horse to ride about on, would you undertake the notification and
examination of the necessitous cases, the pruning away—as my wife would
say—of the dishonest applicants.”
“I am a gardener,” said the gardener. “I love interfering with nature.
Mr. Tring, you are a most excellent friend to me. Thank you seems too
little a word.”
There are only a few people to be met with who can do justice to such a
thankless task as the expression of thanks. Man under an obligation is
always convinced that the conventional words are not enough, and tries
to improve on them. This must always be a failure, however, as improving
on convention is a work that only genius can undertake with success.
A horse was found for the gardener. He was what might be called an
anxious rider, and Courtesy, after watching his first equestrian
exhibition, went to some trouble to find him an elderly mare of sober
propensities. Mounted upon this excellent creature, the gardener one
morning threaded the little passes that had been made in and out of the
crags of ruined Union Town. It was early. The Olympians had not yet
begun to compound that horrible broth of sun and steam and dust which
they brew daily upon the plains of the Island. The sun’s eyes had not
yet opened even on the most ambitious of the hills, but the sky was
awake, and so clear that you might have thought you were looking through
crystal at a blue Zion. The dew was laughing in the crushed gardens.
Grey lizards with a purple bloom on them jumped from ruin to ruin over
chasms of ruin. A humming-bird, looking as though its tail and beak had
been added hurriedly out of the wrong box, stood in the air glaring into
the open eye of a passion flower. The air was shining cool. The songs of
the birds were like little fountains of cold water.
There is always a pessimistic gloom about the woods of the Island. The
cotton tree, with its ashen blasted trunk, looks as if it had known a
bitter past. Logwood gives the impression of firewood left standing by
mistake. And the cocoanut palms, which are unstable souls, lean this way
and that, as though glancing over their shoulders for their enemy the
wind, against whom they have no defence. Only the great creepers throw
cables of hope from tree to tree, and the orchids nestle blood-red
against the colourless hearts of the cotton trees.
The huts for the homeless had been built in a wide clearing in the
woods, only divided from the sea by the road, a belt of palms, and a
frill of sand so white that the word white sounded dirty as you looked
at it. The rocks leant out of opal water into pearl air. A pensive
pelican, resting its double chin upon its breast, stood waiting on a low
rock.
The gardener dismounted with great care. A person of three summers or so
came to watch him do it. The only thing she wore that nature had not
from the first provided her with was a hair-ribbon. Her head looked like
a phrenologist’s chart. It was mapped out in squares by multiplied
partings at right angles to each other. From every square plot of wool
sprang a rigid plait of perhaps one inch in length. On the highest plait
was a scarlet hair-ribbon. The effect was not really beautiful, but
suggested a beautiful maternal patience. The person thus decorated was
gnawing a piece of bread.
“That bread,” thought the gardener, who in flashes posed as Sherlock
Holmes, “must have been made with flour. That flour probably came from
Tring’s. Where did you get that bit of bread, Miss?” he added.
The person, determined not to appear to overlook a joke for want of an
effort, gave a high fat chuckle, and danced the opening steps of a
natural tango. The gardener, unwilling to shatter the illusion of his
own humour, did not repeat the question. He gave the elderly mare in
charge of not more than a dozen little boys. It was an insult to the
mare, a creature with a deep sense of responsibility, who could much
more reasonably have taken charge of the little boys.
“Dat Mrs. Morra’s pickney,” said one of the older boys, with a polite
desire to effect an introduction between the gardener and the dancing
person. On hearing herself thus described, Mrs. Morra’s pickney at once
led the way at great speed to Mrs. Morra. Now Mrs. Morra’s was the first
name on the gardener’s list of applications.
She was discovered outside the door of her hut, submitting the head of
an elder daughter to that process of which the coiffure of the younger
was a finished example. The conversation was punctured by wails from the
victim. Wool does not adapt itself to painless combing.
“Good morning, Mrs. Morra,” said the gardener, with his confiding smile.
Mrs. Morra screamed with amusement.
“I hear the earthquake knocked down your home and didn’t leave you
anything to live on. You asked for some of the free bread, didn’t you?
The police gave us your name.”
“P’leece?” questioned Mrs. Morra, who seemed amused by the mention of
her necessity. “Whe’ dat, please?”
“The police—the big man in blue,” said the gardener, before he
remembered that on the Island the police was always a little man in
white.
“P’leece?” persisted Mrs. Morra.
“The policeman—the law,” said the gardener desperately.
Every nigger is familiar with the law. Going to law is a vice that on
the Island takes the place of drink. The nigger’s idea of heaven is a
vast courthouse, with the Almighty sitting at a desk awarding him
damages and costs.
“Oh, de law—de polizman, please sah,” said Mrs. Morra.
“Right. Now how did your little girl get this bread?”
“Beg a quattie from a lady, please,” said the mother.
“Yes, but where did she buy the bread when she had the quattie. Bread is
free now, you can’t buy it.”
“Bought it fim Daddy Hamilton, please, old man who live alone by himself
across opposite. But he ha’n’t got no more, please!”
“I’ll go and see Daddy Hamilton,” said the gardener. “How many children
have you got, Mrs. Morra?”
“Please?”
“How many children?”
“Please?”
“How many pickneys?” said the gardener, inspired.
“Pickneys please thank you,” said Mrs. Morra. “I got Dacia Maree Blanche
Rosabel Benjum Teodor Lionel.”
“Seven,” panted the gardener, who had kept careful count.
“Tree, please sah,” corrected the lady.
“Me Dacia Maree,” explained the victim of maternal pride.
“Have you a husband?” continued the gardener.
“O la, no please sah.”
“A widow?” he suggested.
Mrs. Morra shrieked with laughter.
“Nebber had no man mo’ dan tree monts,” she said. “Dacia Maree’s
fader—he on’y stop a week. Benjum’s dad bin in gaol two yahs. Blanche
Rosabel—her fader was a brown man, her grand-dad was a buckra.”
The gardener blushed into his notebook.
The police had certified that the family’s means of subsistence had been
swept away by the earthquake, and the gardener, by one glance into an
unsavoury hut, satisfied himself that no luxuries had been saved from
the wreck. He therefore noted the case as needy, and asked his way to
Daddy Hamilton.
This gentleman, seated upon an upturned bucket, was studying a hymn-book
through a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
“God bless you, sah,” he said in the loud unmistakable voice of a joyous
Christian.
The gardener thanked him.
“I see, Mr. Hamilton, that you told the police you had two married
daughters whose husbands had been killed by the earthquake, and seven
grandchildren dependent on you.”
“Yessah. De Lawd giveth, an’ de Lawd taketh away.”
“Certainly. And you had an emergency grant of several loaves of bread on
Monday.”
“Praise be to God, sah, I did. De Lawd giveth——”
“On the contrary, in this case it was Mr. Tring that gave. Now, are
either of your married daughters or any of your grandchildren at home?”
“No, sah. Dey all gone to chapel.”
“Really? Now there seems to be an idea among your neighbours that you
live by yourself. How is it they have never noticed your two daughters
and seven grandchildren?”
“Dunno, sah. Deir eyes dey hab closed, lest at any time dey should see
wid deir eyes, and hear wid deir ears——”
“Do the whole ten of you sleep in that little hut?”
“No, sah, I sleep on de graound aoutside. Foxes hab holes——”
“Now, Mr. Hamilton, can you look me in the face and tell me that the
bread that was given you was really eaten by yourself, and two
daughters, and seven grandchildren?”
“Yes, sah. To tell you de troot, sah, dey wasn’t ezackly
blood-grandchildren. All men are brudders, we are told, sah, and
derefore grandchildren, an’ daughters, an’ nieces too, sah. All de
pickneys call me Daddy Hamilton. Suffer de little children to come unto
me, saith de Lawd, so I suffer dem gladly.”
“Yes, but do you ever charge anything for suffering them? Have you ever
sold any of the bread that was given you?”
“Well, sah, a man mus’ live.”
“Yes, but the bread was given you to live on.”
“Well, sah, money is better dan bread. You ask for bread and dey give
you a stone.”
“Not in this case. The bread was excellent. Do you know, Mr. Hamilton, I
believe you are liable to be prosecuted for obtaining Mr. Tring’s gift
under false pretences.”
“No, sah, not false. I am a faitful sojer in de Lawd’s army, sah,
faitful an’ joyful. Old Joybells dey call me.”
“Still, this time I’m afraid you stepped aside. I will ask Mr. Tring
what he would like done about it. At any rate, you won’t get any more
bread given you for the present. I’ll see to that.”
“God bless you, sah. De Lawd giveth, an’ de Lawd taketh away.”
All novelties are interesting to One Who is Seeing Life, but novelty is
unfortunately an elusive phantom to pursue. After a fortnight spent in
inquiry, the gardener began to feel his heart sink at the mention of
flour. He suffered from the gift of enthusiasm, in place of the gift of
interest, and enthusiasm is like the seed that fell upon stony ground,
the suns of monotony scorch it quickly. To do the gardener justice, it
must be admitted that there was very little left to do. Union Town was
not very long in adjusting itself to the emergency. Nigger huts are
quickly built, and even the villas of the coffee-coloured aristocracy,
the most serious sufferers from the disaster, are not the work of ages.
The Post Office continued to lie upon its face in the High Street, but
the bare feet of the people soon trod a path around it. Government House
remained huddled in a heap upon its own cellars, but Governors, after
all, are not human, and it makes but little difference to the population
to hear of its viceroy sleeping under canvas.
In the gardener’s mind, during the past fortnight, the suffragette had
had Union Town as a serious rival. His vanity was a little hurt by her
continued lack of appreciation of a great man. He would have liked,
while still on crutches, to have met her searching among the ruins for
him. So for a little while he posed as being in love with his work. But
when Union Town began to retire into the background, the suffragette
stepped forward into insistent prominence. She triumphed finally one
night in the verandah of the St. Maurice Hotel, after dinner. It was a
night without a flaw, every star spoke the right word, and the moon was
a poem unspeakable. Fireflies starred the garden.
The stars and fireflies dance in rings,
The fireflies set my heart alight,
Like fingers, writing magic things
In flame upon the wall of night.
There is high meaning in the skies
(The stars and fireflies—high and low),
And all the spangled world is wise
With knowledge that I almost know ...
“I’ll have to return to the search,” said the gardener.
“What for?” asked Courtesy, who always liked everything explained.
“For the suffragette,” he replied. “I’m tired of being respectable and
in doubt.”
Luckily the priest had changed his table since Courtesy had changed her
company. He sat at the far end of the verandah, with his back to every
one. His righteousness had subsided to some extent since the earthquake,
but he still looked on the gardener as a hopelessly lost lamb. Such a
shepherd as the priest may yearn towards the lost lamb, but would rather
not sit at the same table with it.
“If you start that silly game again, gardener,” said Courtesy, “you’ll
have to throw over Mr. Twing’s job. Why can’t you leave the girl alone?
She can’t have been killed, because there are no white people left
unidentified. Why can’t you stick to one thing?”
“I have no glue in me,” replied the gardener. “I’m glad of it; there
could be nothing duller than sticking to one thing. Besides, there’s
nothing left to stick to. There was only half an hour’s work to do
yesterday, although I spent three hours over it.”
Mrs. Rust shot a fountain of tobacco smoke into the air as a sign that
she intended to speak. The priest liked Mrs. Rust, because his own
tolerance of her vagaries made him feel so broad-minded. He liked to
smile at her roguishly when she took a small whisky and soda; he liked
to hand her the matches when she smoked; he liked to write to his sister
at home: “One comes in contact with a worldly set out here, but if one
is careful to keep one’s mind open, one finds points of contact undreamt
of at home in one’s own more thoughtful set.” If the gardener had been a
drunkard instead of being in love, the priest would have liked him
better. But the gardener posed as being a non-drinker and a non-smoker
on principle. Really the taste of spirits or of tobacco smoke made him
feel sick.
“I am going to leave Union Town myself,” said Mrs. Rust. “I know of a
car I could hire to-morrow. I will help you in your search, gardener,
although she strikes me as being a totally unattractive young woman.”
“We had arranged to go to the hotel in Spanish City next Wednesday by
the nine train,” said Courtesy in a reproachful voice; “and from there
to Alligator Bay, and then in a car round the Island. I daresay other
plans might be made, but you should have let me know sooner.”
“No plans need be made,” said the gardener rebelliously. “We might just
get the car, and start now in the cool.”
“Ass!” observed Courtesy simply. “Mrs. Rust’s lace scarf won’t be dry
enough to iron till to-morrow. I will see whether we can start the next
day.”
To disobey Courtesy was unthinkable. The gardener gritted his teeth at
the stars, because he would have to see them again before he could start
on his search. _Now_ was the only time for the gardener; _then_ hardly
counted; and _presently_ was a word he failed to acknowledge.
“Anyway, you don’t either of you know where to look for her,” said
Courtesy, that practical girl.
“She’ll be at Alligator Bay,” said Mrs. Rust. “They’ve got a picture
gallery there.”
“She’ll be somewhere in the hills,” said the gardener. “She would always
go up.”
“I entirely disagree with you,” retorted Mrs. Rust.
“Anyway, it seems hot on sea-level,” said Courtesy. “We’d better go up
to where it’s supposed to be cool. I’m told the Ridge Pension, High
Valley, has a good cook, but the New Hotel, at Greyville, is also well
spoken of.”
Fortunately thirty-six hours, though they may stretch half-way to
eternity, never succeed in covering the whole distance. A moment arrived
when the three, bristling with travellers’ trifles, met the waiting car
at the nearest spot in the ruined High Street to which cars could
penetrate. And then followed a long series of dancing moments. Little
village ports strung like beads along the coast; thatched huts thrown
together by a playful fate; waterfalls like torn shreds of gauze draped
on the nakedness of the hills; logwood plantations, banana plantations,
sugar plantations, yam plantations.... Then as the approaching hills
began to usurp more and more of the sky, the road cut through a high and
low land; hand in hand with a very blue river, it threaded a great grey
crack in the island; high cliffs yearned towards each other on either
side; a belt of pale sky followed the course from above. Then out into
the sun and wild woods, with ferns and flowering trees beckoning
beautifully from all sides. And then long hills, a road that doubled
back at every hundred yards, with a great changing view, growing bigger,
on the right hand or the left, as the course of the road decided. Little
brown villages clung desperately to the hill-side; gardens of absurd
size balanced themselves on almost perpendicular slopes; paths of red
mud, disdaining the winding subterfuges of the road, sprang from angle
to angle, like children playing at independence beside a plodding
mother.
Towards the afternoon a blue-black cloud crept suddenly over a summit,
and emptied itself with passion upon the travellers. In a minute the
waterproof hood of the car was proved unworthy of its name; the screen
in front became less transparent than a whirlpool; the road went mad and
believed itself to be a mountain torrent. The wet wrath of heaven began
to make itself felt even down Mrs. Rust’s neck.
“This is disgraceful,” said Mrs. Rust. “Courtesy, do something at once.”
No doubt Courtesy would have risen to the occasion, but for once Heaven
was quicker. The sun suddenly shouldered its way round the intruding
cloud, and made one great shining jewel of the world. Park View, that
forward house, residence of the retiring Miss Brown, stood bold upon the
sky-line.
The gardener’s heart did not leap within him when he saw Park View. Only
in books does Fate disguised stir the heart to such activity. In real
life, when I stumble on the little thing that is to change my life, I
merely kick it aside, and hurry on.
In case you should think that by bringing my travellers to Greyville I
make the long arm of coincidence unduly attenuated, I must add that
there are only two tourist centres on the hills of the Island—Greyville
and High Valley—and that almost everybody visits both.
The gardener was now posing as a Seeker, and instinctively his eyes took
on the haggard look that belongs to the pose. As he mounted the steps of
the New Hotel verandah, the lady novelist thought, “What an interesting
young man!” When, however, she saw Mrs. Rust’s hair, her notebook
trembled in her pocket. The Treasure had left, and as to the other
Americans, she had practically drunk their cup of copy dry.
“Charles,” she said to the woolly black waiter when he brought her tea,
“will you put those new people at my table?”
“No, please, missis,” replied Charles, who, being a head waiter at
seventeen, was suffering from the glamour of power. “Shall sit dem wid
Mistah Van Biene.”
A fraction of the proceeds of the lady novelist’s last novel, however,
soon silenced the authority of Charles.
And after all it was Mrs. Rust who sought acquaintance first, at
breakfast in the cool verandah next morning.
“There was a lizard in my bath,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful! Why can’t
you exterminate your vermin?”
This was hard on the lady novelist, who screamed for Charles whenever
she saw anything moving anywhere, but she bore the injustice with a
beautiful patience.
“What do you think of the Island in general?” she asked. “I can tell by
your face that your opinion would be worth having.”
She might have added that she could tell this, not so much by Mrs.
Rust’s face as by her hair.
“I don’t think of the Island if I can help it,” retorted Mrs. Rust after
some thought, during which she sought in vain for some adequately
startling reply. “That earthquake—on my first day—a revolting
exhibition.”
“Oh, were you in Union for the earthquake? I am collecting the reports
of intelligent people who were there. I am sure your adventures must
have been worth recording.”
“On the contrary,” replied Mrs. Rust, “the whole thing was absurdly
overrated. My nerves remained perfectly steady throughout.”
The gardener, the only person who might have cast a doubt upon this
statement, was not present. Still posing as the strenuous seeker, he had
gone for a walk before breakfast.
There is a great glitter about morning in the hills which drags the
optimist for long walks in the small hours upon an empty stomach, and
causes even the pessimist to attack his grape fruit at breakfast with a
jovial trill. The little tables on the verandah of the New Hotel have a
glamour of heaped bright fruit upon white linen. In the garden the
tangerines grow radiantly among their shining sober green, the
butterflies blow across the pale young grass. There is a salmon-pink
azalea, whose smile attracts the humming-birds, and a riotous clump of
salvia. There is a benevolent John Crow, who strikes attitudes upon the
roof of the annex, and stands for hours with his ragged wings spread
open to the sun, as he surveys the diamond world. Really he is hoping
that you will fall dead over your breakfast, but you lose this thought
in the glitter of a hill morning. For the sake of your own peace of
mind, never get close enough to a John Crow to see his gargoyle face.
Content yourself with admiring his barbaric grace from a distance, and
forget why he is there.
Courtesy was characteristically still in bed. She never was one to hear
the call of a singing world.
The gardener came in with eyes crinkled by the sun, and his hair
standing up in a spirited way all over the top of his head. Did you know
that it is possible to be a specialist in posing without giving thought
to the appearance?
“You look as if you had been fighting,” snapped Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful
state of hair.”
“I wish I had,” replied the gardener. “I could fight beautifully at this
moment. I never knew what it was to breathe until this morning.”
“Air is indeed a blessing” said the lady novelist. “I have a passion for
air. I sometimes think I should die without it. How interesting to meet
any one who loves fighting. You ought to be a soldier. I myself am a
peace-loving woman, but I often have quarrels forced upon me.”
“Let me conduct them for you,” suggested the gardener, wrestling with
his grape fruit. “Show me the enemy.”
“I wish I could. I think I will,” said the lady. “I came to Greyville to
stay with a dear friend, and a young woman, of no standing whatever,
picked up anyhow and anywhere, not only turned me out of my friend’s
house, but now insists on my moving two of my trunks from the
sick-room.”
“Oh, there is a sick-room, is there?”
“Yes, my friend’s little nephew is ill.”
“But didn’t your friend protest? Has the young woman a hypnotic power
over her?”
“My friend is very weak. The young woman is only a sort of second-rate
children’s nurse, apparently.”
“And do you want to go back there?”
“No, I prefer to be here. But it is so undignified not to be consulted.”
“That’s very true,” said the gardener, whose interest was beginning to
wane.
“That road below is as crowded and as noisy as Piccadilly,” said Mrs.
Rust. “Disgraceful.”
“Market day,” replied the novelist rapturously. “Such a blaze of colour.
Such a babel of tongues....”
“And so smelly, I am sure,” said Mrs. Rust. “I am going to market.”
“Let’s all go to market,” added the gardener.
An hour had to be allowed for Courtesy to have her breakfast, and for
Mrs. Rust to don her panama. Mrs. Rust, though not averse to startling
any one of her own colour, had a secret distaste for the naïve
criticisms of the niggers on her strange hair. The Islanders were not
aware that dyed hair was the apex of modern fashion; they looked upon
it, poor things, as a deformity, and a most amusing one. Mrs. Rust had
been obliged to invest in a perfect beehive of a hat for wear in such
ignorant parts.
So four more units joined the stream of marketers along the red road. In
spite of Mrs. Rust’s panama, the niggers laughed. Niggers always laugh
unless they cry, and the lunatic ways of white women provide a source of
amusement that never fails, although white women have been on the Island
for three hundred years. Some of the marketers actually had to remove
their baskets of fruit—crowned with boots—from their heads, to give free
play to their sense of humour. Every nigger wears his boots upon his
head. It is, I suppose, as much a disgrace not to own them as it is a
discomfort to wear them.
The appearance of the market was like a maniac garden, and the sound of
it was like a maniac rookery. By way of compensation to the niggers for
their individual ugliness, Providence has granted to them an unconscious
beauty in the matter of grouping themselves. A nigger by herself looks
like a comic picture post card, a lot of niggers together look like the
picture that many master-hands have tried to paint.
My senses tingle even now with the welter of sun and sound and smell and
colour, that constitutes an Island market.