Pamela awoke with the sun flashing in her eyes as the heavy lids lifted
reluctantly to the flush of the new day. She sat up and looked from the
window which had remained open and unshuttered through the night. Dare
had left her shortly before two o'clock, and she had slept soundly until
roused by the sun, which newly risen shone golden in a cloudless sky.
Already its fiery heat penetrated into the carriage, and struck fiercely
on her hands and face, and upon the cushions of the seat which felt warm
under her touch.
She wondered whether Dare had slept, whether he slept still?
Involuntarily her thoughts turned back to the overnight vigil. She
reviewed with a regretful sense as of something past, gone irrevocably,
the quiet hours of intimate companionship, silent hours for the greater
part,--silent with that eloquence of wordlessness more assertive than
speech. A raised voice would have sounded intrusive, breaking the
stillness of the darkened carriage where they had sat close together,
gazing out upon the dusk, and whispering at intervals the thoughts which
sprang straight from the heart to the lips. That night with its beauty;
its stirrings of complex emotions, seeking and evading articulate
expression; its untellable happiness, made up mainly of physical
nearness and assimilated thoughts and feelings, had rolled back into the
past,--was curtained off for ever behind the obnubilating folds of
yesterday's mantle. Only memory remained; the vivid hours had faded
away in the dawn. Would any night ever mean so much to them again?
Pamela rose and made her toilet with the primitive arrangements provided
in the carriage. She felt crumpled and unrefreshed, the effects of
sleeping fully dressed. There was grit and sand in her hair. She
brushed and rearranged it by the aid of the tiny suspended mirror. Then
she dusted the compartment as well as she was able with a handkerchief;
the fine red sand of the Karroo penetrated everywhere, and lay thick
upon the baggage and the cushions of the seats.
She heard Dare moving in the next compartment; and felt glad that he too
was up early. When he joined her they would have an early breakfast of
fruit and biscuits.
She was ready for him when he tapped on the door. He slid the door back
in response to her permission to enter, and came in quietly and kissed
her.
"Sleep well?" he asked.
She nodded brightly.
"Like a top," she answered.
"You did it in a hurry then," he remarked. "It's only six now."
"Only six!" she repeated. "And feel how hot it is. What will it be
like at noon?"
"If you travel through the Karroo in February," he said, "you must
expect to find it sultry. You will have to keep the shutters closed on
the sunny side."
"But that shuts out the view," she objected. "I'm just loving this. I
never imagined anything so desolate and grand and inspiring."
"It's desolate enough," he admitted, glancing through the window out on
the wide scene.
They were in the heart of the Karroo now. The arid sandy soil was
sparsely covered with scrub and stunted mimosa bushes, and at intervals
low hills sprang unexpectedly to the view, giving the effect of dark
excrescences on the flat face of the land. Nothing green was visible;
everywhere the eye rested on parched, powdered soil and dry scrub,
beneath a brazen sky of hard, relentless blue.
They opened their baskets and broke their fast. Pamela was frankly
hungry; the clear light air of the Karroo stimulates the appetite; and
this early morning breakfast, with the warm sunlight streaming in
through the windows, with the light warm breeze on her face, stirring
the hair at her temples, was a new experience. She felt as she had felt
on the previous night, alive in every nerve and centre of her being,--
alert with the instinct of sheer gladness and joy in life; keenly
appreciative of each fresh sensation, each fresh aspect in the
constantly changing landscape as it unfolded itself to the view.
The stark barrenness of these vast tracks of no man's land appealed to
her senses acutely, stirred the imagination; contrasting sombrely with
the greater fertility which occasionally started up amid the desolation,
emphasising the sterility of the great plain which nursed these oases in
its bare bosom, and supplied them from sources denied itself. Here,
where the land was richer, where the rivers, dry at this season, had
their beds between wooded banks, were to be seen small isolated groups
of native huts, reed thatched, and patched with sacking and pieces of
tin; and little naked piccaninnies ran forward to meet the train, and
danced and shrieked excitedly, holding out little dark supplicating
hands in greedy anticipation. Pamela snatched a handful of fruit and
threw it to them, and leaning from the window, watched the eager race of
these children of the sun who scampered to get the prize.
"They are just sweet," she said, laughing.
"At a distance, yes," agreed Dare. "They are characteristic of the
country anyway--healthy, untrammelled, uncivilised."
He got up and leaned from the window beside her. They had left the
fertility behind. The ground became more stony, more strikingly naked.
The railway wound in and out among the hills,--brown hills, covered with
scrub, and strewn with huge boulders. There was no sight of a tree or
of any living thing. The wind blew fitfully and more strongly; hot
breaths of it were wafted in their faces, carrying with it a fine red
grit which made the eyes sore.
Dare watched the eager, intent face with a slightly amused smile.
Pamela's keen enjoyment of everything reduced the discomfort of the long
tiring journey to a minimum. She was making of it a picnic, and he was
glad to fall in with her mood.
"We will take advantage of the next stop," he said, "and make our way to
the breakfast-car. I need something more substantial than fruit to face
the day upon."
He was wise in insisting upon a substantial breakfast; the heat, later
in the day, deprived them both of appetite. Pamela refused to go to
lunch, and Dare, equally disinclined for food, remained with her in the
compartment, sitting opposite her on the shady side of the stifling
carriage, keenly observant of her as she sat, limp and pale with the
heat, but still interested; noting everything with languid, amazed blue
eyes while the train rushed onward across the burning plain, through
miles of uncultivated land, vast tracks of sun-drenched, treeless
desert, where in patches of startling green, showing vividly amid the
blackened scrub, its pale fingers pointing skyward, the milkbush
flourished, hardy plant of the dry Karroo, which like the cactus draws
its sustenance from the dews. Bleached bones of cattle strewed the
ground in places, and about the farms, springing up occasionally out of
the barrenness, the lean stock moved listlessly, feeding on the
insufficient vegetation.
Farther on, in the dry bed of a river, a few hollow-flanked oxen lay,
too weak to rise, their big soft eyes dim with suffering; and on the
banks starved sheep were dying on the blackened veld, victims of the
merciless drought that had swept the land bare as though devastated by
fire. The aasvogels, perched on the telegraph poles along the railway,
waited sombrely; grim birds of prey, with their bare ugly necks and
gloomy eyes, ready to swoop when the last faint flicker of life died
out.
Little whirlpools of dust rose on the flats, small, detached, yellow
clouds, disturbed by some local puff of wind; and across the hard blue
of the sky a few fleecy clouds floated lazily, throwing moving shadows
of dense black upon the kopjes that appeared at frequent and unexpected
intervals parallel with the line. Lonely graves of British soldiers,
reminiscent of the ugly past, lay thickly at the foot of these deadly
hills.
"This," Pamela said, bringing her face round and looking with troubled
eyes at Dare, "makes my heart ache. This is truly the Desolate Way.
But it's impressive,--it's amazing. I feel all stirred."
"Yes," he said; "one can't help feeling that. It's the actuality of
life struggling with death, an everlasting grapple with indeterminate
result. One sees here the forces of nature incessantly warring, the
elements of productiveness and destruction constantly opposed. One day
these elements will be brought into subjection. The railway is the
first step in linking up these waste places with our tentative
civilisation. This country is in the lap of the future."
"I would sooner see it as it is," she said.
"So would I," he agreed. "Civilisation could never excite one's
imagination as this untamed land does. It's a fine country,--worth the
sacrifice of a good deal."
"But not worth that," she said, and pointed to the cairns of stones with
the little wooden crosses standing above them. There were so many of
these relics along the route.
"That's the part that shows," he returned. "It has cost more than
that."
She was silent for a while, gazing from the window as she leaned back in
her seat Dare had bought some pineapples at De Aar that the natives were
selling on the platform, and he cut one of the fruit in half, and gave
it to her with a spoon, that being, he assured her, the only way in
which a pineapple should be eaten.
"If I had come alone," Pamela said, "I should have fared badly."
"You couldn't have made this journey alone," he said decidedly. "It's
unthinkable."
The wind was rising steadily, a hot wind, that stirred the sticky red
sand and carried it in clouds towards them till it covered everything.
Whirlpools of red dust, rising skyward like tongues of furiously
swirling flame, travelled with extraordinary velocity along the ground.
There were farms here too, and cultivated patches of grain, and more
lean sheep; and at infrequent intervals, marking a spot of beauty in
this sterile waste, grew low, spiky, darkly green bushes starred with
white blossom resembling cherry blossom, and straggling clumps of the
prickly pear.
"And people live on these lonely farms," Pamela said. "I wonder what
their lives are like? Think of it, day after day--only this."
"Fairly dull," Dare commented. "But it's extraordinary how little they
regard it. I've stayed on some of these Karroo farms. It isn't half
bad."
"As an experience, perhaps not... But to live there!"
"There are conditions," he returned, "in which such isolation might be
agreeable."
"They would be quite extraordinary conditions," she rejoined. "Most of
those people are probably ordinary folk with ordinary feelings. I can't
imagine it myself. It appears to me depressingly monotonous. How tired
they must grow of one another."
He looked amused.
"It is possible to attain to that state of boredom even in big centres,"
he argued.
"Well, yes, of course. But there are distractions. One isn't so
entirely dependent on one another."
"That's the strongest argument in favour of these cut off places," he
returned. "Such absolute dependence must develop qualities of
kindliness and toleration which would encourage the companionable
spirit. I don't think it would irk me under the right conditions. The
heart of the Karroo would be heaven with the right person to share one's
life."
"I suppose any exile might be acceptable in that case," Pamela said,
gravely returning his look. "But I don't fancy it happens often in life
that the right people come together."
"That is sometimes their own fault," he answered quietly. He leaned
suddenly towards her, and took and held her hand. "We are in a fair way
to commit that blunder, Pamela. We are stumbling forward, following
blindly the leading of a blind fate, and cutting the ground behind us,
closing every retreat. I'm gripped with a conviction at times that we
are acting foolishly,--that afterwards we shall regret."
"Regret!" she echoed a little bitterly. "Life is one long regret."
"It is in our own hands," he said. "The choice is always ours."
"No," she said, "no!"
She drew her hand gently from his and turned her face aside quickly,
afraid to meet the love in his eyes, afraid of the earnest persuasion of
his manner as he presented their case anew for her consideration. It
was hard to withstand him. But free choice, she realised, was the one
thing which was not permitted them; for her it was not a question of
choice at all; it was a matter of controlled and unquestionable
necessity. If she turned back now it would be to own herself beaten at
every point along the road of life. That would insure regret also--more
than regret. A shameful consciousness of failure would stultify any
satisfaction that love would bring them; and in watching her children
grow up about her she would be reminded continually of how completely
she had failed in her duty to them. They would be to her always a
lasting reproach.
"You are bent on making a hard business of life," he said.
His voice held a dissatisfied ring; his eyes, as they rested on her
half-averted face, wore a look of baffled perplexity. It had not been
his intention to make this further appeal; he was vexed with himself for
troubling her; but at the moment he could not have kept the words back.
"Whatever course I took the path would be difficult," she answered,
"because I took the wrong step years ago. One can't go back, you see,
and start again. One has to make the best of one's mistakes. That's
why we are parting now, dear,--you and I. There isn't any choice in it
at all."
He moved to her side of the compartment and sat down close to her.
"I've got to submit to your ruling," he said; "I know that... And I'm
doing it, doing it with an ill grace, perhaps; but you can't expect too
much. There's just one little ray of comfort left me, Pamela... Shall
I tell you what that is?"
She slipped a hand into his.
"Tell me," she said softly.
"It's that I have a presentiment at the back of my mind that one day in
the future--how far off or how near, I cannot say--we shall come
together--be together always. I don't feel that we are parting. We
aren't parting--not finally. This is an ugly phase in our intercourse--
a rude breaking away of vital things that entails a certain loss--
temporary loss. Afterwards we shall meet again, farther along the
journey. Then we'll finish the journey together."
She made no answer. She turned to him in silence, and drew his face to
hers and kissed him with grave tenderness upon the mouth. After that
they did not talk again for some considerable time.