Chapter Twenty Four.
Matheson made Mrs Upton’s acquaintance on the following Sunday. He called at the boarding house and had tea in the shabby general sitting-room, and allowed himself to be drawn out by Brenda’s mother, who was plainly bent on learning all she could concerning him before and since his intimacy with her daughter.
He succeeded on the whole in impressing her favourably, despite a natural prejudice she entertained against the unconventional manner in which the acquaintance had begun, and a further disapproval of the nightly excursions which Brenda made under his escort, a custom which allied itself with her present occupation but was not the custom of her class. Without a home, a girl was so handicapped. She felt their social downfall more bitterly on her daughter’s account than ever she had felt it on her own.
She resembled her daughter in appearance, and also in manner. Before life had bruised her she had possibly been a very entertaining woman. She possessed still a certain charm, and had an alert way of expressing herself which appealed to the listener. Matheson was conscious primarily of an immense relief. He had rather dreaded this meeting with Brenda’s mother. Why he should have expected anything so wildly improbable he could not tell, but he had anticipated a replica of Mrs Aplin. But this little quiet-eyed woman was altogether different; and her bright way of saying the unexpected thing pleased him. If her life had known unusual distress, she had not permitted herself to go down under them, but kept a brave front to the world, hiding even from her daughter the humiliation she experienced in coming back to the place where she and her misfortunes were so well known.
Brenda poured out the tea and left the talking principally to the others. She was almost nervously anxious that this man whom she already liked so well should win her mother’s approval. Mrs Upton had expressed doubts as to the desirability of this casual friendship. Matheson’s request for permission to call had done much towards mislaying these misgivings; but the ultimate decision, Brenda felt, rested with himself. She wanted him to shine, to say brilliant things; and all the while he was behaving in a perfectly correct and commonplace manner. She had not believed he could be so dull. It exasperated her. And when he rose to go he did not suggest, as she hoped he would, that they should go for a walk. Possibly, she reflected resentfully, he had other calls to make and did not want her company. It never occurred to her that he was regulating his conduct with a view to its effect upon her mother. It surprised her when he was gone to hear her mother praise in him the characteristics which she deplored.
“But he wasn’t at his best,” she protested. “I never knew him to be so dull.”
“He is a very interesting man,” Mrs Upton declared. “It was you who were a little dull. You scarcely spoke to him.” She laughed suddenly. “Perhaps he is one of those men who like an audience; otherwise I don’t see what he gets out of it, if you are not more eloquent alone with him than you were to-day.”
“Yes, he needs an audience. He always does most of the talking,” Brenda said.
After that Sunday it became a weekly custom for Matheson to call in the afternoon. Generally he took Brenda out somewhere, and when he brought her back he stayed for a chat with her mother, and occasionally had tea with them. He took them to the theatre, and to any entertainment he thought might give them pleasure. And once, despite a natural shrinking on Mrs Upton’s part to be seen in public, he persuaded them to dine with him at the Mount Nelson. That evening stuck in his memory. It was the first occasion on which he had seen Brenda in evening dress. She looked well, and was animated and almost brilliant. He felt proud to be seen with her.
Mrs Upton was considerably perplexed. It was quite manifest to her that Matheson was making up his mind to propose to her daughter, if indeed it was not already made up; but she could discover in his undoubted affection for Brenda nothing of the quality of passionate love. This disturbed her. Matheson’s quiet affection seemed to her a wholly inadequate return for the devotion of the girl’s whole heart. It was no secret from her mother that Brenda was very much in love. It was the girl’s first and only love affair, and it absorbed her entirely. Should anything interpose between her love and its fulfilment the result might easily lead to a lifelong disappointment.
Mrs Upton, realising this perfectly, could only stand by and watch the course of events shaping themselves to the making or the marring of her daughter’s happiness. There were times when she wished Matheson had not come into the girl’s life; though all the glamour and romance her life had known had come to her through him. She wished too that he had not been so sure of Brenda. The girl’s devotion shone in her look.
But Matheson, though he had no doubt of Brenda’s love, was not so confident of winning her as her mother believed. In all the weeks of their renewed friendship he had not uttered one word of love to her, had attempted none of those affectionate familiarities he had practised during the early days of their acquaintance. The kiss she had given him in the road at their first parting was the only kiss he had received from her. Something in the girl’s manner silenced him.—It may have been that the mere knowledge that she loved him, acted as a restraint; possibly too the lukewarm quality of his own desires caused him to hesitate ere taking the irrevocable step he contemplated. He was sure of the girl’s love, but he could not feel positive as to her answer. Nor was he satisfied that perfect happiness would result from an alliance based on such inequalities of affection. She had set this doubt working in his mind, and he was powerless to determine it, or to put it aside. The matter occasioned him endless thought and worry.
At times he felt like taking the plunge and leaving the doubts to resolve themselves; and then her quiet face, with the earnest eyes lit with love for him, gave him pause, and he decided to wait and allow the friendship to develop. Already it had grown deep enough to make him conscious of his need of her. The idea of letting her drop out of his life again was altogether unthinkable. She was necessary to him. He did not understand it, but he realised it perfectly. Out of the odd confection of human emotions that swayed him, his dependence on Brenda, even the inconsistent urgency of his requirement of her love, stood out and dominated the rest. He wanted her; he had no longer any doubt about that.
And yet when he was alone, and at night-time, it was seldom of Brenda he thought Even when he was with her the memory of Honor thrust between them, a beautiful, intangible obstruction keeping them apart.
The time came when he felt the necessity to talk to her about Honor. He did not stop to consider whether it was wise to do so; something impelled him to speak of this matter which alone formed a bar to their complete understanding. He could not, he found, ask Brenda to marry him without confiding to her something of that part of his life the influences of which intervened between them.
It was on a Sunday afternoon that Matheson chose to unburden himself. He took Brenda to see the Rhodes’ Memorial—the fine unfinished work of Watts, emblematic of Rhodes’ unfinished work—for that matter, emblematic of the unfinished work of any human span.
It was a day of brilliant sunshine and cool winds, such as one gets during the Cape winter, and which one can only compare with spring weather in England, or an early autumn day before the leaves fall. They went out by tram, and walked through the wonderful grounds of Groot Schuur, that magnificent home of a wealthy, ambitious, brilliant man, who dreamed of Empire expansion, and who realised a part, though never the entire dream.
Silent and a little weary, they followed the broad gravelled drive to the temple where the eight bronze lions guard the steps which lead up to the lonely enshrined bust of a strong man who, for all his greatness, despite wealth and success and numberless friends, stands out a lonely figure in the history of his time.
They walked up the broad stone steps and stood before the fine thoughtful face, lifelike in its quiet abstraction, gazing towards the north, as Watts’ equestrian statue of Energy gazes, through eternal sunlit spaces, across rich plains of unsurpassed beauty, towards the mountains and the remote distances of that hinterland which lies beyond them, and in which Rhodes’ hopes and thoughts were centred.
It was the first time that Matheson had visited the place. Its influence upon him in the quiet grandeur, the spirit-invaded atmosphere of this spot where Rhodes in his lifetime spent so many thoughtful hours, where even now in bronze he mounted guard over this chosen place, was tremendous. It did not surprise him, on looking towards her after a pregnant silence, to see the tears standing in Brenda’s eyes. There was a greatness in the quality and the inspiration of this monument to greatness which touched the secret springs of emotion and stirred the imagination.
“Let us go and sit on the seat below there, under the trees, where he used to sit,” he said.
And without further speech they descended the steps and walked quietly to the plain wooden bench where Rhodes in his lifetime sat often and dreamed his big dreams, looking away through the golden haze over the limitless scene.
“He was wonderful,” Brenda said... “His is the greatest name in South African history.”
Matheson, looking towards the distant mountains, nodded acquiescence.
“He died too soon,” he said. “That’s the worst of it... Had he lived long enough he would have linked up the south with the north. He won more territory for the Empire without bloodshed than any other man.”
“And then came the Boer war...”
Quickly he brought his face round and looked at her.
“Well, yes,” he said. “But I don’t suppose he could help that.”
“When I stand in front of his bust up there, and gaze away over this scene, and realise the greatness of him and the vastness of his ambition, I incline to believe that he could,” she said.
“Yes!”
Her words obviously impressed him. Involuntarily his mind travelled bade to Benfontein, to the impressions obtained from that visit, and the memory of the bitterness of racial hate he had discovered among the Dutch whom he had met.
“He cherished so many schemes—too many for one man to carry out Perhaps you are right, and he neglected the finest and wisest scheme of all, that of welding together the two white races in the Colony by the closest ties of friendship and trust. One can’t determine these things now.”
“He was an Empire builder,” she returned, and looked at him with a smile in her eyes. “The Empire builder inclines to overlook the great human essentials. The field of his operations is necessarily impersonal.”
For a moment or so he looked back at her steadily. She was wise, this slender slip of a girl. He already entertained a profound respect for her opinion; and it occurred to him while he gazed at her, that she would be ready also of understanding, that he had less to fear in giving her his entire confidence than in holding a part, the vitally important part, back.
And then abruptly he began to talk to her about Honor.
“I think I ought to tell you,” he said in a slightly constrained voice, and without looking at her, “that while I was away, before I came back here, something happened to me, something of tremendous importance. I met—some one—a girl... You understand... She meant a lot to me. I fell in love. She was Dutch. She hated the British... she couldn’t forget. That stood between us—her resentment struck deeper than anything else.”
He paused, and leaned forward slightly, peering into the distance.
“That’s all,” he added jerkily. “I felt I would like to tell you.”
She was silent for a space, watching him, seeing the strained look in the eyes staring straight ahead of him, the set lines of his mouth. One strong hand was clenched on the bench beside him; the prominent knuckles showed white. She put out her hand and covered his.
“Poor dear!” she said, and repeated softly after a moment: “Poor dear! ... That explains it.”
“Explains what?” he asked dully.
“Explains everything I haven’t understood in you of late... Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I wasn’t sure, I suppose, that I ought to tell you... I’m not sure now that I’ve done well.”
“Oh! yes,” she returned quickly. “I’m glad you trusted me... I’m sorry. I hate to see you hurt.”
“One gets over that—in time,” he said. “I’m not going to let it swamp me.”
And then abruptly he drew his hand from under hers and stood up.
“They provide tea in the cottage up there,” he said. “Come along and have some.”
He drew her up from the bench, and gripped her hand hard when she stood beside him, forcing a smile to his lips.
“This spot stirs the emotions,” he said. “I shall always think of it as the Place of Memories...”