Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.Brenda Upton, avoiding the notice of the general company by leaving the dinner table early that evening and slipping into the garden while most of the guests remained seated, sauntered down the path to the gate, thrilled with an agreeable sense of adventure that was only slightly damped by the reflection that her behaviour in meeting this stranger about whom she knew nothing was not in keeping with the traditions of her class, was, in fact indiscreet, and might be regarded by the man himself as evidence of an unconventionality of which he might seek to take advantage.She felt herself blushing at the thought; and pulled up at the gate, and stood with it open and her hand upon the iron spikes, wavering, and looking uncertainly upon the shadowy road. If she detected in his manner any decrease of respect it would hurt as well as humiliate... Perhaps after all it would be wiser not to go...She glanced back over her shoulder towards the house. Two men made their appearance on the stoep while she looked back. She had made one of a set with them that day for tennis; the younger had suggested taking her up the mountain later. It had seemed quite natural and in order to consent to these things. Yet what did she know about these men more than she knew of Guy Matheson? They chanced to be staying in the same house; that was all: had the other been staying in the house she would not have hesitated to walk with him on the beach. These distinctions were rather absurd.She let the gate go, and it clanged behind her as she emerged upon the road, and, startled a little by the noise of the gate swinging to, stood for a second and looked about her with an air of furtive watchfulness, and the feeling that she was doing something just a little shameful, something which later she might regret.The expedition seemed scarcely worth such complications of perplexed thought. It was a proof of the strength of her inclination that she persevered in face of this sense of impropriety, and the formless doubts that assailed her continually in defiance of the logic with which she sought to banish them. She was interested in this man with the strong body and handsome face and the air of reckless indolence. She wanted to meet him and talk uninterruptedly without the necessity to break away in the middle of the conversation and hurry back to a meal or something. The freemasonry that exists between persons of like temperament and instinctive sympathy assured her that this interest was mutual.She crossed the road and walked on to the beach. Against the wall, lounging in the shadow of it and obviously waiting for her, was Matheson. When she saw him she realised how ashamed, how bitterly ashamed, she would have felt had she arrived first. He must have dined early, or hurried through his meal, to have got there so soon. He turned his head quickly, caught sight of her, and advanced to meet her.“It’s good of you,” he said. “But I felt sure you must relent.”He scrutinised her for a moment, and found himself enjoying the effects of the last rays of the sunset warming her hair and the clear olive of her skin.“The sun is kissing you good-bye. It’s a good time of the day, isn’t it?” he said.“Yes,” she answered a little shyly—“the best time of all.”“Wait,” he counselled. “I am going to take you beyond Sea Point. You needn’t trudge it all the way. We can board the tram—as far as it goes. Round the point one gets a view of the Twelve Apostles—if you care about mountains,—but I’m sure you do. One faces the wide sweep of the bay and the immensity of the open sea. We’ll watch the moon rise out there—then you will know which is the best time of all I want you to admit that my hour is the best hour.” He laughed with a ring of light-hearted enjoyment in the sound of the mirth. “Humour me,” he pleaded. “That’s one of my conceits.”But she, smiling also, shook her head.“The best hour of the twenty-four—the Perfect Hour,” she insisted, “belongs to no specified period. Haven’t you discovered that?”“What is the perfect hour?” he asked.“The hour we most enjoy.”An earnest look had come into her eyes, the quiet tones of her voice echoed this earnestness, accentuated it; he felt his own mood responding to the seriousness of hers. He liked her treatment of the subject. Never in all his life, he believed, and wondered whether she had been more fortunate in this respect, had he experienced the perfect hour. It was possible, he decided, to go through life without experiencing it.“Your idea appeals pleasantly to the imagination,” he said; “but it deals with superlatives. My good hour is not to be despised; it’s within the grasp of all.”“You think the other isn’t?” she asked.“Well, of course, enjoyment is relative; but I imagine your idea of it embraces only the highest quality. Am I right?”“In a sense, yes—though possibly our ideas of what is truly enjoyable differ substantially. For instance, beautiful scenery is to me entirely satisfying; so is a beautiful flower.”“You will get that to-night,” he said—“the scenery, I mean. But you know the coast about here, I expect.”“Fairly well.”“We’ll get on to the road,” he said; “then we can stop the first tram that overtakes us. It’s too far to walk. We have to study the leg.”“Oh, that! I played tennis this afternoon,” she said.He showed his disapproval.“If you do foolish things like that you deserve complications.”A tram came up almost immediately. They boarded it; and the girl, feeling a little constrained and disinclined to talk, sat silent, watching the spear of light along the horizon narrowing and paling as the sea settled to a grey restfulness beneath the darkening sky. She did not want Matheson to talk, and was glad when he fell into silence too. She was conscious of the people on the tram to a quite disproportionate degree. She had a persuasion that they knew she was doing something unusual and rather indiscreet. The sense of back doors and secrecy which had gripped her at first had hold of her again, and spoilt things. It was with immeasurable relief that she got down when they reached the terminus and started to walk.“Let us go on and on,” she said, “until there is no one. I want—quiet.”“I know,” he said on a note of understanding. “We’ll find what we want.”A swift and unaccountable feeling of intimacy sprang out of this mutual desire for solitude, which she had expressed with unconscious audacity; while he, in voicing his agreement, seemed to be conspiring with her to get away together and be alone. This purpose had been in his mind from the beginning.“Tell me when you are tired,” he said, as he helped her over a difficult place.But she did not tire easily. It was the difficulty of making their way between and over the boulders of the rock-strewn beach that brought them to a halt. They sat down on a small strip of sand with a rock at their backs, and for a while remained silent, contemplating the scene in quiet appreciation that defied expression and lent itself to the prevailing peace. Out of the warm dusk a few stars gleamed faintly, and upon the stirless air the contented murmuring of the sea as it drew away from the sleeping shore hung reposefully, the wild slumber song which throughout the ages the element which never rests urges upon the land.As the silence between them lengthened, Brenda Upton became aware that the man beside her moved nearer to her; observed too, when she turned towards him, that he was more intent upon the study of her face than upon the deep swell of the moving waters, the sinister strength and secretiveness of the mountain range that walled and overlooked the bay. He had brought her here to see these things, but he did not look at them himself; he was not after all sharing them with her. A faint resentment stirred her as she met the steady gaze of the indolent eyes; she felt somehow cheated.“I thought this would move you,” he said in a voice of satisfaction.“It moves me—yes.” She took up a handful of sand and let it run slowly through her fingers. “And you?” she asked.Suddenly he smiled. He changed his attitude for a more comfortable position, reclining on the sand on his elbow, with his chin supported on his hand.“I’m enjoying your enjoyment. That’s enough for me to-night. It’s a fresh sensation; the scenery isn’t. When I first came out here it gripped me—as it grips you. I forgot the time. I missed my dinner.” He laughed at some reminiscence. “That didn’t matter; it was worth it. But I found it impossible to explain what had kept me. It would have spoilt it. You know the fatuous remarks that some people would have made... I could have talked of it to you—you would have understood. There’s something fine about this bit of coast—fine and lonely. People don’t come here much. You see, it’s difficult to get at; there’s no beach, and the rocks scare off bathers. There’s nothing to draw people—except just the rugged beauty of it...”He broke off, aware of the criticism in her eyes, their look of veiled surprise.“I don’t believeyouunderstand,” he said doubtfully.“The love of beauty!” she said. “Oh! yes, I understand that part. It’s the inconsistency that puzzles me.”“The inconsistency!” he echoed.“I’ll tell you,” she said, and added quickly: “Please don’t think I am criticising you—only when I hear you talk like that of the beauty of nature, it becomes difficult to reconcile that idea of you with—the earliest impression.”“I know,” he said, and shifted a little on his arm in, order to get a more direct view of her.He was thinking of the disapproval the brown eyes had so clearly expressed that first morning, and his subsequent wish to drive the disapproval out of them and earn her appreciation. There followed a brief, expectant pause before he said:“I’m glad you spoke of that. Of course I saw what you were thinking that morning... And in truth it is a waste of a blue day to spend it in gambling. I’ve acted like a fool, and learnt a lesson. I don’t suppose I feel particularly keen about playing in future—not for a time, anyhow—but I have a feeling I’d like to make some sort of a resolve... Would it bore you to accept my undertaking never to play again?”“It wouldn’t bore me,” she said, manifestly surprised at his question. “But are you sure? ... It is more likely to bore you afterwards to feel constrained to keep that resolve. Is it necessary to promise—anything?”“Not necessary, perhaps. It would be a satisfaction to me.” He looked up at her with a swift smile. “I believe that’s what I inveigled you here for—to force you into the position of custodian of my conscience—to listen to confidences. I’m lonely. I’ve no one belonging to me out here—no one I can talk intimately with. I’ve knocked around. That sort of life doesn’t lend itself to intimacies. I want to talk—oh! about things one doesn’t talk about generally... I wonder whether I am making myself intelligible?”“Yes,” she said. “Though possibly if I didn’t have those same feelings I might not follow you altogether. I’m lonely too. I often want a sympathetic listener; and there’s no one; so I moon about alone, and—”Her voice trailed off on a thoughtful pause.“Want to kick yourself?” he suggested.“No. I don’t think it’s ever been quite so bad as that.”“It is with me,” he said—“often. But I have few resources. I don’t sweat things out like some men in violent exercise. I’ve tried that, but it doesn’t give me any sort of relief. My beastly muscles develop and keep hard without that Sometimes I think they are the only part of me to develop and harden; the rest is non-resistant.”“A man has his work,” she interjected. “There’s ambition...”He looked away across the dark waste of waters and answered indifferently.“I never had any. All that talk about a career—what does it amount to? One man makes a bit of a splash, another doesn’t; but they are both heading the same way, both making for the open sea, which eventually engulfs them. It’s only while they are inshore that the splash is visible; farther out the sea is deep and tranquil; and sometimes it is the man who hasn’t made a splash inshore who keeps up longest and sees well ahead. Those early splashes don’t count for much when the swimmer is done. Death beats us all in the end. It isn’t worth it... ambition... no.”“Without ambition nothing would be achieved ever,” she said. “Some one’s got to do the things—that are worth doing.”“Why?” he asked, and smiled at her lazily. She looked down at him, puzzled and hesitating, a little uncertain of her ground. “What are the things worth doing?”“Don’t you believe that there is a purpose in life?” she asked.The smile on his face broadened.“I confess I haven’t given much thought to the matter, but, since you ask me, I suppose there might be some blind purpose even in the life of a mole. It’s all rather futile though, isn’t it? What are you doing? ... What am I doing? ... The obvious answer, of course, is sitting on the shore. Well, that’s about all there is to it—sitting on the shore and talking. Later, well take the plunge and swim out to the deep sea—and that’s the finish. I like best sitting on the shore. It’s very pleasant, isn’t it? Say you are enjoying it—and don’t try to rouse ambition in me; it’s a mean thing at best.”“It’s a fine thing,” she contradicted. “Very little has ever been achieved without it.”He sat up straighter.“I’ll prove my definition to be more correct than yours,” he insisted. “What is ambition?—a desire for power, for superiority. It’s utterly selfish, an egotistical quality. It springs from greed of gain, either of recognition or of material benefit. Can that be considered other than an ignoble sentiment?”“Not as you put it,” she dissented. “But I dispute your definition. Ambition is a lofty endeavour to excel.”“Well, it may be... sometimes it is,” he allowed. “But in this very human world it is oftener the more sordid sentiment I described. I merely dragged the wings from your ideal and brought it down to earth.”“I believe that is what you enjoy doing,” she said, a touch of reproach in her voice.“What do we know better than this dear mother earth?” he asked, and pressed his hand heavily upon the sand. “She is altogether beautiful, save where man, in the determined pursuit of ambition, has scarred and changed her face. That idea of living at a high mental altitude is mere presumption. It’s an age of posing. We catch at a phrase that sounds fine, and adopt it because of its fine sound. There isn’t any need to live up to the sentiment it expresses—very often it doesn’t express much. There’s a cult that’s called, I believe, the Higher Thought Movement. People read books—or they don’t read them, but simply own them and talk vaguely of the higher things they express. It doesn’t go far beyond talking as a rule. I never met any one who could transmit higher thought. It’s another catch phrase.”“Doesn’t every one have those thoughts at some time?” she asked quietly, without resenting his speech as he had half expected her to do.“Higher thoughts? ... Yes, I suppose so. Only one doesn’t talk about them.”“No,” she returned; “you are right. One would have difficulty in expressing those things—particularly in high sounding phrases.”“Truth is never adorned,” he said—“which possibly accounts for the frequency with which she is disregarded.”Abruptly he stood up, and held out both hands in invitation to her to rise.“The moon’s getting up,” he said. “Come nearer to the water’s edge and see it top the mountain.”

Brenda Upton, avoiding the notice of the general company by leaving the dinner table early that evening and slipping into the garden while most of the guests remained seated, sauntered down the path to the gate, thrilled with an agreeable sense of adventure that was only slightly damped by the reflection that her behaviour in meeting this stranger about whom she knew nothing was not in keeping with the traditions of her class, was, in fact indiscreet, and might be regarded by the man himself as evidence of an unconventionality of which he might seek to take advantage.

She felt herself blushing at the thought; and pulled up at the gate, and stood with it open and her hand upon the iron spikes, wavering, and looking uncertainly upon the shadowy road. If she detected in his manner any decrease of respect it would hurt as well as humiliate... Perhaps after all it would be wiser not to go...

She glanced back over her shoulder towards the house. Two men made their appearance on the stoep while she looked back. She had made one of a set with them that day for tennis; the younger had suggested taking her up the mountain later. It had seemed quite natural and in order to consent to these things. Yet what did she know about these men more than she knew of Guy Matheson? They chanced to be staying in the same house; that was all: had the other been staying in the house she would not have hesitated to walk with him on the beach. These distinctions were rather absurd.

She let the gate go, and it clanged behind her as she emerged upon the road, and, startled a little by the noise of the gate swinging to, stood for a second and looked about her with an air of furtive watchfulness, and the feeling that she was doing something just a little shameful, something which later she might regret.

The expedition seemed scarcely worth such complications of perplexed thought. It was a proof of the strength of her inclination that she persevered in face of this sense of impropriety, and the formless doubts that assailed her continually in defiance of the logic with which she sought to banish them. She was interested in this man with the strong body and handsome face and the air of reckless indolence. She wanted to meet him and talk uninterruptedly without the necessity to break away in the middle of the conversation and hurry back to a meal or something. The freemasonry that exists between persons of like temperament and instinctive sympathy assured her that this interest was mutual.

She crossed the road and walked on to the beach. Against the wall, lounging in the shadow of it and obviously waiting for her, was Matheson. When she saw him she realised how ashamed, how bitterly ashamed, she would have felt had she arrived first. He must have dined early, or hurried through his meal, to have got there so soon. He turned his head quickly, caught sight of her, and advanced to meet her.

“It’s good of you,” he said. “But I felt sure you must relent.”

He scrutinised her for a moment, and found himself enjoying the effects of the last rays of the sunset warming her hair and the clear olive of her skin.

“The sun is kissing you good-bye. It’s a good time of the day, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered a little shyly—“the best time of all.”

“Wait,” he counselled. “I am going to take you beyond Sea Point. You needn’t trudge it all the way. We can board the tram—as far as it goes. Round the point one gets a view of the Twelve Apostles—if you care about mountains,—but I’m sure you do. One faces the wide sweep of the bay and the immensity of the open sea. We’ll watch the moon rise out there—then you will know which is the best time of all I want you to admit that my hour is the best hour.” He laughed with a ring of light-hearted enjoyment in the sound of the mirth. “Humour me,” he pleaded. “That’s one of my conceits.”

But she, smiling also, shook her head.

“The best hour of the twenty-four—the Perfect Hour,” she insisted, “belongs to no specified period. Haven’t you discovered that?”

“What is the perfect hour?” he asked.

“The hour we most enjoy.”

An earnest look had come into her eyes, the quiet tones of her voice echoed this earnestness, accentuated it; he felt his own mood responding to the seriousness of hers. He liked her treatment of the subject. Never in all his life, he believed, and wondered whether she had been more fortunate in this respect, had he experienced the perfect hour. It was possible, he decided, to go through life without experiencing it.

“Your idea appeals pleasantly to the imagination,” he said; “but it deals with superlatives. My good hour is not to be despised; it’s within the grasp of all.”

“You think the other isn’t?” she asked.

“Well, of course, enjoyment is relative; but I imagine your idea of it embraces only the highest quality. Am I right?”

“In a sense, yes—though possibly our ideas of what is truly enjoyable differ substantially. For instance, beautiful scenery is to me entirely satisfying; so is a beautiful flower.”

“You will get that to-night,” he said—“the scenery, I mean. But you know the coast about here, I expect.”

“Fairly well.”

“We’ll get on to the road,” he said; “then we can stop the first tram that overtakes us. It’s too far to walk. We have to study the leg.”

“Oh, that! I played tennis this afternoon,” she said.

He showed his disapproval.

“If you do foolish things like that you deserve complications.”

A tram came up almost immediately. They boarded it; and the girl, feeling a little constrained and disinclined to talk, sat silent, watching the spear of light along the horizon narrowing and paling as the sea settled to a grey restfulness beneath the darkening sky. She did not want Matheson to talk, and was glad when he fell into silence too. She was conscious of the people on the tram to a quite disproportionate degree. She had a persuasion that they knew she was doing something unusual and rather indiscreet. The sense of back doors and secrecy which had gripped her at first had hold of her again, and spoilt things. It was with immeasurable relief that she got down when they reached the terminus and started to walk.

“Let us go on and on,” she said, “until there is no one. I want—quiet.”

“I know,” he said on a note of understanding. “We’ll find what we want.”

A swift and unaccountable feeling of intimacy sprang out of this mutual desire for solitude, which she had expressed with unconscious audacity; while he, in voicing his agreement, seemed to be conspiring with her to get away together and be alone. This purpose had been in his mind from the beginning.

“Tell me when you are tired,” he said, as he helped her over a difficult place.

But she did not tire easily. It was the difficulty of making their way between and over the boulders of the rock-strewn beach that brought them to a halt. They sat down on a small strip of sand with a rock at their backs, and for a while remained silent, contemplating the scene in quiet appreciation that defied expression and lent itself to the prevailing peace. Out of the warm dusk a few stars gleamed faintly, and upon the stirless air the contented murmuring of the sea as it drew away from the sleeping shore hung reposefully, the wild slumber song which throughout the ages the element which never rests urges upon the land.

As the silence between them lengthened, Brenda Upton became aware that the man beside her moved nearer to her; observed too, when she turned towards him, that he was more intent upon the study of her face than upon the deep swell of the moving waters, the sinister strength and secretiveness of the mountain range that walled and overlooked the bay. He had brought her here to see these things, but he did not look at them himself; he was not after all sharing them with her. A faint resentment stirred her as she met the steady gaze of the indolent eyes; she felt somehow cheated.

“I thought this would move you,” he said in a voice of satisfaction.

“It moves me—yes.” She took up a handful of sand and let it run slowly through her fingers. “And you?” she asked.

Suddenly he smiled. He changed his attitude for a more comfortable position, reclining on the sand on his elbow, with his chin supported on his hand.

“I’m enjoying your enjoyment. That’s enough for me to-night. It’s a fresh sensation; the scenery isn’t. When I first came out here it gripped me—as it grips you. I forgot the time. I missed my dinner.” He laughed at some reminiscence. “That didn’t matter; it was worth it. But I found it impossible to explain what had kept me. It would have spoilt it. You know the fatuous remarks that some people would have made... I could have talked of it to you—you would have understood. There’s something fine about this bit of coast—fine and lonely. People don’t come here much. You see, it’s difficult to get at; there’s no beach, and the rocks scare off bathers. There’s nothing to draw people—except just the rugged beauty of it...”

He broke off, aware of the criticism in her eyes, their look of veiled surprise.

“I don’t believeyouunderstand,” he said doubtfully.

“The love of beauty!” she said. “Oh! yes, I understand that part. It’s the inconsistency that puzzles me.”

“The inconsistency!” he echoed.

“I’ll tell you,” she said, and added quickly: “Please don’t think I am criticising you—only when I hear you talk like that of the beauty of nature, it becomes difficult to reconcile that idea of you with—the earliest impression.”

“I know,” he said, and shifted a little on his arm in, order to get a more direct view of her.

He was thinking of the disapproval the brown eyes had so clearly expressed that first morning, and his subsequent wish to drive the disapproval out of them and earn her appreciation. There followed a brief, expectant pause before he said:

“I’m glad you spoke of that. Of course I saw what you were thinking that morning... And in truth it is a waste of a blue day to spend it in gambling. I’ve acted like a fool, and learnt a lesson. I don’t suppose I feel particularly keen about playing in future—not for a time, anyhow—but I have a feeling I’d like to make some sort of a resolve... Would it bore you to accept my undertaking never to play again?”

“It wouldn’t bore me,” she said, manifestly surprised at his question. “But are you sure? ... It is more likely to bore you afterwards to feel constrained to keep that resolve. Is it necessary to promise—anything?”

“Not necessary, perhaps. It would be a satisfaction to me.” He looked up at her with a swift smile. “I believe that’s what I inveigled you here for—to force you into the position of custodian of my conscience—to listen to confidences. I’m lonely. I’ve no one belonging to me out here—no one I can talk intimately with. I’ve knocked around. That sort of life doesn’t lend itself to intimacies. I want to talk—oh! about things one doesn’t talk about generally... I wonder whether I am making myself intelligible?”

“Yes,” she said. “Though possibly if I didn’t have those same feelings I might not follow you altogether. I’m lonely too. I often want a sympathetic listener; and there’s no one; so I moon about alone, and—”

Her voice trailed off on a thoughtful pause.

“Want to kick yourself?” he suggested.

“No. I don’t think it’s ever been quite so bad as that.”

“It is with me,” he said—“often. But I have few resources. I don’t sweat things out like some men in violent exercise. I’ve tried that, but it doesn’t give me any sort of relief. My beastly muscles develop and keep hard without that Sometimes I think they are the only part of me to develop and harden; the rest is non-resistant.”

“A man has his work,” she interjected. “There’s ambition...”

He looked away across the dark waste of waters and answered indifferently.

“I never had any. All that talk about a career—what does it amount to? One man makes a bit of a splash, another doesn’t; but they are both heading the same way, both making for the open sea, which eventually engulfs them. It’s only while they are inshore that the splash is visible; farther out the sea is deep and tranquil; and sometimes it is the man who hasn’t made a splash inshore who keeps up longest and sees well ahead. Those early splashes don’t count for much when the swimmer is done. Death beats us all in the end. It isn’t worth it... ambition... no.”

“Without ambition nothing would be achieved ever,” she said. “Some one’s got to do the things—that are worth doing.”

“Why?” he asked, and smiled at her lazily. She looked down at him, puzzled and hesitating, a little uncertain of her ground. “What are the things worth doing?”

“Don’t you believe that there is a purpose in life?” she asked.

The smile on his face broadened.

“I confess I haven’t given much thought to the matter, but, since you ask me, I suppose there might be some blind purpose even in the life of a mole. It’s all rather futile though, isn’t it? What are you doing? ... What am I doing? ... The obvious answer, of course, is sitting on the shore. Well, that’s about all there is to it—sitting on the shore and talking. Later, well take the plunge and swim out to the deep sea—and that’s the finish. I like best sitting on the shore. It’s very pleasant, isn’t it? Say you are enjoying it—and don’t try to rouse ambition in me; it’s a mean thing at best.”

“It’s a fine thing,” she contradicted. “Very little has ever been achieved without it.”

He sat up straighter.

“I’ll prove my definition to be more correct than yours,” he insisted. “What is ambition?—a desire for power, for superiority. It’s utterly selfish, an egotistical quality. It springs from greed of gain, either of recognition or of material benefit. Can that be considered other than an ignoble sentiment?”

“Not as you put it,” she dissented. “But I dispute your definition. Ambition is a lofty endeavour to excel.”

“Well, it may be... sometimes it is,” he allowed. “But in this very human world it is oftener the more sordid sentiment I described. I merely dragged the wings from your ideal and brought it down to earth.”

“I believe that is what you enjoy doing,” she said, a touch of reproach in her voice.

“What do we know better than this dear mother earth?” he asked, and pressed his hand heavily upon the sand. “She is altogether beautiful, save where man, in the determined pursuit of ambition, has scarred and changed her face. That idea of living at a high mental altitude is mere presumption. It’s an age of posing. We catch at a phrase that sounds fine, and adopt it because of its fine sound. There isn’t any need to live up to the sentiment it expresses—very often it doesn’t express much. There’s a cult that’s called, I believe, the Higher Thought Movement. People read books—or they don’t read them, but simply own them and talk vaguely of the higher things they express. It doesn’t go far beyond talking as a rule. I never met any one who could transmit higher thought. It’s another catch phrase.”

“Doesn’t every one have those thoughts at some time?” she asked quietly, without resenting his speech as he had half expected her to do.

“Higher thoughts? ... Yes, I suppose so. Only one doesn’t talk about them.”

“No,” she returned; “you are right. One would have difficulty in expressing those things—particularly in high sounding phrases.”

“Truth is never adorned,” he said—“which possibly accounts for the frequency with which she is disregarded.”

Abruptly he stood up, and held out both hands in invitation to her to rise.

“The moon’s getting up,” he said. “Come nearer to the water’s edge and see it top the mountain.”

Chapter Six.For a week Matheson remained in Cape Town awaiting Holman’s convenience. He was in no hurry to leave. He felt neither interest nor curiosity in his mission; the only emotion he experienced in regard to it was an impatient desire to have it behind instead of hanging perpetually over him, to fulfil his undertaking, and be done with the whole thing and thus be free of further obligation. The necessity for doing something altogether repugnant to him incensed him against the man who had imposed the condition, and who was formerly his friend. He resented the thing as though it had been a trick. In a way it had been a trick. He apprehended that without following the purpose of the stratagem. He had undertaken a questionable mission at the request of a man against whose interest it was to be detected in connection with the matter. The whole thing was ridiculous; but it was as imperative of discharge as any other debt of honour incurred at the option of the individual. Having agreed to the stake, it was impossible now to draw back.During the week of compulsory inactivity in Cape Town he pursued with considerable diligence the congenial pastime of cultivating the acquaintance so recently begun, which on the night of that first walk had leaped forward with astonishing rapidity, clearing the conventional obstacles that intrude on new acquaintanceship, and arriving at something more nearly resembling an intimate comradeship than anything he had ever experienced in relation to feminine friendship. The novelty of the thing, as much as the undeniable enjoyment he derived from the girl’s society, pleased him. The waiting about was not irksome when Brenda Upton was there to fit into the blanks. But Brenda was not always available.During the next two days Mrs Graham remained indisposed; and her companion was therefore free to spend most of the day, and all the evening, in any way she inclined towards. Never before had Matheson taken satisfaction in a woman’s headaches; nor would he have believed it possible that the sufferer’s recovery on the third day could have caused him such real disappointment. He would cheerfully have confined her to her room for a week.With Mrs Graham about again the meetings were uncertain and hurried, and the after-dinner walks ceased altogether. Matheson rebelled against this.“You can get away if you want to,” he asserted unreasonably. “She couldn’t refuse to let you off for an hour if you asked.”“Do you really believe that I don’t want to?” she asked. “If you only knew how much more they mean to me than they can to you—these walks! ... It’s out of the question, anyhow.”That evening while she sat in the lounge, holding wool for her employer and compelled to listen to the discordant noise made by a group of the younger guests, gathered about the piano in the corner, Brenda’s thoughts wandered to the quiet beach. She pictured the warm satisfying serenity of the night out there under the starlit sky with the moan of the sea at one’s feet. How good it was! ... how good! ... It was hot in the house, despite the draughts created by open doors and windows; there was difficulty in breathing. One wanted to be outside walls, away from artificial lighting, out in the open in the quiet dusk, with no light but the stars.Mrs Graham finished winding her wool and, with the exhausted air of a woman recently prostrated by some nervous disorder, proposed an adjournment to her room for the inevitable hour’s reading, which until now the girl had accepted as a matter of course and not found so unutterably wearisome.With a limp disinclination that was an unspoken protest, she followed Mrs Graham downstairs and into a room on the left of the entrance, a pleasant room opening on to the stoep in front, and with access to a small conservatory. Mrs Graham touched the electric switch, and immediately the room was flooded with light.“Shut die window,” she directed, “or we shall be eaten alive by mosquitoes.”“But,”—Brenda paused—“it’s so hot.”“Well, you can leave the fanlight open. It is as hot outside as indoors.”The reading proved a miserable business. The best of readers would fail to interpret successfully the spirit of a work with a mind intent upon matters wholly outside the subject of the book. Brenda attempted conscientiously to capture her straying thoughts and tie them down to the prosaic present, but they evaded her and flew off at a tangent in pursuit of retrospective glamour. She reached out after them and brought them back, only to lose them almost immediately as, eluding her listless vigilance, they wandered anew in unbidden channels.“I really think,” Mrs Graham’s voice broke in complainingly, “that you must go back and read those last few pages again. You’ve missed the sense somehow. There’s a want of relevance... You mustn’t skip.”Brenda turned back without comment and endeavoured to fix her attention on the print, which conveyed no meaning whatever to her. The reading that evening was admittedly a failure.“Year in year out, until I’m old, it will be like this, I suppose,” the girl said wearily to herself later on her way upstairs. And then, almost fiercely: “Why do we stand it? Why do we allow all the dull, uninteresting things to be forced on us? I do this—for food and shelter. And there isn’t any escape—except through marriage. Ugh!”Arrived in her bedroom, leaning from the window looking out upon the stirless night, she admonished herself mutely.“I don’t think that moonlight walks and agreeable society are altogether good for you, my dear. You grow discontented because every hour isn’t a perfect hour.”A faint smile curved her lips. She leaned farther out into the fragrant darkness, and rested her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands, and gazed away towards the sea, and sighed.“Life isn’t made up of perfect hours,” she reflected. “They are so few—so very few—that’s what makes them so good. He’s discontented too... Every one’s discontented. We want things—oh! all sorts of fine, impossible things—we keep on wanting them. And life goes on in the same solid, stolid way: we live; we grumble; we die.Sic transit...”“No,” she contradicted presently, “that isn’t all. Thereisa glory concealed somewhere—the rainbow in the bubble, if we look long enough.”And after that she ceased to speculate on the problem of life, and fell into a retrospective reverie and forgot the time.Perhaps it is because women as a sex acquiesce too readily in the conditions of life, whatever they may be, instead of making a determined stand against what is unfavourable, that unfavourable conditions are imposed upon them. Men do not submit, and results justify their resistance—organised resistance is the charter of freedom. It is taught that there is beauty in submission—well, there isn’t. Submission is lacking in dignity, and beauty is always dignified. There is beauty in restraint, in control, in unselfishness; but none of these qualities necessarily include submission—rule it out, therefore; its day is done.It was Matheson who gave Brenda Upton her first lesson in resistance. He was very authoritative and firm and convincing; also—he was going away. That was the strongest argument in favour of his demand. It was a demand; there was nothing in the nature of a request about it. He required her on the day before he left Cape Town to obtain, not an hour off, but the entire evening. He wanted her companionship, wanted to sit and talk uninterruptedly, as they had done on those other nights, and not to be worried with considerations of time. He met her on the beach during the hottest hour of the day, when Mrs Graham was enjoying her siesta, and stated his desire. Brenda looked amazed.“She’ll not hear of it,” she said.“Of course not, if you make up your mind in advance that you won’t ask her,” he returned.A flicker of a smile showed in the dark eyes.“If you only realised how difficult it is! She’ll want it explained—why I want to go, and all that.”“But that’s cheek,” he said, surprised. “Don’t you see it’s cheek. You ought not to submit to that sort of thing. It isn’t any business of hers.”She laughed.“It isn’t... But it’s always understood in the case of a girl—it’s one of the indignities we put up with.”“Then don’t put up with them. Don’t you see that in putting up with them you are responsible for their existence. It’s up to you to make a stand for the good of the next generation.”“That’s not as simple as it sounds when one has to exist,” she said.“No.”He was silent for a moment, then he returned to the attack.“Well, you are coming with me to-night. Tell her what you like—only come.”Events combined that evening to facilitate matters for Brenda. Several of the younger people staying in the house arranged a walk to Camps Bay for that evening: the plan was under discussion during dinner, so audible a discussion that Mrs Graham could not avoid hearing it at her table in the corner. Brenda also listened with attention; and the manner in which she intended to put her request framed itself in her thoughts. After dinner she approached Mrs Graham with her sentences well considered.“There is a walk on to-night,” she observed, with the faintest trace of nervousness apparent in her manner, and a consciousness of wilfully deceiving. “It is such a perfect evening... I wonder if you would let me have to-night off?”“To-night?” Mrs Graham’s tone was expostulatory. “What am I to do for the reading?”“I’m sorry.” The girl’s face looked mutinous; there was an obstinate ring in her voice. She was not going to give in. Matheson had made that point clear. She had to make a stand. “I will read longer to-morrow if I may have to-night... only to-night I won’t be inconsiderate afterwards.”She felt that it was weak to promise that Why, after all, should she not have a night free occasionally?“But they will be away hours,” Mrs Graham objected. “I shall be in bed before you get back. There will be no one to massage my shoulder.”It trembled on Brenda’s lips to promise to massage it in the morning; but deciding that this was weak also she remained obstinately silent. Something in the girl’s manner, perhaps the unrelenting quiet of her air; convinced Mrs Graham that opposition would avail nothing. In the teeth of determined resistance she gave way.“Well, of course, if you really wish to go...” she conceded with sufficient ungraciousness. “But it is very inconvenient. I should have thought that you had had plenty of free time lately.”She felt distinctly aggrieved. And she held a prejudice against these expeditions when her young companion formed one of the number. There was something not altogether seemly in the idea.“I hope you won’t be very late,” she said.Brenda followed the party from the house, and contrived to separate from it outside the gate. She took an unnecessary turn round a block of buildings, and came out again upon the main road and made her way on to the beach. Matheson came forward eagerly and caught her hands.“Didn’t I say you’d manage it?—clever person! Now, which is it to be?—into town, or a last pilgrimage to the spot we visited that first evening? It depends on whether your mood demands amusement or solitude.”Her answer pleased him.“My mood demands neither... I want companionship, and the old spot.”

For a week Matheson remained in Cape Town awaiting Holman’s convenience. He was in no hurry to leave. He felt neither interest nor curiosity in his mission; the only emotion he experienced in regard to it was an impatient desire to have it behind instead of hanging perpetually over him, to fulfil his undertaking, and be done with the whole thing and thus be free of further obligation. The necessity for doing something altogether repugnant to him incensed him against the man who had imposed the condition, and who was formerly his friend. He resented the thing as though it had been a trick. In a way it had been a trick. He apprehended that without following the purpose of the stratagem. He had undertaken a questionable mission at the request of a man against whose interest it was to be detected in connection with the matter. The whole thing was ridiculous; but it was as imperative of discharge as any other debt of honour incurred at the option of the individual. Having agreed to the stake, it was impossible now to draw back.

During the week of compulsory inactivity in Cape Town he pursued with considerable diligence the congenial pastime of cultivating the acquaintance so recently begun, which on the night of that first walk had leaped forward with astonishing rapidity, clearing the conventional obstacles that intrude on new acquaintanceship, and arriving at something more nearly resembling an intimate comradeship than anything he had ever experienced in relation to feminine friendship. The novelty of the thing, as much as the undeniable enjoyment he derived from the girl’s society, pleased him. The waiting about was not irksome when Brenda Upton was there to fit into the blanks. But Brenda was not always available.

During the next two days Mrs Graham remained indisposed; and her companion was therefore free to spend most of the day, and all the evening, in any way she inclined towards. Never before had Matheson taken satisfaction in a woman’s headaches; nor would he have believed it possible that the sufferer’s recovery on the third day could have caused him such real disappointment. He would cheerfully have confined her to her room for a week.

With Mrs Graham about again the meetings were uncertain and hurried, and the after-dinner walks ceased altogether. Matheson rebelled against this.

“You can get away if you want to,” he asserted unreasonably. “She couldn’t refuse to let you off for an hour if you asked.”

“Do you really believe that I don’t want to?” she asked. “If you only knew how much more they mean to me than they can to you—these walks! ... It’s out of the question, anyhow.”

That evening while she sat in the lounge, holding wool for her employer and compelled to listen to the discordant noise made by a group of the younger guests, gathered about the piano in the corner, Brenda’s thoughts wandered to the quiet beach. She pictured the warm satisfying serenity of the night out there under the starlit sky with the moan of the sea at one’s feet. How good it was! ... how good! ... It was hot in the house, despite the draughts created by open doors and windows; there was difficulty in breathing. One wanted to be outside walls, away from artificial lighting, out in the open in the quiet dusk, with no light but the stars.

Mrs Graham finished winding her wool and, with the exhausted air of a woman recently prostrated by some nervous disorder, proposed an adjournment to her room for the inevitable hour’s reading, which until now the girl had accepted as a matter of course and not found so unutterably wearisome.

With a limp disinclination that was an unspoken protest, she followed Mrs Graham downstairs and into a room on the left of the entrance, a pleasant room opening on to the stoep in front, and with access to a small conservatory. Mrs Graham touched the electric switch, and immediately the room was flooded with light.

“Shut die window,” she directed, “or we shall be eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

“But,”—Brenda paused—“it’s so hot.”

“Well, you can leave the fanlight open. It is as hot outside as indoors.”

The reading proved a miserable business. The best of readers would fail to interpret successfully the spirit of a work with a mind intent upon matters wholly outside the subject of the book. Brenda attempted conscientiously to capture her straying thoughts and tie them down to the prosaic present, but they evaded her and flew off at a tangent in pursuit of retrospective glamour. She reached out after them and brought them back, only to lose them almost immediately as, eluding her listless vigilance, they wandered anew in unbidden channels.

“I really think,” Mrs Graham’s voice broke in complainingly, “that you must go back and read those last few pages again. You’ve missed the sense somehow. There’s a want of relevance... You mustn’t skip.”

Brenda turned back without comment and endeavoured to fix her attention on the print, which conveyed no meaning whatever to her. The reading that evening was admittedly a failure.

“Year in year out, until I’m old, it will be like this, I suppose,” the girl said wearily to herself later on her way upstairs. And then, almost fiercely: “Why do we stand it? Why do we allow all the dull, uninteresting things to be forced on us? I do this—for food and shelter. And there isn’t any escape—except through marriage. Ugh!”

Arrived in her bedroom, leaning from the window looking out upon the stirless night, she admonished herself mutely.

“I don’t think that moonlight walks and agreeable society are altogether good for you, my dear. You grow discontented because every hour isn’t a perfect hour.”

A faint smile curved her lips. She leaned farther out into the fragrant darkness, and rested her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands, and gazed away towards the sea, and sighed.

“Life isn’t made up of perfect hours,” she reflected. “They are so few—so very few—that’s what makes them so good. He’s discontented too... Every one’s discontented. We want things—oh! all sorts of fine, impossible things—we keep on wanting them. And life goes on in the same solid, stolid way: we live; we grumble; we die.Sic transit...”

“No,” she contradicted presently, “that isn’t all. Thereisa glory concealed somewhere—the rainbow in the bubble, if we look long enough.”

And after that she ceased to speculate on the problem of life, and fell into a retrospective reverie and forgot the time.

Perhaps it is because women as a sex acquiesce too readily in the conditions of life, whatever they may be, instead of making a determined stand against what is unfavourable, that unfavourable conditions are imposed upon them. Men do not submit, and results justify their resistance—organised resistance is the charter of freedom. It is taught that there is beauty in submission—well, there isn’t. Submission is lacking in dignity, and beauty is always dignified. There is beauty in restraint, in control, in unselfishness; but none of these qualities necessarily include submission—rule it out, therefore; its day is done.

It was Matheson who gave Brenda Upton her first lesson in resistance. He was very authoritative and firm and convincing; also—he was going away. That was the strongest argument in favour of his demand. It was a demand; there was nothing in the nature of a request about it. He required her on the day before he left Cape Town to obtain, not an hour off, but the entire evening. He wanted her companionship, wanted to sit and talk uninterruptedly, as they had done on those other nights, and not to be worried with considerations of time. He met her on the beach during the hottest hour of the day, when Mrs Graham was enjoying her siesta, and stated his desire. Brenda looked amazed.

“She’ll not hear of it,” she said.

“Of course not, if you make up your mind in advance that you won’t ask her,” he returned.

A flicker of a smile showed in the dark eyes.

“If you only realised how difficult it is! She’ll want it explained—why I want to go, and all that.”

“But that’s cheek,” he said, surprised. “Don’t you see it’s cheek. You ought not to submit to that sort of thing. It isn’t any business of hers.”

She laughed.

“It isn’t... But it’s always understood in the case of a girl—it’s one of the indignities we put up with.”

“Then don’t put up with them. Don’t you see that in putting up with them you are responsible for their existence. It’s up to you to make a stand for the good of the next generation.”

“That’s not as simple as it sounds when one has to exist,” she said.

“No.”

He was silent for a moment, then he returned to the attack.

“Well, you are coming with me to-night. Tell her what you like—only come.”

Events combined that evening to facilitate matters for Brenda. Several of the younger people staying in the house arranged a walk to Camps Bay for that evening: the plan was under discussion during dinner, so audible a discussion that Mrs Graham could not avoid hearing it at her table in the corner. Brenda also listened with attention; and the manner in which she intended to put her request framed itself in her thoughts. After dinner she approached Mrs Graham with her sentences well considered.

“There is a walk on to-night,” she observed, with the faintest trace of nervousness apparent in her manner, and a consciousness of wilfully deceiving. “It is such a perfect evening... I wonder if you would let me have to-night off?”

“To-night?” Mrs Graham’s tone was expostulatory. “What am I to do for the reading?”

“I’m sorry.” The girl’s face looked mutinous; there was an obstinate ring in her voice. She was not going to give in. Matheson had made that point clear. She had to make a stand. “I will read longer to-morrow if I may have to-night... only to-night I won’t be inconsiderate afterwards.”

She felt that it was weak to promise that Why, after all, should she not have a night free occasionally?

“But they will be away hours,” Mrs Graham objected. “I shall be in bed before you get back. There will be no one to massage my shoulder.”

It trembled on Brenda’s lips to promise to massage it in the morning; but deciding that this was weak also she remained obstinately silent. Something in the girl’s manner, perhaps the unrelenting quiet of her air; convinced Mrs Graham that opposition would avail nothing. In the teeth of determined resistance she gave way.

“Well, of course, if you really wish to go...” she conceded with sufficient ungraciousness. “But it is very inconvenient. I should have thought that you had had plenty of free time lately.”

She felt distinctly aggrieved. And she held a prejudice against these expeditions when her young companion formed one of the number. There was something not altogether seemly in the idea.

“I hope you won’t be very late,” she said.

Brenda followed the party from the house, and contrived to separate from it outside the gate. She took an unnecessary turn round a block of buildings, and came out again upon the main road and made her way on to the beach. Matheson came forward eagerly and caught her hands.

“Didn’t I say you’d manage it?—clever person! Now, which is it to be?—into town, or a last pilgrimage to the spot we visited that first evening? It depends on whether your mood demands amusement or solitude.”

Her answer pleased him.

“My mood demands neither... I want companionship, and the old spot.”

Chapter Seven.There are a thousand beauties of the night, as there are varied shades in the qualities of light and colour, many of them so subtly blended, so dependent on sympathetic conditions, that they are not revealed to every one equally. Beauty is interpreted according to the mood and temperament of the individual. There is beauty in a brick wall when the mind is in harmony with its subject; there is beauty in ugliness where ugliness is not divorced from the soul; there is beauty in everything when youth stands on the threshold of its wonder world and gazes into the shining distances that disclose romance. Romance coruscates in shining distances, like the splendid bewilderment of the Northern Lights: one cannot reach out and grasp these wonders—to take hold of romance is to lose it; to attempt to decrease the distance is to dull the golden vista and distort the fine sense of proportions. As well attempt to bottle material fact with imagination; fermentation would inevitably set up and the result be catastrophe.With feet planted lightly on the slippery rocks, and a strong hand holding her hand to steady her progress over the wet weed, Brenda looked out across the expanse of darkening ocean that flowed away to the horizon, beyond it, till it flung its spent waters upon the quiet shores on the other side of the world, and her eyes were big, and filled with the wondering content that is born of happiness. All the beauties that were in the night were revealed to her. The sensuous warmth enfolded her like the embrace of a lover; the sound of the sea was magic music in her ears, and the salt breath of the spray, which tightened the tendrils of her hair into ringlets, pressed with the flavour of salt kisses on her lips, acrid kisses, moist and stimulating, that stung the lips they caressed. And behind and above her towered the dark mystery of the land, the frowning heights of grey rock that defied the sea’s advance and guarded that vast hinterland so jealously hidden behind the mountain-girt shores.She came to a halt abruptly, and stood still, and looked down at the sea which bubbled at her feet in the interstices of the rocks, and made a soft splashing sound amongst the weed. She was not observing things consciously; her mind was intent on the man beside her, busy with the moment, and, despite the moment’s happiness, oppressed with the sense of finality which the impending parting conveyed. She desired to be a bright and cheerful companion, and instead she was proving, she feared, rather dull. The warm, firm clasp of his hand somewhat confused her ideas. The baldest commonplace was all the utterance she found it possible to make.“To-morrow at this time you will be in the train,” she remarked suddenly, snapping the silence which was beginning to embarrass her.“Yes,” he answered. “Awful bore, isn’t it? The heat will be intolerable. I shall be cursing fate, and wishing myself back here... on this rock with you. It’s good, isn’t it? Lift your face and feel the breeze on your cheek. It’s like a breath—nature’s cool sweet breath. And that jolly little duck of the sea between the rocks... Will you come here again afterwards?”“No,” she replied, and did not give, nor did he ask for, a reason. “We go back in a week,” she added.“And then the holiday comes to an end?”“Yes.”“Well, my play time is finished too. I thought it would last longer, but necessity demands that I should earn a living. Why wasn’t I born a Kaffir? No Kaffir need work unless he wants to. He settles down on another man’s land, and eats another man’s mealies, and makes pretence of being useful in return. It’s an enviable existence.”“Oftener he lives by his wife’s exertions,” she said.“There are white Kaffirs who do that,” he rejoined—“plenty of them across the water. I don’t fancy civilisation can reproach him there. I rather like the coloured man. Do you?”“Custom is everything; I’m used to him,” she said. “I’m South African, you know—born in the Colony. I have never been home.”It occurred to him as odd that she should speak of a country she had never seen as “home.” He had noticed this peculiarity frequently since he had arrived in the country. To the Colonial of British extraction England was always home. It conveyed a sense of unwilling exile that struck like a reproach at the golden welcome of this radiant land which men of many nations have suffered and died for, and women also in the days of the early pioneers. The sting of ingratitude lay in the idea.“Home, as you call it, is but another lump of mother earth set down under colder skies,” he said. “And our skins over there aren’t all white although they ought to be. I like new countries. If I possess the indolence of a Kaffir, the push and the enterprise of youth appeals to me. A young country is unspoilt; it offers immense possibilities. And the route isn’t mile-stoned with precedents which may not be ignored. Incidentally, there are greater facilities for getting on without interest, and sometimes with an infinitesimal degree of energy.”“No,” she contradicted; “it is seldom the lazy man who gets on out here.”“Don’t discourage me,” he pleaded, and turned a smiling face towards her, and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m for taking the smooth path all the way. Why not? Why make such a business of living? It ought to be quite a simple thing.”He was standing very close to her, still holding her hand which he pressed against his side. Her face in the deepening dusk showed misty and uncertain of outline, and the eyes meeting his in the dimness were just dark shadows glowing in their white setting; but he knew that the soft pensive look was in them which he liked to see there had the light been sufficient to reveal it.“I wonder if I might kiss you?” he said, and bent forward in the warm dusk and found her lips.“It was sweet of you to allow that,” he said. “A little kindness is a touch of heaven to a lonely man.”He was not to know how much more that kiss signified to the girl than it did to him. No man had ever kissed her before that night. She did not then respond to the caress, but she accepted it. As his lips descended warmly upon her mouth she felt her face grow hot, and was grateful to the darkness for hiding her confusion; her heart gave a bound and started racing at a great rate; it seemed to her that, standing so close, he must hear it pounding inside her chest.If he observed her emotion he did not remark on it. The touch of the cool unresponding lips with the salt flavour of the sea upon them moved him unaccountably; but some quality that was compounded of the audacity and sensitiveness of youth, nicely balanced with the discretion of a more matured mind, decided him to ignore the little episode until he had further determined its importance in relation to events. It was never wise to precipitate things.“Let’s get off the rocks,” he said. “There’s our little strip of sand waiting for us up yonder. The moon will be later to-night. But it doesn’t matter, does it? We’re in no hurry. And anyway we should never get back in the dark without coming to grief.”He tucked his hand under her arm and assisted her over the rocks. She slipped once, and clutched at him desperately, and nearly upset his balance as well as her own. When with difficulty he maintained his ground and succeeded in holding her up, they remained for a moment or two with his arms about her and laughed recklessly over the averted mishap.“You’re so strong,” she said.“It’s just luck,” he observed, “that we aren’t playing at mixed bathing instead of standing high and dry. There’s a certain excitement in walking on the rocks. I’m enjoying this.”Brenda was enjoying it also; she felt rather sorry when they reached the sand and sat down, and, there being no longer a reason for the attention, he released her hand.“I want you, if you will,” he said presently, “to give me some address that will find you after you leave here. I want to write to you—if I may.”She was silent for a space. He was lying on the sand beside her, looking up into her face; while she hesitated she looked down at him.“I thought it was a case of ships that pass in the night,” she said.“No,” he answered quietly; “I never intended it should be that.”“I can give you Mrs Graham’s address,” she said, after a further pause. “But that, of course, is only temporary.”“How about your home address?” he suggested.“I haven’t one,” she answered, and started to play with the sand. “We broke that up when my father... He was unfortunate,” she finished in a flattened voice.“I’m sorry,” he said simply. He felt that he had blundered upon a painful subject; the father was evidently one of those people whom their relations prefer to ignore. “I’ll have Mrs Graham’s address anyhow, and follow up the changes. This friendship has got to develop, you know. It wouldn’t be fair to me if you drew bade now after extending the hand of good-fellowship.”“Oh! I’m not drawing back,” she said, and ceased fidgeting with the sand and sat nursing her knees, and watching the moving blackness below. “I’ve derived much pleasure from the friendship. It’s been... Well, there have been perfect moments...”“To-night?” he questioned.“To-night—yes.”Her voice dropped to a whisper in making the admission; she spoke with an effort; there was a suggestion of a great deal which she might have said but determinedly repressed in her manner. The darkness crept closer and hid the blush that warmed her face.“It’s rotten having to go to-morrow,” he said. “I’m sorry I have to go. I’ve enjoyed this week—oh! more than I have enjoyed anything since landing. I would have liked to have seen the holiday out with you. Perhaps some day...”He broke off and dropped back on the sand and lay staring up at the stars.“It’s a rotten nuisance, anyway,” he finished.It was later than they had supposed when eventually they rose to retrace their steps; in the enjoyment of the present they lost count of time; and it was with something akin to dismay that Brenda learnt on consulting his watch by the light of the moon that it was approaching eleven o’clock. It would complicate matters if the others got home from their walk before her.“We’ll have to hurry,” she said.“It’s so simple to hurry over the rocks, isn’t it?” he returned with grim humour. “What, after all, can any one say if you are late?”She did not explain that it was not hard words she feared, but the loss of her post and character, two important matters to a girl dependent on her own efforts.“Please,” she said, “let us be as quick as possible.”And so the return journey was made with none of the pleasant lingerings, the pauses to admire beauties that sprang unexpectedly to the gaze, the brief halts for agreeable wrangling or more intimate talk, the longer pauses when they did not talk but stood side by side and gazed out to sea in a sympathetic silence that needed no expression; these pleasures had to be foregone in the effort to overtake time.The necessity for haste irked Matheson; the girl at his side was conscious of his irritation and distressed because of it.“It is such a pity,” she said, as they emerged upon the road, “to have to spoil things.”He caught the note of apology in her voice, its half breathless appeal to his forbearance, and his irritation vanished in a smiling satisfaction.“By Jove!” he cried, nearly breathless too. “I never believed you’d keep the pace up. Let’s put the brake on a bit. It can’t make a difference of more than five minutes either way now. I can’t talk, scampering along like this.”When they reached the road where she was staying, instead of parting at the corner, he accompanied her, as he had on the first morning, to the side gates. Before opening the gate he drew her into the shadow of the oleanders against the fence, and, having looked cautiously up the road and down, and ascertained that no one was within sight, he slipped his hands behind her shoulders and held her for a moment and looked into her eyes.“It’s good-bye this time,” he said, and hung on a significant pause.She remained very quiet and still under his hands, and made no response.“You let me kiss you on the beach,” he said, “but...” He bent his face towards hers. “Won’t you kiss me?” he asked.For a moment she hesitated; then she lifted her face swiftly, and her lips met his, shyly and a little shamefully, in a caress which brushed his eager lips as lightly as one of the pink petals that fell, fragrant and unheeded, about them. She broke away from him; and he turned without a word and opened the gate and looked after her as she slipped through and sped up the path, a slim white figure, with the moonlight splashed upon her hair and face.The night had not been without its perfect moments for him too.

There are a thousand beauties of the night, as there are varied shades in the qualities of light and colour, many of them so subtly blended, so dependent on sympathetic conditions, that they are not revealed to every one equally. Beauty is interpreted according to the mood and temperament of the individual. There is beauty in a brick wall when the mind is in harmony with its subject; there is beauty in ugliness where ugliness is not divorced from the soul; there is beauty in everything when youth stands on the threshold of its wonder world and gazes into the shining distances that disclose romance. Romance coruscates in shining distances, like the splendid bewilderment of the Northern Lights: one cannot reach out and grasp these wonders—to take hold of romance is to lose it; to attempt to decrease the distance is to dull the golden vista and distort the fine sense of proportions. As well attempt to bottle material fact with imagination; fermentation would inevitably set up and the result be catastrophe.

With feet planted lightly on the slippery rocks, and a strong hand holding her hand to steady her progress over the wet weed, Brenda looked out across the expanse of darkening ocean that flowed away to the horizon, beyond it, till it flung its spent waters upon the quiet shores on the other side of the world, and her eyes were big, and filled with the wondering content that is born of happiness. All the beauties that were in the night were revealed to her. The sensuous warmth enfolded her like the embrace of a lover; the sound of the sea was magic music in her ears, and the salt breath of the spray, which tightened the tendrils of her hair into ringlets, pressed with the flavour of salt kisses on her lips, acrid kisses, moist and stimulating, that stung the lips they caressed. And behind and above her towered the dark mystery of the land, the frowning heights of grey rock that defied the sea’s advance and guarded that vast hinterland so jealously hidden behind the mountain-girt shores.

She came to a halt abruptly, and stood still, and looked down at the sea which bubbled at her feet in the interstices of the rocks, and made a soft splashing sound amongst the weed. She was not observing things consciously; her mind was intent on the man beside her, busy with the moment, and, despite the moment’s happiness, oppressed with the sense of finality which the impending parting conveyed. She desired to be a bright and cheerful companion, and instead she was proving, she feared, rather dull. The warm, firm clasp of his hand somewhat confused her ideas. The baldest commonplace was all the utterance she found it possible to make.

“To-morrow at this time you will be in the train,” she remarked suddenly, snapping the silence which was beginning to embarrass her.

“Yes,” he answered. “Awful bore, isn’t it? The heat will be intolerable. I shall be cursing fate, and wishing myself back here... on this rock with you. It’s good, isn’t it? Lift your face and feel the breeze on your cheek. It’s like a breath—nature’s cool sweet breath. And that jolly little duck of the sea between the rocks... Will you come here again afterwards?”

“No,” she replied, and did not give, nor did he ask for, a reason. “We go back in a week,” she added.

“And then the holiday comes to an end?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my play time is finished too. I thought it would last longer, but necessity demands that I should earn a living. Why wasn’t I born a Kaffir? No Kaffir need work unless he wants to. He settles down on another man’s land, and eats another man’s mealies, and makes pretence of being useful in return. It’s an enviable existence.”

“Oftener he lives by his wife’s exertions,” she said.

“There are white Kaffirs who do that,” he rejoined—“plenty of them across the water. I don’t fancy civilisation can reproach him there. I rather like the coloured man. Do you?”

“Custom is everything; I’m used to him,” she said. “I’m South African, you know—born in the Colony. I have never been home.”

It occurred to him as odd that she should speak of a country she had never seen as “home.” He had noticed this peculiarity frequently since he had arrived in the country. To the Colonial of British extraction England was always home. It conveyed a sense of unwilling exile that struck like a reproach at the golden welcome of this radiant land which men of many nations have suffered and died for, and women also in the days of the early pioneers. The sting of ingratitude lay in the idea.

“Home, as you call it, is but another lump of mother earth set down under colder skies,” he said. “And our skins over there aren’t all white although they ought to be. I like new countries. If I possess the indolence of a Kaffir, the push and the enterprise of youth appeals to me. A young country is unspoilt; it offers immense possibilities. And the route isn’t mile-stoned with precedents which may not be ignored. Incidentally, there are greater facilities for getting on without interest, and sometimes with an infinitesimal degree of energy.”

“No,” she contradicted; “it is seldom the lazy man who gets on out here.”

“Don’t discourage me,” he pleaded, and turned a smiling face towards her, and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m for taking the smooth path all the way. Why not? Why make such a business of living? It ought to be quite a simple thing.”

He was standing very close to her, still holding her hand which he pressed against his side. Her face in the deepening dusk showed misty and uncertain of outline, and the eyes meeting his in the dimness were just dark shadows glowing in their white setting; but he knew that the soft pensive look was in them which he liked to see there had the light been sufficient to reveal it.

“I wonder if I might kiss you?” he said, and bent forward in the warm dusk and found her lips.

“It was sweet of you to allow that,” he said. “A little kindness is a touch of heaven to a lonely man.”

He was not to know how much more that kiss signified to the girl than it did to him. No man had ever kissed her before that night. She did not then respond to the caress, but she accepted it. As his lips descended warmly upon her mouth she felt her face grow hot, and was grateful to the darkness for hiding her confusion; her heart gave a bound and started racing at a great rate; it seemed to her that, standing so close, he must hear it pounding inside her chest.

If he observed her emotion he did not remark on it. The touch of the cool unresponding lips with the salt flavour of the sea upon them moved him unaccountably; but some quality that was compounded of the audacity and sensitiveness of youth, nicely balanced with the discretion of a more matured mind, decided him to ignore the little episode until he had further determined its importance in relation to events. It was never wise to precipitate things.

“Let’s get off the rocks,” he said. “There’s our little strip of sand waiting for us up yonder. The moon will be later to-night. But it doesn’t matter, does it? We’re in no hurry. And anyway we should never get back in the dark without coming to grief.”

He tucked his hand under her arm and assisted her over the rocks. She slipped once, and clutched at him desperately, and nearly upset his balance as well as her own. When with difficulty he maintained his ground and succeeded in holding her up, they remained for a moment or two with his arms about her and laughed recklessly over the averted mishap.

“You’re so strong,” she said.

“It’s just luck,” he observed, “that we aren’t playing at mixed bathing instead of standing high and dry. There’s a certain excitement in walking on the rocks. I’m enjoying this.”

Brenda was enjoying it also; she felt rather sorry when they reached the sand and sat down, and, there being no longer a reason for the attention, he released her hand.

“I want you, if you will,” he said presently, “to give me some address that will find you after you leave here. I want to write to you—if I may.”

She was silent for a space. He was lying on the sand beside her, looking up into her face; while she hesitated she looked down at him.

“I thought it was a case of ships that pass in the night,” she said.

“No,” he answered quietly; “I never intended it should be that.”

“I can give you Mrs Graham’s address,” she said, after a further pause. “But that, of course, is only temporary.”

“How about your home address?” he suggested.

“I haven’t one,” she answered, and started to play with the sand. “We broke that up when my father... He was unfortunate,” she finished in a flattened voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply. He felt that he had blundered upon a painful subject; the father was evidently one of those people whom their relations prefer to ignore. “I’ll have Mrs Graham’s address anyhow, and follow up the changes. This friendship has got to develop, you know. It wouldn’t be fair to me if you drew bade now after extending the hand of good-fellowship.”

“Oh! I’m not drawing back,” she said, and ceased fidgeting with the sand and sat nursing her knees, and watching the moving blackness below. “I’ve derived much pleasure from the friendship. It’s been... Well, there have been perfect moments...”

“To-night?” he questioned.

“To-night—yes.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper in making the admission; she spoke with an effort; there was a suggestion of a great deal which she might have said but determinedly repressed in her manner. The darkness crept closer and hid the blush that warmed her face.

“It’s rotten having to go to-morrow,” he said. “I’m sorry I have to go. I’ve enjoyed this week—oh! more than I have enjoyed anything since landing. I would have liked to have seen the holiday out with you. Perhaps some day...”

He broke off and dropped back on the sand and lay staring up at the stars.

“It’s a rotten nuisance, anyway,” he finished.

It was later than they had supposed when eventually they rose to retrace their steps; in the enjoyment of the present they lost count of time; and it was with something akin to dismay that Brenda learnt on consulting his watch by the light of the moon that it was approaching eleven o’clock. It would complicate matters if the others got home from their walk before her.

“We’ll have to hurry,” she said.

“It’s so simple to hurry over the rocks, isn’t it?” he returned with grim humour. “What, after all, can any one say if you are late?”

She did not explain that it was not hard words she feared, but the loss of her post and character, two important matters to a girl dependent on her own efforts.

“Please,” she said, “let us be as quick as possible.”

And so the return journey was made with none of the pleasant lingerings, the pauses to admire beauties that sprang unexpectedly to the gaze, the brief halts for agreeable wrangling or more intimate talk, the longer pauses when they did not talk but stood side by side and gazed out to sea in a sympathetic silence that needed no expression; these pleasures had to be foregone in the effort to overtake time.

The necessity for haste irked Matheson; the girl at his side was conscious of his irritation and distressed because of it.

“It is such a pity,” she said, as they emerged upon the road, “to have to spoil things.”

He caught the note of apology in her voice, its half breathless appeal to his forbearance, and his irritation vanished in a smiling satisfaction.

“By Jove!” he cried, nearly breathless too. “I never believed you’d keep the pace up. Let’s put the brake on a bit. It can’t make a difference of more than five minutes either way now. I can’t talk, scampering along like this.”

When they reached the road where she was staying, instead of parting at the corner, he accompanied her, as he had on the first morning, to the side gates. Before opening the gate he drew her into the shadow of the oleanders against the fence, and, having looked cautiously up the road and down, and ascertained that no one was within sight, he slipped his hands behind her shoulders and held her for a moment and looked into her eyes.

“It’s good-bye this time,” he said, and hung on a significant pause.

She remained very quiet and still under his hands, and made no response.

“You let me kiss you on the beach,” he said, “but...” He bent his face towards hers. “Won’t you kiss me?” he asked.

For a moment she hesitated; then she lifted her face swiftly, and her lips met his, shyly and a little shamefully, in a caress which brushed his eager lips as lightly as one of the pink petals that fell, fragrant and unheeded, about them. She broke away from him; and he turned without a word and opened the gate and looked after her as she slipped through and sped up the path, a slim white figure, with the moonlight splashed upon her hair and face.

The night had not been without its perfect moments for him too.

Chapter Eight.At the last moment Holman decided that he was unable to see his friend off by train on the journey he was undertaking at his request; an engagement prevented him from getting to the station in time. They met at breakfast; but very little was said in reference to the journey or its mission, the details of which had been discussed overnight. Matheson had the letter and his directions. His destination was a farm some twenty miles to the west of De Aar. He would leave the train at the junction and complete the journey by road, obtaining a conveyance at a hotel which Holman recommended.The prospect of the journey bored him. He was sufficiently familiar with the line to be able to judge fairly accurately the amount of discomfort he might expect from travelling in summer; and the idea of staying for a fortnight, perhaps longer, on a farm with Dutch people was distasteful.“What, in hell,” he asked desperately, “shall I do with myself? I don’t even speak Dutch.”“Nor write it?” Holman asked, without looking at him.“Haven’t any knowledge at all of the fool lingo. You might as reasonably expect me to talk in Kaffir.”“I’m not expecting anything,” was the response. “But I thought you might have picked up a few words—some fellows show a surprising facility in acquiring the taal. But it’s not important. The Dutch mostly speak English. The Kriges do, anyhow. Mrs Krige is, as a matter of fact, English by birth.”“Come, that’s better,” Matheson said complacently. “It constitutes a link. I’ll know how to talk to a fellow-countrywoman.”“I wouldn’t insist too much on the point of nationality,” the other threw in with a note of caution in his tones. “She’s Dutch now, and so are all her children.”“In law, yes,” Matheson agreed. “There are kids, then?”“Oh! they are all grown up. It is her son you are going to see. The old man died years ago.”He changed the subject with some abruptness, and spoke of his own arrangements, and planned their next meeting. He would wait in Johannesburg; Matheson, when he turned up, would discover him in one of the usual haunts. They could then square their account finally. And if there was any little service that it lay in his power to do the other, he would be glad to be called upon to perform the same.Later, when he was seated in the train, Matheson recalled this tentative promise and the peculiar emphasis of its utterance; and it occurred to him that Holman inclined to exaggerate the service he was rendering. He leaned back in a corner of the compartment, which he had to himself, and thought over things. The importance of this trumpery party intrigue was assuming disproportionate dimensions. The flicker of doubt in his mind developed steadily, while he sat staring from the window at the changing scenery, pondering the matter deeply. He did not altogether believe the reasons Holman had alleged in explanation of the secrecy of the mission and the need for caution. His talk of overthrowing the government hadn’t rung true. Moreover, men don’t attempt the overthrow of governments by stealth; that is usually a noisy business which revels in publicity and insists upon the limelight. There was something behind it all, something which had not transpired, which conceivably might never transpire so far as he was concerned.He regretted his ignorance of the taal. In the light of his growing suspicion it occurred to him that his disclaimer of all knowledge of Dutch had given Holman satisfaction. Whatever the tatter’s business was with Andreas Krige it was not his wish that his messenger should learn it.He took out his pocket-book, and examined the letter which lay inside the cover. The direction told him nothing. The name of the farm was Benauwdheidfontein. It had taken him some time to get anywhere near the pronunciation—Benaudtfontein was the best he could do; but Holman had told him the Kriges cut it down to Benfontein.He put the letter back, having examined it from all angles, as one might examine a curiosity, and returned to his former occupation of staring unseeingly from the window while revolving matters in his brain, a form, of mental exercise that was unusual with him. Thinking bored him; he did not often encourage the habit. But this business roused his curiosity; he was beginning to be more interested than he ever remembered being in another man’s affairs.And then suddenly there flashed across his mind, allaying its distrust, the thought that these people were partly English. That to a great extent took from the sinister aspect of the thing. Quite possibly he was on the track of a mare’s nest It might be merely some raining transaction of more or less doubtful honesty that Holman was communicating with Andreas Krige about Holman made a good thing of buying and selling shares—particularly selling. Krige might be in with him, or about to be bled by him. He would be able to judge better of that when he saw the man.He dismissed the matter from his mind and read for a while; but the blistering heat in the sun-scorched compartment made it difficult to concentrate the attention on anything for long. And there was no escape from the heat, not even when night fell, bringing darkness without coolness to the earth, and a hushed silence, penetrated by the insistent, shrill chirp of the crickets and the intrusive rush of the train through the night-shadowed land.He slept about eleven, and awoke to a golden sunrise and another cloudless blue day. But the breadth of the early day was fresh and sweet and wonderfully pure. He drew it into his lungs, leaning from the carriage window, surveying the parched landscape, and the gaping fissures in the almost dry beds of the river, along the banks of which the thorny mimosa grew, the reluctant dewdrops hiding in the hollows of its shrivelled leaves from the too searching rays of the sun.The railway curved sharply, winding in and out among the hills, so that from the window the tail of the train was visible, seeming like a second train cutting the first in the middle. Beyond Hutchinson the line was being repaired. A row of white tents alongside the rails, with their owners squatted in the openings having breakfast, caused Matheson a queer, unaccustomed stab of envy. This was what he ought to be doing—useful work for the country, instead of using the metals to career about on a fool’s errand.The train had slowed down. He leaned farther out of the window and shouted to a sunburnt man who stood astride outside his tent, with a tin mug in one hand and part of a loaf in the other.“You, Saunders!” he yelled. “What ho! Want an extra hand down there?”The person addressed as Saunders grinned amiably; and another man came to the opening of the tent and stood behind him, interested, stripped to the waist, and towelling vigorously.“Tumble out,” shouted Saunders. “I dare say we could make use of you.”And then the train left the white tents and their tanned owners behind; and Matheson drew in his head with a feeling of sharp dissatisfaction with life, and thought of these men enviously, until the steadily increasing warmth of the day brought back to his memory the stuffy unbearableness of heat accumulated under canvas; and his imagination pictured anew the treeless, sunbaked nature of the land where those jolly cool-looking white tents were pitched. It wasn’t after all much of a picnic.He arrived at De Aar about noon, and went to the hotel, and had a bath and changed before sitting down to lunch. He had not been in this Karroo town before, and it struck him as fine and picturesque and altogether characteristic. The country was flat and open, and the veld greener and less drought-stricken.It was a commercial hotel that Holman had recommended, run by Dutch people and patronised principally by the Dutch. Matheson shared a small table with a Jew, who owned a store in the town and took his meals at the hotel but did not sleep there. The Jew was not expansive; but he showed a ready courtesy when approached on any subject, and was emphatic in his agreement with Matheson’s disparagement of the weather.“It is a land of drought,” he finished, and refilled his glass from the bottle at his elbow. “I have known the drought hold on the Karroo for two years. But the land won’t die. There’s water a long way below the surface.”“Well have to bore for that some day,” Matheson said.“Oh! they do bore—on the farms.”“It wants doing on a more extensive scale.”“Yes; but there’s the difficulty of finance again. Who is to provide the money?”Matheson lifted his brows.“If a man finds a gold mine, he’s quick enough as a rule to find the capital for exploiting it. The Empire’s fairly wealthy.”The other appeared doubtful.“She did not become so through speculation,” he ventured.“That’s no argument,” the younger man contended. “Something has been written, you know, against wrapping certain possessions away in a napkin. If one undertakes responsibility it’s up to one to turn it to the best account—otherwise leave it alone.”The Jew relapsed into an acquiescent silence, from which Matheson presently dug him to inquire if he knew a farm named Benauwdheidfontein.“No.” He looked up curiously. “I wouldn’t like to take a farm with a name like that,” he said.“It’s something of a mouthful certainly,” Matheson agreed.“Oh, that! Many Dutch homesteads have long names... But—Benauwdheidfontein! ... No! that’s bad.”It became clear to Matheson that it was something the name suggested, rather than the word itself, to which the speaker objected.“What does Benauwdheidfontein stand for?” he inquired.The Jew thought for a moment.“Literally the word, I believe, means uneasiness, anxiety; but it conveys rather more than that. It suggests being at odds with life—cornered, as it were—having reached the limit of endurance. Fear lurks in the word. It’s a name with a sinister meaning—an unlucky name, we should call it.”“I am not much of a believer in luck, are you?” Matheson said. His listener smiled.“It depends on the hour, the place, and the circumstance,” he replied, and helped himself to cheese, which he proceeded to despatch in an abstracted manner, and with an air of being wishful to escape further conversation.Matheson finished his lunch, and interviewed the proprietor.“Can you provide me with a conveyance that will take me to Benauwdheidfontein?” he asked.“Benfontein—Mr Krige’s place? Oh! yes,” was the response. “It’s a long drive. You won’t want to start for a couple of hours, I suppose?”Upon Matheson’s replying that the hour of departure was a matter of indifference to him, the proprietor fixed it for four o’clock, when the great heat would be decreasing, and driving across the veld could be undertaken with less discomfort. He seemed anxious to do his best for his guest.“Will I put a gun in the cart?” he asked. “With luck, you should see some birds as you travel. There is good sport on the flats.”Matheson accepted gratefully. If Krige could offer something in the way of shooting, his stay at Benfontein would not lack compensation. He regretted that he had no gun with him. But on a farm a spare gun is usually available, the etiquette of the veld being strictly in accord with the principle of the traveller’s right to hospitality, which includes the enjoyment of one’s goods—providing always that he does not travel on foot.

At the last moment Holman decided that he was unable to see his friend off by train on the journey he was undertaking at his request; an engagement prevented him from getting to the station in time. They met at breakfast; but very little was said in reference to the journey or its mission, the details of which had been discussed overnight. Matheson had the letter and his directions. His destination was a farm some twenty miles to the west of De Aar. He would leave the train at the junction and complete the journey by road, obtaining a conveyance at a hotel which Holman recommended.

The prospect of the journey bored him. He was sufficiently familiar with the line to be able to judge fairly accurately the amount of discomfort he might expect from travelling in summer; and the idea of staying for a fortnight, perhaps longer, on a farm with Dutch people was distasteful.

“What, in hell,” he asked desperately, “shall I do with myself? I don’t even speak Dutch.”

“Nor write it?” Holman asked, without looking at him.

“Haven’t any knowledge at all of the fool lingo. You might as reasonably expect me to talk in Kaffir.”

“I’m not expecting anything,” was the response. “But I thought you might have picked up a few words—some fellows show a surprising facility in acquiring the taal. But it’s not important. The Dutch mostly speak English. The Kriges do, anyhow. Mrs Krige is, as a matter of fact, English by birth.”

“Come, that’s better,” Matheson said complacently. “It constitutes a link. I’ll know how to talk to a fellow-countrywoman.”

“I wouldn’t insist too much on the point of nationality,” the other threw in with a note of caution in his tones. “She’s Dutch now, and so are all her children.”

“In law, yes,” Matheson agreed. “There are kids, then?”

“Oh! they are all grown up. It is her son you are going to see. The old man died years ago.”

He changed the subject with some abruptness, and spoke of his own arrangements, and planned their next meeting. He would wait in Johannesburg; Matheson, when he turned up, would discover him in one of the usual haunts. They could then square their account finally. And if there was any little service that it lay in his power to do the other, he would be glad to be called upon to perform the same.

Later, when he was seated in the train, Matheson recalled this tentative promise and the peculiar emphasis of its utterance; and it occurred to him that Holman inclined to exaggerate the service he was rendering. He leaned back in a corner of the compartment, which he had to himself, and thought over things. The importance of this trumpery party intrigue was assuming disproportionate dimensions. The flicker of doubt in his mind developed steadily, while he sat staring from the window at the changing scenery, pondering the matter deeply. He did not altogether believe the reasons Holman had alleged in explanation of the secrecy of the mission and the need for caution. His talk of overthrowing the government hadn’t rung true. Moreover, men don’t attempt the overthrow of governments by stealth; that is usually a noisy business which revels in publicity and insists upon the limelight. There was something behind it all, something which had not transpired, which conceivably might never transpire so far as he was concerned.

He regretted his ignorance of the taal. In the light of his growing suspicion it occurred to him that his disclaimer of all knowledge of Dutch had given Holman satisfaction. Whatever the tatter’s business was with Andreas Krige it was not his wish that his messenger should learn it.

He took out his pocket-book, and examined the letter which lay inside the cover. The direction told him nothing. The name of the farm was Benauwdheidfontein. It had taken him some time to get anywhere near the pronunciation—Benaudtfontein was the best he could do; but Holman had told him the Kriges cut it down to Benfontein.

He put the letter back, having examined it from all angles, as one might examine a curiosity, and returned to his former occupation of staring unseeingly from the window while revolving matters in his brain, a form, of mental exercise that was unusual with him. Thinking bored him; he did not often encourage the habit. But this business roused his curiosity; he was beginning to be more interested than he ever remembered being in another man’s affairs.

And then suddenly there flashed across his mind, allaying its distrust, the thought that these people were partly English. That to a great extent took from the sinister aspect of the thing. Quite possibly he was on the track of a mare’s nest It might be merely some raining transaction of more or less doubtful honesty that Holman was communicating with Andreas Krige about Holman made a good thing of buying and selling shares—particularly selling. Krige might be in with him, or about to be bled by him. He would be able to judge better of that when he saw the man.

He dismissed the matter from his mind and read for a while; but the blistering heat in the sun-scorched compartment made it difficult to concentrate the attention on anything for long. And there was no escape from the heat, not even when night fell, bringing darkness without coolness to the earth, and a hushed silence, penetrated by the insistent, shrill chirp of the crickets and the intrusive rush of the train through the night-shadowed land.

He slept about eleven, and awoke to a golden sunrise and another cloudless blue day. But the breadth of the early day was fresh and sweet and wonderfully pure. He drew it into his lungs, leaning from the carriage window, surveying the parched landscape, and the gaping fissures in the almost dry beds of the river, along the banks of which the thorny mimosa grew, the reluctant dewdrops hiding in the hollows of its shrivelled leaves from the too searching rays of the sun.

The railway curved sharply, winding in and out among the hills, so that from the window the tail of the train was visible, seeming like a second train cutting the first in the middle. Beyond Hutchinson the line was being repaired. A row of white tents alongside the rails, with their owners squatted in the openings having breakfast, caused Matheson a queer, unaccustomed stab of envy. This was what he ought to be doing—useful work for the country, instead of using the metals to career about on a fool’s errand.

The train had slowed down. He leaned farther out of the window and shouted to a sunburnt man who stood astride outside his tent, with a tin mug in one hand and part of a loaf in the other.

“You, Saunders!” he yelled. “What ho! Want an extra hand down there?”

The person addressed as Saunders grinned amiably; and another man came to the opening of the tent and stood behind him, interested, stripped to the waist, and towelling vigorously.

“Tumble out,” shouted Saunders. “I dare say we could make use of you.”

And then the train left the white tents and their tanned owners behind; and Matheson drew in his head with a feeling of sharp dissatisfaction with life, and thought of these men enviously, until the steadily increasing warmth of the day brought back to his memory the stuffy unbearableness of heat accumulated under canvas; and his imagination pictured anew the treeless, sunbaked nature of the land where those jolly cool-looking white tents were pitched. It wasn’t after all much of a picnic.

He arrived at De Aar about noon, and went to the hotel, and had a bath and changed before sitting down to lunch. He had not been in this Karroo town before, and it struck him as fine and picturesque and altogether characteristic. The country was flat and open, and the veld greener and less drought-stricken.

It was a commercial hotel that Holman had recommended, run by Dutch people and patronised principally by the Dutch. Matheson shared a small table with a Jew, who owned a store in the town and took his meals at the hotel but did not sleep there. The Jew was not expansive; but he showed a ready courtesy when approached on any subject, and was emphatic in his agreement with Matheson’s disparagement of the weather.

“It is a land of drought,” he finished, and refilled his glass from the bottle at his elbow. “I have known the drought hold on the Karroo for two years. But the land won’t die. There’s water a long way below the surface.”

“Well have to bore for that some day,” Matheson said.

“Oh! they do bore—on the farms.”

“It wants doing on a more extensive scale.”

“Yes; but there’s the difficulty of finance again. Who is to provide the money?”

Matheson lifted his brows.

“If a man finds a gold mine, he’s quick enough as a rule to find the capital for exploiting it. The Empire’s fairly wealthy.”

The other appeared doubtful.

“She did not become so through speculation,” he ventured.

“That’s no argument,” the younger man contended. “Something has been written, you know, against wrapping certain possessions away in a napkin. If one undertakes responsibility it’s up to one to turn it to the best account—otherwise leave it alone.”

The Jew relapsed into an acquiescent silence, from which Matheson presently dug him to inquire if he knew a farm named Benauwdheidfontein.

“No.” He looked up curiously. “I wouldn’t like to take a farm with a name like that,” he said.

“It’s something of a mouthful certainly,” Matheson agreed.

“Oh, that! Many Dutch homesteads have long names... But—Benauwdheidfontein! ... No! that’s bad.”

It became clear to Matheson that it was something the name suggested, rather than the word itself, to which the speaker objected.

“What does Benauwdheidfontein stand for?” he inquired.

The Jew thought for a moment.

“Literally the word, I believe, means uneasiness, anxiety; but it conveys rather more than that. It suggests being at odds with life—cornered, as it were—having reached the limit of endurance. Fear lurks in the word. It’s a name with a sinister meaning—an unlucky name, we should call it.”

“I am not much of a believer in luck, are you?” Matheson said. His listener smiled.

“It depends on the hour, the place, and the circumstance,” he replied, and helped himself to cheese, which he proceeded to despatch in an abstracted manner, and with an air of being wishful to escape further conversation.

Matheson finished his lunch, and interviewed the proprietor.

“Can you provide me with a conveyance that will take me to Benauwdheidfontein?” he asked.

“Benfontein—Mr Krige’s place? Oh! yes,” was the response. “It’s a long drive. You won’t want to start for a couple of hours, I suppose?”

Upon Matheson’s replying that the hour of departure was a matter of indifference to him, the proprietor fixed it for four o’clock, when the great heat would be decreasing, and driving across the veld could be undertaken with less discomfort. He seemed anxious to do his best for his guest.

“Will I put a gun in the cart?” he asked. “With luck, you should see some birds as you travel. There is good sport on the flats.”

Matheson accepted gratefully. If Krige could offer something in the way of shooting, his stay at Benfontein would not lack compensation. He regretted that he had no gun with him. But on a farm a spare gun is usually available, the etiquette of the veld being strictly in accord with the principle of the traveller’s right to hospitality, which includes the enjoyment of one’s goods—providing always that he does not travel on foot.

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