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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75175 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SONS OF FIRE
+
+                                A Novel
+
+                       By Mary Elizabeth Braddon
+
+                             THE AUTHOR OF
+                   "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"
+                            "ISHMAEL," ETC.
+
+                        _IN THREE VOLUMES_
+
+                               VOL. III.
+
+                                LONDON
+            SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LIMITED
+                        STATIONERS' HALL COURT
+
+                     [_All rights reserved_]
+
+                                LONDON:
+
+             PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+                         CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
+
+
+                    I. ROMAN AND SABINE
+
+                   II. "IF SHE BE NOT FAIR TO ME"
+
+                  III. "I GO TO PROVE MY SOUL"
+
+                   IV. BLACK AND WHITE
+
+                    V. THE MEETING-PLACE OF WATERS
+
+                   VI. KIGAMBO
+
+                  VII. MAMBU KWA MUNGU
+
+                 VIII. WHERE THE BURDEN IS HEAVIEST
+
+                   IX. ALL IN HONOUR
+
+                    X. "AM I HIS KEEPER?"
+
+                   XI. A SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH
+
+                  XII. "IT IS THE STARS"
+
+                 XIII. MADNESS OR CRIME?
+
+                  XIV. "HE HATH AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM OF LIFE"
+
+
+
+
+                             SONS OF FIRE.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                           ROMAN AND SABINE.
+
+
+Geoffrey was not to be baulked of his purpose. He sat till long after
+midnight in the music-room with his mother--sat or roamed about in the
+ample spaces of that fine apartment, talking in his own wild way, with
+that restless, fitful romanticism which had marked him from childhood,
+from the dim hours, so vaguely remembered and so sadly sweet in his
+memory, when he had sat on the floor with his head leaning against
+the soft silken folds of her gown, and had been moved to tears by her
+playing. There were simple turns of melody, almost automatic phrases of
+Mozart's, which recalled the vague heartache of those childish hours;
+an idea of music so interwoven with that other idea of summer twilight
+in a spacious, shadowy room, that it startled him to hear one of those
+familiar movements in the broad glare of day, as if daylight and _that_
+music were irreconcilable.
+
+No arguments of his mother's could shake his purpose.
+
+"I will see her and talk with her. She alone shall be the judge of what
+is right. Perhaps when I am sure of her I may be able to teach myself
+patience. But I must be sure of her love."
+
+He was at Bournemouth by the first train that would carry him there,
+and it was still early when he went roaming out towards Branksome and
+the borderland of Dorset. To walk suited better with his impatience
+than to be driven by a possibly stupid flyman, and to have the fly
+pulled up every five minutes for the stupid flyman to interrogate
+a--probably--more stupid pedestrian, who would inevitably prove "a
+stranger in those parts," as if the inhabitants never walked abroad.
+
+No, he would find Rosenkrantz, Mrs. Tolmash's villa, for himself. He
+had been told it was near Branksome Chine.
+
+Swift of foot and keen of apprehension, he succeeded in less time
+than any flyman would have done. Yes, this was the villa--red-brick,
+gabled, curtained with virginia creeper from chimneys downwards;
+virginia creeper not yet touched by autumn's ruddy fingers; and with
+roses enough climbing over the verandah and surrounding the windows to
+justify the name which fancy had given. He opened the light iron gate
+and went into the garden; a somewhat spacious garden. She was there,
+perhaps. At any rate, he would explore before confronting servant,
+drawing-room, and unknown lady of the house. The garden was so pretty,
+and the morning was so fine, that, if within the precincts, surely she
+would be in the garden.
+
+He went boldly round the house by a shrubberied walk, and saw a fine
+lawn on a breezy height above the Chine, facing the sunlit sea and the
+wooded dip that went down to golden sands. The standard rose-trees were
+blown about in the morning air, dropping a rain of pink and yellow on
+the smooth short turf. He saw the sea westward--sapphire blue--through
+an arch of reddest roses, and beyond that archway, close to the edge
+of the cliff, as it seemed in the perspective, there was a bench with
+a red and white awning, and sitting under that awning a figure in a
+white frock, a slender waist, a graceful throat, a small dark head,
+which he would have known from a thousand girlish heads and throats and
+waists--for him the girl of girls.
+
+He knew that restless foot, lightly tapping the grass as she looked
+seaward. Was there not weariness of life, rebellion against fate,
+in that quick movement of the slender foot? Was she not waiting for
+happiness and for him?
+
+He ran to her, sat down by her side, had taken both her hands in his,
+before she could utter so much as a cry of surprise.
+
+"My darling, my darling!" he murmured; "now and for ever my own!"
+
+She snatched her hands away and started to her feet indignantly. Anger
+flashed in the dark eyes and flushed the pale olive cheeks. And then
+her frown changed to an ironical smile, and she stood looking at him
+almost contemptuously.
+
+"I think you forget, Mr. Wornock, that it is a long time since the
+Romans ran away with the Sabines."
+
+"You mean that I am too impetuous."
+
+"I mean that you are too absurd."
+
+"Is it absurd to love the sweetest woman in the world--the prettiest,
+the most enchanting? Suzette, I tore back from the Hartz Mountains
+because I was told you were free--free to marry the man who loves you
+with all the passion of his soul. When I told you of my love months
+ago, you were bound to another man, you were obstinately bent upon
+keeping your promise to him. I had no option but to withdraw, to fight
+my battle, and try to live without you. I did try, Suzette. I left the
+ground clear for my rival. I was self-banished from my own home."
+
+"You need not have been banished. I could have kept away from Discombe."
+
+"That would have distressed my mother, whose happiness depends on your
+society, Suzette. You know how she loves you. To see you my wife will
+make her very happy. She has taken you to her heart as a daughter."
+
+"Not so much as she has taken Allan Carew to her heart. It was for his
+sake she liked me. I could see when we parted that it was of Allan she
+thought; it was for him she was sorry. I don't think she will ever
+forgive me for making Allan unhappy."
+
+"Not if her only son's happiness is bought with that price? Suzette,
+why do you keep me at arm's length--now, when there is nothing to part
+us; now, while I know that you love me?"
+
+"You have no right to say that. If you know it, you know more than I
+know myself."
+
+"Suzette, Suzette, do you deny your love?"
+
+She was crying, with her hands over her averted face. He tried to draw
+those hands away, eager to look into her eyes. He would not believe
+mere words. Only in her eyes could he read the truth.
+
+"I deny your right to question me now, while my heart is aching for
+Allan--Allan whom I like and respect more than any man living. He is
+the best friend I have in the world, after my father. He will always be
+my cherished and trusted friend. If in some great unhappiness I needed
+any other friend than my father--badly, wickedly as I have behaved to
+him--it is to Allan I would go for help."
+
+"What, not to me?"
+
+"To you! No more than I would appeal to a whirlwind."
+
+"You think me so unreasonable a creature?"
+
+"Yes, unreasonable! It is unreasonable in you to come here to-day. You
+must know that I am sorry for having behaved so badly--deeply sorry for
+Allan's disappointment."
+
+"I begin to think it a pity you disappointed him, if nobody is to
+profit by your release. Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I should have
+killed myself if you had persisted. At least you have saved a life. I
+hope you are glad of that."
+
+"I cannot talk to you while you are so foolish."
+
+"Is it foolish to tell you the truth? I bare my heart to you--to the
+woman I want for my wife. I am a creature full of faults; but for you I
+could become anything. I would be as wax, and you might mould me into
+whatever shape you chose. Oh, Suzette, is not love enough? Is it not
+enough for any woman to be loved as I love you?"
+
+"You cannot love me better than Allan did, though he never talked as
+wildly as you."
+
+"Allan! It is not in his nature to love or to suffer as I do. He was
+not born under the same burning star. All the forces of nature were at
+war when I was born, Suzette. My Swiss nurse told me of the tempest
+that was roaring over the wilderness of peaks and crags when I came
+into the world, with something of that storm in my heart and brain. Be
+my good genius, Suzette. Save me from my darker, stormier self. Make
+and mould me into an amiable, order-loving English gentleman. I am
+your slave. You have but to command me, and I shall submit as meekly
+as the trained dog who lies down at his mistress's feet and shams the
+stillness of death. Tell me to fetch and carry; tell me to die. I will
+do your bidding like that dog."
+
+She gave a troubled sigh and looked at him, pale and perplexed, in deep
+distress. His pleading moved her as no words of Allan's had ever done,
+and yet there was more of fear than of love in the emotion that he
+awakened.
+
+"I have only one thing in the world to ask of you," she said, in a low,
+agitated voice. "I ask you to leave me to myself. I came here, almost
+among strangers, in order that I might be calm and quiet, and away from
+the associations of the past year. You must forgive me, Mr. Wornock,
+if I say that it was cruel of you to follow me to this refuge."
+
+"Cruel for passionate love to follow the beloved! 'Mr. Wornock,' too!
+How formal! Suzette, if you do not love me, if I am nothing to you, why
+did you jilt Carew?"
+
+"I asked him to release me because I felt I did not love him well
+enough to be his wife."
+
+"Only that?"
+
+"Only that. As time went on, I felt more and more acutely that I could
+not give him love for love."
+
+"And you cared for no one else?--there was no other reason?" he
+insisted, trying to take her hand.
+
+"I have hardly asked myself that question; and I will not be questioned
+by you."
+
+She rose and moved away, he following.
+
+"Mr. Wornock, I am going into the house. I beg you not to persecute me.
+It was persecution to come here to-day."
+
+"Give me hope. I cannot leave you without hope."
+
+"I can say nothing more than I have said. My heart is sore for Allan.
+Allan is first in my thoughts, and must be for a long time. I hate
+myself for having behaved so badly to him."
+
+"And what of your behaviour to me? How cold! how cruel!"
+
+"Oh, thank Heaven, here come Mrs. Tolmash and her daughter. Now you
+_must_ go."
+
+Geoffrey looked round and saw a middle-aged lady in a chair being
+wheeled across the lawn, a girl in a pink frock pushing the chair.
+
+He gave Suzette a despairing look, picked up his hat from the grass,
+and walked quickly away. He was in no mood to make the acquaintance of
+the pink frock or the lady in the chair, though that plump, benevolent
+person, with neat little grey curls clustering round a fair forehead,
+looked quite capable of asking him to luncheon.
+
+He walked back to the nearest station, angry beyond measure, and paced
+the platform for an hour, waiting for the train for Eastleigh, and
+with half a mind to throw himself under the first express that came
+shrieking by. Yet that were basest surrender.
+
+"She is possessed by a devil of obstinacy," he told himself. "But the
+stronger devil within me shall master her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the more fiery and arrogant of Suzette's lovers was raging
+against her coldness, resolved to bear down all opposing forces, to
+ride roughshod over every obstacle, her gentler and more conscientious
+lover was hiding his grief in the quiet of that level and unromantic
+land on which his eyes had first opened. No tempest had raged when
+Allan was born. He had entered life amidst no grandeurs of mountain
+and glacier, arrested avalanche and roaring torrent. An English
+home--English to intensity--had been his cradle; a mild, even-tempered
+mother, a father in whom a gentle melancholy was the prevailing
+characteristic. Growing up under such home-influences, Allan Carew had
+something of womanly gentleness interwoven with the strong fibre of a
+fine manly nature. He had the womanly capacity to suffer in silence, to
+submit to Fate, and to take a very humble place at the banquet of life.
+
+Well, he was not destined to be happy. She had never loved him--never.
+He had won her by sheer persistency; he had imposed upon her yielding
+nature, upon the amiability which makes it so hard for some women to
+say no. She had always been friendly and kind and sweet, but the signs
+and tokens of passionate love had been wanting. If she would have been
+content to marry him upon those friendly terms, content to forego the
+glamour of romantic love, all might have been well. Love would have
+followed marriage in the quiet years of domestic life. The watchful
+kindnesses of an adoring husband must have won her heart.
+
+Yes, but for Geoffrey Wornock's appearance on the scene, all might have
+been well. Suzette would have married Allan, and the years would have
+ripened friendship into love. Geoffrey's was the fatal influence.
+Contrast with that fiery nature had made Allan seem a dullard.
+
+This is what the forsaken lover told himself as he roamed about the
+autumn fields, the fertile levels, where all the soil he trod on was
+his own, and had belonged to his ancestors when the clank of armed feet
+was still a common thing in the land, and a stout Suffolk pad was your
+swiftest mode of travel. The shooting had begun, and the houses of
+Suffolk were full of guests, and the squires of Suffolk had mustered
+their guns, and were doing their best to beat the record of last year
+and all the years that were gone. But Allan had no heart for so much as
+a morning tramp across the stubble. The flavour and the freshness were
+gone out of life. He gave his shooting to a neighbour, an old friend of
+his father's, while his own days were dawdled through in the library,
+or spent in long walks by stream and mill-race, pine-wood and common,
+in any direction that offered the best chance of solitude.
+
+He wrote to Suzette, with grave kindness, apologizing for his angry
+vehemence in the hour of their parting. He expatiated sorrowfully upon
+that which might have been.
+
+"I think I must have known all along that you had no romantic love for
+me," he wrote; "but I would have been more than content to have your
+liking in exchange for my passionate love. I should not have thought
+myself a loser had you put the case in the plainest words. 'You idolize
+me, and I--well--I think you an estimable young man, and I have no
+objection to be your idol, accepting your devotion, and giving you a
+sisterly regard in exchange.' There are men who would think that a bad
+bargain; but I am not made of such proud stuff. Your friendship would
+have been more precious to me than any other woman's love; and I should
+have been happy, infinitely happy, could I have won you on those terms.
+
+"But it was not to be--and now my heart turns cold every time the
+post-bag is opened, lest it should contain the letter that will tell me
+Geoffrey Wornock has won the prize that I have lost. Such things must
+be, Suzette. They are happening every day, and hearts are breaking,
+quietly. May you be happy--my dear lost love--whatever I may be."
+
+Much as he might desire solitude, it was impossible for Allan to
+escape his fellow-man through the month of September in such a
+happy shooting-ground as that in which his property lay. In that
+part of Suffolk people knew of hunting as a barbarous form of sport
+somewhat affected in the midlands, and a fox was considered a beast
+of prey. The guns had it all their own way in those woods which
+Allan's great-grandfather had planted, and over the turnips which
+Allan's tenants had sown. Among the shooters who were profiting by
+his hospitality it was inevitable that he should meet some one he
+knew; and that some one happened to be a man with whom he had been
+on the friendliest terms five years before during a big shoot in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+They met at a dinner at the house of the jovial squire to whom Allan
+had given his shooting--a five-mile drive from Fendyke. Lady Emily had
+persuaded her son to accept the invitation.
+
+His father had been dead six months. Though she, the widow, would go
+nowhere, it might seem churlish in the son to hold himself aloof from
+old friends.
+
+"And you don't want to be wearing the willow for that shallow-hearted
+girl, I hope," added Lady Emily, who was very angry with Suzette.
+
+No, he did not want to wear the willow, to pose as a victim, so he
+accepted Mr. Meadowbank's invitation.
+
+It was to be only a friendly dinner, only the house party; and among
+the house party Allan found his old acquaintance, Cecil Patrington,
+a man who had spent the best years of his life in Africa, and had
+won renown among sportsmen as a hunter of big game, a weather-beaten
+athlete, brawny, strong of limb, with bronzed forehead and
+copper-coloured neck.
+
+"I think you were just back from Bechuana Land when we last met," said
+Allan, in the unreserve of Squire Meadowbank's luxurious smoke-room,
+"and you were going back to the Cape when the shooting was over. Have
+you been in Africa ever since?"
+
+"Yes, I have been moving about most of the time, here and there, mostly
+in Central South Africa, between Brazzaville and Tabora, now on one
+side of the lake, now on the other?"
+
+"Which lake?"
+
+"Tanganyika. It's a delightful district, only it's getting a deuced
+deal too well known. Burton was a glorious fellow, and he had a
+glorious career. No man can ever enjoy life in Africa like that. There
+are steamers on the lake now, and one meets babies in perambulators,
+genuine British babies!" with a profound sigh.
+
+"I have looked for a record of your exploits at the Geographical."
+
+"Oh, I don't go in for that kind of thing, you see. I read a paper
+once, and it didn't pay. I am not a literary cove like Burton, and I
+haven't the gift of the gab like Stanley--who is a literary cove, too,
+by the way. I ain't a scientific explorer. I don't care a hang what
+becomes of the water, don't you know. I like the lakes for their own
+sake--and the niggers for their own sake--and the picturesqueness of it
+all, and the variety, and the danger of it all. If I discovered a new
+lake or an unknown forest, I should keep the secret to myself. That's
+my view of Africa. I ain't a geographer. I ain't a missionary. I ain't
+a trader. I like Africa because it's jolly, and because there ain't any
+other place in the world worth living in for the man who has once been
+there."
+
+"Shall you ever go again?"
+
+"Shall I ever?" Mr. Patrington laughed at the question. "I sail for
+Zanzibar next November."
+
+"Do you?" said Allan. "I should like to go with you."
+
+"Why not?" asked Mr. Patrington.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                      "IF SHE BE NOT FAIR TO ME."
+
+
+Geoffrey Wornock went back to Discombe, and his mother read failure
+and mortification in his gloomy countenance; but he vouchsafed no
+confidence. He was not sullen or unkind. He lived; and that was about
+as much as could be said of him. The fiddles, which were to him as
+cherished friends, lay mute in their cases. He seemed to regard that
+spacious music-room with its lofty ceiling and noble capacity for
+sound, as the captive lion regards his cage--a place in which to roam
+about, and pace to and fro, restless, miserable, unsatisfied. He did
+not complain, and his mother dared not attempt to console. Once she
+pressed his hand and whispered "patience;" but he only shook his head
+fretfully, and walked out of the room.
+
+"Patience! yes," he muttered to himself. "I could be patient, as
+patient as Jacob when he waited for Rachel--if I were sure she loved
+me. But I have begun to doubt even that. Oh, if she knew what love
+meant, she would have rushed into my arms. She would have swooned upon
+my breast in the shock of that meeting; but she sat prim and quiet,
+only a little pale and tearful, while I was shaken by a tempest of
+passion. She is capable of no more than a schoolgirl's love--held
+in check by the pettiest restraints of good manners and the world's
+opinion--and she has hardly decided whether that feeble flame burns for
+me or for Allan."
+
+And then he began to preach to himself the sermon which almost every
+slighted swain has preached since the world began. What was this woman
+that he should die of heartache for her? Was she so much fairer than
+other women whom he might have for the wooing? No, again and again,
+no. He could conjure fairer faces out of the past--faces he had gazed
+at and praised, and which had left him cold. She was not as handsome
+as Miss Simpson, at Simla, last year--that Miss Simpson who had thrown
+herself at his head--or as Miss Brown at Naini Tal, General Brown's
+daughter, who looked liked a houri, and who waltzed like a thing of
+air, imparting buoyancy and grace to the lumpiest of partners. He had
+not cared a straw for Miss Brown, even although the General had hinted
+to him, in the after-dinner freedom of the mess-room, that Miss Brown
+had an exalted opinion of him. No, he had cared for neither of these
+girls, though either might have been his for the asking. Perhaps that
+was why he did not care. He was madly in love with Suzette, whom he
+had known only as another man's betrothed. Suzette represented the
+unattainable; and for Suzette he could die.
+
+He hardly left the bounds of Discombe during those bright autumnal
+days, when the music of the hounds was loud over field and down. He
+had dissevered himself from most of the friends of his manhood by
+leaving the army; and in Matcham he had only acquaintance. From these
+he kept scrupulously aloof. One Matcham person, however, he could not
+escape. Mrs. Mornington surprised him in the music-room with his mother
+one afternoon, and instead of running away, as he would have done from
+any one else, he stayed and handed tea-cups with supreme amiability.
+
+He knew she would talk of Suzette. That was inevitable. She had
+scarcely settled herself in a comfortable armchair when she began.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Wornock, have you seen anything more of this niece of mine?"
+
+Of course there could be only one niece in question.
+
+"No, indeed. She has not come back from Bournemouth, has she?"
+
+"Oh yes, she has. She has come and gone. I made sure she would pay you
+a visit. You and she were always so thick. I believe she is fonder of
+you than she is of me."
+
+Geoffrey began to walk about the room--as softly as the parquetted
+floor would allow--listening intently. Eager as he was to hear, he
+could not sit still while Suzette was being discussed.
+
+Mrs. Wornock murmured a gentle negative.
+
+"Oh, but she is, you know. There is that," said Mrs. Mornington,
+pointing to the organ, "and that," pointing to the piano, "and your son
+is a fiddler. You are music mad, all of you. Suzette took to practising
+five hours a day. It was Chopin, Rubinstein, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn
+all day long. She looks upon me as an outsider, because I don't
+appreciate classical music. I wonder she didn't run over to see you."
+
+"Has she gone back to Bournemouth?"
+
+"Not she. My foolish brother took fright about her because she was
+looking pale and worried when she came home; so he whisked her off to
+London, took her to a doctor in Mayfair, who said Schwalbach; and to
+Schwalbach they are gone, and I believe, after a course of iron at
+Schwalbach--where they will meet no civilized beings at this time of
+year--they are to winter on the Riviera, and a pretty penny these whims
+and fancies will cost her father. I am glad I have no daughters. Poor
+Allan! such a fine, honest-hearted young man! She ought to have thanked
+God for such a sweetheart. I dare say, if he had been a reprobate and a
+bankrupt, she would have offered to go through fire and water for him."
+
+Geoffrey walked out at the open window which afforded such a ready
+escape.
+
+She was gone! Heartless, selfish girl! Gone without a word of farewell,
+without a whisper of hope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan returned to Matcham a few days after Mrs. Mornington's appearance
+at Discombe, and in spite of his dark doubts about Geoffrey, his first
+visit was to Mrs. Wornock.
+
+She was shocked at the change in him. He was pale, and thin, and
+serious looking, and, but for his grey-tweed suit, might have been
+mistaken for an overworked East-end parson.
+
+She talked to him about Lady Emily and the farm. Had he been shooting?
+Were there many birds this year? She talked of the most frivolous
+things in order to ward off painful subjects. But he himself spoke of
+Suzette.
+
+"She has gone away, I am told, for the whole winter. Marsh House is
+shut up. I never knew what a bright, home-like house it was till I saw
+it this morning, with the shutters shut, and the gates padlocked. There
+was not even a dog to bark at me. She has gone far afield; but I am
+going a good deal farther."
+
+And then he told her with a certain excitement of his meeting with
+Cecil Patrington, and his approaching departure for Zanzibar.
+
+"It was the luckiest thing in the world for me," he said. "I had
+not the least idea what to do with myself, or where to go, to get
+out of myself. The little I have seen of the Continent rather bored
+me--picture-gallery, cathedral, town-hall, a theatre, invariably shut
+up, a river, reported delightful when navigable, but not navigable
+at the time being. The same thing, and the same thing--not very
+interesting to a man who can't reckon the age of a cathedral to within
+a century or two--over and over again. But this will be new, this will
+mean excitement. I shall feel as if I were born again. The wonder will
+be--to myself, at least--that I don't come home black."
+
+"And you think you will find consolation--in Africa?"
+
+"I hope to find forgetfulness."
+
+"Poor Allan! Poor Geoffrey! It is a hard thing that you should both
+suffer."
+
+"Mr. Wornock's sufferings will soon be over, I take it. Rapture and not
+suffering will be the dominant in the scale of his life. He will have
+everything his own way when I am gone."
+
+"I don't think he will. He has not confided his secrets to me, but I
+believe he has offered himself to her, since her engagement was broken,
+and has been rejected."
+
+"He will offer himself again and will be accepted. There are
+conventionalities to be observed. Miss Vincent would not like people to
+say that she transferred her affections from lover to lover with hardly
+a week's interval."
+
+"I only know that my son is very unhappy, Allan."
+
+"So is a spoilt child when he can't have the moon. Your son will get
+the moon all in good time--only he will have to wait for it, and spoilt
+children don't like waiting."
+
+"How bitterly you speak of him, Allan. I hope you are not going to be
+ill friends."
+
+"Why should we be ill friends? It is not his fault that she has thrown
+me over--at the eleventh hour. It is only his good fortune to be more
+attractive than I am. It was the contrast with his brilliancy that
+showed her my dulness. He has the magnetism which I have not--genius,
+perhaps, or at least the air and suggestion of genius. One hardly knows
+what constitutes the real thing. I am one of the crowd. He has the
+marked individuality which fascinates or repels."
+
+"And you will be friends still, Allan--you and my poor wilful son? He
+is like a ship without a rudder, now that he has left the army. He has
+no intimate friends. He cannot rest long in one place. I never wanted
+him to steal your sweetheart, Allan. I am sure you know that. But I
+should be very glad to see him married."
+
+"You will see him married before long--and to the lady who was once my
+sweetheart."
+
+Mrs. Wornock shook her head; and the argument was closed by the
+appearance of Geoffrey himself, who came sauntering in from the garden,
+with his favourite Clumber spaniel at his heels.
+
+"Been shooting?" Allan asked, as they shook hands.
+
+There was a certain aloofness in their greeting, but nothing churlish
+or sullen in the manner of either. On Geoffrey's side there was only
+listlessness; on Allan's a grave reserve.
+
+"No. I look at my dogs every day. The keepers do the rest."
+
+"You are not fond of shooting?"
+
+"Not particularly--not of creeping about a copse on the look-out for a
+cock pheasant; still less do I love a hot corner!"
+
+He seated himself on the bench by the organ, and began to turn over a
+pile of music, idly, almost mechanically, not as if he were looking for
+anything in particular. Allan rose to go, and Mrs. Wornock followed him
+to the corridor.
+
+"Does he not look wretched? And wretchedly ill?" she asked appealingly;
+her own unhappiness visible in every line of her face.
+
+"He is certainly changed for the worse since I saw him last. That was
+a longish time ago, you may remember. He looks hipped and worried. He
+should go away, as I am going."
+
+"Not like you, Allan, to a savage country. I wish he would take me
+to Italy for the winter. We could move from place to place. He could
+change the scene as often as he liked."
+
+"I fear the mind would be the same, though earth and sky might change.
+Travelling upon beaten paths would only bore him. If he is unhappy, and
+you are unhappy about him, you had better let him come with Patrington
+and me."
+
+The offer was made on the impulse of the moment, out of sympathy with
+the mother rather than out of regard for the son.
+
+"No, no, I could not bear to lose him again--so soon. What would
+my life be like if you were both gone? I should lapse into the old
+loneliness--and solitude would bring back the old dreams--the old vain
+longing----"
+
+These last words were murmured brokenly, in self-communion.
+
+Allan left her, and she went back to the music-room, where Geoffrey
+had seated himself at the piano, and was playing a Spanish dance by
+Sarasate, for the edification of the spaniel, who looked agonized.
+
+"What have you been saying to Carew, mother?" he asked, stopping in the
+middle of a phrase.
+
+"Nothing of any importance. Allan is going to Central Africa with a
+friend he met in Suffolk--a Mr. Patrington."
+
+"A Mr. Patrington? I suppose you mean Cecil Patrington?"
+
+"Yes, that is the name."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                       "I GO TO PROVE MY SOUL."
+
+
+Allan lost no time in making his preparations. He ordered everything
+that Cecil Patrington told him to order, and in all things followed
+the advice of that experienced traveller, who consented to spend his
+last fortnight in England at Beechhurst, where his appearance excited
+considerable interest in the local mind. He allowed Allan to mount
+him, and went out with the South Sarum; and as he neither dressed,
+rode, nor looked like anybody else, he was the object of some curiosity
+among those outsiders who did not know him as a famous African hunter,
+a man who had made himself a name among British sportsmen unawares,
+while following the bent of his own fancy, and caring nothing what his
+countrymen at home thought about him.
+
+Lady Emily was her son's guest during the last week, anxious to be
+with him till he sailed, to postpone the parting till the final day.
+She was full of sorrow at the idea of a separation which was to last
+for at least two years, and might extend to double that time if the
+climate and the manner of life in Central Africa suited Allan. Stanley
+had taken nearly a year and a half going and returning between Zanzibar
+and Ujiji, and Stanley had been a much quicker traveller than previous
+explorers. And Mr. Patrington talked of Ujiji as a starting-point for
+journeys to the north, and to the west, rambling explorations over less
+familiar regions, and anon a leisurely journey down to Nyassaland, the
+African Arcadia. His plans, if carried out, would occupy five or six
+years.
+
+That sturdy traveller laughed at the mother's apprehensions.
+
+"My dear Lady Emily, you are under a delusion as to the remoteness of
+the great lake country. Should your son grow home-sick, something less
+than a three months' journey will bring him from the Tanganyika to the
+Thames. Sixty years ago, it took longer to travel from Bombay to London
+than it does now to come from the heart of Africa."
+
+The mother sighed, and looked mournfully at her son. He was unhappy,
+and travel and adventure would perhaps afford the best cure for his low
+spirits. She discussed the situation with Mrs. Mornington when that
+lady called upon her.
+
+"Your niece has acted very cruelly," she said.
+
+"My niece has acted like a fool. She has made two young men unhappy,
+and left herself out in the cold. I saw Geoffrey Wornock last week, and
+he looked a perfect wreck."
+
+"Do you think she cared for him?"
+
+"The girl must care for somebody. Looking back now, I can see that
+there was a change in her--a gradual change--after Geoffrey Wornock's
+return. It was very unfortunate. Either young man would have been a
+capital match;" added Mrs. Mornington, waxing practical; "but she could
+not marry them both!"
+
+Lady Emily felt angry with Geoffrey as the cause of unhappiness, the
+indirect cause of the coming separation between herself and her son.
+How happy she might have been had all gone smoothly! Allan would have
+settled at Beechhurst with his young wife; but they would have spent
+nearly half of every year in Suffolk. How happy her own life might have
+been with the son she loved, and the girl whom she was ready to take
+to her heart as a daughter, but for this wilful cruelty on the part of
+Suzette!
+
+Lady Emily was sitting in the Mandarin-room with her son and his friend
+late in the evening, their last evening but one in England. To-morrow
+they were all going to London together, and on the day after the
+travellers would embark for Zanzibar.
+
+The night was wet and windy, and a large wood fire burnt and crackled
+on the ample hearth. Lady Emily had her embroidered coverlet spread
+over her lap, and her work-table drawn conveniently near her elbow,
+in the light of a shaded lamp, while the two men lounged in luxurious
+chairs in front of the fire. The room looked the picture of comfort,
+the men companionable, content, and homely, and the mother's heart
+sank at the thought that years must pass before such an evening could
+repeat itself in that room, and before her poor Allan would be sitting
+in so comfortable a chair. It was not without regret that her son had
+contemplated the idea of their separation, or of his mother's solitary
+home when he should be gone. He had talked with her of the coming
+years, suggested the nieces or girl-friends whom she might invite to
+enliven the slumberous house, and to enjoy the beauty of those fertile
+gardens and level park-like meadows that stretched to the edge of the
+river.
+
+"You have troops of friends, mother, and you will have plenty of
+occupation with your farm, and sovereign power over the whole estate.
+Drake"--the bailiff--"will have to consult you about everything."
+
+"Yes, there will be much to be looked at and thought about; but I shall
+miss you every hour of my life, Allan."
+
+"Not as much as if I had been living at home."
+
+"Every bit as much. I was quite happy thinking of you here. How can
+I be happy when I picture you toiling alone in the desert under a
+broiling sun--no water--even the camels dropping and dying under their
+burdens."
+
+"Dear mother, be happy as to the camels. We shall not be in the camel
+country. We shall see very little of sandy deserts. Shadowy woods,
+fertile valleys, the margins of great lakes will be our portion."
+
+"And you will drink the water--which is sure to be unwholesome--and you
+will get fever."
+
+Allan did not tell his mother that fever was inevitable, a phase of
+African life which every traveller must reckon with. He represented
+African travel as a perpetual holiday in a land of infinite beauty.
+
+"Would Patrington go back there if it were not a delightful life?" he
+argued. "He has not to get his living there, as the poor fellows have
+who grill and bake themselves for half a lifetime in India. He goes
+because he loves the life."
+
+"He goes to shoot big game. He is a horrid, bloodthirsty creature."
+
+Little by little, however, Lady Emily had allowed herself to be
+persuaded that Central Africa was not so hideous a region as she had
+supposed. She was told that there were bits of country like Suffolk, a
+home-like Arcadia on the shores of Nyassa which would remind her of her
+own farm.
+
+"Then why not make that district your head-quarters?" she argued,
+appealing to Patrington.
+
+"We shall have no head-quarters. We shall wander from one interesting
+spot to another. We shall settle down only in the Masika season, when
+travelling is out of the question--not so much because it couldn't be
+done as because the blackies won't do it. They are uncommonly careful
+of themselves; won't budge in the rains, won't take a canoe on the
+lake, if there's a bit of a swell on."
+
+"I am glad of that," sighed Lady Emily, with an air of relief; "I am
+very glad the negroes are prudent and careful."
+
+"A deuced deal too prudent, my dear Lady Emily."
+
+The men were sitting at a table looking at a map, one of Patrington's
+rough sketch maps, and splotched with a blunt quill pen. He was showing
+Allan where more scientific map-makers had gone wrong.
+
+"Here's the Lualaba, you see, and here's the little wood where we
+camped--I seldom use a tent if I can help it, but there wasn't a
+village within ten miles of that spot."
+
+The door was opened and a servant announced--
+
+"Mr. Wornock."
+
+Allan started up, surprised, thrown off his balance by Geoffrey's
+entrance. It was half-past ten--Matcham bedtime.
+
+"You have come to bid us good-bye," Allan said, recovering his
+self-possession as they shook hands. "This is kind and friendly of you."
+
+"I have come to do nothing of the sort. I want to join your party, if
+you and your friend will have me."
+
+He spoke in his lightest tone; but he was looking worn and ill, and
+there were all the signs of sleeplessness and worry in his haggard face.
+
+"I know it's the eleventh hour," he said, "but I heard you say,"
+looking from Allan to Patrington, "that your important preparations
+have to be made at Zanzibar, where you buy most of the things you want.
+I--I only made up my mind this evening, after dinner. I am bored to
+death in England. There is nothing for me to do. I get so tired of
+things----"
+
+"And your mother?" hazarded Allan, feebly.
+
+"My mother is accustomed to doing without me. I believe I only worry
+her when I am at home. Will you take me, Carew? 'Yes,' or 'No'?"
+
+"Why, of course it is 'Yes,' Mr. Wornock," exclaimed Lady Emily, coming
+from the other end of the room, where she had been folding up her work
+for the night. "Allan, why don't you introduce Mr. Wornock to me?"
+
+She was radiant, charmed at the idea of a third traveller, and such a
+traveller as the Squire of Discombe. It seemed to lessen the peril of
+the expedition, that this other man should want to go, should offer
+himself thus lightly, on the eve of departure.
+
+She shook hands with Geoffrey in the friendliest way, looking at the
+wan, worn face with keen interest. Like Allan? Yes, he was like, but
+not so good-looking. His features were too sharply cut; his hollow
+cheeks and sunken eyes made him look ever so much older than Allan,
+thought the mother, admiring her own son above all the world.
+
+"Of course they will take you," she said, looking from one to the
+other. "It will make the expedition ever so much pleasanter for them
+both. They will feel less lonely."
+
+"I ain't afraid of loneliness," growled Patrington; "but if Mr. Wornock
+really wishes to go with us, and will fall into our plans, and not
+want to make alterations, and upset our route for whims of his own,
+I'm agreeable. It isn't always easy for three men to get on smoothly,
+you see. Even two don't always hit it--Burton and Speke, for instance.
+There were bothers."
+
+"You shall be my chief and captain," protested Geoffrey, "and if you
+should tire of me, well, I can always wander off on my own hook, you
+know. I could start by myself, now, take my chance and trust to native
+guides, choose another line of country, where I couldn't molest you----"
+
+"Molest! My dear Wornock, if you are really in earnest, really
+inclined to join us as a pleasant thing to do, and not a caprice of the
+moment, I shall be glad to have you, and I think Patrington will have
+no objection," said Allan, hastily.
+
+"Not the slightest. I only want unity of purpose. You don't look very
+fit," added Patrington, bluntly; "but you can rough it, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; I'm not afraid of hardships."
+
+"I should like to have a few words with you before anything is settled,
+if you will take a turn on the terrace," said Allan, and on Geoffrey
+assenting, he went over to the glass door, and led the way to the
+gravel walk outside.
+
+The rain was over, and the moon was shining out of a ragged mass of
+cloud.
+
+"Why do you leave this place, now, when you are master of the
+situation?" Allan asked abruptly, when he and Geoffrey had walked a few
+paces.
+
+"I am not master, no more than a beaten hound is master. I have
+mastered nothing, not even the lukewarm regard which she still
+professes for you. She has thrown you over, but I am not to be the
+gainer. I went to her directly I knew she was free. I offered myself to
+her, an adoring slave. But she would have none of me. She did not love
+you enough to be your wife; but for me she had only contempt, cruel
+words, mocking laughter that cut me like a bunch of scorpions. I am
+frank with you, Carew. If I had a ghost of a chance, I would follow her
+to Schwalbach, to the Riviera, all round this globe on which we crawl
+and suffer. Distance should not divide us. But I am too much a man to
+pursue a woman who scorns me. I want to forget her; I mean to forget
+her; and I think I might have a chance if I went with you and your chum
+yonder. I should like to go with you, unless you dislike me too much to
+be at ease in my company."
+
+"Dislike you! No, indeed, I do not."
+
+"I'm glad of that. My mother is very fond of you. You have been to her
+almost as a son. It will comfort her to think that we are together,
+together in danger and difficulty, and if one of us should not come
+back----"
+
+"Nonsense, Wornock! Of course we are coming back. Look at
+Patrington----"
+
+"Ah, but he has been a solitary traveller. When two go, there is always
+one who stays."
+
+"If you think that, you had much better stop at home."
+
+"No, no; the risk is the best part of the business to a man of my
+temper. It's the toss-up that I like. Heads, a safe return; tails,
+death in the wilderness--death by niggers, wild beasts, flood, or
+fire. I go with my life in my hand, as the catch phrase of the day has
+it; and if there were no hazards, no danger--well, one might as well
+stay at home, or play polo at Simla. Fellows get themselves killed
+even at that. Allan, we have been rivals, but not enemies. Shall we be
+brothers, henceforward?"
+
+"Yes, friends and brothers, if you will."
+
+They went back to the Mandarin-room, and when Lady Emily had bidden
+them good night, the three men lit up pipes and cigars, and talked
+about that wonder-world of tropical Africa, and what they were to do
+there, till the night grew late, and the Manor groom, dozing on the
+settle by the saddle-room fire after a hearty supper of beef and beer,
+questioned querulously whether his guv'nor meant to go home before
+daylight.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                           BLACK AND WHITE.
+
+
+A year and more, spring and summer, autumn and winter, had gone by
+since Allan Carew and his companions set their faces towards the Dark
+Continent; and now it was spring again, the early spring of Central
+Africa; and under the pale cloudless blue of a tropical sky three white
+men, with their modest following of Wangwana and Wanyamwezi--a company
+no bigger than that with which Captain Trivier crossed from shore to
+shore--camped beside the Sea of Ujiji. They had come from the east,
+and the journey from the coast opposite Zanzibar, taken very easily,
+with many halting-places on the way, had occupied the best part of a
+year. Some of those resting-places had been chosen for sport, for
+exploration, for repose after weary and troublesome stages. Sometimes a
+long halt had been forced upon the travellers by sickness, by inclement
+weather, by the rebellion or the perversity of their men--those porters
+upon whose endurance and good will their comfort and safety alike
+depended, in a land where it has been truly said that "luggage is life."
+
+That march from Bagamoyo, Stanley's starting-point, through the
+vicissitudes of the road and the seasons, had not been all pleasure;
+and there were darker hours on the way, when, toiling on with aching
+head and blistered feet, half stifled by the rank mists and poisonous
+odours of a jungle that smelt of death, Allan Carew and his companions
+may have wished themselves back in the beaten paths of a civilized
+world, where there is no need to think of bed or dinner, and where all
+that life requires for sustenance and support seems to come of itself.
+But if there had been weak yearnings for the comfortable, as opposed to
+the adventurous, not one of the three travellers had ever given any
+indication of such backsliding. Each in his turn stricken down--not
+once, but often--by the deadly mukunguru, or African fever, had rallied
+and girded his loins for the journey without an hour's needless delay;
+and then, on recovery, there had followed a fervent joy in life and
+nature; a rapture in the atmosphere; a keener eye for every changeful
+light and colour in earth and sky; the blissful sensations of a newly
+created being, basking in a new world. It was almost worth a man's
+while to pass through the painful stages of that deadly fever, the ague
+fit and languor, the yawning and drowsiness which mark the beginning
+of sickness, the raging thirst and throbbing temples, the aching spine
+and hideous visions that are its later agonies, in order to feel that
+ecstasy of restored health in which the convalescent sees ineffable
+loveliness even in the dull monotony of rolling woods, and thrills with
+friendship and love for the dusky companions of his journey.
+
+Loneliness and horror, pleasantness and danger, a startling variety
+of scenes had been traversed between the red coast of Eastern Africa
+and that vast inland sea where many rivers meet and mingle in the deep
+bosom of the mountains. Across the monotony of rolling woods that rise
+and fall in a seemingly endless sequence; by fever-haunted plains and
+swampy hollows; through the dripping scrub of the Makata wilderness;
+in all the dull horror of the Masika season, when the long swathes
+of tiger-grass lie rotting under the brooding mists that curtain the
+foul-smelling waste, when the Makata river has changed from a narrow
+stream to a vast lake which covers the plain, and in whose shallow
+waters trees and canes and lush green parasites subside into tangled
+masses of putrid vegetation, until to the traveller's weary eye it
+seems as if this very earth were slowly rotting in universal and final
+decay.
+
+They had come through many a settlement, friendly or unfriendly,
+through rivers difficult to cross by ford or ferry, difficult and
+costly too, since there are dusky sultans who take toll of these white
+adventurers at every ferry, sometimes rival chiefs who set up a claim
+to the same ferry, and have to be defied or satisfied--generally the
+latter; through many a _guet à pens_, where the "whit-whit" of the
+long arrows sounded athwart the woods as the travellers hurried by;
+through scenes of beauty and romantic grandeur; across vast expanses
+of green sward diversified with noble timber, calmly picturesque as
+an English park--a hunter's paradise of big game. They had journeyed
+at a leisurely pace, loitering wherever nature invited to enjoyment,
+their camp of the simplest, their followers as few as the absolute
+necessities of the route demanded.
+
+By these same forest paths, fighting his way through the same
+inexorable jungle, Burton had come on his famous voyage of discovery to
+the unknown lake; and by the same, or almost the same, paths Stanley
+had followed in his search for the great God-fearing traveller, brave
+and calm and patient, who made Africa his own. And here had come
+Cameron, meeting that dead lord of untrodden lands, journeying on
+other men's shoulders, no longer the guide and chief, but the silent
+companion of a sorrowful pilgrimage. Lonely as the track might be, it
+was peopled with heroic memories.
+
+"I should like to have been the first to come this way," Geoffrey had
+said with a vexed air, as he twirled the tattered leaves of Burton's
+book, which, with Stanley's and Cameron's travels, and Goethe's
+"Faust," composed the whole of his library.
+
+"You would always like to be first," Allan answered, laughing. "Is it
+not enough for you that you are the mightiest hunter of us three--the
+father of meat, as our boys call you--and that finer giraffes and harte
+beestes have fallen before your gun than even Patrington can boast,
+experienced sportsman though he is?"
+
+Patrington assented with a lazy comfortable laugh, stretched his legs
+on the reed mat under the rough verandah, and refilled his pipe.
+
+He was content to take the second place in the record of sport, and to
+let this restless fiery spirit satisfy its feverish impulses in the
+toils and perils of the jungle or the plain.
+
+Here was a young man with an insatiable love of sport, an activity of
+brain and body which nothing tired, and it was just as well to let him
+work for the party, while the older traveller, and nominal chief of the
+expedition, basked in the February sun, and read "Pickwick."
+
+A little brown-leather bound Bible, which he had used a good many years
+before at Harrow, and a dozen or so of Tauchnitz volumes, all by the
+same author, and all tattered and torn in years of travel and continual
+reperusal, constituted Mr. Patrington's stock of literature. Allan was
+the only member of the party who had burdened himself with a varied
+library of a dozen or so of those classics which a man cannot read too
+much or too often; for, indeed, could any man, not actually a student,
+exercise so much restraint over himself as to restrict his reading for
+three or four years to a dozen or so of the world's greatest books,
+that man would possess himself of a better literary capital than the
+finest library in London or Paris can provide for the casual reader,
+hurrying from author to author, from history to metaphysics, from Homer
+to Horace, from Herodotus to Froude, the wasting years of careless
+reading upon those snares for the idle mind--books about books. Half
+the intelligent readers in England know more about Walter Pater's
+opinion of Shelley or Buxton Forman's estimate of Keats than they know
+of the poems that made Shelley and Keats famous.
+
+Dickens reigned alone in Cecil Patrington's literary Valhalla. He
+always talked of the author of "Pickwick" as "he" or "him." Like Mr. Du
+Maurier's fine gentleman who thought there was only one man in London
+who could make a hat, Mr. Patrington would only recognize one humourist
+and one writer of fiction.
+
+"How he would have enjoyed this kind of life!" he said. "What fun he
+would have got out of those crocodiles! What a word picture he would
+have made of our storms, and the Masika rains, and those rolling woods,
+that illimitable forest t'other side of Ukonongo! and how he would have
+understood all the ins and outs in the minds of our Zanzibaris, and
+of the various nigger-chiefs whose society we have enjoyed, and whose
+demands we have had to satisfy, upon the road!"
+
+"Have they minds?" asked Geoffrey, with open scorn. "I doubt the
+existence of anything you can call mind in the African cranium. Hunger
+and greed are the motive power that moves the native mechanism; but
+mind, no. They have ferocious instincts, such as beasts have, and the
+craving for food. Feed them, and they will love you to-day; but they
+will rob and murder you to-morrow, if they see the chance of gaining by
+the transaction."
+
+"Oh, come, I won't have our boys maligned. I have lived among them
+for years, remember, while you are only a new-comer. Granted that
+they are greedy. They are only greedy as children are. They are like
+children----"
+
+"Exactly. They are like children. They could not be like anything
+worse."
+
+"What!" cried Patrington, with a look of horror, "have you no faith in
+the goodness and purity of a child?"
+
+"In its goodness, not a whit! Purity, yes; the purity of ignorance,
+which we call innocence, and pretend to admire as an exquisite and
+touching attribute of the undeveloped human being. These blackies are
+just as good and just as bad as the average child; greedy, grasping,
+selfish; selfish, grasping, greedy; ready to kiss the feet of the man
+who comes back to the village with an antelope on his shoulder; ready
+to send a poisoned arrow after him if on parting company he refuses to
+be swindled out of cloth or beads. They are bad, Patrington--if I were
+not a disciple of Locke, I would say they are innately bad. But what
+does that matter? We are all bad."
+
+"What a pleasant way you have of looking at life and your fellow-men!"
+said Patrington.
+
+"I look life and my fellow-man full in the face, and I ask myself if
+there is any man living whose nature--noble, perhaps, according to the
+world's esteem--does not include a latent capacity for evil. Every
+man and every woman, the best as well as the worst, is a potential
+criminal. Do you think _that_ Macbeth who came over the heath at
+sundown after the battle, flushed with victory, was a scoundrel? Not
+he. There was not a captain in the Scottish army more loyal to his
+king. He was only an ambitious man. Temptation and opportunity did all
+the rest. Temptation, were it only strong enough, and opportunity,
+would make a murderer of you or me."
+
+"'Lead us not into temptation.' Oh, wondrous wise and simple prayer,
+which riseth every night and morning out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings over all the Christian world, and in a few brief phrases
+includes every aspiration needful for humanity!" said Cecil Patrington,
+who was in matters theological just where he had been when his boyish
+head was bowed under the Episcopal hand on the day of his confirmation.
+
+Far away from new books and new opinions, knowing not the names of
+Spencer or Clifford, Schopenhauer or Hartmann, this rough traveller's
+religion was the unquestioning faith of Paul Dombey, of Hester
+Summerson and Agnes Whitfield and Little Nell, of all the gentlest
+creatures in the dream-world of Charles Dickens.
+
+There was leisure and to spare for argument and discussion here in this
+quiet settlement on the shore of the great lake. The travellers had
+established themselves in a deserted _tembe_, which had been allotted
+to them by the Arab chieftain of the land, and which was pleasantly
+situated on a ridge of rising ground about a mile from the busy village
+of Ujiji. They had done all that laborious ingenuity could do to purify
+the rough clay structure, ridding it as far as possible of the plague
+of insects that crawled in the darkness below or buzzed in the thatch
+above, of the rats which the dusk of evening brought out in gay and
+familiar riot, and the snakes that followed in their train, and the
+huge black spiders, whose webs choked every corner. They had knocked
+out openings under the deep eaves of the thatched roof--openings which
+allowed of cross-currents of air, and were regarded by their Zanzibaris
+and Unyanyembis with absolute horror. Only once in their pilgrimage had
+the travellers found a hut with windows.
+
+"What does a man want in his _tembe_ but warmth and shelter? And how
+can these white men be so foolish as to make openings that let in the
+cold?" argued the native mind; nor was the native mind less exercised
+by the trouble these three white men took to keep their _tembe_ and its
+surroundings, the verandah, the ground about it, severely clean, or by
+their war of extermination against that insect life whose ravages the
+African suffers with a stoical indifference.
+
+The travellers had established themselves in this convenient
+spot--close to the port and market of Ujiji--to wait for the Masika,
+the season of rain that raineth every day--rain that closes round
+the camp like a dense wall of water--such rain as a man must go to
+the tropics to see, and which, once having seen, he is not likely to
+forget. They could hardly be better off anywhere, when the rains of
+April should come upon them, than they would be here. The natives were
+friendly; friendly too, friendly and kind and helpful, was the mighty
+Arab chief Roumariza, the white Arab, sovereign lord of these regions,
+sole master here, where the sceptre of the Sultan of Zanzibar reaches
+not: a man whose word is law, and in whose hand is plenty.
+
+Roumariza looked upon Cecil Patrington's party with the eye of favour,
+and upon Patrington as an old friend--nay, almost a subject of his own,
+so familiar was Patrington's bronzed face in those regions, whither
+he had come close upon the footsteps of Cameron, and when that lake
+land of tropical Africa was still a new world, untrodden by the white
+man's foot, the northern shores of the lake still unexplored, the vast
+country of Rua unknown even to the Arabs.
+
+At Ujiji provisions were plentiful and cheap. At Ujiji there were
+boat-builders; and canoes and rowers were at hand for the exploration
+of the vast fresh-water sea. Indeed, there was only too much
+civilization and human life to please that son of the wilderness, Cecil
+Patrington.
+
+"I love the unknown better than the known," he said. "We shall never
+see the lake again as Burton saw it--before ever the sound of engine
+and paddle-wheel had been heard on that broad blue expanse, when the
+monkeys chattered and screamed and slung themselves from tree to tree
+in a tumult of wonder at sight of the white wayfarer. Nobody can ever
+enjoy the sense of rapture and surprise that took Cameron's breath away
+as he looked down from the hills and saw the wide-reaching, pale blue
+water flashing in the sun. He took the lake itself for a cloud at the
+first glance, and a little islet for the lake, and asked his men, with
+bitterest chagrin, 'Is this all?' And then the niggers pointed, and
+these vast waters spread themselves out of the cloud, and he saw this
+mighty sea shining out of its dark frame of mountain and plain forest.
+Jupiter, what a moment! _I_ could never enjoy that surprise. I had read
+Cameron's book, and he had discounted the situation for me; he had
+swindled me out of my emotions. I knew the breadth and length of the
+lake to within a mile--no chance of mistake for _me_. Yes, I said. Here
+is the Tanganyika, and it is a very fine sheet of blue water; and pray
+where is the Swiss porter to take my luggage? or where shall I find the
+omnibus for the best hotel? Mark me, lads, before we have been long
+underground, there will be hotels and omnibuses and Swiss porters, and
+the Cooks and Gazes of the future will deal in through tickets to the
+African lakes, and this great heart of Africa will be the Englishman's
+favourite holiday ground. Let but the tramway Stanley talks about be
+laid from Bagamoyo to the interior, and 'Arry will be lord of Central
+Africa, as he is of the rest of the earth."
+
+Idle talk in idle hours beside the camp-fire. Though the days were as
+sunny and summer-like as February on the Riviera, the nights were cold;
+and after sundown masters and men liked to sit by their fires and watch
+the pine-wood crackle and the flames leap through the smoke like living
+things, vanish and reappear, fade into darkness or flicker into light
+with swifter and more sudden movement than even the thoughts of the men
+who watched them.
+
+The porters and servants had their own huts and their own fires. They
+had made a rough stockade round the cluster of bee-hive huts--a snug
+settlement, which Allan compared to a mediæval fortress, one of the
+Scottish castles, whose inhabitants live and move in the pages of the
+Wizard of the North. Allan was a devoted worshipper of Scott, whom
+he held second only to Shakespeare; and as Cecil Patrington claimed
+exactly this position for Charles Dickens, the question afforded an
+inexhaustible subject for argument, sometimes mild and philosophical,
+sometimes vehement and angry, to which Geoffrey listened yawningly, or
+into which he plunged with superior vehemence and arbitrary assertion
+if it were his humour to be interested.
+
+In a land where there was no daily record of what mankind were doing,
+no newspaper at morning and evening recounting the last pages of
+the world's history, telling the story of yesterday's crimes and
+catastrophes, sickness and death, wrong and right, evil and good,
+adventures, successes, failures, inventions, gains and losses--every
+movement near or far in the great mill-wheel of human life--deprived
+of newspapers, of civilized society, and of all the business of
+money-getting and money-spending, it was only in such discussions
+that these exiles could find subjects for conversation. The contents
+of the letters and papers that had reached them three months before
+at Tabora, brought on from Zanzibar by an Arab caravan bound for the
+hunting-grounds of Rua, had been long exhausted; and now there was
+only the populace of the great romancers to talk about in the long
+chilly evenings, when they were in no mood for piquet or poker, and too
+lazy-brained for the arduous pleasures of chess. Then it was pleasant
+to lie in front of the fire and dispute the merits of one's favourite
+novelist, or some abstract question in the regions of philosophy.
+Sometimes the three men's talk would wander from Dickens to Plato, from
+Scott to Aristotle, from Macaulay to Thucydides. Allan was the most
+bookish of the three, and his knowledge of German enabled him to carry
+the lightest of travelling-libraries, in the shape of that handy series
+of little paper-covered books which includes the best German authors,
+together with translations of all the classics, ancient and modern,
+Greek, Latin, Norse, English, French, Italian, at twopence-halfpenny
+per volume--tiny booklets, of which he could carry half a dozen in the
+pockets of his flannel jacket, and which comprised the literature of
+the world in the smallest possible compass.
+
+For more than a year, these three men had been dependent upon one
+another's society for all intellectual solace, for all mental comfort;
+for more than a year they had looked upon no white faces but their
+own, so tanned and darkened by sun and weather that they had come to
+talk of themselves laughingly as white Arabs, or semi-negroids, and to
+opine that they would never look like Englishmen again. Indeed, Cecil
+Patrington, whose fifteen years of manhood had been chiefly spent
+under tropic stars, had no desire ever again to wear the sickly aspect
+of the home-keeping Englishman, whom he spoke of disparagingly as a
+turnip-face. Bronzed and battered, and hardened by the hard life of the
+desert, he laughed to scorn the amenities of modern civilization and
+the iron bondage of the claw-hammer coat.
+
+"Male humanity is divided into two classes--the men who dress for
+dinner, and the men who don't. I have always belonged to the latter
+half. We are the freemen; our shoulders have never bent under the
+yoke. I ran away from every school I was ever sent to. I played
+Hell and Tommy at my private tutor's Berkshire parsonage--set fire
+to his study when he locked me in, with an order to construe five
+tough pages of 'Thicksides,' for insubordination. I set fire to his
+waste-paper basket, lads, and his missus's muslin curtains. I knew
+I could put the fire out with his garden-hose, when I had given him
+a good scare; and after that little bit of arson, he was uncommonly
+glad to get rid of me. The old Herod had insisted on my dressing
+for dinner every night--putting on a claw-hammer coat and a white
+tie to eat barley-broth and boiled mutton. I wasn't going to stop
+in such a _bouge_ as that. Then came the university. I was always
+able to scramble through an exam., so I matriculated with flying
+colours--passed my Little Go with a flourish of trumpets; and my people
+hoped I had turned over a new leaf. So I had, boys--a new leaf in a new
+book. I had begun to read the story of African travel--Livingstone,
+Burton, Baker, du Chaillu, Stanley. And from that hour I knew what
+manner of life I was meant for. I got my kind old dad to give me a
+biggish cheque--compounded with him, before my second term at Trinity
+was over, for the fifteen hundred my university career would have cost
+him--and sailed for the Cape; and from that day to this, except when I
+read a paper one night in Savile Row, I have never worn the garment of
+the white slave. I have never thrust these hairy arms of mine into the
+silk-lined sleeves of a swallow-tail coat."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the eldest traveller those days before the coming of the Masika
+left nothing to be desired. The long coasting voyages on the great
+fresh-water sea, the canoes following the romantic shores or threading
+the southern archipelago where the river Lofu pours its broad stream
+into the lake, were enough for exercise, excitement, variety.
+
+For Cecil Patrington--for the man who carried no burden of bitter
+memories, whose heart ached not with the yearning for home faces, the
+joys of Central Africa were all-sufficing. He had been happy in scenes
+far less lovely; happy in arid deserts such as the Roman poet pictured
+to himself in the luxurious repose of his suburban villa--deserts to be
+made endurable by the presence of Lalage. Cecil Patrington would not
+have exchanged his Winchester rifle for the loveliest Lalage; he wanted
+to kill, not to be killed. No sweetly smiling, no prettily prattling
+society would have made up to him for the lack of big game and the
+means of slaughter. Perhaps he, too, had dreamed his dream, even as Mr.
+Jaggers had. There is no man so unlikely of aspect that he may not once
+have been a lover. Is not the faithfullest, fondest lover in all modern
+fiction the hunchback Quasimodo? But if this rough sportsman had ever
+succumbed to the common fever, had ever sighed and suffered, his malady
+was a thing of the remote past. In his most confidential talk there had
+never been the faintest indication of a romantic attachment.
+
+"Why did I never marry?" he echoed, when the question was asked
+jestingly, beside the camp-fire, in the early stages of their journey.
+"I had neither time nor inclination, nor money to waste upon such an
+expensive toy as a wife; a wife who would eat her head off in England
+while I was knocking about over here, a wife who would cost me more
+than a caravan."
+
+This was all that Mr. Patrington ever said about the matrimonial
+question; but marriage is a subject upon which some men never reveal
+their real thoughts.
+
+He took life as merrily as if it had been a march in a comic opera;
+and in the presence of his cheerfulness the two young men kept their
+troubles to themselves.
+
+Had Allan forgotten Suzette under those tropic stars? No, he had not
+achieved forgetfulness; but he had learnt to live without love, without
+the light of a fair woman's face; and in a modified way to be happy.
+The changes and chances, difficulties, accidents, and adventures of the
+journey between the coast and Tabora had kept his mind fully occupied.
+Fever, and recovery from fever; failure or success with his gun;
+difficult negotiations with village sultans; and even an occasional
+skirmish in which the poisoned arrows flew fast, and the stern
+necessity of firing on their assailants had stared them in the face;
+all these things had left little leisure for love-sick dreams, for fond
+regrets.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                     THE MEETING-PLACE OF WATERS.
+
+
+At Tabora there had been a long halt, a delay forced upon the
+travellers by the conditions of climate, by the sickness and the
+idleness of their caravan; but this interval of rest had not been
+altogether disagreeable. The place was a place of fatness, a settlement
+in the midst of a fertile plan where the flocks and herds, the Arab
+population, the pastoral life suggested those familiar pictures
+in that first book of ancient history which the child takes into
+his newly awakened consciousness; and which the hard and battered
+wayfarer--believer or agnostic--loves and admires to the end of life.
+In just such a scene as this Rebecca might have given Isaac the fateful
+draught of water from the wayside well; upon just such a level pasture
+Joseph and his brethren might have tended their flocks and watched the
+stars. The visions of the young dreamer would have shown him this pale
+milky azure, over-arching the rich level where the sheaves bowed down
+to his sheaves; and in just such a reposeful atmosphere would he have
+laid himself down for the noontide siesta, and let his fancy slide into
+the dim labyrinth of dreamland.
+
+At Tabora there had been overmuch time for thought, and the yearning
+for a far-away face must needs have been in the hearts of both those
+young Englishmen, whose bronzed features were sternly and steadily set
+with the resolute calm of men who do not mean to waste in despair and
+die for love of the fairest woman upon earth.
+
+Often and often in the dusk, Allan heard his comrade's rich baritone
+rolling out that old song--
+
+    "Shall I, wasting in despair,
+    Die, because a woman's fair?
+    Or make pale my cheeks with care
+    Because another's rosy are?"
+
+The voice thrilled him. What a gift is that music which gives a man
+power over his fellow-men? Geoffrey's fiddle talked to them nearly
+every night beside the camp-fire, talked to them sometimes at daybreak,
+when its owner had been sleepless; for that restless spirit had
+watched too many long blank hours in the course of his travels. It had
+been hard work to convey that fiddle-case across the rolling woods,
+through swamp and river, guarded from the crass stupidity of native
+porters--from the obstinacy of the African donkey--the curiosity of the
+inhabitants of the villages on the way. Geoffrey had carried it himself
+for the greater part of the journey; refusing to trust Arab or Negroid
+with so precious a burden. Riding or walking, he had managed to take
+care of his little Amati, the smallest but not the least valuable of
+all his fiddles.
+
+There were some among his dark followers to whom Geoffrey's Amati
+was an enchanted thing, a thing that ought to have been alive if
+it was not; indeed, there were some who secretly believed that it
+was a living creature. The velvet nest in which he kept the strange
+thing, the delicate care with which he laid it in that luxurious
+resting-place, or took it out into the light of day; the loving
+movement with which he rested his chin on the shining wood, while his
+long lissome fingers twined themselves caressingly about the creature's
+neck; the strange light that came into his eyes as he drew the bow
+across the strings, and the ineffable sounds which those strings gave
+forth; all these were tokens of a living presence, a something to be
+loved and feared.
+
+When he tuned his fiddle, they thought that he was punishing it, and
+that it shrieked and groaned in its agony. Why else were those sounds
+so harsh and discordant, so unlike the melting strains which the
+thing gave forth when he laid his chin upon it and loved it, when his
+lips smiled, and his melancholy eyes looked far away into the purple
+distances, across the woods and the plains, to the remoteness of the
+mountain range beyond?
+
+If it were not actually alive--if it had neither heart nor blood as
+they had, why, then, it was a familiar demon--a charm--by which he who
+possessed it could influence his fellow-men. He could rouse them to
+savage raptures, to shrieks and wild leaps that were meant for dancing.
+He could melt them to tears.
+
+From the first hour when he played by the camp-fire, on the third
+night after they left Bagamoyo, Geoffrey's music had given him a hold
+over the more intelligent members of the caravan. They had listened at
+first almost as the dog listens, and had been ready to lift up their
+heads and howl as the dog howls. But gradually those singing sounds had
+exercised a soothing influence, they had sprawled at his feet, a ring
+of listeners, with elbows on the ground, looking up at him out of onyx
+eyes that flashed in the firelight.
+
+Among their followers there were some Makololos from the Shire Valley,
+men of superior courage and determination, a finer race than the common
+herd of African porters, of the same race as those faithful followers
+of Livingstone's first great journey, who afterwards became chiefs and
+rulers of the land. These Makololos adored Geoffrey. His music, the
+achievements of his Winchester rifle, that ardent fitful temperament of
+his, exercised an extraordinary influence over these men; and it seemed
+as if they would have followed him without fee or reward, for sheer
+love of the man himself; not for meat, and cloth, and beads, and brass
+wire.
+
+Never a word said Geoffrey or Allan of that one woman whose image
+filled the minds of both. They talked of other people freely enough.
+Each spoke of his mother tenderly, regretfully even, Allan taking
+comfort from the thought of Lady Emily's delight in her farm, the
+occupation and interest which every change of the seasons brought
+for her. Such letters as had reached him on his wanderings had been
+resigned and uncomplaining, although dwelling sorrowfully upon the
+husband she had lost.
+
+"He used to live so much apart, shut in his library day after day,
+and only joining me in the evening, that I could hardly have believed
+my life could seem so empty without him. But I know now how much his
+presence in the house--even his silent, unseen presence--meant for
+me; and I realize now how often I used to go to him, interrupting his
+dreamy life with my petty household questions, my little bits of news
+from the farmyard or the cow-houses, or the garden. He was so kind
+and sympathetic. He would look up from his books to interest himself
+in some story about my Brahmas or my Cochins, and if he was bored, he
+never allowed me to see the faintest sign of impatience. I think he was
+the best and truest man that ever lived. And my Allan is like him. May
+God protect and bless my dearest, my only dear, in all the perils of
+the desert!"
+
+Lady Emily's mental picture of Africa represented one far-reaching
+waste of level sand, a desert flatness incompatible with a spherical
+earth, pervaded by camels, and occasionally varied by a mirage. A
+pair of pyramids--like tall candlesticks at the end of a board-room
+table--a sphinx and a crocodily river occupied the north-east corner of
+this vast plateau, while the south-west was distinguished by a colony
+of ostriches, and the place to which Indian officials used to resort
+for change of air some fifty years since. To these narrow limits were
+restricted Lady Emily's notions of the continent on which her son
+was now a wanderer. She feared that if he got out of the way of the
+crocodiles he might fall in with the ostriches, which doubtless were
+dangerous when encountered in large numbers; and she shuddered at the
+sight of her feather fan.
+
+Mrs. Wornock's letters were in a sadder strain. The key was distinctly
+minor. She wrote of her loneliness; of the monotonous days; the longing
+for the face that had vanished.
+
+"My organ talks to me of you--Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, all
+tell me the same story. You are far away--away for a long time--and
+life is very sad."
+
+There was not a word of Suzette in those letters. If she was ever at
+the Manor, if Mrs. Wornock retained her affection and found solace in
+her society, there was no hint of that consoling presence. It might
+be that the girl hated the house because of that vehement stormy love
+which had assailed her there; the love that would not let her be
+faithful to a more reasonable lover.
+
+"And yet--and yet!" thought Geoffrey, hardly caring even in his own
+mind to put the question positively.
+
+In his innermost consciousness there was the belief that she loved
+him--him, Geoffrey Wornock--that she had refused him perversely and
+foolishly, out of a mistaken sense of honour. She would not marry Allan
+whom she did not love; and she refused to marry Geoffrey whom she did
+love, in order to spare her jilted lover the pain of seeing a rival's
+triumph.
+
+"But I am not beaten yet," Geoffrey told himself. "When I go back to
+England--if I but find her free--I shall try again. Allan's wounds
+will have healed by that time; and even her Quixotic temper will have
+satisfied itself by the sacrifice of two years of her lover's life."
+
+"When I go back!" Musing sometimes on that prospect of the homeward
+journey, whether returning by the road they had come, or dropping down
+southward by Trivier's route to the Nyassa and the Zambesi, or by the
+more adventurous westward line by the forest and the Congo, the way
+by which Trivier had come to the Lake, whichever way were eventually
+chosen, Geoffrey asked himself if the three travellers would all go
+back?
+
+"One shall be taken and the other left."
+
+Throughout the record of African travel, there is that dark feature
+of the story; the traveller who is left behind. Sometimes it is the
+fever fiend that lays a scorching hand upon the fearless adventurer,
+flings him down to suffer thirst and pain and heaviness, and delirious
+horrors, in the foul darkness of a bee-hive hut, to die in a dream
+of home, with shadowy faces looking down at him, familiar voices
+talking with him. Sometimes he falls in a ring of savage foes, hemmed
+round with hideous faces, foes as fierce and implacable as lion or
+leopard; foes who kill for the sake of killing; or cannibals, for
+whom a murdered man provides the choicest banquet. The hazards of the
+pilgrimage take every shape, death by drowning, death by massacre,
+death by small-pox or jungle fever, death by starvation, by the
+bursting of a gun, by beasts of prey. In every story of travel there
+is always that dark page which tells of the man who is left. Dillon,
+Farquhar, the two Pococks, Jameson, Bartelott, Weissemburger--the
+ghosts that haunt the pathways of tropical Africa are many; but those
+melancholy shadows exercise no deterring influence on the traveller who
+sets out to-day, strong, elate, hopeful, inspired by an eager curiosity
+which takes no heed of trouble or of risk.
+
+"Which of us three is to stay behind?" Geoffrey asked himself in a
+gloomy wonder. Not Patrington. He had come to the stage at which the
+traveller bears a charmed life. It is seldom the experienced wanderer,
+the man of many journeys, who falls by the wayside. Hot-headed youth,
+bold in its ignorance of danger, perishes like a bird caught in a trap.
+The strong frame of the trained athlete shrivels like a leaf in the hot
+blast of fever. The careless boatman tempts the perils of a difficult
+passage, and is swept over the stony bed of the torrent, and vanishes
+in the fathomless pool. The hardened traveller knows what he is about,
+and can reckon with the forces of that gigantic nature which he faces
+and defies. It is the tyro who pays the price of his inexperience, and,
+in the history of African travel, the survival of the fittest is the
+rule.
+
+"Which of us?" That question had entered into the very fabric of
+Geoffrey's thoughts. Sometimes, sitting by the camp-fire as the
+chillness of night crept round them, a grisly fancy would flash across
+his reverie, and he would think that the pale mist that rose about
+Allan's figure, on the other side of the circle, was the shroud which
+the Highlander sees upon the shoulders of a friend marked for death.
+
+"Would it be Allan?" If it were Allan, he, Geoffrey, would hasten
+home to tell the sad story, and then--to claim her whose too-tender
+conscientiousness had refused happiness at Allan's expense. Allan gone,
+there would be no reason why she should deny her love.
+
+"For I know, I know that she loves me," Geoffrey repeated to himself.
+
+He had been telling himself that story ever since he left England. No
+denial from those lovely lips, no words of scorn, would convince him
+that he was unloved. He could recall looks and tones that told another
+story. He had seen the gradual change in her which told of an awakening
+heart.
+
+"She never knew what love means till she knew me," he told himself.
+Did he wish for Allan's death? No, there was no such hideous thought
+in the dark labyrinth of his mind; or, at least, he believed that
+there was not. One must perish! He had so brooded over the story
+of former victims that he had taught himself to look upon one lost
+life as inevitable. But the lot was as likely to fall upon him as
+upon Allan. More likely, since his habits were more reckless and more
+adventurous than Allan's. If there was danger to be found, he and his
+Makololos courted it. Shooting expeditions, raids upon unfriendly
+villages, hand-to-hand skirmishes with Mirambo's brigand tribes; he
+and his Makololos were ready for anything. He had travelled over
+hundreds of miles with his warlike little gang--exploring, shooting,
+fighting--while Patrington and Allan were living in dreamy inaction,
+waiting for better weather, or for the recovery of half a dozen
+ailing pagazis. Assuredly he who ran such superfluous risks was the
+more likely to fall by the way. Well, death is a solution of all
+difficulties.
+
+"If I am dead, it will matter to me very little that my bright,
+ineffable coquette is transformed into a sober, middle-aged wife,
+and that she and Allan are smiling at each other across the family
+breakfast-table, in their calm heaven of domestic hum-drum. But while I
+live and am young I shall think of her and long for her, and hate the
+lucky wretch who wins her. If we should both go back; if Patrington's
+tough bones are the bones that are to whiten by the way, and not
+Allan's or mine; why, then, we shall again be rivals; and the years of
+exile will be only a dream that we have dreamt."
+
+It was a strange position in which these two young men found
+themselves. Friends, almost as brothers in the close intimacy of that
+solitude of three, only three civilized thinking beings amidst a crowd
+of creatures who seemed as far apart as if they had belonged to the
+forest fauna--the great antelope family--or the simian race; these two,
+so nearly of an age, reared in the same country and the same social
+sphere, united and sympathetic at every point of contact between mind
+and mind, and yet keeping this one deep gulf of silence between them.
+
+They spoke to each other freely of all things, except of her; and
+yet each knew that she was the one absorbing subject in the mind of
+the other. Each knew that her image went along with them, was never
+absent, never less distinctly lovely, even when the way was fullest of
+hardship and peril, when every yard of progress meant a struggle with
+thorns that tore them, and brambles that lashed them, and the tough,
+rank verdure-carpet that clogged their feet. Neither had ever ceased to
+remember her, or to think of these adventurous days as anything else
+than exile from her. Whatever interest or enjoyment there might be in
+that varied experience of a land where beauty and ugliness alternated
+with startling transitions, it was not possible that either Allan or
+Geoffrey could forget the reason they were there, far from the fair
+faces of women, and from all the ease and pleasantness of civilized
+life.
+
+Geoffrey had the better chance of oblivion, since those wild excursions
+and explorations of his afforded the excitement of the untrodden and
+the hazardous. The caravan road from the coast to Ujiji, with all its
+varieties of hardship, was too beaten a track for this fiery spirit.
+At every halting-place he went off at a tangent; and if his comrades
+threatened not to wait for his return, he would pledge himself to
+rejoin them further on, laughing to scorn every suggestion that he and
+his little company of Makololos and Wanyamwesis could lose themselves
+in the wilderness.
+
+He was more in touch with the men than Allan--as familiar with their
+ways and ideas as Patrington after many years of travel. He had learnt
+their languages with a marvellous quickness--not the copious language
+of civilization and literature, be it remembered, but the concise
+vocabulary of the camp and the hunting-ground, the river and the
+road. He understood his men and their different temperaments as few
+travellers learn to understand, or desire to understand them. And yet
+there was but little Christian benevolence at the root of this quick
+sympathy and comprehension. Although, as an Englishman, Geoffrey would
+have given no sanction to the sale and barter of his fellow-creatures,
+these dark servants were to him no more than slaves--so much carrying
+power and so much fighting power, subject to his domination. It pleased
+him to know their characters, to be able to play upon their strength
+and weakness, their ferocity and their greed, just as surely as he
+manipulated the stops of the great organ at Discombe.
+
+These Africans gave a name of their own choosing to almost everybody.
+They christened the great Sultan of the interior Tippo-Tib, because
+of a curious blinking of his eyes. Captain Trivier obtained his
+nickname on account of his eye-glass. Another man was named after
+his spectacles. The Sultan of Ujiji was called Roumariza--"It is
+ended,"--because he had succeeded in reducing belligerent tribes to
+peaceful settlement. For the Englishman in particular, Africa could
+always find a nickname, based on some insignificant detail of manner or
+appearance. For Englishmen in general she had found a nobler-sounding
+name. She called them Sons of Fire.
+
+Geoffrey, with his tireless energy, his rapid decision, his angry
+impatience of delay, seemed to his followers the very highest exemplar
+of the fiery race that can persevere and conquer difficulties which the
+native of the soil recoils from as insurmountable.
+
+Sons of Fire! Were they not worthy of the name, these white men, when
+far out in midstream, while the boatmen bent and cowered over their
+paddles, these Englishmen looked in the face of the lightning and
+sat calm and unmoved while day darkened to the pitchy blackness of a
+starless midnight, and the thunder reverberated from hill to hill,
+with roar upon roar and peal upon peal, like the booming of heavy
+batteries, and anon crashed and rattled with a sharper, nearer sound.
+Blinding lightning, torrential rain, war of thunder and tempestuous
+waters, were all as nothing to these sons of fire. Their spirits rose
+amidst hurricane or thunderstorm; they were full of life and gaiety
+while the cockleshell canoes were being tossed upon the short, choppy
+sea, like forest leaves upon a forest brook, and when every sudden gust
+threatened destruction. They laughed at peril, and insisted upon having
+the canoes out when their native followers saw danger riding on the
+wind and death brooding over the waters. They met the spirit of murder,
+and were not afraid. They lay down to sleep in the midst of an unknown
+wilderness, with savage beasts lurking in the darkness that surrounded
+their tents. They forded rivers that swarmed with crocodiles--horrible
+stealthy creatures, swimming deep down below the surface of the water,
+the placid, beautiful water, with lotus flowers sleeping in the
+sunlight, and scaly monsters waiting underneath in the shadow.
+
+Panther, crocodile, tempest, fever, or sunstroke, poisoned arrows from
+murderous foes, were only so many varieties in the story of adventure.
+Through every vicissitude the ready wit and calm courage of the
+Englishmen rose superior to accident, discomfort, or danger; and to
+the native temper these wanderers from a far country, an island which
+they had heard of as a speck in a narrow sea, seemed men of iron with
+souls of fire.
+
+Geoffrey would admit no malingering, would accept no idle pretexts for
+inaction or delay. His little band, picked out from the ruck of their
+porters, were always on the move, save in those rainy interludes which
+made movement impossible; and even then Geoffrey fretted and fumed, and
+was inclined to question the impracticability of a hunting expedition
+through those torrential rains.
+
+"Did you ever hear of a fox-hunter stopping at home because of a wet
+day?" he asked Cecil Patrington, impatiently.
+
+"Did you ever see such rain as this in a fox-hunting country?" retorted
+Patrington, pointing through an opening in the door of the hut to the
+sheet of falling water, which blotted out all beyond, and splashed with
+a thud into the pool that filled the enclosure.
+
+The deep eaves kept the rain out of the huts, but not without
+occasional accident--spoilt provisions, damp gunpowder. It was a rude
+awakening from dreams of home to find one's bed afloat on a pond of
+rising waters.
+
+Geoffrey had taken upon himself the task of providing meat for the
+party, Patrington's lazy, happy-go-lucky temper readily ceding that
+post of distinction to the new-comer. A man who had shot every species
+of beast that inhabits the great continent could easily surrender the
+privilege of finding meat-dinners along the route; so he only used his
+gun when the quarry was worthy and his humour prompted; and for the
+most part smoked the pipe of peace and read Dickens in the repose of a
+day's halt, while Geoffrey roamed off with his Winchester rifle and his
+little band of obsequious dark-skins.
+
+And now in this period of waiting there was the great inland sea to
+explore; those romantic shores with their wealth of animal life; those
+waters teeming with fish, hemmed round and guarded by the majesty
+of mountains whose lofty peaks and hollows no foot of man had ever
+trodden. There was plenty of scope for movement and adventure here, so
+long as the rains held off; and the three men made good use of their
+time, and the canoes were rarely idle, or the rowers allowed to shirk
+upon the favourite pretence of bad weather.
+
+So long as there was something to be done, Geoffrey and Allan were
+happy; but with every interval of repose there came the familiar
+heartache, the longing for home-faces, the sense of disappointment and
+loss.
+
+Sometimes alone by the lake, while the lamp was shining on the faces of
+his two friends yonder in the verandah, where they sat playing chess,
+alone in the awful stillness of that vast mountain gorge, the waters
+rippling with placid movement, only faintly flecked with whiteness here
+and there in the blue distance, Geoffrey's longing for that vanished
+face grew to an almost unendurable agony. He felt as if he could bear
+this anguish of severance no more. He began to calculate the length
+of the homeward journey. Oh, the weariness of it! for him for whose
+impatience the fastest express train would be too slow. He shrank
+appalled from the contemplation of the distance that he had put between
+himself and the woman he loved, the intolerable distance--thousands
+and thousands of miles--and the difficulties and vicissitudes of the
+journey; all the forces of tropical nature to contend with, dependent
+upon savages, subject to fevers that hinder and stop the eager feet,
+and lay the weary body low, a helpless log--to waste days and nights
+in burning agony--to awaken and find a caravan dwindled by desertion,
+luggage plundered, new impediments to progress.
+
+Why had he been so mad as to come here? That was the question which
+he asked himself again and again in the stillness of night, when the
+mountain-peaks stood out in silvery whiteness and the mountain-chasms
+were pits of blackest shadow. Why had he, a free agent, master of his
+life and its golden opportunities, made himself a voluntary exile?
+
+"What demon of revolt and impatience drove me out into the wilderness,
+when I ought to have followed her and refused to believe in her
+unkindness, and insisted upon being heard, and heard again, and
+rejected again, only to be accepted later? Did I not know, in my heart
+of hearts, that she loved me? And now she will believe no more in my
+love. The man who could leave her, who could try to cure himself of
+his passion for her--such a man is unworthy to be remembered. Some
+one else will appear upon the scene--that unknown rival whom no man
+fears or foresees till the hour sounds and he is there--some arrogant
+lover, utterly unlike Allan or me--who will not adore her as we have
+adored--who will approach her not as a slave, but as a master, who will
+win her in a month, in a week, with fierce swift wooing, startle and
+scare her into loving him, win her by a _coup de main_. That is the
+sort of thing that will happen. It is happening now, perhaps. While
+I am standing by these African waters, sick with longing for her. Is
+it night and moonlight in England, I wonder? Are she and her new
+lover walking in the old sleepy garden? No, it is winter there; they
+are sitting at the piano, perhaps, in the lamplight, her little hands
+moving about the keys--he listening and pretending to admire, knowing
+and caring no more about music than the coarsest of my Pagazis. Oh, it
+is maddening to think of how I am losing her! And I came here to cure
+myself of loving her. Cure! There is no cure for such a passion as
+mine. It grows with absence--it strengthens with time."
+
+And now the Masika, the dreaded rainy season began; the rain-sun burnt
+with a sickly oppressive heat; and over all nature there crept the
+deathlike silence that comes before a storm. No longer was heard the
+wail of the fish-eagle calling his mate, and the answering call from
+afar. No diver flitted, black, long, and lanky, over the waters. The
+big white and grey kingfisher had vanished from his perch upon the
+branches that overhang the lake. Even the ranæ in the sedges, noisiest
+of birds for the most part, were mute in anticipatory terror. Thick
+darkness brooded over the long line of hills on the further side of
+the lake; and from Ujiji nothing could be seen but a waste of livid
+waters touched here and there with patches of white. Then through that
+dreadful stillness rolled the long low muttering of the thunder, and
+lightning flashes, pale and sickly, pierced the overhanging pall of
+night-in-day--and then the tempest, in all its majesty of terror, the
+roar of winds and waters, the artillery of heaven pealing, crackling,
+rattling, booming from yonder fortress of unseen giants, the citadel of
+untrodden hills.
+
+And after the storm the rain, the ceaseless, hopeless, melancholy rain,
+a wall of water shutting out the world. There was nothing for it but to
+sit in the rough shelter of the tembe, and amuse one's self as best one
+might, cleaning guns and fishing-tackle, mending nets, playing cards or
+chess, reading, talking, disputing, execrating the enforced inaction,
+the deadly monotony. For Geoffrey's restless spirit that rainy season
+was absolute torture; and it needed all the forbearance and good
+nature of his companions to bear with his irritability and fretful
+complaining against inexorable nature.
+
+Even Patrington, the best-tempered, most easy-going of men, was
+disgusted at Geoffrey's feverish impatience.
+
+"I begin to admire the wisdom of a vulgar proverb--two's company,
+three's none," he said to Allan across the chess-board, as they
+arranged their men, sitting in the light of the wood fire, while
+Geoffrey lay fast asleep in his hammock after the weariness of
+sleepless nights. "Your friend is a very bad traveller--a fine-weather
+traveller, a man who must have sport and variety and progress all
+along the route. That kind of man isn't a pleasant companion in
+Central Africa. If courage and activity are essential, patience is no
+less needed. Your friend has plenty of pluck; but there's too much
+quicksilver in his veins. He exercises an extraordinary influence upon
+the men; but he is just the kind of fellow to quarrel with them and
+get murdered by them, if he were left too much to his own devices.
+It would need very little for them to think that fiddle of his an
+evil spirit, and smash his skull with it. On the whole, Carew, I wish
+you and I were alone, for with yonder gentleman," pointing to the
+motionless figure under the striped rug, "I feel as if I had undertaken
+the care of a troublesome child; and Africa, don't you know, isn't the
+right place for spoilt brats."
+
+"Geoffrey will be himself again when these beastly rains are over. He's
+a splendid fellow, and I know you like him."
+
+"Like him? Of course I like him. Nobody could help liking him. He has
+the knack of making himself liked, loved almost, but he's a crank for
+all that. Allan, mark my words, that young man is a crank."
+
+Allan's heart sank at this expression of opinion, short, sharp,
+decisive. He remembered what he had heard of Geoffrey's birth from the
+lips of Geoffrey's mother. Could one expect perfect soundness of brain,
+perfect balance of mind and judgment in a man who had entered life in a
+world of dreams and hallucinations?
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                              KIGAMBO.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Kigambo: unexpected calamity, slavery, or death.]
+
+
+The rainy season was over. The moving wall of water was down. The
+travellers were no longer kept awake at night by the ceaseless roar of
+the rain. The lake lay stretched before them, sapphire dark under the
+milky blueness of the tropical sky. Kingfisher and fish-eagle, and all
+the birds that haunt those waters, hovered, or perched on the trees or
+along the bank, or skimmed the shining surface of the great fresh-water
+sea. And now the canoes were manned, and the three white men and their
+followers were setting their faces towards Manyema, the cannibal
+country, dreaded by Wangana and Wanyamwesis, and even by the bolder
+Makololos.
+
+For this stage of their journey they were travelling in a stronger
+company, having accepted the fellowship of an Arab caravan faring
+towards the Congo; and this larger troop gave an air of new gaiety to
+their train. They had been forced to buy new stores of cloth and beads
+at Ujiji, Geoffrey's recklessness in rewarding his men, after every
+successful hunting expedition, having considerably reduced their stock.
+The cloth bought at Ujiji was dear and bad, and Cecil Patrington took
+Geoffrey to task with some severity; but his reproaches fell lightly
+upon that volatile nature.
+
+"Remember that the measure of the goods we carry is the measure of our
+lives," said the experienced traveller gravely.
+
+"Oh, Providence will take care of us when our goods are gone," argued
+Geoffrey. "We shall fall in with some civilized Arabs who know the
+value of hard cash. I cannot believe in a country where a cheque-book
+is useless. We shall be within touch of the mercantile world when we
+get to Stanley Pool."
+
+"When!" echoed Patrington. "Hill and jungle, and desert and river,
+mutiny or desertion, pestilence and tempest, have to be accounted with
+before you see steamers and civilization. There's no use in glib talk
+of what can be done at Brazzaville or at Stanley Pool. Luckily we are
+going into a region where food is cheap--such as it is. But then, on
+the other hand, we may run out of quinine--and quinine sometimes means
+life."
+
+Summer was in the land when they crossed the great lake, stopping for
+a night or two on one of the principal islands, under the hospitable
+roof of a missionary station, where it was a new sensation to sit upon
+a chair, and taste a cup of coffee made in the European manner, and
+to see an Englishwoman's pleasant face and neat raiment. There was
+an English child also, "a real human child," as Geoffrey exclaimed,
+delighted at the phenomenon--a round-limbed, fat-cheeked rosy baby, who
+sat and watched the landing of the party from her perambulator, and
+patronized them, waving a welcome with chubby hands, as they scrambled
+out of the canoes--a child who had entered upon a world of black faces,
+and who may have fancied her mother and father monstrosities in a place
+where everybody else was black.
+
+What a contrast was this blue-eyed two-year-old to such infancy as
+they had seen in villages along their road, the brown naked creatures
+rolling and grovelling in the dirt, and looking more like pug-dogs than
+children!
+
+When they had bidden good-bye to the friendly missionary and his
+domestic circle, they were not without childish life upon their way,
+for the Arabs with whom they had joined company had some women in
+their train, one a slave with a couple of children; and as the Arab
+law does not recognize slavery under adult age, these brats of six and
+seven were free, and not being goods and chattels, no provision was
+allowed for them, and the mother had to feed them out of her own scanty
+rations.
+
+Geoffrey was on more familiar terms with the Arabs than either
+Patrington or Allan, and, on discovering the state of things with the
+native mother and her sons, he took these two morsels of dusky humanity
+into his service, and set them to clean pots and pans, and treated them
+as a kind of lap-dogs, and let them dance to his wild fiddle music in
+the firelight in front of the tents, and would not allow them to be
+punished for their depredations among the pannikins of rice or the
+baskets of bananas.
+
+They crossed the swift and turbid Luama river, and encamped for a night
+upon its shores. And then came the harassing march in single file
+through the dense jungle--a hopeless monotony of rank foliage taller
+than the tallest of the travellers, a coarse and monstrous vegetation
+which lashed their faces and rent their clothing and caught their feet
+like wire snares set for poachers. Vain was it to put the porters with
+their loads in the forefront of the procession. The rank inexorable
+jungle closed behind them as they passed; and a four-hours' march
+through this pitiless scrub was worse than a ten-hours' tramp in the
+open.
+
+The days were sultry. The travellers deemed themselves lucky if the
+evening closed without a thunderstorm; and the storms in those regions
+were deadly. A fired roof and a blackened corpse in a hut next that
+occupied by the three friends testified to the awfulness of an African
+thunderstorm. The thatch blazed, the neighbours looked on, and the
+husband of the victim sat beside the disfigured form in a curious
+indifference, which might mean either bewilderment or want of feeling.
+
+"Twenty years ago the catastrophe next door would have been assuredly
+put down to our account," said Patrington, as they sat at supper after
+the storm, "and we should have had to pay for that poor lady with our
+persons or our goods--our goods, for choice, so much merikani, or so
+many strings of sami sami. But since the advent of the Arabs, reason
+has begun to prevail over unreason. The influence of Islam makes for
+civilization."
+
+They found the people of Manyema, the reputed man-eaters, friendly,
+and willing to deal. Provisions were cheap. Fowls, eggs, maize, and
+sweet potatoes were to be had in abundance. The natives were civil,
+but curious and intrusive; and the sound of Geoffrey's amati was the
+signal for a crowd round the camping-place, a crowd that could only
+be dispersed by the sight of a revolver, the nature of which weapon
+seemed very clearly understood by these warriors of the lance and the
+knife. When the admiring throng waxed intrusive, and the black faces
+and filthy figures crowded the verandah, Cecil Patrington took out his
+pistols, and gave them a little lecture in their native tongue, with
+the promise of an illustration or two if they should refuse to depart.
+
+Or, were Geoffrey in the humour, he would push his way, playing,
+through that savage throng, and, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, would
+lead those human rats away towards hill or stream, jungle or plain,
+playing, playing some diabolical strain of Tartini's, or some still
+wilder war-song of the new Sclavonic school--Stojowski, Moszkowski,
+Wienianwowski--something thrilling, plaintive, frightening, appealing,
+which set those savage breasts on fire, and turned those savage heads
+like strong drink.
+
+"One shall be taken and the other left." That text would flash across
+Geoffrey Wornock's thoughts at the unlikeliest moments. It might have
+been a fiery scroll projected on the dark cloud-line of the thunderous
+eventide. It might have been the sharp shrill cry of some bird crossing
+the blue above his head, so unexpectedly, so strangely did the words
+recur to him. So far, in all the vicissitudes of the journey, the
+little band had held firmly on, with less than the average amount of
+suffering and inconvenience. There had been desertion, there had been
+death among their men; but on the Unyamwesi route it had been easy to
+repair all such losses, and their Wanyamwesis were in most respects the
+superiors of the Wangana they had lost by the way.
+
+So far, despite of some baddish bouts of fever, the dark, inexorable
+Shadow had held aloof. The dread of death had not been beside their
+camp-fires or about their bed.
+
+But now, in this region of tropical fertility, amidst a paradise of
+luxuriant verdure, sheltered by the vast mountain citadel that rises
+like a titanic wall above the western border of the Tanganyika, they
+came upon a spot where the fever-fiend, the impalpable, invisible,
+inexorable enemy reigned supreme. Geoffrey was the first to feel the
+poisonous influence of the atmosphere. He laid down his fiddle, and
+flung himself upon his bed, with aching back and weary limbs, one
+evening, after a day of casual roaming along the banks of a tributary
+stream.
+
+"I've been walking about too long," he said. "That's all that there is
+the matter with me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That's all!" But when daylight came he was in the unknown
+fever-country, the dreadful topsy-turvy world of delirium. He had two
+heads, and he wanted to shoot one of them. He tried to stand up and go
+across the hut to fetch the rifle that hung against the opposite wall,
+but his limbs refused to obey him. He lay groaning, helpless as an
+infant, muttering that the other head wouldn't let him sleep. The pain
+was all in that other head. In the long agony that followed all things
+were blank and dark; until, after five days of raging fever, the pulse
+grew regular again, the scorching body cooled down to the temperature
+of healthy life, and weak and wan, but rejoicing in freedom from pain,
+the patient came back to everyday life, and looked into the faces of
+his companions with eyes that saw the things that were, and not the
+spectral forms that people delirious dreams.
+
+"'One shall be taken,'" he muttered to himself, as he looked from Allan
+to Cecil, and back again. "I thought it was I. Then we are all three of
+us alive?" he said, with a catch in his voice that was almost a sob.
+
+"Very much alive, and we hope to remain so," answered Patrington,
+cheeriest of travellers. "You've had a bad spell of the cursed
+mukurungu, which I suppose must have its fling for the next decade or
+two, until railroads, and hotels, and scientific drainage, and Swiss
+innkeepers have altered the climate for the better. You've been pretty
+bad, and you've kept us in a very unhealthy district, so as soon as
+ever you've picked up your strength, we'll move on."
+
+"I can start to-morrow morning. I feel as strong as a lion."
+
+"Does a lion's paw shake as your hand is shaking now? My dear Geoff,
+you are as weak as water. We'll give you three days to recruit. I
+am too hardened a subject for the mukurungu, which is a fever of
+acclimatization, for the most part, and I've been dosing Allan with
+quinine, and I've been doing a good deal of ambulance surgery among
+the natives, and we're a very popular party. They have seldom seen
+three white men in a bunch. Your fiddling, my medicine-chest and
+sticking-plaster, and Allan's good manners have made a great effect.
+The blackies are assured that we are all three sultans in our own
+country."
+
+"And our Arab friends?"
+
+"Oh, they have gone on. We have only our own men with us now. Your
+Makololos have been miserable about you."
+
+They spent a jovial night, Geoffrey's spirits rising to wild gaiety,
+with that lightness which comes when a fever-patient has struggled
+through the thick cloud of strange fancies, the agony of throbbing
+brain and aching back.
+
+He tuned the fiddle that had been lying mute in its velvet nest. He
+tucked it lovingly under his chin, and laid his bow along the strings
+with light fingers that trembled a little in the rapture of that
+familiar touch.
+
+"Shall I bore you very much if I play?" he asked, looking at his elder
+companion.
+
+"Bore us! Not a jot. I have sadly missed your wild strains. There has
+been a voice wanting--a voice that is almost human, and which seems so
+much a part of you that while _that_ was dumb you seemed to be dead.
+Begin your spells. Play us something by one of your 'Owskis,--Jimowski,
+Bilowski, Bobowski--whichever you please."
+
+Geoffrey drew his bow across the strings with a swelling chord, a
+burst of bass music like the sudden pealing of an organ, and began a
+Walachian dirge.
+
+"Does that give you the scene?" he asked, pausing and looking round
+at them, after a tremendous presto movement. "Does it conjure up the
+funeral train, the wild wailing of the mourners, the groaning men,
+the shrieking women, even the whining and whimpering of the little
+children, the stormy sky, the thick darkness, the flare of the torches,
+the trampling of iron-shod hoofs? I can hear and see it all as I play."
+And then he began the slow movement, the awful ghostly adagio with
+its suggestion of all things horrible, its eccentric phrasing, and
+dissonant chords, shaping a vision of strange unearthly forms.
+
+"It's a very jolly kind of music," Cecil Patrington said thoughtfully;
+"I mean jolly difficult, don't you know. But if you want my candid
+opinion as to what it suggests, I am free to confess it sounds to me
+like your improvised notion of the mukurungu--all fever and pain and
+confusion."
+
+"The mukurungu! Not half a bad name for a descriptive sonata!" laughed
+Geoffrey, putting his fiddle to bed.
+
+And then they brought out the cards, and played poker for cowries,
+Cecil Patrington, as usual, the winner, by reason of that inscrutable
+countenance of his, which had hardened itself in all the hazards of
+an adventurous career. They were particularly jovial that evening,
+and flung care to the winds that sobbed and muttered along the shore.
+Geoffrey's gaiety communicated itself to the other two. They drank
+their moderate potations; they smoked their pipes; and Patrington
+discoursed of an ideal settlement where the surplus population of
+Whitechapel and Bermondsey were to come and work in a new Arcadia, a
+place of flocks and herds and coffee-fields, under a smokeless heaven.
+
+"For my own satisfaction, I would have Africa untrodden and unknown,
+a world of wonder and mystery," he said; "but the beginning has been
+made, and the coming century will see every missionary settlement
+of to-day develop into a populous centre of enterprise and labour.
+Crowded-out England will come here, and thrive here, as it has thriven
+in less fertile lands. Englishmen will flock here for sport and
+pleasure and profit."
+
+"And these native sultans--these little kings and their peoples?"
+
+"Ah, that is the problem! God grant there may be a bloodless solution!"
+
+That was the last night these three travellers ever sat together over
+their cards and pipes, ever laughed and talked together with hearts at
+ease. They were to resume their journey next morning; but when all was
+ready for the start, Allan discovered that Cecil Patrington was too ill
+to walk.
+
+"I've had a bad night," he confessed; "the kind of night that lets
+one know one has a head belonging to one. But the men can carry me in
+a litter. I shall be all right to-morrow. I'd much rather we jogged
+along. This is a vile, feverish hole."
+
+There was no question of jogging along for this hardy traveller. The
+oppressive drowsiness, which is sometimes the first stage of malarial
+fever, held him like a spell. He looked at his companions dimly, with
+eyes that sparkled and yet were cloudy with involuntary tears. He could
+hardly see their anxious faces.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm in for it," he faltered. "I thought I was fever-proof."
+
+He sank upon the narrow camp-bed in a shivering fit, and Geoffrey
+and Allan spread their blankets over him. They heaped every woollen
+covering they possessed over those shaking limbs, but could not quiet
+the ague fit or bring warmth to the icecold form.
+
+Dreary days, dreadful nights, followed the sad waking of that sultry
+morning. The two young men nursed their guide and captain with
+unceasing watchfulness and devotion. Geoffrey developed a feminine
+tenderness and carefulness which was touching in so wild and fitful a
+nature. But they could do so little! And he whom they watched and cared
+for knew not, or only knew in rare brief intervals, of their loving
+care.
+
+They tried to sustain each other's courage. They told each other that
+malarial fever was only a phase of African travel; an unpleasant phase,
+but not to be avoided. They knew all about the fever from bitter
+experience; and here was Geoffrey but just recovered, and doubtless
+Patrington would mend in a day or two, as he had mended.
+
+"I don't suppose he's any worse than I was," said Geoffrey.
+
+Allan shook his head sadly.
+
+"I don't know that he's worse, but the symptoms seem different somehow.
+He doesn't answer to the medicines as you did."
+
+The symptoms developed unmistakably after this, and the fever showed
+itself as typhus in the most deadly form. Swift on this revelation came
+the end; and in the solemn stillness of the forest midnight they knelt
+beside the unconscious form, and watched the parched, quivering lips
+from which the breath was faintly ebbing. One last sobbing sigh, and
+between them and the captain of their little company there stretched
+a distance wider than the breadth of Africa, further than from the
+Zambesi to the Congo. A land more mysterious than the Dark Continent
+parted them from him who was last week their jovial, hardy comrade,
+sharing the fortunes of the day, thinking of death as of a shadowy
+something waiting for him far off, at the end of innumerable journeys
+and long years of adventurous activity--a quiet haven, into which his
+bark would drift when the timbers were worn thin with long usage, and
+the arms of the rower were weary of plying the oar.
+
+And death was close beside them all the time, lying in wait for that
+gallant spirit, like a beast of prey.
+
+"O God, is there another Africa, where we shall meet that brave,
+good man again?" cried Allan. "Which of our modern teachers is
+right?--Liddon, who tells us that Christ rose from the dead; or
+Clifford, who tells us there is nothing--nothing: no Great Companion,
+no Master or Guide: only ourselves and our faithful service for one
+another--only this poor humanity?"
+
+He looked up appealingly, expecting to see Geoffrey's face on the other
+side of the bed; but he was alone. Geoffrey had fled from the presence
+of death. He had rushed out into the wilderness. It was late in the
+following afternoon when he came back. The men had dug a grave under a
+great sycamore, and Allan was about to read the funeral service, when
+his fellow-traveller reappeared.
+
+White, haggard, with wild eyes, and clothes stained with mire and
+sedge, the red clay of the forest paths, the green slime of swamp and
+bog, Allan could only look at him in pitying wonder.
+
+"Where in Heaven's name have you been?" he asked, looking up from the
+rough basket-work coffin--bamboo and bulrush--interwoven by native
+hands.
+
+"I don't know. Out yonder, between the plain and the river. I was a
+craven to fly from the face of death--I, a soldier," with a short,
+ironical laugh. "I don't know how it was with me last night. I couldn't
+bear it. I had been thinking of that verse in the gospel--'One shall be
+taken,' but I didn't think it would be that one--the hardy, experienced
+traveller. It might have been you or I. Not he, Allan. It was a blow,
+wasn't it?--a blow that might shake a strong man's nerves!"
+
+Allan stretched out his hand to his comrade in silence, and they
+clasped hands, heartily on Allan's part; and his grip was so earnest
+that he did not know it clasped a nerveless hand.
+
+"It was a crushing blow," he said gravely. "I don't blame you for being
+scared. You have come back in time to see him laid in his grave, and
+to say a prayer with me."
+
+Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, with a hopeless look.
+
+"Where do our prayers go, I wonder? We know no more than the natives,
+when they sacrifice to their gods. Isn't it rather feeble to go on
+praying when there never comes any answer? I saw you praying last
+night--wrestling with God in prayer, as pious people call it. I saw
+your forehead damp with agony, your lips writhing--every vein in your
+clasped hands standing out like whipcord. I watched you, and was sorry,
+and would have given ten years of my life to save his; but I couldn't
+pray with you. And, you see, there came no answer. Inexorable Nature
+worked out her own problem in her own way. Your prayers--my silence;
+one was as much use as the other. Nobody heeded us; nobody cared for
+us. The blow fell."
+
+"Ah, we know not, we know not! There is compensation, perhaps. We shall
+see and know our friends in heaven, and look back and know that we
+were children groping in the dark. Try to believe, Geoffrey. Belief is
+best."
+
+"Belief. The pious mourner's anodyne, the Christian's patent
+pain-killer. Yes, belief is best; but, you see, some people can't
+believe. I can't. And I see only the hideous side of death--the dull
+horror of annihilation. A week ago we had a man with us, the manliest
+of men--all nerve, and fire, and brain-power, brave as a lion,
+ready to do and endure--and now we have only--that," with a look of
+heart-sickness, "which we are impatient to put out of sight for ever.
+Put it in the ground, Allan; fill in the grave; trample it down; let us
+forget that there was ever such a man."
+
+He flung himself upon the ground and sobbed out his grief. There had
+been something in the blunt, dogged straightforwardness of Cecil
+Patrington's character which had attached this wayward nature to him
+with hooks of steel.
+
+"I loved him," he muttered, getting up, calm and grave even to
+sullenness. "And now you and I are alone."
+
+He stood beside the grave where native hands had gently lowered the
+rough coffin, and where Allan had scattered flowers and herbs, whose
+aromatic odours hung heavy on the still sultriness of the atmosphere.
+He looked at Allan, and not with looks of love.
+
+"Only we two," he muttered, "and these black beasts of burden."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                          MAMBU KWA MUNGU.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: Mambu kwa mungu: "It is God's trouble."]
+
+
+One had been taken. That which seemed to Geoffrey Wornock inevitable
+in the history of African travel had been accomplished. The Dark
+Continent had claimed its tribute of human life. Africa had chosen her
+victim. Not the expected sacrifice. She had chosen her prey in him who
+had dared the worst she could do--not in one pilgrimage, but in long
+years of travel--who had looked her full in the face and laughed at
+her dangers, and had wooed her with a masterful spirit, telling her
+that she was fair, stepping with light, careless foot over her traps
+and pitfalls, lying down within sound of her lions, drenched with her
+torrential rains, tossed on her chopping seas, blinded with the fierce
+glare of her lightnings--always her lover, her master, her champion.
+
+"There is no land like Africa. There is nothing in life so good as the
+wild, free day of the wanderer," he had said again and again.
+
+And now he had paid for his love with his life. He had laid himself
+down, like Mark Antony at the foot of his dead mistress.
+
+He was gone, and the two young men were alone in the wide wilderness,
+among the mountain paths between the great lake and the far-off western
+sea; and in long pauses of melancholy silence by the camp-fire, or in
+the noontide rest, Geoffrey looked into the face that was like and yet
+not like his own, and thought of the woman they both loved, and of that
+duel to the death which there must needs be when two men have built all
+their hopes of happiness upon the love of one woman. A duel of deadly
+thoughts, if not of deadly weapons.
+
+"If we go back, it will be to fight for her love," he thought,
+"to fight as the wild stags in the mountains fight for the chosen
+hind--forehead to forehead, fore feet planted like iron, antlers
+locked, clashing with a sound that is heard afar off. Yes, we shall
+fight for her. The battle will have to begin again. We shall hate each
+other."
+
+Wakeful and unquiet in the deep, dead silence of the tropical night, he
+would sit outside hut or tent, mending the fire, looking listlessly at
+the circle of sleeping porters, listening mechanically for the qua-qua
+of the night-heron, or the grunt of the hippopotamus coming up from
+the river. The loss of Patrington's cheery companionship had wrought a
+dark change in Geoffrey's mind and feelings. While Patrington was with
+them, there had been ever-recurring distractions from sullen brooding
+on the inner self. Patrington was eminently a man of action, practical,
+matter-of-fact; and love-sick dreaming was hardly possible in his
+company. He was as energetic in conversation as in action, would
+argue, and philosophize, and quote his master of fiction, and dose them
+with Pickwick and Weller as he dosed them with quinine.
+
+He was gone; and in the deep melancholy that had fallen upon the
+travellers after the sudden shock of bereavement, Geoffrey's thoughts
+dwelt with a maddening iteration upon one absorbing theme.
+
+They had left the poor village of bee-hive huts, near which their
+comrade lay at rest under the great sycamore. They had travelled
+slowly, ten miles in a day at most, uphill and downhill, by jungle and
+swamp, too depressed for any strenuous effort, Geoffrey still weak
+after his attack of fever, and harassed with rheumatic aches after his
+night of reckless wandering in marsh and wilderness, in peril of being
+devoured by the panthers that abound in that region. They were not more
+than fifty miles from the great lake, and now they were delayed again
+by the illness of some of their porters, and perhaps also by their own
+listlessness--the hopeless inertia that follows a great sorrow, a state
+of mind in which it seems not worth while to make any effort.
+
+They had lost their captain and guide; but they had their plans all
+laid down--plans discussed again and again during the rains at Ujiji.
+After a good deal of talk about going south to Nyassa, and back to the
+east coast by the Zambesi-Shire route, they had finally decided on
+following Trivier's route to Stanley Pool, and there to wait for the
+steamer. The idea of crossing the great continent from east to west
+pleased the younger travellers better than that notion of doubling back
+to the more civilized region, the Arcadia of Nyassaland, a place of
+Christian missions, and flocks, and herds, and prosperous homesteads,
+and frequent steamers.
+
+But now life in the desert had lost its savour, and Allan and Geoffrey
+looked over their rough sketch-maps dully, and wished that the journey
+were done.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to turn back and take the easiest route, by
+Nyassa and the Shire?" Allan asked despondently.
+
+"No, no; we must see the Congo. What should we do if we went back
+to England? Have either you or I anything that calls us back to
+civilization and its deadly monotony?" Geoffrey asked, watching his
+companion's face with eager eyes.
+
+"No, there is very little. My mother would be glad to see me back
+again. It seems hard to desert her now she is left alone. And Mrs.
+Wornock--her life is just as solitary--she must long for your return."
+
+"Oh, she is accustomed to my rambling propensities. Yes, Lady Emily
+would be glad, no doubt; and my mother would be glad; but at our age
+men don't go back to their mothers. If you have no one else to think
+about--if there is no other attraction?"
+
+"You know there is no one else," Allan answered with a sigh.
+
+The Amati was not silent in those dreary evenings, amidst the smoke
+of the fire that rose up towards the rough roof of the hut, where
+the lizards disported themselves among the rafters and rejoiced in
+the warmth. The voice of the fiddle was as lugubrious as the wailings
+of the native women for their dead. Funeral marches; Beethoven,
+Chopin, Berlioz, all that music knows of sadness and lamentation, were
+Geoffrey's themes in that solitude of two. The music itself had an
+unearthly sound; and the face of the player, sharpened and wasted by
+illness and by grief, had an unearthly look as the firelight flashed
+upon it, or the shadows darkened it.
+
+While those lonely days wore on, Allan began to have a curious feeling
+about his companion, the consciousness of a gulf that was gradually
+widening between them; a something sinister, indefinite, indescribable.
+It would be too much to say that he felt he was with an enemy; but he
+felt that he was in the presence of the unknown.
+
+He woke one night, turning wearily on his Arab bed--the mat spread on
+the ground, which use had taught him almost to like. He woke, and
+saw Geoffrey sitting up on his mat on the other side of the hut, his
+back against the wall, his eyes looking straight at Allan with an
+inscrutable expression. Was it dislike or was it fear that looked out
+of those widely opened eyes? Why fear?
+
+"What's the matter?" Allan asked quickly. "Have you just awakened from
+a bad dream?"
+
+"No. Life is my bad dream; and there is no awakening from that. There
+is only the change to dreamless sleep."
+
+"What were you thinking about, then?"
+
+"Life and death, and love and hate, and all things sad and strange
+and cruel. Do you remember Livingstone's description of a Bechuana
+chieftain's burial? His people dig a grave in his cattle-pen, and bury
+him there; and then they drive the cattle round and over the spot till
+every trace of the newly filled-in grave is obliterated. We are not as
+candid as the Bechuana men. We put up a statue of our great man--or,
+at least, we talk about a statue; but in six months he is as much
+forgotten as if the cattle had pranced and trampled over his body."
+
+"Primrose Day belies your cynicism."
+
+"Primrose Day! A fashion as much as the November bonfire. Of all the
+people who wear the Beaconsfield badge three-fourths could not tell you
+who Beaconsfield was, or how much or how little he did for England."
+
+"Do you remember something else in Livingstone's book, how the
+tribes who met him said, 'Give us sleep'? It was their prayer to the
+wonder-worker. Give me sleep, Geoff. I'm dead beat."
+
+"Why, we did nothing yesterday; a beggarly eight miles."
+
+"Perhaps it was the thunderstorm that took it out of me."
+
+"Well, sleep away. The tribes were right. There is no better gift.
+Would it help you if I played a little, very softly? I have a devil
+to-night which only music will cast out."
+
+"Yes, play, but don't be too lugubrious. My heart is one great ache."
+
+Without moving from his mat, Geoffrey stretched a thin hand towards
+the fiddle-case that lay beside his pillow, opened it noiselessly and
+took out the Amati; then, with his haggard eyes still fixed on the
+reclining figure opposite him, he drew a long sobbing chord out of the
+strings, and began a nocturne of Chopin's, delicatest melody played
+with exquisite delicacy, the very music of sleep and dreams.
+
+"I am talking to her," he murmured to himself softly; "across the great
+continent, across the great sea, over burning desert and tropical
+wilderness, my voice is calling to her. I am telling her the story of
+my heart, as I used to tell her in the dear days at Discombe, the dear
+unheeding days, when my bow talked to her half in sport, when I hardly
+knew if the wild thrill that ran along my veins meant a lifelong love."
+
+The music served as a lullaby for Allan, and it soothed Geoffrey, whose
+brain had been over-charged with hideous fancies, as he sat up in his
+bed, listening to the ticking of the watch that hung against the wall,
+and looking at his slumbering companion.
+
+Darkest thoughts, thoughts of what might happen if this throbbing brain
+of his were to lose its balance. He had been thinking of the narrow
+wall between reason and unreason, and of the madness that may come out
+of one absorbing idea. Where did a passionate love like his end and
+monomania begin? Was it well that they two should be alone together,
+with only these black beasts of burden?
+
+He thought of one of the men, a grinning good-natured-looking animal,
+the best of their porters, of whom it was told that setting out on a
+journey with one of his wives he arrived at his destination without
+her. It might have been his honeymoon. He explained that wild beasts
+had eaten the lady; but it was known afterwards that he had killed her
+and chopped her up on the way. Anger, jealousy, convenience? Who knows?
+The man was a good servant, and nobody cared about this episode in his
+career.
+
+Was murder so easy, then? Easy to do, easy to forget?
+
+A great horror came over him at thought of the deeds that had been done
+in the world by men of natures like his own; by despairing lovers,
+by jealous husbands, by men over whose ill-balanced minds one idea
+obtained the mastery. And, under the dominion of such ghastly fancies,
+he looked forward to the journey they two were to make, a journey
+that, all told, was likely to last the greater part of a year. Alone
+together, seeing each other's faces day after day, each thinking the
+same thoughts, and not daring to speak those thoughts; each with fonder
+and more passionate yearning as the time drew nearer when they should
+meet the woman they loved; each knowing that happiness for one must
+mean misery for the other. Friends in outward seeming, rivals and foes
+at heart, they were to go on journeying side by side, day after day,
+lying down beside the same fire night after night, waking in the
+darkness to hear each other's breathing, and to know that a loaded
+rifle lay within reach of their hands, and that a bullet would end all
+their difficulties.
+
+It was horrible.
+
+"I was an idiot to undertake the impossible, to believe that I could be
+happy and at ease with this man. If I were to go home alone, she would
+have me," he told himself. "It was only for Allan's sake she hung back.
+So tender, so over-scrupulous, lest she should pain the lover she had
+jilted."
+
+If he were to go home alone! Was not that possible without the
+suggestion of darkest iniquity? If he could go home, and gain, say half
+a year, before his rival reappeared upon the scene, would not that
+half-year suffice for the winning of his bride?
+
+"If she loved me as I think she loved me, and if she is as noble of
+nature as I believe her to be, two years of severance will have tried
+and strengthened her love. She will love me all the dearer for my
+wanderings. And if Allan is not there to remind her of his wrongs, to
+appeal to her too-scrupulous conscience, I shall win her."
+
+To go back alone, to divide their resources, to divide their followers,
+and each to set out on his own way. Useless such a parting as that; for
+Allan might be the first to tread on English soil, the first to clasp
+Suzette's hands in the gladness of friends who meet after long absence.
+
+"If he were to be the first, she might deceive herself in the joy of
+seeing a familiar face, and think she loved him, and give him back her
+promise in a fit of penitent affection. There are such nice shades in
+love. She must have had a certain fondness for him. It might revive
+were I not there--revive and seem enough for happiness. I must be
+first! I must be first, and alone in the field."
+
+He hated himself for the restless impatience which had made him join
+fortunes with Allan. What had he to do with the rejected lover, he who
+knew that he was loved?
+
+They crept slowly on. Allan was ailing, and unable to stand the fatigue
+of a long march through a close and difficult country. That week of
+watching beside Patrington's sick-bed, and the agony of losing that
+kindly comrade, had shattered his nerves and reduced his physical
+strength almost as much as an actual illness could have reduced him.
+He felt the depressing influence of the climate as the days grew more
+sultry and the thunderstorms more frequent. All the spirit and all
+the pleasure seemed to have vanished out of the expedition since the
+digging of that grave under the sycamore.
+
+Their day's journey dwindled and their halts grew longer. At the
+rate they were now travelling it would take them a year to reach the
+Falls. They had left Ujiji more than a month, and they were still a
+long way to the east of Kassongo, the busy centre of Arab commerce and
+population, where they could make any purchases they wanted, refit
+for the rest of their journey, or, perhaps, make a contract with the
+mighty Tippoo, who would provide them with men and food till the end
+of the land journey for a lump sum. While Patrington lived they had
+looked forward to the halt at Kassongo with keen interest; but now zest
+and pleasurable curiosity were gone, and a dull lassitude weighed like
+an actual burden upon both travellers. Both were alike spiritless; and
+even Geoffrey's raids in quest of meat were neither so frequent nor so
+far afield as they had been, and his men began to lose something of
+their admiration for him. He was growing over-fond of that kri-kri of
+his, over-fond of sitting at the door of his tent talking with that
+curious, tricksy spirit, now drawing forth sobbing cries like funeral
+dirges, now with frisking, flickering touch that danced and flashed
+across the strings, with hand as rapid as light, with fingers that
+flew, and eyes that flashed fire.
+
+These wild dances were grasshoppers, he told them; and when he began
+the wailing music that thrilled and pained them, his Makololos would
+lie down at his feet and entreat him to change it to a grasshopper.
+
+"We hate him when he cries," they said of the fiddle. "We love him when
+he leaps and dances."
+
+"And you would follow him and me anywhere across the land?" Geoffrey
+asked, laughing down at the brown faces.
+
+"Anywhere, if you promise us your guns at the end of the journey."
+
+Two days later Allan succumbed to the feeling of prostration which
+had been growing upon him during the last four or five stages of the
+journey, and confessed himself unable to leave the native hut in which
+they had camped at sunset.
+
+It was in the freshness of dawn. The mists were creeping off the manioc
+fields, and the wide stretches of tropical foliage beyond the patch of
+rude cultivation. The brown figures were moving about in the pearly
+light, women fetching water, children sprawling on the rich red earth,
+their plump shining bodies only a little browner than the soil, happy
+in their nakedness and dirt, placid and unashamed. The porters were
+shouldering their loads, the lean, long-legged mongrels were yelping,
+the frogs croaking their morning hymn to the sun.
+
+"I'm afraid it's hopeless," Allan faltered, as he leant against one
+of the rough supports of the verandah, wiping the moisture from his
+forehead. "I'm dead beat. I can't go on unless you carry me in a
+litter; and that's hardly worth while with our small following. You'd
+better go on to Kassongo, Geoff, and leave me here till I'm able to
+follow. If I don't turn up within a few days of your arrival, you can
+get the chief to send some of his men to fetch me, with a donkey, if
+there's one to be had. The villagers will take care of me in the mean
+time. It isn't fever, you see," holding out his cold moist hand to his
+friend. "It's not the mukunguru this time. I'm just dead beat, that's
+all. There's no good fighting against hard fact, Geoff. _Mambu kwa
+mungu_--it is God's trouble! One must submit to the inevitable."
+
+Geoffrey looked at him curiously.
+
+"Leave you to these savages in the Manyema country? No; that would
+be a beastly thing to do," he said, with his cynical laugh. "I'm not
+quite bad enough for that, Allan. How do I know they wouldn't eat
+you? They've been civil enough so far, but I believe it's because of
+my fiddle. They take me for a medicine-man, and my little Amati for
+a capricious devil that can give them toko if they don't act on the
+square. I won't leave you--like that; but I'll tell you what I'll do.
+We'll divide forces for a bit. I'll leave you the larger party, and I
+and my Makololos will go and look for big game."
+
+Allan crept into the hut and sank down upon his mat while his comrade
+was talking. He had hardly strength to answer him. He lay there white
+and dumb, while Geoffrey spread the blanket over him, and wiped his
+forehead with a silk handkerchief.
+
+"Do what you like, Geoff," he murmured, "and do the best for yourself.
+I don't want to spoil your sport."
+
+He turned his body towards the wall, with an obvious effort, as if his
+limbs were made of lead, and presently sank into a sleep which seemed
+almost stupor.
+
+"My God!" muttered Geoffrey, looking down at him, "is he going to die?
+Can death come like that, as if in answer to a wicked wish?"
+
+He went out and talked to the men, giving them stringent orders as to
+what they were to do for the sick Musungu. He was going on a shooting
+expedition with only four men--the rest, a round dozen, would remain
+with the other Musungu, and nurse him, and take care of him, and obey
+his orders when he was well enough to move; and, above all, not attempt
+robbery or desertion, as they--the two Musungus--had letters from the
+Sultan of Zanzibar to Nzigue, the Arab chief at Kassongo, and any evil
+treatment would be bitterly expiated. "You know how small account the
+white Arabs make of a black man's life," he concluded.
+
+Yes, they knew.
+
+He went back to the hut, and to the store of quinine and other drugs,
+and he prepared such doses as it would be well for Allan to take at
+fixed periods; and then he instructed the leader of the porters--a
+Zanzibari, who had been with Burton, and afterwards with Stanley--as
+to the treatment of the sick man. He was to do this, and this, once,
+twice, thrice, between sunrise and sundown, the division of the day by
+hours not having yet been revealed to these primitive minds.
+
+"Say, how often are you hungry in the day, and how often do you eat?"
+
+"Three times."
+
+"Then every time you are hungry, and before you sit down to eat, you
+will give the Musungu his medicine--one of the powders, as I put them
+ready for you--mixed with water, as he has often given them to you. And
+if you forget, or don't care to give him his medicine, evil will come
+to you--for I shall put a spell upon the door, and wicked spirits will
+hurt you if you don't obey me."
+
+After this he called his Makololos and one of the Wanyamwesis, for
+whom he had shown a liking, and who worshipped him with a slavish
+subjugation of all personal will-power. He told them he was going on
+a hunting expedition that might last many days--and they must take
+baggage enough to assure themselves against being left to starve upon
+the way. He counted the bales of cloth, the bags of beads, brass-headed
+nails, brass wire; and he set apart about a fourth of the whole stock;
+and with these stores he loaded his men. And so in the full blaze of
+the morning sun this little company went out into the jungle, turning
+their faces eastward, towards the mountains that rose between them and
+the sea of Ujiji.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                     WHERE THE BURDEN IS HEAVIEST.
+
+
+The deep-toned organ pealed through the empty manor-house in the gloom
+of a rainy summer afternoon. Not once in the long dull day had the sun
+looked through the low, dull sky; and Mrs. Wornock, always peculiarly
+sensible of every change in the atmosphere, felt that life was just a
+little sadder and emptier than it had been for her in all the long slow
+years of a lonely widowhood.
+
+What had she to live for? The brief romance of her girlhood was all
+she had ever known of the love which for most women means a life
+history. For her it had been only the beginning of a chapter--ending in
+self-sacrifice, as blind and piteously faithful to duty as Abraham's
+obedience to the Divine command. And after all those years of fond
+fidelity to a memory, she had seen her lover again--once for a few
+minutes--by stealth, through an open window, undreamt of by him.
+
+What had she to live for? A son whose restless spirit would not allow
+him to be her companion and friend--in whose feverish life she was of
+so little value that he could leave her for a pilgrimage to Central
+Africa, with a brief good-bye; as if it were a small thing for mother
+and son to live with half the world between them. It seemed to her
+sometimes, brooding upon the past year, that Allan Carew had cared for
+her more, was more in sympathy with her, than that very son--as if some
+hereditary sentiment, some mystic link with the father who had loved
+her, brought the son nearer to her heart.
+
+And now they were both so distant that she thought of them almost as
+mournfully as if they were dead. Dark clouds of trouble hung over their
+forms, as she tried to see them in that far-off world, ever impending
+dangers which haunted her in her dreams, until the words of St. Paul
+burnt themselves into her brain, and she would awake from some dream of
+horror, hearing her own voice, with that awful sound of the dreamer's
+voice, repeating--
+
+"In journeyings ... in perils of waters, in perils of robbers ... in
+perils by the heathen ... in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the
+sea ... in weariness and painfulness ... in hunger and thirst."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suzette had been absent for nearly a year, and Suzette's absence had
+increased the sense of loss and deepened the gloom of the rambling old
+house, and those picturesque gardens, where the girl's bright face and
+graceful figure flitting in and out from arch to arch, between the
+walls of ilex or yew, had been a living gladness that seemed only a
+natural accompaniment to spring flowers, sulphur butterflies, and the
+deepening purple of the beeches, in the joyous awakening of the year.
+But Suzette had returned from her travels nearly a year since, and
+had taken up the thread of life again, and with it her old friendship
+for Mrs. Wornock, feeling herself secure from the risk of all violent
+emotions in her friend's house, now that Geoffrey was a good many
+thousand miles away.
+
+Suzette had brought comfort to the lonely life. Together she and Mrs.
+Wornock had read books of African travel, explored maps, and followed
+the route of the travellers. General Vincent was a fellow of the
+Geographical Society, and the monthly report issued by that society
+kept his daughter informed of the latest progress in the history of
+exploration, while the Society's library was at her disposal for
+books of travel. It seemed to Suzette in that quiet year after her
+home-coming that she read nothing but African books, and began almost
+to think in the Swahili language--picking up words in every chapter,
+till they became as familiar as French phrases in a society novel.
+
+She was quieter than of old, people said: less interested in golf:
+caring nothing for a church bazaar which was the one absorbing topic
+in that particular summer; wrapped up in her musical studies, and
+practising a great deal too much, as officious friends informed General
+Vincent.
+
+"Suzette must do what she likes," he said; "she has always been my
+master."
+
+But egged on by the same officious friends, he bought his daughter a
+horse, and insisted on her riding with him, and they went for long
+rides over the downs, and sometimes were lucky enough to fall in with
+the hawks, and see a few innocent rooks slaughtered high up in the blue
+of an April sky.
+
+He shrank from questioning his daughter about the young men who
+were gone. She had been very ill--languid, and white, and wan, and
+spiritless--when he carried her off to Germany, and had required a
+good deal of patching up before she became anything like the happy,
+active, high-spirited Suzette of the Indian hills--who had charmed
+everybody, old and young, by her bright prettiness and joy in life.
+German waters, German woods and hills, followed by a winter on the
+Riviera, and a long holiday by the Italian lakes, had set her up again;
+and General Vincent was content to wait till time should unravel the
+mystery of a maiden's heart.
+
+"Those young men will come back," he told his sister; "and then I
+shouldn't wonder if Geoffrey were to renew his offer--and to be
+accepted; for since she gave Allan the sack without any provocation, I
+conclude it's Geoffrey she cares for."
+
+"I wash my hands of her and her love affairs," Mrs. Mornington retorted
+waspishly. "She might have married Allan--a young man who adored
+her--and a very good match. _Very_ good now his father's gone. She
+jilted Allan--one would suppose solely because she was in love with
+Geoffrey. Oh dear no! She refuses Geoffrey, and sends two excellent
+young men--each an only son, with a stake in the country--to bake
+themselves black in a wilderness where they will very likely be eaten
+after they are baked. I have no patience with her."
+
+"Don't be cross, Molly. There's no use worrying about her lovers. Thank
+God she has recovered her health, and is my own sweet little girl
+still."
+
+"Sweet little fiddlestick, coquette, weathercock, jilt! That's what she
+is."
+
+"Take my word for it. Wornock will come back again when he's tired of
+Africa--and propose again."
+
+"Not if he has a grain of sense. Young men don't come back to girls who
+treat them badly."
+
+The General took things easily. He had his daughter, and his daughter
+would be comfortably provided for when his day was done. He was more
+than content with the present arrangement of things; and he felt that
+Providence had been very good to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suzette came in upon Mrs. Wornock's loneliness that rainy afternoon
+like a sudden burst of sunlight; so fresh, after her walk through the
+rain, so daintily neat in the pretty blue-and-white pongee frock which
+her waterproof cloak had preserved from all harm.
+
+"I did not think you would come to-day, dear!"
+
+"Did you think the rain would frighten me? The walk was lovely in spite
+of a persistent drizzle, the woods are so fresh and sweet, and every
+little insignificant wild-flower sparkles like a jewel. I have a tiny
+bit of news for you."
+
+"Not bad news?"
+
+"No, I hope not. Lady Emily is at Beechhurst. She came late last night.
+The cook at the Vicarage saw her arrive, and Bessie Edgefield told me
+this morning. Do you think it means that Allan is expected home?"
+
+"And Geoffrey with him? Would to God it meant that! I am getting very
+weak Suzette, weary to death. My anxiety is like a wearing, physical
+pain. It is so long since we have heard anything of them."
+
+"Yes, it seems very long!" Suzette murmured, soothingly.
+
+"It _is_ very long--quite four months since I had Geoffrey's last
+letter!"
+
+"Do you think it is really as much as that?"
+
+"I know it is--and there is the post-mark to convince you," glancing at
+the secretaire where she kept those treasured letters. "Geoffrey seldom
+dates a letter. I have read this last one again and again and again.
+They were at Ujiji--the place seemed almost civilized, as he described
+it; but they were to cross the lake later on--the great lake, like an
+inland sea--to cross in an open boat. How do I know that they were not
+drowned in that crossing? He told me the natives were afraid of going
+on the lake in a storm. And he is so foolhardy, so careless of himself!
+He may have over-persuaded them----"
+
+"Hark!" cried Suzette, "a visitor! What a day for callers to choose!
+They must really wish to find you at home."
+
+There was the usual delay caused by the leisurely stroll of a footman
+from the servants' quarters to the hall-door, and then the door of the
+music-room was opened, and the leisurely butler announced Lady Emily
+Carew.
+
+Lady Emily shook hands with Mrs. Wornock, with a clinging, almost
+affectionate air, and allowed herself to be led to an easy-chair
+near the hearth where some logs were burning, to give a semblance of
+cheerfulness amidst the prevailing grey of the outside world. There
+was a marked contrast in the lady's greeting of Suzette, to whom she
+vouchsafed no handshake, only the most formal salutation. The mother of
+an only son, whom she deems perfection, cannot easily forgive the girl
+who goes near to breaking his heart.
+
+"I was so surprised to hear you were at Beechhurst," said Mrs. Wornock.
+"I hope you bring good news--that the travellers are nearing home."
+
+Lady Emily could hardly answer for her tears.
+
+"Indeed, no," she said piteously. "My news is very bad; I could
+not rest at home. I thought you might have heard lately from Mr.
+Wornock----"
+
+"My latest letter is four months old."
+
+"Ah, then you can tell me nothing. Allan has written later. He wrote
+the night before they left Ujiji----"
+
+"But the news--the bad news? What was it?"
+
+"Very, very bad. They are alone now--our sons--alone among savages--in
+an unknown country--friendless, helpless. What is to become of them?"
+
+"But Mr. Patrington--surely he has not deserted them?"
+
+"No, no, poor fellow; he would never have deserted them. He is dead.
+He died of fever. The news of his death was cabled to his brother by
+Allan. The message came from Zanzibar; but he died on his way from
+the Lake to Kassongo. That was Allan's message. Died of fever on the
+journey to Kassongo. Allan's last letter was from Ujiji. They were
+all well when he wrote, and in good spirits, looking forward to the
+journey down the Congo; and now their leader is dead, the man who knew
+the country; and they are alone, helpless, and ignorant."
+
+"They are men," Suzette flashed out indignantly, her eyes sparkling
+with tears. "They will fight their way through difficulties like men
+of courage and resource. I don't think you need be frightened, Mrs.
+Wornock; nor you, Lady Emily."
+
+"It is very good of you to console me, Miss Vincent," replied Allan's
+mother; "but if you had known your mind a little better, my son need
+never have gone to Africa."
+
+"I am sorry you should think me so much to blame; but what would you
+have thought of me if I had not told Allan the truth?"
+
+"Well, you have sent him away--and he is dead, perhaps--dead in the
+wilderness--of fever, like poor Cecil Patrington."
+
+Suzette bowed her head, and was silent under this reproof. She could
+feel for the mother, and was content to bear unmerited blame. She went
+to the organ, and occupied herself in putting away the scattered
+sheets of music, with that deft neatness which, in her case, was an
+instinct.
+
+The two mothers sat side by side, and talked, and wept together. They
+could but speculate upon the condition and the whereabouts of the
+wanderers. Those few words from Zanzibar told them so little. Cecil
+Patrington's elder brother had written to Lady Emily enclosing a copy
+of the message, with a polite hope that her son would find his way
+safely home. There was no passionate grief among his relations at home
+for the wanderer who lay in his final halting-place under the great
+sycamore. Long years of absence had weakened family ties; and the
+head of the house of Patrington was a busy country squire, with an
+increasing family and a diminishing rent-roll.
+
+Suzette put on her hat and wished Mrs. Wornock good-bye. She would have
+left with only a little bend of the head to Lady Emily; but that kindly
+matron had repented herself of her harshness, and held out her hand
+with a pathetic look which went straight to the girl's heart.
+
+"Forgive me for what I said just now," she pleaded. "I am almost beside
+myself with anxiety. You were not to blame. Truth is always the best.
+But my poor Allan was so fond of you, and you and he might have been so
+happy--if you had only loved him."
+
+"I did love him--once," faltered Suzette. "But later it seemed as if my
+love were not enough--not enough for a lifetime."
+
+"Ah, but there was some one else--we know, Mrs. Wornock--some one who
+is like my poor son, but cleverer, handsomer, more fascinating. It was
+Mr. Wornock's return that changed you----"
+
+"No, no, no!" Suzette protested eagerly. "If it had been, I might have
+acted differently. Please don't talk about me and my folly--not to know
+myself or my own heart. They are both away. God grant they are well and
+happy, and enjoying the beauty and the strangeness of that wonderful
+country. Why should they not be safe and happy there? Think how many
+years Mr. Patrington had spent in Africa before the end came. Why
+should they not be as safe as Cameron, Stanley, Trivier?"
+
+Her heart sank even as she argued in this consoling strain, remembering
+how with Stanley, with Cameron, with Trivier there was one left behind.
+But here, perhaps, the Fates were already appeased. One had fallen by
+the way. The sacrifice had been made to the cruel goddess of the dark
+land.
+
+"Will you come to Beechhurst with me, Suzette?" pleaded Allan's mother.
+"It would be so kind if you would come and stay with me till to-morrow
+morning. I shall leave by the first train to-morrow. I want to be at
+home again, to be there when Allan's letter comes. There must be a
+letter soon. It is so lonely at Beechhurst. I think General Vincent
+could spare you for just one night?"
+
+Suzette proposed that Lady Emily should dine at Marsh House; but she
+seemed to take a morbid pleasure in her son's house in spite of its
+loneliness, so Suzette drove back to Matcham with her, took her to tea
+with the General, and obtained his permission to dine and sleep at
+Beechhurst, and did all that could be done by unobtrusive kindness and
+attention to console and cheer Allan's mother.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                            ALL IN HONOUR.
+
+
+It was nearly a month after Lady Emily's appearance at Discombe, and
+there had been no letter from Geoffrey. Every day had increased Mrs.
+Wornock's anxiety, and in the face of an ever-growing fear there had
+been a tacit avoidance of all mention of the absent son, both on the
+part of his mother and of Suzette. They had talked of music, of the
+gardens, of the poor, and of the latest developments in that science of
+the supernatural in which Mrs. Wornock's interest had never abated, and
+in which her faith had never been entirely shaken.
+
+Once, in the midst of discussing the last number of the _Psychical
+Magazine_ with Suzette--a sad sceptic--she said quietly--
+
+"Whatever has happened, I know he is not dead. I must have seen him. I
+must have known. There would have been some sign."
+
+Suzette was silent. Not for worlds would she have dashed a faith which
+buoyed up the fainting spirit. Yet it needed but some dreadful dream,
+she reflected, a dead face seen amidst the clouds of sleep, to change
+this blind confidence into despair.
+
+It was in the evening following this conversation that Suzette was
+sitting at her piano alone in her own drawing-room, playing from
+memory, and losing herself in the web of a Hungarian nocturne, which
+was to her like thinking in music--the composer's learned sequences and
+changes of key seeming only a vague expression of her own sadness. Her
+father was dining out--a man's dinner--a dissipation he rarely allowed
+himself; and Suzette was relieved from her evening task of playing
+chess, reading aloud, or listening to tiger-stories, which had lost
+none of their interest from familiarity, the fondly loved father being
+the hero of every adventure.
+
+She was glad to be alone to-night, for her heart was full of dread of
+the news which the next African letter might bring. She had tried to
+make light of the leader's death; yet she, too, thought with a shudder
+of the two young men alone, inexperienced, and one of them, at least,
+reckless and daring even to folly.
+
+The wailing Hungarian reverie with its minor modulations seemed to
+shape itself into a dream of Africa, the endless jungle, the vastness
+of swamp and river, the beauty and the terror of gigantic waterfalls,
+huge walls of water, a river leaping over a precipice into a gulf of
+darkness and snow-white foam. The scenes of which she had been reading
+lately crowded into her mind, and filled it with aching fears.
+
+"Suzette!"
+
+A voice called to her softly from the open window. She looked up,
+trembling and cold with an awful fear. His voice--Geoffrey's--a
+spectral voice; the voice of a ghost calling to her, the unbeliever,
+from the other side of the world--calling in death, or after death, to
+the woman the living man had loved.
+
+She rose, with a faint scream, and rushed to the window, and was
+clasped in the living Geoffrey's arms, on the threshold, between the
+garden and the room. Had she flung herself into his arms in her fear
+and great surprise? or had he seized her as she ran to him? She could
+not tell. She knew only that she was sobbing on his breast, clasped in
+two gaunt arms, which held her as in a grasp of iron.
+
+"Geoffrey, Geoffrey! Alive and well! What delight for your poor mother!
+Was she not wild with happiness?" she asked, when he released her,
+after a shower of kisses upon forehead and lips, which she pretended to
+ignore.
+
+She could not begin quarrelling with him in these first moments of
+delighted surprise.
+
+He followed her into the room, and she saw his face in the light of the
+lamp on the piano--worn, wan, haggard, wasted, but with eyes that were
+full of fire and gladness.
+
+"Suzette, Suzette!" he cried, clasping her hands, and trying to draw
+her to his heart again, "it was worth a journey over half the world to
+find you! So sweet, so fair! All that my dreams have shown me, night
+after night, night after night! Ah, love, we have never been parted.
+Your image has never left me."
+
+"Africa has done you no good. You are as full of wild nonsense as
+ever," she said, trying to take the situation lightly, yet trembling
+with emotion, her heart beating loud and fast, her eyes hardly daring
+to meet the eyes that dwelt upon her face so fondly. "Tell me about
+your mother. Was she not surprised--happy?"
+
+"I hope she will be a little glad. I haven't seen her yet."
+
+"Not seen--your mother?"
+
+"No, child. A man can't have two lode-stars. I came straight from
+Zanzibar to this house. I came home to _you_, Suzette."
+
+"But you will go to the Manor directly? Your poor mother has been so
+miserable about you. Don't lose a minute in making her happy."
+
+"Lose! These minutes are gold; the most precious minutes of my life.
+Oh, Suzette, how cruel you were! Why did you drive me from you?"
+
+She was in his arms again, held closely in those wasted arms, caught in
+the coils of that passionate love, she scarcely knew how. He was taking
+everything for granted; and she knew not how to resist him. She had no
+argument to offer against that triumphant love.
+
+"Cruel, cruel, cruel Suzette! Two years of exile--two wasted lonely
+years--years of fond longing and looking back! Why did you send me
+away? No, I won't ask. It was all in honour, all in honour. My dearest
+is made up of honourable scruples, and delicate sympathies, which this
+rough nature of mine can't understand. But you loved me, Suzette.
+You loved me from the first, as I loved you. Our hearts went out to
+meet each other over the bridge of my violin--flew out to each other
+in a burst of melody. And we will go on loving each other till the
+last breath--the last faint glimmer of life's brief candle. Ah, love,
+forgive me if I rave. I am beside myself with joy."
+
+"I think you are a little out of your mind," she faltered.
+
+She let him rave. She accepted the situation. Ah, surely, surely it was
+this man she loved. It was this eager spirit which had passed like a
+breath of fire between her and Allan; this masterful nature which had
+possessed itself of her heart, as of a mere chattel that must needs
+be the prize of the strongest. She submitted to the tyranny of a love
+which would not accept defeat; and presently they sat down side by side
+in the soft lamplight, close to the piano which she loved only a little
+less than if it were human. They sat down side by side, his arm still
+round the slim waist, plighted lovers.
+
+"Poor Allan!" she sighed, with a remorseful pang. "Has he gone down to
+Suffolk?"
+
+"To Suffolk? He is on the Congo--past Stanley Falls, I hope, by this
+time."
+
+"On the Congo! You have left him! Quite alone! Oh, Geoffrey, how could
+you?"
+
+"Why not? He is safe enough. He knows the country as well as I. I left
+him near Kassongo, where he could get as big a train and as many stores
+as he wanted; though we have done nowadays with long trains, armies of
+porters, and a mountainous load of provisions."
+
+"What will Lady Emily say? She will be dreadfully unhappy. I could not
+have believed you and Allan would part company--after Mr. Patrington's
+death."
+
+"Why not? We were both strangers in the land. He knows how to take care
+of himself as well as I do."
+
+"But two men--companions and friends--surely they would be safer than
+one Englishman travelling alone?" said Suzette, deeply distressed at
+the thought of what Allan's mother would suffer when she knew that her
+son's comrade had left him.
+
+"Do you think two men are safer from fever, poisoned arrows, the
+bursting of a gun, the swamping of a canoe? My dearest, Allan is just
+as safe alone as he was when he was one of three. He had learnt a good
+deal about the country, and he knew how to manage the natives, and he
+had stores and ammunition, and the means of getting plenty more. Don't
+let me see that sweet face clouded. Ah, my love, my love, I shall never
+forget your welcoming smile--the light upon your face as you ran to the
+window. I had always believed in your love--always--even when you were
+cruellest; but to-night I know--I know that I am the chosen one."
+
+He let his head sink on her shoulder, and nestled against her, like
+a child at rest near his mother's heart. How could she resist a love
+so fervent, so resolute--a spirit like Satan's--not to be changed by
+place or time. It is the lover who will not be denied--the selfish,
+impetuous, unscrupulous lover who has always the better chance; and in
+a case like this it was a foregone conclusion that he who came back
+first would be the winner. The first strong appeal to the heart that
+had been tried by absence and anxiety, the first returning wave of
+romantic love. It was something more than a lover's return. It was the
+awakening of love from a long sleep that had seemed dull and grey and
+hopeless as death.
+
+"I thought you would never come back," sighed Suzette, resigning
+herself to the tyranny of the conqueror, content at last to be taken
+by a _coup de main_. "I was afraid you and Allan would be left in
+that dreadful country. And I had to make believe to think you as safe
+as if you were in the next parish. I had to be cheerful and full of
+hopefulness, for your mother's sake. Your poor mother," starting up
+suddenly. "Oh, Geoffrey, how cruel that we should be sitting here while
+she is left in ignorance of your return; and she has suffered an agony
+of fear since she heard of poor Mr. Patrington's death. It is shameful!
+You must go to her this instant."
+
+"Must I, my queen and mistress?"
+
+"This instant. It will be a shock to her--even in the joy of your
+return--to see how thin and haggard you have grown. What suffering you
+must have gone through!"
+
+"Only one kind of suffering--only one malady, Suzette. I was sick
+for love of you. Love made me do forced marches; love kept me awake
+of nights. Impatience was the fever that burnt in my blood--love and
+longing for you. Yes, yes, I am going," as she put her hand through his
+arm and led him to the window. "I will be at my mother's feet in half
+an hour, kneeling to ask for her blessing on my betrothal. There will
+be double joy for her, Suzette, in my home-coming and my happiness. I
+left her a restless, unquiet spirit. I go back to her tamed and happy."
+
+"Yes, yes, only go! Remember that every minute of her life of late has
+been a minute of anxiety. And she loves you so devotedly, Geoffrey. She
+has only you to love."
+
+"I am going; but not till you have told me how soon, Suzette."
+
+"How soon--what?"
+
+"Our marriage."
+
+"Geoffrey, how absurd of you to talk about that, when I hardly know
+that we are engaged."
+
+"I know it. We are bound and plighted as never lovers were, to my
+knowledge, since Romeo and Juliet. How long did Romeo wait, Suzette?
+Twenty-four hours, I think. I shall have to wait longer--for a special
+licence."
+
+"Geoffrey, unless you hurry away to the Manor this instant, I will
+never speak civilly to you again."
+
+"Why, what a fury my love can be! What an exquisite termagant! Yes, I
+will wait for the licence. Come to the gate with me, Suzette."
+
+They went through the dusky garden to the old-fashioned five-barred
+gate which opened on to a circular drive. The night was cool and grey,
+and the white bloom of a catalpa tree gleamed ghost-like among the dark
+masses of the shrubbery. A bat wheeled across the greyness in front of
+the lovers, as they kissed and parted.
+
+"Until I can get the licence," he repeated, with his happy laugh.
+"We'll wait for nothing else."
+
+"You will have to wait for me," she answered, tossing up her head, and
+running away, a swift white figure, vanishing in the bend of the drive
+as he stood watching her.
+
+"Thank God!" he ejaculated. "The reward is worth all that has gone
+before."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                          "AM I HIS KEEPER?"
+
+
+Before the sun had gone down upon the second day after Geoffrey's
+return, his engagement to Miss Vincent had become known to almost
+every member of Matcham society who had any right to be posted in the
+proceedings of the _élite_.
+
+Mrs. Mornington, dropping in at her brother's house after breakfast,
+and before her daily excursion to the village, was transformed into
+a statue of surprise on the very threshold of the hall at hearing
+fiddling in her brother's drawing-room, unmistakably fiddling of a
+superior order; a fiddle whose grandiose chords rose loud and strong
+above the rippling notes of a piano--a quaint old melody of Porpora's,
+in strongly marked common time--a fairy-like accompaniment of delicate
+treble runs, light as a gauzy veil flung over the severe outlines of a
+bronze statue.
+
+"She must be having accompanying lessons," thought Mrs. Mornington.
+"Some fiddler from Salisbury, I suppose."
+
+She marched into the drawing-room with the privileged unceremoniousness
+of an aunt, and found Geoffrey Wornock standing beside the piano, at
+which Suzette was sitting fresh as a rose, in a pale green frock, that
+looked like the calix of a living flower.
+
+"Home!" cried Mrs. Mornington, with a step backward, and again becoming
+statuesque; "and I have been picturing you as eaten by tigers, or
+tomahawked by savages!"
+
+"The African tiger is only a panther, and there are no tomahawks,"
+answered Geoffrey, laying down his bow, and going across the room to
+shake hands with Mrs. Mornington, the Amati still under his chin.
+
+"And Allan? Where is Allan?"
+
+"I left him on his way to the Congo."
+
+"You left him!--came back without him?"
+
+"Yes. He wanted to extend his travels--to cross Africa. I was not so
+ambitious. I only wanted to come home."
+
+His smile, as he turned to look at Suzette, told the astute matron all
+she desired to know.
+
+"So," she exclaimed, "is the weathercock nailed to the vane at last?"
+
+"The ship which has been tossing so long upon a sunless sea, is safe in
+her haven," answered Geoffrey.
+
+Mrs. Mornington's keen perceptions took a swift review of the position.
+A much better match than poor Allan! Discombe, with revenues that had
+accumulated at compound interest during a long minority, must be better
+than Beechhurst, a mere villa, and an estate in Suffolk of which Mrs.
+Mornington knew very little except that it was hedged in and its glory
+overshadowed by the lands of a Most Noble and a Right Honourable or
+two. Discombe! The Squire of Discombe was a personage in that little
+world of Matcham; and the world of Matcham was all on the earthward
+side of the universe for which Miss Mornington cared.
+
+Suzette's shilly-shallying little ways had answered admirably, it
+seemed, after all. How wisely Providence orders things, if we will only
+fold our hand and wait.
+
+"Don't let me interrupt your musical studies, young people," exclaimed
+the good lady. "I only came to know if Suzette was going to the
+golf-ground."
+
+"Of course I am going, auntie, if you are walking that way and want
+company."
+
+It was the kind of day on which only hat and gloves are needed for
+outdoor toilette; and Suzette's neat little hat was ready for her in
+the hall. They all three went off to the links together, along the
+dusty road and through the busy little village--busy just for one
+morning hour--and to the common beyond, the long stretch of common
+that skirted the high-road, and which everybody declared to have been
+created on purpose for golf.
+
+Mrs. Mornington talked about Allan nearly all the way--her regret that
+he had extended his travels, regret felt mostly on his mother's account.
+
+"I think he always meant to cross from sea to sea," Geoffrey answered
+carelessly. "His mother ought to have been prepared for that. He read
+Trivier's book, and that inspired him. And really crossing Africa means
+very little nowadays. One's people at home needn't worry about it."
+
+"Mr. Patrington did not find it so easy."
+
+"Poor Patrington! No; he was unlucky. There is no reckoning with fever.
+That is the worst enemy."
+
+"Did you bring home a letter for Lady Emily?"
+
+"No. Allan wrote from Ujiji. That letter would reach England much
+quicker than I could."
+
+"But you will go to see her, I dare say. No doubt it would be a comfort
+to her to talk to you about her son--to hear all those details which
+letters so seldom give."
+
+"I will go if she ask me. Suzette has written to tell her of my return."
+
+"She will ask you, I am sure. Or she may come to Beechhurst, as she
+came only a month ago, in the hope of hearing of Allan's movements from
+your letters to your mother."
+
+"I was never so good a correspondent, or so good a son, as Allan."
+
+They were at the golf-ground by this time, and here Mrs. Mornington
+left them; and meeting five of her particular friends on the way, told
+them how a strange thing had happened, and that Geoffrey Wornock, who
+had left England broken-hearted because Suzette had rejected him, had
+come back suddenly from Africa, and had been accepted.
+
+"He took her by storm, poor child! But, after all, I believe she always
+preferred him to poor Allan."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There seemed nothing wanting now to Mrs. Wornock's happiness. Her son
+had returned, not to restlessness and impatience, not to weary again
+of his beautiful home, but to settle down soberly with a wife he adored.
+
+His mother was to live with him always. The Manor House was still
+to be her home, the music-room her room, the organ hers. In all
+things she was to be as she had been--plus the son she loved, and
+the daughter-in-law she would have chosen for herself from all the
+daughters of earth.
+
+"If it were not that I am sorry for Allan, there would not be a cloud
+in my sky," she told her son, on the second night after his return,
+when he had quieted down a little from that fever of triumphant
+gladness which had possessed him after his conquest of Suzette.
+
+"Dear mother, there is no use in being sorry for Allan. We could not
+both be winners. To be sorry for him is to grudge me my delight; and I
+could easily come to believe that you are fonder of Allan than of me."
+
+"Geoffrey!"
+
+"Well, I'll never say so again if you'll only leave off lamenting about
+Allan. He will have all the world before him when he comes back to
+England. Somewhere, no doubt there are love and sympathy, and beauty
+and youth waiting for him. When he knows that Suzette has made her
+choice, he will accept the inevitable, and fall in love with somebody
+else--not at Matcham."
+
+There was the faintest touch of irritation in his reply. That incessant
+reference to Allan began to jar upon his nerves. Wherever he went, he
+had to answer the same questions--to explain how he wanted to come home
+and Allan wanted to go further away; and how for that reason only they
+had parted. He began to feel like Cain, and to sympathize with the
+first murderer.
+
+But the worst was still to come. In the midst of a sonata of De
+Beriot's--long, brilliant, difficult--a _tour de force_ for Suzette,
+whose fingers had not grappled with such music within the last two
+years, the door of the music-room was opened, and Lady Emily Carew was
+announced, just as upon that grey afternoon a month ago.
+
+"Forgive me for descending upon you again in this way," she said
+hurriedly to Mrs. Wornock, who came from her seat by the window to
+receive the uninvited guest. "I couldn't rest after I received Miss
+Vincent's letter."
+
+Nothing could have been colder than the "Miss Vincent," except the
+stately recognition of Suzette with which it was accompanied. "Mr.
+Wornock"--turning to Geoffrey, without even noticing his mother's
+outstretched hand--"why did you leave my son?"
+
+"I thought Suzette had told you why we parted. He wished to go on. I
+wanted to come home. Is there anything extraordinary in that?"
+
+"Yes. When two men go to an uncivilized country, full of dangers and
+difficulties, and when the third, their guide and leader, has been
+snatched away--surely it is very strange that they should part; very
+cruel of the one whose stronger will insisted upon parting."
+
+"If you mean to imply that I had no right to come back to England
+without your son, I can only answer that you are very unjust. If you
+were a man, Lady Emily, I might be tempted to express my meaning in
+stronger language."
+
+"Oh, it is easy enough for you to answer me, if you can satisfy your
+own conscience; if you can answer to yourself for leaving your friend
+and comrade helpless and alone."
+
+"Was he more helpless than I? We parted in the centre of Africa. If I
+chose the easier and shorter route homeward, that route was just as
+open to him as to me. It was his own choice to go down the Congo River.
+No doubt his next letter, whenever it may reach you, will tell you all
+you can want to know as to his reasons for taking that route. When I
+offered myself as your son's companion, I accepted no apprenticeship. I
+was tired of Africa; he wasn't. There was no compact between us. I was
+under no bond to stay with him. He may choose to spend his life there,
+as Cecil Patrington chose, practically. I wanted to come home."
+
+"Yes, to be first; to steal my son's sweetheart!" said Lady Emily, pale
+with anger, looking from Geoffrey to Suzette.
+
+"Lady Emily, you are unreasonable."
+
+"I am a mother, and I love my son. Till I see him, till I hear from
+his own lips that you were not a traitor--that you did not abandon him
+in danger or distress, for your own selfish ends; till then I shall
+not cease to think of you as I think now. Your mother will, of course,
+believe whatever you tell her; and Miss Vincent, no doubt, was easily
+satisfied; but I am not to be put off so lightly--nor your conscience,
+as your face tells me."
+
+She was gone before any one could answer her. She waited for no
+courtesy of leave-taking, for no servant to lead the way. Her own
+resolute hand opened and shut the door, before Mrs. Wornock could
+recover from the shock of her onslaught. Indeed, in those few moments,
+Mrs. Wornock had only eyes or apprehension for one thing, and that was
+Geoffrey's white face. Was it anger or remorse that made him so deadly
+pale?
+
+While his mother watched him wonderingly, filled with a growing fear,
+his sweetheart was too deeply wounded by Lady Emily's scornful speech
+to be conscious of anything but her own pain. She went back to her
+place at the piano, and bent her head over a page of music, pretending
+to study an intricate passage, but unable to read a single bar through
+her thickly gathering tears.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+                       A SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH.
+
+
+No more was seen or heard of Lady Emily at Matcham. Except the one
+fact that she had returned to Suffolk on the morning after her brief
+appearance at the Manor, nothing more was known about that poor
+lonely lady, whom adverse fate had cut adrift from all she loved.
+At Beechhurst closed shutters told of the master's absence; and the
+inquiries of the officious or the friendly elicited only the reply that
+Mr. Carew was still travelling in Africa, and that no letters had been
+received from him for a long time. He was in a country where there were
+no post-offices, the housekeeper opined, but she believed her ladyship
+heard from him occasionally.
+
+Geoffrey's return, and the news of his engagement to Miss Vincent,
+made a pleasant excitement in the village and neighbourhood. An early
+marriage was talked about. Mr. Wornock had told the Vicar that he was
+going to be married in a fortnight--had spoken as if he were sole
+master of the situation.
+
+"As if such a nice girl as Suzette would allow herself to be hustled
+into marriage without time for a trousseau," persisted Bessie
+Edgefield, who assured her friends that there would be no wedding that
+year. "It may be in January," she said; "but it won't be before the New
+Year."
+
+Geoffrey had pleaded in vain. He had won his sweetheart's promise; but
+his sweetheart was not to be treated in too masterful a fashion.
+
+"God knows why we are waiting, or what we are waiting for," he said,
+in one of those fits of nervous irritability, which even Suzette's
+influence could not prevent. "Hasn't my probation been long enough?
+Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't you kept me on the rack of
+uncertainty long enough to satisfy your love of power? You are like all
+women; you think of a lover as a surgeon thinks of a rabbit, too low
+in the scale for his feelings to be considered--just good enough for
+vivisection."
+
+"Can't we be happy, Geoffrey? We have everything in the world that we
+care for."
+
+"I can never be happy till I am sure of you. I am always dreading the
+moment in which you will tell me you have changed your mind."
+
+"I have given you my promise. Isn't that enough?"
+
+"No, it is not enough. You gave Allan your promise--and broke it."
+
+She started up from her seat by the piano, and turned upon him
+indignantly.
+
+"If you are capable of saying such things as that, we had better bid
+each other good-bye at once," she said. "I won't submit to be reminded
+of my wrong-doing by you, who are the sole cause of it. If I had
+never seen you, I should be Allan's wife this day. You came between
+us; you tempted me away from him; and now you tell me I am fickle
+and untrustworthy. I begin to think I have made a worse mistake in
+promising to be your wife than I made when I engaged myself to Allan."
+
+"That means that you are regretting him--that you wish he were here
+now--in my place."
+
+"Not in your place; but I wish he were safe in England. It makes me
+miserable to be so uncertain of his fate, for his mother's sake."
+
+"Well, he will be in England soon enough, I dare say. But you will be
+my wife by that time; and I shall be secure of my prize. I shall be
+able to defy a hundred Allans."
+
+And then he sat down by her side, and pleaded for her pardon, almost
+with tears. He hated himself for those jealous doubts which devoured
+him, he told her--those fears of he knew not what. If she were but his
+wife, his own for ever, that stormy soul of his would enter into a
+haven of peace. The colour of his life would be changed.
+
+"And even for Allan's sake," he argued, "it is better that there
+should be no delay. He will accept the situation more easily if he
+find us man and wife. A man always submits to the inevitable. It is
+uncertainty which kills."
+
+He pleaded, and was forgiven; and by-and-by Suzette was induced to
+consent to an earlier date for her marriage. It was to be in the
+second week of December--five months after Geoffrey's return, and the
+honeymoon was to be spent upon that lovely shore where there is no
+winter; and then, early in the year, Suzette and her husband were to
+establish themselves at Discombe; and the doors of the Manor House were
+to be opened as they had never been opened since old Squire Wornock was
+a young man. Matcham was in good spirits at the prospect of pleasant
+hospitalities, a going and coming of nice people from London. Nobody
+in the immediate neighbourhood could afford to entertain upon a scale
+which would be a matter of course for Geoffrey Wornock.
+
+"December will be here before we know where we are," said Mrs.
+Mornington, and her constitutional delight in action and bustle of
+all kinds again found a safety-valve in the preparation of Suzette's
+trousseau.
+
+Again she was confronted by a chilling indifference in the young lady
+for whom the clothes were being made. She advised Suzette to spend
+a week in London, in order to get her frocks and jackets from the
+best people. Salisbury would have been good enough for Allan, and
+Beechhurst; but for Squire Wornock's wife--for the Riviera--and for
+Discombe Manor, the most fashionable London artists should be called
+upon for their best achievements.
+
+"I suppose you'll want to look well when you show yourself at Cannes
+as Mrs. Wornock? You won't want to be another awful example of an
+Englishwomen wearing out her old clothes on the Continent," said Mrs.
+Mornington snappishly.
+
+As the General was also in favour of a week in town, Suzette consented,
+and bored herself to death in the family circle of an aunt who was
+almost a stranger, but who had been offering her hospitality ever
+since she could remember. At this lady's house in Bryanstone Square,
+she spent a weary week of shopping, and trying on, always under the
+commanding eye of Aunt Mornington, who delighted in tramping about
+London out of the season, a London in which one could do just what one
+liked, without fear or favour of society.
+
+And so the trousseau was put in hand; the wedding-gown chosen; the
+wedding-cake ordered; Mrs. Mornington taking all trouble off her
+brother's hands in the matter of the reception that was to be held
+after the wedding. Everybody was to be asked, of course; but the
+invitations were not to go out till a fortnight before the day.
+
+"I don't want people to suppose I am giving them plenty of time to
+think about wedding-presents," Suzette explained, when she insisted
+upon this short notice.
+
+All these arrangements were made in October--the marriage settlement
+was drafted, and everybody was satisfied, since Geoffrey's liberality
+had required the curb rather than the spur.
+
+For the rest of the year the lovers had nothing to think of but each
+other, and those great spirits of the past whose voices still spoke to
+them, whose genius was the companion of their lives. Beethoven, Mozart,
+Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schubert, were the friends of those quiet days;
+and love found its most eloquent interpreters in the language of the
+dead.
+
+Sometimes, with a dim foreboding of evil, Suzette found herself
+wondering what she would do with that fiery restless spirit, were
+it not for that soothing influence of music; but she could not
+imagine Geoffrey dissociated from that second voice which seemed
+more characteristic of him than any spoken language--that voice of
+passionate joys and passionate regrets, of deepest melancholy, and of
+wildest mirth. Music made a third in their lives--the strongest link
+between them, holding them aloof from that outside world to which the
+mysteries of harmony were unknown. Matcham society shrugged shoulders
+of wonder, not unmixed with disdain, when it was told how Miss Vincent
+practised five hours a day at home or at Discombe, and how she was
+beginning to play as well as a professional pianist. There had been a
+little dinner at the Manor House, and Geoffrey and his betrothed had
+played a duet which they called a Salterello, and Mrs. Mornington was
+complimented on her niece's gifts. Her execution was really surprising!
+No other young lady in Matcham could play like that. The girls of the
+present day lived too much out-of-doors to aspire to "execution." If
+they could play some little thing of Schumann's or the easiest of
+Chopin's or Rubinstein's valses, they were satisfied with themselves.
+
+The hunting season began, but Geoffrey only hunted occasionally. He
+went only when General Vincent and his daughter went, not otherwise.
+Suzette had three or four hunters at her disposal now, and could have
+ridden to hounds three times a week had she so desired. Geoffrey's
+first care had been to get some of his best horses ready for carrying
+a lady; and she had her own thoroughbred, clever and kind, and able to
+carry her for a long day's work. But Suzette was not rabid about riding
+to hounds in all weathers, and at all distances. She liked a day now
+and then when her father was inclined to take her; but she had no idea
+of giving up her whole life--books, music, cottage visiting, home, for
+fox-hunting. Geoffrey gave up many a day's sport in order to spend the
+wintry hours in the music-room at Discombe, or in long rambles in the
+woods, or over the downs, with his betrothed.
+
+Was he happy, having won his heart's desire? Suzette sometimes
+found herself asking that question, of herself, not of him. He was
+a creature of moods: sometimes animated, eloquent, hopeful, talking
+of life as if doubt, sorrow, satiety were unknown to him, undreamt
+of by him; at other times strangely depressed, silent and gloomy, a
+dismal companion for a joyous high-spirited girl. Those moods of his
+scared Suzette; but she was prepared to put up with them. She had
+chosen him, or allowed herself to be chosen by him. She had bound
+herself to life-companionship with that fitful spirit. For him she
+had forsaken a lover whose happier nature need never have caused her
+an hour's anxiety--a man whose thoughts and feelings were easy to
+read and understand. She had taken the lover whose caprices and moods
+had awakened a romantic interest, had aroused first curiosity, then
+sympathy and regard. It was because he was a genius she loved him; and
+she must resign herself to the capricious varieties of temperament
+which make genius difficult to deal with in everyday life.
+
+No news of Allan reached Matcham till the beginning of November, when
+Mrs. Mornington took upon herself to write to Lady Emily about him, and
+received a very cold reply.
+
+"I heard from my son last week," Lady Emily wrote, after a stately
+acknowledgment of Mrs. Mornington's inquiry. "He has been laid up with
+fever, but is better, and on his way home. He wrote from Brazzaville.
+It is something to know that he did not die in the desert, neglected
+and alone. Even on the eve of her marriage, your niece may be glad
+to hear that my son has survived her unkindness, and Mr. Wornock's
+desertion; and that I am hoping to welcome him home before long."
+
+Mrs. Mornington showed the letter to Suzette, whose mind was greatly
+relieved by this news of Allan.
+
+"It is such a comfort to know that he is safe," she told Geoffrey,
+after commenting upon the unkindness of Lady Emily's letter.
+
+The news which was so cheering to her had a contrary effect upon her
+lover. There was a look of trouble in Geoffrey's face when he was
+told of Allan's expected arrival, and he took no pains to conceal his
+displeasure.
+
+"I am sorry you have suffered such intense anxiety," he said
+resentfully. "Did you suspect me of having murdered him?"
+
+"Nonsense, Geoffrey! I could not help thinking of all possible
+dangers; and it distressed me to know that other people thought you
+unkind in leaving him."
+
+"Other people have talked like fools--as foolishly as his mother, in
+whom one forgives folly. I was not his nurse, or his doctor, or his
+hired servant. I was only a casual companion; and I was free to leave
+him how and when I pleased."
+
+"But not to leave him in distress or difficulty. _I_ knew you could not
+have done that. I knew that you could not act ungenerously. I think
+Lady Emily ought to make you a very humble apology for her rudeness,
+when she has her son safe at home."
+
+"She may keep her apologies for people who value her opinion. I shall
+be a thousand miles away when her son returns."
+
+He was silent and gloomy for the rest of the morning, and Suzette felt
+that she had offended him. Was he so jealous of her former lover that
+even the mention of his name--a natural interest in his safety--could
+awaken angry feelings, and make a distance between them? Even their
+music went badly, and Mrs. Wornock, from her seat by the fire,
+reproached them for careless playing.
+
+"That sonata of Porpora's went ever so much better last week," she
+said, on which Geoffrey threw down his bow in disgust.
+
+"I dare say you are right. I am not in the mood for music. Will you
+come for a ride after lunch, Suzette? I can drive you home, and the
+horses can follow while you are getting on your habit. We might fall in
+with the hounds."
+
+Suzette declined this handsome offer. She was not going to say to lunch.
+
+"Father complains that I am never at home," she said, putting away the
+music.
+
+"Your father is out with the hounds. What is the use of your going back
+to an empty house?"
+
+"I would rather be at home to-day Geoffrey."
+
+"To think about Allan, and offer a thanksgiving for his safety?"
+
+"I am full of thankfulness, and I am not ashamed of being glad."
+
+She went over to Mrs. Wornock, who had been too much absorbed in her
+book to be aware that the lovers were quarrelling, till Suzette's brief
+good-bye and rapid departure startled her out of her tranquillity.
+
+"Aren't you going to walk home with her, Geoffrey?" she asked when
+her son returned to the music-room, after escorting his sweetheart no
+further than the hall-door.
+
+"No," he answered curtly; "we have had enough of each other for to-day."
+
+He went to the library, where the morning papers were lying unread, and
+turned to the second page of the _Times_ for the list of steamers, and
+then to the shipping intelligence.
+
+Zanzibar? Yes, the Messageries Maritimes steamer _Djemnah_, was
+reported as arriving at Marseilles yesterday morning. Allan was in
+England, perhaps. If all went well with him, he would come by the
+first ship after the mail that brought his letter. The _Rapide_ would
+bring him from Marseilles in time for the morning mail from Paris. He
+was in England--he whom Geoffrey had cruelly, treacherously deserted,
+helpless, and alone.
+
+"All is fair in love," Geoffrey told himself; "but I wonder what
+Suzette will think of her future husband when she knows all? Her
+future husband! If I were but her actual husband, I could defy Fate.
+Who knows? something may have happened to hinder his return--a fit of
+fever, a difficulty on the road. Three more weeks, and he may come back
+safe and sound; it won't matter to me; I have no murderous thoughts
+about him. He may tell her the worst he can about me. Once my wife, I
+can hold and keep her in spite of the world. I will teach her that the
+man who sins for love's sake must be forgiven for the sake of his love."
+
+He was consumed with a fever of anxiety which would not let him rest
+within four walls. He walked to Beechhurst, and unearthed a caretaker,
+who came strolling from the distant stables, where he had been
+enlivening his idleness by gossip with the grooms. The blinds and
+shutters were all closed. Nothing had been heard from Mr. Carew.
+
+"If he were in England you would have heard from him, I suppose?" said
+Geoffrey.
+
+"Yes, sir; he would have wired, no doubt. My wife is housekeeper, and
+she would have had notice to get the house ready."
+
+"Even if Mr. Carew had gone to Suffolk, in the first instance?"
+
+"I should think so, sir. He would know we should want time to prepare
+for him."
+
+There was relief in this. Perhaps the _Djemnah_ had carried no such
+passenger as the man whose return Geoffrey Wornock dreaded.
+
+He went back to the Manor in the gloom of a November evening. The
+darkness and loneliness of the road suited his humour. He wanted to be
+alone, to think out the situation, to walk down the devil within him.
+
+Matcham Church clock was chiming the third quarter after five when he
+opened the gate and went into Discombe Wood; but when the Discombe
+dressing-bell rang at half-past seven--an old-fashioned bell in a
+cupola, which gave needless information to every cottager within half a
+mile of the Manor House--Geoffrey had not come in.
+
+His valet waited about for him till nearly dinner-time, and then went
+down to the drawing-room to ask Mrs. Wornock if his master was to dine
+at home.
+
+"He is not in his dressing-room, ma'am. Will you wait dinner for him?"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course I shall wait. Tell them to keep the dinner back."
+
+The dinner was kept back so long that nobody eat any of it, out of
+the servants' hall. Mrs. Wornock spent a troubled evening in the
+music-room, full of harassing fears; while grooms rode here and
+there--to Marsh House, to inquire if Mr. Wornock was dining there; to
+Matcham Road Station, to ask if he had left by any train, up or down
+the line; to the Vicarage, a most unlikely place, and to other houses
+where it was just possible, but most improbable, that he should allow
+himself to be detained; but nowhere within the narrow circle of Matcham
+life was Mr. Wornock to be heard of.
+
+"Pray don't be anxious about Geoffrey," Suzette wrote, in answer to
+Mrs. Wornock's hastily scribbled note of inquiry; "you know how erratic
+he is. He was vexed at something I said about Allan this morning, and
+he has gone off somewhere in a huff. Keep up your spirits, chère mère.
+I will be with you early to-morrow morning. _I_ am not frightened."
+
+"She is not frightened! If she loved him as I do, she would be as
+anxious as I am," commented Mrs. Wornock, when she had read Suzette's
+letter.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                          "IT IS THE STARS."
+
+
+Morning brought no relief of mind to Mrs. Wornock, since it brought no
+news of her son; but before night there was even greater anxiety at
+Beechhurst, where Allan Carew's mother arrived late in the evening,
+summoned by a letter from her son, despatched from Southampton on the
+previous day, announcing his arrival, and asking her to join him at
+Beechhurst.
+
+"I would go straight to Suffolk," he wrote, "knowing how anxious my
+dear, tender-hearted mother will be to welcome her wanderer home,
+only--only I think you know that there is some one at Matcham about
+whose feelings I have still a shadow of doubt, still a lingering hope.
+I go there first, where perhaps I may meet you; and if I find that
+faint hope to be only a delusion, I know you will sympathize with my
+final disappointment.
+
+"I have passed through many adventures and some dangers since I left
+the great lake. I have been ill, and I have been lonely; but I come
+back to England the same man who went away--unchanged in heart and
+mind. However altered you may find the outer man, the inner man is the
+same."
+
+Having telegraphed from Waterloo to announce her arrival at Matcham
+Road Station, Lady Emily was bitterly disappointed at not finding her
+son waiting for her on the platform. She looked eagerly out into the
+November darkness, searching for the well-known figure among the few
+people standing here and there along the narrow platform. There was no
+Allan, and there was no Beechhurst carriage waiting for her.
+
+The station-master recognized her as she alighted, and came to assist
+in the selection of her luggage, while a porter ran off to order a fly
+from the inn outside.
+
+"Mr. Carew was expected home yesterday. Did he come?" asked Lady
+Emily, with that faint sickness of despair which follows on such a
+disappointment.
+
+She had pictured the moment of reunion over and over again during the
+journey--had fancied how he would look, what he would say to her, and
+the delight of their long confidential talk on the drive home, and the
+pleasure of their _tête-à-tête_ dinner. The only shadow upon her happy
+thought of him was her knowledge of what his faithful heart must needs
+suffer when he found that Suzette had engaged herself to his rival.
+
+The station-master informed Lady Emily that Mr. Carew had arrived the
+day before, by this very train. He had evidently sent no notice of
+his arrival, as there was no carriage to meet him. He had very little
+luggage with him--only a portmanteau and a bale of rugs and sticks,
+which had been sent to Beechhurst by the station 'bus. Mr. Carew had
+walked home.
+
+He was at home, then. The gladness of reunion was only delayed for an
+hour. His mother tried to make light of her disappointment and of his
+neglect. He had given an order to the stable, perhaps, and it had been
+forgotten. There was a mistake somewhere, but no unkindness on his part.
+
+"Was my son looking in pretty good health?" she asked the
+station-master.
+
+"Yes, my lady, allowing for the wear and tear of a sea-voyage, Mr.
+Carew looked pretty well; but he looked pulled down a bit since he went
+away. You mustn't be surprised at a little change in that way."
+
+"Yes, yes, no doubt he is altered. Years of travel and fatigue and
+danger. Ah, there is the fly; they have been very quick. Come, Taylor,"
+to the middle-aged, homely Suffolk abigail who stood on guard over her
+mistress's luggage.
+
+The drive through the November night seemed longer to the lady inside
+the carriage, sitting alone and longing for the sight of her son's
+face, than to her maid on the box beside John coachman, of the Station
+Inn, chatting sociably about the improvements in the neighbourhood
+and the prospects of the hunting season. And, oh, bitter agony of
+disappointment when the door of Beechhurst was opened, and Lady Emily
+saw only a half-lit hall and staircase, and the stolid countenance of
+butler and caretaker, whose informal attire too plainly showed her that
+his master was not in the house.
+
+"Has Mr. Carew gone away again?" she asked, as the man helped her out
+of the carriage, thinking vaguely that Allan might have started off for
+Suffolk that morning, and that she and he were travelling to and fro at
+cross purposes.
+
+"Mr. Carew has not been home, my lady."
+
+"Not been home? Why, he arrived yesterday by the train I came by
+to-night. The station-master told me so."
+
+"Then he must be visiting somewhere in the neighbourhood, my lady. Some
+luggage was brought at nine o'clock; but my master has not been home."
+
+She stood looking at the man dumbly, paralyzed by apprehension. Where
+could Allan be? what could he have done with himself? His letter had
+asked her to meet him in that house. He had arrived at the station
+twenty-four hours before he could expect her; he had sent home his
+luggage, and had walked out of the station in the most casual manner,
+saying that he was going home. Was it credible that he would go to
+anybody else's house, straight from the station, luggageless, newly
+landed after a long sea-voyage? No man in his senses would so act. Yet
+there was but one course for an anxious mother to take, and Lady Emily
+returned to the fly, and ordered the man to drive to Marsh House.
+
+Allan might have gone straight to Suzette. Who could tell what effect
+the news of her approaching marriage might have upon his mind? His
+letter told his mother that he still hoped; and the change from hope to
+despair would be crushing. He might have hurried away from the scene
+of his disappointment, careless how or where he went, so long as he got
+himself far away from the place associated with his fickle sweetheart.
+
+Suzette was at home, and received Lady Emily kindly, forgetting all
+that had gone before in her compassion for the mother's distress.
+
+Allan had called at Marsh House on the previous evening during
+Suzette's absence. He had been told that she was at the Manor, and the
+servant had understood him to say that he was going on to the Manor. He
+had seemed put out at hearing where she was, the soldier servant had
+told his young mistress.
+
+"And were you not at the Manor when he called?" Lady Emily asked.
+
+"No; I left before lunch; but instead of coming home, where I was not
+expected, I spent the afternoon at the Vicarage and on the golf-ground
+with Bessie Edgefield."
+
+"And Mr. Wornock was with you most of the time, I suppose?"
+
+"Not any of the time."
+
+"Is he away, then?"
+
+"No. If you must know the truth, we had--well, I can hardly say, we had
+quarrelled; but Geoffrey had been very disagreeable, and I was glad to
+leave him to himself for the afternoon."
+
+"You are good friends again now, no doubt?"
+
+"We have not seen each other since. Geoffrey has gone away, without
+letting any one know where he was going, and his poor mother is anxious
+and unhappy about him. He is so impetuous--so erratic."
+
+"And you, his sweetheart, are still more anxious, no doubt?"
+
+"I am anxious chiefly for his poor mother's sake. She is too easily
+frightened."
+
+"Can they have gone away together, anywhere?" said Lady Emily.
+
+"Together--Allan and Geoffrey!" exclaimed Suzette. "No, I don't think
+they would do that."
+
+"Why not? They were together for two years in Africa."
+
+"Yes, but that was different. I don't think, in Geoffrey's state
+of mind, that he would have gone on a journey with your son. He
+has a jealous temper, I am sorry to say, and he was irritable and
+unreasonable yesterday when he heard of--Mr. Carew's return. Is it
+likely that he would have gone off on any expedition with your son to
+London or anywhere else?"
+
+"Then where is my son? He was here at this hour yesterday. He left here
+to go to the Manor; and now you tell me that Mr. Wornock is missing,
+and that my son has not been heard of since he left your door."
+
+"He has not been at the Manor. Mrs. Wornock would have told me if he
+had called. I was with her all this morning. She is wretched about
+Geoffrey. They are both safe, I dare say; but their disappearance is
+very alarming."
+
+"Alarming, yes. It means something dreadful--something I dare not
+think of--unless, indeed, Allan changed his mind on finding the state
+of things here, and went off to Suffolk, intending to anticipate my
+journey. Oh, I dare say I am frightening myself for nothing. Will you
+let me write a telegram?" looking distractedly round the room for pens
+and ink.
+
+"Dear Lady Emily, pray don't be too anxious. One is so often frightened
+for nothing. My father has only to be an hour later than usual on a
+hunting day in order to make me half distracted. Please sit down by the
+fire, here in this comfortable chair. I'll write your telegram, and
+send it off instantly."
+
+She rang the bell, and then seated herself quietly at her
+writing-table, while Allan's mother sank into a chair, the image of
+helplessness.
+
+"What shall I say?"
+
+    "To Allan Carew, Fendyke, Millfield, Suffolk.
+
+    "I am miserable at not finding you here. Reply immediately, with
+    full information as to your plans.
+
+                                                         "EMILY CAREW."
+
+"God grant I may hear of him there," said Lady Emily, when she had read
+message and address with a searching eye, lest Suzette's writing should
+offer any excuse for mistakes. The telegram was handed to the servant
+with instructions to take it himself to the post-office; and then Lady
+Emily kissed Suzette with a sad remorseful kiss, and went back to the
+fly.
+
+"Discombe Manor," she told the man, with very little consideration for
+the hard-working fly-horse.
+
+"Yes, my lady; it'll be about as much as he can do."
+
+"He? What do you mean?"
+
+"The horse, my lady. He's been on his legs two hours a'ready, and the
+Manor's a good three mile; but I suppose I shall be able to wash out
+his mouth there before I takes him home?"
+
+"Yes, yes; you may do what you like; only get me to the Manor as fast
+as you can."
+
+Allan had not been seen at the Manor. No one had rung the hall-door
+bell yesterday after luncheon. Mrs. Wornock's monastic solitude was
+not often intruded upon by visitors; and yesterday there had been no
+one. The door had not been opened after Miss Vincent went out, Geoffrey
+Wornock's impatient temper always choosing an easier mode of egress
+than that ponderous hall door, which required a servant's attendance,
+or else closed with a bang that reverberated through the house.
+Whatever Allan's intention might have been when he left Marsh House, he
+had not come to Discombe.
+
+Lady Emily and Mrs. Wornock were softened in their feelings for each
+other by a mutual terror; but Allan's mother dwelt upon the fact that
+the two young men, as travellers of old, might have started off upon
+some expedition; a run up to London to see some new production at
+the theatre; a billiard match; anything in which young men might be
+interested.
+
+"They must be much better friends than before they went to Africa--much
+closer companions," urged Lady Emily. "I feel there is less reason for
+fear now that I know your son is missing as well as Allan."
+
+Mrs. Wornock tried to take the same hopeful view; but she was of a
+less hopeful temperament, and she knew too much of Geoffrey's jealous
+distrust of his rival to believe that there had been any companionable
+feeling between the two young men since Allan's return.
+
+"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid!" she moaned piteously, wringing her
+hands in an agony of apprehension.
+
+"What is it you fear? What calamity can have happened which would
+involve both your son and mine? Surely nothing dreadful could happen to
+both our sons, and yet no tidings come either to you or to me. Wherever
+they were--if any accident happened--one or other of them would be
+recognized. Some one would bring us the news. No; I have been anxious
+and unhappy; but I am sure now that I have been needlessly anxious. We
+shall hear from them--very soon."
+
+Mrs. Wornock clasped Lady Emily's hand in silence, and shook her head
+despondently.
+
+"What is it you fear?" asked Allan's mother.
+
+"I don't know--but I am full of fear for Geoffrey--for both of them."
+
+Lady Emily left her, depressed and dispirited by the fear which shrunk
+from shaping itself in words. The disposition to take a hopeful view
+of the case did not last in the face of Mrs. Wornock's mysterious
+agitations, and Allan's mother went back to Beechhurst stupefied with
+anxiety, able only to walk about the house, in and out of the empty
+rooms, in helpless misery.
+
+That state of not knowing what to fear ended suddenly soon after nine
+o'clock, when there came the sound of wheels, and a carriage stopped
+at the hall door. Lady Emily rushed to the door and opened it with her
+own hands, before any one had time to ring the bell; opened it to find
+herself face to face with the woman she had left only two hours before.
+
+Mrs. Wornock was stepping out of her carriage as the hall door opened.
+She wore neither bonnet nor cloak, only a shawl wrapped round her head
+and shoulders.
+
+"He is found!" she said, agitatedly. "Will you come with me?"
+
+"Your son?"
+
+"No; Allan Carew. Ah, it is dreadful to think of, dreadful to tell you.
+I came myself; I wouldn't let any one else----"
+
+"He is dead!" cried Lady Emily, her heart feeling like ice, her knees
+trembling under her.
+
+"No, no! Dreadfully hurt--but not dead. There is hope still--Mr.
+Podmore does not give up hope. I have sent a messenger to Salisbury.
+We shall have Dr. Etheridge to-morrow morning--or I will send to
+London----"
+
+"Where is my son--my murdered--dying son?"
+
+"No, no, no--not dying--not murdered. Don't I tell you there is hope?
+He is at Discombe--they have put him in Geoffrey's room. Everything is
+being done. He may recover--he will, he must recover."
+
+Lady Emily was seated in the brougham, unconscious of the movements
+that had conveyed her there; the butler was at the hall door by this
+time, staring in blank wonder, not knowing what to think of this rapid
+departure.
+
+"Send your mistress's maid to the Manor with her things," ordered
+Mrs. Wornock, hurriedly. And then to her own servant, waiting at the
+carriage door, "Home--as fast as he can drive."
+
+"Why was he taken to your house, and not to his own?" asked Lady Emily,
+in a dull whisper, when the carriage had driven out of the gates.
+
+"Because it was so much nearer to bring him. He was found in our
+woods--robbed--and hurt, cruelly hurt. There is a dreadful wound upon
+his head, and there are signs of a desperate struggle--as if he had
+fought for his life----"
+
+"Oh, God, that he should be murdered--here in England--within an hour's
+walk of his own house! And I have dreamt of him in some dreadful
+danger--from savage beasts, savage men--night after night, in those
+dreary years he was away--and that he should come home--home--to love,
+and happiness, and safety, as I thought--to meet the fate I had been
+fearing! I prayed God day and night for him--prayed that he might be
+brought back to me in safety. And he came back--came back only to die,"
+wailed the unhappy woman, her head sunk upon her knees, her hands
+working convulsively amongst her loosened hair.
+
+"He will _not_ die," cried Mrs. Wornock, fiercely. "Don't I tell you
+that he will not die? The wound need not be fatal; the doctor said it
+was not a hopeless case. Why do you go on raving--as if you wanted him
+to die--as if you were bent on being miserable--and driving me mad?"
+
+"You! What have you to do with it? He is not your son. Your son is safe
+enough, I dare say. Your son--who left him in the desert--who came
+home to steal his comrade's sweetheart. Your son is safe. Such a man as
+that is never in danger."
+
+Mrs. Wornock bore this insulting speech in silence; and there was no
+word more on either side for the rest of the journey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not without hope! Looking down at the motionless form lying on Geoffrey
+Wornock's bed, in the large airy room, the hand on the coverlet
+as white as the lawn sheet, the face disfigured and hardly to be
+recognized as Allan's face under the broad linen bandage which covered
+forehead and eyes, the lips livid and speechless--looking with agonized
+heart at this spectacle, Allan's mother found it hard to believe the
+doctor's assurance that the case was not, in his humble opinion,
+utterly hopeless.
+
+"We shall know more to-morrow," he said.
+
+"Are they trying to find the wretch who did it?" asked Lady Emily. "God
+grant he may be hanged for murder, if my son is to die."
+
+"I shall go from here to the police-station, and take all necessary
+steps, if I have your ladyship's authority for doing so. The keeper who
+found your poor son sent a lad off to give information."
+
+"Yes, yes. And you will offer a reward--a large reward. My
+poor boy--my dear, dear son--to see him lying there--quite
+unconscious--speechless--helpless. My murdered boy! Where did they find
+him--how----"
+
+"Lying in a little hollow among the underwood, within a few paces of
+the path. There is a gate in the fence opening into the high-road, and
+a footpath, and cart-track, which cut into the main drive four or five
+hundred yards from the gate. It is a point at which he might be likely
+to meet a tramp--as it is so near the road--and a long way from any of
+the lodge gates. The drive would be in Mr. Carew's straight course from
+Marsh House here."
+
+"Yes, yes! And it was a tramp--you are sure of that--a common
+robber--who attacked him?"
+
+"Evidently. His pockets were turned inside out--his watch was gone."
+
+"There was a day when no one man would have dared to attack my son."
+
+"There may have been two men. The ground was a good deal trampled, the
+keeper told me; but they would be able to see very little by the light
+of a couple of lanterns brought from the stables to the north lodge. We
+shall see the footsteps, and be able to come to a better idea of the
+struggle, to-morrow morning."
+
+"Send for a London detective--the best that can be got," Lady Emily
+interrupted eagerly.
+
+"Be sure we will do all that can be done."
+
+"He has no father to take his part," she went on, distractedly; "no
+wife--no sweetheart even--to care for him--only a poor, weak mother. If
+he should die, there will be only one broken heart in the world--only
+one----"
+
+"Dear lady, why anticipate the worst?" remonstrated the doctor.
+
+"Yes, yes, I am wrong. I must cast myself upon God's mercy. I am not
+an irreligious woman. I will pray for my son. There is nothing else
+in the world that I can do. But while I am praying you will work--you
+will find the wretch who did this cruel deed. You will send for the
+cleverest doctor in London--the one man of all men who can cure my poor
+boy."
+
+"You may trust me, Lady Emily. Nothing shall be forgotten or deferred."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not till the following morning that the news of Allan Carew's
+condition, and his presence at Discombe, reached General Vincent and
+his daughter. Mrs. Mornington was the bearer of those dismal tidings.
+Always active, alert, and early afoot, she heard of the tragedy from
+the village tradesmen, and was told three conflicting versions of the
+story--first at the grocer's, where she was assured that Mr. Carew had
+breathed his last five minutes after he was carried into the Manor
+House; next from the butcher's wife, a very ladylike person, rarely
+seen except through glass, in a little counting-house, giving on to
+the shop--and who opened her glass shutter on purpose to inform Mrs.
+Mornington that both young gentlemen had been picked up for dead in
+the copse at Discombe; Mr. Wornock shot through the heart, Mr. Carew
+with a bullet in his left temple, the result of a duel to the death.
+A third informant, taking the air in front of the coachbuilder's
+workshop--where everybody's carriages went sooner or later for
+repairs--assured Mrs. Mornington that there hadn't been much harm done,
+and that Mr. Carew, who had had his pockets picked by a tramp, had been
+more frightened than hurt.
+
+Mrs. Mornington was not the kind of person to languish in uncertainty
+about any fact in local history while she possessed the nerves of
+speech and locomotion. Before the coach-builder finished his rambling
+story, she had despatched a village boy to the Grove to order her
+pony-cart to be brought her as quickly as the groom could get it
+ready; and her orders being always respected, the honest bay cob met
+her, rattling his bit and whisking his tail from joyous freshness, at
+the bend of the village street, within a quarter of an hour of the
+messenger's start. The boy had run his fastest; the groom had not lost
+a moment; for Mrs. Mornington was one of those excellent mistresses who
+stand no nonsense from their servants.
+
+The cob went to Discombe at a fast trot, and returned stablewards still
+faster, indulging in occasional spurts of cantering, which his mistress
+did not check with her usual severity.
+
+She saw no one but servants at the Manor House. Mrs. Wornock was in her
+own room, quite prostrate, the butler explained; Lady Emily was with
+Mr. Carew, who had passed a bad night, and was certainly no better this
+morning, even if he were no worse.
+
+"Is it very serious, Davidson?" Mrs. Mornington asked the trustworthy
+old servant.
+
+"I'm afraid it couldn't be much worse, ma'am. The doctor from Salisbury
+was here at nine o'clock, and was upstairs with Mr. Podmore very near
+an hour; but he didn't look very cheerful when he left--no more did Mr.
+Podmore. And there's another doctor been telegraphed for from London.
+If doctors can save the poor gentleman's life, he'll be spared. But I
+saw his face last night when he was carried upstairs, and I can't say
+_I've_ much hopes of him."
+
+"Never mind your hopes, Davidson, if the doctors can pull him through.
+A young man can get over a good deal."
+
+"If he can get over having his head mashed--and lying for twenty-seven
+hours in a wood--he must have a better constitution than ever I heard
+tell of."
+
+"The wretch who attacked him has not been found yet, I suppose?"
+
+"No, ma'am, not yet, nor never likely to be, so far as I can see.
+He had seven and twenty hours' start, you see, ma'am; and if a
+professional thief couldn't get off with that much law, the profession
+can't be up to much; begging your pardon, ma'am, for venturing to
+express an opinion," concluded Davidson, who felt that he had been
+presuming on an old servant's licence.
+
+Mrs. Mornington told him she was very glad to hear his opinion, and
+then handed him cards for the two ladies, on each of which she had
+scribbled assurances of sympathy; and with this much information from
+the fountain-head, she appeared in the drawing-room at Marsh House,
+where she found Suzette sitting by the fire in a very despondent
+mood. Her lover's mysterious disappearance after something which was
+very like a quarrel, was not a cheering incident in her life; and now
+Lady Emily's anxiety about her son--the fact that he, too, should be
+missing--increased her trouble of mind.
+
+She listened aghast to her aunt's story.
+
+"What does it mean?" she faltered. "What can it mean?"
+
+"The meaning is plain enough, I think. This poor young man was waylaid
+in the dusk on Thursday evening--attacked and plundered."
+
+"By a tramp?"
+
+"By one of the criminal classes--a ticket-of-leave man, perhaps,
+rambling from Portland to London, ready to snatch any opportunity on
+the way. There's very little use in speculating about a wretch of that
+class. There are plenty of such ruffians loose in the world, I dare
+say."
+
+"But it would have served a robber's purpose just as well to have only
+stunned him."
+
+"Oh, those gentry don't consider things so nicely. No doubt Allan
+showed fight. And the ruffian would have no mercy."
+
+"Do you think he will die? Oh, aunt, how terrible if he were to die.
+And Geoffrey still away--Mrs. Wornock miserable about him!"
+
+"Yes, that's the strangest part of the business! What can have induced
+Geoffrey to take himself off in that mysterious way? Have you any idea
+why he went?"
+
+"No. I have no idea."
+
+"If he is keeping away of his own accord--if nothing dreadful has
+happened to him--his conduct is most insulting to you."
+
+"Never mind me, aunt; while there is this trouble at Discombe--for poor
+Lady Emily."
+
+"I am very sorry for her; but I am obliged to think of you. His
+behaviour places you in such an awkward position--a ridiculous
+position. Your wedding-day fixed--hurried on with red-hot impatience by
+this young man--and he, the bridegroom, missing! What do you suppose
+people will say?"
+
+"I have no suppositions about people outside our lives. I can only
+think of the sorrow at Discombe. People can say anything they like,"
+Suzette answered wearily.
+
+Her father had been questioning her, and had talked very much in the
+same strain as her aunt. She was tired to heart-sickness of talk about
+Geoffrey. All had grown dark in her life; and darkest of all was her
+thought of her betrothed.
+
+There had been that in his manner when she parted with him which had
+filled her with a shapeless dread, a terror not to be lightly named,
+a terror she had not ventured to suggest even to her father. And here
+was her aunt teasing her about other people--utterly indifferent
+people--and their ideas.
+
+"What will people _not_ say?" exclaimed Mrs. Mornington, after a
+troubled pause, in which she had poked the fire almost savagely, and
+pulled a chairback straight. "I must have a serious talk with your
+father. Is he at home?"
+
+"No. He is out shooting."
+
+"Shooting? It is scarcely decent of him in the present state of
+affairs. Any more presents?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes; there was a box came this morning. I haven't opened
+it. Please don't talk of presents. It is too horrid to think of them."
+
+"Horridly embarrassing," said Mrs. Mornington. "You had better come to
+the Grove, Suzette. There's no good in your moping alone here. And you
+may have visitors in the afternoon prying and questioning."
+
+"Thanks, aunt, I would rather be at home. I shall deny myself to
+everybody except Bessie Edgefield."
+
+"Ah, and you'll tell her everything, and she will tell everybody in
+Matcham."
+
+"I have nothing to tell--nothing that Bessie cannot find out from other
+people. But she is not a gossip; and she is always _simpatica_."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                           MADNESS OR CRIME?
+
+
+Days grew into weeks, and the slow, anxious hours brought very little
+change in Allan's condition, and certainly no change which the doctors
+could call a substantial improvement. Physician and surgeon from
+London, famous specialists both, came at weekly intervals and testified
+to the good fight which the patient was making, and the latent power of
+a frame which had been strained and wasted by the hardships of African
+travel, and which was now called upon to recover from severe injuries.
+Consciousness had returned, but not reason. The young man had not once
+recognized the mother who rarely left his bedside, but whose bland
+and pleasant countenance was so sorely altered by grief and anxiety
+that even in the full possession of his senses he might hardly have
+known her. The power of speech had returned, but only in delirious
+utterances, or in a strange gibberish, which poor Lady Emily mistook
+for an African language, but which was really the nonsense-tongue of a
+disordered brain.
+
+The doctors pronounced the case not utterly without hope; but they
+would commit themselves to nothing further than this. It was a wonder
+to have kept him alive so long. His recovery would be almost a miracle.
+
+Two trained nurses from the county hospital alternated the daily and
+nightly watch by the sick-bed, and Lady Emily shared the day's, and
+sometimes the night's, duty, humbly assisting the skilled attendants,
+grateful for being permitted to aid in the smallest service for the son
+who lay helpless, inert, and unobserving on that bed which even yet
+might be his bed of death.
+
+No one but those three women and the doctors was allowed to enter
+Allan's room. Mrs. Wornock was very kind and sympathetic, in spite
+of torturing anxieties about her son's unexplained absence; but she
+expressed no desire to see Allan, and she seldom saw Lady Emily for
+more than a few minutes in the course of the day. The whole house was
+ordered with reference to the sick-room. Organ and piano were closed
+and dumb, and a funereal silence reigned everywhere.
+
+And so the wintry days went by, and rain and rough weather made a
+sufficient excuse for Suzette's staying quietly at home, and seeing
+very little of the outer world. Mrs. Mornington took the social aspect
+of the crisis entirely on her own hands, and informed her friends that
+the wedding had been deferred, partly on account of Allan's illness,
+and for other reasons which she was not at liberty to explain.
+
+"My niece is very capricious," she said.
+
+"I hope she has not sent Mr. Wornock off to Africa again!" exclaimed
+Mrs. Roebuck. "Such a brilliant young man, with a house so peculiarly
+adapted for entertaining, should not be allowed to become an absentee.
+It is too great a loss for such a place as this, where so few people
+entertain."
+
+Mrs. Roebuck's estimate of her acquaintance was always based upon their
+capacity for entertaining, though she herself, on this scale, would
+have been marked zero.
+
+"No, I don't think he will go back to Africa. But my niece and he have
+agreed to part--for a short time, at any rate. She is sending back all
+her wedding-presents this week."
+
+"Oh, pray don't let her send me that absurd Japanese paper-knife! I
+only chose it because it is so deliciously ugly and queer. And I knew
+that, marrying a man of Mr. Wornock's means, she wouldn't want anything
+costly or useful--no fish-knives or salt-cellars."
+
+"Well, if it really is off, or likely to be off," Mr. Roebuck said,
+with a solemnly confidential air, "I don't mind saying in confidence
+that I think your niece has acted wisely. The young man is a genius,
+no doubt; but he's a little bit overstrung--_fanatico per la musica_,
+don't you know. And one never knows whether that sort of thing won't
+go further," tapping his forehead suggestively.
+
+"Oh, _das macht nichts_; the poor dear young man is _toqué_, only
+_toqué_, not _fêlé_," protested Mrs. Roebuck, who affected a polyglot
+style.
+
+"Ah, but the mother, don't you know! That's where the danger comes in.
+The mother has never been quite right," argued her husband.
+
+"I am not going to accept congratulations," said Mrs. Mornington. "I'm
+very sorry the marriage has been postponed. Mr. Wornock and Suzette are
+admirably adapted for each other, and he is no more cracked than I am.
+And remember the marriage is put off--not broken off."
+
+"All the more reason why she should not send me back that Japanese
+absurdity," said Mrs. Roebuck, as if the paper-knife were of as much
+consequence as the marriage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suzette saw Mrs. Wornock nearly every day during that time of
+trouble--sometimes at Discombe, where they sat together in the
+music-room, or paced the wintry garden, saying very little to each
+other, but the elder woman taking comfort from the presence of the
+younger.
+
+"I am miserable about him," she told Suzette; and that was all she
+would ever say of her son.
+
+She had no suggestions to offer as to the cause of his disappearance.
+She uttered no complaint of his unkindness.
+
+Suzette inquired if the police had made any discovery about Allan's
+assailant.
+
+No, nothing; or, at least, Mrs. Wornock had heard of nothing.
+
+"Lady Emily may know more than she cares to tell me," she said.
+
+"Oh, I think not! Living in your house, indebted so deeply to your
+kindness, she could not be so churlish as to keep anything back."
+
+"She thinks of nothing but her son. She would have no mercy upon any
+one who had injured him."
+
+Her tone startled Suzette, with the recurrence of a terror which she
+had tried to dismiss from her mind as groundless and irrational.
+
+"No, no; of course not. Who could expect her to have mercy? However
+hard the law might be, she would never think the sentence hard enough.
+Her only son, her idolized son, brought to the brink of the grave,
+perhaps doomed to die, in spite of all that can be done for him."
+
+Suzette tried to shut out that horrible idea--the hideous fancy that
+the ruffian who had attacked Allan Carew was no casual offender,
+extemporizing a crime on the suggestion of the moment, for the chance
+contents of a gentleman's purse, and an obvious watch and chain.
+Murder so brutal is not often the result of a chance encounter. Yet
+such things have been; and the alternative of a private vengeance--a
+vindictive jealousy culminating in attempted murder--was too horrible.
+Yet that dreadful suspicion haunted Suzette's pillow in the long winter
+nights--nights of wakefulness and sorrow.
+
+Where was he, that miserable man, who had won her heart in spite of
+her better reason, and in loving whom she had seldom been without
+the sense of trouble and fear? His want of mental balance had been
+painfully obvious to her even in their happiest hours; and she had felt
+that there was peril in a nature so capricious and so intense. She had
+discovered that for him religion was no strong rock. He had laughed
+away every serious question, and had made her feel that, in all the
+most solemn thoughts of life and after-life, they were divided by an
+impassable gulf: on his side, all that is boldest and saddest in modern
+thought: on her side, the simple, unquestioning faith which she had
+accepted in the dawn of her reason, and which satisfied an intellect
+not given to speculate upon the Unknowable. She had found that, not
+only upon religious questions, but even on the moral code of this life,
+there were wide differences in their ideas. Dimly, and with growing
+apprehension, she had divined the element of lawlessness in Geoffrey's
+character, revealed in his admiration of men for whom neither religion
+nor law had been a restraining influence--men for whom passion had been
+ever the guiding star. Lives that to her seemed only criminal were
+extolled by him as sublime. Such, or such a man, whose unbridled will
+had wrought ruin for himself and others, was lauded as one who had
+known the glory of life in its fullest meaning, who had verily lived,
+not crawled between earth and heaven.
+
+In her own simple, unpretentious way, Suzette had tried to combat
+opinions which had shocked her; and then Geoffrey had laughed off
+her fears, and had promised that for her sake he would think as she
+thought, he would school himself to accept a spiritual guide of her
+choosing.
+
+"Who shall my master be, Suzette? Shall I be broad and liberal with
+Stanley, severe with Manning, intense with Liddon, mystical with
+Newman? 'Thou for my sake at Allah's shrine, and I----' You know the
+rest. I will do anything to make my dearest happy."
+
+"Anything except pretend, Geoffrey. You must never do that."
+
+"Mustn't I? Then we had better leave religion out of the question;
+until, perhaps, it may grow up in my mind, suddenly, like Jonah's
+gourd, out of my love for you."
+
+In all the weary time while Allan was lying at the gate of death, and
+Geoffrey had so strangely vanished, Suzette had never doubted the
+love of her betrothed. The possibility of change or fickleness on his
+part never entered into her mind. Of the truth and intensity of his
+affection she, who had been his betrothed for nearly half a year, could
+not doubt. Her fears and anxieties took a darker form than any fear of
+alienated feelings, or inconstancy. Suicide, crime, madness, were the
+things she feared, though she never expressed her fears. Her father
+heard no lamentations from those pale lips; but he could read the marks
+of distress in her countenance, and he was grieved and anxious for her
+sake.
+
+He too invoked the powers of the detective police, but quietly, and
+without anybody's knowledge. He went up to London, and put the case
+of Geoffrey's disappearance before one of the sagest philosophers who
+had ever adorned the detective force at Scotland Yard, now retired and
+practising delicate investigations on his own account.
+
+"Do you suppose there has been a fatal accident, or that he has been
+keeping out of the way on purpose?" asked the General, after all
+particulars had been stated.
+
+"An accident would have been heard of before now. No doubt he is
+keeping out of the way. Have you any reason to suppose him mentally
+afflicted?"
+
+"Afflicted, no. Eccentric, perhaps, though I should hardly call him
+that--capricious, somewhat whimsical. Mentally afflicted? No, decidedly
+not."
+
+"Ah! That trick of keeping out of the way is a very common thing in
+madness. If he is not mad, there must be some strong reason for his
+disappearance. He must have done something to put himself in jeopardy."
+
+"Impossible! No, no, no. I can't entertain the idea for a moment,"
+cried the General, thinking of that murderous attack in the wood.
+
+"Do you wish us to make inquiries?"
+
+"No, no, better not--the young man's mother is having everything done.
+I am not a relation--I only wanted the benefit of a professional
+opinion. I thought you might be able to throw some light----"
+
+"No two cases are quite alike, sir; but I think you will find I am
+right here, and that in this case there is lunacy, or there has been a
+crime."
+
+"Madness or crime," mused the General, as he left the office. "I can't
+go back to Suzette and tell her that. I must take her away again."
+
+He announced his intention of starting for the Riviera next morning at
+the breakfast-table; but his daughter implored him piteously to let her
+stay at Matcham.
+
+"It would be so heartless to go away while Allan is hovering between
+life and death, and while----"
+
+She left the sentence unfinished. She could not trust herself to speak
+of Geoffrey.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+              "HE HATH AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM OF LIFE."
+
+
+It was the day which was to have seen Suzette's wedding--the thirteenth
+of December, a dull, mild December, promising that green Christmas
+which is said to people churchyards with new-comers; a December to
+gladden the heart of the fox-hunter, and disappoint the skater.
+
+Sitting in melancholy solitude by the drawing-room fire, on this grey,
+rainy morning, Suzette was glad to remember that she had prevented the
+sending out of invitation cards, and that very few people in Matcham
+knew the intended date of that wedding which was never to be. There
+were not many to think of her with especial pity on this particular
+day, sitting alone in her desolation, in her dark serge frock, with
+the black poodle, Caro, and her piano for her only companions. Even the
+companionship of that beloved piano had failed her since Geoffrey's
+disappearance. Music was too closely associated with his presence.
+There was not a single composition in her portfolio that did not recall
+him--not an air she played that did not bring back the words he had
+spoken when last her fingers followed the caprices of the composer.
+He had been her master as well as her lover--he had taught her the
+subtleties of musical expression--had breathed mind into her music.
+
+Bessie Edgefield knew the date; but Bessie was sympathetic, and
+never officious or obtrusive. She would drop in by-and-by, no doubt,
+pretending not to remember anything particular about the day. She would
+be full of some little bit of village news, or a new book from Mudie's,
+or Mrs. Roebuck's last bonnet.
+
+The wedding was to have been at two o'clock, a sensible, comfortable
+hour; giving the bride ample leisure in which to put on her wedding
+finery. The hours between breakfast and luncheon seemed longer than
+usual that morning, a long blank weariness, after Suzette had seen her
+father mount and ride away on his favourite hunter. The hounds met on
+the other side of the downs, on the borders of Hampshire. It would be
+late, most likely, before she would welcome that kind father to the
+comfortable fireside, and listen, or at least pretend to listen, to the
+varying fortunes of an adventurous day. And in the meantime she had the
+day all before her, to dispose of as best she might, that day which was
+to have seen her a bride.
+
+Was she sorrowing for the lover who had forsaken her, as she sat
+looking with sad, tearless eyes into the fire? Was she regretting the
+happiness that might have been, thinking of a life which should have
+been cloudless? No, she had never contemplated a life of cloudless
+happiness with Geoffrey Wornock. She had loved that fiery spirit. Her
+love had been conquered by a mind stronger than her own, and she had
+submitted, almost as a slave submits to her captor. Mentally she had
+been in bondage, able to see all that was faulty and perilous in the
+character of her conqueror, yet loving him in spite of his faults.
+
+But to-day his image was associated with a great terror--a terror
+of undiscovered crime--the fear that when next she heard his name
+spoken she would hear of him as an arrested criminal; or as a suicide,
+self-slaughtered in some quiet spot, where the searchers must needs be
+slow to find him.
+
+Two o'clock. She had tried all her best-loved books in the endeavour to
+forget the dark realities of life; but books did not help her to-day.
+She never went into the dining-room for a formal luncheon when her
+father was out for the day; preferring some light refreshment of the
+kind which one hears of in Miss Austen's novels as "the tray," a modest
+meal of cake and fruit, with nothing more substantial than a sandwich.
+To-day even the sandwich was impossible. Her lips were dry with an
+inward fever. Her hands were cold as ice, her forehead was burning.
+"Was it raining?" she asked the servant. "No, the rain had ceased an
+hour ago," the man told her. She started up with a feeling of relief
+at the idea of escape from the dull, silent house; put on her hat and
+jacket, and went out by the glass door into the garden, where the mild
+winter had left a few flowers, pale Dijon roses, amidst the thick
+foliage of honeysuckle and magnolia on the south wall, a lingering
+chrysanthemum here and there in a sheltered bend of the shrubbery. The
+air was full of the sweetness of herbs and flowers, and the freshness
+of the rain. Yes, it was a relief to be walking about, looking at the
+shrubs, shaking the rain from the feathery branches of the deodaras,
+searching for late violets behind a border of close-clipped box. It
+was a comfortable, old-fashioned garden, full of things that had been
+growing for the best part of a century, a garden of broad gravel
+walks, and square grass plots, espaliers hiding asparagus-beds, the
+scent of sweet herbs conquering the more delicate odours of violets and
+rare roses--a dear old garden to be happy in, and a quiet retreat in
+which to walk alone with sorrow.
+
+Suzette walked alone with her sorrow for nearly an hour, thankful for
+the hazard which had carried her energetic aunt to Salisbury two days
+before, on a visit to her friends in the Close, and had thus spared
+her Mrs. Mornington's society on this particular day. To have been
+comforted, or to have been bewailed over, would have added to her
+burden. To walk alone in this dull old garden was best.
+
+Not alone any more! She heard the rustling of branches at the other
+end of the long green alley, and a footstep--a heavier footfall than
+Bessie Edgefield's--on the moist gravel. Her heart throbbed with a
+startled expectancy. Joy or fear? She had no time to know which feeling
+predominated before she saw her lover coming quickly towards her. He
+was dressed, not as she had been accustomed to see him in the corduroy
+waistcoat, short tweed coat, and knickerbockers of rustic out-of-door
+life, but in a frock-coat, light grey trousers, and white waistcoat,
+and was wearing a tall hat. She had time to note these details, and
+the malmaison carnation in his coat, and the light gloves which he was
+carrying, before he was at her side, looking down at her with wild,
+bloodshot eyes, grasping her arm with a strong hand, while those smart
+lavender gloves dropped from his unconscious grasp, and fell on the wet
+gravel, to be trampled underfoot like weeds.
+
+"Why were you not at the church? Why are you wearing that dingy frock?
+You and your bridesmaids ought to have been ready an hour ago. I have
+been waiting for you. Have you forgotten what this day means?"
+
+"Geoffrey! have not _you_ forgotten? What madness to come back like
+this! What have you been doing with your life since the fourteenth of
+November? Where have you been hiding?"
+
+"Where? Hiding! Nonsense! I have been travelling. I took it into
+my head, when Allan was coming back, that you didn't care for me,
+that he was the favoured lover, in spite of all. I had extorted your
+promise--and you were sorry you had ever given it. And I thought the
+best thing for me would be to make myself scarce, to go to Africa,
+Australia, anywhere. The world is big enough for two people to give
+each other a wide berth, but not big enough for Allan and me, if you
+liked him better than me. I was a fool, that's all: a fool to doubt my
+dearest! But there's no time to lose. We must be married before three.
+Come to the church as you are. What does it matter? I've put on my
+war-paint, you see. My valet seemed to think I was mad."
+
+"You have seen your mother?"
+
+"Yes, she has been plaguing me with questions. I gave her the slip.
+Allan is there, in my house. The irony of fate, isn't it? Hovering
+between life and death, my mother told me. How long will he hesitate
+between two opinions? I left them wondering, and hurried to the church
+to meet you, only to find emptiness. No one there! Not even the sexton.
+But there is still time. We can be married--you and I--with the sexton
+and pew-opener for witnesses, and can start for the other end of the
+world to-night."
+
+"Geoffrey, why did you go away?" she asked, looking up at that wild
+face with infinite terror in her own.
+
+The restless eyes, the convulsive working of the dry hot lips told
+their story only too plainly, the story of a mind distraught.
+
+"Dear Geoffrey!" she said gently, with unspeakable pity for this
+human wreck, "there can be no marriage to-day. We are all in great
+trouble--about Allan."
+
+"About Allan--always about Allan!" he interrupted savagely. "What has
+Allan to do with the matter? It is our wedding-day, yours and mine. I
+don't want Allan for my best man."
+
+"There can be no marriage while Allan is ill, lying in your house, so
+nearly murdered; perhaps even yet to die from that cruel usage. They
+are looking for his murderer, Geoffrey. Was it wise for you to come
+back to this place, knowing that?"
+
+"Knowing what?"
+
+"That Allan's mother is determined to find the man who so nearly killed
+her son."
+
+"What have I to do with her determination? I shall neither hinder nor
+help her."
+
+Oh, the crafty smile, the malice and the cunning in that face, a look
+which Suzette had never seen till now! A look which made that once
+splendid countenance seem the face of a stranger.
+
+She shrank from him involuntarily. He saw the sudden look of repulsion,
+and tightened his grasp upon her arm, until she gave a cry of pain.
+
+"Did I hurt you?" loosening his grasp with a laugh. "What a fluttering
+little dove it is; so easily scared, so easily hurt. Come, Suzette, you
+are not going to cheat me, are you? This is the thirteenth of December.
+Do you hear? the thirteenth, the date fixed and appointed by you, by
+your very self. You shall not evade your own appointment. Come, love,
+come."
+
+He took a few rapid steps forward, dragging her along with him, lifting
+her off her feet in his vehemence, but stopping suddenly when he found
+she was nearly falling.
+
+"Geoffrey, how rough you are!"
+
+"I didn't mean to be rough. But there's not a moment to lose. Why won't
+you come?"
+
+"I am not coming. It is sheer madness to talk of our wedding. You have
+been away for a whole month of your own accord. Our marriage has been
+put off indefinitely. Poor Geoffrey!" looking at his haggard face with
+sudden tenderness, "how dreadfully ill you look! worse than the night
+you arrived from Zanzibar. I will go back to the Manor with you, and
+see you safe and at rest with your dear mother."
+
+"No, no, I am never going back to the Manor where that dead man lies."
+
+"Dead! Oh, God! He is not dead! What do you mean?"
+
+"I don't want their dead man there. Well, he may be alive still,
+perhaps. I don't want him there. His presence poisons my house, as his
+influence has poisoned my life. He has been a blight upon me. Like me,
+they say--like me, but of a different fibre. I know how to fight for
+my own hand. Will you come with me to the church quietly, of your own
+accord?"
+
+"No, no. Impossible."
+
+"Then I'll make you," he cried savagely, seizing her in his arms. "I
+won't be fooled. I won't be cheated. I am here to fulfil my part of the
+bond. I have not forgotten the date."
+
+Then with a swift change of mood he loosened his angry hold upon her,
+fell on his knees at her feet, crying over the poor little hand which
+he clasped in both his own.
+
+"Pity me, Suzette, pity me! I am the most miserable wretch in the
+world. I have been wandering about England like a criminal; a hateful
+country, no solitude, people staring and prying everywhere; a miserable
+over-crowded place where a man cannot be alone with his troubles, where
+there is no space for thought or memory. But I did not forget you. Your
+image was always there," touching his forehead; "_that_ never faded.
+Only I forgot other things, or hardly knew which were dreams, or which
+were real. That grey afternoon in the wood, and the words that were
+said, and his face when I struck him! A dream? Yes, a dream! And then
+only yesterday the date upon a newspaper seen by accident--I have read
+no newspapers since I left Discombe--reminded me of to-day. I was at
+Padstow yesterday afternoon, an out-of-the-way village on the Cornish
+coast; and it has taken me all my time to get here to Discombe to-day
+in time to dress for my wedding. You should have seen my servant's
+face when I rang for him. I went into the house by the old door in the
+lobby, and walked up to my dressing-room without meeting a mortal. One
+never does meet any one at Discombe. The house is like the tomb of the
+Pharaohs--long passages, emptiness, silence."
+
+He had risen from his knees at Suzette's entreaty, and was walking
+by her side, walking fast, speaking with breathless rapidity, eager,
+self-absorbed, holding her, lightly now, by the arm, as they paced the
+gravel walk.
+
+"Higson was always a fool. I could see what he was thinking when I made
+him put out my frock-coat. The fellow thought I was mad. He wanted me
+to take a warm bath, and lie down for a bit before I saw my mother. He
+talked in the smooth wheedling way common people use with lunatics, as
+if they were children; and then he ran off to fetch my mother; and she
+came, poor soul, and kissed and cried over me, and thanked God with
+one breath for my return, and with the next wailed about Allan. Allan
+was there, close by, in my room. I was not to speak above my breath,
+lest I should disturb him. I went to another room to dress, but I
+had ever so much trouble with Higson before I could get the things
+I wanted--London things he called them--and wouldn't I have this, or
+that, anything except what I asked for? So you see I had a lot of
+trouble, and then I walked to the church, and found it was two o'clock,
+and not a soul there."
+
+"Geoffrey, what could you expect?"
+
+"I expected you to keep your word. This is our wedding-day. I expected
+to find my bride."
+
+"We must wait, Geoffrey. There is plenty of time."
+
+"No, there is no time. I want to take you with me to the Great Lake,
+far away from this cramped narrow country, these teeming over-crowded
+cities, a soil gridironed with railways, shut in with streets and
+houses, not one wide horizon like that inland sea. Ah, how you would
+adore it, as I do, in storm or in calm, always beautiful, always grand,
+a place made for the mind to grow in, for the heart to rest in. Ah,
+how often in the deep of the moonlight nights I have wandered up and
+down those smooth sands, thinking of you, conjuring up your image in
+such warm reality that it froze my blood when I looked round and saw
+that the real woman was not at my side. You will go to Africa with me,
+Suzette?"
+
+"Yes, dear, yes; by-and-by."
+
+"Ah, that's what Higson said when I told him to put out a frock-coat,
+'By-and-by.' But I answered with a 'Now!' that made him jump. Hark!
+there's some one coming; a step on the gravel."
+
+A light step, a girl's quick footfall. It was the vicar's daughter,
+fresh and blooming in winter frock and winter hat. A creature of the
+kind that is usually nailed flat on a barn door was coiled gracefully
+round the little felt hat, pretending to have come from Siberia.
+
+At the first sight of Geoffrey, she started and looked aghast.
+
+"Mr. Wornock! I thought you were hundreds of miles away."
+
+"So I was, yesterday afternoon; but I happened to remember my
+wedding-day, and here I am, only to find that other people had
+forgotten."
+
+"Oh, you happened to remember!" said Bessie, still staring at the white
+waistcoat, the malmaison carnation, the light grey trousers stained
+with rain and mud from the knee downwards, and worst of all the haggard
+countenance of the wearer. "You only remembered yesterday. How funny!"
+
+Miss Edgefield would have made the same remark about a funeral in her
+present startled condition of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Matcham had plenty of stuff for conversation within the next few days;
+for by that subtle process by which facts or various versions of
+facts are circulated in a rustic neighbourhood, people became aware
+of Geoffrey Wornock's return to Discombe, and of dreadful scenes that
+had occurred at Marsh House, where he had stayed for a couple of days,
+during which period Suzette was living at the Grove under her aunt and
+uncle's protection.
+
+Yes, there had been scenes, tragical scenes, at Marsh House. Mrs.
+Wornock had been hastily summoned there, and had stayed under General
+Vincent's roof till her unhappy son was removed in medical custody,
+whither Matcham people knew not, though there were positive assertions
+as to locality on the part of the more energetic talkers. A physician
+had been summoned from London, a man of repute in mental cases; and
+Mrs. Wornock's brougham had driven away from Marsh House in wintry
+dusk, with a pair of horses, and had not returned to the Manor till
+late on the following day; whereby it was concluded that the journey
+had been at least twenty miles.
+
+Mr. Wornock had been taken away, placed under restraint, people told
+each other, arriving at the fact by the usual inductive process, and
+on this occasion unhappily accurate in their deduction. Geoffrey was
+in a doctor's care; a madman with lucid intervals; not violent, except
+in brief flashes of angry despair, but with occasional hallucinations,
+that delirium without fever which constitutes lunacy from the
+standpoint of law and medicine.
+
+Before he passed into that dim under-world of the private lunatic
+asylum, he had, in more than one wild torrent of self-accusation,
+confessed his treacherous desertion of Allan in Africa, his savage
+assault upon Allan in the wood. They had met, and Allan had upbraided
+him for that treacherous desertion, and for stealing his sweetheart.
+Suzette's name had been like a lighted fuse to an infernal machine;
+and then the latent savage which is in every man had leapt into life,
+and there had been a deadly struggle, a fight for existence on Allan's
+part, a murderous onslaught from Geoffrey.
+
+It needed not the opinion of the detective police, nor yet the
+discovery of Allan's watch and signet-ring under the rotten leaves
+in the deep hollow of an old oak half a mile from the spot where he
+himself had been found, to substantiate Geoffrey's self-accusation. His
+unhappy mother, who was with him at Marsh House throughout those last
+dreadful hours of raving and unrest, had never doubted his guilt from
+the time of his reappearance at Discombe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was months before Allan returned to the world of active life; but he
+left the Manor long before actual convalescence.
+
+Not once, during those slow hours of returning health, did he allude
+to the cause of his terrible illness; and, on his mother timidly
+questioning him, he professed to have no recollection of the assault
+which had been so nearly fatal.
+
+"Let the past remain a blank, mother. No good can come by trying to
+remember."
+
+He was especially gentle and affectionate to Mrs. Wornock on her rare
+visits to his room during the earlier stages of his convalescence.
+Geoffrey's name was not spoken by either; but Allan's sympathetic
+manner told the unhappy mother that he knew her grief and pitied her.
+
+Lady Emily was by no means ungrateful for the lavish hospitality with
+which Mrs. Wornock's house and household had been devoted to her
+son, yet she shrank with a natural abhorrence from a scene which was
+associated with Allan's peril and Geoffrey's crime. No kindness of
+Mrs. Wornock's could lessen that horror; and Lady Emily did her utmost
+to hasten the patient's removal to his own house, short of risking a
+relapse. When she saw him established in his cheerful bedchamber at
+Beechhurst, she felt as if she had taken him out of a charnel-house
+into the pleasant world of the living and the happy; a world to which
+Geoffrey Wornock was fated never to return.
+
+"Quite hopeless," was the verdict of medical authority.
+
+Mrs. Wornock left Discombe, and was said to be living in complete
+seclusion, attended upon by two or three of the oldest of the Manor
+servants, in a cottage near the private asylum where her son was a
+prisoner for life.
+
+Before midsummer Allan's health was completely restored, and mother
+and son left for Suffolk, for the pastures and pine-woods, the long
+white roads and sandy commons, the wide horizons and large level spaces
+flooded with the red and gold of sunsets that are said to surpass the
+splendour of sunsets in more picturesque scenery. Lady Emily would have
+been completely happy in this quiet interlude, this tranquil pause in
+the drama of life, had not Allan talked of going back to Africa before
+the end of the year.
+
+"Why not?" he asked, when she remonstrated with him. "There is nothing
+for me to do in England, and Africa doesn't mean a lifelong separation,
+mother, or I would not dream of going there. Every year shortens
+the journey. Six weeks, I think Consul Johnstone called it, to Lake
+Tanganyika. If I go, I promise to return in less than two years. You
+would hardly have time to miss me in your busy days here----"
+
+"Busy about such poor trifles, Allan? Do you think my farm could fill
+the place of my son? If you were away, one great care and sorrow would
+fill every hour of my life. And think what an anxious winter I went
+through--a season of fear and trembling."
+
+This plea prevailed. He could not disregard the care and love that had
+been lavished upon him. No, he would not allow himself to be drawn back
+to that dark continent which is said to exercise a subtle influence
+over those who have once crossed her far-reaching plains, and rested
+beside her wide waters, and lived her life of adventure and surprise.
+No, it was too soon for the son to leave his mother, she having none
+but him. He had done with love; but duty still claimed him; and he
+stayed.
+
+A quiet winter at Beechhurst, with his mother to keep house for him,
+a good deal of hunting, and so much attention and kindly feeling from
+everybody in the neighbourhood, that he could not altogether play the
+hermit. He was forced into visiting, and into entertaining his friends,
+and Lady Emily was very happy in playing her part of hostess in the
+livelier circle of Matcham, while the shutters were closed at Fendyke,
+and the bailiff had full sway on the white farm, allowed to do what
+he liked there, which was generally something different from what his
+mistress liked.
+
+Life was made easier for Allan that winter by the absence of Suzette,
+who was travelling with her father--easier, and emptier, for the one
+presence which would have given a zest to life was wanting. He told
+himself that it was better so, better for his peace, since she could
+never be anything to him. The disappearance of his rival would make no
+difference in her feelings for Allan; for no doubt her affection for
+Geoffrey would only be strengthened by their tragical separation and
+her lover's miserable fate.
+
+"If she should ever care for any one else, it will be a stranger,"
+Allan told himself in those long reveries which the mere sight of a
+well-known garden wall, or the chimneys of Marsh House seen above the
+leafless elms as he rode past, could evoke. "She will never waste a
+thought upon me."
+
+Other people were more hopeful. Mrs. Mornington told her friends in
+confidence that her niece's acceptance of that unfortunate young man
+had been a folly, into which she had been entrapped by Geoffrey's
+dominant temper, and by her passion for music.
+
+"She never loved that unhappy young man as she once loved Allan Carew."
+
+"And now, no doubt, she and Mr. Carew will make it up and marry," said
+the confidant, male or female, as the case might be.
+
+"Not now: but some day, yes, perhaps," replied Suzette's aunt, with a
+significant nod.
+
+And the day came--when Geoffrey Wornock's passionate heart was still
+for ever--had been stilled for more than two years--and when to him, at
+rest in the silence of the family burial-place at Discombe, by the side
+of the mother who had only survived him by a few weeks, the sound of
+Suzette's wedding-bells, the knowledge of Allan's happiness could bring
+no pain.
+
+Allan's day came--long and late, after years of patient waiting, when
+Suzette had attained the sober age of six and twenty; but it was a day
+of cloudless happiness, which promised to last to the end of life. No
+fear of the future marred the joy of the present. The later love that
+had grown up in Suzette's heart for her first lover, was too strongly
+based upon knowledge and esteem to suffer the shadow of change.
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+         LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+      [Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75175 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75175 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>SONS OF FIRE</h1>
+
+<p>A Novel</p>
+
+<p class="ph1">By Mary Elizabeth Braddon</p>
+
+<p>THE AUTHOR OF</p>
+
+<p>"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"<br>
+"ISHMAEL," ETC.</p>
+
+<p><i>IN THREE VOLUMES</i></p>
+
+<p>VOL. III.</p>
+
+<p>LONDON<br>
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO. LIMITED<br>
+STATIONERS' HALL COURT</p>
+
+<p>[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p>
+
+<p>LONDON:<br>
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. III.</h2>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">ROMAN AND SABINE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">"IF SHE BE NOT FAIR TO ME"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">"I GO TO PROVE MY SOUL"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">BLACK AND WHITE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">THE MEETING-PLACE OF WATERS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">KIGAMBO</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">MAMBU KWA MUNGU</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">WHERE THE BURDEN IS HEAVIEST</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">ALL IN HONOUR</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">"AM I HIS KEEPER?"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">A SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">"IT IS THE STARS"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">MADNESS OR CRIME?</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">"HE HATH AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM OF LIFE"</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+
+<h2>SONS OF FIRE.</h2>
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">ROMAN AND SABINE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Geoffrey was not to be baulked of his purpose. He sat till long after
+midnight in the music-room with his mother—sat or roamed about in the
+ample spaces of that fine apartment, talking in his own wild way, with
+that restless, fitful romanticism which had marked him from childhood,
+from the dim hours, so vaguely remembered and so sadly sweet in his
+memory, when he had sat on the floor with his head leaning against
+the soft silken folds of her gown, and had been moved to tears by her
+playing. There were simple turns of melody, almost automatic phrases of
+Mozart's, which recalled the vague heartache of those childish hours;
+an idea of music so interwoven with that other idea of summer twilight
+in a spacious, shadowy room, that it startled him to hear one of those
+familiar movements in the broad glare of day, as if daylight and <i>that</i>
+music were irreconcilable.</p>
+
+<p>No arguments of his mother's could shake his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I will see her and talk with her. She alone shall be the judge of what
+is right. Perhaps when I am sure of her I may be able to teach myself
+patience. But I must be sure of her love."</p>
+
+<p>He was at Bournemouth by the first train that would carry him there,
+and it was still early when he went roaming out towards Branksome and
+the borderland of Dorset. To walk suited better with his impatience
+than to be driven by a possibly stupid flyman, and to have the fly
+pulled up every five minutes for the stupid flyman to interrogate
+a—probably—more stupid pedestrian, who would inevitably prove "a
+stranger in those parts," as if the inhabitants never walked abroad.</p>
+
+<p>No, he would find Rosenkrantz, Mrs. Tolmash's villa, for himself. He
+had been told it was near Branksome Chine.</p>
+
+<p>Swift of foot and keen of apprehension, he succeeded in less time
+than any flyman would have done. Yes, this was the villa—red-brick,
+gabled, curtained with virginia creeper from chimneys downwards;
+virginia creeper not yet touched by autumn's ruddy fingers; and with
+roses enough climbing over the verandah and surrounding the windows to
+justify the name which fancy had given. He opened the light iron gate
+and went into the garden; a somewhat spacious garden. She was there,
+perhaps. At any rate, he would explore before confronting servant,
+drawing-room, and unknown lady of the house. The garden was so pretty,
+and the morning was so fine, that, if within the precincts, surely she
+would be in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>He went boldly round the house by a shrubberied walk, and saw a fine
+lawn on a breezy height above the Chine, facing the sunlit sea and the
+wooded dip that went down to golden sands. The standard rose-trees were
+blown about in the morning air, dropping a rain of pink and yellow on
+the smooth short turf. He saw the sea westward—sapphire blue—through
+an arch of reddest roses, and beyond that archway, close to the edge
+of the cliff, as it seemed in the perspective, there was a bench with
+a red and white awning, and sitting under that awning a figure in a
+white frock, a slender waist, a graceful throat, a small dark head,
+which he would have known from a thousand girlish heads and throats and
+waists—for him the girl of girls.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that restless foot, lightly tapping the grass as she looked
+seaward. Was there not weariness of life, rebellion against fate,
+in that quick movement of the slender foot? Was she not waiting for
+happiness and for him?</p>
+
+<p>He ran to her, sat down by her side, had taken both her hands in his,
+before she could utter so much as a cry of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, my darling!" he murmured; "now and for ever my own!"</p>
+
+<p>She snatched her hands away and started to her feet indignantly. Anger
+flashed in the dark eyes and flushed the pale olive cheeks. And then
+her frown changed to an ironical smile, and she stood looking at him
+almost contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you forget, Mr. Wornock, that it is a long time since the
+Romans ran away with the Sabines."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that I am too impetuous."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you are too absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it absurd to love the sweetest woman in the world—the prettiest,
+the most enchanting? Suzette, I tore back from the Hartz Mountains
+because I was told you were free—free to marry the man who loves you
+with all the passion of his soul. When I told you of my love months
+ago, you were bound to another man, you were obstinately bent upon
+keeping your promise to him. I had no option but to withdraw, to fight
+my battle, and try to live without you. I did try, Suzette. I left the
+ground clear for my rival. I was self-banished from my own home."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not have been banished. I could have kept away from Discombe."</p>
+
+<p>"That would have distressed my mother, whose happiness depends on your
+society, Suzette. You know how she loves you. To see you my wife will
+make her very happy. She has taken you to her heart as a daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much as she has taken Allan Carew to her heart. It was for his
+sake she liked me. I could see when we parted that it was of Allan she
+thought; it was for him she was sorry. I don't think she will ever
+forgive me for making Allan unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if her only son's happiness is bought with that price? Suzette,
+why do you keep me at arm's length—now, when there is nothing to part
+us; now, while I know that you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have no right to say that. If you know it, you know more than I
+know myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette, Suzette, do you deny your love?"</p>
+
+<p>She was crying, with her hands over her averted face. He tried to draw
+those hands away, eager to look into her eyes. He would not believe
+mere words. Only in her eyes could he read the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"I deny your right to question me now, while my heart is aching for
+Allan—Allan whom I like and respect more than any man living. He is
+the best friend I have in the world, after my father. He will always be
+my cherished and trusted friend. If in some great unhappiness I needed
+any other friend than my father—badly, wickedly as I have behaved to
+him—it is to Allan I would go for help."</p>
+
+<p>"What, not to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"To you! No more than I would appeal to a whirlwind."</p>
+
+<p>"You think me so unreasonable a creature?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, unreasonable! It is unreasonable in you to come here to-day. You
+must know that I am sorry for having behaved so badly—deeply sorry for
+Allan's disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to think it a pity you disappointed him, if nobody is to
+profit by your release. Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I should have
+killed myself if you had persisted. At least you have saved a life. I
+hope you are glad of that."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot talk to you while you are so foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it foolish to tell you the truth? I bare my heart to you—to the
+woman I want for my wife. I am a creature full of faults; but for you I
+could become anything. I would be as wax, and you might mould me into
+whatever shape you chose. Oh, Suzette, is not love enough? Is it not
+enough for any woman to be loved as I love you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot love me better than Allan did, though he never talked as
+wildly as you."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan! It is not in his nature to love or to suffer as I do. He was
+not born under the same burning star. All the forces of nature were at
+war when I was born, Suzette. My Swiss nurse told me of the tempest
+that was roaring over the wilderness of peaks and crags when I came
+into the world, with something of that storm in my heart and brain. Be
+my good genius, Suzette. Save me from my darker, stormier self. Make
+and mould me into an amiable, order-loving English gentleman. I am
+your slave. You have but to command me, and I shall submit as meekly
+as the trained dog who lies down at his mistress's feet and shams the
+stillness of death. Tell me to fetch and carry; tell me to die. I will
+do your bidding like that dog."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a troubled sigh and looked at him, pale and perplexed, in deep
+distress. His pleading moved her as no words of Allan's had ever done,
+and yet there was more of fear than of love in the emotion that he
+awakened.</p>
+
+<p>"I have only one thing in the world to ask of you," she said, in a low,
+agitated voice. "I ask you to leave me to myself. I came here, almost
+among strangers, in order that I might be calm and quiet, and away from
+the associations of the past year. You must forgive me, Mr. Wornock,
+if I say that it was cruel of you to follow me to this refuge."</p>
+
+<p>"Cruel for passionate love to follow the beloved! 'Mr. Wornock,' too!
+How formal! Suzette, if you do not love me, if I am nothing to you, why
+did you jilt Carew?"</p>
+
+<p>"I asked him to release me because I felt I did not love him well
+enough to be his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Only that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that. As time went on, I felt more and more acutely that I could
+not give him love for love."</p>
+
+<p>"And you cared for no one else?—there was no other reason?" he
+insisted, trying to take her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I have hardly asked myself that question; and I will not be questioned
+by you."</p>
+
+<p>She rose and moved away, he following.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock, I am going into the house. I beg you not to persecute me.
+It was persecution to come here to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me hope. I cannot leave you without hope."</p>
+
+<p>"I can say nothing more than I have said. My heart is sore for Allan.
+Allan is first in my thoughts, and must be for a long time. I hate
+myself for having behaved so badly to him."</p>
+
+<p>"And what of your behaviour to me? How cold! how cruel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank Heaven, here come Mrs. Tolmash and her daughter. Now you
+<i>must</i> go."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey looked round and saw a middle-aged lady in a chair being
+wheeled across the lawn, a girl in a pink frock pushing the chair.</p>
+
+<p>He gave Suzette a despairing look, picked up his hat from the grass,
+and walked quickly away. He was in no mood to make the acquaintance of
+the pink frock or the lady in the chair, though that plump, benevolent
+person, with neat little grey curls clustering round a fair forehead,
+looked quite capable of asking him to luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>He walked back to the nearest station, angry beyond measure, and paced
+the platform for an hour, waiting for the train for Eastleigh, and
+with half a mind to throw himself under the first express that came
+shrieking by. Yet that were basest surrender.</p>
+
+<p>"She is possessed by a devil of obstinacy," he told himself. "But the
+stronger devil within me shall master her."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>While the more fiery and arrogant of Suzette's lovers was raging
+against her coldness, resolved to bear down all opposing forces, to
+ride roughshod over every obstacle, her gentler and more conscientious
+lover was hiding his grief in the quiet of that level and unromantic
+land on which his eyes had first opened. No tempest had raged when
+Allan was born. He had entered life amidst no grandeurs of mountain
+and glacier, arrested avalanche and roaring torrent. An English
+home—English to intensity—had been his cradle; a mild, even-tempered
+mother, a father in whom a gentle melancholy was the prevailing
+characteristic. Growing up under such home-influences, Allan Carew had
+something of womanly gentleness interwoven with the strong fibre of a
+fine manly nature. He had the womanly capacity to suffer in silence, to
+submit to Fate, and to take a very humble place at the banquet of life.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he was not destined to be happy. She had never loved him—never.
+He had won her by sheer persistency; he had imposed upon her yielding
+nature, upon the amiability which makes it so hard for some women to
+say no. She had always been friendly and kind and sweet, but the signs
+and tokens of passionate love had been wanting. If she would have been
+content to marry him upon those friendly terms, content to forego the
+glamour of romantic love, all might have been well. Love would have
+followed marriage in the quiet years of domestic life. The watchful
+kindnesses of an adoring husband must have won her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, but for Geoffrey Wornock's appearance on the scene, all might have
+been well. Suzette would have married Allan, and the years would have
+ripened friendship into love. Geoffrey's was the fatal influence.
+Contrast with that fiery nature had made Allan seem a dullard.</p>
+
+<p>This is what the forsaken lover told himself as he roamed about the
+autumn fields, the fertile levels, where all the soil he trod on was
+his own, and had belonged to his ancestors when the clank of armed feet
+was still a common thing in the land, and a stout Suffolk pad was your
+swiftest mode of travel. The shooting had begun, and the houses of
+Suffolk were full of guests, and the squires of Suffolk had mustered
+their guns, and were doing their best to beat the record of last year
+and all the years that were gone. But Allan had no heart for so much as
+a morning tramp across the stubble. The flavour and the freshness were
+gone out of life. He gave his shooting to a neighbour, an old friend of
+his father's, while his own days were dawdled through in the library,
+or spent in long walks by stream and mill-race, pine-wood and common,
+in any direction that offered the best chance of solitude.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote to Suzette, with grave kindness, apologizing for his angry
+vehemence in the hour of their parting. He expatiated sorrowfully upon
+that which might have been.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I must have known all along that you had no romantic love for
+me," he wrote; "but I would have been more than content to have your
+liking in exchange for my passionate love. I should not have thought
+myself a loser had you put the case in the plainest words. 'You idolize
+me, and I—well—I think you an estimable young man, and I have no
+objection to be your idol, accepting your devotion, and giving you a
+sisterly regard in exchange.' There are men who would think that a bad
+bargain; but I am not made of such proud stuff. Your friendship would
+have been more precious to me than any other woman's love; and I should
+have been happy, infinitely happy, could I have won you on those terms.</p>
+
+<p>"But it was not to be—and now my heart turns cold every time the
+post-bag is opened, lest it should contain the letter that will tell me
+Geoffrey Wornock has won the prize that I have lost. Such things must
+be, Suzette. They are happening every day, and hearts are breaking,
+quietly. May you be happy—my dear lost love—whatever I may be."</p>
+
+<p>Much as he might desire solitude, it was impossible for Allan to
+escape his fellow-man through the month of September in such a
+happy shooting-ground as that in which his property lay. In that
+part of Suffolk people knew of hunting as a barbarous form of sport
+somewhat affected in the midlands, and a fox was considered a beast
+of prey. The guns had it all their own way in those woods which
+Allan's great-grandfather had planted, and over the turnips which
+Allan's tenants had sown. Among the shooters who were profiting by
+his hospitality it was inevitable that he should meet some one he
+knew; and that some one happened to be a man with whom he had been
+on the friendliest terms five years before during a big shoot in the
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>They met at a dinner at the house of the jovial squire to whom Allan
+had given his shooting—a five-mile drive from Fendyke. Lady Emily had
+persuaded her son to accept the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>His father had been dead six months. Though she, the widow, would go
+nowhere, it might seem churlish in the son to hold himself aloof from
+old friends.</p>
+
+<p>"And you don't want to be wearing the willow for that shallow-hearted
+girl, I hope," added Lady Emily, who was very angry with Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>No, he did not want to wear the willow, to pose as a victim, so he
+accepted Mr. Meadowbank's invitation.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be only a friendly dinner, only the house party; and among
+the house party Allan found his old acquaintance, Cecil Patrington,
+a man who had spent the best years of his life in Africa, and had
+won renown among sportsmen as a hunter of big game, a weather-beaten
+athlete, brawny, strong of limb, with bronzed forehead and
+copper-coloured neck.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you were just back from Bechuana Land when we last met," said
+Allan, in the unreserve of Squire Meadowbank's luxurious smoke-room,
+"and you were going back to the Cape when the shooting was over. Have
+you been in Africa ever since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have been moving about most of the time, here and there, mostly
+in Central South Africa, between Brazzaville and Tabora, now on one
+side of the lake, now on the other?"</p>
+
+<p>"Which lake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tanganyika. It's a delightful district, only it's getting a deuced
+deal too well known. Burton was a glorious fellow, and he had a
+glorious career. No man can ever enjoy life in Africa like that. There
+are steamers on the lake now, and one meets babies in perambulators,
+genuine British babies!" with a profound sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I have looked for a record of your exploits at the Geographical."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't go in for that kind of thing, you see. I read a paper
+once, and it didn't pay. I am not a literary cove like Burton, and I
+haven't the gift of the gab like Stanley—who is a literary cove, too,
+by the way. I ain't a scientific explorer. I don't care a hang what
+becomes of the water, don't you know. I like the lakes for their own
+sake—and the niggers for their own sake—and the picturesqueness of it
+all, and the variety, and the danger of it all. If I discovered a new
+lake or an unknown forest, I should keep the secret to myself. That's
+my view of Africa. I ain't a geographer. I ain't a missionary. I ain't
+a trader. I like Africa because it's jolly, and because there ain't any
+other place in the world worth living in for the man who has once been
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you ever go again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I ever?" Mr. Patrington laughed at the question. "I sail for
+Zanzibar next November."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" said Allan. "I should like to go with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Mr. Patrington.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"IF SHE BE NOT FAIR TO ME."</p>
+
+
+<p>Geoffrey Wornock went back to Discombe, and his mother read failure
+and mortification in his gloomy countenance; but he vouchsafed no
+confidence. He was not sullen or unkind. He lived; and that was about
+as much as could be said of him. The fiddles, which were to him as
+cherished friends, lay mute in their cases. He seemed to regard that
+spacious music-room with its lofty ceiling and noble capacity for
+sound, as the captive lion regards his cage—a place in which to roam
+about, and pace to and fro, restless, miserable, unsatisfied. He did
+not complain, and his mother dared not attempt to console. Once she
+pressed his hand and whispered "patience;" but he only shook his head
+fretfully, and walked out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Patience! yes," he muttered to himself. "I could be patient, as
+patient as Jacob when he waited for Rachel—if I were sure she loved
+me. But I have begun to doubt even that. Oh, if she knew what love
+meant, she would have rushed into my arms. She would have swooned upon
+my breast in the shock of that meeting; but she sat prim and quiet,
+only a little pale and tearful, while I was shaken by a tempest of
+passion. She is capable of no more than a schoolgirl's love—held
+in check by the pettiest restraints of good manners and the world's
+opinion—and she has hardly decided whether that feeble flame burns for
+me or for Allan."</p>
+
+<p>And then he began to preach to himself the sermon which almost every
+slighted swain has preached since the world began. What was this woman
+that he should die of heartache for her? Was she so much fairer than
+other women whom he might have for the wooing? No, again and again,
+no. He could conjure fairer faces out of the past—faces he had gazed
+at and praised, and which had left him cold. She was not as handsome
+as Miss Simpson, at Simla, last year—that Miss Simpson who had thrown
+herself at his head—or as Miss Brown at Naini Tal, General Brown's
+daughter, who looked liked a houri, and who waltzed like a thing of
+air, imparting buoyancy and grace to the lumpiest of partners. He had
+not cared a straw for Miss Brown, even although the General had hinted
+to him, in the after-dinner freedom of the mess-room, that Miss Brown
+had an exalted opinion of him. No, he had cared for neither of these
+girls, though either might have been his for the asking. Perhaps that
+was why he did not care. He was madly in love with Suzette, whom he
+had known only as another man's betrothed. Suzette represented the
+unattainable; and for Suzette he could die.</p>
+
+<p>He hardly left the bounds of Discombe during those bright autumnal
+days, when the music of the hounds was loud over field and down. He
+had dissevered himself from most of the friends of his manhood by
+leaving the army; and in Matcham he had only acquaintance. From these
+he kept scrupulously aloof. One Matcham person, however, he could not
+escape. Mrs. Mornington surprised him in the music-room with his mother
+one afternoon, and instead of running away, as he would have done from
+any one else, he stayed and handed tea-cups with supreme amiability.</p>
+
+<p>He knew she would talk of Suzette. That was inevitable. She had
+scarcely settled herself in a comfortable armchair when she began.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Wornock, have you seen anything more of this niece of mine?"</p>
+
+<p>Of course there could be only one niece in question.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed. She has not come back from Bournemouth, has she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, she has. She has come and gone. I made sure she would pay you
+a visit. You and she were always so thick. I believe she is fonder of
+you than she is of me."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey began to walk about the room—as softly as the parquetted
+floor would allow—listening intently. Eager as he was to hear, he
+could not sit still while Suzette was being discussed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock murmured a gentle negative.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but she is, you know. There is that," said Mrs. Mornington,
+pointing to the organ, "and that," pointing to the piano, "and your son
+is a fiddler. You are music mad, all of you. Suzette took to practising
+five hours a day. It was Chopin, Rubinstein, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn
+all day long. She looks upon me as an outsider, because I don't
+appreciate classical music. I wonder she didn't run over to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she gone back to Bournemouth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not she. My foolish brother took fright about her because she was
+looking pale and worried when she came home; so he whisked her off to
+London, took her to a doctor in Mayfair, who said Schwalbach; and to
+Schwalbach they are gone, and I believe, after a course of iron at
+Schwalbach—where they will meet no civilized beings at this time of
+year—they are to winter on the Riviera, and a pretty penny these whims
+and fancies will cost her father. I am glad I have no daughters. Poor
+Allan! such a fine, honest-hearted young man! She ought to have thanked
+God for such a sweetheart. I dare say, if he had been a reprobate and a
+bankrupt, she would have offered to go through fire and water for him."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey walked out at the open window which afforded such a ready
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>She was gone! Heartless, selfish girl! Gone without a word of farewell,
+without a whisper of hope.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Allan returned to Matcham a few days after Mrs. Mornington's appearance
+at Discombe, and in spite of his dark doubts about Geoffrey, his first
+visit was to Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>She was shocked at the change in him. He was pale, and thin, and
+serious looking, and, but for his grey-tweed suit, might have been
+mistaken for an overworked East-end parson.</p>
+
+<p>She talked to him about Lady Emily and the farm. Had he been shooting?
+Were there many birds this year? She talked of the most frivolous
+things in order to ward off painful subjects. But he himself spoke of
+Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"She has gone away, I am told, for the whole winter. Marsh House is
+shut up. I never knew what a bright, home-like house it was till I saw
+it this morning, with the shutters shut, and the gates padlocked. There
+was not even a dog to bark at me. She has gone far afield; but I am
+going a good deal farther."</p>
+
+<p>And then he told her with a certain excitement of his meeting with
+Cecil Patrington, and his approaching departure for Zanzibar.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the luckiest thing in the world for me," he said. "I had
+not the least idea what to do with myself, or where to go, to get
+out of myself. The little I have seen of the Continent rather bored
+me—picture-gallery, cathedral, town-hall, a theatre, invariably shut
+up, a river, reported delightful when navigable, but not navigable
+at the time being. The same thing, and the same thing—not very
+interesting to a man who can't reckon the age of a cathedral to within
+a century or two—over and over again. But this will be new, this will
+mean excitement. I shall feel as if I were born again. The wonder will
+be—to myself, at least—that I don't come home black."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think you will find consolation—in Africa?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope to find forgetfulness."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Allan! Poor Geoffrey! It is a hard thing that you should both
+suffer."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock's sufferings will soon be over, I take it. Rapture and not
+suffering will be the dominant in the scale of his life. He will have
+everything his own way when I am gone."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he will. He has not confided his secrets to me, but I
+believe he has offered himself to her, since her engagement was broken,
+and has been rejected."</p>
+
+<p>"He will offer himself again and will be accepted. There are
+conventionalities to be observed. Miss Vincent would not like people to
+say that she transferred her affections from lover to lover with hardly
+a week's interval."</p>
+
+<p>"I only know that my son is very unhappy, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"So is a spoilt child when he can't have the moon. Your son will get
+the moon all in good time—only he will have to wait for it, and spoilt
+children don't like waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"How bitterly you speak of him, Allan. I hope you are not going to be
+ill friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should we be ill friends? It is not his fault that she has thrown
+me over—at the eleventh hour. It is only his good fortune to be more
+attractive than I am. It was the contrast with his brilliancy that
+showed her my dulness. He has the magnetism which I have not—genius,
+perhaps, or at least the air and suggestion of genius. One hardly knows
+what constitutes the real thing. I am one of the crowd. He has the
+marked individuality which fascinates or repels."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will be friends still, Allan—you and my poor wilful son? He
+is like a ship without a rudder, now that he has left the army. He has
+no intimate friends. He cannot rest long in one place. I never wanted
+him to steal your sweetheart, Allan. I am sure you know that. But I
+should be very glad to see him married."</p>
+
+<p>"You will see him married before long—and to the lady who was once my
+sweetheart."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock shook her head; and the argument was closed by the
+appearance of Geoffrey himself, who came sauntering in from the garden,
+with his favourite Clumber spaniel at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>"Been shooting?" Allan asked, as they shook hands.</p>
+
+<p>There was a certain aloofness in their greeting, but nothing churlish
+or sullen in the manner of either. On Geoffrey's side there was only
+listlessness; on Allan's a grave reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I look at my dogs every day. The keepers do the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not fond of shooting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not particularly—not of creeping about a copse on the look-out for a
+cock pheasant; still less do I love a hot corner!"</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself on the bench by the organ, and began to turn over a
+pile of music, idly, almost mechanically, not as if he were looking for
+anything in particular. Allan rose to go, and Mrs. Wornock followed him
+to the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he not look wretched? And wretchedly ill?" she asked appealingly;
+her own unhappiness visible in every line of her face.</p>
+
+<p>"He is certainly changed for the worse since I saw him last. That was
+a longish time ago, you may remember. He looks hipped and worried. He
+should go away, as I am going."</p>
+
+<p>"Not like you, Allan, to a savage country. I wish he would take me
+to Italy for the winter. We could move from place to place. He could
+change the scene as often as he liked."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear the mind would be the same, though earth and sky might change.
+Travelling upon beaten paths would only bore him. If he is unhappy, and
+you are unhappy about him, you had better let him come with Patrington
+and me."</p>
+
+<p>The offer was made on the impulse of the moment, out of sympathy with
+the mother rather than out of regard for the son.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I could not bear to lose him again—so soon. What would
+my life be like if you were both gone? I should lapse into the old
+loneliness—and solitude would bring back the old dreams—the old vain
+longing——"</p>
+
+<p>These last words were murmured brokenly, in self-communion.</p>
+
+<p>Allan left her, and she went back to the music-room, where Geoffrey
+had seated himself at the piano, and was playing a Spanish dance by
+Sarasate, for the edification of the spaniel, who looked agonized.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you been saying to Carew, mother?" he asked, stopping in the
+middle of a phrase.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of any importance. Allan is going to Central Africa with a
+friend he met in Suffolk—a Mr. Patrington."</p>
+
+<p>"A Mr. Patrington? I suppose you mean Cecil Patrington?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is the name."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"I GO TO PROVE MY SOUL."</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan lost no time in making his preparations. He ordered everything
+that Cecil Patrington told him to order, and in all things followed
+the advice of that experienced traveller, who consented to spend his
+last fortnight in England at Beechhurst, where his appearance excited
+considerable interest in the local mind. He allowed Allan to mount
+him, and went out with the South Sarum; and as he neither dressed,
+rode, nor looked like anybody else, he was the object of some curiosity
+among those outsiders who did not know him as a famous African hunter,
+a man who had made himself a name among British sportsmen unawares,
+while following the bent of his own fancy, and caring nothing what his
+countrymen at home thought about him.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was her son's guest during the last week, anxious to be
+with him till he sailed, to postpone the parting till the final day.
+She was full of sorrow at the idea of a separation which was to last
+for at least two years, and might extend to double that time if the
+climate and the manner of life in Central Africa suited Allan. Stanley
+had taken nearly a year and a half going and returning between Zanzibar
+and Ujiji, and Stanley had been a much quicker traveller than previous
+explorers. And Mr. Patrington talked of Ujiji as a starting-point for
+journeys to the north, and to the west, rambling explorations over less
+familiar regions, and anon a leisurely journey down to Nyassaland, the
+African Arcadia. His plans, if carried out, would occupy five or six
+years.</p>
+
+<p>That sturdy traveller laughed at the mother's apprehensions.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Lady Emily, you are under a delusion as to the remoteness of
+the great lake country. Should your son grow home-sick, something less
+than a three months' journey will bring him from the Tanganyika to the
+Thames. Sixty years ago, it took longer to travel from Bombay to London
+than it does now to come from the heart of Africa."</p>
+
+<p>The mother sighed, and looked mournfully at her son. He was unhappy,
+and travel and adventure would perhaps afford the best cure for his low
+spirits. She discussed the situation with Mrs. Mornington when that
+lady called upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Your niece has acted very cruelly," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece has acted like a fool. She has made two young men unhappy,
+and left herself out in the cold. I saw Geoffrey Wornock last week, and
+he looked a perfect wreck."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think she cared for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"The girl must care for somebody. Looking back now, I can see that
+there was a change in her—a gradual change—after Geoffrey Wornock's
+return. It was very unfortunate. Either young man would have been a
+capital match;" added Mrs. Mornington, waxing practical; "but she could
+not marry them both!"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily felt angry with Geoffrey as the cause of unhappiness, the
+indirect cause of the coming separation between herself and her son.
+How happy she might have been had all gone smoothly! Allan would have
+settled at Beechhurst with his young wife; but they would have spent
+nearly half of every year in Suffolk. How happy her own life might have
+been with the son she loved, and the girl whom she was ready to take
+to her heart as a daughter, but for this wilful cruelty on the part of
+Suzette!</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was sitting in the Mandarin-room with her son and his friend
+late in the evening, their last evening but one in England. To-morrow
+they were all going to London together, and on the day after the
+travellers would embark for Zanzibar.</p>
+
+<p>The night was wet and windy, and a large wood fire burnt and crackled
+on the ample hearth. Lady Emily had her embroidered coverlet spread
+over her lap, and her work-table drawn conveniently near her elbow,
+in the light of a shaded lamp, while the two men lounged in luxurious
+chairs in front of the fire. The room looked the picture of comfort,
+the men companionable, content, and homely, and the mother's heart
+sank at the thought that years must pass before such an evening could
+repeat itself in that room, and before her poor Allan would be sitting
+in so comfortable a chair. It was not without regret that her son had
+contemplated the idea of their separation, or of his mother's solitary
+home when he should be gone. He had talked with her of the coming
+years, suggested the nieces or girl-friends whom she might invite to
+enliven the slumberous house, and to enjoy the beauty of those fertile
+gardens and level park-like meadows that stretched to the edge of the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>"You have troops of friends, mother, and you will have plenty of
+occupation with your farm, and sovereign power over the whole estate.
+Drake"—the bailiff—"will have to consult you about everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there will be much to be looked at and thought about; but I shall
+miss you every hour of my life, Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"Not as much as if I had been living at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Every bit as much. I was quite happy thinking of you here. How can
+I be happy when I picture you toiling alone in the desert under a
+broiling sun—no water—even the camels dropping and dying under their
+burdens."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mother, be happy as to the camels. We shall not be in the camel
+country. We shall see very little of sandy deserts. Shadowy woods,
+fertile valleys, the margins of great lakes will be our portion."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will drink the water—which is sure to be unwholesome—and you
+will get fever."</p>
+
+<p>Allan did not tell his mother that fever was inevitable, a phase of
+African life which every traveller must reckon with. He represented
+African travel as a perpetual holiday in a land of infinite beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Would Patrington go back there if it were not a delightful life?" he
+argued. "He has not to get his living there, as the poor fellows have
+who grill and bake themselves for half a lifetime in India. He goes
+because he loves the life."</p>
+
+<p>"He goes to shoot big game. He is a horrid, bloodthirsty creature."</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, however, Lady Emily had allowed herself to be
+persuaded that Central Africa was not so hideous a region as she had
+supposed. She was told that there were bits of country like Suffolk, a
+home-like Arcadia on the shores of Nyassa which would remind her of her
+own farm.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not make that district your head-quarters?" she argued,
+appealing to Patrington.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have no head-quarters. We shall wander from one interesting
+spot to another. We shall settle down only in the Masika season, when
+travelling is out of the question—not so much because it couldn't be
+done as because the blackies won't do it. They are uncommonly careful
+of themselves; won't budge in the rains, won't take a canoe on the
+lake, if there's a bit of a swell on."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of that," sighed Lady Emily, with an air of relief; "I am
+very glad the negroes are prudent and careful."</p>
+
+<p>"A deuced deal too prudent, my dear Lady Emily."</p>
+
+<p>The men were sitting at a table looking at a map, one of Patrington's
+rough sketch maps, and splotched with a blunt quill pen. He was showing
+Allan where more scientific map-makers had gone wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the Lualaba, you see, and here's the little wood where we
+camped—I seldom use a tent if I can help it, but there wasn't a
+village within ten miles of that spot."</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened and a servant announced—</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock."</p>
+
+<p>Allan started up, surprised, thrown off his balance by Geoffrey's
+entrance. It was half-past ten—Matcham bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come to bid us good-bye," Allan said, recovering his
+self-possession as they shook hands. "This is kind and friendly of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to do nothing of the sort. I want to join your party, if
+you and your friend will have me."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke in his lightest tone; but he was looking worn and ill, and
+there were all the signs of sleeplessness and worry in his haggard face.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it's the eleventh hour," he said, "but I heard you say,"
+looking from Allan to Patrington, "that your important preparations
+have to be made at Zanzibar, where you buy most of the things you want.
+I—I only made up my mind this evening, after dinner. I am bored to
+death in England. There is nothing for me to do. I get so tired of
+things——"</p>
+
+<p>"And your mother?" hazarded Allan, feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother is accustomed to doing without me. I believe I only worry
+her when I am at home. Will you take me, Carew? 'Yes,' or 'No'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course it is 'Yes,' Mr. Wornock," exclaimed Lady Emily, coming
+from the other end of the room, where she had been folding up her work
+for the night. "Allan, why don't you introduce Mr. Wornock to me?"</p>
+
+<p>She was radiant, charmed at the idea of a third traveller, and such a
+traveller as the Squire of Discombe. It seemed to lessen the peril of
+the expedition, that this other man should want to go, should offer
+himself thus lightly, on the eve of departure.</p>
+
+<p>She shook hands with Geoffrey in the friendliest way, looking at the
+wan, worn face with keen interest. Like Allan? Yes, he was like, but
+not so good-looking. His features were too sharply cut; his hollow
+cheeks and sunken eyes made him look ever so much older than Allan,
+thought the mother, admiring her own son above all the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they will take you," she said, looking from one to the
+other. "It will make the expedition ever so much pleasanter for them
+both. They will feel less lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't afraid of loneliness," growled Patrington; "but if Mr. Wornock
+really wishes to go with us, and will fall into our plans, and not
+want to make alterations, and upset our route for whims of his own,
+I'm agreeable. It isn't always easy for three men to get on smoothly,
+you see. Even two don't always hit it—Burton and Speke, for instance.
+There were bothers."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall be my chief and captain," protested Geoffrey, "and if you
+should tire of me, well, I can always wander off on my own hook, you
+know. I could start by myself, now, take my chance and trust to native
+guides, choose another line of country, where I couldn't molest you——"</p>
+
+<p>"Molest! My dear Wornock, if you are really in earnest, really
+inclined to join us as a pleasant thing to do, and not a caprice of the
+moment, I shall be glad to have you, and I think Patrington will have
+no objection," said Allan, hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Not the slightest. I only want unity of purpose. You don't look very
+fit," added Patrington, bluntly; "but you can rough it, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I'm not afraid of hardships."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to have a few words with you before anything is settled,
+if you will take a turn on the terrace," said Allan, and on Geoffrey
+assenting, he went over to the glass door, and led the way to the
+gravel walk outside.</p>
+
+<p>The rain was over, and the moon was shining out of a ragged mass of
+cloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you leave this place, now, when you are master of the
+situation?" Allan asked abruptly, when he and Geoffrey had walked a few
+paces.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not master, no more than a beaten hound is master. I have
+mastered nothing, not even the lukewarm regard which she still
+professes for you. She has thrown you over, but I am not to be the
+gainer. I went to her directly I knew she was free. I offered myself to
+her, an adoring slave. But she would have none of me. She did not love
+you enough to be your wife; but for me she had only contempt, cruel
+words, mocking laughter that cut me like a bunch of scorpions. I am
+frank with you, Carew. If I had a ghost of a chance, I would follow her
+to Schwalbach, to the Riviera, all round this globe on which we crawl
+and suffer. Distance should not divide us. But I am too much a man to
+pursue a woman who scorns me. I want to forget her; I mean to forget
+her; and I think I might have a chance if I went with you and your chum
+yonder. I should like to go with you, unless you dislike me too much to
+be at ease in my company."</p>
+
+<p>"Dislike you! No, indeed, I do not."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that. My mother is very fond of you. You have been to her
+almost as a son. It will comfort her to think that we are together,
+together in danger and difficulty, and if one of us should not come
+back——"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Wornock! Of course we are coming back. Look at
+Patrington——"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but he has been a solitary traveller. When two go, there is always
+one who stays."</p>
+
+<p>"If you think that, you had much better stop at home."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; the risk is the best part of the business to a man of my
+temper. It's the toss-up that I like. Heads, a safe return; tails,
+death in the wilderness—death by niggers, wild beasts, flood, or
+fire. I go with my life in my hand, as the catch phrase of the day has
+it; and if there were no hazards, no danger—well, one might as well
+stay at home, or play polo at Simla. Fellows get themselves killed
+even at that. Allan, we have been rivals, but not enemies. Shall we be
+brothers, henceforward?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, friends and brothers, if you will."</p>
+
+<p>They went back to the Mandarin-room, and when Lady Emily had bidden
+them good night, the three men lit up pipes and cigars, and talked
+about that wonder-world of tropical Africa, and what they were to do
+there, till the night grew late, and the Manor groom, dozing on the
+settle by the saddle-room fire after a hearty supper of beef and beer,
+questioned querulously whether his guv'nor meant to go home before
+daylight.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">BLACK AND WHITE.</p>
+
+
+<p>A year and more, spring and summer, autumn and winter, had gone by
+since Allan Carew and his companions set their faces towards the Dark
+Continent; and now it was spring again, the early spring of Central
+Africa; and under the pale cloudless blue of a tropical sky three white
+men, with their modest following of Wangwana and Wanyamwezi—a company
+no bigger than that with which Captain Trivier crossed from shore to
+shore—camped beside the Sea of Ujiji. They had come from the east,
+and the journey from the coast opposite Zanzibar, taken very easily,
+with many halting-places on the way, had occupied the best part of a
+year. Some of those resting-places had been chosen for sport, for
+exploration, for repose after weary and troublesome stages. Sometimes a
+long halt had been forced upon the travellers by sickness, by inclement
+weather, by the rebellion or the perversity of their men—those porters
+upon whose endurance and good will their comfort and safety alike
+depended, in a land where it has been truly said that "luggage is life."</p>
+
+<p>That march from Bagamoyo, Stanley's starting-point, through the
+vicissitudes of the road and the seasons, had not been all pleasure;
+and there were darker hours on the way, when, toiling on with aching
+head and blistered feet, half stifled by the rank mists and poisonous
+odours of a jungle that smelt of death, Allan Carew and his companions
+may have wished themselves back in the beaten paths of a civilized
+world, where there is no need to think of bed or dinner, and where all
+that life requires for sustenance and support seems to come of itself.
+But if there had been weak yearnings for the comfortable, as opposed to
+the adventurous, not one of the three travellers had ever given any
+indication of such backsliding. Each in his turn stricken down—not
+once, but often—by the deadly mukunguru, or African fever, had rallied
+and girded his loins for the journey without an hour's needless delay;
+and then, on recovery, there had followed a fervent joy in life and
+nature; a rapture in the atmosphere; a keener eye for every changeful
+light and colour in earth and sky; the blissful sensations of a newly
+created being, basking in a new world. It was almost worth a man's
+while to pass through the painful stages of that deadly fever, the ague
+fit and languor, the yawning and drowsiness which mark the beginning
+of sickness, the raging thirst and throbbing temples, the aching spine
+and hideous visions that are its later agonies, in order to feel that
+ecstasy of restored health in which the convalescent sees ineffable
+loveliness even in the dull monotony of rolling woods, and thrills with
+friendship and love for the dusky companions of his journey.</p>
+
+<p>Loneliness and horror, pleasantness and danger, a startling variety
+of scenes had been traversed between the red coast of Eastern Africa
+and that vast inland sea where many rivers meet and mingle in the deep
+bosom of the mountains. Across the monotony of rolling woods that rise
+and fall in a seemingly endless sequence; by fever-haunted plains and
+swampy hollows; through the dripping scrub of the Makata wilderness;
+in all the dull horror of the Masika season, when the long swathes
+of tiger-grass lie rotting under the brooding mists that curtain the
+foul-smelling waste, when the Makata river has changed from a narrow
+stream to a vast lake which covers the plain, and in whose shallow
+waters trees and canes and lush green parasites subside into tangled
+masses of putrid vegetation, until to the traveller's weary eye it
+seems as if this very earth were slowly rotting in universal and final
+decay.</p>
+
+<p>They had come through many a settlement, friendly or unfriendly,
+through rivers difficult to cross by ford or ferry, difficult and
+costly too, since there are dusky sultans who take toll of these white
+adventurers at every ferry, sometimes rival chiefs who set up a claim
+to the same ferry, and have to be defied or satisfied—generally the
+latter; through many a <i>guet à pens</i>, where the "whit-whit" of the
+long arrows sounded athwart the woods as the travellers hurried by;
+through scenes of beauty and romantic grandeur; across vast expanses
+of green sward diversified with noble timber, calmly picturesque as
+an English park—a hunter's paradise of big game. They had journeyed
+at a leisurely pace, loitering wherever nature invited to enjoyment,
+their camp of the simplest, their followers as few as the absolute
+necessities of the route demanded.</p>
+
+<p>By these same forest paths, fighting his way through the same
+inexorable jungle, Burton had come on his famous voyage of discovery to
+the unknown lake; and by the same, or almost the same, paths Stanley
+had followed in his search for the great God-fearing traveller, brave
+and calm and patient, who made Africa his own. And here had come
+Cameron, meeting that dead lord of untrodden lands, journeying on
+other men's shoulders, no longer the guide and chief, but the silent
+companion of a sorrowful pilgrimage. Lonely as the track might be, it
+was peopled with heroic memories.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to have been the first to come this way," Geoffrey had
+said with a vexed air, as he twirled the tattered leaves of Burton's
+book, which, with Stanley's and Cameron's travels, and Goethe's
+"Faust," composed the whole of his library.</p>
+
+<p>"You would always like to be first," Allan answered, laughing. "Is it
+not enough for you that you are the mightiest hunter of us three—the
+father of meat, as our boys call you—and that finer giraffes and harte
+beestes have fallen before your gun than even Patrington can boast,
+experienced sportsman though he is?"</p>
+
+<p>Patrington assented with a lazy comfortable laugh, stretched his legs
+on the reed mat under the rough verandah, and refilled his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>He was content to take the second place in the record of sport, and to
+let this restless fiery spirit satisfy its feverish impulses in the
+toils and perils of the jungle or the plain.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a young man with an insatiable love of sport, an activity of
+brain and body which nothing tired, and it was just as well to let him
+work for the party, while the older traveller, and nominal chief of the
+expedition, basked in the February sun, and read "Pickwick."</p>
+
+<p>A little brown-leather bound Bible, which he had used a good many years
+before at Harrow, and a dozen or so of Tauchnitz volumes, all by the
+same author, and all tattered and torn in years of travel and continual
+reperusal, constituted Mr. Patrington's stock of literature. Allan was
+the only member of the party who had burdened himself with a varied
+library of a dozen or so of those classics which a man cannot read too
+much or too often; for, indeed, could any man, not actually a student,
+exercise so much restraint over himself as to restrict his reading for
+three or four years to a dozen or so of the world's greatest books,
+that man would possess himself of a better literary capital than the
+finest library in London or Paris can provide for the casual reader,
+hurrying from author to author, from history to metaphysics, from Homer
+to Horace, from Herodotus to Froude, the wasting years of careless
+reading upon those snares for the idle mind—books about books. Half
+the intelligent readers in England know more about Walter Pater's
+opinion of Shelley or Buxton Forman's estimate of Keats than they know
+of the poems that made Shelley and Keats famous.</p>
+
+<p>Dickens reigned alone in Cecil Patrington's literary Valhalla. He
+always talked of the author of "Pickwick" as "he" or "him." Like Mr. Du
+Maurier's fine gentleman who thought there was only one man in London
+who could make a hat, Mr. Patrington would only recognize one humourist
+and one writer of fiction.</p>
+
+<p>"How he would have enjoyed this kind of life!" he said. "What fun he
+would have got out of those crocodiles! What a word picture he would
+have made of our storms, and the Masika rains, and those rolling woods,
+that illimitable forest t'other side of Ukonongo! and how he would have
+understood all the ins and outs in the minds of our Zanzibaris, and
+of the various nigger-chiefs whose society we have enjoyed, and whose
+demands we have had to satisfy, upon the road!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have they minds?" asked Geoffrey, with open scorn. "I doubt the
+existence of anything you can call mind in the African cranium. Hunger
+and greed are the motive power that moves the native mechanism; but
+mind, no. They have ferocious instincts, such as beasts have, and the
+craving for food. Feed them, and they will love you to-day; but they
+will rob and murder you to-morrow, if they see the chance of gaining by
+the transaction."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come, I won't have our boys maligned. I have lived among them
+for years, remember, while you are only a new-comer. Granted that
+they are greedy. They are only greedy as children are. They are like
+children——"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. They are like children. They could not be like anything
+worse."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried Patrington, with a look of horror, "have you no faith in
+the goodness and purity of a child?"</p>
+
+<p>"In its goodness, not a whit! Purity, yes; the purity of ignorance,
+which we call innocence, and pretend to admire as an exquisite and
+touching attribute of the undeveloped human being. These blackies are
+just as good and just as bad as the average child; greedy, grasping,
+selfish; selfish, grasping, greedy; ready to kiss the feet of the man
+who comes back to the village with an antelope on his shoulder; ready
+to send a poisoned arrow after him if on parting company he refuses to
+be swindled out of cloth or beads. They are bad, Patrington—if I were
+not a disciple of Locke, I would say they are innately bad. But what
+does that matter? We are all bad."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pleasant way you have of looking at life and your fellow-men!"
+said Patrington.</p>
+
+<p>"I look life and my fellow-man full in the face, and I ask myself if
+there is any man living whose nature—noble, perhaps, according to the
+world's esteem—does not include a latent capacity for evil. Every
+man and every woman, the best as well as the worst, is a potential
+criminal. Do you think <i>that</i> Macbeth who came over the heath at
+sundown after the battle, flushed with victory, was a scoundrel? Not
+he. There was not a captain in the Scottish army more loyal to his
+king. He was only an ambitious man. Temptation and opportunity did all
+the rest. Temptation, were it only strong enough, and opportunity,
+would make a murderer of you or me."</p>
+
+<p>"'Lead us not into temptation.' Oh, wondrous wise and simple prayer,
+which riseth every night and morning out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings over all the Christian world, and in a few brief phrases
+includes every aspiration needful for humanity!" said Cecil Patrington,
+who was in matters theological just where he had been when his boyish
+head was bowed under the Episcopal hand on the day of his confirmation.</p>
+
+<p>Far away from new books and new opinions, knowing not the names of
+Spencer or Clifford, Schopenhauer or Hartmann, this rough traveller's
+religion was the unquestioning faith of Paul Dombey, of Hester
+Summerson and Agnes Whitfield and Little Nell, of all the gentlest
+creatures in the dream-world of Charles Dickens.</p>
+
+<p>There was leisure and to spare for argument and discussion here in this
+quiet settlement on the shore of the great lake. The travellers had
+established themselves in a deserted <i>tembe</i>, which had been allotted
+to them by the Arab chieftain of the land, and which was pleasantly
+situated on a ridge of rising ground about a mile from the busy village
+of Ujiji. They had done all that laborious ingenuity could do to purify
+the rough clay structure, ridding it as far as possible of the plague
+of insects that crawled in the darkness below or buzzed in the thatch
+above, of the rats which the dusk of evening brought out in gay and
+familiar riot, and the snakes that followed in their train, and the
+huge black spiders, whose webs choked every corner. They had knocked
+out openings under the deep eaves of the thatched roof—openings which
+allowed of cross-currents of air, and were regarded by their Zanzibaris
+and Unyanyembis with absolute horror. Only once in their pilgrimage had
+the travellers found a hut with windows.</p>
+
+<p>"What does a man want in his <i>tembe</i> but warmth and shelter? And how
+can these white men be so foolish as to make openings that let in the
+cold?" argued the native mind; nor was the native mind less exercised
+by the trouble these three white men took to keep their <i>tembe</i> and its
+surroundings, the verandah, the ground about it, severely clean, or by
+their war of extermination against that insect life whose ravages the
+African suffers with a stoical indifference.</p>
+
+<p>The travellers had established themselves in this convenient
+spot—close to the port and market of Ujiji—to wait for the Masika,
+the season of rain that raineth every day—rain that closes round
+the camp like a dense wall of water—such rain as a man must go to
+the tropics to see, and which, once having seen, he is not likely to
+forget. They could hardly be better off anywhere, when the rains of
+April should come upon them, than they would be here. The natives were
+friendly; friendly too, friendly and kind and helpful, was the mighty
+Arab chief Roumariza, the white Arab, sovereign lord of these regions,
+sole master here, where the sceptre of the Sultan of Zanzibar reaches
+not: a man whose word is law, and in whose hand is plenty.</p>
+
+<p>Roumariza looked upon Cecil Patrington's party with the eye of favour,
+and upon Patrington as an old friend—nay, almost a subject of his own,
+so familiar was Patrington's bronzed face in those regions, whither
+he had come close upon the footsteps of Cameron, and when that lake
+land of tropical Africa was still a new world, untrodden by the white
+man's foot, the northern shores of the lake still unexplored, the vast
+country of Rua unknown even to the Arabs.</p>
+
+<p>At Ujiji provisions were plentiful and cheap. At Ujiji there were
+boat-builders; and canoes and rowers were at hand for the exploration
+of the vast fresh-water sea. Indeed, there was only too much
+civilization and human life to please that son of the wilderness, Cecil
+Patrington.</p>
+
+<p>"I love the unknown better than the known," he said. "We shall never
+see the lake again as Burton saw it—before ever the sound of engine
+and paddle-wheel had been heard on that broad blue expanse, when the
+monkeys chattered and screamed and slung themselves from tree to tree
+in a tumult of wonder at sight of the white wayfarer. Nobody can ever
+enjoy the sense of rapture and surprise that took Cameron's breath away
+as he looked down from the hills and saw the wide-reaching, pale blue
+water flashing in the sun. He took the lake itself for a cloud at the
+first glance, and a little islet for the lake, and asked his men, with
+bitterest chagrin, 'Is this all?' And then the niggers pointed, and
+these vast waters spread themselves out of the cloud, and he saw this
+mighty sea shining out of its dark frame of mountain and plain forest.
+Jupiter, what a moment! <i>I</i> could never enjoy that surprise. I had read
+Cameron's book, and he had discounted the situation for me; he had
+swindled me out of my emotions. I knew the breadth and length of the
+lake to within a mile—no chance of mistake for <i>me</i>. Yes, I said. Here
+is the Tanganyika, and it is a very fine sheet of blue water; and pray
+where is the Swiss porter to take my luggage? or where shall I find the
+omnibus for the best hotel? Mark me, lads, before we have been long
+underground, there will be hotels and omnibuses and Swiss porters, and
+the Cooks and Gazes of the future will deal in through tickets to the
+African lakes, and this great heart of Africa will be the Englishman's
+favourite holiday ground. Let but the tramway Stanley talks about be
+laid from Bagamoyo to the interior, and 'Arry will be lord of Central
+Africa, as he is of the rest of the earth."</p>
+
+<p>Idle talk in idle hours beside the camp-fire. Though the days were as
+sunny and summer-like as February on the Riviera, the nights were cold;
+and after sundown masters and men liked to sit by their fires and watch
+the pine-wood crackle and the flames leap through the smoke like living
+things, vanish and reappear, fade into darkness or flicker into light
+with swifter and more sudden movement than even the thoughts of the men
+who watched them.</p>
+
+<p>The porters and servants had their own huts and their own fires. They
+had made a rough stockade round the cluster of bee-hive huts—a snug
+settlement, which Allan compared to a mediæval fortress, one of the
+Scottish castles, whose inhabitants live and move in the pages of the
+Wizard of the North. Allan was a devoted worshipper of Scott, whom
+he held second only to Shakespeare; and as Cecil Patrington claimed
+exactly this position for Charles Dickens, the question afforded an
+inexhaustible subject for argument, sometimes mild and philosophical,
+sometimes vehement and angry, to which Geoffrey listened yawningly, or
+into which he plunged with superior vehemence and arbitrary assertion
+if it were his humour to be interested.</p>
+
+<p>In a land where there was no daily record of what mankind were doing,
+no newspaper at morning and evening recounting the last pages of
+the world's history, telling the story of yesterday's crimes and
+catastrophes, sickness and death, wrong and right, evil and good,
+adventures, successes, failures, inventions, gains and losses—every
+movement near or far in the great mill-wheel of human life—deprived
+of newspapers, of civilized society, and of all the business of
+money-getting and money-spending, it was only in such discussions
+that these exiles could find subjects for conversation. The contents
+of the letters and papers that had reached them three months before
+at Tabora, brought on from Zanzibar by an Arab caravan bound for the
+hunting-grounds of Rua, had been long exhausted; and now there was
+only the populace of the great romancers to talk about in the long
+chilly evenings, when they were in no mood for piquet or poker, and too
+lazy-brained for the arduous pleasures of chess. Then it was pleasant
+to lie in front of the fire and dispute the merits of one's favourite
+novelist, or some abstract question in the regions of philosophy.
+Sometimes the three men's talk would wander from Dickens to Plato, from
+Scott to Aristotle, from Macaulay to Thucydides. Allan was the most
+bookish of the three, and his knowledge of German enabled him to carry
+the lightest of travelling-libraries, in the shape of that handy series
+of little paper-covered books which includes the best German authors,
+together with translations of all the classics, ancient and modern,
+Greek, Latin, Norse, English, French, Italian, at twopence-halfpenny
+per volume—tiny booklets, of which he could carry half a dozen in the
+pockets of his flannel jacket, and which comprised the literature of
+the world in the smallest possible compass.</p>
+
+<p>For more than a year, these three men had been dependent upon one
+another's society for all intellectual solace, for all mental comfort;
+for more than a year they had looked upon no white faces but their
+own, so tanned and darkened by sun and weather that they had come to
+talk of themselves laughingly as white Arabs, or semi-negroids, and to
+opine that they would never look like Englishmen again. Indeed, Cecil
+Patrington, whose fifteen years of manhood had been chiefly spent
+under tropic stars, had no desire ever again to wear the sickly aspect
+of the home-keeping Englishman, whom he spoke of disparagingly as a
+turnip-face. Bronzed and battered, and hardened by the hard life of the
+desert, he laughed to scorn the amenities of modern civilization and
+the iron bondage of the claw-hammer coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Male humanity is divided into two classes—the men who dress for
+dinner, and the men who don't. I have always belonged to the latter
+half. We are the freemen; our shoulders have never bent under the
+yoke. I ran away from every school I was ever sent to. I played
+Hell and Tommy at my private tutor's Berkshire parsonage—set fire
+to his study when he locked me in, with an order to construe five
+tough pages of 'Thicksides,' for insubordination. I set fire to his
+waste-paper basket, lads, and his missus's muslin curtains. I knew
+I could put the fire out with his garden-hose, when I had given him
+a good scare; and after that little bit of arson, he was uncommonly
+glad to get rid of me. The old Herod had insisted on my dressing
+for dinner every night—putting on a claw-hammer coat and a white
+tie to eat barley-broth and boiled mutton. I wasn't going to stop
+in such a <i>bouge</i> as that. Then came the university. I was always
+able to scramble through an exam., so I matriculated with flying
+colours—passed my Little Go with a flourish of trumpets; and my people
+hoped I had turned over a new leaf. So I had, boys—a new leaf in a new
+book. I had begun to read the story of African travel—Livingstone,
+Burton, Baker, du Chaillu, Stanley. And from that hour I knew what
+manner of life I was meant for. I got my kind old dad to give me a
+biggish cheque—compounded with him, before my second term at Trinity
+was over, for the fifteen hundred my university career would have cost
+him—and sailed for the Cape; and from that day to this, except when I
+read a paper one night in Savile Row, I have never worn the garment of
+the white slave. I have never thrust these hairy arms of mine into the
+silk-lined sleeves of a swallow-tail coat."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>For the eldest traveller those days before the coming of the Masika
+left nothing to be desired. The long coasting voyages on the great
+fresh-water sea, the canoes following the romantic shores or threading
+the southern archipelago where the river Lofu pours its broad stream
+into the lake, were enough for exercise, excitement, variety.</p>
+
+<p>For Cecil Patrington—for the man who carried no burden of bitter
+memories, whose heart ached not with the yearning for home faces, the
+joys of Central Africa were all-sufficing. He had been happy in scenes
+far less lovely; happy in arid deserts such as the Roman poet pictured
+to himself in the luxurious repose of his suburban villa—deserts to be
+made endurable by the presence of Lalage. Cecil Patrington would not
+have exchanged his Winchester rifle for the loveliest Lalage; he wanted
+to kill, not to be killed. No sweetly smiling, no prettily prattling
+society would have made up to him for the lack of big game and the
+means of slaughter. Perhaps he, too, had dreamed his dream, even as Mr.
+Jaggers had. There is no man so unlikely of aspect that he may not once
+have been a lover. Is not the faithfullest, fondest lover in all modern
+fiction the hunchback Quasimodo? But if this rough sportsman had ever
+succumbed to the common fever, had ever sighed and suffered, his malady
+was a thing of the remote past. In his most confidential talk there had
+never been the faintest indication of a romantic attachment.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did I never marry?" he echoed, when the question was asked
+jestingly, beside the camp-fire, in the early stages of their journey.
+"I had neither time nor inclination, nor money to waste upon such an
+expensive toy as a wife; a wife who would eat her head off in England
+while I was knocking about over here, a wife who would cost me more
+than a caravan."</p>
+
+<p>This was all that Mr. Patrington ever said about the matrimonial
+question; but marriage is a subject upon which some men never reveal
+their real thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>He took life as merrily as if it had been a march in a comic opera;
+and in the presence of his cheerfulness the two young men kept their
+troubles to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Had Allan forgotten Suzette under those tropic stars? No, he had not
+achieved forgetfulness; but he had learnt to live without love, without
+the light of a fair woman's face; and in a modified way to be happy.
+The changes and chances, difficulties, accidents, and adventures of the
+journey between the coast and Tabora had kept his mind fully occupied.
+Fever, and recovery from fever; failure or success with his gun;
+difficult negotiations with village sultans; and even an occasional
+skirmish in which the poisoned arrows flew fast, and the stern
+necessity of firing on their assailants had stared them in the face;
+all these things had left little leisure for love-sick dreams, for fond
+regrets.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">THE MEETING-PLACE OF WATERS.</p>
+
+
+<p>At Tabora there had been a long halt, a delay forced upon the
+travellers by the conditions of climate, by the sickness and the
+idleness of their caravan; but this interval of rest had not been
+altogether disagreeable. The place was a place of fatness, a settlement
+in the midst of a fertile plan where the flocks and herds, the Arab
+population, the pastoral life suggested those familiar pictures
+in that first book of ancient history which the child takes into
+his newly awakened consciousness; and which the hard and battered
+wayfarer—believer or agnostic—loves and admires to the end of life.
+In just such a scene as this Rebecca might have given Isaac the fateful
+draught of water from the wayside well; upon just such a level pasture
+Joseph and his brethren might have tended their flocks and watched the
+stars. The visions of the young dreamer would have shown him this pale
+milky azure, over-arching the rich level where the sheaves bowed down
+to his sheaves; and in just such a reposeful atmosphere would he have
+laid himself down for the noontide siesta, and let his fancy slide into
+the dim labyrinth of dreamland.</p>
+
+<p>At Tabora there had been overmuch time for thought, and the yearning
+for a far-away face must needs have been in the hearts of both those
+young Englishmen, whose bronzed features were sternly and steadily set
+with the resolute calm of men who do not mean to waste in despair and
+die for love of the fairest woman upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>Often and often in the dusk, Allan heard his comrade's rich baritone
+rolling out that old song—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"Shall I, wasting in despair,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Die, because a woman's fair?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Or make pale my cheeks with care</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Because another's rosy are?"</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The voice thrilled him. What a gift is that music which gives a man
+power over his fellow-men? Geoffrey's fiddle talked to them nearly
+every night beside the camp-fire, talked to them sometimes at daybreak,
+when its owner had been sleepless; for that restless spirit had
+watched too many long blank hours in the course of his travels. It had
+been hard work to convey that fiddle-case across the rolling woods,
+through swamp and river, guarded from the crass stupidity of native
+porters—from the obstinacy of the African donkey—the curiosity of the
+inhabitants of the villages on the way. Geoffrey had carried it himself
+for the greater part of the journey; refusing to trust Arab or Negroid
+with so precious a burden. Riding or walking, he had managed to take
+care of his little Amati, the smallest but not the least valuable of
+all his fiddles.</p>
+
+<p>There were some among his dark followers to whom Geoffrey's Amati
+was an enchanted thing, a thing that ought to have been alive if
+it was not; indeed, there were some who secretly believed that it
+was a living creature. The velvet nest in which he kept the strange
+thing, the delicate care with which he laid it in that luxurious
+resting-place, or took it out into the light of day; the loving
+movement with which he rested his chin on the shining wood, while his
+long lissome fingers twined themselves caressingly about the creature's
+neck; the strange light that came into his eyes as he drew the bow
+across the strings, and the ineffable sounds which those strings gave
+forth; all these were tokens of a living presence, a something to be
+loved and feared.</p>
+
+<p>When he tuned his fiddle, they thought that he was punishing it, and
+that it shrieked and groaned in its agony. Why else were those sounds
+so harsh and discordant, so unlike the melting strains which the
+thing gave forth when he laid his chin upon it and loved it, when his
+lips smiled, and his melancholy eyes looked far away into the purple
+distances, across the woods and the plains, to the remoteness of the
+mountain range beyond?</p>
+
+<p>If it were not actually alive—if it had neither heart nor blood as
+they had, why, then, it was a familiar demon—a charm—by which he who
+possessed it could influence his fellow-men. He could rouse them to
+savage raptures, to shrieks and wild leaps that were meant for dancing.
+He could melt them to tears.</p>
+
+<p>From the first hour when he played by the camp-fire, on the third
+night after they left Bagamoyo, Geoffrey's music had given him a hold
+over the more intelligent members of the caravan. They had listened at
+first almost as the dog listens, and had been ready to lift up their
+heads and howl as the dog howls. But gradually those singing sounds had
+exercised a soothing influence, they had sprawled at his feet, a ring
+of listeners, with elbows on the ground, looking up at him out of onyx
+eyes that flashed in the firelight.</p>
+
+<p>Among their followers there were some Makololos from the Shire Valley,
+men of superior courage and determination, a finer race than the common
+herd of African porters, of the same race as those faithful followers
+of Livingstone's first great journey, who afterwards became chiefs and
+rulers of the land. These Makololos adored Geoffrey. His music, the
+achievements of his Winchester rifle, that ardent fitful temperament of
+his, exercised an extraordinary influence over these men; and it seemed
+as if they would have followed him without fee or reward, for sheer
+love of the man himself; not for meat, and cloth, and beads, and brass
+wire.</p>
+
+<p>Never a word said Geoffrey or Allan of that one woman whose image
+filled the minds of both. They talked of other people freely enough.
+Each spoke of his mother tenderly, regretfully even, Allan taking
+comfort from the thought of Lady Emily's delight in her farm, the
+occupation and interest which every change of the seasons brought
+for her. Such letters as had reached him on his wanderings had been
+resigned and uncomplaining, although dwelling sorrowfully upon the
+husband she had lost.</p>
+
+<p>"He used to live so much apart, shut in his library day after day,
+and only joining me in the evening, that I could hardly have believed
+my life could seem so empty without him. But I know now how much his
+presence in the house—even his silent, unseen presence—meant for
+me; and I realize now how often I used to go to him, interrupting his
+dreamy life with my petty household questions, my little bits of news
+from the farmyard or the cow-houses, or the garden. He was so kind
+and sympathetic. He would look up from his books to interest himself
+in some story about my Brahmas or my Cochins, and if he was bored, he
+never allowed me to see the faintest sign of impatience. I think he was
+the best and truest man that ever lived. And my Allan is like him. May
+God protect and bless my dearest, my only dear, in all the perils of
+the desert!"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily's mental picture of Africa represented one far-reaching
+waste of level sand, a desert flatness incompatible with a spherical
+earth, pervaded by camels, and occasionally varied by a mirage. A
+pair of pyramids—like tall candlesticks at the end of a board-room
+table—a sphinx and a crocodily river occupied the north-east corner of
+this vast plateau, while the south-west was distinguished by a colony
+of ostriches, and the place to which Indian officials used to resort
+for change of air some fifty years since. To these narrow limits were
+restricted Lady Emily's notions of the continent on which her son
+was now a wanderer. She feared that if he got out of the way of the
+crocodiles he might fall in with the ostriches, which doubtless were
+dangerous when encountered in large numbers; and she shuddered at the
+sight of her feather fan.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock's letters were in a sadder strain. The key was distinctly
+minor. She wrote of her loneliness; of the monotonous days; the longing
+for the face that had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"My organ talks to me of you—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, all
+tell me the same story. You are far away—away for a long time—and
+life is very sad."</p>
+
+<p>There was not a word of Suzette in those letters. If she was ever at
+the Manor, if Mrs. Wornock retained her affection and found solace in
+her society, there was no hint of that consoling presence. It might
+be that the girl hated the house because of that vehement stormy love
+which had assailed her there; the love that would not let her be
+faithful to a more reasonable lover.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet—and yet!" thought Geoffrey, hardly caring even in his own
+mind to put the question positively.</p>
+
+<p>In his innermost consciousness there was the belief that she loved
+him—him, Geoffrey Wornock—that she had refused him perversely and
+foolishly, out of a mistaken sense of honour. She would not marry Allan
+whom she did not love; and she refused to marry Geoffrey whom she did
+love, in order to spare her jilted lover the pain of seeing a rival's
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not beaten yet," Geoffrey told himself. "When I go back to
+England—if I but find her free—I shall try again. Allan's wounds
+will have healed by that time; and even her Quixotic temper will have
+satisfied itself by the sacrifice of two years of her lover's life."</p>
+
+<p>"When I go back!" Musing sometimes on that prospect of the homeward
+journey, whether returning by the road they had come, or dropping down
+southward by Trivier's route to the Nyassa and the Zambesi, or by the
+more adventurous westward line by the forest and the Congo, the way
+by which Trivier had come to the Lake, whichever way were eventually
+chosen, Geoffrey asked himself if the three travellers would all go
+back?</p>
+
+<p>"One shall be taken and the other left."</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the record of African travel, there is that dark feature
+of the story; the traveller who is left behind. Sometimes it is the
+fever fiend that lays a scorching hand upon the fearless adventurer,
+flings him down to suffer thirst and pain and heaviness, and delirious
+horrors, in the foul darkness of a bee-hive hut, to die in a dream
+of home, with shadowy faces looking down at him, familiar voices
+talking with him. Sometimes he falls in a ring of savage foes, hemmed
+round with hideous faces, foes as fierce and implacable as lion or
+leopard; foes who kill for the sake of killing; or cannibals, for
+whom a murdered man provides the choicest banquet. The hazards of the
+pilgrimage take every shape, death by drowning, death by massacre,
+death by small-pox or jungle fever, death by starvation, by the
+bursting of a gun, by beasts of prey. In every story of travel there
+is always that dark page which tells of the man who is left. Dillon,
+Farquhar, the two Pococks, Jameson, Bartelott, Weissemburger—the
+ghosts that haunt the pathways of tropical Africa are many; but those
+melancholy shadows exercise no deterring influence on the traveller who
+sets out to-day, strong, elate, hopeful, inspired by an eager curiosity
+which takes no heed of trouble or of risk.</p>
+
+<p>"Which of us three is to stay behind?" Geoffrey asked himself in a
+gloomy wonder. Not Patrington. He had come to the stage at which the
+traveller bears a charmed life. It is seldom the experienced wanderer,
+the man of many journeys, who falls by the wayside. Hot-headed youth,
+bold in its ignorance of danger, perishes like a bird caught in a trap.
+The strong frame of the trained athlete shrivels like a leaf in the hot
+blast of fever. The careless boatman tempts the perils of a difficult
+passage, and is swept over the stony bed of the torrent, and vanishes
+in the fathomless pool. The hardened traveller knows what he is about,
+and can reckon with the forces of that gigantic nature which he faces
+and defies. It is the tyro who pays the price of his inexperience, and,
+in the history of African travel, the survival of the fittest is the
+rule.</p>
+
+<p>"Which of us?" That question had entered into the very fabric of
+Geoffrey's thoughts. Sometimes, sitting by the camp-fire as the
+chillness of night crept round them, a grisly fancy would flash across
+his reverie, and he would think that the pale mist that rose about
+Allan's figure, on the other side of the circle, was the shroud which
+the Highlander sees upon the shoulders of a friend marked for death.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be Allan?" If it were Allan, he, Geoffrey, would hasten
+home to tell the sad story, and then—to claim her whose too-tender
+conscientiousness had refused happiness at Allan's expense. Allan gone,
+there would be no reason why she should deny her love.</p>
+
+<p>"For I know, I know that she loves me," Geoffrey repeated to himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had been telling himself that story ever since he left England. No
+denial from those lovely lips, no words of scorn, would convince him
+that he was unloved. He could recall looks and tones that told another
+story. He had seen the gradual change in her which told of an awakening
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>"She never knew what love means till she knew me," he told himself.
+Did he wish for Allan's death? No, there was no such hideous thought
+in the dark labyrinth of his mind; or, at least, he believed that
+there was not. One must perish! He had so brooded over the story
+of former victims that he had taught himself to look upon one lost
+life as inevitable. But the lot was as likely to fall upon him as
+upon Allan. More likely, since his habits were more reckless and more
+adventurous than Allan's. If there was danger to be found, he and his
+Makololos courted it. Shooting expeditions, raids upon unfriendly
+villages, hand-to-hand skirmishes with Mirambo's brigand tribes; he
+and his Makololos were ready for anything. He had travelled over
+hundreds of miles with his warlike little gang—exploring, shooting,
+fighting—while Patrington and Allan were living in dreamy inaction,
+waiting for better weather, or for the recovery of half a dozen
+ailing pagazis. Assuredly he who ran such superfluous risks was the
+more likely to fall by the way. Well, death is a solution of all
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>"If I am dead, it will matter to me very little that my bright,
+ineffable coquette is transformed into a sober, middle-aged wife,
+and that she and Allan are smiling at each other across the family
+breakfast-table, in their calm heaven of domestic hum-drum. But while I
+live and am young I shall think of her and long for her, and hate the
+lucky wretch who wins her. If we should both go back; if Patrington's
+tough bones are the bones that are to whiten by the way, and not
+Allan's or mine; why, then, we shall again be rivals; and the years of
+exile will be only a dream that we have dreamt."</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange position in which these two young men found
+themselves. Friends, almost as brothers in the close intimacy of that
+solitude of three, only three civilized thinking beings amidst a crowd
+of creatures who seemed as far apart as if they had belonged to the
+forest fauna—the great antelope family—or the simian race; these two,
+so nearly of an age, reared in the same country and the same social
+sphere, united and sympathetic at every point of contact between mind
+and mind, and yet keeping this one deep gulf of silence between them.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke to each other freely of all things, except of her; and
+yet each knew that she was the one absorbing subject in the mind of
+the other. Each knew that her image went along with them, was never
+absent, never less distinctly lovely, even when the way was fullest of
+hardship and peril, when every yard of progress meant a struggle with
+thorns that tore them, and brambles that lashed them, and the tough,
+rank verdure-carpet that clogged their feet. Neither had ever ceased to
+remember her, or to think of these adventurous days as anything else
+than exile from her. Whatever interest or enjoyment there might be in
+that varied experience of a land where beauty and ugliness alternated
+with startling transitions, it was not possible that either Allan or
+Geoffrey could forget the reason they were there, far from the fair
+faces of women, and from all the ease and pleasantness of civilized
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey had the better chance of oblivion, since those wild excursions
+and explorations of his afforded the excitement of the untrodden and
+the hazardous. The caravan road from the coast to Ujiji, with all its
+varieties of hardship, was too beaten a track for this fiery spirit.
+At every halting-place he went off at a tangent; and if his comrades
+threatened not to wait for his return, he would pledge himself to
+rejoin them further on, laughing to scorn every suggestion that he and
+his little company of Makololos and Wanyamwesis could lose themselves
+in the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>He was more in touch with the men than Allan—as familiar with their
+ways and ideas as Patrington after many years of travel. He had learnt
+their languages with a marvellous quickness—not the copious language
+of civilization and literature, be it remembered, but the concise
+vocabulary of the camp and the hunting-ground, the river and the
+road. He understood his men and their different temperaments as few
+travellers learn to understand, or desire to understand them. And yet
+there was but little Christian benevolence at the root of this quick
+sympathy and comprehension. Although, as an Englishman, Geoffrey would
+have given no sanction to the sale and barter of his fellow-creatures,
+these dark servants were to him no more than slaves—so much carrying
+power and so much fighting power, subject to his domination. It pleased
+him to know their characters, to be able to play upon their strength
+and weakness, their ferocity and their greed, just as surely as he
+manipulated the stops of the great organ at Discombe.</p>
+
+<p>These Africans gave a name of their own choosing to almost everybody.
+They christened the great Sultan of the interior Tippo-Tib, because
+of a curious blinking of his eyes. Captain Trivier obtained his
+nickname on account of his eye-glass. Another man was named after
+his spectacles. The Sultan of Ujiji was called Roumariza—"It is
+ended,"—because he had succeeded in reducing belligerent tribes to
+peaceful settlement. For the Englishman in particular, Africa could
+always find a nickname, based on some insignificant detail of manner or
+appearance. For Englishmen in general she had found a nobler-sounding
+name. She called them Sons of Fire.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey, with his tireless energy, his rapid decision, his angry
+impatience of delay, seemed to his followers the very highest exemplar
+of the fiery race that can persevere and conquer difficulties which the
+native of the soil recoils from as insurmountable.</p>
+
+<p>Sons of Fire! Were they not worthy of the name, these white men, when
+far out in midstream, while the boatmen bent and cowered over their
+paddles, these Englishmen looked in the face of the lightning and
+sat calm and unmoved while day darkened to the pitchy blackness of a
+starless midnight, and the thunder reverberated from hill to hill,
+with roar upon roar and peal upon peal, like the booming of heavy
+batteries, and anon crashed and rattled with a sharper, nearer sound.
+Blinding lightning, torrential rain, war of thunder and tempestuous
+waters, were all as nothing to these sons of fire. Their spirits rose
+amidst hurricane or thunderstorm; they were full of life and gaiety
+while the cockleshell canoes were being tossed upon the short, choppy
+sea, like forest leaves upon a forest brook, and when every sudden gust
+threatened destruction. They laughed at peril, and insisted upon having
+the canoes out when their native followers saw danger riding on the
+wind and death brooding over the waters. They met the spirit of murder,
+and were not afraid. They lay down to sleep in the midst of an unknown
+wilderness, with savage beasts lurking in the darkness that surrounded
+their tents. They forded rivers that swarmed with crocodiles—horrible
+stealthy creatures, swimming deep down below the surface of the water,
+the placid, beautiful water, with lotus flowers sleeping in the
+sunlight, and scaly monsters waiting underneath in the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Panther, crocodile, tempest, fever, or sunstroke, poisoned arrows from
+murderous foes, were only so many varieties in the story of adventure.
+Through every vicissitude the ready wit and calm courage of the
+Englishmen rose superior to accident, discomfort, or danger; and to
+the native temper these wanderers from a far country, an island which
+they had heard of as a speck in a narrow sea, seemed men of iron with
+souls of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey would admit no malingering, would accept no idle pretexts for
+inaction or delay. His little band, picked out from the ruck of their
+porters, were always on the move, save in those rainy interludes which
+made movement impossible; and even then Geoffrey fretted and fumed, and
+was inclined to question the impracticability of a hunting expedition
+through those torrential rains.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever hear of a fox-hunter stopping at home because of a wet
+day?" he asked Cecil Patrington, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever see such rain as this in a fox-hunting country?" retorted
+Patrington, pointing through an opening in the door of the hut to the
+sheet of falling water, which blotted out all beyond, and splashed with
+a thud into the pool that filled the enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>The deep eaves kept the rain out of the huts, but not without
+occasional accident—spoilt provisions, damp gunpowder. It was a rude
+awakening from dreams of home to find one's bed afloat on a pond of
+rising waters.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey had taken upon himself the task of providing meat for the
+party, Patrington's lazy, happy-go-lucky temper readily ceding that
+post of distinction to the new-comer. A man who had shot every species
+of beast that inhabits the great continent could easily surrender the
+privilege of finding meat-dinners along the route; so he only used his
+gun when the quarry was worthy and his humour prompted; and for the
+most part smoked the pipe of peace and read Dickens in the repose of a
+day's halt, while Geoffrey roamed off with his Winchester rifle and his
+little band of obsequious dark-skins.</p>
+
+<p>And now in this period of waiting there was the great inland sea to
+explore; those romantic shores with their wealth of animal life; those
+waters teeming with fish, hemmed round and guarded by the majesty
+of mountains whose lofty peaks and hollows no foot of man had ever
+trodden. There was plenty of scope for movement and adventure here, so
+long as the rains held off; and the three men made good use of their
+time, and the canoes were rarely idle, or the rowers allowed to shirk
+upon the favourite pretence of bad weather.</p>
+
+<p>So long as there was something to be done, Geoffrey and Allan were
+happy; but with every interval of repose there came the familiar
+heartache, the longing for home-faces, the sense of disappointment and
+loss.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes alone by the lake, while the lamp was shining on the faces of
+his two friends yonder in the verandah, where they sat playing chess,
+alone in the awful stillness of that vast mountain gorge, the waters
+rippling with placid movement, only faintly flecked with whiteness here
+and there in the blue distance, Geoffrey's longing for that vanished
+face grew to an almost unendurable agony. He felt as if he could bear
+this anguish of severance no more. He began to calculate the length
+of the homeward journey. Oh, the weariness of it! for him for whose
+impatience the fastest express train would be too slow. He shrank
+appalled from the contemplation of the distance that he had put between
+himself and the woman he loved, the intolerable distance—thousands
+and thousands of miles—and the difficulties and vicissitudes of the
+journey; all the forces of tropical nature to contend with, dependent
+upon savages, subject to fevers that hinder and stop the eager feet,
+and lay the weary body low, a helpless log—to waste days and nights
+in burning agony—to awaken and find a caravan dwindled by desertion,
+luggage plundered, new impediments to progress.</p>
+
+<p>Why had he been so mad as to come here? That was the question which
+he asked himself again and again in the stillness of night, when the
+mountain-peaks stood out in silvery whiteness and the mountain-chasms
+were pits of blackest shadow. Why had he, a free agent, master of his
+life and its golden opportunities, made himself a voluntary exile?</p>
+
+<p>"What demon of revolt and impatience drove me out into the wilderness,
+when I ought to have followed her and refused to believe in her
+unkindness, and insisted upon being heard, and heard again, and
+rejected again, only to be accepted later? Did I not know, in my heart
+of hearts, that she loved me? And now she will believe no more in my
+love. The man who could leave her, who could try to cure himself of
+his passion for her—such a man is unworthy to be remembered. Some
+one else will appear upon the scene—that unknown rival whom no man
+fears or foresees till the hour sounds and he is there—some arrogant
+lover, utterly unlike Allan or me—who will not adore her as we have
+adored—who will approach her not as a slave, but as a master, who will
+win her in a month, in a week, with fierce swift wooing, startle and
+scare her into loving him, win her by a <i>coup de main</i>. That is the
+sort of thing that will happen. It is happening now, perhaps. While
+I am standing by these African waters, sick with longing for her. Is
+it night and moonlight in England, I wonder? Are she and her new
+lover walking in the old sleepy garden? No, it is winter there; they
+are sitting at the piano, perhaps, in the lamplight, her little hands
+moving about the keys—he listening and pretending to admire, knowing
+and caring no more about music than the coarsest of my Pagazis. Oh, it
+is maddening to think of how I am losing her! And I came here to cure
+myself of loving her. Cure! There is no cure for such a passion as
+mine. It grows with absence—it strengthens with time."</p>
+
+<p>And now the Masika, the dreaded rainy season began; the rain-sun burnt
+with a sickly oppressive heat; and over all nature there crept the
+deathlike silence that comes before a storm. No longer was heard the
+wail of the fish-eagle calling his mate, and the answering call from
+afar. No diver flitted, black, long, and lanky, over the waters. The
+big white and grey kingfisher had vanished from his perch upon the
+branches that overhang the lake. Even the ranæ in the sedges, noisiest
+of birds for the most part, were mute in anticipatory terror. Thick
+darkness brooded over the long line of hills on the further side of
+the lake; and from Ujiji nothing could be seen but a waste of livid
+waters touched here and there with patches of white. Then through that
+dreadful stillness rolled the long low muttering of the thunder, and
+lightning flashes, pale and sickly, pierced the overhanging pall of
+night-in-day—and then the tempest, in all its majesty of terror, the
+roar of winds and waters, the artillery of heaven pealing, crackling,
+rattling, booming from yonder fortress of unseen giants, the citadel of
+untrodden hills.</p>
+
+<p>And after the storm the rain, the ceaseless, hopeless, melancholy rain,
+a wall of water shutting out the world. There was nothing for it but to
+sit in the rough shelter of the tembe, and amuse one's self as best one
+might, cleaning guns and fishing-tackle, mending nets, playing cards or
+chess, reading, talking, disputing, execrating the enforced inaction,
+the deadly monotony. For Geoffrey's restless spirit that rainy season
+was absolute torture; and it needed all the forbearance and good
+nature of his companions to bear with his irritability and fretful
+complaining against inexorable nature.</p>
+
+<p>Even Patrington, the best-tempered, most easy-going of men, was
+disgusted at Geoffrey's feverish impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to admire the wisdom of a vulgar proverb—two's company,
+three's none," he said to Allan across the chess-board, as they
+arranged their men, sitting in the light of the wood fire, while
+Geoffrey lay fast asleep in his hammock after the weariness of
+sleepless nights. "Your friend is a very bad traveller—a fine-weather
+traveller, a man who must have sport and variety and progress all
+along the route. That kind of man isn't a pleasant companion in
+Central Africa. If courage and activity are essential, patience is no
+less needed. Your friend has plenty of pluck; but there's too much
+quicksilver in his veins. He exercises an extraordinary influence upon
+the men; but he is just the kind of fellow to quarrel with them and
+get murdered by them, if he were left too much to his own devices.
+It would need very little for them to think that fiddle of his an
+evil spirit, and smash his skull with it. On the whole, Carew, I wish
+you and I were alone, for with yonder gentleman," pointing to the
+motionless figure under the striped rug, "I feel as if I had undertaken
+the care of a troublesome child; and Africa, don't you know, isn't the
+right place for spoilt brats."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey will be himself again when these beastly rains are over. He's
+a splendid fellow, and I know you like him."</p>
+
+<p>"Like him? Of course I like him. Nobody could help liking him. He has
+the knack of making himself liked, loved almost, but he's a crank for
+all that. Allan, mark my words, that young man is a crank."</p>
+
+<p>Allan's heart sank at this expression of opinion, short, sharp,
+decisive. He remembered what he had heard of Geoffrey's birth from the
+lips of Geoffrey's mother. Could one expect perfect soundness of brain,
+perfect balance of mind and judgment in a man who had entered life in a
+world of dreams and hallucinations?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">KIGAMBO.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+
+
+<p>The rainy season was over. The moving wall of water was down. The
+travellers were no longer kept awake at night by the ceaseless roar of
+the rain. The lake lay stretched before them, sapphire dark under the
+milky blueness of the tropical sky. Kingfisher and fish-eagle, and all
+the birds that haunt those waters, hovered, or perched on the trees or
+along the bank, or skimmed the shining surface of the great fresh-water
+sea. And now the canoes were manned, and the three white men and their
+followers were setting their faces towards Manyema, the cannibal
+country, dreaded by Wangana and Wanyamwesis, and even by the bolder
+Makololos.</p>
+
+
+<p>For this stage of their journey they were travelling in a stronger
+company, having accepted the fellowship of an Arab caravan faring
+towards the Congo; and this larger troop gave an air of new gaiety to
+their train. They had been forced to buy new stores of cloth and beads
+at Ujiji, Geoffrey's recklessness in rewarding his men, after every
+successful hunting expedition, having considerably reduced their stock.
+The cloth bought at Ujiji was dear and bad, and Cecil Patrington took
+Geoffrey to task with some severity; but his reproaches fell lightly
+upon that volatile nature.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember that the measure of the goods we carry is the measure of our
+lives," said the experienced traveller gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Providence will take care of us when our goods are gone," argued
+Geoffrey. "We shall fall in with some civilized Arabs who know the
+value of hard cash. I cannot believe in a country where a cheque-book
+is useless. We shall be within touch of the mercantile world when we
+get to Stanley Pool."</p>
+
+<p>"When!" echoed Patrington. "Hill and jungle, and desert and river,
+mutiny or desertion, pestilence and tempest, have to be accounted with
+before you see steamers and civilization. There's no use in glib talk
+of what can be done at Brazzaville or at Stanley Pool. Luckily we are
+going into a region where food is cheap—such as it is. But then, on
+the other hand, we may run out of quinine—and quinine sometimes means
+life."</p>
+
+<p>Summer was in the land when they crossed the great lake, stopping for
+a night or two on one of the principal islands, under the hospitable
+roof of a missionary station, where it was a new sensation to sit upon
+a chair, and taste a cup of coffee made in the European manner, and
+to see an Englishwoman's pleasant face and neat raiment. There was
+an English child also, "a real human child," as Geoffrey exclaimed,
+delighted at the phenomenon—a round-limbed, fat-cheeked rosy baby, who
+sat and watched the landing of the party from her perambulator, and
+patronized them, waving a welcome with chubby hands, as they scrambled
+out of the canoes—a child who had entered upon a world of black faces,
+and who may have fancied her mother and father monstrosities in a place
+where everybody else was black.</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast was this blue-eyed two-year-old to such infancy as
+they had seen in villages along their road, the brown naked creatures
+rolling and grovelling in the dirt, and looking more like pug-dogs than
+children!</p>
+
+<p>When they had bidden good-bye to the friendly missionary and his
+domestic circle, they were not without childish life upon their way,
+for the Arabs with whom they had joined company had some women in
+their train, one a slave with a couple of children; and as the Arab
+law does not recognize slavery under adult age, these brats of six and
+seven were free, and not being goods and chattels, no provision was
+allowed for them, and the mother had to feed them out of her own scanty
+rations.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey was on more familiar terms with the Arabs than either
+Patrington or Allan, and, on discovering the state of things with the
+native mother and her sons, he took these two morsels of dusky humanity
+into his service, and set them to clean pots and pans, and treated them
+as a kind of lap-dogs, and let them dance to his wild fiddle music in
+the firelight in front of the tents, and would not allow them to be
+punished for their depredations among the pannikins of rice or the
+baskets of bananas.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the swift and turbid Luama river, and encamped for a night
+upon its shores. And then came the harassing march in single file
+through the dense jungle—a hopeless monotony of rank foliage taller
+than the tallest of the travellers, a coarse and monstrous vegetation
+which lashed their faces and rent their clothing and caught their feet
+like wire snares set for poachers. Vain was it to put the porters with
+their loads in the forefront of the procession. The rank inexorable
+jungle closed behind them as they passed; and a four-hours' march
+through this pitiless scrub was worse than a ten-hours' tramp in the
+open.</p>
+
+<p>The days were sultry. The travellers deemed themselves lucky if the
+evening closed without a thunderstorm; and the storms in those regions
+were deadly. A fired roof and a blackened corpse in a hut next that
+occupied by the three friends testified to the awfulness of an African
+thunderstorm. The thatch blazed, the neighbours looked on, and the
+husband of the victim sat beside the disfigured form in a curious
+indifference, which might mean either bewilderment or want of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty years ago the catastrophe next door would have been assuredly
+put down to our account," said Patrington, as they sat at supper after
+the storm, "and we should have had to pay for that poor lady with our
+persons or our goods—our goods, for choice, so much merikani, or so
+many strings of sami sami. But since the advent of the Arabs, reason
+has begun to prevail over unreason. The influence of Islam makes for
+civilization."</p>
+
+<p>They found the people of Manyema, the reputed man-eaters, friendly,
+and willing to deal. Provisions were cheap. Fowls, eggs, maize, and
+sweet potatoes were to be had in abundance. The natives were civil,
+but curious and intrusive; and the sound of Geoffrey's amati was the
+signal for a crowd round the camping-place, a crowd that could only
+be dispersed by the sight of a revolver, the nature of which weapon
+seemed very clearly understood by these warriors of the lance and the
+knife. When the admiring throng waxed intrusive, and the black faces
+and filthy figures crowded the verandah, Cecil Patrington took out his
+pistols, and gave them a little lecture in their native tongue, with
+the promise of an illustration or two if they should refuse to depart.</p>
+
+<p>Or, were Geoffrey in the humour, he would push his way, playing,
+through that savage throng, and, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, would
+lead those human rats away towards hill or stream, jungle or plain,
+playing, playing some diabolical strain of Tartini's, or some still
+wilder war-song of the new Sclavonic school—Stojowski, Moszkowski,
+Wienianwowski—something thrilling, plaintive, frightening, appealing,
+which set those savage breasts on fire, and turned those savage heads
+like strong drink.</p>
+
+<p>"One shall be taken and the other left." That text would flash across
+Geoffrey Wornock's thoughts at the unlikeliest moments. It might have
+been a fiery scroll projected on the dark cloud-line of the thunderous
+eventide. It might have been the sharp shrill cry of some bird crossing
+the blue above his head, so unexpectedly, so strangely did the words
+recur to him. So far, in all the vicissitudes of the journey, the
+little band had held firmly on, with less than the average amount of
+suffering and inconvenience. There had been desertion, there had been
+death among their men; but on the Unyamwesi route it had been easy to
+repair all such losses, and their Wanyamwesis were in most respects the
+superiors of the Wangana they had lost by the way.</p>
+
+<p>So far, despite of some baddish bouts of fever, the dark, inexorable
+Shadow had held aloof. The dread of death had not been beside their
+camp-fires or about their bed.</p>
+
+<p>But now, in this region of tropical fertility, amidst a paradise of
+luxuriant verdure, sheltered by the vast mountain citadel that rises
+like a titanic wall above the western border of the Tanganyika, they
+came upon a spot where the fever-fiend, the impalpable, invisible,
+inexorable enemy reigned supreme. Geoffrey was the first to feel the
+poisonous influence of the atmosphere. He laid down his fiddle, and
+flung himself upon his bed, with aching back and weary limbs, one
+evening, after a day of casual roaming along the banks of a tributary
+stream.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been walking about too long," he said. "That's all that there is
+the matter with me."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"That's all!" But when daylight came he was in the unknown
+fever-country, the dreadful topsy-turvy world of delirium. He had two
+heads, and he wanted to shoot one of them. He tried to stand up and go
+across the hut to fetch the rifle that hung against the opposite wall,
+but his limbs refused to obey him. He lay groaning, helpless as an
+infant, muttering that the other head wouldn't let him sleep. The pain
+was all in that other head. In the long agony that followed all things
+were blank and dark; until, after five days of raging fever, the pulse
+grew regular again, the scorching body cooled down to the temperature
+of healthy life, and weak and wan, but rejoicing in freedom from pain,
+the patient came back to everyday life, and looked into the faces of
+his companions with eyes that saw the things that were, and not the
+spectral forms that people delirious dreams.</p>
+
+<p>"'One shall be taken,'" he muttered to himself, as he looked from Allan
+to Cecil, and back again. "I thought it was I. Then we are all three of
+us alive?" he said, with a catch in his voice that was almost a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Very much alive, and we hope to remain so," answered Patrington,
+cheeriest of travellers. "You've had a bad spell of the cursed
+mukurungu, which I suppose must have its fling for the next decade or
+two, until railroads, and hotels, and scientific drainage, and Swiss
+innkeepers have altered the climate for the better. You've been pretty
+bad, and you've kept us in a very unhealthy district, so as soon as
+ever you've picked up your strength, we'll move on."</p>
+
+<p>"I can start to-morrow morning. I feel as strong as a lion."</p>
+
+<p>"Does a lion's paw shake as your hand is shaking now? My dear Geoff,
+you are as weak as water. We'll give you three days to recruit. I
+am too hardened a subject for the mukurungu, which is a fever of
+acclimatization, for the most part, and I've been dosing Allan with
+quinine, and I've been doing a good deal of ambulance surgery among
+the natives, and we're a very popular party. They have seldom seen
+three white men in a bunch. Your fiddling, my medicine-chest and
+sticking-plaster, and Allan's good manners have made a great effect.
+The blackies are assured that we are all three sultans in our own
+country."</p>
+
+<p>"And our Arab friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they have gone on. We have only our own men with us now. Your
+Makololos have been miserable about you."</p>
+
+<p>They spent a jovial night, Geoffrey's spirits rising to wild gaiety,
+with that lightness which comes when a fever-patient has struggled
+through the thick cloud of strange fancies, the agony of throbbing
+brain and aching back.</p>
+
+<p>He tuned the fiddle that had been lying mute in its velvet nest. He
+tucked it lovingly under his chin, and laid his bow along the strings
+with light fingers that trembled a little in the rapture of that
+familiar touch.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I bore you very much if I play?" he asked, looking at his elder
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Bore us! Not a jot. I have sadly missed your wild strains. There has
+been a voice wanting—a voice that is almost human, and which seems so
+much a part of you that while <i>that</i> was dumb you seemed to be dead.
+Begin your spells. Play us something by one of your 'Owskis,—Jimowski,
+Bilowski, Bobowski—whichever you please."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey drew his bow across the strings with a swelling chord, a
+burst of bass music like the sudden pealing of an organ, and began a
+Walachian dirge.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that give you the scene?" he asked, pausing and looking round
+at them, after a tremendous presto movement. "Does it conjure up the
+funeral train, the wild wailing of the mourners, the groaning men,
+the shrieking women, even the whining and whimpering of the little
+children, the stormy sky, the thick darkness, the flare of the torches,
+the trampling of iron-shod hoofs? I can hear and see it all as I play."
+And then he began the slow movement, the awful ghostly adagio with
+its suggestion of all things horrible, its eccentric phrasing, and
+dissonant chords, shaping a vision of strange unearthly forms.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very jolly kind of music," Cecil Patrington said thoughtfully;
+"I mean jolly difficult, don't you know. But if you want my candid
+opinion as to what it suggests, I am free to confess it sounds to me
+like your improvised notion of the mukurungu—all fever and pain and
+confusion."</p>
+
+<p>"The mukurungu! Not half a bad name for a descriptive sonata!" laughed
+Geoffrey, putting his fiddle to bed.</p>
+
+<p>And then they brought out the cards, and played poker for cowries,
+Cecil Patrington, as usual, the winner, by reason of that inscrutable
+countenance of his, which had hardened itself in all the hazards of
+an adventurous career. They were particularly jovial that evening,
+and flung care to the winds that sobbed and muttered along the shore.
+Geoffrey's gaiety communicated itself to the other two. They drank
+their moderate potations; they smoked their pipes; and Patrington
+discoursed of an ideal settlement where the surplus population of
+Whitechapel and Bermondsey were to come and work in a new Arcadia, a
+place of flocks and herds and coffee-fields, under a smokeless heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"For my own satisfaction, I would have Africa untrodden and unknown,
+a world of wonder and mystery," he said; "but the beginning has been
+made, and the coming century will see every missionary settlement
+of to-day develop into a populous centre of enterprise and labour.
+Crowded-out England will come here, and thrive here, as it has thriven
+in less fertile lands. Englishmen will flock here for sport and
+pleasure and profit."</p>
+
+<p>"And these native sultans—these little kings and their peoples?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that is the problem! God grant there may be a bloodless solution!"</p>
+
+<p>That was the last night these three travellers ever sat together over
+their cards and pipes, ever laughed and talked together with hearts at
+ease. They were to resume their journey next morning; but when all was
+ready for the start, Allan discovered that Cecil Patrington was too ill
+to walk.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a bad night," he confessed; "the kind of night that lets
+one know one has a head belonging to one. But the men can carry me in
+a litter. I shall be all right to-morrow. I'd much rather we jogged
+along. This is a vile, feverish hole."</p>
+
+<p>There was no question of jogging along for this hardy traveller. The
+oppressive drowsiness, which is sometimes the first stage of malarial
+fever, held him like a spell. He looked at his companions dimly, with
+eyes that sparkled and yet were cloudy with involuntary tears. He could
+hardly see their anxious faces.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I'm in for it," he faltered. "I thought I was fever-proof."</p>
+
+<p>He sank upon the narrow camp-bed in a shivering fit, and Geoffrey
+and Allan spread their blankets over him. They heaped every woollen
+covering they possessed over those shaking limbs, but could not quiet
+the ague fit or bring warmth to the icecold form.</p>
+
+<p>Dreary days, dreadful nights, followed the sad waking of that sultry
+morning. The two young men nursed their guide and captain with
+unceasing watchfulness and devotion. Geoffrey developed a feminine
+tenderness and carefulness which was touching in so wild and fitful a
+nature. But they could do so little! And he whom they watched and cared
+for knew not, or only knew in rare brief intervals, of their loving
+care.</p>
+
+<p>They tried to sustain each other's courage. They told each other that
+malarial fever was only a phase of African travel; an unpleasant phase,
+but not to be avoided. They knew all about the fever from bitter
+experience; and here was Geoffrey but just recovered, and doubtless
+Patrington would mend in a day or two, as he had mended.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he's any worse than I was," said Geoffrey.</p>
+
+<p>Allan shook his head sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that he's worse, but the symptoms seem different somehow.
+He doesn't answer to the medicines as you did."</p>
+
+<p>The symptoms developed unmistakably after this, and the fever showed
+itself as typhus in the most deadly form. Swift on this revelation came
+the end; and in the solemn stillness of the forest midnight they knelt
+beside the unconscious form, and watched the parched, quivering lips
+from which the breath was faintly ebbing. One last sobbing sigh, and
+between them and the captain of their little company there stretched
+a distance wider than the breadth of Africa, further than from the
+Zambesi to the Congo. A land more mysterious than the Dark Continent
+parted them from him who was last week their jovial, hardy comrade,
+sharing the fortunes of the day, thinking of death as of a shadowy
+something waiting for him far off, at the end of innumerable journeys
+and long years of adventurous activity—a quiet haven, into which his
+bark would drift when the timbers were worn thin with long usage, and
+the arms of the rower were weary of plying the oar.</p>
+
+<p>And death was close beside them all the time, lying in wait for that
+gallant spirit, like a beast of prey.</p>
+
+<p>"O God, is there another Africa, where we shall meet that brave,
+good man again?" cried Allan. "Which of our modern teachers is
+right?—Liddon, who tells us that Christ rose from the dead; or
+Clifford, who tells us there is nothing—nothing: no Great Companion,
+no Master or Guide: only ourselves and our faithful service for one
+another—only this poor humanity?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up appealingly, expecting to see Geoffrey's face on the other
+side of the bed; but he was alone. Geoffrey had fled from the presence
+of death. He had rushed out into the wilderness. It was late in the
+following afternoon when he came back. The men had dug a grave under a
+great sycamore, and Allan was about to read the funeral service, when
+his fellow-traveller reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>White, haggard, with wild eyes, and clothes stained with mire and
+sedge, the red clay of the forest paths, the green slime of swamp and
+bog, Allan could only look at him in pitying wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Where in Heaven's name have you been?" he asked, looking up from the
+rough basket-work coffin—bamboo and bulrush—interwoven by native
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Out yonder, between the plain and the river. I was a
+craven to fly from the face of death—I, a soldier," with a short,
+ironical laugh. "I don't know how it was with me last night. I couldn't
+bear it. I had been thinking of that verse in the gospel—'One shall be
+taken,' but I didn't think it would be that one—the hardy, experienced
+traveller. It might have been you or I. Not he, Allan. It was a blow,
+wasn't it?—a blow that might shake a strong man's nerves!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan stretched out his hand to his comrade in silence, and they
+clasped hands, heartily on Allan's part; and his grip was so earnest
+that he did not know it clasped a nerveless hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a crushing blow," he said gravely. "I don't blame you for being
+scared. You have come back in time to see him laid in his grave, and
+to say a prayer with me."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, with a hopeless look.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do our prayers go, I wonder? We know no more than the natives,
+when they sacrifice to their gods. Isn't it rather feeble to go on
+praying when there never comes any answer? I saw you praying last
+night—wrestling with God in prayer, as pious people call it. I saw
+your forehead damp with agony, your lips writhing—every vein in your
+clasped hands standing out like whipcord. I watched you, and was sorry,
+and would have given ten years of my life to save his; but I couldn't
+pray with you. And, you see, there came no answer. Inexorable Nature
+worked out her own problem in her own way. Your prayers—my silence;
+one was as much use as the other. Nobody heeded us; nobody cared for
+us. The blow fell."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, we know not, we know not! There is compensation, perhaps. We shall
+see and know our friends in heaven, and look back and know that we
+were children groping in the dark. Try to believe, Geoffrey. Belief is
+best."</p>
+
+<p>"Belief. The pious mourner's anodyne, the Christian's patent
+pain-killer. Yes, belief is best; but, you see, some people can't
+believe. I can't. And I see only the hideous side of death—the dull
+horror of annihilation. A week ago we had a man with us, the manliest
+of men—all nerve, and fire, and brain-power, brave as a lion,
+ready to do and endure—and now we have only—that," with a look of
+heart-sickness, "which we are impatient to put out of sight for ever.
+Put it in the ground, Allan; fill in the grave; trample it down; let us
+forget that there was ever such a man."</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself upon the ground and sobbed out his grief. There had
+been something in the blunt, dogged straightforwardness of Cecil
+Patrington's character which had attached this wayward nature to him
+with hooks of steel.</p>
+
+<p>"I loved him," he muttered, getting up, calm and grave even to
+sullenness. "And now you and I are alone."</p>
+
+<p>He stood beside the grave where native hands had gently lowered the
+rough coffin, and where Allan had scattered flowers and herbs, whose
+aromatic odours hung heavy on the still sultriness of the atmosphere.
+He looked at Allan, and not with looks of love.</p>
+
+<p>"Only we two," he muttered, "and these black beasts of burden."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">MAMBU KWA MUNGU.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>One had been taken. That which seemed to Geoffrey Wornock inevitable
+in the history of African travel had been accomplished. The Dark
+Continent had claimed its tribute of human life. Africa had chosen her
+victim. Not the expected sacrifice. She had chosen her prey in him who
+had dared the worst she could do—not in one pilgrimage, but in long
+years of travel—who had looked her full in the face and laughed at
+her dangers, and had wooed her with a masterful spirit, telling her
+that she was fair, stepping with light, careless foot over her traps
+and pitfalls, lying down within sound of her lions, drenched with her
+torrential rains, tossed on her chopping seas, blinded with the fierce
+glare of her lightnings—always her lover, her master, her champion.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no land like Africa. There is nothing in life so good as the
+wild, free day of the wanderer," he had said again and again.</p>
+
+<p>And now he had paid for his love with his life. He had laid himself
+down, like Mark Antony at the foot of his dead mistress.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone, and the two young men were alone in the wide wilderness,
+among the mountain paths between the great lake and the far-off western
+sea; and in long pauses of melancholy silence by the camp-fire, or in
+the noontide rest, Geoffrey looked into the face that was like and yet
+not like his own, and thought of the woman they both loved, and of that
+duel to the death which there must needs be when two men have built all
+their hopes of happiness upon the love of one woman. A duel of deadly
+thoughts, if not of deadly weapons.</p>
+
+<p>"If we go back, it will be to fight for her love," he thought,
+"to fight as the wild stags in the mountains fight for the chosen
+hind—forehead to forehead, fore feet planted like iron, antlers
+locked, clashing with a sound that is heard afar off. Yes, we shall
+fight for her. The battle will have to begin again. We shall hate each
+other."</p>
+
+<p>Wakeful and unquiet in the deep, dead silence of the tropical night, he
+would sit outside hut or tent, mending the fire, looking listlessly at
+the circle of sleeping porters, listening mechanically for the qua-qua
+of the night-heron, or the grunt of the hippopotamus coming up from
+the river. The loss of Patrington's cheery companionship had wrought a
+dark change in Geoffrey's mind and feelings. While Patrington was with
+them, there had been ever-recurring distractions from sullen brooding
+on the inner self. Patrington was eminently a man of action, practical,
+matter-of-fact; and love-sick dreaming was hardly possible in his
+company. He was as energetic in conversation as in action, would
+argue, and philosophize, and quote his master of fiction, and dose them
+with Pickwick and Weller as he dosed them with quinine.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone; and in the deep melancholy that had fallen upon the
+travellers after the sudden shock of bereavement, Geoffrey's thoughts
+dwelt with a maddening iteration upon one absorbing theme.</p>
+
+<p>They had left the poor village of bee-hive huts, near which their
+comrade lay at rest under the great sycamore. They had travelled
+slowly, ten miles in a day at most, uphill and downhill, by jungle and
+swamp, too depressed for any strenuous effort, Geoffrey still weak
+after his attack of fever, and harassed with rheumatic aches after his
+night of reckless wandering in marsh and wilderness, in peril of being
+devoured by the panthers that abound in that region. They were not more
+than fifty miles from the great lake, and now they were delayed again
+by the illness of some of their porters, and perhaps also by their own
+listlessness—the hopeless inertia that follows a great sorrow, a state
+of mind in which it seems not worth while to make any effort.</p>
+
+<p>They had lost their captain and guide; but they had their plans all
+laid down—plans discussed again and again during the rains at Ujiji.
+After a good deal of talk about going south to Nyassa, and back to the
+east coast by the Zambesi-Shire route, they had finally decided on
+following Trivier's route to Stanley Pool, and there to wait for the
+steamer. The idea of crossing the great continent from east to west
+pleased the younger travellers better than that notion of doubling back
+to the more civilized region, the Arcadia of Nyassaland, a place of
+Christian missions, and flocks, and herds, and prosperous homesteads,
+and frequent steamers.</p>
+
+<p>But now life in the desert had lost its savour, and Allan and Geoffrey
+looked over their rough sketch-maps dully, and wished that the journey
+were done.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be better to turn back and take the easiest route, by
+Nyassa and the Shire?" Allan asked despondently.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; we must see the Congo. What should we do if we went back
+to England? Have either you or I anything that calls us back to
+civilization and its deadly monotony?" Geoffrey asked, watching his
+companion's face with eager eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No, there is very little. My mother would be glad to see me back
+again. It seems hard to desert her now she is left alone. And Mrs.
+Wornock—her life is just as solitary—she must long for your return."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is accustomed to my rambling propensities. Yes, Lady Emily
+would be glad, no doubt; and my mother would be glad; but at our age
+men don't go back to their mothers. If you have no one else to think
+about—if there is no other attraction?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know there is no one else," Allan answered with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>The Amati was not silent in those dreary evenings, amidst the smoke
+of the fire that rose up towards the rough roof of the hut, where
+the lizards disported themselves among the rafters and rejoiced in
+the warmth. The voice of the fiddle was as lugubrious as the wailings
+of the native women for their dead. Funeral marches; Beethoven,
+Chopin, Berlioz, all that music knows of sadness and lamentation, were
+Geoffrey's themes in that solitude of two. The music itself had an
+unearthly sound; and the face of the player, sharpened and wasted by
+illness and by grief, had an unearthly look as the firelight flashed
+upon it, or the shadows darkened it.</p>
+
+<p>While those lonely days wore on, Allan began to have a curious feeling
+about his companion, the consciousness of a gulf that was gradually
+widening between them; a something sinister, indefinite, indescribable.
+It would be too much to say that he felt he was with an enemy; but he
+felt that he was in the presence of the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>He woke one night, turning wearily on his Arab bed—the mat spread on
+the ground, which use had taught him almost to like. He woke, and
+saw Geoffrey sitting up on his mat on the other side of the hut, his
+back against the wall, his eyes looking straight at Allan with an
+inscrutable expression. Was it dislike or was it fear that looked out
+of those widely opened eyes? Why fear?</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" Allan asked quickly. "Have you just awakened from
+a bad dream?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Life is my bad dream; and there is no awakening from that. There
+is only the change to dreamless sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"What were you thinking about, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Life and death, and love and hate, and all things sad and strange
+and cruel. Do you remember Livingstone's description of a Bechuana
+chieftain's burial? His people dig a grave in his cattle-pen, and bury
+him there; and then they drive the cattle round and over the spot till
+every trace of the newly filled-in grave is obliterated. We are not as
+candid as the Bechuana men. We put up a statue of our great man—or,
+at least, we talk about a statue; but in six months he is as much
+forgotten as if the cattle had pranced and trampled over his body."</p>
+
+<p>"Primrose Day belies your cynicism."</p>
+
+<p>"Primrose Day! A fashion as much as the November bonfire. Of all the
+people who wear the Beaconsfield badge three-fourths could not tell you
+who Beaconsfield was, or how much or how little he did for England."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember something else in Livingstone's book, how the
+tribes who met him said, 'Give us sleep'? It was their prayer to the
+wonder-worker. Give me sleep, Geoff. I'm dead beat."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, we did nothing yesterday; a beggarly eight miles."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it was the thunderstorm that took it out of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sleep away. The tribes were right. There is no better gift.
+Would it help you if I played a little, very softly? I have a devil
+to-night which only music will cast out."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, play, but don't be too lugubrious. My heart is one great ache."</p>
+
+<p>Without moving from his mat, Geoffrey stretched a thin hand towards
+the fiddle-case that lay beside his pillow, opened it noiselessly and
+took out the Amati; then, with his haggard eyes still fixed on the
+reclining figure opposite him, he drew a long sobbing chord out of the
+strings, and began a nocturne of Chopin's, delicatest melody played
+with exquisite delicacy, the very music of sleep and dreams.</p>
+
+<p>"I am talking to her," he murmured to himself softly; "across the great
+continent, across the great sea, over burning desert and tropical
+wilderness, my voice is calling to her. I am telling her the story of
+my heart, as I used to tell her in the dear days at Discombe, the dear
+unheeding days, when my bow talked to her half in sport, when I hardly
+knew if the wild thrill that ran along my veins meant a lifelong love."</p>
+
+<p>The music served as a lullaby for Allan, and it soothed Geoffrey, whose
+brain had been over-charged with hideous fancies, as he sat up in his
+bed, listening to the ticking of the watch that hung against the wall,
+and looking at his slumbering companion.</p>
+
+<p>Darkest thoughts, thoughts of what might happen if this throbbing brain
+of his were to lose its balance. He had been thinking of the narrow
+wall between reason and unreason, and of the madness that may come out
+of one absorbing idea. Where did a passionate love like his end and
+monomania begin? Was it well that they two should be alone together,
+with only these black beasts of burden?</p>
+
+<p>He thought of one of the men, a grinning good-natured-looking animal,
+the best of their porters, of whom it was told that setting out on a
+journey with one of his wives he arrived at his destination without
+her. It might have been his honeymoon. He explained that wild beasts
+had eaten the lady; but it was known afterwards that he had killed her
+and chopped her up on the way. Anger, jealousy, convenience? Who knows?
+The man was a good servant, and nobody cared about this episode in his
+career.</p>
+
+<p>Was murder so easy, then? Easy to do, easy to forget?</p>
+
+<p>A great horror came over him at thought of the deeds that had been done
+in the world by men of natures like his own; by despairing lovers,
+by jealous husbands, by men over whose ill-balanced minds one idea
+obtained the mastery. And, under the dominion of such ghastly fancies,
+he looked forward to the journey they two were to make, a journey
+that, all told, was likely to last the greater part of a year. Alone
+together, seeing each other's faces day after day, each thinking the
+same thoughts, and not daring to speak those thoughts; each with fonder
+and more passionate yearning as the time drew nearer when they should
+meet the woman they loved; each knowing that happiness for one must
+mean misery for the other. Friends in outward seeming, rivals and foes
+at heart, they were to go on journeying side by side, day after day,
+lying down beside the same fire night after night, waking in the
+darkness to hear each other's breathing, and to know that a loaded
+rifle lay within reach of their hands, and that a bullet would end all
+their difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>It was horrible.</p>
+
+<p>"I was an idiot to undertake the impossible, to believe that I could be
+happy and at ease with this man. If I were to go home alone, she would
+have me," he told himself. "It was only for Allan's sake she hung back.
+So tender, so over-scrupulous, lest she should pain the lover she had
+jilted."</p>
+
+<p>If he were to go home alone! Was not that possible without the
+suggestion of darkest iniquity? If he could go home, and gain, say half
+a year, before his rival reappeared upon the scene, would not that
+half-year suffice for the winning of his bride?</p>
+
+<p>"If she loved me as I think she loved me, and if she is as noble of
+nature as I believe her to be, two years of severance will have tried
+and strengthened her love. She will love me all the dearer for my
+wanderings. And if Allan is not there to remind her of his wrongs, to
+appeal to her too-scrupulous conscience, I shall win her."</p>
+
+<p>To go back alone, to divide their resources, to divide their followers,
+and each to set out on his own way. Useless such a parting as that; for
+Allan might be the first to tread on English soil, the first to clasp
+Suzette's hands in the gladness of friends who meet after long absence.</p>
+
+<p>"If he were to be the first, she might deceive herself in the joy of
+seeing a familiar face, and think she loved him, and give him back her
+promise in a fit of penitent affection. There are such nice shades in
+love. She must have had a certain fondness for him. It might revive
+were I not there—revive and seem enough for happiness. I must be
+first! I must be first, and alone in the field."</p>
+
+<p>He hated himself for the restless impatience which had made him join
+fortunes with Allan. What had he to do with the rejected lover, he who
+knew that he was loved?</p>
+
+<p>They crept slowly on. Allan was ailing, and unable to stand the fatigue
+of a long march through a close and difficult country. That week of
+watching beside Patrington's sick-bed, and the agony of losing that
+kindly comrade, had shattered his nerves and reduced his physical
+strength almost as much as an actual illness could have reduced him.
+He felt the depressing influence of the climate as the days grew more
+sultry and the thunderstorms more frequent. All the spirit and all
+the pleasure seemed to have vanished out of the expedition since the
+digging of that grave under the sycamore.</p>
+
+<p>Their day's journey dwindled and their halts grew longer. At the
+rate they were now travelling it would take them a year to reach the
+Falls. They had left Ujiji more than a month, and they were still a
+long way to the east of Kassongo, the busy centre of Arab commerce and
+population, where they could make any purchases they wanted, refit
+for the rest of their journey, or, perhaps, make a contract with the
+mighty Tippoo, who would provide them with men and food till the end
+of the land journey for a lump sum. While Patrington lived they had
+looked forward to the halt at Kassongo with keen interest; but now zest
+and pleasurable curiosity were gone, and a dull lassitude weighed like
+an actual burden upon both travellers. Both were alike spiritless; and
+even Geoffrey's raids in quest of meat were neither so frequent nor so
+far afield as they had been, and his men began to lose something of
+their admiration for him. He was growing over-fond of that kri-kri of
+his, over-fond of sitting at the door of his tent talking with that
+curious, tricksy spirit, now drawing forth sobbing cries like funeral
+dirges, now with frisking, flickering touch that danced and flashed
+across the strings, with hand as rapid as light, with fingers that
+flew, and eyes that flashed fire.</p>
+
+<p>These wild dances were grasshoppers, he told them; and when he began
+the wailing music that thrilled and pained them, his Makololos would
+lie down at his feet and entreat him to change it to a grasshopper.</p>
+
+<p>"We hate him when he cries," they said of the fiddle. "We love him when
+he leaps and dances."</p>
+
+<p>"And you would follow him and me anywhere across the land?" Geoffrey
+asked, laughing down at the brown faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere, if you promise us your guns at the end of the journey."</p>
+
+<p>Two days later Allan succumbed to the feeling of prostration which
+had been growing upon him during the last four or five stages of the
+journey, and confessed himself unable to leave the native hut in which
+they had camped at sunset.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the freshness of dawn. The mists were creeping off the manioc
+fields, and the wide stretches of tropical foliage beyond the patch of
+rude cultivation. The brown figures were moving about in the pearly
+light, women fetching water, children sprawling on the rich red earth,
+their plump shining bodies only a little browner than the soil, happy
+in their nakedness and dirt, placid and unashamed. The porters were
+shouldering their loads, the lean, long-legged mongrels were yelping,
+the frogs croaking their morning hymn to the sun.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it's hopeless," Allan faltered, as he leant against one
+of the rough supports of the verandah, wiping the moisture from his
+forehead. "I'm dead beat. I can't go on unless you carry me in a
+litter; and that's hardly worth while with our small following. You'd
+better go on to Kassongo, Geoff, and leave me here till I'm able to
+follow. If I don't turn up within a few days of your arrival, you can
+get the chief to send some of his men to fetch me, with a donkey, if
+there's one to be had. The villagers will take care of me in the mean
+time. It isn't fever, you see," holding out his cold moist hand to his
+friend. "It's not the mukunguru this time. I'm just dead beat, that's
+all. There's no good fighting against hard fact, Geoff. <i>Mambu kwa
+mungu</i>—it is God's trouble! One must submit to the inevitable."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave you to these savages in the Manyema country? No; that would
+be a beastly thing to do," he said, with his cynical laugh. "I'm not
+quite bad enough for that, Allan. How do I know they wouldn't eat
+you? They've been civil enough so far, but I believe it's because of
+my fiddle. They take me for a medicine-man, and my little Amati for
+a capricious devil that can give them toko if they don't act on the
+square. I won't leave you—like that; but I'll tell you what I'll do.
+We'll divide forces for a bit. I'll leave you the larger party, and I
+and my Makololos will go and look for big game."</p>
+
+<p>Allan crept into the hut and sank down upon his mat while his comrade
+was talking. He had hardly strength to answer him. He lay there white
+and dumb, while Geoffrey spread the blanket over him, and wiped his
+forehead with a silk handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"Do what you like, Geoff," he murmured, "and do the best for yourself.
+I don't want to spoil your sport."</p>
+
+<p>He turned his body towards the wall, with an obvious effort, as if his
+limbs were made of lead, and presently sank into a sleep which seemed
+almost stupor.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" muttered Geoffrey, looking down at him, "is he going to die?
+Can death come like that, as if in answer to a wicked wish?"</p>
+
+<p>He went out and talked to the men, giving them stringent orders as to
+what they were to do for the sick Musungu. He was going on a shooting
+expedition with only four men—the rest, a round dozen, would remain
+with the other Musungu, and nurse him, and take care of him, and obey
+his orders when he was well enough to move; and, above all, not attempt
+robbery or desertion, as they—the two Musungus—had letters from the
+Sultan of Zanzibar to Nzigue, the Arab chief at Kassongo, and any evil
+treatment would be bitterly expiated. "You know how small account the
+white Arabs make of a black man's life," he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, they knew.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the hut, and to the store of quinine and other drugs,
+and he prepared such doses as it would be well for Allan to take at
+fixed periods; and then he instructed the leader of the porters—a
+Zanzibari, who had been with Burton, and afterwards with Stanley—as
+to the treatment of the sick man. He was to do this, and this, once,
+twice, thrice, between sunrise and sundown, the division of the day by
+hours not having yet been revealed to these primitive minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, how often are you hungry in the day, and how often do you eat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three times."</p>
+
+<p>"Then every time you are hungry, and before you sit down to eat, you
+will give the Musungu his medicine—one of the powders, as I put them
+ready for you—mixed with water, as he has often given them to you. And
+if you forget, or don't care to give him his medicine, evil will come
+to you—for I shall put a spell upon the door, and wicked spirits will
+hurt you if you don't obey me."</p>
+
+<p>After this he called his Makololos and one of the Wanyamwesis, for
+whom he had shown a liking, and who worshipped him with a slavish
+subjugation of all personal will-power. He told them he was going on
+a hunting expedition that might last many days—and they must take
+baggage enough to assure themselves against being left to starve upon
+the way. He counted the bales of cloth, the bags of beads, brass-headed
+nails, brass wire; and he set apart about a fourth of the whole stock;
+and with these stores he loaded his men. And so in the full blaze of
+the morning sun this little company went out into the jungle, turning
+their faces eastward, towards the mountains that rose between them and
+the sea of Ujiji.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">WHERE THE BURDEN IS HEAVIEST.</p>
+
+
+<p>The deep-toned organ pealed through the empty manor-house in the gloom
+of a rainy summer afternoon. Not once in the long dull day had the sun
+looked through the low, dull sky; and Mrs. Wornock, always peculiarly
+sensible of every change in the atmosphere, felt that life was just a
+little sadder and emptier than it had been for her in all the long slow
+years of a lonely widowhood.</p>
+
+<p>What had she to live for? The brief romance of her girlhood was all
+she had ever known of the love which for most women means a life
+history. For her it had been only the beginning of a chapter—ending in
+self-sacrifice, as blind and piteously faithful to duty as Abraham's
+obedience to the Divine command. And after all those years of fond
+fidelity to a memory, she had seen her lover again—once for a few
+minutes—by stealth, through an open window, undreamt of by him.</p>
+
+<p>What had she to live for? A son whose restless spirit would not allow
+him to be her companion and friend—in whose feverish life she was of
+so little value that he could leave her for a pilgrimage to Central
+Africa, with a brief good-bye; as if it were a small thing for mother
+and son to live with half the world between them. It seemed to her
+sometimes, brooding upon the past year, that Allan Carew had cared for
+her more, was more in sympathy with her, than that very son—as if some
+hereditary sentiment, some mystic link with the father who had loved
+her, brought the son nearer to her heart.</p>
+
+<p>And now they were both so distant that she thought of them almost as
+mournfully as if they were dead. Dark clouds of trouble hung over their
+forms, as she tried to see them in that far-off world, ever impending
+dangers which haunted her in her dreams, until the words of St. Paul
+burnt themselves into her brain, and she would awake from some dream of
+horror, hearing her own voice, with that awful sound of the dreamer's
+voice, repeating—</p>
+
+<p>"In journeyings ... in perils of waters, in perils of robbers ... in
+perils by the heathen ... in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the
+sea ... in weariness and painfulness ... in hunger and thirst."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Suzette had been absent for nearly a year, and Suzette's absence had
+increased the sense of loss and deepened the gloom of the rambling old
+house, and those picturesque gardens, where the girl's bright face and
+graceful figure flitting in and out from arch to arch, between the
+walls of ilex or yew, had been a living gladness that seemed only a
+natural accompaniment to spring flowers, sulphur butterflies, and the
+deepening purple of the beeches, in the joyous awakening of the year.
+But Suzette had returned from her travels nearly a year since, and
+had taken up the thread of life again, and with it her old friendship
+for Mrs. Wornock, feeling herself secure from the risk of all violent
+emotions in her friend's house, now that Geoffrey was a good many
+thousand miles away.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette had brought comfort to the lonely life. Together she and Mrs.
+Wornock had read books of African travel, explored maps, and followed
+the route of the travellers. General Vincent was a fellow of the
+Geographical Society, and the monthly report issued by that society
+kept his daughter informed of the latest progress in the history of
+exploration, while the Society's library was at her disposal for
+books of travel. It seemed to Suzette in that quiet year after her
+home-coming that she read nothing but African books, and began almost
+to think in the Swahili language—picking up words in every chapter,
+till they became as familiar as French phrases in a society novel.</p>
+
+<p>She was quieter than of old, people said: less interested in golf:
+caring nothing for a church bazaar which was the one absorbing topic
+in that particular summer; wrapped up in her musical studies, and
+practising a great deal too much, as officious friends informed General
+Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette must do what she likes," he said; "she has always been my
+master."</p>
+
+<p>But egged on by the same officious friends, he bought his daughter a
+horse, and insisted on her riding with him, and they went for long
+rides over the downs, and sometimes were lucky enough to fall in with
+the hawks, and see a few innocent rooks slaughtered high up in the blue
+of an April sky.</p>
+
+<p>He shrank from questioning his daughter about the young men who
+were gone. She had been very ill—languid, and white, and wan, and
+spiritless—when he carried her off to Germany, and had required a
+good deal of patching up before she became anything like the happy,
+active, high-spirited Suzette of the Indian hills—who had charmed
+everybody, old and young, by her bright prettiness and joy in life.
+German waters, German woods and hills, followed by a winter on the
+Riviera, and a long holiday by the Italian lakes, had set her up again;
+and General Vincent was content to wait till time should unravel the
+mystery of a maiden's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Those young men will come back," he told his sister; "and then I
+shouldn't wonder if Geoffrey were to renew his offer—and to be
+accepted; for since she gave Allan the sack without any provocation, I
+conclude it's Geoffrey she cares for."</p>
+
+<p>"I wash my hands of her and her love affairs," Mrs. Mornington retorted
+waspishly. "She might have married Allan—a young man who adored
+her—and a very good match. <i>Very</i> good now his father's gone. She
+jilted Allan—one would suppose solely because she was in love with
+Geoffrey. Oh dear no! She refuses Geoffrey, and sends two excellent
+young men—each an only son, with a stake in the country—to bake
+themselves black in a wilderness where they will very likely be eaten
+after they are baked. I have no patience with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be cross, Molly. There's no use worrying about her lovers. Thank
+God she has recovered her health, and is my own sweet little girl
+still."</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet little fiddlestick, coquette, weathercock, jilt! That's what she
+is."</p>
+
+<p>"Take my word for it. Wornock will come back again when he's tired of
+Africa—and propose again."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if he has a grain of sense. Young men don't come back to girls who
+treat them badly."</p>
+
+<p>The General took things easily. He had his daughter, and his daughter
+would be comfortably provided for when his day was done. He was more
+than content with the present arrangement of things; and he felt that
+Providence had been very good to him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Suzette came in upon Mrs. Wornock's loneliness that rainy afternoon
+like a sudden burst of sunlight; so fresh, after her walk through the
+rain, so daintily neat in the pretty blue-and-white pongee frock which
+her waterproof cloak had preserved from all harm.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not think you would come to-day, dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you think the rain would frighten me? The walk was lovely in spite
+of a persistent drizzle, the woods are so fresh and sweet, and every
+little insignificant wild-flower sparkles like a jewel. I have a tiny
+bit of news for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not bad news?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I hope not. Lady Emily is at Beechhurst. She came late last night.
+The cook at the Vicarage saw her arrive, and Bessie Edgefield told me
+this morning. Do you think it means that Allan is expected home?"</p>
+
+<p>"And Geoffrey with him? Would to God it meant that! I am getting very
+weak Suzette, weary to death. My anxiety is like a wearing, physical
+pain. It is so long since we have heard anything of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it seems very long!" Suzette murmured, soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> very long—quite four months since I had Geoffrey's last
+letter!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it is really as much as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is—and there is the post-mark to convince you," glancing at
+the secretaire where she kept those treasured letters. "Geoffrey seldom
+dates a letter. I have read this last one again and again and again.
+They were at Ujiji—the place seemed almost civilized, as he described
+it; but they were to cross the lake later on—the great lake, like an
+inland sea—to cross in an open boat. How do I know that they were not
+drowned in that crossing? He told me the natives were afraid of going
+on the lake in a storm. And he is so foolhardy, so careless of himself!
+He may have over-persuaded them——"</p>
+
+<p>"Hark!" cried Suzette, "a visitor! What a day for callers to choose!
+They must really wish to find you at home."</p>
+
+<p>There was the usual delay caused by the leisurely stroll of a footman
+from the servants' quarters to the hall-door, and then the door of the
+music-room was opened, and the leisurely butler announced Lady Emily
+Carew.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily shook hands with Mrs. Wornock, with a clinging, almost
+affectionate air, and allowed herself to be led to an easy-chair
+near the hearth where some logs were burning, to give a semblance of
+cheerfulness amidst the prevailing grey of the outside world. There
+was a marked contrast in the lady's greeting of Suzette, to whom she
+vouchsafed no handshake, only the most formal salutation. The mother of
+an only son, whom she deems perfection, cannot easily forgive the girl
+who goes near to breaking his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I was so surprised to hear you were at Beechhurst," said Mrs. Wornock.
+"I hope you bring good news—that the travellers are nearing home."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily could hardly answer for her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, no," she said piteously. "My news is very bad; I could
+not rest at home. I thought you might have heard lately from Mr.
+Wornock——"</p>
+
+<p>"My latest letter is four months old."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then you can tell me nothing. Allan has written later. He wrote
+the night before they left Ujiji——"</p>
+
+<p>"But the news—the bad news? What was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very, very bad. They are alone now—our sons—alone among savages—in
+an unknown country—friendless, helpless. What is to become of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Patrington—surely he has not deserted them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, poor fellow; he would never have deserted them. He is dead.
+He died of fever. The news of his death was cabled to his brother by
+Allan. The message came from Zanzibar; but he died on his way from
+the Lake to Kassongo. That was Allan's message. Died of fever on the
+journey to Kassongo. Allan's last letter was from Ujiji. They were
+all well when he wrote, and in good spirits, looking forward to the
+journey down the Congo; and now their leader is dead, the man who knew
+the country; and they are alone, helpless, and ignorant."</p>
+
+<p>"They are men," Suzette flashed out indignantly, her eyes sparkling
+with tears. "They will fight their way through difficulties like men
+of courage and resource. I don't think you need be frightened, Mrs.
+Wornock; nor you, Lady Emily."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very good of you to console me, Miss Vincent," replied Allan's
+mother; "but if you had known your mind a little better, my son need
+never have gone to Africa."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry you should think me so much to blame; but what would you
+have thought of me if I had not told Allan the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you have sent him away—and he is dead, perhaps—dead in the
+wilderness—of fever, like poor Cecil Patrington."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette bowed her head, and was silent under this reproof. She could
+feel for the mother, and was content to bear unmerited blame. She went
+to the organ, and occupied herself in putting away the scattered
+sheets of music, with that deft neatness which, in her case, was an
+instinct.</p>
+
+<p>The two mothers sat side by side, and talked, and wept together. They
+could but speculate upon the condition and the whereabouts of the
+wanderers. Those few words from Zanzibar told them so little. Cecil
+Patrington's elder brother had written to Lady Emily enclosing a copy
+of the message, with a polite hope that her son would find his way
+safely home. There was no passionate grief among his relations at home
+for the wanderer who lay in his final halting-place under the great
+sycamore. Long years of absence had weakened family ties; and the
+head of the house of Patrington was a busy country squire, with an
+increasing family and a diminishing rent-roll.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette put on her hat and wished Mrs. Wornock good-bye. She would have
+left with only a little bend of the head to Lady Emily; but that kindly
+matron had repented herself of her harshness, and held out her hand
+with a pathetic look which went straight to the girl's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me for what I said just now," she pleaded. "I am almost beside
+myself with anxiety. You were not to blame. Truth is always the best.
+But my poor Allan was so fond of you, and you and he might have been so
+happy—if you had only loved him."</p>
+
+<p>"I did love him—once," faltered Suzette. "But later it seemed as if my
+love were not enough—not enough for a lifetime."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but there was some one else—we know, Mrs. Wornock—some one who
+is like my poor son, but cleverer, handsomer, more fascinating. It was
+Mr. Wornock's return that changed you——"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no!" Suzette protested eagerly. "If it had been, I might have
+acted differently. Please don't talk about me and my folly—not to know
+myself or my own heart. They are both away. God grant they are well and
+happy, and enjoying the beauty and the strangeness of that wonderful
+country. Why should they not be safe and happy there? Think how many
+years Mr. Patrington had spent in Africa before the end came. Why
+should they not be as safe as Cameron, Stanley, Trivier?"</p>
+
+<p>Her heart sank even as she argued in this consoling strain, remembering
+how with Stanley, with Cameron, with Trivier there was one left behind.
+But here, perhaps, the Fates were already appeased. One had fallen by
+the way. The sacrifice had been made to the cruel goddess of the dark
+land.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come to Beechhurst with me, Suzette?" pleaded Allan's mother.
+"It would be so kind if you would come and stay with me till to-morrow
+morning. I shall leave by the first train to-morrow. I want to be at
+home again, to be there when Allan's letter comes. There must be a
+letter soon. It is so lonely at Beechhurst. I think General Vincent
+could spare you for just one night?"</p>
+
+<p>Suzette proposed that Lady Emily should dine at Marsh House; but she
+seemed to take a morbid pleasure in her son's house in spite of its
+loneliness, so Suzette drove back to Matcham with her, took her to tea
+with the General, and obtained his permission to dine and sleep at
+Beechhurst, and did all that could be done by unobtrusive kindness and
+attention to console and cheer Allan's mother.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">ALL IN HONOUR.</p>
+
+
+<p>It was nearly a month after Lady Emily's appearance at Discombe, and
+there had been no letter from Geoffrey. Every day had increased Mrs.
+Wornock's anxiety, and in the face of an ever-growing fear there had
+been a tacit avoidance of all mention of the absent son, both on the
+part of his mother and of Suzette. They had talked of music, of the
+gardens, of the poor, and of the latest developments in that science of
+the supernatural in which Mrs. Wornock's interest had never abated, and
+in which her faith had never been entirely shaken.</p>
+
+<p>Once, in the midst of discussing the last number of the <i>Psychical
+Magazine</i> with Suzette—a sad sceptic—she said quietly—</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever has happened, I know he is not dead. I must have seen him. I
+must have known. There would have been some sign."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was silent. Not for worlds would she have dashed a faith which
+buoyed up the fainting spirit. Yet it needed but some dreadful dream,
+she reflected, a dead face seen amidst the clouds of sleep, to change
+this blind confidence into despair.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the evening following this conversation that Suzette was
+sitting at her piano alone in her own drawing-room, playing from
+memory, and losing herself in the web of a Hungarian nocturne, which
+was to her like thinking in music—the composer's learned sequences and
+changes of key seeming only a vague expression of her own sadness. Her
+father was dining out—a man's dinner—a dissipation he rarely allowed
+himself; and Suzette was relieved from her evening task of playing
+chess, reading aloud, or listening to tiger-stories, which had lost
+none of their interest from familiarity, the fondly loved father being
+the hero of every adventure.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad to be alone to-night, for her heart was full of dread of
+the news which the next African letter might bring. She had tried to
+make light of the leader's death; yet she, too, thought with a shudder
+of the two young men alone, inexperienced, and one of them, at least,
+reckless and daring even to folly.</p>
+
+<p>The wailing Hungarian reverie with its minor modulations seemed to
+shape itself into a dream of Africa, the endless jungle, the vastness
+of swamp and river, the beauty and the terror of gigantic waterfalls,
+huge walls of water, a river leaping over a precipice into a gulf of
+darkness and snow-white foam. The scenes of which she had been reading
+lately crowded into her mind, and filled it with aching fears.</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette!"</p>
+
+<p>A voice called to her softly from the open window. She looked up,
+trembling and cold with an awful fear. His voice—Geoffrey's—a
+spectral voice; the voice of a ghost calling to her, the unbeliever,
+from the other side of the world—calling in death, or after death, to
+the woman the living man had loved.</p>
+
+<p>She rose, with a faint scream, and rushed to the window, and was
+clasped in the living Geoffrey's arms, on the threshold, between the
+garden and the room. Had she flung herself into his arms in her fear
+and great surprise? or had he seized her as she ran to him? She could
+not tell. She knew only that she was sobbing on his breast, clasped in
+two gaunt arms, which held her as in a grasp of iron.</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, Geoffrey! Alive and well! What delight for your poor mother!
+Was she not wild with happiness?" she asked, when he released her,
+after a shower of kisses upon forehead and lips, which she pretended to
+ignore.</p>
+
+<p>She could not begin quarrelling with him in these first moments of
+delighted surprise.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her into the room, and she saw his face in the light of the
+lamp on the piano—worn, wan, haggard, wasted, but with eyes that were
+full of fire and gladness.</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette, Suzette!" he cried, clasping her hands, and trying to draw
+her to his heart again, "it was worth a journey over half the world to
+find you! So sweet, so fair! All that my dreams have shown me, night
+after night, night after night! Ah, love, we have never been parted.
+Your image has never left me."</p>
+
+<p>"Africa has done you no good. You are as full of wild nonsense as
+ever," she said, trying to take the situation lightly, yet trembling
+with emotion, her heart beating loud and fast, her eyes hardly daring
+to meet the eyes that dwelt upon her face so fondly. "Tell me about
+your mother. Was she not surprised—happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope she will be a little glad. I haven't seen her yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Not seen—your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, child. A man can't have two lode-stars. I came straight from
+Zanzibar to this house. I came home to <i>you</i>, Suzette."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will go to the Manor directly? Your poor mother has been so
+miserable about you. Don't lose a minute in making her happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Lose! These minutes are gold; the most precious minutes of my life.
+Oh, Suzette, how cruel you were! Why did you drive me from you?"</p>
+
+<p>She was in his arms again, held closely in those wasted arms, caught in
+the coils of that passionate love, she scarcely knew how. He was taking
+everything for granted; and she knew not how to resist him. She had no
+argument to offer against that triumphant love.</p>
+
+<p>"Cruel, cruel, cruel Suzette! Two years of exile—two wasted lonely
+years—years of fond longing and looking back! Why did you send me
+away? No, I won't ask. It was all in honour, all in honour. My dearest
+is made up of honourable scruples, and delicate sympathies, which this
+rough nature of mine can't understand. But you loved me, Suzette.
+You loved me from the first, as I loved you. Our hearts went out to
+meet each other over the bridge of my violin—flew out to each other
+in a burst of melody. And we will go on loving each other till the
+last breath—the last faint glimmer of life's brief candle. Ah, love,
+forgive me if I rave. I am beside myself with joy."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are a little out of your mind," she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>She let him rave. She accepted the situation. Ah, surely, surely it was
+this man she loved. It was this eager spirit which had passed like a
+breath of fire between her and Allan; this masterful nature which had
+possessed itself of her heart, as of a mere chattel that must needs
+be the prize of the strongest. She submitted to the tyranny of a love
+which would not accept defeat; and presently they sat down side by side
+in the soft lamplight, close to the piano which she loved only a little
+less than if it were human. They sat down side by side, his arm still
+round the slim waist, plighted lovers.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Allan!" she sighed, with a remorseful pang. "Has he gone down to
+Suffolk?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Suffolk? He is on the Congo—past Stanley Falls, I hope, by this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"On the Congo! You have left him! Quite alone! Oh, Geoffrey, how could
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? He is safe enough. He knows the country as well as I. I left
+him near Kassongo, where he could get as big a train and as many stores
+as he wanted; though we have done nowadays with long trains, armies of
+porters, and a mountainous load of provisions."</p>
+
+<p>"What will Lady Emily say? She will be dreadfully unhappy. I could not
+have believed you and Allan would part company—after Mr. Patrington's
+death."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? We were both strangers in the land. He knows how to take care
+of himself as well as I do."</p>
+
+<p>"But two men—companions and friends—surely they would be safer than
+one Englishman travelling alone?" said Suzette, deeply distressed at
+the thought of what Allan's mother would suffer when she knew that her
+son's comrade had left him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think two men are safer from fever, poisoned arrows, the
+bursting of a gun, the swamping of a canoe? My dearest, Allan is just
+as safe alone as he was when he was one of three. He had learnt a good
+deal about the country, and he knew how to manage the natives, and he
+had stores and ammunition, and the means of getting plenty more. Don't
+let me see that sweet face clouded. Ah, my love, my love, I shall never
+forget your welcoming smile—the light upon your face as you ran to the
+window. I had always believed in your love—always—even when you were
+cruellest; but to-night I know—I know that I am the chosen one."</p>
+
+<p>He let his head sink on her shoulder, and nestled against her, like
+a child at rest near his mother's heart. How could she resist a love
+so fervent, so resolute—a spirit like Satan's—not to be changed by
+place or time. It is the lover who will not be denied—the selfish,
+impetuous, unscrupulous lover who has always the better chance; and in
+a case like this it was a foregone conclusion that he who came back
+first would be the winner. The first strong appeal to the heart that
+had been tried by absence and anxiety, the first returning wave of
+romantic love. It was something more than a lover's return. It was the
+awakening of love from a long sleep that had seemed dull and grey and
+hopeless as death.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would never come back," sighed Suzette, resigning
+herself to the tyranny of the conqueror, content at last to be taken
+by a <i>coup de main</i>. "I was afraid you and Allan would be left in
+that dreadful country. And I had to make believe to think you as safe
+as if you were in the next parish. I had to be cheerful and full of
+hopefulness, for your mother's sake. Your poor mother," starting up
+suddenly. "Oh, Geoffrey, how cruel that we should be sitting here while
+she is left in ignorance of your return; and she has suffered an agony
+of fear since she heard of poor Mr. Patrington's death. It is shameful!
+You must go to her this instant."</p>
+
+<p>"Must I, my queen and mistress?"</p>
+
+<p>"This instant. It will be a shock to her—even in the joy of your
+return—to see how thin and haggard you have grown. What suffering you
+must have gone through!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only one kind of suffering—only one malady, Suzette. I was sick
+for love of you. Love made me do forced marches; love kept me awake
+of nights. Impatience was the fever that burnt in my blood—love and
+longing for you. Yes, yes, I am going," as she put her hand through his
+arm and led him to the window. "I will be at my mother's feet in half
+an hour, kneeling to ask for her blessing on my betrothal. There will
+be double joy for her, Suzette, in my home-coming and my happiness. I
+left her a restless, unquiet spirit. I go back to her tamed and happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, only go! Remember that every minute of her life of late has
+been a minute of anxiety. And she loves you so devotedly, Geoffrey. She
+has only you to love."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going; but not till you have told me how soon, Suzette."</p>
+
+<p>"How soon—what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, how absurd of you to talk about that, when I hardly know
+that we are engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it. We are bound and plighted as never lovers were, to my
+knowledge, since Romeo and Juliet. How long did Romeo wait, Suzette?
+Twenty-four hours, I think. I shall have to wait longer—for a special
+licence."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, unless you hurry away to the Manor this instant, I will
+never speak civilly to you again."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what a fury my love can be! What an exquisite termagant! Yes, I
+will wait for the licence. Come to the gate with me, Suzette."</p>
+
+<p>They went through the dusky garden to the old-fashioned five-barred
+gate which opened on to a circular drive. The night was cool and grey,
+and the white bloom of a catalpa tree gleamed ghost-like among the dark
+masses of the shrubbery. A bat wheeled across the greyness in front of
+the lovers, as they kissed and parted.</p>
+
+<p>"Until I can get the licence," he repeated, with his happy laugh.
+"We'll wait for nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have to wait for me," she answered, tossing up her head, and
+running away, a swift white figure, vanishing in the bend of the drive
+as he stood watching her.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!" he ejaculated. "The reward is worth all that has gone
+before."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"AM I HIS KEEPER?"</p>
+
+
+<p>Before the sun had gone down upon the second day after Geoffrey's
+return, his engagement to Miss Vincent had become known to almost
+every member of Matcham society who had any right to be posted in the
+proceedings of the <i>élite</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington, dropping in at her brother's house after breakfast,
+and before her daily excursion to the village, was transformed into
+a statue of surprise on the very threshold of the hall at hearing
+fiddling in her brother's drawing-room, unmistakably fiddling of a
+superior order; a fiddle whose grandiose chords rose loud and strong
+above the rippling notes of a piano—a quaint old melody of Porpora's,
+in strongly marked common time—a fairy-like accompaniment of delicate
+treble runs, light as a gauzy veil flung over the severe outlines of a
+bronze statue.</p>
+
+<p>"She must be having accompanying lessons," thought Mrs. Mornington.
+"Some fiddler from Salisbury, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>She marched into the drawing-room with the privileged unceremoniousness
+of an aunt, and found Geoffrey Wornock standing beside the piano, at
+which Suzette was sitting fresh as a rose, in a pale green frock, that
+looked like the calix of a living flower.</p>
+
+<p>"Home!" cried Mrs. Mornington, with a step backward, and again becoming
+statuesque; "and I have been picturing you as eaten by tigers, or
+tomahawked by savages!"</p>
+
+<p>"The African tiger is only a panther, and there are no tomahawks,"
+answered Geoffrey, laying down his bow, and going across the room to
+shake hands with Mrs. Mornington, the Amati still under his chin.</p>
+
+<p>"And Allan? Where is Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"I left him on his way to the Congo."</p>
+
+<p>"You left him!—came back without him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He wanted to extend his travels—to cross Africa. I was not so
+ambitious. I only wanted to come home."</p>
+
+<p>His smile, as he turned to look at Suzette, told the astute matron all
+she desired to know.</p>
+
+<p>"So," she exclaimed, "is the weathercock nailed to the vane at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"The ship which has been tossing so long upon a sunless sea, is safe in
+her haven," answered Geoffrey.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington's keen perceptions took a swift review of the position.
+A much better match than poor Allan! Discombe, with revenues that had
+accumulated at compound interest during a long minority, must be better
+than Beechhurst, a mere villa, and an estate in Suffolk of which Mrs.
+Mornington knew very little except that it was hedged in and its glory
+overshadowed by the lands of a Most Noble and a Right Honourable or
+two. Discombe! The Squire of Discombe was a personage in that little
+world of Matcham; and the world of Matcham was all on the earthward
+side of the universe for which Miss Mornington cared.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette's shilly-shallying little ways had answered admirably, it
+seemed, after all. How wisely Providence orders things, if we will only
+fold our hand and wait.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me interrupt your musical studies, young people," exclaimed
+the good lady. "I only came to know if Suzette was going to the
+golf-ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am going, auntie, if you are walking that way and want
+company."</p>
+
+<p>It was the kind of day on which only hat and gloves are needed for
+outdoor toilette; and Suzette's neat little hat was ready for her in
+the hall. They all three went off to the links together, along the
+dusty road and through the busy little village—busy just for one
+morning hour—and to the common beyond, the long stretch of common
+that skirted the high-road, and which everybody declared to have been
+created on purpose for golf.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington talked about Allan nearly all the way—her regret that
+he had extended his travels, regret felt mostly on his mother's account.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he always meant to cross from sea to sea," Geoffrey answered
+carelessly. "His mother ought to have been prepared for that. He read
+Trivier's book, and that inspired him. And really crossing Africa means
+very little nowadays. One's people at home needn't worry about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Patrington did not find it so easy."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Patrington! No; he was unlucky. There is no reckoning with fever.
+That is the worst enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you bring home a letter for Lady Emily?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Allan wrote from Ujiji. That letter would reach England much
+quicker than I could."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will go to see her, I dare say. No doubt it would be a comfort
+to her to talk to you about her son—to hear all those details which
+letters so seldom give."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go if she ask me. Suzette has written to tell her of my return."</p>
+
+<p>"She will ask you, I am sure. Or she may come to Beechhurst, as she
+came only a month ago, in the hope of hearing of Allan's movements from
+your letters to your mother."</p>
+
+<p>"I was never so good a correspondent, or so good a son, as Allan."</p>
+
+<p>They were at the golf-ground by this time, and here Mrs. Mornington
+left them; and meeting five of her particular friends on the way, told
+them how a strange thing had happened, and that Geoffrey Wornock, who
+had left England broken-hearted because Suzette had rejected him, had
+come back suddenly from Africa, and had been accepted.</p>
+
+<p>"He took her by storm, poor child! But, after all, I believe she always
+preferred him to poor Allan."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>There seemed nothing wanting now to Mrs. Wornock's happiness. Her son
+had returned, not to restlessness and impatience, not to weary again
+of his beautiful home, but to settle down soberly with a wife he adored.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was to live with him always. The Manor House was still
+to be her home, the music-room her room, the organ hers. In all
+things she was to be as she had been—plus the son she loved, and
+the daughter-in-law she would have chosen for herself from all the
+daughters of earth.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were not that I am sorry for Allan, there would not be a cloud
+in my sky," she told her son, on the second night after his return,
+when he had quieted down a little from that fever of triumphant
+gladness which had possessed him after his conquest of Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mother, there is no use in being sorry for Allan. We could not
+both be winners. To be sorry for him is to grudge me my delight; and I
+could easily come to believe that you are fonder of Allan than of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll never say so again if you'll only leave off lamenting about
+Allan. He will have all the world before him when he comes back to
+England. Somewhere, no doubt there are love and sympathy, and beauty
+and youth waiting for him. When he knows that Suzette has made her
+choice, he will accept the inevitable, and fall in love with somebody
+else—not at Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>There was the faintest touch of irritation in his reply. That incessant
+reference to Allan began to jar upon his nerves. Wherever he went, he
+had to answer the same questions—to explain how he wanted to come home
+and Allan wanted to go further away; and how for that reason only they
+had parted. He began to feel like Cain, and to sympathize with the
+first murderer.</p>
+
+<p>But the worst was still to come. In the midst of a sonata of De
+Beriot's—long, brilliant, difficult—a <i>tour de force</i> for Suzette,
+whose fingers had not grappled with such music within the last two
+years, the door of the music-room was opened, and Lady Emily Carew was
+announced, just as upon that grey afternoon a month ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me for descending upon you again in this way," she said
+hurriedly to Mrs. Wornock, who came from her seat by the window to
+receive the uninvited guest. "I couldn't rest after I received Miss
+Vincent's letter."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been colder than the "Miss Vincent," except the
+stately recognition of Suzette with which it was accompanied. "Mr.
+Wornock"—turning to Geoffrey, without even noticing his mother's
+outstretched hand—"why did you leave my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought Suzette had told you why we parted. He wished to go on. I
+wanted to come home. Is there anything extraordinary in that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. When two men go to an uncivilized country, full of dangers and
+difficulties, and when the third, their guide and leader, has been
+snatched away—surely it is very strange that they should part; very
+cruel of the one whose stronger will insisted upon parting."</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean to imply that I had no right to come back to England
+without your son, I can only answer that you are very unjust. If you
+were a man, Lady Emily, I might be tempted to express my meaning in
+stronger language."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is easy enough for you to answer me, if you can satisfy your
+own conscience; if you can answer to yourself for leaving your friend
+and comrade helpless and alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he more helpless than I? We parted in the centre of Africa. If I
+chose the easier and shorter route homeward, that route was just as
+open to him as to me. It was his own choice to go down the Congo River.
+No doubt his next letter, whenever it may reach you, will tell you all
+you can want to know as to his reasons for taking that route. When I
+offered myself as your son's companion, I accepted no apprenticeship. I
+was tired of Africa; he wasn't. There was no compact between us. I was
+under no bond to stay with him. He may choose to spend his life there,
+as Cecil Patrington chose, practically. I wanted to come home."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be first; to steal my son's sweetheart!" said Lady Emily, pale
+with anger, looking from Geoffrey to Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Emily, you are unreasonable."</p>
+
+<p>"I am a mother, and I love my son. Till I see him, till I hear from
+his own lips that you were not a traitor—that you did not abandon him
+in danger or distress, for your own selfish ends; till then I shall
+not cease to think of you as I think now. Your mother will, of course,
+believe whatever you tell her; and Miss Vincent, no doubt, was easily
+satisfied; but I am not to be put off so lightly—nor your conscience,
+as your face tells me."</p>
+
+<p>She was gone before any one could answer her. She waited for no
+courtesy of leave-taking, for no servant to lead the way. Her own
+resolute hand opened and shut the door, before Mrs. Wornock could
+recover from the shock of her onslaught. Indeed, in those few moments,
+Mrs. Wornock had only eyes or apprehension for one thing, and that was
+Geoffrey's white face. Was it anger or remorse that made him so deadly
+pale?</p>
+
+<p>While his mother watched him wonderingly, filled with a growing fear,
+his sweetheart was too deeply wounded by Lady Emily's scornful speech
+to be conscious of anything but her own pain. She went back to her
+place at the piano, and bent her head over a page of music, pretending
+to study an intricate passage, but unable to read a single bar through
+her thickly gathering tears.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">A SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH.</p>
+
+
+<p>No more was seen or heard of Lady Emily at Matcham. Except the one
+fact that she had returned to Suffolk on the morning after her brief
+appearance at the Manor, nothing more was known about that poor
+lonely lady, whom adverse fate had cut adrift from all she loved.
+At Beechhurst closed shutters told of the master's absence; and the
+inquiries of the officious or the friendly elicited only the reply that
+Mr. Carew was still travelling in Africa, and that no letters had been
+received from him for a long time. He was in a country where there were
+no post-offices, the housekeeper opined, but she believed her ladyship
+heard from him occasionally.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey's return, and the news of his engagement to Miss Vincent,
+made a pleasant excitement in the village and neighbourhood. An early
+marriage was talked about. Mr. Wornock had told the Vicar that he was
+going to be married in a fortnight—had spoken as if he were sole
+master of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"As if such a nice girl as Suzette would allow herself to be hustled
+into marriage without time for a trousseau," persisted Bessie
+Edgefield, who assured her friends that there would be no wedding that
+year. "It may be in January," she said; "but it won't be before the New
+Year."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey had pleaded in vain. He had won his sweetheart's promise; but
+his sweetheart was not to be treated in too masterful a fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows why we are waiting, or what we are waiting for," he said,
+in one of those fits of nervous irritability, which even Suzette's
+influence could not prevent. "Hasn't my probation been long enough?
+Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't you kept me on the rack of
+uncertainty long enough to satisfy your love of power? You are like all
+women; you think of a lover as a surgeon thinks of a rabbit, too low
+in the scale for his feelings to be considered—just good enough for
+vivisection."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't we be happy, Geoffrey? We have everything in the world that we
+care for."</p>
+
+<p>"I can never be happy till I am sure of you. I am always dreading the
+moment in which you will tell me you have changed your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I have given you my promise. Isn't that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it is not enough. You gave Allan your promise—and broke it."</p>
+
+<p>She started up from her seat by the piano, and turned upon him
+indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are capable of saying such things as that, we had better bid
+each other good-bye at once," she said. "I won't submit to be reminded
+of my wrong-doing by you, who are the sole cause of it. If I had
+never seen you, I should be Allan's wife this day. You came between
+us; you tempted me away from him; and now you tell me I am fickle
+and untrustworthy. I begin to think I have made a worse mistake in
+promising to be your wife than I made when I engaged myself to Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"That means that you are regretting him—that you wish he were here
+now—in my place."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in your place; but I wish he were safe in England. It makes me
+miserable to be so uncertain of his fate, for his mother's sake."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he will be in England soon enough, I dare say. But you will be
+my wife by that time; and I shall be secure of my prize. I shall be
+able to defy a hundred Allans."</p>
+
+<p>And then he sat down by her side, and pleaded for her pardon, almost
+with tears. He hated himself for those jealous doubts which devoured
+him, he told her—those fears of he knew not what. If she were but his
+wife, his own for ever, that stormy soul of his would enter into a
+haven of peace. The colour of his life would be changed.</p>
+
+<p>"And even for Allan's sake," he argued, "it is better that there
+should be no delay. He will accept the situation more easily if he
+find us man and wife. A man always submits to the inevitable. It is
+uncertainty which kills."</p>
+
+<p>He pleaded, and was forgiven; and by-and-by Suzette was induced to
+consent to an earlier date for her marriage. It was to be in the
+second week of December—five months after Geoffrey's return, and the
+honeymoon was to be spent upon that lovely shore where there is no
+winter; and then, early in the year, Suzette and her husband were to
+establish themselves at Discombe; and the doors of the Manor House were
+to be opened as they had never been opened since old Squire Wornock was
+a young man. Matcham was in good spirits at the prospect of pleasant
+hospitalities, a going and coming of nice people from London. Nobody
+in the immediate neighbourhood could afford to entertain upon a scale
+which would be a matter of course for Geoffrey Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>"December will be here before we know where we are," said Mrs.
+Mornington, and her constitutional delight in action and bustle of
+all kinds again found a safety-valve in the preparation of Suzette's
+trousseau.</p>
+
+<p>Again she was confronted by a chilling indifference in the young lady
+for whom the clothes were being made. She advised Suzette to spend
+a week in London, in order to get her frocks and jackets from the
+best people. Salisbury would have been good enough for Allan, and
+Beechhurst; but for Squire Wornock's wife—for the Riviera—and for
+Discombe Manor, the most fashionable London artists should be called
+upon for their best achievements.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you'll want to look well when you show yourself at Cannes
+as Mrs. Wornock? You won't want to be another awful example of an
+Englishwomen wearing out her old clothes on the Continent," said Mrs.
+Mornington snappishly.</p>
+
+<p>As the General was also in favour of a week in town, Suzette consented,
+and bored herself to death in the family circle of an aunt who was
+almost a stranger, but who had been offering her hospitality ever
+since she could remember. At this lady's house in Bryanstone Square,
+she spent a weary week of shopping, and trying on, always under the
+commanding eye of Aunt Mornington, who delighted in tramping about
+London out of the season, a London in which one could do just what one
+liked, without fear or favour of society.</p>
+
+<p>And so the trousseau was put in hand; the wedding-gown chosen; the
+wedding-cake ordered; Mrs. Mornington taking all trouble off her
+brother's hands in the matter of the reception that was to be held
+after the wedding. Everybody was to be asked, of course; but the
+invitations were not to go out till a fortnight before the day.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want people to suppose I am giving them plenty of time to
+think about wedding-presents," Suzette explained, when she insisted
+upon this short notice.</p>
+
+<p>All these arrangements were made in October—the marriage settlement
+was drafted, and everybody was satisfied, since Geoffrey's liberality
+had required the curb rather than the spur.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the year the lovers had nothing to think of but each
+other, and those great spirits of the past whose voices still spoke to
+them, whose genius was the companion of their lives. Beethoven, Mozart,
+Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schubert, were the friends of those quiet days;
+and love found its most eloquent interpreters in the language of the
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, with a dim foreboding of evil, Suzette found herself
+wondering what she would do with that fiery restless spirit, were
+it not for that soothing influence of music; but she could not
+imagine Geoffrey dissociated from that second voice which seemed
+more characteristic of him than any spoken language—that voice of
+passionate joys and passionate regrets, of deepest melancholy, and of
+wildest mirth. Music made a third in their lives—the strongest link
+between them, holding them aloof from that outside world to which the
+mysteries of harmony were unknown. Matcham society shrugged shoulders
+of wonder, not unmixed with disdain, when it was told how Miss Vincent
+practised five hours a day at home or at Discombe, and how she was
+beginning to play as well as a professional pianist. There had been a
+little dinner at the Manor House, and Geoffrey and his betrothed had
+played a duet which they called a Salterello, and Mrs. Mornington was
+complimented on her niece's gifts. Her execution was really surprising!
+No other young lady in Matcham could play like that. The girls of the
+present day lived too much out-of-doors to aspire to "execution." If
+they could play some little thing of Schumann's or the easiest of
+Chopin's or Rubinstein's valses, they were satisfied with themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The hunting season began, but Geoffrey only hunted occasionally. He
+went only when General Vincent and his daughter went, not otherwise.
+Suzette had three or four hunters at her disposal now, and could have
+ridden to hounds three times a week had she so desired. Geoffrey's
+first care had been to get some of his best horses ready for carrying
+a lady; and she had her own thoroughbred, clever and kind, and able to
+carry her for a long day's work. But Suzette was not rabid about riding
+to hounds in all weathers, and at all distances. She liked a day now
+and then when her father was inclined to take her; but she had no idea
+of giving up her whole life—books, music, cottage visiting, home, for
+fox-hunting. Geoffrey gave up many a day's sport in order to spend the
+wintry hours in the music-room at Discombe, or in long rambles in the
+woods, or over the downs, with his betrothed.</p>
+
+<p>Was he happy, having won his heart's desire? Suzette sometimes
+found herself asking that question, of herself, not of him. He was
+a creature of moods: sometimes animated, eloquent, hopeful, talking
+of life as if doubt, sorrow, satiety were unknown to him, undreamt
+of by him; at other times strangely depressed, silent and gloomy, a
+dismal companion for a joyous high-spirited girl. Those moods of his
+scared Suzette; but she was prepared to put up with them. She had
+chosen him, or allowed herself to be chosen by him. She had bound
+herself to life-companionship with that fitful spirit. For him she
+had forsaken a lover whose happier nature need never have caused her
+an hour's anxiety—a man whose thoughts and feelings were easy to
+read and understand. She had taken the lover whose caprices and moods
+had awakened a romantic interest, had aroused first curiosity, then
+sympathy and regard. It was because he was a genius she loved him; and
+she must resign herself to the capricious varieties of temperament
+which make genius difficult to deal with in everyday life.</p>
+
+<p>No news of Allan reached Matcham till the beginning of November, when
+Mrs. Mornington took upon herself to write to Lady Emily about him, and
+received a very cold reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard from my son last week," Lady Emily wrote, after a stately
+acknowledgment of Mrs. Mornington's inquiry. "He has been laid up with
+fever, but is better, and on his way home. He wrote from Brazzaville.
+It is something to know that he did not die in the desert, neglected
+and alone. Even on the eve of her marriage, your niece may be glad
+to hear that my son has survived her unkindness, and Mr. Wornock's
+desertion; and that I am hoping to welcome him home before long."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington showed the letter to Suzette, whose mind was greatly
+relieved by this news of Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"It is such a comfort to know that he is safe," she told Geoffrey,
+after commenting upon the unkindness of Lady Emily's letter.</p>
+
+<p>The news which was so cheering to her had a contrary effect upon her
+lover. There was a look of trouble in Geoffrey's face when he was
+told of Allan's expected arrival, and he took no pains to conceal his
+displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry you have suffered such intense anxiety," he said
+resentfully. "Did you suspect me of having murdered him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Geoffrey! I could not help thinking of all possible
+dangers; and it distressed me to know that other people thought you
+unkind in leaving him."</p>
+
+<p>"Other people have talked like fools—as foolishly as his mother, in
+whom one forgives folly. I was not his nurse, or his doctor, or his
+hired servant. I was only a casual companion; and I was free to leave
+him how and when I pleased."</p>
+
+<p>"But not to leave him in distress or difficulty. <i>I</i> knew you could not
+have done that. I knew that you could not act ungenerously. I think
+Lady Emily ought to make you a very humble apology for her rudeness,
+when she has her son safe at home."</p>
+
+<p>"She may keep her apologies for people who value her opinion. I shall
+be a thousand miles away when her son returns."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent and gloomy for the rest of the morning, and Suzette felt
+that she had offended him. Was he so jealous of her former lover that
+even the mention of his name—a natural interest in his safety—could
+awaken angry feelings, and make a distance between them? Even their
+music went badly, and Mrs. Wornock, from her seat by the fire,
+reproached them for careless playing.</p>
+
+<p>"That sonata of Porpora's went ever so much better last week," she
+said, on which Geoffrey threw down his bow in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say you are right. I am not in the mood for music. Will you
+come for a ride after lunch, Suzette? I can drive you home, and the
+horses can follow while you are getting on your habit. We might fall in
+with the hounds."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette declined this handsome offer. She was not going to say to lunch.</p>
+
+<p>"Father complains that I am never at home," she said, putting away the
+music.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father is out with the hounds. What is the use of your going back
+to an empty house?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather be at home to-day Geoffrey."</p>
+
+<p>"To think about Allan, and offer a thanksgiving for his safety?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am full of thankfulness, and I am not ashamed of being glad."</p>
+
+<p>She went over to Mrs. Wornock, who had been too much absorbed in her
+book to be aware that the lovers were quarrelling, till Suzette's brief
+good-bye and rapid departure startled her out of her tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to walk home with her, Geoffrey?" she asked when
+her son returned to the music-room, after escorting his sweetheart no
+further than the hall-door.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered curtly; "we have had enough of each other for to-day."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the library, where the morning papers were lying unread, and
+turned to the second page of the <i>Times</i> for the list of steamers, and
+then to the shipping intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Zanzibar? Yes, the Messageries Maritimes steamer <i>Djemnah</i>, was
+reported as arriving at Marseilles yesterday morning. Allan was in
+England, perhaps. If all went well with him, he would come by the
+first ship after the mail that brought his letter. The <i>Rapide</i> would
+bring him from Marseilles in time for the morning mail from Paris. He
+was in England—he whom Geoffrey had cruelly, treacherously deserted,
+helpless, and alone.</p>
+
+<p>"All is fair in love," Geoffrey told himself; "but I wonder what
+Suzette will think of her future husband when she knows all? Her
+future husband! If I were but her actual husband, I could defy Fate.
+Who knows? something may have happened to hinder his return—a fit of
+fever, a difficulty on the road. Three more weeks, and he may come back
+safe and sound; it won't matter to me; I have no murderous thoughts
+about him. He may tell her the worst he can about me. Once my wife, I
+can hold and keep her in spite of the world. I will teach her that the
+man who sins for love's sake must be forgiven for the sake of his love."</p>
+
+<p>He was consumed with a fever of anxiety which would not let him rest
+within four walls. He walked to Beechhurst, and unearthed a caretaker,
+who came strolling from the distant stables, where he had been
+enlivening his idleness by gossip with the grooms. The blinds and
+shutters were all closed. Nothing had been heard from Mr. Carew.</p>
+
+<p>"If he were in England you would have heard from him, I suppose?" said
+Geoffrey.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; he would have wired, no doubt. My wife is housekeeper, and
+she would have had notice to get the house ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Even if Mr. Carew had gone to Suffolk, in the first instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so, sir. He would know we should want time to prepare
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>There was relief in this. Perhaps the <i>Djemnah</i> had carried no such
+passenger as the man whose return Geoffrey Wornock dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the Manor in the gloom of a November evening. The
+darkness and loneliness of the road suited his humour. He wanted to be
+alone, to think out the situation, to walk down the devil within him.</p>
+
+<p>Matcham Church clock was chiming the third quarter after five when he
+opened the gate and went into Discombe Wood; but when the Discombe
+dressing-bell rang at half-past seven—an old-fashioned bell in a
+cupola, which gave needless information to every cottager within half a
+mile of the Manor House—Geoffrey had not come in.</p>
+
+<p>His valet waited about for him till nearly dinner-time, and then went
+down to the drawing-room to ask Mrs. Wornock if his master was to dine
+at home.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not in his dressing-room, ma'am. Will you wait dinner for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, of course I shall wait. Tell them to keep the dinner back."</p>
+
+<p>The dinner was kept back so long that nobody eat any of it, out of
+the servants' hall. Mrs. Wornock spent a troubled evening in the
+music-room, full of harassing fears; while grooms rode here and
+there—to Marsh House, to inquire if Mr. Wornock was dining there; to
+Matcham Road Station, to ask if he had left by any train, up or down
+the line; to the Vicarage, a most unlikely place, and to other houses
+where it was just possible, but most improbable, that he should allow
+himself to be detained; but nowhere within the narrow circle of Matcham
+life was Mr. Wornock to be heard of.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray don't be anxious about Geoffrey," Suzette wrote, in answer to
+Mrs. Wornock's hastily scribbled note of inquiry; "you know how erratic
+he is. He was vexed at something I said about Allan this morning, and
+he has gone off somewhere in a huff. Keep up your spirits, chère mère.
+I will be with you early to-morrow morning. <i>I</i> am not frightened."</p>
+
+<p>"She is not frightened! If she loved him as I do, she would be as
+anxious as I am," commented Mrs. Wornock, when she had read Suzette's
+letter.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"IT IS THE STARS."</p>
+
+
+<p>Morning brought no relief of mind to Mrs. Wornock, since it brought no
+news of her son; but before night there was even greater anxiety at
+Beechhurst, where Allan Carew's mother arrived late in the evening,
+summoned by a letter from her son, despatched from Southampton on the
+previous day, announcing his arrival, and asking her to join him at
+Beechhurst.</p>
+
+<p>"I would go straight to Suffolk," he wrote, "knowing how anxious my
+dear, tender-hearted mother will be to welcome her wanderer home,
+only—only I think you know that there is some one at Matcham about
+whose feelings I have still a shadow of doubt, still a lingering hope.
+I go there first, where perhaps I may meet you; and if I find that
+faint hope to be only a delusion, I know you will sympathize with my
+final disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"I have passed through many adventures and some dangers since I left
+the great lake. I have been ill, and I have been lonely; but I come
+back to England the same man who went away—unchanged in heart and
+mind. However altered you may find the outer man, the inner man is the
+same."</p>
+
+<p>Having telegraphed from Waterloo to announce her arrival at Matcham
+Road Station, Lady Emily was bitterly disappointed at not finding her
+son waiting for her on the platform. She looked eagerly out into the
+November darkness, searching for the well-known figure among the few
+people standing here and there along the narrow platform. There was no
+Allan, and there was no Beechhurst carriage waiting for her.</p>
+
+<p>The station-master recognized her as she alighted, and came to assist
+in the selection of her luggage, while a porter ran off to order a fly
+from the inn outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Carew was expected home yesterday. Did he come?" asked Lady
+Emily, with that faint sickness of despair which follows on such a
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>She had pictured the moment of reunion over and over again during the
+journey—had fancied how he would look, what he would say to her, and
+the delight of their long confidential talk on the drive home, and the
+pleasure of their <i>tête-à-tête</i> dinner. The only shadow upon her happy
+thought of him was her knowledge of what his faithful heart must needs
+suffer when he found that Suzette had engaged herself to his rival.</p>
+
+<p>The station-master informed Lady Emily that Mr. Carew had arrived the
+day before, by this very train. He had evidently sent no notice of
+his arrival, as there was no carriage to meet him. He had very little
+luggage with him—only a portmanteau and a bale of rugs and sticks,
+which had been sent to Beechhurst by the station 'bus. Mr. Carew had
+walked home.</p>
+
+<p>He was at home, then. The gladness of reunion was only delayed for an
+hour. His mother tried to make light of her disappointment and of his
+neglect. He had given an order to the stable, perhaps, and it had been
+forgotten. There was a mistake somewhere, but no unkindness on his part.</p>
+
+<p>"Was my son looking in pretty good health?" she asked the
+station-master.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lady, allowing for the wear and tear of a sea-voyage, Mr.
+Carew looked pretty well; but he looked pulled down a bit since he went
+away. You mustn't be surprised at a little change in that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, no doubt he is altered. Years of travel and fatigue and
+danger. Ah, there is the fly; they have been very quick. Come, Taylor,"
+to the middle-aged, homely Suffolk abigail who stood on guard over her
+mistress's luggage.</p>
+
+<p>The drive through the November night seemed longer to the lady inside
+the carriage, sitting alone and longing for the sight of her son's
+face, than to her maid on the box beside John coachman, of the Station
+Inn, chatting sociably about the improvements in the neighbourhood
+and the prospects of the hunting season. And, oh, bitter agony of
+disappointment when the door of Beechhurst was opened, and Lady Emily
+saw only a half-lit hall and staircase, and the stolid countenance of
+butler and caretaker, whose informal attire too plainly showed her that
+his master was not in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Mr. Carew gone away again?" she asked, as the man helped her out
+of the carriage, thinking vaguely that Allan might have started off for
+Suffolk that morning, and that she and he were travelling to and fro at
+cross purposes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Carew has not been home, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Not been home? Why, he arrived yesterday by the train I came by
+to-night. The station-master told me so."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he must be visiting somewhere in the neighbourhood, my lady. Some
+luggage was brought at nine o'clock; but my master has not been home."</p>
+
+<p>She stood looking at the man dumbly, paralyzed by apprehension. Where
+could Allan be? what could he have done with himself? His letter had
+asked her to meet him in that house. He had arrived at the station
+twenty-four hours before he could expect her; he had sent home his
+luggage, and had walked out of the station in the most casual manner,
+saying that he was going home. Was it credible that he would go to
+anybody else's house, straight from the station, luggageless, newly
+landed after a long sea-voyage? No man in his senses would so act. Yet
+there was but one course for an anxious mother to take, and Lady Emily
+returned to the fly, and ordered the man to drive to Marsh House.</p>
+
+<p>Allan might have gone straight to Suzette. Who could tell what effect
+the news of her approaching marriage might have upon his mind? His
+letter told his mother that he still hoped; and the change from hope to
+despair would be crushing. He might have hurried away from the scene
+of his disappointment, careless how or where he went, so long as he got
+himself far away from the place associated with his fickle sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was at home, and received Lady Emily kindly, forgetting all
+that had gone before in her compassion for the mother's distress.</p>
+
+<p>Allan had called at Marsh House on the previous evening during
+Suzette's absence. He had been told that she was at the Manor, and the
+servant had understood him to say that he was going on to the Manor. He
+had seemed put out at hearing where she was, the soldier servant had
+told his young mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"And were you not at the Manor when he called?" Lady Emily asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I left before lunch; but instead of coming home, where I was not
+expected, I spent the afternoon at the Vicarage and on the golf-ground
+with Bessie Edgefield."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Wornock was with you most of the time, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not any of the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he away, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. If you must know the truth, we had—well, I can hardly say, we had
+quarrelled; but Geoffrey had been very disagreeable, and I was glad to
+leave him to himself for the afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"You are good friends again now, no doubt?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have not seen each other since. Geoffrey has gone away, without
+letting any one know where he was going, and his poor mother is anxious
+and unhappy about him. He is so impetuous—so erratic."</p>
+
+<p>"And you, his sweetheart, are still more anxious, no doubt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am anxious chiefly for his poor mother's sake. She is too easily
+frightened."</p>
+
+<p>"Can they have gone away together, anywhere?" said Lady Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"Together—Allan and Geoffrey!" exclaimed Suzette. "No, I don't think
+they would do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? They were together for two years in Africa."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but that was different. I don't think, in Geoffrey's state
+of mind, that he would have gone on a journey with your son. He
+has a jealous temper, I am sorry to say, and he was irritable and
+unreasonable yesterday when he heard of—Mr. Carew's return. Is it
+likely that he would have gone off on any expedition with your son to
+London or anywhere else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then where is my son? He was here at this hour yesterday. He left here
+to go to the Manor; and now you tell me that Mr. Wornock is missing,
+and that my son has not been heard of since he left your door."</p>
+
+<p>"He has not been at the Manor. Mrs. Wornock would have told me if he
+had called. I was with her all this morning. She is wretched about
+Geoffrey. They are both safe, I dare say; but their disappearance is
+very alarming."</p>
+
+<p>"Alarming, yes. It means something dreadful—something I dare not
+think of—unless, indeed, Allan changed his mind on finding the state
+of things here, and went off to Suffolk, intending to anticipate my
+journey. Oh, I dare say I am frightening myself for nothing. Will you
+let me write a telegram?" looking distractedly round the room for pens
+and ink.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Lady Emily, pray don't be too anxious. One is so often frightened
+for nothing. My father has only to be an hour later than usual on a
+hunting day in order to make me half distracted. Please sit down by the
+fire, here in this comfortable chair. I'll write your telegram, and
+send it off instantly."</p>
+
+<p>She rang the bell, and then seated herself quietly at her
+writing-table, while Allan's mother sank into a chair, the image of
+helplessness.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I say?"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"To Allan Carew, Fendyke, Millfield, Suffolk.</p>
+
+<p>"I am miserable at not finding you here. Reply immediately, with full
+information as to your plans.</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">"EMILY CAREW."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"God grant I may hear of him there," said Lady Emily, when she had read
+message and address with a searching eye, lest Suzette's writing should
+offer any excuse for mistakes. The telegram was handed to the servant
+with instructions to take it himself to the post-office; and then Lady
+Emily kissed Suzette with a sad remorseful kiss, and went back to the
+fly.</p>
+
+<p>"Discombe Manor," she told the man, with very little consideration for
+the hard-working fly-horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lady; it'll be about as much as he can do."</p>
+
+<p>"He? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"The horse, my lady. He's been on his legs two hours a'ready, and the
+Manor's a good three mile; but I suppose I shall be able to wash out
+his mouth there before I takes him home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; you may do what you like; only get me to the Manor as fast
+as you can."</p>
+
+<p>Allan had not been seen at the Manor. No one had rung the hall-door
+bell yesterday after luncheon. Mrs. Wornock's monastic solitude was
+not often intruded upon by visitors; and yesterday there had been no
+one. The door had not been opened after Miss Vincent went out, Geoffrey
+Wornock's impatient temper always choosing an easier mode of egress
+than that ponderous hall door, which required a servant's attendance,
+or else closed with a bang that reverberated through the house.
+Whatever Allan's intention might have been when he left Marsh House, he
+had not come to Discombe.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily and Mrs. Wornock were softened in their feelings for each
+other by a mutual terror; but Allan's mother dwelt upon the fact that
+the two young men, as travellers of old, might have started off upon
+some expedition; a run up to London to see some new production at
+the theatre; a billiard match; anything in which young men might be
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"They must be much better friends than before they went to Africa—much
+closer companions," urged Lady Emily. "I feel there is less reason for
+fear now that I know your son is missing as well as Allan."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock tried to take the same hopeful view; but she was of a
+less hopeful temperament, and she knew too much of Geoffrey's jealous
+distrust of his rival to believe that there had been any companionable
+feeling between the two young men since Allan's return.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid!" she moaned piteously, wringing her
+hands in an agony of apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you fear? What calamity can have happened which would
+involve both your son and mine? Surely nothing dreadful could happen to
+both our sons, and yet no tidings come either to you or to me. Wherever
+they were—if any accident happened—one or other of them would be
+recognized. Some one would bring us the news. No; I have been anxious
+and unhappy; but I am sure now that I have been needlessly anxious. We
+shall hear from them—very soon."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock clasped Lady Emily's hand in silence, and shook her head
+despondently.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you fear?" asked Allan's mother.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know—but I am full of fear for Geoffrey—for both of them."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily left her, depressed and dispirited by the fear which shrunk
+from shaping itself in words. The disposition to take a hopeful view
+of the case did not last in the face of Mrs. Wornock's mysterious
+agitations, and Allan's mother went back to Beechhurst stupefied with
+anxiety, able only to walk about the house, in and out of the empty
+rooms, in helpless misery.</p>
+
+<p>That state of not knowing what to fear ended suddenly soon after nine
+o'clock, when there came the sound of wheels, and a carriage stopped
+at the hall door. Lady Emily rushed to the door and opened it with her
+own hands, before any one had time to ring the bell; opened it to find
+herself face to face with the woman she had left only two hours before.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock was stepping out of her carriage as the hall door opened.
+She wore neither bonnet nor cloak, only a shawl wrapped round her head
+and shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"He is found!" she said, agitatedly. "Will you come with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your son?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; Allan Carew. Ah, it is dreadful to think of, dreadful to tell you.
+I came myself; I wouldn't let any one else——"</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead!" cried Lady Emily, her heart feeling like ice, her knees
+trembling under her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! Dreadfully hurt—but not dead. There is hope still—Mr.
+Podmore does not give up hope. I have sent a messenger to Salisbury.
+We shall have Dr. Etheridge to-morrow morning—or I will send to
+London——"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is my son—my murdered—dying son?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no—not dying—not murdered. Don't I tell you there is hope?
+He is at Discombe—they have put him in Geoffrey's room. Everything is
+being done. He may recover—he will, he must recover."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was seated in the brougham, unconscious of the movements
+that had conveyed her there; the butler was at the hall door by this
+time, staring in blank wonder, not knowing what to think of this rapid
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Send your mistress's maid to the Manor with her things," ordered
+Mrs. Wornock, hurriedly. And then to her own servant, waiting at the
+carriage door, "Home—as fast as he can drive."</p>
+
+<p>"Why was he taken to your house, and not to his own?" asked Lady Emily,
+in a dull whisper, when the carriage had driven out of the gates.</p>
+
+<p>"Because it was so much nearer to bring him. He was found in our
+woods—robbed—and hurt, cruelly hurt. There is a dreadful wound upon
+his head, and there are signs of a desperate struggle—as if he had
+fought for his life——"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God, that he should be murdered—here in England—within an hour's
+walk of his own house! And I have dreamt of him in some dreadful
+danger—from savage beasts, savage men—night after night, in those
+dreary years he was away—and that he should come home—home—to love,
+and happiness, and safety, as I thought—to meet the fate I had been
+fearing! I prayed God day and night for him—prayed that he might be
+brought back to me in safety. And he came back—came back only to die,"
+wailed the unhappy woman, her head sunk upon her knees, her hands
+working convulsively amongst her loosened hair.</p>
+
+<p>"He will <i>not</i> die," cried Mrs. Wornock, fiercely. "Don't I tell you
+that he will not die? The wound need not be fatal; the doctor said it
+was not a hopeless case. Why do you go on raving—as if you wanted him
+to die—as if you were bent on being miserable—and driving me mad?"</p>
+
+<p>"You! What have you to do with it? He is not your son. Your son is safe
+enough, I dare say. Your son—who left him in the desert—who came
+home to steal his comrade's sweetheart. Your son is safe. Such a man as
+that is never in danger."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock bore this insulting speech in silence; and there was no
+word more on either side for the rest of the journey.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Not without hope! Looking down at the motionless form lying on Geoffrey
+Wornock's bed, in the large airy room, the hand on the coverlet
+as white as the lawn sheet, the face disfigured and hardly to be
+recognized as Allan's face under the broad linen bandage which covered
+forehead and eyes, the lips livid and speechless—looking with agonized
+heart at this spectacle, Allan's mother found it hard to believe the
+doctor's assurance that the case was not, in his humble opinion,
+utterly hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall know more to-morrow," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they trying to find the wretch who did it?" asked Lady Emily. "God
+grant he may be hanged for murder, if my son is to die."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go from here to the police-station, and take all necessary
+steps, if I have your ladyship's authority for doing so. The keeper who
+found your poor son sent a lad off to give information."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. And you will offer a reward—a large reward. My
+poor boy—my dear, dear son—to see him lying there—quite
+unconscious—speechless—helpless. My murdered boy! Where did they find
+him—how——"</p>
+
+<p>"Lying in a little hollow among the underwood, within a few paces of
+the path. There is a gate in the fence opening into the high-road, and
+a footpath, and cart-track, which cut into the main drive four or five
+hundred yards from the gate. It is a point at which he might be likely
+to meet a tramp—as it is so near the road—and a long way from any of
+the lodge gates. The drive would be in Mr. Carew's straight course from
+Marsh House here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! And it was a tramp—you are sure of that—a common
+robber—who attacked him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently. His pockets were turned inside out—his watch was gone."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a day when no one man would have dared to attack my son."</p>
+
+<p>"There may have been two men. The ground was a good deal trampled, the
+keeper told me; but they would be able to see very little by the light
+of a couple of lanterns brought from the stables to the north lodge. We
+shall see the footsteps, and be able to come to a better idea of the
+struggle, to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Send for a London detective—the best that can be got," Lady Emily
+interrupted eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Be sure we will do all that can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"He has no father to take his part," she went on, distractedly; "no
+wife—no sweetheart even—to care for him—only a poor, weak mother. If
+he should die, there will be only one broken heart in the world—only
+one——"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear lady, why anticipate the worst?" remonstrated the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I am wrong. I must cast myself upon God's mercy. I am not
+an irreligious woman. I will pray for my son. There is nothing else
+in the world that I can do. But while I am praying you will work—you
+will find the wretch who did this cruel deed. You will send for the
+cleverest doctor in London—the one man of all men who can cure my poor
+boy."</p>
+
+<p>"You may trust me, Lady Emily. Nothing shall be forgotten or deferred."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was not till the following morning that the news of Allan Carew's
+condition, and his presence at Discombe, reached General Vincent and
+his daughter. Mrs. Mornington was the bearer of those dismal tidings.
+Always active, alert, and early afoot, she heard of the tragedy from
+the village tradesmen, and was told three conflicting versions of the
+story—first at the grocer's, where she was assured that Mr. Carew had
+breathed his last five minutes after he was carried into the Manor
+House; next from the butcher's wife, a very ladylike person, rarely
+seen except through glass, in a little counting-house, giving on to
+the shop—and who opened her glass shutter on purpose to inform Mrs.
+Mornington that both young gentlemen had been picked up for dead in
+the copse at Discombe; Mr. Wornock shot through the heart, Mr. Carew
+with a bullet in his left temple, the result of a duel to the death.
+A third informant, taking the air in front of the coachbuilder's
+workshop—where everybody's carriages went sooner or later for
+repairs—assured Mrs. Mornington that there hadn't been much harm done,
+and that Mr. Carew, who had had his pockets picked by a tramp, had been
+more frightened than hurt.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington was not the kind of person to languish in uncertainty
+about any fact in local history while she possessed the nerves of
+speech and locomotion. Before the coach-builder finished his rambling
+story, she had despatched a village boy to the Grove to order her
+pony-cart to be brought her as quickly as the groom could get it
+ready; and her orders being always respected, the honest bay cob met
+her, rattling his bit and whisking his tail from joyous freshness, at
+the bend of the village street, within a quarter of an hour of the
+messenger's start. The boy had run his fastest; the groom had not lost
+a moment; for Mrs. Mornington was one of those excellent mistresses who
+stand no nonsense from their servants.</p>
+
+<p>The cob went to Discombe at a fast trot, and returned stablewards still
+faster, indulging in occasional spurts of cantering, which his mistress
+did not check with her usual severity.</p>
+
+<p>She saw no one but servants at the Manor House. Mrs. Wornock was in her
+own room, quite prostrate, the butler explained; Lady Emily was with
+Mr. Carew, who had passed a bad night, and was certainly no better this
+morning, even if he were no worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it very serious, Davidson?" Mrs. Mornington asked the trustworthy
+old servant.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it couldn't be much worse, ma'am. The doctor from Salisbury
+was here at nine o'clock, and was upstairs with Mr. Podmore very near
+an hour; but he didn't look very cheerful when he left—no more did Mr.
+Podmore. And there's another doctor been telegraphed for from London.
+If doctors can save the poor gentleman's life, he'll be spared. But I
+saw his face last night when he was carried upstairs, and I can't say
+<i>I've</i> much hopes of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind your hopes, Davidson, if the doctors can pull him through.
+A young man can get over a good deal."</p>
+
+<p>"If he can get over having his head mashed—and lying for twenty-seven
+hours in a wood—he must have a better constitution than ever I heard
+tell of."</p>
+
+<p>"The wretch who attacked him has not been found yet, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am, not yet, nor never likely to be, so far as I can see.
+He had seven and twenty hours' start, you see, ma'am; and if a
+professional thief couldn't get off with that much law, the profession
+can't be up to much; begging your pardon, ma'am, for venturing to
+express an opinion," concluded Davidson, who felt that he had been
+presuming on an old servant's licence.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington told him she was very glad to hear his opinion, and
+then handed him cards for the two ladies, on each of which she had
+scribbled assurances of sympathy; and with this much information from
+the fountain-head, she appeared in the drawing-room at Marsh House,
+where she found Suzette sitting by the fire in a very despondent
+mood. Her lover's mysterious disappearance after something which was
+very like a quarrel, was not a cheering incident in her life; and now
+Lady Emily's anxiety about her son—the fact that he, too, should be
+missing—increased her trouble of mind.</p>
+
+<p>She listened aghast to her aunt's story.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it mean?" she faltered. "What can it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"The meaning is plain enough, I think. This poor young man was waylaid
+in the dusk on Thursday evening—attacked and plundered."</p>
+
+<p>"By a tramp?"</p>
+
+<p>"By one of the criminal classes—a ticket-of-leave man, perhaps,
+rambling from Portland to London, ready to snatch any opportunity on
+the way. There's very little use in speculating about a wretch of that
+class. There are plenty of such ruffians loose in the world, I dare
+say."</p>
+
+<p>"But it would have served a robber's purpose just as well to have only
+stunned him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, those gentry don't consider things so nicely. No doubt Allan
+showed fight. And the ruffian would have no mercy."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think he will die? Oh, aunt, how terrible if he were to die.
+And Geoffrey still away—Mrs. Wornock miserable about him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's the strangest part of the business! What can have induced
+Geoffrey to take himself off in that mysterious way? Have you any idea
+why he went?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I have no idea."</p>
+
+<p>"If he is keeping away of his own accord—if nothing dreadful has
+happened to him—his conduct is most insulting to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind me, aunt; while there is this trouble at Discombe—for poor
+Lady Emily."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry for her; but I am obliged to think of you. His
+behaviour places you in such an awkward position—a ridiculous
+position. Your wedding-day fixed—hurried on with red-hot impatience by
+this young man—and he, the bridegroom, missing! What do you suppose
+people will say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no suppositions about people outside our lives. I can only
+think of the sorrow at Discombe. People can say anything they like,"
+Suzette answered wearily.</p>
+
+<p>Her father had been questioning her, and had talked very much in the
+same strain as her aunt. She was tired to heart-sickness of talk about
+Geoffrey. All had grown dark in her life; and darkest of all was her
+thought of her betrothed.</p>
+
+<p>There had been that in his manner when she parted with him which had
+filled her with a shapeless dread, a terror not to be lightly named,
+a terror she had not ventured to suggest even to her father. And here
+was her aunt teasing her about other people—utterly indifferent
+people—and their ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"What will people <i>not</i> say?" exclaimed Mrs. Mornington, after a
+troubled pause, in which she had poked the fire almost savagely, and
+pulled a chairback straight. "I must have a serious talk with your
+father. Is he at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He is out shooting."</p>
+
+<p>"Shooting? It is scarcely decent of him in the present state of
+affairs. Any more presents?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Yes; there was a box came this morning. I haven't opened
+it. Please don't talk of presents. It is too horrid to think of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Horridly embarrassing," said Mrs. Mornington. "You had better come to
+the Grove, Suzette. There's no good in your moping alone here. And you
+may have visitors in the afternoon prying and questioning."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, aunt, I would rather be at home. I shall deny myself to
+everybody except Bessie Edgefield."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, and you'll tell her everything, and she will tell everybody in
+Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing to tell—nothing that Bessie cannot find out from other
+people. But she is not a gossip; and she is always <i>simpatica</i>."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">MADNESS OR CRIME?</p>
+
+
+<p>Days grew into weeks, and the slow, anxious hours brought very little
+change in Allan's condition, and certainly no change which the doctors
+could call a substantial improvement. Physician and surgeon from
+London, famous specialists both, came at weekly intervals and testified
+to the good fight which the patient was making, and the latent power of
+a frame which had been strained and wasted by the hardships of African
+travel, and which was now called upon to recover from severe injuries.
+Consciousness had returned, but not reason. The young man had not once
+recognized the mother who rarely left his bedside, but whose bland
+and pleasant countenance was so sorely altered by grief and anxiety
+that even in the full possession of his senses he might hardly have
+known her. The power of speech had returned, but only in delirious
+utterances, or in a strange gibberish, which poor Lady Emily mistook
+for an African language, but which was really the nonsense-tongue of a
+disordered brain.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors pronounced the case not utterly without hope; but they
+would commit themselves to nothing further than this. It was a wonder
+to have kept him alive so long. His recovery would be almost a miracle.</p>
+
+<p>Two trained nurses from the county hospital alternated the daily and
+nightly watch by the sick-bed, and Lady Emily shared the day's, and
+sometimes the night's, duty, humbly assisting the skilled attendants,
+grateful for being permitted to aid in the smallest service for the son
+who lay helpless, inert, and unobserving on that bed which even yet
+might be his bed of death.</p>
+
+<p>No one but those three women and the doctors was allowed to enter
+Allan's room. Mrs. Wornock was very kind and sympathetic, in spite
+of torturing anxieties about her son's unexplained absence; but she
+expressed no desire to see Allan, and she seldom saw Lady Emily for
+more than a few minutes in the course of the day. The whole house was
+ordered with reference to the sick-room. Organ and piano were closed
+and dumb, and a funereal silence reigned everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>And so the wintry days went by, and rain and rough weather made a
+sufficient excuse for Suzette's staying quietly at home, and seeing
+very little of the outer world. Mrs. Mornington took the social aspect
+of the crisis entirely on her own hands, and informed her friends that
+the wedding had been deferred, partly on account of Allan's illness,
+and for other reasons which she was not at liberty to explain.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece is very capricious," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope she has not sent Mr. Wornock off to Africa again!" exclaimed
+Mrs. Roebuck. "Such a brilliant young man, with a house so peculiarly
+adapted for entertaining, should not be allowed to become an absentee.
+It is too great a loss for such a place as this, where so few people
+entertain."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Roebuck's estimate of her acquaintance was always based upon their
+capacity for entertaining, though she herself, on this scale, would
+have been marked zero.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think he will go back to Africa. But my niece and he have
+agreed to part—for a short time, at any rate. She is sending back all
+her wedding-presents this week."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pray don't let her send me that absurd Japanese paper-knife! I
+only chose it because it is so deliciously ugly and queer. And I knew
+that, marrying a man of Mr. Wornock's means, she wouldn't want anything
+costly or useful—no fish-knives or salt-cellars."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it really is off, or likely to be off," Mr. Roebuck said,
+with a solemnly confidential air, "I don't mind saying in confidence
+that I think your niece has acted wisely. The young man is a genius,
+no doubt; but he's a little bit overstrung—<i>fanatico per la musica</i>,
+don't you know. And one never knows whether that sort of thing won't
+go further," tapping his forehead suggestively.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>das macht nichts</i>; the poor dear young man is <i>toqué</i>, only
+<i>toqué</i>, not <i>fêlé</i>," protested Mrs. Roebuck, who affected a polyglot
+style.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but the mother, don't you know! That's where the danger comes in.
+The mother has never been quite right," argued her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not going to accept congratulations," said Mrs. Mornington. "I'm
+very sorry the marriage has been postponed. Mr. Wornock and Suzette are
+admirably adapted for each other, and he is no more cracked than I am.
+And remember the marriage is put off—not broken off."</p>
+
+<p>"All the more reason why she should not send me back that Japanese
+absurdity," said Mrs. Roebuck, as if the paper-knife were of as much
+consequence as the marriage.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Suzette saw Mrs. Wornock nearly every day during that time of
+trouble—sometimes at Discombe, where they sat together in the
+music-room, or paced the wintry garden, saying very little to each
+other, but the elder woman taking comfort from the presence of the
+younger.</p>
+
+<p>"I am miserable about him," she told Suzette; and that was all she
+would ever say of her son.</p>
+
+<p>She had no suggestions to offer as to the cause of his disappearance.
+She uttered no complaint of his unkindness.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette inquired if the police had made any discovery about Allan's
+assailant.</p>
+
+<p>No, nothing; or, at least, Mrs. Wornock had heard of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Emily may know more than she cares to tell me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I think not! Living in your house, indebted so deeply to your
+kindness, she could not be so churlish as to keep anything back."</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks of nothing but her son. She would have no mercy upon any
+one who had injured him."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone startled Suzette, with the recurrence of a terror which she
+had tried to dismiss from her mind as groundless and irrational.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; of course not. Who could expect her to have mercy? However
+hard the law might be, she would never think the sentence hard enough.
+Her only son, her idolized son, brought to the brink of the grave,
+perhaps doomed to die, in spite of all that can be done for him."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette tried to shut out that horrible idea—the hideous fancy that
+the ruffian who had attacked Allan Carew was no casual offender,
+extemporizing a crime on the suggestion of the moment, for the chance
+contents of a gentleman's purse, and an obvious watch and chain.
+Murder so brutal is not often the result of a chance encounter. Yet
+such things have been; and the alternative of a private vengeance—a
+vindictive jealousy culminating in attempted murder—was too horrible.
+Yet that dreadful suspicion haunted Suzette's pillow in the long winter
+nights—nights of wakefulness and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Where was he, that miserable man, who had won her heart in spite of
+her better reason, and in loving whom she had seldom been without
+the sense of trouble and fear? His want of mental balance had been
+painfully obvious to her even in their happiest hours; and she had felt
+that there was peril in a nature so capricious and so intense. She had
+discovered that for him religion was no strong rock. He had laughed
+away every serious question, and had made her feel that, in all the
+most solemn thoughts of life and after-life, they were divided by an
+impassable gulf: on his side, all that is boldest and saddest in modern
+thought: on her side, the simple, unquestioning faith which she had
+accepted in the dawn of her reason, and which satisfied an intellect
+not given to speculate upon the Unknowable. She had found that, not
+only upon religious questions, but even on the moral code of this life,
+there were wide differences in their ideas. Dimly, and with growing
+apprehension, she had divined the element of lawlessness in Geoffrey's
+character, revealed in his admiration of men for whom neither religion
+nor law had been a restraining influence—men for whom passion had been
+ever the guiding star. Lives that to her seemed only criminal were
+extolled by him as sublime. Such, or such a man, whose unbridled will
+had wrought ruin for himself and others, was lauded as one who had
+known the glory of life in its fullest meaning, who had verily lived,
+not crawled between earth and heaven.</p>
+
+<p>In her own simple, unpretentious way, Suzette had tried to combat
+opinions which had shocked her; and then Geoffrey had laughed off
+her fears, and had promised that for her sake he would think as she
+thought, he would school himself to accept a spiritual guide of her
+choosing.</p>
+
+<p>"Who shall my master be, Suzette? Shall I be broad and liberal with
+Stanley, severe with Manning, intense with Liddon, mystical with
+Newman? 'Thou for my sake at Allah's shrine, and I——' You know the
+rest. I will do anything to make my dearest happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Anything except pretend, Geoffrey. You must never do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Mustn't I? Then we had better leave religion out of the question;
+until, perhaps, it may grow up in my mind, suddenly, like Jonah's
+gourd, out of my love for you."</p>
+
+<p>In all the weary time while Allan was lying at the gate of death, and
+Geoffrey had so strangely vanished, Suzette had never doubted the
+love of her betrothed. The possibility of change or fickleness on his
+part never entered into her mind. Of the truth and intensity of his
+affection she, who had been his betrothed for nearly half a year, could
+not doubt. Her fears and anxieties took a darker form than any fear of
+alienated feelings, or inconstancy. Suicide, crime, madness, were the
+things she feared, though she never expressed her fears. Her father
+heard no lamentations from those pale lips; but he could read the marks
+of distress in her countenance, and he was grieved and anxious for her
+sake.</p>
+
+<p>He too invoked the powers of the detective police, but quietly, and
+without anybody's knowledge. He went up to London, and put the case
+of Geoffrey's disappearance before one of the sagest philosophers who
+had ever adorned the detective force at Scotland Yard, now retired and
+practising delicate investigations on his own account.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose there has been a fatal accident, or that he has been
+keeping out of the way on purpose?" asked the General, after all
+particulars had been stated.</p>
+
+<p>"An accident would have been heard of before now. No doubt he is
+keeping out of the way. Have you any reason to suppose him mentally
+afflicted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Afflicted, no. Eccentric, perhaps, though I should hardly call him
+that—capricious, somewhat whimsical. Mentally afflicted? No, decidedly
+not."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! That trick of keeping out of the way is a very common thing in
+madness. If he is not mad, there must be some strong reason for his
+disappearance. He must have done something to put himself in jeopardy."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible! No, no, no. I can't entertain the idea for a moment,"
+cried the General, thinking of that murderous attack in the wood.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish us to make inquiries?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, better not—the young man's mother is having everything done.
+I am not a relation—I only wanted the benefit of a professional
+opinion. I thought you might be able to throw some light——"</p>
+
+<p>"No two cases are quite alike, sir; but I think you will find I am
+right here, and that in this case there is lunacy, or there has been a
+crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Madness or crime," mused the General, as he left the office. "I can't
+go back to Suzette and tell her that. I must take her away again."</p>
+
+<p>He announced his intention of starting for the Riviera next morning at
+the breakfast-table; but his daughter implored him piteously to let her
+stay at Matcham.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be so heartless to go away while Allan is hovering between
+life and death, and while——"</p>
+
+<p>She left the sentence unfinished. She could not trust herself to speak
+of Geoffrey.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"HE HATH AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM OF LIFE."</p>
+
+
+<p>It was the day which was to have seen Suzette's wedding—the thirteenth
+of December, a dull, mild December, promising that green Christmas
+which is said to people churchyards with new-comers; a December to
+gladden the heart of the fox-hunter, and disappoint the skater.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting in melancholy solitude by the drawing-room fire, on this grey,
+rainy morning, Suzette was glad to remember that she had prevented the
+sending out of invitation cards, and that very few people in Matcham
+knew the intended date of that wedding which was never to be. There
+were not many to think of her with especial pity on this particular
+day, sitting alone in her desolation, in her dark serge frock, with
+the black poodle, Caro, and her piano for her only companions. Even the
+companionship of that beloved piano had failed her since Geoffrey's
+disappearance. Music was too closely associated with his presence.
+There was not a single composition in her portfolio that did not recall
+him—not an air she played that did not bring back the words he had
+spoken when last her fingers followed the caprices of the composer.
+He had been her master as well as her lover—he had taught her the
+subtleties of musical expression—had breathed mind into her music.</p>
+
+<p>Bessie Edgefield knew the date; but Bessie was sympathetic, and
+never officious or obtrusive. She would drop in by-and-by, no doubt,
+pretending not to remember anything particular about the day. She would
+be full of some little bit of village news, or a new book from Mudie's,
+or Mrs. Roebuck's last bonnet.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding was to have been at two o'clock, a sensible, comfortable
+hour; giving the bride ample leisure in which to put on her wedding
+finery. The hours between breakfast and luncheon seemed longer than
+usual that morning, a long blank weariness, after Suzette had seen her
+father mount and ride away on his favourite hunter. The hounds met on
+the other side of the downs, on the borders of Hampshire. It would be
+late, most likely, before she would welcome that kind father to the
+comfortable fireside, and listen, or at least pretend to listen, to the
+varying fortunes of an adventurous day. And in the meantime she had the
+day all before her, to dispose of as best she might, that day which was
+to have seen her a bride.</p>
+
+<p>Was she sorrowing for the lover who had forsaken her, as she sat
+looking with sad, tearless eyes into the fire? Was she regretting the
+happiness that might have been, thinking of a life which should have
+been cloudless? No, she had never contemplated a life of cloudless
+happiness with Geoffrey Wornock. She had loved that fiery spirit. Her
+love had been conquered by a mind stronger than her own, and she had
+submitted, almost as a slave submits to her captor. Mentally she had
+been in bondage, able to see all that was faulty and perilous in the
+character of her conqueror, yet loving him in spite of his faults.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day his image was associated with a great terror—a terror
+of undiscovered crime—the fear that when next she heard his name
+spoken she would hear of him as an arrested criminal; or as a suicide,
+self-slaughtered in some quiet spot, where the searchers must needs be
+slow to find him.</p>
+
+<p>Two o'clock. She had tried all her best-loved books in the endeavour to
+forget the dark realities of life; but books did not help her to-day.
+She never went into the dining-room for a formal luncheon when her
+father was out for the day; preferring some light refreshment of the
+kind which one hears of in Miss Austen's novels as "the tray," a modest
+meal of cake and fruit, with nothing more substantial than a sandwich.
+To-day even the sandwich was impossible. Her lips were dry with an
+inward fever. Her hands were cold as ice, her forehead was burning.
+"Was it raining?" she asked the servant. "No, the rain had ceased an
+hour ago," the man told her. She started up with a feeling of relief
+at the idea of escape from the dull, silent house; put on her hat and
+jacket, and went out by the glass door into the garden, where the mild
+winter had left a few flowers, pale Dijon roses, amidst the thick
+foliage of honeysuckle and magnolia on the south wall, a lingering
+chrysanthemum here and there in a sheltered bend of the shrubbery. The
+air was full of the sweetness of herbs and flowers, and the freshness
+of the rain. Yes, it was a relief to be walking about, looking at the
+shrubs, shaking the rain from the feathery branches of the deodaras,
+searching for late violets behind a border of close-clipped box. It
+was a comfortable, old-fashioned garden, full of things that had been
+growing for the best part of a century, a garden of broad gravel
+walks, and square grass plots, espaliers hiding asparagus-beds, the
+scent of sweet herbs conquering the more delicate odours of violets and
+rare roses—a dear old garden to be happy in, and a quiet retreat in
+which to walk alone with sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette walked alone with her sorrow for nearly an hour, thankful for
+the hazard which had carried her energetic aunt to Salisbury two days
+before, on a visit to her friends in the Close, and had thus spared
+her Mrs. Mornington's society on this particular day. To have been
+comforted, or to have been bewailed over, would have added to her
+burden. To walk alone in this dull old garden was best.</p>
+
+<p>Not alone any more! She heard the rustling of branches at the other
+end of the long green alley, and a footstep—a heavier footfall than
+Bessie Edgefield's—on the moist gravel. Her heart throbbed with a
+startled expectancy. Joy or fear? She had no time to know which feeling
+predominated before she saw her lover coming quickly towards her. He
+was dressed, not as she had been accustomed to see him in the corduroy
+waistcoat, short tweed coat, and knickerbockers of rustic out-of-door
+life, but in a frock-coat, light grey trousers, and white waistcoat,
+and was wearing a tall hat. She had time to note these details, and
+the malmaison carnation in his coat, and the light gloves which he was
+carrying, before he was at her side, looking down at her with wild,
+bloodshot eyes, grasping her arm with a strong hand, while those smart
+lavender gloves dropped from his unconscious grasp, and fell on the wet
+gravel, to be trampled underfoot like weeds.</p>
+
+<p>"Why were you not at the church? Why are you wearing that dingy frock?
+You and your bridesmaids ought to have been ready an hour ago. I have
+been waiting for you. Have you forgotten what this day means?"</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey! have not <i>you</i> forgotten? What madness to come back like
+this! What have you been doing with your life since the fourteenth of
+November? Where have you been hiding?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where? Hiding! Nonsense! I have been travelling. I took it into
+my head, when Allan was coming back, that you didn't care for me,
+that he was the favoured lover, in spite of all. I had extorted your
+promise—and you were sorry you had ever given it. And I thought the
+best thing for me would be to make myself scarce, to go to Africa,
+Australia, anywhere. The world is big enough for two people to give
+each other a wide berth, but not big enough for Allan and me, if you
+liked him better than me. I was a fool, that's all: a fool to doubt my
+dearest! But there's no time to lose. We must be married before three.
+Come to the church as you are. What does it matter? I've put on my
+war-paint, you see. My valet seemed to think I was mad."</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she has been plaguing me with questions. I gave her the slip.
+Allan is there, in my house. The irony of fate, isn't it? Hovering
+between life and death, my mother told me. How long will he hesitate
+between two opinions? I left them wondering, and hurried to the church
+to meet you, only to find emptiness. No one there! Not even the sexton.
+But there is still time. We can be married—you and I—with the sexton
+and pew-opener for witnesses, and can start for the other end of the
+world to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, why did you go away?" she asked, looking up at that wild
+face with infinite terror in her own.</p>
+
+<p>The restless eyes, the convulsive working of the dry hot lips told
+their story only too plainly, the story of a mind distraught.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Geoffrey!" she said gently, with unspeakable pity for this
+human wreck, "there can be no marriage to-day. We are all in great
+trouble—about Allan."</p>
+
+<p>"About Allan—always about Allan!" he interrupted savagely. "What has
+Allan to do with the matter? It is our wedding-day, yours and mine. I
+don't want Allan for my best man."</p>
+
+<p>"There can be no marriage while Allan is ill, lying in your house, so
+nearly murdered; perhaps even yet to die from that cruel usage. They
+are looking for his murderer, Geoffrey. Was it wise for you to come
+back to this place, knowing that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Knowing what?"</p>
+
+<p>"That Allan's mother is determined to find the man who so nearly killed
+her son."</p>
+
+<p>"What have I to do with her determination? I shall neither hinder nor
+help her."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the crafty smile, the malice and the cunning in that face, a look
+which Suzette had never seen till now! A look which made that once
+splendid countenance seem the face of a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank from him involuntarily. He saw the sudden look of repulsion,
+and tightened his grasp upon her arm, until she gave a cry of pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I hurt you?" loosening his grasp with a laugh. "What a fluttering
+little dove it is; so easily scared, so easily hurt. Come, Suzette, you
+are not going to cheat me, are you? This is the thirteenth of December.
+Do you hear? the thirteenth, the date fixed and appointed by you, by
+your very self. You shall not evade your own appointment. Come, love,
+come."</p>
+
+<p>He took a few rapid steps forward, dragging her along with him, lifting
+her off her feet in his vehemence, but stopping suddenly when he found
+she was nearly falling.</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, how rough you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean to be rough. But there's not a moment to lose. Why won't
+you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not coming. It is sheer madness to talk of our wedding. You have
+been away for a whole month of your own accord. Our marriage has been
+put off indefinitely. Poor Geoffrey!" looking at his haggard face with
+sudden tenderness, "how dreadfully ill you look! worse than the night
+you arrived from Zanzibar. I will go back to the Manor with you, and
+see you safe and at rest with your dear mother."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I am never going back to the Manor where that dead man lies."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead! Oh, God! He is not dead! What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want their dead man there. Well, he may be alive still,
+perhaps. I don't want him there. His presence poisons my house, as his
+influence has poisoned my life. He has been a blight upon me. Like me,
+they say—like me, but of a different fibre. I know how to fight for
+my own hand. Will you come with me to the church quietly, of your own
+accord?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. Impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll make you," he cried savagely, seizing her in his arms. "I
+won't be fooled. I won't be cheated. I am here to fulfil my part of the
+bond. I have not forgotten the date."</p>
+
+<p>Then with a swift change of mood he loosened his angry hold upon her,
+fell on his knees at her feet, crying over the poor little hand which
+he clasped in both his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity me, Suzette, pity me! I am the most miserable wretch in the
+world. I have been wandering about England like a criminal; a hateful
+country, no solitude, people staring and prying everywhere; a miserable
+over-crowded place where a man cannot be alone with his troubles, where
+there is no space for thought or memory. But I did not forget you. Your
+image was always there," touching his forehead; "<i>that</i> never faded.
+Only I forgot other things, or hardly knew which were dreams, or which
+were real. That grey afternoon in the wood, and the words that were
+said, and his face when I struck him! A dream? Yes, a dream! And then
+only yesterday the date upon a newspaper seen by accident—I have read
+no newspapers since I left Discombe—reminded me of to-day. I was at
+Padstow yesterday afternoon, an out-of-the-way village on the Cornish
+coast; and it has taken me all my time to get here to Discombe to-day
+in time to dress for my wedding. You should have seen my servant's
+face when I rang for him. I went into the house by the old door in the
+lobby, and walked up to my dressing-room without meeting a mortal. One
+never does meet any one at Discombe. The house is like the tomb of the
+Pharaohs—long passages, emptiness, silence."</p>
+
+<p>He had risen from his knees at Suzette's entreaty, and was walking
+by her side, walking fast, speaking with breathless rapidity, eager,
+self-absorbed, holding her, lightly now, by the arm, as they paced the
+gravel walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Higson was always a fool. I could see what he was thinking when I made
+him put out my frock-coat. The fellow thought I was mad. He wanted me
+to take a warm bath, and lie down for a bit before I saw my mother. He
+talked in the smooth wheedling way common people use with lunatics, as
+if they were children; and then he ran off to fetch my mother; and she
+came, poor soul, and kissed and cried over me, and thanked God with
+one breath for my return, and with the next wailed about Allan. Allan
+was there, close by, in my room. I was not to speak above my breath,
+lest I should disturb him. I went to another room to dress, but I
+had ever so much trouble with Higson before I could get the things
+I wanted—London things he called them—and wouldn't I have this, or
+that, anything except what I asked for? So you see I had a lot of
+trouble, and then I walked to the church, and found it was two o'clock,
+and not a soul there."</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, what could you expect?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expected you to keep your word. This is our wedding-day. I expected
+to find my bride."</p>
+
+<p>"We must wait, Geoffrey. There is plenty of time."</p>
+
+<p>"No, there is no time. I want to take you with me to the Great Lake,
+far away from this cramped narrow country, these teeming over-crowded
+cities, a soil gridironed with railways, shut in with streets and
+houses, not one wide horizon like that inland sea. Ah, how you would
+adore it, as I do, in storm or in calm, always beautiful, always grand,
+a place made for the mind to grow in, for the heart to rest in. Ah,
+how often in the deep of the moonlight nights I have wandered up and
+down those smooth sands, thinking of you, conjuring up your image in
+such warm reality that it froze my blood when I looked round and saw
+that the real woman was not at my side. You will go to Africa with me,
+Suzette?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, yes; by-and-by."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that's what Higson said when I told him to put out a frock-coat,
+'By-and-by.' But I answered with a 'Now!' that made him jump. Hark!
+there's some one coming; a step on the gravel."</p>
+
+<p>A light step, a girl's quick footfall. It was the vicar's daughter,
+fresh and blooming in winter frock and winter hat. A creature of the
+kind that is usually nailed flat on a barn door was coiled gracefully
+round the little felt hat, pretending to have come from Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>At the first sight of Geoffrey, she started and looked aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock! I thought you were hundreds of miles away."</p>
+
+<p>"So I was, yesterday afternoon; but I happened to remember my
+wedding-day, and here I am, only to find that other people had
+forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you happened to remember!" said Bessie, still staring at the white
+waistcoat, the malmaison carnation, the light grey trousers stained
+with rain and mud from the knee downwards, and worst of all the haggard
+countenance of the wearer. "You only remembered yesterday. How funny!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Edgefield would have made the same remark about a funeral in her
+present startled condition of mind.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Matcham had plenty of stuff for conversation within the next few days;
+for by that subtle process by which facts or various versions of
+facts are circulated in a rustic neighbourhood, people became aware
+of Geoffrey Wornock's return to Discombe, and of dreadful scenes that
+had occurred at Marsh House, where he had stayed for a couple of days,
+during which period Suzette was living at the Grove under her aunt and
+uncle's protection.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, there had been scenes, tragical scenes, at Marsh House. Mrs.
+Wornock had been hastily summoned there, and had stayed under General
+Vincent's roof till her unhappy son was removed in medical custody,
+whither Matcham people knew not, though there were positive assertions
+as to locality on the part of the more energetic talkers. A physician
+had been summoned from London, a man of repute in mental cases; and
+Mrs. Wornock's brougham had driven away from Marsh House in wintry
+dusk, with a pair of horses, and had not returned to the Manor till
+late on the following day; whereby it was concluded that the journey
+had been at least twenty miles.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wornock had been taken away, placed under restraint, people told
+each other, arriving at the fact by the usual inductive process, and
+on this occasion unhappily accurate in their deduction. Geoffrey was
+in a doctor's care; a madman with lucid intervals; not violent, except
+in brief flashes of angry despair, but with occasional hallucinations,
+that delirium without fever which constitutes lunacy from the
+standpoint of law and medicine.</p>
+
+<p>Before he passed into that dim under-world of the private lunatic
+asylum, he had, in more than one wild torrent of self-accusation,
+confessed his treacherous desertion of Allan in Africa, his savage
+assault upon Allan in the wood. They had met, and Allan had upbraided
+him for that treacherous desertion, and for stealing his sweetheart.
+Suzette's name had been like a lighted fuse to an infernal machine;
+and then the latent savage which is in every man had leapt into life,
+and there had been a deadly struggle, a fight for existence on Allan's
+part, a murderous onslaught from Geoffrey.</p>
+
+<p>It needed not the opinion of the detective police, nor yet the
+discovery of Allan's watch and signet-ring under the rotten leaves
+in the deep hollow of an old oak half a mile from the spot where he
+himself had been found, to substantiate Geoffrey's self-accusation. His
+unhappy mother, who was with him at Marsh House throughout those last
+dreadful hours of raving and unrest, had never doubted his guilt from
+the time of his reappearance at Discombe.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was months before Allan returned to the world of active life; but he
+left the Manor long before actual convalescence.</p>
+
+<p>Not once, during those slow hours of returning health, did he allude
+to the cause of his terrible illness; and, on his mother timidly
+questioning him, he professed to have no recollection of the assault
+which had been so nearly fatal.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the past remain a blank, mother. No good can come by trying to
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>He was especially gentle and affectionate to Mrs. Wornock on her rare
+visits to his room during the earlier stages of his convalescence.
+Geoffrey's name was not spoken by either; but Allan's sympathetic
+manner told the unhappy mother that he knew her grief and pitied her.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was by no means ungrateful for the lavish hospitality with
+which Mrs. Wornock's house and household had been devoted to her
+son, yet she shrank with a natural abhorrence from a scene which was
+associated with Allan's peril and Geoffrey's crime. No kindness of
+Mrs. Wornock's could lessen that horror; and Lady Emily did her utmost
+to hasten the patient's removal to his own house, short of risking a
+relapse. When she saw him established in his cheerful bedchamber at
+Beechhurst, she felt as if she had taken him out of a charnel-house
+into the pleasant world of the living and the happy; a world to which
+Geoffrey Wornock was fated never to return.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite hopeless," was the verdict of medical authority.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock left Discombe, and was said to be living in complete
+seclusion, attended upon by two or three of the oldest of the Manor
+servants, in a cottage near the private asylum where her son was a
+prisoner for life.</p>
+
+<p>Before midsummer Allan's health was completely restored, and mother
+and son left for Suffolk, for the pastures and pine-woods, the long
+white roads and sandy commons, the wide horizons and large level spaces
+flooded with the red and gold of sunsets that are said to surpass the
+splendour of sunsets in more picturesque scenery. Lady Emily would have
+been completely happy in this quiet interlude, this tranquil pause in
+the drama of life, had not Allan talked of going back to Africa before
+the end of the year.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he asked, when she remonstrated with him. "There is nothing
+for me to do in England, and Africa doesn't mean a lifelong separation,
+mother, or I would not dream of going there. Every year shortens
+the journey. Six weeks, I think Consul Johnstone called it, to Lake
+Tanganyika. If I go, I promise to return in less than two years. You
+would hardly have time to miss me in your busy days here——"</p>
+
+<p>"Busy about such poor trifles, Allan? Do you think my farm could fill
+the place of my son? If you were away, one great care and sorrow would
+fill every hour of my life. And think what an anxious winter I went
+through—a season of fear and trembling."</p>
+
+<p>This plea prevailed. He could not disregard the care and love that had
+been lavished upon him. No, he would not allow himself to be drawn back
+to that dark continent which is said to exercise a subtle influence
+over those who have once crossed her far-reaching plains, and rested
+beside her wide waters, and lived her life of adventure and surprise.
+No, it was too soon for the son to leave his mother, she having none
+but him. He had done with love; but duty still claimed him; and he
+stayed.</p>
+
+<p>A quiet winter at Beechhurst, with his mother to keep house for him,
+a good deal of hunting, and so much attention and kindly feeling from
+everybody in the neighbourhood, that he could not altogether play the
+hermit. He was forced into visiting, and into entertaining his friends,
+and Lady Emily was very happy in playing her part of hostess in the
+livelier circle of Matcham, while the shutters were closed at Fendyke,
+and the bailiff had full sway on the white farm, allowed to do what
+he liked there, which was generally something different from what his
+mistress liked.</p>
+
+<p>Life was made easier for Allan that winter by the absence of Suzette,
+who was travelling with her father—easier, and emptier, for the one
+presence which would have given a zest to life was wanting. He told
+himself that it was better so, better for his peace, since she could
+never be anything to him. The disappearance of his rival would make no
+difference in her feelings for Allan; for no doubt her affection for
+Geoffrey would only be strengthened by their tragical separation and
+her lover's miserable fate.</p>
+
+<p>"If she should ever care for any one else, it will be a stranger,"
+Allan told himself in those long reveries which the mere sight of a
+well-known garden wall, or the chimneys of Marsh House seen above the
+leafless elms as he rode past, could evoke. "She will never waste a
+thought upon me."</p>
+
+<p>Other people were more hopeful. Mrs. Mornington told her friends in
+confidence that her niece's acceptance of that unfortunate young man
+had been a folly, into which she had been entrapped by Geoffrey's
+dominant temper, and by her passion for music.</p>
+
+<p>"She never loved that unhappy young man as she once loved Allan Carew."</p>
+
+<p>"And now, no doubt, she and Mr. Carew will make it up and marry," said
+the confidant, male or female, as the case might be.</p>
+
+<p>"Not now: but some day, yes, perhaps," replied Suzette's aunt, with a
+significant nod.</p>
+
+<p>And the day came—when Geoffrey Wornock's passionate heart was still
+for ever—had been stilled for more than two years—and when to him, at
+rest in the silence of the family burial-place at Discombe, by the side
+of the mother who had only survived him by a few weeks, the sound of
+Suzette's wedding-bells, the knowledge of Allan's happiness could bring
+no pain.</p>
+
+<p>Allan's day came—long and late, after years of patient waiting, when
+Suzette had attained the sober age of six and twenty; but it was a day
+of cloudless happiness, which promised to last to the end of life. No
+fear of the future marred the joy of the present. The later love that
+had grown up in Suzette's heart for her first lover, was too strongly
+based upon knowledge and esteem to suffer the shadow of change.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">THE END.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Kigambo: unexpected calamity, slavery, or death.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Mambu kwa mungu: "It is God's trouble."</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+   <p class="ph4">LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75175 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+eBook #75175 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75175)