MAMBU KWA MUNGU.[2]
[Footnote 2: Mambu kwa mungu: "It is God's trouble."]
One had been taken. That which seemed to Geoffrey Wornock inevitable
in the history of African travel had been accomplished. The Dark
Continent had claimed its tribute of human life. Africa had chosen her
victim. Not the expected sacrifice. She had chosen her prey in him who
had dared the worst she could do--not in one pilgrimage, but in long
years of travel--who had looked her full in the face and laughed at
her dangers, and had wooed her with a masterful spirit, telling her
that she was fair, stepping with light, careless foot over her traps
and pitfalls, lying down within sound of her lions, drenched with her
torrential rains, tossed on her chopping seas, blinded with the fierce
glare of her lightnings--always her lover, her master, her champion.
"There is no land like Africa. There is nothing in life so good as the
wild, free day of the wanderer," he had said again and again.
And now he had paid for his love with his life. He had laid himself
down, like Mark Antony at the foot of his dead mistress.
He was gone, and the two young men were alone in the wide wilderness,
among the mountain paths between the great lake and the far-off western
sea; and in long pauses of melancholy silence by the camp-fire, or in
the noontide rest, Geoffrey looked into the face that was like and yet
not like his own, and thought of the woman they both loved, and of that
duel to the death which there must needs be when two men have built all
their hopes of happiness upon the love of one woman. A duel of deadly
thoughts, if not of deadly weapons.
"If we go back, it will be to fight for her love," he thought,
"to fight as the wild stags in the mountains fight for the chosen
hind--forehead to forehead, fore feet planted like iron, antlers
locked, clashing with a sound that is heard afar off. Yes, we shall
fight for her. The battle will have to begin again. We shall hate each
other."
Wakeful and unquiet in the deep, dead silence of the tropical night, he
would sit outside hut or tent, mending the fire, looking listlessly at
the circle of sleeping porters, listening mechanically for the qua-qua
of the night-heron, or the grunt of the hippopotamus coming up from
the river. The loss of Patrington's cheery companionship had wrought a
dark change in Geoffrey's mind and feelings. While Patrington was with
them, there had been ever-recurring distractions from sullen brooding
on the inner self. Patrington was eminently a man of action, practical,
matter-of-fact; and love-sick dreaming was hardly possible in his
company. He was as energetic in conversation as in action, would
argue, and philosophize, and quote his master of fiction, and dose them
with Pickwick and Weller as he dosed them with quinine.
He was gone; and in the deep melancholy that had fallen upon the
travellers after the sudden shock of bereavement, Geoffrey's thoughts
dwelt with a maddening iteration upon one absorbing theme.
They had left the poor village of bee-hive huts, near which their
comrade lay at rest under the great sycamore. They had travelled
slowly, ten miles in a day at most, uphill and downhill, by jungle and
swamp, too depressed for any strenuous effort, Geoffrey still weak
after his attack of fever, and harassed with rheumatic aches after his
night of reckless wandering in marsh and wilderness, in peril of being
devoured by the panthers that abound in that region. They were not more
than fifty miles from the great lake, and now they were delayed again
by the illness of some of their porters, and perhaps also by their own
listlessness--the hopeless inertia that follows a great sorrow, a state
of mind in which it seems not worth while to make any effort.
They had lost their captain and guide; but they had their plans all
laid down--plans discussed again and again during the rains at Ujiji.
After a good deal of talk about going south to Nyassa, and back to the
east coast by the Zambesi-Shire route, they had finally decided on
following Trivier's route to Stanley Pool, and there to wait for the
steamer. The idea of crossing the great continent from east to west
pleased the younger travellers better than that notion of doubling back
to the more civilized region, the Arcadia of Nyassaland, a place of
Christian missions, and flocks, and herds, and prosperous homesteads,
and frequent steamers.
But now life in the desert had lost its savour, and Allan and Geoffrey
looked over their rough sketch-maps dully, and wished that the journey
were done.
"Wouldn't it be better to turn back and take the easiest route, by
Nyassa and the Shire?" Allan asked despondently.
"No, no; we must see the Congo. What should we do if we went back
to England? Have either you or I anything that calls us back to
civilization and its deadly monotony?" Geoffrey asked, watching his
companion's face with eager eyes.
"No, there is very little. My mother would be glad to see me back
again. It seems hard to desert her now she is left alone. And Mrs.
Wornock--her life is just as solitary--she must long for your return."
"Oh, she is accustomed to my rambling propensities. Yes, Lady Emily
would be glad, no doubt; and my mother would be glad; but at our age
men don't go back to their mothers. If you have no one else to think
about--if there is no other attraction?"
"You know there is no one else," Allan answered with a sigh.
The Amati was not silent in those dreary evenings, amidst the smoke
of the fire that rose up towards the rough roof of the hut, where
the lizards disported themselves among the rafters and rejoiced in
the warmth. The voice of the fiddle was as lugubrious as the wailings
of the native women for their dead. Funeral marches; Beethoven,
Chopin, Berlioz, all that music knows of sadness and lamentation, were
Geoffrey's themes in that solitude of two. The music itself had an
unearthly sound; and the face of the player, sharpened and wasted by
illness and by grief, had an unearthly look as the firelight flashed
upon it, or the shadows darkened it.
While those lonely days wore on, Allan began to have a curious feeling
about his companion, the consciousness of a gulf that was gradually
widening between them; a something sinister, indefinite, indescribable.
It would be too much to say that he felt he was with an enemy; but he
felt that he was in the presence of the unknown.
He woke one night, turning wearily on his Arab bed--the mat spread on
the ground, which use had taught him almost to like. He woke, and
saw Geoffrey sitting up on his mat on the other side of the hut, his
back against the wall, his eyes looking straight at Allan with an
inscrutable expression. Was it dislike or was it fear that looked out
of those widely opened eyes? Why fear?
"What's the matter?" Allan asked quickly. "Have you just awakened from
a bad dream?"
"No. Life is my bad dream; and there is no awakening from that. There
is only the change to dreamless sleep."
"What were you thinking about, then?"
"Life and death, and love and hate, and all things sad and strange
and cruel. Do you remember Livingstone's description of a Bechuana
chieftain's burial? His people dig a grave in his cattle-pen, and bury
him there; and then they drive the cattle round and over the spot till
every trace of the newly filled-in grave is obliterated. We are not as
candid as the Bechuana men. We put up a statue of our great man--or,
at least, we talk about a statue; but in six months he is as much
forgotten as if the cattle had pranced and trampled over his body."
"Primrose Day belies your cynicism."
"Primrose Day! A fashion as much as the November bonfire. Of all the
people who wear the Beaconsfield badge three-fourths could not tell you
who Beaconsfield was, or how much or how little he did for England."
"Do you remember something else in Livingstone's book, how the
tribes who met him said, 'Give us sleep'? It was their prayer to the
wonder-worker. Give me sleep, Geoff. I'm dead beat."
"Why, we did nothing yesterday; a beggarly eight miles."
"Perhaps it was the thunderstorm that took it out of me."
"Well, sleep away. The tribes were right. There is no better gift.
Would it help you if I played a little, very softly? I have a devil
to-night which only music will cast out."
"Yes, play, but don't be too lugubrious. My heart is one great ache."
Without moving from his mat, Geoffrey stretched a thin hand towards
the fiddle-case that lay beside his pillow, opened it noiselessly and
took out the Amati; then, with his haggard eyes still fixed on the
reclining figure opposite him, he drew a long sobbing chord out of the
strings, and began a nocturne of Chopin's, delicatest melody played
with exquisite delicacy, the very music of sleep and dreams.
"I am talking to her," he murmured to himself softly; "across the great
continent, across the great sea, over burning desert and tropical
wilderness, my voice is calling to her. I am telling her the story of
my heart, as I used to tell her in the dear days at Discombe, the dear
unheeding days, when my bow talked to her half in sport, when I hardly
knew if the wild thrill that ran along my veins meant a lifelong love."
The music served as a lullaby for Allan, and it soothed Geoffrey, whose
brain had been over-charged with hideous fancies, as he sat up in his
bed, listening to the ticking of the watch that hung against the wall,
and looking at his slumbering companion.
Darkest thoughts, thoughts of what might happen if this throbbing brain
of his were to lose its balance. He had been thinking of the narrow
wall between reason and unreason, and of the madness that may come out
of one absorbing idea. Where did a passionate love like his end and
monomania begin? Was it well that they two should be alone together,
with only these black beasts of burden?
He thought of one of the men, a grinning good-natured-looking animal,
the best of their porters, of whom it was told that setting out on a
journey with one of his wives he arrived at his destination without
her. It might have been his honeymoon. He explained that wild beasts
had eaten the lady; but it was known afterwards that he had killed her
and chopped her up on the way. Anger, jealousy, convenience? Who knows?
The man was a good servant, and nobody cared about this episode in his
career.
Was murder so easy, then? Easy to do, easy to forget?
A great horror came over him at thought of the deeds that had been done
in the world by men of natures like his own; by despairing lovers,
by jealous husbands, by men over whose ill-balanced minds one idea
obtained the mastery. And, under the dominion of such ghastly fancies,
he looked forward to the journey they two were to make, a journey
that, all told, was likely to last the greater part of a year. Alone
together, seeing each other's faces day after day, each thinking the
same thoughts, and not daring to speak those thoughts; each with fonder
and more passionate yearning as the time drew nearer when they should
meet the woman they loved; each knowing that happiness for one must
mean misery for the other. Friends in outward seeming, rivals and foes
at heart, they were to go on journeying side by side, day after day,
lying down beside the same fire night after night, waking in the
darkness to hear each other's breathing, and to know that a loaded
rifle lay within reach of their hands, and that a bullet would end all
their difficulties.
It was horrible.
"I was an idiot to undertake the impossible, to believe that I could be
happy and at ease with this man. If I were to go home alone, she would
have me," he told himself. "It was only for Allan's sake she hung back.
So tender, so over-scrupulous, lest she should pain the lover she had
jilted."
If he were to go home alone! Was not that possible without the
suggestion of darkest iniquity? If he could go home, and gain, say half
a year, before his rival reappeared upon the scene, would not that
half-year suffice for the winning of his bride?
"If she loved me as I think she loved me, and if she is as noble of
nature as I believe her to be, two years of severance will have tried
and strengthened her love. She will love me all the dearer for my
wanderings. And if Allan is not there to remind her of his wrongs, to
appeal to her too-scrupulous conscience, I shall win her."
To go back alone, to divide their resources, to divide their followers,
and each to set out on his own way. Useless such a parting as that; for
Allan might be the first to tread on English soil, the first to clasp
Suzette's hands in the gladness of friends who meet after long absence.
"If he were to be the first, she might deceive herself in the joy of
seeing a familiar face, and think she loved him, and give him back her
promise in a fit of penitent affection. There are such nice shades in
love. She must have had a certain fondness for him. It might revive
were I not there--revive and seem enough for happiness. I must be
first! I must be first, and alone in the field."
He hated himself for the restless impatience which had made him join
fortunes with Allan. What had he to do with the rejected lover, he who
knew that he was loved?
They crept slowly on. Allan was ailing, and unable to stand the fatigue
of a long march through a close and difficult country. That week of
watching beside Patrington's sick-bed, and the agony of losing that
kindly comrade, had shattered his nerves and reduced his physical
strength almost as much as an actual illness could have reduced him.
He felt the depressing influence of the climate as the days grew more
sultry and the thunderstorms more frequent. All the spirit and all
the pleasure seemed to have vanished out of the expedition since the
digging of that grave under the sycamore.
Their day's journey dwindled and their halts grew longer. At the
rate they were now travelling it would take them a year to reach the
Falls. They had left Ujiji more than a month, and they were still a
long way to the east of Kassongo, the busy centre of Arab commerce and
population, where they could make any purchases they wanted, refit
for the rest of their journey, or, perhaps, make a contract with the
mighty Tippoo, who would provide them with men and food till the end
of the land journey for a lump sum. While Patrington lived they had
looked forward to the halt at Kassongo with keen interest; but now zest
and pleasurable curiosity were gone, and a dull lassitude weighed like
an actual burden upon both travellers. Both were alike spiritless; and
even Geoffrey's raids in quest of meat were neither so frequent nor so
far afield as they had been, and his men began to lose something of
their admiration for him. He was growing over-fond of that kri-kri of
his, over-fond of sitting at the door of his tent talking with that
curious, tricksy spirit, now drawing forth sobbing cries like funeral
dirges, now with frisking, flickering touch that danced and flashed
across the strings, with hand as rapid as light, with fingers that
flew, and eyes that flashed fire.
These wild dances were grasshoppers, he told them; and when he began
the wailing music that thrilled and pained them, his Makololos would
lie down at his feet and entreat him to change it to a grasshopper.
"We hate him when he cries," they said of the fiddle. "We love him when
he leaps and dances."
"And you would follow him and me anywhere across the land?" Geoffrey
asked, laughing down at the brown faces.
"Anywhere, if you promise us your guns at the end of the journey."
Two days later Allan succumbed to the feeling of prostration which
had been growing upon him during the last four or five stages of the
journey, and confessed himself unable to leave the native hut in which
they had camped at sunset.
It was in the freshness of dawn. The mists were creeping off the manioc
fields, and the wide stretches of tropical foliage beyond the patch of
rude cultivation. The brown figures were moving about in the pearly
light, women fetching water, children sprawling on the rich red earth,
their plump shining bodies only a little browner than the soil, happy
in their nakedness and dirt, placid and unashamed. The porters were
shouldering their loads, the lean, long-legged mongrels were yelping,
the frogs croaking their morning hymn to the sun.
"I'm afraid it's hopeless," Allan faltered, as he leant against one
of the rough supports of the verandah, wiping the moisture from his
forehead. "I'm dead beat. I can't go on unless you carry me in a
litter; and that's hardly worth while with our small following. You'd
better go on to Kassongo, Geoff, and leave me here till I'm able to
follow. If I don't turn up within a few days of your arrival, you can
get the chief to send some of his men to fetch me, with a donkey, if
there's one to be had. The villagers will take care of me in the mean
time. It isn't fever, you see," holding out his cold moist hand to his
friend. "It's not the mukunguru this time. I'm just dead beat, that's
all. There's no good fighting against hard fact, Geoff. _Mambu kwa
mungu_--it is God's trouble! One must submit to the inevitable."
Geoffrey looked at him curiously.
"Leave you to these savages in the Manyema country? No; that would
be a beastly thing to do," he said, with his cynical laugh. "I'm not
quite bad enough for that, Allan. How do I know they wouldn't eat
you? They've been civil enough so far, but I believe it's because of
my fiddle. They take me for a medicine-man, and my little Amati for
a capricious devil that can give them toko if they don't act on the
square. I won't leave you--like that; but I'll tell you what I'll do.
We'll divide forces for a bit. I'll leave you the larger party, and I
and my Makololos will go and look for big game."
Allan crept into the hut and sank down upon his mat while his comrade
was talking. He had hardly strength to answer him. He lay there white
and dumb, while Geoffrey spread the blanket over him, and wiped his
forehead with a silk handkerchief.
"Do what you like, Geoff," he murmured, "and do the best for yourself.
I don't want to spoil your sport."
He turned his body towards the wall, with an obvious effort, as if his
limbs were made of lead, and presently sank into a sleep which seemed
almost stupor.
"My God!" muttered Geoffrey, looking down at him, "is he going to die?
Can death come like that, as if in answer to a wicked wish?"
He went out and talked to the men, giving them stringent orders as to
what they were to do for the sick Musungu. He was going on a shooting
expedition with only four men--the rest, a round dozen, would remain
with the other Musungu, and nurse him, and take care of him, and obey
his orders when he was well enough to move; and, above all, not attempt
robbery or desertion, as they--the two Musungus--had letters from the
Sultan of Zanzibar to Nzigue, the Arab chief at Kassongo, and any evil
treatment would be bitterly expiated. "You know how small account the
white Arabs make of a black man's life," he concluded.
Yes, they knew.
He went back to the hut, and to the store of quinine and other drugs,
and he prepared such doses as it would be well for Allan to take at
fixed periods; and then he instructed the leader of the porters--a
Zanzibari, who had been with Burton, and afterwards with Stanley--as
to the treatment of the sick man. He was to do this, and this, once,
twice, thrice, between sunrise and sundown, the division of the day by
hours not having yet been revealed to these primitive minds.
"Say, how often are you hungry in the day, and how often do you eat?"
"Three times."
"Then every time you are hungry, and before you sit down to eat, you
will give the Musungu his medicine--one of the powders, as I put them
ready for you--mixed with water, as he has often given them to you. And
if you forget, or don't care to give him his medicine, evil will come
to you--for I shall put a spell upon the door, and wicked spirits will
hurt you if you don't obey me."
After this he called his Makololos and one of the Wanyamwesis, for
whom he had shown a liking, and who worshipped him with a slavish
subjugation of all personal will-power. He told them he was going on
a hunting expedition that might last many days--and they must take
baggage enough to assure themselves against being left to starve upon
the way. He counted the bales of cloth, the bags of beads, brass-headed
nails, brass wire; and he set apart about a fourth of the whole stock;
and with these stores he loaded his men. And so in the full blaze of
the morning sun this little company went out into the jungle, turning
their faces eastward, towards the mountains that rose between them and
the sea of Ujiji.