Matheson made Mrs Upton's acquaintance on the following Sunday. He
called at the boarding house and had tea in the shabby general
sitting-room, and allowed himself to be drawn out by Brenda's mother,
who was plainly bent on learning all she could concerning him before and
since his intimacy with her daughter.
He succeeded on the whole in impressing her favourably, despite a
natural prejudice she entertained against the unconventional manner in
which the acquaintance had begun, and a further disapproval of the
nightly excursions which Brenda made under his escort, a custom which
allied itself with her present occupation but was not the custom of her
class. Without a home, a girl was so handicapped. She felt their
social downfall more bitterly on her daughter's account than ever she
had felt it on her own.
She resembled her daughter in appearance, and also in manner. Before
life had bruised her she had possibly been a very entertaining woman.
She possessed still a certain charm, and had an alert way of expressing
herself which appealed to the listener. Matheson was conscious
primarily of an immense relief. He had rather dreaded this meeting with
Brenda's mother. Why he should have expected anything so wildly
improbable he could not tell, but he had anticipated a replica of Mrs
Aplin. But this little quiet-eyed woman was altogether different; and
her bright way of saying the unexpected thing pleased him. If her life
had known unusual distress, she had not permitted herself to go down
under them, but kept a brave front to the world, hiding even from her
daughter the humiliation she experienced in coming back to the place
where she and her misfortunes were so well known.
Brenda poured out the tea and left the talking principally to the
others. She was almost nervously anxious that this man whom she already
liked so well should win her mother's approval. Mrs Upton had
expressed doubts as to the desirability of this casual friendship.
Matheson's request for permission to call had done much towards
mislaying these misgivings; but the ultimate decision, Brenda felt,
rested with himself. She wanted him to shine, to say brilliant things;
and all the while he was behaving in a perfectly correct and commonplace
manner. She had not believed he could be so dull. It exasperated her.
And when he rose to go he did not suggest, as she hoped he would, that
they should go for a walk. Possibly, she reflected resentfully, he had
other calls to make and did not want her company. It never occurred to
her that he was regulating his conduct with a view to its effect upon
her mother. It surprised her when he was gone to hear her mother praise
in him the characteristics which she deplored.
"But he wasn't at his best," she protested. "I never knew him to be so
dull."
"He is a very interesting man," Mrs Upton declared. "It was you who
were a little dull. You scarcely spoke to him." She laughed suddenly.
"Perhaps he is one of those men who like an audience; otherwise I don't
see what he gets out of it, if you are not more eloquent alone with him
than you were to-day."
"Yes, he needs an audience. He always does most of the talking," Brenda
said.
After that Sunday it became a weekly custom for Matheson to call in the
afternoon. Generally he took Brenda out somewhere, and when he brought
her back he stayed for a chat with her mother, and occasionally had tea
with them. He took them to the theatre, and to any entertainment he
thought might give them pleasure. And once, despite a natural shrinking
on Mrs Upton's part to be seen in public, he persuaded them to dine
with him at the Mount Nelson. That evening stuck in his memory. It was
the first occasion on which he had seen Brenda in evening dress. She
looked well, and was animated and almost brilliant. He felt proud to be
seen with her.
Mrs Upton was considerably perplexed. It was quite manifest to her
that Matheson was making up his mind to propose to her daughter, if
indeed it was not already made up; but she could discover in his
undoubted affection for Brenda nothing of the quality of passionate
love. This disturbed her. Matheson's quiet affection seemed to her a
wholly inadequate return for the devotion of the girl's whole heart. It
was no secret from her mother that Brenda was very much in love. It was
the girl's first and only love affair, and it absorbed her entirely.
Should anything interpose between her love and its fulfilment the result
might easily lead to a lifelong disappointment.
Mrs Upton, realising this perfectly, could only stand by and watch the
course of events shaping themselves to the making or the marring of her
daughter's happiness. There were times when she wished Matheson had not
come into the girl's life; though all the glamour and romance her life
had known had come to her through him. She wished too that he had not
been so sure of Brenda. The girl's devotion shone in her look.
But Matheson, though he had no doubt of Brenda's love, was not so
confident of winning her as her mother believed. In all the weeks of
their renewed friendship he had not uttered one word of love to her, had
attempted none of those affectionate familiarities he had practised
during the early days of their acquaintance. The kiss she had given him
in the road at their first parting was the only kiss he had received
from her. Something in the girl's manner silenced him.--It may have
been that the mere knowledge that she loved him, acted as a restraint;
possibly too the lukewarm quality of his own desires caused him to
hesitate ere taking the irrevocable step he contemplated. He was sure
of the girl's love, but he could not feel positive as to her answer.
Nor was he satisfied that perfect happiness would result from an
alliance based on such inequalities of affection. She had set this
doubt working in his mind, and he was powerless to determine it, or to
put it aside. The matter occasioned him endless thought and worry.
At times he felt like taking the plunge and leaving the doubts to
resolve themselves; and then her quiet face, with the earnest eyes lit
with love for him, gave him pause, and he decided to wait and allow the
friendship to develop. Already it had grown deep enough to make him
conscious of his need of her. The idea of letting her drop out of his
life again was altogether unthinkable. She was necessary to him. He
did not understand it, but he realised it perfectly. Out of the odd
confection of human emotions that swayed him, his dependence on Brenda,
even the inconsistent urgency of his requirement of her love, stood out
and dominated the rest. He wanted her; he had no longer any doubt about
that.
And yet when he was alone, and at night-time, it was seldom of Brenda he
thought Even when he was with her the memory of Honor thrust between
them, a beautiful, intangible obstruction keeping them apart.
The time came when he felt the necessity to talk to her about Honor. He
did not stop to consider whether it was wise to do so; something
impelled him to speak of this matter which alone formed a bar to their
complete understanding. He could not, he found, ask Brenda to marry him
without confiding to her something of that part of his life the
influences of which intervened between them.
It was on a Sunday afternoon that Matheson chose to unburden himself.
He took Brenda to see the Rhodes' Memorial--the fine unfinished work of
Watts, emblematic of Rhodes' unfinished work--for that matter,
emblematic of the unfinished work of any human span.
It was a day of brilliant sunshine and cool winds, such as one gets
during the Cape winter, and which one can only compare with spring
weather in England, or an early autumn day before the leaves fall. They
went out by tram, and walked through the wonderful grounds of Groot
Schuur, that magnificent home of a wealthy, ambitious, brilliant man,
who dreamed of Empire expansion, and who realised a part, though never
the entire dream.
Silent and a little weary, they followed the broad gravelled drive to
the temple where the eight bronze lions guard the steps which lead up to
the lonely enshrined bust of a strong man who, for all his greatness,
despite wealth and success and numberless friends, stands out a lonely
figure in the history of his time.
They walked up the broad stone steps and stood before the fine
thoughtful face, lifelike in its quiet abstraction, gazing towards the
north, as Watts' equestrian statue of Energy gazes, through eternal
sunlit spaces, across rich plains of unsurpassed beauty, towards the
mountains and the remote distances of that hinterland which lies beyond
them, and in which Rhodes' hopes and thoughts were centred.
It was the first time that Matheson had visited the place. Its
influence upon him in the quiet grandeur, the spirit-invaded atmosphere
of this spot where Rhodes in his lifetime spent so many thoughtful
hours, where even now in bronze he mounted guard over this chosen place,
was tremendous. It did not surprise him, on looking towards her after a
pregnant silence, to see the tears standing in Brenda's eyes. There was
a greatness in the quality and the inspiration of this monument to
greatness which touched the secret springs of emotion and stirred the
imagination.
"Let us go and sit on the seat below there, under the trees, where he
used to sit," he said.
And without further speech they descended the steps and walked quietly
to the plain wooden bench where Rhodes in his lifetime sat often and
dreamed his big dreams, looking away through the golden haze over the
limitless scene.
"He was wonderful," Brenda said... "His is the greatest name in South
African history."
Matheson, looking towards the distant mountains, nodded acquiescence.
"He died too soon," he said. "That's the worst of it... Had he lived
long enough he would have linked up the south with the north. He won
more territory for the Empire without bloodshed than any other man."
"And then came the Boer war..."
Quickly he brought his face round and looked at her.
"Well, yes," he said. "But I don't suppose he could help that."
"When I stand in front of his bust up there, and gaze away over this
scene, and realise the greatness of him and the vastness of his
ambition, I incline to believe that he could," she said.
"Yes!"
Her words obviously impressed him. Involuntarily his mind travelled
bade to Benfontein, to the impressions obtained from that visit, and the
memory of the bitterness of racial hate he had discovered among the
Dutch whom he had met.
"He cherished so many schemes--too many for one man to carry out Perhaps
you are right, and he neglected the finest and wisest scheme of all,
that of welding together the two white races in the Colony by the
closest ties of friendship and trust. One can't determine these things
now."
"He was an Empire builder," she returned, and looked at him with a smile
in her eyes. "The Empire builder inclines to overlook the great human
essentials. The field of his operations is necessarily impersonal."
For a moment or so he looked back at her steadily. She was wise, this
slender slip of a girl. He already entertained a profound respect for
her opinion; and it occurred to him while he gazed at her, that she
would be ready also of understanding, that he had less to fear in giving
her his entire confidence than in holding a part, the vitally important
part, back.
And then abruptly he began to talk to her about Honor.
"I think I ought to tell you," he said in a slightly constrained voice,
and without looking at her, "that while I was away, before I came back
here, something happened to me, something of tremendous importance. I
met--some one--a girl... You understand... She meant a lot to me. I
fell in love. She was Dutch. She hated the British... she couldn't
forget. That stood between us--her resentment struck deeper than
anything else."
He paused, and leaned forward slightly, peering into the distance.
"That's all," he added jerkily. "I felt I would like to tell you."
She was silent for a space, watching him, seeing the strained look in
the eyes staring straight ahead of him, the set lines of his mouth. One
strong hand was clenched on the bench beside him; the prominent knuckles
showed white. She put out her hand and covered his.
"Poor dear!" she said, and repeated softly after a moment: "Poor dear!
... That explains it."
"Explains what?" he asked dully.
"Explains everything I haven't understood in you of late... Why didn't
you tell me sooner?"
"I don't know," he answered. "I wasn't sure, I suppose, that I ought to
tell you... I'm not sure now that I've done well."
"Oh! yes," she returned quickly. "I'm glad you trusted me... I'm
sorry. I hate to see you hurt."
"One gets over that--in time," he said. "I'm not going to let it swamp
me."
And then abruptly he drew his hand from under hers and stood up.
"They provide tea in the cottage up there," he said. "Come along and
have some."
He drew her up from the bench, and gripped her hand hard when she stood
beside him, forcing a smile to his lips.
"This spot stirs the emotions," he said. "I shall always think of it as
the Place of Memories..."