I
FOR two days the forest below Luguru echoed the German bugle calls and
the sound of rifle fire. At night the throbbing of drums never ceased,
and the reflection of great fires lit along the edge of the bush reddened
the sky. During this time the prisoners at Luguru heard nothing of
Godovius. James, who was still keeping to his room, had not been able to
notice the absence of the mission boys. Now he was quickly regaining
strength and confidence. It was strange how brightly the flame of
enthusiasm burned in his poor body. As soon as the cuts on his hands
were healed he began to consort once more with his friends the prophets,
and Eva was almost thankful for this, for it kept him employed as no
other recreation could have done. Indeed, beneath this shadow of which
she alone was conscious, their solitary life became extraordinarily
tranquil. The atmosphere impressed Eva in its deceptiveness. All the
time she was waiting for the next move of Godovius, almost wishing that
the period of suspense might end, and something, however desperate,
happen. One supposes that Godovius was busy with the training of his
levies, instructing them in the science of slaughter, flattering them in
their new vocation of askaris with the utmost licence in the way of food
and drink and lust, as became good soldiers of Germany. That was the
meaning of those constant marchings and counter-marchings by day, and the
fires which lit the sky at night above their camps upon the edge of the
forest.
The failure of her feeble attempt at an escape had shown Eva that it was
impossible for her to help M‘Crae in the way which she had planned.
Again and again the idea of bargaining with Godovius returned to her. It
came into her head so often, and was so often rejected beneath the
imagined censure of the prisoner that, in the end, her sense of
bewilderment and hopelessness was too much for her. She could not sleep
at night, even when the drums, at last, were quiet. The strain was too
acute for any woman to have borne.
In the end even James, who never noticed anything, became aware of her
pale face and haggard eyes. Anybody but James would have seen them long
before. He said:
“You’re not looking well, Eva. . . . You don’t look at all well. I hope
you’re not going to be ill. You’ve taken your quinine? What’s the
matter with you?”
Rather wearily she laughed him off; but James was a persistent creature.
He wouldn’t let her excuses stand: and since it didn’t seem to her worth
while sticking to them, she thought she might as well tell him everything
and be done with it. Not quite everything. . . . She didn’t tell him
about M‘Crae, for she felt that his clumsiness would be certain to
irritate her. She told him, as simply as she could, that they were both
prisoners; that England was at war with Germany, and how she had promised
Godovius that they wouldn’t try to escape. “I don’t suppose it will make
any difference to us out here, so far away from everywhere,” she said.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you before. And of course you were too ill to
be bothered.”
At first he was only annoyed that she had kept him in the dark. Then his
imagination began to play with the idea. He began to walk up and down
the room, rather unsteadily, and talk to her as his thoughts formed
themselves. Eva was too miserable to listen.
“This is terrible,” he said. “A monstrous thing. Here it may be
nothing, but in Europe it will be terrible beyond description. This is
the awful result of the world’s sin. Europe is like the cities of the
plain. All the evil of her cities will be washed out in blood. It is an
awful awakening for those places of pleasure. London and Berlin. Sodom
and Gomorrah. This is the vengeance of God. It has been foretold. No
war will ever be like this war. If the peoples had hearkened to the word
of God. . . . For He is slow to anger.”
Eva had never imagined that he would take it so hardly. She hadn’t for a
moment envisaged the awfulness of the catastrophe. All the time she had
been thinking not of the agony of Europe nor of the possible consequences
to themselves, but only of M‘Crae, whom the accident had thrown into
Godovius’s hands. Even when she had listened to James’ very eloquent
oration she found herself thinking of the helpless figure which the
Waluguru askaris had carried into the bush, of the knotted veins on his
arm beneath the bonds.
That evening the fires in the askaris camp shone brighter than ever, the
throbbing of the drums more passionate. James, realising now the meaning
of all that distant noise and light, became restless and excited. He
would not be content to go to bed early, as Eva had intended. He said
that he would be happier sitting out on the stoep in a long chair,
listening to all that was going on below. After their evening meal they
sat out there together, and while Eva nearly fell asleep from sheer
tiredness, he talked as much to himself as to her. It was a night of the
most exquisite calm. Beneath them the thorn bush lay soft and silvered
in the light of the moon. The upper sky was so bright that they could
even see beyond the forest the outlines of the hills. In all that vast
expanse of quiet land only one spot of violent colour appeared, in a
single patch of red sky above the German camps.
“You see it burning there,” said James. “That is War. That is what War
means. A harsh and brutal thing in the middle of the quietness of life.
A fierce, unholy, unnatural thing.”
She said “Yes,” but that was because she did not want him to ask her any
questions.
A strange night. From time to time the lightened circle of sky would
glow more brightly, the drums throb as wildly as if all the drummers had
gone mad together. Sometimes the unheeding distance muffled their sound,
so that only a puff of wind brought it to their ears, waxing and waning
like the pulsations of a savage heart. Once, in the nearer bush, they
heard the voice of a man crying out like an animal. Eva begged James to
go to bed. The nearness of the sound frightened her.
“You can’t stay here all night,” she said. “Soon you will be cold, and
that means fever.”
He was almost rough with her. “Leave me alone . . . please leave me
alone. I want to think. I couldn’t think indoors.”
Suddenly they were startled by the sound of rifle fire. All over the
bush people were firing guns. They couldn’t understand it. At first it
came from very near, but gradually the firing died away in the direction
of the forest.
“It must sound like that,” said James, “in a moving battle: a running
fight that is passing out of hearing.”
At nine o’clock the drums and the firing ceased. Even the fires in the
camp must have been allowed to die down, for the silver of the moon
washed all the sky. The bush stretched as grey and silent as if no
living creature moved in it; and with the silence returned a sense of the
definite vastness of that moonlit land, the immemorial impassivity of the
great continent. It was a beautiful and melancholy sight.
“In Europe millions of men are slaughtering each other,” James whispered.
“Now you will go to bed?” she pleaded.
He took her arm, as though he were really unconscious of it, and allowed
her to help him to his feet. They stood there still for a moment, and
while they watched, both of them became suddenly aware of the small
figure of a man running towards the bungalow from the edge of the bush.
His clothes and his face were of the pale colour of the moonlight, so
that he might have been a ghost, and when he caught sight of their two
figures on the stoep he waved his hand. It was his right hand that he
waved. The other arm was missing. While James stood wondering what had
happened, Eva was running down the garden path to meet him. Half-way
they met. M‘Crae could see the tears Eva’s eyes shining in the
moonlight. He had never seen her face so pale and beautiful.
II
M‘Crae came to the point quickly, too quickly, indeed, for James, whom
the sight of this passionate meeting had bewildered.
“We have no time to lose,” he said. “My rifle is in the _banda_. I
suppose Mr. Warburton has a rifle of some sort?” Of course James hadn’t.
“And food. . . . It may take us nearly a week. Three of us. But we
mustn’t be overburdened.”
James waved his arms. One can imagine the gesture of this lanky figure
in the long black coat with his head in a bandage.
“I don’t understand you, Mr. M‘Crae. . . . I hope I have the name right.
. . . I don’t understand the meaning of this. Will you be good enough
to explain?”
“There’s no time for explanation,” said M‘Crae. “I’m saying that we have
to leave here, all three of us, as quickly as we can. It’ll be a hard
journey in front of us, but I’m thinking it’s better to be driven than to
be dead. That’s what it comes to. . . . There’s no time for talking.”
He told them swiftly and dryly what had happened to him after his arrest.
How the askaris had dragged him to the House of the Moon and left him,
with hands and feet bound, in a shanty at the back of the long white
building; how the old woman whose tongue had been cut out had brought him
porridge of mealie meal in a bowl, and how he had been forced to lap it
like a dog. Once Godovius had been to see him, bringing the pleasant
announcement that he was soon to be shot: soon, but not yet; that England
was already paying for her infamy in the sack of London and the
destruction of her fleet. “In a year’s time,” he had said, “no swine of
an Englishman will be able to show his face in Africa. The black men
will laugh at you. You have already lost South Africa. The German flag
is flying in Pretoria and Capetown. It is probable that you will live to
hear worse things than this, even though you do not see the end.”
M‘Crae did not tell them what Godovius had said of Eva, nor of the anger
which had nearly driven him mad in his bonds.
“And then,” he said, “he came again to-night. I never saw a man so
changed. He was pretty near the colour of his uniform. ‘If I cut the
ropes,’ he said, ‘will you promise that you will not attack me?’ A
ludicrous question to a one-armed man, cramped with captivity and
weaponless!”
M‘Crae had given his word, and Godovius had released him. “Now listen,”
he said. “You are an Englishman and I am a German. That is one thing.
For others we have good cause to hate each other. War is war, and it is
our duty to hate. But besides this we are both white men. At Luguru
there is a white woman. I will be frank with you. For the moment our
hatred must go, for we are all in the same danger. Where the danger has
come from I cannot tell you. Probably it is part of your damned English
scheming. The English have always paid other races to fight their
battles. You know that this colony is now one armed camp. In every
tribe we have raised levies and armed them. My black swine, the
Waluguru, are getting out of hand. To-day I have shot seven of them; but
things are still dangerous. It may spread. All the armed natives of
Africa may rise against us, German and English alike. They hate us . . .
we know that . . . and in an isolated place like this we shall stand no
chance. To-night, on my way home, I have been fired at by my own people.
They may try to burn the house over me. That will not be so easy, for I
have a machine gun. But the mission they will strip and burn without
trouble. You can think of the fate of your two English. And I cannot
save them; perhaps I cannot save myself. Somehow they must get to
M’papwa, where there are plenty of white men to protect them. I am a
German soldier. My post is here; and in any case I must stay and teach
these black devils what the German rule means in their own blood. You
are an enemy and a prisoner. See, I give you your liberty, and in
exchange you give me your word that you will return here when you have
saved them. I am taking the risk of letting you go. If we meet again I
shall know that you too are a soldier and worthy of my nobility. Miss
Eva is in your hands. You had better go quickly.”
He had asked for arms, and Godovius, after a moment of hesitation and
distrust, had given him a Mauser pistol. “You will put it in your belt,”
he said. “I shall watch you go. You will hold your hand above your
head. Remember, I have a rifle, and you will be covered until you are
out of range.”
M‘Crae had laughed. “I hate all you damned Englanders,” said Godovius.
“You have no sense of seriousness. I do not do this of my own will. But
I love that woman. I would rather she were killed by my hand than given
to the Waluguru. And I wish her to live. You understand?”
M‘Crae understood. His journey to the mission had not been easy: for his
body was still cramped by his long confinement and the woods were full of
watching Waluguru whom it had been difficult to evade. “At the present
moment,” he said, “they are all about the bush round the house. As I
said, there’ll be no time. Miss Eva will put together some food, and I
will slip out again to see where the way is open.”
In Eva’s mind there was no questioning. In whatever other way she may
have regarded M‘Crae, she trusted him without reservation. She had
reason to trust him. As soon as he gave the word she was ready to obey.
She remembered the parcel of food which she had made ready for M‘Crae on
the evening of her hopeless expedition, and turned to go. The voice of
James recalled her.
“Eva . . . where are you going? You had better stay here for a moment.”
“There is no time for waiting,” said M‘Crae. “I’ve told you . . .”
James waved his arms. “That is for me to decide,” he said. “The matter
must be considered. It is possible, sir, that your story is true . . .”
“James!” she cried.
“Eva, I must ask you to hear me. . . . I say that this man’s story may
be true. But how can we know? We have no particular reason to believe
him. Think a moment. How do we know that this is not some new deviltry
of that dreadful man? After all, it is not unreasonable to suspect a
messenger who comes from that house. We know nothing of him . . .
nothing at all.”
“Oh, but we do . . .” she said.
“Nothing. This isn’t a matter in which a woman is competent to judge.
It’s a matter for a man. I’m your brother. There’s no one else to stand
between you and the world. You know nothing of the world’s wickedness.
No doubt, in your inexperience, you would trust the first man you met
with your honour. Thank God I am here, and ready to do my duty.”
“It’s your duty that I am showing to you,” said M‘Crae. “Evidently you
haven’t taken in what I’ve been telling you. Godovius’s natives have got
out of hand. They’re armed. If you stay here we shall all be butchered,
all three of us. Of course I should stay with you. And I should rather
kill your sister with my own hands than let her be taken by the Waluguru.
We have to try and get away in five minutes at the most, and make for the
Central Railway, where we shall be taken prisoners by the Germans.
Perhaps we will not get there. That is in God’s hands. But we must have
a try. ‘God helps them that help themselves’ may not be Scripture, but
it’s common-sense. You’ll admit that I’m reasonable.”
“You may be reasonable, sir,” said James, “but I’m not going to be
ordered about in my own house.”
“The alternative is being killed in it. For God’s sake, man, don’t
trifle.”
James passed his hand over his forehead.
“Perhaps I am wrong . . . I don’t know. My head’s in a muddle after the
other night. I can’t think.”
“Miss Eva,” said M‘Crae, “get everything ready quickly. Five minutes . . .”
She said “Yes.”
M‘Crae turned to James. “Man,” he said, “do you realise the awful
responsibility that you’re taking upon yourself in the sin of your pride?
Would you see what you saw the other night, and your sister in it?”
For the moment he was very Scotch, and the actual intensity of his words
made them impressive. . . . Some peculiar quality in this appeal made
James crumple up.
“God forgive me,” he sobbed. “God forgive me. . . . You had better take
her. If it is to be, the sooner the better . . .”
“Very well then,” said M‘Crae. “Hurry up and get some clothes on. You
can’t set out in pyjama legs and a black coat. Let me help you if you
are weak.”
By this time the pitiful figure had got over his sobs. Once more he was
formal and precise. He spoke very much as if he were conducting a
Pleasant Sunday Afternoon at home.
“You have mistaken me, Mr. M‘Crae,” he said. “I have given you my
authority to take my sister. You realise, no doubt, the trust which that
implies, and that we are quite in your hands. But my own position is
quite different. Perhaps you do not know what religion means to a man,
or how a man in my position regards his mission. I was sent to Africa to
devote myself to these unfortunate people. I have a responsibility. If
the devil has entered into their hearts this is the occasion in which
they need me most. You spoke just now a little contemptuously of
Scripture . . . I am a minister, and perhaps it means more to me. At
any rate these words, if you’ll have the patience to hear me, mean a
great deal: ‘_He that is an hireling_, _and not the shepherd_, _whose own
the sheep are not_, _seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and
fleeth_.’ You know who spoke those words. Mine must be the part of the
good shepherd. If I behaved as a hireling I could not bear to live.”
“There is such a thing as reason,” said M‘Crae; “I beseech you to listen
to it. A dead shepherd is of very little use to his flock.”
James glowed. It was extraordinary to see the pale creature expand.
“Ah,” he cried, “Mr. M‘Crae, that is where you make the greatest of
mistakes. It was a dead Shepherd who redeemed the world. If you are a
Christian you cannot suggest that that sacrifice was of no use.”
“It is not a matter for argument,” said M‘Crae. “I recognise your point
of view. Against my will I respect it. I think you are an honest man
and that’s the best title I can give you.” They shook hands. It is an
amazing commentary on the naturalness of theatrical conventions that
common men, in moments of the greatest stress, tend to the most obvious
gestures. M‘Crae, gripping the hand of James, noticed that it was as
cold as if the man were already dead.
They spoke no more, for Eva entered the room, carrying the linen satchel
full of food and a couple of water-bottles. She saw the two men standing
in silence. “You are ready?” she said. “You’ve settled everything?”
“Yes, we’ve settled it,” said M‘Crae. “But your brother will not come.
He says that his duty lies here.”
“Oh, James, but you can’t!” she cried. “You poor dear, of course you
can’t!”
James shook his head. “We can’t argue,” he said. “Mr. M‘Crae says
there’s no time.”
“Then we will all stay together,” she said.
She laid her hands on James’ shoulders and looked up at him. He smiled.
“No, Eva. . . . It is as much your duty to go as mine to stay. You . . .
you must fall in with my wishes . . . you must be reasonable . . . you
must be a good girl . . .” He stroked her cheek, and the unfamiliar
tenderness of the action made her burst into tears. She sobbed quietly
on the breast of his black coat. Quite gently he disengaged her hands.
“Now you must go, dear. I am trusting you to Mr. M‘Crae. God keep you.”
They kissed. They had never kissed each other since they were children.
“Oh, James . . .” she said.
“I am very happy . . . I am perfectly happy . . .”
“Come along,” said M‘Crae in a peculiarly harsh voice which he did not
know himself.
She slipped the band of the Mannlicher over his shoulder and they left
the house. Left alone, James sighed and straightened his hair. He went
on to the stoep and looked out over the silent lands. The growing moon
now sailed so splendidly up the sky that he became conscious of the
earth’s impetuous spin; he saw the outstretched continent as part of its
vast convexity and himself, in this moment of extreme exaltation, an
infinitesimal speck in the midst of it. Even in the face of this
appalling lesson in proportion his soul was confident and deliciously
thrilled with expectation of some imminent miracle. His lips moved:
“_And fear not them which kill the body_, _but are not able to kill the
soul_; _but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body
in hell_. _Are not five sparrows_ . . .” _He moistened his lips_ “. . .
_five sparrows sold for a farthing_? _and not one of them is forgotten
before God_.”
III
M‘Crae and Eva moved quietly through the garden. The shadow of the
avenue of flamboyant trees shielded them from the moonlight, their steps
could scarcely be heard upon the sandy floor, and she could only see
M‘Crae, moving swiftly in front of her, where the blotches of silver
falling from the interstices of woven boughs flaked his ghostly figure,
the hump of the knapsack slung across his shoulders, or sometimes the
blue barrel of the Mannlicher which he trailed. She followed without
question, pausing when he halted, creeping forward when he moved: and,
deeply though she trusted him, she found herself wondering at the
strangeness of the whole proceeding, at its fantastic unreality, at the
incredible perversity of a chance which had sent them out into the
darkness together on this debatable quest. Her reason told her that the
two of them were in stark reality running for their lives: that in all
probability she had said good-bye to James for the last time: that there
was nothing else to be done. She couldn’t believe this. It was no good,
she told herself, trying to believe it. It was simply a monstrous fact
which must be accepted without questioning. It was no good trying to
think about the business which must simply be accepted. She sighed to
herself and followed M‘Crae.
At the corner of the _banda_ he halted. “Wait here till I come back,” he
whispered. “Stand in the shadow and wait.”
He disappeared. He seemed to her to be making a great deal of noise.
She couldn’t understand it, for it seemed to her that he ought really to
be making no noise at all. She wanted to tell him to go more quietly.
She felt inclined to follow him and explain this to him. For quite a
long time she heard his movements, and then, in a little interval of
silence, the sound of another body which had lain concealed behind the
_banda_, following him. Then she wanted to cry out and warn him, or even
to run after him. She wished that wherever he was going he would have
taken her with him. She remembered his last whisper, “Wait here till I
come back,” and waited . . . endlessly waited. It was not easy. It
would have been easier, she thought, if she had not been left so near
home. There, in the shadow of the acacias, she had not yet taken the
final, irrevocable step. There still remained for her an avenue of
retreat.
Here, only a few feet away from her, was the opening of Mr. Bullace’s
_banda_. The moonlight showed her, through the doorway, the table on
which her work-basket lay and beside it an open book, which she had been
reading only a few hours . . . or was it centuries? . . . before. At the
other end of her dark tunnel she could see the angle of the house, with
its festoons of bougainvillea; and all this looked so homely and safe, so
utterly removed from the nightmare atmosphere of danger and flight.
These things, it seemed to her, were solid and permanent, the others no
more than a mad, confusing dream. And there, in his little room, was
James. The whole business could be nothing but a dream which had
ridiculously invaded her consciousness. She felt that if she were to go
back to the silent house and find James, and slip once more into the
pleasant order which she had created, she might wake and find herself
happy again. And yet, all the while, she was remembering the whisper of
M‘Crae, “Stand here in the shadow. . . . Wait till I come back again,”
and found herself obeying. Not without revolt. It was too bad of him,
she thought, to try her in this way, to leave her there in the
threatening shadow. Too bad of him. . .
In the darkness she heard a shot fired. Again silence. Perhaps that was
the end of it. But though the idea tortured her, the sound of that
report did actually bring her to herself again. It showed her that the
danger was real after all. She pulled herself together. “I must wait
here until he comes,” she thought. “Even if it’s for hours and hours I
must wait here . . .”
It was not for very long. Suddenly she became conscious of a shadow
behind her, and before she had time to cry out she saw that it was
M‘Crae, who beckoned her from the end of the avenue nearest to the house.
. . . He stood waiting for her, and though no word passed between them,
she followed.
Their way led at right angles to the one which he had taken at first,
close under the shadow of the house. On the edge of the compound he
dropped down and wriggled between two clusters of spiked sisal leaves.
She bent down and did the same. In a little while they were threading
their way between the twisted thorns of the bush. A branch,
back-springing, tore Eva’s cheek. They must have moved more quickly than
she had imagined, for her heart was fluttering violently, but M‘Crae
never hesitated, and still she followed after.
She wondered often how in the world he knew which way he was taking her,
for all the trees in this wilderness seemed to her alike, and she had no
knowledge of the stars. Somewhere on the right of them she heard shots,
and when the firing started he stopped to listen. A ridiculous thing,
that any man who was running for his life should waste time in that way.
The first shots sounded a long way from them, in the direction which he
had taken when he first left her; but while they stood listening a group
of four followed, and these were of a terrifying loudness, beating on
their ears as if, indeed, the rifles were levelled at their heads. Eva
had often heard the echoes of Godovius’s rifle in the bush; but it was
quite a different thing to feel that she was being fired at. She
shivered and touched M‘Crae’s arm.
“Where are they?” she whispered. “Can you see them?”
“No. . . . You mustn’t be frightened,” he said. “The bush magnifies the
sound. They are quite a long way away.”
But with the next shot something droned with the flight of a beetle above
them, and a severed twig dropped on Eva’s hair.
“It’s all right,” said M‘Crae; “they’re firing on chance, and they’re
firing high. They always fire high. Are you rested now? Come along.”
Strangely enough, she found herself no longer tired. Her heart ceased
its feeble flutterings. She had reached her “second wind.” Now they
moved faster than ever. Even though the bush never thinned, M‘Crae
seemed able to find a twisting way between the thorns; almost as if he
had planned the route exactly, yard for yard, and were following it
exactly, never changing pace nor breaking stride.
Suddenly, in front of them, the bush grew thinner, and Eva was thankful,
for it seemed to her that now they were no longer shut in a cage of
thorns. A moment later they emerged upon the edge of a wide slade of
grasses, very beautiful and silvery in the moon. For a full mile or more
it stretched before them, unmoved by any breath of wind, and the night so
softened the contours of the black bush which lay about it that a strange
magic might have transported them without warning to some homely English
meadow, set about with hedges of hawthorn and dreaming beneath the moon.
No scene could have been further removed from her idea of Africa and its
violence.
“We must keep to the thorn,” whispered M‘Crae.
She obeyed. But here, on the edge of the bush, where the lower branches
of the thorn-trees had pushed out into sunlight and more luxuriantly
thriven, it was not easy going. They moved slowly, and in a little while
Eva’s dress was torn in many places. Thorns from the low branches tore
at her back and remained embedded in her flesh. She was very miserable,
but never, never tired. In the bush on their left they heard a
melancholy, drooping note. It was the cry of a bird with which Eva had
grown very familiar at Luguru, and she scarcely noticed it until M‘Crae
stopped dead.
“It was a hornbill,” she said.
“Yes. . . . But a hornbill never calls at night.”
While he spoke the call was echoed from the woody edge beyond their slade
of grasses. Again on their left: and this time very near.
“An escort,” said M‘Crae. “We must get closer in.”
“Towards the sound?”
“Yes . . . Come along.”
He led the way into a denser thicket of thorn. “We can never force our
way through this,” she thought. Upright they could not have penetrated
this spinous screen. Crouching low, they managed to pass beneath its
lower branches where they drooped to the level of many fleshy spears of
the wild sisal. At last Eva found that they had reached a little clear
space about the root of a gigantic acacia.
“Now lie down,” said M‘Crae. She lay down in the dark and the shed
spines of other years drove into her limbs till she could have cried. In
this secret lair they waited silently for a long while. They heard no
longer the mocking hornbill call, nor any sound at all until their
silence was suddenly shattered by a burst of firing over the grass-land
on their right. “They think that they have seen something,” said M‘Crae.
“Don’t be frightened. You are quite safe here. Quite safe.”
And so this firing ceased, or rather bore away to the south-east across
the line which they were following, and then again to the full south, in
distant bush, where it muttered and died away. All this time Eva was
lying with her arms between the thorny ground and her head, gazing up at
the flat, horizontal tapestries of the acacia and beyond to a clear sky
in which the moon sailed lightly as though it were rejoicing in the
freedom of the heaven from any wisp of cloud to mar its brightness; for
all the cloudy content of the sky lay piled upon the hills beyond which
she had risen, in monstrous gleaming billows that dwarfed the dark
hill-chains, but stood up so far away that Eva had no notion of their
presence. A little wind passed in the night, and she grew aware of many
dead or dry leaves shivering all around.
“Come along,” said M‘Crae, helping her gently to her feet. She was
horribly stiff, but still not in the least tired.
Now it was not easy to escape from their hiding-place, so thick-set were
the trees and so tangled about their roots with an undergrowth as wiry in
the stem as heather but fledged with softer leaves. Eva’s hands clutched
at these as they passed, and she became aware of a pungent and aromatic
odour.
“Don’t do that, please,” said M‘Crae. “On a windless night that will
smell for hours.”
She felt like a naughty child at this reproof. She found herself rubbing
her hands on her skirt, almost expected to be scolded again for ruining
her clothes. That skirt, at any rate, was past ruination. She felt
inclined to laugh at her own feeling of guilt as much as at his
seriousness; for she couldn’t get over the idea that even if they were
going to die it would be just as well to make a little joke about it.
M‘Crae’s intense monosyllables worried her and, thinking of this, she
came to see that in reality it was the man, and not she, who was
childish. “If I laugh,” she thought, “he will think I am mad. But if I
don’t laugh soon I shall simply have to cry or something.” She learnt a
great deal about M‘Crae in those early hours of their flight, realising
that he was as blind to the essential humour of nearly every catastrophe
as all the other men she had met would have been: as James, as her
father, the minister at Far Forest who drove out on Sundays from Bewdley;
as every one of them, in fact, but the second mate who had tried to make
love to her on the mail-boat. “And he wasn’t really a nice man,” she
thought.
In a little while they had pushed their way through several miles of this
kind of bush. For a long time now they had heard no noise of firing, nor
indeed any other sound; but at length there came to their ears a shrill,
trilling note of a curiously liquid quality, and Eva knew that they must
be approaching water of some kind, for she had often heard the same music
on the edge of the swamp or near their own mission after rain. M‘Crae
was still walking a little in front of her—never during all this chase
had she seen his face—and suddenly she saw his shoulders dip as he
disappeared over a grassy edge into a deep channel sunk in the ground.
She followed him cautiously, for she did not know how steep the bank
might be or what depth of water might be lying at the bottom. Her feet
landed on a bank of soft sand.
“No luck,” said M‘Crae. In the dry watercourse no drop of moisture
remained. “But I think we are near water for all that,” he said.
She could not think why he should be worrying his mind about water when
the bottles which they carried were full. Already she was uncomfortably
conscious of the weight of her own. They crossed a second narrow donga,
and then another: both dry. At a third, sheltered by a graceful screen
of taller acacias, they found a bottom on which there was room for both
of them to turn. The whistling of the frogs grew so shrill that it hurt
their ears. In the middle of the donga no stream flowed; but caught in a
series of shelving rock-pools a little of the water of the last rains had
lodged. It smelt stale and was cloudy with the larvæ of mosquitoes.
“Now we had better drink,” he said.
“This?”
“Yes. It is not bad water.”
“But I’m not thirsty. And even if I were . . .”
“You must drink it all the same. We must keep the water in our bottles.
We shall want that later. Drink as much as you can . . .”
He himself began to drink, ladling the stuff to his mouth with the curved
palm of his hand. She had never seen anyone drink like that, and when
she tried to imitate him she found that she spilt more than she drank.
Nevertheless she managed to obey him, and now knew, for the first time,
how parched her mouth was.
“Now we must get away from this,” he said. “This place must be alive
with mosquitoes.”
Her wrists and ankles knew that already; but the tangle of swamps into
which they had wandered was not so easily left. It must have taken them
an hour or more to free themselves from its convolutions. When they
merged at last into the open air and could see the moonlit sky, they
settled down in the hollow of a dry river bed upon the edge of which the
grass grew high and rank. The bank of this stream was strewn with fine
sand and made a comfortable shelf on which to lie.
“I’m afraid you are tired,” he said. “You must be tired to death.”
She denied him; and indeed, strangely enough, until that moment she had
not been conscious of fatigue. She even felt a mild exhilaration: a
feeling that it wasn’t easy to describe: and then, of a sudden, very,
very sleepy.
“You are wonderful . . . wonderful . . .” he said.
He told her that if she were to be fit to march next day it was essential
that she should get some sleep. “We are all alone,” he said, “and you
must realise that we can’t be . . . be quite the same as if we were
living in a civilised place. You mustn’t mind what I do for you. If you
trust me . . . if you realise that I reverence you . . . that . . .”
“You should know that without asking me,” she said.
“It is going to be a cold night,” he said. “You’re warm now. But it’s
nearly two o’clock and the cold of the ground will strike through your
clothes. I want you to share my warmth. If you aren’t warm you won’t
sleep. And it’s important you should sleep. You mustn’t take any notice
of it. You mustn’t mind.”
She made no reply. It seemed very strange to her, even though she told
herself that there was no real reason why it should seem strange. And so
they settled down for the night, lying very close together, with M‘Crae’s
body pressed to hers; and when, a little later, she began to shiver, as
he had told her, and found that she had huddled instinctively closer to
his warmth, she felt him respond to her presence, placing his arm about
her for protection. Even in her state between sleep and waking she felt
her sense of modesty weakly rebel against the idea that she should be
lying under the moon with the arm of a stranger about her. But when she
reflected on the matter it seemed to her that in fact she knew M‘Crae
more intimately than any other man in the world, and smiling to herself
at the strangeness of the whole business, she fell asleep again.
M‘Crae did not sleep. . . . He had many matters for thinking, and even
though they had made good travelling from Luguru, having left the mission
twelve or fourteen miles behind, he felt that it was still his duty to
watch. At this distance from Luguru it was more than probable that their
pursuers would leave them alone, and particularly in the night season,
which the Waluguru fear; but even if he were free from the menace of the
armed savages, no sleeping man could be wholly safe from lions in a
country so full of game. He wanted, too, in his own methodical way, to
make his plans for the next day’s journey, to calculate how far their
resources of food and water would carry them, to set his course by that
pale starlight for the journey towards the Central Railway with its
relative civilisation.
He calculated that from the nullah in which they now lay to their object
must be close on eighty miles. Of the lie of the land he knew next to
nothing, for he had entered the German province from the north; but he
knew enough of the general nature of Africa to guess that the country
would lie higher towards the east, and that the rivers, draining to the
Wami, as did the M’ssente, would be spread out like the fingers of a hand
from the north to the south-west, and farther south in the line of the
Equator. It seemed to him, therefore, that they could hardly ever be
wholly lacking in water. But he didn’t know. There was no way in which
he could know. He reckoned that if he were travelling alone he could
make almost certain of doing his twenty miles a day; but this time he was
not travelling alone, and he had no knowledge of the strength or
endurance of a woman, or how her delicate feet would stand the strain of
walking day after day. That night he had made her loosen her shoes. He
could see them now, ridiculously slender things, lying beside her. It
was not the fact that they were unpractical which impressed him so much
as that they were small. Seeing this token of Eva’s fragility, he was
overwhelmed with a kind of pity for her littleness. He supposed that for
all her high and splendid spirit she was really no more than a child; and
feeling thus incalculably tender toward her, he found that, in the most
unconscious way in the world, the arm which he had placed about her to
keep her warm when she had shivered would have tightened in a caress.
That wouldn’t do. He knew it wouldn’t do. He knew that it would have
been the easiest thing to have bent a little nearer and kissed her cool,
pale cheek: so easy, and so natural for a man who loved her. But he had
settled it long ago in his mind that for a man of his kind to permit
himself the least indulgence of tenderness would not be strictly fair to
her. He knew that if he were once to admit the possibility of
love-making between them there must be an end once for all of his
attempts to do what he had conceived to be his duty. It would not be
fair: and there was an end of it. It wouldn’t be fair . . .
And so, lying alone with this woman so intensely loved, in his embrace,
he resigned himself to the contemplation of the vast sky which stretched
above them. God knows, it wasn’t easy. All the time there was a
danger—and no one could have appreciated it better than he did—of his
allowing himself to be persuaded that she was really a child and that he
was justified in his sense of protection: so that it was not surprising
that he found himself turning for an escape towards the infinite
remoteness of stellar space. It was an old trick of his. Time after
time, in the past, he had used this expedient in hours of distress and
disappointment. He knew nothing of astronomy, and yet he had lived under
the stars. He saw now the great cloudy nebulæ of the southern sky, and
that principal glory of the south, Orion, mightily dominating the whole
vault. He had always cherished an idea these remote, compassionate
spheres looked down with pity on the small troubles of the human race and
the little, spinning world. What, after all, did it matter whether one
man were lord of his desires or no? In heaven, he remembered, there was
no marrying or giving in marriage. It were better so. While he watched,
the great sky gradually clouded over. No driving clouds were hurried
past the moon: only an immense curtain of white vapour condensed in the
upper sky, and in a few moments the moon was hidden. It grew almost
dark.
Next morning Eva wakened to a sound that was peculiar in its blending of
the strange and the familiar. The sky hung grey above them, but the air
was full of innumerable bird-song, so clear and thrilling in its
slenderness that she could almost have imagined that she was waking to a
morning in the first ecstasy of spring in her own home on the edge of the
Forest of Wyre. She had never heard anything like that at Luguru. In
the garden at the mission she had grown accustomed to the harsh note of
the pied shrikes, a numerous and truculent tribe which makes its living
on the smaller birds. This first and ravishing impression was a small
thing: but somehow it coloured all that day. A wonderful day. The sun
rose swiftly on those highlands, and in a little while her limbs lost
their chill and stiffness. As soon as she had rubbed her eyes and put on
her shoes they ate a little breakfast together. M‘Crae allowed her a
little water . . . so very little, she thought, and then they set off
walking in the cool morning.
No man who has not travelled in the early morning of the African
highlands could tell you of the beauty of that day. Their way led them
over a wide country of waving grasses where trees were few: a high
plateau, so washed with golden light, so bathed in golden air, so kindly
and so free that it would have been difficult for any soul to have felt
unhappy there. To the west and to the south of them stretched these
endless yellow plains. In the north they could still see the bosky forms
of the Luguru hills, where all their troubles lay: but even these seemed
now too beautiful to have sheltered any violence or pain. Once or twice
in the midst of this atmosphere of freedom and of relief from the
intangible threats of Luguru Eva remembered James. She recognised, I
suppose, that he was in some danger: she was grieved, no doubt, by the
obstinacy which had made him stay behind, and realised that it was very
courageous of him and very like him to have seen the business through:
but her own relief and bewilderment were so intense that she was never
vexed with the dreadful imaginations which came to the mind of M‘Crae,
and made him remote and preoccupied all through that golden morning.
Little by little his sombre mood was beguiled by her childish pleasure in
new things, her young and healthy life. I suppose that a man can know no
greater happiness than walking alone in the open air at the side of the
woman he loves. In these hours the whole living world ministers to his
passion, revealing countless and incredible beauties to eyes that are
already drunk with joy. So it was with M‘Crae. In the loveliness of
Eva’s gait, of her eyes, of her voice, he was lost. The way was
scattered with familiar beauties which came to him invested with a
strange poignancy when they were shared by Eva’s eyes. Thus, in the heat
of the day, they rested beneath a solitary acacia on the gravelly crown
of these plains and round the dusty flowers of brushwood at their feet
many butterflies hovered. M‘Crae knew them all well enough, but Eva had
never seen many of them before and must find a likeness for each of their
silken patterns. One that she loved was blotched with peacock eyes of
violet, and another wore wings of figured satin in modest browns and
greys, like the sober gowns of mid-Victorian ladies: and at the sight of
another Eva must hold her breath, for it floated down on great curved
wings of black that were barred with the blue of a kingfisher.
All through the heat of the day they lay there listening to the sleepy
calling of the hornbills until they fell asleep themselves. In the first
cool of the evening they set out again, leaving the country of tall
grasses as golden as ever behind them, and entering a zone of Park Steppe
scattered with trees from which the nests of the bottle-bird were hanging
in hundreds. Eva was beginning to be very thirsty: but M‘Crae would not
let her drink. Soon, he imagined, they must come to one of the greater
tributaries of the Wami: there they would quench their thirst and camp
for the night upon the farther side. At the time of sunset they came
indeed to a sodden valley upon which the Park Steppe looked down. It
promised good and plenteous water, for the bottom was hidden with
tapestries of acacia slowly stirring, and a single group of taller trees
with silvery trunks and great, expanded crowns stood brooding over the
sources of some spring. On a slope of sand M‘Crae noticed the spoor of
many buck that had wandered to this oasis for water, and when he saw them
his mind was clouded with a faint doubt: for the hoof-prints had set hard
in moist sand and had been left there, for all he knew, as long ago as
the last rains. When they came to the bottom of the valley they found
that the bed of the stream was dry. M‘Crae searched along its course to
see if any water had been caught in the pools of rock: but whatever had
lain there had long since evaporated. Somewhere indeed there must be
water. So much they knew by the high crowns of that company of
smooth-trunked trees and by the luxuriance of the thorned acacia. But
the water was too deep for them. M‘Crae spent a futile hour digging with
his hand in the sandy bottom of the stream: but though the sand grew
cool, no water trickled through.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Eva. “We have plenty of water left.”
M‘Crae shook his head.
That night they made their camp on a hill-side placed a mile or so above
the bed of the river, at a safe distance from those sinister beauties
which are known to hunters as “fever trees.” Eva was very happy, even
though the spear-grass had worked its way into her feet. She was
healthily and pleasantly fatigued. Never in all her life had she spent a
more wonderful day. She felt, too, that she was beginning to know M‘Crae
better and was glad of it. Time had helped her to reason herself out of
a great deal of ridiculous shyness. Again they lay together under the
stars, talking of trivial and intimate things. They did not speak of
James or of Godovius. Their talk was as light and an inconsequent as
that of two happy lovers. Indeed they were already lovers, though
neither of them had ever given the other a word of love.
Eva fell asleep early, resigning herself without question to the arm of
M‘Crae: but M‘Crae lay awake long into the night. He was thinking of
water . . . always of water. Their disappointment at the river bed had
made him very anxious. He had made certain of finding permanent water at
this level, and the bed of the stream was sufficiently deep and wide to
justify his belief. But now there was no doubt in his mind but that he
had set their course too far westward for the season of the year. He had
been aiming, as Godovius had told him, for M’papwa; but if he were to
keep in touch with water it seemed that he must make for the line
considerably farther east. The prospect which lay before him, according
to his present plans, was a whole system of dry river beds which would
mock their thirst at every valley and in the midst of which they must
surely perish. It meant a whole revision of his plans, and, what was
more, a waste of valuable time. For, even though he had undertaken to
place Eva in safety on the Central Railway, the mind of M‘Crae was never
very remote from Luguru. He had given Godovius his word that he would
return. In some small particular Godovius had shown himself to be a
white man: at the last moment his regard for Eva had been sufficiently
strong to place her in the protection of his only rival. M‘Crae had
gravely given him credit for that: and if he owed a debt of honour to
Godovius, he felt himself even more deeply indebted to James, a man of
his own race, cursed with the courage and perversity of a martyr, and the
only brother of the woman he loved. Yes, as soon as it were possible he
must make his way back to Luguru . . . even if he were to be too late.
There was so little time to spare. Once more, about midnight, the sky
clouded over. On the horizon’s brim he watched the flickering light of
bush fires slowly burning fifty miles away.
IV
A cloudless and splendid dawn ushered in the first of the bad days. They
set off early: for M‘Crae was anxious to make as much progress as
possible before the extreme heat of the sun developed. He had decided,
in his deliberations of the night, to follow the course of the dry river
valley towards the east, so that, at the worst, they might keep in touch
with the possibility of water. They marched all day. From time to time
M‘Crae would leave Eva to rest while he reached out towards the valley of
the river to see if any sign of water were there. Time after time he
returned with a solemn face which told her that he had failed, and every
time she was ready to meet him with a smile. It wasn’t easy to smile,
for though she dared not let him know, she was suffering a great deal.
The little doles of water which he allowed her to take were never enough
to quench her thirst. Always, in the back of her mind, whatever she
might be saying or doing, thirst was the dominant idea. In all her life
she had never been far away from the sweet moisture of brookland air: but
the country through which they now struggled might never have known any
moisture but that of the dew for all they could see of it. It was an
endless, arid plain, so vast and so terribly homogeneous that their
progress began to seem like a sort of nightmare in which they were
compelled to trudge for ever without more achievement than prisoners
treading a wheel. Always the same level skylines hemmed them in,
offering, as one might think, an infinite possibility of escape, but
giving none. The dry bed of the river was the same, neither wider nor
narrower, and always parched with sun. The trees were the same scattered
bushes of mimosa and acacia: the butterflies the same; the same hornbills
called to them from melancholy distances. Once, in the appalling fatigue
of the early evening, when a little coolness descended to mock their
labours, Eva realised of a sudden that she was sitting under a withered
candelabra cactus, a gloomy skeleton that raised withered arms into the
dry air, and a haunting conviction assailed her that this was the
self-same tree under which she had sat in their first halt, long ago in
the dawn of the same day. The idea was almost too horrible to be true;
and, when she saw M‘Crae approaching, the same lean, dusty figure, his
lips parched with drought, the atmosphere of a monstrous dream returned
to her. Again he smiled, again he helped her to her feet. He was so
kind, she thought, that she could have cried for that alone.
At sunset they lay down for the night. They spoke very little. They
were too tired to speak, and the mind of M‘Crae too troubled; for he knew
that even if they found water next day their food was running short. For
supper they chewed plugs of biltong. That night she slept very little.
When she was not awake she dreamed without ceasing. She dreamed of Far
Forest, and above all of a little brook which tumbles from the western
margin of the watershed of Clow’s Top to the valley of the Teme, and a
mossy pool of icy, clear water into which the thin stream fell with a
tinkling sound. When she was a child, returning on hot autumn days from
the wooded valley, she had often bathed her flushed face in its basin,
and let the water trickle into her mouth, and so, she dreamed, she was
doing now. Then she awoke to the brilliant moonlit sky untenanted by any
cloud or any dewy tenderness. In the cold, dry air she huddled closer to
M‘Crae. It was good, after all, not to be quite alone. She decided that
she would chew no more biltong. She would rather starve than have that
savour in her dry mouth. It tasted to her like the dregs of beef-tea.
A little before dawn he awakened her. Now he had determined to take the
greater risk and march due south. Even without water—and the land could
not be waterless for ever—it would be possible for them to cover as much
as fifty miles, and he did not suppose that they could now be farther
than this from the railway.
It was a bitter start. She found that her feet had become so sore that
it was torture only to stand; but she supposed that when once she had got
going it would be easier. He knew that she must be suffering thirst, for
he himself had taken far less water than she.
“You poor child,” he said. “You poor, dear child. It can’t be so very
long now . . .”
She knew it could not be so very long.
But that day was a repetition of the last: more terrible, perhaps, in its
alternations of hope and despair; for now their way led them over a
series of river valleys, every one of them full of promise, every one of
them dry. She began to hate the temptations of their beckoning green.
All the time he was at her side ready to cheer her, and always eager to
give her rest.
“You are brave,” he said, “you are splendid. You are wonderful. A
little longer. Only a little longer . . .”
Towards evening she knew that she could do no more. After a longer halt
than usual she made her confession.
“I’m afraid I can’t. . . . No . . . I know I can’t. My feet are
dreadful. It’s worse than being thirsty. You mustn’t take any notice of
me. You had better go on. You mustn’t mind leaving me. I want you to
do so.”
“We must see what we can do,” he said, “and you mustn’t talk such wicked
nonsense. You know that I can’t leave you. Let’s see what we can do to
your feet.”
She took off her stockings. She didn’t want to do so. It was funny that
in this extremity she should have been troubled by any such instinctive
modesty. “I expect they look awful,” she said.
Her stockings had stuck to her feet, her poor, swollen feet, with
blisters, she supposed; but when, with infinite pain, she had managed to
free them, she found that the skin was smothered with ghastly suppurating
wounds in each of the many places where the fine spines of spear-grass
had pierced it. Indeed it was a miracle of endurance that she should
have held on through the day. The realisation of her suffering was
altogether too much for M‘Crae. He caressed the bruised feet with his
trembling hand.
“What you must have suffered . . . my dear one, my dear one . . . your
beautiful feet. You, a woman. You of all women in the world.”
Kneeling beside her in the sand, he kissed her dusty ankles.
“I have been cruel to you. I have driven you. And just because you were
so brave . . .”
“It hasn’t been more for me than for you,” she said. “And don’t call me
brave. I’m not brave. I’m only what you make me. If you call me brave
I know I shall cry . . . and I don’t want to do that.” She raised his
head and kissed his blackened lips. And then she found that she must cry
after all: but while she cried to herself her hand, all of its own
accord, was stroking his bowed head.
The peace of the sunset descended on the plains. The air about them was
full of a tenderness which is the nearest to that of spring than any that
the tropics know. A rainbird on a spray of thorn began its liquid song;
but this battered and exhausted pair were too rapt in their own
bewildering revelation of beauty to be aware of any other. The night
fell.
They did not sleep. They lay together and talked softly of things which
had not the remotest bearing on their desperate case: of the night when
they had first met: the long evenings in Mr. Bullace’s _banda_ among the
whisky bottles and the rest of the precious hours which now they counted
as lost. For them the past and the amazing present were enough. They
had no future. It did not seem to matter what the future might be now
that they had reached this most glorious end. At the worst they were
sure of dying together. To-morrow . . .
To-morrow came. They watched the sky grow pale over the eastern horizon.
Gradually the outlines of the low trees which had lain around them in
silent congregation became more distinct. The birds began to sing.
Perhaps there would not be another dawn.
While they sat wondering under the paling sky a strange sound came to
their ears. To Eva it sounded like the rushing of a distant river. In
such a silence the least of sounds could be heard; but this sound came
for a moment faintly and was gone. Indeed it was more like the sound of
water than anything else: a mirage of sound that had come like that old
dream to torture her thirst. It faded away, and then, very gently, it
came again.
“I heard something . . . like a river. Did you hear it?” she said.
“I heard something,” said M‘Crae, “but I think I must have imagined it.
It was like the noise that the blood makes in the vessels near your ears
at night, when you are getting better from fever. I expect it’s partly
the quinine.”
“But I heard it too. . . . It can’t be that,” she said.
“Don’t think about it,” said M‘Crae. “We had better make a start. Now
there is no reason why you shouldn’t let me carry you. We will see how
it works. I shall take you like they carry a wounded man. You must put
your arms round my neck.” Again they kissed.
He had lifted her precious weight, when she cried: “Listen. . . . I hear
it again. It can’t be imagination,” and they listened together.
“My God!” said M‘Crae. “My God! It’s a train!”
He left her, and she watched him running into the bush, as though this
were actually the last train that was ever going to grind along the
length of the Central Railway, and he must stop it or die.