Chapter 15

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

He was silent a moment, weighing his words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They heard Diana returning, and he moved restlessly.

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

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

And then Diana came into the room.

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

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

XXI

A "HOARDING HUSTLING"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Silence," thoughtfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXII

MERYL'S DECISION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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