There were some among his dark followers to whom Geoffrey's Amati was an enchanted thing, a thing that ought to have been alive if it was not; indeed, there were some who secretly believed that it was a living creature. The velvet nest in which he kept the strange thing, the delicate care with which he laid it in that luxurious resting-place, or took it out into the light of day; the loving movement with which he rested his chin on the shining wood, while his long lissome fingers twined themselves caressingly about the creature's neck; the strange light that came into his eyes as he drew the bow across the strings, and the ineffable sounds which those strings gave forth; all these were tokens of a living presence, a something to be loved and feared.
When he tuned his fiddle, they thought that he was punishing it, and that it shrieked and groaned in its agony. Why else were those sounds so harsh and discordant, so unlike the melting strains which the thing gave forth when he laid his chin upon it and loved it, when his lips smiled, and his melancholy eyes looked far away into the purple distances, across the woods and the plains, to the remoteness of the mountain range beyond?
If it were not actually alive—if it had neither heart nor blood as they had, why, then, it was a familiar demon—a charm—by which he who possessed it could influence his fellow-men. He could rouse them to savage raptures, to shrieks and wild leaps that were meant for dancing. He could melt them to tears.
From the first hour when he played by the camp-fire, on the third night after they left Bagamoyo, Geoffrey's music had given him a hold over the more intelligent members of the caravan. They had listened at first almost as the dog listens, and had been ready to lift up their heads and howl as the dog howls. But gradually those singing sounds had exercised a soothing influence, they had sprawled at his feet, a ring of listeners, with elbows on the ground, looking up at him out of onyx eyes that flashed in the firelight.
Among their followers there were some Makololos from the Shire Valley, men of superior courage and determination, a finer race than the common herd of African porters, of the same race as those faithful followers of Livingstone's first great journey, who afterwards became chiefs and rulers of the land. These Makololos adored Geoffrey. His music, the achievements of his Winchester rifle, that ardent fitful temperament of his, exercised an extraordinary influence over these men; and it seemed as if they would have followed him without fee or reward, for sheer love of the man himself; not for meat, and cloth, and beads, and brass wire.
Never a word said Geoffrey or Allan of that one woman whose image filled the minds of both. They talked of other people freely enough. Each spoke of his mother tenderly, regretfully even, Allan taking comfort from the thought of Lady Emily's delight in her farm, the occupation and interest which every change of the seasons brought for her. Such letters as had reached him on his wanderings had been resigned and uncomplaining, although dwelling sorrowfully upon the husband she had lost.
"He used to live so much apart, shut in his library day after day, and only joining me in the evening, that I could hardly have believed my life could seem so empty without him. But I know now how much his presence in the house—even his silent, unseen presence—meant for me; and I realize now how often I used to go to him, interrupting his dreamy life with my petty household questions, my little bits of news from the farmyard or the cow-houses, or the garden. He was so kind and sympathetic. He would look up from his books to interest himself in some story about my Brahmas or my Cochins, and if he was bored, he never allowed me to see the faintest sign of impatience. I think he was the best and truest man that ever lived. And my Allan is like him. May God protect and bless my dearest, my only dear, in all the perils of the desert!"
Lady Emily's mental picture of Africa represented one far-reaching waste of level sand, a desert flatness incompatible with a spherical earth, pervaded by camels, and occasionally varied by a mirage. A pair of pyramids—like tall candlesticks at the end of a board-room table—a sphinx and a crocodily river occupied the north-east corner of this vast plateau, while the south-west was distinguished by a colony of ostriches, and the place to which Indian officials used to resort for change of air some fifty years since. To these narrow limits were restricted Lady Emily's notions of the continent on which her son was now a wanderer. She feared that if he got out of the way of the crocodiles he might fall in with the ostriches, which doubtless were dangerous when encountered in large numbers; and she shuddered at the sight of her feather fan.
Mrs. Wornock's letters were in a sadder strain. The key was distinctly minor. She wrote of her loneliness; of the monotonous days; the longing for the face that had vanished.
"My organ talks to me of you—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, all tell me the same story. You are far away—away for a long time—and life is very sad."