At day-break on the following morning the drums and horns joyfully
sounded the reveille. Neither soldiers nor bearers needed, as was
their wont, any rousing to make them leave their couches of dried
leaves or straw; they, like everybody else, were in a hurry to make
their triumphal entry into Gondokoro. Walinda even, usually so
unconcerned and apparently insensible to every noise and every
incident of the journey, left her shelter. With her eyes fixed on the
tents, she seemed impatiently to await the moment when the Europeans
would appear and give the order to start.
M. de Morin was the first person she saw; then, a moment afterwards,
M. de Pommerelle, M. Périères, and the two doctors, Delange and
Desrioux. A moment afterwards Miss Poles emerged from her sleeping
place, having got up before everybody else in order to devote more
time to a toilet intended to create a sensation in Gondokoro.
Two tents alone gave no signs of life, those of Madame de Guéran and
her husband, separated one from the other by ten yards.
At last, the door of the tent without the flag was seen to move, and
at the moment when the rising sun was shedding on all around his
earliest rays, and tingeing them with his rosy hues, the Baroness de
Guéran stepped forth, smiling, charming as ever, into the light of
day.
Walinda, on seeing her, uttered a terrible cry, a cry of mingled rage
and terror.
Other cries were heard. They proceeded from Joseph, who, by order of
M. de Morin, had entered M. de Guéran's tent to see whether he could
do anything for him, and at the same time to tell him that all was in
readiness for the march.
He found the unhappy man covered with blood, dead, and cold. The
knife, with which the blow had been struck, was still in his heart.
Walinda had been misled; she thought to kill the wife; she had
murdered the husband instead.
She did not know that, on the previous evening, Madame de Guéran,
fearing that the mist from the neighbouring marshes of Gondokoro
might prove injurious to her husband, had given her tent up to him
and had passed the night in the one usually occupied by him.
* * * * * *
Eight days after this catastrophe, the Europeans secured two
negghers, vessels used on the Upper Nile, and sailed down the river.
A third vessel, smaller than the others, carried the coffin of M. de
Guéran.
Before embarking, the Europeans, after having settled all accounts in
a most liberal manner, parted with their soldiers and bearers, who
immediately entered into other engagements with the slave dealers, so
plentiful in these parts at that particular season of the year. The
servants alone were retained. Nassar, whose devotion and intelligence
had been so valuable, and the two Arab interpreters, Omar and Ali,
wished to accompany their masters as far as Cairo.
They had not been afloat for more than a few hours, Gondokoro was
still in sight, and the vessels, compelled to tack, were making but
slow progress, when M. de Morin thought he saw in the middle of the
river a dead body being carried down by the current. He at once got
into a boat, and, by dint of hard rowing, discovered that it was the
body of Walinda. The splendid corpse, on which death had not yet
commenced its work of destruction, which it still respected, floated
on the top of the water, gilded by the beams of the setting sun.
The Queen, in despair at having spared her rival and killed the man
she loved, had taken advantage of the consternation throughout the
camp to escape. She had, no doubt, wandered for some days along the
banks of the river, and then plunged beneath its waters.
In death she still followed the caravan and the coffin of her lover.
At Khartoum the Europeans made a very short stay, at the commencement
of April. 1874, for the purpose of conferring with Colonel Chaillé
Long, chief of the staff to General Gordon. In exchange for the news
from Europe which he gave them, he obtained from MM. Desrioux and de
Pommerelle information concerning the Uganda territory and its king,
M'tesa, to whom he was about to pay a visit.
Nothing of importance occurred during the long voyage down the Nile;
all the members of the party kept aloof from each other, wrapped up
in themselves, alone with their reminiscences and their thoughts.
Advantage was taken of this inaction, following so closely on so
agitated a life, to collect and arrange the notes of the expedition,
and occasionally to admire the new countries stretching out to the
horizon.
Madame de Guéran, secluded in a cabin in the after part of the
vessel, appeared very seldom. She was, perhaps, reproaching herself
for her harshness towards him who was no more, and for the words
which had escaped her during her interview with M. Delange. She
forgot all the faults of her husband in remembering only the
indomitable courage and resolution of the great explorer.
Dr. Delange had also lost some of his light-heartedness, and he felt
acutely the sole reproach addressed to him by M. de Morin. "Your
admiration for African women, my dear friend," said the leader of the
expedition to him, "has cost a man's life."
At Cairo the residue of the Nubians, the Soudan women, Nassar, and
the Arabs took their departure, and all these faithful servants might
very well exist for a long time on the handsome presents which were
made to them.
The little European colony, left now to itself, after having embarked
at Port Said, in the month of June, on board a steamer belonging to
the _Messageries Maritimes_, arrived at Paris without any further
delay.
Then came more adieux. Miss Poles said good-bye to her companions,
who, although they had often made fun of her, fully appreciated her
goodness, her devotion, and her courage. When the moment of departure
arrived, and she had to tear herself away from the four men whom she
had loved one by one, for whom she had burned with equal ardour, she
forgot her latest preference for M. de Pommerelle and enfolded the
whole lot in one embrace. From the arms of M. Périères she passed to
those of M. de Morin, to fall into the embrace of M. Delange, who
handed her over to the Count de Pommerelle. The Kings Munza and
Kadjoro were alone wanting in this all-round embrace; if they had
been present the _fête_ would have been complete, and Miss Poles
would have bestowed one huge, universal kiss on those she had loved
so well.
After having wiped her tear-dimmed spectacles, and thanked Madame de
Guéran, who had just secured an independance for her during the
remainder of her life, she betook herself to her beloved England,
where she now indulges in the "cup which cheers but not inebriates"
in the society of her friend, the confidant of her most secret
thoughts, the sole depository of her famous adventures amongst the
Thouaregs.
The faithful Joseph has not left, his master having too much need of
him. M. de Morin is, if one may be allowed to say so, the living
crown of Joseph's glory, the landmark of his courage. A dozen times a
day the valet points out his young master to the servants and
tradesmen of the neighbourhood, saying to them at the same time. "You
see that young fellow over there? The Arabs were going to shoot him,
but I rescued him. The Niam-Niam wanted to eat him, I offered myself
as a sacrifice. The amazons were making ready to massacre him, I
delivered him out of their hands." All the feats of arms performed by
M. de Morin were inscribed on Joseph's record of service. History is
often written thus, the parts being reversed, and the truly great are
swallowed up by the really small.
The various Geographical Societies of Europe did more justice to the
de Guéran expedition, for although at first they received with a
certain reserve the notes sent to them by an unknown explorer like M.
Périères, they, in the course of time, officially accepted his
discoveries, and replaced the words "unexplored regions" on their
maps by the names of the Domondoos, the Maleggas, and the Walindis.
Every day, moreover, some fresh traveller appears to confirm these
discoveries, and quite lately, in the course of the year 1876, M.
Gessi, one of Gordon's lieutenants, reported the existence of a
second arm of the Nile, issuing, like its fellow, from the Albert-Nyanza,
flowing westwards, and, according to the natives, rejoining
the great river above Gondokoro. This is the arm of the Nile which M.
Desrioux discovered and pointed out in 1874.
* * * * * *
Eighteen months elapsed without Madame de Guéran putting off her
weeds, or showing any sign of marrying again.
"Why on earth does not she marry her dear doctor?" said M. de Morin
one day to M. Delange. "They adore each other! That, alas! is easily
seen, and I know the Baroness. She is just as incapable of shortening
the term of her widowhood as she would be of breaking her marriage
vows. But I wish she would put an end to this state of things, and
betake herself, as soon as possible, to the priest and the mayor."
"My dear fellow," replied Delange, "Périères last week said almost
the same thing in the same words, but they were, like yours, so full
of bitterness that I dared not repeat them to Madame de Guéran. If
she were to hear either of you, so far from making up her mind, as
you want her to do, she would wait still longer."
"According to you, her scruples and her delicacy as regards us are
the real causes of the delay?"
"Yes, she wants to let time heal your wounds; she has so sincere a
friendship for both of you that she would not wound you for the
world."
"Then tell her, please, that we shall not have the sorrow of knowing
even the date of her wedding. Our first journey has whetted our
appetites; the feverish longing for discovery has taken possession of
Périères, de Pommerelle, and myself, and in a few weeks we shall
start for western Africa. Following the example of the brothers
Lander, we shall follow the course of the Congo, and proceed, in a
north-easterly direction, towards Lake Tanganyika. We are in earnest,
you see, and Madame de Guéran may resume her freedom of action. We
are going to travel without her, and consequently she has a right to
marry without us."
* * * * * *
Two months after this conversation Laura de Guéran became Madame
Desrioux. The newly-married couple have retired to a villa on the
borders of Lake Como, whose picturesque shores recall to their minds
the Albert-Nyanza, near which they refound each other.
M. Delange and Joseph alone of all our heroes remain in Paris. The
former is devoting himself to his profession, which does not prevent
him, at midnight when his work is over, playing a rubber of whist, or
making one at a baccarat table in his club. He it is, so report says,
whom Gondinet and Felix Cohen have hit off in the second act of their
capital play "_Le Club_." The doctor still dreams occasionally of the
women of Africa, but he makes no secret of his opinion that several
of his Parisian patients are their superiors.
Joseph betrayed a certain amount of indifference when the question of
again setting out for Africa was mooted before him, and it is,
moreover, quite possible that M. de Morin, with good reason for it,
did not make a point of his accompanying him. The trusty valet is a
valet no longer. He is a gentleman of independent means, thanks to
the generosity of his master, and the sale of thirty elephant's
tusks.
As for ourselves, our task is ended, and with it this lengthy
history, which has only one merit—that of being entirely exact from a
geographical point of view, and with regard to African customs. We
have thought that our readers might be interested in being taken far
away from Paris, and in having brought before them, in a possibly
attractive guise, laborious researches, interesting discoveries, and
the mysteries of a new world.
THE END.