“Man of moods,” she said, “I was just wondering how long you would be satisfied to sit here staring at the gum trees... Let us go out into the sunlight and the wind—and just talk...”
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Sweeping swiftly, as quickly scudding clouds will sweep athwart a wind-swept sky, memories that were not wholly bitter flashed across Matheson’s mind with each mile that he covered on his journey to Benfontein. Some odd thought or phrase or emotion leapt out of the past into prominence and held him with all the vital qualities of a thing newly realised. Always in imagination he was speeding towards Benfontein, though Nel’s rondavel, and not the farm of Andreas Krige, was his ultimate destination.
From some unexplained, and indeed inexplicable, reason, he had shrunk from being seen off on this journey by his fiancée. She had proposed being at the station for that purpose; but he had raised so many difficulties that she had reluctantly given way to his obvious wish for solitude; and when the time for departure came there was no one on the platform to speed his going.
He felt relieved at this; nevertheless the mood in which he started was heavy, overcast like the day which, bright with promise in the dawn, had later clouded darkly with every prospect of a gathering storm. The darkness of the day fitted his mood. Not since the hour when he had turned his back upon the white walls of Benfontein and driven beside Oom Koos Marais across the blackened veld, had he experienced such heaviness of spirit. Some unexpected spring of emotion had been uncovered by this turning back, and its bitter sweet waters were bubbling to the surface in a succession of reawakened memories which he had cheated himself into believing were buried for ever. No one has ever succeeded in burying memory in a sufficiently deep grave; however untiringly one labours over its interment, the first chance breeze of some recurrent thought or seeming likeness, blows back the loose soil and discovers the stark form that had been laid to final rest. Memory ranks with the immortals: it is vain to attempt to bury what cannot die.
Matheson thrust these reminiscent thoughts from him as he travelled northward, and tried to concentrate upon the immediate prospect of his meeting with Holman. It was his intention to hire a horse at De Aar and ride out to Nel’s farm and take possession of the rondavel. A saddle horse would be a necessity to him; he could not appropriate to his use any of Cornelius Nel’s horses. It was moreover possible that the horses on the farm had been commandeered, and had been taken when their master left to join Maritz. This he found later was the case: the farm had been stripped of everything that could prove of use to aid the rebellion.
The rondavel, however, remained as its owner invariably left it, fully provisioned, and fit for immediate habitation. One servant was left in charge of things, a light-coloured Kaffir who answered to the name of Butter Tom by reason of his fair skin, which, the colour of old parchment, suggested a mixture of alien blood. Butter Tom had been Nel’s body servant in the old days, and he recognised and greeted Matheson with a broad smile of welcome.
“Me take the baas’ horse,” he said. “The baas will find everything he want by the rondavel. Me come bimeby and get the baas something to eat.”