tenderness in his voice; "not my best girl, Louis, but a gray-haired
woman of sixty--one I shall never forget."
Madame laid her hand quickly on Herbert's arm; she had caught the note
in his voice.
"Oh! I'm so glad!" she said. "I love stories of old women; I always
have. Please go on."
"If I could have made her young again, madame, you would perhaps have
liked my story better."
"Why? Is it very sad?"
"Yes and no. It is not, I must say, exactly an after-dinner story, and
but that it illustrates precisely how difficult it is sometimes to speak
the truth, I would not tell it at all. Shall I go on?"
"Yes, please do," she pleaded, a tremor now in her own voice. It was
astonishing how simple and girlish she could be when her sympathies were
aroused.
"My gray-haired woman had an only son, a man but a few years younger
than myself, a member of my own party, who had died some miles from our
camp at Bangala, and it accordingly devolved upon me not only to notify
his people of his death, but to forward to them the few trinkets and
things he had left behind. As I was so soon to return to London I wrote
his people that I would bring them with me.
"He was a fine young fellow, cool-headed, afraid of nothing, and was a
great help to me and very popular with every one in the camp. Having
been sent out by the company to which I belonged, as were many others
during the first years of our stay on the Congo, he had already mastered
both the language and the ways of the natives. When a powwow was to be
held I always sent him to conduct it if I could not go myself. I did so,
too, when he had to teach the natives a lesson--lessons they needed and
never forgot, for he was as plucky as he was politic.
"I knew nothing of his people except that he was a Belgian whose mother,
Madame Brion, occupied a villa outside of Brussels, where she lived with
a married daughter.
"On presenting my card I was shown into a small library where the young
woman received me with tender cordiality, and, after closing the door so
that we might not be overheard, she gave me an outline of the ordeal I
was about to go through. With her eyes brimming tears she told me how
her mother had only allowed her son to leave home because of the
pressure brought to bear upon her by his uncle, who was interested in
the company; how she daily, almost hourly, blamed herself for his death;
how, during the years of his absence, she had lived on his letters, and
when mine came, telling her of his end, she had sat dazed and paralyzed
for hours, the open page in her lap--no word escaping her--no
tears--only the dull pain of a grief which seemed to freeze the blood in
her veins. Since that time she had counted the days to my coming, that
she might hear the details of his last illness and suffering.
"You can imagine how I felt. I have never been able to face a woman when
she is broken down with grief, and but that she was expecting me every
minute, and had set her heart on my coming, I think I should have been
cowardly enough to have left the house.
"When the servant returned, I was conducted up the broad staircase and
into a small room hung with wonderful embroideries and pictures and
filled with flowers. In one corner on an easel was Brion's portrait in
the uniform of an officer, while all about were other portraits--some
taken when he was a child, others as a boy--a kind of sanctuary, really,
in which the mother worshipped this one idol of her life."
Herbert stopped, drew the tiny glass of cognac toward him, sipped its
contents slowly, the tenderness of tone increasing as he went on:
"She greeted me simply and kindly, and led me to a seat on the sofa
beside her, where she thanked me for the trouble I had taken, her soft
blue eyes fixed on mine, her gentle, high-bred features illumined with
her gratitude, her silver-gray hair forming an aureole in the light of
the window behind her, as she poured out her heart. Then followed
question after question; she wanting every incident, every word he had
uttered; what his nursing had been--all the things a mother would want
to know. Altogether it was the severest ordeal I had been through since
I left home--and I have had some trying ones.
"For three hours I sat there, giving her minute accounts of his illness,
his partial recovery, his relapse; what remedies I had used; how he
failed after the fourth day; how his delirium had set in, and how at the
last he had passed peacefully away. Next I described the funeral, giving
a succinct account of the preparations; how we buried him on a little
hill near a spring, putting a fence around the grave to keep any one
from walking over it. Then came up the question of a small head-stone.
This she insisted she would order cut at once and sent out to me--or
perhaps one could be made ready so that I might take it with me. All
this I promised, of course, even to taking it with me were there time,
which, after all, I was able to do, for my steamer was delayed. And so I
left her, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes fixed on mine in gratitude
for all I had done for her dead son."
"Oh!--the poor, dear lady!" cried madame la marquise, greatly moved, her
hands tight clasped together. "Yes, I believe you--nothing in all your
experience could have been as painful!"
Brierley raised his head and looked at Herbert:
"Rather a tight place, old man, awful tight place," and his voice
trembled. "But where does the lie come in? You told her the truth, after
all."
"Told her the truth! I thought you understood. Why I lied straight
through! There _was_ no grave--there never had been! Her son and his
three black carriers had been trapped by cannibals and eaten."
Madame started from her chair and clutched Herbert's hand.
"Oh!--how terrible! No! you could not have told her!--I would never have
liked you again if you had told her. Oh! I am so glad you didn't!"
"There was nothing else to do, madame," said Herbert thoughtfully, his
eyes gazing into space as if the recital had again brought the scene
before him.
"Pray God she never found out!" said the marquise under her breath.
"That has always been my consolation, madame. So far as I know she never
did find out. She is dead now."
"And I wish we had never found out either!" groaned Louis. "Why in the
world do you want to make goose-flesh crawl all over a fellow! An
awful, frightful story. I say, Herbert, if you've got any more horrors
keep 'em for another night. I move we have a rest. Drag out that spinet,
Brierley, and give us some music."
"No, please don't!" cried the marquise. "Tell us another. I wish this
one of Monsieur Herbert's was in print, so that I could read it over and
over. Think how banal is our fiction; how we are forever digging in the
same dry ground, turning up the same trivialities--affairs of the heart,
domestic difficulties--thin, tawdry romances of olden times, all the
characters masquerading in modern thought--all false and stupid. Oh! how
sick I am of it all! But this epic of Monsieur Herbert means the clash
of races, the meeting of two civilizations, the world turning back, as
it were, to measure swords with that from which it sprung. And think,
too, how rare it is to meet a man who in his own life has lived them
both--the savage and the civilized. So please, Monsieur Herbert, tell us
another--something about the savage himself. You know so many things and
you _are so human_."
"He doesn't open his lips, madame, until I get some fresh air!" cried
Louis. "Throw back that door, Lemois, and let these hobgoblins out! No
more African horrors of any kind! Ladies and gentlemen, you will now
hear the distinguished spinetist, Herr Brierley, of Pont du Sable, play
one of his soul-stirring melodies! Up with you, Brierley, and take the
taste out of our mouths!"
V
IN WHICH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CANNIBAL AND A FREE-BOOTER IS CLEARLY
SET FORTH
To-night the circle around the table welcomed the belated Le Blanc,
bringing with him his friend, The Architect, who had designed some of
the best villas on the coast, and whose fad when he was not bending over
his drawing-board was writing plays. Marc, to every one's regret, did
not come. After returning with madame to her villa the night of her
visit, he had, according to Le Blanc, been lost to the world.
Dinner over and the cigarettes lighted, the men pushed back their
chairs; Louis spreading himself on the sofa or great lounge; Brierley in
a chair by the fire, with Peter cuddled up in his arms, and the others
where they would be the most comfortable; Lemois, as usual, at the
coffee-table.
The talk, as was to be expected, still revolved around the extraordinary
woman who had so charmed us the night before; Le Blanc expressing his
profound regret at not having been present, adding that he would rather
listen to her talk than to that of any other woman in Europe, and I had
just finished giving him a résumé of her story about the tattooed girl
and her sufferings, when Brierley, who is peculiarly sympathetic, let
the dog slip to the floor, and rising to his feet broke out in a tirade
against all savage tribes from Dyaks to cannibals, closing his outburst
with the hope that the next fifty years would see them all exterminated.
Soon the table had taken sides, The Architect, who had lived in Nevada
and the far West, defending the noble red man so cruelly debauched by
the earlier settlers; Le Blanc siding with Brierley, while Lemois and I
watched the discussion, Louis, from his sofa, putting in his oar
whenever he thought he could jostle the boat, grewsome discussions not
being to his liking.
Herbert, who, dinner over, had been leaning back in his chair, the glow
of the firelight touching both his own and the two carved heads above
him, and who, up to this time, had taken no part in the talk--Herbert,
not the heads, suddenly straightened up, threw away his cigarette, and
rested his hands on the table.
"I have not been among the savage tribes in lower Borneo," he said,
addressing The Architect; "neither do I know the red Indian as the
Americans or their grandfathers may have known him. But I do know the
cannibal"--here he looked straight at Le Blanc--"and he is not as black
as he is painted. In fact, the white man is often ten times blacker in
the same surroundings."
"Not when they roasted your Belgian friend?" cried Louis, with some
anger.
"Not even then. There were two sides to that question."
"The brown and the underdone, I suppose," remarked Louis _sotto voce_.
"No, the human."
"But you don't excuse the devils, do you?" broke in Le Blanc. "Their
cruelties are incredible. A friend of mine once met a man in Zanzibar
who told him he had seen a group of slaves, mostly young girls, who,
after being fattened up, were tied together and marched from one of the
villages to the other that the buyers might select and mark upon their
bodies the particular cuts they wanted."
"I haven't a doubt of it. It's all true," replied Herbert. "I once saw
the same thing myself when I was helpless to prevent it, as I was in
hiding at the time and dared not expose myself. Yet I recognized even
then that the savage was only following out the traditions of centuries,
with no one to teach him any better. We ourselves have savage tastes
that are never criticised; to do so would be considered mawkish and
sentimental. We feel, for instance, no regret when we wring the neck of
a pigeon--that is, we didn't," Herbert added with a dry smile, "until
Lemois advanced his theories of 'mercy' the other night. We still feed
our chickens in coops, stuff our geese to enlarge their livers, fatten
our hogs until they can barely stagger, and, after parading them around
the market-places, kill and eat them just as the African does his human
product. Even Lemois, with equal nonchalance, hacks up his lobsters
while they are alive or plunges them into boiling water--he wouldn't
dare serve them to us in any other way. The only difference is that we
persuade ourselves that our pigs and poultry are ignorant of what is
going to happen to them, while the captured African begins to suffer the
moment he is pounced upon by his captors."
"And you mean to tell me you don't blame these wretches!" burst out Le
Blanc. "I'd burn 'em alive!"
"Yes, I am quite sure you would--that is the usual civilized,
twentieth-century way, a continuation of the eye-for-an-eye dogma, but
it isn't always efficacious, and it is seldom just. The savage has his
good side; he can really teach some of us morals and manners, though you
may not believe it. Please don't explode again--not now; wait until I
get through. And I go even farther, for my experience teaches me that
the savage never does anything which he himself thinks to be wrong. I
say this because I have been among them for a good many years, speak
their dialects, and have had, perhaps, a better opportunity of studying
them than most travellers. And these evidences of a better nature can be
found, let me tell you, not only among the tribes in what is known as
'White Man's Africa,' opened up by the explorers, but in the more
distant parts--out of the beaten track--often where no white man has
ever stepped--none at least before me. Even among the cannibal tribes I
have often been staggered at discovering traits which were as mysterious
as they were amazing--deep human notes of the heart which put the white
man to shame. These traits are all the more extraordinary because they
are found in a race who for centuries have been steeped in superstition
with its attendant cruelty, and who are considered incapable even of
love because they sell their women.
"You, Le Blanc, naturally break out and want to burn them alive. Lemois,
more humane, as he always is, would exercise more patience if he could
see anything to build upon. You are both wrong. Indeed, between the
educated white man freed from all restraint and turned loose in a savage
wilderness, and the uneducated savage I would have more hope of the
cannibal than the freebooter, and I say this because the older I grow
the more I am convinced that with a great majority of men, public
opinion, and public opinion only, keeps them straight, and that when
they are far from these restraints they often stoop to a lower level
than the savage, unless some form of religion controls their actions. To
make this clear I will tell you two stories.
"My first is about a young fellow, a graduate of one of the first
universities of Europe. I am not going to preach, nor throw any blame.
Some of us in our twenties might have done what that white man did. I
am only trying to prove my statement that the cannibal in his cruelties
is only following out the instincts and traditions of his race, which
have existed for centuries, while the white man goes back on every one
of his. I wish to prove to you if I can that there is more in the heart
of a savage than most of us realize--more to build upon, as Lemois puts
it.
"Some years ago I met, on the Upper Congo, a young fellow named Goringe,
of about twenty-four or five, who had a contract with the company for
providing carriers to be sent to the coast for the supplies to be
brought back and delivered to the several camps, mine among the others.
He, like many an adventurer drawn to that Eldorado of adventure, was a
man of more than ordinary culture, a brilliant talker, and of very great
executive ability. It was his business to visit the different villages,
buy, barter, or steal able-bodied men for so much a month, and rush them
in gangs to the coast under charge of an escort. On their return the
company paid them and him so much a head. There were others besides
Goringe, of course, engaged in the same business, but none of them
attained his results, as I had learned from time to time from those who
had come across his caravans in their marches through the jungle.
"One morning a runner came into my camp with a message from Goringe,
telling me that he intended passing within a mile or so of where I was;
that he was pressed for time or would do himself the honor of calling
upon me, and that he would deem it a great favor if I would meet him at
a certain crossing where he meant to rest during the heat of the day. I,
of course, sent him word that I should be on hand. I hadn't seen him for
some years--few other white men, for that matter--and I wanted to learn
for myself the secret of his marvellous success. When in London he had
worn correct evening clothes, a decoration in his button-hole, and was a
frequenter of the best and most exclusive clubs--rather a poor training,
one would suppose, for the successful life he had of late been leading
in the jungle--and it _was_ successful so far as the profits of the home
company were concerned. While their other agents would hire ten men--or
twenty--in a long march of months, gathering up former carriers out of
work, some of whom had served Stanley in his time, Goringe would get a
hundred or more of fresh recruits, all able-bodied savages capable of
carrying a load of sixty-five pounds no matter what the heat or how
rough the going.
"I arrived at the crossing first and waited--waited an hour, perhaps
two--before his vanguard put in an appearance. Then, to use one of
Louis' expressions, I 'sat up and began to take notice.' I had seen a
good many barbaric turnouts in my time--one in India when I was the
guest of a maharaja, who received me at the foot of a steep hill flanked
on either side by a double row of elephants in gorgeous trappings, with
armed men in still more gorgeous costumes filling the howdahs; another
in Ceylon, and another in southern Spain at Easter time--but Goringe's
march was the most unique and the most startling spectacle I had ever
laid my eyes on, so much so that I hid myself in a mass of underbrush
and let the last man pass me before I made myself known.
"The vanguard was composed of some twenty naked men, black as tar, of
course, and armed with spears and rawhide shields. These were the
fighters, clearing the way for my lord, the white man. These were
followed by a dozen others carrying light articles: the great man's
india-rubber bath-tub, his guns, ammunition, medicine-chest, tobacco,
matches, and toilette articles--with such portions of his wardrobe as he
might choose to enjoy. Separated from the contaminating touch of those
in front by a space of some twenty feet and by an equal distance from
those behind, came Goringe, walking alone, like a potentate of old. As
he passed within a few yards of where I lay concealed I had ample
opportunity to study every detail of his personality and make-up. I was
not quite sure that it was he; then I got his smile and the peculiar
debonair lift of his head. Except that he was fifty pounds heavier, he
was the man with whom I had dined so often in London.
"On his head was a pith helmet that had once been white, round which was
wound a yard or more of bright-red calico. A dozen strings of gaudy
beads bound his throat and half covered his bare chest. After that there
was nothing but his naked skin--back and front, as far down as his
waist, from which hung a frock of blue denim falling to his knees--then
more bare skin, and then his feet wrapped in goat-skins. In his hand he
carried a staff which he swung from side to side as he walked with
lordly stride.
"His harem followed: thirty girls in single file, dressed in the
prevailing fashion of the day--a petticoat of plantain leaves and a
string of beads. Each of them carried a gaudy paper umbrella like those
sold at home for sixpence. Some of the girls were slim and tall, some
fat; but all were young and all bore themselves with an air of calm
distinction, as if conscious of their alliance with a superior race.
Bringing up the rear was a long line of carriers loaded down with tents,
provisions, and other camp equipage.
"When it had all passed I stepped quickly through the forest, got
abreast of my lord the white man, and shouted:
"'Goringe!'
"He turned suddenly, lifted the edge of his helmet, threw his staff to
one of his men, and came quickly toward me.
"'By the Eternal, but I'm glad to see you! I was afraid you were going
back on me! It was awfully decent in you to come. You didn't mind my
sending for you, did you? I've got to make the next village by sundown,
and then I'm going up into the Hill Country, and may not be this way
again for months--perhaps never. How well you look! What do you think of
my turnout?'
"I told him in reply, that it was rather remarkable--about as
uncivilized as anything I had ever seen--and was on the point of asking
some uncomfortable questions when, noting my disapproval, he switched
off by explaining that it was the only way he could make a penny, and
again turned the conversation by exclaiming abruptly:
"'Saw my wives, didn't you?-every one of them the daughter of a chief.
You see, I buy the girl, and so get even with her father, am made High
Pan-Jam with the red button and feather, or next of kin to the chief by
blood-letting--anything they want. I'm scarred all up now mixing my
precious ancestral fluid with that of these blacklegs, and am first
cousin to half the cutthroats on the river. Next I start on the
carriers, pick 'em out myself, and send 'em down to the agent. The home
company is getting ugly, so I hear, and wonder why they owe me so much
for the carriers I've sent them--pretty near six hundred pounds
sterling, now. They think there is something crooked about it, but I'm
keeping it up. I'm going down when the row is over and present my bill,
and they've got to pay it or I'll know the reason why. Now we'll have
tiffin.'
"I watched his women crowd about him. One spread a blanket for his
royal highness to sit on; two or more busied themselves getting the food
together; one, parasol in hand, planted herself behind him to shield his
precious head from the few sunbeams that filtered through the
overhanging leaves, fanning him vigorously all the while.
"With the serving of the meal and the uncorking of a bottle in which he
kept what he called his 'private stock,' he gave me further details of
his methods with the natives. When a chief was at war with another
tribe, for instance, he would move into the first village he came to,
spread his own tent and those of his wives, post his retainers, and then
despatch one of his men to the other combatant, commanding a powwow the
next morning. Everybody would come--everybody would talk, including
himself, for he spoke Kinkongo and Bangala perfectly. Then when he had
patched up their difficulties, he would distribute presents, get
everybody drunk on palm wine, and would move on next day with a
contribution of carriers from both tribes, adding with a wink, 'And the
trick works every time.'"
Herbert paused for a moment and his lips curled.
"Now there's a specimen white man for you! To have expressed my disgust
of his methods in the way I would have liked to do--and I can be pretty
ugly at times--would, under the circumstances, have been impossible,
although there was no question in my mind of his cruelty nor of his
sublime selfishness. The world was his oyster and he opened it at his
leisure. He knew as well as I did what would become of the women when he
was through with them--that they would either be sold into slavery or
eaten--and he knew, too, how many of those poor devils of carriers would
go to their death, for the mortality among them is fearful--and yet none
of it ever made the slightest impression on him. Now I could excuse that
sort of thing in Tippoo Tib, whom I knew very well. He was a
slave-trader and the most cruel ruffian that was ever let loose on the
natives; but this man was an Anglo-Saxon, a graduate of a university,
speaking French and German fluently, with a good mother, and sisters,
and friends; a man whom you could no doubt find to-night perfectly
dressed and heartily welcomed in a London club, or in the foyer of some
theatre in Paris, for his father has since died and he has come into his
property. And yet the environment and the absence of public opinion had
reduced him to something worse than a savage, and so I say again, one
can excuse a cannibal whose traditions and customs have known no change
for centuries, but you cannot excuse a freebooter who goes back on every
drop of decent blood in his veins."