The Rhodesian. Gertrude Page
might go to Rhodesia! You'll perhaps fall overboard and be eaten by commonplace fishes if you go there."
"What has given you the notion, Meryl? I thought only miners and farmers went to Rhodesia, except a few tourists to the Victoria Falls. Do you think there is anything to eat there except locusts and wild honey?"
"Let's go and see. I … I … want to do some Empire work or something. I can't explain. But we've just got into such a maze of petty happenings and petty pleasures, and since the King died … "
"Of course! … you've been miles away ever since, dreaming and romancing and imperialising. But it won't last, and when you've landed us all high and dry in some Rhodesian wilderness we shall just hate each other and everything else, and be ready to murder you."
"Nonsense. We shall explore all round, and study the natives and the animals, and make friends with the settlers; and it will all be just new and big and teeming with interest."
"Not if you are chewing the mule harness, because you've had nothing to eat for days."
"O yes, even that; why not? … We should love it all when we came safely back."
"Well, I'll have the bridle, then. It won't, perhaps, be quite so greasy."
"Now you're disgusting. Just put your head back on the pillow, and register a vow to see me through this craze, if you like to call it so, and I'll love you for ever. I like to think of it as Empire work. Come and do a little Empire work too."
"But I don't want to. I'm bored to tears with the Empire. We hear a great deal too much of it nowadays; that and Standard Bread. I don't know which is the worst"—making a wry face—"and, besides, if you really want to do Empire work, your plain duty is to marry Dutch Willie and cement the races."
A cloud flitted for a moment across Meryl's fair face, which Diana was quick to see, and she snoozled down into her cosy bed with a little chuckle.
"Got you there, my fair Imperialist! Dutch Willie, or let us call him William van Hert, will drop this wild anti-British policy of his like a hot brick, if you will only make up your mind to be Madam van Hert, and bless his hearth with a Dutch doll or two, having good English blood in their veins as well as eighteen-carat Dutch," and the chuckles grew more and more audible.
But Meryl only got up slowly and moved away to her own little bed.
"Well, I shall ask father to-morrow, and if you won't come I shall try to make him take me without you. I think he will."
"O, no he won't. If you are really quite obdurate, I shall do a little Imperial work also. I shall come along to keep watch and ward, and see that you don't fail the Empire by losing your heart to some fascinating young Rhodesian settler and forget your own South Africa altogether. Dutch Willie is a lot the nicest Dutchman who ever belonged to that obtuse people, and I foresee it will be my lot to guide you to your high destiny on behalf of the two races."
Meryl only smiled dreamily, as if she scarcely heard. Swiftly, mysteriously, unaccountably, as is her way, Rhodesia had caught her senses and filled all her horizon for the time being. She nestled down into her own pretty bed, with the unrest already fading from her eyes, and a new gladness in her heart, as of one renewed with a great purpose and comforted with a wide hope.
IV
THE RHODESIAN PROJECT
Aunt Emily represented what Diana was pleased to call "the family skeleton in the flesh." She was Henry Pym's only sister, and there had been a time when she shared a pound a week with him in a tiny cottage in Cornwall, while he worked as a miner in order to teach himself all he could about mining. After that she had taken a situation as housekeeper, while he went out to South Africa to make his fortune. Later she had spent a year or two with him, sharing his struggles in the new country, and then he had married, and she was once more left to take care of herself; for at that stage Henry's finances would barely keep himself and his wife. Three years afterwards, when his genius for finance was bearing fruit, his wife died, and at twenty-seven he found himself a childless widower just becoming prosperous. He again offered his sister a home, but her recollections of Africa were none to draw her back thither, and she chose to continue life in the comfortable situation she had procured as companion to an invalid lady. So Henry devoted himself entirely to the science of money-making, and at thirty-five he was a rich man. He married a second time, choosing for his wife among the gentlest-born Johannesburg could offer, and winning the sweet woman who was Meryl's mother. About the same time his brother came out from England and joined him, and in fifteen years they were two of Johannesburg's wealthiest millionaires. A few years later both were widowers, and very shortly afterwards John Pym died, leaving his only daughter and all the wealth that would be hers to his brother's care. Thus the household became as we have seen it, for Henry, remembering gratefully how his sister had stood by him in his days of struggle, now insisted upon her sharing his luxurious homes and acting as chaperon to the two girls. That she was a little trying he knew perfectly, but his sense of fair play and kinship resolutely turned a deaf ear to the half-spoken pleas of the girls, that he would give her instead a cosy home of her own, and procure a younger and brighter chaperon for them; and she had now become a fixture.
But what irritated Diana so was the fact that had the good lady consulted her own taste, she would infinitely have preferred the cosy, independent home; but just as Henry's sense of fair play offered her a place in his, so her sense of duty to the two motherless girls made her accept it in spite of her inclination.
"If people would but consult their comfort instead of their duty," quoth poor Diana, "how much nicer it would be all round! Uncle doesn't really want her here, and she doesn't really want to come, and we'd give our heads to be rid of her; but just because Old Man Duty loves to make people supremely uncomfortable, here we all are!" and her expressive gesture made further comment unnecessary.
But, as a matter of fact, she made a very easy and good-natured chaperon, and it was only some of her irritating little ways that troubled them. Without being really deaf, she usually failed to hear any opening speech, and this Diana coped with very summarily. "Aunt Emily," she would begin. "Eh … eh … eh … eh … ah," and when Aunt Emily had duly enquired, "What did you say, my dear?" she would speak her sentence for the first time. Or, again, with reference to her propensity to get exceedingly worked up upon a subject of very little general interest, she would say, "The great point is, not to start her off, and not to give her a chance to start herself off. A little perspicacity will soon tell you what subject to nip in the bud, or when to talk as hard and fast as you can about something else."
"And as for her mournfulness," declared the matter-of-fact young heiress, "well, that's genuinely funny. If I've got a bit of a hump myself, and I hear Aunt Emily, with a face of heroic resignation, say, 'I can bear it,' I begin to feel quite chirpy at once."
But when the Rhodesian project came seriously under discussion, they were all a good deal surprised to hear Aunt Emily take part in it as one who must inevitably be of the party. Henry Pym was a reserved, undemonstrative man, and when Meryl begged him to let them accompany him on his travels, though he said very little, he was secretly a good deal gratified and pleased. His own early hardships had taught him the inestimable value of learning self-dependence and plucky endurance, and it was not without some regret he viewed a future for the girls entirely of rose leaves. Yet how could it very well be otherwise? When, however, Meryl pleadingly asked him to take them to Rhodesia with him, he perceived that the trip might be beneficial in more ways than one.
"You probably don't understand," he told her quietly, "that I am going on a business, prospecting trip. I am going right away from hotels and railways to see mines, and I don't intend to be bothered with anything elaborate in the way of an outfit. I suppose I shall take a tent, and travel in a travelling ambulance,