A pill, a pill, is all he ask,
Dat take away his ink-black mask,
And make him quicker at his task.’
Sambo had spent exactly eight hours and a half in making up and learning this piteous rhyme. He thought his master could not but understand that if he had taken so much trouble he must be in earnest. He thought that the instant his master knew the rum had made no difference to Sambo’s black he would tell him what would. ‘Instead, the doctor, who, disappointed of his grog, was now very angry, lifted Sambo up in one hand, boxed each of his ears in turn with the other, opened the door, and dropped him on the mat outside it. And so poor Sambo had failed again.
Still, the doctor was not an unkind-hearted man, and next morning he had forgotten all about the rum. In fear that he might remember, however, Sambo had been wise enough to smear a little blacking on the polish which so much rubbing had made of the tip of his broad nose. But there had been no real need to do this. The doctor had quite forgotten, and the same day a whole keg of the best Jamaica rum went down into his cellar.
So the days and even weeks went by. Sambo did not dare to dream even of asking his master any more questions. Instead with a faint heart he tried mixing together one or two and even three of the different drugs and powders, and, thumb and finger clutching his nose, he swallowed these. On his annual half-holiday he even went so far as to swallow a pill which he had mixed with sal volatile and paregoric and then dried into a larger pill with some of the doctor’s medical soap and a pinch of senna. It was a very big pill and he nearly choked in the effort, as he sat in the doctor’s garden under a blossoming pear-tree. But though a sort of dusky pallor crept over his cheek, it was at least twenty tints away from being as white as the myriad flowers over his head: and by the evening, when he was better, Sambo was wholly his natural black again.
Last of all, his rolling eye glanced along the row of locked-up medicines called Poisons in the doctor’s cabinet. Could some of them be poisons simply because they would turn a white man into a blackamoor, he wondered? And was the doctor afraid of taking one himself by mistake? Could they? But Sambo dared not tamper with the lock.
And still he pined. Lying awake sometimes between his white sheets, the full moon silvering his fuzzy head and gleaming in his treacle-black eyes, he would gaze at her till they ached in his head. Up there, he thought, perhaps … But before he could follow this fancy far, he was usually fast asleep.
One afternoon, out on his rounds, he met the dentist’s boy again. His heart all but choking him, he set down his basket on the ‘sidewalk’, put his fingers into his ears to keep out the hated Yahs, and waited until William had come up with him. Then, trembling all over, he asked the pug-nosed urchin in a shrill quavering voice what was the matter with being black.
‘What’s the matter?’ squeaked the urchin, mimicking him; ‘why, dat,’ slapping him on one cheek, ‘and dat!’ slapping him on the other. And with redoubled Yahs off he went.
So Sambo grew sadder and sadder. Yet by this time he was sure that he knew almost as much about doctoring and physicking, pilling and draughting as his master. And he had all but worn out the dictionary. One of his jobs every day – after whitening the three steps on to the street, polishing up the knocker and the bell-handle, sweeping out the waiting-room, and making the doctor’s coffee, was to arrange his master’s letters (that had been brought by the postman) on a tray. These he carried in, after thumping at the doctor’s bedroom door, with his coffee.
And there came one morning a letter addressed to his master in a most beautiful handwriting. Sambo had never seen such spidery letters, such exquisite curves. Besides this, a most delicious perfume and odour eddied up from the speckless paper to his nose. He lifted the envelope and sniffed and sniffed again. What valerian is to a cat, so was the scent of his envelope to Sambo. He longed to have it for his own.
It seems indeed that Sambo’s Satan must have been by at this moment, though he himself could not imagine how Satan could spare the time to tempt so small a darkey. Sambo’s night-dark oily eyes glanced around him. He saw no one near. And instead of taking up the letter at once to his master, he undid three of his round silver buttons and pushed it in under his tunic. There it remained throughout the morning – the unhappiest he ever had. When he came in the afternoon to a high wall under some bushy linden trees, he sat down beside his basket in the sunshine and shadow, opened the letter, and set to spelling it out.
First came the address from which it had been written: White Slopes, The Snow Mountains. And this, after half-an-hour’s patient endeavour, was what Sambo read:
The last Miss Bleech presents her compliments to Dr Grimble, and wishes to say that she is a very old woman now and ill in bed. She would be much obligated if the doctor would bring physic and come and see her as soon as he can.
In ten minutes Sambo had spelled it through again. He could not understand why this letter began not with ‘Dear’, as all the few other letters he had ever seen began, but in this strange fashion: The last Miss Bleech. Yet perhaps it was her very name that made him in his small mind’s eye see this old lady; as plainly as if she lay in her bed before him under the linden trees! Her face wore the kindest of smiles. But it was her address still more that fascinated him. It was like the stare of a snake at a canary. That sudden sweep of frosty whiteness – it shone in on his sorrowful spirit with a radiance he could hardly bear. If only he had wings! Here, the streets were often dark with rain and wind, the doctor’s house was at best a gloomy abode, and the white faces of everyone he saw seldom met him with any but the blackest of looks. There was neither help nor hope anywhere to bring the change he pined for. If only his master would send him on this journey, tell him what to do, and what physic and juleps and lotions to take with him in his stead!
Sambo knew well this was impossible. He should have driven the very thought of it out of his head. But even under the green lime trees the Satan he feared must have been there beside him. He pushed back the letter under his tunic, hooked his basket over his arm, and finished his afternoon’s round. He had made up his mind. He would say nothing about the letter. He would pack up the physics himself. When he got to where the letter said, he would tell this old lady, the last Miss Bleech, that the doctor had sent him. And there, surely, would be the end of ail his troubles. This sinful plan had grown up within him as quick as Jonah’s gourd. He went home on fire with it; and waited only until the next time the doctor went off, to visit his Aunt Clara, to carry it out.
Poor Sambo. His master had told him little about his oughts; and though he knew that borrowing money without leave was wrong, he did not know that it was almost as wicked as stealing. He had been kept ‘in the dark’. But he did know that it might be a very long way to the Snow Mountains, that he would have to travel there in a train, and that to travel in a train you must go to the railway station and buy a ticket. In the middle of that night, then – and the doctor had gone off with his little black bag about three in the afternoon – Sambo crept downstairs, opened his master’s drawer, and took out from it in greenbacks and silver dollars about half of the money he found in the little tin box inside it. For a moment he stood listening, his bulging eyes ashine in the candlelight, his pale-palmed hands trembling. But no sound at all came out of the empty night. If in his dreams his master was watching him, he had not uttered a word.
The money safe in his pocket, he stole up to a room where the doctor’s old mother used to sleep when she was alive. He had sometimes glanced sharply in here before, in dread of her ghost, and once in curiosity and in the bright light of day, he had peeped too into the wardrobe that stood facing the empty bed. His lighted candle in his hand, his black feet bare, his small ivory-white teeth chattering, he crept soundlessly and more darkly than a shadow into this chamber. He opened the great wardrobe door. From every hook there hung limp and lifeless the old clothes of the doctor’s old mother – gowns and shawls and mantles; puce and violet, mauve and purple; and on a hook all to
itself a little satin bodice, lovelier than any and of a faded vermilion, which must have been worn by her when she was young. Sambo gasped for delight at sight of all these colours, these silks and satins. He gently put out his finger as if to touch them. For Sambo’s master, even though he had a quick temper, had been very fond of his mother, and so could not bear to part with her clothes.
Else, Sambo perhaps would never have reached the Snow Mountains. For among them there hung a cloak made only of ermine. This had been a present from the doctor to his mother on her seventieth birthday, and must have cost a mint of money. For love of her son and for pride in it she always wore it after that when she went out at night to hear music or to sup with her friends, though this was seldom.
Sambo carefully placed his candlestick on the dressing-table in front of the large dark looking-glass, and standing on a chair took down the cloak from its hook. He not only took it down, he put it on. Then he got up on to a stool, and by the flickering beam of his candle surveyed himself in the glass. Out of its quiet depths showed his round black fuzzy head, his dark liquid eyes, gleaming teeth, small black hands – and from chin to heel flowed down this silken, silvery, soft white fur – except for the little black tufts on it.
Sambo had never seen so marvellous a thing before. He could hardly even sigh for wonder. This it was then to be the great-grandson of a king! There was but one small trouble in his mind – the tufts. And lo and behold, on the dressing-table there lay a pair of the old lady’s embroidery scissors, of silver and mother-of-pearl, and with tapering steel points. Sambo sat down on the floor, and heedless of how the cold night hours glided away, snipped out with the scissors every single tuft of black he found in the cloak. He gathered them up, opened a bandbox, put them in, huddled up the cloak into a bundle, took his candle and went back to his master’s room.
There, for his candle was now guttering out, he lit the gas and turned it low. From the shelves above his head, since he could not borrow from all, he took down the third and seventh bottles of the powders from every shelf – his small heart being dark with superstitions – and he put a little of each of their contents into some pill-boxes. He took only powders because he was afraid on a long journey that bottles might break. Now Dr Grimble served up his pills in boxes of different colours, according to what ailment the pills were for. So Sambo had ten boxes in all, two of which were of the same colour, as there were five shelves. These ten boxes he put into his basket. In other boxes he put some of his favourite pills, and he could not resist one bottle of Nicey-Nicey, as the doctor called it. It was this nicey-nicey that he mixed with his medicines to make them go down sweeter. Sambo also put into his basket one or two little shiny knives, some long scissors, a slim wooden pipe with a cup at the end of it for listening to hearts with, and a pair of dark-glassed tortoise-shell spectacles: and that was all.
When he had finished packing his basket the grey of dawn was showing through the cracks of the window shutters. His cheek almost as grey itself, though he did not know it, he stole downstairs. His basket on one side of him, and a bundle – containing his money, both his nightshirts and two old bandana handkerchiefs – on the other, he sat down to breakfast. It was still early morning when, having eaten the doctor’s breakfast as well as his own, Sambo let himself out of the house, crept past the whispering poplar trees, and ran off.
It was a bad thing to do, but perhaps if the dentist’s boy had told Sambo what was the matter with being black, he might never have gone at all. But go he did; and all that day until evening fell, he hid in one of the mangers in the stables of an old empty house that he had often noticed on his rounds – its rambling garden deep with grass and busy with birds. Part of the time he nodded off to sleep, but most of it he sat with clammy hands and open mouth listening in dread of the baying of the bloodhounds sniffing him out; of Satan; but far more, of never reaching the Snow Mountains. Only once he ventured from his hiding-place to see if any of last year’s apples were still mouldering in the grass. He found none, and had to go hungry.
In the dusk, his basket and ermine cloak over his arm, he skulked off to the railway station and asked for a ticket to the nearest station to the Snow Mountains.
‘Who wants it?’ said the man.
‘Massa, sir,’ said Sambo.
‘If he wants a ticket for the Snow Mountains, why doesn’t he say so?’ said the man.
‘Me no know,’ said Sambo, and the man gave him a ticket. Sambo dared ask nobody any other questions, but spied about until he saw a tall wooden pole surmounted with a finger-board. On this was scrawled in charcoal: ‘To the Snow Mountains’. It pointed to a train – standing empty in the murky gloom of a siding – and an ancient, faded, blistered, ramshackle train it looked.
There was not a human soul to be seen here, or even sign of any, not even of the engine-driver. And when Sambo at last sidled up to enquire of a huddled shape sitting in the dark in how many hours’ time the train would be starting, no tongue answered, and he found he had been whispering to a huge sack of bran! So without more ado he climbed up into one of the carriages – and very dark and musty it was inside – lay down on the hard wooden seat, covered himself with his ermine cloak, and in less than no time he fell asleep.
He awoke in a dreadful nightmare, not knowing where he was, and supposing there had been an earthquake. When he scrambled to his knees and looked out of the window, he found that the train was jerking and jolting along over a very narrow track in the light of the moon, and on either side the track was nothing but the wide glare and glitter and whiteness of ice and snow. The scene stretched on into the distance, a waste of frozen snow. It was a strange thing that any train could have gone rambling off so quick into the north like this. But then Sambo had been fast asleep, nor knew how long. And but one glance at the glory of the snow did him more good than if he had swallowed the whole of his master’s medicines, including the poisons.
The train went on, clanking and clattering – Sambo could even hear the tinkle of the broken ice, and still the moon shone down, and now it began to snow again, but very sparsely. Sambo hung as far as he could out of the narrow window to peep into the carriages ahead of and behind him. Both it seemed were empty. Now and again he saw a house, but it was always only a little house and far away. And once the track made so sharp a curve that he could see even the twinkle of the fire in the engine-cabin and what looked like a black man crouching there, though he couldn’t be sure. And as they were scuttling along as fast as ever, and Sambo was soon drowsy again with watching the snow, he lay down on his hard seat in the warmth of the cloak and once more fell asleep.
When he awoke, the train was at a standstill. Sambo heard a bell ringing, and looked out of the window. It was bright full morning. And there he saw a low narrow platform crusted thick with snow, and an open shed. Above the shed were the words: ‘The Snow Mountains. Change!’ He had only time enough to take out his basket and his bundle and his cloak before there came a long mournful hoot from the engine, and in a moment the train was gone.
And still there was no one to be seen. So Sambo, who was cold, put on his cloak, and, with his basket under it on one arm, and his bundle in his hand, he came to the wicket gate of the station. An old man with a beard was standing there, a lighted lantern in his hand, though the sun had risen. This old man asked Sambo for his ticket. And Sambo, having given him the ticket, asked the old man where the last Miss Bleech lived. ‘White Slopes am de name,’ he said.
‘You go along and along there,’ mumbled the old man, pointing to a winding narrow road beyond the station, ‘until you begin to go up and up. Then up and up you go and follow the trees.’
Sambo thanked him and went on his way. In spite of his long and heavy sleep in the train, his leg bones ached and he was very weary. His basket grew heavier, his cloak hotter, the path steeper. The sun shone down on the whiteness and dazzled his eyes. The pine trees by the wayside had hours ago gone far beyond his counting. He could not even guess how many miles he ha
d tramped scrunching on through the snow when of a sudden he came round a bluff in the hills and saw with joy indeed what he felt sure must be White Slopes. For there was the strangest house in all the world. Peaked and sloping, wide and narrow, and clotted with snow, its shining roofs stood high above its walls and windows. It was not a house but a great Mansion. Up, up, into the solitary mountains Sambo had climbed, following the pine trees that marked his narrow path, and here at last was where he longed to be. What should he do next?
Before he started he had thought he would tell the old lady that his master had sent him. ‘Massa Doc’r ill in bed, he say: he sent Sambo.’ These would be the words he would use. Then he would mix a little of the powder from each of his coloured boxes in turn with some of the nicey-nicey and a little water, and would give her one teaspoonful of each of them every day. He knew his physics now by heart; and though they had done him no good, not at any rate the kind of good he longed for, they had done him no harm.
As long as the medicines lasted, he felt sure the old lady would let him stay with her. When she was better again, perhaps she might ask him to be her house-boy. How happy that would be! For if only, poor Sambo felt certain, he could remain long enough in this white shining mansion among the mountains, and in these radiant wastes of snow, surely, surely, his black would slowly vanish away. Had not his master’s window curtains, even in sunlight incomparably less fair and bright than this, turned from blue to faded grey?
The faintest of breezes came sighing through the air, so faint that it scarcely stirred the glittering crystals at Sambo’s feet. He shivered. And his thoughts grew darker. Supposing the old lady, when he appeared before her great bed, did not believe that his master had sent him? Supposing she asked him questions, discovered that he had stolen his medicines; that he was a little black cheat? What then?
Short Stories for Children Page 49
