THE DIARY.
Reflecting that time evidently had made little change in Jeekie, Alan
studied this route map with care, and found that it started from Old
Calabar, in the Bight of Biafra, on the west coast of Africa, whence it
ran up to the Great Qua River, which it followed for a long way. Then
it struck across country marked “dense forest,” northwards, and came to
a river called Katsena, along the banks of which the route went
eastwards. Thence it turned northward again through swamps, and ended
in mountains called Shaku. In the middle of these mountains was written
“Asiki People live here on Raaba River.”
The map was roughly drawn to scale, and Alan, who was an engineer
accustomed to such things, easily calculated that the distance of this
Raaba River from Old Calabar was about 350 miles as the crow flies,
though probably the actual route to be travelled was nearer five
hundred miles.
Having mastered the map, he opened the water-soaked diary. Turning page
after page, only here and there could he make out a sentence, such as
“so I defied that beautiful but terrific woman. I, a Christian
minister, the husband of a heathen priestess! Perish the thought.
Sooner would I be sacrificed to Bonsa.”
Then came more illegible pages and again a paragraph that could be
read—“They gave me ‘The Bean’ in a gold cup, and
knowing its deadly nature I prepared myself for death. But happily for
me my stomach, always delicate, rejected it at once, though I felt
queer for days afterwards. Whereon they clapped their hands and said I
was evidently innocent and a great medicine man.”
And again, further on—“never did I see so much gold whether in
dust, nuggets, or worked articles. I imagine it must be worth millions,
but at that time gold was the last thing with which I wished to trouble
myself.”
After this entry many pages were utterly effaced.
The last legible passage ran as follows—“So guided by the lad
Jeekie, and wearing the gold mask, Little Bonsa, on my head, I ran
through them all, holding him by the hand as though I were dragging him
away. A strange spectacle I must have been with my old black
clergyman’s coat buttoned about me, my naked legs and the gold mask, as
pretending to be a devil such as they worship, I rushed through them in
the moonlight, blowing the whistle in the mask and bellowing like a
bull. . . . Such was the beginning of my dreadful six months’ journey
to the coast. Setting aside the mercy of Providence that preserved me
for its own purposes, I could never have lived to reach it had it not
been for Little Bonsa, since curiously enough I found this fetish known
and dreaded for hundreds of miles, and that by people who had never seen
it, yes, even by the wild cannibals. Whenever it was produced food,
bearers, canoes, or whatever else I might want were forthcoming as
though by magic. Great is the fame of Big and Little Bonsa in all that
part of West Africa, although, strange as it may seem, the outlying
tribes seldom mention them by name. If they must speak of either of
these images which are supposed to be man and wife, they call it the
‘Yellow-God-who-lives-yonder.’”
Not another word of all this strange history could Alan decipher, so
with aching eyes he shut up the stained and tattered volume, and at
last, just as the day was breaking, fell asleep.
At eleven o’clock on that same morning, for he had slept late, Alan rose
from his breakfast and went to smoke his pipe at the open door of the
beautiful old hall in Yarleys that was clad with brown Elizabethan oak
for which any dealer would have given hundreds of pounds. It was a
charming morning, one of those that comes to us sometimes in an English
April when the air is soft like that of Italy and the smell of the
earth rises like that of incense, and little clouds float idly across a
sky of tender blue. Standing thus he looked out upon the park where the
elms already showed a tinge of green and the ash-buds were coal black.
Only the walnuts and the great oaks, some of them pollards of a
thousand years of age, remained stark and stern in their winter dress.
Alan was in a reflective mood and involuntarily began to wonder how many
of his forefathers had stood in that same spot upon such April mornings
and looked out upon those identical trees wakening in the breath of
spring. Only the trees and the landscape knew, those trees which had
seen every one of them borne to baptism, to bridal and to burial. The
men and women themselves were forgotten. Their portraits, each in the
garb of his or her generation, hung here and there upon the walls of
the ancient house which once they had owned or inhabited, but who
remembered anything of them to-day? In many cases their names even were
lost, for believing that they, so important in their time, could never
sink into oblivion, they had not thought it necessary to record them
upon their pictures.
And now the thing was coming to an end. Unless in this way or in that he
could save it, what remained of the old place, for the outlying lands
had long since been sold, must go to the hammer and become the property
of some pushing and successful person who desired to found a family,
and perhaps in days to be would claim these very pictures that hung
upon the walls as those of his own ancestors, declaring that he had
brought in the estate because he was a relative of the ancient and
ruined race.
Well, it was the way of the world, and perhaps it must be so, but the
thought of it made Alan Vernon sad. If he could have continued that
business, it might have been otherwise. By this hour his late partners,
Sir Robert Aylward and Mr. Champers-Haswell, were doubtless sitting in
their granite office in the City, probably in consultation with Lord
Specton, who had taken his place upon the Board of the great Company
which was being subscribed that day. No doubt applications for shares
were pouring in by the early posts and by telegram, and from time to
time Mr. Jeffreys respectfully reported their number and amount, while
Sir Robert looked unconcerned and Mr. Haswell rubbed his hands and
whistled cheerfully. Almost he could envy them, these men who were
realizing great fortunes amidst the bustle and excitement of that
fierce financial life, whilst he stood penniless and stared at the
trees and the ewes which wandered among them with their lambs, he who,
after all his work, was but a failure. With a sigh he turned away to
fetch his cap and go out walking—there was a tenant whom he must see, a
shifty, new-fangled kind of man who was always clamouring for fresh
buildings and reductions in his rent. How was he to pay for more
buildings? He must put him off, or let him go.
Just then a sharp sound caught his ear, that of an electric bell. It
came from the telephone which, since he had been a member of a City
firm, he had caused to be put into Yarleys at considerable expense in
order that he might be able to communicate with the office in London.
“Were they calling him up from force of habit?” he wondered. He went to
the instrument which was fixed in a little room he used as a study, and
took down the receiver.
“Who is it?” he asked. “I am Yarleys. Alan Vernon.”
“And I am Barbara,” came the answer. “How are you, dear? Did
you sleep well?”
“No, very badly.”
“Nerves—Alan, you have got nerves. Now although I had a worse day
than you did, I went to bed at nine, and protected by a perfect
conscience, slumbered till nine this morning, exactly twelve hours.
Isn’t it clever of me to think of this telephone, which is more than
you would ever have done? My uncle has departed to London vowing that
no letter from you shall enter this house, but he forgot that there is
a telephone in every room, and in fact at this moment I am speaking
round by his office within a yard or two of his head. However, he can’t
hear, so that doesn’t matter. My blessing be on the man who invented
telephones, which hitherto I have always thought an awful nuisance. Are
you feeling cheerful, Alan?”
“Very much the reverse,” he answered; “never was more gloomy
in my life, not even when I thought I had to die within six hours of
blackwater fever. Also I have lots that I want to talk to you about and
I can’t do it at the end of this confounded wire that your uncle may be
tapping.”
“I thought it might be so,” answered Barbara, “so I just rang
you up to wish you good-morning and to say that I am coming over in the
motor to lunch with my maid Snell as chaperone. All right, don’t
remonstrate, I _am coming_ over to lunch—I can’t hear you—never mind
what people will say. I am coming over to lunch at one o’clock, mind you
are in. Good-bye, I don’t want much to eat, but have something for Snell
and the chauffeur. Good-bye.”
Then the wire went dead, nor could all Alan’s “Hello’s”
and “Are you there’s?” extract another syllable.
Having ordered the best luncheon that his old housekeeper could provide
Alan went off for his walk in much better spirits, which were further
improved by his success in persuading the tenant to do without the new
buildings for another year. In a year, he reflected, anything might
happen. Then he returned by the wood where a number of new-felled oaks
lay ready for barking. This was not a cheerful sight; it seemed so
cruel to kill the great trees just as they were pushing their buds for
another summer of life. But he consoled himself by recalling that they
had been too crowded and that the timber was really needed on the
estate. As he reached the house again carrying a bunch of white violets
which he had plucked in a sheltered place for Barbara, he perceived a
motor travelling at much more than the legal speed up the walnut avenue
which was the pride of the place. In it sat that young lady herself,
and her maid, Snell, a middle-aged woman with whom, as it chanced, he
was on very good terms, as once, at some trouble to himself, he had
been able to do her a kindness.
The motor pulled up at the front door and out of it sprang Barbara,
laughing pleasantly and looking fresh and charming as the spring
itself.
“There will be a row over this, dear,” said Alan, shaking his head
doubtfully when at last they were alone together in the hall.
“Of course, there’ll be a row,” she answered. “I mean
that there shall be a row. I mean to have a row every day if necessary,
until they leave me alone to follow my own road, and if they won’t, as
I said, to go to the Court of Chancery for protection. Oh! by the way,
I have brought you a copy of _The Judge_. There’s a most awful article
in it about that Sahara flotation, and among other things it announces
that you have left the firm and congratulates you upon having done so.”
“They’ll think I have put it in,” groaned Alan as he glanced
at the head lines, which were almost libellous in their vigour, and the
summaries of the financial careers of Sir Robert Aylward and Mr.
Champers-Haswell. “It will make them hate me more than ever, and I say,
Barbara, we can’t live in an atmosphere of perpetual warfare for the
next two years.”
“I can, if need be,” answered that determined young woman.
“But I admit that it would be trying for you, if you stay here.”
“That’s just the point, Barbara. I must not stay here, I must go
away, the further the better, until you are your own mistress.”
“Where to, Alan?”
“To West Africa, I think.”
“To West Africa?” repeated Barbara, her voice trembling a little.
“After that treasure, Alan?”
“Yes, Barbara. But first come and have your lunch, then we will talk. I
have got lots to tell and show you.”
So they lunched, speaking of indifferent things, for the servant was
there waiting on them. Just as they were finishing their meal Jeekie
entered the room carrying a box and a large envelope addressed to his
master, which he said had been sent by special messenger from the
office in London.
“What’s in the box?” asked Alan, looking somewhat nervously
at the envelope, which was addressed in a writing that he knew.
“Don’t know for certain, Major,” answered Jeekie, “but
think Little Bonsa; think I smell her through wood.”
“Well, look and see,” replied Alan, while he broke the seal of the
envelope and drew out its contents. They proved to be sundry documents
sent by the firm’s lawyers, among which were a notice of the formal
dissolution of partnership to be approved by him before it appeared in
the _Gazette_, a second notice calling in a mortgage for fifteen
thousand and odd pounds on Yarleys, which as a matter of business had
been taken over by the firm while he was a partner; a cash account
showing a small balance against him, and finally a receipt for him to
sign acknowledging the return of the gold image that was his property.
“You see,” said Alan with a sigh, pushing over the papers to
Barbara, who read them carefully one by one.
“I see,” she answered presently. “It is war to the knife.
Alan, I hate the idea of it, but perhaps you had better go away. While
you are here they will harass the life out of you.”
Meanwhile with the aid of a big jack-knife and the dining-room poker,
Jeekie had prised off the lid of the box. Chancing to look round
Barbara saw him on his knees muttering something in a strange tongue,
and bowing his white head until it touched an object that lay within
the box.
“What are you doing, Jeekie?” she asked.
“Make bow to Little Bonsa, Miss Barbara, tell her how glad I am see her
come back from town. She like feel welcome. Now you come bow too, Little
Bonsa take that as compliment.”
“I won’t bow, but I will look, Jeekie, for although I have heard so
much about it I have never really examined this Yellow God.”
“Very good, you come look, miss,” and Jeekie propped up the case
upon the end of the dining-room table. As from its height and position
she could not see its contents very well whilst standing above it,
Barbara knelt down to get a better view of it.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed, “what a terrible face,
beautiful too in its way.”
Hardly had the words left her lips when for some reason unexplained that
probably had to do with the shifting of the centre of gravity, Little
Bonsa appeared to glide or fall out of her box with a startling
suddenness, and project herself straight at Barbara, who, with a faint
scream, fearing lest the precious thing should be injured, caught it in
her arms and for a moment hugged it to her breast.
“Saved!” she exclaimed, recovering herself and placing it on the
table, whereon Jeekie, to their astonishment, began to execute a kind of
war dance.
“Oh! yes,” he said, “saved, very much saved. All saved, most
magnificent omen. Lady kneel to Little Bonsa and Little Bonsa nip out of
box, make bow and jump in lady’s arms. That splendid, first-class luck,
for miss and everybody. When Little Bonsa do that need fear nothing no
more. All come right as rain.”
“Nonsense,” said Barbara, laughing. Then from a cautious distance
she continued her examination of the fetish.
“See,” said Jeekie, pointing to the misshapen little gold legs
which were yet so designed that it could be stood up upon them, “when
anyone wear Little Bonsa, tie her on head behind by these legs; look,
here same old leather string. Now I put her on, for she like to be worn
again,” and with a quick movement he clapped the mask on to his face,
manipulated the greasy black leather thongs and made them fast. Thus
adorned the great negro looked no less than terrific.
“I see you, miss,” he said, turning the fixed eyes of opal-like
stone, bloodshot with little rubies, upon Barbara, “I see you, though
you no see me, for these eyes made very cunning. But listen, you hear
me,” and suddenly from the mask, produced by some contrivance set within
it, there proceeded an awful, howling sound that made her shiver.
“Take that thing off, Jeekie,” said Alan, “we don’t
want any banshees here.”
“Banshees? Not know him, he poor English fetish p’raps,” said
Jeekie, as he removed the mask. “This real African god, howl banshee and
all that sort into middle of next week. This Little Bonsa and no
mistake, ten thousand years old and more, eat up lives, so many that no
one can count them, and go on eating for ever, yes unto the third and
fourth generation, as Ten Commandments lay it down for benefit of
Christian man, like me. Look at her again, Miss Barbara.”
Miss Barbara took the hateful, ancient thing in her hands and studied
it. No one could doubt its antiquity, for the gold plate of which it
was made was literally worn away wherever it had touched the foreheads
of the high priests or priestesses who donned it upon festive occasions
or days of sacrifice, showing that hundreds and hundreds of them must
have used it thus in succession. So was the vocal apparatus within the
mouth, and so were the little toad-like feet upon which it was stood
up. Also the substance of the gold itself was here and there pitted as
though with acid or salts, though what those salts were she did not
inquire. And yet, so consummate was the art with which it had
originally been fashioned, that the battered beautiful face of Little
Bonsa still peered at them with the same devilish smile that it had worn
when it left the hands of its maker, perhaps before Mohammed preached
his holy war, or even earlier.
“What is all that writing on the back of it?” asked Barbara,
pointing to the long lines of rune-like characters which were inscribed
within it.
“Not know, miss, think they dead tongue cut in the beginning when black
men could write. But Asiki priests swear they remember every one of
them, and that why no one can copy Little Bonsa, for they look inside
and see if marks all right. They say they names of those who died for
Little Bonsa, and when they all done, Little Bonsa begin again, for
Little Bonsa never die. But p’raps priests lie.”
“I daresay,” said Barbara, “but take Little Bonsa away, for
however lucky she may be, she makes me feel sick.”
“Where I put her, Major?” asked Jeekie of Alan. “In box in
library where she used to live, or in plate-safe with spoons? Or under
your bed where she always keep eye on you?”
“Oh! put her with the spoons,” said Alan angrily, and Jeekie
departed with his treasure.
“I think, dear,” remarked Barbara as the door closed behind him,
“that if I come to lunch here any more, I shall bring my own christening
present with me, for I can’t eat off silver that has been shut up with
that thing. Now let us get to business—show me the diary and the
map.”
“Dearest Alan,” wrote Barbara from The Court two days later,
“I have been thinking everything over, and since you are so set upon it,
I suppose that you had better go. To me the whole adventure seems
perfectly mad, but at the same time I believe in our luck, or rather in
the Providence which watches over us, and I don’t believe that you, or
I either, will come to any harm. If you stop here, you will only eat
your heart out and communication between us must become increasingly
difficult. My uncle is furious with you, and since he discovered that
we were talking over the telephone, to his own great inconvenience he
has had the wires cut outside the house. That horrid letter of his to
you saying that you had ‘compromised’ me in pursuance of a ‘mercenary
scheme’ is all part and parcel of the same thing. How are you to stop
here and submit to such insults? I went to see my friend the lawyer,
and he tells me that of course we can marry if we like, but in that
case my father’s will, which he has consulted at Somerset House, is
absolutely definite, and if I do so in opposition to my uncle’s wishes,
I must lose everything except £200 a year. Now I am no money-grubber,
but I will not give my uncle the satisfaction of robbing me of my
fortune, which may be useful to both of us by and by. The lawyer says
also that he does not think that the Court of Chancery would interfere,
having no power to do so as far as the will is concerned, and not being
able to make a ward of a person like myself who is over age and has the
protection of the common law of the country. So it seems to me that the
only thing to do is to be patient, and wait until time unties the knot.
“Meanwhile, if you can make some money in Africa, so much the better. So
go, Alan, go as soon as you like, for I do not wish to prolong this
agony, or to see you exposed daily to all you have to bear. Whenever
you return you will find me waiting for you, and if you do not return,
still I shall wait, as you in like circumstances will wait for me. But
I think you will return.”
Then followed much that need not be written, and at the end a postscript
which ran:
“I am glad to hear that you have succeeded in shifting the mortgage on
Yarleys, although the interest is so high. Write to me whenever you get
a chance, to the care of the lawyer, for then the letters will reach
me, but never to this house, or they may be stopped. I will do the same
to you to the address you give. Good-bye, dearest Alan, my true and
only lover. I wonder where and when we shall meet again. God be with us
both and enable us to bear our trial.
“P.P.S. I hear that the Sahara flotation was _really_ a success,
notwithstanding the _Judge_ attacks. Sir Robert and my uncle have made
millions. I wonder how long they will keep them.”
A week after he received this letter Alan was on the seas heading for
the shores of Western Africa.