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Title: Bride of the night
Author: Louise Gerard
Release date: March 23, 2026 [eBook #78276]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Macaulay Company, 1930
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78276
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE NIGHT ***
BRIDE OF THE NIGHT
BY
LOUISE GERARD
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
[COPYRIGHT]
Copyright, 1930
By Louise Gerard
[DEDICATION]
To My Friend
Dorothea Thornton Clarke, F.R.G.S.,
_without whose help and constant encouragement
neither this nor any of my books would
have been written_
[EPIGRAPH]
_Wild winds! What are the wild winds?_
_They are love and hate and lust and avarice._
_Wild winds that blow through the kingdom of the soul,_
_Catching us we know not when,_
_Carrying us we know not where._
PART ONE
“Men will call me unrelenting,
Pitiless, vindictive, stern,
Few will raise a voice dissenting,
Few will better things discern.”
CHAPTER I
“_Shall we count offences or coin excuses,_
_Or weigh with scales the soul of a man?_”
Dr. Atherley’s bungalow was the resort of British officials who
passed through Duke Town on their way to and from various posts in
West Africa. It was an ugly, hygienic structure of corrugated iron
situated on the more civilized side of the Calabar River, facing an
expanse of sullen, slow-flowing water on the far bank of which was an
endless stretch of mangrove and pandanus swamp.
One day when Atherley returned home from a round of duties at the
military hospital, on his veranda he found an acquaintance--an officer
from up-country.
“Hello, Fletcher, have you caught your Hyena yet?” he said by way of
greeting.
The question brought a look of mingled chagrin and regret to Captain
Lindsay Fletcher’s sun-bitten face. The “Hyena” was a mysterious negro
sultan, a notorious raider, so-called because of his tribal cry; and
for some years the captain had been trying to run him to earth.
“I haven’t,” he replied, “but he’s caught and tortured to death
another of my juniors, young Dennis.”
Atherley poured out a dose of whiskey from a bottle standing on a
table near.
“That nigger is the very devil,” he remarked.
“I’d give ten years of my life to catch him,” Fletcher said fervently.
“Have you ever thought of looking for him in unlikely places?”
“I’ve looked into every hole and corner of my various districts.”
“Why not spread your net a little farther?”
Captain Fletcher was lying at his ease on a long cane lounge. The
doctor’s question made him sit up smartly.
“Have you heard anything?” he questioned quickly.
“Not a thing! But your Hyena interests me. He seems to me a bit too
clever to be wholly a product of the wilds. There’s a nigger in this
town whose record isn’t any too healthy. It struck me it might be
worth your while to probe into his intimate affairs.”
Although Duke Town was hundreds of miles away from the scenes of the
mysterious negro chieftain’s raids and massacres, Fletcher did not
scoff at his friend’s suggestions.
“Who’s your suspect?” he asked, all attention.
Atherley settled his shriveled, sun-dried self in a long chair.
“His name is Essel Lebrassa. He’s a mulatto. Senior--”
“I always said there was more than a nigger’s brain behind the Hyena’s
tactics,” Fletcher interrupted.
“Not so fast. I’m not accusing Lebrassa. I’m only saying--”
“Oh, cut out the preaching and give me full particulars,” Fletcher
said with open impatience.
“This Essel Lebrassa is a better educated man than any one here
present. He’s the senior partner of the firm of Lebrassa and Cooper.
Cooper, by the way, is coal black. They’re enormously wealthy, both of
them. Lebrassa holds all sorts of weird, wild orgies in that villa of
his on the hill here. And he has a whole harem of colored mistresses.
What’s more, he hates a white skin like poison.”
By now Fletcher was weighing facts carefully.
“But none of that points to his having any connection with the fiend
who periodically raids our up-country districts,” he said in a
despondent manner.
“I’m getting there,” Atherley replied.
He took a sip of whiskey.
“Occasionally this Lebrassa disappears for months on end,” he
continued. “Presumably he goes to Europe or America. But I heard from
Harding that this buck nigger, who was supposed to be in England last
year, joined the outward bound steamer not in Liverpool, but in Lagos!
And last year the Hyena was busy in your district.”
“I should rather think he was!” Fletcher said feelingly. “Massacred
half my _Hausas_, not to mention poor Dennis, and raided and burned a
score of my villages. But this Lagos incident doesn’t prove anything.
Lebrassa may have come out by some previous boat and got off there on
business.”
“He may have,” Atherley agreed. “But that little fact made me look
into things. And it seems queer that _all_ Lebrassa’s absences
coincide with the times when the Hyena gets busy. Anyhow, he left here
last week, presumably for England, even mentioning the town he was
bound for--Harrogate. As you’re going home by the next steamer, it
might be worth your while to see if Lebrassa really is there as
reported.”
“What’s he like?” Fletcher asked.
“A big chap. Bigger than you, and that’s saying something. Age, about
forty. Not so bad-looking, either, even according to European
standards.”
These remarks left Fletcher thoughtful.
“The description tallies,” he said at length, “except that the Hyena
is black as soot, but dye could turn a brown skin ebony. And
considering he’s been a thorn in the flesh of three governments for
twenty years, he can’t be altogether a chicken.”
“Exactly. That’s why I mentioned this Essel Lebrassa to you. With no
clue at all as to who and what the Hyena really is, or where he comes
from, the merest suspicion is worth following.”
“It certainly makes it worth my while looking in at Harrogate. And if
Lebrassa isn’t there. Well--”
Fletcher broke off, and lapsed into thoughtful silence.
CHAPTER II
“_Thus we know not the day, nor the morrow,_
_Nor yet what a night may bring forth,_
_Nor the storm, nor the sleep, nor the sorrow,_
_Nor the strife, nor the rest, nor the wrath._”
In the winter garden of a big hotel in Harrogate the visitors were
assembling for tea. One couple sat apart from the rest of the guests;
they were the object of many curious and contemptuous glances. The
girl was about twenty-seven. She had a weak, worn face, dreamy, gray
eyes, and a mass of golden hair. Her companion was a coal-black negro,
ostentatiously dressed, who hung over her with an air of possession.
A stir at the far end of the room made her turn to a man near, who was
leaning against a pillar watching the assembly in a bored manner.
He was a mulatto of the best type, verging on forty, well but quietly
dressed. He stood nearly six feet three in height, but his massive
shoulders made him appear less tall than he really was. His was a
powerful face, European in feature. The negro taint showed only in the
pale brown of his skin, and a peculiar blueness in the whites of his
eyes.
“Mr. Lebrassa, I think that’s the post,” she said. “Please go and see
if there are any letters for me.”
The request brought his eyes to the couple.
“With pleasure, Miss Seaton,” he replied.
His voice was that of a man of culture; in it was no trace of the
stilted, jerky intonation usual with his kind.
Lebrassa passed through the winter garden into a lounge hall beyond,
where the letters were being sorted. On making his request he received
one addressed to “Miss Molly Seaton”--a letter in a flaming crimson
envelope.
The unusual color made him look at it with some curiosity. As he
turned it over a name written across the flap caught his eye.
“Leslie Graham.”
On seeing it, he started as if suddenly stung, and from his lips there
came a fierce, smothered exclamation of astonishment and triumph.
For a moment he stood with the missive crushed to a red streak in his
hand. Then slipping it into his pocket he went back to the
winter-garden.
At his return Molly looked up anxiously.
“Is there nothing for me?” she questioned quickly.
“No. Nothing.”
She sighed, and the dreary look on her face deepened.
The mulatto watched her closely.
“You’re disappointed,” he said.
“I was hoping to get a letter from a friend in Paris.”
Presently Lebrassa left the winter garden, and made his way upstairs
to his private sitting-room. Once there he locked the door. Seating
himself in front of the fire, he opened the scarlet letter.
As he drew out the contents a photograph fell to the floor. This he
picked up and glanced at. Then putting the picture on the table by his
side he started the letter.
It had a Paris address and ran as follows:
_My Own Darling Molly_,
Things have gone our way at last! I can see your dear eyes opening
when you receive this startling epistle, startling as regards color
and contents. It is the red letter day of my career, so I speculated
in a box of this glowing carmine to celebrate the occasion.
How does £300 a year sound for me, Leslie Graham? At one time living
on your bounty, Molly mine. I can’t believe it’s really true, yet
provided you come with me the job is mine. It means so much. It means
we can always be together now. It means you won’t have to do another
day’s work. It means space and color and fresh air and sunshine, all
the things you must have and that we’ve always wanted. It really means
I’ve got a job as foreign correspondence clerk to a shipping firm in
Marseilles.
My gift for languages, the only thing I inherited from my dear old
dissipated father, is going to prove as useful to me as it was to him.
It found him a job in every corner of the earth, and if it does the
same for me we shall get round the world, Molly mine, and your silly
old lungs will behave themselves properly in sunny climes.
Now I’ll give you the whole campaign.
When I last wrote I gave you an inkling of it. I stood as good a
chance as anyone. I had every qualification they wanted. For two weeks
I waited, getting sicker and sicker every day. Messieurs Dupont,
Baroche et Cie. made no acknowledgment of my existence. Imagine my
surprise and delight when with my coffee and rolls this morning came a
letter from the firm, requesting me to present myself at their Paris
office at my earliest convenience.
You may be sure I went, tout suite. They examined me in all the
required languages and I came off with flying colors. Then they tested
my shorthand, bookkeeping and typewriting, and finally had an inquest
on my testimonials.
Unfortunately I had one great fault--I was very young.
Then, Molly mine, I told them all about you. That settled it. They
were no longer the Inquisition, burning to find some flaw in my
composition, qualifications and testimonials, but two really nice,
bald-headed, old gentlemen, quite anxious to entrust their foreign
correspondence in my keeping provided you are there to vouch for my
respectability and keep me anchored to my job.
So, Molly, old thing, in the near future, I hope we shall have a
little place all our very own by the sunny Mediterranean. I’m coming
to see you on Saturday, and I shall land up at your hotel in time for
dinner. So-long.
Always your loving
Leslie.
P.S. Enclosed is a photograph of our little lot, so you will see hard
work has not aged me beyond recognition. L.G.
Lebrassa read the letter through a second time. Then he got to his
feet and went to Cooper’s room. In shirt sleeves the negro was seated
before a mirror, vigorously brushing his wool.
On seeing the mulatto he got to his feet.
“Well, Cooper, have you fixed up with your little white girl yet?”
Lebrassa asked.
For a moment the negro stared at his visitor in blank astonishment, as
if the question were the last he had expected. Then a look of hungry
passion came to his face.
“I wish to God I had,” he answered.
“There should be no difficulty,” Lebrassa said. “She’s a weak,
easily-persuaded creature. I’ve a reason for wanting her married to
you by next Saturday.”
“But that only gives me three days,” Cooper said in a despondent
manner.
“Well, if you don’t make her overlook your color before the week is
out, there’ll be very little chance for you. An Englishman is coming
here on Saturday whose desire is much the same as yours. I’m going to
interview him, and I want to tell him among other things that his
proposed fiancée has eloped with a nigger. If he’s anything like his
father, the news should prove a trifle disconcerting.”
In wild excitement the negro took a step forward.
“Not de Tourville’s son!” he exclaimed.
“Every circumstance points to it. He bears an alias Lionel de
Tourville adopted, and possessed a father as dissipated, moreover a
man who had been to most parts of the world.”
“Then vengeance is ours at last!” Cooper yelled.
“Possibly,” Lebrassa answered, coolly. “However, this man’s fate is my
concern alone. Yours is to carry out my wishes.”
“What about Nanza?” Cooper asked. “He will want a hand in this.”
At the mention of the name the mulatto’s eyes narrowed.
“Nanza!” he said contemptuously. “What of him?”
With a savage, brooding air, Lebrassa returned to his own quarters.
On entering, the photograph lying on the table took his attention.
Again he picked it up. Across the back was written in a small, firm
hand:
“Puzzle, find Leslie Graham.”
He glanced at the picture. It was a group of eight young people, five
men and three girls.
A girl’s face took his attention. She was hardly more than a child,
delicate and refined-looking, who was smiling out at the world in rare
good fellowship and kindliness. And it seemed to Lebrassa her smile
was directed at _him_!
His glance went from her to the young men. At each in turn he looked,
wondering with which he had to deal. Then his gaze came back to the
girl’s face and stayed there. Until the dinner gong sounded, he sat
looking at it, wondering bitterly if she would smile at him in such a
friendly manner if she knew he was a “nigger.”
When the dinner gong went booming through the big hotel, he tore off
the rest of the photograph and threw it into the fire. But the small,
smiling, friendly face he put carefully into his pocket-book.
CHAPTER III
“_It may be my fancy and nothing more._”
In the lounge hall of the hotel the visitors were assembling.
Gathered in little groups, they were talking, smoking and drinking
cocktails before going in for dinner. Half hidden in an archway that
led to the winter garden, was a girl in a cheap black evening frock.
She was small and slight, with a fair, delicate complexion and big,
dark-fringed eyes almost startling in their vivid blueness. Her wavy
black hair was worn in thick, tight coils round her ears. There was a
tired droop about her childish figure, and deep dark rings under eyes
that scanned each late-comer anxiously.
A voice speaking almost at her elbow brought her attention to a couple
of men near.
“That’s the fifth nigger I’ve counted within the last five minutes.
The place is creeping with them. A nigger wild is the devil’s own
production, and to see the beast dressed up like yourself is
absolutely sickening.”
In surprise, the girl glanced at the speaker. He was a tall, sunburnt
man who looked like an officer home on leave from tropic parts. She
wondered why he should have spoken just when that big mulatto was in
the act of passing. Several other colored people had gone by, but he
had made no comments about them, and they all had been more obviously
“niggers” than the man at whom the remarks were leveled.
She looked at the mulatto, knowing he must have heard, and then back
at the Englishman who seemed bent on insulting him.
With a casual, indifferent glance at Fletcher, Lebrassa passed on.
Halting a yard or so away, he stood talking to a few other colored
people.
“There’s a pretty crowd of buck niggers for you,” Fletcher went on,
with the same loud, offensive manner. “It’s bad enough to have to deal
with them in the land set apart for their sort, but to rub shoulders
with them in England is the limit.”
It was impossible for the group not to hear what he said. With
smothered hatred one or two negroes glanced at him, but Lebrassa
ignored him and his remarks completely.
With indignation the girl glanced at Fletcher. Whatever his private
opinion of negroes might be, it was the height of bad taste to insult
them publicly. Yet, in spite of his flagrant rudeness, it struck her
the Englishman was a type who ought to have known better.
Fletcher showered further abuse on the group of colored men--abuse
that drew all eyes but Lebrassa’s to him.
Suddenly the girl moved forward.
An unexpected voice took Fletcher’s attention from the scheme on
hand--an effort to break through the mask of bored indifference
screening Lebrassa’s face.
“You ought not to talk in that manner,” a sweet voice said with
trembling indignation. “They can’t help their color. And you don’t
show your superiority by being rude to them.”
Lebrassa glanced at the girl, amazed that she should speak in defence
of his color. Her face was vaguely familiar. He wondered who she was,
and where he had seen her before.
In sudden interest, his mask of indifference dropped. On his face was
the haughty arrogance of a savage ruler.
Brief as the unveiling was, it brought a glint of satisfaction to
Fletcher’s eyes. He had wanted to catch Lebrassa off his guard, and
the girl’s defence had succeeded where his own abuse had failed.
With some amusement he looked at her.
“Really!” he said. “Do you honestly think niggers have feelings that
could be damaged by my remarks?”
“This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the subject,” she
answered.
Then she turned quickly into the winter garden.
She was sorry she had spoken. Her interference had done no good, and
it had drawn unwelcome attention to herself.
Going to a secluded corner, she sat down and tried to compose herself.
Presently, voices talking on the other side of the greenery reached
her.
“Well?” one asked.
“I’m pretty certain I’m on the right trail this time.”
“Nonsense! He bears no resemblance to the Hyena.”
“The resemblance is as much as any one could swear to after glimpsing
that brute for a moment in the heat of a midnight ambush, and meeting
this man three years later, in the dinner garb of civilization with a
skin considerably lighter. Besides the look he gave when that little
girl spoke was familiar.”
“You see the Hyena in every nigger over six foot,” was the scoffing
reply.
“So would you, if you’d had to clean up after him as I have. Of course
the resemblance may be a matter of coincidence. For all that I’d like
to give him a coat of black paint and a covering no bigger than a
handkerchief and see what I thought of him then.”
“What’s that nigger supposed to be?”
“A palm-oil trader, from Calabar, Southern Nigeria. Essel Lebrassa by
name. Atherley told me about him, and I came here for the sole purpose
of having a look at him.”
“Calabar is far enough from the Hyena’s beat.”
“I’m inclined to think he’s had a finger in every rising in the length
and breadth of West Africa for the last twenty years.”
All at once it dawned on the girl she was eavesdropping. To give
evidence of her presence, she moved her chair. The sudden sharp scrape
along the floor made the voices stop abruptly.
Presently two men came sauntering down the leafy alley where she was
sitting. One of them was the sunburnt Englishman whose behavior had
aroused her indignation some minutes previously.
On seeing him she realized the topic of their conversation must have
been the big mulatto who had won her admiration by his quiet disregard
of the Englishman’s rudeness.
CHAPTER IV
“_How, let me ask, will it end?_”
When the girl in black turned into the winter garden, Lebrassa was
conscious of only one thing--a desire to follow and find out who she
was. Then the approach of a page took his attention to other matters.
On the salver the boy held was a telegram. Lebrassa opened and read
the message. It was from Cooper, saying he had married Molly Seaton by
special license in Liverpool that morning.
Putting it into his pocket, Lebrassa turned towards the page.
“Have there been any inquiries for Miss Seaton?” he asked.
“Not that I know of, sir.”
Lebrassa glanced at his wrist watch.
It was quite possible the London train was late. Leslie Graham might
not have arrived yet.
“If any one inquires for Miss Seaton, send him to 19 on the first
floor,” he said.
“I’ll tell the porter, sir,” the boy replied.
Lebrassa left the hall and went upstairs to his own private
sitting-room. It was as silent as the tomb except for the ticking of a
clock and the occasional rattle of a cinder on the hearth. The solid
door, with its rubber beading and heavy curtain, prevented any noise
from entering. And, equally, any noise in the room would not reach the
world’s ears.
This last fact must have been in his mind, for the lines of cruelty
about his mouth deepened to absolute savagery as he stood waiting for
the coming of Leslie Graham.
Suddenly the door swung open.
For a second time that night Lebrassa forgot the business on hand.
Standing on the threshold was the girl who had been his champion
barely twenty minutes before.
On seeing him, she came to an abrupt halt, staring at him in blank
amazement. Then she made a backward movement.
The action roused him.
He crossed the room hastily.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked quickly.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I must have got to the wrong room. I’m
afraid I startled you, bursting in like that.”
“You didn’t startle me in the least,” he replied, smiling at her. “And
if you tell me what room you want, perhaps I can put you right.”
“In the bureau they said I was to go to 19 on the first floor. But
they must have given me the wrong number.”
She had recognized Lebrassa as the man who had been the butt of
Fletcher’s rudeness. This second meeting left her wondering at his
cultured voice and well-bred ease of manner. And it also brought a
desire to show him that all English people were not so rude and
offensive as the man who had attacked him in the hall.
Lebrassa’s next remark put a means of compensation into her hands.
“You look very tired,” he said. “Let me go down to the bureau and see
if I can solve the mystery for you.”
“It’s most kind of you,” she said gratefully.
“I’m glad to be of any assistance. Won’t you sit down in the
meantime?”
Crossing to the fireplace, he drew one of the big, comfortable chairs
closer. In a way that was vaguely familiar she smiled at him. Then,
with an air of suppressed weariness, she seated herself.
He leant against the chimney-piece, toying with a little metal vase
there. At that moment only one fact had any place in his mind. By some
lucky chance the girl who so interested him had strayed into his room,
and he wanted to keep her as long as possible.
“Whom shall I ask for?” he inquired.
“I’m trying to find Miss Seaton.”
The name brought his thoughts back to the man he was expecting.
He scanned his visitor more closely. She was a gentlewoman, Molly
Seaton a very ordinary type of lower middle-class girl clerk. He
wondered what the two had in common and how they came to be friends.
“Who shall I say is inquiring?” he asked.
“Leslie Graham.”
A tense, quivering pause greeted her statement. The little brass vase
he was toying with crumpled up like an eggshell as his hand clenched
round it. He stood as though pressing backwards, with his whole
strength, against some wild flood that would have swept him on towards
the girl.
“Leslie Graham,” he repeated, in a thick, strained voice.
“You seem surprised,” she said.
“I always thought it was a man’s name,” he said in the same husky way.
“It can be a girl’s too,” she explained. “In fact I’m called after my
father.”
“I’ve never heard it as a girl’s name,” he said hoarsely. “Years ago I
knew a boy of the name. He would be about grown up, twenty or
twenty-one now. I wonder if he was a relative of yours?”
“I had a brother called Leslie, but he died before my day. So he
couldn’t have been the boy you mean. Though he would have been about
twenty-one now,” she added reflectively.
Lebrassa changed the conversation.
“This is hardly finding your friend for you,” he remarked.
With a quick, fierce movement he turned from her, and went downstairs
to make inquiries he knew would be useless.
When he came back, a few minutes later, all trace of his surprise had
vanished.
“They tell me, Miss Graham, that your friend left here early this
morning for Liverpool and hasn’t returned yet.”
“That’s what they told me. And I can’t make it out at all. It’s so
strange she should have gone the very day she knew I’d be coming.”
“Probably she intended to return much earlier, and somehow missed her
train,” he suggested.
A look of relief greeted this idea.
“How stupid of me not to think of that! When is the next train due?”
Going to his desk, Lebrassa picked up a railway guide.
“There’s one at half-past eight,” he said a moment or so later. “As
you’ve quite half an hour to wait, a very sensible way of passing the
time would be by having some dinner. You must be both tired and hungry
after your long journey.”
With some surprise Leslie looked at him.
“How do you know I’ve had a long journey?”
Lebrassa was conscious of having made a slip. However, he covered it
up very quickly.
“The porter said a lady from Paris was inquiring for Miss Seaton.
Naturally I assumed it was you.”
“But why was I sent here?”
In spite of himself a wish to stand well with his visitor seized
Lebrassa--a desire to keep her from learning he had taken the scarlet
letter.
“I rather expected a friend this evening. Probably the porter mixed up
the names,” he said suavely.
In a friendly way Leslie smiled at him.
“It’s very good of you to have taken so much trouble on my account,”
she said.
She got to her feet.
“It’s been a pleasure, not a trouble,” he assured her. “And I’m hoping
you’ll let me have that pleasure a little longer. I’m a solitary
animal with no defined social status--a sort of rogue elephant usually
left to my own devices. Will you relieve my solitude to-night, and
dine with me?”
His request filled her with dismay. All she had heard earlier in the
evening concerning his sort and color flashed back to her mind. It was
one thing to stand up for a despised race on an impulse, but quite
another to dine tête-à-tête with a “nigger” under the gaze of
nearly two hundred people.
This Leslie realized when Lebrassa issued his invitation.
He saw the dismay on her face, and the bitter, cruel lines about his
mouth deepened.
Then her innate sense of justice brought other thoughts to her head.
It wasn’t fair to condemn him for a cause no fault of his own. His
manners and style were perfect. No prince could be better behaved. He
couldn’t help his color. He had been very hard hit once that evening.
If she refused his invitation, he would guess why.
She cast a quick glance at him as he loomed, big, over her, his bored
face showing nothing of what was passing in his mind.
To the girl he seemed vaguely familiar; as if behind him lurked the
shadow of some one she knew. She had the queer feeling, too, that she
must be kind to him, for a reason quite apart from the insults heaped
on him by that man in the hall; as if there was something between them
that demanded her pity and understanding.
The feeling made her decide in his favor.
Just when Lebrassa was expecting a refusal she looked up at him.
“I’m quite grateful to you for asking me,” she said. “I don’t know a
soul here, and I hate going into a strange dining-room alone.”
It was a gracious and cordial acceptance.
It appeared to leave him a trifle nonplussed, almost as if he would
rather she had said “no” and so given him some grievance against her.
When Leslie entered the dining-room she was well aware that her
unusual companion caused more than the average number of curious eyes
to be turned in her direction. As she went up the room, Lebrassa in
her wake, she knew two men, both slightly familiar, were scanning her
closely.
Whilst Lebrassa gave his order to the waiter, Leslie studied the
couple. All at once it dawned on her they were the two whose
conversation she had overheard in the winter garden.
“Mr. Lebrassa, can you tell me who those men are?” she asked, glancing
at the watching couple.
At her question his eyes narrowed. With veiled suspicion he watched
her, wondering how she knew his name and why she should ask him to
identify that special pair.
“All I know about them is that the taller one is the man who tried to
pick a quarrel with me just before dinner,” he said cautiously.
“I’d recognize _him_, but I was wondering who and what they were.”
“I’ll do my best to find out for you.”
Beckoning the head waiter, Lebrassa made inquiries.
“The taller one, sir, is a Captain Fletcher. The other a Mr. Mellors.
They came here this afternoon, from Liverpool. Just home from Northern
Nigeria.”
Lebrassa gave Leslie time to digest this information.
Then, watching her closely, he said:
“I’m curious to know who told you my name.”
The underlying tone of command in his voice surprised Leslie. She
wondered why he should take so seriously a subject she had broached
out of sheer nervousness.
Considering the happenings of the evening, and that she was in a way
indebted to him for the trouble he had taken over Molly’s absence, she
had no wish that he should learn how very much she would rather _not_
have accepted his invitation. This, combined with nervousness, made
her treat him in the friendly way she would have treated a man of her
own class and color.
Her face assumed a gravity equalling his. But in spite of all efforts
a dimple twitched into her left cheek.
“They told me. In fact, they told me quite a lot of dreadful things
about you, but I was so worried that I’d forgotten all about it.
Seeing them reminded me.”
The suspicious, thoughtful look in Lebrassa’s eyes deepened.
“If you’re on such friendly terms with them as to discuss me
wholesale, why did you put me to the trouble of finding out their
names?”
“I don’t know them any more than you do. Quite accidentally I
overheard them talking about you.”
His dark, compelling eyes were fixed on her tired face as if all the
power of his will were behind them.
“What were they saying about me?” he asked in a casual manner.
Leslie was too tired and worried to realize she was being “pumped.”
“They were connecting you with some one called the Hyena, whoever he
may be. But I’ve forgotten most of what they said,” she replied.
With a little grating noise the mulatto’s teeth set.
“They flattered me,” he said a moment later.
“In what way?”
“The Hyena, Miss Graham, is the nom-de-guerre of the most
blood-thirsty villain in West Africa, so-called from his tribal cry--a
man three Governments have been after for years. He’s the ruler of a
band of miscreants whose headquarters haven’t yet been discovered. A
savage African sultan with a price on his head, who is always ready to
take a hand in any and every rising against the whites, to raid and
burn and do murder, for no reason that can be discovered, unless a
sheer hatred of their color.”
“He sounds a very terrible person. How absurd of them to think you
might be the man. Whatever made them do that?”
“I really don’t know. However, if they persist in their opinion, I
shall have no difficulty in convincing them otherwise.”
He turned the conversation.
As the meal went on he sat listening to Leslie’s voice, watching her
small, white hands. A wild desire to laugh aloud seized him as he
realized she was his enemy, whom he had sworn to kill, the daughter of
a man who had injured him irreparably. This scrap of a girl who had
spoken in defence of _him_ and his color; who rather than hurt his
feelings had swallowed her pride and accepted his invitation to
dinner.
He studied her closely. In no way did she resemble her dead father.
The girl Cooper had married was more like that thief and murderer.
Then a surge of wild negro hatred went coursing through Lebrassa at
the thought of who and what Leslie was. With it came the desire to
take her by the throat and wring the life out of her.
And through the surge of savage anger her voice reached him, talking
in a frank, friendly manner, and gradually the wild flood subsided,
leaving him chill and thoughtful.
Presently he was watching her in a strained, anxious way, thankful
that only he knew the alias Lionel de Tourville had adopted, of the
fact of the son’s death, and of the existence of this daughter.
Then he remembered that Cooper had married her friend. The negro might
gather enough to connect the man whose visit to the hotel he,
Lebrassa, had spoken of, and this girl.
The idea made the lines of thought on his powerful face deepen.
A further remark of Leslie’s penetrated the maze in which his mind was
moving.
“It’s nearly half past eight,” she was saying with an air of
suppressed relief. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be in the hall
when Miss Seaton comes in.”
Getting to her feet, with a friendly nod she left the table.
As she went down the room, Lebrassa stood with his eyes on her.
For a brief half hour a girl of a type as far beyond his reach as the
stars, had sat and talked to him just as if he were as other men.
Lionel de Tourville’s daughter!
Loath to leave the table that seemed still sweet with her presence, he
seated himself again.
A violet, that must have dropped from the bunch on her shoulder, lay
half hidden in a dish of fruit.
Picking it out he held it almost caressingly. The faint perfume
reached him. For a time he looked at the little flower thoughtfully.
Then he crushed it fiercely, rubbing it up and down between his thumb
and finger until only a purple stain remained. Yet the scent was
sweeter and stronger than ever.
CHAPTER V
“_Our hopes are wild imaginings,_
_Our schemes are airy castles._”
Leslie Graham and Molly Seaton were comrades of some years’
standing, who had met under unusual circumstances. Business had taken
Molly to one of the big London railway stations. On a bench in the
waiting room she noticed a child sitting all alone. The little girl
looked worried, so Molly had asked what the matter was. A sweet voice
that had taken Molly’s gentle heart by storm had explained the
situation.
That day she and her father had arrived in England from New Zealand.
He had left her in the station while he went to transact some business
outside. He had said he would not be more than an hour, and she was to
wait on the seat until he came back. Three hours had passed and he had
not returned.
That night a black-haired little girl cried herself to sleep in
Molly’s arms, in a bed-sitting-room Brixton way, and the elder Leslie
Graham’s disappearance had been reported to the police.
A week passed, but nothing was heard of him. Molly was advised to get
rid of the child. This she refused to do, for Leslie clung to her as
the one sure thing in a world suddenly turned upside down.
Very little of the lost man’s history could be found out, and that
little was mostly what his daughter had to tell. Leslie had spent the
first ten years of her life in a Spanish convent. She had not seen her
father until two years ago when he had taken her from school to the
store in New Zealand where he was employed. Beyond the fact that he
belonged to the army of educated wastrels drifting about the world,
nothing more was culled. It was more than likely the name was an
assumed one, for Leslie had never heard of any relatives--except a
brother who had died before she was born.
A deserted child is not of rare occurrence or much account. Molly was
advised to let her protegée go to the poorhouse. She refused to do
so. Instead, for two years she kept the little girl.
When Leslie was fourteen, she secured employment as a typist in
Molly’s office, but she did not rest long in this position. Her
knowledge of languages stood her in good stead. She quickly
out-distanced her benefactress in both position and salary. At sixteen
she was foreign correspondence clerk in the shipping house where they
were both employed.
When Leslie was eighteen, Molly, never very strong, was seriously ill.
For three months the younger girl went to the office alone and Molly
stayed at home fretting over her uselessness.
However, with the summer, things looked up again.
Then winter came, and, with it, the darkest days of all.
Molly was ill again, so ill that she had to leave London, if possible
go to the South of France. And just when money was most needed their
firm amalgamated with another and Leslie was numbered with the
unemployed. Molly was sent to Harrogate. Leslie went to Paris as a
teacher in a school of languages, the first post that presented
itself. And she went wondering what would happen when their savings
ran out, for the care Molly needed could not be got out of two pounds
a week.
Then the sky cleared again, and Leslie sat in the hall of the hotel in
a fever of impatience waiting to impress upon the still truant Molly
the greatness of this stroke of luck.
Full of suppressed excitement she watched the hands of the clock creep
slowly round to half-past eight. She wondered why Molly had not wired
to account for her absence, but she knew her friend’s easily agitated
and flustered ways too well to take much notice of this.
As Fletcher and Mellors left the dining-room, the sight of Leslie
sitting small and erect with eyes for nothing beyond the clock and the
entrance, brought the Captain to a halt.
“I tell you she’s no more a friend of that villain’s than I am,” he
said with some heat. “Does she look the sort of girl to take up with a
nigger? He’s taken advantage of her impulsive action and thrust
himself upon her, and she’s too much of a child to know how to get out
of the situation. As far as I can see she hasn’t a friend in the
place. If rumor is to be believed one girl from here has just gone and
made an unholy mess of her life by marrying a nigger. At the risk of a
snub, I’ll give that kid a word in season.”
“Let her alone,” Mellors replied. “If she has no more respect for
herself than to be seen with Lebrassa, she’s not worth troubling
about.”
“If she were ten years older I wouldn’t give the matter a second
thought. But a child like that, loose on the world, is everybody’s
concern.”
Mellors shrugged his shoulders. Captain Lindsay Fletcher crossed the
hall.
A voice well above her head brought Leslie’s gaze back from the
entrance.
“I owe you an apology,” it said in a conciliatory tone. “I’d no idea
you were standing within earshot on that occasion before dinner, or I
wouldn’t have expressed myself quite so forcibly.”
Fletcher experienced a nervous tremor as two vivid purple eyes were
switched on him. He stood expecting the snub he had laid himself open
to.
“You owe me no apology,” she said. “But you certainly owe one to the
people you were so rude to.”
“I’d a reason for what I said. But had I known Lebrassa was a friend
of yours I shouldn’t have said a word.”
“I can hardly claim Mr. Lebrassa as a friend--except perhaps a friend
in need.”
Fletcher braced himself up.
“For a friend in need you’d be wiser to stick to your own sort and not
apply to the black people here. I’ve had dealings with niggers for
over twelve years and the less white women have to do with them the
better. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll avoid Lebrassa. If he
endeavors to thrust himself on you, I shall be only too pleased if
you’ll use me as an excuse.”
Leslie was dumbfounded.
“How dare you come and talk to me?” she managed to gasp. “The man you
call a ‘nigger’ at least knows how to behave himself properly.”
Fletcher stuck to his guns.
“Certainly our two meetings can’t have impressed you favorably. As
your opinion of me can’t be any worse than it is, I may as well have
my say out. To begin with, this Lebrassa is half a negro, he’s known
to be a bad lot, he--”
“He’s not the Hyena, anyhow, because he told me so himself.”
There was a tense silence as Fletcher realized all it meant if
Lebrassa had an inkling of his suspicions.
He had deemed it improbable that the girl sitting in the winter garden
had heard or put any meaning to his conversation with Mellors. With an
alarming rush it dawned on him she had.
“Surely you’ve not added to your follies by telling Lebrassa what I
was saying to Mellors?”
For the first time it occurred to Leslie that she ought not to have
repeated the conversation she had overheard accidentally. The fact
that she had, took all anger from her. The sudden pallor of her face
told Fletcher the worst before she met his angry gaze unflinchingly.
“I’m sorry, but--I did.”
All the pretty color had faded from her cheeks, all the brightness
from her eyes. For the first time he realized how tired and worried
she was. The knowledge made him put his own anger and sense of defeat
in the background.
The few cold, wrathful words Leslie was expecting did not come.
Instead, Fletcher seated himself beside her.
“I think you need a friend now if ever you did. Won’t you tell me what
the trouble is?” he asked in a kindly tone.
His unexpected change of front brought a tremor to her voice.
“I… I’ve been waiting for a friend ever since a quarter to seven. In
spite of what Mr. Lebrassa says, I think something must have happened
to her.”
“What did Lebrassa say?”
“That she must have missed the Liverpool train and wouldn’t be here
before half-past eight. But it’s a quarter to nine and… and she still
hasn’t come.”
“Probably the train’s late. They often are.”
“But I can’t make out why she went at all, the very day she knew I’d
be coming.”
Just then Fletcher’s only idea was to comfort his companion and to
stay with her until the arrival of the belated friend put her into
safe hands.
“There’s no accounting for what some people will do,” he said,
pouncing on the first topic of conversation that came to his mind.
“One of my reasons for speaking to you now was because of what’s been
going on here. There was a girl staying in this place, all alone as
you seemed to be. She got friendly with one of these niggers, a man
named Cooper, Lebrassa’s partner in fact, not knowing that to give
their sort an inch means they’ll try for an ell. This Cooper got such
a hold over her that rumor says she’s eloped with him. You wouldn’t
care for people to say the things about you that are being said about
this Miss Seaton. And it started--”
“What are you talking about? Molly wouldn’t elope with a nigger.”
This sudden interruption made Fletcher stop abruptly. As he gazed at
Leslie’s blank, unbelieving face, the truth of the situation dawned on
him.
“Believe me, I’d no idea she was your friend,” he said quickly.
“Tell the manager to come,” Leslie said sharply. “I’ll ask him about
it.”
“He’ll tell you the same thing, child. The place is buzzing with the
scandal.”
In a bewildered way, she got to her feet. In her weary mind there was
only one idea. This man, who had been saying things against people all
evening, had now started on Molly. Some one must be found who would
contradict his statements.
White and dazed, Leslie stood looking for a face she knew.
Seeing Lebrassa sauntering across the hall made her start in his
direction. Guessing where she was going, Fletcher followed. At that
moment only the girl’s reputation had any place in his mind; he did
not wish her to be seen for a second time alone with the mulatto.
Her anxious voice made the latter turn around.
“Mr. Lebrassa, is it true Miss Seaton has eloped with your partner?”
Ignoring Fletcher, he glanced at Leslie.
“I regret to say it is true, Miss Graham,” he said quietly.
“Then you knew all the time!”
“I heard it rumored only. It’s been said before without foundation. In
case it shouldn’t be true this time, I took the liberty of asking you
to dine with me. The subject would have been freely discussed by the
white people here and you might have been alarmed unnecessarily.”
The episode of the dinner invitation was turned off with a skill and
diplomacy that left Fletcher inwardly fuming. He knew Lebrassa had
noted his interview with Leslie. Now, the mulatto had construed his
invitation into consideration for the girl. Moreover, he had succeeded
in making him, Fletcher, appear an even greater cad in her sight.
As he glanced from the worried, anxious girl to the mulatto, back to
his mind flashed a remark made at a neighboring table during
dinner--to the effect that Lebrassa had seemed as anxious for Molly
Seaton to marry Cooper, as Cooper had been to marry the girl; in fact
he had done his best to assist the negro toward this end.
A feeling of something lying behind it all suddenly seized Fletcher.
And the fact of Lebrassa standing cool and unconcerned when he must
know he was under suspicion, made the Englishman doubt the theory he
was evolving.
Yet Fletcher could not quite free himself of the idea that Lebrassa
might be the “wanted” man; his present behavior savored of the Hyena’s
reckless daring.
Leslie gazed back at Lebrassa’s dark, unmoved face almost defiantly.
“I don’t believe it. Molly wouldn’t marry a… a colored man.”
“It may be a little difficult to believe, but it’s true nevertheless,
for I’ve just had a telegram from Cooper, my partner, now her husband,
telling me they were married in Liverpool this morning by special
license.”
“You let her marry a--nigger!”
The amazed disgust in Leslie’s voice brought a flicker of amusement to
the mulatto’s face.
“You forget I’m a ‘nigger’ myself, Miss Graham. Cooper is wealthy. If
your friend were willing to overlook his color it was hardly for me to
interfere.”
In stunned bewilderment Leslie looked from one man to the other. Then,
with an effort she pulled herself together.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you both,” she said in a stiff, strained
manner. “I must apologize for doubting what you both said, but it
was--rather unexpected.”
Small and erect, with only the dazed pallor of her face to show what a
blow the news had been, she crossed the hall, making for the refuge of
her bedroom.
Ignoring each other completely, the two men watched her until she was
lost round a bend in the stairs.
CHAPTER VI
“_If our best intentions pave the way_
_To a place that is somewhat hot,_
_Can our worst intentions lead us, say,_
_To a still more sultry spot?_”
London was enveloped in a lowering gray cloud. All day a cold rain
had been pouring down, showing no signs of abating as the afternoon
wore on.
At about six o’clock, when shops and offices were closing, one figure
showed up in sharp contrast to the rest of the hurrying pedestrians:
that of a girl who went along at a slow walk, with hands thrust deep
into the pockets of her mackintosh.
Four months had passed since the news of Molly Seaton’s elopement had
fallen with the suddenness of a thunderbolt on Leslie Graham.
The following day she had left the hotel. Fletcher had tried to find
out her address and more about her, but he learned nothing except that
she had come from Paris. Lebrassa had taken Leslie’s departure more
coolly. Within a week he, himself, had left the hotel for West Africa.
Dr. Atherley kept Fletcher posted on Essel Lebrassa’s every movement.
At length the captain heard that the mulatto was again visiting
England. This news shattered most of the hopes concerning the Hyena.
Moreover, the intervening correspondence had almost proved that
Lebrassa was nothing more than the senior partner of the firm of
“Lebrassa & Cooper,” whose long absences were due only to business and
pleasure trips to Europe and America.
However, Fletcher decided to have the mulatto watched during his visit
to England, await his return to Africa and travel back by the same
boat. The captain wanted to satisfy himself completely that Lebrassa
was only the wealthy half-breed trader whose orgies had made him
notorious throughout the Bight of Biafra.
To Leslie the months had passed very slowly. She had returned to Paris
hoping to hear something from Molly.
Lebrassa’s remark, “Cooper is wealthy,” was constantly before her.
Sometimes she wondered if this could be the explanation.
As the post in Marseilles had fallen through owing to her lack of a
chaperon, at the end of a few weeks Leslie had returned to London, to
take a position in an office there. Then, just when the wound was
healing a little, a letter came from Molly in Africa, forwarded from
Leslie’s Paris address. It had reached her the previous morning, and
the contents had been in her mind ever since.
It was all a mistake! Molly had never had her letter! She had only
married that dreadful man in order to be no further burden on her,
Leslie.
Thoughts went in steady procession through Leslie’s brain, drummed and
marshaled by one quivering, heartbroken cry.
“How _did_ the letter go astray?”
It was all too terrible! Poor, sensitive little Molly tied for life to
a nigger. All because a letter had not reached its destination!
Through mud and rain Leslie trudged on, trying to think the matter out
calmly, too preoccupied to notice a man lingering outside her office,
who, on seeing her, had followed in her wake.
She turned into a cheap café for a cup of tea. Once seated, awaiting
the arrival of her order, she drew out Molly’s letter and read it
through again.
It bore a West African address and ran as follows:
_Dear little Leslie_,
What years, centuries, it seems since I last called you that. And it’s
not more than six months! I meant to drop out of your life
entirely--to tell you nothing. I knew you’d hear sooner or later what
had happened. And I hoped you’d despise me and forget all about me. I
couldn’t be a drag on you any longer, dear. When you mentioned that
position in Marseilles, I cried with relief. And I prayed that you
would get it. But you never wrote. So I guessed it had fallen through.
You could swim alone, but the weight of me would swamp you. I used to
sit thinking until my head ached, trying to find a way out.
Then a way came. Such a way!
I think I must have died and gone to hell. A hell full of negroes.
They are all around me. I can’t get away from them. And so hideously
real. So real that it makes me scream. Then one, my husband, the
constant and most vivid of them all, comes and kisses me and asks me
what the matter is!
I always wonder how I brought myself to marry him, but the color bar
did not seem so insurmountable then. And I thought the climate would
kill me. But it hasn’t. I’ve only been married four months and I can’t
stand it. I want to come back to England, but my husband won’t hear of
it. Everything is mine for the asking--everything except a little time
away from him, the only thing I want.
He says I may have one of my girl friends out here if I wish. Leslie,
in the horror of it all I turn to you. I want you to come out and stay
with me before I go absolutely mad. I want one little bit of the old
world, the white world, to cling to. Some one to talk to who is not
black, brown or yellow. Some one white who will not despise me. I want
to make you come and I know it’s wrong. If you come to me the few
white women in the place will cut you. And the men will do the same.
Or worse still, look at you in a way that makes you feel you’ve lost
something that can never be regained. If I were not so weak and
cowardly I’d bear my burden alone, or go down to the river and put an
end to everything. But I can’t. I’m afraid of both. So afraid that I
write to you, to drag you down to the depths of my black hell.
I want to tempt you, to make you come. You have been my strength for
so long. Think of all the strange wild sights you would see, all the
glories of the tropics. I am writing this out on the balcony, in the
moonlight. Such a moon, such a mass of molten glory that I almost
forget the price! And such stars! Great things of silver set in a low
arch of purple velvet. So near to the earth too, that by standing on
my chair I fancy I could touch them. On the skyline is the forest,
dark and uncanny, fearsome and haunted, black against a flood of
moonlight. The wind comes moaning down from the unknown, bringing the
whispering sigh of a hundred exotic trees, the scent of orange blossom
and magnolia and a dozen other strange, languorous perfumes. They
smother the scent of the roses growing round the balcony, and I am
glad. It is all white--white with a perfect whiteness. And
black--black with an utter everlasting blackness.
Below at the foot of the hill are the twinkling lights of the town,
set in a bower of vegetation. Farther away are bonfires blazing in the
native quarter, showing up scattered mud huts and a host of savage
figures. Beyond is the river, all white and still and peaceful. And
the sounds that drift up to me here! The splash and ripple of the
silvered water, the hoot of an owl, the uncanny whispering rustle of
the bamboos, the hoarse bellow of a distant crocodile, the beating of
tom-toms, wild negro melodies, the stealthy pad of unshod feet as the
servants go to and fro, and the hundred wild, weird whispers that go
to make up tropical night.
But, above all, my husband’s voice talking to his partner. Leslie,
don’t come, you’ll be a pariah too.
My husband’s partner, Mr. Lebrassa, says he saw you in Harrogate, at
the hotel! Ever since he told me I have been wondering why you came.
He said you thought I would be expecting you! It has puzzled me so
much. I can think of nothing else. He has been so kind to me since I
came here. He’s not a bit like my husband, but almost an Englishman.
This used to be his bungalow, but he has given it over to Horten, my
husband, because it is higher and healthier and better for me than
down over the factory where Horten used to be. He’s always trying to
make my lot easier. I know he suggested I ought to have a companion,
that being alone all day when my husband was at the factory was not
good for me. But that was only the nice way to put it. I think he
knows the long evenings alone with Horten are getting more than I can
stand. He leaves for England the day after to-morrow, by the same boat
as this letter. I told him I’d written to the one friend who loved me
enough to overlook what I had done, and perhaps come out here and stay
with me. He asked me who that was and I told him your name and where
you were living. Then he said he’d met and talked to you at the hotel
the very day I was married! He is only going to stay a few weeks in
England, and if you can forget the loss of caste and come out here to
me he will be able to look after you. It _is_ selfish of me to ask
you, to try and pull you down to what I am now, but the horror of it
all is getting more than I can bear alone.
Leslie darling, don’t take any notice of my ravings, stay where you
are.
Molly.
As Leslie sat brooding on the letter, some one halting at her table
brought her mind back to the present. Glancing up she stayed staring
in open surprise at the man standing beside her.
“Why, Mr. Lebrassa, how did you get here?” she asked. “I was just
reading about you--quite nice things.”
Her greeting made the cruel lines about his mouth relax a little.
“Were you? I’m glad of that. People as a rule haven’t a good word to
say for me. And what would _you_ say if I told you I’d been
cold-bloodedly stalking you--stalking you with intent to capture?”
“I should say I knew why.”
“Why then?” he asked.
“I’ve just heard from my friend, saying she’d given you my Paris
address. I could never make out why she wasn’t at the hotel that
night, and it seems she never got my letter.”
“Was it so important that she’d have postponed her wedding in order to
wait for you?”
It was on the tip of Leslie’s tongue to say that, had she arrived
twelve hours sooner at the hotel, there would have been no wedding. To
explain forcibly and pointedly to Lebrassa it was _not_ Cooper’s money
that had made Molly commit such a degrading action.
But Molly was married. No amount of explanation could undo that. It
was no use going over matters nothing could rectify, which this man
might repeat to his partner, and perhaps make Molly’s lot even worse.
“It was a business letter and of importance to both of us,” she
answered.
There was a brief pause.
Leslie was the first to break it.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked rather nervously. “There’s a lot I
want to say to you.”
Seating himself, Lebrassa stayed watching her in brooding silence.
Then suddenly he put a hand on her soaked raincoat.
“Why are you sitting in that wet thing?” he asked.
At his touch, she drew back quickly. Her action made him laugh in a
savage, bitter manner.
“Sometimes I wonder what I should have been like if I hadn’t been--a
nigger,” he said in a dreary manner.
Leslie knew she had hurt him by shrinking from his touch.
She poured herself out a cup of tea, and as she drank it she watched
his hand which lay, brown and powerful, on the table.
Just then her one idea was to make amends for the pain she had
unwittingly inflicted.
Presently, she laid her hand on his. Just for a moment it settled on
his dark one, and was off again with the nervous flutter of a
butterfly. The touch, light and slight as it was, made him suddenly
shiver.
“Mr. Lebrassa, something is worrying you,” she said.
He smiled, a smile that made Leslie’s heart ache with its
hopelessness.
“It’s nothing more than what has worried me for the last thirty-six
years. I thought I’d got over it, but I find I haven’t--quite.”
Leslie said nothing. But now she realized what his “worry” was.
“Now tell me what Mrs. Cooper had to say to you? I can make a fair
guess,” he went on quickly. “And if you take my advice--don’t go.”
“I’ve made up my mind to go,” she replied. “I sent a cablegram this
afternoon.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t understand myself,” he answered grimly.
Then once more he lapsed into brooding silence.
CHAPTER VII
“_In my ears, like distant washing_
_Of the surf upon the shore,_
_Drones a murmur, faintly splashing,_
_’Tis the splash of Charon’s oar._”
Two hours later Leslie was sitting before a gas fire in a bedroom of
a Bloomsbury boarding-house. During the last few months two men, both
strangers, both met in the most casual manner, both entirely different
from any who had come into her life before, had taken it upon
themselves to give her advice. And, in each case, she had preferred
her own immature judgment. Moreover, Mr. Lebrassa had not taken any
part of the ell mentioned by Captain Fletcher. The mulatto had not
shown any desire to meet her again, or invited her out to dinner or a
theater, or even attempted to pay for her tea, as she had feared he
might. He had merely said that, if she insisted on going to Mrs.
Cooper, he had been instructed to book a passage for her and take
charge of her on the way out. And he had left saying he would write
and let her know the boat and the time of sailing, and would meet her
in Liverpool, if she persisted in her foolish decision.
About a month later Leslie stepped out of a train in one of the
principal Liverpool stations.
“You see I’ve come, Mr. Lebrassa, in spite of your advice,” was her
greeting to the man who came forward to meet her.
“So I see, but it’s still not too late to turn back.”
“I never intended to do anything but go from the moment I got that
letter.”
Rather abruptly he turned away to see after her luggage.
“Would you rather walk or ride down to the boat, Miss Graham?” he
asked when this was disposed of. “We’ve two hours yet before sailing;
I suggest walking so that you can take a last, long, lingering
farewell of England.”
“Why a last farewell?”
“West Africa, I fancy, has a higher European death rate than any place
on earth. Haven’t you heard our rhyme?
“‘Beware, take care of the Bight of Benin,
Where for one that comes out there are forty stay in.’”
“But I’m not going there,” she replied. “I’m going to the Bight of
Biafra.”
“That’s next door.”
“You _are_ cheerful. I’d better walk and make the most of being alive
now, for you seem to think I’m going to swell the forty. Who knows? I
may prove to be the fortunate one who comes out.”
In a grim way, Lebrassa smiled. Then he piloted his charge out of the
busy station into the street beyond.
“I’m so glad I’m going to Molly,” Leslie said. “I’d put up with
anything to be with her.”
Lebrassa, however, appeared to be lost in thoughts of his own. For the
next few minutes he answered her remarks in a very haphazard manner.
Presently, in one of the main thoroughfares, a large florist’s shop
brought him to a halt.
“Miss Graham, may I buy you a flower before you leave England?”
His request was followed by a moment’s silence. Then Leslie thought of
the inch that had never been exceeded.
“What a nice idea,” she said. “It’ll take away the taste of that
dreadful Bight of Benin you spoke about.”
On entering the shop Lebrassa appeared to want rosebuds--small white
rosebuds, and only one of these. But he had every specimen in the
place brought out for his inspection.
Leslie watched him as he went over them, examining each carefully.
“You’re very difficult to please,” she said at length.
“I can’t find what I want--one with just two petals curled back, quite
white and without a flaw.”
“What about this?” she inquired, putting a finger on a perfect
specimen he had just discarded.
“It’s not absolutely white. The one I want must have no tinge of
color.”
“Really suitable for my funeral wreath,” she suggested.
In a grim, mirthless manner he smiled.
“That I’ve not quite decided,” he replied.
He continued his search.
“There,” he said at length, placing a flower on the counter before
her.
As Leslie pinned it on her coat, in a contemplative way he watched
her.
“Out in Africa I’ve a rose garden,” he said presently. “It has been my
hobby and recreation for nearly twenty years. But I’ve never had my
flowers quite white. They’ve always had a tinge of color. Some day,
perhaps, you may see it.”
“Is it near Calabar?” she asked.
“Near Calabar!” he echoed.
Then, in a savage manner, he laughed.
“It’s some distance from Calabar,” he finished with peculiar emphasis.
For some reason she could not fathom, Leslie shivered.
CHAPTER VIII
“_For now they are so few indeed_
(_Not more than three in all_)
_Who e’er will think of me or heed_
_What fate may me befall._”
On board the S.S. _Batava_, outward bound for West Africa, all was
bustle and confusion. On the lower deck a couple of men stood, one of
whom was watching the passengers coming off the last tender.
“Well,” he remarked presently, “your little girl with the ‘clematis’
eyes married him in spite of the word in season.”
The remark made Captain Fletcher turn sharply.
“What the devil are you talking about?” he asked.
“Here comes your latest Hyena with the little white lamb you were so
anxious about.”
Fletcher’s gaze followed Mellors’. He saw a girl with a pair of eyes
that he, in a weak and sentimental moment, had likened to a clematis.
“Poor kid! She must have been all alone in the world or that wouldn’t
have happened.”
“Well, there’s no need for you to waste any further thought or
sympathy on her,” Mellors replied. “She looks perfectly pleased with
her bargain. But it’s surprising what some women will swallow provided
it’s sufficiently gilded.”
Fletcher watched the two coming along the deck. Lebrassa was the first
to see him and over his dark face there crept a vestige of sardonic
amusement.
He made some remark to Leslie that brought her attention to the two
men.
For an instant the vivid eyes that had haunted Fletcher for the last
few months looked straight at him. But the girl made no acknowledgment
of his presence, unless the sudden rush of color to her face counted
as such.
“The cut direct,” Mellors murmured as she passed on.
There he was wrong. It was the act of a child caught doing what it
knew it ought not to do, moreover, what it had been told not to do,
very anxious to attract no further attention to itself.
Lebrassa’s remark, “There are two friends of yours,” had made Leslie
look round in quick curiosity.
Fletcher and Mellors were the last people she had expected to see. She
knew they had recognized her. With an unpleasant rush their presence
brought back every word Fletcher had said about colored men. And the
look of contempt on Mellors’ face told her, for the first time, what
she might have to put up with on the voyage out, and what certainly
would be her lot in Calabar.
By the time she was two steps away it dawned on her that she might
have saved herself some future unpleasantness had she given Fletcher
the barest recognition. Having once cut him she could hardly smile
upon him the next time they met. Then all he had said about Lebrassa,
which had proved absolutely false, made her glad she had treated him
in the way he deserved.
A prey to a variety of emotions, Fletcher watched her go, the
principal being that their former meetings had left her with such an
unfavorable impression of himself that his advice counted for nothing.
In gloomy silence he stood watching her retreating figure, then he
left his friend and went to the saloon to study the passenger list.
He returned to Mellors with a buoyancy in his step that had not been
there when he left.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “She’s not married to that nigger.”
“What the deuce is she doing with him then?”
“I want to know what he’s doing with her,” Fletcher replied, “because
she’s going to Calabar.”
For the rest of the day Fletcher kept a sharp lookout for Leslie, but
he saw nothing more of her. Out in the Irish Sea the worst gale of the
season was raging, and all but the most seasoned travelers sought the
refuge of their cabins.
One afternoon about two days later, he came across what looked to be a
bundle of rugs stretched out on a deck chair. As he neared it, it took
shape and became a girl asleep in the sun. The sight brought him to an
abrupt halt, for he had determined to make, not one, but many efforts
to gain the confidence of this friendless little girl, and the
opportunity seemed favorable.
Leaning on a rail near, he waited until Leslie awoke.
All at once she opened her eyes, but seeing him on guard there, closed
them again before he had time to speak.
Fletcher knew she had seen him. Also, he knew she was now keeping her
eyes shut deliberately, for the sole purpose of not seeing him.
Leslie was very conscious of the big man leaning against the rail
near. Angrily she wondered why he should take it upon himself to stand
just there, and she was waiting for him to move before she sat up.
She had made up her mind to ignore everybody on board except Lebrassa.
Already her destination was being whispered about. To feel herself
despised and an object of contempt was a new sensation.
Fletcher had heard rumors of where she was going, and it had made him
all the more determined to come between her and her folly.
Presently the vigorous ringing of the tea bell, almost in her ear,
made any further pretense impossible.
Leslie sat up, ready for the fray, knowing Fletcher was going to speak
to her.
“I hope you’re feeling better, Miss Graham,” he said.
“I’m quite well, thank you,” she replied in a frosty manner.
“I think you must have forgotten me,” he continued, ignoring her icy
tone, “so I’ve taken the liberty of recalling myself.”
“I remember seeing you in Harrogate.”
The reply was not encouraging. It said plainly she had no desire for
his acquaintance.
Fletcher’s jaw set in the way it did when he was leading a forlorn
hope.
“I’m going to Calabar,” he said stiffly. “If I can be of any use to
you either there or during the voyage, I’m always at your service.”
“I don’t think I shall have to avail myself of your offer,” she said
in a cutting one.
Fletcher was sorry he had spoken. He had wanted her to know she had at
least one friend on board, and he had only succeeded in annoying her.
“May I tell the steward to bring you some tea?” he asked prior to
departure.
“Mr. Lebrassa will do that.”
Fletcher knew she had said this purposely, to show him how much either
he, his opinion, or advice were worth in her estimation.
For three days Leslie pursued her own way, ignoring everybody but
Lebrassa, and herself ignored by most people.
The climax came the evening before the steamer reached Grand Canary.
A dance was taking place on the saloon deck, and the strains of the
music were wafted over the calm, starlit sea. Leslie was alone on the
deserted lower deck, gazing rather wistfully over the shrouded water.
She was learning that the lot of a pariah is not enviable.
All at once a figure loomed up beside her with a silence that made her
jump and broke the current of her thoughts.
“How you made me jump, Mr. Lebrassa,” she said, smiling up at him.
“What are you thinking about, all alone here?” he asked.
“I was thinking--how nice and quiet it was.”
The reply made Lebrassa smile.
In spite of her trying position no word of complaint had ever passed
the girl’s lips.
“Then you were not thinking you were just the least bit sorry you
hadn’t taken my advice and stayed in England?”
“Why should I be?” she asked, almost defiantly.
“I was afraid you were beginning to find things a bit changed.”
“I’d made up my mind to all that before I left England. It would be
rather foolish to start worrying now, wouldn’t it?”
“Are you always so brave and loyal?” he asked.
“There’s nothing very brave in giving up a hard life for an easy one.”
“So you think your life with Mrs. Cooper will be easy?”
“Well, I shan’t have to turn out every morning, whether I’m in the
mood for it or not. And in past days Molly was awfully good to me.”
He made no reply. Leaning against the rail, with stifled, unwilling
tenderness he watched her small, brave face.
“May I do my poor best to entertain you, Miss Graham?” he said at
length. “The other day you were boasting of your prowess as a
chess-player. May I challenge you to mortal combat?”
“It won’t be combat at all, but simple slaughter. I shall be wiped out
of existence in the first round.”
“Shall we fight over there?” he asked, indicating a lamp in a remote
and secluded corner. “Just the two of us alone, mortal enemies, to the
death. Then, when I’ve killed you I can drop you overboard and no one
will be any the wiser.”
“How vicious you sound! Hankering after bloodshed.”
“You forget I’m half a savage.”
In a gentle, understanding manner Leslie smiled at him.
“I don’t forget because I never thought you were.”
Rather abruptly Lebrassa turned away to fetch the chess-board and the
pieces. Leslie went across to the lighted corner and stood there
watching the figures flitting on the upper deck.
Up there were women who turned their backs on her, and men who did the
same or, worse still, whispered and laughed and tried to talk to her.
As the music struck up afresh she turned her back on the scene, and
picking up a book from one of the chairs looked at it with eyes too
blurred with tears to distinguish the letters.
Presently, approaching footsteps made her glance round, thinking it
was Lebrassa. But when her gaze fell on the figure coming along the
deck, she looked away again very quickly.
The newcomer was a stout, red-faced man--one of those who laughed and
whispered and tried to talk to her.
Halting at her side, he leant over her in a most familiar manner.
“What about this dance, Miss Graham?” he asked.
“I don’t dance,” she said curtly.
“Well, now I come to think of it, I don’t seem to have seen you
hopping round with that nigger.”
Leslie plunged again into her book, ignoring him completely.
“You’re not a very sociable sort,” he said, “and I’ve seen you talking
nineteen to the dozen to that Lebrassa.”
It was evident he meant to stay. Deliberately Leslie closed her book
and was in the act of moving away when he seized one of her bare arms
and, despite her struggles, kept her where she was.
“You’re not in such a dashed hurry to run away when that nigger comes
and talks to you,” he said, “so you needn’t put on any airs with me.”
The unexpected contact of his coarse, hot hand on her bare flesh made
her give a little gasping scream. The sound reached Fletcher just as
he was leaving the smoke-room. It brought him to a halt and made him
look sharply along the deserted deck.
On seeing the couple under the lamp, he turned swiftly in that
direction.
A voice, hoarse with suppressed anger, made the man loose Leslie’s
arm.
“You damned skunk!” it said. “How dare you come and annoy this lady.
If I catch you at it again I’ll thrash the life out of you.”
Gripping the man’s shoulder, Fletcher sent him swinging across the
deck.
In Leslie’s mind was the memory of her last interview with Fletcher.
Under his gaze all speech fled. Then, just as she was pulling herself
together, his voice scattered her thoughts again.
“At the risk of annoying you again, I must say it’s not wise of you to
stand about alone on deck at night. Considering the circumstances, you
lay yourself open to that sort of thing. And while I’m talking, let me
say I think you’re very foolish to ignore everybody but Lebrassa. I
know half a dozen men on board you could be friendly with and who
wouldn’t take advantage of your peculiar position.”
“I… I don’t want to know any one.”
Into the voice of the pariah crept the least suspicion of tears.
“I can quite understand that,” Fletcher replied. “But you’re putting
Lebrassa in a very unfair position. You can’t realize what you’re
doing or you wouldn’t act in such a foolish manner. What thoughts
would come into any man’s head if you were with him as much as you are
with this Lebrassa? In the words of the Americans, he’d think you’d
‘fallen for him.’ I’ve seen enough of Lebrassa to know he can behave
himself when he wants, and in you he knows he’s dealing with some one
very different from the women who usually seek out a man of his sort.
But if he should forget himself, you’ve only yourself to blame. I’m
sorry to have to speak so plainly. And if you should consider my
advice worth taking I’m always ready to help you.”
Quickly Fletcher turned away, fearing the storm that might break on
his offending head.
His words left Leslie stunned and petrified.
The idea that she might be leading Lebrassa to think she loved him,
filled her with horror.
The mulatto’s voice roused her from her stunned bewilderment.
“I must apologize for being so long, Miss Graham, but I had some
difficulty in collecting the weapons together.”
His bored, cultured voice that, in all her experience of him, had
never varied one whit, comforted her a little. Sitting down, she
watched him arrange the pieces, answering his remarks in a preoccupied
manner.
The game started. But Leslie was too full of what Fletcher had said to
give her whole attention to it.
Closely Lebrassa watched her. At once he noticed she was perturbed and
unusually silent.
During his absence something had happened--something that had startled
this little white fawn of his.
He recollected having met Fletcher coming along the deck as though
from her direction, and he determined to find out if his enemy had
been with her.
“If Captain Fletcher wanted you to dance, I hope you didn’t consider
our game,” he remarked.
Leslie looked up from her silent contemplation of the board.
“He didn’t ask me to dance,” she replied, her face flushing.
So Fletcher had been talking to her! Lebrassa wondered what had been
said, and he was sufficiently acquainted with his man to know it would
be nothing to his, Lebrassa’s, credit.
The thought appeared to amuse him, for a smile, half-tender,
half-cruel, came and played about his mouth as he watched his
companion. Her hand hovering uncertainly about a piece made his smile
deepen.
“If you make that move, I win,” he remarked presently.
Leslie surveyed the position more closely.
“So you do,” she said.
Another move was tried, but further consideration proved it to be no
better than the first.
Lebrassa watched her as she sat, with puckered brow, considering her
position on the chess board. Just then he was filled with great relief
to know that Cooper had _not_ connected Molly’s friend with Lionel de
Tourville. In fact the negro had been too elated over his own marriage
to inquire further into the matter.
“Why, whatever I do, you win,” Leslie said presently.
Lebrassa swept the pieces together.
“Exactly. Whatever you do I win,” he replied in a voice that had in it
a queer undercurrent of savage satisfaction. “Shall we play again?
This time I’ll give you unto half of my kingdom, then we shall be more
evenly matched.”
“There are one or two letters I must write, so perhaps you’ll excuse
me,” Leslie said, very conscious of Fletcher’s advice.
“If I can give you a hand in any way, getting the right sort of stamps
or anything, don’t be afraid to ask,” he volunteered.
“… I’ve already been taking up too much of your time.”
Her nervous reply, with an unmistakable note of reserve, so different
from her usual friendly, straightforward manner, made a surge of anger
go coursing through Lebrassa.
What Fletcher had said to the girl had made her lose faith in him.
“How can you take up too much of my time, when Mrs. Cooper put you in
my charge?” he asked.
“But--I keep you away from your own friends.”
“My own friends! Who are they? If you mean the black passengers, I’m
sufficiently akin to them to despise them utterly. My friends! I never
had any. Those I want, despise me. Those who want me, I despise. I’m
nothing, neither black nor white, above the one, below the other. An
outcast and a pariah.”
Leslie was aghast at the storm her words had roused. And his dreary,
bitter voice cut her to the quick.
For a second time she had a glimpse of the galling black yoke--how it
chafed and tortured the man who wore it.
She glanced at him as he sat, all else forgotten but the black curse
on his life, with massive shoulders bowed, and a hopeless weariness in
his eyes.
The sight made her heart ache. He was so big and strong, so capable of
feeling, so full of suffering, so absolutely alone with a burden not
of his own making, and which none could help him with.
A sudden flood of sympathy and understanding swept through her.
Getting to her feet, she leant over him, a hand lightly on his
shoulder.
“It isn’t any fault of yours,” she whispered.
Her voice and light, caressing touch made him start up, shivering as
from ague.
Startled by the abruptness of his movement, she drew back quickly. He
had loomed over her so suddenly, big and all-powerful, blocking out
everything but the fact of himself. There was some emotion on his face
that her frightened expression and shrinking attitude stifled.
In a bitter, hopeless way, he laughed.
“Don’t waste any sympathy on me, Miss Graham. I’m not worth it.”
Abruptly he turned away.
As Leslie watched him go, the wail of a violin came sweeping along on
the night wind and died away in a long-drawn sigh. Just then the world
seemed all pain--pain that no human hands could lighten.
Hardly aware of where she was going, Leslie went along the deck. Her
only desire was to reach the light, to get away from the blackness
that shadowed and spoilt everything.
On the upper deck, among the gay flags and the colored lanterns, the
music that had seemed like weeping was only a waltz tune!
She leant against the rail, thankful for the light, watching the
dancers, glad there were still some happy people in the world, people
whom the black did not touch.
She looked round the deck for Fletcher. She knew she must accept his
offer of friendship, and not risk making things even worse by letting
Mr. Lebrassa think they ever could be more than friends.
A little way off, she saw her quarry watching the crowd moodily.
Leslie hesitated. His air of aloofness did not argue well for the
coming interview. And the fact that Fletcher had never on any occasion
approved of her behavior made her courage shrivel to vanishing point.
Then the thought of the consequences that might arise if she persisted
in her present line of action made her take her wavering determination
firmly in both hands.
A voice with a desperate “do or die” note in it broke in on his moody
reverie.
“I hadn’t time to thank you, Captain Fletcher. And I’m very grateful
for what you said and did.”
Hardly able to believe his ears, he turned. The cause of his gloomy
musings was with him, for the first time condescending to take any
notice of him or his advice.
“I’m only too pleased to be of any use to you, Miss Graham,” he said
eagerly.
There was a brief pause as Leslie wondered how to put her project into
words. She was anxious to justify Molly and to give Lebrassa his due
by letting Fletcher know the mulatto had done his best to keep her
from going to Africa.
Groping round in his head for some commonplace remark Fletcher watched
her, but her presence seemed to have deprived him of speech.
“You were quite right in what you said when that man came and annoyed
me,” Leslie said in a nervous manner. “But I’d never looked at it in
that light before. So I’d like you for my friend, and… and I’d like to
explain everything to you.”
“Don’t bother to explain. I shall be only too delighted if you will
count me as your friend without that.”
“But I’d much rather tell you all about it,” she insisted.
“Very well then, if you wish, but let me get you a chair first.”
In a more light-hearted frame of mind than had been his since leaving
Liverpool, he skirmished round the deck to find two chairs.
As they sat side by side, into Fletcher’s ears was poured the story of
the letter, how it never reached its destination, and the fatal
result. She told him of the one that had come to her from Molly in
Africa. How Lebrassa had tried to persuade her not to go to her
friend, but she had insisted.
“You see,” she finished, “Mrs. Cooper married that dreadful man to
save me, not because he’s rich, as people say. And I couldn’t leave
her in the lurch.”
Fletcher could read between the lines, and he knew Leslie had
struggled on, trying to keep her friend, handicapped beyond her
strength.
“I always suspected it was something of the sort, both in your case
and Mrs. Cooper’s,” he said in a kindly tone.
“It’s very good of you to have given the case so lenient a view. It
was all a mistake, so ghastly that at times I can’t believe it. Poor
little Molly tied for life to that--man, all because my letter went
astray.”
Fletcher recollected what he had heard in the hotel concerning
Lebrassa’s desire for his partner to marry Molly Seaton. With the
recollection came a feeling that the mulatto may have wanted the
marriage as a means of getting Leslie to Africa.
The idea made him probe deeper into the affair.
“Have any of your people anything to do with West Africa, Miss
Graham?”
“No. My father disliked everything African and he had an absolute
hatred of negroes. I once had a piece of jewelry that I found among
his things. A friend told me it was of West African origin, but it
couldn’t have been because my father had never been there, and he had
been to the place the name of which was engraved on the armlet,
because when he was… ill, he used to talk about it.”
“What was the name of the place?” Fletcher asked.
“Kallu.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m much interested
in things West African, and I know more about them than most people.
If you’d let me have a look at that armlet I could tell whether it had
come from those parts.”
“I haven’t got it now. I had to sell it last year when Molly was so
ill.”
Scenting a mystery, Fletcher pondered on what she had said. He wanted
to ask Leslie more about her father. Finally he decided to leave the
subject until a more advanced stage of friendship permitted of
questions bordering on the inquisitive.
Her voice roused him.
“I like Mr. Lebrassa, and I consider the world is hard on him for a
reason that is no fault of his. For all that I shouldn’t like him to
think--to think he could be anything more than my friend.”
Leslie got to her feet.
“I’ve not been at all nice to you,” she continued, “and I appreciate
your kindness in… in coming to my rescue. Good-night and many thanks.”
Fletcher took the hand she held out to him, wondering why Fate had
left such an honorable, high-minded child to find her way through the
maze of life alone.
When she had gone, a desire for solitude drove him to the lower deck,
to walk up and down there, thinking of all she had said.
Lebrassa was there also, pacing up and down with the quiet, stealthy
tread of a jungle beast.
The sight of his dark, powerful face with its cruel mouth and
indifferent expression eventually drove Fletcher to his cabin, more
than ever convinced there was something behind it all that only the
mulatto knew.
CHAPTER IX
“_I am so foolish and you are so wise._”
The Calabar River crept along sluggishly, bringing with it all the
drainings of a dark continent. A dense forest lined one bank right
down to its boulder-strewn edge; the other was a dreary, monotonous
stretch of mangrove and pandanus swamp.
No sound broke the quiet of the evening, except the sickly lapping of
water round the slimy, weed-grown piles of a wooden wharf. There was
no sign of human life save one woman standing ankle-deep in the river,
gazing intently across the stretch of steaming swamp.
She was tall and superbly made, a bronze statue in the swiftly fading
light, with features more Arab than negro. A cream-colored cloth
draped her from shoulder to knee. On her arms were a couple of ivory
bracelets; these and a necklace composed of many rows of gold chains
set with small nuggets, coral and charms, completed her attire.
Just as the brief African twilight was gathering into night, a canoe
crept out from the shadows of the opposite bank, and made straight for
the woman.
The boat had one occupant, a young man of about twenty.
When he reached her, the woman greeted him in a dialect not known in
that part of Southern Nigeria.
“He’s not back yet, Nanza. He has a great love for England now. He’s
been there twice within the last six months.”
For some minutes the two stood talking together. Then they turned
inland, to a trading factory standing just behind the wharf.
A light dribbled through one of the reed blinds screening a door
leading on to the balcony surrounding the upper part of the building.
Inside, busy writing, Cooper sat.
The unceremonious pulling aside of the reed blind made him look up
sharply. When his gaze fell on the entering couple, surprise and anger
came to his face.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded hotly, looking at the man. “You
were told not to come within four hundred miles of this place.”
Contemptuously, Nanza looked at him.
“Since when have I taken orders from you?” he asked.
“The order was not mine, but the Sultan’s.”
“You’ve a great liking for things English lately, both you and he.”
There was a threat in Nanza’s voice. Cooper was quick to hear it. His
next remark was in a cooler and more conciliatory tone.
“On each occasion lately, it was business that took our Sultan to
England,” he explained.
“And I suppose it was _business_ that made you marry one of an
accursed race,” Nanza sneered.
“My marriage was the Sultan’s command,” Cooper said after a moment’s
pause.
The answer appeared to leave Nanza nonplussed.
Yoni’s voice broke the silence.
“Is it the Sultan’s command too, that you sit of an evening toying
with that woman’s hair, and whispering love words into her ears?” she
demanded.
In an access of fury Cooper started up.
“By hell! I won’t discuss my wife with such as you.”
“Hark at him!” Yoni cried mockingly. “We hold his heart in our hand.
Squeeze it, Nanza, my brother. Ask all you wish. And if he won’t tell
you, threaten to expose everything. And he will tell you then, for
love has made a coward of him.”
In a menacing manner Nanza advanced towards Cooper.
“See here,” he cried angrily, “why am I kept in darkness? Twice have I
sent down asking why the Sultan doesn’t come. And twice I’ve been put
off by you. I will know the truth. What is the Sultan doing in
England?”
“I’ve told you,” Cooper replied in a dogged voice. “It’s business that
concerns him alone. I’ve been forbidden to say more.”
“What is the Sultan’s concern is my concern. Am I not his cousin and
his heir?”
At his words Yoni laughed scornfully, a laugh that had in it an
undercurrent of savage jealousy.
“But not his heir for much longer, Nanza,” she said. “For our Sultan
is afflicted with a love-sickness, of a fierceness that comes to men
but once. And he forgets, as men forget, that the dog which has licked
his hand for many years can bite.”
In scorn her brother turned on her.
“A pest on you for a jealous woman. Is it for a fool’s tale such as
this that you have dragged me down from Kallu?”
“It is no fool’s tale,” Yoni declared passionately. “Have I been his
slave and servant all these years for nothing? When our cousin
returned from his last visit to England he would have nothing to do
with me. Instead, he would pace at nights from sunset to sunrise, and
would bid me begone did I venture near him. What is it comes between
a man and his sleep? Soft sleep in arms such as these,” and a pair of
beautiful limbs were thrown out with a gesture of despair. “What but
the face of another woman!”
“You’re a mad, raving fool,” her brother said contemptuously. “Our
cousin has no need of women--as wives.”
“Cooper said the same of himself,” she cried, turning to the negro.
“Yet he has returned with a woman fairer than the morning, whose hair
is like gold. And she is his wife! I did not know these white women
could be so beautiful. All those I had seen before were as sticks,
dried and shriveled, and I, Yoni, in all my blackness, was fairer and
more to be desired. I said, ‘The whites breed fine men, but their
women--bah!’ In my ignorance I spat at them. They are ashamed of such
wives, I thought, that is why the white men always come alone. I was
wrong. They keep their fairest women safe at home and send here such
as are old and of no further use. It is love that has taken our cousin
again so soon to England. And he will return with a woman fairer than
the whitest star--his wife! It will be a short shrift for you then,
Nanza, for the Sultan will brook no heir save of his own breeding.”
This time his sister’s remarks left Nanza very quiet. The truth of her
last observation struck home with considerable force.
Apprehensively Cooper glanced at him.
“Yoni is crazy,” he said presently. “Between a man and his sleep come
other things than love. Vengeance, for instance.”
Nanza’s eyes came towards him.
“Vengeance,” he echoed.
“Vengeance that is all but completed,” Cooper said. “Now, as always,
our Sultan works alone and says no word until all is completed. Two
weeks from now he will be here with his victim, trapped in a way that
only he could have thought out.”
In the manner of a savage beast about to spring, Nanza took a step
forward.
“Not Lionel de Tourville’s son!”
“The Gods have granted even greater vengeance. His daughter!”
“His daughter! There was but a son!”
“The son our Sultan searched for has been dead many years. In his
place came a daughter of whose existence we knew nothing. She is
young. Hardly more than a child. To seize her forcibly might have
meant her death before she reached Kallu. The trapping has been long
and most skilful. My marriage was part of it--she is as a sister to my
wife. Under the guise of friendship our Sultan is bringing her out
here, on a visit to my wife. She is in his care, trusting him! Who but
the Sultan could have conceived a plan so deep?”
Nanza laughed, the great roar of some wild beast.
Then another aspect of the situation struck him.
“Why has this been told to you who are but a servant?” he asked
haughtily. “And not to me, his cousin and his heir?”
“It wasn’t told to me. I learnt it for myself. When we were in England
together he heard a rumor, but he did not mention the matter again,
and I thought, as often before, the scent had proved false. When I got
out here he was constantly urging me to get my wife a companion of her
own color. I was puzzled, for our Sultan has no love for the English,
man or woman. I plied my wife with judicious questions, and soon
guessed his reason.”
“Are you sure of all this?” Nanza asked.
“Quite sure. And remember, the Sultan has no liking for others to
discover his secrets. I should not have said anything about it had not
that woman’s foolishness put madness into you. It was no love business
that took the Sultan again to England. He was working for Kallu. For
the vengeance he promised twenty years ago. Vengeance for a murdered
queen. Vengeance for Irena. It was this that made him pace at night,
not love as this woman would have you think. And he has remained
unmarried because he would see his cousin Nanza heir. For your mother
claimed him kin when all his father’s race had turned against him.”
Yoni’s voice broke in sullenly.
“How like a man! Our Sultan has remained unwed because he has no real
love to give to women of my color. He would have a white wife, of the
class of his father’s people.”
“If the Sultan wished he could have a white wife, even as I have,”
Cooper retorted.
“Bah!” she said with intense scorn. “I’ve seen your wife. She is a
child of the people. I am Yoni, Keeper of the Stars, priestess of
Doomana, noble in my own land, and I know. There is a difference with
the whites as with the blacks. Our Sultan would not have a wife such
as yours. He would have a wife from the stock of his father, who was a
noble of England.”
Angrily, Nanza turned on his sister.
“A curse on you and your mad talk, Yoni,” he cried. “That I should be
afflicted with a fool for a sister! Go, this is man’s business and no
place for you.”
With blazing eyes Yoni faced her brother.
“I am Yoni, Keeper of the Stars. Night gives me many eyes, and I see
deep into the souls of men. Yet I am a fool as you please to say.”
With a haughty gesture she lifted the reed blind and went from the
room.
Going to the water’s edge, she stood there watching the night.
Blackness surrounded her. And high above, the white stars mocked and
twinkled.
CHAPTER X
“_They seem’d long hours._”
In the west, ominous clouds were banked, lurid and luminous,
splashed and barred by the deep flaming crimson of the setting sun
that lay, a pool of fiery red, in the midst of them. Sullen heaving
waves ran right up to the land, if such it could be called; stretch
upon stretch of haunting, mysterious mangrove swamp, broken only by
the mouth of a river, the thick, muddy waters of which drained
greasily down to the sea.
It was the scenery of the Bight of Biafra--mangroves, foul lagoons and
pestilential mud. A fetid waste that was neither land nor water, all
matted and grown together with rank, tangled creepers, so dense that
it seemed nature’s one desire was to keep any ray of light from
filtering through into the dark depths.
The scene was neither beautiful nor cheering, but it had a grim
fascination as it lay there, sullen and secretive, lighted just on the
edge with somber liana-slung passages leading away into darkness.
On the upper deck of the _Batava_, Lebrassa stood with his eyes on the
scene. He might have been studying the wild waste of swamp, or
listening to voices that were wafted across the awning-covered deck.
A fortnight had passed since Leslie had made friends with Fletcher.
Since that night her acquaintances had increased, at one time
numbering fully half a dozen. When the _Batava_ reached African waters
they had decreased as the vessel put in at the various ports. Now, as
it lay anchored off the mouth of the Calabar River, her friends on
board were reduced to two, not counting Lebrassa.
One was Captain Fletcher, the other a Major Harding. The latter was a
man of about forty-eight, moreover a father, as Leslie discovered
before she had known him half an hour, with a daughter in England
about her own age.
In spite of her new friends the girl did not altogether avoid the
mulatto. He was a pariah. She had been one for a while; her own
experience of the position had given her a keen sympathy for him, and
a certain amount of time she still spent in his company.
Lebrassa did not appear to notice any change in her manner. He was the
same as ever, except that he was anxious she should make the most of
her new friends. So much so, that the fears Fletcher’s lecture had
roused were speedily lulled.
A voice speaking at Lebrassa’s elbow made him turn round in his usual
bored, indifferent manner.
“I can quite believe your tale about the Bight of Benin,” it said.
“Which tale, Miss Graham?” he asked.
“About the forty who didn’t come out,” she answered.
Then she glanced again at the forbidding scene.
“I wonder what goes on inside that dark landscape,” she added.
“It’s an abode of wickedness. The essence of all the evil that oozes
out from the black heart of Africa.”
“It’s your country, and you oughtn’t to say horrid things about it.”
“So you consider it my country,” he remarked, smiling slightly. “In
your opinion I’m more in my element here than I was, say--the night I
had the pleasure of meeting you?”
Leslie was sorry she had spoken. She tried to avoid all topics that
would make his black burden any heavier. But in his ways and speech he
was so like a white man that sometimes she forgot the mixed blood in
him.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly, a look of distress on her
face. “But from something you once said, I imagined you’d lived out
here nearly all your life.”
“I’ve spent more than half my life out here,” he replied. “I came when
I was about as old as you are now, quite twenty years ago. By now, I
suppose you’re right in calling it ‘my country’,” he added, the
bitterness she now knew in his voice.
With curiosity she glanced at him. He interested her deeply, this big
strange man whom nobody liked, for no reason at all so far as she
could see, except an accident of birth.
Often she had wanted to ask him about himself, who he really was and
where he came from. And this seemed an opportunity.
“Were you born in England?” she asked, rather nervously.
Leslie knew she ought not to display so much interest in him, but
somehow she could not help it. At times too, she had the queer feeling
of there being a link between them, but she put this down to the fact
of their both being pariahs.
“No,” he said. “I was born in Africa. In a country deep in the
wilds--my mother’s country. When I was a baby, my father took me to
England. At eighteen I came back to Africa. But, during the interval
I’d become too civilized. I couldn’t settle down in my mother’s
country--couldn’t quite break away from the white side. So I came down
to Calabar, just to stay on the edge of it.”
“But didn’t you like England?”
“It wasn’t that so much as that England didn’t like me,” he said
rather grimly.
He changed the conversation.
“You’ve been asking me questions, Miss Graham, so I’m going to
retaliate, and ask you one.”
“What is it?”
“I often wonder what your mother was like, and why you weren’t called
after her, instead of after--your father.”
“My mother died when I was a baby. But my father always said I was
just like her, and not a bit like him. And I am named after her,
too--Leslie Sylvia.”
“Why did you discard Sylvia in favor of the masculine Leslie?” he
asked. “I much prefer Sylvia.”
On Lebrassa’s face was the quiet, well-bred smile that occasionally
came now when they were together.
“I thought Leslie sounded more capable of looking after itself. Sylvia
has such a frail sound, as if it ought to be kept at home in
cotton-wool with some mere male to look after it. After I left school
and went to live with my father, he always treated me as if I were a
boy. He said I had my own way to make and I must get used to knocks.
It was a bit strenuous at first, but I got used to it.”
“Poor little Sylvia! Does she always do just what this strong-minded
Leslie tells her?”
“Now you’re laughing at me.”
“Indeed I’m not,” he said gravely, his mouth twitching with amusement.
“In all seriousness I ask you--at a critical moment would ‘Sylvia’ or
‘Leslie’ come uppermost?”
“I won’t answer such a silly question. I’ll go and do my packing and
leave you to laugh alone.”
When she left, Lebrassa’s gaze went again to the gloomy landscape, and
stayed there in a fixed, brooding manner.
It was nearly midnight when the vessel anchored off Duke
Town--haunting, tropical midnight, pitch-dark, close, and breathless.
A thick fog hung over the river, deadening every sound, shutting out
every light of the settlement on the near bank.
On the boat all was bustle and confusion, but when the noise died down
a little, weird sounds came drifting in from the surrounding darkness.
Voices out on the river were shouting and singing in a guttural
language. In a soft, sickly manner the thick, muddy water lapped on
the vessel’s side. Through the darkness came the snort and whistle of
a wandering steam launch trying to locate the steamer.
In even quieter lulls, strange sounds from the distant bank were
heard. The splashes and heaving sighs of uncouth monsters gamboling;
hoarse bellows and soft slithering noises as of heavy bodies sliding
over mud; uncanny moans and grunts and screams, mingled and mixed
together in a mysterious, whispering whole by the all-enveloping fog.
Everything loomed big and haunting, wild and ghostly, distorted out of
all proportion by the dense mist.
Near the gangway Leslie stood with Lebrassa, looking about her with
rather nervous eyes. This uncanny land of fog and darkness was not the
scented, moonlit, tropic Africa Molly’s letter had led her to expect.
This fact, combined with the strangeness of everything, the eerie
night and the unknown awaiting her there, made the girl a trifle
hysterical.
With a triumphant snort, the wandering steam launch reached its
destination. Leslie leant over the rail, straining through the murky
atmosphere to get a glimpse of the occupants, hoping to see her
friend. Only one person came up the gangway; an Englishman, parched
and sun-dried, with the bloodless look of a grasshopper. With some
surprise he glanced at her and Lebrassa, then he went along the deck
to a spot some yards away where Fletcher and Major Harding were
standing.
Presently, out of the shrouded gloom, came the muffled splash of oars.
The sound made Leslie move nearer the gangway, thinking that, at last,
Molly was coming.
A big boat loomed up, manned by half a dozen savages, naked but for a
wisp of cloth round their loins. Black figures with faces like
grotesque masks, skins that steamed in the faint yellow lamplight,
blood-shot eyes that rolled and glistened, and mouths, big, loose and
red, that jabbered in a horrible manner.
Fascinated, Leslie watched them.
For whom were they coming? To whom were they calling, with awful
beast-like voices?
They were calling to--Mr. Lebrassa! And he was answering in the same
way! It was Molly’s hell. Molly’s hell that she was going to!
A sweet, wild laugh just beside him took Lebrassa’s attention quickly
from the boatmen.
“What’s the matter?” he asked sharply.
“Shall I… shall I get like them if I stay out here?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Leslie said in an hysterical manner.
“Where’s Molly? Why doesn’t she come?”
“My men have just brought a message saying she’s not well enough to
come and meet you.”
Tightly Leslie’s hands clutched the rail, all hysteria knocked out of
her at the thought of Molly being ill.
“Where’s Mr. Cooper?” she asked, scanning the boatload of savages.
“He couldn’t leave her.”
“I must go to Molly at once,” Leslie said, everything forgotten but
her friend.
“We’ll start now, if you wish,” Lebrassa replied. “I’ll send my men
back for your luggage.”
“I must just say good-by to Captain Fletcher and Major Harding,”
Leslie answered, turning in their direction.
It was very evident the group had been watching her, for her first
movement in their direction brought Fletcher towards her.
“Where’s Mrs. Cooper?” he demanded.
“She’s too ill to come.”
“Then you mustn’t think of landing to-night.”
“But I must go to her,” Leslie replied.
“You can’t leave the vessel at this time of night, all alone.”
“I shan’t be alone. Mr. Lebrassa is going with me.”
“Good heavens, child, you’re not in England now, or dealing with an
Englishman. If you must go, let me take you up in Atherley’s launch. I
know where the place is.”
Leslie’s mouth set in the obstinate way it did on those rare occasions
when Fletcher’s temper got the better of his judgment and he said
anything in the least degree disparaging about Lebrassa.
“I won’t insult Mr. Lebrassa by refusing to go with him.”
Leslie left him wrathful and gloomy and went along to Harding.
“I’m going, now,” she said, “so this will be good-by.”
“Hardly ‘good-by’ as yet, Miss Graham. Dr. Atherley has kindly placed
his launch at our disposal, so you’ll let us have the pleasure of
seeing you to the end of your journey.”
“It’s very thoughtful of you, but Mr. Lebrassa’s boat has just come.”
Harding glanced at Fletcher. He had noted the other’s interview with
the girl, and he had made a final effort to keep her in safe custody.
“Good-by,” Leslie said, holding out a hand to Harding.
With fatherly tenderness he took it.
“You mustn’t desert me altogether, Miss Graham. I miss my own little
girl dreadfully, so will you promise to bring Mrs. Cooper to my
bungalow sometimes and pour tea for me?”
“I don’t think Molly would care to go anywhere.”
“Well, if you can’t persuade her to come with you, come alone.”
Gratefully Leslie smiled at him.
“It’s awfully decent of you to try to make things easier for me, but I
knew just what I was coming to. Molly didn’t try to deceive me. And I
shall be very pleased to come and see you sometimes.”
With a pleasant smile at the Major and a cold nod to Fletcher, Leslie
joined Lebrassa.
Fletcher watched the two as they disappeared down the gangway. Then he
went to the rail in time to see the big boat, with its crew of
savages, swallowed up in darkness.
To Leslie, as she left the _Batava’s_ side, there came a sensation of
all known things gliding away--an uncanny feeling that made her
shiver. She cast a quick glance back at the steamer, and stifled a
desire to ask Lebrassa to stop and take her back to the world she
knew. With an effort she suppressed the wish and tried to interest
herself in her surroundings.
When one of the negroes struck a match, the sharp scratch made her
heart give a choking jump. A moment later a lantern flared up in the
bow. The combination of flickering light and curling miasma caused
wild, distorted shapes to dance in the shrouded gloom, and cast weird
shadows over the savage crew.
With hands clasped tightly together, Leslie watched the negroes.
Occasional grunts broke from them as they pulled and sweated at the
oars to the accompaniment of a low, whining chant. To any one fresh
from civilization, they were very unlike human beings. This Leslie
realized as she watched them, horror-stricken at the thought of Molly
being married to one of their race.
A movement at the tiller brought her mind back from the naked crew to
Lebrassa.
The fitful light rendered his swarthy face darker than usual, and the
negro in him showed more as he sat gazing intently ahead, picking out
a difficult passage by sounds and signs that only senses attuned to
the slightest noise and shadow could have noticed.
Leslie watched him. Never had she seen him look quite so dark, quite
so much like a negro before.
“I’d like to give him a coat of black paint and a covering no bigger
than a handkerchief, and see what I thought of him then.”
Fletcher’s words, accidentally overheard that night in the hotel, came
back to her mind.
What _would_ she think of him then?
A thrill of horror went through her.
All Fletcher had said concerning Lebrassa’s sort and color returned
with an appalling rush. With it came a sudden realization of the
loneliness of her present position, and the terrifying knowledge that
she really knew nothing at all about Lebrassa.
With fearsome speculation she watched him, noting, as she had never
done before, every line and flaw on his face, the latent savagery in
his eyes, the cruel set of his mouth, the whole stamped with the
unmistakable seal of reckless dissipation.
What if she had been wrong all the time? What if he _were_ the Hyena?
Leslie tried to crush this thought back. But it would come uppermost.
During the voyage out she had heard many terrible tales about this
mysterious rebel chieftain, the mere recollection of which made her
shiver.
Lebrassa must have noticed the shudder that ran through her, for he
glanced sharply at her.
“What’s the matter?” he asked quickly.
Trying to stifle her terror, she looked at him.
“Have--we much further to go?”
He must have noticed the break of fear in her voice, for he smiled at
her gently.
“There’s nothing _you_ need be afraid of,” he said softly. “Fifteen
minutes from now you’ll be with your friend.”
His cultivated voice comforted her. It made her remember he was very
different from the creatures rowing the boat.
Almost as he spoke, a faint luminous light appeared in the darkness
ahead, and grew bigger and redder and more lurid as they approached
it.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The light of my wharf. The end of your river journey.”
The oars were shipped, and black, weed-grown piles loomed up. Some of
the crew leant over and pawed along the slimy wood until steps were
reached.
As Leslie mounted them, she experienced the uncomfortable feeling of
some one’s gliding away at her approach, of unseen eyes watching her
from out of the darkness. She was glad of Lebrassa’s company, and
stayed close beside him while the negroes went to the trading factory
to fetch a hammock in which she was to be carried up to the villa on
the hill.
As they stood together, out from the night came the sudden throb of a
native drum, a roll of wild music with little intermittent taps.
Another answered it, a faint echo in the distance.
The sound startled the girl. Major Harding had told her how the
African tribes signalled to each other in this fashion, sending
messages from place to place with amazing rapidity. She wondered what
the drums were saying, and why, the moment she landed, they should
roll their wild music through the night.
The sound left Lebrassa tense and listening.
In the faint light of a dying lamp overhead Leslie glanced at him. The
look on his face was one she had never seen before: an expression of
tigerish ferocity.
“What are they making that noise about?” she asked nervously.
“It’s in honor of your landing.”
He laughed, in a manner both savage and tender. For the message of the
drums was--that he had returned, and with him was his enemy’s
daughter!
His look and laugh made the girl shrink from him. The lamp overhead
flared up wildly. In the sudden glare she saw a pair of eyes watching
her intently. Then all light died away as the last roll of a drum came
echoing down like a faint sigh from the unknown.
Leslie remained in the darkness, conscious some one was creeping
stealthily up to her. She could see nothing, but she could feel an
unknown and hostile presence.
A voice came out of the night, a wild jabber, loud and coarse, with a
note of the beast in it, and the sound sapped Leslie’s last remaining
scrap of courage.
“Are you there, Mr. Lebrassa?” she asked nervously.
At her question he laughed.
He was there. So was she. And Kallu knew it!
The depths of savagery in his tone made her shudder. All the fears
that had assailed her on the river returned four-fold. Fearsomely she
touched the arm of the man who loomed, solid, in the surrounding
darkness.
“You’re not the Hyena, are you?” she asked in a hysterical manner.
“If I said ‘yes,’ would you believe me?”
“Please, please don’t make a joke of it when I’m here all--alone.”
The terrified, imploring note in her voice made him draw her arm
through his, where he held it carefully. And Leslie was glad of the
feeling of safety that came with him.
“So in a critical moment it would be Sylvia,” he said teasingly.
“Would be Sylvia!” she echoed.
Then in a shaky manner she laughed.
“What made _you_ think I might be the Hyena?” he went on. “Am I so
very savage when we’re together? Or are you afraid that now I’ve got
you far away from your own sort that I shall fall on you and gobble
you up, as the wolf did little Red Riding Hood?”
“It was all this strange haunted night,” she confessed. “I… I think I
had a sudden attack of nerves. It was stupid of me to say such a
thing. You’re not angry, are you?” she finished anxiously.
“Do I sound as if I were?”
“You sound as if you were laughing at me, but then you’re very good at
hiding what you really feel.”
Lebrassa made no reply. He remained silent, her arm tucked through his
until the arrival of the hammock and lanterns broke the darkness
again.
The party was soon stirring. Leslie lay in her litter trying to see
something of her surroundings. Only indistinct trunks of trees were
visible. In her ears was the sound of dripping moisture, an occasional
rustle in the undergrowth, far-away, moaning howls, the stealthy pad
of unshod feet, and the comforting sound of a firm, louder tread that
denoted a civilized presence.
“Here’s your destination,” Lebrassa said, at length.
His words made her sit up. She saw nothing but mist and trees and a
vicious thorny hedge lost either way in the darkness. There was the
sound of a gate opening. More mist and trees, and, finally, a halt at
the bottom of broad, wooden steps leading up to a wide, creeper-grown
balcony.
The noise of their arrival brought some one along the veranda. A negro
loomed up, a man of about forty, of medium height and black as any one
of her bearers. Only his European dress and the look of intelligence
on his face marked him out as in any way differing from them.
Before Lebrassa’s brief introduction, Leslie guessed he was Molly’s
husband.
A desire to scream aloud seized her. With an effort she pulled herself
together. She must shake hands with him. For Molly’s sake she must
behave just as if he were a white man.
“I’m sorry I could not come to meet you, Miss Graham,” Cooper said.
“But my wife is dangerously ill.”
His words stunned Leslie.
Lebrassa’s voice reached her.
“Let me take you to the dining-room. You must have something to eat
after your tiring journey.”
Impatiently she turned from him.
“I must go to Molly at once. Will you take me?” she asked, looking at
Cooper.
She had a vague idea of walking up the steps and along the balcony
with some one who, in stilted, foreign English was imploring her to
save Molly.
Then she was taken into a lighted room.
In the faint illumination of a shaded lamp she saw a trio of black
faces leaning over a bed where a girl lay moaning--two men and one
woman.
Leslie had eyes only for the girl on the bed. Molly was there. Molly
who had done this dreadful thing for _her_ sake! Molly with her pretty
golden hair and sweet, gentle face, staring wildly at the figures
clustered around her.
As Leslie crossed the room, she felt a sudden hatred for everybody
with a dark skin. Leaning over the bed, she tried to block out from
Molly’s poor wild eyes those terrifying black faces.
“What are these people doing here?” she demanded, looking at Cooper.
“They are two doctors and a nurse, Miss Graham.”
“Send them away. I can manage quite well alone. I’ve nursed and
doctored Molly through several illnesses.”
Leslie’s only idea was to clear the room of black people.
There was some demur on the part of the negro physicians. In an
insolent, aggressive, patronizing manner they questioned Leslie’s
right to dismiss them.
Pale and haughty, she faced them.
“You will do as I tell you. Mr. Cooper has put his wife in my care.”
She was of the dominant race and the room cleared.
When the doctors and nurse had gone, Leslie turned to Cooper.
“Will you see if Mr. Lebrassa is still here? And if he is, will you
say I’d like to speak to him for a moment?”
He left immediately.
Turning from the bed, Leslie took off her hat with trembling hands.
She was bending over Molly again, crooning little words of sympathy
and understanding, when a light tap disturbed her.
Crossing the room, she drew aside the reed blind screening the
doorway.
Outside Lebrassa stood. In his hands was a tray with coffee and
sandwiches.
With an air of proud humility, as if he were more accustomed to be
waited on than waiting on others, he put the tray on a table just
inside the door.
“You sent for me, so I took the liberty of bringing you some supper at
the same time,” he remarked as he put the tray down.
“That was thoughtful of you,” she said, looking at him with eyes full
of gratitude. “I really wanted you to tell Mr. Cooper not to come in
here again to-night. I didn’t like to tell him myself. But… but Molly
will be much better just alone with me. I sent the doctors away too,
and I’m afraid I offended them, but they were only frightening her.”
“I’ll see that Cooper and the rest of them keep out of here,” he
assured her.
He half-turned to go, but Leslie’s hand on his sleeve kept him where
he was.
“You’ll think me very silly,” she said quickly, in a nervous,
apologetic tone, “but I wonder if you’d mind waiting here for a bit.
I… I’d like to think you were here, that I’m not quite alone with--all
these strange people.”
“I’ll gladly stay all night if it’s going to save you one moment’s
worry.”
“I would like you to stay until it’s light again. Everything seems so
fearfully dark, everybody so… so different from what I’ve been used
to. It will be comforting to think I have a friend within hailing
distance.”
In a peculiar manner Lebrassa laughed.
“Friend, you call me?”
All Leslie saw in his laughter and his remark was the fact that he had
once told her he had no friends.
“Why not?” she asked. “You’ve always been a good friend to me.”
“And you to me, Miss Graham,” he answered with a touch of feeling in
his usually indifferent voice.
He changed the conversation.
“But you mustn’t make yourself ill, looking after Mrs. Cooper. Let me
send the nurse back.”
“Molly will be much better just with me, and I can manage quite all
right, especially now I know you’ll be here. Good-night, and thank you
so much.”
From sheer gratitude Leslie held out her hand.
Until now she had avoided shaking hands with him. In fact she had
avoided all personal contact, except on the occasions when her
sympathy had been aroused, or when sudden fear of the strange life she
had been plunged into had made her turn to him.
Very cordially she gave her hand, for in her mind was the knowledge of
the suspicions that had assailed her during the boat journey from the
steamer.
Lebrassa took it carefully.
“This seals our compact,” he said, smiling at her, the quiet,
well-bred smile Leslie now knew and liked. “We are no longer enemies,
but friends.”
“What nonsense you do talk at times. We’ve never been enemies.”
“What about those bloodthirsty battles over the chess-board?”
Leslie laughed.
“Oh, those!” she exclaimed.
For a moment Lebrassa held her hand.
“Good-night, little friend,” he said, watching her closely.
Freeing her hand he turned away rather sharply and went from the room.
Once outside, for some minutes he stood, thoughtful and motionless, by
the reed blind, as if on sentry there. Then, with a sudden, fierce
movement, he went along to the dining-room, where Cooper was.
“Who sent that message up to Kallu?” he asked in a peremptory manner.
The question set Cooper fidgeting uneasily.
“I sent no message,” he answered.
“Who did then?” Lebrassa asked savagely.
“Yoni must have.”
“What made that woman interfere?”
“She had some mad notion that you’d gone to England to get married,
and she sent word up to Nanza to that effect. He came down here
threatening to expose everything unless he knew exactly what was
happening. To keep him quiet I had to tell him it was Lionel de
Tourville’s daughter you had gone to fetch.”
The reply left Lebrassa thoughtful.
“What made you connect Miss Graham with Lionel de Tourville?” he asked
at length.
“From what you told me that night in Harrogate, and from what I learnt
from my wife about her friend. I congratulate you on the clever way
you got the girl out here.”
In a strangely unpleasant manner, Lebrassa laughed--a laugh that might
have been caused by his minions running foul of his orders, or his own
delight at having captured his enemy so neatly.
CHAPTER XI
“_But hate and friendship both find their end._”
Outside the Lebrassa & Cooper factory, all was quiet and peaceful in
the early morning sun. Inside, the business of the day had started,
and Cooper was issuing orders to the colored assistants before
ascending to his office on the floor above.
When he left the store to go up the steps leading to the balcony, Yoni
came out from behind the building. She followed him to the office and
leant against the door, watching him sullenly.
Presently, as she showed no inclination either to speak or go away, he
looked up from his books.
“Well?” he asked sharply.
“I have seen her. She has a face like a star set in the black cloud of
her hair. Hands so small, fit for nothing save to hold the heart of a
man. And a voice that ripples sweet as flowing water.”
“What of it?” Cooper asked impatiently.
“Then you talk of vengeance!”
“Why not?”
Contemptuously she laughed.
“Why not indeed! I’ve seen the Sultan with her. He’s her slave and
servant. He! The Lord of Doomana!”
“He treats her as the white men treat their women,” Cooper explained.
“She was afraid last night. I know, for I was close by and saw them.
He saw it too, and comforted her with soft words. I don’t know what
was said, for they spoke in her language. And he drew her arm through
his, and it might have been the earth’s greatest treasure for the care
he used.”
Uneasily Cooper glanced at her, wishing his partner would come and
deal with this incubus of a woman.
“As soon as my wife is able to travel we’re going up-country,” he said
in a soothing manner. “She, as my wife’s friend, goes with us. One day
she will stray from the camp and not return. Down here my wife’s story
will pacify the white men--that her friend was lost in the forest and
devoured by some wild beast. But you and I and the Sultan, Yoni, will
know what really happened.”
“That she is to be taken to Kallu, to be sacrificed on the altar her
father fouled?”
“Exactly.”
“But if our Sultan is going to kill her, why does he act as if he were
her lover?”
“He wishes her to believe him her friend, so that she’ll have no idea
what his motive really is.”
“It’s a pastime he finds pleasure in, and would have more of. I
followed them last night. My night was spent in the garden
watching--the garden I’ve been free to wander in these many years, but
am now forbidden to enter. Why?”
As Cooper ignored the question, Yoni answered it herself.
“Because a Star has risen in the Heart of Darkness. I know. Have I not
spent my life at his feet? Are there no hands good enough to serve
that girl but he must wait upon her himself? Last night it was a tray
set with dainty morsels. This morning when she came from that room,
who went to meet her with the haste of a supplicant lover, to take her
to a lounge set in the sweetest corner of the balcony, to place
cushions at her head, to tempt her again with dainties, running to and
fro, a woman’s slave? Who? The Sultan!”
Cooper’s temper was rising, but he was anxious to keep the peace.
“The hunt needs great skill,” he answered in a dogged manner. “The
game is shy and frightened--a nervous girl feeling insecure in her new
surroundings. Our Sultan is lulling her into a sense of safety before
he makes the next move.”
“It is a task men love--to soothe the fears of such as she. With
little hands so small and white, and eyes like twin flowers of blue
set in a roseleaf, other thoughts than vengeance enter the heart of
man.”
Cooper’s supply of patience suddenly ran out.
“Confound you!” he cried. “The truest word your brother spoke was when
he called you a fool.”
After that, silence reigned in the office.
Presently, the sound of some one coming up the steps made him heave a
sigh of relief.
With eyes that had a glint of fear in their somber depths, Yoni turned
and looked at the man coming along the balcony. But she might not have
been there for all the notice Lebrassa took of her.
“What’s this woman doing here?” he asked sharply, in the vernacular.
“I won’t have the natives loafing round my premises.”
With a quick movement, full of grace and abandon, Yoni bowed deeply
before him.
“I came to give my lord greeting,” she said.
Without taking the least notice of her Lebrassa moved away.
“Has my lord no greeting for his slave?” she asked with a note of
abject pleading.
Lebrassa turned his back on her, and, picking up a budget of letters,
began to open and read them.
Cooper glanced quickly from one to the other.
“I don’t think you should be so offhand with her,” he said presently
in English, and with an air of diffidence.
“Since when has it been my habit to propitiate?”
“She knows too much. What’s more, she’s madly jealous of that girl.”
A look of savage arrogance came to Lebrassa’s face.
“I presume you mean your wife’s friend,” he said. “In future you will
refer to her as Miss Graham, and in no other manner.”
With that Lebrassa left the office.
He went to his private apartments, Yoni following him.
“My lord is angry,” she said with a cringing air.
“I have no use for those who disobey me.”
In an anxious manner, she touched his arm.
“I hoped--” she began.
With a savage gesture, he shook her hand off.
“Don’t touch me, woman,” he cried angrily.
Alarmed and anxious, Yoni watched him.
“Is it for nothing I’ve been your faithful servant these long years?”
she ventured. “I, Yoni, Keeper of the Stars, priestess of Doomana, who
gave all for the sake of love.”
“Don’t talk to me of love.”
“Essel, my cousin, who spoke first of love? My lord was a good pleader
in the dead days.”
In loathing he looked at her, as if the mention of the blood tie
between them was more than he could bear.
Watching him in a threatening manner, Yoni drew away.
“And if I go to the white men and say, ‘Come, I will show you the
Hyena, the Sultan of Kallu--the man you have looked for these many
years’--what then?”
“Do as you please, only keep out of my sight.”
“My lord has no fear?”
“Fear! Of what?”
“It is he who won my heart, only to crush it. Essel, my cousin, see, I
am at your feet.”
With a lithe movement Yoni was prostrate before him.
With hatred and aversion, he turned his back on her.
“Go back to the darkness that bred you. I’ve done with such as you,”
he cried savagely.
There was a moan, like that of an animal in deadly pain. Yoni crept
out on to the balcony and crouched there shivering in the sunshine.
CHAPTER XII
“_Yes, the times are changed, for better or worse._”
Roses nodded sleepily over the veranda rail of Cooper’s bungalow,
saturating the air with their sweetness. Their scent mingled with that
of a hundred subtle foreign perfumes until the place had the
languorous atmosphere of an Eastern harem. Around the dwelling lay a
wilderness of a garden--a tangle of beautiful tropical trees and
shrubs, fenced with a high thorny hedge which protected from
inquisitive eyes its wealth of gorgeous flowers and cool greenery.
One corner of the balcony was grown over by roses whose blossoms shut
out the blazing glare and turned the spot into a cool, scented bower.
There two girls sat, one on a long cane lounge, the other on a
quaintly carved native stool, a tea-table beside them.
Nearly three weeks had passed since Leslie’s arrival in Duke Town, and
during the time she had nursed Molly to convalescence.
As Leslie was pouring tea, footsteps along the veranda made her glance
in that direction, a rather strained look in her eyes. Since only
colored people came to the bungalow, and as Cooper never returned
before dusk, she feared it was one of the native doctors of whom she
had seen more than enough during the last few weeks.
Coming round the corner was a big, dark man in spotless white. On
seeing him an expression of relief came to her face.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Lebrassa?” she asked with mock severity.
“My patient isn’t allowed any visitors as yet.”
“I heard Mrs. Cooper was able to get up to-day, and I wanted to be the
first outsider to congratulate her on her recovery,” he explained, as
he paused beside Molly’s chair.
“You must congratulate my nurse, not me. But for Leslie I should never
have pulled through.”
“I didn’t do much,” the younger girl replied. “I just sat round and
gave you bites and sups.”
Affectionately, Molly’s thin arms went round the neck of the girl
sitting on the low stool beside her.
“Modesty is Leslie’s great failing, as you may have noticed, Mr.
Lebrassa. Won’t you sit down?” she finished, glancing at a chair
beside them.
As Molly poured out tea for the visitor, Leslie studied him.
She had seen nothing of Lebrassa since the morning following her
arrival at the bungalow. He came as a welcome change after society
limited to Cooper, whom she avoided as much as possible, and the two
negro physicians who were rapidly becoming a nightmare.
She could quite understand Molly’s thinking Mr. Lebrassa almost an
Englishman; he was so different from those others.
His voice broke in on her thoughts.
“I hear you’ve not been out since you came here, Miss Graham,” he
said. “May I show you some of the local sights to-morrow afternoon?”
“I’ve promised to have dinner with Major Harding to-morrow, and I
shouldn’t care to leave Molly both afternoon and evening.”
Since leaving the steamer, Leslie had seen nothing of her two English
friends, but she had heard from one or the other daily. And with
Molly’s convalescence had come an invitation to dine with Harding the
following evening.
Her reply brought a baulked look to Lebrassa’s eyes.
His one desire was to keep Leslie away from all her own color, so that
she would not be able to make comparisons that would be to his
disadvantage.
However, nothing of what was in his mind showed on his face as he
looked at the girl.
“I was told you couldn’t be induced to leave Mrs. Cooper, even for
necessary exercise. Now I find you’re willing to desert her for a
whole evening.”
“I’m the one to blame,” Molly put in quickly. “Leslie wouldn’t have
gone but I made her. She ought not to desert those nice men she met on
the boat. She’ll have few enough friends out here, goodness knows.”
“You were wise in persuading her to go,” he said suavely.
Then he looked again at Leslie.
“When does my turn come? When may I take you sight-seeing?”
“Any day that isn’t to-morrow,” she replied.
“What about the day after? And what would you like to see?”
“Something typically African.”
“What’s your idea of ‘something typically African’?”
“A place far away from missionaries and traders, that has never come
under white influence,” Leslie answered.
“Away in the wilds, where the African can be seen in all his primitive
savagery, unrefined by the least touch of civilization, where human
sacrifice goes on daily in the local temple, and where human flesh is
displayed for edible purposes in the market square,” Lebrassa said,
continuing the theme.
But although he spoke in his usual bored manner, a twitch of amusement
and teasing took the hard, set look from his mouth.
Reproachfully Leslie looked at him.
“You’re making fun of me again,” she said.
“There’s a bush village a few miles away. What about that?” Molly
suggested, as she poured out a second cup of tea for the visitor.
“Do you think that will be sufficient to satisfy Miss Graham’s craving
for undiluted savagery?” he asked.
“You know I don’t like savage things,” Leslie exclaimed.
Her remark silenced Lebrassa.
Presently, he rose to go.
After farewells were made, he lingered for a moment at Leslie’s side.
“Can I persuade you to accompany me as far as the gate, Miss Graham?”
he asked.
Because of all his kindness to Molly, Leslie was full of gratitude.
This brought her to her feet at once, anxious to comply.
“I shall be glad of a walk,” she said. “And you can tell me the names
of some of these wonderful tropical flowers.”
It was pleasant in the garden. The doves were cooing sleepily in the
waning afternoon sun. Butterflies, orange, scarlet, brown, opalescent
green, mauve, yellow and velvety-black flitted among the drowsy
blossoms. From bubbling fountains water dripped, and trees sighed
languidly in a light breeze that brought a rainbow shower of petals
falling slowly to the ground.
Lebrassa seemed in no hurry to reach the gate. He went along
leisurely, pausing frequently, watching with veiled eyes the girl at
his side, answering her question about the flowers in a manner that
suggested he had a good knowledge of botany.
Eventually when the gate was reached, he came to a halt.
“Miss Graham,” he said earnestly, “will you believe me when I say that
had I known six months ago what I know now I’d have done my best to
stop your friend’s marriage?”
“But what could you have done?” she asked with some surprise.
“I ought to have known that a man of Cooper’s power would be able to
persuade a girl of your friend’s caliber into almost anything he
wished, if there was no counter-influence at work. I saw what was
happening, and I did nothing to prevent it. It pleased me to see her
going headlong to destruction, for I’ve a grudge against the universe,
a desire that the rest of mankind should suffer a modicum of what I’ve
been through in my time. But had I known she was the friend of my
little friend that was to be, I’d have put a stop to it.”
There was a dreary note in his voice that Leslie now knew.
“You’re blaming yourself for something that is not your fault at all,”
she said in a sympathetic manner. “And you mustn’t have a grudge
against the universe because of--your color. You imagine everybody
despises you because of it, and being proud, you get your oar in
first, and look at everybody with the deepest contempt. The world
won’t stand that sort of thing, and pays you back in your own coin.
You should look more amiably at the world. It’s not such a bad place
really if… if it weren’t for the mistakes that sometimes happen.”
There was a strained look on Lebrassa’s face as he watched the girl
who gazed up at him earnestly and kindly.
“I’m one of the mistakes,” he said. “But so long as you don’t despise
me, I’ll endeavor to mend my ways, and be more amiable to the world.”
“Why should I despise you? You’ve never given me any cause to. Now
you’re standing in the sun without your hat,” she added.
As if to draw him into the shade, Leslie laid a small, anxious hand on
his sleeve.
Almost boyishly, he laughed.
“The sun won’t hurt my head. That’s one of the few advantages attached
to being a nigger.”
“You mustn’t call yourself that.”
“Why not? It’s what the world has called me from my earliest days. I
don’t mind now, since you don’t despise me because of it. But there
was a time when the word made me absolutely rabid, when it left me
hovering between murder and suicide. It stirred depths in me your mind
could never conceive. I’d high ideals as a youngster. That word stood
between me and all of them. It was maddening to have ambitions and yet
be a ‘nigger,’ with sufficient white blood in me to make me appreciate
the fact in all its fullness. I----”
As if afraid of where confessions might carry him, Lebrassa broke off
suddenly.
“But I mustn’t worry my little friend with the career of a ‘mistake,’”
he continued more calmly. “For in the end I succeeded, but not in the
way I’d once hoped.”
“You don’t worry me. I like to hear you talk about yourself. It
doesn’t do to keep things of that sort bottled up. They’re apt to
ferment and cause a terrific explosion.”
“It was so with me, little friend. I fermented, and there was a big
explosion.”
In his remarks Leslie saw nothing more than a reference to the huge
business he had built up in Calabar, and the fact that rumor said his
private life did not bear inspection. But the more she saw of the man,
the more excuses she could find for him.
She returned to the house, pitying him from the depths of her heart,
guessing a little of what he had suffered.
Lebrassa was well to the fore in her mind the next evening as she
dressed for Harding’s party.
In from the balcony drifted the sound of the strange negro voices. To
celebrate his wife’s recovery Cooper had invited a dozen or so guests
to dinner.
Leslie knew she would have to make an appearance in the drawing-room
before she left. She also knew that with Molly’s recovery there would
be more and more of the negro element to contend with.
Presently, erect and fearless-looking, Leslie entered the
drawing-room.
A coal-black negro, male or female, in evening dress, is not a pretty
sight. This the girl realized as she gazed at the assembly. Her
thoughts went to Lebrassa as she had seen him the afternoon before,
olive-skinned, with well-cut features, immaculate in white drill,
bare-headed in the sun that marked out the silver threads in his
crisp, wavy black hair, and the deep-cut lines of dissipation on his
face. He had been laughing in a way she had never seen him laugh
before, laughing as if his black burden had suddenly dropped from him,
laughing in a way that took all the cruel look from his
mouth--laughing and calling himself a “nigger”!
And she had come out to Africa thinking all educated negroes would be
like Mr. Lebrassa!
As Leslie entered the room one of the black doctors crossed to her,
taking in every detail of her frock, letting his eyes dwell on her
slim, bare arms and slender white shoulders in a manner particularly
offensive.
The girl detested him, and Molly’s convalescence had come as a blessed
relief from his almost constant presence in the bungalow.
“I was wondering where you were, Miss Graham,” he said. “I have been
looking forward to meeting you unofficially, and without the reserve
professional etiquette demands between doctor and nurse. It is quite
ten years since I had the pleasure of dining with an English lady,
except, of course, my hostess. It will remind me of my college days,
when, if I may say so, I numbered many charming English ladies among
my friends.”
“I’m dining with Major Harding to-night.”
It gave Leslie untold pleasure to be able to say this. Those other
“charming English ladies” this specimen of educated African referred
to would hardly have been invited to grace Harding’s table.
“Is that not somewhat unusual?”
“Unusual! What do you mean?”
“I fancied from what I saw of English society--I may, of course, have
been mistaken--that it was not customary for young ladies,
unchaperoned, to go to the residences of their gentlemen friends.”
A small face, very white and cold, looked back unflinchingly at the
leering, insinuating black one.
“I’m not a member of English society now, so I needn’t consider its
customs.”
With that Leslie turned her back on him. She crossed to where Molly
was sitting. There she stayed for a few minutes, watching the crowd of
black faces that seemed suddenly to bear down upon her, bowing coldly
as Cooper introduced his various friends.
With a sense of unspeakable relief she heard her hammock announced.
As Leslie was jogged along to Harding’s bungalow, she found it in her
heart to wish she had taken Lebrassa’s advice and remained in England.
Although Molly had warned her what to expect from the white side, she
had not said what Leslie might have to put up with from the black.
She was very quiet and subdued during her dinner with the Major, so
much so that he was sorely tempted to ask what the matter was.
However, during the course of dessert, she told him of her own accord.
“Major Harding, it was kind of you to ask me here to-night. Molly has
a dinner party on, so I hesitated about coming here because of that.
But she insisted on my coming.”
“I’m sorry if my invitation clashed with Mrs. Cooper’s arrangements.”
“It doesn’t matter in the least. I… I’d much rather be here.”
Wondering what had happened, in a very fatherly manner he looked
across at her.
“Whenever you feel ‘you’d much rather be here,’ come without waiting
for any invitation. I want you to look upon my bungalow as your second
home, a place you can run in and out of just as you wish. Whenever
Cooper has friends, you come to me. For I don’t think you’ll care much
for colored society.”
Leslie’s big, beautiful eyes suddenly grew moist.
“No, I don’t think I shall,” she said huskily.
By now Harding knew what the matter was. He turned the conversation
into other channels. And as they talked together, he wondered how long
it would be before this foolish, quixotic little girl came and told
him she had decided to return to England.
CHAPTER XIII
“_What is the tale you are telling?_”
It was midnight when Leslie arrived back at the garden gate of
Cooper’s residence. Dismissing the hammock and its bearers, she went
up the silent, leafy path alone. Everything around her lay still and
unmoved, as if carved out in black and white marble. And the streaming
flood of moonlight had swept away all life and sound.
However, as she neared the bungalow a sudden burst of laughter brought
her to a halt. It announced that Cooper’s guests were still there. The
fact sent her down a side path, with the idea of staying in the garden
until she was quite sure they had departed.
For some distance she went along, until a wide stone seat was reached,
set in a secluded corner under a trio of palms. Close by, a fountain
bubbled from a moss-grown gargoyle into a deep, clear pool set round
with a wealth of ferns. The soft, warm air was heavy with the
intoxicating odors of a thousand tropical flowers. Occasionally the
trees sighed softly as a faint, scented breeze stirred them.
It was a garden to dream in, a place of almost unearthly beauty, yet
over it hung a dreadful black shadow, so dense that at times it
blotted out all its charm.
All at once a slight movement just behind her made Leslie turn
quickly. Coming round the side of the seat was something quite small
and not in the least terrifying.
Leslie had always imagined fairies to be white, but this one was
brown. Moreover the average fairy has on some sort of drapery. But
this wore only a string of blue beads round its neck, and a gold
bangle on one fat wrist.
Hesitatingly it advanced, very naked and very unashamed, one finger in
its mouth, and staring at her with great, solemn, dark eyes.
Reassuringly she smiled. It was quite the funniest wee thing she had
ever seen. Some one’s small girl-baby who had strayed into the garden.
Then to the civilized mind came the feeling it needed some sort of
drapery. Leslie took a silk shawl from her shoulders, wrapped it
around the tiny golden-brown statue, and lifted it to her knee.
There it stayed, still sucking a finger and staring at her gravely.
On the seat was a box of chocolates Harding had given her.
Leslie put one in the baby’s mouth. It was eaten with evident relish.
Then a fat finger rubbed her shoulder in a way most openly interested
and curious.
It was so absurd, having that soft little finger rubbing her as if to
remove the coating of white that Leslie laughed. And her laughter made
a tiny brown face screw up in a companion smile.
All at once the tinkle of barbaric ornaments made Leslie glance round
again.
A woman was coming towards her, quite a savage, with nothing more than
a cloth draping her, and a profusion of gold and ivory ornaments.
With a friendly smile Leslie looked at the newcomer. Doubtless she was
the brown baby’s mother in search of her truant offspring.
“Is this your little girl?” she asked.
There was no reply. As Leslie had spoken in English, she had not
really expected one. But the mournful expression in the woman’s great,
dark eyes made her quick sympathy rise; there was so much pleading in
them, such unutterable sadness.
“What’s the matter?” she asked gently.
Although Yoni did not understand what Leslie said, she heard the
kindness in the white girl’s voice. And this fact brought her to her
knees, pouring out a flood of wild, heart-broken, imploring words.
Leslie placed a hand on the brown woman’s shoulder.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she whispered in a gentle,
distressed manner. “I wish I did, and then perhaps I could help you.”
It was just as well that Leslie did not understand what Yoni was
saying.
The latter belonged to a race used to sharing a man’s heart with half
a dozen other women. She was imploring Leslie to be merciful, to spare
her one scrap of their lord’s affection, referring to her child to
prove she had some claim on him, offering to be this new Star’s slave
and servant if only one corner of their mutual master’s heart were
given back into her keeping.
Carefully, Leslie held the solemn brown baby, wondering what the
trouble was, feeling the outbreak was caused by something more than
the temporary loss of the child.
As she sat there, puzzled and distressed, she heard some one coming
along the path. A moment later there was a quick, fierce movement
followed by a savage, guttural exclamation, startling in its unbridled
ferocity.
The sound made the white woman jump up quickly and the black one
crouch down, shrinking against the skirt of her supposed rival.
Leslie had always feared that somewhere in Lebrassa, in spite of
education and the tone good breeding brings, the latent savage might
linger. Now it seemed to her that she had never seen so much
concentrated fury on any face before.
“What is the matter, Mr. Lebrassa? What has made you so angry?” she
asked quickly.
Her voice seemed to penetrate his fury. He stopped abruptly. There was
a tense strained feeling in the air, as if he were wrestling with a
very demon of wild rage. In the passion of the moment he forgot that
lack of a common tongue barred out all conversation between the two
women.
“I fear I startled you, Miss Graham,” he said hoarsely, “but I thought
this woman had molested and frightened you.”
Rather nervously Leslie laughed.
“She hasn’t frightened me. But you did though, coming stampeding down
that path like a rogue elephant.”
Her reply said she had learnt nothing of who and what Yoni really was.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said, “but you frightened me first. I heard you
come in, but as you did not appear in the bungalow I began to wonder
what had happened. So I searched the garden and came upon you in this
secluded corner, annoyed, as I thought, by this woman.”
Yoni still knelt by Leslie’s side, holding her frock in a desperate
clutch, with wild eyes watching Lebrassa.
“She wants to tell me something,” Leslie replied. “But I can’t
understand a word she says, so now you can translate for me.”
“It’s rather late to start sifting native grievances. Besides you
mustn’t stay out in this treacherous night air. Let me take you
indoors.”
Although he spoke in his customary bored, indifferent manner, there
was an air of forced calm about him that spoke of a tornado raging
within.
Sensing trouble, Leslie stuck to her guns.
“I’d like to help her if I could. She’s so upset. Do ask her what the
matter is?”
Lebrassa suddenly realized that if he refused, Leslie might take Yoni
up to the bungalow and get one of the servants to act as interpreter.
Yoni’s threat to expose him he had taken for what he knew it was
worth, but it had never entered his mind that she would dare to accost
Leslie. The fact maddened him, both by its unexpectedness and the
thought of what the consequences would have been if one of the
servants had found the two together. It would have swept away all he
was working for--the desperate hope that Leslie might overlook his
color and marry him.
Yoni’s latest escapade, combined with previous acts of disobedience
that needed all his powerful brain to cope with, made him merciless
where she was concerned.
He spoke to the kneeling woman, asking her how she dared disobey his
orders, and what she meant by accosting this English lady.
In deadly fear Yoni whimpered out her reason. The explanation, if
possible, increased his rage. His infuriated reply, with the death
note in it that she had heard before for others, made her shrink
closer into the sanctuary of Leslie’s skirt, quick to know that there
her one hope of safety lay.
The girl noticed Yoni’s terror and her convulsive shivers.
“What have you said to make her so frightened?” she asked, laying a
protecting hand on the woman’s dark shoulder.
“I was telling her to go away and not worry you. It’s some domestic
grievance. Nothing you can rectify,” he replied with an air of forced
calm.
“She hasn’t worried me. But you’ve made the poor thing think she’s
done something terrible. Now say something nice to her.”
Lebrassa’s only idea was to separate the two. But this was not so
easily done.
Leslie’s kind heart, quick to sympathize with him, was equally quick
to respond to Yoni. She knew the matter was more serious than Lebrassa
would have her believe. And she was determined not to let her visitor
go until all fear was soothed.
“I won’t let her go while she’s so terrified,” the girl continued,
“because she didn’t look like that before you came. And there’s not
the least need for you to be angry with her.”
It dawned on Lebrassa that before he could part the two Yoni would
have to be forgiven.
Turning to her, with forced gentleness he said a few words. They
brought her prostrate before him.
The sight of a woman at a man’s feet left Leslie aghast.
“She mustn’t do that!” she cried in astonishment.
Then she was half-kneeling before Lebrassa also, trying vainly, with
her one disengaged arm, to raise Yoni.
“Leave her alone, child,” he commanded in a strangled, wrathful voice.
“Help her up. Don’t stand there looking as if you expected it,” she
replied with indignation.
For no reason at all that Leslie could see, Lebrassa laughed. It
cleared the air. Bending down, he raised the prostrate woman to her
feet.
“Now, what else am I to do?” he asked, turning to Leslie.
There was about him the air of a subdued wild beast, pleased and
purring under the caressing touch of a favorite keeper.
“Tell her to take the baby home.”
Turning to Yoni, he delivered the message, together with one of his
own. His words brought her kneeling at Leslie’s feet, pouring out a
torrent of words.
“What’s she saying now?” the girl asked.
“That she’s your slave for ever.”
“I don’t want any slaves. Tell her to go home and put the baby to
bed.”
A further word from Lebrassa brought Yoni to her feet and sent her
down an adjacent path.
Leslie watched her go.
“I’m so glad you were nice to her,” she remarked. “I hate to see
people miserable.”
Apparently Lebrassa had forgotten about the “treacherous night air.”
Instead of taking Leslie back to the house, he started talking.
“What made you wander about the garden at this hour?” he asked.
Leslie gave only part of her reason.
“Because it’s all so beautiful. I like Africa by moonlight.”
“In my old age I find myself going back to the tastes of my youth,” he
replied. “I’m heartily tired of Africa and craving for civilization.
I’ve just one scheme to put through, and if I can manage that in the
way I hope, I shall retire and settle down in Europe--Italy or Spain
preferably, where I wouldn’t be too conspicuous, where not one in
twenty would put me down for what I really am--a nigger.”
With a gentle smile Leslie looked up at him.
“Why don’t you try to forget about that?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, though I’ve sought oblivion in various ways.”
At that moment her only desire was to get his thoughts away from a
subject she knew was painful.
“What scheme are you working on now?” she asked.
With veiled tenderness he looked at her.
“When it’s through I’ll tell you,” he replied. “And if it comes off in
the way I want, I may forget, or rather, perhaps cease to worry over
the fact that God, or more possibly the devil, made me half a nigger.”
Leslie glanced at him.
For some reason the same vague frightened feeling was upon her that
had assailed her in Liverpool when Lebrassa had spoken of his rose
garden that was “some distance from Calabar.”
CHAPTER XIV
“_If we met, he and I--we alone--we two--_
_Would I give him one moment’s grace to pray?_”
On the plateau behind Duke Town, where several official bungalows
were situated, only one showed any sign of habitation. From there a
blaze of light flared out, cutting like a gigantic knife into the
darkness.
In this one lighted room silence reigned, a silence broken by the ping
of the ever-present mosquito and the occasional clink of ice on glass.
The latter sound came from a table where three men sat playing cards
to an accompaniment of whiskey and soda.
Through the open door leading to the balcony came the lash of driving
rain and the steady pour of the torrent rushing down from the
corrugated iron roof.
Between the deals Harding looked across at his guests.
“You two will have to spend the night here,” he remarked.
With the readiness of bachelor freedom, Fletcher and Atherley agreed.
For the next half-hour the game went on without a break. One o’clock
chimed as Fletcher rose to fetch a further supply of soda-water from
the sideboard.
As he stood there a slight noise out on the balcony made him glance
towards the door.
“Good Heavens! What is that?” he cried, darting in that direction.
His voice made the other men look round, and what they saw brought
them to their feet.
A girl stood in the doorway, a little thing of mud and blood and long
loose wet hair where golden stars flashed.
She stood for a moment gazing at them. Then she laughed, a wild, sweet
sound, and ran toward Fletcher, collapsing just as he reached her.
“What is it, child? What has happened?” he asked hoarsely, as he
caught her.
Only meaningless laughter answered him.
Over Leslie’s dripping head, he looked at Harding and Atherley.
“My God, if he has injured her! My God, if he has injured her!” he
said in cold, merciless reiteration.
By now the Major’s arm was about Leslie.
“It’s all right, little girl,” he said soothingly. “You’re quite safe
now. You’re in my bungalow. Don’t you remember? You had dinner here
last night.”
But the wild sobbing laughter went on, the result of a brain that had
given way under some dreadful strain.
Over Leslie’s sobbing mirth Atherley’s voice came.
“Let me have a look at her. Bring her in here, Fletcher,” he said,
leading the way to one of the bedrooms.
He turned toward Harding.
“Go round and rouse the cook and tell him to send one of his women
here at once.”
In a dazed way Harding obeyed the doctor’s orders.
Fletcher went back to the sitting-room and stood there until Harding
returned. When the Major came in, he crossed to a sideboard and,
opening one of the drawers, took out a couple of revolvers. One he
handed to Fletcher.
“We can’t do any good here,” he said tensely. “So we’ll get along to
Cooper’s place and hear what he has to say about Miss Graham’s
plight.”
Presently, with storm-proof lanterns, the two officers started across
the black, rain-washed plain.
Cooper’s bungalow lay about a mile away. As they neared the place,
Harding stumbled over an unnoticed heap lying huddled on the ground.
At once Fletcher switched his lantern on to it.
“Something ghastly has been happening here,” he said. “Look at this.”
Harding gave an exclamation of horror.
What he had stumbled over was the corpse of a negro servant, hacked
and mutilated out of all human semblance.
“What fiend’s work is this?” he asked hoarsely.
As if the sight were no new one, Fletcher gazed at the corpse.
“Let’s get on to the house,” he said in a brooding manner, “and see
how much more of this there is.”
They went up the dripping, leafy alley, passing two similar heaps
within the next hundred yards.
“It looks as though there had been a general massacre here,” Harding
commented as the third heap was passed, “and that these poor wretches
had been flying for their lives.”
Fletcher said nothing, but each corpse they came to made his face more
tense and thoughtful.
The house was reached at last.
Strangely large and haunted it loomed up out of the pouring rain. A
sense of dire tragedy had gripped the two Englishmen. This increased
as they mounted the balcony steps and went toward the one lighted
room, which lay eerie and lifeless, in spite of the gay flare of
rose-colored lamps. There was no vestige of the human sounds that
should have accompanied those gay lights; nothing but the ceaseless
drip of rain, the mournful sough of the wind through wet trees, the
echo of their own footsteps, and the soft tapping of sodden roses on
the balcony rail.
On reaching the open door, abruptly they halted, aghast at the scene
of desolation and destruction that lay before them.
The pink carpet was muddy and blood-stained, and covered with the
marks of great, naked feet. The mirrors were smashed to atoms. The
furniture broken into splinters. The whole place looked as though an
army of maniacs had held riot there. There were four corpses in the
room, but one lay white and peaceful among the pale pink cushions of a
lounge, her white lace dress blood-stained, her shoes in a thick red
pool that oozed from a dismembered, mangled corpse at her feet.
In awed silence Harding and Fletcher crossed to the lounge. They gazed
down at the dead girl, noting a little wet red patch in her golden
hair. Then Fletcher stooped and turned over one of the two naked
bodies lying face downwards on the carpet beside the mangled remains
that had once been Cooper.
As he turned the corpse over, a savage, bestial face crudely scarred
and marked met his view.
“I thought so,” he said grimly.
“What?” Harding asked quickly.
“This is some of the Hyena’s work. I’ve been on his trail too often
not to recognize the signs. I suspected it when we saw that first
mutilated corpse outside. Now I’m sure. I should know these
dog-toothed devils of his anywhere,” he said, glancing again at the
savage figure at his feet.
“This rather explodes your theory about Lebrassa,” Harding commented.
“Explodes it!” Fletcher echoed. “Not unless I find his corpse hacked
up in a similar manner,” he finished grimly.
Then his gaze went to Molly, lying quiet and still among the pillows
so peaceful-looking that she might have been asleep. And from her his
eyes wandered down to a revolver still clenched in one of the hands of
the mangled heap at her feet.
“Cooper shot her, poor little woman, rather than let her fall into the
clutches of these fiends. And thank heaven he did!”
Going from the drawing-room, the two officers went around to the back
premises where the servants’ quarters were situated. The whole place
was like a slaughter-house, not a soul left alive. Every room was
trampled, mud-splashed and red-stained, as though a horde of wild
beasts had burst in searching for what they could kill.
But nowhere did Fletcher find what he was looking for--some trace of
Lebrassa.
“I wonder how that little girl escaped,” he remarked, taking a long
shred of muslin, that matched the tattered remains of Leslie’s frock,
from among the splinters of a wooden table, “for she was here, right
enough.”
“I should say Lebrassa got her away and was killed in doing so,”
Harding replied.
In a harsh, mirthless manner Fletcher laughed.
“Let’s go on to his factory and see if he’s there,” was all he said.
They left the bungalow and pressed on through the deserted night. No
sound reached them as they went along, except the steady pour of the
rain, the constant drip of the trees and the sobbing moan of the wind.
On reaching the factory all was silence and darkness. No light showed
in the upper rooms, nor was there a sign of life anywhere about.
With the idea of making an examination of the lower storey, they
started walking round the place.
By the open door of one of the back storerooms, Fletcher came to a
sharp halt.
“Some one has been here,” he remarked. “The same little crew who were
up above.”
Holding up his lantern, he showed his companion great, red marks on
the white paint, where bloody paws pushed the door along on its
rollers.
“And look at this,” he added on entering.
A whole litter of stores lay about, covered with ominous red marks and
mud, as if a crowd had searched around hastily for certain articles,
casting aside everything except just what they desired.
Fletcher surveyed the débris--scattered hammocks, waterproof rugs,
silk shawls, and cases of edibles.
“It looks to me as if some one had arranged a very hurried departure
up-country. And he had not intended to go alone, either. A man of
Lebrassa’s type doesn’t take this sort of junk on a forced journey.”
Fletcher’s foot touched a wooden case marked “Chicken in aspic,” which
had been crudely pried open and a dozen or so tins snatched out.
“If Lebrassa isn’t upstairs, then he’s at the bottom of this, and he
_is_ the Hyena.”
Harding made no comment. In silence they left the storeroom and went
toward the balcony. Noiselessly Fletcher went up the stairs with his
lantern well down against the wooden steps. They showed clean and
white, with none of the muddy marks that had been on Cooper’s veranda,
but it was quite possible the pouring rain might have washed off all
traces of the marauders.
But when the covered part of the balcony was reached, he suddenly
grasped Harding’s arm.
“Not so quick,” he whispered. “There’s a little matter here we’d
better investigate before going any further. What do you think of
this?”
He pointed to a track of muddy feet, shod ones, a solitary pair, that
went along the spotless boards to the accompaniment of a trail of
water, telling plainly that some drenched person had passed that way
not so very long before.
“It looks like Lebrassa’s trail,” Harding whispered. “I’m anxious to
hear what he has to say about to-night’s business.”
“Not as anxious as I am,” Fletcher responded grimly. “But I doubt if
we shall be given an opportunity.”
With screened lanterns, stealthily the two continued their journey.
Presently they turned the corner of the side where Lebrassa’s
living-rooms were situated. On reaching the first of the dark windows
they paused, listening for any sound that might come from the rooms
beyond.
All was silent. Out from the black night came the mournful swish of
sodden palm trees and the constant roar of the downpour.
“It doesn’t look as if any one’s at home,” Harding whispered.
“Exactly. But for all that we’ll be wise to announce ourselves with
caution.”
Drawing their revolvers, they took a few stealthy steps forward and
then halted.
In front of them the living-room door stood wide open. Into it the
trail of muddy feet went. But there was no sign of their returning.
Looking and listening they peered into the darkness, but they saw and
heard nothing.
“Are you there, Lebrassa?” Harding called sharply.
All was silent.
They waited for a few moments, then entered, flashing their lanterns
quickly around the room. It was deserted, but all was straight and
orderly.
The trail of the shod, muddy feet and stream of dripping water went
across the white matting into a room beyond.
The two visitors followed the trail into a plainly furnished bedroom.
There was no sign of life there either. But in one corner lay a heap
of dripping, muddy clothes.
“What does that mean?” Harding asked, gazing at the pile.
“Possibly that we must look for Lebrassa in a very different guise
from any Calabar knows.”
They turned to make a survey of a third chamber.
This proved to be a study, sparsely but suitably furnished. There were
choice engravings on the walls and cases of classical books; and on
the writing desk, a solitary white rose in a crystal vase.
English, French, German and Italian reviews and papers were scattered
on the tables and couches; there was every sign of education and
culture.
All this Fletcher noticed. But most of all he noticed the half-blown
white rose that reminded him of Leslie, as it stood there fresh and
sweet and pure, and so lonely.
As if he hated to see the blossom in the mulatto’s possession, he
crossed to the desk, and taking it from the vase, held it tenderly.
“I wonder who and what Lebrassa really is,” he said. “He can be the
devil incarnate, yet this room shows quite another side of him.”
In some surprise Harding was gazing about the study.
“I know nothing at all about him,” he confessed. “During my time in
Calabar, he has gone his own way, ignoring both black and white,
holding occasional mad orgies in that slaughter-house on the hill,
which has given him an unsavory reputation throughout the Bight. I’d
never noticed him much until this voyage out. And I must say his good
manners and correct behavior surprised me, considering the reputation
he held.”
Fletcher made no immediate reply. Thoughtfully he looked at the white
rosebud he was caressing.
“I always have thought, and shall think,” he volunteered presently,
“that he knows more of Miss Graham’s history and who and what her
father was than the girl herself does. And I’m certain he was at the
bottom of her coming out here. To-night the climax arrived. Whether
Cooper endeavoring to spoke his wheel brought about the tragedy up
there I don’t know. But one thing I do know--whether he wants Miss
Graham for motives known only to himself, or because he’s infatuated
with her, he’ll stop at nothing to get her back again.”
“That’s rather apart from your Hyena theory,” Harding remarked.
“The whole business is beyond me,” Fletcher confessed.
“Well, we’d better push on, and see what his employees have to say.”
Retracing their steps, they went along a narrow forest track which led
to a cluster of native huts lying some quarter of a mile away. There,
everything was in order, and no clue to the night’s happenings could
be culled from the sleepy inhabitants.
Leaving the tiny hamlet, they went along the river bank, choosing a
different route for the homeward journey. Presently they turned into a
little, tree-lined path leading up to the plateau. For some minutes
they pushed on through the driving rain, the wind full in their faces.
All at once a sound reached them of some one coming swiftly down the
narrow way. Quickly the two officers came to a halt and veiled their
lanterns.
By now the rain had ceased, and a fitful moon gave a silver tinge to
the night.
As the two officers waited, peering intently ahead through the vague
gray of mist and moonlight, out of a side track a few yards ahead a
figure loomed, rendered very big and shadowy by the fog.
Coming toward them was what appeared to be a coal-black negro, naked
but for a loin cloth. Over his shoulder what seemed to be a thick,
folded rug was slung.
On seeing the two Englishmen, he turned abruptly into the thick growth
lining the track, and went swiftly through the screening forest.
As he turned Fletcher caught a glimpse of his face. In an instant his
revolver rang out, but a hand jogged his elbow, spoiling his aim.
“What are you thinking about, man?” Harding cried angrily. “You can’t
go about shooting at every nigger you see.”
Fletcher, however, rushed after the negro, firing as he ran. One shot
reached home, for the man’s right arm fell limp.
Facing round savagely, the negro dropped to his knees, slid his
shrouded burden to the ground, and crouched over it as if to screen
the contents from the pepper of bullets.
His hand went to his loin cloth. He drew out a revolver, and started
firing at Fletcher. Although the shots were left-handed two whizzed
uncomfortably close to the latter’s head, and a third found a home in
the big muscle of his right arm.
Without waiting to load his own weapon, Fletcher dashed on, to be
felled by a thunderous blow that changed his reckless fury to
blackness and dancing stars. But although he was half-stunned, he
clutched and held on to the bundle the negro was protecting.
“By hell! You shall pay for this,” a mad voice bellowed in English.
Through the stars and blackness Fletcher heard it, and it made him
cling desperately to the blanket the dark hands tried to snatch from
him.
Relief came from behind.
Before the negro could wrest his shrouded burden from Fletcher’s
stunned grip, Harding’s revolver rang out.
The shot would have been fatal but for the deceptive fog. As it was,
it brought the blood streaming down the negro’s face from a scalp
wound. Dashing the blood from his eyes, the massive black figure broke
away, leaving the bundle in Fletcher’s hold.
Harding flew after the negro. But the sounds of his progress drifted
farther and farther off, until they were lost in the night.
Pausing, he listened, but no echo came from the surrounding darkness.
Then, quickly, he retraced his steps to where Fletcher was kneeling,
the blood streaming from his arm, beside the bundle the negro had
dropped and fought over.
As if petrified Harding stopped, surprised beyond speech at the sight
the lantern showed.
In the blanket Leslie lay, dead asleep--in the deep unconsciousness of
drugged slumber.
His presence roused Fletcher.
“You infernal idiot! That was the Hyena. Lebrassa. The devil
incarnate! And but for your damned interference I should have killed
him.”
Harding said nothing. By now he had realized that what Fletcher said
was true. Getting out his handkerchief he bound up his companion’s
wounded arm. Then he picked up the sleeping girl.
The two continued their journey in silence. Nothing more could be done
until headquarters were reached.
On arriving at the major’s bungalow all was chaos. Half a dozen sleepy
servants wandered about aimlessly, unable to tell them anything except
that Atherley had gone to rouse the other officers.
Presently, all wet and dishevelled, the doctor came in. His story was
very simple--so much so, that when he saw Leslie still asleep among
the pillows from which she had been snatched barely half an hour
before, he felt like doubting the truth of his own statements.
After Leslie’s sleeping draught had taken effect, he had left her in
charge of the cook’s wife while he went back to the dining-room to put
away his drugs. A few minutes later he had returned to the bedroom to
find the negress bound and gagged and her charge gone.
As Atherley probed about in the fleshy part of Fletcher’s arm on the
track of Lebrassa’s bullet, the events of the night were told to him.
“It’s a queer affair altogether,” he said. “And the whole of this
night’s work we shan’t know until Miss Graham recovers. But this final
act shows how much Lebrassa will risk. He came here knowing this would
be the sanctuary she would make for, and hung about outside awaiting
his opportunity, relying on his disguise. What Miss Graham has said
about her father proves he was a hunted man. And, in the face of the
little we know, this goes to prove that Lebrassa was his enemy.”
Turning towards a side table, Atherley picked up a heavy gold armlet.
Its plain surface was embossed with stars, the clasp a hyena’s head,
the whole slightly twisted, as if the soft metal had been bent into
some desired shape.
“You have told me that Miss Graham said when her father was ill he
used to rave about a place called Kallu, which he said was not in
Africa. This proves the contrary, and shows Lebrassa as something more
than the Hyena.”
Atherley held the armlet towards the two officers.
“This thing,” he continued, “was round Miss Graham’s head, evidently
put there by its owner. Read what’s inside.”
Fletcher took the jewel and glanced at an Arabic inscription engraved
on the inner surface.
This ran:
“Essel, Sultan of Kallu, Lord of Doomana, Ruler of the Night, Heir of
all Darkness.”
The captain read the words aloud.
“There’s an all-powerful sound about it,” Harding remarked. “Yet I
don’t know of any such place as Kallu.”
“Nor I,” Atherley chimed in, “until Fletcher told me about it in
connection with Miss Graham. Now it occurs to me to wonder if her
father found the place and that was why he was hunted and I should
say, finally, trapped, considering his mysterious disappearance. Now
the mantle of vengeance has descended against the daughter.”
“But if Lebrassa wanted to kill her he’s had every opportunity,”
Harding pointed out.
“But he may have wanted to do it in some special place and at the
appointed season, after the manner of negro rites,” Atherley replied.
So far Fletcher had said nothing. He just held the armlet looking at
it thoughtfully.
Now he chimed in.
“Blood feud and vengeance may have been at the bottom of it all
originally,” he said, “but in my opinion Lebrassa reckoned without
himself, without the white side which we know can be very dominant. A
man may be as big a brute as the Hyena yet to the end there’s
generally one thing that will bring any good that may be in him to the
fore. And that is love.”
Pausing, Fletcher laid the armlet down on the table.
“I’ve studied Lebrassa and I know Miss Graham,” he continued. “She’s
so frank and innocent and high-minded, without a thought or idea of
evil in her head that she would attract him apart from the added charm
of her _spirituelle_ appearance. On the voyage it was obvious that his
only idea when with her was to make a good impression. He may have
started with the idea of working off some blood feud, but it ended in
his own complete infatuation.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Harding put in.
“I’m sure of it,” Fletcher said emphatically. “Such a love as his, the
wild passion of a blood-stained, half-caste African sultan, would only
fill a well-bred English girl with horror. Miss Graham had no idea
what she was dealing with. The mere fact of her being civil to him
would fan the spark into flame. I tried to warn her, but he was always
too clever for me. Any doubts I raised he speedily lulled. To-night’s
work may be the outcome of his rejected suit.”
Picking up the armlet again, Fletcher eyed it in a contemplative
manner.
“It’s impossible to say how far Lebrassa’s influence extends, for this
thing seems to point to his being not only sultan, but priest. In
these capacities I know nothing of him. But I know him as that
mysterious raider, the Hyena. What he’ll do from sheer daring and
deviltry will be nothing compared to the lengths passion and
infatuation will carry him. It would be better for Miss Graham had he
kept to his original intention and killed her. Knowing the man as I
know him, I fear he’ll get her into his possession again, in spite of
all we may do.”
“What’s your suggestion then?” Harding asked. “Lebrassa’s not going to
have her if I can help it.”
“We must get her out of the country the moment she’s able to travel.
And in such a way that nobody except ourselves knows where she is.”
“If Lebrassa is as all-powerful as this leads us to believe, that will
be difficult. He’ll have spies all around the place, watching our
every movement,” Atherley commented.
Fletcher made no reply. He was looking at the armlet speculatively, as
if measuring his strength against that of Lebrassa.
CHAPTER XV
“_Yet, I warn’d you--ah! but my words came true--_
‘_Perhaps some day you will find him out._’”
The story now goes back to the afternoon preceding the events in the
previous chapter.
Along a narrow forest track leading to a native village, Leslie and
Lebrassa were walking. They had come up the river by boat, landing
within easy distance of the place.
The path was the merest jungle trail, twisting through aisles of
strange trees grown over with bright, flowering creepers.
In course of time the village was reached. Their arrival was heralded
by the barking of dogs--a continuous chorus that brought the
inhabitants out from their huts.
The hamlet was prettily situated among lime, palm and pawpaw trees.
And over the quaint brown huts, plantains, bananas and bamboo
fluttered. Outside each doorway, over fires made between four big
stones, the evening stew was being prepared. The smell was so
pronounced that Leslie made inquiries about the ingredients. She heard
its basis was well-hung fish, or dog, or monkey, seasoned with red
peppers, with palm oil added as a flavoring.
In spite of wanting to see something really African, she was startled
by the villagers’ ways. For they lived and acted in a manner
alarmingly primitive.
“Well, have you had enough of the undiluted savage?” Lebrassa asked
presently, as the girl’s face grew whiter and her eyes ever bigger.
“I’d no idea they’d be quite so… so primitive,” she said in a rather
breathless manner.
But for his foresight the village would have been even more primitive.
Lebrassa had sent instructions that the inhabitants must be on their
best behavior and decently clad. As it was, there were no adults going
about in a state of nature or acting in the manner of cattle.
“Suppose we go and have a look at something civilized in the shape of
tea,” he suggested.
“I am awfully thirsty,” Leslie said, glad of an excuse to escape from
what seemed to her a crowd of absolute savages.
Lebrassa took her to a large hut on the outskirts of the village.
There was something about the place that suggested it had been
furnished for the occasion. The crude contents were supplemented by a
couple of comfortable wicker chairs and a folding table where a
tea-basket reposed. Leaving the girl in the hut, he went in search of
water fit for drinking purposes. During his absence, Leslie explored
the dwelling. There were two rooms, and in the inner one was
everything essential for a welcomed “wash and brush up” after a hot,
stifling walk in the tropics.
Tea was set, cakes and biscuits laid out when she came through the
curtain screening the inner room.
By the table Lebrassa stood, watching the kettle he had set to boil on
a spirit stove.
Her entrance made him look up.
“Well, in your survey of the African at home, what impressed you the
most?” he asked.
Leslie could have said the scanty clothing, but she mentioned only a
secondary impression.
“That the women were doing most of the work and the men loafing
about.”
Her reply brought to his face the slightly teasing look that came
occasionally when he talked to her.
“But think, Miss Graham, if a man has half a dozen wives he can’t
afford to keep them all in idleness.”
“Have they half a dozen wives?” she gasped.
“More--some of them. And if you care to argue the point I can prove
that out here in Africa, among a race of savages, women are more
highly prized and thought more of than in England.”
“I don’t quite see how you’re going to do that.”
The slightly pugnacious note in her voice made his teasing look
deepen.
“In England when a woman marries, her father ‘gives her away’--not
only gives her away, but very often a considerable sum of money is
added to a dowry. But out here in Africa, does a dusky parent give his
daughter away, much less pay to get rid of her?”
“What nonsense you talk at times.”
“It’s not nonsense. I’m arguing my case. Out here if a man wants to
marry a woman he has to give some substantial proof of his affection.
‘Does this young fellow love my daughter sufficiently to give _me_
three goats, two lengths of Manchester cloth, a case of gin and a
cuckoo clock?’ the dusky parent argues. ‘If not, I won’t give my girl
in marriage with a man whose affection is so limited that he won’t
deny himself a few little bachelor luxuries in order to get the
evidence I need.’ Now I ask you in cold, calm logic, which lover is
more worthy of the name, which father esteems his daughter higher?”
“How absurd you are! Logic has nothing to do with it.”
Her indignant reply made him laugh.
“You’re trying to draw a red herring across the trail,” he said.
“Logically you know I’m right. Sentimentally, of course, I’m very much
off the line. A wife who comes to her husband in the recognized
English way, for the great and simple reason of love, is immeasurably
above one obtained in either of the two recognized African
methods--buying and stealing.”
“Stealing!”
Leslie’s voice was full of horror.
“It’s not much done in these more civilized parts,” he explained. “But
up-country it frequently happens.”
The kettle boiling turned Lebrassa’s thoughts to tea-making.
When the meal was over, one or two inquisitive little black faces
peering with fearsome interest in at the doorway took Leslie’s
attention.
“Do you mind if I give them these cakes and biscuits now we’ve
finished?” she asked.
“Of course you may,” he answered quickly. “Why trouble to ask?”
With all the remnants on a tray Leslie left the hut, distributing the
scraps among the children collected outside.
“There wasn’t one there as nice as my brown baby,” she remarked on
returning.
“Which do you call your brown baby?” he asked.
“The one I found in the garden last night.”
“Oh, that,” Lebrassa said in a forced, offhand manner.
“None of the women here were anything like as good-looking as its
mother,” the girl continued. “What beautiful ivory armlets she wore,
did you notice them?”
“I don’t know that I did, specially,” he replied, with the same air of
simulated indifference.
“They had stars carved on them,” Leslie persisted, continuing a
subject that obviously interested her. “I once had an armlet like
hers, but mine was made of gold. And inside was an Arabic inscription.
A friend translated it to me and he said it meant, ‘Irena, Queen of
Kallu, Daughter of the Stars, Bride of the Night, Beloved of
Darkness.’ I often wonder who she was and where my father got it from.
I never even knew he had it until after he was… lost.”
As Leslie talked, a strained look came and deepened on Lebrassa’s dark
face. When she finished he made no remark. Instead, he sat in gloomy
silence.
A faint sigh roused him. It came, not from his companion, but from the
forest outside. A low, moaning rush followed. This made him start up
quickly and go to the door. There was a sudden mad shriek, as if all
the winds of the world were loosed. Leslie came to his side.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, with alarm.
There was no need to answer the question. The horizon was a mass of
blood-red and indigo--the lurid tints of an approaching tornado.
Before he could answer her question the first great, blinding streak
of lightning shot across the sky.
“We shall have to wait here until this storm passes off,” he remarked
casually.
Leslie sat down again, listening to the storm that came ever closer,
until the murky, thunder-ridden clouds cast the gloom of twilight over
the scene.
Presently a flash of lightning and a deafening peal directly overhead
made her glance at Lebrassa who was leaning carelessly against the
lintel watching the storm, and apparently in no way disturbed by its
violence.
“You don’t seem to mind,” she said.
“I’ve seen many of the sort. The other day you were asking for
something typically African. Now you’ve got it--a typically African
tornado.”
Then seeing the girl was nervous, he came and seated himself in the
chair next hers.
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” he said in a soothing tone.
“The lightning goes for the high trees, and not these little huts.”
The next few minutes there was one constant flash and roar that filled
the atmosphere with the smell of sulphur and scorched wood, and left
Leslie sitting wide-eyed and trembling, obviously gripping her courage
with both hands.
“Leslie has Sylvia very well under control,” he remarked presently, a
tender, caressing note in his voice.
The comment made her smile at him in a tremulous manner.
“You seem to remember every silly thing I say. And I have the feeling
that you’re always vastly amused at my expense.”
Lebrassa said nothing, but his mouth softened until all its cruel
lines vanished. He sat as if lost in his own thoughts, watching the
rain coming down with a violence that blotted out the adjacent forest
in a driving cloud of gray.
“I’m afraid we shall have to stay here for some hours,” he remarked
presently. “There’s no chance of this clearing up just yet.”
“Hours!” Leslie echoed, and her voice was full of dismay.
“As soon as the rain lessens, I’ll send one of the villagers down to
the river for your hammock. You can’t possibly walk back with the
ground in the state it will be in after this downpour.”
“I’m putting you to a great deal of trouble,” she said apologetically.
He smiled, in the quiet, well-bred way Leslie liked.
“You’re my only friend,” he replied. “The first I’ve ever had. If Fate
had been kind enough to provide me with an English mother I should
have had a circle almost bigger than I could manage. Where my one
friend is concerned, nothing is too much trouble. I’m only too pleased
to do any little thing for you.”
For the next hour the rain poured down continuously, bringing darkness
earlier than usual and making even more gloomy the short African
twilight.
Inside the hut the shadows quickly gathered. Leslie sat watching the
torrent and listening to Lebrassa’s cultured voice as he talked of a
hundred and one things calculated to take her mind away from the
present predicament.
The darkness thickened until only two white blurs showed up in the
hut.
Presently Lebrassa rose.
“I’ll get a light,” he volunteered.
“Wait till the rain stops a bit. You’ll be wet through before you’ve
gone a dozen yards,” she said quickly.
“If I wait for the rain to stop we shall have to sit in darkness until
midnight.”
“You mean we shall have to stay here until then?”
“There’s not much chance of getting away before,” he said.
With that he left the hut.
Brooding on his verdict, Leslie stayed alone in the darkness,
listening to the hiss of the rain, the moan of the wind through the
forest, the strange creaks and sighs and distant howls that came with
it, the rustle of lizards in the roof, and the scratching, tapping
sounds as the long leaves of a plantain scraped against the side of
the tiny dwelling.
The mingled sounds made an eerie whole. There was such an unaccustomed
feeling about everything, such a creepy sensation, too, at the idea of
being in this savage village miles away from the nearest white person.
The combination sapped Leslie’s nerve.
A big, indistinct blot suddenly looming up in the doorway made her
heart jump in a sickly fashion.
“Is that you, Mr. Lebrassa?” she asked, a touch of fear in her voice.
“Now who else would it be?”
“You… you were gone so long. I--was beginning to get quite alarmed.”
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” he said in a soothing manner.
“But you _were_ a long time. And… and all this _is_ a bit new to me.”
“Poor little Sylvia! If I’d thought of her, I’d have given you a hint
that I was seeing about dinner, and also searching round for some
‘typically African’ means of illumination.”
Now that he was with her, Leslie’s fears subsided.
“And I expect you got wet through in doing it.”
The expression of her voice was essentially feminine, chiding and
concerned at the same time.
“I believe I did,” he said indifferently.
As he leaned over the table to arrange the lighting apparatus,
Leslie’s hand touched his sleeve, with one of those little downward
strokes by which one investigates as to the dampness of a person.
“Why, you’re absolutely soaked!” she cried, her voice full of
distress.
“It won’t harm me,” he answered, in a tone that said her concern on
his account pleased him. “I’m used to it. I could be out all night in
this rain, sleeping on the ground in it, and feel no ill effects.
Another advantage attached to being ‘a nigger’.”
“No one who really knew you would ever call you one,” she assured him.
“So you don’t think of me as one, now you’ve got to know me?”
Leslie thought of some of the specimens she had met at Cooper’s
bungalow.
“Never,” she said emphatically.
On the table, as lamps, Lebrassa was arranging two half-cocoanut
shells filled with palm oil with a scrap of rag floating in each as a
wick. After several attempts, he made them burn--dancing, uncertain
lights, each with a thick column of pungent smoke.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“It looks very local.”
Seating himself, he went on talking until the dinner arrived. A trio
of native women appeared with a variety of calabashes. There were
small ones to do duty as plates, and polished half-cocoanuts for
glasses.
In one huge calabash a savory stew steamed. In another were pancakes
made from pounded plantains fried in palm oil which gave them a
curious red tinge. A third was piled high with nuts and fruit. And in
a bottle that had once held trade gin was native palm wine.
“Shall we gather round?” he asked as the women left.
“How strange and nice it all looks,” Leslie remarked, as she seated
herself at the table.
Over the flickering, smoking lamps a powerful brown face looked at a
delicate white one.
“Now, Miss Graham, what about some chicken stew? I guarantee it’s fit
for civilized consumption because I saw the ingredients put in, and
dared the cook, under pain of death, to add any trifles of her own
choice.”
As the meal proceeded, in a veiled way Lebrassa’s negro-tainted eyes
watched the girl who chatted to him in a frank, friendly manner, often
smiling at him in the way she had done when her photograph first met
his gaze.
By the time dessert was reached, Leslie was thoroughly enjoying her
“typically African” evening.
“We might be miles and miles away from civilization,” she said in the
course of conversation. “Right in the heart of savage Africa. But I’m
glad we’re not.”
“What’s your objection to the heart of savage Africa?”
“I should live in constant fear of the Hyena swooping down on me, and
grilling me over a fire, or leaving me abandoned on an ant-hill.”
Her reply was the last Lebrassa had expected. An uneasy look crossed
his face.
“What made you think about that man just now?” he asked hoarsely.
“All these strange, barbaric surroundings, this
far-away-from-all-civilization feeling. Captain Fletcher says he
tortures people for days on end. I can’t imagine any one human being
acting in that manner toward another, can you?”
The strained look on Lebrassa’s face deepened.
“Everybody out here has some theory about him,” he answered. “Mine is,
that he’s some unfortunate wretch suffering from a loathsome disease
that is a constant torture to him, which he knows neither time,
patience, repentance, nor any earthly remedy can cure, and only death
relieve. In the agonies of others he may find some little relief from
his own--forgetfulness of his own spectre.”
“Captain Fletcher says he does it from sheer hatred of white people,”
Leslie put in.
“Perhaps. But we’ve only to refer to history to find that some of the
greatest barbarians of the past, men whose names are bywords of
cruelty to this day, have been afflicted themselves. Any horrible
affliction, combined with inherited savage instincts and the cruelty
that lurks in all things negro, would produce something on a par with
the devil. Sympathy is always with the Hyena’s victims. Personally I
find myself extending a little to the man himself, if the cause is
what I say.”
For some time there was silence.
In a sympathetic manner Leslie watched Lebrassa, knowing his thoughts
were on his own affliction--the black blood in him.
“Why don’t you smoke?” she asked presently, with the idea of getting
his mind away from himself.
Her voice brought him out from his black study.
“May I?”
“Of course. Why didn’t you light up sooner?”
“I thought tobacco, combined with the smell of these lamps, might be
rather too much for you,” he explained.
“I like it. It keeps off the mosquitoes,” she replied, glad she had
got his thoughts away from his constant trouble.
He drew out a wet-looking cigar-case. A search for matches followed.
But he could find none, the last having been used to get the lamps
burning.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to endure the mosquitoes,” he said.
Leslie pointed to the soaked rag that lay, half submerged in the
oil-filled shell, flickering and smoldering under the heavy pall of
thick, greasy smoke.
“What’s wrong with getting a light from there?” she asked.
“There’d be too much palm-oil flavor attached to my cigar if I did!”
“I never knew anything quite so helpless as a man if a thing can’t be
done in the regulation way. Why not make a paper spill?”
As he searched round in his pockets for material for making one,
Lebrassa’s eyes, soft and smiling, rested on the girl.
“I shall call you ‘Little Friend of all the Universe,’ Miss Graham,”
he remarked. “You seem able to ease every one’s troubles, and find a
way out of his difficulties for him.”
He drew out his pocket-book, and opened it carelessly to tear out a
dry leaf from the middle.
As he did so, something fluttered to the table and lay there, face
upwards, staring at Leslie.
In blank astonishment she stared back at it.
Her intent gaze drew Lebrassa’s attention to the spot.
On the table a little pictured face lay; a face he had come to know
very well since he had torn it out from the group, wondering who the
girl was and if she would smile at him in such a friendly manner if
she knew she was smiling at a “nigger.”
Starting violently, he looked across at the original.
The pleasure of having Leslie so entirely to himself, miles away from
all her own color, trusting him as implicitly as if he were one of her
own people, to know she was concerned about his welfare and his wants,
that she understood and sympathized with him, had made him forget what
secret lay hidden within his notebook.
He made a movement to pick the photograph up, but her hand was there
first.
“Why! It’s like the one I sent to Molly!” she exclaimed. “In that
letter! You know. The one that was lost.”
As if unable to credit her eyes, she turned it over.
On the back her own handwriting greeted her.
“It _is_ the very one!” she went on in a disbelieving gasp.
In a dazed, puzzled manner, she looked across at him.
“How did you get hold of it?” she asked.
Lebrassa’s eyes were strained and anxious, but her blank surprise had
given him time to gather an explanation together.
“I found it among some of Cooper’s possessions, that he asked me to
forward after he left Harrogate.”
“But it’s out of the letter I sent to Molly! The one she never had. My
letter must have got there. And he… he must have taken it!”
Lebrassa made no reply.
Intently he watched the girl, wondering if his excuse would stand, by
now sufficiently acquainted with her character to know she would not
question the negro on a matter nothing could rectify, or tell Molly
that the man who was her husband had attained the position by stealing
a letter.
All at once Leslie looked across at him.
“Mr. Lebrassa, will you do me a favor? Don’t say anything to Mr.
Cooper about this. It’s too late to mend matters now. And I don’t want
Molly to know either. If she did, it would sweep away the shred of
tolerance that makes her life with her husband possible. Do help me to
keep this secret,” she finished earnestly.
“I won’t say a word if you don’t wish me to,” he said hoarsely.
“Will you shake hands on it?”
Across the table a small white hand was extended. He drew back as if
stung, watching her with an expression that was tortured.
“Can’t you trust me without that?” he asked roughly.
Leslie imagined her action had been misconstrued; that he thought his
mixed blood had made her fancy he was not to be relied on.
“Of course I can,” she said, all penitence. “It’s only a silly
school-boy formula.”
After that she sat back in her chair, brooding over the mystery that
had been solved at last.
It was some time before it struck her to wonder why the picture should
have been in Lebrassa’s possession. The shock of coming across it so
unexpectedly had taken all but the fact of Cooper’s treachery from her
mind.
Now other thoughts came trooping in, the principal being--why had Mr.
Lebrassa picked out and kept her photograph?
On further inspection, the fact that he had done so left her with an
uncomfortable feeling; a desire to get back to other people, not to be
quite so alone with him.
Fletcher’s final lecture on the _Batava_ was well to the fore in her
mind. What if Captain Fletcher were right, and she wrong? What if Mr.
Lebrassa were in love with her?
She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that there had never
been anything lover-like in his behavior. He treated her in a
friendly, fatherly way, much as Major Harding did.
But the fact that he carried her photograph about refused to be
ignored, and there came the perturbing thought that friendship might
not satisfy him. He might wish for something more.
Like an appalling flood there swept through Leslie the recollection
that Lebrassa was only half English, only half civilized. And in
matters of emotion the savage might come to the top.
Anxiously he watched her as she sat silent and thoughtful. Every
shadow and expression that crossed her face he noted, all the time
wondering if his excuse would pass muster, knowing there were
incidents in their first meeting that might go to disprove his
explanation.
Suddenly Leslie got up and went to the door. As she did so he caught
one glance--fleeting, fearsome and suspicious.
“I--don’t think it’s raining quite so much. Hadn’t we better start
back now?”
There was unmistakable reserve in her voice, and a break of fear that
he immediately noticed.
Crossing the hut, he took up his stand just behind her--as he very
often did--looking over her head at the driving rain.
“We can’t possibly start in this,” he said.
Leslie moved to the other side of the door. With her mind full of
suspicions she did not care to have him so close to her. The action
made him glance at her in a sharp, anxious, almost hungry manner,
suspecting that some idea of his deceit had dawned on her.
She caught his look, and it did not add to her peace of mind.
“But I’d like to go now,” she said, trying to speak naturally.
She did her best to hide her uneasiness. She feared that her having
seen the photograph might make him tell his reason for carrying her
picture about. Being what he was, he might not take his congé in the
manner an Englishman would.
“Molly will be wondering what has happened to me,” she added as an
excuse.
“Mrs. Cooper will guess why you’re late. There’s no need for you to
distress yourself on her account.”
Lebrassa’s voice was very hoarse, as if he were laboring under great
but suppressed emotion. Leslie, with ears now quick to mark every tone
in his voice, heard it.
She shivered, so violently that it was noticeable. His hand was on her
shoulder with quick, caressing anxiety.
“You’re not damp or cold, are you, little friend?”
She drew away from him and went into the room, putting the length of
the table between them. There she stood watching him with frightened,
suspicious eyes. Half an hour ago she would have put his touch and
anxiety on her account down to friendship, but the finding of her
photograph in his possession now gave all his doings another meaning.
Lebrassa followed her.
Guilt made him quick to put but one construction on her actions. A
further survey of the situation had shown her flaws in his
explanation--flaws through which the truth was leaking. Her avoidance
and desire to escape from him made him think she had guessed he had
taken the letter.
“Before God, Leslie, I wouldn’t have taken that letter had I known
everything,” he said hoarsely.
Blankly she looked at him.
“What are you talking about?” she asked with undisguised surprise.
In an instant Lebrassa’s mistake flashed on him. He knew now why she
shrank from him. She had guessed his reason for keeping the
photograph. Now his own confession had betrayed him, had swept away
the one thing he was working for--to possess her legally. On her
trust, sympathy and liking, there had been a chance he might build
something stronger than the friendship she had granted him. A slender
chance, that his own words had swept away.
Leslie stood wondering what he meant.
His hoarse, broken words were very different from the proposal she had
expected and dreaded.
“_I wouldn’t have taken that letter had I known everything._”
Over and over again the sentence repeated itself in her mind.
“You mean _you_ took that letter?” she asked at length.
There was no reply. Something gripped Lebrassa’s throat and strangled
all utterance as her astounded eyes gazed at him with the truth
dawning in their clear depths.
Over the flickering, curling lights he watched her in a strange, wild,
hungry way.
Leslie noticed nothing of this. Other things were in her mind. Back to
her had flashed some of the incidents of their first meeting, all of
which went to corroborate the gradually dawning truth.
She remembered how she had been sent to his room. His start and
surprise on hearing her name. How he had said he was expecting some
one. His knowledge that she had come from Paris.
The full meaning of it all dawned on her at last.
_He_ was responsible for Molly’s ghastly marriage. This man she had
been sorry for, whom she had called “friend,” treated as such, and
held to, in spite of advice and warning.
Why Lebrassa should have taken the letter had no place in her mind.
Everything was forgotten in the flood of cold, unbounded rage that
swept over her at the knowledge of his treachery and how she had been
deceived.
With unveiled aversion, she turned from him, and picking up her hat
pulled it on her head with hands that shook with the intensity of her
anger.
There was no mistaking her action. She had done with him entirely.
She turned to leave the hut. Before she reached the door, Lebrassa was
there, barring the way.
There was no need for further deception. The knowledge that he was now
despicable in her sight had cracked the veneer of civilization. The
savage, whom her trust, innocence and liking could keep in abeyance,
showed through. A flood of wild emotion had swept away almost every
English trait on his face, leaving it reckless, cruel, arrogant, full
of savage love and hungry passion.
Leslie faced him, looking at him with contempt and loathing, too
enraged to notice the wild storm her scorn had raised.
“Let me pass at once,” she said.
It was a haughty command, with no hint of fear or entreaty.
“And if I refuse, little white rose, what then?”
Unflinchingly she scanned the big figure barring her way.
“You will recollect what you are and obey me instantly.”
He laughed, a low, fierce laugh, with a great note of the tiger in it.
“What am I, heart’s delight? Tell me what I am. For what if I say I
_am_ the Hyena?”
At his words all color died from Leslie’s face.
Wide-eyed and in dread fascination, she gazed at him.
“A savage African Sultan with a price on his head.” “The most
bloodthirsty villain in West Africa.”
With sickening force his words came thundering back to her mind.
Contempt and anger were lost in the flood of deadly terror that swept
over her.
She was not dealing with a civilized being, but with a savage chief, a
blood-stained monster, a creature quite beyond her comprehension.
She glanced round wildly, seeking refuge from the tainted eyes
watching her. As if to get away from the truth confronting her, she
made a backward step. Lebrassa followed, not touching her, just
driving her backwards step by step, laughing all the time, driving her
backwards until she could get no further. There was a wall behind her,
and this great savage thing in front watching her and laughing.
It was impossible to scream. No sound would come.
A sound came, but from outside. From the forest not a hundred yards
away. A snarling, ravening sound, a howl of fiendish mirth, a shriek
of mad, bestial laughter. Like a pack of hell hounds on the trail, the
sound rose and fell with the swish of the rain; now, a low,
blood-curdling chuckle, now a wild, hellish yell, a horrible cry, like
a hundred hyenas howling. The wild sounds stopped as abruptly as they
had arisen. And through the heavy roar of the downpour came the echo
of running feet.
That ghastly howling sobered Lebrassa.
The wild surge of red-hot negro passion the sudden chattering of his
hopes had roused died down as quickly as it had arisen. Another flood
of emotion swayed him. How to save the girl now looking at him as if
he were earth’s greatest horror. There was the low moan of a child in
deadly fear as his arm went round her, crouched against the wall,
staring at him with eyes black with terror.
Leslie was aware he lifted her lightly, holding her in a grip that
took all her strength away. Then everything faded in total blackness
as she lay, limp, in a dead faint within his arms.
The running feet reached the hut. Yoni loomed up and threw herself on
her knees before Lebrassa, as he stood holding Leslie close against
him in fierce protection.
“What treachery is this, woman?” he demanded in a savage, desperate
voice.
“It’s Nanza,” she gasped. “He did not go back to Kallu. He waited here
to spy. Then he sent a message up to the high-priest, Mhaki, who has
come down with fifty of his followers demanding blood and vengeance.
Nanza has seen you with the Star, and he knows you love her. He has
told them, and they are filled with madness. They come now for the
blood of the Star and the death of a Sultan who has betrayed them.
Essel, my cousin, give them vengeance. What does it matter if that
girl dies? But not my lord who is the Sultan and my life.”
As the gasping, breathless voice finished, another burst of fiendish
laughter roused the echoes, the mad hyena’s cry that had preceded
Yoni’s coming. A crowd of howling black figures dashed into the hut,
wet and dripping, with the steam rising from their ebony hides; with
scarred faces and thick, livid lips that snarled and showed great
yellow fangs filed down to resemble dogs’ teeth.
“Back, dogs!” Lebrassa roared in some heathen dialect. “Since when has
it been law to enter thus the presence of your Sultan?”
As his furious voice thundered out, to be heard above the mad babel,
the wild roar died down to an ominous growl. The half-dozen savages
already in the hut, stopped short, but they were pressed on by the
force of those behind them.
“By all darkness! Who comes one step nearer dies,” Lebrassa thundered.
The mob stopped. Under the mulatto’s blazing eyes there was some
inclination on the part of the most prominent of the intruders to draw
back and give precedence to their fellows.
It was one thing to talk against the Sultan behind his back, another
to meet him face to face. There was the sullen, backward cringe of
wild beasts under the eye of their trainer, and the growl subsided
into silence.
“Don’t heed him,” a voice from behind cried. “He would keep blood from
us.”
“So, Nanza, you are here,” Lebrassa answered. “Come! Your Sultan bids
you enter.”
Nanza came through the crowd and halted, facing Lebrassa with an
arrogance equaling his own.
“Now, what’s all this talk about withholding blood? Since when in
Kallu has your voice issued orders except of my giving?” the mulatto
asked. “Remember, even the Sultan’s cousin, heir to all Darkness
though he be, is not exempt from death if he dare disobey me.”
“Nor is the Sultan exempt from death, if he betrays the priests and
the people,” Nanza replied boldly.
A growl of assent went up.
“In what way have I betrayed either priests or people?” Lebrassa
demanded.
“Need you ask, with that girl in your arms?” Nanza replied, pointing a
black finger at Leslie’s unconscious form. “Have you forgotten your
oath sworn on the Altar of the Night?”
Lebrassa gave a savage laugh, arrogant and contemptuous.
“What I hold in my arms is mine. No oath broken, but what has long
been the wish of the priests and the people.”
“It is no wish of theirs that you hold that foul murderer’s daughter
in a lover’s embrace. Give her to us. Give us blood and vengeance.
Give us the woman you hold,” his cousin cried.
With a sullen, angry roar the horde surged up to Lebrassa as if to
tear Leslie from his protecting arms. Only one man touched her, and
the next moment he fell under a blow that would have stunned an ox.
“That I should live to see this crew of mongrels yapping round me!”
Lebrassa roared with mad fury. “Hounded on by the lash of jealousy. By
one who desires to sit in your Sultan’s place.”
These were words that could reach through the blood-lust that swayed
the crowd: motives they could understand. Vengeance was one, treachery
another, now a third had been presented to them. Some of their fury
died down, and left them waiting for explanations.
Lebrassa was quick to seize his opportunity.
“But do I hold the child of that murderer?” he asked. “Who has said
so? Only Nanza. And why?”
Now the mob was all attention, hanging on to his words, awaiting his
excuses.
“Why do you listen to the voice of jealousy?” Lebrassa continued. “It
was said in Kallu, ‘The Sultan tarries. Why is he so long away from
his people?’ A message was sent up, ‘Wait’, but it did not say for
what. There is one who sits in the Sultan’s place when his dogs rest
after hunting--one who fain would sit there always. He must plot
mischief, he and a jealous woman. A message was sent up to you, ‘The
child of the murderer is found.’ Who sent it? Not I. Yet it was a true
one. And another had been found also.”
Lebrassa paused for a moment, and his arms took an even firmer hold of
the girl who lay limp within them.
“Long has it been asked in Kallu, ‘Why have we no Queen?’ ‘Why does
not the Sultan give us an heir of his own breeding?’ Why? Because no
Star had risen in the Heart of Darkness. In Kallu there was no woman
as beautiful as Irena, Bride of the Night. None fit to take her place,
to be wife to her son. Your Sultan was ambitious. He would give even
greater beauty than Irena’s to shine on the Throne of Night, to be a
mother of kings. There was a hunt, a hunt of vengeance; a fresh rumor
had come as to the whereabouts of the child of Irena’s murderer. On
the trail of blood your Sultan found a love scent. A Star rose in the
Heart of Darkness. It was a dual hunt that kept your Sultan from
Kallu--love and vengeance. And in the end, both were successful.”
Lebrassa stopped for a moment, his gaze on the small head pillowed
against his chest.
With staring eyes and interest on their fierce faces, the wild crowd
waited for him to continue.
“Vengeance proved more easily wooed than love. The first was soon
completed, the other far from finished. What is the best guard for a
woman who needs safe keeping, whose life is forfeit for her father’s
sins? A husband who loves her and is jealous of her beauty. A husband
was found for the daughter of that foul murderer. At my order my
servant Cooper married her. But he does not know who she really is,
the woman who is now his wife. I had to find a keeper for her, for the
love hunt was far from finished.”
Smiling fondly Lebrassa laid a big, brown hand on Leslie’s head.
“Is it the way of a Sultan to turn back from love not attained?” he
asked proudly. “It was but a small Star I sought, yet it would have
none of me. I laughed and waited. It was a sweet game over which men
love to linger, when the end is sure. A small Star against the Ruler
of the Night! I spread a net for it, into which the little feet of
innocence strayed. My Star would have fled, but too late. I had caught
it. Nanza can tell you more of my snare, but in it he would have I was
trapping vengeance, not love. Shall we say--for reasons of his own?”
As if to let his question sink in, Lebrassa paused again.
“For has it not been whispered that he would remain my heir now and
forever? Say, dogs, had you slain me by the words jealousy had
whispered, who would be your Sultan now? Nanza has no wish for me to
marry. For my son would be the heir, and not himself. It is well then
if I am slain. Who is to be believed? The one who desires to sit in
the Sultan’s place, or he who has led you to victory these twenty
years? He or I? Love is here in my arms. The object of our vengeance
is in charge of her guard, Cooper, whom you know better as Bhessu, my
servant.”
There was no mistaking who had the heart of the crowd now. Lebrassa
knew his audience and played on it, swaying it with the gift of negro
eloquence, combined with English reason.
A wild howl went up, very different from the first that had greeted
him. Half a score of hands seized Nanza as he stood trying to make
himself heard, bore him backwards and would have had his life. Over
the babel Lebrassa’s voice came thundering.
“Back, dogs, let him have his say. Do not let my words, like his, sway
you unduly. Maybe there is something lacking in my explanation. I
would answer all the charges he has to bring against me.”
The dusky horde surged back immediately.
“What he has said is no proof,” Nanza yelled. “When only the Sultan
knows the truth, it is easy for him to say one woman is the other.”
Fifty voices answered him.
“Proof! What need have we of proof? The Sultan’s word is enough.”
Then a man who had not yet spoken put in a word. He was a negro of
about sixty who appeared to weigh judicially all that had been said.
Lebrassa’s desire that Nanza should have his say had had a more
favorable effect on the high-priest, Mhaki, than anything that had yet
passed.
“Nanza has spoken truly,” he said quietly. “What the Sultan has said
is no proof. It is easy to pass off one woman as the other. With love
deceit enters into the heart of man. I’m not of the rabble to be
swayed by words and references to fights that have gone before. I am a
priest of Doomana, a faithful servant of the Night-God, of the
murdered Queen Irena, of the Sultan Essel too, if he give but one
proof to his statements.”
“Then, Mhaki, no one can give better proof than you. For no one here
but you saw my mother’s murderer in his prime. Now, what was he like,
that man you saw nearly twenty-three years ago?”
As Lebrassa put the question he was busy drawing the pins from the
coils of hair about Leslie’s ears.
“He resembled Irena’s consort,” Mhaki replied. “So much so that he
might have been his brother. He was a tall man, with hair of gold, and
eyes gray as a night cloud.”
“He was as you say, Mhaki, a man who might have been my father’s
brother,” Lebrassa said, a bitter note in his voice. “Now, who has
seen Cooper’s wife? Come, Nanza, you’ve played the spy. Speak up, and
tell us what she is like?”
There was no reply.
Lebrassa laughed.
“Is there any one here who has seen her?” he asked.
Yoni rose up from Lebrassa’s feet.
“I give testimony to my lord. I, Yoni, Keeper of the Stars, priestess
of Doomana, who caused all this, and put jealousy into my brother. I
have seen her. She has hair of gold, and eyes that are as the
twilight.”
“There’s the proof you desire, Mhaki,” Lebrassa cried. “Now, see
this!”
With a quick movement, he tore off Leslie’s screening hat. A shake
brought her cloud of black hair sweeping over his sleeve. Then he held
the girl at arms’ length, where she lay gazing around with big, dazed,
purple-blue eyes.
There was a moment of astonished silence.
“She is, indeed, a Star,” Mhaki said in an awed voice. “Never have I
seen a girl so beautiful.”
He made as if to finger Leslie’s silky hair, but Lebrassa drew her
quickly back to his heart, pressing her against him with fierce
tenderness and savage jealousy, away from the black paws that would
have touched her.
“A Star for me alone, and not for you and your color to touch, Mhaki,”
he answered. “If love were not in my heart, your lives would pay for
this night’s work. Now, I will crown her, Queen of Kallu, a gift from
the Sultan to his people.”
The project met with a roar of assent. Lebrassa stood in the midst of
a crowd that fawned round him in the manner of dogs welcoming a
long-absent master.
The excitement of victory, coming after the tearing strain of the last
few minutes, when only he stood between Leslie and fifty fiends
thirsting for blood and vengeance, made Lebrassa, for the moment,
forgetful of everything except that she was safe.
As he stood surrounded by the fawning crowd Nanza slipped out of the
hut. For he knew that death would be his portion once the Sultan
remembered his treachery.
The savages were too busy to notice Nanza’s stealthy exit. All eyes
were on the two in the middle of the hut, eager to miss no detail of
the impromptu crowning of their Queen.
One of the mulatto’s arms was bared to beyond the elbow. On his
massive brown limb was a circle of gold, embossed with stars. This
Mhaki was unclasping. When the armlet was off he gave it into
Lebrassa’s keeping. The latter took it and placed it on Leslie’s head,
drawing strands of her hair through it to keep it in position. And
there it gleamed--a band of golden stars set in a cloud of black.
The curling, smoking lights played on the wild figures who watched him
as he stood holding a white-faced girl close against him, gazing with
savage arrogance over her star-crowned head.
“Is there no greeting for my Queen?”
Fifty voices answered him.
“We are star-worshipers, we spawn of the night. In Kallu there is
always welcome for such as she.”
There followed the wild, tribal war-cry--a long-drawn howl of hyena
laughter, so weird and blood-curdling that it reached Leslie through
her stunned terror.
Involuntarily, she clutched Lebrassa’s wrist.
“Enough, you are frightening her,” he cried. “She’s not used to the
music of my hunting dogs, this little Queen of mine.”
Then all at once, Nanza’s absence dawned on him.
“By all darkness! That traitor has slipped away!” he thundered.
It needed but a minute to convince everybody of the truth of this
statement, and growls of anger arose from the savages.
“He will do no harm as yet,” Lebrassa said in a quick, compelling
voice. “Saving his own life concerns him more now than betraying us.
But we must act quickly.”
A few sharp orders were issued.
The hut cleared.
Presently there remained only Yoni and the two who, not an hour
before, were seated amicably together at dinner.
The negress was ordered out and told to wait within earshot until
called. When she left, Lebrassa drew up a chair and put Leslie into
it. For the girl drooped against him, so weak and limp that he knew
she would have fallen but for his arm.
Once she was seated he stood watching her, as if hoping for some word.
There was a tired, strained look about him; a lot had been lost and
gained within the last hour.
Presently, as the silence remained unbroken, he leaned over her and
took one of her cold, trembling hands into his.
“Say something to me, little white rose?” he asked with pleading. “Say
I’ve deceived you. That you hate me. Anything. Don’t sit in silence as
if no words could express your contempt and my baseness. I deceived
you. But is it quite unforgivable? A small, white hand reached down to
me, through the blackness and the blood, to the depths of a hell I’ve
been in these last twenty years. If I try to keep it, am I wrong?”
Watching her anxiously he paused, but if he expected an answer he was
disappointed.
“I’m hungry after white innocence and purity, nobility and gentleness,
things that have been denied me. I would have them for my own, to hold
them close against me. You are my treasure, my precious angel, as far
above me as the stars. I would have won you honorably if I could,
Leslie, but fate was against me. You know me now for what I am--a
creature black and blood-stained, who has been the sport of the gods
since birth. A constant black horror was born with me, one that can
drag me down to the level of the beasts, with which I must move, eat
and sleep to the end--a horror that I see reflected on every white
face, that neither time, patience, money nor penitence can take from
me. That horror has risen in all its ghastly blackness between me and
every hope, ideal and ambition I may have cherished, and it has
hounded me to hell in search of oblivion. And I found oblivion--at
last. At last I found the Waters of Lethe. Where do you think,
Leslie?”
For a moment he paused as if hoping for some word from her. But only
the sigh and the sob of the rain answered him.
“I found oblivion. Not in the depths I’d groveled in so long. But high
above me, in the stars. For you, Leslie, smiled on me and were my
friend, treating me just as if I were as other men. You forgot what I
was. And I forgot also, because you did. Forgot, and when you had
gone, remembered a thousand times more. Yet I would hide the blood and
blackness from you. Would deceive you. I was thirsty for whiteness
after my life in hell.”
He raised her cold, shaking hand to his lips, kissing it tenderly.
“It is such a little hand, this of yours,” he said, holding it
carefully in his big brown one. “Yet it eased the yoke that held me.
It brought me back to what I might have been. This little hand,
trembling in my own. May I keep it, Leslie?”
There was no reply. Only her hand trembled more than ever.
“Have you nothing to say to me, little friend?” he asked with abject
pleading. “Not one word. I dare not ask for love, but just a little
toleration and pity, a little of the old sweet sympathy. I could give
so much in return--love, worship and adoration. Don’t make an even
greater savage of me, Leslie. Be something more than a Sultan’s
captive bride. Be my little angel of pity.”
For some moments he watched her hungrily.
A white-faced girl looked back at him, speechless and in dread
fascination.
“Haven’t you one word for me, darling?” he begged.
Still there was no reply.
For a moment longer he waited. Then he went from the hut, leaving Yoni
on guard at the door.
CHAPTER XVI
“_My soul seem’d numbed by the blow,_
_A faintness followed, a sickly swoon._”
When Leslie returned to consciousness she seemed to be in quite a
different world--a world of darkness, damp and chill, full of wild
howls and animal snarlings, and over it all a savage voice was
thundering.
Fearsomely she glanced round, the terrors of a ghastly nightmare upon
her, not yet awake to the events of the evening. Above her head a
voice was speaking, full of triumph, arrogance, and barbaric pride.
It roused her to a further review of her surroundings.
She became aware of a big brown hand holding hers, pressed close in
fierce possession. In a dazed way, she studied it. No reassuring ring
of white flesh appeared beneath the wet, blistered cuff. This caught
her attention. Many men had brown hands, quite as dark as this one.
Captain Fletcher had, in fact. Yet on his arm the brown stopped all at
once, just beyond the cuff, and the white began. But on this arm the
brown did not stop. It went on and on, until it was lost in the depths
of the sleeve.
Leslie’s eyes went to the swarthy, powerful face above her head, and
stayed there in a puzzled fashion.
It was like a once well-known scene that had been devastated by some
wild flood, vaguely haunting in outline, yet changed almost beyond
recognition: all the old familiar landmarks had been swept away and
unknown signs had taken their places.
A sickly shudder ran through her. Through the numbness that had
followed her brief swoon, came a sudden dawning of the terror which
had been with her before a merciful unconsciousness had seized
her--when the knowledge of who and what Lebrassa really was had
thundered down on her.
She stayed frozen with the horror of recollection, gazing at the wild
figures around her, hoping they would not go and leave her quite alone
with him.
Her strained eyes watched them as they slipped away one by one, to be
swallowed up in the night.
When Lebrassa put her into the chair, Leslie was limp with terror. As
from a long way off she heard his voice talking in a manner that
filled her with even greater fear.
Then presently, mercifully, he was gone too.
When he left the hut she got up. With uncertain steps she crossed to
the door, looking up at Yoni in a wild way.
“Let me pass. I want to go at once,” she said.
Yoni looked back at her, but she made no sign of moving from the
narrow doorway.
Leslie tried to push past her, but it was no use.
For the first time the full sense of her captivity dawned on her, and
with it some of the cunning which is the heritage of all trapped
weakness.
Going back to the chair, she sat there trying to think of some means
of getting her jailor away before Lebrassa returned.
Presently she got up, and taking one of the lamps went into the inner
room.
She returned, sponge in one hand and empty water jug in the other. By
pantomime she pointed out to her jailor that she wanted to wash but
there was no water.
Yoni shook her head and refused to move. Leslie smiled at her--a smile
that got no further than her lips--and pointed to a stream of water
pouring off the roof not more than a couple of yards away, which Yoni
could reach by just moving from the door.
As the negress took the jug and leaned across to hold it under the
stream, Leslie darted past her.
Yoni dropped the jug and made a grab at her, seizing whatever she
could grasp. A brief struggle ensued. Then a wave of fear went over
the negress, for the girl suddenly collapsed in her grip.
Lifting her charge, she carried her back into the room, and laid her
in the chair. Then she stood watching Leslie’s white, unconscious
face, chafing her cold hands, in an access of mortal fear as to what
her fate would be if the Sultan returned and found this cherished
being injured.
The chafing had no effect. Yoni tried forcing palm wine between the
girl’s slightly parted lips. But she could bring no flicker of life
back to the heavy, black-fringed lids, no glimmer of returning
consciousness to the small white face pillowed on the cushions.
The case was beyond her. She must send and let the Sultan know.
Perhaps his voice and arms would coax this strange Star back to life.
For a moment Yoni hesitated, then she went quickly from the hut.
She was not gone two minutes, yet, when she returned, the hut was
empty!
The discovery left her petrified. To her came the knowledge of what
her fate would be when the Sultan returned and found out what had
happened. The thought made her run from the hut towards the sheltering
forest.
Then there were two women lost in the night, flying through rain and
storm, away from the fate that would be theirs if they fell again into
the hands of the Hyena.
CHAPTER XVII
“_The wide gulf that parts us may yet be no wider._”
Molly stood by the drawing-room door of her bungalow, gazing across
the veranda into the pitch-dark night, listening to the heavy thunder
of the rain.
Presently her anxious eyes came back from the shrouded garden to the
man sitting by the lounge she had just vacated.
“I do hope Leslie will be all right,” she said.
Getting up, Cooper came to her side, gazing at her with a curious
mingling of dumb pleading and conscious possession.
“She will be all right, my dove. Lebrassa will see to that.”
“But I wish she was back. It’s after eleven.”
So saying, Molly turned away from him, and went to a table at the far
end of the room. There she stood, turning over the many magazines
listlessly.
Presently she picked out one and went back to the lounge. As she
seated herself she tried not to see the blackness of the hands that
arranged the cushions for her with clumsy tenderness. Then she stayed,
not reading, but watching the man beside her.
All at once there came a sound like the rush of many naked feet along
the balcony.
As Cooper started up, a crowd of wild figures loomed in the open
doorway, wet and steaming, with the rain dripping from their wool,
their scarred, naked bodies gleaming and writhing.
They burst into the room, trampling with great, muddy feet on the
dainty carpet, knocking over half a dozen chairs by the impetuosity of
their entrance.
In a rush of fear, Molly clutched her husband’s arm. One of his hands
went to his hip pocket and stayed there.
The intruders stopped short, awed, not by the negro’s action, but by
the strangeness of their surroundings. To savages, accustomed only to
the crude appointments of a mud hut, that drawing-room with its
rose-painted piano, its gilded, satin-covered furniture, soft silken
draperies, flowers and cushions, was a revelation.
“Who are they? What do they want?” Molly gasped.
Cooper pushed her back on the lounge, standing between her and the
savages.
From the wild rabble Mhaki came forward.
“What are you doing here?” Cooper demanded in anger and astonishment,
thinking the high-priest had come, as he did occasionally, but
unattended, to see Lebrassa.
“What are we doing here?”
A mocking chorus answered him in the dialect he had used.
“We have come for the woman who is your wife,” the chanters continued.
“She is to be wedded to another whose name is Death. Full long has
Kallu called for vengeance. And we are thirsty after long years of
waiting.”
The answer infuriated Cooper.
“Get out of this, you mad, gin-drinking fools,” he bellowed. “It’s
just as well for you I’m here and not the Sultan, or your lives would
be the price of this piece of drunken folly.”
A roar of brutal laughter greeted him.
Its unbridled ferocity made Molly clutch his arm again. Her face was
pressed against his side. In fear his blackness was forgotten; she
remembered only the fact that he was her husband and her natural
protector.
“Why, Bhessu, the Sultan sent us,” came with jeering laughter.
“The Sultan sent you!” Cooper repeated. “What madness are you
talking?”
Over the jeers and laughter Mhaki’s voice came.
“There’s no need to mock at him. Our Sultan said he did not know. And
he has been a good keeper. Come, Bhessu, let us have that woman, your
wife, the daughter of He-who-slew-Irena. The Sultan has sent us for
her.”
“It is false,” Cooper roared. “The woman you want is with him.”
“Hark to him! Another traitor,” the mob yelled.
By now Cooper’s anger had died down. In its place had come a strained,
thoughtful look.
“I am no traitor,” he said quietly, “but a faithful servant of the
Sultan. What fool’s talk is this, Mhaki, about my wife being the
daughter of He-who-slew-Irena? What did the Sultan say?”
Very briefly the high-priest gave the gist of Lebrassa’s statements.
“Come now,” he finished. “Let us have the woman. The Sultan desires
both of you, and there is no time to waste.”
Calm and ominous, Cooper’s answer came.
“There is still time to talk. It is false, all this the Sultan has
said. I swear by all Kallu holds sacred. He has lied to you through
love of the woman he held, and has put the burden of vengeance on
another. Ask Yoni, to whom in my faithfulness I would not listen. Ask
her, and she will tell you.”
“He speaks against the Sultan. His life for it,” the crowd howled.
Cooper’s hand came from his pocket to rest on the golden head pressed
against his side. He stayed, waiting for the mob to rush.
Over the wild yells Mhaki’s voice came, calling for silence.
“Love has made you crazy, Bhessu,” he said. “Yoni gave evidence in
favor of all the Sultan said. And I can see for myself this woman is
the one. For she has the hair and the eyes of her accursed father.”
In a strained, dogged voice, Cooper answered.
“Let me have my say. Then if you still think this woman is the one,
you may take her. Hair and eyes, what proof are they? May not a child
favor one parent and not the other? Perhaps the mother of your
Sultan’s bride had hair like the night and eyes of the deepest blue,
and it is the mother and not the father she favors. What Nanza told
you is true. And I can prove it. How many years is it since the Queen
Irena was found murdered on the Altar of Night? Twenty-three. And it
was proved that he who did the deed was not then married. If your
Sultan speaks the truth concerning these two women, how is it that my
wife is nearly twenty-eight?”
Scoffing laughter greeted this statement.
At twenty-eight a negro woman is old. To Mhaki and his following the
girl Cooper was defending looked still in her teens.
With wild mockery and jeers the crowd surged up to him, to tear
Molly’s hands from their clinging, terrified hold.
There was a gasping scream as her face was hidden against her
husband’s coat to shut out the swarm of naked, mud-splashed, bestial
figures.
His hand that had lain loosely closed on her soft hair, moved
slightly. A glint of steel showed pressed on to gleaming gold. And
with it came a revolver shot.
“The Sultan lies,” Cooper bellowed. “I will not give my wife to such
as you.”
Molly sank back on the silken cushions, an ominous little red patch
oozing through the strands of her shining hair.
Over the baulked howls of the savages came the sound of five more
revolver shots fired in quick succession. Then all was silent except
for a horrible, soft, hacking sound.
On the lounge Molly lay quiet and peaceful, her brocade shoes in the
blood of the mangled heap at her feet, that had once been her husband.
He had given her the gift she most desired--death. A gift that had
cost him his life.
The savage horde went from the room, thirsting for further slaughter,
maddened by the vengeance that had been taken from them.
Yet in Mhaki’s mind a doubt lingered.
CHAPTER XVIII
“_Ah me! we believe in evil,_
_Where once we believed in good._”
The first puff of cool afternoon wind came sighing up from the
distant sea, stirring the creepers on Harding’s veranda. As the cool
breeze moved the heated air there was a slight stir in a hammock slung
across its shadiest corner. At the movement, a washed-out English
nurse, sitting close at hand, glanced at her patient--a girl so thin
and wasted that she appeared to leave no impression on the pillows
supporting her.
Nearly a month had passed since Leslie had come, soaked and
blood-splashed, to Harding’s bungalow.
The happenings of that night stood out like a ghastly nightmare--a
chaos of blackness, wild wind, driving rain, mad laughter and blood.
She had stumbled on, lost in the blinding darkness, battling against
the raging storm in a maze of trees and thorns and mud, with the
feeling of some Terror close behind her; so close that the fact froze
out all thought of the elements she was battling against with the mad
haste of a hunted thing.
Out of the black night and driving rain a voice had called her by
name.
“Leslie, my darling, where are you? Oh God!” it had cried again and
again.
The sound had made her rush into a deep stagnant pool, and stay there,
crouched up to the neck in foul water, heedless of the swarm of great
leeches that had fixed on her, screening her face with the blackness
of her hair, lest its whiteness should betray her: in shivering,
deadly terror lest the frantic thumping of her heart and her own
sobbing, panting breath should be heard above the howl of the storm.
How long she crouched there listening as Lebrassa searched round she
did not know. Then he had gone, still calling frantically, until his
voice was lost in the night.
Creeping out from her refuge, she had gone on and on and on, her only
desire to reach whiteness and light again.
She had found Molly’s house at last.
Light was reached. Then--!
Something must have snapped in her head, for she woke up in a strange
bedroom with a shriveled, dried, grasshopper-looking little man
sitting beside her.
In his patient, as well as shock and strain, Atherley had had to fight
against malaria fever. Yet, with skilful nursing and in the care of a
doctor who knew every turn of the treacherous tropical disease, Leslie
was slowly creeping back to life.
Fletcher and his brother officers had scoured the country. However,
they had found no trace of Lebrassa, and learned nothing of him except
that the morning after the massacre in Cooper’s bungalow, a couple of
Mohammedan traders had called at a medical mission about twenty-five
miles away. The younger of the two, a giant of a man, had a broken
right arm, the result, so he had said, of his companion’s revolver
going off accidentally.
Beyond a doubt the man was the Hyena.
When Leslie returned to reason she had told all she knew of that
night’s happenings, and there the matter ended.
On the river bank the Lebrassa & Cooper factory lay closed and silent.
On the outskirts of the settlement the bungalow stood empty and
lifeless, overgrown and entangled, its tragedy sleeping quietly in the
embrace of black earth. And on the balcony of Harding’s house lay the
girl who had escaped from that night of rapine and slaughter.
Presently the sound of men’s voices drifted along with the sighing
wind. A couple of soldierly figures came up the balcony steps. Harding
went on, round the corner to the shady spot where Leslie’s hammock was
slung, but his companion remained at the head of the stairs, in a
state of obvious fidgets.
When the Major appeared round the corner, a feeble smile greeted him.
By Leslie’s side, he came to a halt, patting her worn face tenderly.
“Well, how’s my little girl?” he asked. “Feeling equal to a visitor?”
Leslie guessed who the visitor was, and a faint tinge of color came to
her white cheeks.
“If it’s Captain Fletcher, I’d like to see him,” she said faintly.
So far she had seen no one except the nurse, doctor, and her host.
Perhaps Fletcher had never felt so clumsy and nervous, or so
speechless, as when, a few moments later, he sat by Leslie’s hammock
bereft of the support of his friend and the nurse, who had withdrawn,
leaving him alone with the patient.
He was not used to feminine society. Most of his adult life had been
spent on the edge of one of the wildest parts of the Empire, where
from year’s end to year’s end he never saw a white woman. Now, as he
watched the girl among the pillows, he felt keenly the loss of the
gift of free and easy conversation.
However, Leslie broke the silence before it grew strained.
“Captain Fletcher, I can never thank you enough for all you did--that
night. I know you were wounded in saving me. I’m awfully sorry you’ve
been hurt, because it… it was all my fault.”
Fletcher could answer remarks, even if he could not broach subjects of
his own.
“Some one must have been exaggerating about my injuries,” he said. “I
was out and running about the same day. So you see I couldn’t have
been seriously damaged. And how do you make it out to be all your
fault?”
“If I hadn’t told that--that dreadful man what I overheard you saying
that night in the Harrogate hotel, all this would never have
happened.”
No one knew better than Fletcher what had been lost by that piece of
thoughtlessness, but he had always kept to himself the fact that
Leslie had inadvertently told Lebrassa he was under suspicion. Now,
his one idea was to soothe the girl, never to let her know the extent
of her folly.
“You foolish child,” he said gently. “Lebrassa would have suspected
the moment he saw me. What you said made no difference at all.”
Leslie cast a quick glance at the sun-bitten face beside her.
“It’s very kind of you to say so,” she said humbly.
“I mean it,” he replied emphatically. “He knows I’ve been on his trail
for the last ten years. If you must know, that’s really my job. Sort
of secret police business. Sleuthhounding round for any clue that may
lead up to the catching of that villain.”
His words comforted Leslie a little.
“He took my letter,” she volunteered. “The one Molly never got, that
made her marry Mr. Cooper. I can’t think why he did it.”
Fletcher agreed it was a mystery.
“He told me all about the Hyena,” she went on. “I’d no idea there
really were people of that sort. So different from what they seemed…
so absolutely dreadful.”
“Lebrassa has deceived most people, many of them men twice your age
and used to dealing with all manner of villains. So it’s not very
surprising if he succeeded in your case.”
“I thought you were not just, not fair,” Leslie confessed, “and all
the time you were right. I shall never forgive myself for not
listening to you from the first.”
The arrival of Atherley with “Time’s up, young man,” resulted in the
routing of Fletcher.
However, he did not go very far away. Only round the corner to a spot
where Harding was sitting.
Presently Atherley joined the two. Then over whiskey and soda, they
listened to Fletcher’s plan for getting Leslie out of the country in
such a way that Lebrassa would have no inkling of where she was.
The doctor, whose leave was about due, was to take her, and Fletcher
insisted the financing of the affair was his concern alone.
The plan of campaign was as follows.
From Calabar River it was possible to get to another river, Rio del
Rey, about forty miles away. At the trading stations there, steamers
called at stated times. By one of these Atherley and his charge would
proceed to the island of Fernando Po. An express German steamer was
due there within the next fortnight. By it the two would proceed to
Hamburg, and on by rail to some place on the Riviera until Leslie was
fit to take up life again.
“And then?” Harding asked, as Fletcher finished.
“Then I expect she’ll go her own way,” the captain answered in a
gloomy manner. “Because none of us has any legal claim or hold on
her.”
“You great overgrown ass, why don’t you ask her to marry you?”
Atherley put in.
For a moment it looked as though Fletcher would resent the question.
“I’ve no reason to believe she even likes me,” he replied stiffly. “To
ask her now when she’s under an obligation to me would be taking a
mean advantage. The child is absolutely penniless. She might feel
bound to take my offer--no matter what her own feelings were--as the
only possible way of paying off her debt.”
Harding’s voice eased the situation.
“I’ve a brother-in-law in the Portuguese wine trade. If I wrote to my
sister and asked her to take Miss Graham as her companion, I know she
would. Then at least we should know where the child was.”
“I say, that’s awfully decent of you,” Fletcher said, relieved.
During the next week the three men devoted a good deal of time to the
mechanism and working of the doctor’s launch. Dispensing with the
negro crew, the little craft took short runs in the cool of the
afternoon with these three budding engineers and Leslie as passenger.
On the river bank the usual crowd of loafing negroes watched their
exit and return.
One day the three Englishmen and their solitary passenger set off as
usual. However, they failed to return at the customary hour. This fact
appeared to interest a couple of the negroes, for they waited until
darkness came.
Night fell, but there was no sign of the truant launch.
Presently, out of the dark forest, came the wild roll of a native drum
with curious little intermittent taps. Another answered it. And still
another, from farther and ever farther away, repeating the rhythm
until it was lost in distance.
However, before the news of Leslie’s departure reached Lebrassa, she
was lying under the awning of a steamer in Rio del Rey, waiting for
the evening tide to bear her down the river and away from Africa.
By her side Fletcher was sitting.
Now that the actual parting had come he was more tongue-tied than
ever. On Leslie, too, had fallen a cloak of silence.
Strained and anxious, she was watching the man at her side.
“Captain Fletcher,” she said presently in a nervous voice, “I can
never thank you for all your kindness to me.”
“That’s nothing,” he said hastily. “If you’ll drop me a line
occasionally I shall be more than repaid.”
“Of course I shall write to you.”
There was another pause, broken this time by the “All ashore” bell.
“Well, I must push off,” Fletcher said, getting to his feet.
Leslie got up also.
“You will keep out of the way of that dreadful Hyena, won’t you?” she
asked anxiously.
He took the hand she was offering, holding it carefully.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said cheerfully. “Lebrassa will make
it his business to avoid me. Now, good-by, and take care of yourself.
And… and may I come and see you during my next leave,” he stammered.
“If you think such a foolish person is… is worth keeping in touch
with,” she said shyly.
“Worth keeping in touch with!” he echoed.
Then feeling himself on the edge of a proposal, hastily he shook the
girl’s hand and turned quickly away.
Presently he was gazing longingly after a steamer that was
disappearing round a bend of the river.
On its deck Leslie lay, wondering drearily if her folly had quite
alienated Captain Fletcher. During the past week, although they had
been quite a lot together, he had never shown the least sign of
straying beyond the friendship stage. In her eyes, now, he was a hero,
not the interfering busybody he had once seemed.
As she pondered on the problem she watched the sunset.
Great, black clouds, flecked with lurid red, loomed up over the land
she was leaving, looking almost as if they were chasing her.
As she gazed at them a violent shiver ran through her. She would much
rather have had one of the brilliant, rainbow-hued sunsets that had
fallen to her lot many times during her brief tragic stay in Africa.
Not this ominous banking of black and red. For it seemed to suggest
that the blood and blackness could not be left behind so easily.
PART TWO
“Love of my life! we had lights in season--
Hard to part from, harder to keep.
We had strength to labor and souls to reason,
And seed to scatter and fruits to reap.
Though time estranges and fate disperses,
We have _had_ our loves and our loving mercies:
Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses
Yet bides the gift of the darkness--sleep!”
CHAPTER XIX
“‘_Our burdens are heavy, our natures weak,_
_Some pastime devoid of harm_
_May we look for? Puritan elder, speak!_’
‘_Yea, friend, peradventure thou mayest seek_
_Recreation singing a psalm._’”
The Kubu Mission had a new convert. His industry was a marvel; his
progress a matter that afforded a never-ending topic of conversation
to the teachers of the Mission.
He had come to them some eight months before, clad only in a
loin-cloth, speaking an uncouth African dialect, and with a habit of
squatting on his heels. Now, he was sitting out on the veranda of the
schoolhouse, in a civilized manner, on a chair, attired in a
full-blown suit of white drill, with his large feet encased in a pair
of canvas shoes.
He was reading the “Pilgrim’s Progress” in English; and in a stiff,
stilted, negro manner, he could now speak this language very well.
For hours this young convert would sit at the feet of his pastors
while they told him of the wonders and glories of England. And he
would listen in round-eyed astonishment, asking them endless
questions--most of them on purely secular subjects.
When they were tired of talking he would thank them humbly and then go
and perform lowly tasks about the place. But as he worked he smiled to
himself with a depth of ferocity that would have startled the gentle
missionaries had they seen it.
For motives known only to himself Nanza was doing what is vulgarly
called “learning the ropes.”
This particular afternoon as he sat in the shade of the schoolhouse
reading, he put down his “Pilgrim’s Progress” and drew from his pocket
a string of nondescript objects, and stayed studying it intently.
It looked like a kite’s tail. There were half-a-dozen cowrie shells of
varying sizes, beads of different hues, several nuts and dried
berries, punctuated with feathers and strips of rag of divers colors,
all threaded and tied together on a single piece of string.
To Nanza it represented a letter. A letter, moreover, from the
high-priest Mhaki.
The barbaric message worried him extremely. First by the fact that the
high-priest knew his whereabouts, secondly by its contents.
It left him undecided whether to answer in person, or whether to fly
from this seat of learning. He knew the cunning of his cousin the
Sultan, and this might be a trap.
When Nanza had fled from Calabar his one object had been
self-preservation. As soon as this was accomplished, his mind turned
to other subjects, chief among them being vengeance.
Sometimes he wondered whether he would reveal the whereabouts of Kallu
to the authorities. But to do this meant the downfall of the power to
which he was still direct heir, and that would sweep away all chance
of supreme sultanship even more surely than his cousin’s marriage.
For a long time he sat on the veranda considering whether or not he
would respond to Mhaki’s overtures. Finally he decided it was worth
risking. He knew his ground and could back out at the first sign of a
trap.
About a fortnight later Nanza was approaching an up-country village
some two hundred miles removed from the Kubu Mission. However, he
showed no immediate desire to enter. Instead, he hid himself away in
the undergrowth and awaited nightfall. When darkness gathered he
entered the little town.
There was an air of stealth about him as he crept through the muddle
of mud huts, palm trees, drinking pools and heaps of débris; an
obvious desire to avoid meeting any of the inhabitants.
The place lay in darkness, the silence broken only by the snores that
issued from some of the huts and the squeaks and rustles of uneasy
domestic animals.
Nanza went along in a manner that suggested his surroundings were not
entirely new, his objective the guest-house in the middle of the
village. Out of the purple darkness, lying like a pall over the
market-square, a light flickered and disappeared and flickered again
at regular intervals in the open door of the little hut in the center.
For some time Nanza watched the light. So far as he could see the hut
was empty save for one old figure, nor did there appear to be any one
lurking in the vicinity.
Presently, with the stealthy tread of a leopard, he went forward.
Just inside the door of the guest hut was a negro of about sixty, who,
squatting on his heels on the mud floor, was busy pulling to and fro
the shutter of a battered dark lantern.
Nanza’s approach made him look up. On seeing his visitor, he gave a
grunt of satisfaction.
“So you recognized my signal?” he said by way of greeting.
Nanza nodded. He entered the hut, and, drawing the palm-leaf shutter
screening the doorway into position, seated himself opposite the
high-priest.
“How are things in Kallu, Mhaki?” he asked. “Is there any sign as yet
of a new heir? And how is it that _you_ are plotting against the
Sultan? Have my words proved true? Or is the Sultan so enamored with
the Star he has caught that he forgets the rites of the temple?”
Mhaki cast a glance at his blustering visitor. Then he rolled a
portion of tobacco he was chewing across his tongue, and expectorated
with great deliberation before replying.
“There is no bride in Kallu,” he said.
The remark left Nanza amazed. He knew nothing of the final happenings
of that tragic night, nothing of Leslie’s escape or Molly’s death.
“What do you mean?” he asked excitedly.
Mhaki told how the Star had fled back to the night and had not
returned.
Nanza laughed, a great roar of savage mirth.
“So my cousin is not so successful in love as in war. And what did the
Ruler of the Night do when the Star he loved fooled him?”
“It’s because of what he did and what he did not do that I searched
for you,” Mhaki answered. “I am his servant, but, before him, I have
sworn to serve the gods. It may be the Sultan spoke falsely, for the
girl he held was fair enough to melt even the heart of hatred.”
The old man paused.
“We of Kallu have almost forgotten that the Sultan’s father was _not_
one of us, but of a race who make no war on women,” he continued a
moment later. “In past days I learnt much of the ways of white men
from Irena’s consort. Who knows what goes on in the heart of man when
eyes such as the Star’s have looked into it? Now, hearken, Nanza, Heir
of all Darkness. I will tell you my story, and when suspicion first
entered my heart, and all that has happened since.”
Mhaki moved a little closer to his companion. The feeble light of the
lantern played on him fitfully, making him look like a gigantic black
toad shuffling along in the semi-darkness.
Into Nanza’s ears was poured an account of what had taken place in
Cooper’s bungalow, when the first seed of doubt concerning Lebrassa’s
statements had been sown in Mhaki’s mind.
“Yet,” he finished, “when I told the Sultan how Bhessu had killed the
woman who was his wife rather than give her to us, it was as nothing.
There was nothing in the Sultan’s mind but the lost Star; no thought
or regret for the vengeance that had been swept from him. Now, what do
_you_ think of that?” Mhaki asked.
“A Sultan of Kallu does not take so lightly the passing of vengeance,
unless all thought of vengeance has long since passed from his mind,”
Nanza answered.
Mhaki nodded to himself.
“That was exactly what I thought,” he said. “And another thing. Had
not the love of Bhessu for the Sultan always been a byword in Kallu,
even where all worship him? Had not Bhessu as great a hatred for the
Queen Irena’s murderer as had the Sultan? Yet this faithful servant of
the Royal House did not turn from his wife when the truth was told
him. He swore the Sultan had lied! He, Bhessu, to whom the Sultan was
a god! He tried to save his wife, swearing she was not the daughter of
Irena’s murderer. Yet I saw the woman had the eyes and hair of that
foul traitor. Bhessu tried to prove to us by her age that she could
not have been a child of that thief. And I did not believe him, for in
my ears the Sultan’s words were still ringing.”
Pausing, Mhaki laid a black, wrinkled hand on Nanza’s shoulder.
“Yet there was a flaw somewhere,” he continued. “With the next sunrise
I went with the Sultan, who had been injured in his efforts to get the
Star from the white men, to a Mission where his wound was dressed. I
saw a white woman there, a teacher. Of a servant I inquired her age.
To me she looked a girl. And I was told she was over thirty! Three
years older than the woman who was Bhessu’s wife. There is no reason
why that servant at the Mission should have lied to me. And then I
began to wonder who had lied, Bhessu or the Sultan?”
Silence reigned in the hut as Mhaki finished speaking. The wind moaned
around the deserted market square, bringing with it distant forest
howls and the gentle sigh of the palms.
Nanza heard nothing of these noises. He was thinking over all the
high-priest had told him, glowing with inward satisfaction at the
thought of the white man’s learning which was now his, and which would
help him to prove the suspicions lingering in his companion’s mind.
“What do you want of me?” he asked, finally.
“I am an old man,” Mhaki answered. “A faithful servant of Doomana. And
I would know the truth, yea, even if it means my death. For in Kallu
we have no use for traitors.”
“Even so,” Nanza agreed. “Tell me what I can do, and I will do it.”
“If you knew the ways and speech of the English, the plan I have
thought of would be robbed of half its difficulties. There is always
gold and to spare at Kallu. For that white men will tell you all you
care to ask.”
Evilly Nanza smiled.
Then he told Mhaki how he had been occupied since his hurried flight
from Calabar.
In a calculating manner the high-priest looked at him.
“It’s no child’s game we’re playing. And I am still the servant of the
reigning Sultan. It is the truth alone I seek. If it be proved the
Sultan Essel has spoken truly then it will be well for you, O Nanza,
to keep from this country. There will be ten thousand watching lest
you betray Kallu. Yet, if it be proved that the Sultan Essel loves
where he should hate, then he dies, and I am the faithful servant of
the Sultan Nanza.”
“The stakes are high, but I am willing to venture all,” the younger
man answered.
“Think well. I am setting you no light task. Nor am _I_ easily
deceived,” Mhaki said pointedly. “I, too, can read and write after the
manner of the white men. In the dead days Irena’s consort taught me
these things. All knowledge is good, and I have not forgotten my white
lore. The proof you bring must be no proof of mouth alone, but white
man’s proof with seals and documents and signatures. And I must have
time to ponder, to write and ask for myself the truth of what you may
bring.”
With some eagerness Mhaki awaited Nanza’s reply, sufficiently
acquainted with his man to know that the fact of his return would
prove the truth of the papers he brought with him.
“I am no child now, but Heir of Doomana,” Nanza answered proudly.
“That night when I accused my cousin, Essel, of treachery, I was
saying what Bhessu had told me more than a month before, when I
arrived in Calabar, sent by _you_ to inquire into the reason of the
Sultan’s long absence. What my sister said made me stay. When she
first spoke, I considered her words only a jealous woman’s madness.
Then I saw for myself that the Sultan was infatuated with the girl he
had brought with him. And I pondered on the matter, wondering if what
Yoni said were true. For it struck me that a woman sees deeper into
the heart of a man than does a man.”
“That’s so,” Mhaki agreed.
“I watched the Sultan with the maid he had sworn to kill. Love made
him deaf, for often I stood close by, spying. And there is a saying in
Kallu, did a fly but crawl the Sultan heard it! Yet none would believe
what I said. And now you, Mhaki, have doubts, even as I had.”
Mhaki nodded.
“Now, Nanza, listen,” he said, “and I’ll put my plan before you.”
In the dim light the two drew closer together.
“If the Sultan has lied, it would be vain for us to trace the lost
Star. He will have destroyed all evidence against her. If he is a
traitor, we have need of her, so that he may see her die first. The
Ruler of the Night has searched for her in vain these nine months. We
will let him search. If he can’t find her, the task is beyond us. But
we will go to work in another manner. We will find out more about the
other woman, the one Bhessu held as wife. Go first to Calabar. Learn
all you can about her from his friends there. Afterwards proceed to
England and probe further. If you can prove she was _not_ the daughter
of that foul murderer, then ten thousand will call you Sultan of
Kallu.”
Pausing, the high-priest drew a small leather bag from his loin-cloth
and dropped it in front of his visitor.
“This bag of pebbles means great wealth in England. Take it, and
remember there is short shrift for traitors, you or the Sultan Essel.”
With that Nanza rose and passed out into the night.
CHAPTER XX
“_As we’ve sown so we must reap._”
Mail day was the great event of the month at Tuata, Northern
Nigeria, one of the most isolated of British outposts. The district
was a vast tract of dense forest with no means of communication beyond
the trails leading from one village to another.
It was so peaceable that Mellors, the commissioner, occasionally found
it in his heart to wish for a little more excitement. In fact, it was
so law-abiding, in a part where uprisings were frequent, that Captain
Lindsay Fletcher had come to Tuata to pursue his investigations in the
tangled, almost unexplored forest that comprised most of the district;
to find out if those hundreds of miles of dense wilderness held any
clue to the Hyena’s headquarters.
At that moment under consideration the Government representatives were
stretched out on cane lounges on the veranda of Mellors’ bungalow,
deep in the contents of the newly arrived mail.
Captain Fletcher was lost in an epistle signed “Leslie Graham.”
Nearly a year had passed since he had last seen the writer, and during
the period letters from that source had come to him regularly at the
rate of about one a month, all of which he had kept and treasured.
The broiling midday sun poured down on the cleared hill where the tiny
town was situated. No sound broke the hot silence except the sleepy
drone of insects and the rustle of paper, as Fletcher, Mellors, and a
young subaltern went through the monthly mail.
All at once, a sudden order to halt, issued by the _Hausa_ sentry on
duty at the top of the balcony steps, made the three Englishmen look
up.
A tattered, blood-stained figure was ascending the stairs--a negro
assistant at a trading factory, to judge from his garments. His left
arm was tied up in an unskilful manner in a caked and gory cloth, and
there was a wild, hunted look in his eyes as he stood, swaying with
fatigue, at the top of the steps.
This apparition brought the Englishmen to their feet.
“Hello, my friend, what has happened?” Mellors asked, going quickly
towards the wounded negro.
“They all dead, all dead,” the man gasped. “Massa Barton, Massa Joe,
Congo Sam, Brass Boys. All dead. All but me. I see um die. Killed all
dead. And dem wild mans laugh! Laugh, all time. Laugh like de debil.”
Barton’s was one of the few trading stations scattered throughout the
district; it was a store situated near a big village about twenty
miles away, and run by two brothers of that name.
“Good Lord!” Mellors ejaculated. “It means the whole factory has been
wiped out.”
“I expect it has,” Fletcher replied. “From what this fellow says it
sounds like some of the Hyena’s work.”
“Then we’re in for a lively time if he’s taken it into his head to
prowl round my district,” Mellors said.
Fletcher turned to the negro.
“Tell me all you know,” he said quietly.
Between breathless gasps the story came out--a short one--and the
tactics Fletcher knew very well.
Just before midnight of the preceding day the store had been set on
suddenly by a score of fiends who had risen, so it seemed, from the
earth with howls of mad laughter. He, the speaker, had been cut down
as he fired the alarm, trampled on, and left for dead as the marauders
swept on towards his masters’ sleeping quarters.
Before they returned he had managed to crawl away and hide himself in
the forest. The two Englishmen and their assistants had fought till
the greater force had overpowered them. Then the raiders had set fire
to the factory.
“My aunt! To think that was all going on within twenty miles of us.
And I was playing patience last night because I’d nothing better to
do,” the subaltern said, sorrowfully.
“Well, my son, you’ll have something else to do this evening,” Mellors
rejoined grimly. “You can go along with Fletcher and help him to clean
up the mess at Barton’s place.”
In less than an hour Fletcher and the youngster, with a detachment of
_Hausas_, were en route for Barton’s factory.
It was early afternoon when the expedition left Tuata. For the first
twelve miles they went along a narrow path in the silent forest, which
twisted, like an endless snake, between immense towering trees all
festooned and matted together by a mass of parasitic growths. There
were patches of swamp on the route, rudely bridged by half-submerged
trunks of trees, covered again with small boughs and rushes to make a
safe passage across the quaking bog that lay, black and green-patched,
stretching away beneath a low arch of twining vegetation.
Twilight gathered early in the green shade of this dense forest,
bringing with it the usual thick miasma. The last glimmer of daylight
vanished by the time the journey was rather more than half completed.
Fletcher called a halt for rest and refreshments, before pushing on
into the thick blackness.
The journey was started again, the party proceeding in single file,
the captain leading. It was a dark night, with a saturating mist; no
glimmer of starlight could penetrate the matted growth; and there
would be no moon before the small hours of the morning; even then, no
matter how brilliant the flood of light, only the merest ray would
pierce through into the tangled depths. All around lay the sleeping
forest, its silence broken by the rustle of their movements, the
distant howls of a prowling leopard or the booming of some night-bird.
For nearly half-an-hour they went along, until the most intricate part
of the trail was reached; a tangle so thick and overgrown that even in
single file they had great difficulty in pushing through.
Then, suddenly, without the least warning, a blaze of fire was opened
on them, lighting up the mist and night with its flare. It was
followed by a screech of hideous mirth, a roar of devil’s laughter,
the snarl of a hundred maddened beasts.
Fletcher knew that sound only too well.
A brief, grim, death-struggle began. Shadows fought with shadows in a
shadowy mist. Shrieks and yells, groans and hoarse commands, dull
yellow flashes and the clang of steel, came from every side. It was a
nightmare of blackness and blood, fog, fire and ghastly yells.
Fletcher’s little force fought with the madness of cornered creatures;
but they were surrounded, split up, outnumbered easily three to one.
All at once a red-hot something seemed to sear Fletcher’s brain, and
in its train came an all-prevailing silence.
There followed a vista of pain and heat and thirst. When consciousness
returned he was being jogged along in a litter; all was darkness, yet
the twitter of birds and other daylight sounds reached him. He tried
to move his right arm, but it appeared to be fixed to his side. Any
attempt to raise the left resulted in excruciating agony.
Slowly events came back to him, bringing in their wake a suppressed
shudder; for he realized he had fallen into the hands of the Hyena!
He lay wondering how long it was since the ambush, and why, instead of
killing him, his captor had nursed him back to life. A sudden chill
swept away the feverish heat enveloping him as the fate of other white
officers who had fallen alive into the hands of the Hyena rushed back
to his mind.
A halt roused him. The cloth screening his eyes was removed, his
uninjured arm loosened. Weakly he raised himself and inspected his
surroundings. The interior of a native hut met his gaze, the door
guarded by a trio of savages. By his side lay the subaltern, moaning
and gazing round with fevered blue eyes.
A glance told Fletcher the boy was past saying anything. Swaying with
weakness, he struggled to his feet and, aided by the walls, tottered
to the door, his first instinct to get an idea of his surroundings.
The three on guard there quickly gave him to understand he was not to
go outside. He sat down again, too weak and dazed to argue the matter.
As he sat, limp and sagging on a packing case, brooding on the
situation, a movement of the guard roused him. His gaze went to a
figure just entering. And remained there.
The man was one he had grown to know very well during the voyage out
on the _Batava_, as spotless and immaculate now, in well-cut white
drill and broad, sombrero hat, as he had been when he strolled up and
down the deck, alone and aloof; or stood talking in a half-bored,
half-amused manner, to the girl whose voice could stop his stealthy,
caged-lion march, whose presence banished the habitual expression of
contempt his face wore when she was not about.
Lebrassa crossed the hut, and, ignoring Fletcher completely, knelt by
the side of the moaning boy. He dressed the lad’s wounds and
readjusted the bandages with a care and gentleness that left Fletcher
marveling.
The mulatto seemed to feel his prisoner’s fixed gaze. Presently he
looked round, the cruel lines about his mouth deepening.
“You notice I’ve a liking for blue eyes, Captain Fletcher,” he said.
“If your ravings are to be believed, it’s a weakness we share in
common.”
The Englishman knew quite well what Lebrassa was hinting at, and he
ignored the remarks.
Presently Lebrassa got up and came to his side.
“With your permission I’ll dress your shoulder too,” he said suavely.
“Dr. Hillman, my surgeon, has just started for Europe on a very
important mission, so his duties fall to my lot. I’m afraid my men
mauled you about pretty severely and I’ve a reason for wanting you
whole. However, as it happened, it made no difference, except that
you’ve missed three days’ appreciation of my scheme of exchange and
barter.”
Fletcher still ignored his captor.
“I’ve been impatiently awaiting your return to reason,” Lebrassa
continued, “so that I can tell you, among other things, that Barton’s
factory was _not_ raided by me. I merely wanted you to go that way
because the path offered the best ambush in the district of Tuata. My
messenger played his part well, and you very kindly walked into my
trap. I’ve been most anxious to meet you. I thought you might be able
to give me Miss Graham’s address. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me
freely. But you’re sufficiently versed in my methods to know I can use
ways of extracting information perhaps not recognized by the British
Army.”
Much as Lebrassa tried, he could not keep a note of savage hate from
leaking into the suave, friendly tone he had adopted.
“You black devil!” Fletcher cried. “You may torture me till Doomsday,
but I won’t tell you where she is.”
The mulatto laughed, low and fierce, and with intense satisfaction.
“I admire your sentiments,” he said. “However, the circumstances are
now beyond you. Mental tortures, I know from personal experience,
exceed any amount of physical pain. This, I think, will explain what I
mean.”
From his pocket Lebrassa drew a packet of bloodstained letters and
dropped them on Fletcher’s knee. They had on them Portuguese stamps,
and the writing was Leslie’s.
Blankly Fletcher stared at the package.
“I came across these when I searched your unconscious body,” Lebrassa
continued. “They told me all I wanted to know. I may add that as soon
as I learnt Miss Graham’s address I sent Dr. Hillman as special envoy
to her, offering your life in exchange for herself.”
Fletcher was beyond speech. One hand went across his brow as he gazed
at the letters on his knee. Letters he had treasured and always
carried about with him. Letters that would put Leslie again into the
Hyena’s hands!
As the meaning of it all penetrated his dazed brain, a sudden desire
to do murder seized him. Everything passed from him--the knowledge of
his own wounds and weakness, the giant strength of his captor. A red
cloud surrounded him, and out of it a dark face looked with savage
hatred and mocking triumph.
He staggered to his feet and made a dash at the other’s brown,
muscular throat, heedless of the excruciating agony of his shoulder.
For his effort tore the wound open and brought the blood pouring down
his arm.
A push from Lebrassa sent him reeling backwards. Sick with pain and
the sense of his own helplessness, he sank back weakly onto the
packing case, and with a stifled groan buried his face in his hands.
CHAPTER XXI
“_Let me gather a little strength to think,_
_As one who reels on the outermost brink,_
_To the innermost gulf descending._”
In a summer-house of one of the several châlets perched up among
the Cintra mountains sat Leslie. Far below was a vista of hill and
dale, forests of cork and chestnut, groves of orange, lemon and olive
trees, white villages and red, ploughed fields and, in the distance,
the silver sea and Lisbon.
Behind towered rock-strewn heights, standing black and sinister
against the sunlit sky, their craggy sides patched with somber pines
and firs. Suspended like a jewel in the heavens, was the Palacio da
Pena (the Palace of Sorrow), with its three golden domes flashing in
the clear blue sky.
Nearly a fortnight ago Leslie’s employers had sent her up to their
mountain resort. For suddenly she had become pale and thin, had lost
interest in her duties and in the round of gaieties which fell to her
lot as companion to one of the most popular women in Lisbon. In fact,
she was again the sad-eyed, listless girl who had come to Lisbon
nearly a year before on Major Harding’s recommendation.
Yet this sudden lack of energy was not due to overmuch dancing in the
Portuguese capital as her employers suspected. It resulted from an
item seen in the month-old paper now lying on her knee--a curt notice
of an occurrence that frequently happens in the running of an Empire.
“News comes from Tuata, Northern Nigeria, of the death of two British
officers, Captain Lindsay Fletcher and Lieutenant Paul Vincent. They,
and a small company of _Hausas_, were ambushed and massacred by a
party of natives. The whole of the British force was annihilated. The
bodies of the _Hausas_ were recovered, but no trace of the murdered
officers’ bodies has been found.”
Inside the folded newspaper were ten letters from West Africa, all
written by Fletcher--letters with a curious air of restraint about
them.
Over a year had passed since Leslie had said good-by to Dr. Atherley.
Her new life in a strange land, with its round of pleasures and slight
duties, together with the kindness and consideration of her new
friends, had eased the blow of Molly’s tragic end. Lebrassa she still
thought of with a shudder. But as time passed he faded somewhat from
her mind and was no longer the constant, haunting specter he had been
during the early months following her departure from West Africa.
She sat, white and tearless, thinking of the man she loved, murdered
out in darkest Africa, wondering, in a numb, heartbroken way, why the
world went on just as usual.
As she sat there brooding, the approach of a servant, with a letter on
a salver, roused her.
Picking it up, she glanced at the envelope. The postmark was Lisbon,
re-addressed to her from her employers’ house there. The writing was
vaguely familiar, yet she could not put it down to any one of her
acquaintances in that city.
Thinking it must be some invitation she opened it. She drew out no
card, but thin sheets of foreign correspondence paper. The opening
phrase brought a gasp of alarm to her lips. Quickly she turned it over
and looked at the signature.
It was one she had seen before, on a letter that had come to her
eighteen months ago in London--a brief note telling her the name of
the boat that was to take her to West Africa, the time of sailing and
the best train to Liverpool.
“_Essel Lebrassa._”
Big and all-powerful the name looked back at her, blinding her to
everything but the fact of its presence.
With wide, dilated eyes she scanned the letter her shaking hands held.
_Little White Rose_,
There is so much I want to tell you, that I want you to believe, that
I would have told you, but you fled away from me. Why did you, Leslie?
I thought I had been through most of the phases of mental agony this
existence can offer, but the knowledge that you were out in that
driving gale, battling with wind and rain through miles of forest, and
that fear of me had sent you there, caused me the deepest suffering I
have yet known. You will not believe me when I say that the greatest
joy of my life was when I heard you had recovered from the effects of
that night. Yet I am such a savage. I am writing to you now to make
you come back to me.
Little friend, you once had so much sympathy. Why did you take it from
me? Just when I needed it most. When you knew me for who I was, the
depths of vile blackness in me, the red flood wherein I had sought
oblivion. And some of the white, too, that _you_ could always bring to
the top.
I was a brute that night. I think I touched the bottom of a seemingly
bottomless hell. I would have injured the little girl who trusted me.
But your scorn and contempt maddened me, roused every atom of the vile
black blood in me.
There was a time--so long ago that I had almost forgotten it until I
met you--when I tried to conquer every evil passion the negro blood
brought with it. And I succeeded. Yet it proved no use. All I had been
working for was swept from me by an act of treachery, by a man who
should have been my best friend. I left England for Africa, went back
to a heritage I knew was mine, where I was welcomed and worshipped as
a god and Sultan, not an object of contempt, as I was in your country,
to be sneered at and called a “nigger,” and treated as though I were
immeasurably beneath the poorest white trash civilization produces.
I was not twenty when I left the white world, to take up every rite
and custom of my mother’s people, and very bitter against my father’s
race because they had dealt out to me nothing but sneers and insults
and injustice.
I had once hoped to make a name for myself, not in the way I have
since done, but honorably. My birth and one man’s crime barred me out
from that, so I tried another way, and succeeded. I think I am born
for success, provided there is no honor attached to it. I tried to win
you honorably, Leslie, though you will not believe me. And all the
time I knew how poor my chance was. You were mine, more mine even than
you know, the white side of me that had come back embodied in an angel
who had deigned to be my friend.
I want to tell you, little rose, of the worship and adoration in my
heart. Yet I know you have no wish to hear it. No pleading or love I
could offer would bring you to me willingly, as I had once hoped,
foolishly, wildly. Your white hands had touched me gently once or
twice with such sympathy and understanding, that I dared to think you
might give yourself into my keeping.
I was always a dreamer, Leslie, and always rudely awakened. I had
forgotten what I was--a creature black and bloodstained. Such a flood
of blood and blackness that it swept away the one friend life had
given me; one I would have chosen had fate made me as other men.
I must have the one pure thing that has come into this nightmare life
of mine. I am so thirsty down here at the bottom of my black hell,
thirstier than ever before for goodness and purity. My little angel
knows the truth about me; no small white hands will touch me willingly
again; no rose will flood me with its sweetness.
Because of the vile depths of blackness in me, I must make a bargain
with the whiteness that has spurned me.
Little Rose, I hold a life in my hand. I will give it to you in
exchange for yourself. A man’s life for one sweet white flower from an
English garden. One whom you now call “friend,” as you once called me.
It is Captain Fletcher.
What a threat to use! One that will make you loathe and despise me
more utterly than ever. I am a brute even to my most cherished
treasure, whom I would have know only the best in me, but to whom Fate
has determined to show the worst.
Captain Fletcher is my prisoner, not dead, as will be reported, but
captured by me with but one motive--to learn your whereabouts. If you
will come to me his life is yours--his and that of his brother officer
whom I took at the same time. The day you arrive at Kallu they will be
sent back to the nearest British station. If you refuse to come they
both die. It is for you to choose. Even if you refuse to come, you
cannot escape me. I know where you are now. My servants will be
watching your every movement, awaiting an opportunity to trap you and
bring you out here. The first is the quicker method, that is why I
have adopted it. I am so hungry for you; so hungry to have my little
English rose set in the sweetest garden earth holds. And I must make a
further compact with my rose, lest she betray me.
I have sent a guardian to Lisbon for you, Dr. Hillman, who, for the
next week will wait all day in the Rocio. If you are willing to give
yourself in exchange for Captain Fletcher, you have only to stand by
the statue in the middle, with a white rosebud in your hand. He will
give you another letter. You must do what it says, and say nothing to
any one of where you are going. You will come out to Africa as his
daughter. There will be eyes watching you always. Any attempt on your
part to betray either me or my servant will result in Captain
Fletcher’s death.
How can I expect you to do anything but hate and loathe me? I am the
Sultan of Kallu, with ten thousand souls to treat as I please, yet I
am the son of an English nobleman, an upright and honorable man who
would have had me the same, but he reckoned without my mother and the
race of savage rulers she sprang from. _You_ can keep me the son of my
father, even after twenty years of savagery, if you will. Be my sweet
angel of pity, as you once were. Don’t drive me quite back to
barbarism, Leslie. Try to have toleration and pity on your side. Love
I could not hope for, but just a little something, dearest, that would
hold us together outside the power of my arms.
Essel Lebrassa.
With trembling hands Leslie put the letter down. The first feeling
that came out of the chill, sick daze enveloping her was one of relief
to know Fletcher was alive. The full meaning of what the price of his
life meant she was too stunned to realize. She only knew he was not
dead and that she could save him.
None of the pathos and the pleading in the letter came to her.
CHAPTER XXII
“_Mask more subtle, and disguise_
_Far less shallow, thou dost need, O_
_Traitor, to deceive my eyes._”
Mammy Illa and her little brown piccaninny were well known on the
steamers that plied up and down the West Coast of Africa. It was
nearly eighteen months since she had first appeared among the batch of
native women who boarded the vessels at Sierra Leone for the purpose
of disposing of various articles of local manufacture to the European
passengers.
She stood now in a corner by the gangway of an outward-bound British
steamer, picturesquely clad in a full, short-sleeved bodice and skirt
of gaily printed blue and yellow cotton cloth. Around her were
arranged carved calabashes, baskets and mats of all shapes made from
crudely dyed rushes, plaited and twisted leather-work, a few pieces of
carved ivory, and roughly made trinkets of gold.
In the midst of all these wares sat a solemn-eyed mite of a girl.
All the world, black and white, who passed up and down to West Africa
could be seen in that first port of call on the coast. And this Yoni
knew when, under an alias, she made her way there.
The town lay behind her now, a delightful little place situated at the
foot, and half-way up, a mountain. It was criss-crossed with red
streets where grew brightly flowering shrubs, tall grass and cocoanut
palms. On the hill at the back, airy bungalows nestled among lime,
lemon and orange trees, with now and again a cluster of fluttering
bananas, a vivid red acacia looking like a splash of fire, or an odd
patch of quaint, stiff cacti with brilliant scarlet and yellow
flowers, all backed by the eternal, glowing green of West Africa, and
set under a sky of blazing blue.
Yoni had no eyes for the treacherous beauty of her native land. Her
gaze was on the passengers. One especially--an overdressed negro in
gray flannels, scarlet tie, and panama hat with a ribbon to match, who
had just emerged from the saloon.
Five months before she had seen him pass out from Africa. On that
occasion she had claimed no acquaintance, knowing there were reasons
that would account for his departure from his native land. But she
could not reconcile herself to his return. Moreover, there was an air
of triumph about him that gave her a feeling of uneasiness.
As Nanza stood by the saloon doorway, a voice speaking in a dialect
probably no other person on board understood, made him turn sharply.
“What are you doing here, my brother?” it was asking.
For a moment he stared at his sister in speechless astonishment. Then
a cunning look crossed his face.
“And you, Yoni?” he asked. “Why do you stand at the gate of Africa,
watching?”
“I have watched these eighteen months,” she replied. “I saw you pass
out, but I did not speak, knowing there would be bitterness in your
heart against me, for my jealousy nearly caused your death. Now I see
you return. Is it safe for you to do so?”
Nanza smiled tigerishly.
“I would stand well in the sight of our cousin, the Lord of Doomana,”
he replied. “So I made a journey to England searching for the lost
Star, by her recovery hoping to attain again his favor. It is not well
to have a Sultan of Kallu as an enemy, and I am hungry for my own
land.”
“It was you then, who found her,” Yoni said with well-feigned
surprise. “She was here but a week ago, and with her was the white
doctor. It was a small Star, white and frozen, who has no love for the
Ruler of the Night. Nor have you, or I, Nanza. I want revenge on the
Sultan, yea, and on the Star too, who stole his heart from me.”
Yoni had spoken to one of Leslie’s unofficial bodyguards. She knew
Nana was in no way responsible for the girl’s return. Now she wanted
to find out why her brother had returned to Africa, and what he was
doing.
Yoni’s act of many months before, which had resulted in Nanza’s first
appearance in any spot approaching civilization, was the proceeding of
a woman scorned. Nanza’s counter-action of staying in Calabar and
playing the spy had made her realize that he was likely to develop
into something more than a jealous woman’s tool, a means of extracting
information she had been unable to obtain from Cooper. In fact, her
brother had seemed likely to develop into a menace to the Sultan.
Nanza’s departure from Africa left her with a feeling of relief. But
his return filled her with fears concerning the safety of her god and
Sultan. All the more because she knew Nanza had lied to her concerning
the reason of his visit to England.
“Was it vengeance that took you to England?” she asked. “If so, I
would like to help you.”
It was news to Nanza that Leslie had been found. But he did not tell
his sister so.
“If you want vengeance, why did you give evidence in favor of what our
cousin said that night in Calabar?” he asked.
“I’m only a woman. I feared he might slay me if I spoke against the
Star. And for the sake of vengeance I desired to live. The Lord of
Doomana was deceived by my action, thinking me then, as always, his
slave. So deceived that he left the Star in my keeping. Then my moment
came and I let her escape. For _your_ sake, Nanza, so that you might
still be the heir. Now you have brought the Star back to the Ruler of
the Night! Who knows what will please a man? And I am in ill-favor all
round. For it is not good to withhold from a Sultan of Kallu the woman
he desires.”
“Nor is it good to withhold from the people of Kallu the blood that is
their due,” Nanza answered, in a tone of savage hate.
Yoni’s face assumed an air of abject terror.
“My brother will not betray me. What I did was from love of you. And
for that piece of treachery to the Lord of Doomana my life is
forfeit.”
As Nanza watched his sister his suspicions died away.
“It was a bad day for you, Yoni, when our cousin went to England on
the trail of vengeance, for he found the trail of love too. They were
so mixed, those two, that we of Kallu could not tell one from the
other until the Sultan gave us his word. And then, _of course_, we
doubted no longer. But now the Star has returned, and all will be
well.”
Two great tears trickled down Yoni’s face.
“It is well for you who have found her. Now you can return home in
honor. I, too, am hungry for my own people, and am shut out from them
forever,” she replied mournfully.
Nanza laughed.
“Who knows?” he said. “Even a sultan may die.”
With that he sauntered off.
Yoni watched him go, convinced that he knew something that might harm
her god. And the knowledge made her determined to warn the Sultan.
CHAPTER XXIII
“_Good night!--and--Good-by!_”
The first red beam shot out of the east, sending the rich fiery glow
of dawning day over a vista of densely wooded country, breaking up the
thick veil of mist that night had drawn over the landscape. The
growing light showed an endless stretch of matted forest with only one
break as far as the eye could reach. There the marble ruins of a once
great city glinted; but time had broken it almost beyond recognition,
and vegetation was swallowing the little that remained.
White carved columns stood side by side with those of Nature’s
rearing; great arches and the scattered stones of city walls stretched
away under deep, gloomy vaults of towering trees; graceful, fluttering
palms grew among the ruins of marble palaces. It was the remains of
one of those mystic, haunting cities occasionally met with by those
who probe the all-devouring forest wastes that comprise so much of
West Africa.
There was still life in one corner of this shattered city; one patch
the all-shrouding vegetation had not yet covered up.
Within a huge walled garden a tiny palace showed, Moorish in design
and of a recent era. It had graceful horse-shoe arches, columned
balconies and beautiful carved arabesque windows opening on to a
center courtyard smothered with roses. There fountains played, and
orange trees, white with blossom, shaded carved stone seats.
This miniature palace was set in a great shady garden full of winding
walks, unexpected fountains and deep, still pools where gold and
silver fish flashed among the roots of pink, white and blue
water-lilies. Roses, from the deepest red to pure white, vied in
sweetness with the sensual perfume of a thousand tropical flowers.
Palms, mangoes and bread-fruit trees cast a welcome shade over patches
of violets. Wistarias showered down a flood of petals on whispering
bamboo, and trailing jessamine found support around the trunks of
grotesque, spiky-leaved dragon trees.
The whole of this little paradise was walled by twenty feet of marble,
with only one entrance--a gilded gate that flashed in the rising sun.
Outside the screening walls were scores of rude huts. From these came
a busy hum. Wild, black figures flitted to and fro, and were lost
among the ruins; others sat on the ground polishing knives and spears
and shields, until they vied with the sunshine.
There was an air of savage gaiety over everything--no suggestion of
the warfare the industrious polishing of weapons might have led one to
expect. The Hyena’s following, when they went out to battle, were
armed with something very different from the crude spears, shields and
knives they cleaned amidst loud laughter and many jokes; but they all
agreed these made a better show than white man’s weapons, and who had
ever heard of a Sultan’s bride entering Kallu save under an arch of
spears held by the picked men of her lord’s army.
So broad-bladed spears were cleaned, and heavy, elephant-hide shields,
with flashing brass knobs, polished with a right good-will.
Had not the Ruler of the Night at last found the Star that was his
heart’s delight? Gossip, grunts, comments, much laughter and friendly
bantering went on, whilst the old-fashioned weapons grew ever
brighter, and the stacks of wood for bonfires ever higher.
Twenty miles away, in the deep green gloom of the forest, unconscious
of the celebrations which were to be held in her honor, Leslie was
sitting in the tent that had been her home for over six weeks.
To her the months since receiving Lebrassa’s letter had been a kind of
mental paralysis. Now an incident had occurred which made her realize
how close the dread future was.
On the table beside her lay a letter, and a bunch of roses held
together by a thick, heavy bracelet of red-gold with diamonds
sparkling like stars on its surface--the first gift of the Sultan to
his bride.
The flowers, bracelet and letter were lying there, untouched, half an
hour later when Hillman entered to tell the girl the last stage of her
journey was about to start.
Wearily Leslie rose, to be assisted into the hammock that had borne
her daily for more than six weeks.
With the approaching end of her journey had come the haunting fear
that Lebrassa might _not_ keep his side of the bargain. Even now the
man she had come to save might have been killed. It was hardly likely
the Hyena would let such a determined enemy as Captain Fletcher live
and go free.
These facts passed through Leslie’s mind as she was jogged along in
the hammock. Assuming her lover were still alive, she was trying to
think out some way of saving him from the result of her own folly and
his enemy’s vengeance.
There _was_ one way of making sure of Captain Fletcher’s safety. But
it meant such a long vista of horror for her--not the quick way of
death she had decided on.
As the afternoon wore on, the forest grew less dense, and more
sunshine dribbled through the matted branches. A desire to meet her
fate standing seized Leslie. She raised herself on her elbow and
looked round for her guardian.
The movement brought Hillman to her side.
“What is it, Miss Graham?” he asked.
“I’d like to walk the rest of the way.”
The doctor looked at her in the manner he frequently had used since
their first meeting in Lisbon--as if wondering why his patron should
run such risks in order to get this white-faced wraith of a girl into
his possession.
“You can hardly do that,” he answered. “We’ve still two miles to go.”
“I want to walk. I can’t stay here any longer.”
A voice that would be very powerful in Kallu had stated its desire.
The doctor helped Leslie from her litter. Then the procession started
again, following in the wake of the two.
The girl had no idea how long she walked.
She seemed hardly to have left the hammock when the path widened and
scattered blocks of masonry showed up. The trees grew farther and
farther apart and, between them, ruins loomed. She went on, wondering
why the sun was shining, why it was not all as black as her own
future.
Presently the world became a brilliant flood of golden light, that
flashed on a long avenue of spears.
She was aware the doctor left her just as the first two silent, black
warriors were reached. There seemed an endless double row of them, all
watching her, all black, all with rolling, blood-shot eyes.
As she entered the arch of spears, the wild war-cry greeted her.
With set, white face she went on, thinking the savage roar would
follow her into eternity, and emerged into a wide, open square. Marble
walls and a glittering gate formed one side, the other three were
living walls--an excited, eager crowd, all watching her, all shouting.
The dazzling glare of tropical sunshine did not blind her to a man
coming toward her, bareheaded, the only person there in European
dress.
Lebrassa halted beside her, gazing intently at her white, scornful
face.
“May I say ‘Welcome to Kallu,’ little rose?” he asked with a touch of
pleading.
There was no reply.
A light breeze sighed through the forest, bringing with it the excited
whisper of thousands watching the meeting of their Sultan and his
bride.
“Have you no word for me, little friend?”
“I want to see--Captain Fletcher,” Leslie said in a breathless way.
Evidently Lebrassa expected this. Putting a hand lightly on her
shoulder, he guided her across the square toward a point where mud and
palm leaf dwellings showed. Like a receding wave, the crowd swept back
as they approached. Beyond was a group of palm trees; beneath them a
two-roomed hut, around the door of which half a dozen savages mounted
guard.
The sight of the sentries broke up some of the haze in which Leslie
was submerged. Their presence indicated that Captain Fletcher was not
dead as she had feared. She pulled her benumbed faculties together for
the great effort of saving him.
She quickened her pace, heedless of the black figures closing up to
block the entrance, stopping only when she realized she could not pass
them and that they had no intention of moving.
So far Lebrassa had given no signal for the guard to admit her. He
stood waiting for the request to come from her. This Leslie quickly
grasped, for she looked at him haughtily. Just then other matters than
the horror of himself were in her mind.
“Tell them to move,” she said coldly.
He made a gesture, nothing more than a slight movement of his hand,
and the way was cleared. For the first time the girl realized how
all-powerful he was. Also it gave her the feeling that a word of hers
could move him as easily as he had moved the barrier. The full extent
of the influence she had over him dawned on her, and she determined to
use all means within her power to save her countrymen.
The sound of her sweet cool voice made the two men sitting within the
hut start up. Fletcher’s face, worn and haggard, was turned towards
the door, as he stood, bound and helpless, watching the entering
couple.
To Leslie, as she crossed the hut, there was only one thing left in
the world--the man she loved. A man with a tired, hopeless face and
weary eyes. She went up to him, to stand holding his bound arms
tightly.
“Why did you come, little one?” Fletcher asked hoarsely. “I’d hoped,
prayed, you wouldn’t.”
There was no reply, but the clutch of the small hands on his arms
tightened.
Vincent’s husky voice roused her to the fact of his existence.
“You shouldn’t have come, Miss Graham, whatever that black brute
threatened.”
Wistfully she smiled at him. He was a nice-looking youngster, so fresh
and fair and Anglo Saxon; no boy of his type would ever come into her
life again. She was glad he was there. Just then it was easier to talk
to a stranger than to Captain Fletcher.
“If I hadn’t come, it would have made no difference. I should have
been here sooner or later, once he knew where I was.”
Her brave strained voice brought a stifled groan to the youngster’s
lips, and the look of deadly pain in Fletcher’s eyes deepened.
From outside came the excited hum of the crowd, an occasional jabber
from the sentries, with now and again the crude blast of a horn or the
beating of tom-toms, and, above all, the sleepy sigh of trees stirred
by the breeze of sunset.
A black bar fell across the flood of golden light streaming in at the
doorway. Leslie shivered, as if with sudden cold. Her eyes left
Fletcher’s worn face and went to the mulatto. And there they stayed
with desperate, scornful gaze.
“Mr. Lebrassa,” she said in a stiff, cold voice, “you promised me
these two lives if I came here, but I know you won’t keep your word.
Death is a quick way out of my troubles. Yet--if I know that Captain
Fletcher and Lieutenant Vincent really reach safety I… I’ll promise
not to kill myself in order to get away from you.”
“Don’t bargain with him, darling,” Fletcher broke out hoarsely. “Don’t
bind yourself down to hell because of us.”
At her words the least flicker of feeling crossed Lebrassa’s face.
“I suppose you won’t believe me when I say I’ve no intention of
breaking our bargain,” he said. “What proof would satisfy you these
two officers really reach safety?”
“If Captain Fletcher sends a letter back with a message I give him
now, privately, signed by himself and Lieutenant Vincent and the
officers of the outpost they reach.”
Leslie spoke in a hard, forced way, as if the plan were one
desperation had forced on her.
“Very well. I’ll give you three minutes alone,” Lebrassa answered.
He turned to the youngster.
“Come outside with me, Vincent,” he commanded.
When the two left the hut, Leslie stood looking up at Fletcher with
eyes full of love. There was no need for disguise now, when the whole
world ended with his departure.
The knowledge of her position and his own helplessness was beyond the
man’s strength. He dropped on to a bench, his haggard, distorted face
pressed against the rough mud wall, to hide from her the tears that
agony had brought to his eyes.
Putting her arms about his neck, she drew his head on her shoulder,
trying to kiss away his pain.
A movement outside made her arms tighten.
“Kiss me just once, to show you don’t despise me,” she whispered.
“Then say, ‘Good night, dear, and--good-by.’ Will you put that in your
letter, ‘Good night and Good-by’?”
A few minutes later a little procession--two Englishmen, with an
escort of negroes--set out into the forest. In the center of the
square Leslie stood, heedless of the man beside her, watching Fletcher
until he was lost in the shadows.
CHAPTER XXIV
“_My story is told as, long ago,_
_My story was told to me._”
To Leslie, as the little procession disappeared, came the feeling
that had assailed her when she had first landed in Calabar--that of
all known things gliding away from her.
Presently, out of the world of unreality surrounding her, a voice
came.
“Come, little rose, let me take you where you can rest and have tea.”
In a dazed manner she looked up at Lebrassa.
“You can’t stand here any longer,” he said gently. “You must come with
me now.”
There was nothing else to do but obey.
Like one numbed, she walked with him up to the gilded gates, and on
through a maze of flowers and trees until a building was reached. She
passed through an arch into a room--a room all white and green, with
marble floor and walls, and little fountains dripping into carved
shells filled with ferns. There were alcoves draped with glistening
gauze and heavy silver lamps hung from the ceiling. The place had no
windows, but all one side was columned arches around which roses
twined.
Leslie noticed nothing of her surroundings. Lebrassa took her across
to one of the curtained alcoves, and held the silver gauze aside so
that she might pass through. She looked at his brown hand, so dark
against the curtain, wondering why it left no red stain on the
whiteness.
Beyond was a door. This he opened.
“You’ll find all you want in there, Leslie. Then you must come back to
me and have tea.”
The place proved to be an ordinary bedroom which, but for the mosquito
net drawn round the bed, the marble floor and walls, and the fretted
arches screened with reed blinds, might have been any girl’s room in
far-away England.
Taking off her hat, she sank down on one of the chairs and stayed
there, with hands clasped tightly on her knee.
A knock roused her. A woman entered--a negress in a loose, blue cotton
smock, with big, gold hoops in her ears.
Guessing the woman to be an emissary from her captor, Leslie rose, and
went through the shimmering draperies into the room beyond.
Her entrance made Lebrassa, who was bending over a tea-table, look
around.
“Sit down,” he said gently.
She sank down on the nearest lounge. And there she stayed, watching
him hostilely. The thought of Captain Fletcher’s safety had lessened
her own burden of horror.
Presently he came to her side, a cup of tea in one hand, in the other
a cake-stand with various dishes of assorted dainties.
“Tea, Leslie,” he said.
She took the cup he was offering. And then sat holding it, forgetting
it was there.
How silent the room was! No sound but dripping water and this man’s
soft movements. She could quite understand Molly’s hell now!
His voice broke into her thoughts.
“Now, what would you like?”
She looked, not at the array of dainties he was offering, but at the
swarthy face above them.
“Nothing, thank you.”
Her voice must have lashed him with its depths of scorn and aversion.
But no flicker of feeling came to his face.
“Drink your tea then,” he said quietly. “Afterwards we’ll talk.”
Turning away, he went to one of the arches leading out into a center
courtyard. There he lounged, his gaze fixed in an unseeing manner on
the beauty outside.
He looked so thoroughly English as he stood there, his face half
turned away, his hands deep in his pockets, so that she could not see
their darkness, that again Leslie had the feeling of moving in some
ghastly nightmare. She could still hardly realize _he_ was the Hyena.
Mr. Lebrassa! A man she had once liked and been drawn to!
The sound of her cup being put on a table, roused him. With a quick,
feverish movement he crossed to where she sat. There was a moment of
quivering silence as he stood with one hand on the back of her chair,
watching her hungrily.
“I suppose your mind is made up to hate and despise me,” he said
tensely.
“Do you expect me to do anything else?” she asked, in a cold, scornful
manner.
“I expect a lot from you, Leslie. And, since you’ve driven me to it,
I’ll tell you why.”
Then from Lebrassa’s lips came a flood of words, low, fierce and
passionate.
“I’ve had the world’s scorn and contempt, Leslie, but I won’t have
yours. God knows I would not smirch the whiteness of my rose. I don’t
like to tell you what I’m about to tell you now. It’s no story for a
girl’s ears. But I want so much from you, and you will give me nothing
willingly. Not a grain of pity. Not a shred of toleration. Not a
shadow of the sympathy that was so sweet. Nothing but scorn, contempt
and aversion--what all your color have dealt out to me.”
As if gathering his words together he stopped for a moment.
“Do you think I should have become the brute I am without a reason?”
he asked. “Don’t you know me well enough to have asked yourself that
question? Have you never wondered why I took that letter?”
There was no answer.
“_Your_ signature on the envelope made me take it, Leslie. I’d been
looking for someone of that name for years. And I’ll tell you why. It
started forty-five years ago, with a man’s desire for travel and
romance. There were two brothers, orphans, sons of an English
nobleman, the last of an old family. The elder was twenty-five when
his father died, the other twenty-two. Even at that age the younger
one’s life had been so vicious that his father had disinherited him.
Yet his brother stood by him, paid off his debts and gave him a fresh
start in life. Then the elder one followed his own bent. He was by
nature an artist and a dreamer, a brave man who loved travel and
adventure, and the wild romance civilization cannot bring. Fate
brought him out to Africa, to the heart of the unknown. There was a
queen reigning there, in the corner of a ruined city, a girl barely
fifteen. She was the daughter of an African Sultan and his chief wife,
a negress with a dash of white blood in her. This young queen was a
girl of great beauty, resembling more her unknown white ancestors than
her negro parents. See, Leslie, here she is! Irena, Queen of Kallu,
Daughter of the Stars.”
Lebrassa drew aside a curtain screening an alcove near.
A life-size portrait was behind, a picture of a girl with a tawny,
yellow skin, who looked like a lovely purring tigress. But her great,
black eyes smiled out at the world, full of love and tenderness.
The artist had been clever and realistic, for the stars flashing among
her wealth of black curls glittered with gold-dust put on before the
paint had dried. Golden armlets, strewn with golden stars, glistened
against her golden skin. A robe of purple gauze, like the darkest
night, draped her from shoulder to ankle, scarcely hiding the golden
sheen of herself. Stars held the sleeveless garment on her tawny
shoulders, and were strewn about its hem. On her softly rounded bosom
was a golden ornament, the shape of a hyena’s head, with lips curled
back on a vicious snarl over tiny white fangs, and green eyes that
leered diabolically.
She stood, a daughter of Sultans, proudly smiling, a slim girl, like a
golden reed, draped in the garment of the night, with the crest of her
race on her bosom.
The curtain dropped, and Lebrassa’s low, tense voice started again.
“Her European ancestry was shown in more than her light skin and
unusual beauty. It was shown in her aversion to marry with any of the
negro chieftains from neighboring districts. And this Englishman was
brought to her, a prisoner found trespassing on her lands--the first
white man she had seen. She was a queen. The priests desired her
marriage. If her choice fell on this stranger, a man fair-skinned,
with hair that gleamed like her golden jewels, was it very surprising?
The surprise was not there, but on the other side. This Englishman,
her prisoner, grew to love her as few women are loved--this wild,
golden girl who had picked him for her consort, this daughter of
savage negro Sultans, Irena, Queen of Kallu. He was a man who honored
and respected women. He took her away, far beyond the bounds of the
corner where she ruled, and married her at a Protestant mission. She
was his legal wife as surely as if she had been an Englishwoman.”
There was a brief pause.
Dark shadows were creeping into the arched recesses of the room.
Lebrassa struck a tiny gong. Its mellow voice brought a soft-footed
servant who lighted the lamps and vanished as noiselessly as he had
appeared. Their glow gave a golden sheen to the purple of advancing
night, a purple that was rapidly growing deeper.
“They came back to Kallu,” Lebrassa went on when the servant had
disappeared. “This little palace he had built from the ruins of a once
great city. And he lived here with his wife, teaching her, dreaming,
and painting. A time came when he was awakened. For something occurred
to the possibility of which I doubt if he had ever given a thought. A
third came into the little paradise he had made for himself and one
other. A problem confronted the dreamer: a problem he had created and
was responsible for. A son was born, heir alike to all that was his
father’s and his mother’s, to light and darkness, to civilization and
barbarism, to English culture and African savagery. But he was a just
man, and he determined his son should have every chance.”
Lebrassa stopped for a moment, then he went on again, but in a quiet,
dreary way.
“A little, a very little of my history I once told you, Leslie, so
pleased that you should wish to hear. I was a year old when my father
took me to England. He did not take me as his son, but under another
name, the one you know me by. Afterwards I kept it, because I couldn’t
prove my claim to a better. I was put into an English clergyman’s
family as a mulatto boy in whom he was interested, to be brought up in
the ways of civilization. I was five years old when I first remember
seeing the man I afterwards knew to be my father. Just when I was
beginning to realize I was not as the other children at the vicarage,
but a nigger. It was some time before I knew all that the word meant,
but I felt it was one of contempt.”
He paused, as if hoping for some word from Leslie. Her gaze was on the
picture. The name “Irena” was familiar. It had been on the golden
armlet she had found among her father’s possessions. It had been on
his lips occasionally, when attacks of raving, which subsequent
knowledge of the world had told her were delirium tremens, had him in
their grip. Although she had no idea what Lebrassa’s confession was
leading up to, a feeling of dire disaster, outside of anything to do
with her being in his power, gradually was creeping over her.
“I remember quite well how I felt when I reached the stage of reading
for myself and crept into the library to find out the meaning of the
word they threw at me in anger,” his voice continued. “The next time
it came from English lips, from a boy two years my senior, I fought
him and made him take his word back. I believe I would have killed
him, for I was a Sultan of Kallu even in those days, but the nurse
separated us. She called me ‘a little black devil’ and locked me in my
room for the rest of the day. A few weeks after this I first saw my
father--my guardian I thought he was. That episode was told him,
together with other instances of uncontrollable temper and childish
arrogance. The short time he stayed in England we spent together. He
explained to me the mixed blood in me. He said he wanted me to grow up
to be an Englishman. He said I must not let my savage instincts
conquer me. That I must learn to control myself, to prove myself
worthy to be called a white man. I knew he liked me, and I loved him.
After that God alone knows how I fought with myself to try to become
the man he wished. As I grew up I fought the white race, but in a
different manner, with my brains. And I always won. I was first in my
studies and in my games. But I still remained ‘that nigger.’ Jealousy
applied the term to me then. I made no friends at school. The boys I
would have liked to be friendly with avoided me. Those who would have
had me for their friend, I avoided. From Africa letters came
frequently, encouraging, helpful letters from the man I loved and was
striving to please.”
Lebrassa’s voice trailed off into silence, to become one with the sigh
of the night wind drifting through the arches.
“I only saw my father three times,” he continued, “the last when I was
about sixteen. I remember how elated I was on that occasion. I’d just
won a scholarship that would take me on to college. I was delighted to
tell my benefactor this, to know I should be no further expense to the
man who had done so much for me. I remember wondering why he laughed
when I told him, and how he told me he would give me a good allowance
in spite of my scholarship. And I knew he was pleased with me, my
success, my control over myself. For he told me I was a ‘white man,’
and how glad he was that he had given me my chance. Then he gave me a
sealed letter, saying he could rely on my word of honor not to open it
until I was eighteen. I sometimes wonder why he did so. But afterwards
I learnt he had a weak heart, and he may have felt his doom was upon
him.”
As if brooding on the long-dead past, Lebrassa paused again.
“I went on to college,” he began. “But at the end of the second term
my allowance stopped. The firm of solicitors who forwarded the money
could tell me nothing except that my patron, Mr. Godfrey--the name I
knew him by--had not sent his usual remittance to them. My scholarship
kept me going. At the bottom of my box was a sealed letter, my most
cherished possession, to be opened when I was eighteen. I was very
honorable in those days, Leslie, too honorable to open that letter
after I had given my word. And you will hear now all that honor did
for me. Had I been less honorable there would have been no Hyena. I
should have been able to outwit my enemy.”
Lebrassa stopped again, as if hoping for some comment from the girl.
But she said nothing.
“I can’t make you understand what that letter was to me, Leslie. It
was a legacy from my lost friend who I felt must be dead. It kept me
silent and uncomplaining under the burden of gibes and insults your
color heaped upon me. Some of the fault may have been mine. At times I
forgot I was a ‘nigger’ and stated my ideas and opinions in a manner
my colleagues would not brook from a person they considered so much
their inferior.”
There was another pause.
From beyond the garden the flare of bonfires lit the sky, and sparks
flew out in golden showers drenching the soft purple of the night. The
wind sighed through the open arches, bringing the scent of roses and
the sound of distant merrymaking--of crowds rejoicing over their
Sultan’s happiness.
Tense and low the mulatto’s voice came again, whispering and sighing
away into the depths of the silent room.
“Then my eighteenth birthday came. And what that letter told me! It
was from a father to a son he was proud of, who he had once thought
might bring dishonor on an ancient name, but who had proved himself
worthy of his heritage. I was not Essel Lebrassa, the bastard son of
a negro woman as I had imagined myself to be, a waif, brought to
England out of charity by a man who desired to experiment. I was Essel
de Tourville, only and legal son of Richard, Earl of Alglenton, heir
to one of the oldest names in England. My existence was known only to
two English people, my father and his brother. There was a lot about
my mother in the letter, and it told me of my African heritage and
where it was situated. I did not want that. It was the English one I
craved, because it took the stigma from me. Shall I tell you of the
dreams I dreamt that night? Not dreams of self-advancement, but of all
I could do for the country I loved in spite of the insults it had
dealt out to me. I would be one of its peers, would have a voice in
its management, could do for it in its African possessions what no
other man could do, understanding so well both the black and white
sides of all the problems different colors bring, having both black
and white in me. They were a boy’s dreams, rudely shattered. The next
morning I was up in Town with the solicitor who had sent me notice of
the cessation of my allowance nearly two years before. I showed him my
letter. He laughed at me. Richard, Earl of Alglenton had died
unmarried and had been succeeded by his brother, the Honorable Lionel
de Tourville. My letter was a hoax. The invention of a madman. It
proved nothing. ‘Would the present peer, knowing the existence of his
brother’s son, have deprived him of his heritage?’ ‘Would the late
Earl of Alglenton have so far forgotten what was due to him as a peer
of England to have legally married a negro woman?’ These and other
questions he put to me, all the time laughing at me. I must produce my
mother’s marriage certificate, my own birth certificate, before I
could expect anyone to listen to a story as mad as mine.”
By now Leslie was looking at Lebrassa in a strained way, her eyes
brought to his by the mention of the names “Richard” and “Alglenton.”
“My faith in my letter was unshaken,” he went on. “I left the office
laughing at myself. In my excitement I had forgotten such things as
certificates were necessary. Then out of the whirl I was moving in,
came another thought. Why had my uncle sent me no news of my father’s
death? Why had he stepped so calmly into my place? I thought no evil
of my father’s brother, and I soon found an answer to my own
questions. It was my father’s wish that all facts should be kept from
me until my eighteenth birthday. My uncle had taken my place to avoid
explanations. I had yet to find out what manner of man I was dealing
with. I decided to go and see my uncle. I consulted a directory and
found my own town address. I found him in my own house. He was a
clever villain. My card was given to him and he had me admitted. I
recognized him at once by his likeness to the Mr. Godfrey I’d known. I
did not expect him to claim me kin until he had seen my father’s
letter. I said why I’d come and brought out my letter. He took it in a
strangely quiet way. I know now that he had no idea I had it. It was
some evidence. Experts could prove that the handwritings of Mr.
Godfrey and Richard, Earl of Alglenton, were identical, the work of
the same man. I was not expecting treachery. I judged him by my
father. I had to learn they were very different. He left me, crossed
to the fire and stood there reading my letter. Then, Leslie, before I
knew what was happening, he had burnt it! Burnt my letter!”
As if the agony of that moment were still upon him, Lebrassa paused.
“Then he turned on me in mockery, asking me what I meant by bringing
such a lunatic’s tale to him. He denied all knowledge of my existence,
of my father’s marriage; of all my letter contained. I was
dumbfounded. Too late I realized the villain I was dealing with. I
knew it was his intention to defraud me, to keep my heritage from me.
Although he had burnt my letter, I knew its contents by heart. In it
had been given cursory information as to the whereabouts of my
mother’s country. But it was enough for me. I determined to go there,
get my certificates and again confront him. During the few days I
remained in England I learnt more of my father and uncle. How my
father had died suddenly of heart disease two days after I’d last seen
him, just as he was about to start out to Africa. No one but my uncle
knew what took him there. Society had long since ceased to talk about
him, dubbing him an eccentric man who preferred the wilds to England.
My uncle spent the year following his brother’s death abroad, before
launching himself as the Earl of Alglenton. I was soon to know how his
time had been spent.”
There was a brief pause. Leslie’s gaze was still on Lebrassa, in a
fixed, anxious manner, as if she dreaded what he might say next.
“God knows, little rose, I wouldn’t tell you this,” he went on in a
strained way, “but I want your love and sympathy. It is my right and
due as surely as was the Earldom of Alglenton.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder, looking down at her hungrily. She
did not shrink from his touch. She did not even know his hand was upon
her. She sat just waiting, petrified, at the knowledge of some
unknown, ghastly horror that was sweeping toward her.
“Within a few days I left England for Africa,” he continued a moment
later. “It was months before I reached Kallu, longing for my unknown
mother, to lay my head on her knee and tell her how they had served
me. And what do you think I found? A tribe of maddened savages. Ten
thousand tongues clamoring for the blood of a white man, the murderer
of their queen. No certificates were needed to satisfy them who I was.
My word was enough. There were those among my mother’s people who
could speak English, taught them by my father. From them I learnt the
rest of the story. Two years before, a second white man had found his
way to Kallu. He called himself an emissary from England, sent by the
queen’s consort to ask her for certain papers she held, that her
husband needed to prove the identity of their only child. My mother
took him into the temple where she kept these treasures of hers in a
golden casket on the altar of her heathen ancestors. What happened in
there no one knew. Whether my mother suddenly suspected him of
treachery and refused to give them into his keeping, I don’t know. She
was a savage in spite of everything. Some of the instinct civilization
stifles may have come to her, telling her not to part with the papers
that gave her son his English heritage.”
Once more Lebrassa paused, as if he saw that slim, golden girl, his
mother, alone in the Temple of the Night, standing by an ancient
altar, with her treasured papers pressed against her heart, wondering
if she dared give them into the keeping of the man who said he was a
messenger from the white husband she adored, and whose lightest word
to her was law.
“That stranger left the temple alone,” he continued. “Nothing was
thought of it. The Queen Irena often stayed there to muse among the
forgotten gods of her ancestors. Hours passed and she still did not
appear. Then the priests entered. They found her dead, strangled on
the altar, and the casket empty.”
The wind took up Lebrassa’s words, and they seemed to die away like a
sob in the far corners of the great room.
“From one of the men my father had taken with him, I learnt the
whereabouts of the Mission where my parents had been married. I went
there, thinking I might prove something. I was too late again. I might
have known that villain would leave me nothing. The man who had
married them was long since dead. But there were people about the
place who remembered the marriage of an Englishman with a yellow girl
of great beauty. They searched all the books for a record of the
event. A book was found where the record should have been. But--the
page containing the entry was missing! I asked if any stray white man
had been there during the last two years. There had been several, and
one answered to my uncle’s description. I was the Sultan of Kallu.
This heritage brought me riches far surpassing my English one, if not
the honor. I went back to England, to my uncle, accusing him of
treachery. I swore I would have his life in exchange for my mother’s
unless he gave me my due. He laughed at me. In my rage I would have
killed him there and then, had not the servants stopped me. The next
year I spent in an English prison, and narrowly escaped being shut up
for life as a criminal lunatic. Twenty-two years ago England was
ringing with the story of a ‘nigger’ who imagined himself to be an
English earl. Then I went mad. I forgot civilization altogether. In an
English prison was born a man now called the Hyena.”
Lebrassa’s hand left Leslie’s shoulder. He moved a few steps away, to
a curtain screening another alcove.
“I went back to Kallu,” he continued. “I took up every rite and
ceremony of my negro ancestors. On the altar of my heathen forefathers
I swore to have the life of the man who had defrauded me. Not only
his, but all who sprang from him. Revenge on the whole white race for
the sneers, insults, and the final degradation they had put upon me.
Then my uncle learnt that I meant what I said. And he dared not remain
in public life. So very soon England was ringing with another
story--the mysterious disappearance of the Earl of Alglenton, his
countess and infant son. For fourteen years my servants hunted him,
and in the end I caught him. But he died of pneumonia a week later.
His death left me rabid, for it seemed he had robbed me of everything,
even vengeance. Yet, presently, I was glad I had not killed him. Madly
I searched for his son, to make him pay the penalty his father had
escaped. It was not until many years later I heard his son had died in
infancy but there was--a daughter. Who was he, Leslie, this man who
stole all from me when I was a boy?”
With a quick, passionate gesture Lebrassa drew the curtain screening
the alcove. It showed a portrait of an Englishman of about thirty, in
light, tropical garb, tall and fair and with gray eyes.
In a dazed way Leslie looked at the picture. In spite of the
difference twenty years would make, only too well she knew of whom it
reminded her.
“That is my father, Leslie, Richard, Earl of Alglenton. _Your_
father’s brother.”
It had broken over her at last, that great wave of blood and blackness
and treachery that had been rapidly rising. Broken over her and
swamped her completely.
There were a dozen things to confirm Lebrassa’s statements. Her lack
of knowledge as to who and what she really was. The wandering life her
father had led. His mysterious disappearance. His dislike of Africa,
where he said he had never been, yet his own ravings proved to the
contrary, and the names of Richard, Irena, Alglenton and Kallu had
always been on his tongue when drink had him firmly within its grip.
The armlet she had found among his possessions, similar to the ones
the pictured girl wore.
Leslie had loved her father; he was the only relative life had given
her. For all that, as she grew older she had realized he had been a
wastrel, that his ways had not been those of an upright and honorable
man.
Through the black cloud that seemed to choke her, Lebrassa’s voice
came.
“And then your letter came into my hands, with the name of the son of
my enemy. And I saw _you_, heard you speaking in my defense. I had to
learn you were my cousin, my one white relative. You came to my room,
and I found out the truth. You stayed talking to me, treating me just
as if I were a white man. I went back to Africa, intending to keep my
oath. I schemed to get you to Kallu. I meant to make you pay for your
father’s crimes. Yet, when I saw you again, my only desire was to turn
you away from the trap I had laid. I had no chance against you. I
couldn’t hate you, much as I tried. I could only love you, Leslie. If
I were the man I might once have been I wouldn’t have forced you to
come to me now, knowing you had nothing but hatred for me. I’ve been a
savage too long. Too long the Sultan of Kallu. But I could be so
patient, if patience would win me a little toleration, a little liking
perhaps. God knows I’m a brute, steeped in every vice and crime, not
fit to touch you. Yet, little rose, is the blame all mine? If I went
back to savagery, who drove me?”
Leslie’s hands had gone to her face, as if to shut out the picture of
vile treachery he had put before her.
“I didn’t know. I’d no idea,” she moaned.
That heart-broken wail made him touch her gently.
“I know you hadn’t, darling,” he whispered. “It’s just a ghastly mess,
no more your fault than mine. The sins of the fathers that we have to
pay for.”
There was no response. Instead came the sound of stifled sobbing.
Her tears made him drop on his knees beside her, whispering words of
consolation.
“You mustn’t cry, little cousin. It’s no fault of yours. I can forgive
everything if only you’ll try to love me, touch me willingly again.
He’s not my enemy now. He’s the father of my rose. The sweetness he
created can do more than ease my pain. I was a brute to tell you. But
I couldn’t stand your hatred. Don’t cry, little cousin, dearest,
don’t. I can’t bear it.”
The broken-hearted sobs went on, but a small, shaking, white hand came
trembling on to Lebrassa’s head. At its touch, he buried his face on
Leslie’s knee, and knelt there with his arms around her.
CHAPTER XXV
“_In lieu of flowers from your fair land--_
_Take wild growths of dreamland or starland._”
The early morning breeze came whispering through the shady little
courtyard that lay in the midst of the palace. It brought a shower of
white petals fluttering down in the golden sunshine, mingling with the
silver rain of fountains. Some fell like snowflakes on a shady stone
seat where Leslie was sitting.
She had been a week in Kallu, and with each passing day she seemed to
grow smaller, whiter and more wraith-like.
The girl had taken the burden of her father’s sins upon herself. A way
of compensation had been shown to her, and she had accepted it,
although the weight was crushing all life out of her. In another
week’s time she was going to marry her cousin according to heathen
rites. Then he was taking her over the border, to a secluded Mission,
where they would be united in the European manner.
Now Leslie had no desire to return to civilization. Her father’s sins
had cut her off from all her own color. The white world was no place
for her, the daughter of a man guilty of depths of treachery she once
would have deemed impossible. She was branded--as much an outcast and
pariah as the big, strange cousin whose crimes her father was morally
responsible for.
The sound of some one coming through one of the horseshoe arches
roused her. Now she knew that footfall very well. And it made her look
round with a smile, pathetic in its wistfulness.
Lebrassa crossed to her side. He noticed her forced air of welcome.
And he noticed also that daily the girl grew thinner. She was visibly
wasting away, and only too well he knew the reason. Half-kneeling on
the seat beside her, he drew a branch of orange blossom down until it
touched her head.
Every morning brought Leslie some gift from her cousin, the Sultan.
His presents varied considerably, from heavy, barbaric jewels, rich
and rare and gaudy, to a tiny specimen of a deer, so small that it had
been sent in a foot-square hamper, so tame that it now lay at her
feet.
His dark, tainted eyes were quick to see this morsel of life found
more favor in her sight than all the costly jewels he heaped upon her.
That morning, with her early breakfast, had come a tiny cage, not more
than four inches square, made of fine gold wire and studded with gems.
In it was a mite of a bird, little bigger than a bumble bee,
bright-eyed and very much alive.
On seeing it, for the first time since reaching Kallu, Leslie had
laughed. It was such an absurd morsel, such a complete cage with
feeding troughs, perches and a swing, everything a bird needed. And
the servant who had brought the present had glided silently away to
tell his royal master how much the gift had pleased.
As Leslie had sipped her coffee, talking to her new pet, pinhead,
beady eyes had watched her, as if trying to explain that, in spite of
its minuteness, it was a bird, and there was one thing the golden,
jeweled cage lacked. It had chirped so loudly about its missing
privilege that, the moment breakfast was over, she had taken the cage
out into the courtyard. Now it stood empty on the seat beside her.
This Lebrassa noticed the moment his gaze came from his cousin’s face.
“Why, you’ve let it go!” he exclaimed. “And I was told you liked it.”
She laid a thin, apologetic hand on his sleeve.
“I’m sorry, Essel, but it didn’t like being shut up, so I had to let
it out.”
His given name on her lips always brought a look of pleasure to his
face. But on this occasion the look had died away by the time her
sentence was finished.
Moving the tiny cage, he seated himself beside her, and stayed there
in thoughtful silence.
“You’re making me very much the son of my father, Leslie,” he
volunteered presently. “When you’re about I seem to have no connection
with the savages on my mother’s side.”
She glanced at him, wondering what he was leading up to.
His gaze, however, was on the empty, golden cage.
“If I said you needn’t marry me and sent you back to England, do you
think you’d get quite well and happy again?”
“I’d much rather stay here--now.”
He realized that the fact of her father’s crimes made her wish to
avoid all people of her own color.
“I was a brute to tell you,” he said in a voice choked with feeling.
“I was a fool not to have known it would crush the life out of you.”
Leslie said nothing.
A light wind breathed through the garden, bringing the scent of roses,
the cooing of doves, and the ceaseless drip of fountains.
“Then it isn’t just the thought of me and all I wish that makes you
look so tired and worn?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m only too glad to be able to make some return.”
He got to his feet, watching her tenderly. Then he took one of her
listless hands into his, holding it carefully.
“You’re just a rose, Leslie, and crushing brings out all your
sweetness. Do try and think of me only as my father’s son. Try not to
dwell on my mother’s side,” he begged.
“I never think of you now except as my cousin,” she answered. “I know
you would have been very different but for--my father,” she finished,
in a voice that trembled.
He raised her hand to his lips.
“Why did I ever tell you?” he cried, his voice full of pain.
Kissing her hand he turned quickly away, and disappeared through one
of the arches.
Leslie spent a long, listless morning, then lunch-time came--a
solitary meal set in the coolest corner of the marble room. It was
followed by a silent afternoon, hot and breathless, when everything,
even the insects, seemed to sleep.
Sometimes Leslie wondered where her cousin was. She never saw him
except for a few minutes in the morning and again in the evening when,
with the cool of approaching sunset, he came to take her for a walk.
When the rising night wind woke up the sleeping trees, Lebrassa’s step
roused Leslie as she sat reading on the terrace of the marble room.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
With a weary air, she picked up and pulled on a large hat lying on a
chair near. As she walked by his side she saw nothing unless it was
pointed out to her. A cloud of black and red had risen between her and
earth’s beauties, shutting out the world, leaving her alone with a man
who was her cousin, yet half a negro.
She watched him as he leant over a bed of violets gathering a bunch
for her. Blacker than her father’s crimes loomed her own future. She
felt crushed between the two, with no escape from either.
“Let me pin them on, darling?” he asked as he straightened himself.
“Why not, if you wish to,” she answered, smiling wistfully at him.
Then she watched his brown fingers that looked so dark against her
white frock. So dark that only with an effort could she keep herself
from shivering. Just then, when he was so close, the negro in him
seemed so terrible, more insurmountable than all the crimes of his own
doing.
Leaving the garden they passed through the village, and on into the
cool depths of the forest. The night shadows were lengthening, and the
relics of the forgotten city stood like white ghosts in the green
gloom.
Leslie went on, thinking of Captain Fletcher, knowing her father’s
infamy shut her out from all such as he.
Lebrassa’s voice broke the silence that had enveloped them since
entering the forest.
“Who knows, Leslie,” he began, his gaze on the ancient ruins, “perhaps
the black people were the first on earth. There was darkness before
light, and night before day. We know there have been civilizations
which time has buried. Perhaps the Sphinx itself is a monument of a
past negro civilization, for it has a very negroid cast of features.
The negroes may not be what the world thinks, a race just getting
light from the whites, but the descendants of an ancient civilization,
now forgotten. Perhaps, if one only knew it, it’s not such a disgrace
to be a nigger.”
Leslie listened, not minding what subject he talked on now, so long as
it was not love.
“Are you the last of your race?” she asked.
“There’s you, little cousin.”
“I meant----”
Abruptly she stopped.
Her remark and pause brought a dreary smile to his lips. It told him
just what he was in her estimation.
“You mean my mother’s race? I’ve two cousins, children of my mother’s
younger sister. Is that the only side you can see of me? I want to be
all white with you, yet you can only see the nigger. You’re very sweet
to me now, but I know it’s only to pay a debt. Don’t think I don’t
know it. And appreciate it, too. I’m thankful for so little where I’d
once dared to hope for so much.”
In silence the walk continued. And away in the forest, a prowling
hyena laughed, loud and long and with wild mockery.
CHAPTER XXVI
“_Both by land and sea we have travell’d far._”
Mhaki, the high-priest, squatted among the ruins of a forgotten city
watching the night shadows gather. He sat with his back against a
marble block, listening to the sounds drifting through the night.
There was one that always left him alert--a single howl of hyena’s
laughter.
He watched the shadows gather till the darkness shut out everything,
and brought a life all its own--a whispering, rustling, creeping,
stealthy life that preyed one on the other. Every noise that drifted
through the bush he noted. Presently a sudden cessation of all sounds
made his old eyes go sharply to a track just ahead of him.
It was one of those silences that fall upon all smaller forest life
when a common enemy is abroad. The high-priest listened, knowing it
meant either the presence of man or some big beast of prey, and his
hand grasped a spear lying just in front of him.
Then came a sound that made him start up quickly.
About three hundred yards away, along the one lone trail that led to
Kallu, came a long-drawn howl, a solitary hyena’s cry. There was a
moment’s pause, then two howls came, from Mhaki’s lips this time.
Three answered him. The repetition made his gnarled old hands lose
their grip of things, and his spear fell to the ground.
It was Nanza’s signal. The truth had come to Kallu at last! And
Nanza’s return said his worst fears were verified.
Presently a dark figure loomed up.
With trembling knees the old priest went to meet him.
“Hail, Nanza,” he said, “what message do you bring? Yet your return
spells the Sultan Essel’s treachery.”
“I bring proof to all Bhessu said,” Nanza answered. “And, Mhaki, night
whispers to me that the Star is in Kallu. It should please my cousin
to see the daughter of his mother’s murderer sacrificed on the altar
her father defiled.”
“How do you know the Star is here?”
“Night whispered it,” Nanza answered. “But this is no time for gossip.
In some safe spot, let me show you the proofs I’ve brought.”
Mhaki drew out a soiled cloth and tied it over his visitor’s eyes.
Then he led him towards the wilderness of creepers and shattered
masonry.
After they had gone some distance Nanza was told to stoop and crawl.
When the bandage was removed, he found himself in what appeared to be
an underground cellar.
Mhaki produced a wooden lever from a corner and inserted it into a
crevice between the flags forming the floor.
“There are many ways into the Temple of Night, but this is known only
to me and the Sultan,” he grunted, as a two-foot square stone heaved
up in response to his efforts.
Beneath was a narrow spiral stairway, twisting down a funnel-like hole
until it was lost in darkness.
Taking a lamp from a niche near, Mhaki started down. The winding stair
led to a heavy wooden door. This the high-priest opened.
The feeble light showed a fair-sized cave with curious signs and
symbols on the rugged walls. A spring gurgled up in one corner; close
by was a slit in the solid rock, wide enough for a man to walk
through, that led on to darkness again.
A lounge, a table and a case of books showed up in one corner.
There Mhaki went, placing his battered lamp on the table.
“This is the Chamber of Musing,” he volunteered. “It lies just behind
the Throne of Night.”
He paused and pointed to the slit.
“That leads to the temple, but the secret of its entrance is known
only to the reigning sultan and the high-priest. Now, Nanza, the
proofs. And if your story is false, you will stay here until death
finds you. For no one knows the way that leads to and from this room
except the Sultan Essel and myself.”
Nanza smiled.
“I, at least, am no traitor,” he said proudly. “Here are the proofs,
white man’s proofs with seals and documents and signatures as you
requested.”
From his loin cloth he drew a flat packet and laid it on the table.
With shaking fingers Mhaki opened it.
“How did you come by all these?” he asked, as several photographs and
a bulky sealed letter came to light.
“As you advised, I went to Calabar. There I made friends with people
who had been friends of Bhessu’s, Cooper, that is, and the white woman
who was his wife. He had talked much about her. I learnt where they
had met and what her name was from a man to whom he had given a
photograph, taken the day they were married. I heard all that was
said, and afterwards, when darkness fell, I returned by stealth to the
house of this great talker and took that picture. Then on to England.
From friends I made during the voyage I learnt the manner of tracing
people among the whites. I was told there were those in London who
lived by finding out all concerning others. To such I went. Gold did
the rest. There, signed and sealed, untouched by me since I left their
office, is what they found. It proves the woman who was Cooper’s wife
to be no murderer’s child. She was the daughter of a man who served in
a store where cloth was sold. The niece of another who to this day
bakes bread for the city. And he bears witness to all that is written
here. There is a picture, too, that I bought from him.”
From the papers, Nanza drew out a portrait of two girls, with dark and
fair heads together.
“That,” he said, pointing to Leslie, “is the child of that foul
murderer. Not this one, as the Sultan Essel would have us believe,”
Nanza went on, putting a black finger on Molly’s pictured face.
“Because none of us in Kallu, but you, had any white man’s learning,
he thought we were easy to dupe. Here is what the people of London
told me. Write to them if you wish. I’m content to stay here until you
have proved my words to be true.”
Mhaki opened the sealed letter.
Messrs. Speyer and Speyer, private detectives of London, would have
been very surprised had they known that the mass of information a
wealthy colored client had desired them to find concerning a certain
Molly Seaton, married about two years before at a Liverpool registry
office to a negro named Horten Cooper, whom she had met in a Harrogate
hotel, would be opened in the inner chamber of a heathen temple, some
five hundred miles up-country in West Africa.
Tracing Molly had proved a simple task. From Harrogate they had
followed her history backwards, through the years of her clerkship in
London to a childhood spent in Islington where her father had been a
cashier in a big drapery store. It described her minutely at every
stage of her career. There were copies of her birth certificate, dated
twenty-nine years before, and of her marriage certificate. The letter
told how Molly Seaton had found a child called Leslie Graham, supposed
to have been deserted in London, about eight years before, and how the
two had lived together to within a few months of Molly’s marriage. It
proved beyond doubt that the Molly Seaton born in Islington
twenty-nine years ago was the same Molly Seaton who had married a
negro called Horten Cooper in Liverpool twenty-seven years later.
For more than two hours Mhaki pored over it all. He read and re-read
the letter and studied the photographs. Yet, in spite of everything,
his faithful old heart wanted more proof before condemning the son of
his beloved Irena.
“I would have more proof,” he said at length. “The condemning of a
Sultan of Kallu is no light matter. There may be some flaw that even
these people have not grasped. I must have more proof before I lay
these papers before the other priests.”
Evilly Nanza smiled, the smile of one who holds the ace of trumps up
his sleeve.
“I’ve proof beyond all this. Proof that will satisfy even you. And I
found it for myself. I made friends with that uncle who bakes bread,
and I paid him well to tell me all he knew about these two women. He
had a box containing goods belonging to his niece and her friend. And
I went through it carefully. I found there a picture of two faces both
of which Kallu knows.”
From his loin cloth Nanza drew out a thin, oblong packet, wrapped in
oil silk. This he opened and handed to the high-priest.
“Who are these two?” he asked.
Speechless Mhaki looked at the picture.
It was a photograph of a man of about fifty-five, with a handsome,
dissipated face. Standing by his side was a little girl of perhaps
eleven, who smiled out at the world in a frank, friendly way. The
first Mhaki knew at a glance. He was the stranger who had come to
Kallu and murdered the Queen Irena. On the second his eyes lingered.
Big, dark eyes looked back at him with fearless innocence. In spite of
the difference between the child of eleven and the grown-up woman, he
knew who it was. The girl the Sultan proposed to marry!
There was no room for further doubt. It was proof direct. The Sultan
Essel had lied!
The old man got up suddenly, the gleam of the fanatic in his eyes.
“Hail, Nanza! There has been a law these twenty years in Kallu, one of
the Sultan Essel’s making: ‘Death to all traitors.’”
With savage satisfaction Nanza laughed.
“I thought that would satisfy you,” he said.
“I want no further proof. I see here the murderer with his child. I
must have time to convince the priesthood of the truth of all you have
brought. The Sultan is Lord of Doomana, and none will believe his
treachery readily. I have a plan. Give me time. It’s for your sake I
ask. Did those beyond know of your presence here you would be slain
before I could save you. We must work stealthily. First I must
convince the priests of the Sultan’s treachery. If they are satisfied
we will wait. Then, on the night of his marriage, when all the tribe
are gathered together to witness it, we will accuse him as he stands
with her, on the Throne of Night, desiring to make her Queen of
Kallu--this offspring of the accursed one, this daughter of his
mother’s murderer! There will be no escape for him or her. First he
shall see her die. Then we will deal with him.”
Mhaki swept together all the correspondence. Then, blowing out the
light, he seized his companion’s arm and led him on into darkness.
CHAPTER XXVII
“_A horror of outer darkness._”
A vast hall of darkness, so great that it seemed to have no end; a
place blacker than the deepest night, with no glint of light or life.
Yet life was there, for out of the gloomy depths came the buzz of a
multitude, eager and suppressed, now nothing more than a sighing
breath, again a loud excited whisper that rose and echoed away until
space swallowed it up.
The sighing breath took an upward rush, resounding through the
darkness like the thunder of surf, to die away again in whispering,
waiting silence.
A speck of light appeared, a pin-prick in the vast gloom. Gradually it
came closer, and halted, shining high above everything.
The light showed a girl with a tired, white face, clad in a robe of
purple gauze that swathed her with the billowy softness of a cloud.
Her bare arms and shoulders were loaded with barbaric jewels--a
rainbow mass of glittering color, looking almost too heavy for her to
carry.
Her appearance made a wild shout come up from beneath.
“Hail, Star, Bride of the Night. All darkness gives you welcome.”
Leslie had no idea what was said, only a roar of savage sound came
from the depths her strained eyes were trying to fathom.
The noise died away, to be followed by a silence so still that it
seemed to whisper.
Then from a long way off a voice spoke in cultured English.
“Come, dearest, there’s nothing to fear.”
Leslie came of a race that died fighting. Although the voice left her
cold and shivering, it reminded her that a debt had to be paid.
She stepped forward into the gloom. Each step brought frantic,
hysterical courage; a determination to wipe off, if possible, her
father’s infamy; to give this big, strange cousin all he wanted; never
to let him know the depths of her aversion.
She reached the bottom of the long flight of rude stone steps. The
lantern she carried showed nothing but empty space, and from beyond
came the murmur of thousands.
She went forward. Other steps appeared, leading upwards. When she
reached the top of these, out of the gloom some one leant towards her,
whispering to her not to be afraid.
As the two met, suddenly a thousand torches flared up at all points of
the vast underground hall, and a minute later a hundred bonfires burst
into life.
Leslie gazed around. It was darkness no longer, but yellow curling
mist and smoke and flames. The flare revealed great arches stretching
away on either side, until they looped out into a gigantic circle. In
each a bonfire danced, lighting the enclosed ring, but accentuating
the gloom beyond. There was an inner circle of men, five deep, with
spears and shields, all holding torches--men with scarred black faces
and fang-like teeth. In front of these again were shadowy figures
draped from head to foot in black, with nothing but their rolling eyes
to tell they were alive.
Behind them was a sea of faces, all black, all watching her,
stretching away until they became nothing more than gleaming eyes.
Leslie’s gaze came back from the countless wild faces to her immediate
surroundings.
She was standing on a square block of black rock. Close behind loomed
what appeared to be a great night cloud spreading away until it was
lost in the shadows. At the first glance it was nothing more than a
cloud, cunningly represented by some sculptor of forgotten ages. As
she gazed, out of the billowy mass form came. It held her fascinated.
It was not a cloud banked up behind the place where she was standing,
but a great shape, neither God, nor beast, nor devil, yet all three so
blended that they were lost in one. A fearsome Thing, yet strangely
human.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at it once more. It was
a cloud again, slowly taking shape as she gazed. Its face was bestial,
devilish and divine, with eyes that glowed dully in the firelight.
Eyes, which, on first inspection, appeared to be two stars peeping out
from the night. Some long-dead artist’s conception of the darkness
from which all life sprang.
Her eyes left the cloud and went back to Lebrassa. There they stayed,
frightened and fascinated.
He was clad in a long, straight, black gown, his massive bare arms
flashing with golden armlets. A worn circlet of gold, with strange
signs and symbols, was on his crisp, wavy hair. The sight sent a chill
through her. There was so little of the Englishman left. So much of
the savage, negro Sultan.
His voice broke in on her thoughts.
“You mustn’t watch that beast, darling, or he’ll gather you into
everlasting darkness.”
His voice brought back the knowledge of his English side, and her own
determination.
“But it isn’t quite a beast. One way it looks almost god-like.”
“I’ve watched it for days on end, and seen nothing but the beast and
devil.”
“Perhaps you haven’t looked at it in the right way.”
“Or with the right eyes, little rose.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Doomana, the shadow of all things. The darkness from which all earth
sprang, according to the legend of my mother’s people. A lowering mass
of evil that has brooded over this temple since time past all memory.
That gathered me into its clutches more than twenty years ago.”
Gently she touched his arm. At that moment the knowledge of her debt
loomed large before her.
The light touch brought him bending over her, anxious and eager.
“Little cousin, if I’d come to you clean-handed, my father’s son, not
the Sultan of Kallu, could you have overlooked the black if there had
been no red of my own making?”
Bravely she answered, with no hint of the ice that seemed to freeze
her heart and stop its beating.
“There would have been no red, Essel dear, but for my father.”
The endearment, the first that had passed her lips, brought a smile
that took all the lines of cruelty from his mouth. He drew her arm
through his, where it stayed, cold, but unresisting.
Leslie stood, staring straight in front of her, until a burst of wild
music brought her mind back to earth again.
A procession was winding its way through the gloom beyond the arches,
all wearing straight black gowns. Leslie guessed them to be priests.
There were perhaps fifty of them, headed by an old man carrying a tray
of carved ebony on which reposed a wreath of golden stars, a crown
similar to the one worn by the girl-queen, Irena.
From the shadow a voice chanted some old, weird melody, wild and
haunting. Now and again, thousands answered it in a chorus that was
deafening.
As Leslie watched the approaching procession of priests, it seemed to
her they looked at her in anything but a friendly manner--almost as if
they hated her. Quite different from the way the black soldiers used
to look at her when she went with her cousin among his people. She
glanced up at him, wondering if he had noticed it. But he had eyes for
her and nothing else.
“What is it, dearest?” he asked, when their eyes met.
“I shall be glad when it’s all over.”
“It will soon come to an end,” he whispered.
Leslie wondered whether it would be a month, a year, or whether old
age would come before the debt was settled and a welcome death claimed
her.
At the foot of the steps leading to the rocky throne where she and
Lebrassa stood, the procession halted. Silence fell on the multitude.
A silence broken only by the crackle of the flames as the assembly
stood waiting for the high-priest to begin the ceremony.
Then Mhaki’s voice came.
“Hail, Essel, Sultan of Kallu. Lord of Doomana. Ruler of the Night.
Heir of all Darkness. Hail, Star, Bride of the Night, set to shine
high on the Throne of Night, a gift from the Sultan to his people.”
Leslie was aware that her cousin drew her in front of him, holding her
close against him.
Over her head his voice came thundering.
“Hail, all Kallu. A Star has risen to shine in the Heart of Darkness.”
Next came Mhaki’s voice.
Mounting half-way up the steps, he stood facing the crowd, holding on
high the glittering crown.
“See, all Kallu! What is set above the night, as night is set above
the earth?”
“The stars. And a star was sent to earth to wed with the one who first
ruled in Kallu, in the shadow of the Night, as Lord of Doomana. And to
his heirs, forever, a star. Our Sultan has chosen, and we would see
him crown her.”
Question and answer came like the repetition of some old formula.
The high-priest’s voice again wailed through the temple.
“The Sultan has chosen, and we would see him crown her.”
There was a touch of menace in Mhaki’s voice that made one or two of
the dusky warriors glance at him sharply. But Lebrassa had eyes and
ears only for the girl within his arms.
As the high-priest mounted higher, to bow before the Sultan and the
Star of his choice, holding the crown on its ebony salver, there was a
stir among the shrouded figures of the priests forming the circle
immediately in front of the warriors.
When Lebrassa took the crown and placed it on Leslie’s head, a sort of
sigh passed through them, like an indrawn, hissing breath. Then it
died away, and all eyes were fixed on him as he stood proudly smiling
over her small head where golden stars now glittered. Over the murmur
of the seething crowd, above the crackle and roar of the bonfires, his
voice came, loud, arrogant, and all-commanding.
“Is there no greeting for my Queen?”
Ten thousand voices answered him.
“We are star-worshipers, we spawn of the night. In Kallu there is
always welcome for such as she.”
As the volume of sound died away, from one corner came a solitary
burst of hyena’s laughter. Ten thousand took up the wild war cry. The
great hall trembled as the roar thundered through it. Long after
Lebrassa’s hand was raised for silence the sound came echoing up from
the darkness, to die away in a feeble, jeering laugh and a final
sobbing sigh.
There was silence again, a silence that hissed and whispered.
Then, once more, the high-priest spoke:
“In Kallu there is always welcome for such as she. Red welcome.”
It did not need the added phrase to bring Lebrassa’s eyes from Leslie
to the black face watching him in fanatical hatred. The menace of the
voice had reached him before the clause of Mhaki’s own adding.
Before he had time to say or do anything, almost before the words had
left the high-priest’s lips, a hundred voices bellowed:
“Traitor!”
The word was one that raised all the wild beast in the Kalluians. Who
and what the traitor was no one knew, save fifty priests and the same
number of probationers attached to the temple. The word had come. It
raised the blood-lust of a crowd already excited almost beyond bounds.
A savage roar went up, demanding the name of the traitor, and his
death for daring to desecrate the Sultan’s nuptials with his presence.
The mass surged up to Lebrassa as he stood with surprise, savage anger
and a glint of uneasiness on his face.
They stopped at the foot of the throne, not aware the one they sought
was there, demanding that the Sultan should deliver this traitor into
their hands. Their sudden onward rush swallowed up the priests, who
went through the seething crowd whispering, insinuating, hinting.
No name was said, only one sentence.
“The daughter of the murderer is here.”
In the writhing mist and smoke and darkness no one knew where the
words came from. They were whispered from the shadows, murmured out of
the blackness, echoed through the vaulted arches. From mouth to mouth
the words went.
There were men among the soldiers who remembered an argument between
the Sultan and his cousin, Nanza, more than eighteen months before, in
a hut near Calabar, five hundred miles away: an argument concerning
the identity of two white women. They numbered only twenty-eight of
the warriors, but what they said was listened to and repeated again
and again, till ten thousand heard it.
In less than a quarter of an hour what had been an orderly crowd was a
wild pandemonium. Question and answer were hurled out of the mist and
smoke and shadows.
Then an ominous lull fell on the surging mass. The wild shouts died
down to thick, hoarse growls. All eyes were turned on Lebrassa. His
voice came thundering through the vast hall.
“By all darkness! What madness has seized you?”
He stood a picture of unbridled savagery and arrogance, enraged beyond
measure, conscious of Leslie’s heart thumping in wild terror beneath
his hand. He realized that some inkling of who she really was had
reached Kallu. He never doubted but what he could quell the riot. But
he did not know the extent and completeness of the evidence against
him.
As yet no one had set foot on the Throne of Night. Lebrassa’s voice
and attitude held those immediately beneath in check.
Over the growl of the multitude Mhaki’s voice answered, coming from
the crowd just below.
“What madness has seized _you_, Essel, Sultan of Kallu, that you would
set the daughter of your mother’s murderer on the Throne of Night? A
gift of the Sultan to his people. A gift you promised full twenty
years ago. But a gift of vengeance, of blood, an offering to Doomana.
Not a star to shine as Queen of Kallu. There is a law which says,
‘Death to all traitors.’”
No savage roar greeted the word now. The growl died away to a
whispering hiss. The multitude stood with strained ears, awaiting
their Sultan’s defense.
“What madness has seized you in your dotage, Mhaki, that you accuse
_me_, your Sultan, of black treachery? Death to you that you should
dare to foul the name of the Star now shining over Kallu. Say, dogs,
do you stand quiet and hear your leader called a traitor? By Mhaki
who, with his own eyes, saw the daughter of the murderer die. Shot by
Cooper, her husband.”
Lebrassa’s appeal to the soldiers had its effect. A roar greeted him.
With a wild rush the warriors swept toward the high-priest, who stood
surrounded by his supporters. It was just as well Mhaki had retired
beyond his master’s reach. After his accusations he had backed down
the steps of the throne and a surge of his friends and followers had
swallowed him up. Had he remained within the Sultan’s reach the royal
hand might have choked him.
Until order was restored, Lebrassa dared not leave the high rock where
he was standing. He did not know what the mob might do to Leslie if
she were left alone. He did not think about his own danger. As once
before all his wits were concentrated on saving the girl he held
pressed close against him in fierce protection. He thought he could
keep the surging mass immediately beneath in check until the soldiers
cleared a way so that he could get her out of the temple and in some
place of safety. Then he would return and pacify the mob.
As he watched, the oncoming soldiers wavered, hesitated, came on
uncertainly and then stopped altogether.
Lebrassa had reckoned without the women who had been gathered in the
shadows beyond the lights. Chaos had brought them out among the men. A
fortnight of wild revelry had preceded the Sultan’s marriage. This had
given the hearts of the dusky warriors very much into the keeping of
their womenfolk. Black hands could cling and hinder and make their
power felt just as easily as white ones on men who were husbands,
sweethearts and would-be lovers. The women clustering around the
soldiers had fathers and brothers among the priests, and they had no
wish to see their relatives killed. They clung to the arms of the
soldiers, pleading and imploring, whispering that what Mhaki said
might be true, that love plays havoc with the hearts of men, and the
Sultan was but human, begging them to talk matters out quietly, to
have no bloodshed. And all the time the priests were talking,
whispering no longer, but declaring plainly that Nanza had returned
and had brought proof beyond all doubt of the Sultan Essel’s
treachery.
The soldiers’ halt left Lebrassa aghast. Through the babel of sound
separate voices reached him. He heard how the news had come to Kallu
and who had brought it, and he realized how poor was his chance of
quelling the riot.
There was but one way of saving Leslie.
He glanced round calculatingly, knowing he could keep the mob in check
for a few moments, sufficiently long to carry out the plan of escape
that had come to him.
But first he desired a personal interview with Mhaki--to get within
touch of the high-priest and silence that worthy for ever. But before
doing this, he wanted to have Leslie where she could not see him act
according to the instincts of his savage ancestors.
He was a picture of sultanic fury as he stood thundering for the
silence he was gradually obtaining.
Over the mad babel his voice was heard at last.
“Who is the cur that heads this rabble? Let him come forward and prove
his statements. If what he says is true, then I have been deceived
about this girl I would make my wife.”
At his words a listening silence fell on the horde. To Mhaki’s face
there came an expression of relief. But Nanza, disguised as one of the
shrouded temple probationers, shrank back into the shadows.
Breathless silence reigned as the Sultan’s defense went on.
“Mhaki saw the murderer’s daughter die. A woman who told me her father
was the man who slew Irena. And I thought then that she did not know
who I was. But if what Mhaki says is true, then she knew me, what my
motive was, and misled me purposely. For the woman whom I thought to
be the daughter of that foul murderer was smitten with a disease that
made her days numbered. Moreover, she had a friend whom she loved
beyond all else--the Star I would have set to shine over Kallu. If the
news my cousin Nanza has brought is true, then the woman who is dead
deceived me purposely, hoping to save her friend. If it can be proved
that Bhessu’s wife was not the child of the murderer, but it is her
friend whose blood is wanted, she who is with me now as my bride, say,
all Kallu, would there be anything but hatred in my heart, and a
desire to deal with her as her father dealt with my mother? I, also,
would know the truth. If all Mhaki says is fair and just, proof past
all doubting, no plot of his and Nanza’s, then there will be no love
in my heart for the Star, but hatred. And I will give her over to you
to do with as you please, and say I am a fool, I, the Sultan of Kallu,
to be so deceived by a woman.”
The explanation sent the crowd surging over to Lebrassa’s side.
Even the high-priest’s fanatical old heart was eased. The son of his
beloved Irena was no traitor after all! But a man deluded by a woman,
ensnared by the beauty of another as is ever the lot of man, not
knowing who and what she really was.
Lebrassa watched the effect of his words on the crowd surging beneath
the rock where he stood alone with the girl he was endeavoring to
save. As he watched he made a gradual backward movement toward the
brooding shape that loomed behind him, so slowly that in the
flickering shadows it was hardly noticeable.
Just as Mhaki reached the foot of the steps the mulatto touched some
point in the carved mass behind him, at the same time assuming a stiff
unnatural position as though both feet and one elbow were working for
some desired effect. There was a heavy stealthy noise as of a great
stone moving. Leslie felt herself being lowered with quick haste and a
voice whispered:
“Have no fear, little cousin, go straight on and I’ll join you.”
By then the unsuspecting priest had reached the top of the steps. The
mulatto sprang forward, seized him in the grip of a madman, swung him
on high, then dashed him with all his giant strength down against the
black rock.
The roar of ten thousand wild beasts greeted this action. But Mhaki
lay quite still, his sharp old brains bespattered about the Throne of
Night, the only person, besides Lebrassa, who knew how to open the
entrance to the Chamber of Musing, or who knew where, in the forest,
was the door of the secret way leading from it.
Lebrassa turned to join Leslie, his idea being to take her on through
the passage, and out into the forest, trusting to his own great
strength, skill, cunning and savage lore to make his way through the
wilderness until he reached what would be a place of safety for her,
the first British outpost more than two hundred miles away.
As he turned to open the rock again, which had swung to the moment his
hand left it, Nanza drew a revolver from beneath his cloak and fired
wildly.
One shot reached home. Just as Lebrassa was about to move the rock
again and join Leslie in her temporary refuge, he reeled and fell,
lamed by a bullet through his ankle. He was up again almost at once,
but just too late. Before he could reach sanctuary fifty hands seized
him and dragged him down as he fought with the strength of Samson and
the fury of a mad elephant.
In spite of everything there was a small orderly section in the mob.
The hands holding Lebrassa were mostly priestly ones; the probationers
formed a circle around him, keeping off the herd bellowing for his
life.
Over the pandemonium Nanza’s voice came thundering. The fact of his
presence sent a further howl echoing through the vast hall--a howl of
welcome. A call for silence went round. Gradually the wild babel died
down and his voice was heard.
“Hail, all Kallu. The truth has come, and with it the death of a
Sultan. My cousin would have us think he knew not that the Star was
the daughter of Irena’s murderer. Are we fools to be beguiled by such
a tale? If what he said was true, why did he hide the girl, and then
kill the high-priest, Mhaki? He lied to you and killed Mhaki in order
to save himself and her, for only he and Mhaki knew that beyond lies a
secret passage leading to the heart of the forest. And only he and
Mhaki knew the secret that moves the stone. Does not all this prove
that he knew who and what the girl was, and that it was his intention
to defraud you of the blood that is your due?”
This speech resulted in a further dash to reach Lebrassa who now lay,
bound and helpless, surrounded by a guard sufficiently strong to keep
the rabble at bay.
Over their fury Nanza’s voice came again.
“You would give him an easy death,” he cried. “Not one worthy of
Kallu. Let me ask him if he is willing to give the Star back into our
keeping, and we will deal with him according to his answer.”
Nanza turned to his prostrate cousin.
“Tell me, Essel, the secret that moves Doomana, that I may enter and
bring back the Star to shine over Kallu. A gift from the Sultan to his
people.”
There was no reply.
The mulatto’s eyes blazed back at his tormentor as he writhed in a
giant effort to burst his bonds and reach the one responsible for his
capture. He was in an agony of helplessness at the thought of Leslie
alone in the rock chamber, yet he knew that death by slow starvation
would be preferable to the one this mob would deal out to her if she
fell into their hands.
“See, he will tell me nothing,” Nanza cried. “What shall we do? Shall
we persuade him?”
There was order now, the order of a multitude all of one mind.
The throne was cleared of all except Nanza, half a dozen priests and
the prisoner. Wild figures rushed round the circle, mending and poking
fires the happenings of the last hour had allowed to smolder
unattended. There must be light--light to show what was about to
happen.
The fires blazed up on a mass of figures, all squatted on their
haunches, with the lurid light playing on their black, shining skins
and eyes that had an inward red gleam fixed on the square rock, high
above, where another fire gleamed.
Through the waiting hall Nanza’s voice came, full of savagery and
hate.
“Tell us, my cousin, how to reach the Star set to shine over Kallu? We
would have her in our midst, this Light from the Skies.”
There was a long pause, but no reply.
The question came again, but it still met with no answer.
At a gesture from Nanza, one of the priests drew a red hot bar of iron
from the fire.
A moment later there was a faint hissing sound, and with it came the
smell of live flesh scorching. This was followed by a laugh, loud,
arrogant and defiant. Nanza’s voice came again.
“Come, Essel, son of my mother’s sister. Give us the Star. We are
anxious to welcome our Queen.”
Again there was no response. And again there came that sickly,
scorching smell.
Another laugh followed, but it died away in a stifled groan.
A crowd sat and watched, but there was no laughter now, only the smell
of scorching flesh and a sort of suppressed panting.
CHAPTER XXVIII
“_My king, to the last put trust in me._”
The Sultan Nanza was holding audience in the market-square. Three
days had passed since the deposing of his cousin. Down in the great
underground temple Lebrassa lay, recovering from the effects of that
night’s work. During the time that had gone by since that evening,
parties of soldiers had scoured the forest looking for the entrance to
the passage down which Mhaki had taken Nanza, but no trace of it could
be found.
In the market-place Nanza stood, his ambition attained at last. For
now he was the Sultan of Kallu, no longer his cousin’s understudy and
deputy, and he was talking loudly of all that was going to happen now
he had the management of affairs.
A sudden stir and shouting on the outskirts of the village, took the
attention of his audience. A woman had just emerged from a forest
track, a tall, handsome negress of travel-stained appearance--a woman
once very well known in the place.
On seeing his sister the new sultan stood in open-mouthed
astonishment. Heedless of the questions and greetings showered on her,
Yoni came on and threw herself at her brother’s feet.
“Hail, Nanza,” she cried breathlessly. “You see my words of long ago
were true. The Sultan Essel had deceived us. That traitor who took me
from my country and then cast me off with mockery and scorn. Give me
vengeance. Let me see him die. Don’t tell me you have already killed
him.”
Savagely Nanza laughed.
“No traitor dies in three days,” he said. In a suspicious manner his
eyes remained on his sister. “How is it you’re here only a few days
after me?” he added.
“I followed you, purposely, hoping that if you found favor in the
sight of our cousin you would plead with him for me. A week ago I
reached a village, and there one whispered to me the news you had
brought from England, of the Sultan Essel’s treachery, of a Star that
was no Star. I ask no greater boon than to see him as he lies in
agony, that in his hour of suffering I may mock at him as he once
mocked at me. Grant this, O Nanza, my brother and Sultan, to a woman
full of hate and suffering.”
As she talked, suspicion died from his eyes, and her final sentence
brought a tigerish smile to his lips.
“Our cousin lies in the temple. A free show to all, and a warning to
those who would be traitors.”
Yoni rose to her feet.
The crowd’s gaze was upon her. They all noted her blazing, fanatical
eyes and air of savage hate. She was another who had no love for the
deposed Sultan!
This was the opinion of the priests some ten minutes later when Yoni
halted at the head of the passage leading down to the temple, in her
brother’s name, demanding admittance.
She passed through and went on to the head of the long flight of
steps.
In the darkness below a fire gleamed. The light showed a man lying on
a rude native couch. Beside him squatted a score of priests.
Lebrassa’s face was very English now. Pain had drawn his features;
they had lost their heavy look, but his eyes still showed the negro
taint that nothing could take away.
As the priests half-dozed on the throne by the royal prisoner, a wild
voice from the back made them look round sharply. A woman was bearing
down on them, with arms uplifted, wild-eyed, and face distorted with
hate and passion.
In front of the priestly barrier she paused, glaring at the man they
were guarding, shrieking out a volume of abuse. The flood of
vituperation brought Lebrassa’s attention to her.
He watched her, surprised that his treachery to Kallu should have
roused her hatred, when the breaking off of the life they had once led
together had failed to do so.
“And you too, Yoni,” he said presently, with a dreary smile.
Her voice died down to a long-drawn, hissing breath and a splutter
after speech, yet through it words reached Lebrassa that made his
scorched hands clench. What seemed to the priests nothing more than
the frantic gurgle of a woman choked with anger, reached him in the
dialect of Calabar: a language unknown to any one there except himself
and Yoni.
“My lord knows his slave is faithful,” he heard her say.
Yoni raised her voice again, raving, shouting and vituperating, down
to a gurgling, breathless splutter.
“I came to give warning, but too late. To save my lord I would give my
life,” reached Lebrassa.
She made a mad rush at the priests standing between her and the couch,
as if to get at the deposed sultan and work her will upon him. They
held her back, as she fought them wildly, their attention being
temporarily removed from the prisoner. But through her struggles
Yoni’s ears were strained for any word that might come from Lebrassa.
“More than life lies beyond the Shadow of Doomana, Yoni,” he was
saying. “You cannot save me, but save the Star, and my death will be
happy in spite of the tortures they deal out to me.”
Again her voice was raised in a storm of wild abuse, to die away in a
sob of fury and frantic gasps. Between them came protestations that
her desire was to save _him_, not the girl who had brought him to his
end.
There was a further struggle between the priests and the distraught
woman endeavoring to reach the prisoner. Sobs of fury came, and
through them Yoni spluttered:
“I am but a slave to obey. A trance will come over me. I will fall
here and none will dare touch me. Pretend to sleep, then mutter all
you wish.”
Suddenly she stopped her wild struggles. She stood, stiff and frothing
at the mouth. Then like a log she fell unconscious not two yards from
where Lebrassa lay.
The priests gazed at her with awe. In past days she had been one of
their kind, a priestess of the temple, but she had been expelled
through love of the man she now hated. They sat round, watching her
with interest, waiting until she came back to consciousness, wondering
what she would say. For they thought her trance an audience with the
gods.
On the couch the prisoner dozed uneasily, muttering whilst he slept.
A sudden howl from Yoni startled the priests. She staggered to her
feet, swaying weakly, staring unseeingly into darkness. All waited to
hear the words the gods had put into her mouth during the hour or so
she had been with them.
“I am Yoni, Keeper of the Stars. Night gives me many eyes and I see.
There is one coming whose arrival brings the darkness and the dawn.”
Long after she had vanished, swallowed up in the depths of the temple,
the priests sat and talked over the meaning of the message.
But Lebrassa lay gazing patiently into darkness. To him the words
needed no interpreting.
For Leslie’s sake he had betrayed Kallu. He had told Yoni to go to
Tuata, to bring up Captain Fletcher and a relieving force.
CHAPTER XXIX
“_The blackness of darkness._”
As the great mass of rock swung back into position Leslie stood for
a few moments conscious of a queer, dizzy feeling, glad of the
quietness after the wild uproar she had left, wondering what had
caused it. Then she went on in the darkness, groping her way along the
rocky wall. An abrupt turn in the passage showed a faint light ahead.
She went forward quickly, to find herself in a cave, faintly lighted
by a lamp set on a table in one corner of it.
She glanced around. It was a large, high vault with a little spring
oozing from a crevice at her feet, and another opening opposite the
one by which she had entered, blocked by a heavy wooden door. The cave
was empty but for the one corner whence the light came, which was
fitted up as a chamber. There lay a suit of white drill. In that
secret room behind the throne of rock, barely half an hour before,
Lebrassa had put on the barbaric robes for the heathen wedding
ceremony.
Crossing to the lounge, Leslie seated herself there, watching the
passage by which she had entered, thinking it all part of the wild
rites that made her her cousin’s wife, almost sick with dread at the
thought of the man who soon would be coming along the passage, in
terror not noticing how the time was passing.
The splutter of the dying lamp roused her. Fear of one darkness made
her forget the other. Getting up quickly, she went to the slit, and
stood there listening for some sound of her cousin’s coming. She heard
nothing except the faint lapping of the spring. In an excess of terror
and loneliness she crossed swiftly to the door, very conscious of the
wild, moving shapes the lamp cast, thinking he might be coming that
way. But, much as she tried, it was beyond her strength to open it.
Fearing the light would die away before she reached it, she ran back
to the table and stood watching the flickering lamp. It gave a final
upward flare of long flames, smoke and sparks, then died down to a
glowing, smoldering wick. Breathlessly she watched the point of red.
Then it faded, leaving her alone in utter darkness.
How long she stood with her eyes on the spot where it had been, she
did not know. But it was until her legs gave way beneath her. Then she
sank down on the lounge, and stayed there trying to hear something
besides the gurgle of the spring.
Presently she got to her feet, her only desire now to reach the way by
which she had entered.
On finding the slit she went up it blindly, with outstretched arms,
until the solid rock stopped her.
“Essel! Essel!” she called wildly. “Don’t leave me here all alone.”
A sense of being buried alive seized her. With desperate hands she
beat on the unresisting rock. Dull echoes answered.
She stopped, waiting until the gruesome sounds died away. Then she
crept back to the lounge, trying to realize what it all meant and why
her cousin had not come as he had said.
Then, presently, out of sheer fatigue, she slept.
She awoke with a stiff, cramped feeling, wondering where she was and
why it was so dark. With a sudden flood came the recollection of all
that had happened before sleep brought oblivion.
Louder than the gurgle of the spring, came her own heart-beats. A long
shudder ran through her as she realized something must have happened
or her cousin would not have left her so long in darkness. A wild wish
to scream aloud, to make some human sound come out of the blackness,
seized her. With an effort she repressed the feeling, conscious only
of the chill, sickly fear that had her in its grip.
Then she rose and went groping for the passage, stumbling over rocks,
heedless of the pool she splashed into, her only desire to reach the
way by which she had entered. Then she threw herself face downwards on
the ground in an effort to shut out the all-enveloping darkness.
There followed a vista of constant terrifying night.
Then forgetfulness came again. From this she awoke, dazed and
blinding, in unaccustomed light that made her eyes ache.
A black face was bending over her, a woman’s face, vaguely familiar,
watching her in an anxious but unfriendly manner.
“Have you come to fetch me?” Leslie asked feebly.
Yoni made no reply. She knew what the girl said. During the months the
negress had spent trading on the steamers she had picked up a
smattering of English. Turning toward the table, she began unwrapping
the voluminous blue cloth that swathed her, bringing to light a number
of parcels tied on to her person. They proved to be a quantity of hard
biscuits, plantains, oranges and nuts, a bundle of candles and a
couple of boxes of matches--supplies such as any native woman in an
up-country African village would have bought for household stores.
In a dazed manner Leslie watched the silent woman, wondering if she
were dreaming. She hardly dared speak lest this apparition should fade
and leave her in total blackness again.
“Where’s Mr. Lebrassa?” she ventured at length.
The name brought Yoni’s eyes to her--black, suffering eyes full of
hate and jealousy.
“He say you lib for here tree week,” she answered in broken English.
Her reply left Leslie aghast.
“But I can’t. I can’t stay here any longer. I shall go mad,” Leslie
cried hysterically.
“He say you mus’ lib for here till Cap’en Fletcher come.”
Leslie stared back at her, too weak to grasp the meaning of what was
said.
“Tell Mr. Lebrassa I can’t stay here. Why doesn’t he come?” she
finished wildly.
“He no can come. He say I mus’ no say why.”
With the feeling of some nightmare on her, Leslie watched the silent
figure that stolidly continued unpacking the parcels.
All at once Yoni faced the girl, looking at her in a wild, jealous
way.
“He say I no mus’ say. But I say. He tink only ob you. You--who hab
lose him everyting.”
There came a flood of wild words in broken English. As Leslie
deciphered their meaning, it left her frozen.
They told of all Lebrassa was suffering, and for what reason; of the
weeks of agony that lay before him; of how Yoni had reached him; of
the secret of the whereabouts of the forest entrance to the rocky
chamber which he had entrusted into her keeping; of the provisions she
was to bring before starting to Tuata, over two hundred miles away to
bring up the British force which meant Leslie’s rescue and the
downfall of Kallu.
“An’ I hate you, you white gel!” Yoni’s frantic, sobbing voice
finished. “An’ I kill you, but dat I no can sabe him, an’ he wan’ see
you ’fore he die.”
Petrified Leslie listened. The hopeless tragedy was more than she
could bear. Just as surely as her father had stolen her cousin’s
English birthright, so she, unwittingly, had deprived him of his
African heritage and brought him to this ghastly end. All the aversion
and dread she had felt were lost in a flood of pity, so great that it
was almost love.
She got up, looking with desperate eyes at Yoni’s dark, distorted
face.
“Take me to Mr. Lebrassa at once,” she commanded.
The negress stopped sobbing and gazed at her with curiosity.
“You no lub him, an’ you wan’ go an’ sabe him?”
“I won’t have him tortured because of me.”
Yoni pushed her back on the lounge.
“No good now. Dey kill him all same. An’ you, de one he wan’ sabe. He
say you write note to Cap’en Fletcher, so dat white mans see I say
true.”
Yoni plunged into a big calico pocket that was tied round her waist
and produced a stump of lead pencil. With trembling fingers Leslie
took it and looked round for something to write on.
The candle Yoni had fixed on the table by means of a drop of grease
showed a strange picture. A big, gloomy cavern full of groping
shadows, and, in one corner of it, a worn, white girl sat scribbling a
frantic message on a piece of soiled paper that had been round one of
the packages. The light flashed on slim, gem-laden fingers that wrote
with desperate pleading, begging her distant countryman to come and
save a man whose head had had a price on it for the last seventeen
years; it played on the rainbow mass of jewels gleaming on her slender
bare arms and shoulders, and on the golden stars strewn about the
gauzy, billowing robe she wore. The light showed, too, a black woman
standing half-naked, silent as a statue, her coarse blue cloth
trailing on the ground, with eyes full of jealousy, hatred and
suffering fixed on the frail, ethereal beauty beside her.
When the note was finished Leslie rose, determined to make another
effort to save Lebrassa from further suffering.
“You must let me out. Perhaps they won’t torture him if they have me.”
Savagely Yoni laughed, in a way strangely reminiscent of her brother.
“If dat sabe him, you no be here now. I tell hem fetch you so soon I
know how get here. I take you now, but I know it hurt de Sultan more
see you hurt dan all dey hurt him. Dere is only to do what he say. You
here. He dere--hoping dat de white mans come ’fore he die, an’ he know
you safe. It all you--you--you!”
Dazed and stunned Leslie stood conscious of the truth of all Yoni
said, aghast at her own helplessness. There was nothing to do but
wait, knowing a man was being tortured to death on her account. The
fact left her sick and shivering. And above all was the knowledge that
her cousin had tried to keep this last horror from her.
In an ecstasy of pity and helplessness she touched Yoni’s arm.
“Is there nothing I can do?” she asked.
Roughly the negress shook off that small, anxious, white hand.
“You can do what he say. No more.”
Yoni took the candle from the table and made for the wooden door by
which she had entered, and started wrestling with the catch.
Leslie followed her. In what the woman had said, the girl had
forgotten her own weeks of imprisonment and dire loneliness.
“Why do you do so much for the Sultan?” she asked.
For a moment Yoni ceased her struggles with the door. Turning, she
scanned Leslie from head to foot, a glance that showed all the hatred
she felt for the one responsible for her god’s suffering and downfall.
“For de reason he do so much for you.”
Then she turned her back on Leslie and re-attacked the door. Presently
it gave way under her efforts. Without a word she went out, banging it
behind her almost before Leslie had realized what was happening.
She flew to the door, trying to reach Yoni, still hoping that if she
gave herself up her cousin’s torments might cease, but as she got
there she heard a heavy bar slipped into position. She pulled and
banged at the door, but her efforts brought no response from the woman
outside.
Presently, worn out with her three days of starvation, she groped her
way back to the table and felt round for candle and matches.
There were only a dozen candles and these would have to last her for
three weeks at least. But although light was so precious, she could
not sit in darkness alone with her thoughts.
CHAPTER XXX
“_Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses,_
_Yet bides the gift of the darkness--sleep!_”
All day long war drums had been sending their wild tattoo echoing
through the forest. Savage figures flitted to and fro among the ruins
of ancient Kallu. War-palaver was being held in the market-square,
attended by an array of warriors, blood-stained and bandaged, hardly
one of them whole.
Kallu was learning that the Sultan Nanza was not the leader the Sultan
Essel had been.
Away in the forest, now not more than thirty miles distant, a thin
line of khaki and black, led by a trio of Englishmen, was pushing its
way onwards, and no effort of the Kalluians could dislodge or turn it
from its course.
When the first news of the coming expedition had been brought, Kallu
had set out, a thousand strong, to annihilate the hurried advancing
towards them. There had been attacks by day and by night, every one a
failure. There were ambushes set, but every hiding place on the route
appeared to be known to the advancing force, and the Kalluians found
themselves attacked by a foe they had hoped to surprise.
A sullen crowd scowled at Nanza as he stood arranging the next move.
There was no getting away from the fact that they were beaten, and the
fall of Kallu was only a matter of a few hours. The warriors had lost
faith in their leader. He was brave, but courage was of little use
when machine guns came into play, and his skill in warfare was crude
negro cunning; he had none of the finesse and strategy his cousin had
inherited from a long line of English ancestors, most of them famous
soldiers. In the Sultan Essel’s day they had fought in many parts of
West Africa, and their portion of the campaign had been always
successful. Now, to be defeated, routed day after day, by a force only
a fraction of their original number, took the heart out of them, and
left them with no desire to meet the advancing foe face to face.
More than three weeks had passed since Yoni had started down to Tuata.
The news she had brought, and the frantic note from Leslie delivered
with it, had resulted in the whole garrison being sent up, for
Fletcher knew enough of the Hyena’s following to guess they would
prove no easy foe, even when deprived of their half-caste leader.
Always when the expedition halted for its few hours’ nightly rest,
Fletcher would bring out Leslie’s imploring letter. In it was no
mention of that brief moment of exquisite agony when her small, white
face had been so close to his and her soft lips had tried to kiss the
pain out of his eyes. Nothing of the confession of love that tragic
parting had brought. It was a wild cry, begging him to come and save
the man he had been trying to catch for years.
And it left him with the feeling that had assailed him once before, at
the Harrogate hotel, on the occasion of his first round with Lebrassa
over Leslie, when the mulatto had succeeded in converting his dinner
invitation into consideration for her only. Now, in his end, ghastly
as it was, the same thought and consideration were there, and the
volume of it appeared to have driven from Leslie’s mind the knowledge
of all else.
The wild, imploring note was in Fletcher’s hand, as he sat camped only
ten miles from Kallu, wondering what the morrow would show him;
whether Lebrassa would have withstood the tortures put upon him and
kept the secret of Leslie’s hiding place, or whether he would have
come too late to do more than stamp out this nest of hornets.
The blackness of night was growing faintly red when the little British
force started on the last ten miles of its journey. The sun was up
long before the first glimpse of the ruins came into view. The piles
of masonry and tangled curtains of creeper offered excellent cover for
the enemy. Every moment Fletcher expected an attack, not knowing Kallu
had struck its last blow.
The little column marched on, and came out into the blaze of sunshine
flooding the market-square. Everything there was quiet and peaceful;
thin spirals of faint, gray smoke curled up from fires outside the mud
huts clinging to the palace walls. Around them stood a crowd of women
and children, sullen and resentful, watching the intruders. But there
was no sign of a man of fighting age.
Fletcher knew what had happened--reverses had taken the heart out of
Kallu. He had seen these evacuations before, in several expeditions
against rebellious tribes, when the tide had gone against them.
However, he was taking no risks.
In spite of his desire to reach Leslie, and Yoni dragging at his arm
and imploring him to come at once to the temple, he made a survey of
the place to satisfy himself its peaceful attitude was no trap. At the
head of the tunnel leading down to the temple he posted half his men.
Then, with a supply of torches, he took the remaining half in with
him.
The long, dark corridor he and his party traversed sounded strangely
silent and deserted; only the booming echo of the steady tramp of feet
came out of the darkness confronting them. The array of torches showed
rock walls covered with signs and symbols beyond the knowledge of the
present age--the work of some night-worshipers who lived when the
world was dim.
Fletcher had no eyes for these. At the head of his men he marched
along, wondering what the unknown beyond would show him.
Presently a flight of steps was reached, leading down to even darker
depths of silence. No glimmer of light came from it, no sound.
For a moment he stood staring into the pit. It seemed as if he had
come too late; that this great black void had swallowed up everything.
Yoni’s hand, pulling his sleeve in desperate, anxious haste, roused
him.
The party descended into the inky well. The torches showed only
further darkness. They marched on until the columns of a great arch
loomed up in the feeble light.
A cry from Yoni brought Fletcher’s gaze to something lying at the foot
of the wide stone steps leading up to the Throne. Something that had
once been a man. Now a mass of festering sores and stumps, forgotten
in the fighting that had taken his torturers from Kallu, left alone in
darkness to die. Something once so strong that even death had been
conquered by it, for the great bare chest, scarred and burnt till the
ribs showed through, still moved with a flicker of life.
With a wail of agony Yoni sank beside Lebrassa.
Fletcher knelt beside his old enemy, marveling that a man could endure
so much and still be alive. Opening his flask, he coaxed a draught of
weak whiskey and water between Lebrassa’s parched lips. Tortured eyes
opened, then closed again as if the light were too much for them;
opened again, and rested unbelievingly on the Englishman’s face.
“Why, Fletcher!” came out in a faint gasp.
Fletcher had no love for the man he was tending. There had been a time
when he had thought the worst death earth could inflict would be too
good for him. But now his end had come, the cause that had brought him
to it seemed to have wiped away the mass of villainy at his door.
The idea made Fletcher do the most difficult, and perhaps the most
noble, deed of his life.
“Miss Graham wrote to me, asking me to come and save you. There was no
thought of anything but you in her letter--you and what you were
suffering on her account.”
His words made a shadow of the old arrogance cross Lebrassa’s face.
“That woman must have told her. I wanted to keep it from her.” Then he
laughed, a laugh pathetic in its feebleness. “Leslie asked _you_ to
save _me_!”
Lebrassa’s eyes closed weakly. Then he spoke again, in a querulous,
hopeless, wandering way.
“Take me out of this black hell. I want light and whiteness and
roses.”
Fletcher’s next draught brought his wandering mind back to the
present. His eyes opened and rested on his captor’s face in an
anxious, pleading manner.
“Those devils have left me no sight for a girl’s eyes. I’d like to
look something like a man in case she should want to see me.”
Even now, in spite of all he had endured for Leslie’s sake, there was
the anxious doubt that the return of her own sort and color might take
her thoughts from him and bring back all the old antipathy.
Despite his desire to reach Leslie, the wistful pleading in that
faint, tortured voice made Fletcher comply with the request before
going further. Turning to a _Hausa_ sergeant, he gave an order for an
impromptu stretcher to be made. Whilst Lebrassa was being lifted
carefully on it, he scribbled a note to the doctor of the expedition,
telling him to do his best for the dying man.
When this was done, in a feeble, gasping voice Lebrassa told him the
secret that opened the Shadow.
In a fever of anxiety Fletcher went up the wide stone steps of the
throne and crossed to the rock where the brooding Shape loomed. Slowly
and carefully he followed out the complicated instructions Lebrassa
had given. Presently an oblong hole appeared in the banked cloud. It
revealed nothing but darkness, no sign or sound of the one entombed
within.
Telling his men to hold the rock back, he lowered himself into the
gaping hole. Then he took a torch from one of them and went along the
empty passage.
The noise of his heavy military boots went echoing down the long,
rough, rock alley, booming into the cave beyond with the sound of
distant thunder. It made the girl sitting there in darkness, start up
with wildly beating heart, not knowing whether it was relief at last,
or whether the man suffering outside had been unable to endure more,
and had told her whereabouts.
Fletcher came out of the slit with the growing fear that the horror
and loneliness had proved beyond the girl’s strength.
Anxiously he stood gazing round the great cave, for the light of his
torch was not sufficient to pierce its far, gloomy corners. Out of the
darkness something seemed to float towards him; a wraith of a girl in
crumpled purple gauze where golden stars flashed. She was so
transparent and ethereal that for a moment he thought she was some
conception of his own mind come to haunt his waking hours as her ghost
did his dreams.
Then dropping his torch he rushed forward and drew her into his arms.
“My darling!” he cried, falling on his knees before her.
Small hands, so thin and white, were on his shoulders.
“Is he--still alive?”
Leslie’s question sent a chill through her lover. In the end it seemed
that Lebrassa was victor, that he had succeeded in stealing her love.
The idea left Fletcher tongue-tied and clumsy, and choked back the
flood of tender words on his lips.
“He’s still alive,” he said huskily.
“Is… is he much hurt?”
He knew she had no idea of the tortures savages were capable of
inflicting. He knew also that Lebrassa’s end was only a matter of a
few days, hours even, that his desire to see the girl for whose sake
he had suffered so much had helped to keep life in him.
“I’m afraid he won’t recover.”
“Then I shall have killed him!”
“No, darling, his own wild schemings brought him to his end.”
“He’s my cousin,” Leslie said brokenly. “And something my… father did
made him do all those dreadful things.”
This was no news to Fletcher. The bare fact had come into Leslie’s
wild, imploring note, and it had left him wondering what the true
story was.
“So you told me, little one,” he said tenderly.
“I thought you would never come,” she said wildly. “I’ve waited so
long, all the time knowing they were torturing him. Perhaps I’m only
dreaming now, and I shall wake up in the dark again, thinking he’s
still being hurt.”
Tenderly Fletcher drew her fragile little form closer.
“Haven’t you a word of welcome for me, darling?” he asked.
Leslie was too weak and dazed to realize anything except that relief
had come at last, and her only desire was to see the man who for her
sake had suffered so much.
“I can’t think of anything but my cousin.”
Fletcher’s arms dropped from the slender waist they encircled. It
seemed to him they had no place there; that he was usurping a dying
man’s privilege.
Instinct must have told Leslie that his heart was stricken.
“Don’t be hurt and angry, dear,” she pleaded. “I must do all I can to
make my cousin’s end happy. Don’t you see, he’s not a nigger to me
now. He’s my cousin. My brave, dear cousin. The cousin my… father
mortally injured.”
Getting to his feet, Fletcher picked up the torch. As he did so,
drearily he wondered why the mulatto always succeeded in
out-maneuvering him where the girl they both loved was concerned.
To Leslie the journey back to daylight was a blurred vista of
sensations. She was aware of a bigger flare of light as Fletcher
lifted her out through the hole and onto the rock throne. There was
the vast hall to cross, a walk that made her realize how weak she was.
Steps were reached, a breathless climb. Then a long corridor, like an
endless black tube, with a faint speck of light at the end, that grew
bigger and brighter as she stumbled on, until it almost blinded her.
Well within the screening shadow of the tunnel, where the light did
not come so strongly, Fletcher came to a halt. He gave an order to a
_Hausa_ sergeant to fetch a hammock to carry Leslie to the palace.
Then he drew out a handkerchief and folded it thickly so as to bind
her eyes when she crossed the sunlit square.
As they stood there waiting, Lieutenant Vincent came and spoke to her,
telling her that Lebrassa was a hero and a gentleman, that the doctor
was doing his best for him.
He said a great deal more but that was all Leslie grasped. In a dazed
way she listened as he went on talking, glad some one was saying a
good word for her cousin.
When the hammock came, Fletcher bound her eyes and carried her into
it. Then the screening cloth was taken off, she was in the green,
shady garden within the palace walls.
The big arch leading into the courtyard was reached at last, then the
fretted, columned windows opening into the sitting-room that had once
been hers.
The moment the bearers stopped Leslie slipped from the litter. She
went on blindly, with eyes only for a man on a low couch set between
the portraits of the two who were responsible for his being.
She did not realize the extent of her cousin’s injuries, for his
persecutors had left his face untouched, and a coverlet screened the
rest from her sight. But there was no mistaking the suffering in the
tainted eyes watching so eagerly for her coming.
With a little cry she crossed and knelt beside him, flooding his worn
face with her tears. The soft shower eased his look of pain and
anguish and took the wistful anxiety from his eyes.
“The tears are not for me, are they, little rose?” he whispered.
“You should have told them where I was. You shouldn’t have let them
hurt you,” she sobbed, as she smoothed back his crisp, wavy hair--now
more white than black--in an ecstasy of loving pity.
“A life in hell makes one oblivious to pain, little cousin.”
“You should have spoken! You should have spoken! You shouldn’t have
let them torture you because of me.”
In a weak, pleased, tender manner Lebrassa laughed.
“There’s no pain now, little rose, only sweetness.”
The depth of love and suffering in his voice was more than Leslie
could bear.
Her head sank on the coverlet and stayed there in an agony of
suppressed weeping. A mangled limb that had been bandaged back to some
semblance of an arm came out from beneath the screening coverlet, and
was put around her with a vestige of its old fierce protection.
“You mustn’t cry, dearest,” he whispered. “I’ve got a better end than
I deserve.”
“You mustn’t die, Essel. You mustn’t. I want you.”
“I’d go through any hell, Leslie, to come out finding you weeping over
me, _wanting me!_”
Then his faint, tired voice stopped. Happiness seemed to have taken
away his last remaining mite of strength. He lay just watching the
girl who knelt beside him, smoothing his grizzled hair and touching
his haggard face with gentle, caressing fingers, a touch that took all
pain from his eyes.
The doctor’s entry roused them. Coming to the couch, he stood looking
at Lebrassa, wondering how much he would endure for the sake of the
girl with him, knowing what pain the moving of that encircling arm
must have caused.
“I shall have to send you away now, Miss Graham,” he said in a kindly
manner. “I haven’t quite finished making your cousin comfortable.”
The mere suggestion of her leaving him made Lebrassa’s arm tighten
round the girl.
His action brought a tearful smile to Leslie’s lips. All was weakness
and suffering where once there had been such strength and power. She
did not draw back from that feeble hold, instead even more tenderly
she smoothed his worn face.
“Let me go, Essel dear,” she whispered. “I’ll come back the moment the
doctor will let me.”
With a touch of savage jealousy he held her tighter, kissing her
caressing hands passionately.
“There’s no one but me now, is there, little angel? In spite of the
blackness,” he asked anxiously.
“No one,” she whispered.
She bent over him until the cloud of her hair screened from his sight
everything but herself. Gently she smoothed his worn face, and he
gazed at her in worship and adoration, whispering all the wild love
that, up to now, the knowledge of her aversion and dread of him had
kept stifled.
When Leslie returned to his bedside she was no sultan’s bride, but a
little English girl in a straight, short-sleeved muslin frock with
hair done in tight coils round her ears. All afternoon she stayed
beside him, fanning him gently, for the breathless, tropical heat had
taken all but the faintest spark of life from him, and that was in the
tainted eyes that never left her face.
The dim, shaded room was all peace and quiet, the silence broken only
by the girl’s slight movements, the occasional gentle murmur of her
voice and the tramp of the sentry on duty outside--the only thing that
said Lebrassa was a prisoner.
For nearly a week he lingered, patient, quiet and happy, with Leslie
his nurse by day and Yoni taking night duty.
There came a time when he was a little exacting with Leslie, anxious
she should stay with him all morning instead of going for her usual
half hour walk in the garden as he had always insisted, peevish if she
left him even for a moment. He was irritable with Yoni, not wanting
her near him; angry if any of the Englishmen came into the room,
holding Leslie in a weak yet savage, jealous way, if they spoke to
her.
All morning he lay watching his cousin, refusing everything but the
sips of water she coaxed between his lips. But when lunch-time came he
asked her to go and have her meal in some cool spot in the garden, as
an excuse saying she had been tied to the room all morning and that
now he felt like sleeping a little.
But once she was out of sight, he asked if he might see his captor.
The request surprised Fletcher. Generally Lebrassa ignored him, if he
chanced to come in the room, granting him neither look nor word. The
message was from a dying man so Fletcher went, wondering why his
prisoner should suddenly ask for him.
On approaching the couch, Lebrassa’s gaze met his in a pleading,
anxious manner. Then he looked at the doctor who usually sat in the
room.
“Could we be quite alone, Captain Fletcher?” he asked faintly.
Fletcher glanced toward his medical officer.
“I’ll take a turn with the patient, if you’d like to get along for
lunch now.”
Once the doctor was out of earshot, Lebrassa spoke again.
“You love my cousin, Captain Fletcher?”
From such a source the captain once would have resented this question.
Even now it rubbed him on the raw, but remembering the cause for which
his rival was dying he answered from his heart.
“I loved Miss Graham from the first moment I saw her.”
“Leslie loves you, too, though she tries to hide it from me,” Lebrassa
replied. “But in her generous, unselfish way she has given me one week
in heaven, and for that I’m grateful.”
As if getting his words together Lebrassa paused.
“My cousin is penniless,” he continued a moment later. “She can’t
prove her claim to anything that was once my father’s. As an indemnity
your government will seize all I own out here, so it’s no use for me
to make a will in her favor.”
Realizing the truth of these statements, Fletcher said nothing. He had
decided what Leslie’s future was to be. That she was penniless did not
trouble him at all; he had a comfortable income apart from his pay.
But he still wondered what the interview was leading up to.
“I want Leslie to be happy,” that weak, gasping voice continued. “And
she can’t be with the weight of her father’s sins upon her. And
because of them, she won’t marry you either.”
This fact Fletcher had not grasped. Now it made him listen eagerly to
what the dying man was saying.
“I can’t bear to think of her missing happiness because of her father.
Because of his sins going through life feeling a leper. I know that
feeling only too well. And I won’t have Leslie suffer in the way I
have.”
Fletcher saw his own paradise retreating, and the fact stunned him.
“But what can you do?” he asked rather helplessly.
His question brought a slight smile to Lebrassa’s drawn lips.
“In strategy and finesse I’ve always been the better man of the two,”
he remarked.
Fletcher knew the Sultan was referring to their many rounds in past
days, when he had always proved himself more than a match for the
Englishman.
“I’m going to tell my cousin another story,” Lebrassa went on. “And
_you_ must uphold my second confession. Now listen carefully.”
Fletcher stooped over the bed to miss no word of that faint, gasping
speech. With heads close together they stayed talking, two men, once
mortal enemies, now brought together as friends in defense of the girl
they both loved.
“But it’s going back on a brave man,” Fletcher protested when Lebrassa
had finished.
“Better to go back on a ‘brave man’ as you please to call me, than
leave an innocent, honorable girl suffering for the rest of her life.
And you’ll be the braver man, Captain Fletcher, for you’ll have to
tell lies and stick to them, knowing that by cheating you’ll win the
prize.”
To Fletcher it seemed no sacrifice could be greater than the one his
old enemy was prepared to make for the sake of the girl they both
loved.
“You will back me up,” Lebrassa pleaded.
Fletcher was past speaking; he just nodded.
A bandaged arm made a movement in his direction, as if to shake hands
on their bargain. Then Lebrassa seemed to recollect what he was and
the mutilated limb was drawn back. Slight as the gesture was, Fletcher
saw it and he put his own hand carefully on the stump where his
enemy’s hand had once been.
When Leslie returned to her vigil by her cousin’s couch there was no
sign of Fletcher. Nor did the doctor who was sitting in the room make
any mention of his visit.
The long, hot, trying afternoon dragged on. It left Lebrassa lying
with closed eyes, that opened only to smile when she touched him
caressingly. But the coolness of evening brought a little life to him.
For a long time he stayed watching her in an anxious, hungry, jealous
way. Then a whisper brought her bending over him.
“There’s something I want to tell you, Leslie. Something that will
take all your love away from me.”
“What is it, dear?” she asked. “What do you want to tell me now?”
The whole of his nightmare life, black, white and red, had been poured
out before her during the past few days.
“It’s about you, dearest,” he whispered, in a hesitating manner, as if
afraid of what the result of his confession would be.
“I’m listening, Essel,” she said, patting his hollow face tenderly.
“It’s what I once told you about your father. It wasn’t true. Not a
word of it, except that I am your cousin, but not legally. My father
married my mother by heathen rites only. Think of it, Leslie, would
such a thing as a legal marriage be likely? My father was the
reprobate, not yours. He was a just and honorable man, even to me.
Accidentally I learned who my dead father was. I forged that letter
and went to my uncle, claiming to be the legal son of his elder
brother. He listened to me. Read my letter. Said if my story was true,
he would give me my title and estates, but I must first produce my
mother’s marriage certificate and my own birth certificate. She had
been dead long before I went to him, and I swore she had hidden the
proofs I wanted and that the secret of their hiding-place had died
with her.”
There was a brief pause, then the weak voice went on, gradually
gaining force and power and conviction--a dying man’s effort to remove
a heritage of sin from a girl’s white conscience.
“He came out to Kallu, to see how much of my wild story was true, and
spent a lot of time in trying to find out the truth. Then he
discovered it, and accused me of being the imposter I was. I tried to
terrorize him into giving me what was his, and acknowledge me as his
brother’s legal son. I said I’d have his life and the lives of his
wife and child if he did not give me my father’s title and estates.
Fear for them drove him from England. It was not true, anything I told
you that day you came to Kallu, Leslie. I said it to make you be kind
to me, so that you wouldn’t quite hate me, knowing it would be so easy
to deceive you, that I might get sympathy that way, if not love.”
Stunned, Leslie listened.
For a moment it seemed as though the burden of her father’s infamy had
slipped from her. Then other thoughts came that made her bend over her
cousin in an ecstasy of love and pity.
“I don’t believe you, Essel.”
“It is true. You must believe me,” he said with weak determination. “I
said it to make you like me. I’ve deceived everybody, so why not you,
the one I plotted and schemed and did murder to get? Why not you, the
little girl whose love I wanted, who always paid her debts so nobly?
Why not forge a debt to make you pay me back in the sympathy and
sweetness I couldn’t get otherwise?”
There was conviction in the voice that had gathered strength for this
last effort at deception. But in Leslie’s mind were childish
recollections of a drunken, dissipated man who had habits and ways and
ideas that the light of advancing years had shown her were neither
just nor honorable. Above all was the knowledge of her cousin’s wild
love and depth of sacrifice for herself.
She leaned over him, anxious these last few hours should be as happy
as she could make them.
“Never mind, dear. If you deceived me, it was because you loved me.”
Searchingly, he watched her.
“You believe me, don’t you, little rose? I swear it on my dying oath.”
She took his anxious, watching face between her hands.
“I believe you, Essel, but it doesn’t make any difference now. You’re
my cousin just the same. The dear, brave cousin I love.”
This effort to remove the burden of sin from her shoulders to his own,
left him almost unconscious.
Daylight died away, and brought shadows creeping into the room.
Lebrassa lay in a fitful, uneasy doze, starting and waking to gaze
round anxiously for Leslie. The doctor came in to light the lamp and
look at his patient, and out again to fetch Fletcher. The two
Englishmen stayed in the screening shadows so that the dying man could
not see them, knowing their presence might raise a flood of negro
jealousy he was now too feeble to keep under control.
Midnight came. Lebrassa still lay muttering, sometimes in the language
of his mother’s people, sometimes in English--back again to his
boyhood spent in England.
All at once he started up with the wild war-cry of his negro
ancestors. Fletcher and the doctor darted forward to hold down the
maimed, distorted thing howling on the couch. Their presence maddened
him, and brought back all the hatred of the whites that had once been
his.
A savage roar of fury greeted them in the heathen dialect that, in
past days, had led many a charge against their color.
There was a quick movement beside him, and a slim, white hand was laid
on his shoulder.
“Essel! Essel, dear.”
Leslie’s voice brought his mad, blazing eyes from the two white men.
For a moment he looked at her in bewilderment, then a smile came.
“Why, little rose!” he exclaimed, as if brought out of some nightmare.
Falling back weakly, he lay watching her.
“Keep hold of me, little cousin,” he gasped presently. “Hell is so
close now. Hell here and hereafter.”
With an arm around his neck, she sat with her face pressed close
against his brown one.
His voice came again, peevish and fretful.
“It’s so dark now, I can’t see you, dearest. You won’t go where I
can’t find you, will you?”
“No, dear, I’ll stay with you always.”
There was no reply. But a bandaged arm came out from beneath the
coverlet and groped round blindly as if feeling for something.
Leslie put it round her waist where it stayed contentedly.
For some time there was silence. The night wind came creeping through
the fretted arches, bringing the moaning sigh of the surrounding
wilderness, and distant, weird, wild, forest howls.
Then a whisper came, faint and far away, from just on the Verge--the
last, tired sigh of a soul slipping into eternity.
“I deceived you, little rose. I swear it on my dying oath. Say you
believe--”
“I believe you, dear. Of course I do,” she whispered, stooping.
But the lips Leslie kissed were dead ones.
CHAPTER XXXI
“_I loved her better than my life,_
_And better than my soul._”
On the veranda of Harding’s bungalow Leslie was sitting. Over two
months had passed since, away in the wilds, Essel, Earl of Alglenton,
the man known as the Hyena, had died. The previous day, in Fletcher’s
charge, the girl had returned to Calabar. Now, as the Major’s guest,
she was awaiting the arrival of the steamer that was to take her back
to England and civilization.
To Leslie, the time that had elapsed since Molly’s marriage had
assumed the aspect of some ghastly nightmare from which she had
emerged with the shadow of sin upon her. She could not make up her
mind which of her cousin’s two confessions was the true one; there was
so much for and against each.
Yet Captain Fletcher, who was generally right about things, always
voted in favor of the last.
The mere idea that her father might not be responsible for Lebrassa’s
crimes had lifted the cloud of despair that had settled on the girl.
As she sat there brooding, another problem confronted her--the problem
of a living. In a listless manner she was going through a pile of
papers on a table beside her, too full of other thoughts to realize
they were more than a month old.
From this occupation a step roused her, and sent her eyes to the big
sunburnt man coming along the veranda.
Now, where Leslie was concerned, Fletcher had no nervousness. She was
the woman he loved, who loved him, and who deliberately shut herself
away from him behind the barrier of her father’s possible crimes.
Halting at her side, he eyed the newspaper she was scanning, which was
open at the “help wanted” page.
“Why are you looking at that?” he asked.
“I must get something to do when I return to England.”
Leslie was not looking forward to taking up life again. For two years
she had been more or less out of things, and she knew the future was
not going to be any too pleasant or easy.
“There’s only one job open for you now, and that’s marrying me,” he
said firmly.
“I’d marry you to-morrow, dear, if--”
She broke off, the blighted look he now knew very well again on her
face.
Before Fletcher there arose the picture of a dim room in a far-away
marble palace, a mangled form on a low couch, the anxiety in its
tainted eyes, and his promise to a dying man.
“My darling, I know your cousin’s second confession was the true one,
everything points to it,” he said tenderly.
“But my father wasn’t my idea of an honorable man, Lindsay.”
“Any man would go to pieces if he had to give up everything and fly
for his life.”
Earnestly she looked at him.
“Do you _really_ think Essel was speaking the truth when he said my
father was not to blame? You know he’d endure anything, tell any lie
to save me.”
In his own mind Fletcher had no doubt which was the real culprit. For
all that he was adding brick after brick to the wall of deception
Lebrassa had endeavored to raise between the girl and the truth,
hoping it would soon be high enough to screen from her the deeds that
some men will do in their lust for power and position and money.
“Of course he was, my darling,” he said firmly. “Haven’t I said so a
thousand times. And have you ever caught me in a lie?” he added
bravely.
Leslie took one of his sunburnt hands and pressed it to her cheek.
“You’ve been so good to me, Lindsay,” she whispered. “And sometimes I
almost think you’re right about--my father not being to blame.”
“Give me some proof of your faith by marrying me. Don’t spoil both our
lives because of a fancy.”
“I wish I could really think it was a fancy.”
“That’s all it is, darling. A fancy that, if you’re not careful, is
going to make a mess of both our lives.”
“I do so want you to be happy,” she said, suddenly weakening. “And if
you really think--”
Fletcher did not give her time to finish her sentence.
“Think! I know,” he exclaimed, catching her into his arms.
He kissed the small, white, anxious face and the wide, blue eyes that
were looking into his as if trying to read the truth in his soul.
“He was a hero, that cousin of yours,” he said hoarsely, a few minutes
later. “A far braver man than you know, Leslie. Braver than I could
have been under the same conditions.”
Leslie liked to hear him praise her cousin, and she tried to think his
words referred to the tortures Lebrassa had undergone for her sake,
which Fletcher had accounted for by saying the Kalluians had objected
to their Sultan’s marrying a white woman.
But to Fletcher, now, the wall of deception he had built round Leslie
was a monument raised to the memory of a brave man whom Fate and
circumstances had driven mad.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. bloodthirsty/blood-thirsty,
market-square/market square, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Formatting: abandon the use of drop-caps and left-align the chapter
epigraphs.
Fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings.
Add ToC.
[Chapter II]
Change “I can see your _ear_ eyes opening when you receive this” to
_dear_.
[Chapter III]
“In the lounge hall of the _hotle_ the visitors were assembling” to
_hotel_.
[Chapter IV]
“but quite another to dine tête-à-tête _wtih_ a” to _with_.
[Chapter VI]
“He leaves for England the day after _tomorrow_” to _to-morrow_.
[Chapter VIII]
“Presently, approaching _foosteps_ made her glance round” to
_footsteps_.
[Chapter XXIV]
“a slim girl, like a golden reed, _drapped_ in the garment of the”
_draped_.
“As if brooding on the _long dead_ past, Lebrassa paused again” to
_long-dead_.
[Chapter XXVII]
“knew that beyond lies a secret _pasage_ leading to the heart” to
_passage_.
[End of text]
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