THE MISSION STATION

They went to the Grenvilles’ the next day, while Mr. Pym took another of his investigation trips. Stanley acted as escort, and Carew went to Edwardstown on business.

Ailsa Grenville met them with her brightest smile, and ushered them proudly into her cool, picturesque drawing-room hut.

“How charming!” they cried, with genuine delight; and Diana added, “O! why can’t I have a hut in the wilderness?...”

Then the khaki-clad, sportsmanlike missionary strode in, and after the preliminary greetings Diana asked with charming piquancy, “O! are you really and truly a missionary?”

“Really and truly,” he told her gaily, and came over to her side of the hut to sit beside her. “Why do you ask it like that?”

She considered a moment, and then declared impishly, “Because it doesn’t seem possible that a man like you should never say ‘Damn.’”

He laughed outright. “Well, I’m not going to tell tales out of school; but if you’d only got one pair of brown boots in the world and one pair of brown gaiters, and the boy tried to clean them with blacklead and paraffin oil!...”

Diana moved nearer to him, with her prettiest and most ingratiating air. “O, tell me some more!... Tell me lots more.”

“I don’t think that is half so bad as the boy washing the saucepans and the teacups all in the same water together,” put in Mrs. Grenville.

“How perfectly delicious of him!” cried Diana. “What else did he do?”

“You ought to have been here this morning when our stores came out from Edwardstown,” the missionary told her. “The boy carries them on his head, you know; and there was a tin of golden syrup ...”

“Yes ... yes ... and it leaked!...” gleefully.

“Trickled all down his head and neck; you never saw such a sticky mess! And as soon as the other boys discovered ...”

“Did they duck his head in a bucket?...”

“O, dear no!... licked him!...”

Diana fairly howled with delight; and then Stanley came in, after seeing that the horses were properly watered and fed, and was immediately accosted by Grenville with, “Hullo, Kid! you’re quite a deserter! What have you been doing all the week?”

“Do you call him Kid?” Diana asked. “What a capital name for him!”

“He has been ‘The Kid’ almost ever since he came to this district.”

“It pays,” remarked Stanley jocularly; “they give me sugar.”

“And he lives with The Bear; how comical! Instead of the lion lying down with the lamb, in Rhodesia you have The Kid feeding with The Bear.”

“Who is The Bear?” Ailsa Grenville asked, from the packing-case cupboard, where she was reaching down cups and saucers.

“Need you ask?” queried Diana. “Doesn’t Major Carew ever growl when he is here?”

Ailsa looked much amused. “Not exactly,” she said; “but I admit sometimes he rolls himself up into a ball, so to speak, and relapses into a sort of winter sleep.”

“I hope you prod him,” said Diana.

“Billy wouldn’t let me,” glancing affectionately at her husband. “There is only one Major Carew for him.”

“Still, it might do him good. We prodded him last night, didn’t we?” addressing Stanley. “We went right into his den, and gave him a good baiting, while we smoked his new Abdullah cigarettes,” and she smiled gleefully at the remembrance of the stern soldier, in an astonishingly sociable mood for him, humorously parrying her chaff. “You know,” she ran on, “he simply hated our coming. I almost wonder he didn’t dig impassable trenches across the road, or fortify himself in the Acropolis Hill. Anyone might have thought we were the bears, and he the woman.”

“I expect he was afraid of your charms,” said Grenville smilingly. “We wilderness-dwellers have none of the townsmen’s armour to withstand fair women.”

“Well, growling and scowling are very fair substitutes,” quoth Diana; “and, besides, he didn’t even trouble to observe if we had charms. As far as he decently could he looked the other way altogether.”

While she chatted on, delighting the missionary and his wife with her gaiety, Meryl sat in a low chair, and gazed through the doorway out over the smiling country, much as Carew usually did.

“It must be very wonderful,” she said at last, aroused by a sympathetic question from Ailsa Grenville, “to live day after day with such a scene as that in one’s doorway.”

“Yes,” Ailsa told her. “The wonder never grows less, nor the mystery, nor the beauty. Major Carew, when he is here, loves just to sit and look at it; and so do I.”

Diana, with the two men, had strolled outside; and Ailsa and Meryl sat alone in the cool interior.

Meryl sat very still, with her hands lightly clasped on her knees, and her eyes always always to the lovely prospect that was like a mighty ocean in which the waves were blue, mystical kopjes; and over which the first clouds, that heralded the approach of the rainy season, shed entrancing lights and shadows. Ailsa sat a little behind, and her eyes roved back from the view that had grown into her being and become part of her life to the face of the young heiress. She noted at once its instinctive charm; the charm of a woman blessed with most of the traits that hold and bind men for ever. Strength was there without masterfulness; sweetness that would never cloy; a dreamy elusiveness that meant a closed book it would be a joy to study chapter by chapter; and some of the chapters would surprise with their lightness and mirth, while others would surprise with their depth of sympathetic understanding, and yet others would bewilder alluringly with their whimsical, irresistible uncertainty. She knew that society papers sometimes spoke of the well-known millionaire’s daughter as beautiful, but to her it seemed the word was hardly the right one. Meryl’s face had in it something too strong and too distinctive for actual beauty; and yet Ailsa thought of all the lovely women she had ever seen none were quite so attractive. And because she was a tender-hearted woman, the thought crossed her mind to wonder if perhaps, out of the dark shadow that she knew hung ever over Peter Carew’s life, there might yet be a way of escape; a gracious healing, and a final joy. Could two such humans meet and not love? Could anything truly separate them if once the love were born?

She mused a moment or two happily, sublimely ignorant of all the forces that warred between; of what caused the shadow; of the power of a dead face; of the pride of a resolute man; of that attractive Huguenot Dutchman biding his time down south.

At last Meryl broke the silence. As she sat gazing through the open doorway her mind had lingered unconsciously over that last sentence. “Major Carew, when he is here, loves just to sit and look at it,” and in her fancy she saw the silent, watching form of the grim soldier-policeman.

“He is an interesting man,” she said simply. “I think I understood he was some connection of yours?”

“You mean Major Carew? Yes; he is a distant sort of cousin, but we are two entirely different branches of the family, and had drifted widely apart until we three met out here. Yet it was not surprising we should meet like this. The Carews were always wanderers and adventurers, like Drake and Frobisher and the other fine old pirates. A humdrum career in the Blues would hardly have continued to satisfy Major Carew, any more than the conventions and hide-bound prejudices of the Established Church could hold my husband.”

“Yet, if you will forgive my seeming rudeness, both of them apparently took a decided step downwards from the social point of view.”

“That would not trouble either of them for a moment. They sought Freedom, and found it.”

“Yet it meant, in a sense, what some people call being buried alive.”

“Ah, those people do not understand. That is how I took it at first. Shall I tell you a little, or will it bore you?”

“Please tell me. I think it is kind of you to trust me so soon with your confidence.”

Ailsa smiled. “One always knows. Anyone with insight would trust you instinctively. But there isn’t much to tell. Only that when I married my husband he held a living in Shropshire, with a sure promise of quick promotion; and then Doubt crept in which he could not overthrow, and after a long struggle he gave it up because his conscience would not let him be a hypocrite.”

“But he is still a Church missionary, is he not?”

“In a sense; but he is not paid by any society, and works on his own lines entirely. He had a little money of his own, and I have also, and out here it is ample. But at first I was very bitter with him, and let myself be influenced by my people who were still more bitter, and I would not join him. I went back home and lived the old life of my girlhood. He never uttered one word of reproach, although he was just breaking his heart for me, and for which I bless him every day of my life he wrote every mail telling me about the country and his work. At first I scarcely read the letters, and often did not reply; but he wrote on patiently and waited. And at last my mood changed. The endless tea-parties began to pall, and the insipidity of my home life. Week after week, week after week, the same round of social gatherings; the same people, the same conversations, the same everlasting tea, buns, and gossip. In each parish around, so many, many unmarried women, so many empty, monotonous lives. I think the condition of England’s country villages is becoming almost a tragedy; all the men seem to have gone away to a bigger and wider world, and all the women to have been left behind to feed on emptiness. There are the clergyman’s daughters, the doctor’s daughters, the solicitor’s daughters, and perhaps a few retired veterans and their daughters; all struggling through the same old empty round; while the men go out to conquer the earth.” She paused a moment, but seeing Meryl’s rapt attention, went on uninterruptedly, “And one day I awoke to the fact that I had a special right to one of the finest men who had gone out to do his share, and a special place at his side. To cut a long story short, I won through the frantic opposition of my family, cut myself adrift, and came out here to see for myself what Billy was doing that gave him a satisfaction he had never found in his peaceful easy living; in spite of the hunger I had always known was wearing out his soul for me.” She looked out across the country dreamily, before she finished. “I shall never forget when I first saw this,” motioning to the sunny prospect. “We arrived here in the dusk, owing to a breakdown, and so I had a long night’s rest before Billy first showed it to me. I must tell you I was already tremendously impressed, on the quiet, with my brown, stalwart, khaki-clad husband in place of the decorous, black-coated parson I had parted with; and although the journey had been very exhausting, for I had to travel in the post-cart, my interest in him and the country had never abated. Then he opened the door wide about sunrise, and said casually, ’Sit up and look at my view, Ailsa.’ I sat up, and for a moment I could not speak at all. Do you know, Miss Pym, the country looked positively hung with diamonds that wonderful morning. I shall never forget it. Just outside the door, forming a sort of framework to the scene beyond, was some tall, dry grass, thin and straggly enough to let the light through. And where at the top it spread into graceful, hanging, feathery seed-ears, it was hung with large dewdrops, reflecting all the colours of the rainbow. Behind them was the bluest of early-morning skies. Beyond them, what you see here, a far dream-country of untold loveliness. I said, ’O, Billy! have you lived beside this all these months?’ And then I began to cry, because I didn’t know what else to do, and I was so glad that I had come.”

A fleeting shadow of sadness seemed to cross Meryl’s face. “I envy you,” she said in a low voice. “You can stay on with the man you love, and see it every day. I must go back to the tea-parties.”

“Most people pity me.”

“I dare say; and they envy me,” with a little forlorn smile.

“You have much power, and power is good,” softly.

“Have I?... How, why, where?... What shall I do with all this money my father makes? I wonder what I could do to take from my heart this feeling that I am an alien and an intruder in this lovely country, among you people who are quietly making history? If your husband wants money for his mission, I could get him a cheque for a thousand pounds from my father, I know; but what is that compared to giving one’s life as you do, and growing right into the heart of the country, and feeling just that it is yours because of what you have given? I know that is how Major Carew feels also. One can see it in his rapt gaze. He does not care for very much else in the world. But we, my father and I, we just take riches out, and give nothing but cheques which we never even miss.” She got up and moved to the doorway, controlling with an effort her sudden, unexpected show of emotion. “The others have been looking at your fowls and cattle,” she said, “and now they are coming back. I hope Mr. Grenville will show us over the mission station.”

“He will be delighted,” Ailsa answered, following her lead with quick understanding; “and another day you must come and sit in my doorway again.”

“I should love to;” and she stepped out into the sunlight to join the gay trio Diana was still the life of.

Then Mr. Grenville took them into his workshops and his little mission hall, and showed them how he taught the boys carpentering and blacksmithing, and reading and writing and farming; making good, useful labourers of them with even greater zeal than that with which he made them Christians. Diana, the outspoken, could not resist a surprised comment.

“I thought people who had been abroad always ran down missionaries, and scoffed at missionary work?”

“They do very often,” Grenville replied, with frankness, “and not without reason. A great many missionaries are naturally not very suitable men. It is almost impossible to pick and choose.”

“There are some,” put in Stanley disgustedly, “who just confirm all the blacks they can, without bothering about how much they understand, and then make communicants of them so that they can send good figures home to their society for the missionary magazines. They don’t teach them anything useful at all, and they do a roaring trade with the garments sent out by pious ladies’ work guilds; as if the natives weren’t better in their own natural state than they are ever likely to be dressed up in clothes and fuddled with doctrines.”

Mr. Grenville, standing very upright and looking every inch a man, said simply, “It isn’t entirely their fault always. The home folk like the figures; they imagine they stand for progress, and they know nothing about the conditions. Many missionaries are very fine men, and they would do even better work if left a little more to their own initiative, and not cursed with this atmosphere of competition in figures. It isn’t fair to damn the whole flock because a few of the sheep are black.”

“And don’t you ever feel you are wasting your talents?” Meryl asked him a little shyly.

He threw his head back and squared his shoulders with a characteristic movement. “It is better than the hypocrisy and feebleness of the condition of affairs at home; and I am very fond of the natives. They are most lovable, when one once gets their confidence and understands them. And the freedom is good, and the primitive conditions. The getting right down to the bedrock of nature, so to speak, without too much highly developed civilisation. Yes, it is a good life for a man. Sometime I should like to show you the mission farm. We’ve made tremendous strides lately.”

“And you?...” Diana turned with a winsome air to Ailsa Grenville. “Do you find the natives lovable, and the primitive conditions?... And are you proud of the mission farm?... Or doesn’t it all sometimes make you just long to scream?... It would me!...”

Ailsa smiled into her eyes. “One grows adaptable very quickly. I confess I am very happy here. Certainly there are times when one feels rather as if one had dropped off the world into space, but it doesn’t take long to struggle through it. But then, of course, it is well to remember that Billy and I are rather an exceptional couple; quite absurdly, idiotically satisfied with each other’s company. If it were not so our lives would be purgatory. The tragedies of these far countries are for the husbands and wives isolated from all other companionship, and having perhaps nothing in common with each other. There are few conditions worse than isolation under those circumstances. It breaks the woman’s spirit and sours the man and brings shipwreck, where a little other congenial companionship might have brought them through in safety.”

They were interrupted by the sound of voices outside, and found that Mr. Pym and his engineer, having encountered Major Carew returning from Edwardstown, had persuaded him to show them the way to the mission. Mr. and Mrs. Grenville greeted them with eager warmth, and, the afternoon sun having sunk behind some trees, tea was spread outside the huts, so that they could drink it while admiring the view. Carew, though silent as ever, was less rigid, and Meryl saw how insistently his eyes strayed back to the blue vista of kopjes. She wondered what he thought of all day long, in his continuous silences, and behind the quiet, forceful eyes. It was noticeable that Diana seemed to have outgrown both her awe and chagrin towards him; and though at first he proved very unbending, she eventually won something like a repartee out of him. Ailsa watched them quietly from the background, and waited hopefully, but in vain, to see his eyes stray to Meryl. Indeed, he seemed almost to shun her, and she noted it with regret. Was it possible that already his preference was given to Diana, with her light raillery and ready laugh? Diana so pretty, so attractive, so original, and yet to Ailsa’s thinking, so far less reliable and restful than Meryl. In the end, by a clever little manoeuvre, she brought Carew and Meryl together.

“You are almost outvied, Major Carew,” she told him lightly. “Miss Pym likes my view already, as much, if not more, than you. I told her you loved to sit and look at it, and that is exactly what she likes to do.”

Meryl smiled, but made no comment. Mere admiration seemed superfluous, and Carew was grateful that she spared him raptures. So they sat quite still, and instead of any constraint between them because of the silence, there was a vague sense of restfulness and understanding. Meryl spoke first, and then she made no allusion to his love of the spot.

“I think you were right,” she said simply. “Mrs. Grenville must be one of Rhodesia’s heroines.”

“How do you specially mean it?”

“I mean it, because one knows there must be times when the isolation is almost unendurable, and when she must long for many of the things of her old life, however much she declares otherwise.”

“Yes, I think there are. She evidently had many friends, and she has almost lost them all. It is difficult to keep up friendships by post.”

Then Ailsa herself joined them.

“Has Major Carew been with you into the temple, yet?” she asked Meryl. “He is better than any guide-book for information.”

Meryl coloured faintly, but looked a little amused. He had so persistently withstood every friendly hint or invitation to accompany them among the ruins.

“He has been very much occupied ever since we came,” she said, glancing towards him.

Carew looked quite unconcerned, and merely assented, which made Ailsa rather want to shake him. “But it ought to be part of your business,” she told him, “to interest visitors in our wonderful old ruin.”

“I can hardly imagine anyone needing any incentive to that from me,” he said.

Meryl glanced at him humorously. Some new phase she had detected in him, since Diana persisted in what she called “baiting” him, made her more ready to overlook his bearishness and less quick to feel repulsed.

“Will you take me if I promise not to ask any silly questions?” she asked, with a smile.

He looked up, and for a brief moment the past seemed to lie still as one that is dead. His keen, direct eyes looked straight into hers, and he said simply, “I should like to take you.”

Meryl felt her cheeks glow a little with sudden, swift, indefinable pleasure, and almost at the same moment Diana broke in upon them.

“Do you know, Major Carew, your singularly appropriate nickname has been subjected to a little embroidery?... You are now called, after the Coeur de Lion, ‘The Bear with two faces.’” All in a moment he stiffened and the shadow loomed; and while Meryl wondered Diana ran on unheedingly, “If I say to you when we meet, ‘Which face is it to-day?’ you will know that I mean, is it your day of lordly graciousness, or is it the cast-iron, beware-of-the-bull frown day?”

“I think you are excessively rude, Diana,” Meryl said, though she smiled with the rest.

Carew smiled too, but he rose from his seat and moved away on some small pretence.

And as he went, Meryl, watching with eyes that were daily gaining clearer sight, saw that the shadow was as of some deep, unfathomable pain.

She too got up and moved a little away from the rest, gazing with grave, tender eyes across the kopjes, lying how bathed in a faint ethereal flush of rose and gold.

“He had not always two faces,” she said in her heart. “Something hurt him badly once, and ever since he has taken refuge behind the iron mask.”

“Rhodesia,” her heart whispered, almost without her consciousness, “cannot you with your fairness reward him for his work by soothing away the memory so that the refuge is no longer needed?...”

A little later, as they all prepared to ride home, she saw how resolutely he took his place with the engineer, and hastened on ahead, quenching even Diana by the stoniness of his mien.