The Translation of a Savage, Volume 3.

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THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 3.

IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES
X. "THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS"
XI. UPON THE HIGHWAY
XII. "THE CHASE OF THE YELLOW SWAN"
XIII. A LIVING POEM
XIV. ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE
XV. THE END OF THE TRAIL

CHAPTER IX

THE FAITH OF COMRADES

When Francis Armour left his wife's room he did not go to his own, but
quietly descended the stairs, went to the library, and sat down. The
loneliest thing in the world is to be tete-a-tete with one's conscience.
A man may have a bad hour with an enemy, a sad hour with a friend, a
peaceful hour with himself, but when the little dwarf, conscience,
perches upon every hillock of remembrance and makes slow signs--those
strange symbols of the language of the soul--to him, no slave upon the
tread-mill suffers more.

The butler came in to see if anything was required, but Armour only
greeted him silently and waved him away. His brain was painfully alert,
his memory singularly awake. It seemed that the incident of this hour
had so opened up every channel of his intelligence that all his life ran
past him in fantastic panorama, as by that illumination which comes to
the drowning man. He seemed under some strange spell. Once or twice he
rose, rubbed his eyes, and looked round the room--the room where as a boy
he had spent idle hours, where as a student he had been in the hands of
his tutor, and as a young man had found recreations such as belong to
ambitious and ardent youth. Every corner was familiar. Nothing was
changed. The books upon the shelves were as they were placed twenty
years ago. And yet he did not seem a part of it. It did not seem
natural to him. He was in an atmosphere of strangeness--that atmosphere
which surrounds a man, as by a cloud, when some crisis comes upon him and
his life seems to stand still, whirling upon its narrow base, while the
world appears at an interminable distance, even as to a deaf man who sees
yet cannot hear.

There came home to him at that moment with a force indescribable the
shamelessness of the act he committed four years ago. He had thought to
come back to miserable humiliation. For four years he had refused to do
his duty as a man towards an innocent woman,--a woman, though in part a
savage,--now transformed into a gentle, noble creature of delight and
goodness. How had he deserved it? He had sown the storm, it was but
just that he should reap the whirlwind; he had scattered thistles,
could he expect to gather grapes? He knew that the sympathy of all his
father's house was not with him, but with the woman he had wronged. He
was glad it was so. Looking back now, it seemed so poor and paltry a
thing that he, a man, should stoop to revenge himself upon those who had
given him birth, as a kind of insult to the woman who had lightly set him
aside, and should use for that purpose a helpless, confiding girl. To
revenge one's self for wrong to one's self is but a common passion, which
has little dignity; to avenge some one whom one has loved, man or woman,
--and, before all, woman,--has some touch of nobility, is redeemed by
loyalty. For his act there was not one word of defence to be made, and
he was not prepared to make it.

The cigars and liquors were beside him, but he did not touch them. He
seemed very far away from the ordinary details of his life: he knew he
had before him hard travel, and he was not confident of the end. He
could not tell how long he sat there. --After, a time the ticking of
the clock seemed painfully loud to him. Now and again he heard a cab
rattling through the Square, and the foolish song of some drunken
loiterer in the night caused him to start painfully. Everything jarred
on him. Once he got up, went to the window, and looked out. The moon
was shining full on the Square. He wondered if it would be well for him
to go out and find some quiet to his nerves in walking. He did so. Out
in the Square he looked up to his wife's window. It was lighted. Long
time he walked up and down, his eyes on the window. It held him like a
charm. Once he leaned against the iron railings of the garden and looked
up, not moving for a time. Presently he saw the curtain of the window
raised, and against the dim light of the room was outlined the figure of
his wife. He knew it. She stood for a moment looking out into the
night. She could not see him, nor could he see her features at all
plainly, but he knew that she, like him, was alone with the catastrophe
which his wickedness had sent upon her. Soon the curtain was drawn down
again, and then he went once more to the house and took his old seat
beside the table. He fell to brooding, and at last, exhausted, dropped
to a troubled sleep. He woke with a start. Some one was in the room.
He heard a step behind him. He came to his feet quickly, a wild light in
his eyes. He faced his brother Richard.

Late in the afternoon Marion had telegraphed to Richard that Frank was
coming. He had been away visiting some poor and sick people, and when he
came back to Greyhope it was too late to catch the train. But the horses
were harnessed straightway, and he was driven into town, a three-hours'
drive. He had left the horses at the stables, and, having a latch-key,
had come in quietly. He had seen the light in the study, and guessed who
was there. He entered, and saw his brother asleep. He watched him for a
moment and studied him. Then he moved away to take off his hat, and, as
he did so, stumbled slightly. Then it was Frank waked, and for the first
time in five years they looked each other in the eyes. They both stood
immovable for a moment, and then Richard caught Frank's hand in both of
his and said: "God bless you, my boy! I am glad you are back."

"Dick! Dick!" was the reply, and Frank's other hand clutched Richard's
shoulder in his strong emotion. They stood silent for a moment longer,
and then Richard recovered himself. He waved his hand to the chairs.
The strain of the situation was a little painful for them both. Men are
shy with each other where their emotions are in play.

"Why, my boy," he said, waving a hand to the spirits and liqueurs, "full
bottles and unopened boxes? Tut, tut! here's a pretty how-d'ye-do. Is
this the way you toast the home quarters? You're a fine soldier for an
old mess!"

So saying, he poured out some whiskey, then opened the box of cigars and
pushed them towards his brother. He did not care particularly to drink
or smoke himself, but a man--an Englishman--is a strange creature. He is
most natural and at ease when he is engaged in eating and drinking. He
relieves every trying situation by some frivolous and selfish occupation,
as of dismembering a partridge, or mixing a punch.

"Well, Frank," said his brother, "now what have you to say for yourself?
Why didn't you come long ago? You have played the adventurer for five
years, and what have you to show for it? Have you a fortune?" Frank
shook his head, and twisted a shoulder. "What have you done that is
worth the doing, then?"

"Nothing that I intended to do, Dick," was the grave reply.

"Yes, I imagined that. You have seen them, have you?" he added, in a
softer voice.

Frank blew a great cloud of smoke about his face, and through it he said:
"Yes, I have seen a damned sight more than I deserved to see."

"Oh, of course; I know that, my boy; but, so far as I can see, in another
direction you are getting quite what you deserve: your wife and child are
upstairs--you are here."

He paused, was silent for a moment, then leaned over, caught his
brother's arm, and said, in a low, strenuous voice: "Frank Armour, you
laid a hateful little plot for us. It wasn't manly, but we forgave it
and did the best we could. But see here, Frank, take my word for it,
you have had a lot of luck. There isn't one woman out of ten thousand
that would have stood the test as your wife has stood it; injured at the
start, constant neglect, temptation--" he paused. "My boy, did you ever
think of that, of the temptation to a woman neglected by her husband?
The temptation to men? Yes, you have had a lot of luck. There has been
a special providence for you, my boy; but not for your sake. God doesn't
love neglectful husbands, but I think He is pretty sorry for neglected
wives."

Frank was very still. His head drooped, the cigar hung unheeded in his
fingers for a moment, and he said at last: "Dick, old boy, I've thought
it all over to-night since I came back--everything that you've said.
I have not a word of defence to make, but, by heaven! I'm going to win
my wife's love if I can, and when I do it I'll make up for all my cursed
foolishness--see if I don't."

"That sounds well, Frank," was the quiet reply. "I like to hear you talk
that way. You would be very foolish if you did not. What do you think
of the child?"

"Can you ask me what I think? He is a splendid little fellow."

"Take care of him, then--take good care of him: you may never have
another," was the grim rejoinder. Frank winced. His brother rose, took
his arm, and said: "Let us go to our rooms, Frank. There will be time
enough to talk later, and I am not so young as I once was."

Truth to say, Richard Armour was not so young as he seemed a few months
before. His shoulders were a little stooped, he was greyer about the
temples. The little bit of cynicism which had appeared in that remark
about the care of the child showed also in the lines of his mouth; yet
his eyes had the same old true, honest look. But a man cannot be hit in
mortal places once or twice in his life without its being etched on his
face or dropped like a pinch of aloe from his tongue.

Still they sat and talked much longer, Frank showing better than when his
brother came, Richard gone grey and tired. At last Richard rose and
motioned towards the window. "See, Frank," he said, "it is morning."
Then he went and lifted the blind. The grey, unpurged air oozed on the
glass. The light was breaking over the tops of the houses. A crossing-
sweeper early to his task, or holding the key of the street, went
pottering by, and a policeman glanced up at them as he passed. Richard
drew down the curtain again.

"Dick," said Frank suddenly, "you look old. I wonder if I have changed
as much?"

Six months before, Frank Armour would have said hat his brother looked
young.

"Oh, you look young enough, Frank," was the reply. "But I am a good deal
older than I was five years ago. . . Come, let us go to bed."

CHAPTER X

THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS

And Lali? How had the night gone for her? When she rose from the
child's cot, where her lips had caught the warmth that her husband had
left on them, she stood for a moment bewildered in the middle of the
room. She looked at the door out of which he had gone, her bosom beating
hard, her heart throbbing so that it hurt her--that she could have cried
out from mere physical pain. The wifedom in her was plundering the wild
stores of her generous soul for the man, for--as Richard had said that
day, that memorable day!--the father of her child. But the woman, the
pure translated woman, who was born anew when this frail life in its pink
and white glory crept out into the dazzling world, shrank back, as any
girl might shrink that had not known marriage. This child had come--from
what?--She shuddered now--how many times had she done so since she first
waked to the vulgar sacrilege of her marriage? She knew now that every
good mother, when her first child is born, takes it in her arms, and, all
her agony gone, and the ineffable peace of delivered motherhood come,
speaks the name of its father, and calls it his child. But--she
remembered it now--when her child was born, this little waif, the fruit
of a man's hot, malicious hour, she wrapped it in her arms, pressed its
delicate flesh to the silken folds of her bosom, and weeping, whispered
only: "My child, my little, little child!"

She had never, as many a wife far from her husband has done, talked to
her child of its father, told it of his beauty and his virtues, arrayed
it day by day in sweet linen and pretty adornments, as if he were just
then knocking at her door; she had never imagined what he would say when
he did come. What could such a father think of his child, born of a
woman whose very life he had intended as an insult? No, she had loved
it for father and mother also. She had tried to be good, a good mother,
living a life unutterably lonely, hard in all that it involved of study,
new duty, translation, and burial of primitive emotions. And with all
the care and tearful watchfulness that had been needed, she had grown so
proud, so exacting--exacting for her child, proud for herself.

How could she know now that this hasty declaration of affection was
anything more than the mere man in him? Years ago she had not been able
to judge between love and insult--what guarantee had she here? Did he
think that she could believe in him? She was not the woman he had
married, he was not the man she had married. He had deceived her basely
--she had been a common chattel. She had been miserable enough--could
she give herself over to his flying emotions again so suddenly?

She paced the room, her face now in her hands, her hands now clasping and
wringing before her. Her wifely duty? She straightened to that. Duty!
She was first and before all a good, unpolluted woman. No, no, it could
not be. Love him? Again she shrank. Then came flooding on her that
afternoon when she had flung herself on Richard's breast, and all those
hundred days of happiness in Richard's company--Richard the considerate,
the strong, who had stood so by his honour in an hour of peril.

Now as she thought of it a hot wave shivered through all her body, and
tingled to her hair. Her face again dropped in her hands, and, as on
that other day, she knelt beside the cot, and, bursting into tears,
said through her sobs: "My baby, my own dear baby! Oh, that we could go
away--away--and never come back again!"

She did not know how intense her sobs were. They waked the child from
its delicate sleep; its blue eyes opened wide and wise all on the
instant, its round soft arm ran up to its mother's neck, and it said:
"Don't c'y! I want to s'eep wif you! I'se so s'eepy!"

She caught the child to her wet face, smiled at it through her tears,
went with it to her own bed, put it away in the deep whiteness, kissed
it, and fondled it away again into the heaven of sleep. When this was
done she felt calmer. How she hungered over it! This--this could not be
denied her. This, at least, was all hers, without clause or reservation,
an absolute love, and an absolute right.

She disrobed and drew in beside the child, and its little dewy cheek
touching her breast seemed to ease the ache in her soul.

But sleep would not come. All the past four years trooped by, with their
thousand incidents magnified in the sharp, throbbing light of her mind,
and at last she knew and saw clearly what was before her, what trials,
what duty, and what honour demanded--her honour.

Richard? Once for all she gently put him away from her into that
infinite distance of fine respect which a good woman can feel, who has
known what she and Richard had known--and set aside. But he had made for
her so high a standard, that for one to be measured thereby was a severe
challenge.

Could Frank come even to that measure? She dared not try to answer the
question. She feared, she shrank, she grew sick at heart. She did not
reckon with that other thing, that powerful, infinite influence which
ties a woman, she knows not how or why, to the man who led her to the
world of motherhood. Through all the wrongs which she may suffer by him,
there runs this cable of unhappy attraction, testified to by how many
sorrowful lives!

But Lali was trying to think it out, not only to feel, and she did not
count that subterranean force which must play its part in this new
situation in her drama of life. Could she love him? She crept away out
of the haven where her child was, put on her dressing-gown, went to the
window, and looked out upon the night, all unconscious that her husband
was looking at her from the Square below. Love him?--Love him?--Love
him? Could she? Did he love her? Her eyes wandered over the Square.
Nowhere else was there a light, but a chimney-flue was creaking
somewhere. It jarred on her so that she shrank. Then all at once she
smiled to think how she had changed. Four years ago she could have slept
amid the hammers of a foundry. The noise ceased. Her eyes passed from
the cloud of trees in the Square to the sky-all stars, and restful deep
blue. That--that was the same. How she knew it! Orion and Ashtaroth,
and Mars and the Pleiades, and the long trail of the Milky Way. As a
little child hanging in the trees, or sprawled beside a tepee, she had
made friends with them all, even as she learned and loved all the signs
of the earth beneath--the twist of a blade of grass, the portent in the
cry of a river-hen, the colour of a star, the smell of a wind. She had
known Nature then, now she knew men. And knowing them, and having
suffered, and sick at heart as she was, standing by this window in the
dead of night, the cry that shook her softly was not of her new life,
but of the old, primitive, child-like.

'Pasagathe, omarki kethose kolokani vorgantha pestorondikat Oni.'

"A spear hath pierced me, and the smart of the nettle is in my wound.
Maker of the soft night, bind my wounds with sleep, lest I cry out and be
a coward and unworthy."

Again and again, unconsciously, the words passed from her lips

'Vorganthe, pestorondikat Oni.'

At last she let down the blind, came to the bed, and once more gathered
her child in her arms with an infinite hunger. This love was hers--rich,
untrammelled, and so sacred. No matter what came, and she did not know
what would come, she had the child. There was a kind of ecstasy in it,
and she lay and trembled with the feeling, but at last fell into a
troubled sleep.

She waked suddenly to hear footsteps passing her door. She listened.
One footstep was heavier than the other--heavier and a little stumbling;
she recognised them, Frank and Richard. In that moment her heart
hardened. Frank Armour must tread a difficult road.

CHAPTER XI

UPON THE HIGHWAY

Frank visited the child in the morning, and was received with a casual
interest. Richard Joseph Armour was fastidious, was not to be won at the
grand gallop. Besides, he had just had a visit from his uncle, and the
good taste of that gay time was yet in his mouth. He did not resent the
embraces, but he did not respond to them, and he straightened himself
with relief when the assault was over. Some one was paying homage to
him, that was all he knew; but for his own satisfaction and pleasure he
preferred as yet his old comrades, Edward Lambert, Captain Vidall,
General Armour, and, above all, Richard. He only showed real interest
at the last, when he asked, as it were in compromise, if his father would
give him a sword. No one had ever talked to him of his father, and he
had no instinct for him so far as could be seen. The sword was,
therefore, after the manner of a concession. Frank rashly promised it,
and was promptly told by Marion that it couldn't be; and she was backed
by Captain Vidall, who said it had already been tabooed, and Frank wasn't
to come in and ask for favours or expect them.

The husband and wife met at breakfast. He was down first. When his wife
entered, he came to her, they touched hands, and she presently took a
seat beside him. More than once he paused suddenly in his eating, when
he thought of his inexplicable case. He was now face to face with a
reversed situation. He had once picked up a pebble from the brown dirt
of a prairie, that he might toss it into the pool of this home life; and
he had tossed it, and from the sweet bath there had come out a precious
stone, which he longed to wear, and knew that he could not--not yet.
He could have coerced a lower being, but for his manhood's sake--he had
risen to that now, it is curious how the dignity of fatherhood helps to
make a man--he could not coerce here, and if he did, he knew that the
product would be disaster.

He listened to her talk with Marion and Captain Vidall. Her voice
was musical, balanced, her language breathed; it had manner, and an
indescribable cadence of intelligence, joined to a deliberation, which
touched her off with distinction. When she spoke to him--and she seemed
to do that as by studied intention and with tact at certain intervals--
her manner was composed and kind. She had resolved on her part. She
asked him about his journey over, about his plans for the day, and if
he had decided to ride with her in the Park,--he could have the general's
mount, she was sure, for the general was not going that day,--and would
he mind doing a little errand for her afterwards in Regent Street, for
the child--she feared she herself would not have time?

Just then General Armour entered, and, passing behind her, kissed her on
the cheek, dropping his hand on Frank's shoulder at the same time with a
hearty greeting. Of course, Frank could have his mount, he said. Mrs.
Armour did not come down, but she sent word by Richard, who entered last,
that she would be glad to see Frank for a moment before he left for the
Park. As of old, Richard took both Lali's hands in his, patted them, and
cheerily said:

"Well, well, Lali, we've got the wild man home again safe and sound,
haven't we--the same old vagabond? We'll have to turn him into a
Christian again--'For while the lamp holds out to burn'--"

He did not give her time to reply, but their eyes met honestly, kindly,
and from the look they both passed into life and time again with a fresh
courage. She did not know, nor did he, how near they had been to an
abyss; and neither ever knew. One furtive glance at the moment, one
hesitating pressure of the hand, one movement of the head from each
other's gaze, and there had been unhappiness for them all. But they
were safe.

In the Park, Frank and his wife talked little. They met many who greeted
them cordially, and numbers of Frank's old club friends summoned him to
the sacred fires at his earliest opportunity. The two talked chiefly of
the people they met, and Frank thrilled with admiration at his wife's
gentle judgment of everybody.

"The true thing, absolutely the true thing," he said; and he was
conscious, too, that her instincts were right and searching, for once or
twice he saw her face chill a little when they met one or two men whose
reputations as chevaliers des dames were pronounced. These men had had
one or two confusing minutes with Lali in their time.

"How splendidly you ride!" he said, as he came up swiftly to her, after
having chatted for a moment with Edward Lambert. "You sit like wax, and
so entirely easy."

"Thank you," she said. "I suppose I really like it too well to ride
badly, and then I began young on horses not so good as Musket here--
bareback, too!" she added, with a little soft irony.

He thought--she did not, however--that she was referring to that first
letter he sent home to his people, when he consigned her, like any other
awkward freight, to their care. He flushed to his eyes. It cut him
deep, but her eyes only had a distant, dreamy look which conveyed nothing
of the sting in her words. Like most men, he had a touch of vanity too,
and he might have resented the words vaguely, had he not remembered his
talk with his mother an hour before.

She had begged him to have patience, she had made him promise that he
would not in any circumstance say an ungentle or bitter thing, that he
would bide the effort of constant devotion, and his love of the child.
Especially must he try to reach her through love of the child.

By which it will be seen that Mrs. Armour had come to some wisdom by
reason of her love for Frank's wife and child.

"My son," she had said, "through the child is the surest way, believe me;
for only a mother can understand what that means, how much and how far it
goes. You are a father, but until last night you never had the flush of
that love in your veins. You stand yet only at the door of that life
which has done more to guide, save, instruct, and deepen your wife's life
than anything else, though your brother Richard--to whom you owe a debt
that you can never repay--has done much in deed. Be wise, my dear, as I
have learned a little to be since first your wife came. All might easily
have gone wrong. It has all gone well; and we, my son, have tried to do
our duty lovingly, consistently, to dear Lali and the child."

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