Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  However, I went to bed and slept on it. Next morning I determined to set out for Southampton on a tour of inquiry to all the steamboat agencies. If that failed, I could go on to Plymouth.

  But, as chance would have it, the morning post brought me an unexpected letter, which helped me not a little in unravelling the problem. It was a crumpled letter, written on rather soiled paper, in an uneducated hand, and it bore, like Hilda’s, the Basingstoke postmark.

  “Charlotte Churtwood sends her duty to Dr. Cumberledge,” it said, with somewhat uncertain spelling, “and I am very sorry that I was not able to Post the letter to you in London, as the lady ast me, but after her train ad left has I was stepping into mine the Ingine started and I was knocked down and badly hurt and the lady gave me a half-sovering to Post it in London has soon as I got there but bein unable to do so I now return it dear sir not knowing the lady’s name and adress she having trusted me through seeing me on the platform, and perhaps you can send it back to her, and was very sorry I could not Post it were she ast me, but time bein an objeck put it in the box in Basingstoke station and now inclose post office order for ten Shillings whitch dear sir kindly let the young lady have from your obedient servant,

  “CHARLOTTE CHURTWOOD.”

  In the corner was the address: “11, Chubb’s Cottages, Basingstoke.”

  The happy accident of this letter advanced things for me greatly — though it also made me feel how dependent I was upon happy accidents, where Hilda would have guessed right at once by mere knowledge of character. Still, the letter explained many things which had hitherto puzzled me. I had felt not a little surprise that Hilda, wishing to withdraw from me and leave no traces, should have sent off her farewell letter from Basingstoke — so as to let me see at once in what direction she was travelling. Nay, I even wondered at times whether she had really posted it herself at Basingstoke, or given it to somebody who chanced to be going there to post for her as a blind. But I did not think she would deliberately deceive me; and, in my opinion, to get a letter posted at Basingstoke would be deliberate deception, while to get it posted in London was mere vague precaution. I understood now that she had written it in the train, and then picked out a likely person as she passed to take it to Waterloo for her.

  Of course, I went straight down to Basingstoke, and called at once at Chubb’s Cottages. It was a squalid little row on the outskirts of the town. I found Charlotte Churtwood herself exactly such a girl as Hilda, with her quick judgment of character, might have hit upon for such a purpose. She was a conspicuously honest and transparent country servant, of the lumpy type, on her way to London to take a place as housemaid. Her injuries were severe, but not dangerous. “The lady saw me on the platform,” she said, “and beckoned to me to come to her. She ast me where I was going, and I says, ‘To London, miss.’ Says she, smiling kind-like, ‘Could you post a letter for me, certain sure?’ Says I, ‘You can depend upon me.’ An’ then she give me the arf-sovering, an’ says, says she, ‘Mind, it’s VERY par-tickler; if the gentleman don’t get it, ‘e’ll fret ’is ‘eart out.’ An’ through ‘aving a young man o’ my own, as is a groom at Andover, o’ course I understood ‘er, sir. An’ then, feeling all full of it, as yu may say, what with the arf-sovering, and what with one thing and what with another, an’ all of a fluster with not being used to travelling, I run up, when the train for London come in, an’ tried to scramble into it, afore it ‘ad quite stopped moving. An’ a guard, ’e rushes up, an’ ‘Stand back!’ says ’e; ‘wait till the train stops,’ says ’e, an’ waves his red flag at me. But afore I could stand back, with one foot on the step, the train sort of jumped away from me, and knocked me down like this; and they say it’ll be a week now afore I’m well enough to go on to London. But I posted the letter all the same, at Basingstoke station, as they was carrying me off; an’ I took down the address, so as to return the arf-sovering.” Hilda was right, as always. She had chosen instinctively the trustworthy person, — chosen her at first sight, and hit the bull’s-eye.

  “Do you know what train the lady was in?” I asked, as she paused. “Where was it going, did you notice?”

  “It was the Southampton train, sir. I saw the board on the carriage.”

  That settled the question. “You are a good and an honest girl,” I said, pulling out my purse; “and you came to this misfortune through trying — too eagerly — to help the young lady. A ten-pound note is not overmuch as compensation for your accident. Take it, and get well. I should be sorry to think you lost a good place through your anxiety to help us.”

  The rest of my way was plain sailing now. I hurried on straight to Southampton. There my first visit was to the office of the Castle line. I went to the point at once. Was there a Miss Wade among the passengers by the Dunottar Castle?

  No; nobody of that name on the list.

  Had any lady taken a passage at the last moment?

  The clerk perpended. Yes; a lady had come by the mail train from London, with no heavy baggage, and had gone on board direct, taking what cabin she could get. A young lady in grey. Quite unprepared. Gave no name. Called away in a hurry.

  What sort of lady?

  Youngish; good-looking; brown hair and eyes, the clerk thought; a sort of creamy skin; and a — well, a mesmeric kind of glance that seemed to go right through you.

  “That will do,” I answered, sure now of my quarry. “To which port did she book?”

  “To Cape Town.”

  “Very well,” I said, promptly. “You may reserve me a good berth in the next outgoing steamer.”

  It was just like Hilda’s impulsive character to rush off in this way at a moment’s notice; and just like mine to follow her. But it piqued me a little to think that, but for the accident of an accident, I might never have tracked her down. If the letter had been posted in London as she intended, and not at Basingstoke, I might have sought in vain for her from then till Doomsday.

  Ten days later, I was afloat on the Channel, bound for South Africa.

  I always admired Hilda’s astonishing insight into character and motive; but I never admired it quite so profoundly as on the glorious day when we arrived at Cape Town. I was standing on deck, looking out for the first time in my life on that tremendous view — the steep and massive bulk of Table Mountain, — a mere lump of rock, dropped loose from the sky, with the long white town spread gleaming at its base, and the silver-tree plantations that cling to its lower slopes and merge by degrees into gardens and vineyards — when a messenger from the shore came up to me tentatively.

  “Dr. Cumberledge?” he said, in an inquiring tone.

  I nodded. “That is my name.”

  “I have a letter for you, sir.”

  I took it, in great surprise. Who on earth in Cape Town could have known I was coming? I had not a friend to my knowledge in the colony. I glanced at the envelope. My wonder deepened. That prescient brain! It was Hilda’s handwriting.

  I tore it open and read:

  “MY DEAR HUBERT, — I KNOW you will come; I KNOW you will follow me. So I am leaving this letter at Donald Currie & Co.’s office, giving their agent instructions to hand it to you as soon as you reach Cape Town. I am quite sure you will track me so far at least; I understand your temperament. But I beg you, I implore you, to go no further. You will ruin my plan if you do. And I still adhere to it. It is good of you to come so far; I cannot blame you for that. I know your motives. But do not try to find me out. I warn you, beforehand, it will be quite useless. I have made up my mind. I have an object in life, and, dear as you are to me — THAT I will not pretend to deny — I can never allow even YOU to interfere with it. So be warned in time. Go back quietly by the next steamer.

  “Your ever attached and grateful,

  “HILDA.”

  I read it twice through with a little thrill of joy. Did any man ever court so strange a love? Her very strangeness drew me. But go back by the next steamer! I felt sure of one thing: Hilda was far too good a judge of character to believe that
I was likely to obey that mandate.

  I will not trouble you with the remaining stages of my quest. Except for the slowness of South African mail coaches, they were comparatively easy. It is not so hard to track strangers in Cape Town as strangers in London. I followed Hilda to her hotel, and from her hotel up country, stage after stage — jolted by rail, worse jolted by mule-waggon — inquiring, inquiring, inquiring — till I learned at last she was somewhere in Rhodesia.

  That is a big address; but it does not cover as many names as it covers square miles. In time I found her. Still, it took time; and before we met, Hilda had had leisure to settle down quietly to her new existence. People in Rhodesia had noted her coming, as a new portent, because of one strange peculiarity. She was the only woman of means who had ever gone up of her own free will to Rhodesia. Other women had gone there to accompany their husbands, or to earn their livings; but that a lady should freely select that half-baked land as a place of residence — a lady of position, with all the world before her where to choose — that puzzled the Rhodesians. So she was a marked person. Most people solved the vexed problem, indeed, by suggesting that she had designs against the stern celibacy of a leading South African politician. “Depend upon it,” they said, “it’s Rhodes she’s after.” The moment I arrived at Salisbury, and stated my object in coming, all the world in the new town was ready to assist me. The lady was to be found (vaguely speaking) on a young farm to the north — a budding farm, whose general direction was expansively indicated to me by a wave of the arm, with South African uncertainty.

  I bought a pony at Salisbury — a pretty little seasoned sorrel mare — and set out to find Hilda. My way lay over a brand-new road, or what passes for a road in South Africa — very soft and lumpy, like an English cart-track. I am a fair cross-country rider in our own Midlands, but I never rode a more tedious journey than that one. I had crawled several miles under a blazing sun along the shadeless new track, on my African pony, when, to my surprise I saw, of all sights in the world, a bicycle coming towards me.

  I could hardly believe my eyes. Civilisation indeed! A bicycle in these remotest wilds of Africa!

  I had been picking my way for some hours through a desolate plateau — the high veldt — about five thousand feet above the sea level, and entirely treeless. In places, to be sure, a few low bushes of prickly aspect rose in tangled clumps; but for the most part the arid table-land was covered by a thick growth of short brown grass, about nine inches high, burnt up in the sun, and most wearisome to look at. The distressing nakedness of a new country confronted me. Here and there a bald farm or two had been literally pegged out — the pegs were almost all one saw of them as yet; the fields were in the future. Here and there, again, a scattered range of low granite hills, known locally as kopjes — red, rocky prominences, flaunting in the sunshine — diversified the distance. But the road itself, such as it was, lay all on the high plain, looking down now and again into gorges or kloofs, wooded on their slopes with scrubby trees, and comparatively well-watered. In the midst of all this crude, unfinished land, the mere sight of a bicycle, bumping over the rubbly road, was a sufficient surprise; but my astonishment reached a climax when I saw, as it drew near, that it was ridden by a woman!

  One moment later I had burst into a wild cry, and rode forward to her hurriedly. “Hilda!” I shouted aloud, in my excitement: “Hilda!”

  She stepped lightly from her pedals, as if it had been in the park: head erect and proud; eyes liquid, lustrous. I dismounted, trembling, and stood beside her. In the wild joy of the moment, for the first time in my life, I kissed her fervently. Hilda took the kiss, unreproving. She did not attempt to refuse me.

  “So you have come at last!” she murmured, with a glow on her face, half nestling towards me, half withdrawing, as if two wills tore her in different directions. “I have been expecting you for some days; and, somehow, to-day, I was almost certain you were coming!”

  “Then you are not angry with me?” I cried. “You remember, you forbade me!”

  “Angry with you? Dear Hubert, could I ever be angry with you, especially for thus showing me your devotion and your trust? I am never angry with you. When one knows, one understands. I have thought of you so often; sometimes, alone here in this raw new land, I have longed for you to come. It is inconsistent of me, of course; but I am so solitary, so lonely!”

  “And yet you begged me not to follow you!”

  She looked up at me shyly — I was not accustomed to see Hilda shy. Her eyes gazed deep into mine beneath the long, soft lashes. “I begged you not to follow me,” she repeated, a strange gladness in her tone. “Yes, dear Hubert, I begged you — and I meant it. Cannot you understand that sometimes one hopes a thing may never happen — and is supremely happy because it happens, in spite of one? I have a purpose in life for which I live: I live for it still. For its sake I told you you must not come to me. Yet you HAVE come, against my orders; and—” she paused, and drew a deep sigh— “oh, Hubert, I thank you for daring to disobey me!”

  I clasped her to my bosom. She allowed me, half resisting. “I am too weak,” she murmured. “Only this morning, I made up my mind that when I saw you I would implore you to return at once. And now that you are here—” she laid her little hand confidingly in mine— “see how foolish I am! — I cannot dismiss you.”

  “Which means to say, Hilda, that, after all, you are still a woman!”

  “A woman; oh, yes; very much a woman! Hubert, I love you; I half wish I did not.”

  “Why, darling?” I drew her to me.

  “Because — if I did not, I could send you away — so easily! As it is — I cannot let you stop — and... I cannot dismiss you.”

  “Then divide it,” I cried gaily; “do neither; come away with me!”

  “No, no; nor that, either. I will not stultify my whole past life. I will not dishonour my dear father’s memory.”

  I looked around for something to which to tether my horse. A bridle is in one’s way — when one has to discuss important business. There was really nothing about that seemed fit for the purpose. Hilda saw what I sought, and pointed mutely to a stunted bush beside a big granite boulder which rose abruptly from the dead level of the grass, affording a little shade from that sweltering sunlight. I tied my mare to the gnarled root — it was the only part big enough — and sat down by Hilda’s side, under the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. I realised at that moment the force and appropriateness of the Psalmist’s simile. The sun beat fiercely on the seeding grasses. Away on the southern horizon we could faintly perceive the floating yellow haze of the prairie fires lit by the Mashonas.

  “Then you knew I would come?” I began, as she seated herself on the burnt-up herbage, while my hand stole into hers, to nestle there naturally.

  She pressed it in return. “Oh, yes; I knew you would come,” she answered, with that strange ring of confidence in her voice. “Of course you got my letter at Cape Town?”

  “I did, Hilda — and I wondered at you more than ever as I read it. But if you KNEW I would come, why write to prevent me?”

  Her eyes had their mysterious far-away air. She looked out upon infinity. “Well, I wanted to do my best to turn you aside,” she said, slowly. “One must always do one’s best, even when one feels and believes it is useless. That surely is the first clause in a doctor’s or a nurse’s rubric.”

  “But WHY didn’t you want me to come?” I persisted. “Why fight against your own heart? Hilda, I am sure — I KNOW you love me.”

  Her bosom rose and fell. Her eyes dilated. “Love you?” she cried, looking away over the bushy ridges, as if afraid to trust herself. “Oh, yes, Hubert, I love you! It is not for that that I wish to avoid you. Or, rather, it is just because of that. I cannot endure to spoil your life — by a fruitless affection.”

  “Why fruitless?” I asked, leaning forward.

  She crossed her hands resignedly. “You know all by this time,” she answered. “Sebastian would tell you, of course,
when you went to announce that you were leaving Nathaniel’s. He could not do otherwise; it is the outcome of his temperament — an integral part of his nature.”

  “Hilda,” I cried, “you are a witch! How COULD you know that? I can’t imagine.”

  She smiled her restrained, Chaldean smile. “Because I KNOW Sebastian,” she answered, quietly. “I can read that man to the core. He is simple as a book. His composition is plain, straightforward, quite natural, uniform. There are no twists and turns in him. Once learn the key, and it discloses everything, like an open sesame. He has a gigantic intellect, a burning thirst for knowledge; one love, one hobby — science; and no moral instincts. He goes straight for his ends; and whatever comes in his way,” she dug her little heel in the brown soil, “he tramples on it as ruthlessly as a child will trample on a worm or a beetle.”

  “And yet,” I said, “he is so great.”

  “Yes, great, I grant you; but the easiest character to unravel that I have ever met. It is calm, austere, unbending, yet not in the least degree complex. He has the impassioned temperament, pushed to its highest pitch; the temperament that runs deep, with irresistible force; but the passion that inspires him, that carries him away headlong, as love carries some men, is a rare and abstract one — the passion of science.”

  I gazed at her as she spoke, with a feeling akin to awe. “It must destroy the plot-interest of life for you, Hilda,” I cried — out there in the vast void of that wild African plateau— “to foresee so well what each person will do — how each will act under such given circumstances.”

  She pulled a bent of grass and plucked off its dry spikelets one by one. “Perhaps so,” she answered, after a meditative pause; “though, of course, all natures are not equally simple. Only with great souls can you be sure beforehand like that, for good or for evil. It is essential to anything worth calling character that one should be able to predict in what way it will act under given circumstances — to feel certain, ‘This man will do nothing small or mean,’ ‘That one could never act dishonestly, or speak deceitfully.’ But smaller natures are more complex. They defy analysis, because their motives are not consistent.”