The Claw Part 39

Stubbly bush had been uprooted from charming slopes to make place for luxuriant beds of tomatoes and Cape gooseberries; and terraces of flowers already gave evidence of beauty and fragrance to come. Gnarled growths had disappeared, and big trees had a clear s.p.a.ce to branch abroad in freedom and grace. A fine tennis-court, the delight of every player in the town, stretched its gleaming level s.p.a.ce near a newly begun small banana grove.

Each of our huts except the kitchen had now a picturesque rustic porch added to it, round which were set plants of young grenadilla--the best shady creeper in Africa, and one that bears a lovely purple pa.s.sion flower, and most delicious fruit.

The men's camp was also enormously improved. A little agitation in the right quarter had resulted in a grant of Government boys to build and thatch a big mess and club-house. The parade ground had been enlarged, and the beginning of an out-door gym was visible. The men had something better to do now than loafing to town in off hours, or getting drunk in their huts out of sheer boredom with life. There were shooting-b.u.t.ts up, and regular hours for practice in view of putting forward a Bisley team. There was also a Sports programme in active rehearsal for a projected gymkhana meeting in the near future. Under a smart officer full of initiative and invention the best bred wasters in the world are bound to "buck up and look slippy" and that is what the Mgatweli troopers were very busily occupied in doing.

In six months Maurice had done wonders; and the wonders had not ceased with improvements at home and in the camp. You had only to look at him sitting there, neat and debonair in his grey uniform, to recognise that fact. He had the clear eye, healthy skin, and quiet, firm air of a man with a purpose. Force of character may be c.u.mulative, and six months may not be a very long time in which to acc.u.mulate it. But a will to do well, and a lovely climate to do it in, is much; and I should say the matter depended not so much on time as on the number and size of the difficulties met and overcome. Six months may not be a long time but it is too long to fight daily battles with your vices without getting results; and an acc.u.mulation of results sat upon the serene brow of Maurice Stair, and revealed themselves in the firmness of his mouth.

No more sealed wooden cases were surrept.i.tiously carried to his hut. He drank his whiskey-and-soda from his own sideboard like a sane and decent gentleman. No more shirking and shelving of duties: but rather a seeking of fresh ones. No more sloth and skulking and petty sins. The old vices and weaknesses were under foot at last. He had his heel on the heads of them.

I know not what upheld him in the fight; what secret dew refreshed his jaded spirit in the terrible struggles he must have undergone. Often I saw him stumble and falter, and sometimes (but not often) fall "mauled to the earth." And I cannot tell where he found the strength to "arise and go on again;" but he did. There is little one human being can do for another in these crises of the soul, these fierce battles with old sins that have their roots in deep. They must be fought out alone.

External aid is of small use. But what I could I did. And perhaps it helped a little to let him see that I too was fighting and suffering and striving to climb by his side with my hand in his. But whatever the means the result was there plain for all who ran to read; and I am bound to admit that it was so far beyond my dreams and expectations that I sometimes found it hard to recognise in this new Maurice, whose feet were so firmly planted on the upward slopes, the old Maurice, my dark-souled companion in a deep and dread ravine.

Sitting there in the sunset glow he gave me fresh proof of his changed outlook on life. He offered of his own free will to renounce the five hundred a year Sir Alexander Stair paid him to live in Africa. A few days before he had unflinchingly and without preliminaries told me the meaning of the income he enjoyed from his uncle.

"He pays me to keep out of his sight. He has always despised me for a rotter. The reason he put a clincher on my going into the army was because he thought I'd disgrace the family name there. It makes him sick to think I'll get the t.i.tle after him. Rather than see me, and be reminded of the fact, he pays me nearly half of his income to stay out here."

I said nothing at the time beyond exclaiming at the arrogant self-righteousness that made it possible for a man to condemn his only relative so harshly. But I knew very well that the new Maurice felt the ignominy attached to such an arrangement, and that his confession to me heralded some change. Now he volunteered to give up the money, and asked me if I would leave Africa with him for Australia, where an old friend of his father's had a large ranch near Melbourne and had offered him a sort of under-managership on it. Having been out there for several years before coming to Africa, Maurice thoroughly understood the life and its conditions.

"As soon as I get back to the ropes, after a year or so Broughton will offer me the whole thing to manage. And I know well enough I'm able for it if you will only go with me and back me up."

"Of course I will go, Maurice," I said quietly, and we fell to making plans; but I looked no longer at the sunlit hills, and in the thorn tree the note of the little green-breasted robin had changed. It seemed now to be sobbing its life away in song.

"You see we couldn't go on here at twenty pounds a month, Deirdre. It is impossible. Living in this country is too high. These billets aren't meant for men without private incomes. Later, when the railways get up here, it will be different. But before then we are going to have another row with the n.i.g.g.e.rs here, or my name is not Jack Robinson.

Then life will be dearer than ever. There's trouble brewing again with these Matabele fellows. Ever since the rinderpest broke out they've been queer. They are desperate with vexation at losing their cattle, and their _Umlimo_, a sort of G.o.d or high priest who lives in a cave and prophesies to them from the depths of it--having carefully collected his information first, by means of spies--tells them it is the white man who is causing their cattle to die. The funny thing is that this fellow is really the G.o.d of the Mashonas, yet the Matabele put absolute faith in him. Old Loben used to send and consult him about everything--"

I was not listening very intently to Maurice. I was wondering whether it was the bird's song that had suddenly filled me with despair. Why was I not glad to be escaping at last from the claw of the witch? Was it these thatched huts that held me--because we had made them so charming and homelike without and within? I knew it could not be.

Places appealed to me, and people; houses and things never. Goods and chattels had no hands to hold me as they do some people. Of late I had come to think that life under a tree without any accessories at all could be very full and sweet--if one only shared the shade of the branches with the one right person in sill the world. Moreover, the legend carved above a door in dead Fatehpur had always struck me as a peculiarly appropriate motto for people whose lives were cast in Africa.

"_Said Jesus, to whom be peace, the world is a bridge, pa.s.s over it, but build no house there_."

As we talked, Makupi in his brick-red blanket pa.s.sed down the sloping pathway towards the zinia-sea, and when he came to its beach squatted himself down, took his piano from his hair, and began his sombre beating.

_Tom--brr--torn--brr--torn--brr--tom-tom-tom-brr_.

It seemed to me that I heard the throbbing of a human heart laid upon the stone altar of some monstrous G.o.d. My eyes wandered to the hills again. Then suddenly I knew that it was the thought of leaving _them_ that filled me with such haunting despair--the far-off Matoppos that held for me some hidden mystery, some magic that drew my eyes at dawn, and at setting of sun. On moonlit nights I would often rise from my bed to gaze at them and wonder.

_Tom--brr--torn--brr--torn--brr_.

"Call him over here, Deirdre," said Maurice suddenly. "Let's give him back his _e'tambo_."

Putting his hand into an inner pocket he drew out a small black object and handed it to me. It was a little bone taken from the joint of a sheep (the boys call them _dolour-ossi_, and often play with them). But this one was black, either with age or by some artificial process, and polished until it gleamed like a jewel. On it was traced in spidery lines the profile of some weird quadruped of the same description as the Hottentot drawings on the rocks; otherwise there was not the slightest thing about it to suggest mystery or romance. Yet Makupi was eating his heart out and growing hollow-eyed for lack of it. He wanted to go back to his kraal in Mashonaland, he told me, but would never leave until he got his _e'tambo_ back from the _Inkos_. He had even offered me some mysterious bribe if I would steal it for him. Something about a mysterious gold mine, no doubt, I thought, and laughed. But I always wished Maurice would give it to the poor fellow. Lately we had become so accustomed to seeing him about that I think we had almost forgotten what he was there for.

But _he_ had not forgotten. When I called to him to come, that the _Inkos_ had something for him, his thoughts flew at once to his charm, and he leaped to his feet and came running. He guessed what it was Maurice had hidden in his hand.

"But what about that wonderful secret you were going to tell me, Makupi?" I laughed. He rolled his eager sad eyes at me.

"Give me my _e'tambo_ first. You will be glad."

"Give it to him, Maurice. Let us be glad," said I, still laughing, and suddenly feeling, in spite of my sad thoughts of the last hour, extraordinarily light-hearted and happy.

One swift glance at the small black bone, and then Makupi's lithe hand closed over it. He made a movement with both hands over his body and hair, and then his palms hung empty by his sides, and we never saw the charm again.

He looked at Maurice first, then his eyes came to me and rested there while he spoke a brief sentence in the pigeon-Makalika which he knew I understood.

"_In the cave of the Umlimo in the Maloppos, there is a white man hidden. He wears blue charms in his ears_."

For one moment he watched the paralysing effect of his statement, gazing at me in astonishment as though he saw a spectre, and afterwards at Maurice who had risen from his seat and was holding to the tree as if for support. Then his eager voice continued. He poured out the strange story now in his own tongue, of which I only understood a word here and there. But I understood enough to make the blood fly rustling through my veins, leaping from my heart to my ears and cheeks. When he had spoken a few sentences he made a gesture towards me and waited for Maurice to translate. I kept my eyes averted from my husband's.

"He says--that in the cave of the _Umlimo_ a white man has been hidden and kept prisoner ever since the Matabele war--he is a man whom a party of Matabele warriors came upon just at the close of the campaign--alone in the bush, not far from the Shangani. He was wounded in the head, and had gone raving mad--was singing and laughing when they came upon hint-- that is why they did not kill him. They are afraid to kill the mad--the mad are sacred. They took him prisoner and carried him to the camp where Lobengula lay dying."

Makupi took up the tale once more.

"He says--that the King forbade them to kill the man, but to take him by out-of-the-way routes to the cave of the _Umlimo_ who would get wisdom from his madness, and be able to advise the Matabele how to defeat the white men later, if they were beaten in the war. A wife of Lobengula who had skill in sickness took charge of him and after the death of the King he was taken by devious ways to the Matoppos, where he has been ever since."

Maurice paused a minute moment. He seemed to be suffering. His lips twisted as with some agonised effort to produce words from a lacerated throat. Later, he took up Makupi's tale. Unconsciously he adopted the boy's chanting tone, and used the native phraseology.

"He says--the wound in the head took long to heal--only in the last few months has wisdom fully returned to the man--and since then the _Umlimo_ keeps him in bonds for fear he should escape and tell of the things he has seen and heard in the cave where the Deity sits brooding over the fate of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. They are afraid to kill him, not only because Lobengula put the command on them not to, but because he is a great white man with strong eyes that make them afraid to strike--he sits all day with his hands bound--but when the stars come out and on nights that the moon shines he commands to be taken out, and he walks for many hours among the hills."

Another swift flow of words from Makupi.

"He says--that two men of the old Imbezu Regiment are with him always-- armed with a.s.segai--but there are never any horses near, and they never unbind his hands. He eats well, with the air of a man who is content-- but his eyes are looking always beyond the hills and though he pretends to be content they see that his desire lies in Mashonaland."

When Makupi's tale was finished the sun was gone, and nothing was left of the sunset but a little red light and one last streak of gold that lingered between two hills. He folded his hands upon his breast and stood still with his eyes drooped to the ground.

"Poor Kinsella!" said Maurice abstractedly, almost like a man speaking in his sleep. "What a dog's life--for nearly two years!"

Like a little codicil to a last will and testament Makupi added a few more words.

"This is a very secret matter, and forbidden by the _Umlimo_ to be spoken of to any, under pain of--" he made a dramatic gesture of stabbing. "It would have been better for me to have told any of the secrets of the Matabele and the Makalikas than this. But because the _Inkosizaan_ is like the departed glory of the Matabeleland, and her hands are kind and healing to all she touches, I have told."

"You have done well," said Maurice firmly. He had wakened from his dreaminess now; "and we'll take care you don't suffer for it. But look here, Makupi, will you go with me to the Matoppoe and show me the way to the cave of the _Umlimo_?"

Makupi looked at me for a moment.

"If the _Inkosizaan_ wishes, I will go and show the way," he said. "But it will not be easy to overcome those men of the Imbezu with their a.s.segais and stabbing knives; some of the _Umlimo's_ people have guns too, which they did not give up after the war. We will have to wait in secret places of the hills with horses always ready to start, and coming upon them by surprise spring on the guard and kill them, then quickly unbind the white man and ride away. But it is hard to say how long we shall have to wait hiding in the hills."

"That's nothing. Be ready to start the dawn after to-morrow's dawn, Makupi. Do not fail me--or the _Inkosizaan_."

"No, _Inkos_."

He went away with a spring to his walk. I turned to Maurice and spoke as steadily as I could.

"Do you not think you should tell the Company and have an expedition sent?"

"No!" he said abruptly. "I shall take Makapi and go alone. They would get wind of an expedition--you can't keep anything dark from kaffirs for long--and then they would kill Kinsella as sure as a gun. After holding him so long they know well enough that some one will have to pay when he is released, and they'll think nothing of killing him off and denying that there was ever any one there at all. We can't risk that. I must go alone and very quickly. There will be nothing unusual in a police inspector setting off alone, and they will suspect nothing. We won't give them time to suspect."

"I think you should tell the Company," I persisted. There was something terrifying and awful to me in letting my husband go off alone on this dangerous mission to bring back the man I loved.

"Of course I shall tell the Company--as much as is good for them to know. I must get my chief on the wire at once, and get leave to go off on urgent secret inquiry work. There are any amount of reasons to go secretly to the kraals, now that the natives are so unsettled. He'll be glad enough to have me visit the Matoppo kraals and see what is going on." He turned on me suddenly. "Do you grudge me this work to do for you?" he said strangely, and I knew not how to answer him, but at last I faltered: