Part 6

“That’s a message to me,” said Ross, starting up. “Come down to the shore and see the last of me for three months at any rate.”

Dr Koomadhi put on his helmet, and saw his friend safely through the surf on his way to where the steamer was swinging at her anchor. The sun had set before he returned to his house to dinner; and before he had risen from the table a message came to him that one of the officers of the Houssas was anxious to see him, being threatened with an attack of fever. The great stars were burning overhead before he returned from the barrack of the Houssas, and was able to throw off his coat and lie back in his chair in his own sitting-room.

He had a good deal to think about before going to his bedroom, and he seemed to find the darkness congenial with his thoughts. In fact, the negro acknowledged a sort of brotherhood in the night, and he remained for some hours in that fraternal darkness. It was just midnight when he went, with only a small amount of groping, to his desk, and took out of its drawer the ivory box containing the earshaped stone, into whose orifice he had spoken some words before leaving for the Commissioner’s house in the afternoon. He unlocked the box and removed the stone. He left his villa, taking the stone with him, and strolled once more to the house which he had visited a few hours before.

Lights were in the windows of the Residency, and certain musical sounds were coming from the room where he had been. With the twanging of the banjo there came the sound of a light bass voice of no particular timbre, chanting the words of the latest plantation melody--

“Don’t you belieb un, Massa John,

Jes’ winkie mid yo’ eye,

Kick up yo’ heels to de gasalier--

Say, how am dat for high?”

Dr Koomadhi listened while three stanzas of the doggerel were being sung by Major Minton; then he raised the ear-shaped stone that was in the hollow of his hand, and whispered some words into it as he had done in the afternoon. In a second the song stopped, although the singer was in the middle of a stanza.

“Confound it all!” cried Major Minton--Koomadhi heard his voice distinctly. “One of my strings is broken. I suppose it was the sudden change of atmosphere that made it give way. It’s a good bit drier here than aboard the _Penguin_.”

“The concert is over for to-night,” came the voice of the Commissioner. “It’s about time for all of us to be in our beds.”

“That’s my notion too,” said Letts. “Those who object can have their money returned at the doors.”

“It was strange--that breaking of the string without warning,” Dr Koomadhi heard Gertrude say.

He smiled.

It was only at midnight in the open air, and when he was alone, that he allowed himself the luxury of an unbridled smile. He knew the weaknesses of his race.

He put the stone into the pocket of his coat and returned to his house.

V.

The marriage of Major Minton to Miss Hope took place in another week. Of course the ceremony was performed by the Lord Bishop of Bonny, who was also Metropolitan of the Gambia and Senegal. The gunboat that was at the anchorage displayed every available rag of bunting, and the lieutenant who commanded her said he would gladly have fired a salute in honour of the event, only for the fact that the Admiralty made him accountable for every ounce of powder that he burned, and, in addition, for the wear and tear on every gun. The guns didn’t bear much tampering with, and there was nothing so bad for them as firing them: it wore them out, the Admiralty stated, and the practice must be put a stop to.

But if there was no official burning of powder to mark the happy event, there was a great deal of it that was unofficial and wholly irregular. Dr Koomadhi spent several hours of the afternoon amputating fingers of Krooboys that had been mutilated through an imperfect acquaintance, on the part of the native populace, with the properties of gunpowder when ignited. An eye or two were reported to be missing, and in the cool of the evening the Doctor had brought to him, by a conscientious townsman, a human ear for which no owner could be found.

The happy pair went to the Canary Islands for their honeymoon, and returned radiant at the end of six weeks; and the Commissioner’s _ménage_, which had suffered materially through the absence of the Commissioner’s daughter, was restored in all its former perfection. Every night varied strains of melody floated to the ears of such persons as were in the neighbourhood of the Residency; and it was a fact that Major Minton’s banjo never twanged without attracting an audience of from ten to five hundred of the negro population of Picotee. The pathway was every night paved with negroes, who listened, shoulder to shoulder, and kneecap to kneecap--they sat upon their haunches--to the fascinating songs. They felt that if the Commissioner had only introduced a tom-tom obbligato to the tom-tom melodies, the artistic charm of the performance would be complete.

The native evangelist, who occasionally contrived to fill a schoolhouse with young Christians by the aid of a harmonium,--a wheezy asthmatic instrument, which, in spite of a long lifetime spent on the West Coast, had never become fully acclimatised,--felt that his success was seriously jeopardised by the Major’s secular melodies. When the flock were privileged to hear such fascinating music unconditionally, he knew that it was unreasonable to expect them to be regular in their attendance at the schoolhouse, where the harmonium wheezed only after certain religious services had been forced on them.

He wondered if the Bishop might be approached on the subject of introducing the banjo into the schoolhouse services. He believed that with such auxiliaries as the banjo, and perhaps--but this was optional--the bones, a large evangelistic work might be done in the outlying districts of Picotee.

Dr Koomadhi had always been a frequent visitor at the Residence, but for some time after the marriage of the Commissioner’s daughter he was not quite so often to be found in the drawing-room of an evening. Gradually, however, he increased the number of his weekly visits. He was the only person in the neighbourhood who could (occasionally) beat Major Minton at billiards, and this fact helped, in a large measure, to overcome the prejudice which Major Minton frankly admitted (to his wife) he entertained against the native races of West Africa. Major Minton was becoming a first-class billiard-player, as any active person who understands the game is likely to become after a few months’ residence at a West Coast settlement.

“Dr Koomadhi is a gentleman and a Christian,” Mrs Minton remarked one day when Mr Letts, the Secretary, had challenged discussion upon his favourite topic--namely, the thinness of the veneer of civilisation upon the most civilised savage.

“He’s a negro-gentleman, I admit,” said Letts.

“A man who plays so straight a game of billiards can’t be far wrong,” remarked Major Minton.

“I have reasons--the best of reasons--for knowing that Dr Koomadhi is a forgiving Christian gentleman,” said Gertrude. “Yes, he shall always be my friend.”

She had not forgiven herself for that terrible half-spoken sentence, “I would as soon marry----”

She had not forgiven herself for having glanced at the baboon as she checked the words that sprang from her almost involuntarily.

But Dr Koomadhi was showing day by day that he had forgiven them.

And thus it was she felt that he was worthy to be regarded by all men as a gentleman and a Christian.

VI.

A few days later Dr Koomadhi was visited by Major Minton. The Major was anxious to have some shooting at big game, and he was greatly disappointed at being unable to find in the neighbourhood of Picotee any one who could put him on the right track to gratify his longing for slaughter. The ivory-hunters did not find an outlet for their business at Picotee, and the majority of the inhabitants were as unenterprising, Major Minton said, as the chaw-bacons of an English village; nay, more so, for the chawbacons were beginning to know the joy of a metropolitan music hall, and that meant enterprise. He wondered if Koomadhi would allow him to accompany him on his next excursion inland.

Koomadhi said that no proposal could give him greater pleasure. He would be going up again in a week or two, and he could promise Major Minton some first-class sport. He could show him some queer things.

Talking of queer things, had Major Minton ever seen a piece of the famous African sound-stone?

It was supposed that the famous statue of Memnon had been carved out of that stone.

Major Minton had considered all that had been written on the subject of the talking statue utter rot, and he believed so still. Could any sane man credit a story like that, he was anxious to know?

“I suppose not,” said Koomadhi.

“But anyhow, I have now and again come upon pieces of the sound-stone. I’ll show you a couple of bits.”

He produced the roughly cut stone ear, and then an equally rough stone chipped into the form of a mouth--a negro’s mouth.

“They are rum things, to be sure,” said Minton. “I don’t think that I ever saw stones just the same. Is the material marble?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said Koomadhi. “But just put that stone to your ear for a few moments.”

Minton had the mouth-stone in his hand. Koomadhi retained the ear-stone and put it to his lips the moment that the Major raised his hand.

“No,” said the Major. “I hear nothing. That sound-stone myth isn’t good enough for me. I’m not exactly a lunatic yet, and that’s why I’m going to climb up to your roof to enjoy the sea-breeze. Take your marvellous sound-stone, and I’ll show you what it is to be a gymnast.”

He opened the shutters, got out upon the verandah, and began climbing one of the supports of the verandah roof. He was a pretty fair athlete, but when the thermometer registers 97° is not, perhaps, the most favourable time for violent exercise. Still, he reached the roof with his hands and threw one leg up; in another moment he was sitting on the highest part of the roof, and was inviting Koomadhi to join him, declaring that only a fool would remain indoors on such a day.

Koomadhi smiled and shook his head.

“You must have some refreshment after your exertions,” said he. “What would you like--a brandy-and-soda, with a lump of ice clinking the sides of the tumbler?”

“That sounds inviting,” said Major Minton, scratching his chest with a forefinger--it had apparently been chafed in his ascent of the roof. “Yes; but if you chance to have a banana and a few nuts--by Jingo I should like a nut or two. Has no dietist written a paper on the dietetic value of the common or garden nut, Koomadhi?”

“Come down and I’ll give you as many nuts as you can eat,” said Koomadhi.

“Yes, I’ll come down this way,” said the Major. He swung himself by one arm from the side of the roof to the bough of a tree. There he hung suspended by the other arm, and swinging slowly backward and forward. Even then he scraped the breast of his shirt, uttering a number of sounds that might have meant laughter. Then he caught a lower branch with his loose arm and dropped to the ground. Again he scraped at his chest and laughed.

“How about those nuts?” he said. “I think I’ve earned them. How the mischief is it that I neglected my gymnastics all these months? What a fool I was! Walking along in the open day by day, when I might have been enjoying the free life of the jungle!”

“Come inside and try a bit of cocoanut,” said Koomadhi.

“I’m your man,” said the Major.

“My man--man?” laughed the Doctor. “Oh yes, you’ve earned the cocoanut.”

The soft flesh of a green cocoanut lay on the table of the sitting-room, and Major Minton caught it up and swallowed it without ceremony. The Doctor watched him with a curious expression on his face.

“That’s the most refreshing tiffin I’ve had for a long time,” said the Major. “Now, I’ll have to get back to the Residency. Will you drop in for a game of billiards?”

“Perhaps I may,” said the Doctor. “Take that sound-stone again, and try if you really cannot hear anything when you put it to your ear.”

“My dear fellow, I’m not the sort of a chap to become the victim of a delusion,” said the Major, picking up the stone and holding it to his ear. “Not a sound do I hear. Hang it all, man, I’d get more sound out of a common shell. _Au revoir_.”

He had his eyes fixed upon the ink-bottle that stood on the desk beside a blotter and a sheet of writing-paper. Dr Koomadhi noticed the expression in his eyes, and turned to open the door. The very instant that his back was turned, Major Minton ran to the ink-bottle, upset it upon the blotter, and then rushed off by the open window, laughing heartily.

And yet there was no human being who so detested the playing of practical jokes as Major Minton.

Dr Koomadhi put away the stones, and called his servant to wipe up the ink, which was dripping down to the floor.

“Lorramussy!” cried the old woman. “How eber did yo’ make dat muss?”

“I didn’t know that it was on the blotter until too late,” said he. And yet Dr Koomadhi was a most truthful man--for a doctor.

VII.

Hullo!” said Letts, “what have you been doing to yourself?”

Major Minton had thrown himself into the Secretary’s cosiest chair on his return from visiting Dr Koomadhi, and was wiping his forehead.

“I’ve been doing more to myself than I should have done,” replied Minton. “For heaven’s sake, ring for a brandy-and-soda!”

“A brandy-and-soda? That’s an extreme measure,” said Letts. “But you look as if you needed one.” He went to his own cupboard and produced the brandy, and then rang the bell for the soda-water, which was of course kept in the refrigerator. Then he looked curiously at the man in the chair. “By the Lord Harry! you’ve been in a fight,” he cried, when his examination had concluded. “You’re an ass to come between any belligerents in this neighbourhood: you forget that Picotee Street is not Regent Street. You got your collar torn off your coat for your pains; and, O Lord, your trousers!”

“I did not notice how much out of line I had fallen until now,” said Minton, with a laugh. “By George, Letts, that tear in my knee does suggest a free-and-easy tussle.”

“But how on earth did it come about?” asked Letts. “Surely you should know better than to go for a nigger as you would for a Christian! Why the mischief didn’t you kick him on the shins, and then put your knee into his face?”

“Give me the tumbler.”

The Secretary handed him the tumbler, containing a stiff “peg,” and he drained it without giving any evidence of dissatisfaction.

“Now, how did it come about?” inquired Letts. “I hope you haven’t dragged us into the business. If you have, there’ll be a question asked about it in the House of Commons by one of those busybodies who have no other way of proving to their constituents that they’re in attendance. ‘Mr Jones asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he had any information to give to the House regarding an alleged outrage by a white man, closely associated with the family of her Majesty’s Commissioner at Picotee, upon a native or natives of that colony.’ That’s how it will read. Then there’ll be puppy leaders in those papers that deal with ‘justices’ justice’: the boy who gets a month’s imprisonment for stealing a turnip--you know that sort of thing.”

“Keep your hair on,” said Minton; “there’ll be no show in the House about this. There has been no row. I went round to Koomadhi’s, and when we were talking together I suddenly fancied that the day was just one for a gymnastic display. I don’t know whether it was that polite manner of Koomadhi’s or something else set me off, but I felt an irresistible impulse to bounce. Without waiting to take off my coat I went out on the verandah and hauled myself up to the roof: I don’t know how I did it. I might have managed it ten years ago, when I was in condition; but, considering how far off colour I am just now, by George! I don’t know how I managed it. Anyhow, I did manage it.”

“At some trifling cost,” said Letts. “And what did you do on the roof when you got there?”

“Well, I swung myself down again. But I seemed to have a notion in the meantime that that nice, well-groomed nigger would try to climb up beside me, and I know that I had an impulse to catch him by the tail--the tail of his coat, of course--and swing him through the shutters.”

“But he didn’t make such an ass of himself as to go through some gymnastics, and the thermometer standing a degree or two under a hundred. Well, you’ve got off well this time, Minton; but don’t do it again, that’s all.”

“I tell you it was an impulse--a curious----”

“Oh, impulses like that don’t come to chaps who have their wits about them.”

“I suppose it was a bit of bounding, after all. But, somehow--well, you wouldn’t just call me a bounder, would you, Letts?”

“Why shouldn’t I call you a bounder, I’d like to know? A bounder is one who bounds, isn’t he?”

“Well, I suppose--but I give you my word, I felt at that moment that it was the most natural thing I could have done--climbing up to the roof of the verandah, and then----”

“And then?”

“Swinging down again, I suppose.”

He was afraid to tell Letts of that practical joke which he had played off on Koomadhi, when he found that the Doctor did not lend himself to that subtle piece of jocularity which Minton said he had conceived when sitting on the roof of the verandah. Letts had been pretty hard on him for having gone so far as to climb up to the roof; but what would he have said if he had been told about that ink-bottle incident?

Minton thought it would, on the whole, be doing himself more ample justice if he were to withhold from Letts all information regarding that ink-bottle business. He said nothing about it, and when Letts mumbled something when in the act of lighting a cigar--something about fellows, who behave like idiots, going home and giving the whole West Coast a bad name, whereas, properly treated, the climate was one of the most salubrious, he remarked confidentially--

“I say, old chap, you needn’t mind jawing to the missus or the Governor about this business; it’s not worth talking about, you know; but they’re both given to exaggerate the importance of such things--Gertrude especially. I’m a bit afraid of her still, I admit: we’ve only been married about three months, you’ll remember.”

“Great Duke! here’s a chap who fancies that as time goes on he’ll get less afraid of his wife,” cried Letts. “Well, well, some chaps do get hallucinations early in life.”

“Don’t say a word about it, Letts. Where’s the good of making a poor girl uneasy?”

“Where, indeed? But why ‘poor girl’?”

“Because she’s liable to be made uneasy at trifles. You’re not--only riled. But I don’t blame you: you’ve been on this infernal coast for three years.”

“There’s nothing the matter with the coast: it’s only the idiots----”

“Quite so: I seem somehow to feel that I’ve heard all that sort of thing before. I’m one of the idiots.”

“Far be it from me to contradict so able a diagnosis of----”

He caught the cushion which Minton hurled at him, and laughed. Then he became curiously thoughtful.

“By the way,” he said, “wasn’t it a bit rum that Koomadhi didn’t try to prevent your swinging out to that roof? He’s a medico, and so should know how such unnatural exertion is apt to play the mischief with a chap in such a temperature as this. Didn’t he abuse you in his polite way?”

“Not he,” said Minton; “on the contrary, I believe I had an idea that I heard him suggest... no, no; that’s a mistake, of course.”

“What’s a mistake?”

“That idea of mine--I don’t know how I came to have it.”

“You were under the impression, somehow, that he suggested your climbing to the roof? That was a rummy notion, wasn’t it?”

“A bit too rummy for general use. Oh no: he only said--now, what the mischief did he say? Oh, no matter.”

“If he said ‘no matter’ when he saw that you were bent on gymnastics in the middle of a day with the temperature hovering about a hundred, he should be ashamed of himself.”

“He didn’t say ‘no matter.’ I’ve just said it. Let me say it again. You should be a cross-examiner at the Bailey and Middlesex Session, Letts. Now, mind, not a word to the missus. Don’t let her cross-examine you: evade her as I’m evading you. I’ll see you after dinner: maybe we’ll have a billiard together--I’m too tired now.”

He went off, leaving Letts trying to find out the place where he had left off in a novel of George Eliot’s. George Eliot is still read on the West Coast of Africa.

But when Minton had left the room Letts did not trouble himself further with the novel. He tossed it away and lay back in his Madeira chair with a frown, suggesting perplexity, on his face.

Some five minutes had passed, and yet the frown, so far from departing, had but increased in intensity.

“I should like very much to know what his game is,” he muttered. “It wouldn’t at all be a bad idea to induce sunstroke by over-exertion on a day like this. But why can’t he remember if the nigger tried on that game with him? P’chut! what’s the good of bothering about it when the game didn’t come off, whatever it was?”

But in spite of his attempted dismissal of the whole matter from his mind, he utterly failed to give to the confession of the youth in ‘Middlemarch’ (it was to the effect that his father had been a pawnbroker, and it was very properly made to the young woman to the accompaniment of the peals of a terrific thunderstorm) the attention which so striking an incident demanded.

VIII.

If it’s a command, sir, I’ll obey; if not, well----”

“Oh, nonsense, Letts!” said the Commissioner. “There’s no command to a dinner with my daughter, her husband, and another man.”

“Ah, that other man,” said Letts.

“Now, I hope I’ll hear nothing more about your absurd objection to that other man,” said the Commissioner. “I tell you that it’s not only ridiculous, that old-fashioned prejudice of yours, it’s prejudicial to the Service--it is, upon my soul, Letts. You know as well as I do that the great thing is to get in touch with the natives, to show them that, as common subjects of the Sovereign, enjoying equal rights wherever that flag waves, we are, we are--well, we must show them that we’ve no prejudices. You’ll admit that we must do that, Letts.”

(As Letts had not written out this particular speech for him, the Commissioner was a trifle shaky, and found it to his advantage to abandon the oratorical in favour of the colloquial style.)

“I don’t feel called on to show that I’m not prejudiced against the whole race, sir--the whole race as a race, and Dr Koomadhi as an individual,” said Letts. “Therefore I hope that you and Mrs Minton will excuse me from your dinner.”

“Upon my soul, I’m surprised at you, Letts,” said Commander Hope. “I didn’t expect to find in these days of enlightenment such old-fashioned prejudices as regards race. Great heavens! sir, is the accident of a man’s being a negro to be looked on as debarring him from--from--well, from all that you would make out--the friendship of the superior race, the----”

“Ah, there you are, sir; the superior race. In matters of equality there’s no superior.”

“Oh, of course I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t some difference between the two races. Don’t they say it was the effects of the curse, Letts--the curse of Ham? If a race was subject to the disabilities of an early curse duly recorded, you can’t quite expect them to recover themselves all in a moment: it wouldn’t be reasonable--it wouldn’t be Scriptural either. But I think that common charity should make us--well, should make us do our best to mitigate their unfortunate position. That appeal of yours to Scripture, Letts, was used as an argument in favour of slavery. It’s unworthy of you.”