The Shadow of the Past Part 22

"In my opinion that is regrettable," Matheson observed. "I am in favour of race preservation."

"Yes! Well, so am I. The dark man has his uses."

"He is a lazy schelm," put in Oom Koos, his customary amiability temporarily eclipsed behind his disapproval of the talk. "And the English are spoiling him. They give him too much money. Wages go up yearly; and the higher the wage the less he works."

"That's the rule all up the scale, isn't it?" Matheson asked with a laugh. "It's a sign of civilisation, anyway."

"This country is only in the making," Krige remarked, in his slow unexpected way of breaking in upon a conversation in which he had taken no previous part. "European principles don't apply out here."

"One has to live in this country for many years," Mrs Krige threw in, loyally supporting her son's statement, "before one begins to understand it; and even then there is always much to learn."

Which obvious remark put a period to the conversation, and when the talk revived ethnological discussion was tacitly tabooed.

With the finish of breakfast Oom Koos announced his intention to start.

It was a long drive to De Aar, and he had business to transact there.

He did not consult Matheson. He went with Andreas Krige to the stables to superintend the inspanning of his horses, and later drove up to the fence of spiky aloes and waited for his pa.s.senger in the patch of shade which they cast along the ground.

Matheson flung his things into a suit-case and hurried out. They were all there, grouped about the spider, with the exception only of Honor; but that exception meant everything to him. An overwhelming regret seized him. He was going away--she was allowing him to go--like a stranger, without so much as a touch of the hand, without a word of farewell. He rebelled against this. He resented it All these people would wonder--they would understand perhaps. He imagined he detected satisfaction in Andreas' eyes, and suspected Oom Koos' habitual twinkle of being a.s.sumed at his expense. Rage, which was in part misery, gripped him, and filled him with a desire to do something violent, which was none the less imperative because of its futility and utter absurdity. He had to make an effort at control before he could face these people calmly, and climb quietly to his place beside the ma.s.sive Dutchman and respond to the chorus of farewells.

In his angry misery he forgot that he had had no talk with Krige about the message he had promised to carry for him. It did not occur to him until after the horses started to wonder why Krige had made no reference to this matter. When he thought about it, it struck him as significant, this ignoring of the subject. Possibly Honor had warned her brother against taking the course he had intended. It did not matter anyway.

That was finished. He was leaving the farm with the sinister name, and carrying away with him a sense of the ill luck which was a.s.sociated with its strange t.i.tle.

He turned in his seat to look back at the low white building, gleaming in the brilliant sunlight with a hard dazzling effect which hurt the eyes. Somewhere behind the gleaming walls, beyond the wide open windows, Honor hid from him--complex and beautiful and incomprehensible--a bright life overshadowed with the tragedy of the past.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

It was Matheson's intention to return to the work--to the old firm, if it would take him back--which at Holman's instigation he had thrown up for the uncertain but more attractive methods of livelihood which speculation, under the expert tutelage of the German, offered. It seemed a long time since those days of careless adventurous living, though the actual period was under a month. He had thought so much, thought more deeply, during that month than he had ever done before.

And he had felt things--understood with a wider sympathy than he had any idea he possessed. It was not so much that he had developed, as that he had tumbled by accident upon those unexplored mental regions which remain in cases of indulged indolence often unsuspected. The discovery had only now come about, but his feet had unconsciously turned into the road on the morning when he had first seen Brenda Upton, and been moved to unaccustomed self-a.n.a.lysis by the criticism in her eyes. It had pulled him up. He had not before considered himself or life seriously; the sense of responsibility had not touched him.

From that time onward he had felt his way forward, as an explorer might, curious and heedful, observant of every fresh surprise of the unfamiliar way, inquiring, acquisitive, immensely interested. And now he had received a check, the most serious check he had met with in life. It was not very clear how this would affect him; it was bound to leave a deeper impression on his mind than anything that had gone before. For the present he was conscious only of a feeling of defeat, of exasperated misery, that moved him to the same insensate anger that a man tortured with toothache feels sometimes towards the cause of his discomfort.

It was not Honor he was angry with; it was the systematic perversion of ideals, and the hypocrisy which exalted this mischievous doctrine into something fine and enn.o.bling that enraged him. He saw Honor as a bright soul following blindly the path into which others had directed her steps, following it tirelessly, the brightness fading and the beauty of her fading with it as her nature became more warped and embittered with the years. No nature, however fine and sweet, can pursue a policy of revenge without hurt to itself.

During the greater part of the long drive from the farm to the hotel at which he had lunched on his arrival, Matheson sat wrapped in his own gloomy meditations, while Mynheer Marais smoked his huge calabash and grunted encouragement to the horses at frequent intervals, occasionally turning to address a remark to his silent companion.

It was plain to Matheson that Mynheer Marais did not trust him; he was reserved and guarded in his speech, confining himself to such safe topics as the climate and the uncertain distribution of the rainfall, and the visitations of G.o.d in the form of drought and other ills peculiar to the country.

"You will go back to England some day, perhaps--eh?" he suggested--"and will talk of these things and be glad you are out of the sun."

"I don't think that at all likely," Matheson replied. "It is my intention to colonise."

Oom Koos scrutinised him closely and smiled and stroked his horses'

flanks gently with the whip.

"When you have made much money you will return to England," he said confidently. "That is what all the English do. Ja."

Which speech tended only to harden Matheson in his resolve to remain in the country and do his part towards furthering British interests there.

Why should a man regard this, or any, country simply as a place in which to acc.u.mulate wealth? The ultimate purpose of a man's life rightly planned was to found a home and carry on: the getting of wealth should be concomitant and subordinated to that idea. Herman Nel had placed his hand upon the very heart of truth when he a.s.serted that the secret of conquest lay not in destruction, but in the production and safeguarding of life. To pa.s.s on leaving one's life work finished with one's own brief span is to fail in the greatest achievement possible to the individual.

At the hotel Matheson and Mynheer Marais separated. The big Boer was well known in the town, and as soon as he appeared on the stoep of the hotel he was accosted by some Dutch acquaintance, with whom Matheson left him exchanging greetings in the taal.

Later he saw Oom Koos again for a few minutes after lunch; and then, accompanied by his friend, Oom Koos departed for the town, which was the last Matheson saw of him, a huge, ungainly, genial figure, talking and gesticulating freely, walking heavily amid the dust that stirred lazily about his big feet as he disappeared in the golden haze of the sultry afternoon.

Matheson experienced a curious and inexplicable loneliness after he had watched the lumbering figure of the Dutchman out of sight. The going of Oom Koos closed the Benfontein episode finally. He felt as though a door had been slammed in his face and the key turned in the lock.

The same feeling of loneliness, that sense of being shut out, clung to him after he left De Aar. It remained with him throughout the journey to Johannesburg. But with the sight of the straggling town, of its innumerable buildings and red streets, its busy crowded station, other emotions held him, and obliterated for a time the strange unaccustomed sensation of being adrift and without bearings. At least he could find his bearings here. He knew very well what he intended to do.

He drove to his old rooms and settled in. Then he went straightway to ascertain if there was any likelihood of getting back with his old firm, and was more successful than he had antic.i.p.ated. The firm had a big Government contract at Cape Town and was glad to take him on in connexion with the work. That settled the uncertainty as to his future finances.

He returned to his rooms considerably lightened in spirit, and with as many daily papers as he could procure. He had been living out of the world, and had not the remotest idea of what was going on in it. There is nothing so isolating as existing without newspapers. Beyond a Dutch paper, princ.i.p.ally concerned with agricultural matters, which Andreas received once a week, no newspaper, so far as Matheson was aware, ever found its way to the farm.

Having read his papers, which contained nothing of particular interest-- the country was still recovering from the stupefying effects of the great strike and the subsequent deportations, and did not appear to have altogether regained its breath--he went out again for the purpose of hunting up Holman and having a plain talk with him. He found him in the private room he called his office, where he transacted business princ.i.p.ally through the medium of the telephone, and received the few callers who penetrated the mysteries of the winding pa.s.sage and outer premises which led to the rather squalid quarters he inhabited at the lower end of the town.

He was, Matheson learned on arrival from the youthful clerk, who seemed to do little beyond guard the inner sanctum and scan the daily news, engaged for the moment. Since no one emerged from the inner room while he waited, and no one was present when a few minutes later, in response to the ring of a bell, he was conducted by the clerk to the presence, the inference was that the engagement was telephonic. Holman was alone, seated at his desk. His hand fell from the receiver as the door opened and closed upon his visitor. He swung round on his swivel chair and welcomed Matheson cordially.

"You never sent me any word," he said. "When did you arrive? I've been expecting you daily for the past week. You haven't hurried."

He could not fail to notice the very obvious fact that his extended hand was ignored, nor that the cordiality of his manner received no response.

He waved the neglected hand in the direction of a seat.

"Sit down," he said, and crossed one leg over the other and regarded Matheson closely, fidgeting idly and with a suggestion of nervousness in the quick, uncertain movement of his fingers, with the pen on his blotting pad. "Now, let me hear all about it," he resumed.

Matheson seated himself.

"Well, in the first place," he said, leaning forward with his hands upon his knees, "I had better state at once that I know a good deal about this d.a.m.nable business... not through the Kriges... there was a sort of conspiracy to keep me in the dark--Krige never talked to me. I learned what I know from Herman Nel. Nel called you a d.a.m.ned scoundrel... and I endorse his sentiments. Have you anything to say to that?"

He paused. Holman ceased fidgeting with the pen and clenched his hand on the blotter and sat quite still, smiling faintly.

"No. I don't see that any comment of mine would avail anything. Of course you don't expect me to applaud your opinion. Simply, I refuse to consider it. What you have learned from Herman Nel doesn't interest me either. Nel was never a recipient of my confidence. He knows nothing whatever about me."

"You are mistaken; his knowledge is more complete than you imagine. It was from Nel I learned that you are German, and not a British subject as I supposed."

"Did I ever a.s.sert that I was British?" Holman interrupted him to inquire.

"Not to me. But I understood you were. You led me somehow, whether intentionally or not I can't say, to understand that. And you spell your name in the English way, and sign the double n only when you correspond with your Dutch friends. I saw that in your letter to Krige."

"So you read the letter I entrusted to your safe keeping?" Holman said with a flash of anger. "Then it was a lie when you said you couldn't read Dutch?"

"It was nothing of the sort. I leave the lying to men practised in the art, like yourself. I saw the letter. I did not read it... but it was read to me. Had Nel's statement needed corroboration I had it in your own words. You are helping to stir up bad feeling among the Dutch. You are inciting the dissatisfied Boers to open rebellion--Heaven knows why!--or the devil, to whom Nel gives the credit of the direction of this affair. What you expect to gain by it personally is your secret, but you must realise that it is a hopeless business for them in any event. A handful of farmers can't fight a great organised nation with any hope of success."

Holman smiled.

"You are talking arrant nonsense, you know," he said. "If it wasn't such absolute nonsense it would be offensive. There was not a sentence in my letter to Krige that even hinted at rebellion; there is not a sentence in my letter--not a word, for that matter, that I could not explain satisfactorily if I recognised any necessity for an explanation.

Nel didn't tell you, I suppose, while he was engaged in aspersing my character, that there is a feud of long standing between us which is princ.i.p.ally of his making?"

"He told me nothing," Matheson replied, "beyond what I have stated, and the further fact that you have been carrying on this underhand intrigue for years. What your game is remains to be seen. You have got some stake in this. It isn't just philanthropy and sympathy with the poor Boer that actuates you. Time will show, perhaps. In the meanwhile with men of Herman Nel's type in the country, I don't think you will accomplish much. As regards my own share in this, I can only say that your estimate of my intelligence as expressed in your letter would seem to fit I have been a fool. But you overestimated my complaisance--my conscience is not for purchase, however high the price."

"You misread that," Holman said, not looking at him. "I don't deal in consciences. I fancied you were likely game to fall to the lovely Honor's charm. That was in my mind when I watched you fooling about with that girl on the beach. You will agree, I imagine, that I would be scarcely likely to engage in a dangerous intrigue in co-operation with a girl like Honor?"