The Great Impersonation | Page 6

alone.

"I've been talking an awful lot of rot about myself," Dominey said.
"Tell me a little about your career now and your life in Germany before
you came out here?"
Von Ragastein made no immediate reply, and a curious silence ebbed
and flowed between the two men. Every now and then a star shot
across the sky. The red rim of the moon rose a little higher from behind
the mountains. The bush stillness, always the most mysterious of
silences, seemed gradually to become charged with unvoiced passion.
Soon the animals began to call around them, creeping nearer and nearer
to the fire which burned at the end of the open space.
"My friend," Von Ragastein said at last, speaking with the air of a man
who has spent much time in deliberation, "you speak to me of Germany,
of my homeland. Perhaps you have guessed that it is not duty alone
which has brought me here to these wild places. I, too, left behind me a
tragedy."
Dominey's quick impulse of sympathy was smothered by the stern,
almost harsh repression of the other's manner. The words seemed to
have been torn from his throat. There was no spark of tenderness or
regret in his set face.
"Since the day of my banishment," he went on, "no word of this matter
has passed my lips. To-night it is not weakness which assails me, but a
desire to yield to the strange arm of coincidence. You and I,
schoolmates and college friends, though sons of a different country,
meet here in the wilderness, each with the iron in our souls. I shall tell
you the thing which happened to me, and you shall speak to me of your
own curse."
"I cannot!" Dominey groaned.
"But you will," was the stern reply. "Listen."
An hour passed, and the voices of the two men had ceased. The
howling of the animals had lessened with the paling of the fires, and a
slow, melancholy ripple of breeze was passing through the bush and

lapping the surface of the river. It was Von Ragastein who broke
through what might almost have seemed a trance. He rose to his feet,
vanished inside the banda, and reappeared a moment or two later with
two tumblers. One he set down in the space provided for it in the arm
of his guest's chair.
"To-night I break what has become a rule with me," he announced. "I
shall drink a whisky and soda. I shall drink to the new things that may
yet come to both of us."
"You are giving up your work here?" Dominey asked curiously.
"I am part of a great machine," was the somewhat evasive reply. "I
have nothing to do but obey."
A flicker of passion distorted Dominey's face, flamed for a moment in
his tone.
"Are you content to live and die like this?" he demanded. "Don't you
want to get back to where a different sort of sun will warm your heart
and fill your pulses? This primitive world is in its way colossal, but it
isn't human, it isn't a life for humans. We want streets, Von Ragastein,
you and I. We want the tide of people flowing around us, the roar of
wheels and the hum of human voices. Curse these animals! If I live in
this country much longer, I shall go on all fours."
"You yield too much to environment," his companion observed. "In the
life of the cities you would be a sentimentalist."
"No city nor any civilised country will ever claim me again," Dominey
sighed. "I should never have the courage to face what might come."
Von Ragastein rose to his feet. The dim outline of his erect form was in
a way majestic. He seemed to tower over the man who lounged in the
chair before him.
"Finish your whisky and soda to our next meeting, friend of my school
days," he begged. "To-morrow, before you awake, I shall be gone."

"So soon?"
"By to-morrow night," Von Ragastein replied, "I must be on the other
side of those mountains. This must be our farewell."
Dominey was querulous, almost pathetic. He had a sudden hatred of
solitude.
"I must trek westward myself directly," he protested, "or eastward, or
northward--it doesn't so much matter. Can't we travel together?"
Von Ragastein shook his head.
"I travel officially, and I must travel alone," he replied. "As for yourself,
they will be breaking up here to-morrow, but they will lend you an
escort and put you in the direction you wish to take. This, alas, is as
much as I can do for you. For us it must be farewell."
"Well, I can't force myself upon you," Dominey said a little wistfully.
"It seems strange, though, to meet right out here, far