Cynthia Stockley

“ Between two upright boulders almost on the river bank there was a little cleft of shadow lined with moss and small, harsh-leaved fern, and there I flung myself down and unburdened my heart of its weight of tears. I wept until I had no more tears, until it seemed that last night’s moonlit madness must be washed away, all Anthony Kinsella’s scorching kisses from my lips, all his treachery from my memory. Only the young know the exquisite tragedy and solace of tears: of broken sobs that come shuddering up from the soul to the lips; that are of the body and yet most terribly of the spirit ”

“ I missed Makupi’s red blanket against the blaze of the zinias, where he was wont to sit, expelling the melancholy of his soul with the throb of his weird tom-tom, and hiding in his heart through all these months a secret that changed the face of life for three people!
Down in the camp a trooper, sitting outside his hut, was at the same business as myself—darning his foot-wear—and save for his idle song there was no other sound to break the hot, tranquil silence of the afternoon. ”

“ Six months may not be a long time but it is too long to fight daily battles with your vices without getting results; and an accumulation of results sat upon the serene brow of Maurice Stair, and revealed themselves in the firmness of his mouth.
No more sealed wooden cases were surreptitiously carried to his hut. He drank his whiskey-and-soda from his own sideboard like a sane and decent gentleman. No more shirking and shelving of duties: but rather a seeking of fresh ones. No more sloth and skulking and petty sins. The old vices and weaknesses were under foot at last. ”

“ Africa had shown them to me happening in all their naked terror and beauty. In Europe I had known pictures, and sculpture, add music, in all their finished and accepted beauty. But here I had found the very elements of Art—deeds to inspire sculpture, and all the tragedy that a violin in the hands of a master tries to tell.
Riding home between the two men, along the dusty road, silver fretted now under the glancing stars and a moon that hung in the heavens like a great luminous pearl, I realised how changed I was, and how changed was life for me. ”

“ Many waters cannot drown love, but there are fires in life that can burn out of a woman the last root of vanity; and I had been through those flames. Some vague idea possessed me, perhaps, of hiding from the cynical eyes of Nonie Valetta the scars the furnace had left on me. I had always felt it to be due to Maurice, as well as myself, to cover up the hollowness of our life from curious eyes, and I think no one had ever suspected what we hid under our pleasant manner to each other in public. ”

“ When in my bedroom at the end of the evening, while they were putting on their wraps, I found myself mechanically muttering inventions to women as pale as myself about my husband’s touch of fever—stroke of sun—overwork—strain, anything that was not too utterly futile a reason for outrageous behaviour; the taste of life was bitter in my mouth, and I knew shame that burned to the bone.
Those were the nights when I could have torn out my tongue for making vows before God to Maurice Stair; when my soul was blotted with hatred ”

“ I could not contemplate life without them. Africa was only an interlude—an experience. In a few months I should be back again hunting with the Meath pack from our dear little box near Balbriggan; flying over to London for balls and Hurlingham, or with my pretty Aunt Betty van Alen in her Paris studio, entertaining her and her friends with the strange tale of my adventures in this strange land. How ridiculous to fancy that I could feel the thrilling pain of a claw in my heart—Africa’s claw! What was Africa to me or I to Africa? ”

“ I could hear him stirring the tea they had given him, and the jingle of his spoon in the saucer afterwards, and the showers of questions and exclamations that fell upon him as he stood drinking. Very clearly I heard Mrs Valetta’s question, though it was in a soft and entreating voice I had never heard her use before:
“Why are you going, Kim? Surely it is your duty to stay here and mind us.”
“Yes, do stay,” implored Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “It will make such a difference. How safe we’ll all feel!”
Anna Cleeve said nothing, but I could feel her looking. ”

“ It seemed to me then that I was very friendless and alone in that wide sun-scorched land of pale grasses and turquoise skies—far from my dead mother and my brother and the friends of my life. Fate had dumped me on the African veldt and suffering had overtaken me. All the things I had known and loved—pictures, books, marbles, dim churches, and magnificent music—seemed useless to help or comfort me. These things do not matter to Africa; and when one is dumped on a burning African plain they do not seem to matter to life. ”

“ I had been too tired to take off my rings, and an opal and a diamond or two winked wickedly at me. I wondered if my hands would be like Judy’s some day—calm and complacent and badly manicured! Just because some good man would come along and admire them and kiss them and think them the most beautiful hands in the world, and thereafter fold them in his breast while he himself took the wheel and did all the guiding through stormy seas, and all the hard work on land of fighting and gripping and parrying for place and position and money! ”

“ But she had opened eyes in my soul that had been blind before, and had shown me lives seared with pain and sin and scorched with the fires of passion that were yet beautiful; of men who could fight down the beasts of temptation and conquer the devils of vice; of men who could forget self-interest to hold out a helping hand to the weak and the stumbling; of men who could die in lone, silent places so that others might live in safety and security; of women who could offer their all for the public good, and lose it with a smile on their lips. ”

“ The living have the best of it. The dead and the missing are soon forgotten, except by the few who loved them personally.
I felt that if I could have gone out into the wild places penetrating the great Somabula Forest and searching all along the thickly bushed banks of the Shangani I should have found some trace, some news, something to break the aching, mysterious silence, and confirm me in my belief that Anthony was still alive somewhere. But across Africa’s rolling leagues of bush and rocks and empty, rugged, burning land no one can travel without the accessories that only money can buy. ”

“ My body lay still and anguished, but my mind wandered in a wilderness of wretchedness and misery where it sometimes seemed no gleam of hope or happiness could ever penetrate again. I had said that I believed no word of it all, but left alone with Judy’s haunting tale ringing in my head, how was it possible to dismiss the whole thing as a tissue of lies from beginning to end? Facts, such as his marriage, must be true. No woman would invent a thing that could be so easily disproved. ”

“ And so the months slipped by, until a year had gone since the night I kissed Anthony Kinsella goodbye. Of all the old Fort George friends there was only one left in my life—Maurice Stair. The rest were scattered far and wide in Matabeleland, and the different camps and townships springing up in every part of the country.
That is the way in Africa. People come into your life, live in almost family intimacy with you, learn (very often) the very inmost secrets of your heart, share joys and sorrows with you, then pass on and are lost to you for ever. ”

“ I am one of those extremely feminine women who must have some one to look after me. You can have no idea how wretched and lonely I am. It is all very well for you—so self-poised and full of character. Women like you don’t really know what it is to love and suffer. I don’t believe tall women feel things like little women either; and I am so tiny—Dick always said I was like a tiny sweet rosebud.”
“Oh, leave Dick out of it for God’s sake, Judy,” I groaned. “Content yourself with the words of Mr Courtfield now. Let poor Dick rest in his grave.”
“How brutal you are, Deirdre!” ”

“ A strange thing about the veldt is that if you stare long at it when you are happy your eyes will fill with tears, and an indefinable sorrow surges in your veins. But go to it when you are wretched, and its beauty will lay shadowy hands on you and bless you and enfold you, and something will wing its way into your heart like a white heron of peace, and nestling there give you comfort and courage. ”

“ Do you think you ought to see a doctor, Deirdre? Dr Abingdon here is quite clever they say, though he does look such an old roué. But Jand, in Salisbury, is the best man. Even Dr Jim goes to him when he is ill.”
“I am quite well, Judy.” I got up from the table and looked out of the window. I felt as if I could die of weariness and the sick blankness of life. Across the square near Anthony Kinsella’s hut a group of men stood talking animatedly. I turned away with my hand to my head. I wished I might never see any more men for a thousand years—and yet—
“I am quite well, Judy, but my head aches. ”

“ Oh, yes, there were reasons, bitter cruel reasons why I should repay the love and service of Maurice Stair, inasmuch as a loveless wife and the empty shell of a heart could repay him. It seemed a poor bargain for a man of thirty with ambitions for a great career, and all the world before him, to make and be content with; but he never ceased to assure me of his content, so the least I could do was to refrain from the gracelessness of reminding him of it. ”

“ I was too young and strong to hope for death, even while I felt that youth was being left far behind in the shadow of happier days, and age crouched somewhere in the tangled thorny wild in front. And always, always, the terrible regret for the passing of days that held nothing in them! Empty days—empty nights! Life was not meant to be passed thus, and life was passing!
“The wine of life was falling drop by drop;
The leaves of life were fading one by one!”
Maurice spent little of his time at the police camp. His duties as commanding officer did not oppress him. He rarely went near his men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is nothing at all glorious in sitting safe and snug at home killing time until good news comes in.
I was very sorry for pale, handsome Maurice Stair with his crippled arm. He could not even go out on patrol or picket duty, because it was impossible for him to carry a gun. He always sought me when he had a spare half-hour, and afterwards I used to feel quite exhausted from the prolonged effort of trying to cheer him up. It was like trying to pull a heavy bucket up a well and never quite succeeding in getting it to the top. ”

“ Life with Maurice Stair was too lively and active a misery to be truthfully described as dreary. It was more difficult than climbing the Dent blanche with bare and broken feet, or wandering waterless in the burning desert; for there was no glorious peak in sight up the steep and rugged path, nor any oases to rest by in the weary desert, nor any hope of “Death, the tardy friend” overtaking one’s faltering footsteps. ”

“ Then suddenly the heat was over, the flare died out of the picture, the far-off kops turned a faint pink colour, and the grimness of the bush was blurred in a drapery of purple chiffon. At once night unsheathed her velvet wings, and darkness fell in dim purple veils embroidered with silver stars. Some subtle scent as of flowering trees growing by a river blew through the tent of the cart. The world seemed filled with gracious dimness and made up of illimitable lovely space. An indescribable feeling of happy freedom filled my heart. ”

“ I could not prophesy with my hope; I could only try to keep from my voice the despair that obsessed me.
“A home perhaps that you and I can live in with peace and honour, Maurice,” I faltered at last. “Who knows; we may yet build some fine thing with the wreckage of our old selves. If we learn to tolerate and help and comfort each other—will not that be something? Perhaps in the end friendship may come.” ”

“ One look was enough to tell me not to look again, and I was occupied with my own misery.
Anthony Kinsella riding carelessly with his right arm turned in on his hip was all I saw. A dark face with two blue points in it under a slouched felt hat: eyes that with one swift look dragged my glance to his over the heads of everybody, long before he rode in amongst us with his little band. In the midst of them was an untented cart drawn by oxen containing several women and children and a sick man. Every one crowded round the riders shaking hands, questioning, welcoming. ”

“ After an ice-cold moment I answered her in a voice that sounded to me like some one else’s.
“What do you mean, Judy? Why do you say that to me?”
She was plaiting her hair then, and had a hairpin between her lips so that her voice was a little indistinct, but her words fell like gunshots into my ears.
“Well, you seemed to like him, rather. You were a good deal together this evening, weren’t you? Of course I know that you are well able to take care of yourself, but a flirtation with Tony Kinsella should not be embarked upon even by the most experienced hand. For one thing, he is married.” ”