thread in her fingers. Evidently it was a subject that moved her
deeply. "Of course, you know the verse from 'The Ship of Fools':
'We are those fools who could not rest
In the dull earth we left behind,
And burned with passion for the West,
And drank strange frenzy from its wind.
The world where wise men live at ease
Fades from our unregretful eyes,
And blind, across uncharted seas,
We stagger on our enterprise.'
"Those are the men who appeal to me; the men to whom gain is the
secondary consideration; who come blindly out just as much to give as
to take. My husband is one, Major Carew is another, Stanley under
Carew's influence will become a third. Think of them all, all over the
world; guarding the frontiers, making the paths, exploring the
danger-zones!
"Think of the little band now gone into the sleeping-sickness belt to
investigate the disease, and try to learn how best to cope with it!
How little reward will they get! how little acclaim! But that is just
a side issue. They did not go for reward. Disaster shook a
threatening hand at a splendid young country, and instantly some from
The Ship of Fools were ready to risk their lives in going to the
rescue. God bless them for it, and bring them safely back! But in any
case one knows they will be content, if but the work is carried
forward and the new pathways rendered safe.
"Those types of men are the heroes of to-day, because the spread of
the Empire, and the welfare and progress of the colonies, grows every
year a more important factor to England; yet many a good football
player, and many a popular actor, will win an honoured name, while the
man who died at the outposts in some dangerous investigation work will
pass away unknown and unheard of. But they do not mind, that is the
splendid thing. They are just fools, fools, fools
'Who burned with passion for the West,
And drank strange frenzy from its wind.
* * * * *
And blind, across uncharted seas,
They stagger to their enterprise.'
"How many threw up everything at home and came out in the time of the
Boer War! Think of the men who carried the railways across Canada and
America, fighting for the pathway, step by step! Think of them in the
awful climate of West Africa, laughing and playing and singing one
evening and dead the next! Think of them struggling up here in the
early days, and undaunted by the horrors of the Matabele rebellions,
going steadily on with their railways, making their homes! Think of
them in India! Ah! what The Ship of Fools has achieved in India is
beyond telling. Only one doesn't feel it in the same way at home. One
has to come out oneself, and see the path-finders at their work, to
realise all it means. It does one good just to hear them grumble. How
shall I explain? It makes you understand that they are the sort of
heroes who hate to be thought heroic; so they grouse and swear and
grumble; and talk about a God-forsaken country and a God-forsaken
existence, and wonder what in the name of all that is wonderful they
are here for. And perhaps they go off home vowing never to return;
until the 'strange frenzy' catches them again, and back comes the dear
Ship of Fools, with every berth taken and the stoutest grumblers
hurrying to be the first ashore. Fools or heroes, it is much the same.
I think I have read somewhere that a man couldn't be a hero unless he
were also a fool."
Meryl got up, and moved behind her companion's chair that she might
not see the glisten in her eyes, for the longing for that one
Fool-Hero who had brought such sudden desolation in her heart. Placing
her hands on the back of it, she leaned over her affectionately and
said, "It doesn't carry men only, that ship of yours: some of the
fools are women. O, I know, I know; you are one of the chief among
them and I envy you." In a whisper, "God knows, I envy you."
Ailsa reached a hand back and laid it over the girl's. "It is very
sweet of you to say so, but I mayn't accept it. Seeing I have a
husband like Billy, I should be a very real fool in the most literal
sense if I stayed away. No, the women-heroes in this land are those
who face it with a careless, selfish husband, or perhaps in a home
having no love, and who win through their little day and make no
plaint. God help them!"
"And you mustn't envy me," she added after a moment, "for presently,
you will be doing far more than I can ever hope to do. Because it is
in your heart it will find a way, and then your money will give you a
great power and influence. Be hopeful, you sweet child," with a little
playful pat. "Your eyes are over-sad for twenty-four, and sometimes
when you smile it goes no further than your lips."
Meryl brushed her hand quickly across her eyes, and tried to laugh
with an attempt at lightness.
"O yes, I will. When I get back home I'll sign cheques, and more
cheques, it is so easy for me. And I'll persuade father to plan out a
scheme to bring settlers on the land; land scholarships for
public-school boys, or something of that sort; and I'll try and
comfort myself with the thought that in this way he is giving back for
what he has received. I think I'll take a stroll now it is cooler. The
others will no doubt come back to-morrow, and this may be my last
evening in this part of the world. I know you want to worry your
cook-boy and your head about the dinner, so I'll just go a little way
alone."
"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 Brontë:
"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
æsthetic and the practical, and so they appeal to the æsthetic or the
practical side of man."
She wondered if it were possible such as he should have an æsthetic
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 æstheticism
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 naïvely; "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!..."