Gregory Rose had been gone seven months. Em sat alone on a white
sheepskin before the fire.
The August night-wind, weird and shrill, howled round the chimneys and
through the crannies, and in walls and doors, and uttered a long low cry
as it forced its way among the clefts of the stones on the kopje. It was
a wild night. The prickly-pear tree, stiff and upright as it held
its arms, felt the wind’s might, and knocked its flat leaves heavily
together, till great branches broke off. The Kaffers, as they slept in
their straw huts, whispered one to another that before morning there
would not be an armful of thatch left on the roofs; and the beams of the
wagon-house creaked and groaned as if it were heavy work to resist the
importunity of the wind.
Em had not gone to bed. Who could sleep on a night like this? So in the
dining room she had lighted a fire, and sat on the ground before it,
turning the roaster-cakes that lay on the coals to bake. It would save
work in the morning; and she blew out the light because the wind through
the window-chinks made it flicker and run; and she sat singing to
herself as she watched the cakes. They lay at one end of the wide
hearth on a bed of coals, and at the other end a fire burnt up steadily,
casting its amber glow over Em’s light hair and black dress, with
the ruffle of crepe about the neck, and over the white curls of the
sheepskin on which she sat.
Louder and more fiercely yet howled the storm; but Em sang on, and
heard nothing but the words of her song, and heard them only faintly, as
something restful. It was an old, childish song she had often heard her
mother sing long ago:
Where the reeds dance by the river, Where the willow’s song is said, On
the face of the morning water, Is reflected a white flower’s head.
She folded her hands and sang the next verse dreamily:
Where the reeds shake by the river,
Where the moonlight’s sheen is shed,
On the face of the sleeping water,
Two leaves of a white flower float dead.
Dead, Dead, Dead!
She echoed the refrain softly till it died away, and then repeated it.
It was as if, unknown to herself, it harmonized with the pictures and
thoughts that sat with her there alone in the firelight. She turned the
cakes over, while the wind hurled down a row of bricks from the gable,
and made the walls tremble.
Presently she paused and listened; there was a sound as of something
knocking at the back-doorway. But the wind had raised its level higher,
and she went on with her work. At last the sound was repeated. Then
she rose, lit the candle and the fire, and went to see. Only to satisfy
herself, she said, that nothing could be out on such a night.
She opened the door a little way, and held the light behind her to
defend it from the wind. The figure of a tall man stood there, and
before she could speak he had pushed his way in, and was forcing the
door to close behind him.
“Waldo!” she cried in astonishment.
He had been gone more than a year and a half.
“You did not expect to see me,” he answered, as he turned toward her;
“I should have slept in the outhouse, and not troubled you tonight; but
through the shutter I saw glimmerings of a light.”
“Come in to the fire,” she said; “it is a terrific night for any
creature to be out. Shall we not go and fetch your things in first?” she
added.
“I have nothing but this,” he said, motioning to the little bundle in
his hand.
“Your horse?”
“Is dead.”
He sat down on the bench before the fire.
“The cakes are almost ready,” she said; “I will get you something to
eat. Where have you been wandering all this while?”
“Up and down, up and down,” he answered wearily; “and now the whim has
seized me to come back here. Em,” he said, putting his hand on her arm
as she passed him, “have you heard from Lyndall lately?”
“Yes,” said Em, turning quickly from him.
“Where is she? I had one letter from her, but that is almost a year ago
now--just when she left. Where is she?”
“In the Transvaal. I will go and get you some supper; we can talk
afterward.”
“Can you give me her exact address? I want to write to her.”
But Em had gone into the next room.
When food was on the table she knelt down before the fire, turning the
cakes, babbling restlessly, eagerly, now of this, now of that. She
was glad to see him--Tant Sannie was coming soon to show her her new
baby--he must stay on the farm now, and help her. And Waldo himself was
well content to eat his meal in silence, asking no more questions.
“Gregory is coming back next week,” she said; “he will have been
gone just a hundred and three days tomorrow. I had a letter from him
yesterday.”
“Where has he been?”
But his companion stooped to lift a cake from the fire.
“How the wind blows! One can hardly hear one’s own voice,” she said.
“Take this warm cake; no one’s cakes are like mine. Why, you have eaten
nothing!”
“I am a little weary,” he said; “the wind was mad tonight.”
He folded his arms, and rested his head against the fireplace, whilst
she removed the dishes from the table. On the mantelpiece stood an
inkpot and some sheets of paper. Presently he took them down and turned
up the corner of the tablecloth.
“I will write a few lines,” he said; “till you are ready to sit down and
talk.”
Em, as she shook out the tablecloth, watched him bending intently over
his paper. He had changed much. His face had grown thinner; his cheeks
were almost hollow, though they were covered by a dark growth of beard.
She sat down on the skin beside him, and felt the little bundle on the
bench; it was painfully small and soft. Perhaps it held a shirt and a
book, but nothing more. The old black hat had a piece of unhemmed muslin
twisted round it, and on his elbow was a large patch so fixed on with
yellow thread that her heart ached. Only his hair was not changed, and
hung in silky beautiful waves almost to his shoulders.
Tomorrow she would take the ragged edge off his collar, and put a new
band round his hat. She did not interrupt him, but she wondered how it
was that he sat to write so intently after his long weary walk. He was
not tired now; his pen hurried quickly and restlessly over the paper,
and his eye was bright. Presently Em raised her hand to her breast,
where lay the letter yesterday had brought her. Soon she had forgotten
him, as entirely as he had forgotten her; each was in his own world with
his own. He was writing to Lyndall. He would tell her all he had seen,
all he had done, though it were nothing worth relating. He seemed to
have come back to her, and to be talking to her now he sat there in the
old house.
“--and then I got to the next town, and my horse was tired, so I could
go no further, and looked for work. A shopkeeper agreed to hire me as
salesman. He made me sign a promise to remain six months, and he gave
me a little empty room at the back of the store to sleep in. I had still
three pounds of my own, and when you just come from the country three
pounds seems a great deal.
“When I had been in the shop three days I wanted to go away again. A
clerk in a shop has the lowest work to do of all the people. It is much
better to break stones; you have the blue sky above you, and only the
stones to bend to. I asked my master to let me go, and I offered to give
him my two pounds, and the bag of mealies I had bought with the other
pound; but he would not.
“I found out afterward he was only giving me half as much as he gave to
the others--that was why. I had fear when I looked at the other clerks
that I would at last become like them. All day they were bowing and
smirking to the women who came in; smiling, when all they wanted was to
get their money from them. They used to run and fetch the dresses and
ribbons to show them, and they seemed to me like worms with oil on.
There was one respectable thing in that store--it was the Kaffer
storeman. His work was to load and unload, and he never needed to smile
except when he liked, and he never told lies.
“The other clerks gave me the name of Old Salvation; but there was one
person I liked very much. He was clerk in another store. He often went
past the door. He seemed to me not like others--his face was bright and
fresh like a little child’s. When he came to the shop I felt I liked
him. One day I saw a book in his pocket, and that made me feel near him.
I asked him if he was fond of reading, and he said, yes, when there was
nothing else to do. The next day he came to me, and asked me if I did
not feel lonely; he never saw me going out with the other fellows; he
would come and see me that evening, he said.
“I was glad, and bought some meat and flour, because the grey mare and I
always ate mealies; it is the cheapest thing; when you boil it hard you
can’t eat much of it. I made some cakes, and I folded my great coat on
the box to make it softer for him; and at last he came.
“‘You’ve got a rummy place here,’ he said.
“You see there was nothing in it but packing-cases for furniture, and it
was rather empty. While I was putting the food on the box he looked at
my books; he read their names out aloud. ‘Elementary Physiology,’ ‘First
Principles.’
“‘Golly!’ he said; ‘I’ve got a lot of dry stuff like that at home I got
for Sunday-school prizes; but I only keep them to light my pipe with
now; they come in handy for that.’ Then he asked me if I had ever read
a book called the ‘Black-eyed Creole.’ ‘That is the style for me,’ he
said; ‘there where the fellow takes the nigger-girl by the arm, and the
other fellow cuts it off! That’s what I like.’
“But what he said after that I don’t remember, only it made me feel as
if I were having a bad dream, and I wanted to be far away.
“When he had finished eating he did not stay long; he had to go and see
some girls home from a prayer-meeting; and he asked how it was he never
saw me walking out with any on Sunday afternoons. He said he had lots of
sweethearts, and he was going to see one the next Wednesday on a farm,
and he asked me to lend my mare. I told him she was very old. But he
said it didn’t matter; he would come the next day to fetch her.
“After he was gone my little room got back to its old look. I loved
it so; I was so glad to get into it at night, and it seemed to be
reproaching me for bringing him there. The next day he took the grey
mare. On Thursday he did not bring her back, and on Friday I found the
saddle and bridle standing at my door.
“In the afternoon he looked into the shop, and called out: ‘Hope you got
your saddle, Farber? Your bag-of-bones kicked out six miles from here.
I’ll send you a couple of shillings tomorrow, though the old hide wasn’t
worth it. Good morning.’
“But I sprung over the counter, and got him by his throat. My father was
so gentle with her; he never would ride her up hill, and now this fellow
had murdered her! I asked him where he had killed her, and I shook him
till he slipped out of my hand. He stood in the door grinning.
“‘It didn’t take much to kill that bag-of-bones, whose master sleeps
in a packing-case, and waits till his company’s finished to eat on the
plate. Shouldn’t wonder if you fed her on sugar-bags,’ he said; ‘and
if you think I’ve jumped her, you’d better go and look yourself. You’ll
find her along the road by the aasvogels that are eating her.’
“I caught him by his collar, and I lifted him from the ground, and
I threw him out into the street, half-way across it. I heard the
bookkeeper say to the clerk that there was always the devil in those mum
fellows; but they never called me Salvation after that.
“I am writing to you of very small things, but there is nothing else to
tell; it has been all small and you will like it. Whenever anything has
happened I have always thought I would tell it to you. The back thought
in my mind is always you. After that only one old man came to visit me.
I had seen him in the streets often; he always wore very dirty black
clothes, and a hat with crepe round it, and he had one eye, so I
noticed him. One day he came to my room with a subscription-list for
a minister’s salary. When I said I had nothing to give he looked at me
with his one eye.
“‘Young man,’ he said, ‘how is it I never see you in the house of the
Lord?’ I thought he was trying to do good, so I felt sorry for him, and
I told him I never went to chapel. ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘it grieves me
to hear such godless words from the lips of one so young--so far gone in
the paths of destruction. Young man, if you forget God, God will forget
you. There is a seat on the right-hand side as you go at the bottom door
that you may get. If you are given over to the enjoyment and frivolities
of this world, what will become of your never dying soul?’
“He would not go till I gave him half a crown for the minister’s salary.
Afterward I heard he was the man who collected the pew rents and got a
percentage. I didn’t get to know any one else.
“When my time in that shop was done I hired myself to drive one of a
transport-rider’s wagons.
“That first morning, when I sat in the front and called to my oxen, and
saw nothing about me but the hills, with the blue coming down to them,
and the karoo bushes, I was drunk; I laughed; my heart was beating till
it hurt me. I shut my eyes tight, that when I opened them I might see
there were no shelves about me. There must be a beauty in buying and
selling, if there is beauty in everything: but it is very ugly to me. My
life as transport-rider would have been the best life in the world if I
had had only one wagon to drive. My master told me he would drive one, I
the other, and he would hire another person to drive the third. But the
first day I drove two to help him, and after that he let me drive all
three. Whenever we came to an hotel he stopped behind to get a drink,
and when he rode up to the wagons he could never stand; the Hottentot
and I used to lift him up. We always travelled all night, and used to
outspan for five or six hours in the heat of the day to rest. I planned
that I would lie under a wagon and read for an hour or two every day
before I went to sleep, and I did for the first two or three; but after
that I only wanted to sleep, like the rest, and I packed my books away.
“When you have three wagons to look after all night, you are sometimes
so tired you can hardly stand. At first when I walked along driving
my wagons in the night it was glorious; the stars had never looked so
beautiful to me; and on the dark nights when we rode through the bush
there were will-o’-the-wisps dancing on each side of the road. I found
out that even the damp and dark are beautiful. But I soon changed, and
saw nothing but the road and my oxen. I only wished for a smooth piece
of road, so that I might sit at the front and doze. At the places where
we outspanned there were sometimes rare plants and flowers, the festoons
hanging from the bush-trees, and nuts and insects, such as we never see
here; but after a little while I never looked at them--I was too tired.
“I ate as much as I could, and then lay down on my face under the wagon
till the boy came to wake me to inspan, and then we drove on again all
night; so it went, so it went. I think sometimes when I walked by my
oxen I called to them in my sleep, for I know I thought of nothing; I
was like an animal. My body was strong and well to work, but my brain
was dead. If you have not felt it, Lyndall, you cannot understand it.
You may work, and work, and work, till you are only a body, not a
soul. Now, when I see one of those evil-looking men that come from
Europe--navvies, with the beast-like, sunken face, different from any
Kaffer’s--I know what brought that look into their eyes; and if I
have only one inch of tobacco I give them half. It is work, grinding,
mechanical work, that they or their ancestors have done, that has made
them into beasts. You may work a man’s body so that his soul dies. Work
is good. I have worked at the old farm from the sun’s rising till its
setting, but I have had time to think, and time to feel. You may work a
man so that all but the animal in him is gone; and that grows stronger
with physical labour.
“You may work a man till he is a devil. I know it, because I have felt
it. You will never understand the change that came over me. No one but I
will ever know how great it was. But I was never miserable; when I could
keep my oxen from sticking fast, and when I could find a place to lie
down in, I had all I wanted. After I had driven eight months a rainy
season came. For eighteen hours out of the twenty-four we worked in
the wet. The mud went up to the axles sometimes, and we had to dig the
wheels out, and we never went far in a day. My master swore at me more
than ever, but when he had done he always offered me his brandy-flask.
When I first came he had offered it me, and I had always refused; but
now I drank as my oxen did when I gave them water--without thinking. At
last I bought brandy for myself whenever we passed an hotel.
“One Sunday we outspanned on the banks of a swollen river to wait for
its going down. It was drizzling still, so I lay under the wagon on the
mud. There was no dry place anywhere; and all the dung was wet, so there
was no fire to cook food. My little flask was filled with brandy, and I
drank some and went to sleep. When I woke it was drizzling still, so
I drank some more. I was stiff and cold; and my master, who lay by me,
offered me his flask, because mine was empty. I drank some, and then I
thought I would go and see if the river was going down. I remember that
I walked to the road, and it seemed to be going away from me. When I
woke up I was lying by a little bush on the bank of the river. It was
afternoon; all the clouds had gone, and the sky was deep blue. The
Bushman boy was grilling ribs at the fire. He looked at me and grinned
from ear to ear. ‘Master was a little nice,’ he said, ‘and lay down in
the road. Something might ride over master, so I carried him there.’ He
grinned at me again. It was as though he said, ‘You and I are comrades.
I have lain in a road, too. I know all about it.’
“When I turned my head from him I saw the earth, so pure after the
rain, so green, so fresh, so blue; and I was a drunken carrier, whom his
leader had picked up in the mud, and laid at the roadside to sleep out
his drink. I remember my old life, and I remember you. I saw how,
one day, you would read in the papers: ‘A German carrier, named Waldo
Farber, was killed through falling from his wagon, being instantly
crushed under the wheel. Deceased was supposed to have been drunk at the
time of the accident.’ There are those notices in the paper every month.
I sat up, and I took the brandy-flask out of my pocket, and I flung it
as far as I could into the dark water. The Hottentot boy ran down to see
if he could catch it; it had sunk to the bottom. I never drank again.
But, Lyndall, sin looks much more terrible to those who look at it than
to those who do it. A convict, or a man who drinks, seems something so
far off and horrible when we see him; but to himself he seems quite near
to us, and like us. We wonder what kind of a creature he is; but he is
just we, ourselves. We are only the wood, the knife that carves on us is
the circumstance.
“I do not know why I kept on working so hard for that master. I think it
was as the oxen come every day and stand by the yokes; they do not know
why. Perhaps I would have been with him still; but one day we started
with loads for the Diamond Fields. The oxen were very thin now, and
they had been standing about in the yoke all day without food, while the
wagons were being loaded. Not far from the town was a hill. When we came
to the foot the first wagon stuck fast. I tried for a little while to
urge the oxen, but I soon saw the one span could never pull it up. I
went to the other wagon to loosen that span to join them on in front,
but the transport-rider, who was lying at the back of the wagon, jumped
out.
“‘They shall bring it up the hill; and if half of them die for it they
shall do it alone,’ he said.
“He was not drunk, but in bad temper, for he had been drunk the night
before. He swore at me, and told me to take the whip and help him. We
tried for a little time, then I told him it was no use, they could never
do it. He swore louder and called to the leaders to come on with their
whips, and together they lashed. There was one ox, a black ox, so thin
that the ridge of his backbone almost cut through his flesh.
“‘It is you, devil, is it, that will not pull?’ the transport-rider
said. ‘I will show you something.’ He looked like a devil.
“He told the boys to leave off flogging, and he held the ox by the horn,
and took up a round stone and knocked its nose with it till the blood
came. When he had done they called to the oxen and took up their whips
again, and the oxen strained with their backs bent, but the wagon did
not move an inch.
“‘So you won’t, won’t you?’ he said. I’ll help you.’
“He took out his clasp-knife, and ran it into the leg of the trembling
ox three times, up to the hilt. Then he put the knife in his pocket, and
they took their whips. The oxen’s flanks quivered, and they foamed at
the mouth. Straining, they moved the wagon a few feet forward, then
stood with bent backs to keep it from sliding back. From the black ox’s
nostrils foam and blood were streaming on to the ground. It turned its
head in its anguish and looked at me with its great starting eyes. It
was praying for help in its agony and weakness, and they took their
whips again. The creature bellowed aloud. If there is a God, it was
calling to its Maker for help. Then a stream of clear blood burst from
both nostrils; it fell on to the ground, and the wagon slipped back. The
man walked up to it.
“‘You are going to lie down, devil, are you? We’ll see you don’t take it
too easy.’
“The thing was just dying. He opened his clasp-knife and stooped down
over it. I do not know what I did then. But afterward I know I had him
on the stones, and I was kneeling on him. The boys dragged me off. I
wish they had not. I left him standing in the sand in the road, shaking
himself, and I walked back to the town. I took nothing from that
accursed wagon, so I had only two shillings. But it did not matter. The
next day I got work at a wholesale store. My work was to pack and unpack
goods, and to carry boxes, and I had to work from six in the morning to
six in the evening; so I had plenty of time.
“I hired a little room, and subscribed to a library, so I had everything
I needed; and in the week of Christmas holidays I went to see the sea.
I walked all night, Lyndall, to escape the heat, and a little after
sunrise I got to the top of a high hill. Before me was a long, low,
blue, monotonous mountain. I walked looking at it, but I was thinking of
the sea I wanted to see. At last I wondered what that curious blue thing
might be; then it struck me it was the sea! I would have turned back
again, only I was too tired. I wonder if all the things we long to
see--the churches, the pictures, the men in Europe--will disappoint
us so! You see I had dreamed of it so long. When I was a little boy,
minding sheep behind the kopje, I used to see the waves stretching
out as far as the eye could reach in the sunlight. My sea! Is the idea
always more beautiful than the real?
“I got to the beach that afternoon, and I saw the water run up and down
on the sand, and I saw the white foam breakers; they were pretty, but I
thought I would go back the next day. It was not my sea.
“But I began to like it when I sat by it that night in the moonlight;
and the next day I liked it better; and before I left I loved it. It was
not like the sky and stars, that talk of what has no beginning and no
end; but it is so human. Of all the things I have ever seen, only the
sea is like a human being; the sky is not, nor the earth. But the sea is
always moving, always something deep in itself is stirring it. It never
rests. It is always wanting, wanting, wanting. It hurries on; and then
it creeps back slowly without having reached, moaning. It is always
asking a question, and it never gets the answer. I can hear it in the
day and in the night; the white foam breakers are saying that which I
think. I walk alone with them when there is no one to see me, and I sing
with them. I lie down on the sand and watch them with my eyes half shut.
The sky is better, but it is so high above our heads. I love the
sea. Sometimes we must look down too. After five days I went back to
Grahamstown.
“I had glorious books, and in the night I could sit in my little room
and read them; but I was lonely. Books are not the same things when you
are living among people. I cannot tell why, but they are dead. On the
farm they would have been living beings to me; but here, where there
were so many people about me, I wanted some one to belong to me. I was
lonely. I wanted something that was flesh and blood. Once on this farm
there came a stranger; I did not ask his name, but he sat among the
karoo and talked with me. Now, wherever I have travelled I have looked
for him--in hotels, in streets, in passenger wagons as they rushed in,
through the open windows of houses I have looked for him, but I have not
found him--never heard a voice like his. One day I went to the Botanic
Gardens. It was a half-holiday, and the band was to play. I stood in the
long raised avenue and looked down. There were many flowers, and ladies
and children were walking about beautifully dressed. At last the music
began. I had not heard such music before.
“At first it was slow and even, like the everyday life, when we walk
through it without thought or feeling; then it grew faster, then it
paused, hesitated, then it was quite still for an instant, and then it
burst out. Lyndall, they made heaven right when they made it all music.
It takes you up and carries you away, away, till you have the things
you longed for, you are up close to them. You have got out into a large,
free, open place. I could not see anything while it was playing; I stood
with my head against my tree; but, when it was done, I saw that there
were ladies sitting close to me on a wooden bench, and the stranger who
had talked to me that day in the karoo was sitting between them. The
ladies were very pretty, and their dresses beautiful. I do not think
they had been listening to the music, for they were talking and laughing
very softly. I heard all they said, and could even smell the rose on the
breast of one. I was afraid he would see me; so I went to the other side
of the tree, and soon they got up and began to pace up and down in the
avenue.
“All the time the music played they chatted, and he carried on his arm
the scarf of the prettiest lady. I did not hear the music; I tried to
catch the sound of his voice each time he went by. When I was listening
to the music I did not know I was badly dressed; now I felt so ashamed
of myself. I never knew before what a low, horrible thing I was, dressed
in tancord. That day on the farm, when we sat on the ground under the
thorn-trees, I thought he quite belonged to me; now, I saw he was not
mine. But he was still as beautiful. His brown eyes are more beautiful
than any one’s eyes, except yours.
“At last they turned to go, and I walked after them. When they got out
of the gate he helped the ladies into a phaeton, and stood for a moment
with his foot on the step talking to them. He had a little cane in his
hand, and an Italian greyhound ran after him. Just when they drove away
one of the ladies dropped her whip.
“‘Pick it up, fellow,’ she said; and when I brought it her she threw
sixpence on the ground. I might have gone back to the garden then; but I
did not want music; I wanted clothes, and to be fashionable and fine. I
felt that my hands were coarse, and that I was vulgar. I never tried to
see him again.
“I stayed in my situation four months after that, but I was not happy.
I had no rest. The people about me pressed on me, and made me
dissatisfied. I could not forget them. Even when I did not see them they
pressed on me, and made me miserable. I did not love books; I wanted
people. When I walked home under the shady trees in the street I could
not be happy, for when I passed the houses I heard music, and saw faces
between the curtains. I did not want any of them, but I wanted some one
for mine, for me. I could not help it. I wanted a finer life.
“Only one day something made me happy. A nurse came to the store with a
little girl belonging to one of our clerks. While the maid went into the
office to give a message to its father, the little child stood looking
at me. Presently she came close to me and peeped up into my face.
“‘Nice curls, pretty curls,’ she said; ‘I like curls.’
“She felt my hair all over, with her little hands. When I put out my arm
she let me take her and sit her on my knee. She kissed me with her soft
mouth. We were happy till the nurse-girl came and shook her, and asked
her if she was not ashamed to sit on the knee of that strange man. But I
do not think my little one minded. She laughed at me as she went out.
“If the world was all children I could like it; but men and women draw
me so strangely, and then press me away, till I am in agony. I was not
meant to live among people. Perhaps some day, when I am grown older, I
will be able to go and live among them and look at them as I look at the
rocks, and bushes, without letting them disturb me, and take myself from
me; but not now. So I grew miserable; a kind of fever seemed to eat me;
I could not rest, or read, or think; so I came back here. I knew you
were not here but it seemed as though I should be nearer you; and it is
you I want--you that the other people suggest to me, but cannot give.”
He had filled all the sheets he had taken, and now lifted down the
last from the mantelpiece. Em had dropped asleep, and lay slumbering
peacefully on the skin before the fire. Out of doors the storm still
raged; but in a fitful manner, as though growing half weary of itself.
He bent over his paper again, with eager flushed cheek, and wrote on.
“It has been a delightful journey, this journey home. I have walked on
foot. The evening before last, when it was just sunset, I was a little
footsore and thirsty, and went out of the road to look for water. I went
down into a deep little kloof. Some trees ran along the bottom, and I
thought I should find water there. The sun had quite set when I got to
the bottom of it. It was very still--not a leaf was stirring anywhere.
In the bed of the mountain torrent I thought I might find water. I came
to the bank, and leaped down into the dry bed. The floor on which I
stood was of fine white sand, and the banks rose on every side like the
walls of a room.
“Above there was a precipice of rocks, and a tiny stream of water oozed
from them and fell slowly on to the flat stone below. Each drop you
could hear fall like a little silver bell. There was one among the trees
on the bank that stood cut out against the white sky. All the other
trees were silent; but this one shook and trembled against the sky.
Everything else was still; but those leaves were quivering, quivering. I
stood on the sand; I could not go away. When it was quite dark, and the
stars had come, I crept out. Does it seem strange to you that it should
have made me so happy? It is because I cannot tell you how near I felt
to things that we cannot see but we always feel. Tonight has been a
wild, stormy night. I have been walking across the plain for hours in
the dark. I have liked the wind, because I have seemed forcing my way
through to you. I knew you were not here, but I would hear of you. When
I used to sit on the transport wagon half-sleeping, I used to start
awake because your hands were on me. In my lodgings, many nights I have
blown the light out, and sat in the dark, that I might see your face
start out more distinctly. Sometimes it was the little girl’s face who
used to come to me behind the kopje when I minded sheep, and sit by me
in her blue pinafore; sometimes it was older. I love both. I am very
helpless; I shall never do anything; but you will work, and I will take
your work for mine. Sometimes such a sudden gladness seizes me when I
remember that somewhere in the world you are living and working. You are
my very own; nothing else is my own so. When I have finished I am going
to look at your room door--”
He wrote; and the wind, which had spent its fury, moaned round and round
the house, most like a tired child weary with crying.
Em woke up, and sat before the fire, rubbing her eyes, and listening, as
it sobbed about the gables, and wandered away over the long stone walls.
“How quiet it has grown now,” she said, and sighed herself, partly
from weariness and partly from sympathy with the tired wind. He did not
answer her; he was lost in his letter.
She rose slowly after a time, and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“You have many letters to write,” she said.
“No,” he answered; “it is only one to Lyndall.”
She turned away, and stood long before the fire looking into it. If you
have a deadly fruit to give, it will not grow sweeter by keeping.
“Waldo, dear,” she said, putting her hand on his, “leave off writing.”
He threw back the dark hair from his forehead and looked at her.
“It is no use writing any more,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
She put her hand over the papers he had written.
“Waldo,” she said, “Lyndall is dead.”