Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales. Arthur Shearly Cripps

our passionate pilgrim. They had given us a hut that was old and grimy with fires. Its floor teemed with life.

      Therefore we changed our resting-place and went out to camp under a rocky eminence. There with a bedrock of austere granite we slept in peace. At glimmer of dawn we were saddling up. We rode to another kraal, but the folk there had no news for us.

      We were close on the hills now at last. We came to a low river at the foot of them. We chose a landlocked pool that seemed to be immune from crocodiles, for a plunge. Next I girded myself for Sacrifice, and he served me. Then we made a fire and cooked a huge breakfast in the hungry morning air. Drayton grew quite lyrical as to the charm of the country before the meal was over.

      'Browne's not far wrong about her,' he said; 'but there's reason in all things.'

      That whole day we heard no news and found no spoor or sign. The hill-country gave us stiff climbing and rocky paths to ride. Kraals and clusters of gardens places where we might hope to hear tidings how few they were in that hill-country! We camped disconsolately at last in a forlorn garden among grey boulders where stumps of trees were burning. We found no trouble in building up a good night fire of half-burnt logs. We gave our ponies their nosebags and ate our own bread and bully rather silently. Then we surmised with some weariness and gloom over our pipes. At last we slept under the many eyes of the heavens.

      About first cock-crow, when a chill struck through my blanket, I opened my eyes and looked towards the fire. Someone was sitting beside it watching me. Now that he saw me stirring he greeted me.

      It was Johannes. 'I saw your fire but just now,' he said. 'Our fire is up there beyond great rocks. The white man has been very sick. I think he will come home now.'

      I sprang to my feet and roused Drayton. He would not get up for a long time. I suspect he combined breakfast and lunch fairly often at Oxford. But I roused him mercilessly. I told him the news.

      He argued in desperate fashion at first. 'How far's the sick bed,' he asked.

      'Not more than a mile or so,' said I.

      'Need we go till morning?' said he.

      'Shame!' said I.

      At last he sprang up.

      As we clambered among the boulders, piloted by Johannes, he droned away at his chorus part:

      'She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild, sad eyes With kisses four.

      'And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd Ah woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side.'

      We found Browne in a nook among the rocks. A fire was burning beside him. He seemed to be sleeping.

      'He looks as if he'd been sick,' I said. 'We'd better let him sleep on!'

      'Yes; let's go to bed ourselves,' said Drayton, yawning.

      So we lay down on opposite sides of the fire. Such a red and splendid fire that cold cock-crow time!

      Browne kept giving sharp little moans in his sleep, just as a dog will do of nights.

      'He's started a nightmare,' said I. 'I wish we could help him to better dreams. I'd like to see what he sees just now.'

      Drayton began to drone from his side of the fire:

      'I saw pale kings and princes, too; Pale warriors death-pale were they all. They cried, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" hath thee in thrall.

      'I saw their starved lips in the gloom With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.'

      I asked a question: 'What will Browne like for breakfast,

       Drayton?'

      'If he's come back to his civilized tastes, you'd better open that tin of sausages,' he said. 'You've got some squish, too, haven't you? Don't give him that bush-tea of yours!'

      I was up long before Drayton. I had secured Browne's confidences before the sun had been risen an hour. 'I've had a sort of miserable ague,' he said. 'A cold and hot fever has been plaguing me. Some part of this last night has been savagely horrible. But I've sweated pounds of my weight away, and my fever's gone. Strange, isn't it?'

      'Quite ordinary in this part of Africa,' I said, sharply and minimizingly. I handed him a shirt, and he doffed his drenched one. He did not tell me any more just then. His eyes watched me in a dazed, miserable way. I asked him to excuse me, and went off with Johannes to my service. When I came back his eyes were clearer, they had less of their look of wan-hope.

      'Sinister country, this Africa,' he said. 'I was infatuated with her yesterday. Today I can't understand just what the attraction was. Her desolate moors seemed to make me drunk. See how she's served me! I never felt quite so sick as I've done most of this last day and night. Just before I woke it seemed to me I saw them in my dreams tens and twenties of her victims; men she's charmed and led on and on, and demoralized, ruined, killed and buried, and helped down-hill the way of the bottomless pit. I am better now; but I'm shaken. How thankful I'll be if only I get out of her, and can only stop thinking about her after that.'

      I listened with grave attention. Then I gave him some bread and sausages, and he ate away ravenously. How ever many cups of tea did he drink afterwards?'

      The above was all the avowal that Browne made to me. I do not think that he said nearly as much to Drayton as he did to me. Drayton plied me with questions that night, and I told him too much, to my regret.

      Months afterwards a copy of an undergraduate paper, containing a fantasia on the events that I have recorded, reached me. It comprised much African coloring and some little humor. I wonder if it reached Browne or Mrs. Browne?

      We got Browne home in little over a day. He hurried on, oftentimes when we wanted to rest. He seemed as anxious to emerge from the African desert as he had been to explore the deeps of it. He looked rakish and wretched as he bumped about upon his mule. His face was livid, and his black beard, that he used to cut so formally, desperately out of trim. His eyes were strangely bloodshot.

      We reached home safely with our prize by noon on Saturday. Browne, as I have said, was all for getting on fast, and when we once started, his stubborn mount went well. It was won to emulation by the willingness of our ponies, I imagine.

      Mrs. Browne was delighted at her Gerald's return. Yet I think it must have taken some months to restore her confidence in his sanity. She had had a sore shock. Drayton and I, indeed, were both discreet in our brief narratives of what had really happened. But I was heedless enough to forget Johannes. I did not caution him in time. So Mrs. Browne gathered rather a bizarre account from him while we were at church on Sunday evening. It is to her credit that, despite her thrift, she gave the boy a whole gold sovereign.

      The three travelers left by the slow down-train on the Monday morning. I went to the station with them. I saw Drayton into a smoking-carriage, and climbed in and sat with him. There was still ten minutes' grace allowed us.

      'Where's Browne, and where's Mrs. Browne?' I asked.

      'Along there, ever so far!' he said; 'with Professor Ayres and the Misses Ayres, and all sorts of good company. But, hullo! Look there!'

      Browne was coming up the platform towards the bookstall, looking forlorn and sad.

      'Ah! what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering?' murmured Drayton. 'It's a bad job for me, Jerry's getting off-color like this. How's he going to train men for Firsts next June, when he's gone in himself?'

      'Oh. he'll pick up as soon as he gets out of Africa, never fear.'

       I reassured him.

      Browne loitered up to the stall and amassed two month-old English magazines. Then he stood by the stall, looking on to the distances near and far behind it. Our feverish contact had not spoilt much of the landscape there as yet. Beyond a few railway sheds showed some bushes, as it were, of wild cherry-blossom, flaunting a true white under the sky's true blue. Spring