"Very well," Ailsa answered cheerily, guessing that she wished to take the stroll in solitude; but as she moved away towards her kitchen she said to herself, "Poor little girl! you will comfort yourself you are helping your father to fulfil his trusts, and at the back of it all quietly, silently, you will be breaking your heart for a man of iron who unbends to none."

And along the rocky pathway, that was a short cut to Edwardstown and led along a low ledge of kopjes commanding a lovely view of the valley which lay between the Mission Station and Zimbabwe's lofty northern mountain, Meryl walked slowly, with a sense of desolation she could neither gauge nor dispel; and over and over through her mind as she looked to the far kopjes passed the lines of England's strong woman-poet, Emily Bronte:

"What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? More glory and more grief than I can tell: The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell."

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? was the dumb, inarticulate cry in her heart. Ah! what?... what?... And it seemed as if all the loneliness in the world were brooding over the blue kopje and over the spot where the ancient ruins lay, and creeping into her heart and her life for ever.

Would he ever come again, that grim soldier-policeman, who just once or twice had shown her a glimpse of the strong man's heart behind the barrier, and the strong man's everlasting charm?... Or was it indeed all finished for ever? Just an episode that came and went and had no sequel, except in that brooding sense of a great loneliness upon the distant hills and upon the path of her life. She told herself again that it must be so; that evidently the momentary softness had been only passing moods; that she counted for nothing at all to him, not even a friend it was worth while saying "good-bye" to.

With the deep sadness still in her face she turned, because a step was approaching round a tall boulder beside her. And a moment later she was looking full and deep into Peter Carew's eyes.

"You?..." she said. "You? ..." as if she could not believe her own eyes.

He said nothing. Suddenly speech seemed to have gone from him, but an expression in his face that was new to her quickened her pulses with a strange glad quickening.

After a moment he spoke, and it was as though his whole expression and figure stiffened.

"I did not expect to find you here," he said. "I was told you had gone with your father."

"Not I; Diana only." And her eyes fell, and a faint colour dyed her cheeks.

There was a moment's awkward pause: she remembering his unceremonious departure, wondering at his unceremonious return; he nonplussed at the trick Fate had played him, bringing him again, in spite of his decision, into the sphere of her beauty and her quiet charm.

"I was going to the Grenvilles'," he told her at last.

And suddenly a tiny smile played about the corners of Meryl's mouth. "I thought you could not possibly return from Segundi for a week?"

She looked away as she said it, so she could not see the swift contraction of his face and the swift gleam in his eyes. For one moment, of all things in heaven and earth, he felt suddenly that he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her—roughly perhaps; yes, roughly and masterfully, for daring to aim her little shaft at him. Instead he replied gravely, "I had to come, because Mr. Jardine wanted Grenville's opinion on a particular native question, and it was a difficult matter to explain in a letter."

"Then I mustn't hinder you." And she stood aside. "Of course you are thinking of starting back to-night and are in a great hurry?"

And then for once the man's armour failed him. "No, I am not going back to-night, and I am not in any special hurry. If you were going on to the top of the kopje, may I come with you?"



XVII

AN EVENING CONVERSATION

As they climbed slowly up the zigzag path, neither of them troubled to make conversation. All in a moment it had come back—mysteriously, unaccountably—the sense of understanding, the quiet kinship of minds—for her, the sudden utter content at his nearness. While he was there beside her, by his own seeking, what did the future matter?—the future might wait. It is generally so with women. In the "afterwards," the deepest pain is usually theirs, because it is not given them to break away and drown the ache and the longing in action and change; but in the present, if he, the loved, is with her, she can forget so much in that blessed sense of nearness. The man's ache, perhaps, spreads more uniformly over both presence and absence, for in each, for him, there is the very human craving to possess.

So they reached the summit, and stood a moment gazing at the prospect outspread. A sunset in a novel has become too banal for repetition; it seems, indeed, almost the last word in literary mediocrity; and yet at the evening hour in Rhodesia, in September, when the rains are nearly due, and great masses of cloud begin to gather on the horizon, there is again and again a pageant of wonder and colouring to steep man's senses afresh at every renewal, as if it was the first time of beholding. Nothing banal, nothing mediocre in the actual phenomenon—just a riot of colouring, a riot of splendour, a riot of revelation. It is not a glory in the west spreading a little way overhead. It is an all around, north, south, east, and west, colouring beyond all telling—something aloof, overpowering, incomprehensible, with the remote majestic splendour of the Rockies, or the Sahara, or the Victoria Falls.

Neither Carew nor Meryl spoke. They were of those who know that the highest appreciation of all is in silence. But to herself Meryl whispered:

"Lord, Thy glory fills the heavens."

At last he turned and glanced at the little book in her hand.

"You read Omar?"

"Yes. And you?"

"I like Adam Lindsay Gordon better. Omar is apt to undermine a strong purpose. Gordon inspires one."

"Doesn't Omar help one to see things as they are, and dare to be strong in spite of it, while Gordon avoids many essentials, and writes chiefly of how we would have things be?"

"But surely the inspiration is the chief thing. The man who inspires is better than the man who reveals, and in revealing unnerves." She was silent, and he added, "I suppose it is the difference between the aesthetic and the practical, and so they appeal to the aesthetic or the practical side of man."

She wondered if it were possible such as he should have an aesthetic side, and presently said:

"You are all practical, I should imagine."

He glanced at her half humorously. "I wonder why you say that?"

"I don't know, except that one does not usually associate aestheticism and strength." Another man might have asked her if she was satisfied he was strong, but Carew only looked to the horizon. He was asking it of himself instead.

And he asked it, because he was leaning there beside her, alone on the kopje top. Suddenly yielding to an impulse he did not seek to analyse, he said quietly, "I have never been a great reader of poetry, but long ago I was engaged to be married, to some one who cared very much for it. Omar was one of her favourites, and sixteen years ago he was very little known compared with to-day."

Meryl felt the colour ebbing from her face, and averted her eyes. Without any telling, she knew that this woman he had loved sixteen years ago was the cause of that mysterious shadow on his life to-day. When she felt she had complete control of her voice, she asked, "And you were never able to be married?"

"She died." There was a pause, before he added, "You remind me of her more than anyone I have ever known." And for both their sakes he finished, "That is one reason why I have been glad to talk to you one day, and found it perhaps too painful the next."

Meryl felt suddenly as if an icy hand had closed on her heart. His meaning to her was so obvious. But she managed to say naturally, "I am afraid it has been a great sorrow to you. Was she ill for long?"

"She died suddenly. There was a tragedy. Afterwards I came out here."

"And you have never been back?"

"No, I have never been back."

"But you will go?"

"I think not. When I came away it was like closing a book and writing 'Finis.' I do not want to reopen the book for many reasons."

"But your people?" she ventured, longing to hear more, yet fearful of staying his unexpected confidence.

"I have no people," and his voice was suddenly stern.

"But your home?..." bravely; "your country?..."

"My home is here. My country is here. I am a Rhodesian."

Still with her face averted, she looked to the far kopjes lost in thought. She seemed to be realising slowly all that his words meant; feeling throughout her consciousness the utter exclusion of herself from any plan of life he might formulate. It was as she had seen before. His work, the country were everything to him—would continue to be everything. Any unusual softness he had shown to her, any unexpected pleasure in her company, was just for the sake of a certain memory he held very precious, for the sake of what the book contained, upon which he had written "Finis."

Of course, she might have known. What should such a man as he be drawn to except in friendly intercourse in a girl as young and simple and undeveloped as herself? What a madness it had been, what a foolishness! and yet how it hurt, how it hurt!

With a sudden blind sense of ineradicable pain, she breathed over to herself one verse of the "Immortal Persian" that is not contained in many editions:

"Better, oh better, cancel from the scroll Of universe one luckless human soul, Than drop by drop enlarge the flood that rolls Hoarser with anguish as the ages roll."

What pain there had evidently been for him! What pain for her now—and to what end....

"Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days Where Destiny with men for pieces plays; Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, And one by one back and closet lays."

She stood up suddenly and brushed her hands across her eyes. This was a weakness, and she knew it. He must not know, he must not guess.

But he saw enough to cause him to say suddenly, with quick concern, "You are not well. Something is troubling you."

"O no," and she gave a little laugh that he could not but know was forced. "I've been rather bothered with a headache to-day. Shall we go back?" She had been carrying the large grey hat slung over her arm, but now she tied it on, pulling it down over her face, so that he could see nothing but the small, firm chin and sensitive mobile mouth. And neither could she see that, under or through the rigidity, his face wore now a troubled aspect, and his eyes looked to the horizon seeing nothing. Why had he come back? he was asking. Why was he hovering in the grip of it again, that strong need of the human, however resolute, for sympathy, for companionship, for understanding? For now, as they stood together alone on the kopje, all the ache of the last sixteen years seemed to be merged into one great longing for her. And then in his heart he laughed harshly. He, the British South African policeman, not even a regular soldier; and she, the only child, and sole heiress, of a millionaire father who adored her. He, with his tragedy in the background, that he could not speak of, in his forty-third year. She young, beautiful, fresh, with all the world at her feet. Ah, of course, he had been a fool to run any risk of another encounter; and he was sore with the fate that had led him thither in ignorance.

And Meryl, walking a little stumblingly over the rough pathway, was glad of the big shady hat that hid her eyes and gave her time to pull herself together. Of course, that other woman he had loved sixteen years ago had been one of his own people—one of those whom the great Fourtenay family of Devon regarded as an equal. Whereas she was just Meryl Pym, and though many needy peers chose rich wives from across the sea, anyone might know Peter Carew was not of these, and would sooner shun such riches than seek them.

So they walked back, mostly in silence, only no longer the silence of quiet, contented understanding, but rather a silence which she showed no inclination to break, and he felt baffled, and worried, and anxious. And at dinner, though Meryl made one of her spasmodic efforts and contrived to be gay, he remained somewhat preoccupied and taciturn. And Ailsa looked from one to the other secretly, and wondered what had been said before they reached the Mission Station; and felt again that womanlike desire to shake the man for the very resoluteness she most admired in him.

When she said good night to Meryl she could not refrain, from just one little delve into the perplexing situation. "If you and Major Carew met at six o'clock and did not get back until seven, you must have had quite a long chat together. Such a new thing for him! I don't think even I, his trusted friend, can boast of such an incident."

"We just stayed to watch the sunset," and Meryl turned away on some slight pretext. "He certainly was a little more communicative than usual. Did you know he was once engaged to someone who died?"

"No," in slow surprise, "I had never heard of it. But then, he never speaks of himself, and I did not know his branch of the family at all. We lived near London about that time, and seldom went into Devonshire. Still, I wonder Billy did not know. Probably he heard it, and took no notice. That would be so like Billy. He was perhaps scheming some new move for his boys, as he used to call his parishioners."

"Perhaps he would rather I had not mentioned it," Meryl said.

"It will be safe with me, dear. I shall only speak of it to Billy. How terrible it must have been! It is impossible not to feel it has shadowed all his life. And for her!—he must have been a very striking, attractive man in those days. One hears rumours without attaching much interest to them at the time, but looking back now, I remember my father alluding once or twice to the two brothers as if they were very well-known men. But that would be when I was but a schoolgirl, and soon afterwards I went abroad for a year with an aunt." She lingered a moment longer. "I am glad he told you. It was nice of him. And he tells so little. It was a great compliment. Good night, dearie. Sleep well."

Meryl sat on the little bed, in the round wattle and daub hut, and pressed her fingers against her eyes to still their throbbing. Then she looked round at her surroundings, and a little wry smile twisted her lips. A rough floor of ant-heap composition and cow-dung hardened to cement, with some native reed matting laid down; a small stretcher bed; a packing-case for a washhand-stand, and enamel ware. Another packing-case for a dressing-table, and a little cheap glass nailed to the wall. Walls of baked mud, which had fallen in places, laying bare the wattle stems, and a door made from packing-cases which fitted badly, and was fastened only by a string and a nail. For ceiling long, thin wattle stems converging upwards, and outside a thatch of dried grass. And against this in her mind she placed the Johannesburg bedroom, with its costly appointments, its beautiful windows opening to a wide, flower-decked verandah, which commanded a lovely view of distant hills; its lavish display of wealth and luxury. And she smiled that little wry smile, because for the sake of just one man, a mere soldier-policeman, this room might have been a paradise, and the other a grave. In truth she had learnt much from her sojourn in the wilderness—much beyond the life and aspect of a far country.

Then she crept to bed feeling tired and disheartened, but finding a little comfort in the thought that she would see him in the morning.

But at sunrise Carew aroused Grenville and said good-bye, and rode away before breakfast.



XVIII

THE CHARTER FLATS

Later in the day the party arrived back from Susi, and in the cool of the afternoon a last good-bye was said to the mission station, and they all returned to the Zimbabwe camp for their last night.

It had been casually mentioned that Carew had paid a flying visit the previous evening and gone again early that morning, but very little was said about the circumstance. Stanley was already beginning to look and feel disconsolate over the approaching exodus, and Diana was very full of the fact that she had shot a duyker. "I didn't really aim at him, you know," she told Grenville naively; "I just held up the gun and pulled the trigger. I couldn't believe my own eyes when I saw the buck lying dead. All the same I did shoot him, and I've got his horns, and they will occupy the place of honour when I get back in my own private sanctum. I shall not tell the Jo'burg folk about not aiming; why should I? If I describe the buck going at full speed, and how I bowled him over with one shot, it won't be any more of a lie, if as much, as most of you colonists tell when you get home to civilisation."

"Certainly not," agreed Grenville gravely; "but why not make it a lion while you are about it, or even a rhinoceros?"

The Kid began to giggle. "And let it be just charging you," he suggested joyfully. "And first you must take a snapshot of it charging, and then you must fire into its mouth and blow its brains out."

"And you might have its horns polished and mounted and its tail stuffed," added Grenville.

"Silly idiots," scornfully. "You're both jealous. If you could have seen the things The Kid missed!"

"The Kid generally misses," chimed in Ailsa cheerfully. "He gets so excited, he quivers all over, and the wild beast, or whatever it is, just lollops away, throwing a grin over his shoulder at him."

"If you don't mind," threatened Stanley, "I'll give away your hippo story."

"It has increased," said Ailsa's big, schoolboy husband, chuckling to himself.

"Impossible!..." ejaculated The Kid. "Surely it had already reached the limit of human ingenuity?"

They both spluttered, and Ailsa threw a newspaper at them, but Diana demanded to be told the story.

"O, it's only about a hippo in the Zambesi, above the Victoria Falls," began Stanley; "a perfectly harmless hippo really, but it had the impudence to look at the canoe in which Mrs. Grenville was travelling back to the hotel in the dusk."

"I thought it bumped the canoe up and down on its back," said the missionary, still chuckling.

"That came later"; and Stanley addressed himself gravely to Diana. "But at one time the story really did stop at the hippo chasing them on to an island and off it again, and opening and shutting its mouth at them."

"If you had been there you would have been terrified, and had hysterics or something," Ailsa flung at him.

"I certainly should at the later period of the story," he assured her.

"When it played catch-ball with them?" suggested the missionary. "Threw them all into the air and caught them again in the canoe."

"That wasn't so bad, since it did catch them," said Stanley. "My horror would have been when it climbed the tree after them!..."

"That is the part that has increased," put in the schoolboy husband, beginning to shake again. "It now jumps after them from one tree to another," and then they both spluttered insanely, and Diana joined in because it was so infectious, and Ailsa called them all ridiculous children who ought to be given a sweetie and tucked up in bed.

A little later the cavalcade got under way, and Grenville and his wife stood waving to them somewhat sorrowfully from their wilderness home.

"They are dear people," Ailsa said; and added, "O, Billy, if Major Carew would but come out of his shell and love Meryl!... I am sure she cares for him ... and she is so sweet ... and he—O, he is just like a figure of stone."

Grenville pinched her ear affectionately. "Little matchmaker! No one by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature; and no one by just wishing it, I am inclined to think, can influence the little god Cupid whither he will aim his arrow. Perhaps, perhaps not; that is all there is to say ever."

The next morning after a very early breakfast, the travellers started on their way to Enkeldorn en route for Salisbury. And at the top of the valley, whither they walked to save the mules, both girls stood and turned for a long last look at the grey walls of the ancient temple, lying in a soft haze of morning mists. It seemed to Meryl it had never held a deeper fascination, a stronger allurement. Just those old, old walls, and the soft enfolding mists which must have enfolded them even so for perhaps three thousand years. The red of sunrise was still in the sky, for Mr. Pym was an early starter, and it tinged the mist with a soft flush where the sun's rays had not yet lit a clearer light.

"It was good to come," said Diana simply. "I have to thank you for it."

But Meryl only smiled in response. She had nothing to say. She felt she was leaving behind with the ruins the best memory her life would ever hold. Then they climbed into the ambulance waiting for them, said "good-bye" charmingly to the lonely dwellers at the store and hotel, with whom they had had some pleasant chats, drinking tea and admiring the lovely view from their delightful huts, and went clattering away down the road, their faces turned to the north.

And in the valley they left behind there was desolation.

Carew arrived back at his quarters, grim and taciturn, in the evening, to find Stanley looking a veritable image of disconsolate hopelessness in spite of Moore's persistent droll badinage.

"O, what did they want to come for," he groaned, "if they had to go away again?"

"Faith!..." said the astute Irishman. "Did ye ask either of them to share your little wooden hut?..."

But The Kid paid no attention. As Carew stood a moment beside him, filling a pipe, with a cold, expressionless face, the youngster glanced up with a momentary gleam, and remarked, "Eh, sir? But women are the devil, aren't they?"

Carew said nothing; but with a low chuckle Moore ejaculated, "Come, give the divil a chance; we find him very accommodating sometimes in auld Erin."

Stanley got up and stretched himself. "Days and weeks of desolation now," he moaned; "and we were so happy and content before. Moore, old chap"—giving that harmless individual a smack on the back that nearly knocked him over—"yours was the wise choice when we spoke of gifts from heaven. I said, 'Give me millionairesses,' and you, with the wisdom of the ages, said, 'Give me whisky.' I'll take a little now and hope for the best."

And still Carew said nothing. The pipe was filled and he slowly lit it. Then unexpectedly he tapped it with light significance. "This is the best friend of all," he said, and went away into his hut.

Stanley glanced after him a moment with a curious expression. "Gad!..." he murmured. "Was our bronze image a bit hit too? He looks fierce enough and stern enough to be resenting a dent."

In the meantime the travellers reached the Charter Flats, and decided to camp there for the night. They had travelled for some time along the sandy tracts, enjoying the sense of space all around and the wide horizons, and both Mr. Pym and the girls were loth to hurry away. It is customary to dread these wide sandy tracts, and either hurry across them or avoid them; but to these city-dwellers their vast calm held a deep allurement; for though only scrub and sand stretched from horizon to horizon, with occasional little strips of stunted trees, the clear southern atmosphere lent a lovely effect of light and shade and colour. Many large patches here and there were blackened with veldt fires, but these in the distance formed delicate shadings that enhanced the charm of a strip of yellow sand or young green grass or purple-shadowed wilderness. It was like a world that contained only a colour scheme; no dwellings, no humans, no landmarks, no hills and valleys, no roads: just delicate shadings and haze as far as the eye could see, with no clear line between earth and heaven. They might have been looking over the edge of the world into a delicately tinted space, so boundless it seemed, so unfathomable, so remote. They pitched their camp on a little rising ground, near a slow meandering stream that crept lazily across the miniature desert. And when the dusk came down the effect was more unusual still, for the flats are on high ground, and the heavens seem to stoop down all round, hanging a dark curtain, decorated with brilliant stars, on every side. Across all the world no sign of human life, no sound; only vast emptiness everywhere—above, around, below; and for companions, worlds and suns and solar systems.

It is a scene in which a man may seem to get very close to his God; not a remote, incomprehensible Deity, dwelling vaguely beyond the stars, but a Presence that is in the breathing silence and the velvety deeps at hand. And a man may meet himself there also; not the aping, grinning, chattering mask of a personality custom more or less compels him to wear in the crowd, but the hidden, mysterious being, conscious of a soul beyond his ken, that in such quiet hours desires eternally some goal, some good, afar off. The indestructible, incomprehensible, infinite hunger, that lies as a germ in every human heart and is man's best attribute, in that it raises him for ever incontestably above the beasts that perish, and stands serene and steadfast as the Rock of Ages, the one barrier past which the materialists and the scientists cannot go: the divine spark within the human, which no theory can account for and no learning of sage or cynic obliterate.

The travellers sat round a glowing fire, for the night air was keen and cold; and much that is inevitably disturbing in the friction of daily being and daily doing seemed to fall away from them and cease to exist for that one wonderful night. And the next day, when the small black attendant brought their early tea and opened wide the tent-flap to a brilliant morning, yet another picture awaited them. This time it was a world decked with enormous diamonds. Tall, sparse grasses leant over and whispered to each other outside the tent, and every ear and every seed was hung with a lovely brilliant dewdrop. Out beyond was that same vague, remote, fathomless horizon, painted now with wonderful rose tints, where the rising sun caught the lingering mists and merged the dark streaks of blackened veldt into the general scheme with a softness of shading beyond all description. Meryl lay still, gazing with her soul in her eyes, but after a time Diana sat up.

"It makes me ache almost like the Victoria Falls did. I wonder why God painted such lovely scenes where no one ever came, or scarcely ever, to see them?"

She was silent a moment, then ran on again, "We fight and sweat and struggle for diamonds, and God hangs them on the dry grass, in the wilderness. Meryl, I wonder if we shall ever see anything quite like this again? And they told us to avoid the Charter Flats!... I suppose God feels about it something as we do. He knows most people like Brighton parades and Durban sea-fronts, so He lets them arrange their own sights; and for Himself, in far wonderful places, He paints scene pictures, and plants lovely gardens, and fills them with birds and flowers and sunshine, and splashes down upon the world, in some remote corner, a glorious colour scheme, just for his own delight."

Meryl raised herself on her elbow, with a little tender smile. "And I suppose He said to Himself, 'I will let Diana and Meryl Pym see one of my secret, treasured places'?"

"Yes, exactly. And though I don't hold with saying grace before meals, because, since God made us, it seems the least He can do to enable us to obtain food to keep us alive, I will say a grace this morning to Him for letting me see His colour scheme on the Charter Flats at sunset and sunrise."

A little later they had a fragrant breakfast of liver from a buck the engineer had shot about daybreak; and that is a delicacy known only to those who fare forth across the veldt, and have a bright wood fire burning in readiness for the spoils of the hunt directly they are brought in.

Then they started away again across the flats, once more moving in a vague world of soft shadings, with only the long sandy road stretching away into space behind them and before. And sometimes, before the sun mounted too high, they found themselves moving across a space of gold and bronze, where grass that had not been burnt shone like amber in the morning glory; and again presently a space of loveliest emerald-green, where the grass had been burnt early and the new blades were already sending up joyous blades into the sunlight. And sometimes a Kaffir-boom tree added a splash of brilliant scarlet, painted upon a canvas of soft, hazy shadings; and sometimes the veldt showed them a little piece of her flower-carpet—the carpet that was to spread broadcast presently—of delicate-tinted lovely flowers in reckless profusion upon a ground of rich terra-cotta soil.

Neither girl talked. It was not a scene to talk in. It did not call for raptures and exclamations; only for dreaming and absorbing. It seemed as if it might have been the spot where God rested upon the seventh day, so utter and absolute and complete was the sense of detachment from all the exigencies of being and doing.

Two verses of a poem by Arthur Symons repeated themselves in pleasant rhythm in Meryl's mind:—

"I leave the lonely city street, The awful silence of the crowd; The rhythm of the roads I beat, My blood leaps up, I shout aloud, My heart keeps measure with my feet.

"A bird sings something in my ear, The wind sings in my blood a song 'Tis good at times for a man to hear; The road winds onward white and long, And the best of earth is here!"



XIX

THE CONVENTIONALITIES ONCE MORE

Later in the day they reached Enkeldorn and once more pitched their tent beside the police camp; but the place is not inviting, and they were glad to leave early the following morning; for Enkeldorn is the centre round which many Dutch people congregate to farm small farms, in what it must be confessed is often the most slovenly and lazy fashion conceivable. And some of them speak quite openly of how they hate the English, and look forward to a day when they will be strong enough to turn them out of the country.

But before that day can come, before union with a South Africa in which there is Dutch predominance, it is to be hoped England will send out more and yet more strong, vigorous young settlers, to put brains and heart and energy into the virgin soil, waiting only for the craftsman's hand; and so ensure for ever, in union or out of it, an unswerving predominance of Cecil Rhodes's countrymen: holding his high aims and hopes and splendid Imperialism in Cecil Rhodes's land.

Two days later the party arrived in Salisbury, and not a little to their regret, the fashionable garments that had travelled thither by train to await their arrival had to be duly unpacked and worn. Diana glanced at herself disconsolately the first afternoon, dressed in an elegant summer frock, awaiting tea in a drawing-room, and one or two lady callers known to Mr. Pym who were likely shortly to arrive. Meryl, seeming lovelier than ever, though perhaps a trifle frailer, as if some sadness in her mind weighed upon her waking and sleeping hours, stood at the window, looking over the pretty, well-kept town.

"Why are we here? This is not the wilderness," Diana said grumblingly; "this is suburban mediocrity. It was not fair to bring me all this way from home, to have to dress up and look pleasant, and talk banalities to people I have never seen before and probably shall never see again."

"You are so inconsistent, Di," Meryl said, with a little affectionate laugh. "When we arrived at Zimbabwe you said you did not want only old ruins, you wanted a man. Judging by the number of cyclists in flannels, carrying tennis racquets or golf clubs, who have passed this window in the last half-hour, you will find more men, ready no doubt to hang upon your lightest smile, than you will know what to do with."

"I don't want them," with an impish pettiness. "I hate young men in flannels. I hate houses. I hate afternoon frocks. I hate clean hands. I hate having to be polite. I want The Kid, giggling insanely at his own silly jokes. I want The Bear's den and The Bear inside it. I want to have grubby hands and old shoes and a red face, and eat things in my fingers, and forget I have heaps and heaps of money for the simple reason that it is no earthly use if I have."

Meryl smiled softly and wistfully. "I wonder what they are doing?... I think they will miss us. It is extraordinary how Zimbabwe gets into one's heart. I have never seen anything anywhere that appealed to me quite like those old walls, with their untold story and their patience of the ages. The Sphinx in Egypt may be older, but we know how it came to be there and who built it. One of Zimbabwe's fascinations seems to be the absence of all knowledge about it, of all why and wherefore." She broke off as a Cape cart drove up to the door. "Here is someone coming to call. I think it is Mrs. Cluer, by father's description."

"Then bother Mrs. Cluer!" snapped the peevish one. "In this country I wonder if people say they are 'out' or 'asleep' when they do not want to be found 'at home'?"

But Mrs. Cluer knew both Major Carew and Stanley, so the conversation was not quite so uninteresting as Diana had anticipated. She was, moreover, a woman of exceptional charm, and at any other time they would both have lost their hearts to her.

"You probably did not see much of Major Carew," she said. "He is the most unsociable man in the country. One can get him to a man's bridge-party, but not much else; and most of us have given up trying. I expect it is partly his own doing that he is down there. He always manages to get work that takes him out on the veldt, if possible."

"He appears to like it," Meryl commented; "and Mr. Stanley and his companion are very fond of him, in spite of his unsociable ways."

"O, all the men are fond of him," she told them, evidently glad of an opportunity to sing his praises. "He never gives himself any airs with them for one thing, and he's just a man all through, living a clean, sportsman's life; and whether they do the same themselves or not, they all look up to him and admire him for it, without being afraid he will come down like a sledgehammer upon their failings. One knows the tone of the whole police force is better for having an officer like Major Carew, and it is a thousand pities there are not more like him. And Cecil Stanley is just the dearest boy in the world. Every one in Salisbury was fond of him. He is so good at games and dancing, and always so jolly and boyish and natural. We miss him badly, but I believe he likes being down there better than in the town."

"I think he does; he seemed perfectly happy."

They went on to speak of the gaiety of Salisbury; its golf and tennis and polo and dancing; and their visitor urged them to stay for a fancy-dress ball, when four hundred guests all in costume were expected. But neither of them were in the mood for balls, and the only attraction they cared about was an early-morning gallop with the hounds after jackal. Nothing could solace them for the careless, happy days they had left, and as soon as Mr. Pym had transacted his business, they persuaded him to take them out to Lomagundi with him, rather than be left behind in the town.

"They seem to be rather touchy ladies here, and so superior," Diana urged, when he demurred; "and you know I am never safe for two minutes with that type. I should be driven into saying appalling things, and our reputation might be ruined for ever."

In the end, as usual, they won him round, and departed one morning gleefully in the little toy train that runs out across the Gwebi Flats to the Eldorado Gold Mine. And to Diana's joy, they had a luggage-van fitted up as an impromptu saloon for them, and were able to spin along with both doors wide open, enjoying the air and the country. The Eldorado is the show mine of Rhodesia, having a native compound equal to any in South Africa, and charming bungalows for the staff, and an airy, comfortable hospital. But mines were not likely to hold much interest to lady travellers from Johannesburg, and all their eagerness was to go out to Sinoia to see the limestone caves, where, like an exquisite jewel in a massive setting, an underground lake, of wonderful colouring, lies in lonely loveliness.

Or perhaps it were better likened to a butterfly, with its wings closed, and only the more or less drab outside showing. The veldt, somewhat uniform and colourless, with its surrounding hills, is the butterfly with its wings closed. Enter the wide hole in the ground, beside the hidden lake, and descend the rough natural staircase of rocky boulders, to where the sun through an opening in the ground above shines down on to the translucent water, and there lies the butterfly with its wings open, and all their exquisite design and colouring and blending unfolded to the eye.

"You have some rare treasures in this far Rhodesia," Meryl said to their guide and host as they reluctantly left the hidden jewel behind; "treasures that your children and your children's children will be very proud of some day."

"If they have time," he answered a trifle cynically. "Not many Rhodesians to-day have time to care for any but the treasures that they can work for and grasp and carry away. The time for natural beauties to be appreciated is not yet. Why, we do not even pay a native half-a-crown a week to keep the caves free from the baboons and bats that defile them. I am afraid, at present, Rhodesia lives almost entirely for to-day," he continued. "The spirit ready to sacrifice itself for the good of future generations has yet to be developed." He was a clever-looking man, with quiet, thoughtful eyes, and he and Meryl had talked much together during her short stay. "The nobility of the bee is not found much among humans. In all the annals of the race, is there anything to compare with their service to the coming swarm?"

"Only that we do not know it is the result of calm reasoning," she answered. "The bee perhaps comes into existence, permeated through and through with this one idea, and lives solely to fulfil it. The service humanity asks of humanity is something even higher, surely—a willing, conscious sacrifice of present ease to future good. The spirit of heroes and fools"; and she smiled a little sadly, remembering Ailsa Grenville's verse and her enthusiasm for the dear Ship of Fools. "But you have some fine men out here," she added. "I think your future looks exceedingly hopeful."

A few days later they started on their return to Bulawayo, and the tour was practically ended. There was nothing more now but dusty railway journeys and elegant garments and conventionalities.

"No more grubby hands and red faces and 'anyhow' clothes that did not matter," was Diana's constant lament. Meryl said nothing. What was there to say? But the pain that dwelt in her eyes sometimes, when she thought no one was looking, sent deep stabs to her father's heart. With all his money, and all his power and influence, what could he do in this one thing that seemed to matter beyond all other things? Nothing except to look quietly on, and hope the wound was not too deep for healing. That, and to humour her in anything she asked. Which was partly why some of the long hours of the hot, dusty journey were spent in discussing plans for the settlement of young men upon his land, on exceptionally easy terms. He was not quite sure that the country was ripe for such a scheme yet; but Meryl's great wish for it, and obvious pleasure in the discussions, took him to lengths he might otherwise have avoided.

So they came to Bulawayo, and as they stepped out on to the platform, Meryl saw suddenly among the other passengers a tall form in khaki that caused her to draw in her breath with a little catch, while her eyes grew strained and anxious. Diana was still in the saloon, only half dressed, and her father was talking aside to someone who had come to the station to meet him. She was quite alone, rooted momentarily to the spot, waiting for the tall man to turn in her direction, if he chanced to look that way at all before hurrying off.

Then someone accosted him, and she saw the strong, self-contained face, as he turned to the speaker. A moment's suspense followed; then the man who had accosted him went towards the station entrance, and Carew came slowly in her direction, with his helmet low over his eyes. Thus he did not see her until they were face to face, and in the first moment of recognition she saw him start, as one taken in swift surprise. Then a slow colour crept up under the sunburn on his cheeks, and something came into his eyes that she had never seen there before.

But he only came forward with a formal air and saluted her solemnly. "I joined the train in the night," he said. "I had no idea you would be coming to Bulawayo so soon."

It was all very ordinary, very sedate, and a little wooden, but Meryl paid no heed to that, paid no heed to the obvious conclusion he had taken no chance journey hoping to see her again. For what his lips could not say, and his manner would not, his eyes had revealed to her in that first swift moment of surprise. She knew that whatever came between them in the future, whatever was between them now, Peter Carew was not indifferent to her.



XX

FAREWELL

"Did I hear the growl of a bear?" sang out a voice from behind a drawn blind of the saloon coach beside which they were standing.

"I'm afraid you did," said Carew, addressing the blind.

"O, joy! joy! Growl again, growl again—like the Christmas bells. How would it go?... 'Growl out, wild bear'—I forget the rest, but it's a silly song I learnt to sing when I was young. Don't go away; I shall be dressed directly. If these God-forsaken railways had not such a mania for landing you at your destination when all respectable people are snug in bed!..." and sundry sounds suggested the impatient speaker was flinging things about. Then a face with bright eyes appeared over the blind, which was a wooden shutter, and could be lowered to a discreet distance. "Hullo!... I simply had to take a look at you. I've been pining for a glimpse of The Kid's smile and your scowl. It's been deadly since we left Zimbabwe. Ugh!... how I hate civilisation!"

Carew looked at her with his rare, slow smile. "Is that why you keep the whole train waiting in the station, and the station-master, conductor, and guard in a state of ferment, because they cannot clear the line until you are dressed?"

"Rude man!" came back the quick retort. "You haven't yet said, How do you do?"

"How do you do, Miss Diana Pym?" gravely. "I hope I see you well! And how did you leave Salisbury?"

"I do very nicely, thank you, Major Carew. You cannot see me very well through a wooden shutter, I imagine. And how is your old heap of stones?" ... with which she vanished again to the interior. "Tell the conductor I've come to the last curl and the last hook and eye," she called, and a few minutes later stepped out on to the platform, a vision of fresh daintiness. "I'm rather glad," she remarked to Carew, with a twinkle, "that you will have an opportunity of seeing us in our best clothes"; then running on, "I see you look as fierce and awe-inspiring as ever; but having learnt, in Rhodesia, to keep quite calm with cockchafers and beetles running about in my bed, I am not likely to be afraid of a bear."

"Are you going to the Grand Hotel?" Mr. Pym asked him, having joined them while Diana was finishing her toilet, "because there is plenty of room in our motor."

Carew thanked him, and they all moved away together. At the hotel, however, he vanished, and it was only after a little adroit persuasion later that Mr. Pym got him to accept an invitation to dine with them in their private room in the evening.

And after accepting, Carew went about the work that had brought him to Bulawayo with an uneasy mind. The fortnight that had elapsed since the evening he found Meryl unexpectedly at the Grenvilles' had been a somewhat disturbed one for him. For many years now his life had flown so evenly in all big essentials. Little worries, little disturbances, disappointments, were inevitable for a man whose heart was so thoroughly in his work, and for whom the conditions of work were often so trying. But these had only ruffled the surface; underneath the smooth river flowed along strong and self-contained. After the upheaval that had been as a volcanic eruption upon smiling sunshine-flooded fields in his life, and the black desolation that followed, there had succeeded a long quiet period of calm action that, if it held nothing which could be termed joy, held nothing either that was sorrow except his buried memories. And he had been well content that it should be so; well content to contemplate just that and nothing else to the journey's end.

And now, suddenly, had come this vague unrest. He sought for its source and its reason, and could not find a satisfactory answer. For though it dated from the coming of the millionaire and his party, he would not admit himself capable of the folly of falling in love with Meryl. To him it was such inexcusable foolishness, in view of many things. Rather he chose to believe it was a voice from the old life, reawakened in his heart, and calling to him across the years. When he smoked his pipe outside the huts, and pondered deeply some knotty point in his report and in the work of the Native Commission, he found himself suddenly remembering that it was September. And away in his beloved Devon they would be out after the partridges—striding through the heather and across the stubble-fields, ranging over the purple moors with purple horizons all round, and in the distance a strip of turquoise, which was the sea. He could almost hear the whir ... rr of wings and the shots on some far hill-side. And he knew that, though the shooting in a wild, vast country like Rhodesia is a far finer and more sportsmanlike affair than shooting driven birds in England, he yet felt, and would ever feel, that intense British love of the soil that had reared him, and the moors where he fired his first gun and shot his first bird. And, of course, upon the heels of the shooting came the hunting, which had once been the joy of his life, ever after he first put his pony at a stiff fence, entirely on his own, and sailed gloriously over, in spite of an anxious groom shouting caution to the winds.

And then all the woodcraft and fieldcraft he had learnt from his uncle's keepers and his uncle's farmer tenants. He remembered how it had been part of his education as a youngster, and how in pursuit of knowledge he had been up early and late and in the middle of the night, picking up information about the woodland creatures from anyone who could teach him or finding things out for himself. There was the poacher who had shown him, for love of the sport, if sport it could be called, how he got the pheasants silently off the boughs in the night—taking them from their roosting-places and never a sound. He had given that poacher a bright half-crown, he remembered, and his firm lips twitched a little over the recollection. He had not seen the humour then of paying the man who was stealing his uncle's pheasants—the pheasants that would some day be his. He wondered if the boys in England now, the future landowners, were taught woodlore as he had been taught it, because it was good for an English gentleman to know all the scents and signs and sounds of his estate.

And after all, he was no landowner at all. By his own act, instead, merely an officer in the British South Africa Police, with a few hundreds a year income, and nothing but a meagre pension ahead.

Ah well! he had had a good deal besides for what he had lost, and it had been a good life enough, dependent solely on himself, and far removed from the caprices of a rich uncle. He regretted nothing at this stage of what had transpired after the upheaval came. Of course, his brother was now owner of the estates that might have been his, and was married, and had children; whereas he was a soldier-policeman looking forward to a meagre pension.

Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. It was only that, seeing so much more of the Pyms socially than he had been wont to see of anyone, old memories had been awakened. He hoped they would soon go to sleep again, for, in passing, they had taken some of the restfulness out of Rhodesia's far horizons, and fretted the flow of the strong, silent river, with a vague discontent. Sometimes between him and those far horizons there was a face now—sometimes a voice—sometimes just a dim presence—the voice and the face and the presence of Meryl Pym. And it was a thing to be fought down and crushed and conquered—a weakness that was well-nigh a foolishness—a folly such as stern men trample underfoot.

So when Mr. Pym asked him to dine with them privately, he made some excuse, and only yielded under pressure. And when he joined them he was in one of his gravest moods, as if he had barricaded himself round with impenetrable reserve. There were two other guests, so Diana did not twit him openly; she only murmured in an aside, for his ear alone, "I'm so sorry it's a party, and we shall feel obliged to be polite. This civilisation is becoming a positive burden."

Meryl was a little late, and she wore a beautiful gown, of a classic cut, with exquisite classic embroideries and a filigree band on her lovely hair. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress, and he took one keen, sweeping glance and then looked away. He had rather the attitude of a soldier on parade, to whom the colonel had said "eyes front." Only he was his own colonel, obeying his own laws and restrictions. And Meryl only dared to take a fleeting glance also, for fear her eyes might betray her. And though he looked as striking as a man may, in immaculate evening dress, with his strong, clear-cut features, and inches that dwarfed most men, with the inconsistency of a woman she decided she liked him best in khaki that had seen hard service, and that look of being all of a piece, because his hands and face were so brown. He sat on her left, while Lord Elmsleigh, who was passing through from the Victoria Falls, sat on her right; and though she chatted lightly to his lordship, she was conscious every second of the hour of the big, silent, rather grim soldier-policeman. He spoke very little. Just an opinion now and then when he was asked for it, or the corroboration or correction of a statement, when someone looked to him questioningly. The millionaire, chatting in his quiet, weighty way to his two other guests, noted everything. He knew that Carew and Meryl scarcely once looked at each other, or addressed each other direct, and with a deep sense of regret he had again that feeling of being brought up against some barrier where neither his money nor power nor influence could be of any avail. And at the same time he knew in his heart that he had never met any man to whom he would sooner entrust Meryl and the fortune that must be hers. For though their very silence together revealed to his astute brain that neither was indifferent to the other, he could not but see also that undercurrent of grim determination in Carew. True, he was almost always silent, but Henry Pym perceived that his silence to-day was not quite of that of yesterday. Something had gone out of it—some quiet, grave, unquestioning content. In the keen, direct, steel-blue eyes now there was a shadow lurking behind, that might have been of some old memory, or might have been of some new pain, but which vaguely hurt the millionaire host.

Meryl's eyes were less smiling than her lips, turning a little unsteadily this way and that, with a restlessness that added a touch of vivacity to her quiet beauty. But that, he knew, was the thing we baldly name pluck. It was not to-night he need fear what he should see in her eyes, nor perhaps to-morrow. It was any day, any hour, any moment in the weeks to come, when she believed no one was observing her.

So the evening passed, and the last rubber of bridge was played, and the first move made towards departure.

"Shall we have your company for a day or two? I must stay here over to-morrow!" Mr. Pym said to Carew.

"I leave early in the morning," was the quiet reply. "I only came here to see Mr. Ireson, and now I go to Salisbury."

Meryl, with her face turned away, blanched a little in the shadow. This was the end then. This casual, conventional good-bye at a dinner-party. To-morrow he would go east before they were up; and the next day she would go back to Johannesburg, and later England. She turned quickly to make a gay remark. Something in her heart tightened. She felt suddenly appalled at the future, and was afraid she might show it.

But the evening had still one little unexpected treat in store for her. Lord Elmsleigh had a big-game trophy in his room that he wanted to show Mr. Pym and their other guests—something that he had shot in the Kafue valley. And in consequence, while Diana and Carew and Meryl were standing together by the open window that led on to the wide balcony, he took them both off with him.

And then Diana said to Carew, "As you are going to-morrow, I will give you those snapshots to-night. I have them in my room," and she went away, pulling the door to after her.

So Carew and Meryl were left alone by the window, looking out into the pulsing southern night. Meryl, quite suddenly, felt a little dizzy, and she drew back into the corner, leaning against the woodwork, feeling glad of some support. Carew remained upright and rigid, with something in that very rigidity that suggested a special need to keep himself well in hand. If he had stopped to think about it, he might have felt that Fate was treating him a little unkindly. So far he had done the strong thing every time, and gone quietly away from danger; not because he was a coward, but because he knew it is sometimes far more cowardly to skate on thin ice, and hope it will be all right, than to remain in safety on the bank. For Meryl's sake as well as his own he had chosen to remain on the bank. And yet here, for the third time, was Fate deliberately bringing the danger zone to him, in spite of his efforts to avoid it. But he did not stop to cogitate either one way or the other. Sufficient for him that he knew himself in the danger zone, and therefore it behoved him to be very wary. Not by act or word, if he could help it, must he let Meryl see how she had disturbed his peace. And there, again, it would seem, Fate had played with him. A subtler man would have perceived that an added rigidity was not entirely the safeguard he needed now. Meryl already knew him too well for that. Had he talked and laughed a little, she might have been puzzled and baffled. But Carew was not subtle. He was simply sincere. And so he just stood very rigid and silent; not perceiving that in the circumstances that it was hardly the best way to baffle the eyes of love. Meryl knew instinctively he was putting some special restraint on himself, and the knowledge made her quietly glad, underneath the sudden pain of the knowledge that it was farewell. Back, in her vantage of shadow, she looked at him. And she saw, not for the first time, but perhaps more fully, that inner force in this man, which told any who had eyes to see and understanding to perceive, that nothing would turn him from a set purpose, if he were persuaded it was a right one; and whatever woman's arts she might possess, they would be as the waves against a granite rock. They might play round him, and sprinkle foam on him, and soften his aspect, but they would not move him. So, with an inner strength not unlike his own, she accepted his decree. For some reason, or set of reasons, love might not come into being between them. He was determined that it should not. Very well, she would hide her hurt and face her future without it.

And if she chose to cherish his image, hidden deep down in her heart, that was her affair. A laughing, mocking world need never know.

She broke the silence first:

"If you are going early to-morrow, we shall not meet again."

"No." He looked at her a moment, about to say something else; then changed his mind, and looked out of the window in silence. Leaning up against the lintel, in the softened light, her outline and features and deep, true eyes made too fair a picture for him to trust himself to look upon.

"Perhaps you will be coming to Johannesburg presently?"

"I think not."

"Nor England?..." with a little wistful smile.

"Nor England."

"You speak almost as if you never expected to go there again?"

"I shall never go there again."

There was a pause; then she continued:

"Yet you are so absolutely an Englishman, and they say"—with another little smile—"an Englishman always wants to go home to be buried."

"I am more a Rhodesian."

"And you feel like Cecil Rhodes?... We went out to the Matopos this afternoon. It was a big thought, that of his, to be buried there. It gives you people in the north something that we of the south have not—your own special great man, lying in your midst. What a country you will be some day! I envy you your share of the building."

"The south is a great country now. It is not a small thing to be building there."

"Yes, but we have two races, and it spells division and weakens our enthusiasm."

"Help to bridge over the gap. Help to make it spell union. That were a work that any man might be proud to give his life to."

And at that slowly she became taut and rigid almost as he, with wide eyes gazing into the night. He had struck a hidden chord; struck it full and strong.

"Do you mean," she said a little breathlessly, "that though my sympathies are so much with the north, my work, any usefulness I may attain to, ought to be given to the south?... that ... that ... perhaps it belongs to it?..."

He was silent a moment, weighing his words.

"I think," he said, "that you in the south are passing through a critical stage, and there must be much need for strong women as well as strong men. Dutch Predominance is the cry now, but the scales turn easily, and it may be English Predominance to-morrow. No country can make real headway, and consolidate its greatness, while there is this changing and interchanging of power. There must be no predominance but that of the country's good; and to that end Dutch and English must be merged into South African. It is the duty of every true patriot to look this way and that, and see how it can best be achieved; and to be ready to sink all personal aims and triumphs for the furtherance of the great end."

"Is it possible," she asked slowly, "when it seems one side only is honest in its protestations?"

"You cannot be sure about that. Seek out the strongest and best men of both sides, and help them to gain the power and hold it. Your own side is not without blame. At the first big election after the country was settling down again, you could not even stand together. At the polls there were three parties, where there should have been only two. Englishmen opposed Englishmen, mostly over a question of small differences, and for personal pride of place. South Africa has never yet recovered from that mistake. You must not hold two hands out to the Boers—the hands of differing Englishmen—but one hand, that is absolutely reliable and sincere."

"It is what I have heard my father say, and others also, but progress is very slow. There is much racial hatred rampant still."

"It will yield gradually. The fittest must prevail in the end; but obviously that fittest will prove to be neither Dutch nor English, but South African."

"How do you think it will prevail?" She was white now, and her eyes were gazing very straight out into the night.

"By intermarriage chiefly. It is almost the only solution to the problem. Speaking one tongue, owning one country, will never help it, as Dutch and English interests united upon one hearth. That is why you must be patient, and just go steadily on, avoiding dissension as much as possible, while trying to raise the tone of both races on every side."

There was a little tremor in her voice as she said, "And are we to take it just meekly when Englishmen are ousted for Dutchmen and loyal service ignored?"

"I think you can only be patient at present. The strong part will lie with you, though the others seem to triumph. If the party in power find the country is at a standstill, and not progressing as they want it to, they will end by rearranging the public posts, and the Englishmen will come back because they are the fittest. As a race, you know, we are inclined to be domineering and somewhat overbearing. We certainly have ourselves to thank for some of the trouble. Probably while the Dutchman is 'top dog' he is having his fling, and we are learning a little wholesome wisdom. When the reaction comes the country will be the gainer."

"And in the meantime intermarriage?" she questioned slowly.

"In the meantime intermarriage," he said, with quiet emphasis.

But he little dreamt that at the cross-roads he was pointing her to a path of tears.

They heard Diana returning, and he moved restlessly.

"If I do not see you again"—with a hesitating voice unlike himself—"I hope you will be very happy.... Meeting you has been a great and unexpected pleasure."

"Thank you," was all she could trust herself to say.

And then Diana came into the room.

A moment later the other men returned, and they all said good-bye. And when Carew shook hands with Meryl, he noticed that her hand was as cold as ice and her cheeks as white as snow, and that she scarcely raised her eyes to his face.

And wondering and fearing, he walked away into the darkness, with the sense of a new shadow walking beside him—a shadow that had come to stay, in spite of all his resolutions and strong endeavours, the shadow of his love for the woman he had just left in silence and never thought to see again.



XXI

A "HOARDING HUSTLING"

There was probably no family in Johannesburg better known or better loved than that of Henry Pym, the millionaire. Even Aunt Emily was something of a favourite, in spite of her peculiarities, perhaps a little for the sake of the delightful entertaining that took place at Hill Court. Diana was adored for her spirits, and Meryl was regarded somewhat as a treasure Johannesburg had a right to be proud of. Certain it was that if eventually she followed the example of her American cousins and enriched an English peerage with her wealth, she would hold her own amidst the loveliest and most charming of England's peeresses. At the same time, though many perhaps hoped that she would lead the way for the young South African heiresses, not many had much belief that she would lead it in the particular fashion they hoped; for there was ever that uncertain elusive quality about Meryl, that suggestion of the visionary and dreamer, that betold a nature not very likely to follow in any beaten path, or give overmuch value to the advantages of a high alliance from a worldly point of view. It was probable she would see things in quite a different light to the majority and act for herself. Nevertheless Johannesburg hoped for the best, and would have been pleased to number a peeress among her daughters; if it were only to show the world, for one thing, that some of South Africa's heiresses were every whit as refined and clever and charming as America's, whatever may have been implied to the contrary by scathing comments on Johannesburg's millionaires which have appeared from time to time in varied guise.

Mr. Pym himself, however, was not among those who nursed such high hopes. When he took the Piccadilly mansion the preceding spring, and transferred his household to London for the season, he meant to entertain lavishly, and give the girls every possible opportunity to see the world of the highest London society, knowing full well he could do this because his friends numbered many among England's high names. That he should take them into the wilds of Rhodesia instead had certainly been the very last thought in his mind. On the other hand, as we have said, it did not greatly perturb him. He was inclined to think they might gain as much from their pioneer pilgrimage as from a rush of continuous gaiety. What exactly they had gained it would have been difficult to gauge; nothing perhaps that Aunt Emily would detect, fussing and exclaiming round them upon their first arrival.

Diana, in a mood for merriment, and possibly to cover a certain invisible shadow that rested as a dim cloud upon the party, rouged her face to a brilliant red with an alarmingly fiery nose end. When she lifted her veil and confronted her aunt with a perfectly unconcerned smile, that lady raised her hands in horror and bemoaning. "O, my dear!... my dear!... your complexion is ruined. How could you be so careless? How could Meryl let you?... It will take weeks of care to undo the mischief."

"O, don't make a fuss, aunty! Complexions don't matter tuppence-halfpenny in Rhodesia. You surely didn't imagine I was going to carry a sun-umbrella about, did you?"

"But my dear child!..." still in great distress. "It is a dreadful thing to say, but you really look as if ... as if ..." but there her courage forsook her, and she could not name the dreadful possibility.

"As if I had been drinking!" finished Diana cheerfully. "Yes, it's a little awkward, but perhaps if I don't lurch or look foolish ..." Then she encountered the astonished eyes of a young footman, who had come in with some small paraphernalia from the motor, and unable to keep her face, turned hurriedly away.

"I'm rather afraid James is going to have a fit," she remarked to Meryl. "I hope it won't incapacitate him for the rest of the day," and she chuckled to herself. Meryl had not yet raised her veil, and the anxiety on Aunt Emily's face, which she vainly strove to hide, was delighting Diana more than ever. "Better not take your veil off downstairs, Meryl. Aunt Emily has had rather a shock from my face; I don't think she could bear any more."

But the poor lady's concern was too pitiful to Meryl, and she threw her veil far back, saying, "She is a wicked creature, aunty. Her face only wants washing"; and then Aunt Emily, reassured and comforted, joined in the general laugh.

"But soap and water won't remedy all the defects," Diana told her. "I've acquired a violent dislike to houses and rooms and tableclothes and clean hands, and all the absurd paraphernalia of civilised existence. Of course, I suppose I shall become rational again in time, but at present I thought of having a tent on the lawn and becoming a hermit."

"How is everyone, Aunty?" Meryl asked, as the poor lady seemed again somewhat overcome. "Have you had hosts of visitors while you were all alone?"

"Yes, people have been very kind, and I have not had much time to be dull; and everyone is delighted you are back again. Mr. van Hert has called twice this week to know which day you would arrive."

Meryl's lips contracted a little, but Diana murmured, "Oho!... Dutch Willie! ready to be on the doorstep, of course, in spite of the hullabaloo you've been causing in the country, unrestrained by my caustic criticisms."

"I expect he thought he would make hay while the sun shone," Meryl told her, "and air his pet theories while they were not in danger of being stamped on."

Then they both went upstairs, and Meryl stood awhile at the wide window, looking over the lovely garden; and though she still answered kindly to her aunt's flow of chatter, the good lady having followed them to their room, her heart was far away among distant kopjes, where mysterious grey walls basked in the sunlight with the silence and the patience of the ages.

For the next two or three days a continuous stream of visitors passed up and down the drive, and invitations poured in, and the girls found themselves quickly in a very vortex of social life.

William van Hert did not come until the third day, and then he chose as late an hour as he well could, hoping to escape the throng. This he succeeded in doing, but Diana he could not escape. If it had been his hope to see Meryl alone he was entirely frustrated. Diana's small, practical head perceived the wisdom of avoiding all haste in what these two might have to say to each other, and van Hert had to bow to her decision. Still further, he had to undergo a small fire of chaff with an edge to it, concerning some of his political doings and sayings during their absence. But this from Diana he could always take. Whether she knew it or not, and whether she cared or not, at the time she probably wielded a more direct influence over van Hert than anyone else living. Certainly a more direct influence than Meryl and her father, for whereas his liking for them only tempered his rashness and indiscretions, Diana aimed shafts straight at any of his rabid policies in a manner that caused him secretly to reconsider. Yet all his devotion was drawn to Meryl in her fairness and quiet strength, and the hope of his heart was still to win her.

As it happened, it was a very white-faced, silent Meryl who sat on the deep verandah that afternoon of his first call, and was content chiefly to listen to Diana waging her usual war. That astute young person had much to say, in her own slangy phraseology, concerning certain utterances of the Dutch extremists, openly derogatory to the English, and seemingly opposed to any spirit of racial conciliation.

"Why don't you try and teach your people to play the game?" she asked him, with a fine scorn. "Do you hear any of our eminent men haranguing about 'keeping down the Dutch' and 'steam-rollering the Dutch,' and without any hesitation openly speaking of themselves as a separate and superior race? Whatever our men think, they are at least sportsmen enough just now to keep it to themselves, for the sake of the hopes and aims of the country. But you apparently allow your following to say anything, and either pretend not to hear or take no notice. Listen to this, said by a predicant of the Dutch Reformed Church...." She picked up a pamphlet, lying near, and read aloud: "'We are a nation with our own taal, traditions, and history. We must now stand shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand for the rights of our people.... May God give our people strength to be unanimous!' Unanimous in what?... Why, forcing the issue of the language question according to their own ends, and retrenching English teachers, and generally looking upon themselves as the superior, chosen people whom God meant to reign alone in South Africa."

"My dear young lady," he remonstrated, "can you blame me for the unwise, indiscreet utterances of every Dutch predicant who opens his mouth?"

"Why, of course I do. You are a leader, and you ought to protest openly against any such utterance; but naturally, if you only consider it unwise and indiscreet, you don't regret the purport of the words at all, merely their being uttered at perhaps the wrong time. Well, that sort of spirit isn't 'cricket,' as we understand it; and your attitude, in professing to hold out a hand to the English section, while the other is making secret signs to the Dutch, is what we call trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; and that is an experiment being attempted by far too many of your colleagues just now."

"I am doing nothing of the kind," he repudiated indignantly. "I am standing by my countrymen, that they may maintain the dignity of their nation and not be trampled under foot by the English."

"O fiddlesticks! No one wants to trample you under foot. We mostly want to raise you. We want to broaden your outlook and widen your views. But you know perfectly well that that means a great united country, for the back-veldters might learn at last where strength lay; and then your precious taal, traditions, and history will have to take their proper place in the general scheme, and that will be on a plane of equality and not blatantly on top."

Again he protested with outspread hands. "But we have a great country now through union. You overlook the most important fact."

"We should have had," she corrected, "if the Bond in Cape Colony, and Het Volk in the Transvaal, and the Unie in the Orange River Colony had not chanced to be powerful enough to work almost entirely in the interests of a Dutch South Africa all the time they were waving a flag, and cheering the colours, and delivering orations on the beauty of Union and their love for the great Mother Country, meaning the Liberal Government, who mostly, it would seem, told them to do as they like and please themselves and not make a fuss, so long as they called it Union."

He turned to Meryl with a deprecating air, as if asking for her support, and she smiled rather a tired smile and said, "It is only that she has had to bottle it all up for a long time, as you were not at hand. The next time you come she will be ready to smile on you."

"But I hope in the meantime you do not endorse the slander?..."

"I have plenty of hope to balance a certain amount of doubt; and if it is any pleasure to you to know it, Diana never troubles to cross swords with a man she has not considerable regard for."

He flushed and looked gratified, and Diana remarked coolly, "O, I've lots of regard for you. I'm only sorry that a man who might be brilliant is content to be mediocre because of his prejudices. Now when we were in Rhodesia ..." and she paused, regarding him with the bright, piquant eyes of a small bird.

"Well, what about Rhodesia? You didn't find much brilliance there, I imagine? Brilliance does not thrive on bully beef and existence in a mud hut."

"Neither does 'back-veldt' obtuseness and narrow-minded bigotry and indiscreet loquacity, Meinheer van Hert."

He could not help laughing at the droll way she made the statement. "Well, what does thrive?"

"Silence," thoughtfully.

"But that did not appeal to you?" with significance.

"Not perhaps so much as the growl," was her enigmatic reply.

"And did you like this wild, wilderness land of silence?"

She regarded him with half-grave, half-mocking eyes. "Well, we understood why you want to have a finger in Rhodesia's pie, you and your various active organisations working in the interests of a Dutch South Africa. Any child could see what such a country would be worth to you. But you won't succeed, my friend. They've got a few strong men up there who believe in 'to-morrow' more than 'to-day,' and are not afraid to forego present honours for future progress. You won't bribe them, and you won't hoodwink them, and you won't get them. They may not have much weight or power or money to back them, but there's something in the atmosphere up there, something in the very air, that would tell anyone with a grain of perspicacity they could be dangerous if they liked. I shouldn't rouse the sleeping lion in Rhodesia if I were you, Meinheer, you and your colleagues, with coercion or anything else—that way lie explosives."

At that moment Mr. Pym joined them, and the conversation at once became general, though van Hert laughingly told his host he had been undergoing a regular hoarding hustling. Then he told them of a few happenings since they went away, and because he was as glad as he could be to see them back again, all his natural versatility came uppermost, and one could easily perceive why he was a leader of men, and likely to remain so.

"If only one could make him see straight," said Diana, when they spoke of it afterwards, "instead of with the warped vision of a one-idea'd fanatic."

Later she tried to draw Meryl a little concerning her attitude towards him, but Meryl would only maintain an unrevealing silence, and Diana was baffled and troubled. She felt vaguely that some new thought was forming in Meryl's mind, some thought that held danger, but she could not grasp in what direction it tended.

And van Hert smoked his pipe with a very thoughtful air that evening, pondering deeply. Meryl had neither encouraged him nor repulsed him, and she seemed just the same and yet different; and once more that half-formed dread came back to his memory that through Rhodesia he might lose her.

And then he thought he would put the uncertainty at an end quickly and learn his fate as soon as possible; for he was treading on rather thin ice in his public capacity just now, and a strong coalition against him, which was rumoured in the air, might place him in an unpleasant position.

On the other hand, Mr. Pym's support and Meryl's charm might prove weapons which would see him safely through, and help him to mould his position anew on broader lines.

But for another three weeks Diana successfully baffled his intention, influenced by that vague fear she could not fathom, and a futile, helpless desire to ward off some pending destiny. And in the meantime she puzzled her small head daily concerning the invulnerable silence and aloofness of Peter Carew, and the blue shadows deepening under Meryl's eyes, though she strove hourly to be ever her old self and show no sign.



XXII

MERYL'S DECISION

Although van Hert had no opportunity to reopen the subject of his hopes to Meryl during those three weeks, she knew quite well that he had in no wise changed to her. His every look showed it, and an intangible something in his manner whenever he addressed her. And all the time, though her heart was given hopelessly elsewhere, she felt herself in the grip of circumstances that might determine her action against her inclination.

It would be difficult to relate just what passed in her mind through those three weeks, while outwardly she moved in the whirl of social happenings dependent upon their return with all her usual charm and dignity. Certainly she was rather quieter than usual, but as Diana talked and laughed faster, possibly with intent, the change was not noticed. She was specially quieter when van Hert was there, and Diana was specially talkative; entertaining him, rallying him, teazing him, in a way that, at any rate, brought out his best side, and in a sense buffeted the bigot good-naturedly into the attractive companion. And it seemed to show Diana at her best too, for behind all her flippancy there was undoubtedly a purpose and a depth which she would not for a moment have admitted, but which nevertheless was sincere and true.

"Of course, I don't really care either way," she would tell him mockingly. "You may have a Dutch South Africa and welcome, if you won't interfere with my personal schemes and general affairs. I've nothing modern about me, in the sense of wanting to reconstruct the world generally and be a Joan of Arc to my retrenched compatriots. But when some of you talkers get up and express high-flown sentiments of brotherhood and union for the benefit of the public Press one moment, and swerve right down and wink at such sentiments as steamroller the English or the finances or the language question the next, it is time you had a little wholesome plain speaking. Anyhow, who did vote the money for the new Government buildings?..."

But whether Diana cared or not, one thing was certain: the utterances of that well-known minister William van Hert were showing gradually a higher and broader tone, and an atmosphere of conciliation was beginning to spread over his hitherto rabid sectarianism.

And van Hert himself found it went well with his feelings to exchange wordy battles with Diana and keep his dreams for Meryl. The younger girl invigorated and enthused him, while the elder, curiously enough, appealed more to his senses. He wanted her fairness, as a strong, dark man often feels himself drawn to a woman who is frail and fair. And yet even while he wanted her he was a little afraid of her, a little baffled, a little uncertain of himself.

Thus the three weeks passed, and the moment of the inevitable decision came near.

And all the time Meryl felt herself rather as one who stood upon a difficult, stony place, with the forbidden land behind her and the clear call of a great need before. She believed that she would never see Carew again; that definitely and forever he had cut the threads of deep sympathy both had known existed. It was his dictum and she could only abide by it. What then should she do with her life? To what end turn this existence, blessed by fortune with wealth and the power wealth brings, though suddenly swept bare of joy?

And ever and again back to her mind came Carew's words that last evening at Bulawayo: "Help to bridge over the gap. Help to make division become union. That were a work that any man might be proud to give his life to."

And every day, more and more fully, she recognised that whatever she had to give she owed to South Africa. She gradually thought herself into a state in which she existed for herself and her own inclinations no more, but only for that sacred claim upon her.

For the spirit of noble deeds, the spirit that carried Joan of Arc to the rescue of her country and to martyrdom, is not dead in the world, though no modern historian may depict a woman in armour leading allied armies on the battlefield. In quieter guise, in hidden corners, in unsung self-forgetfulness, women still answer to the divine call that sounds in their hearts, more inspiringly perhaps than in a man's; and for the everlasting good of the human race let us hope it will never cease to sound.

Lamartine has said: "Nature has given woman two painful but heavenly gifts which distinguish her from the condition of men, and often raise her above it: pity and enthusiasm. Through pity she sacrifices herself; enthusiasm ennobles her. Self-sacrifice and enthusiasm! What else is there in heroism? Women have more heart and imagination than men. Enthusiasm arises from the imagination, self-sacrifice springs from the heart. They are therefore by nature more heroic than heroes."

Enthusiasm and a divine spirit of self-sacrifice held a very deep part in Meryl's heart, though never for a moment would the thought of heroism have occurred to her. Where Diana, out of her mocking, but staunch and loyal heart, amused herself dashing cold water and playful satire upon all heroics, Meryl said nothing at all, but at a critical moment both were equally capable of acting.

And it did not require much thought on Meryl's part to see now where this spirit of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice seemed to call her. South Africa was at the cross-roads; she was at the period of her most urgent need for great women as well as great men. The only question that seemed to arise was, what did she specially want of the women ready to serve her?

In her own case Meryl found an answer from the lips of Carew himself. "Intermarriage," he had said; "that is the real solution to this great barrier of racialism. The same hopes united upon the same hearth." And it did not need much thought to perceive that should she, the admired and beloved heiress, fondly expected to marry an English nobleman and blossom into a peeress, marry instead a Dutchman and devote herself absolutely to South Africa, she would give a tremendous impetus to this question of intermarriage which was to consolidate the great South African Union. She saw herself giving this impetus, because it seemed to be the service life asked of her, and following it up by a wise and steadying influence upon the man who was likely always to be in the forefront of South Africa's politics.

And yet, sometimes in the silence of the night, how her spirit shuddered and shrank from it, lying bare and desolate and bleeding under the hopeless, unconquerable ache for that strong Englishman in the north—that soldier-policeman for whom she would willingly have foregone all pride of place, all luxury of wealth, all satisfaction of achievement! Yet this he would never know, seeing her, as he ever must, framed in a vast fortune from which she could not extricate herself. She thought if she might choose, she would remain quietly with her father for ever, doing good, as he, by stealth and without ostentation, feeding her heart on a memory that would never die; but here the spirit of self-sacrifice intervened, and gave her no hope of rest but in fulfilment of what she believed life asked of her.