Suddenly it seemed all unreal;—could it be a dream? No—there was the court-room—he could see it through the open doorway before which he was standing. He stepped forward on tip-toe and looked in. Involuntarily his eye sought the prisoners’ dock—the spot where his twin-brother had stood with rapt, unmoved face and heard the pronouncement of his doom. His strained brain easily conjured up the figure in all its menacing nobility, and before the vision he felt abased to the dust.
Had there been another human creature present, Gideon would have cried aloud a confession of his sin, but he stood alone with the hideousness of his own transgression.
Then a reaction set in and he staggered from the room grasping wildly at the shred of comfort which lay in the realisation of the fact that the man whom he had hated through so many bitter years had now been taken out of his life. A strange duality was set up in his consciousness:—it seemed as though the man he had seen undergoing sentence, although still his brother, was no longer the Stephanus who had used him so despitefully. Thus his mind was buffeted hither and thither by a gusty storm of conflicting emotions.
So the long-looked-forward-to triumph of Gideon van der Walt sank foully smouldering upon its own ashes, and he entered into that hell out of which there is seldom redemption.
Chapter Six.
Gideon and Marta.
Night had almost fallen when Gideon reached his homestead on the seventh day after the trial. He had been, throughout the whole journey, a prey to the keenest misery. In the short and broken sleep which visited his distracted brain the image of Stephanus as he had last seen him, haunted his dreams. The dauntless mien and the noble courage with which his brother had met his doom; the puzzled, pathetic expression upon the face of the blind child; the belated revelation of love combined with a terrifying appeal for forgiveness which he had read in the face of the woman for whom his passion had never died, swept over the field of his consciousness like clouds across a storm-swept sky. He felt no remorse for what he had done; on the contrary, his inability to enjoy the revenge he had long panted for, was the cause of redoubled resentment against his enemy.
After greeting his family with forced cheerfulness, Gideon drank a cup of coffee and at once retired to bed, saying that he felt fatigued after his long journey. His wife, Aletta, was not deceived by his demeanour, but there was that in his face which caused her to forbear asking any questions.