Chapter 8

He drove through a gate and up a drive. He was at home again. His house had been enlarged and re-decorated since he was last there. It looked solidly prosperous. Its second floor shouted 'money' in a country where most houses could boast no first floor. Its critics might have called its colors harrowing and its architecture the reverse of inspired, but Julian cared not a jot for that sort of up-in-the-air criticism. He sat down to breakfast with a thankful heart, and made himself quite amiable to Tommy Bates.

Tommy Bates was five years older than Julian, and had acted as his Secretary these two years past. He had small eyes set in a rather big pasty face. His goatee beard was trim, but scarcely pleasing.

Julian got through his letters at breakfast and after, breakfast with Tommy's help. Amongst the letters was one from Mount Pleasant Mission enclosing a card. 'Hunter's mad,' said Julian crossly. He tore up the envelope viciously, but he did not tear up the card it contained. He placed that in his pocket-book carefully. Tommy looked at him in interrogation, but Julian was not communicative.

After they had discussed a business letter or two, and had a drink together, Julian started for the Club. He made himself agreeable to one or two, and got a deal of pleasure out of snubbing another. Then he gathered some important news from a business acquaintance. It was great news. He wanted time to think over it. He sent off two or three wires to labor agents and one to a Native Commissioner.

He must have boys at any cost, and quickly, to develop certain properties. He

"... turned an easy wheel That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel."

Then he interviewed an agent in an office, and did some very delicate work indeed in the drafting of a prospectus. He had earned a drink by then. His brain interested him he was inclined to self-analysis of a sort its chiaroscuro of limelight effects and faint nuances indicated rather than expressed. It was good to be alive to-day, and to pull as many strings as he was pulling.

He did not stop at one drink; over the second, the expert made a proposition to him. It dazzled him, but he would not give an answer just then. To-morrow morning would do.

After that he lunched at the Club with Sir Charles Guestling who was just back from England, and had brought a younger brother out with him to see the country. It would have been a pleasanter lunch without that brother, Julian thought at the time. The brother said nothing offensive, indeed he hardly opened his mouth, but his eyes embarrassed Julian strangely. He had curious blue-grey eyes that contrasted with his black hair, and he would fix Julian with these eyes just as he and Sir Charles were deep in shares and options and the scarcity of labor. Perhaps it was that Julian was overwrought with anxieties of success. The eyes seemed to him clairvoyant, he imagined that they saw more than they ought to see, when they looked him over, as he made some highly technical statement. It was extraordinary that a conventional man about town like Sir Charles should have such a brother.

After lunch Julian relaxed.

He gave himself the indulgence of a call on Mrs. Puce.

He had put her husband on to a good thing or two a year ago now. They had been great friends, he and the wife.

To-day he was a little anxious as to how she would receive him. Things had altered since they last met. 'He had got engaged a business-like engagement.

But she was very gracious in her welcome. Moreover she was more decorous this afternoon than he remembered her a few months back. He told her about his contemplated coup.

'I'll consult planchette for you,' said she. 'Yes, and I'll let you know to-night.'

She was a pretty woman with rather too high a color. But she grew pale enough now.

'I forgot, though, it's against my principles,' she said. 'I've given up lots of things. I'm much more particular.' Something roused Julian. He spoke masterfully.

'Just this once,' he said, 'Let me know to-night. I may know of something gilt-edged that I won't keep to myself if I hear to-night without fail. No, I won't be refused. I want proof of good-will.'

It was a sunny afternoon, with none of that southeast wind which is the bane of our winter. Julian told his coachman to drive him up to his new farm. The homestead was about five miles out of town in the Mount Pleasant direction.

Julian drew out the draft of the prospectus, and began to work hard at its revision. They had stopped at the house ere he thrust pencil and paper into his pocket. He stepped out of El Dorado let himself down, not without a jar, on to more humdrum earth.

The farm-house was an iron shanty newly hammered together. The bailiff a full-bearded Colonial stood in the front doorway. Julian gave him a perfunctory handshake. He talked farming business to him quickly. He was tired, and eager to be through with it.

They were almost through with it in half an hour. They smoked their pipes and had coffee on the stoep together.

'About that Mission Church,' said the Bailiff, 'You know the notice is just up that you gave them last year. The boy that used to teach there is gone, and the kraal's moving. The building still stands empty. They don't use it now.'

Julian frowned.

'Let's have a look at it,' he said. 'We can drive round that way when Bob's inspanned. Meanwhile let's have a drink.'

The Church was very small wattle and daub. It had done three years' service.

'No value,' pronounced Julian. He was rather angry with such a mere shed for wasting his valuable time.

'That grass wants burning,' he muttered. 'If you set a light to it and the Church catches, I shouldn't think there'll be any harm done.'

'Right,' said the bailiff. Julian stepped inside the building.

'Nothing left,' he said. 'Nothing but this box. You'd better keep it. They can have it if they send for it.'

'What's inside?'

There were some red and black candlesticks and vases packed away in the box works of art in their way, but that way was not Julian's.

'Cheap and nasty,' was his comment. 'Ah! What's that?'

'It was on the Communion Table,' said the bailiff.

Julian took up a clay cross and regarded it curiously.

'A cross with a snake on it!' he exclaimed.

'One of the boys said it meant the Brazen Serpent,' said the bailiff.

'Holy Moses!' laughed Julian. 'Well I'm going to jump this, it's quite a curiosity. You may give the boy five bob from me if he asks what we've done with it.'

'Right,' said the bailiff, and went off with the box to the cart.

Julian looked at the twisted symbol with an intent fascination. 'As Moses lifted up the Serpent in the Wilderness,' he murmured to himself. 'Even so shall the Son of Man be lifted up. How well I remember preaching outside a kraal, on a boulder under a flowering kaffir tree, on that very text. I liked preaching that day more than I did most days. It wasn't half bad. That's Christ all over that reptile that Worm and no man! The Worm that I tread on with impunity that's Christ! I expect Hunter might say it would be better for me if the Worm would turn and bite better for my eternal interests. Perhaps the Worm will, one of these fine days. It's a rather clammy notion! The notion would be rather a nuisance, if I believed in the Worm.'

III. THIS NIGHT

As he drove along the veld twenty minutes after, Julian looked back at the burning Church. 'What would the Canon Superintendent say?' he muttered with a grin. A fantastic shape started up from the grass in front of him. The mules shied at it, and broke into a gallop. 'Pull up!' he shouted. At last the mules were pulled up. He sprang out and walked back along the road. The figure stood stock-still by the road-side, as if waiting to greet him.

When he came near, it came towards him, the figure of an old native with a ragged grey beard, all hunched up in a blanket.

'Tom.' called Julian to him in his shrill voice, 'You've got to come down to town tonight. No, you swine, to-morrow won't do. Tonight before sunset, or there'll be trouble. You know what I want you to do, what you did last Christmas.' The drive back to town was uneventful.

Julian sat on his stoep half an hour before dinner, smoking and pondering. He was anxious about that plunge he meant to make to-morrow. His philosophy of life, so largely commercial, found room for a cult or two of superstition. He had consulted Mrs. Puce's oracle time and time again. He had had recourse to his boy Jim's father, Tom Nyoka, twice before. He had got him to use for him a rude and illegal form of divination. He had been helped by it before, at least so he opined. He might be helped again. He sat looking at the sun dropping smoothly in a cloudless sky. As he watched, Jim came out to him to tell him that his father was in the kitchen. 'I'll come directly, Jim,' he said.

The piccanin was sent off to get water, the kitchen door was safely locked. The throwing of the bones began, while Julian watched with understanding eyes. His hard grip of his subjects, generally, extended to this remote ritual.

To-night the answer seemed to be inconclusive, but as they sought the answer, a clear sign appeared as it were by the way, and unsought. Julian was watching haggardly. He snarled a question at Jim. His cook-boy's big round eyes showed very big and very round just now. He was watching with painful intentness.

'Yes,' he answered his master, 'Yes, sir, it is so.'

Julian whistled and turned away moodily, with his hands in his pockets, staring into space.

The old man the diviner was talking at large as he gathered the fingers of wood with their rude traceries together. Julian paid little heed to his words and gesticulations when he awoke from his day-dream.

'Give him some skoff and a bit of meat, Jim,' he said. 'Tell him I'll give him ten bob when I've got change.'

The old man was clamoring to him to make up his money to a sovereign, but Julian paid no heed to what he said. He swung out of the hut and off to wash for dinner, still brooding moodily.

At dinner. Tommy Bates found Julian the reverse of good company. He did not keep his gloom to himself, and he snapped at any excuse for snapping. Tommy left as the sweets came in, with an excuse about meeting some friends at 8:30.

'Don't be late,' said Julian peremptorily. 'I want you here at eleven sharp. I want to see about tomorrow's letters before I go to bed.'

At 8:30 a pink note came in with the coffee. Mrs. Puce had sent it down. It contained but a few lines:

DEAR JULIAN,

I'm so sorry, but I couldn't make head nor tail of the answer. What I was told clearly was that you were likely to be in some trouble to-night about midnight. I don't know what sort of trouble, but somebody who lives at the back of your house may have something to do with it. Do take care of yourself. I trust you to do that for my sake. I think you are sensible enough to do it, now you are forewarned. Come up to-morrow to breakfast and reassure me,

Yours, in ever so much of a shudder,

CELIA.

Julian turned rather green as he read. 'I don't like it,' he growled, 'Two signs, and independent ones. The one sign death. I saw it myself when the bones were thrown. The other sign danger. And Celia hasn't the sort of conscience that would let her invent it. I don't know what to set about doing. But I must do something or other.' He began to reflect. He started from the unsubstantial grounds of twofold superstition, and tried to be practical in his own defense.

'About midnight,' he thought, 'Well, I can trust Jim. And I can't trust the other two boys that inhabit my back kitchen. Piet has some of his own to get back for what I did last Christmas, and the other boy I simply don't know. He was only sent to me to-day. I'll tell Jim to go over to the location and take the other two with him, and look after them for all of to-night. Tommy should be back by eleven. We two ought to be able to look after ourselves. Likely enough it's all moonshine this back-of-the-house business.' He pitied himself for his anxieties, and took an extra drink to dispel them. He went to the kitchen. Jim and the new piccanin were just discussing the movements of somebody as he arrived.

'When was it?' asked Jim.

'Just when the sun set,' the piccanin answered.

'Where?' asked Jim.

Then Julian cut them short, heedless of what they were saying.

'Lock up at once, and go over to the location. Mind, Jim, you must look after the other two and see they don't come back here. I don't want any boys on the place to-night. D'you hear?' Julian proceeded to enlarge on the bigness of reward or punishment in certain eventualities.

Julian went to his study, and put on his slippers. He called Jim to light the wood-fire before he left. The night seemed a bitter one, or was it that he had taken a chill? He took up a local paper when Jim was gone. 'It's been a busy day,' he reflected, as he straightened it out. 'Fancy my not looking at a paper of any sort till this time of night.'

He searched the columns impatiently.

'No news to speak of,' he thought. But then he cried out as his eye caught an out-of-the-way corner. 'Why, Hunter's dead!' The news seemed to take his breath like a body-blow. 'A good man!' he said to himself. 'The man who gave me the sop when he had dipped it. The best of that Church gang! A man who called me an apostate straight out more than once! The man who sent me that weird card this morning! Yes and he sent me a quaint souvenir, a sort of "Memento Mori," once before, last Christmas, just when my boom came off. I haven't forgotten the words yet. I will say to my soul, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." And God said unto him, "Thou fool, this night."

'This night,' he muttered. 'I wish this night were well over.'

IV. VICISTI GALILAEE!

Julian was in a strange fit of tension when he heard Tommy Bates' steps coming up the garden path. They were very uncertain steps.

Julian threw open his study door as the secretary reeled into the hall. He had longed for company this last grey craven hour or two, and this was all the company he was to enjoy for to-night at least!

Humming and lurching and stinking of whisky as Tommy was, there was not much comfort to be sought from him.

Julian swore at him sonorously then he hustled him off to bed. Soon he was snoring. Julian had somehow shuffled away his fear in his coercion of Tommy.

'I'll get my blankets and pillow out of my room, and lie down in Tommy's. I feel I can sleep now,' he thought.

He went into his room heedlessly in the dark and trod on something or somebody, just as he was striking a match.

It was the big black snake that lived in the ant-hill at the back of the house whose movements Jim and the piccanin had been discussing. The snake dealt with Julian.

Julian staggered about looking for crystals and a lancet. They were locked up safely and perhaps Jim, or perhaps Tommy had the key.

Tommy would not wake to any purpose. Just as Julian was shaking him, the clock in the study a clock Julian had won in his sprinting days chimed twelve very melodiously. Everything seemed to be locked up. Had Jim the key of the spirit cupboard or Tommy? Julian was growing drowsy in his struggles against the current of fortune. Hadn't he better give in, and let himself be carried down? Almost before he knew it, he was lying on the sofa in his study where the lamp with the red shade was burning so cosily. Likely enough his eye caught a quaint ornament on his study table at the juncture the figure of the Serpent on the Cross.

It may be too, that some sort of startled respect came to him for the Worm that had turned at last, not vindictively, but in the interests of the Commonweal.

Probability points to this one fact at least, that Julian fumbled for something in his pocket-book ere he resigned himself finally to the growing torpor.

A card was found on the study floor when morning came; they found the pocket-book itself on the conch beside him.

The card was the one that had come at his last breakfast-time from Dick Hunter, the card that he had reserved rather indignantly for future consideration.

On the one side of it was a color-process reproduction, very good of its kind Christ in Glory the Rex Tremendoe Majestatis and also the Fons Pietatis of the Dies Ira with tears in His Eyes and thorns on His Brows as He judged just judgment. On the other side were four lines from Browning, faithfully transcribed save for the change of a name. They were written in the shaking writing of a sick man, in Hunter's round, unformed hand:

'For the main criminal I have no hope Except in such a suddenness of fate So may the truth be by one blow flashed out. And Julian see one instant and be saved.'

There is no question as to the suddenness of the stroke of fate that ended Julian's career in South Africa. There is an open question as to the illuminative force of that blow, and we must wait for the answer.

THE DOUBLE CABIN

We had been close to a certain line of fire together, and yet we had not seen much fighting. That is to say, we were taking part in a campaign together that was for the time being an affair of patrols near a certain border an affair that flashed into fire now and then as between man and man. As between sun and man the firing was fairly continuous for eight hours of most days. Were we not within a hundred miles or so of the equator? In that climatic struggle (so much the more constant of the two for us Northerners) I on my noncombatant job came off lightly, he, as a combatant, suffered. He was down with malaria time and time again. He had it on him that night when he put me up at his place a night when the old year was almost out. He was then inhabiting a border outpost a clean little camp tucked away behind a native village. It was none too airy, I thought, with its heavy curtains of cactus hedging. He seemed a little better that next morning, when I said prayers, and afterwards rehearsed a certain Rite. He stayed to the end of my ministrations. After breakfast I started again on my journey, a round that took me far from the centre of our small world. When I touched that centre again I heard his news, which was not so very reassuring. He had gone down with blackwater, and been carried into a small hospital. There, having almost gone out, he had rallied enough to be put on board a ship crossing the lake. So he came to a greater hospital. It was thither that I followed him up. He had had another crisis, I found, but he was better again by the time I got to him. Then he improved a little, and seemed to be convalescing. Then malaria chose to interfere with the running of her sister fever's course. This seemed extraordinarily meddlesome, and made things hazardous still, though they were as well as one expected, when the time of my going on leave came.

How glad I was to get off! My Good-byes were hurried when once the brown envelope had come. I saw him on the hospital stoep (baraza, did they call it in that alien part of Africa?) just as I was rushing down to the station. He had lost his blue color, but still looked rather flickery.

'If you go to Bulawayo, you'll remember, won't you?' he said. 'You've got the plan?'

He had given me an elaborate little drawing of two streets that converged. His bungalow stood upon an island betwixt their confluence and the shading that he had marked waste ground. The pink paper was in my breast pocket, but, knowing my way with papers, I had already learned those streets' names.

'All right,' I said. 'But I'm not likely to go that way. And the time's so short. I'll try though.'

His face lit, and his eyes gleamed. 'Do try,' he said.

'Don't build on it,' I entreated him. 'I'll try to write to her anyway.'

Then he looked downcast indeed; he had fallen from such a confident height. But he said 'Goodbye' like a real friend.

I forgot him almost completely for the next four days or so. There were excitements, seeing somebody at headquarters, wiring business wires, writing friendly letters against time, steering a forlorn small native and a more forlorn small dog, who were sharing my fortunes, down to the coast. At last I was there, and discussing shipping news with new-found keenness. My prospects of getting off with speed looked black for a bit; then came the flash of a fresh idea. As there was no ship for the African port I knew, why not book for the unknown? There were transports returning to a port beyond, I had heard. True, the cost of railway traveling thence was hard to forecast, resources were of a modest sort, and there were three of us to find fares for.

Yet ways and means began to show their forms out of the mist soon. I chose to sail almost at once by the untried road, and I wrote to friends', telling them how I had chosen. I wrote to my friend in hospital, among others. I was going the Bulawayo way after all, and I might do what he wanted quite unbelievably easily. Who would have thought it when we parted? I scribbled down the great news against time. (I had an importunate proof to correct before sailing; proofs are apt to take hours, I find, and my sailing hour was near.) He might be expected to have my scribble handed to him on the hospital stoep about three days after. So I calculated. I flattered myself that I knew the ins and outs of our despatches and mail deliveries, also that I had allowed in my calculation for censorial delay. It was pleasant to think how pleased he might be expected to be. I well-wished him with a prayer. Then I started down the glaring white road for the wharf. I had dismissed him from my mind, I regret to say, for another three days or more.

I traveled down from that east coast fighting-base on a transport that had brought up mules and horses. She had naturally enough, shipped a goodly crew of flies with them. The mules and horses had gone their ways, but the flies had by no means all gone with them. Now with no quadrupeds to be their prime care, those that remained were apt to obtrude themselves upon us. I deprecated at heart the ruthless warfare that marine authority waged upon them. But for all that I found my afternoon slumbers often distracted by the survivors. On the first and second afternoons of that voyage I awoke not long after I dropped off. I awoke, and thought about nothing in particular. On the third afternoon my waking thoughts took a very definite shape.

I was in a cabin or stateroom that two officers had shared going up doubtless of the veterinary profession. Now on this return journey I had the place to myself. I lay in my bunk with my boots off, and observed the empty couch beside me.

It was my friend that I thought of my friend as I had taken leave of him, reclining on the hospital stoep, straining with eager eyes at mine. It was his breathless voice that I remembered. It was saying over and over, 'You will go and see her, won't you? I'll be with you in spirit in this your trek for her and home.'

Surely he was on that couch in the cabin now beside me, and surely he was saying the same thing over and over again, just as regularly and restlessly as if he were yonder electric fan curveting with the same sort of panting iteration.