The Story of an African Farm Part 42

"I'm almost afraid you won't be able to go," said Em, who was intent on her needle; "I don't think it is going to leave off today."

"I am going," said Gregory.

Em looked up.

"But the sloots are as full as rivers; you cannot go. We can wait for the post," she said.

"I am not going for the post," said Gregory, impressively.

Em looked for explanation; none came.

"When will you be back?"

"I am not coming back."

"Are you going to your friends?"

Gregory waited, then caught her by the wrist.

"Look here, Em," he said between his teeth, "I can't stand it any more.

I am going to her."

Since that day, when he had come home and found Lyndall gone, he had never talked of her; but Em knew who it was who needed to be spoken of by no name.

She said, when he had released her hand:

"But you do not know where she is?"

"Yes, I do. She was in Bloemfontein when I heard last. I will go there, and I will find out where she went then, and then, and then! I will have her."

Em turned the wheel quickly, and the ill-adjusted needle sprung into twenty fragments.

"Gregory," she said, "she does not want us; she told us so clearly in the letter she wrote." A flush rose on her face as she spoke. "It will only be pain to you, Gregory: Will she like to have you near her?"

There was an answer he might have made, but it was his secret, and he did not choose to share it. He said only:

"I am going."

"Will you be gone long, Gregory?"

"I do not know; perhaps I shall never come back. Do what you please with my things. I cannot stay here!"

He rose from his seat.

"People say, forget, forget!" he cried, pacing the room. They are mad!

they are fools! Do they say so to men who are dying of thirst--forget, forget? Why is it only to us they say so! It is a lie to say that time makes it easy; it is afterward, afterward that it eats in at your heart!

"All these months," he cried bitterly, "I have lived here quietly, day after day, as if I cared for what I ate, and what I drank, and what I did! I care for nothing! I cannot bear it! I will not! Forget! forget!"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Gregory. "You can forget all the world, but you cannot forget yourself. When one thing is more to you than yourself, how are you to forget it?

"I read," he said--"yes; and then I come to a word she used, and it is all back with me again! I go to count my sheep, and I see her face before me, and I stand and let the sheep run by. I look at you, and in your smile, a something at the corner of your lips, I see her. How can I forget her when, whenever I turn, she is there, and not there? I cannot, I will not, live where I do not see her.

"I know what you think," he said, turning upon her. "You think I am mad; you think I am going to see whether she will not like me! I am not so foolish. I should have known at first she never could suffer me. Who am I, what am I, that she should look at me? It was right that she left me; right that she should not look at me. If any one says it is not, it is a lie! I am not going to speak to her," he added--"only to see her; only to stand sometimes in a place where she has stood before."

Chapter 2.XI. An Unfinished Letter.

Gregory Rose had been gone seven months. Em sat alone on a white sheepskin before the fire.

The August night-wind, weird and shrill, howled round the chimneys and through the crannies, and in walls and doors, and uttered a long low cry as it forced its way among the clefts of the stones on the kopje. It was a wild night. The p.r.i.c.kly-pear tree, stiff and upright as it held its arms, felt the wind's might, and knocked its flat leaves heavily together, till great branches broke off. The Kaffers, as they slept in their straw huts, whispered one to another that before morning there would not be an armful of thatch left on the roofs; and the beams of the wagon-house creaked and groaned as if it were heavy work to resist the importunity of the wind.

Em had not gone to bed. Who could sleep on a night like this? So in the dining room she had lighted a fire, and sat on the ground before it, turning the roaster-cakes that lay on the coals to bake. It would save work in the morning; and she blew out the light because the wind through the window-c.h.i.n.ks made it flicker and run; and she sat singing to herself as she watched the cakes. They lay at one end of the wide hearth on a bed of coals, and at the other end a fire burnt up steadily, casting its amber glow over Em's light hair and black dress, with the ruffle of crepe about the neck, and over the white curls of the sheepskin on which she sat.

Louder and more fiercely yet howled the storm; but Em sang on, and heard nothing but the words of her song, and heard them only faintly, as something restful. It was an old, childish song she had often heard her mother sing long ago:

Where the reeds dance by the river, Where the willow's song is said, On the face of the morning water, Is reflected a white flower's head.

She folded her hands and sang the next verse dreamily:

Where the reeds shake by the river, Where the moonlight's sheen is shed, On the face of the sleeping water, Two leaves of a white flower float dead.

Dead, Dead, Dead!

She echoed the refrain softly till it died away, and then repeated it.

It was as if, unknown to herself, it harmonized with the pictures and thoughts that sat with her there alone in the firelight. She turned the cakes over, while the wind hurled down a row of bricks from the gable, and made the walls tremble.

Presently she paused and listened; there was a sound as of something knocking at the back-doorway. But the wind had raised its level higher, and she went on with her work. At last the sound was repeated. Then she rose, lit the candle and the fire, and went to see. Only to satisfy herself, she said, that nothing could be out on such a night.

She opened the door a little way, and held the light behind her to defend it from the wind. The figure of a tall man stood there, and before she could speak he had pushed his way in, and was forcing the door to close behind him.

"Waldo!" she cried in astonishment.

He had been gone more than a year and a half.

"You did not expect to see me," he answered, as he turned toward her; "I should have slept in the outhouse, and not troubled you tonight; but through the shutter I saw glimmerings of a light."

"Come in to the fire," she said; "it is a terrific night for any creature to be out. Shall we not go and fetch your things in first?" she added.

"I have nothing but this," he said, motioning to the little bundle in his hand.

"Your horse?"

"Is dead."

He sat down on the bench before the fire.

"The cakes are almost ready," she said; "I will get you something to eat. Where have you been wandering all this while?"

"Up and down, up and down," he answered wearily; "and now the whim has seized me to come back here. Em," he said, putting his hand on her arm as she pa.s.sed him, "have you heard from Lyndall lately?"