He could just see that the pale eyes of the white man were looking, whether at him or through him, he did not attempt to discover, but quickly stabbed with his knife and his breath between the windpipe and the muscular part of the throat.
His audience was hissing.
The boy was stabbing, and sawing, and cutting, and breaking, with all of his increasing, but confused manhood, above all, breaking. He must break the terrible magic that bound him remorselessly, endlessly, to the white men.
When Jackie had got the head off, he ran outside followed by the witnesses, and flung the thing at the feet of the elders, who had been clever enough to see to it that they should not do the deed themselves.
The boy stood for a moment beneath the morning star. The whole air was trembling on his skin. As for the head-thing, it knocked against a few stones, and lay like any melon. How much was left of the man it no longer represented? His dreams fled into the air, his blood ran out upon the dry earth, which drank it up immediately. Whether dreams breed, or the earth responds to a pint of blood, the instant of death does not tell.
*
Also early in the morning, Mrs Bonner started up from the chair in her niece’s room in which she had been, not exactly sleeping, but wrestling with horrid tangible thoughts. She jumped up, out of the depths, and saw that it was Laura who had rescued her. The young woman was moving feebly on her sick-bed, while calling out with what remained of her strength after the bleedings to which she had been subjected on several occasions.
The aunt looked at her niece and hoped that she herself would know how to act.
‘What is it, my dear?’ begged the frightened woman. ‘I know that I am foolish, but pray that I may rise above my foolishness. Just this once. If only you will tell.’
Realizing that there were cupboards which she would never be allowed to arrange had stamped an expression of confusion, even of resentment, on Mrs Bonner’s good face. She stood looking at her niece, who was trying to disburden herself, it was at once clear, for veins stood out in her throat, and she was streaming with moisture and a peculiar grey light. This latter effect was caused, doubtless, by the morning, as it came in at the window, and was reflected by the panes, the mirrors, and various objects in ornamental glass.
‘O God,’ cried the girl, at last, tearing it out. ‘It is over. It is over.’
As she spoke, she shivered, and glistened.
The aunt put her hand on the niece’s skin. It was quite wet.
‘It has broken,’ said Aunt Emmy. ‘The fever has broken!’
She herself had dissolved into a hopeful perspiration.
Laura Trevelyan was now crying. She could not stop. Mrs Bonner had never heard anything quite so animal, nor so convulsive, but as she was no longer frightened, she did not pause to feel shocked.
‘Oh, dear,’ relief had made the old thing whimper, ‘the fever is broken. We must praise God.
‘Eternally,’ she added, and heard it sound exceptionally solemn.
But Laura Trevelyan cried.
Presently, when she was calmer, she said:
‘At least I shall look forward to seeing my little girl before very long.’
‘Then you know that I disobeyed your wishes?’ Aunt Emmy gulped.
‘I know that my will wavered, for which I hope I may be forgiven,’ her niece replied. ‘He will forgive, for at that distance, I believe, failures are accepted in the light of intentions.’
‘Who will forgive, who condemn, I cannot say, only that nobody has ever taken into consideration my powers of judgement,’ Mrs Bonner complained. ‘No, I am a muddler, it has been decided, and not even my own family will allow that I sometimes muddle right.’
Laura, by this time too exhausted to submit to more, was falling into a sleep that appeared peaceful enough, at least, to listen to, and watch.
When she had wiped her smeary face with an Irish handkerchief that could have been a dish-clout, Mrs Bonner’s first impulse was to wake her husband, such was her relief, and tell him there was now some possibility that their niece might recover from her terrible illness. She did go a little way along the passage, before thinking better of it. For Mr Bonner, a man of reticence in moments of emotion, might not have done justice to the situation. So she hugged her joy selfishly, in the grey house in the still morning, and let her husband sleep on.
14
THREE little girls, three friends, were tossing their braided heads in the privacy of some laurels, a nest of confidences and place of pacts, to which they almost always repaired with the varnished buns that the younger Miss Linsley distributed to the children at eleven o’clock.
‘I like potatoes,’ Mary Hebden said.
‘Mmmm?’ Mary Cox replied, in doubt.
‘I like pumpkin best,’ said Mary Hayley.
‘Oh, well, best!’ Mary Hebden protested. ‘Who was talking of best?’
They were all three skipping and jumping, as they licked the few grains of sugar off the insipid, glossy buns. It was their custom to do several things at once, for freedom is regrettably brief.
‘I like strawberries best.’ Mary Hebden jumped and panted.
‘Strawberries!’ shrieked Mary Cox. ‘Who will get strawberries?’
‘I will,’ said Mary Hebden. ‘Although I am not supposed to tell.’
‘That is one of the things you expect us to believe,’ Mary Hayley said. ‘As if we was silly.’
‘Simple dimple had a pimple,’ chanted Mary Cox.
‘Syllables of sillicles,’ sang Mary Hayley, in her rather pure voice.
‘Very well, then,’ said Mary Hebden. ‘I had begun to tell. But will not now. Thanks to you, they will not be able to say I cannot keep promises.’
Mary Hebden had stopped. She shook her braids with mysterious importance, and began to suck her inkstains.
‘Old ink-drinker!’ accused Mary Cox.
‘I will drink sherbet this afternoon,’ said Mary Hebden.
She held her finger up to the light, and the sucked ink shone.
‘Like anything, you will,’ said Mary Hayley. ‘Between sewing and prayers.’
‘Very well, then,’ cried Mary Hebden, who could not bear it. ‘I will tell you.’
All the braids were still.
‘I am going to a party at Waverley, for grown-up people, at the home of Mrs de Courcy, who is a kind of cousin of my father’s.’
‘A party in term time?’ doubted Mary Cox.
‘And if it is for grown-ups, why should a child be going?’ asked Mary Hayley. ‘I do not believe it.’
‘It is a special occasion. It is quite true, I tell you.’
‘You have told us so many things,’ said Mary Cox.
‘But this is true. I swear it upon my double honour. It is a party for my uncle, who has come back from searching for that explorer who got lost. That German.’
‘Uggh!’ said Mary Hayley. ‘Germans!’
‘Do you know any?’ asked Mary Cox.
‘No,’ Mary Hayley replied. ‘And I do not want to. Because I would not like them.’
‘You are the silly one,’ Mary Hebden decided.
‘My father says that if you cannot be English, it is all right to be Scotch. But the Irish and everyone else is awful,’ said Mary Hayley. ‘Although the Dutch are very clean.’
‘But we are not English, not properly, not any more.’
‘Oh, that is different,’ said Mary Hayley. ‘Yourself is always different.’
‘Any way,’ said Mary Hebden, ‘if that German had not got lost, and my uncle had not gone to look, there would not be a party.’
‘But if your uncle did not find the German,’ said the doubting Mary Cox.