RESTITUTION
Darkness had closed down suddenly on the forest, but it was hotter
than ever in the primitively furnished general room of Lamartine's
house, where the lamp further raised the already almost insupportable
temperature. There was also a deep, impressive silence in the bush
that shut the rickety dwelling in, though now and then the sound of a
big drop splashing upon a quivering leaf came in through the open
window with startling distinctness. Lamartine, the French trader, was
dead, and had been buried that afternoon, as was customary, within an
hour or two after the breath has left his body. His career, like that
of most men in his business, had not been a very exemplary one, but he
had, at least, now and then shown that he possessed certain somewhat
fantastic and elementary notions of ethics, which he was in the habit
of alluding to as his code of honor. It was, as Father Tiebout, who
had once or twice given him spiritual advice when he was very sick of
fever, admitted, a rather indifferent one, but very few white men in
that country had any code at all, and, as the good padre said, it was
possible that too much would not be expected from any one who had
lived in that forest long.
In any case, Lamartine had gone to answer for the deeds that he had
done, and the three men who had buried him and had constituted
themselves his executors sat about his little table with the
perspiration dripping from them. There was Nares, gaunt and
hollow-faced, weak from fever and worn with watching; Father Tiebout,
the Belgian priest, little, and also haggard; and Ormsgill, the
gray-eyed, brown-faced Englishman, who sat looking at them with set
lips and furrowed forehead. Their creeds were widely different, but
men acquire a certain wide toleration in the land of the shadow, where
it is exceedingly difficult to believe in any thing beyond the
omnipotence of evil.
It was, perhaps, characteristic that it was the priest who tore up
certain papers Ormsgill had selected from the pile upon the table.
"I do not think that anything would be gained by allowing them to come
under the notice of the authorities," he said. "I am not sure that
they might not consider they invalidated the trifling bequest to the
Mission, which with good management should enable us to rescue a few
more of the heathen."
"A very few!" and Ormsgill smiled. "The market's stiff now Domingo has
practically a monopoly as purveyor. Converts will be dearer. One
understands that you buy most of yours."
Father Tiebout's eyes twinkled good-humoredly. "One must use the means
available, and it is, at least, something if we can save their bodies.
But to proceed, our companion will agree with me that repentance must
be followed by restitution or reparation. In the case of the friend we
have buried one must take the will for the deed, and the will was
there. Restitution may also be efficacious if it is vicarious. As you
know, it was the thought of the woman from the interior that most
troubled Lamartine."
Ormsgill glanced at Nares, for both had heard some, at least, of the
dying man's words on that subject, but for a time the American looked
straight in front of him. Then he turned to Ormsgill.
"He seemed to expect you to make that restitution for him. Tell us
what you know. Most of it will not be news to Father Tiebout, but I
haven't his advantages."
"The affair is easily understood. Lamartine bought the girl from the
man who ran the labor supply business before Domingo. She was
decidedly good-looking, a pretty warm brown in color, and had the most
intelligent eyes I've ever seen in an African. The curious thing is
that I believe Lamartine was genuinely fond of her. In any case, he
was furious when one of the boys laid what looked like very conclusive
evidence of her unfaithfulness before him. He meant to administer the
usual penalty."
Father Tiebout made a little gesture. "Ah," he said, "these things
happen. One can only protest."
"Well," said Ormsgill dryly, "as you know, they didn't in this case. I
nearly broke his wrist, but I took the pistol from him. You see, I
rather believed in the girl's innocence. Lamartine compromised the
thing by handing her on to Herrero--though he would take no money for
her. He had, as he was rather fond of mentioning, his code of honor.
There was a trying scene when Herrero sent for her. The girl flung
herself down and clung to Lamartine's knees. It seemed she was fond of
the man, and didn't want to go away, which was, as it happens, wise of
her. Though she was probably not aware of this, Herrero trains the
women who take his fancy with the whip."
He stopped a moment and glared at Nares. "I have no doubt the padre
knows the rest. Lamartine found out not long ago that the boy had
lied, and remembered a little too late that Herrero would in all
probability beat the girl to death in one of his outbreaks. He made
him a very tempting offer if he would send her back, but Herrero
apparently wanted to keep her, and while negotiations were in progress
Lamartine fell sick. I naturally don't know what he told the padre,
but he once or twice assured me that if he knew she could be sent back
safe to her people in the bush he would die more contentedly. In fact,
improbable as it may seem in this country, the thing was worrying him
badly."
It was significant that Nares, who was something of an optimist,
appeared by his expression to consider the fact that such a thing
should have troubled Lamartine very improbable indeed, but Father
Tiebout smiled contemplatively. His profession gave him, as had been
suggested, advantages which Nares did not enjoy, and he was a wise man
in his way.
"Lamartine," he said, "desired to make restitution--but to do it in
his own person was not permitted him."
Then he turned, and sat still with his eyes fixed on Ormsgill, as
though waiting. It was, in fact, an occupation he was accustomed to,
for one who would see the result of his efforts must as a rule wait a
long while in Africa.
Ormsgill met his gaze thoughtfully, with steady gray eyes, and it was
a moment or two before he spoke.
"Whether a vicarious reparation will be of any benefit to the soul of
Lamartine I naturally do not know," he said. "It is enough for me that
he and the padre seemed to fancy it might be, and, as it happens, I
owe Lamartine a good deal. This is why I practically promised to
undertake his responsibility. I am not sure that either of you know I
first arrived in this Colony trimming coal among the niggers in a
steamer's stokehold."
Father Tiebout made a little gesture with his hands which seemed to
imply that there was very little he was not acquainted with, and
Ormsgill went on--
"Still, I do not think you know I was quietly compelled to abandon the
service of a British Colony for a fault I never committed. My friends
at home very naturally turned against me. I had brought them
discredit--and it did not matter greatly whether I was guilty. How I
made a living afterwards along this coast does not concern you; but I
went down in one sense as far as a white man may, and the struggle has
left a mark that will never quite come out on me. Still, I met with
kindness from other outcasts and benighted heathen, as one usually
does from the outcast and the trodden on, and, when I was flung ashore
after nearly pounding the life out of a brutal second engineer,
Lamartine, who had gone down to the coast on business, held out a hand
to me. As I said, I feel that I owe him a little."
He stopped for a moment with a little grim smile. "Herrero has gone
South somewhere, taking the girl with him, but if she is alive I think
I can promise that he will give her up. After that it would not be so
very difficult to send her back to where she comes from in the bush."
"For the repose of the soul of Lamartine!" and Nares glanced at Father
Tiebout, with a challenge in his eyes.
The little priest's gesture seemed to imply that he declined to be
drawn into a controversy, and it was Ormsgill who answered the
American.
"To discharge a debt--among other reasons--and as a protest. I have
been driven to exhaustion myself more than once. Have you any hope at
all to offer these African people, I mean in this world, padre?"
Father Tiebout smiled. "Yes," he said simply. "One does what one can,
and waits patiently. How long, I do not know, but slowly or suddenly,
in our time, or in the time of these people's children, the change
will come."
He looked at Nares, the man of action, who bore with waiting ill, and
he, flushed with fever, laid a hand that was clenched hard upon the
table.
"You expect them to endure to the second generation. I tell you that
they are forging spears in the interior now. A little more, and they
will come down and wipe out every bush mission and garrison, and can
we blame them, who stand by and tolerate the abominable traffic in
black men's souls and bodies? There was more excuse for the old-time
slavery. Horrible as it would be, one could almost welcome the
catastrophe which would force the outside world to recognize what
white men are doing here."
There were, perhaps, men in the outside world who knew it already, and
could suggest no remedy. After all, labor is essential to the
prosperity of any African colony, and while in some which are ruled as
justly as circumstances permit the negro is offered wages for his
services, and can go home with his earnings when he likes, there are
others where more drastic measures are adopted. There the labor
purveyor collects the white man's servants in the bush, and it is not
the business of the Administration to inquire whether they are
prisoners of war or have been sold by their friends. They are bound
down to toil for a term of years, and if they die off during it few
troublesome questions are asked. The African climate is an unhealthy
one, as everybody knows.
In the meanwhile neither of Nares' companions said anything for a
space. They were thinking of the same thing, each in his own way,
while the dense steamy blackness of the African night shut them in.
Ormsgill, who had been driven until the sweat of anguished effort
dripped from him, wondered vaguely what a man with brains and nerve
and money might do on the negroes' behalf in spite of the opposition
of a corrupt administration. The priest was also wondering how much
he could accomplish with Lamartine's bequest, very little of which
would, however, in all probability, be allowed to remain in his
hands, though he knew that it would in any case not go very far,
for he was one who recognized that the new beneficent order must be
evolved slowly, here a little and there a little, with other men to
carry out what he had begun. Father Tiebout seldom rode a tilt at
impossibilities, as Nares and Ormsgill occasionally did. He was a wise
man, and knew the world too well. At last Nares made a little gesture
of weariness.
"Well, the thing may happen, but that hardly concerns us in the
meanwhile, and our work here is done. I wonder if you remember that
you haven't read the letters Father Tiebout brought up, Ormsgill?"
Ormsgill had, as it happened, quite forgotten them. He had arrived
worn out with a long and hasty journey, and Nares and he had then kept
close watch beside his comrade's bed. When at last their watch was
over there was still much to be done, and now for the first time he
had leisure to open the packet the priest had handed him. He took out
a stiff blue envelope with an English postmark, and gazed at it heavy
eyed and vacantly before he broke the cover. Then he slowly
straightened himself in his chair, and incredulity gave place to
bewilderment as he read the letter he shook out. Lamartine's death had
left him an outcast and one obnoxious to constituted authority again.
Five minutes ago he had not known what his next step would be, but the
stiff legal writing held out before him dazzling possibilities. Then
he laid down the letter, and turned to his companions with a curious
little laugh.
"The thing is almost incredible," he said. "A man who I was told would
never forgive the discredit I brought upon the family has died in
England and left me what looks very like a fortune. The other letters
may bear upon it. You'll excuse me."
They watched him in silence for ten minutes, and there was a faint
flush in his bronzed face when he quietly rose and took out a
photograph from a little tin box.
"Padre," he said, "you are the wisest man I know, and, though
distinctions are invidious, Nares is, I think, the honestest. That is
why I am going to put a case before you. Well, I had a good
upbringing, and I think my English friends expected something from me
before I was flung out of the British service and became a pariah.
After that I never troubled them again, which was no doubt a cause of
satisfaction to everybody. There was, however, a thing I had to do
which was not easy, and this picture should make it clear to you. It
was arranged that we should be married when I had brought my laurels
home from Africa."
He handed Nares the photograph. "When I was made a scapegoat I gave
her back her liberty. It is now intimated that she has not so far
profited by it."
Nares bent over the portrait of a young and very comely English girl,
and saw only the fresh, innocent face, and the smiling eyes. Then he
handed it to the little haggard priest, who had a deeper
understanding, and saw a good deal more than that.
"It is a beautiful face," he said when Father Tiebout had gazed at it
steadily, but the latter said nothing, and turned towards Ormsgill, as
though still ready to give him his attention, which he seemed to
understand.
"It is more than four years since I saw her, and I have spent them
with the outcasts," he said. "You can realize what effect that has
upon one, padre. The stamp this country sets on the white man is plain
on you, but you have not lived here as I have been forced to do. Well,
I think the woman is still the same, and I have greatly changed. I do
not know my duty."
Father Tiebout sat silent for at least a minute, looking reflectively
at the man before him. Ormsgill was young still, but his lean face was
furrowed, and there was a suggestiveness in the lines on it. He had
seen death and pestilence, human nature stripped naked, and
unmentionable cruelty; and the priest was quite aware that one cannot
live with the outcast, in Africa, and remain unchanged. Then he looked
at the photograph again, for he knew that the four years had also had
their effect upon the woman.
"Ah," he said, "we all grow, some towards the beneficent light, and
some in the blighting shadow. The training and the pruning we are
subjected to also has its effect. Her people?"
"I almost think you would consider them children of this world," said
Ormsgill dryly.
"And you have been left a good deal of money?"
Ormsgill told him what the amount was, and once more the priest said
nothing for awhile. Quiet and unobtrusive as he was, he never forgot
that he was one of the vanguard of the Church militant, and was ready
to use with skill any weapon that was offered him. It was also
necessary to thrust hard now and then, and he knew that in his hands
the man who had lived with the outcast and the oppressed would prove a
reliable blade. Ormsgill, as he recognized, had capacities. Still, his
counsel had been asked, and he would answer honestly, knowing that he
could afford to do it if his knowledge of human nature, and the girl's
face, had not deceived him. After all, he fancied, whatever he said
the result would be the same, and he was playing a skillful game of
which the stakes were black men's bodies, and, perhaps, human souls.
"With a sum like that there is so much that one could do," he said.
"With discretion--you understand--here and there a little. Domingo put
down, women dying at their tasks redeemed and enfolded in the shelter
of the Mission, men with brutal masters set at liberty, and
concessions where they are driven to death suppressed. One could also
bring about a reckoning with corrupt authority. When admonition is of
no service one may try the scourge."
He saw the little glint in Ormsgill's eyes, and made a deprecatory
gesture with his hands. "Still, you have asked for counsel, and you
have another duty. With us marriage is not a social contract, and the
promise that precedes it is almost as sacred. You are pledged to this
Englishwoman if she has not released you, and that you are changed
will not matter if she loves you. It is your duty to go back to her."
Nares looked up and nodded. "Of course!" he said. "You must go."
Ormsgill's forehead was furrowed, and the perspiration stood in beads
on it. The love that had driven him out to win his spurs in the land
of shadow still in some degree, at least, remained with him; but he
was conscious of the change in him which the girl with her upbringing
might well shrink from. He had lived with the outcasts until he had
become one of them, a hater of conventional formulas and shams, while
there had crept into his nature a trace of the somberness of the dark
land. What, he wondered, would the sunny-tempered English girl he had
left make of such a man. Still, as the priest had said, his duty was
clear, and, what was perhaps more, his inclination marched with it. He
straightened himself suddenly with a little resolute jerk of his
shoulders.
"I will start for the coast to-morrow, and go to Grand Canary," he
said. "As it happens, she is there now with her people. Still, before
I go, padre, I will arrange with the casa Sarraminho to hand you the
equivalent of £200 sterling. With that you can buy the liberty of the
woman Lamartine gave Herrero, and use what is left over as you and
Nares think fit. If Herrero will not part with her, or you find the
thing too difficult, I will come back for a while and undertake it
myself. After all, it is my affair. I owe it to Lamartine."
Then he took the little photograph and replaced it in the tin box,
after which he walked quietly past them and out of the room while,
when they heard him go down the veranda stairway, Father Tiebout
looked at his companion with a curious smile.
"Four years!" he said. "It is a space in a woman's lifetime, and every
year leaves its mark on us. It is decreed that we must grow, but we do
not all grow the same."
In the meanwhile Ormsgill stood in the little compound with the sour
white steam drifting past him. The forest rose out of it, a great
black wall, and its hot, damp smell was in his nostrils. It was a
heady savor, for something that goes with the smell of the wilderness
sinks deep into the hearts of those who once allow it to enter, and is
always afterwards a cause of disquietude and restlessness to some of
them. Ormsgill had had his endurance and all the courage he was born
with taxed to the uttermost in that steamy shade, but now when he was
about to leave it he found the smell of its tall white lilies and the
acrid odors of corruption stirring and shaking him. At last, with a
little jerk of his shoulders, which was a trick he had acquired from
Lamartine, he turned and went back to the lighted room again.