Chapter 3

Drayton looked at me as if he might have said much more. But I changed the subject; it never occurred to me then that it might be a thrilling one. I went home later on and sat on the stoep and talked to my host. Browne had very little to say. He went off for a sunset walk, and never came to church at night. We sat up in the moonlight waiting for him afterwards. He came in at last and joined us on the stoep, but he was very silent. He would not have any supper. He smoked away furiously till bed-time.

I arranged a riding trip for all three visitors next morning. They were to off-saddle under some high kopjes about ten miles from town; they were to have a picnic and an amazing view. I could not go myself, as I had an appointment to keep. But I sent two Mashona boys to be their retinue; one of them was Johannes, my own right hand at home. I solemnly entrusted the strangers and their steeds to his keeping.

When I came in about sunset that Monday evening they had not returned. But before the daylight failed, three of them were back Mrs. Browne, Drayton, and the under-boy. Where were Browne and Johannes? Mrs. Browne seemed to be a little uneasy, but she affected to make light of what had happened. She said that her husband had wanted to see the country beyond, so he had gone on with the boy. He was sure to be back to-morrow, as he had taken so little food with him. Drayton said nothing at the time, but after dinner, when we were smoking on the stoep, he began to quote to me:

'I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful a faery's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.'

'What do you mean to insinuate?' I said.

'Oh, I don't mean anything libelous. Browne hasn't gone off with a comely Mashona. But, for all that, I believe he's taken Africa much too seriously. She has a grim fascination for me, but she doesn't stop at that with him. She grips him and orders him to come along.'

'Tell me about today,' I said.

'Browne acknowledged a little to me three days ago,' Drayton said. 'He told me that this huge Tamburlaine (or rather Zenocrate) of a country was giving him too heady a welcome. He said she was still in the Middle Ages, and not only there, but more than half outside the pale of Christendom, such as it was then. So she had strange forces at work in her, and used incantations to allure, in prodigal variety. He talked about Lapland, and some footling researches he had made into the magic of the north. He also told me a horrible tale or two of the South that he had found in the Bodleian. One was a real curdler, I can tell you. Jerry Browne's own moustache seemed to turn up like a German's as he imparted it to me. You know he's romantic enough in his way, though he does lead such a repressed life. You should see him at home.'

'But do tell me why he's gone off so suddenly,' said I, with some impatience.

'I can't tell you very much,' said Drayton. 'We rode out, and Jerry seemed tremendously cheerful quite sportive. Anyone who'd only known him in Park Crescent would have been much surprised to watch him and listen to the things he said. Mrs. Browne seemed a bit puzzled, I thought, at last. Then we came to the kopjes where there was a consummate view. You could see a long way to the north across a hugely wide plain. Browne climbed up on the highest rock with me a sort of flat slab, whereon you might immolate a hecatomb. He seemed more exhilarated than ever just then. Soon he slipped away down the rocks and left me smoking my pipe on high. About five minutes after I observed him making tracks across the northern plain. He was cantering his dappled mule for all it was worth; he was carrying nothing so far as I could see.

'I made haste down. I found that boy you said we could trust. I gave him two or three picnic rugs and what was left of our food to carry. I asked him to follow the rideaway, to stick to him, and to bring him back as soon as ever he could. Then I went to Mrs. Browne. She was sitting behind some bushes crying. She said Browne had said such a curious good-bye to her. He had spoken of riding on to see more of the country he had said he would be back in the morning. She had tried to dissuade him, but he seemed hardly to listen. She could scarcely believe that he had really gone without blankets or food. I reassured her, telling her that I had sent the boy and that you had said the boy was a good 'un. But if she thinks, or you think, that the old man will come back tomorrow, I don't.'

Tuesday passed anxiously both for Mrs. Browne and for me. Drayton was anxious in the wrong way, unless I misjudged him. I seemed to read triumph in his face as the hours went by and brought no Browne.

I grew haggard when evening drew on. What was I to do? But about sunset tidings came. A native, who had traveled into town from the north, brought me a penciled note from Johannes: 'My father, I ask you to come to us. Let your horse make haste. The white man will not turn. He has finished his food. He goes to the hills, he says. I think that he is mad. Pray for us! Johannes.'

I went to Mrs. Browne at once. I remember I found her sitting under a flaming hibiscus bush. She looked very pale and washed-out against it. I told her that her husband wanted to extend his tour. She burst into tears, and said she could not understand it. Then I told her that I meant going after him in the morning to try to hasten his return. She brightened up at that, and fell to planning what I should take with me. What comforts could she send Gerald in the comfortless desert without overloading me? I showed Johannes' note to Drayton after dinner. He whistled, and, to his credit, looked grave.

'I'm to go after him to-morrow,' I said. 'I've thought over it, and I think you may as well come too. You may be useful, as knowing his ways.'

He nodded. 'Rather bad about his running out of skoff, isn't it?' he asked. 'I wonder if he's out of baccy and just breaking his heart.' His plump face was pitiful.

'Don't you fret,' I answered. 'It only means he's run out of our food. They'll surely buy monkey-nuts or sweet-potatoes or rice in the kraals. He's probably developed a passion for native food by now, also for native snuff. He'll be able to buy some of that, surely.'

'Just so,' said Drayton. He began to quote again in a sort of droning chant as if he were a chorus recording the onsweep of a tragedy:

'I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she lean, and sing A faery's song.

'She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said I love thee true.'

In the morning we got a flying start after all, though Drayton was in bed when I came back from church. We went away at eight, and soon found, to our joy, that we were really well mounted. It was joy, too, to remember what a stubborn mule Browne had for pacing steed. He had not got away far, we assured ourselves. But we did not catch him that night.

We asked at kraals as we went along, and struck a hot scent about three in the afternoon. A white man had passed that morning a white man riding a dappled mule, with a boy carrying blankets behind him. Straightway we gave our ponies an off-saddle.

Afterwards we rode on hard in what we deemed to be the right direction till darkness fell: We sought shelter at a village then. There was no village gossip, alas! about the passing of a white man that day! They were good to us, though, those villagers, and gave us beans and monkey-nuts for supper and mealies for our ponies. After we had finished eating we spread out the rush-mat they had lent us and lay down to smoke and meditate and surmise as to our passionate pilgrim. They had given us a hut that was old and grimy with fires. Its floor teemed with life.

Therefore we changed our resting-place and went out to camp under a rocky eminence. There with a bedrock of austere granite we slept in peace. At glimmer of dawn we were saddling up. We rode to another kraal, but the folk there had no news for us.

We were close on the hills now at last. We came to a low river at the foot of them. We chose a landlocked pool that seemed to be immune from crocodiles, for a plunge. Next I girded myself for Sacrifice, and he served me. Then we made a fire and cooked a huge breakfast in the hungry morning air. Drayton grew quite lyrical as to the charm of the country before the meal was over.

'Browne's not far wrong about her,' he said; 'but there's reason in all things.'

That whole day we heard no news and found no spoor or sign. The hill-country gave us stiff climbing and rocky paths to ride. Kraals and clusters of gardens places where we might hope to hear tidings how few they were in that hill-country! We camped disconsolately at last in a forlorn garden among grey boulders where stumps of trees were burning. We found no trouble in building up a good night fire of half-burnt logs. We gave our ponies their nosebags and ate our own bread and bully rather silently. Then we surmised with some weariness and gloom over our pipes. At last we slept under the many eyes of the heavens.

About first cock-crow, when a chill struck through my blanket, I opened my eyes and looked towards the fire. Someone was sitting beside it watching me. Now that he saw me stirring he greeted me.

It was Johannes. 'I saw your fire but just now,' he said. 'Our fire is up there beyond great rocks. The white man has been very sick. I think he will come home now.'

I sprang to my feet and roused Drayton. He would not get up for a long time. I suspect he combined breakfast and lunch fairly often at Oxford. But I roused him mercilessly. I told him the news.

He argued in desperate fashion at first. 'How far's the sick bed,' he asked.

'Not more than a mile or so,' said I.

'Need we go till morning?' said he.

'Shame!' said I.

At last he sprang up.

As we clambered among the boulders, piloted by Johannes, he droned away at his chorus part:

'She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild, sad eyes With kisses four.

'And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd Ah woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side.'

We found Browne in a nook among the rocks. A fire was burning beside him. He seemed to be sleeping.

'He looks as if he'd been sick,' I said. 'We'd better let him sleep on!'

'Yes; let's go to bed ourselves,' said Drayton, yawning.

So we lay down on opposite sides of the fire. Such a red and splendid fire that cold cock-crow time!

Browne kept giving sharp little moans in his sleep, just as a dog will do of nights.

'He's started a nightmare,' said I. 'I wish we could help him to better dreams. I'd like to see what he sees just now.'

Drayton began to drone from his side of the fire:

'I saw pale kings and princes, too; Pale warriors death-pale were they all. They cried, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" hath thee in thrall.

'I saw their starved lips in the gloom With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.'

I asked a question: 'What will Browne like for breakfast, Drayton?'

'If he's come back to his civilized tastes, you'd better open that tin of sausages,' he said. 'You've got some squish, too, haven't you? Don't give him that bush-tea of yours!'

I was up long before Drayton. I had secured Browne's confidences before the sun had been risen an hour. 'I've had a sort of miserable ague,' he said. 'A cold and hot fever has been plaguing me. Some part of this last night has been savagely horrible. But I've sweated pounds of my weight away, and my fever's gone. Strange, isn't it?'

'Quite ordinary in this part of Africa,' I said, sharply and minimizingly. I handed him a shirt, and he doffed his drenched one. He did not tell me any more just then. His eyes watched me in a dazed, miserable way. I asked him to excuse me, and went off with Johannes to my service. When I came back his eyes were clearer, they had less of their look of wan-hope.

'Sinister country, this Africa,' he said. 'I was infatuated with her yesterday. Today I can't understand just what the attraction was. Her desolate moors seemed to make me drunk. See how she's served me! I never felt quite so sick as I've done most of this last day and night. Just before I woke it seemed to me I saw them in my dreams tens and twenties of her victims; men she's charmed and led on and on, and demoralized, ruined, killed and buried, and helped down-hill the way of the bottomless pit. I am better now; but I'm shaken. How thankful I'll be if only I get out of her, and can only stop thinking about her after that.'

I listened with grave attention. Then I gave him some bread and sausages, and he ate away ravenously. How ever many cups of tea did he drink afterwards?'

The above was all the avowal that Browne made to me. I do not think that he said nearly as much to Drayton as he did to me. Drayton plied me with questions that night, and I told him too much, to my regret.

Months afterwards a copy of an undergraduate paper, containing a fantasia on the events that I have recorded, reached me. It comprised much African coloring and some little humor. I wonder if it reached Browne or Mrs. Browne?

We got Browne home in little over a day. He hurried on, oftentimes when we wanted to rest. He seemed as anxious to emerge from the African desert as he had been to explore the deeps of it. He looked rakish and wretched as he bumped about upon his mule. His face was livid, and his black beard, that he used to cut so formally, desperately out of trim. His eyes were strangely bloodshot.

We reached home safely with our prize by noon on Saturday. Browne, as I have said, was all for getting on fast, and when we once started, his stubborn mount went well. It was won to emulation by the willingness of our ponies, I imagine.

Mrs. Browne was delighted at her Gerald's return. Yet I think it must have taken some months to restore her confidence in his sanity. She had had a sore shock. Drayton and I, indeed, were both discreet in our brief narratives of what had really happened. But I was heedless enough to forget Johannes. I did not caution him in time. So Mrs. Browne gathered rather a bizarre account from him while we were at church on Sunday evening. It is to her credit that, despite her thrift, she gave the boy a whole gold sovereign.

The three travelers left by the slow down-train on the Monday morning. I went to the station with them. I saw Drayton into a smoking-carriage, and climbed in and sat with him. There was still ten minutes' grace allowed us.

'Where's Browne, and where's Mrs. Browne?' I asked.

'Along there, ever so far!' he said; 'with Professor Ayres and the Misses Ayres, and all sorts of good company. But, hullo! Look there!'

Browne was coming up the platform towards the bookstall, looking forlorn and sad.

'Ah! what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering?' murmured Drayton. 'It's a bad job for me, Jerry's getting off-color like this. How's he going to train men for Firsts next June, when he's gone in himself?'

'Oh. he'll pick up as soon as he gets out of Africa, never fear.' I reassured him.

Browne loitered up to the stall and amassed two month-old English magazines. Then he stood by the stall, looking on to the distances near and far behind it. Our feverish contact had not spoilt much of the landscape there as yet. Beyond a few railway sheds showed some bushes, as it were, of wild cherry-blossom, flaunting a true white under the sky's true blue. Spring colors dressed the woodland behind them red and bronze, and also the two famous colors of Faeryland. Behind that, again, the view was spread out widely diverse, certain blue hills standing up very delicately. Meanwhile in the near foreground some Kaffir herds helped the picture not a little. They were driving their flock between the white-blossomed bushes.

Browne stood a long while and watched that landscape. I would have given something to have read his face all the while, but his back was turned to us.

At last he began to pace up and down by the bookstall. Then he stood to gaze again, scouring, as it seemed, the far distance with eyes straining their utmost. Our eyes followed his.

Did not some ironstone kopjes rise up dimly to the north there?

Assuredly Browne saw those blue peaks and ridges, and remembered them.

'Do you remember them?' I asked Drayton.

'Don't I just?' he said.

He began again in his chanting chorus tone: he was reading and transposing from a pocket copy of Theocritus.

'They all call thee a "gipsy," gracious Africa, and "lean" and "sunburnt," 'tis only I that call thee "honey-pale." Yea, and the violet is swart, and swart the lettered hyacinth, but yet these flowers are chosen the first in garlands. . . . Ah, gracious Africa, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is drowsy sweet, and thy ways, I cannot tell of them.'

The engine whistled. Browne roused himself to my intense relief, and climbed into the train.

'Good-bye,' I called to him as they steamed away.

'Au revoir,' he called back to me.

THE SCENTED TOWN (A TRIPPER'S TALE)

It is now more than two years since I was invalided out of my country parish one bitter March, and sent on a southern voyage. I had ten weeks to recruit in, and I passed by the Mediterranean to the eastern coast of Africa. It was hard to tear myself away from Zanzibar, but at last I went on southward and struck up into the wilder country of the central tableland. I meant to take the rail for Cape Town when my time should be up.

It happened in Easter week that I camped out disconsolately, and rose anxiously, having lost my way overnight. I had spent Easter Day in a cathedral, or pro-cathedral, town, and was now on my way to a certain mission. I had hoped to make it that last night the third night of the journey but had somehow missed it in the dark after a big effort. There seemed to be no native village near, and no passers-by. My carriers were strangers to that neighborhood, and I was afraid of going far past the house in benighted wanderings, so I bent my resolution and lay down. I rose just before the sun did. It was April and the dews were very heavy.

From a rocky hill above me the baboons were barking. Just below us was a fair stream with a rich grove of native trees on the further bank. Some native gardens showed on the slope above. The white path wound through them, then away among boulders, some of them very big ones. While I watched the stream I saw a white body of mist mounting up. Just at that moment the sun showed. As I looked on the sacred sight I saw somebody coming down the path. It was the man whose mission station I had been looking for. He was coming through the long grass in a hurry. Soon he splashed through the drift. After that he caught sight of me, and rushed up to our camp, glowing. It was Leonard Reeve. He looked much the same as he did that day in London three years before--dark, pale, slight, earnest. I had been to his sendoff and gone down to Victoria Docks with him. I had written to tell him; I was most likely coming his way after Easter. He seemed ever so glad to see me.

'But where were you off to?' I said.

'It's only a mile on that I'm going,' he answered. 'There's a little chapel on that hill over there with some native villages near by. I want to have an Easter service there.'

'Let me come,' said I. 'You can be back to breakfast here, can't you, when we've done?'

He said he could. Even as he nodded I felt a little anxious when I remembered that we had no meat of any sort left. I took Jack, my head carrier, aside and asked him to do what he could while we were gone. Couldn't he buy some eggs for salt, or do something useful in the way of foraging? He said three words in kitchen Kaffir that sounded hopeful.

Then I went on with my chill, damp little friend. One of the coldest ways surely of taking a bath is to tramp through the long grass (it is very long in that country) when it is drenched with dew or rain. However it is all right if you are sturdy and in good heart, and keep going a stirring pace, and never sit down till you are dry again. My companion did not seem very buoyant, though he made no complaint and trudged on without flagging. We had a glorious service in a quaint church of wattles and earth and grass on a hill-top. One way it looked over a great spread of village gardens I think there were at least three villages in sight. The other way it looked on some well-wooded uplands that the eastern sun lighted tenderly. There were only a few people in church at the end of the rite, though a great crowd was there at the outset, and the 'Kyrie' and first two hymns raised the hill echoes.

There was no sermon. When the unbaptized were gone the tiny church, that had seemed so thronged and stifling, grew to be roomy and cool.

That was to me a very beautiful rendering of the Liturgy. Yet I only understood a word here and there. I could follow the action of the Divine Pageant throughout, and I would not have had the mystery and aloofness of the words one whit lessened.

After it was over Reeve took me across to the native teacher's house, where we found a very shy wife and a very composed baby to greet us. Meanwhile the husband bustled about and gave us tea. I liked his laugh and his boyish face, as well as his Biblical English. He did not stint the tea in his blue pot. Soon we were on our way back to my camp.

Jack had got a real good fire now in the shelter of the rocks, and a hearty smell of fish frying reassured me as we drew near.

Reeve, who had seemed a little tired and washed out as we came away from the church, now brightened up marvelously.

'I declare,' he said, 'it's just like old times. You know the Tooting Road, where I used to work? It's just like the fried-fish shop there, next door to the Surrey Arms. If we'd only got the fog and the trams and a few of the old people here how fine it'd be!'

We had found a subject that interested us both and lasted most of the breakfast-time. His enthusiasm struck me as a little too emphatic. I remarked that I thought he was well out of the Tooting Road and out under blue sky on an African moorland.

'Look up there!' I said. 'That makes the Tooting Road seem rather monstrous when one comes to think of it.' I pointed to the many cattle and sheep and goats coming down to the stream at a swinging pace through the gleaming woodland.

Two little boys were mounted on bulls; two or three others came rushing behind. There was a barking of dogs and an ecstasy of shouting.

'Oh, it's all very well,' he said, and his eyes flashed a little scornfully.

Afterwards he took me to his home. His church stood out nobly as we came up the path towards it. Within it was beautifully kept, but I confess I was disappointed. It was all very neat, but it suggested the skill of the church-furnishing firm too strongly. I sighed a little as he showed me four enormous brazen vases of a too familiar type. I longed for the two or three little red and black earthen vases that I had seen on his teacher's altar; but I kept my longing to myself.

He was a marvelous man for method, Leonard Reeve. He seemed to me to organize classes with real talent anybody who came to the Mission at all habitually was pigeon-holed as 'Inquirer,' 'Hearer,' 'Catechumen,' 'Under a cloud,' or something else, and dealt with accordingly. His work, as I watched it day by day, and evening by evening in church and school and villages and Mission farm seemed to me well-considered and painstaking. On the other hand he seemed to me not so happy, and not so very well.

The mail came in on the Monday.