Out Of The Darkness

by Crawford, Dianna; Druten, Rachel;

  Mrs. Bryant must have caught Mary’s grimace. “You’ve met her?”

  Mary nodded, not trusting herself to reply.

  Her hostess chuckled. “I guess the Lord’s work is never done. What happened?”

  In the most delicate way she could manage, Mary explained.

  Mrs. Bryant nodded sympathetically. “What a reception. You poor dear. The natives are covetous of their positions, and I can hardly blame them. There is so little decent-paying employment. That’s why Daniel has given orders to provide food for anyone who shows up at our door. Nothing is wasted from our table.” She frowned. “My dear, what’s troubling you?”

  “It’s just. . .it’s just. . .well, if Kweela cleans and serves and Nandi cooks, what is there left for me to do to earn my keep?”

  “Why, my dear, didn’t Colin explain? You’re to be my companion.”

  Mary’s brow wrinkled. “He said that, but. . .what exactly does a companion do?”

  Mrs. Bryant put her elbows on the arms of the chair. “Before I was with child, when Daniel would be gone—weeks, sometimes months—I had my work to keep me occupied, even though I missed him dreadfully. But now, with my confinement, he has been pressing me to hire someone to help with my personal chores. More a friend than a servant. And to be honest, Mary, I really have not felt all that well during this time. When Constable Peterson brought Colin’s note, we knew God was answering our prayers. And when he said you were a seamstress, with a new baby coming, well, that was an added blessing.”

  Mary’s smile started small and broadened as Mrs. Bryant spoke.

  “So you see, my dear, we need you as much as you need us.”

  Mary laughed lightly. “A bump and a bounce, that seems to be the way things have gone since I got to South Africa.”

  “With God’s hands to catch you, you need not worry,” Mrs. Bryant assured her.

  Mary’s smile warmed as she began to relax, really relax, for the first time.

  “I especially need help catching up with my correspondence.”

  “Correspondence?” Mary’s grip on her fork tightened.

  Mrs. Bryant nodded. “So many letters come from America that need to be answered, and then there is the mission work, and some social correspondence. Speaking of that—” She clasped her hands and smiled. “Your first task will be a note to Colin to postpone our dinner until Daniel returns from Chief Mlawu’s village.” She folded her napkin and placed it beside her empty plate. “But we’ll get to that later. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to lie down. For some reason, I’m feeling a little weary.”

  Mary tried to speak, but no words came.

  As she pushed herself to her feet, Mrs. Bryant glanced over at her. “What’s worrying you now, my dear?”

  She had to confess it. She had no choice. “I can’t send your note to Magistrate Reed.”

  “Of course you can.”

  Mary slowly shook her head. “I can’t write. . .or read,” She added in an even smaller voice.

  “What?” The woman looked aghast. “Why, that will never do.”

  As Mary rose, her shoulders slumped with the weight of the world. “I’ll pack my things.”

  “And I lose my seamstress? Of course you won’t! I am more convinced now than ever that God sent you.” Mrs. Bryant looked almost gleeful. “I am an English teacher. I also tutor elocution and the art of public speaking—as well as the Bible, but we’ll get to that later. Why, I’ll have you reading, writing, and speaking perfectly modulated sentences in no time.” She rubbed her hands together. “Daniel is in for a big surprise,” she chortled. She took Mary’s arm as they left the dining room. “And just for good measure, we might spruce up your ward-robe a bit. If you’re going to be a proper companion, you should dress like one.”

  Mary’s heart thumped, then soared as she envisioned herself in an elegant summer gown, serving tea on the Bryants’ verandah.

  Maybe Magistrate Reed would be there. Would he think her comely? As comely as the women in his world?

  ❧

  Colin gazed down at the street where he’d first seen his “little wren.” He smiled. She was little enough, but hardly a wren, the way she’d so valiantly dealt with her attacker. She had more spirit and spunk in that petite body than all the supercilious society ladies put together. At least the ones he knew. He couldn’t even imagine how Sylvia or the elegant Grace Ellen would have handled what that sweet soul had been put through. Was it just yesterday?

  His musings were interrupted by a knock on his office door.

  Deputy Magistrate Scott stuck in his head. “Mr. Higgins-Smythe is here to see you, sir.”

  “What now?” Colin groaned. The manager of the Johannes-burg office of the Granger Mine was a constant irritant, making demands it would take a full-time army to handle.

  The tall, bearded deputy rolled his eyes. “Problems at the mine.”

  “As usual. You’d think we were their own personal police force. That man expects us to send a full contingent every time a native blinks.”

  “I heard that, Reed.” Bowler in hand, the rotund little man in a casual three-piece suit pushed past the departing deputy. “And this time it’s not the natives blinking, it’s the foreigners.” He sat stiffly in the leather chair in front of Colin’s desk and balanced his bowler on his knee. “The outsiders are threatening to riot if the owners replace any of them with Kaffirs. If the company chooses to hire native workers, that’s our affair. Foreigners have no right to tell us how to run our business—any more than the Boers did. That’s why we fought the war.”

  “Not exactly.” But Colin wasn’t about to get into a discussion on the complexities of the bitter dispute between the Dutch and British settlers. This small-minded man wouldn’t grasp it anyway. “So what do you want me to do from a hundred miles away?”

  “Well,” the man sneered, “you might send a contingent.”

  Colin sat down behind his desk. “Has the company tried arbitration?”

  “The owners feel it’s gone beyond that.” The man rose abruptly. “They have authorized me to demand your immediate response. As taxpayers—generous taxpayers—they expect order to be restored.”

  Colin stood up. He hated to give in to the offensive little man, but the Granger operation was a major voice in the mining consortium, giving them considerable political clout. As a public servant, he was forced to pay attention. “Very well, I’ll get on it.”

  “At once!” the man commanded. He turned at the door. “This morning!”

  Colin sighed. He’d have to cancel dinner at the Bryants’. That was a disappointment. He looked forward to Nandi’s cooking, to say nothing of his conversations with Daniel, who he considered to be one of the most stimulating, erudite men he’d ever met. And Emma was just as challenging. They were a rare couple.

  And, of course, there was Mary. He wondered how the brave little soul was faring.

  He called in his second-in-command and grudgingly issued his orders for departure, then lifted his military cap from the hat tree. “I’ll stop by the Bryants’ on my way out of town.”

  ❧

  Dust rose from the horses’ stamping hooves as Colin and his company of men detoured down the road to the Bryants’ house later that afternoon. He had twenty—a third of them black—all good men and true.

  As he rode along, Colin wondered what encouragement he could give Mary when he saw her. The interview he’d had that morning with Ryzzi Kryzika in the man’s cesspool of a brothel had confirmed that she’d traveled on the Southern Star with an Ed McKenzie. Kryzika’s description of the man fitted that of Mary’s. Anger boiled in Colin even now, thinking of the shifty-eyed procurer, surrounded by the blowzy, coarse women he employed, referring to sweet, clear-eyed Mary as “uppity tenement trash.” It had been all Colin could do to keep from grinding his fist into the fellow’s pugnacious face.

  Colin rode ahead, dismounting at the gate, his men coming to a halt behind him. As he walked up the front path, Emm
a opened the door.

  “Colin, I was just about to send you a note.”

  Nandi’s husband, Jalamba, came hustling around the side of the house, and Colin noticed that two other dark faces looked past the parted curtains of the parlor window. Nandi and Kweela giggled at his smart salute. It wasn’t every day twenty men, uniformed and armed, appeared at the missionaries’ door.

  “Good heavens, what’s all this about?” Emma clasped her hands, looking at the company in bewilderment.

  Colin grinned, searching for Mary and finding her in the shadows of the entry. “Just thought I’d bring the regiment along for dinner. Daniel being famous for his miracles, I reckoned he could provide—rather like the loaves and the fishes. Don’t you think?” Over Emma’s shoulder he smiled at Mary.

  “Why, Colin,” Emma bantered, “I didn’t realize you’d become a biblical scholar. Daniel is gone.”

  “Oh?” With some effort, Colin pulled his gaze from the young woman.

  “Last evening, just after you left, one of the natives from the Lobedu Kraal appeared at our front door.”

  “Chief Mlawu?”

  “He’s worse.”

  “I’m sorry.” Colin lowered his eyes to the cap he was rotating in his hands. “I’m on my way to the Granger Mine.” He looked up. “I’ll stop by and pay my respects. Do you have a message for Daniel?”

  “Only, Godspeed.”

  Mary cleared her throat, and Colin’s gaze darted again to her sweet face.

  She stepped forward. “I don’t suppose there’s been any word from Ed?”

  Oh, those soulful, searching brown eyes, so hopeful. Married or not, how could the cad have given her such shabby treatment? Colin shook his head. “I’m sorry. . .perhaps, on this journey to the mines, I’ll run across him.”

  Her pained, brave expression wrenched his heart.

  Colin grabbed her hand. “I’ll find him for you, Mary. I promise.” But wrapped in the warmth and trust of her gaze, he suddenly realized it was a promise he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to keep.

  Emma put her hand on Colin’s arm. Reluctantly, he turned and saw in the woman’s eyes recognition, and a gentle warning.

  “We’ll have a feast when you and Daniel return. And, God willing,” she added, “you’ll bring good news from Mary’s Ed.”

  “God willing,” Colin murmured. And under Emma’s discerning watch, he put on his billed cap and strode back down the path.

  He motioned his column to move forward, and although he vowed not to, he looked back.

  Mary raised her hand in a gesture of farewell, and he imagined that her eyes reflected the same longing he’d tried not to show in his own.

  six

  Shortly before noon the next day, Colin pulled up at the rise of a small hill and looked down over the conical-roofed reed huts surrounding the central corral of one of the few remaining kraals in South Africa. The fence circling the native village was in disrepair, and he sensed, even from where he sat, the despair and discouragement of a people and their country exploited by the likes of himself. He felt a moment’s shame.

  Motioning his men to remain behind, he pressed his heels against the stallion’s flanks, and the horse broke into a slow trot down the slope toward the tall, yawning entry.

  To his surprise, he saw Daniel, leading his sorrel geld-ing toward the gate. Beside him strode Chief Mlawu’s son, Ntsikana.

  Lean and tall as an ebony tree, Ntsikana was wrapped in a leopard-skin cloak. A pelt banded his broad brow, from which waived a long, thin feather. He was wearing the trappings of chief.

  Chief Mlawu was dead.

  Colin’s heart sank. He reined his horse to a walk.

  Daniel raised a hand in greeting, but his face was drawn, and now a deeper concern etched his features. “Colin. What brings you here? Is there a problem at home?”

  “No, not at all. Emma is fine. They’re threatening an uprising at the Granger Mine. I’m on my way there. But when Emma told me the chief had taken a turn for the worse, I hoped—” He avoided Ntsikana’s eyes. “I thought maybe there was something I could do to help.”

  “You help?” Ntsikana, standing just behind Daniel, spat into the dirt. “You are a chief with no teeth, except when you turn your guns on my people.” His voice was resonant, and he spoke with an Oxford accent.

  The animosity between him and Colin ran as deep as their college ties, for they had once been friends. But no longer. Colin’s heritage was British, and Ntsikana had come to hate all that was British, including his old friend. Now, in his piercing black eyes, all his anger, hate, and frustration over the years of his people’s subservience to the white intruders simmered in a brew that threatened to boil over.

  Colin suspected that only Daniel’s calming presence managed to keep a lid on the pot.

  But, although the grieving man did not lift his spear, his fury could not be silenced.

  “What lies will they promise now at the Granger Mine? Will they force the Kaffirs to sign more contracts that they, themselves, do not keep, then, as always, forbid my people to quit and go home? Will they go on promising to send for the workers’ wives and children and pretend the words were never spoken? Will they continue to charge so much for lodging and food at the mine-owned stores that there will never be enough left over to send home to their starving families?”

  Ntsikana rose to his full, imposing height. “Now that I am chief, not one man from my village will go to work in the mines. I will thrust a spear into his heart first!”

  For a moment there was silence. Then Daniel put his hand on the man’s tightly muscled arm. Quietly he said, “My friend, your concerns are mine.” He glanced at Colin. “And Magistrate Reed’s. I know that for a fact. We have discussed it many times.”

  Ntsikana grunted, proud and disdainful, still disbelieving.

  Daniel continued. “We, he and I, unite with you in your mission for reform.” Again he glanced at Colin. “That is why I am joining the magistrate on his journey to the mine.”

  Oh, no. Colin loved Daniel—like a brother. But he certainly didn’t need a Bible-thumping missionary where he was heading, not that Daniel was the meddling kind. But there was nothing Daniel could do to help with the impending problem at the Granger Mine. Except get in the way.

  ❧

  Mary sat in the rocker hemming the baby dress she’d stitched while Emma played the piano.

  In all of her nineteen years, Mary had never been so happy, nor at peace. . .to say nothing of feeling so suitably stylish. Mrs. Emma had taught her how to do her hair just so, parted in the middle with soft waves, and her curls pulled into a cluster at her crown. And Mrs. Emma had given Mary several lovely dresses from her own wardrobe that the two of them had refitted for Mary.

  Mary sighed, smoothing the skirt of the lavender piqué shirtwaist she was wearing. Mrs. Emma had such impeccable taste. She was always dressed just right for the occasion. And she had such elegant manners. Mrs. Emma never hesitated about which fork to use. . .and now, neither did Mary.

  Mary bit off the end of the thread and smoothed the tiny garment on her lap.

  She loved listening to Mrs. Emma read the Bible each night and to her direct and simple prayers at mealtime. She even enjoyed going to church with her—the bonnets that Mrs. Emma let her borrow made her feel quite fashionable, although sometimes the deacon’s sermon got a little long. And she wasn’t the only one who thought so. Last Sunday she’d overheard a couple of the ladies whispering that they could hardly wait until Pastor Bryant returned to the pulpit.

  Sometimes, after the service, she’d go with Mrs. Emma to visit folks who were sick or in trouble, and Mrs. Emma told her how she, Mary, had a natural gift for lifting people’s spirits.

  And twice Mrs. Emma had taken her to the dry goods store to purchase lovely pastel fabrics and laces to make dresses for Mary. And the baby, of course.

  As Emma played “Rock of Ages,” Mary glanced warmly at the woman who, in the last four weeks, had become more
than a mentor. She’d become a dear and cherished friend. She’d been so encouraging and patient, and as a result, Mary’s progress had been phenomenal—or so Mrs. Emma said. It was amazing how quickly a string of letters had turned into words she could read, and if she didn’t know the word, Mrs. Emma had taught her how to sound it out. She’d banished “ain’t” from her vocabulary. . .except when she forgot, and she didn’t end sentences with a preposition. . .most of the time.

  When the anthem came to an end, Emma thumbed through the hymnal again. Then, lowering her hands to the keyboard, she began to sing in a spirited voice, “Come to the church in the wild wood—” She nodded at Mary to join in. “—Come to the church in the vale. No place is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the dale.”

  Mary rocked back in her chair, laughing with happiness. Mrs. Emma had taught her many of the beautiful old hymns, but she knew this was Mary’s favorite.

  Emma began again, this time singing a descant, “Come, come, come, come—” while Mary repeated the melody.

  When they had finished, Emma rested her hands in her lap. “Mary, you have an absolutely beautiful singing voice. Matched by an almost perfect natural sense of phrasing.”

  Mary couldn’t hide the pleasure she felt at the compliment. Mrs. Emma never hesitated to praise Mary’s accomplishments, to the point that Mary was afraid she might get overly used to such lovely treatment and expect it always. She knew very well, when Ed came back, she wouldn’t get such appreciative responses from him. Even though he expected them from her.

  Ed. Now why did she have to think about him right now?

  She was making such progress, learning so much every day. But the more she learned, the more she realized how much more there was to know. When Ed came back, it would all be over. And that made her sad.

  “It’s just not fair to hide your talent under a bushel,” Emma said. “I’ve decided! You, my dear, will join our musicales.”