“It is not pretty,” Mrs Krige said. “We had a beautiful garden when we lived in the town. I miss it.”
“It would be difficult,” he replied, “to make a beautiful garden with so poor a supply of water. But the trees are fine. Trees in this country are more acceptable than anything else.”
She looked about her with a vague discontent in her eyes, eyes which held at times, which held now, a haunting expression of sorrow.
“Yes, trees are good,” she agreed. “Do you observe that so far as the gaze can reach there is not one patch of shade except just here?—not a bush, only that small clump of prickly-pear yonder to throw its scant shadow on the ground? Sometimes there are mirage trees. One wonders...”
She broke off without completing the sentence and seated herself in one of the chairs.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. “It is long since I met a fellow-countryman. I have become so identified with the Dutch that the few English friends I possessed have dropped away one by one. In this country a divided allegiance is impossible. I belong to my husband’s people—my admiration and sympathies are all with them. You can’t understand that,” she added, with a swift look into his grave eyes. “I saw last night while Honor talked that you failed to understand. I believe it was your restraint then that decided me to attempt to explain what is to you incredible. You didn’t understand; but I saw that you were trying to understand.”
He sat forward with his hands between his knees, and gazed very intently into her face—an earnest, pleasant face with patient eyes.
“No; I don’t understand,” he said. “It’s puzzled me a lot. You see, your daughter disclaimed your nationality, and you offered no protest. That’s un-English. You can’t change your nationality at will; it’s as much a part of yourself as the colour of your eyes. We are proud as a race of our nationality. We are the finest nation in the world. I’m not for giving preference to any other. I don’t say I’d talk like that to a foreigner—unless he challenged me; and then,” he smiled slightly, “I’d probably be emphatic.”
Mrs Krige caught something of his humour, and smiled in sympathy. Deep down in her heart, so jealously hidden that she almost doubted its existence there, the undying love for her own people kept its place in spite of the sadness and injustice her life had known.
“I felt as you do at one time,” she said—“oh! for long after I was married. My husband was a Free State Boer—one of the old type, a little narrow and prejudiced, but a good man—an excellent husband and father. My married life was very happy.”