CHAPTER VI
THE STORM BREAKS
"Do you know, you are a very odd person, Miss Jess," John saidpresently, with a little laugh. "I don't think you can have a happymind."
She looked up. "A happy mind?" she said. "Who _can_ have a happy mind?Nobody who feels. Supposing," she went on after a pause--"supposing oneputs oneself and one's own little interests and joys and sorrows quiteaway, how is it possible to be happy, when one feels the breath of humanmisery beating on one's face, and sees the tide of sorrow and sufferingcreeping up to one's feet? You may be on a rock yourself and out of thepath of it, till the spring floods or the hurricane wave come to sweepyou away, or you may be afloat upon it: whichever it is, it is quiteimpossible, if you have any heart, to be indifferent."
"Then only the indifferent are happy?"
"Yes, the indifferent and the selfish; but, after all, it is the samething: indifference is the perfection of selfishness."
"I am afraid that there must be lots of selfishness in the world, forcertainly there is plenty of happiness, all evil things notwithstanding.I should have said that happiness springs from goodness and a sounddigestion."
Jess shook her head as she answered, "I may be wrong, but I don'tsee how anybody who feels can be quite happy in a world of sickness,suffering, slaughter, and death. I saw a Kafir woman die yesterday, andher children crying over her. She was a poor creature and had a roughlot, but she loved her life, and her children loved her. Who can behappy and thank God for His creation when he has just seen such a thing?But there, Captain Niel, my ideas are very crude, and I dare say verywrong, and everybody has thought them before: at any rate, I am notgoing to inflict them on you. What is the use of it?" and she wenton with a laugh: "what is the use of anything? The same old thoughtspassing through the same human minds from year to year and century tocentury, just as the same clouds float across the same blue sky. Theclouds are born in the sky, and the thoughts are born in the brain, andthey both end in tears and re-arise in blind, bewildering mist, and thisis the beginning and end of thoughts and clouds. They arise out of theblue; they overshadow and break into storms and tears, then they aredrawn up into the blue again, and the story begins afresh."
"So you don't think that one can be happy in this world?" he asked.
"I did not say that--I never said that. I do think that happiness ispossible. It is possible if one can love somebody so hard that one canquite forget oneself and everything else except that person, and itis possible if one can sacrifice oneself for others. There is no truehappiness outside of love and self-sacrifice, or rather outside of love,for it includes the other. This is gold, and all the rest is gilt."
"How do you know that?" he asked quickly. "You have never been in love."
"No," she answered, "I have never been in love like that, but all thehappiness I have had in my life has come to me from loving. I believethat love is the secret of the world: it is like the philosopher's stonethey used to look for, and almost as hard to find, but if you find itit turns everything to gold. Perhaps," she went on with a little laugh,"when the angels departed from the earth they left us love behind, thatby it and through it we may climb up to them again. It is the one thingthat lifts us above the brutes. Without love man is a brute, and nothingbut a brute; with love he draws near to God. When everything else fallsaway the love will endure because it cannot die while there is any life,if it is true love, for it is immortal. Only it must be true--you see itmust be true."
He had penetrated her reserve now; the ice of her manner broke upbeneath the warmth of her words, and her face, usually impassive, hadcaught life and light from the eyes above, and acquired a certain beautyof its own. John looked at it, and understood something of the untaughtand ill-regulated intensity and depth of the nature of this curiousgirl. He met her eyes and they moved him strangely, though he was notan emotional man, and was too old to experience spasmodic thrills at thechance glances of a pretty woman. He moved towards her, looking at hercuriously.
"It would be worth living to be loved like that," he said, more tohimself than to her.
Jess did not answer, but she let her eyes rest on his. Indeed, she didmore, for she put her soul into them and gazed and gazed till John Nielfelt as though he were mesmerised. And as she gazed there rose up in herbreast a knowledge that if she willed it she could gain this man's heartand hold it against all the world, for her nature was stronger than hisnature, and her mind, untrained though it be, encompassed his mind andcould pass over it and beat it down as the wind beats down the tossingseas. All this she learnt in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye: shecould not tell how she knew it, but she did know it as surely as sheknew that the blue sky stretched overhead, and, what is more--for themoment, at any rate--he knew it too. This strange strong certainty cameon her as a shock and a revelation, like the tidings of some great joyor grief, and for a moment left her heart empty of all things else.
Jess dropped her eyes suddenly.
"I think," she said quietly, "that we have been talking a great deal ofnonsense, and that I want to finish my sketch."
He rose and left her, for he was wanted at home, saying as he went thathe thought there was a storm coming up; the air was so quiet, and thewind had fallen as it does before an African tempest. Presently onlooking round she saw him slowly climbing the precipitous ascent to thetable-land above the gulf.
It was one of those glorious afternoons that sometimes come in theAfrican spring, although it was so intensely still. Everywhere appearedthe proofs of evidences of life. The winter was over, and now, fromthe sadness and sterility of its withered age, sprang youth and lovelysummer clad in sunshine, bediamonded with dew, and fragrant with thebreath of flowers. Jess lay back and looked up into the infinite depthsabove. How blue they were, and how measureless! She could not see theangry clouds that lay like visible omens on the horizon. Look, there,miles above her, was one tiny circling speck. It was a vulture, watchingher from his airy heights and descending a little to see if she weredead, or only sleeping.
Involuntarily she shuddered. The bird of death reminded her of Deathhimself also hanging high up yonder in the blue and waiting hisopportunity to fall upon the sleeper. Then her eyes fell upon a bough ofthe glorious flowering bush under which she rested. It was not more thanfour feet above her head, but she lay so still and motionless that ajewelled honeysucker came and hovered over the flowers, darting from oneto another like a many-coloured flash. Thence her glance travelled tothe great column of boulders that towered above her, and that seemed tosay, "I am very old. I have seen many springs and many winters, andhave looked down on many sleeping maids, and where are they now?All dead--all dead," and an old baboon in the rocks with startlingsuddenness barked out "_all dead_" in answer.
Around her were the blooming lilies and the lustiness of springing life;the heavy air was sweet with the odour of ferns and the mimosa flowers.The running water splashed and musically fell; the sunlight shot ingolden bars athwart the shade, like the memory of happy days in thegrey vista of a life; away in the cliffs yonder, the rock-doves werepreparing to nest by hundreds, and waking the silence with their cooingand the flutter of their wings. Even the grim old eagle perched onthe pinnacle of the peak was pruning himself, contentedly happy inthe knowledge that his mate had laid an egg in that dark corner of thecliff. All things rejoiced and cried aloud that summer was at hand andthat it was time to bloom and love and nest. Soon it would be winteragain, when things died, and next summer other things would live underthe sun, and these perchance would be forgotten. That was what theyseemed to say.
And as Jess lay and heard, her youthful blood, drawn by Nature'smagnetic force, as the moon draws the tides, rose in her veins like thesap in the budding trees, and stirred her virginal serenity. All thebodily natural part of her caught the tones of Nature's happy voice thatbade her break her bonds, live and love, and be a woman. And lo! thespirit within her answered to it, flinging wide her bosom's doors, andof a sudden, as it were, something quickened and live
d in her heart thatwas of her and yet had its own life--a life apart; something that sprangfrom her and another, which would always be with her now and couldnever die. She rose pale and trembling, as a woman trembles at the firststirring of the child that she shall bear, and clung to the flowerybough of the beautiful bush above, then sank down again, feeling thatthe spirit of her girlhood had departed from her, and another angel hadentered there; knowing that she loved with heart and soul and body, andwas a very woman.
She had called to Love as the wretched call to Death, and Love had comein his strength and possessed her utterly; and now for a little whileshe was afraid to pass into the shadow of his wings, as the wretchedwho call to Death fear him when they feel his icy fingers. But the fearpassed, and the great joy and the new consciousness of power and ofidentity that the inspiration of a true passion gives to some strongdeep natures remained, and after a while Jess prepared to make her wayhome across the mountain-top, feeling as though she were another being.Still she did not go, but lay there with closed eyes and drank of thisnew intoxicating wine. So absorbed was she that she did not noticethat the doves had ceased to call, and that the eagle had fled away forshelter. She was not aware of the great and solemn hush which had takenthe place of the merry voice of beast and bird and preceded the breakingof the gathered storm.
At last as she rose to go Jess opened her dark eyes, which, for the mostpart, had been shut while this great change was passing over her, andwith a natural impulse turned to look once more on the place where herhappiness had found her, then sank down again with a little exclamation.Where was the light and the glory and all the happiness of the life thatmoved and grew around her? Gone, and in its place darkness and risingmist and deep and ominous shadows. While she lay and thought, the sunhad sunk behind the hill and left the great gulf nearly dark, and, as iscommon in South Africa, the heavy storm-cloud had crept across the bluesky and sealed the light from above. A drear wind came moaning up thegorge from the plains beyond; the heavy rain-drops began to fall oneby one; the lightning flickered fitfully in the belly of the advancingcloud. The storm that John had feared was upon her.
Then came a dreadful hush. Jess had recovered herself by now, and,knowing what to expect, she snatched up her sketching-block and hurriedinto the shelter of a little cave hollowed by water in the side of thecliff. And now with a rush of ice-cold air the tempest burst. Down camethe rain in a sheet; then flash upon flash gleaming fiercely through thevapour-laden air; and roar upon roar echoing along the rocky cavities involumes of fearful sound. Then another pause and space of utter silence,followed by a blaze of light that dazed and blinded her, and suddenlyone of the piled-up columns to her left swayed to and fro like a poplarin a breeze, to fall headlong with a crash which almost mastered theawful crackling of the thunder overhead and the shrieking of the baboonsscared from their crannies in the cliff. Down it rushed beneath thestroke of that fiery sword, the brave old pillar that had lasted out somany centuries, sending clouds of dust and fragments high up into theblinding rain, and carrying awe and wonder to the heart of the girl whowatched its fall. Away rolled the storm as quickly as it had come, witha sound like the passing of the artillery of an embattled host; then agrey rain set in, blotting the outlines of everything, like an endlessabsorbing grief, dulling the edge and temper of a life. Through it Jess,scared and wet to the skin, managed to climb up the natural steps, nowmade almost impassable by the prevailing gloom and the rush of waterfrom the table-top of the mountain, and on across the sodden plain, downthe rocky path on the farther side, past the little walled-in cemeterywith the four red gums planted at its corners, in which a stranger whohad died at Mooifontein lay buried, and so, just as the darkness of thewet night came down like a cloud, home at last. At the back-door stoodher old uncle with a lantern.
"Is that you, Jess?" he called out in his stentorian tones. "Lord! whata sight!" as she emerged, her sodden dress clinging to her slight form,her hands torn with clambering over the rocks, her curling hair whichhad broken loose hanging down her back and half covering her face.
"Lord! what a sight!" he ejaculated again. "Why, Jess, where have youbeen? Captain Niel has gone out to look for you with the Kafirs."
"I have been sketching in Leeuwen Kloof, and got caught in the storm.There, uncle, let me pass, I want to take these wet things off. It isa bitter night," and she ran to her room, leaving a long trail of waterbehind her as she passed. The old man entered the house, shut the door,and blew out the lantern.
"Now, what is it she reminds me of?" he said aloud as he groped his waydown the passage to the sitting-room. "Ah, I know, that night when shefirst came here out of the rain leading Bessie by the hand. What can thegirl have been thinking of, not to see the thunder coming up? She oughtto know the signs of the weather here by now. Dreaming, I suppose,dreaming. She's an odd woman, Jess, very." Perhaps he did not quite knowhow accurate his guess was, and how true the conclusion he drew from it.Certainly she had been dreaming, and she was an odd woman.
Meanwhile Jess was rapidly changing her clothes and removing the tracesof her struggle with the elements. But of that other struggle she hadgone through she could not remove the traces. They and the love thatarose out of it would endure as long as she endured. It was her formerself that had been cast off in it and which now lay behind her, an emptyand unmeaning thing like the shapeless heap of garments. It was all verystrange. So John had gone to look for her and had not found her. She wasglad that he had gone. It made her happy to think of him searchingand calling in the wet and the night. She was only a woman, and it wasnatural that she should feel thus. By-and-by he would come back and findher clothed and in her right mind and ready to greet him. She was gladthat he had not seen her wet and dishevelled. A girl looks so unpleasantlike that. It might have set him against her. Men like women to looknice and clean and pretty. That gave her an idea. She turned to herglass and, holding the light above her head, studied her own faceattentively. She was a woman with as little vanity in her composition asit is possible for a woman to have, and till now she had not given herpersonal looks much consideration. They had not been of great importanceto her in the Wakkerstroom district of the Transvaal. But to-night allof a sudden they became very important; and so she stood and looked ather own wonderful eyes, at the masses of curling brown hair still dampand shining from the rain, at the curious pallid face and clear-cutdetermined mouth.
"If it were not for my eyes and hair, I should be very ugly," she saidto herself aloud. "If only I were beautiful like Bessie, now." Thethought of her sister gave her another idea. What if John were to preferBessie? Now she remembered that he had been very attentive to Bessie.A feeling of dreadful doubt and jealousy passed through her, for womenlike Jess know what jealousy is in its bitterness. Supposing that it wasin vain, supposing that what she had given to-day--given utterly onceand for all, so that she could not take it back--had been given to a manwho loved another woman, and that woman her own dear sister! Supposingthat the fate of her love was to be like water falling unalteringlyon the hard rock that heeds it not and retains it not! True, the waterwears the rock away; but could she be satisfied with that? She couldmaster him, she knew; even if things were so, she could win him toherself, she had read it in his eyes that afternoon; but could she, whohad promised to her dead mother to cherish and protect her sister, whomtill this day she had loved better than anything in the world, andwhom she still loved more dearly than her life--could she, if it shouldhappen to be thus, rob that sister of her lover? And if it should be so,what would her life be like? It would be like the great pillar after thelightning had smitten it, a pile of shattered smoking fragments, a veryheaped-up debris of a life. She could feel it even now. No wonder, then,that Jess sat there upon the little white bed holding her hand againsther heart and feeling terribly afraid.
Just then she heard John's footsteps in the hall.
"I can't find her," he said in an anxious tone to some one as she rose,taking her candle with her, and left the room. The light of it fe
ll fullupon his face and dripping clothes. It was white and anxious, and shewas glad to see the anxiety.
"Oh, thank God! here you are!" he said, catching her hand. "I began tothink you were quite lost. I have been right down the Kloof after you,and got a nasty fall over it."
"It is very good of you," she said in a low voice, and again their eyesmet, and again her glance thrilled him. There was such a wonderful lightin Jess's eyes that night.
Half an hour afterwards they sat down as usual to supper. Bessie didnot put in an appearance till it was a quarter over, and then satvery silent through it. Jess narrated her adventure in the Kloof, andeverybody listened, but nobody said much. There seemed to be a shadowover the house that evening, or perhaps it was that each party wasthinking of his own affairs. After supper old Silas Croft began talkingabout the political state of the country, which gave him uneasiness.He said that he believed the Boers really meant to rebel against theGovernment this time. Frank Muller had told him so, and he always knewwhat was going on. This announcement did not tend to raise anybody'sspirits, and the evening passed as silently as the meal had done. Atlast Bessie got up, stretched her rounded arms, and said that she wastired and going to bed.
"Come into my room," she whispered to her sister as she passed. "I wantto speak to you."