Читать книгу Woodsmoke - Francis Brett Young - Страница 12

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So he forgot his grievance and set to work at the last, and, as it seemed to him, the easiest of his labours: the choice of servants and gunbearers for the safari. The news of Rawley’s expedition had by this time filtered downward from the dinner tables of Mombasa to the last alley of the native locations, and Antrim found that cooks and headmen were waiting for him in droves; that they knew not only the number of the party but the exact date that had been fixed for starting and the route to be taken: matters that had only been discussed within the closed circle of the Rawleys and himself.

This discovery annoyed him. Later, when he thought about it, it also made him a little uneasy. It gave him a new vision of Mombasa. Up to this point he had always taken the place for granted, seeing only the life of the club and the little society over which Mrs. Kilgour, in the absence of the Governor’s lady, presided: clear figures, picked out against the dark indefinite background of native life. Now, suddenly, he realised that what he had taken for a background, passive and inert, was, in fact, an active and acutely conscious environment in which he and his fellows moved as in a dark wood, seeing nothing, but watched in their every movement and heard in their least whisper. The thought of this dark omniscience came to him as a revelation; for he saw that this speck of an island was a microcosm of all Africa. Perhaps this explained the mystery and terror with which the continent had always inspired strangers. It was uncanny to find that he knew nothing of all this multitude that knew everything of him; that perhaps already men in the swampy villages of the Wataveta knew that he and the Rawleys would pass their way. It put him at a disadvantage and aroused his instincts of self-protection to a degree that made him laugh at himself. It wasn’t like him to consider such things; it was part of the unhealthy sensitiveness that his mind seemed to have acquired on the way down from Nairobi; nerves; altitude—it didn’t matter what you called it. The proper word was fear; and that was an emotion which he was ashamed to experience. He put it resolutely behind him.

Among the applicants that swarmed about him he found a headman well experienced in the German country, a Zanzibari named Asmani who would serve them for 40 rupees a month; a cook at 25, Somali gunbearers with sheaves of hunting references, and a personal servant who took his fancy more than any. This was a sturdy, thick-set fellow of Zulu race. How he had been cast up on this northern coast Antrim could not guess, though men of every Bantu tribe may be found in Mombasa or Zanzibar.

His name was that of the great conqueror Dingaan, son of Chaka, and Antrim saw that he was full of a pride of race that would make him a valuable ally, isolating him from the other servants, who belonged to coastal tribes, and throwing him, in case of trouble, on the white man’s side. In another way he would be useful, for having lived in the Transvaal, he spoke English, and this would save him from the kind of misunderstanding of which Rawley was so dangerously capable. Antrim was delighted with this discovery. To Asmani, the Zanzibari, he entrusted the engagement of porters and two so-called askaris to act as watchmen and put the fear of God into them. When he had made this arrangement he called in at the Rawleys’ hotel to report progress.

They were in, the porter told him, but not to be seen. On this point the lady had left implicit orders. Antrim was disappointed; for he was pleased with his morning’s work and had looked forward to telling them; but since they were not visible he sent up a message to say that he would call again in the evening. A hundred yards down the road a servant from the hotel overtook his ricksha with a note. Mrs. Rawley would be glad if he could postpone his visit till next morning. A strange message. No reason, no apologies.

He guessed that there was trouble. Rawley, of course. If Rawley had turned awkward he felt he ought to be there; but since the message had been so explicit he could do nothing. He didn’t like the look of things, not only because of their present significance, but as an augury of the future.

“This is a devil of a job,” he told himself. “I wish I could help her.” And all that afternoon, as he lay sweating under a mosquito net that kept off the flies, his mind kept returning to the difficulties with which she was surrounded. He saw her fighting the loneliest of battles. “If only she’d sink her pride,” he thought, “and give me her confidence! She might know that I’d do my damnedest. She’s bound to come to it some day.”

The prospects of their journey had never seemed to him more gloomy. It was now exactly a fortnight since Rawley’s last outburst. Once a fortnight meant six times in three months. “I must make a point,” he thought, “of taking no store of liquor on this trip. One sundowner a day. I shall have to ration it.” And yet it was curious that where before he had thought, from time to time, of backing out of the expedition, he now felt thankful that he was committed to it. “Suppose she had had to deal with this sort of thing alone!” he thought. “Now at any rate she’ll have me to fall back on; if only she won’t play the fool and try to keep me out of it.”