"You are driving, of course," stated Marice, in an authoritative tone.
"No," said Tryon dryly; "I never let any one handle my car but myself."
Now, nothing would make Marice renounce the comfort of the front seat. Even if she would have done it for the sake of sitting with Druro, she knew that the jarring and jolting so unavoidable on African roads would put her nerves on edge for the evening. So there was nothing further to be said, but she felt, as she flung herself into the seat beside Tryon, that this was verily the last straw. For a time she showed her displeasure with and disdain of Tryon by sitting half turned and conversing with Druro, who was obliged to lean forward uncomfortably to answer her remarks. But she soon tired of this, for the strong wind caused by the car cutting through the air tore her flatly arranged hair from its appointed place and blew it over her eyes in thin black strings. This enraged her, as the dishevelment of a carefully arranged coiffure always enrages a fashionable woman. She loathed wind at any time; it always aroused seven devils in her. She longed to box Tryon's ears. But the best she could do was to sit in haughty silence at his side, while the wind took the long ends of her scented tulle scarf and tore it to rags, fluttering them maliciously in the faces of the two silent ones behind. Every now and then Druro mechanically caught hold of these ends, crumpled them into a bunch, and stuffed them behind Mrs. Hading's shoulders, but a few minutes later they would be loose again, whipping the wind. Once, when he was catching the flickering things from Gay's face, his hand touched her cheek, and once, when they both put out their hands together, they clasped each other's fingers instead of the fragile stuff. But they never spoke. And their silence at last began to weigh on the two in front. They found themselves straining their ears to hear if those two would ever murmur a word to each other. And if they did not, why didn't they?
"Has he got his arm round her?" wondered Tryon savagely. (He too had counted on tonight and the long, lonely drive with Gay, and was in none too pleasant a mood with life.)
"Is he holding her hand?" thought Marice Hading, and ground her teeth.
"Has there ever been anything between them?"
But Druro and Gay were doing none of these things—only sitting very still, and thinking long, long thoughts. And whatever it was they thought of, it put no gladness into their eyes. Any one who could have peered into their faces in the pale moonlight must have been struck by the similarity in the expression of their eyes, the vague, staring misery of those who search the horizon vainly for something that will never be theirs, some lost city from which they are for ever exiled.
The African horizon was wonderfully beautiful that night. As they came out from the miles of bush which surround Wankelo into the hill-and-valley lands of Selukine, the moon burst in pearly splendour from her fleecy wrappings of cloud and showed long lines of silver-tipped hills and violet valleys, and, here and there, great open stretches of undulating space with a clear view across leagues and leagues to the very edge, it seemed, of the world. As one such great stretch of country rolled into view from a rise in the road, Druro spoke for the first time, in a low voice, vaguely and half to himself.
"There is the land I love—my country!"
With his hand he made a gesture that was like a salute. After all, he was a Rhodesian, and this was his confession of faith. The story of the lamp-posts was only a bluff put up to disguise the hook Africa had put in his heart, the hook by which she drags all those who love her back across the world, denying, reviling, forswearing her even unto seventy times seven, yet panting to be once more in her adored arms. All Rhodesians have this heart-wound, which opens and bleeds when they are away from their country, and only heals over in the sweet veld air.
Gay did not answer. He had hardly seemed to address the remark to her; yet it went home to her heart because she, too, was a Rhodesian, and this was the land she loved.