The room grew still, and all at once she found herself praying. Her lips
did not move, but she was praying. She was ashamed to have Philip hear
her, and she was ashamed, too, before God that she should turn to Him
only when she had desperate need. But none of these things made any
difference. In her terror and anguish she prayed. God would hear her. He
would know and understand if he were a good God.
Then suddenly she felt his hand relax ever so little, gently, and she
said softly, “Philip! Philip!”
After a long silence, he said, “Yes ... Mary,” and pressed her hand
feebly. “I’m here.”
“Philip ... I think there is to be a child.... You must live on his
account.”
“I’m glad, Mary ... I mean to live. I mean to live.”
She fell to praying again, and again she felt the thin hand relax. This
time it slipped slowly from her cheek.
“Philip! Philip!”
He did not answer, and again she called, “Philip! Philip!”
His eyes were closed, but he still breathed. She began to pray once
more, pressing her body close to his. She never knew how long she knelt
there, but presently she knew that the thin, brown hands were no longer
hot. The fever had gone out of them, and she thought suddenly, “The
thing has passed, and he is safe.” But the coolness turned slowly to a
strange dead chill. She raised her head and looked at him. He seemed
asleep, but he was so still. She touched his face, and the head fell a
little to one side. The mouth opened. And then she knew....
Without a sound, she slipped to the dusty earth beside the cot. She
tasted the earth with her lips, but she did not even raise her head.
When she came out of the hut to find Swanson, it was still dark,
although a faint rim of light had begun to show above the surface of the
lake. Near the opening in the barricade, the night fire had burned to a
glowing pile of embers. For a long time she stood there beneath the
stars, listening to the mysterious sounds of the African night, on the
very spot where Philip had once stood, half-naked, listening to the
sound of the drums, lost in a strange, savage delight at the discovery
of being alive and young and a man. And at last there came to her the
feeling that she was not alone, but surrounded by the creatures who
filled all the night with their sense of life. She was not alone, for
Naomi was there, too. This strange world belonged to Naomi. She herself
was only an intruder.
A sound of birds churring in the darkness roused her, and she went off
to find Swanson. He was asleep in his hut and he wakened slowly,
clumsily. For once, understanding without being told, he rose and
followed her.
As the gray turned to rose above the lake, and the sounds of the waking
forest grew more distinct, she knelt by the side of the cot while
Swanson prayed, and slowly she came to understand that in his simplicity
he was a good man, akin in his selfless simplicity, to the wild things
in the gloomy forest that surrounded them. She understood, too, that
Philip had meant to die thus, that he had come here to the spot where
death was certain. But she saw, too, that he had really died long ago,
on the night that had followed their happiness in the room above the
stable. She didn’t hate Naomi: she had never hated her.
The morning light began to filter in through the doorway, and the spaces
below the thatching. She stirred and took up the drawing-block on which
Philip had written his name. No, it was not Naomi that she hated....
* * * * *
Two days later they buried him beneath the acacia not far from the fresh
grave of the battered old Lady Millicent, on the spot where once, for
the first time, he had known a blinding intimation of what life might
be. He had known it again afterward--once as he stood in the moonlight
listening to the drums, and again, on the day the wicked Lily Shane came
to the stable; and then at last on the night he returned to find Mary
waiting in the darkness.
It was the simple Swanson who read the service, because Mary wished it;
for the Reverend Mr. Murchison made her think of Christians like Emma
Downes and her brother, Elmer Niman.... It was the Reverend Mr.
Murchison who would be the first Bishop of East Africa.
4
When Emma returned home one night from the restaurant to find a letter
from Madagascar addressed in a strange handwriting, she knew what had
happened. For a long time, she sat at the dining-room table, staring at
the letter, for the sight of it threw her into one of those rare moods
when for a moment she gave herself over to reflection and so came
unbearably near to seeing herself. She had known all along that it was
certain to happen, yet the knowledge had not prepared her in any way. It
seemed as hard to bear as if he had been killed suddenly by some
terrible accident in the Mills.
He had not told her he was returning to Megambo until he had gone, when
it was too late for her to act; and now she knew that he had died
without ever seeing the letter she had sent, as it were, into space, to
follow him in time to turn him back. He had died, she saw, without even
knowing at all she had written, begging him not to be so hard, to think
of her as his mother who was willing to sacrifice everything for his
happiness. She would (she had written) forgive Mary, and try her best to
behave toward her as if Mary were her own daughter. What more could she
have done? To forgive Mary who had stolen him from her?
As she sat there the dull pain of a hopeless loneliness took possession
of her. Here she was, at fifty, beginning for the first time to feel
tired and in need of companionship, and she had no one--not even her own
grandchildren. It was cruel, she told herself, to have suffered as she
had suffered, with no reward but this--to end life alone after
struggling for so long, always bent upon doing the right thing. Surely
she had lived as God meant her to live, a Christian life filled with
sacrifice to individuals and duty. Surely no one since Job had been so
bitterly tried ... no husband ... no son ... alone.
And presently her blunt, strong fingers tore open the envelope, and she
read the letter. It was brief, almost like a cablegram ... a few lines
which told her what she already knew, that Philip, her little boy, was
dead. The sight of the word “dead” and the name “Mary Downes” signed at
the end, filled her with a sudden wave of bitterness that swept away all
her sorrow. It was Mary who had stolen him from her like a thief. What
could be more sinful than to steal from a mother a son for whom she had
sacrificed her whole life? It was Mary who had destroyed him in the end,
by filling his head with strange ideas, and leading him back to Africa.
She was finished now with Mary. She would like to see Mary dead. And
some day (perhaps it had happened already) Mary would receive the
wandering letter and read, “I will even forgive Mary and try to treat
her as if she were my own daughter.” Then perhaps for a moment she would
feel remorse over what she had done.
The letter lay crumpled in her work-stained hand. She began suddenly to
weep, falling forward and burying her head in her arms beneath the glow
of the gas-dome, painted with wild-roses. She had suffered too long....
She kept seeing Philip as a little boy....
After midnight, when she had ceased to weep, she rose, and, turning out
the light, went up the creaking stairs of the home she had made her own
by the labor of her own hands ... the house (she thought bitterly) she
had meant for Philip. She had done everything for his sake.
Alone in her own room, she thought, “I must not give in. I must go on.
God will in the end reward me.” The old spirit began to claim her.
She put on mourning (a thing her conscience had not permitted her to do
when Naomi died), and in the Town people said, “Poor Emma Downes! She
has had almost too much to bear. It is a life like hers that makes you
sometimes doubt God ... a good woman like that deserves a better
reward.” She even had a letter from Moses Slade.
Only McTavish did not join in the pity. To him it seemed that the chain
of her calamities was as inevitable as a Greek tragedy. It was not God,
but Emma herself, who had created them. And he saw what the others did
not, that Emma was by no means a broken woman.
And, after a time, she came even to create a certain glory out of
Philip’s death, for she found that people believed he had gone back to
Megambo to take up his old work, and so had gone back to certain death
and martyrdom. She did not disillusion them: it could not, surely, be
wrong to let them believe that her Philip was a martyr. Philip, who must
now be with God, would understand. And, sitting in church, she knew that
people about her thought of him as her martyred son. He had not lived to
be Bishop of East Africa, but he had died a martyr....
There remained, however, one more blow. Two months after Philip’s death,
she received a second letter, in a strange handwriting, this time from
Australia. As she opened it, there fell out a photograph on a picture
postcard. It was the photograph of seven people, all of them strangers
save Jason, who sat in the middle of the front row beside a large,
rather coarse and plain woman, whose hand rested on his shoulder. At the
bottom was written: “_Upper row: Jason, Henry, Hector. Lower row:
Bernice, old Jason, self and Emma._”
It was “self and Emma” which startled her. Who was “self,” and who was
“Emma”?
She read:
“_Dear Madam_:
“_I am writing because I knew you would be interested in the
details of Jason’s death...._”
(Jason’s death! Jason dead!)
“_He died a month ago on board ship coming home...._”
(Coming home! What did it mean--coming home? This house was Jason’s
home!)
“_He died from a fall down some steps. I guess he had been taking a
drop too much. You know how Jason was. And he hit his head where he
had fallen once before. You remember the scar he had. Well, that’s
where he hit himself. He didn’t ever become conscious again, and
died two days later._
“_I know you will be wondering about the postcard. Well, it is me
and Jason and our five children. No, Jason was no bigamist. We was
never married. He came to my father’s ranch looking for work
twenty-four years ago. The eldest, Jason, is twenty-two come
Michaelmas. He wasn’t much good as a worker, but he was good
company and the ranch was a lonely place, so Pa kept him on. He
told such good stories. And the following spring--I was eighteen
then, but developed like a woman of twenty-five, he seduced me. I
guess I wanted to be seduced. You know what a way Jason had with
women. My only complaint against him as a husband was that it was
hard to keep him in order. Well, when Pa found out that I was in
the family way, he was hoppin’ mad, and I didn’t care, because I
was off my nut about Jason. Pa said he had to marry me, and Jason
said he couldn’t, because he already had a wife. So then when Pa
had cooled down a bit, he said we was all to go to Sydney, and
pretend we was married there, and if Jason ever deserted me he’d go
after him with a gun and shoot him. The way it was about here then,
it didn’t make much difference if you was married or not. It was
kind of wild. So we pretended we was married because Pa was a
believer and a Primitive Methodist._
“_Well, at the time Pa died, we had four children, and he left
everything to me, I being his only child, and heir. Emma was born
after he died. Maybe you’ll think it was funny about her name. It
was Jason who wanted to call her Emma. He said he’d like to because
it made him think of old times. I said it was all the same to me,
though I wanted to call her Opal._
“_Jason must have told you that he was rich and owned a lot of
land. He was always a liar. Well, it ain’t true. He didn’t own a
square foot of land, and he never made a ha’penny in all the time
he was my husband. I even gave him the money to go back to America
to see you. He wanted to go so bad I couldn’t say no to him. I
guess he was curious about that son of his in America, and maybe he
wanted to see you, too. I just wanted you to know this, so you
wouldn’t think there was any money coming to you or your son._
“_I always speak of him as my husband. He may have been married to
you, but he was really mine. He was happy out here and I need
never to reproach myself for anything I did while he was alive. He
always belonged to me and as I’ve often told him, before he passed
away, that counts for more than all the banns and marriage
certificates in the world. That’s why I didn’t mind his paying you
a brief visit. I KNEW he’d come back to me._
“_Well, I can’t think of any more that ought to be said. He often
spoke of you kindly. The worst he ever said was, ‘Em had an
unfortunate temperament.’ I think that was how he put it. He was
embalmed on ship, and at his funeral looked very natural. He was a
remarkable young-looking man for his age. Well, I will stop now._
“_Yours respectively_,
“_Dora Downes_.
“(_Mrs. Jason Downes._)
“_Postscriptum. The picture is good of all except me and Emma. I
never did photograph well. It was a thing Jason always said--that
photographs never did me justice._”
When she had finished reading, Emma took up the postcard and looked
again at the three strapping sons and the two robust daughters, but her
chief interest lay in the figure of Dora Downes (Mrs. Jason Downes!) She
was a healthy, rather plain woman, with an enormous shelflike bosom on
which her fat double chin appeared to rest. Beside her, Jason appeared,
small and dapper and insignificant, like a male spider beside the female
who devours her mate after he has filled Nature’s demands.
“She must have been plain always,” thought Emma. “She’s really a
repulsive woman.”
Then she rose and, going into the kitchen, lifted an iron plate from the
stove, and thrust into the coals the letter and the picture postcard,
sending them the way of that other letter left by Jason twenty-seven
years earlier.
One thing in the letter she could not forget--“_I knew he’d come back to
me._”
It was a little more than a year later that Moses Slade and Emma Downes
were married quietly in Washington, but not so quietly that Sunday
newspapers did not have pictures of the bride and bridegroom taken
outside the church. They had come together again, through the strangest
circumstances, for Moses, still unmarried, had found himself suddenly
involved with Mamie Rhodes, who Emma had once said “did something to
men.” He was, in fact, so involved that blackmail or the ruin of a
career seemed the only way out ... the only way save marriage with some
woman so prominent and so respectable as to suffocate any doubts
regarding his breach of morality. “And what woman,” he had asked
himself, “fitted such a rôle as well as Emma Downes, who was now a widow
... a _real_ widow whose troublesome son was dead.” He saw with his
politician’s eye all the protection she could give him as a prominent
figure, known for her moral strictness and respectability, pitied for
the trials she had borne with such Christian fortitude. Such a woman,
people (voters) would say, could not marry him if the stories about
Mamie Rhodes were true.
So he had gone to Emma and, confessing everything, thrown himself upon
her mercy. For five days she kept him in doubt, and terror, lest she
refuse, and in the end she accepted, but only at a price ... that it
should remain, as she expressed it, “a marriage in name only.”
In the end, she subdued even Moses Slade. It was in reality Emma who sat
in his seat in the House of Representatives. It was Emma who cast his
votes. She became, in a small way, a national figure, concerned always
with moralities and reforms. She came into a full flowering as chairman
or member of a dozen committees and movements against whisky and
cigarettes, and for Sunday closing. She made speaking tours, when she
was received by palpitating ladies who labored in vain to sap the robust
vitality of their country. There were times when her progress became a
marvel of triumph. She was known as a splendid speaker.
But the apotheosis of her glory was reached in the war, when she offered
her services as a speaker to right and to left--to aid recruiting, or
Y.M.C.A. funds, to attack Bolshevism and denounce the barbarous Huns.
She had a marvelous speech which began on a quavering note: “I had a son
of my own once, but he gave his life as a martyr in Africa, fighting the
good fight for God and home and Christian faith, even as all our boys
are fighting to-day against a whole race, a whole nation bent upon
spreading murder and destruction across the face of God’s bright earth.
(Cheers.) If my son were alive to-day, he would be over there, on the
rim of the world (cheers), etc., etc.”
It was in making this speech that she wore herself out. The end came on
a wet, chill night in Kansas City, when, speaking on behalf of the
Y.M.C.A., she was taken with a chill. Moses Slade came from Washington
to be at her bedside, and so was there at the end to tell her that
“she’d given her life as much as any soldier who fell in Flanders
Field.”
She was buried in the Town, alone, for the grave of her husband was in
Australia, and that of her son beside a tepid lake in East Africa. The
funeral service, in the enthusiasm of the war, became a sort of public
festival, done to the titanic accompaniment of the Mills, which pounded
now as they had never done before, to heap up piles of shells in the
dead, abandoned park of Shane’s Castle. It was an end which she would
have liked. The new preacher, more sanctimonious but less moving than
the Reverend Castor, made a high-flown and flowery funeral oration. He
did it skilfully, though it was a difficult thing to speak of her trials
and still not raise the ghosts of Naomi and the Reverend Castor. But the
ghosts were there: they troubled the minds of every member of the
congregation.
In conclusion, he said in a voice rich with enthusiasm, “She never lost
her faith through trials more numerous than are the lot of most. She
gave her son to God and her own life to this great cause which is so
near to the heart of us all. She was brave and courageous, and generous
and tolerant, but she fought always for the right like a good soldier.
She never had any doubts. She was, in brief, all that is meant when our
hearts lead us to say of some one, ‘She was a good woman....’”
It was in the following year that the Town bought the Castle from Lily
Shane who had never returned to it since the night of the riot. The
Town demolished the place and even dug away the hill itself to make a
site for the new railway station. When the wreckers attacked the stable
they found a room whose walls were covered with pencil sketches. By the
window stood a half-finished painting black with soot and dust. On the
table there was a coffee-pot, several soiled plates, and a fragment of
something which turned out to be bread. Nearby beneath a layer of soot
lay a woman’s handkerchief of fine linen marked with the initials M.C.;
one of the workmen took it home to his wife. The other things--the
sketches and the painting--were thrown into a heap and burned on the
very spot where eight years before there had been another fire in the
snow.
THE END