Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  ‘How hideous!’ said Ethel, shrinking back.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, dearest,’ John said, smiling at her. ‘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 Butabué), 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 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 Butabué. 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 Creedy?

  Yes, instinct had gained the day over civilisation; the savage in John Creedy had broken out; he had torn up his English clothes and, in West African parlance, ‘had 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 Creedy 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 ghastilly, but not a trace of colour in her cheek nor a sign of life upon her face.

  John Creedy 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.

  III

  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 Creedy 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 Creedy,’ the bare-legged savage answered, also in Fantee. ‘He wants European clothes.’

  ‘Has he sent a letter?’ asked the missionary.

  John Creedy took the folded piece of paper from his palm. The missionary read it. It told him in a few words how the Butabué 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 Creedy, 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 Creedy 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 Butabué.

  ‘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 Creedy. ‘I can eat it as I go.’ And when they gave it him he forgot himself for the moment, and answered ‘Thank you’ in English. The missio
nary stared, but thought it was only a single phrase that he had picked up at Butabué, 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 Butabué. 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. ‘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. ‘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. ‘I don’t mind if I die now.’ And she sank back exhausted into a sort of feverish sleep.

  ‘John Creedy,’ said the black catechist’s wife solemnly, in Fantee, ‘you will have to answer for that lie to a dying woman with your soul!’

  ‘My soul!’ cried John Creedy 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 Creedy was really at bottom far more than a mere veneer; though the 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 Creedy 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 mendax, answered in a firm voice, ‘I swear it.’

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

  Next morning, John Creedy — tearless, but parched and dry in the mouth, like one stunned and unmanned — took a pick-axe 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 Butabué 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.

  FRASINE’S FIRST COMMUNION

  Zélie 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 Provençale was Zélie, olive-skinned, black-haired, thick-lipped, pleasant-featured, with flashing dark eyes and a merry mouth, well shaped to make a mock at you. Nobody would have called Zélie 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 çoux for choux, and çapeau 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 Zélie, 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.’ Zélie 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 Zélie’s keep except at the hour of her cook’s reception.

  On this particular day, however, Ruth was surprised to see Zélie 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, Zélie!’ she cried, putting one hand to her heart, ‘you’re not going to be married?’ For cooks like Zélie are
rare on the Littoral.

  ‘Ma foi! no, Madame,’ Zélie answered, laughing. ‘I confection a robe for Frasine, who makes her first Communion.’

  ‘Frasine!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘And who may Frasine be? Your sister, I suppose, Zélie?’

  Zélie 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, Zélie, I never even knew you were married!’

  Zélie 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, Zélie,’ she murmured, seizing her hand in dismay, ‘do you mean to tell me —— ?’

  Zélie 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,’ Zélie answered, still going on with her work, ‘and 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 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.