THE SIGN OF THE HEART

Chapter 4

The throb of the propeller has almost ceased; faint, too, is the vibration of the

slowed-down engines. The Persian is gliding with well-nigh imperceptible

motion through the smooth waters of Table Bay.

It is a perfect morning, cloudless in its dazzling splendour. In front, the huge

Table Mountain rears its massive wall, dwarfing the mud-town lying at its base

and the bristling masts of shipping, its great line mirrored in the sheeny surface.

Away in the distance, the purple cones of the Hottentots Holland mountains

loom thirstily through a glimmer of summer haze. A fair scene indeed after three

weeks of endless sea and sky.

"And what are your first impressions of my native land?"

Laurence turned.

"I was thinking less of the said land than of myself," he answered. "I was

thinking what potentialities would lie between my first impressions of it and my

last."

Just a suspicion of gravity came over Lilith Ormskirk's face at the remark.

"And are you glad the voyage is at an end, now that it is?" she went on.

"You know I am not. It was such a rest."

"Which I was everlastingly disturbing."

"By wreathing those unholy spells. Lilith, thou sorceress, how long will it be

before those talks of ours are forgotten? A week, perhaps?"

"They will never be forgotten," she answered, her eyes dreamy and serious. "But

now, I must go below and finish doing up my things. We shall be in dock

directly."

A great crowd is collected on the quay as the steamer warps up, above which rise

sunshades coloured and coquettish, pith helmets and sweeping puggarees, and more orthodox white "stove-pipes." Then in the background, yellow-skinned

Malays in gaudy Oriental attire, parchment-faced Hottentots, Mozambique

blacks, and lighter-hued Kaffirs from the Eastern frontier. The docks are piled

with luggage, for the privilege of carrying which and its multifold owners Malay

cab-drivers are uttering shrill and competing yells. On board, people are bidding

each other good-bye or greeting those who have come to meet them; and flitting

among such groups, a mingled expression of alertness and anxiety on his

countenance, is here and there a steward, bent upon sounding up a possibly

elusive "tip," or refreshing an inconveniently short memory.

Near the gangway Lilith Ormskirk was holding quite a farewell court. Her

"poodles," as Laurence had satirically defined them, were crowding around—

Swaynston at their head—for a farewell pat. The last, in the shape of Holmes

and another, had taken their sorrowful departure, and now a quick, furtive look

seemed to cross the smiling serenity of her face, a shade of wistfulness, of

disappointment. Thus one in the hurrying throng at the other side of the deck

read it.

"What a tail-wagging!" almost immediately spake a voice at her side.

She turned. Decidedly the expression was one of brightening.

"I thought you had gone—had forgotten to say good-bye," she said.

"I was waiting until the poodles had finally cleared. Now, however, I have come

to utter that not always hateful word."

"Not in this instance?"

"Yes, distinctly. I have just heard there is to be a special train made up—we are

in too late for the regular mail-train, you know. So I shall leave for Kimberley in

about two or three hours' time."

Lilith looked disappointed.

"I thought you would have stayed here at least a few days," she said. And then

the friends who had met her on board returned, and Laurence found himself

introduced to three pretty girls—fair-haired, blue-eyed, well-dressed—eke to a

man—tall, brown-faced, loosely hung, apparently about thirty years of age—

none of whose names he could quite succeed in catching, save that the latter was

apostrophized as "George." Then, after a commonplace or two, good-byes were

uttered and they separated—Lilith and her party to catch the train for Mowbray, her late fellow-passenger to arrange for his own much longer journey.

Having the compartment to themselves, one of the blue-eyed girls opened fire

thus:

"Lilith, who is he?"

"Who?"

"He."

"Bless the child," laughed Lilith, "there were about half a hundred he's."

"No, there was only one. Who is he? What is he?"

"I don't know," replied Lilith, affecting ignorance no longer.

"You don't know? After three weeks on board ship together? Three whole weeks

of ship life, and you have the face to tell me you don't know anything about him.

After the way in which you said good-bye to each other, too? Oh, I saw."

"Well, I don't know."

"Or care?"

"Chaff away, if it's any fun to you," answered Lilith quite serenely, as the trio

rippled into peals of laughter.

"I liked the man, liked to talk to him on board—you are welcome to the

admission—but all I know is that he is going to Johannesburg. We may never see

each other again."

"These English Johnnies who come out here, and whom one knows nothing

about, are now and again slippery fish," gruffly spoke the brown-faced one.

"Watch it, Lilith."

"I thought this one looked as if he might be interesting," said another of the blueeyed girls. "Pity he wasn't staying a day or two. We might have got him out to

the house and seen what he was made of."

"Watch it," repeated George sententiously. "Watch it, Lilith." Meanwhile, the object of this discussion—and warning—having resignedly

"passed" the Customs at the dock gates, was spinning townwards in one of the

innumerable hansoms. Sizing up the South African metropolis, it gave him the

idea of a mud city, just dumped down wet and left to dry in the sun. Its general

aspect suggested the vagaries of some sportive Titan, who, from the summit of

the lofty rock wall behind it, had amused himself, out of office hours, by

chucking down chunks of clay of all sorts and sizes, trying how near he could

"lob" them into the position of streets and squares.

At that time the railway line ended at Kimberley—the distance thence to

Johannesburg, close upon three hundred miles, had to be done by stage. It

occurred to Laurence that, having a couple of hours to spare, he had better look

up the coach-agent and secure a seat by wire.

The agent was not in his office. Laurence Stanninghame, however, who knew

the ways of similar countries, albeit a new arrival in this, inquired for that

functionary's favourite bar. The reply was prompt and accurate withal. In a few

minutes, seated on stools facing each other, he and the object of his search were

transacting business.

The latter did not seem entirely satisfactory. The agent could not say when the

earliest chance might occur by regular coach. He might have to wait at

Kimberley—well, it might be for days, or it might be for ever. On the other

hand, he might not even have to wait at all. He could not tell. Even the people at

the other end could not say for certain. Laurence began to lose patience.

"See here," he said somewhat testily. "I haven't been long in your country, but

that's about the only reply I've been able to meet with to any question yet. Tell

me, as a matter of curiosity, is there any one thing you are ever certain of out

here? Just one."

The agent looked at him with faint amazement.

"There is one," he said; "just one."

"Well—and that?"

"Death. That's always a dead cert. Let's liquor. Put a name to it, skipper." The special train consisted of a mail van and a first-class carriage. There being

only three or four other travellers each had a compartment to himself, an

arrangement which met with Laurence Stanninghame's unfeigned approval. He

did not want to talk—especially in a clattering, dusty railway carriage. At

intervals the passengers foregathered for meals at some wayside buffet or

accommodation house,—meals whose quality was in inverse ratio to the

exuberance of the prices charged therefor,—then each would return to his own

box and smoke and read and sleep away the little matter of seven hundred miles.

On they sped for hours and hours—on through sleepy Dutch villages, whose

gardens and cultivation made an oasis on the surrounding flats—on, winding in a

slow ascent through the gloomy grandeur of the Hex River Poort, with its ironbound heights rearing in mighty masses from the level valley bottom. Then it

grew dark, and, the dim oil lamp being inadequate for reading purposes,

Laurence went to sleep.

"Afar in the desert I love to ride,"

sang Pringle, the South African bard.

"Pringle was a liar, or a lunatic," quoth Laurence Stanninghame, to whom the

passage was familiar, on opening his eyes next morning and looking around. For

the train was speeding—when not slowing—through the identical desert of

which Pringle sang; that heart-breaking, dead-level, waterless, treeless belt

known as the Karroo. Not a human habitation in sight, for hours at a stretch—the

same low table-topped mountains rising hours ahead, and which never seemed to

get any closer, looking, moreover, in the distant, mirage-effects, like vast slabs

poised in mid-air and resting on nothing. At long intervals a group of foul and

tumble-down Hottentot huts, with their squalid inhabitants—lean curs and apelike men; their raison d'être, in the shape of a flock of prematurely aged and

disappointed-looking goats, trying all they are worth to extract sustenance from

the red shaly earth and its sparse growth of coarse bush-like herbage. Looking

out on this horrible desert, the eye and the mind alike grow weary, and the latter

starts speculating in a shuddering sort of a way as to how the deuce anything

human can find it in its heart to exist in such a place. Yet though an awful desert

in time of drought it is not always so.

But gazing forth upon the surrounding waste, Laurence was able to read into it a

certain charm—the charm of freedom, of boundlessness, so vividly standing out

in contrast to his own cramped, narrow, shut-in life. All the changed conditions the wildness, the solitude, the flaming and unclouded sun—were as a new

awakening to life. The current of a certain joy of living, long since sluggish,

congealed, now coursed swiftly and without hinderance through his being.

Now through all those hours of tedious travelling—in the flaming glow of day,

or in the still, cool watches of the night, he had with him a recollection—Lilith

Ormskirk's face haunted him. Those eyes seemed to follow him—sweet, serious;

or again mirthful, flashing from out their dark fringe of lashes, but ever

entrancing, ever inviting. Her whole personality, in fact, seemed to pervade his

mind, warring for sole possession, to the exclusion of all other thought, all other

consideration. Into the conflict his own mind entered with a zest. It was a

psychological struggle which appealed to him, and that thoroughly. She should

not, by her witchery, take entire possession. Yet the recollection of her was so

potent that at length he ceased to strive against it. He gave way,—abandoned

himself contentedly, voluptuously to its sway,—even aiding it in the pictures it

conjured up. Now he saw her, as he had first passed her, day after day on board

ship, with indifference, with faintly ironical curiosity; again, as when they had

first begun to talk together; and yet again, when he had found himself resorting

to all manner of cowardly mental expedients to persuade himself that he did not

revel in her dangerously winning attractiveness, and sweet sympathetic

converse. In the monotonous three-four time beat of the wheels he could conjure

up her voice—even the colonial trick of clipping the final "r" in words ending

with that letter—as to which he had often rallied her, while secretly liking it—for

this, like a touch of the brogue, can be winsome enough when uttered by pretty

lips. Now all these reflections could not but be profitless, possibly dangerous,

yet they had this advantage—they helped to kill time, and that during a thirtyodd-hour journey across the Karroo. Well, it is an advantage!

On through the long, hot day, and still that memory was with him. The solitude,

the stillness, the mile after mile over the desolate and barren waste, the novelty

of the scene, the monotonous rattle of the wheels—all went to perpetuate it.

Then the sun drew down to the horizon, and the departing glow, striking upon

the red soil, painted the latter the colour of blood, making up an extraordinarily

vivid study in red and blue. Overhead a cloudless sky, the horizon all aflame, and

the whole earth, far as the eye could reach, steeped in the richest purple red.

Laurence fell fast asleep.

He dreamed they were steaming into Charing Cross Station. Lilith was waiting

to meet him. He swore, in his dream, because they had halted on the railway

bridge too long to take the tickets. Then he awoke. They were steaming slowly into a terminus, amid the familiar flashing of lamps and the rumbling of porters'

trucks. But it was not Charing Cross, it was Kimberley.

Not long did it take him to collect his scanty baggage and fling it into a "cab,"

otherwise an open, two-seated Cape cart. Hardly had he taken his seat than the

driver uttered a war-whoop, and, with a jerk that nearly sent its passenger

somersaulting into the road, the concern started off as hard as its eight legs and

two wheels could carry it.

The night was dark, the streets guiltless of lighting. As the trap zigzagged

furiously from one side of the way to the other, now poised on one wheel, now

leaping bodily into the air as it charged through a deep hole or rut, it was a

comfort to the said passenger to reflect that the road being feet deep in sand one

was bound to fall soft anyhow. Yet, candidly, he rather enjoyed it. After thirtythree hours in a South African "Flying Watkin" even this spurious excitement

was welcome.

They shaved corners, always on one wheel, sometimes even scraping the corners

of houses, and causing those pedestrians in their line of flight to skip like young

unicorns. Then, recovering, the startled wayfarers would hurl their choicest

blessings after the cab. To these, the madcap driver would reply with a shrill and

fiendish yell, belabouring his frantic cattle with a view to attempting fresh feats.

They succeeded. It only wanted a bullock-waggon coming down the street to

afford them the opportunity. The bullock-waggon came. Then a dead, dull

scrunch—an awful shock—and the cab was at a standstill. The waggon people

opened their safety-valves and let off a fearful blast of profanity; the cab-driver

replied in suitable and feeling terms, then backed clear of the wreck and whipped

on.

Vastly amused by this lively experience, Laurence still ventured to expostulate,

mildly, and as a matter of form. But he got no more change out of his present

Jehu than Horace Greeley did of Hank Monk. The reply, accompanied by a

jovial guffaw, was:

"All right, mister. You sit tight, and I'll fetch you through. Which hotel did you

say?"

Laurence refreshed his memory—and swaying, jerking, pounding, into ruts and

holes, the chariot drew up like a hurricane blast before quite an imposinglooking building at the corner of the Market Square. Having paid off the lunatic

of the whip and stood him a drink, Laurence engaged a room, and wondered what the deuce he should do with himself if delayed here any time. For the

glimpse he had obtained of the place seemed not inviting. The same crowded

bars, the same roaring racket, the same dust—yea, even the same thirst. He had

seen it all before in other parts of the world.

He was destined to wonder still more, and wearily, what he should do with

himself; for nearly a week went by before he could secure a seat in the coach. A

great depression came upon him, begotten of the heat and the drowsiness and the

dust, as day after day seemed to bring with it no emancipation from the windswept, tin-built town, dumped down on its surrounding flat and sad-looking

desert waste. Yet nothing akin to homesickness was there in his depression. He

wanted to get onward, not to return. He was bored and in the blues. Yet, as he

looked back, the feeling which predominated was that of freedom—of having a

certain measure of life and its prospects before him. Stay, though. His thoughts

would, at times, travel backward, and that in spite of himself, and they would

land him with a lingering, though unacknowledged, regretfulness, on the deck of

the Persian. Well, that was only an episode. It had passed away out of his life,

and it was as well that it had.

But—had it?

At last, to our wayfarer's unspeakable joy, deliverance came. It had been

Laurence's lot to travel in far worse conveyances than the regular coaches which

at that time performed the journey between Kimberley and Johannesburg, a

distance of close upon three hundred miles; consequently, although not among

the fortunate ones who had secured a corner seat, he managed to make himself

as comfortable as any traveller in comparatively outlandish regions has a right to

expect. His fellow-passengers consisted, for the most part, of mechanics of the

better sort and a loquacious Jew—not at all a bad sort of fellow—in conversation

with whom he would now and then beguile the weariness of the route. And it

was weary. The flat sameness of the treeless plains, as mile after mile brought no

change; the same stony kopjes; the same deserted and tumble-down mining

structures; the same God-forsaken-looking Dutch homesteads, whose owners

had apparently taken on the triste hopelessness of their surroundings; the same

miserable wayside inns, where leathery goat-flesh and bones and rice, painted

yellow, were dispensed under the title of breakfast and dinner, what time the

coach halted to change horses, and even then only served up when the driver was frantically vociferating, "All aboard!" Thus they journeyed day and night,

allowing, perhaps, three hours, or four at the outside, for sleep—on a bed. But

the latter proved an institution of dubious beneficence, because of its far from

dubious animation; the said "animation" scorning blithely and imperviously

accumulations of insect powder, reaching back into the dim past, left there and

added to by a countless procession of tortured travellers. Howbeit, of these and

like discomforts are such journeyings productive, wherefore they are scarcely to

be reckoned as worthy of note.