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.