I
WHEN Eva, resolved on confession, had come to the door of her brother’s
room and knocked, she had not been altogether surprised at his anxiety to
be left alone. James had always been like that, and she knew that there
was nothing to be gained by disturbing him. Through the heat of that
peerless afternoon she waited. But when the evening came and he had not
yet emerged from his chosen solitude, she began to be more anxious. Even
if he were in a state of extreme spiritual depression, starvation
wouldn’t improve matters. It had always been a great part of her
function in life to see that he was properly supplied with food and
raiment and all the physical comforts which his spirit so heartily
despised, and even in this extremity her thoughts moved in the accustomed
channel. Seeing herself, as from a distance, pursuing these eminently
practical affairs, she was even faintly thankful that she had still the
distraction of her habitual activities. She went into the garden to find
the boys. Onyango was there alone, sleeping in the sun. She woke him,
and in a little while he returned, bringing with him a yellow gourd full
of the thin milk of the country. She boiled a little of this over her
fire of sticks, and took it to the door of James’ room. This time there
was no answer. Perhaps, she thought, he was asleep. A blessed relief
from all his troubles.
Two hours later she knocked again, and when, again, she received no
reply, she suddenly took fright. She wasn’t afraid that he had done
anything very desperate: she knew that his religious sense was too strong
for this: but she knew that he was the lightest of sleepers, and his
silence suggested to her a return of the illness which had robbed him of
consciousness before. She remembered so well the ghastly sight which he
had presented to her on that day, when he had laid on his back with his
eyes staring at the ceiling, breathing stertorously. She listened
carefully at the door, trying to hear if he were breathing like that now.
She remembered her despair on that terrible night and the callous
unconcern of Godovius, and her thoughts turned gratefully to M‘Crae.
Now, thank heaven, she was not quite alone. She tried the door and found
that it was bolted. The window. . . . It opened on to the stoep at the
place where the great bougainvillea hung in thick festoons, mitigating
kindly the whiteness of the light. At her passage a flight of
nectarinidæ passed with whirring wings. The window stood open. The room
was empty . . . that little room of James’, pathetic in its bareness,
with no ornamentation but a cabinet photograph of old Aaron Burwarton and
the coloured texts which James himself had achieved in his schooldays.
On the table lay the open Bible and a sheet of paper on which James had
scribbled texts. If she had looked up the references she might have
discovered a series of obvious clues to the mystery of his new adventure.
But she didn’t. She folded the paper and closed the Bible. She saw that
he had lain on the bed, and even while she wondered what could have
happened to him, she was smoothing the sheets and putting the creased
bedclothes in order. She was only thankful that he was not ill. It
didn’t so much concern her where he had gone; for it was a very rare
thing for James to invite her confidence in his plans. Even at Far
Forest he would often annoy her by an air of secrecy which emphasised his
importance. So when she had put his room, that scene of so recent a
spiritual anguish, in order, she sighed, and returned to the kitchen with
her cup of milk.
All that afternoon she did not go to M‘Crae. Since the day on which
Godovius had threatened her she had never been quite comfortable with
him. She had felt an awkwardness which it was hard to explain: almost as
if M‘Crae were aware of the character which Godovius had given to their
relation. In some subtle way it seemed that the frankness of their first
friendship had been spoiled. That was how she put it to herself; but the
more probable reason for their awkwardness was the fact that he knew that
she was excluding him from her confidence and would not say so. She
would not admit to herself that she, more directly than Godovius, was
responsible for the strained atmosphere.
In a very little while night fell. Still James did not come; and this
seemed to her unusual, for the thorn bush about Luguru is no place for a
man to wander in at night. From her chair in front of their living-room
window on the stoep she watched the rising of the moon. At that very
moment James was crossing the M’ssente River. A beautiful slip of a
thing she seemed to Eva, and of an amazing brilliance. Even before her
shining sickle had floated above Kilima ja Mweze the sky was flooded with
a pale radiance, and the outlines of the trees which climbed the sky-line
and had already been merged in the soft darkness of the mountain’s bulk
grew suddenly distinct. . . . Then the restless noises of the night
began. Eva felt suddenly and rather hopelessly alone. She was not very
happy in the dark.
Now she would not have to wait very long for James. No doubt, too, he
would be hungry. She went into the house and laid the table for supper.
After all, one must eat. On the table she placed a single lighted
candle. Then she pulled on a pair of leather mosquito boots to protect
her ankles, and sat there, waiting, and listening to the night. Far away
in the forest she heard the sound of drumming. It did not bring to her
mind the sinister suggestions with which it troubled that of James. But
she felt unhappy, and, somehow, a little cold. She found herself
shivering. And just as she had begun to wonder if she, like James, were
on the edge of the inevitable fever, a strong-winged moth, hurling out of
the darkness at her candle, put out the flame, with a noise of singeing
wings, and left her in darkness.
It was a small thing, but it frightened her. She relighted the candle
and settled down again to waiting for James; but now she found it more
difficult than before to be self-contained. Indeed this culmination to
her long day’s anxiety had been rather too much for her; she had tried
too daringly to walk alone. The incident of the empty church, which at
first had seemed to her no more than a set-back to be encountered, now
returned to her with a more sinister suggestion. All atmospheres of that
kind are more formidable by night: and this night of Africa, with its
high and velvety sky in which the crescent moon was still ascending,
seemed peculiarly vast, and alien in its vastness. All the time, from
the recesses of the forest, she heard the beating of drums.
The little clock on the mantelpiece struck eight. The candle on the
supper-table was burning down with a steady flame. James had never in
all their life at Luguru been as late as this. It occurred to her that
perhaps she was feeling nervous just for want of food. She decided that
at the very worst she would not have to wait much longer, and that in any
case it would be foolish to give way to her fancies. And then, at a
moment when she was really feeling more secure, fear came to her, as
swiftly and blindly as the moth which had blundered in out of the night,
and all her bravery was extinguished. She left the light burning in the
room and ran along the garden path to M‘Crae’s _banda_.
“I was frightened,” she told him, quite simply. And then she told him of
the surprise at the church that morning; of how James had left her and
locked himself in his room; how he had left the mission and had not yet
returned. And when once she had begun to tell him these things, and had
heard his grave replies in a voice that was steady and devoid of fear,
she began to feel lighter and happier. When once she had managed to talk
like this she found it wonderfully easy to go on, and in a little while
she had unbosomed herself of the whole story of her meeting with
Godovius, his entreaties and his threats. Until she had ended he did not
speak; but she knew that it was with difficulty that he heard her
through. At the end he said:
“You should have told me. It would have been more like you.”
“I don’t know . . .” she said. “Perhaps I was ashamed. I think I _was_
ashamed. At the suggestion . . . you know . . . that we were anything
but friends.”
He gave a short laugh. “I’m not laughing at you,” he said quickly.
“I know you’re not. It was silly of me. I ought to have trusted you. I
wanted to. But I was shy, I suppose. And shocked by the mistake that
he’d made. I was afraid that you might suffer because of his mistaken
idea. And I was selfish. I couldn’t bear the thought of your not being
here: and I thought that I could somehow wait until things cleared up. I
thought I could just keep it to myself and hold on.”
“You were wrong. It never pays to put things off. No doubt it was a
shock for you to have it taken for granted that I had made love to you.
I wouldn’t have you worried by that. I suppose I am old enough to be
your father. You mustn’t think any more of that.”
Quite candidly she said: “I won’t.” It was no more than he expected.
She sighed. “I am happier now,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I
have gone through in these days.” And then her thoughts returned
suddenly to her fears for James.
“You must tell me what to do. I don’t feel as if I can do any more
thinking. I’ve been such a failure when I tried to do it. I can’t
think. I don’t believe I can feel. I’m not like a woman at all. I’m
callous. No . . . I’m not really callous, but awfully tired. Oh, what
can we do?”
“There’s nothing to be done in the night,” he said. “You don’t know
where he went. In the night we are quite helpless. On the night when
you found me it was just a matter of luck . . . a matter of Providence.
When you get to my age you begin to believe in Providence. If you are
lonely or frightened you had better stay here with me.”
“I’m not frightened now,” she said. “But . . . but I think I’ll stay
here.”
M‘Crae made room for her on the heap of sisal beside him. They sat there
for a long time without speaking amid the restless sounds which passed
for silence in that night. In the remotest distance they heard the drums
at Kilima ja Mweze. They were like the beating of a savage heart.
“I shouldn’t have kept it all to myself,” she said at last. “Are you
very angry with me?”
He was a long time answering her childishness. “I couldn’t be angry with
you. You should have known that. But if I had heard what he said to you
I should have killed him. I couldn’t have missed him.”
“Then I’m thankful you didn’t.”
In the long silence which followed her tiredness gradually overcame her.
It was no great wonder that in a little while she fell asleep. M‘Crae,
lying beside her, felt her tired limbs twitch from time to time, as the
muscles, conscious of the brain’s waning control, tried to keep awake.
These feeble movements aroused in M‘Crae’s mind an emotion which was
nearer to pity than to anything else. They reminded him of the helpless
incoordinate movements which he had often seen in the limbs of young
animals. He pitied her childishness, and loved it; for he had come to an
age in which youth seems the most pathetic and beautiful of all things.
Gradually this restlessness ceased. Eva sighed in her sleep, and the
hand which lay nearest to him slipped down until it touched his bare arm.
In its unconsciousness the action was as tender as a caress. He
permitted himself to be conscious of the hand’s slenderness; but it
seemed to him very cold. Gently, without disturbing her slumber, he
lifted with his foot the blanket which she had lent him and pushed it
over her. Then, lying still in the same cramped position, he settled
down to think.
II
It was plain to M‘Crae from the noise of drumming which had filled the
forest all that evening that some great festival was in progress at the
Hill of the Moon. Lying awake in his _banda_, he listened to the sound.
It accompanied, with its bourdon of menace, all the deliberations of that
night. It was now evident to him that if a way were to be found out of
Eva’s difficulties he must find it himself; and though he had fought his
way often enough out of a tight corner, he had never been faced with a
problem of equal delicacy. On the face of it, the matter seemed
insoluble. In the first place, he could not count on James for any
behaviour that was not admirably perverse. In any project of escape
James counted for so much dead weight. Again, even if James should not
return from his adventure on this night—and there was no reason to
suppose that he would not do so—M‘Crae’s peculiar position as a man
“wanted” by the German Colonial Government made it impossible for him to
be a free agent. Here, as in most things, Godovius had the whip-hand,
and however gallantly M‘Crae might have desired to play the knight-errant
in the case of Eva, it would always be doubtful if her association with
him could be of any use. It might even be better for her if he were to
disappear, as a man with his knowledge of bushcraft might conceivably do,
and leave her unhampered by his unfortunate association. But he couldn’t
do that. For if he left her, only James would remain, and of what use in
the world was James?
Thinking the matter over coldly and with deliberation, he regretted that
he had not been able to hear the shameful suggestions of Godovius on the
evening of the rains; for if he had heard him he would assuredly have
shot him where he stood, and the world would have been rid of another
wild animal, as savage as any beast in the bush but without any redeeming
dower of beauty. He would have shot him. There would have been another
murder to his account. But this time he would not have needed to change
his name, to lie hidden in an opium house or ship furtively under a
strange flag. No . . . the matter would have been far simpler. He would
have stepped out into the bush a free man, and then the vastness of
Central Africa would have swallowed him up, him and his name. He would
have trekked to recesses where no European could have found him. He
would simply have disappeared. Perhaps he would have lived for many
years: the M‘Craes were a long-lived race. Perhaps he would have died
soon and in violence: it would have made no difference. The life which
he would have led would not have been very much more solitary than his
life had been for the last thirty years, except for one thing—the fact
that he would be condemned to it for ever. And here, even though his
love for Africa was so vast and varied, he found that there was more to
renounce than he would have believed. For many years, as he had told
Eva, the memory of his early life in Arran had been nothing more to him
than a memory: he had never really hoped to return to her misty beauty.
But now, when he found himself faced by an absolute renunciation of the
possibility of returning, he couldn’t quite face it. The sacrifice would
be as final as death. For a short moment he was troubled by a vision of
his ancient home: a day, as chance would have it, of lashing rain without
and the smell of peat within. And he knew that if he did return he would
have no more part or lot in the life of that remote island than a ghost
revisiting the haunt of vanished love. For a little while the picture
held his fancy: and then, imperceptibly, faded. The huge insistence of
the tropical night, the high note of the cicalas, the whistling of the
frogs rejoicing in the vanishing moisture of the rains, recalled him to
the life which he had chosen, and he realised how imponderable was his
dream. If he had killed Godovius that dream must have been surrendered.
Very well . . . let it go. Even now it might be that he would have to
kill Godovius . . .
He wished that he could smoke. Such meditations as these were less easy
without tobacco. His tobacco hung in a yellow canvas bag at his belt,
but his pipe was in his pocket, and in any case his hand was not free,
for Eva’s fingers lay upon his arm, and she, poor child, must sleep. By
this time his eyes were so accustomed to the dim light of the _banda_,
now faintly illumined by starlight and the beams of the rising moon, that
he could see every feature of her pale face and the gloom of her hair.
He had never before been able really to see Eva’s face. In the daylight
the candour of her eyes would have abashed him; he would not have dared
to look at her eyes. Now he saw how much her beauty meant to him. If he
should kill Godovius he would never see her again . . .
Against this final cruelty his spirit rebelled. It was not for nothing
that he had been brought up in the hard creed of Calvinism. Here, even
in spite of the new beliefs which life had taught him so bitterly, he
found himself instinctively remembering the words of the Old Testament,
and the brand of the murderer Cain, whose fate it had been to wander to
and fro upon the face of the earth. So deeply ingrained in his mind were
the teachings of his childhood that he was almost ready to accept this
cruelty as justice: a kind of religious justice which decreed that if he
were to save her loveliness from the defilement of Godovius he must
relinquish for ever the one surpassing revelation of beauty which had
crowned his wanderings.
Even so it seemed probable that he would have to kill Godovius. There
was no other way out of it. At his side lay his rifle. The chambers
were loaded with soft-nosed four-fifty bullets. He remembered the
scandals which centred in the soft-nosed bullet in the Boer War. A
bullet of that kind inflicted terrible wounds. That wouldn’t matter if
only he shot straight: and there was no fear of his missing, for his
rifle was almost part of his maimed body.
Eva stirred very gently in her sleep. She made a strange choking noise
that was like a sob. M‘Crae’s fingers grasped her hand. He had never
done anything like that before: but it seemed natural to take hold of the
hand of a child who was frightened in the dark.
III
It was past midnight when the stillness of the night was broken by the
sound of Africans grunting beneath a burden and the clatter of many
tongues. In the front of the mission there was a great commotion and
M‘Crae roused Eva from her sleep. Now that the game of secrecy was over
there seemed to be no point in concealment; and Eva was far too sleepy to
question what he did. They stepped out together into the pale night.
The sky was very high and clear, but immense billows of milky cloud were
ranged along the hill horizons, which in their huge whiteness overpowered
the little earth. Beneath the stoep a crowd of Waluguru were setting up
a _kelele_. Most of them were naked and their polished skins shone in
the moonlight. They swarmed like black ants about a piece of carrion,
and the body which they had dragged from the forest to the mission was
that of James, bleeding and torn by the thorns of the bush and smothered
in red dust. Hamisi, who appeared to be in charge of the expedition, was
loud and anxious in explanation.
“Hapana kufa. . . . He isn’t dead,” he hastened to tell them.
Sakharani, he said, had sent him home. He had been found unconscious in
the forest: even now he was unconscious, but breathing, and alive.
Now, at any rate, he had little chance of air, so completely was he
surrounded by the sweating Waluguru. M‘Crae told them to go back to the
forest. Already Eva was kneeling at her brother’s side, while the boy
Hamisi, pleased with the importance of his mission, grinned and repeated
the words: “Hapana kufa. . . . Hapana kufa. . . . He isn’t dead.”
He wasn’t dead, but, for all that, a very ghastly sight. His face was
deadly pale and smeared with the blood that had trickled from a split in
the skin above his right eyebrow. His right eye was full of blood. The
blow must have stunned him fairly effectually, or else the rough journey
would have awakened him.
“We must get him into the house,” said M‘Crae. He saw Eva help Hamisi to
lift him and cursed his own maimed strength. It was beautiful of her, he
thought, that she should consent to do such things. They lifted him and
dragged him to his own room, and laid him on the bed. Eva brought a bowl
of water from the kitchen and bathed his head. M‘Crae, miserably
helpless, questioned Hamisi.
Bwana N’gombe (James), he said, had been found in the forest near Kilima
ja Mweze. The cut on the head was nothing. Perhaps he had fallen
against a tree. Perhaps a leopard had torn him. They had found him
lying in the grass. Lying asleep. Even now he was asleep. Hamisi
relapsed again into his monotonous “Hapana kufa. . . . Hapana kufa.”
Perhaps he had gone to sleep for want of blood. Perhaps a devil had done
it. He knew nothing whatever about it. He only knew that the man had
been picked up asleep in the grass and that Sakharani had told them to
carry him home. And here he was. Hamisi grinned, being satisfied that
he had taken part in an excellent piece of work.
All the time that M‘Crae was questioning the Waluguru he had his eye on
Eva. He watched the splendid way (as he thought) in which she suddenly
adapted herself to the demands of the moment. Once again, as on the
night when he had staggered out to waylay her, she was showing him her
deft, practical side: the aspect which appeals most strongly to a man who
has made a woman the vehicle of a tender ideal. It reminded him of that
first night. It pleased him that it should do so, and so he kept Hamisi
talking, and tried lovingly to recover the atmosphere of their first
meeting, thinking: “You wonderful woman . . .”
He packed Hamisi off to bed in his smoky hole. He and Eva together
stripped James of his torn and muddy clothes.
“You see he has been through the swamp,” he said.
It pleased him to find that he could use his arm with very little
discomfort now, and the sense of helplessness which had lain upon him so
heavily in the _banda_ disappeared. It was difficult to realise that he
had led the life of a prisoner in a dungeon for a month. And Eva, too,
was amazed at the help which he gave her, for she had grown to think of
him as a helpless and pitiable creature. When she had started to undress
James she had not imagined that the task would be so difficult. The
weight of his unconscious body surprised her. A poor, thin creature,
wasted by fever . . . he looked as though she could easily pick him up in
her arms. But she couldn’t. Even with the help of M‘Crae it was a
struggle.
“It’s no good wasting your strength,” he said. “You’d better slit up the
sleeve.” So she went to her room and fetched a pair of scissors, and
then M‘Crae found himself watching her slim, capable fingers again.
“I won’t leave you now,” he said, and was rewarded by her smile.
They sat there for a long time together, speaking in whispers, as if they
were afraid of waking James, although, in fact, they were most anxious
that he should wake. It was a very strange night for M‘Crae. Removed at
last from the gloom of the _banda_, it seemed to him that he had never
really seen Eva before. In this light and spacious room she was quite a
different creature from the gentle presence which had haunted his prison;
endowed, in some way, with a more beautiful freedom of movement . . .
more alive. More hopelessly unattainable. But it was ridiculous on the
face of it that she should occur to him in these terms. He thrust the
fancy aside obstinately, only to find it obstinately return. For why in
the world should he not enjoy this brief interlude of beauty and light,
seeing that in a very little time, a few days . . . perhaps a few hours,
he himself must vanish altogether into a darkness from which he would
never emerge? For, without any doubt, he must kill Godovius. There was
no way out of that.
At length, a little time before the dawn, when the night was at its
coldest, James stirred in his bed. His hand uncertainly sought his
bandaged head, and Eva very tenderly guided it downwards and laid it
beneath the blanket. The movement was an immense relief to both of them.
Neither of them spoke; and yet M‘Crae could see that a shadow had been
lifted from her face.
And now James became increasingly restless. Once or twice he gave a
groan of pain, and then a deep sigh, almost a sigh of content. He tried
to lift himself up in the bed, though Eva gently restrained him. At last
he spoke.
“I must have left it behind . . . in the church . . . it is so light.”
He tried to open his eyes. M‘Crae could see his brows wrinkling beneath
the bandage. “Too light . . .” he said.
M‘Crae moved the lamp further away from the bed. His footsteps disturbed
James.
“Who’s that? . . . There’s somebody there,” he said. “Oh, my poor head
. . . my poor head.”
Eva laid her hand lightly upon his forehead. “It’s all right, dear,
don’t worry,” she said.
For a little while he was contented; but then he said again: “There’s
someone else in the room. . . . Who is it? _He_ isn’t here, is he?”
Even in this dazed condition he was typically persistent.
“There’s somebody there . . . who is it? You’re keeping it from me. It
isn’t fair. Who is it?”
Eva’s voice trembled as she answered. She was listening to her own
voice.
“It’s only a friend,” she said.
“A friend? . . . We have no friends.”
“A stranger. A Mr. M‘Crae. A hunter who was lost near here and came to
the mission.”
There followed a long silence. She was dreading what would come next.
To her relief she found that he was treating it as a matter of course.
He said: “Oh . . . all right. My head does ache so.”
For the first time Eva breathed freely. No doubt it was strange that she
should be so relieved; but the difficulty which she had dreaded most in
James’ awakening had been his discovery of M‘Crae’s presence. From the
very first she had wondered how he would take it. She had feared that
his peculiarly jealous regard for all strangers, a thing which he had
overcome with difficulty in his youth, would be too much for him. The
anticipation of this had been bad enough; but after her interview with
Godovius, and his most hateful insinuations, she had felt that James
would be almost justified in thinking the worst of her, and that she
could have no defence to offer which wouldn’t sound like the flimsiest
excuse. But the pain in James’ head asserted itself too cruelly for him
to think of anything else for the moment. He accepted the presence of
M‘Crae as nothing more than a curiosity, and the little that she told him
seemed to satisfy him. A little later, when his enhavocked brain began
to clear a little, the horror of the night before, which had been
mercifully forgotten, stole back again. Suddenly, as he lay there, with
his hand in Eva’s, he was shaken by a fit of sobbing. At the best of
times the sight of a grown man so tortured is terrible. And he was Eva’s
brother. The one emotion with which she had habitually regarded him was
that of pity. Now her compassion was overwhelming. She would have given
anything in the world to be able to soothe him. He was clutching so hard
at the hand in which his own had lain that he actually hurt her. M‘Crae
saw her bending over James. He stepped through the open window out on
the clammy stoep.
“You poor, poor dear,” he heard her say. “Is your head so bad?”
James spoke chokingly through his sobs.
“The pain’s nothing . . . nothing. I’ve only just awakened . . .
remembered. Eva, I’ve been in hell. There can’t be anything worse in
hell. I’d forgotten. Oh, my God, my God. I shall never forget again.
My God. . . . My God . . .” And he started crying again.
She could do nothing with him. Her own helplessness amazed her. At
times the storm of sobs would cease; but even then the light of his
reason shone balefully. The words which he spoke were disconnected, and
all were madly tinged with the remembrance of horror. Again and again he
would say that he had been in hell, in the uttermost hell. And then his
fancy would suddenly be taken with the idea of fire. “Look,” he cried,
“look, they’re bringing dry wood to the fire. The heat . . . think of
the heat. . . . Seven times heated. Nothing could live. The stones are
white-hot. Oh, God . . . God . . . can you see it?” Then he would
scream: “They’re coming . . . they’re coming . . .” and clutch at his
head and grip Eva’s hand; and she would grip his in her turn, as though
the consciousness of her nearness and her strength might help his lonely
spirit. Once, indeed, she found that he was stroking her hand. He had
never done such a thing before, and the action brought tears to her eyes.
But it was not Eva, of whom he was thinking. He said: “Mother . . . dear
mother.” In a little while the violence and frequency of his fits of
sobbing abated. He babbled less wildly, and fell at last, as she
thought, into a state that resembled sleep. Indeed, she would have left
him if his fingers had not been still clutching her hand. Thus they
waited, until in the hour before their sudden dawn a rain-bird sang. The
sound was doubly sweet to Eva, for she knew that the daylight was at
hand, and in daylight she need not be so frightened. But with the dawn
she heard another sound. And the sleeper heard it in his dreams, for he
surprised her by leaping up in bed, with terror in his grey face. “The
drums . . .” he said. “Do you hear them? The drums of hell.”