by John Buchan
“And in the meantime,” said the Duchess, “we are to be assisted to understand what you call ‘the concrete significance’ — odious phrase! — of Imperialism by going off into the real wilderness for three weeks. I daresay we shall get the atmosphere of empire into our souls, but I shall be surprised if some of us don’t get fever into our bones. I do hope you have been careful, Francis. I don’t want Musuru to end as a nursing home.”
“There is just a chance of fever for those who go to Ruwenzori, but I think it may be avoided, and in any case it would be slight. The other expeditions are as healthy as a cruise in the North Sea. Shall I tell you the plans?”
Carey had privately arranged with each member of the party as to how the next weeks should be spent, but no one had been permitted to divulge the arrangement. Hence, while all knew their destinations they had no inkling of who their companions might be, and their host’s announcement was awaited with much interest.
“First of all the Duchess stays on at Musuru with me; and Lord Appin and Lord Launceston keep us company. Lady Warcliff is going to Aden by the Austrian Lloyd to meet Sir Arthur on his way home from India. Mrs Deloraine was anxious to explore the East Coast, and Mr Wakefield wanted to have a look at the South African colonies, so they will join one of my yachts to-morrow at Mombasa. Mrs Wilbraham, Mrs Yorke, and Mr Lowenstein are going too, and I think they should be able to get as far as Durban, and spend three or four days ashore. I am a little doubtful about the next expedition, which is Astbury’s idea. He and Graham and Marjory and Lady Lucy propose to go off to Ruwenzori, and make an attempt to ascend Kiyanja. It is well worth doing, for there is no stranger or lovelier mountain scenery on earth, but it is a long job, and the country before you reach the Mubuku valley is a little wearing. However, I have collected for them a good caravan, they can cross the lake in the yacht to the best starting - point, and two Chamonix guides, who live here in the settlement, will accompany them. They took me up the second time the ascent was made, and know every step of the road. Last of all comes the hunting-party, — Lady Flora, Lady Amysfort, Hugh, and Sir Edward. Teddy still yearns for a good eland head, so they are going off to the north to look for one — first, the Uasin-Gishu flats, and then up towards Rudolf. Remember you have only three weeks, and you won’t be allowed to outstay your leave, for my men have orders to bring you back at all costs to Musuru twenty-two days hence. Bon voyage to you all, and good hunting to you, Teddy, and for Heaven’s sake, Hugh, give up the habit of stalking lions with a pop-gun.”
“I wish,” said the Duchess, “that I were not an old woman. Or, since that is a foolish thing to say, I wish that, being old, I did not feel so young. I suppose some one must remain behind to write to sorrowing relatives. You must be very kind to me, Francis, for I foresee I am going to be in a bad temper.”
CHAPTER X.
THREE weeks later Lady Flora and Hugh were riding with slack reins over the great downs which sweep from Musuru to the north. Their caravan was visible some miles in the rear, a small dot in the interminable expanse of green. The riders were facing south, and far away appeared the dark line which told of the forests which surrounded the house. It was a windless afternoon, but at that height the air had the freshness of a mountain-top. The world slept in the still and golden weather — only the sound of their horses’ hoofs, and now and then the cry of a bird, broke in upon the warm, scented silence. The bent, green with springtide in the near distance, mellowed in the farther spaces to a pale gold, which stood out with entrancing clearness against the crystalline blue of the sky. It was a plateau on which they rode, for to the west the tops of little hills showed up on the horizon, foreshortened like the masts of ships at sea. This sight, and the diamond air and the westering sun, gave the riders the sensation of moving in some cloud-built world raised far above the levels of man.
The three weeks had worked changes in their appearance. In spite of veils Lady Flora had become sunburnt, and she had exchanged her prim English seat for the easy pose of the backwoods. Hugh, tanned like an Indian, wore clothes so stained and ragged that he looked like some swagman who had stolen a good horse. He caught the girl’s amused eye and laughed.
“I know I’m pretty bad, but I’m not so bad as Teddy. I wish his wife could see him at this moment. And I wish the whole round earth could behold Lady Amysfort. Who could have guessed that the wilds would have wrought such a change?”
“You don’t know Caroline as well as I do, or you would wonder more. I was afraid she would be bored, or have a headache or something, for she is so accustomed to being served and worshipped that I did not think she would see any fun in roughing it. I suppose Mr Carey knew her better. But when I saw her making pancakes the first night, I knew it would be all right. Before we started, she was the last woman I would have chosen to travel with, and now she is the first. And that is a pretty high recommendation, I think.”
“Like Charles Lamb’s praise—’ What a lass to go a-gipsying through the world with!’ I think so too. Well, it’s all over now, Lady Flora. Have you enjoyed yourself?”
“Shall I ever forget it — those magical weeks? We are not going back to anything half sus good as we are leaving behind. I know now what Mr Astbury meant by Nirwana, for I have been living in it. Do you remember when we camped in the little ravine above Asinyo? When you and Sir Edward were away hunting all day, Charlotte and I used to climb up to the top of the rocks among the whortleberries, and watch the shadows running over the plain, and get blown on by the cool winds from the Back of Beyond. I never knew one could be so happy alone. And then the evenings, with the big fire and the natives’ chatter, and Sir Edward’s stories and Caroline’s singing! Do you remember one night we argued for hours about what could be done to make Ascot more amusing? And then we suddenly remembered where we were, and burst out laughing. What fun it was, too, to lie awake in bed, quite warm and comfortable, and see the stars twinkling through the door of one’s tent, and hear the wolves howling to each other! I hate coming back — even to Musuru.
“And in all that huge, heavenly country,” the girl went on, “there was not one white man. I shall soon be as fanatical about settlement as Lady Warcliff. Only I am going to preach a different creed. Think of the numbers of young men of our class who have sufficient money to live on and nothing to do. They somehow fall out of the professions, and hang about at a loose end. But there is excellent stuff in them if they found the kind of life to suit them. They would have made good eldest sons, though they are very unsatisfactory younger ones. But out here they could all be eldest sons. They would have a Christian life, plenty of shooting, plenty of hard work of the kind they could really do well; and then they could marry and found a new aristocracy. I don’t suppose Mr Carey wants the new countries to be without their gentry. What a delightful society it would be! I can picture country-houses — simple places, not palaces like Musuru, — and pretty gardens, and packs of hounds, and — oh, all that makes England nice, without any of the things that bore us. There would be no Season, because there would be no towns, and everybody would remain young, because there would he nothing to make them grow old.”
“Would you be one of the citizens of your Utopia?” Hugh asked.
“I think I should. At least my Better Self would. At this moment I look on the complicated world with disgust. My tastes are half pagan and half early Christian. I want to have all the things that really matter in life, and nothing else. I want to be able to look out on everything with clear eyes and without any sentimentality or second-hand emotion. Do you know, if I spent many weeks like the last three I should become very like a man. I have caught Sir Edward’s slang, and I have almost fallen into his way of regarding things. What was that odd poem he was always quoting, something about the ‘wind in his teeth’?”
“‘May I stand in the mist and the clear and the chill,’”
Hugh repeated —
“‘In the cycle of wars,
In the brown of the moss and the grey of the hill,
With my eyes to the stars!
Gift this guerdon and grant this grace,
That I bid good-e’en,
The sword in my hand and my foot to the race,
The wind in my teeth and the rain in my face!’
‘Be it so,’ said the Queen.”
“Well, I am all for ‘the wind in my teeth and the rain in my face,’ though it would be very bad for my complexion. Where does Sir Edward get his verses?”
“Heaven knows! Partly he invents them, and partly he misremembers things he has read. They are the strangest mixture. And he hasn’t an idea who wrote what. He will put down some hideous doggerel to Shakespeare, and credit Whyte-Melville with the best things of Browning. He argued with me for a long time the other day about ‘The desire of the moth for the star.’ He only knew the last verse, and maintained that it had been written by an Australian poet of his acquaintance called Buck Jones.... How long do you think this new mood of yours will last? I am coming to shoot at Wirlesdon in November. Shall I find it gone?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl dolefully. “Of course I shall go back and become a conventional young woman again. And yet I shall never be able to forget the other side. I shall always be longing for this plateau, and the sun, and the smell of the camp-fire. And when I see myself in a mirror at balls, my Better Self will say to my Ordinary Self, ‘Now you are like a thousand people in a crowd; but once, little goose, you were a woman that mattered!’... But, indeed, we can never get away from Musuru so long as Mr Carey lives. All that is delightful in the place is in him. I could not help thinking while we were on trek that the wilderness was his real setting, and not the splendours of Musuru. He broods over the country like a fate.”
“I have had the same feeling in all our travels,” said Hugh. “Carey has the wilds so much in his soul, and he lives so entirely among elemental things, that he has the same aura as this land. When I think of him it is never at Musuru or in London, but as I first saw him in Rhodesia forcing his great shoulders through the bush with a dusty caravan behind him. No divine teacher would ever bid him sell all his goods and give to the poor, for it would be no sacrifice. He sits as loose among his great possessions as if he were a pilgrim with only a begging-bowl to his credit.”
“You once praised detachment,” said Lady Flora, “and I didn’t quite agree. I think it often means selfishness or a cold heart or a weak digestion. But Mr Carey’s detachment is the most wonderful thing on earth. He has such a fire in his own soul that he does not need to warm his hands at any of the blazes which we poor worldly mortals shiver around.”
“You know how every now and again he breaks out into some proverb. I remember once in London walking down Piccadilly, when suddenly Carey came up and put his arm in mine. He walked with me for a hundred yards without speaking, and then he said in that abstracted way of his, ‘Every man should be lonely at heart,’ and went off. He, at any rate, has the true spiritual austerity. Do you remember the story of the Italian poet’s mistress, sitting at some fête in beautiful clothes, when a scaffolding broke and she was crushed to death? And then they found that beneath her silken robes she had worn sackcloth. The world pictures Carey with his power and his wealth, and notes only the purple and fine linen, but few can penetrate to that inner austerity which looks upon such things as degrees of the infinitely small. He is, if you like, a practical mystic — an iron hand to change the fate of nations, and all the while a soul lit by its own immortal dreams. As you said, Lady Flora, while he lives we, who are his friends, can never sink altogether into the commonplace. And when he dies we can write over him that most tremendous of all epitaphs—’ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’”
The darkness was gathering fast, and the travellers were almost on the edge of the first belt of forest, beyond which lay Musuru. A clatter of hoofs behind them made them turn their heads sharply, and they found themselves overtaken by Lady Amysfort and Sir Edward.
“We hurried on,” said that gentleman, who in the twilight seemed longer and leaner than ever, “because we couldn’t stand the pace of those confounded mules. So we left Akhub to bring in the caravan. We are not more than a mile from Musuru, so you’d better stick that hat of yours straight, Hugh. You look as if you had escaped from some Wild West show. Do you mind if I push on by myself? I am very keen to know what has won the Leger?”
The dinner-table that evening was a very different sight from that presented on the first night of the visit. Then every one was fresh from home, a little’ strange and shy, inclined to be in awe equally of their neighbours and their host. A month of close comradeship in the wilds had made smooth the rough places, and the whole company had become excellent friends. The men were all tanned to a uniform brown, which in Sir Edward’s case had deepened into a Mephistophelian duskiness, and all had the clear eyes and alert figures which tell of perfect health. Even Mr Lowenstein had so greatly benefited by the voyage that he showed no trace of weakness. The women had changed the pink and white of civilisation for wholesome sunburn. As for the Ruwenzori party, they had escaped fever but had left their complexions on the high snows, and Graham and Astbury showed faces so wonderfully tattered that by contrast Hugh looked modish and refined.
“Francis,” said the Duchess, “may I beg a favour? Don’t let the name of empire be mentioned to-night. I want to hear all about these young people’s doings. Besides, they will soon be much too sleepy to talk. Flora says she rode thirty miles to-day.”
“First you must tell us what has been happening at home, Aunt Susan. I haven’t had time to read my letters. I know what won the St Léger, for Sir Edward has told me the news eighteen times, but I don’t know anything else.”
“What could happen at home in September? My letters are mostly from Scotland, where your uncle is still saying hard things about the fishing. All the history manufactured lately has been made here. You cannot imagine the profound peace of Musuru when you are all away. Bob read, and Lord Launceston wrote, and Francis was either shut up in his den working or roving about the estate. I dozed a good deal of the day, but we all woke up in the evening, and talked, no politics, only simple friendly gossip. We made Bob read Scott aloud after dinner, and we got through the ‘Heart of Midlothian.’ Never in my life have I spent a more restful time, and now I feel like some quiet old abbess whose convent has been invaded by Goths. You must atone for the jar to my nerves by giving me a faithful tale of your adventures. You may begin, Margaret!”
“Alas, nothing happened to me,” said Lady Warcliff, with that air of mingled petulance and candour which was the chief of her charms. “Aden was a simple inferno with heat and dust. I saw Arthur, and tried to get him to come on here with me, but the call of the partridges was stronger than my eloquence. He hurried home, and I came back and stopped for two nights to explore Mombasa. My story is a very dull one. How did you enjoy the East Coast?” she asked, turning to Mrs Deloraine.
