Twelve tales; with a headpiece, a tailpiece, and an intermezzo: being select stories

Front matter

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TWELVE TALES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION, v

HEADPIECE : A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION, . . 3

II

The little mission bungalow at Butabue, a wooden shed neatly thatched with fan palms, had been built and gar- 18 nished by the native catechist from Axim and his wife before the arrival of the missionaries, so that Ethel found a habitable dwelling ready for her at the end of her long boat journey up the rapid stream of the Ancobra. There the strangely matched pair settled down quietly enough to their work of teaching and catechising, for the mission had already been started by the native evangelist, and many of the people were fairly ready to hear and accept the new religion. For the first ten or twelve months Ethel's letters home were full of praise and love for dear John. Now that she had come to know him well, she wondered she had ever feared to marry him. No husband was ever so tender, so gentle, so considerate. He nursed her in all her little ailments like a woman ; she leaned on him as a wife leans on the strong arm of her husband. And then he was so clever, so wise, so learned. Her only grief was that she feared she was not and would never be good enough for him. Yet it was well for her that they were living so entirely away from all white society at Butabue, for there she had nobody with whom to contrast John but the halfclad savages around them. Judged by the light of that startling contrast, good John Greedy, with his cultivated ways and gentle manners, seemed like an Englishman indeed.

John Greedy, for his part, thought no less well of his Ethel. He was tenderly respectful to her; more distant, perhaps, than is usual between husband and wife, even in the first months of marriage, but that was due to his innate delicacy of feeling, which made him half unconsciously recognise the depth of the gulf that still divided them. He cherished her like some saintly thing, too sacred for the common world. Yet Ethel was his helper in all his work, so cheerful under the necessary privations of their life, so ready to put up with bananas and cassava balls, so apt at kneading plantain paste, so willing to learn from the negro women all the mysteries of mixing agadey, cankey, and koko pudding. No tropical heat seemed to put her out of temper ; even the horrible country fever itself she bore with such gentle resignation, John Greedy felt in his heart of hearts that he would willingly give up his life for her, and that it would be but a small sacrifice for so sweet a creature.

One day, shortly after their arrival at Butabue, John Greedy began talking in English to the catechist about the best way of setting to work to learn the native language. He had left the country when he was nine years old, he said, and had forgotten all about it. The catechist answered him quickly in a Fantee phrase. John Greedy looked amazed and started.

' What does he say ? ' asked Ethel.

' He says that I shall soon learn if only I listen ; but the carious thing is, Ethie, that I understand him.'

' It has come back to you, John, that 's all. You are so quick at languages, and now you hear it again you remember it/

' Perhaps so,' said the missionary slowly, 'but I have never recalled a word of it for all these years. I wonder if it will all come back to me/

' Of course it will, dear,' said Ethel ; ' you know, things come to you so easily in that way. You almost learned Portuguese while we were coming out from hearing those Benguela people/

And so it did come back, sure enough. Before John Greedy had been six weeks at Butabue, he could talk Fantee as fluently as any of the natives around him. After all, he was nine years old when he was taken to England, and it was no great wonder that he should recollect the language he had heard in his childhood till that age. Still, he himself noticed rather uneasily that every phrase and word, down to the very heathen charms and prayers of his infancy, came back to him now with startling vividness and without an effort.

Four months after their arrival John saw one day a tall and ugly negro woman, in the scanty native dress, standing near the rude market-place, where the Butabue butchers killed and sold their reeking goat-meat. Ethel saw him start again ; and with a terrible foreboding in her heart, she could not help asking him why he started. ' I can't tell you, Ethie/ he said piteously ; ' for heaven's sake, don't press me. I want to spare you.' But Ethel would hear. ' Is it your mother, John ? ' she asked hoarsely.

f No, thank Heaven, not my mother, Ethie/ he answered her, with something like pallor on his dark cheek, ' not my mother ; but I remember the woman/

' A relative ? '

'Oh, Ethie, don't press me. Yes, my mother's sister. I remember her years ago. Let us say no more about it.' And Ethel, looking at that gaunt and squalid savage woman, shuddered in her heart and said no more.

Slowly, as time went on, however, Ethel began to notice a strange shade of change coming over John's ideas and remarks about the negroes. At first he had been shocked and distressed at their heathendom and savagery ; but the more he saw of it, the more he seemed to find it natural enough in their position, and even in a sort of way to sympathise with it or apologise for it. One morning, a month or two later, he spoke to her voluntarily of his father. He had never done so in England. ' I can remember/ he said, * he was a chief, a great chief. He had many wives, and my mother was one. He was beaten in war by Kola, and I was taken prisoner. But he had a fine palace at Kwantah, and many fan-bearers.' Ethel observed with a faint terror that he seemed to speak with pride and complacency of his father's chieftaincy. She shuddered again and wondered. Was the West African instinct getting the upper hand in him over the Christian gentleman ?

When the dries were over, and the koko-harvest gathered, the negroes held a grand feast. John had preached in the open air to some of the market-people in the morning, and in the evening he was sitting in the hut with Ethel, waiting till the catechist and his wife should come in to prayers, for they carried out their accustomed ceremony decorously, even there, every night and morning. Suddenly they heard the din of savage music out of doors, and the noise of a great crowd laughing and shouting down the street. John listened, and listened with deepening attention. ' Don't you hear it, Ethie ? ' he cried. ' It 's the tom-toms. I know what it means. It's the harvest battle-feast !'

' How hideous ! ' said Ethel, shrinking back.

'Don't be afraid, dearest,' John said, smiling at her. f It means no harm. It 's only the people amusing themselves.' And he began to keep time to the tom-toms rapidly with the palms of his hands.

The din drew nearer, and John grew more evidently excited at every step. ' Don't you hear, Ethie ? ' he said again. ' It 's the Salonga. What inspiriting music ! It 's like a drum and fife band ; it 's like the bagpipes ; it's like a military march. By Jove, it compels one to dance ! ' And he got up as he spoke, in English clerical dress (for he wore clerical dress even at Butabue), and began capering in a sort of hornpipe round the tiny room.

' Oh, John, don't ! ' cried Ethel. ' Suppose the catechist were to come in ! '

But John's blood was up. 'Look here/ he said excitedly, ' it goes like this. Here you hold your matchlock out ; here you fire ; here you charge with cutlasses ; here you hack them down before you; here you hold up your enemy's head in your hands, and here you kick it off among the women. Oh, it 's grand ! ' There was a terrible 22 light in his black eyes as he spoke, and a terrible trembling in his clenched black hands.

'John/ cried Ethel, in an agony of horror, 'it isn't Christian, it isn't human, it isn't worthy of you. I can never, never love you if you do such a thing again.'

In a moment John's face changed and his hand fell as if she had stabbed him. ' Ethie,' he said in a low voice, creeping back to her like a whipped spaniel, — ' Ethie, my darling, my own soul, my beloved ; what have I done ? Oh, heavens, I will never listen to the accursed thing again ! Oh, Ethie, for heaven's sake, for mercy's sake, forgive me

Ethel laid her hand, trembling, on his head. John sank upon his knees before her, and bowed himself down with his head between his arms, like one staggered and penitent. Ethel lifted him gently, and at that moment the catechist and his wife came in. John stood up firmly, took down his Bible and Prayer Book, and read through evening prayer at once in his usual impressive tone. In one moment he had changed back again from the Fantee savage to the decorous Oxford clergyman.

It was only a week later that Ethel, hunting about in the little storeroom, happened to notice a stout wooden box carefully covered up. She opened the lid with some difficulty, for it was fastened down with a native lock, and to her horror she found inside it a surreptitious keg of raw negro rum. She took the keg out, put it conspicuously in the midst of the storeroom, and said nothing. That night she heard John in the jungle behind the yard, and looking out, she saw dimly that he was hacking the keg to pieces vehemently with an axe. After that he was even kinder and tenderer to her than usual for the next week ; but Ethel vaguely remembered that once or twice before he had seemed a little odd in his manner, and that it was on those days that she had seen gleams of the savage nature peeping through. Perhaps, she thought, with a shiver, his civilisation was only a veneer, and a glass of raw rum or so was enough to wash it off.

Twelve months after their first arrival, Ethel came home very feverish one evening from her girls' school, and found John gone from the hut. Searching about in the room for the quinine bottle, she came once more upon a rum-keg, and this time it was empty. A nameless terror drove her into the little bedroom. There, on the bed, torn into a hundred shreds, lay John Creedy's black coat and European clothing. The room whirled around her ; and though she had never heard of such a thing before, the terrible truth flashed across her bewildered mind like a hideous dream. She went out, alone, at night, as she had never done before since she came to Africa, into the broad lane between the huts which constituted the chief street of Butabue. So far away from home, so utterly solitary among all those black faces, so sick at heart with that burning and devouring horror ! She reeled and staggered down the street, not knowing how or where she went, till at the end, beneath the two tall date-palms, she saw lights flashing and heard the noise of shouts and laughter. A group of natives, men and women together, were dancing and howling round a dancing and howling negro. The central figure was dressed in the native fashion, with arms and legs bare, and he was shouting a loud song at the top of his voice in the Fantee language, while he shook a tom-tom. There was a huskiness as of drink in his throat, and his steps were unsteady and doubtful. Great heavens ! could that reeling, shrieking black savage be John Greedy ?

Yes, instinct had gained the day over civilisation; the savage in John Greedy had broken out ; he had torn up his English clothes and, in West African parlance, fhad gone Fantee.' Ethel gazed at him, white with horror — stood still and gazed, and never cried nor fainted, nor said a word.

The crowd of negroes divided to right and left, and John Greedy saw his wife standing there like a marble figure. With one awful cry he came to himself again, and rushed to her side. She did not repel him, as he expected ; she did not speak ; she was mute and cold like a corpse, not like a living woman. He took her up in his strong arms, laid her head on his shoulder, and carried her home through the long line of thatched huts, erect and steady as when he first walked up the aisle of Walton Magna church. Then he laid her down gently on the bed, and called the wife of the catechist. ' She has the fever,' he said in Fantee. ' Sit by her/

The catechist's wife looked at her, and said, ' Yes ; the yellow fever.'

And so she had. Even before she saw John the fever had been upon her, and that awful revelation had brought it out suddenly in full force. She lay unconscious upon the bed, her eyes open, staring ghastlily, but not a trace of colour in her cheek nor a sign of life upon her face.

John Greedy wrote a few words upon a piece of paper, which he folded in his hand, gave a few directions in Fantee to the woman at the bedside, and then hurried out like one on fire into the darkness outside.

Ill

It was thirty miles through the jungle by a native trackway to the nearest mission station at Effuenta. There were two Methodist missionaries stationed there, John Greedy knew, for he had gone round by boat more than once to see them. When he first came to Africa he could no more have found his way across the neck of the river fork by that tangled jungle track than he could have flown bodily over the top of the cocoa palms; but now,, half naked, barefooted, and inspired with an overpowering emotion, he threaded his path through the darkness among the creepers and lianas of the forest in true African fashion. Stooping here, creeping on all fours there, running in the open at full speed anon, he never once stopped to draw breath till he had covered the whole thirty miles, and knocked in the early dawn at the door of the mission hut at EfFuenta.

One of the missionaries opened the barred door cautiously. ' What do you want ? ' he asked in Fantee of the bare-legged savage, who stood crouching by the threshold.

' I bring a message from Missionary John Greedy/ the bare-legged savage answered, also in Fantee. ' He wants European clothes/

* Has he sent a letter ? ' asked the missionary.

John Greedy took the folded piece of paper from his palm. The missionary read it. It told him in a few words how the Butabue people had pillaged John's hut at night and stolen his clothing, and how he could not go outside his door till he got some European dress again.

' This is strange/ said the missionary. ' Brother Felton died three days ago of the fever. You can take his clothes to Brother Greedy, if you will/

The bare-limbed savage nodded acquiescence. The missionary looked hard at him, and fancied he had seen his face before, but he never even for a moment suspected that he was speaking to John Greedy himself.

A bundle was soon made of dead Brother Felton's clothes, and the bare-limbed man took it in his arms and prepared to run back again the whole way to Butabue.

' You have had nothing to eat/ said the lonely missionary. ' Won't you take something to help you on your way ? '

' Give me some plantain paste/ answered John Greedy. ' I can eat it as I go.' And when they gave it him he forgot 26 himself for the moment, and answered ' Thank you' in English. The missionary stared, but thought it was only a single phrase that he had picked up at Butabue, and that he was anxious, negro-fashion, to air his knowledge.

Back through the jungle, with the bundle in his arms, John Creedy wormed his way once more, like a snake or a tiger, never pausing or halting on the road till he found himself again in the open space outside the village of Butabue. There he stayed a while, and behind a clump of wild ginger he opened the bundle and arrayed himself once more from head to foot in English clerical dress. That done, too proud to slink, he walked bold and erect down the main alley, and quietly entered his own hut. It was high noon, the baking high noon of Africa, as he did so.

Ethel lay unconscious still upon the bed. The negro woman crouched, half asleep after her night's watching, at the foot. John Creedy looked at his watch, which stood hard by on the little wooden table. ' Sixty miles in fourteen hours/ he said aloud. ' Better time by a great deal than when we walked from Oxford to the White Horse eighteen months since/ And then he sat down silently by Ethel's bedside.

' Has she moved her eyes ? ' he asked the negress.

' Never, John Creedy,' answered the woman. Till last night she had always called him ' Master.'

He watched the lifeless face for an hour or two. There was no change in it till about four o'clock ; then Ethel's eyes began to alter their expression. He saw the dilated pupils contract a little, and knew that consciousness was gradually returning.

In a moment more she looked round at him and gave a little cry. ' John,' she exclaimed, with a sort of awakening hopefulness in her voice, * where on earth did you get those clothes ? '

' These clothes ? ' he answered softly. e Why, you must be wandering in your mind, Ethie dearest, to ask such a question now. At Standen's, in the High at Oxford, my darling/ And he passed his black hand gently across her loose hair.

Ethel gave a great cry of joy. 'Then it was a dream, a horrid dream, John, or a terrible mistake ? Oh, John, say it was a dream ! '

John drew his hand across his forehead slowly. f Ethie darling/ he said, ' you are wandering, I 'm afraid. You have a bad fever. I don't know what you mean/

' Then you didn't tear them up, and wear a Fantee dress, and dance with a tom-tom down the street ? Oh, John ! '

( Oh, Ethel ! No. What a terrible delirium you must have had ! '

( It is all well/ she said. 1 1 don't mind if I die now/ And she sank back exhausted into a sort of feverish sleep.

' John Greedy/ said the black catechist's wife solemnly, in Fantee, e you will have to answer for that lie to a dying woman with your soul ! '

1 My soul ! ' cried John Greedy passionately, smiting both breasts with his clenched fists. 'My soul ! Do you think, you negro wench, I wouldn't give my poor, miserable, black soul to eternal torments a thousand times over, if only I could give her little white heart one moment's forgetfulness before she dies ? '

For five days longer Ethel lingered in the burning fever, sometimes conscious for a minute or two, but for the most part delirious or drowsy all the time. She never said another word to John about her terrible dream, and John never said another word to her. But he sat by her side and tended her like a woman, doing everything that was possible for her in the bare little hut, and devouring his full heart with a horrible gnawing remorse too deep for pen or tongue to probe and fathom. For civilisation with John Greedy was really at bottom far more than a mere veneer ; though the 28

THE REVEREND JfOHN CREEDY

savage instincts might break out with him now and again, such outbursts no more affected his adult and acquired nature than a single bump-supper or wine-party at college affects the nature of many a gentle-minded English lad. The truest John Greedy of all was the gentle, tender, English clergyman.

As he sat by her bedside sleepless and agonised, night and day, for five days together, one prayer only rose to his lips time after time, ' Heaven grant she may die ! ' He had depth enough in the civilised side of his soul to feel that that was the only way to save her from a lifelong shame. ' If she gets well/ he said to himself, trembling, ' I will leave this accursed Africa at once. I will work my way back to England as a common sailor, and send her home by the mail with my remaining money. I will never inflict my presence upon her again, for she cannot be persuaded, if once she recovers, that she did not see me, as she did see me, a bare-limbed heathen Fantee brandishing a devilish tom-tom. But I shall get work in England — not a parson's ; that I can never be again — but clerk's work, labourer's work, navvy's work, anything ! Look at my arms : I rowed five in the Magdalen eight : I could hold a spade as well as any man. I will toil, and slave, and save, and keep her still like a lady, if I starve for it myself: but she shall never see my face again if once she recovers. Even then it will be a living death for her, poor angel ! There is only one hope — Heaven grant she may die ! '

On the fifth day she opened her eyes once. John saw that his prayer was about to be fulfilled. ' John,' she said feebly — ' John, tell me, on your honour, it was only my delirium.'

And John, raising his hand to heaven, splendide tnendax, answered in a firm voice, ' I swear it.'

Ethel smiled and shut her eyes. It was for the last time.

Next morning, John Greedy — tearless, but parched and dry in the mouth, like one stunned and unmanned — took a pickaxe and hewed out a rude grave in the loose soil near the river. Then he fashioned a rough coffin from twisted canes with his own hands, and in it he reverently placed the sacred body. He allowed no one to help him or come near him — not even his fellow-Christians, the catechist and his wife : Ethel was too holy a thing for their African hands to touch. Next he put on his white surplice, and for the first and only time in his life he read, without a quaver in his voice, the Church of England Burial Service over the open grave. And when he had finished he went back to his desolate hut, and cried with a loud voice of utter despair, ( The one thing that bound me to civilisation is gone. Henceforth I shall never speak another word of English. I go to my own people/ So saying, he solemnly tore up his European clothes once more, bound a cotton loin-cloth round his waist, covered his head with dirt, and sat fasting and wailing piteously, like a broken-hearted child, in his cabin.

Nowadays, the old half-caste Portuguese rum-dealer at Butabue can point out to any English pioneer who comes up the river which one, among a crowd of dilapidated negroes who lie basking in the soft dust outside his hut was once the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of Magdalen College, Oxford.

II FRASINE'S FIRST COMMUNION

ZELIE was our cook. She came back to us each winter when we returned to the Riviera, and went away again in spring to Aix-les-Bains, where she always made her summer season with a German family. A thorough-going Proven9ale was Zelie, olive-skinned, black-haired, thick-lipped, pleasantfeatured,, with flashing dark eyes and a merry mouth, well shaped to make a mock at you. Nobody would have called Zelie exactly pretty : but she was comely and buxom, and good-humoured withal ; while, as for pot-au-feu, she had not her equal in the whole Department. She said qoux for choux, and gapeau for chapeau ; but her smile was infectious, and her kindness of heart was as undoubted as her omelettes.

One April afternoon, Ruth went out into the kitchen. She didn't often penetrate into such regions at the villa; for Zelie, on that point, was strictly conservative. ' If Madame desires to see me/ she used to say, ' I receive at half-past nine in the morning, when I come home from marketing. At all other hours, I am happy to return Madame's call in the salon.' Zelie was too good a servant to make it worth while for us to risk her displeasure ; and the consequence was that Ruth seldom ventured into Zelie's keep except at the hour of her cook's reception.

On this particular day, however, Ruth was surprised to c 33

FRASINFS FIRST COMMUNION

see Zelie seated at the table, stitching away at what appeared to be a bridal garment. Such white muslin and white tulle gave her a turn for a moment. ' Why, Zelie ! ' she cried, putting one hand to her heart, ' you 're not going to be married?' For cooks like Zelie are rare on the Littoral.

' Ma foil no, Madame,' Zelie answered, laughing. el confection a robe for Frasine, who makes her first Communion.'

' Frasine ! ' Ruth exclaimed. ' And who may Frasine be ? Your sister, I suppose, Zelie ? '

Zelie smoothed out a flounce with one capable brown hand. ' No, Madame,' she said demurely ; * Frasine is my daughter/

' Your daughter ! ' Ruth cried, staring at her. ' But, Zelie, I never even knew you were married ! '

Zelie smoothed still more vigorously at the edge of the flounce. 'Mais non, Madame,' she continued, in her most matter-of-fact voice. 'It arrived so, you see. Hector's family were against it, and thus it never happened.'

Ruth gazed at her, much shaken. 'But, Zelie,' she murmured, seizing her hand in dismay, 'do you mean to tell me ?'

Zelie nodded her head sagely. ' Yes, yes, Madame,' she answered. ' These things come so to us other poor people. It is not like that, I know, chez vous. But here in France, let us allow, the law is so difficult.'

' Tell me all about it,' Ruth cried, sinking down on to one of the kitchen chairs, and looking up at her appealingly. ' What age has your daughter ? '

' Frasine is twelve years old,' Zelie answered, still going on with her work, fand a pretty girl, too, though 'tis the word of a mother. You see, Madame, it came about like this. The good Hector was in love with me ; but he was in a better position than my parents for his part, for his father 34,

FRASINFS FIRST COMMUNION

was proprietor, while mine was workman. They owned a beautiful property up in our hills near Vence — oh, a beautiful property ! They harvested I could not tell you how many hectolitres of olives. Their little blue wine was renowned in the country. Well, Hector loved me, and I loved Hector. Que voulez-vous? We were thrown, in our work, very much together.' She paused, and glanced shyly askance at Ruth with those expressive eyes of hers.

' And he didn't marry you ? ' Ruth asked, faltering.

' He meant to, Madame : I assure you, he meant to/ Zelie answered hastily. 'He was a kind soul, Hector; he began it all at first for the good motive. But, meanwhile, you

understand, in waiting for the priest ' Zelie lifted her

flounce close up to her face and stitched away at it nervously.

' And that was all ? ' Ruth put in, with her scared white face — I could hear and see it all through the door from my study.

There was a pause for a moment, during which you could hear Zelie's needle go stitch, stitch, stitch, through the stiff starched muslin. Then Ruth spoke again : ' And, after that, he left you ? '

Zelie's stoicism began to give way a little. There were tears in her eyes, but still she stitched on, to hide her confusion. ' He never meant any harm, my poor boy ! ' she answered, bending over. ' He really loved me, and he always hoped, in the end, to marry me. So, when he knew Frasine was beginning to be, he said to me, one fine day, " Zelie, I will go up to Vence, and arrange your affair with my father and the cure." And he went up to Vence, and asked his father's consent to our marriage; for, chez nous, you know, one is not permitted to marry without the consent of one's family. But Hector's father was very angry at the news, and refused his consent, because he was proprietor, and I was but a servant. And about that time it was Hector's year to serve, and they put him into a regiment that was stationed a long way off — oh ! a very long way off — quite far from my country, in the direction of Orleans. And without his father's consent, of course, he could never marry me, for that 's our law here in France, to us others. So he served his time, and at the end of it all — well, he married another woman, and settled in Paris/