The Explorer Part 15

'And supposing you regret the step you've taken?'

'In my youth I imagined, with the romantic fervour of my age, that in life everything was irreparable. That is a delusion. One of the greatest advantages of life is that hardly anything is. One can make ever so many fresh starts. The average man lives long enough for a good many experiments, and it's they that give life its savour.'

'I don't approve of this flippant way you talk of life,' said Mrs.

Crowley severely. 'It seems to me something infinitely serious and complicated.'

'That is an illusion of moralists. As a matter of fact, it's merely what you make it. Mine is quite light and simple.'

Mrs. Crowley looked at d.i.c.k reflectively.

'I wonder why you never married,' she said.

'I can tell you easily. Because I have a considerable gift for repartee.

I discovered in my early youth that men propose not because they want to marry, but because on certain occasions they are entirely at a loss for topics of conversation.'

'It was a momentous discovery,' she smiled.

'No sooner had I made it than I began to cultivate my powers of small talk. I felt that my only chance was to be ready with appropriate subjects at the smallest notice, and I spent a considerable part of my last year at Oxford in studying the best masters.'

'I never noticed that you were particularly brilliant,' murmured Mrs.

Crowley, raising her eyebrows.

'I never played for brilliancy, I played for safety. I flatter myself that when prattle was needed, I have never been found wanting. I have met the ingenuousness of sweet seventeen with a few observations on Free Trade, while the haggard efforts of thirty have struggled in vain against a brief exposition of the higher philosophy.'

'When people talk higher philosophy to me I make it a definite rule to blush,' said Mrs. Crowley.

'The skittish widow of uncertain age has retired in disorder before a complete acquaintance with the Restoration dramatists, and I have frequently routed the serious spinster with religious leanings by my remarkable knowledge of the results of missionary endeavour in Central Africa. Once a dowager sought to ask me my intentions, but I flung at her astonished head an article from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. An American _divorcee_ swooned when I poured into her sh.e.l.l-like ear a few facts about the McKinley Tariff. These are only my serious efforts. I need not tell you how often I have evaded a flash of the eyes by an epigram, or ignored a sigh by an apt quotation from the poets.'

'I don't believe a word you say,' retorted Mrs. Crowley. 'I believe you never married for the simple reason that n.o.body would have you.'

'Do me the justice to acknowledge that I'm the only man who's known you for ten days without being tempted by those coal-mines of yours in Pennsylvania to offer you his hand and heart.'

'I don't believe the coal has anything to do with it,' answered Mrs.

Crowley. 'I put it down entirely to my very considerable personal attractions.'

d.i.c.k looked at the time and found that the c.o.c.ktail had given him an appet.i.te. He asked Mrs. Crowley if she would lunch with him, and gaily they set out for a fashionable restaurant. Neither of them gave a thought to Alec and George speeding towards the unknown, nor to Lucy shut up in her room, given over to utter misery.

For Lucy it was the first of many dreary days. d.i.c.k went to Naples, and enjoying his new-won idleness, did not even write to her. Mrs. Crowley, after deciding on a trip to Egypt, was called to America by the illness of a sister; and Lady Kelsey, unable to stand the rigour of a Northern winter, set out for Nice. Lucy refused to accompany her. Though she knew it would be impossible to see her father, she could not bear to leave England; she could not face the gay people who thronged the Riviera, while he was bound to degrading tasks. The luxury of her own life horrified her when she compared it with his hard fare; and she could not look upon the comfortable rooms she lived in, with their delicate refinements, without thinking of the bare cell to which he was confined.

Lucy was glad to be alone.

She went nowhere, but pa.s.sed her days in solitude, striving to acquire peace of mind; she took long walks in the parks with her dogs, and spent much time in the picture galleries. Without realising the effect they had upon her, she felt vaguely the calming influence of beautiful things; often she would sit in the National Gallery before some royal picture, and the joy of it would fill her soul with quiet relief.

Sometimes she would go to those majestic statues that decorated the pediment of the Parthenon, and the tears welled up in her clear eyes as she thanked the G.o.ds for the graciousness of their peace. She did not often listen to music, for then she could remain no longer mistress of her emotions; the tumultuous sounds of a symphony, the final anguish of _Tristan_, made vain all her efforts at self-control; and when she got home, she could only throw herself on her bed and weep pa.s.sionately.

In reading she found her greatest solace. Many things that Alec had said returned dimly to her memory; and she began to read the Greek writers who had so profoundly affected him. She found a translation of Euripides which gave her some impression of the original, and her constant mood was answered by those old, exquisite tragedies. The complexity of that great poet, his doubt, despair, and his love of beauty, spoke to her heart as no modern writer could; and in the study of those sad deeds, in which men seemed always playthings of the fates, she found a relief to her own keen sorrow. She did not reason it out with herself, but almost unconsciously the thought came to her that the slings and arrows of the G.o.ds could be transformed into beauty by resignation and courage.

Nothing was irreparable but a man's own weakness, and even in shame, disaster, and poverty, it was possible to lead a life that was not without grandeur. The man who was beaten to the ground by an outrageous fortune might be a finer thing than the unseeing, cruel powers that conquered him.

It was in this wise that Lucy battled with the intolerable shame that oppressed her. In that quiet corner of Hampshire in which her early years had been spent, among the memories of her dead kindred, the pride of her race had grown to unreasonable proportions; and now in the reaction she was terrified lest its decadence was in her, too, and in George. She could do nothing but suffer whatever pain it pleased the G.o.ds to send; but George was a man. In him were placed all her hopes.

But now and again wild panic seized her. Then the agony was too great to bear, and she pressed her hands to her eyes in order to drive away the hateful thought: what if George failed her? She knew well enough that he had his father's engaging ways and his father's handsome face; but his father had had a smile as frank and a charm as great. What if with the son, too, they betokened only insincerity and weakness? A malicious devil whispered in her ear that now and again she had averted her eyes in order not to see George do things she hated. But it was youth that drove him. She had taken care to keep from him knowledge of the sordid struggles that occupied her, and how could she wonder if he was reckless and uncaring? She would not doubt him, she could not doubt him, for if anything went wrong with him there was no hope left. She could only cease to believe in herself.

When Lucy was allowed to write to her father, she set herself to cheer him. The thought that over five years must elapse before she would have him by her side once more, paralysed her pen; but she would not allow herself to be discouraged. And she sought to give courage to him. She wanted him to see that her love was undiminished, and that he could count on it. Presently she received a letter from him. After a few weeks, the unaccustomed food, the change of life, had told upon him; and a general breakdown in his health had driven him into the infirmary.

Lucy was thankful for the respite which his illness afforded. It must be a little less dreary in a prison hospital than in a prison cell.

A letter came from George, and another from Alec. Alec's was brief, telling of their journey down the Red Sea and their arrival at Momba.s.sa; it was abrupt and awkward, making no reference to his love, or to the engagement which she had almost promised to make when he returned. He began and ended quite formally. George, apparently in the best of spirits, wrote as he always did, in a boyish, inconsequent fashion. His letter was filled with slang and gave no news. There was little to show that it was written from Momba.s.sa, on the verge of a dangerous expedition into the interior, rather than from Oxford on the eve of a football match. But she read them over and over again. They were very matter of fact, and she smiled as she thought of Julia Crowley's indignation if she had seen them.

From her recollection of Alec's words, Lucy tried to make out the scene that first met her brother's eyes. She seemed to stand by his side, leaning over the rail, as the ship approached the harbour. The sea was blue with a blue she had never seen, and the sky was like an inverted bowl of copper. The low sh.o.r.e, covered with bush, stretched away in the distance; a line of waves was breaking on the reef. They came in sight of the island of Momba.s.sa, with the overgrown ruins of a battery that had once commanded the entrance; and there were white-roofed houses, with deep verandas, which stood in little clearings with coral cliffs below them. On the opposite sh.o.r.e thick groves of palm-trees rose with their singular, melancholy beauty. Then as the channel narrowed, they pa.s.sed an old Portuguese fort which carried the mind back to the bold adventurers who had first sailed those distant seas, and directly afterwards a ma.s.s of white buildings that reached to the edge of the lapping waves. They saw the huts of the native town, wattled and thatched, nestling close together; and below them was a fleet of native craft. On the jetty was the African crowd, shouting and jostling, some half-naked, and some strangely clad, Arabs from across the sea, Swahilis, and here and there a native from the interior.

In course of time other letters came from George, but Alec wrote no more. The days pa.s.sed slowly. Lady Kelsey returned from the Riviera.

d.i.c.k came back from Naples to enjoy the pleasures of the London season.

He appeared thoroughly to enjoy his idleness, signally falsifying the predictions of those who had told him that it was impossible to be happy without regular work. Mrs. Crowley settled down once more in her house in Norfolk Street. During her absence she had written reams by every post to Lucy, and Lucy had looked forward very much to seeing her again. The little American was almost the only one of her friends with whom she did not feel shy. The apartness which her nationality gave her, made Mrs. Crowley more easy to talk to. She was too fond of Lucy to pity her. The general election came before it was expected, and Robert Boulger succeeded to the seat which d.i.c.k Lomas was only too glad to vacate. Bobbie was very charming. He surrounded Lucy with a protecting care, and she could not fail to be touched by his entire devotion. When he thought she had recovered somewhat from the first blow of her father's sentence, he sent her a letter in which once more he besought her to marry him. She was grateful to him for having chosen that method of expressing himself, for it seemed possible in writing to tell him with greater tenderness that if she could not accept his love she deeply valued his affection.

It seemed to Lucy that the life she led in London, or at Lady Kelsey's house on the river, was no more than a dream. She was but a figure in the procession of shadow pictures cast on a sheet in a fair, and nothing that she did signified. Her spirit was away in the heart of Africa, and by a vehement effort of her fancy she sought to see what each day her friend and her brother were doing.

Now they had long left the railway and such civilisation as was to be found in the lands where white men had already made their mark. She knew the exultation which Alec felt, and the thrill of independence, when he left behind him all traces of it. He held himself more proudly because he knew that thenceforward he must rely on his own resources, and success or failure depended only on himself.

Often as she lay awake and saw the ghostly dawn steal across the sky, she seemed borne to the African camp, where the break of day, like a gust of wind in a field of ripe corn, brought a sudden stir among the sleepers. Alec had described to her so minutely the changing scene that she was able to bring it vividly before her eyes. She saw him come out of his tent, in heavy boots, buckling on his belt. He wore knee-breeches and a pith helmet, and he was more bronzed than when she had bidden him farewell. He gave the order to the headman of the caravan to take up the loads. At the word there was a rush from all parts of the camp; each porter seized his load, carrying it off to lash on his mat and his cooking-pot, and then, sitting upon it, ate a few grains of roasted maize or the remains of last night's game. And as the sun appeared above the horizon, Alec, as was his custom, led the way, followed by a few askari. A band of natives struck up a strange and musical chant, and the camp, but now a scene of busy life, was deserted. The smouldering fires died out with the rising sun, and the silent life of the forest replaced the chatter and the hum of human kind. Giant beetles came from every quarter and carried away pieces of offal; small shy beasts stole out to gnaw the white bones upon which savage teeth had left but little; a gaunt hyena, with suspicious looks, s.n.a.t.c.hed at a bone and dashed back into the jungle. Vultures settled down heavily, and with deliberate air sought out the foulest refuse.

Then Lucy followed Alec upon his march, with his fighting men and his long string of porters. They went along a narrow track, pushing their way through bushes and thorns, or tall rank gra.s.s, sometimes with difficulty forcing through elephant reeds which closed over their heads and showered the cold dew down on their faces. Sometimes they pa.s.sed through villages, with rich soil and extensive population; sometimes they plunged into heavy forests of gigantic trees, festooned with creepers, where the silence was unbroken even by the footfall of the traveller on the bottomless carpet of leaves; sometimes they traversed vast swamps, hurrying to avoid the deadly fever, and sometimes scrub jungles, in which as far as the eye could reach was a forest of cactus and thorn bush. Sometimes they made their way through gra.s.sy uplands with trees as splendid as those of an English park, and sometimes they toiled painfully along a game-track that ran by the bank of a swift-rushing river.

At midday a halt was called. The caravan had opened out by then; men who were sick or had stopped to adjust a load, others who were weak or lazy, had lagged behind; but at last they were all there; and the rear guard, perhaps with George in charge of it, whose orders were on no account to allow a single man to remain behind them, reported that no one was missing. During the heat of noon they made fires and cooked food.

Presently they set off once more and marched till sundown.

When they reached the place which had been fixed on for camping, a couple of shots were fired as signals; and soon the natives, men and women, began to stream in with little baskets of grain or flour, with potatoes and chickens, and perhaps a pot or two of honey. Very quickly the tents were pitched, the bed gear arranged, the loads counted and stacked. The party whose duty it was to construct the _zeriba_ cut down boughs and dragged them in to form a fence. Each little band of men selected the site for their bivouac; one went off to collect materials to build the huts, another to draw water, a third for firewood and stones, on which to place the cooking-pot. At sunset the headman blew his whistle and asked if all were present. A l.u.s.ty chorus replied. He reported to his chief and received the orders for the next day's march.

Alec had told Lucy that from the cry that goes up in answer to the headman's whistle, you could always gauge the spirit of the men. If game had been shot, or from scarcity the caravan had come to a land of plenty, there was a perfect babel of voices. But if the march had been long and hard, or if food had been issued for a number of days, of which this was the last, isolated voices replied; and perhaps one, bolder than the rest, cried out: I am hungry.

Then Alec and George, and the others sat down to their evening meal, while the porters, in little parties, were grouped around their huge pots of porridge. A little chat, a smoke, an exchange of sporting anecdotes, and the white men turned in. And Alec, gazing on the embers of his camp fire was alone with his thoughts: the silence of the night was upon him, and he looked up at the stars that shone in their countless myriads in the blue African sky. Lucy got up and stood at her open window. She, too, looked up at the sky, and she thought that she saw the same stars as he did. Now in that last half hour, free from the burden of the day, with everyone at rest, he could give himself over to his thoughts, and his thoughts surely were of her.

During the months that had pa.s.sed since Alec left England, Lucy's love had grown. In her solitude there was nothing else to give brightness to her life, and little by little it filled her heart. Her nature was so strong that she could do nothing by half measures, and it was with a feeling of extreme relief that she surrendered herself to this overwhelming pa.s.sion. It seemed to her that she was growing in a different direction. The yearning of her soul for someone on whom to lean was satisfied at last. Hitherto the only instincts that had been fostered in her were those that had been useful to her father and George; they had needed her courage and her self-reliance. It was very comfortable to depend entirely upon Alec's love. Here she could be weak, here she could find a greater strength which made her own seem puny.

Lucy's thoughts were absorbed in the man whom really she knew so little.

She exulted in his unselfish striving and in his firmness of purpose, and when she compared herself with him she felt unworthy. She treasured every recollection she had of him. She went over in her mind all that she had heard him say, and reconstructed the conversations they had had together. She walked where they had walked, remembering how the sky had looked on those days and what flowers then bloomed in the parks; she visited the galleries they had seen in one another's company, and stood before the pictures which he had lingered at. And notwithstanding all there was to torment and humiliate her, she was happy. Something had come into her life which made all else tolerable. It was easy to bear the extremity of grief when he loved her.

After a long time d.i.c.k received a letter from Alec. MacKenzie was not a good letter-writer. He had no gift of self-expression, and when he had a pen in his hand seemed to be seized with an invincible shyness. The letter was dry and wooden. It was dated from the last trading-station before he set out into the wild country which was to be the scene of his operations. It said that hitherto everything had gone well with him, and the white men, but for fever occasionally, were bearing the climate well. One, named Macinnery, had made a nuisance of himself, and had been sent back to the coast. Alec gave no reasons for this step. He had been busy making the final arrangements. A company had been formed, the North East Africa Trading Company, to exploit the commercial possibilities of these unworked districts, and a charter had been given them; but the unsettled state of the land had so hampered them that the directors had gladly accepted Alec's offer to join their forces with his, and the traders at their stations had been instructed to take service under him.

This increased the white men under his command to sixteen. He had drilled the Swahilis whom he had brought from the coast, and given them guns, so that he had now an armed force of four hundred men. He was collecting levies from the native tribes, and he gave the outlandish names of the chiefs, armed with spears, who were to accompany him. The power of Mohammed the Lame was on the wane; for, during the three months which Alec had spent in England, an illness had seized him, which the natives a.s.serted was a magic spell cast on him by one of his wives; and a son of his, taking advantage of this, had revolted and fortified himself in a stockade. The dying Sultan had taken the field against him, and this division of forces made Alec's position immeasurably stronger.

d.i.c.k handed Lucy the letter, and watched her while she read it.

'He says nothing about George,' he said.

'He's evidently quite well.'

Though it seemed strange that Alec made no mention of the boy, d.i.c.k said no more. Lucy appeared to be satisfied, and that was the chief thing.

But he could not rid his mind of a certain uneasiness. He had received with misgiving Lucy's plan that George should accompany Alec. He could not help wondering whether those frank blue eyes and that facile smile did not conceal a nature as shallow as Fred Allerton's. But, after all, it was the boy's only chance, and he must take it.