Chapter Four.Watchers by the Road.The sky-line was scarlet from east to west, and above the scarlet lay massed bronze. The rest of the world was composed of tan-coloured kopjes and rocks, and the road along which the Cape cart dolorously crawled, resembled a river of dust rising in mountainous waves through which the setting sun loomed like a blood-red heart.It was the road from the Transvaal to Tuli, and the cart had been travelling along it for hours, but was still many miles from the wayside hotel where a night’s rest for man and beast was waiting; and the offside leader had gone dead-lame, while the other three horses appeared to have lost all enthusiasm for life. On the crest of a rise, the cart came to a standstill, and they stood with hung heads and quivering barrels panting under their lathered harness. The driver descended; a burly Cape boy, he had the thick mouth of a Hottentot and the hang-dog swagger of a low-class Boer; but as far as horses were concerned he was an angel from Heaven. When he spoke to his beasts, they lifted up their despairing heads trembling like lovers to his voice, seeming to stand together again with fresh resolution while he rubbed the nose of one, slapped another’s soapy flank, and once more examined the leader’s foot. Afterwards he emitted a kind of resigned grunt and stood chewing a bit of grass he had plucked in stooping. The two men crammed in the body of the cart with several dogs, guns, and a mass of shooting-kit looked on grimly. They were merciful men who hated to see a beast suffer, but they also hated the prospect of a night on the veld without provisions or blankets. They were weary as only a day’s travelling in a Cape cart under the hot sun can make men weary; dead beat, begrimed, and hungry. Moreover they were in a hurry to reach their destination; if they had not been they would have waited for the weekly mail-coach instead of chartering a special cart.The significance of the driver’s grunt was not lost on one at least of them, a dark man burnt almost black, with hard blue eyes and a grim lip, who looked as though with a red handkerchief on his head instead of a slouch hat he would have made a first-class pirate. Never handsome, a broken nose, and a deep scar which began over one unflinching eye and finished somewhere in the roots of his short thick hair had not softened his appearance. Yet no woman or dog (the two have strangely similar tastes where men are concerned) would have glanced twice at the other man (a well set up, good-looking fellow of thirty), while Dark Carden was about. The latter, however, if he returned the glances of women with interest, also knew something of men and horses, and because of this he now saw very well that the leader was done for and the driver resigned to a night on the veld. Disentangling himself from the shooting-kit he threw himself out of the cart, and the dogs leaped after him barking joyously.“This is a damned look-out, Swartz!”“Yes, Baas,” assented Swartz, not unamiably. “The leader’s leg is gone for store, and the others are done up. We can’t make Webb’s to-night.”“How far is it?”“About thirty miles yet.”Carden looked at the man in the cart.“Feel inclined to tramp it, Talfourd?”“Oh, Lord!” groaned Talfourd. “Do you?”“Not much!” said Carden smiling. “We’ll camp. After all we’ve got the buck.” He gave a glance to the back of the cart where a beautiful little net buck still warm, but with the glaze of death over its eyes was suspended. Then his keen eye travelled swiftly over the surrounding country. The dust was subsiding, and it could be seen that they were in a wild place of lonely kopjes and immense patches of grey-green bush. Far off, taller, greener trees growing thick and close as moss outlined the banks of the Crocodile River. Across the midst of the scene, round kops and through bush, curved and curled the dusty white road that led to Tuli, and thence upwards and onwards through Mashonaland and Matabeleland to the North.Swartz had begun to outspan the horses, knee-haltering each so that they would not roam too far.“They’ll be safer than they would have been fifteen or twenty years ago,” he announced. “It was somewhere about here, on the banks of the river that Baas Kavanagh, the great hunter, was killed by a lion.”“By George!” said Carden softly under his breath, and his blue eyes took on a misty look that softened them curiously. He was thinking of Francis Kavanagh, the big, lawless, lovable Irishman who hailed from his own part of Ireland—County Carlow, and had all the magic of the west in his voice and eyes. Kavanagh had been the hero of Carden’s boyhood dreams, the man who first inspired him with a love and longing for Africa. His thoughts went back in a straight line to the day when, as a college boy, he had last shaken the hand of the Explorer, famous even at thirty for his travels and exploits. He had told Kavanagh of his intention to come to Africa as soon as college days were over, and the hunter had warmly urged him to come as soon as possible to join a projected Expedition into a part of Africa that had not been penetrated. Carden had indeed left Ireland within two years of that time, but by then Kavanagh had died accidentally and mysteriously as men do die on the veld, with nothing but native rumour to tell of the manner of his death; and Carden with no friend to join, and too poor to fit out waggons for the hunting, adventurous life that lured him, was obliged to make for the comparatively civilised places where money was to be made. Destiny led him to the Diamond Fields, where, gradually absorbed by an unexpected gift in himself for finance, and fascinated by the life of danger and excitement, he had been caught in the big money-making whirlpool, and had stayed. Then when the current set for the Transvaal where the Game was even keener, and the life wilder, with gold for stakes instead of diamonds, he had gone with it, and continued to play the great Game for all he was worth. But always, always he meant to leave it some day, and go where his dreams called him, to the wild, strange spots and lonely places of Africa—sometimes he seemed to hear them calling in the night with a voice that was like a woman’s voice. But in the morning he had gone back to the Game, the money-game, which is one of the most fascinating in the world, and was in those early Rand days full of “battle, murder, and sudden death.” If he had missed hunting lions he had closed with many a human tiger, as his scars, hard eyes, and grim mouth testified. Though usually the top tiger, he had sometimes been brought down himself. Twice he had made and lost enormous fortunes; and now, only moderately rich, but on the eve of a great financial coup that if properly brought off would make him a millionaire, he had suddenly thrown down the Game, and leaving the haunts of money set out for the wilds. He had listened to the voice of his dream at last, and more than ever it had sounded like the voice of a woman; only sweeter than any woman’s voice he had ever heard. In haste, yet with the steady purpose of one who carries out a long-formed plan, he had fitted up his waggons, sent them on to Tuli, and was now on his way to join them and three friends there. His intention was to be away for a year and a half at least, and perhaps longer.And the end of his second day’s travelling had brought him thus unexpectedly to the place where Francis Kavanagh had died! Ah, well! God rest him for a fine Irishman, a lawless lover, a true friend, and a brave man! The mist cleared from Carden’s eyes and his usual unfeeling, not to say stony, expression returned. He cast another alert look over the country, and instantly espied at some distance a broken-down cattle kraal, and near by it the stooping figure of a Kaffir gatheringmis. In a straight line from there, pitched on the side of a kopje, and by reason of its colouring hardly distinguishable from the bush about it was a grey stone house; a light spot in front of it might have been the flicker of a woman’s dress. There was also the gleam of a fire.“That’s a farm, Swartz. Whose place can it be?”Swartz gazed in the direction indicated, and his stolid countenance took on a certain degree of interest.“Ach wot, ja! That must be old Johannes de Beer’s, the transport rider’s place, yes! I heered he had come to live about here, but he won’t be no good to us, Baas.A slegte kerel! Says he hates the rooi-neks and would like to shoot them likeschelmwherever he meets them on the veld.”“Ah! What part is he from?”“The Transvaal, Baas. But he’s different from other Boers. He lived in Delagoa Bay when he was a youngkereland went a trek once on a Portuguese gunboat and learnt a lot ofslegteways from these dago sailors. I’ve heard that he is all covered with red and blue anchors and animals that he had made on himself.”“Very interesting,” said Carden dryly. “We may as well see what this genius can do for us, Tal. If he won’t put us up for the night we may at least be able to buy some bread to eat with our buck. Come on.”“Gad! I’m glad to stretch my legs again,” said Talfourd getting stiffly out of the cart. Preceded by the bounding dogs they made their way to the house. As they drew near they recognised the typical Boer farm—a low sprawling building with highstoepand verandah. The white thing Carden had noticed was, as he had supposed, the dress of a woman sitting on a wooden bench by the door. About thirty yards from the house was a fire with a large three-legged pot over it, and another woman, a Kaffir with a shrewd withered face squatted beside it stirring with a long metal spoon. A blue vapour rose from the pot and the scent of roasting coffee beans was on the air. One lonely, sinister-looking tree grew by itself to the left of the stoep and a baboon chained to it barked hoarsely at them as they approached. The old Kaffir regarded them with unfriendly eyes, but the woman in the verandah rose and came down the steps and they saw that she was a young girl, slim and straight in a pink print dress with her face far back in a print sunbonnet. All that could be distinguished in the failing light was that like most Boer girls she had a fine complexion. Carden took off his hat and shook hands with her in the Boer fashion, addressing her in good Dutch.“Dag Jefrouw! Is this Johannes de Beer’s place?”“Jah Mynheer. This isGreis-Kopje(Grey-hill) farm,” she answered. Her voice was surprisingly soft and melodious, and it seemed to Carden that he had heard one like it before.“Our cart has broken down, and we want to know if Mr de Beer can put us up for the night. Perhaps we could speak to him?”“He has gone to Pretoria,” said the girl. “There is only Grietje, Yacop, and me here.”“We cannot do anything for you,” said the old woman who had approached, and stood by with the spoon in her hand. “This is not an hotel, and the old Baas would be angry if we took you in.” She scowled at them, but when she saw Swartz who had come up behind them her features slightly relaxed, and she gave him a curt nod.“This is pretty tough,” said Carden, putting his hat on the back of his head in an absent-minded way and laughing a little. “Well! We’d better go back to our buck, I suppose, and make a fire in the open. We can get some sleep anyhow.”But the girl suddenly began to speak. Her speech had a queer little twist to it that made it unusual, but the ugly Dutch fashion of clipping the ends of words betrayed that she was colonial and jarred Carden’s fine ear.“Oh, no,” she said excitedly, “Grietje is mad. You mustn’t go away. Of course we will do all we can for you. Come inside. Don’t mind Grietje. Would you like some coffee?”“Wouldn’t we?” said Talfourd. “And if we could only have some soap and water—”Carden said nothing but stared keenly into the girl’s “cappie” trying to see her face. She led the way indoors and they followed her, Talfourd limping with weariness. But fatigue was gone from Carden’s face. Something in the way the girl walked and in the lines of the slim young figure in the faded print dress refreshed him like wine.From the verandah they entered a large low room remarkably unlike the usualEat-kammerof a Boer house. It is true there were guns in the corner, karosses on the furniture, and skins on the floor; but the things were arranged with taste, and there were flowers about; a big jar of wild jasmine on the chimney-piece with long fronds trailed upwards over a fine pair of koodoo horns nailed near the ceiling, and on the table a native bowl full of leaves and bright wild geraniums.“What a capital room!” said Talfourd full of enthusiasm; but Carden always and ever remained silent.“If you will sit down I will see about a room for you,” said the girl, in her soft voice and bad accent. They protested that they wished to give no trouble, but she opened a door and disappeared, returning after a matter of five minutes to lead the way to a bedroom which astonished them even more than theEat-kammerhad done. It contained only one bed, a very white and nice one, but there was a sofa, large and comfortable-looking, covered by a beautiful leopard kaross. Rough dark tables had white calico cloths edged with narrow lace upon them. A white wooden shelf on the wall held a few books and again there were flowers everywhere.“If you do not mind using my room to wash and rest in until supper time,” said the girl, “there will be two rooms got ready for you by to-night. Please lie down and rest if you wish to.”She left them and they stood staring at the bed with its white counterpane. It was so simple and dainty, so obviously a girl’s bed. Talfourd threw himself on the sofa.“H’m!” said Carden. “I suppose I’ve got to camp on the floor? It won’t be the first time anyway.”In the meantime he poured out water in the white enamel bowl and got rid of some of the dust under which he was hidden. Afterwards he wiped up with his handkerchief the splashes he had made, and left everything as dainty as before.“Be careful to leave the wash-hand stand as you find it Talfourd,” he said, with something very like command in his voice. But there was no response from the weary Talfourd who was sleeping like a child. Carden smiled and looked about him for wherewith to do his hair, but when he saw the little wooden brush and white bone comb he made shift to groom his back head with the flat of his hand, after which he carefully hid the brush and comb on the principle that what was too good for him was certainly too good for Talfourd. He had discarded his tie in the heat of the day, and several buttons of his thin silk shirt were undone exposing a tanned, muscular throat; he carefully fastened them up, and though they came undone again a moment or two later he did not notice it so concentrated was he on his thoughts, whistling softly under his breath while he moved about the room. When he had quite finished he roused Talfourd, told him to get a bustle on him, and opening the door went back to the living-room.Candles had been lighted, and the table laid with a spotless white cloth, cups and saucers, tin plates, bone knives and forks, and a large loaf of the brown meal bread known assimmels broot. A fine savoury smell of riet buck crisping and singeing on red embers came from outside where Swartz and Grietje, now reinforced by the old Kaffir who had been picking upmis, were officiating over the fire. Carden sat down by the open window, and presently a door from another part of the house opened and the girl came in, carrying a pot of coffee. She had taken off her cappie and by the flickering candlelight Carden saw the smoky black hair growing above her brows like the glossy spread wings of a raven; the bar of golden freckles that lay across her nose; her silky curved mouth; dewy, mist-coloured eyes that like all eyes that have looked long on great spaces were full of dreams of forests and rivers, and seemed to reflect the shadows of far blue mountains. God had been good to her. She was lovely as a flower.She sat down on the other side of the table and she and Carden looked at each other. The pupils of the man’s eyes expanded, giving a curious intensity to his glance, and something in hers seemed to leap out like a swift radiant spirit to him and become his. She gave a deep sigh and her lids closed, as though some living vital thing gone out of her, she were dead, or asleep. For an instant she stayed so, then rose quietly and went out of the room. Carden breathing heavily like a man who has been running, and with a rushing sound in his ears, heard her speaking to the servants at the fire, and a moment later Talfourd came in with the bustle he had been told to acquire.The girl sat with them at dinner, serving them daintily to the luscious venison, and cutting big slices of thesimmels brootthat tasted like wheat with the heat of the sun still in it. Later she poured them out cups of the coffee whose beans had so lately been roasted over Grietje’s fire. She had little strong hands burnt a pale brown by the sun.Afterwards the two men walked up and down smoking in the moonlight that was bright as daylight only softer and more tender. It transformed the walls of the mean farmhouse so that they seemed to be made of alabaster with the shadowy branches of the lonely tree etched in ebony upon them. In the distance the broken-down kraal looked a gracious ruin. A little wind had risen and drifting wraiths of cloud gave the impression that the moon was racing across the sky with one lone silver star following her deathlessly. When they came back to the verandah they found the girl sitting on the wooden bench, and with her permission they sat beside her.“By Jove! What a night!” said Talfourd, and feeling well after a rest and an excellent meal began in a very fine tenor voice to sing:Have you forgotten, love, so soon,that night, that lovely night of June,When down the tide so idly dreaming,we floated where the moon lay gleaming?My heart was weary and oppressed,by some sweet longing unconfessed,When like an answer to my sighing,your hand in mine was gently lying.When he had finished, the girl said in a low tremulous voice, “Sing again!”So he sang Tosti’sAdieu; and then Schubert’sSerenade. Such sounds, such words had perhaps never before been heard in the vicinity of the little farmhouse. Yet who can tell! Carden’s Irish imagination evolved the idea that many beautiful things must have been spoken and thought before the flower-like girl by his side had been born. He stirred a little on the old bench at the thought, and the girl stirred too, putting her hand down beside her as if to rise. Carden did not see her movement, but by some strange instinct his hand went down too and found hers there, and finding it took it. She left it for an instant in his, then tried to draw it away; but he held it closely as he always held things he once took a grip on, whether they belonged to him or not, and she left it there. So they sat listening hand in hand while Talfourd sang his last song to them.I want no star in Heaven to guide me,I need no sun, no moon to shine,While I have you, dear love, beside me,While I know that you are mine.I need not fear whate’er betide me,for straight and sweet my pathway lies,I want no star in Heaven to guide me,while I gaze in your dear eyes.I hear no birds at twilight calling,I catch no music in the streams,While your golden words are fallingWhile you whisper in my dreams.Every sound of joy enthralling,speaks in your dear voice aloneWhile I hear your fond lips calling,while you speak to me, my own.Again the girl’s strong little hand fluttered like a bird under his, but he held it fast. He liked things that tried to flutter away and escape from him.I want no kingdom where thou art, love,I want no throne to make me blestWhile within thy tender heart, love,Thou wilt take my heart to rest.Kings must play a weary part,love, thrones must ring with wild alarms,But the kingdom of my heart,love, lies within thy loving arms.At last, Talfourd proposed to go to bed, but first he wanted to know what the plans were for the morning. Swartz was called up and a discussion held. There were no horses to be had at the farm, for it appeared that old de Beer had taken away the only two he possessed.Swartz’s plan was to take the best horse of the four, ride on to Webb’s and bring back a fresh span in the evening; and Carden thought it a good plan, if Miss de Beer would allow them to encroach so far upon her hospitality.“We’ll earn our dinner, if there is any shooting to be got about here,” he said.“Oh, yes; plenty of red-wing partridge, stem buck, and duiker.” She was standing opposite him now, having escaped in the general movement.“Muchmatatendelaalso,” volunteered the old native man Yacop who had come up to take part in the indaba. Carden laughed.“They’ll do for you, Tal; guinea-fowl need a sprinting athlete after them, and you are younger than I am.” He looked very boyish and happy as he spoke.“All the more reason why I should go to bed at once,” said Talfourd. “Good-night, Miss de Beer, and many, many thanks for pouring oil and wine upon us the way you have done. You have been a good Samaritan indeed!”“No; it was you who found me by the roadside,” she answered with a grave little smile, but she looked at Carden only. He lingered behind with her, hoping she would come and sit beside him again, but she did not move from where she stood leaning against the verandah pole. Swartz and Yacop had gone back to squat by the fire, and the former had produced the inevitable concertina that every Cape boy knows how to manipulate. Carden and the girl stayed listening to his melancholy strains, though it seemed to the man that it was the surging of waves in his ears that he heard, and little drums in all his pulses beating a call to arms.Dark Carden had been loved many times and loved carelessly back, but never had he met the woman he wanted to take and keep for ever in his life. He had an idea that such a woman existed, in Ireland, if anywhere. Certainly he had long ago decided that he would never marry any but a woman from his own land; and she must be beautiful, accomplished, well-bred, and virtuous at that. Nothing but the best was good enough for Dark Carden. But he was in no great hurry to find this ideal wife. Life and women had treated him too well for him to be in any hurry to change his ways and curtail his liberty. In the meantime he had put away all such thoughts for awhile.The spell of the wilderness was on him and it was stronger than any spell he had ever felt. Passing strange to find this flower of a girl blossoming here on the very edge of the wild! and more than passing sweet to linger awhile, sharing the moonlight night with her, stirred by the forbidden magic of her girlhood. For girls to him represented forbidden fruit. Everything else in the orchard might be reached after, or climbed for, by those who like himself had the nerve and taste for the pastime. But girls, however ripe and inviting, however close they leaned to the gathering hand, were not for this orchard thief. It was the one clause in his code concerning women which he had never broken. True he had not been greatly tempted, for girls had never held any extraordinary allure for him. The more astonishing then to find himself so troubled by the sight and sound of this one. When he thought of that something which had come winging its way from her eyes to his, and of how her hand had fluttered under his and then lain still, content, the blood tingled through his veins; he was glad to be alive.A longing to hear the voice which charmed him in spite of the jarring Dutch accent made him break the spell of silence that had fallen on them.“I do not even know your name,” he said in the gentle way he had with women.“Frances,” she answered as gently. “Frances de Beer.”“But you are not Dutch?” he said, though it mattered little to him if she declared herself Siamese or a native of Timbuctoo. The important thing was that she wasshe, a beautiful, alluring, and forbidden thing.“No; my mother was an Englishwoman who married a Boer. I am the love child of an Irishman.”A wave of astonishment mingled with pity surged through him at her strange words, and all the tragedy they implied both for her and the mother who had borne her in suffering and sorrow.And now he knew why this girl’s eyes were deep and full of dreams, why her hair framed her face like the spread wings of a raven, why her mouth was curved to the shape of a kiss incarnate.She was the child of two eternal things: Love and Sorrow.He sat very still thinking. The pity of it all took hold of his heart and an impulsive longing rose in him to do something to set things aright as they should be, for this beautiful child. Yet the sins of the fathers! Who can pay for them but the flesh and blood of those who made the debt? Who can set aright what has been wrong from the first? What place in the world was there for this love flower of the desert?Supposing he, Wilberforce St. John Carden were to marry her! The tingle came into his veins again at the thought, and a song sang in his blood. But his brain knew that it was a fool’s idea. What place in his life for the simple untaught child?It never occurred to him to doubt whether she would marry him. He was too trained a student in the school of women’s looks not to know what gift she had given him with her eyes whether consciously or unconsciously, at their first encounter. And every instinct urged him to lay hot impulsive hands on it, to take and keep it, as he had taken and kept her hand. But his brain remained cool and clear. He had his code to keep. The girl was impossible to marry. That fact put her out of his reach definitely.He sighed deeply. He did not know that he sighed, but the girl heard him. It seemed to him that he had come a long way, and passed through some extraordinarily poignant ordeal. As a matter of fact it was only a minute or two since she had last spoken that the girl spoke again, continuing her narrative.“My mother lived in this house with her Boer husband who was very cruel to her. The only pleasure she had was to sit here sometimes and watch the road. One day when her husband was away in the Transvaal an Irishman came along the road. He was a hunter and an adventurer, and my mother said there was a magic in him that no woman could resist—unlessshe were of his own country; for all others he was one of those whomustbe followed when they call, and I think he must have been, for one so sweet and good as my mother to have forgotten all for him. He took her away to his waggons, and they were going away together to the Interior but a lion killed him over there by the river.”“What was his name?” asked Carden, though he already knew. He knew now whose musical voice had echoed up old memories when first he heard her speak.“Francis Kavanagh. My mother told me when she was dying, but no one else has ever known, except Grietje—and now you.”“Why do you tell me?” he asked, though he knew the answer to that too. Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little foot-note to her tragic tale.“She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his.” A moment later she added:“But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer.”“Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel to your mother?” Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.“I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my husband.”It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and forgetfulness.“Ah, yes—your husband,” he said in a vague way, like a man whose thoughts are elsewhere.“He used to pass this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to mind him well, and he is not unkind.”Later she said:“He bought this farm and came to live here because it has always been my home—and I like to watch the road.”He did not ask her why. The boys by the fire got up and shuffled away to their blankets. The old woman was long since gone. These two were left alone in the silence and the moonlight.“Did you think that someone for you would come along the road some day?” he asked at last, coming very near her and looking at her mouth. After a moment she answered with a little sobbing sigh in her throat:“But I must always remember the promise I made to my mother.”He came close to her and gripped her hands; his eyes full of hunger, and longing, and caresses searched hers; his lips were almost on her lips.“What was the promise?”A wave of colour passed over her face and her eyes darkened with tears.“I think you know,” she cried miserably.“You must break it,” he said firmly. “You are mine—you must come with me.”“No,” she said crying, “I cannot.”Her face bright and pale in the white light was like the face of a brave boy looking on death. The heat and madness went out of Carden. He took her hand very gently and kissed it, then he walked away into the night.But out on the hot scented veld he thought of the gifts in her eyes and madness came upon him again. A promise! Can the dead bind the living with promises? Can a sinner make a saint out of her child by laying an injunction on her young soul! He laughed loud and bitterly in the night, and the birds stirred in the trees at so strange a sound. A “bush baby” curled in some distant clump of mimosa began to wail, and the dog that had followed his master from the farm whined uneasily. He had walked far and long. The swift rush of the river was close at hand, and the whereabouts of the farm could only be guessed by one little faint yellow light that streaked across the distance. Someone was keeping vigil.Somewhere near this spot Kavanagh had met the end so fitting to his wild adventurous life.Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword! The lawless had fallen victim to the lawless! But he had found his own before the end came, was Carden’s thought.What did Death matter when one had drunk to the dregs the cup Life holds to the lips of lovers? A good enough way to die too, by God! A short sharp struggle with the odds against him—then, very swiftly, the end!Married to a Boer! Those dewy dreaming eyes that were of his land—that black hair that winged above her forehead like the wings of a raven—that ardent spirit that had leaped from her eyes to his—married to a Boer! And he, Wilberforce Carden, who had always taken what he wanted from life, wrenched it from men’s hands and women’s lips,hemust be denied and go empty away!He forgot now that when he thought her free he had successfully resisted the idea of marrying her as a solution to the problem, and forgot too that her accent jarred on him. Remembered only the gifts her eyes had for him—and thought that with her, out under the stars he could forget the world into which she would not fit. And it was no good. She was married to a Boer!Raging he bit on the empty pipe in his mouth, and blood came into his eyes so that he could no longer see clearly, but went stumbling on his way, raging, cursing. He would have liked to have that Boer who was “not unkind” to her under his hands out there in the veld. He flung himself like a boy face down on the earth. After a little while, lying there, a quietness fell upon him. The cool brain that had out-finessed many another cool brain woke up and began to consider the situation from the point of view of the man who does not mean to lose, whatever the game may be. He lay so still that his dog who sat uneasily by him thought he must be asleep and from time to time gently licked his ear. But Dark Carden was not asleep. He was fighting a battle with his better self; with such rags and remnants of a conscience as survived in him; with a last unbroken moral code. At last he got up and retraced his steps quietly and firmly like a man with a purpose. His eyes had grown a little harder. The battle was lost.Dawn was not more than an hour or two off when he returned to the farm. The stars were darkening, and the indescribable freshness of morning could be felt in the air. Shadows under tree and bush were stirring as if for flight. A wedge-shaped flock of wild duck passed, honking mournfully, towards the east.The light in the farmhouse had gone out; but as he came quietly to the stoep he heard from a window that stood ajar a sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping. A little while he stood there, listening, then gently he pushed the window further open and stepped into the room. The soft and broken weeping ceased.They stayed three days and nights at Grey-Kopje farm. Talfourd and Carden went out shooting daily, returning at meal times, laden with small game to restock the larder. Always after dinner the three sat on the stoep as on the first night, and Talfourd sang while the other two listened. Swartz had brought back fresh horses on the evening of the first day, but Carden found fault with them and made him return for others. On the second day, a native carrier sent out with instructions to search the road for Carden brought a letter from the men waiting in Tuli who wanted to know what delayed him and why he did not materialise? Talfourd wanted to know too, but knew better than to ask. Carden was a man who took badly to any kind of ill-timed inquiry.On the fourth morning, Swartz had not returned, but Talfourd with the clear eye of a man who has accomplished nine hours of sound sleep with nothing on his conscience, glanced out of the window and noted Carden picking out of the cart things he would not be likely to need before reaching Tuli. “Hurray! we’re going to make a move at last!” he said to himself, and made haste to perform his toilette.At the breakfast table, it struck him that Carden looked older than a man of thirty-four ought to look, however swift has been the pace. However, he kept his observations to himself. It transpired that Carden’s plan was that he and Talfourd should start for Webb’s immediately after breakfast, leaving the cart to be brought on later by Swartz when he turned up with horses.“If we don’t meet him we can send on someone else for it.”“How are we going to get there?” said Talfourd looking up in surprise.“I suppose we can foot thirty miles without endangering our lives?” answered Carden with something so very like a sneer and so very unlike his usual impassive serenity that Talfourd was even more surprised.“Oh, all right, my dear fellow,” he said pleasantly. “It’s your picnic. I only wanted to know.”Mrs de Beer sat listening without comment, but she grew very pale. Afterwards Talfourd went out to get the guns ready, and Carden remained sitting at the table.“You are going?” she said looking away from him with eyes that were no longer dewy but dry and brilliant like the sky above the Karoo in days of drought.“Yes,” he answered in a business-like voice. “I must go.” He got up and looked out of the window for a moment, then walked back to the table.“My friends are waiting for me at Tuli.”“Yes,” she said.“I cannot break faith with them.”“No.” Her mouth was twisted like the mouth of a tortured child, but her eyes remained bright and dry.Carden’s faithless heart smote him.“For God’s sake, Frances—” he muttered, taking her hands. “I will stay if you wish it”—But his heart was already away with his friends and the waiting miles beyond. She read the truth in his eyes. No wordnowof her coming with him! Only of his staying—if she wished it!She looked into his eyes a long aching moment, then turned away with one word:“Good-bye.”A few hours later all was as it had been at the Grey farm. Even the cart was gone, for Swartz had brought four sturdy mules and driven it away. Under the lone tree Xsosa, the baboon, sat silent, watching the kopjes with fierce wistful eyes. Silence everywhere, except in one room of the house whence came the sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping.Once some Kaffir words spoken savagely yet with a kind of crooning tenderness came through an open window.“See you now what you have got from watching the road!—a knife in your heart. Did not old Grietje warn you? Hush armekindje—weep not.”But the soft and broken weeping went on.Across the arid flats of Bechuanaland went Carden with company picked for its excellence in fair weather or foul; but sometimes on the fairest, fullest day a pang of loneliness would shoot through him, darkening his mental horizon and isolating him from his fellows. The Forest of Somabula gave splendid sport, but in its deep silences he sometimes thought he could hear the sound of a woman weeping. And all the water sweeping down the violet black precipices of Victoria Falls and twirling lazily in the subtle olive green pool below could not wash out the remembrance of a mouth that was twisted like the mouth of a little tortured child. But his conscience had great sleeping qualities. Also, he had not been using his will for ten years to fight and “down” other men without strengthening its sinews for his own service. Hewillednot to remember certain things, therefore in time will knocked memory out, or at least put it into Chancery where it could no longer hurt him until he released it, or it proved strong enough to release itself.After that the trip was as complete a success for him, as it had been from the beginning to the others.Everything favoured them. Sport was extraordinarily good, boys reliable, mules and oxen in fine condition, weather unfailingly serene. The objective point of the trip was Lake Rudolph in British East Africa, via British Central and German territory. The route had been picked and pored over long before the start and nothing intervened to spoil the original plans. With an almost uncanny smoothness the days unclosed, rolled themselves out, and closed again, full to the brim with event and adventure, leaving no spare moment in which to remember the life left hundreds of miles behind; thereafter swiftly transforming themselves into weeks and months, until more than half the year was done.Then one lovely moonlight night on the shore of Lake Bangwelo memory without comprehensible rhyme or reason came out of Chancery and stayed with Carden. And thereafter it came regularly. Will had no power over it any longer. Like a little spectral child that was afraid to be out alone it came oftenest when the moon was sinking and the dawn only an hour or two off. Nearly always its lips were twisted with pain, and on dark nights he could hear it softly weeping. But there were nights when it was not a sad ghost and these were hardest to bear. Sometimes it threw a soft warm arm round his throat and woke him very tenderly because the dawn was near and he must go. At other times it would leave a kiss fresh as a flower across his lips and he would fling out his arms and wake with a curse to find them empty. But always in some wise or another the little ghost kept vigil with him.Then slowly, little by little, he began to hate things, and things repaid him as they always do, by going wrong. Boys began to run away when they were most needed, donkeys took to dying (the ox-waggons had long been left behind), carriers got fever and died, and those engaged in their place ofttimes scooted leaving packs by the wayside. Big game, after long tracking, escaped though wounded, in the end. One of the other fellows went down with malaria and passed out. The rest of them grew morose and sick of the whole business. Some of them began to talk of the affairs that awaited their attention down-country. But Carden meant to bring back a white rhino from the shores of the Rudolph and he said so, though God knew that he too was sick of the business. Not a night now that he did not lie down with maledictions in his heart; not a morning when he rose to a world glittering with frost crystals that looked as though they had been shaken from some giant Christmas card (everywhere except on the dark spots where sleepers had lain) but his first thought was to curse the day he was born and jibe at every good thing life had bestowed on him.The year was two months short of completion when the other men began to drop off. Le Breton and Senier took a dozen boys and walked for Mozambique. Vincent was dead. Talfourd, the last to go, joined at Tabora another man who was making his way to Daar-es-Saalem. Carden was left alone with his determination to finish at Lake Rudolph or die in the attempt. The determination was undermined at nights by a spectre which whispered him alluring invitations to embark at Mombassa for the Cape and thence from Petersburg to take the Tuli road. But by day he was far from the intention of doing anything of the kind, though after being away nearly a year and a half he had very good reasons for hastening his return. Occasional batches of letters that reached him at prearranged posts notified an urgency for his presence on the Rand, but it had grown to be a matter almost of defiance now that he should make Rudolph, though who or what it was he defied he omitted to specify, even to himself.And hedidmake Rudolph though it took him three months to do it and another three months to get back. When he arrived at Mombassa with his white rhino trophies, he was looking a good deal the worse for wear, and it may be computed that his system contained more than one man’s fair share of malarial and tropical trypanosomes. But he was once more immune to spectral memories at least and so far master of his destiny as to be able with a firm mind to arrange his affairs down south by letter and cable and take ship for Europe instead of the Cape. Via the East Coast he reached Egypt and made a month’s stay; then to Marseilles and several months loitering on the Mediterranean shores. But his objective point now was Ireland and by land and water he came at last to that fair, green land. For one of the conclusions he had arrived at during the lonely later months of his expedition was that man was not meant to live alone and that the hour had struck for him to find the beautiful, accomplished, and well-born girl who doubtless awaited him somewhere in his own country. Ireland indeed is the home of many such, and in and out of Dublin during a specially gay dancing and hunting season he found no scarcity of the usual supply. But none were for him. Always, even in the most charming, something lacked, some little, vital, essential thing—he knew not what, and did not wish to analyse, and never stayed to find out. Once or twice, when he lingered in curiosity, the keys of his castle were almost out of his hands, for the dark face of Dark Carden had not lost its lure for women, and many a beautiful eye grew brighter for his coming and more than one society beauty made up her mind that it would be “rather good fun” to go to South Africa as this adventurer’s bride. But Carden escaped always, and with a sense of breathlessness and relief that was extraordinary considering the nature of his quest.Then one bleak morning in late autumn the nostalgia of Africa took him by the heart and before that day was out he was shaking the dust of Ireland from his feet with his face set for Southampton where the Union-Castle liners turn their noses towards the Southern Cross.One of the first faces to greet him at the Cape Town Docks was Talfourd’s. Carden fell upon him as upon a long-lost brother. It seemed to him there was no other man in the world he would so gladly have met. He was conscious that Tal and he shared an experience that was secret to the rest of his friends. Wherefore he could not disguise his pleasure at the encounter. Tal was hooked in to come and lunch at the City Club, and later to dine at the Mount Nelson. For the moment there was no one like Tal. The latter indeed found himself somewhat intrigued by this unwonted demonstrativeness. Carden seemed to him to be queerly changed since first they had met some five or six years past. When after dinner that night, out among the trim walks and aromatic bushes of the garden, they fell into reminiscences he voiced something of his thought. He was an introspective fellow with a good deal of sentiment in his composition, and the wine and cigars had been excellent.“You were always a hard nut to crack, Carden, but the gayest chap on earth, and even the fellows you knocked out liked you for it afterwards. But Africa changed you as it changes us all. You went queer on that trek of ours up north and I never could make it out. I’ve thought a lot about it and, do you know, I always dated the change in you back to that little farm we put up at on the road to Tuli—Greis-Kopje—remember the place?”Carden gloomed at him. Did he remember it? By God!“Strange,” continued Talfourd, “I ran into our old driver Swartz at Pretoria the other day. He has got regular work on the Zeederburg Coach Line, and is up and down the Tuli Road. He told me a queer thing aboutGreis-Kopje. It appears that old de Beer, the fellow who owned the place, disappeared about a year ago and has never been seen since. He was the husband of that pretty girl we thought was his daughter at first. You remember?”Carden was busy lighting another cigar, his face mask-like except for the eyes which burnt like points of blue fire.“The supposition is that either he was drowned crossing the Crocodile River or else a stray lion got him.”“And Mrs de Beer?”“Still lives on there with old Grietje and Yacop.”“Let’s go in,” said Carden abruptly. “I have to be up at daybreak and get through a lot of business. I leave by the mail at eleven.”“What a fellow you are! Where for? Johannesburg?”“Yes.” And from thence to the Tuli Road, fast as hoof and wheel could carry him. Now he knew what ailed him, and would shout it from the mountain-tops but that it was too sweet and dear a secret to be shared with all the world—yet. Now he knew what anodyne to seek for healing of his raging wound, what drink for solace of his burning torment. By the broad, dusty road to Tuli ran a stream of clear, cold water and his parched soul was sick to drink from it. Memory suddenly sculptured in his brain a face that all Ireland had not been able to duplicate. Yet all Ireland lay in the dewy, passionate eyes of Frances de Beer, and for him all home, all peace, all future. Now, at last, he acknowledged what he had always known, and gave himself up to the thought of what he had denied so long: she who had given all asked nothing, and let him go without a reproach. He knew now that he had been a knave and a fool and that for the last two and a half years he had been paying with torment of body and soul for it. And still was paying. When he remembered her and all she had been to him—his loneliness was a still small torment that pierced and tortured him like a dart in his vitals.Throughout that night he paced his room, or stood at his open window, staring out at the silvered slopes of Table Mountain but getting no peace of her stern eternal loveliness. Pacing, and staring, in the small hours, he went over every detail of that brief sweet-madness on the Tuli Road, remembering her face, her voice, her eyes, and the soul of her that had leaped from them to him. And, as always, the thing that stirred him most was the memory of her fluttering hand under his that first night when they sat on the stoep listening to Talfourd’s singing. He remembered how a mist had come over his eyes at the feel of it; his heart had seemed to turn over in his breast; it was as though he had trapped something he had lain in wait for all his life; all the tyranny and tenderness of his nature had been roused in that moment, with something of a boy’s elation when he has caught with his own hands some beautiful wild thing that he has watched for long.It all came back, like a dream of delirium, only more vividly. He re-lived the moment when a passing chivalrous impulse had bade him kiss her hands and leave her, and that dark hour on the veld when he had fought a battle with his baser self and lost. Then that other mad hour of stolen sweetness, when he had groped for her in the luminous darkness of her room and found first the little, pale, strong hands that smelled like apple blossom—then her lips! He recalled her tears and little broken cries, and how his lips had crushed them down and kissed them away! How all too soon the dawn had come! And with this memory came pain and shame. Bitter shame that he had so debased her whom he loved. She who had only wished to do right, but found her heart and his will too strong for her. Love anointed his cynical eyes at last and he saw and understood the hearts of women as he had never done before, and knew at last how unworthy were most men, and he with them, of the sacrifices women make on the altar of love. Hot, unaccustomed moisture that seemed to be dragged torturingly from the very depths of his being seared his eyes. He flung himself on his bed, ashamed at first of his tears, then of his acts, and, at last, ashamed of his life.“God forgive me!” he thought. “It shall never happen again.”But God’s forgiveness was taken for granted and he thought less about that than of the sweetness the future promised.It was not many nights before his feet were set upon the long white dusty road that wound by kop and kloof and vlei to the haven of his heart’s desire. He had given orders for everything he possessed on the Rand to be sold, and did not mean to return to the Golden City. Waggons were being fitted up and provisioned in Pretoria for his use, and would follow him. For the veld was to be his home now once and for all. He was sick of money-making, politics, and all the little games and intrigues of finance, of artificial women, and conventions. He meant to have done with these things and forget on the brown, kind breast of Mother Africa that he had ever known them.Andshewas coming with him; the one woman who fitted into the wild places his soul loved; the woman with dreams of stretching plains and forests in her eyes. Ah! that was a woman with whom to seek the blue mountains, to camp under the stars and forget cities and sins! It was well that old de Beer had disappeared, for Dark Carden meant to take what was his own at last, and swore that all the de Beers in the world, dead or alive, should not prevent him. He was ready to defy Heaven and Hell to prevent him.His cart drew near the line of grey kopjes at the end of a long day’s run. From his outspan the distance was too great for any but his own keen eyes to distinguish the little ramshackle farm.Everything was as it had been nearly two and a half years before. The dust lay thick on the sage-green bush, and once more a blood-red sun was sinking to rest behind the horizon of massed scarlet and bronze. No one had mended the broken-down kraal, and on a far off rise a figure that might have been Yacop was picking up dried cow-dung. There was something very like the smell of roasting coffee on the air.Carden was glad to be alive with a fierce gladness. He felt a boy again, and looked it, as he strode across the sunburnt grass. Yes! there was Grietje crouching by the fire. And a white gown flickered on the stoep as long ago it had flickered a signal to his heart. She was waiting for him there, as he had always known that she would be waiting.The baboon barked furiously as he approached. It was not chained to the tree any longer, but to a post by the side of the house. At the sound of the creature’s hoarse voice the old woman by the fire rose up. She did not speak when she saw that it was Carden, only looked at him with strange little old eyes, dark as the unexplored depths of a secret well. When he had passed she stood a moment gazing after him, then shuffled silently away to the back of the house.He went forward to the stoep and slowly mounted the crumbling stone steps. The old woman’s gaze had vaguely disturbed him. Or was it something in the motionless silence of the woman who sat gravely observing him, that chilled the riot of his veins?She wore her little sunbonnet cappie as of old, her face so far back in it that nothing could be seen but two great eyes. It seemed strange to him that she did not rise, nor put out her hand in welcome. Only sat there observing him sombrely.“Frances,” he said gently, “I have come back.”She sighed. After a moment she spoke from her cappie. But it was not a voice that he remembered at all.“You should not have done that, Dark Carden.”He stood very still. It seemed as if something ice cold had entered his breast and was slowly approaching his heart. His voice jerked a little when he spoke again, very humbly.“I should have come long ago.”“Yes; you should have come long ago.” There was something relentless and fateful in the sound of that voice, so soft and stern. “Now, it is too late.”“No,” he said violently. “It is not. I have come to take you away and never let you go again. I cannot do without you any longer.”She gave one of her strange terrible sighs, and spite of his firm words he felt the cold thing creep a little nearer to his heart.“Where is your husband, Frances?” God knew what made him ask. He cared little enough for the whereabouts of old de Beer. Yet the answer was extraordinarily disconcerting.“He is over there.” She made a gesture and he jerked his head round abruptly. There was nothing to be seen in the direction her hand had indicated. Nothing but the lonely tree. He looked at her piercingly then, with a new inquiry in his glance, and a creeping, clutching fear for her mind.“I heard that he was dead,” he said slowly.“Yes, it is true. He is dead,” she answered quietly, looking past him to where she had pointed. Spite of himself he looked once more in the same direction. Again nothing but the tree.But something else arrested his eye. Grietje had come back and was squatting by the fire, and at her side, playing in the dust, was the toddling dumpy figure of a little child. It must have come round with Grietje from the back of the house. Certainly it had not been there before.“Whose child is that?” he asked in surprise. And the stern, still voice from the sunbonnet answered him:“It is your child and mine.”“My God!”After a long time he said again, brokenly, with bitter self-accusation.“My God! Frances, forgive me! I did not know. How was I to know?”She did not answer.“Can you ever forgive me?”“Yes, as I hope for forgiveness,” she said.There was a dull solemnity in her tone and she did not touch the hand he stretched out. Unobserved by him the little toddling child had come up and now flung itself against its mother’s knees hiding its face in her lap. It swung a little sunbonnet in its hand and by the fading light he could see the softly curling hair, black as his own, and the outline of a small tender face. He knew that her child and his could not but be beautiful, and stood staring there, trembling, the magic of fatherhood on him and an urgent longing to catch the little creature in his arms. Suddenly it turned to him, and in the same moment the mother raised a pale, warning finger and laid it across her lips in token that he must be silent. So he did not cry out at what he saw.The little face that promised such flower-like beauty had been transformed into a thing of horror by a piece of diabolically clever tattooing. A monstrous purple and red spider sprawled its bloated form and lobster-like claws upon the delicate rose-leaf skin. Neither tarantula nor octopus, it possessed all the worst attributes of each. It’s puffed-out body crouched in the centre of the face upon the nose and cheek bones, and the child’s bright violet eyes seemed the staring strange eyes of the beast. Its claws sprayed and curled about the mouth, reached out to the ears, and lost themselves in tendrils of hair upon the forehead! The thing seemed too hideous in conception to be the work of anyone but a mad devil, yet there was in it some sinister suggestion of human hands.Carden knew not what supernatural or other power kept him there, staring with agonised eyes at the face of his child, when his every instinct was to turn and run as he had never run from anything in his life. The child broke the spell by dancing away with a pretty elfin laugh to rejoin Grietje by the fire. The quality of her laugh and the light patter of her feet brought home to Carden the realisation that it was a girl whose beauty had been thus cruelly destroyed forever, and a groan broke from him. The woman watching him with her tragic eyes saw sweat standing in little beads on his lips.“He did it,” she said. “That is why he lies dead over there” Her eyes travelled past Carden once more to where the lonely tree waved an arm in the evening breeze.“He did not come back for eleven months after you had passed,” she continued in her sad relentless voice. “My baby was here when he returned—so of course he knew. But he said nothing. I feared terribly for the child at first, but in the end I came to think that he did not care. Then, one day, when my fears were all asleep, he disappeared, taking my baby with him for three days. Grietje and I roamed the veld seeking them, and on the night of the third day as we drew near home again we heard the child crying, and coming in we found it with its lovely little face all swollen and black from the poisons he had put in. He was lying on the bench laughing, and called out to me as I came in:“‘There is your love child. Butshewill have to do without love.’”“I was worn out with weeping and wandering for three days and nights, but when he said those words I rushed over to him and killed him. I killed him with these hands.” She looked down on the hands lying on her lap.“I tore his throat open and his life ran out with his blood,” she said softly.Carden had no words. He stood looking at the little pale strong hands that were used to smell of apple blossom, and listening like a man in a dream. But it was a bad dream. A nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his days! He was not sure now that those days would be many, thathislife too was not passing with every word spoken by that gentle, fateful voice.“Grietje and I buried him over there under the tree. No one else knows but Xsosa who watched us at the burying in the dead of night.”Darkness had suddenly enfolded the land. No stars brightened the vapouring gloom but occasionally the fire threw out a blood-red finger showing Grietje cuddling the child to her bosom, crooning some Kaffir lullaby over its head.“What is to be done,” muttered Carden, in the voice of a man who has come to the end of all ways. He looked at her, but her face was, as ever, hidden in the cappie. He had not seen it once in all this terrible hour and now he knew he would never see it.“What is there to do?” she said sombrely. “Grietje and I must stay here, with him, until we grow old and die.”“But... the child?”“Ah!” She sighed her deep sigh. “She will grow up perhaps—and in her turn watch the road.”
The sky-line was scarlet from east to west, and above the scarlet lay massed bronze. The rest of the world was composed of tan-coloured kopjes and rocks, and the road along which the Cape cart dolorously crawled, resembled a river of dust rising in mountainous waves through which the setting sun loomed like a blood-red heart.
It was the road from the Transvaal to Tuli, and the cart had been travelling along it for hours, but was still many miles from the wayside hotel where a night’s rest for man and beast was waiting; and the offside leader had gone dead-lame, while the other three horses appeared to have lost all enthusiasm for life. On the crest of a rise, the cart came to a standstill, and they stood with hung heads and quivering barrels panting under their lathered harness. The driver descended; a burly Cape boy, he had the thick mouth of a Hottentot and the hang-dog swagger of a low-class Boer; but as far as horses were concerned he was an angel from Heaven. When he spoke to his beasts, they lifted up their despairing heads trembling like lovers to his voice, seeming to stand together again with fresh resolution while he rubbed the nose of one, slapped another’s soapy flank, and once more examined the leader’s foot. Afterwards he emitted a kind of resigned grunt and stood chewing a bit of grass he had plucked in stooping. The two men crammed in the body of the cart with several dogs, guns, and a mass of shooting-kit looked on grimly. They were merciful men who hated to see a beast suffer, but they also hated the prospect of a night on the veld without provisions or blankets. They were weary as only a day’s travelling in a Cape cart under the hot sun can make men weary; dead beat, begrimed, and hungry. Moreover they were in a hurry to reach their destination; if they had not been they would have waited for the weekly mail-coach instead of chartering a special cart.
The significance of the driver’s grunt was not lost on one at least of them, a dark man burnt almost black, with hard blue eyes and a grim lip, who looked as though with a red handkerchief on his head instead of a slouch hat he would have made a first-class pirate. Never handsome, a broken nose, and a deep scar which began over one unflinching eye and finished somewhere in the roots of his short thick hair had not softened his appearance. Yet no woman or dog (the two have strangely similar tastes where men are concerned) would have glanced twice at the other man (a well set up, good-looking fellow of thirty), while Dark Carden was about. The latter, however, if he returned the glances of women with interest, also knew something of men and horses, and because of this he now saw very well that the leader was done for and the driver resigned to a night on the veld. Disentangling himself from the shooting-kit he threw himself out of the cart, and the dogs leaped after him barking joyously.
“This is a damned look-out, Swartz!”
“Yes, Baas,” assented Swartz, not unamiably. “The leader’s leg is gone for store, and the others are done up. We can’t make Webb’s to-night.”
“How far is it?”
“About thirty miles yet.”
Carden looked at the man in the cart.
“Feel inclined to tramp it, Talfourd?”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Talfourd. “Do you?”
“Not much!” said Carden smiling. “We’ll camp. After all we’ve got the buck.” He gave a glance to the back of the cart where a beautiful little net buck still warm, but with the glaze of death over its eyes was suspended. Then his keen eye travelled swiftly over the surrounding country. The dust was subsiding, and it could be seen that they were in a wild place of lonely kopjes and immense patches of grey-green bush. Far off, taller, greener trees growing thick and close as moss outlined the banks of the Crocodile River. Across the midst of the scene, round kops and through bush, curved and curled the dusty white road that led to Tuli, and thence upwards and onwards through Mashonaland and Matabeleland to the North.
Swartz had begun to outspan the horses, knee-haltering each so that they would not roam too far.
“They’ll be safer than they would have been fifteen or twenty years ago,” he announced. “It was somewhere about here, on the banks of the river that Baas Kavanagh, the great hunter, was killed by a lion.”
“By George!” said Carden softly under his breath, and his blue eyes took on a misty look that softened them curiously. He was thinking of Francis Kavanagh, the big, lawless, lovable Irishman who hailed from his own part of Ireland—County Carlow, and had all the magic of the west in his voice and eyes. Kavanagh had been the hero of Carden’s boyhood dreams, the man who first inspired him with a love and longing for Africa. His thoughts went back in a straight line to the day when, as a college boy, he had last shaken the hand of the Explorer, famous even at thirty for his travels and exploits. He had told Kavanagh of his intention to come to Africa as soon as college days were over, and the hunter had warmly urged him to come as soon as possible to join a projected Expedition into a part of Africa that had not been penetrated. Carden had indeed left Ireland within two years of that time, but by then Kavanagh had died accidentally and mysteriously as men do die on the veld, with nothing but native rumour to tell of the manner of his death; and Carden with no friend to join, and too poor to fit out waggons for the hunting, adventurous life that lured him, was obliged to make for the comparatively civilised places where money was to be made. Destiny led him to the Diamond Fields, where, gradually absorbed by an unexpected gift in himself for finance, and fascinated by the life of danger and excitement, he had been caught in the big money-making whirlpool, and had stayed. Then when the current set for the Transvaal where the Game was even keener, and the life wilder, with gold for stakes instead of diamonds, he had gone with it, and continued to play the great Game for all he was worth. But always, always he meant to leave it some day, and go where his dreams called him, to the wild, strange spots and lonely places of Africa—sometimes he seemed to hear them calling in the night with a voice that was like a woman’s voice. But in the morning he had gone back to the Game, the money-game, which is one of the most fascinating in the world, and was in those early Rand days full of “battle, murder, and sudden death.” If he had missed hunting lions he had closed with many a human tiger, as his scars, hard eyes, and grim mouth testified. Though usually the top tiger, he had sometimes been brought down himself. Twice he had made and lost enormous fortunes; and now, only moderately rich, but on the eve of a great financial coup that if properly brought off would make him a millionaire, he had suddenly thrown down the Game, and leaving the haunts of money set out for the wilds. He had listened to the voice of his dream at last, and more than ever it had sounded like the voice of a woman; only sweeter than any woman’s voice he had ever heard. In haste, yet with the steady purpose of one who carries out a long-formed plan, he had fitted up his waggons, sent them on to Tuli, and was now on his way to join them and three friends there. His intention was to be away for a year and a half at least, and perhaps longer.
And the end of his second day’s travelling had brought him thus unexpectedly to the place where Francis Kavanagh had died! Ah, well! God rest him for a fine Irishman, a lawless lover, a true friend, and a brave man! The mist cleared from Carden’s eyes and his usual unfeeling, not to say stony, expression returned. He cast another alert look over the country, and instantly espied at some distance a broken-down cattle kraal, and near by it the stooping figure of a Kaffir gatheringmis. In a straight line from there, pitched on the side of a kopje, and by reason of its colouring hardly distinguishable from the bush about it was a grey stone house; a light spot in front of it might have been the flicker of a woman’s dress. There was also the gleam of a fire.
“That’s a farm, Swartz. Whose place can it be?”
Swartz gazed in the direction indicated, and his stolid countenance took on a certain degree of interest.
“Ach wot, ja! That must be old Johannes de Beer’s, the transport rider’s place, yes! I heered he had come to live about here, but he won’t be no good to us, Baas.A slegte kerel! Says he hates the rooi-neks and would like to shoot them likeschelmwherever he meets them on the veld.”
“Ah! What part is he from?”
“The Transvaal, Baas. But he’s different from other Boers. He lived in Delagoa Bay when he was a youngkereland went a trek once on a Portuguese gunboat and learnt a lot ofslegteways from these dago sailors. I’ve heard that he is all covered with red and blue anchors and animals that he had made on himself.”
“Very interesting,” said Carden dryly. “We may as well see what this genius can do for us, Tal. If he won’t put us up for the night we may at least be able to buy some bread to eat with our buck. Come on.”
“Gad! I’m glad to stretch my legs again,” said Talfourd getting stiffly out of the cart. Preceded by the bounding dogs they made their way to the house. As they drew near they recognised the typical Boer farm—a low sprawling building with highstoepand verandah. The white thing Carden had noticed was, as he had supposed, the dress of a woman sitting on a wooden bench by the door. About thirty yards from the house was a fire with a large three-legged pot over it, and another woman, a Kaffir with a shrewd withered face squatted beside it stirring with a long metal spoon. A blue vapour rose from the pot and the scent of roasting coffee beans was on the air. One lonely, sinister-looking tree grew by itself to the left of the stoep and a baboon chained to it barked hoarsely at them as they approached. The old Kaffir regarded them with unfriendly eyes, but the woman in the verandah rose and came down the steps and they saw that she was a young girl, slim and straight in a pink print dress with her face far back in a print sunbonnet. All that could be distinguished in the failing light was that like most Boer girls she had a fine complexion. Carden took off his hat and shook hands with her in the Boer fashion, addressing her in good Dutch.
“Dag Jefrouw! Is this Johannes de Beer’s place?”
“Jah Mynheer. This isGreis-Kopje(Grey-hill) farm,” she answered. Her voice was surprisingly soft and melodious, and it seemed to Carden that he had heard one like it before.
“Our cart has broken down, and we want to know if Mr de Beer can put us up for the night. Perhaps we could speak to him?”
“He has gone to Pretoria,” said the girl. “There is only Grietje, Yacop, and me here.”
“We cannot do anything for you,” said the old woman who had approached, and stood by with the spoon in her hand. “This is not an hotel, and the old Baas would be angry if we took you in.” She scowled at them, but when she saw Swartz who had come up behind them her features slightly relaxed, and she gave him a curt nod.
“This is pretty tough,” said Carden, putting his hat on the back of his head in an absent-minded way and laughing a little. “Well! We’d better go back to our buck, I suppose, and make a fire in the open. We can get some sleep anyhow.”
But the girl suddenly began to speak. Her speech had a queer little twist to it that made it unusual, but the ugly Dutch fashion of clipping the ends of words betrayed that she was colonial and jarred Carden’s fine ear.
“Oh, no,” she said excitedly, “Grietje is mad. You mustn’t go away. Of course we will do all we can for you. Come inside. Don’t mind Grietje. Would you like some coffee?”
“Wouldn’t we?” said Talfourd. “And if we could only have some soap and water—”
Carden said nothing but stared keenly into the girl’s “cappie” trying to see her face. She led the way indoors and they followed her, Talfourd limping with weariness. But fatigue was gone from Carden’s face. Something in the way the girl walked and in the lines of the slim young figure in the faded print dress refreshed him like wine.
From the verandah they entered a large low room remarkably unlike the usualEat-kammerof a Boer house. It is true there were guns in the corner, karosses on the furniture, and skins on the floor; but the things were arranged with taste, and there were flowers about; a big jar of wild jasmine on the chimney-piece with long fronds trailed upwards over a fine pair of koodoo horns nailed near the ceiling, and on the table a native bowl full of leaves and bright wild geraniums.
“What a capital room!” said Talfourd full of enthusiasm; but Carden always and ever remained silent.
“If you will sit down I will see about a room for you,” said the girl, in her soft voice and bad accent. They protested that they wished to give no trouble, but she opened a door and disappeared, returning after a matter of five minutes to lead the way to a bedroom which astonished them even more than theEat-kammerhad done. It contained only one bed, a very white and nice one, but there was a sofa, large and comfortable-looking, covered by a beautiful leopard kaross. Rough dark tables had white calico cloths edged with narrow lace upon them. A white wooden shelf on the wall held a few books and again there were flowers everywhere.
“If you do not mind using my room to wash and rest in until supper time,” said the girl, “there will be two rooms got ready for you by to-night. Please lie down and rest if you wish to.”
She left them and they stood staring at the bed with its white counterpane. It was so simple and dainty, so obviously a girl’s bed. Talfourd threw himself on the sofa.
“H’m!” said Carden. “I suppose I’ve got to camp on the floor? It won’t be the first time anyway.”
In the meantime he poured out water in the white enamel bowl and got rid of some of the dust under which he was hidden. Afterwards he wiped up with his handkerchief the splashes he had made, and left everything as dainty as before.
“Be careful to leave the wash-hand stand as you find it Talfourd,” he said, with something very like command in his voice. But there was no response from the weary Talfourd who was sleeping like a child. Carden smiled and looked about him for wherewith to do his hair, but when he saw the little wooden brush and white bone comb he made shift to groom his back head with the flat of his hand, after which he carefully hid the brush and comb on the principle that what was too good for him was certainly too good for Talfourd. He had discarded his tie in the heat of the day, and several buttons of his thin silk shirt were undone exposing a tanned, muscular throat; he carefully fastened them up, and though they came undone again a moment or two later he did not notice it so concentrated was he on his thoughts, whistling softly under his breath while he moved about the room. When he had quite finished he roused Talfourd, told him to get a bustle on him, and opening the door went back to the living-room.
Candles had been lighted, and the table laid with a spotless white cloth, cups and saucers, tin plates, bone knives and forks, and a large loaf of the brown meal bread known assimmels broot. A fine savoury smell of riet buck crisping and singeing on red embers came from outside where Swartz and Grietje, now reinforced by the old Kaffir who had been picking upmis, were officiating over the fire. Carden sat down by the open window, and presently a door from another part of the house opened and the girl came in, carrying a pot of coffee. She had taken off her cappie and by the flickering candlelight Carden saw the smoky black hair growing above her brows like the glossy spread wings of a raven; the bar of golden freckles that lay across her nose; her silky curved mouth; dewy, mist-coloured eyes that like all eyes that have looked long on great spaces were full of dreams of forests and rivers, and seemed to reflect the shadows of far blue mountains. God had been good to her. She was lovely as a flower.
She sat down on the other side of the table and she and Carden looked at each other. The pupils of the man’s eyes expanded, giving a curious intensity to his glance, and something in hers seemed to leap out like a swift radiant spirit to him and become his. She gave a deep sigh and her lids closed, as though some living vital thing gone out of her, she were dead, or asleep. For an instant she stayed so, then rose quietly and went out of the room. Carden breathing heavily like a man who has been running, and with a rushing sound in his ears, heard her speaking to the servants at the fire, and a moment later Talfourd came in with the bustle he had been told to acquire.
The girl sat with them at dinner, serving them daintily to the luscious venison, and cutting big slices of thesimmels brootthat tasted like wheat with the heat of the sun still in it. Later she poured them out cups of the coffee whose beans had so lately been roasted over Grietje’s fire. She had little strong hands burnt a pale brown by the sun.
Afterwards the two men walked up and down smoking in the moonlight that was bright as daylight only softer and more tender. It transformed the walls of the mean farmhouse so that they seemed to be made of alabaster with the shadowy branches of the lonely tree etched in ebony upon them. In the distance the broken-down kraal looked a gracious ruin. A little wind had risen and drifting wraiths of cloud gave the impression that the moon was racing across the sky with one lone silver star following her deathlessly. When they came back to the verandah they found the girl sitting on the wooden bench, and with her permission they sat beside her.
“By Jove! What a night!” said Talfourd, and feeling well after a rest and an excellent meal began in a very fine tenor voice to sing:
Have you forgotten, love, so soon,that night, that lovely night of June,When down the tide so idly dreaming,we floated where the moon lay gleaming?My heart was weary and oppressed,by some sweet longing unconfessed,When like an answer to my sighing,your hand in mine was gently lying.
Have you forgotten, love, so soon,that night, that lovely night of June,When down the tide so idly dreaming,we floated where the moon lay gleaming?My heart was weary and oppressed,by some sweet longing unconfessed,When like an answer to my sighing,your hand in mine was gently lying.
When he had finished, the girl said in a low tremulous voice, “Sing again!”
So he sang Tosti’sAdieu; and then Schubert’sSerenade. Such sounds, such words had perhaps never before been heard in the vicinity of the little farmhouse. Yet who can tell! Carden’s Irish imagination evolved the idea that many beautiful things must have been spoken and thought before the flower-like girl by his side had been born. He stirred a little on the old bench at the thought, and the girl stirred too, putting her hand down beside her as if to rise. Carden did not see her movement, but by some strange instinct his hand went down too and found hers there, and finding it took it. She left it for an instant in his, then tried to draw it away; but he held it closely as he always held things he once took a grip on, whether they belonged to him or not, and she left it there. So they sat listening hand in hand while Talfourd sang his last song to them.
I want no star in Heaven to guide me,I need no sun, no moon to shine,While I have you, dear love, beside me,While I know that you are mine.I need not fear whate’er betide me,for straight and sweet my pathway lies,I want no star in Heaven to guide me,while I gaze in your dear eyes.I hear no birds at twilight calling,I catch no music in the streams,While your golden words are fallingWhile you whisper in my dreams.Every sound of joy enthralling,speaks in your dear voice aloneWhile I hear your fond lips calling,while you speak to me, my own.
I want no star in Heaven to guide me,I need no sun, no moon to shine,While I have you, dear love, beside me,While I know that you are mine.I need not fear whate’er betide me,for straight and sweet my pathway lies,I want no star in Heaven to guide me,while I gaze in your dear eyes.I hear no birds at twilight calling,I catch no music in the streams,While your golden words are fallingWhile you whisper in my dreams.Every sound of joy enthralling,speaks in your dear voice aloneWhile I hear your fond lips calling,while you speak to me, my own.
Again the girl’s strong little hand fluttered like a bird under his, but he held it fast. He liked things that tried to flutter away and escape from him.
I want no kingdom where thou art, love,I want no throne to make me blestWhile within thy tender heart, love,Thou wilt take my heart to rest.Kings must play a weary part,love, thrones must ring with wild alarms,But the kingdom of my heart,love, lies within thy loving arms.
I want no kingdom where thou art, love,I want no throne to make me blestWhile within thy tender heart, love,Thou wilt take my heart to rest.Kings must play a weary part,love, thrones must ring with wild alarms,But the kingdom of my heart,love, lies within thy loving arms.
At last, Talfourd proposed to go to bed, but first he wanted to know what the plans were for the morning. Swartz was called up and a discussion held. There were no horses to be had at the farm, for it appeared that old de Beer had taken away the only two he possessed.
Swartz’s plan was to take the best horse of the four, ride on to Webb’s and bring back a fresh span in the evening; and Carden thought it a good plan, if Miss de Beer would allow them to encroach so far upon her hospitality.
“We’ll earn our dinner, if there is any shooting to be got about here,” he said.
“Oh, yes; plenty of red-wing partridge, stem buck, and duiker.” She was standing opposite him now, having escaped in the general movement.
“Muchmatatendelaalso,” volunteered the old native man Yacop who had come up to take part in the indaba. Carden laughed.
“They’ll do for you, Tal; guinea-fowl need a sprinting athlete after them, and you are younger than I am.” He looked very boyish and happy as he spoke.
“All the more reason why I should go to bed at once,” said Talfourd. “Good-night, Miss de Beer, and many, many thanks for pouring oil and wine upon us the way you have done. You have been a good Samaritan indeed!”
“No; it was you who found me by the roadside,” she answered with a grave little smile, but she looked at Carden only. He lingered behind with her, hoping she would come and sit beside him again, but she did not move from where she stood leaning against the verandah pole. Swartz and Yacop had gone back to squat by the fire, and the former had produced the inevitable concertina that every Cape boy knows how to manipulate. Carden and the girl stayed listening to his melancholy strains, though it seemed to the man that it was the surging of waves in his ears that he heard, and little drums in all his pulses beating a call to arms.
Dark Carden had been loved many times and loved carelessly back, but never had he met the woman he wanted to take and keep for ever in his life. He had an idea that such a woman existed, in Ireland, if anywhere. Certainly he had long ago decided that he would never marry any but a woman from his own land; and she must be beautiful, accomplished, well-bred, and virtuous at that. Nothing but the best was good enough for Dark Carden. But he was in no great hurry to find this ideal wife. Life and women had treated him too well for him to be in any hurry to change his ways and curtail his liberty. In the meantime he had put away all such thoughts for awhile.
The spell of the wilderness was on him and it was stronger than any spell he had ever felt. Passing strange to find this flower of a girl blossoming here on the very edge of the wild! and more than passing sweet to linger awhile, sharing the moonlight night with her, stirred by the forbidden magic of her girlhood. For girls to him represented forbidden fruit. Everything else in the orchard might be reached after, or climbed for, by those who like himself had the nerve and taste for the pastime. But girls, however ripe and inviting, however close they leaned to the gathering hand, were not for this orchard thief. It was the one clause in his code concerning women which he had never broken. True he had not been greatly tempted, for girls had never held any extraordinary allure for him. The more astonishing then to find himself so troubled by the sight and sound of this one. When he thought of that something which had come winging its way from her eyes to his, and of how her hand had fluttered under his and then lain still, content, the blood tingled through his veins; he was glad to be alive.
A longing to hear the voice which charmed him in spite of the jarring Dutch accent made him break the spell of silence that had fallen on them.
“I do not even know your name,” he said in the gentle way he had with women.
“Frances,” she answered as gently. “Frances de Beer.”
“But you are not Dutch?” he said, though it mattered little to him if she declared herself Siamese or a native of Timbuctoo. The important thing was that she wasshe, a beautiful, alluring, and forbidden thing.
“No; my mother was an Englishwoman who married a Boer. I am the love child of an Irishman.”
A wave of astonishment mingled with pity surged through him at her strange words, and all the tragedy they implied both for her and the mother who had borne her in suffering and sorrow.
And now he knew why this girl’s eyes were deep and full of dreams, why her hair framed her face like the spread wings of a raven, why her mouth was curved to the shape of a kiss incarnate.
She was the child of two eternal things: Love and Sorrow.
He sat very still thinking. The pity of it all took hold of his heart and an impulsive longing rose in him to do something to set things aright as they should be, for this beautiful child. Yet the sins of the fathers! Who can pay for them but the flesh and blood of those who made the debt? Who can set aright what has been wrong from the first? What place in the world was there for this love flower of the desert?
Supposing he, Wilberforce St. John Carden were to marry her! The tingle came into his veins again at the thought, and a song sang in his blood. But his brain knew that it was a fool’s idea. What place in his life for the simple untaught child?
It never occurred to him to doubt whether she would marry him. He was too trained a student in the school of women’s looks not to know what gift she had given him with her eyes whether consciously or unconsciously, at their first encounter. And every instinct urged him to lay hot impulsive hands on it, to take and keep it, as he had taken and kept her hand. But his brain remained cool and clear. He had his code to keep. The girl was impossible to marry. That fact put her out of his reach definitely.
He sighed deeply. He did not know that he sighed, but the girl heard him. It seemed to him that he had come a long way, and passed through some extraordinarily poignant ordeal. As a matter of fact it was only a minute or two since she had last spoken that the girl spoke again, continuing her narrative.
“My mother lived in this house with her Boer husband who was very cruel to her. The only pleasure she had was to sit here sometimes and watch the road. One day when her husband was away in the Transvaal an Irishman came along the road. He was a hunter and an adventurer, and my mother said there was a magic in him that no woman could resist—unlessshe were of his own country; for all others he was one of those whomustbe followed when they call, and I think he must have been, for one so sweet and good as my mother to have forgotten all for him. He took her away to his waggons, and they were going away together to the Interior but a lion killed him over there by the river.”
“What was his name?” asked Carden, though he already knew. He knew now whose musical voice had echoed up old memories when first he heard her speak.
“Francis Kavanagh. My mother told me when she was dying, but no one else has ever known, except Grietje—and now you.”
“Why do you tell me?” he asked, though he knew the answer to that too. Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little foot-note to her tragic tale.
“She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his.” A moment later she added:
“But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer.”
“Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel to your mother?” Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.
“I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my husband.”
It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.
He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and forgetfulness.
“Ah, yes—your husband,” he said in a vague way, like a man whose thoughts are elsewhere.
“He used to pass this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to mind him well, and he is not unkind.”
Later she said:
“He bought this farm and came to live here because it has always been my home—and I like to watch the road.”
He did not ask her why. The boys by the fire got up and shuffled away to their blankets. The old woman was long since gone. These two were left alone in the silence and the moonlight.
“Did you think that someone for you would come along the road some day?” he asked at last, coming very near her and looking at her mouth. After a moment she answered with a little sobbing sigh in her throat:
“But I must always remember the promise I made to my mother.”
He came close to her and gripped her hands; his eyes full of hunger, and longing, and caresses searched hers; his lips were almost on her lips.
“What was the promise?”
A wave of colour passed over her face and her eyes darkened with tears.
“I think you know,” she cried miserably.
“You must break it,” he said firmly. “You are mine—you must come with me.”
“No,” she said crying, “I cannot.”
Her face bright and pale in the white light was like the face of a brave boy looking on death. The heat and madness went out of Carden. He took her hand very gently and kissed it, then he walked away into the night.
But out on the hot scented veld he thought of the gifts in her eyes and madness came upon him again. A promise! Can the dead bind the living with promises? Can a sinner make a saint out of her child by laying an injunction on her young soul! He laughed loud and bitterly in the night, and the birds stirred in the trees at so strange a sound. A “bush baby” curled in some distant clump of mimosa began to wail, and the dog that had followed his master from the farm whined uneasily. He had walked far and long. The swift rush of the river was close at hand, and the whereabouts of the farm could only be guessed by one little faint yellow light that streaked across the distance. Someone was keeping vigil.
Somewhere near this spot Kavanagh had met the end so fitting to his wild adventurous life.Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword! The lawless had fallen victim to the lawless! But he had found his own before the end came, was Carden’s thought.
What did Death matter when one had drunk to the dregs the cup Life holds to the lips of lovers? A good enough way to die too, by God! A short sharp struggle with the odds against him—then, very swiftly, the end!
Married to a Boer! Those dewy dreaming eyes that were of his land—that black hair that winged above her forehead like the wings of a raven—that ardent spirit that had leaped from her eyes to his—married to a Boer! And he, Wilberforce Carden, who had always taken what he wanted from life, wrenched it from men’s hands and women’s lips,hemust be denied and go empty away!
He forgot now that when he thought her free he had successfully resisted the idea of marrying her as a solution to the problem, and forgot too that her accent jarred on him. Remembered only the gifts her eyes had for him—and thought that with her, out under the stars he could forget the world into which she would not fit. And it was no good. She was married to a Boer!
Raging he bit on the empty pipe in his mouth, and blood came into his eyes so that he could no longer see clearly, but went stumbling on his way, raging, cursing. He would have liked to have that Boer who was “not unkind” to her under his hands out there in the veld. He flung himself like a boy face down on the earth. After a little while, lying there, a quietness fell upon him. The cool brain that had out-finessed many another cool brain woke up and began to consider the situation from the point of view of the man who does not mean to lose, whatever the game may be. He lay so still that his dog who sat uneasily by him thought he must be asleep and from time to time gently licked his ear. But Dark Carden was not asleep. He was fighting a battle with his better self; with such rags and remnants of a conscience as survived in him; with a last unbroken moral code. At last he got up and retraced his steps quietly and firmly like a man with a purpose. His eyes had grown a little harder. The battle was lost.
Dawn was not more than an hour or two off when he returned to the farm. The stars were darkening, and the indescribable freshness of morning could be felt in the air. Shadows under tree and bush were stirring as if for flight. A wedge-shaped flock of wild duck passed, honking mournfully, towards the east.
The light in the farmhouse had gone out; but as he came quietly to the stoep he heard from a window that stood ajar a sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping. A little while he stood there, listening, then gently he pushed the window further open and stepped into the room. The soft and broken weeping ceased.
They stayed three days and nights at Grey-Kopje farm. Talfourd and Carden went out shooting daily, returning at meal times, laden with small game to restock the larder. Always after dinner the three sat on the stoep as on the first night, and Talfourd sang while the other two listened. Swartz had brought back fresh horses on the evening of the first day, but Carden found fault with them and made him return for others. On the second day, a native carrier sent out with instructions to search the road for Carden brought a letter from the men waiting in Tuli who wanted to know what delayed him and why he did not materialise? Talfourd wanted to know too, but knew better than to ask. Carden was a man who took badly to any kind of ill-timed inquiry.
On the fourth morning, Swartz had not returned, but Talfourd with the clear eye of a man who has accomplished nine hours of sound sleep with nothing on his conscience, glanced out of the window and noted Carden picking out of the cart things he would not be likely to need before reaching Tuli. “Hurray! we’re going to make a move at last!” he said to himself, and made haste to perform his toilette.
At the breakfast table, it struck him that Carden looked older than a man of thirty-four ought to look, however swift has been the pace. However, he kept his observations to himself. It transpired that Carden’s plan was that he and Talfourd should start for Webb’s immediately after breakfast, leaving the cart to be brought on later by Swartz when he turned up with horses.
“If we don’t meet him we can send on someone else for it.”
“How are we going to get there?” said Talfourd looking up in surprise.
“I suppose we can foot thirty miles without endangering our lives?” answered Carden with something so very like a sneer and so very unlike his usual impassive serenity that Talfourd was even more surprised.
“Oh, all right, my dear fellow,” he said pleasantly. “It’s your picnic. I only wanted to know.”
Mrs de Beer sat listening without comment, but she grew very pale. Afterwards Talfourd went out to get the guns ready, and Carden remained sitting at the table.
“You are going?” she said looking away from him with eyes that were no longer dewy but dry and brilliant like the sky above the Karoo in days of drought.
“Yes,” he answered in a business-like voice. “I must go.” He got up and looked out of the window for a moment, then walked back to the table.
“My friends are waiting for me at Tuli.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I cannot break faith with them.”
“No.” Her mouth was twisted like the mouth of a tortured child, but her eyes remained bright and dry.
Carden’s faithless heart smote him.
“For God’s sake, Frances—” he muttered, taking her hands. “I will stay if you wish it”—But his heart was already away with his friends and the waiting miles beyond. She read the truth in his eyes. No wordnowof her coming with him! Only of his staying—if she wished it!
She looked into his eyes a long aching moment, then turned away with one word:
“Good-bye.”
A few hours later all was as it had been at the Grey farm. Even the cart was gone, for Swartz had brought four sturdy mules and driven it away. Under the lone tree Xsosa, the baboon, sat silent, watching the kopjes with fierce wistful eyes. Silence everywhere, except in one room of the house whence came the sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping.
Once some Kaffir words spoken savagely yet with a kind of crooning tenderness came through an open window.
“See you now what you have got from watching the road!—a knife in your heart. Did not old Grietje warn you? Hush armekindje—weep not.”
But the soft and broken weeping went on.
Across the arid flats of Bechuanaland went Carden with company picked for its excellence in fair weather or foul; but sometimes on the fairest, fullest day a pang of loneliness would shoot through him, darkening his mental horizon and isolating him from his fellows. The Forest of Somabula gave splendid sport, but in its deep silences he sometimes thought he could hear the sound of a woman weeping. And all the water sweeping down the violet black precipices of Victoria Falls and twirling lazily in the subtle olive green pool below could not wash out the remembrance of a mouth that was twisted like the mouth of a little tortured child. But his conscience had great sleeping qualities. Also, he had not been using his will for ten years to fight and “down” other men without strengthening its sinews for his own service. Hewillednot to remember certain things, therefore in time will knocked memory out, or at least put it into Chancery where it could no longer hurt him until he released it, or it proved strong enough to release itself.
After that the trip was as complete a success for him, as it had been from the beginning to the others.
Everything favoured them. Sport was extraordinarily good, boys reliable, mules and oxen in fine condition, weather unfailingly serene. The objective point of the trip was Lake Rudolph in British East Africa, via British Central and German territory. The route had been picked and pored over long before the start and nothing intervened to spoil the original plans. With an almost uncanny smoothness the days unclosed, rolled themselves out, and closed again, full to the brim with event and adventure, leaving no spare moment in which to remember the life left hundreds of miles behind; thereafter swiftly transforming themselves into weeks and months, until more than half the year was done.
Then one lovely moonlight night on the shore of Lake Bangwelo memory without comprehensible rhyme or reason came out of Chancery and stayed with Carden. And thereafter it came regularly. Will had no power over it any longer. Like a little spectral child that was afraid to be out alone it came oftenest when the moon was sinking and the dawn only an hour or two off. Nearly always its lips were twisted with pain, and on dark nights he could hear it softly weeping. But there were nights when it was not a sad ghost and these were hardest to bear. Sometimes it threw a soft warm arm round his throat and woke him very tenderly because the dawn was near and he must go. At other times it would leave a kiss fresh as a flower across his lips and he would fling out his arms and wake with a curse to find them empty. But always in some wise or another the little ghost kept vigil with him.
Then slowly, little by little, he began to hate things, and things repaid him as they always do, by going wrong. Boys began to run away when they were most needed, donkeys took to dying (the ox-waggons had long been left behind), carriers got fever and died, and those engaged in their place ofttimes scooted leaving packs by the wayside. Big game, after long tracking, escaped though wounded, in the end. One of the other fellows went down with malaria and passed out. The rest of them grew morose and sick of the whole business. Some of them began to talk of the affairs that awaited their attention down-country. But Carden meant to bring back a white rhino from the shores of the Rudolph and he said so, though God knew that he too was sick of the business. Not a night now that he did not lie down with maledictions in his heart; not a morning when he rose to a world glittering with frost crystals that looked as though they had been shaken from some giant Christmas card (everywhere except on the dark spots where sleepers had lain) but his first thought was to curse the day he was born and jibe at every good thing life had bestowed on him.
The year was two months short of completion when the other men began to drop off. Le Breton and Senier took a dozen boys and walked for Mozambique. Vincent was dead. Talfourd, the last to go, joined at Tabora another man who was making his way to Daar-es-Saalem. Carden was left alone with his determination to finish at Lake Rudolph or die in the attempt. The determination was undermined at nights by a spectre which whispered him alluring invitations to embark at Mombassa for the Cape and thence from Petersburg to take the Tuli road. But by day he was far from the intention of doing anything of the kind, though after being away nearly a year and a half he had very good reasons for hastening his return. Occasional batches of letters that reached him at prearranged posts notified an urgency for his presence on the Rand, but it had grown to be a matter almost of defiance now that he should make Rudolph, though who or what it was he defied he omitted to specify, even to himself.
And hedidmake Rudolph though it took him three months to do it and another three months to get back. When he arrived at Mombassa with his white rhino trophies, he was looking a good deal the worse for wear, and it may be computed that his system contained more than one man’s fair share of malarial and tropical trypanosomes. But he was once more immune to spectral memories at least and so far master of his destiny as to be able with a firm mind to arrange his affairs down south by letter and cable and take ship for Europe instead of the Cape. Via the East Coast he reached Egypt and made a month’s stay; then to Marseilles and several months loitering on the Mediterranean shores. But his objective point now was Ireland and by land and water he came at last to that fair, green land. For one of the conclusions he had arrived at during the lonely later months of his expedition was that man was not meant to live alone and that the hour had struck for him to find the beautiful, accomplished, and well-born girl who doubtless awaited him somewhere in his own country. Ireland indeed is the home of many such, and in and out of Dublin during a specially gay dancing and hunting season he found no scarcity of the usual supply. But none were for him. Always, even in the most charming, something lacked, some little, vital, essential thing—he knew not what, and did not wish to analyse, and never stayed to find out. Once or twice, when he lingered in curiosity, the keys of his castle were almost out of his hands, for the dark face of Dark Carden had not lost its lure for women, and many a beautiful eye grew brighter for his coming and more than one society beauty made up her mind that it would be “rather good fun” to go to South Africa as this adventurer’s bride. But Carden escaped always, and with a sense of breathlessness and relief that was extraordinary considering the nature of his quest.
Then one bleak morning in late autumn the nostalgia of Africa took him by the heart and before that day was out he was shaking the dust of Ireland from his feet with his face set for Southampton where the Union-Castle liners turn their noses towards the Southern Cross.
One of the first faces to greet him at the Cape Town Docks was Talfourd’s. Carden fell upon him as upon a long-lost brother. It seemed to him there was no other man in the world he would so gladly have met. He was conscious that Tal and he shared an experience that was secret to the rest of his friends. Wherefore he could not disguise his pleasure at the encounter. Tal was hooked in to come and lunch at the City Club, and later to dine at the Mount Nelson. For the moment there was no one like Tal. The latter indeed found himself somewhat intrigued by this unwonted demonstrativeness. Carden seemed to him to be queerly changed since first they had met some five or six years past. When after dinner that night, out among the trim walks and aromatic bushes of the garden, they fell into reminiscences he voiced something of his thought. He was an introspective fellow with a good deal of sentiment in his composition, and the wine and cigars had been excellent.
“You were always a hard nut to crack, Carden, but the gayest chap on earth, and even the fellows you knocked out liked you for it afterwards. But Africa changed you as it changes us all. You went queer on that trek of ours up north and I never could make it out. I’ve thought a lot about it and, do you know, I always dated the change in you back to that little farm we put up at on the road to Tuli—Greis-Kopje—remember the place?”
Carden gloomed at him. Did he remember it? By God!
“Strange,” continued Talfourd, “I ran into our old driver Swartz at Pretoria the other day. He has got regular work on the Zeederburg Coach Line, and is up and down the Tuli Road. He told me a queer thing aboutGreis-Kopje. It appears that old de Beer, the fellow who owned the place, disappeared about a year ago and has never been seen since. He was the husband of that pretty girl we thought was his daughter at first. You remember?”
Carden was busy lighting another cigar, his face mask-like except for the eyes which burnt like points of blue fire.
“The supposition is that either he was drowned crossing the Crocodile River or else a stray lion got him.”
“And Mrs de Beer?”
“Still lives on there with old Grietje and Yacop.”
“Let’s go in,” said Carden abruptly. “I have to be up at daybreak and get through a lot of business. I leave by the mail at eleven.”
“What a fellow you are! Where for? Johannesburg?”
“Yes.” And from thence to the Tuli Road, fast as hoof and wheel could carry him. Now he knew what ailed him, and would shout it from the mountain-tops but that it was too sweet and dear a secret to be shared with all the world—yet. Now he knew what anodyne to seek for healing of his raging wound, what drink for solace of his burning torment. By the broad, dusty road to Tuli ran a stream of clear, cold water and his parched soul was sick to drink from it. Memory suddenly sculptured in his brain a face that all Ireland had not been able to duplicate. Yet all Ireland lay in the dewy, passionate eyes of Frances de Beer, and for him all home, all peace, all future. Now, at last, he acknowledged what he had always known, and gave himself up to the thought of what he had denied so long: she who had given all asked nothing, and let him go without a reproach. He knew now that he had been a knave and a fool and that for the last two and a half years he had been paying with torment of body and soul for it. And still was paying. When he remembered her and all she had been to him—his loneliness was a still small torment that pierced and tortured him like a dart in his vitals.
Throughout that night he paced his room, or stood at his open window, staring out at the silvered slopes of Table Mountain but getting no peace of her stern eternal loveliness. Pacing, and staring, in the small hours, he went over every detail of that brief sweet-madness on the Tuli Road, remembering her face, her voice, her eyes, and the soul of her that had leaped from them to him. And, as always, the thing that stirred him most was the memory of her fluttering hand under his that first night when they sat on the stoep listening to Talfourd’s singing. He remembered how a mist had come over his eyes at the feel of it; his heart had seemed to turn over in his breast; it was as though he had trapped something he had lain in wait for all his life; all the tyranny and tenderness of his nature had been roused in that moment, with something of a boy’s elation when he has caught with his own hands some beautiful wild thing that he has watched for long.
It all came back, like a dream of delirium, only more vividly. He re-lived the moment when a passing chivalrous impulse had bade him kiss her hands and leave her, and that dark hour on the veld when he had fought a battle with his baser self and lost. Then that other mad hour of stolen sweetness, when he had groped for her in the luminous darkness of her room and found first the little, pale, strong hands that smelled like apple blossom—then her lips! He recalled her tears and little broken cries, and how his lips had crushed them down and kissed them away! How all too soon the dawn had come! And with this memory came pain and shame. Bitter shame that he had so debased her whom he loved. She who had only wished to do right, but found her heart and his will too strong for her. Love anointed his cynical eyes at last and he saw and understood the hearts of women as he had never done before, and knew at last how unworthy were most men, and he with them, of the sacrifices women make on the altar of love. Hot, unaccustomed moisture that seemed to be dragged torturingly from the very depths of his being seared his eyes. He flung himself on his bed, ashamed at first of his tears, then of his acts, and, at last, ashamed of his life.
“God forgive me!” he thought. “It shall never happen again.”
But God’s forgiveness was taken for granted and he thought less about that than of the sweetness the future promised.
It was not many nights before his feet were set upon the long white dusty road that wound by kop and kloof and vlei to the haven of his heart’s desire. He had given orders for everything he possessed on the Rand to be sold, and did not mean to return to the Golden City. Waggons were being fitted up and provisioned in Pretoria for his use, and would follow him. For the veld was to be his home now once and for all. He was sick of money-making, politics, and all the little games and intrigues of finance, of artificial women, and conventions. He meant to have done with these things and forget on the brown, kind breast of Mother Africa that he had ever known them.
Andshewas coming with him; the one woman who fitted into the wild places his soul loved; the woman with dreams of stretching plains and forests in her eyes. Ah! that was a woman with whom to seek the blue mountains, to camp under the stars and forget cities and sins! It was well that old de Beer had disappeared, for Dark Carden meant to take what was his own at last, and swore that all the de Beers in the world, dead or alive, should not prevent him. He was ready to defy Heaven and Hell to prevent him.
His cart drew near the line of grey kopjes at the end of a long day’s run. From his outspan the distance was too great for any but his own keen eyes to distinguish the little ramshackle farm.
Everything was as it had been nearly two and a half years before. The dust lay thick on the sage-green bush, and once more a blood-red sun was sinking to rest behind the horizon of massed scarlet and bronze. No one had mended the broken-down kraal, and on a far off rise a figure that might have been Yacop was picking up dried cow-dung. There was something very like the smell of roasting coffee on the air.
Carden was glad to be alive with a fierce gladness. He felt a boy again, and looked it, as he strode across the sunburnt grass. Yes! there was Grietje crouching by the fire. And a white gown flickered on the stoep as long ago it had flickered a signal to his heart. She was waiting for him there, as he had always known that she would be waiting.
The baboon barked furiously as he approached. It was not chained to the tree any longer, but to a post by the side of the house. At the sound of the creature’s hoarse voice the old woman by the fire rose up. She did not speak when she saw that it was Carden, only looked at him with strange little old eyes, dark as the unexplored depths of a secret well. When he had passed she stood a moment gazing after him, then shuffled silently away to the back of the house.
He went forward to the stoep and slowly mounted the crumbling stone steps. The old woman’s gaze had vaguely disturbed him. Or was it something in the motionless silence of the woman who sat gravely observing him, that chilled the riot of his veins?
She wore her little sunbonnet cappie as of old, her face so far back in it that nothing could be seen but two great eyes. It seemed strange to him that she did not rise, nor put out her hand in welcome. Only sat there observing him sombrely.
“Frances,” he said gently, “I have come back.”
She sighed. After a moment she spoke from her cappie. But it was not a voice that he remembered at all.
“You should not have done that, Dark Carden.”
He stood very still. It seemed as if something ice cold had entered his breast and was slowly approaching his heart. His voice jerked a little when he spoke again, very humbly.
“I should have come long ago.”
“Yes; you should have come long ago.” There was something relentless and fateful in the sound of that voice, so soft and stern. “Now, it is too late.”
“No,” he said violently. “It is not. I have come to take you away and never let you go again. I cannot do without you any longer.”
She gave one of her strange terrible sighs, and spite of his firm words he felt the cold thing creep a little nearer to his heart.
“Where is your husband, Frances?” God knew what made him ask. He cared little enough for the whereabouts of old de Beer. Yet the answer was extraordinarily disconcerting.
“He is over there.” She made a gesture and he jerked his head round abruptly. There was nothing to be seen in the direction her hand had indicated. Nothing but the lonely tree. He looked at her piercingly then, with a new inquiry in his glance, and a creeping, clutching fear for her mind.
“I heard that he was dead,” he said slowly.
“Yes, it is true. He is dead,” she answered quietly, looking past him to where she had pointed. Spite of himself he looked once more in the same direction. Again nothing but the tree.
But something else arrested his eye. Grietje had come back and was squatting by the fire, and at her side, playing in the dust, was the toddling dumpy figure of a little child. It must have come round with Grietje from the back of the house. Certainly it had not been there before.
“Whose child is that?” he asked in surprise. And the stern, still voice from the sunbonnet answered him:
“It is your child and mine.”
“My God!”
After a long time he said again, brokenly, with bitter self-accusation.
“My God! Frances, forgive me! I did not know. How was I to know?”
She did not answer.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
“Yes, as I hope for forgiveness,” she said.
There was a dull solemnity in her tone and she did not touch the hand he stretched out. Unobserved by him the little toddling child had come up and now flung itself against its mother’s knees hiding its face in her lap. It swung a little sunbonnet in its hand and by the fading light he could see the softly curling hair, black as his own, and the outline of a small tender face. He knew that her child and his could not but be beautiful, and stood staring there, trembling, the magic of fatherhood on him and an urgent longing to catch the little creature in his arms. Suddenly it turned to him, and in the same moment the mother raised a pale, warning finger and laid it across her lips in token that he must be silent. So he did not cry out at what he saw.
The little face that promised such flower-like beauty had been transformed into a thing of horror by a piece of diabolically clever tattooing. A monstrous purple and red spider sprawled its bloated form and lobster-like claws upon the delicate rose-leaf skin. Neither tarantula nor octopus, it possessed all the worst attributes of each. It’s puffed-out body crouched in the centre of the face upon the nose and cheek bones, and the child’s bright violet eyes seemed the staring strange eyes of the beast. Its claws sprayed and curled about the mouth, reached out to the ears, and lost themselves in tendrils of hair upon the forehead! The thing seemed too hideous in conception to be the work of anyone but a mad devil, yet there was in it some sinister suggestion of human hands.
Carden knew not what supernatural or other power kept him there, staring with agonised eyes at the face of his child, when his every instinct was to turn and run as he had never run from anything in his life. The child broke the spell by dancing away with a pretty elfin laugh to rejoin Grietje by the fire. The quality of her laugh and the light patter of her feet brought home to Carden the realisation that it was a girl whose beauty had been thus cruelly destroyed forever, and a groan broke from him. The woman watching him with her tragic eyes saw sweat standing in little beads on his lips.
“He did it,” she said. “That is why he lies dead over there” Her eyes travelled past Carden once more to where the lonely tree waved an arm in the evening breeze.
“He did not come back for eleven months after you had passed,” she continued in her sad relentless voice. “My baby was here when he returned—so of course he knew. But he said nothing. I feared terribly for the child at first, but in the end I came to think that he did not care. Then, one day, when my fears were all asleep, he disappeared, taking my baby with him for three days. Grietje and I roamed the veld seeking them, and on the night of the third day as we drew near home again we heard the child crying, and coming in we found it with its lovely little face all swollen and black from the poisons he had put in. He was lying on the bench laughing, and called out to me as I came in:
“‘There is your love child. Butshewill have to do without love.’”
“I was worn out with weeping and wandering for three days and nights, but when he said those words I rushed over to him and killed him. I killed him with these hands.” She looked down on the hands lying on her lap.
“I tore his throat open and his life ran out with his blood,” she said softly.
Carden had no words. He stood looking at the little pale strong hands that were used to smell of apple blossom, and listening like a man in a dream. But it was a bad dream. A nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his days! He was not sure now that those days would be many, thathislife too was not passing with every word spoken by that gentle, fateful voice.
“Grietje and I buried him over there under the tree. No one else knows but Xsosa who watched us at the burying in the dead of night.”
Darkness had suddenly enfolded the land. No stars brightened the vapouring gloom but occasionally the fire threw out a blood-red finger showing Grietje cuddling the child to her bosom, crooning some Kaffir lullaby over its head.
“What is to be done,” muttered Carden, in the voice of a man who has come to the end of all ways. He looked at her, but her face was, as ever, hidden in the cappie. He had not seen it once in all this terrible hour and now he knew he would never see it.
“What is there to do?” she said sombrely. “Grietje and I must stay here, with him, until we grow old and die.”
“But... the child?”
“Ah!” She sighed her deep sigh. “She will grow up perhaps—and in her turn watch the road.”