Читать книгу The Shadow of the Past - F. E. Mills Young - Страница 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh! they do bore—on the farms.”

“It wants doing on a more extensive scale.”

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

Matheson lifted his brows.

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

The other appeared doubtful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does Benauwdheidfontein stand for?” he inquired.

The Jew thought for a moment.

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

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

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

Matheson finished his lunch, and interviewed the proprietor.

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

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

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

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

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