And Carew's comment was to ride out across the veldt alone.
The news was undoubtedly a shock to him. Of course, he had known she would marry, but, more or less unconsciously, he had pictured her with an English home and a permanent place in English society.
The reality,—what actually had happened,—had not entered his head at all. Of course he knew van Hert by name; everyone did. And because of his reputation for anti-English views Carew both marvelled and at the same time gleaned a probable motive. And the result of his cogitations was that added sternness which always came into his face when he was seriously troubled.
Yet what use to fret and trouble now? She had gone out of his life for ever, and with her his last chance of glad renewing. Henceforth he must go back to his quiet life of service which asked and gave nothing else, and to the companionship of those old memories which sometimes awakened from their sleep.
He rode far across the veldt, and for the first time for many a long year turned back the leaves of the closed book. And the reason he did this was the remembrance of Meryl's face, as she leaned up against the lintel of the window that last evening at Bulawayo, when they both felt it was a final parting. Something that had been in the depths of her eyes, and which she had been powerless to hide, although she made no other sign. It was a remembrance that called that added sternness to his face: the sternness of deep trouble suppressed. For he knew no woman of Meryl's nature would look as she had looked that evening and love another man in a month. Therefore it was probably for some altruistic motive and not love that she had consented to marry van Hert; no shallow, selfish motive he knew well enough, but perhaps some call she had found the courage to answer.
But if it was also a sacrifice, an offering of herself and her happiness upon some altar of need, ought he to let her fulfil it? Between her and the husband he had pictured for her he could not allow himself to stand; between her and van Hert, whom he was convinced she did not love, was another matter. Yet he knew in his heart that he could not save her now; the die was cast, both of them must abide by it. And in any case, how could he tell her his story? How could he go to her with that story and empty-handed as well; she the heiress of great wealth, and he without even a name and position?
Away out in the kopjes he rode his horse slowly up a steep hill-side, and on the top dismounted and sat upon a boulder, looking over a vast tract of lovely country to infinite blue distances. As ever in moments of stress, he had chosen the height, with wide horizons, fresh-blowing winds, far spaces of sunlight; and in the flickering shade of the thinly foliaged trees he took off his helmet, baring his head to the breeze. And it could be seen that the grey about the temples had been increasing, while the strong lines on the face had deepened already, as if it had gone hardly with him of late.
He sat very still; so still that a little squirrel ran down almost to his feet to investigate the strange figure, and little birds chirped all kinds of personalities about him to each other close at hand. He was taking a journey into a far land—the far land of the buried past. He was thinking of that story he would have had to tell Meryl Pym. Of Joan's sad life, sad love, sad death. Of how long ago she had lain dead upon the heather, as far as anyone could tell, slain by his hand.
He went back to it now, page by page; it seemed in some sort of penance that he must give. The first pages dealt with those two gay young brothers in the Blues; the elder, Peter, the recognised heir to the rich bachelor uncle, who now made life gay for them with an allowance of two thousand a year each; but he was an autocrat and something of a tyrant, the old uncle, and his will had to be law. He did not mind their sowing of wild oats if they were what he called gentlemanly wild oats, and merely got them talked about as gay young dogs, and he was always generous with an extra cheque if they got into difficulties; but he would not have foolhardy, quixotic affairs at all. There he put his foot down. When the younger brother, Geoffrey, a youth of small, mean aims and temperament, led the pretty daughter of one of the keepers into trouble, he told his uncle he was going to give her a fixed sum out of his own allowance yearly while she was unmarried, and something always for the child.
"Nonsense," said the old gentleman tartly; "the girl shouldn't have been such a fool. I will pay one hundred pounds into the bank for her, and she shall not have another penny." Geoffrey thought himself well out of the scrape, but before the incident closed there were words between the brothers that neither ever forgot. Peter took a different view of the matter entirely; he knew the girl, and he knew that she was gentle and confiding, and that Geoffrey had won her round with promises. So he called his brother a cur, and a few other things with strong adjectives, and because he knew he was in the wrong Geoffrey never forgave him. He went further, and hated him from that time onward.