On parting from Nel, Matheson started to walk briskly, aware that
already he was some minutes late for his appointment. It was the first
occasion on which he had kept his fiancee waiting. He did not
anticipate that she would be vexed; the delay had been unavoidable, and
the meeting with Nel had saved him an unprofitable journey. A knowledge
of Holman's whereabouts simplified his quest and would economise time,
which was an important factor; the settlement of this business had to be
accomplished while he was free to attend to private matters.
In his hurried walk he overtook the Aplin girls, very gay and important,
bedecked with tricolour ribbons and wearing the Union Jack badges in
their hats. They were frightfully busy, they informed him, collecting
for Christmas parcels for the troops. It was great sport, begging, but
desperately tiring.
"One likes to feel that one is helping," Rosie explained.
Their manner towards him was more gracious than it had appeared of late.
On the few occasions when they had met since his engagement they had
contrived to convey a sense of aggrieved disapproval, and had pointedly
refrained from offering him their congratulations on his forthcoming
marriage. They never referred to Brenda.
"Mr Macfarlane told us you were going to Europe," May said. "When do
you sail? I've promised to write to half a dozen boys who have joined
up for overseas."
"I've changed my mind about that," he said. "There's work to be done
out here first."
Immediately their interest waned.
"If I were a man, as I told Mr Macfarlane, I'd want to go where the big
things are doing," May asserted. "I wouldn't be bothered with these
horrid rebels."
"Somebody must," he said, and refrained from further comment. It would
be wasted labour, he felt, to question their point of view.
"But it would be such a lark, going to Europe. It's the chance of a
lifetime. I wish mother would let me go."
"Nursing?" he inquired.
"Oh, nursing! That's horrid work. No. I'd like to drive an ambulance
wagon, or do something smart... and wear a uniform like the men."
"Yes," he answered, and laughed. "I remember you had always a leaning
towards fancy dress. I daresay you'll find something to do even here."
"Oh! we're having a perfectly gorgeous time," put in Rosie, "And we are
really working--not just stupid sewing meetings, you know, but hard
work. We are organising a fancey fete for the relief of the poor
Belgians. It will be great fun. We are raising the funds all right."
"After that we start recruiting," May added, smiling. "The slackers
will have a bad time of it. Every man ought to be a soldier."
"You _are_ busy," he said, and wondered whether they ever took anything
seriously. The war was not a world disaster, but a huge excitement with
possibilities of interesting developments. It gave them something fresh
to think about. "I turn in here," he added, pausing outside the gate
leading to Brenda's lodging.
Rosie's glance travelled towards the windows of the house, and then back
again slowly to his face.
"I suppose Miss Upton has had something to do in influencing your
decision to remain out here?" she said. "She wouldn't like you to go to
Europe."
"She is satisfied either way," he answered. "Had I sailed for Europe
she would have accompanied me. That was settled from the first."
They parted from him unconvinced, and with a slight return of the chill
displeasure he had grown to look for from them. The halt at Brenda's
gate had seemed to them an affront.
"Of course she stopped him from going," May declared. "She knows if she
lets him out of her sight she risks losing him. She was always an
artful little thing. I believe he would get out of that engagement if
he could. It seems to have flattened him."
"He hasn't been the same since," Rosie admitted, and looked away down
the leafy avenue with sentimental eyes. "It's such a pity; he's so
awfully good looking," she said, and sighed.
Brenda was on the stoep waiting for him when Matheson reached the house.
She must have witnessed the parting between him and the Aplin girls,
which had been sufficiently leisurely to excite resentment in view of
her long wait. He forestalled any remark by apologising for his
lateness.
"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "Twice I was stopped on the way here. I
ought to have been with you half an hour ago. I met a man--a Dutchman--
Nel: he kept me. He wants me to join Botha's army."
She scrutinised him closely.
"And you're going to?" she said.
"Yes."
"These changes are a little unsettling," she observed after a brief
reflection. "I was quite prepared for Europe."
"You don't mind?" he asked quickly.
"No." She stood touching his coat softly, caressingly, with her
fingers; and her eyes wore a look of quiet satisfaction, almost of
relief. "I've dreaded France for you. Out here a man has a chance--a
sporting chance; over there it's a war of chemicals. No; I'm not brave.
I never wanted you to go."
"One has to defend the Empire," he said.
"Oh! yes." She smiled suddenly. "No woman really admires the man who
thinks otherwise. But..."
She broke off abruptly, and pulled him towards a seat on the stoep and
sat down beside him.
"Tell me, who is this man? Why should a Dutchman influence you so
strongly? I tried from the first to persuade you to join the Union
Forces. I'm jealous of this Dutchman."
He laughed and possessed himself or her hand and pressed it warmly.
"He's a Boer I met up country--one of the finest men I know. He has the
welfare of South Africa at heart--like Botha and Smuts."
"Oh! a loyal Boer," she said.
Matheson made a gesture of impatience.
"That term is applied so differently," he said. "He is one of the men
who are on our side, if you mean that."
"Well, but that's being loyal, isn't it?" she said.
"Loyal to one's conception of right--yes. I imagine one needs to be
Dutch to see the thing clearly. He is not a son of Empire; he's a South
African, heart and soul. His brother is on the other side."
"Ah!" she said. "A rebel. That's painful for him."
"Yes," he agreed. "It cuts him, of course, badly. But he regrets this
difference rather than condemns it. That's where the wider
understanding of race comes in: he discriminates between sedition and
mistaken ideals."
"And he has tutored you?" she said.
"He--and others."
He looked away from her, aware of her searching scrutiny. Did she
guess, he wondered, that Nel was somehow connected with the story of
Honor? His sympathies with the Dutch, he felt, must wound her in a
sense.
"I'll tell you why he wants you to join Botha's army," she said, after a
short pause; and Matheson was conscious that the fingers of the hand he
held closed suddenly tighter about his own--"why you mean to do that
rather than go to Europe--because you also understand... You've gone
into this question, and you can regard it without prejudice. I wish I
could do that."
"Any one can," he asserted. "It's merely a matter of analysing
motives."
"No." She shook her head. "I know that admittedly there are two sides
to every question; but each side sees inevitably its own point of view;
occasionally one may obtain an imperfect view of the other side; but it
is given only to the largest vision to see both sides clearly. The
wider vision lights the path to a more complete understanding. I wish I
possessed it."
"Are you so sure you don't?" he asked, and took her chin between his
fingers and turned her face towards his and held it for a while. "They
see a long way, those wise brown eyes. Some one once tried to make me
see into the heart of Africa... You penetrate deeper than that--you see
into the heart of humanity; and there you have the key to everything."
Matheson did not speak of the other change in his plans which the
meeting with Nel had brought about Brenda still supposed he was going to
Johannesburg; and he allowed her to think that. But he felt some
embarrassment when she asked him to send her word of his arrival, and a
telegram to let her know when to expect him back.
"If I miss writing on my arrival," he said, and felt mean at the
equivocation, "I'll wire you news of my return. It will be such a
hurried affair, I doubt whether there will be much time for writing--and
none for receiving any reply from you. I'll get back as soon as I can."
"I'll be there at the station to meet you," she said.
"Well, of course."
He experienced a new tenderness for her, a sort of protective love,
unlike any other emotion he had felt, as he sat beside her on the tiny
ill-kept stoep and talked fragmentally of unimportant things in a
determined effort to steer wide of the tragic doings of the times, and
to avoid further discussion of his own immediate plans. It afforded him
pleasure to reflect that shortly they would be married; that when all
this business of fighting was over they would have a home of their own,
and this dear girl chum would be his wife and daily companion. He put
his arm about her shoulders with an unwonted display of affection that
caused her a thrill of shy pleasure. She never invited his caresses;
they were the more precious on account of their rareness.
"You're such a chum," he said. "I think I'm a very lucky fellow to have
secured so dear a comrade to march by my side through life."
"That's all I ask to be, your comrade through life," she said, and
looked up at him with big worshipful eyes, secure in the knowledge that
comradeship is the surest foundation upon which to base a successful
marriage. The union thus founded is more assured of continuing
happiness than a marriage between unequals as the result of physical
attraction. Passionate love has its limitations; but comradeship, which
is born of a perfect understanding, strengthens with the years.
It was odd, Matheson reflected while gazing steadily into Brenda's quiet
eyes, that the encounter with Nel should have brought nothing of the
past very vividly back. He wondered whether in returning to the scene
of those emotional stresses he would experience anew something of the
pain and keen resentment of frustrated desire which had gripped him at
the time with what had seemed unforgettable anguish.
It struck him, while he pondered these things, as disloyal to Brenda,
this contemplated journey to Benfontein; the fact that he kept his
destination secret from her was proof in itself of a consciousness of
wrong. He was not acting on the square. He was not even sincere with
himself. Why should he undertake the punishment of Holman? It was
clearly a case for the military authorities, and his duty to furnish the
necessary information and leave the matter with them. He recognised
that. But the complex motives which drove him to seek out Holman, to
confront him with his villainy, and deal personally with this insidious
poisoner of innocent minds, were compelling. In striking at Holman he
not only struck at a national enemy, he would strike also at the
insinuating subtlety which had thrust between himself and Honor; which
thrust between Honor and happiness, and trampled ruthlessly over the
virgin soil where the tender seed of love lay germinating, and disturbed
it and bruised it and left in its stead the unlovely seed of hate,
striking its tenacious suckers deep into the ground. There was no
punishment to fit this infamy; but at least he could make certain that
the lying tongue was silenced and could do no further harm.
The urgency of his desire reduced his scruples to a minimum. But he
felt shame none the less as his glance rested on the girl beside him,
the girl whose entire heart was given into his keeping. It was not much
of a return he was making her. Contrasted with the richness of her
gift, the poverty of his was painfully apparent.
"Come!" he said, grown suddenly restless before the rush of his own
thoughts. "We are wasting our afternoon. We've a lot to crowd into the
next few hours."
She stood up and faced him, laughing.
"Man of moods," she said, "I was just wondering how long you would be
satisfied to sit here staring at the gum trees... Let us go out into
the sunlight and the wind--and just talk..."