“We shall have to go without her. She can’t come—says she’s getting headachy.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
Nidia had to turn away her head to avoid a splutter outright. Never had she heard words intended to be sympathetic uttered in tones of more jubilant relief. To herself she said: “You are a sad tarradiddler, John Ames.” To him she said, “Yes; it’s a pity, isn’t it?” He, for his part, was thinking that this time the official order need not be interpreted too literally. It had plainly intimated that a state of things had transpired which necessitated the presence of every official at his post, but this time the state of things could dispense with his adjusting hand for twenty-four hours longer. “With all possible dispatch.” Well, to start that night under the circumstances would not be possible, under others it would. Throughout the whole day Nidia would be alone with him, and he meant that day to be one that he should remember.
They started. At first the exhilarating spin along the smooth fir-shaded road, together with the consciousness that the day was only beginning, caused him partly to forget that most unwelcome recall. They had arranged to use by-roads where the riding was good, and, taking the train at Mowbray, proceed to Cape Town, and ride out thence as far beyond Camp’s Bay as they felt inclined. Now, as they spun along through the sunlit air, between leafy gardens radiant with bright flowers and the piping of gladsome birds, the noble mountain wall away on the left towering majestic though not stern and forbidding, its cliffs softened in the summer haze, its slopes silvered with the beautiful wattle, and great seas of verdure—the bright green of oak foliage throwing out in relief the darker pine and blue eucalyptus—surging up against its mighty base, the very contrast afforded by this glorious scene of well-nigh Paradisical beauty, and the mental vision of a hot steamy wilderness, not unpicturesque, but depressing in the sense of remote loneliness conveyed, was borne forcibly home to the mind of one of them. It was a question of hours, and all would have fled. He grew silent. Depression had reasserted itself.
Yet, was it merely a sense of the external contrast which was afflicting him? He had traversed this very scene before, and not once or even twice only. He had always admired it, but listlessly. But now? The magic wand had been waved over the whole. But why transform the ordinary and mundane into a paradise for one who was to be suffered but one glimpse therein, and now was to be cast forth? A paradise—ah yes; but a fool’s paradise, he told himself bitterly.
“Well?”
He started. The query had come from Nidia, and was uttered artlessly, innocently, but with a spice of mischief.
“Yes? I was wondering?” she went on.
“What were you wondering?”
“Oh, nothing! Only—er—as it is rather—er—slow for me, don’t you think so—supposing you give me an inkling of the problem that is absorbing you so profoundly? You haven’t said a word for at least ten minutes. And I like talking.”