These made the most of their chance.
In the red, leather-bound volume of aphorisms which accompanied Dick
in his wanderings, he found a remark of Balzac's which seemed to him
full of promise:--
'Dans le monde de la realité,' that thinker had apparently concluded,
'comme dans le monde des fées, la femme appartient toujours à celui
qui sait arriver à elle et la délivrer de la situation où elle
languit.'
Here was the situation, here the woman languished, here was Dick
ready for the part of Fairy Prince.
He reflected with satisfaction that while the heroine of fairy
stories may very suitably be shepherdess, goose girl, beggar maid,
the hero is inevitably a prince--never a cattle breeder. Did this
not hint the triumph of Court over Farm, Athens over Bœotia,
Capital over Colony?
If Dick was no prince, he was young, amusing, good-looking, rich
enough to wander in comfort about Africa and bold enough to call such
wandering 'exploration' (at any rate to the journalists at
Southampton). The omens were favourable.
Dinner the first evening had been planned to suggest a tacit
comparison between Norah's present lot and the world of civilised
luxury whose gate his kiss would open.
He had shown Africa in damaging contrast with Europe. Now he applied
himself to set the lover in high relief against the husband.
Too clever for tangible disparagement that would challenge Norah's
loyalty, Dick applied himself silently to supply all that Archie in
two years had left undone. Dick's 'boy' hung the pictures that had
stood, faces wallwards, for eighteen months; Dick stretched an
insect-proof ceiling of calico that he took from his stores of
presents for headmen; Dick's carriers dug and levelled the flower
garden that Archie had always promised 'next season.'
His long limbs and cool, unhurried gestures, his well-cut white
flannels, and the faint swagger with which he wore them, had the
unquestioned advantage of Archie's unremarkable presence.
In long tête-à-têtes he exerted all his charm of manner and person.
An afternoon when Nature seemed to work for him was the shooting
expedition that he had promised. In deference to the foot, which
furnished the excuse of his stay, it was decided to paddle down river
to the flats where puku grazed and where at nightfall duck flighted.
Papyrus met over their heads in a tunnel of green silence, that the
plash of a paddle hardly broke.
'If this would never end,' sighed Dick.
Norah shrugged her shoulders.
'"Momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
she quoted, as the stream bore them out into the daylight.
A bird like a black ibis, rigid and heraldic on the bank that here
was firm and covered with short turf, kept jealous watch on the
surface of the water. Their silent passage barely disturbed his
fishing. Half-way between the river and the straight edge of the
bush a pair of Karongo crane, true season after season to each other
and their haunts, promenaded the flats. Their long necks swayed to
their leisurely, fastidious stride.
The old boatman with the withered leg, who stood in the stern, bent
forward and whispered excitedly.
'He can see a herd of puku,' said Norah.
Crouching low in the boat beneath the level of the bank, they drifted
till a bend of the river brought them into long range. Peeping
cautiously from behind a tuft of amatete reeds, Norah watched the
little red-brown cluster of buck.
Five lengths ahead of his ewes the ram was grazing. Ever and again
up jerked his head and he stood, broad-chested and solid, his mild
eyes distended, his wet nostrils snuffing, alert for sign, scent, or
sound. Then his head would sink and, reassured, he took up his
grazing, moving onward as he fed.
Dick cocked his rifle and pushed it into Norah's hand.
'Now's your chance,' he whispered.
Norah shook her head.
'Too far for me,' she breathed. 'I don't want to wound.'
Helped by Dick, whose fingers lingered on her arm, she clambered up
the bank, and began to creep on her knees, circling that the breeze
might not carry her scent to the herd. But for all her care, the ram
was uneasy. At shorter intervals his head jerked up, causing Norah
each time to flatten herself to the ground.
Whether at last they caught her scent or whether general principles
of caution prevailed, at some invisible sign from their leader the
herd started into a skeltering gallop. The ground drummed under
their hoofs until they came to a strip where reeds concealed a little
marsh. There the red bodies emerged and disappeared with the
bounding motion of rocking-horses. On the farther side they paused,
long necks stretched, wide eyes astare. Then they fell quietly to
grazing.
'I'm three parts glad I didn't get a shot,' said Norah, as she
rejoined the canoe.
Dick commended her gentleness.
'Puku are such gallant little chaps,' she said, 'and they take such a
lot of killing. Archie wounded one that dropped after she had run a
mile. When they cut her up, they found the bullet in her heart."
This gave Dick a chance to talk about the state in which at an
autopsy his heart would be found.
Norah laughed. 'You'll have forgotten I exist by the time you've
been a week in London,' she prophesied.
Dick said this was hardly fair. It was seven years since he'd seen
her last, and all the time...
'Anyhow it took you a good few minutes to recognise me in the bush,'
she reminded him.
'But you'd grown more lovely yet,' he protested. 'And in
breeches....'
The river had widened out into a sort of lake. Reeds grew up through
the water and blue lotuses starred its surface. A couple of small
red-headed moorhens bobbed up from under the broad leaves as if they
were made of cork.
This is a good place to wait for the duck to come over,' said Norah,
and Dick fixed his twelve bore.
The sunlight had turned from white through gold to ochre. A few
frogs had tentatively begun to croak. Too near the equator for
twilight, it was Africa's _heure du berger_.
Dick began to talk. From what Norah told me, his themes seem to have
dated from the early earnest years of the century. He pleaded the
right of the Natural Mate over the Legal Spouse; he urged the
barrenness of constancy Where Love is Not; he suggested that the
world might be Well Lost for Love. And so on. For my part I never
could see why 'All for Love' is a respectable sentiment and a subject
for epics and tragedies, while other equally whole-hearted passions
and sacrifices, say, 'All for Money' or 'for Food' are discredited.
However, that's an opinion that neither Norah nor Dick shared.
Norah, of course, wasn't convinced by Dick's eloquence--no woman ever
listened to what her lover said. But passion is as infectious as
small-pox, and, if it lasts no longer, leaves no lighter scars. So,
reluctantly on that perfect evening, her conscience gave ground and
Dick's words began to reach her heart and his nearness her senses.
'Don't miss the best part of life,' he adjured her.
'Life looks its best from behind.'
'It isn't for any one as young and lovely to say that. Be brave,
take a chance....'
This was perilous advice for the gambler's daughter.
'Supposing I wanted to take a chance ... with you, don't you see I've
promised...'
'Are you willing to waste your whole life for two words mumbled in
Hanover Square?'
'Don't be melodramatic, Dick!'
'It isn't melodrama, it's tragedy! Norah, come away with me,
Norah....'
Just then the duck came over, and winging swiftly against the sunset,
interrupted Dick's eloquence.
On the third evening Dick, progressing from words to action, forced
her to decision. The sun had set and Norah was still sitting out of
doors protected from wild beasts by a lamp on the table and by a gun
at her feet. The lowing of the cattle had abated and the thud of
their feet as they shouldered into the kraals had ceased. The air
was heavy with spring and with the fleshy scent of the wild magnolias
that overhung the river.
She knew it was time to go indoors, but any effort seemed
intolerable. The harsh chorus of frogs in the marshes alone broke
the silence. She sat on. A moth, as big as a swallow, brushed
against her cheek, causing her to look up. A yellow light across the
river caught her eye. 'Dick's camp fire,' she thought, and let her
imagination play. But as she gazed she knew she was mistaken, for
the light was dodging and swaying nearer. It was a hurricane lamp
crossing the river. It could only be carried by Dick, and he was
coming over to her.
She did not feel glad or sorry, but waited in inert prostration
before an oncoming fate. The night denied motion, and she was held
in a snare waiting the coming of the fowler. Her heart began to beat
faster. A drum started to throb in a distant village and her blood
seemed to pulse in time. Dick's lamp was an intolerable way off, so
were the tropical stars, so was reality. Her world was that
insistent drum and her galloping pulses.
At last she heard Dick's footsteps on the leaves. Without a word he
lowered himself into the chair beside her and for a long time sat in
silence, his face in the shadow.
'What holds you here?' he asked at last.
'Say "who" rather?' her deep voice replied, resenting the effort of
speech.
'The flowers blossom and die in your forests,' he went on, 'and no
man sees them.'
'Poetry!' she laughed. 'This is prose and daily bread.'
He groped after her mood.
'You could have poetry and cake.'
She threw up her head laughing and he saw where the sunburn stopped
on her neck.
'Wedding cake?' she asked mischievously.
'If I'm not an angel, I'm not an absolute rotter,' he said quickly.
'It wouldn't have mattered in any case,' she murmured, 'if...'
'If what?'
She did not answer. In the distance the drum pounded on, inciting to
the dance some isolated community of black men, sentient only of the
whips of hunger and desire. She wondered if white civilisation at
heart obeyed any different goad.
'That's all the music you'll hear,' Dick nodded his head in the
direction of the sound.
'Life can be lived without stimulants,' she said.
'D'you call it life?'
He tried to take her hand. She moved it.
'Norah, you're driving me mad. Do you want to?'
'You know I don't,' she whispered.
'Don't you see? ... In a few days, my foot'll be well, I must go.
Must I go alone, without hope, knowing I'll never see you again? I
really think I'll kill myself.'
What about Archie?'
'Would he kill himself?' asked Dick quietly. 'Would he ... notice
even?'
She did not answer.
'Be fair to him; but be fair to yourself; be generous to me.'
She was silent, listening to the message of the drums.
He interpreted her silence to his wishes, and slid his hand up her
arm. She did not resist; it seemed so much simpler to accept the
philosophy of the drum and surrender to the primeval forces. Dick's
lips were on hers, but his kisses reminded her of her husband's early
love-making. Without much conviction, she pushed them away and stood
upright, her breasts heaving. Dick seized her small hands as they
pushed at his chest, pulling her against him. His arm went round her
body and lifted her to him till her toes barely touched the ground.
He smothered her white, upturned face with kisses. She could hardly
breathe. For a moment she was tense and tingling; her senses shot up
like firelight, then narrowed to a pin point. Heaviness descended on
her and remorse. Her own voice rang in her ears--'What about Archie?'
She struggled and he released her.
'Go now, Dick,' she said, her deep voice husky, and picking up the
lamp she left him.
He waited silent in his chair for hours it seemed; then, as she made
no sign, he rose, swinging his hurricane lamp. She watched the light
stagger away across the river with a feeling of utter desolation.
Next morning she sat down at her writing-table. Outside the window
squatted Jacketi waiting impassively for her letter.
Jacketi was a bad lot, he liked beer and women better and spared
truth further than most natives, but he had perfect manners and
wonderful legs. Sixty miles in thirty hours he would do, and
overtake in a day and a night the three days' stages of a white man.
For this Norah had summoned him to carry a letter to Archie.
Africa was silent in the daylight and traditions of loyalty and
chastity asserted themselves. She resented the struggle and thought
cynically how much simpler it would have been, if Dick had imposed
his will on her: like Montaigne's lady, who, after a troop of cavalry
had been billeted in her house, wrote in her diary, This night,
praise the Virgin, I am satisfied without sin.'
She had decided to call to Archie to come and, if his presence did
not stem the flood which threatened to sweep her away, at least she
would talk things out aboveboard and honestly with him. Painfully
she drafted a letter: not an easy one to write. She tore up her
first attempt and scrawled, '_Dear Archie, If you love me, come
straight back._--NORAH.' She sealed it and handed it through the
window to the waiting Jacketi. Then she wrote a note to Dick,
telling him to keep his side of the river till she sent for him.
Norah never did things by halves.
A few days later Jacketi was standing again on the verandah, tired
but smiling.
'Well, Jacketi, did you find the Bwana?'
'Yes, indeed, mistress.'
'Did he give you a letter?'
'No, indeed, mistress....'
'What did the Bwana say?'
Jacketi imitated Archie's manner and voice.
'"All right, Jacketi."'
'Was that all?'
Jacketi nodded his head composedly. She flung him a shilling. 'You
can go now,' and re-entered the darkened room.
Had Archie ignored this appeal too and pushed forward on his 'cattle
business'? If so ... But since he was as saving with letters as with
words, he might even now be on his way back to her. She must have
patience and wait. He should reach the farm not later than
Wednesday."
Ross flung out his arm with a deprecatory gesture. At least that is
how I interpreted the path of his glowing cigar-end.
"Some of the blame," he said, "should you be old-fashioned enough to
think in terms of blame and praise, must be reserved for Africa.
To understand the problem of Norah's ... fall, bid for
self-expression, or whatever your brand of morality calls it, apply
my formula for gauging what Africa will make of a man:--'Lowest
Common Failing cubed' if you remember. Our first task is the ever
congenial one of spotting the L.C.F., the ruling weakness. Poor
Norah, the field is big enough. So big, selection is difficult; for,
outside courage and honesty, she had few noteworthy virtues.
Pride, hot temper--neither was missing, but neither ruled her.
Irreverence--a full share, but nothing notable for the century. A
free tongue, a gambler's heart--I feel we are 'warmer.'
Rebelliousness, generosity--which of these two failings to choose?
From her cradle she had been a rebel. I have mentioned a few
instances--her expulsion from the Red Cross, her defiance of the
rules of war when she rescued Archie, and of the rules of common
sense when she married him, her preference of Africa to Edinburgh,
and so on. To Norah a custom established, a practice accepted, dared
her to its disregard or breach. The temptation to break with her
sex's tradition of, at any rate overt, chastity must have been
overwhelming, while to the itch to break through rules, she could
only oppose fidelity to her promise.
Generosity, my second choice, had ever made it hard for her to say
'no' or to withhold what lay in her power to give. As a child she
had lavished her pennies on the utterly undeserving poor. As a girl,
disregarding the cost, she had always been at the call of any friend,
or stranger for that matter, in a difficulty. And now she could by
an act, not in itself uncomfortable, grant Dick a boon he craved,
whose refusal he hinted would make him desperate ... while Archie, it
seemed ... did not care.
So, if you wish, you may charge her ultimate surrender to her double
weakness exploited by Africa; if you prefer, to her single strength
betrayed by Archie's silence, that loyalty to her bond long and
savagely honoured.
As an English writer you may be trusted not to impute her fall to
mere weakness of the flesh. You would never admit that a woman of
your nation and class would take a lover from so disinterested a
motive. Adultery on grounds of spite, altruism, jealousy, poverty,
revenge, avarice, or even absence of mind is admissible. From
passion, unthinkable.
Well, the decisive Wednesday came without sign or rumour of Archie.
On Saturday night Dick's lantern a second time came swinging across
the river."