"_There is no art in the Telling that can equal the consummate art of
the Happening_!"
It was a remark dropped by a forgotten someone in a prospector's hut one
night, years and years ago, when we had exhausted snakes and hunting,
lucky strikes and escapes, and had got away into coincidences. One of
the party had been telling us an experience of his. He was introduced
on the day he arrived to a man well known on the fields. It seemed
quite impossible that they could have met before, for they compared
dates and places for ten years back, and yet both were puzzled by the
hazy suggestion of having seen the other before, and, in our friend's
case, of something more definite. His remark to the other was:
"I can't help feeling that I saw you once in a devil of a fright
somewhere--or dreamt it, I suppose!"
But this first feeling faded quickly away, and was utterly forgotten by
both. Later on they shared a hut near Rimer's Creek, and afterwards,
when houses came into vogue, they lived for several years together,
while the first impression was lying buried, but not dead.
One day, in the process of swapping yarns, the other man was telling of
the "narrowest escape he ever had"--and all due to such a simple little
mistake. A ticket-collector took the tickets at the wrong end of a
footbridge. Instead of collecting them as the passengers from the train
_went on to_ the bridge, he took them as they were _going off_. The
result was that the crowd of excursionists was too great for the little
bridge, and it slipped between the abutments, carrying some two hundred
people into the river below, the narrator being one of them. It was
then that the dormant idea stirred and awoke--jumped into life--and our
friend put up his hands as he had done fifteen years before, when the
little bridge in Bath dropped, and gasped out:
"My God! you were the other chap that hung on to the broken rail!
_That's_ where we met!"
That was what prompted the forgotten one to say after we had lapsed into
silence:
"There's no art in the Telling that can equal the consummate art of the
Happening!"
And I only recall the remark because it must be my apology for telling
plain truth just as it happened.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a man has spent some years of his life--the years of young manhood
they generally are--in the veld, in the waggon, or tent, or Bush, it is
an almost invariable rule that something which you can't define
germinates in him and never entirely dies until he does. When this
thing--this instinct, feeling, craving, call it what you will--awakens,
as it periodically does, it becomes a madness, and they call it
trek-fever, and then, as an old friend used to say, "You must trek or
burst!" There are many stories based on trek-fever, but this is not one
of them; and if you were to ask those who know them, or, better still,
get hold of any of the old hands, hard-headed, commonplace, unromantic
specimens though they might be, who have lived in the veld--if you gave
them time to let it slip out unawares--you would find that every man
jack of them would have something to say about the camp-fire. I do
believe that the fascination within the fascination is the camp-fire in
veld life, with its pleasant yarn-swapping, and its long, pregnant,
thoughtful silences, no less enjoyable. The least loquacious individual
in the world will be tempted to unfold a tale within the circle of a
camp-fire's light.
Everything is so quietly, unobtrusively sociable, and subjects are not
too numerous in the veld, so that when a man has something _apropos_ or
interesting to tell, he commands an appreciative audience. Nobody
bores, and nobody interrupts. Perhaps it is the half-lazy preference
for playing the listener which everyone feels that is the best security
against bores and interruptions.
The charm of the life is indescribable, and none who have tasted it ever
weary of it, ever forget it, or cease to feel the longing to return when
once they have quitted it.
It was in '91, the year after the pioneers cut their way through the
Bush, with Selous to guide them, and occupied Mashonaland. We followed
their trail and lived again their anxious nights and days, when they, a
small handful in a dense Bush, at the mercy of the Matabele thousands,
did not know at what hour they would be pounced on and massacred.
We crossed the Lundi, and somewhere beyond where one of their worst
nights was passed we outspanned in peace and security, and gossiped over
the ruins of ancient temples and the graves of modern pioneers. There
were half a dozen of us, and we lay round the fire in lazy silence, too
content to speak, simply _living_ and drinking in the indescribable
glories of an ideal African night.
It was someone knocking his pipe out and asking for the tobacco that
broke the long silence, and the old Barbertonian, who had had to move to
release the tobacco, looked round with the air of wanting someone to
talk to. As no one gave any sign, he asked presently:
"Are you chaps asleep?"
"No!" came in clear, wakeful voices, with various degrees of promptness.
"I was just thinking," he said, refilling his pipe slowly, "that this
sort of thing--a night like this, you know, and all that--although it
seems perfection to us, isn't really so perfect after all. It all
depends on the point of view, you know. A night like this must be a
perfect curse to a lion or a tiger, you know."
"Your sympathies are too wide, old man," said the surveyor. "Chuck me a
light, and console yourself that your predatory friends do well enough
when others are miserable. Take a more human view."
"If you want an outlet for your native sympathy, you might heave me out
a cushion," suggested another. "I've made a pillow of a bucket, and got
a dent in my head. The thick cushion, old boy, and I'm with you so far
as to say that the lions have a jolly hard time of it with so much fine
weather."
The Barbertonian lighted up his pipe and threw the cushion at the last
speaker.
"H'm!" he grunted between puffs. "I was really thinking of it from
quite a human standpoint--the view of that poor devil who got lost here
two months ago. Now, _he_ couldn't have thought much of nights like
these. Do you think he mused on their beauty!"
"Oh, I heard something of him," said one. "Lost for forty days in the
wilderness, wasn't he? I remember. The coincidence struck me as
peculiar."
"Yes, it was odd in a way. He was just `forty days and forty nights.'
He went out with a rifle and five cartridges to kick up a duiker along
the river bank here, and somehow or other got astray towards sundown,
and lost his head completely. Five cartridges, seven matches, no grub,
no coat, no compass, and no savvey! That's a fair start for a forty
days' picnic, isn't it?" he resumed. "Well, he fired off all his
cartridges by dark, trying to signal to his camp, and then threw away
his rifle. Fact! He broke the heads off two matches--he was shaking so
from fright--before he realised that there were only seven altogether.
But as he had nothing to cook, it didn't really make much difference
whether he had matches or not."
"What, in winter time, and with lions about?"
"_Yah_! Well, you get used to that. It was a bit frosty, and sometimes
wet, and at first the lions worried him a lot and treed him several
nights; but he says that that was nothing, while the sense of being
lost--dead, yet alive--remained. What's that? Live? Oh, he doesn't
know himself how he lived, but we could pretty well tell by his
condition when we found him. We were out shooting about five miles
down-stream, and on one of the sandy spits of the river we saw fresh
footprints. Nigger, we thought, as it was barefoot. We wondered,
because there were no kraals near here, and we had seen no cattle spoor
or footpaths. I was on top of the bank every minute expecting a duiker
or Bush buck to make a break out, and--I tell you--I don't know when I
got such a start--such a _turn_, I should say--as when I caught sight of
a white face looking at me out of an ant-bear hole. Great Caesar! there
was something so infernally uncanny, wild, and hunted in the look that I
instinctively got the gun round to cover him if he came at me. When the
others came up, he crawled out, stark naked, sunburnt, scratched,
shock-headed--still staring with that strange hunted look--came up to us
and--laughed! We led him back to our camp. He could tell nothing,
could hardly understand any of our questions. He was quite dazed. His
hands were cut and disfigured, the nails were worn off with burrowing
for roots. We went to his den. It was a big ant-bear hole under an old
tree and among rocks--a well-chosen spot. He had burrowed it out a bit,
I think, and in a sort of pigeon-hole or socket in the side of it there
were a few nuts, and round about there were the remains of nuts and
chewed roots, stones of fruit, and such things. I never could
understand how it was that, being mad as he certainly was then, he had
still the sense--well, really it was an instinct more than any
knowledge--to get roots and wild-fruits to keep body and soul together!"
"A suggestive subject, truly," said a man who had more millions to his
credit than you would expect of a traveller in Mashonaland. "A man
starving within rifle-shot of his friends and supplies. Helpless in
spite of the resources that civilisation gives him, and saved from
absolute death by a blessed instinct that we didn't know was ours since
the days of the anthropomorphic ape! H'm! You're right, Barberton! He
couldn't have thought much of the beauties of the night, and, if he
thought at all, he must have placed a grim and literal interpretation on
the _Descent_ of Man when he was grubbing for roots with bleeding,
nail-stripped fingers or climbing for nuts without a tail to steady
him!"
Among us there was a retired naval man, a clean-featured, bronzed,
shrewd-looking fellow, who was a determined listener during these
camp-fire chats; in fact, he seldom made a remark at all. He sat
cross-legged, with one eye closed--a telescope habit, I suppose--
watching Barberton for quite a spell, and at last said, very slowly, and
seemingly speaking under compulsion:
"Well, you never know how they take these shocks. We picked a man up
once whose two companions had lain dead beside him for days and days.
Before he became delirious, the last thing he remembers was getting some
carbolic acid from a small medicine-chest. His mates had been dead two
days then, and he had not the strength to heave them overboard. I
believe he wanted to drink the carbolic. Any way, he spilt it, and went
off his head with the smell of carbolic around him. He recovered while
with us--we were on a weary deep-sea-sounding cruise--but twice during
the voyage he had short but violent returns of the delirium and the
other conditions that he was suffering under when we found him. By the
merest accident our doctor discovered that it was the smell of carbolic
that sent him off. Once--years after this--he nearly died of it. He
had had fever, and they kept disinfecting his room; but, luckily for
him, he became dangerous and violent, and they had to remove him to
another place. He was all right in a few days."
"Do you believe that a man could live out a reasonably long lifetime in
the way that `forty days' chap lived? I suppose he _could_, eh! Shoo!
Fancy forgetting the civilised uses of tongue and limbs and brain! It
seems awful, doesn't it? and yet men have been known to deliberately
choose a life of savagery and barbarism--men whose lines had been cast
in easy places, too!"
"That's all very well," said Barberton. "Now you are speaking of
fellows settling down among savages and in the wilds voluntarily, and
with certain provisions made for emergencies, etc, not of men _lost_."
"Even so, a man must deteriorate most horribly under such
circumstances."
"Well," said Barberton contemplatively, "I don't know so much about
that. It all depends upon the man. Mind you, I do think that the end
is always fiasco--tragedy, trouble, ruin, call it what you like. We
can't throw back to barbarism at will. For good or ill we have taken
civilisation, and the man who quits it pays heavy toll on the road he
travels, and, likely enough, fetches up where he never expected to."
The man who wrote for the papers smiled.
"I know," he said with kindling eye--"I know. It was just such a case
you told us of at Churchill's Camp the other night. A man of the best
calibre and training goes wild and marries two--mark you, _two_!--Kaffir
women, and becomes a Swazie chief, and then the drama of the--"
"Drama be damned!" growled Barberton. "It was one case out of twenty of
the same sort."
Barberton was nervously apprehensive of ridicule, and hated to be traded
and walked out for effects.
"I was up on the Transvaal-Swazie border in '86," said the millionaire.
"I remember you told me something of them then. It was a warm corner,
Swazieland, then--about the warmest in South Africa, I should think.
Eh?"
"You're right. It was. But," said Barberton, turning to the
correspondent, "you were talking of men going _amok_ through playing
white nigger. Well, I can tell you this, that two of my best friends
have done that same trick, and I'd stake my head that better men or more
thorough gentlemen never trod in shoe-leather, for all their Kaffir
ways."
"Do you mean to say," asked the millionaire, "that you have known men
settle down among natives, living among them as one of themselves, and
still retain the manners, customs, instincts, habits of mind and body,
even to the ambitions, of a white man?"
"No--well, I can't quite say that. Their ambitions, as far as you could
gauge them, were a Kaffir's; that is, they aspired to own cattle, and to
hunt successfully, but--And yet I don't know that it is right to say
_that_ even, because in almost every case these men get the `hanker' for
white life again sooner or later. The Kaffir ambition may be a
temporary one, or it may be that the return to white ways is the passing
mania. Who knows, any way? From my own experience of them, I can say
that the return to their own colour almost invariably means their doom
and ruin. I don't know why, but I've noticed it, and it seems like--
like a sort of judgment, if you believe in those things."
"And you know," he said, after taking a few pulls at the pipe again,
"there's a sense of justice in that, too. Civilisation, scorned and
flouted, being the instrument of its own revenge! If one could vest the
abstract with personal feelings, what an ample revenge would be hers at
the sight of the renegade--sick-hearted, weary, and shamefaced--coming
back to the ways of his youth and race, and succumbing to some one part
of that which he had despised and rejected _in toto_!"
Barberton generally became philosophic and reminiscent on these fine
nights. Someone would make a remark of pretty general application, and
he would sit up and wag his old head a few times in silence; then, from
force of habit, examine his pipe and knock it out on the heel of his
boot, and then out would lounge some reminiscence in illustration of his
philosophy.
It was generally introduced by a long-drawn, thoughtful, "We-ll, you
know, I've always thought there was something curious about these
things." He would have another squint down the empty bowl of the pipe
and ask for the tobacco. There would be a couple of grunts, and then,
as he lighted up, he would say, between puffs, "I remember, in '78, up
at Pilgrim's," or, "There was a fellow up Barberton way in '86."
This night he sat in tailor fashion, with an elbow socketed in each
knee-bend, and his hands clasped over the bowl of his pipe.
"One of the rummiest meetings I ever had," said he, smiling thoughtfully
at the recollection, "was in the Swazie country in '85. Did I ever tell
you about Mahaash and the Silver Spur!"
He gave a gurgling sort of chuckle, and puffed contentedly at the
big-bowled briar.
"There were two of us riding through the Swazie country, and making for
the landing-place on the Maputa side. We had had a row with the
Portuguese about some cattle that the niggers stole from us. A couple
of the niggers got shot, of course, during the discussion, and we had to
quit for a while and take a rest on the Lebombo. But that's nix! When
we got to the Komati, we were told that there was a white man on the
Lebombo whose Kaffir name was Sebougwaan. That's the name the niggers
give to a man who wears an eyeglass or spectacles. We were jogging
along doing our thirty miles a day, living on old mealies roasted on a
bit of tin, and an occasional fowl--Swazie fowl, two to the meal--helped
down by bowls of amazi--thick milk, you know. We used to sleep out in
the Bush every night, with a blanket apiece and saddles for pillows, and
the horses picketed at our heads. Man, it was grand on nights like
this! We were always tired and often hungry; but to lie there in the
peace and stillness of the Bush, to look up at the stars like diamond
dust against the sky, and not care a damn for anything in God's world,
why--why--I call that living! All those months we had no knowledge of
the outer world. As far as we were concerned, there might as well have
been none. We had one book, `The Ingoldsby Legends.' If anyone could
have seen me reading Ingoldsby by the light of the fire, and have heard
every now and then the bursts of laughter over `The Jackdaw of Rheims'
or `The Witches' Frolic,' and others, his face would have been a study,
I expect.
"However, I was telling you about Mahaash. Mahaash was a big induna,
and had about five to seven thousand fighting men. He used to konza to
Umbandine, but paid merely nominal tribute, and was jolly independent.
He was the cleverest-looking nigger I have ever seen. Small, thin, and
ascetic-looking, with wonderfully delicate hands, clear features, and
lustrous black eyes. Really, he gave one the idea that he saw through
everything, or next to it, and though he said very little, he looked one
of the very determined quiet ones. We had to pass his place to get to
Sebougwaan's, and, of course, had to stay the day and pay our respects.
His kraal was on top of the highest plateau, near the Mananga Bluff. It
lay on the edge of a forest, and the road--an aggregation of cattle
tracks--was very steep and very stony. You can imagine we were not
overflush just then, and what puzzled us was what to give the chief as a
present when he would accord us an interview. Rifles and ammunition we
daren't part with, and we were mortally afraid they were just the things
he would want to annex. Finally, it occurred to us to present him with
one of my chum's silver spurs. Heron didn't favour this much. He said
it would likely cause trouble; but I put that down to his disinclination
to spoil his pair of swagger spurs. Only the day before our arrival the
chief had purchased a horse; he had sent to Lydenburg for it, and it was
the first they had ever seen in that part of the country--which seems
odd when you think that the chief's own name, Mahaash, means `the
Horse.' However, to proceed. We got word next day that the chief would
see us, and after the usual hour's wait we had our indaba, and presented
the silver spur. I must say he viewed it very suspiciously--very!--and
when we showed him how to put it on, he gave a slow, cynical smile, and
made some remark in an undertone to one of his councillors. I began to
agree with Heron about the unwisdom of giving a present so little
understood, and would gladly have changed it, but that Mahaash--who was
of a practical turn of mind--sent a man for our horses, and bade us ride
with the `biting iron' on. We gave an exhibition of its uses which
pleased him, and we, too, felt quite satisfied--for a moment! But
things didn't look quite so well when he announced that he was going to
ride his horse, and he desired Heron to strap the spur on to his bare
foot. It was no use hesitating--we had to trust to luck and the chances
that a skinny moke such as his was would take no notice of a spur;
besides which Heron, with good presence of mind, jammed the rowels on a
stone and turned most of the points. It was no good, however. The
chief had never been astride a horse before; he was hoisted up by a
couple of stalwart warriors. Once on, he laid hold of the mane with
both hands, and gripped his heels firmly under the horse's belly. I saw
the brute's ears go flat on his neck. The two supporters stepped back.
Mahaash swayed to one side, and, I suppose, gave a convulsive grip with
the armoured heel. There was a squeal and scuffle, and a black streak
shooting through the air with a red blanket floating behind it. The
chief bounced once on the stony incline, shot on for another ten feet,
and fetched up with his head against a rock. I can tell you that for
two minutes it was just hell let loose. We dropped our rifles--we
always carried them--and ran to the chief I believe if we had kept them
they'd have stuck us, for there were scores of black devils round each
of us, flashing assegais in our faces, and yelling: `Bolalile Inkos!
Umtagati! umtagati!'--`They have killed the chief! Witchcraft!
witchcraft!' But in another minute we saw Mahaash standing propped up
by several kehles, and holding one hand to his head. He steadied
himself for a moment, gave us one steady, inscrutable look, and walked
into his private enclosure.
"For four days we remained there--prisoners in fact, though not in name.
Nothing was said about leaving, but our guns and horses were gone, and
we were given a hut to ourselves in the centre of the kraal. We didn't
know whether Mahaash was dead, dying, or quite unhurt. We didn't know
whether we were to be despatched or set free, or to be kept for ever.
On the morning of the fifth day we found our horses tied to the cattle
kraal in front of our hut, and a grey-headed induna brought word to us
that Sebougwaan, for whom we were looking, lived not far from there
along the plateau. We took the hint, and saddled up. As we were
starting an _umfaan_ brought a kid, killed and cleaned, and handed it to
me--a gift from the chief; and the old induna stepped up to Heron with a
queer look in his wrinkled, cunning old phiz, and said:
"`The chief says, "Hamba gahle",' (`Pleasant journey'), `and sends _you_
this.'
"It was the silver spur."
Barberton had another squint at his pipe, and chuckled at the
recollection of the old nigger's grim pleasantry.
"But I was telling you about that white man on the Bomba," he resumed.
"Well, we weren't long in making tracks out of Mahaash's kraal, and as
we dodged along through the forest, following a footpath which just
permitted a man on foot to pass, we realised how poor a chance we'd have
had had we tried to escape. Every hundred yards or so we had to
dismount to get under overhanging boughs or trunks of fallen trees or
networks of monkey-ropes. The horses had got so used to roughing it
that they went like cats, and in several places they had to duck under
the heavy timber that hung, portcullis fashion, across the dark little
pathway. This was the only way out at the back of Mahaash's. In front
of him, of course, were the precipitous sides of the Lebombo Range.
"We went on for hours through this sort of thing, hardly seeing sunlight
through the dense foliage; and when we got out at last into a green
grassy flat, the bright light and open country fairly dazzled us. Here
we met a few women and boys, who, in reply to our stock question, gave
the same old reply that we had heard for days: `Sebougwaan? Oh, further
on ahead!'
"We just swore together and like one man, for we really had reckoned to
get to this flying Dutchman this time without further disappointments.
We looked around for a place to off-saddle, and made for a koppie
surrounded by trees.
"Heron was ahead. As we reached the trees, he pulled up, and with a
growing grin called to me, `I say, just look here! Here's a rum start!'
"It was clearly our friend Sebougwaan. He was standing with arms
akimbo, and feet well set apart, surveying critically the framework of a
house he was putting up.
"He had a towel round his loins, and an eye glass screwed tightly into
the near eye. Nothing else.
"We viewed him _en profile_ for quite awhile, until he turned sharply
our way and saw us. It was one of the pleasantest faces in the world
that smiled on us then. Sebougwaan walked briskly towards us, saying:
"`Welcome, gentlemen, welcome. It's not often I see a white face here.
And, by-the-by, you'll excuse my attire, won't you? The custom of the
country, you know, and "In Rome--" Well, well. You'll off-saddle, of
course, and have a snack. Here, Komola! Bovaan! Hi, you boys! Where
the devil are they? Here, take these horses and feed them. And now
just "walk into my parlour." Nothing ominous in the quotation, I assure
you.'
"He bustled us around in the jolliest manner possible, and kept up a
running fire of questions, answers, comments, and explanations, while he
busied himself with our comfort.
"It was a round wattle-and-daub hut that he showed us into, but not the
ordinary sort. This one was as bright and clean as a new pin. Bits of
calico and muslin and gay-coloured kapelaan made curtains, blinds, and
table-covers. The tables were of the gin-case pattern, legs planted in
the ground; the chairs ordinary Bush stools; but what struck me as so
extraordinary was the sight of all the English periodicals and
illustrated papers laid out in perfect order and neatness on the table,
as one sees them arranged in a reading-room before the first frequenters
have disturbed them. There was also a little hanging shelf on which
were five books. I couldn't help smiling at them--the Bible, a
Shakespeare, the Navy List, a dictionary, and Ruff's Guide.
"They say that you may tell a man by his friends, and most of all by his
books; but I couldn't make much out of this lot, with one exception. I
looked at the chap's easy bearing, the pleasant, hearty manner and
torpedo beard, and concluded that the Navy List, at any rate, was a bit
of evidence. However, he kept things going so pleasantly and gaily that
one had no time in which to observe much.
"Lots of little things occurred which were striking and amusing in a
way, because of the peculiar surroundings and conditions of the man's
life rather than because of the incidents themselves. For instance,
when we owned up that we had had no breakfast, we found ourselves within
a few minutes enjoying poached eggs on toast, and I felt myself grinning
all over when the Swazie boy waited in passable style with a napkin
thrown carelessly over one shoulder. Surely a man must be a bit
eccentric to live such a life as this in such a place and alone, and yet
take the trouble to school a nigger to wait on him in conventional
style.
"I thought of the peculiar littleness of teaching a nigger boy that
waiter's trick, and concluded that our friend, whatever his occupation
might be, was not a trader from necessity. After breakfast he produced
some excellent cigarettes--another fact in the nature of a paradox.
"We were making for the landing-place on the Tembe River, and had
intended moving along again that day; but our host was pressing, and we
by no means anxious to turn our backs on so pleasant a camp, so we
stayed overnight, and became good friends right away.
"I was quite right. He had been in the navy many years, and had given
it up to play at exploring. He said he had settled down here because
there was absolute peace and a blissful immunity from the ordinary
worldly worries. Once a week a native runner brought him his mail
letters and papers, and, in fact, as he said, he was as near to the
world as he chose to be, or as far from it.
"He had a curious gold charm attached to a watch-chain, which I saw
dangling from a projecting wattle-end in the dining-hut. I was looking
at this, and puzzled over it; it seemed so unlike anything I had ever
seen. He saw me, and, after putting us to many a futile guess, told us
laughingly that he had found it in one of the villages they had sacked
on the West Coast. I don't know what sort of part he took in these
nasty little wars, but I'll bet it was no mean one. We listened that
night for hours to his easy, bright, entertaining chat, and although he
hardly ever mentioned himself or his own doings, one couldn't but see
that he had been well in the thick of things, and dearly loved to be
where danger was. Now and then he let slip a reference to hardships,
escapes, and dangers, but only when such reference was necessary to
explain something he was telling us of. What interested us most was his
description of General Gordon--`Chinese Gordon'--with whom he appeared
to have been in close contact for a good while. The little details he
gave us made up an extraordinarily vivid picture of the soldier-saint,
the man who could lead a storming-party, a forlorn hope, with a Bible in
one hand and a cane in the other; the man who, in the infiniteness of
his love and tenderness, and in the awful immutability of his decision
and justice, realised qualities in a degree which we only associate with
the Deity. I felt I could see this man helping, feeding with his own
short rations, nursing, and praying with, the lowliest of his men, the
incarnation of mercy. But I also saw him facing the semi-mutinous
regiment of barbarians, and, with the awful passionless decision of fate
itself, singling out the leaders here and there--in all a dozen men--
whom he shot dead before their comrades, and turning again as calm and
unmoved as ever to repeat his order, which this time was obeyed! I
pictured this man, with the splendid practical genius to reconquer and
reorganise China, treasuring a cutting which he had taken from what he
verily believed to be the identical living tree from which Eve had
plucked the forbidden fruit. Surely, one of the enigmas of history!"
"Do you mean to say that's a fact?" asked the millionaire, as old
Barberton paused.
"As far as I know, it certainly is. Our friend told it as a fact, and
not in ridicule, either, for he had the deepest reverence and regard for
Gordon. He assured us, moreover, that Gordon was once most deeply
mortified and offended by a colleague of his treating the matter as a
joke and laughing at it. Gordon never forgot that laugh, and was always
constrained and reserved in the man's presence afterwards.
"I wish I could remember a hundredth part of our host's anecdotes of
well-known people, descriptions of places and of peoples, accounts of
travels and adventures. He seemed to know everyone and all places. It
was three in the morning before we thought of turning in. After
breakfast we saddled up and bade adieu, but our friend walked along part
of the way with us to put us on the right path. He was carrying a bunch
of white Bush flowers--a curious fancy, I thought, for a man clothed in
a towel and an eyeglass. I remarked on the beauty of the mountain
flowers, and he held up the bunch.
"`Yes,' he said, `they are lovely, aren't they? Poor old Tarry! He was
my man--the only other white man that ever lived here. He was with me
for many years, and died here two summers back--fever contracted on the
Tembe. Poor old fellow! I fixed him up on the bluff yonder. He used
to gather these flowers and sit there every day of his life looking out
towards Delagoa, wondering if we would ever quit this place and get a
sight of old Ireland again. I take him a bunch once in a while. Come
up and see where a good friend lies.'
"We left the horses and climbed up the rough path, and looked at the
unpretentious stone enclosure and the soft slate slab with a rough-cut
inscription:
"Paddy Tarry's Rest!
_Are ye ready_?
_Ay, ay, sir_!"
"Our friend leaned over the low stone wall and replaced the faded wreath
by the fresh one.
"We left him standing there on the ridge, clear-cut above the outline of
the mountain, and took our way down the rough cattle-path that wound
down to the still rougher, wilder kloof through which our route lay. I
remember so well the way he was standing, one foot on a projecting rock,
arms folded, until we were rounding the turn that took us out of sight.
Then he waved adieu."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We had unpleasant times on that trip to the Tembe. We met all the
murderous ruffians in that Alsatia, and they were all at loggerheads,
thieving and shooting with both hands. However, we got out all right
after months and months of roaming about, owing to the trouble about
those Kaffirs, and I think we had both forgotten all about Sebougwaan by
the time we fetched up in Lydenburg again. There was always something
happening in that infernal outlaw corner of Swazieland to keep the time
from dragging!
"My chum went off to his farm; but I had no home, and took the road
again with waggons, and loaded for Barberton at slashing fine rates. I
got there just as the Sheba boom was well on. Companies were being
floated daily, shares were booming, money flowing freely. All were
merry in the sunshine of to-day. No one took heed of to-morrow.
Speculators were making money in heaps; brokers raking in thousands.
"You know how it is in a place like that. After you have been there for
a few hours, or a day or two, you begin to notice that one name is
always cropping up oftener than any other; one man seems the most
popular, important, and indispensable. Well, it was the same here.
There was always this one name in everything--market, mines, sport,
entertainment--any blessed department. You can just imagine--at least,
you can't imagine--my surprise when I found that my naked white Kaffir
sailor-friend, Sebougwaan, was the man of the hour. I couldn't believe
it at first, and then a while later it seemed to be the most natural
thing in the world; for, if I ever met a man who looked the living
embodiment of mental, moral, and physical strength, of good humour,
grace, and frankness--a born king among men--it was this chap.
"I met him next day, and he seemed more full of life and personal
magnetism than ever. After that I didn't see him for three or four
days; you know how time spins away in a wild booming market. Then
somebody said he was ill--down with dysentery and fever at the Phoenix.
I went off at once to see him. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was
emaciated, haggard, with black-ringed eyes sunk into his head, and so
weak that he couldn't raise his arm when it slipped from the bed. He
spoke to me in whispers and gasps, only a word or two, and then lay back
on the pillows with a terrible look of suffering in his eyes, or
occasionally dropping the lids with peculiar suddenness; and when he did
this the room seemed empty from loss of this horrible expression of
pain.
"I stood at the foot of his bed, and didn't know what to do or say, and
didn't know how to get out of a room where I was so useless. This sort
of thing may only have lasted a few minutes, or perhaps half an hour--I
don't know; but after one long spell he opened his eyes suddenly and
looked long and steadily into mine, sat bolt upright, apparently without
effort, lifted his glance till I felt he was looking over my head at
something on the wall behind me, and then raised both arms, outstretched
as though to receive something, and, groaning out, `Oh, my God! my poor
wife!' dropped back dead."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were five intent faces upturned at Barberton as he stopped. The
rosy glow of the fire lighted them up, and the man nearest me--the
millionaire--whispered to himself, "Good God! how awful!"
"Well, who was he? Did you--" began the man who wrote for the papers.
Barberton looked steadily at him, and with measured deliberation said:
"We never knew another word about him. From that day to this nothing
has ever been heard to throw the least light on him or what he said."
Far away in the stillness of the African night we heard the impatient
half-grunt, half-groan of the lion. Near by there was a cricket
chirping; and presently a couple of the logs settled down with a small
crunch, and a fresh tongue of flame leaped up. Barberton pumped a straw
up and down the stem of the faithful briar, and remarked sententiously:
"Yah, it's a rum old world, this of ours! I've seen civilisation take
its revenge that way quite a lot of times--just like a woman!"
No one else said a word. Now and then a snore came from under the
waggon where the drivers were sleeping.
The dog beside me gave some abortive whimpers, and his feet twitched
convulsively--no doubt he was hunting in dreamland. I felt depressed by
Barberton's yarn.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
But round the camp-fire long silences do not generally follow a yarn,
however often they precede one. One reminiscence suggests another, and
it takes very, very little to tempt another man to recall something
which "that just reminds him of." It was the surveyor who rose to it
this time; I could see the spirit move him. He sat up, stroked his
clean-shaven face, closed the telescope eye, and looked at Barberton.
"Do you know," he began thoughtfully, "you talk of chaps going away
because of something happening--some quarrel or mistake or offence or
something. That is all a sort of clap-trap romance, I know--the mystery
trick, and so forth; but I confess it always interests me, although I
know it's all rot, because of a thing which happened within my own
knowledge--an affair of a shipmate of mine, one of the best fellows that
ever stepped the earth, in spite of the fact that he was a regular
Admirable Crichton.
"He was an ideal sort of chap, until you got to know him really well,
and found out that he was cursed with one perfectly miserable trait. He
never--absolutely _never_--forgave an injury, affront, or cause of
quarrel. He was not huffy or bad-tempered--a sunnier nature never was
created; a more patient, even-tempered chap never lived--but it was
really appalling with what immutable obstinacy he refused to forgive.
In the instances that came under my own notice, where he had quarrelled
with former friends--not through his own fault, I must say--nothing in
this world, or any other, for that matter, could influence him to shake
hands or renew acquaintance. His generosity and unselfishness were
literally boundless, his courage and fidelity superb; but anyone who had
seen evidence of his fault must have felt sorrow and regret for the
blemished nature, and must have been awestruck and frightened by his
relentlessness. Death all round him, the sight of it in friends, the
prospect of it for himself, never shook his cursed obstinacy; as we
knew, after one piece of business. He got the V.C. for a remarkable--in
fact, mad--act of courage in rescuing a brother officer. The man he
carried out, fought for, fought over, and nearly died for, was a man to
whom he had not spoken for some years. God knows what the difference
was about. This was their first meeting since quitting the same ship,
and when he carried his former friend out and laid him safely in the
surgeon's corner of the square, the half-dead man caught his sleeve, and
called out, `God bless you, old boy!' All _he_ did was to loosen the
other's grip gently, and, without a word or look at him, walk back into
the fight. It seems incredible--it did to us; but he wouldn't know him
again. He had literally wiped him out of his life!
"This trait was his curse. He was well off and well connected, and he
married one of the most charming women I have ever met. For years none
of us knew he was married. His wife was, I am convinced, as good as
gold; but she was young, attractive, accomplished, and, in fact, a born
conqueror. Perhaps she was foolish to show all the happiness she felt
in being liked and admired. You know the long absences of a sailor.
Well, perhaps she would have been wiser had she cut society altogether;
but she was a true, good woman, for all that, and she worshipped him
like a god! None of us ever knew what happened; but he left wife and
child, settled on them all he had in the world, handed over his estates
and almost all his income, and his right to legacies to come, went out
into the world, and simply erased them from his mind and life.
"That was a good many years ago--ten, I should think; and--I hate to
think it--but I wish I was as sure of to-morrow as I am sure that he
never recognised their existence again."
The surveyor shuddered at the thought.
"He was a man who could do anything that other men could do. He was
best at everything. He was loved by his mates, worshipped by his men,
and liked and admired by everyone who met him--until this trait was
revealed. Others must have felt as I did. When I discovered _that_ in
him, I don't know whether I was more frightened or grieved. I don't
know that I didn't stick to him more than ever--perhaps from pity, and
the sense that he was his own enemy and needed help. I have never heard
of or from him since he left the service, and yet I believe I was his
most intimate friend. Oliver Raymond Rivers was his name. Musical
name, isn't it?"
Barberton dropped his pipe.
"Good God! Sebougwaan!"