The sky-line was scarlet from east to west, and above the scarlet lay
massed bronze. The rest of the world was composed of tan-coloured
kopjes and rocks, and the road along which the Cape cart dolorously
crawled, resembled a river of dust rising in mountainous waves through
which the setting sun loomed like a blood-red heart.
It was the road from the Transvaal to Tuli, and the cart had been
travelling along it for hours, but was still many miles from the wayside
hotel where a night's rest for man and beast was waiting; and the
offside leader had gone dead-lame, while the other three horses appeared
to have lost all enthusiasm for life. On the crest of a rise, the cart
came to a standstill, and they stood with hung heads and quivering
barrels panting under their lathered harness. The driver descended; a
burly Cape boy, he had the thick mouth of a Hottentot and the hang-dog
swagger of a low-class Boer; but as far as horses were concerned he was
an angel from Heaven. When he spoke to his beasts, they lifted up their
despairing heads trembling like lovers to his voice, seeming to stand
together again with fresh resolution while he rubbed the nose of one,
slapped another's soapy flank, and once more examined the leader's foot.
Afterwards he emitted a kind of resigned grunt and stood chewing a bit
of grass he had plucked in stooping. The two men crammed in the body of
the cart with several dogs, guns, and a mass of shooting-kit looked on
grimly. They were merciful men who hated to see a beast suffer, but
they also hated the prospect of a night on the veld without provisions
or blankets. They were weary as only a day's travelling in a Cape cart
under the hot sun can make men weary; dead beat, begrimed, and hungry.
Moreover they were in a hurry to reach their destination; if they had
not been they would have waited for the weekly mail-coach instead of
chartering a special cart.
The significance of the driver's grunt was not lost on one at least of
them, a dark man burnt almost black, with hard blue eyes and a grim lip,
who looked as though with a red handkerchief on his head instead of a
slouch hat he would have made a first-class pirate. Never handsome, a
broken nose, and a deep scar which began over one unflinching eye and
finished somewhere in the roots of his short thick hair had not softened
his appearance. Yet no woman or dog (the two have strangely similar
tastes where men are concerned) would have glanced twice at the other
man (a well set up, good-looking fellow of thirty), while Dark Carden
was about. The latter, however, if he returned the glances of women
with interest, also knew something of men and horses, and because of
this he now saw very well that the leader was done for and the driver
resigned to a night on the veld. Disentangling himself from the
shooting-kit he threw himself out of the cart, and the dogs leaped after
him barking joyously.
"This is a damned look-out, Swartz!"
"Yes, Baas," assented Swartz, not unamiably. "The leader's leg is gone
for store, and the others are done up. We can't make Webb's to-night."
"How far is it?"
"About thirty miles yet."
Carden looked at the man in the cart.
"Feel inclined to tramp it, Talfourd?"
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Talfourd. "Do you?"
"Not much!" said Carden smiling. "We'll camp. After all we've got the
buck." He gave a glance to the back of the cart where a beautiful
little net buck still warm, but with the glaze of death over its eyes
was suspended. Then his keen eye travelled swiftly over the surrounding
country. The dust was subsiding, and it could be seen that they were in
a wild place of lonely kopjes and immense patches of grey-green bush.
Far off, taller, greener trees growing thick and close as moss outlined
the banks of the Crocodile River. Across the midst of the scene, round
kops and through bush, curved and curled the dusty white road that led
to Tuli, and thence upwards and onwards through Mashonaland and
Matabeleland to the North.
Swartz had begun to outspan the horses, knee-haltering each so that they
would not roam too far.
"They'll be safer than they would have been fifteen or twenty years
ago," he announced. "It was somewhere about here, on the banks of the
river that Baas Kavanagh, the great hunter, was killed by a lion."
"By George!" said Carden softly under his breath, and his blue eyes took
on a misty look that softened them curiously. He was thinking of
Francis Kavanagh, the big, lawless, lovable Irishman who hailed from his
own part of Ireland--County Carlow, and had all the magic of the west in
his voice and eyes. Kavanagh had been the hero of Carden's boyhood
dreams, the man who first inspired him with a love and longing for
Africa. His thoughts went back in a straight line to the day when, as a
college boy, he had last shaken the hand of the Explorer, famous even at
thirty for his travels and exploits. He had told Kavanagh of his
intention to come to Africa as soon as college days were over, and the
hunter had warmly urged him to come as soon as possible to join a
projected Expedition into a part of Africa that had not been penetrated.
Carden had indeed left Ireland within two years of that time, but by
then Kavanagh had died accidentally and mysteriously as men do die on
the veld, with nothing but native rumour to tell of the manner of his
death; and Carden with no friend to join, and too poor to fit out
waggons for the hunting, adventurous life that lured him, was obliged to
make for the comparatively civilised places where money was to be made.
Destiny led him to the Diamond Fields, where, gradually absorbed by an
unexpected gift in himself for finance, and fascinated by the life of
danger and excitement, he had been caught in the big money-making
whirlpool, and had stayed. Then when the current set for the Transvaal
where the Game was even keener, and the life wilder, with gold for
stakes instead of diamonds, he had gone with it, and continued to play
the great Game for all he was worth. But always, always he meant to
leave it some day, and go where his dreams called him, to the wild,
strange spots and lonely places of Africa--sometimes he seemed to hear
them calling in the night with a voice that was like a woman's voice.
But in the morning he had gone back to the Game, the money-game, which
is one of the most fascinating in the world, and was in those early Rand
days full of "battle, murder, and sudden death." If he had missed
hunting lions he had closed with many a human tiger, as his scars, hard
eyes, and grim mouth testified. Though usually the top tiger, he had
sometimes been brought down himself. Twice he had made and lost
enormous fortunes; and now, only moderately rich, but on the eve of a
great financial coup that if properly brought off would make him a
millionaire, he had suddenly thrown down the Game, and leaving the
haunts of money set out for the wilds. He had listened to the voice of
his dream at last, and more than ever it had sounded like the voice of a
woman; only sweeter than any woman's voice he had ever heard. In haste,
yet with the steady purpose of one who carries out a long-formed plan,
he had fitted up his waggons, sent them on to Tuli, and was now on his
way to join them and three friends there. His intention was to be away
for a year and a half at least, and perhaps longer.
And the end of his second day's travelling had brought him thus
unexpectedly to the place where Francis Kavanagh had died! Ah, well!
God rest him for a fine Irishman, a lawless lover, a true friend, and a
brave man! The mist cleared from Carden's eyes and his usual unfeeling,
not to say stony, expression returned. He cast another alert look over
the country, and instantly espied at some distance a broken-down cattle
kraal, and near by it the stooping figure of a Kaffir gathering _mis_.
In a straight line from there, pitched on the side of a kopje, and by
reason of its colouring hardly distinguishable from the bush about it
was a grey stone house; a light spot in front of it might have been the
flicker of a woman's dress. There was also the gleam of a fire.
"That's a farm, Swartz. Whose place can it be?"
Swartz gazed in the direction indicated, and his stolid countenance took
on a certain degree of interest.
"_Ach wot, ja_! That must be old Johannes de Beer's, the transport
rider's place, yes! I heered he had come to live about here, but he
won't be no good to us, Baas. _A slegte kerel_! Says he hates the
rooi-neks and would like to shoot them like _schelm_ wherever he meets
them on the veld."
"Ah! What part is he from?"
"The Transvaal, Baas. But he's different from other Boers. He lived in
Delagoa Bay when he was a young _kerel_ and went a trek once on a
Portuguese gunboat and learnt a lot of _slegte_ ways from these dago
sailors. I've heard that he is all covered with red and blue anchors
and animals that he had made on himself."
"Very interesting," said Carden dryly. "We may as well see what this
genius can do for us, Tal. If he won't put us up for the night we may
at least be able to buy some bread to eat with our buck. Come on."
"Gad! I'm glad to stretch my legs again," said Talfourd getting stiffly
out of the cart. Preceded by the bounding dogs they made their way to
the house. As they drew near they recognised the typical Boer farm--a
low sprawling building with high _stoep_ and verandah. The white thing
Carden had noticed was, as he had supposed, the dress of a woman sitting
on a wooden bench by the door. About thirty yards from the house was a
fire with a large three-legged pot over it, and another woman, a Kaffir
with a shrewd withered face squatted beside it stirring with a long
metal spoon. A blue vapour rose from the pot and the scent of roasting
coffee beans was on the air. One lonely, sinister-looking tree grew by
itself to the left of the stoep and a baboon chained to it barked
hoarsely at them as they approached. The old Kaffir regarded them with
unfriendly eyes, but the woman in the verandah rose and came down the
steps and they saw that she was a young girl, slim and straight in a
pink print dress with her face far back in a print sunbonnet. All that
could be distinguished in the failing light was that like most Boer
girls she had a fine complexion. Carden took off his hat and shook
hands with her in the Boer fashion, addressing her in good Dutch.
"_Dag Jefrouw_! Is this Johannes de Beer's place?"
"_Jah Mynheer_. This is _Greis-Kopje_ [Grey-hill] farm," she answered.
Her voice was surprisingly soft and melodious, and it seemed to Carden
that he had heard one like it before.
"Our cart has broken down, and we want to know if Mr de Beer can put us
up for the night. Perhaps we could speak to him?"
"He has gone to Pretoria," said the girl. "There is only Grietje,
Yacop, and me here."
"We cannot do anything for you," said the old woman who had approached,
and stood by with the spoon in her hand. "This is not an hotel, and the
old Baas would be angry if we took you in." She scowled at them, but
when she saw Swartz who had come up behind them her features slightly
relaxed, and she gave him a curt nod.
"This is pretty tough," said Carden, putting his hat on the back of his
head in an absent-minded way and laughing a little. "Well! We'd better
go back to our buck, I suppose, and make a fire in the open. We can get
some sleep anyhow."
But the girl suddenly began to speak. Her speech had a queer little
twist to it that made it unusual, but the ugly Dutch fashion of clipping
the ends of words betrayed that she was colonial and jarred Carden's
fine ear.
"Oh, no," she said excitedly, "Grietje is mad. You mustn't go away. Of
course we will do all we can for you. Come inside. Don't mind Grietje.
Would you like some coffee?"
"Wouldn't we?" said Talfourd. "And if we could only have some soap and
water--"
Carden said nothing but stared keenly into the girl's "cappie" trying to
see her face. She led the way indoors and they followed her, Talfourd
limping with weariness. But fatigue was gone from Carden's face.
Something in the way the girl walked and in the lines of the slim young
figure in the faded print dress refreshed him like wine.
From the verandah they entered a large low room remarkably unlike the
usual _Eat-kammer_ of a Boer house. It is true there were guns in the
corner, karosses on the furniture, and skins on the floor; but the
things were arranged with taste, and there were flowers about; a big jar
of wild jasmine on the chimney-piece with long fronds trailed upwards
over a fine pair of koodoo horns nailed near the ceiling, and on the
table a native bowl full of leaves and bright wild geraniums.
"What a capital room!" said Talfourd full of enthusiasm; but Carden
always and ever remained silent.
"If you will sit down I will see about a room for you," said the girl,
in her soft voice and bad accent. They protested that they wished to
give no trouble, but she opened a door and disappeared, returning after
a matter of five minutes to lead the way to a bedroom which astonished
them even more than the _Eat-kammer_ had done. It contained only one
bed, a very white and nice one, but there was a sofa, large and
comfortable-looking, covered by a beautiful leopard kaross. Rough dark
tables had white calico cloths edged with narrow lace upon them. A
white wooden shelf on the wall held a few books and again there were
flowers everywhere.
"If you do not mind using my room to wash and rest in until supper
time," said the girl, "there will be two rooms got ready for you by
to-night. Please lie down and rest if you wish to."
She left them and they stood staring at the bed with its white
counterpane. It was so simple and dainty, so obviously a girl's bed.
Talfourd threw himself on the sofa.
"H'm!" said Carden. "I suppose I've got to camp on the floor? It won't
be the first time anyway."
In the meantime he poured out water in the white enamel bowl and got rid
of some of the dust under which he was hidden. Afterwards he wiped up
with his handkerchief the splashes he had made, and left everything as
dainty as before.
"Be careful to leave the wash-hand stand as you find it Talfourd," he
said, with something very like command in his voice. But there was no
response from the weary Talfourd who was sleeping like a child. Carden
smiled and looked about him for wherewith to do his hair, but when he
saw the little wooden brush and white bone comb he made shift to groom
his back head with the flat of his hand, after which he carefully hid
the brush and comb on the principle that what was too good for him was
certainly too good for Talfourd. He had discarded his tie in the heat
of the day, and several buttons of his thin silk shirt were undone
exposing a tanned, muscular throat; he carefully fastened them up, and
though they came undone again a moment or two later he did not notice it
so concentrated was he on his thoughts, whistling softly under his
breath while he moved about the room. When he had quite finished he
roused Talfourd, told him to get a bustle on him, and opening the door
went back to the living-room.
Candles had been lighted, and the table laid with a spotless white
cloth, cups and saucers, tin plates, bone knives and forks, and a large
loaf of the brown meal bread known as _simmels broot_. A fine savoury
smell of riet buck crisping and singeing on red embers came from outside
where Swartz and Grietje, now reinforced by the old Kaffir who had been
picking up _mis_, were officiating over the fire. Carden sat down by
the open window, and presently a door from another part of the house
opened and the girl came in, carrying a pot of coffee. She had taken
off her cappie and by the flickering candlelight Carden saw the smoky
black hair growing above her brows like the glossy spread wings of a
raven; the bar of golden freckles that lay across her nose; her silky
curved mouth; dewy, mist-coloured eyes that like all eyes that have
looked long on great spaces were full of dreams of forests and rivers,
and seemed to reflect the shadows of far blue mountains. God had been
good to her. She was lovely as a flower.
She sat down on the other side of the table and she and Carden looked at
each other. The pupils of the man's eyes expanded, giving a curious
intensity to his glance, and something in hers seemed to leap out like a
swift radiant spirit to him and become his. She gave a deep sigh and
her lids closed, as though some living vital thing gone out of her, she
were dead, or asleep. For an instant she stayed so, then rose quietly
and went out of the room. Carden breathing heavily like a man who has
been running, and with a rushing sound in his ears, heard her speaking
to the servants at the fire, and a moment later Talfourd came in with
the bustle he had been told to acquire.
The girl sat with them at dinner, serving them daintily to the luscious
venison, and cutting big slices of the _simmels broot_ that tasted like
wheat with the heat of the sun still in it. Later she poured them out
cups of the coffee whose beans had so lately been roasted over Grietje's
fire. She had little strong hands burnt a pale brown by the sun.
Afterwards the two men walked up and down smoking in the moonlight that
was bright as daylight only softer and more tender. It transformed the
walls of the mean farmhouse so that they seemed to be made of alabaster
with the shadowy branches of the lonely tree etched in ebony upon them.
In the distance the broken-down kraal looked a gracious ruin. A little
wind had risen and drifting wraiths of cloud gave the impression that
the moon was racing across the sky with one lone silver star following
her deathlessly. When they came back to the verandah they found the
girl sitting on the wooden bench, and with her permission they sat
beside her.
"By Jove! What a night!" said Talfourd, and feeling well after a rest
and an excellent meal began in a very fine tenor voice to sing:
Have you forgotten, love, so soon,
that night, that lovely night of June,
When down the tide so idly dreaming,
we floated where the moon lay gleaming?
My heart was weary and oppressed,
by some sweet longing unconfessed,
When like an answer to my sighing,
your hand in mine was gently lying.
When he had finished, the girl said in a low tremulous voice, "Sing
again!"
So he sang Tosti's _Adieu_; and then Schubert's _Serenade_. Such
sounds, such words had perhaps never before been heard in the vicinity
of the little farmhouse. Yet who can tell! Carden's Irish imagination
evolved the idea that many beautiful things must have been spoken and
thought before the flower-like girl by his side had been born. He
stirred a little on the old bench at the thought, and the girl stirred
too, putting her hand down beside her as if to rise. Carden did not see
her movement, but by some strange instinct his hand went down too and
found hers there, and finding it took it. She left it for an instant in
his, then tried to draw it away; but he held it closely as he always
held things he once took a grip on, whether they belonged to him or not,
and she left it there. So they sat listening hand in hand while
Talfourd sang his last song to them.
I want no star in Heaven to guide me,
I need no sun, no moon to shine,
While I have you, dear love, beside me,
While I know that you are mine.
I need not fear whate'er betide me,
for straight and sweet my pathway lies,
I want no star in Heaven to guide me,
while I gaze in your dear eyes.
I hear no birds at twilight calling,
I catch no music in the streams,
While your golden words are falling
While you whisper in my dreams.
Every sound of joy enthralling,
speaks in your dear voice alone
While I hear your fond lips calling,
while you speak to me, my own.
Again the girl's strong little hand fluttered like a bird under his, but
he held it fast. He liked things that tried to flutter away and escape
from him.
I want no kingdom where thou art, love,
I want no throne to make me blest
While within thy tender heart, love,
Thou wilt take my heart to rest.
Kings must play a weary part,
love, thrones must ring with wild alarms,
But the kingdom of my heart,
love, lies within thy loving arms.
At last, Talfourd proposed to go to bed, but first he wanted to know
what the plans were for the morning. Swartz was called up and a
discussion held. There were no horses to be had at the farm, for it
appeared that old de Beer had taken away the only two he possessed.
Swartz's plan was to take the best horse of the four, ride on to Webb's
and bring back a fresh span in the evening; and Carden thought it a good
plan, if Miss de Beer would allow them to encroach so far upon her
hospitality.
"We'll earn our dinner, if there is any shooting to be got about here,"
he said.
"Oh, yes; plenty of red-wing partridge, stem buck, and duiker." She was
standing opposite him now, having escaped in the general movement.
"Much _matatendela_ also," volunteered the old native man Yacop who had
come up to take part in the indaba. Carden laughed.
"They'll do for you, Tal; guinea-fowl need a sprinting athlete after
them, and you are younger than I am." He looked very boyish and happy
as he spoke.
"All the more reason why I should go to bed at once," said Talfourd.
"Good-night, Miss de Beer, and many, many thanks for pouring oil and
wine upon us the way you have done. You have been a good Samaritan
indeed!"
"No; it was you who found me by the roadside," she answered with a grave
little smile, but she looked at Carden only. He lingered behind with
her, hoping she would come and sit beside him again, but she did not
move from where she stood leaning against the verandah pole. Swartz and
Yacop had gone back to squat by the fire, and the former had produced
the inevitable concertina that every Cape boy knows how to manipulate.
Carden and the girl stayed listening to his melancholy strains, though
it seemed to the man that it was the surging of waves in his ears that
he heard, and little drums in all his pulses beating a call to arms.
Dark Carden had been loved many times and loved carelessly back, but
never had he met the woman he wanted to take and keep for ever in his
life. He had an idea that such a woman existed, in Ireland, if
anywhere. Certainly he had long ago decided that he would never marry
any but a woman from his own land; and she must be beautiful,
accomplished, well-bred, and virtuous at that. Nothing but the best was
good enough for Dark Carden. But he was in no great hurry to find this
ideal wife. Life and women had treated him too well for him to be in
any hurry to change his ways and curtail his liberty. In the meantime
he had put away all such thoughts for awhile.
The spell of the wilderness was on him and it was stronger than any
spell he had ever felt. Passing strange to find this flower of a girl
blossoming here on the very edge of the wild! and more than passing
sweet to linger awhile, sharing the moonlight night with her, stirred by
the forbidden magic of her girlhood. For girls to him represented
forbidden fruit. Everything else in the orchard might be reached after,
or climbed for, by those who like himself had the nerve and taste for
the pastime. But girls, however ripe and inviting, however close they
leaned to the gathering hand, were not for this orchard thief. It was
the one clause in his code concerning women which he had never broken.
True he had not been greatly tempted, for girls had never held any
extraordinary allure for him. The more astonishing then to find himself
so troubled by the sight and sound of this one. When he thought of that
something which had come winging its way from her eyes to his, and of
how her hand had fluttered under his and then lain still, content, the
blood tingled through his veins; he was glad to be alive.
A longing to hear the voice which charmed him in spite of the jarring
Dutch accent made him break the spell of silence that had fallen on
them.
"I do not even know your name," he said in the gentle way he had with
women.
"Frances," she answered as gently. "Frances de Beer."
"But you are not Dutch?" he said, though it mattered little to him if
she declared herself Siamese or a native of Timbuctoo. The important
thing was that she was _she_, a beautiful, alluring, and forbidden
thing.
"No; my mother was an Englishwoman who married a Boer. I am the love
child of an Irishman."
A wave of astonishment mingled with pity surged through him at her
strange words, and all the tragedy they implied both for her and the
mother who had borne her in suffering and sorrow.
And now he knew why this girl's eyes were deep and full of dreams, why
her hair framed her face like the spread wings of a raven, why her mouth
was curved to the shape of a kiss incarnate.
She was the child of two eternal things: Love and Sorrow.
He sat very still thinking. The pity of it all took hold of his heart
and an impulsive longing rose in him to do something to set things
aright as they should be, for this beautiful child. Yet the sins of the
fathers! Who can pay for them but the flesh and blood of those who made
the debt? Who can set aright what has been wrong from the first? What
place in the world was there for this love flower of the desert?
Supposing he, Wilberforce St. John Carden were to marry her! The tingle
came into his veins again at the thought, and a song sang in his blood.
But his brain knew that it was a fool's idea. What place in his life
for the simple untaught child?
It never occurred to him to doubt whether she would marry him. He was
too trained a student in the school of women's looks not to know what
gift she had given him with her eyes whether consciously or
unconsciously, at their first encounter. And every instinct urged him
to lay hot impulsive hands on it, to take and keep it, as he had taken
and kept her hand. But his brain remained cool and clear. He had his
code to keep. The girl was impossible to marry. That fact put her out
of his reach definitely.
He sighed deeply. He did not know that he sighed, but the girl heard
him. It seemed to him that he had come a long way, and passed through
some extraordinarily poignant ordeal. As a matter of fact it was only a
minute or two since she had last spoken that the girl spoke again,
continuing her narrative.
"My mother lived in this house with her Boer husband who was very cruel
to her. The only pleasure she had was to sit here sometimes and watch
the road. One day when her husband was away in the Transvaal an
Irishman came along the road. He was a hunter and an adventurer, and my
mother said there was a magic in him that no woman could resist--unless
_she were of his own country_; for all others he was one of those who
_must_ be followed when they call, and I think he must have been, for
one so sweet and good as my mother to have forgotten all for him. He
took her away to his waggons, and they were going away together to the
Interior but a lion killed him over there by the river."
"What was his name?" asked Carden, though he already knew. He knew now
whose musical voice had echoed up old memories when first he heard her
speak.
"Francis Kavanagh. My mother told me when she was dying, but no one
else has ever known, except Grietje--and now you."
"Why do you tell me?" he asked, though he knew the answer to that too.
Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little
foot-note to her tragic tale.
"She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his." A moment
later she added:
"But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer."
"Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel
to your mother?" Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange
fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.
"I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my
husband."
It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars
looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful
erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.
He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon
him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and
forgetfulness.
"Ah, yes--your husband," he said in a vague way, like a man whose
thoughts are elsewhere.
"He used to pass this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought
he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in
the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to
mind him well, and he is not unkind."
Later she said:
"He bought this farm and came to live here because it has always been my
home--and I like to watch the road."
He did not ask her why. The boys by the fire got up and shuffled away
to their blankets. The old woman was long since gone. These two were
left alone in the silence and the moonlight.
"Did you think that someone for you would come along the road some day?"
he asked at last, coming very near her and looking at her mouth. After
a moment she answered with a little sobbing sigh in her throat:
"But I must always remember the promise I made to my mother."
He came close to her and gripped her hands; his eyes full of hunger, and
longing, and caresses searched hers; his lips were almost on her lips.
"_What was the promise_?"
A wave of colour passed over her face and her eyes darkened with tears.
"I think you know," she cried miserably.
"You must break it," he said firmly. "You are mine--you must come with
me."
"No," she said crying, "I cannot."
Her face bright and pale in the white light was like the face of a brave
boy looking on death. The heat and madness went out of Carden. He took
her hand very gently and kissed it, then he walked away into the night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
But out on the hot scented veld he thought of the gifts in her eyes and
madness came upon him again. A promise! Can the dead bind the living
with promises? Can a sinner make a saint out of her child by laying an
injunction on her young soul! He laughed loud and bitterly in the
night, and the birds stirred in the trees at so strange a sound. A
"bush baby" curled in some distant clump of mimosa began to wail, and
the dog that had followed his master from the farm whined uneasily. He
had walked far and long. The swift rush of the river was close at hand,
and the whereabouts of the farm could only be guessed by one little
faint yellow light that streaked across the distance. Someone was
keeping vigil.
Somewhere near this spot Kavanagh had met the end so fitting to his wild
adventurous life. _Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword_! The
lawless had fallen victim to the lawless! But he had found his own
before the end came, was Carden's thought.
What did Death matter when one had drunk to the dregs the cup Life holds
to the lips of lovers? A good enough way to die too, by God! A short
sharp struggle with the odds against him--then, very swiftly, the end!
_Married to a Boer_! Those dewy dreaming eyes that were of his land--
that black hair that winged above her forehead like the wings of a
raven--that ardent spirit that had leaped from her eyes to his--married
to a Boer! And he, Wilberforce Carden, who had always taken what he
wanted from life, wrenched it from men's hands and women's lips, _he_
must be denied and go empty away!
He forgot now that when he thought her free he had successfully resisted
the idea of marrying her as a solution to the problem, and forgot too
that her accent jarred on him. Remembered only the gifts her eyes had
for him--and thought that with her, out under the stars he could forget
the world into which she would not fit. And it was no good. She was
married to a Boer!
Raging he bit on the empty pipe in his mouth, and blood came into his
eyes so that he could no longer see clearly, but went stumbling on his
way, raging, cursing. He would have liked to have that Boer who was
"not unkind" to her under his hands out there in the veld. He flung
himself like a boy face down on the earth. After a little while, lying
there, a quietness fell upon him. The cool brain that had out-finessed
many another cool brain woke up and began to consider the situation from
the point of view of the man who does not mean to lose, whatever the
game may be. He lay so still that his dog who sat uneasily by him
thought he must be asleep and from time to time gently licked his ear.
But Dark Carden was not asleep. He was fighting a battle with his
better self; with such rags and remnants of a conscience as survived in
him; with a last unbroken moral code. At last he got up and retraced
his steps quietly and firmly like a man with a purpose. His eyes had
grown a little harder. The battle was lost.
Dawn was not more than an hour or two off when he returned to the farm.
The stars were darkening, and the indescribable freshness of morning
could be felt in the air. Shadows under tree and bush were stirring as
if for flight. A wedge-shaped flock of wild duck passed, honking
mournfully, towards the east.
The light in the farmhouse had gone out; but as he came quietly to the
stoep he heard from a window that stood ajar a sound as of a woman
softly and brokenly weeping. A little while he stood there, listening,
then gently he pushed the window further open and stepped into the room.
The soft and broken weeping ceased.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They stayed three days and nights at Grey-Kopje farm. Talfourd and
Carden went out shooting daily, returning at meal times, laden with
small game to restock the larder. Always after dinner the three sat on
the stoep as on the first night, and Talfourd sang while the other two
listened. Swartz had brought back fresh horses on the evening of the
first day, but Carden found fault with them and made him return for
others. On the second day, a native carrier sent out with instructions
to search the road for Carden brought a letter from the men waiting in
Tuli who wanted to know what delayed him and why he did not materialise?
Talfourd wanted to know too, but knew better than to ask. Carden was a
man who took badly to any kind of ill-timed inquiry.
On the fourth morning, Swartz had not returned, but Talfourd with the
clear eye of a man who has accomplished nine hours of sound sleep with
nothing on his conscience, glanced out of the window and noted Carden
picking out of the cart things he would not be likely to need before
reaching Tuli. "Hurray! we're going to make a move at last!" he said to
himself, and made haste to perform his toilette.
At the breakfast table, it struck him that Carden looked older than a
man of thirty-four ought to look, however swift has been the pace.
However, he kept his observations to himself. It transpired that
Carden's plan was that he and Talfourd should start for Webb's
immediately after breakfast, leaving the cart to be brought on later by
Swartz when he turned up with horses.
"If we don't meet him we can send on someone else for it."
"How are we going to get there?" said Talfourd looking up in surprise.
"I suppose we can foot thirty miles without endangering our lives?"
answered Carden with something so very like a sneer and so very unlike
his usual impassive serenity that Talfourd was even more surprised.
"Oh, all right, my dear fellow," he said pleasantly. "It's your picnic.
I only wanted to know."
Mrs de Beer sat listening without comment, but she grew very pale.
Afterwards Talfourd went out to get the guns ready, and Carden remained
sitting at the table.
"You are going?" she said looking away from him with eyes that were no
longer dewy but dry and brilliant like the sky above the Karoo in days
of drought.
"Yes," he answered in a business-like voice. "I must go." He got up
and looked out of the window for a moment, then walked back to the
table.
"My friends are waiting for me at Tuli."
"Yes," she said.
"I cannot break faith with them."
"No." Her mouth was twisted like the mouth of a tortured child, but her
eyes remained bright and dry.
Carden's faithless heart smote him.
"For God's sake, Frances--" he muttered, taking her hands. "I will stay
if you wish it"--But his heart was already away with his friends and the
waiting miles beyond. She read the truth in his eyes. No word _now_ of
her coming with him! Only of his staying--if she wished it!
She looked into his eyes a long aching moment, then turned away with one
word:
"Good-bye."
A few hours later all was as it had been at the Grey farm. Even the
cart was gone, for Swartz had brought four sturdy mules and driven it
away. Under the lone tree Xsosa, the baboon, sat silent, watching the
kopjes with fierce wistful eyes. Silence everywhere, except in one room
of the house whence came the sound as of a woman softly and brokenly
weeping.
Once some Kaffir words spoken savagely yet with a kind of crooning
tenderness came through an open window.
"See you now what you have got from watching the road!--a knife in your
heart. Did not old Grietje warn you? Hush arme _kindje_--weep not."
But the soft and broken weeping went on.
Across the arid flats of Bechuanaland went Carden with company picked
for its excellence in fair weather or foul; but sometimes on the
fairest, fullest day a pang of loneliness would shoot through him,
darkening his mental horizon and isolating him from his fellows. The
Forest of Somabula gave splendid sport, but in its deep silences he
sometimes thought he could hear the sound of a woman weeping. And all
the water sweeping down the violet black precipices of Victoria Falls
and twirling lazily in the subtle olive green pool below could not wash
out the remembrance of a mouth that was twisted like the mouth of a
little tortured child. But his conscience had great sleeping qualities.
Also, he had not been using his will for ten years to fight and "down"
other men without strengthening its sinews for his own service. He
_willed_ not to remember certain things, therefore in time will knocked
memory out, or at least put it into Chancery where it could no longer
hurt him until he released it, or it proved strong enough to release
itself.
After that the trip was as complete a success for him, as it had been
from the beginning to the others.
Everything favoured them. Sport was extraordinarily good, boys
reliable, mules and oxen in fine condition, weather unfailingly serene.
The objective point of the trip was Lake Rudolph in British East Africa,
via British Central and German territory. The route had been picked and
pored over long before the start and nothing intervened to spoil the
original plans. With an almost uncanny smoothness the days unclosed,
rolled themselves out, and closed again, full to the brim with event and
adventure, leaving no spare moment in which to remember the life left
hundreds of miles behind; thereafter swiftly transforming themselves
into weeks and months, until more than half the year was done.
Then one lovely moonlight night on the shore of Lake Bangwelo memory
without comprehensible rhyme or reason came out of Chancery and stayed
with Carden. And thereafter it came regularly. Will had no power over
it any longer. Like a little spectral child that was afraid to be out
alone it came oftenest when the moon was sinking and the dawn only an
hour or two off. Nearly always its lips were twisted with pain, and on
dark nights he could hear it softly weeping. But there were nights when
it was not a sad ghost and these were hardest to bear. Sometimes it
threw a soft warm arm round his throat and woke him very tenderly
because the dawn was near and he must go. At other times it would leave
a kiss fresh as a flower across his lips and he would fling out his arms
and wake with a curse to find them empty. But always in some wise or
another the little ghost kept vigil with him.
Then slowly, little by little, he began to hate things, and things
repaid him as they always do, by going wrong. Boys began to run away
when they were most needed, donkeys took to dying (the ox-waggons had
long been left behind), carriers got fever and died, and those engaged
in their place ofttimes scooted leaving packs by the wayside. Big game,
after long tracking, escaped though wounded, in the end. One of the
other fellows went down with malaria and passed out. The rest of them
grew morose and sick of the whole business. Some of them began to talk
of the affairs that awaited their attention down-country. But Carden
meant to bring back a white rhino from the shores of the Rudolph and he
said so, though God knew that he too was sick of the business. Not a
night now that he did not lie down with maledictions in his heart; not a
morning when he rose to a world glittering with frost crystals that
looked as though they had been shaken from some giant Christmas card
(everywhere except on the dark spots where sleepers had lain) but his
first thought was to curse the day he was born and jibe at every good
thing life had bestowed on him.
The year was two months short of completion when the other men began to
drop off. Le Breton and Senier took a dozen boys and walked for
Mozambique. Vincent was dead. Talfourd, the last to go, joined at
Tabora another man who was making his way to Daar-es-Saalem. Carden was
left alone with his determination to finish at Lake Rudolph or die in
the attempt. The determination was undermined at nights by a spectre
which whispered him alluring invitations to embark at Mombassa for the
Cape and thence from Petersburg to take the Tuli road. But by day he
was far from the intention of doing anything of the kind, though after
being away nearly a year and a half he had very good reasons for
hastening his return. Occasional batches of letters that reached him at
prearranged posts notified an urgency for his presence on the Rand, but
it had grown to be a matter almost of defiance now that he should make
Rudolph, though who or what it was he defied he omitted to specify, even
to himself.
And he _did_ make Rudolph though it took him three months to do it and
another three months to get back. When he arrived at Mombassa with his
white rhino trophies, he was looking a good deal the worse for wear, and
it may be computed that his system contained more than one man's fair
share of malarial and tropical trypanosomes. But he was once more
immune to spectral memories at least and so far master of his destiny as
to be able with a firm mind to arrange his affairs down south by letter
and cable and take ship for Europe instead of the Cape. Via the East
Coast he reached Egypt and made a month's stay; then to Marseilles and
several months loitering on the Mediterranean shores. But his objective
point now was Ireland and by land and water he came at last to that
fair, green land. For one of the conclusions he had arrived at during
the lonely later months of his expedition was that man was not meant to
live alone and that the hour had struck for him to find the beautiful,
accomplished, and well-born girl who doubtless awaited him somewhere in
his own country. Ireland indeed is the home of many such, and in and
out of Dublin during a specially gay dancing and hunting season he found
no scarcity of the usual supply. But none were for him. Always, even
in the most charming, something lacked, some little, vital, essential
thing--he knew not what, and did not wish to analyse, and never stayed
to find out. Once or twice, when he lingered in curiosity, the keys of
his castle were almost out of his hands, for the dark face of Dark
Carden had not lost its lure for women, and many a beautiful eye grew
brighter for his coming and more than one society beauty made up her
mind that it would be "rather good fun" to go to South Africa as this
adventurer's bride. But Carden escaped always, and with a sense of
breathlessness and relief that was extraordinary considering the nature
of his quest.
Then one bleak morning in late autumn the nostalgia of Africa took him
by the heart and before that day was out he was shaking the dust of
Ireland from his feet with his face set for Southampton where the
Union-Castle liners turn their noses towards the Southern Cross.
One of the first faces to greet him at the Cape Town Docks was
Talfourd's. Carden fell upon him as upon a long-lost brother. It
seemed to him there was no other man in the world he would so gladly
have met. He was conscious that Tal and he shared an experience that
was secret to the rest of his friends. Wherefore he could not disguise
his pleasure at the encounter. Tal was hooked in to come and lunch at
the City Club, and later to dine at the Mount Nelson. For the moment
there was no one like Tal. The latter indeed found himself somewhat
intrigued by this unwonted demonstrativeness. Carden seemed to him to
be queerly changed since first they had met some five or six years past.
When after dinner that night, out among the trim walks and aromatic
bushes of the garden, they fell into reminiscences he voiced something
of his thought. He was an introspective fellow with a good deal of
sentiment in his composition, and the wine and cigars had been
excellent.
"You were always a hard nut to crack, Carden, but the gayest chap on
earth, and even the fellows you knocked out liked you for it afterwards.
But Africa changed you as it changes us all. You went queer on that
trek of ours up north and I never could make it out. I've thought a lot
about it and, do you know, I always dated the change in you back to that
little farm we put up at on the road to Tuli--_Greis-Kopje_--remember
the place?"
Carden gloomed at him. Did he remember it? By God!
"Strange," continued Talfourd, "I ran into our old driver Swartz at
Pretoria the other day. He has got regular work on the Zeederburg Coach
Line, and is up and down the Tuli Road. He told me a queer thing about
_Greis-Kopje_. It appears that old de Beer, the fellow who owned the
place, disappeared about a year ago and has never been seen since. He
was the husband of that pretty girl we thought was his daughter at
first. You remember?"
Carden was busy lighting another cigar, his face mask-like except for
the eyes which burnt like points of blue fire.
"The supposition is that either he was drowned crossing the Crocodile
River or else a stray lion got him."
"And Mrs de Beer?"
"Still lives on there with old Grietje and Yacop."
"Let's go in," said Carden abruptly. "I have to be up at daybreak and
get through a lot of business. I leave by the mail at eleven."
"What a fellow you are! Where for? Johannesburg?"
"Yes." And from thence to the Tuli Road, fast as hoof and wheel could
carry him. Now he knew what ailed him, and would shout it from the
mountain-tops but that it was too sweet and dear a secret to be shared
with all the world--_yet_. Now he knew what anodyne to seek for healing
of his raging wound, what drink for solace of his burning torment. By
the broad, dusty road to Tuli ran a stream of clear, cold water and his
parched soul was sick to drink from it. Memory suddenly sculptured in
his brain a face that all Ireland had not been able to duplicate. Yet
all Ireland lay in the dewy, passionate eyes of Frances de Beer, and for
him all home, all peace, all future. Now, at last, he acknowledged what
he had always known, and gave himself up to the thought of what he had
denied so long: she who had given all asked nothing, and let him go
without a reproach. He knew now that he had been a knave and a fool and
that for the last two and a half years he had been paying with torment
of body and soul for it. And still was paying. When he remembered her
and all she had been to him--his loneliness was a still small torment
that pierced and tortured him like a dart in his vitals.
Throughout that night he paced his room, or stood at his open window,
staring out at the silvered slopes of Table Mountain but getting no
peace of her stern eternal loveliness. Pacing, and staring, in the
small hours, he went over every detail of that brief sweet-madness on
the Tuli Road, remembering her face, her voice, her eyes, and the soul
of her that had leaped from them to him. And, as always, the thing that
stirred him most was the memory of her fluttering hand under his that
first night when they sat on the stoep listening to Talfourd's singing.
He remembered how a mist had come over his eyes at the feel of it; his
heart had seemed to turn over in his breast; it was as though he had
trapped something he had lain in wait for all his life; all the tyranny
and tenderness of his nature had been roused in that moment, with
something of a boy's elation when he has caught with his own hands some
beautiful wild thing that he has watched for long.
It all came back, like a dream of delirium, only more vividly. He
re-lived the moment when a passing chivalrous impulse had bade him kiss
her hands and leave her, and that dark hour on the veld when he had
fought a battle with his baser self and lost. Then that other mad hour
of stolen sweetness, when he had groped for her in the luminous darkness
of her room and found first the little, pale, strong hands that smelled
like apple blossom--then her lips! He recalled her tears and little
broken cries, and how his lips had crushed them down and kissed them
away! How all too soon the dawn had come! And with this memory came
pain and shame. Bitter shame that he had so debased her whom he loved.
She who had only wished to do right, but found her heart and his will
too strong for her. Love anointed his cynical eyes at last and he saw
and understood the hearts of women as he had never done before, and knew
at last how unworthy were most men, and he with them, of the sacrifices
women make on the altar of love. Hot, unaccustomed moisture that seemed
to be dragged torturingly from the very depths of his being seared his
eyes. He flung himself on his bed, ashamed at first of his tears, then
of his acts, and, at last, ashamed of his life.
"God forgive me!" he thought. "It shall never happen again."
But God's forgiveness was taken for granted and he thought less about
that than of the sweetness the future promised.
It was not many nights before his feet were set upon the long white
dusty road that wound by kop and kloof and vlei to the haven of his
heart's desire. He had given orders for everything he possessed on the
Rand to be sold, and did not mean to return to the Golden City. Waggons
were being fitted up and provisioned in Pretoria for his use, and would
follow him. For the veld was to be his home now once and for all. He
was sick of money-making, politics, and all the little games and
intrigues of finance, of artificial women, and conventions. He meant to
have done with these things and forget on the brown, kind breast of
Mother Africa that he had ever known them.
And _she_ was coming with him; the one woman who fitted into the wild
places his soul loved; the woman with dreams of stretching plains and
forests in her eyes. Ah! that was a woman with whom to seek the blue
mountains, to camp under the stars and forget cities and sins! It was
well that old de Beer had disappeared, for Dark Carden meant to take
what was his own at last, and swore that all the de Beers in the world,
dead or alive, should not prevent him. He was ready to defy Heaven and
Hell to prevent him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
His cart drew near the line of grey kopjes at the end of a long day's
run. From his outspan the distance was too great for any but his own
keen eyes to distinguish the little ramshackle farm.
Everything was as it had been nearly two and a half years before. The
dust lay thick on the sage-green bush, and once more a blood-red sun was
sinking to rest behind the horizon of massed scarlet and bronze. No one
had mended the broken-down kraal, and on a far off rise a figure that
might have been Yacop was picking up dried cow-dung. There was
something very like the smell of roasting coffee on the air.
Carden was glad to be alive with a fierce gladness. He felt a boy
again, and looked it, as he strode across the sunburnt grass. Yes!
there was Grietje crouching by the fire. And a white gown flickered on
the stoep as long ago it had flickered a signal to his heart. She was
waiting for him there, as he had always known that she would be waiting.
The baboon barked furiously as he approached. It was not chained to the
tree any longer, but to a post by the side of the house. At the sound
of the creature's hoarse voice the old woman by the fire rose up. She
did not speak when she saw that it was Carden, only looked at him with
strange little old eyes, dark as the unexplored depths of a secret well.
When he had passed she stood a moment gazing after him, then shuffled
silently away to the back of the house.
He went forward to the stoep and slowly mounted the crumbling stone
steps. The old woman's gaze had vaguely disturbed him. Or was it
something in the motionless silence of the woman who sat gravely
observing him, that chilled the riot of his veins?
She wore her little sunbonnet cappie as of old, her face so far back in
it that nothing could be seen but two great eyes. It seemed strange to
him that she did not rise, nor put out her hand in welcome. Only sat
there observing him sombrely.
"Frances," he said gently, "I have come back."
She sighed. After a moment she spoke from her cappie. But it was not a
voice that he remembered at all.
"You should not have done that, Dark Carden."
He stood very still. It seemed as if something ice cold had entered his
breast and was slowly approaching his heart. His voice jerked a little
when he spoke again, very humbly.
"I should have come long ago."
"Yes; you should have come long ago." There was something relentless
and fateful in the sound of that voice, so soft and stern. "Now, it is
too late."
"No," he said violently. "It is not. I have come to take you away and
never let you go again. I cannot do without you any longer."
She gave one of her strange terrible sighs, and spite of his firm words
he felt the cold thing creep a little nearer to his heart.
"Where is your husband, Frances?" God knew what made him ask. He cared
little enough for the whereabouts of old de Beer. Yet the answer was
extraordinarily disconcerting.
"He is over there." She made a gesture and he jerked his head round
abruptly. There was nothing to be seen in the direction her hand had
indicated. Nothing but the lonely tree. He looked at her piercingly
then, with a new inquiry in his glance, and a creeping, clutching fear
for her mind.
"I heard that he was dead," he said slowly.
"Yes, it is true. He is dead," she answered quietly, looking past him
to where she had pointed. Spite of himself he looked once more in the
same direction. Again nothing but the tree.
But something else arrested his eye. Grietje had come back and was
squatting by the fire, and at her side, playing in the dust, was the
toddling dumpy figure of a little child. It must have come round with
Grietje from the back of the house. Certainly it had not been there
before.
"Whose child is that?" he asked in surprise. And the stern, still voice
from the sunbonnet answered him:
"It is your child and mine."
"My God!"
After a long time he said again, brokenly, with bitter self-accusation.
"My God! Frances, forgive me! I did not know. How was I to know?"
She did not answer.
"Can you ever forgive me?"
"Yes, as I hope for forgiveness," she said.
There was a dull solemnity in her tone and she did not touch the hand he
stretched out. Unobserved by him the little toddling child had come up
and now flung itself against its mother's knees hiding its face in her
lap. It swung a little sunbonnet in its hand and by the fading light he
could see the softly curling hair, black as his own, and the outline of
a small tender face. He knew that her child and his could not but be
beautiful, and stood staring there, trembling, the magic of fatherhood
on him and an urgent longing to catch the little creature in his arms.
Suddenly it turned to him, and in the same moment the mother raised a
pale, warning finger and laid it across her lips in token that he must
be silent. So he did not cry out at what he saw.
The little face that promised such flower-like beauty had been
transformed into a thing of horror by a piece of diabolically clever
tattooing. A monstrous purple and red spider sprawled its bloated form
and lobster-like claws upon the delicate rose-leaf skin. Neither
tarantula nor octopus, it possessed all the worst attributes of each.
It's puffed-out body crouched in the centre of the face upon the nose
and cheek bones, and the child's bright violet eyes seemed the staring
strange eyes of the beast. Its claws sprayed and curled about the
mouth, reached out to the ears, and lost themselves in tendrils of hair
upon the forehead! The thing seemed too hideous in conception to be the
work of anyone but a mad devil, yet there was in it some sinister
suggestion of human hands.
Carden knew not what supernatural or other power kept him there, staring
with agonised eyes at the face of his child, when his every instinct was
to turn and run as he had never run from anything in his life. The
child broke the spell by dancing away with a pretty elfin laugh to
rejoin Grietje by the fire. The quality of her laugh and the light
patter of her feet brought home to Carden the realisation that it was a
girl whose beauty had been thus cruelly destroyed forever, and a groan
broke from him. The woman watching him with her tragic eyes saw sweat
standing in little beads on his lips.
"_He did it_," she said. "_That is why he lies dead over there_" Her
eyes travelled past Carden once more to where the lonely tree waved an
arm in the evening breeze.
"He did not come back for eleven months after you had passed," she
continued in her sad relentless voice. "My baby was here when he
returned--so of course he knew. But he said nothing. I feared terribly
for the child at first, but in the end I came to think that he did not
care. Then, one day, when my fears were all asleep, he disappeared,
taking my baby with him for three days. Grietje and I roamed the veld
seeking them, and on the night of the third day as we drew near home
again we heard the child crying, and coming in we found it with its
lovely little face all swollen and black from the poisons he had put in.
He was lying on the bench laughing, and called out to me as I came in:
"`There is your love child. But _she_ will have to do without love.'"
"I was worn out with weeping and wandering for three days and nights,
but when he said those words I rushed over to him and killed him. I
killed him with these hands." She looked down on the hands lying on her
lap.
"I tore his throat open and his life ran out with his blood," she said
softly.
Carden had no words. He stood looking at the little pale strong hands
that were used to smell of apple blossom, and listening like a man in a
dream. But it was a bad dream. A nightmare that would haunt him for
the rest of his days! He was not sure now that those days would be
many, that _his_ life too was not passing with every word spoken by that
gentle, fateful voice.
"Grietje and I buried him over there under the tree. No one else knows
but Xsosa who watched us at the burying in the dead of night."
Darkness had suddenly enfolded the land. No stars brightened the
vapouring gloom but occasionally the fire threw out a blood-red finger
showing Grietje cuddling the child to her bosom, crooning some Kaffir
lullaby over its head.
"What is to be done," muttered Carden, in the voice of a man who has
come to the end of all ways. He looked at her, but her face was, as
ever, hidden in the cappie. He had not seen it once in all this
terrible hour and now he knew he would never see it.
"What is there to do?" she said sombrely. "Grietje and I must stay
here, with him, until we grow old and die."
"But... the child?"
"Ah!" She sighed her deep sigh. "She will grow up perhaps--and in her
turn watch the road."