Africa had taught me a few things.
I had come out to her stiff with the arrogance of youth and well-being, of pride that has never been assailed by suffering and disgrace; of rectitude that has been untried by temptation; full of the disdainful virtue of one who has known only the bright, beflowered paths of life, and been well hedged and guarded from all that hurts and defiles. But she had opened eyes in my soul that had been blind before, and had shown me lives seared with pain and sin and scorched with the fires of passion that were yet beautiful; of men who could fight down the beasts of temptation and conquer the devils of vice; of men who could forget self-interest to hold out a helping hand to the weak and the stumbling; of men who could die in lone, silent places so that others might live in safety and security; of women who could offer their all for the public good, and lose it with a smile on their lips.
These were things I had read of and heard of and dreamed of perhaps. But in this fierce, sad land they happened. Africa had shown them to me happening in all their naked terror and beauty. In Europe I had known pictures, and sculpture, add music, in all their finished and accepted beauty. But here I had found the very elements of Art—deeds to inspire sculpture, and all the tragedy that a violin in the hands of a master tries to tell.
Riding home between the two men, along the dusty road, silver fretted now under the glancing stars and a moon that hung in the heavens like a great luminous pearl, I realised how changed I was, and how changed was life for me. I think then for the first time it dawned upon me that the claw of Africa was already deep in my heart, but that the throe it caused was not all of pain.
When we got back to the town we found that some waggons we had met on our way out had come in. They were drawn up in the front of one of the shops, and left standing there for the night, but a little of the unloading had been begun, and on one side of the road lay three enormous packing cases. We reined in for a moment to look at them, and read the address painted on each in large black letters. Afterwards we gazed at each other and exchanged sad ironical smiles. Mrs Marriott’s trousseau had arrived!
I think it was just three weeks afterwards that I heard of Dick’s death. The news came as an absolute shock to me, for I had not even known that he was ill. It appeared that he had been suffering from fever ever since his return from Fort George, but he had not allowed Judy, to tell me because he thought it would add to my worries, also he hoped from day to day to have better news to send. Instead, weakened by his wounds and the privations undergone at the front, he suddenly got rapidly worse, and almost before they realised in what desperate case he was, passed quietly out one morning at dawn. When I heard, it was too late even to see his face before they buried him, for the dead do not tarry long with us in Africa, and I could not have reached Salisbury in less than three or four days.
While I was still quivering under the blow, and as though it were not enough, they came to tell me that Maurice Stair had come home—alone. Walking like a woman in a dream I went to the hut where he was resting, and heard the story he had to tell.
After much searching and enquiry among the Matabele who had come in to lay down their arms, but were all averse to telling what part they had taken in the past fighting, or to confess the solitary deeds of horror many of them had committed, he had at last found certain natives willing to lead him to other natives still away in the bush who had knowledge of the disappearance of Anthony Kinsella. By inference, implication, and insinuation—anything but direct information, for fear they should be accused of complicity—these boys had told what they knew of the affair—which was too much!
They said that after Britton had escaped to fetch help from the main column, Anthony had gone on fighting, shooting with his revolver when his rifle ammunition had given out, and attacking the natives with such violence that all had fallen except one, who, wounded in the legs had crawled to the bush, and from there had watched. He reported that Anthony Kinsella had been hit on the head by one of the last bullets, and seemed to have gone mad afterwards for he suddenly threw down his revolver and leaving the body of Vincent (supposed by the natives to be dead) had walked away into the bush, laughing and singing! Afterwards some more natives had come up, and the wounded man had shewn them the direction Kinsella had taken. They had followed his spoor, and come upon him in the bush, unarmed—