I suppose I fainted, and later perhaps I slept. At any rate it seemed, and must have been, a long while afterwards that I waked up to a sound so pleasant and comforting that I believed at first I must still be in the land of strange dreams in which my mind had been wandering. But I presently realised that though I was still lying curled up in the cart, it really was the sound of wood crackling and burning in a fire, and that the aromatic flavour in the air was the smoke of wood mingled with the curiously sweet scent of burning leaves and branches, still hissing with sap. Very softly I raised myself upon a cramped elbow and looked out of the cart. The place was transformed. The circular clearing, no longer gaunt and terrifying but a scene of tall enchanted trees and frondy ferns, was lit up with leaping rose-and-amber lights from four large fires built at the corners of a square. The post-cart, well within the radius, had a munching horse tethered to it, while stretched at full length on a rug in the firelight was a man.
He was lying carelessly at his ease, and by the flickering light of the fires looking through a number of letters and papers. One hand supported a determined-looking jaw; the rest of his face was hidden under a hat with so evil a slouch to it that it might easily have belonged to a burglar. He wore no coat; only a grey flannel shirt open at the neck, with a dark blue and crimson striped handkerchief (the kind of thing college men put on after boating or football) knotted loosely round his bare throat. His khaki riding-breeches were “hitched” round him on a leather belt from which also depended a heavy Service revolver and a knife-case. By the side of him on the rug lay a gun. He was evidently taking no risks as far as lions were concerned.
I began to have an extraordinary curiosity to see his face. Moreover I longed with a fervent longing not only to get out and sit in the warmth of those homely and attractive fires, but to speak with another human being. If he would only look up, I thought, and let me see whether or not he had an honest face! I could not trust that hat. With such a hat he might be a horse thief, an escaped convict, an I.D.B., or a pirate on a holiday, and though any of those might possibly be interesting persons to meet I felt that the time and place were hardly suitable for such a rencontre. The only thing to do was to lie perdue until I was able to come to some conclusion as to what manner of man he was. Even while I so decided he moved.
Sitting straight up he rolled the letter he had been reading into a ball and aimed it with violence and precision at the nearest fire, uttering at the same time some bad and bitter words that came quite clearly to my ears. However, I was by that time inured to bad language. Every one in South Africa uses it when they think you are not listening. Also, it is apparently the only language that mules and oxen understand for drivers never speak any other. I had become so accustomed to wicked words that I no longer took the slightest notice of them.
To my amazement I discovered that he was muttering verse to himself—bits of Stevenson:
“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone.
Say, can that lad be I?
Merry of heart he sailed on a day,
Over the sea to Skye.
* * * * *
Glory of youth glowed in his veins
Where is that glory now?”
He whipped the muffler from his neck at this and flung it down, then drove his hands into his pockets and continued his sullen chant:
“Give me again all that was there.
Give me the sun that shone.
Give me the heart, give me the eyes,
Give me the lad that is gone!”
He flung off his hat. I was able to get some idea of his general appearance then, as he passed up and down in the varying lights and shadows, and that too seemed strangely reminiscent of some one I had known. But I was disappointed to find that he didn’t look the least bit like the hero of a romance. He was not even tall. What was worse he had the most awful hair. It was black and lank like an Indian’s and distinctly thin in front, and one strand of it like a rag of black silk kept falling away from the rest and hanging down between his bad-tempered blue eyes—at least I felt sure they must be bad-tempered, and I had to come to the conclusion that they were blue, because every time he passed the fire I got a suggestion of blue. He perpetually smeared the rag of hair back from his eyes and it as perpetually fell down again. A curious thing about him was the way he moved, so softly and firmly on his feet, yet without making a sound, and when he reached the end of one of his enforced marches he swung round in the same pleasing way that the sail of a boat swings in the wind. It was hard to admit that a sort of burglar in riding-breeches could interest one by the way he walked, but I had to admit after a time, that there was a queer distinction and grace about him. He made a further remark to the stars:
“‘Give me again all that was there.’ But what for, good Lord? To let women wipe their boots on and throw in the mud! Ah, they leave one nothing! They throw down every shrine one sets up.”