The Second Class Passenger Part 37

The child looked up at him in astonishment. "Why?" he began.

"Be still," commanded David, and went over to him cautiously. The serpent's evil head was raised as he approached, and it hissed at him. Paul stood quite quiet, and David advanced his naked hand to his certain death and the delivery of his child. The reptile poised, and as David s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, it struck--but on his sleeve. The next instant was a delirious vision of writhing green and yellow; there was a cry from Paul, and the snake was on the floor. David crushed it furiously with his boot.

Christina s.n.a.t.c.hed the child. "Did it bite you, Paul!" she screamed.

"Did it bite you?"

The boy shook his head, but David interposed with a voice of thunder.

"Of course it did!" he vociferated with blazing eyes; "what else did my dream point to? But we'll fight with G.o.d yet. Bring me the child, Christina."

On the plump forearm of Paul they found two minute punctures and two tiny points of blood. David drew his knife, and the child shrieked and struggled.

"Get a hot iron, Christina," cried David, and gripped Paul with his knees.

In the morning the room was wild and grisly with blood and the smell of burnt flesh, and David lay face downwards on the floor, writhing as the echoes of Paul's shrieks tortured his ears. But in the next room little Paul was still for ever, and all the ghostly labor was to no purpose.

I suppose there is some provision in the make of humanity for overflow grief, some limit impregnable to affliction; for when little Paul was laid beside his brother, there were still David and Christina to walk aimlessly in their empty world. Their scars were deep, and they were crippled with woe, and it seemed to them they lived as paralytics live, dead in all save in their susceptibility to torture. Moreover, there was a barrier between them in David's disastrous foreknowledge, for Christina could not throw off the thought that it contained the causal elements which had robbed her of her sons. Pain had fogged her; she could not probe the matter, and sensations tyrannised over her mind. David, too, was bowed with a sense of guilt that he could not rise to throw off. All motive was buried in the kraal; and he and his wife sat apart and spent days and nights without the traffic of speech.

But Christina was seized with an idea. She woke David in the night and spoke to him tensely.

"David," she cried, gripping him by the arm. "David! We cannot live for ever. Do you hear me? Look, David, look hard! Look where you looked before. Can you see nothing for me--for us, David?"

He was sitting up, and the spell of her inspiration claimed him. He opened his eyes wide and searched the barren darkness for a sign. He groped with his mind, tore at the bonds of the present.

"Do you see nothing?" whispered Christina. "Oh, David, there must be something. Look--look hard!"

For the s.p.a.ce of a hundred seconds they huddled on the bed, David fumbling with the keys of destiny, Christina waiting, breathless.

"Lie down," said David at last. "You are going to die, little cousin.

It is all well." His voice was the calmest in the world. "And you!"

cried Christina; "David, and you?"

"I see nothing," he said.

"Poor David!" murmured his wife, clinging to him. "But I am sure all will yet be well, David. Have no fear, my husband."

She murmured on in the dark, with his arm about her, and promised him death, entreated him to believe with her, and coaxed him with the bait of the grave. They were bride and groom again, they two, and slept at last in one another's arms.

In the morning all was well with Christina, and she bustled about as of old. David was still, and hoped ever, with a tired content in what should happen, a languor that forbade him from railing on fate.

Together they prepared matters as for a journey.

"If the black trousers come frayed again," said Christina, "try to remember that the scissors are better than a knife. And the seeds are all in the box under our bed."

"In the box under our bed," repeated David carefully. "Yes, under the bed. I will remember."

"And this, David," holding up piles of white linen, "this is for me.

You will not forget?"

"For you?" he queried, not understanding.

"Yes," she answered softly. "I will be buried in this."

He started, but recovered himself with a quivering lip.

"Of course," he answered. "I will see to it. I must be very old, Christina."

She came over and kissed him on the forehead.

In the middle of the afternoon she went to bed, and he came in and sat beside her. She held his hand, and smiled at him.

"Are you dying now?" he asked at length.

"Yes," she said. "What shall I tell Frikkie and the kleintje from you?"

"Tell them nothing," he said, after a pause. "It cannot be that I shall be apart from you all long. No; I am very sure of that."

She pressed his hand, and soon afterwards felt some pain. It was little, and she made no outcry. Her death was calm and not strongly distressing, and the next day David put her into the ground where her sons lay.

But, as I have made clear, he did not die till long afterwards, when he had sold his farm and come to live in the little white house in the dorp, where colors jostled each other in the garden, and fascinated children watched him go in and come out. I think the story explains that perpetual search of which his vacant eyes gave news, and the joyous alacrity of his last home-coming, and the perfect technique of his death. It all points to the conclusion, that however brave the figures, however aspiring their capers, they but respond to strings which are pulled and loosened elsewhere.

XII

THE HIDDEN WAY

A veil 'twixt us and Thee, dread Lord, A veil 'twixt us and Thee!

Lest we should hear too clear, too clear, And unto madness see.

Carrick crossed the fields in time to see, from the low bank above the churchyard, the children coming forth from Sunday school in the church, blinking contentedly at the late summer sunlight and all the familiar world from which, for two hours, they had been exiles. A little behind them came Mr. Newman, carrying his sober hat in his hand, and the curate.

"Hi!" called Carrick, and they turned toward him as he came down the bank, with his sly spaniel shambling at his heels.

The curate looked with disfavor at Carrick's worn tweed clothes and his general week-day effect. "I think," he said primly, "I'll be getting along."

"I should," said Carrick shortly, turning his back on him. "I want to speak to you, Newman."

"Then we will walk together," agreed Mr. Newman. "Good-bye till this evening," he called after the departing curate.

It was an afternoon of June, languid and fragrant; the declining sun was in their faces as they went in company under the high arches of the elms, in a queer contrast of costume and personality. Carrick, the man of science, the adventurer in the bypaths of knowledge, affronted the Sabbath in the clothes which gave offence to the curate. He was a thin, impatient man, standing on the brink of middle age, with the hard, intent face of one accustomed to verify the evidence of his own senses. A habit he had of doing his thinking in the open air had left him tanned and limber; he walked easily, with the light foot of an athlete, while Mr. Newman, decorous in the black clothes which are the uniform of the regular churchgoer, trod deliberately at his side and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

"It was very warm in the church this afternoon," explained Mr. Newman mildly. "Very warm."

He was an older man than Carrick, and altogether a riper and most complacent figure. He had a large and benevolent face, which would have been common-place but for a touch of steadfastness and serenity which dignified it, and an occasional vivacity of the kindly eyes.

One perceived in him a man who had come smoothly through life, secure in plain faiths and clear hopes, unafraid of destiny. Something reverend in his general effect accentuated his difference from his companion.

"Ventilation," Carrick was saying. "On an afternoon like this you might as well shut those children up in a family vault. Twenty of them, all breathing carbonic acid gas, besides yourself--and that a.s.s!"