"I suppose I had better return to Johannesburg, and then if any of you
get ill with malaria or typhoid, you must wire for me and I will come
back."
"You were very good to come so far," said Meryl gently, seeing the
veiled disappointment that they could dispense with her so easily.
"If it is any consolation," volunteered Diana, "you may be quite sure
we are all going to be most horribly uncomfortable for the next month
or two. The only illness I anticipate is an utter and complete
weariness of life. I don't know which sounds the most dreadful: being
bumped along dusty roads in an ambulance, and sleeping with snakes and
toads under a tent; or being stifled in an odious little
corrugated-iron hotel, living on poisonous tinned stuffs in a
perpetual odour of stale roast nigger. If I am going to endure it for
my country, I hope my country will give me the only fitting
reward--the Victoria Cross."
"Perhaps we needn't stay in the hotel," said Meryl hopefully. "We can
probably camp out. Surely the wonderful old ruins are somewhere near
Edwardstown, father? How splendid if we could camp beside them!..."
"Quite near. We will certainly go and see them. They tell me there is
a police camp there, and at this time of the year it is quite
healthy."
"But how glorious!..." cried Meryl. "I had no idea you were going in
their direction."
"I meant to if possible," her father said; and so the trip was decided
upon.
Three days later the cavalcade started off from Gwelo with great
_éclat_. Two ambulances: one containing the two girls, a driver, a
fore-looper, and a small black boy named Gelungwa, who was everything
from ladies' maid to general adviser; and the other containing Mr.
Pym, his engineer, driver, fore-looper, and the engineer's black
cook-boy, who proved himself an invaluable asset.
Each ambulance was drawn by eight mules, and carried its share of the
paraphernalia necessary to a long sojourn in the wilderness, and being
thoroughly well equipped, they had decided to dispense with any
further railway service until they reached Salisbury.
They started from Gwelo, with its wide, tree-lined roads, in the
freshness of the morning, and leaving the surrounding bare,
uninteresting common quickly behind, dived straightway into a track of
Rhodesia that is like a vast, undulating park. The red road wound
across a wide, breezy stretch of veldt to wooded hills and valleys,
and beyond this was an enchanting vista of dreaming blue kopjes on a
far horizon. Even Diana found nothing to grumble at. Like Meryl, her
eyes rested often on that dreaming distance, and the unique charm of a
journey into the unknown, independent of railways and hotels, held her
senses. When two graceful buck sprang up in the grass near them, stood
a moment to investigate, and then fled away, leaping and bounding to
safety, she drew a deep breath of delight.
"Di, it's going to be a glorious trip!" Meryl exclaimed in low-voiced
ecstasy.
Diana paused before she remarked in answer:
"It seems so natural somehow, to be journeying out to an unknown
bourne in this primitive fashion. I wonder if, in another existence, I
was one of the wives or handmaidens in Abraham's caravanserai? Perhaps
I was his favourite concubine!... How interesting!... I'm sure I've
journeyed like this into a far land before."
And again:
"How jolly to have two drivers who don't understand a word we say,
instead of a chauffeur who is all ears and an Aunt Emily who is all
prejudices!"
"Still," said Meryl, "you couldn't very well have a coachman in
England wearing a sky-blue felt hat that was obviously meant for a
lady, and with a large blue patch upon brown trousers."
"He's just a dear," was Diana's laughing comment. "I love his awful
solemnity. He's like a Hindoo idol. And what luck to have a side wind
instead of a forward one!"
At twelve they stayed in a welcome piece of shade for their first
veldt meal. Lounge-chairs were untied for them to rest in, and an
excellent little repast prepared by the cook-boy, while the small
black imp waited upon them like a trained butler. Then they dozed
through the hot midday hours, continuing their journey to those
alluring blue distances after all were rested, until they reached the
first night's camping place and pitched their tents near a rippling
river--as Diana described it, "all mixed up with stars, and dreams,
and niggers, and kopjes, and mules."
For a week they journeyed on, each day seeming lovelier than the last,
and the dreaming repose of a great content hovered over all of them.
There was no need for haste and none was made. There was no pitiless
urging of tired mules as in the post-cart; no shouting natives, no
hurried pauses for a snatched rest. The mules jogged contentedly
along, realising they were in good hands, and always through the
midday hours everyone lazed. An early spring had brought many young
leaves out, although it was still August, and these were often
beautiful shades of red, bronze, orange, scarlet, gold, and
emerald-green, beyond or through which blue kopjes took on a yet more
dream-like, ethereal air. Sometimes the red road wound along through
woods of loveliest colouring, carpeted already with spring flowers.
Sometimes it ran out into open spaces where the trees stood back in
line, revealing wonderful glimpses of the fascinating land to their
eager gaze.
Strange, fantastical, granite kopjes like mighty mausoleums adorned
with ilex trees barred their path, and Diana was convinced some of
the bones of her ancestors lay buried there, because she felt so
weirdly at home with them.
"This is my natural environment," she informed her uncle and the
engineer. "I ought to be dwelling here in state, as the favourite wife
of the greatest chief in the land."
Meryl grew dreamier with every day, though sometimes her eyes were sad
as she looked out over the country, as if she already loved it with a
love that was akin to pain.
Had he, that great Imperialist, looked at it with those calm eyes of
his, and known just that sense of aching love?... When he journeyed
out into its enchanting untrodden spaces, accompanied only by some
kindred spirit, had the land risen up and enslaved and enfolded him,
like some enchantress who bound men's souls for ever?... Had Rhodesia,
in her sunny loveliness, been wife and child to the great man who went
lonely to his grave?...
As they drove along and the fascination increased, far outweighing any
discomfort of glare and dust and jolting roads, Meryl felt herself
engraving the sight and the sound and the freshness of it upon her
soul, that she might have hidden pictures to gaze upon with closed
eyes when the exigencies of life called her back into the throng.
Her father was mostly silent as was his wont, planning and scheming
with a brain that knew little other rest than following its natural
bent, yet with that in his silence, and in his watchful eyes that made
one feel he too loved the land for itself, as well as for what he
could get out of it; and that when occasion came, like Alfred Beit and
Cecil Rhodes, he would pay his debt a hundredfold.
So they came at last to the wide, open veldt where Edwardstown was
situated, and knew themselves in the district teeming with pioneer
memories.
Meryl and Diana descended reluctantly at the hotel, and looked round
disparagingly at their little hot bedroom, thinking regretfully of
their tent in the wilderness.
"How awful," said Diana, "if we find ourselves never able to exist in
an ordinary house again! We shall have to pitch two tents in Hyde
Park. Ugh!... it positively smells of walls and doors and windows;
how I hate them!"
"We'll go on to Zimbabwe to-morrow and camp beside the ruins,"
answered Meryl. "How splendid to be going there so soon!"
"Ruins are not much in my line," quoth the outspoken. "Let's hope
there'll be a man there as well."
VII
CAREW IS DISTURBED
The news that the millionaire Henry Pym with his daughter and a niece
were journeying to Great Zimbabwe reached the police camp first
through a letter from the Administration to Major Carew, requesting
him to have the long, disfiguring dry grass burnt, and the
surroundings of the temple tidied up a little, and to show every
attention to the travellers. When he received the letter it was
obvious at once that the information did not give him any pleasure. On
the contrary, his expression as nearly approached a frown as he was
likely to permit it on receiving orders from headquarters. He had
opened the letter standing outside his hut, where it had been handed
to him by the native runner, and Stanley was reading a newspaper near,
while Moore affectionately handled an antediluvian gun he was thinking
of buying from a prospector.
Stanley glanced up, wondering what letters had come, and saw the
hovering frown.
"Any news, sir?" he asked frankly, for he was no longer in awe of his
silent chief. As a matter of fact, he never had been to any degree.
The Kid would have found it difficult to be in awe of anyone, but for
a few days Carew had baffled him.
"Henry Pym, you've probably heard of him, is likely to arrive here in
a few days."
Stanley opened his eyes a little. "What! the millionaire?... Good biz!
We'll rook him at poker and bridge and shooting, and a few other
things. It isn't right for him to have all that money. It would even
things up a little if we could transfer some of it to poor, penniless
policemen."
"He is accompanied by his daughter and a niece," said Carew in even
tones.
"Lord love a holy duck!..." exclaimed the young policeman, and was
fairly astonished on to his feet. "Coming here, sir?... Coming here to
Zimbabwe?"
"So the letter says. It also adds that they may wish to camp near, and
they are to be shown every attention."
"_They shall be_ ..." quoth The Kid, so comically that even Carew's
lips relaxed. "I suppose the letter doesn't specify the attention?...
Christopher Columbus!... Great Scott!... Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!...
To think of two millionaires' daughters all at once in this benighted,
thirsty land!... It fairly catches me in the breath," and he sat down
again suddenly as if the news was too much for him.
"By gad, Moore!... do you hear that?... a bloated millionaire and two
millionairesses are about to descend upon us from the skies. Talk of
manna and blessings coming down from heaven!... Give me
millionairesses!..."
The Irishman looked up with a knowing smile. "Shure!" said he, "give
me whisky...."
"Begorra, Pat!" laughed The Kid. "If you got the heiress you could
swim in whisky." Then he looked again at Major Carew and observed the
suggestion of a frown still on his face while he stood with the letter
in his hand.
"Heiresses are seemingly not much in your line, sir?" he suggested
humorously. "You ... well, you don't quite look overjoyed!..."
Carew in his quiet way had grown fond of the gay young trooper, and he
showed no offence at the attitude of familiarity.
"We shall have to consider a good camping-place for them, and probably
give up two huts to the ladies. I gather they may be here in two or
three days. Is the grass dry enough to burn to-night?"
The Kid glanced round doubtfully. "Hardly; and the place won't look
well all black."
"That's why I thought we had better begin at once. If they are some
days the ash will have had time to blow away. Arrange for a gang of
boys to be ready at six o'clock, and we will light up and see what we
can do."
In the hut he tossed the letter down on to his table. "Confound
it!..." he said under his breath. "Fancy women down here, staring and
chattering, and prying! I suppose they will expect the entire police
force in the neighbourhood to be at their disposal, and nothing else
will matter at all." His face grew more and more gloomy. "If I had
only started to M'rekwas yesterday, I could have been absent a
fortnight, and by then they would have departed again." He stood a
moment considering if he could start at once, and decided, as the
letter was sent specially to him, he could hardly leave before
carrying out his instructions.
Stanley and the other trooper meanwhile made hurried preparations for
a great fire. They lit up in the evening, having stationed boys at
intervals to keep the flames within bounds, and themselves stood
posted with their guns, hoping for a shot at wild pig or cheetah, or
possibly a lion or leopard. Carew kept guard at the huts, with a few
boys to beat off the flames that encroached to any danger points and
watch for flying sparks that might ignite the thatch. It was a
wonderful sight, and his eyes were full of appreciation as he watched
it. The gathering darkness, the lurid flames lighting up with swift
brightness the ancient ruins; the high Acropolis Hill on one side, the
low granite-strewn kopjes on the other, and running between the Valley
of Ruins, now a vale of fire.
It crossed his mind that it was almost a pity they had not left the
burning of the grass until the travellers arrived, that they might see
the strange, fantastic sight. But he cogitated that the millionaires
he had known hitherto had little appreciation for much beyond
money-making, and no doubt they were merely taking a passing glimpse
at the ruins; the man on some money-making quest, and the girls just
to be able to say they had seen them. His eyes rested on the temple
wall, and he felt suddenly absurdly resentful that these rich
pleasure-seekers should come even there to gape and stare. He had
grown to love the ruins dearly, until that moment he had scarcely
known how dearly, and to him it seemed for the moment like showing
some treasured personal relics to barbarians.
There were so many other things for the pleasure-seekers. Let them go
to the Falls, and Lake Nyassa, and the Himalayas, and those tourist
treasures; but why come and chatter inane banalities about his ruins:
his treasured, mysterious relic of perhaps the oldest civilisation
the world has known?
Of course, he knew perfectly that much controversy had raged round the
question, and that one or two learned scientists had definitely stated
their belief that the ruins were of comparatively recent date, and
deduced more or less convincing proofs in support of their theory; but
controversies and carefully worded reports were small things to the
man who had dwelt beside the mysterious temples and fortifications,
and learnt to love and treasure them. He had his proofs too and his
deductions, and such as they were they satisfied him, in the face of
all opposition, that the curious remains were indeed of great
antiquity, quite probably the ancient Havilah of the Scriptures. To
him every nook and every corner had its meaning and its history. In
the play of his fancy he had seen the white-robed priests and acolytes
in stately procession, amid the old, old walls; heard strains of
far-off music when an ancient worship offered its votary of prayer and
praise to that mysterious deity whom they believed in; heard perhaps a
single lovely voice, or seen a single lovely convert kneel before the
Sacred Enclosure. He had seen their strong men and their brave men and
their great men marshalling a host of women and children and infirm
citizens safely into the fastnesses of the Acropolis Hill, where, with
a sufficient supply of food and water, three thousand people might be
safely shielded for any length of time. He had seen them stand on the
high battlements, and look out across the plain or into the rock-hewn
kopjes for the hosts of the enemy. He had seen them, even when
besieged upon that mighty hill, assembling together to worship in the
temples they had laboriously raised upon the giant granite ledges.
Were they fair, those women of that old, old day? Were they brave,
were they mighty in stature, those men who evolved and achieved those
wonderful defence works? Did they love the fair land that fed them
with the love of home and country, or were they but sojourners for a
while amid unfriendly, cruel tribes, that needed watchful eyes day and
night? Led perhaps by a spirit of adventure, or by persecution
elsewhere, or by the lust of gold, yet faithful always to the worship
of their race, and building at infinite, incomprehensible pains those
temples in the alien land. How they held him; how they fascinated; how
they soothed with infinite soothing the bitter sorrow, the gaping,
stinging wound that had driven him furiously away, all those years
before, from the flesh-pots of a modern Babylon! Had he cared for it
all very much then?... He wondered, looking full and deep into his
hidden memories. Had the lights and the music, the song and dance, the
laughing women and reckless men, the midnight orgies and morning
headaches, really given him so much pleasure that he must needs fling
it all aside with such bitter anger and harsh regret when the
thunderbolt fell and the searching dart stabbed him awake? Outraged,
hurt-maddened, he had flung away, as he believed, to outer darkness,
and to a joyless, purposeless, colourless life. And he had found?...
Ah!... when he looked at the ancient, mysterious ruins he had grown to
love, and around upon a country that was life-hope and life-interest
to him, he knew that it was the other life which had been purposeless,
and all of one colour, and the self-chosen exile that had given him
the things it is good to live and breathe and die for.
And thinking of it all, with that shy softness which sometimes stole,
as it were, stealthily into his strong face in moments of dreaming
thought, he remembered with growing regret the advent of the party for
which he was bidden to make preparations, and resented it yet more
forcibly. Why need they come?... these women ... these spoiled,
flattered, perhaps vulgar, heiresses. What did they want with ancient
rites and wonderful relics of antiquities? What were they doing in
Rhodesia at all, flaunting their finery and their possessions before
the eyes of the hardy settlers and the plucky women who shared their
difficulties and disappointments? In a young, struggling country what
place was there for the idly, gracefully rich?
In his goaded fancy he saw their elegant, costly garments, and he
heard strident voices exclaiming shrilly at his treasure, perhaps
calling it an interesting heap of stones. Was there still time to get
away, he wondered? Could a sudden call be arranged?... a sudden need
for hasty departure?...
Let The Kid laugh the hours away with them, and take his fill of gay
companionship; and let him return when the siege was over, and the
soothing and the restfulness and the splendour had come back.
Wondering still, and with the sore regretfulness growing, he looked
round to make sure all was safe, and that no further danger need be
feared from blowing sparks or creeping flames; and then went gravely
into his hut to read.
The next morning he told Stanley that he might be obliged to go east
the following day on important business, and leave him to receive the
travellers, and remained imperturbably grave and non-seeing when
Stanley raised his eyebrows and regarded him with a little amused
twinkle of understanding.
But in the afternoon the party quite unexpectedly turned up, and
somewhere away in the blue, dreaming kopjes the voice of a following
fate laughed softly.
VIII
TWO UNEXPECTED MEETINGS
Early in the afternoon Carew rode to the mission station to tell Ailsa
Grenville and her husband of the expected visitors, and of how he was
likely to depart in the morning for M'rekwas and be away about a
fortnight.
Ailsa Grenville smiled at him archly when he told her. "Why do you run
away when, for once in a way, you have the chance of a little
companionship? It would do you more good to stay."
"I think not; and besides," he added, hastily, "I am going on
business."
"A convenient sort of business, I fancy. Why not wait and see them
first?"
"Well, I could hardly go away immediately after their arrival, when
Mr. Pym probably knows of the letter despatched to me from
headquarters. It is far simpler to send a runner back with excuses."
"But why go at all?" in a persuasive voice.
Carew walked to the door and knocked the ashes out of his pipe against
the heel of his boot; and Ailsa knew by his face that, though he did
not resent her questioning, he would take no notice of it. And it made
her a little sad, for of all the men she knew, next to Billy, her
husband, she admired Carew, and she regretted deeply his insistent
determination to stand aloof from mankind generally behind the
barriers he had built up.
Then Billy himself came in: khaki-clad, vigorous, and gay as ever; and
when he heard the news he was less reticent, and exclaimed outright,
"But what do you want to go away for? Why, it will be quite a treat
for you to have ladies there; and who knows, one of the heiresses may
be very charming--charming enough even for your fastidious taste!"
"I prefer the company of the veldt," was all he said, without relaxing
the fixity of his face; "ladies are more in Stanley's line."
"The Kid must be awfully pleased," Ailsa said, smiling. "I'm sure he
isn't going away."
Carew, lying back in a big chair, was leisurely lighting his pipe, and
he did not reply. All his attitude showed only cold indifference, and
it would have been difficult to believe that, even in his heart, he
had taken the trouble to be resentful. Ailsa, watching, felt a little
impatient with him. She wanted to break through the shell in which he
chose to hide that self which her instinct told her was so different
to his outward seeming. What had become of the gay Londoner, who drove
the smartest four-in-hand in the park, and rode the fastest horse to
hounds? She longed to write home and ask her people of his story, but
bitter things had been said when she elected to go into exile with her
husband, and there had been almost no correspondence since. And Billy
had been away in South Africa at the time of the crash and heard
nothing about it. All he could tell her was that Carew of the Blues
had been known as one of the gayest of the gay fifteen years or so
ago, and that suddenly he had seemed to vanish off the face of the
earth; and that Carew of the B.S.A.P. was the same man, only
different, and he must be over forty years of age. So she had to
content herself as well as she could, and be glad that, at any rate,
while he remained in the Victoria district, they could have his
companionship, though he chose to keep his own counsel as to why he
was there.
At first she had been rather afraid of him, and felt shy and awkward
when he came to see them; but Billy's attitude of jovial good
fellowship, in no way repulsed by the other's cold reserve, had helped
to reassure her, and now they both appeared unconscious of any lack of
warmth in their visitor. If he liked to be silent he could, and if he
seemed in a taciturn mood they took no notice.
When he called for his horse to return he said good-bye to her before
mounting, and spoke of not coming again for a fortnight, and she
watched him ride away regretfully. Evidently he did not mean to be
sociable, even to the lady travellers, and it was no use hoping
anything for him.
In the meantime, the first ambulance, containing Meryl and Diana,
arrived at the ruins. Mr. Pym was detained in Edwardstown with his
engineer, and might not join them until the next day, but the girls
begged him to let them go on, longing to be out in the open again,
away from hotels and bungalows.
So a police-boy from the town camp was sent on to escort them, and the
Zimbabwe camp notified by runner of their approach. Stanley opened the
letter in the absence of his chief, and much to his own delectation,
was waiting alone to receive them upon the chosen camping-ground on
their arrival. Diana saw him first, and remarked joyfully that he was
white.
"Hooroosh!..." said she, "there's a man as well as ruins." And a
little later, "I'm afraid he's only a boy, but he looks a nice boy,
and there are occasions when the 'half a loaf' proverb applies to
'half a man.'"
Then he helped her out of the ambulance after receiving them with a
grave salute, and regretted that, in the absence of Major Carew, there
was no one but himself to receive them. He was evidently a trifle shy
and embarrassed, stammering a little as he offered his services to
superintend the pitching of their camp, with eyes that would wander
from the elder cousin to Diana's small, impish, alluring face.