CAREW IS DISTURBED

The news that the millionaire Henry Pym with his daughter and a niece were journeying to Great Zimbabwe reached the police camp first through a letter from the Administration to Major Carew, requesting him to have the long, disfiguring dry grass burnt, and the surroundings of the temple tidied up a little, and to show every attention to the travellers. When he received the letter it was obvious at once that the information did not give him any pleasure. On the contrary, his expression as nearly approached a frown as he was likely to permit it on receiving orders from headquarters. He had opened the letter standing outside his hut, where it had been handed to him by the native runner, and Stanley was reading a newspaper near, while Moore affectionately handled an antediluvian gun he was thinking of buying from a prospector.

Stanley glanced up, wondering what letters had come, and saw the hovering frown.

“Any news, sir?” he asked frankly, for he was no longer in awe of his silent chief. As a matter of fact, he never had been to any degree. The Kid would have found it difficult to be in awe of anyone, but for a few days Carew had baffled him.

“Henry Pym, you’ve probably heard of him, is likely to arrive here in a few days.”

Stanley opened his eyes a little. “What! the millionaire?... Good biz! We’ll rook him at poker and bridge and shooting, and a few other things. It isn’t right for him to have all that money. It would even things up a little if we could transfer some of it to poor, penniless policemen.”

“He is accompanied by his daughter and a niece,” said Carew in even tones.

“Lord love a holy duck!...” exclaimed the young policeman, and was fairly astonished on to his feet. “Coming here, sir?... Coming here to Zimbabwe?”

“So the letter says. It also adds that they may wish to camp near, and they are to be shown every attention.”

“They shall be ...” quoth The Kid, so comically that even Carew’s lips relaxed. “I suppose the letter doesn’t specify the attention?... Christopher Columbus!... Great Scott!... Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!... To think of two millionaires’ daughters all at once in this benighted, thirsty land!... It fairly catches me in the breath,” and he sat down again suddenly as if the news was too much for him.

“By gad, Moore!... do you hear that?... a bloated millionaire and two millionairesses are about to descend upon us from the skies. Talk of manna and blessings coming down from heaven!... Give me millionairesses!...”

The Irishman looked up with a knowing smile. “Shure!” said he, “give me whisky....”

“Begorra, Pat!” laughed The Kid. “If you got the heiress you could swim in whisky.” Then he looked again at Major Carew and observed the suggestion of a frown still on his face while he stood with the letter in his hand.

“Heiresses are seemingly not much in your line, sir?” he suggested humorously. “You ... well, you don’t quite look overjoyed!...”

Carew in his quiet way had grown fond of the gay young trooper, and he showed no offence at the attitude of familiarity.

“We shall have to consider a good camping-place for them, and probably give up two huts to the ladies. I gather they may be here in two or three days. Is the grass dry enough to burn to-night?”

The Kid glanced round doubtfully. “Hardly; and the place won’t look well all black.”

“That’s why I thought we had better begin at once. If they are some days the ash will have had time to blow away. Arrange for a gang of boys to be ready at six o’clock, and we will light up and see what we can do.”

In the hut he tossed the letter down on to his table. “Confound it!...” he said under his breath. “Fancy women down here, staring and chattering, and prying! I suppose they will expect the entire police force in the neighbourhood to be at their disposal, and nothing else will matter at all.” His face grew more and more gloomy. “If I had only started to M’rekwas yesterday, I could have been absent a fortnight, and by then they would have departed again.” He stood a moment considering if he could start at once, and decided, as the letter was sent specially to him, he could hardly leave before carrying out his instructions.

Stanley and the other trooper meanwhile made hurried preparations for a great fire. They lit up in the evening, having stationed boys at intervals to keep the flames within bounds, and themselves stood posted with their guns, hoping for a shot at wild pig or cheetah, or possibly a lion or leopard. Carew kept guard at the huts, with a few boys to beat off the flames that encroached to any danger points and watch for flying sparks that might ignite the thatch. It was a wonderful sight, and his eyes were full of appreciation as he watched it. The gathering darkness, the lurid flames lighting up with swift brightness the ancient ruins; the high Acropolis Hill on one side, the low granite-strewn kopjes on the other, and running between the Valley of Ruins, now a vale of fire.

It crossed his mind that it was almost a pity they had not left the burning of the grass until the travellers arrived, that they might see the strange, fantastic sight. But he cogitated that the millionaires he had known hitherto had little appreciation for much beyond money-making, and no doubt they were merely taking a passing glimpse at the ruins; the man on some money-making quest, and the girls just to be able to say they had seen them. His eyes rested on the temple wall, and he felt suddenly absurdly resentful that these rich pleasure-seekers should come even there to gape and stare. He had grown to love the ruins dearly, until that moment he had scarcely known how dearly, and to him it seemed for the moment like showing some treasured personal relics to barbarians.

There were so many other things for the pleasure-seekers. Let them go to the Falls, and Lake Nyassa, and the Himalayas, and those tourist treasures; but why come and chatter inane banalities about his ruins: his treasured, mysterious relic of perhaps the oldest civilisation the world has known?

Of course, he knew perfectly that much controversy had raged round the question, and that one or two learned scientists had definitely stated their belief that the ruins were of comparatively recent date, and deduced more or less convincing proofs in support of their theory; but controversies and carefully worded reports were small things to the man who had dwelt beside the mysterious temples and fortifications, and learnt to love and treasure them. He had his proofs too and his deductions, and such as they were they satisfied him, in the face of all opposition, that the curious remains were indeed of great antiquity, quite probably the ancient Havilah of the Scriptures. To him every nook and every corner had its meaning and its history. In the play of his fancy he had seen the white-robed priests and acolytes in stately procession, amid the old, old walls; heard strains of far-off music when an ancient worship offered its votary of prayer and praise to that mysterious deity whom they believed in; heard perhaps a single lovely voice, or seen a single lovely convert kneel before the Sacred Enclosure. He had seen their strong men and their brave men and their great men marshalling a host of women and children and infirm citizens safely into the fastnesses of the Acropolis Hill, where, with a sufficient supply of food and water, three thousand people might be safely shielded for any length of time. He had seen them stand on the high battlements, and look out across the plain or into the rock-hewn kopjes for the hosts of the enemy. He had seen them, even when besieged upon that mighty hill, assembling together to worship in the temples they had laboriously raised upon the giant granite ledges. Were they fair, those women of that old, old day? Were they brave, were they mighty in stature, those men who evolved and achieved those wonderful defence works? Did they love the fair land that fed them with the love of home and country, or were they but sojourners for a while amid unfriendly, cruel tribes, that needed watchful eyes day and night? Led perhaps by a spirit of adventure, or by persecution elsewhere, or by the lust of gold, yet faithful always to the worship of their race, and building at infinite, incomprehensible pains those temples in the alien land. How they held him; how they fascinated; how they soothed with infinite soothing the bitter sorrow, the gaping, stinging wound that had driven him furiously away, all those years before, from the flesh-pots of a modern Babylon! Had he cared for it all very much then?... He wondered, looking full and deep into his hidden memories. Had the lights and the music, the song and dance, the laughing women and reckless men, the midnight orgies and morning headaches, really given him so much pleasure that he must needs fling it all aside with such bitter anger and harsh regret when the thunderbolt fell and the searching dart stabbed him awake? Outraged, hurt-maddened, he had flung away, as he believed, to outer darkness, and to a joyless, purposeless, colourless life. And he had found?...

Ah!... when he looked at the ancient, mysterious ruins he had grown to love, and around upon a country that was life-hope and life-interest to him, he knew that it was the other life which had been purposeless, and all of one colour, and the self-chosen exile that had given him the things it is good to live and breathe and die for.

And thinking of it all, with that shy softness which sometimes stole, as it were, stealthily into his strong face in moments of dreaming thought, he remembered with growing regret the advent of the party for which he was bidden to make preparations, and resented it yet more forcibly. Why need they come?... these women ... these spoiled, flattered, perhaps vulgar, heiresses. What did they want with ancient rites and wonderful relics of antiquities? What were they doing in Rhodesia at all, flaunting their finery and their possessions before the eyes of the hardy settlers and the plucky women who shared their difficulties and disappointments? In a young, struggling country what place was there for the idly, gracefully rich?

In his goaded fancy he saw their elegant, costly garments, and he heard strident voices exclaiming shrilly at his treasure, perhaps calling it an interesting heap of stones. Was there still time to get away, he wondered? Could a sudden call be arranged?... a sudden need for hasty departure?...

Let The Kid laugh the hours away with them, and take his fill of gay companionship; and let him return when the siege was over, and the soothing and the restfulness and the splendour had come back.

Wondering still, and with the sore regretfulness growing, he looked round to make sure all was safe, and that no further danger need be feared from blowing sparks or creeping flames; and then went gravely into his hut to read.

The next morning he told Stanley that he might be obliged to go east the following day on important business, and leave him to receive the travellers, and remained imperturbably grave and non-seeing when Stanley raised his eyebrows and regarded him with a little amused twinkle of understanding.

But in the afternoon the party quite unexpectedly turned up, and somewhere away in the blue, dreaming kopjes the voice of a following fate laughed softly.