The White Hecatomb Part 13

The woman looked up at him from where she was sitting, with a start of surprise. Pain, love, pity, and yearning made worlds of her eyes.

"Now take my case," continued the man; "it is only four days since Wallie died, and it was but yesterday we laid him in his grave, and yet to-night I feel hardly any grief. Of course, the shock unmanned me at first, but now I am quite myself again. I have never been able to make you see the uses of--"

The man ceased speaking and began to cough. Then he walked slowly backwards and forwards with an air of extreme preoccupation. The woman said nothing, but kept her eyes, which were now swimming in tears, fixed on him.

"Really, my darling," he continued after a pause, and in an impatient tone, "you must try and look at the thing as I do. He is dead, and we saw the lid of the coffin screwed down over his cold body, yet, wonderful to relate, he is so close to us that I can bring him back at will. I have only to close my eyes and I see him. Look here, I hold his cap just three feet from the floor, and there he stands below it, with his face under the peak, and his curls behind. Now cover your face with the cap, and draw in your breath;--so--did I not tell you?--He has only just taken it off. Now, look: can you not see him there before you? Now he is here nestling up, and just going to beg for a story.

There, he has gone over to his rocking-horse. Now close your eyes and rock it; to close your eyes at the right time is the great secret."

Here the man's voice was again interrupted by the cough. The woman stood up and laid her hand caressingly over his shoulder. Then she tried to move in front of him and look into his eyes. With an impatient gesture he shook himself free, and resumed his walking to and fro, always avoiding her eyes.

"How foolish you are," he resumed, "not to help me, not to partic.i.p.ate in this new creation which I have discovered the secret of effecting.

Look here, be reasonable, every night we will make up his bed and place his clothes ready for the morning. Then we will tie the string to your wrist so that he can pull it and waken you without disturbing me. Now just try it, and I am quite positive you will feel the string being pulled just when he wants you to kiss him at the usual time. You have always been pitching into me for reading metaphysics, but look at the difference between us now. You remember what Fichte--"

Here the man's voice was once more interrupted by the cough. He turned and leant against the wall, resting his forehead against his arm. The woman tried to make him sit down on an easy-chair, which she drew towards him, but he refused with the same impatient gesture. Soon he resumed his walking, and continued:

"I am even prepared to maintain that in some respects we are better off than if he had lived. I do not imagine that either of us will last very long, and think what it would have been to leave him behind, uncared for. Then, if he had grown up, who knows what mistakes he might have made, and what he might have suffered. As it is now, he will always be the same to us. I am glad you are not crying any longer. Now I will go and carry his cot back into the bedroom. Do not come in until I have things arranged."

There was a smell of carbolic disinfectant throughout the house, for the boy had died of diphtheritic croup, after an agonising illness of five days. This smell continually suggested death to the woman; it seemed to have got into her nostrils permanently, go where she would she could not avoid it. She now stood up from where she had been sitting near the fireplace, and walked into the drawing-room, which had a south-eastern aspect. It was winter, and the night was somewhat unseasonably warm.

The weather had long been dry. A bright moon was high in the heavens.

The woman stood in the dark room and looked out of the window to where the bare, silvery rods of a willow swayed and undulated to the faint, intermittent breeze. Then her gaze wandered to an oak, out of the leafless boughs of which hung the ropes of the boy's swing, oscillating gently. Every now and then she coughed, and the sound of the man's coughing reached her at short intervals from the next room. The rising wind began to sough and moan over the house, and to call ghostly whisperings from the bare, chafing branches of the crowded oak trees.

Stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon was a curved fringe of delicate snow-white cloud, suggestive of an ostrich feather in shape and texture. This came nearer every moment. It hung for a breath like a broken, opaline halo round the moon. Now it was over the house, and the moon was again clear, but low down on the southern horizon from whence it had arisen, dark clouds of gradually increasing bulk were surging up, and faint lightnings flickering.

The man came from the bedroom into the pa.s.sage and called to the woman, who silently joined him, and again pa.s.sed her arm over his shoulder.

"Come along, darling," he said, as they went towards the bedroom; "see how I have arranged it all. What a pity we did not think of this last night!"

The little cot had been moved back to its place, and in it the boy's bed had been made, pillow, white sheet turned back, and little eider-down quilt, all complete. In the middle of the pillow was a dent, as if a head had just been lying there, and the bed-clothes were slightly tumbled. On a chair at the foot of the cot were carelessly thrown a flannel shirt, a blue-striped tunic, and a pair of blue serge knickerbockers; upon these lay loose a pair of cardinal-coloured socks, and two shoes with bright steel buckles stood close by on the floor.

The woman walked up to the cot, her face was ashen. Her lips had ceased quivering, but she could not speak. Her heart stood almost still. Her mental tension was such that she almost lost consciousness. Two impressions dominated all others, the smell of the carbolic, and the swelling moan of the wind over the roof. The man went on garrulously, and in a cheerful voice:

"Look here, we will hang his plaid over the side of the cot, and when we light the candle in the night to see if he is covered properly, we can just _know_ that he is there, behind it. He lies so quietly that we never can hear him breathe.

"Sit down now and I will read a chapter of the Bible to you. It is past our usual time."

The man stretched forth his hand and took a Bible down from a small book-shelf which hung on the wall close to the head of the bed. Then he began to speak, turning over the leaves at the same time.

"Let me see, what shall we read to-night? I forgot to-day to pick one out that Wallie will not ask awkward questions about.

"Ah! here is the one about King David's child dying; you remember he lost a child, a boy too, his son and Bathsheba's... I will read this.

Come close; I believe Wallie is asleep, so I must speak low... How the wind is wailing;... but you know, wind always makes him sleep more soundly."

The woman bent forward and hid her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. The man began to read:

"And it came to pa.s.s on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself if we tell him that the child is dead?

"But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead: therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? and they said, He is dead.

"Then David arose from the earth and washed, and anointed himself; and changed his apparel, and came into the House of the Lord, and worshipped; then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.

"Then said his servants unto him: What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and weep for the child while it was alive, but when the child was dead thou didst arise and eat bread.

"And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether G.o.d will be gracious to me, that the child may live?

"But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not come to me."

The wind had gradually increased in violence, and now there came a strong gust and a sudden clash of rain against the iron roof. The man ceased reading, and looked up with a light of wildness in his eyes.

Then he flung down the book, started up, and ran around to the other side of the bed, where the cot was. He looked into the cot, and a long cry of agony broke from him when he saw that it was empty. He staggered and would have fallen but for the woman, who supported him for a moment, and then let him sink back on the bed. Another fit of coughing came on, after which white foam, slightly tinged with blood, appeared on his lips. The rain, with which hail was now mixed, swept down on the roof in a roaring torrent.

Suddenly the man sprang up, and before the woman could restrain him, had reached the pa.s.sage leading to the front door.

"Come, come," he shouted, "he is out in the cold and wet, and we are in here warm and dry. Let me go; I will take his plaid to put over him.

You do not care, or you would not try to stop me. Let me go."

All this time he was struggling to escape from the woman's clasping arms, and at length he succeeded. He rushed back into the bedroom, seized the plaid from where it hung on the cot, and again made for the door. The woman followed him with an overcoat, and caught him as he was turning the handle.

"Wait one moment, Fred," she said in a low-toned voice, which had the immediate effect of calming him, "we will go together. Come back with me until I get my cloak."

He followed her back to the bedroom, and there walked impatiently about, struggling to get into the overcoat, and coughing incessantly. She put on a waterproof ulster, and then opened a little jewel-case which stood on the dressing-table. From this she took a thick, glossy lock of dark, curly hair, which she hid in the bosom of her dress.

The woman took the man's arm, and the two walked out into the wild night. It was not dark, for the moon was nearly full, but swift on the wings of the screaming gale low, combing clouds were hurrying over the land. From these heavy showers of piercing sleet fell. Each shower only lasted for a few minutes, but the intervals between them were hardly longer. As the storm grew, the duration of the showers increased, whilst that of the intervals diminished. As yet, how ever, the moon shone out brightly after each shower.

The graveyard was on the spur of a mountain which overhung the river about a mile below the village. Thither the man and the woman wended.

Fortunately the wind was behind them. It was this circ.u.mstance that made their progress possible. They never could have faced the howling storm. Faster and faster they staggered onward, the woman supporting the man by means of her left arm, which she had pa.s.sed around his body, and holding his left in her right hand. They both coughed dreadfully, but the paroxysms of the man were the worse.

They reached the graveyard at length, and sank down exhausted on the boy's grave. Just then, a furious shower of hail lashed out of a driving cloud, and in a few moments the whole world was white. They managed to spread the plaid over the little mound. The woman being on the windward side, held it for a while in position, and soon the hail lay thickly on it.

In a short lull between two of the worst gusts the woman managed to creep around to the other side of the grave where the man was lying huddled. She pa.s.sed her arm around him in the old protective manner, and laid her cold lips against his cheek, which was like frozen marble.

He was only just breathing. Then the cough seized him again, and he struggled violently. The woman closed her eyes, and held him fast. He gave a great gulp, a shudder pa.s.sed over his limbs, and then he lay still.

The woman opened her eyes. The moon was shining brightly through a narrow rift between the storm-cloud that had just pa.s.sed over and the one hurrying on its track. The dazzlingly white hail covered everything, and lay in heaps against the graveyard wall, the tree-trunks, and the tombstones. It half covered the man and the woman, and on the white heap against which his head was lying, was a dark stain.

The woman closed her eyes and lay with her head against the man's body.

She soon fell asleep, and dreamt a dream. She thought she was swinging in the hammock which was slung between the verandah poles of the cottage, reading to the boy his favourite story. It was a slight and simple allegory which the man had composed for him, and was based princ.i.p.ally upon the last chapter of Revelation, the description of the Delectable Mountains, and Augustine's City of G.o.d. The story was written in the man's happiest vein, and was full of the loveliest fancy-play. The best pa.s.sage in it was that description of the valley through which runs the River of the Water of Life. She read as far as this, and lo! in the twinkling of an eye she was in the valley. There stood the grove of those wondrous trees which bear twelve different kinds of fruit, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the suffering nations.

But she was alone in the midst of all this wonder and beauty. She wandered along in a state of disquietude, seeking something or somebody, she knew not who or what. Then she heard a halloa far away in a voice that seemed familiar, and that sent a thrill of agonising bliss through her being. Soon a well-known, pattering footstep sounded down one of the s.p.a.cious avenues, and the boy rushed into her arms. After an ecstatic moment she lifted her face out of his dark curls, and saw the man hurrying towards her with shining face and outstretched arms.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE RETURN OF SOBEDE.

"There is a deal of human nature in mankind."

Josh Billings.

_One_.

Sobede stood in the prisoners' dock before the Circuit Court at Kokstad, between his fellow-prisoners Kwekwe and Gazile, and pleaded "Not Guilty"

to the charge of having stolen four head of cattle from one Jasper Swainson, a farmer dwelling in the valley of the Indwana river, Umzimkulu district, whom he had served as a shepherd two years previously.