When he went to his room that night Matheson was in too great a state of
excitement to sleep. For some time he made no show of seeking the
enveloping couch prepared for him by Honor's capable hands, but remained
at the open window looking out at the dark quiet beauty of the night,
less in contemplation of the scene that stretched its uncertain outline
to the far horizon than in a retrospective reverie, during which not
only all that the Dutch girl had said, but all the concentrated
bitterness of voice and expression, came back to him with the
disconcerting effect of a blow which he could neither avoid nor return.
She had struck at him deliberately with intent to wound, and she had
succeeded in that, and something more--she had succeeded in interesting
him enormously.
In any circumstances he would have admired her; but it was something
deeper than admiration she awoke in him, something more vital in
quality, something which gripped and disquieted and provoked
surprisingly, seeming part of the fierce passionate nature of the
country, part of its unrestraint, its intensity, its rugged honesty. No
woman had ever roused in him emotions so profound.
He was immeasurably perplexed and perturbed, and extraordinarily
curious. One thing seemed fairly certain as an outcome of this visit to
Benauwdheidfontein with its altogether unforeseen results; he would not
leave this farm on the Karroo, to which he had journeyed against his
inclination on an errand of doubtful honesty, unchanged by his
experiences. He felt while he stood at the window and considered these
things that his whole outlook on life was altering, and in the
transition stage was altogether out of focus. Odd that in a few hours a
man's view of life should change.
He turned away from the window and undressed slowly and climbed into
bed, where he lay fretting in uneasy wakefulness on his mountain of
feathers.
Before the rising of the sun he was up and dressed and waiting on the
stoep for Honor Krige. She came out and joined him with the first
flushing of the sky, the sudden brightening and deepening of the colours
in the east came swiftly and noiselessly, so that she was close beside
him before the sound of the light footfall on the concrete floor
apprised him of her approach. He brought his head round sharply and
surveyed her with critical, curious eyes, eyes which held a flash of
reawakened interest in them as they rested in a close scrutiny upon her
face, shaded by a white sun-helmet. She wore a riding-skirt, and
carried a whip in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other.
"I thought you would prefer to take this out here," she said, and gave
the cup into his hand.
"Thank you." He greeted her formally when he had relieved her of the
cup. "You are riding?" he said.
"Yes. We always ride on the veld." She beat her skirt softly with the
whip, and looked up at him with a faint smile. "You are early. I hope
you slept well?"
"I scarcely slept at all," he answered. "I was thinking... You set me
thinking. I believe you intended that."
Without denying this, she answered, looking away from him:
"At least I did not wish to spoil your rest."
He stood sipping his coffee and regarding her the while. He decided
that hers was the most beautiful face he had ever beheld; no pictured
face that he could recall surpassed it, and among living faces it was
more flawless than any he had seen.
"I'll make up for that to-night," he returned. "I don't believe even an
uneasy conscience could rob me of sleep two nights in succession."
He finished the coffee, and carried the empty cup inside and put it down
on the round oak table in the living-room. Honor made no effort to
prevent him. She looked after him without moving, and remained silent
until he returned and confronted her with an inquiring lift of the
brows.
"Suppose I couldn't ride?" he asked.
She evinced surprise. Not ride! Every man rode.
"You do," she asserted.
"As luck has it... but there are plenty of quite respectable persons in
England who don't," he informed her. "Getting on and off busses in
motion is a more useful accomplishment with us. To each country its own
customs! Do we start now?"
"Yes; we will walk across to the stables." She flashed a smile at him.
"I am afraid we will have to saddle our own horses; there won't be any
one about so early as this."
The business of getting the horses out took time. The sun was above the
horizon when Matheson led them into the open, followed by Honor, who had
done her share of the work. He held his hand for her, and assisted her
to the saddle. Then he mounted himself. Honor sat quietly, with her
face turned, and watched the performance. She had not expected him to
be clumsy; his size and weight notwithstanding, he conveyed the
impression that whatever he did he would do well. At least, she
reflected, when, having gained the saddle, he brought his horse abreast
of hers, his seat was good.
"Which direction do we take?" he asked.
She lifted a hand and pointed with her whip to some flat-topped hills
far away, but standing out in the clear dry atmosphere, sharply defined
against the blue cloudless sky like hills seen through a powerful glass.
"We will ride to the south," she said, "towards the tafel-kopjes
yonder."
He looked down into her eyes.
"And there we shall find the beauty and the charm you promised?"
Honor returned his gaze with grave composure.
"That depends on yourself," she answered. "All this," and she indicated
the wide and arid landscape, which, with the night dews still lingering
on its gaping surfaces and sapless vegetation, sparkled in the early
sunshine with a glitter as of silver and gems, "appeals to people
differently. Some see in it beauty, and others only barrenness--but
always it is impressive. It hurts or it pleases, according to the
mood."
"But you believe I shall see its beauty," he said quietly.
"Yes," she answered; "I believe that--otherwise, I would not have
suggested your coming."
They rode in silence for a while. Momentarily the sun gained power; the
freshness of the early day yielded to its burning ardour, was caught up
and enveloped in its heated embrace; the dew on the scant vegetation
sparkled a moment and the next was absorbed; and the hot yellow stones
basking in its rays revealed unexpected streaks of colour and fanciful
patterns and quaint veinings, as they caught the refracted rays, and
transmitted them, and gave back some of their assimilated heat into the
shimmering air.
The soil became more sandy the farther they rode, and more arid; wide
bare patches of sand appeared, and again other patches sparsely covered
with dry brown scrub. An occasional ostrich, suggestive of farms in the
neighbourhood, wandered over the sunbaked ground, and pecked at the
little stones. Here was Africa--the real Africa--untamed, barbaric,
fiercely splendid, and cruel in its callous disregard of life.
Matheson's gaze travelled over the scene, travelled to the distant
hills, and rested there. A dark shadow like a black stain lay upon the
hillside, the curious effect of some unseen cloud. In his imagination
it seemed a significant, even a sinister, shadow. He watched it for a
time, but it moved so slowly that it did not appear to move at all, but
to be in reality a black stain on the face of the land. He removed his
gaze, and when later he looked again the shadow had passed.
"This is the real thing," he said--"the key to Africa. The Karroo is
the small sister of the Sahara."
Suddenly, moved by some unaccountable emotion, he turned towards her
swiftly.
"How can you endure living here?" he asked. "The loneliness...
Heavens! the loneliness... It suggests a world in the making. The
beauty! ... Yes, I acknowledge the beauty, the terrible beauty of it.
But--how often do you see a human face besides your own?"
She broke into a quiet laugh.
"Not often. But then, we are busy; we don't trouble about such things.
The blood of the old Voortrekkers runs in our veins. At least there is
freedom here."
"Gods! I should say so," he responded, and fell to contemplating once
more the sameness of those leagues upon leagues of interminable,
sun-scorched veld, with its dried-up water-courses, its gaping fissures,
and scrubby blackened bush, among which at long intervals pushed the
smooth green fingers of the milkbush, and the stunted, gnarled trunks of
the butterbloem, yellow as though smeared with sulphur, with bell-shaped
flowers blooming on long blood-red stems. Boulders of iron-stone broke
the sameness, and an occasional hill, rounded or peaked, not rising
gradually but seeming to have been dumped down there, or happened
otherwise by accident.
Honor's eyes rested dreamily upon the scene.
"You should see it after the rains fall," she said. "It is wonderful
then."
"It is wonderful now," he returned. "I have never beheld anything so
extraordinarily moving and impressive."
"But you don't like it," she said quickly.
"Oh, like! ... the term scarcely applies. I couldn't live here... I'd
be afraid to live here--not physically, of course. I mean it's so
immense, so unpeopled. The Karroo is jealous of life; it crushes it.
I'd go down under the spell of it. I can imagine a man falling into the
habit of talking aloud to himself here--for company."
"One need not live alone," she said.
"You love the solitudes," he said, looking at her wonderingly.
"Yes; I suppose I do. I love the veld... It is my blood--that intense
love of the land."
Her eyes, looking out from the shade of her helmet, dwelt with intense
appreciation upon the shimmering landscape. All the wonder and the
beauty and the richness of the plain, which appeared now but a blackened
waste, was known to her. To the unobservant gaze the scene might wear
the semblance of an arid desert; but to one familiar with it through the
different seasons the drought-stricken sterility which held the veld in
a relentless, strangling grip was but the period of waiting when the
land rested in expectation of the coming gift of life. With the rains
the richness concealed in her dry bosom would spring forth and blossom
prodigally, and the desert would be a garden, teeming with life.
"Love of the land!" she repeated softly. And added, after a moment:
"Have you ever breathed air so good as this?--so light and clear and
dry? There's health in every breath of it. One could see to the ends
of the earth through air so pure and clear. There is health here, and
freedom."
"It is a savage land," he said suddenly--"but it grips. It is the
savagery which gets hold of one. I feel I want to tame it."
She laughed, and pointed upward where a vulture with great wings
outspread flew heavily in the blue, sensing its prey.
"Could you tame the aasvogel," she asked, "till it ceases to be a
carrion bird and eats from your hand? Could you teach the jackal to
respect the lamb?--or the snake to forget its venom? I would hate to
see this land subdued."
He smiled at her enthusiasm. There was something in herself which, if
not exactly savage, was at least untamed, he reflected. Without
thinking she had quickened her horse's pace. Matheson rode faster to
keep up with her.
"I have disappointed you," he said.
"Oh, no!" she contradicted quickly. "It wasn't to be expected that you
would feel as we do about the veld... But you see deeper than many
Englishmen. You will love the land yet."
He made no answer to this. Had he put his thoughts into words, they
would have claimed to love the land already. It was amazing how surely
and firmly it had got a hold on his imagination. It was not only with
his arrival at the farm, he told himself, that he had felt this
extraordinary influence; but since he had come to Benfontein he had
acquired a new sympathy with, and a deeper understanding of, the
country. Honor Krige was teaching him that, and other things.
He had set forth that morning to behold the beauty and the charm of the
veld; and, insensibly, while he gazed upon this sun-scorched sameness,
the mystery and the beauty of it were revealed to him. The translucent
air, quivering in the sunlight like some glad and living thing, was
wondrously soft and stimulating; eye and brain cleared with its magic
healing; the mind became surprisingly alert and receptive of new
impressions. The sandy soil lost its aridity, and disclosed numberless
unsuspected shining beauties; it glittered as with many gems, and
revealed in places unexpected shades and colours, and curious,
infinitesimal insect-life creeping and pushing upon its white surface.
The dry sluits and water-courses, proclaiming moisture where it would
appear that moisture was unknown; the cairns of yellow stones, piled
high in rude and strange formation; the yellow and red of the
butterbloem, crude intense colours in an intense atmosphere under the
hard blue of the sky; the occasional oddly-shaped kopjes; the distant
oasis of some lonely farm; each struck a separate note of beauty in this
strange, uncivilised scene--a beauty that was fearful and fiercely
assertive, that crushed the senses, that again attracted and held surely
by the unfailing magnetism of elemental and sincere things. And over
all the parched nakedness of the land the sun flung its golden radiance,
a yellow flame that quivered through the hot air and pierced into the
earth.
Matheson knew while his eyes lingered upon it all that he would in very
truth love the land.
And then he turned his head suddenly and met Honor's eyes. She was
smiling softly, but she did not speak.