Allan's Wife Page 10

  CHAPTER IX

  "LET US GO IN, ALLAN!"

  It is very difficult for me to describe the period of time which elapsedbetween my arrival at Babyan's Peak and my marriage with Stella. When Ilook back on it, it seems sweet as with the odour of flowers, and dimas with the happy dusk of summer eves, while through the sweetness comesthe sound of Stella's voice, and through the gloom shines the starlightof her eyes. I think that we loved each other from the first, though fora while we said no word of love. Day by day I went about the place withher, accompanied by little Tota and Hendrika only, while she attendedto the thousand and one matters which her father's ever-growing weaknesshad laid upon her; or rather, as time drew on, I attended to thebusiness, and she accompanied me. All day through we were together. Thenafter supper, when the night had fallen, we would walk together in thegarden and come at length to hear her father read aloud sometimes fromthe works of a poet, sometimes from history. Or, if he did not feelwell, Stella would read, and when this was done, Mr. Carson wouldcelebrate a short form of prayer, and we would separate till the morningonce more brought our happy hour of meeting.

  So the weeks went by, and with every week I grew to know my darlingbetter. Often, I wonder now, if my fond fancy deceives me, or if indeedthere are women as sweet and dear as she. Was it solitude that had givensuch depth and gentleness to her? Was it the long years of communingwith Nature that had endowed her with such peculiar grace, the grace wefind in opening flowers and budding trees? Had she caught that murmuringvoice from the sound of the streams which fall continually about herrocky home? was it the tenderness of the evening sky beneath which sheloved to walk, that lay like a shadow on her face, and the light of theevening stars that shone in her quiet eyes? At the least to me she wasthe realization of that dream which haunts the sleep of sin-stained men;so my memory paints her, so I hope to find her when at last the sleephas rolled away and the fevered dreams are done.

  At last there came a day--the most blessed of my life, when we told ourlove. We had been together all the morning, but after dinner Mr. Carsonwas so unwell that Stella stopped in with him. At supper we met again,and after supper, when she had put little Tota, to whom she had grownmuch attached, to bed, we went out, leaving Mr. Carson dozing on thecouch.

  The night was warm and lovely, and without speaking we walked up thegarden to the orange grove and sat down upon a rock. There was a littlebreeze which shook the petals of the orange blooms over us in showers,and bore their delicate fragrance far and wide. Silence reigned around,broken only by the sound of the falling waterfalls that now died to afaint murmur, and now, as the wavering breeze turned, boomed loudlyin our ears. The moon was not yet visible, but already the dark cloudswhich floated through the sky above us--for there had been rain--showeda glow of silver, telling us that she shone brightly behind the peak.Stella began to talk in her low, gentle voice, speaking to me of herlife in the wilderness, how she had grown to love it, how her mind hadgone on from idea to idea, and how she pictured the great rushing worldthat she had never seen as it was reflected to her from the books whichshe had read. It was a curious vision of life that she had: things wereout of proportion to it; it was more like a dream than a reality--amirage than the actual face of things. The idea of great cities, andespecially of London, had a kind of fascination for her: she couldscarcely realize the rush, the roar and hurry, the hard crowds of menand women, strangers to each other, feverishly seeking for wealth andpleasure beneath a murky sky, and treading one another down in the furyof their competition.

  "What is it all for?" she asked earnestly. "What do they seek? Having sofew years to live, why do they waste them thus?"

  I told her that in the majority of instances it was actual hardnecessity that drove them on, but she could barely understand me. Livingas she had done, in the midst of the teeming plenty of a fruitful earth,she did not seem to be able to grasp the fact that there were millionswho from day to day know not how to stay their hunger.

  "I never want to go there," she went on; "I should be bewildered andfrightened to death. It is not natural to live like that. God put Adamand Eve in a garden, and that is how he meant their children to live--inpeace, and looking always on beautiful things. This is my idea ofperfect life. I want no other."

  "I thought you once told me that you found it lonely," I said.

  "So I did," she answered, innocently, "but that was before you came. NowI am not lonely any more, and it is perfect--perfect as the night."

  Just then the full moon rose above the elbow of the peak, and herrays stole far and wide down the misty valley, gleaming on the water,brooding on the plain, searching out the hidden places of the rocks,wrapping the fair form of nature as in a silver bridal veil throughwhich her beauty shone mysteriously.

  Stella looked down the terraced valley; she turned and looked up at thescarred face of the golden moon, and then she looked at me. The beautyof the night was about her face, the scent of the night was on her hair,the mystery of the night shone in her shadowed eyes. She looked at me, Ilooked on her, and all our hearts' love blossomed within us. We spoke noword--we had no words to speak, but slowly we drew near, till lips werepressed to lips as we kissed our eternal troth.

  It was she who broke that holy silence, speaking in a changed voice,in soft deep notes that thrilled me like the lowest chords of a smittenharp.

  "Ah, now I understand," she said, "now I know why we are lonely, and howwe can lose our loneliness. Now I know what it is that stirs us in thebeauty of the sky, in the sound of water and in the scent of flowers.It is Love who speaks in everything, though till we hear his voice weunderstand nothing. But when we hear, then the riddle is answered andthe gates of our heart are opened, and, Allan, we see the way that wendsthrough death to heaven, and is lost in the glory of which our love isbut a shadow.

  "Let us go in, Allan. Let us go before the spell breaks, so thatwhatever overtakes us, sorrow, death, or separation, we may always havethis perfect memory to save us. Come, dearest, let us go!"

  I rose like a man in a dream, still holding her by the hand. But as Irose my eye fell upon something that gleamed white among the foliageof the orange bush at my side. I said nothing, but looked. The breezestirred the orange leaves, the moonlight struck for a moment full uponthe white object.

  It was the face of Hendrika, the Babyan-woman, as Indaba-zimbi hadcalled her, and on it was a glare of hate that made me shudder.

  I said nothing; the face vanished, and just then I heard a baboon barkin the rocks behind.

  Then we went down the garden, and Stella passed into the centre hut. Isaw Hendrika standing in the shadow near the door, and went up to her.

  "Hendrika," I said, "why were you watching Miss Stella and myself in thegarden?"

  She drew her lips up till her teeth gleamed in the moonlight.

  "Have I not watched her these many years, Macumazahn? Shall I cease towatch because a wandering white man comes to steal her? Why were youkissing her in the garden, Macumazahn? How dare you kiss her who is astar?"

  "I kissed her because I love her, and because she loves me," I answered."What has that to do with you, Hendrika?"

  "Because you love her," she hissed in answer; "and do I not love heralso, who saved me from the babyans? I am a woman as she is, and you area man, and they say in the kraals that men love women better than womenlove women. But it is a lie, though this is true, that if a woman lovesa man she forgets all other love. Have I not seen it? I gather herflowers--beautiful flowers; I climb the rocks where you would never dareto go to find them; you pluck a piece of orange bloom in the garden andgive it to her. What does she do?--she takes the orange bloom, she putsit in her breast, and lets my flowers die. I call to her--she does nothear me--she is thinking. You whisper to some one far away, and shehears and smiles. She used to kiss me sometimes; now she kisses thatwhite brat you brought, because you brought it. Oh, I see it all--all; Ihave seen it from the first; you are stealing her from us, stealing herto yourself, and those who loved her before y
ou came are forgotten. Becareful, Macumazahn, be careful, lest I am revenged upon you. You, youhate me; you think me half a monkey; that servant of yours calls meBaboon-woman. Well, I have lived with baboons, and they are clever--yes,they can play tricks and know things that you don't, and I am clevererthan they, for I have learnt the wisdom of white people also, and I sayto you, Walk softly, Macumazahn, or you will fall into a pit," and withone more look of malice she was gone.

  I stood for a moment reflecting. I was afraid of this strange creaturewho seemed to combine the cunning of the great apes that had rearedher with the passions and skill of human kind. I foreboded evil at herhands. And yet there was something almost touching in the fierceness ofher jealousy. It is generally supposed that this passion only exists instrength when the object loved is of another sex from the lover, but Iconfess that, both in this instance and in some others which I have metwith, this has not been my experience. I have known men, and especiallyuncivilized men, who were as jealous of the affection of their friendor master as any lover could be of that of his mistress; and who hasnot seen cases of the same thing where parents and their children areconcerned? But the lower one gets in the scale of humanity, the morereadily this passion thrives; indeed, it may be said to come to itsintensest perfection in brutes. Women are more jealous than men,small-hearted men are more jealous than those of larger mind and widersympathy, and animals are the most jealous of all. Now Hendrika was insome ways not far removed from animal, which may perhaps account for theferocity of her jealousy of her mistress's affection.

  Shaking off my presentiments of evil, I entered the centre hut. Mr.Carson was resting on the sofa, and by him knelt Stella holding hishand, and her head resting on his breast. I saw at once that she hadbeen telling him of what had come about between us; nor was I sorry,for it is a task that a would-be son-in-law is generally glad to do bydeputy.

  "Come here, Allan Quatermain," he said, almost sternly, and my heartgave a jump, for I feared lest he might be about to require me to goabout my business. But I came.

  "Stella tells me," he went on, "that you two have entered into amarriage engagement. She tells me also that she loves you, and that yousay that you love her."

  "I do indeed, sir," I broke in; "I love her truly; if ever a woman wasloved in this world, I love her."

  "I thank Heaven for it," said the old man. "Listen, my children. Manyyears ago a great shame and sorrow fell upon me, so great a sorrow that,as I sometimes think, it affected my brain. At any rate, I determinedto do what most men would have considered the act of a madman, to go faraway into the wilderness with my only child, there to live remote fromcivilization and its evils. I did so; I found this place, and here wehave lived for many years, happily enough, and perhaps not without doinggood in our generation, but still in a way unnatural to our race andstatus. At first I thought I would let my daughter grow up in a state ofcomplete ignorance, that she should be Nature's child. But as time wenton, I saw the folly and the wickedness of my plan. I had no right todegrade her to the level of the savages around me, for if the fruitof the tree of knowledge is a bitter fruit, still it teaches good fromevil. So I educated her as well as I was able, till in the end I knewthat in mind, as in body, she was in no way inferior to her sisters, thechildren of the civilized world. She grew up and entered into womanhood,and then it came into my mind that I was doing her a bitter wrong, thatI was separating her from her kind and keeping her in a wilderness whereshe could find neither mate nor companion. But though I knew this, Icould not yet make up my mind to return to active life; I had grown tolove this place. I dreaded to return into the world I had abjured. Againand again I put my resolutions aside. Then at the commencement of thisyear I fell ill. For a while I waited, hoping that I might get better,but at last I realized that I should never get better, that the hand ofDeath was upon me."

  "Ah, no, father, not that!" Stella said, with a cry.

  "Yes, love, that, and it is true. Now you will be able to forget ourseparation in the happiness of a new meeting," and he glanced at meand smiled. "Well, when this knowledge came home to me, I determined toabandon this place and trek for the coast, though I well knew thatthe journey would kill me. I should never live to reach it. But Stellawould, and it would be better than leaving her here alone with savagesin the wilderness. On the very day that I had made up my mind to takethis step Stella found you dying in the Bad Lands, Allan Quatermain, andbrought you here. She brought you, of all men in the world, you, whosefather had been my dear friend, and who once with your baby hands hadsaved her life from fire, that she might live to save yours from thirst.At the time I said little, but I saw the hand of Providence in this, andI determined to wait and see what came about between you. At the worst,if nothing came about, I soon learned that I could trust you to see hersafely to the coast after I was gone. But many days ago I knew how itstood between you, and now things are determined as I prayed they mightbe. God bless you both, my children; may you be happy in your love;may it endure till death and beyond it. God bless you both!" and hestretched out his hand towards me.

  I took it, and Stella kissed him.

  Presently he spoke again--

  "It is my intention," he said, "if you two consent, to marry you nextSunday. I wish to do so soon, for I do not know how much longer will beallowed to me. I believe that such a ceremony, solemnly celebratedand entered into before witnesses, will, under the circumstances, beperfectly legal; but of course you will repeat it with every formalitythe first moment it lies in your power so to do. And now, there isone more thing: when I left England my fortunes were in a shatteredcondition; in the course of years they have recovered themselves,the accumulated rents, as I heard but recently, when the waggons lastreturned from Port Natal, have sufficed to pay off all charges, andthere is a considerable balance over. Consequently you will not marry onnothing, for of course you, Stella, are my heiress, and I wish to makea stipulation. It is this. That so soon as my death occurs you shouldleave this place and take the first opportunity of returning to England.I do not ask you to live there always; it might prove too much forpeople reared in the wilds, as both of you have been; but I do ask youto make it your permanent home. Do you consent and promise this?"

  "I do," I answered.

  "And so do I," said Stella.

  "Very well," he answered; "and now I am tired out. Again God bless youboth, and good-night."