Mark, but seeing you again will be a tonic to him. Mark stopped involuntarily in the doorway and felt the shock dry the saliva under his tongue.
General Sean Courtney was an old man. He sat at the bay windows of the bedroom suite. He wore a plaid dressing-gown and a mohair rug was tucked around his legs.
On the table beside him was a pile of files and reports, Parliamentary White Papers and a sheath of letters, all the documentation of his life that Mark remembered so well, but the General had fallen asleep, and the metal- rimmed spectacles had slid down on to the tip of his nose. He snored softly, his lips fluttering at each breath. His face seemed to have wasted so that the bones of cheek and brow stood out gauntly. His eyes receded into deep plum purple cavities, and his skin had a greyish lifeless tinge to it.
But the truly shocking thing was the colour of his beard and the once thick bush of his hair. On Sean Courtney the late snows were falling. His beard had turned into a silver cascade, and his hair was as white and as thin as the fine sun-bleached grasses of the Kalahari desert.
Ruth crossed to his chair and lifted the spectacles off his nose, then gently, with a loving wife's concern, she touched his shoulder. Sean, darling. There is somebody here to see you.
He woke the way an old man wakes, blinking and mumbling, with small inconclusive movements of his hands.
Then he saw Mark and his expression firmed, suddenly there was a little of the old sparkle in the dark eyes and the warmth in his smile. My boy! he said, lifting his hands, and Mark stepped forward quite naturally. Then for the first time they embraced like father and son, and afterwards Sean beamed at him fondly. I was beginning to believe we had lost you for ever to the ways of the wild. Then he looked up at Ruth beside his chair. In celebration I think we can advance the hour a little, my dear. Won't you have Joseph bring up the tray? Sean, you know what the doctor said yesterday. But Sean snorted with disgust. For fifty years, man and boy, my stomach has got used to its evening dash of John Haig pinch bottle. Lack of it will kill me more swiftly and surely than Doctor Henderson and all his pills and potions and blatant quackeries. He placed one arm about her waist and squeezed her winningly. There's a bonnie girl! When Ruth had gone, smiling and shaking her head disapprovingly, Sean waved Mark to the chair opposite him. What does the doctor say is wrong with you, sir? Doctor! Sean blew through his lips. The older I get, the less faith I have in the whole sorry bunch. He reached for the cigar box. They even wanted me to stop these. What on earth is the use of living, if you have to give up all the processes of life -I ask you. He lit the cigar with a flourish and drew on it with relish. I'll tell you what's wrong with me, son. Too many years of running hard, of fighting and riding and working. That's all it is. Now I'm having a nice little rest, and in a week or so I'll be chipper and fly as I ever was. Ruth brought the silver tray and they sat until it was dark, talking and laughing. Mark told them of the life at Chaka's Gate, about each little triumph, describing the cottage and the work done on the roads; he told them of the buffalo and the lioness and the cubs, and Sean told him of the progress made by their Wildlife Society.
It's disappointing, Mark, nothing like I had hoped for.
It's extraordinary just how little people care about things that don't affect their daily lives directly. I never expected instant success. How can people care about something they have never seen? Once we have made the wilderness accessible, once people can have the experience, like seeing these cubs, it will begin then. Yes, Sean agreed thoughtfully. That's what the true object of the Society is. To educate them. They talked on while darkness fell and Ruth closed the shutters and drew the curtains. Mark waited for an opportunity to speak of the true reason for his coming to Emoyeni, but he was uncertain of how it might affect a man who was already sick.
At last he could wait no longer. He drew a deep breath, hoped for grace, and told it quickly and without trimmings, repeating Pungushe's story exactly and describing what he had seen himself.
When he finished, Sean was silent for a long time, staring into his glass. At last he roused himself and began asking questions, shrewd cutting questions that showed his mind was as quick and crisp as it had been before.
Have you opened the grave? and Mark shook his head. Good, said Sean and went on. This Zulu, Pungushe, was the only witness. How reliable is he? They discussed it for another half hour, before Sean asked the one question he had obviously been avoiding.
You think Dirk Courtney is responsible for this?
Yes, Mark nodded. What proof is there? He is the only one who could have profited by my grandfather's murder, and the style is his. I asked what proof there is, Mark. There is none, he admitted, and Sean was silent again while he weighed it all. Mark, I understand just how you feel, and I think you know how I feel. However, there is nothing we can do now that will have any effect, beyond alerting the murderer, whoever he is. He leaned forward in his chair and stretched out a hand to grip Mark's forearm in a gesture of comfort. All we have now is the unsupported testimony of a Zulu poacher who speaks no English. A good lawyer would eat him without spitting out the bones, and Dirk Courtney would have the best lawyer, even if we could trace this mysterious 'Silent One' to him and get him into court. We need more than this, Mark. I know, Mark nodded. But I thought we might be able to trace the Greyling father and son. They went to Rhodesia, I believe. The foreman at Ladyburg railway station told me that. Yes, I'll get somebody on to that. My lawyers will know a good investigator. He made a note on the pad at his side. But in the meantime, we can only wait. They talked on, but it was clear that the discussion had tired Sean Courtney, and grey and blue shadows etched the lines and wrinkles on his face. He settled down a little deeper in his chair, his beard lowered on to his chest and suddenly he had fallen asleep again. He sagged slowly sideways, the crystal glass fell from his hand to the carpet with a soft thud and splattered a few drops of whisky, and he snored a soft single snort.
Ruth picked up the glass, arranged the rug carefully around his shoulders and signalled Mark to follow her.
In the passage she chatted brightly. I have told Joseph to make up your bed in the blue room, and there is a good hot bath waiting. There will be only the two of us for dinner, Mark. The General will have a tray in his room. They had reached the door of the library and Mark could be silent no longer. He caught Ruth's arm. Mrs Courtney, he pleaded. What is it? What is wrong with him? The bright smile faded slowly, and she swayed slightly on her feet. Now for the first time he noticed how the few strands of white . had turned to deep iron grey wings at her temples. He saw also the little lines and creases around her eyes, and the deeper furrows of worry across her brow. His heart is broken, she said simply, and then she was weeping. No hysterical sobs or wild cries of grief, but a slow deep welling up of tears that was more harrowing, more poignant than any theatrical display. They have broken his heart, she repeated, and swayed again, so that Mark caught and steadied her.
She clung to him, her face pressed to his shoulder. First the estrangement from Dirk and then Michael's death, she whispered. He never let it show, but they destroyed some part of him. Now the whole world has turned against him. The people to whom he has devoted his life in peace and war. The newspapers call him the Butcher of Fordsburg, Dirk Courtney has whipped them upon him like a pack of wild dogs. He led her into the library and made her sit on the low buttoned sofa while he knelt beside her and found a crumpled handkerchief in his jacket pocket. on top of it all, there is Storm. The way she ran off and married that man. He was a horrible man, Mark. He even came here asking for money, and there was a terrible scene.
That's when Sean had his first attack, that night. Then finally there was further shame, further heartbreak
