“We can’t allow it,” said Webster gruffly.
“Then take me with you,” she said softly, as she bent forward, with a flush in her cheeks; “take me with you—for you have suffered with me; men have sacrificed their lives for you as for me. Ah! take me too; I could not live alone with these memories.”
Chapter Fifteen.
A Quarrel.
So it came that they left behind them the arid rock of Ascension, the murmur of the sea, and all that it spoke to them of tragedy and defeated hopes. They had set out in quest of the Golden Rock, had passed from under the granite walls of Table Mountain, through the vine-clad valleys of the Paarl, up on to the melancholy plateau of the Karroo, crossed the Orange River in the night, sped for a day through the treeless flats of the Free State, and had arrived at Pretoria—a town of strange contrasts, where the low-walled house of the old days stood in the shadow of the lofty modern building, where the slow-moving Boer looked askance at the restless uitlanders—unwelcome visitors from the crowded haunts of Europe.
Before them was the Golden Rock—the “fairy spot,” already glorified by a halo of mystery—the goal of their endeavours, whose brightness lured them on, though they secretly feared it would always elude their grasp; and behind, like a dream vividly remembered, was a vision of a calm sea, and brave men rushing to their death. For them there was no interest in the people around them; but they were observed and discussed with a freedom that did not stick at coarseness.
In the veranda of the principal hotel, after dinner, when the men were smoking over their coffee, and there was no other lady but Miss Anstrade, drinking in the cool of the evening, the conversation grew both free and loud, especially at one corner, where a party of three leant with their backs to a balustrade, and laughed boisterously at each other’s jokes.
“She is an actress,” said one; “I can see that, from the way she manoeuvres her fan.”