A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 4/Chapter 1
They made a part of the journey from the coast by the feeble half-finished railway that had only lately thrust its head like a serpent through the wilderness that had been untouched when Philip with Naomi and Swanson and Lady Millicent had made their way on foot to the coast. It was the end of the rainy season, before the coming of the burning heat, and Mary saw the country at its best, when it was still green and the earth still damp and pungent. The railroad came to an end abruptly, for no reason at all, in a clump of scrubby trees, and here they passed the second night in a shack shared by the East Indian guards. Long after nightfall, Mary heard the first roar of a lion—a strange, spasmodic, coughing sound, that came nearer and nearer until the frail wall of the shack trembled with the reverberation. Sitting up in bed, she fancied that she heard the beast circling the little shed. It came so near that she listened to the sound of its wheezing breath . . . a queer, brutal sound, that created a sudden vision of slobbering, ruthless jaws.
In the morning, she found the footprints of the beast in the damp earth, great toed prints pressed deep by the weight of the tawny body. And again the terror seized her, this time a terror less of the beast than of the dark thing for which he seemed to stand as a symbol. She knew as she stood looking down at the tracks in the earth that what had happened just before dawn was not a nightmare, but reality. It was part of this life which she was entering. Every day would be like this. She said nothing to Philip. She succeeded in behaving as if the night had been the most usual thing in the world. For she was aware that she must not disturb the peace that seemed to settle over him, slowly, with each mile that brought them nearer to Megambo and the brassy lake. He appeared no longer to be tired and troubled; yet he was not the old, gentle, dependent Philip she had always known. It was still a new one she had never seen before—a Philip who seemed still and quiet, who seemed at times to be looking far beyond the world that lay all about them. Twice she had discovered him thus staring across the scrub-covered plains, as if he were enchanted by the sense of vast emptiness.
She never shattered his moods by so much as a word, yet she was frightened, for at such times he seemed to withdraw far beyond her into a strange mystical world of his own where she had no part. Once she awakened in the night to find him sitting by the side of the fire, awake, looking up at the dome of cobalt sky powdered with stars. She lay there for a long time watching him. He turned toward her, and she closed her eyes quickly, pretending to be asleep. The old terror seized her that he was escaping her in an unearthly fashion that left her powerless.
On the fourth day, at the crest of a low hill covered with thorn-trees, Philip halted the little train of bearers, and said to her, "That ought to be the lake and Megambo." He pointed into the distance where the plain seemed to break up into a group of low hills covered with trees, and then far beyond to turn into the dark line of a real forest. At an immense distance, out of the heat, the mountains appeared like a mirage. She stared for a long time, and presently she saw that what at first she had believed to be only sky was in reality a vast lake. As she looked, it seemed in a way to come alive, to be striking the reflection of the sky from a surface made of metal. It was a dark, empty country, wild and faintly sinister in its stillness.