Mynheer Marais came in after the rest, and he and Herman Nel indulged in some amicable wrangling across the breakfast table. Mostly the conversation was carried on in English in consideration of Matheson’s presence, but occasionally it drifted into Dutch when the speakers grew excited; and then Matheson was glad to sit in silent preoccupation, deaf to the unintelligible sounds, indifferent to his surroundings, seeing only a fair upturned face with eyes that were entirely beautiful looking into his; and behind it, setting off the fair face with the shining eyes and the sunny hair, glowed the dark wood panelling of the old room, warmed with the newly risen sun. That picture he knew would live in his mind for ever.
“So you leave to-day?” Herman Nel said, turning and addressing him unexpectedly.
Matheson, looking towards the speaker, met the shrewd friendly eyes scrutinising him attentively as they had done across the small table at the rondavel.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m going back.”
“You’ll have a lot to say about the fertility of this district,” Nel remarked and laughed. “Come in the spring next time, Mr Matheson. We are rather proud of our veld then. When you are again in these parts I will be pleased if you will stay with me at my rondavel. You have seen what accommodation I have to have to offer; it is sufficient. If at any time you come and I am not there, enter and take possession. I never lock my house.”
“No,” interposed Oom Koos before Matheson could reply. “He tries to live like the Kaffirs; and the Kaffirs, who steal everything they can lay their filthy hands on, are baang to touch his goods because they think him white witch-doctor. But one day there will come a Kaffir who is not afraid.”
“I go on the principle,” Nel replied, “that evil hides instinctively from those who are not in search of it, but reveals itself impudently where it realises its presence is suspected. Oom Koos has lost more goats than I ever possessed. It is well for Mr Marais that he is a richer man than I.”
“If I followed your example,” Oom Koos retorted, “I would not be that. The wise man who would guard his sheep from the jackals, sees to it that they are safe in the kraals each night. A Kaffir will murder his father and his mother for their few paltry possessions.”
“Occasionally,” Nel returned quietly, “the white man commits worse crimes than that: he will murder his own people and rob his unborn child. But we style his crime differently. It is the tide one affixes to an act which proclaims it a crime or a virtue.”
As though aware that he was treading on difficult ground, warned possibly by the steady look from Freidja’s sombre eyes, he turned again to Matheson and skilfully directed the talk into a safer channel.