Carew made no comment. Evidently it was true. Little else mattered. Nearly all through this trek of his round those distant kraals his King had been lying dead, and he had not known it. Such a man as he is not stunned by tidings; but he recedes still further into his shell, if possible. There is no comment, no discussion, just a grim silence sealing a deep pain that cannot express itself.
He stayed a moment longer, while Stanley told him a few details, and then he went away into his hut and shut his door to the sunlight—one of those exiles for whom the news had, as it were, an added sorrow, because during the first shock he had remained in ignorance, and had thus been prevented joining in the loyal homage of grief that had been offered by his countrymen from the four corners of the earth.
It was thus with many of the far-off Empire-builders. They heard so late, so unpreparedly, so suddenly; and in the first shock, an exile which had been a calmly accepted condition, became almost a menace, seemed swiftly to develop a force. The men in the far places felt their aloofness; knew that their souls were beating vainly against prison bars, for the longing to annihilate space and stand beside the beloved dead. That quiet band of men whom we sometimes call "The Pathfinders," and who go away across the world to bring the wilderness into line; to smooth the rough, link the severed, subdue the untamed, and carry prosperity to the waste places. The men who cope with strange, deadly diseases; who fight fever swamps, and compel them to carry a railroad across their reluctant bosoms, though the swamps in turn exact a heavy toll of human life; who make the paths that the women and children will presently pass over, though no such soul-stirring cry urges their exhausting efforts.
But it is not usual to laud these men, who win their colours at the dull, prosaic work of path-finding, as it is to laud those who encounter shot and shell in the lurid atmosphere of battle, and one feels they do not ask it. Yet now and then they must surely be glad to know that thoughtful women and thoughtful men follow their work and bless them in silence, sending across the world to them a homage of praise that is, perhaps, richer than the plaudits of the crowd. And not to them only, but also to the mothers who bid them go, accepting their hard part of lonely, anxious waiting without complaint.
And if they fall by the wayside, unrecognised, unknown, but having carried the path forward, maybe a mile, maybe a yard, maybe an inch, how great a thing is that compared to the small happenings that of necessity make up most men's lives!
In the sultry midday heat Carew sat alone in his hut, and certain memories, that for fifteen years he had tried to crush out of his mind, crowded back upon him with overwhelming force in the grip of his sudden sorrow. For that sad event which had plunged a great nation into grief had been to him a personal loss. In the silence and shadow he mourned deeply, not only the idol of his youth and dear object of his heart's best loyalty, but the memory of a friend.
For long ago, or so it seemed, there had been a moment when a royal hand had clasped his, and a royal voice—the royalty all lost in the friend—had said, "Perhaps you are right. It is best to begin again. But do not imagine your life is over and its aims purposeless. Out there you will find renewing. Some day come back and tell me about it."
That was fifteen years ago, but he had never gone back. Never sought the second hand-clasp that would have been his. Never unfolded to those interested ears his personal experiences with the pioneer column that led the way to do the path-finding in Rhodesia. In the hush of the afternoon, with his head bowed on his arms, the years between seemed to pass out of mind, and that which once had been to stand alone, awaking within him an infinite regret.
He saw again certain lovely park-lands—the woods and hills and dales—of a rich inheritance that should have been his. He saw himself, the gay guardsman. He saw the dear face of the woman for whom he had chosen to cross that arbitrary will which would brook no disobedience, and sought to intimidate him with disinheritance. Through his mind passed in slurred detail the sordid story which had given him a brother's hate in return for a quixotic championing of the weak—a hate which proved to have power enough behind it to draw a devastating hand across the promise of his future.
Lastly—and here in the silence it was as though his head sank deeper in its pain—he saw that woman's dear face, as he had last seen it, lying white upon the heather—dead.