"There is nothing worth seeing in Rhodesia, except the Victoria Falls," he asserted; "and you can run up there and see all you want to and get back in a week!" And still he looked enquiringly at Meryl.
"We want to see the people," she said, half turning. "The pioneers, who went first to investigate, the settlers who followed, the women who went forward with their husbands into the wilderness."
He got off the table and came and leaned against a verandah-post beside her with folded arms, looking down. "But that is what you won't see; how should you? You will only see dusty, upstart towns, with horrible corrugated-iron hotels, where you will swelter in heat and flies and eat abominable tinned stuffs. It is a barren, comfortless land at present, with a possibility of being useful some day. They want money, energy, brains to develop it thoroughly; and they won't accept them when they are offered, because a few stiff-necked Englishmen happen to be in power. It is absurd to go there at present. You will only get typhoid and malaria, and be excruciatingly uncomfortable."
"It sounds a pretty rotten sort of place! What do you and your colleagues want it for so badly, anyway?..." asked Diana, throwing her head back and narrowing her eyes as she looked at him with a shrewd questioning air.
He coloured slightly under the sunburn on his cheeks. "We want a United South Africa. Why should one country stand aloof!"
"Meinheer van Hert," said she, coming down from her table and taking a step forward to confront him, "for any man with your political views to talk about including Rhodesia in the Union solely for the sake of a United South Africa and for her own good, is the veriest cant. There's gold up there, and perhaps tin; and there's land for farming, and land for ranching, and hunting grounds, and a big river. In your United South Africa you want your people to be 'top dog' always, and as long as Rhodesia stands out there's a menace in the north. That's one reason why you want her! Rumour tells us there's a fine race of men up there, who don't mean to have any tongue but Cecil Rhodes's tongue taught in Cecil Rhodes's country, so it certainly is no place for you! You've got to learn more thoroughly what an Englishman means by 'cricket' before your overtures will be considered; and we're all hoping you'll learn it quickly, because we want to be friends, good friends, just as soon as ever we can."
He bit his lip and looked angry, but she was already laughing the moment's tension aside. "You didn't know I was a politician, did you?... As a matter of fact, I'm not!... I'm sick of the whole bag of tricks, and the Empire that fills Meryl with heaves and swells isn't half so much to me as winning a tennis tournament or a golf championship. But when you Hollanders are bursting with pride of place and achievement, and offering energy and brains to help Britishers along, I just feel as if you'd got to be told a few home-truths for your good. Now I'm going to liven the meeting with a little operatic music," and she tripped indoors to the piano. Van Hert shrugged his shoulders expressively, and then stood silently beside Meryl for some moments looking into the night. And as he stood he became conscious of a vague sort of dissatisfaction with himself. It was a sensation he knew only at rare moments, and those moments were chiefly at the Pyms' house. He admired the two cousins more than any women he knew; he admired Henry Pym; he loved the homyness of their household; and he had to remember that they were English. There must, of course, be many others like them. Were there many like them among his own countrymen? When Diana told him his people had yet to learn more thoroughly what was meant by "cricket" she had hit him hard. He would never have admitted it for one moment, but, nevertheless, when he was at the Pyms' house he wondered.... Densely, stubbornly patriotic to his own people and his own tongue he might be, but he had travelled enough to recognise certain traits in the English "old public-school boy" which it was good for a country there should be in her young men, and which were not noticeably present in his countrymen of the back veldt.
Then his eyes rested on Meryl, and all his pulses throbbed with her nearness. He had known for many months now that he loved her, yet he had never actually told his love. At first there had been a disinclination to marry an Englishwoman because of the unbending, resolute policy he had identified himself with in the Union Parliament. No one spoke of anti-British and anti-Dutch nowadays. It was impolitic. But whereas certain men genuinely tried to ease the forced situation and meet with fairness and justice upon common ground, others still kept the flag of discord in their hands, though they hid it under the table, so to speak, and only produced it when, as they chose to assert, some pet foible of their countrymen was overruled or some indignity threatened.
And of this section in Parliament van Hert was the leader. If he then married an Englishwoman, not even South African born, would he not be held up to ridicule by his colleagues? And then he would see Meryl again, and all his feelings would merge into one great longing for her; not for her money—she had been right when she said such a charge was unjust, indeed, he almost wished she had been poor—but her quiet dignity and calm strength and the exquisite fairness that held all his senses.
And as he stood beside her now he hated more and more, without knowing why, that she should go to Rhodesia. Whatever he had said to the contrary, he knew that there was a romance about that far land that might fascinate her. He knew that up there there were some of the cream of England's men. "The second son's country," he had heard it called, and that meant very often the well-born, high-bred gentleman who was not afraid to work, who had never been pampered, and was full of the best sportsman's spirit. The man of all others to attract such a woman as Meryl Pym. The mere thought of it seemed to fill him with a growing alarm, and presently, almost before he knew it, he found himself pouring into her ears the story of his love.