The White Hecatomb Part 16

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

AIALA.

_One_.

I promised Lourens Brand not to tell the tale of his strange adventure and its stranger consequences until at least ten years should have elapsed from the date of his departure from South Africa, and the promise has been kept in the spirit if not in the letter. Poor Brand never left South Africa--in the flesh, at least. His bones lie buried in an unfenced graveyard, near the deserted site of an old mining camp in the north of the Transvaal, where he died of fever in 1885.

Brand was a Dutchman; his family established itself generations back in Java, and several of his ancestors were prominent officials under the old Dutch East India Company. He had a dash of Malay blood in his veins--his great-grandfather having married the daughter of one of the Singapore rajahs in the last century. This, however, one would never have suspected from his appearance, for he was tall and blonde, with blue eyes, and the presence and bearing of a sea-king. His disposition was diffident and somewhat retiring, and his Eastern blood showed itself in a certain dreaminess and a tendency to dwell rather on the occult than the obvious properties and relations of the things around him. He was a mechanical engineer by profession.

Brand landed in Cape Town in the early autumn of 188--, and took lodgings in the house where I was boarding. This was on the Sir Lowry road, not far from the Castle. We struck up an intimacy almost immediately. He had been educated at Leyden, and had returned to Java, meaning to practise his profession there, but the scope was too small for a man of his energetic disposition, so he came to South Africa in the hope of obtaining employment in some mine. He spoke the Malay language perfectly, and could quote copiously from the Malay version of the Koran.

One thing must, for the adequate understanding of this tale, be laid stress on. Brand, although twenty-six years of age, had never strayed in the fields where the wild oats grow. His nature was pa.s.sionate in its depths, but the pa.s.sion still slept. It was probably an innate fastidiousness combined with a strong sense of shame that kept his feet in the path of purity. Be this as it may, the fact remains that although he had lived in the East, where, they tell us, Galahads are uncommon, Brand had never kissed a woman except his mother and sisters.

As regards religion, he was what is known as an agnostic.

It was on the second day after arriving in Cape Town that Brand went down to the docks to see about the landing of some of his effects from the steamer. As it happened, another steamer had just arrived from the east coast ports, bringing a cargo of Malay pilgrims on their return journey from Mecca, and a lot of the pilgrims' friends had come to meet and greet them. A number of cabs with Malay drivers were standing about on the wharf, and in one of these Brand noticed, sitting by herself, a young Malay girl of such rare beauty that it could not be concealed by the formless hideousness of the local Malay garb. The driver had gone on board the steamer to greet some of his friends, and left the cab to take care of itself.

The cab was close to the rail-track, and as Brand stood looking at the girl he heard the warning whistle of a dock-engine which was rapidly approaching. The startled horse moved a few paces forward and again stood, this time right on the rail-track. Nothing could now save the cab, but Brand sprang forward, lifted the girl in his arms, and sprang with her out of danger just an instant before the vehicle and the hapless horse were crushed into a ma.s.s of hopeless ruin.

The girl was, of course, terribly frightened, and she clung convulsively to her preserver. He spoke to her rea.s.suringly in the Malay language, which, strange to say, she appeared to understand perfectly. With the exception of the priests, very few of the Cape Town Malays understand the Malay tongue, they having adopted a very corrupt dialect of Dutch.

He was more than ever struck by her beauty. Her figure was effectually concealed by her dress, but she was tall, and her head, which had become freed from the head-dress when she was being dragged out of the cab, was small, delicately moulded, and gracefully poised over a pair of shapely shoulders, on a neck like the stem of an asphodel. Her colour was very light, her face was a pure oval, and between her shaded eyelids lurked the most wonderful depths of dark, liquid brown that ever drowned the reason of a man.

After being effusively thanked by the girl's friends, who had now come with a swarm of others from the steamer, Brand took his leave of her with a certain twinge of regret. The girl's eyes were to him henceforth an abiding remembrance.

It was about a month after the rescue of the girl that Brand's strange adventure took place.

It was now winter of the year of the small-pox epidemic. The streets of Cape Town at the lower levels were slushy as only Cape Town streets can be, for the rain had been falling steadily for ten days. Then followed a day and a night of absolutely cloudless and unseasonably warm weather, and it was on the night in question that Brand took the walk which had such remarkable consequences.

Brand, another man, and I dined together at the club. The other man had arrived by the last mail steamer from England, and he and I had booked to start by the up-country train at half-past ten. Our luggage was safe at the railway-station, and having nothing to do for the moment, it was suggested that we might take a walk to some of the higher levels where we would be comparatively free of the mud, and from where we might obtain a good view of Table Mountain and the city lights. We accordingly lit our pipes and wandered forth.

There is always much to fascinate in the streets of a strange city, and the Cape Town streets at night, filled as they are with men and women of all shades of colour, garbed variously and speaking divers tongues, are especially interesting--at all events to any one with an imagination.

On this night the streets possessed an unusual attraction of a weird and impressive kind, for the small-pox epidemic was at its greatest height, and a brooding terror overshadowed the stricken city. Every one abroad seemed to have a furtive look. When two met near a lamp-post startled glances were exchanged, and in hurrying along the pavements the pa.s.sers sheered off to avoid one another. Every now and then an empty coffin would be seen being hurried along the middle of the street upon men's shoulders. The few cabs on the almost deserted stands looked like hea.r.s.es, their occupation was almost gone for the time being, for hardly a soul would venture into a cab for fear of infection.

We strolled down Adderley Street for some distance, and then, turning to the left, went up Long Market Street, across Saint George's and Long Streets, and on until we found ourselves in the Malay quarter on the slope at the base of the Lion's Rump. Here silence and desolation reigned supreme. The moon had now arisen, so on reaching half-way up the ascent we paused to examine the view and to take breath. Looking back we saw the gleaming city stretched like a vast necropolis under the crags of the great mountain, which gleamed silvery in the moonlight. To our left opened the gla.s.sy expanse of Table Bay, with the breakwater lights glinting on the water. From the Malay graveyard on the hill-side above us came the shrill howls of the mourners. There was not a breath of wind. Owing to the comparative suspension of traffic the city seemed silent as the grave.

We retraced our steps for a short distance, and then, turning to the right, walked along a deserted street of white, flat-topped, sepulchre-like houses. All at once we became aware of a sound of loud wailing going on in a house to our left. We stood still for a s.p.a.ce and listened. The shrill treble of a woman's cry could be distinguished, and also the quavering tones of an old man's voice, full of the deepest agony. We drew near the house very softly. The windows were covered by dark Venetian shutters, between the slats of which a dim light could be discerned. The house was one of a row all more or less similar in size and shape, and built touching each other. Each house had a paved "stoep" in front, with a masoned seat at either end. Against the house next to the one in which the wailing was going on, was standing a ladder which just reached the top of the parapet.

After listening for a few moments we moved quietly away and continued our course along the street. Soon we turned again to the right, and afterwards to the left. Eventually we found that we had lost ourselves.

We wandered about helplessly for some time, getting into blind alleys and streets that led nowhere, and thus having to retrace our steps over and over again. Quarter by quarter the hour was chimed from the belfry tower of the far-away Dutch church, and when ten o'clock struck, and we were still lost, the situation looked serious for us who required to catch the train in half-an-hour.

Just after this, however, we found ourselves in the street where we had listened to the wailing, and soon the rumbling of an approaching cab was heard. After being hailed, the driver, an Irishman of even more than average volubility, swore with fervour that his cab had never, since it was turned out with its first coat of varnish from the very best workshop in the whole of South Africa, had a "dirty Malay" sitting across its axle (it was from Malays that the infection was mostly dreaded); that the vehicle was known throughout the length and breadth of Cape Town as "the white man's cab"; that if we weren't too proud to take a look at the panel, we would find the cab's name, "The Blanche,"

in "purty gould letthers." Of course "ivry wan" who was educated knew _that_ to mean just "white," and nothing else in the English language.

So we bade Brand farewell and were driven, smoking germicidically, to the railway-station, which we reached just in time to catch the train.

_Two_.

Brand strolled slowly down the street and again stopped before the house of sorrow, where the wailing had now ceased. Yielding to a reprehensible impulse of morbid curiosity he approached the shuttered window, where light still faintly gleamed, and endeavoured to find an aperture through which he could see into the house. By looking upwards between the diagonally-fixed slats he could see the ceiling, but the lower areas of the chamber were quite out of the range of his vision.

Listening carefully, he seemed to hear a smothered sob and then a sigh.

One of those unaccountable impulses that grip men by the throat sometimes, and make them do to their own undoing things which under ordinary circ.u.mstances they would never dream of attempting, then overcame him, and he felt that, come what may, he must see the inside of that room. He caught hold of the shutter and gently tried to open it, but the outside leaf was firmly bolted to the window-sill, and could not be moved. However, in pa.s.sing his hand over the slats he found that one was slightly loose and yielded to pressure. He pressed this slat and it slid upwards and inwards, leaving a s.p.a.ce of about an inch and a half in width through which he could look.

The room was one of medium size, with a fireplace at one end. A lamp hung from the ceiling and distributed a dim light. The papered walls were of a deep crimson hue, and the floor was covered with Indian mats.

A very large cus.h.i.+oned divan draped with dark green silk stood before a curtained recess in the opposite wall, and a large open volume lay upon a Koran stand of black wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A number of feminine garments, princ.i.p.ally of silk, lay about the room in disorder.

Sitting on the divan and facing the window was a young girl, apparently a Malay; and although her face was partly covered by her hands, Brand could see that she was very lovely. Judging by her figure she looked to be about seventeen years of age. She was bent forward with her elbows resting on her knees, and her long black hair hung down in a rolled sheaf over one side of her bosom. Her neck, arms, and legs below the knees were bare, and of the most delicate symmetry. Her only clothing appeared to be a short petticoat and bodice, both of red silk delicately embroidered with white, and a pair of richly-worked sandals. Her skin was even lighter than that delicate, slightly dusky tint usually only found in pure-bred Malay girls and young boys.

Brand withdrew from the window with a flush of shame at his dishonourable conduct, and stood in the middle of the street. The huge bulk of Table Mountain loomed sheer before him, transfigured by the white splendour of the moonlight,--a faint film of mist hanging motionless over its highest western b.u.t.tress. A gentle breeze was now streaming from the south-east. This, flowing over the city, bore to his ear a low and confused murmur of belated life. From the graveyard high on the hill-side above him still pierced the shrill cadences of the mourners. Then an indescribable feeling of oppression came over him, a sort of hopeless sense of the mystery overshadowing Man and his destinies--Death, the falling of the awful veil that men, since the beginning of Time, had been trying to pierce with their agonised prayers. The G.o.d who dwelt behind it and made no sign--what did it matter what He were called--Jehovah or Allah--whether the favoured interpreter of His laws to men were called Christ or Mahomet, or whether the broken heart sobbed out its yearning appeal from the church pew, or from the carpet on the pavement of a mosque?

Did men tell truth when they declared that they could realise His existence with absolute certainty? Where in this world of shows and shadows might a humble seeker happily find--not Him--that were too much to hope for--but some sacred, authentic shred from the hem of His divine robe? Just then from the tower of the adjacent mosque pealed out the clear voice of a priest calling the faithful to prayer. Brand smiled wearily--prayer, in the sense of communion with the object prayed to, was as unintelligible to him as colour to one born blind.

These impa.s.sive house-fronts that he pa.s.sed in his slow, absorbed stroll--what a dark, persistent stream of life trickled from eternity to eternity behind them. These Malays of the Cape, although they had shed their language like an outworn garment on the wayside, and had adapted an alien tongue to their needs, had they not kept their previously adopted faith, their customs, and their prejudices intact? What strange quality was it in Mahometanism that rendered it so easy to grasp and so difficult to let go? What curiosity was aroused in respect of the family life of the Malay, which he has guarded so jealously from the ken of the European who rules him from the next street. Yet, as Brand knew, the dwellers in these tomb-like houses hoped and feared very much on the same lines as did the other children of men. And how much alike was not all human nature after all? The scene he had just witnessed, was it not thoroughly and ordinarily feminine in all its detail--from the careful manner in which the sheaf of opulent hair was rolled and tied to prevent it tangling, to the petulant tap of the sandalled foot on the floor, and the way the girl threw herself on the divan? Yes, the great beginning and the great end, with the devious way and the changeful weather between--the way so smooth for some and so rough for others, but with the one splendid flower blooming for all by the wayside--the triple mystery of birth and love and death--was it not all common to him and to the alien dwellers in these silent streets? Then the present terror of the pestilence made manifest in the solitude by the wails of the mourners smote him to the heart with a sense of exalted sympathy, and a deep pity for the stricken people came home to him.

Brand, absorbed in his reflections, had unwittingly wandered back some distance down the deserted street, and he now turned back with the intention of returning to his lodgings. As he drew near the house of sorrow for the third time, he again noticed the ladder leaning against the parapet next, door, and the impulse seized him to climb to the top and see what the city looked like from there. This impulse he immediately and unthinkingly yielded to. Stepping from the ladder he stood for a s.p.a.ce on the flat roof of mason-work behind the parapet.

Then he walked softly towards the back and looked down into the yards behind the row. Here, as in the street, everything seemed to be frozen into white silence.

The roof of the house next to Brand on his left was about three feet higher than the one he was standing on, and was separated from it by a parapet rising a foot higher still. He vaulted over the latter and walked on for some yards; then he again stood still and regarded the view. After a pause of a few moments he turned and retraced his steps, meaning now to descend and return to his lodgings without further delay.

When, however, he reached the place where he had ascended he found to his alarm and perplexity that the ladder had disappeared.

It seemed most extraordinary. He had not heard a sound or seen a living soul. He glanced up and down the street; all was vacant and as still as death. Then the awkwardness and danger of his situation came home to him in full force. What was he to do? The descent to the street was nearly twenty feet, that into the back-yard rather more, but might be broken by taking advantage of a sort of out-house built as a lean-to against the main building. But in the yard he would be like a rat in a trap. The yards at each side appeared to be all more or less constructed on the same principle. His position was truly a desperate one, and he knew this perfectly well. Most unfounded accusations had been made against the Malays, to the effect that they were maliciously endeavouring to spread the disease among the Europeans by means of infected clothing. Indignation on this account ran high, and would no doubt be ruthlessly vented on any European found in such an extremely equivocal position as he was now in. Inwardly cursing his folly, he took off his boots, remounted the roof to his left, and began walking along the tops of the houses in the hope of discovering some means of escape.

After pa.s.sing over the roofs of four houses he noticed that there seemed to be a considerable drop to the roof of the next. He approached this, and to his horror there arose before him from behind the parapet, the dark, bearded face of a man who held a gleaming knife in his teeth.

Brand turned and fled just as the man sprang over the parapet. As he did so he heard a rough, guttural exclamation behind him, and the sound of pursuing footsteps. As he sprang down to the roof of the house he had ascended at, he heard his pursuer fall with a heavy thud on the hard mason-work.

Brand rushed on, and when he reached the roof of the next house he noticed a curious cowl-shaped wooden structure, something like that which covers the approach to the forecastle ladder on the deck of a s.h.i.+p. He quickly turned and took refuge in this on the chance of his pursuer, who had not yet reappeared, and who was most probably lying stunned from his fall, going past it. When, however, he entered the cowl the floor gave way almost noiselessly beneath him, and he fell through nearly twenty feet of s.p.a.ce, with a thud on what seemed to be a pile of tumbled clothing. He lay half stunned for a few seconds, and then sat up. He found himself in complete darkness. A sound of low muttering reached his ear, but from what direction it came he could not tell, and a strange smell suggestive somewhat of incense was strongly perceptible.

Searching in his pockets Brand managed to find a match, which he struck on his boot. He found himself in a small room out of which one doorway led. On the floor, which was of clay, was a heap of clothing of all sorts, interspersed with bedding and mats, all thrown together in the greatest confusion. He made for the door and turned the handle softly.

The leaf swung towards him. Pa.s.sing into the doorway with his hands outstretched, he groped forward and came in contact with the heavy folds of a curtain, which he gently drew aside.

A blaze of white light nearly blinded him. He found himself on the threshold of a room about twenty feet square. From the ceiling a large brazen lamp hung, and other lamps with burnished reflectors shone from each of the four walls. On a low bier in the centre of the room lay the dead body of a young man clad in green robes, his face frightfully disfigured from the effects of small-pox. At the head and foot of the bier stood braziers on which scented woods were burning, and the almost invisible fumes which arose caused the smell which he had perceived.

Crouching on the ground at the foot of the bier was an old man clad in a ca.s.sock-like garment of dingy green alpaca. He was bent and decrepit-looking, and he swayed slowly from side to side repeating some words softly in a high-pitched, quavering tone. His long, white beard and bald head were plentifully strewn with ashes, and his disordered turban of green silk was thrown upon the floor next to him.

Brand gazed spell-bound for a moment at the strange spectacle. The old man's profile was towards him. Then words in an unknown dialect were hoa.r.s.ely shouted by some one on the roof, evidently at the aperture through which Brand had made his entrance. The old man slowly turned his head in the direction of the curtained door, and Brand then saw that he was stone blind.

At the opposite side of the room was another door also curtained, so Brand, hearing a sound as though some one was descending through the aperture by means of a ladder, crossed the room, stepping noiselessly upon the soft carpet. He pa.s.sed close to the head of the bier, pushed the curtain to one side, opened the door, and entered the room into which he had been looking from the street.

The girl started up from the divan with a smothered cry and gazed wildly at the intruder. To his intense surprise he recognised in her the one whose life he had saved on the wharf.

The girl evidently recognised him as well, for she checked the cry upon her lips, and the terror faded out of her face. Brand closed the door softly behind him, and then advanced towards her, his hands stretched out with a gesture of appeal. As he did this he whispered in the Malay tongue:

"Save me, for G.o.d's sake; they want to kill me."

Just then a movement was heard in the next room, and immediately afterwards could be distinguished the hoa.r.s.e, guttural tones which Brand a.s.sociated with the bearded man who carried the knife between his teeth, and whose pursuit had filled him with such terror. The eyes of the girl softened; she hesitated for a second, and then hurriedly motioned to Brand to hide himself in the recess next to the divan. When he had effected this she laid herself down in her former position.