Allan's Wife
Page 17
A week after Hendrika's death I left Babyan Kraals. The place washateful to me now; it was a haunted place. I sent for old Indaba-zimbiand told him that I was going. He answered that it was well. "The placehas served your turn," he said; "here you have won that joy which it wasfated you should win, and have suffered those things that it was fatedyou should suffer. Yes, and though you know it not now, the joy and thesuffering, like the sunshine and the storm, are the same thing, and willrest at last in the same heaven, the heaven from which they came. Nowgo, Macumazahn."
I asked him if he was coming with me.
"No," he answered, "our paths lie apart henceforth, Macumazahn. We mettogether for certain ends. Those ends are fulfilled. Now each one goeshis own way. You have still many years before you, Macumazahn; my yearsare few. When we shake hands here it will be for the last time. Perhapswe may meet again, but it will not be in this world. Henceforth we haveeach of us a friend the less."
"Heavy words," I said.
"True words," he answered.
Well, I have little heart to write the rest of it. I went, leavingIndaba-zimbi in charge of the place, and making him a present of suchcattle and goods as I did not want.
Tota, I of course took with me. Fortunately by this time she had almostrecovered the shock to her nerves. The baby Harry, as he was afterwardsnamed, was a fine healthy child, and I was lucky in getting arespectable native woman, whose husband had been killed in the fightwith the baboons, to accompany me as his nurse.
Slowly, and followed for a distance by all the people, I trekked awayfrom Babyan Kraals. My route towards Natal was along the edge of theBad Lands, and my first night's outspan was beneath that very tree whereStella, my lost wife, had found us as we lay dying of thirst.
I did not sleep much that night. And yet I was glad that I had not diedin the desert about eleven months before. I felt then, as from yearto year I have continued to feel while I wander through the lonelywilderness of life, that I had been preserved to an end. I had won mydarling's love, and for a little while we had been happy together. Ourhappiness was too perfect to endure. She is lost to me now, but she islost to be found again.
Here on the following morning I bade farewell to Indaba-zimbi.
"Good-bye, Macumazahn," he said, nodding his white lock at me. "Good-byefor a while. I am not a Christian; your father could not make me that.But he was a wise man, and when he said that those who loved each othershall meet again, he did not lie. And I too am a wise man in my way,Macumazahn, and I say it is true that we shall meet again. All myprophecies to you have come true, Macumazahn, and this one shall cometrue also. I tell you that you shall return to Babyan Kraals and shallnot find me. I tell you that you shall journey to a further land thanBabyan Kraals and shall find me. Farewell!" and he took a pinch ofsnuff, turned, and went.
Of my journey down to Natal there is little to tell. I met with manyadventures, but they were of an every-day kind, and in the end arrivedsafely at Port Durban, which I now visited for the first time. Both Totaand my baby boy bore the journey well. And here I may as well chroniclethe destiny of Tota. For a year she remained under my charge. Then shewas adopted by a lady, the wife of an English colonel, who was stationedat the Cape. She was taken by her adopted parents to England, whereshe grew up a very charming and pretty girl, and ultimately married aclergyman in Norfolk. But I never saw her again, though we often wroteto each other.
Before I returned to the country of my birth, she too had been gatheredto the land of shadows, leaving three children behind her. Ah me! allthis took place so long ago, when I was young who now am old.
Perhaps it may interest the reader to know the fate of Mr. Carson'sproperty, which should of course have gone to his grandson Harry. Iwrote to England to claim the estate on his behalf, but the lawyerto whom the matter was submitted said that my marriage to Stella, nothaving been celebrated by an ordained priest, was not legal according toEnglish law, and therefore Harry could not inherit. Foolishly enoughI acquiesced in this, and the property passed to a cousin of myfather-in-law's; but since I have come to live in England I have beeninformed that this opinion is open to great suspicion, and that thereis every probability that the courts would have declared the marriageperfectly binding as having been solemnly entered into in accordancewith the custom of the place where it was contracted. But I am now sorich that it is not worth while to move in the matter. The cousin isdead, his son is in possession, so let him keep it.
Once, and once only, did I revisit Babyan Kraals. Some fifteen yearsafter my darling's death, when I was a man in middle life, I undertookan expedition to the Zambesi, and one night outspanned at the mouth ofthe well-known valley beneath the shadow of the great peak. I mountedmy horse, and, quite alone, rode up the valley, noticing with a strangeprescience of evil that the road was overgrown, and, save for the musicof the waterfalls, the place silent as death. The kraals that used to beto the left of the road by the river had vanished. I rode towards theirsite; the mealie fields were choked with weeds, the paths were dumb withgrass. Presently I reached the place. There, overgrown with grass, werethe burnt ashes of the kraals, and there among the ashes, gleaming inthe moonlight, lay the white bones of men. Now it was clear to me. Thesettlement had been fallen on by some powerful foe, and its inhabitantsput to the assegai. The forebodings of the natives had come true; BabyanKraals were peopled by memories alone.
I passed on up the terraces. There shone the roofs of the marble huts.They would not burn, and were too strong to be easily pulled down. Ientered one of them--it had been our sleeping hut--and lit a candlewhich I had with me. The huts had been sacked; leaves of books andbroken mouldering fragments of the familiar furniture lay about. ThenI remembered that there was a secret place hollowed in the floor andconcealed by a stone, where Stella used to hide her little treasures. Iwent to the stone and dragged it up. There was something within wrappedin rotting native cloth. I undid it. It was the dress my wife had beenmarried in. In the centre of the dress were the withered wreath andflowers she had worn, and with them a little paper packet. I opened it;it contained a lock of my own hair!
I remembered then that I had searched for this dress when I came awayand could not find it, for I had forgotten the secret recess in thefloor.
Taking the dress with me, I left the hut for the last time. Leavingmy horse tied to a tree, I walked to the graveyard, through the ruinedgarden. There it was a mass of weeds, but over my darling's grave grew aself-sown orange bush, of which the scented petals fell in showers on tothe mound beneath. As I drew near, there was a crash and a rush. A greatbaboon leapt from the centre of the graveyard and vanished into thetrees. I could almost believe that it was the wraith of Hendrika doomedto keep an eternal watch over the bones of the woman her jealous ragehad done to death.
I tarried there a while, filled with such thoughts as may not bewritten. Then, leaving my dead wife to her long sleep where the watersfall in melancholy music beneath the shadow of the everlasting mountain,I turned and sought that spot where first we had told our love. Now theorange grove was nothing but a tangled thicket; many of the trees weredead, choked with creepers, but some still flourished. There stood theone beneath which we had lingered, there was the rock that had been ourseat, and there on the rock sat the wraith of _Stella_, the Stella whomI had wed! Ay! there she sat, and on her upturned face was that samespiritual look which I saw upon it in the hour when we first had kissed.The moonlight shone in her dark eyes, the breeze wavered in her curlinghair, her breast rose and fell, a gentle smile played about herparted lips. I stood transfixed with awe and joy, gazing on that lostloveliness which once was mine. I could not speak, and she spoke noword; she did not even seem to see me. Now her eyes fell. For a momentthey met mine, and their message entered into me.
Then she was gone. She was gone; nothing was left but the tremulousmoonlight falling where she had been, the melancholy music of thewaters, the shadow of the everlasting mountain, and, in my heart, thesorrow and the hope.
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