December 23
’I have just buried my boy, my poor handsome
boy of whom I was so proud, and my heart is broken.
It is very hard having only one son to lose him thus,
but God’s will be done. Who am I that
I should complain? The great wheel of Fate rolls
on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn,
some soon, some late — it does not matter
when, in the end, it crushes us all. We do not
prostrate ourselves before it like the poor Indians;
we fly hither and thither — we cry for
mercy; but it is of no use, the black Fate thunders
on and in its season reduces us to powder.
’Poor Harry to go so soon! just when his life
was opening to him. He was doing so well at
the hospital, he had passed his last examination with
honours, and I was proud of them, much prouder than
he was, I think. And then he must needs go to
that smallpox hospital. He wrote to me that
he was not afraid of smallpox and wanted to gain the
experience; and now the disease has killed him, and
I, old and grey and withered, am left to mourn over
him, without a chick or child to comfort me.
I might have saved him, too — I have money
enough for both of us, and much more than enough —
King Solomon’s Mines provided me with that;
but I said, “No, let the boy earn his living,
let him labour that he may enjoy rest.”
But the rest has come to him before the labour.
Oh, my boy, my boy!
’I am like the man in the Bible who laid up
much goods and builded barns — goods for
my boy and barns for him to store them in; and now
his soul has been required of him, and I am left desolate.
I would that it had been my soul and not my boy’s!
’We buried him this afternoon under the shadow
of the grey and ancient tower of the church of this
village where my house is. It was a dreary December
afternoon, and the sky was heavy with snow, but not
much was falling. The coffin was put down by
the grave, and a few big flakes lit upon it.
They looked very white upon the black cloth!
There was a little hitch about getting the coffin
down into the grave — the necessary ropes
had been forgotten: so we drew back from it,
and waited in silence watching the big flakes fall
gently one by one like heavenly benedictions, and
melt in tears on Harry’s pall. But that
was not all. A robin redbreast came as bold
as could be and lit upon the coffin and began to sing.
And then I am afraid that I broke down, and so did
Sir Henry Curtis, strong man though he is; and as for
Captain Good, I saw him turn away too; even in my own
distress I could not help noticing it.’
The above, signed ‘Allan Quatermain’,
is an extract from my diary written two years and
more ago. I copy it down here because it seems
to me that it is the fittest beginning to the history
that I am about to write, if it please God to spare
me to finish it. If not, well it does not matter.
That extract was penned seven thousand miles or so
from the spot where I now lie painfully and slowly
writing this, with a pretty girl standing by my side
fanning the flies from my august countenance.
Harry is there and I am here, and yet somehow I cannot
help feeling that I am not far off Harry.
