THE SHADOW OF DEATH
The firing from the bank had ceased, and John, who still kept his head, being a rather phlegmatic specimen of the Anglo-Saxon race, knew that, for the moment at any rate, all danger from this source was ended. Jess lay perfectly still in his arms, her head upon his breast. A horrible idea struck him that she might be shot, perhaps already dead!
"Jess, Jess," he shouted, through the turmoil of the storm, "are you hit?"
She lifted her head an inch or two--"I think not," she said. "What is going on?"
"G.o.d only knows, I don"t. Sit still, it will be all right."
But in his heart he knew it was not "all right," and that they stood in imminent danger of death by drowning. They were whirling down a raging river in a cart. In a few moments it was probable that the cart would upset, and then----
Presently the wheel b.u.mped against something, the cart gave a great lurch, and sc.r.a.ped along a little.
"Now for it," thought John, for the water was pouring over the flooring.
Then came a check, and the cart leant still farther to one side.
_Crack!_ The pole had gone, and the cart swung round bows, or rather box, on to the stream. What had happened was this: they had drifted across a rock that projected from the bed of the river, the force of the current having washed the dead horses to the one side of it and the cart to the other. Consequently they were anch.o.r.ed to the rock, as it were, the anchor being the dead horses, and the cable the stout traces of untanned leather. So long as these traces and the rest of the harness held, they were safe from drowning; but of course they did not know this.
Indeed, they knew nothing. Above them rolled the storm; about them the river seethed and the rain hissed. They knew nothing except that they were helpless living atoms tossing between the wild waters and the wilder night, with imminent death staring them in the face, around, above, and below. To and fro they rocked, locked fast in each other"s arms, and as they swung came that awful flash that, though they guessed it not, sent two of the murderers to their account, and for an instant, even through the sheet of rain, illumined the s.p.a.ce of boiling water and the long lines of the banks on either side. It showed the point of rock to which they were fixed, it glared upon the head of one of the poor horses tossed up by the driving current as though it were still trying to escape its watery doom, and revealed the form of the dead Zulu, Mouti, lying on his face, one arm hanging over the edge of the cart and dabbling in the water that ran level with it, in ghastly similarity to some idle pa.s.senger in a pleasure boat, who lets his fingers slip softly through the stream.
In a second it was gone, and once more they were in darkness. Then by degrees the storm pa.s.sed off and the moon began to shine, feebly indeed, for the sky was not clear washed of clouds, which still trailed along in the tracks of the tempest, sucked after it by its mighty draught. Still it was lighter and the rain thinned gradually till at last it stopped.
The storm had rolled in majesty down the ways of night, and there was no sound round them save the sound of rushing water.
"John," said Jess presently, "can we do anything?"
"Nothing, dear."
"Shall we escape, John?"
He hesitated. "It is in G.o.d"s hands, dear. We are in great danger. If the cart upsets we shall be drowned. Can you swim?"
"No, John."
"If we can hang on here till daylight we may get ash.o.r.e, if those devils are not there to shoot us. I do not think that our chance is a good one."
"John, are you afraid to die?"
He hesitated. "I don"t know, dear. I hope to meet it like a man."
"Tell me what you truly think. Is there any hope for us at all?"
Once more he paused, reflecting whether or no he should speak the truth.
Finally he decided to do so.
"I can see none, Jess. If we are not drowned we are sure to be shot.
They will wait about the bank till morning, and for their own sakes they will not dare to let us live."
He did not know that all which was left of two of them would indeed wait for many a long year, while the third had fled aghast.
"Jess, dear," he went on, "it is of no good to tell lies. Our lives may end any minute. Humanly speaking, they must end before the sun is up."
The words were awful enough--if the reader can by an effort of imagination throw himself for a moment into the position of these two, he will understand how awful.
It is a dreadful thing, when in the flow of health and youth, suddenly to be placed face to face with the certainty of violent death, and to know that in a few more minutes your course will have been run, and that you will have commenced to explore a future, which may prove to be even worse, because more enduring, than the life you are now quitting in agony. It is a dreadful thing, as any who have ever stood in such a peril can testify, and John felt his heart sink within him at the thought of it--for Death is very strong. But there is one thing stronger, a woman"s perfect love, against which Death himself cannot prevail. And so it came to pa.s.s that now as he fixed his cold gaze upon Jess"s eyes they answered him with a strange unearthly light. She feared not Death, so that she might meet him with her beloved. Death was her hope and opportunity. Here she had nothing; there she might have all.
The fetters had fallen from her, struck off by an overmastering hand.
Her duty was satisfied, her trust fulfilled, and she was free--free to die with her beloved. Ay! her love was indeed a love deeper than the grave; and now it rose in eager strength, standing expectant upon the earth, ready, when dissolution had lent it wings, to soar to its own predestined star.
"You are sure, John?" she asked again.
"Yes, dear, yes. Why do you force me to repeat it? I can see no hope."
Her arms were round his neck, her soft curls rested on his cheek, and the breath from her lips played upon his brow. Indeed it was only by speaking into each other"s ears that conversation was possible, owing to the rushing sound of the waters.
"Because I have something to tell you which I cannot tell unless we are going to die. You know it, but I want to say it with my own lips before I die. I love you, John, _I love you, I love you_; and I am glad to die because I can die with you, and go away with you."
He heard, and such was the power of her love, that his, which had been put out of mind in the terror of that hour, reawoke and took the colour of her own. He too forgot the imminence of death in the warm presence of his down-trodden pa.s.sion. She was in his arms as he had taken her during the firing, and he bent his head to look at her. The moonlight played upon her pallid, quivering face, and showed that in her eyes which no man could look upon and turn away. Once more--yes, even then--there came over him that feeling of utter surrender to the sweet mastery of her will which had possessed him in the sitting-room of "The Palatial."
Only all earthly considerations having faded into nothingness now, he no longer hesitated, but pressed his lips to hers and kissed her again and yet again. It was perhaps as wild and pathetic a love scene as ever the old moon above has witnessed. There they clung, those two, in the actual shadow of death experiencing the fullest and acutest joy that our life has to offer. Nay, death was present with them, for, beneath their very feet, half-hidden by the water, lay the stiffening corpse of the Zulu.
To and fro swung the cart in the rush of the swollen river, up and down beside them the carcases of the horses rose and fell with the surge of the water, on whose surface the broken moonbeams played and quivered.
Overhead was the blue star-sown depth through which they were waiting presently to pa.s.s, and to the right and left the long broken outlines of the banks stretched away till at last they appeared to grow together in the gloom.
But they heeded none of these things; they remembered nothing except that they had found each other"s hearts, and were happy with a wild joy it is not often given to us to feel. The past was forgotten, the future loomed at hand, and between the one and the other was spanned a bridge of pa.s.sion made perfect and sanctified by its approaching earthly end.
Bessie was forgotten, all things were forgotten, for they were alone with Love and Death.
Let those who would blame them pause awhile. Why not? They had kept the faith. They had denied themselves and run straightly down the path of duty. But the compacts of life end with life. No man may bargain for the beyond; even the marriage service shrinks from it. And now that hope had gone and life was at its extremest ebb, why should they not take their joy before they pa.s.sed to the land where, perchance, such things will be forgotten? So it seemed to them; if indeed they were any longer capable of reason.
He looked into her eyes and she laid her head upon his heart in that mute abandonment of worship which is sometimes to be met with in the world, and is redeemed from vulgar pa.s.sion by an indefinable quality of its own. He looked into her eyes and was glad to have lived, ay, even to have reached this hour of death. And she, lost in the abyss of her deep nature, sobbed out her love-laden heart upon his breast, and called him her own, her own, her very own!
Thus the long hours pa.s.sed unheeded, till at last a new-born freshness in the air told them that they were not far from dawn. The death they were awaiting had not found them. It must now be very near at hand.
"John," she whispered in his ear, "do you think that they will shoot us?"
"Yes," he answered hoa.r.s.ely; "they must for their own sakes."
"I wish it were over," she said.
Suddenly she started back from his arms with a little cry, causing the cart to rock violently.
"I forgot," she said; "you can swim, though I cannot. Why should you not swim to the bank, and escape under cover of the darkness? It is only fifty yards, and the current is not so very swift."
The idea of flight without Jess had never occurred to John, and now that she suggested it, it struck him as so absurd that he broke into the ghost of a laugh.
"Don"t be foolish, Jess," he said.
"Yes, yes, I will. Go! You _must_ go! It does not matter about me now.
I know that you love me, and I can die happy. I will wait for you. Oh, John! wherever I am, if I have any individual life and any remembrance I will wait for you. Never forget that all your days. However far I may seem away, if I live at all, I shall be waiting for you. And now go; you _shall_ go, I say. No, I will not be disobeyed. If you will not go I will throw myself into the water. Oh, the cart is turning over!"