It was not till six months later that news of Alec MacKenzie's
expedition reached the outer world, and at the same time Lucy received a
letter from him in which he told her that her brother was dead. That
stormy night had been fatal to the light-hearted Walker and to George
Allerton, but success had rewarded Alec's desperate boldness, and a blow
had been inflicted on the slavers which subsequent events proved to be
crushing. Alec's letter was grave and tender. He knew the extreme grief
he must inflict upon Lucy, and he knew that words could not assuage it.
It seemed to him that the only consolation he could offer was that the
life which was so precious to her had been given for a worthy cause. Now
that George had made up in the only way possible for the misfortune his
criminal folly had brought upon them, Alec was determined to put out of
his mind all that had gone before. It was right that the weakness which
had ruined him should be forgotten, and Alec could dwell honestly on the
boy's charm of manner, and on his passionate love for his sister.
The months followed one another, the dry season gave place to the wet,
and at length Alec was able to say that the result he had striven for
was achieved. Success rewarded his long efforts, and it was worth the
time, the money, and the lives that it had cost. The slavers were driven
out of a territory larger than the United Kingdom, treaties were signed
with chiefs who had hitherto been independent, by which they accepted
the suzerainty of Great Britain; and only one step remained, that the
government should take over the rights of the company which had been
given powers to open up the country, and annex the conquered district to
the empire. It was to this that MacKenzie now set himself; and he
entered into communication with the directors of the company and with
the commissioner at Nairobi.
But it seemed as if the fates would snatch from him all enjoyment of the
laurels he had won, for on their way towards Nairobi, Alec and Dr.
Adamson were attacked by blackwater fever. For weeks Alec lay at the
point of death. His fine constitution seemed to break at last, and he
himself thought that the end was come. Condamine, one of the company's
agents, took command of the party and received Alec's final
instructions. Alec lay in his camp bed, with his faithful Swahili boy by
his side to brush away the flies, waiting for the end. He would have
given much to live till all his designs were accomplished, but that
apparently was not to be. There was only one thing that troubled him.
Would the government let the splendid gift he offered slip through their
fingers? Now was the time to take formal possession of the territories
which he had pacified: the prestige of the whites was at its height, and
there were no difficulties to be surmounted. He impressed upon
Condamine, whom he wished to be appointed sub-commissioner under a chief
at Nairobi, the importance of making all this clear to the authorities.
The post he suggested would have been pressed upon himself, but he had
no taste for official restrictions, and his part of the work was done.
So far as this went, his death was of little consequence.
And then he thought of Lucy. He wondered if she would understand what he
had done. He could acknowledge now that she had cause to be proud of
him. She would be sorry for his death. He did not think that she loved
him, he did not expect it; but he was glad to have loved her, and he
wished he could have told her how much the thought of her had been to
him during these years of difficulty. It was very hard that he might not
see her once more in order to thank her for all she had been to him. She
had given his life a beauty it could never have had, and for this he was
very grateful. But the secret of George's death would die with him; for
Walker was dead, and Adamson, the only man left who could throw light
upon it, might be relied on to hold his tongue. And Alec, losing
strength each day, thought that perhaps it were well if he died.
But Condamine could not bear to see his chief thus perish. For four
years that man had led them, and only his companions knew his worth. To
his acquaintance he might seem hard and unsympathetic, he might repel by
his taciturnity and anger by his sternness; but his comrades knew how
eminent were his qualities. It was impossible for anyone to live with
him continually without being conquered by his greatness. If his power
with the natives was unparalleled, it was because they had taken his
measure and found him sterling. And he had bound the whites to him by
ties from which they could not escape. He asked no one to do anything
which he was not willing to do himself. If any plan of his failed he
took the failure upon himself; if it succeeded he attributed the
success to those who had carried out his orders. If he demanded courage
and endurance from others it was easy, since he showed them the way by
his own example to be strong and brave. His honesty, justice, and
forbearance made all who came in contact with him ashamed of their own
weakness. They knew the unselfishness which considered the comfort of
the meanest porter before his own; and his tenderness to those who were
ill knew no bounds.
The Swahilis assumed an unaccustomed silence, and the busy, noisy camp
was like a death chamber. When Alec's boy told them that his master grew
each day weaker, they went about with tears running down their cheeks,
and they would have wailed aloud, but that they knew he must not be
disturbed. It seemed to Condamine that there was but one chance, and
that was to hurry down, with forced marches, to the nearest station.
There they would find a medical missionary to look after him and the
comforts of civilisation which in the forest they so woefully lacked.
Alec was delirious when they moved him. It was fortunate that he could
not be told of Adamson's death, which had taken place three days before.
The good, strong Scotchman had succumbed at last to the African climate;
and on this, his third journey, having surmounted all the perils that
had surrounded him for so long, almost on the threshold of home, he had
sunk and died. He was buried at the foot of a great tree, far down so
that the jackals might not find him, and Condamine with a shaking voice
read over him the burial service from an English prayerbook.
It seemed a miracle that Alec survived the exhaustion of the long
tramp. He was jolted along elephant paths that led through dense bush,
up stony hills and down again to the beds of dried-up rivers. Each time
Condamine looked at the pale, wan man who lay in the litter, it was with
a horrible fear that he would be dead. They began marching before
sunrise, swiftly, to cover as much distance as was possible before the
sun grew hot; they marched again towards sunset when a grateful coolness
refreshed the weary patient. They passed through interminable forests,
where the majestic trees sheltered under their foliage a wealth of
graceful, tender plants: from trunk and branch swung all manner of
creepers, which bound the forest giants in fantastic bonds. They forded
broad streams, with exquisite care lest the sick man should come to
hurt; they tramped through desolate marshes where the ground sunk under
their feet. And at last they reached the station. Alec was still alive.
For weeks the tender skill of the medical missionary and the loving
kindness of his wife wrestled with death, and at length Alec was out of
danger. His convalescence was very slow, and it looked often as though
he would never entirely get back his health. But as soon as his mind
regained its old activity, he resumed direction of the affairs which
were so near his heart; and no sooner was his strength equal to it than
he insisted on being moved to Nairobi, where he was in touch with
civilisation, and, through the commissioner, could influence a supine
government to accept the precious gift he offered. All this took many
months, months of anxious waiting, months of bitter disappointment; but
at length everything was done: the worthy Condamine was given the
appointment that Alec had desired and set out once more for the
interior; Great Britain took possession of the broad lands which Alec,
by his skill, tact, perseverance and strength, had wrested from
barbarism. His work was finished, and he could return to England.
Public attention had been called at last to the greatness of his
achievement, to the dangers he had run and the difficulties he had
encountered; and before he sailed, he learned that the papers were
ringing with his praise. A batch of cablegrams reached him, including
one from Dick Lomas and one from Robert Boulger, congratulating him on
his success. Two foreign potentates, through their consuls at Mombassa,
bestowed decorations upon him; scientific bodies of all countries
conferred on him the distinctions which were in their power to give;
chambers of commerce passed resolutions expressing their appreciation of
his services; publishers telegraphed offers for the book which they
surmised he would write; newspaper correspondents came to him for a
preliminary account of his travels. Alec smiled grimly when he read that
an Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs had referred to him in a debate
with honeyed words. No such enthusiasm had been aroused in England since
Stanley returned from the journey which he afterwards described in
_Darkest Africa_. When he left Mombassa the residents gave a dinner in
his honour, and everyone who had the chance jumped up on his legs and
made a speech. In short, after many years during which Alec's endeavours
had been coldly regarded, when the government had been inclined to look
upon him as a busybody, the tide turned; and he was in process of being
made a national hero.
Alec made up his mind to come home the whole way by sea, thinking that
the rest of the voyage would give his constitution a chance to get the
better of the ills which still troubled him; and at Gibraltar he
received a letter from Dick. One had reached him at Suez; but that was
mainly occupied with congratulations, and there was a tenderness due to
the fear that Alec had hardly yet recovered from his dangerous illness,
which made it, though touching to Alec, not so characteristic as the
second.
_My Dear Alec:_
_I am delighted that you will return in the nick of time for the
London season. You will put the noses of the Christian Scientists
out of joint, and the New Theologians will argue no more in the
columns of the halfpenny papers. For you are going to be the lion
of the season. Comb your mane and have it neatly curled and
scented, for we do not like our lions unkempt; and learn how to
flap your tail; be sure you cultivate a proper roar because we
expect to shiver delightfully in our shoes at the sight of you, and
young ladies are already practising how to swoon with awe in your
presence. We have come to the conclusion that you are a hero, and
I, your humble servant, shine already with reflected glory because
for twenty years I have had the privilege of your acquaintance.
Duchesses, my dear boy, duchesses with strawberry leaves around
their snowy brows, (like the French grocer, I make a point of never
believing a duchess is more than thirty,) ask me to tea so that
they may hear me prattle of your childhood's happy days, and I have
promised to bring you to lunch with them, Tompkinson, whom you
once kicked at Eton, has written an article in Blackwood on the
beauty of your character; by which I take it that the hardness of
your boot has been a lasting, memory to him. All your friends are
proud of you, and we go about giving the uninitiated to understand
that nothing of all this would have happened except for our
encouragement. You will be surprised to learn how many people are
anxious to reward you for your services to the empire by asking you
to dinner. So far as I am concerned, I am smiling in my sleeve; for
I alone know what an exceedingly disagreeable person you are. You
are not a hero in the least, but a pig-headed beast who conquers
kingdoms to annoy quiet, self-respecting persons like myself who
make a point of minding their own business._
_Yours ever affectionately,_
_Richard Lomas._
Alec smiled when he read the letter. It had struck him that there would
be some attempt on his return to make a figure of him, and he much
feared that his arrival in Southampton would be followed by an attack of
interviewers. He was coming in a slow German ship, and at that moment a
P. and O., homeward bound, put in at Gibraltar. By taking it he could
reach England one day earlier and give everyone who came to meet him the
slip. Leaving his heavy luggage, he got a steward to pack up the things
he used on the journey, and in a couple of hours, after an excursion on
shore to the offices of the company, found himself installed on the
English boat.
* * *
But when the great ship entered the English Channel, Alec could
scarcely bear his impatience. It would have astonished those who thought
him unhuman if they had known the tumultuous emotions that rent his
soul. His fellow-passengers never suspected that the bronzed, silent man
who sought to make no acquaintance, was the explorer with whose name all
Europe was ringing; and it never occurred to them that as he stood in
the bow of the ship, straining his eyes for the first sight of England,
his heart was so full that he would not have dared to speak. Each
absence had intensified his love for that sea-girt land, and his eyes
filled with tears of longing as he thought that soon now he would see it
once more. He loved the murky waters of the English Channel because they
bathed its shores, and he loved the strong west wind. The west wind
seemed to him the English wind; it was the trusty wind of seafaring men,
and he lifted his face to taste its salt buoyancy. He could not think of
the white cliffs of England without a deep emotion; and when they passed
the English ships, tramps outward bound or stout brigantines driving
before the wind with their spreading sails, he saw the three-deckers of
Trafalgar and the proud galleons of the Elizabethans. He felt a personal
pride in those dead adventurers who were spiritual ancestors of his, and
he was proud to be an Englishman because Frobisher and Effingham were
English, and Drake and Raleigh and the glorious Nelson.
And then his pride in the great empire which had sprung from that small
island, a greater Rome in a greater world, dissolved into love as his
wandering thoughts took him to green meadows and rippling streams. Now
at last he need no longer keep so tight a rein upon his fancy, but
could allow it to wander at will; and he thought of the green hedgerows
and the pompous elm trees; he thought of the lovely wayside cottages
with their simple flowers and of the winding roads that were so good to
walk on. He was breathing the English air now, and his spirit was
uplifted. He loved the grey soft mists of low-lying country, and he
loved the smell of the heather as he stalked across the moorland. There
was no river he knew that equalled the kindly Thames, with the fair
trees of its banks and its quiet backwaters, where white swans gently
moved amid the waterlilies. His thoughts went to Oxford, with its
spires, bathed in a violet haze, and in imagination he sat in the old
garden of his college, so carefully tended, so great with memories of
the past. And he thought of London. There was a subtle beauty in its
hurrying crowds, and there was beauty in the thronged traffic of its
river: the streets had that indefinable hue which is the colour of
London, and the sky had the gold and the purple of an Italian brocade.
Now in Piccadilly Circus, around the fountain sat the women who sold
flowers; and the gaiety of their baskets, rich with roses and daffodils
and tulips, yellow and red, mingled with the sombre tones of the houses,
the dingy gaudiness of 'buses and the sunny greyness of the sky.
At last his thoughts went back to the outward voyage. George Allerton
was with him then, and now he was alone. He had received no letter from
Lucy since he wrote to tell her that George was dead. He understood her
silence. But when he thought of George, his heart was bitter against
fate because that young life had been so pitifully wasted. He
remembered so well the eagerness with which he had sought to bind
George to him, his desire to gain the boy's affection; and he remembered
the dismay with which he learned that he was worthless. The frank smile,
the open countenance, the engaging eyes, meant nothing; the boy was
truthless, crooked of nature, weak. Alec remembered how, refusing to
acknowledge the faults that were so plain, he blamed the difficulty of
his own nature; and, when it was impossible to overlook them, his
earnest efforts to get the better of them. But the effect of Africa was
too strong. Alec had seen many men lose their heads under the influence
of that climate. The feeling of an authority that seemed so little
limited, over a race that was manifestly inferior, the subtle magic of
the hot sunshine, the vastness, the remoteness from civilisation, were
very apt to throw a man off his balance. The French had coined a name
for the distemper and called it _folie d'Afrique_. Men seemed to go mad
from a sense of power, to lose all the restraints which had kept them in
the way of righteousness. It needed a strong head or a strong morality
to avoid the danger, and George had neither. He succumbed. He lost all
sense of shame, and there was no power to hold him. And it was more
hopeless because nothing could keep him from drinking. When Macinnery
had been dismissed for breaking Alec's most stringent law, things,
notwithstanding George's promise of amendment, had only gone from bad to
worse. Alec remembered how he had come back to the camp in which he had
left George, to find the men mutinous, most of them on the point of
deserting, and George drunk. He had flown then into such a rage that he
could not control himself. He was ashamed to think of it. He had seized
George by the shoulders and shaken him, shaken him as though he were a
rat; and it was with difficulty that he prevented himself from thrashing
him with his own hands.
And at last had come the final madness and the brutal murder. Alec set
his mind to consider once more those hazardous days during which by
George's folly they had been on the brink of destruction. George had met
his death on that desperate march to the ford, and lacking courage, had
died miserably. Alec threw back his head with a curious movement.
'I was right in all I did,' he muttered.
George deserved to die, and he was unworthy to be lamented. And yet, at
that moment, when he was approaching the shores which George, too,
perhaps, had loved, Alec's heart was softened. He sighed deeply. It was
fate. If George had inherited the wealth which he might have counted on,
if his father had escaped that cruel end, he might have gone through
life happily enough. He would have done no differently from his fellows.
With the safeguards about him of a civilised state, his irresolution
would have prevented him from going astray; and he would have been a
decent country gentleman--selfish, weak, and insignificant perhaps, but
not remarkably worse than his fellows--and when he died he might have
been mourned by a loving wife and fond children.
Now he lay on the borders of an African swamp, unsepulchred, unwept; and
Alec had to face Lucy, with the story in his heart that he had sworn on
his honour not to tell.