I
NOW it was far too light for her to think of sleep, and so she went into
the house to change her clothes and to make herself clean. When she saw
her own reflection in the little mirror she was shocked, for it seemed to
her a strange thing that she should have passed through so many hours of
intense experience and show so little for it. Her blouse was torn and
her skirt caked with black mud, but that was all. She would not have
been surprised if she had found that her hair had turned white. But it
hadn’t: only, when she took it down, she was puzzled for a moment by an
unfamiliar perfume which seemed to have been imprisoned in its folds.
She shuddered, realising all at once that it was the scent of Godovius’s
room. But when she had bathed and changed her clothes and stepped out
into the summery sunshine of early morning she felt as though she had
really managed to wash that damnable atmosphere away. There wasn’t
really a vestige of it left. She just felt a little light-headed and
nervous, as if her legs didn’t quite belong to her. But she did realise
that she had got her hands full.
In the first place, James. Several times she passed in and out of his
room. He was still sleeping peacefully, and she did not disturb him; but
somewhere about nine o’clock, when she had breakfasted, she found that he
had wakened. He was lying on his back with his arms folded in front of
his chest and his eyes wide open. He smiled at her.
“I think I’m all right now,” he said. “It’s been a funny time.”
She was unfeignedly thankful. She washed him tenderly, and from time to
time he asked her short questions which she thought it her duty to evade
for fear of exciting him. And he was easily satisfied.
“I’m afraid you’ve been up all night with me,” he said. “It was a
strange night. Did I talk to you in the night? I seem to remember . . .”
“You told me a silly nightmare,” she said, “that was all. You had been
dreaming.”
He laughed softly. “I’m always dreaming. Even when I’m awake. I don’t
remember anything about it. Everything at Luguru is like a dream.”
And so she left him for a little. She had begun to wonder about her
hidden guest. Now for the first time, in broad daylight, and removed
from all the romantic circumstances of the night before, she realised the
results of her hospitality. The possibilities were frightening. A
law-abiding citizen, she was sheltering a felon; a modest young woman,
she was hiding a strange man of whom she knew nothing at all. But there
was no running away from it. She had taken on the job and must see it
through. That was the way in which she looked at it, even in the face of
a considerable anxiety. It struck her as strange that she hadn’t for a
moment counted the cost the night before. She smiled at herself, a
little indulgently. “I always do things like that and think about them
afterwards,” she thought.
Meanwhile she had a great deal to be thankful for in the recovery of
James. Freed of this anxiety, she was far more capable of tackling the
problem which Hare presented. Godovius was her other concern, and it
seemed to her providential that things had really come to a head at
Njumba ja Mweze that night, for after what had happened there he couldn’t
very well pursue his attentions. She was thinking all the time of
Godovius as a possible threat to her two protégés. For the sake of both
of them it was essential that he should be kept away from Luguru.
Nothing could have happened better. Now he couldn’t have the face to
come. That was all she knew about Godovius.
In this way, scheming for his protection, searching for every probable
contingency which might threaten his safety, and arming herself against
them with an unusual caution, she came to Mr. Bullace’s _banda_. It was
now midday and very hot. Close to the _banda_, dangerously close, the
shamba boys were cutting down the poles on which the sisal spires had
withered. They hacked at the pulpy poles with iron _pangas_, and sang to
each other a queer antiphonal song which had lightened the labours of
black men cutting wood for untold generations. Hamisi had climbed up the
pole, and when the trunk was nearly severed he swung himself to and fro
until the whole thing toppled over with a tearing sound. When the pole
fell they shouted to one another and laughed; and one of them, a naked
M’luguru who had sat in the garden path busily excavating a jigger from
his toe, looked up and laughed too, as though the occasion were one for
universal happiness. He was an ugly creature with shining cicatrices on
either cheek and porcupine quills which he had picked up stuck through
his hair, and as soon as he had done with his surgery he jumped to his
feet and lolled up against the side of the _banda_.
It suddenly came to Eva that only the thin grass wall of the _banda_ now
separated him from the place where Hare was lying. Already her secret
seemed on the point of being discovered. She remembered hearing Godovius
tell her brother one day that the Waluguru, in common with other African
races, could detect the presence of a white man by his smell. She was so
frightened that she hurried to the side of the _banda_ and pulled the
lounging Luguru away. It was the first time in her life that she had
handled a native roughly. The others, standing idle in their dirty red
blankets, laughed. She felt that they were jeering at her; but if she
had laid open their comrade’s back with the cut of a _kiboko_ they would
have laughed in the same way. She called Hamisi, and told him to see to
the other side of the hedge first. He said: “N’dio, Bibi,” and smiled.
She hated all their smiling. He was smiling, she thought, at her secret.
Probably they all knew it by now. Soon Godovius would know . . .
The boys moved off to the other end of the garden and still she stood at
the corner of the _banda_ thinking. Around her the lazy life of the
morning stirred. Among the aromatic herbs which had invaded that
neglected garden with their ashen foliage and clustered flowers, purple
and cinnabar, the restless butterflies of Africa hovered in mazy flight.
Most of them were small and barred with cinnabar, like the little orange
tips which brightened the Shropshire lanes in spring. A green lizard
moved as quietly as a shadow at her feet. Through the green curtain of
acacia a flight of honey-suckers passed with a whir of wings. She hated
all this busy, mocking life, this land that smiled eternally and was
eternally cruel. She felt that she had no part in it. It was all wrong.
She went into her _banda_ and tapped at the partition. Hare answered her
in a whisper. He said that he was quite comfortable. He had slept and
was not hungry. All that morning he had lain listening to the chatter of
the boys as they worked on the sisal hedge, and he had heard many curious
things of which they would never have spoken if they had known that he
was there. He wanted to know all about James, and seemed relieved when
she told him of his calm awakening. “Now he should be all right,” he
said, and told her what to do in the matter of food and of quinine. “But
you sound tired,” he said. “You must rest yourself. The night of quiet
and comfort has made all the difference to me. I’m afraid I’m an anxiety
to you; and you have enough to worry about already.”
Although this was almost an echo of her own thought, she denied it
hastily.
“Ah, but I need not be an anxiety much longer,” he said. “A day or two
and I shall be able to fend for myself. I could hear that you were
nervous when you spoke to the boys.”
She wanted to explain herself; for suddenly, thinking of what life at
Luguru would be like if he left her, she realised what the presence of
the fugitive meant to her. But this was no time for talking, even in
whispers. After sunset, when the Africans had gone to sleep. . . . She
asked him if there was anything that he needed particularly. He told her
that he only wanted two things, water to wash in and a pencil.
“But you can’t use either of them,” she said, “as you are now.”
She heard him laugh softly. “You don’t know how clever I am with no
hands to speak of.”
She moved away softly, and a little later she returned, bringing with her
a gourd full of water, soap and a towel, and the pencil for which he had
asked her. Very carefully she moved aside the partition and pushed them
inside. But she did not see him, for the inside of the _banda_ was dark
and the sound of a step on the garden path made her close the open space
hurriedly. And even though she found that her fancy had deceived her,
this sort of thing was not over-good for her nerves.
II
In this manner, all through that day which was the first and the most
trying, she hovered between her two anxieties. James was more than
usually difficult and talkative. With the vanishing of his fever it
seemed as if all the accumulated nervous energy which disease had
beneficently drugged were suddenly released. He prayed aloud; he made
plans, and in the intervals he would call to Eva to remind her of some
small thing that had happened at Far Forest many years before. It was
all encouraging in a way, but tiring . . . very tiring. In the evening,
about the time of sunset, he fell asleep over his Bible, and the relief
to Eva was as great as if he had been delirious all day.
She sat on the stoep in that sudden interval of silence and relief,
watching the hot sky grow cool and temperate, watching, a little later,
the growing crescent of the young moon free itself from the topmost
tangles of the forest and then go sailing, as if indeed it had been
caught and were now released into a dusky sky. Almost before she had
realised that the light was failing, it was night. The crescent now was
soaring through the crowns of her own tall crotons. From every grassy
nullah where water once had flowed the frogs began their trilling. She
wondered if she would ever taste the long coolness of twilight again.
Then, when she had made a small meal and put aside some food for Hare,
she lit a blizzard lantern and carried it to her _banda_. From the other
end of the compound, where the Africans slept, she heard the twanging of
a strange instrument. One of the boys was singing an interminable,
tuneless native song. At any rate they were safe for the night.
Hare was waiting for her. She placed the lantern on her own side of the
partition, so that only a wide panel of light fell within the inner
chamber. He was sitting up on his bed of sisal fibre, making a savage
but intensely pathetic figure. I don’t suppose he knew for one moment
what a ruffian he looked. For many years he had lived a life in which
one does not consider appearances, but, for all that, he had tried to
make himself as clean as he could with one imperfect hand. He had combed
his long hair and even attempted to make a job of his beard. This was
really the first time that Eva had properly seen him. The night before,
in spite of his exhaustion, he had seemed so collected and capable, so
eager not to make trouble, and she had been so anxious about James and
distressed by the difficulty of the situation that she hadn’t quite taken
in his absolute helplessness. It came to her in a sudden flash of
realisation. She felt guilty and ashamed. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Now I am much more comfortable,” he said, making matters worse than
ever.
“But how on earth have you managed?” she whispered. “Your poor arm. . . .
I’ve neglected you shockingly.”
All at once she became maternal and practical. It was not very difficult
for her. For the greater part of her life she had been looking after
helpless male creatures: first her old father and then James. Now she
would not be denied.
“Where is the arm broken?” she asked.
It was nothing, he said, only a smashed collar-bone. It had been broken
before. “Only, you see, I must keep the upper arm close to the side. It
acts as a sort of splint. In a fortnight it will be sound. I know all
about this sort of thing. I have to.”
“I’m going to wash you, anyway,” she said.
I do not suppose such a thing as this had ever happened to Hare in all
his life; but now he was too helpless and the idea too reasonable for him
to protest. To Eva the business came quite naturally. Very tenderly she
disentangled the dirty shirt of khaki drill from his left shoulder,
slipping the sleeve over the poor pointed stump of what had once been one
of the wiriest arms in Africa. It was a painful process to her; all the
time she felt that she was hurting him; but he smiled up at her with a
look of confidence and shyness which one might more easily have seen on
the face of a child than of this old hunter.
The shirt was dirty . . . horribly dirty; but he made no apologies which
might have embarrassed them both. The injured shoulder was more
difficult. Pain twisted his lips into a sort of smile. “Easy . . . if
you don’t mind,” he said.
“If you wouldn’t mind my slitting up the sleeve,” she suggested.
“No . . . that wouldn’t do. It’s my only shirt. It’s only dirty because
of this accident. I generally wash it every few days.”
At last it was over. Now she could see the angle of the broken
collar-bone, and from it a great bruise, purple and yellow, tracking down
into the axilla. She washed him, passing gently over the bruised area.
When she had finished he thanked her. “This is not a woman’s work,” he
said.
“Oh, but it is,” she smiled.
“Perhaps I am wrong. It is many years since I have spoken to a woman. I
live a very solitary life. Even before I had the misfortune to lose my
arm.” It was funny to see how his little self-consciousness showed
itself.
Now she was anxious to rescue his very awful shirt; for she had decided
that it would be easy to fit him out in one of James’s until it was
clean. He was almost as anxious about that as he had been about the
rifle. He didn’t want to offend her; but for all his gentleness he was
determined to get it back.
“But we must wash it,” she said. “What is the matter with you?”
“You can have it, but . . . did you notice that there’s a big pocket in
the left breast? Yes . . . that’s it. Will you be kind enough to look
in it. There’s a wee packet of papers in a waterproof cover. That’s
what I want. It’s very near the only thing in my gear that I’ve saved.
It has only a personal value.” He paused and then modestly added: “It’s
the fruits of several adventurous years. It’s a book—”
He looked at her very narrowly. She could see now that his eyes were of
a very clear blue-grey. In the lamplight they sparkled like the eyes of
a bird. Then he smiled.
“I may tell you,” he said, “that you are the first human being I have
ever told that to . . . and there aren’t many . . . who would not have
thought it rather a joke.”
“But that would be ridiculous,” she said. “For I don’t know you. When I
come to think of it, I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m called Hare,” he said, “Charles Hare. It’s possible you’ve heard
the name. Not probable you’ve heard any good of it.” It sounded as if
he were trying to make the best of it himself.
She repeated: “Charles Hare.” But when he heard the words in her voice
his incorrigible romanticism wouldn’t permit him to let them pass. It
was like Hare to abandon in one moment an alias that he had carried for a
quarter of a century. I suppose it was just the directness and
simplicity of Eva that worked the miracle: it suddenly occurred to him
that it would be a shame to deceive her in the least particular. He
said:
“You can forget that name. It’s none the better for my having carried
it. I don’t know”—there was a bright challenge in his eyes—“that it’s
really much worse. But it isn’t mine. My name is M‘Crae. Hector
M‘Crae.”
She was bewildered. “But why—” she began.
“I had sufficient reasons for losing it,” he said. “I’ve found it again.
I’ve found a lot of things during the last four days. You must forgive
me for having deceived you. One gets into the habit . . .”
It sounded rather a lame finish.
“Oh, it’s a long story,” he said, “a long story. Some day if you’ll
listen to me I’ll tell it to you. Now, if you please, we’ll leave it. I
want to know about your brother. I should like to know a little about
you . . .”
He began to question her narrowly on the subject of James, approving,
with monosyllables, what she had done. And then he told her seriously
that she was looking over-tired. “You want sleep,” he said. “We mustn’t
talk any more to-night. Will you throw this blanket over my shoulders?
Oh . . . and there’s one thing more. I’ve been clumsy enough to break
the point of your pencil. There’s a knife on my belt. Will you sharpen
it for me?”
III
It was four nights later that M‘Crae—it is better to call him M‘Crae, if
it were only to dissociate this new being from the figure which so many
people in Africa know—came to his story. Eva had never asked for it; and
I think this delicacy on her part did something towards making him feel
that it was her due. Besides this, the passage of time had made an
intimacy between the two more easy. For one thing, James suffered no
return of his fever: Eva was less harassed and for that reason more able
to devote herself to the other invalid. She had made it clear to him,
once and for all, that a man with one hand, and that in a sling, was in
no position to look after himself. At first, no doubt, his native pride,
of which he had more than a man’s ordinary share, and which had been
fostered alike by his infirmity and his solitary manner of life, made it
difficult for him to accept her attentions with ease; but by degrees the
naturalness and the simplicity of her outlook overcame him. Perhaps this
was not so strange as one might imagine, for the man’s independence was
more a matter of habit than of instinct. Her deftness and her tenderness
together made it impossible to resist even if he would have done so. And
her beauty . . . I do not know. I don’t think I want to know. Perhaps
he was in love with her from the beginning. If he were, I can only
believe that it was a great blessing to him: the very crown and
fulfilment of a strangely romantic life.
On the fourth evening he had evidently prepared himself for his
recitation. He would not talk of other things. Eva couldn’t understand
it at first: for he answered her questions as though he were not in the
least interested, and she thought that for some queer reason of his own
he was sulking, or perhaps that he was in pain. I suppose he was in
pain. It was not an easy matter for a man like M‘Crae to get a story off
his chest. She had hung the blizzard lamp at the mouth of the _banda_
and she was sitting in a deck-chair close to the partition, where it was
so dark that neither of them could see the other’s face. She was just
conscious of his eyes in the darkness, and it seemed to her that they
never left her face. It was a very quiet, moonless night. For some
reason the sky was unusually cloudy. The noises of the dark, the zizzing
of cicalas and the trilling of frogs were so regular that they became as
unnoticeable as silence. In the roof little lizards were moving; but
they, too, came and went as softly as shadows. No violence troubled
their isolation, unless it were the impact of an occasional moth hurling
out of the darkness at the lantern’s flame or the very distant howling of
a hyena on the edge of the forest. It was a silence that invited
confidences. No two people in the world could have been more alone.
At length Eva asked: “Mr. M‘Crae, what’s the matter with you?”
He said: “Nothing.” And there followed another long silence.
Then, without a word of introduction, he began talking to her about his
childhood. A long and disordered story. He didn’t seem to be
considering her at all in the recitation. She might not even have been
there, she thought, if it had not been that his eyes were always on her.
It was a remote and savage story, which began in the island of Arran,
fifty years ago: a small farm of stone in the mountain above Kilmory
Water, dreaming above a waste of sea in which, at night, the lighthouse
on the Isle of Pladda shows the only token of life. But by day all the
mouth of the firth to Ailsa Craig would be streaked with the smoke of
steamers making for the Clyde, and others reaching out from those grey
waters to the ends of the earth. “If it hadn’t been for the shipping,”
he said, “I might have lived all my life at the Clachan and never known
that there was anything else in the world. I should be living there now.
Let me see . . . July. . . . It’ll be over-early for the heather. I can
see my father there now. But he must be dead for all that. When I left
him he was a strong man of sixty without a single grey hair to his head.
Strong. . . . Ay, and just. But hard. Hard as granite. I don’t judge
him harshly. I often see, now that I’m not so young as I was, that if I
had stayed in Arran, as my brothers did, I might have grown into
something very like him. Sometimes I catch myself in a gesture or even a
turn of speech which is him to the life. That is the outside of me. All
the battering about the world I’ve had hasn’t been enough to get rid of
the externals. Inside it’s very different. My father’s eyes never saw
farther than the firth or the sound; his life kept inside the Old
Testament, while I’ve seen more of the world than most people, and played
skittles with the Ten Commandments too. Understand that I’m not sorry
for it. There aren’t many regrets in my life. . . . Just a few. I’ve
missed things that are a consolation when a man grows old . . . a home
. . . children . . . but I believe the balance is on my side. They taught
me the whole duty of man in a thing they call the Shorter Catechism.
They would say that I’ve failed in it. But there’s more than one way of
glorifying God, and there are more gods than the God of my fathers . . .”
He was sixteen when his mother died, and her loss had desolated him. He
was only a boy, but he saw already that life at the Clachan must resolve
itself into a struggle between the two strongest wills within its walls,
his own and his father’s. If he had lived in some inland valley it is
possible that he would have found no way of escape, even though the most
inland Scotsmen have a way of escaping. As it was, his prison, however
remote it may have seemed, overlooked one of the great highways of the
world, and escape was easy. He left Lamlash one day in a ketch-rigged,
round-bottomed barge that was sailing for Glasgow, and from that day
forward he never saw his home again. Sometimes, he said, he had felt a
sudden impulse to return. He had a little theory of his own that for a
man to be completely satisfied he must see every place that he has
visited at least twice; no more than twice; for the first return was an
inevitable disillusionment, the only cure, in fact, for the wanderer’s
hunger. Once indeed, in the early years of his sea-faring, he had
returned to the port of Glasgow in the stokehold of a cattle ship rolling
over from Brazil. He had been talking to the third engineer, whose home
was a village called Kirn, on the Holy Loch; and this man, who glowed
with anticipation at the thought of nearing home, had promised to call
him when they should draw abeam of the Pladda light. “A sight for sair
eyes,” he had called it, and M‘Crae had half persuaded himself that he
was going to share in this tender emotion. It was three o’clock in the
morning when the good-natured engineer shouted to him as he toiled,
sweating and stripped to the waist, before the fires. He had thrown a
shirt over his shoulders and climbed up the iron ladder of the
engine-room, where the pistons sighed and panted, to the dark deck. It
was a pitchy night, the sky full of a howling wind and cold flurries of
snow. In the ‘tween-decks sea-sick cattle were stamping and making
hideous noises. “You’ll see the light of Pladda over on the port bow,”
the third had shouted, and the word “bow” was caught in the tail of the
wind and borne away astern. M‘Crae could see no light. There were no
stars in the sky; only a riot of windy space in which the feeble
headlight of the ship made dizzy plunges, lighting for a moment ragged
flakes of snow. Flying scuds of snow, driven through the darkness, spat
upon his sweating chest. Over there, in the heart of that wild darkness,
Arran lay. The shoulders of Goat Fell stood up against the storm;
Kilmory Water should be in a brown spate; there, in the Clachan, they
would all be sound asleep, all but the two sheep-dogs lying with their
noses to the hearth, where fiery patterns were stealing through white
ashes of peat. M‘Crae stood waiting in the cold for the expected thrill.
It didn’t come. . . . He could only think in that perverse moment of
sunshine and light; of the green mountain slopes above Buenos Ayres and
blue, intense shadows on the pavement of the Plaza where dark-skinned
ranchers from inland _estancias_ lounged at the scattered tables of the
cafés. His utmost will was powerless to enslave his imagination. He
shivered, and turned gratefully to the oily heat of the engine-room.
“Well, did ye see it?” the engineer shouted. “Yon’s a fine sight!”
“Ay, I saw it,” M‘Crae lied, and his reply was accepted for the proper
Scots enthusiasm. He was not sorry when the ship sailed south again.
All the time that she stayed in the port of Glasgow was marred by snow
and sleet and rain.
For all that, in later years he had thought of returning more than once.
One day, at Simonstown, he had watched a Highland regiment sailing for
home at the end of the Boer War. Someone had started to sing _The
Flowers of the Forest_ in a high tenor voice. Tears had come into his
eyes, and, having a heap of gold sewn in his waistcoat, he had almost
decided to book his passage on a mail-boat, until, loitering down
Adderley Street on his way to the shipping offices, he had fallen in with
a man who had found copper in Katanga, near the shores of Tanganyika, and
in half-an-hour they had decided to set out together by the next
northward train. And it had always been like that. Some chance had
invariably stood between him and his old home. “Now I shall never see it
again,” he said.
“I wonder,” said Eva softly.
“You needn’t wonder,” he replied. “It’s one of the things of which I
feel certain. I shall never leave Africa now. Even in Africa I’ve come
across things that made me think of Arran. I remember. . . . There’s a
place up above the Rift Valley, eight thousand feet of altitude. It’s
called Kijabe. One of these Germans built a hotel there. _N’gijabi_ had
the meaning of wind in Masai. And it can blow there. Long before the
German came near the place I was there . . . before the railway ran to
Naivasha. I camped there for a week, and all the week I never so much as
saw the valley or the lake. Nothing but thin white mist, mist as white
as milk, just like the stuff that comes dripping off Goat Fell. I
remembered. . . . But it’s a long digression.”
He laughed softly. And then he told her of many voyages at sea in which
he had come upon strange things that are no longer to be seen. Once in a
sailing ship he had doubled the icy Horn; and later, sailing out of
‘Frisco, had been wrecked on Kiu-Siu, the southern island of Japan, being
cast up on a beach of yellow sand where the slow Pacific swell was
spilling in creamy ripples. A woman found him there, an ugly, flat-faced
woman, who carried a baby on her back. It was a little bay with a
pointed volcanic hill at either horn all covered in climbing pine-trees.
At the back of it stood the reed huts of fishermen and on the level plats
of sand brown nets were spread to dry. “A beautiful and simple people,”
he said. “In these days, they tell me, they have been spoiled.” For a
month he lived there, lived upon dried fish and rice, wandering over the
red paths which climbed between the pines on those pointed hillocks. It
was February, and peerless weather. By the wayside violets were hiding,
and in the air flapped the lazy wings of the meadow browns that he had
known in Arran. “I have seen those butterflies in Africa too. It’s
strange how a thing like that will piece together one’s life. I could
tell you things of that kind for ever, if it weren’t that they would tire
you. And they don’t really matter.
“And then I killed a man.”
He paused, and she felt that his eyes were on her more than ever.
“That’s how I lost my name. The one that I found again the other night.
At the time it seemed to me a terrible thing. I’m not so sure that I
think it terrible now. If I hadn’t killed him he would have killed me;
but for all that the quarrel was of my making. It was in Singapore . . .
in Malay Street, Singapore. A street with a bad name. He was a Russian
sailor, and he was treating a woman in the way that no woman, whatever
her trade might be, should be treated. I didn’t know the woman. I shot
him. In a second the place was swarming like an ant’s nest. I had my
clothes torn from me, but I got away. I was three weeks hiding in an
opium shop in Singapore. The Chinese will do anything for you for money.
I didn’t want to be hanged, for in those days I put a higher value on
life than I do now . . . a funny thing to say of a man who had just
killed another. I hid among the long bunks where Chinese sailors were
lying. The place was dark, with a low roof, and full of the heavy smoke
of opium. I was used to that; for one of our quartermasters was an opium
smoker and the fo’c’sle of the _Mary Deans_ always smelt of it. I spent
three weeks thinking of my past sins and watching a pattern of golden
dragons on the roof; and I did more thinking there than I had ever done
in my life.
“At the end of those three weeks Ah Qui—that was the Chinaman’s name—got
me away. I remember the night. We pulled out in a _sampan_ from Tanjong
Pagar under the lee of a little island. Pulo . . . Pulo something or
other. There was an oily sea lapping round the piles on which the Malays
had built their huts and one of those heavy skies that you get in the
Straits washed all over with summer lightning. But the taste of clean
air after three weeks of opium fumes! They got me on to a junk that was
sailing for Batavia, in Java. Old Ah Qui had stripped me of every dollar
I possessed. He wouldn’t do it for a cent less. When I found myself on
the deck of that junk, breathing free air under the flapping sails, the
want of money didn’t trouble me. I stretched out my arms. I filled my
lungs. I could have sung for joy . . .
“At Batavia I shipped under the Dutch flag under the name of Charles
Hare. It wasn’t a bad name. It came to me in a flash. We landed at
Capetown in the year eighteen eighty-five. It was the year after the
discovery of gold at De Kaap; Moodie’s farm had just been opened.
Everybody was talking of gold. While we lay in Table Bay waiting for
cargo they found the Sheba reef. We heard of it, myself and another man
named Miles, in a dope shop down by the harbour. We didn’t think twice
about it. That very night we set off for the Transvaal on foot.
“I was one of the lucky ones. We had a fair start of the others who came
flocking out from Europe. And it wasn’t only luck. I kept my head.
That is part of the virtue of being a Scotsman. I kept my head where
poor Miles didn’t. I had had my lesson: those three weeks of hard
thinking in Ah Qui’s opium shop. And Miles went under. Twice I put him
on his feet again, but he didn’t pay for helping. He was never the man
that I should have chosen. He just happened to be the only white man
aboard that Dutch ship. I couldn’t make a new man of him. I suppose he
was a born waster. There were plenty like that on the Rand in
eighty-six. I saw scores of them go under. And as for murder . . . that
was common enough to make me wonder what all the fuss had been about in
Singapore.
“I was lucky, as I told you. I left the Rand in eighty-seven. During
the last year, when I had parted with Miles and was working for myself, I
had experienced a big reaction. It seemed to me that the adventurous way
in which I had been living wasn’t worth while. I’d seen the example of
Miles . . . poor fellow . . . and remembered Singapore. Besides, I had a
good bit of money banked with the Jews—enough to live on for the rest of
my life—and the mere fact of possessing money makes you look at the world
in a different way. It’s a bad thing for a young man . . . I’m sure of
that. But I was a lot older than my years.
“At any rate, when I left the place where Jo’burg is now I swore that I’d
keep what I’d got. I came down to the Cape again, and built a little
house out Muizenburg way . . . up above the winter pool they call Zand
Vlei . . . a fine little wooden house; and I planted peaches there, and a
plumbago hedge round my mealies. It was all my idea of a home. And
then, just as the house was beginning to be all that I expected it, I
came across a woman. I had never known what it was to be in love before.
I was a simple enough lad, for all my money and my pretty house. She was
an assistant in one of the stores that stood where Adderley Street is
now. An English-woman. She had come out there as ‘mother’s help,’ or
whatever they call it, to some Government people; and when they were
recalled Mr. Jenkins had asked her if she would come into his store. I
fancy they came from the same part of the country. Her home was in
Herefordshire. She stayed at Jenkins’, and it was there I found her.
“A beautiful woman . . . beautiful, I mean in every way. But it was for
so little, so very little . . .
“I can tell _you_ . . . I feel I can tell you because—if you’ll allow me
to be personal—she had much the same colouring as you; the same eyes, the
same straight eyebrows, the same sort of hair. I almost fancy her speech
was like yours too. But one forgets. It was thirty years ago . . .
“I can’t say much about it. The whole of that experience was like an
evening in spring. As short and as beautiful. And we felt . . . we felt
that this was only the beginning. One feels that on an early spring
evening there is so much in reserve; first the season when the may comes;
and then full summer—long summer evenings with bees in the heather; and,
afterwards, autumn with the rowan berries. It was like that. We were
waiting on an evening of that kind with just the confidence that young
people have in all the beautiful things which will happen in the ordinary
passage of time.
“And that was all. She died. Cruelly . . . cruelly. Without any
warning. She was only ill three days. That is the kind of thing that
makes a man despise life. I had lost everything . . . everything . . .
utterly lost everything . . .”
He paused. Eva had drawn back her chair a little from the light. She
was crying. It was impossible for her to speak. She wondered if she
should have spoken. Out of the darkness they heard a deep and throaty
rumble.
“Lion,” said M‘Crae.
After that there followed a silence.
At last he spoke.
“And then my life began . . .
“A blow of that kind knocks a man silly for a time. When he opens his
eyes after it nothing looks the same. I was restless. I wanted to find
something new to fill the gap in my mind. I hated that little house at
Muizenberg in which I had promised myself to end my days. The only thing
that did me any good was walking, the lonelier the better. I used to
walk over the neck of the peninsula and climb Table Mountain, up above
the Twelve Apostles. I’d walk there for hours in the white mist that
lies on the top—they call it the tablecloth. I’ve slept there more than
once when the fog has caught me. And though I’ve never been back there
since those days I was just sane enough to remember that it’s a wonderful
place for flowers. There’s many very pretty things there.
“One evening when I came down from the mountain I saw a youngish man
looking at my plumbago hedge. ‘Pretty place you’ve got here,’ he said.
‘Kind of place that would just suit me.’ ‘What do you want it for?’ says
I. He blushed . . . he was a nice young fellow. . . . ‘Getting
married,’ said he. That nearly did me. I could have burst out crying on
the spot. But I got him in for a sundowner all the same. He started
telling me all about the young lady. ‘If you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘I’d
rather not hear. Don’t think that I want to offend you. But if you want
the house you can have it. You can have it for two-thirds what it cost
me.’ I’d almost have given it him.
“In a week we had the thing settled. That year they found gold in the
Zoutspanberg district. It was new country, very mountainous and wild. I
didn’t mind where I went as long as I could forget the other thing. I
went there by easy stages, seeing a goodish bit of country. I sunk my
money there . . . there and in Zululand. And I lost it—every penny of it
but the little bit which was coming in to me, with a scrap of interest,
for the Muizenburg farm. I lost my money . . . but I think I found
myself.
“It was a great game country, that. I don’t suppose there’s much game
left there now, but in those days it was swarming, all the way from the
mountains to the Limpopo. It was a big, lonely country. Those were the
two things that got hold of me. I used to ride out there on hunting
expeditions with no more company than one boy. I remember sitting there
one night after supper with a pipe of Boer tobacco, and then the thought
came to me: ‘Good God! as I sit here now there’s probably not another
white man within fifty miles.’
“That was the beginning of it. I began to follow out the idea, and I
soon realised that my fifty miles was nothing to speak of. North of me
it would easily run into thousands . . . thousands of miles of country
that no living man knew anything about; where, for all we knew, there
might be rivers and lakes and cities even that had never been seen, all
waiting for a man who would set out to find them for the love of the
thing. It was a big idea, almost too big for one man’s life. But it was
the very thing for which my loneliness had been waiting. Africa. . . .
Years afterwards—I think it was after the war—I came across a poem by
Kipling: a man, one of your amateur settlers, showed it me in the Kenya
province. It was about Africa. He called Africa ‘the woman wonderful.’
Yes . . . ‘lived a woman wonderful,’ it began. I’d lost one wonderful
woman. Now I found another. I’ve lived with her for thirty years and I
have never come anywhere near the end of her wonder, though I know more
of her than most men. Why, there _is_ no end. There is always something
new. Even in the last week I have stumbled on something new and
wonderful. Tonight . . .
“I had three years of it south of the Limpopo. In eighteen ninety I
heard that Rhodes was sending an expedition into Mashonaland. There were
only five hundred of us in ‘ninety; but I always want to shake a man by
the hand if he was with us in those days. The men who rode up to
Salisbury . . . men that I’d still give my life for: men like Selous. A
great hunter, and a good man!
“From that day to this my life has been much the same. There have been
one or two diversions. In ninety-five the Jameson raid, and a few years
later the Boer War. Wasted years . . . but I didn’t fully realise the
value of time in those days. I was a wild fellow too. God knows how
much I drank. A young man thinks that he is going to live for ever.
Still, I suppose there was a mess to be cleared up and it had to be done,
and after the war I had my own way. I never slept where I couldn’t see
the Southern Cross.
“I could tell you a good deal about Africa, all Africa from the Orange
River to Lake Chad and the Blue Nile, and the Lorian Swamp. I’ve hunted
everywhere—not for the love of hunting, but because a man must live.
I’ve not been one of those that make hunting pay. I’ve shot elephants
because ivory would keep me in food and porters and ammunition. I’ve
poached ivory with a clear conscience for the same reason. I’ve found
gold, gold and copper: and I’ve let other men scramble for the fortunes.
I didn’t want their fortunes. I wanted to know Africa. And always . . .
for my own sake, not for the sake of other people, I have made notes of
the things that I saw, of kindly peoples, of good water, and things like
that. Some day I might make a book about them; but it would be a big
book, and I haven’t any skill in writing. If I could write of all the
beauty and strangeness that I’ve seen as I saw them a man would never put
down the book that I wrote. That’s the meaning of the notebooks that I
carried in my shirt pockets. There are a lot more stored with the
Standard Bank. You see, I’ve been at it for thirty years.
“Now it’s not so easy as it used to be. The zest is there. I’m as
eager, you might almost say, as a child; but the power isn’t the same. I
can’t starve in the same way as I used to. In the old days I could live
on a little biltong and coffee and the mealie flour I got from the
natives. And I’m handicapped in other ways. Five years ago I lost my
left arm. I was lucky not to lose my life, for a wounded elephant
charged and got me. I’m glad he didn’t kill me, for in spite of it all
I’ve had a good time since. I can shoot straight, thank God, if I have
something on which to rest my rifle. German East has always been an
unlucky country for me. It was near Meru that the elephant got me. One
of the Dutchmen in the Arusha settlement had a down on me, and there’s
been a warrant out for my arrest. The other day, if it hadn’t been for
you, they would have had me. It’s a good thing they didn’t; for I want
to see this country. I’ve heard funny things about the Waluguru.
They’re worth more to me than ivory. When this shoulder’s better perhaps
I shall find out if the things I’ve heard are true . . . and I’ve never
been to Kissaki or the Rufiji Delta . . . .
“I think that is all. It’s strange how little a man can really tell of
his life. The things that matter, the wonderful moments, can’t be told
at all. What I’ve been able to tell you sounds like . . . like nothing
more than what might have happened to any hard case who’s knocked about
Africa for thirty years. But for all that life has been precious to me.
Perhaps you will think it the kind of life that wasn’t worth saving. You
mustn’t think that. Because I’m grateful. I’m grateful even for these
last hours. I’m grateful that you’ve allowed me to make this sort of
confession. It worried me that I should have started off with a lie to a
woman like you. It hadn’t struck me that way ever before. I dare say it
was foolish of me; but when one is weak one gets those twinges of . . .
of conscience.
“I’m hoping that you’ll forgive me . . .”