A good woman

by Louis Bromfield

Without a sound, she slipped to the dusty earth beside the cot. She tasted the earth with her lips, but she did not even raise her head.

When she came out of the hut to find Swanson, it was still dark, although a faint rim of light had begun to show above the surface of the lake. Near the opening in the barricade, the night fire had burned to a glowing pile of embers. For a long time she stood there beneath the stars, listening to the mysterious sounds of the African night, on the very spot where Philip had once stood, half-naked, listening to the sound of the drums, lost in a strange, savage delight at the discovery of being alive and young and a man. And at last there came to her the feeling that she was not alone, but surrounded by the creatures who filled all the night with their sense of life. She was not alone, for Naomi was there, too. This strange world belonged to Naomi. She herself was only an intruder.

A sound of birds churring in the darkness roused her, and she went off to find Swanson. He was asleep in his hut and he wakened slowly, clumsily. For once, understanding without being told, he rose and followed her.

As the gray turned to rose above the lake, and the sounds of the waking forest grew more distinct, she knelt by the side of the cot while Swanson prayed, and slowly she came to understand that in his simplicity he was a good man, akin in his selfless simplicity, to the wild things in the gloomy forest that surrounded them. She understood, too, that Philip had meant to die thus, that he had come here to the spot where death was certain. But she saw, too, that he had really died long ago, on the night that had followed their happiness in the room above the stable. She didn’t hate Naomi: she had never hated her.

The morning light began to filter in through the doorway, and the spaces below the thatching. She stirred and took up the drawing-block on which Philip had written his name. No, it was not Naomi that she hated....

Two days later they buried him beneath the acacia not far from the fresh grave of the battered old Lady Millicent, on the spot where once, for the first time, he had known a blinding intimation of what life might be. He had known it again afterward—once as he stood in the moonlight listening to the drums, and again, on the day the wicked Lily Shane came to the stable; and then at last on the night he returned to find Mary waiting in the darkness.

It was the simple Swanson who read the service, because Mary wished it; for the Reverend Mr. Murchison made her think of Christians like Emma Downes and her brother, Elmer Niman.... It was the Reverend Mr. Murchison who would be the first Bishop of East Africa.

4

When Emma returned home one night from the restaurant to find a letter from Madagascar addressed in a strange handwriting, she knew what had happened. For a long time, she sat at the dining-room table, staring at the letter, for the sight of it threw her into one of those rare moods when for a moment she gave herself over to reflection and so came unbearably near to seeing herself. She had known all along that it was certain to happen, yet the knowledge had not prepared her in any way. It seemed as hard to bear as if he had been killed suddenly by some terrible accident in the Mills.

He had not told her he was returning to Megambo until he had gone, when it was too late for her to act; and now she knew that he had died without ever seeing the letter she had sent, as it were, into space, to follow him in time to turn him back. He had died, she saw, without even knowing at all she had written, begging him not to be so hard, to think of her as his mother who was willing to sacrifice everything for his happiness. She would (she had written) forgive Mary, and try her best to behave toward her as if Mary were her own daughter. What more could she have done? To forgive Mary who had stolen him from her?