Butter Tom was busy outside the rondavel shaking the dust from the skin
mats which covered the floor. He glanced up at Honor's approach, and
smiled with a cautious deference that concealed his vague distrust of
her more effectually than it hid his nervousness. The missis with the
face of a lily in the moonlight possessed the cunning of a devil.
Already she had worked evil towards the baas he served. Her appearance
now he believed portended further evil. He was afraid of her with the
unreasoning fear of a man who realises his inability to resist a
superior will. If she commanded him to do a thing, he would do it
because he dared not refuse. He likened her to the fleet-footed powers
of evil which outdistanced the chameleon, the tardy messenger of the
gods, who failed through its dilatoriness to deliver the World from the
ills which afflict mankind. She came towards him swiftly, as evil
travels, with the speed of the wind, and halted beside him, warmly
flushed and panting for breath. Butter Tom gathered up his mats, and,
grinning nervously, prepared to retreat with them; but Honor stayed him
with a gesture.
"Put those down," she said authoritatively, "and go to the stable
quickly, and fetch out the old spider which Baas Herman uses. Inspan
Baas Matheson's horse without loss of time. The baas will drive to the
town, and you will drive him there and bring the spider back. Do you
understand?"
"Ja, missis. Me take the mats inside, then me go."
For a second it seemed as though she would not permit this delay; then
with another gesture she signified her consent to the disposal of the
mats, but bade him be quick as she would wait for him.
Butter Tom retired within, and spread his mats carefully on the floor.
The baas was attempting to shave himself with the razor grasped in his
left hand, and was making a sorry business of it. He looked round at
Butter Tom's entrance to inquire who it was he had heard talking outside
the hut.
"Young missis will send Butter Tom to the stable," the Kaffir
vouchsafed, with an appealing look at the baas in the hope that the
latter would raise some objection to his obeying the strange behest.
But the baas, letting the razor fall, and receiving it without comment
from the dark hand which hastily forestalled his request by returning it
to him, merely said:
"If the young missis wants you, go at once."
Then he resumed the business of shaving himself with a hand considerably
less steady than before. What need had Honor for employing Nel's
servant? And why had she returned?
As if in answer to his unspoken questions. Honor entered the rondavel,
having satisfied herself that Butter Tom had departed to do her bidding.
She entered with a certain hesitation, and seeing Matheson's
occupation, advanced with greater assurance and took the razor from his
unresisting hand.
"There isn't any time for this," she said. "You can get this done in
the town. In a few minutes Butter Tom will have the spider ready. It's
a long drive for one horse, but you must do it, and you must start at
once."
"But why?" he asked, amazed. "It is early. Half an hour can't make
much difference anyway; and I look such a ruffian."
She closed the razor with a snap. As she did so Leentje's words
recurred to her with a new and more sinister meaning. "She put her hand
to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer." ... A razor
was quite as effective a weapon as a hammer in the hand of jael.
Quickly she returned the razor to him, contemplating him with thoughtful
anxious eyes. Instinctively she knew that she must not apprise him of
his danger. He would not flee before a German, nor even from a modern
Jael.
"There is no time to lose," she said. "They might raise objections to
my lending the spider. I am giving you the only chance of a conveyance.
If you don't take it now you will have to wait until you can ride into
town; and quite possibly your horse will be commandeered. All the
horses on the farm have been taken."
"Nel's horses--yes," he said. "But they can't take mine."
"They won't ask your permission," she answered. "Please do as I ask
you. The spider belongs to Herman; you need not scruple to use it.
Butter Tom will drive you... Reward him well; he will possibly be
blamed when he returns."
She did not think it necessary to inform him that Butter Tom would most
probably be flogged for obeying her orders. Holman would wreak his
vengeance on the Kaffir because he would not dare to reproach her. She
had known him flog a Kaffir before; it was his method of enforcing a
discipline he could not otherwise maintain.
"But such haste partakes of the nature of flight," he objected. "I
don't really see the need for it."
"You wanted to get away before," she reminded him. "You asked me to
help you. This is the only way in which I can help. If you delay it
will be embarrassing for me. You are well enough to travel, aren't
you?"
Again she scrutinised him closely, with renewed anxiety in her gaze. He
did not look equal to a great deal of fatigue. Never before had he felt
so painfully conscious of weakness; but he made light of it.
"I'll be all right," he said. "It isn't that... Of course, if you
think it best, I am ready to start at once."
Her relief at his compliance was manifest. She was nervous and
unstrung, and the sudden reaction shook her fortitude. She turned her
face aside to hide its emotion from him; but he saw the tears in her
eyes, and was immensely disconcerted at the sight of this distress which
he failed altogether to understand. He advanced a few paces towards
her, hesitated, and stood irresolute, regarding her with an exasperated
sense of his own inadequacy.
"I say!" he said awkwardly. "Don't! ... Please, don't... I'm awfully
sorry that my presence has so upset you. I'll go. I'll go at once,
Honor." Then a doubt crept into his mind. He approached quite close to
her and put out a hand and touched her sleeve. "You want me to go?" he
asked.
"Yes," she cried quickly--"yes... Of course." She moved away. "Drive
straight for the town," she added. "And don't spare the horse."
Without once looking at him she left the rondavel, hiding her tear-wet
face from him, and hurrying away in the sunshine with steps as fleet as
those she had used in coming, but followed a less direct route for the
purpose of allaying suspicion as to where she had been in the event of
meeting any one on the way back. She had done her utmost for him; his
safety was now his own affair.
Matheson remained for a while inactive, watching her retreating figure.
He followed her to the doorway, and stood in the brilliant sunshine,
looking after her, as she sped away with never a backward glance, the
gold of the sunlight upon her and the morning wind ruffling her hair.
Innumerable doubts troubled him while he stood there, doubts which she
had set fermenting in his brain. She was not happy. The change in her
was very marked. When he had first met her she had been afire with
enthusiasm and eager interest in life; now she was a woman, grave and
thoughtful, on whom cares and responsibilities pressed heavily. She had
sold her birthright of joy, sacrificing it to a long-cherished dream of
vengeance; and already she was discovering how unsatisfying was the
bargain she had made. Nel was right. There was a predestination in
these matters beyond human control.
A sense of utter futility gripped Matheson, a sort of sick
disappointment more distressing than physical nausea. His passion for
Honor assumed a new significance: it became less personal--more of a
formal worship of beauty for beauty's sake than the love of man for
woman for simple and primitive ends. He realised that temperamentally
they were entirely opposed, as the north wind is opposed to the south,
the east to the west. In no circumstance could they have mated with
felicitous results. He had loved her beauty and the quick fire of her
imagination; she had attracted him as the fierce untamed land she loved
attracted him, by reason of its untrammelled freedom, its unconquerable
savagery and beauty. But these qualities do not make for the sublime
happiness of domestic peace. The human need demands something more
satisfying than passionate discords in its relations with life. A man
may enjoy climbing to exalted altitudes; but he lives preferably in the
valleys among quiet and orderly things.
It seemed to Matheson that he saw life clearly for the first time. He
was regarding things from the detached standpoint of an unbiassed
onlooker--regarding himself, as a person takes note of some acquaintance
and determines his place in the scheme of the universe. He had a place,
quite unimportant and prosaic, but with certain clearly defined duties
and work to perform. Always he came back to that. There was work for
him to do--work for every one. He had been idling in the backwaters of
good intentions long enough. Too often a man idles away his best years
in dreaming, and overcrowds his middle age with much that might have
been accomplished during his youth. Youth is the period for activities;
and most surely is youth the time for marriage--useful marriage for the
raising and rearing of healthy and beautiful children.
Then, breaking in sharply upon his musings, came the sound of wheels and
the noise of Butter Tom's guttural exhortations to the recalcitrant bony
horse which Matheson had hired at De Aar, and which, accustomed to the
saddle, displayed mule-like tendencies between the shafts. Butter Tom
sawed at the reins and swore at it in Kaffir, while Matheson looked on
with apathetic indifference, thinking drearily of the long drive before
him in the heat, with his wounded shoulder and the useless right arm for
which Honor had improvised a sling from a scarf of her own.
With the moment of departure it occurred to him what a fool he had been
to come. He did not know what he had expected from the visit. It had
proved a wild, impossible venture. A man may not take the law into his
own hands even in Africa. Had he killed Holman he would have found
himself placed in an awkward dilemma. It would not have been easy to
establish a sufficient reason for the act. He had nothing but
circumstantial evidence to produce against Holman, evidence which would
have implicated Honor, and which therefore he could not have made use
of. He realised clearly that he had been actuated by a strong personal
animus, the result of his recognition of the man's responsibility for
the poisoning of Honor's mind, and the systematic fostering of her
brother's disloyalty. It had never been with him a question of German
treachery against England, but of the injury done to himself through the
woman he had loved His sense of justice had not sprung from any lofty
motive; therefore its failure of accomplishment, though humiliating, was
not deserving of many regrets.
He climbed into the spider with difficulty and seated himself beside
Butter Tom, who, by dint of a vigorous application of the whip, induced
the stubborn horse to break into an uncomfortable trot.
"This horse bad schelm," the Kaffir observed critically. "Him got seven
debels in him."
Matheson looked back towards the rondavel, remembering now that they
were moving the few things he had brought with him and which he had
forgotten to pack. He was about to tell the Kaffir to return in order
to fetch his possessions when he became aware of Leentje Nel's figure in
the distance, running towards them, and changed his mind. The
Dutchwoman gesticulated violently, and shouted to Butter Tom to stop.
Butter Tom heard her, and looked back; then, with his whip arm upraised,
he glanced inquiringly at the baas' imperturbable face.
"Drive on," Matheson commanded.
The whip fell relentlessly across the animal's lean flanks. Butter Tom
stood up to the business, and narrowly escaped being thrown out on to
the veld as the horse, after an indignant plunge and two ineffectual
attempts to splinter the splashboard with its hoofs, broke into a
furious gallop, bumping the spider behind it like a toy cart over the
rough stony ground. Matheson, hanging on with his left hand, watched,
with a light of understanding for Honor's urgency breaking in upon him,
Leentje Nel's pursuing figure pounding after them in futile and angry
chase.