Chapter Twenty Eight.The mood in which Dare started on the journey to Pretoria was one of mingled sensations. A persuasion of irreparable loss qualified the immediate satisfaction he experienced in being uninterruptedly alone with Pamela. The joy he felt in having her to himself, withdrawn from outside influences, from ties and conventional restrictions, was considerably reduced when he reflected that this present close companionship was the forerunner of a more complete separation than any they had previously known. They were acting in deliberate concert in closing all the tracks which had led to the converging of their life paths, making it impossible that they should ever cross again. In doing this together they lost sight for the time of the reality of parting. There was a flavour of adventure in the proceeding which Dare at least appreciated; although it foreshadowed the inevitable parting, it seemed to set it further apart,—a vague forbidding cloud which threatened to break and deluge them later, but loomed remotely on the horizon of the present, a misfortune that some unforeseen agency might yet avert.Pamela remained very quiet and still during the first hour of the journey. The excitement and bustle of departure, with Mrs Carruthers and the children, a noisy and somewhat unmanageable group about the door of the compartment which Dare had secured to themselves, left her slightly depressed when it subsided. She leaned from the window as the train glided out of the station, waving her handkerchief to the children, whom Mrs Carruthers grasped determinedly one by either hand, until the train bore her from their view; then, dispirited, conscious of the abrupt reaction, she sank back in her seat, the sudden tears smarting under her eyelids at the sense of loneliness which the fading of the bright faces, the cessation of the gay childish voices, induced.Dare busied himself with the disposition of the baggage and refrained from noticing her. It occurred to him that she might feel some slight embarrassment in the first moments of realising how completely she was cut off from outside things in this solitude of days to be passed in his sole company. He believed that she had not taken into consideration the fact of this uninterrupted intercourse to which he had looked forward with such eagerness; that aspect of the journey had probably never presented itself to her mind. In which surmise he was entirely right; Pamela had not considered the matter of their complete isolation. When it dawned upon her it did not, however, cause her any embarrassment. She was less self-conscious than Dare in respect to their relations. It never occurred to her to disguise from herself or from him the comfort and pleasure she derived from his friendship. When one is facing serious issues the smaller concerns of life assume a proportionate insignificance; and the appearance of one’s actions ceases to disturb the mind confident that its motives are right.When Dare, having settled things in their places, sat down opposite to her and offered her a pile of periodicals to help pass the time, she put them down on the seat beside her, and evinced a disposition to talk.Pamela had done so little travelling in the Colony that she was interested in the scenery, and immensely impressed with its magnificence, as any traveller must be, seeing it for the first time. Had it not been for the serious object of the journey, she would have enjoyed the experience thoroughly; but the thought of Arnott, of meeting him, of the possible difficulty of persuading him to return with her, as well as the shock of his illness, damped her spirit, hung over her like a nightmare. She was terribly afraid that this man who had treated her so infamously would refuse her request even now. The contemplation of enforcing the fulfilment of his obligation by a threat of proceeding against him chilled her. If it came to the point, she could not, she felt, do that.“It’s wonderful—this,” she said, gazing out of the window at the wide sweep of country through which they were passing. “I’ve never been up the line before. It’s new to me, travelling through sunlit spaces like this. See the flowers in the veld. I can smell them as we pass.”He looked from the window with her, sharing her pleasure in the unexpected beauty which developed and changed surprisingly, became more assertive, more strikingly characteristic with every mile they traversed, as leaving the green fertility of the Peninsula, and the blue line of the Atlantic, behind, the train plunged into the rugged open country, where the long lush grass was splashed with vivid colour, with the orange and purple and crimson of the wild flowers that struggled amid the tangled growth; where the mountain ranges showed blue in the blue distance, which like an azure veil spread itself over the golden riot of the sunshine.“I’ve dwelt in fancy on this often,” he said,—“travelling with you,—seeing new places with you. I’m fond of scenery. I like going about. But always I take you with me in imagination. I knew you’d enjoy it. I enjoy it as I never enjoyed before—because of you.”Pamela did not remove her gaze from the landscape, but she slipped her hand along the ledge of the window until it met his; and for a while they remained in silence, watching the view together.“I have often had a feeling that some day we should do this journey, you and I,” he said presently. “But I didn’t suppose it would be under these conditions... God knows what I thought! I’ve always been a dreamer... I pictured breaking the journey with you. There are one or two places along the line that are well worth a visit. It makes the journey easier. You will be pretty well tired out before we reach Pretoria.”She nodded.“Yes,” she said. “But we couldn’t do that.”“No; I suppose we can’t. That’s the pity of it. But it is good as it is,” he added, glancing at her with a smile. “We’ll make the most of this... Why not? It’s the finish. It will be something for me to look back upon anyway, when you are just a memory to me.”Her face clouded at his words, suggesting in their quiet finality the complete separation which the end of the journey promised. In their frank acknowledgement of their mutual love, both realised that meeting in the future was impossible, at any rate for many years. Perhaps when time had reconciled them to parting they might meet again as friends.“I have secured a berth for myself in the next compartment,” he observed, after a pause. “I’ve got it to myself. So if you require anything when I am not with you, you have only to knock in to me, and I shall hear. When you want to be alone, just say the word, and I’ll dear out.”Pamela smiled at him gravely. That was just what she did not want—to be alone. His presence was an immense comfort to her. She doubted whether she could have undertaken this difficult journey without him,—have faced, without his support, the still more difficult task which awaited her at the journey’s end. He inspired her with confidence and courage. She knew that as long as she needed him he would not fail her,—he would see her through to the finish.They lunched at a little table together in the dining-car, and afterwards Dare insisted that she should rest for a while; for the day was hot, and the compartment, with all the windows open, was oppressively close. He settled her comfortably, and went out into the corridor to smoke. And Pamela, drowsy with the heat and the motion, fell asleep, and did not wake until nearly four. When she opened her eyes again, Dare was standing in the doorway of the compartment, looking down at her. He smiled as their glances met. Then he came forward and bent and kissed her. She flushed brightly, and sat up.“By all the rules of the game I ought not to have done that,” he said. “But—may I?”She rose, and put her two hands on his shoulders and looked him squarely in the eyes.“Why not?” she said.Her hands slipped round his neck until they met behind.“We are hungry for love, and we are giving up everything. Why should we deny ourselves the bare crumbs? And it will be ended so soon. I don’t see any harm in it at all... Do you?”“No,” he said, with his arms about her. “I suppose I view it in much the same way as yourself. But the world wouldn’t, you know.”“Oh, the world!” Pamela pressed closer to him. “We are out of the world, dear, just for this journey. We have left it behind... we’re away from it all—alone—you and I. We are going to have this time together,—a glimpse of Heaven to brighten the drab world when we get back to earth. I want to make the most of it—of every minute. I don’t want to sleep away the hours, as I did this afternoon. It wasn’t kind of you to send me to sleep. Afterwards, when we are back in the world, then I’ll sleep, but not now. To-night I shall sit up quite late. I shall keep you with me. We’ll watch the night close down upon the veld, and look out upon the moving darkness together, and forget the world entirely and all this weary business of life... My dear! ... Oh, my dear!”He bent his head lower until their lips met.The long hot day drew to its close, and the brief twilight descended. They dined as they had lunched at the little table together. There were very few passengers on the train; the seats in the dining-car, save for one or two, were unoccupied. This was due to the season. It was a satisfaction to Dare, as it insured their greater privacy. He had secured their compartments at the end of the corridor so that they should not be disturbed with people passing; each detail had been carefully considered and carried out, and everything that experience had taught him as necessary to the comfort of a long train journey in the hot weather had been provided. Pamela lacked nothing which forethought could devise. Fruit there was in abundance, and cooling drinks suspended from the carriage window in Dare’s canvas water-bag. The dry air of the Karroo induces thirst. Pamela, who had come away entirely unprovided, was grateful to him for his thought for her.“You are a wonderful person; you’ve forgotten nothing,” she said.“I am an old hand,” he replied. “I do not travel with a beautiful trust in Providence, and a blind faith in the commissariat of the railway, like this other wonderful person. To-morrow and the next day you will know what thirst means.”“I think we shall be able to satisfy it,” she said, regarding the hamper of fruit on the opposite seat. “It’s like a huge picnic, isn’t it? I feel—excited.”He laughed, and passed an arm about her, holding her comfortably against his shoulder. She rested so for a while quietly.“I have drunk of the waters of Lethe,” she said, looking up at him after a silence. “I am like a woman whose memory has gone. Everything is a blank, save the present. It’s good, isn’t it?”“It’s more than good,” he replied.He gazed down into the sweet face resting against his shoulder, and smiled into the deep, serious eyes.“Tired?” he asked.“No,” she answered.“We’ve been travelling over nine hours,” he said. “We shall reach Matjesfontein shortly.”“Do we stop there?”“Only for a minute or two. Then you will see the Karroo at night.”“It’s night now,” she said. “But it isn’t dark.”“It’s a clear night,” he answered. “It won’t get darker than this. See the stars, Pamela?”She turned to look from the window.“There is too much light in the carriage,” she said, leaning out into the warm dusk, and gazing upon the shadowed landscape which gave an impression of movement, as though it swept past the lighted train.Dare got up and switched off the light. She turned her head quickly.“Oh! I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. “That’s much nicer.”He returned and seated himself beside her, and leaned from the broad window with his face close to hers. She touched his cheek with her own caressingly.“Night on the veld,” she whispered,—“and just we two alone—watching. All those other people... they don’t count. I love it—don’t you? Do you notice the scents? They are stronger than in the daytime. What is it. I can smell as we go along? Something... it’s like heliotrope.”“The night convolvulus,” he answered. “The veld is smothered with it in places. All the best scents in Africa are night scents. The night is the best time of all.”“Yes; it’s the best time,” she agreed. “A night like this! ... Isn’t it perfect? I am alive as I have never felt before. It’s as though all my senses were quickened. I didn’t know it was possible to enjoy so intensely. I wish this could last for ever... I wish that I might fall asleep presently, and wake no more... Don’t let us talk... Let us watch together—like this,—and just feel...”And so they remained, this man and woman who loved hopelessly, silent in the darkened carriage, with faces pressed close against each other,—intent on one another to the exclusion of every other thought,—clinging together in a mute sympathy, and a love which had gone beyond utterance, got above and outside ordinary physical passion, and stood for what it was,—the supreme thing in their lives,—the best that life had offered them, which neither separation nor sorrow could filch from their possession.And the train rushed on through the clear, luminous night that, warm still and fragrant with the hundred different scents of the Karroo, never darkened beyond a twilight duskiness, in which the veld showed darkly defined against the deepening purple of the sky, where a young moon rode like a white sickle amid the countless stars.
The mood in which Dare started on the journey to Pretoria was one of mingled sensations. A persuasion of irreparable loss qualified the immediate satisfaction he experienced in being uninterruptedly alone with Pamela. The joy he felt in having her to himself, withdrawn from outside influences, from ties and conventional restrictions, was considerably reduced when he reflected that this present close companionship was the forerunner of a more complete separation than any they had previously known. They were acting in deliberate concert in closing all the tracks which had led to the converging of their life paths, making it impossible that they should ever cross again. In doing this together they lost sight for the time of the reality of parting. There was a flavour of adventure in the proceeding which Dare at least appreciated; although it foreshadowed the inevitable parting, it seemed to set it further apart,—a vague forbidding cloud which threatened to break and deluge them later, but loomed remotely on the horizon of the present, a misfortune that some unforeseen agency might yet avert.
Pamela remained very quiet and still during the first hour of the journey. The excitement and bustle of departure, with Mrs Carruthers and the children, a noisy and somewhat unmanageable group about the door of the compartment which Dare had secured to themselves, left her slightly depressed when it subsided. She leaned from the window as the train glided out of the station, waving her handkerchief to the children, whom Mrs Carruthers grasped determinedly one by either hand, until the train bore her from their view; then, dispirited, conscious of the abrupt reaction, she sank back in her seat, the sudden tears smarting under her eyelids at the sense of loneliness which the fading of the bright faces, the cessation of the gay childish voices, induced.
Dare busied himself with the disposition of the baggage and refrained from noticing her. It occurred to him that she might feel some slight embarrassment in the first moments of realising how completely she was cut off from outside things in this solitude of days to be passed in his sole company. He believed that she had not taken into consideration the fact of this uninterrupted intercourse to which he had looked forward with such eagerness; that aspect of the journey had probably never presented itself to her mind. In which surmise he was entirely right; Pamela had not considered the matter of their complete isolation. When it dawned upon her it did not, however, cause her any embarrassment. She was less self-conscious than Dare in respect to their relations. It never occurred to her to disguise from herself or from him the comfort and pleasure she derived from his friendship. When one is facing serious issues the smaller concerns of life assume a proportionate insignificance; and the appearance of one’s actions ceases to disturb the mind confident that its motives are right.
When Dare, having settled things in their places, sat down opposite to her and offered her a pile of periodicals to help pass the time, she put them down on the seat beside her, and evinced a disposition to talk.
Pamela had done so little travelling in the Colony that she was interested in the scenery, and immensely impressed with its magnificence, as any traveller must be, seeing it for the first time. Had it not been for the serious object of the journey, she would have enjoyed the experience thoroughly; but the thought of Arnott, of meeting him, of the possible difficulty of persuading him to return with her, as well as the shock of his illness, damped her spirit, hung over her like a nightmare. She was terribly afraid that this man who had treated her so infamously would refuse her request even now. The contemplation of enforcing the fulfilment of his obligation by a threat of proceeding against him chilled her. If it came to the point, she could not, she felt, do that.
“It’s wonderful—this,” she said, gazing out of the window at the wide sweep of country through which they were passing. “I’ve never been up the line before. It’s new to me, travelling through sunlit spaces like this. See the flowers in the veld. I can smell them as we pass.”
He looked from the window with her, sharing her pleasure in the unexpected beauty which developed and changed surprisingly, became more assertive, more strikingly characteristic with every mile they traversed, as leaving the green fertility of the Peninsula, and the blue line of the Atlantic, behind, the train plunged into the rugged open country, where the long lush grass was splashed with vivid colour, with the orange and purple and crimson of the wild flowers that struggled amid the tangled growth; where the mountain ranges showed blue in the blue distance, which like an azure veil spread itself over the golden riot of the sunshine.
“I’ve dwelt in fancy on this often,” he said,—“travelling with you,—seeing new places with you. I’m fond of scenery. I like going about. But always I take you with me in imagination. I knew you’d enjoy it. I enjoy it as I never enjoyed before—because of you.”
Pamela did not remove her gaze from the landscape, but she slipped her hand along the ledge of the window until it met his; and for a while they remained in silence, watching the view together.
“I have often had a feeling that some day we should do this journey, you and I,” he said presently. “But I didn’t suppose it would be under these conditions... God knows what I thought! I’ve always been a dreamer... I pictured breaking the journey with you. There are one or two places along the line that are well worth a visit. It makes the journey easier. You will be pretty well tired out before we reach Pretoria.”
She nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “But we couldn’t do that.”
“No; I suppose we can’t. That’s the pity of it. But it is good as it is,” he added, glancing at her with a smile. “We’ll make the most of this... Why not? It’s the finish. It will be something for me to look back upon anyway, when you are just a memory to me.”
Her face clouded at his words, suggesting in their quiet finality the complete separation which the end of the journey promised. In their frank acknowledgement of their mutual love, both realised that meeting in the future was impossible, at any rate for many years. Perhaps when time had reconciled them to parting they might meet again as friends.
“I have secured a berth for myself in the next compartment,” he observed, after a pause. “I’ve got it to myself. So if you require anything when I am not with you, you have only to knock in to me, and I shall hear. When you want to be alone, just say the word, and I’ll dear out.”
Pamela smiled at him gravely. That was just what she did not want—to be alone. His presence was an immense comfort to her. She doubted whether she could have undertaken this difficult journey without him,—have faced, without his support, the still more difficult task which awaited her at the journey’s end. He inspired her with confidence and courage. She knew that as long as she needed him he would not fail her,—he would see her through to the finish.
They lunched at a little table together in the dining-car, and afterwards Dare insisted that she should rest for a while; for the day was hot, and the compartment, with all the windows open, was oppressively close. He settled her comfortably, and went out into the corridor to smoke. And Pamela, drowsy with the heat and the motion, fell asleep, and did not wake until nearly four. When she opened her eyes again, Dare was standing in the doorway of the compartment, looking down at her. He smiled as their glances met. Then he came forward and bent and kissed her. She flushed brightly, and sat up.
“By all the rules of the game I ought not to have done that,” he said. “But—may I?”
She rose, and put her two hands on his shoulders and looked him squarely in the eyes.
“Why not?” she said.
Her hands slipped round his neck until they met behind.
“We are hungry for love, and we are giving up everything. Why should we deny ourselves the bare crumbs? And it will be ended so soon. I don’t see any harm in it at all... Do you?”
“No,” he said, with his arms about her. “I suppose I view it in much the same way as yourself. But the world wouldn’t, you know.”
“Oh, the world!” Pamela pressed closer to him. “We are out of the world, dear, just for this journey. We have left it behind... we’re away from it all—alone—you and I. We are going to have this time together,—a glimpse of Heaven to brighten the drab world when we get back to earth. I want to make the most of it—of every minute. I don’t want to sleep away the hours, as I did this afternoon. It wasn’t kind of you to send me to sleep. Afterwards, when we are back in the world, then I’ll sleep, but not now. To-night I shall sit up quite late. I shall keep you with me. We’ll watch the night close down upon the veld, and look out upon the moving darkness together, and forget the world entirely and all this weary business of life... My dear! ... Oh, my dear!”
He bent his head lower until their lips met.
The long hot day drew to its close, and the brief twilight descended. They dined as they had lunched at the little table together. There were very few passengers on the train; the seats in the dining-car, save for one or two, were unoccupied. This was due to the season. It was a satisfaction to Dare, as it insured their greater privacy. He had secured their compartments at the end of the corridor so that they should not be disturbed with people passing; each detail had been carefully considered and carried out, and everything that experience had taught him as necessary to the comfort of a long train journey in the hot weather had been provided. Pamela lacked nothing which forethought could devise. Fruit there was in abundance, and cooling drinks suspended from the carriage window in Dare’s canvas water-bag. The dry air of the Karroo induces thirst. Pamela, who had come away entirely unprovided, was grateful to him for his thought for her.
“You are a wonderful person; you’ve forgotten nothing,” she said.
“I am an old hand,” he replied. “I do not travel with a beautiful trust in Providence, and a blind faith in the commissariat of the railway, like this other wonderful person. To-morrow and the next day you will know what thirst means.”
“I think we shall be able to satisfy it,” she said, regarding the hamper of fruit on the opposite seat. “It’s like a huge picnic, isn’t it? I feel—excited.”
He laughed, and passed an arm about her, holding her comfortably against his shoulder. She rested so for a while quietly.
“I have drunk of the waters of Lethe,” she said, looking up at him after a silence. “I am like a woman whose memory has gone. Everything is a blank, save the present. It’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s more than good,” he replied.
He gazed down into the sweet face resting against his shoulder, and smiled into the deep, serious eyes.
“Tired?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
“We’ve been travelling over nine hours,” he said. “We shall reach Matjesfontein shortly.”
“Do we stop there?”
“Only for a minute or two. Then you will see the Karroo at night.”
“It’s night now,” she said. “But it isn’t dark.”
“It’s a clear night,” he answered. “It won’t get darker than this. See the stars, Pamela?”
She turned to look from the window.
“There is too much light in the carriage,” she said, leaning out into the warm dusk, and gazing upon the shadowed landscape which gave an impression of movement, as though it swept past the lighted train.
Dare got up and switched off the light. She turned her head quickly.
“Oh! I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. “That’s much nicer.”
He returned and seated himself beside her, and leaned from the broad window with his face close to hers. She touched his cheek with her own caressingly.
“Night on the veld,” she whispered,—“and just we two alone—watching. All those other people... they don’t count. I love it—don’t you? Do you notice the scents? They are stronger than in the daytime. What is it. I can smell as we go along? Something... it’s like heliotrope.”
“The night convolvulus,” he answered. “The veld is smothered with it in places. All the best scents in Africa are night scents. The night is the best time of all.”
“Yes; it’s the best time,” she agreed. “A night like this! ... Isn’t it perfect? I am alive as I have never felt before. It’s as though all my senses were quickened. I didn’t know it was possible to enjoy so intensely. I wish this could last for ever... I wish that I might fall asleep presently, and wake no more... Don’t let us talk... Let us watch together—like this,—and just feel...”
And so they remained, this man and woman who loved hopelessly, silent in the darkened carriage, with faces pressed close against each other,—intent on one another to the exclusion of every other thought,—clinging together in a mute sympathy, and a love which had gone beyond utterance, got above and outside ordinary physical passion, and stood for what it was,—the supreme thing in their lives,—the best that life had offered them, which neither separation nor sorrow could filch from their possession.
And the train rushed on through the clear, luminous night that, warm still and fragrant with the hundred different scents of the Karroo, never darkened beyond a twilight duskiness, in which the veld showed darkly defined against the deepening purple of the sky, where a young moon rode like a white sickle amid the countless stars.
Chapter Twenty Nine.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.
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.
Chapter Thirty.Night! ... night on the veld once more—another luminous night of stars and sweet scents, and the haunting sense of mystery and isolation and intimate companionship, interrupted at intervals of ever greater frequency as the train ran into some wayside station, and hurrying forms moved along the platform, and gazed with faint curiosity into the unlighted carriage, as they passed the open windows and caught a momentary glimpse of the dim faces of a man and woman watching together in the night.“Ghosts!” Pamela said once, pressing closer against Dare. “Shadows of the night,—flitting in the darkness, and swallowed up in it again. I wonder what they make of us, those ghosts?—two live people alone in a shadow world.”She shivered slightly as the train sped onward again. Dare took a wrap from the seat and placed it about her shoulders. The temperature had fallen perceptibly. The fierce heat of the day was succeeded by the cold of the Transvaal night,—the cold of a high bracing altitude, following with surprising suddenness on the dry, burning heat of the Karroo. The fierceness and the desolation lay behind. The country presented here a fertile wooded beauty, startling in its greenness, following upon the arid desert through which they had passed.“Don’t leave me to-night,” Pamela said presently, gripping his hand tightly. “Stay, and let us see it out together. It’s the finish... our last night. To-morrow...”“There is no to-morrow,” he interposed quickly. “We have no concern with anything but the present I’ll stay... I want to stay. Lean against me, and sleep if you feel like it. I’d like you to sleep, Pamela.”She laughed softly.“I don’t want to lose one precious moment in sleep,” she said. “Now talk to me.”“Last night,” he reminded her, “you didn’t want to talk.”“I know. But to-night it’s different. There is so little time left. We have got to crowd everything into to-night. I want a store of memories,—a little harvest of summer thoughts to draw upon when the winter comes. We’ve talked so little.”“We’ve managed to express a lot without words,” he said.“Yes,” she said... “feelings. We’ve expressed ourselves somehow mutely. We get near to one another mentally. When I can’t see you any more I shall still have that sense of nearness. You’ll be there—somewhere.”The arm with which he supported her held her more closely. He looked down at the shadowy outline of her face in the darkness where it rested against his shoulder, and his lips tightened suddenly. Why, in the name of all that was absurd, were they parting like this? ... parting without a sufficient reason,—for a scruple. The impulse to plead with her once more, to urge her more insistently than he had yet done, moved him strongly. He bent his face to hers quickly; but the words he would have uttered died on his lips, as the soft, low-pitched voice that he loved fell again on the silence, with a new note of tenderness in its tone.“I think it is because of the trust you inspire that I love you so well.”When we perceive, or imagine we perceive, certain qualities in another, it is possible to inspire those qualities which we admire. As he listened to her, Dare was silent; the impulse to plead with her faded. To deliberately shake her faith in him was a thing he could not do. There must be no painful memories of those last hours together.“There is no accounting for love,—love like ours,” he said after a brief pause. “It’s not a thing of reasons,—it’s instinctive,—a common bond of sympathy, of mental understanding, uniting us as no law could unite us. If we never meet again you will still belong to me, as I belong to you. No lesser love could ever come into my life,—it wouldn’t satisfy me. I’ve given you everything. You fill all the crevices of my heart and brain. You’ve succeeded in crowding out the rest. When we have gone our separate ways, following out our different lives, as we shall be doing shortly, it will be some consolation to reflect that we hold one another constantly in our thoughts. You’ll write to me,—you can’t refuse me this time. I shall write,—often, whenever the impulse moves me. I am not going to lose touch with you again. If life gets too difficult for you, you will let me know. I’m always behind you, remember. I’m there when you want me. The time may come, Pamela.”“Yes,” she said. “But you mustn’t encourage me to become too dependent on you. I’m not going to be afraid of difficulties, dear. Lifeisdifficult. It has been difficult for me for some while past. You know... You knew that time you stayed with Connie. I think it was at that time when things were so hard I first learnt how much I cared,—how much you were to me I leaned on your strength then without realising it; and when you left I missed you so. It hurt—like hunger.”“It’s like that with me always,” he said.“It is easier to bear now,” she added, “since we’ve talked it over together. It is keeping it all pent up that frets one so. It is wrong,—don’t you think?—to be afraid of loving,—to attempt to suppress it as though it were something shameful. There is nothing shameful in love when one loves straight. I’m proud of loving you,—proud to know your love is mine. It’s an immense help to me, that knowledge. The world wouldn’t see it as we see it. I know. That’s where the need for secrecy comes in. But secrecy is just a little—dishonouring, don’t you think?”He smiled faintly.“The world is old in experience,” he said. “We couldn’t go on meeting and stay at this point, my dear. Love between man and woman, however steady and restrained, has its element of passion. There must come moments when one’s feelings get out of hand. The demand of love increases. You have only just accustomed yourself to the idea of loving; when one grows familiar with the idea one has to explore further. That is why I am going out of your life, dear one, until I can enter into it fully. For you and for me there can be no half measures.”She was silent for a while, a little troubled at the flood of light he had let in upon the situation which she had been viewing through the haze of an impossible idealism. She realised the truth of what he said; and she felt suddenly ashamed, not at his having stripped away the sham coverings ruthlessly, but for having wilfully blinded herself to obvious realities. She felt that she had been convicted of deliberate dishonesty of thought. If he saw this thing clearly, why had not she also seen it without the need of his pointing it out?“We are lovers, dear; we’ve admitted that,” he resumed. “We can’t stop at that unless we give up seeing one another. I want you. You are free to come to me,—free, that is, save for your own scruples. That is why I feel that in making love to you I have not acted dishonourably. I’ve fought for our love,—it was a square fight, and I’ve lost. You may be right... I can’t say. Anyway the decision rests with you. I’m not going against it. I am going to remain in the background until your need of me is as great as my need of you; then you’ll send for me. In the meantime you need not be afraid to trust me. I shall never seek to persuade you against your will.”There was a further silence. Pamela dared not venture upon speech because of the tears which would have choked her utterance had she attempted to express her feelings aloud. He was so much more honest than she was, so much finer and stronger. She held him in her thoughts so highly placed that Dare would have been amazed and considerably embarrassed could he have realised the pinnacle to which he was elevated in the opinion of this woman, whom he was conscious of looking up to as infinitely better and simpler and altogether nobler of intention than himself. Compared with her direct and decent conceptions of life, her quiet acceptance of duty, and sense of responsibility, his ideas appeared carnal and extraordinarily limited and self-centred. He did not want to give up anything. He rebelled at the sacrifice demanded of him. It was only because he recognised the impossibility of shaking her resolution that he submitted at all. Had she weakened for a single moment he would have set himself to wear down her resistance with the first sign of faltering on her part. He had watched jealously for some sign of her yielding from the hour when they were alone together, away from the influences that had surrounded her in her home. During the past two days of intimacy and close companionship his hopes had run high. He did not understand how, loving him as she did, and admitting her love so freely, she could yet persist in her determination to marry the man who had wronged her so grievously. It was beyond his powers of comprehension entirely. The day would come, he believed, when she would recognise her mistake, would possibly even acknowledge it. It was for that day he would wait. When it dawned, as dawn it surely must, he would be ready.The night grew colder as it advanced. Dare unstrapped the rugs and wrapped them about their knees. Pamela was enveloped in his overcoat, with nothing of herself visible but the dim outline of her face showing above the collar, crowned by the pale masses of her hair. She felt wonderfully comfortable and wakeful.This rushing through the windy starlight, through unfamiliar country shrouded in the dusk and mystery of night, darkly revealed in silhouette against the lighter sky, exhilarated her, filled her with a sense of beauty and ever deepening wonder, as mile after mile was passed in the noisy rush of that symbol of modern activity through the heart of a partially developed country. Black objects, shapes of trees and outlines of scattered homesteads, started up out of the surrounding obscurity, flashed darkly for a second on the landscape, and vanished, and were succeeded by other shapes, formless, vaguely distinct outlines, distorted and magnified in the gloom. The quiet remote beauty of night lay like a softening shadow upon the face of the land.“I have always loved the night,” Pamela said, speaking softly as though wishful to avoid disturbing the tranquillity by raising her tones; “but I have never loved it so well before, felt so at one with it. It shuts out the world, doesn’t it? ... shuts out everything.”“It’s you in the night I love,” he said. “That’s where the magic for me comes in. If I hadn’t you beside me I should probably be sleeping. Place and time don’t count, Pamela,—it’s companionship that matters. See the dawn, dear,—just breaking. In a short while it will be light.”“Yes.”She stirred restlessly. The thought of what the new day held for her troubled her insistently, filled her with a shrinking sensation of dread. Before another dawn should break she would be faced with gigantic issues; the biggest crisis of her life would have been met. What did the future hold for her, she wondered. Had it lain in her power to lift the veil she would not have dared to look.“I’m dreading the day, dear,” she said, a little tremulously. “I’m such a coward... I’m afraid,—of him.”“He’s a sick man, Pamela,” he said, desirous of reassuring her. “Illness changes a man.”“I know,” she said.She was quiet for a while, watching the paling stars in the slowly brightening heavens, observant of the gradual definement of the landscape, as the light revealed it, first as a clear colourless picture in the grey dawn, and later as a wonder of separate distinct shades of green and amber beneath a sky already flushing with the promise of the day.He tried to distract her thoughts by speaking on impersonal topics, by bringing the talk back again after a while to themselves. He did not speak of love. That was all past and done with. He assumed a new attitude, was quietly protective and helpful and reassuring. He drew up her plans for her, and settled where they would stay. It was Pamela’s wish that they should go to the same hotel. He had suggested separate hotels; but he gave in to her pleading. After all what did it matter? He was there to advise and help her; it was better that he should be at hand.“I am leaving everything to you,” she said, regarding him wistfully.“Of course,” he answered. “That’s what I’m here for.”“There’s one thing,”—she paused, then completed the sentence—“I want you to do, if you don’t mind... It’s been troubling me. Would you tell the doctor,—what you think necessary to make him understand? I shouldn’t know how to explain...”He smiled down into the distressed blue eyes, and laid his hand warmly upon hers.“I never intended you should explain,” he answered. “That’s my job too.”
Night! ... night on the veld once more—another luminous night of stars and sweet scents, and the haunting sense of mystery and isolation and intimate companionship, interrupted at intervals of ever greater frequency as the train ran into some wayside station, and hurrying forms moved along the platform, and gazed with faint curiosity into the unlighted carriage, as they passed the open windows and caught a momentary glimpse of the dim faces of a man and woman watching together in the night.
“Ghosts!” Pamela said once, pressing closer against Dare. “Shadows of the night,—flitting in the darkness, and swallowed up in it again. I wonder what they make of us, those ghosts?—two live people alone in a shadow world.”
She shivered slightly as the train sped onward again. Dare took a wrap from the seat and placed it about her shoulders. The temperature had fallen perceptibly. The fierce heat of the day was succeeded by the cold of the Transvaal night,—the cold of a high bracing altitude, following with surprising suddenness on the dry, burning heat of the Karroo. The fierceness and the desolation lay behind. The country presented here a fertile wooded beauty, startling in its greenness, following upon the arid desert through which they had passed.
“Don’t leave me to-night,” Pamela said presently, gripping his hand tightly. “Stay, and let us see it out together. It’s the finish... our last night. To-morrow...”
“There is no to-morrow,” he interposed quickly. “We have no concern with anything but the present I’ll stay... I want to stay. Lean against me, and sleep if you feel like it. I’d like you to sleep, Pamela.”
She laughed softly.
“I don’t want to lose one precious moment in sleep,” she said. “Now talk to me.”
“Last night,” he reminded her, “you didn’t want to talk.”
“I know. But to-night it’s different. There is so little time left. We have got to crowd everything into to-night. I want a store of memories,—a little harvest of summer thoughts to draw upon when the winter comes. We’ve talked so little.”
“We’ve managed to express a lot without words,” he said.
“Yes,” she said... “feelings. We’ve expressed ourselves somehow mutely. We get near to one another mentally. When I can’t see you any more I shall still have that sense of nearness. You’ll be there—somewhere.”
The arm with which he supported her held her more closely. He looked down at the shadowy outline of her face in the darkness where it rested against his shoulder, and his lips tightened suddenly. Why, in the name of all that was absurd, were they parting like this? ... parting without a sufficient reason,—for a scruple. The impulse to plead with her once more, to urge her more insistently than he had yet done, moved him strongly. He bent his face to hers quickly; but the words he would have uttered died on his lips, as the soft, low-pitched voice that he loved fell again on the silence, with a new note of tenderness in its tone.
“I think it is because of the trust you inspire that I love you so well.”
When we perceive, or imagine we perceive, certain qualities in another, it is possible to inspire those qualities which we admire. As he listened to her, Dare was silent; the impulse to plead with her faded. To deliberately shake her faith in him was a thing he could not do. There must be no painful memories of those last hours together.
“There is no accounting for love,—love like ours,” he said after a brief pause. “It’s not a thing of reasons,—it’s instinctive,—a common bond of sympathy, of mental understanding, uniting us as no law could unite us. If we never meet again you will still belong to me, as I belong to you. No lesser love could ever come into my life,—it wouldn’t satisfy me. I’ve given you everything. You fill all the crevices of my heart and brain. You’ve succeeded in crowding out the rest. When we have gone our separate ways, following out our different lives, as we shall be doing shortly, it will be some consolation to reflect that we hold one another constantly in our thoughts. You’ll write to me,—you can’t refuse me this time. I shall write,—often, whenever the impulse moves me. I am not going to lose touch with you again. If life gets too difficult for you, you will let me know. I’m always behind you, remember. I’m there when you want me. The time may come, Pamela.”
“Yes,” she said. “But you mustn’t encourage me to become too dependent on you. I’m not going to be afraid of difficulties, dear. Lifeisdifficult. It has been difficult for me for some while past. You know... You knew that time you stayed with Connie. I think it was at that time when things were so hard I first learnt how much I cared,—how much you were to me I leaned on your strength then without realising it; and when you left I missed you so. It hurt—like hunger.”
“It’s like that with me always,” he said.
“It is easier to bear now,” she added, “since we’ve talked it over together. It is keeping it all pent up that frets one so. It is wrong,—don’t you think?—to be afraid of loving,—to attempt to suppress it as though it were something shameful. There is nothing shameful in love when one loves straight. I’m proud of loving you,—proud to know your love is mine. It’s an immense help to me, that knowledge. The world wouldn’t see it as we see it. I know. That’s where the need for secrecy comes in. But secrecy is just a little—dishonouring, don’t you think?”
He smiled faintly.
“The world is old in experience,” he said. “We couldn’t go on meeting and stay at this point, my dear. Love between man and woman, however steady and restrained, has its element of passion. There must come moments when one’s feelings get out of hand. The demand of love increases. You have only just accustomed yourself to the idea of loving; when one grows familiar with the idea one has to explore further. That is why I am going out of your life, dear one, until I can enter into it fully. For you and for me there can be no half measures.”
She was silent for a while, a little troubled at the flood of light he had let in upon the situation which she had been viewing through the haze of an impossible idealism. She realised the truth of what he said; and she felt suddenly ashamed, not at his having stripped away the sham coverings ruthlessly, but for having wilfully blinded herself to obvious realities. She felt that she had been convicted of deliberate dishonesty of thought. If he saw this thing clearly, why had not she also seen it without the need of his pointing it out?
“We are lovers, dear; we’ve admitted that,” he resumed. “We can’t stop at that unless we give up seeing one another. I want you. You are free to come to me,—free, that is, save for your own scruples. That is why I feel that in making love to you I have not acted dishonourably. I’ve fought for our love,—it was a square fight, and I’ve lost. You may be right... I can’t say. Anyway the decision rests with you. I’m not going against it. I am going to remain in the background until your need of me is as great as my need of you; then you’ll send for me. In the meantime you need not be afraid to trust me. I shall never seek to persuade you against your will.”
There was a further silence. Pamela dared not venture upon speech because of the tears which would have choked her utterance had she attempted to express her feelings aloud. He was so much more honest than she was, so much finer and stronger. She held him in her thoughts so highly placed that Dare would have been amazed and considerably embarrassed could he have realised the pinnacle to which he was elevated in the opinion of this woman, whom he was conscious of looking up to as infinitely better and simpler and altogether nobler of intention than himself. Compared with her direct and decent conceptions of life, her quiet acceptance of duty, and sense of responsibility, his ideas appeared carnal and extraordinarily limited and self-centred. He did not want to give up anything. He rebelled at the sacrifice demanded of him. It was only because he recognised the impossibility of shaking her resolution that he submitted at all. Had she weakened for a single moment he would have set himself to wear down her resistance with the first sign of faltering on her part. He had watched jealously for some sign of her yielding from the hour when they were alone together, away from the influences that had surrounded her in her home. During the past two days of intimacy and close companionship his hopes had run high. He did not understand how, loving him as she did, and admitting her love so freely, she could yet persist in her determination to marry the man who had wronged her so grievously. It was beyond his powers of comprehension entirely. The day would come, he believed, when she would recognise her mistake, would possibly even acknowledge it. It was for that day he would wait. When it dawned, as dawn it surely must, he would be ready.
The night grew colder as it advanced. Dare unstrapped the rugs and wrapped them about their knees. Pamela was enveloped in his overcoat, with nothing of herself visible but the dim outline of her face showing above the collar, crowned by the pale masses of her hair. She felt wonderfully comfortable and wakeful.
This rushing through the windy starlight, through unfamiliar country shrouded in the dusk and mystery of night, darkly revealed in silhouette against the lighter sky, exhilarated her, filled her with a sense of beauty and ever deepening wonder, as mile after mile was passed in the noisy rush of that symbol of modern activity through the heart of a partially developed country. Black objects, shapes of trees and outlines of scattered homesteads, started up out of the surrounding obscurity, flashed darkly for a second on the landscape, and vanished, and were succeeded by other shapes, formless, vaguely distinct outlines, distorted and magnified in the gloom. The quiet remote beauty of night lay like a softening shadow upon the face of the land.
“I have always loved the night,” Pamela said, speaking softly as though wishful to avoid disturbing the tranquillity by raising her tones; “but I have never loved it so well before, felt so at one with it. It shuts out the world, doesn’t it? ... shuts out everything.”
“It’s you in the night I love,” he said. “That’s where the magic for me comes in. If I hadn’t you beside me I should probably be sleeping. Place and time don’t count, Pamela,—it’s companionship that matters. See the dawn, dear,—just breaking. In a short while it will be light.”
“Yes.”
She stirred restlessly. The thought of what the new day held for her troubled her insistently, filled her with a shrinking sensation of dread. Before another dawn should break she would be faced with gigantic issues; the biggest crisis of her life would have been met. What did the future hold for her, she wondered. Had it lain in her power to lift the veil she would not have dared to look.
“I’m dreading the day, dear,” she said, a little tremulously. “I’m such a coward... I’m afraid,—of him.”
“He’s a sick man, Pamela,” he said, desirous of reassuring her. “Illness changes a man.”
“I know,” she said.
She was quiet for a while, watching the paling stars in the slowly brightening heavens, observant of the gradual definement of the landscape, as the light revealed it, first as a clear colourless picture in the grey dawn, and later as a wonder of separate distinct shades of green and amber beneath a sky already flushing with the promise of the day.
He tried to distract her thoughts by speaking on impersonal topics, by bringing the talk back again after a while to themselves. He did not speak of love. That was all past and done with. He assumed a new attitude, was quietly protective and helpful and reassuring. He drew up her plans for her, and settled where they would stay. It was Pamela’s wish that they should go to the same hotel. He had suggested separate hotels; but he gave in to her pleading. After all what did it matter? He was there to advise and help her; it was better that he should be at hand.
“I am leaving everything to you,” she said, regarding him wistfully.
“Of course,” he answered. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“There’s one thing,”—she paused, then completed the sentence—“I want you to do, if you don’t mind... It’s been troubling me. Would you tell the doctor,—what you think necessary to make him understand? I shouldn’t know how to explain...”
He smiled down into the distressed blue eyes, and laid his hand warmly upon hers.
“I never intended you should explain,” he answered. “That’s my job too.”
Chapter Thirty One.They reached Pretoria shortly after nine. Dare drove with Pamela to the Grand Hotel where he engaged rooms. They breakfasted together at a small table in the public room. A rather silent meal it proved; Pamela was tired, and somewhat depressed now that they were arrived at their destination; the fatigue of the long journey told upon her; and her eyes were heavy, the result of insufficient rest.All the glamour was ended; the pleasurable excitement, the sense of adventure, of happy forgetfulness, was as a dream of the night which the daylight dispelled utterly, leaving only a vague regret of glowing memories dimly recalled and greatly missed. Shefeltas a woman might feel who had been pleasantly drugged and wakes painfully in a bleak, unlovely world.Dare prescribed a warm bath and bed. She could do nothing that morning. He would see her again at the lunch hour, when she was rested, and tell her what arrangements he had been able to make in the interval.She acquiesced silently, too weary and depressed to care whether she saw Arnott that day or the next. Now that the meeting loomed so imminent all her courage was oozing away. She realised with a sense of horror at herself that she shrank almost with repulsion from the thought of standing beside the sick bed of the man she once had loved, for whom she now felt nothing but a cold resentment, a bitter anger for the evil part he had played in her life. She did not desire to see him. But the reason which had led her to him governed her still. Her future course was none the less plain because it was difficult to follow.The much needed rest brought with its refreshment a greater tranquillity of mind; and when she met Dare at luncheon she was herself again, quiet and composed, a little nervous obviously, but equal to facing the ordeal when the moment for doing so arrived.She was relieved to hear that she was not expected to visit the invalid until the following morning. She might not, Dare informed her, see him even then. It depended entirely upon how he received the news of her presence whether she was admitted to his room. He was making good progress, and the doctors had no wish to retard his recovery by risking the excitement of an emotional scene.“I have vouched for your absolute discretion,” he said, meeting the wistful eyes with a reassuring smile. “I don’t fancy you are the sort of woman who indulges in scenes.”“No,” she said quietly. “I’ve got beyond that.” She lowered her gaze to the flowers in the centre of the table, contemplating their beauty with a kind of tired relief. Dare watched her intently.“I feel,” she added after a pause, “rather as though I had become frozen. I don’t seem to care much what happens. You’ll go with me in the morning, I suppose?”“Naturally,” he answered.She raised her eyes again to his swiftly.“After I have seen him once,” she said, “it won’t be so difficult. I’ll be able to release you then from your kind office. You mustn’t waste your time any longer on my account.”“I don’t reckon it time wasted,” he returned.“Not wasted,—no. I couldn’t have managed without you. But I feel it is very selfish of me to have accepted so much from you. You’ve set me in the path. I’ll be able to walk it now unaided.”“We will talk of that,” he said easily, “after you have seen him. In the meantime I am not going to let you dwell on the matter. You are going to drive with me this afternoon. It’s beautiful country about here, and the roads are excellent. We’ll forget the painful purpose of this journey, Pamela, and enjoy ourselves. I claim that as my fee for the services you insist on recognising.”“You are so good to me,” she said.Her voice was low and tenderly tremulous, and her eyes, lifted to his, shone misty and soft and confiding. Dare gripped the table with both hands, and stared back at her across the flowers which divided them in their slender crystal vase. His face was tense.“It is easy to be that,” he answered gruffly, oblivious of the people in the room, oblivious of everything but the sweet, tired beauty of her face, and the trustful affection in the earnest eyes.“I say,” he added, recollecting himself, “let’s get out of this.”She rose; and he followed her from the room, aware of the glances she attracted in passing, and not indifferent to the covert looks directed at himself. He was well known in Pretoria; one or two faces there were not unfamiliar to him. He heard his name pronounced distinctly as he passed through the doors in Pamela’s wake. It might be well after all, he decided, to leave her as she suggested on the morrow. It was difficult to have continually in mind the necessity for playing the discreet part of disinterested friend under observant eyes. He had not intended to leave so soon; but in the circumstances it was wiser; and from Johannesburg he would have only a two hours’ journey if the necessity for his presence arose. He would extract a promise from her to wire to him if she found herself in any difficulty.He did not unfold his plans to her then. He decided to leave matters as they stood until the morrow. So much depended on the result of the morning’s interview. It seemed to him that his own fate, being inseparable from hers, hung in the balance of the next twenty-four hours.He felt almost as nervous as Pamela the following day, when he accompanied her to the Home, and waited in the little room where he had waited before to learn the doctor’s verdict.The matron came in and talked hopefully with Pamela of her husband’s progress. Mr Arnott had been informed that his wife was there, and had expressed the wish to see her. She thought that very possibly the visit would cheer him; he had shown a growing tendency towards depression of late, which was not unusual in the early stages of convalescence.Pamela listened very quietly to the amiable chatter of this pleasant, capable looking woman, whose clear eyes were curiously observant of the white-faced stranger, so tardy in her duty to her sick husband, so little concerned, it seemed to her, about his condition now that she was here. The doctor had let fall some vague intimation of domestic estrangement in instructing her as to the precautions necessary to take in regard to this visit; but in view of the man’s serious illness the other woman looked on the wife’s unforgiving attitude as heartless in the extreme. She did not know of the agony of suspense hidden behind the quiet manner, the fear which the calm eyes concealed. She noticed only the stranger’s wonderful composure, the utter lack of spontaneous inquiry into her husband’s case. The only questions that were asked were put by the man who accompanied her, and who appeared more interested in the patient, if not more sympathetic, than the wife.When the doctor entered the matron withdrew; and the medical man, an older man than the junior partner whom Dare had interviewed on his first visit, drew a chair forward and sat down opposite to Pamela.He scrutinised her intently, with kindly interested gaze, thinking her over in the light of the information he had received from Dare on the previous day, which, meagre as it had been, had conveyed the impression that the wife was much to be pitied. Dare’s version had explained the young woman whose connection with Arnott had puzzled the doctor when first called upon to attend this case. Confronted with Pamela, he found the situation difficult of comprehension.“You must be prepared,” he warned her, “for a terrible change in your husband. He’s been very ill—he is very ill still. But his recovery is more satisfactory than we had hoped for. You must be very careful not to excite him.”“Yes,” said Pamela gravely; and he felt that the warning was unnecessary.“He is expecting you,” he added. “I believe he is anxious to see you. It is quite possible that this illness of his has wiped a good deal of the near past from his memory. I would advise you not to recall anything of a painful nature. Approach him if possible only on present matters. And cheer him up a little. You can possibly do more for him than I can at this stage.”Pamela smiled at him bravely.“I have come with the intention of doing all that is in my power,” she answered gently. “If he will let me, I will devote myself to him. I want to help him—if I can.”“I don’t think there should be any difficulty about that,” he replied. “For a while you will have to be satisfied to leave him here. Later, if you wish, he can be moved to where you are staying. He could not undertake the journey to Cape Town yet.”“No?” Pamela said, thinking abruptly of Connie and the children. “I had thought—”“Too great a risk,” he said decidedly. “We’ll err on the side of caution, Mrs Arnott. He is making such a splendid recovery, I should be sorry if we did anything to retard it now. I think you will have to make up your mind to remain in Pretoria for a time. I will let you know as soon as I consider it safe for him to travel. In any case the hot weather would prohibit a long journey. Didn’t you find it very trying coming up?”“I don’t think I mind the heat very much,” she answered, evading a more direct reply.“That’s fortunate,” he returned, smiling, “because there is no getting away from it out here.” He rose. “Now, if you are ready, I will direct you to Mr Arnott’s room.”He glanced at Dare.“You’ll remain here?” he said.Dare nodded. Under his brows he was observing Pamela, who, with the old nervous light in her eyes, was waiting near the door. She did not look at him as she passed out. In silence she accompanied the doctor along the passage to Arnott’s room which was situated at the end of it. The door stood open, and a nurse who was standing inside came forth, and took up her position in the passage within call in case she were needed. The doctor motioned to Pamela to enter.“I’ve brought Mrs Arnott to see you,” he said.His words broke the dead stillness that reigned in the room abruptly; but as soon as he had uttered them and quietly withdrawn, the stillness descended again, more deadly, more paralysing than before, it seemed to Pamela, left alone for the first time with the man who when last she had seen him had flung out of her presence in anger, and who now, moving his head feebly on the pillow, turned a pallid, eager, so old face towards her, and held out his hand to her, and broke into pitiful frying.Pamela felt inexpressibly shocked. She had prepared herself for a change, but not so great a change as this. His hair had whitened during his illness; it was quite white, like a very old man’s; his chin was unshaven, and the unfamiliar beard was white also; his moustache alone retained a few dark hairs. His face was thin, and so altered that, but for the eyes, she would have failed in recognising it. And the sight of him lying there, weak and helpless and so feebly crying, hurt her beyond measure, moved her to an almost terrified compassion, so that for a second she could not stir or speak. Something seemed to clutch at her heart and stop its beating. She had never seen Arnott cry before. The thought of tears in connection with him would have occurred to her as impossible. And here he lay,—crying,—holding out a trembling hand to her, and sobbing like a child.With a swift, sudden movement, as though her limbs relaxed abruptly and responded automatically to the rush of pity that leapt up within her, submerging for the time all other feeling, she approached the bed and knelt beside it and put her arms about him, as she might have put them about a suffering child, appealing for sympathy. She drew his head to her shoulder, and with the so sadly altered face hidden from her sight against her breast, felt her courage returning, and was able to articulate his name, and murmur soothing words to him as she caressed the silvered hair.“Herbert!—my dear,” she said; “it’s Pamela. It’s all right, dear... Don’t cry... don’t cry.”“I’ve been ill,” he said, speaking thickly, with a slight impediment that made the words difficult to understand. “I’ve wanted you, Pam... You’ve been a long time coming.”He spoke querulously, and sobbed again with a sort of complaining self-pity, as though he felt she had been neglectful, that she ought to have known and come to him before. Pamela would have realised without the doctor’s preparation that the enfeebled mind had lost its power to remember recent events. It was quite possible that he did not realise even where he was, that, had he been told, he would have failed to recall the circumstances of his coming to Pretoria. The subject of their differences, of his desertion of her, had faded entirely from his recollection. He only knew that he was ill, that he had wanted her, and that she had been long in coming. He took up his complaint again.“I’ve wanted you,” he reiterated. “I’ve kept on wanting you. Why didn’t you come sooner?”“I came as soon as I could,” she answered soothingly. “They would not let me see you before. You’ve been very ill. You are getting better now. Soon you will be much stronger, and then we will go home.”He lay still for a second or so, taking in the significance of her words.“Home!” he repeated vaguely... “Yes.”He drew in his breath quiveringly like a tired child, and lay back on the pillow and stared at her with the familiar eyes set in the unfamiliar face. Pamela felt oddly disconcerted by his gaze, and only with difficulty forced herself to meet it. She wished that he would not look at her, wished that he had remained with his face hidden against her breast.“I should like to go home,” he said.He spoke with a puzzled intonation as though not quite dear in his mind as to where home was; but very sure of one thing, that home meant being with Pamela, and that he wanted to be with her.“You’ll stay with me?” he asked presently.“I will come and see you often,” she answered, “every day. I have come to be with you. As soon as you are able to be moved I will take you away. You must make haste and get strong.”“Yes,” he said, “get strong. I have had funny dreams,” he added, still keeping his eyes on her face. “I get funny dreams now occasionally,—when I’m awake. That’s strange, isn’t it? Why do I dream when I am awake?”“That is only weakness,” she replied gently. “Now I am here you won’t dream any more.”“No,” he said, and seemed satisfied with her reply. “I’ve thought sometimes you were dead,” he said; “but you aren’t.” He stroked her hand softly. “I’m glad you’re all right, Pam.”His eyes, still puzzled, still striving vainly to recall facts which seemed to hover on the borderland of memory, and which always eluded him, wandered from her face, wandered aimlessly about the room, and came back to her face again with the same perplexed, inquiring look which was so difficult to meet. She felt that she wanted to push away the hand that so loosely held hers, wanted to get upon her feet and rush from the room,—away from the haunting sight of the grey, drawn face, and the insistent, puzzled eyes,—away from the presence of this man who seemed like a stranger to her, between whom and herself there yet existed an ugly and dishonouring bond.She controlled herself with a great effort and continued talking soothingly to him, obeying mechanically the will power that had governed her actions throughout. But how much the effort cost her, only she, herself, could ever realise. While she stayed there with him, listening to his thick, disconnected utterances, and replying with a gentleness born of pity only, it seemed to her that something within her, something that was vital and necessary to the appreciation of life, died utterly, and left her apathetic and indifferent, a woman denuded of all the best warm impulses of the heart. The best of herself was dead; there only remained the dull, unloving semblance of her former self.
They reached Pretoria shortly after nine. Dare drove with Pamela to the Grand Hotel where he engaged rooms. They breakfasted together at a small table in the public room. A rather silent meal it proved; Pamela was tired, and somewhat depressed now that they were arrived at their destination; the fatigue of the long journey told upon her; and her eyes were heavy, the result of insufficient rest.
All the glamour was ended; the pleasurable excitement, the sense of adventure, of happy forgetfulness, was as a dream of the night which the daylight dispelled utterly, leaving only a vague regret of glowing memories dimly recalled and greatly missed. Shefeltas a woman might feel who had been pleasantly drugged and wakes painfully in a bleak, unlovely world.
Dare prescribed a warm bath and bed. She could do nothing that morning. He would see her again at the lunch hour, when she was rested, and tell her what arrangements he had been able to make in the interval.
She acquiesced silently, too weary and depressed to care whether she saw Arnott that day or the next. Now that the meeting loomed so imminent all her courage was oozing away. She realised with a sense of horror at herself that she shrank almost with repulsion from the thought of standing beside the sick bed of the man she once had loved, for whom she now felt nothing but a cold resentment, a bitter anger for the evil part he had played in her life. She did not desire to see him. But the reason which had led her to him governed her still. Her future course was none the less plain because it was difficult to follow.
The much needed rest brought with its refreshment a greater tranquillity of mind; and when she met Dare at luncheon she was herself again, quiet and composed, a little nervous obviously, but equal to facing the ordeal when the moment for doing so arrived.
She was relieved to hear that she was not expected to visit the invalid until the following morning. She might not, Dare informed her, see him even then. It depended entirely upon how he received the news of her presence whether she was admitted to his room. He was making good progress, and the doctors had no wish to retard his recovery by risking the excitement of an emotional scene.
“I have vouched for your absolute discretion,” he said, meeting the wistful eyes with a reassuring smile. “I don’t fancy you are the sort of woman who indulges in scenes.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I’ve got beyond that.” She lowered her gaze to the flowers in the centre of the table, contemplating their beauty with a kind of tired relief. Dare watched her intently.
“I feel,” she added after a pause, “rather as though I had become frozen. I don’t seem to care much what happens. You’ll go with me in the morning, I suppose?”
“Naturally,” he answered.
She raised her eyes again to his swiftly.
“After I have seen him once,” she said, “it won’t be so difficult. I’ll be able to release you then from your kind office. You mustn’t waste your time any longer on my account.”
“I don’t reckon it time wasted,” he returned.
“Not wasted,—no. I couldn’t have managed without you. But I feel it is very selfish of me to have accepted so much from you. You’ve set me in the path. I’ll be able to walk it now unaided.”
“We will talk of that,” he said easily, “after you have seen him. In the meantime I am not going to let you dwell on the matter. You are going to drive with me this afternoon. It’s beautiful country about here, and the roads are excellent. We’ll forget the painful purpose of this journey, Pamela, and enjoy ourselves. I claim that as my fee for the services you insist on recognising.”
“You are so good to me,” she said.
Her voice was low and tenderly tremulous, and her eyes, lifted to his, shone misty and soft and confiding. Dare gripped the table with both hands, and stared back at her across the flowers which divided them in their slender crystal vase. His face was tense.
“It is easy to be that,” he answered gruffly, oblivious of the people in the room, oblivious of everything but the sweet, tired beauty of her face, and the trustful affection in the earnest eyes.
“I say,” he added, recollecting himself, “let’s get out of this.”
She rose; and he followed her from the room, aware of the glances she attracted in passing, and not indifferent to the covert looks directed at himself. He was well known in Pretoria; one or two faces there were not unfamiliar to him. He heard his name pronounced distinctly as he passed through the doors in Pamela’s wake. It might be well after all, he decided, to leave her as she suggested on the morrow. It was difficult to have continually in mind the necessity for playing the discreet part of disinterested friend under observant eyes. He had not intended to leave so soon; but in the circumstances it was wiser; and from Johannesburg he would have only a two hours’ journey if the necessity for his presence arose. He would extract a promise from her to wire to him if she found herself in any difficulty.
He did not unfold his plans to her then. He decided to leave matters as they stood until the morrow. So much depended on the result of the morning’s interview. It seemed to him that his own fate, being inseparable from hers, hung in the balance of the next twenty-four hours.
He felt almost as nervous as Pamela the following day, when he accompanied her to the Home, and waited in the little room where he had waited before to learn the doctor’s verdict.
The matron came in and talked hopefully with Pamela of her husband’s progress. Mr Arnott had been informed that his wife was there, and had expressed the wish to see her. She thought that very possibly the visit would cheer him; he had shown a growing tendency towards depression of late, which was not unusual in the early stages of convalescence.
Pamela listened very quietly to the amiable chatter of this pleasant, capable looking woman, whose clear eyes were curiously observant of the white-faced stranger, so tardy in her duty to her sick husband, so little concerned, it seemed to her, about his condition now that she was here. The doctor had let fall some vague intimation of domestic estrangement in instructing her as to the precautions necessary to take in regard to this visit; but in view of the man’s serious illness the other woman looked on the wife’s unforgiving attitude as heartless in the extreme. She did not know of the agony of suspense hidden behind the quiet manner, the fear which the calm eyes concealed. She noticed only the stranger’s wonderful composure, the utter lack of spontaneous inquiry into her husband’s case. The only questions that were asked were put by the man who accompanied her, and who appeared more interested in the patient, if not more sympathetic, than the wife.
When the doctor entered the matron withdrew; and the medical man, an older man than the junior partner whom Dare had interviewed on his first visit, drew a chair forward and sat down opposite to Pamela.
He scrutinised her intently, with kindly interested gaze, thinking her over in the light of the information he had received from Dare on the previous day, which, meagre as it had been, had conveyed the impression that the wife was much to be pitied. Dare’s version had explained the young woman whose connection with Arnott had puzzled the doctor when first called upon to attend this case. Confronted with Pamela, he found the situation difficult of comprehension.
“You must be prepared,” he warned her, “for a terrible change in your husband. He’s been very ill—he is very ill still. But his recovery is more satisfactory than we had hoped for. You must be very careful not to excite him.”
“Yes,” said Pamela gravely; and he felt that the warning was unnecessary.
“He is expecting you,” he added. “I believe he is anxious to see you. It is quite possible that this illness of his has wiped a good deal of the near past from his memory. I would advise you not to recall anything of a painful nature. Approach him if possible only on present matters. And cheer him up a little. You can possibly do more for him than I can at this stage.”
Pamela smiled at him bravely.
“I have come with the intention of doing all that is in my power,” she answered gently. “If he will let me, I will devote myself to him. I want to help him—if I can.”
“I don’t think there should be any difficulty about that,” he replied. “For a while you will have to be satisfied to leave him here. Later, if you wish, he can be moved to where you are staying. He could not undertake the journey to Cape Town yet.”
“No?” Pamela said, thinking abruptly of Connie and the children. “I had thought—”
“Too great a risk,” he said decidedly. “We’ll err on the side of caution, Mrs Arnott. He is making such a splendid recovery, I should be sorry if we did anything to retard it now. I think you will have to make up your mind to remain in Pretoria for a time. I will let you know as soon as I consider it safe for him to travel. In any case the hot weather would prohibit a long journey. Didn’t you find it very trying coming up?”
“I don’t think I mind the heat very much,” she answered, evading a more direct reply.
“That’s fortunate,” he returned, smiling, “because there is no getting away from it out here.” He rose. “Now, if you are ready, I will direct you to Mr Arnott’s room.”
He glanced at Dare.
“You’ll remain here?” he said.
Dare nodded. Under his brows he was observing Pamela, who, with the old nervous light in her eyes, was waiting near the door. She did not look at him as she passed out. In silence she accompanied the doctor along the passage to Arnott’s room which was situated at the end of it. The door stood open, and a nurse who was standing inside came forth, and took up her position in the passage within call in case she were needed. The doctor motioned to Pamela to enter.
“I’ve brought Mrs Arnott to see you,” he said.
His words broke the dead stillness that reigned in the room abruptly; but as soon as he had uttered them and quietly withdrawn, the stillness descended again, more deadly, more paralysing than before, it seemed to Pamela, left alone for the first time with the man who when last she had seen him had flung out of her presence in anger, and who now, moving his head feebly on the pillow, turned a pallid, eager, so old face towards her, and held out his hand to her, and broke into pitiful frying.
Pamela felt inexpressibly shocked. She had prepared herself for a change, but not so great a change as this. His hair had whitened during his illness; it was quite white, like a very old man’s; his chin was unshaven, and the unfamiliar beard was white also; his moustache alone retained a few dark hairs. His face was thin, and so altered that, but for the eyes, she would have failed in recognising it. And the sight of him lying there, weak and helpless and so feebly crying, hurt her beyond measure, moved her to an almost terrified compassion, so that for a second she could not stir or speak. Something seemed to clutch at her heart and stop its beating. She had never seen Arnott cry before. The thought of tears in connection with him would have occurred to her as impossible. And here he lay,—crying,—holding out a trembling hand to her, and sobbing like a child.
With a swift, sudden movement, as though her limbs relaxed abruptly and responded automatically to the rush of pity that leapt up within her, submerging for the time all other feeling, she approached the bed and knelt beside it and put her arms about him, as she might have put them about a suffering child, appealing for sympathy. She drew his head to her shoulder, and with the so sadly altered face hidden from her sight against her breast, felt her courage returning, and was able to articulate his name, and murmur soothing words to him as she caressed the silvered hair.
“Herbert!—my dear,” she said; “it’s Pamela. It’s all right, dear... Don’t cry... don’t cry.”
“I’ve been ill,” he said, speaking thickly, with a slight impediment that made the words difficult to understand. “I’ve wanted you, Pam... You’ve been a long time coming.”
He spoke querulously, and sobbed again with a sort of complaining self-pity, as though he felt she had been neglectful, that she ought to have known and come to him before. Pamela would have realised without the doctor’s preparation that the enfeebled mind had lost its power to remember recent events. It was quite possible that he did not realise even where he was, that, had he been told, he would have failed to recall the circumstances of his coming to Pretoria. The subject of their differences, of his desertion of her, had faded entirely from his recollection. He only knew that he was ill, that he had wanted her, and that she had been long in coming. He took up his complaint again.
“I’ve wanted you,” he reiterated. “I’ve kept on wanting you. Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“I came as soon as I could,” she answered soothingly. “They would not let me see you before. You’ve been very ill. You are getting better now. Soon you will be much stronger, and then we will go home.”
He lay still for a second or so, taking in the significance of her words.
“Home!” he repeated vaguely... “Yes.”
He drew in his breath quiveringly like a tired child, and lay back on the pillow and stared at her with the familiar eyes set in the unfamiliar face. Pamela felt oddly disconcerted by his gaze, and only with difficulty forced herself to meet it. She wished that he would not look at her, wished that he had remained with his face hidden against her breast.
“I should like to go home,” he said.
He spoke with a puzzled intonation as though not quite dear in his mind as to where home was; but very sure of one thing, that home meant being with Pamela, and that he wanted to be with her.
“You’ll stay with me?” he asked presently.
“I will come and see you often,” she answered, “every day. I have come to be with you. As soon as you are able to be moved I will take you away. You must make haste and get strong.”
“Yes,” he said, “get strong. I have had funny dreams,” he added, still keeping his eyes on her face. “I get funny dreams now occasionally,—when I’m awake. That’s strange, isn’t it? Why do I dream when I am awake?”
“That is only weakness,” she replied gently. “Now I am here you won’t dream any more.”
“No,” he said, and seemed satisfied with her reply. “I’ve thought sometimes you were dead,” he said; “but you aren’t.” He stroked her hand softly. “I’m glad you’re all right, Pam.”
His eyes, still puzzled, still striving vainly to recall facts which seemed to hover on the borderland of memory, and which always eluded him, wandered from her face, wandered aimlessly about the room, and came back to her face again with the same perplexed, inquiring look which was so difficult to meet. She felt that she wanted to push away the hand that so loosely held hers, wanted to get upon her feet and rush from the room,—away from the haunting sight of the grey, drawn face, and the insistent, puzzled eyes,—away from the presence of this man who seemed like a stranger to her, between whom and herself there yet existed an ugly and dishonouring bond.
She controlled herself with a great effort and continued talking soothingly to him, obeying mechanically the will power that had governed her actions throughout. But how much the effort cost her, only she, herself, could ever realise. While she stayed there with him, listening to his thick, disconnected utterances, and replying with a gentleness born of pity only, it seemed to her that something within her, something that was vital and necessary to the appreciation of life, died utterly, and left her apathetic and indifferent, a woman denuded of all the best warm impulses of the heart. The best of herself was dead; there only remained the dull, unloving semblance of her former self.