Allans Wife | Page 6

foreign cousin of hers. It seems from a letter she left me that
she always cared for him, not for me. She married me because she
thought me a rich English milord. Now she has run through my
property, or most of it, and gone. I don't know where. Luckily, she did
not care to encumber her new career with the child; Stella is left to me."
"That is what comes of marrying a papist, Carson," said my father. That
was his fault; he was as good and charitable a man as ever lived, but he
was bigoted. "What are you going to do--follow her?"
He laughed bitterly in answer.
"Follow her!" he said; "why should I follow her? If I met her I might
kill her or him, or both of them, because of the disgrace they have
brought upon my child's name. No, I never want to look upon her face
again. I trusted her, I tell you, and she has betrayed me. Let her go and
find her fate. But I am going too. I am weary of my life."
"Surely, Carson, surely," said my father, "you do not mean----"
"No, no; not that. Death comes soon enough. But I will leave this
civilized world which is a lie. We will go right away into the wilds, I
and my child, and hide our shame. Where? I don't know where.
Anywhere, so long as there are no white faces, no smooth educated
tongues----"
"You are mad, Carson," my father answered. "How will you live? How
can you educate Stella? Be a man and wear it down."
"I will be a man, and I will wear it down, but not here, Quatermain.
Education! Was not she--that woman who was my wife--was not she

highly educated?--the cleverest woman in the country forsooth. Too
clever for me, Quatermain--too clever by half! No, no, Stella shall be
brought up in a different school; if it be possible, she shall forget her
very name. Good-bye, old friend, good-bye for ever. Do not try to find
me out, henceforth I shall be like one dead to you, to you and all I
knew," and he was gone.
"Mad," said my father, with a heavy sigh. "His trouble has turned his
brain. But he will think better of it."
At that moment the nurse came hurrying in and whispered something in
his ear. My father's face turned deadly pale. He clutched at the table to
support himself, then staggered from the room. My mother was dying!
It was some days afterwards, I do not know exactly how long, that my
father took me by the hand and led me upstairs into the big room which
had been my mother's bedroom. There she lay, dead in her coffin, with
flowers in her hand. Along the wall of the room were arranged three
little white beds, and on each of the beds lay one of my brothers. They
all looked as though they were asleep, and they all had flowers in their
hands. My father told me to kiss them, because I should not see them
any more, and I did so, though I was very frightened. I did not know
why. Then he took me in his arms and kissed me.
"The Lord hath given," he said, "and the Lord hath taken away; blessed
be the name of the Lord."
I cried very much, and he took me downstairs, and after that I have
only a confused memory of men dressed in black carrying heavy
burdens towards the grey churchyard!
Next comes a vision of a great ship and wide tossing waters. My father
could no longer bear to live in England after the loss that had fallen on
him, and made up his mind to emigrate to South Africa. We must have
been poor at the time--indeed, I believe that a large portion of our
income went from my father on my mother's death. At any rate we
travelled with the steerage passengers, and the intense discomfort of the
journey with the rough ways of our fellow emigrants still remain upon

my mind. At last it came to an end, and we reached Africa, which I was
not to leave again for many, many years.
In those days civilization had not made any great progress in Southern
Africa. My father went up the country and became a missionary among
the Kaffirs, near to where the town of Cradock now stands, and here I
grew to manhood. There were a few Boer farmers in the neighbourhood,
and gradually a little settlement of whites gathered round our mission
station--a drunken Scotch blacksmith and wheelwright was about the
most interesting character, who, when he was sober, could quote the
Scottish poet Burns and the Ingoldsby Legends, then recently published,