A Yellow God: An Idol of Africa. Генри Райдер Хаггард
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Alan,” it ran: “Don’t be late for dinner, or I may not be able to keep a place next to me. Of course Sir Robert takes me in. They are a worse lot than usual this time, odious—odious!—and I can’t stand one on the left hand as well as on the right. Yours,
“B.
“P.S. What have you been doing? Our distinguished guests, to say nothing of my uncle, seem to be in a great fuss about you. I overheard them talking when I was pretending to arrange some flowers. One of them called you a sanctimonious prig and an obstinate donkey, and another answered—I think it was Sir Robert—‘No doubt, but obstinate donkeys can kick and have been known to upset other people’s applecarts ere now.’ Is the Sahara Syndicate the applecart? If so, I’ll forgive you.
“P.P.S. Remember that we will walk to church together to-morrow, but come down to breakfast in knickerbockers or something to put them off, and I’ll do the same—I mean I’ll dress as if I were going to golf. We can turn into Christians later. If we don’t—dress like that, I mean—they’ll guess and all want to come to church, except the Jews, which would bring the judgment of Heaven on us.
“P.P.P.S. Don’t be careless and leave this note lying about, for the under-footman who waits upon you reads all the letters. He steams them over a kettle. Smith the butler is the only respectable man in this house.”
Alan laughed outright as he finished this peculiar and outspoken epistle, which somehow revived his spirits, that since the previous day had been low enough. It refreshed him. It was like a breath of frosty air from an open window blowing clean and cold into a scented, overheated room. He would have liked to keep it, but remembering Barbara’s injunctions and the under-footman, threw it onto the fire and watched it burn. Jeekie coughed to intimate that it was time for his master to dress, and Alan turned and looked at him in an absent-minded fashion.
He was worth looking at, was Jeekie. Let the reader imagine a very tall and powerfully-built negro with a skin as black as a well-polished boot, woolly hair as white as snow, a little tufted beard also white, a hand like a leg of mutton, but with long delicate fingers and pink, filbert-shaped nails, an immovable countenance, but set in it beneath a massive brow, two extraordinary humorous and eloquent black eyes which expressed every emotion passing through the brain behind them, that is when their owner chose to allow them to do so. Such was Jeekie.
“Shall I unlace your boots, Major?” he said in his full, melodious voice and speaking the most perfect English. “I expect that the gong will sound in nine and a half minutes.”
“Then let it sound and be hanged to it,” answered Alan; “no, I forgot—I must hurry. Jeekie, put that fire out and open all the windows as soon as I go down. This room is like a hot-house.”
“Yes, Major, the fire shall be extinguished and the sleeping-chamber ventilated. The other boot, if you please, Major.”
“Jeekie,” said Alan, “who is stopping in this place? Have you heard?”
“I collected some names on my way upstairs, Major. Three of the gentlemen you have never met before, but,” he added suddenly breaking away from his high-flown book-learned English, as was his custom when in earnest, “Jeekie think they just black niggers like the rest, thief people. There ain’t a white man in this house, except you and Miss Barbara and me, Major. Jeekie learnt all that in servant’s hall palaver. No, not now, other time. Everyone tell everything to Jeekie, poor old African fool, and he look up an answer, ‘O law! you don’t say so?’ but keep his eyes and ears open all the same.”
“I’ll be bound you do, Jeekie,” replied Alan, laughing again. “Well, go on keeping them open, and give me those trousers.”
“Yes, Major,” answered Jeekie, reassuming his grand manner, “I shall continue to collect information which may prove to your advantage, but personally I wish that you were clear of the whole caboodle, except Miss Barbara.”
“Hear, hear,” ejaculated Alan, “there goes the gong. Mind you come in and help to wait,” and hurrying into his coat he departed downstairs.
The guests were gathered in the hall drinking sherry and bitters, a proceeding that to Alan’s mind set a stamp upon the house. His host, Mr. Champers-Haswell, came forward and greeted him with much affectionate enthusiasm, and Alan noticed that he looked very pale, also that his thoughts seemed to be wandering, for he introduced a French banker to him as a noted Jew, and the noted Jew as the French banker, although the distinction between them was obvious and the gentlemen concerned evidently resented the mistake. Sir Robert Aylward, catching sight of him, came across the hall in his usual, direct fashion, and shook him by the hand.
“Glad to see you, Vernon,” he said, fixing his piercing eyes upon Alan as though he were trying to read his thoughts. “Pleasant change this from the City and all that eternal business, isn’t it? Ah! you are thinking that one is not quite clear of business after all,” and he glanced round at the company. “That’s one of your cousin Haswell’s faults; he can never shake himself free of the thing, never get any real recreation. I’d bet you a sovereign that he has a stenographer waiting by a telephone in the next room, just in case any opportunity should arise in the course of conversation. That is magnificent, but it is not wise. His heart can’t stand it; it will wear him out before his time. Listen, they are all talking about the Sahara. I wish I were there; it must be quiet at any rate. The sands beneath, the eternal stars above. Yes, I wish I were there,” he repeated with a sigh, and Alan noted that although his face could not be more pallid than its natural colour, it looked quite worn and old.
“So do I,” he answered with enthusiasm.
Then a French gentleman on his left, having discovered that he was the engineer who had formulated the great flooding scheme, began to address him as “Cher maitre,” speaking so rapidly his own language that Alan, whose French was none of the best, struggled after him in vain. Whilst he was trying to answer a question which he did not understand, the door at the end of the hall opened, and through it appeared Barbara Champers.
It was a large hall and she was a long way off, which caused her to look small, who indeed was only of middle height. Yet even at that distance it was impossible to mistake the dignity of her appearance. A slim woman with brown hair, cheerful brown eyes, a well-modelled face, a rounded figure and an excellent complexion, such was Barbara. Ten thousand young ladies could be found as good, or even better looking, yet something about her differentiated her from the majority of her sex. There was determination in her step, and overflowing health and vigour in her every movement. Her eyes had a trick of looking straight into any other eyes they met, not boldly, but with a kind of virginal fearlessness and enterprise that people often found embarrassing. Indeed she was extremely virginal and devoid of the usual fringe of feminine airs and graces, a nymph of the woods and waters, who although she was three and twenty, as yet recked little of men save as companions whom she liked or disliked according to her instincts. For the rest she was sweetly dressed in a white robe with silver on it, and wore no ornaments save a row of small pearls about her throat and some lilies of the valley at her breast.
Barbara came straight onwards, looking neither to the right or to the left, till she reached her uncle, to whom she nodded. Then she walked to Alan and, offering him her hand, said:
“How do you do! Why did you not come over at lunch time? I wanted to play a round of golf with you this afternoon.”
Alan answered something about being busy at Yarleys.
“Yarleys!” she replied. “I thought that you lived in the City now, making money out of speculations, like everyone else that I know.”
“Why, Miss Champers,” broke in Sir Robert reproachfully, “I asked you to play a round of golf before tea and you would not.”
“No,” she answered, “because I was waiting for my cousin. We are better matched, Sir Robert.”
There was something in her voice, usually so soft and pleasant, as she spoke these words, something of steeliness and defiance that caused Alan to feel at once happy and uncomfortable. Apparently also