There was no ride that morning. Feeling disinclined to remain indoors
Matheson left the house and went for a walk, hoping to rid himself in
some measure of his depression. He passed beyond the aloe boundary, and
continued his way beside the ostrich camps, keeping at a respectful
distance from the wire fencing behind which the great birds stalked
aimlessly, craning their long necks forward and regarding him
malevolently out of their large soft eyes.
He watched them with a detached interest, and reflected on the many
occasions he had accompanied Honor when she fed them, carrying the
basket of mealies for her and standing by while she threw the corn. He
had chaffed her on account of her fear of the fierce clumsy birds. Fear
had seemed so altogether foreign to her nature. They had strolled over
the veld often at sunset, and listened to the ostriches' cry to the
departing day; had walked on over the rise and looked down in a pleasant
and intimate companionship upon the homestead, softened and beautified
in the evening light, upon the serried ranks of the mealie stalks, and
the cluster of native huts dotted about near the kraals. They had been
pleasant walks those. There was no doubt about it, they had had some
good times together. And now it was all ended--in a moment, like the
collapse of a pack of cards.
He quickened his pace, ruminating as he went. What exactly had
happened? It was not, he felt, only prejudice and racial animosity that
divided Honor and himself. Save in very exceptional cases, a woman does
not exalt hate above love. There was something behind, something which
he did not understand. He began to believe that he had been mistaken in
thinking that she cared. She had never cared. She felt merely
interested in him, as she might feel interested in any stranger coming
for a time into her uneventful life. There was no more in it than that.
He returned to the house when it was approaching the breakfast hour,
returned reluctantly, an unaccustomed feeling of nervousness, which
increased as he came nearer, seizing him, causing a dryness of the
throat and giving a furtiveness to his look. He did not know how he
should face Honor--what they would say to one another. He experienced
an absurd regret that she had her seat next his at table. It was not
possible to sit beside any one and remain silent.
In the garden he saw Mrs Krige. She was looking out for him; and
immediately from her face he divined that she knew. It puzzled him why
this fact should occasion him relief rather than embarrassment. Perhaps
the expression in her eyes as she came towards him assured him of her
sympathy.
"I am not late, I hope?" he said, as he joined her. "I have been taking
a last walk."
"Every one is late this morning," she replied. "Mr Marais is only now
awake, and Honor is lying down with a headache. Even Andreas was late.
I think there is thunder in the air; the weather has been very
oppressive these past few days; it upsets one."
"Yes," he agreed, following her talk only imperfectly, but grasping the
reference to Honor which seemed to point to the unlikelihood of his
seeing her again before he left. It was difficult to realise that he
had actually seen Honor for the last time.
"I am sorry you are going," Mrs Krige said presently. "I have so
enjoyed your visit. Your being here has made me a little hungry for my
own people. I haven't talked so much English for six years. It may be
years before I speak it again."
"I think," he returned, looking at her curiously, "you punish yourself
heavily."
He could not forget that it was from her mother Honor had learned her
bitter creed. He found it difficult to forgive that. Of all these
people whom he had met up here, so jealous of any infringement of the
rights of the Dutch, so zealous in support of their claim to a national
status, there was only one good patriot among them, and he was Herman
Nel. It was such men as Nel who would make South Africa a great
country.
Suddenly, while they walked towards the house, he found himself speaking
of his proposal to Honor, and her rejection of his suit.
"She has told you?" he finished.
"Yes," Mrs Krige admitted. "I am sorry about it. Honor will never
marry; she does not think of it. Since you've been here I've fancied at
times... But she isn't like most girls; she never gives it a thought."
"No," he answered almost fiercely, "because her mind is preoccupied.
She's obsessed with a sense of her wrongs, with a longing for revenge,
which she miscalls patriotism. Mrs Krige, I'd give the world to undo
the injury that has been done a young, impressionable, and beautiful
nature. Honor was made for love, and she puts love outside her life.
Her life holds other interests."
The slow tears gathered in Mrs Krige's eyes. "You are blaming me," she
said... "I know you blame me."
"I blame no one," he answered, and felt savage with himself for hurting
her to no purpose. "I'm feeling sore. This thing cuts, you see..."
"Yes," she said. "Yes--I know. I'm sorry."
She wiped her eyes quickly, unwilling that he should witness her
emotion, and added presently:
"If Honor had given a different answer I should have been glad."
They stepped on to the stoep in silence. Freidja was in the
living-room, superintending Koewe who was bringing in the breakfast.
She came to the window and admonished them good-naturedly.
"Ach! I don't know what is the matter with every one this morning," she
said. "The breakfast has been cooked a long time already, and only
myself to eat it. Andreas has not come in yet, and Oom Koos says he
will be ready just now--which means in about half an hour, perhaps.
Meanwhile the porridge cools, and the chops are burnt. What has got all
of you?"
Andreas came into sight while she spoke, and walking with him was Herman
Nel. Nel had ridden over on an errand of peace which, as Freidja knew,
was connected solely with herself. She flushed on catching sight of
him, and retired to the kitchen, where she remained until Nel, having
shaken hands all round, and not seeing her, and feeling obviously very
much at home at Benfontein, went in search of her, and returned after
some while carrying the dish of chops and followed by his fiancee, both
of them looking thoroughly happy, and Freidja appearing, to Matheson's
amaze, softened and entirely womanly and rather shy.
Mynheer Marais came in after the rest, and he and Herman Nel indulged in
some amicable wrangling across the breakfast table. Mostly the
conversation was carried on in English in consideration of Matheson's
presence, but occasionally it drifted into Dutch when the speakers grew
excited; and then Matheson was glad to sit in silent preoccupation, deaf
to the unintelligible sounds, indifferent to his surroundings, seeing
only a fair upturned face with eyes that were entirely beautiful looking
into his; and behind it, setting off the fair face with the shining eyes
and the sunny hair, glowed the dark wood panelling of the old room,
warmed with the newly risen sun. That picture he knew would live in his
mind for ever.
"So you leave to-day?" Herman Nel said, turning and addressing him
unexpectedly.
Matheson, looking towards the speaker, met the shrewd friendly eyes
scrutinising him attentively as they had done across the small table at
the rondavel.
"Yes," he said. "I'm going back."
"You'll have a lot to say about the fertility of this district," Nel
remarked and laughed. "Come in the spring next time, Mr Matheson. We
are rather proud of our veld then. When you are again in these parts I
will be pleased if you will stay with me at my rondavel. You have seen
what accommodation I have to have to offer; it is sufficient. If at any
time you come and I am not there, enter and take possession. I never
lock my house."
"No," interposed Oom Koos before Matheson could reply. "He tries to
live like the Kaffirs; and the Kaffirs, who steal everything they can
lay their filthy hands on, are baang to touch his goods because they
think him white witch-doctor. But one day there will come a Kaffir who
is not afraid."
"I go on the principle," Nel replied, "that evil hides instinctively
from those who are not in search of it, but reveals itself impudently
where it realises its presence is suspected. Oom Koos has lost more
goats than I ever possessed. It is well for Mr Marais that he is a
richer man than I."
"If I followed your example," Oom Koos retorted, "I would not be that.
The wise man who would guard his sheep from the jackals, sees to it that
they are safe in the kraals each night. A Kaffir will murder his father
and his mother for their few paltry possessions."
"Occasionally," Nel returned quietly, "the white man commits worse
crimes than that: he will murder his own people and rob his unborn
child. But we style his crime differently. It is the tide one affixes
to an act which proclaims it a crime or a virtue."
As though aware that he was treading on difficult ground, warned
possibly by the steady look from Freidja's sombre eyes, he turned again
to Matheson and skilfully directed the talk into a safer channel.
"I like the native," he said. "I always fight his battles. He is not
highly developed mentally; he is largely instinctive; but his instincts
on the whole are good."
"The mental inferiority, I suppose," Matheson ventured, "is the result
of his want of civilisation. He is coming on rapidly, don't you think?"
"He advances undoubtedly. But I think the mental inferiority strikes
deeper than that. I believe myself that eventually the black races will
become extinct. Wherever the white man penetrates the effect becomes
marked in succeeding generations."
"In my opinion that is regrettable," Matheson observed. "I am in favour
of race preservation."
"Yes! Well, so am I. The dark man has his uses."
"He is a lazy schelm," put in Oom Koos, his customary amiability
temporarily eclipsed behind his disapproval of the talk. "And the
English are spoiling him. They give him too much money. Wages go up
yearly; and the higher the wage the less he works."
"That's the rule all up the scale, isn't it?" Matheson asked with a
laugh. "It's a sign of civilisation, anyway."
"This country is only in the making," Krige remarked, in his slow
unexpected way of breaking in upon a conversation in which he had taken
no previous part. "European principles don't apply out here."
"One has to live in this country for many years," Mrs Krige threw in,
loyally supporting her son's statement, "before one begins to understand
it; and even then there is always much to learn."
Which obvious remark put a period to the conversation, and when the talk
revived ethnological discussion was tacitly tabooed.
With the finish of breakfast Oom Koos announced his intention to start.
It was a long drive to De Aar, and he had business to transact there.
He did not consult Matheson. He went with Andreas Krige to the stables
to superintend the inspanning of his horses, and later drove up to the
fence of spiky aloes and waited for his passenger in the patch of shade
which they cast along the ground.
Matheson flung his things into a suit-case and hurried out. They were
all there, grouped about the spider, with the exception only of Honor;
but that exception meant everything to him. An overwhelming regret
seized him. He was going away--she was allowing him to go--like a
stranger, without so much as a touch of the hand, without a word of
farewell. He rebelled against this. He resented it All these people
would wonder--they would understand perhaps. He imagined he detected
satisfaction in Andreas' eyes, and suspected Oom Koos' habitual twinkle
of being assumed at his expense. Rage, which was in part misery,
gripped him, and filled him with a desire to do something violent, which
was none the less imperative because of its futility and utter
absurdity. He had to make an effort at control before he could face
these people calmly, and climb quietly to his place beside the massive
Dutchman and respond to the chorus of farewells.
In his angry misery he forgot that he had had no talk with Krige about
the message he had promised to carry for him. It did not occur to him
until after the horses started to wonder why Krige had made no reference
to this matter. When he thought about it, it struck him as significant,
this ignoring of the subject. Possibly Honor had warned her brother
against taking the course he had intended. It did not matter anyway.
That was finished. He was leaving the farm with the sinister name, and
carrying away with him a sense of the ill luck which was associated with
its strange title.
He turned in his seat to look back at the low white building, gleaming
in the brilliant sunlight with a hard dazzling effect which hurt the
eyes. Somewhere behind the gleaming walls, beyond the wide
open windows, Honor hid from him--complex and beautiful and
incomprehensible--a bright life overshadowed with the tragedy of the
past.