's Matheson," the visitor announced, and, perceiving that the name conveyed nothing to his listener, he added: "I thought Holman would have prepared you for my visit. Perhaps I had better give you his letter, which will explain things."

He felt in his pocket for the letter, and presented it. Krige, taking it in the left hand, deliberately extended the right.

"That is all right," he said. "I did not know. A friend of Mr Holman is very welcome."

He spoke in Dutch to the coloured driver, who climbed down from the cart and started to take out the horses. One of Krige's boys sauntered forward to his a.s.sistance; and a woman, who, judging from the likeness between them, was Krige's sister, appeared on the shadeless stoep, and looked on with detached interest at the scene beyond the aloe hedge.

Matheson judged her to be about thirty. She was swarthy, like her brother, with a deepening brown on the neck that suggested a strain of native blood somewhere in the Krige ancestry. Her eyes were very dark, and sombre in expression, which robbed them, as it robbed her face, of actual beauty, and lent both a tragic, almost a sullen air. Looking at her a stranger would p.r.o.nounce unhesitatingly that hers had been a tragic life. At least it was a life which had known tragedy, and had nursed its bitterness throughout the years.

Krige conducted Matheson on to the stoep and presented him to his sister. From the way in which she unbent, as her brother had done, at the mention of Holman's name, he concluded that in this household Holman was held in very warm regard. The mantle of his popularity descended in some measure upon himself.

"Come inside and rest," said Miss Krige. "You will be hungry. We will be having supper just now." She scrutinised him for a second. "I expect you are tired," she added; "it's a long drive from De Aar."

He disclaimed undue fatigue, and followed her into the house, where bustling preparations were going forward in the guest chamber, which the younger girl had hastened to get ready as soon as the Cape Cart came within sight. The bed had to be made, and the room dusted. There were seldom visitors at Benfontein; and the great four-poster bedstead remained usually shrouded in dustsheets, under which the feather mattress humped itself protestingly, and fell into depressions where some heedless touch had deflated its bulging surface.

The younger Miss Krige, who was called Honor, treated the feather mattress as a conscientious cook might treat dough, the lightness of which depended on the energy of her kneading, with the result that the bed lost the appearance of an anaemic mountain and a.s.sumed quite reasonable dimensions of a sufficient flatness to warrant its claim to being a couch to repose upon. Then she fetched water and towels, and ran away to her own room to smooth her disordered hair, and, since her house frock was decidedly shabby, to make other alterations in her toilet calculated to improve her appearance, as her energetic ministrations had improved that of the bed. Honor took a greater interest in travellers than her sister. She was five years younger; and the sorrow which had touched their lives had touched hers more lightly, and left, not so much a bitterness, as a deliberately cultivated grievance to germinate in the furrows it had made.

Matheson was taken to the living-room, which struck him when he entered it as one of the pleasantest rooms he had ever seen--it was so essentially homelike. A blending of English and Dutch taste, and a feminine love of the beautiful, with inadequate resources at command, made the room in its bare cool simplicity invitingly restful and pleasing. There was not an article in it, save an old Dutch dresser, of any value. The dark, beeswaxed floor had no covering other than one or two golden jackal skins, shot, and roughly dressed, on the farm, and a large sheepskin mat. The chairs were reimpe bottomed, that is laced with strips of hide instead of cane, which makes a more durable and infinitely more comfortable seat. There were a few Madeira chairs with cushions in them, and a profusion of veld flowers, flowers in bowls and any available vessel--splashes of colour against the cool dark woodwork of the panelled walls.

In one of the low chairs a woman was seated, sewing. She looked about sixty, a well-preserved comely woman fair complexioned and essentially English in type. Her dear blue eyes met the blue eyes of the stranger with a cordial light of welcome in them, as she rose and came quickly forward and shook hands.

"We do not see many travellers at this season," she remarked in her soft English voice, "which makes your visit doubly welcome. You have had a long drive."

"Yes," he said; "but the air is extraordinarily light. I didn't find it too hot. It must be wonderful here in the spring."

"It is," she agreed. "The next time you come to Benfontein you must choose your season better. We aren't always drought-stricken. We boast a fine climate really."

"I think it's topping," he said. "And,"--he looked about him--"I think this is just the jolliest room I've ever seen."

His wandering gaze, travelling critically about the room he professed such warm admiration for, was abruptly arrested when it reached the doorway, where it remained transfixed, caught by a vision of such surprising beauty that for quite an appreciable while he remained staring and speechless, until suddenly recalled to the present by the sound of Krige's foot moved with some impatience on the wooden floor.

"It's perfect," he finished his encomium with, and faced his hostess again with an enigmatic smile. "I thought that as soon as I saw it."

The vision hereupon entered through the doorway.

"My daughter, Honor," Mrs Krige said.

The vision confronted Matheson now, a tall graceful girl, with bright hair that suggested the sunlight, and eyes that were like brown pools, dark and shadowed, and splashed with a lighter shade as though the sunlight penetrated here too and sported in their brown depths. It was a lovely face; Matheson found it flawless. He was amazed at her beauty, at the soft transparency of the fair skin, and her quiet self-possession. She held out a cool, aloof hand.

"You know all about me," she said, "but no one enlightens me...

English?--of course."

He was not sure whether it was his imagination, but he fancied he detected some hostility in her voice as she p.r.o.nounced his nationality.

Her tones rang odd and rather hard.

"Matheson by name, cosmopolitan by disposition," he returned easily--"like yourself."

"Oh! I'm Dutch," she said quickly.