"This terrible Africa is full of brutes!" I said to myself. "If I once
get out of it, will I ever come back again? No!"
The man suddenly left off tramping, and going to each of the fires fed
them in turn from a large pile of wood which he had evidently collected
on arrival. Then he came to his horse and putting his arm round its
neck spoke to it in a voice curiously sweet, quite unlike that in which
he had been reviling women; and the horse whinnied softly to him in
return.
"Dear old Belle!" he said, "you've had a rough time, but there's a rest
coming--a good rest coming and after that boot-and-saddle! We'll get
away from them all once more; and maybe if we have any luck, we'll get a
rest once and for all--a long, long rest--under the wide and starry
sky."
I was ashamed to hear these intimate bitter things he was confiding to
his horse with his arm round her neck and his face bent. But could I
help it? Only I was no longer afraid. I felt that in spite of his
fierce and violent words there was nothing to fear from him.
Walking back to his rug he threw himself down once more, this time on
his back, clasping his hands under his head and closing his eyes. In a
few moments he was sleeping as peacefully as a child.
It really seemed after awhile that I might venture to descend.
Apparently there was no danger to be anticipated from any quarter. He
had guarded against lions by making fires and now he himself was asleep.
There was nothing to fear but still I was horribly afraid. As quietly
and carefully as possible I unknotted myself and crawled out of the
cart, for I was really too stiff and weary to do anything but crawl, and
when at last I stood on the ground by the step, my legs would hardly
support me. However, I eventually gained the courage and strength to
steal to the nearest fire and stretch my numbed fingers to the blaze.
It was so big that I was able to warm myself without stooping, a fact I
was intensely grateful for: I felt that I should never want to sit or
kneel again for the rest of my life.
The man slept peacefully on. I could not see him clearly for the
firelight dazed my eyes, but I could hear his quiet and regular
breathing. Later I crept closer and gave another glance to the face I
was so curious to see. At the same moment a bright flicker of light
passed right over his eyes and I saw that they were open and regarding
me with a wide and steady stare. Without a sound he rose to his feet.
My hands dropped to my sides, and I drew myself up to my full height,
prepared (though my heart was nearly jumping out of my body) to be very
calm and dignified indeed to this woman-hater who could only be nice to
horses. As for him, the wind was entirely out of his sails also: he
simply stood there staring at me, dumb with amazement at finding one of
the hated brood of women in his camp. I might have got a good deal of
malicious satisfaction out of the situation if I had not been almost
stunned into confusion and astonishment myself in the revelation that
the man who stood staring at me was the dark, blue-eyed man with whom I
had talked about Africa three years before at the Viceregal Lodge. I
recognised in a moment his extraordinarily vivid eyes with the careless
lids that covered so intent a glance. And there were the little bits of
blue turquoise still stuck in his ears!
I can only account for not having recognised him earlier by the fact
that I had not really seen his eyes. He was one of those men whom you
might pass without a glance, thinking him ordinary, until you looked in
his face or he spoke to you. Then you saw at once that he was not
ordinary at all, that so far from being short he was seemingly at least
about three heads taller than most men, also that his hair was perfectly
nice, and what was better perfectly original. In his crakey, thrilly
voice he was now assuring me that he had never supposed for an instant
that there was any one in the post-cart.
"And a lady, good God!--I mean it is unbelievable; but where is your
driver? Do you mean to say, Madam, that you have been here alone in
that cart all the evening?"
Madam! That was funny, though I did not much care about being taken for
a madam. But of course he could see nothing of my face through my thick
veil.
"Yes," I said. "The driver gave me my choice between being shut into
the stable with the mules or staying out here in the cart alone. I
preferred this."
"The infernal scoundrel! The--" His mouth shut, he hastily swallowed
something, doubtless more profanity. "The scoundrel!" he repeated.
"The river is full. He said we could not cross to-night."
"That is true, but his business was to make fires here and guard you.
This is one of the most dangerous places in Africa. I cannot think,
Madam, how you came to be on such a journey alone and unprotected. Some
one is gravely to blame."
"No, indeed," I faltered. "No one is to blame but myself. I insisted
on taking this journey against all advice. If the lions had eaten me it
would have been my own fault."
I don't know what was the matter with me, but suddenly the remembrance
of all my terrors overwhelmed me and I began to cry. I never thought I
could have been so utterly silly and ridiculous, but the cause was
something that I had no control over, something quite outside myself; it
may have been the reaction of suddenly feeling so safe after all my
misery, or that his voice was the kind of voice that stirs one up to
doing things one didn't intend to do; really I don't know. Only, I
cried quite foolishly and brokenly for a few moments like a child, and
he took hold of my hands and patted them and said ever so kindly:
"There, there--don't cry, for Heaven's sake don't cry--it's all right
now--you're quite safe--I'll take care of you. And I'll hammer that,
brute within an inch of his life to-morrow morning," he added savagely.
He made me sit on his rug by the fire, while he went over to the cart
and hauled out mail-bags and cushions and rugs, all bundled up together,
and dragged them over by the fire, and in two minutes had a most
delightful sort of lounge-seat ready for me. I never thought other
people's letters and parcels could be so comfortable and useful.
"Now," said he, "have you got anything to eat or drink? I am sorry to
say I haven't a thing. I'm `travelling light,' and expected to cross
the river to-night and get to Madison's for dinner."
Of course I had a travelling basket with plenty of tinned things in it,
and some stale bread. There was also tea and a little kettle which he
filled from the water-bag under the cart and had over the fire in the
twinkling of an eye, while I spread a napkin on the ground and laid out
as invitingly as possible such provisions as I had. Then, while he was
once more replenishing the fires, I pulled a little mirror from my
vanity bag, and by its aid removed some of the dust which by reason of
my tears had now turned to mud on my face. I arranged my veil over my
hat, and my dainty, tragic brown face looked back at me from the
hand-glass. I say _tragic_ because so many people have said it before
of me and I've got used to the word but I could never really see myself
what suggested it. Only I know that I am rather original looking. I do
not profess to be pretty: but I am unusual; and I have nice bones, and
the shades of brown and amber in my eyes and hair are really rather
charming; and I know I've a good line from my ear to my chin--one cannot
study sculpture without getting to recognise fine lines whether in one's
self or other people.
When he came back with the kettle of boiling water, I knelt by the cloth
and made the tea, while he stared at me in perfect silence. Perhaps he
was surprised to see that I didn't look much like a madam after all. He
made no sign of recognition, which was rather disappointing, but I did
not mind at the time as I was so frightfully hungry. So was he. There
was not the faintest attempt on the part of either of us to disguise the
fact that we each possessed what Dick called an "edge." We drank our
tea and fell like wolves upon the sandwiches I had made of stale bread
and potted turkey. We also cleaned up a tin of sardines, about three
pounds of biscuits, and a pot of strawberry jam. We ate like schoolboys
and were as merry as thieves in a wood. It did not seem in the least
strange to be sitting there under the stars in that wild place taking
possession of a large meal with a man who did not know my name nor I
his. Nothing is strange on the veldt! Besides, I felt as if I had
known him all my life, even if he did not recognise me. All the same, I
was aware that he never ceased to stare at me intently, with the little
rag of black hair hanging between his blue eyes. He told me he was
riding across country from Tuli to Fort George. He had been buying
waggons and horses in the Transvaal for the Chartered Company.
"I suppose you know you have come to this part of Africa at a very bad
time?" he said. "The Chartered Company is going to send an expedition
into Matabeleland against Lobengula. Almost all the men in the country
will be needed to fight, and while they are away in Matabeleland the
ladies in Mashonaland will all be shut up in forts. That will not be
very interesting. It would have been better for you to have postponed
your journey until a little later."
"_Au contraire_," said I. "It is far more interesting to be in a
country while history is being made than to arrive afterwards when
everything is settled and dull. But why are we going to war with
Lobengula?"
He laughed at the "we" which slipped in unconsciously.
"Ah! I see you are one of us already, so I can tell you all about it.
Well, Loben has been behaving very badly for a long while. Ever since
the Chartered Company took possession of Mashonaland he has been
harassing us in various ways. But lately he has taken to serious
menace. Large _impis_ of his armed warriors have been raiding across
the border laid down by agreement between the two countries, murdering
the Mashonas who are under our protection, and taking up a very
threatening and insolent attitude to any white men who remonstrate with
him. He has paid no attention to official remonstrance, either, but
broken promise after promise, so that at last we have had to take things
into our own hands. If we don't they'll wipe out every white man in
Mashonaland one of these days. So we are going to invade them and break
their power once and for all. There is a chance of some interesting
fighting first, though, for the Matabele are twenty thousand strong, all
in fighting trim, and as ferocious as the Zulus from whom they are
descended. _Now_, are you sorry you've come?"
"Not at all," I laughed. "Afterwards, when this is all over, I may have
an opportunity of seeing Lobengula's fifty wives. That is one of my
most important reasons for coming out to Africa. That and prowling
lions; however, I think I've had more than enough of _them_."
He began to laugh.
"You won't find Lobengula's wives very enchanting, if you do succeed in
seeing them; and there are only six, by the way. But where did you get
your experience of lions?"
"Here!" said I, and told him something of what I had gone through; only
_something_. I did not think it necessary to go into details about my
terror, nor to tell him I had fainted. I left him to suppose that I had
been asleep when he came to camp. He looked at me keenly at this part
of my story, remembering, I suppose, his pleasant remarks about women.
But I returned his gaze with frank eyes.
"Ah! I heard those shots," he said at last. "I was about two miles off
then, and supposed some one was camping round here, but I could not
locate them at all; no sign or smell of fire anywhere; so on finding the
river full I camped here, ready to cross the drift the first thing in
the morning. I looked into the post-cart, but only casually, for
naturally I didn't expect any one to be in it. I guessed that the
driver had locked himself in with the mules--they usually do in such
circumstances, but not when there are passengers. Those were not lions,
by the way. As soon as I got here I knew by the behaviour of my horse
that there had been beasts of some kind about, and when I had made fires
I looked for spoor and found traces of about half-a-dozen hyenas. They
must have been hungry, too, for they had chewed the mule harness to
ribbons."
He smiled at me gaily, but I felt myself turning pale.
"Hyenas! How horrible! How glad I am I did not know! I'd much rather
they had been lions!"
"Thank God they were not," he said quietly. "I'm afraid your revolver
would not have been much use. Hyenas, on the contrary, hardly ever
touch a human being, and are easily scared off."
"But they laugh!" I cried, shuddering, and then sprang to my feet, for
the most terrifying noise I had ever heard in my life suddenly split the
stillness and rang around us. I have heard lions roar in the Zoo, and
that is bad enough; but the cry of a caged lion is a dove-like call
compared to the awe-inspiring, mournful, belching, hollow roar of the
king of beasts when he makes his presence known to the wide and empty
veldt. My companion was on his feet too.
"Don't be afraid," he said quietly, "but get into the cart again as
quickly as possible."
I obeyed without the least delay, another roar, closer at hand,
considerably accelerating my steps. In a moment I was back in my old
place on the floor; and he was swiftly untethering the horse from the
back of the cart, to fasten it in front, more fully in the glare of the
fires. Then he stepped into the driver's place, and half-sitting,
half-stooping, laid his rifle across the splash-board, right over the
horse's head. We waited.
"Don't make a sound," he said over his shoulder. There was no alarm in
his voice, but rather a kind of gay elation, and my fear immediately
died away. I began to watch and listen with interest for what was to
happen next. There were no more roars, only an ominous stillness, that
was broken presently by the restless moving and shuddering of the horse.
The poor beast began to try to break loose and get away, but its master
leaning forward, spoke to it in a soothing gentle voice, and the
terrified creature was presently quiet, except for an occasional shudder
that it could not control.
Silence again for a time that seemed hours, then at last the click of a
broken twig that sounded to my straining ears like a pistol shot. There
was just the faintest suspicion of a rustling of leaves. An instant
later something in my companion's intent gaze and attitude told me that
the psychological moment had come. He could see something, and was
taking aim. I glanced at the dim, shadowy mass of foliage towards which
his rifle pointed, and for one moment saw nothing. Then something huge
and pale and massive came bounding high in the air out of the shadows,
and the horse cried out like a human being. The Martini-Henry cracked
twice and a blinding flash of gunpowder filled the air. Later I heard
my friend's voice speaking to his leaping horse and as the smoke died
away my dazed eyes saw lying stretched between the fires something that
had not been there before. The only sounds to be heard were the
creaking of the cart caused by the shudderings of the horse, and the
chattering of my teeth. I don't know which was the louder. But I know
that I crouched beside the man's knee and was grateful and glad for one
of his strong brown hands on mine, and his crakey, thrilly voice saying
close to my ear:
"There is no danger. Only we must be quiet. There's probably another
of them about. I should like to pot him too."
Needless to say, I sat still with all my might. The great
honey-coloured body fascinated my eyes, but there was something
extraordinarily reassuring in the scent of mingled gunpowder and tobacco
that hung about the grey flannel sleeve so close to me. We sat in
silence for what must have been nearly an hour and nothing happened: no
more roars, no sound anywhere but the far cry of the jackal, and the
rush of the river. It was my companion who at last broke the spell,
speaking in a low, absent voice, almost like a man in a reverie.
"So you have come to Africa after all, Miss Saurin!"
I could hardly believe my ears were not playing me false. It seemed the
strangest thing of all the strange things that had come to pass that
night that he should know my name and speak it thus. He had recognised
me after all, then! In the same voice of gentle reverie he spoke again,
staring not at me but straight before him.
"--And this is the way she receives you!"
"You know my name?" I faltered.
"Of course. Do you think I could ever forget your face?"
I felt my cheeks grow hot. I was not unused to hearing men say
charming, flattering things, and I knew very well how to parry them.
But there was something so unusual in the quiet serenity of this man's
words and the vibration of his beautiful voice that I could not lightly
turn aside his strange answer. I am all woman, too, and could not
refrain from feeling a little thrill of pleasure in what he said. It is
surely something rather sweet to be remembered for three years by a man
to whom one has spoken only once, for a few minutes, in a crowded
ball-room.
"And that dance--I think you remember the dance we had together--and our
talk of Africa. You said you would love to come out here, and I told
you then you surely would. I think you must remember?"
There was something so appealing and yet compelling in his question that
I felt obliged to answer him sincerely, though such worldly wisdom as I
possessed strongly counselled me to do otherwise.
"Yes, I have always remembered," I said, and found myself remembering
other things, too, vividly: the way his words had moved me, the way my
lids had fallen under his strong glance.
"And you are still Miss Saurin? _Deirdre Saurin_?"
It would be impossible to describe the beauty and gentleness of his
voice as he so unexpectedly spoke my name. It sounded almost as if he
were blessing me.
"You did not many Herriott after all? But you could not have, or he
would be here. No man who married you would ever leave your side."
That was ridiculous, of course. I felt it was ridiculous, but he said
it so convincingly that I almost believed it. In fact, I was obliged to
recognise that this man was very convincing indeed. You could not treat
his remarks with the indifference they deserved, even if you wanted to.
However, there was one thing I felt I ought to make clear to him, though
it was rather embarrassing to say these things.
"I think as you know so much," I stammered, "you ought to know a little
more. I was never engaged to Lord Herriott."
"But I was told by two different people that night, both relatives of
his, that you were engaged; that the announcement was to be made
immediately."
"They had no right to say so," I said firmly. "We were never engaged."
"Will you tell me that he never asked you to marry him?"
"I cannot tell you more than I have," I answered rather stiffly.
"And you think it insolence on my part to ask so much?" His voice had
gone back to reverie and his eyes to the dying fires. "Do not think
that, Miss Saurin. Insolence has no place near you in my mind and
memory. It was no business of mine I suppose whether you refused
Herriott, or why. In any case I should have left Ireland at once as I
did. Only--I wish to God I _had_ known in all these years."
I had to realise at last that this man was making love to me, and that
the fact aroused in my heart neither anger nor indignation. I felt not
the slightest disposition to reprove him, but rather to go on sitting
there for ever listening to his strange burning words and vibrating
voice. It seemed to me suddenly that I was listening to an old song I
had known all my life, but had never before heard set to music. My
heart began to flutter like a wild bird in my breast and a trembling
thrilled me unlike any trembling I had known through the past hours of
darkness and fear. A faintness stole over my senses. I, too, had kept
my gaze straight before me while we talked, but now, while I felt myself
growing pale to the lips with some strange emotion, I turned my eyes his
way and found him looking at me. Glance burnt glance. His blue, intent
eyes searching in mine as if for something that was his. Mine reading
in his--I know not what--something I had long known dimly but dared not
recognise. In that moment I realised why I had come to Africa. I knew
why I had refused Herriott. It was for the sake of seeing again this
strange man with the voice that pulled at my heart-strings and the
burning eyes that searched in mine as if for something that was his.
And now, alone with him in this wild and desolate spot, where
conventions and all the superficialities of life fell sheer away, and
left us just simple man and woman, I was afraid of the poignant
sweetness and wonder of it. I was afraid for my immortal soul.
For the second time that night, and half unconsciously, I put up my
hand, and as do all good Catholics in the supreme moments of life,
crossed myself. I hardly knew what I had done until I found my right
hand touching the shoulder nearest him and almost as if in answer to my
action, which he could not have failed to observe, he lifted his hand,
which still lay upon my left hand, and pushed back from his eyes the
fallen streak of hair. Afterwards he did not replace it, though mine
still lay where he left it.
"You are a Catholic?" he said abruptly.
"Yes, the Saurins have always been Catholics," I answered. Then a
silence fell between us that I feared. For some reason I did not
understand, I began, in a voice at first a little strained and
uncertain, to tell him of the love there had always been in my family
for the beautiful old faith, of how much its forms and ceremonies meant
to even the most irreligious of us. I told him legends of long-dead
rakes and scamps among my paternal ancestors who, forsaking their sins,
had gone from their own country to fight for the faith they loved in
other lands. How never a Saurin for three centuries had died without a
scapular about his throat and a _De profundis_ on his lips. I told him
how my mother, coming of a rigid Protestant American family, had yet,
for love of my Irish father, embraced his faith with all the fervour of
the convert, and taught me to love it as she did herself. I told him
things, I knew not why, that had never been told out of my family
before. Whether he was interested in my facts or the soft and even flow
of my voice I cannot say, but the sweet and dangerous silence was
dispersed, and a kind of fragrant peace fell around us, cooling our
hands and quieting our hearts.
"Catholicism was the faith of my fathers, too," he said at last, "but I
suppose we fell away from it through wandering far from our own land. I
have never practised Catholicism or anything else. What religion the
love of my mother put into my heart is there still, and I recognise it
in great moments--at this moment--but oh, Lord! Where do these things
go? The clean, fair dreams of our youth, the fine visions we began to
fight with, the generosity wide as the horizon! All lost in the
scuffle, buried under the mud and scum. Do you know that tag of verse--
"`In the mud and scum of things
Something, something always sings?'
"It is something, I suppose, in the end, if we still can hear the
singing. There is some rag of grace left in us, perhaps, if we can
recognise a man like Rhodes when we see him, and, leaving all, go after
him into the wilderness to do or die for a man with bigger dreams than
our own--but it isn't much, by God! considering what dreams we ourselves
set out with!"
He seemed for the moment to have forgotten me, and to be communing with
the desolation of his own soul. I offered him no word. Something told
me then, that no woman can quite comfort a man for his lost dreams. At
the best she may be able to create others for him; but surely they are
never quite the same as those first dreams that had the freshness of the
morning on them. Even as I mourned for him his mood changed, and he
laughed with a laugh that turned him into a joyous boy.
"Listen to the river!" said he, laughing. "Listen to the jackals
chanting their dirge of the empty stomach! Smell the rolling leagues of
emptiness! Look at that beauty lying there in the grass! Oh, I tell
you, this is good enough for a man! One can get back some of the old
fair visions here. One might even go back to the `gold for silver'
creed that Whyte Melville put into some of us long ago!"
"The `gold for silver' creed?"
"Do you not know your _Bones and I_? They were the last of my
prophets."
He began to misquote, laughing a little, but without any bitterness at
all now:
"Gold for silver: old lamps for new: stack your capital in the bank that
in the end pays cent for cent--the bank of human kindness, where the
bonds are charity, help to the broken-down, sympathy with the bust-up,
protection to the weak-kneed, encouragement to the forlorn, etc; and
afterwards the inscription on your tomb or in some one's memory:
"`What he spent he had: what he saved he lost! What he gave he has.'
"Ah! what a long time since I heard those words, and believed that any
one could be such a fool as to try and live up to them!"
"How can you say that?" I said. "It is still your creed. If ever any
one protected the weak-kneed and encouraged the forlorn you have done it
to-night."
At that we both began to laugh. The shadows had fled from his brow, and
his face had no more marks on it than Dick's when he and I played
together as children. Indeed, we were both as happy as children. Later
he stepped down from the cart to feed the fires and fetch my rugs from
where they still lay on the ground. He wrapped them round me, for the
air had grown very chill, and told me to sleep. And I did, for the
heavy weariness of the small morning hours had suddenly stolen upon me.
When I awoke the stars were pale in the sky, and dawn, with pearl and
purple and amber on her feet, was treading the distant hills. A long
line of red-legged birds streaked overhead, calling to each other as
they passed. The rush of the river, which could now be plainly seen
glinting between the trees, was like music on the air. A cloak of
silver dew lay over grass and fern and the massed foliage of the bush;
and little veldt flowers were lifting their pink faces to give forth a
sweet scent. Against the faint rose and amber of the horizon a blue
spiral of smoke ascended from a newly-built fire, on which the kettle
was already boiling for breakfast. The only grim thing to be seen in
all that fair place was the long, honey-coloured body of the dead lion,
stretched upon the carpet of grass and flowers. His great shaggy head
lay amidst a mass of bright wild lilies: but already little beetles and
ants were busy about his blood-reddened mouth and open eyes. It was the
only joyless thing to be seen, but it had no power to sadden me. I,
too, was full of the glad spirit of morning, and my singing heart gave
thanks as it had never done before for the magic gift of life.