The Shadow of the Past

by F. E. Mills Young

Chapter Thirty Two.

The day wore slowly away. No one visited the rondavel. Although he knew the wish to be preposterous, Matheson nevertheless felt a strong desire to see Honor. He did not want to talk to her; he merely wished to see her. He would have been satisfied had she entered to confer with her mother, and left again without paying any heed to him—had she even passed the open door so that he might, unseen, have watched her go by.

But Honor did not come.

Butter Tom appeared at regular intervals, moving with unnecessary caution on tip-toe, his bare feet, always noiseless, making no sound on the smooth floor. He brought food for Mrs Krige, and soup for the sick baas, and laid and cleared the table with surprising swiftness and care. Butter Tom’s mind was troubled with regard to the baas’ accident. He felt himself blameworthy in having failed to keep guard. But the young missis with the face that was like a lily in the moonlight had sent him with a message to the farm. He had not liked to refuse to do her bidding: now he wished that he had refused. His own baas when he returned would be displeased with him, and the sick baas would reproach him; there would be no tobacco and no more good English money for him.

He stole repeated furtive glances towards the bed; but the baas lay with his gaze fixed on the open doorway and never looked his way. That was proof enough for Butter Tom that the baas was angry.

Matheson was not thinking of Butter Tom: he had ceased to wonder at the latter’s defection; subsequent events had blotted that out for the time. All his mind now was intent upon Honor to the obliteration of everything—Honor, who, apart from her marriage, was lost to him, and should have ceased to occupy his thoughts. In allowing this obsession to hold him he knew that he was behaving discreditably; but a man, though he may control his emotions up to a certain point, cannot always entirely subdue them: desire confronted with the object which inspires it can become an overpowering passion. Out of her presence, with distance and the knowledge of the hopelessness of his love separating them, he had grown resigned to the inevitable; but the sight of her again, the sound of the rich soft voice, the touch of her, had been more than he could bear with stoicism. He was moved to a sick longing for her, a longing which overlooked another man’s prior claim, and the claim of the girl who loved and trusted him. If occasionally the memory of Brenda obtruded itself, he thrust it aside with a sick man’s irritably impatience towards disturbing thoughts. Brenda had no place here. This side of his life was a thing apart, a slice of life detached and complete in itself. Here in this odd corner of the world he had experienced all the romance he was to know: it began here, and ended when he left. He would dig its grave and bury it when he went away. There was nothing else left to do.

He worked himself into a fever as the day advanced, and, flushed and restless, turned continually on the pillow and stared out at the hot sunshine that flooded the world without, and poured in through the opening of the rondavel and lay, a golden stream, along the shining floor. No trees surrounded Nel’s hut to shade it from the fierce rays of the sun, and the days were sultry at that time of the year.

Mrs Krige sat beside him and fanned him with untiring patience. The slow regular movement of her arm worried him; but he was grateful to her, and he appreciated the faint draught thus created: when she paused to rest the heaviness of the atmosphere oppressed him so that he felt almost suffocated. It was a relief when the sun went down, and the sky, blood-red from the afterglow, reflected luridly upon the darkening veld; though the dusk, as it closed in slowly, robbed him of his final hope of seeing Honor. Honor would not come to him... Perhaps it were wiser so.

He fell asleep after a while, and woke later to find the rondavel dimly illumined by the lamp which, turned low, was screened from the bed. He was alone. The quiet figure which he had last seen seated at the table rolling those endless strips of linen, was no longer there. Mrs Krige had left and had taken with her the result of her long hours of industry; there was nothing, save the fan lying on the chair beside the bed, to remind him of her presence. He wondered whether Butter Tom remained within call, or if he were entirely alone. The thought of being alone troubled him, why he did not know. He hesitated to call the Kaffir for fear of receiving no response; doubt, he felt, in the uncertainty of any one being near, was preferable to knowledge.

For a while he lay and watched the dimly burning lamp, and watching it lost consciousness of his surroundings in sleep once more.