Chapter Thirty.
Night! ... night on the veld once more—another luminous night of stars and sweet scents, and the haunting sense of mystery and isolation and intimate companionship, interrupted at intervals of ever greater frequency as the train ran into some wayside station, and hurrying forms moved along the platform, and gazed with faint curiosity into the unlighted carriage, as they passed the open windows and caught a momentary glimpse of the dim faces of a man and woman watching together in the night.
“Ghosts!” Pamela said once, pressing closer against Dare. “Shadows of the night,—flitting in the darkness, and swallowed up in it again. I wonder what they make of us, those ghosts?—two live people alone in a shadow world.”
She shivered slightly as the train sped onward again. Dare took a wrap from the seat and placed it about her shoulders. The temperature had fallen perceptibly. The fierce heat of the day was succeeded by the cold of the Transvaal night,—the cold of a high bracing altitude, following with surprising suddenness on the dry, burning heat of the Karroo. The fierceness and the desolation lay behind. The country presented here a fertile wooded beauty, startling in its greenness, following upon the arid desert through which they had passed.
“Don’t leave me to-night,” Pamela said presently, gripping his hand tightly. “Stay, and let us see it out together. It’s the finish... our last night. To-morrow...”
“There is no to-morrow,” he interposed quickly. “We have no concern with anything but the present I’ll stay... I want to stay. Lean against me, and sleep if you feel like it. I’d like you to sleep, Pamela.”
She laughed softly.
“I don’t want to lose one precious moment in sleep,” she said. “Now talk to me.”
“Last night,” he reminded her, “you didn’t want to talk.”
“I know. But to-night it’s different. There is so little time left. We have got to crowd everything into to-night. I want a store of memories,—a little harvest of summer thoughts to draw upon when the winter comes. We’ve talked so little.”
“We’ve managed to express a lot without words,” he said.
“Yes,” she said... “feelings. We’ve expressed ourselves somehow mutely. We get near to one another mentally. When I can’t see you any more I shall still have that sense of nearness. You’ll be there—somewhere.”
The arm with which he supported her held her more closely. He looked down at the shadowy outline of her face in the darkness where it rested against his shoulder, and his lips tightened suddenly. Why, in the name of all that was absurd, were they parting like this? ... parting without a sufficient reason,—for a scruple. The impulse to plead with her once more, to urge her more insistently than he had yet done, moved him strongly. He bent his face to hers quickly; but the words he would have uttered died on his lips, as the soft, low-pitched voice that he loved fell again on the silence, with a new note of tenderness in its tone.
“I think it is because of the trust you inspire that I love you so well.”
When we perceive, or imagine we perceive, certain qualities in another, it is possible to inspire those qualities which we admire. As he listened to her, Dare was silent; the impulse to plead with her faded. To deliberately shake her faith in him was a thing he could not do. There must be no painful memories of those last hours together.
“There is no accounting for love,—love like ours,” he said after a brief pause. “It’s not a thing of reasons,—it’s instinctive,—a common bond of sympathy, of mental understanding, uniting us as no law could unite us. If we never meet again you will still belong to me, as I belong to you. No lesser love could ever come into my life,—it wouldn’t satisfy me. I’ve given you everything. You fill all the crevices of my heart and brain. You’ve succeeded in crowding out the rest. When we have gone our separate ways, following out our different lives, as we shall be doing shortly, it will be some consolation to reflect that we hold one another constantly in our thoughts. You’ll write to me,—you can’t refuse me this time. I shall write,—often, whenever the impulse moves me. I am not going to lose touch with you again. If life gets too difficult for you, you will let me know. I’m always behind you, remember. I’m there when you want me. The time may come, Pamela.”
“Yes,” she said. “But you mustn’t encourage me to become too dependent on you. I’m not going to be afraid of difficulties, dear. Life is difficult. It has been difficult for me for some while past. You know... You knew that time you stayed with Connie. I think it was at that time when things were so hard I first learnt how much I cared,—how much you were to me I leaned on your strength then without realising it; and when you left I missed you so. It hurt—like hunger.”
“It’s like that with me always,” he said.
“It is easier to bear now,” she added, “since we’ve talked it over together. It is keeping it all pent up that frets one so. It is wrong,—don’t you think?—to be afraid of loving,—to attempt to suppress it as though it were something shameful. There is nothing shameful in love when one loves straight. I’m proud of loving you,—proud to know your love is mine. It’s an immense help to me, that knowledge. The world wouldn’t see it as we see it. I know. That’s where the need for secrecy comes in. But secrecy is just a little—dishonouring, don’t you think?”
He smiled faintly.
“The world is old in experience,” he said. “We couldn’t go on meeting and stay at this point, my dear. Love between man and woman, however steady and restrained, has its element of passion. There must come moments when one’s feelings get out of hand. The demand of love increases. You have only just accustomed yourself to the idea of loving; when one grows familiar with the idea one has to explore further. That is why I am going out of your life, dear one, until I can enter into it fully. For you and for me there can be no half measures.”
She was silent for a while, a little troubled at the flood of light he had let in upon the situation which she had been viewing through the haze of an impossible idealism. She realised the truth of what he said; and she felt suddenly ashamed, not at his having stripped away the sham coverings ruthlessly, but for having wilfully blinded herself to obvious realities. She felt that she had been convicted of deliberate dishonesty of thought. If he saw this thing clearly, why had not she also seen it without the need of his pointing it out?
“We are lovers, dear; we’ve admitted that,” he resumed. “We can’t stop at that unless we give up seeing one another. I want you. You are free to come to me,—free, that is, save for your own scruples. That is why I feel that in making love to you I have not acted dishonourably. I’ve fought for our love,—it was a square fight, and I’ve lost. You may be right... I can’t say. Anyway the decision rests with you. I’m not going against it. I am going to remain in the background until your need of me is as great as my need of you; then you’ll send for me. In the meantime you need not be afraid to trust me. I shall never seek to persuade you against your will.”
There was a further silence. Pamela dared not venture upon speech because of the tears which would have choked her utterance had she attempted to express her feelings aloud. He was so much more honest than she was, so much finer and stronger. She held him in her thoughts so highly placed that Dare would have been amazed and considerably embarrassed could he have realised the pinnacle to which he was elevated in the opinion of this woman, whom he was conscious of looking up to as infinitely better and simpler and altogether nobler of intention than himself. Compared with her direct and decent conceptions of life, her quiet acceptance of duty, and sense of responsibility, his ideas appeared carnal and extraordinarily limited and self-centred. He did not want to give up anything. He rebelled at the sacrifice demanded of him. It was only because he recognised the impossibility of shaking her resolution that he submitted at all. Had she weakened for a single moment he would have set himself to wear down her resistance with the first sign of faltering on her part. He had watched jealously for some sign of her yielding from the hour when they were alone together, away from the influences that had surrounded her in her home. During the past two days of intimacy and close companionship his hopes had run high. He did not understand how, loving him as she did, and admitting her love so freely, she could yet persist in her determination to marry the man who had wronged her so grievously. It was beyond his powers of comprehension entirely. The day would come, he believed, when she would recognise her mistake, would possibly even acknowledge it. It was for that day he would wait. When it dawned, as dawn it surely must, he would be ready.
The night grew colder as it advanced. Dare unstrapped the rugs and wrapped them about their knees. Pamela was enveloped in his overcoat, with nothing of herself visible but the dim outline of her face showing above the collar, crowned by the pale masses of her hair. She felt wonderfully comfortable and wakeful.
This rushing through the windy starlight, through unfamiliar country shrouded in the dusk and mystery of night, darkly revealed in silhouette against the lighter sky, exhilarated her, filled her with a sense of beauty and ever deepening wonder, as mile after mile was passed in the noisy rush of that symbol of modern activity through the heart of a partially developed country. Black objects, shapes of trees and outlines of scattered homesteads, started up out of the surrounding obscurity, flashed darkly for a second on the landscape, and vanished, and were succeeded by other shapes, formless, vaguely distinct outlines, distorted and magnified in the gloom. The quiet remote beauty of night lay like a softening shadow upon the face of the land.
“I have always loved the night,” Pamela said, speaking softly as though wishful to avoid disturbing the tranquillity by raising her tones; “but I have never loved it so well before, felt so at one with it. It shuts out the world, doesn’t it? ... shuts out everything.”
“It’s you in the night I love,” he said. “That’s where the magic for me comes in. If I hadn’t you beside me I should probably be sleeping. Place and time don’t count, Pamela,—it’s companionship that matters. See the dawn, dear,—just breaking. In a short while it will be light.”
“Yes.”
She stirred restlessly. The thought of what the new day held for her troubled her insistently, filled her with a shrinking sensation of dread. Before another dawn should break she would be faced with gigantic issues; the biggest crisis of her life would have been met. What did the future hold for her, she wondered. Had it lain in her power to lift the veil she would not have dared to look.
“I’m dreading the day, dear,” she said, a little tremulously. “I’m such a coward... I’m afraid,—of him.”
“He’s a sick man, Pamela,” he said, desirous of reassuring her. “Illness changes a man.”
“I know,” she said.
She was quiet for a while, watching the paling stars in the slowly brightening heavens, observant of the gradual definement of the landscape, as the light revealed it, first as a clear colourless picture in the grey dawn, and later as a wonder of separate distinct shades of green and amber beneath a sky already flushing with the promise of the day.
He tried to distract her thoughts by speaking on impersonal topics, by bringing the talk back again after a while to themselves. He did not speak of love. That was all past and done with. He assumed a new attitude, was quietly protective and helpful and reassuring. He drew up her plans for her, and settled where they would stay. It was Pamela’s wish that they should go to the same hotel. He had suggested separate hotels; but he gave in to her pleading. After all what did it matter? He was there to advise and help her; it was better that he should be at hand.
“I am leaving everything to you,” she said, regarding him wistfully.
“Of course,” he answered. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“There’s one thing,”—she paused, then completed the sentence—“I want you to do, if you don’t mind... It’s been troubling me. Would you tell the doctor,—what you think necessary to make him understand? I shouldn’t know how to explain...”
He smiled down into the distressed blue eyes, and laid his hand warmly upon hers.
“I never intended you should explain,” he answered. “That’s my job too.”