IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Just outside Senga to the north, in open country, stands a great walled
zareba, and the space enclosed is the nearest approach to the Garden of
Eden which this wicked world can produce. The Zoological Gardens of
Cairo and Khartum replenish their cages from Senga. But there are no
cages at Senga, and only the honey-badger lives in a tub with a chain
round his neck, like a bull-dog. The buffalo and the elephant, the
wart-hog and the reed-buck, roam and feed and sleep together. Nor do
they trouble, after three days' residence in that pleasant sanctuary,
about man--except that specimen of man who brings them food.
All day long you may see, towering above the wall close to the little
wooden door, the long necks and slim heads of giraffes looking towards
the city and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men
to-day, and why they don't come along with the buns and sugar. Once
within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes
and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to
be wary of the ostrich. He, mincing delicately around you with his
little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an
ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you.
If he succeeds he will land you one. And one is enough.
Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hillyard on the next morning.
Luttrell had an hour free, and the zareba was the one spectacle in
Senga. He kicked the honey-badger's tub in his little reed-house and
brought out that angry animal to the length of his strong chain and to
within an inch of his own calves.
"Charming little beast, isn't he? See the buffalo in the middle? The
little elephant came in a week ago from just south of the Khor Galagu.
You had something private to say to me? Now's your time. Mind the
ostrich, that's all. He looks a little ruffled."
They were quite alone in the zareba. The giraffes had fallen in behind
and were following them, and level with them, on Hillyard's side, the
ostrich stepped like a delicate lady in a muddy street. Hillyard found
it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella Croyle's
message. But he would have delivered it awkwardly in any case. He had
seen enough of Harry Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now
rolled between those two.
"On the first night of my play, 'The Dark Tower,'" he began, and
suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell back.
"Yes!" said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich indifferently. "That
animal's a brute, isn't he?"
He took a threatening step towards it, and the ostrich sidled away as if
it really didn't matter to him where he took his morning walk.
"Yes?" Luttrell repeated.
"I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles Hardiman."
"Oh?"
Luttrell's voice was careless enough. But his eyes went watchfully to
Hillyard's face, and he seemed to shut suddenly all expression out of
his own.
"Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours."
Luttrell nodded.
"Mrs. Croyle?"
"Yes."
"She was well?"
"In health, yes!"
"I am very glad." Unexpectedly some feeling of relief had made itself
audible in Luttrell's voice. "It would have troubled me if you had
brought me any other news of her. Yes, that would have troubled me very
much. I should not have been able to forget it," he said slowly.
"But she is unhappy."
Luttrell walked on in silence. His forehead contracted, a look of
trouble came into his face. Yet he had an eye all the while for the
movements of the animals in the zareba. At last he halted, struck out
at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard with a gesture of
helplessness.
"But what can one do--except the single thing one can't do?"
"She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet you," answered
Hillyard.
Luttrell's face hardened perceptibly.
"Let me hear it, Martin."
"She said that she would like you to have news of her, and that from
time to time she would like to have a little line from you."
"That was all?"
"Yes."
Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply. He walked back with
Hillyard to the door of the zareba, and the ostrich bore them company,
now on this side, now on that. The elephant was rolling in the grass
like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door like beggars
outside a restaurant. The two friends walked back towards the town in an
air shimmering with heat. The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks
like so many ribands of molten steel. They were close upon the house
before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle's message.
"All _that_," he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping
something behind him, "all that happened in another age when I was
another man."
The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful. He was not a man
exasperated by a woman's unseasonable importunity, but angry with the
grim, hard, cruel facts of life.
"It's no good, Martin," he added, with a smile. "Not all the king's
horses nor all the king's men----"
Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to
the house in the Bayswater Road. The traditions of his house and of his
regiment had Harry Luttrell in their keeping. Messages? Martin Hillyard
might expect them, might indeed respond to and obey them, and with
advantage, just because they came out of the blue. But the men of
tradition, no! The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their
fathers' houses before ever they were born.
At the door of the Governor's house Harry Luttrell stopped.
"I expect you'll want to do some marketing, and I shall be busy, and
to-night we shall have the others with us. So I'll say now," and his
face brightened with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter
where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties, "it has been
really good to see you again."
Certain excellent memories were busy with them both--Nuneham and Sanford
Lasher and the Cherwell under its overhanging branches. Then Luttrell
looked out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous days faded
from his vision.
"I should like you to get away bukra, bukra, Martin," he said.
"Half-past one at the latest, to-morrow morning. Can you manage it?"
"Why, of course," answered Hillyard in surprise.
"You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you were here. I think
it'll go off all right, but since it's no concern of yours, I would just
as soon you were out of the way. I have fixed it for eight. If you start
at half-past one you will be a good many miles away by then."
He turned and went into the house and to his own work. Martin Hillyard
walked down the road along the river bank to the town. Harry Luttrell
had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle. Of that he was sure and
was glad, though Stella's tear-stained face would rise up between his
eyes and the water of the Nile. Sooner or later Harry Luttrell would
come home, bearing his sheaves, and then he would marry amongst his own
people; and a new generation of Luttrells would hold their commissions
in the Clayfords. He had said his last word concerning Stella Croyle.
But Hillyard was wrong. For in the dark of the morning, when he had
bestridden his donkey and given the order for his caravan to march, he
was hailed by Luttrell's voice. He stopped, and Luttrell came down in
his pyjamas from the door of the house to him.
"Good luck," he said, and he patted the donkey's neck. "Good luck, old
man. We'll meet in England some time."
"Yes," said Hillyard.
It was not to speak these words that Harry Luttrell had risen, after
wishing him good-bye the night before. So he waited.
Luttrell was still, his hand on the little donkey's neck.
"You'll remember me to our honorary member, won't you?"
"Yes."
"Don't forget."
"I won't."
Nor was it for this reminder, either. So Hillyard still waited, and at
last the words came, jerkily.
"One thing you said yesterday.... I was very glad to hear it. That
Stella was well--quite well. You meant that, didn't you? It's the
truth?"
"Yes, it's the truth."
"Thank you ... I was a little afraid ... thank you!"
He took his hand from the donkey's neck, and Hillyard rode forward on
the long and dreary stage to the one camping ground between Senga and
Senaar.
For a little while he wondered at this insistence of Harry Luttrell upon
the physical health of Stella Croyle, and why he had been afraid. But
when the dawn came his thoughts reverted to his own affairs. The message
delivered to him in the forest of the River Dinder! It might mean
nothing. It was the part of prudence to make light of his hopes and
conjectures. But the hopes would not be stilled, now that he was alone.
This was the Summons, the great Summons for which, without his
knowledge, the experiences of his life, detail by detail, had builded
him.