Percy Fitzpatrick - The Outspan - Tales of South Africa

“We left the horses and climbed up the rough path, and looked at the unpretentious stone enclosure and the soft slate slab with a rough-cut inscription:

“Our friend leaned over the low stone wall and replaced the faded wreath by the fresh one.

“We left him standing there on the ridge, clear-cut above the outline of the mountain, and took our way down the rough cattle-path that wound down to the still rougher, wilder kloof through which our route lay. I remember so well the way he was standing, one foot on a projecting rock, arms folded, until we were rounding the turn that took us out of sight. Then he waved adieu.”

“We had unpleasant times on that trip to the Tembe. We met all the murderous ruffians in that Alsatia, and they were all at loggerheads, thieving and shooting with both hands. However, we got out all right after months and months of roaming about, owing to the trouble about those Kaffirs, and I think we had both forgotten all about Sebougwaan by the time we fetched up in Lydenburg again. There was always something happening in that infernal outlaw corner of Swazieland to keep the time from dragging!

“My chum went off to his farm; but I had no home, and took the road again with waggons, and loaded for Barberton at slashing fine rates. I got there just as the Sheba boom was well on. Companies were being floated daily, shares were booming, money flowing freely. All were merry in the sunshine of to-day. No one took heed of to-morrow. Speculators were making money in heaps; brokers raking in thousands.

“You know how it is in a place like that. After you have been there for a few hours, or a day or two, you begin to notice that one name is always cropping up oftener than any other; one man seems the most popular, important, and indispensable. Well, it was the same here. There was always this one name in everything – market, mines, sport, entertainment – any blessed department. You can just imagine – at least, you can’t imagine – my surprise when I found that my naked white Kaffir sailor-friend, Sebougwaan, was the man of the hour. I couldn’t believe it at first, and then a while later it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world; for, if I ever met a man who looked the living embodiment of mental, moral, and physical strength, of good humour, grace, and frankness – a born king among men – it was this chap.

“I met him next day, and he seemed more full of life and personal magnetism than ever. After that I didn’t see him for three or four days; you know how time spins away in a wild booming market. Then somebody said he was ill – down with dysentery and fever at the Phoenix. I went off at once to see him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was emaciated, haggard, with black-ringed eyes sunk into his head, and so weak that he couldn’t raise his arm when it slipped from the bed. He spoke to me in whispers and gasps, only a word or two, and then lay back on the pillows with a terrible look of suffering in his eyes, or occasionally dropping the lids with peculiar suddenness; and when he did this the room seemed empty from loss of this horrible expression of pain.

“I stood at the foot of his bed, and didn’t know what to do or say, and didn’t know how to get out of a room where I was so useless. This sort of thing may only have lasted a few minutes, or perhaps half an hour – I don’t know; but after one long spell he opened his eyes suddenly and looked long and steadily into mine, sat bolt upright, apparently without effort, lifted his glance till I felt he was looking over my head at something on the wall behind me, and then raised both arms, outstretched as though to receive something, and, groaning out, ‘Oh, my God! my poor wife!’ dropped back dead.”

There were five intent faces upturned at Barberton as he stopped. The rosy glow of the fire lighted them up, and the man nearest me – the millionaire – whispered to himself, “Good God! how awful!”

“Well, who was he? Did you – ” began the man who wrote for the papers.

Barberton looked steadily at him, and with measured deliberation said:

“We never knew another word about him. From that day to this nothing has ever been heard to throw the least light on him or what he said.”

Far away in the stillness of the African night we heard the impatient half-grunt, half-groan of the lion. Near by there was a cricket chirping; and presently a couple of the logs settled down with a small crunch, and a fresh tongue of flame leaped up. Barberton pumped a straw up and down the stem of the faithful briar, and remarked sententiously:

“Yah, it’s a rum old world, this of ours! I’ve seen civilisation take its revenge that way quite a lot of times – just like a woman!”

No one else said a word. Now and then a snore came from under the waggon where the drivers were sleeping.

The dog beside me gave some abortive whimpers, and his feet twitched convulsively – no doubt he was hunting in dreamland. I felt depressed by Barberton’s yarn.

But round the camp-fire long silences do not generally follow a yarn, however often they precede one. One reminiscence suggests another, and it takes very, very little to tempt another man to recall something which “that just reminds him of.” It was the surveyor who rose to it this time; I could see the spirit move him. He sat up, stroked his clean-shaven face, closed the telescope eye, and looked at Barberton.

“Do you know,” he began thoughtfully, “you talk of chaps going away because of something happening – some quarrel or mistake or offence or something. That is all a sort of clap-trap romance, I know – the mystery trick, and so forth; but I confess it always interests me, although I know it’s all rot, because of a thing which happened within my own knowledge – an affair of a shipmate of mine, one of the best fellows that ever stepped the earth, in spite of the fact that he was a regular Admirable Crichton.

“He was an ideal sort of chap, until you got to know him really well, and found out that he was cursed with one perfectly miserable trait. He never – absolutely never – forgave an injury, affront, or cause of quarrel. He was not huffy or bad-tempered – a sunnier nature never was created; a more patient, even-tempered chap never lived – but it was really appalling with what immutable obstinacy he refused to forgive. In the instances that came under my own notice, where he had quarrelled with former friends – not through his own fault, I must say – nothing in this world, or any other, for that matter, could influence him to shake hands or renew acquaintance. His generosity and unselfishness were literally boundless, his courage and fidelity superb; but anyone who had seen evidence of his fault must have felt sorrow and regret for the blemished nature, and must have been awestruck and frightened by his relentlessness. Death all round him, the sight of it in friends, the prospect of it for himself, never shook his cursed obstinacy; as we knew, after one piece of business. He got the V.C. for a remarkable – in fact, mad – act of courage in rescuing a brother officer. The man he carried out, fought for, fought over, and nearly died for, was a man to whom he had not spoken for some years. God knows what the difference was about. This was their first meeting since quitting the same ship, and when he carried his former friend out and laid him safely in the surgeon’s corner of the square, the half-dead man caught his sleeve, and called out, ‘God bless you, old boy!’ All he did was to loosen the other’s grip gently, and, without a word or look at him, walk back into the fight. It seems incredible – it did to us; but he wouldn’t know him again. He had literally wiped him out of his life!