CHAPTER XXXII
AFTER a week or so at Potchefstroom, Carson returned to Johannesburg, to find Rosser beating the town for him, crazy with impatience. Wallerstein had offered seven hundred pounds apiece for the South Rands, but Rosser had not closed; he considered it madness not to stand out for eight hundred.
"It'll only be a matter of a week or two," said he. But Carson gloomed and cursed. It maddened him to find the thing still unsettled, for he had made up his mind not to return to Durban until he knew definitely whether he had poverty or wealth—both comparative, of course—to offer to the woman of his heart. However, as he had stayed so long already, a few days more could not make much difference, he argued lifelessly with himself, so he gave a grudging half-assent to Rosser and went his ways. He still had several minor affairs to attend to, and various people to see, but he did all half-heartedly. Choosing and despatching a ring to Poppy was the only thing that gave him any joy, and that was too poignant for pleasure. Then, suddenly, in one day he grew restless and haggard. Hunger was on him for the sight of a face, and at last he knew he could wait no longer, but must go. The decision came upon him suddenly in the Club with the sight and scent of a gardenia Forsyth was wearing in his coat at lunch-time. Now, between the scent of a gardenia and the scent of Barbadoes-thorn there is scarcely any difference at all, except that the gardenia's fragrance is perhaps more subtly insistent. Carson spun out of the Club into a cab and in fifteen minutes was in his broker's office.
"Close for seven hundred pounds each, Rosser," he said briskly. "And get the whole thing fixed up as soon as possible. I'm leaving to-night."
"Oh, but I've already closed for eight hundred pounds each," chirruped the elated Rosser. "The transfer is completed and the money paid in." He pranced into an inner office and produced voluminous documents. "Loot, my son! Loot from the house of Rimmon! I take my little fifteen thousand pounds and you take twenty-five thousand. Isn't that all right? Now will you be good!"
An hour later Carson regained his cab and was driven to his rooms. A portmanteau at Vetta's head was a sufficient indication of his intentions, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in settling up his remaining business matters and appointments by telegram and telephone. Then he dined, and caught the eight o'clock express by one minute and a half. Vetta, who was on the look-out for him, indicated an empty first-class, and Carson fell into it and slept like the dead until morning.
Those were the days when the run between Johannesburg and Durban occupied the better part of twenty-seven hours. The first stop of any importance was at Volksrust, the boundary town, and Carson roused himself to take a look at country he knew well, and was not likely to see again for many years. It was as early as five A.M., and a wet salt mist lay over everything, chilling him to the bone as he opened his window and looked out at the bleak Drakensberg looming through the haze, and tragic Majuba, which throws a shadow athwart every brave man's path as he passes. Later, the train dashed through the Laing's Nek tunnel, and as it descended the sloping spur of the range, Natal lay before Carson's eyes—all beautiful green valleys and running water: the land of his desire. The mist had cleared from the air, but it still seemed to obscure Carson's vision as he looked, and he passed Ingogo, and Mount Prospect, with ill-fated Colley's monument, unknowingly. Only the far blue haze that meant the coast lured his eyes, for there for him lay heart's content.
Presently, at Newcastle, came the faithful Vetta with tidings of breakfast; and Carson scrambled amongst a weary, sleepy crowd, in which he recognised no face, for sandwiches and vile coffee flung at him, half in cup and half in saucer. When he had breakfasted in this fashion, taken a leisurely stroll, glanced in all the carriages to see if there could possibly be any passengers he knew, inspected the accommodation of Vetta, and inquired into the matter of the latter's breakfast, he returned to his carriage. There was still a residue of sixteen hours to get through before the journey ended. Having no reading-matter with him, he thought at first to kill time with pleasant thoughts of a woman in a garden, but it was presently borne in upon him that his consciousness, or conscience, or memory, or whatever he may have cared to call it, had another and less agreeable affair to consider with him. Something within, that he would fain have cursed into silence, earnestly solicited his attention to the fact that the train which was crawling with him to the woman he loved, was at the same time tearing with most indecent haste towards one whom he had never loved, and the hour in which he must tell her so. Presently the thought of that hour lashed him, cut him with knives, turned him sick.
In time, he stared at the wild and rugged outline of the Biggarsberg, until it seemed blurred with a red haze; and as the flat and dreary land of stunted bush that lies between Elandslaagte and Howick unrolled itself monotonously before his window, rocks appeared to grin and gibe at him, and isolated trees menaced him with gnarled arms, even as in Wiertzs's picture Napoleon is menaced by the arms of women.
As the hours passed his eyes grew bloodshot and his throat dry. His mouth sneered with self-contempt; unconsciously his lips opened and closed, and he swallowed with the expression of a man who is tasting the bitterness of death. But through all, his heart held steadfast to one plan—the man's plan, the old plan that was in the beginning and shall be till the end.