JEEKIE TELLS A TALE.
The Court, Mr. Champers-Haswell’s place, was a very fine house indeed,
of a sort. That is, it contained twenty-nine bedrooms, each of them
with a bathroom attached, a large number of sitting-rooms, ample
garages, stables, and offices, the whole surrounded by several acres of
newly-planted gardens. Incidentally it may be mentioned that it was
built in the most atrocious taste and looked like a suburban villa seen
through a magnifying glass.
It was in this matter of taste that it differed from Sir Robert
Aylward’s home, Old Hall, a few miles away. Not that this was old
either, for the original house had fallen down or been burnt a hundred
years before. But Sir Robert, being gifted with artistic perception,
had reared up in place of it a smaller but really beautiful dwelling of
soft grey stone, long and low, and built in the Tudor style with many
gables.
This house, charming as it was, could not of course compare with
Yarleys, the ancient seat of the Vernons in the same neighbourhood.
Yarleys was pure Elizabethan, although it contained an oak-roofed hall
which was said to date back to the time of King John, a remnant of a
former house. There was no electric light or other modern convenience
at Yarleys, yet it was a place that everyone went to see because of its
exceeding beauty and its historical associations. The moat by which it
was surrounded, the grass court within, for it was built on three sides
of a square, the mullioned windows, the towered gateway of red brick,
the low-panelled rooms hung with the portraits of departed Vernons, the
sloping park and the splendid oaks that stood about, singly or in
groups, were all of them perfect in their way. It was one of the most
lovely of English homes, and oddly enough its neglected gardens and the
air of decay that pervaded it, added to rather than decreased its charm.
But it is with The Court that we have to do at present, not with
Yarleys. Mr. Champers-Haswell had a week-end party. There were ten
guests, all men, and with the exception of Alan, who it will be
remembered was one of them, all rich and in business. They included two
French bankers and three Jews, everyone a prop of the original Sahara
Syndicate and deeply interested in the forthcoming flotation. To
describe them is unnecessary, for they have no part in our story, being
only financiers of a certain class, remarkable for the riches they had
acquired by means that for the most part would not bear examination. The
riches were evident enough. Ever since the morning the owners of this
wealth had arrived by ones or twos in their costly motorcars, attended
by smart chauffeurs and valets. Their fur coats, their jewelled studs
and rings, something in their very faces suggested money, which indeed
was the bond that brought and held them together.
Alan did not come until it was time to dress for dinner, for he knew
that Barbara would not appear before that meal, and it was her society
he sought, not that of his host or fellow guests. Accompanied by his
negro servant, Jeekie, for in a house like this it was necessary to
have someone to wait upon him, he drove over from Yarleys, a distance
of ten miles, arriving about eight o’clock.
“Mr. Haswell has gone up to dress, Major, and so have the other
gentlemen,” said the head butler, Mr. Smith, “but Miss Champers
told me to give you this note and to say that dinner is at half-past
eight.”
Alan took the note and asked to be shown to his room. Once there,
although he had only five-and-twenty minutes, he opened it eagerly,
while Jeekie unpacked his bag.
“Dear Alan,” it ran: “Don’t be late for dinner, or I
may not be able to keep a place next to me. Of course Sir Robert takes
me in. They are a worse lot than usual this time, odious—odious!—and I
can’t stand one on the left hand as well as on the right. Yours,
“B.
“P.S. What _have_ you been doing? Our distinguished guests, to say
nothing of my uncle, seem to be in a great fuss about you. I overheard
them talking when I was pretending to arrange some flowers. One of them
called you a sanctimonious prig and an obstinate donkey, and another
answered—I think it was Sir Robert —‘No doubt, but obstinate donkeys
can kick and have been known to upset other people’s applecarts ere
now.’ Is the Sahara Syndicate the applecart? If so, I’ll forgive you.
“P.P.S. Remember that we will walk to church together to-morrow, but
come down to breakfast in knickerbockers or something to put them off,
and I’ll do the same—I mean I’ll dress as if I were going to
golf. We can turn into Christians later. If we don’t—dress like
that, I mean—they’ll guess and all want to come to church, except
the Jews, which would bring the judgment of Heaven on us.
“P.P.P.S. Don’t be careless and leave this note lying about, for
the under-footman who waits upon you reads all the letters. He steams
them over a kettle. Smith the butler is the only respectable man in
this house.”
Alan laughed outright as he finished this peculiar and outspoken
epistle, which somehow revived his spirits, that since the previous day
had been low enough. It refreshed him. It was like a breath of frosty
air from an open window blowing clean and cold into a scented,
overheated room. He would have liked to keep it, but remembering
Barbara’s injunctions and the under-footman, threw it onto the fire and
watched it burn. Jeekie coughed to intimate that it was time for his
master to dress, and Alan turned and looked at him in an absent-minded
fashion.
He was worth looking at, was Jeekie. Let the reader imagine a very tall
and powerfully-built negro with a skin as black as a well-polished
boot, woolly hair as white as snow, a little tufted beard also white, a
hand like a leg of mutton, but with long delicate fingers and pink,
filbert-shaped nails, an immovable countenance, but set in it beneath a
massive brow, two extraordinary humorous and eloquent black eyes which
expressed every emotion passing through the brain behind them, that is
when their owner chose to allow them to do so. Such was Jeekie.
“Shall I unlace your boots, Major?” he said in his full, melodious
voice and speaking the most perfect English. “I expect that the gong
will sound in nine and a half minutes.”
“Then let it sound and be hanged to it,” answered Alan; “no,
I forgot—I must hurry. Jeekie, put that fire out and open all the
windows as soon as I go down. This room is like a hot-house.”
“Yes, Major, the fire shall be extinguished and the sleeping-chamber
ventilated. The other boot, if you please, Major.”
“Jeekie,” said Alan, “who is stopping in this place? Have you
heard?”
“I collected some names on my way upstairs, Major. Three of the
gentlemen you have never met before, but,” he added suddenly breaking
away from his high-flown book-learned English, as was his custom when
in earnest, “Jeekie think they just black niggers like the rest, thief
people. There ain’t a white man in this house, except you and Miss
Barbara and me, Major. Jeekie learnt all that in servant’s hall
palaver. No, not now, other time. Everyone tell everything to Jeekie,
poor old African fool, and he look up an answer, ‘O law! you don’t say
so?’ but keep his eyes and ears open all the same.”
“I’ll be bound you do, Jeekie,” replied Alan, laughing again.
“Well, go on keeping them open, and give me those trousers.”
“Yes, Major,” answered Jeekie, reassuming his grand manner,
“I shall continue to collect information which may prove to your
advantage, but personally I wish that you were clear of the whole
caboodle, except Miss Barbara.”
“Hear, hear,” ejaculated Alan, “there goes the gong. Mind you
come in and help to wait,” and hurrying into his coat he departed
downstairs.
The guests were gathered in the hall drinking sherry and bitters, a
proceeding that to Alan’s mind set a stamp upon the house. His host,
Mr. Champers-Haswell, came forward and greeted him with much
affectionate enthusiasm, and Alan noticed that he looked very pale,
also that his thoughts seemed to be wandering, for he introduced a
French banker to him as a noted Jew, and the noted Jew as the French
banker, although the distinction between them was obvious and the
gentlemen concerned evidently resented the mistake. Sir Robert Aylward,
catching sight of him, came across the hall in his usual, direct
fashion, and shook him by the hand.
“Glad to see you, Vernon,” he said, fixing his piercing eyes upon
Alan as though he were trying to read his thoughts. “Pleasant change
this from the City and all that eternal business, isn’t it? Ah! you are
thinking that one is not quite clear of business after all,” and he
glanced round at the company. “That’s one of your cousin
Haswell’s faults; he can never shake himself free of the thing, never
get any real recreation. I’d bet you a sovereign that he has a
stenographer waiting by a telephone in the next room, just in case any
opportunity should arise in the course of conversation. That is
magnificent, but it is not wise. His heart can’t stand it; it will wear
him out before his time. Listen, they are all talking about the Sahara.
I wish I were there; it must be quiet at any rate. The sands beneath,
the eternal stars above. Yes, I wish I were there,” he repeated with a
sigh, and Alan noted that although his face could not be more pallid
than its natural colour, it looked quite worn and old.
“So do I,” he answered with enthusiasm.
Then a French gentleman on his left, having discovered that he was the
engineer who had formulated the great flooding scheme, began to address
him as “Cher maitre,” speaking so rapidly in his own language that
Alan, whose French was none of the best, struggled after him in vain.
Whilst he was trying to answer a question which he did not understand,
the door at the end of the hall opened, and through it appeared Barbara
Champers.
It was a large hall and she was a long way off, which caused her to look
small, who indeed was only of middle height. Yet even at that distance
it was impossible to mistake the dignity of her appearance. A slim
woman with brown hair, cheerful brown eyes, a well-modelled face, a
rounded figure and an excellent complexion, such was Barbara. Ten
thousand young ladies could be found as good, or even better looking,
yet something about her differentiated her from the majority of her
sex. There was determination in her step, and overflowing health and
vigour in her every movement. Her eyes had a trick of looking straight
into any other eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal
fearlessness and enterprise that people often found embarrassing.
Indeed she was extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of
feminine airs and graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although
she was three and twenty, as yet recked little of men save as
companions whom she liked or disliked according to her instincts. For
the rest she was sweetly dressed in a white robe with silver on it, and
wore no ornaments save a row of small pearls about her throat and some
lilies of the valley at her breast.
Barbara came straight onwards, looking neither to the right nor to the
left, till she reached her uncle, to whom she nodded. Then she walked
to Alan and, offering him her hand, said:
“How do you do! Why did you not come over at lunch time? I wanted to
play a round of golf with you this afternoon.”
Alan answered something about being busy at Yarleys.
“Yarleys!” she replied. “I thought that you lived in the City
now, making money out of speculations, like everyone else that I know.”
“Why, Miss Champers,” broke in Sir Robert reproachfully, “I
asked you to play a round of golf before tea and you would not.”
“No,” she answered, “because I was waiting for my cousin. We
are better matched, Sir Robert.”
There was something in her voice, usually so soft and pleasant, as she
spoke these words, something of steeliness and defiance that caused
Alan to feel at once happy and uncomfortable. Apparently also it caused
Aylward to feel angry, for he flashed a glance at Alan over her head of
which the purport could not be mistaken, though his pale face remained
as immovable as ever. “We are enemies. I hate you,” said that glance.
Probably Barbara saw it; at any rate before either of them could speak
again, she said:
“Thank goodness, there is dinner at last. Sir Robert, will you take me
in, and, Alan, will you sit on the other side of me? My uncle will show
the rest their places.”
The meal was long and magnificent; the price of each dish of it would
have kept a poor family for a month, and on the cost of the exquisite
wines they might have lived for a year or two. Also the last were well
patronized by everyone except Barbara, who drank water, and Alan, who
since his severe fever took nothing but weak whiskey and soda and a
little claret. Even Aylward, a temperate person, absorbed a good deal
of champagne. As a consequence the conversation grew animated, and
under cover of it, while Sir Robert was arguing with his neighbour on
the left, Barbara asked in a low voice:
“What is the row, Alan? Tell me, I can’t wait any longer.”
“I have quarrelled with them,” he answered, staring at his mutton
as though he were criticizing it. “I mean, I have left the firm and have
nothing more to do with the business.”
Barbara’s eyes lit up as she whispered back:
“Glad of it. Best news I have heard for many a day. But then, may I ask
why you are here?”
“I came to see you,” he replied humbly—“thought perhaps
you wouldn’t mind,” and in his confusion he let his knife fall into
the mutton, whence it rebounded, staining his shirt front.
Barbara laughed, that happy, delightful little laugh of hers, presumably
at the accident with the knife. Whether or no she “minded” did not
appear, only she handed her handkerchief, a costly, lace-fringed
trifle, to Alan to wipe the gravy off his shirt, which he took thinking
it was a napkin, and as she did so, touched his hand with a little
caressing movement of her fingers. Whether this was done by chance or
on purpose did not appear either. At least it made Alan feel extremely
happy. Also when he discovered what it was, he kept that gravy-stained
handkerchief, nor did she ever ask for it back again. Only once in
after days when she happened to come across it stuffed away in the
corner of a despatch-box, she blushed all over, and said that she had no
idea that any man could be so foolish out of a book.
“Now that _you_ are really clear of it, I am going for them,”
she said presently when the wiping process was finished. “I have only
restrained myself for your sake,” and, leaning back in her chair she
stared at the ceiling, lost in meditation.
Presently there came one of those silences which will fall upon
dinner-parties at times, however excellent and plentiful the champagne.
“Sir Robert Aylward,” said Barbara in that clear, carrying voice of
hers, “will you, as an expert, instruct a very ignorant person? I want a
little information.”
“Miss Champers,” he answered, “am I not always at your
service?” and all listened to hear upon what point their hostess desired
to be enlightened.
“Sir Robert,” she went on calmly, “everyone here is, I
believe, what is called a financier, that is except myself and Major
Vernon, who only tries to be and will, I am sure, fail, since Nature
made him something else, a soldier and—what else did Nature make you,
Alan?”
As he vouchsafed no answer to this question, although Sir Robert
muttered an uncomplimentary one between his lips which Barbara heard,
or read, she continued:
“And you are all very rich and successful, are you not, and are going to
be much richer and much more successful—next week. Now what I want to
ask you is—how is it done?”
“Accepting the premises for the sake of argument, Miss Champers,”
replied Sir Robert, who felt that he could not refuse the challenge,
“the answer is that it is done by finance.”
“I am still in the dark,” she said. “Finance, as I have heard
of it, means floating companies, and companies are floated to earn money
for those who invest in them. Now this afternoon as I was dull, I got
hold of a book called the Directory of Directors, and looked up all
your names in it, except those of the gentlemen from Paris, and the
companies that you direct—I found out about those in another book.
Well, I could not make out that any of these companies have ever earned
any money, a dividend, don’t you call it? Therefore how do you all grow
so rich, and why do people invest in them?”
Now Sir Robert frowned, Alan coloured, two or three of the company
laughed outright, and one of the French gentlemen who understood
English and had already drunk as much as was good for him, remarked
loudly to his neighbour, “Ah! she is charming. She do touch the spot,
like that ointment you give me to-day. How do we grow rich and why do
the people invest? _Mon Dieu!_ why do they invest? That is the great
mystery. I say that _cette belle demoiselle, votre nièce, est
ravissante. Elle a d’esprit, mon ami Haswell._”
Apparently her uncle did not share these sentiments, for he turned as
red as any turkey-cock, and said across the great round table:
“My dear Barbara, I wish that you would leave matters which you do not
understand alone. We are here to dine, not to talk about finance.”
“Certainly, Uncle,” she answered sweetly. “I stand, or rather
sit, reproved. I suppose that I have put my foot into it as usual, and
the worst of it is,” she added, turning to Sir Robert, “that I am just
as ignorant as I was before.”
“If you want to master these matters, Miss Champers,” said Aylward
with a rather forced laugh, “you must go into training and worship at
the shrine of”—he meant to say Mammon, then thinking that the word
sounded unpleasant, substituted—“the Yellow God as we do.”
At these words Alan, who had been studying his plate, looked up quickly,
and her uncle’s face turned from red to white. But the irrepressible
Barbara seized upon them.
“The Yellow God,” she repeated. “Do you mean money or that
fetish thing of Major Vernon’s with the terrible woman’s face that
I saw at the office in the City. Well, to change the subject, tell us,
Alan, what is that yellow god of yours and where did it come from?”
“My uncle Austin, who was my mother’s brother and a missionary,
brought it from West Africa a great many years ago. He was the first to
visit the tribe who worship it; in fact I do not think that anyone has
ever visited them since. But really I do not know all the story. Jeekie
can tell you about it if you want to know, for he is one of that people
and escaped with my uncle.”
Now Jeekie having left the room, some of the guests wished to send for
him, but Mr. Champers-Haswell objected. The end of it was that a
compromise was effected, Alan undertaking to produce his retainer
afterwards when they went to play billiards or cards.
Dinner was over at length and the diners, who had dined well, were
gathered in the billiard room to smoke and amuse themselves as they
wished. It was a very large room, sixty feet long indeed, with a wide
space in the centre between the two tables, which was furnished as a
lounge. When the gentlemen entered it they found Barbara standing by
the great fireplace in this central space, a little shape of white and
silver in its emptiness.
“Forgive me for intruding on you,” she said, “and please do
not stop smoking, for I like the smell. I have sat up expressly to hear
Jeekie’s story of the Yellow God. Alan, produce Jeekie, or I shall go to
bed at once.”
Her uncle made a movement as though to interfere, but Sir Robert said
something to him which appeared to cause him to change his mind, while
the rest in some way or another signified an enthusiastic assent. All
of them were anxious to see this Jeekie and hear his tale, if he had
one to tell. So Jeekie was sent for and presently arrived clad in the
dress clothes which are common to all classes in England and America.
There he stood before them white-headed, ebony-faced, gigantic,
imperturbable. There is no doubt that his appearance produced an
effect, for it was unusual and indeed striking.
“You sent for me, Major?” he said, addressing his master, to whom
he gave a military salute, for he had been Alan’s servant when he was in
the Army.
“Yes, Jeekie. Miss Barbara here and these gentlemen, wish you to tell
them all that you know about the Yellow God.”
The negro started and rolled his round eyes upwards till the whites of
them showed, then began in his school-book English:
“That is a private subject, Major, upon which I should prefer not to
discourse before this very public company.”
A chorus of remonstrance arose and one of the Jewish gentlemen
approaching Jeekie, slipped a couple of sovereigns into his great hand,
which he promptly transferred to his pocket without seeming to notice
them.
“Jeekie,” said Barbara, “don’t disappoint me.”
“Very well, miss, I fall in with your wishes. The Yellow God that all
these gentlemen worship, quite another god to that of which you desire
that I should tell you. You know all about him. My god is of female
sex.”
At this statement his audience burst into laughter while Jeekie rolled
his eyes again and waited till they had finished. “My god,” he went on
presently, “I mean, gentlemen, the god I used to pray to, for I am a
good Christian now, has so much gold that she does not care for any
more,” and he paused.
“Then what does she care for?” asked someone.
“Blood,” answered Jeekie. “She is god of Death. Her name is
Little Bonsa or Small Swimming Head; she is wife of Big Bonsa or Great
Swimming Head.”
Again there was laughter, though less general—for instance, neither Sir
Robert nor Mr. Champers-Haswell laughed. This merriment seemed to excite
Jeekie. At any rate it caused him to cease his stilted talk and relapse
into the strange vernacular that is common to all negroes, tinctured
with a racy slang that was all his own.
“You want to hear Yellow God palaver?” he said rapidly. “Very
well, I tell you, you cocksure white men who think you know everything,
but know nothing at all. My people, people of the Asiki, that mean
people of Spirits, what you call ghosts and say you no believe in, but
always look for behind door, they worship Yellow God, Bonsa Big and
Bonsa Little, worship both and call them one; only Little Bonsa on trip
to this country just now and sit and think in City office. Yellow God
live long way up a great river, then turn to the left and walk six days
through big forest where dwarf people shoot you with poisoned arrow.
Then turn to the right, walk up stream where many wild beasts. Then
turn to the left again and go in canoe through swamp where you die of
fever, and across lake. Then walk over grassland and mountains. Then in
kloof of the mountains where big black trees make a roof and river fall
like thunder, find Asiki and gold house of the Yellow God. All that
mountain gold, full of gold and beneath gold house Yellow God afloat in
water. She what you call Queen, priestess, live there also, always
there, very beautiful woman called Asika with face like Yellow God,
cruel, cruel. She take a husband every year, and every year he die
because she always hunt for right man but never find him.”
“How does she kill him then?” asked Barbara.
“Oh! no, she no kill him, Miss, he kill himself at end of year, glad to
get away from Asika and go to spirits. While he live he have a very good
time, plenty to eat, plenty wives, fine house, much gold as he like,
only nothing to spend it on, pretty necklace, nice paint for face. But
Asika, little bit by little bit she eat up his spirit. He see too many
ghosts. The house where he sleep with dead men who once have his
billet, full of ghosts and every night there come more and sit with
him, sit all round him, look at him with great eyes, just like you look
at me, till at last when Asika finish eating up his spirit, he go
crazy, he howl like man in hell, he throw away all the gold they give
him, and then, sometimes after one week, sometimes after one month,
sometimes after one year if he be strong but never more, he run out at
night and jump into canal where Yellow God float and god get him, while
Asika sit on the bank and laugh, ’cause she hungry for new man to eat
up his spirit too.”
Jeekie’s big voice died away to a whisper and ceased. There was a
silence in the room, for even in the shine of the electric light and
through the fumes of champagne, in more than one imagination there rose
a vision of that haunted water in which floated the great Yellow God,
and of some mad being casting himself to his death beneath the moon,
while his beautiful witch wife who was “hungry for more spirits” sat
upon its edge and laughed. Although his language was now commonplace
enough, even ludicrous at times, the negro had undoubtedly the art of
narration. His auditors felt that he spoke of what he knew, or had
seen, that the very recollection of it frightened him, therefore he
frightened them.
Again Barbara broke the silence which she felt to be awkward.
“Why do more ghosts come very night to sit with the queen’s
husband, Jeekie?” she asked. “Where do they come from?”
“Out of the dead, miss, dead husbands of Asika from beginning of the
world; what they call Munganas. Also always they make sacrifice to
Yellow God. From far, far away them poor niggers send people to be
sacrifice that their house or tribe get luck. Sometimes they send
kings, sometimes great men, sometimes doctors, sometimes women what
have twin babies. Also the Asiki bring people what is witches, or have
drunk poison stuff which blacks call _muavi_ and have not been sick, or
perhaps son they love best to take curse off their roof. All these come
to Yellow God. Then Asiki doctor, they have Death-palaver. On night of
full moon they beat drum, and drum go Wow! Wow! Wow! and doctors pick
out those to die that month. Once they pick out Jeekie, oh! good Lord,
they pick out _me_,” and as he said the words he gasped and with his
great hand wiped off the sweat that started from his brow. “But Yellow
God no take Jeekie that time, no want him and I escape.”
“How?” asked Sir Robert.
“With my master, Major’s uncle, Reverend Austin, he who come try to
make Asiki Christian. He snap his fingers, put on small mask of Yellow
God which he prig, Little Bonsa herself, that same face which sit in
your office now,” and he pointed to Sir Robert, “like one toad upon a
stone. Priests think that god make herself into man, want holiday, take
me out into forest to kill me and eat my life. So they let us go by and
we go just as though devil kick us—fast, fast, and never see the Asiki
any more. But Little Bonsa I bring with me for luck, tell truth I no
dare leave her behind, she not stand that; and now she sit in your
office and think and think and make magic there. That why you grow
rich, because she know you worship her.”
“That’s a nice way for a baptized Christian to talk,” said
Barbara, adding, “But Jeekie, what do you mean when you say that the god
did not take you?”
“I mean this, miss; when victim offered to Big Yellow God, priest-men
bring him to edge of canal where the great god float. Then if Yellow God
want him, it turn and swim across water.”
“Swim across water! I thought you said it was only a mask of gold?”
“I don’t know, miss, perhaps man inside the mask, perhaps spirit. I
say it swim across water in the night, always in the night, and lift
itself up and look in victim’s face. Then priest take him and kill him,
sometimes one way—sometimes another. Or if he escape and they not kill
him, all same for that Johnnie, he die in about one year, always die,
no one ever live long if Yellow God swim to him in dark and rise up and
smile in his face. No matter if it Big Bonsa or Little Bonsa, for they
man and wife joined in holy matrimony and either do trick.”
As these words left Jeekie’s lips Alan became aware of some unusual
movement on his left and looking round, saw that Mr. Champers-Haswell,
who stood by him, had dropped the cigar which he held and, white as a
sheet, was swaying to and fro. Indeed in another instant he would have
fallen had not Alan caught him in his arms and supported him till
others came to his assistance, when between them they carried him to a
sofa. On their way they passed a table where spirits and soda water
were set out, and to his astonishment Alan noticed that Sir Robert
Aylward, looking little if at all better than his partner, had helped
himself to half a tumbler of cognac, which he was swallowing in great
gulps. Then there was confusion and someone went to telephone the
doctor, while the deep voice of Jeekie was heard exclaiming:
“That Yellow God at work—oh yes, Little Bonsa on the job. Jeekie
Christian man but no doubt she very powerful fetish and can do anything
she like to them that worship her, and you see, she sit in office of
these gentlemen. ’Spect she make Reverend Austin and me bring her to
England because she got eye on firm of Messrs. Aylward & Haswell,
London, E.C. Oh, shouldn’t wonder at all, for Bonsa know everything.”
“Oh, confound you and your fetish! Be off, you old donkey,” almost
shouted Alan.
“Major,” replied the offended Jeekie, assuming his grand manner and
language, “it was not I who wished to narrate this history of
blood-stained superstitions of poor African. Mustn’t blame old Jeekie if
they make Christian gents sick as Channel steamer.”
“Be off!” repeated Alan, stamping his foot.
So Jeekie went, but outside the door, as it chanced, he encountered one
of the Jew gentlemen who also appeared to be a little “sick.” An idea
striking him, he touched his white hair with his finger and said:
“You like Jeekie’s pretty story, sir? Well, Jeekie think that if
you make little present to him, like your brother in there, it please
Yellow God very much, and bring you plenty luck.”
Then acting upon some unaccustomed impulse, that Jew became exceedingly
generous. In his pocket was a handful of sovereigns which he had been
prepared to stake at bridge. He grasped them all and thrust them into
Jeekie’s outstretched palm, where they seemed to melt.
“Thank you, sir,” said Jeekie. “Now I sure you have plenty
luck, just like your grandpa Jacob in Book when he do his brudder in
eye.”