CHAPTER XXXV.
PERILS BY THE WAY
Three weeks later, two torn and tattered, half-starved Europeans sat under a burning South African sun by the dry bed of a shrunken summer torrent. It was in the depths of Namaqua land, among the stony Karoo; and the fugitives were straggling, helplessly and hopelessly, seaward, thirsty and weary, through a half-hostile country, making their marches as best they could at dead of night and resting by day where the natives would permit them.
Their commissariat had indeed been a lean and hungry one. Though they carried many thousand pounds' worth of diamonds about their persons, they had nothing negotiable with which to buy food or shelter from the uncivilized Namaquas. Ivory, cloth, and beads were the currency of the country. No native thereabouts would look for a moment at their little round nobs of water-worn pebbles. The fame of the diamond fields hadn't penetrated as yet so far west in the land as to have reached to the huts of the savage Namaquas.
And now their staying power was almost worn out Granville Kelmscott lay down on the sandy soil with a wild gesture of despair. All around were bare rocks and the dry sweltering veldts, covered only with round stones and red sand and low bushy vegetation.
"Waring," he said feebly, in a very faint voice, "I wish you'd leave me and go on by yourself. I'm no good any more. I'm only a drag upon you. This fever's too bad for me to stand much longer. I can never pull through to the coast alive. I've no energy left, were it even to try. I'd like to lie down here and die where I sit. Do go and leave me."
"Never!" Guy answered resolutely. "I'll never desert you, Kelmscott, while I've a drop of blood left. If I carry you on my back to the coast, I'll get you there at last, or else we'll both die on the veldt together."
Granville held his friend's hand in his own fevered fingers as he might have held a woman's.
"Oh, Waring," he cried once more, in a voice half choked with profound emotion, "I don't know how to thank you enough for all you've done for me. You've behaved to me like a brother—like a brother indeed. It makes me ashamed to think, when I see how unselfish, and good, and kind you've been—ashamed to think I once distrusted you. You've been an angel to me all through. Without you, I don't know how I could ever have lived on through this journey at all. And I can't bear to feel now I may spoil your retreat—can't bear to know I'm a drag and burden to you."
"My dear fellow," Guy said, holding the thin and fevered hand very tenderly in his, "don't talk to me like that. I feel to you every bit as you feel to me in this matter. I was afraid of you at first, because I knew you misunderstood me. But the more I've seen of you, the better we've each of us learned to sympathize with the other. We've long been friends. I love you now, as you say, like a brother."
Granville hesitated for a moment. Should he out with it or not? Then at last the whole long-suppressed truth came out with a burst. He seized his companion's two hands at once in a convulsive grasp.
"That's not surprising either," he said, "after all—for Guy, do you know, we ARE really brothers!"
Guy gazed at him in astonishment. For a moment he thought his friend's reason was giving way. Then slowly and gradually he took it all in.
"ARE really brothers!" he repeated, in a dazed sort of way. "Do you mean it, Kelmscott? Then my father and Cyril's—"
"Was mine too, Waring. Yes; I couldn't bear to die without telling you that. And I tell it now to you. You two are the heirs of the Tilgate estates. And the unknown person who paid six thousand pounds to Cyril, just before you left England, was your father and mine—Colonel Henry Kelmscott."
Guy bent over him for a few seconds in speechless surprise. Words failed him at first. "How do you know all this, Kelmscott?" he said at last faintly.
Granville told him in as few words as possible—for indeed he was desperately weak and ill—by what accident he had discovered his father's secret. But he told him only what he knew himself. For, of course, he was ignorant as yet of the Colonel's seizure and sudden death on the very day after they had sailed from England.
Guy listened to it all in profound silence. It was a strange, and for him a momentous tale. Then he said at last, as Granville finished, "And you never told me this all these long months, Kelmscott."
"I always meant to tell you, Guy," his half-brother answered, in a sudden fit of penitence. "I always meant in the end you and your brother Cyril should come into your own at Tilgate as you ought. I was only waiting—"
"Till you'd realized enough to make good some part of your personal loss," Guy suggested, not unkindly.
"Oh no," Granville answered, flushing up at the suggestion. "I wasn't waiting for that. Don't think me so mercenary. I was waiting for YOU, in your turn to extend to ME your own personal confidence. You know, Guy," he went on, dropping into a still more hushed and solemn undertone, "I saw an evening paper the night we left Plymouth—"
"Oh, I know, I know," Guy cried, interrupting him, with a very pale face. "Don't speak to me of that. I can't bear to think of it. Kelmscott, I was mad when I did that deed. I wasn't myself. I acted under somebody else's compulsion and influence. The man had a sort of hypnotic power over my will, I believe. I couldn't help doing whatever he ordered me. It was he who suggested it. It was he that did it. And it's he who was really and truly guilty."
"And who was that man?" Granville Kelmscott asked with some little curiosity.
"There's no reason I shouldn't tell you," Guy answered, "now we've once broken the ice; and I'm glad in my heart, I must say, that we've broken it. For a year and a half, day and night, that barrier has been raised between us always, and I've longed to get rid of it. But I was afraid to speak of it to you, and you to me! Well, the man, if you must know, was Montague Nevitt!"
Granville Kelmscott looked up at him in credulous surprise. But he was too ill and weak to ask the meaning of this riddle. Montague Nevitt! What on earth could Waring mean by that? How on earth could Montague Nevitt have influenced and directed him in assaulting and murdering Montague Nevitt?
For a long time there was silence. Each brother was thinking his own thoughts to himself about this double disclosure. At last, Granville lifted his head and spoke again.
"And you'll go home to England now," he said, "under an assumed name, I suppose; and arrange with your brother Cyril for him to claim the Kelmscott estates, and allow you something out of them in retirement somewhere."
"Oh no," Guy answered manfully. "I'm going home to England now, if I go at all, under my own proper name that I've always borne, to repay Cyril in full every penny I owe him, to make what reparation I can for the wrong I've done, and to give myself up to the police for trial."
Granville gazed at him, more surprised and more admiring than ever.
"You're a brave man, Waring," he said slowly. "I don't understand it at all. But I know you're right. And I almost believe you. I almost believe it was not your fault. I should like to get through to England after all, if it was only to see you safe out of your troubles."
Guy looked at him fixedly.
"My dear fellow," he said, in a compassionate tone, "you mustn't talk any more. You've talked a great deal too much already. I see a hut, I fancy, over yonder, beside that dark patch of brush. Now, you must do exactly as I bid you. Don't struggle or kick. Lie as still as you can. I'll carry you there on my back, and then we'll see if we can get you anyhow a drop of pure water."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
DESERTED
That was almost the last thing Granville Kelmscott knew. Some strange shadowy dreams, to be sure, disturbed the lethargy into which he fell soon after; but they were intermittent and indefinite. He was vaguely aware of being lifted with gentle care into somebody's arms, and of the somebody staggering along with him, not without considerable difficulty, over the rough stony ground of that South African plateau. He remembered also, as in a trance, some sound of angry voices—a loud expostulation—a hasty palaver—a long slow pause—a gradual sense of reconciliation and friendliness—during all which, as far as he could recover the circumstances afterwards, he must have been extended on the earth, with his back propped against a great ledge of jutting rock, and his head hanging listless on his sinking breast. Thenceforward all was blank, or just dimly perceived at long intervals between delirium and unconsciousness. He was ill for many days, where or how he knew not.
In some half dreamy way, he was aware too, now and again, of strange voices by his side, strange faces tending him. But they were black faces, all, and the voices spoke in deep guttural tones, unlike even the clicks and harsh Bantu jerks with which he had grown so familiar in eighteen months among the Barolong. This that he heard now, or seemed to hear in his delirium, like distant sounds of water, was a wholly different and very much harsher tongue—the tongue of the Namaquas, in fact, though Granville was far too ill and too drowsy just then to think of reasoning about it or classifying it in any way. All he knew for the moment was that sometimes, when he turned round feebly on his bed of straw, and asked for drink or help in a faltering voice, no white man appeared to answer his summons. Black, faces all—black, black, and unfamiliar. Very intermittently he was conscious of a faint sense of loneliness. He knew not why. But he thought he could guess. Guy Waring had deserted him!
At last, one morning, after more days had passed than Granville could possibly count, all of a sudden, in a wild whirl, he came to himself again at once, with that instant revulsion of complete awakening which often occurs at the end of long fits of delirium in malarious fever. A light burst in upon him with a flash. In a moment, his brain seemed to clear all at once, and everything to grow plain as day before him. He raised himself on one wasted elbow and gazed around him with profound awe. He saw it all now; he remembered everything, everything.
He was alone, among savages in the far heart of Africa.
He lay on his back, on a heap of fresh straw, in a close and filthy mud-built hut. Under his aching neck a wooden pillow or prop of native make supported his head. Two women and a man bent over him and smiled. Their faces, though black, were far from unkindly. They were pleased to see him stare about with such meaning in his eyes. They were friendly, no doubt. They seemed really to take an interest in their patient's recovery.
But where was Guy Waring? Dead? Dead? Or run away? Had his half-brother, in this utmost need, then, so basely deserted him?
For some minutes, Granville gazed around him, half dazed, and in a turmoil of surprise, yet with a vivid passion of acute inquiry. Now he was once well awake, he must know all immediately. But how? Who to ask? This was terrible, terrible. He had no means of intercommunication with the people in the hut. He knew none of their language, nor they of his. He was utterly alone, among unmitigated savages.
Meanwhile, the man and the women talked loud among themselves in their own harsh speech, evidently well pleased and satisfied at their guest's improvement. With a violent effort, Granville began to communicate with them in the language of signs which every savage knows as he knows his native tongue, and in which the two Englishmen had already made some progress during their stay in Barolong land.
Pointing first to himself, with one hand on his breast, he held up two fingers before the observant Namaqua, to indicate that at first there had been a couple of them on the road, both white men. The latter point he still further elaborated by showing the white skin on his own bare wrist, and once more holding up the two fingers demonstratively. The Namaqua nodded. He had seized the point well. He held up two fingers in return himself; then looked at his own black wrist and shook his head in dissent—they were not black men; after which he touched Granville's fair forearm with his hand; yes, yes, just so; he took it in; two white men.
What had become of the other one? Granville asked in the same fashion, by looking around him on all sides in dumb show, inquiringly. One finger only was held up now, pointing about the hut; one hand was laid upon his own breast to show that a single white man alone remained. He glanced about him uneasily. What had happened to his companion?
The Namaqua pointed with his finger to the door of the hut, as much as to say the other man was gone. He seized every sign at once with true savage quickness.
Then Granville tried once more. Was his companion dead? Had he been killed in a fight? Was that the reason of his absence? He lunged forward with his hand holding an imaginary assegai. He pressed on upon the foe; he drove it through a body. Then he fell, as if dead, on the floor, with a groan and a shriek. After which, picking himself up as well as he was able, and crawling back to his straw, he proceeded in mute pantomime to bury himself decently.
The Namaqua shook his head again with a laugh of dissent. Oh no; not like that. It had happened quite otherwise. The missing white man was well and vigorous, a slap on his own chest sufficiently indicated that news. He placed his two first fingers in the ground, astride like legs, and made them walk along fast, one in front of the other. The white man had gone away. He had gone on foot. Granville nodded acquiescence. The savage took water in a calabash and laid it on the floor. Then he walked once more with his fingers, as if on a long and weary march, to the water's brink. Granville nodded comprehension again. He understood the signs. The white man had gone away, alone, on foot—and seaward.
At that instant, with a sudden cry of terror, the invalid's hands went down to his waist, where he wore the girdle that contained those precious diamonds—the diamonds that were to be the ransom of some fraction of Tilgate. An awful sense of desertion broke over him all at once. He called aloud in his horror. It was too much to believe. The girdle was gone, and the diamonds with it!
Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Thief! Murderer! Robber! He had trusted that vile creature, that plausible wretch, in spite of all the horrible charges he knew against him. And THIS was the sequel of their talk that day! THIS was how Guy Waring had requited his confidence.
He had stolen the fruits of eighteen months' labour.
Granville turned to the Namaqua, wild with his terrible loss, and pointed angrily to his loins, where the diamonds were not. The savage nodded; looked wise and shook his head; pretended to gird himself round the waist with a cloth; then went over to Granville, who lay still in the straw, undid an imaginary belt, with deliberate care, tied it round his own body above the other one, with every appearance of prudence and forethought, counted the small stones in it one by one, in his hand, to the exact number, with grotesque fidelity, and finally set his fingers to walk a second time at a rapid pace, in the direction of the calabash which represented the ocean.
Granville fell back on his wooden pillow with a horrible groan of awakened distrust. The man had gone off, that was clear, and had stolen his diamonds That is what comes of intrusting your life and property to a discovered murderer. How could he ever have been such a fool? He would never forgive himself.
The desertion itself was bad enough in all conscience; but it was as nothing at all in Granville's mind to the wickedness of the robbery.
He might have known it, of course. How that fellow toiled and moiled and gloated over his wretched diamonds! How little he seemed to think of the stain of blood on his hands, and how much of the mere chance of making filthy lucre! Pah! Pah! it was pitiable. The man's whole mind was distorted by a hideous fungoid growth—the love of gain, which is the root of all evil. For a few miserable stones, he would plunder his own brother, lying helpless and ill in that African hut, and make off with the booty himself, saving his own skin, seaward.
If it hadn't been for the unrequited kindness of these mere savage Namaquas, Granville cried to himself in his bitterness, he might have died of want in the open desert. And now he would go down to the coast, after all, a ruined man, penniless and friendless. It was a hard thought indeed for a Kelmscott to think he should have been abandoned and robbed by his own half-brother, and should owe his life now to a heathen African. The tender mercies of a naked barbarian in a mud-built hut were better than the false friendship of his father's son, the true heir of Tilgate.
It was miserable! pitiable! The shock of that discovery threw Granville back once more into a profound fever. For several hours he relapsed into delirium. And the worst of it was, the negroes wouldn't let him die quietly in his own plain way. In the midst of it all, he was dimly aware of a dose thrust down his throat. It was the Namaqua administering him a pill—some nauseous native decoction, no doubt—which tasted as if it were made of stiff white paper.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
AUX ARMES!
For a day or two more, Granville remained seriously ill in the dirty hut. At the end of that time, weak and wasted as he was, he insisted upon getting up and setting out alone on his long march seaward.
It was a wild resolve. He was utterly unfit for it. The hospitable Namaqua, whose wives had nursed him well through that almost hopeless illness, did his best to persuade the rash Englishman from so mad a course, by gestures and entreaties, in his own mute language. But Granville was obstinate. He would NOT sit down quietly and be robbed like this of the fruit of his labours. He would not be despoiled. He would not be trampled upon. He would make for the coast, if he staggered in like a skeleton, and would confront the robber with his own vile crime, be it at Angra Pequena, or Cape Town, or London, or Tilgate.
In short, he would do much as Guy himself had done when he discovered Montague Nevitt's theft of the six thousand. He would follow the villain till he ran him to earth, and would tax him at last to his face with the open proofs of his consummate treachery. What's bred in the bone will out in the blood. The Kelmscott strain worked alike its own way in each of them.
The Namaqua, to be sure, tried in vain to explain to Granville by elaborate signs that the other white man had given orders to the contrary. The other white man had strictly enjoined upon him not to let the invalid escape from his hut on any pretext whatever. The other white man had promised him a reward, a very large reward—money, guns, ammunition—if he kept him safely and didn't allow him to escape. Granville Kelmscott smiled to himself a bitter, cynical, smile. Poor confiding savage! He didn't know Guy as well as he, his brother, did.
And yet, in the midst of it all, in spite of the revulsion, Granville was conscious now and then of some little ingratitude somewhere to his half-brother's memory. After all, Guy had shown him time and again no small kindness. Some excuse should be made for a man who saves his own life first in very dire extremities. But none, no, none for one who has the incredible and inhuman meanness to rob his own brother of his hard-earned gams, in a strange wild land, when he thinks him dying.
For it was the robbery, not the desertion, Granville could never forgive. The man who was capable of doing that basest of acts was capable also of murder or any crime in the decalogue.
So the fevered white man rose at last one morning on his shrunken limbs, and staggered, as best he might, from his protector's hut in a wild impulse of resolution, on his mad journey seaward. When the Namaqua saw nothing on earth would induce him to remain, he shouldered his arms and went out beside him, fully equipped for fight with matchlock and assegai. Not that the savage made any undue pretence to a purely personal devotion to the belated white man. On the contrary, he signified to Granville with many ingenious signs that he was afraid of losing the great reward he had been promised, if once he let the invalid get out of his sight unattended.
Granville smiled once more that bitter smile of new-born cynicism. Well, let the fellow follow him if he liked! He would reward him himself if ever they reached the coast in safety. And in any case, it was better to go attended by a native. An interpreter who can communicate in their own tongue with the people through whose territory you are going to pass is always, useful in a savage country.
How Granville got over that terrible journey seaward he could never tell. He crawled on and on, supported by the faithful Namaqua with unfailing good-humour, over that endless veldt, for three long days of wretched footsore marching. And for three long nights he slept, or lay awake, under the clear desert stars, on the open ground of barren Namaqua land. It was a terrible time. Worn and weary with the fever, Granville was wholly unfit for any kind of travelling. Nothing but the iron constitution of the Kelmscotts could ever have stood so severe an ordeal. But the son of six generations of soldiers, who had commanded in the fever-stricken flats of Walcheren, or followed Wellesley through the jungles of tropical India, or forced their way with Napier into the depths of Abyssinia, was not to be daunted even by the nameless horrors of that South African desert. Granville still endured, for three days and nights, and was ready to march, or crawl on, once more, upon the fourth morning.
Here, however, his Namaqua, guide, with every appearance of terror, made strong warnings of danger. The country beyond, he signified by strange gestures, lay in the hands of a hostile tribe, hereditarily at war with his fellow-clansmen. He didn't even know whether the other white man, with the diamonds round his waist, had got safely through, or whether the hostile tribe beyond the frontier had assegaied him and "eaten him up," as the picturesque native phrase goes. It was difficult enough for even a strong warrior to force his way through that district with a good company of followers; impossible for a single weak invalid like Granville, attended only by one poor, ill-armed Namaqua.
So the savage seemed to say in his ingenious pantomime. If they went on, they'd be killed and eaten up resistlessly. If they stopped they might pull through. They must wait and camp there. For what they were to wait, Granville hadn't the faintest conception. But the Namaqua insisted upon it, and Granville was helpless as a child in his hands. The man was alarmed, apparently, for his promised reward. If Granville insisted, he showed in very frank dumb show, why—a thrust with the assegai explained the rest most persuasively. Granville still had his revolver, to be sure, and a few rounds of ball cartridge. But he was too weak to show fight; the savage overmastered him.
They were seated on a stony ridge or sharp hog's back, overlooking the valley of a dry summer stream. The watershed on which they sat separated, with its chine of rugged rocks, the territory of the two rival tribes. But the Namaqua was evidently very little afraid that the enemy might transgress the boundaries of his fellow-tribesmen. He dared not himself go beyond the jagged crest of the ridge; but he seemed to think it pretty certain the people of the other tribe wouldn't, for their part, in turn come across to molest him. He sat down there doggedly, as if expecting something or other to turn up in the course of time; and more than once he made signs to Granville which the Englishman interpreted to mean that after so many days and nights from some previous event unspecified, somebody would arrive on the track from the coast at the point of junction between the hostile races.
Granville was gazing at the Namaqua in the vain attempt to interpret these signs more fully to himself, when, all of a sudden, an unexpected noise in the valley below attracted his attention. He pricked up his ears, Impossible! Incredible! It couldn't be—yes, it was—the sharp hiss of firearms!
At the very same moment the Namaqua leapt to his feet in sudden alarm, and, shading his eyes with his dusky hand, gazed intently in front of him. For a minute or so he stood still, with brows knit and neck craning. Then he called out something in an excited tone two or three times over in his own tongue to Granville. The Englishman stared in the same direction, but could make out nothing definite just at first, in the full glare of the sunlight. But the Namaqua, with a cry of joy, held up his two fingers as before, to symbolize the two white men, and pointed with one of them to his guest, while with the other he indicated some object in the valley, nodding many times over. Granville seized his meaning at once. Could it be true, what he said in this strange mute language? Could relief be at hand? Could the firing beneath show that Guy was returning?
As he looked and strained his eyes, peering down upon the red plain, under the shadow of his open palm, the objects by the water-course grew gradually clearer. Granville could make out now that a party of natives, armed with spears and matchlocks, was attacking some little encampment on the bank of the dry torrent. The small force in the encampment was returning the fire with great vigour and spirit, though apparently over-powered by the superior numbers of their swarming assailants. Even as Granville looked, their case grew more desperate. A whole horde of black men seemed to be making an onset on some small white object, most jealously guarded, round which the defenders of the camp rallied with infinite energy. At the head of the little band of strangers, a European in a pith helmet was directing the fire, and fighting hard himself for the precious white object. The rest were blacks, he thought, in half-civilized costume. Granville's heart gave a bound as the leader sprang forth upon one approaching savage. His action, as he leapt, stamped the man at once. There was Kelmscott in the leap. Granville knew in a second it was indeed Guy Waring.
The Namaqua recognised him too, and pointed enthusiastically forward. Granville saw what he meant. To the front! To the front! If there was fighting to be done, let them help their friends. Let them go forward and claim the great reward offered.
Next moment, with a painful thrill of shame and remorse, the Englishman saw what was the nature of the object they were so jealously guarding. His heart stood still within him. It was a sort of sedan chair, or invalid litter, borne on poles by four native porters. Talk about coals of fire! Granville Kelmscott hardly knew how to forgive himself for his unworthy distrust. Then Guy must have reached the coast in safety, after leaving him in charge of the Namaqua and fighting his way through, and now he was on his way back to the interior again, with a sufficient escort and a palanquin to fetch him.
Even as he looked, the assailants closed in more fiercely than ever on the faltering little band. One of them thrust out with an assegai at Guy. In an agony of horror, Granville cried aloud where he stood. Surely, surely, they must be crushed to earth. No arms of precision could ever avail them against such a swarm of assailants, poured forth over their camp as if from some human ant-hill.
"Let us run!" the sick man cried to the Namaqua, pointing to the fight below; and the Namaqua, comprehending the gesture, if not the words, set forward to run with him down the slope into the valley.
At about a hundred yards off from the crowd, Granville, crouched behind a clump of thorny acacia, and, signalling to the Namaqua to hide at the same time, drew his revolver and fired point-blank at the hindmost natives.
The effect was electrical. In a moment the savages turned and gazed around them astonished. One of their number was hit and wounded in the leg. Granville had aimed so purposely, to maim and terrify them. The natives faltered and fell back. As they did so, Granville emerged from the shelter of the acacia bush, and fired a second shot from another point at them. At the same instant the Namaqua raised a loud native battle-cry, and brandished his assegai. The effect was electrical. The hostile tribe broke up in wild panic at once. They cried in their own tongue that the Namaquas were down upon them, under English guidance: and, quick as lightning, they dispersed as if by magic, to hide themselves about in the thick bush jungle.
Two seconds later, Guy was wringing Granville's hand in a fervour of gratitude. Each man had saved the other's life. In the rapid interchange of question and answer that followed, one point alone puzzled them both for a minute or two.
"But why on earth didn't you leave a line to explain what you'd done?" Granville cried, now thoroughly ashamed of his unbelief, "If only I'd known, you were coming back to the village it would have saved me so much distress, so much sleepless misery."
"Why, so I did," Guy answered, still thoroughly out of breath, and stained with blood and powder. "I tore a leaf from my note-book and gave it to the Namaqua, explaining to him by signs that he was to let you have it at once, the moment you were conscious. Here, you, sir," he went on, turning round to their faithful black ally, and holding up the note-book before his eyes to refresh his memory, "why didn't you give it to the gentleman as I told you?"
The Namaqua, catching hastily at the meaning from the mere tone of the question, as well as from Guy's instinctive and graphic imitation of the act of writing, pulled out from his waistband the last relics of a very brown and tattered fragment of paper, on which were still legible in pencil the half-obliterated words: "My dear Granville,—I find there is no chance of conveying you to the coast through the territory of the next tribe in your present condition, unless–"