Chapter IV: Vicisti Galilaee! (1)

Julian was in a strange fit of tension when he heard Tommy Bates' steps coming up the garden path. They were very uncertain steps.

Julian threw open his study door as the secretary reeled into the hall. He had longed for company this last grey craven hour or two, and this was all the company he was to enjoy for to-night at least!

Humming and lurching and stinking of whisky as Tommy was, there was not much comfort to be sought from him.

Julian swore at him sonorously then he hustled him off to bed. Soon he was snoring. Julian had somehow shuffled away his fear in his coercion of Tommy.

'I'll get my blankets and pillow out of my room, and lie down in Tommy's. I feel I can sleep now,' he thought.

He went into his room heedlessly in the dark and trod on something or somebody, just as he was striking a match.

It was the big black snake that lived in the ant-hill at the back of the house whose movements Jim and the piccanin had been discussing. The snake dealt with Julian.

Julian staggered about looking for crystals and a lancet. They were locked up safely and perhaps Jim, or perhaps Tommy had the key.

Tommy would not wake to any purpose. Just as Julian was shaking him, the clock in the study a clock Julian had won in his sprinting days chimed twelve very melodiously. Everything seemed to be locked up. Had Jim the key of the spirit cupboard or Tommy? Julian was growing drowsy in his struggles against the current of fortune. Hadn't he better give in, and let himself be carried down? Almost before he knew it, he was lying on the sofa in his study where the lamp with the red shade was burning so cosily. Likely enough his eye caught a quaint ornament on his study table at the juncture the figure of the Serpent on the Cross.

It may be too, that some sort of startled respect came to him for the Worm that had turned at last, not vindictively, but in the interests of the Commonweal.

Probability points to this one fact at least, that Julian fumbled for something in his pocket-book ere he resigned himself finally to the growing torpor.

A card was found on the study floor when morning came; they found the pocket-book itself on the conch beside him.

The card was the one that had come at his last breakfast-time from Dick Hunter, the card that he had reserved rather indignantly for future consideration.

On the one side of it was a color-process reproduction, very good of its kind Christ in Glory the Rex Tremendoe Majestatis and also the Fons Pietatis of the Dies Ira with tears in His Eyes and thorns on His Brows as He judged just judgment. On the other side were four lines from Browning, faithfully transcribed save for the change of a name. They were written in the shaking writing of a sick man, in Hunter's round, unformed hand:

'For the main criminal I have no hope Except in such a suddenness of fate So may the truth be by one blow flashed out. And Julian see one instant and be saved.'

There is no question as to the suddenness of the stroke of fate that ended Julian's career in South Africa. There is an open question as to the illuminative force of that blow, and we must wait for the answer.

THE DOUBLE CABIN

We had been close to a certain line of fire together, and yet we had not seen much fighting. That is to say, we were taking part in a campaign together that was for the time being an affair of patrols near a certain border an affair that flashed into fire now and then as between man and man. As between sun and man the firing was fairly continuous for eight hours of most days. Were we not within a hundred miles or so of the equator? In that climatic struggle (so much the more constant of the two for us Northerners) I on my noncombatant job came off lightly, he, as a combatant, suffered. He was down with malaria time and time again. He had it on him that night when he put me up at his place a night when the old year was almost out. He was then inhabiting a border outpost a clean little camp tucked away behind a native village. It was none too airy, I thought, with its heavy curtains of cactus hedging. He seemed a little better that next morning, when I said prayers, and afterwards rehearsed a certain Rite. He stayed to the end of my ministrations. After breakfast I started again on my journey, a round that took me far from the centre of our small world. When I touched that centre again I heard his news, which was not so very reassuring. He had gone down with blackwater, and been carried into a small hospital. There, having almost gone out, he had rallied enough to be put on board a ship crossing the lake. So he came to a greater hospital. It was thither that I followed him up. He had had another crisis, I found, but he was better again by the time I got to him. Then he improved a little, and seemed to be convalescing. Then malaria chose to interfere with the running of her sister fever's course. This seemed extraordinarily meddlesome, and made things hazardous still, though they were as well as one expected, when the time of my going on leave came.

How glad I was to get off! My Good-byes were hurried when once the brown envelope had come. I saw him on the hospital stoep (baraza, did they call it in that alien part of Africa?) just as I was rushing down to the station. He had lost his blue color, but still looked rather flickery.

'If you go to Bulawayo, you'll remember, won't you?' he said. 'You've got the plan?'

He had given me an elaborate little drawing of two streets that converged. His bungalow stood upon an island betwixt their confluence and the shading that he had marked waste ground. The pink paper was in my breast pocket, but, knowing my way with papers, I had already learned those streets' names.

'All right,' I said. 'But I'm not likely to go that way. And the time's so short. I'll try though.'

His face lit, and his eyes gleamed. 'Do try,' he said.

'Don't build on it,' I entreated him. 'I'll try to write to her anyway.'

Then he looked downcast indeed; he had fallen from such a confident height. But he said 'Goodbye' like a real friend.

I forgot him almost completely for the next four days or so. There were excitements, seeing somebody at headquarters, wiring business wires, writing friendly letters against time, steering a forlorn small native and a more forlorn small dog, who were sharing my fortunes, down to the coast. At last I was there, and discussing shipping news with new-found keenness. My prospects of getting off with speed looked black for a bit; then came the flash of a fresh idea. As there was no ship for the African port I knew, why not book for the unknown? There were transports returning to a port beyond, I had heard. True, the cost of railway traveling thence was hard to forecast, resources were of a modest sort, and there were three of us to find fares for.

Yet ways and means began to show their forms out of the mist soon. I chose to sail almost at once by the untried road, and I wrote to friends', telling them how I had chosen. I wrote to my friend in hospital, among others. I was going the Bulawayo way after all, and I might do what he wanted quite unbelievably easily. Who would have thought it when we parted? I scribbled down the great news against time. (I had an importunate proof to correct before sailing; proofs are apt to take hours, I find, and my sailing hour was near.) He might be expected to have my scribble handed to him on the hospital stoep about three days after. So I calculated. I flattered myself that I knew the ins and outs of our despatches and mail deliveries, also that I had allowed in my calculation for censorial delay. It was pleasant to think how pleased he might be expected to be. I well-wished him with a prayer. Then I started down the glaring white road for the wharf. I had dismissed him from my mind, I regret to say, for another three days or more.

I traveled down from that east coast fighting-base on a transport that had brought up mules and horses. She had naturally enough, shipped a goodly crew of flies with them. The mules and horses had gone their ways, but the flies had by no means all gone with them. Now with no quadrupeds to be their prime care, those that remained were apt to obtrude themselves upon us. I deprecated at heart the ruthless warfare that marine authority waged upon them. But for all that I found my afternoon slumbers often distracted by the survivors. On the first and second afternoons of that voyage I awoke not long after I dropped off. I awoke, and thought about nothing in particular. On the third afternoon my waking thoughts took a very definite shape.

I was in a cabin or stateroom that two officers had shared going up doubtless of the veterinary profession. Now on this return journey I had the place to myself. I lay in my bunk with my boots off, and observed the empty couch beside me.

It was my friend that I thought of my friend as I had taken leave of him, reclining on the hospital stoep, straining with eager eyes at mine. It was his breathless voice that I remembered. It was saying over and over, 'You will go and see her, won't you? I'll be with you in spirit in this your trek for her and home.'

Surely he was on that couch in the cabin now beside me, and surely he was saying the same thing over and over again, just as regularly and restlessly as if he were yonder electric fan curveting with the same sort of panting iteration.

And yet, don't mistake me, I don't pretend to have seen anything or heard anything extraordinary in the ordinary way of seeing or hearing. Only I was dead sure that he was there with the same old entreaty. Afterwards I lighted a pipe, went above, talked to the skipper's wife, read, investigated my boy's and also my dog's welfare rather perfunctorily, settled down to saying an evening Office, made an end more or less of that, just as night came on, and then again took time to think over things. I remembered that he would have possibly got my letter, the letter which announced my sailing in this ship of the Archangel Line, just about the very time that he had seemed so near me. It was natural enough, then, that his eager mind should have embarked with me on the 'Saint Raphael.' He knew now that I was going home, contrary to previous expectation, by the very way he had desired, the way to see his wife and tell her his news.

That night, when I said my prayers, I took but a corner of that couch for my elbows. I gave him room, so to speak, with odd scrupulous courtesy, just as if he were lying there in the body. For I knew he was there, there by his own subtle means of transport. That night the wind rose, and for the next three days about, we were on the downgrade as regards weather. Our captain opined that there had been a hurricane of sorts to south-east, out Madagascar way. We were in the troughs of a mighty swell that grew in might till the third morn of its reign was over. In the mad tilting of my cabin floor, and the scuffling of my cabin accessories, that last morning, the unseen and unheard presence that I was now growing used to, reclined unperturbed. Elsewhere I would forget it lightly enough, as soon as ever I left the cabin, at the saloon table, where plate and cup fretted themselves up and down against the table frames, in the skipper's basket lounge chair wherein I read contrasted romances, East End and Zulu, on the deck where I groped from hold-by to hold-by, longing to change grey sky and green sea-trenches for sunshine and blue levels of sea and sky. The weather calmed and brightened, but the presence was unaffected. It remained to my perception eager and sanguine, no less, no more, than it had seemed at first.

At last the Bluff loomed to south-east. Soon a game of pitch-and-toss precluded our access to harbor. At last we transshipped, all three of us, boy and dog and I, to a steam-launch, and were soon ashore. No, I won't say four of us. The presence did not make itself felt as taking a share in that scramble of ours. I was rather surprised at missing its company, when I found time to think about it. I was standing at ease in the Base Office then. Soon I was on my way back again to the station where I had left my convoy. The boy was mounting guard over dog and gear. Yes, everything seemed all right. I turned towards the ticket office. As I waited for our tickets I evolved a sort of rationale of my consciousness of that presence. He who had accompanied me was very weak, distinctly convalescent. He could but make himself felt clinically, so to speak. When at length I was aboard the train I had opportunity to test my surmises. There were six sleeping berths in the Jo'burg second class compartment (there was no third class, worse luck, on that train) wherein I found myself. On one side slept the dark Theosophist who was to lend me 'The Star of the East' next morning. Under him slept the Norwegian recruit bound for Potchefstroom. Under him again a fresh-colored, wizened little Colonist. On my side slept an Africander recruit for Potchefstroom (God love him! I hope he was better than his looks and conversation). I was bedded over him. Above me on the sixth sleeping ledge was only a certain amount of luggage. So we had arranged, and so my eyes assured me. But I became firmly conscious that the presence was reclining there.

Next night I was able to travel on third class from Johannesburg without missing my train's connection. I had the carriage to myself (not without misgivings, for the guard had cleared a native out, and other compartments seemed likely to be rather crowded). I lay down somewhat prayerlessly. The last light seemed to have not long faded on the white mine-banks. I woke in the chill of the dawn. The train was nearing Mafeking. The presence I had been too tired to think much about last night, was assuredly there on the other side of the carriage. Yet there was only my bag to be seen on the seat, my bag that I had set there to search for a towel.

The next night we drew near to Bulawayo. I had a Jew for traveling companion then. He was to get off about midnight at Francistown. I dropped off to sleep somehow. I don't know exactly how the trick was done, I was so excited at nearing my own country. When I awoke the Jew was gone, and the seat opposite me was empty, empty save for the presence which reclined there. I gave it a share of my attention amongst other persons and matters. I was far too full of plans and anticipations now to sleep. Yet I fought for sleep that next hour or two. Then, as the cocks had crowed undoubtedly, I lighted a pipe. Afterwards I stole out in the faint light to shave. When I returned, I was confronted by an old acquaintance a detective. He wanted information about me, naturally enough, as it was war-time. He sat himself down on the seat whereon the presence was. I had squirmed when he shook hands with me so heartily (I had twisted my hand, slipping on a warship's deck). I was disposed to squirm once again. When he sat down rudely on that seat which I knew to be occupied, I forgot myself at once, and drew him to a seat beside me. 'Can't you see what's there?' I said hastily. Of course he could not see, and thought me a little mad. Then, when I explained that the seat had been kept, he looked suspicious, If only he had enjoyed the same perceptiveness as myself, what pages he might have filled in that expensive-looking note book. I chuckled to myself as I thought of his description his, who had crossed the Rhodesian border with me at Plumtree on such special service. What would that note book make of him? The note book's master looked at me hard. Doubtless I aroused certain unnecessary alarums and excursions in the imagination of a useful and already overworked official. But I had given him nothing tangible in the way of incrimination. He looked at me as one who much desired to keep me under observation, but he said 'Goodbye!'

The house answered the pink paper's description. It was on the verge of some waste ground. But I had expected a more prosperous-looking place.

It had a long row of white palings that lacked repainting. The house itself looked rather poverty-stricken. I had hurried over my breakfast at the station, then I had asked my way, and found it. I knocked once and again. That wife, whom I had never seen before, came slowly to the door. He had shown me her portrait more than once, and I remembered it. It certainly had not flattered her. She was dressed in black. Her face would have been fresh under her bright hair, but the eyes were drawn, and the lips quivered that spoke to me, quivered in a pitiful fashion. I told her how I came from her husband. I embarked on a longish rigmarole as to the luck that brought me her way after all, against expectations. She listened without saying a word. Then I told her about him, and she listened patiently. 'I seem to have felt him with me on my way,' I said. 'He was so keen that I should bring you his love,' I said. Then she burst out crying. 'It is all very interesting,' she sobbed. 'But I have got later news than yours.'

I shuddered. 'Was there a relapse, then?' I said.

'I suppose there must have been,' she murmured, steadying herself. 'He came to me just at sunrise,' she said, 'this sunrise, this very morning. I saw him so plainly coming into the room just after I had opened my eyes. He always said he was sure he would be able to come, by God's mercy, if it should come to that . . .' Her voice shook, and I knew what 'that' meant.

No doubt they had loved one another very dearly, no doubt he had been able, so strong was his affection, to follow my journey towards her, while he was still in life. Then, at the moment of the great change, he had doubtless gathered strength to come to her and manifest himself. Such things have surely happened before, and are likely to happen again whilst our lives linger in the midst of death, and love is love.

'It is just on church-time,' she said, 'all but eight o'clock. I was getting ready to go when you knocked. You won't mind my going now, will you? You won't mind my saying Good-bye?'

So we said 'Good-bye' outside the church door, our ways went so far together. Then I went off by the station road; my train was to go on in another hour or so.

When I got into an empty carriage I was conscious of some sense of forlornness. I had lost my traveling companion. Yet I was glad somehow to think that the strain of his interest in my journey was at an end. I gave thanks for that new rest of his.

As for her I am glad to remember where it was that she parted from me so graciously. That church was a poor, corrugated iron structure, but I looked in and saw a gladsome light burning before its altar. Her eyes were on that light, I think, as she knelt down. Truly a sanctuary of God seemed the place of places to leave her in. They were so desperately fond of one another, and he was so devoted to his religion, as well as to her. If in God's sanctuary the Psalmist found most satisfaction as to his own riddle of the ungodly's vitality, I feel sure she found some comfortable answer to her own contrasted problem the mortality of one so dear to her and to his Lord.

INTELLIGENCE

I was staying with an Intelligence Officer on a certain island. Our people had but just succeeded in occupying it with a force of occupation. It was a very green and richly tropical island with the faults of its qualities, I should say. Most of its German tenants were prisoners now, a few had escaped in canoes. Their sergeant of askaris, a stout fellow, had passed the word of 'no surrender.' But for all that very few native soldiers seemed to be in the bush now. Most seemed to have surrendered, or to have transformed themselves into civilians.

I had reached my host's lodging just before sundown on Saturday night. We dined simply, as far as courses went, but our conversation came easily and took many turns. There seemed to be something in the air that night. There were three of us at the table, my host and Hunter and I. Hunter was a naval man who had walked up with me, and was staying the night. He was very fresh and pleasant to look at; he seemed old for his years, which were few; he had a range of interests as well as powers of expression. Did he seem just a little conscious of his tender age? Was he not a bit too anxious to profess disillusion? Yes, he was cynical about Belgians, also about France, also about the Foreign Office. I suffered him thus far with a certain guilty gladness. But the Intelligence Officer demurred grimly. He was a patriot and a fighting man. They had switched a maxim on to him years before, but he was still going hardily, albeit he limped. He had fought in an irregular white corps in the present campaign; he had raised an irregular black corps; our adversaries were said to have priced his head. He had charming manners; he had befriended me nobly not once nor twice. He was a man surely of extraordinary dash and resource. I had no sort of reason to doubt the great stories I had heard of him, of his coolness under fire and in tight places. I had seen every reason to believe them. For all that, my affection for him was mixed with another feeling. He was very tall. His face wore a sort of perennial fever-flush. He was very dark. His eyes were fine and fierce, too; he wore a strange he-goat-tuft on his chin. I found myself chuckling privately that evening over a bizarre fancy of mine. I had remembered a certain mediaeval print of a famous character. Yes, there certainly was a likeness.

We discussed Intelligence Work a branch of War Service as to which I am apt to be prejudiced. To my indefensible delight. Hunter excelled himself at giving my own views voice over the pudding. Never did I hear an indictment more sweeping. He spoke of the reading of people's letters, the bluffing of unhappy natives. He hinted darkly at dark methods of persuasion. He hammered in the debasing futility of the whole spy system, our own and the other side's. He ended with schoolboy personalities about people he had met, some of our host's own agents. His remarks about them were unworthy of the eloquence that had gone before. Our host took it all in very kindly part. He was a man of deeds rather than of words.

'I never thought I'd come so low as I did to-day,' he admitted. 'You heard of the German who got away with his wife and kids in canoes. I was turning over one of the kids' money-boxes. Just five rupees or so in it. But I'll try to get it back to the youngster. I never thought to come quite so low.'

I tackled him about a horrid practice he had admitted having recourse to. 'Torture, or torture-witchcraft possibly! It seems a hopeful way of eliciting true intelligence, not to speak of playing the game in any sort of British sense.' He hung his head penitently. He pleaded that this expedient had saved an execution only the other day. There had been none after all. Had there been, as had looked likely at one time, an innocent man would have died.

'Oh, why not be without reproach as well as without fear?' I pleaded.

'How am I to get truth from them? It's a usage of their own.' He was pleading back.

'Not that way.' I was inflexible in my scorn and horror, for I knew that I was right.

By this time we had about finished dinner. Soon we were outside Hunter in a deck-chair, I on a box, my host on a looted camp-stool. We smoked on under the stars.

We spoke of looting. The naval man scintillated about the conduct of the army at a raid on a neighboring town. I was with him most of the way.

'So they cleared away with their swags for fear of enemy reinforcements. And they had a report printed that the natives had looted the place. That put the lid on it,' he said. But then came purgatory for me. The Native Question cropped up. Our host was away just then, conferring about chits that his spies had brought in. Hunter fairly coruscated with cynicism, when it came to the Native Question. He had expressed very different views upon it the last time that I had met him (the day before at lunchtime). Now he expressed himself cured of any sneaking wish to treat natives with kindness rather than kiboko. His boy, to whom he had granted leave of absence, had not come back to his day, and the whole fabric of Native sympathies, so far as he was concerned, had crashed to the ground. Henceforth he would know how to treat natives, the way to have no trouble with them. Any other way was not worth while. I objected, but my objections were as little rocks over which his periods broke in foam.

They enhanced the effect. Our host came back and laughed a little, till he saw how little I was enjoying it. Then he rotted the orator on his lordly oblivion of one fact. Were there not limits to his experience of Africa? He himself avowed his sympathies with the African. If he had a hobby, it was natives. He wanted to win their trust for a great many reasons. It was worth while having it. He told a certain story and the talk diverged. It was quite sympathetic talk, from my point of view thenceforward, up till bed-time. We slept in that big room within, all three of us. I had brought next to no kit, and I had noted with some awe my naval friend's scorn of the ill-provided in the course of the evening. He had described how a Belgian he had shared a room with, lacked certain accessories of civilization. So I was in the mood now to feel my own deficiency. But the censor was not so very observant, and he seemed sleepy. Soon he was sleeping.

My host and I exchanged a few undertones. Tomorrow was Whitsunday. I wanted to have Service very early. 'That'll be all right,' he said. Soon he put our hurricane lamp out, but I was not to win sleep for quite a long while. In the early morning, moreover, something happened. Some red-ant skirmishers were about, and I had a hot time in my bed on the floor. I' might well have felt more grateful than I did feel. Yes, had I only known what battalions would have engaged me, had they decided to attack before dawn! At dawn I was to see for myself what were the numbers of their host. Meanwhile, their scouts gave me trouble, if only a moderate amount. A cock crowed close by. Then another and another. The dawn was not so very far then surely. The thunder that had boomed when I first awoke, boomed louder. A rushing mighty wind seized upon the shanty where we slept, a very airy shanty. The fact that the Day that came was Pentecost, recurred to me. Then the storm broke in fury. The rain smashed down, and the lightning forked and flickered. The roar and tumult raged and swelled and thudded overhead. My host awakened.

'It's near,' he said. 'Too near for me,' I murmured, as I ducked involuntarily when a perfervid flash came.

'Look at the Navy!' he said. I looked.

The cynic slept like a child. His face was very calm and intensely optimistic. 'He told me he had slept through big guns' fire on his ship,' I said admiringly. 'He has great powers.'

A curious lingering flash came. It played round the sleeper's head. A huge peal seemed to come almost with it, the last huge peal ere that brief passionate storm withdrew.

Then the sleeper began to talk.

He talked too well too well for me to mix his actual phrases up with this secular story.

The Intelligence man began to laugh. The thing struck him as funny. But suddenly I caught familiar words, and I put my finger on my lips. My host's black eyes looked into mine, and I saw, as I had never seen before, how much there was in them. First they kindled, and then they grew soft, and he turned his head away. The sleeper had been repeating the end of the fifth chapter of S. Matthew the bit about the God (whose sons we Christians are) that makes His sun to shine, and His rain to fall so impartially.

He said the words very clearly, as articulately as if he were a child saying repetition. What made our host's eyes melt so curiously was what came after.

The sleeper said a sort of child's prayer about sun and rain, and just and unjust, and good and evil, praying quite simply to God to bless everybody and to do the best for them English and Germans, black men and white.

'Yes, and my boy,' he said, as if that petition furnished a sort of limit to the mercy he invoked. 'And the mtoto,' he added a minute after.

'What's his name?' he asked innocently. He had forgotten the name of his boy's apprentice, and his forgetfulness was on his mind.

The strain was a bit too much for us when it came to that question.

We laughed rather hysterically. Then we pulled ourselves together, but we had not disturbed him. He spoke no more save for two or three detached words proper names I think. But he breathed long breaths peacefully.

The dawn was quite near on its way now. A dove called from the wood to its mate. Surely it desired to tell it that morning came.

'We've got some fresh Intelligence,' my host said gravely.

'Pentecostal Illumination, rather,' I said.

'Did you happen to remember what the Day was?'

He nodded. 'We'd better not sit up talking,' he told me. 'It might seem to spoil it somehow. We'd better try to get a little sleep. Come over here out of the ants.'

So we shifted my mattress.

After our Pentecostal Service, and our breakfast, we compared notes, we two alone.

Once more Hunter had talked a lot at table. It was somehow a little hard completely to identify the Hunter of breakfast time with the Hunter of cock-crow. 'Our friend was rather angelical, only rather,' my host said.

'He was cynical about your cynical business,' I said. He laughed. 'Have you forgotten what he said about missionaries?' he asked.

I smiled ruefully. 'It certainly wasn't up to his level,' I said, 'his cock-crow level.'

'I've got a theory,' said my chin-tufted friend (I have made up my mind to recall Don Quixote in future when I think of him rather than that mediaeval print). 'The subliminal self of the Navy was revealed by that Pentecostal flash. Pentecost was in the air. We saw the real lieutenant in his sleeping sub-consciousness. It's a pity the real self isn't top-dog in ordinary life; it's under-dog for the present, worse luck!'

'But in sleep he's a child still, and a good child at that,' I said.

'Yes, or he couldn't have responded to that Pentecostal suggestion. You or I wouldn't have responded; anyhow, not so readily.'

He sighed. 'It's a wicked world,' he said smiling, 'and we learn many tricks of our respective trades.'

'Speak for yourself and your own trade,' I said sternly. Then I begged him to give up that unmentionable way of obtaining intelligence.

'Let's try to live up to the cock-crow level,' I said. 'We two have seen what we have seen, and heard what we have heard. We have received unexpected Intelligence. We have got some hints as to self and soul, truth and falsehood.'

'Yes, I'll allow that,' he admitted.

A CREDIT BALANCE

The siding was on such soil as recalled South Devon; flanking the name-board there were a few pepper-trees with dry, fern-like foliage, and bunches of red berries just then, the month being March. Alfred Home drew up before that name-board in scorching sunshine, wiped his face, and looked at his watch. Was he in time?

He had heard nothing of the train yet, and it was not to be seen approaching. His watch told him that it had been due for ten minutes now. Surely it could not have gone! No, there it was. Its whistle sounded, and soon it came winding through the sparse woodlands. He gave a sigh of relief, and squatted down to wait for it. Soon it drew up at Pepper-tree Siding.

He climbed on to a third-class carriage, which carried natives and colored people, also one European in lonely majesty. This last stood smoking a cigarette in an amber or mock-amber mouthpiece. He was a boy not long out of his teens, a boy with a dazzling complexion if, indeed, he were not a girl in a boy's grey suit. He introduced himself, as he ushered his fellow-traveler into a compartment. 'I'm the only one here,' he said. 'I've been alone since Mafeking. I'm George Donald, and I'm just out from Derry.' Home accepted the cigarette that was offered him. Then he wiped his face again a dark, fiercely-burnt face. He was a man over forty; he looked more than his age, or as if he had had very hard times. 'Going far?' he asked. 'Not much further now,' the boy said cheerfully. 'My station's fifty miles beyond Gwelo. I'm about sick of it. I traveled second class on the boat. But they never sent any money for expenses, so I've had to pig it on this train.' Home smiled. 'Ever been out before?' he asked. Donald shook his head. Then he indulged in many confidences. 'I'm going to be partner in a trading concern,' he said. 'Soldana's is the name of the place.' He went on to describe the voyage out, with free criticisms of the food and of fellow-passengers. They had had a concert or two on board, and he had recited at the second-class concert last week. 'What did you recite?' Home asked him. 'Oh, I gave them "Sir Galahad." I had to grind it up, with lots more of Tennyson, for an exam. You know it?' Home nodded. His lips moved. 'How ever does it go?' he said a moment after. 'I only remember tags of lines here and there "And star-like mingles with the stars." That's authentic, isn't it?' The boy repeated the stanza whence those words came. 'Would you like any more?' he asked. Home grinned. 'May as well have it through, if it's all the same to you,' he said. So the boy began at the beginning, and continued, and made an end, Home watching him all the while. His eyes had satire in them as he watched, but they had also admiration. Two or three hours after, they drew up at another siding, and Home got together his belongings. He handed them to a Bechuana boy who stood waiting for them outside on the step. Then he settled himself down again, for the engine was waiting to take water. He wrote a few words on a half-sheet and handed it to Donald. 'That's my address,' he said. 'Do write or look me up at my store, if I can be of any use at any time.' The reciter of 'Sir Galahad' shook his hand warmly, promising that he would do so. Then Home scrambled out into the noontide heat. Soon the slow train woke up again, and lumbered on.

It was much more than three years after when Donald came to Home's store. He looked fagged and weary as he came up the wagon-road, having done his thirty miles that day. He had a knapsack on his back, but that was not heavy. Home was sitting on a case under his verandah. The sun had just set, and he had closed the store for the day, just before the traveler showed in sight. Now that he drew near, he knew him at once. 'Hullo! I've often thought about you,' was his greeting. 'But what have you been doing with yourself?' The boy's face he looked boyish still, though no longer girlish was worn. He was very pale, and had blue marks under his eyes. 'I've had a hell of a time,' he muttered. 'Well, come and have some skoff,' Home said. 'After that you can tell me about it all.' The boy ate but languidly, though he emptied cup after cup. He said hardly anything; he looked down on his luck. The zest was gone out of his talk, as the rose-pink out of his cheeks, since they last met.

Home tried to say something cheerful. 'Do you know, if you'd come this day week I don't think you'd have found me here. I've sold this store. I'm meaning to go home, and to settle down there.' The boy congratulated him rather listlessly. Then he spoke with a sparkle of his old keenness. 'I wish I were going home,' he said.

'Why don't you?'

'I haven't a shilling,' the boy said; 'only minus shillings, only debts.' Home tried to say something pleasant about luck turning, but it came out flatly. After supper the boy told a story, but he did not seem to tell it candidly by any manner of means. The partnership he had gone to had been dissolved a year ago. He had been trading, backed up by a Jew, this last cold weather. He had had horrible luck; his store had been burnt down in August. It was November now. He had been knocking about in a certain town for a month or two. Then he had taken to the road. Some people had been kind to him as he came along; others hadn't.

'What do you owe?' Home asked him abruptly. 'Oh, a pound or two,' he answered, coloring. 'It's more than that, isn't it?' Home said gently. The boy denied its being more than that. Then all of a sudden he owned up. 'One Jew, they were partners, said it was twenty-five; the other said he'd take fifteen. It wasn't really more than fifteen, honor bright.'

'So you owe him fifteen,' Home said. 'Do you mean to pay him?'

'Not unless I'm forced,' the boy said savagely. He spoke in quite an open way now. 'I'd rather pay him out than pay him back, the .. .' Home changed the subject.

Just before they went to bed he recalled their brief journey together so long ago now. He reached a newish Tennyson down from his candle-box bookshelf. 'Do you mind saying that piece over again that piece you said in the train?' Home spoke shyly.

The boy flushed up before he answered. 'I've forgotten it,' he said.

'Well, read it, then, won't you, please? I've got it here.' The boy started to read the lines. He read rather badly that night, so Home thought to himself. He stuck in one place. 'Here, you'd better go on,' he said hoarsely. So Home finished the poem to the last line of it:

Until I find the Holy Grail.

'Do you know?' he said, when he had ended, 'I owe you a debt. You've got a big balance to draw on so far as I'm concerned. I bucked up a bit, beginning from that day when we met in the train. I'd been thinking of giving up whisky, and other things, before that day. But you gave me what I wanted a start. "Now or never," I said, having seen you coming out so fresh as you did yes, and heard you recite. I won't describe you as you were then; you may or may not remember what you were like. That bit in the poem about riding in lonely places through the dark caught my fancy. I used to think of you who had gone away in the train northwards. I thought of you trading on the Mashonaland veld, and passing unscathed and unafraid over it by night and day you that had nothing to be ashamed of. Thinking so helped to buck me up. I've done better since that train journey than I ever did before out here. Now I'm doing quite well, else it wouldn't be likely I'd be thinking of going home, as I am.'

The boy looked up at him wretchedly. 'It all went wrong nearly from the first,' he said, 'so far as I was concerned.'

'Yet all the while you helped me,' Home said. 'So I owe you a debt, and I mean to pay my debts, whatever you mean to do about yours. Come on, now. Take this bed. I'm sleeping in the store.'

Thus it came about that in the morning Home, having slept upon his resolve, brought out some money. He stacked it on the table impressively. 'I'm glad I slept upon it,' he said. 'I thought last night that I'd give you the money to go home this year. I'd made up my mind almost to go next year instead of this.'

The boy's eyes lighted up. Gratitude looked out of them. Then they changed. It seemed that gloomy Fear had taken Gratitude's place at the double window. Donald stammered a bit; then he spoke out. 'I'd like to lie to you, like I did last night; but I can't somehow. No, I'm going to tell you utter' truth. I'd like you to give me the money well enough in one way. But if you did I know what I'd do. You don't know how gone-in I am. If I ever got as far as Capetown I'd drink out what was left there, or I'd blow it some way. But I'd never get so far as Capetown; I'll be honest with you. Yet thanks all the same. You meant kindly.'

'That's all right,' Home said kindly enough. 'Thanks for being straight. I thought over that first plan of mine last night. I wasn't long in chucking it for a second.' The boy listened languidly. 'I was going second,' Home went on; 'I was going second if I'd gone alone. Now let's both go together! Supposing I square the Jew for you probably you understated his account a bit (I've allowed for that) I may have enough for two thirds and something to spare. You won't mind my going too, and my keeping the bag, will you?'

'Mind?' the other said. 'I shouldn't think I'd mind, seeing it's a one-and-only sort of chance. But I don't see why you should give it me.'

'It's only paying you something on account,' Home said. 'Remember, there'll be a credit balance still after the journey's over, but you'll give me a little time to pay off that, won't you?'

So they went together in the following week by a slow train, the same sort of slow train as had carried them of old one that stopped at Peppertree Siding.

'I'd like to refund you,' the boy said while they waited there. He was beginning to get a little of his own back by then, Home thought; Home was beginning to suffer him as an inseparable much more gladly. 'I've written some things that might sell,' Donald murmured; 'things I wrote when I was traveling in lonely places among the hills, or in the bush-veld, or by the river that held me up for three days.'

'What sort of things? "Sir Galahad" sort of things?' Home asked with a twinkle.

The boy shuddered. 'No, just the other sort of things,' he answered. 'Not seeing everything right because one feels right, but seeing everything devilish because one feels devilish.'

'Hadn't you better, perhaps, burn the lot?' Home said. 'Don't talk about a refund to me. Why, man, I tell you I owe you quite a lot. Make yourself easy; you've a big credit balance to draw on.'

MAN'S AIRY NOTIONS

It is quaint how a catch of a song or a phrase of a lyric will haunt one along the lonely miles of a walk, up hill and down dale of one's pilgrimage. Hood found a phrase of a lyric dogging him down the first stages of his home-road last year. He thought little of the circumstance at the time, but afterwards he remembered it, and wondered why the thing had befallen so. The lines of the phrase had by that time gained meaning for him, more meaning than he had suspected to be in them, when he said them over to himself:

'In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth.' *

* From 'The Splendid Spur,' by Q.

He remembered saying them over and over to himself along one long, sandy, thirsty stretch. Then again, when he sat down by the drift in huge content waiting for his kettle to boil; then again on a certain melodramatic night as he paddled in the rain a night he is not likely to forget.

He had been a missionary in South-Eastern Africa for ten or fifteen years, I forget which, and his leave that came every five years was once more due. He started for the railhead, some forty odd miles from his home, going by way of the post-town, and calling there for his share of the last mail.

Yes, it was all right. Nothing near at hand in Africa, or far overseas in England, barred his home-road as far as he could learn. On the other hand, at least two Southern letters bade him go back and prosper, and a new welcome had come forward to him from the North in a writing that he remembered. It was posted in an Upper River village not many miles from Oxford, and it was a bidding to a meeting of Oxford contemporaries arranged for the coming July. They had met on about that same day (the birthday of the host) five years before.

Hood remembered that day of meeting, as he sat by the drift, reading his letter, and waiting for the kettle to boil. He remembered walking out from the city of the spires, and the way the house looked as he came to it by a path through water-meadows. What gardens and green shades and coolness of comfort, he remembered, and linked with that time and that place. He dreamed a dream with the smell of new-turned hay in it, then awoke to find himself repeating that mellifluous tag of his about man's airy notions. The kettle had boiled.

The letter of invitation was written in high spirits. It was sanguine as to the completeness of their numbers when they should meet. All but one was likely to be there if only Hood would come all but one who had fallen out of the ranks. Hood was, somehow, I think, more overcast by the thought of the one exception, than rejoiced by the prospect of such a noble muster. Yet, as he strode along the road, pondering the letter, his longing for England seemed to grow amazingly. His stride lengthened as his satisfaction deepened. Twenty miles gave him little trouble that March forenoon and afternoon. He crossed the wide river in a crazily perilous ferry-boat, forded a narrow one, and supped with great content on his bread and cheese.

Meanwhile his carriers fell heartily to hungry men's rations of bully beef and millet-meal. The rains had been heavy those two or three days in that last week, as the rivers testified. Now the clouds were closing up again, and the carriers shook their heads. Their road was a lonely one. A kraal was some six miles ahead, the railhead inn was almost nine. When they had gone on for about a mile of their road, the rain began to come down heavily, just as the night began. On and on they splashed through the pools and currents of the wagon-way. Then the rain slackened. A red, elusive light shone ahead in the dip of a hollow. It seemed a wandering fire to Hood's eyes as the road twisted suddenly. But no it was a humdrum wagon-fire of logs. They clustered round it, chilly and dripping, his carriers and he. A voice called out to them from the folds of a buck-sail above. A Mashona boy was crouching in shelter there. He told them that his master was asleep on the wagon. Hood tried a greeting to this master, but it gained no answer. He began to take counsel with his comrades, as they squatted by the fire. 'Wouldn't it be fine to sleep under the wagon? Who wanted to tramp through a black night with perhaps a pouring roof of sky above, and certainly a soaked mud floor beneath?'

The carriers and he agreed to risk the storm (threatening even now in the distance). Night-prayers were said by that gladsome fire. Still, the larger of the two muffled shapes above made no sign. Afterwards Hood's bed was made by the stretching out of a strip of sailcloth. A blanket was laid over it, and a knapsack crowned it as a pillow. Hood began to settle himself in with huge content, a pipe between his teeth. One carrier wriggled himself up beside him. The two others laid themselves at his feet. By this time the thunder was rolling up relentlessly, and the flashes shone green and sinister. The storm was not long in breaking over them. The rain swished in from the west the way of Hood's right side. He wrapped his head in his five-shilling blanket; its cotton-waste was not very waterproof. He had a few more draws at his pipe in the dark. Pools were filling under him. He put his pipe down. He made haste for the frontiers of sleep. He must have got some way in that direction, for he soon found himself in his bath on the threshold of a dream. Of course, he should have hardened his heart hygienically. He should have risen and stridden on with his retainers the miles that remained. But he had his vein of weakness and sloth; he took the fury of that night lying down.

At whiles he was across the drift of Lethe in the darkness, but never for long together. Once he woke uneasily with a start and saw a flash. The crash followed as in one beat, and the rain was like the rain in King Lear. He was broadly awake now. Two carriers were nestling near him. He felt fearfully for his pipe, and almost mourned for it as washed away. He found it, and turned over with a happy sigh. 'Man's airy notions!' 'as in a grave,' 'mix with earth' he hummed himself to sleep with that brave sing-song.