Wild Honey Part 16

"_What was the promise_?"

A wave of colour pa.s.sed over her face and her eyes darkened with tears.

"I think you know," she cried miserably.

"You must break it," he said firmly. "You are mine--you must come with me."

"No," she said crying, "I cannot."

Her face bright and pale in the white light was like the face of a brave boy looking on death. The heat and madness went out of Carden. He took her hand very gently and kissed it, then he walked away into the night.

But out on the hot scented veld he thought of the gifts in her eyes and madness came upon him again. A promise! Can the dead bind the living with promises? Can a sinner make a saint out of her child by laying an injunction on her young soul! He laughed loud and bitterly in the night, and the birds stirred in the trees at so strange a sound. A "bush baby" curled in some distant clump of mimosa began to wail, and the dog that had followed his master from the farm whined uneasily. He had walked far and long. The swift rush of the river was close at hand, and the whereabouts of the farm could only be guessed by one little faint yellow light that streaked across the distance. Someone was keeping vigil.

Somewhere near this spot Kavanagh had met the end so fitting to his wild adventurous life. _Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword_! The lawless had fallen victim to the lawless! But he had found his own before the end came, was Carden's thought.

What did Death matter when one had drunk to the dregs the cup Life holds to the lips of lovers? A good enough way to die too, by G.o.d! A short sharp struggle with the odds against him--then, very swiftly, the end!

_Married to a Boer_! Those dewy dreaming eyes that were of his land-- that black hair that winged above her forehead like the wings of a raven--that ardent spirit that had leaped from her eyes to his--married to a Boer! And he, Wilberforce Carden, who had always taken what he wanted from life, wrenched it from men's hands and women's lips, _he_ must be denied and go empty away!

He forgot now that when he thought her free he had successfully resisted the idea of marrying her as a solution to the problem, and forgot too that her accent jarred on him. Remembered only the gifts her eyes had for him--and thought that with her, out under the stars he could forget the world into which she would not fit. And it was no good. She was married to a Boer!

Raging he bit on the empty pipe in his mouth, and blood came into his eyes so that he could no longer see clearly, but went stumbling on his way, raging, cursing. He would have liked to have that Boer who was "not unkind" to her under his hands out there in the veld. He flung himself like a boy face down on the earth. After a little while, lying there, a quietness fell upon him. The cool brain that had out-finessed many another cool brain woke up and began to consider the situation from the point of view of the man who does not mean to lose, whatever the game may be. He lay so still that his dog who sat uneasily by him thought he must be asleep and from time to time gently licked his ear.

But Dark Carden was not asleep. He was fighting a battle with his better self; with such rags and remnants of a conscience as survived in him; with a last unbroken moral code. At last he got up and retraced his steps quietly and firmly like a man with a purpose. His eyes had grown a little harder. The battle was lost.

Dawn was not more than an hour or two off when he returned to the farm.

The stars were darkening, and the indescribable freshness of morning could be felt in the air. Shadows under tree and bush were stirring as if for flight. A wedge-shaped flock of wild duck pa.s.sed, honking mournfully, towards the east.

The light in the farmhouse had gone out; but as he came quietly to the stoep he heard from a window that stood ajar a sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping. A little while he stood there, listening, then gently he pushed the window further open and stepped into the room.

The soft and broken weeping ceased.

They stayed three days and nights at Grey-Kopje farm. Talfourd and Carden went out shooting daily, returning at meal times, laden with small game to restock the larder. Always after dinner the three sat on the stoep as on the first night, and Talfourd sang while the other two listened. Swartz had brought back fresh horses on the evening of the first day, but Carden found fault with them and made him return for others. On the second day, a native carrier sent out with instructions to search the road for Carden brought a letter from the men waiting in Tuli who wanted to know what delayed him and why he did not materialise?

Talfourd wanted to know too, but knew better than to ask. Carden was a man who took badly to any kind of ill-timed inquiry.

On the fourth morning, Swartz had not returned, but Talfourd with the clear eye of a man who has accomplished nine hours of sound sleep with nothing on his conscience, glanced out of the window and noted Carden picking out of the cart things he would not be likely to need before reaching Tuli. "Hurray! we're going to make a move at last!" he said to himself, and made haste to perform his toilette.

At the breakfast table, it struck him that Carden looked older than a man of thirty-four ought to look, however swift has been the pace.

However, he kept his observations to himself. It transpired that Carden's plan was that he and Talfourd should start for Webb's immediately after breakfast, leaving the cart to be brought on later by Swartz when he turned up with horses.

"If we don't meet him we can send on someone else for it."

"How are we going to get there?" said Talfourd looking up in surprise.

"I suppose we can foot thirty miles without endangering our lives?"

answered Carden with something so very like a sneer and so very unlike his usual impa.s.sive serenity that Talfourd was even more surprised.

"Oh, all right, my dear fellow," he said pleasantly. "It's your picnic.

I only wanted to know."

Mrs de Beer sat listening without comment, but she grew very pale.

Afterwards Talfourd went out to get the guns ready, and Carden remained sitting at the table.

"You are going?" she said looking away from him with eyes that were no longer dewy but dry and brilliant like the sky above the Karoo in days of drought.

"Yes," he answered in a business-like voice. "I must go." He got up and looked out of the window for a moment, then walked back to the table.

"My friends are waiting for me at Tuli."

"Yes," she said.

"I cannot break faith with them."

"No." Her mouth was twisted like the mouth of a tortured child, but her eyes remained bright and dry.

Carden's faithless heart smote him.

"For G.o.d's sake, Frances--" he muttered, taking her hands. "I will stay if you wish it"--But his heart was already away with his friends and the waiting miles beyond. She read the truth in his eyes. No word _now_ of her coming with him! Only of his staying--if she wished it!

She looked into his eyes a long aching moment, then turned away with one word:

"Good-bye."

A few hours later all was as it had been at the Grey farm. Even the cart was gone, for Swartz had brought four st.u.r.dy mules and driven it away. Under the lone tree Xsosa, the baboon, sat silent, watching the kopjes with fierce wistful eyes. Silence everywhere, except in one room of the house whence came the sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping.

Once some Kaffir words spoken savagely yet with a kind of crooning tenderness came through an open window.

"See you now what you have got from watching the road!--a knife in your heart. Did not old Grietje warn you? Hush arme _kindje_--weep not."

But the soft and broken weeping went on.

Across the arid flats of Bechua.n.a.land went Carden with company picked for its excellence in fair weather or foul; but sometimes on the fairest, fullest day a pang of loneliness would shoot through him, darkening his mental horizon and isolating him from his fellows. The Forest of Somabula gave splendid sport, but in its deep silences he sometimes thought he could hear the sound of a woman weeping. And all the water sweeping down the violet black precipices of Victoria Falls and twirling lazily in the subtle olive green pool below could not wash out the remembrance of a mouth that was twisted like the mouth of a little tortured child. But his conscience had great sleeping qualities.

Also, he had not been using his will for ten years to fight and "down"

other men without strengthening its sinews for his own service. He _willed_ not to remember certain things, therefore in time will knocked memory out, or at least put it into Chancery where it could no longer hurt him until he released it, or it proved strong enough to release itself.

After that the trip was as complete a success for him, as it had been from the beginning to the others.

Everything favoured them. Sport was extraordinarily good, boys reliable, mules and oxen in fine condition, weather unfailingly serene.

The objective point of the trip was Lake Rudolph in British East Africa, via British Central and German territory. The route had been picked and pored over long before the start and nothing intervened to spoil the original plans. With an almost uncanny smoothness the days unclosed, rolled themselves out, and closed again, full to the brim with event and adventure, leaving no spare moment in which to remember the life left hundreds of miles behind; thereafter swiftly transforming themselves into weeks and months, until more than half the year was done.

Then one lovely moonlight night on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Bangwelo memory without comprehensible rhyme or reason came out of Chancery and stayed with Carden. And thereafter it came regularly. Will had no power over it any longer. Like a little spectral child that was afraid to be out alone it came oftenest when the moon was sinking and the dawn only an hour or two off. Nearly always its lips were twisted with pain, and on dark nights he could hear it softly weeping. But there were nights when it was not a sad ghost and these were hardest to bear. Sometimes it threw a soft warm arm round his throat and woke him very tenderly because the dawn was near and he must go. At other times it would leave a kiss fresh as a flower across his lips and he would fling out his arms and wake with a curse to find them empty. But always in some wise or another the little ghost kept vigil with him.

Then slowly, little by little, he began to hate things, and things repaid him as they always do, by going wrong. Boys began to run away when they were most needed, donkeys took to dying (the ox-waggons had long been left behind), carriers got fever and died, and those engaged in their place ofttimes scooted leaving packs by the wayside. Big game, after long tracking, escaped though wounded, in the end. One of the other fellows went down with malaria and pa.s.sed out. The rest of them grew morose and sick of the whole business. Some of them began to talk of the affairs that awaited their attention down-country. But Carden meant to bring back a white rhino from the sh.o.r.es of the Rudolph and he said so, though G.o.d knew that he too was sick of the business. Not a night now that he did not lie down with maledictions in his heart; not a morning when he rose to a world glittering with frost crystals that looked as though they had been shaken from some giant Christmas card (everywhere except on the dark spots where sleepers had lain) but his first thought was to curse the day he was born and jibe at every good thing life had bestowed on him.

The year was two months short of completion when the other men began to drop off. Le Breton and Senier took a dozen boys and walked for Mozambique. Vincent was dead. Talfourd, the last to go, joined at Tabora another man who was making his way to Daar-es-Saalem. Carden was left alone with his determination to finish at Lake Rudolph or die in the attempt. The determination was undermined at nights by a spectre which whispered him alluring invitations to embark at Momba.s.sa for the Cape and thence from Petersburg to take the Tuli road. But by day he was far from the intention of doing anything of the kind, though after being away nearly a year and a half he had very good reasons for hastening his return. Occasional batches of letters that reached him at prearranged posts notified an urgency for his presence on the Rand, but it had grown to be a matter almost of defiance now that he should make Rudolph, though who or what it was he defied he omitted to specify, even to himself.

And he _did_ make Rudolph though it took him three months to do it and another three months to get back. When he arrived at Momba.s.sa with his white rhino trophies, he was looking a good deal the worse for wear, and it may be computed that his system contained more than one man's fair share of malarial and tropical trypanosomes. But he was once more immune to spectral memories at least and so far master of his destiny as to be able with a firm mind to arrange his affairs down south by letter and cable and take s.h.i.+p for Europe instead of the Cape. Via the East Coast he reached Egypt and made a month's stay; then to Ma.r.s.eilles and several months loitering on the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es. But his objective point now was Ireland and by land and water he came at last to that fair, green land. For one of the conclusions he had arrived at during the lonely later months of his expedition was that man was not meant to live alone and that the hour had struck for him to find the beautiful, accomplished, and well-born girl who doubtless awaited him somewhere in his own country. Ireland indeed is the home of many such, and in and out of Dublin during a specially gay dancing and hunting season he found no scarcity of the usual supply. But none were for him. Always, even in the most charming, something lacked, some little, vital, essential thing--he knew not what, and did not wish to a.n.a.lyse, and never stayed to find out. Once or twice, when he lingered in curiosity, the keys of his castle were almost out of his hands, for the dark face of Dark Carden had not lost its lure for women, and many a beautiful eye grew brighter for his coming and more than one society beauty made up her mind that it would be "rather good fun" to go to South Africa as this adventurer's bride. But Carden escaped always, and with a sense of breathlessness and relief that was extraordinary considering the nature of his quest.