The Shadow of the Past Part 34

Matheson felt his disadvantage and stood for a s.p.a.ce 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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed in watchful suspense. He wondered why b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter 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 pa.s.sionate anger at the outrage, and seized the fallen weapon in his left hand and fired again at the opening.

The gra.s.s 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 a.s.sailant 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 a.s.sailant 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 l.u.s.t of killing held him; he was dominated by a pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sion 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 a.s.sisted 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 att.i.tude 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 compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 embarra.s.sment 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 d.a.m.ned 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 grat.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sion 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, a.s.suring 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 st.i.tching 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."

"b.u.t.ter 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. "b.u.t.ter 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 st.i.tching 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.