I
HOW many hours Eva lay alone under the thorn-tree I do not know. For a
great part of the time she slept or fell into an uneasy dream that hung
midway between sleep and waking. Now that her hope of water had been
renewed her thirst became a torment even greater than before. Once
again, in the middle of the hot noon, she thought that she heard a train
moving on the line; but by this time the wind which had brought the noise
to their ears had dropped, and it sounded very far away. In the
intervals of waking, and even in her dreams, her mind seemed marvellously
clear. She found that she wanted to talk of the ideas which whirled
about it. She even wanted to laugh, although she could not imagine why.
And then, in her weakness, she would topple from this pinnacle of
exaltation, feeling her actual and appalling loneliness, thinking
miserably of James and of any catastrophe which might have befallen him.
At other times she would surprise herself, or rather one of the
innumerable selves of which her personality was compact, engrossed in the
contemplation of some minute part of the multitude of silent life which
surrounded her. At one time, moving rapidly in the red dust at her feet,
she saw an expedition of black ants, many thousands of them, extended in
a winding caravan. She saw the porters stumbling under their loads, the
shining bellies of their attendant askaris, and the solitary scouts which
they had thrown out on either side. She could not guess where they had
come from or where they were going, but the way which they had chosen,
and from which no obstacle could dissuade them, happened to lie over the
ragged edge of her skirt. She dared not move, for she feared that if she
disturbed them they would swarm upon her with innumerable stings; so she
lay very still and watched their column move past until the head of it
wheeled away beneath a fallen bough; and the thought invaded her brain,
now so perilously clear, that she and M‘Crae, in their long adventure,
had been no less tiny and obscure in comparison with their surrounding
wilderness than this strangely preoccupied host. In all her life she had
never been given to such speculations; but that was how it appeared to
her now. “We are just ants,” she thought. “God cannot see us any bigger
than that.” A strange business. . . . Very strange. It was hard to
believe.
When, in another interlude of her dream, M‘Crae arrived, the shadow of
the acacia had moved away from her, and she found that she was lying in
the tempered sunshine of late afternoon. He brought her water. That was
the thing which mattered most. And when she had drunk she found that she
was ready to tackle another plug of biltong. Little by little the dream
atmosphere faded.
“I’ve been a long time,” he said, “but I wanted to make sure of
everything. I can tell you we’re in luck’s way. We slept within a
couple of miles of water. To think of it! The railway lies over the
brow of the hill on our right. I made a false cast for it at first. And
there is not only the railway there, but a sort of station. Now you can
be sure of safety. I can leave you happily.”
Their eyes met, and both knew that he had not spoken the truth; but she
also knew that his mind was already made up on what he still conceived to
be his duty and that, however tragically, leave her he must.
“I found a man there working in the rubber. A Greek I took him to be.
And I told him about Godovius and his levies at Luguru. They can’t send
help from here: but the stationmaster has sent a wire through to Kilossa.
Probably they thought I was mad. He was old and very fat; but I saw his
boys washing a woman’s clothes, so I think you will be safe. So now I
shall take you to the edge of the bush above the station. After that you
will fend for yourself. It may be difficult . . . but I know how brave
you are, you wonderful child.”
“It is only a little way,” he said, “and you must let me carry you. I
know that you’re done, my darling. No other woman could have stood what
you have stood already. If I put everything else aside I should have to
have loved you for that. You know how I love you?”
“Not well enough. You must keep on telling me. . . . But now,” she
said, “I can walk. Do they know that I am coming? Does that Greek woman
know?”
“They know nothing. Only that a madman out of the bush has brought a
message from Luguru and has gone again. When you get there you know that
you will be a prisoner.”
“But the Germans are not at war with the women,” she said.
“No . . .” he said. “I am sure that you will be safe. A white woman is
safe anywhere in Africa with white men. If it were not so it would be
impossible for women to live here at all. But we must not waste time.
You’ll put your arms round my neck and I shall lift you.”
“I will put my arms round your neck, and then I will kiss you; but I
shall not let you carry me. You must be more tired than me. I’ve been
resting all day.”
“Then you shall try,” he said solemnly.
He lifted her to her feet and the trees swam round her. She clutched at
him, and it seemed as if he too were part of the swimming world.
“Now you see . . .” he said.
“It was getting up suddenly. Now I’m better,” she protested; and so he
let her have her way, and they set off slowly together in the cool
evening. For a little way she would try to walk, and then, having
confessed that she was tired, she allowed him to take her on his back and
carry her.
In this way they passed through a narrow belt of bush and descended to a
valley. Here, marvel of marvels, ran a little stream, where water,
coloured red with the stain of acacia bark, flowed over a sandy bottom.
They halted there for a moment, and Eva bathed her face, her arms and her
bruised feet. In all her life she had never known water so wonderful;
but they could not linger there, for already the sky was beginning to
darken. So at length they came to the edge of the bush, and saw beneath
them the valley in which the railway ran, an ordered green plantation of
rubber, some fields of sisal, a cluster of homely, white-washed houses,
and a little compound in which stood a group of paw-paw trees burdened
with gourdlike fruit.
“Now you have only a little way to go,” said M‘Crae.
There, on the edge of the dry bush, they said good-bye. In the story of
their strange courtship I have imagined many things, and some that I have
written were told to me, so that I know them to be true. I have imagined
many things . . . but for this unimaginable parting I have no words; for,
as you may guess, they never met again.
II
This, too, is the end of Eva Burwarton’s story. I can see her painfully
making her way towards the station buildings and the compound in which
the paw-paw trees were growing, turning, perhaps, to look once again at
the dusty figure of M‘Crae, clear at first, but in a little while
becoming merged into the ashen grey of the bush and the bistre of burnt
grasses. Perhaps it is true that they have never been more to me than
figures of this kind, very small and distant, struggling with feeble
limbs upon a huge and sinister background. One is content to accept them
as this and as no more: for an action of mere puppets in surroundings so
vast and so sombre were enough to arouse one’s imagination and to claim
one’s pity. Of all the actors in this lonely drama it was never my
fortune to know more than one: and it seems to me that the rest of her
story matters very little. If you would have it—and for those who are in
search of further horrors there is horror enough—it is all written in the
Bluebook, or White Paper, or whatever it is called, which tells of the
persecutions and indignities of the English prisoners at Taborah. One
heard enough of these things at Nairobi in the winter of 1916; one heard
them with pity and with admiration, but never with the thrilling sense of
drama, remote and intense, which underlay Eva’s story of the months
before. She didn’t stay long in Nairobi. For a week or two they
warm-douched her with sympathies and chilled her with prayer meetings,
and then they sent her down the line with her unfortunate companions, and
shipped her home by the way of South Africa. That, for me, was the end
of her story. Perhaps she returned to Far Forest. I don’t know; but I
imagine that this was unlikely; for, if I remember rightly, there were no
more of her family left, unless it were an aunt to whom she used to write
from Luguru, an aunt who lived in Mamble—or was it Pensax?—some place or
other not very far away.
In those days it was my business to visit German prisoners who were
confined in the camp on Nairobi Hill near the K.A.R. cantonments, a happy
and well-fed company, very different from our famished and fever-ridden
spectres who had lain in prison at Taborah. From time to time large
batches of these civilians were sent away to be repatriated in Germany;
and when others came to take their place, my curiosity would always make
me ask them if they knew anything of Luguru or of Godovius, for, whether
I would or no, my mind was occupied at that time by Eva’s story. Many of
them had heard of Godovius. The story of the woman who had been killed
by the mamba was popular; any lie in the world was popular that might
serve to ingratiate them with the hated English. A poor crowd . . . a
very poor crowd! But nobody at all professed to be acquainted with
James. I suppose he had not been long enough in the colony.
One day my luck turned. It was my business to treat a new arrival who
went by the name of Rosen—something or other. A Jew at any rate. He had
been left behind somewhere in the neighbourhood of Morogoro, had been
taken unarmed, had claimed to be a missionary, and had been treated as
such. Personally I am convinced that he was a waiter, and an appalling
specimen at that. When he discovered that he was on the point of
repatriation, he remembered that he had been born at Kalisch, in Poland,
and was therefore a Russian. Anything in the world to keep out of
Germany. You see, the papers were full of the stories of bread riots and
fat tickets, and, for all his religious protestations, his only god, as
far as I could gather, was his belly. When the day came nearer he sprung
an attack of fever. I’m prepared to admit that it was genuine enough,
but he certainly made the most of it.
“Herr Doktor,” he said to me, clasping his hands in front of him, so that
I could see no less than ten black finger-nails, “it is probable that the
next attack will kill me. I have had blackwater fever five times. I
understand this disease. I have been for many years in Africa, and if
you will pardon me saying so, I understand myself.”
So did I; but although I hadn’t any possible use for the swine, the mere
mean ingenuity which he showed in his attempts to avoid returning to
Germany amused me, and so, sometimes, I let him talk. He had lived in
England. I must confess that for a missionary he was pretty well
acquainted with the least reputable bars and lounges of the West End. Of
course he was a waiter . . . or perhaps he had been a steward on a
British liner. He was great on idiomatic English and the slang of the
nineties, and from time to time he would trot out the names of Englishmen
whom he had befriended or whose lives he had saved in German East. One
day he startled me with the remembered name of Bullace. “Bullace?” I
said. “Yes . . . I knew him. Tell me about him.”
“Ah, Herr Doktor,” he said, “then you knew, no doubt, my old friend’s
failing? A sad thing for a brother missionary. Twice I nursed him with
what you call the jim-jams.”
I questioned him about Luguru, about Godovius, about James. He shook his
head.
“But do you not know what happened at Luguru early in the war?” he said.
At last he had found a chance of entertaining me without so much painful
effort. He settled down to it. He was charmed to tell me everything he
knew.
It surprised him that we, in British East, should have known nothing
about it. Quite a sensation, he said. At the time when it all happened
he had been in Kilossa. He was at great pains to explain that his
mission lay near to that place. Those were early days of the war, and
all his community had volunteered for work—noncombatant work—in the
field. They were all gathered together at Kilossa, waiting for orders.
And then, one day a message came over the wire from a small station near
M’papwa. The stationmaster, a fool of a fellow, had been given a message
about some native rising at Luguru. He hadn’t had the sense to detain
the messenger. Madness . . . but the Germans were such a simple,
trustful people. A rising at Luguru, where the levies of Godovius were
believed to be in training; where, only a few days before, a caravan of
rifles and ammunition had been sent. Still, the news was definite
enough, and there was no time to be lost. Volunteers were asked for.
Ober-Leutenant Stein, a planter himself, was put in charge. “And I
offered to go with them,” said the little Jew.
“But you are a missionary. . . . You cannot carry arms . . .”
“I know it,” says my friend, “but there is also a mission at Luguru, and
the missionary there, even if he is an Englishman, is my brother. It was
my duty to go.”
They shook their heads, he said; they tried to dissuade him; but in the
end he had his way. Had he not held the Englishman Bullace drunk in his
arms? Had he not, very nearly, succeeded in reforming him?
He wept for Bullace.
They left Morogoro the next day at dawn. Twenty whites, a hundred
askaris, Wanyamweze, trained men. Stein in command: a man who had been
long in the colony, who had known Africa in the Herero campaign, one of
Karl Peters’ men. “He knew how to deal with these black devils.”
They moved quickly; and indeed the story went too quickly for me. I
asked him about Godovius. “A Jew,” said he, shaking his own undeniably
Semitic nose, implying that no more need be said. “A Jew . . . and a
very strange man. You know the story of the mamba? A fine organiser,
and greatly respected by the Waluguru. Rather too catholic in his taste
for women . . . there were other funny stories about him . . . but then,
we are not in Europe; we must not be too hard on the sins of the flesh.
The tropics, you know . . .”
On the third day they came to Luguru. The people were very quiet,
cowering in their villages. Perhaps they knew what was coming. The
column marched in pomp through the forest to Njumba ja Mweze. A pitiful
sight. It had been a fine house for the colonies, well built of stone,
almost like a one-storeyed house at home in Germany—in Poland. Burnt.
Absolutely gutted with fire. He remembered the pathetic appearance of a
grand piano, crushed beneath a fallen beam, worth, he supposed, as much
as three thousand rupees, worth half that second-hand, now only a twisted
tangle of strings and a warped iron frame. No trace of Godovius or of
his servants. No trace of anything in the world but ashes. Stein said
nothing. It was a dangerous thing when a man like Stein, a man of deep
feeling, remained silent.
Next they went to the mission. They had expected to find the same sort
of havoc, but, strangely enough, the house was standing. “I went into
the house myself and there everything was quiet. I thought: ‘God is
great. This is a miracle. They have spared the holy place!’ I offered
up a prayer. It was most touching. There, in the kitchen, was a table
and on it a piece of woman’s sewing and a work-basket. In the bedroom,
the very room where I had saved the life of Bullace, another table on
which there was an open Bible. But I saw that the spinners had hung
their webs across the room. I saw a great big spinner [gesture] fat as a
black chief, sitting in the middle of the web. Ugh! . . . No man had
lived there for days. I thought of the woman whose work was in the
kitchen. I went to Stein. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘there has been black work,
black work. . . . These devils have killed them.’ Stein said nothing:
“I thought, ‘These people, the missionary and his wife, had gone to
Godovius for protection. Alas! they have shared his fate. Now there are
three white people to be avenged.’ Stein told the askaris to load their
rifles. He himself walked behind the machine-gun porters. ‘Now we will
see to these Waluguru swine,’ he said. Stein was a man of few words but
a colossal courage. Later he was killed, up on the Usambara line.
‘Come, you,’ he said . . .”
They went down through the bush to the forest. There was an askari who
knew the Waluguru villages, and he showed the way. “We marched past the
church, and I thought to myself: ‘It is right that I should go in there,
to the place where my friend Bullace worked and prayed. I will go in and
offer a prayer myself.’ I opened the door. . . . Pff! . . . But the
stench was too much. ‘My God!’ I said. ‘What is this?’ . . .
“You are a Protestant. You do not know . . . If you had been in the
Roman Catholic churches in Poland [he got it right that time] you would
have seen the human-size crucifixes which frighten the children with a
big dead Christ. It was on the pulpit. They had hung him there on the
pulpit with big nails. Through his neck was a carpenter’s chisel. The
nails and the hammer were lying on the floor. In his black coat he hung
with his feet tied together. He was far gone, as you say. Pff! . . .
Oh, it was very bad. And the black swine had mutilated him in the way
that Africans, even our own askaris, use with their enemies. You know . . .
Pff! . . . It was too awful. I tell you I could not stay there to
offer up the prayer that I had intended in that place. I went out. I
could not bear the sight of that crucified man. I ran after them. I was
afraid to be alone. You will understand; I was not allowed to carry arms
. . .
“I told Stein. Stein said nothing: but I know that his blood boiled
nobly. Then the firing began. It was just. Never was there such a
revenge. We went from village to village. Everywhere the fires crackled
up. Everywhere they ran screaming, the black pigs, women and all. Stein
had the machine gun. The askaris knew what had to be done. By evening
that forest was cleansed. I do not think the Waluguru will trouble us
again. There is only one way of teaching savages.
“That night we slept in the mission. There was not room for all of us
and so I and another gentleman went to rest in a little _banda_ in the
garden on a heap of sisal. There, too, the woman had been. It pained
our hearts to think of that woman. But we knew she had been avenged. We
had done our duty, even for our enemies. The place was full of whisky
bottles. Worse luck! [idiom] they were all empty.
“That was the end of it. Next day we left Luguru. We never found the
woman. I expect she went to Godovius. Trust Godovius for that. But one
more thing we found. It was the body of another man, or as much as the
hyenas and the white ants had left. No doubt he was an Englishman,
though we did not know there was another there. He had a rifle with him,
a Mannlicher, which I should have liked myself if I had not been
forbidden to carry arms. The white ants had eaten most of his clothes
and some wild beast had carried away one arm: but he had on him a little
packet of letters, or rather notes. I picked them up and put them in my
pocket, thinking there might be paper money therewith. If I had taken
money it would not have harmed him. When I began to examine it I found
that it was all written in English. He wrote badly, like a child, that
man; and you may believe me or not—it was all notes on places in our
colony: on good water holes and winter streams and things of that kind.
It was an affair for the General Staff. You see he was a spy . . . an
English spy, who had been killed by thirst or sickness and had his arm
carried off by the hyenas. A brave man, perhaps. So . . . it was the
right death for a spy. See, this was in the early days of the war, and
already your spies were near Luguru!
“And now, Herr Doktor, you see how weak I am. You see how this simple
story had tired me? Ah . . . this accursed climate! It weakens all of
us. I think you too are pale. It will be a long time before I am fit to
travel . . . the strain of a sea voyage. Is it not true? How can I
thank you for all you have done for me?” He would have pressed my hand.
I left him. It seemed to me that the day was heavier than usual. I
wished that the rains would come and have done with all this alternating
oppression and boisterous wind. I left the camp. I went past a little
garden where the children of some prisoners, little creatures with flaxen
hair and blue eyes, were playing at soldiers, and walked due south until
I came to the escarpment of the hills. Below me the levels of the Athi
plains stretched without end, dun-coloured and dappled with huge shadows
like the upper waters of the Bristol Channel, or rather of some vaster
and more gloomy sea. It was an impressive and wholly soothing scene. I
sat there until the sun had set, and on the remotest horizon the shadow
of Kilimanjaro, a hundred miles away, rose against the sky. I sat there
till it grew dark, and the great plains faded from me, thinking of the
three men who died at Luguru: of James the martyr predestinate; of
Godovius consumed in the flames which he had kindled; of M‘Crae whom Eva
Burwarton had loved. It was very still. All the shallow life of Nairobi
might have been as far away as the great mountain’s filmy shadow. And
then, when I turned to make my way back in the darkness to the club, a
sudden sound startled me. It was the beating of a drum in the lines of
the King’s African Rifles. I stopped. In that moment I knew that for
all our pretences of civilisation I was still living in a wholly savage
land. I looked up to the sky, to the south with its strange spaces and
unfamiliar stars. I saw Orion, the old hunter, stretched across the
vault. The beating of the drum awakened some ancient adventurous spirit
in my blood. I knew that this was the land above all others which men of
European race have never conquered. It was a strange moment, full of a
peculiar, half-bitter ecstasy. I gazed at the stars and murmured to
myself: “This is Africa. . . . This is Africa.”