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The Shadow of the Past

by F. E. Mills Young · English · Gutenberg #37262 · 491,990 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Shadow of the Past

Author: F. E. Mills Young


        
Release date: August 29, 2011 [eBook #37262]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37262

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADOW OF THE PAST ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Shadow of the Past
By F.E. Mills Young
Published by George H. Doran Company.
This edition dated 1919.

The Shadow of the Past, by F.E. Mills Young.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
THE SHADOW OF THE PAST, BY F.E. MILLS YOUNG.

CHAPTER ONE.

On the strip of yellow sand in the curve of the wall which separates the
beach at Three Anchor Bay from the roadway above it two men sat playing
cards in the blaze of the morning sunshine, which beat with untempered
violence upon their uncovered heads, upon the hot sand that sloped
gently to the rocky shore, and upon the long blue waves rolling slowly
in from the Atlantic with the semblance of a succession of hooded
serpents, rearing themselves with languid grace and folding over
reluctantly, throwing off a stream of spray from their crests like the
tail of some gigantic comet.  Far out the sea was aglitter, save where
it touched the horizon and lay mirror clear in the sensuous warmth,
reflecting the light and colour from the sky.

With the exception of the two card players the beach was deserted; they
were alone with the riot of colour and sunlight and the beauty of the
sea.  Neither looked at the sea.  The older man, sitting cross-legged on
the sand, had his back towards it; the younger, leaning, save when he
dealt the cards, on his elbow, only lifted his eyes from the cards to
fix them on his companion's face, which he did at infrequent intervals
with an odd half admiring resentment in their expression.

He was a well made, good-looking man of about twenty-seven.  His fair
skin, caught by the strong salt air and daily exposure, was burnt to a
brilliant brick, the pink stain travelling down his long throat and
broad chest which, moist with perspiration, showed to the waist where
the grey flannel shirt was unbuttoned; the sleeves also were rolled up
above his elbows revealing a pair of muscular arms covered with fine
golden hairs.  Strength, indolence and amazing recklessness showed in
this man's look and bearing.  While giving the idea that physically he
was capable of any effort of endurance, his manner conveyed also the
impression that usually he would be discovered playing the passive part
while others strove, that only some powerful inducement would rouse him
to exert his strength: physical and mental qualities seemed here to be
at variance.

His companion was altogether less noticeable; a shrewd, light-eyed,
slightly built man in the thirties; a man marked early in life for
moderate success in most things.  One of his successes was card playing,
as his adversary was discovering; perhaps he was more successful in that
than in anything.  For days he had been steadily winning away from its
owner the recently acquired wealth which a stroke of luck had brought
him; and the loser, in the grip of the gambler's superstition, played on
in the hope of winning back.

Their solitude was invaded by the sudden appearance of a girl with a
collie dog.  She approached unexpectedly from behind the wall within a
foot or two of the players, who, flushed and intent, disregarded her in
their silent concentration on the game.  The girl surveyed their
grouping in surprise; and the younger man, looking up involuntarily from
the cards he held, paused in the act of taking one from his hand to
return her curious look.  She averted her eyes and walked on; and the
man returned to the game, and forgot almost immediately in this greater
interest that just for a moment he had been quite curiously impressed by
the steady inquiring eyes which had looked into and held his with the
odd intimacy and interest of their gaze.

The owner of the inquiring eyes walked leisurely down to the shore,
where she paused to respond to the dog's excited invitation by throwing
a stick she carried for the purpose into the sea for him to retrieve.
Again and again, when the collie brought back the stick and laid it
before her and barked for a repetition of the game, the girl stooped
with swift grace, picked up the stick, and with a free side swing of the
arm flung it far into the waves.

"Damn that dog!" snapped the older man.  "Why doesn't the fool of a girl
move farther on instead of making herself a nuisance?"

The younger man allowed his attention to stray from the cards and turn
his gaze seaward.  He watched the collie swimming through the surf, and
the white figure of the girl poised against the blue, with the cool
waves running up the wet sand almost to her feet, and the shimmering
steamy heat vapour rising from the sands behind her, an atmospheric veil
quivering between herself and him.  The joyous barking of the dog as,
emerging from the waves, it beshowered the girl plentifully in an
attempt to shake the salt drops from its coat, was the only sound to
disturb the harmony of the sea's lazy response to the whisper of the
breeze.

"I expect," he said, leisurely shuffling the cards, "she considers her
occupation more legitimate than ours.  After all, I don't see what cause
you have to be nervy because a dog barks."

As though the complaint had travelled across the dividing space and
reached her ears, the girl started to walk, still throwing the stick
when it was brought to her, but no longer remaining stationary to pursue
this seemingly unending game.  She disappeared with the dog round the
curve; and fitfully, and growing fainter, the barking of the collie was
borne back to their ears, till finally the sound died away in the
distance, and only the thud of breaking waves, the swish of their
advance, with the backward suck of their waters in retreat, broke the
surrounding quiet.  A great silence and a great stillness reigned.

At last the younger man threw down the cards, and lay back on his elbow,
staring at the sea.

"That's the finish," he said presently, in controlled quiet tones.
"You've cleaned me out."

"There's always the chance," the other returned, rolling a cigarette and
lighting it, "of a change in the luck.  Why not make use of paper and
pencil, and have another run on it?"

The loser shook his head.

"No; I'm done.  You have the devil's luck."

There was a dazed look in his eyes, an unhappy lode.  His companion,
while feigning not to observe him was aware of it, aware too of the grim
tightening of the lips, and the repressed passion underlying the
unnatural calm of his manner.  Guy Matheson did not often betray
emotion.  He had played and lost steadily for days, and had parted with
his money with an indifference that had misled the other as to the
resources at his command.  The information that he was "cleaned out,"
with the corroborative evidence of his stunned expression, came with a
shock of surprise to his hearer.  That which he had set himself to
effect had been accomplished sooner than he had hoped.  Luck and
superior skill had both been in his favour.  The run of luck had been
consistent; each day he had been apprehensive of its changing, but it
had held steadily; if it held only a little longer, all would be well.

The silence between them grew until it became difficult to break.  To
venture a trivial remark in the teeth of that grim pause was impossible.
The man with the luck smoked reflectively, his eyes on the sand; the
man without the luck stared seaward, indifferent in the preoccupation of
his thoughts as to what construction his companion was likely to put
upon his taciturnity.  He was angry with himself, not alone because he
had lost everything, but because he could not take his losses
philosophically.  He had no feeling of splendid adventure, no desire to
flick his fingers in the face of fate and laugh.  He felt much as he had
felt when, a small boy, he had dropped a penny in the slot of an
automatic sweet machine that was out of order, and had followed that
failure to get a return for his money by dropping another, and this his
last, penny in the same unresponsive receptacle.  He had on that
occasion kicked the offending machine viciously; to have been able to
kick something now would have been a relief.

And then abruptly the noise of a bark snapped the silence.  The collie
was returning along the sands.  He turned over on his elbow and swept
the beach with his eyes, eyes in which a quickening interest vied with
the hard bitterness of resentful anger.  He wanted to see the girl
again, the girl who had looked at him in wondering amaze that he could
find no better pastime than card playing in the sunlight.  She had
disapproved of his occupation; he had read that in her look; he had also
seen the interest that flashed to the surface and drenched the wonder
and the disapproval in the dark eyes.

"Here's that brute of a dog again!"  Holman said.

The complaint was allowed to pass without comment; the indolent figure
reclining on the sand remained motionless, waiting for the reappearance
of the girl.  She came into sight presently, still stooping for, and
throwing, the stick at intervals; though her response to the dog's
insistence was not so ready as it had been, and her movements were
listless, conveying an impression of fatigue.  As the girl showed
greater indifference for the game, the collie grew more eager.  When by
its barking it failed to rouse her to greater activity, it pulled at her
dress, rushing in and snapping at her skirt excitedly.  The man
sprawling on the sands looked on.  The dog, he decided, was a nuisance.
It was boisterous in common with its breed.  It scarcely surprised him
when from the water's edge he heard a girl's scream.  In one of its wild
rushes the dog had caught her leg in its teeth.  With amazing swiftness
he was on his feet.

"The brute's bitten her!" he exclaimed.

"Serve her right," the other responded, "for letting it make itself a
nuisance."

If he heard the callous remark, Guy Matheson paid no heed to it.  In a
few rapid strides he reached the girl's side.  Holman looked after him;
looked from him to the cards lying where they had been thrown down on
the sands; looked from the cards to the two figures by the sea shore;
and, reflecting on the unlikelihood of his friend's return, he slipped
the cards into his pocket and left the beach.

CHAPTER TWO.

The girl faced about at the sound of Matheson's approach.  She was
vainly attempting to ward off the dog's exuberant attacks, which
Matheson quelled promptly with the effective argument of force.  She
looked from him to the collie as it ran howling behind her, and her eyes
rebuked the man's roughness.

"He did not intend to hurt," she said.  "He is always like that when he
grows excited; one has to keep him off with a stick; but I forgot."

"I am afraid he bit you," he said.  "Yes.  But it isn't much, I think.
I'll go back and bathe it.  I am staying quite close."

"A dog's bite can be a nasty thing, particularly in this country," he
said.  "I wish you would let me have a look at it."  She flushed
brightly, and asked: "Are you a doctor?"

"Doctor enough for that sort of operation," he replied, smiling.  "There
is a natural and effective way of treating all bites when one has no
artificial remedy handy."

"Oh!  I don't think it is necessary to trouble you," she said quickly.
"The dog is perfectly healthy."

"That may be; but it is a wise precaution," he urged.  He was quietly
insistent; but the girl was determined in her objection, which he had a
persuasion arose from prudish reasons rather than indifference to the
wound.  A feeling of irritation gripped him.  He wondered why he should
concern himself about her.  If she chose to run risks, that was her
affair.

"I am afraid you consider my interference impertinent," he said.  "It
was not meant so."

Quickly she lifted her eyes, brown, earnest eyes, to his face, and
scrutinised him closely.

"I am sorry if you really think that," she said.  "And it isn't true.  I
feel only gratitude for your kindness.  If I thought there was the least
danger I would gladly follow your suggestion.  But it's such a trifling
matter.  I cried out because I was startled.  I didn't think you would
hear up there by the wall."

"I happened to be watching," he said, "and saw what happened.  I am glad
the injury is only slight.  All the same, I wouldn't stand about; a
bandage and rest would be advisable."

"Yes," she said.

She hesitated for a moment, manifestly undecided whether to part without
thanking him formally for his kindly interest would not appear rather
ungracious.  She had been prepared at first to resent his interference.
It had annoyed her when he kicked the dog; the action had struck her as
brutal, and consistent in a man who gambled away the best of the hours.
A mental picture of a sunburnt face, flushed and absorbed in the game,
of strong indolent hands fingering the cards, recurred persistently and
prejudiced her against him.  She wished that she had not discovered him
thus engaged.  As though he divined the reason of her hesitation, and
sought to relieve her of further embarrassment, he glanced rapidly over
his shoulder, made some remark about the necessity for following his
friend, and turned away.  Abruptly the girl held out her hand.

"Thank you very much for troubling about me," she said.

"There is nothing to thank me for," he answered, facing her again with a
lazy smile.  "You wouldn't let me render any service."

"Because there wasn't any need," she said quickly, as though thinking
her refusal needed explaining.  "But I am obliged to you for your
concern for me."

She started to walk up the beach; and the dog, barking remonstrance that
she should forsake the sea, remained with its feet planted protestingly
in the wet sand in the hope that she would think better of it and
return.  Matheson walked beside her.

"Since we are both bound for the road," he said, "may I go so far with
you?"

He stepped aside to pick up his jacket from the sands and slipped into
it.  The coat gave him a more civilised appearance, his companion
thought.  But, though she strove to, she could not place him to her
satisfaction.  He might be anything, from a miner to a trooper in the
mounted police.  He was, as a matter of fact, a civil engineer, though
for the past year or two he had neglected his profession for more
adventurous pursuits.

When they reached the road the girl pointed to a large house with a
tower, lying back in a pleasant garden, and informed him that she was
staying there.

"It's nothing of a walk, you see," she added, smiling suddenly.  "Now I
am going in to follow your prescription."

"I'll walk to the gate with you, if I may," he said.

His persistence surprised her.  It occurred to her as unusual that a man
who a few minutes before had been a complete stranger to her should
consider an accidental introduction which left them both in ignorance
regarding each other's name sufficient grounds for developing the
acquaintance.  She looked at him with her steady eyes, which seemed to
be gravely considering him, as though she would estimate his worth
before committing herself, and answered slowly:

"If it is not taking you out of your way."

He smiled at the primness of the conventionally worded permission which
she so reluctantly gave; it pleased him, he hardly knew why.  She
pleased him altogether, this little brown girl, with the dark soft eyes
that looked so straight into his with their wondering expression which
was fearless and shy as well.  He liked the clear rich olive of her
sun-kissed skin, and the warm unruly brown of her hair.  She was not in
any sense of the word pretty, save with the beauty that is youth's, and
which vanishes with youth.  But there was about her some quality which
appealed to Matheson as no physical attraction could appeal; for lack of
a more suitable phrase he designated it the essential feminine; but he
knew in using the term that it failed in embodying all he wished to
convey, failed to portray that brooding spirit of womanhood which he
recognised looking out at him from her soft eyes.  Possibly had it not
been for this look, which he detected when for the first time he met her
gaze fully, she would not have caught his attention, would certainly not
have stimulated his curiosity.  He found himself searching for the look
whenever she lifted her eyes; and when for a fleeting second he
surprised it in them he had a curious feeling that he wanted to kiss
her.  He wondered what she would have said had he yielded to the
temptation.

"If it took me any part of the way out of my road," he replied, "it
could not be reckoned an appreciable distance.  I've a fancy to see that
you take advantage of the side gate instead of mounting all those steps
on to the stoep."

She emitted a quiet laugh.

"You would make me out quite an invalid," she said.  "I've always been
encouraged not to fuss over trifles."

"That advice suggests brothers," he ventured.

He became aware of some one standing on the balcony, gravely intent upon
their figures as they climbed the shadeless road; and he saw a faint
flush steal into his companion's cheeks, a tiny pucker of vexation
contract her brows.

"I shall have to explain you," she said.  "They'll never let me take
Bruno out again."

"Not take out your dog!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, he isn't mine.  He belongs to the house.  I have never owned
anything so valuable as a dog."  She laughed again, entirely without
bitterness, and added: "The advantage of possessing nothing lies in the
knowledge that one can never suffer the disappointment of loss."

He wondered whether she guessed that he was suffering keenly from the
particular disappointment of which she spoke, whether, when those clear
eyes had fastened upon his in the surprise of that first encounter, she
had discerned the breathless, almost feverish, anxiety with which he
hung on the issue of the game.  He felt that she would not sympathise
with him if he confessed to her that he had lost his all, that he could
boast no greater possessions than herself.  He recalled the disapproval
in her look; and he felt that in no circumstance could he be drawn to
confide in her that for over a week he had been steadily gambling, and,
for the greater part of the time, losing heavily.  She simply would not
understand.

"It is an advantage truly," he allowed--"so long as one is sure of one's
next meal.  I enjoy that enviable condition with yourself."

"Yes.  But you won't enjoy it for long."

"You mean?" he asked.

"You'll acquire...  Men can."

"And can't women too?"

"It's possible, of course; but it isn't so easy for us; we're up against
so many obstacles--tradition is the biggest of them."

"Some of you have climbed over that," he said.

"Some of us have."  She lifted her face with a brief smile.  "When we've
climbed over in sufficient numbers we'll roll it out of the way.  Don't
come with me any farther, please; Mrs Graham won't like it.  That is
Mrs Graham on the balcony.  I am her companion."

"Oh!" he said.

He opened the gate for her and stood with his hand upon it.  Because of
the watchful figure on the balcony he made no offer to shake hands; the
girl, he believed, would prefer that her employer should not witness how
far they had advanced towards a friendly intimacy.

"I hope the leg will soon be well," he said.  "I am often on the beach;
I'm on holiday.  Perhaps I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again,
and hearing from you of its progress.  I'm staying in town.  Matheson is
my name--Guy Matheson."

"Mine is Brenda Upton," she returned with a sort of shy bluntness that
seemed to hint at unwillingness to respond to his insistent confidences.
He was gaining information by insidious methods.  In a few minutes he
had learnt more about her than is sometimes revealed after a long
acquaintance.  She resented this.  It conferred privileges to which he
was entitled.

"Good morning," she said, and passed through the gate, leaving him to
shut it after her.

She did not look back; and, after following her retreating figure for a
moment with his eyes, he turned about and walked slowly away in the
sunshine.  On one point he was determined; he intended to make it his
business to see Brenda Upton again.

He returned to the main road and boarded the tram for Adderley Street;
he was staying in the vicinity with Holman.  The latter's acquaintance
he had made in Johannesburg.  They had in a very brief space of time
become surprisingly intimate.  He was not quite dear what had been
responsible for the development of the intimacy.  He had never felt
especially drawn towards the older man, who had pursued the friendship
with a determination that was flattering and irresistible in the case of
a man who was indolent in the matter of selection as in most things, and
who, as a recent arrival in Africa, was fairly ready to respond to
friendly overtures, particularly from a man long and closely associated
with the country.

Holman seemed to have no specified profession.  He was interested in
company promoting, and had undoubtedly some influence in mining circles.
He was a man of mystery, whose movements were abrupt and always
uncertain, and whose friends were as insignificant in numbers as his
circle of acquaintances was large.  He travelled at irregular intervals
to Europe; but he was seldom absent from Africa for longer than three
months at a stretch.  He hated the land, he was wont to say; but it was
too important an investment to disregard.

"Rhodes realised the value of Africa," he informed Matheson.  "He would
have connived at anything so that he could hold it for the Empire in the
hollow of his hand.  But there was one thing he didn't foresee."

"What is that?"  Matheson had asked.

"The near future will shed a light upon that," was the unexpected reply.
"I'll leave it to the future to answer your question."

Matheson's knowledge of African politics and African history was
superficial.  He had considered the Boer war necessary as putting the
only possible finish to an intolerable situation.  He further considered
independent government a mistake.  Older and wiser men thought the same,
but they were in the minority.  The blunders of misgovernment are the
inevitable result of circumscribed powers.  To quote a wise and able
statesman: It is better that a country should govern itself from within,
even if at first it govern badly.

CHAPTER THREE.

Holman was seated at lunch when Matheson joined him.  He had tucked a
napkin inside his waistcoat, and, with his elbows at right angles,
leaned well over his plate, eating stewed mutton with an appetite which
not even the extreme heat could affect.  His table manners were a
continual source of surprise and disgust to Matheson.  A navvy could
have given him points in daintiness.

"Finished spooning?" he asked, looking up as the younger man pulled out
his chair and dropped heavily into it.

To his surprise Matheson showed annoyance.

"I only did what was civil," he answered shortly.  "Hang it all!  What
else can a man do when he sees a girl bitten by a dog?"

"What else? ...  Save do as I did.  I dare say it gave her pleasure."

"I don't think it caused her emotion of any sort."

The tone of the response did not invite a pursuance of the subject.
Having in mind the speaker's run of ill luck, Holman found it easy to
excuse his irritability.  He went on unmoved with his lunch, and
confined his conversational efforts to the baldest commonplace, evincing
neither surprise nor resentment when no reply was vouchsafed to some of
his remarks.

Despite the fact that Matheson had sat down late he was the first to
rise from the table.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" the other asked.

"Oh!  I don't know...  I shall loaf on the stoep, I think."

Holman looked at him closely.

"Loafing seems to agree with some people," he said, a trifle pointedly.
"It's rather a favourite pastime of yours."

"What of it?" asked Matheson impatiently.

"Nothing.  It is well if you can afford it.  If you can't, it's
imprudent."

His hearer laughed.

"You know about how well I can afford it," he said.

"I am ready at any time to give you a chance of making good," Holman
answered quickly.  "Take a day off--loaf, if you feel that way--
to-morrow I will make you a proposal.  I can't win so much off a friend.
I don't like it."

Matheson seemed about to make some reply, but, after a slight
hesitation, finally answered nothing; he gave a brief nod as his sole
response, and walked quickly out of the room.  Holman did not
immediately follow him.

"There," he mused, looking reflectively after the retreating figure,
"goes a useful man--a man who is too lazy to use his brains, and
sufficiently a fool to allow others to adapt them to their own purposes.
So long as there is need for a type, that type exists."

Though such a possibility had not occurred to him at the moment of
uttering them, his words had had considerable effect upon Matheson, who,
stretching himself in a wicker lounge in the shade of the small stoep at
the back of the hotel, farthest removed from the busy hum of the street,
stared absently out upon the glaring sunlight and pondered over the
implication that he was idling away the hours.  It was not a new
suggestion; but it had not struck him so forcibly before, perhaps
because it had not before been brought so pointedly to his notice by
another.

It was not Holman alone who had seemed to make this imputation of
indolence.  What the man had conveyed in speech, the girl's eyes had
expressed with even greater effectiveness.  It was what he had read in
the girl's eyes that weighed with him now; it left him with a feeling of
insufficiency and incompetence.  He experienced an unaccustomed sense of
shame at the thought that he was as a piece of flotsam which is set
moving with the tide.  He resented, but could not overcome, this unusual
self-depreciation.  For the first time he saw himself impartially, and
recognised his limitations with surprising clearness.  And all because a
pair of brown, earnest eyes had seemed to accuse him of trifling with
life, which was a serious problem and not the game he would have it.
They were wise brown eyes, and carried persuasion.  For the only time
within his memory he felt dissatisfied with himself.

He looked into the past, and saw it a waste of opportunity; he looked at
the present, and frowned, and dismissed it without comment; he attempted
to view the future; but the future stretched vague and unsubstantial
along a vista of untrodden years, years in which he foresaw waste also--
always waste; unless he pulled himself together and made some
appreciable endeavour to justify his existence.  Life held obligations
which he had not recognised before that day; perhaps because only then
was born in him the consciousness that no life can be lived
independently; the individual stands in responsible relationship to the
race.

"By Jove!" he muttered, and struck the arm of his chair twice in rapid
succession with his open palm, and continued to stare at the sunlight.
"I wonder what has set my thoughts in this direction?  I can't remember
that these things ever troubled me before."

He passed his hand over his eyes; then he took the hand from before his
face and contemplated it with interest, looking at it with a sort of
surprised curiosity, as though until that moment he had not appreciated
its strength.  He opened and closed the fingers deliberately,
attentively regarding the prominent knuckles that showed white against
the sunburnt skin.  It was a large hand, and broad, the hand of a
mechanic; and it was covered, as were his arms and chest, with fine gold
hairs.  Evidence of strength was not lacking here, or in the long legs
stretched out on the rests of his chair.  He turned his attention to his
legs, brought his feet deliberately to the stone floor, and sat up
straighter.

"I suppose it amounts to this," he reflected, "that I'm something of a
rotter, and am only now awaking to the fact."

It may have been the state of his finances, which were low, that was
responsible for rousing him, or it may have been simply the criticism in
a girl's eyes.  It was of the latter he thought more often as he sat
wakeful in the sultry afternoon, with a mind in alert contradiction to
the repose which his attitude suggested.  He saw always in imagination
the look of wonder and perplexity shadowing their brown depths, the hint
of disapproval behind their surprise.  He felt inexplicably desirous of
justifying himself in this girl's opinion, of winning her approval, even
her admiration.  An almost boyish enthusiasm gripped him to do great
things, splendid things, to force her into a generous acknowledgement of
his worth.  He knew it to be absurd, but the conceit held him, despite
his realisation that in all probability the girl had ceased to think of
him.  Their meeting was but an episode in life; possibly he had made
less impression on her mind, notwithstanding all that her features had
seemed to express, than she had made on his.  He doubted that he had
gripped her imagination.

It annoyed him to discover that he was more alive to her disapproval
than to any other emotion she may have shown.  There had been only
disapproval, he believed; and he resented this thought, as he resented
the feeling of his own insufficiency, futilely and yet with vehemence.
He had got to make that right somehow.  He could not let it rest at
that.  He was going to prove that he was not such a waster after all--
prove it to the girl, until the disapproval in her eyes was banished
entirely.

It was odd how the memory of that look stuck in his mind and exasperated
him.  He could not recall that he had ever been so deeply affected by a
gaze before.  It was as though he had turned a corner sharply and come
unexpectedly up against some barrier he had never suspected of being
there; it disconcerted him.  But behind the embarrassment he was
conscious of an immense curiosity, and coupled with the curiosity was an
agreeable sense of adventure that coloured everything with the magic of
romance.

Not since he had attained to manhood had he felt particularly interested
in any individual woman.  As a boy girls had interested him; but of late
years he had come little in contact with women, and had fallen into the
habit of avoiding their society when it was available.  Therefore the
encounter of the morning was the more significant.  He recognised that
his action in accosting the girl was the outcome less of impulse than of
volition--an instinctive, compelling sympathy which had given him
readily to perceive and resent the criticism of her look, and had made
it easy, and indeed imperative, for him to speak to her.  The same
urgency impelled him to seek her again, some power outside his will yet
not in conflict with it.

The afternoon wore slowly away.  The brazen sun sloped to the hard blue
horizon, sinking into the waves victoriously with its golden challenge
flashed in the reluctant face of oncoming night.  Along the shore the
little waves were breaking gold-tipped, and lengthening shadows, the
heralds of approaching dusk, lay along the sands.  Matheson, while he
sat at dinner, was thinking of the sea--the sea with the evening light
upon it, and the restful shadows darkening cliff and sand.  He dined
alone.  Holman was spending the evening with friends--a matter of
business, he had explained, and had referred vaguely to the club.  It
did not concern Matheson that he should be dining at the club rather
than at his friend's house; he was not particularly interested in his
arrangements.  In his present mood he was only conscious of relief at
being left to himself.  He was out of tune with life, and desirous of
keeping the discord unsuspected.  He had a strong objection to the cause
of his despondency being misinterpreted: Holman would naturally conclude
that his losses were weighing unduly on his mind: they certainly sat
there heavily, and caused discomfort; but he had an idea that he could
bear up in face of these reverses.  It was not the first occasion that
he had been unlucky with the cards.

He left the dinner table with the picture of the dusk and the quiet
sands exciting his imagination, luring him on to the committal of
amazing follies.  He resisted successfully for over half an hour the
seductive call of the sea; and then went up to his room and changed into
flannels, and did what for thirty odd minutes he had been resolving he
would not do--tramped out along the road to Three Anchor Bay.  He had
not the smallest hope of seeing Brenda Upton on the beach, or elsewhere;
nevertheless he walked down to the beach, and peered about him,
searching the dusk vainly for a sign of the small slender figure.  He
knew that it was not in the least likely that she would be walking
about; but he looked for her none the less, with the dogged yet
purposeless air of a man pursuing consciously an illusion.

When he had satisfied himself that she was not on the beach, he regained
the road, and deliberately turned his steps in the direction he had
taken with her that morning.  The house where she was staying loomed
large in the darkness; and, as he strolled up the sandy roadway, he was
conscious of the scent of the oleanders, tall trees of which, in a pink
and white confusion, leaned over towards the road.  The air was heavy
with their fragrance, and warm and still.  In the stillness the murmur
of the sea followed him, resembling in its muffled monotony the almost
outdistanced murmuring of a large concourse of people, uttering an
insistent complaint.  Lights gleamed fitfully from the open windows of
the house, and upon the stoep and balcony people were grouped in small
parties of twos and threes, contented, after dinner groups, enjoying the
restful dusk which succeeded the heat and glare of the day.  If Miss
Upton had been there he could not have judged; it was not light enough
to distinguish clearly, and the view he got was interrupted and shadowed
with the trees.

When he had passed the house he turned, abruptly and retraced his
footsteps, and walked back to his hotel, which he reached with a most
unaccustomed feeling of weariness as a result of his long tramp.  He
discovered when he got back that Holman had returned.  He came upon him
in the vestibule, and was able to greet him with no trace of his former
irritation.  He had walked that mood off, or had got the better of it
somehow.

Holman was in excellent spirits.  He wanted to talk, and suggested
whisky and a smoke and a retired corner; and Matheson, infected with his
bonhomie, managed to throw off the despondency that had weighed upon him
all day and respond to his genial humour.

Before they separated for the night, rather unexpectedly, and yet in a
manner which seemed to suggest that he had deliberately led up to the
subject, Holman made an allusion to the cards, and to the other's run of
ill luck, which he prophesied must turn shortly.

"It can't hold for ever," he asserted.  "I'll play you to-morrow double
or quits."

"It's no good," Matheson answered.  "If I lost I couldn't pay, and I'm
not taking on a debt to hang like a millstone round my neck for years."

"I'll tell you what I will do."  Holman's hand fell warmly on the
other's shoulder...  "I can't clear you out without giving you a chance
of winning back.  If you lose you can pay me in service."

"That depends," Matheson answered, and scrutinised the speaker closely,
"on what the service is."

"Well, of course."  There was a long pause.

"We will go into that to-morrow," came the slow response.

CHAPTER FOUR.

"And so you see," Holman said, and flung his coat upon the sands, and
took a pack of cards from one of the pockets and shuffled them absently,
"you don't stand to lose anyhow.  If you win it's quits; if I win you
get half your losses bade and simply render me a service which will
trespass only on a few days--a week or two at most--of your time.  It
strikes me as a fairly generous offer."

"It's the undeniable generosity that gives it its Blackguard look," was
the answer.  "What's the nature of the service? ...  You say you want me
to deliver a letter to a certain person of Dutch extraction and to bring
you back his reply.  That would sound all right if there were no postal
facilities; but in view of the very excellent postal arrangements in
this country the request wears a sinister aspect.  I don't want to
offend you, but--it's shady, this business?  Plainly I can't go into the
thing with my eyes shut."

"I don't ask you to.  At the same time, the less wide open they are the
better.  There is nothing shadier in it than is customary in the gamble
of party politics.  It's an attempt to overthrow the government.  That,
I take it, won't disturb you particularly; you're not interested.
Despite your appreciation of the postal arrangements of this country,
there is a leakage somewhere.  I don't choose to have my private
communications tapped, that is why I send important messages by hand."

Matheson pondered this, put a few questions as to the policy of the
present government and the reason for the other's objection to it, and
then lay full length on his lack on the sands and deliberated upon the
offer.  Judged on its face-value it was worthy of consideration--the
whole of his losses, which were considerable, back if he won; and if he
lost half of them returned to him, with the sole obligation of carrying
a letter for a friend, who was presumably a political agitator, and to
return to him bearing a reply to his communication.

There was no danger in the undertaking; it would have appealed more
strongly had the dangerous element intruded; there was no particular
satisfaction in it beyond the pecuniary gain.  Politics did not interest
him; but he was averse to this backstairs method of abetting agitators.
Agitators were insufferable nuisances.  He had always felt that.
Usually they were moved by motives of personal interest; and they lacked
reasonableness.  The latter placed them outside the limit of sympathy.
When one can't reason with a man one loses the desire to grasp his point
of view.  It struck him as odd that Holman should be one of these
ill-balanced people; he had always regarded him as a shrewd and
peculiarly level-headed man.  As a political malcontent he appeared in a
new light, a light that flared artificially about him and revealed a
queer motley of anachronistic effects--modern civilisation practising
the customs of bygone intrigue in a country that was young, in the
accepted sense of development, and more ancient than history itself.  He
couldn't understand it.

After a while he ceased to concern himself with that aspect of the case,
and brought his attention to bear upon the more personal view.  He would
be blind to self-interest if he could not perceive that the proposal,
apart from its unpleasant flavour of intrigue, was altogether favourable
to himself.  He believed it to be prompted by purely friendly feeling,
and a desire to accommodate without humiliating him.  Regarding it thus,
he could only appreciate the generosity and good feeling which dictated
it, and marvel at his own reluctance to accept this opportunity of
regaining half, or all, that he had lost.  But the reluctance remained,
and revealed itself, even when he had overcome it sufficiently to decide
in favour of closing with the offer, in the ungracious acquiescence
which he gave.

"All right," he said, sitting up and fidgeting with the sand.  "That
sort of thing isn't exactly in my line, but I'll do it--if I lose."

"And ask no questions?"  Holman said, without moving.

"And keep my mouth shut in any circumstance..."

They cut, and Matheson dealt.

This gamble, with its odd stakes and uncertain issue, was like no other
game he had ever engaged in.  He felt as a man might feel who stakes
life or liberty upon a chance without sufficient justification.
Possibly it was because in some subconscious way he realised that it was
honour that was at stake that made the issue of such tremendous
importance to him.  He had to win.  He would not admit the possibility
of failure.

In silence he took up his cards.  His features were tense.  The
perspiration started on his forehead, on the backs of his hands, on his
arms: there was an anxious look in his eyes, a suggestion of nervousness
in his laboured breathing.  In striking contrast, the calm of his
opponent's manner was manifest in the deliberate way in which he looked
over his hand and calculated its value.  His luck still held; the
advantage of the cards lay with him...

Later, with the excitement of the play past, the eager curiosity of
indeterminate results changed to the unpleasant actuality of accepted
defeat, Matheson was aware that he had lost more than a mere game, even
a game with big stakes depending thereon.  Although he had regained
one-half of his former losses, he felt poorer than when on the previous
day he had acknowledged that he was cleaned out.  He stood pledged now
to a service about which he knew nothing save its undeniably shady
nature; he had agreed, moreover, not to attempt to learn more concerning
it.  The unwisdom of the undertaking struck him as it had not done when
upheld with the belief that he would win and so be relieved of the
obligation.  He was committed to the carrying out of a piece of
egregious folly which might lead to any wild complication, and force him
into an unwilling co-operation with persons whose views were opposed to
his own.  Distrust of Holman grew in him.  He could not give a name to
his doubt, but the doubt existed: he resented having allowed himself to
become the man's tool.

Holman made some comment on the unaccountability of luck, and, looking
up to answer him, Matheson became aware of a small face, flushed and
half averted, of a pair of disapproving brown eyes surveying their
grouping with disfavour, as their owner passed close by the scene of the
gamble and continued her way over the hot sands.  Matheson got up.

"I'll see you at the hotel," he said, slipping into his coat.  And
without waiting for any response, he followed the girl and speedily
overtook her.

"So the injury didn't amount to much after all," he said, meeting her
eyes with a smile as she turned an inquiring face in his direction, and
then halted and shook hands with him.  "I am glad to see you are able to
walk without inconvenience."

"Oh! the bite was nothing.  I rested yesterday; but it wasn't really
necessary.  However, I don't mean to walk far; it is too hot."

"The best time is the evening," he said, keeping beside her when she
started to walk again.  "It was jolly on the beach last night.  I
tramped out after dinner," he explained, observing her surprise.  "Do
you ever come down here in the dusk?"

"No.  I don't often get the opportunity," she answered; and there was,
he fancied, a note of regret in her voice.  "Mrs Graham likes to be
read to after dinner--or we work."

The description of the manner in which her evenings were passed did not
sound enlivening.  He wondered that any girl should submit to these dull
conditions, that girls could be found to fill such servile posts.

"Do you never get any time off?" he asked.

"It's off-time to-day," she admitted, smiling suddenly.  "Mrs Graham
has a sick headache.  When she has a headache no one is allowed near
her.  Sometimes they last three days.  She is subject to them."

"Then," he said promptly, in the manner of one making a statement which
admits no contradiction, "you can come to-night...  Will you?" he added
tentatively.

"Will I come--on the beach?" she asked in an undecided tone, as though
uncertain that she apprehended him rightly.  "You mean after dinner?"

"Yes," he returned.  "It will be jolly if you do."

She hesitated; and he noticed in her eyes, before she averted them and
looked seaward, a shadow like a tiny doubt passing over the clear
surface of her mind.

"I...  It is a little unusual," she said, the perplexed eyes in the
glittering distance.

"That's tantamount to a refusal, I suppose?" he said, feeling nettled
and unaccountably disappointed.  "Perhaps I ought not to have proposed
it; but it occurred to me that it would be pleasant.  I'm sorry.  I
didn't wish to embarrass you."

Immediately, with his inference of refusal, her disinclination to adopt
the suggestion faded.  She wanted to come.  He had said he thought it
would be pleasant; she, more positive in her opinions, knew that it
would be pleasant, wonderfully pleasant.  Very few pleasant adventures
happened in her life; it was ridiculous to reject anything that offered
for so feeble a reason as a sense of the unusual.  Was that not after
all recommendation in itself?  She sought about in her mind for words in
which to convey to him without appearing eager that she would like to
come, but her vocabulary failed her; seldom had she been at so great a
loss for words.  Unexpectedly he came to her relief.

"I am infected with the holiday mood," he said.  "I want to enjoy
things.  And my holiday is very near the finish.  I may leave any day--
perhaps to-morrow.  You too must know the holiday mood.  We don't leave
it altogether behind with our childhood.  I want to talk to you.  We
happened upon the acquaintance by accident--it is part of the holiday.
That must be my apology for seeming intrusive."

She turned towards him deliberately with a friendlier look in her eyes.

"I think my gaucherie needs some apologia too," she confessed.

"Why not make it in the form of a concession?" he suggested hopefully,
and experienced a curious satisfaction when suddenly she laughed.

Somehow he did not need any assurance in words that she would be on the
beach that evening.  Instinctively he felt that the reason which had
been responsible for her reluctance to accede to his request no longer
existed.  Whatever it had been she had ridded herself of it.  He liked
to think that if she had felt a want of confidence in him, her feminine
intuition had made it possible to conquer this mistrust.  It was the
first step towards that better understanding which he wished, he did not
know why, to establish between them.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Brenda Upton, avoiding the notice of the general company by leaving the
dinner table early that evening and slipping into the garden while most
of the guests remained seated, sauntered down the path to the gate,
thrilled with an agreeable sense of adventure that was only slightly
damped by the reflection that her behaviour in meeting this stranger
about whom she knew nothing was not in keeping with the traditions of
her class, was, in fact indiscreet, and might be regarded by the man
himself as evidence of an unconventionality of which he might seek to
take advantage.

She felt herself blushing at the thought; and pulled up at the gate, and
stood with it open and her hand upon the iron spikes, wavering, and
looking uncertainly upon the shadowy road.  If she detected in his
manner any decrease of respect it would hurt as well as humiliate...
Perhaps after all it would be wiser not to go...

She glanced back over her shoulder towards the house.  Two men made
their appearance on the stoep while she looked back.  She had made one
of a set with them that day for tennis; the younger had suggested taking
her up the mountain later.  It had seemed quite natural and in order to
consent to these things.  Yet what did she know about these men more
than she knew of Guy Matheson?  They chanced to be staying in the same
house; that was all: had the other been staying in the house she would
not have hesitated to walk with him on the beach.  These distinctions
were rather absurd.

She let the gate go, and it clanged behind her as she emerged upon the
road, and, startled a little by the noise of the gate swinging to, stood
for a second and looked about her with an air of furtive watchfulness,
and the feeling that she was doing something just a little shameful,
something which later she might regret.

The expedition seemed scarcely worth such complications of perplexed
thought.  It was a proof of the strength of her inclination that she
persevered in face of this sense of impropriety, and the formless doubts
that assailed her continually in defiance of the logic with which she
sought to banish them.  She was interested in this man with the strong
body and handsome face and the air of reckless indolence.  She wanted to
meet him and talk uninterruptedly without the necessity to break away in
the middle of the conversation and hurry back to a meal or something.
The freemasonry that exists between persons of like temperament and
instinctive sympathy assured her that this interest was mutual.

She crossed the road and walked on to the beach.  Against the wall,
lounging in the shadow of it and obviously waiting for her, was
Matheson.  When she saw him she realised how ashamed, how bitterly
ashamed, she would have felt had she arrived first.  He must have dined
early, or hurried through his meal, to have got there so soon.  He
turned his head quickly, caught sight of her, and advanced to meet her.

"It's good of you," he said.  "But I felt sure you must relent."

He scrutinised her for a moment, and found himself enjoying the effects
of the last rays of the sunset warming her hair and the clear olive of
her skin.

"The sun is kissing you good-bye.  It's a good time of the day, isn't
it?" he said.

"Yes," she answered a little shyly--"the best time of all."

"Wait," he counselled.  "I am going to take you beyond Sea Point.  You
needn't trudge it all the way.  We can board the tram--as far as it
goes.  Round the point one gets a view of the Twelve Apostles--if you
care about mountains,--but I'm sure you do.  One faces the wide sweep of
the bay and the immensity of the open sea.  We'll watch the moon rise
out there--then you will know which is the best time of all I want you
to admit that my hour is the best hour."  He laughed with a ring of
light-hearted enjoyment in the sound of the mirth.  "Humour me," he
pleaded.  "That's one of my conceits."

But she, smiling also, shook her head.

"The best hour of the twenty-four--the Perfect Hour," she insisted,
"belongs to no specified period.  Haven't you discovered that?"

"What is the perfect hour?" he asked.

"The hour we most enjoy."

An earnest look had come into her eyes, the quiet tones of her voice
echoed this earnestness, accentuated it; he felt his own mood responding
to the seriousness of hers.  He liked her treatment of the subject.
Never in all his life, he believed, and wondered whether she had been
more fortunate in this respect, had he experienced the perfect hour.  It
was possible, he decided, to go through life without experiencing it.

"Your idea appeals pleasantly to the imagination," he said; "but it
deals with superlatives.  My good hour is not to be despised; it's
within the grasp of all."

"You think the other isn't?" she asked.

"Well, of course, enjoyment is relative; but I imagine your idea of it
embraces only the highest quality.  Am I right?"

"In a sense, yes--though possibly our ideas of what is truly enjoyable
differ substantially.  For instance, beautiful scenery is to me entirely
satisfying; so is a beautiful flower."

"You will get that to-night," he said--"the scenery, I mean.  But you
know the coast about here, I expect."

"Fairly well."

"We'll get on to the road," he said; "then we can stop the first tram
that overtakes us.  It's too far to walk.  We have to study the leg."

"Oh, that!  I played tennis this afternoon," she said.

He showed his disapproval.

"If you do foolish things like that you deserve complications."

A tram came up almost immediately.  They boarded it; and the girl,
feeling a little constrained and disinclined to talk, sat silent,
watching the spear of light along the horizon narrowing and paling as
the sea settled to a grey restfulness beneath the darkening sky.  She
did not want Matheson to talk, and was glad when he fell into silence
too.  She was conscious of the people on the tram to a quite
disproportionate degree.  She had a persuasion that they knew she was
doing something unusual and rather indiscreet.  The sense of back doors
and secrecy which had gripped her at first had hold of her again, and
spoilt things.  It was with immeasurable relief that she got down when
they reached the terminus and started to walk.

"Let us go on and on," she said, "until there is no one.  I want--
quiet."

"I know," he said on a note of understanding.  "We'll find what we
want."

A swift and unaccountable feeling of intimacy sprang out of this mutual
desire for solitude, which she had expressed with unconscious audacity;
while he, in voicing his agreement, seemed to be conspiring with her to
get away together and be alone.  This purpose had been in his mind from
the beginning.

"Tell me when you are tired," he said, as he helped her over a difficult
place.

But she did not tire easily.  It was the difficulty of making their way
between and over the boulders of the rock-strewn beach that brought them
to a halt.  They sat down on a small strip of sand with a rock at their
backs, and for a while remained silent, contemplating the scene in quiet
appreciation that defied expression and lent itself to the prevailing
peace.  Out of the warm dusk a few stars gleamed faintly, and upon the
stirless air the contented murmuring of the sea as it drew away from the
sleeping shore hung reposefully, the wild slumber song which throughout
the ages the element which never rests urges upon the land.

As the silence between them lengthened, Brenda Upton became aware that
the man beside her moved nearer to her; observed too, when she turned
towards him, that he was more intent upon the study of her face than
upon the deep swell of the moving waters, the sinister strength and
secretiveness of the mountain range that walled and overlooked the bay.
He had brought her here to see these things, but he did not look at them
himself; he was not after all sharing them with her.  A faint resentment
stirred her as she met the steady gaze of the indolent eyes; she felt
somehow cheated.

"I thought this would move you," he said in a voice of satisfaction.

"It moves me--yes."  She took up a handful of sand and let it run slowly
through her fingers.  "And you?" she asked.

Suddenly he smiled.  He changed his attitude for a more comfortable
position, reclining on the sand on his elbow, with his chin supported on
his hand.

"I'm enjoying your enjoyment.  That's enough for me to-night.  It's a
fresh sensation; the scenery isn't.  When I first came out here it
gripped me--as it grips you.  I forgot the time.  I missed my dinner."
He laughed at some reminiscence.  "That didn't matter; it was worth it.
But I found it impossible to explain what had kept me.  It would have
spoilt it.  You know the fatuous remarks that some people would have
made...  I could have talked of it to you--you would have understood.
There's something fine about this bit of coast--fine and lonely.  People
don't come here much.  You see, it's difficult to get at; there's no
beach, and the rocks scare off bathers.  There's nothing to draw
people--except just the rugged beauty of it..."

He broke off, aware of the criticism in her eyes, their look of veiled
surprise.

"I don't believe _you_ understand," he said doubtfully.

"The love of beauty!" she said.  "Oh! yes, I understand that part.  It's
the inconsistency that puzzles me."

"The inconsistency!" he echoed.

"I'll tell you," she said, and added quickly: "Please don't think I am
criticising you--only when I hear you talk like that of the beauty of
nature, it becomes difficult to reconcile that idea of you with--the
earliest impression."

"I know," he said, and shifted a little on his arm in, order to get a
more direct view of her.

He was thinking of the disapproval the brown eyes had so clearly
expressed that first morning, and his subsequent wish to drive the
disapproval out of them and earn her appreciation.  There followed a
brief, expectant pause before he said:

"I'm glad you spoke of that.  Of course I saw what you were thinking
that morning...  And in truth it is a waste of a blue day to spend it in
gambling.  I've acted like a fool, and learnt a lesson.  I don't suppose
I feel particularly keen about playing in future--not for a time,
anyhow--but I have a feeling I'd like to make some sort of a resolve...
Would it bore you to accept my undertaking never to play again?"

"It wouldn't bore me," she said, manifestly surprised at his question.
"But are you sure? ...  It is more likely to bore you afterwards to feel
constrained to keep that resolve.  Is it necessary to promise--
anything?"

"Not necessary, perhaps.  It would be a satisfaction to me."  He looked
up at her with a swift smile.  "I believe that's what I inveigled you
here for--to force you into the position of custodian of my conscience--
to listen to confidences.  I'm lonely.  I've no one belonging to me out
here--no one I can talk intimately with.  I've knocked around.  That
sort of life doesn't lend itself to intimacies.  I want to talk--oh!
about things one doesn't talk about generally...  I wonder whether I am
making myself intelligible?"

"Yes," she said.  "Though possibly if I didn't have those same feelings
I might not follow you altogether.  I'm lonely too.  I often want a
sympathetic listener; and there's no one; so I moon about alone, and--"

Her voice trailed off on a thoughtful pause.

"Want to kick yourself?" he suggested.

"No.  I don't think it's ever been quite so bad as that."

"It is with me," he said--"often.  But I have few resources.  I don't
sweat things out like some men in violent exercise.  I've tried that,
but it doesn't give me any sort of relief.  My beastly muscles develop
and keep hard without that Sometimes I think they are the only part of
me to develop and harden; the rest is non-resistant."

"A man has his work," she interjected.  "There's ambition..."

He looked away across the dark waste of waters and answered
indifferently.

"I never had any.  All that talk about a career--what does it amount to?
One man makes a bit of a splash, another doesn't; but they are both
heading the same way, both making for the open sea, which eventually
engulfs them.  It's only while they are inshore that the splash is
visible; farther out the sea is deep and tranquil; and sometimes it is
the man who hasn't made a splash inshore who keeps up longest and sees
well ahead.  Those early splashes don't count for much when the swimmer
is done.  Death beats us all in the end.  It isn't worth it...
ambition... no."

"Without ambition nothing would be achieved ever," she said.  "Some
one's got to do the things--that are worth doing."

"Why?" he asked, and smiled at her lazily.  She looked down at him,
puzzled and hesitating, a little uncertain of her ground.  "What are the
things worth doing?"

"Don't you believe that there is a purpose in life?" she asked.

The smile on his face broadened.

"I confess I haven't given much thought to the matter, but, since you
ask me, I suppose there might be some blind purpose even in the life of
a mole.  It's all rather futile though, isn't it?  What are you doing?
...  What am I doing? ...  The obvious answer, of course, is sitting on
the shore.  Well, that's about all there is to it--sitting on the shore
and talking.  Later, well take the plunge and swim out to the deep sea--
and that's the finish.  I like best sitting on the shore.  It's very
pleasant, isn't it?  Say you are enjoying it--and don't try to rouse
ambition in me; it's a mean thing at best."

"It's a fine thing," she contradicted.  "Very little has ever been
achieved without it."

He sat up straighter.

"I'll prove my definition to be more correct than yours," he insisted.
"What is ambition?--a desire for power, for superiority.  It's utterly
selfish, an egotistical quality.  It springs from greed of gain, either
of recognition or of material benefit.  Can that be considered other
than an ignoble sentiment?"

"Not as you put it," she dissented.  "But I dispute your definition.
Ambition is a lofty endeavour to excel."

"Well, it may be... sometimes it is," he allowed.  "But in this very
human world it is oftener the more sordid sentiment I described.  I
merely dragged the wings from your ideal and brought it down to earth."

"I believe that is what you enjoy doing," she said, a touch of reproach
in her voice.

"What do we know better than this dear mother earth?" he asked, and
pressed his hand heavily upon the sand.  "She is altogether beautiful,
save where man, in the determined pursuit of ambition, has scarred and
changed her face.  That idea of living at a high mental altitude is mere
presumption.  It's an age of posing.  We catch at a phrase that sounds
fine, and adopt it because of its fine sound.  There isn't any need to
live up to the sentiment it expresses--very often it doesn't express
much.  There's a cult that's called, I believe, the Higher Thought
Movement.  People read books--or they don't read them, but simply own
them and talk vaguely of the higher things they express.  It doesn't go
far beyond talking as a rule.  I never met any one who could transmit
higher thought.  It's another catch phrase."

"Doesn't every one have those thoughts at some time?" she asked quietly,
without resenting his speech as he had half expected her to do.

"Higher thoughts? ...  Yes, I suppose so.  Only one doesn't talk about
them."

"No," she returned; "you are right.  One would have difficulty in
expressing those things--particularly in high sounding phrases."

"Truth is never adorned," he said--"which possibly accounts for the
frequency with which she is disregarded."

Abruptly he stood up, and held out both hands in invitation to her to
rise.

"The moon's getting up," he said.  "Come nearer to the water's edge and
see it top the mountain."

CHAPTER SIX.

For a week Matheson remained in Cape Town awaiting Holman's convenience.
He was in no hurry to leave.  He felt neither interest nor curiosity in
his mission; the only emotion he experienced in regard to it was an
impatient desire to have it behind instead of hanging perpetually over
him, to fulfil his undertaking, and be done with the whole thing and
thus be free of further obligation.  The necessity for doing something
altogether repugnant to him incensed him against the man who had imposed
the condition, and who was formerly his friend.  He resented the thing
as though it had been a trick.  In a way it had been a trick.  He
apprehended that without following the purpose of the stratagem.  He had
undertaken a questionable mission at the request of a man against whose
interest it was to be detected in connection with the matter.  The whole
thing was ridiculous; but it was as imperative of discharge as any other
debt of honour incurred at the option of the individual.  Having agreed
to the stake, it was impossible now to draw back.

During the week of compulsory inactivity in Cape Town he pursued with
considerable diligence the congenial pastime of cultivating the
acquaintance so recently begun, which on the night of that first walk
had leaped forward with astonishing rapidity, clearing the conventional
obstacles that intrude on new acquaintanceship, and arriving at
something more nearly resembling an intimate comradeship than anything
he had ever experienced in relation to feminine friendship.  The novelty
of the thing, as much as the undeniable enjoyment he derived from the
girl's society, pleased him.  The waiting about was not irksome when
Brenda Upton was there to fit into the blanks.  But Brenda was not
always available.

During the next two days Mrs Graham remained indisposed; and her
companion was therefore free to spend most of the day, and all the
evening, in any way she inclined towards.  Never before had Matheson
taken satisfaction in a woman's headaches; nor would he have believed it
possible that the sufferer's recovery on the third day could have caused
him such real disappointment.  He would cheerfully have confined her to
her room for a week.

With Mrs Graham about again the meetings were uncertain and hurried,
and the after-dinner walks ceased altogether.  Matheson rebelled against
this.

"You can get away if you want to," he asserted unreasonably.  "She
couldn't refuse to let you off for an hour if you asked."

"Do you really believe that I don't want to?" she asked.  "If you only
knew how much more they mean to me than they can to you--these walks!
...  It's out of the question, anyhow."

That evening while she sat in the lounge, holding wool for her employer
and compelled to listen to the discordant noise made by a group of the
younger guests, gathered about the piano in the corner, Brenda's
thoughts wandered to the quiet beach.  She pictured the warm satisfying
serenity of the night out there under the starlit sky with the moan of
the sea at one's feet.  How good it was! ... how good! ...  It was hot
in the house, despite the draughts created by open doors and windows;
there was difficulty in breathing.  One wanted to be outside walls, away
from artificial lighting, out in the open in the quiet dusk, with no
light but the stars.

Mrs Graham finished winding her wool and, with the exhausted air of a
woman recently prostrated by some nervous disorder, proposed an
adjournment to her room for the inevitable hour's reading, which until
now the girl had accepted as a matter of course and not found so
unutterably wearisome.

With a limp disinclination that was an unspoken protest, she followed
Mrs Graham downstairs and into a room on the left of the entrance, a
pleasant room opening on to the stoep in front, and with access to a
small conservatory.  Mrs Graham touched the electric switch, and
immediately the room was flooded with light.

"Shut die window," she directed, "or we shall be eaten alive by
mosquitoes."

"But,"--Brenda paused--"it's so hot."

"Well, you can leave the fanlight open.  It is as hot outside as
indoors."

The reading proved a miserable business.  The best of readers would fail
to interpret successfully the spirit of a work with a mind intent upon
matters wholly outside the subject of the book.  Brenda attempted
conscientiously to capture her straying thoughts and tie them down to
the prosaic present, but they evaded her and flew off at a tangent in
pursuit of retrospective glamour.  She reached out after them and
brought them back, only to lose them almost immediately as, eluding her
listless vigilance, they wandered anew in unbidden channels.

"I really think," Mrs Graham's voice broke in complainingly, "that you
must go back and read those last few pages again.  You've missed the
sense somehow.  There's a want of relevance...  You mustn't skip."

Brenda turned back without comment and endeavoured to fix her attention
on the print, which conveyed no meaning whatever to her.  The reading
that evening was admittedly a failure.

"Year in year out, until I'm old, it will be like this, I suppose," the
girl said wearily to herself later on her way upstairs.  And then,
almost fiercely: "Why do we stand it?  Why do we allow all the dull,
uninteresting things to be forced on us?  I do this--for food and
shelter.  And there isn't any escape--except through marriage.  Ugh!"

Arrived in her bedroom, leaning from the window looking out upon the
stirless night, she admonished herself mutely.

"I don't think that moonlight walks and agreeable society are altogether
good for you, my dear.  You grow discontented because every hour isn't a
perfect hour."

A faint smile curved her lips.  She leaned farther out into the fragrant
darkness, and rested her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands,
and gazed away towards the sea, and sighed.

"Life isn't made up of perfect hours," she reflected.  "They are so
few--so very few--that's what makes them so good.  He's discontented
too...  Every one's discontented.  We want things--oh! all sorts of
fine, impossible things--we keep on wanting them.  And life goes on in
the same solid, stolid way: we live; we grumble; we die.  _Sic
transit_..."

"No," she contradicted presently, "that isn't all.  There _is_ a glory
concealed somewhere--the rainbow in the bubble, if we look long enough."

And after that she ceased to speculate on the problem of life, and fell
into a retrospective reverie and forgot the time.

Perhaps it is because women as a sex acquiesce too readily in the
conditions of life, whatever they may be, instead of making a determined
stand against what is unfavourable, that unfavourable conditions are
imposed upon them.  Men do not submit, and results justify their
resistance--organised resistance is the charter of freedom.  It is
taught that there is beauty in submission--well, there isn't.
Submission is lacking in dignity, and beauty is always dignified.  There
is beauty in restraint, in control, in unselfishness; but none of these
qualities necessarily include submission--rule it out, therefore; its
day is done.

It was Matheson who gave Brenda Upton her first lesson in resistance.
He was very authoritative and firm and convincing; also--he was going
away.  That was the strongest argument in favour of his demand.  It was
a demand; there was nothing in the nature of a request about it.  He
required her on the day before he left Cape Town to obtain, not an hour
off, but the entire evening.  He wanted her companionship, wanted to sit
and talk uninterruptedly, as they had done on those other nights, and
not to be worried with considerations of time.  He met her on the beach
during the hottest hour of the day, when Mrs Graham was enjoying her
siesta, and stated his desire.  Brenda looked amazed.

"She'll not hear of it," she said.

"Of course not, if you make up your mind in advance that you won't ask
her," he returned.

A flicker of a smile showed in the dark eyes.

"If you only realised how difficult it is!  She'll want it explained--
why I want to go, and all that."

"But that's cheek," he said, surprised.  "Don't you see it's cheek.  You
ought not to submit to that sort of thing.  It isn't any business of
hers."

She laughed.

"It isn't...  But it's always understood in the case of a girl--it's one
of the indignities we put up with."

"Then don't put up with them.  Don't you see that in putting up with
them you are responsible for their existence.  It's up to you to make a
stand for the good of the next generation."

"That's not as simple as it sounds when one has to exist," she said.

"No."

He was silent for a moment, then he returned to the attack.

"Well, you are coming with me to-night.  Tell her what you like--only
come."

Events combined that evening to facilitate matters for Brenda.  Several
of the younger people staying in the house arranged a walk to Camps Bay
for that evening: the plan was under discussion during dinner, so
audible a discussion that Mrs Graham could not avoid hearing it at her
table in the corner.  Brenda also listened with attention; and the
manner in which she intended to put her request framed itself in her
thoughts.  After dinner she approached Mrs Graham with her sentences
well considered.

"There is a walk on to-night," she observed, with the faintest trace of
nervousness apparent in her manner, and a consciousness of wilfully
deceiving.  "It is such a perfect evening...  I wonder if you would let
me have to-night off?"

"To-night?"  Mrs Graham's tone was expostulatory.  "What am I to do for
the reading?"

"I'm sorry."  The girl's face looked mutinous; there was an obstinate
ring in her voice.  She was not going to give in.  Matheson had made
that point clear.  She had to make a stand.  "I will read longer
to-morrow if I may have to-night... only to-night I won't be
inconsiderate afterwards."

She felt that it was weak to promise that Why, after all, should she not
have a night free occasionally?

"But they will be away hours," Mrs Graham objected.  "I shall be in bed
before you get back.  There will be no one to massage my shoulder."

It trembled on Brenda's lips to promise to massage it in the morning;
but deciding that this was weak also she remained obstinately silent.
Something in the girl's manner, perhaps the unrelenting quiet of her
air; convinced Mrs Graham that opposition would avail nothing.  In the
teeth of determined resistance she gave way.

"Well, of course, if you really wish to go..." she conceded with
sufficient ungraciousness.  "But it is very inconvenient.  I should have
thought that you had had plenty of free time lately."

She felt distinctly aggrieved.  And she held a prejudice against these
expeditions when her young companion formed one of the number.  There
was something not altogether seemly in the idea.

"I hope you won't be very late," she said.

Brenda followed the party from the house, and contrived to separate from
it outside the gate.  She took an unnecessary turn round a block of
buildings, and came out again upon the main road and made her way on to
the beach.  Matheson came forward eagerly and caught her hands.

"Didn't I say you'd manage it?--clever person!  Now, which is it to
be?--into town, or a last pilgrimage to the spot we visited that first
evening?  It depends on whether your mood demands amusement or
solitude."

Her answer pleased him.

"My mood demands neither...  I want companionship, and the old spot."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

There are a thousand beauties of the night, as there are varied shades
in the qualities of light and colour, many of them so subtly blended, so
dependent on sympathetic conditions, that they are not revealed to every
one equally.  Beauty is interpreted according to the mood and
temperament of the individual.  There is beauty in a brick wall when the
mind is in harmony with its subject; there is beauty in ugliness where
ugliness is not divorced from the soul; there is beauty in everything
when youth stands on the threshold of its wonder world and gazes into
the shining distances that disclose romance.  Romance coruscates in
shining distances, like the splendid bewilderment of the Northern
Lights: one cannot reach out and grasp these wonders--to take hold of
romance is to lose it; to attempt to decrease the distance is to dull
the golden vista and distort the fine sense of proportions.  As well
attempt to bottle material fact with imagination; fermentation would
inevitably set up and the result be catastrophe.

With feet planted lightly on the slippery rocks, and a strong hand
holding her hand to steady her progress over the wet weed, Brenda looked
out across the expanse of darkening ocean that flowed away to the
horizon, beyond it, till it flung its spent waters upon the quiet shores
on the other side of the world, and her eyes were big, and filled with
the wondering content that is born of happiness.  All the beauties that
were in the night were revealed to her.  The sensuous warmth enfolded
her like the embrace of a lover; the sound of the sea was magic music in
her ears, and the salt breath of the spray, which tightened the tendrils
of her hair into ringlets, pressed with the flavour of salt kisses on
her lips, acrid kisses, moist and stimulating, that stung the lips they
caressed.  And behind and above her towered the dark mystery of the
land, the frowning heights of grey rock that defied the sea's advance
and guarded that vast hinterland so jealously hidden behind the
mountain-girt shores.

She came to a halt abruptly, and stood still, and looked down at the sea
which bubbled at her feet in the interstices of the rocks, and made a
soft splashing sound amongst the weed.  She was not observing things
consciously; her mind was intent on the man beside her, busy with the
moment, and, despite the moment's happiness, oppressed with the sense of
finality which the impending parting conveyed.  She desired to be a
bright and cheerful companion, and instead she was proving, she feared,
rather dull.  The warm, firm clasp of his hand somewhat confused her
ideas.  The baldest commonplace was all the utterance she found it
possible to make.

"To-morrow at this time you will be in the train," she remarked
suddenly, snapping the silence which was beginning to embarrass her.

"Yes," he answered.  "Awful bore, isn't it?  The heat will be
intolerable.  I shall be cursing fate, and wishing myself back here...
on this rock with you.  It's good, isn't it?  Lift your face and feel
the breeze on your cheek.  It's like a breath--nature's cool sweet
breath.  And that jolly little duck of the sea between the rocks...
Will you come here again afterwards?"

"No," she replied, and did not give, nor did he ask for, a reason.  "We
go back in a week," she added.

"And then the holiday comes to an end?"

"Yes."

"Well, my play time is finished too.  I thought it would last longer,
but necessity demands that I should earn a living.  Why wasn't I born a
Kaffir?  No Kaffir need work unless he wants to.  He settles down on
another man's land, and eats another man's mealies, and makes pretence
of being useful in return.  It's an enviable existence."

"Oftener he lives by his wife's exertions," she said.

"There are white Kaffirs who do that," he rejoined--"plenty of them
across the water.  I don't fancy civilisation can reproach him there.  I
rather like the coloured man.  Do you?"

"Custom is everything; I'm used to him," she said.  "I'm South African,
you know--born in the Colony.  I have never been home."

It occurred to him as odd that she should speak of a country she had
never seen as "home."  He had noticed this peculiarity frequently since
he had arrived in the country.  To the Colonial of British extraction
England was always home.  It conveyed a sense of unwilling exile that
struck like a reproach at the golden welcome of this radiant land which
men of many nations have suffered and died for, and women also in the
days of the early pioneers.  The sting of ingratitude lay in the idea.

"Home, as you call it, is but another lump of mother earth set down
under colder skies," he said.  "And our skins over there aren't all
white although they ought to be.  I like new countries.  If I possess
the indolence of a Kaffir, the push and the enterprise of youth appeals
to me.  A young country is unspoilt; it offers immense possibilities.
And the route isn't mile-stoned with precedents which may not be
ignored.  Incidentally, there are greater facilities for getting on
without interest, and sometimes with an infinitesimal degree of energy."

"No," she contradicted; "it is seldom the lazy man who gets on out
here."

"Don't discourage me," he pleaded, and turned a smiling face towards
her, and looked deep into her eyes.  "I'm for taking the smooth path all
the way.  Why not?  Why make such a business of living?  It ought to be
quite a simple thing."

He was standing very close to her, still holding her hand which he
pressed against his side.  Her face in the deepening dusk showed misty
and uncertain of outline, and the eyes meeting his in the dimness were
just dark shadows glowing in their white setting; but he knew that the
soft pensive look was in them which he liked to see there had the light
been sufficient to reveal it.

"I wonder if I might kiss you?" he said, and bent forward in the warm
dusk and found her lips.

"It was sweet of you to allow that," he said.  "A little kindness is a
touch of heaven to a lonely man."

He was not to know how much more that kiss signified to the girl than it
did to him.  No man had ever kissed her before that night.  She did not
then respond to the caress, but she accepted it.  As his lips descended
warmly upon her mouth she felt her face grow hot, and was grateful to
the darkness for hiding her confusion; her heart gave a bound and
started racing at a great rate; it seemed to her that, standing so
close, he must hear it pounding inside her chest.

If he observed her emotion he did not remark on it.  The touch of the
cool unresponding lips with the salt flavour of the sea upon them moved
him unaccountably; but some quality that was compounded of the audacity
and sensitiveness of youth, nicely balanced with the discretion of a
more matured mind, decided him to ignore the little episode until he had
further determined its importance in relation to events.  It was never
wise to precipitate things.

"Let's get off the rocks," he said.  "There's our little strip of sand
waiting for us up yonder.  The moon will be later to-night.  But it
doesn't matter, does it?  We're in no hurry.  And anyway we should never
get back in the dark without coming to grief."

He tucked his hand under her arm and assisted her over the rocks.  She
slipped once, and clutched at him desperately, and nearly upset his
balance as well as her own.  When with difficulty he maintained his
ground and succeeded in holding her up, they remained for a moment or
two with his arms about her and laughed recklessly over the averted
mishap.

"You're so strong," she said.

"It's just luck," he observed, "that we aren't playing at mixed bathing
instead of standing high and dry.  There's a certain excitement in
walking on the rocks.  I'm enjoying this."

Brenda was enjoying it also; she felt rather sorry when they reached the
sand and sat down, and, there being no longer a reason for the
attention, he released her hand.

"I want you, if you will," he said presently, "to give me some address
that will find you after you leave here.  I want to write to you--if I
may."

She was silent for a space.  He was lying on the sand beside her,
looking up into her face; while she hesitated she looked down at him.

"I thought it was a case of ships that pass in the night," she said.

"No," he answered quietly; "I never intended it should be that."

"I can give you Mrs Graham's address," she said, after a further pause.
"But that, of course, is only temporary."

"How about your home address?" he suggested.

"I haven't one," she answered, and started to play with the sand.  "We
broke that up when my father...  He was unfortunate," she finished in a
flattened voice.

"I'm sorry," he said simply.  He felt that he had blundered upon a
painful subject; the father was evidently one of those people whom their
relations prefer to ignore.  "I'll have Mrs Graham's address anyhow,
and follow up the changes.  This friendship has got to develop, you
know.  It wouldn't be fair to me if you drew bade now after extending
the hand of good-fellowship."

"Oh!  I'm not drawing back," she said, and ceased fidgeting with the
sand and sat nursing her knees, and watching the moving blackness below.
"I've derived much pleasure from the friendship.  It's been...  Well,
there have been perfect moments..."

"To-night?" he questioned.

"To-night--yes."

Her voice dropped to a whisper in making the admission; she spoke with
an effort; there was a suggestion of a great deal which she might have
said but determinedly repressed in her manner.  The darkness crept
closer and hid the blush that warmed her face.

"It's rotten having to go to-morrow," he said.  "I'm sorry I have to go.
I've enjoyed this week--oh! more than I have enjoyed anything since
landing.  I would have liked to have seen the holiday out with you.
Perhaps some day..."

He broke off and dropped back on the sand and lay staring up at the
stars.

"It's a rotten nuisance, anyway," he finished.

It was later than they had supposed when eventually they rose to retrace
their steps; in the enjoyment of the present they lost count of time;
and it was with something akin to dismay that Brenda learnt on
consulting his watch by the light of the moon that it was approaching
eleven o'clock.  It would complicate matters if the others got home from
their walk before her.

"We'll have to hurry," she said.

"It's so simple to hurry over the rocks, isn't it?" he returned with
grim humour.  "What, after all, can any one say if you are late?"

She did not explain that it was not hard words she feared, but the loss
of her post and character, two important matters to a girl dependent on
her own efforts.

"Please," she said, "let us be as quick as possible."

And so the return journey was made with none of the pleasant lingerings,
the pauses to admire beauties that sprang unexpectedly to the gaze, the
brief halts for agreeable wrangling or more intimate talk, the longer
pauses when they did not talk but stood side by side and gazed out to
sea in a sympathetic silence that needed no expression; these pleasures
had to be foregone in the effort to overtake time.

The necessity for haste irked Matheson; the girl at his side was
conscious of his irritation and distressed because of it.

"It is such a pity," she said, as they emerged upon the road, "to have
to spoil things."

He caught the note of apology in her voice, its half breathless appeal
to his forbearance, and his irritation vanished in a smiling
satisfaction.

"By Jove!" he cried, nearly breathless too.  "I never believed you'd
keep the pace up.  Let's put the brake on a bit.  It can't make a
difference of more than five minutes either way now.  I can't talk,
scampering along like this."

When they reached the road where she was staying, instead of parting at
the corner, he accompanied her, as he had on the first morning, to the
side gates.  Before opening the gate he drew her into the shadow of the
oleanders against the fence, and, having looked cautiously up the road
and down, and ascertained that no one was within sight, he slipped his
hands behind her shoulders and held her for a moment and looked into her
eyes.

"It's good-bye this time," he said, and hung on a significant pause.

She remained very quiet and still under his hands, and made no response.

"You let me kiss you on the beach," he said, "but..."  He bent his face
towards hers.  "Won't you kiss me?" he asked.

For a moment she hesitated; then she lifted her face swiftly, and her
lips met his, shyly and a little shamefully, in a caress which brushed
his eager lips as lightly as one of the pink petals that fell, fragrant
and unheeded, about them.  She broke away from him; and he turned
without a word and opened the gate and looked after her as she slipped
through and sped up the path, a slim white figure, with the moonlight
splashed upon her hair and face.

The night had not been without its perfect moments for him too.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

At the last moment Holman decided that he was unable to see his friend
off by train on the journey he was undertaking at his request; an
engagement prevented him from getting to the station in time.  They met
at breakfast; but very little was said in reference to the journey or
its mission, the details of which had been discussed overnight.
Matheson had the letter and his directions.  His destination was a farm
some twenty miles to the west of De Aar.  He would leave the train at
the junction and complete the journey by road, obtaining a conveyance at
a hotel which Holman recommended.

The prospect of the journey bored him.  He was sufficiently familiar
with the line to be able to judge fairly accurately the amount of
discomfort he might expect from travelling in summer; and the idea of
staying for a fortnight, perhaps longer, on a farm with Dutch people was
distasteful.

"What, in hell," he asked desperately, "shall I do with myself?  I don't
even speak Dutch."

"Nor write it?"  Holman asked, without looking at him.

"Haven't any knowledge at all of the fool lingo.  You might as
reasonably expect me to talk in Kaffir."

"I'm not expecting anything," was the response.  "But I thought you
might have picked up a few words--some fellows show a surprising
facility in acquiring the taal.  But it's not important.  The Dutch
mostly speak English.  The Kriges do, anyhow.  Mrs Krige is, as a
matter of fact, English by birth."

"Come, that's better," Matheson said complacently.  "It constitutes a
link.  I'll know how to talk to a fellow-countrywoman."

"I wouldn't insist too much on the point of nationality," the other
threw in with a note of caution in his tones.  "She's Dutch now, and so
are all her children."

"In law, yes," Matheson agreed.  "There are kids, then?"

"Oh! they are all grown up.  It is her son you are going to see.  The
old man died years ago."

He changed the subject with some abruptness, and spoke of his own
arrangements, and planned their next meeting.  He would wait in
Johannesburg; Matheson, when he turned up, would discover him in one of
the usual haunts.  They could then square their account finally.  And if
there was any little service that it lay in his power to do the other,
he would be glad to be called upon to perform the same.

Later, when he was seated in the train, Matheson recalled this tentative
promise and the peculiar emphasis of its utterance; and it occurred to
him that Holman inclined to exaggerate the service he was rendering.  He
leaned back in a corner of the compartment, which he had to himself, and
thought over things.  The importance of this trumpery party intrigue was
assuming disproportionate dimensions.  The flicker of doubt in his mind
developed steadily, while he sat staring from the window at the changing
scenery, pondering the matter deeply.  He did not altogether believe the
reasons Holman had alleged in explanation of the secrecy of the mission
and the need for caution.  His talk of overthrowing the government
hadn't rung true.  Moreover, men don't attempt the overthrow of
governments by stealth; that is usually a noisy business which revels in
publicity and insists upon the limelight.  There was something behind it
all, something which had not transpired, which conceivably might never
transpire so far as he was concerned.

He regretted his ignorance of the taal.  In the light of his growing
suspicion it occurred to him that his disclaimer of all knowledge of
Dutch had given Holman satisfaction.  Whatever the tatter's business was
with Andreas Krige it was not his wish that his messenger should learn
it.

He took out his pocket-book, and examined the letter which lay inside
the cover.  The direction told him nothing.  The name of the farm was
Benauwdheidfontein.  It had taken him some time to get anywhere near the
pronunciation--Benaudtfontein was the best he could do; but Holman had
told him the Kriges cut it down to Benfontein.

He put the letter back, having examined it from all angles, as one might
examine a curiosity, and returned to his former occupation of staring
unseeingly from the window while revolving matters in his brain, a form,
of mental exercise that was unusual with him.  Thinking bored him; he
did not often encourage the habit.  But this business roused his
curiosity; he was beginning to be more interested than he ever
remembered being in another man's affairs.

And then suddenly there flashed across his mind, allaying its distrust,
the thought that these people were partly English.  That to a great
extent took from the sinister aspect of the thing.  Quite possibly he
was on the track of a mare's nest It might be merely some raining
transaction of more or less doubtful honesty that Holman was
communicating with Andreas Krige about Holman made a good thing of
buying and selling shares--particularly selling.  Krige might be in with
him, or about to be bled by him.  He would be able to judge better of
that when he saw the man.

He dismissed the matter from his mind and read for a while; but the
blistering heat in the sun-scorched compartment made it difficult to
concentrate the attention on anything for long.  And there was no escape
from the heat, not even when night fell, bringing darkness without
coolness to the earth, and a hushed silence, penetrated by the
insistent, shrill chirp of the crickets and the intrusive rush of the
train through the night-shadowed land.

He slept about eleven, and awoke to a golden sunrise and another
cloudless blue day.  But the breadth of the early day was fresh and
sweet and wonderfully pure.  He drew it into his lungs, leaning from the
carriage window, surveying the parched landscape, and the gaping
fissures in the almost dry beds of the river, along the banks of which
the thorny mimosa grew, the reluctant dewdrops hiding in the hollows of
its shrivelled leaves from the too searching rays of the sun.

The railway curved sharply, winding in and out among the hills, so that
from the window the tail of the train was visible, seeming like a second
train cutting the first in the middle.  Beyond Hutchinson the line was
being repaired.  A row of white tents alongside the rails, with their
owners squatted in the openings having breakfast, caused Matheson a
queer, unaccustomed stab of envy.  This was what he ought to be doing--
useful work for the country, instead of using the metals to career about
on a fool's errand.

The train had slowed down.  He leaned farther out of the window and
shouted to a sunburnt man who stood astride outside his tent, with a tin
mug in one hand and part of a loaf in the other.

"You, Saunders!" he yelled.  "What ho!  Want an extra hand down there?"

The person addressed as Saunders grinned amiably; and another man came
to the opening of the tent and stood behind him, interested, stripped to
the waist, and towelling vigorously.

"Tumble out," shouted Saunders.  "I dare say we could make use of you."

And then the train left the white tents and their tanned owners behind;
and Matheson drew in his head with a feeling of sharp dissatisfaction
with life, and thought of these men enviously, until the steadily
increasing warmth of the day brought back to his memory the stuffy
unbearableness of heat accumulated under canvas; and his imagination
pictured anew the treeless, sunbaked nature of the land where those
jolly cool-looking white tents were pitched.  It wasn't after all much
of a picnic.

He arrived at De Aar about noon, and went to the hotel, and had a bath
and changed before sitting down to lunch.  He had not been in this
Karroo town before, and it struck him as fine and picturesque and
altogether characteristic.  The country was flat and open, and the veld
greener and less drought-stricken.

It was a commercial hotel that Holman had recommended, run by Dutch
people and patronised principally by the Dutch.  Matheson shared a small
table with a Jew, who owned a store in the town and took his meals at
the hotel but did not sleep there.  The Jew was not expansive; but he
showed a ready courtesy when approached on any subject, and was emphatic
in his agreement with Matheson's disparagement of the weather.

"It is a land of drought," he finished, and refilled his glass from the
bottle at his elbow.  "I have known the drought hold on the Karroo for
two years.  But the land won't die.  There's water a long way below the
surface."

"Well have to bore for that some day," Matheson said.

"Oh! they do bore--on the farms."

"It wants doing on a more extensive scale."

"Yes; but there's the difficulty of finance again.  Who is to provide
the money?"

Matheson lifted his brows.

"If a man finds a gold mine, he's quick enough as a rule to find the
capital for exploiting it.  The Empire's fairly wealthy."

The other appeared doubtful.

"She did not become so through speculation," he ventured.

"That's no argument," the younger man contended.  "Something has been
written, you know, against wrapping certain possessions away in a
napkin.  If one undertakes responsibility it's up to one to turn it to
the best account--otherwise leave it alone."

The Jew relapsed into an acquiescent silence, from which Matheson
presently dug him to inquire if he knew a farm named Benauwdheidfontein.

"No."  He looked up curiously.  "I wouldn't like to take a farm with a
name like that," he said.

"It's something of a mouthful certainly," Matheson agreed.

"Oh, that!  Many Dutch homesteads have long names...  But--
Benauwdheidfontein! ...  No! that's bad."

It became clear to Matheson that it was something the name suggested,
rather than the word itself, to which the speaker objected.

"What does Benauwdheidfontein stand for?" he inquired.

The Jew thought for a moment.

"Literally the word, I believe, means uneasiness, anxiety; but it
conveys rather more than that.  It suggests being at odds with life--
cornered, as it were--having reached the limit of endurance.  Fear lurks
in the word.  It's a name with a sinister meaning--an unlucky name, we
should call it."

"I am not much of a believer in luck, are you?"  Matheson said.  His
listener smiled.

"It depends on the hour, the place, and the circumstance," he replied,
and helped himself to cheese, which he proceeded to despatch in an
abstracted manner, and with an air of being wishful to escape further
conversation.

Matheson finished his lunch, and interviewed the proprietor.

"Can you provide me with a conveyance that will take me to
Benauwdheidfontein?" he asked.

"Benfontein--Mr Krige's place?  Oh! yes," was the response.  "It's a
long drive.  You won't want to start for a couple of hours, I suppose?"

Upon Matheson's replying that the hour of departure was a matter of
indifference to him, the proprietor fixed it for four o'clock, when the
great heat would be decreasing, and driving across the veld could be
undertaken with less discomfort.  He seemed anxious to do his best for
his guest.

"Will I put a gun in the cart?" he asked.  "With luck, you should see
some birds as you travel.  There is good sport on the flats."

Matheson accepted gratefully.  If Krige could offer something in the way
of shooting, his stay at Benfontein would not lack compensation.  He
regretted that he had no gun with him.  But on a farm a spare gun is
usually available, the etiquette of the veld being strictly in accord
with the principle of the traveller's right to hospitality, which
includes the enjoyment of one's goods--providing always that he does not
travel on foot.

CHAPTER NINE.

It was manifest to Matheson on his arrival at Benfontein that he was not
expected.  He had taken it for granted that Holman would inform these
people of his coming, and instead he found it necessary to explain
himself to the swarthy young Dutchman who came out of the house, when
the cart drew up beside the big aloes that formed a hedge dividing the
garden from the veld, and strolled leisurely forward with no great
display of eagerness to receive the traveller.  He descended from the
Cape Cart and faced him.

"Is it Mr Krige?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the Dutchman, and regarded him with something like
distrust blended with dislike, and waited for further enlightenment.

"My name's Matheson," the visitor announced, and, perceiving that the
name conveyed nothing to his listener, he added: "I thought Holman would
have prepared you for my visit.  Perhaps I had better give you his
letter, which will explain things."

He felt in his pocket for the letter, and presented it.  Krige, taking
it in the left hand, deliberately extended the right.

"That is all right," he said.  "I did not know.  A friend of Mr Holman
is very welcome."

He spoke in Dutch to the coloured driver, who climbed down from the cart
and started to take out the horses.  One of Krige's boys sauntered
forward to his assistance; and a woman, who, judging from the likeness
between them, was Krige's sister, appeared on the shadeless stoep, and
looked on with detached interest at the scene beyond the aloe hedge.
Matheson judged her to be about thirty.  She was swarthy, like her
brother, with a deepening brown on the neck that suggested a strain of
native blood somewhere in the Krige ancestry.  Her eyes were very dark,
and sombre in expression, which robbed them, as it robbed her face, of
actual beauty, and lent both a tragic, almost a sullen air.  Looking at
her a stranger would pronounce unhesitatingly that hers had been a
tragic life.  At least it was a life which had known tragedy, and had
nursed its bitterness throughout the years.

Krige conducted Matheson on to the stoep and presented him to his
sister.  From the way in which she unbent, as her brother had done, at
the mention of Holman's name, he concluded that in this household Holman
was held in very warm regard.  The mantle of his popularity descended in
some measure upon himself.

"Come inside and rest," said Miss Krige.  "You will be hungry.  We will
be having supper just now."  She scrutinised him for a second.  "I
expect you are tired," she added; "it's a long drive from De Aar."

He disclaimed undue fatigue, and followed her into the house, where
bustling preparations were going forward in the guest chamber, which the
younger girl had hastened to get ready as soon as the Cape Cart came
within sight.  The bed had to be made, and the room dusted.  There were
seldom visitors at Benfontein; and the great four-poster bedstead
remained usually shrouded in dustsheets, under which the feather
mattress humped itself protestingly, and fell into depressions where
some heedless touch had deflated its bulging surface.

The younger Miss Krige, who was called Honor, treated the feather
mattress as a conscientious cook might treat dough, the lightness of
which depended on the energy of her kneading, with the result that the
bed lost the appearance of an anaemic mountain and assumed quite
reasonable dimensions of a sufficient flatness to warrant its claim to
being a couch to repose upon.  Then she fetched water and towels, and
ran away to her own room to smooth her disordered hair, and, since her
house frock was decidedly shabby, to make other alterations in her
toilet calculated to improve her appearance, as her energetic
ministrations had improved that of the bed.  Honor took a greater
interest in travellers than her sister.  She was five years younger; and
the sorrow which had touched their lives had touched hers more lightly,
and left, not so much a bitterness, as a deliberately cultivated
grievance to germinate in the furrows it had made.

Matheson was taken to the living-room, which struck him when he entered
it as one of the pleasantest rooms he had ever seen--it was so
essentially homelike.  A blending of English and Dutch taste, and a
feminine love of the beautiful, with inadequate resources at command,
made the room in its bare cool simplicity invitingly restful and
pleasing.  There was not an article in it, save an old Dutch dresser, of
any value.  The dark, beeswaxed floor had no covering other than one or
two golden jackal skins, shot, and roughly dressed, on the farm, and a
large sheepskin mat.  The chairs were reimpe bottomed, that is laced
with strips of hide instead of cane, which makes a more durable and
infinitely more comfortable seat.  There were a few Madeira chairs with
cushions in them, and a profusion of veld flowers, flowers in bowls and
any available vessel--splashes of colour against the cool dark woodwork
of the panelled walls.

In one of the low chairs a woman was seated, sewing.  She looked about
sixty, a well-preserved comely woman fair complexioned and essentially
English in type.  Her dear blue eyes met the blue eyes of the stranger
with a cordial light of welcome in them, as she rose and came quickly
forward and shook hands.

"We do not see many travellers at this season," she remarked in her soft
English voice, "which makes your visit doubly welcome.  You have had a
long drive."

"Yes," he said; "but the air is extraordinarily light.  I didn't find it
too hot.  It must be wonderful here in the spring."

"It is," she agreed.  "The next time you come to Benfontein you must
choose your season better.  We aren't always drought-stricken.  We boast
a fine climate really."

"I think it's topping," he said.  "And,"--he looked about him--"I think
this is just the jolliest room I've ever seen."

His wandering gaze, travelling critically about the room he professed
such warm admiration for, was abruptly arrested when it reached the
doorway, where it remained transfixed, caught by a vision of such
surprising beauty that for quite an appreciable while he remained
staring and speechless, until suddenly recalled to the present by the
sound of Krige's foot moved with some impatience on the wooden floor.

"It's perfect," he finished his encomium with, and faced his hostess
again with an enigmatic smile.  "I thought that as soon as I saw it."

The vision hereupon entered through the doorway.

"My daughter, Honor," Mrs Krige said.

The vision confronted Matheson now, a tall graceful girl, with bright
hair that suggested the sunlight, and eyes that were like brown pools,
dark and shadowed, and splashed with a lighter shade as though the
sunlight penetrated here too and sported in their brown depths.  It was
a lovely face; Matheson found it flawless.  He was amazed at her beauty,
at the soft transparency of the fair skin, and her quiet
self-possession.  She held out a cool, aloof hand.

"You know all about me," she said, "but no one enlightens me...
English?--of course."

He was not sure whether it was his imagination, but he fancied he
detected some hostility in her voice as she pronounced his nationality.
Her tones rang odd and rather hard.

"Matheson by name, cosmopolitan by disposition," he returned
easily--"like yourself."

"Oh!  I'm Dutch," she said quickly.

"Mr Matheson is a friend of Mr Holman," her mother explained.

Honor's smile became more friendly.

"You ought to have told me that at the beginning," she said.  "It makes
a difference."

"Isn't that a little rough on me?" he asked.

"I don't see that.  It's an introduction.  Mr Holman is a good friend.
It is a long time already that we have known him."

"Honor has known Mr Holman since she was a child," Mrs Krige
interposed.  "That was before we came to Benfontein, when we lived in
the town.  Lately we have seen little of him.  Andreas, I expect Mr
Matheson would like to go to his room.  We shall have supper shortly.
If you are only half as hungry as I was the first time I drove across
the flats," she added, turning again towards the guest, "you must be
very ready for it."

Alone in the plainly furnished bedroom, dominated by the great
four-poster, which recalled gruesome suggestions of a hearse, Matheson
fell to thinking pleasantly about Honor Krige.  It was extraordinary
what a change the sight of her had put upon the face of things.  He no
longer experienced boredom at the prospect of spending a week, or even
two weeks, at the farm.  He hoped the reply to Holman's communication
would be delayed--the nature of the communication no longer mattered.
Of what account was the overthrow of governments, or other and more wily
knavery, when set off against daily intercourse and companionship with
beauty's self?  He felt equal at the moment to participating in a crime
if to do so were to win a smile of genuine appreciation from Honor
Krige.  Not that he imagined Honor, or any member of her family, to be
steeped in infamy.  If the brother were a political firebrand, he
doubted that the women were infected with the disorder.  They seemed to
be quiet and homely folk.

The Kriges meanwhile were discussing him, while Honor and a little
Kaffir girl laid the table for the supper which Freidja Krige was
cooking.

"He is nice looking," observed Honor, having dispatched Koewe to the
kitchen for plates.  "I am going to be nice to him."

"Don't be too nice," advised her brother drily.  "We do not know
anything about him.  We must be discreet."

"He is a friend of Mr Holman," she urged, as if that constituted a
claim to their consideration.

"He only comes on business from Mr Holman," he said.  "It is best not
to be hasty."

Mrs Krige glanced swiftly at her son.

"Andreas," she said, "is he on political business for Mr Holman?"

"As a messenger only.  He brought me a letter."

"Mr Holman would not send any but a trustworthy messenger," she
replied, and became silent as the Kaffir girl returned with the plates,
and set them in a pile on the table for Honor to arrange.

"Place the chairs, Koewe," said Honor--"straight, picannin schelm.  That
will do.  Now go and help young missis in the kitchen."

She swung round and faced her brother.

"What does Mr Holman say about him?" she asked.

"Very little," Krige answered in his deliberate way.  "I gather from the
letter that he trusts him simply because he is new to the country, and
has no knowledge of Dutch."

"Ah!" said Honor, and gazed thoughtfully through the open window out
upon the dried-up garden.  "I wonder why he should carry letters for Mr
Holman?" she mused.

CHAPTER TEN.

It was possible that Andreas Krige was a man of many ideas; he was not a
man of many words.  For the better part of an hour Matheson sat on the
stoep and smoked in company with him, and waited in confident expectancy
for the remark which, he calculated roughly, fell on an average once in
every fifteen minutes from Krige's lips.  The remark, when it came, was
not profound.  His own conversational efforts partook of the nature of a
monologue, which Krige punctuated at long intervals with grunts; a short
grunt fitting like a comma into a pause, and a longer grunt putting a
period to the talk.  He emerged from these periods usually with one of
his infrequent observations.

It occurred to Matheson later, thinking over that quiet hour on the
stoep, that Krige, by his silence and those occasional sympathetic
grunts, had deliberately encouraged him to talk, had indeed urged him on
to talk while observing himself an intentional reticence.  But this did
not strike him at the time, perhaps because his mind was so intent on
Honor Krige, whom he could hear moving about inside the room they had
left by means of the long window near which their chairs were placed,
that it held no space for other reflection.

He wondered why the women did not come out and join them.  He wanted to
talk to Honor, who was bright and animated and decidedly more
companionable than her dark and silent brother.  Krige did not interest
him.  And yet the long, loose-limbed figure reclining in the chair
appealed to him as symbolic of the silence, the secrecy, the rugged
simplicity of the veld, which daily exacted from him so much of energy
and sweat and labour, and yielded its grudging return, rather as the man
himself drew out of others more than he ever gave.  The nature of the
veld was in his blood.  That is a characteristic of the Boer; he is as
much a part of the soil as the coloured man, when it comes to wide
spaces--to the veld which he has named.  Krige suggested the solitudes,
and the rude and primitive toil which Adam bequeathed his sons.

One thing he said during their talk stuck in Matheson's memory.  It was
the least simple remark he had made.

"We do not get many engineers this way," he said.  "To-morrow I will ask
you to lode at the wells.  That windmill you see from here is out of
order."

It was rather a cute way, Matheson decided, of testing the truth of his
claim to his profession.

After a while Mrs Krige emerged from the house with her elder daughter,
and the talk became general and more ready.  But still it seemed to
Matheson that without Honor the party was not so much incomplete as
lifeless: her presence made for him the atmosphere of the place.

And then, quite unexpectedly and silently, she appeared among them, and
stood in the open window of the sitting-room, leaning her shoulder
against the frame.  She came so softly to the window, and took up her
position there without remark, that Matheson realised her presence only
through that extra sense which apprises one of the nearness of another
person through the medium of a wordless transmission of thought.  He
turned his head abruptly, and found her behind him, and stood up.  Their
eyes met.  In the dusk amid the shadows of the unlighted room behind her
she suggested to his imagination, in her pale and slender beauty, a
moon's ray--the night seemed lighter for her coming.

"Please sit down again," she said without moving.

"But I can't sit while you stand," he returned.  "Come and take my
chair."

"Thank you; but if I wanted to sit I should bring a chair with me--there
is one at my back.  If you won't sit down again you will oblige me to go
in."

He resumed his seat with a promptness which was a sufficient guarantee
of his unwillingness to provoke her into acting as she proposed, and at
the same time he moved it so that without turning he could see her where
she stood.  He rather liked to see her there so close to him in the
dusk.  It was immaterial whether she talked; to sit and watch her was so
good in itself.  But Honor did not remain silent long.

"What do you think of our Karroo nights?" she asked in her quiet,
intense voice.

"You have put a difficult question," he returned.  "It is so impossible
to express what one feels without seeming extravagant.  A night like
this is--just wonderful.  There's something...  I can't put it into
words... it grips."

She smiled suddenly and leaned forward looking into the night.

"I have a feeling when I stand here," she said, "and look away across
the veld into the deep purple and primrose of the evening sky, that I am
gazing into the heart of Africa--a heart which opens and reveals many
things.  The past unfolds like a picture before the mind.  I wonder if
you will ever see into the heart of the veld? ...  I wonder whether any
Englishman could look so deep?"

"But surely," he protested, "many Englishmen have loved this land?"

"Coveted, not loved," she insisted.  "Does one ever hurt what one
loves?"

In his surprise he forgot that the speaker was herself partly English,
that her mother, a silent listener to their talk, was a compatriot of
his own.  His patriotism was aroused by this aspersion; as the sole
representative of his country, he was bound to meet and repudiate it.

"I think your attack is most unjust," he said, a shade of resentment in
his tones.  "If you reflect a while I believe you will admit as much.
Great Britain has done more for this country than any other nation."

"She has annexed land," the cool, dispassionate voice admitted--"she
continues to annex.  Wherever we have settled, she has followed and
turned us out.  She can do this--because of the power behind,--her
strength lies across the seas."

"Oh, come!" he said, and regretted his ignorance of South African
history.  "It is quite elementary knowledge that the Netherlands sold
the Cape Colony to Britain in the early part of the nineteenth century."

A cold little smile crossed her features.

"Oh! yes," she said; "we were sold--we know that--after hundreds of us
had bled for the land.  They sold us because they knew they couldn't
hold the land.  Then we left the colony which we had founded at the Cape
a century and a half before, and trekked as far as Natal.  When we had
made that colony, the British annexed it...  It was always trekking and
then annexation and then trekking once more.  We left the coast and
struck inland, and crossed the Orange River in search anew of a home.
Again we were driven on--beyond the Vaal.  There we founded our
Republic."

The low, evenly modulated voice never raised its tones, but an
increasing bitterness crept into them at this point.

"The Transvaal was rich in minerals.  That was sufficient.  The
Transvaal was annexed by the British.  But the Boers were stronger now,
and they could endure this persecution no longer.  They fought for their
Republic, and bought it again dearly with their blood at Majuba Hill.
But the feeling of insecurity remained.  There was friction between the
two white races, and jealousy, and much bitterness.  Still you coveted
our land.  You never rested until, backed by the power across the seas,
you fought again for it--and won."

Matheson was amazed.  When the quiet voice ceased speaking, in the pause
that followed, the shrill noise of the crickets broke with disconcerting
insistence and troubled the ears.  Only Andreas Krige moved.  He did not
speak; he stood up abruptly, and pocketed his pipe, and went inside,
passing his sister without appearing to notice her.

Matheson was interested, intensely interested--and hurt.

"Isn't all this you have been telling me a distortion of facts?" he
asked.

"No," she answered.  "It is just a bald summary of the principal events
in the history of the Colony since its beginning."

"I am sorry I am so ignorant of these things," he said.  "A man ought to
read up the history of a country before he visits it.  I'm at a
disadvantage.  That only matters in as far as it prevents my answering
you.  I am hearing only your side.  You have made out a good case...
There's always injustice where the interests of races conflict.  If one
went back far enough, _I_ imagine one would find the greatest injustice
has been meted out to the natives."

"Oh, the natives!"  Her voice sounded her contempt.  "You British always
fall back on the natives.  It's your unfailing retort that you
administer more wisely and more humanely than we do."

"It's a fairly sound argument," he returned with greater assurance.  "No
nation in the world can colonise as we can."

"Honor," Mrs Krige interposed gently, "it is an abuse of hospitality to
attack a guest."

Again the pale fleeting smile crossed Honor's features.  She glanced
down at the man, who sat with face half averted looking towards the
deepening purple of the sky, the colours of which never fade entirely on
the Karroo even in the pallid hour of the dawn.

"I am making no attack," she answered.  "I am exposing the bleeding
heart of Africa for him to see."  She came closer to him.  "Can you see?
... blood and hatred, blood and hatred--the price of every morgen of
this land."

He looked up, immeasurably perplexed and discomposed.  He had persuasion
that he ought to say something, offer some protest, put up something of
a defence; but he felt hopelessly inadequate.  There was nothing he
could find to say except:

"We don't hate.  As a race we are healthy: grievances do not fester with
us; they heal."

"I know," she said.  "You pride yourselves on that.  You don't bear
malice.  But in your generosity you incline to overlook the fact that
this patronising attitude insults the object of your benevolence.  You
say tolerantly: `The Boer is not half bad; he's useful; and anyway there
is no getting rid of him.  He is here for always.  We will let bygones
be bygones and not bear ill will,'--forgetting that the cause for ill
will is on his side rather than on yours, and showing surprise that he
does not respond, and appear obliged to you.  You should learn to
remember--to forget too easily causes suffering to others."

"Honor!"  Mrs Krige interposed again.

Honor passed swiftly behind Matheson's chair and approached her mother.

"I think at least you should bear in mind," Matheson said quietly, "that
your mother is an Englishwoman."

"My mother is Dutch," Honor replied quickly, and put an arm about her
mother's shoulders and drew close to her.

Something in that protective gesture, in the tones of the proud
determined young voice, and in the older woman's acquiescent silence,
acted like a silencing hand laid on Matheson's lips.  He felt tragedy in
the air.  She had said that she was revealing the bleeding heart of
Africa to him--she was doing more; he was gazing on the stark, unlovely
body of the past, disinterred from its too shallow grave by the morbid
passions which are born of hate.

And yet he could not understand.  How came this daughter of an
Englishwoman to feel thus bitterly towards her mother's people?--and why
did the mother acquiesce in the condemnation of her country?  It was as
perplexing as it was distressing.  Across the turmoil of his thoughts, a
thing irrelevant and yet not without its significance in relation to the
present disturbing scene, a speech the Jew had made at lunch that day
flashed with startling clearness; and he recalled, besides the words,
the distaste in the speaker's tones when replying about
Benauwdheidfontein: "It suggests being at odds with life... fear lurks
in the word.  It's a name with a sinister meaning--an unlucky name."

Possibly the Kriges were at odds with life.  Could it be that Honor,
beautiful, young, intelligent, was at odds with the life which for her
was only beginning?  It could not be.  The sorrows that embitter are
encountered usually farther along the road: they are not the skies of
spring and summer which are overcast.

His gaze, lingering upon her figure, as she stood in the dusk with her
arm about her mother's shoulders, lifted to her face which in the fading
light showed little more than an outline.  It was, he decided, some
fanciful touch of the twilight that gave to her features the expression
of earnest entreaty he imagined he saw in them; her eyes shone with a
softness in such direct contradiction to the hostility of her words, the
proud aloofness of her manner, that he knew it for a trick of the
twilight.  No woman who felt so bitterly against his country could turn
so soft a gaze upon an Englishman.

"You are a little startling in your vehemence, Honor," Freidja Krige
observed, speaking for the first time since her sister's advent had
snapped the desultory general conversation, which Matheson had found so
unenlivening, and flung the bombshell of her complaining into the void.

Honor laughed quietly.  The deep emotions that had swayed her and
provoked her attack, were subdued; she had her feelings well in hand
now.

"I haven't startled any one really," she said.  "But--I have made Mr
Matheson angry."

A new quality had come into her voice.  She gave Matheson a gesture of
appeal.  It was as though she wished to assure him that there was
nothing personal in her attack, that she did not hold him responsible
for the national crimes of which she complained.  She excepted him, as
she excepted her mother.  They had been born English, they couldn't help
that.  He might even be an estimable person in despite of it.

"Not angry," he contradicted, and rose, moved, not so much by a desire
to stand, as a feeling that he wanted to be more on a level with her,
wanted to face her on equal ground; seated he was at a disadvantage.
"What you have said has given food for thought I'd no idea; ...  One
doesn't think enough about these things.  It's only when one comes face
to face with it that one gets a sense of what lies beneath the surface.
We are too easily satisfied with a superficial view.  One should look
deeper."

Honor's arm fell from her mother's neck and hung at her side.  She did
not move nearer, but she turned more directly towards him.

"You will look deeper," she said with conviction.

Suddenly a smile broke over her face.

"I have shown you something of the tragedy of the veld," she added.
"To-morrow, if you are willing to rise with the sun, I will show you
something of its beauty and its charm.  The Karroo is at its best when
the day is young."

If he were willing...  He would have risen in advance of the sun to have
set forth in her company on any quest.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

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.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Freidja Krige went many times to the window to look for the riders'
return.  She had prepared the breakfast; the sarsates were cooked and
ready to be served, and Andreas had come in from the land and was
waiting with extraordinary patience for the meal, which usually made its
appearance with his own.  He glanced up from an agricultural journal he
was reading when for about the fourth time his sister came through from
the kitchen and took her stand by the window and looked out across the
veld.

"They must have ridden far," he observed.

"They are coming now," she said--"walking the horses.  I expect they
find it hot.  I'll make the coffee, Andreas, and bring in your
porridge."

He shook his head.

"I will wait," he said.

Mrs Krige entered the room, and her son rose and kissed her
uneffusively but with affection.  She stood at the window and watched
with him the slow advance of the riders.

"It's so hot," she said.  "They should have got back half an hour ago.
Honor ought to think of these things."

"Why does Honor ride with a stranger?" he asked.  "I consider it
unnecessary.  He can ride on the farm with me."

Mrs Krige raised surprised eyes to his.

"I see no reason for objecting," she returned.  "I think we may trust
Honor."

He lifted his loose shoulders heavily.

"It is always wise to go slow," he said.

Then he caught up his hat and stepped out on to the stoep and went to
meet the horses.

Honor slipped from the saddle, and relinquished the reins to him, making
some remark about the warmth of the day to which he made no response.
He shifted the rein to his left hand, and raised the right, which he
proffered the guest.

"You had better dismount," he said.  "I will take the horses to the
stable."

Matheson offered a protest; at least he would accompany him; but Krige
was firmly insistent.  Finally Matheson swung himself from the saddle
and followed Honor to the house, while Krige, whistling for a boy as he
went, led the horses away.

Matheson had a persuasion that for some reason or other Krige did not
like him.  He had felt that on the stoep the previous night.  Why, he
wondered, should a man dislike another of whom he knew nothing, whom he
met now for the first time?  It was not reasonable.  Racial prejudice
possibly influenced him to some extent.  It was obvious that as a family
the Kriges were antagonistic to British supremacy; but that in itself
seemed insufficient to justify personal animus, particularly in view of
the fact of Mrs Krige's nationality.  Having regard to that last point,
the attitude of the family towards all things British puzzled him.  He
felt that in her quiet acceptance of her children's view, this
Englishwoman displayed a strange disloyalty.  It would have been
altogether finer and more natural had she, through her marriage,
attempted to bring the two white races in the Colony into closer and
more sympathetic relations.  She might have inculcated in this new
generation a love for the best ideals of both races.  In doing which she
would have rendered a greater service to South Africa than in fostering
racial jealousy, would have accomplished some worthier end than the poor
satisfaction born of harbouring bitter feeling and petty distrust.

He resented this lade of patriotism in a countrywoman of his own, it
forced him into a strong and quite sincere opposition.  Love of country
is the moral backbone of the individual; a vaunted contempt for one's
birthright is a tacit admission of unworthiness of the privilege it
confers.

He stepped on to the stoep in Honor's wake, and went along to his room
and entered by the window.

"Don't be long," Honor called after him.  "We are late."

He made what haste he could; and entered the living-room to find the
delayed breakfast steaming on the table, and every one obviously waiting
amid a savoury smell of coffee and grilled meat Honor was not present.
She came in when the rest were seated, looking cool and beautiful and
fresh in a white muslin frock with blue ribbons, that drew Andreas
Krige's eyes in her direction in silent disapproval.

"I am sorry to be so late," she said.  "We rode farther than I intended.
It was all so interesting that I did not think of the time."

"What was interesting?"  Freidja asked.

Honor looked across at her sister with a show of faint surprise.

"I was interested in watching Mr Matheson's appreciation," she said.

"Mr Matheson will not find much to appreciate on the Karroo at this dry
season," Freidja returned.  "My! there's nothing but burnt scrub to be
seen.  Don't you wonder," she asked, turning towards him, "how anything
grows here?"

"I admit," he replied, "that it occurs to me to doubt whether results
justify the outlay.  You are up against pretty well everything, aren't
you?  Farming in this country must entail endless labour."

"We do fairly well with ostriches," Krige interposed.  "If you care
about it, I will show you our birds.  I am making a speciality of the
new breed, the feathers of which have a natural curl.  They are very
handsome."

"Thanks; it will interest me immensely," Matheson said.  "Besides, there
is the well.  I am to look at that to-day."

"Andreas," Mrs Krige remonstrated, "we must not trespass too much on
Mr Matheson's good nature.  I think he will be glad to rest a little.
There are other days."

Her words, seeming to imply an acceptance of his continued presence on
the farm, pleased Matheson.  He was very ready to stay as long as they
were willing to entertain him.  Krige had not yet referred to the
purpose of his visit; he had made no mention of the letter which he was
to carry away.  Matheson was undecided whether there was a motive in his
reticence, or whether he took it for granted that he was in Holman's
confidence and therefore in no need of enlightenment.

In response to his mother's remark Krige simply said:

"The well will keep till another time."

He did not after that make any observation unless directly appealed to,
but despatched his breakfast in grave preoccupation, and left the table
before the rest.  Mrs Krige turned her face to look after him as he
went out through the window; and Matheson was struck by the light of
affection which shone in her eyes as they followed the tall figure till
it disappeared from view.

"He works so hard.  There is no one to help him," she said, and sighed.

"He is interested in his work," Freidja put in quickly.  "As for hard
work, every one works hard on a farm."

Involuntarily her glance travelled in her sister's direction.  How did
Honor purpose making beds and helping with the dinner in that frock?

Honor proceeded leisurely with her breakfast, as though work were the
last thing to concern her.  It did not concern her for the immediate
present.  With the finish of breakfast the visitor must be disposed of;
he would sit in the garden in the shade of the pepper trees--her mother
would see to that; then she would slip out of her clean frock and get
through the morning's work and dress again.  It was quite simple,
entailing merely a little additional trouble.  Honor did not object to
trouble of that nature, and visitors were rare.

"You shame my idleness, Miss Krige," Matheson said.  "I don't see why I
should be told off to rest.  I think I'll go and have a look at that
well."

Honor laughed.

"You know you just long to sit in the shade and smoke," she said.

And Freidja, who, like Andreas, disapproved of her sister's easy
familiarity with the stranger, replied that she thought her brother
would prefer to accompany him when he inspected the wells.

"You see," he said, and turned in protest to Mrs Krige.  "I am not
allowed to do anything.  Every one insists upon encouraging my natural
indolence."

He would have been very willing to sit in the garden had Honor consented
to sit with him; but, breakfast over, Honor disappeared with her sister;
and Mrs Krige, explaining that they had duties to attend to, offered to
show him a pleasant corner in the shade of the trees, where he would
feel as cool as it was possible to feel in such warm weather.

She led the way into the garden.  There were chairs under the trees, and
a primitive wooden seat formed with roughly sawn logs, which served the
double purpose of a seat and table.  Beyond the garden were lucerne
beds, and beyond these again was a fencing of wire confining a number of
Krige's best birds.  It was neither a restful nor a pretty garden; it
was burnt up and sunbaked like the surrounding veld, save for one long
bed below the stoep which was planted with flowers and carefully tended.
Some one who loved flowers cared for these and watered them.

"It is not pretty," Mrs Krige said.  "We had a beautiful garden when we
lived in the town.  I miss it."

"It would be difficult," he replied, "to make a beautiful garden with so
poor a supply of water.  But the trees are fine.  Trees in this country
are more acceptable than anything else."

She looked about her with a vague discontent in her eyes, eyes which
held at times, which held now, a haunting expression of sorrow.

"Yes, trees are good," she agreed.  "Do you observe that so far as the
gaze can reach there is not one patch of shade except just here?--not a
bush, only that small clump of prickly-pear yonder to throw its scant
shadow on the ground?  Sometimes there are mirage trees.  One
wonders..."

She broke off without completing the sentence and seated herself in one
of the chairs.

"I want to talk to you," she said.  "It is long since I met a
fellow-countryman.  I have become so identified with the Dutch that the
few English friends I possessed have dropped away one by one.  In this
country a divided allegiance is impossible.  I belong to my husband's
people--my admiration and sympathies are all with them.  You can't
understand that," she added, with a swift look into his grave eyes.  "I
saw last night while Honor talked that you failed to understand.  I
believe it was your restraint then that decided me to attempt to explain
what is to you incredible.  You didn't understand; but I saw that you
were trying to understand."

He sat forward with his hands between his knees, and gazed very intently
into her face--an earnest, pleasant face with patient eyes.

"No; I don't understand," he said.  "It's puzzled me a lot.  You see,
your daughter disclaimed your nationality, and you offered no protest.
That's un-English.  You can't change your nationality at will; it's as
much a part of yourself as the colour of your eyes.  We are proud as a
race of our nationality.  We are the finest nation in the world.  I'm
not for giving preference to any other.  I don't say I'd talk like that
to a foreigner--unless he challenged me; and then," he smiled slightly,
"I'd probably be emphatic."

Mrs Krige caught something of his humour, and smiled in sympathy.  Deep
down in her heart, so jealously hidden that she almost doubted its
existence there, the undying love for her own people kept its place in
spite of the sadness and injustice her life had known.

"I felt as you do at one time," she said--"oh! for long after I was
married.  My husband was a Free State Boer--one of the old type, a
little narrow and prejudiced, but a good man--an excellent husband and
father.  My married life was very happy."

She folded her hands on her lap and turned aside her face and looked
away with reminiscent gaze over the sunlit landscape.  Possibly she saw
anew those long dead years passing before her mind like the mirage trees
of the veld which appear only to vanish again.  Matheson watched her
curiously, anticipating something of her story.  How many persons in
that country, he wondered, had been hurt by the conflicting interests of
the two white races?

"And then," she added quietly, "all the happiness came to an end...
everything came to an end with the war--with those three bitter years of
struggle and hatred.  The British were wrong--very wrong.  I believe if
I had not been married to a Dutchman I should have felt that.  It is a
black mark against our national honour."

He noticed with faint surprise that in her condemnation of her country
she associated herself with it for the first time--it might have been
unconsciously, or it might have been that, in condemning it, some
instinct of race caused her to identify herself with its disgrace.
There was a suggestion of a desire to defend in that simple connection,
to defend what she could not condone.

"You don't know," she said--"no one could know who was not directly
concerned--all the injustice of the war...  I lost my husband, I lost my
son--not fighting; it wouldn't have been so hard had they died fighting
for their independence.  They were both prisoners, in an internment camp
near Matjesfontein.  And they died there.  My boy was delicate.  I don't
know...  I suppose things were rough and he needed care.  He developed
consumption, and died and was buried there.  I was not allowed to see
him.  I have never seen his grave."

Her voice was slightly tremulous, but she betrayed no other sign of
emotion, and resumed quietly with only a brief pause:

"His father died later.  I think myself his heart was broken."  She
lifted protesting eyes.  "Is it worth it? ... these broken hearts and
broken lives--the price of territorial gain!  It is too much to pay for
any country's aggrandisement.  And the bitterness to me lay in the
knowledge that it was my own country inflicting this injustice on a
weaker people.  I cannot convey all I suffered.  I was treated with
great indignity--a prisoner in my own house, where I remained with my
three youngest children.  I wasn't allowed outside the house save by
permit, and it was with difficulty I obtained that.  I insisted on
seeing the officer in charge, and informed him I was an Englishwoman.
He was very rough with me, and told me to be careful or I might find
myself interned also.

"Oh!  I cannot describe the misery and the hopelessness of that time.  I
don't know how I lived through it; but one learns to endure.  Now you
know why I am bitter, why my children are bitter, against the English.
They have nothing to teach them love of reverence for England--the
nation that made them orphans, and treated their mother harshly.  These
wrongs live in the memory--they embitter life."

"Yes," he said, and was silent.  It was so difficult to say anything in
face of what he had heard.  It was because he saw her point of view so
clearly, sympathised with her in her sorrow, that he found it impossible
to attempt to point out that she was taking an altogether wrong view.
Her judgment was biassed.  In no question concerning the community is
the individual point of view the one to be considered.  But one can't
say these things to a woman who has suffered deeply.

Suddenly he put out a hand and laid it upon hers.  There was something
in his action, in the firm reassuring grip of his fingers, that moved
her more than he knew.  It was as the outstretched hand of a
fellow-countryman gripping hers in the wilderness; it conveyed hope and
comfort.

"I say, I'm awfully sorry," he said.  He pressed her hand firmly and
then released it and sat looking away from her, considering a while.

"It's so often the case," he said presently, "that authority gets into
the wrong hands.  Men find themselves in responsible positions who are
not fitted for responsibility, and they make a mess of things.  In war,
of course, injustice is inevitable; it's not possible to discriminate.
Aren't you being unjust in your turn by impugning all Englishmen because
one, or even more than one, during a time of intense mental strain,
treated you without consideration?" ...  She made no response; and he
continued almost immediately:

"You know, you impress me tremendously.  You've made me intensely
interested in these matters.  I've not thought about these things
before.  I've stood apart from public questions--they haven't seemed to
be any affair of mine.  But there's where we make a mistake.  Every
question that concerns one's country concerns the individual.  The
honour of the Empire is in our keeping.  Men and women don't bear that
in mind sufficiently; we ought to have it in mind continually.  It
should be as much to us as personal honour, which most of us rate
highly.  Take this country, for instance, where old wrongs rankle and
old wounds remain unhealed, it's people like yourself who have the power
to effect the healing process.  You could do it--you, and others in this
land which is so vitally important a part of the Empire.  There is no
wound of that nature which cannot be healed."

He felt that he had not touched her.  She remained manifestly unmoved
and outside it all.  She lived with the memories of the past.

"You may heal wounds and there will remain a scar," she answered.  "And
for amputation cases there is no remedy."

"You mean," he said, "that in your alienated sympathies your patriotism
has suffered amputation?  Fellow-countrywoman, I am not going to believe
that.  You have tucked it away out of sight, and are cheating yourself
into believing it isn't there because you no longer see it.  Well, I'll
tell you what you've done for me."  He smiled suddenly.  "You have
called my patriotism into being.  I'd forgotten I had so precious a
possession till you showed it to me."

"I!" she said, amazed.

"You... and your daughter.  For the greater part of last night I lay
awake thinking over Miss Krige's unpalatable history lesson.  I don't
know enough about these things to judge whether it was altogether
accurate, but I imagine she has got hold of facts--though, of course,
there are two ways of presenting facts, and she is obviously biassed.
But, anyway, what she said helped me to see the Dutch point of view, and
it is essential for the complete understanding of a subject to see the
view of either side; there is admittedly always something to be said for
both.  And she taught me besides that there are two principles which a
great nation would do well to adopt--to forget the injuries it sustains,
and to remember the wrongs which it inflicts upon others.  In my opinion
that is what we, as a nation, do.  Aren't we proving that in the way in
which we administer this Colony?  The Dutch can suffer no injustice
under the existing system of independent government."

Then suddenly he remembered that Krige was opposed to the present
government.  A light of understanding flashed across his brain.  Krige
was a revolutionary.  He was working in concert with other malcontents
against law and order and the existing state of affairs; and he, an
Englishman, had allowed himself to be used as a tool towards this end.
He wondered what the Kriges thought of him, if they considered him a
dupe?--or worse?

In quick embarrassment he glanced at Mrs Krige.  Unless she believed
him to be a dupe, she must take him for a contemptible humbug.  Her face
told him nothing; its expression was sad and infinitely remote.  After
all, it was rather brutal to pursue the subject further.  This stirring
up of painful memories could serve no good purpose.  More than a decade
had passed since the sword had been sheathed; but it takes all of that
time to realise the extent of the hurt; afterwards the mind readjusts
itself and finds a new balance.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Matheson had been over a fortnight at Benfontein before the question of
his departure was touched upon, even then it was left to him to broach
the subject.  Day after day he expected Krige to make some reference to
the purpose of his coming; but Krige ignored the matter.  Every one
behaved exactly as though the visit were an ordinary event, and the
visitor at liberty not only to choose the hour of his departure, but to
defer it as long as he pleased.  They made him quietly welcome, and
treated him after the first few days almost as a member of the
household.

He was able in return to render Krige good service on the farm; several
small matters he found needing attention which, with the aid of certain
tools on the farm and others which Krige borrowed from a neighbour, he
managed to accomplish fairly satisfactorily.  It gave him a comfortable
sense of squaring accounts.  He had no wish to be indebted to the
Dutchman for anything.

He felt differently in regard to the women--to Honor and her mother, at
least.  With the confidence the latter had reposed in him she had
extended her friendship also, extended it in so frank a manner that he
could be in no doubt about it.  And Honor...  Well, Honor was quite a
separate consideration.  He did not care to analyse his feelings in
regard to Honor.  He had an idea that it was safest not to dwell on this
subject.  But it was obvious that Honor as well as her mother felt
kindly towards him.  She went out of her way at times to reveal this
amiable state of her feeling for him--considerably and unnecessarily out
of her way, Freidja Krige opined.  The elder sister stood aloof with
Andreas, and looked on at the development of this unequal friendship, of
which she disapproved, notwithstanding that she also entertained for
their guest a liking she had not believed possible in the case of an
Englishman.

Matheson had disarmed their antagonism by reason of his moderation.
Even Krige opened out as the days passed, and seemed to find some
pleasure in the other man's company.  The furtive distrust, so
noticeable at first, disappeared from his manner entirely.  He became
altogether more sociable, and lost much of his taciturnity and blossomed
into unexpected speech at times, a thing as surprising and unlooked-for
as the sudden flowering of the Karroo following its period of
barrenness.

But his speech never even directly hinted at Holman's business.
Matheson began to believe that he did not intend to send any return
message through him.  Finally he broached the subject himself one
evening during the inevitable hour spent in Krige's society on the stoep
after supper.  This quiet hour, devoted to smoking and fragmentary talk,
had ceased to bore him.  Krige was not loquacious at any time, but he
had become more companionable; and, in his silent and rather tragic
reserve, he was an interesting personality.  The people who are slow of
speech are not often stupid.

"It's time, I suppose, that I was thinking of moving on," Matheson
observed apropos of nothing, breaking in indeed upon a protracted pause.
"It's so jolly here that I'm inclined to trespass on your hospitality.
In return I hope, if there's anything I can do for you when I get back,
you will not hesitate to mention it I shall be seeing Holman, I expect,
pretty soon.  Perhaps you have a message you'd like me to carry?"

He surveyed Krige interrogatively; and Krige, after a long minute during
which he continued to smoke meditatively as though he had not heard,
suddenly took the pipe from his mouth, and lifted his eyes without
moving any other part of him, and said, in lieu of answering the
question:

"Are you tired of the farm already?"  Matheson felt surprised, possibly
he showed it.  "No; I'm not tired of the farm.  I thought I had made
that clear.  But I do not wish to outstay my welcome, and I have been
here two weeks."

"If you can stay a little longer," Krige observed, "I shall have a
message which I shall be glad for you to carry to Mr Holman.  We will
be sorry when you leave Benfontein.  There is no need for haste unless
you wish to go."

That was precisely what Matheson did not wish; he was very willing to
remain as long as they showed equal willingness to have his company.
Each day as it passed made the thought of leaving less agreeable: there
was no doubt about it in his mind any longer; some influence had gripped
him powerfully; he was in the throes of a great emotional crisis--the
result of the magnetic power which Honor Krige exercised over him.
Nothing which he had ever experienced equalled in intensity his feeling
for her.  Was it love?  He did not know.  If it were love, it was
different in quality from any other emotion of the kind he had known.
The thought of possession, of spending his life with her, had not
entered his mind--such a thought would have struck him then as
presumptuous.  A royal princess would not have appeared to him more
inaccessible than this Dutch girl with her beauty and her ideals and her
ingrained prejudices--prejudices that stretched, an artificially fed
gulf of bitter waters, between them.

"I think you are wonderful," he said to her one day.

They were seated under the pepper trees in the garden, and the sun,
which was declining, slanted its rays through the fern-like foliage and
played in bright patterns on her face and dress.  She turned her face,
with the sunlight playing upon it, towards him, and her eyes smiled
mockingly.

"I suppose many men have told you so?" he added self-consciously.

"I meet so many men on the Karroo who are likely to tell me those
things," she answered.  "How often have you said that to other girls?"

"Not once," he answered truthfully.

She laughed, and the laugh sounded frankly incredulous.

"But--there is some one? ...  There must be someone."

He was sensible anew as he met her gaze of the barrier which divided
them.  And inexplicably her words called up the memory of a pair of
brown, disapproving eyes; of a rock-strewn coast and moonlight upon the
sea; of moonlight striking through the oleanders in a quiet road and
falling upon a serious, upturned face; of the feel of soft lips meeting
his...

"Isn't there some one?" the sceptical voice persisted.

And he answered slowly:

"I--don't--know."

He wondered why until that moment he had not given Brenda a thought.
The more dominating personality of Honor, with her surprising beauty,
had submerged the other affair entirely.  In less than a month he had
almost forgotten the girl of the beach.

"Ah!"  Honor exclaimed, and the note of disbelief was still
distinguishable in her voice.  "There is always some one."

He found himself wishing almost fiercely that he had not admitted that
state of doubt, but had repudiated promptly the suggestion conveyed in
her question.  He had put himself in a false position.  There was not
the slightest foundation for her supposition.  It even crossed his mind
to explain this--to go into details.  He had a profound conviction that
it would be prejudicial to his interests to leave matters in this
unsatisfactory, indeterminate condition.

While he was weighing these important considerations, Honor abruptly
snapped his chain of thought with a wholly irrelevant remark about the
sunset; and he realised with a sense of mingled regret and relief that
the time was past in which any explanation was possible.  Honor never
encouraged personalities, as he had noticed before; whenever the talk
showed a tendency to slip to a more intimate note than usual she
speedily brought it back to the impersonal.

He ignored the sunset.  He did not even glance towards it.

"When are you going to show me more of the beauty of the Karroo?" he
asked.  "You have never taken me for a second ride."

"Oh!" she cried, and he wondered whether it were simply the glow of the
setting sun that flushed her cheeks so brightly.  "We have ridden every
day."

"We have ridden, yes--but never alone since that first morning.  The
magic of the solitudes is not found among crowds."

"Crowds!" murmured Honor, with a suspicion of laughter in her voice.

"Don't tease," he entreated.  "You know exactly what I mean.  One mind
not entirely in sympathy with another can create its multitudes.  Won't
you go with me again alone in search of the truth and the mystery which
make the beauty of the veld?  I want to see these things with your
eyes."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because of your wonderful insight.  One person looking into a puddle
would see only the mud at the bottom, and another would perceive
sufficient beauties of light and shade to transform even mud into a
glorious substance.  You have the gift of imagination--which is merely
another term for being able to see truth.  Teach me to see it also.  I
begin to believe that my destiny has led me here that I may learn that
of you."

"To see truth!" she said, and regarded him thoughtfully.  "I wonder if
you are being sincere?  One doesn't learn those things from another
human being.  But I'll ride with you--to-morrow.  Rise an hour earlier,
and we will start before any one is about."

She stood up suddenly and faced the west.

"See!" she said.  "The sun has gone.  I must go in and see about
supper."

He stood up also, and interposed himself in her path and looked down
into her face, flushed with the sunset, and very fair and earnest in
expression.

"I am always entirely sincere with you," he said.  "You mustn't ever
again question my sincerity."

Honor appeared surprised, even a little startled; his outburst was
unusual and unexpected, and his manner was very insistent.  Without
intending it she had hurt him; she regretted that.

"I was mistaken," she acknowledged generously.  "I believe that you are
sincere."

Then she left him, standing in the path feeling a little surprised at
himself, and went swiftly up to the stoep and entered the house.  For
the first time in her life she had experienced shyness in a man's
presence.

Matheson remained for a while in a state of indecision; then he went
indoors and stayed in his room until supper was ready.  From his window
he watched Krige ride away, as he had done on several occasions during
the past week.  That the business upon which he rode was important,
Matheson judged from the fact that Krige dressed with care on these
evenings, and discarded the veldschoens he used daily about the farm for
highly varnished black boots; his clothes also were black.  Invariably
he rode away in advance of supper, and seldom returned before eleven
o'clock, which was late for a man who rose daily with the sun.

Matheson was undecided whether these journeys were taken in pursuance of
revolutionary or matrimonial designs.  Krige did not wear the air of a
lover; but a man may cherish romance who does not cut a romantic figure.
It was difficult to imagine Krige in ardent mood; yet the picture of
Krige as a married man and a father, seemed perfectly natural and
likely; he was not the type of man who remains single.

No reference of his absence was ever made by the other members of the
family; only his place at the supper-table was not set for him, which
omission, with the agreeable substitute of the company of Mrs Krige and
one of her daughters for Krige's silent presence on the stoep after
supper, marked the general acceptance of the fact.

Matheson experienced an increasing curiosity as to the nature of these
journeys.  Some inward prompting suggested that the message for Holman
depended upon these nightly pilgrimages; and into his mind the first
misgivings as to the honourableness of acting as intermediary in this
business insinuated themselves, and gave him food for much unpleasant
thought.  A man has no sort of moral right to traffic in his honour.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

When Honor appeared on the stoep the next morning, dressed for the ride
and carrying the early cup of coffee, the horses were saddled and
waiting below the stoep, and Matheson stood in the path beside them
doing something to his stirrup leather.  He left what he was doing and
came up the steps and joined her.

"That's too bad," she cried; "you've done all the work this morning."

"No," he contradicted, taking the cup from her hand.  "You made the
coffee.  I call that sharing.  But I have been waiting a good while."

"It's early though," she said, and looked beyond the aloe fence to where
the dew spread its silvery cobwebbed veil along the ground.

"Yes; it's early."

He drank the coffee slowly, standing beside her watching the soft colour
deepening her clear skin, and the look of pleased expectancy shining in
her eyes.  He wondered whether she too knew the satisfaction which he
was feeling in anticipation of their uncompanioned ride?  It was not
possible that she felt it in the same degree.

He put down the empty cup and assisted her to mount.

"Which direction do we take to-day?" he asked.  "Last time we rode to
the south."

"So you remember?"  She looked up, smiling, "There isn't any choice
to-day.  I have a letter to carry for Andreas to Cornelius Nel.  The
Nels' farm is about five miles from here.  You will see it when we top
the rise."

"Isn't it somewhat early for making calls?" he asked.

"We need only leave the letter," she said.  "We will stop there on our
way home.  It is possible they will want us to stay to breakfast; but if
you prefer--"

"Oh, please!" he interrupted.  "It's for you to decide."

"Yes.  But you don't understand.  Cornelius hates the English; his
brother, Herman, is different.  Often they do not speak for months as a
result of political disagreement.  The farm is jointly theirs, but they
have separate houses."

"In that case," he said, smiling involuntarily, "if we remain to
breakfast, it would seem wise that you should breakfast with Cornelius
and I with Herman.  Are they married, by the way?"

"Cornelius is."

"And does Mrs Nel share her husband's prejudices?"

Honor reflected a moment.  Then unexpectedly she broke into a laugh.

"Mrs Nel is of the opinion that had the Lord intended the different
peoples of the earth to remain on friendly terms.  He would never have
contrived the confusion of tongues."

"Ah!"  Matheson's smile broadened.  "There is a good deal to be urged in
defence of her argument," he said.

"Do you know,"--Honor glanced at him swiftly--"I believe they will like
you.  You have none of the irritating characteristics of the average
Englishman."

"Look here!" he remonstrated.  "When you disparage my countrymen, you
disparage me.  I wish you wouldn't say those things.  I don't know how
far you are in earnest, but I can't take it as a compliment when you
dissociate me from my country.  Why not practise a little forbearance?"

"I think we will not remain to breakfast with the Nels," was all she
said in response, and rode on with her face turned from him and her chin
held high.

Matheson felt exasperated.  The qualities which appealed to her,
tolerance and a sympathetic understanding, were inexplicably entirely
lacking in herself: she did not desire to take any but a personal view.
The injuries which she, with her family, refused to forget were ancient
scars now; but they kept these scars from healing by constant probing,
indifferent to the fact that the unhealed wound is painful only to the
sufferer.  She had not any sense of fair play, he decided, for all her
English blood.

It was rather a silent ride they took that morning.  Matheson, sensible
of the tension, of the curious thrill of antagonism which he felt was
common in both, held to his point stubbornly and refused to make
overtures.  He was not in the wrong; it was not for him to offer
reparation.

His thoughts crystallised round her while he rode.  He attempted to get
a clearer insight into her mind.  To grasp her point of view, and that
of other Boers who thought and felt as she did, seemed to him essential
in order to live harmoniously with these people.  But her outlook was so
circumscribed, so amazingly egotistical.  This grievance was like every
other thing which becomes a personal matter--a cult narrowed down to
pettiness, which alienates even its sympathisers by the selfishness of
its aims.  He failed to understand how a beautiful nature could become
corrupted by bitterness.  It spoilt her, as all abnormal qualities must
spoil what is simple and direct.

Honor brought her head round presently and met the eyes which he turned
in response to her movement from the contemplation of steel-blue
distances seen between his horse's ears, to fix them upon her face.

"You came out in search of truth," she said, with a suggestion of irony
in her tones.  "Have you found it?"

"No," he answered bluntly.  "How can I find what you refuse to show me?"

She flushed brightly and made no answer.  After a moment or so he said:

"I think you are a little vexed that I asked you to ride alone with me
this morning."

"No," she contradicted quickly, "no.  There is no reason why I should
not wish to ride with you.  The first ride we took was at my suggestion.
I have taken pleasure in watching your interest."

Matheson felt while he looked at her that he had never been so baffled
by any one in his life; her psychology was altogether beyond his
understanding.  On the whole he enjoyed that ride, though what
constituted the enjoyment he would have been at a loss to explain.
Possibly the assurance he felt, even in the moment of her annoyance,
that despite her prejudices she realised, perhaps admitted to herself,
that he had a hold upon her which threatened to weaken those carefully
fostered antagonisms, was a sufficient satisfaction.  He was certain of
her interest in himself, and this gave him unbounded pleasure.  His
reciprocal interest was advancing with amazing rapidity.  One soft look
from those eyes which held a smile in them would cause him a thrill of
happiness such as he had never known before.  She excited him.  Also her
influence set stirring within him the beginning of a new responsibility
which had for its ultimate object the complete reconciliation of her
people with his own.  It was unthinkable that Honor and he should remain
enemies.  The two races had buried their grievances and become united.
But there were factions on both sides which remained outside the Union.
He hated to think of Honor placed in one of these camps of
irreconcilables.  She was altogether too fine for that company.  That
sort of thing, racial jealousy, was what the undereducated man and woman
mistook for patriotism.  It is the lowest intelligences which keep alive
the sense of injury.

While these new thoughts were shaping themselves in his mind, another
idea presented itself which seemed to open out a way to some sort of an
understanding.  The solution lay with Herman Nel--the Boer who did not
hate the English, and wrangled with his brother on the strength of his
convictions.  He must talk with Herman Nel.  From him he might receive
much useful information.

When he arrived at this determination they were already within sight of
the farm.  As they came nearer Honor pointed with her whip to a round
cob building with a grass roof, which stood apart from the homestead and
the outbuildings, as though, like its owner, it withdrew from what it
failed to agree with, maintaining a comfortable isolation on open ground
that defied surprise.

"That is the rondavel," she explained, "which Herman Nel built for
himself when his brother married.  It's small, but it is very
comfortable.  When he marries he will have to enlarge it."

"Is he thinking of marrying?"  Matheson asked.

"Oh, yes.  He wants to marry Freidja.  But just now they have
quarrelled."

"It would appear that he has a quarrelsome disposition," Matheson said.

"No."  She smiled ever so faintly.  "He is rather like yourself--he
exasperates other people."

"Ah!"  He smiled too.  "I should like to meet Mr Herman Nel."

Mr Nel came out from his rondavel at that moment, stood for a second or
so looking in their direction, and then came swiftly towards them.
Honor, who was riding in the direction of the homestead, changed the
horse's course and went to meet him.  It occurred to Matheson that she
would have preferred to avoid the meeting; she did not seem pleased.

Nel came on unhesitatingly.  When a short distance off he raised his
wide-brimmed hat and flourished it; and Matheson observed that his hair
was turning grey; grey showed also in his short pointed beard.  He was a
man of middle height and spare build, rather handsome, with an alert
expression, and clear blue eyes with a humorous twinkle in them.  The
twinkle in them faded when they rested upon Matheson.  It appeared to
Matheson that they refuted Honor's assertion of their owner's bias in
favour of the English.  Nel's face expressed curiosity, and something
which looked very like contempt, as it lifted to his own.  He
transferred his attention almost immediately to Honor.

"So it's you?" he said, shaking hands.  "I gathered from Andreas last
night that some one would be over from Benfontein in the morning.  I was
on the watch to intercept you."

"I am afraid you are disappointed," Honor said with a laugh.

"Not disappointed, but not wholly satisfied," he answered.  "How are
they all at home?"

She made some reply in Dutch, which Matheson failed to understand, and
which did not seem to afford Nel particular pleasure.  He made no
response, but looked somewhat dejected.  Honor turned abruptly and
brought Matheson into the conversation by effecting an introduction.

"Mr Matheson," she explained, as the two shook hands, "is staying at
Benfontein."

"Yes, I know."  The tone was short and lacked cordiality.  "Mr Holman's
friend, eh?"

For the first time since his arrival in the district Matheson heard
Holman's name spoken without friendliness; also the speaker gave it an
un-English pronunciation; he had noticed that previously with the
Kriges, and had put it down to the Dutch accent.  It might be, he
reflected, that Nel was jealous of Holman's popularity at Benfontein.

"I was admiring your curious dwelling as we rode up," he said.  "You've
built on the native style.  I like it."

Nel was vain about his house: he unbent a little.

"You must come and see it," he said.  "Look in on your return.  If I am
not there, go inside.  There are no secrets--it is open to inspection."

He looked towards Honor.

"You will be staying to breakfast? ...  Leentje expects you."

Honor hesitated; and Matheson, observing her hesitation, explained the
difficulty.

"Miss Krige doesn't trust me sufficiently to allow me to breakfast with
her friends," he said, smiling.  "We belong to opposite camps.  Couldn't
I inspect the rondavel while she delivers her message?"

"So!" said Herman Nel, obviously at a loss to understand the position.
"I thought you would have business with Cornelius.  But I will be very
pleased if you will breakfast with me instead.  They will not let Miss
Krige leave until after breakfast."

He laid a hand on the sweat-darkened, satin neck of Honor's horse; and
the beast turned its head and nosed him with friendly interest.  The
hand moved with the slow, rhythmic, caressing touch of the animal lover.
He looked up at Honor smilingly.

"There will be a lot for you to see.  The baby has cut his first tooth;
that is perhaps the most important thing.  When you have seen everything
and have had breakfast, come to my bachelor quarters and eat meiboss
with us.  I will take care of Mr Matheson."

Still Honor appeared reluctant.  Matheson could not but notice it; it
seemed as though she hesitated to leave him with Herman Nel.

"I think I ought not to stay," she said.

"I think you will not be able to leave," Nel replied.  "When Leentje
tells me a thing is to be so, I accept it; it is less unpleasant to do
that I like peace.  You will not forget that I am expecting you to
meiboss, and that I may not stay too long by my house?"

"Cornelius will think it strange, perhaps, that Mr Matheson should
breakfast with you," Honor suggested.

"If Cornelius gives you to understand that he is either surprised or
displeased, extend the invitation to meiboss to him and Leentje," he
replied.

She laughed, and flicked the reins a little vexedly, and rode on.

Nel kept pace beside the second horse.  Matheson, despite his protest,
dismounted and walked on the other side.

"Is this your first visit to this district, Mr Matheson?" he asked.

"It is," he answered.  "And I believe that in the short time I have been
here more thought and experience have been crowded than during any other
period of my life--certainly any period of like duration."

The eyes of the two men met in a long steady scrutiny.  Nel was the
first to withdraw his gaze.

"That is interesting," he replied slowly--"and surprising; so little
happens here.  But the less that happens the more time there is for
thought.  In my rondavel I have much leisure for thinking; but staying
by Benfontein you are in good company.  They are nice people, the
Kriges--yes!"

The undoubted distrust with which Nel viewed him was forced anew on
Matheson's notice.  He realised clearly that it would be necessary to
allay this distrust before he could hope to gain his confidence.  The
man on the other side of the horse was shrewd, and it was not altogether
surprising that he should entertain doubts of the Englishman's honesty
of purpose.  He knew the errand that had brought him there, and formed
his judgment in accordance with his knowledge.  Matheson's claim that he
belonged to a different camp puzzled him considerably.  He regarded the
speaker as a liar.  Men who work evil stealthily are not addicted as a
rule to truth.

"We will leave your horse in the shade of this tree," he said.  "My boy
will see to him until you are ready to start."

He called for the boy, and then led the way inside.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The rondavel was curious rather than beautiful.  It was built entirely
on the native principle, save that it had a fireplace and properly
constructed chimney.  In the centre four uprights of timber supported
the roof--young trees which had been felled and barked under Nel's
supervision.  The roof was of wattle and reed, the thatching of which
had been done entirely by native women because in Nel's opinion they
understood the work thoroughly.  The mud floor, smooth and of a perfect
evenness, was subjected regularly to the unsavoury process of smearing--
washing over the surface with a weak solution of cow-dung.  This is less
unpleasant than it sounds, and is admittedly the best treatment for mud
floors; it prevents crumbling and unevenness of surface.  Upon the floor
were one or two good skins.  A curious curtain of strips of hide
attached to the supports divided the hut into separate apartments.  Nel
held aside this reimpe curtain and disclosed his bed.

"When I go to bed," he explained, "I draw the curtain back; then my
sleeping apartment is quite spacious."

Behind the rondavel a second and smaller hut had been erected.  This
served as a kitchen and his boy's quarters; and from this hut presently
a Kaffir appeared and spread a cloth on the round table, and brought in
the breakfast.  They took their seats.

"You would have fared better by my brother's house," Nel observed,
helping his guest to porridge with which raw cream was served.  "I live
simply here.  It suits me.  There are buttered mealies to follow--and
biltong, if you care for it.  It's quite good eating cut fine--a
pocket-knife is best for the purpose.  I'll cut you some to eat with
bread and butter."

"Thanks," Matheson answered.  "I call it excellent fare.  For myself I
should be satisfied with the porridge and that fine water melon to
finish with."

"Yes!"  Nel regarded the huge green fruit that furnished the centre of
the table.  "We grow good melons--a very pleasant and refreshing fruit.
It makes a nice confit, too.  My sister-in-law is very clever in that
way.  It is she who keeps me supplied with meiboss, and other agreeable
preserves."

He went into a dissertation on the unsurpassed excellence of Dutch
housewifery, and extolled the Dutchwoman's knowledge in all branches of
cookery, and the special preparation of the produce of the country.
Matheson was not particularly interested in the subject; but the speaker
and his quaint abode and curious mode of living interested him
enormously.  He had imagined that all Dutchmen were phlegmatic; slow of
speech, slow of thought, heavy in their humour, and violent in temper.
This Dutchman was altogether different from any type he had met.
Instinctively he liked him.  He had a feeling that Nel was predisposed
towards reciprocating this liking; but the man was cautious.  He talked
continuously; and while he talked he was quite plainly taking stock of
his visitor--thinking him out.  He could not place the Englishman, and
was frankly puzzled.  The Englishman was agreeable, and seemed honest;
but an honest man does not undertake a dishonourable mission.

"I expected to see you at the meeting last night," he said presently.

He spoke with some abruptness, and fumbled in his pocket for his knife,
which he opened deliberately, keeping his gaze fixed on Matheson's face
the while.

"It is the first I have heard of any meeting," Matheson replied.  "I
suppose Mr Krige attended?"

"Yes.  You think it wise to keep away, eh?"

Matheson stared hard at the speaker.  The shrewd eyes withdrew their
gaze and fixed themselves on the dried buckflesh which was being finely
sliced with the sharp blade of the clasp knife.  Matheson felt incensed.

"I don't know what you mean," he said.  "I wasn't invited to attend.
Why should it seem to you wise that I should keep away?"

Nel went on quietly dicing the biltong.

"When a man sells his country he does not usually attend the auction,"
he said.

Matheson's head went up with a jerk.  It was the most astonishing moment
in his life.  Here was a man whose hospitality he was partaking of, with
whom a minute before he had been in amicable conversation, accusing him
of one of the worst crimes in the calendar; and for the life of him he
could not tell whether the accusation were just or not.  That was the
worst of it, the most serious side of the business; he did not know the
extent of his responsibility.

He raised his hand, prepared to bring his clenched fist passionately
down on the table; but his arm dropped to his side, the hand fell open
loosely.  He sat back in his seat and stared amazedly at the composed
face of the man who accused him of a thing so vile, so absolutely
unthinkable.

"I think, Mr Nel, you will have to take that back," he said quietly,
"or prove your words."  And then, losing for a space the grip he had
managed to get on his feelings, he burst out with some vehemence: "Damn
it!  What the devil do you mean?"

Nel pushed the plate of biltong towards the middle of the table,
pocketed his knife, and sat forward, leaning with his arms on the cloth.

"You resent my words," he said.  "Why should you?  Are you not the paid
messenger of a German secret agent?"

"Holman! ...  You mean Holman?  Holman is--"

"A German," interrupted Nel coolly.  "In the Colony perhaps it suits him
to pass as British.  If you had read the letter you delivered to Andreas
Krige you would have seen that he signs himself Holmann.  That isn't the
English way of spelling the name."

"You've read the letter?"  Matheson asked quickly.

"No."  Nel smiled drily.  "I saw only the signature.  They do not trust
me with the letter--no!  When they can they keep me from their meetings.
But last night I attended.  I attend to talk common sense.  They do not
like common sense; they do not listen.  When I talk Andreas Krige closes
his eyes; when I have finished he opens them again and resumes as though
I had not spoken."  The Boer became suddenly excited.  "It's devil's
work you are engaged upon, Mr Matheson.  I am not surprised you feel
shame to acknowledge your part in it."

Matheson leaned his arms on the table also and brought his face close to
the speaker's.  With an effort he controlled his temper.  He was on the
fringe of a discovery; he did not wish to prejudice his chances of
learning what was so vitally important that he should know by rousing
the other to anger.  To learn more of this secret business was all that
mattered for the present.  In those days the fact that Holman was German
was not in itself significant, but it was remarkable that he should
conceal his nationality and pass as British.  The whole thing in its
lying secrecy wore a very sinister look.

"It seems rather much to ask you to believe, Mr Nel, that I am less
well informed than yourself as to the nature of this business of
Holman's.  He told me it was political; and I gathered that it was some
party squabble.  I consented to act as the bearer of his letter in part
payment of a sum of money I owed him.  I also undertook to keep my mouth
shut.  But in opening it to you I cannot be said to be giving
information.  You, know more than I do.  It would seem I have been
assisting in what is contrary to the interests of the Empire.  I would
let my hand rot off before I applied knowingly to such work."

Nel shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't care that for the British Empire," he said, snapping his
fingers.  "It's working against the good of this country that concerns
me.  Look at this country, prosperous and free and developing rapidly.
South Africa was never more prosperous.  The conditions for the white
races are favourable to all alike.  We in South Africa enjoy as great
liberty and freedom as any country; yet men like Krige and Cornelius--
ah! and older and more responsible men whom I could name if I would--
would plunge the country into bloodshed out of a bitter spirit of
revenge.  They have a sense of personal grievance; they seek to wipe it
out with no care nor compunction for the wrong they will do others.  We
can't get anything through war that we haven't got.  It is merely
nominal privileges they seek.  They want to separate South Africa from
the British Empire.  Even if they succeeded, what would they gain?  Do
they imagine they would be allowed to keep so great a prize? ...  There
is only one sure means of conquest."  He smiled, a slow, quiet smile.
"It isn't warfare...  Propagation... that is the secret We multiply; and
I tell you surely we will people South Africa.  Your people come and go,
but the Boer lives by the land.  South Africa is his Fatherland.  I bid
them to have patience; but they want to see in this generation the
result of the seed which lies in the womb of the future."

"It's rebellion, then, that is hatching?"  Matheson said.

The present concerned him much more vitally than the future.  The future
of South Africa he believed was quite secure; there was little need to
worry about that.  He reflected for a space.

"The overthrow of the government...  Yes; I begin to understand."

Again he was silent, staring into the Dutchman's flushed, earnest face.
Nel's eyes, alight with patriotic zeal, returned his gaze.

"I would do anything," the Boer said--"anything in the world, to crush
this spirit of rebellion--to rid the land of it for ever.  There must be
an end of racial bitterness.  The welfare of the country depends upon
the co-operation of Dutch and British.  The Boers must learn to crush
down personal feeling.  The best men have done that in the interests of
the Fatherland.  What matters it, the flag we prosper under?  The
country belongs to the people who live in it.  It's personal feeling
that is at the bottom of this discontent.  There is no patriotism in it.
It is not the wrong done them as a people, it's the personal grievance
that rankles.  The whole spirit of rebellion is fed on personal animus.
These men would injure their country out of a spirit of revenge.  There
is no sense in it; it is childish."

He paused, and scrutinised Matheson closely for a moment or so.

"You say you are not wilfully assisting in sowing seeds of discord
throughout the Union, yet you admit being in the pay of a man who has
carried on this devil's work for years.  One day we will reap the
harvest; and the result will be that brother will be against brother,
friend against friend.  A bloody civil war is not a pleasant thing to
contemplate.  Think well before you meddle again in what you don't
understand.  I will give you a message to bear to your friend, Mr
Holmann: tell him from me that he is a damned scoundrel."

"I shall probably have a similar message to deliver to him on my own
account," Matheson answered.  "I am obliged to you for enlightening me.
And I can only say that I hope you believe me when I give you my word of
honour that I had not the remotest suspicion of what you have informed
me.  I'm amazed.  Of course, I've heard the Kriges' story; I know they
feel bitterly towards the British.  But I imagined they voiced a quite
insignificant minority."

"They voice a minority--but not insignificant.  Mostly this madness--for
it is madness--shows itself among the most ignorant of the backveld
Boers, in whom racial prejudice dies hard.  They are not properly
civilised, these men.  They want freedom--freedom from taxation, from
laws, and restraints.  They are of the pioneer breed.  They make good
trekkers, but they don't submit kindly to government.  The men who lead
them know better; but they are actuated by jealousy and hate.  They are
mad with hate, just mad; and a madman who isn't under restraint is a
danger to the population."

With surprising suddenness Nel's face softened wonderfully, the anger
died out of his eyes.

"I get carried away," he said apologetically.  "I feel strongly, Mr
Matheson.  This matter is the one subject of dissension between me and
my brother.  Cornelius, like Lot's wife, cannot look forward because
some evil influence impels him always to turn back towards the shadow of
the past."

He put out a hand as though he waved the subject aside, and returned to
his neglected duty as host.

"Come!" he said.  "You are not eating.  You mustn't starve yourself
because I talk too much."

He passed the plate of biltong to his visitor and helped himself at the
same time.

"The best guarantee that I accept your word that you acted in
ignorance," he said presently, "is that I have spoken as freely as I
have.  If you would, you could help largely in counteracting the evil
influences that are working to undermine the peace of this country."

He paused; and Matheson, looking up to inquire in what way he could be
useful, discovered the searching eyes scrutinising him anew with
disconcerting attentiveness.  He laughed quietly.

"I don't believe you are very sure of me yet," he said.

"Oh! yes, I am... as sure as a man can be of another whom he knows so
slightly.  What I would say to you is, go back--you can do no good
here--go back, and help to instil in the minds of your own countrymen a
feeling of greater kindliness towards the Dutch.  The racial bitterness
is not all on our side.  A little forbearance, a more generous spirit--
what you call fair play, will lead to a better understanding.  I believe
that under tactful and sympathetic conditions of government the spirit
of rebellion which exists to-day, which will exist for some time while
men turn to look back at that shadow of the past, will eventually die
out; and the union of the two white races in South Africa will become
cemented.  The prosperous future of the country depends on that.  It is
one camp; there must be no enemies in it."

His mouth lifted at the corners humorously.

"This farm is an example of dissension in the camp," he said.  "I build
myself a rondavel, with a rope ladder leading to the roof which I can
draw up after me.  When we have eaten I will show you.  No one knows of
that retreat.  I have kept my secret; then, when I do not wish to be
found, I climb into my secret chamber, and they look for me in vain.  My
rondavel has a double roof."

Matheson looked up with surprise at the innocent-looking grass roof,
while Nel observed him smilingly.

"A child with a toy!--eh, Mr Matheson?" he said.  "I was just a big boy
when I planned my house."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Nel showed something of the disposition of a boy when later he revealed
to Matheson the secret of his rondavel.  He fixed his rope ladder to a
beam in the roof, mounted, and, removing a part of the thatch,
disappeared into the obscurity beyond through the opening he had made.
For a moment his face showed in the opening, smiling down on Matheson,
who stood below watching the proceedings with interest.

"Follow me," he said.  "It is quite spacious up here, but somewhat hot.
And there are cockroaches."

Matheson swarmed up the ladder after him, and thrust his head and
shoulders through the opening and looked about him.  It was difficult to
see anything in the gloom, but after a while he made out Nel's figure
seated with the shoulders against the thatch.  It was not possible to
stand upright; the room at its highest point was not above five feet;
but there was space enough for three or four persons to sit with ease,
and a certain amount of ventilation came through holes in the grass
roof.

"One would not perhaps use it for a sitting-room," Nel said; "but it is
a good hiding place."

"Excellent," Matheson replied.  "No one would suppose, judging from the
exterior, that there was space enough between the roof for a room like
this.  It's deceptive from below."

"Yes.  I decided on a high roof for coolness, and the double thatch for
the same reason.  It was an afterthought to make use of the space
between.  I planned this loft, and elaborated it until it developed into
my secret chamber.  The movable thatch and rope ladder I made myself.  I
will ask you to descend now.  It would not distress me if Miss Krige
surprised my secret, but I would not have it generally known."

Matheson, as he observed Nel unhitch his ladder and fold it up and
thrust it inside a chest which stood on the floor, realised that this
display of confidence was Herman Nel's way of showing that he trusted
him, that he accepted his word as to his ignorance of the nature of the
enterprise he had so heedlessly embarked upon.  It was a practical proof
of faith in his future discretion.

They resumed their seats and discussed South African politics and the
future of the country, until the arrival of Honor, with Cornelius, his
wife, and the baby, broke up their talk.

Mrs Nel was a heavily made woman, dark complexioned and far from
handsome.  Cornelius had married her for no physical attraction, but for
the many domestic qualities for which she was justly renowned.  The baby
was not handsome either; but it was good, and in Cornelius' opinion a
good baby was preferable to a pretty baby.  He, himself, was rather like
his brother, only taller and more stoutly built.

Matheson was introduced, and the newcomers shook hands.

"Why did you not come to my house?" asked Cornelius.  "My wife and I
would have been very pleased."

Matheson explained that the rondavel had interested him, that Mr Herman
Nel had kindly invited him to breakfast, and he had been glad to accept
Mrs Nel laughed when he finished speaking.

"Ach!  Herman lives like the Kaffirs," she said.  "There is never
anything to eat by his house.  You will be hungry just now."

"Indeed, we fared sumptuously," Matheson answered.

"And we have not finished," Herman Nel put in.  "We are about to taste
some of your very good meiboss.  Come and join us."

Mrs Nel took some meiboss, and allowed the b

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