"It makes me ache almost like the Victoria Falls did. I wonder why God painted such lovely scenes where no one ever came, or scarcely ever, to see them?"
She was silent a moment, then ran on again, "We fight and sweat and struggle for diamonds, and God hangs them on the dry grass, in the wilderness. Meryl, I wonder if we shall ever see anything quite like this again? And they told us to avoid the Charter Flats!... I suppose God feels about it something as we do. He knows most people like Brighton parades and Durban sea-fronts, so He lets them arrange their own sights; and for Himself, in far wonderful places, He paints scene pictures, and plants lovely gardens, and fills them with birds and flowers and sunshine, and splashes down upon the world, in some remote corner, a glorious colour scheme, just for his own delight."
Meryl raised herself on her elbow, with a little tender smile. "And I suppose He said to Himself, 'I will let Diana and Meryl Pym see one of my secret, treasured places'?"
"Yes, exactly. And though I don't hold with saying grace before meals, because, since God made us, it seems the least He can do to enable us to obtain food to keep us alive, I will say a grace this morning to Him for letting me see His colour scheme on the Charter Flats at sunset and sunrise."
A little later they had a fragrant breakfast of liver from a buck the engineer had shot about daybreak; and that is a delicacy known only to those who fare forth across the veldt, and have a bright wood fire burning in readiness for the spoils of the hunt directly they are brought in.
Then they started away again across the flats, once more moving in a vague world of soft shadings, with only the long sandy road stretching away into space behind them and before. And sometimes, before the sun mounted too high, they found themselves moving across a space of gold and bronze, where grass that had not been burnt shone like amber in the morning glory; and again presently a space of loveliest emerald-green, where the grass had been burnt early and the new blades were already sending up joyous blades into the sunlight. And sometimes a Kaffir-boom tree added a splash of brilliant scarlet, painted upon a canvas of soft, hazy shadings; and sometimes the veldt showed them a little piece of her flower-carpet—the carpet that was to spread broadcast presently—of delicate-tinted lovely flowers in reckless profusion upon a ground of rich terra-cotta soil.
Neither girl talked. It was not a scene to talk in. It did not call for raptures and exclamations; only for dreaming and absorbing. It seemed as if it might have been the spot where God rested upon the seventh day, so utter and absolute and complete was the sense of detachment from all the exigencies of being and doing.
Two verses of a poem by Arthur Symons repeated themselves in pleasant rhythm in Meryl's mind:—
"I leave the lonely city street, The awful silence of the crowd; The rhythm of the roads I beat. My blood leaps up, I shout aloud, My heart keeps measure with my feet.
"A bird sings something in my ear, The wind sings in my blood a song 'Tis good at times for a man to hear; The road winds onward white and long, And the best of earth is here!"