The Crater by Robert Gore Browne - HTML preview

PLEASE NOTE: This is an HTML preview only and some elements such as links or page numbers may be incorrect.
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.

 

EPILOGUE

Ross smoked a time in silence. At length he spoke. "Archie did not give in at once," he said. "His Scottish instincts put up a rearguard action. But Norah's account of Dick's death had won the day.

He protested indeed, but without his old conviction, that he must stand his trial and be formally exonerated. I dropped heavily on the suggestion. What was he thinking of? I asked. What was the use of dragging Norah through the mud of the courts, of giving to the press the story of her elopement? Was it fair to sacrifice her name on the altar of his exoneration?

Archie collapsed; it was never hard to put him in the wrong. Soon I left for bed. Husband and wife sat on by the fire. Bad perhaps for his fever but to the good of his happiness.

It was long before I slept. The duel I had witnessed was fought again in my head. At last I fell asleep, still wondering if Norah had told an inspired lie; if she had been rash enough to teach Changalilo the tale he had repeated; or if Dick had really fired before he died.

It was Changalilo who enlightened me.

Next day Norah went up to the Boma to report Ward's disappearance. She would not, I suppose, trust Archie in Abercorn. She gave me instructions to see to his soup in the middle of the morning. About eleven I went to the kitchen to find out if it was ready. I found Changalilo and the sukambali squatting on the ground, stirring a saucepan, with their backs towards me. I was wearing tennis shoes and my approach was unheard.

'Did the Mama think I had stolen the cartridge?' Changalilo was saying; 'I do not know.'

He went back to relate the original discovery of the two rounds that fitted Dick's 7.9 Mauser, and how they had lain in its magazine till the day of the eland.

'I was making the chief's dinner,' said Changalilo, 'on the fire. I heard from the hills not far off, first the boom'—he imitated the sound—'of Bwana Ar-i-shy's gun for elephant. Then not a moment later the crack'—again an imitation—'of the little gun.'

Soon after the Mama brought him the little gun with only one cartridge in the magazine and he had cleaned the barrel. Now she had forgotten that she had fired at the eland and missed. So he was blamed.

'Yes, indeed,' said the sukambali, 'the chief forgets and the slave is beaten.'

'First the boom of the elephant gun; then the crack of Dick's gun.' I could guess what had happened.

Archie had shot Dick through the heart. As he fell, his contracting fingers closed on the trigger of his 7.9 and the bullet went into the air, into the ground. Archie, deafened by the explosion from his heavy weapon and dizzy with fever, had not heard that posthumous, as one might call it, shot. When Norah had first told me her story, she related how she had picked up Dick's rifle and automatically had opened the breech. Some fresh point had crossed her brain, and she had not told me she had noticed the empty cartridge case. Memory of that detail had burst on her when she retold the story, and saw how it could be manipulated by a wife who was brave enough to shoulder the weight of her husband's crime."

Ross stopped speaking.

After a long silence broken only by the throbbing of the engines, "Is that the end?" I asked.

"The worst of you writers," said Ross, "is that you expect a story to have a beginning and an end. Life isn't so tidy. Death itself doesn't end the story, except possibly for the dead man....

Who is the platitude-monger who talks about the ever-widening circle of ripples started by any stone you care to fling into the duck-pond of life? Well, the wash started by that ill-timed kiss of Dick's came near, as I have shown you, to swamping the Sinclairs' boat. It may still swamp it."

"I saw them off," he continued, "on their slow ulendo to the coast, within a week of that momentous conversation, myself taking in hand the sale of the cattle, the disposal of the farm, the disinterment of the ivory.

But now that they are back in England, do you fancy they have forgotten? Forgetting is not as easy as you happy-ending merchants make out. And the Sinclairs have plenty to forget....

Don't you think that sometimes, in some chance combination of words, Norah hears Dick Ward speak...? Suppose she comes across his friends, his relations.... Sometimes, on nights when she cannot sleep, will not the burden of the guilt she shouldered seem too heavy...?

Archie too. Don't you think he ever sees a face, a face that is partly eaten away by a hyæna, a face on which he is raking the wet earth? When Norah whistles—it is a habit of hers—doesn't he see her saunter into that sunlit clearing and watch the light die in her eyes as she recognises him?"

Ross began ponderously to pace the deck, his bulk visible against the eastern sky. I fell into step beside him.

"The Come-back of the Erring Wife isn't as simple as it looks at the end of Reel Five," he said. "Those silver-haired husbands with wistful faces, whose lines are caressed by the glow of the dying fire, as they lay a hand of forgiveness on the girl wife's golden head, they aren't found in every home.

Still Norah stood a fair chance with Archie. He always thought for himself and never accepted as gold the counters that pass for ideas. He would grant, I fancy, that courage may be as valuable a feature in a wife as chastity."

"Who was it said that purity is the bull point of the plain woman?" Ross asked me.

I did not reply. It sounded to me much like Ross.

"Well, there's something in it," he resumed. "Why do men love the memories of the fair and frail and forget good wives and mothers? Why will Queen Cleopatra's fame increase when Queen Victoria is forgotten?" He paused and seemed to expect an answer. I said something about Shakespeare.

"Rubbish," he replied, "how many people have read that play? But you're taking me off my point. Men marry widows and, as far as Dick was concerned, Norah might nearly rank as a widow. They say that patriotism died with the war and virginity with the higher education of women. Well, if it did, Archie would be one of those who would make the best of a bad job. I don't mean that he'd sit by, while his wife climbed in and out of other men's beds like the heroines of Mr. Arlen's novels. On the contrary, you've seen he had a pretty short way with the other man. But he never subscribed to the view of the Church of Paul that sex was the only thing that mattered. And in his darkest hour, he had never been able to conquer his love for Norah."

I suggested that her indifference would in the end effect that conquest.

"Indifference?" said Ross quickly. "To run off with a man, when you think your husband ignores you, is not indifference. Any more than it is indifference to load his crime on your guilty shoulders."

"In any case," I protested, "she told you she didn't love him."

"For the time, the tragedy she had brought about had trodden out of her that blend of illusion and realism we call 'love,' leaving her potent for no impulse more romantic than devotion. When she reached home and the horror had receded, her quick-blooded nature would need to twine round some man's heart. She would think more than twice before she looked beyond her husband a second time. And now she knows his strength no less than his weakness. Not a bad basis for love."

The flippancy which Ross affected was momentarily laid aside. "I believe," he said slowly, "I pray, that by now Norah and Archie Sinclair's hearts are so locked together by sympathy, understanding and affection that they can face together the black hours they cannot hope to escape."

"In any case," I said, "he cannot judge her."

"Because he'd killed Dick?"

I nodded.

"So you agree with Archie, that was wrong?"

"Don't you?" I asked.

I shivered in the chill that comes before the dawn. Land was visible on the port and I guessed we were rounding Gardafui. Before us lay Europe, behind us Africa.

Life was stirring on the liner. Clattering his pail, a sailor started to swab the deck.

Congo River—Marcham—Capri.
 1924-25.

 

 [1] M'pala is the native name for Abercorn.

 

THE END

You may also like...

  • Time has cast me out plus four more stories
    Time has cast me out plus four more stories Fiction by D.A.Sanford
    Time has cast me out plus four more stories
    Time has cast me out plus four more stories

    Reads:
    3

    Pages:
    82

    Published:
    Nov 2024

    What would you do if you now found yourself knocked out of time. You are caught between tick and tock. this is a group of stories that are related to the gods...

    Formats: PDF, Epub, Kindle, TXT

  • Stranded
    Stranded Fiction by D.A.Sanford
    Stranded
    Stranded

    Reads:
    30

    Pages:
    27

    Published:
    Nov 2024

    Some of the biggest things come in small packages. This is a tale that starts after I was adrift in space in an escape pod. I land on a planet that seems to b...

    Formats: PDF, Epub, Kindle, TXT

  • A Flock Leaders Journey
    A Flock Leaders Journey Fiction by D.A.Sanford
    A Flock Leaders Journey
    A Flock Leaders Journey

    Reads:
    11

    Pages:
    82

    Published:
    Nov 2024

    Billy Barker, since the age of 12, has been on his own. Travel rules are to find a hide two hours before sunset and don't come out until an hour after sunrise...

    Formats: PDF, Epub, Kindle, TXT

  • Them and Us
    Them and Us Fiction by Paul Schueller
    Them and Us
    Them and Us

    Reads:
    36

    Pages:
    49

    Published:
    Oct 2024

    A dystopian view of political selfishness.

    Formats: PDF, Epub, Kindle, TXT