“_Yet, I warn’d you--ah! but my words came true--_
‘_Perhaps some day you will find him out._’”
The story now goes back to the afternoon preceding the events in the
previous chapter.
Along a narrow forest track leading to a native village, Leslie and
Lebrassa were walking. They had come up the river by boat, landing
within easy distance of the place.
The path was the merest jungle trail, twisting through aisles of
strange trees grown over with bright, flowering creepers.
In course of time the village was reached. Their arrival was heralded
by the barking of dogs--a continuous chorus that brought the
inhabitants out from their huts.
The hamlet was prettily situated among lime, palm and pawpaw trees.
And over the quaint brown huts, plantains, bananas and bamboo
fluttered. Outside each doorway, over fires made between four big
stones, the evening stew was being prepared. The smell was so
pronounced that Leslie made inquiries about the ingredients. She heard
its basis was well-hung fish, or dog, or monkey, seasoned with red
peppers, with palm oil added as a flavoring.
In spite of wanting to see something really African, she was startled
by the villagers’ ways. For they lived and acted in a manner
alarmingly primitive.
“Well, have you had enough of the undiluted savage?” Lebrassa asked
presently, as the girl’s face grew whiter and her eyes ever bigger.
“I’d no idea they’d be quite so… so primitive,” she said in a rather
breathless manner.
But for his foresight the village would have been even more primitive.
Lebrassa had sent instructions that the inhabitants must be on their
best behavior and decently clad. As it was, there were no adults going
about in a state of nature or acting in the manner of cattle.
“Suppose we go and have a look at something civilized in the shape of
tea,” he suggested.
“I am awfully thirsty,” Leslie said, glad of an excuse to escape from
what seemed to her a crowd of absolute savages.
Lebrassa took her to a large hut on the outskirts of the village.
There was something about the place that suggested it had been
furnished for the occasion. The crude contents were supplemented by a
couple of comfortable wicker chairs and a folding table where a
tea-basket reposed. Leaving the girl in the hut, he went in search of
water fit for drinking purposes. During his absence, Leslie explored
the dwelling. There were two rooms, and in the inner one was
everything essential for a welcomed “wash and brush up” after a hot,
stifling walk in the tropics.
Tea was set, cakes and biscuits laid out when she came through the
curtain screening the inner room.
By the table Lebrassa stood, watching the kettle he had set to boil on
a spirit stove.
Her entrance made him look up.
“Well, in your survey of the African at home, what impressed you the
most?” he asked.
Leslie could have said the scanty clothing, but she mentioned only a
secondary impression.
“That the women were doing most of the work and the men loafing
about.”
Her reply brought to his face the slightly teasing look that came
occasionally when he talked to her.
“But think, Miss Graham, if a man has half a dozen wives he can’t
afford to keep them all in idleness.”
“Have they half a dozen wives?” she gasped.
“More--some of them. And if you care to argue the point I can prove
that out here in Africa, among a race of savages, women are more
highly prized and thought more of than in England.”
“I don’t quite see how you’re going to do that.”
The slightly pugnacious note in her voice made his teasing look
deepen.
“In England when a woman marries, her father ‘gives her away’--not
only gives her away, but very often a considerable sum of money is
added to a dowry. But out here in Africa, does a dusky parent give his
daughter away, much less pay to get rid of her?”
“What nonsense you talk at times.”
“It’s not nonsense. I’m arguing my case. Out here if a man wants to
marry a woman he has to give some substantial proof of his affection.
‘Does this young fellow love my daughter sufficiently to give _me_
three goats, two lengths of Manchester cloth, a case of gin and a
cuckoo clock?’ the dusky parent argues. ‘If not, I won’t give my girl
in marriage with a man whose affection is so limited that he won’t
deny himself a few little bachelor luxuries in order to get the
evidence I need.’ Now I ask you in cold, calm logic, which lover is
more worthy of the name, which father esteems his daughter higher?”
“How absurd you are! Logic has nothing to do with it.”
Her indignant reply made him laugh.
“You’re trying to draw a red herring across the trail,” he said.
“Logically you know I’m right. Sentimentally, of course, I’m very much
off the line. A wife who comes to her husband in the recognized
English way, for the great and simple reason of love, is immeasurably
above one obtained in either of the two recognized African
methods--buying and stealing.”
“Stealing!”
Leslie’s voice was full of horror.
“It’s not much done in these more civilized parts,” he explained. “But
up-country it frequently happens.”
The kettle boiling turned Lebrassa’s thoughts to tea-making.
When the meal was over, one or two inquisitive little black faces
peering with fearsome interest in at the doorway took Leslie’s
attention.
“Do you mind if I give them these cakes and biscuits now we’ve
finished?” she asked.
“Of course you may,” he answered quickly. “Why trouble to ask?”
With all the remnants on a tray Leslie left the hut, distributing the
scraps among the children collected outside.
“There wasn’t one there as nice as my brown baby,” she remarked on
returning.
“Which do you call your brown baby?” he asked.
“The one I found in the garden last night.”
“Oh, that,” Lebrassa said in a forced, offhand manner.
“None of the women here were anything like as good-looking as its
mother,” the girl continued. “What beautiful ivory armlets she wore,
did you notice them?”
“I don’t know that I did, specially,” he replied, with the same air of
simulated indifference.
“They had stars carved on them,” Leslie persisted, continuing a
subject that obviously interested her. “I once had an armlet like
hers, but mine was made of gold. And inside was an Arabic inscription.
A friend translated it to me and he said it meant, ‘Irena, Queen of
Kallu, Daughter of the Stars, Bride of the Night, Beloved of
Darkness.’ I often wonder who she was and where my father got it from.
I never even knew he had it until after he was… lost.”
As Leslie talked, a strained look came and deepened on Lebrassa’s dark
face. When she finished he made no remark. Instead, he sat in gloomy
silence.
A faint sigh roused him. It came, not from his companion, but from the
forest outside. A low, moaning rush followed. This made him start up
quickly and go to the door. There was a sudden mad shriek, as if all
the winds of the world were loosed. Leslie came to his side.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, with alarm.
There was no need to answer the question. The horizon was a mass of
blood-red and indigo--the lurid tints of an approaching tornado.
Before he could answer her question the first great, blinding streak
of lightning shot across the sky.
“We shall have to wait here until this storm passes off,” he remarked
casually.
Leslie sat down again, listening to the storm that came ever closer,
until the murky, thunder-ridden clouds cast the gloom of twilight over
the scene.
Presently a flash of lightning and a deafening peal directly overhead
made her glance at Lebrassa who was leaning carelessly against the
lintel watching the storm, and apparently in no way disturbed by its
violence.
“You don’t seem to mind,” she said.
“I’ve seen many of the sort. The other day you were asking for
something typically African. Now you’ve got it--a typically African
tornado.”
Then seeing the girl was nervous, he came and seated himself in the
chair next hers.
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” he said in a soothing tone.
“The lightning goes for the high trees, and not these little huts.”
The next few minutes there was one constant flash and roar that filled
the atmosphere with the smell of sulphur and scorched wood, and left
Leslie sitting wide-eyed and trembling, obviously gripping her courage
with both hands.
“Leslie has Sylvia very well under control,” he remarked presently, a
tender, caressing note in his voice.
The comment made her smile at him in a tremulous manner.
“You seem to remember every silly thing I say. And I have the feeling
that you’re always vastly amused at my expense.”
Lebrassa said nothing, but his mouth softened until all its cruel
lines vanished. He sat as if lost in his own thoughts, watching the
rain coming down with a violence that blotted out the adjacent forest
in a driving cloud of gray.
“I’m afraid we shall have to stay here for some hours,” he remarked
presently. “There’s no chance of this clearing up just yet.”
“Hours!” Leslie echoed, and her voice was full of dismay.
“As soon as the rain lessens, I’ll send one of the villagers down to
the river for your hammock. You can’t possibly walk back with the
ground in the state it will be in after this downpour.”
“I’m putting you to a great deal of trouble,” she said apologetically.
He smiled, in the quiet, well-bred way Leslie liked.
“You’re my only friend,” he replied. “The first I’ve ever had. If Fate
had been kind enough to provide me with an English mother I should
have had a circle almost bigger than I could manage. Where my one
friend is concerned, nothing is too much trouble. I’m only too pleased
to do any little thing for you.”
For the next hour the rain poured down continuously, bringing darkness
earlier than usual and making even more gloomy the short African
twilight.
Inside the hut the shadows quickly gathered. Leslie sat watching the
torrent and listening to Lebrassa’s cultured voice as he talked of a
hundred and one things calculated to take her mind away from the
present predicament.
The darkness thickened until only two white blurs showed up in the
hut.
Presently Lebrassa rose.
“I’ll get a light,” he volunteered.
“Wait till the rain stops a bit. You’ll be wet through before you’ve
gone a dozen yards,” she said quickly.
“If I wait for the rain to stop we shall have to sit in darkness until
midnight.”
“You mean we shall have to stay here until then?”
“There’s not much chance of getting away before,” he said.
With that he left the hut.
Brooding on his verdict, Leslie stayed alone in the darkness,
listening to the hiss of the rain, the moan of the wind through the
forest, the strange creaks and sighs and distant howls that came with
it, the rustle of lizards in the roof, and the scratching, tapping
sounds as the long leaves of a plantain scraped against the side of
the tiny dwelling.
The mingled sounds made an eerie whole. There was such an unaccustomed
feeling about everything, such a creepy sensation, too, at the idea of
being in this savage village miles away from the nearest white person.
The combination sapped Leslie’s nerve.
A big, indistinct blot suddenly looming up in the doorway made her
heart jump in a sickly fashion.
“Is that you, Mr. Lebrassa?” she asked, a touch of fear in her voice.
“Now who else would it be?”
“You… you were gone so long. I--was beginning to get quite alarmed.”
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” he said in a soothing manner.
“But you _were_ a long time. And… and all this _is_ a bit new to me.”
“Poor little Sylvia! If I’d thought of her, I’d have given you a hint
that I was seeing about dinner, and also searching round for some
‘typically African’ means of illumination.”
Now that he was with her, Leslie’s fears subsided.
“And I expect you got wet through in doing it.”
The expression of her voice was essentially feminine, chiding and
concerned at the same time.
“I believe I did,” he said indifferently.
As he leaned over the table to arrange the lighting apparatus,
Leslie’s hand touched his sleeve, with one of those little downward
strokes by which one investigates as to the dampness of a person.
“Why, you’re absolutely soaked!” she cried, her voice full of
distress.
“It won’t harm me,” he answered, in a tone that said her concern on
his account pleased him. “I’m used to it. I could be out all night in
this rain, sleeping on the ground in it, and feel no ill effects.
Another advantage attached to being ‘a nigger’.”
“No one who really knew you would ever call you one,” she assured him.
“So you don’t think of me as one, now you’ve got to know me?”
Leslie thought of some of the specimens she had met at Cooper’s
bungalow.
“Never,” she said emphatically.
On the table, as lamps, Lebrassa was arranging two half-cocoanut
shells filled with palm oil with a scrap of rag floating in each as a
wick. After several attempts, he made them burn--dancing, uncertain
lights, each with a thick column of pungent smoke.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“It looks very local.”
Seating himself, he went on talking until the dinner arrived. A trio
of native women appeared with a variety of calabashes. There were
small ones to do duty as plates, and polished half-cocoanuts for
glasses.
In one huge calabash a savory stew steamed. In another were pancakes
made from pounded plantains fried in palm oil which gave them a
curious red tinge. A third was piled high with nuts and fruit. And in
a bottle that had once held trade gin was native palm wine.
“Shall we gather round?” he asked as the women left.
“How strange and nice it all looks,” Leslie remarked, as she seated
herself at the table.
Over the flickering, smoking lamps a powerful brown face looked at a
delicate white one.
“Now, Miss Graham, what about some chicken stew? I guarantee it’s fit
for civilized consumption because I saw the ingredients put in, and
dared the cook, under pain of death, to add any trifles of her own
choice.”
As the meal proceeded, in a veiled way Lebrassa’s negro-tainted eyes
watched the girl who chatted to him in a frank, friendly manner, often
smiling at him in the way she had done when her photograph first met
his gaze.
By the time dessert was reached, Leslie was thoroughly enjoying her
“typically African” evening.
“We might be miles and miles away from civilization,” she said in the
course of conversation. “Right in the heart of savage Africa. But I’m
glad we’re not.”
“What’s your objection to the heart of savage Africa?”
“I should live in constant fear of the Hyena swooping down on me, and
grilling me over a fire, or leaving me abandoned on an ant-hill.”
Her reply was the last Lebrassa had expected. An uneasy look crossed
his face.
“What made you think about that man just now?” he asked hoarsely.
“All these strange, barbaric surroundings, this
far-away-from-all-civilization feeling. Captain Fletcher says he
tortures people for days on end. I can’t imagine any one human being
acting in that manner toward another, can you?”
The strained look on Lebrassa’s face deepened.
“Everybody out here has some theory about him,” he answered. “Mine is,
that he’s some unfortunate wretch suffering from a loathsome disease
that is a constant torture to him, which he knows neither time,
patience, repentance, nor any earthly remedy can cure, and only death
relieve. In the agonies of others he may find some little relief from
his own--forgetfulness of his own spectre.”
“Captain Fletcher says he does it from sheer hatred of white people,”
Leslie put in.
“Perhaps. But we’ve only to refer to history to find that some of the
greatest barbarians of the past, men whose names are bywords of
cruelty to this day, have been afflicted themselves. Any horrible
affliction, combined with inherited savage instincts and the cruelty
that lurks in all things negro, would produce something on a par with
the devil. Sympathy is always with the Hyena’s victims. Personally I
find myself extending a little to the man himself, if the cause is
what I say.”
For some time there was silence.
In a sympathetic manner Leslie watched Lebrassa, knowing his thoughts
were on his own affliction--the black blood in him.
“Why don’t you smoke?” she asked presently, with the idea of getting
his mind away from himself.
Her voice brought him out from his black study.
“May I?”
“Of course. Why didn’t you light up sooner?”
“I thought tobacco, combined with the smell of these lamps, might be
rather too much for you,” he explained.
“I like it. It keeps off the mosquitoes,” she replied, glad she had
got his thoughts away from his constant trouble.
He drew out a wet-looking cigar-case. A search for matches followed.
But he could find none, the last having been used to get the lamps
burning.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to endure the mosquitoes,” he said.
Leslie pointed to the soaked rag that lay, half submerged in the
oil-filled shell, flickering and smoldering under the heavy pall of
thick, greasy smoke.
“What’s wrong with getting a light from there?” she asked.
“There’d be too much palm-oil flavor attached to my cigar if I did!”
“I never knew anything quite so helpless as a man if a thing can’t be
done in the regulation way. Why not make a paper spill?”
As he searched round in his pockets for material for making one,
Lebrassa’s eyes, soft and smiling, rested on the girl.
“I shall call you ‘Little Friend of all the Universe,’ Miss Graham,”
he remarked. “You seem able to ease every one’s troubles, and find a
way out of his difficulties for him.”
He drew out his pocket-book, and opened it carelessly to tear out a
dry leaf from the middle.
As he did so, something fluttered to the table and lay there, face
upwards, staring at Leslie.
In blank astonishment she stared back at it.
Her intent gaze drew Lebrassa’s attention to the spot.
On the table a little pictured face lay; a face he had come to know
very well since he had torn it out from the group, wondering who the
girl was and if she would smile at him in such a friendly manner if
she knew she was smiling at a “nigger.”
Starting violently, he looked across at the original.
The pleasure of having Leslie so entirely to himself, miles away from
all her own color, trusting him as implicitly as if he were one of her
own people, to know she was concerned about his welfare and his wants,
that she understood and sympathized with him, had made him forget what
secret lay hidden within his notebook.
He made a movement to pick the photograph up, but her hand was there
first.
“Why! It’s like the one I sent to Molly!” she exclaimed. “In that
letter! You know. The one that was lost.”
As if unable to credit her eyes, she turned it over.
On the back her own handwriting greeted her.
“It _is_ the very one!” she went on in a disbelieving gasp.
In a dazed, puzzled manner, she looked across at him.
“How did you get hold of it?” she asked.
Lebrassa’s eyes were strained and anxious, but her blank surprise had
given him time to gather an explanation together.
“I found it among some of Cooper’s possessions, that he asked me to
forward after he left Harrogate.”
“But it’s out of the letter I sent to Molly! The one she never had. My
letter must have got there. And he… he must have taken it!”
Lebrassa made no reply.
Intently he watched the girl, wondering if his excuse would stand, by
now sufficiently acquainted with her character to know she would not
question the negro on a matter nothing could rectify, or tell Molly
that the man who was her husband had attained the position by stealing
a letter.
All at once Leslie looked across at him.
“Mr. Lebrassa, will you do me a favor? Don’t say anything to Mr.
Cooper about this. It’s too late to mend matters now. And I don’t want
Molly to know either. If she did, it would sweep away the shred of
tolerance that makes her life with her husband possible. Do help me to
keep this secret,” she finished earnestly.
“I won’t say a word if you don’t wish me to,” he said hoarsely.
“Will you shake hands on it?”
Across the table a small white hand was extended. He drew back as if
stung, watching her with an expression that was tortured.
“Can’t you trust me without that?” he asked roughly.
Leslie imagined her action had been misconstrued; that he thought his
mixed blood had made her fancy he was not to be relied on.
“Of course I can,” she said, all penitence. “It’s only a silly
school-boy formula.”
After that she sat back in her chair, brooding over the mystery that
had been solved at last.
It was some time before it struck her to wonder why the picture should
have been in Lebrassa’s possession. The shock of coming across it so
unexpectedly had taken all but the fact of Cooper’s treachery from her
mind.
Now other thoughts came trooping in, the principal being--why had Mr.
Lebrassa picked out and kept her photograph?
On further inspection, the fact that he had done so left her with an
uncomfortable feeling; a desire to get back to other people, not to be
quite so alone with him.
Fletcher’s final lecture on the _Batava_ was well to the fore in her
mind. What if Captain Fletcher were right, and she wrong? What if Mr.
Lebrassa were in love with her?
She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that there had never
been anything lover-like in his behavior. He treated her in a
friendly, fatherly way, much as Major Harding did.
But the fact that he carried her photograph about refused to be
ignored, and there came the perturbing thought that friendship might
not satisfy him. He might wish for something more.
Like an appalling flood there swept through Leslie the recollection
that Lebrassa was only half English, only half civilized. And in
matters of emotion the savage might come to the top.
Anxiously he watched her as she sat silent and thoughtful. Every
shadow and expression that crossed her face he noted, all the time
wondering if his excuse would pass muster, knowing there were
incidents in their first meeting that might go to disprove his
explanation.
Suddenly Leslie got up and went to the door. As she did so he caught
one glance--fleeting, fearsome and suspicious.
“I--don’t think it’s raining quite so much. Hadn’t we better start
back now?”
There was unmistakable reserve in her voice, and a break of fear that
he immediately noticed.
Crossing the hut, he took up his stand just behind her--as he very
often did--looking over her head at the driving rain.
“We can’t possibly start in this,” he said.
Leslie moved to the other side of the door. With her mind full of
suspicions she did not care to have him so close to her. The action
made him glance at her in a sharp, anxious, almost hungry manner,
suspecting that some idea of his deceit had dawned on her.
She caught his look, and it did not add to her peace of mind.
“But I’d like to go now,” she said, trying to speak naturally.
She did her best to hide her uneasiness. She feared that her having
seen the photograph might make him tell his reason for carrying her
picture about. Being what he was, he might not take his congé in the
manner an Englishman would.
“Molly will be wondering what has happened to me,” she added as an
excuse.
“Mrs. Cooper will guess why you’re late. There’s no need for you to
distress yourself on her account.”
Lebrassa’s voice was very hoarse, as if he were laboring under great
but suppressed emotion. Leslie, with ears now quick to mark every tone
in his voice, heard it.
She shivered, so violently that it was noticeable. His hand was on her
shoulder with quick, caressing anxiety.
“You’re not damp or cold, are you, little friend?”
She drew away from him and went into the room, putting the length of
the table between them. There she stood watching him with frightened,
suspicious eyes. Half an hour ago she would have put his touch and
anxiety on her account down to friendship, but the finding of her
photograph in his possession now gave all his doings another meaning.
Lebrassa followed her.
Guilt made him quick to put but one construction on her actions. A
further survey of the situation had shown her flaws in his
explanation--flaws through which the truth was leaking. Her avoidance
and desire to escape from him made him think she had guessed he had
taken the letter.
“Before God, Leslie, I wouldn’t have taken that letter had I known
everything,” he said hoarsely.
Blankly she looked at him.
“What are you talking about?” she asked with undisguised surprise.
In an instant Lebrassa’s mistake flashed on him. He knew now why she
shrank from him. She had guessed his reason for keeping the
photograph. Now his own confession had betrayed him, had swept away
the one thing he was working for--to possess her legally. On her
trust, sympathy and liking, there had been a chance he might build
something stronger than the friendship she had granted him. A slender
chance, that his own words had swept away.
Leslie stood wondering what he meant.
His hoarse, broken words were very different from the proposal she had
expected and dreaded.
“_I wouldn’t have taken that letter had I known everything._”
Over and over again the sentence repeated itself in her mind.
“You mean _you_ took that letter?” she asked at length.
There was no reply. Something gripped Lebrassa’s throat and strangled
all utterance as her astounded eyes gazed at him with the truth
dawning in their clear depths.
Over the flickering, curling lights he watched her in a strange, wild,
hungry way.
Leslie noticed nothing of this. Other things were in her mind. Back to
her had flashed some of the incidents of their first meeting, all of
which went to corroborate the gradually dawning truth.
She remembered how she had been sent to his room. His start and
surprise on hearing her name. How he had said he was expecting some
one. His knowledge that she had come from Paris.
The full meaning of it all dawned on her at last.
_He_ was responsible for Molly’s ghastly marriage. This man she had
been sorry for, whom she had called “friend,” treated as such, and
held to, in spite of advice and warning.
Why Lebrassa should have taken the letter had no place in her mind.
Everything was forgotten in the flood of cold, unbounded rage that
swept over her at the knowledge of his treachery and how she had been
deceived.
With unveiled aversion, she turned from him, and picking up her hat
pulled it on her head with hands that shook with the intensity of her
anger.
There was no mistaking her action. She had done with him entirely.
She turned to leave the hut. Before she reached the door, Lebrassa was
there, barring the way.
There was no need for further deception. The knowledge that he was now
despicable in her sight had cracked the veneer of civilization. The
savage, whom her trust, innocence and liking could keep in abeyance,
showed through. A flood of wild emotion had swept away almost every
English trait on his face, leaving it reckless, cruel, arrogant, full
of savage love and hungry passion.
Leslie faced him, looking at him with contempt and loathing, too
enraged to notice the wild storm her scorn had raised.
“Let me pass at once,” she said.
It was a haughty command, with no hint of fear or entreaty.
“And if I refuse, little white rose, what then?”
Unflinchingly she scanned the big figure barring her way.
“You will recollect what you are and obey me instantly.”
He laughed, a low, fierce laugh, with a great note of the tiger in it.
“What am I, heart’s delight? Tell me what I am. For what if I say I
_am_ the Hyena?”
At his words all color died from Leslie’s face.
Wide-eyed and in dread fascination, she gazed at him.
“A savage African Sultan with a price on his head.” “The most
bloodthirsty villain in West Africa.”
With sickening force his words came thundering back to her mind.
Contempt and anger were lost in the flood of deadly terror that swept
over her.
She was not dealing with a civilized being, but with a savage chief, a
blood-stained monster, a creature quite beyond her comprehension.
She glanced round wildly, seeking refuge from the tainted eyes
watching her. As if to get away from the truth confronting her, she
made a backward step. Lebrassa followed, not touching her, just
driving her backwards step by step, laughing all the time, driving her
backwards until she could get no further. There was a wall behind her,
and this great savage thing in front watching her and laughing.
It was impossible to scream. No sound would come.
A sound came, but from outside. From the forest not a hundred yards
away. A snarling, ravening sound, a howl of fiendish mirth, a shriek
of mad, bestial laughter. Like a pack of hell hounds on the trail, the
sound rose and fell with the swish of the rain; now, a low,
blood-curdling chuckle, now a wild, hellish yell, a horrible cry, like
a hundred hyenas howling. The wild sounds stopped as abruptly as they
had arisen. And through the heavy roar of the downpour came the echo
of running feet.
That ghastly howling sobered Lebrassa.
The wild surge of red-hot negro passion the sudden chattering of his
hopes had roused died down as quickly as it had arisen. Another flood
of emotion swayed him. How to save the girl now looking at him as if
he were earth’s greatest horror. There was the low moan of a child in
deadly fear as his arm went round her, crouched against the wall,
staring at him with eyes black with terror.
Leslie was aware he lifted her lightly, holding her in a grip that
took all her strength away. Then everything faded in total blackness
as she lay, limp, in a dead faint within his arms.
The running feet reached the hut. Yoni loomed up and threw herself on
her knees before Lebrassa, as he stood holding Leslie close against
him in fierce protection.
“What treachery is this, woman?” he demanded in a savage, desperate
voice.
“It’s Nanza,” she gasped. “He did not go back to Kallu. He waited here
to spy. Then he sent a message up to the high-priest, Mhaki, who has
come down with fifty of his followers demanding blood and vengeance.
Nanza has seen you with the Star, and he knows you love her. He has
told them, and they are filled with madness. They come now for the
blood of the Star and the death of a Sultan who has betrayed them.
Essel, my cousin, give them vengeance. What does it matter if that
girl dies? But not my lord who is the Sultan and my life.”
As the gasping, breathless voice finished, another burst of fiendish
laughter roused the echoes, the mad hyena’s cry that had preceded
Yoni’s coming. A crowd of howling black figures dashed into the hut,
wet and dripping, with the steam rising from their ebony hides; with
scarred faces and thick, livid lips that snarled and showed great
yellow fangs filed down to resemble dogs’ teeth.
“Back, dogs!” Lebrassa roared in some heathen dialect. “Since when has
it been law to enter thus the presence of your Sultan?”
As his furious voice thundered out, to be heard above the mad babel,
the wild roar died down to an ominous growl. The half-dozen savages
already in the hut, stopped short, but they were pressed on by the
force of those behind them.
“By all darkness! Who comes one step nearer dies,” Lebrassa thundered.
The mob stopped. Under the mulatto’s blazing eyes there was some
inclination on the part of the most prominent of the intruders to draw
back and give precedence to their fellows.
It was one thing to talk against the Sultan behind his back, another
to meet him face to face. There was the sullen, backward cringe of
wild beasts under the eye of their trainer, and the growl subsided
into silence.
“Don’t heed him,” a voice from behind cried. “He would keep blood from
us.”
“So, Nanza, you are here,” Lebrassa answered. “Come! Your Sultan bids
you enter.”
Nanza came through the crowd and halted, facing Lebrassa with an
arrogance equaling his own.
“Now, what’s all this talk about withholding blood? Since when in
Kallu has your voice issued orders except of my giving?” the mulatto
asked. “Remember, even the Sultan’s cousin, heir to all Darkness
though he be, is not exempt from death if he dare disobey me.”
“Nor is the Sultan exempt from death, if he betrays the priests and
the people,” Nanza replied boldly.
A growl of assent went up.
“In what way have I betrayed either priests or people?” Lebrassa
demanded.
“Need you ask, with that girl in your arms?” Nanza replied, pointing a
black finger at Leslie’s unconscious form. “Have you forgotten your
oath sworn on the Altar of the Night?”
Lebrassa gave a savage laugh, arrogant and contemptuous.
“What I hold in my arms is mine. No oath broken, but what has long
been the wish of the priests and the people.”
“It is no wish of theirs that you hold that foul murderer’s daughter
in a lover’s embrace. Give her to us. Give us blood and vengeance.
Give us the woman you hold,” his cousin cried.
With a sullen, angry roar the horde surged up to Lebrassa as if to
tear Leslie from his protecting arms. Only one man touched her, and
the next moment he fell under a blow that would have stunned an ox.
“That I should live to see this crew of mongrels yapping round me!”
Lebrassa roared with mad fury. “Hounded on by the lash of jealousy. By
one who desires to sit in your Sultan’s place.”
These were words that could reach through the blood-lust that swayed
the crowd: motives they could understand. Vengeance was one, treachery
another, now a third had been presented to them. Some of their fury
died down, and left them waiting for explanations.
Lebrassa was quick to seize his opportunity.
“But do I hold the child of that murderer?” he asked. “Who has said
so? Only Nanza. And why?”
Now the mob was all attention, hanging on to his words, awaiting his
excuses.
“Why do you listen to the voice of jealousy?” Lebrassa continued. “It
was said in Kallu, ‘The Sultan tarries. Why is he so long away from
his people?’ A message was sent up, ‘Wait’, but it did not say for
what. There is one who sits in the Sultan’s place when his dogs rest
after hunting--one who fain would sit there always. He must plot
mischief, he and a jealous woman. A message was sent up to you, ‘The
child of the murderer is found.’ Who sent it? Not I. Yet it was a true
one. And another had been found also.”
Lebrassa paused for a moment, and his arms took an even firmer hold of
the girl who lay limp within them.
“Long has it been asked in Kallu, ‘Why have we no Queen?’ ‘Why does
not the Sultan give us an heir of his own breeding?’ Why? Because no
Star had risen in the Heart of Darkness. In Kallu there was no woman
as beautiful as Irena, Bride of the Night. None fit to take her place,
to be wife to her son. Your Sultan was ambitious. He would give even
greater beauty than Irena’s to shine on the Throne of Night, to be a
mother of kings. There was a hunt, a hunt of vengeance; a fresh rumor
had come as to the whereabouts of the child of Irena’s murderer. On
the trail of blood your Sultan found a love scent. A Star rose in the
Heart of Darkness. It was a dual hunt that kept your Sultan from
Kallu--love and vengeance. And in the end, both were successful.”
Lebrassa stopped for a moment, his gaze on the small head pillowed
against his chest.
With staring eyes and interest on their fierce faces, the wild crowd
waited for him to continue.
“Vengeance proved more easily wooed than love. The first was soon
completed, the other far from finished. What is the best guard for a
woman who needs safe keeping, whose life is forfeit for her father’s
sins? A husband who loves her and is jealous of her beauty. A husband
was found for the daughter of that foul murderer. At my order my
servant Cooper married her. But he does not know who she really is,
the woman who is now his wife. I had to find a keeper for her, for the
love hunt was far from finished.”
Smiling fondly Lebrassa laid a big, brown hand on Leslie’s head.
“Is it the way of a Sultan to turn back from love not attained?” he
asked proudly. “It was but a small Star I sought, yet it would have
none of me. I laughed and waited. It was a sweet game over which men
love to linger, when the end is sure. A small Star against the Ruler
of the Night! I spread a net for it, into which the little feet of
innocence strayed. My Star would have fled, but too late. I had caught
it. Nanza can tell you more of my snare, but in it he would have I was
trapping vengeance, not love. Shall we say--for reasons of his own?”
As if to let his question sink in, Lebrassa paused again.
“For has it not been whispered that he would remain my heir now and
forever? Say, dogs, had you slain me by the words jealousy had
whispered, who would be your Sultan now? Nanza has no wish for me to
marry. For my son would be the heir, and not himself. It is well then
if I am slain. Who is to be believed? The one who desires to sit in
the Sultan’s place, or he who has led you to victory these twenty
years? He or I? Love is here in my arms. The object of our vengeance
is in charge of her guard, Cooper, whom you know better as Bhessu, my
servant.”
There was no mistaking who had the heart of the crowd now. Lebrassa
knew his audience and played on it, swaying it with the gift of negro
eloquence, combined with English reason.
A wild howl went up, very different from the first that had greeted
him. Half a score of hands seized Nanza as he stood trying to make
himself heard, bore him backwards and would have had his life. Over
the babel Lebrassa’s voice came thundering.
“Back, dogs, let him have his say. Do not let my words, like his, sway
you unduly. Maybe there is something lacking in my explanation. I
would answer all the charges he has to bring against me.”
The dusky horde surged back immediately.
“What he has said is no proof,” Nanza yelled. “When only the Sultan
knows the truth, it is easy for him to say one woman is the other.”
Fifty voices answered him.
“Proof! What need have we of proof? The Sultan’s word is enough.”
Then a man who had not yet spoken put in a word. He was a negro of
about sixty who appeared to weigh judicially all that had been said.
Lebrassa’s desire that Nanza should have his say had had a more
favorable effect on the high-priest, Mhaki, than anything that had yet
passed.
“Nanza has spoken truly,” he said quietly. “What the Sultan has said
is no proof. It is easy to pass off one woman as the other. With love
deceit enters into the heart of man. I’m not of the rabble to be
swayed by words and references to fights that have gone before. I am a
priest of Doomana, a faithful servant of the Night-God, of the
murdered Queen Irena, of the Sultan Essel too, if he give but one
proof to his statements.”
“Then, Mhaki, no one can give better proof than you. For no one here
but you saw my mother’s murderer in his prime. Now, what was he like,
that man you saw nearly twenty-three years ago?”
As Lebrassa put the question he was busy drawing the pins from the
coils of hair about Leslie’s ears.
“He resembled Irena’s consort,” Mhaki replied. “So much so that he
might have been his brother. He was a tall man, with hair of gold, and
eyes gray as a night cloud.”
“He was as you say, Mhaki, a man who might have been my father’s
brother,” Lebrassa said, a bitter note in his voice. “Now, who has
seen Cooper’s wife? Come, Nanza, you’ve played the spy. Speak up, and
tell us what she is like?”
There was no reply.
Lebrassa laughed.
“Is there any one here who has seen her?” he asked.
Yoni rose up from Lebrassa’s feet.
“I give testimony to my lord. I, Yoni, Keeper of the Stars, priestess
of Doomana, who caused all this, and put jealousy into my brother. I
have seen her. She has hair of gold, and eyes that are as the
twilight.”
“There’s the proof you desire, Mhaki,” Lebrassa cried. “Now, see
this!”
With a quick movement, he tore off Leslie’s screening hat. A shake
brought her cloud of black hair sweeping over his sleeve. Then he held
the girl at arms’ length, where she lay gazing around with big, dazed,
purple-blue eyes.
There was a moment of astonished silence.
“She is, indeed, a Star,” Mhaki said in an awed voice. “Never have I
seen a girl so beautiful.”
He made as if to finger Leslie’s silky hair, but Lebrassa drew her
quickly back to his heart, pressing her against him with fierce
tenderness and savage jealousy, away from the black paws that would
have touched her.
“A Star for me alone, and not for you and your color to touch, Mhaki,”
he answered. “If love were not in my heart, your lives would pay for
this night’s work. Now, I will crown her, Queen of Kallu, a gift from
the Sultan to his people.”
The project met with a roar of assent. Lebrassa stood in the midst of
a crowd that fawned round him in the manner of dogs welcoming a
long-absent master.
The excitement of victory, coming after the tearing strain of the last
few minutes, when only he stood between Leslie and fifty fiends
thirsting for blood and vengeance, made Lebrassa, for the moment,
forgetful of everything except that she was safe.
As he stood surrounded by the fawning crowd Nanza slipped out of the
hut. For he knew that death would be his portion once the Sultan
remembered his treachery.
The savages were too busy to notice Nanza’s stealthy exit. All eyes
were on the two in the middle of the hut, eager to miss no detail of
the impromptu crowning of their Queen.
One of the mulatto’s arms was bared to beyond the elbow. On his
massive brown limb was a circle of gold, embossed with stars. This
Mhaki was unclasping. When the armlet was off he gave it into
Lebrassa’s keeping. The latter took it and placed it on Leslie’s head,
drawing strands of her hair through it to keep it in position. And
there it gleamed--a band of golden stars set in a cloud of black.
The curling, smoking lights played on the wild figures who watched him
as he stood holding a white-faced girl close against him, gazing with
savage arrogance over her star-crowned head.
“Is there no greeting for my Queen?”
Fifty voices answered him.
“We are star-worshipers, we spawn of the night. In Kallu there is
always welcome for such as she.”
There followed the wild, tribal war-cry--a long-drawn howl of hyena
laughter, so weird and blood-curdling that it reached Leslie through
her stunned terror.
Involuntarily, she clutched Lebrassa’s wrist.
“Enough, you are frightening her,” he cried. “She’s not used to the
music of my hunting dogs, this little Queen of mine.”
Then all at once, Nanza’s absence dawned on him.
“By all darkness! That traitor has slipped away!” he thundered.
It needed but a minute to convince everybody of the truth of this
statement, and growls of anger arose from the savages.
“He will do no harm as yet,” Lebrassa said in a quick, compelling
voice. “Saving his own life concerns him more now than betraying us.
But we must act quickly.”
A few sharp orders were issued.
The hut cleared.
Presently there remained only Yoni and the two who, not an hour
before, were seated amicably together at dinner.
The negress was ordered out and told to wait within earshot until
called. When she left, Lebrassa drew up a chair and put Leslie into
it. For the girl drooped against him, so weak and limp that he knew
she would have fallen but for his arm.
Once she was seated he stood watching her, as if hoping for some word.
There was a tired, strained look about him; a lot had been lost and
gained within the last hour.
Presently, as the silence remained unbroken, he leaned over her and
took one of her cold, trembling hands into his.
“Say something to me, little white rose?” he asked with pleading. “Say
I’ve deceived you. That you hate me. Anything. Don’t sit in silence as
if no words could express your contempt and my baseness. I deceived
you. But is it quite unforgivable? A small, white hand reached down to
me, through the blackness and the blood, to the depths of a hell I’ve
been in these last twenty years. If I try to keep it, am I wrong?”
Watching her anxiously he paused, but if he expected an answer he was
disappointed.
“I’m hungry after white innocence and purity, nobility and gentleness,
things that have been denied me. I would have them for my own, to hold
them close against me. You are my treasure, my precious angel, as far
above me as the stars. I would have won you honorably if I could,
Leslie, but fate was against me. You know me now for what I am--a
creature black and blood-stained, who has been the sport of the gods
since birth. A constant black horror was born with me, one that can
drag me down to the level of the beasts, with which I must move, eat
and sleep to the end--a horror that I see reflected on every white
face, that neither time, patience, money nor penitence can take from
me. That horror has risen in all its ghastly blackness between me and
every hope, ideal and ambition I may have cherished, and it has
hounded me to hell in search of oblivion. And I found oblivion--at
last. At last I found the Waters of Lethe. Where do you think,
Leslie?”
For a moment he paused as if hoping for some word from her. But only
the sigh and the sob of the rain answered him.
“I found oblivion. Not in the depths I’d groveled in so long. But high
above me, in the stars. For you, Leslie, smiled on me and were my
friend, treating me just as if I were as other men. You forgot what I
was. And I forgot also, because you did. Forgot, and when you had
gone, remembered a thousand times more. Yet I would hide the blood and
blackness from you. Would deceive you. I was thirsty for whiteness
after my life in hell.”
He raised her cold, shaking hand to his lips, kissing it tenderly.
“It is such a little hand, this of yours,” he said, holding it
carefully in his big brown one. “Yet it eased the yoke that held me.
It brought me back to what I might have been. This little hand,
trembling in my own. May I keep it, Leslie?”
There was no reply. Only her hand trembled more than ever.
“Have you nothing to say to me, little friend?” he asked with abject
pleading. “Not one word. I dare not ask for love, but just a little
toleration and pity, a little of the old sweet sympathy. I could give
so much in return--love, worship and adoration. Don’t make an even
greater savage of me, Leslie. Be something more than a Sultan’s
captive bride. Be my little angel of pity.”
For some moments he watched her hungrily.
A white-faced girl looked back at him, speechless and in dread
fascination.
“Haven’t you one word for me, darling?” he begged.
Still there was no reply.
For a moment longer he waited. Then he went from the hut, leaving Yoni
on guard at the door.