“I knew it must be you,” he said at length, slowly. “When I heard those words I knew they could be sung by no one else—like that.”
For it was the same ballad which she had sung on that night at Seringa Vale, when he was betrayed into the first avowal of his love, nearly four years ago; and the first words which had thrilled upon his ear now, as he recovered from his sudden attack of faintness, was the conclusion of the sad and mournful refrain.
And then this man, whose death she had mourned long and in secret, suddenly stood before her.
When last we saw Claverton lying fever-racked in the Matabili hut, he was certainly as near to death’s door as ever man was without actually passing that grim portal; and when the uncivilised bystanders, with bated breath, whispered their verdict, it was only the one which would have been returned by any onlooker. Falling back, he had lain to all appearance dead; but that very swoon had been the means of saving his life, at least, such was the unhesitating opinion of one or two to whom he afterwards told the circumstances, though of course not what had caused the swoon, and who, from their training and practice, were qualified to judge. His life must have been saved by a miracle, said they. What that miracle was he did not feel called upon to tell them. The sight—sudden and vivid in its distinctness—of a face the dying man had longed, with a terrible hopeless longing, to see; death had no terrors for him, his whole soul was concentrated on this one agonising desire, and it had been fulfilled. The sight of that loved face, momentary as it was, had calmed him into a peaceful, death-like sleep, and the crisis was past. Had it been that in some mysterious manner, triumphing over nature, spirit had gone to meet spirit on that dark winter night? Who can tell? The end effected would have sufficed to justify such a departure from the law of nature, for it is certain that the apparition, whether due to the imagination of a fever-distorted brain, or to whatever cause, was the saving of Claverton’s life.
Then, almost too soon after his recovery, he had wandered on. He had come through the Transvaal, and past the gold fields of the great Dutch Republic, and now he pushed on beyond the haunts of man striving after gain, farther and farther into the interior, where the gnu and quagga roamed the vast plains in countless herds; where the giraffe browsed in the green mimosa dales, and the elephant and rhinoceros crushed through the tangled jungle—at night terrific with the resounding roar of the forest king. On—ever on—alone, save for three or four native followers to look after his waggon and aid in the chase.
And he had borne a charmed life. He it was who had shot the huge lion in mid-air as it leaped right over him to seize one of the oxen tied fast for the night in the strong brushwood enclosure, the mighty frame falling nearly upon him as it bit and ramped in the agonies of death. He it was who had confronted the hostile Matabili chief and his six hundred men, when that truculent potentate had demanded the person of one of his followers in satisfaction for some trifling larceny committed by the hapless lad upon their mealie gardens, and dared the barbarian and his armed warriors so much as to lay a finger upon him or his; and the fierce savage, in admiring awe of his sublime indifference to death or danger, had suddenly become his fast friend, though a moment before, the chances were a hundred to one against his leaving the spot alive. He it was who had swum out into the river swarming with crocodiles, and rescued this very follower, none other than the same, the Natal boy, Sam—who had watched him through his illness at the Matabili kraal—who, carried off his feet by the force of the current, was being borne away down the river, and the other natives had given him up as lost. And many and many a hair-breadth escape had he, by field and flood, until the natives began to look upon him as a sort of god, and his own body servants felt safer in his service from danger or sickness than they would have done surrounded by British regiments in the former contingency, or protected by all the “charms” of their most renowned izanusi (wizards) in the latter. For he was absolutely indifferent to death, and consequently death was indifferent to him.
And ever before him, whether amid all the rapturous excitement of the chase, in the glowing noonday, or in the awesome solitude of the midnight camp far in the heart of the wilderness, hundreds of miles from the nearest haunt of civilised man, with the roar of the lion and the howl of the hyaena echoing along the reedy bank of some turbid lagoon; while he watched the scintillating eyes of savage beasts glowing like live coals out of the surrounding gloom as they prowled around his encampment, haply waiting for the sinking watch-fire to fade altogether—amid all this, and ever before him, there was one beautiful face present to his mind’s eye, as he had seen it, looking smilingly at him in the soft moonlight, or set and despairing as he had last gazed upon it that day in the golden noontide, beneath the old pear-tree. And as years went on they brought with them no solace, and now he had returned to civilisation, intending shortly to leave for ever the land which had made only to mar the successes of his life.
He had changed slightly—and changed for the better—for his years of wandering in the wilderness. He was in splendid condition, broader of chest and firmer-looking, though not one whit less active than in the old days; but the impatient, restless expression had departed from his eyes, leaving one of settled calm, the imperturbability of a man who feels that he has lived his life, and that his past is a far-away state—a vista, fair and lovely, perhaps, to look back upon, as the traveller looks back in memory upon some beautiful tract he has left behind—but still another and a different state of being. Such was Arthur Claverton, as brought there by a marvellous freak of the hand of Fate, he stood once more face to face with his first and only love.
Suddenly the voice of his host on the stoep recalled him to himself; recalled both of them, and, with a sigh, Lilian turned round as if to resume what she had been doing, in reality to collect herself, and Payne entered.
“Hallo,” he said. “You here, Miss Strange? Let me introduce my friend; or have you already been making acquaintance?”