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.

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. She felt as 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.