The Story of an African Farm Part 48

"Why did you send that money back to me? You are cruel to me; it is not rightly done."

She rolled the little red pencil softly between her fingers, and her face grew very soft. Yet:

"It cannot be," she wrote; "I thank you much for the love you have shown me; but I cannot listen. You will call me mad, foolish--the world would do so; but I know what I need and the kind of path I must walk in. I cannot marry you. I will always love you for the sake of what lay by me those three hours; but there it ends. I must know and see, I cannot be bound to one whom I love as I love you. I am not afraid of the world--I will fight the world. One day--perhaps it may be far off--I shall find what I have wanted all my life; something n.o.bler, stronger than I, before which I can kneel down. You lose nothing by not having me now; I am a weak, selfish, erring woman. One day I shall find something to wors.h.i.+p, and then I shall be--"

"Nurse," she said; "take my desk away; I am suddenly so sleepy; I will write more tomorrow." She turned her face to the pillow; it was the sudden drowsiness of great weakness. She had dropped asleep in a moment, and Gregory moved the desk softly, and then sat in the chair watching.

Hour after hour pa.s.sed, but he had no wish for rest, and sat on, hearing the rain cease, and the still night settle down everywhere. At a quarter-past twelve he rose, and took a last look at the bed where she lay sleeping so peacefully; then he turned to go to his couch. Before he had reached the door she had started up and was calling him back.

"You are sure you have put it up?" she said, with a look of blank terror at the window. "It will not fall open in the night, the shutter--you are sure?"

He comforted her. Yes, it was tightly fastened.

"Even if it is shut," she said, in a whisper, "you cannot keep it out!

You feel it coming in at four o'clock, creeping, creeping, up, up; deadly cold!" She shuddered.

He thought she was wandering, and laid her little trembling body down among the blankets.

"I dreamed just now that it was not put up," she said, looking into his eyes; "and it crept right in and I was alone with it."

"What do you fear?" he asked, tenderly.

"The Grey Dawn," she said, glancing round at the window. "I was never afraid of anything, never, when I was a little child, but I have always been afraid of that. You will not let it come in to me?"

"No, no; I will stay with you," he continued.

But she was growing calmer. "No, you must go to bed. I only awoke with a start; you must be tired. I am childish, that is all;" but she s.h.i.+vered again.

He sat down beside her, after some time she said: "Will you not rub my feet?"

He knelt down at the foot of the bed and took the tiny foot in his hand; it was swollen and unsightly now, but as he touched it he bent down and covered it with kisses.

"It makes it better when you kiss it; thank you. What makes you all love me so?" Then dreamily she muttered to herself: "Not utterly bad, not quite bad--what makes them all love me so?"

Kneeling there, rubbing softly, with his cheek pressed against the little foot, Gregory dropped to sleep at last. How long he knelt there he could not tell; but when he started up awake she was not looking at him. The eyes were fixed on the far corner, gazing wide and intent, with an unearthly light.

He looked round fearfully. What did she see there? G.o.d's angels come to call her? Something fearful? He saw only the purple curtain with the shadows that fell from it. Softly he whispered, asking what she saw there.

And she said, in a voice strangely unlike her own: "I see the vision of a poor, weak soul striving after good. It was not cut short, and in the end it learnt, through tears and much pain, that holiness is an infinite compa.s.sion for others; that greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them; that"--She moved her white hand and laid it on her forehead--"happiness is a great love and much serving. It was not cut short; and it loved what it had learnt--it loved--and--"

Was that all she saw in the corner?

Gregory told the landlady the next morning that she had been wandering all night. Yet, when he came in to give her her breakfast, she was sitting up against the pillows, looking as he had not seen her look before.

"Put it close to me," she said, "and when I have had breakfast I am going to dress."

She finished all he had brought her eagerly.

"I am sitting up quite by myself," she said. "Give me his meat;" and she fed the dog herself, cutting his food small for him. She moved to the side of the bed.

"Now bring the chair near and dress me. It is being in this room so long, and looking at that miserable little bit of suns.h.i.+ne that comes in through the shutter, that is making me so ill. Always that lion's paw!"

she said, with a look of disgust at it. "Come and dress me." Gregory knelt on the floor before her, and tried to draw on one stocking, but the little swollen foot refused to be covered.

"It is very funny that I should have grown so fat since I have been so ill," she said, peering down curiously. "Perhaps it is want of exercise." She looked troubled and said again, "Perhaps it is want of exercise." She wanted Gregory to say so too. But he only found a larger pair; and then tried to force the shoes, oh, so tenderly, on to her little feet.

"There," she said, looking down at them when they were on, with the delight of a small child over its first shoes, "I could walk far now.

How nice it looks!"

"No," she said, seeing the soft gown he had prepared for her, "I will not put that on. Get one of my white dresses--the one with the pink bows. I do not even want to think I have been ill. It is thinking and thinking of things that makes them real," she said. "When you draw your mind together, and resolve that a thing shall not be, it gives way before you; it is not. Everything is possible if one is resolved," she said. She drew in her little lips together, and Gregory obeyed her; she was so small and slight now it was like dressing a small doll. He would have lifted her down from the bed when he had finished, but she pushed him from her, laughing very softly. It was the first time she had laughed in those long, dreary months.

"No, no; I can get down myself," she said, slipping cautiously on to the floor. "You see!" She cast a defiant glance of triumph when she stood there. "Hold the curtain up high, I want to look at myself."

He raised it, and stood holding it. She looked into the gla.s.s on the opposite wall.

Such a queenly little figure in its pink and white. Such a transparent little face, refined by suffering into an almost angel-like beauty. The face looked at her; she looked back, laughing softly. Doss, quivering with excitement, ran round her, barking. She took one step toward the door, balancing herself with outstretched hands.

"I am nearly there," she said.

Then she groped blindly.

"Oh, I cannot see! I cannot see! Where am I?" she cried.

When Gregory reached her she had fallen with her face against the sharp foot of the wardrobe and cut her forehead. Very tenderly he raised the little crushed heap of muslin and ribbons, and laid it on the bed. Doss climbed up, and sat looking down at it. Very softly Gregory's hands disrobed her.

"You will be stronger tomorrow, and then we shall try again," he said, but she neither looked at him nor stirred.

When he had undressed her, and laid her in bed, Doss stretched himself across her feet and lay whining softly.

So she lay all that morning, and all that afternoon.

Again and again Gregory crept close to the bedside and looked at her; but she did not speak to him. Was it stupor or was it sleep that shone under those half-closed eyelids. Gregory could not tell.

At last in the evening he bent over her.

"The oxen have come," he said; "we can start tomorrow if you like. Shall I get the wagon ready tonight?"

Twice he repeated his question. Then she looked up at him, and Gregory saw that all hope had died out of the beautiful eyes. It was not stupor that shone there, it was despair.

"Yes, let us go," she said.

"It makes no difference," said the doctor; "staying or going; it is close now."

So the next day Gregory carried her out in his arms to the wagon which stood inspanned before the door. As he laid her down on the kartel she looked far out across the plain. For the first time she spoke that day.

"That blue mountain, far away; let us stop when we get to it, not before." She closed her eyes again. He drew the sails down before and behind, and the wagon rolled away slowly. The landlady and the n.i.g.g.e.rs stood to watch it from the stoep.

Very silently the great wagon rolled along the gra.s.s-covered plain. The driver on the front box did not clap his whip or call to his oxen, and Gregory sat beside him with folded arms. Behind them, in the closed wagon, she lay with the dog at her feet, very quiet, with folded hands.

He, Gregory, dared not be in there. Like Hagar, when she laid her treasure down in the wilderness, he sat afar off:--"For Hagar said, Let me not see the death of the child."