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<h2> CHAPTER IX </h2>
<h3> "LET US GO IN, ALLAN!" </h3>
<p>It is very difficult for me to describe the period of time which elapsed
between my arrival at Babyan's Peak and my marriage with Stella. When I
look back on it, it seems sweet as with the odour of flowers, and dim as
with the happy dusk of summer eves, while through the sweetness comes the
sound of Stella's voice, and through the gloom shines the starlight of her
eyes. I think that we loved each other from the first, though for a while
we said no word of love. Day by day I went about the place with her,
accompanied by little Tota and Hendrika only, while she attended to the
thousand and one matters which her father's ever-growing weakness had laid
upon her; or rather, as time drew on, I attended to the business, and she
accompanied me. All day through we were together. Then after supper, when
the night had fallen, we would walk together in the garden and come at
length to hear her father read aloud sometimes from the works of a poet,
sometimes from history. Or, if he did not feel well, Stella would read,
and when this was done, Mr. Carson would celebrate a short form of prayer,
and we would separate till the morning once more brought our happy hour of
meeting.</p>
<p>So the weeks went by, and with every week I grew to know my darling
better. Often, I wonder now, if my fond fancy deceives me, or if indeed
there are women as sweet and dear as she. Was it solitude that had given
such depth and gentleness to her? Was it the long years of communing with
Nature that had endowed her with such peculiar grace, the grace we find in
opening flowers and budding trees? Had she caught that murmuring voice
from the sound of the streams which fall continually about her rocky home?
was it the tenderness of the evening sky beneath which she loved to walk,
that lay like a shadow on her face, and the light of the evening stars
that shone in her quiet eyes? At the least to me she was the realization
of that dream which haunts the sleep of sin-stained men; so my memory
paints her, so I hope to find her when at last the sleep has rolled away
and the fevered dreams are done.</p>
<p>At last there came a day—the most blessed of my life, when we told
our love. We had been together all the morning, but after dinner Mr.
Carson was so unwell that Stella stopped in with him. At supper we met
again, and after supper, when she had put little Tota, to whom she had
grown much attached, to bed, we went out, leaving Mr. Carson dozing on the
couch.</p>
<p>The night was warm and lovely, and without speaking we walked up the
garden to the orange grove and sat down upon a rock. There was a little
breeze which shook the petals of the orange blooms over us in showers, and
bore their delicate fragrance far and wide. Silence reigned around, broken
only by the sound of the falling waterfalls that now died to a faint
murmur, and now, as the wavering breeze turned, boomed loudly in our ears.
The moon was not yet visible, but already the dark clouds which floated
through the sky above us—for there had been rain—showed a glow
of silver, telling us that she shone brightly behind the peak. Stella
began to talk in her low, gentle voice, speaking to me of her life in the
wilderness, how she had grown to love it, how her mind had gone on from
idea to idea, and how she pictured the great rushing world that she had
never seen as it was reflected to her from the books which she had read.
It was a curious vision of life that she had: things were out of
proportion to it; it was more like a dream than a reality—a mirage
than the actual face of things. The idea of great cities, and especially
of London, had a kind of fascination for her: she could scarcely realize
the rush, the roar and hurry, the hard crowds of men and women, strangers
to each other, feverishly seeking for wealth and pleasure beneath a murky
sky, and treading one another down in the fury of their competition.</p>
<p>"What is it all for?" she asked earnestly. "What do they seek? Having so
few years to live, why do they waste them thus?"</p>
<p>I told her that in the majority of instances it was actual hard necessity
that drove them on, but she could barely understand me. Living as she had
done, in the midst of the teeming plenty of a fruitful earth, she did not
seem to be able to grasp the fact that there were millions who from day to
day know not how to stay their hunger.</p>
<p>"I never want to go there," she went on; "I should be bewildered and
frightened to death. It is not natural to live like that. God put Adam and
Eve in a garden, and that is how he meant their children to live—in
peace, and looking always on beautiful things. This is my idea of perfect
life. I want no other."</p>
<p>"I thought you once told me that you found it lonely," I said.</p>
<p>"So I did," she answered, innocently, "but that was before you came. Now I
am not lonely any more, and it is perfect—perfect as the night."</p>
<p>Just then the full moon rose above the elbow of the peak, and her rays
stole far and wide down the misty valley, gleaming on the water, brooding
on the plain, searching out the hidden places of the rocks, wrapping the
fair form of nature as in a silver bridal veil through which her beauty
shone mysteriously.</p>
<p>Stella looked down the terraced valley; she turned and looked up at the
scarred face of the golden moon, and then she looked at me. The beauty of
the night was about her face, the scent of the night was on her hair, the
mystery of the night shone in her shadowed eyes. She looked at me, I
looked on her, and all our hearts' love blossomed within us. We spoke no
word—we had no words to speak, but slowly we drew near, till lips
were pressed to lips as we kissed our eternal troth.</p>
<p>It was she who broke that holy silence, speaking in a changed voice, in
soft deep notes that thrilled me like the lowest chords of a smitten harp.</p>
<p>"Ah, now I understand," she said, "now I know why we are lonely, and how
we can lose our loneliness. Now I know what it is that stirs us in the
beauty of the sky, in the sound of water and in the scent of flowers. It
is Love who speaks in everything, though till we hear his voice we
understand nothing. But when we hear, then the riddle is answered and the
gates of our heart are opened, and, Allan, we see the way that wends
through death to heaven, and is lost in the glory of which our love is but
a shadow.</p>
<p>"Let us go in, Allan. Let us go before the spell breaks, so that whatever
overtakes us, sorrow, death, or separation, we may always have this
perfect memory to save us. Come, dearest, let us go!"</p>
<p>I rose like a man in a dream, still holding her by the hand. But as I rose
my eye fell upon something that gleamed white among the foliage of the
orange bush at my side. I said nothing, but looked. The breeze stirred the
orange leaves, the moonlight struck for a moment full upon the white
object.</p>
<p>It was the face of Hendrika, the Babyan-woman, as Indaba-zimbi had called
her, and on it was a glare of hate that made me shudder.</p>
<p>I said nothing; the face vanished, and just then I heard a baboon bark in
the rocks behind.</p>
<p>Then we went down the garden, and Stella passed into the centre hut. I saw
Hendrika standing in the shadow near the door, and went up to her.</p>
<p>"Hendrika," I said, "why were you watching Miss Stella and myself in the
garden?"</p>
<p>She drew her lips up till her teeth gleamed in the moonlight.</p>
<p>"Have I not watched her these many years, Macumazahn? Shall I cease to
watch because a wandering white man comes to steal her? Why were you
kissing her in the garden, Macumazahn? How dare you kiss her who is a
star?"</p>
<p>"I kissed her because I love her, and because she loves me," I answered.
"What has that to do with you, Hendrika?"</p>
<p>"Because you love her," she hissed in answer; "and do I not love her also,
who saved me from the babyans? I am a woman as she is, and you are a man,
and they say in the kraals that men love women better than women love
women. But it is a lie, though this is true, that if a woman loves a man
she forgets all other love. Have I not seen it? I gather her flowers—beautiful
flowers; I climb the rocks where you would never dare to go to find them;
you pluck a piece of orange bloom in the garden and give it to her. What
does she do?—she takes the orange bloom, she puts it in her breast,
and lets my flowers die. I call to her—she does not hear me—she
is thinking. You whisper to some one far away, and she hears and smiles.
She used to kiss me sometimes; now she kisses that white brat you brought,
because you brought it. Oh, I see it all—all; I have seen it from
the first; you are stealing her from us, stealing her to yourself, and
those who loved her before you came are forgotten. Be careful, Macumazahn,
be careful, lest I am revenged upon you. You, you hate me; you think me
half a monkey; that servant of yours calls me Baboon-woman. Well, I have
lived with baboons, and they are clever—yes, they can play tricks
and know things that you don't, and I am cleverer than they, for I have
learnt the wisdom of white people also, and I say to you, Walk softly,
Macumazahn, or you will fall into a pit," and with one more look of malice
she was gone.</p>
<p>I stood for a moment reflecting. I was afraid of this strange creature who
seemed to combine the cunning of the great apes that had reared her with
the passions and skill of human kind. I foreboded evil at her hands. And
yet there was something almost touching in the fierceness of her jealousy.
It is generally supposed that this passion only exists in strength when
the object loved is of another sex from the lover, but I confess that,
both in this instance and in some others which I have met with, this has
not been my experience. I have known men, and especially uncivilized men,
who were as jealous of the affection of their friend or master as any
lover could be of that of his mistress; and who has not seen cases of the
same thing where parents and their children are concerned? But the lower
one gets in the scale of humanity, the more readily this passion thrives;
indeed, it may be said to come to its intensest perfection in brutes.
Women are more jealous than men, small-hearted men are more jealous than
those of larger mind and wider sympathy, and animals are the most jealous
of all. Now Hendrika was in some ways not far removed from animal, which
may perhaps account for the ferocity of her jealousy of her mistress's
affection.</p>
<p>Shaking off my presentiments of evil, I entered the centre hut. Mr. Carson
was resting on the sofa, and by him knelt Stella holding his hand, and her
head resting on his breast. I saw at once that she had been telling him of
what had come about between us; nor was I sorry, for it is a task that a
would-be son-in-law is generally glad to do by deputy.</p>
<p>"Come here, Allan Quatermain," he said, almost sternly, and my heart gave
a jump, for I feared lest he might be about to require me to go about my
business. But I came.</p>
<p>"Stella tells me," he went on, "that you two have entered into a marriage
engagement. She tells me also that she loves you, and that you say that
you love her."</p>
<p>"I do indeed, sir," I broke in; "I love her truly; if ever a woman was
loved in this world, I love her."</p>
<p>"I thank Heaven for it," said the old man. "Listen, my children. Many
years ago a great shame and sorrow fell upon me, so great a sorrow that,
as I sometimes think, it affected my brain. At any rate, I determined to
do what most men would have considered the act of a madman, to go far away
into the wilderness with my only child, there to live remote from
civilization and its evils. I did so; I found this place, and here we have
lived for many years, happily enough, and perhaps not without doing good
in our generation, but still in a way unnatural to our race and status. At
first I thought I would let my daughter grow up in a state of complete
ignorance, that she should be Nature's child. But as time went on, I saw
the folly and the wickedness of my plan. I had no right to degrade her to
the level of the savages around me, for if the fruit of the tree of
knowledge is a bitter fruit, still it teaches good from evil. So I
educated her as well as I was able, till in the end I knew that in mind,
as in body, she was in no way inferior to her sisters, the children of the
civilized world. She grew up and entered into womanhood, and then it came
into my mind that I was doing her a bitter wrong, that I was separating
her from her kind and keeping her in a wilderness where she could find
neither mate nor companion. But though I knew this, I could not yet make
up my mind to return to active life; I had grown to love this place. I
dreaded to return into the world I had abjured. Again and again I put my
resolutions aside. Then at the commencement of this year I fell ill. For a
while I waited, hoping that I might get better, but at last I realized
that I should never get better, that the hand of Death was upon me."</p>
<p>"Ah, no, father, not that!" Stella said, with a cry.</p>
<p>"Yes, love, that, and it is true. Now you will be able to forget our
separation in the happiness of a new meeting," and he glanced at me and
smiled. "Well, when this knowledge came home to me, I determined to
abandon this place and trek for the coast, though I well knew that the
journey would kill me. I should never live to reach it. But Stella would,
and it would be better than leaving her here alone with savages in the
wilderness. On the very day that I had made up my mind to take this step
Stella found you dying in the Bad Lands, Allan Quatermain, and brought you
here. She brought you, of all men in the world, you, whose father had been
my dear friend, and who once with your baby hands had saved her life from
fire, that she might live to save yours from thirst. At the time I said
little, but I saw the hand of Providence in this, and I determined to wait
and see what came about between you. At the worst, if nothing came about,
I soon learned that I could trust you to see her safely to the coast after
I was gone. But many days ago I knew how it stood between you, and now
things are determined as I prayed they might be. God bless you both, my
children; may you be happy in your love; may it endure till death and
beyond it. God bless you both!" and he stretched out his hand towards me.</p>
<p>I took it, and Stella kissed him.</p>
<p>Presently he spoke again—</p>
<p>"It is my intention," he said, "if you two consent, to marry you next
Sunday. I wish to do so soon, for I do not know how much longer will be
allowed to me. I believe that such a ceremony, solemnly celebrated and
entered into before witnesses, will, under the circumstances, be perfectly
legal; but of course you will repeat it with every formality the first
moment it lies in your power so to do. And now, there is one more thing:
when I left England my fortunes were in a shattered condition; in the
course of years they have recovered themselves, the accumulated rents, as
I heard but recently, when the waggons last returned from Port Natal, have
sufficed to pay off all charges, and there is a considerable balance over.
Consequently you will not marry on nothing, for of course you, Stella, are
my heiress, and I wish to make a stipulation. It is this. That so soon as
my death occurs you should leave this place and take the first opportunity
of returning to England. I do not ask you to live there always; it might
prove too much for people reared in the wilds, as both of you have been;
but I do ask you to make it your permanent home. Do you consent and
promise this?"</p>
<p>"I do," I answered.</p>
<p>"And so do I," said Stella.</p>
<p>"Very well," he answered; "and now I am tired out. Again God bless you
both, and good-night."</p>
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