He had dreams of returning to England a different, or perhaps a developed, man. The perfect lovers ought to stand together on the same level. Rosamund and he had never done that yet. He resolved to gain in South Africa, to get a grip on his best possibilities, to go back to England, if he ever went back, a bigger soul, freer, more competent, more generous, more fearless. He could never be a mystic. He did not want to be that. But surely he could learn in this interval of separation which, like a river, divided his life from Rosamund’s, to match her mysticism with something which would be able to call it out of its mysterious understanding. Instead of retreating to God alone she might then, perhaps, take him with her; instead of praying over him she might pray with him. If, after he returned from South Africa, Rosamund were ever again to be deliberately good with him, making such an effort as she had made on that horrible evening in Little Market Street when he had told her he was going on active service, he felt that he simply couldn’t bear it.
He put firmly aside the natural longings for home which often assailed him, and threw himself heart and soul into his new duties. Already he felt happier, for he was “out” to draw from the present, from the whole of it, all the building material it contained, and was resolute to use all that material in the construction of a palace, a future based on marble, strong, simple, noble, a Parthenon of the future. Only the weak man looks to omens, is governed in his mind, and so in his actions, by them. That which he had not known how to win in an easy life he must learn to win in a life that was hard. This war he would take as a gift to him, something to be used finely. If he fell in it still he would have had his gift, the chance to realize some of his latent and best possibilities. He swept out of his mind an old thought, the creeping surmise that perhaps Rosamund had given him all she had to give in lover’s love, that she knew how to love as child and as mother, but that she was incapable of being a great lover in man’s sense of the term when he applies it to woman.
Madeira was passed on January the twenty-fifth, and the men, staring across the sea, saw its lofty hills rising dreamily out of the haze, watchers of those who would not stop, who had no time for any eating of the lotus. Heat came upon the ship, and there were some who pretended that they heard sounds, and smelled perfumes wafted, like messages, from the hidden shores on which probably they would never land. Every one was kept busy, after a sail bath, with drilling, musketry instruction, physical drill, cleaning of accouterments, a dozen things which made the hours go quickly in a buzz of human activities. Some of the men, Dion among them, were trying to learn Dutch under an instructor who knew the mysteries. A call came for volunteers for inoculation, and both Dion and Worthington answered it, with between forty and fifty other men. The prick of the needle was like the touch of a spark; soon after came a mystery of general wretchedness, followed by pains in the loins, a rise of temperature and extreme, in Dion’s case even intense, weakness. He lay in his bunk trying to play the detective on himself, to stand outside of his body, saying to himself, “This is I, and I am quite unaffected by my bodily condition.” For what seemed to him a long time he was fairly successful in his effort; then the body began to show definitely the power of its weakness upon the Ego, to asset itself by feebleness. His will became like an invalid who is fretful upon the pillows. Soon his strong resolutions, cherished and never to be parted from till out of them the deeds had blossomed, lost blood and fell upon the evil day of anemia. He had a sensation of going out. When the midnight came he could not sleep, and with it came a thought feeble but persistent: “If she loves me it’s because I’ve given her Robin.” And in the creaking darkness, encompassed by the restlessness of the sea, again and again he repeated to himself the words—“it’s because I’ve given her Robin.” That was the plain truth. If he was loved, he was loved because of something he had done, not because of something that he was. Towards dawn he felt so weak that his hold on life seemed relaxing, and at last he almost wished to let it go. He understood why dying people do not usually fear death.
Three days later he was quite well and at work, but the memory of his illness stayed with him all through the South African campaign. Often at night he returned to that night on shipboard, and said to himself, “The doctor’s needle helped me to think clearly.”
The voyage slipped away with the unnoticed swiftness that is the child of monotony. The Southern Cross shone above the ship. When the great heat set in the men were allowed to sleep on deck, and Dion lay all night long under the wheeling stars, and often thought of the stars above Drouva, and heard Rosamund’s voice saying, “I can see the Pleiades.”
The ship crossed the line. Early in February the moon began to show a benign face to the crowd of men. One night there was a concert which was followed by boxing. Dion boxed and won his bout easily on points.
This little success had upon him a bracing effect, and gave him a certain prestige among his comrades. He did well also at revolver and musketry practice—better than many men who, though good enough shots at Bisley, found sectional practice with the service rifle a difficult job, were adepts at missing a mark with the revolver, and knew nothing of fire discipline. Because he had set an aim before him on which he knew that his future happiness depended, he was able to put his whole heart into everything he did. In the simplest duty he saw a means to an end which he desired intensely. Everything that lay to hand in the life of the soldier was building material which he must use to the best advantage. He knew fully, for the first time, the joy of work.
On a day in the middle of February the “Ariosto” passed the mail-boat from the Cape bound for England, sighted Table Mountain, and came to anchor between Robben Island and the docks. On the following morning the men of the C.I.V. felt the earth with eager feet as they marched to Green Point Camp.