scandals with sober statistics. The
recent incidents, they said, did not represent the habits of the peaceable
majority. The Governor told the press that everything had been highly
exaggerated. By the time Sybil and Donald left for the Colony the music-hall
comics had already exhausted the entertainment value of colonial shooting
affairs.
‘Don’t make pets of
snakes or crocs. Mind out for the lions. Don’t forget to write.’
It was almost a surprise
to them to find that shooting affairs in the Colony were not entirely a
music-hall myth. They occurred in waves. For three months at a time the
gun-murders and suicides were reported weekly. The old colonists with their
very blue eyes sat beside their whisky bottles and remarked that another young
rotter had shot himself. Then the rains would break and the shootings would
cease for a long season.
Eighteen months after
their marriage Donald was mauled by a lioness and died on the long stretcher
journey back to the station. He was one of a party of eight. No one could
really say how it happened; it was done in a flash. The natives had lost their
wits, and, instead of shooting the beast, had come calling ‘Ah-ah-ah,’ and
pointing to the spot. A few strides, shouldering the grass aside, and Donald’s
friends got the lioness as she reared from his body.
His friends in the
archaeological team to which he belonged urged Sybil to remain in the Colony
for the remaining six months, and return to England with them. Still undecided,
she went on a sight-seeing tour. But before their time was up the
archaeologists had been recalled. War had been declared. Civilians were not
permitted to leave the continent, and Sybil was caught, like Donald under the
lioness.
She wished he had lived
to enjoy a life of his own, as she intended to do. It was plain to her that
they must have separated had he lived. There had been no disagreement but,
thought Sybil, given another two years there would have been disagreements.
Donald had shown signs of becoming a bore. By the last, the twenty-seventh,
year of his life, his mind had ceased to inquire. Archaeology, that thrilling
subject, had become Donald’s job, merely. He began to talk as if all
archaeological methods and theories had ceased to evolve on the day he obtained
his degree; it was now only a matter of applying his knowledge to field-work
for a limited period. Archaeological papers came out from England. The usual
crank literature on roneo foolscap followed them from one postal address to
another. ‘Donald, aren’t you going to look through them?’ Sybil said, as the
journals and papers piled up. ‘No, really, I don’t see it’s necessary.’ It was
not necessary because his future was fixed; two years in the field and then a
lectureship. If it were my subject, she thought, these papers would be
necessary to me. Even the crackpot ones, rightly read, would be, to me,
enlarging.
Sybil lay in bed in the
mornings reading the translation of Kierkegaard’s Journals, newly
arrived from England in their first, revelatory month of publication. She felt
like a desert which had not realized its own aridity till the rain began to
fall upon it. When Donald came home in the late afternoons she had less and less
to say to him.
‘There has been another
shooting affair,’ Donald said, ‘across the valley. The chap came home
unexpectedly and found his wife with another man. He shot them both.’
‘In this place, one is
never far from the jungle,’ Sybil said.
‘What are you talking
about? We are eight hundred miles from the jungle.’
When he had gone on his
first big shoot, eight hundred miles away in the jungle, she had reflected,
there is no sign of a living mind in him, it is like a landed fish which has
ceased to palpitate. But, she thought, another woman would never notice it.
Other women do not wish to be married to a Mind. Yet I do, she thought, and I
am a freak and should not have married. In fact I am not the marrying
recent incidents, they said, did not represent the habits of the peaceable
majority. The Governor told the press that everything had been highly
exaggerated. By the time Sybil and Donald left for the Colony the music-hall
comics had already exhausted the entertainment value of colonial shooting
affairs.
‘Don’t make pets of
snakes or crocs. Mind out for the lions. Don’t forget to write.’
It was almost a surprise
to them to find that shooting affairs in the Colony were not entirely a
music-hall myth. They occurred in waves. For three months at a time the
gun-murders and suicides were reported weekly. The old colonists with their
very blue eyes sat beside their whisky bottles and remarked that another young
rotter had shot himself. Then the rains would break and the shootings would
cease for a long season.
Eighteen months after
their marriage Donald was mauled by a lioness and died on the long stretcher
journey back to the station. He was one of a party of eight. No one could
really say how it happened; it was done in a flash. The natives had lost their
wits, and, instead of shooting the beast, had come calling ‘Ah-ah-ah,’ and
pointing to the spot. A few strides, shouldering the grass aside, and Donald’s
friends got the lioness as she reared from his body.
His friends in the
archaeological team to which he belonged urged Sybil to remain in the Colony
for the remaining six months, and return to England with them. Still undecided,
she went on a sight-seeing tour. But before their time was up the
archaeologists had been recalled. War had been declared. Civilians were not
permitted to leave the continent, and Sybil was caught, like Donald under the
lioness.
She wished he had lived
to enjoy a life of his own, as she intended to do. It was plain to her that
they must have separated had he lived. There had been no disagreement but,
thought Sybil, given another two years there would have been disagreements.
Donald had shown signs of becoming a bore. By the last, the twenty-seventh,
year of his life, his mind had ceased to inquire. Archaeology, that thrilling
subject, had become Donald’s job, merely. He began to talk as if all
archaeological methods and theories had ceased to evolve on the day he obtained
his degree; it was now only a matter of applying his knowledge to field-work
for a limited period. Archaeological papers came out from England. The usual
crank literature on roneo foolscap followed them from one postal address to
another. ‘Donald, aren’t you going to look through them?’ Sybil said, as the
journals and papers piled up. ‘No, really, I don’t see it’s necessary.’ It was
not necessary because his future was fixed; two years in the field and then a
lectureship. If it were my subject, she thought, these papers would be
necessary to me. Even the crackpot ones, rightly read, would be, to me,
enlarging.
Sybil lay in bed in the
mornings reading the translation of Kierkegaard’s Journals, newly
arrived from England in their first, revelatory month of publication. She felt
like a desert which had not realized its own aridity till the rain began to
fall upon it. When Donald came home in the late afternoons she had less and less
to say to him.
‘There has been another
shooting affair,’ Donald said, ‘across the valley. The chap came home
unexpectedly and found his wife with another man. He shot them both.’
‘In this place, one is
never far from the jungle,’ Sybil said.
‘What are you talking
about? We are eight hundred miles from the jungle.’
When he had gone on his
first big shoot, eight hundred miles away in the jungle, she had reflected,
there is no sign of a living mind in him, it is like a landed fish which has
ceased to palpitate. But, she thought, another woman would never notice it.
Other women do not wish to be married to a Mind. Yet I do, she thought, and I
am a freak and should not have married. In fact I am not the marrying
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