“Look here!” he remonstrated. “When you disparage my countrymen, you disparage me. I wish you wouldn’t say those things. I don’t know how far you are in earnest, but I can’t take it as a compliment when you dissociate me from my country. Why not practise a little forbearance?”
“I think we will not remain to breakfast with the Nels,” was all she said in response, and rode on with her face turned from him and her chin held high.
Matheson felt exasperated. The qualities which appealed to her, tolerance and a sympathetic understanding, were inexplicably entirely lacking in herself: she did not desire to take any but a personal view. The injuries which she, with her family, refused to forget were ancient scars now; but they kept these scars from healing by constant probing, indifferent to the fact that the unhealed wound is painful only to the sufferer. She had not any sense of fair play, he decided, for all her English blood.
It was rather a silent ride they took that morning. Matheson, sensible of the tension, of the curious thrill of antagonism which he felt was common in both, held to his point stubbornly and refused to make overtures. He was not in the wrong; it was not for him to offer reparation.
His thoughts crystallised round her while he rode. He attempted to get a clearer insight into her mind. To grasp her point of view, and that of other Boers who thought and felt as she did, seemed to him essential in order to live harmoniously with these people. But her outlook was so circumscribed, so amazingly egotistical. This grievance was like every other thing which becomes a personal matter—a cult narrowed down to pettiness, which alienates even its sympathisers by the selfishness of its aims. He failed to understand how a beautiful nature could become corrupted by bitterness. It spoilt her, as all abnormal qualities must spoil what is simple and direct.
Honor brought her head round presently and met the eyes which he turned in response to her movement from the contemplation of steel-blue distances seen between his horse’s ears, to fix them upon her face.
“You came out in search of truth,” she said, with a suggestion of irony in her tones. “Have you found it?”
“No,” he answered bluntly. “How can I find what you refuse to show me?”
She flushed brightly and made no answer. After a moment or so he said:
“I think you are a little vexed that I asked you to ride alone with me this morning.”