She marvelled that he should say so much, but hid her pleasure lest she should unwittingly change his mood.

"She has never seemed that to me. Something has attracted me from the very first. I came, I saw, I loved."

"You must remember that you came under exceptional circumstances."

"And you?"

"I was among the early pioneers."

"How splendid! I wish I could say the same."

"It was extremely uncomfortable."

"But you didn't mind. I don't need to be told that. There was so much to make up for it. How good it must be to be a man!"

"Yet the women are the true heroes out here."

"Why?"

"We get what we came for. Interest, excitement of a kind, freedom...."

"And the women?"

"There is not much for the women, but the plucky ones are often heroines."

"Only no one tells them so?"

"No one tells them so; therein lies the heroism."

"I see. They put up a good fight, and no one says, 'Well done!' Isn't it the same with the men?"

"The men get many compensations."

"Compensations that make it worth while?"

"Distinctly."

They rode on in silence, both looking ahead to the blue mountain that guards the north of Zimbabwe. The peaceful loveliness soothed his spirit because he loved it, but in her it awakened a vague, swift ache. She felt somehow that he had a right to love the country, because he had made it his and given it of his best; that, for all his presumable poverty in many things, he was yet so rich in what he had achieved, and in what he had won for himself of interest and usefulness. While for her?... She was an alien, a mere tourist, a looker-on; the daughter of a millionaire who came to Rhodesia for wealth, and gave—how little in return!

He might look at the tender outline of the lovely mountain with the glad, restful consciousness of work well done. She could only look at it with that ache of divine discontent: unplumbed, wordless longing. Even the heroism of the settler's wife was not for her. The women who were plucky enough to put up that good fight, although no one ever said "Well done!" Compared with them, in his eyes she was probably a mere cumberer of the earth; an ornament, intended only to be admired by the leisured classes. The young splendid country had no use for her, no place for her. She was an alien, an interloper; child of a man who came only for gain, and took his gain elsewhere, recognising no claim from a land that was no home to him, only an investment.

Her soul cried out it was no wish of hers that it should be so; but only silent condemnation seemed to echo back to her from the far blue hills.

She glanced at the strong, serene face of her companion, and because somehow he seemed a little less stern and uncompromising to-day she said to him simply, leaning a little to his side:

"I envy you so, the sense that you have won the right to love her. I envy the plucky settlers' wives who are the mothers of her future. I feel myself so utterly an alien. Has Rhodesia any use for ... for such as I?"

He looked at her strangely, and as he looked she saw an expression almost like hungry longing come into his eyes; then as suddenly vanish again, leaving him utterly amazingly stony. He turned his head sharply, and his gaze became fixed and rigid.

"Millionaires' daughters can usually be pretty useful if they like," he said almost brutally; and she felt as if he had struck her. In sudden anger and bewilderment she touched her horse with her whip and darted ahead. It was not the words, but the way in which he had said them. What did he mean?... What did he not mean?... She bit her lips to keep back the smarting tears that blinded her eyes. She felt as if she hated him. For a little space he had been so different to the cold, callous soldier, and in quiet response she had spoken from her heart; and in return he had said this cutting thing with cold intent, making her feel that he despised her. Did he see in her only a willing accomplice to her father's money-making schemes? The one perhaps who spent the gains heartlessly and carelessly elsewhere? Beside those settlers' wives he had said were heroines, was she but an idle, contemptible, useless heiress? She spurred her horse on, letting her thoughts run away with her, unwilling that he should overtake her until she had got herself well in hand; and Carew followed behind, feeling again that sense of a black, rayless abyss all about him. Why had he looked full and deep into her eyes like that?... Why had he not gazed only upon the mountains that soothed and refreshed him?... The mere discovery that the past he thought to have outlived slept so lightly was a shock to him. Had he not then outlived anything? Had he only put his memories lightly to sleep, and dreamt all the life he had lived since? He was scarcely conscious that he had said anything inconsiderate; he hardly knew what he had said. He only remembered he had looked full and deep into beautiful eyes, and suddenly it was as though his dead love Joan had come back to him.

Presently she slowed down so that he came up to her, and it was noticeable that something in her whole attitude had changed. She was as upright as he now, and her eyes also looked rigidly ahead. He saw the change without understanding it and wondered a little, without troubling to probe.

"Your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Grenville," she said coldly, "would they care to see us if we called, or would they think it perhaps just vulgar curiosity?"

"They would be delighted; visitors are a very rare treat to them." He was puzzled a little at her manner, but let it pass. Meryl had it on the tip of her tongue to add, "They don't mind even millionaires' daughters?" but her own good taste saved her from a momentary satisfaction that a man of his breeding could only have considered bourgeoise.

"Perhaps Mr. Stanley would take us," was all she suffered herself; and added, "From his account Mrs. Grenville is evidently one of Rhodesia's heroines."

"She is," he answered so simply that Meryl felt a little nonplussed.

When they reached the camp Diana had already dismounted and gone into their tent, whither Meryl followed her.

"Well," she said, "how did you get on with The Bear? Did he chore you up over anything?"

Meryl considered a moment before replying. "One moment I thought him the rudest man I have ever met, and the next ..." she seemed puzzled how to explain.

"And the next I suppose he didn't seem a man at all, only a pillar of stone!..."

For answer, she said thoughtfully, "I wonder if something hurt him very badly some time or other?"

"If it did, it doesn't exempt him from the ordinary amenities of human intercourse. He isn't the only man who has been hurt." And Diana kicked off her boots impatiently.

"No," said Meryl; "but it makes it a little easier to forgive him."

"Don't do anything so foolish. You'll end by thinking him interesting and falling in love with him; which would be too utterly silly when you are as good as engaged to Dutch Willy, and when he, The Bear, would care about as much as my foot," with which dictum she put her head out through the tent flap, and called to Stanley and Carew, "Hey! Mr. Stanley! don't go away. Stay and keep us company in my uncle's absence. I believe he is venturing into The Bear's den to-night."

Carew smiled quite frankly for him.

"Can't I tempt you to come also? I daren't promise you a decent dinner, but I've some fresh Abdullah cigarettes out from home, if you care to come down afterwards."

Diana was disarmed in spite of herself. "And will you promise to growl very prettily?" with an arch expression.

"I'll try not to frighten you away too quickly."

Diana withdrew into the tent.

"O!" she said, "he's a bear with two faces; and that's the most difficult to cope with of all."



XII

THE MISSION STATION

They went to the Grenvilles' the next day, while Mr. Pym took another of his investigation trips. Stanley acted as escort, and Carew went to Edwardstown on business.

Ailsa Grenville met them with her brightest smile, and ushered them proudly into her cool, picturesque drawing-room hut.

"How charming!" they cried, with genuine delight; and Diana added, "O! why can't I have a hut in the wilderness?..."

Then the khaki-clad, sportsmanlike missionary strode in, and after the preliminary greetings Diana asked with charming piquancy, "O! are you really and truly a missionary?"

"Really and truly," he told her gaily, and came over to her side of the hut to sit beside her. "Why do you ask it like that?"

She considered a moment, and then declared impishly, "Because it doesn't seem possible that a man like you should never say 'Damn.'"

He laughed outright. "Well, I'm not going to tell tales out of school; but if you'd only got one pair of brown boots in the world and one pair of brown gaiters, and the boy tried to clean them with blacklead and paraffin oil!..."

Diana moved nearer to him, with her prettiest and most ingratiating air. "O, tell me some more!... Tell me lots more."

"I don't think that is half so bad as the boy washing the saucepans and the teacups all in the same water together," put in Mrs. Grenville.

"How perfectly delicious of him!" cried Diana. "What else did he do?"

"You ought to have been here this morning when our stores came out from Edwardstown," the missionary told her. "The boy carries them on his head, you know; and there was a tin of golden syrup ..."

"Yes ... yes ... and it leaked!..." gleefully.

"Trickled all down his head and neck; you never saw such a sticky mess! And as soon as the other boys discovered ..."

"Did they duck his head in a bucket?..."

"O, dear no!... licked him!..."

Diana fairly howled with delight; and then Stanley came in, after seeing that the horses were properly watered and fed, and was immediately accosted by Grenville with, "Hullo, Kid! you're quite a deserter! What have you been doing all the week?"

"Do you call him Kid?" Diana asked. "What a capital name for him!"

"He has been 'The Kid' almost ever since he came to this district."

"It pays," remarked Stanley jocularly; "they give me sugar."

"And he lives with The Bear; how comical! Instead of the lion lying down with the lamb, in Rhodesia you have The Kid feeding with The Bear."

"Who is The Bear?" Ailsa Grenville asked, from the packing-case cupboard, where she was reaching down cups and saucers.

"Need you ask?" queried Diana. "Doesn't Major Carew ever growl when he is here?"

Ailsa looked much amused. "Not exactly," she said; "but I admit sometimes he rolls himself up into a ball, so to speak, and relapses into a sort of winter sleep."

"I hope you prod him," said Diana.

"Billy wouldn't let me," glancing affectionately at her husband. "There is only one Major Carew for him."

"Still, it might do him good. We prodded him last night, didn't we?" addressing Stanley. "We went right into his den, and gave him a good baiting, while we smoked his new Abdullah cigarettes," and she smiled gleefully at the remembrance of the stern soldier, in an astonishingly sociable mood for him, humorously parrying her chaff. "You know," she ran on, "he simply hated our coming. I almost wonder he didn't dig impassable trenches across the road, or fortify himself in the Acropolis Hill. Anyone might have thought we were the bears, and he the woman."

"I expect he was afraid of your charms," said Grenville smilingly. "We wilderness-dwellers have none of the townsmen's armour to withstand fair women."

"Well, growling and scowling are very fair substitutes," quoth Diana; "and, besides, he didn't even trouble to observe if we had charms. As far as he decently could he looked the other way altogether."

While she chatted on, delighting the missionary and his wife with her gaiety, Meryl sat in a low chair, and gazed through the doorway out over the smiling country, much as Carew usually did.

"It must be very wonderful," she said at last, aroused by a sympathetic question from Ailsa Grenville, "to live day after day with such a scene as that in one's doorway."

"Yes," Ailsa told her. "The wonder never grows less, nor the mystery, nor the beauty. Major Carew, when he is here, loves just to sit and look at it; and so do I."

Diana, with the two men, had strolled outside; and Ailsa and Meryl sat alone in the cool interior.

Meryl sat very still, with her hands lightly clasped on her knees, and her eyes always—always—to the lovely prospect that was like a mighty ocean in which the waves were blue, mystical kopjes; and over which the first clouds, that heralded the approach of the rainy season, shed entrancing lights and shadows. Ailsa sat a little behind, and her eyes roved back from the view that had grown into her being and become part of her life to the face of the young heiress. She noted at once its instinctive charm; the charm of a woman blessed with most of the traits that hold and bind men for ever. Strength was there without masterfulness; sweetness that would never cloy; a dreamy elusiveness that meant a closed book it would be a joy to study chapter by chapter; and some of the chapters would surprise with their lightness and mirth, while others would surprise with their depth of sympathetic understanding, and yet others would bewilder alluringly with their whimsical, irresistible uncertainty. She knew that society papers sometimes spoke of the well-known millionaire's daughter as beautiful, but to her it seemed the word was hardly the right one. Meryl's face had in it something too strong and too distinctive for actual beauty; and yet Ailsa thought of all the lovely women she had ever seen none were quite so attractive. And because she was a tender-hearted woman, the thought crossed her mind to wonder if perhaps, out of the dark shadow that she knew hung ever over Peter Carew's life, there might yet be a way of escape; a gracious healing, and a final joy. Could two such humans meet and not love? Could anything truly separate them if once the love were born?

She mused a moment or two happily, sublimely ignorant of all the forces that warred between; of what caused the shadow; of the power of a dead face; of the pride of a resolute man; of that attractive Huguenot Dutchman biding his time down south.

At last Meryl broke the silence. As she sat gazing through the open doorway her mind had lingered unconsciously over that last sentence. "Major Carew, when he is here, loves just to sit and look at it," and in her fancy she saw the silent, watching form of the grim soldier-policeman.

"He is an interesting man," she said simply. "I think I understood he was some connection of yours?"

"You mean Major Carew? Yes; he is a distant sort of cousin, but we are two entirely different branches of the family, and had drifted widely apart until we three met out here. Yet it was not surprising we should meet like this. The Carews were always wanderers and adventurers, like Drake and Frobisher and the other fine old pirates. A humdrum career in the Blues would hardly have continued to satisfy Major Carew, any more than the conventions and hide-bound prejudices of the Established Church could hold my husband."

"Yet, if you will forgive my seeming rudeness, both of them apparently took a decided step downwards from the social point of view."

"That would not trouble either of them for a moment. They sought Freedom, and found it."

"Yet it meant, in a sense, what some people call being buried alive."

"Ah, those people do not understand. That is how I took it at first. Shall I tell you a little, or will it bore you?"

"Please tell me. I think it is kind of you to trust me so soon with your confidence."

Ailsa smiled. "One always knows. Anyone with insight would trust you instinctively. But there isn't much to tell. Only that when I married my husband he held a living in Shropshire, with a sure promise of quick promotion; and then Doubt crept in which he could not overthrow, and after a long struggle he gave it up because his conscience would not let him be a hypocrite."

"But he is still a Church missionary, is he not?"

"In a sense; but he is not paid by any society, and works on his own lines entirely. He had a little money of his own, and I have also, and out here it is ample. But at first I was very bitter with him, and let myself be influenced by my people who were still more bitter, and I would not join him. I went back home and lived the old life of my girlhood. He never uttered one word of reproach, although he was just breaking his heart for me, and—for which I bless him every day of my life—he wrote every mail telling me about the country and his work. At first I scarcely read the letters, and often did not reply; but he wrote on patiently and waited. And at last my mood changed. The endless tea-parties began to pall, and the insipidity of my home life. Week after week, week after week, the same round of social gatherings; the same people, the same conversations, the same everlasting tea, buns, and gossip. In each parish around, so many, many unmarried women, so many empty, monotonous lives. I think the condition of England's country villages is becoming almost a tragedy; all the men seem to have gone away to a bigger and wider world, and all the women to have been left behind to feed on emptiness. There are the clergyman's daughters, the doctor's daughters, the solicitor's daughters, and perhaps a few retired veterans and their daughters; all struggling through the same old empty round; while the men go out to conquer the earth." She paused a moment, but seeing Meryl's rapt attention, went on uninterruptedly, "And one day I awoke to the fact that I had a special right to one of the finest men who had gone out to do his share, and a special place at his side. To cut a long story short, I won through the frantic opposition of my family, cut myself adrift, and came out here to see for myself what Billy was doing that gave him a satisfaction he had never found in his peaceful easy living; in spite of the hunger I had always known was wearing out his soul for me." She looked out across the country dreamily, before she finished. "I shall never forget when I first saw this," motioning to the sunny prospect. "We arrived here in the dusk, owing to a breakdown, and so I had a long night's rest before Billy first showed it to me. I must tell you I was already tremendously impressed, on the quiet, with my brown, stalwart, khaki-clad husband in place of the decorous, black-coated parson I had parted with; and although the journey had been very exhausting, for I had to travel in the post-cart, my interest in him and the country had never abated. Then he opened the door wide about sunrise, and said casually, 'Sit up and look at my view, Ailsa.' I sat up, and for a moment I could not speak at all. Do you know, Miss Pym, the country looked positively hung with diamonds that wonderful morning. I shall never forget it. Just outside the door, forming a sort of framework to the scene beyond, was some tall, dry grass, thin and straggly enough to let the light through. And where at the top it spread into graceful, hanging, feathery seed-ears, it was hung with large dewdrops, reflecting all the colours of the rainbow. Behind them was the bluest of early-morning skies. Beyond them, what you see here, a far dream-country of untold loveliness. I said, 'O, Billy! have you lived beside this all these months?' And then I began to cry, because I didn't know what else to do, and I was so glad that I had come."

A fleeting shadow of sadness seemed to cross Meryl's face. "I envy you," she said in a low voice. "You can stay on with the man you love, and see it every day. I must go back to the tea-parties."

"Most people pity me."

"I dare say; and they envy me," with a little forlorn smile.

"You have much power, and power is good," softly.

"Have I?... How, why, where?... What shall I do with all this money my father makes? I wonder what I could do to take from my heart this feeling that I am an alien and an intruder in this lovely country, among you people who are quietly making history? If your husband wants money for his mission, I could get him a cheque for a thousand pounds from my father, I know; but what is that compared to giving one's life as you do, and growing right into the heart of the country, and feeling just that it is yours because of what you have given? I know that is how Major Carew feels also. One can see it in his rapt gaze. He does not care for very much else in the world. But we, my father and I, we just take riches out, and give nothing but cheques which we never even miss." She got up and moved to the doorway, controlling with an effort her sudden, unexpected show of emotion. "The others have been looking at your fowls and cattle," she said, "and now they are coming back. I hope Mr. Grenville will show us over the mission station."

"He will be delighted," Ailsa answered, following her lead with quick understanding; "and another day you must come and sit in my doorway again."

"I should love to;" and she stepped out into the sunlight to join the gay trio Diana was still the life of.

Then Mr. Grenville took them into his workshops and his little mission hall, and showed them how he taught the boys carpentering and blacksmithing, and reading and writing and farming; making good, useful labourers of them with even greater zeal than that with which he made them Christians. Diana, the outspoken, could not resist a surprised comment.

"I thought people who had been abroad always ran down missionaries, and scoffed at missionary work?"

"They do very often," Grenville replied, with frankness, "and not without reason. A great many missionaries are naturally not very suitable men. It is almost impossible to pick and choose."

"There are some," put in Stanley disgustedly, "who just confirm all the blacks they can, without bothering about how much they understand, and then make communicants of them so that they can send good figures home to their society for the missionary magazines. They don't teach them anything useful at all, and they do a roaring trade with the garments sent out by pious ladies' work guilds; as if the natives weren't better in their own natural state than they are ever likely to be dressed up in clothes and fuddled with doctrines."

Mr. Grenville, standing very upright and looking every inch a man, said simply, "It isn't entirely their fault always. The home folk like the figures; they imagine they stand for progress, and they know nothing about the conditions. Many missionaries are very fine men, and they would do even better work if left a little more to their own initiative, and not cursed with this atmosphere of competition in figures. It isn't fair to damn the whole flock because a few of the sheep are black."

"And don't you ever feel you are wasting your talents?" Meryl asked him a little shyly.

He threw his head back and squared his shoulders with a characteristic movement. "It is better than the hypocrisy and feebleness of the condition of affairs at home; and I am very fond of the natives. They are most lovable, when one once gets their confidence and understands them. And the freedom is good, and the primitive conditions. The getting right down to the bedrock of nature, so to speak, without too much highly developed civilisation. Yes, it is a good life for a man. Sometime I should like to show you the mission farm. We've made tremendous strides lately."

"And you?..." Diana turned with a winsome air to Ailsa Grenville. "Do you find the natives lovable, and the primitive conditions?... And are you proud of the mission farm?... Or doesn't it all sometimes make you just long to scream?... It would me!..."

Ailsa smiled into her eyes. "One grows adaptable very quickly. I confess I am very happy here. Certainly there are times when one feels rather as if one had dropped off the world into space, but it doesn't take long to struggle through it. But then, of course, it is well to remember that Billy and I are rather an exceptional couple; quite absurdly, idiotically satisfied with each other's company. If it were not so our lives would be purgatory. The tragedies of these far countries are for the husbands and wives isolated from all other companionship, and having perhaps nothing in common with each other. There are few conditions worse than isolation under those circumstances. It breaks the woman's spirit and sours the man and brings shipwreck, where a little other congenial companionship might have brought them through in safety."

They were interrupted by the sound of voices outside, and found that Mr. Pym and his engineer, having encountered Major Carew returning from Edwardstown, had persuaded him to show them the way to the mission. Mr. and Mrs. Grenville greeted them with eager warmth, and, the afternoon sun having sunk behind some trees, tea was spread outside the huts, so that they could drink it while admiring the view. Carew, though silent as ever, was less rigid, and Meryl saw how insistently his eyes strayed back to the blue vista of kopjes. She wondered what he thought of all day long, in his continuous silences, and behind the quiet, forceful eyes. It was noticeable that Diana seemed to have outgrown both her awe and chagrin towards him; and though at first he proved very unbending, she eventually won something like a repartee out of him. Ailsa watched them quietly from the background, and waited hopefully, but in vain, to see his eyes stray to Meryl. Indeed, he seemed almost to shun her, and she noted it with regret. Was it possible that already his preference was given to Diana, with her light raillery and ready laugh? Diana so pretty, so attractive, so original, and yet to Ailsa's thinking, so far less reliable and restful than Meryl. In the end, by a clever little manoeuvre, she brought Carew and Meryl together.

"You are almost outvied, Major Carew," she told him lightly. "Miss Pym likes my view already, as much, if not more, than you. I told her you loved to sit and look at it, and that is exactly what she likes to do."

Meryl smiled, but made no comment. Mere admiration seemed superfluous, and Carew was grateful that she spared him raptures. So they sat quite still, and instead of any constraint between them because of the silence, there was a vague sense of restfulness and understanding. Meryl spoke first, and then she made no allusion to his love of the spot.

"I think you were right," she said simply. "Mrs. Grenville must be one of Rhodesia's heroines."

"How do you specially mean it?"

"I mean it, because one knows there must be times when the isolation is almost unendurable, and when she must long for many of the things of her old life, however much she declares otherwise."

"Yes, I think there are. She evidently had many friends, and she has almost lost them all. It is difficult to keep up friendships by post."

Then Ailsa herself joined them.

"Has Major Carew been with you into the temple, yet?" she asked Meryl. "He is better than any guide-book for information."

Meryl coloured faintly, but looked a little amused. He had so persistently withstood every friendly hint or invitation to accompany them among the ruins.

"He has been very much occupied ever since we came," she said, glancing towards him.

Carew looked quite unconcerned, and merely assented, which made Ailsa rather want to shake him. "But it ought to be part of your business," she told him, "to interest visitors in our wonderful old ruin."

"I can hardly imagine anyone needing any incentive to that from me," he said.

Meryl glanced at him humorously. Some new phase she had detected in him, since Diana persisted in what she called "baiting" him, made her more ready to overlook his bearishness and less quick to feel repulsed.

"Will you take me if I promise not to ask any silly questions?" she asked, with a smile.

He looked up, and for a brief moment the past seemed to lie still as one that is dead. His keen, direct eyes looked straight into hers, and he said simply, "I should like to take you."

Meryl felt her cheeks glow a little with sudden, swift, indefinable pleasure, and almost at the same moment Diana broke in upon them.

"Do you know, Major Carew, your singularly appropriate nickname has been subjected to a little embroidery?... You are now called, after the Coeur de Lion, 'The Bear with two faces.'" All in a moment he stiffened and the shadow loomed; and while Meryl wondered Diana ran on unheedingly, "If I say to you when we meet, 'Which face is it to-day?' you will know that I mean, is it your day of lordly graciousness, or is it the cast-iron, beware-of-the-bull frown day?"

"I think you are excessively rude, Diana," Meryl said, though she smiled with the rest.

Carew smiled too, but he rose from his seat and moved away on some small pretence.

And as he went, Meryl, watching with eyes that were daily gaining clearer sight, saw that the shadow was as of some deep, unfathomable pain.

She too got up and moved a little away from the rest, gazing with grave, tender eyes across the kopjes, lying how bathed in a faint ethereal flush of rose and gold.

"He had not always two faces," she said in her heart. "Something hurt him badly once, and ever since he has taken refuge behind the iron mask."

"Rhodesia," her heart whispered, almost without her consciousness, "cannot you with your fairness reward him for his work by soothing away the memory so that the refuge is no longer needed?..."

A little later, as they all prepared to ride home, she saw how resolutely he took his place with the engineer, and hastened on ahead, quenching even Diana by the stoniness of his mien.



XIII

A DECISION THAT FAILED

As Carew sat outside his hut that evening smoking a solitary pipe, two thoughts seemed to fill his mind. The one that he had told Meryl he would be pleased to visit the temple ruins with her; the other the warning unconsciously conveyed in Diana's raillery, reminding him that he was in danger of straying from the rigid pathway he had chosen of unsociable aloofness, and therefore in a measure, perchance, inviting trouble.

But of course he need not go. A polite message by Stanley, or a call as he rode past perhaps, already starting on some convenient engagement. Yet as he sat on he knew it was not entirely his wish to resort to either subterfuge. Why, after all, should he not go with her just once, and no doubt Diana also, and tell them a little about the mysterious walls?

He pulled hard at his pipe, staring into the darkness. Why not go and get it over, instead of troubling to send an excuse? Surely that were the simpler plan? One moment he thought he would, and the next he found himself shrinking unaccountably, warned again by Diana's chaff. He knew quite well she was right. He was a man, or a bear if she preferred it, with two faces; but the trouble was that she should so thoroughly have grasped the fact. He had only intended to show one face, the uninviting, frigid one; and yet unconsciously she had won from him more than one glimpse of the other.

And if he unbent so far as to act as their escort to the ruins, he was yielding still further to an atmosphere of friendliness he had forsworn.

He turned in at last, still in indecision, but the next morning he said he would not go.

So Meryl waited a little forlornly through the morning hours. It was unusually cool for Zimbabwe, the hot sun being hidden by grey clouds, and she knew no question of heat could possibly be detaining him. She had hoped he would call for her about eleven and then come back to lunch; but the morning wore on, and no tall figure in khaki strode out from the clearing where the police camp stood.

Neither did the afternoon bring any word or sign, until Stanley arrived for a cup of tea and to ask them to stroll up to the store with him at the head of the valley. Diana agreed readily, having found the hours somewhat tedious; but Meryl felt tired and headachy, and chose to remain behind. Once, as casually as she could, she asked if Carew had gone anywhere for the day.

"No, he's grinding away at his report for the Native Commission, and as solemn as a judge. I don't think he has spoken two words all day."

"Is there some special haste then?"

"O no; it is just his mood. He gets a sort of black day sometimes, when he barely answers if you speak to him, and looks like a bronze figure. Then he grinds away at something or other as if his life depended on it, and Moore and I have to just shut up."

When they had gone away up the valley Meryl sat on alone in the shade, thinking deeply. Evidently he had some reason of his own for not following up his promise, and she need not any longer expect him. He did not want to take her, and probably was vexed that he had said that he would. It did not seem very polite, but she hardly looked at it in that way. Somehow, with this stern-featured soldier-policeman, the ordinary amenities of conventional intercourse seemed to have little weight. If he regretted his words and did not want to go, she liked him better for calmly remaining away, than coming against his wish, because he felt he ought. Another man would have done that, any man, in fact; only Peter Carew, and a few like him, would calmly change his mind and remain aloof without saying anything.

Yet how keenly she was disappointed. It was quite idle to pretend otherwise to herself, and with a strength like his she calmly faced the fact. When she went to bed the previous night she had lain awake thinking of the morrow, hugging to her consciousness with shy gladness that he was on the point of unbending at last and showing a little friendliness. In a few days now they would be journeying on, and she had begun to expect he would remain unbending to the last, and let them go away, perhaps never to meet again, with nothing beyond the official courtesy and the occasional sparring with Diana. And then had come this sudden hope, and she had been strangely glad. One might live a lifetime and not again meet a man quite like him. Even if their intercourse were to be of the merest afterwards, still it was better than nothing, better than a final end to all friendship when they journeyed on again, leaving him and the ruins behind.

And now had come this swift disappointment. He must have regretted his move instantly, and made up his mind to be more rigid than ever.

She hardly troubled to ask why. Doubtless he had his own reasons, and whatever they were, they were nothing petty or small. Her eyes strayed a little longingly to the police camp, and she watched the door of his hut from her chair securely hidden behind some low bushes.

Was he still grinding at his report, she wondered, looking like a bronze figure? The simile pleased her, and she smiled. Yes, bronze was the right word to use, for his face and hands and arms were tanned almost to the colour of his khaki with exposure, so that he sometimes looked all of a piece, except for the close-clipped dark moustache and keen, intense blue eyes.

Then as she looked she saw some movement in the camp. A boy appeared, apparently in answer to a call, and stood a moment receiving directions. Then the tall figure itself appeared, stood a moment to give an order, and strode down towards the little gate. She sat up, and her breath came a little unevenly. Was he really coming at last? Had he, after all, been seriously delayed?

No; outside the gate, without one glance towards the tents on the hill-side, he turned to the left and disappeared in the direction of the Acropolis Hill.

So there was nothing further to hope for. He would never come now. It was the end.

She got up, feeling suddenly a new tiredness, and wishing vaguely that they were leaving on the morrow. Perhaps it would be possible to persuade her father to do so without exciting much comment. Diana was already a little bored with their camping-place and ready to be off, and she ... without daring to probe too deeply, Meryl felt, for the sake of her own peace of mind, it would be wiser to go quietly away from a presence so likely to disturb her peace.

Yes, she would ask her father to plan a move as soon as he came in, and in the meantime she must do something herself to pass the next hour more helpfully than sitting alone in the shade.

The greyness had rolled away now, and the evening grown exceptionally lovely, with clear skies overhead and great banks of pearly tinted clouds on the horizons. Where should she go? Only two ways lay open. Either she must follow Diana and Stanley up the valley, or she must stroll down to the temple alone. The third route lay to the Acropolis Hill, and that was formidably closed by the presence of the man who should have been her companion. Finally she decided on the temple, and tying on the large grey hat that blended so charmingly with her eyes and the soft tints of her skin, she walked along the little footpath skirting the police-camp vegetable-garden to the western entrance.

Inside the temple walls all was very peaceful and still, while the sunshine made a network of gold through the leafy trees upon the antique masonry. Yet as she looked around upon the empty desolation her heart grew sad with a nameless sorrow; that old, old ache, and old, old tiredness, for the utter futility of work and of striving, that sometimes seems to fill the human heart, when in a depressed mood it looks upon the ruins of something that has once had strength and greatness. Meryl carried in her hand a little pocket edition of Omar, but she did not open the leaves nor read the lines. In a vague way it was enough to have it with her; it was like having in her hand the hand of a friend who understood. For of all poets the world has known, perhaps none have so perfectly voiced the cry of the human heart when it questions the why and the wherefore and the worthwhileness of its own mysterious existence. So she sat very still in the ancient temple, and pondered the old questions that live from age to age—unanswered.

And because Sorrow seemed for the moment to have her in his keeping, all her thoughts were tinged with sadness. She looked around upon the broken walls, and it seemed to be brought home to her with sudden force, how little time was given to each one to play his part before he must make room for another.

The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly, and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

And because there was that element of greatness in her, which was also in her father, she thought less of the "worthwhileness" of doing than of the poorness of not doing. His talents were given to money-making, because it was the thing he had a genius for; but she knew that in a measure he fulfilled his trust, and besides subscribing generously to charities, helped many a "lame dog" over his stile in secret. But what had this to do with the trust that was hers? She who did not even bear the heat and burden of the day in making the money?... She who had but to spend it.

In the ruined temple she sat on—thinking, thinking.

How the spot fascinated her!

In this far Rhodesia, how strange that she, the product of the most modern and presumably enlightened age, should linger there amidst these broken walls, and feel strange kinship and fascination about those old people in that remote age; should stretch a hand out to them, as it were, across the centuries, with this feeling that their thoughts had been even as her thoughts, and that the passing of the ages could never eradicate the essential likeness of one people to another in those old eternal questions of whence and why and wherefore.

And they, the maidens of that day, had loved the man who was big and strong and true, even as the maidens of to-day; the man who achieved; who was ever fearless to do and dare; who gave his service to the world quietly, unostentatiously, indifferent to praise or reward. And what was the use of it all: the love, the heartache, the silent admiration.... The maidens were dust now, and all the strength and the heroism of the strong men could not give them one age longer to do and dare ere they too made room for others.

Yet always—always—deep-rooted in the heart and mind of humanity, was this ineradicable belief in the simple act of doing; this half-contempt of the lives content to flutter their little way in aimless self-seeking. The spirit that took men through the terrible solitudes of untrodden places, that urged them across uncharted seas, that carried them fearlessly aloft to conquer the air—not for gain, not for notoriety, not for praise, but just that simple splendid need to be doing. How it appealed to her, how it enthralled her senses, how it made her ache with a great overwhelming desire to discover quickly what "doing" in a big sense there might be for her!

Of course he, the stern soldier-policeman, was of the fearless band. In his quiet way he was "doing" with the foremost, though it might be a work that would never bring him anything in this world but enough pay just to live upon. But that was beside the point. The band to which he belonged did not linger in the shallows, counting the cost, counting the gain; they plunged straightway into the deep waters, and struggled to some mysterious, perhaps fugitive, goal ahead, finding their reward in the struggle itself and the difficult headway won.

And afterwards!...

O, what did it matter about afterwards, if one had put up a good fight and dared the deep waters? How much better to be overwhelmed there, than to fritter away a butterfly life in the shallows! How splendid to win through and stand on the far bank with the quiet band of strong workers, even though no one knew aught of the struggle, instead of being lauded to the skies by the playing butterflies!

Only, what could she do; ah, what?

A wave of hopelessness seemed to seize upon her, and back across her mind like a lash cut the dictum of the strong, rigid man, "A millionaire's daughter can generally be pretty useful if she likes."

Of course, signing cheques, cheques, cheques—a mere machine—and never to get in touch with the deep need, the inarticulate sorrow of the world that her soul ached to comfort. It would seem that even to him, the figure of bronze, it was what she should seek as her metier. She almost wondered if somewhere in his heart he had a faint contempt for her, because she was a millionaire's daughter: a product of the new regime; someone who could not be permitted to stand in the same light as the women of his ancient, illustrious name; who had no part with the proud, patrician ladies of his great family.

She rose to her feet suddenly, feeling unaccountably hurt by the thought, and her eyes roved half unconsciously, and fixed themselves upon the spot where the scarlet petals of the Kaffir boom showed blood-red against the ancient northern wall. The ache in her heart coloured all her mind for the moment, shutting out the glad sunshine with its golden evening glow resting tenderly upon the granite blocks, showing her only the splashes of scarlet like blood upon the ancient walls. Was it the altar of sacrifice? Did the Kaffir boom shed its great red flowers for ever, like drops of blood upon the altar of the world's pain?

The sound of a step upon broken stones roused her suddenly; a man's firm tread close beside her. She looked round slowly as it stood still, and with the ache and the question lingering in her face, found herself looking into blue eyes of a disconcerting directness—the eyes of the soldier-policeman.

"I saw you from the Acropolis Hill," he said, "and so I came."

No word of why he had not come sooner; no explanation of his presence on the Acropolis Hill when she had a right to expect him with her; no preliminaries at all, no self-conscious excuses, no apparent realisation that he had behaved a little oddly; only the simple, direct announcement, "I saw you, so I came."

Yet there was something more—a vague intangible something, that made the directness of his eyes disconcerting in a way it had not been before. Meryl felt a pink flush stealing over her face, and turned her head away to hide it.

"I wonder what you were thinking about just then?" he said, with the slightest softening. "I awoke you from a very deep reverie."

She raised her eyes, and they fell again upon the scarlet flowers. Something born of her own deep understanding told her, give this man straightness for straightness always if you would stand well with him; no begging the question, no subterfuge.

"I was thinking," she answered simply, "that those scarlet petals of the Kaffir boom, falling on these ancient walls, suggest great blood drops offered, upon the altar of the world's pain throughout the ages."

"Ah!..." The exclamation escaped him quickly, unheedingly—sharp, short, abrupt. It was as though she had struck him suddenly in a vulnerable place. It told her, as perhaps nothing else could have done, she had gauged rightly when she remarked to Diana that sometime something had hurt him very much.

For a moment there was a tense, pulsing silence, and then he turned aside towards the sacred enclosure which stood behind them. Meryl turned also, and ventured as she did so to glance into his face. It was stern again now, but she knew for a brief moment as he made the exclamation it had not been so, and for a reason she did not seek to fathom her heart was strangely glad.



XIV

THE ANCIENT RUINS

When Carew had started up into the Acropolis Hill an hour previously, he had not had the faintest intention of fulfilling his engagement and going in search of Meryl. On the contrary, he had gone there to avoid her.

All day long, as Stanley described, he had been grinding away at his native report in a gruff, determined silence: a silence even gruffer and more determined than usual. Because of his thoughts the previous evening and of his decision in the morning, he had finally made up his mind not to visit the temple with Meryl Pym, and not to run any further risk of slipping unconsciously into the friendly attitude he was so anxious to avoid. When Stanley set out towards the tents, he mentioned casually that he was going up the valley to the store, which is also a most attractive and comfortable hostel for Zimbabwe visitors, and should ask the two girls to go with him. A little later, glancing in the valley direction, Carew saw the khaki figure for a moment going up the pathway, and the flutter of a light dress, or possibly two, just ahead. He took it for granted that Meryl and Diana had both accompanied Stanley, and that his escort was no longer expected. He told himself he was glad, and decided to go into the Acropolis Hill, about that point of interest still unravelled between himself and Grenville, and so avoid any chance encounter.

But when he found himself among the ruined fortifications, he became conscious of a flagging interest wholly unlooked for. Something seemed to have gone out of him, or out of the ancient stones, and he knew himself in some vague way not in tune. He gazed at the amazing walls, erected upon granite boulders two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet above the valley, and the marvel in him that never seemed to die was, at any rate, less arresting than it had ever been before.

Here, on an isolated hill, rising to a height of three hundred and fifty feet, were fortifications which in their ingenuity, massive character, and persistent repetition at every point of vantage had astonished the highest experts of modern military engineering. Rampart walls, traverses, screen-walls, intricate entrances, narrow and labyrinthine passages, sunken thoroughfares, banquettes, parapets, and other devices of a people thoroughly conversant with military engineering and defence, and not one word, not one line, not one clue as to the identity of the builders nor the object of their colossal labours; labours which one felt could only have been achieved through the compulsory service of many slaves, for thousands of tons of granite blocks had been transported up the precipitous kopje to a height of no less than two hundred feet, which a careful examination of the rocks on the hill proves must mostly have been quarried from granite about twelve miles distant. And all this in spite of the fact that Nature alone had made the hill already impregnable, it being inaccessible on three sides and very difficult of ascent on the fourth. It is one of Rhodesia's mysteries, and one also of its fascinations; those mysteries and fascinations which so far have effectually baffled all efforts to find the clue and read the closed book. Who was it came for gold in those old, old days? Who was it built the line of forts to Solfala on the coast to guard the route along which the gold was undoubtedly carried, and of which remains may still be seen at regular intervals the whole distance? Where was the gold taken to from Solfala, and by whom?

And no less strange perhaps is the absence of all clue to the burial-ground of this stalwart race; for only a stalwart people could have built those temple walls and those amazing fortifications. Where then are the bones of their dead? Strange and incomprehensible as it may seem, no excavations have yet unearthed human bones, or brought to light any spot that might be supposed to have been a burial-ground.

To Peter Carew the mystery and the fascination had become such an ever-present companion in his thoughts, that it was not surprising a moment should come when he stood among the ramparts and found their interest for the time being crowded out. The surprising thing was the source of that crowding out. For it was not even the lengthy report for the Native Commission to which he was giving such infinite thought and pains that filled his mind; neither was it anything to do with the police force he had grown to care for as truly as his old regiment; nor any far-reaching, visionary dream for the welfare of the country. Chiefly it was a pair of grave blue-grey eyes, with a gleam in them as their owner said, "Will you take me if I promise not to ask any silly questions?" And he had said "Yes." Yet now he was here on the Acropolis Hill alone.

He stared moodily at the broken walls and pondered within himself. Why had he not taken her? Or why, since he had chosen not to do so, could he not put the whole remembrance from his mind? Nay, why did he half begin to wish that he had not let himself be overruled by his own counsel of prudence? They would be going so soon now, and it might be long before he would again be given an opportunity to speak with any woman of Meryl's charm, or look into any face so full of attraction. And yet that was just what he wished; was actually the chief reason for his unsociable resolutions. His own inconsistency puzzled and worried him, and his eyes as he looked steadily to the horizon had a lurking cloud in them.

Then quite suddenly and unexpectedly he had turned his gaze to the temple walls lying far below, and seen the figure seated idly on fallen masonry, lost in thought.

Then she had not gone with Stanley and Diana? She had remained behind alone, nettled perhaps by his bearishness, and choosing to be independent, and still take her stroll to the temple without him.

But it was not the thought of her possible censure that spurred him unexpectedly to a new decision. He had accustomed himself to be indifferent to that in most people. It was a perfectly simple and direct desire to join her. And because at heart he was a perfectly simple and direct man, he suddenly left off cogitating and started down the hill. Perhaps until that moment he had not truly known which way his desire lay. Perhaps in the first discovery he had purposely not chosen to give himself time to weigh and probe. Anyhow, he hesitated no more, until he stood at her side and looked into her eyes with that direct gaze that Meryl so unexpectedly found disconcerting. But the sensation passed rapidly, and in its place came a quiet content. Whether he had avoided her all day or not, at least he came now entirely of his own initiative, and for the time it was enough. She was too honest to pretend anything herself, and possessed too fine a nature to cover what might have held embarrassment by a coquettish taunt or feigned pique.

"I had given you up," she said; "it seemed probable that you had spoken unthinkingly when you said you would come."

"I have been working all day at my report," he replied simply.

He seemed a little different somehow, and besides, he had come entirely of his own free will. She remembered it, and put away all sense of restraint, fought down and conquered the self-consciousness that sometimes seemed to grip her when he was taciturn and aloof.

He had placed one foot on a low wall, and leaned back against a tree in a natural, unrestrained attitude, and quite naturally she seated herself on the wall before him.

"You found it very engrossing?"

"It is interesting work."

"Has it any special object, or just a general one?"

"A little of both. We want to benefit the natives as a whole and improve their conditions; and we want also to make some changes in the native administration of the country."

"And you are fond of the natives? For you at least they are worth while?"

"Emphatically so."

"To any particular end?"

His face grew grave and thoughtful, but the hardening stayed away still—the hardening that so often came when either she or Diana, sought to draw him. Only apparently to men would he speak of his work and his beliefs.

"It is difficult to say. Probably nothing but time will show us the true solution of the problem of the black and the white race living together in one country. But meanwhile the black man is eminently worth while. With firm and just treatment he is capable of great development."

He raised his eyes and looked out into the distance. "If only we could ensure it for him everywhere! Native commissioners and their clerks and the magistrates, all men of fine fibre, who honestly care about the natives under them and the welfare of the country. So much could be done if ... if ..." He smiled a little grimly. "We are so apt to expect the impossible," he finished. "How should numbers of men of fine fibre ever reach Rhodesia at all? In so many cases we must just take what we can get."

"But the standard will improve as the country grows?"

"O yes; it is improving steadily. All the signs are hopeful, if we can but light upon what is truly the best method of administering the native laws, and get good men to carry the work out."

And still the heavenly sense of unrestrained mental kinship lingered. Happy, yet fearful, Meryl ventured a word of appreciation.

"It must make you glad to feel you are doing such a useful work for a young country. It seems as if ... as if ... it is just what a man might ask to be doing."

He drew himself up with a slightly taut movement, and she divined he did not wish for any personal praise; yet, because a tinge of red showed under the bronze, she was glad she had seized the opportunity to offer a tribute that might at some odd moment heal a passing sense of uselessness and appreciation.

She stood up also, and they moved slowly round the ruins together, while he explained to her much that he had read and gathered and surmised in his leisure hours, not only about the temple itself, but about all the ancient remains and the mysterious people who had dwelt there long ago. Told as he told it, the listener could only find it enthralling, for the man's heart was in his subject; and where another might have rhapsodised or sentimentalised, he only stated certain remarkable facts, and gave her the simple reasons for and against certain deductions, that she might decide her own view for herself.

"But you?..." she questioned at last. "In spite of the scientific men who have scoffed, and their followers who have thrown cold water upon all enthusiastic belief in the antiquity of the ruins, you are quite satisfied that they are really of a very great age, are you not?"

"Absolutely."

"Can you tell me why chiefly?" She smiled a little. "I believe it absolutely myself, but I am afraid it is partly a sentimental belief. Already I love them, and it makes me jealous for them. I feel I cannot bear anyone to throw doubt upon their antiquity."

"It is not easy to explain in a few words, without a great many facts and a lot of detail, but I can tell you one or two salient points. For one thing, Zimbabwe was evidently connected with a gold industry on a very large scale. Mr. Telford Edwards, a well-known and able mining engineer in Rhodesia, measured up, about fourteen years ago, the length, breadth, and depth of most of the then known old workings in Rhodesia, and calculated the cubic contents of what had been taken out. And taking the assay value in each old working to be per ton the same as it is in the reef in each case now, he estimated that at the present value of gold more than one hundred million pounds' worth had been taken out. Even two hundred years ago gold was worth very much more than it is now; so that it is inconceivable that such an amount had been produced within the last two thousand years without any mention of it anywhere. Such a production of gold would have upset the markets of the world."

"Yes," she said eagerly as he paused; "please go on."

He did so, but without withdrawing his gaze from the distance. "Another point is that the workings are so widely dispersed and so numerous, requiring such an enormous amount of time and labour, that it seems only reasonable to believe that the gold-mining went on for many hundreds of years, probably before the age of writing at all. I am not prepared to agree offhand that Zimbabwe is probably the ancient Havilah of the Scriptures, but I see no very good reason why it should not be. On the other hand, the ancient workings and fortifications and temples may have been the work of Phoenicians or Mongols several thousand years ago. Certainly against Mr. McIver's theory, that the Temple was the work of Bantus a few hundred years ago, I think we may put the fact that an admirable drainage system has been unearthed;—drainage systems of any kind being more or less unknown to black races of a low order. In the meantime, we can but await fresh clues, which may put us upon the track of proofs, and hope that the day is not very far distant when much of the mystery will be cleared."

"O, I hope so," she said; "and thank you so much for telling me all that you have. I shall think of it often when I am back in 'the cities of the plain,'" and she smiled a little wistfully.

He did not answer, and she wondered what deep thoughts at the back of his brain made him always so grave. She felt instinctively he had not always worn this serious, preoccupied air, and her heart grew tender anew at the thought of that "something" which had hurt him long ago.

Had he ever told anyone? she wondered. Would he ever tell anyone?... or would he go quietly on through his life, self-contained, self-dependent, aloof? Well, it was good to have met him and known him; a simple, strong soul going quietly about its appointed service is always good to have known. Perhaps the recollection of the meeting later would help her to do likewise, and in the maze of her life learn at least to do the simple, strong thing at the moment.

They were moving towards the western entrance now, and she wondered if he would accompany her back to the tents, and perhaps stay a little, as Stanley did evening after evening. But just as they approached the opening voices were heard, and a moment later Diana and Stanley stood in the wide aperture. Diana's winsome face was lit with whimsical mischievousness, but it fell somewhat when she beheld Carew.

"O goodness!" she remarked comically. "Who would have thought of finding you here?"

Stanley and Meryl laughed at her apparent discomfiture, and even Carew relaxed as he replied, "You don't seem entirely pleased."

"Well, no, I'm not; but if you are just leaving it doesn't matter."

"I think I shall stay; I scent some vandalism."

"O well," airily, "if you will have it, we were just coming to dig for corpses;" and she tossed her head with an independent air.

"It is strictly forbidden to dig for anything on pain of various dire penalties," Carew told her.

"I know it is, and that is just exactly why it interferes with my plans to find you here."

"I see. And what about Mr. Stanley, who is also a representative of the Government that made the laws?"

"Mr. Stanley is only a trooper, and I am Diana Pym. It is not his place to interfere with my actions. It would only be mine to shield him if he was persuaded to help me and got into trouble."

"And what in the world do you want with a corpse, Di?" asked Meryl.

"Why gold, of course! Mr. Stanley has been telling me a perfectly thrilling theory about corpses with a lot of antique gold ornaments on them being buried in the ruins; and he knows where one or two are, because a gold-diviner showed him with his divining-rod, and he marked the places in case he wanted to remember later; and to-day is when he did want to remember later, and he's just strolled round with me to point out the spots; and if that isn't a long enough sentence for you, you must add some more yourself," drawing a long breath.

The Kid, enjoying himself hugely, hastened to add for Carew's benefit, "It's only just a joke. Miss Pym wanted me to show her where our visitor of the other day said he had divined gold."

"It's not a joke at all," declared Diana defiantly. "It's the key to the whole mystery. While all you scientific folks are arguing this, that, and the other, I want to look and see. Besides, if there are antique gold ornaments, perhaps a few thousand years old, I want some. I'm not specially in love with your old broken walls, but I'm ready to be in love with your jewellery, worn a few thousand years ago."

"You Philistine!" exclaimed Meryl. "If you can't appreciate the ruins, you certainly ought not to be allowed to possess a single treasure taken from them."

"O rot!... What's the use of decayed old walls anyway? You and Major Carew can have the heaps of stones. We don't want to rob you of so much as a pebble. But we do badly want to dig down and look for a corpse."

"And when did you propose to begin?" asked Carew.

"Well, I suppose a moonlight night would be best, when you're rolled up in your den or else when you've gone off to a distant kraal."

"You would see a ghost in about half an hour," from Meryl, "and fly for your life."

"O, are there ghosts?" looking suddenly dubious. "Did your diviner divine any ghosts while he was about it?..." turning to Stanley. "You never told me that. Of course, I shouldn't much like to be handling a corpse, and feel its ghost put a cold, clammy hand on my shoulder. What a horrible idea! Do you think there are any?"

"There might be;" and The Kid's eyes twinkled. "Of course, I supposed you would imagine we ran risks of that sort."

"Ugh!..." with a cold shudder. "I believe I can see one now. It must have overheard me saying I coveted those gold ornaments. Come away quickly. I want ... I want ... now don't look shocked, Meryl; I want a whisky and soda!..."

They followed her out from the gathering gloom of the walls into the quick-coming darkness, and as she and Stanley pressed on ahead, Carew and Meryl could only follow. As they did so they spoke little. It was as though some bond of sympathy between them had slipped into being of itself outside their consciousness altogether, and with a blessed sense of quiet understanding neither attempted to make conversation; and neither questioned as yet whence came this unsought bond, this link forged as by a power outside themselves. The time for probing was near, but it lingered yet a little.

As they approached the tents and joined the other two waiting to make their adieux, Diana's voice again broke in upon their quiet, dispelling its curious sense of unreality.

"It wasn't you I was afraid of, Major Carew," she called lightly. "Baboons and owls and bears I dare tackle any day; but a ghost three thousand years old!... ugh!... I give it up!... You will not need to add to that precious native report another one, concerning the daring theft of a corpse from the ancient ruins of Zimbabwe by a well-known young lady from Johannesburg."

He smiled into her laughing eyes in a manner that surprised her, and made his face extraordinarily attractive in a way she had not yet seen it.

"And what would have happened to Stanley, do you suppose?... I'm afraid the police force might have considered it necessary to dispense with his services."

"O, that wouldn't have mattered in Rhodesia in the least! He'd have opened a butcher's shop, or come on with us as our butler, or gone and dug a hole in a kopje and called it gold-mining. No one would have thought any the worse of him, and I'd have felt indebted to him for life. We'd both have had a run for our money, anyhow!..." and she laughed gaily as she turned away.

But in their tent, alone together, she suddenly made the epigrammatic remark, "Dangerous, very dangerous indeed; like most bears. Mind you don't get badly clawed, Meryl!..." and then with her usual lightness ran off into another subject.



XV

CAREW RIDES AWAY

With the coming of the dark, velvety southern night, resplendent with brilliant southern stars, it would seem the time for probing was at hand. By the tents on the hill-side Mr. Pym, the engineer, Meryl, and Diana sat outside in the starlight, rather a silent party, listening to the intermittent sound of tom-toms coming from some kraal near by.

Then Mr. Pym alluded somewhat suddenly to their departure, and Meryl made the discovery that it was a topic she had been dreading all the evening. Diana, on the other hand, seemed relieved.

"I have one more journey to make," he told them, "and then I propose to start at once for Enkeldorn and Salisbury. Unfortunately, I am afraid this journey will take two and possibly three days."

"Then take us with you," said Diana at once.

"It is an unhealthy district or I would. I do not think it would harm you, but I am afraid for Meryl." There was a slight pause, then he added, "As we returned to-day we stayed for a cup of tea at the mission station with Mr. and Mrs. Grenville. I happened to mention my journey, and Mrs. Grenville said she would be delighted if you would both go and spend the two or three days with her."

"But I want to come with you," Diana cried; and leaning towards him added confidently, "Uncle, you will have to take me; don't make a fuss."

"Why shall I have to take you?" with amusement in his small, keen eyes.

"Because I have made up my mind to go," was the prompt rejoinder; and he gave an amused chuckle.

"And what do you say, Meryl? Will you spend two or three days with Mrs. Grenville?"

"I should like to, if Di really wants to go; otherwise we could quite well have remained on here, couldn't we?" There was a note of anxiety in her voice that she was unable to entirely hide. Only three more days, and they to be spent several miles away!

"I do not particularly want to leave you here as long as that. I would rather you visited Mrs. Grenville, and I think it would be an interesting change. She invited you both."

"It was very kind of her," said Diana, "but I am quite decided about wanting to go with you. I suppose we could both come?"

"I think I would as soon go to Mrs. Grenville"; and Meryl sat very still, gazing at a distant star.

"What do you think?" said Mr. Pym to his engineer. "Will it be all right for my niece to accompany us?"

"Why, yes, certainly, if she takes quinine regularly. It is a beautiful neighbourhood. She can either ride her mule or be carried in a machila."

Diana clapped her hands, feeling her point was won easily, and then added, "Couldn't we take Mr. Stanley with us? He would so love the shooting, and he is such good company."

"As I came past to-night I called in and asked both him and Major Carew. Stanley accepted at once."

There was a slight movement where Meryl sat, but she did not speak; and her father, almost as if with intent, kept his eyes turned away.

"What did Major Carew say?" asked Diana.

"He was uncertain. He thought he might be obliged to go to Edwardstown on business, and he left the question open."

Diana laughed. "He wanted to make quite certain sure that there were to be no ladies in the party."

"I don't know why he should suppose there were likely to be."

"Possibly not, but he is a cautious man. Anyhow, when you tell him I am going he will make ready to start to Edwardstown on business."

So they sat on under the stars, each busy with thoughts. Henry Pym's were a trifle anxious. So little ever escaped his clear eyes that it was not in the least surprising he had seen whither Meryl's mind was trending, almost before she knew of it herself. And much as he admired Major Carew, he feared, with the clear sight of a great love, that indefinable something that stood as a barrier between the man and his outlook upon certain phases of life. Whatever it was, his studied avoidance of social intercourse, and his turning his back so resolutely upon England and all his people there, suggested to the astute man of the world that he had taken out of his life's plan all thought of marriage, and was not very likely to turn from his purpose. Hence the shadow of anxiety in the father's eyes, for his deep knowledge of Meryl told him further that she would neither love lightly nor forget easily.

And still the girl herself sat on and made no sign. The joy of the evening hour was still too new. Under the stars at present she asked nothing better than to live through it again and again in her memory. For whereas a woman is often fearful to anticipate a joy for dread of a disappointment, afterwards, when the realisation is sure and sweet and all her own, she will draw delight from it for many a silent hour in quiet contentment.

And down at the police camp the two troopers and the officer sat likewise under the stars. Stanley was very full of his trip, for Carew had readily given him the two or three days' leave; and in the direction whither they journeyed were roan and sable and water-buck and probably lions to rejoice the heart of a game young British South African policeman with a bloodthirsty desire to kill. Moore, in his quaint, Irish way, chaffed him a good deal, as was his wont; for though one had received his education at the Bedford Grammar School and was a clergyman's son, and the other at a board-school and was the son of a small innkeeper, in the Rhodesia police force all troopers are equals, and there is a frank camaraderie which is very creditable to its members. Carew himself showed very little difference, and in the same spirit the homely Moore had received a cup of tea from Diana's dainty hands, poured out for him by Meryl.

Only, as they twitted each other in slow, easy tones, neither of them attempted to include Carew, who sat a little apart in the darkness smoking his beloved pipe; and when they rose to turn in, he merely acknowledged their pleasant "Good night, sir," with a short "Good night" in reply, and made no movement himself. Even when the lights at the hill-side tents went out he still sat on, alone with the night and the stars. Later, because he knew he should not sleep, he started off up the valley towards the store, feeling a need for action.

And all the time, under the covering darkness, his face seemed to grow graver and graver. He was too wise not to know when danger threatened, and too direct not to face it squarely at once. And the danger that seemed to threaten him now was the likelihood that if he saw much of Meryl Pym he would grow to love her, and perhaps she would reciprocate his love, and for them both there would be only a great pain. That it could by any possibility be anything else did not enter his cogitations. According to his own ideas he could not marry, and least of all could he marry the only child of a millionaire. And it seemed to him further that if he cut off all intercourse at once the danger would be averted. He was quite satisfied in his own mind that the evident attraction had not had time to sink very far down. In two or three days she would go away again and he would go on with his work, and it would all be the same as if they had never met. Manifestly the chief consideration now was to avoid any further friendliness whatever, except the merest courtesy which had obtained at the beginning. If possible, he decided it would be better not to meet any more at all. When a man is strong in one thing, he is usually strong in others; and the quiet strength that had enabled him to break away from an old life of leisure and ease and excitement, and build up another life for himself on entirely different lines in a new country, helped him now quietly to make his decision and try to take the simple, direct course, out of a threatening danger.

And yet it was not entirely easy; the simple, direct way very seldom is. Byways are apt to have softer grass for the feet, deeper shade from the sun, smoother banks to rest upon. The direct, straightforward way often goes on mercilessly up the steep hill, having sharp flints in its pathway, cold winds, dry dust, untempered glare. But the man who dares it with steady eyes usually arrives first at the goal, tempered metal ringing true, while he who dallies in the pleasant byways may find his armour has grown rusty and his powers lax.

As he walked quietly back to the police camp Peter Carew looked straight before him to the dim horizon, and in his eyes there was an expression that few, if any, had ever been permitted to behold. For the hidden sorrow that was his was his alone, and he had never sought nor asked the sympathy of a fellow-creature. In the starlight he looked back into the eyes of his dead love, and it was between him and her only the sorrow might be shared. As he had loved her memory all these years, he would love her still, though in the great loneliness of his heart he might be drawn to that one other woman who so strangely resembled her and so deeply attracted him.

But Meryl was not for him, the penniless policeman, and he knew it.

The hour spent together in the temple ruins had been too sweet, too dangerously sweet, and therefore he would run no further risk. He would not go with Mr. Pym, because that might forge a link of friendship it would be difficult to break; and he would not remain at the camp, because that might involve considerable intercourse if Meryl and Diana stayed behind at the hill-side home alone. He would instead retire to Segundi on the pretext of meeting the Resident Commissioner expected there, and stay until the millionaire's party had departed from Zimbabwe for good. It would be as well to start early, he could easily manage it; and if he saw no prospect of saying good-bye to Mr. Pym in person, he would write him a short note giving some sort of explanation.

So it happened the next morning, before anyone at the hill-side camp was dressed, a Black Watch boy presented a note to Mr. Pym's boy, and a little distance off on the road Major Carew waited on his horse for a message.

And in his tent, still in a sleeping-suit, Mr. Pym read the note, and looked hard for a moment at the sunshine beyond the open flap, as if seeking out there to read, not what was said in the little letter, but what was not said.

Then he stood up, slipped on some shoes, and went outside into the fragrant morning air. Directly he saw Carew on his horse, he took the little path through the scrub and rocks and went towards him. Carew alighted, and came a short distance along the path.

Mr. Pym spoke first. The other had already done his speaking in the note.

"This is very sudden. I hoped you would have accompanied us to Susi." He looked up hard into the soldier's bronzed face, though without seeming to do so. To any other man the steadiness of Carew's eyes might have been disconcerting.

"I hardly expected to be able to. Mr. Jardine was almost certain to be at Segundi one day this week, and I knew I should have to meet him."

"How long will you be away?"

"Possibly a week."

Henry Pym was a little taken aback, but he did not show it. The cool brain that had manufactured the income of a millionaire was fully alert now, not so much because he did not wish to be taken unawares, but because Carew interested him beyond most men, and he wanted to try and grasp the working of his mind.

"Then we may not see you again before we start for Salisbury?"

"Possibly not. Will you kindly say good-bye to the ladies for me, should I be prevented doing so in person?"

"They will be disappointed not to see you."

"I am sorry also." A little smile of grim humour played suddenly about his lips. "You must tell your niece The Bear sent her a farewell growl, and he hopes she will find more amiable Rhodesians at her future camping-places."

"I think she is not one to care much about the average type of amiable cavalier. She will miss The Bear's growl a good deal. But we shall see you again shortly, I hope," he hastened to add. "Any time if you care to come to Johannesburg we shall be delighted if you will visit us at Hill Court."

"Thank you. If I come that way, I shall remember."

Then he held out his hand. Mr. Pym grasped it with unwonted warmth.

"Good-bye, sir," said the soldier simply.

"Good-bye, Carew; I have been glad to meet you," answered the millionaire. And then as the horseman rode away without one backward look, he walked slowly along the little path to the tents.

At breakfast he broke the news quite simply, but once more he did not look at Meryl. He told them Major Carew had been called away to Segundi, and would not return before they had departed north.

"Gone?..." echoed Diana blankly. "Do you mean he has gone already and without saying good-bye?"

He felt Meryl's eyes upon him with a strained expression, and he turned lightly to Diana to give her time to grasp the news.

"Yes; but he left you a message. He passed before you were up, and I went out to speak to him. He asked me to make his farewells to both of you, and particularly to tell you that The Bear sent you a growl, and he hopes you will find more amiable Rhodesians at your other camping-places."

But Diana was in no mood for light messages; rather unaccountably, she received it with impatience.

"O, he is simply odious!" she exclaimed. "I have no patience with him. Why can't he behave like an ordinary man just once in a way? Going off at sunrise, and never stopping to say good-bye! It is downright rudeness, and there is no reason why he should conclude he can be as rude as he likes with impunity. You don't seem to mind his bearishness, Meryl? but I hope you have spirit enough to resent his casual departure."

Meryl was rather pale, but she managed to reply lightly, "I can't see why you seem so surprised. He is only acting as he has done all along. It is his affair, whether he keeps it up to the last, or suddenly changes altogether and becomes the polite, conventional society man. Personally, it would have surprised me far more to see the change."

"O, you're just shielding him," with impatient disdain; "I suppose because he happens to be rather good to look at. But I call it rude; just plain, unvarnished rudeness to go off like that for some trumped-up reason and never say good-bye to you and me. I hope I shall meet more amiable Rhodesians elsewhere, and I should like to have a chance to tell him so." Then she rattled off into another subject, leaving neither Meryl nor her uncle any necessity to help the conversation, for which, in their secret hearts, they were deeply grateful.

And perhaps Diana's clever little head made an effort which had no appearance of an effort; for like the two brothers who had been respectively her father and her uncle, very little transpiring in her immediate circle ever escaped her notice.



XVI

"THE SHIP OF FOOLS"

Meryl had not been long with the Grenvilles before Ailsa's sympathetic nature divined that some shadow seemed to be brooding upon the girl's spirit. She was so pensive and silent, with sad eyes turned often to some far horizon full of wistful thought. And then perhaps suddenly she would make an effort and be unusually gay, but the gaiety was not spontaneous nor the laughter frank.

In truth, it had been a weary two days and nights for Meryl, since the early morning when her father and Diana, with the engineer and Stanley, rode away, after escorting her to the Mission Station and leaving her there to await their return. It was as though the very abruptness of Carew's departure had crystallised all her wavering, uncertain thoughts, and told her bluntly what he was to her. Before she had been half dreaming; now she knew.

And it seemed to her that she knew also, beyond any questioning, that he had no feeling whatever for her beyond the merest friendliness; and since they would probably never meet again, she must, if possible, conquer her own foolish heart, and resolutely withdraw the love she had given unasked. It seemed to her, at any rate, the strongest thing to do, and while she made the effort she would turn a smiling face to the world and let no one suspect. If she failed—well, that would still be her own affair and no one need know. So she rallied herself often and talked gaily, encouraging an interest in all Mr. Grenville's plans and hopes that she did not always feel. What she liked best was to sit silently before the large sitting-room hut, with her hands on her knees, gazing at the wonderful prospect, while Ailsa sewed beside her and talked quietly. Ailsa who knew him so well, and loved him so well, and appeared to be the only woman friend he possessed. Ailsa also who loved this far country so well, the country he had adopted for his own land, and seemed quite content, as he, to give the best years of her life, in her small measure, to its welfare.

Meryl thought much of the lives of these three quiet workers in the wilderness, and mused a little sadly upon what seemed but gilded pleasure-seeking emptiness to which she would presently go back.

It was in one of these thoughtful moods she asked Ailsa with plain directness how she thought a millionaire might best benefit Rhodesia, supposing he were willing to make an effort in that direction. Having asked, she added with a light touch, "I imagine you are hardly ready yet for libraries and public parks and orphanages?"

"No," Ailsa answered; "but we want settlers badly. Think what it would mean to the country if just one rich man or company, instead of acquiring large tracts of land and holding it until the price mounts to a high figure, were to make a genuine effort to get a white population upon it as quickly as possible, even though it meant small or no profits. It is too much to expect from any company naturally, but there are individuals holding up their land, and therefore holding back the country, who might show a more generous spirit. I could name a well-known man who owns immense tracts, one of them two hundred thousand acres not far from a town, and there it lies in idleness, awaiting a land boom. Not long ago it was given out through the newspapers that he had a great scheme in hand for getting settlers, but nothing has come of it yet, and no one has much hope that it ever will."

"I wonder if my father owns land here? Do you happen to know?"

"I think he does."

"And it is lying idle?" divining that her companion knew more than she implied.

"As far as any outsider knows, it is."

"I see." Meryl got up and moved down the rustic verandah, standing a moment at the far end and looking across the country with grave eyes. Then she came back. "Has anyone ever thought of a Rhodes Scholarship, that might take the form of grants of land and be won by competition, I wonder? Would a scheme like that work, do you think?"

"I have often thought that it would. Besides bringing the settler, it would more or less ensure a desirable one, if he had to prove himself a useful, hard-working youth of good sound education. But, of course, it would mean a big outlay. A man might inaugurate such a scheme to be carried out by his will, but he would hardly be likely to do it in his lifetime."

"Still, I suppose something of the kind might prove workable if the owner of the land were content to forego a large profit, and let settlers have farms or plots on exceptional terms, if they could prove themselves capable, useful men?"

"Yes, that is very much what we want. The owner of the land a patriot, keeping an eye on the scheme himself, and helping it forward for love of the country, not holding it back and keeping it idle for the sake of his own already well-filled pocket."

"I will sound my father about his possessions," the girl said simply, looking to the far blue hills.

Ailsa watched her a moment covertly, and then asked with a little wonder in her voice, "The country seems to have taken hold of you very quickly. You speak as one who already loves it."

"I love all South Africa. I have always been happier out here than in England. In some way it seems more thoroughly my own land."

"Why is that, do you think?"

"I hardly know, unless it is the remembrance that all we have we owe to Africa. I believe my father was penniless when he came out here."

"It has been the same with many, but they do not remember. It is more usual to come here for gain, and go away to spend it in more luxurious countries."

"Perhaps, but it has never seemed to me to be fair. My father is not like that. He loves Africa as I do, but he is a very hard-working man, and perhaps some things do not occur to him. I think he is up here now to see the country, as well as acquire fresh mining properties, and all the time he seems so busy and preoccupied, he is probably thinking out development schemes of general benefit."

"I hope so," and Ailsa spoke very earnestly. "Your father is a fine man; one has only to talk to him to perceive that quickly, and it would be a good day for Rhodesia if he began to take a genuinely practical interest in her welfare. I know he has talked much of it to Major Carew, and no one could tell him more of our hopes and needs."

They were silent a few moments, and then Ailsa added with a touch of emotion, "You know, when one thinks of the service some men give so quietly and unquestioningly to the far-off lands, it seems, after all, but a small thing for rich men who have benefited by them to give of their riches. Yet how few ever do! There are more men ready to risk their lives than to put their hands in their pockets. But then that is just perhaps because they are fools, and fools never make any money to give; have nothing, in fact, except their lives to offer."

She smiled with a little twist to her lips, playing fitfully with a thread in her fingers. Evidently it was a subject that moved her deeply. "Of course, you know the verse from 'The Ship of Fools':

'We are those fools who could not rest In the dull earth we left behind, And burned with passion for the West, And drank strange frenzy from its wind.

The world where wise men live at ease Fades from our unregretful eyes, And blind, across uncharted seas, We stagger on our enterprise.'

"Those are the men who appeal to me; the men to whom gain is the secondary consideration; who come blindly out just as much to give as to take. My husband is one, Major Carew is another, Stanley under Carew's influence will become a third. Think of them all, all over the world; guarding the frontiers, making the paths, exploring the danger-zones!

"Think of the little band now gone into the sleeping-sickness belt to investigate the disease, and try to learn how best to cope with it! How little reward will they get! how little acclaim! But that is just a side issue. They did not go for reward. Disaster shook a threatening hand at a splendid young country, and instantly some from The Ship of Fools were ready to risk their lives in going to the rescue. God bless them for it, and bring them safely back! But in any case one knows they will be content, if but the work is carried forward and the new pathways rendered safe.

"Those types of men are the heroes of to-day, because the spread of the Empire, and the welfare and progress of the colonies, grows every year a more important factor to England; yet many a good football player, and many a popular actor, will win an honoured name, while the man who died at the outposts in some dangerous investigation work will pass away unknown and unheard of. But they do not mind, that is the splendid thing. They are just fools, fools, fools

'Who burned with passion for the West, And drank strange frenzy from its wind. * * * * * And blind, across uncharted seas, They stagger to their enterprise.'

"How many threw up everything at home and came out in the time of the Boer War! Think of the men who carried the railways across Canada and America, fighting for the pathway, step by step! Think of them in the awful climate of West Africa, laughing and playing and singing one evening and dead the next! Think of them struggling up here in the early days, and undaunted by the horrors of the Matabele rebellions, going steadily on with their railways, making their homes! Think of them in India! Ah! what The Ship of Fools has achieved in India is beyond telling. Only one doesn't feel it in the same way at home. One has to come out oneself, and see the path-finders at their work, to realise all it means. It does one good just to hear them grumble. How shall I explain? It makes you understand that they are the sort of heroes who hate to be thought heroic; so they grouse and swear and grumble; and talk about a God-forsaken country and a God-forsaken existence, and wonder what in the name of all that is wonderful they are here for. And perhaps they go off home vowing never to return; until the 'strange frenzy' catches them again, and back comes the dear Ship of Fools, with every berth taken and the stoutest grumblers hurrying to be the first ashore. Fools or heroes, it is much the same. I think I have read somewhere that a man couldn't be a hero unless he were also a fool."

Meryl got up, and moved behind her companion's chair that she might not see the glisten in her eyes, for the longing for that one Fool-Hero who had brought such sudden desolation in her heart. Placing her hands on the back of it, she leaned over her affectionately and said, "It doesn't carry men only, that ship of yours: some of the fools are women. O, I know, I know; you are one of the chief among them and I envy you." In a whisper, "God knows, I envy you."

Ailsa reached a hand back and laid it over the girl's. "It is very sweet of you to say so, but I mayn't accept it. Seeing I have a husband like Billy, I should be a very real fool in the most literal sense if I stayed away. No, the women-heroes in this land are those who face it with a careless, selfish husband, or perhaps in a home having no love, and who win through their little day and make no plaint. God help them!"

"And you mustn't envy me," she added after a moment, "for presently, you will be doing far more than I can ever hope to do. Because it is in your heart it will find a way, and then your money will give you a great power and influence. Be hopeful, you sweet child," with a little playful pat. "Your eyes are over-sad for twenty-four, and sometimes when you smile it goes no further than your lips."

Meryl brushed her hand quickly across her eyes, and tried to laugh with an attempt at lightness.

"O yes, I will. When I get back home I'll sign cheques, and more cheques, it is so easy for me. And I'll persuade father to plan out a scheme to bring settlers on the land; land scholarships for public-school boys, or something of that sort; and I'll try and comfort myself with the thought that in this way he is giving back for what he has received. I think I'll take a stroll now it is cooler. The others will no doubt come back to-morrow, and this may be my last evening in this part of the world. I know you want to worry your cook-boy and your head about the dinner, so I'll just go a little way alone."