Chapter Twenty Nine.

Chapter Twenty Nine.Sweeping swiftly, as quickly scudding clouds will sweep athwart a wind-swept sky, memories that were not wholly bitter flashed across Matheson’s mind with each mile that he covered on his journey to Benfontein. Some odd thought or phrase or emotion leapt out of the past into prominence and held him with all the vital qualities of a thing newly realised. Always in imagination he was speeding towards Benfontein, though Nel’s rondavel, and not the farm of Andreas Krige, was his ultimate destination.From some unexplained, and indeed inexplicable, reason, he had shrunk from being seen off on this journey by his fiancée. She had proposed being at the station for that purpose; but he had raised so many difficulties that she had reluctantly given way to his obvious wish for solitude; and when the time for departure came there was no one on the platform to speed his going.He felt relieved at this; nevertheless the mood in which he started was heavy, overcast like the day which, bright with promise in the dawn, had later clouded darkly with every prospect of a gathering storm. The darkness of the day fitted his mood. Not since the hour when he had turned his back upon the white walls of Benfontein and driven beside Oom Koos Marais across the blackened veld, had he experienced such heaviness of spirit. Some unexpected spring of emotion had been uncovered by this turning back, and its bitter sweet waters were bubbling to the surface in a succession of reawakened memories which he had cheated himself into believing were buried for ever. No one has ever succeeded in burying memory in a sufficiently deep grave; however untiringly one labours over its interment, the first chance breeze of some recurrent thought or seeming likeness, blows back the loose soil and discovers the stark form that had been laid to final rest. Memory ranks with the immortals: it is vain to attempt to bury what cannot die.Matheson thrust these reminiscent thoughts from him as he travelled northward, and tried to concentrate upon the immediate prospect of his meeting with Holman. It was his intention to hire a horse at De Aar and ride out to Nel’s farm and take possession of the rondavel. A saddle horse would be a necessity to him; he could not appropriate to his use any of Cornelius Nel’s horses. It was moreover possible that the horses on the farm had been commandeered, and had been taken when their master left to join Maritz. This he found later was the case: the farm had been stripped of everything that could prove of use to aid the rebellion.The rondavel, however, remained as its owner invariably left it, fully provisioned, and fit for immediate habitation. One servant was left in charge of things, a light-coloured Kaffir who answered to the name of Butter Tom by reason of his fair skin, which, the colour of old parchment, suggested a mixture of alien blood. Butter Tom had been Nel’s body servant in the old days, and he recognised and greeted Matheson with a broad smile of welcome.“Me take the baas’ horse,” he said. “The baas will find everything he want by the rondavel. Me come bimeby and get the baas something to eat.”Matheson swung himself out of the saddle.“Well, I’m hungry, and that’s a fact, Butter Tom,” he said.The Kaffir gazed at him reproachfully the while he took the reins in his hand.“Me not fat,” he said seriously, rebuke in his tones and a grave anxiousness in his questioning eyes.Matheson did not attempt an explanation of the mistake: the native ear was confused with the unfamiliar English. He looked closely at the well-knit figure and smiled.“No; so I see,” he said. “You get me supper pretty quick, Butter Tom. I’m plenty hungry.”Whereat Butter Tom laughed quietly. To be plenty hungry was something he did understand.Matheson entered the rondavel and took a survey of his temporary quarters. Everything was as Nel had left it, neat and orderly; the bed behind the reimpe curtain was made as though in preparation for immediate use: the atmosphere and appearance of the hut suggested a recent occupant. There were a pair of boots, which did not belong to Nel, which were not only smaller but more fashionable in make, under a chair; and on the brightly polished surface of the circular table lay a familiar object—a meerschaum pipe, with quaintly carved bowl, which he remembered to have seen Holman smoking innumerable times. The pipe had lain on the desk beside his hand during their last interview in the dingy office at Johannesburg. It was intolerable presumption, he reflected, that this German whom Herman Nel held in such deep abhorrence should make free with the tatter’s possessions, and pollute in its owner’s absence his home with his treacherous presence.On the appearance of Butter Tom he made inquiries, and elicited the information that Baas Holman did occasionally use the rondavel, though he had not been there for some days.“If he come again,” the Kaffir announced sturdily, setting a dish of buttered mealies gently down upon the snowy cloth, “me tell him this baas come from my baas. I serve this baas only. Baas Holman come with the missis two moons since.”So Cornelius Nel’s wife had lent her brother-in-law’s house to his enemy. Indirectly Holman was responsible for the breach between the two brothers; he had been the evil genius of Cornelius as well as of Andreas Krige. Leentje Nel was aware of Herman’s dislike; her conduct therefore in lending his rondavel to the object of his aversion seemed to Matheson peculiarly detestable: it betrayed an utter absence of good taste on her part in offering, and on his in accepting, in the owner’s absence hospitality which would not have been extended had Herman Nel been on the spot.But the fact that Holman used the rondavel, that, having left part of his property there, he meant presumably to return at no distant date, promised well for the meeting he sought with this man who had compassed so much evil and evaded himself any dangerous participation therein. He had no wish to go to Benfontein for the purpose of facing him; it would please him better if Holman descended upon him at the rondavel, where, secure in the knowledge of his right in being there, he would have the advantage over this German, whom Herman Nel would have shot like a jackal as an act of simple justice.He cautioned Butter Tom not to speak of his presence at the rondavel, and bade him be on the alert against surprise; he had no wish to be caught unaware. More particularly he dreaded discovery by Cornelius Nel’s wife: a man when he is an enemy is openly an enemy, but a woman can be secretive and very bitter. Usually she makes the more relentless foe.Butter Tom, with the limited intelligence and blind loyalty of his race, understanding only that this baas who was the friend of his baas did not wish his whereabouts known, was satisfied to keep watch without other explanation: the wish of the baas was a command; it was of itself a sufficient reason why he should guard against intruders. Save when engaged on his duties as servitor, he seldom stirred from his post of observation in the shade of the wall, where he squatted on his haunches, and smoked the tobacco which Matheson provided, and kept a vigilant eye on the approaches to the rondavel.When he was confident that he was unobserved, even by his faithful henchman, Matheson took the precaution to look in the chest where Nel kept the rope ladder with which he mounted to his secret chamber. He felt reassured on finding the ladder rolled up in its accustomed place. No one beside Nel, unless perchance he had disclosed the secret to his fiancée, knew of that hiding place in the roof. In the event of a surprise visit, he intended to make use of his knowledge. He could from the upper chamber observe without being seen all that went on in the room below, could listen without fear of detection to any conversation that was being carried on.Later, he experimented with the ladder, fixing it as he had watched Nel fix it to the cross beam in the roof. He climbed up it, and removed with very little difficulty the thatch door, and crawled through the opening, closing the thatch behind him. When closed there was a thin division in the thatch through which it was quite easy to look into the room beneath. Satisfied with this trial that he was safe against surprise, he made the descent and rolled up the ladder and returned it to the chest.The next few days were spent in anticipation of a visit from Holman, who did not appear. Until dusk each day he remained a voluntary prisoner within the rondavel; after sundown he left Butter Tom in charge and ventured forth in search of exercise; Butter Tom was to watch for his return and warn him by signal in the event of a visitor during his absence. But the days passed and left him in undisputed possession of his quarters. If he meant to see Holman it began to look as though he would have to go to Benfontein after all.This continued immunity from intrusion rendered him less cautious in his actions. He took to sitting outside the hut, and one afternoon went for a walk while it was yet daylight in defiance of being observed by any one on the farm. There was no reason why he should not be seen, save his own wish to surprise Holman. But beyond a native herd and one or two Kaffir women, he met no one; and he returned to the rondavel towards the hour for supper revolving in his mind whether or no he should set forth for Benfontein on the morrow?It was a matter for surprise to him on nearing the rondavel to find Butter Tom, whom he had left guarding the entrance, no longer at his station. It was the first sign of defection Butter Tom had given; the Kaffir’s negligence set him wondering whether in trusting him implicitly he was acting altogether wisely? He looked about for some sign of him, and discovering none, concluded that he must be in the smaller hut preparing the evening meal, having settled, in his indecision between the rival claims of these separate duties, on the primary importance of attending to the baas’ food.Matheson entered the rondavel expecting to find the table laid for supper; but no preparation for the meal had been attempted, and no sound came from the native quarters. The rondavel remained to all appearance as he had left it.And yet, despite the fact that the place was empty, that there was no evidence of any one having been there during his absence, a sense of uneasiness held him—a feeling of being observed, though there was no one visibly present, which was acutely disquieting. Without understanding his reason in doing so, he crossed to the chest beneath the window where the rope ladder lay concealed, and lifted the lid. For a second or so he remained there motionless, holding back the heavy lid with his hand, staring into the empty chest. Some one had been there before him: the rope ladder was gone.

Sweeping swiftly, as quickly scudding clouds will sweep athwart a wind-swept sky, memories that were not wholly bitter flashed across Matheson’s mind with each mile that he covered on his journey to Benfontein. Some odd thought or phrase or emotion leapt out of the past into prominence and held him with all the vital qualities of a thing newly realised. Always in imagination he was speeding towards Benfontein, though Nel’s rondavel, and not the farm of Andreas Krige, was his ultimate destination.

From some unexplained, and indeed inexplicable, reason, he had shrunk from being seen off on this journey by his fiancée. She had proposed being at the station for that purpose; but he had raised so many difficulties that she had reluctantly given way to his obvious wish for solitude; and when the time for departure came there was no one on the platform to speed his going.

He felt relieved at this; nevertheless the mood in which he started was heavy, overcast like the day which, bright with promise in the dawn, had later clouded darkly with every prospect of a gathering storm. The darkness of the day fitted his mood. Not since the hour when he had turned his back upon the white walls of Benfontein and driven beside Oom Koos Marais across the blackened veld, had he experienced such heaviness of spirit. Some unexpected spring of emotion had been uncovered by this turning back, and its bitter sweet waters were bubbling to the surface in a succession of reawakened memories which he had cheated himself into believing were buried for ever. No one has ever succeeded in burying memory in a sufficiently deep grave; however untiringly one labours over its interment, the first chance breeze of some recurrent thought or seeming likeness, blows back the loose soil and discovers the stark form that had been laid to final rest. Memory ranks with the immortals: it is vain to attempt to bury what cannot die.

Matheson thrust these reminiscent thoughts from him as he travelled northward, and tried to concentrate upon the immediate prospect of his meeting with Holman. It was his intention to hire a horse at De Aar and ride out to Nel’s farm and take possession of the rondavel. A saddle horse would be a necessity to him; he could not appropriate to his use any of Cornelius Nel’s horses. It was moreover possible that the horses on the farm had been commandeered, and had been taken when their master left to join Maritz. This he found later was the case: the farm had been stripped of everything that could prove of use to aid the rebellion.

The rondavel, however, remained as its owner invariably left it, fully provisioned, and fit for immediate habitation. One servant was left in charge of things, a light-coloured Kaffir who answered to the name of Butter Tom by reason of his fair skin, which, the colour of old parchment, suggested a mixture of alien blood. Butter Tom had been Nel’s body servant in the old days, and he recognised and greeted Matheson with a broad smile of welcome.

“Me take the baas’ horse,” he said. “The baas will find everything he want by the rondavel. Me come bimeby and get the baas something to eat.”

Matheson swung himself out of the saddle.

“Well, I’m hungry, and that’s a fact, Butter Tom,” he said.

The Kaffir gazed at him reproachfully the while he took the reins in his hand.

“Me not fat,” he said seriously, rebuke in his tones and a grave anxiousness in his questioning eyes.

Matheson did not attempt an explanation of the mistake: the native ear was confused with the unfamiliar English. He looked closely at the well-knit figure and smiled.

“No; so I see,” he said. “You get me supper pretty quick, Butter Tom. I’m plenty hungry.”

Whereat Butter Tom laughed quietly. To be plenty hungry was something he did understand.

Matheson entered the rondavel and took a survey of his temporary quarters. Everything was as Nel had left it, neat and orderly; the bed behind the reimpe curtain was made as though in preparation for immediate use: the atmosphere and appearance of the hut suggested a recent occupant. There were a pair of boots, which did not belong to Nel, which were not only smaller but more fashionable in make, under a chair; and on the brightly polished surface of the circular table lay a familiar object—a meerschaum pipe, with quaintly carved bowl, which he remembered to have seen Holman smoking innumerable times. The pipe had lain on the desk beside his hand during their last interview in the dingy office at Johannesburg. It was intolerable presumption, he reflected, that this German whom Herman Nel held in such deep abhorrence should make free with the tatter’s possessions, and pollute in its owner’s absence his home with his treacherous presence.

On the appearance of Butter Tom he made inquiries, and elicited the information that Baas Holman did occasionally use the rondavel, though he had not been there for some days.

“If he come again,” the Kaffir announced sturdily, setting a dish of buttered mealies gently down upon the snowy cloth, “me tell him this baas come from my baas. I serve this baas only. Baas Holman come with the missis two moons since.”

So Cornelius Nel’s wife had lent her brother-in-law’s house to his enemy. Indirectly Holman was responsible for the breach between the two brothers; he had been the evil genius of Cornelius as well as of Andreas Krige. Leentje Nel was aware of Herman’s dislike; her conduct therefore in lending his rondavel to the object of his aversion seemed to Matheson peculiarly detestable: it betrayed an utter absence of good taste on her part in offering, and on his in accepting, in the owner’s absence hospitality which would not have been extended had Herman Nel been on the spot.

But the fact that Holman used the rondavel, that, having left part of his property there, he meant presumably to return at no distant date, promised well for the meeting he sought with this man who had compassed so much evil and evaded himself any dangerous participation therein. He had no wish to go to Benfontein for the purpose of facing him; it would please him better if Holman descended upon him at the rondavel, where, secure in the knowledge of his right in being there, he would have the advantage over this German, whom Herman Nel would have shot like a jackal as an act of simple justice.

He cautioned Butter Tom not to speak of his presence at the rondavel, and bade him be on the alert against surprise; he had no wish to be caught unaware. More particularly he dreaded discovery by Cornelius Nel’s wife: a man when he is an enemy is openly an enemy, but a woman can be secretive and very bitter. Usually she makes the more relentless foe.

Butter Tom, with the limited intelligence and blind loyalty of his race, understanding only that this baas who was the friend of his baas did not wish his whereabouts known, was satisfied to keep watch without other explanation: the wish of the baas was a command; it was of itself a sufficient reason why he should guard against intruders. Save when engaged on his duties as servitor, he seldom stirred from his post of observation in the shade of the wall, where he squatted on his haunches, and smoked the tobacco which Matheson provided, and kept a vigilant eye on the approaches to the rondavel.

When he was confident that he was unobserved, even by his faithful henchman, Matheson took the precaution to look in the chest where Nel kept the rope ladder with which he mounted to his secret chamber. He felt reassured on finding the ladder rolled up in its accustomed place. No one beside Nel, unless perchance he had disclosed the secret to his fiancée, knew of that hiding place in the roof. In the event of a surprise visit, he intended to make use of his knowledge. He could from the upper chamber observe without being seen all that went on in the room below, could listen without fear of detection to any conversation that was being carried on.

Later, he experimented with the ladder, fixing it as he had watched Nel fix it to the cross beam in the roof. He climbed up it, and removed with very little difficulty the thatch door, and crawled through the opening, closing the thatch behind him. When closed there was a thin division in the thatch through which it was quite easy to look into the room beneath. Satisfied with this trial that he was safe against surprise, he made the descent and rolled up the ladder and returned it to the chest.

The next few days were spent in anticipation of a visit from Holman, who did not appear. Until dusk each day he remained a voluntary prisoner within the rondavel; after sundown he left Butter Tom in charge and ventured forth in search of exercise; Butter Tom was to watch for his return and warn him by signal in the event of a visitor during his absence. But the days passed and left him in undisputed possession of his quarters. If he meant to see Holman it began to look as though he would have to go to Benfontein after all.

This continued immunity from intrusion rendered him less cautious in his actions. He took to sitting outside the hut, and one afternoon went for a walk while it was yet daylight in defiance of being observed by any one on the farm. There was no reason why he should not be seen, save his own wish to surprise Holman. But beyond a native herd and one or two Kaffir women, he met no one; and he returned to the rondavel towards the hour for supper revolving in his mind whether or no he should set forth for Benfontein on the morrow?

It was a matter for surprise to him on nearing the rondavel to find Butter Tom, whom he had left guarding the entrance, no longer at his station. It was the first sign of defection Butter Tom had given; the Kaffir’s negligence set him wondering whether in trusting him implicitly he was acting altogether wisely? He looked about for some sign of him, and discovering none, concluded that he must be in the smaller hut preparing the evening meal, having settled, in his indecision between the rival claims of these separate duties, on the primary importance of attending to the baas’ food.

Matheson entered the rondavel expecting to find the table laid for supper; but no preparation for the meal had been attempted, and no sound came from the native quarters. The rondavel remained to all appearance as he had left it.

And yet, despite the fact that the place was empty, that there was no evidence of any one having been there during his absence, a sense of uneasiness held him—a feeling of being observed, though there was no one visibly present, which was acutely disquieting. Without understanding his reason in doing so, he crossed to the chest beneath the window where the rope ladder lay concealed, and lifted the lid. For a second or so he remained there motionless, holding back the heavy lid with his hand, staring into the empty chest. Some one had been there before him: the rope ladder was gone.

Chapter Thirty.Abruptly Matheson dropped the lid, faced about and looked up. The sensation of being observed, of not being, for all that the hut appeared to be empty, alone, was explained. Some one—he had no means of knowing who—was familiar with Nel’s secret. Whoever it was, it appeared very certain that he was at the moment watching him from the room above, was aware moreover through his incautiousness that the hiding place was equally well known to the man who stood staring up at the movable thatch in amazed and thwarted curiosity.To Matheson it was the most astonishing and perplexing moment in his life. He remained riveted to the spot staring, staring helplessly at the innocent-looking grass roof, trying to discern the intruder; seeing no one and hearing no sound of movement, yet acutely aware that some one lay concealed in the roof, some one who had thought to hide from him, who was undoubtedly even then observing him, secure in the knowledge of remaining himself unseen.Matheson felt his disadvantage and stood for a space irresolute. The sensation of being furtively observed was uncanny. He had no means of knowing whether it were an enemy who hid thus, or some one who, like himself, enjoyed Nel’s confidence and hesitated to discover the secret to a stranger, even though the stranger by his action had made it clear that he shared the knowledge with him.The uncertainty was nerve-racking. To continue in ignorance of the identity of the intruder he felt to be impossible: by some means or other he must ascertain who it was who lay concealed up there and gave no sign of his presence. While the unseen person had the advantage in one respect, the greater advantage of holding him there virtually a prisoner was his. He drew a chair out from beneath the table and seated himself astride it, and taking a revolver from his pocket, leaned with his arms folded on the back of the chair and his gaze lifted to the roof.If the intruder’s purpose were innocent the chances were he would proclaim the fact rather than remain a prisoner at the other’s pleasure; if, on the other hand, it was Holman who had concealed himself there he was likely to be armed also, in which event the advantage would again lay with him.Matheson sat rigid and very much on the alert, and awaited developments. In the unnatural stillness the ticking of the watch in his pocket was distinctly audible. There was no other sound. But that he felt the presence of the unseen watcher through that sense which apprises one of the nearness of another human being, he would have doubted whether any one could be in the upper chamber, so absolutely still did he remain. By making it so obvious that he suspected his presence, Matheson had thought to provoke the other into giving some sign; every moment he expected to see the thatch open; but there was no movement from above; whoever was hiding there had no wish to be discovered.The minutes dragged wearily. An hour passed in watchful suspense. He wondered why Butter Tom did not come with the supper. It was after the usual time, but there was no preparation for a meal. This neglect on the part of Nel’s trusted servant puzzled him. It was not, he believed, accidental: there was treachery afoot. Whoever the mysterious visitor was, he had by some device or other got rid of the Kaffir. The device must have been fairly plausible to have deceived Butter Tom, prepared as he was against surprises of this nature; that the Kaffir had willingly entered into a conspiracy against him he did not for a moment believe.He felt that he must speak, must question this hidden person—force him into making some sign—into revealing himself. It was impossible to sit through the night with his finger on the trigger of his revolver, waiting for he knew not what; alert and wakeful in the darkness, with the concealed foe above like some hidden danger ready to strike. At least he would get a light and wait for darkness to overtake him and add the uncertainty of gloom to the perils of the situation.There was a lamp on the table. He moved towards it, taking the precaution always to face the danger, and holding his revolver in readiness against a surprise attack. The business of removing the globe and striking a match thus hampered took time. It was still quite light in the rondavel, though the shadows were falling quickly; he had no difficulty in seeing clearly. His glance travelled continually from the lamp he was occupied with to the roof, some instinct warning him that the utmost vigilance was necessary for his safety. During the brief moment while he struck a match and held it to the wick, his attention temporarily diverted, he became aware of a sudden noise, so faint and so instantly ceasing that, had his senses not been so keenly alive to any sound, he might have fancied himself mistaken in supposing he heard more than the rustling of the wind without. Instantly his eyes lifted to the roof, his hand arrested in the act of lighting the lamp, the match spluttering out between his fingers. The thatch had moved ever so slightly, and through the aperture thus made he saw distinctly the muzzle of a gun pointing in his direction.It was the work of a second to spring aside. The report from the gun followed his movement. Quick as thought he levelled the revolver and blazed away at the opening in the thatch. There was a second loud report from the gun. He felt the sting of the bullet in his shoulder. The revolver dropped from his hand to the floor. Dazed with the noise as much as by the pain of the wound, he remained for a moment inactive, till, brought sharply back to the realisation of his danger, he stooped, moved by a passionate anger at the outrage, and seized the fallen weapon in his left hand and fired again at the opening.The grass panel slid back noisily, and with an oath, the discharged gun in his hand, a man dropped from the roof on to his shoulders, bringing him to the ground with a force that partially stunned him. Bewildered and dazed though he was, Matheson was quick to appreciate the fact that his assailant was lighter in weight than himself. With the consciousness of his own superior muscular strength the power returned to his arms. He forgot his wound; his brain cleared surprisingly, became active and extraordinarily keen. The man, vainly trying to pin him down while he raised the empty gun to use as a club, was Holman; and Holman he knew was no match for him physically.He flung aside the revolver and seized his assailant by the throat. Holman loosened his grasp on his own weapon for purposes of self-defence, and struck wildly at the fierce, resolute face that stared back at him with the grim determination of implacable enmity in the eyes. He struck at these eyes blindly; again and again he struck with little effect; then with a snarl of rage he flung himself across the other man and fixed his teeth in his neck. Matheson felt sickened: hate of the man maddened him. It was like fighting with a wild beast, this horrible struggle with a creature that tore and bit, and uttered a snarling whine between the parted lips that was scarcely human in sound. He choked the whine into silence under the pressure of his fingers till the desperate resistance slackened, the limp body dropped inert. One minute more and he would squeeze the life out of him and fling his body out on the veld.A fierce exhilaration thrilled him. For the first time in his life the lust of killing held him; he was dominated by a passion greater, more brutal in quality, more relentless, than anything he had felt before. He experienced a savage joy in the thought of taking life. All of evil which this man had accomplished to his knowledge flooded his brain and inflamed it while he held him pinned powerless to the ground, and stared pitilessly into the protruding, agonised eyes from which terror even could not drive the malevolent hatred they expressed.And then in a moment everything was altered. With a swiftness, a silence, a curious unreality, that suggested an apparition rather than a human presence in the stupefying unexpectedness of its approach, a woman’s figure emerged out of the shadows, as though, lurking there invisible, it now assumed shape for some definite purpose, and detaching itself from the gloom, became significant, alive, compelling—a power, a deterrent power, quiet and insistent, with eyes that blazed horrified reproach into the surprised, upturned gaze of the man who, kneeling there with murder in his heart, yet let his fingers insensibly relax their grip, and slowly rose to his feet, and stood shaking from head to foot like a man seized with an ague, as he faced fully the woman whom he had last seen on the morning when he had asked her to be his wife.While he faced her all the love he had ever felt for her surged anew in his heart, till the pain of it was wellnigh unbearable. What was she doing there? And why had she through her coming saved the life of a scoundrel whose destiny overshadowed her own?Without speaking, she passed him and approached the prostrate figure and knelt beside it on the mud floor. At her touch Holman stirred, groaned once, and sat up. He stared about him wildly, and, seeing Matheson, caught at Honor’s dress as though for protection, and shrank further away. Matheson stood and surveyed their grouping with a numb sensation of utter weariness stealing over him. He was too physically used up even to think connectedly. Holman was choking and spluttering. He caught his breath on a sob, and turned his face and spat noisily on the floor. Doubtless he felt a necessity for expectorating; but the act appealed to Matheson as disgusting, and unseemly in Honor’s presence. He expected her to wince. Observing that she made no sign of repugnance, he wondered whether her compassion exceeded her fastidiousness; and felt vaguely disappointed in her for showing so great a forbearance.Very gently she loosened the injured man’s collar, and assisted him to an easier position, tending him with such solicitude that Matheson, watching her in surprised silence, was moved to a yet greater hatred of the man whose life her coming had spared. Could she be so completely dominated by racial antagonism as to be dead to every other consideration? It seemed to him that the tragedy of her mother’s life, the division between the Nels, who in every respect save their sense of right in allegiance to opposite causes, were fraternal in feeling, could not fail to have some effect on her. He could not understand her attitude of unrelenting enmity. Even allowing that from her point of view his country had done her people a real injury in the past, surely she must realise that in this struggle for right against tyranny, every country which spent its strength in the defence of the weaker nations was to be honoured for the sacrifices it was called upon to make? For any injustice Great Britain had been guilty of in the past she was making a splendid atonement.While he pondered these things, dizzy from the effects of his wound and the recent struggle, Honor rose to her feet and confronted him with so kindly a look that he was led to believe that her solicitude for Holman went no deeper than a womanly compassion which any suffering would excite—which she might have shown towards himself had his condition seemed to call for sympathy. She had not observed that he was hurt. In the gathering dusk the blood that was soaking through his coat showed only as a dark stain which passed unremarked in the agitation of the moment.“Go,” she said in a quiet voice, and lifted an arm and pointed towards the open doorway. “Your presence excites him. You have hurt him. What had he done to you that you should seek to kill him?”“Honor!” he said, and hardly recognised his own voice, so hoarse and strange it sounded in the stillness. He made a step towards her, gazing hungrily into the beautiful, upraised face. “Honor!” he repeated dully.He saw, without appreciating in his dazed condition the significance of the action, Holman groping upon the floor for his gun, saw him feel in his pocket for ammunition. He was aware that the man was loading the gun; but he paid no heed to that in the stress of emotion that gripped him in the presence of this girl whose power over him exceeded any other influence that had ever swayed him. He saw the blood warming the pale face while he gazed at it with such strained and eager intensity, and noticed the look of distressed embarrassment in her eyes, the sudden shrinking away before his approach. There was neither dislike nor distrust in her look, only a quick, unaccountable nervousness which he attributed to the unexpectedness of their meeting, with its tragic and ugly introduction.“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “You didn’t come as a friend. You thought to do him an injury... I know... You hate him because of the letter I foolishly read to you. I made a mistake—but I thought I could trust you.”“A damned Englishman is never to be trusted,” Holman’s voice broke in raspingly behind her. “He’d sell you all... Why couldn’t you blasted English keep out of this war?” he demanded aggressively. “It’s not your quarrel. You’ve come in for selfish ends, and you’ll get shot to pieces for interfering when you weren’t called up.”Honor turned her head suddenly at a sound from his direction. Looking over her shoulder she saw the gun raised to his shoulder, his finger crooked round the trigger.“Stand aside,” he commanded her roughly.She swung round quickly and faced him, standing resolutely between him and the man he would have shot down before her eyes.“I will never let you do that,” she said firmly. “You can only shoot through me. We may be rebels, we aren’t murderers, Heinrich.”He lowered the gun, scowling at her, and answered nothing. Matheson laid a hand on her arm and pushed her aside. Something in the calm proprietary tones, despite the service she had rendered him, goaded him to fury. There was a quality in her look and manner when addressing the German that roused him to a pitch of jealous bitterness which he was unable to control. Still gripping her shoulder, he stared into her eyes.“What’s he to you?” he asked harshly. “Why do you interfere? What is this German spy to you, other than an enemy?”“He has never been my enemy,” she answered proudly. “We Dutch have the virtue of gratitude, and he has served our cause faithfully. Be careful how you miscall my husband to me.”For a long moment he continued to stare at her, incredulous, angry, amazed; then he seized her left hand and raised it and saw, encircling her finger, the plain gold band which proclaimed her married state.Without a word he dropped her hand, and turned abruptly and walked unsteadily from the hut out into the warm dusk; and as he went, stumbling and feeling his way like a man suddenly blinded, a sound reached his ears, the sound of a man’s sneering laugh of triumph. A wave of unrestrained passion swept over him. He stood still, hesitated, and looked back: then, still stumbling as he walked, he hurried on into the shadows.

Abruptly Matheson dropped the lid, faced about and looked up. The sensation of being observed, of not being, for all that the hut appeared to be empty, alone, was explained. Some one—he had no means of knowing who—was familiar with Nel’s secret. Whoever it was, it appeared very certain that he was at the moment watching him from the room above, was aware moreover through his incautiousness that the hiding place was equally well known to the man who stood staring up at the movable thatch in amazed and thwarted curiosity.

To Matheson it was the most astonishing and perplexing moment in his life. He remained riveted to the spot staring, staring helplessly at the innocent-looking grass roof, trying to discern the intruder; seeing no one and hearing no sound of movement, yet acutely aware that some one lay concealed in the roof, some one who had thought to hide from him, who was undoubtedly even then observing him, secure in the knowledge of remaining himself unseen.

Matheson felt his disadvantage and stood for a space irresolute. The sensation of being furtively observed was uncanny. He had no means of knowing whether it were an enemy who hid thus, or some one who, like himself, enjoyed Nel’s confidence and hesitated to discover the secret to a stranger, even though the stranger by his action had made it clear that he shared the knowledge with him.

The uncertainty was nerve-racking. To continue in ignorance of the identity of the intruder he felt to be impossible: by some means or other he must ascertain who it was who lay concealed up there and gave no sign of his presence. While the unseen person had the advantage in one respect, the greater advantage of holding him there virtually a prisoner was his. He drew a chair out from beneath the table and seated himself astride it, and taking a revolver from his pocket, leaned with his arms folded on the back of the chair and his gaze lifted to the roof.

If the intruder’s purpose were innocent the chances were he would proclaim the fact rather than remain a prisoner at the other’s pleasure; if, on the other hand, it was Holman who had concealed himself there he was likely to be armed also, in which event the advantage would again lay with him.

Matheson sat rigid and very much on the alert, and awaited developments. In the unnatural stillness the ticking of the watch in his pocket was distinctly audible. There was no other sound. But that he felt the presence of the unseen watcher through that sense which apprises one of the nearness of another human being, he would have doubted whether any one could be in the upper chamber, so absolutely still did he remain. By making it so obvious that he suspected his presence, Matheson had thought to provoke the other into giving some sign; every moment he expected to see the thatch open; but there was no movement from above; whoever was hiding there had no wish to be discovered.

The minutes dragged wearily. An hour passed in watchful suspense. He wondered why Butter Tom did not come with the supper. It was after the usual time, but there was no preparation for a meal. This neglect on the part of Nel’s trusted servant puzzled him. It was not, he believed, accidental: there was treachery afoot. Whoever the mysterious visitor was, he had by some device or other got rid of the Kaffir. The device must have been fairly plausible to have deceived Butter Tom, prepared as he was against surprises of this nature; that the Kaffir had willingly entered into a conspiracy against him he did not for a moment believe.

He felt that he must speak, must question this hidden person—force him into making some sign—into revealing himself. It was impossible to sit through the night with his finger on the trigger of his revolver, waiting for he knew not what; alert and wakeful in the darkness, with the concealed foe above like some hidden danger ready to strike. At least he would get a light and wait for darkness to overtake him and add the uncertainty of gloom to the perils of the situation.

There was a lamp on the table. He moved towards it, taking the precaution always to face the danger, and holding his revolver in readiness against a surprise attack. The business of removing the globe and striking a match thus hampered took time. It was still quite light in the rondavel, though the shadows were falling quickly; he had no difficulty in seeing clearly. His glance travelled continually from the lamp he was occupied with to the roof, some instinct warning him that the utmost vigilance was necessary for his safety. During the brief moment while he struck a match and held it to the wick, his attention temporarily diverted, he became aware of a sudden noise, so faint and so instantly ceasing that, had his senses not been so keenly alive to any sound, he might have fancied himself mistaken in supposing he heard more than the rustling of the wind without. Instantly his eyes lifted to the roof, his hand arrested in the act of lighting the lamp, the match spluttering out between his fingers. The thatch had moved ever so slightly, and through the aperture thus made he saw distinctly the muzzle of a gun pointing in his direction.

It was the work of a second to spring aside. The report from the gun followed his movement. Quick as thought he levelled the revolver and blazed away at the opening in the thatch. There was a second loud report from the gun. He felt the sting of the bullet in his shoulder. The revolver dropped from his hand to the floor. Dazed with the noise as much as by the pain of the wound, he remained for a moment inactive, till, brought sharply back to the realisation of his danger, he stooped, moved by a passionate anger at the outrage, and seized the fallen weapon in his left hand and fired again at the opening.

The grass panel slid back noisily, and with an oath, the discharged gun in his hand, a man dropped from the roof on to his shoulders, bringing him to the ground with a force that partially stunned him. Bewildered and dazed though he was, Matheson was quick to appreciate the fact that his assailant was lighter in weight than himself. With the consciousness of his own superior muscular strength the power returned to his arms. He forgot his wound; his brain cleared surprisingly, became active and extraordinarily keen. The man, vainly trying to pin him down while he raised the empty gun to use as a club, was Holman; and Holman he knew was no match for him physically.

He flung aside the revolver and seized his assailant by the throat. Holman loosened his grasp on his own weapon for purposes of self-defence, and struck wildly at the fierce, resolute face that stared back at him with the grim determination of implacable enmity in the eyes. He struck at these eyes blindly; again and again he struck with little effect; then with a snarl of rage he flung himself across the other man and fixed his teeth in his neck. Matheson felt sickened: hate of the man maddened him. It was like fighting with a wild beast, this horrible struggle with a creature that tore and bit, and uttered a snarling whine between the parted lips that was scarcely human in sound. He choked the whine into silence under the pressure of his fingers till the desperate resistance slackened, the limp body dropped inert. One minute more and he would squeeze the life out of him and fling his body out on the veld.

A fierce exhilaration thrilled him. For the first time in his life the lust of killing held him; he was dominated by a passion greater, more brutal in quality, more relentless, than anything he had felt before. He experienced a savage joy in the thought of taking life. All of evil which this man had accomplished to his knowledge flooded his brain and inflamed it while he held him pinned powerless to the ground, and stared pitilessly into the protruding, agonised eyes from which terror even could not drive the malevolent hatred they expressed.

And then in a moment everything was altered. With a swiftness, a silence, a curious unreality, that suggested an apparition rather than a human presence in the stupefying unexpectedness of its approach, a woman’s figure emerged out of the shadows, as though, lurking there invisible, it now assumed shape for some definite purpose, and detaching itself from the gloom, became significant, alive, compelling—a power, a deterrent power, quiet and insistent, with eyes that blazed horrified reproach into the surprised, upturned gaze of the man who, kneeling there with murder in his heart, yet let his fingers insensibly relax their grip, and slowly rose to his feet, and stood shaking from head to foot like a man seized with an ague, as he faced fully the woman whom he had last seen on the morning when he had asked her to be his wife.

While he faced her all the love he had ever felt for her surged anew in his heart, till the pain of it was wellnigh unbearable. What was she doing there? And why had she through her coming saved the life of a scoundrel whose destiny overshadowed her own?

Without speaking, she passed him and approached the prostrate figure and knelt beside it on the mud floor. At her touch Holman stirred, groaned once, and sat up. He stared about him wildly, and, seeing Matheson, caught at Honor’s dress as though for protection, and shrank further away. Matheson stood and surveyed their grouping with a numb sensation of utter weariness stealing over him. He was too physically used up even to think connectedly. Holman was choking and spluttering. He caught his breath on a sob, and turned his face and spat noisily on the floor. Doubtless he felt a necessity for expectorating; but the act appealed to Matheson as disgusting, and unseemly in Honor’s presence. He expected her to wince. Observing that she made no sign of repugnance, he wondered whether her compassion exceeded her fastidiousness; and felt vaguely disappointed in her for showing so great a forbearance.

Very gently she loosened the injured man’s collar, and assisted him to an easier position, tending him with such solicitude that Matheson, watching her in surprised silence, was moved to a yet greater hatred of the man whose life her coming had spared. Could she be so completely dominated by racial antagonism as to be dead to every other consideration? It seemed to him that the tragedy of her mother’s life, the division between the Nels, who in every respect save their sense of right in allegiance to opposite causes, were fraternal in feeling, could not fail to have some effect on her. He could not understand her attitude of unrelenting enmity. Even allowing that from her point of view his country had done her people a real injury in the past, surely she must realise that in this struggle for right against tyranny, every country which spent its strength in the defence of the weaker nations was to be honoured for the sacrifices it was called upon to make? For any injustice Great Britain had been guilty of in the past she was making a splendid atonement.

While he pondered these things, dizzy from the effects of his wound and the recent struggle, Honor rose to her feet and confronted him with so kindly a look that he was led to believe that her solicitude for Holman went no deeper than a womanly compassion which any suffering would excite—which she might have shown towards himself had his condition seemed to call for sympathy. She had not observed that he was hurt. In the gathering dusk the blood that was soaking through his coat showed only as a dark stain which passed unremarked in the agitation of the moment.

“Go,” she said in a quiet voice, and lifted an arm and pointed towards the open doorway. “Your presence excites him. You have hurt him. What had he done to you that you should seek to kill him?”

“Honor!” he said, and hardly recognised his own voice, so hoarse and strange it sounded in the stillness. He made a step towards her, gazing hungrily into the beautiful, upraised face. “Honor!” he repeated dully.

He saw, without appreciating in his dazed condition the significance of the action, Holman groping upon the floor for his gun, saw him feel in his pocket for ammunition. He was aware that the man was loading the gun; but he paid no heed to that in the stress of emotion that gripped him in the presence of this girl whose power over him exceeded any other influence that had ever swayed him. He saw the blood warming the pale face while he gazed at it with such strained and eager intensity, and noticed the look of distressed embarrassment in her eyes, the sudden shrinking away before his approach. There was neither dislike nor distrust in her look, only a quick, unaccountable nervousness which he attributed to the unexpectedness of their meeting, with its tragic and ugly introduction.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “You didn’t come as a friend. You thought to do him an injury... I know... You hate him because of the letter I foolishly read to you. I made a mistake—but I thought I could trust you.”

“A damned Englishman is never to be trusted,” Holman’s voice broke in raspingly behind her. “He’d sell you all... Why couldn’t you blasted English keep out of this war?” he demanded aggressively. “It’s not your quarrel. You’ve come in for selfish ends, and you’ll get shot to pieces for interfering when you weren’t called up.”

Honor turned her head suddenly at a sound from his direction. Looking over her shoulder she saw the gun raised to his shoulder, his finger crooked round the trigger.

“Stand aside,” he commanded her roughly.

She swung round quickly and faced him, standing resolutely between him and the man he would have shot down before her eyes.

“I will never let you do that,” she said firmly. “You can only shoot through me. We may be rebels, we aren’t murderers, Heinrich.”

He lowered the gun, scowling at her, and answered nothing. Matheson laid a hand on her arm and pushed her aside. Something in the calm proprietary tones, despite the service she had rendered him, goaded him to fury. There was a quality in her look and manner when addressing the German that roused him to a pitch of jealous bitterness which he was unable to control. Still gripping her shoulder, he stared into her eyes.

“What’s he to you?” he asked harshly. “Why do you interfere? What is this German spy to you, other than an enemy?”

“He has never been my enemy,” she answered proudly. “We Dutch have the virtue of gratitude, and he has served our cause faithfully. Be careful how you miscall my husband to me.”

For a long moment he continued to stare at her, incredulous, angry, amazed; then he seized her left hand and raised it and saw, encircling her finger, the plain gold band which proclaimed her married state.

Without a word he dropped her hand, and turned abruptly and walked unsteadily from the hut out into the warm dusk; and as he went, stumbling and feeling his way like a man suddenly blinded, a sound reached his ears, the sound of a man’s sneering laugh of triumph. A wave of unrestrained passion swept over him. He stood still, hesitated, and looked back: then, still stumbling as he walked, he hurried on into the shadows.

Chapter Thirty One.What happened to him during his hurried flight from the rondavel Matheson never knew. He was conscious only of walking, walking heavily and unseeingly, forward into the dusk, when night abruptly overtook him and wrapped him in a darkness more complete than anything he had ever imagined. When again it was light he woke, with an unrefreshed feeling and a sense of having been victimised by an ugly dream of extraordinary vividness, to find himself lying comfortably in Herman Nel’s bed in the rondavel, with an utter absence of any knowledge of how he came there. He could not recollect going to bed overnight.Resting quietly on the pillow in semi-wakefulness, his drowsy thoughts occupied themselves with speculating on what had happened. Little by little the events of the previous evening recurred to him, but always with that dreamlike sense of unreality that left him unable to determine what was actual and what only imaginary. The sudden sharp pain of his wound which, when he moved abruptly, he felt for the first time since waking, brought bade clearly to his memory the scene of the struggle with Holman and Honor’s intervention, assuring him that this was no dream but ugly reality. He had seen again the woman he loved; had been unfaithful in thought to the woman who loved him; had been at death-grips with his enemy; and now lay sick from the wound he had sustained—more side in mind than in body, conscious chiefly of the stupefying fact that this woman whom he loved so dearly was the wife of the man he had sought to kill, that that fact rendered his enmity innocuous; he could not strike at Honor through any one she loved.While he lay there, staring at the daylight through partially closed lids in a misery so acute that his physical suffering seemed as nothing compared with the anguish of his mind, he became aware that he was not alone. Seated at some distance from the bed, engaged on work the nature of which puzzled him to determine for a time, till he made out that she was busy rolling and stitching bandages, was Mrs Krige, looking very much as he had last seen her, her expression sad but calm in its earnest confidence, and with a new purpose in the patient eyes. Her thoughts, as she rolled the strips of linen to be used for the men who were fighting for their right to recognition as an independent race, were with her dead husband, her dead son, and the son who had gone forth to strike for the old Republics. For the moment she had forgotten the patient she was there to nurse; he had slept so long, had lain since waking so quiet that she fancied him sleeping still.A slight movement on his part caused her to look up, and she surprised his gaze riveted on her and on the work in her hands, and read in the mute inquiry in his eyes the questions he would have asked.Swiftly and noiselessly she laid aside her work, and rose and approached the bed, carrying a cup filled with milk, which she held to his lips. He drank the contents and lay back again on the pillow and regarded her with the hint of a smile in his eyes.“I little thought when last we parted to meet you again like this,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been giving trouble. And I’m filled with curiosity. It puzzles me to understand how I came here—in bed. The last thing I recall is walking on the veld.”He raised himself slightly on his elbow and surveyed her with an expression of perplexed inquiry. Her presence was another surprise amid the rush of amazing events. To wake and find her seated in the room, as quietly established as if she were in her own home, occasioned him greater wonderment than anything that had befallen.“I wish you’d enlighten me,” he said. “I want to know how you came to be here.”“Don’t you think you had better lie still and just accept things?” she suggested. “I am here to look after you. You will feel better after a good rest.”“But I can’t rest,” he persisted. “I keep wondering about things. I want to know... please.”“Butter Tom brought you in,” she said. “You dropped from exhaustion. The wound in your shoulder... It bled rather much.”“But that doesn’t account for your presence,” he said. “Butter Tom didn’t fetch you to my aid?”“No.” She turned aside and busied herself at the table. “I’m staying with Mrs Nel,” she added after a moment’s pause for reflection. “It wasn’t far to come, you see.”It was not difficult to fill in the blanks in her halting explanation. Matheson lay back on the pillow and was silent for a time, while Mrs Krige, believing that his curiosity was satisfied, resumed her seat and her occupation. Matheson watched her from the bed, rolling and stitching the strips of linen and placing the finished bandages in orderly rows on the table. There was something significant and disturbing in the calm methodical process; it worried him unaccountably.Actuated by a sudden resolve, he moved his shoulder to test how far it incommoded him. It felt stiff and painful, but he had an idea that if he could get to the station he would be able to manage the journey to Cape Town. It was become a matter of urgent importance to him to get away back to the coast. There was nothing he could accomplish by remaining; and to remain in Honor’s vicinity was intolerable. He put up a hand and felt his shoulder. It had been bandaged with a skill that suggested hospital training. He wondered who had done him this service. Curiosity prompted him to inquire.“Some one has dressed my wound,” he said. “Was that you?”“No.” Mrs Krige looked up quickly. “Hadn’t you better lie quiet?” she said.He picked at the coverlet with impatient fingers.“I can’t,” he answered. “I can’t rest. I want to be up and out of this. If I had a conveyance I could get to the station, and the rest would be easy. There’s nothing much the matter with me. This wound—it’s trifling. Besides, I must get back.”“In a day or so,” she answered soothingly. “Is it so irksome to have me waiting on you for so brief a time?”He smiled faintly.“You are making me out ungrateful. It isn’t that, believe me... You are so kind; I know you will forgive my seeming ungraciousness. It is really important that I should return to the coast. There is some one in Cape Town who expects me. I am going to be married shortly.”He was conscious as he said this of the sudden brightening of Mrs Krige’s face. She glanced towards him with eyes that expressed interest and an immense relief.“I’m so glad,” she said.She got up and moved away to the window, and remained with her back towards the bed, so that Matheson was no longer able to watch her face. She was, as he was perfectly aware, thinking of the confidence he had once reposed in her, when he had talked to her of his hopeless attachment for Honor, and had seemed to reproach her for the misdirection of Honor’s views. Those days appeared far away now; so much had happened in the interval; and yet the distress of them was painfully alive.“Tell me about her... her name, and where she lives,” Mrs Krige said presently, without turning round. “You know I’m interested. I always hoped that—that something of the sort would happen.” She faced about and came back to the bed and sat down beside it. “I wish I knew her. Help me to know her through you... Talk to me about her. If you describe her I shall have a picture of her in my mind.”The pleasant eyes bent upon him were so kind and inviting of confidence; the voice, asking for details of the girl he was so soon to marry, expressed such real sympathy and understanding, that Matheson found himself confiding in her fully the story of his engagement and the events which had led up to it. He painted the worth of his little fiancée in no mean colours, and admitted his own good fortune in having won the most priceless of all possessions, a good woman’s earnest love. But he did not speak of his own love. Possibly the mother of Honor understood that for him the shadow of the past lay darkly yet across the sunlit prospect of this later love, and, lingering, obscured the brightness of the newly won happiness in the gloom of unforgettable things. But no shadow hovers eternally in life’s sky: the darkest clouds must pass.He told her of Brenda’s home life, and touched upon the sadness of her girlhood, and the plucky fight she was putting up when he met her.“She’s such a brave, bright little soul,” he finished. “I want to make up to her if I can for the things she’s missed. I’m going to devote my life to that end. Only sometimes I doubt...”He broke off and moved restlessly on the pillow, and looked up to discover the kind, comprehending eyes scrutinising him attentively, and flushed beneath their gaze.“She’s such a capital chum,” he said. “I’m not really worthy of her.”“Oh! I think she stands a fair chance of being very happy,” Mrs Krige observed with conviction. “And from what you have told me, I should say you have been fortunate enough to discover the right woman. A big nature and a warm heart comprise a generous dowry. I would like to meet her.”He looked pleased.“Yes,” he said; “you would like her. Perhaps, some day—when all this beastly fuss is over...” He put out his unhurt arm and took her hand. “It’s such a pitiful mistake,” he muttered. “Why did you let him join?”She shook her head.“It was not my doing,” she answered. “Andreas felt the call. Life leads us whither we must go. When a person has something taken from him which he prizes, he endeavours to recover what he has lost. That is how it is with us.”“But it isn’t any sort of use,” he urged. “Besides, it is only a nominal loss. The country belongs to the people who live in it. Ask Herman Nel. They won’t succeed, you know—Andreas, and the others.”“God knows!” she answered. “General de Wet will never rest until he has hoisted the flag in Pretoria. They are brave men, and they have right on their side.”“Well, of course, it’s all according to the point of view,” he conceded. “But Botha is a brave man—and Herman Nel. They too have right on their side. It’s a sad business when there is division in the household.”“Yes,” she admitted, and glanced involuntarily at the bandages upon the table, and sighed. “Each war that befalls lays a foundation for the next. Men don’t consider the ties of blood when the question of fighting arises.”“And women cease to consider the claims of love in like circumstance,” he returned grimly.She had no difficulty in following his meaning. Her face clouded momentarily.“That depends largely on the woman’s outlook on life,” she answered. “With some women love is all-satisfying; but the woman with the highest conception of love does not allow her ideals of life to be dominated by passion. It is not always the woman who loves least who puts love outside her life. But—you’ve talked enough.” She got up abruptly and returned to the table and her former occupation. “If I allow you to discuss these matters, your temperature will run up, and I shall be blamed.”“Blamed by whom?” he asked.She bent her head lower over her work and answered quietly:“Both my daughters have been through a course of hospital training.”“In preparation for this rebellion?” he suggested with a touch of irritation in his tones.“In preparation for the rising of their people,” she replied with a gentle dignity of manner that rebuked his anger.He made no answer, but lay still in a thoughtful silence and watched her while she worked.

What happened to him during his hurried flight from the rondavel Matheson never knew. He was conscious only of walking, walking heavily and unseeingly, forward into the dusk, when night abruptly overtook him and wrapped him in a darkness more complete than anything he had ever imagined. When again it was light he woke, with an unrefreshed feeling and a sense of having been victimised by an ugly dream of extraordinary vividness, to find himself lying comfortably in Herman Nel’s bed in the rondavel, with an utter absence of any knowledge of how he came there. He could not recollect going to bed overnight.

Resting quietly on the pillow in semi-wakefulness, his drowsy thoughts occupied themselves with speculating on what had happened. Little by little the events of the previous evening recurred to him, but always with that dreamlike sense of unreality that left him unable to determine what was actual and what only imaginary. The sudden sharp pain of his wound which, when he moved abruptly, he felt for the first time since waking, brought bade clearly to his memory the scene of the struggle with Holman and Honor’s intervention, assuring him that this was no dream but ugly reality. He had seen again the woman he loved; had been unfaithful in thought to the woman who loved him; had been at death-grips with his enemy; and now lay sick from the wound he had sustained—more side in mind than in body, conscious chiefly of the stupefying fact that this woman whom he loved so dearly was the wife of the man he had sought to kill, that that fact rendered his enmity innocuous; he could not strike at Honor through any one she loved.

While he lay there, staring at the daylight through partially closed lids in a misery so acute that his physical suffering seemed as nothing compared with the anguish of his mind, he became aware that he was not alone. Seated at some distance from the bed, engaged on work the nature of which puzzled him to determine for a time, till he made out that she was busy rolling and stitching bandages, was Mrs Krige, looking very much as he had last seen her, her expression sad but calm in its earnest confidence, and with a new purpose in the patient eyes. Her thoughts, as she rolled the strips of linen to be used for the men who were fighting for their right to recognition as an independent race, were with her dead husband, her dead son, and the son who had gone forth to strike for the old Republics. For the moment she had forgotten the patient she was there to nurse; he had slept so long, had lain since waking so quiet that she fancied him sleeping still.

A slight movement on his part caused her to look up, and she surprised his gaze riveted on her and on the work in her hands, and read in the mute inquiry in his eyes the questions he would have asked.

Swiftly and noiselessly she laid aside her work, and rose and approached the bed, carrying a cup filled with milk, which she held to his lips. He drank the contents and lay back again on the pillow and regarded her with the hint of a smile in his eyes.

“I little thought when last we parted to meet you again like this,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been giving trouble. And I’m filled with curiosity. It puzzles me to understand how I came here—in bed. The last thing I recall is walking on the veld.”

He raised himself slightly on his elbow and surveyed her with an expression of perplexed inquiry. Her presence was another surprise amid the rush of amazing events. To wake and find her seated in the room, as quietly established as if she were in her own home, occasioned him greater wonderment than anything that had befallen.

“I wish you’d enlighten me,” he said. “I want to know how you came to be here.”

“Don’t you think you had better lie still and just accept things?” she suggested. “I am here to look after you. You will feel better after a good rest.”

“But I can’t rest,” he persisted. “I keep wondering about things. I want to know... please.”

“Butter Tom brought you in,” she said. “You dropped from exhaustion. The wound in your shoulder... It bled rather much.”

“But that doesn’t account for your presence,” he said. “Butter Tom didn’t fetch you to my aid?”

“No.” She turned aside and busied herself at the table. “I’m staying with Mrs Nel,” she added after a moment’s pause for reflection. “It wasn’t far to come, you see.”

It was not difficult to fill in the blanks in her halting explanation. Matheson lay back on the pillow and was silent for a time, while Mrs Krige, believing that his curiosity was satisfied, resumed her seat and her occupation. Matheson watched her from the bed, rolling and stitching the strips of linen and placing the finished bandages in orderly rows on the table. There was something significant and disturbing in the calm methodical process; it worried him unaccountably.

Actuated by a sudden resolve, he moved his shoulder to test how far it incommoded him. It felt stiff and painful, but he had an idea that if he could get to the station he would be able to manage the journey to Cape Town. It was become a matter of urgent importance to him to get away back to the coast. There was nothing he could accomplish by remaining; and to remain in Honor’s vicinity was intolerable. He put up a hand and felt his shoulder. It had been bandaged with a skill that suggested hospital training. He wondered who had done him this service. Curiosity prompted him to inquire.

“Some one has dressed my wound,” he said. “Was that you?”

“No.” Mrs Krige looked up quickly. “Hadn’t you better lie quiet?” she said.

He picked at the coverlet with impatient fingers.

“I can’t,” he answered. “I can’t rest. I want to be up and out of this. If I had a conveyance I could get to the station, and the rest would be easy. There’s nothing much the matter with me. This wound—it’s trifling. Besides, I must get back.”

“In a day or so,” she answered soothingly. “Is it so irksome to have me waiting on you for so brief a time?”

He smiled faintly.

“You are making me out ungrateful. It isn’t that, believe me... You are so kind; I know you will forgive my seeming ungraciousness. It is really important that I should return to the coast. There is some one in Cape Town who expects me. I am going to be married shortly.”

He was conscious as he said this of the sudden brightening of Mrs Krige’s face. She glanced towards him with eyes that expressed interest and an immense relief.

“I’m so glad,” she said.

She got up and moved away to the window, and remained with her back towards the bed, so that Matheson was no longer able to watch her face. She was, as he was perfectly aware, thinking of the confidence he had once reposed in her, when he had talked to her of his hopeless attachment for Honor, and had seemed to reproach her for the misdirection of Honor’s views. Those days appeared far away now; so much had happened in the interval; and yet the distress of them was painfully alive.

“Tell me about her... her name, and where she lives,” Mrs Krige said presently, without turning round. “You know I’m interested. I always hoped that—that something of the sort would happen.” She faced about and came back to the bed and sat down beside it. “I wish I knew her. Help me to know her through you... Talk to me about her. If you describe her I shall have a picture of her in my mind.”

The pleasant eyes bent upon him were so kind and inviting of confidence; the voice, asking for details of the girl he was so soon to marry, expressed such real sympathy and understanding, that Matheson found himself confiding in her fully the story of his engagement and the events which had led up to it. He painted the worth of his little fiancée in no mean colours, and admitted his own good fortune in having won the most priceless of all possessions, a good woman’s earnest love. But he did not speak of his own love. Possibly the mother of Honor understood that for him the shadow of the past lay darkly yet across the sunlit prospect of this later love, and, lingering, obscured the brightness of the newly won happiness in the gloom of unforgettable things. But no shadow hovers eternally in life’s sky: the darkest clouds must pass.

He told her of Brenda’s home life, and touched upon the sadness of her girlhood, and the plucky fight she was putting up when he met her.

“She’s such a brave, bright little soul,” he finished. “I want to make up to her if I can for the things she’s missed. I’m going to devote my life to that end. Only sometimes I doubt...”

He broke off and moved restlessly on the pillow, and looked up to discover the kind, comprehending eyes scrutinising him attentively, and flushed beneath their gaze.

“She’s such a capital chum,” he said. “I’m not really worthy of her.”

“Oh! I think she stands a fair chance of being very happy,” Mrs Krige observed with conviction. “And from what you have told me, I should say you have been fortunate enough to discover the right woman. A big nature and a warm heart comprise a generous dowry. I would like to meet her.”

He looked pleased.

“Yes,” he said; “you would like her. Perhaps, some day—when all this beastly fuss is over...” He put out his unhurt arm and took her hand. “It’s such a pitiful mistake,” he muttered. “Why did you let him join?”

She shook her head.

“It was not my doing,” she answered. “Andreas felt the call. Life leads us whither we must go. When a person has something taken from him which he prizes, he endeavours to recover what he has lost. That is how it is with us.”

“But it isn’t any sort of use,” he urged. “Besides, it is only a nominal loss. The country belongs to the people who live in it. Ask Herman Nel. They won’t succeed, you know—Andreas, and the others.”

“God knows!” she answered. “General de Wet will never rest until he has hoisted the flag in Pretoria. They are brave men, and they have right on their side.”

“Well, of course, it’s all according to the point of view,” he conceded. “But Botha is a brave man—and Herman Nel. They too have right on their side. It’s a sad business when there is division in the household.”

“Yes,” she admitted, and glanced involuntarily at the bandages upon the table, and sighed. “Each war that befalls lays a foundation for the next. Men don’t consider the ties of blood when the question of fighting arises.”

“And women cease to consider the claims of love in like circumstance,” he returned grimly.

She had no difficulty in following his meaning. Her face clouded momentarily.

“That depends largely on the woman’s outlook on life,” she answered. “With some women love is all-satisfying; but the woman with the highest conception of love does not allow her ideals of life to be dominated by passion. It is not always the woman who loves least who puts love outside her life. But—you’ve talked enough.” She got up abruptly and returned to the table and her former occupation. “If I allow you to discuss these matters, your temperature will run up, and I shall be blamed.”

“Blamed by whom?” he asked.

She bent her head lower over her work and answered quietly:

“Both my daughters have been through a course of hospital training.”

“In preparation for this rebellion?” he suggested with a touch of irritation in his tones.

“In preparation for the rising of their people,” she replied with a gentle dignity of manner that rebuked his anger.

He made no answer, but lay still in a thoughtful silence and watched her while she worked.

Chapter Thirty Two.The day wore slowly away. No one visited the rondavel. Although he knew the wish to be preposterous, Matheson nevertheless felt a strong desire to see Honor. He did not want to talk to her; he merely wished to see her. He would have been satisfied had she entered to confer with her mother, and left again without paying any heed to him—had she even passed the open door so that he might, unseen, have watched her go by.But Honor did not come.Butter Tom appeared at regular intervals, moving with unnecessary caution on tip-toe, his bare feet, always noiseless, making no sound on the smooth floor. He brought food for Mrs Krige, and soup for the sick baas, and laid and cleared the table with surprising swiftness and care. Butter Tom’s mind was troubled with regard to the baas’ accident. He felt himself blameworthy in having failed to keep guard. But the young missis with the face that was like a lily in the moonlight had sent him with a message to the farm. He had not liked to refuse to do her bidding: now he wished that he had refused. His own baas when he returned would be displeased with him, and the sick baas would reproach him; there would be no tobacco and no more good English money for him.He stole repeated furtive glances towards the bed; but the baas lay with his gaze fixed on the open doorway and never looked his way. That was proof enough for Butter Tom that the baas was angry.Matheson was not thinking of Butter Tom: he had ceased to wonder at the latter’s defection; subsequent events had blotted that out for the time. All his mind now was intent upon Honor to the obliteration of everything—Honor, who, apart from her marriage, was lost to him, and should have ceased to occupy his thoughts. In allowing this obsession to hold him he knew that he was behaving discreditably; but a man, though he may control his emotions up to a certain point, cannot always entirely subdue them: desire confronted with the object which inspires it can become an overpowering passion. Out of her presence, with distance and the knowledge of the hopelessness of his love separating them, he had grown resigned to the inevitable; but the sight of her again, the sound of the rich soft voice, the touch of her, had been more than he could bear with stoicism. He was moved to a sick longing for her, a longing which overlooked another man’s prior claim, and the claim of the girl who loved and trusted him. If occasionally the memory of Brenda obtruded itself, he thrust it aside with a sick man’s irritably impatience towards disturbing thoughts. Brenda had no place here. This side of his life was a thing apart, a slice of life detached and complete in itself. Here in this odd corner of the world he had experienced all the romance he was to know: it began here, and ended when he left. He would dig its grave and bury it when he went away. There was nothing else left to do.He worked himself into a fever as the day advanced, and, flushed and restless, turned continually on the pillow and stared out at the hot sunshine that flooded the world without, and poured in through the opening of the rondavel and lay, a golden stream, along the shining floor. No trees surrounded Nel’s hut to shade it from the fierce rays of the sun, and the days were sultry at that time of the year.Mrs Krige sat beside him and fanned him with untiring patience. The slow regular movement of her arm worried him; but he was grateful to her, and he appreciated the faint draught thus created: when she paused to rest the heaviness of the atmosphere oppressed him so that he felt almost suffocated. It was a relief when the sun went down, and the sky, blood-red from the afterglow, reflected luridly upon the darkening veld; though the dusk, as it closed in slowly, robbed him of his final hope of seeing Honor. Honor would not come to him... Perhaps it were wiser so.He fell asleep after a while, and woke later to find the rondavel dimly illumined by the lamp which, turned low, was screened from the bed. He was alone. The quiet figure which he had last seen seated at the table rolling those endless strips of linen, was no longer there. Mrs Krige had left and had taken with her the result of her long hours of industry; there was nothing, save the fan lying on the chair beside the bed, to remind him of her presence. He wondered whether Butter Tom remained within call, or if he were entirely alone. The thought of being alone troubled him, why he did not know. He hesitated to call the Kaffir for fear of receiving no response; doubt, he felt, in the uncertainty of any one being near, was preferable to knowledge.For a while he lay and watched the dimly burning lamp, and watching it lost consciousness of his surroundings in sleep once more.When he woke again the dawn was breaking, and the cool fresh air of the early morning stole softly in through door and windows and fanned his fevered brow. He drank in long breaths of it eagerly, and looking forth at the increasing brightness, as it forced its way inside the silent room and slowly dispelled the shadows lurking there, he was made suddenly aware of another shadow that was not a part of the night, that did not vanish with the darkness but assumed more definite shape, appeared, while never moving, to draw nearer to him, to become less shadowy as the lesser shadows fled. It was a trick of the imagination he believed that formed out of the shadows in the dusky room the slender woman’s figure which he descried dimly outlined against the reimpe curtain, with the dawn touching the pale hair, and falling wanly on the white still face. Was it a dream, he wondered; and feared to move for fear the dream would fade.Quietly he lay and watched, feasting his eyes on the vision; and momentarily the day waxed brighter, and the shadowy form grew more distinct, took more substantial shape, became instinct with life and movement.Slowly the reimpe curtain fell into place. With soft, inaudible footfall Honor advanced and stood beside the bed and looked down on him, a gentle solicitude in her steady eyes. He did not speak. He was afraid still that if he moved or made a sound she might vanish as unexpectedly as she had come. He could not have borne the disappointment had she suddenly turned and left him.And then she spoke. Her voice broke the spell and sent the blood coursing once more madly through his veins. This was no dream. He was awake, and Honor stood there in the dawn beside his bed.“You have slept well,” she said. “You are better?”“I am quite fit,” he answered. “It was all I needed, a good sleep. How did you come? I never heard you enter.”She laughed softly.“I’ve been here with you all night.”“You’ve been here? ... all night?” His tone was eloquent, eyes and voice bespoke his disappointment. “And I never knew! To sleep like that... and you here!”“If knowledge of my presence would have kept you awake, I am glad you did not know,” she said. “You were a little feverish. We did not like to leave you alone. But you’ve slept well.”She touched his neck lightly with her hand, the dear soft hand he longed to hold and kiss—the hand which he had taken and almost flung from him when he first heard of her marriage.“The fever has gone,” she added. “You will soon be all right.”“I’m all right now,” he insisted. “I feel quite fit. It’s awfully good of you to have bothered, but you ought not to have sat up; it wasn’t necessary.”“I wasn’t sure,” she returned, “how badly you were hurt. I didn’t realise at first that you were hurt. I am sorry... I want you to—forgive that injury.”“Oh, that!” he said, and thought of the greater injury Holman had contrived. “I ran that risk with my eyes open. I’m not counting that.”She fell on her knees beside the bed and laid her two hands with swift impulsiveness upon his breast.“I know,” she said, speaking very quickly and in lowered tones, her face close to his, the soft eyes holding his eyes filled with an eager pleading which it was difficult to resist—“I know you and Heinrich are enemies... For that matterweare enemies—you and I—”“No,” he interrupted sharply... “No... You and I, enemies! ... Honor...”“Ah!” she breathed softly, and the hands on his breast pressed more firmly. “I didn’t mean that—not actually. Always in my heart I’ve known that couldn’t be. You’re my—”“Lover,” he interjected hoarsely.She winced and her face went white.“Friend—my dear friend,” she corrected, but so gently, and with so little real conviction in her voice that it was rather as though she admitted his definition of the relationship. “You are my friend. You must remain my friend... I want to keep—just that.”There were tears in her eyes now. She did not attempt to hide them: they welled there, priceless diamonds from a mine of ungathered wealth, welled, and overflowed, and fell on the man’s breast. Matheson lay still, staring at her, and made no response.“This is the last time we shall meet,” she went on quietly, striving after and regaining something of her old composure. “You must not come this way again. It would have been better for us both if you had not come now. Why did you come?”“I did not expect to see you,” he replied, and evaded her eyes.“I will tell you,” she said. “You are seeking Heinrich—to kill him. You meant to kill him...”“I don’t know.” He moved uneasily. “I suppose that was it. He’s a spy. He has been guilty of the worst form of sedition... I didn’t know—how should I?—that—that you— Oh! my God! Honor, I would rather you had died than married him.”“Hush!” She placed a finger on his lips and silenced him. “You mustn’t say those things to me. All that he has done he has done with my approval—for me and mine. He has worked for the Dutch cause for years...”“And because of that,” he interrupted savagely, “you felt it necessary to reward him with all that you had to give... As though he hasn’t been well rewarded by his country, which pays its spies well for spreading sedition. And you’re no longer Dutch—you are a German subject. You’ve renounced your people by your marriage. He’ll renounce them too when it suits him.”She drew back, hurt and angry.“I am not German,” she contradicted proudly. “Heinrich’s interest is identical with mine.”“Oh, well!” he said wearily. “It doesn’t matter anyway. At least it isn’t any business of mine. I’m sorry... but being sorry won’t undo things. Your feet are on the road now which they always wanted to travel. And you can’t see whither it is tending...”“Can you?” she asked scornfully.“I see it leading to disappointment and sorrow,” he returned. “This pitiful rebellion which you have assisted in bringing about is going to make a sad difference in this land. And only hurt can come to you. It is going to throw a still darker shadow across your path. My dear, I’m grieved about that. If it were possible I would sweep all the shadows out of your life and leave it fair and untroubled; but that is a power no human will can compass. Why couldn’t you leave the bitterness of strife to men, and turn your thoughts to gentler things? It’s unnatural for women to cherish hate. Hate never accomplished anything but destruction. In this case it will be the destruction of your hopes and ambitions.”“Wemustwin,” she asserted doggedly. “This is our chance. We are bound to seize it. Your country can’t send big armies to fight us now: you have bigger armies against you. You will lose this war, and we shall come again into our own. If only all the Dutch were with us! ... I can’t understand those Boers who go over to the British. It isn’t loyal; it is abject servility.”“You are altogether mistaken,” he said. “You don’t understand the position. It isn’t a question of going over to the British, but of protecting this country from a serious menace. These men lode deeper than you do; they have the welfare of the country at heart; they have bigger stakes to occupy themselves with than nursing a spirit of revenge. They think for the future generations—for their children, whose heritage this country is. You are thinking only of your grievances: you live in the past. The maker of history must live in the future. Can’t you see, Honor, that you are fighting for your generation to the hurt of the generations to come? The statesman may not reckon for his own brief span; he has to look ahead.”She made no verbal response, but looked at him with quickening interest, her dark eyes glowing, the breath coming quickly from between her parted lips. Matheson caught her wrist and held it firmly while he talked.“What will it benefit you,” he asked, “to hoist your flag over the body of your brother, and the bodies of the sons and husbands of women who think with you? Life is too good a thing to spill it wantonly at the feet of a bloodless ideal. And you are too good and fine and gentle to waste your life in hate.”“Not hate,” she corrected, the hot tears welling afresh. “Patriotism is not hate. Aren’t you ready to spill your blood for your country?”“You’ve got me there,” he said, and smiled. “I’m going to defend this country from German avidity, anyhow.”“Ah!” she cried. “You preach against hate, yet you hate the Germans. That isn’t consistent. You do hate the Germans?”“Yes,” he admitted; “I suppose that’s true. But I never hated a German before their bestial ravishment of Belgium. I never imagined anything so brutal could defame the prestige of a great nation. They will never live that down. The things they’ve done... And the spying and underhand work... Yes, I hate them all right.”“You hate Heinrich,” she persisted.“I hate the things he has done.”“I know,” she said. “But what he has done, he has done for me. Always, when I was still a child, he loved me. Can you wonder that I feel grateful to him? I am sorry you hate him. I don’t want harm to come to him through you... not through you. Promise me that you will go away and never seek to harm him in the future... Promise me that—for my sake.”Had Matheson not already realised that the punishment of Holman was no longer work for him he must have yielded to the earnest entreaty in Honor’s voice and eyes, as with nervous insistence she urged her request that he would spare her husband; but her pleading stabbed him, and excited afresh his enmity towards the man.“There is no need to wring promises from me,” he said, a hardness he could not prevent steeling his voice. “The fact that he is your husband is sufficient. Had I known that sooner I should not be here now. As it is, more harm has come to me than to him. It was not compassion on his side that prevented him from murdering me.”“He was desperate,” she pleaded; “he feared you. He fears you still.”“Perhaps,” he exclaimed with angry suspicion, “he sent you to intercede for him?”“No,” she cried quickly—“not that I came because—because—” Her voice broke on a sob. “You are so hard,” she said. “I cannot touch you. Have you no pity—for me?”“Pity!—for you?” he cried, and raised himself sharply in the bed. “My God! I love you, and you know it... What need have you to ask for pity? Rather should your compassion go out to me. I give everything... and take nothing away with me—nothing.”Suddenly she bent over him, her eyes alight, her face transformed with a tender spiritual beauty that held him spellbound, breathless, drinking in her beauty with his eyes. Leaning towards him she pressed her lips to his.“Something,” she whispered—“not much—but something to take away, and to keep, from me...”

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

But Honor did not come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When he woke again the dawn was breaking, and the cool fresh air of the early morning stole softly in through door and windows and fanned his fevered brow. He drank in long breaths of it eagerly, and looking forth at the increasing brightness, as it forced its way inside the silent room and slowly dispelled the shadows lurking there, he was made suddenly aware of another shadow that was not a part of the night, that did not vanish with the darkness but assumed more definite shape, appeared, while never moving, to draw nearer to him, to become less shadowy as the lesser shadows fled. It was a trick of the imagination he believed that formed out of the shadows in the dusky room the slender woman’s figure which he descried dimly outlined against the reimpe curtain, with the dawn touching the pale hair, and falling wanly on the white still face. Was it a dream, he wondered; and feared to move for fear the dream would fade.

Quietly he lay and watched, feasting his eyes on the vision; and momentarily the day waxed brighter, and the shadowy form grew more distinct, took more substantial shape, became instinct with life and movement.

Slowly the reimpe curtain fell into place. With soft, inaudible footfall Honor advanced and stood beside the bed and looked down on him, a gentle solicitude in her steady eyes. He did not speak. He was afraid still that if he moved or made a sound she might vanish as unexpectedly as she had come. He could not have borne the disappointment had she suddenly turned and left him.

And then she spoke. Her voice broke the spell and sent the blood coursing once more madly through his veins. This was no dream. He was awake, and Honor stood there in the dawn beside his bed.

“You have slept well,” she said. “You are better?”

“I am quite fit,” he answered. “It was all I needed, a good sleep. How did you come? I never heard you enter.”

She laughed softly.

“I’ve been here with you all night.”

“You’ve been here? ... all night?” His tone was eloquent, eyes and voice bespoke his disappointment. “And I never knew! To sleep like that... and you here!”

“If knowledge of my presence would have kept you awake, I am glad you did not know,” she said. “You were a little feverish. We did not like to leave you alone. But you’ve slept well.”

She touched his neck lightly with her hand, the dear soft hand he longed to hold and kiss—the hand which he had taken and almost flung from him when he first heard of her marriage.

“The fever has gone,” she added. “You will soon be all right.”

“I’m all right now,” he insisted. “I feel quite fit. It’s awfully good of you to have bothered, but you ought not to have sat up; it wasn’t necessary.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she returned, “how badly you were hurt. I didn’t realise at first that you were hurt. I am sorry... I want you to—forgive that injury.”

“Oh, that!” he said, and thought of the greater injury Holman had contrived. “I ran that risk with my eyes open. I’m not counting that.”

She fell on her knees beside the bed and laid her two hands with swift impulsiveness upon his breast.

“I know,” she said, speaking very quickly and in lowered tones, her face close to his, the soft eyes holding his eyes filled with an eager pleading which it was difficult to resist—“I know you and Heinrich are enemies... For that matterweare enemies—you and I—”

“No,” he interrupted sharply... “No... You and I, enemies! ... Honor...”

“Ah!” she breathed softly, and the hands on his breast pressed more firmly. “I didn’t mean that—not actually. Always in my heart I’ve known that couldn’t be. You’re my—”

“Lover,” he interjected hoarsely.

She winced and her face went white.

“Friend—my dear friend,” she corrected, but so gently, and with so little real conviction in her voice that it was rather as though she admitted his definition of the relationship. “You are my friend. You must remain my friend... I want to keep—just that.”

There were tears in her eyes now. She did not attempt to hide them: they welled there, priceless diamonds from a mine of ungathered wealth, welled, and overflowed, and fell on the man’s breast. Matheson lay still, staring at her, and made no response.

“This is the last time we shall meet,” she went on quietly, striving after and regaining something of her old composure. “You must not come this way again. It would have been better for us both if you had not come now. Why did you come?”

“I did not expect to see you,” he replied, and evaded her eyes.

“I will tell you,” she said. “You are seeking Heinrich—to kill him. You meant to kill him...”

“I don’t know.” He moved uneasily. “I suppose that was it. He’s a spy. He has been guilty of the worst form of sedition... I didn’t know—how should I?—that—that you— Oh! my God! Honor, I would rather you had died than married him.”

“Hush!” She placed a finger on his lips and silenced him. “You mustn’t say those things to me. All that he has done he has done with my approval—for me and mine. He has worked for the Dutch cause for years...”

“And because of that,” he interrupted savagely, “you felt it necessary to reward him with all that you had to give... As though he hasn’t been well rewarded by his country, which pays its spies well for spreading sedition. And you’re no longer Dutch—you are a German subject. You’ve renounced your people by your marriage. He’ll renounce them too when it suits him.”

She drew back, hurt and angry.

“I am not German,” she contradicted proudly. “Heinrich’s interest is identical with mine.”

“Oh, well!” he said wearily. “It doesn’t matter anyway. At least it isn’t any business of mine. I’m sorry... but being sorry won’t undo things. Your feet are on the road now which they always wanted to travel. And you can’t see whither it is tending...”

“Can you?” she asked scornfully.

“I see it leading to disappointment and sorrow,” he returned. “This pitiful rebellion which you have assisted in bringing about is going to make a sad difference in this land. And only hurt can come to you. It is going to throw a still darker shadow across your path. My dear, I’m grieved about that. If it were possible I would sweep all the shadows out of your life and leave it fair and untroubled; but that is a power no human will can compass. Why couldn’t you leave the bitterness of strife to men, and turn your thoughts to gentler things? It’s unnatural for women to cherish hate. Hate never accomplished anything but destruction. In this case it will be the destruction of your hopes and ambitions.”

“Wemustwin,” she asserted doggedly. “This is our chance. We are bound to seize it. Your country can’t send big armies to fight us now: you have bigger armies against you. You will lose this war, and we shall come again into our own. If only all the Dutch were with us! ... I can’t understand those Boers who go over to the British. It isn’t loyal; it is abject servility.”

“You are altogether mistaken,” he said. “You don’t understand the position. It isn’t a question of going over to the British, but of protecting this country from a serious menace. These men lode deeper than you do; they have the welfare of the country at heart; they have bigger stakes to occupy themselves with than nursing a spirit of revenge. They think for the future generations—for their children, whose heritage this country is. You are thinking only of your grievances: you live in the past. The maker of history must live in the future. Can’t you see, Honor, that you are fighting for your generation to the hurt of the generations to come? The statesman may not reckon for his own brief span; he has to look ahead.”

She made no verbal response, but looked at him with quickening interest, her dark eyes glowing, the breath coming quickly from between her parted lips. Matheson caught her wrist and held it firmly while he talked.

“What will it benefit you,” he asked, “to hoist your flag over the body of your brother, and the bodies of the sons and husbands of women who think with you? Life is too good a thing to spill it wantonly at the feet of a bloodless ideal. And you are too good and fine and gentle to waste your life in hate.”

“Not hate,” she corrected, the hot tears welling afresh. “Patriotism is not hate. Aren’t you ready to spill your blood for your country?”

“You’ve got me there,” he said, and smiled. “I’m going to defend this country from German avidity, anyhow.”

“Ah!” she cried. “You preach against hate, yet you hate the Germans. That isn’t consistent. You do hate the Germans?”

“Yes,” he admitted; “I suppose that’s true. But I never hated a German before their bestial ravishment of Belgium. I never imagined anything so brutal could defame the prestige of a great nation. They will never live that down. The things they’ve done... And the spying and underhand work... Yes, I hate them all right.”

“You hate Heinrich,” she persisted.

“I hate the things he has done.”

“I know,” she said. “But what he has done, he has done for me. Always, when I was still a child, he loved me. Can you wonder that I feel grateful to him? I am sorry you hate him. I don’t want harm to come to him through you... not through you. Promise me that you will go away and never seek to harm him in the future... Promise me that—for my sake.”

Had Matheson not already realised that the punishment of Holman was no longer work for him he must have yielded to the earnest entreaty in Honor’s voice and eyes, as with nervous insistence she urged her request that he would spare her husband; but her pleading stabbed him, and excited afresh his enmity towards the man.

“There is no need to wring promises from me,” he said, a hardness he could not prevent steeling his voice. “The fact that he is your husband is sufficient. Had I known that sooner I should not be here now. As it is, more harm has come to me than to him. It was not compassion on his side that prevented him from murdering me.”

“He was desperate,” she pleaded; “he feared you. He fears you still.”

“Perhaps,” he exclaimed with angry suspicion, “he sent you to intercede for him?”

“No,” she cried quickly—“not that I came because—because—” Her voice broke on a sob. “You are so hard,” she said. “I cannot touch you. Have you no pity—for me?”

“Pity!—for you?” he cried, and raised himself sharply in the bed. “My God! I love you, and you know it... What need have you to ask for pity? Rather should your compassion go out to me. I give everything... and take nothing away with me—nothing.”

Suddenly she bent over him, her eyes alight, her face transformed with a tender spiritual beauty that held him spellbound, breathless, drinking in her beauty with his eyes. Leaning towards him she pressed her lips to his.

“Something,” she whispered—“not much—but something to take away, and to keep, from me...”

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