A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


"You are a good woman," said the doctor warmly.

"There's better, and there's worse," said Phoebe quietly, and even a
little coldly.

"More of the latter," said the doctor dryly. "Well, Mrs.--?"

"Falcon, sir."

"We shall hand him over to your care: but first--just for form--if
you are a married woman, we should like to see Dick here: he is your
husband, I presume."

Ploebe laughed merrily. "Dick is my brother; and he can't be spared to
come here. Dick! he'd say black was white if I told him to."

"Then let us see your husband about it--just for form."

"My husband is at the farm. I could not venture so far away, and not
leave him in charge." If she had said, "I will not bring him into
temptation," that would have been nearer the truth. "Let that fly stick
on the wall, sir. What I do, my husband will approve."

"I see how it is. You rule the roost."

Phoebe did not reply point-blank to that; she merely said, "All my
chickens are happy, great and small," and an expression of lofty,
womanly, innocent pride illuminated her face and made it superb for a
moment.

In short, it was settled that Staines should accompany her next morning
to Dale's Kloof Farm, if he chose. On inquiry, it appeared that he had
just returned to the hospital with his patient. He was sent for, and
Phoebe asked him sweetly if he would go with her to her house, one
hundred and eighty miles away, and she would be kind to him.

"On the water?"

"Nay, by land; but 'tis a fine country, and you will see beautiful deer
and things running across the plains, and"--

"Shall I find the past again, the past again?"

"Ay, poor soul, that we shall, God willing. You and I, we will hunt it
together."

He looked at her, and gave her his hand. "I will go with you. Your face
belongs to the past, so does your voice."

He then inquired, rather abruptly, had she any children. She smiled.

"Ay, that I have, the loveliest little boy you ever saw. When you are as
you used to be, you will be his doctor, won't you?"

"Yes, I will nurse him, and you will help me find the past."

Phoebe then begged Staines to be ready to start at six in the morning.
She and Dick would take him up on their way.

While she was talking to him the doctor slipped out, and to tell the
truth he went to consult with another authority, whether he should take
this opportunity of telling Staines that he had money and jewels at the
bank: he himself was half inclined to do so; but the other, who had not
seen Phoebe's face, advised him to do nothing of the kind. "They are
always short of money, these colonial farmers," said he; "she would get
every shilling out of him."

"Most would; but this is such an honest face."

"Well, but she is a mother, you say."

"Yes."

"Well, what mother could be just to a lunatic, with her own sweet angel
babes to provide for?"

"That is true," said Dr. ----. "Maternal love is apt to modify the
conscience."

"What I would do,--I would take her address, and make her promise to
write if he gets well, and if he does get well then write to HIM, and
tell him all about it."

Dr. ---- acted on this shrewd advice, and ordered a bundle to be made up
for the traveller out of the hospital stores: it contained a nice light
summer suit and two changes of linen.




CHAPTER XVIII.


Next morning, Staines and Dick Dale walked through the streets of Cape
Town side by side. Dick felt the uneasiness of a sane man, not familiar
with the mentally afflicted, who suddenly finds himself alone with one.
Insanity turns men oftenest into sheep and hares; but it does now and
then make them wolves and tigers; and that has saddled the insane in
general with a character for ferocity. Young Dale, then, cast many a
suspicious glance at his comrade, as he took him along. These glances
were reassuring: Christopher's face had no longer the mobility, the
expressive changes, that mark the superior mind; his countenance was
monotonous: but the one expression was engaging; there was a sweet,
patient, lamb-like look: the glorious eye a little troubled and
perplexed, but wonderfully mild. Dick Dale looked and looked, and his
uneasiness vanished. And the more he looked, the more did a certain
wonder creep over him, and make him scarce believe the thing he knew;
viz., that a learned doctor had saved him from the jaws of death by rare
knowledge, sagacity, courage, and skill combined: and that mighty man of
wisdom was brought down to this lamb, and would go north, south, east,
or west, with sweet and perfect submission, even as he, Dick Dale,
should appoint. With these reflections honest Dick felt his eyes get a
little misty, and, to use those words of Scripture, which nothing can
surpass or equal, his bowels yearned over the man.

As for Christopher, he looked straight forward, and said not a word till
they cleared the town; but when he saw the vast flowery vale, and the
far-off violet hills, like Scotland glorified, he turned to Dick with
an ineffable expression of sweetness and good fellowship, and said, "Oh,
beautiful! We'll hunt the past together."

"We--will--SO," said Dick, with a sturdy and indeed almost a stern
resolution.

Now, this he said, not that he cared for the past, nor intended to waste
the present by going upon its predecessor's trail; but he had come to a
resolution--full three minutes ago--to humor his companion to the top
of his bent, and say "Yes" with hypocritical vigor to everything not
directly and immediately destructive to him and his.

The next moment they turned a corner and came upon the rest of their
party, hitherto hidden by the apricot hedge and a turning in the road.
A blue-black Kafir, with two yellow Hottentot drivers, man and boy, was
harnessing, in the most primitive mode, four horses on to the six oxen
attached to the wagon; and the horses were flattening their ears,
and otherwise resenting the incongruity. Meantime a fourth figure, a
colossal young Kafir woman, looked on superior with folded arms, like a
sable Juno looking down with that absolute composure upon the struggles
of man and other animals, which Lucretius and his master Epicurus
assigned to the Divine nature. Without jesting, the grandeur, majesty,
and repose of this figure were unsurpassable in nature, and such as have
vanished from sculpture two thousand years and more.

Dick Dale joined the group immediately, and soon arranged the matter.
Meantime, Phoebe descended from the wagon, and welcomed Christopher very
kindly, and asked him if he would like to sit beside her, or to walk.

He glanced into the wagon; it was covered and curtained, and dark as a
cupboard. "I think," said he, timidly, "I shall see more of the past out
here."

"So you will, poor soul," said Phoebe kindly, "and better for your
health: but you must not go far from the wagon, for I'm a fidget; and
I have got the care of you now, you know, for want of a better. Come,
Ucatella; you must ride with me, and help me sort the things; they are
all higgledy-piggledy." So those two got into the wagon through the back
curtains. Then the Kafir driver flourished his kambok, or long whip, in
the air, and made it crack like a pistol, and the horses reared, and the
oxen started and slowly bored in between them, for they whinnied, and
kicked, and spread out like a fan all over the road; but a flick or
two from the terrible kambok soon sent them bleeding and trembling and
rubbing shoulders, and the oxen, mildly but persistently goring their
recalcitrating haunches, the intelligent animals went ahead, and
revenged themselves by breaking the harness. But that goes for little in
Cape travel.

The body of the wagon was long and low and very stout. The tilt strong
and tight-made. The roof inside, and most of the sides, lined with green
baize. Curtains of the same to the little window and the back. There
was a sort of hold literally built full of purchases; a small fireproof
safe; huge blocks of salt; saws, axes, pickaxes, adzes, flails, tools
innumerable, bales of wool and linen stuff, hams, and two hundred empty
sacks strewn over all. In large pigeon-holes fixed to the sides were
light goods, groceries, collars, glaring cotton handkerchiefs for
Phoebe's aboriginal domestics, since not every year did she go to Cape
Town, a twenty days' journey by wagon: things dangled from the very
roof; but no hard goods there, if you please, to batter one's head in a
spill. Outside were latticed grooves with tent, tent-poles, and rifles.
Great pieces of cork, and bags of hay and corn, hung dangling from
mighty hooks--the latter to feed the cattle, should they be compelled
to camp out on some sterile spot on the Veldt, and methinks to act
as buffers, should the whole concern roll down a nullah or little
precipice, no very uncommon incident in the blessed region they must
pass to reach Dale's Kloof.

Harness mended; fresh start. The Hottentots and Kafir vociferated and
yelled, and made the unearthly row of a dozen wild beasts wrangling: the
horses drew the bullocks, they the wagon; it crawled and creaked, and
its appendages wobbled finely.

Slowly they creaked and wobbled past apricot hedges and detached houses
and huts, and got into an open country without a tree, but here and
there a stunted camel-thorn. The soil was arid, and grew little food
for man or beast; yet, by a singular freak of nature, it put forth
abundantly things that here at home we find it harder to raise than
homely grass and oats; the ground was thickly clad with flowers of
delightful hues; pyramids of snow or rose-color bordered the track;
yellow and crimson stars bejewelled the ground, and a thousand bulbous
plants burst into all imaginable colors, and spread a rainbow carpet
to the foot of the violet hills; and all this glowed, and gleamed, and
glittered in a sun shining with incredible brightness and purity of
light, but, somehow, without giving a headache or making the air sultry.

Christopher fell to gathering flowers, and interrogating the past by
means of them; for he had studied botany: the past gave him back some
pitiably vague ideas. He sighed. "Never mind," said he to Dick, and
tapped his forehead: "it is here: it is only locked up."

"All right," said Dick; "nothing is lost when you know where 'tis."

"This is a beautiful country," suggested Christopher. "It is all
flowers. It is like the garden of--the garden of--locked up."

"It is de--light--ful," replied the self-compelled optimist sturdily.
But here nature gave way; he was obliged to relieve his agricultural
bile by getting into the cart and complaining to his sister. "'Twill
take us all our time to cure him. He have been bepraising this here
soil, which it is only fit to clean the women's kettles. 'Twouldn't feed
three larks to an acre, I know; no, NOR HALF SO MANY."

"Poor soul! mayhap the flowers have took his eye. Sit here a bit, Dick.
I want to talk to you about a many things."

While these two were conversing, Ucatella, who was very fond of Phoebe,
but abhorred wagons, stepped out and stalked by the side, like an
ostrich, a camelopard, or a Taglioni; nor did the effort with which
she subdued her stride to the pace of the procession appear: it was
the poetry of walking. Christopher admired it a moment; but the noble
expanse tempted him, and he strode forth like a giant, his lungs
inflating in the glorious air, and soon left the wagon far behind.

The consequence was that when they came to a halt, and Dick and Phoebe
got out to release and water the cattle, there was Christopher's figure
retiring into space.

"Hanc rem aegre tulit Phoebe," as my old friend Livy would say. "Oh
dear! oh dear! if he strays so far from us, he will be eaten up at
nightfall by jackals, or lions, or something. One of you must go after
him."

"Me go, missy," said Ucatella zealously, pleased with an excuse for
stretching her magnificent limbs.

"Ay, but mayhap he will not come back with YOU: will he, Dick?"

"That he will, like a lamb." Dick wanted to look after the cattle.

"Yuke, my girl," said Phoebe, "listen. He has been a good friend of ours
in trouble; and now he is not quite right HERE. So be very kind to him,
but be sure and bring him back, or keep him till we come."

"Me bring him back alive, certain sure," said Ucatella, smiling from ear
to ear. She started with a sudden glide, like a boat taking the water,
and appeared almost to saunter away, so easy was the motion; but when
you looked at the ground she was covering, the stride, or glide, or
whatever it was, was amazing.


"She seem'd in walking to devour the way."


Christopher walked fast, but nothing like this; and as he stopped at
times to botanize and gaze at the violet hills, and interrogate the
past, she came up with him about five miles from the halting-place.

She laid her hand quietly on his shoulder, and said, with a broad genial
smile, and a musical chuckle, "Ucatella come for you. Missy want to
speak you."

"Oh! very well;" and he turned back with her, directly; but she took him
by the hand to make sure; and they marched back peaceably, in silence,
and hand in hand. But he looked and looked at her, and at last he
stopped dead short, and said, a little arrogantly, "Come, I know YOU.
YOU are not locked up;" and he inspected her point-blank. She stood
like an antique statue, and faced the examination. "You are 'the noble
savage,'" said he, having concluded his inspection.

"Nay," said she. "I be the housemaid."

"The housemaid?"

"Iss, the housemaid, Ucatella. So come on." And she drew him along, sore
perplexed.

They met the cavalcade a mile from the halting-place, and Phoebe
apologized a little to Christopher. "I hope you'll excuse me, sir," said
she, "but I am just for all the world like a hen with her chickens; if
but one strays, I'm all in a flutter till I get him back."

"Madam," said Christopher, "I am very unhappy at the way things are
locked up. Please tell me truly, is this 'the housemaid,' or 'the noble
savage'?"

"Well, she is both, if you go to that, and the best creature ever
breathed."

"Then she IS 'the noble savage'?"

"Ay, so they call her, because she is black."

"Then, thank Heaven," said Christopher, "the past is not all locked up."

That afternoon they stopped at an inn. But Dick slept in the cart.
At three in the morning they took the road again, and creaked along
supernaturally loud under a purple firmament studded with huge stars,
all bright as moons, that lit the way quite clear, and showed black
things innumerable flitting to and fro; these made Phoebe shudder,
but were no doubt harmless; still Dick carried his double rifle, and a
revolver in his belt.

They made a fine march in the cool, until some slight mists gathered,
and then they halted and breakfasted near a silvery kloof, and watered
the cattle. While thus employed, suddenly a golden tinge seemed to
fall like a lash on the vapors of night; they scudded away directly, as
jackals before the lion; the stars paled, and with one incredible bound,
the mighty sun leaped into the horizon, and rose into the sky. In a
moment all the lesser lamps of heaven were out, though late so glorious,
and there was nothing but one vast vaulted turquoise, and a great
flaming topaz mounting with eternal ardor to its centre.

This did not escape Christopher. "What is this?" said he. "No twilight.
The tropics!" He managed to dig that word out of the past in a moment.

At ten o'clock the sun was so hot that they halted, and let the oxen
loose till sun-down. Then they began to climb the mountains.

The way was steep and rugged; indeed, so rough in places, that the
cattle had to jump over the holes, and as the wagon could not jump so
cleverly, it jolted appallingly, and many a scream issued forth.

Near the summit, when the poor beasts were dead beat, they got into
clouds and storms, and the wind rushed howling at them through the
narrow pass with such fury it flattened the horses' ears, and bade fair
to sweep the whole cavalcade to the plains below.

Christopher and Dick walked close behind, under the lee of the wagon.
Christopher said in Dick's ear, "D'ye hear that? Time to reef topsails,
captain."

"It is time to do SOMETHING," said Dick. He took advantage of a jutting
rock, drew the wagon half behind it and across the road, propped the
wheels with stones, and they all huddled to leeward, man and beast
indiscriminately.

"Ah!" said Christopher, approvingly; "we are lying to: a
very--proper--course."

They huddled and shivered three hours, and then the sun leaped into the
sky, and lo! a transformation scene. The cold clouds were first rosy
fleeces, then golden ones, then gold-dust, then gone; the rain was
big diamonds, then crystal sparks, then gone; the rocks and the bushes
sparkled with gem-like drops, and shone and smiled.

The shivering party bustled, and toasted the potent luminary in hot
coffee; for Phoebe's wagon had a stove and chimney; and then they yoked
their miscellaneous cattle again, and breasted the hill. With many
a jump, and bump, and jolt, and scream from inside, they reached the
summit, and looked down on a vast slope, flowering but arid, a region of
gaudy sterility.

The descent was more tremendous than the ascent, and Phoebe got out,
and told Christopher she would liever cross the ocean twice than this
dreadful mountain once.

The Hottentot with the reins was now bent like a bow all the time,
keeping the cattle from flowing diverse over precipices, and the Kafir
with his kambok was here, and there, and everywhere, his whip flicking
like a lancet, and cracking like a horse-pistol, and the pair vied like
Apollo and Pan, not which could sing sweetest, but swear loudest. Having
the lofty hill for some hours between them and the sun, they bumped, and
jolted, and stuck in mud-holes, and flogged and swore the cattle out
of them again, till at last they got to the bottom, where ran a turbid
kloof or stream. It was fordable, but the recent rains had licked away
the slope; so the existing bank was two feet above the stream. Little
recked the demon drivers or the parched cattle; in they plunged
promiscuously, with a flop like thunder, followed by an awful splashing.
The wagon stuck fast in the mud, the horses tied themselves in a knot,
and rolled about in the stream, and the oxen drank imperturbably.

"Oh, the salt! the salt!" screamed Phoebe, and the rocks re-echoed her
lamentations.

The wagon was inextricable, the cattle done up, the savages lazy, so
they stayed for several hours. Christopher botanized, but not alone.
Phoebe drew Ucatella apart, and explained to her that when a man is a
little wrong in the head, it makes a child of him: "So," said she, "you
must think he is your child, and never let him out of your sight."

"All right," said the sable Juno, who spoke English ridiculously well,
and rapped out idioms; especially "Come on," and "All right."

About dusk, what the drivers had foreseen, though they had not the sense
to explain it, took place; the kloof dwindled to a mere gutter, and the
wagon stuck high and dry. Phoebe waved her handkerchief to Ucatella.
Ucatella, who had dogged Christopher about four hours without a word,
now took his hand, and said, "My child, missy wants us; come on;" and so
led him unresistingly.

The drivers, flogging like devils, cursing like troopers, and yelling
like hyenas gone mad, tried to get the wagon off; but it was fast as a
rock. Then Dick and the Hottentot put their shoulders to one wheel, and
tried to prise it up, while the Kafir ENCOURAGED the cattle with his
thong. Observing this, Christopher went in, with his sable custodian at
his heels, and heaved at the other embedded wheel. The wagon was lifted
directly, so that the cattle tugged it out, and they got clear. On
examination, the salt had just escaped.

Says Ucatella to Phoebe, a little ostentatiously, "My child is strong
and useful; make little missy a good slave."

"A slave! Heaven forbid!" said Phoebe. "He'll be a father to us all,
once he gets his head back; and I do think it is coming--but very slow."

The next three days offered the ordinary incidents of African travel,
but nothing that operated much on Christopher's mind, which is the
true point of this narrative; and as there are many admirable books of
African travel, it is the more proper I should confine myself to what
may be called the relevant incidents of the journey.

On the sixth day from Cape Town, they came up with a large wagon stuck
in a mud-hole. There was quite a party of Boers, Hottentots, Kafirs,
round it, armed with whips, shamboks, and oaths, lashing and cursing
without intermission, or any good effect; and there were the wretched
beasts straining in vain at their choking yokes, moaning with anguish,
trembling with terror, their poor mild eyes dilated with agony and fear,
and often, when the blows of the cruel shamboks cut open their bleeding
flesh, they bellowed to Heaven their miserable and vain protest against
this devil's work.

Then the past opened its stores, and lent Christopher a word.

"BARBARIANS!" he roared, and seized a gigantic Kafir by the throat,
just as his shambok descended for the hundredth time. There was a mighty
struggle, as of two Titans; dust flew round the combatants in a cloud; a
whirling of big bodies, and down they both went with an awful thud, the
Saxon uppermost, by Nature's law.

The Kafir's companions, amazed at first, began to roll their eyes and
draw a knife or two; but Dick ran forward, and said, "Don't hurt him: he
is wrong HERE."

This representation pacified them more readily than one might have
expected. Dick added hastily, "We'll get you out of the hole OUR way,
and cry quits."

The proposal was favorably received, and the next minute Christopher and
Ucatella at one wheel, and Dick and the Hottentot at the other, with no
other help than two pointed iron bars bought for their shepherds, had
effected what sixteen oxen could not. To do this Dick Dale had bared his
arm to the shoulder; it was a stalwart limb, like his sister's, and he
now held it out all swollen and corded, and slapped it with his other
hand. "Look'ee here, you chaps," said he: "the worst use a man can put
that there to is to go cutting out a poor beast's heart for not doing
more than he can. You are good fellows, you Kafirs; but I think you have
sworn never to put your shoulder to a wheel. But, bless your poor silly
hearts, a little strength put on at the right place is better than a
deal at the wrong."

"You hear that, you Kafir chaps?" inquired Ucatella, a little
arrogantly--for a Kafir.

The Kafirs, who had stood quite silent to imbibe these remarks, bowed
their heads with all the dignity and politeness of Roman senators,
Spanish grandees, etc.; and one of the party replied gravely, "The words
of the white man are always wise."

"And his arm blanked* strong," said Christopher's late opponent, from
whose mind, however, all resentment had vanished.

* I take this very useful expression from a delightful
volume by Mr. Boyle.

Thus spake the Kafirs; yet to this day never hath a man of all their
tribe put his shoulder to a wheel, so strong is custom in South Africa;
probably in all Africa; since I remember St. Augustin found it stronger
than he liked, at Carthage.

Ucatella went to Phoebe, and said, "Missy, my child is good and brave."

"Bother you and your child!" said poor Phoebe. "To think of his flying
at a giant like that, and you letting of him. I'm all of a tremble from
head to foot:" and Phoebe relieved herself with a cry.

"Oh, missy!" said Ucatella.

"There, never mind me. Do go and look after your child, and keep him out
of more mischief. I wish we were safe at Dale's Kloof, I do."

Ucatella complied, and went botanizing with Dr. Staines; but that
gentleman, in the course of his scientific researches into camomile
flowers and blasted heath, which were all that lovely region afforded,
suddenly succumbed and stretched out his limbs, and said, sleepily,
"Good-night--U--cat--" and was off into the land of Nod.

The wagon, which, by the way, had passed the larger but slower vehicle,
found him fast asleep, and Ucatella standing by him as ordered,
motionless and grand.

"Oh, dear! what now?" said Phoebe: but being a sensible woman, though
in the hen and chickens line, she said, "'Tis the fighting and the
excitement. 'Twill do him more good than harm, I think:" and she had him
bestowed in the wagon, and never disturbed him night nor day. He slept
thirty-six hours at a stretch; and when he awoke, she noticed a slight
change in his eye. He looked at her with an interest he had not shown
before, and said, "Madam, I know you."

"Thank God for that," said Phoebe.

"You kept a little shop, in the other world."

Phoebe opened her eyes with some little alarm.

"You understand--the world that is locked up--for the present."

"Well, sir, so I did; and sold you milk and butter. Don't you mind?"

"No--the milk and butter--they are locked up."

The country became wilder, the signs of life miserably sparse; about
every twenty miles the farmhouse or hut of a degenerate Boer, whose
children and slaves pigged together, and all ran jostling, and the
mistress screamed in her shrill Dutch, and the Hottentots all chirped
together, and confusion reigned for want of method: often they went
miles, and saw nothing but a hut or two, with a nude Hottentot eating
flesh, burnt a little, but not cooked, at the door; and the kloofs
became deeper and more turbid, and Phoebe was in an agony about her
salt, and Christopher advised her to break it in big lumps, and hang it
all about the wagon in sacks; and she did, and Ucatella said profoundly,
"My child is wise;" and they began to draw near home, and Phoebe to
fidget; and she said to Christopher, "Oh, dear! I hope they are all
alive and well: once you leave home, you don't know what may have
happened by then you come back. One comfort, I've got Sophy: she is very
dependable, and no beauty, thank my stars."