“_If our best intentions pave the way_
_To a place that is somewhat hot,_
_Can our worst intentions lead us, say,_
_To a still more sultry spot?_”
London was enveloped in a lowering gray cloud. All day a cold rain
had been pouring down, showing no signs of abating as the afternoon
wore on.
At about six o’clock, when shops and offices were closing, one figure
showed up in sharp contrast to the rest of the hurrying pedestrians:
that of a girl who went along at a slow walk, with hands thrust deep
into the pockets of her mackintosh.
Four months had passed since the news of Molly Seaton’s elopement had
fallen with the suddenness of a thunderbolt on Leslie Graham.
The following day she had left the hotel. Fletcher had tried to find
out her address and more about her, but he learned nothing except that
she had come from Paris. Lebrassa had taken Leslie’s departure more
coolly. Within a week he, himself, had left the hotel for West Africa.
Dr. Atherley kept Fletcher posted on Essel Lebrassa’s every movement.
At length the captain heard that the mulatto was again visiting
England. This news shattered most of the hopes concerning the Hyena.
Moreover, the intervening correspondence had almost proved that
Lebrassa was nothing more than the senior partner of the firm of
“Lebrassa & Cooper,” whose long absences were due only to business and
pleasure trips to Europe and America.
However, Fletcher decided to have the mulatto watched during his visit
to England, await his return to Africa and travel back by the same
boat. The captain wanted to satisfy himself completely that Lebrassa
was only the wealthy half-breed trader whose orgies had made him
notorious throughout the Bight of Biafra.
To Leslie the months had passed very slowly. She had returned to Paris
hoping to hear something from Molly.
Lebrassa’s remark, “Cooper is wealthy,” was constantly before her.
Sometimes she wondered if this could be the explanation.
As the post in Marseilles had fallen through owing to her lack of a
chaperon, at the end of a few weeks Leslie had returned to London, to
take a position in an office there. Then, just when the wound was
healing a little, a letter came from Molly in Africa, forwarded from
Leslie’s Paris address. It had reached her the previous morning, and
the contents had been in her mind ever since.
It was all a mistake! Molly had never had her letter! She had only
married that dreadful man in order to be no further burden on her,
Leslie.
Thoughts went in steady procession through Leslie’s brain, drummed and
marshaled by one quivering, heartbroken cry.
“How _did_ the letter go astray?”
It was all too terrible! Poor, sensitive little Molly tied for life to
a nigger. All because a letter had not reached its destination!
Through mud and rain Leslie trudged on, trying to think the matter out
calmly, too preoccupied to notice a man lingering outside her office,
who, on seeing her, had followed in her wake.
She turned into a cheap café for a cup of tea. Once seated, awaiting
the arrival of her order, she drew out Molly’s letter and read it
through again.
It bore a West African address and ran as follows:
_Dear little Leslie_,
What years, centuries, it seems since I last called you that. And it’s
not more than six months! I meant to drop out of your life
entirely--to tell you nothing. I knew you’d hear sooner or later what
had happened. And I hoped you’d despise me and forget all about me. I
couldn’t be a drag on you any longer, dear. When you mentioned that
position in Marseilles, I cried with relief. And I prayed that you
would get it. But you never wrote. So I guessed it had fallen through.
You could swim alone, but the weight of me would swamp you. I used to
sit thinking until my head ached, trying to find a way out.
Then a way came. Such a way!
I think I must have died and gone to hell. A hell full of negroes.
They are all around me. I can’t get away from them. And so hideously
real. So real that it makes me scream. Then one, my husband, the
constant and most vivid of them all, comes and kisses me and asks me
what the matter is!
I always wonder how I brought myself to marry him, but the color bar
did not seem so insurmountable then. And I thought the climate would
kill me. But it hasn’t. I’ve only been married four months and I can’t
stand it. I want to come back to England, but my husband won’t hear of
it. Everything is mine for the asking--everything except a little time
away from him, the only thing I want.
He says I may have one of my girl friends out here if I wish. Leslie,
in the horror of it all I turn to you. I want you to come out and stay
with me before I go absolutely mad. I want one little bit of the old
world, the white world, to cling to. Some one to talk to who is not
black, brown or yellow. Some one white who will not despise me. I want
to make you come and I know it’s wrong. If you come to me the few
white women in the place will cut you. And the men will do the same.
Or worse still, look at you in a way that makes you feel you’ve lost
something that can never be regained. If I were not so weak and
cowardly I’d bear my burden alone, or go down to the river and put an
end to everything. But I can’t. I’m afraid of both. So afraid that I
write to you, to drag you down to the depths of my black hell.
I want to tempt you, to make you come. You have been my strength for
so long. Think of all the strange wild sights you would see, all the
glories of the tropics. I am writing this out on the balcony, in the
moonlight. Such a moon, such a mass of molten glory that I almost
forget the price! And such stars! Great things of silver set in a low
arch of purple velvet. So near to the earth too, that by standing on
my chair I fancy I could touch them. On the skyline is the forest,
dark and uncanny, fearsome and haunted, black against a flood of
moonlight. The wind comes moaning down from the unknown, bringing the
whispering sigh of a hundred exotic trees, the scent of orange blossom
and magnolia and a dozen other strange, languorous perfumes. They
smother the scent of the roses growing round the balcony, and I am
glad. It is all white--white with a perfect whiteness. And
black--black with an utter everlasting blackness.
Below at the foot of the hill are the twinkling lights of the town,
set in a bower of vegetation. Farther away are bonfires blazing in the
native quarter, showing up scattered mud huts and a host of savage
figures. Beyond is the river, all white and still and peaceful. And
the sounds that drift up to me here! The splash and ripple of the
silvered water, the hoot of an owl, the uncanny whispering rustle of
the bamboos, the hoarse bellow of a distant crocodile, the beating of
tom-toms, wild negro melodies, the stealthy pad of unshod feet as the
servants go to and fro, and the hundred wild, weird whispers that go
to make up tropical night.
But, above all, my husband’s voice talking to his partner. Leslie,
don’t come, you’ll be a pariah too.
My husband’s partner, Mr. Lebrassa, says he saw you in Harrogate, at
the hotel! Ever since he told me I have been wondering why you came.
He said you thought I would be expecting you! It has puzzled me so
much. I can think of nothing else. He has been so kind to me since I
came here. He’s not a bit like my husband, but almost an Englishman.
This used to be his bungalow, but he has given it over to Horten, my
husband, because it is higher and healthier and better for me than
down over the factory where Horten used to be. He’s always trying to
make my lot easier. I know he suggested I ought to have a companion,
that being alone all day when my husband was at the factory was not
good for me. But that was only the nice way to put it. I think he
knows the long evenings alone with Horten are getting more than I can
stand. He leaves for England the day after to-morrow, by the same boat
as this letter. I told him I’d written to the one friend who loved me
enough to overlook what I had done, and perhaps come out here and stay
with me. He asked me who that was and I told him your name and where
you were living. Then he said he’d met and talked to you at the hotel
the very day I was married! He is only going to stay a few weeks in
England, and if you can forget the loss of caste and come out here to
me he will be able to look after you. It _is_ selfish of me to ask
you, to try and pull you down to what I am now, but the horror of it
all is getting more than I can bear alone.
Leslie darling, don’t take any notice of my ravings, stay where you
are.
Molly.
As Leslie sat brooding on the letter, some one halting at her table
brought her mind back to the present. Glancing up she stayed staring
in open surprise at the man standing beside her.
“Why, Mr. Lebrassa, how did you get here?” she asked. “I was just
reading about you--quite nice things.”
Her greeting made the cruel lines about his mouth relax a little.
“Were you? I’m glad of that. People as a rule haven’t a good word to
say for me. And what would _you_ say if I told you I’d been
cold-bloodedly stalking you--stalking you with intent to capture?”
“I should say I knew why.”
“Why then?” he asked.
“I’ve just heard from my friend, saying she’d given you my Paris
address. I could never make out why she wasn’t at the hotel that
night, and it seems she never got my letter.”
“Was it so important that she’d have postponed her wedding in order to
wait for you?”
It was on the tip of Leslie’s tongue to say that, had she arrived
twelve hours sooner at the hotel, there would have been no wedding. To
explain forcibly and pointedly to Lebrassa it was _not_ Cooper’s money
that had made Molly commit such a degrading action.
But Molly was married. No amount of explanation could undo that. It
was no use going over matters nothing could rectify, which this man
might repeat to his partner, and perhaps make Molly’s lot even worse.
“It was a business letter and of importance to both of us,” she
answered.
There was a brief pause.
Leslie was the first to break it.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked rather nervously. “There’s a lot I
want to say to you.”
Seating himself, Lebrassa stayed watching her in brooding silence.
Then suddenly he put a hand on her soaked raincoat.
“Why are you sitting in that wet thing?” he asked.
At his touch, she drew back quickly. Her action made him laugh in a
savage, bitter manner.
“Sometimes I wonder what I should have been like if I hadn’t been--a
nigger,” he said in a dreary manner.
Leslie knew she had hurt him by shrinking from his touch.
She poured herself out a cup of tea, and as she drank it she watched
his hand which lay, brown and powerful, on the table.
Just then her one idea was to make amends for the pain she had
unwittingly inflicted.
Presently, she laid her hand on his. Just for a moment it settled on
his dark one, and was off again with the nervous flutter of a
butterfly. The touch, light and slight as it was, made him suddenly
shiver.
“Mr. Lebrassa, something is worrying you,” she said.
He smiled, a smile that made Leslie’s heart ache with its
hopelessness.
“It’s nothing more than what has worried me for the last thirty-six
years. I thought I’d got over it, but I find I haven’t--quite.”
Leslie said nothing. But now she realized what his “worry” was.
“Now tell me what Mrs. Cooper had to say to you? I can make a fair
guess,” he went on quickly. “And if you take my advice--don’t go.”
“I’ve made up my mind to go,” she replied. “I sent a cablegram this
afternoon.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t understand myself,” he answered grimly.
Then once more he lapsed into brooding silence.