I remember very little in detail of the rest of that enchanted night. I know that every one was very gay and merry, and none more so than I, with a heart singing like a bird in my breast. After scrambling in the kitchen for hours, laughing, blacking our hands and smearing our features, getting smoke in our eyes and ashes down our throats from three large fires out of doors, a banquet was served in the preparing of which at least fifty people had a hand and the like of which was never seen before or since in Mashonaland. The odour thereof permeated to every hut and home and lured men from their beds. People I had never seen before arrived upon the scene and joined in the proceedings—even the frumps and dowds and the business-like men. We were all—
“Glad together in gladsome mood
And joyful in joyous lustre.”
Anthony brewed a bowl of punch flavoured with blue beads that ravished the hearts of all men who tasted it; and Gerry Deshon brewed an opposition bowl which he called “potheen” and engaged attention to by monotonously beating a kaffir tom-tom over it, the sound of which brought the remaining stragglers into camp.
By twelve o’clock, when the moon was low in the heavens but the campfires blazed high, almost every one in the town was seated round the white cloths spread upon the stubbly grass. I recognised the postmaster’s beautifully embroidered tea-cloth among the rest. No one gave a thought to grass-ticks or mosquitoes. How should they when the feast was eaten to the strains of the postmaster’s banjo and his charming tenor voice serenading us with some of the wild, sweet melodies of Ireland to which Moore has put words. But of course, with the innate melancholy of the Celt, he could not refrain from tempering our merriment with woe, and at our blithest he suddenly subdued us with the sad fierce Song of Fionnuala:
“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water.
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,
While murmuring mournfully Lir’s lonely daughter
Tells to the night stars the tale of her woes.
“When shall the swan her death-song singing
Sleep with wings in darkness furled?
When will Heaven its sweet bell ringing
Call my spirit from this stormy world?”
Did the Irish gift of foresight descend for a moment upon that one of Ireland’s sons, I wonder? For it was strange, looking back long after, to reflect that never before had little Fort George indulged in such a gay and merry revel, nor ever did again. That was her swan-song. Afterwards she slept, with wings in darkness furled.
During the evening Anthony and I were side by side once more, and under cover of all the jesting and laughter around us we added another brief little chapter to the history of our love. The firelight was glinting on the points of blue in his ears, and impulsively I put up a finger and touched one of them.
“Why do you wear them?”
He looked steadily into the fire and did not answer at once.
“If you object to them I will not wear them any longer,” he said at last. But there was a note in his voice that chilled my heart.