Читать книгу Kate Meredith, Financier - Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne - Страница 4

Table of Contents

If a white man in a West African factory volunteers details of his previous history, all hearers are quite at liberty to believe or disbelieve, as suits their whim; but if, on the other hand, no word about previous record is offered, Coast etiquette strictly rules that none shall be asked for.

George Carter found even upon the surface of his superior officer at Malla-Nulla factory much that was mysterious. There were moments when Mr. Smith exhibited an unmistakable gentility; but these were rare; and they usually occurred when the pair of them lunched en tête-à-tête at 11 o'clock, and Smith had worked off his morning qualm, and had not commenced his afternoon refreshment. With a larger audience he was one part cynic and six parts ruffian; he was admitted to be the most skilful compounder of cocktails on all that section of the West African seaboard; and he sampled his own brews in such quantities, and with such impunity, as gave the lie to all text-books on topical medicine.

His head was bald, and the gray hair on his face and above his ears was either as short as clippers could make it, or else bristled with a two weeks' growth. Day and night he wore more or less shrunken pyjamas, from the neck buttonhole of which a single eyeglass dangled at the end of a piece of new black silk ribbon. Carter guessed his age as somewhere between fifty and fifty-five, and wondered why on earth Messrs. O'Neill and Craven kept such a disreputable old person as the head of what might have been a very prosperous factory.

Indeed, theories on this very point were already lodged in the older man's brain. "It's this new partner, K. O'Neill, that I don't like the sound of," he explained to Carter one day. "By the way, who is he?"

"Don't know. As I told you I was staying with my father at the vicarage, and I was engaged by wire the day before the M'poso sailed, and only caught her by the skin of my teeth. There was nobody there to see me off, and on the boat all they could tell me was that 'K.' came into the business when the late head died."

"Old Godfrey, that was"—Swizzle-Stick Smith sighed—"poor old Godfrey O'Neill! He was one of the best fellows going in the old days, not a bit like the usual cut of palm-oil ruffian as we used to call the traders then. And, my God! to think of my coming down to the grade of one of them myself."

Again the subject cropped up when one of their rare mails came in. "Here's expense!" grumbled Swizzle-Stick Smith. "Letters landed at our Monk River factory, and sent on to Mulla-Nulla by special runner. K. O'Neill's orders, the Monk River agent says. In the old days you could always bet on the beach being too bad for the steamer to call twice out of three times, and you weren't pestered with a mail more than once in six months. That's mainly why I've stuck by O'Neill and Craven all these years. Now this new man wants our output of kernels to be doubled by this time next year, and hopes I'll take steps to work up the rubber connection. If I can't see my way to do all this, will I kindly give my reasons in writing, and if necessary forward same by runner to a steamer's calling point, so that reply may be in Liverpool within six weeks at latest. What do you think of that?"

"Oh, I should say it was reasonable enough from the Liverpool point of view."

"Bah! There's not much of the Coast about you." He tore the letters into shreds, and folded these carefully into pipe-lights. "Dear old Godfrey trusted me up to the hilt, and this new fellow's got to learn to do the same, or I shall resign my commission. If he understood anything about running the office, he might know I should do all the work that was good for me."

"I'm sure you do," said Carter civilly. "I'm afraid I'm the slacker. You let me have such an easy time of it whilst my arm was getting well, that I've slid off into lazy ways. I must buck up, and if you'll load the work onto me, Mr. Smith, you'll find I can do a lot more."

Swizzle-Stick Smith dried the perspiration from his eye socket, fixed his glass into a firmer hold, and stared. "Well," he said at last, "you are a d—d fool." And there the talk ended.

It was that same day that Carter had his first introduction to Royalty. He was in the retail store—"feteesh," they call it on the Coast—weighing out baskets of palm kernels, measuring calabashes of orange-colored palm oil, judging as best he could the amount of adulterants the simple negro had added to increase the bulk, and apportioning the value in cotton cloth, powder, flintlock guns at twelve and six-pence apiece, and green cubical boxes of Holland gin. Trade proceeded slowly. The interior of the feteesh was a stew of heat and odors, and the white man's elaborate calculations were none of the most glib. To knock some idea of the fairness of these into the black man's skull was a work that required not only eloquence, but also athletic power. The simple savage who did only one day's shopping per annum was willing always to let the delights of it linger out as long as possible, and all the white man's hustling could not drive the business along at more than a snail's pace.

By Coast custom, work for Europeans starts in those cool hours that know the daybreak, and switches off between eleven and twelve for breakfast; and thereafter siesta is the rule till the sun once more begins to throw a shadow. But on this particular day, when Swizzle-Stick Smith had knocked out his pipe and turned in under his mosquito bar, Carter sluiced a parrafin-can full of water over his red head by way of a final refreshment, and went down once more from the living rooms of the factory to the heat and the odors of the feteesh below.

The sweating customers saw him come and roused up out of the purple shadows, and presently the game of haggle was once more in full swing.

Carter had a natural gift for tongues, and was picking up the difficult Coast languages to the best of his ability, but his vocabulary was of necessity small, and a Krooboy stood by to translate intricate passages into idiom more likely to penetrate the harder skulls. The Krooboy wore trousers and singlet in token of his advanced civilization, and bore with pride the name of White-Man's-Trouble.

There was a glut of customers that baking afternoon. High-scented trade stuffs poured into the factory in pleasing abundance, and bundles of European produce were balanced upon woolly craniums for transportation through bush paths to that wild unknown Africa beyond the hinterland. The new law of K. O'Neill allowed no lingering in the feteesh. Once a customer had been delivered of his goods, and had accepted payment, White-Man's-Trouble decanted him into the scalding sunshine outside, and bade him hasten upon his ways. K. O'Neill had stated very plainly, in a typewritten letter, that the leakage by theft was unpleasing to the directorate in Liverpool, and must be stopped. K. O'Neill understood that the thefts took place after a customer had spent all his cash on legitimate purchase, as then all his savage intelligence was turned to pilfering. Carter, as the man on the spot, recognized the truth of all this, and carried out the instructions to the foot of the letter.

Mr. Smith warned him he would have trouble over it. "Ever since the first factory came down to blight this Coast," Smith explained, "the boys have been allowed to hang around the feteesh and steal what wasn't nailed down. They look upon it in the light of a legitimate discount, and it's grown up into a custom. Now in West Africa you may burn a forest, or blot out a nation, or start a new volcano, and nobody will say very much to you, but if you interfere with a recognized custom, you come in contact with the biggest kind of trouble."

"Still," Carter pointed out, "these orders are definite."

"And you are the kind of fool that goes on the principle of 'obeying orders if you break owners.' Well, go ahead and carry out instructions. I won't interfere with you. I'd rather like to see this cocksure K. O'Neill get a smack in the eye to cure his meddling. And for yourself, keep your weather eye lifting, or some indignant nigger will ram a foot of iron into you. It's the Okky-men I'd take especial care of if I were you. They've got their tails up a good deal more than's healthy just now. I'm told, too, that their head witch doctor wants his war drum redecorated." Mr. Smith grinned—"I don't want to be personal, of course."

"Oh, don't mind me. So far I rather fail to understand what I've got to do with the Okky City war drum."

"You see you carry round with you something that would make the very best kind of heap-too-good ju-ju."

"Still I don't understand."

Swizzle-Stick Smith got up and stretched, and limped across to the door. "It's that red head of yours, my lad," he said over his shoulder as he went out. "Every witch doctor in West Africa that sees it will just itch to have it amongst his ornaments. I'd dye it sky-blue if I were you, just for safety sake."

This of course might be Mr. Smith's delicate irony, or again it might be literally true. Carter had already been long enough in West Africa to know that very unusual and unpleasant things can happen there; but that made no change in his determination. K. O'Neill was perfectly right about the matter; this pilfering ought to be stopped; and he felt convinced that White-Man's-Trouble would help to see that justice was done. That particular Krooboy was thievish himself, certainly, but he had a short way with any fellow African who dared to be light-fingered.

So during all that hot morning, and all that sweltering afternoon, merchant after merchant was shown out into the sunshine, and those who chattered and would not go willingly were assisted by the strong right arm of White-Man's-Trouble.

Just upon the time when siestas generally ended, that is, about four o'clock, there came a burly Okky trader who swaggered up to the factory with five carriers in his train laden down with bags of rubber.

Carter examined the evil smelling stuff, and cut open two or three of the larger round lumps. The gentle savage had put in quite thirty per cent. of sticks, and sand, and alien gum by way of makeweight, and was as petulant as a child at having this simple fraud discovered. He still further disliked the price that was offered; and when it came to making his purchases, and he found that the particular spot-white-on-blue cotton cloth on which he had built up his fancy was out of stock, the remaining rags of his temper were frayed completely. For an unbroken ten minutes he cursed Carter, and Malla-Nulla factory, and an unknown Manchester skipper in fluent Okky, here and there embroidered with a few words of that slave-trader's Arabic, which is specially designed as a comfort for the impatient, and when he had accepted a roll of blue cloth spotted in another pattern, and was invited to leave the feteesh, he held himself to be one of the worst used Africans on the Dark Continent.

Carter, who was tired and hot, signed to his henchman. "Here, fire that ruffian out," he said.

But White-Man's-Trouble affected to hear a summons from outside. "Dat you, Smith? Yessar, I come one-time," said he, and bolted out through the doorway.

"Here you," said Carter to the big Okky-man, "you follow that Krooboy out of here. If I have to tell you a second time, there'll be trouble. Come, now, git."

Carter's command of the native might be faulty, but the grammar of his gestures was correct enough. What, go out of the feteesh before he chose? The Okky-man had no idea of doing such a thing. He lifted his walking spear threateningly, and snarled.

Simultaneously Carter put his right hand on the greasy counter and vaulted. He caught the upraised spear with his other hand before his feet had touched ground, and broke the blade close off by the socket; and a short instant later, when he had found a footing, he carried his weight forward in the same leap, and drove his right against the negro's left carotid, just beneath the ear. The man went down as if he had been pole-axed.

Carter went outside and beckoned to the Okky-man's carriers. "Here, you, come and carry your master outdoors"—the men hesitated—"or I'll start in to handle you next." They did as they were bidden. And thereupon Carter, with his blood now well warmed up, was left free to attend to another matter elsewhere.

A noise of voices in disagreement, and the intermittent sounds of scuffling had made themselves heard from the south side of the factory buildings, and now there were added to these a woman's voice calling in English for some one to help her, and then a sharp, shrill scream of unmistakable distress.

Now, Carter was no knight-errant. He had set up the unknown K. O'Neill as his model, and had told himself daily that he intended to meddle with nothing in West Africa, philanthropic or otherwise, which would not directly tend to the advancement of George Carter; but at the first moment when they were put to the test, all these academic resolutions broke to pieces. He picked up his feet and ran at speed through the sunshine, and as he went a mist seemed to rise up before his eyes which tinged everything red.

He felt somehow as he had never felt before; strangely exhilarated and strangely savage; and when he arrived on the scene of the disturbance, he was little inclined to weigh the consequences of interference. There was a woman, white-faced and terror-stricken—he could not for the life of him tell whether she was handsome or hideous. Negroes were handling her. On the ground lay a pole hammock, in which presumably she had arrived. In front of her was a fat negro, over whose head a slave held a gaudy gold and red umbrella, and grouped around this fat one were eight or ten negro soldiers, with swords slung over their shoulders, and long flintlock trade guns in their hands.

The whole scene was, as I say, dished up to Carter's eyes in a red mist, and this thinned and thickened spasmodically so that sometimes he could see clearly what he was doing, and at other times he acted like a man bewitched. But presently the red cleared away altogether, and he found himself clutching the fat negro by a twist of the shoulder cloth, and threatening to split his skull with a sword recently carried by one of the man's own escort. The girl sat limp and white on a green case before them, clearly on the edge of a faint, and round them all stood negro carriers and Haûsa soldiery, frozen to inaction by the fat man's danger.

All human noises had ceased. Only the hot insect hum and the cool diapason of the Atlantic surf droned through the silence. From the dull upraised sword blade outrageous sunrays winked and flickered.

Upon this impasse came Swizzle-Stick Smith from the bush side of the white factory buildings, polishing his eyeglass, and limping along at his usual pace, and no faster. He removed his pipe, and wagged it at them.

"Upon my soul a most interesting picture! Just like a kid's fairy tale book. Gallant young knight rescuing distressed damosel from the clutches of wicked ogre, who incidentally happens to be the King of Okky as anyone but a born fool could have guessed from his state umbrella, and one of the firm's best customers. Kindly observe that I'm the good fairy who always comes in on the last page to put things safe. Carter, I prithee sheath thy virgin sword, and then for God's sake run away and drown yourself."

He had reached the group by this time, and took up in his own the damp black hand of offended majesty, and shook it heartily. He broke out in a stream of fluent Okky, and gradually the potentate's wrath melted. The King still gesticulated violently, and apparently demanded Carter's red head upon a charger as a prelude to truce, but Swizzle-Stick Smith was an old Coaster and knew his man.

"Champagne," Mr. Smith kept on suggesting, "bubbly champagne with plenty of Angostura bitters in it to make it bite. I call attention to your Majesty's historic thirst. Come up into the factory, old Tintacks, and we'll break up a case in honor of the day."

Finally the King, who being a West African king was necessarily a shrewd man, decided that though vengeance would keep till another day, Mr. Smith's champagne might not; and he let himself be led back to the factory, and up the stair. He graciously accepted the most solid-looking of the long chairs in the veranda, sat in it carefully, kicked off his slippers, and tucked his feet beneath him. He waved away Mr. Smith's further speech. "Oh, Smith," he said, "I fit for champagne-palaver, one-time," and loosened the tuck of his ample waist-cloth to give space for the expected cargo. "No damn use more talk-palaver now."

Outside in the sunlight the Haûsa soldiers had taken the cue from their master, and dissolved away unobtrusively; the carriers were dismissed to the Krooboys' quarters under the charge of White-Man's-Trouble, who, now that the disturbance was over, bustled up with many protestations of sorrow for his unavoidable absence, and Carter was left for further attendance on his distressed damsel.

For the first time he found himself able to regard her critically; and he was somehow rather disturbed to find before him a girl who was undeniably beautiful. When he had rushed blindly in to the rescue, he had taken it for granted that the person he saw so vaguely through that red mist was an English or an American missionary woman in distress, and (to himself) excused his mad lust for battle by picturing himself as the champion of the Christian martyr beset by pagans.

The white missionary women of that strip of the Coast occasionally quartered themselves at Malla-Nulla factory on their journeyings, in spite of the very niggardly civility of Mr. Smith, and Carter had been much impressed in the way beneficent Nature had safeguarded them by homely features and unattractive mien from attack by the other sex. He could have taken off his hat to one of these, and said:

"Most happy to have been of service to you, madam. Won't you come into the factory and have a cup of tea?"

But this slim beauty in the frilled white muslins sent speech further and further away from him the more that he looked at her. For the first time since landing in Africa six months before he was ashamed of mildew-stained pyjamas for afternoon wear, and disgusted with the yellow smears of palm oil which bedaubed them. He was hatefully aware too that he had let his razors rust in the moist Coast climate, and White-Man's-Trouble's fortnightly efforts with the clippers had merely left his chin and head covered with an obscene red bristle.

" … It would be ridiculous," the girl was murmuring, "merely to say 'thank you' for what you did, Mr. Carter. You see I know your name. News about new-comers soon spreads amongst the other factories on the Coast here. If you only knew how I dread that fearful King, you would understand my gratitude. You see this isn't the first time he's tried to carry me off."

"I wish you'd mentioned it earlier," Carter blurted out, "and I'd have split his dirty skull, trade or no trade."

She shook her head. "No, that wouldn't have done. There's the law to be thought of even here. Besides, he's a King, and could let loose, so they say, twenty thousand fighting men against the Coast factories, and wipe them out. If only I could get away to some place he couldn't reach!" She shivered. "If I stay on here at my father's factory, I'm bound to be caught and taken to Okky City."

Carter's brown eyes opened in sheer surprise. "You speak of your father's factory. Do you mean to say that you live here on the Coast?"

"At the Smooth River factory."

"What, Slade's place?"

"Yes, I'm Laura Slade. Couldn't you guess?"

"How could I?" Carter blurted out. "Mr. Smith told me that Slade's girl—" And there he stopped, and could have bitten off his tongue for having said so much.

She finished his sentence quietly, and, as it appeared, without resentment. "Mr. Smith, I suppose, described me as a nigger."

Carter made no reply. His brown eyes hung upon her pretty face intently.

"Mr. Smith, of course, knew my father, and my mother, too, for that matter, before I was born. My mother was a quadroon, and that makes me, you see, one-eighth African."

"You did not arrange your pedigree any more than I did mine. If you hadn't told me, I should never have guessed you weren't a full-blooded European. And after all, what does it matter?"

"There speaks the man who has only been out on the Coast six months."

"Six months or six years," said Carter stoutly, "makes no difference so far as I am concerned. We're neighbors, it appears, and I hope you will let me be one of your friends. Miss Slade, will you take compassion on a very lonely man and let him come over to Smooth River occasionally and see you? I can't tell you how ghastly the loneliness has been with only the Krooboys and Mr.—er—Swizzle-Stick Smith to talk to, though perhaps you can guess at it by the way I've let my outward man run to seed."

She gave him her slim brown hand. "I take frankly what you offer," she said. "If you let me become your friend, I shall count myself fortunate; you see, after what you have done for me to-day we can hardly start from the ordinary basis."

From there onwards their talk flowed easily. She had come over on a business errand for her father, and Carter settled that quickly and promptly. She went presently into the factory to rest after her long hammock ride, and Carter seized upon the chance to dive into his own room. Therefrom he emerged an hour later with a chin half-raw from recent shaving with a rusty razor, and wearing creased white drill clothes and a linen collar that sawed his neck abominably.

"I've arranged," he said, when next he saw her, "that you and I dine tête-à-tête, if you don't mind, down under those palm trees yonder. The mosquitos don't trouble down there just at sunset, and my boy, White-Man's-Trouble, only tastes things when they're going back to the cook house. It's mere prejudice to say he's had his filthy paw in every dish before it comes to me. Oh, by the way, Mr. Smith and his Majesty of Okky ask you to excuse them, as they have still more business to discuss before they can break up their meeting."

She laughed and understood him to a nicety. They slipped off into light easy talk as though they had known one another all their lives, and there was neither that narrow escape from tragedy behind them, nor Africa and possible tragedy ahead. The girl was good comrade. The man was hardly that. He too frankly devoured her with his eyes. And certainly, in her cool, frilled muslin dress, and her big green sun hat she was pretty enough to paint. Her hair was black assuredly, but her pale olive face was moulded in curves of the most delicious. In England, and as an Englishwoman, she would have been dark perhaps, though not noticeably so. Nine hundred and ninety-nine English people out of the thousand would have commented on her beauty only. In America—well, in America, she would at once have been placed in that class apart.

But Carter, the recently imported Englishman, saw nothing save only her beauty and her charm, and he behaved towards her as the English gentleman behaves towards his equal. A man who had been longer in Africa would have had the wisdom of one who had lived in the Southern States, and have picked out the African blood at a glance, and, as is the way of men who have eaten of the tree of that wisdom, would have ordered his civilities accordingly.