it was late afternoon by the banks of a swiftly rushing river, a river that gave back a haze of heat from its waters as though it were some stagnant steaming lagoon, and yet seemed to be whirling onward with the determination of a living thing, perpetually eager and remorseless, leaping savagely at any obstacle that attempted to stay its course; an unfriendly river, to whose waters you committed yourself at your peril. under the hot breathless shade of the trees on its shore arose that acrid all-pervading smell that seems to hang everywhere about the tropics, a smell as of some monstrous musty still-room where herbs and spices have been crushed and distilled and stored for hundreds of years, and where the windows have seldom been opened. in the dazzling heat that still held undisputed sway over the scene, insects and birds seemed preposterously alive and active, flitting their gay colours through the sunbeams, and crawling over the baked dust in the full swing and pursuit of their several businesses; the flies engaged in heaven knows what, and the fly-catchers busy with the flies. beasts and humans showed no such indifference to the temperature; the sun would have to slant yet further downward before the earth would become a fit arena for their revived activities. in the sheltered basement of a wayside rest-house a gang of native hammock-bearers slept or chattered drowsily through the last hours of the long mid-day halt; wide awake, yet almost motionless in the thrall of a heavy lassitude, their european master sat alone in an upper chamber, staring out through a narrow window-opening at the native village, spreading away in thick clusters of huts girt around with cultivated vegetation. it seemed a vast human ant-hill, which would presently be astir with its teeming human life, as though the sun god in his last departing stride had roused it with a careless kick. even as comus watched he could see the beginnings of the evening’s awakening. women, squatting in front of their huts, began to pound away at the rice or maize that would form the evening meal, girls were collecting their water pots preparatory to a walk down to the river, and enterprising goats made tentative forays through gaps in the ill-kept fences of neighbouring garden plots; their hurried retreats showed that here at least someone was keeping alert and wakeful vigil. behind a hut perched on a steep hillside, just opposite to the rest-house, two boys were splitting wood with a certain languid industry; further down the road a group of dogs were leisurely working themselves up to quarrelling pitch. here and there, bands of evil-looking pigs roamed about, busy with foraging excursions that came unpleasantly athwart the border-line of scavenging. and from the trees that bounded and intersected the village rose the horrible, tireless, spiteful-sounding squawking of the iron-throated crows.
comus sat and watched it all with a sense of growing aching depression. it was so utterly trivial to his eyes, so devoid of interest, and yet it was so real, so serious, so implacable in its continuity. the brain grew tired with the thought of its unceasing reproduction. it had all gone on, as it was going on now, by the side of the great rushing swirling river, this tilling and planting and harvesting, marketing and store-keeping, feast-making and fetish-worship and love-making, burying and giving in marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing, all this had been going on, in the shimmering, blistering heat and the warm nights, while he had been a youngster at school, dimly recognising africa as a division of the earth’s surface that it was advisable to have a certain nodding acquaintance with.
it had been going on in all its trifling detail, all its serious intensity, when his father and his grandfather in their day had been little boys at school, it would go on just as intently as ever long after comus and his generation had passed away, just as the shadows would lengthen and fade under the mulberry trees in that far away english garden, round the old stone fountain where a leaden otter for ever preyed on a leaden salmon.
comus rose impatiently from his seat, and walked wearily across the hut to another window-opening which commanded a broad view of the river. there was something which fascinated and then depressed one in its ceaseless hurrying onward sweep, its tons of water rushing on for all time, as long as the face of the earth should remain unchanged. on its further shore could be seen spread out at intervals other teeming villages, with their cultivated plots and pasture clearings, their moving dots which meant cattle and goats and dogs and children. and far up its course, lost in the forest growth that fringed its banks, were hidden away yet more villages, human herding-grounds where men dwelt and worked and bartered, squabbled and worshipped, sickened and perished, while the river went by with its endless swirl and rush of gleaming waters. one could well understand primitive early races making propitiatory sacrifices to the spirit of a great river on whose shores they dwelt. time and the river were the two great forces that seemed to matter here.
it was almost a relief to turn back to that other outlook and watch the village life that was now beginning to wake in earnest. the procession of water-fetchers had formed itself in a long chattering line that stretched river-wards. comus wondered how many tens of thousands of times that procession had been formed since first the village came into existence. they had been doing it while he was playing in the cricket-fields at school, while he was spending christmas holidays in paris, while he was going his careless round of theatres, dances, suppers and card-parties, just as they were doing it now; they would be doing it when there was no one alive who remembered comus bassington. this thought recurred again and again with painful persistence, a morbid growth arising in part from his loneliness.
staring dumbly out at the toiling sweltering human ant-hill comus marvelled how missionary enthusiasts could labour hopefully at the work of transplanting their religion, with its homegrown accretions of fatherly parochial benevolence, in this heat-blistered, fever-scourged wilderness, where men lived like groundbait and died like flies. demons one might believe in, if one did not hold one’s imagination in healthy check, but a kindly all-managing god, never. somewhere in the west country of england comus had an uncle who lived in a rose-smothered rectory and taught a wholesome gentle-hearted creed that expressed itself in the spirit of “little lamb, who made thee?” and faithfully reflected the beautiful homely christ-child sentiment of saxon europe. what a far away, unreal fairy story it all seemed here in this west african land, where the bodies of men were of as little account as the bubbles that floated on the oily froth of the great flowing river, and where it required a stretch of wild profitless imagination to credit them with undying souls. in the life he had come from comus had been accustomed to think of individuals as definite masterful personalities, making their several marks on the circumstances that revolved around them; they did well or ill, or in most cases indifferently, and were criticised, praised, blamed, thwarted or tolerated, or given way to. in any case, humdrum or outstanding, they had their spheres of importance, little or big. they dominated a breakfast table or harassed a government, according to their capabilities or opportunities, or perhaps they merely had irritating mannerisms. at any rate it seemed highly probable that they had souls. here a man simply made a unit in an unnumbered population, an inconsequent dot in a loosely-compiled deathroll. even his own position as a white man exalted conspicuously above a horde of black natives did not save comus from the depressing sense of nothingness which his first experience of fever had thrown over him. he was a lost, soulless body in this great uncaring land; if he died another would take his place, his few effects would be inventoried and sent down to the coast, someone else would finish off any tea or whisky that he left behind — that would be all.
it was nearly time to be starting towards the next halting place where he would dine or at any rate eat something. but the lassitude which the fever had bequeathed him made the tedium of travelling through interminable forest-tracks a weariness to be deferred as long as possible. the bearers were nothing loth to let another half-hour or so slip by, and comus dragged a battered paper-covered novel from the pocket of his coat. it was a story dealing with the elaborately tangled love affairs of a surpassingly uninteresting couple, and even in his almost bookless state comus had not been able to plough his way through more than two-thirds of its dull length; bound up with the cover, however, were some pages of advertisement, and these the exile scanned with a hungry intentness that the romance itself could never have commanded. the name of a shop, of a street, the address of a restaurant, came to him as a bitter reminder of the world he had lost, a world that ate and drank and flirted, gambled and made merry, a world that debated and intrigued and wire-pulled, fought or compromised political battles — and recked nothing of its outcasts wandering through forest paths and steamy swamps or lying in the grip of fever. comus read and reread those few lines of advertisement, just as he treasured a much-crumpled programme of a first-night performance at the straw exchange theatre; they seemed to make a little more real the past that was already so shadowy and so utterly remote. for a moment he could almost capture the sensation of being once again in those haunts that he loved; then he looked round and pushed the book wearily from him. the steaming heat, the forest, the rushing river hemmed him in on all sides.
the two boys who had been splitting wood ceased from their labours and straightened their backs; suddenly the smaller of the two gave the other a resounding whack with a split lath that he still held in his hand, and flew up the hillside with a scream of laughter and simulated terror, the bigger lad following in hot pursuit. up and down the steep bush-grown slope they raced and twisted and dodged, coming sometimes to close quarters in a hurricane of squeals and smacks, rolling over and over like fighting kittens, and breaking away again to start fresh provocation and fresh pursuit. now and again they would lie for a time panting in what seemed the last stage of exhaustion, and then they would be off in another wild scamper, their dusky bodies flitting through the bushes, disappearing and reappearing with equal suddenness. presently two girls of their own age, who had returned from the water-fetching, sprang out on them from ambush, and the four joined in one joyous gambol that lit up the hillside with shrill echoes and glimpses of flying limbs. comus sat and watched, at first with an amused interest, then with a returning flood of depression and heart-ache. those wild young human kittens represented the joy of life, he was the outsider, the lonely alien, watching something in which he could not join, a happiness in which he had no part or lot. he would pass presently out of the village and his bearers’ feet would leave their indentations in the dust; that would be his most permanent memorial in this little oasis of teeming life. and that other life, in which he once moved with such confident sense of his own necessary participation in it, how completely he had passed out of it. amid all its laughing throngs, its card parties and race-meetings and country-house gatherings, he was just a mere name, remembered or forgotten, comus bassington, the boy who went away. he had loved himself very well and never troubled greatly whether anyone else really loved him, and now he realised what he had made of his life. and at the same time he knew that if his chance were to come again he would throw it away just as surely, just as perversely. fate played with him with loaded dice; he would lose always.
one person in the whole world had cared for him, for longer than he could remember, cared for him perhaps more than he knew, cared for him perhaps now. but a wall of ice had mounted up between him and her, and across it there blew that cold-breath that chills or kills affection.
the words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost cause, rang with insistent mockery through his brain:
“better loved you canna be,
will ye ne’er come back again?”
if it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile for ever. his epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would be, comus bassington, the boy who never came back.
and in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms, that he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonder hillside.
