F. E. Mills Young

“ The soil became more sandy the farther they rode, and more arid; wide bare patches of sand appeared, and again other patches sparsely covered with dry brown scrub. An occasional ostrich, suggestive of farms in the neighbourhood, wandered over the sunbaked ground, and pecked at the little stones. Here was Africa—the real Africa—untamed, barbaric, fiercely splendid, and cruel in its callous disregard of life.
Matheson’s gaze travelled over the scene, travelled to the distant hills, and rested there. A dark shadow like a black stain lay upon the hillside, the curious effect of some unseen cloud. ”

“ Dark though the cloud of war loomed in Europe, this lesser cloud, which lay like a black stain upon the sunlit peacefulness, was even more tragic in the bitter personal nature of its animus. If no human agency could disperse this cloud, brother would be against brother, friend against friend.
Matheson did not believe that anything would avert the disaster. Quite clearly he saw it coming. Every word in Holman’s letter was indelibly fixed in his memory—the letter which Honor had read to him, and which breathed through every line the insidious cunning of the spy who is paid to organise rebellion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ He watched the collie swimming through the surf, and the white figure of the girl poised against the blue, with the cool waves running up the wet sand almost to her feet, and the shimmering steamy heat vapour rising from the sands behind her, an atmospheric veil quivering between herself and him. The joyous barking of the dog as, emerging from the waves, it beshowered the girl plentifully in an attempt to shake the salt drops from its coat, was the only sound to disturb the harmony of the sea’s lazy response to the whisper of the breeze. ”

“ He had loved her beauty and the quick fire of her imagination; she had attracted him as the fierce untamed land she loved attracted him, by reason of its untrammelled freedom, its unconquerable savagery and beauty. But these qualities do not make for the sublime happiness of domestic peace. The human need demands something more satisfying than passionate discords in its relations with life. A man may enjoy climbing to exalted altitudes; but he lives preferably in the valleys among quiet and orderly things.
It seemed to Matheson that he saw life clearly for the first time. ”

“ The conditions for the white races are favourable to all alike. We in South Africa enjoy as great liberty and freedom as any country; yet men like Krige and Cornelius—ah! and older and more responsible men whom I could name if I would—would plunge the country into bloodshed out of a bitter spirit of revenge. They have a sense of personal grievance; they seek to wipe it out with no care nor compunction for the wrong they will do others. We can’t get anything through war that we haven’t got. It is merely nominal privileges they seek. They want to separate South Africa from the British Empire. ”

“ Butter Tom was busy outside the rondavel shaking the dust from the skin mats which covered the floor. He glanced up at Honor’s approach, and smiled with a cautious deference that concealed his vague distrust of her more effectually than it hid his nervousness. The missis with the face of a lily in the moonlight possessed the cunning of a devil. Already she had worked evil towards the baas he served. Her appearance now he believed portended further evil. He was afraid of her with the unreasoning fear of a man who realises his inability to resist a superior will. ”

“ Honor returned his gaze with grave composure.
“That depends on yourself,” she answered. “All this,” and she indicated the wide and arid landscape, which, with the night dews still lingering on its gaping surfaces and sapless vegetation, sparkled in the early sunshine with a glitter as of silver and gems, “appeals to people differently. Some see in it beauty, and others only barrenness—but always it is impressive. It hurts or it pleases, according to the mood.” ”

“ There are a thousand beauties of the night, as there are varied shades in the qualities of light and colour, many of them so subtly blended, so dependent on sympathetic conditions, that they are not revealed to every one equally. Beauty is interpreted according to the mood and temperament of the individual. There is beauty in a brick wall when the mind is in harmony with its subject; there is beauty in ugliness where ugliness is not divorced from the soul ”

“ Too often a man idles away his best years in dreaming, and overcrowds his middle age with much that might have been accomplished during his youth. Youth is the period for activities; and most surely is youth the time for marriage—useful marriage for the raising and rearing of healthy and beautiful children.
Then, breaking in sharply upon his musings, came the sound of wheels and the noise of Butter Tom’s guttural exhortations to the recalcitrant bony horse which Matheson had hired at De Aar, and which, accustomed to the saddle, displayed mule-like tendencies between the shafts. ”

“ And you talk to me of the futility, the wrong, of my wish to reclaim it... Go back to the girl who loves you, marry her, and have children of your own; and then perhaps you will understand. She will forget when her first child lies in her arms that its father’s love was ever given elsewhere. And you will forget too. No human passion is so acute that time cannot dim its keenness. ”

“ Have you forgotten your talk about a Boer rebellion? I thought you were rotting at the time—but you weren’t. You are something of a prophet, you know, Matheson. If England is full up with her own affairs, that’s just the time the Boers will seize for getting hold of this country. It’s all cut and dried, you can depend on that. Should there be trouble out here,” Macfarlane added in a hard decisive voice, “I am for helping to quell that anyway. If your talk of colonisation is worth anything, you will do the same.” ”

“ The disparagement of one’s friends, or of one’s opinions, forces the sincere believer in either into a sturdy opposition.
It was a matter of extreme gratification to Matheson that he had found Brenda Upton again. Her family history concerned him very little. She was such a good comrade. He had not realised until he rediscovered her how much he stood in need of the friendship she could give him. Friendship with a woman who is sympathetic, and young enough to be attractive as well as companionable, fills the blanks in a man’s life. ”

“ The whip fell relentlessly across the animal’s lean flanks. Butter Tom stood up to the business, and narrowly escaped being thrown out on to the veld as the horse, after an indignant plunge and two ineffectual attempts to splinter the splashboard with its hoofs, broke into a furious gallop, bumping the spider behind it like a toy cart over the rough stony ground. Matheson, hanging on with his left hand, watched, with a light of understanding for Honor’s urgency breaking in upon him, Leentje Nel’s pursuing figure pounding after them in futile and angry chase. ”

“ She had not considered the toll in human life that would be exacted: the grim ugliness of war had been lost sight of in the dazzling prospect of victory. It did not seem to her possible that Andreas could be killed. If that should happen, the triumph of their cause would prove a hollow mockery, and her mother’s tragic life would end in added sadness. It was too big a price, Honor felt in her overwrought and dispirited mood—too big a price to pay even for victory.
As she neared the homestead, coming towards her, she recognised her husband. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the exception of the two card players the beach was deserted; they were alone with the riot of colour and sunlight and the beauty of the sea. Neither looked at the sea. The older man, sitting cross-legged on the sand, had his back towards it; the younger, leaning, save when he dealt the cards, on his elbow, only lifted his eyes from the cards to fix them on his companion’s face, which he did at infrequent intervals with an odd half admiring resentment in their expression. ”

“ The German may talk brotherly love; but he never has loved his neighbour, and he never will. Look at their Colonies. None but Germans can live under their flag. And then look at Cape Town—bar America, it is the most cosmopolitan city in the world. So much for that!” he said, and lighted himself another cigarette. “I discredit equally their peace palaver and your predicted rebellion. If rebellion does come, we’ve got a man at the head of affairs—and he’s a Dutchman, mind you—who will be equal to dealing with it.”
“He knows how to deal with strikers anyhow,” Matheson said, and laughed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Matheson had a persuasion that for some reason or other Krige did not like him. He had felt that on the stoep the previous night. Why, he wondered, should a man dislike another of whom he knew nothing, whom he met now for the first time? It was not reasonable. Racial prejudice possibly influenced him to some extent. It was obvious that as a family the Kriges were antagonistic to British supremacy; but that in itself seemed insufficient to justify personal animus, particularly in view of the fact of Mrs Krige’s nationality. ”

“ Butter Tom sawed at the reins and swore at it in Kaffir, while Matheson looked on with apathetic indifference, thinking drearily of the long drive before him in the heat, with his wounded shoulder and the useless right arm for which Honor had improvised a sling from a scarf of her own.
With the moment of departure it occurred to him what a fool he had been to come. He did not know what he had expected from the visit. It had proved a wild, impossible venture. A man may not take the law into his own hands even in Africa. ”

“ She regarded Matheson quite seriously, with a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. “They play games... every game... well. What more is required of a girl? All this nonsense about higher education... It’s so unnecessary. And study is bad for the eyes; it makes girls frown; and a girl with a frown doesn’t look so much studious as bad tempered. Let them play games and look nice; that’s all that is requisite.”
“It’s the sort of idea I started out with,” Matheson returned, beating his tennis boot softly with his racquet and idly watching the pipe-clay rise in little clouds. ”

“ With feet planted lightly on the slippery rocks, and a strong hand holding her hand to steady her progress over the wet weed, Brenda looked out across the expanse of darkening ocean that flowed away to the horizon, beyond it, till it flung its spent waters upon the quiet shores on the other side of the world, and her eyes were big, and filled with the wondering content that is born of happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She smiled briefly.
“When it comes to war,” she said, “we stand aside and yield your sex first place. It’s your hour. You’ve a right to consideration. But for the war, I would rather you had waited—years.”
“You don’t mean that?” he said, and scrutinised her closely. “There is a little distrust at the back of your mind which I haven’t succeeded in allaying.”
She changed colour, showing signs of embarrassment, and turned away a little disconcerted at this outspoken attack.
“Do you suppose any mother ever thinks a man good enough for her girl?” ”