A WAY OF ESCAPE
When Mr. Alston, Jeremy, and Ernest emerged from the back street in
which was the house they had visited into one of the principal
thoroughfares of Pretoria, they came upon a curious sight. In the
middle of the street stood, or rather danced, a wiry Zulu, dressed in
an old military greatcoat and the ordinary native “moocha,” or scanty
kilt, and having a red worsted comforter tied round one arm. He was
shouting out something at the top of his voice, and surrounded by a
crowd of other natives, who at intervals expressed their approval of
what he was saying in deep guttural exclamations.
“What is that lunatic after?” asked Jeremy.
Mr. Alston listened for a minute, and answered:
“I know the man well. His name is Goza. He is the fleetest runner in
Natal, and can go as fast as a horse; indeed, there are few horses that
he cannot tire out. By profession he is a ‘praiser.’ He is now singing
the praises of the Special Commissioner—‘bongering’ they call it. This
is what he is saying:
“‘Listen to the foot of the great elephant Somptseu (Sir T. Shepstone).
Feel how the earth shakes beneath the tread of the white t’Chaka,*
father of the Zulus, foremost among the great white people. Ou! he is
coming; ou! he is here. See how the faces of the “Amaboona” (the Boers)
turn pale before him. He will eat them up; he will swallow them, the
huge vulture, who sits still till the ox is dead, who fights the fight
of “sit down.” Oh! he is great, the lion; where he turns his eye the
people melt away, their hearts turn to fat. Where is there one like
Somptseu, the man who is not afraid of Death; who looks at Death and it
runs from him; who has the tongue of honey; who reigns like the first
star at night; who is beloved and honoured of the great white mother,
the Queen; who loves his children, the Amazulu, and shelters them under
his wide wing; who lifted Cetywayo out of the dirt, and can put him
back in the dirt again? Abase yourselves, you low people, doctor
yourself with medicine, lest his fierce eyes should burn you up. O,
hark! he comes, the father of kings, the Chaka; O! be still; O! be
silent; O! shake in your knees. He is here, the elephant, the lion, the
fierce one, the patient one, the strong one! See he deigns to talk to
little children; he teaches them wisdom; he gives light like the sun—he
is the sun—he is t’Somptseu.’“
At this juncture a quiet-looking, oldish gentleman, entirely unlike
either an elephant, a lion, or a vulture, of medium height, with gray
whiskers, a black coat, and a neat black tie fastened in a bow, came
round the corner, leading a little girl by the hand. As he came the
praiser lifted up his right hand, and in the most stentorian tones gave
the royal salute, “Bayte,” which was re-echoed by all the other
natives.
The oldish gentleman, who was none other than the Special Commissioner
himself, turned upon his extoller with a look of intense annoyance, and
addressed him very sharply in Zulu.
“Be still,” he said. “Why do you always annoy me with your noise? Be
still, I say, you loud-tongued dog, or I will send you back to Natal.
My head aches with your empty words.”
* The Zulu Napoleon, great-uncle to the last King of Zululand,
Cetywayo.
“O, elephant! I am silent as the dead: Bayte. O Somptseu! I am quiet:
‘Bayte.’“
“Go! Begone!”
With a final shout of Bayte the Zulu turned and fled down the street
with the swiftness of the wind, shouting praises as he went.
“How do you do, sir?” said Mr. Alston, advancing. “I was just coming up
to call upon you.”
“Ah, Alston, I am delighted to see you. I heard that you were gone on a
hunting trip. Given up work and taken to hunting, eh? Well, I should
like to do the same. If I could have found you when I came up here, I
should have been tempted to ask you to come with us.”
At this point Mr. Alston introduced Ernest and Jeremy. The Special
Commissioner shook hands with them.
“I have heard of you,” he said to Jeremy; “but I must ask you not to
fight any more giants here just at present; the tension between Boer
and Englishman is too great to allow of its being stretched any more.
Do you know, you nearly provoked an outbreak last night with your
fighting? I trust that you will not do it again.”
He spoke rather severely, and Jeremy coloured. Presently, however, he
made amends by asking them all to dinner.
On the following morning Ernest sent off his letter to Eva. He also
wrote to his uncle and to Dorothy, explaining his long silence as best
he could. The latter, too, he for the first time took into his
confidence about Eva. At a distance he no longer felt the same shyness
in speaking to her about another woman that had always overpowered him
when he was by her side.
Now that he had been away from England for a year or so, many things
connected with his home life had grown rather faint amid the daily
change and activity of his new life. The rush of fresh impressions had
to a great extent overlaid the old ones, and Dorothy and Mr. Cardus and
all the old Kesterwick existence and surroundings seemed faint and far
away. They were indeed rapidly assuming that unreality which in time
the wanderer finds gather round his old associations. He feels that
they know him no more; very likely he imagines that they have forgotten
him, and so they become like the shades of the dead. It is almost a
shock to such an one to come back and find, after an absence of many
years, that though he has been living a rapid vigorous life, and
storing his time with many acts, good, bad, and indifferent; though he
thinks that he has changed so completely, and developed greatly in one
direction or another, yet the old spots, the old familiar surroundings,
and the old dear faces have changed hardly one whit. They have been
living their quiet English life, in which sensation, incident, and
excitement are things unfamiliar, and have varied not at all.
Most people, as a matter of fact, change very little except in so far
as they are influenced by the cyclic variations of their life, the
passage from youth to maturity, and from maturity to age, and the
attendant modes of thought and action befitting each period. But even
then the change is superficial rather than real. What the child is,
that the middle-aged person and the old man will be also. The reason of
this appears to be sufficiently obvious: the unchanging personality
that grows not old, the animating spiritual “ego,” is there, and
practically identical at all periods of life. The body, the brain, and
the subtler intellect may all vary according to the circumstances,
mostly physical, of personal existence; but the effect that the passage
of a few years, more or less active or stormy, can produce upon a
principle so indestructible, so immeasurably ancient, and the inheritor
of so far-reaching a destiny as we believe the individual human soul to
be, surely must be small.
Already Ernest began to find it something of a labour to indite
epistles to people in England, and yet he had the pen of a ready
writer. The links that bound them together were fast breaking loose.
Eva, and Eva alone, remained clear and real to the vision of his mind.
She was always with him; and to her, at any period of his life, he
never found difficulty in writing. For, in truth, their very natures
were interwoven, and the _rapport_ between them was not produced merely
by the pressure of external circumstances, or by the fact of continual
contact and mutual attraction arising from physical causes, such as the
natural leaning of youth to youth and beauty to beauty.
These causes, according to Ernest’s creed, no doubt had to do with its
production, and perhaps were necessary to its mundane birth, as the
battery is necessary to the creation of the electric spark. Thus, had
Eva been old, instead of a young and lovely girl, the _rapport_ would
perhaps never have come into being here. In short, they formed the
cable along which the occult communication could pass, but there their
function ended. Having once established that communication, and
provided a means by which the fusion of spirit could be effected, youth
and beauty and the natural attraction of sex to sex had done their
part. The great dividing river that rolls so fast and wide between our
souls in their human shape had been safely passed, and the two
fortunate travellers had been allowed before their time to reap
advantages—the measureless advantage of real love, so rare on earth,
and at its best so stained by passion, which will only come to most of
us, and then perhaps imperfectly in a different world from this.
Yes, the bridge might now be broken down; it had served its purpose.
Come age, or loss of physical attraction, or separation and icy
silence, or the change called death itself, and the souls thus subtly
blended can and will and do defy them. For the real life is not here;
here only is the blind beginning of things, maybe the premature
beginning.
And so Ernest posted his letters, and then, partly to employ his
thoughts, and partly because it was his nature to throw himself into
whatever stream of life was flowing past him, he set himself to master
the state of political affairs in the country in which he found
himself.
This need not be entered into here, further than to say that it was
such as might with advantage have employed wiser heads than his, and
indeed did employ them. Suffice it to say that he contrived to make
himself of considerable use to the English party, both before and after
the annexation of the Transvaal to the dominions of the Crown. Among
other things he went on several missions in conjunction with Mr.
Alston, with a view of ascertaining the real state of feeling among the
Boers. Also, together with Jeremy, he joined a volunteer corps which
was organised for the defence of Pretoria when it was still a matter of
doubt whether or not the contemplated annexation would or would not
result in an attack being made upon the town by the Boers. It was a
most exciting time, and once or twice Ernest and Jeremy had narrow
escapes of being murdered.
However, nothing worthy of note happened to them, and at last the
long-expected annexation came off successfully, to the intense joy of
all the Englishmen in the country, and to the great relief of the vast
majority of the Boers.
Now, together with the proclamation by which the Transvaal was annexed
to her Majesty’s dominions, was issued another that was to have a
considerable bearing upon Ernest’s fortunes. This was none other than a
promise of her Majesty’s gracious pardon to all such as had been
resident in the Transvaal for a period of six months previous to the
date of annexation, being former British subjects and offenders against
the English criminal law, who would register their name and offence
within a given time. The object of this proclamation was to give
immunity from prosecution to many individuals formerly deserters from
the English army, and other people who had in some way transgressed the
laws, but were now occupying respectable positions in their adopted
country.
Mr. Alston read this proclamation attentively when it came out in a
special number of the _Gazette._ Then, after thinking for a while, he
handed it to Ernest.
“You have read this amnesty proclamation?” he said.
“Yes,” answered Ernest; “what of it?”
“What of it? Ah, the stupidity of youth! Go down, go down on your
knees, young man, and render thanks to the Power that inspired Lord
Carnarvon with the idea of annexing the Transvaal. Can’t you very well
see that it takes your neck out of the halter? Off with you, and
register your name and offence with the secretary to Government, and
you will be clear for ever from any consequences that might ensue from
the slight indiscretion of having shot your own first cousin on British
soil.”
“By Jove, Alston! you don’t mean that!”
“Mean it? of course I do. The proclamation does not specify any
particular offence to which pardon is to be denied, and you have lived
more than six months on Transvaal territory. Off you go!”
And Ernest went like an arrow.