CHAPTER VI
THE STORM BREAKS
"Do you know, you are a very odd person, Miss Jess," John said
presently, with a little laugh. "I don't think you can have a happy
mind."
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
one puts oneself and one's own little interests and joys and sorrows
quite away, how is it possible to be happy, when one feels the breath
of human misery beating on one's face, and sees the tide of sorrow and
suffering creeping up to one's feet? You may be on a rock yourself and
out of the path of it, till the spring floods or the hurricane wave
come to sweep you away, or you may be afloat upon it: whichever it is,
it is quite impossible, 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 same
thing: indifference is the perfection of selfishness."
"I am afraid that there must be lots of selfishness in the world, for
certainly there is plenty of happiness, all evil things
notwithstanding. I should have said that happiness springs from
goodness and a sound digestion."
Jess shook her head as she answered, "I may be wrong, but I don't see
how anybody who feels can be quite happy in a world of sickness,
suffering, slaughter, and death. I saw a Kafir woman die yesterday,
and her children crying over her. She was a poor creature and had a
rough lot, but she loved her life, and her children loved her. Who can
be happy 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 very wrong, and everybody has thought them before: at any rate, I
am not going to inflict them on you. What is the use of it?" and she
went on with a laugh: "what is the use of anything? The same old
thoughts passing through the same human minds from year to year and
century to century, just as the same clouds float across the same blue
sky. The clouds are born in the sky, and the thoughts are born in the
brain, and they both end in tears and re-arise in blind, bewildering
mist, and this is the beginning and end of thoughts and clouds. They
arise out of the blue; they overshadow and break into storms and
tears, then they are drawn 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 is
possible. It is possible if one can love somebody so hard that one can
quite forget oneself and everything else except that person, and it is
possible if one can sacrifice oneself for others. There is no true
happiness 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 the
happiness I have had in my life has come to me from loving. I believe
that love is the secret of the world: it is like the philosopher's
stone they used to look for, and almost as hard to find, but if you
find it it turns everything to gold. Perhaps," she went on with a
little laugh, "when the angels departed from the earth they left us
love behind, that by it and through it we may climb up to them again.
It is the one thing that lifts us above the brutes. Without love man
is a brute, and nothing but a brute; with love he draws near to God.
When everything else falls away 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 it must be true."
He had penetrated her reserve now; the ice of her manner broke up
beneath the warmth of her words, and her face, usually impassive, had
caught life and light from the eyes above, and acquired a certain
beauty of its own. John looked at it, and understood something of the
untaught and ill-regulated intensity and depth of the nature of this
curious girl. He met her eyes and they moved him strangely, though he
was not an emotional man, and was too old to experience spasmodic
thrills at the chance glances of a pretty woman. He moved towards her,
looking at her curiously.
"It would be worth living to be loved like that," he said, more to
himself than to her.
Jess did not answer, but she let her eyes rest on his. Indeed, she did
more, for she put her soul into them and gazed and gazed till John
Niel felt as though he were mesmerised. And as she gazed there rose up
in her breast a knowledge that if she willed it she could gain this
man's heart and hold it against all the world, for her nature was
stronger than his nature, and her mind, untrained though it be,
encompassed his mind and could pass over it and beat it down as the
wind beats down the tossing seas. All this she learnt in a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye: she could not tell how she knew it, but she
did know it as surely as she knew that the blue sky stretched
overhead, and, what is more--for the moment, at any rate--he knew it
too. This strange strong certainty came on her as a shock and a
revelation, like the tidings of some great joy or 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
of nonsense, and that I want to finish my sketch."
He rose and left her, for he was wanted at home, saying as he went
that he thought there was a storm coming up; the air was so quiet, and
the wind had fallen as it does before an African tempest. Presently on
looking round she saw him slowly climbing the precipitous ascent to
the table-land above the gulf.
It was one of those glorious afternoons that sometimes come in the
African spring, although it was so intensely still. Everywhere
appeared the proofs of evidences of life. The winter was over, and
now, from the sadness and sterility of its withered age, sprang youth
and lovely summer clad in sunshine, bediamonded with dew, and fragrant
with the breath of flowers. Jess lay back and looked up into the
infinite depths above. How blue they were, and how measureless! She
could not see the angry clouds that lay like visible omens on the
horizon. Look, there, miles above her, was one tiny circling speck. It
was a vulture, watching her from his airy heights and descending a
little to see if she were dead, or only sleeping.
Involuntarily she shuddered. The bird of death reminded her of Death
himself also hanging high up yonder in the blue and waiting his
opportunity to fall upon the sleeper. Then her eyes fell upon a bough
of the glorious flowering bush under which she rested. It was not more
than four feet above her head, but she lay so still and motionless
that a jewelled honeysucker came and hovered over the flowers, darting
from one to another like a many-coloured flash. Thence her glance
travelled to the great column of boulders that towered above her, and
that seemed to say, "I am very old. I have seen many springs and many
winters, and have looked down on many sleeping maids, and where are
they now? All dead--all dead," and an old baboon in the rocks with
startling suddenness 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 in golden bars athwart the shade, like the memory of happy days
in the grey vista of a life; away in the cliffs yonder, the rock-doves
were preparing to nest by hundreds, and waking the silence with their
cooing and the flutter of their wings. Even the grim old eagle perched
on the pinnacle of the peak was pruning himself, contentedly happy in
the knowledge that his mate had laid an egg in that dark corner of the
cliff. All things rejoiced and cried aloud that summer was at hand and
that it was time to bloom and love and nest. Soon it would be winter
again, when things died, and next summer other things would live under
the sun, and these perchance would be forgotten. That was what they
seemed to say.
And as Jess lay and heard, her youthful blood, drawn by Nature's
magnetic force, as the moon draws the tides, rose in her veins like
the sap in the budding trees, and stirred her virginal serenity. All
the bodily natural part of her caught the tones of Nature's happy
voice that bade her break her bonds, live and love, and be a woman.
And lo! the spirit within her answered to it, flinging wide her
bosom's doors, and of a sudden, as it were, something quickened and
lived in her heart that was of her and yet had its own life--a life
apart; something that sprang from her and another, which would always
be with her now and could never die. She rose pale and trembling, as a
woman trembles at the first stirring of the child that she shall bear,
and clung to the flowery bough of the beautiful bush above, then sank
down again, feeling that the spirit of her girlhood had departed from
her, and another angel had entered there; knowing that she loved with
heart and soul and body, and was a very woman.
She had called to Love as the wretched call to Death, and Love had
come in his strength and possessed her utterly; and now for a little
while she was afraid to pass into the shadow of his wings, as the
wretched who call to Death fear him when they feel his icy fingers.
But the fear passed, and the great joy and the new consciousness of
power and of identity that the inspiration of a true passion gives to
some strong deep natures remained, and after a while Jess prepared to
make her way home 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 this new intoxicating wine. So absorbed was she that she
did not notice that the doves had ceased to call, and that the eagle
had fled away for shelter. She was not aware of the great and solemn
hush which had taken the place of the merry voice of beast and bird
and preceded the breaking of the gathered storm.
At last as she rose to go Jess opened her dark eyes, which, for the
most part, had been shut while this great change was passing over her,
and with a natural impulse turned to look once more on the place where
her happiness 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 that moved and grew around her? Gone, and in its place
darkness and rising mist and deep and ominous shadows. While she lay
and thought, the sun had sunk behind the hill and left the great gulf
nearly dark, and, as is common in South Africa, the heavy storm-cloud
had crept across the blue sky and sealed the light from above. A drear
wind came moaning up the gorge from the plains beyond; the heavy rain-
drops began to fall one by one; the lightning flickered fitfully in
the belly of the advancing cloud. 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
hurried into the shelter of a little cave hollowed by water in the
side of the cliff. And now with a rush of ice-cold air the tempest
burst. Down came the rain in a sheet; then flash upon flash gleaming
fiercely through the vapour-laden air; and roar upon roar echoing
along the rocky cavities in volumes of fearful sound. Then another
pause and space of utter silence, followed by a blaze of light that
dazed and blinded her, and suddenly one of the piled-up columns to her
left swayed to and fro like a poplar in a breeze, to fall headlong
with a crash which almost mastered the awful crackling of the thunder
overhead and the shrieking of the baboons scared from their crannies
in the cliff. Down it rushed beneath the stroke of that fiery sword,
the brave old pillar that had lasted out so many centuries, sending
clouds of dust and fragments high up into the blinding rain, and
carrying awe and wonder to the heart of the girl who watched its fall.
Away rolled the storm as quickly as it had come, with a sound like the
passing of the artillery of an embattled host; then a grey rain set
in, blotting the outlines of everything, like an endless absorbing
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, now made
almost impassable by the prevailing gloom and the rush of water from
the table-top of the mountain, and on across the sodden plain, down
the rocky path on the farther side, past the little walled-in cemetery
with the four red gums planted at its corners, in which a stranger who
had died at Mooifontein lay buried, and so, just as the darkness of
the wet night came down like a cloud, home at last. At the back-door
stood her old uncle with a lantern.
"Is that you, Jess?" he called out in his stentorian tones. "Lord!
what a sight!" as she emerged, her sodden dress clinging to her slight
form, her hands torn with clambering over the rocks, her curling hair
which had broken loose hanging down her back and half covering her
face.
"Lord! what a sight!" he ejaculated again. "Why, Jess, where have you
been? 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 is
a bitter night," and she ran to her room, leaving a long trail of
water behind 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
way down the passage to the sitting-room. "Ah, I know, that night when
she first came here out of the rain leading Bessie by the hand. What
can the girl have been thinking of, not to see the thunder coming up?
She ought to 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 know how 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
traces of her struggle with the elements. But of that other struggle
she had gone through she could not remove the traces. They and the
love that arose out of it would endure as long as she endured. It was
her former self that had been cast off in it and which now lay behind
her, an empty and unmeaning thing like the shapeless heap of garments.
It was all very strange. So John had gone to look for her and had not
found her. She was glad that he had gone. It made her happy to think
of him searching and calling in the wet and the night. She was only a
woman, and it was natural that she should feel thus. By-and-by he
would come back and find her clothed and in her right mind and ready
to greet him. She was glad that he had not seen her wet and
dishevelled. A girl looks so unpleasant like that. It might have set
him against her. Men like women to look nice and clean and pretty.
That gave her an idea. She turned to her glass and, holding the light
above her head, studied her own face attentively. She was a woman with
as little vanity in her composition as it is possible for a woman to
have, and till now she had not given her personal looks much
consideration. They had not been of great importance to her in the
Wakkerstroom district of the Transvaal. But to-night all of a sudden
they became very important; and so she stood and looked at her own
wonderful eyes, at the masses of curling brown hair still damp and
shining from the rain, at the curious pallid face and clear-cut
determined mouth.
"If it were not for my eyes and hair, I should be very ugly," she said
to herself aloud. "If only I were beautiful like Bessie, now." The
thought of her sister gave her another idea. What if John were to
prefer Bessie? Now she remembered that he had been very attentive to
Bessie. A feeling of dreadful doubt and jealousy passed through her,
for women like Jess know what jealousy is in its bitterness. Supposing
that it was in vain, supposing that what she had given to-day--given
utterly once and for all, so that she could not take it back--had been
given to a man who loved another woman, and that woman her own dear
sister! Supposing that the fate of her love was to be like water
falling unalteringly on the hard rock that heeds it not and retains it
not! True, the water wears the rock away; but could she be satisfied
with that? She could master him, she knew; even if things were so, she
could win him to herself, she had read it in his eyes that afternoon;
but could she, who had promised to her dead mother to cherish and
protect her sister, whom till this day she had loved better than
anything in the world, and whom she still loved more dearly than her
life--could she, if it should happen 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 the lightning had smitten it, a
pile of shattered smoking fragments, a very heaped-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 against her 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
fell full upon his face and dripping clothes. It was white and
anxious, and she was glad to see the anxiety.
"Oh, thank God! here you are!" he said, catching her hand. "I began to
think 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
eyes met, and again her glance thrilled him. There was such a
wonderful light in Jess's eyes that night.
Half an hour afterwards they sat down as usual to supper. Bessie did
not put in an appearance till it was a quarter over, and then sat very
silent through it. Jess narrated her adventure in the Kloof, and
everybody listened, but nobody said much. There seemed to be a shadow
over the house that evening, or perhaps it was that each party was
thinking of his own affairs. After supper old Silas Croft began
talking about the political state of the country, which gave him
uneasiness. He said that he believed the Boers really meant to rebel
against the Government this time. Frank Muller had told him so, and he
always knew what was going on. This announcement did not tend to raise
anybody's spirits, and the evening passed as silently as the meal had
done. At last Bessie got up, stretched her rounded arms, and said that
she was tired and going to bed.
"Come into my room," she whispered to her sister as she passed. "I
want to speak to you."
