AFTER SEVEN YEARS
“What is the time, Leonard?”
“Eleven o’clock, Tom.”
“Eleven—already? I shall go at dawn, Leonard. You remember Johnston
died at dawn, and so did Askew.”
“For heaven’s sake don’t speak like that, Tom! If you think you are
going to die, you will die.”
The sick man laughed a ghost of a laugh—it was half a death-rattle.
“It is no use talking, Leonard; I feel my life flaring and sinking like
a dying fire. My mind is quite clear now, but I shall die at dawn for
all that. The fever has burnt me up! Have I been raving, Leonard?”
“A little, old fellow,” answered Leonard.
“What about?”
“Home mostly, Tom.”
“Home! We have none, Leonard; it is sold. How long have we been away
now?”
“Seven years.”
“Seven years! Yes. Do you remember how we said good-bye to the old
place on that winter night after the auction? And do you remember what
we resolved?”
“Yes.”
“Repeat it.”
“We swore that we would seek wealth enough to buy Outram back till we
won it or died, and that we would never return to England till it was
won. Then we sailed for Africa. For seven years we have sought and done
no more than earn a livelihood, much less a couple of hundred thousand
pounds or so.”
“Leonard.”
“Yes, Tom?”
“You are sole heir to our oath now, and to the old name with it, or you
will be in a few hours. I have fulfilled my vow. I have sought till I
died. You will take up the quest till you succeed or die. The struggle
has been mine, may you live to win the Star. You will persevere, will
you not, Leonard?”
“Yes, Tom, I will.”
“Give me your hand on it, old fellow.”
Leonard Outram knelt down beside his dying brother, and they clasped
each other’s hands.
“Now let me sleep awhile. I am tired. Do not be afraid, I shall wake
before the—end.”
Hardly had the words passed his lips when his eyes closed and he sank
into stupor or sleep.
His brother Leonard sat down upon a rude seat, improvised out of an
empty gin-case. Without the tempest shrieked and howled, the great wind
shook the Kaffir hut of grass and wattle, piercing it in a hundred
places till the light of the lantern wavered within its glass, and the
sick man’s hair was lifted from his clammy brow. From time to time
fierce squalls of rain fell like sheets of spray, and the water,
penetrating the roof of grass, streamed to the earthen floor. Leonard
crept on his hands and knees to the doorway of the hut, or rather to
the low arched opening which served as a doorway, and, removing the
board that secured it, looked out at the night. Their hut stood upon
the ridge of a great mountain; below was a sea of bush, and around it
rose the fantastic shapes of other mountains. Black clouds drove across
the dying moon, but occasionally she peeped out and showed the scene in
all its vast solemnity and appalling solitude.
Presently Leonard closed the opening of the doorway, and going back to
his brother’s side he gazed upon him earnestly. Many years of toil and
privation had not robbed Thomas Outram’s face of its singular beauty,
or found power to mar its refinement. But death was written on it.
Leonard sighed, then, struck by a sudden thought, sought for and found
a scrap of looking-glass. Holding it close to the light of the lantern,
he examined the reflection of his own features. The glass mirrored a
handsome bearded man, dark, keen-eyed like one who is always on the
watch for danger, curly-haired and broad-shouldered; not very tall, but
having massive limbs and a form which showed strength in every
movement. Though he was still young, there was little of youth left
about the man; clearly toil and struggle had done an evil work with
him, ageing his mind and hardening it as they had hardened the strength
and vigour of his body. The face was a good one, but most men would
have preferred to see friendship shining in those piercing black eyes
rather than the light of enmity. Leonard was a bad enemy, and his long
striving with the world sometimes led him to expect foes where they did
not exist.
Even now this thought was in his mind: “He is dying,” he said to
himself, as he laid down the glass with the care of a man who cannot
afford to hazard a belonging however trivial, “and yet his face is not
so changed as mine is. My God! he is dying! My brother—the only man—the
only living creature I love in the world, except one perhaps, if indeed
I love her still. Everything is against us—I should say against me now,
for I cannot count him. Our father was our first enemy; he brought us
into the world, neglected us, squandered our patrimony, dishonoured our
name, and shot himself. And since then what has it been but one
continual fight against men and nature? Even the rocks in which I dig
for gold are foes—victorious foes—” and he glanced at his hands,
scarred and made unshapely by labour. “And the fever, that is a foe.
Death is the only friend, but he won’t shake hands with me. He takes my
brother whom I love as he has taken the others, but me he leaves.”
Thus mused Leonard sitting sullenly on the red box, his elbow on his
knee, his rough hands held beneath his chin pushing forward the thick
black beard till it threw a huge shadow, angular and unnatural, on to
the wall of the hut, while without the tempest now raved, now lulled,
and now raved again. An hour—two—passed and still he sat not moving,
watching the face of the fever-stricken man that from time to time
flushed and was troubled, then grew pale and still. It seemed to him as
though by some strange harmony of nature the death-smitten blood was
striving to keep pace with the beat of the storm, knowing that
presently life and storm would pass together into the same domain of
silence.
At length Tom Outram opened his eyes and looked at him, but Leonard
knew that he did not see him as he was. The dying eyes studied him
indeed and were intelligent, but he could feel that they read something
on his face that was not known to himself, nor could be visible to any
other man—read it as though it were a writing.
So strange was this scrutiny, so meaningless and yet so full of a
meaning which he could not grasp, that Leonard shrank beneath it. He
spoke to his brother, but no answer came,—only the great hollow eyes
read on in that book which was printed upon his face; that book, sealed
to him, but to the dying man an open writing.
The sight of the act of death is always terrible; it is terrible to
watch the latest wax and ebb of life, and with the intelligence to
comprehend that these flickerings, this coming and this going, these
sinkings and these last recoveries are the trial flights of the
animating and eternal principle—call it soul or what you will—before it
trusts itself afar. Still more terrible is it under circumstances of
physical and mental desolation such as those present to Leonard Outram
in that hour.
But he had looked on death before, on death in many dreadful shapes,
and yet he had never been so much afraid. What was it that his brother,
or the spirit of his brother, read in his face? What learning had he
gathered in that sleep of his, the last before the last? He could not
tell—now he longed to know, now he was glad not to know, and now he
strove to overcome his fears.
“My nerves are shattered,” he said to himself. “He is dying. How shall
I bear to see him die?”
A gust of wind shook the hut, rending the thatch apart, and through the
rent a little jet of rain fell upon his brother’s forehead and ran down
his pallid cheeks like tears. Then the strange understanding look
passed from the wide eyes, and once more they became human, and the
lips were opened.
“Water,” they murmured.
Leonard gave him to drink, with one hand holding the pannikin to his
brother’s mouth and with the other supporting the dying head. Twice he
gulped at it, then with a brusque motion of his wasted arm he knocked
the cup aside, spilling the water on the earthen floor.
“Leonard,” he said, “you will succeed.”
“Succeed in what, Tom?”
“You will get the money and Outram—and found the family afresh—but you
will not do it alone. _A woman will help you_.”
Then his mind wandered a little and he muttered, “How is Jane? Have you
heard from Jane?” or some such words.
At the mention of this name Leonard’s face softened, then once more
grew hard and anxious.
“I have not heard of Jane for years, old fellow,” he said; “probably
she is dead or married. But I do not understand.”
“Don’t waste time, Leonard,” Tom answered, rousing himself from his
lethargy. “Listen to me. I am going fast. You know dying men see
far—sometimes. I dreamed it, or I read it in your face. I tell
you—_you_ will die at Outram. Stay here a while after I am dead. Stay a
while, Leonard!”
He sank back exhausted, and at that moment a gust of wind, fiercer than
any which had gone before, leapt down the mountain gorges, howling with
all the voices of the storm. It caught the frail hut and shook it. A
cobra hidden in the thick thatch awoke from its lethargy and fell with
a soft thud to the floor not a foot from the face of the dying man—then
erected itself and hissed aloud with flickering tongue and head swollen
by rage. Leonard started back and seized a crowbar which stood near,
but before he could strike, the reptile sank down and, drawing its
shining shape across his brother’s forehead, once more vanished into
the thatch.
His eyes did not so much as close, though Leonard saw a momentary
reflection of the bright scales in the dilated pupils and shivered at
this added terror, shivered as though his own flesh had shrunk beneath
the touch of those deadly coils. It was horrible that the snake should
creep across his brother’s face, it was still more horrible that his
brother, yet living, should not understand the horror. It caused him to
remember our invisible companion, that ancient enemy of mankind of whom
the reptile is an accepted type; it made him think of that long sleep
which the touch of such as this has no power to stir.
Ah! now he was going—it was impossible to mistake that change, the last
quick quiver of the blood, followed by an ashen pallor, and the sob of
the breath slowly lessening into silence. So the day had died last
night, with a little purpling of the sky—a little sobbing of the
wind—then ashen nothingness and silence. But the silence was broken,
the night had grown alive indeed—and with a fearful life. Hark! how the
storm yelled! those blasts told of torment, that rain beat like tears.
What if his brother——He did not dare to follow the thought home.
Hark! how the storm yelled!—the very hut wrenched at its strong
supports as though the hands of a hundred savage foes were dragging it.
It lifted—by heaven it was gone!—gone, crashing down the rocks on the
last hurricane blast of the tempest, and there above them lowered the
sullen blue of the passing night flecked with scudding clouds, and
there in front of them, to the east and between the mountains, flared
the splendours of the dawn.
Something had struck Leonard heavily, so heavily that the blood ran
down his face; he did not heed it, he scarcely felt it; he only clasped
his brother in his arms and, for the first time for many years, he
kissed him on the brow, staining it with the blood from his wound.
The dying man looked up. He saw the glory in the East. Now it ran along
the mountain sides, now it burned upon their summits, to each summit a
pillar of flame, a peculiar splendour of its own diversely shaped; and
now the shapes of fire leaped from earth to heaven, peopling the sky
with light. The dull clouds caught the light, but they could not hold
it all: back it fell to earth again, and the forests lifted up their
arms to greet it, and it shone upon the face of the waters.
Thomas Outram saw—and staggering to his knees he stretched out his arms
towards the rising sun, muttering with his lips.
Then he sank upon Leonard’s breast, and presently all his story was
told.