The White Hecatomb Part 17

No sooner had this happened than the door opened, and some one, from the voice evidently a woman, entered the room. After discussing rapidly for a few seconds in Dutch so corrupt that Brand could barely understand a word here and there, this person left, closing the door behind her.

Then a noise as of many people moving about on the roof, the pavement, and at the back of the premises arose. This, however, soon died down, and dead silence, only broken from time to time by a groan or a cry from the old mourner, again reigned.

After an interval the girl arose, turned the lamp down low, and whispered to Brand to emerge from his concealment. He had now completely regained his self-possession, and he fully expected to be able to escape from the house with the girl's a.s.sistance, without much difficulty or delay. She had now put on a loose skirt, and wrapped a white, silken shawl over her shoulders and bosom.

Brand told her the exact truth as to the circ.u.mstances under which he had entered the room, and the girl evidently believed him. He thanked her warmly for what she had done, and begged of her to show him a way by which he might make his escape. This, however, she declared, to his horror, she was absolutely unable to do. The window was, she a.s.sured him, fastened down with nails, and the only other way of possible exit lay through the room in which the corpse was lying, and thence through a pa.s.sage to the front door. This course was obviously impossible under the circ.u.mstances, so there was nothing for it but for him to remain where he was until the following morning, and then take advantage of circ.u.mstances as they might arise.

The recess in the wall was about two feet deep, and in this the girl made a sort of a couch for her uninvited and unwilling guest, who lay awake throughout the whole of the long July night, cursing his folly, and wondering as to what the end of his adventure was to be. The girl lay on the divan close to him, and although she hardly moved, Brand could tell from her breathing that she was as sleepless as himself.

Soon after daybreak the girl arose and, speaking softly, told Brand to lie quietly where he was whilst she went out to see if the coast were clear. Soon after this the sounds of people moving about the house could be heard, and then a deadly feeling of being trapped took possession of the concealed man. Had it not been for the certainty of compromising the girl he would have risked the worst and burst his way through the window. He felt, of course, that after her heroic conduct in shielding him at terrible risk to herself, such a course would be unpardonable, and he dismissed the idea at once. By and by the noise in the next room increased; the heavy, shuffling tread of several men could be heard, and the wailing of the old mourner rose to a high pitch. Then came stillness. The body of the dead hadji had been carried away to be prepared for burial.

After another interval the girl returned, and in a whisper told Brand to follow her. Then she sped swiftly through the curtained room and into a pa.s.sage to the left; then down this pa.s.sage to the right, and out into a small courtyard, on the opposite side of which a detached building stood. This building was double-storied at one end. The girl darted across the yard into the detached building, and Brand followed her through the half-opened door. He found himself in a sort of lumber store, which contained, amongst other things, a large number of packing-cases piled one over the other. In obedience to a gesture on the part of the girl, Brand entered a second room through a doorway standing open just in front of him. Here he found himself in semi-darkness. The girl closed the door behind him, and then ran quickly back across the yard to the house.

Brand's eyes soon accustomed themselves to the gloom, and then he began to examine his prison. He found here also a number of packing-cases, some apparently full of merchandise and others containing bound volumes of the Koran in the Malay tongue. In the corner of the room stood a ladder, and immediately above it an open trap-door, evidently leading to an upper chamber. He mounted the ladder and soon found himself in a small, cheerful-looking room with a window at either side. It contained a small table, a chair, and a bracket which hung in one of the corners.

A thick, new carpet was on the floor, and on one side were heaped a number of rich rugs which had evidently not been woven in Western looms.

On the bracket stood a jug of water, a loaf of bread, some baked meat, and a small quant.i.ty of fruit. Brand closed the trap-door, took a long drink of water,--which he had been longing for,--and flung himself down upon the pile of rugs.

The morning was for Brand one deadly monotony of apprehension. Once only did he hear any evidence of movement below, and then it was the sound of a footstep followed by the light click of some metal utensil being placed on the floor. Just afterwards he cautiously lifted the trap-door and looked down. He saw a bucket containing water, a rough towel, and a piece of soap. He had heard the sound of the key being turned in the door, so he descended and had a refreshing wash. After this he re-ascended to the upper room, taking a copy of the Koran with him. What he saw when he looked out of the windows was not rea.s.suring.

The building stood at one side of a closed yard of small size but with very high walls. It was quite certain that there was no means of exit except through the house. Even could he cross these walls he knew from his recollection of what he had seen from the roof that his position would be no better. The trapped feeling overcame him again, and he threw himself on the floor in despair.

Early in the afternoon he heard the door below opened softly, and just afterwards the girl ascended through the trap-door. She brought some food,--a few hard-boiled eggs, a dish of meat cooked after the Malay fashion in a paste, and some dates. Brands first question was as to the practicability of his escaping, but the girl strongly negatived the idea of any attempt in that direction being made for the present. The house was, she said, so arranged that until some occasion arose upon which all the dwellers except the old priest were absent, he could not possibly get away without being discovered. She seated herself on the rug next to him and they talked together like old friends. He ascertained from her that he was on the premises of a very celebrated Malay priest,--the girl's grandfather. This was a wealthy man, who combined commerce with the practice of official religious functions. Two of his sons had managed his business concerns, which had princ.i.p.ally to do with the importation of silken fabrics from the East. One of the sons had died of the pest, and the other was away on a trading trip to Madagascar.

The dead body which Brand had seen was that of the old priest's youngest and favourite son, a promising young hadji of highly reputed sanct.i.ty, who had returned but a few weeks previously from Mecca, only to be smitten by small-pox in its deadliest form. Altogether four members of the family had died,--one an elderly widowed daughter of the old priest, and the other a female servant.

Brand also learned her own history, which was peculiar and interesting.

Her name was Aiala. Her father had been an Englishman who, on being converted to Islam, had married a daughter of the old priest. This accounted for her knowledge of European ways and her sympathetic apprehension of European modes of thought, both of which had puzzled Brand extremely. After her fathers death, two years previously, she had left Java and had come to Cape Town to join her grandfather. She had been very unhappy in her new surroundings; the local peculiarities of the Malays were distasteful to her; she could hardly understand anything of their speech. They, divining her contempt for them, and recognising her superiority, disliked her intensely. She made no friends, and the only one who had treated her with sympathy or kindness was the young hadji who was now dead. To him she had been much attached. She had recently been promised in marriage to a man for whom she had no regard of any kind, and who was much older than she was.

Before leaving, the girl made Brand solemnly promise, with his hand on the Koran, that he would make no attempt to escape without her co-operation. She reminded him of the terrible risk she ran in thus hiding him, and that discovery would undoubtedly result in his death and her ruin. His disappearance was, she said, a mystery to the whole neighbourhood. He had been seen by others on the roof, and an organised hunt had accordingly taken place. The black-bearded man was continually on the watch, and had sworn, if he could find him, to have the stranger's life. Brand, after some hesitation which she overcame by falling at his feet in tears, made the promise she demanded, and regretted having done so immediately afterwards.

Aiala returned late that night and sat in the chair before the window, with the moonlight shining on her beautiful face, and flashing back in softened and enriched splendour from the depths of her glorious eyes.

Her proximity began to engender strange emotions in Brand, and to make some unsuspected springs stir in the depths of his being. Perhaps it was that the Malay strain in his blood had given a certain fibre to his heartstrings, which required some such influence as this to draw it to vibrating tension.

After pressing his hand in silence to her breast, Aiala stole softly away, leaving Brand to dream till dawn of her loveliness. She returned early next morning, bringing food, clean linen, and other things conducive to his comfort. The rain had again set in, and the prospect which Brand regarded from the windows of his prison was the most cheerless imaginable,--just dingy, yellow walls streaming with water.

He again besought the girl to try and arrange for his escape, and after a few moments of deep thought she promised to let him out, irrespective of risks, on the following day. It had hitherto struck Brand as extremely strange that she should have consistently placed obstacles in the way of every project for escaping which he suggested.

All day long Aiala kept flitting up and down the ladder. She was dressed in the most splendid attire. After the death of her uncle the more valuable of the contents of the shop had been removed for safe-keeping to the old priest's dwelling-house, and the girl thus had access to a quant.i.ty of gorgeous Eastern finery, and in this she now revelled to the utmost. The intimacy between her and Brand made rapid progress. She was radiant with smiles so long as he avoided the subject of his departure. When, however, he made any allusion to his wish to escape, she wept bitterly, and begged of him not to be her undoing.

They talked of the scenes of their childhood in far-off Java,--of how the children used to go forth in troops in the early morning from the "kampong," the village built of bamboo, to gather into baskets the "melatti" flowers that had fallen during the night from the trees, until the ground was covered as with a white carpet; of how they would weave the blossoms into garlands and long festoons, wherewith all, even the criminal going to suffer on the gallows, would be decked. From thus talking over scenes which they both knew and loved, they attained to a strange intuitive understanding of each other. Aiala had been her father's favourite child, and he, without teaching her his own tongue, had developed her mind to a degree almost unknown among women of her mother's race. Her finely-moulded head contained a strange farrago of fantastic and poetical notions, and for one so illiterate she had a wonderful gift of language. Her memory was very retentive, especially for poetry and pa.s.sages from the Koran, which she would repeat with a remarkable faculty of original expression, while her sensitive face reflected the spirit of the words.

Brand, however, did not even remotely suspect what was the true state of the case,--that the girl loved him with the full strength of her pa.s.sionate nature. The man who had appeared twice in her life, each time in a great crisis, had stamped himself indelibly on the untouched wax of her heart, and she felt, without even defining the feeling to herself, that her love and her life had become one and the same. From the day when he lifted her from the cab in his arms she had tenderly cherished the memory of the strong, tall, blue-eyed stranger who had rescued her from a terrible death, and who looked like a G.o.d among the uncouth, patois-jabbering crowd, from the like of which her only acquaintance was drawn. Moreover, was he not of the race of the dead father whom she had loved so well? And when he rushed into her presence, a hunted fugitive, had she not--after the first shock of surprise was over--been filled with exalted joy at the thought that this man of men was hers to save or to slay with a word? And whilst he cowered until dawn behind the curtain within a yard of where she lay, outwardly composed, but inwardly seething as though with the thunder and the tumult of the sea pent within her breast, throughout the long night made splendid by starry, sleepless dreams, had her very soul not melted in the ardent crucible of her burning hopes and re-formed in the mould of the man whose personality was a revelation to her, far n.o.bler than her highest ideal?

Aiala had hitherto been loverless; now pa.s.sion awoke in her torrid, Eastern nature like a summer tempest on an Indian Sea, and its waves'

resistless strength undermined what had hitherto been the impregnable rock of Brand's insensibility. All the untaught wiles which are as instinctive to the natural woman in her youth as is preening its feathers to a bird in the spring-time, were lavished on him, and long before he even suspected it, Aiala had filled his heart as completely as he filled hers.

She bade him farewell in the dusk, promising to return as soon as ever she could manage again to escape. When the weary, leaden-footed hours dragged past and yet she did not come, Brand was in despair. He thought something had happened to prevent her coming at all that night, and the agony of longing which he underwent taught him unmistakably that the love he had dreamt of, but never before experienced, had at length made its home in his heart.

A sound in the room below threw him into an ecstasy of expectation, and just afterwards the trap-door was lifted with the usual creaking sound which he had come to regard as sweeter than the sweetest music. It was absolutely dark; the moon had not yet arisen, and the wind-driven rain hissed against the streaming window-panes.

Brand came forward to the corner where the trap-door was, and his outstretched hands came in contact with Aiala, who was shivering, apparently with cold, beneath a heavy, wet cloak. She slid from his attempted embrace with a low breath of laughter, and when he followed her she again eluded him. This, acting on his over-wrought mind and his inexperience, vexed him sorely, and he sat down on the chair in silence and weary perplexity.

After a few moments she startled him by striking a match and lighting a small lamp, which she then placed on the bracket. Brand then noticed that she had hung dark cloths across the windows.

He stood up and looked at her in wonderment. A thick, dark cloak covered her from head to foot and, being drawn in around her throat with a string, formed a hood which quite hid her face. When she lifted the lighted lamp to the bracket he saw with a thrill that her arms were bare from firm, round wrist to shapely shoulder. Then she slowly turned towards him and gazed fixedly into his eyes from the darkness of her hood. Lifting her hands slowly to her throat she untied the string, and then made a sudden, backward movement with her head. The cloak slid down behind her to the floor.

She was clad after the fashion of her native land in a "kabaai," or robe of delicate, fawn-coloured silk, and a "sarong" or skirt of the same material, cerise-coloured. Her thick, glossy, black hair hung loosely over her shoulders; her throat, arms, and ankles were bare, and her feet were covered by delicate sandals of crimson silk. In her hair and around her bosom were garlanded white blossoms of a kind that Brand was unacquainted with, strung together after the manner of the "melatti"

flowers, and emitting a very sweet and pungent scent.

They stood, hardly a pace apart, and gazed at each other, the girl with parted lips and heaving breast, and Brand awed to a statue before her beauty and the spell of her eyes. Then she said in a steady voice:

"I have come to bid you farewell. To-morrow morning the doors will be opened to you, and you can go forth; then I shall die."

She spoke with a calmness that carried conviction. Brand's love had become as necessary to her untutored heart, with its wild, elemental promptings, as the air to her nostrils; and he, with his perceptions rendered acute by emotional stress, knew that she spoke but the truth.

Then Aiala's strength seemed suddenly to give way; she covered her face with her hands, swayed like a lily in the wind, and faltered to the ground at Brand's feet.

The spell was broken; the love in the rising stream of which he had unwittingly been standing overwhelmed and bore Brand away in its resistless course. He bent down to Aiala and clasped her to his breast.

She nestled to him with low murmurs of blissful content, and wound her soft arms about his neck.

As their lips met for the first time, the sordid world rolled away and was forgotten, and they seemed to rest on some palm-shaded isle in a sea of infinite delight, where the waves sang around them strong songs of peace and joy.

_Three_.

Thus love grew, burgeoned, and flowered between these two thus strangely thrown together in the house of pestilence and death, like some rich, exotic plant. Brand no longer thought of departing. To him had come the end of Time, and the realisation of Eternity through infinity of joy. The ever-present danger of discovery, the inevitable consequence of which would have been death, added ardour to their bliss even as wind causes glowing embers to flush and glow more hotly. Their short meetings were full of rapture, and the hours they spent apart were long, delicious trances of remembrance and antic.i.p.ation. Time was like a golden chain studded here and there at uncertain intervals with fire-hearted rubies.

The rainy, tempestuous weather continued, but the lovers did not miss the sun by day nor the stars by night. Safe in their warm nest they would listen to the m.u.f.fled roar of the rain on the masoned roof, thrilling with a delicious realisation of the contrast between the cold and darkness outside, and the love and light which filled their little chamber. Under the influence of fulfilled love Aiala became a new being, developing fresh and wonderful qualities every day. To her lover she was a perpetually unfolding rose of wonder and sweetness. Once, in the midst of a spring-day noon of changing moods she burst into tears, flung herself at Brand's feet, and confessed that she had all along deceived him as to the difficulty of escaping; that on any of the nights of his imprisonment she could, without much danger, have guided him through the almost deserted house and into the silent street. Would he forgive her for having thus deceived him? He only found in what she told him a reason for loving her the more, if that were possible.

One morning, after Aiala had left him, Brand heard the sound of footsteps and voices in the lower chamber. Then followed silence.

After some little time he lifted the trap-door and looked down. He saw, lying upon trestles, the hideous corpse of an old woman,--another victim of the scourge. When Aiala came again she did not mention the circ.u.mstance, and when Brand asked her about it she appeared to consider it not worth regarding. The body was that of the last of the original domestic servants, who had died during the previous night. It was removed for burial after dark.

Now and then Brand thought carelessly of the possibility of either Aiala or himself taking the disease, but familiarity had, as is usual, bred contempt for the danger. Moreover, Brand was strongly imbued with fatalism, absorbed insensibly from the people among whom so much of his life had been spent. Once when he alluded to the danger, Aiala mocked lightly at the notion, and he felt rea.s.sured. The superabundant vitality with which she thrilled seemed as though it were sufficient to defy any form of disease, if not death itself.

Aiala took the greatest delight in ministering to the wants of her lover. She brought him food in delicate variety, and changes of wearing apparel. He now dressed like a Malay of superior rank, in loose, white trousers, long smock, short, sleeveless jacket of velvet, pointed sandals, and silken turban. The latter she would over and over again skilfully roll for him, place upon his head, and immediately disarrange with an embrace.

Seven golden days dawned under a pall of tempest and drenching rain, each with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup of delight for their unsated lips. Seven nights of fierce storm curtained them away from a world of shifting shadows with a rich fabric woven in the golden loom of happy dreams.

Death was busy all around them, but they heeded him not, and he forebore to smite. Perhaps the genius of happiness that guested with them for a little time shielded their nest with a wing which even the Destroyers dart could not pierce.

The eighth morning brought a cloudless sun, before the garish face of which their bliss melted like a snow-flake on the lips of a rose.

When Brand looked out into the bright, bracing morning he awoke from his trance and again yearned for freedom. The whole man in him revolted against this hiding like a mole in the earth. The sunshine and the cool, moist air seemed to call him forth in tones of imperative command.

His love for Aiala had not in the slightest degree diminished, but a horror at his situation, which was accentuated by the pure, blue sky, fell upon him when he realised the nature of his surroundings. A longing to lave in the cold, cleansing sea came over him, and he felt that he must go forth, taking Aiala with him. He was prepared to acknowledge her as his wife in the face of the world, and in all his plans for the future she was inextricably woven.

Aiala had slipped away from his side before dawn while he was yet sleeping, and it was the middle of the forenoon before she was able to return. She found him pacing to and fro like a caged lion raging for its freedom.

Brand clasped her in his arms and poured out his trouble in a torrent of pa.s.sionate words. She freed herself gently from his embrace and knelt before him with her head bowed in token of submission. She had understood in a flash the state of her lover's mind, and the strength of his longing to go forth, and she submitted to the inevitable. One of the most marked effects which their mutual, virginal pa.s.sion had upon these two was, that they became one in a very real sense. Aiala, as a woman, naturally absorbed more of Brand than he did of her, and it was the intuitive perception of his thoughts, his hopes, and his needs manifested by Aiala which struck her lover with a sense of wonder and almost with fear. It sometimes felt as though he had recreated her in his own mental and spiritual image and likeness.

It was decided that Brand was to make his escape just before midnight, Aiala guiding him through the front door into the street. He was to dress as a Malay, leaving his own clothes to be disposed of by Aiala amongst the lumber in the lower room. He was to return forty-eight hours later, and these two meant then to wander forth together into the wide world.

The last few hours of companionship which remained to them seemed to be blighted by the shadow of impending woe. After they had arranged the preliminaries regarding Brand's departure they hardly spoke again to each other, but sat locked in a silent, close embrace. The vivid colour and the ethereal, bliss-born light had faded out of Aiala's lovely face, and given place to a shaded pallor. Her eyes were more wonderful than ever; the pupils having dilated to such an extent that the irises were completely absorbed.

It was at about eleven o'clock that Aiala ascended the ladder for the last time, for the purpose of leading her lover forth. She hung around his neck a thin gold chain with a large pearl clasped by a rough, gold band attached to it. They bade each other a silent, tearless, pa.s.sionate farewell, and then went forth, down the ladder and across the yard, Aiala leading and Brand following with steps that faltered now that the parting was so near. Had Aiala asked him to stay now at the last moment he would have done so without hesitation, but although the word was probably upon her lips, for she always divined Brand's moods, she did not speak it.