A DECISION THAT FAILED

As Carew sat outside his hut that evening smoking a solitary pipe, two thoughts seemed to fill his mind. The one that he had told Meryl he would be pleased to visit the temple ruins with her; the other the warning unconsciously conveyed in Diana’s raillery, reminding him that he was in danger of straying from the rigid pathway he had chosen of unsociable aloofness, and therefore in a measure, perchance, inviting trouble.

But of course he need not go. A polite message by Stanley, or a call as he rode past perhaps, already starting on some convenient engagement. Yet as he sat on he knew it was not entirely his wish to resort to either subterfuge. Why, after all, should he not go with her just once, and no doubt Diana also, and tell them a little about the mysterious walls?

He pulled hard at his pipe, staring into the darkness. Why not go and get it over, instead of troubling to send an excuse? Surely that were the simpler plan? One moment he thought he would, and the next he found himself shrinking unaccountably, warned again by Diana’s chaff. He knew quite well she was right. He was a man, or a bear if she preferred it, with two faces; but the trouble was that she should so thoroughly have grasped the fact. He had only intended to show one face, the uninviting, frigid one; and yet unconsciously she had won from him more than one glimpse of the other.

And if he unbent so far as to act as their escort to the ruins, he was yielding still further to an atmosphere of friendliness he had forsworn.

He turned in at last, still in indecision, but the next morning he said he would not go.

So Meryl waited a little forlornly through the morning hours. It was unusually cool for Zimbabwe, the hot sun being hidden by grey clouds, and she knew no question of heat could possibly be detaining him. She had hoped he would call for her about eleven and then come back to lunch; but the morning wore on, and no tall figure in khaki strode out from the clearing where the police camp stood.

Neither did the afternoon bring any word or sign, until Stanley arrived for a cup of tea and to ask them to stroll up to the store with him at the head of the valley. Diana agreed readily, having found the hours somewhat tedious; but Meryl felt tired and headachy, and chose to remain behind. Once, as casually as she could, she asked if Carew had gone anywhere for the day.

“No, he’s grinding away at his report for the Native Commission, and as solemn as a judge. I don’t think he has spoken two words all day.”

“Is there some special haste then?”

“O no; it is just his mood. He gets a sort of black day sometimes, when he barely answers if you speak to him, and looks like a bronze figure. Then he grinds away at something or other as if his life depended on it, and Moore and I have to just shut up.”

When they had gone away up the valley Meryl sat on alone in the shade, thinking deeply. Evidently he had some reason of his own for not following up his promise, and she need not any longer expect him. He did not want to take her, and probably was vexed that he had said that he would. It did not seem very polite, but she hardly looked at it in that way. Somehow, with this stern-featured soldier-policeman, the ordinary amenities of conventional intercourse seemed to have little weight. If he regretted his words and did not want to go, she liked him better for calmly remaining away, than coming against his wish, because he felt he ought. Another man would have done that, any man, in fact; only Peter Carew, and a few like him, would calmly change his mind and remain aloof without saying anything.

Yet how keenly she was disappointed. It was quite idle to pretend otherwise to herself, and with a strength like his she calmly faced the fact. When she went to bed the previous night she had lain awake thinking of the morrow, hugging to her consciousness with shy gladness that he was on the point of unbending at last and showing a little friendliness. In a few days now they would be journeying on, and she had begun to expect he would remain unbending to the last, and let them go away, perhaps never to meet again, with nothing beyond the official courtesy and the occasional sparring with Diana. And then had come this sudden hope, and she had been strangely glad. One might live a lifetime and not again meet a man quite like him. Even if their intercourse were to be of the merest afterwards, still it was better than nothing, better than a final end to all friendship when they journeyed on again, leaving him and the ruins behind.

And now had come this swift disappointment. He must have regretted his move instantly, and made up his mind to be more rigid than ever.

She hardly troubled to ask why. Doubtless he had his own reasons, and whatever they were, they were nothing petty or small. Her eyes strayed a little longingly to the police camp, and she watched the door of his hut from her chair securely hidden behind some low bushes.

Was he still grinding at his report, she wondered, looking like a bronze figure? The simile pleased her, and she smiled. Yes, bronze was the right word to use, for his face and hands and arms were tanned almost to the colour of his khaki with exposure, so that he sometimes looked all of a piece, except for the close-clipped dark moustache and keen, intense blue eyes.

Then as she looked she saw some movement in the camp. A boy appeared, apparently in answer to a call, and stood a moment receiving directions. Then the tall figure itself appeared, stood a moment to give an order, and strode down towards the little gate. She sat up, and her breath came a little unevenly. Was he really coming at last? Had he, after all, been seriously delayed?

No; outside the gate, without one glance towards the tents on the hill-side, he turned to the left and disappeared in the direction of the Acropolis Hill.

So there was nothing further to hope for. He would never come now. It was the end.

She got up, feeling suddenly a new tiredness, and wishing vaguely that they were leaving on the morrow. Perhaps it would be possible to persuade her father to do so without exciting much comment. Diana was already a little bored with their camping-place and ready to be off, and she ... without daring to probe too deeply, Meryl felt, for the sake of her own peace of mind, it would be wiser to go quietly away from a presence so likely to disturb her peace.

Yes, she would ask her father to plan a move as soon as he came in, and in the meantime she must do something herself to pass the next hour more helpfully than sitting alone in the shade.

The greyness had rolled away now, and the evening grown exceptionally lovely, with clear skies overhead and great banks of pearly tinted clouds on the horizons. Where should she go? Only two ways lay open. Either she must follow Diana and Stanley up the valley, or she must stroll down to the temple alone. The third route lay to the Acropolis Hill, and that was formidably closed by the presence of the man who should have been her companion. Finally she decided on the temple, and tying on the large grey hat that blended so charmingly with her eyes and the soft tints of her skin, she walked along the little footpath skirting the police-camp vegetable-garden to the western entrance.

Inside the temple walls all was very peaceful and still, while the sunshine made a network of gold through the leafy trees upon the antique masonry. Yet as she looked around upon the empty desolation her heart grew sad with a nameless sorrow; that old, old ache, and old, old tiredness, for the utter futility of work and of striving, that sometimes seems to fill the human heart, when in a depressed mood it looks upon the ruins of something that has once had strength and greatness. Meryl carried in her hand a little pocket edition of Omar, but she did not open the leaves nor read the lines. In a vague way it was enough to have it with her; it was like having in her hand the hand of a friend who understood. For of all poets the world has known, perhaps none have so perfectly voiced the cry of the human heart when it questions the why and the wherefore and the worthwhileness of its own mysterious existence. So she sat very still in the ancient temple, and pondered the old questions that live from age to age unanswered.

And because Sorrow seemed for the moment to have her in his keeping, all her thoughts were tinged with sadness. She looked around upon the broken walls, and it seemed to be brought home to her with sudden force, how little time was given to each one to play his part before he must make room for another.

The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly, and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

And because there was that element of greatness in her, which was also in her father, she thought less of the “worthwhileness” of doing than of the poorness of not doing. His talents were given to money-making, because it was the thing he had a genius for; but she knew that in a measure he fulfilled his trust, and besides subscribing generously to charities, helped many a “lame dog” over his stile in secret. But what had this to do with the trust that was hers? She who did not even bear the heat and burden of the day in making the money?... She who had but to spend it.

In the ruined temple she sat on thinking, thinking.

How the spot fascinated her!

In this far Rhodesia, how strange that she, the product of the most modern and presumably enlightened age, should linger there amidst these broken walls, and feel strange kinship and fascination about those old people in that remote age; should stretch a hand out to them, as it were, across the centuries, with this feeling that their thoughts had been even as her thoughts, and that the passing of the ages could never eradicate the essential likeness of one people to another in those old eternal questions of whence and why and wherefore.

And they, the maidens of that day, had loved the man who was big and strong and true, even as the maidens of to-day; the man who achieved; who was ever fearless to do and dare; who gave his service to the world quietly, unostentatiously, indifferent to praise or reward. And what was the use of it all: the love, the heartache, the silent admiration.... The maidens were dust now, and all the strength and the heroism of the strong men could not give them one age longer to do and dare ere they too made room for others.

Yet always always deep-rooted in the heart and mind of humanity, was this ineradicable belief in the simple act of doing; this half-contempt of the lives content to flutter their little way in aimless self-seeking. The spirit that took men through the terrible solitudes of untrodden places, that urged them across uncharted seas, that carried them fearlessly aloft to conquer the air not for gain, not for notoriety, not for praise, but just that simple splendid need to be doing. How it appealed to her, how it enthralled her senses, how it made her ache with a great overwhelming desire to discover quickly what “doing” in a big sense there might be for her!

Of course he, the stern soldier-policeman, was of the fearless band. In his quiet way he was “doing” with the foremost, though it might be a work that would never bring him anything in this world but enough pay just to live upon. But that was beside the point. The band to which he belonged did not linger in the shallows, counting the cost, counting the gain; they plunged straightway into the deep waters, and struggled to some mysterious, perhaps fugitive, goal ahead, finding their reward in the struggle itself and the difficult headway won.

And afterwards!...

O, what did it matter about afterwards, if one had put up a good fight and dared the deep waters? How much better to be overwhelmed there, than to fritter away a butterfly life in the shallows! How splendid to win through and stand on the far bank with the quiet band of strong workers, even though no one knew aught of the struggle, instead of being lauded to the skies by the playing butterflies!

Only, what could she do; ah, what?

A wave of hopelessness seemed to seize upon her, and back across her mind like a lash cut the dictum of the strong, rigid man, “A millionaire’s daughter can generally be pretty useful if she likes.”

Of course, signing cheques, cheques, cheques a mere machine and never to get in touch with the deep need, the inarticulate sorrow of the world that her soul ached to comfort. It would seem that even to him, the figure of bronze, it was what she should seek as her metier. She almost wondered if somewhere in his heart he had a faint contempt for her, because she was a millionaire’s daughter: a product of the new regime; someone who could not be permitted to stand in the same light as the women of his ancient, illustrious name; who had no part with the proud, patrician ladies of his great family.

She rose to her feet suddenly, feeling unaccountably hurt by the thought, and her eyes roved half unconsciously, and fixed themselves upon the spot where the scarlet petals of the Kaffir boom showed blood-red against the ancient northern wall. The ache in her heart coloured all her mind for the moment, shutting out the glad sunshine with its golden evening glow resting tenderly upon the granite blocks, showing her only the splashes of scarlet like blood upon the ancient walls. Was it the altar of sacrifice? Did the Kaffir boom shed its great red flowers for ever, like drops of blood upon the altar of the world’s pain?

The sound of a step upon broken stones roused her suddenly; a man’s firm tread close beside her. She looked round slowly as it stood still, and with the ache and the question lingering in her face, found herself looking into blue eyes of a disconcerting directness the eyes of the soldier-policeman.

“I saw you from the Acropolis Hill,” he said, “and so I came.”

No word of why he had not come sooner; no explanation of his presence on the Acropolis Hill when she had a right to expect him with her; no preliminaries at all, no self-conscious excuses, no apparent realisation that he had behaved a little oddly; only the simple, direct announcement, “I saw you, so I came.”

Yet there was something more a vague intangible something, that made the directness of his eyes disconcerting in a way it had not been before. Meryl felt a pink flush stealing over her face, and turned her head away to hide it.

“I wonder what you were thinking about just then?” he said, with the slightest softening. “I awoke you from a very deep reverie.”

She raised her eyes, and they fell again upon the scarlet flowers. Something born of her own deep understanding told her, give this man straightness for straightness always if you would stand well with him; no begging the question, no subterfuge.

“I was thinking,” she answered simply, “that those scarlet petals of the Kaffir boom, falling on these ancient walls, suggest great blood drops offered, upon the altar of the world’s pain throughout the ages.”

“Ah!...” The exclamation escaped him quickly, unheedingly sharp, short, abrupt. It was as though she had struck him suddenly in a vulnerable place. It told her, as perhaps nothing else could have done, she had gauged rightly when she remarked to Diana that sometime something had hurt him very much.

For a moment there was a tense, pulsing silence, and then he turned aside towards the sacred enclosure which stood behind them. Meryl turned also, and ventured as she did so to glance into his face. It was stern again now, but she knew for a brief moment as he made the exclamation it had not been so, and for a reason she did not seek to fathom her heart was strangely glad.