by Grant Allen
VIII
For a week or two the world was a blank to Clemmy. She knew only one thing — that Ivan had left her two sacred legacies. To print his book, to bring up his child — those were now the tasks in life set before her. From the very first moment she regarded the manuscript of his masterpiece with the profoundest reverence. Even before six stalwart negroes in their Sunday clothes came to bury her dead poet on the slope of the hillside under a murmuring clump of feathery bamboos, she had taken out that precious bundle of papers from Ivan’s box in the corner, which served as sofa in the bare little shanty, and had wrapped it up tenderly in his big silk handkerchief, and replaced it with care, and locked up the box again, and put the key, tied by a string, round her neck on her own brown bosom. And when Ivan was gone for ever, and her tears were dry enough, she went to that box every night and morning, and unrolled the handkerchief reverently, and took out the unprinted book, and read it here and there — with pride and joy and sorrow — and folded it up again and replaced it in its ark till another evening. She knew nothing of books — till this one; it had never even struck her they were the outcome of human brains and hands: but she knew it was her business in life now to publish it. Ivan Greet was gone, and, but for those two legacies he left behind him, she would have wished to die — she would have died, as negroes can, by merely wishing it. But now she couldn’t. She must live for his child; she must live for his idyll. It was a duty laid upon her. She knew not how — but somehow, some time, she must get that book printed.
Six weeks later, her baby was born. As it lay on her lap, a dear, little, soft, round, creamy-brown girl — hardly brown at all, indeed, but a delicate quadroon, with deep chestnut hair and European features — she loved it in her heart for its father’s sake chiefly. It was Ivan’s child, made in Ivan’s likeness. They christened it Vanna; ’twas the nearest feminine form she could devise to Ivan. But even the baby — her baby, his baby — seemed hardly more alive to Clemmy herself than the manuscript that lay wrapped with scented herbs and leaves in the box in the corner. For that was all Ivan’s, and it spoke to her still with his authentic voice — his own very words, his tone, his utterance. Many a time she took it out, as baby lay asleep, with tender eyelids closed, on the bed where Ivan had died (for sanitary science and knowledge of the germ theory haven’t spread much as yet to St. Thomas-in-the-Vale) and read it aloud in her own sing-song way, and laughed and cried over it, and thought to herself, time and again, ‘He wrote all that! How wonderful! How beautiful!’
As soon as ever she was well enough, after baby came, Clemmy took that sacred manuscript, reverently folded still in its soft silk handkerchief, among its fragrant herbs, and with baby at her breast, trudged by herself along the dusty road, some twenty-five miles, all the way into Kingston. It was a long, hot walk, and she was weak and ill; but Ivan’s book must be printed, let it cost her what it might; she would work herself to death, but she must manage to print it. She knew nothing of his family, his friends in England; she knew nothing of publishing, or of the utter futility of getting the type set at a Kingston printing-office; she only knew this — that Ivan wrote that book, and that, before he died, he meant to get it printed. After a weary trudge, buoyed only by vague hopes of fulfilling Ivan’s last wish, she reached the baking streets of the grim white city. To her that squalid seaport seemed a very big and bustling town. Wandering there by herself, alone and afraid, down its unwonted thoroughfares, full of black men and white, all hurrying on their own errands, and all equally strange to her, she came at last to Henderson’s, the printer’s. With a very timid air, she mustered up courage to enter the shop, and unfolded with trembling fingers her sacred burden. The printer stared hard at her. ‘Not your own, I suppose?’ he said, turning it over with a curious eye, like any common manuscript, and evidently amused at the bare idea of a book by an up-country brown girl.
And Clemmy, half aghast that any man should touch that holy relic so lightly, made answer very low, ‘No, not me own. Me fren’s. Him dead, and I want to know how much you ax to print him.’
The man ran his eye through it, and calculated roughly. ‘On paper like this,’ he said, after jotting down a few figures, ‘five hundred copies would stand you in something like five-and-thirty pounds, exclusive of binding.’
Five-and-thirty pounds! Clemmy drew a long breath. It was appalling, impossible. ‘You haven’t got so much about you, I suppose!’ the printer went on, with a laugh. Clemmy’s eyes filled with tears. Five-and-thirty pounds! And a brown girl! Was it likely?
‘I doan’t want it print jes’ yet,’ she answered, with an effort, hardly keeping back her tears. ‘I only come to ax — walk in all de way from St. Tammas-in-de-Vale, so make me tired. Bime-by, p’raps, I print him — when I done got de money. I doan’t got it jes’ yet — but I’m gwine home to get it.’
And home she went, heavy-hearted; home she went to get it. Five-and-thirty pounds, but she meant to earn it. Tramp, tramp, tramp, she trudged along to St. Thomas. Between the pestilential lagoons on the road to Spanish Town she thought it all out. Before she reached the outskirts, with her baby at her breast, she had already matured her plan of campaign for the future. Come what might, she must make enough money to print Ivan Greet’s masterpiece. She was only a brown girl, but she was still in possession of the two-acre plot; and possession is always nine points of the law, in Jamaica as in England. Indeed, with her simple West Indian notions of proprietorship and inheritance, Clemmy never doubted for a moment they were really her own, as much as if she were Ivan’s lawful widow. Nobody had yet come to disturb or evict her; nobody had the right, in Jamaica at least: for Ivan Greet’s heirs, executors, and assigns slumbered at peace, five thousand miles away, oversea in England. So, as Clemmy tramped on, along the dusty high-road, and between the malarious swamps, and through the grey streets of dismantled Spanish Town, and up the grateful coolness of the Rio Cobre ravine to her home in St. Thomas, she said to herself and to his baby at her breast a thousand times over how she would toil and moil, and save and scrape, and earn money to print his last work at last as he meant it to be printed.
IX
And she worked with a will. She didn’t know it was a heroic resolve on her part; she only knew she had got to do it. She planted yam and coffee and tobacco. Coffee and tobacco need higher cultivation than the more thriftless class of negroes usually care to bestow upon them; but Clemmy was a brown girl, and she worked as became the descendant of so many strenuous white ancestors. She could live herself on the yams and bread-fruit; when her crop was ripe she could sell the bananas and coffee and tobacco, and hoard up the money she got in a belt round her waist, for she never could trust all that precious coin away from her own person.
From the day of her return, she worked hard with a will; and on market-days she trudged down with her basket on her head and her baby in her arms to sell her surplus produce in Linstead market. Every quattie she earned she tied up tight in the girdle round her waist. When the quatties reached eight she exchanged them for a shilling — one shilling more towards the thirty-five pounds it would cost her to print Ivan Greet’s last idyll! The people in St. Thomas were kind to Clemmy. ‘Him doan’t nebber get ober de buckra deat’,’ they said. ‘Him take it berry to heart. Him lub him fe’ true, dat gal wit’ de buckra!’ So they helped her still, as they had helped Ivan in his lifetime. Many a one gave her an hour’s work at her plot when the drought threatened badly, or aided her to get in her yams and sweet potatoes before the rainy season.
Clemmy was an Old Connexion Baptist. They all belonged to the Old Connexion in the Linstead district. Your negro is strong on doctrinal theology, and he likes the practical sense of sins visibly washed away by total immersion. It gives him a comfortable feeling of efficient regeneration which no mere infant sprinkling could possibly emulate. One morning, on the hillside, as Clemmy stood in her plot by a graceful clump of waving bamboos, hacking down with her cutlass the weeds that encumbered her precious coffee-bushes — the
bushes that were to print Ivan Greet’s last manuscript — of a sudden the minister rode by on his mountain pony — sleek, smooth-faced, oleaginous, the very picture and embodiment of the well-fed, negro-paid, up-country missionary. He halted on the path — a mere ledge of bridle-track — as he passed where she stood bending down at her labour.
‘Hey, Clemmy,’ the minister cried in his half-negro tone — for, though an Englishman born, he had lived among his flock on the mountains so long that he had caught at last its very voice and accent— ‘they tell me this good-for-nothing white man’s dead who lived in the hut here. Perhaps it was better so! Instead of trying to raise and improve your people, he had sunk himself to their lowest level. So you’ve got his hut now! And what are you doing, child, with the coffee and tobacco?’
Clemmy’s face burned hot; this was sheer desecration! The flush almost showed through her dusky brown skin, so intense was her indignant wrath at hearing her dead Ivan described by that sleek fat creature as a ‘good-for-nothing white man.’ But she answered back bravely, ‘Him good friend to me fe’ true, sah. I doan’t know nuffin ‘bout what make him came heah, but I nebber see buckra treat nagur anywhere same way like he treat dem. An’ I lubbed him true. And I growin’ dem crop dah to prin’ de book him gone left behind him.’
The minister reflected. This was sheer contumacy. ‘But the land’s not yours,’ he said testily. ‘It belongs to the man’s relations — his heirs or his creditors. Unless of course,’ he added, after a pause, just to make things sure, ‘he left it by will to you.’
‘No, sah, him doant make no will,’ Clemmy answered, trembling, ‘an’ him doan’t leave it to anybody. But I lib on de land while Ivan lib, an’ I doan’t gwine to quit it for no one on eart’ now him dead and buried.’
‘You were his housekeeper, I think,’ the minister went on, musing.
And Clemmy, adopting that usual euphemism of the country where such relations are habitual, made answer, hanging her head, ‘Yes, sah, I was him housekeeper.’
‘What was his name?’ the minister asked, taking out a small notebook.
‘Dem call him Ivan Greet,’ Clemmy answered incautiously.
‘Ivan Greet,’ the minister repeated, stroking his smooth double chin and reflecting inwardly. ‘Ivan Greet! Ivan Greet! No doubt a Russian!... Well, Clemmy, you must remember, this land’s not yours; and if only we can find out where Ivan Greet belonged, and write to his relations — which is, of course, our plain duty — you’ll have to give it up and go back to your father.’ He shook his pony’s reins. ‘Get up, Duchess! ‘he cried calmly. ‘Good morning, Clemmy; good morning.’
‘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 come 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 farinaceous 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 civilised 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 bread-fruit and plantain. ’Tis a pretty scene, one of these tropical markets, with its short-kirtled black girls, bare-legged and barefooted, 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 civilised communities. Vanna crowed with delight to see the little black babies in their mother’s arms, and the pretty red tom
atoes 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 Greet’s 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.
