Book Three—Chapter Twenty Six.
Following the departure of his wife in an ambulance, Hallam made his own preparations for leaving home for an indefinite time. He purposed going into the interior. He wanted to be alone, away from the influences of civilisation and the sight of European faces, away from the memory of the past and the nightmare of recent events.
Great mental anguish, particularly anguish which is accompanied by remorse, tends to a morbid condition of mind which renders the individual liable to act in a manner altogether unusual. Hallam made his preparations as a man might do who leaves his home with no thought of ever returning. He left quite definite and detailed instructions with his solicitor, and a letter for his wife, which was only to be given to her when she was strong enough to receive communications of a startling nature. In his letter he informed her that he had left her until such time as he could with confidence feel that he would never again cause her such distress as he had done in the past. He wrote with restraint but with very deep feeling of his undying love for her and of his remorse for what had happened, and ended by bidding her keep a brave heart and carry on until his return.
He posted this letter, with instructions as to its delivery, under cover to his lawyer, and completed his personal arrangements, and left by the train going north.
He had no clear idea as to his destination at the time of entraining; his one thought was to get as far away from civilisation as possible: he intended to make for the Congo. Besides a light kit, he was provided with sufficient money and his gun, which he carried in its case. The undertaking was adventurous; but it was in no spirit of adventure that he started; his heart was heavy and his mind clouded and depressed, preoccupied with thoughts of Esmé lying ill and alone in a nursing-home—too ill to concern herself about him for the present; but later he knew she would ask for him and wonder why he did not come. That could not be avoided: she would grow reconciled to his absence, and she would get well quicker without him to worry about.
Hallam had secured a compartment to himself, a fact which gave him immense satisfaction. He leaned with his arms on the window and surveyed the lively scene on the platform in gloomy abstraction in the interval before the train started. Other passengers leaned from the windows also for a few last words with friends who were seeing them off. But Hallam spoke to no one, and no one paid any attention to the solitary man looking from his compartment on the animated scene below. Doors slammed noisily, and the guard raised his flag, and instantly lowered it again as, amid a confusion of bustle and excitement, two belated travellers arrived and were bundled unceremoniously into the carriage next to Hallam’s. Their baggage was flung in through the windows after them. Then the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.
Disturbed and singularly annoyed, Hallam drew back and sat down in the corner seat. The people whose tardy arrival had delayed the start by a couple of minutes were the Garfields. He had recognised them instantly; he believed that they had seen and recognised him. He felt oddly irritated. Had his flight been a criminal proceeding and the secrecy of his movements imperative, he could not have been more discomposed by the knowledge that these people, who were friends of his wife and with whom he was acquainted, were in the next compartment to his. He would probably encounter them later, almost certainly they would meet in the restaurant-car. They would regard it in the light of a social obligation to inquire for his wife. Mrs Garfield had already called both at the house and at the nursing-home for news of Esmé. He had not seen her; he shrank from the thought of seeing her; but he knew that he would be compelled to face her sooner or later. She was one of the few people whose persistent friendship for his wife refused to be dismayed by an absence of response. She understood Esmé’s difficulties, and sympathised with and admired her tremendously.
The news of the accident, which no one associated with Hallam, had genuinely distressed her. If by her presence she could have been of service during Esmé’s illness she would have put off her journey to the Falls; but her visit to the nursing-home had convinced her that Esmé was not in a condition to need any one; she might be of some use later during the period of convalescence.
Her surprise at seeing Hallam on the train was great. That he should be leaving Cape Town then occurred to her as little short of amazing. While her husband was engaged in stowing their baggage away on the racks she asked him if he had noticed who was in the next compartment to theirs. Apparently he had. He looked down at her and nodded.
“Odd chap?” he said. “Most men would prefer to remain on the spot, even if their presence wasn’t actually needed.”
“The journey may be a matter of necessity,” she said.
“It may be, of course.” He lifted the last bag up to the rack and sat down opposite to her and unrolled a bundle of papers. “We ran it rather fine, old girl. The next time I take you on a holiday I hope you’ll get forrader with your preparations.”
“You old Adam, you!” she said, smiling, and leaned forward to pat his knee.
And the man in the next compartment sat and smoked and meditated gloomily, while the train ran on through fertile grass-veld towards the mountains and the sterile plain which lay beyond them.
In the vexation of seeing people he knew on the train, Hallam’s first thought had been to leave it at a convenient stopping place and wait for the next train and so resume his journey; but on reflection this idea seemed a little absurd. Of what interest could his movements possibly be to the Garfields? They would leave the train in all probability long before he did, and the greatest inconvenience their presence would cause him would be an occasional and brief encounter.
The first encounter occurred very speedily: Mr Garfield came to his compartment and stood in the corridor and inquired after his wife. He expressed much sympathy with Hallam.
“We were shocked,” he said, “when we heard. My wife called at the nursing-home, but she wasn’t allowed to see Mrs Hallam. I trust she is doing well?”
“The doctor tells me so,” Hallam answered, with what the other man considered a curious lack of feeling. “She is too ill at present to see any one.”
The talk hung for a while. Mr Garfield, who never felt at his ease with Hallam, was none the less profoundly sorry for the man. He believed that the callous manner was assumed to cloak his real feelings. The haggard face and sombre eyes betokened considerable mental anguish.
“It is rather an awkward time for you to have to get away,” he ventured.
“It is.” Hallam’s tone became more constrained. He moved restlessly, and looked beyond the speaker out at the changing scenery. “But at least I can’t help by remaining,” he added. Abruptly he brought his gaze back again and looked steadily into the other’s eyes with an expression that was faintly apologetic. “I haven’t recovered from the shock yet,” he said. “I’m worried.”
Garfield nodded sympathetically.
“My dear fellow, of course. It’s not surprising that you should be. If we can do anything, let us know. And if you want a chat come along to our compartment; we’re only next door. I’m taking the wife to the Falls. It’s her first visit. I expect we’ll put in about a couple of weeks there. Do you go as far?”
“I’m going farther,” Hallam answered briefly. But, although Garfield looked inquiry, he did not give him any more definite information in regard to his destination.
Hallam had started on his journey with no thought of deserting his wife and leaving his home for ever: he had come away simply because he felt the imperative necessity for change and solitude. The man’s mind was dark with despair. This feeling of despair deepened with every passing hour. Fear held him in its grip. He mistrusted himself. The horror of what had happened haunted him night and day; he could not sleep for thinking of it. Always before his mind’s eye was the picture of his wife—falling—falling headlong—striking the ground with a thud—lying still and white at the foot of the stairs, with the dark stain under her head slowly spreading on the darker wood of the floor...
How had this thing happened? How had he come to lose control of himself completely? He ought not to have married her. He had done her an irreparable injury by tying her life to his...
Throughout the long hot days he sat in his compartment and brooded, and when the gold merged with the evening purple, and the purple deepened to night, he stretched himself on his bunk, and lay looking out at the star-strewn sky through the unshuttered windows, and brooded still with a mind too distraught to rest.
He believed that some brain sickness was coming upon him; he felt wretchedly ill; and from the way in which people stared at him when he entered the dining-car he judged that his appearance evidenced his physical and mental debility. Although he forced himself to go to meals he ate little; he had no appetite for food; the smell and the sight of it nauseated him.
He began to think that he would be compelled to leave the train: the confined space and the heat were making him ill. He found himself falling into the habit of talking to himself. This development horrified him no more than it horrified Mrs Garfield, who overheard him, and communicated her fear to her husband that Hallam was mad. His proximity made her nervous. She lay awake the greater part of one night listening to his mutterings, and fell asleep with the dawn and slept heavily until breakfast time. It came as a great relief to her to discover later that Hallam had left the train in the early morning.
He had alighted at a wayside halt, moved by an inexplicable impulse too strong to resist. Dread of another long day, of another sleepless night on the train, had been the ruling motive. He felt that if he did not get out and walk he would be ill. He was on the verge of a collapse, and in no condition of mind to realise the foolishness of alighting in this barren waste, with no prospect of shelter or refreshment within view. There must be farms somewhere in the neighbourhood, he judged, or at least a native hut where he could procure all he needed. For the moment he required only to walk in the pure air, to exert his muscles, and rid himself of the intolerable strain on his overcharged nerves. Something had seemed to snap in his brain during the night. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate his attention on anything for long. But the idea that he must walk obsessed him; and, with his gun-case in hand and his kit across his shoulders, he struck across the veld, turning his back on the permanent way.
It did not greatly matter which direction he took; he had no particular objective in view: he wanted chiefly to shake off this annoying sense of unfitness. He had never been ill in his life before: he did not understand it. It had seemed to him that if he could walk he would be all right, and instead he felt worse. He was giddy, and he could not make any pace. He took a bush for a landmark and noted how long he was in reaching it. It amazed him. He became angrily impatient with his own laggard steps: he wasn’t walking, he was crawling—crawling like a sick animal, with a sick animal’s instinct to find some hole to creep into.
He looked about him vaguely, with tired eyes. That was what he wanted, all he wanted,—some quiet shelter into which to crawl and rest.
He stumbled on, tripping over the dry scrub, lurching heavily like a drunken man, and clinging tightly to his gun-case, as to something from which he would not be separated, though the weight of it was too great for his failing strength. Twice he came to his knees; but each time he rose again and stumbled blindly on as before.
The sun rose higher in the heavens. It poured its warmth like some molten stream upon the gaping ground. For miles around the veld stretched in unbroken sameness, blackened from the long drought, sparse and scrubby, with never a sign of any living thing, save the solitary man’s figure, moving slowly, with heavy uncertain gait, in quest of some temporary shelter from the sun’s burning rays.
It seemed to Hallam that he walked many miles and for many hours before, a long way off like some wonderful oasis amid the arid waste, he descried signs of water, and the wooded banks of a river which meandered like a green irregular wall across the stark nakedness of the land. The sight of this unexpected fertility gave him fresh heart and stimulated his failing energies to further effort. By sheer force of will he dragged his lagging feet over the uneven ground. He desired only to reach the river and lie down beside it and rest. He longed simply to get to the water, to feel it, to lave his burning brow in its coolness, to moisten his parched lips.
Again he fell, and again he rose and staggered on, covering the intervening space painfully and slowly. When he was quite close to the bank he fell once more, and this time he failed to rise, despite his persistent efforts. For the first time his hold on his gun-case relaxed. He stared at it regretfully; but he knew that he was powerless to drag it further. He left it lying where it was, and crawled on his hands and knees painfully towards the bushes, crawled between them, and reached the shallow river which had been his goal.