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 assert 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 principally 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.”