CHAPTER XXIX
CARSON left the next day for Johannesburg as he had intended, speaking to no woman after he had parted from that pale, ardent one under the flamboyant tree. Other women, indeed, had ceased to exist for him. With one he knew there must yet be a scene, most painful and bitter, which could not be shirked; the thought of it, when he thought of it, turned his heart cold—but it must be confessed that he did not think of it often. He was too busy in his first weeks of absence to think of any woman much—even the best-beloved. Up to his eyes in affairs, and among a hundred old friends and haunts in the busy, virile life of the Rand, he had scarcely time to turn up the book of his mind for a page he knew was there, illumined with letters of fire and gold. But always he wore a red rose in his heart. Always a star glimmered at the back of his life, colouring the days golden.
Sometimes in the night-hours, or with the dawn, a vision of her face would come to him, so sharp and clear, that it seemed her body must be in the room, as well as her spirit, and almost she would fill the arms he put out for her. In those hours it was made clear to him how Love can wrench the spirit from the body and send it speeding across the miles to the Beloved.
He had not asked her to write, nor did he write himself. Their love was not one which needed to be kept afire by words; already it burned too fiercely for peace. Letters would have been a delight, it is true; but he was artist enough to realise the value of restraint from small joys that a great joy may be more complete, and he knew that their meeting would be the dearer and sweeter for this intervening silence "too full for sound or foam."
Moreover, his affairs were critical. He required all his coolness and judgment for the share market, and the letters he must write if he wrote at all to her, though they would not have disabled him for the fight, must at least have left him less calm and unshaken than he desired to be at this juncture. Fortune is a woman, and a jealous one at that. She must be wooed and worshipped, and all others forgotten for her sake before she will bestow her smiles. Carson approached her in a spirit of ravishment. His desire was for her favours, and he was prepared to drag them from her, if she would not give. He was prepared to buy and sell as never before in all his gay, careless life—feverish for gain.
The glance with which he searched the face of Fortune was neither imperialistic nor altruistic now, but purely personal; he was thinking, plotting, planning for the future; but the details of that same future were too wild and sweet to be thought upon. They sang a song in his veins that would not be silenced.
His first business was to find Charlie Rosser, his broker, the shrewdest, straightest man on 'Change,' and a personal friend at that. But the slump was affecting people's health. All Johannesburg was laid up, nursing its lungs, its hump, or its pet stocks, and Rosser was amongst the invalids. So Carson's first week was spent at a loose end, for he was too wise a citizen of the world to venture upon the seas of finance, of which he had no great knowledge, without a good man at the helm. Most days, however, found him making his way through the crowded streets to "the Chains" for news of the market. Things were as bad as they could be, and every man had a tale of dolour to pitch, but no one looked dolorous. The high, fine air of Johannesburg is a wonderful thing for making people think they are all muscle and no nerves—and they don't find out their mistake until after they have made their pile, or lost it, when the "finding out" doesn't matter, anyway.
The place was always home to Carson, and "full of friendly faces," and he trod its streets as familiarly as the decks of his own soul.
One morning, just before High Change, he found an extra jostle going on amongst the crowds of brokers and dealers "between the Chains." Everyone was agog. The market had come better from London. In anticipation of a demand at High Change, shares were changing hands merrily. Carson was hailed blithely by friend and foe alike, offered everything he didn't want, and alternately elated and depressed by the news that came to him concerning the stocks in which he was interested. But on the whole, the outlook was bright.
"Boom!" was the hilarious word that cleared the horizon of clouds. "There's going to be a boom!" men shouted, and their eyes were full of the bland joy of piracy. Rumours had come that the "Corner House" was supporting the market for their special stocks, and other houses followed the lead. Johannesburg is the most sensitive market in the world—it responds to outside influence as the violin to Sarasate.