by Grant Allen
“Marnin’, sah,” Clemmy answered, with a vague foreboding, her heart standing still with chilly fear within her.
But, as soon as the minister’s ample back was turned, she laid down her cutlass, took up little Vanna from the ground beside her, pressed the child to her breast, and rushed with passionate tears to the box in the hut that contained, in many folds, his precious manuscript. She took the key from her neck, and unlocked it eagerly. Then she brought forth the handkerchief, unwound it with care, and stared hard through her tears at that sacred title-page. His relations indeed! Who was nearer him than herself? Who had ever so much right to till that plot of land as she who was the guardian of his two dying legacies? She would use it to feed his child, and to print his last book. She could kill his own folk if they came there to take it from her!
X.
For weeks and weeks after that, Clemmy worked on in fear and trembling. Would Ivan’s friends come out to claim that precious plot from her — the plot that was to publish his immortal masterpiece? For she knew it was immortal; had not Ivan himself, while he read it, explained so much to her? But slowly she plucked up heart, as week after week passed away undisturbed, and no interloper came to destroy her happiness. She began to believe the minister had said rather more than he meant; he never had written at all to Ivan’s folk in England. Month after month slipped away; and the mango season came, and the tobacco leaves were picked in good condition and sold, and the coffee-berries ripened. Negro friends passed her hut, nodding kindly salute. “You makin’ plenty money, Clemmy? You sell de leaf dear? Hey, but de pickney look well? Him farder proud now if him can see de pickney.”
At last the rainy season was over, and the rivers were full. Mosquito larvæ swarmed and wriggled by thousands in the shallow lagoons; and when they got their wings, the sea-breeze drove them up in countless numbers to the deep basin of St. Thomas, a lake-like expanse in the central range ringed round by a continuous amphitheatre of very high mountains. They were a terrible plague, those mosquitoes; they drove poor little Vanna half wild with pain and terror. A dozen times in the night the tender little creature woke crying from their bites. Clemmy stretched a veil over her face, but that made little difference. Those wretched mosquitoes bit right through the veil. Clemmy didn’t know where to turn to protect her baby.
“Him buckra baby; dat what de matter,” old Rachel suggested gravely. “Nagur baby doan’t feel de ‘skeeter bite same like o’ buckra. Nagur folk and ‘skeeter belong all o’ same country. But buckra doan’t hab no ‘skeeter in England. Missy Queen doan’t ‘low dem. Now dis ’ere chile buckra — tree part buckra an’ one part nagur. Dat what for make him so much feel de ‘skeeter.”
“But what can I do for ‘top him, marra?” Clemmy inquired despondently.
“It only one way,” old Rachel answered, with a very sage face, “Burn smudge before de door. Dat drive away ‘skeeter.”
Now a smudge is a fresh-cut turf of aromatic peaty marsh vegetation; you light it before the hut, where it smoulders slowly during the day and evening, and the smoke keeps the mosquitoes from entering the place while the door stands open. Clemmy tried the smudge next day, and found it most efficacious. For two or three nights little Vanna slept peacefully. Old Rachel nodded her head.
“Keep him burning,” she advised, “till de water dry up, an’ de worm, dem kill, and it doan’t no more ‘skeeter.”
Clemmy followed her mother’s advice to the letter in this matter. Each morning when she went out to work on her plot, with little Vanna laid tenderly in her one shawl on the ground close by, she lighted the smudge and kept it smouldering all day, renewing it now and again as it burnt out through the evening. On Thursday, as was her wont, she went down with her goods to Linstead to market. On her head she carried her basket of “bread-kind” — that is to say, yam, and the other farinacious roots or fruits which are to the negro what wheaten bread is to the European peasant. She walked along erect, with the free, swinging gait peculiar to her countrywomen, untrammelled by stays and the other abominations of civilized costume; little Vanna on her arm crowed and gurgled merrily. ’Twas a broiling hot day, but Clemmy’s heart was lighter. Was there ever such a treasure as that fair little Vanna, whitest of quadroons? — and she was saving up fast for the second of those thirty-five precious pounds towards printing Ivan’s manuscript!
In the market-place at Linstead she sat all day among the chattering negresses, who chaffered for quatties, with white teeth displayed, or higgled over the price of breadfruit and plantain. ’Tis a pretty scene, one of these tropical markets, with its short-kirtled black girls, bare-legged and bare-footed, in their bright cotton gowns and their crimson bandannas. Before them stand baskets of golden mangoes and purple star-apples; oranges lie piled in little pyramids on the ground; green shaddocks and great slices of pink-fleshed water-melon tempt the thirsty passer-by with their juicy lusciousness. Over all rises the constant din of shrill African voices; ’tis a perfect saturnalia of hubbub and noise, instinct with bright colour and alive with merry faces.
So Clemmy sat there all day, enjoying herself after her fashion, in this weekly gathering of all the society known to her. For the market-place is the popular negro substitute for the At Homes and Assembly Rooms of more civilized communities. Vanna crowed with delight to see the little black babies in their mother’s arms, and the pretty red tomatoes scattered around loose among the gleaming oranges. It was late when Clemmy rose to go home to her hamlet. She trudged along, gaily enough, with her laughing companions; more than a year had passed now since Ivan’s death, and at times, in the joy of more money earned for him, she could half forget her great grief for Ivan. The sun was setting as she reached her own plot. For a moment her heart came up into her mouth. Then she started with a cry. She gazed before her in blank horror. The hut had disappeared! In its place stood a mass of still smouldering ashes.
In one second she understood the full magnitude of her loss, and how it had all happened. With a woman’s quickness she pictured it to herself by pure instinct. The smudge had set fire to the clumps of dry grass by the door of the hut; the grass had lighted up the thin wattle and palm thatch; and once set afire, on that sweltering day, her home had burnt down to the ground like tinder.
Two or three big negroes stood gazing in blank silence at the little heap of ruins — or rather of ash, for all was now consumed to a fine white powder. Clemmy rushed at them headlong with a wild cry of suspense. “You save de box?” she faltered out in her agony. “You save de box? You here when it burning?”
“Nobody doan’t see till him all in a blaze,” one young negro replied in a surly voice, as negroes use in a moment of disaster; “an’ den, when we see, we doan’t able to do nuffin.”
Clemmy laid down her child. “De box, de box!” she cried in a frenzied voice, digging down with tremulous hands into the smoking ashes. The square form of the hut was still rudely preserved by the pile of white powder, and she knew in a moment in which corner to look for it. But she dug like a mad creature. Soon all was uncovered. The calcined remains of Ivan’s clothes were there, and a few charred fragments of what seemed like paper. And that was all. The precious manuscript itself was utterly destroyed. Ivan Greets one masterpiece was lost for ever.
XI.
Clemmy crouched on the ground with her arms round her knees. She sat there cowering. She was too appalled for tears; her eyes were dry, but her heart was breaking.
For a minute or two she crouched motionless in deathly silence. Even the negroes held their peace. Instinctively they divined the full depth of her misery.
After a while she rose again, and took Vanna on her lap. The child cried for food, and Clemmy opened her bosom. Then she sat there long beside the ruins of her hut. Negresses crowded round and tried in vain to comfort her. How could they understand her loss? They didn’t know what it meant: for in that moment of anguish Clemmy felt herself a white woman. They spoke to her of the hut. The hut! What to her were ten thousand palaces! If
you had given her the King’s House at Spanish Town that night it would have been all the same. Not the roof over her head, but Ivan Greet’s manuscript.
She rocked herself up and down as she cowered on the ground, and moaned inarticulately. The rocking and moaning lulled Vanna to sleep. His child was now all she had left to live for. For hours she crouched on the bare ground, never uttering a word: the negresses sat round, and watched her intently. Now and again old Rachel begged her to come home to her stepfather’s hut; but Clemmy couldn’t stir a step from those sacred ashes. It grew dark and chilly, for Ivan Greet’s plot stood high on the mountain. One by one the negresses dropped off to their huts; Clemmy sat there still, with her naked feet buried deep in the hot ash, and Ivan Greet’s baby clasped close to her bosom.
At last with tropical unexpectedness, a great flash of lightning blazed forth, all at once, and showed the wide basin and the mountains round as distinct as daylight. Instantly and simultaneously a terrible clap of thunder bellowed aloud in their ears. Then the rain-cloud burst. It came down in a single sheet with equatorial violence.
Old Rachel and the few remaining negresses fled home. They seized Clemmy’s arm, and tried to drag her; but Clemmy sat dogged and refused to accompany them. Then they started and left her. All night long the storm raged, and the thunder roared awesomely. Great flashes lighted up swaying stems of coconuts and bent clumps of bamboo; huge palms snapped short like reeds before the wind; loud peals rent the sky with their ceaseless artillery. And all night long, in spite of storm and wind, the rain pelted down in one unending flood, as though it poured by great leaks from some heavenly reservoir.
Torrents tore down the hills; many huts were swept away; streams roared and raved; devastation marked their track; ’twas a carnival of ruin, a memorable hurricane. Hail rattled at times; all was black as pitch, save when the lightning showed everything more vivid than daylight. But Clemmy sat on, hot at heart with her agony.
When morning dawned the terrified negroes creeping forth from their shanties, found her still on her plot, crouching close over his child, but stiff and stark and cold and lifeless. Her bare feet had dug deep in the ashes of Ivan’s hut, now washed by the rain to a sodden remnant. Little Vanna just breathed in her dead mother’s arms. Old Rachel took her.
And that’s why the world has never heard more of Ivan Greet’s masterpiece.
KAREN.
A CANADIAN ROMANCE.
I.
It was a Mennonite clearing on the Upper Ottawa. All round, a stunted pine-forest covered the low granite hills — slim stems scarcely able to root themselves obliquely in the rare clefts of that barren ice-worn rock. In the foreground, a deep lake slumbered calm between high crags, the peaty soil that surrounded its margin starred thick underfoot with great white cups of the creeping American calla-lily. A group of log-huts occupied a nook by the shore; behind them, some rude corn-plots; then the unbroken forest. It was a beautiful scene, but very sombre and desolate; most romantic to sketch, most gloomy to live in. Above all in winter!
To this lonely spot, miles away from the world, a small colony of Russian religious fanatics had drifted, to take refuge from the despotism of the Orthodox Church. They are a simple, toilsome, God-fearing lot, these bronze-faced and bearded Mennonites, very austere and ascetic — a sort of mild-eyed, melancholy Russian edition of the Quakers or the Moravians; and they flock to Canada, partly because the country is congenially cold and forest-clad, but partly also because the life and the mode of labour there exactly suit them. In those unbroken wilds, far from the din of cities, they fell timber, and plant Indian corn, and speak with tongues, and worship God in their own quaint fashion, no man hindering. The winter is hard on the Upper Ottawa, but the iron grip of the Czar is many degrees harder. It sinks often below the zero of human endurance.
In the spring, however, even the Mennonite fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Now it was a glorious spring day, of the true American sort, when the maples were just clothing themselves in the first wan green of early youth, and the blood-root was opening its pale petals timidly to the warm Canadian sun. A young man and a girl stood on the trail through the wood that led from Nijni Ouralsk to Robinson’s Portage, the next raw settlement. They were Russians by birth, but their speech was English; the common-school system of the country had given them that. The young man was tall, and lissome, and blue-eyed, and handsome; the girl was shrinking and delicate, like an Indian pipe-plant.
“To-morrow we shall know all, Karen,” the young man was saying hopefully, as he held her hand in his, though she half strove to disengage it, like one who tries hard to do her duty, in spite of inclination. “To-morrow we shall know all; and, perhaps, we shall know the best — the very best — my darling.”
The girl looked back at him doubtfully, with a very wistful look. Tears swam in her dim eyes. She was very much in love with him. “And perhaps we shall know the worst,” she said, with a sigh of resignation. “It is as the Lord wills it, Ivan.”
Ivan raised that little white hand, all trembling, to his lips. Karen was always a pessimist — though he hadn’t such a fine word at his tongue’s tip to express it with. He kissed the struggling little hand with profound devotion. These Russians are intense in whatever they do.
“And if it comes to the worst,” he said, in very tentative tones, “if it goes against us, you will obey them, Karen?”
The girl drew back as if shocked.
“Oh, Ivan!” she cried, in alarm. “You would not surely rebel! It is His will, Ivan!”
The young man passed a puzzled hand over his fair brown beard.
“It is His will, I suppose,” he said slowly, “since the Elders tell us so. But it’s very mysterious.”
Karen gazed deep into his true eyes — those clear, honest blue eyes of his, and answered with a burst —
“I sometimes think He won’t put this burden upon our two poor hearts, Ivan. I have prayed so hard. I think you must draw me.”
“I think so, too,” Ivan answered, with the hopeful optimism of early manhood. “For I also have prayed. Prayed earnestly, fervently.”
“Ah, yes, but perhaps your prayers were too carnal,” the girl exclaimed in an anxious voice, with a faint shade of terror passing slowly across her face. “It may be ill for our souls that your petition should be answered. And Peter Verstoff has prayed too. I know he loves me.”
“But not as I love you, Karen,” Ivan cried, all eager, with a red glow on his face. “No, my child, not as I love you! Oh yes, I know he follows you about, and sighs after you, and dreams of you. How could he help it, indeed? There’s no girl in all Ouralsk a man could love but you.” He plucked two white snow-blossoms, with a tiny sprig of tamarack for feathery verdure, and placed them reverently in the opening of her simple bodice. “Peter Verstoff! “ he exclaimed once more, with profound contempt in his tone. “I tell you, Karen, he hasn’t got it in him. Peter doesn’t know how to love as I do!”
“I’m afraid not,” Karen answered demurely, true to her austere faith. “I’m afraid you make an idol of one who is, after all, but of the earth, earthy. For your soul’s sake, I may be denied you. It is as He wills, Ivan.”
“If you are denied me — —” Ivan began, in a wild outburst of hot youth. But Karen clapped her small hand on his mouth disapprovingly.
“Oh, don’t say it, dear Ivan,” she cried, with a persuasive look. “For both our sakes, don’t say it! It may be counted against us, to-morrow. Let us be wise. Let us be humble. I’ll go home and pray. Much may be done by praying.”
The young man leant forward, and pursed his lips. Even Mennonites are human. “Just this once, Karen! This once!” he said, oh so softly and wistfully.
Karen drew back, all tremulous. “But, Ivan,” she cried, aghast, “is it right? Is it allowed us? Should we do so, unbetrothed? Suppose, to-morrow, I was to belong to Peter?”
The young man smiled, and held her sweet face between his two hands, unabashed. No such scruples checked
him. He answered never a word, but stooped down and kissed her. A thrill ran through Karen’s blood at that delicious touch. “Let Peter guard his own!” the young man said lightly. “While I can I will take one.” He was a terrible reprobate!
Karen tore herself away from him with a sudden rush of remorse. “This is sinful,” she cried. “This is sinful! — sinful! How could I ever allow you! Oh, Ivan, let us go home and pray harder than ever. Temptation besets us. Perhaps to-morrow all this will be imputed for sin to us.”
II.
Next morning, in the little log shanty that served for chapel to the settlement, the Elders of the Church assembled in due form to carry out a solemn religious ceremony. Seven young men and five young women stood in line facing one another to right and left before the table that filled the place of an altar. Four of the young women were hard-faced stern-featured Russian Canadians, strong of build and bronzed by the sun, born drudges of the log-huts, with no souls above their slavery. The fifth was Karen. All the young men looked eagerly at her with longing in their eyes, but most of all Ivan Utovitch and Peter Verstoff.
The Elders, all burly men with bushy Russian beards, ranged themselves in a row beside the plain deal table. No smile seemed possible for those hard cold lips. The fanatical asceticism of the Muscovite mind, that speaks out on every page of Tolstoi’s or Dostoieffsky’s, had soured their faces. One had but to look at them to see at a glance that love, as we Westerns understand it, was to them a mere worldly toy, whose name was never so much as to be spoken among them. The will of the flesh was an enemy to be held resolutely at arm’s length, with all their force, for ever. The notion of marrying a woman merely because you loved her was a notion, to them, wafted straight from the devil.
The presiding Elder looked round, and held up his hand for silence. A deep hush fell at once upon the little assembly of believers. All felt only too profoundly the full importance of the moment. For the future of ten lives — nay, more, of ten thousand unborn souls — trembled that day in the balance.
