VIII

A week later Alec MacKenzie and George Allerton started from Charing

Cross. They were to go by P. & O. from Marseilles to Aden, and there

catch a German boat which would take them to Mombassa. Lady Kelsey was

far too distressed to see her nephew off; and Lucy was glad, since it

gave her the chance of driving to the station alone with George. She

found Dick Lomas and Mrs. Crowley already there. When the train steamed

away, Lucy was standing a little apart from the others. She was quite

still. She did not even wave her hand, and there was little expression

on her face. Mrs. Crowley was crying cheerfully, and she dried her eyes

with a tiny handkerchief. Lucy turned to her and thanked her for coming.

'Shall I drive you back in the carriage?' sobbed Mrs. Crowley.

'I think I'll take a cab, if you don't mind,' Lucy answered quietly.

'Perhaps you'll take Dick.'

She did not bid them good-bye, but walked slowly away.

'How exasperating you people are!' cried Mrs. Crowley. 'I wanted to

throw myself in her arms and have a good cry on the platform. You have

no heart.'

Dick walked along by her side, and they got into Mrs. Crowley's

carriage. She soliloquised.

'I thank God that I have emotions, and I don't mind if I do show them. I

was the only person who cried. I knew I should cry, and I brought three

handkerchiefs on purpose. Look at them.' She pulled them out of her bag

and thrust them into Dick's hand. 'They're soaking.'

'You say it with triumph,' he smiled.

'I think you're all perfectly heartless. Those two boys were going away

for heaven knows how long on a dangerous journey, and they may never

come back, and you and Lucy said good-bye to them just as if they were

going off for a day's golf. I was the only one who said I was sorry, and

that we should miss them dreadfully. I hate this English coldness. When

I go to America, it's ten to one nobody comes to see me off, and if

anyone does he just nods and says "Good-bye, I hope you'll have a jolly

time."'

'Next time you go I will come and hurl myself on the ground, and gnash

my teeth and shriek at the top of my voice.'

'Oh, yes, do. And then I'll cry all the way to Liverpool, and I shall

have a racking headache and feel quite miserable and happy.'

Dick meditated for a moment.

'You see, we have an instinctive horror of exhibiting our emotion. I

don't know why it is, I suppose training or the inheritance of our

sturdy fathers, but we're ashamed to let people see what we feel. But I

don't know whether on that account our feelings are any the less keen.

Don't you think there's a certain beauty in a grief that forbids itself

all expression? You know, I admire Lucy tremendously, and as she came

towards us on the platform I thought there was something very fine in

her calmness.'

'Fiddlesticks!' said Mrs. Crowley, sharply. 'I should have liked her

much better if she had clung to her brother and sobbed and had to be

torn away.'

'Did you notice that she left us without even shaking hands? It was a

very small omission, but it meant that she was quite absorbed in her

grief.'

They reached Mrs. Crowley's tiny house in Norfolk Street, and she asked

Dick to come in.

'Sit down and read the paper,' she said, 'while I go and powder my

nose.'

Dick made himself comfortable. He blessed the charming woman when a

butler of imposing dimensions brought in all that was necessary to make

a cocktail. Mrs. Crowley cultivated England like a museum specimen. She

had furnished her drawing-room with Chippendale furniture of an

exquisite pattern. No chintzes were so smartly calendered as hers, and

on the walls were mezzotints of the ladies whom Sir Joshua had painted.

The chimney-piece was adorned with Lowestoft china, and on the silver

table was a collection of old English spoons. She had chosen her butler

because he went so well with the house. His respectability was

portentous, his gravity was never disturbed by the shadow of a smile;

and Mrs. Crowley treated him as though he were a piece of decoration,

with an impertinence that fascinated him. He looked upon her as an

outlandish freak, but his heavy British heart was surrendered to her

entirely, and he watched over her with a solicitude that amused and

touched her.

Dick thought that the little drawing-room was very comfortable, and when

Mrs. Crowley returned, after an unconscionable time at the toilet-table,

he was in the happiest mood. She gave a rapid glance at the glasses.

'You're a perfect hero,' she said. 'You've waited till I came down to

have your cocktail.'

'Richard Lomas, madam, is the soul of courtesy,' he replied, with a

flourish. 'Besides, base is the soul that drinks in the morning by

himself. At night, in your slippers and without a collar, with a pipe in

your mouth and a good book in your hand, a solitary glass of whisky and

soda is eminently desirable; but the anteprandial cocktail needs the

sparkle of conversation.'

'You seem to be in excellent health,' said Mrs. Crowley.

'I am. Why?'

'I saw in yesterday's paper that your doctor had ordered you to go

abroad for the rest of the winter.'

'My doctor received the two guineas, and I wrote the prescription,'

returned Dick. 'Do you remember that I explained to you the other day at

length my intention of retiring into private life?'

'I do. I strongly disapprove of it.'

'Well, I was convinced that if I relinquished my duties without any

excuse people would say I was mad and shut me up in a lunatic asylum. I

invented a breakdown in my health, and everything is plain sailing. I've

got a pair for the rest of the session, and at the general election the

excellent Robert Boulger will step into my unworthy shoes.'

'And supposing you regret the step you've taken?'

'In my youth I imagined, with the romantic fervour of my age, that in

life everything was irreparable. That is a delusion. One of the greatest

advantages of life is that hardly anything is. One can make ever so many

fresh starts. The average man lives long enough for a good many

experiments, and it's they that give life its savour.'

'I don't approve of this flippant way you talk of life,' said Mrs.

Crowley severely. 'It seems to me something infinitely serious and

complicated.'

'That is an illusion of moralists. As a matter of fact, it's merely what

you make it. Mine is quite light and simple.'

Mrs. Crowley looked at Dick reflectively.

'I wonder why you never married,' she said.

'I can tell you easily. Because I have a considerable gift for repartee.

I discovered in my early youth that men propose not because they want to

marry, but because on certain occasions they are entirely at a loss for

topics of conversation.'

'It was a momentous discovery,' she smiled.

'No sooner had I made it than I began to cultivate my powers of small

talk. I felt that my only chance was to be ready with appropriate

subjects at the smallest notice, and I spent a considerable part of my

last year at Oxford in studying the best masters.'

'I never noticed that you were particularly brilliant,' murmured Mrs.

Crowley, raising her eyebrows.

'I never played for brilliancy, I played for safety. I flatter myself

that when prattle was needed, I have never been found wanting. I have

met the ingenuousness of sweet seventeen with a few observations on Free

Trade, while the haggard efforts of thirty have struggled in vain

against a brief exposition of the higher philosophy.'

'When people talk higher philosophy to me I make it a definite rule to

blush,' said Mrs. Crowley.

'The skittish widow of uncertain age has retired in disorder before a

complete acquaintance with the Restoration dramatists, and I have

frequently routed the serious spinster with religious leanings by my

remarkable knowledge of the results of missionary endeavour in Central

Africa. Once a dowager sought to ask me my intentions, but I flung at

her astonished head an article from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. An

American _divorcee_ swooned when I poured into her shell-like ear a few

facts about the McKinley Tariff. These are only my serious efforts. I

need not tell you how often I have evaded a flash of the eyes by an

epigram, or ignored a sigh by an apt quotation from the poets.'

'I don't believe a word you say,' retorted Mrs. Crowley. 'I believe you

never married for the simple reason that nobody would have you.'

'Do me the justice to acknowledge that I'm the only man who's known you

for ten days without being tempted by those coal-mines of yours in

Pennsylvania to offer you his hand and heart.'

'I don't believe the coal has anything to do with it,' answered Mrs.

Crowley. 'I put it down entirely to my very considerable personal

attractions.'

Dick looked at the time and found that the cocktail had given him an

appetite. He asked Mrs. Crowley if she would lunch with him, and gaily

they set out for a fashionable restaurant. Neither of them gave a

thought to Alec and George speeding towards the unknown, nor to Lucy

shut up in her room, given over to utter misery.

* * *

For Lucy it was the first of many dreary days. Dick went to Naples, and

enjoying his new-won idleness, did not even write to her. Mrs. Crowley,

after deciding on a trip to Egypt, was called to America by the illness

of a sister; and Lady Kelsey, unable to stand the rigour of a Northern

winter, set out for Nice. Lucy refused to accompany her. Though she knew

it would be impossible to see her father, she could not bear to leave

England; she could not face the gay people who thronged the Riviera,

while he was bound to degrading tasks. The luxury of her own life

horrified her when she compared it with his hard fare; and she could not

look upon the comfortable rooms she lived in, with their delicate

refinements, without thinking of the bare cell to which he was confined.

Lucy was glad to be alone.

She went nowhere, but passed her days in solitude, striving to acquire

peace of mind; she took long walks in the parks with her dogs, and spent

much time in the picture galleries. Without realising the effect they

had upon her, she felt vaguely the calming influence of beautiful

things; often she would sit in the National Gallery before some royal

picture, and the joy of it would fill her soul with quiet relief.

Sometimes she would go to those majestic statues that decorated the

pediment of the Parthenon, and the tears welled up in her clear eyes as

she thanked the gods for the graciousness of their peace. She did not

often listen to music, for then she could remain no longer mistress of

her emotions; the tumultuous sounds of a symphony, the final anguish of

_Tristan_, made vain all her efforts at self-control; and when she got

home, she could only throw herself on her bed and weep passionately.

In reading she found her greatest solace. Many things that Alec had said

returned dimly to her memory; and she began to read the Greek writers

who had so profoundly affected him. She found a translation of Euripides

which gave her some impression of the original, and her constant mood

was answered by those old, exquisite tragedies. The complexity of that

great poet, his doubt, despair, and his love of beauty, spoke to her

heart as no modern writer could; and in the study of those sad deeds, in

which men seemed always playthings of the fates, she found a relief to

her own keen sorrow. She did not reason it out with herself, but almost

unconsciously the thought came to her that the slings and arrows of the

gods could be transformed into beauty by resignation and courage.

Nothing was irreparable but a man's own weakness, and even in shame,

disaster, and poverty, it was possible to lead a life that was not

without grandeur. The man who was beaten to the ground by an outrageous

fortune might be a finer thing than the unseeing, cruel powers that

conquered him.

It was in this wise that Lucy battled with the intolerable shame that

oppressed her. In that quiet corner of Hampshire in which her early

years had been spent, among the memories of her dead kindred, the pride

of her race had grown to unreasonable proportions; and now in the

reaction she was terrified lest its decadence was in her, too, and in

George. She could do nothing but suffer whatever pain it pleased the

gods to send; but George was a man. In him were placed all her hopes.

But now and again wild panic seized her. Then the agony was too great to

bear, and she pressed her hands to her eyes in order to drive away the

hateful thought: what if George failed her? She knew well enough that he

had his father's engaging ways and his father's handsome face; but his

father had had a smile as frank and a charm as great. What if with the

son, too, they betokened only insincerity and weakness? A malicious

devil whispered in her ear that now and again she had averted her eyes

in order not to see George do things she hated. But it was youth that

drove him. She had taken care to keep from him knowledge of the sordid

struggles that occupied her, and how could she wonder if he was reckless

and uncaring? She would not doubt him, she could not doubt him, for if

anything went wrong with him there was no hope left. She could only

cease to believe in herself.

When Lucy was allowed to write to her father, she set herself to cheer

him. The thought that over five years must elapse before she would have

him by her side once more, paralysed her pen; but she would not allow

herself to be discouraged. And she sought to give courage to him. She

wanted him to see that her love was undiminished, and that he could

count on it. Presently she received a letter from him. After a few

weeks, the unaccustomed food, the change of life, had told upon him; and

a general breakdown in his health had driven him into the infirmary.

Lucy was thankful for the respite which his illness afforded. It must be

a little less dreary in a prison hospital than in a prison cell.

A letter came from George, and another from Alec. Alec's was brief,

telling of their journey down the Red Sea and their arrival at Mombassa;

it was abrupt and awkward, making no reference to his love, or to the

engagement which she had almost promised to make when he returned. He

began and ended quite formally. George, apparently in the best of

spirits, wrote as he always did, in a boyish, inconsequent fashion. His

letter was filled with slang and gave no news. There was little to show

that it was written from Mombassa, on the verge of a dangerous

expedition into the interior, rather than from Oxford on the eve of a

football match. But she read them over and over again. They were very

matter of fact, and she smiled as she thought of Julia Crowley's

indignation if she had seen them.

From her recollection of Alec's words, Lucy tried to make out the scene

that first met her brother's eyes. She seemed to stand by his side,

leaning over the rail, as the ship approached the harbour. The sea was

blue with a blue she had never seen, and the sky was like an inverted

bowl of copper. The low shore, covered with bush, stretched away in the

distance; a line of waves was breaking on the reef. They came in sight

of the island of Mombassa, with the overgrown ruins of a battery that

had once commanded the entrance; and there were white-roofed houses,

with deep verandas, which stood in little clearings with coral cliffs

below them. On the opposite shore thick groves of palm-trees rose with

their singular, melancholy beauty. Then as the channel narrowed, they

passed an old Portuguese fort which carried the mind back to the bold

adventurers who had first sailed those distant seas, and directly

afterwards a mass of white buildings that reached to the edge of the

lapping waves. They saw the huts of the native town, wattled and

thatched, nestling close together; and below them was a fleet of native

craft. On the jetty was the African crowd, shouting and jostling, some

half-naked, and some strangely clad, Arabs from across the sea,

Swahilis, and here and there a native from the interior.

In course of time other letters came from George, but Alec wrote no

more. The days passed slowly. Lady Kelsey returned from the Riviera.

Dick came back from Naples to enjoy the pleasures of the London season.

He appeared thoroughly to enjoy his idleness, signally falsifying the

predictions of those who had told him that it was impossible to be

happy without regular work. Mrs. Crowley settled down once more in her

house in Norfolk Street. During her absence she had written reams by

every post to Lucy, and Lucy had looked forward very much to seeing her

again. The little American was almost the only one of her friends with

whom she did not feel shy. The apartness which her nationality gave her,

made Mrs. Crowley more easy to talk to. She was too fond of Lucy to pity

her. The general election came before it was expected, and Robert

Boulger succeeded to the seat which Dick Lomas was only too glad to

vacate. Bobbie was very charming. He surrounded Lucy with a protecting

care, and she could not fail to be touched by his entire devotion. When

he thought she had recovered somewhat from the first blow of her

father's sentence, he sent her a letter in which once more he besought

her to marry him. She was grateful to him for having chosen that method

of expressing himself, for it seemed possible in writing to tell him

with greater tenderness that if she could not accept his love she deeply

valued his affection.

* * *

It seemed to Lucy that the life she led in London, or at Lady Kelsey's

house on the river, was no more than a dream. She was but a figure in

the procession of shadow pictures cast on a sheet in a fair, and nothing

that she did signified. Her spirit was away in the heart of Africa, and

by a vehement effort of her fancy she sought to see what each day her

friend and her brother were doing.

Now they had long left the railway and such civilisation as was to be

found in the lands where white men had already made their mark. She

knew the exultation which Alec felt, and the thrill of independence,

when he left behind him all traces of it. He held himself more proudly

because he knew that thenceforward he must rely on his own resources,

and success or failure depended only on himself.

Often as she lay awake and saw the ghostly dawn steal across the sky,

she seemed borne to the African camp, where the break of day, like a

gust of wind in a field of ripe corn, brought a sudden stir among the

sleepers. Alec had described to her so minutely the changing scene that

she was able to bring it vividly before her eyes. She saw him come out

of his tent, in heavy boots, buckling on his belt. He wore knee-breeches

and a pith helmet, and he was more bronzed than when she had bidden him

farewell. He gave the order to the headman of the caravan to take up the

loads. At the word there was a rush from all parts of the camp; each

porter seized his load, carrying it off to lash on his mat and his

cooking-pot, and then, sitting upon it, ate a few grains of roasted

maize or the remains of last night's game. And as the sun appeared above

the horizon, Alec, as was his custom, led the way, followed by a few

askari. A band of natives struck up a strange and musical chant, and the

camp, but now a scene of busy life, was deserted. The smouldering fires

died out with the rising sun, and the silent life of the forest replaced

the chatter and the hum of human kind. Giant beetles came from every

quarter and carried away pieces of offal; small shy beasts stole out to

gnaw the white bones upon which savage teeth had left but little; a

gaunt hyena, with suspicious looks, snatched at a bone and dashed back

into the jungle. Vultures settled down heavily, and with deliberate air

sought out the foulest refuse.

Then Lucy followed Alec upon his march, with his fighting men and his

long string of porters. They went along a narrow track, pushing their

way through bushes and thorns, or tall rank grass, sometimes with

difficulty forcing through elephant reeds which closed over their heads

and showered the cold dew down on their faces. Sometimes they passed

through villages, with rich soil and extensive population; sometimes

they plunged into heavy forests of gigantic trees, festooned with

creepers, where the silence was unbroken even by the footfall of the

traveller on the bottomless carpet of leaves; sometimes they traversed

vast swamps, hurrying to avoid the deadly fever, and sometimes scrub

jungles, in which as far as the eye could reach was a forest of cactus

and thorn bush. Sometimes they made their way through grassy uplands

with trees as splendid as those of an English park, and sometimes they

toiled painfully along a game-track that ran by the bank of a

swift-rushing river.

At midday a halt was called. The caravan had opened out by then; men who

were sick or had stopped to adjust a load, others who were weak or lazy,

had lagged behind; but at last they were all there; and the rear guard,

perhaps with George in charge of it, whose orders were on no account to

allow a single man to remain behind them, reported that no one was

missing. During the heat of noon they made fires and cooked food.

Presently they set off once more and marched till sundown.

When they reached the place which had been fixed on for camping, a

couple of shots were fired as signals; and soon the natives, men and

women, began to stream in with little baskets of grain or flour, with

potatoes and chickens, and perhaps a pot or two of honey. Very quickly

the tents were pitched, the bed gear arranged, the loads counted and

stacked. The party whose duty it was to construct the _zeriba_ cut down

boughs and dragged them in to form a fence. Each little band of men

selected the site for their bivouac; one went off to collect materials

to build the huts, another to draw water, a third for firewood and

stones, on which to place the cooking-pot. At sunset the headman blew

his whistle and asked if all were present. A lusty chorus replied. He

reported to his chief and received the orders for the next day's march.

Alec had told Lucy that from the cry that goes up in answer to the

headman's whistle, you could always gauge the spirit of the men. If game

had been shot, or from scarcity the caravan had come to a land of

plenty, there was a perfect babel of voices. But if the march had been

long and hard, or if food had been issued for a number of days, of which

this was the last, isolated voices replied; and perhaps one, bolder than

the rest, cried out: I am hungry.

Then Alec and George, and the others sat down to their evening meal,

while the porters, in little parties, were grouped around their huge

pots of porridge. A little chat, a smoke, an exchange of sporting

anecdotes, and the white men turned in. And Alec, gazing on the embers

of his camp fire was alone with his thoughts: the silence of the night

was upon him, and he looked up at the stars that shone in their

countless myriads in the blue African sky. Lucy got up and stood at her

open window. She, too, looked up at the sky, and she thought that she

saw the same stars as he did. Now in that last half hour, free from the

burden of the day, with everyone at rest, he could give himself over to

his thoughts, and his thoughts surely were of her.

* * *

During the months that had passed since Alec left England, Lucy's love

had grown. In her solitude there was nothing else to give brightness to

her life, and little by little it filled her heart. Her nature was so

strong that she could do nothing by half measures, and it was with a

feeling of extreme relief that she surrendered herself to this

overwhelming passion. It seemed to her that she was growing in a

different direction. The yearning of her soul for someone on whom to

lean was satisfied at last. Hitherto the only instincts that had been

fostered in her were those that had been useful to her father and

George; they had needed her courage and her self-reliance. It was very

comfortable to depend entirely upon Alec's love. Here she could be weak,

here she could find a greater strength which made her own seem puny.

Lucy's thoughts were absorbed in the man whom really she knew so little.

She exulted in his unselfish striving and in his firmness of purpose,

and when she compared herself with him she felt unworthy. She treasured

every recollection she had of him. She went over in her mind all that

she had heard him say, and reconstructed the conversations they had had

together. She walked where they had walked, remembering how the sky had

looked on those days and what flowers then bloomed in the parks; she

visited the galleries they had seen in one another's company, and stood

before the pictures which he had lingered at. And notwithstanding all

there was to torment and humiliate her, she was happy. Something had

come into her life which made all else tolerable. It was easy to bear

the extremity of grief when he loved her.

After a long time Dick received a letter from Alec. MacKenzie was not a

good letter-writer. He had no gift of self-expression, and when he had a

pen in his hand seemed to be seized with an invincible shyness. The

letter was dry and wooden. It was dated from the last trading-station

before he set out into the wild country which was to be the scene of his

operations. It said that hitherto everything had gone well with him, and

the white men, but for fever occasionally, were bearing the climate

well. One, named Macinnery, had made a nuisance of himself, and had been

sent back to the coast. Alec gave no reasons for this step. He had been

busy making the final arrangements. A company had been formed, the North

East Africa Trading Company, to exploit the commercial possibilities of

these unworked districts, and a charter had been given them; but the

unsettled state of the land had so hampered them that the directors had

gladly accepted Alec's offer to join their forces with his, and the

traders at their stations had been instructed to take service under him.

This increased the white men under his command to sixteen. He had

drilled the Swahilis whom he had brought from the coast, and given them

guns, so that he had now an armed force of four hundred men. He was

collecting levies from the native tribes, and he gave the outlandish

names of the chiefs, armed with spears, who were to accompany him. The

power of Mohammed the Lame was on the wane; for, during the three months

which Alec had spent in England, an illness had seized him, which the

natives asserted was a magic spell cast on him by one of his wives; and

a son of his, taking advantage of this, had revolted and fortified

himself in a stockade. The dying Sultan had taken the field against him,

and this division of forces made Alec's position immeasurably stronger.

Dick handed Lucy the letter, and watched her while she read it.

'He says nothing about George,' he said.

'He's evidently quite well.'

Though it seemed strange that Alec made no mention of the boy, Dick said

no more. Lucy appeared to be satisfied, and that was the chief thing.

But he could not rid his mind of a certain uneasiness. He had received

with misgiving Lucy's plan that George should accompany Alec. He could

not help wondering whether those frank blue eyes and that facile smile

did not conceal a nature as shallow as Fred Allerton's. But, after all,

it was the boy's only chance, and he must take it.

* * *

Then an immense silence followed. Alec disappeared into those unknown

countries as a man disappears into the night, and no more was heard of

him. None knew how he fared. Not even a rumour reached the coast of

success or failure. When he had crossed the mountains that divided the

British protectorate from the lands that were to all intents

independent, he vanished with his followers from human ken. The months

passed, and there was nothing. It was a year now since he had arrived at

Mombassa, then it was a year since the last letter had come from him. It

was only possible to guess that behind those gaunt rocks fierce battles

were fought, new lands explored, and the slavers beaten back foot by

foot. Dick sought to persuade himself that the silence was encouraging,

for it seemed to him that if the expedition had been cut to pieces the

rejoicing of the Arabs would have spread itself abroad, and some news of

a disaster would have travelled through Somaliland to the coast, or been

carried by traders to Zanzibar. He made frequent inquiries at the

Foreign Office, but there, too, nothing was known. The darkness had

fallen upon them.

But Lucy suffered neither from anxiety nor fear. She had an immense

confidence in Alec, and she believed in his strength, his courage, and

his star. He had told her that he would not return till he had

accomplished his task, and she expected to hear nothing till he had

brought it to a triumphant conclusion. She did her little to help him.

For at length the directors of the North East Africa Trading Company,

growing anxious, proposed to get a question asked in Parliament, or to

start an outcry in the newspapers which should oblige the government to

send out a force to relieve Alec if he were in difficulties, or avenge

him if he were dead. But Lucy knew that there was nothing Alec dreaded

more than official interference. He was convinced that if this work

could be done at all, he alone could do it; and she influenced Robert

Boulger and Dick Lomas to use such means as they could to prevent

anything from being done. She was certain that all Alec needed was time

and a free hand.