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.