by Talbot Mundy
At first we passed occasional baobabs, with trunks fifteen or twenty feet thick and offshoots covering a quarter of an acre. Then the trees thinned out to the sparse and shriveled all-but-dead things that struggle for existence on the border-lines between man’s land and desolation. At last we drew down the smoked panes over the window to escape the glare and sight of the depressing desolation.
The sun beat down on the iron roof. The heat beat up from the tracks. Red dust polluted the drinking water in the little upright tank. Dust filled eyes, nostrils, hair. Dust caked and grew stiff in the sweat that streamed down us. Yet we stopped once at a station, and humans lived there and a man got off the train. A lone lean babu and his leaner, more miserable native crew came out and eyed the train like vultures waiting for a beast to die. But we did not die, and the train passed on into illimitable dusty redness, leaving them to watch the hot rails ribbon out behind our grumbling caboose.
There began to be carousing in the second-class compartment next ahead of us. Our own Brown of Lumbwa produced a stone crock of Irish whisky from a basket, imbibed copiously, offered us in turn the glistening neck, looked relieved at our refusal, and grew voluble.
“Hear them Greeks an’ that Goa. You’d think they were gentlemen o’ breeding to hear ’em carryin’ on! Truth is we’ve no government worth a moment’s consid’ration, an’ everybody knows it, Greeks included! You men lookin’ for farms? Take your time! Once you get a farm, an’ get your house built, an’ stock bought, an’ stuff planted — once you’ve got your capital invested so to speak, they’ve got you! Till then you’re free! Till then they’ll maybe treat you with consideration! Till then you leave the country when you like an’ kiss yourselves good-by to them an’ Africa. Till then they’ve got no hold! The courts can fine you, maybe, but can they make you pay? It’s none so easy if you’re half awake! But take me: Suppose I break a reggylation. What happens? They know where to find me — how much I’ve got — where it is — an’ if I don’t pay the fine, they come an’ collar my cattle an’ sticks! D’you notice any Greeks applyin’ for farms? Not no crowds of ’em you don’t! I don’t know one single Greek who has a farm in all East Africa! Any Goas? Not a bit of it! Any Indians? Not one! So when a few extry elephants get shot, I get the blame — down at Lumbwa, where there ain’t no elephants; an’ the Greeks, Goas, Arabs an’ Indians get fat on the swag! It’s easy to keep track of a white man; the natives all know him, an’ his name, an’ where he lives, an’ report everything he does to the nearest gov’ment officer. But Greeks an’ Goas an’ Indians an’ Arabs ain’t white, so the natives make no mention of ’em. They do the lootin’; we settlers get the blame; an’ the whole perishing country’s going to blazes as fast as a lump of ice melting in hell — but not so fast as I’d like to see it go. Have some o’ this whisky, won’t you?”
I was scarcely listening to him, but he seemed to get drunk just “so far and no further,” and Fred found him worth attention. It happened that Fred, Will and I were all thinking of the same thing. Will put a hand to his neck and stroked the little scar the Arab knife had made in Zanzibar.
“What sort of a country’s this for women?” Fred demanded.
“Which women?” Brown asked in sort of mild amazement.
“White women?”
“Rotten! Leastwise, there aren’t any. Yes, there’s three. Two officials’ wives, an’ Pioneer Jane French. Heard o’ her? Walked from South Africa, Jane did — hoofed it along o’ French, bossed his boys, drove the cattle, shot the meat, ran the whole shootin’ match, an’ runs him, too, when he’s sober an’ she’s drunk. When they’re both drunk everybody ducks. She’s scarcely a woman, she’s sort of three-men-rolled-into-one. Give her a horsewhip ae she’ll manage the unruliest crowd o’ savages ever you or she set eyes on! Countin’ her as one, an’ the two officials wives, an’ her on this train, there’s four!”
Our eyes met. I awoke to sudden interest that startled our informant and made him curious in turn.
“On this train?”
“On this train. Didn’t you see her? She was watching you chaps through the window slits like the Queen o’ Sheba keepin’ tabs on Solomon. Say, what’s she doing in this country anyhow? I made a try to get a seat in her carriage, but she ordered me out like Aunt Jemima puttin’ out the cat the last thing. She’s got a maid in with her, but the maid ain’t white — Jew — Syrian — Levantine — Dago — some such breed. She’s in this compartment next behind.”
Our eyes met again. Fred laughed, and Will leaned forward to whisper to me: “She heard what Courtney said to us about the way to Mount Elgon!”
“D’you know her name?” asked Brown.
“No!” we all three lied together with one voice.
“I do! I seen it on the reservation card. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon!
Pretty high-soundin’ patronymic, what? Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon!”
He repeated the name over and over, crescendo, with growing fervor.
“What’s a woman with a title doin’ d’you suppose? The title’s no fake.
She’s got the blood all right, all right! You ought to ha’ heard her
shoo me out! Lummy! A nestin’ hen giving the office to a snake
weren’t in it to her an’ me! Good looker, too! What’s she doin’ in
East Africa?”
We made no shift to answer.
“The officials’ wives,” he went on, “are keen after Tippoo’s ivory, but, bein’ obliged to stay in the station except when their husbands go on safari, an’ then only go where their husbands go, they’ve no show to speak of. Pioneer Jane’s nuts on it, an’ she’s dangerous. Jane’s as likely to find the stuff as any one. She’s independent — go where she blooming well pleases — game as a lioness — looks like one, too, only a lioness is kind o’ softer an’ not so quick in the uptake. My money’s on Jane for a place. But d’you suppose this Lady Saffren Whatshername’s another one? Them Greeks ahead of us I’m sure of; all the Greeks in Africa are huntin’ for nothin’ else. But what about the dame?”
“Going to join her husband, perhaps,” suggested Fred to put him off.
“There’s no man o’ that name in British East or Uganda. I know ’em all — every one.”
“Father — brother — uncle — nephew — oh, perhaps she’s just traveling,” said Fred.
“Just traveling my eye! Titled ladies don’t come ‘just traveling’ in these parts — not by a sight, they don’t — not alone!”
He helped himself to more whisky, but had reached the stage where it had no further visible effect on him.
“Anyhow,” he said, wiping the neck of the jar with his hand, “if she kids herself she’ll be let go where she pleases — why, she kids herself! It takes Pioneer Jane to trespass where writs don’t run! Jane goes where her husband don’t dare follow. The officials don’t say a word. Y’see there’s no jail where they could stow a white woman and observe the decencies. So she goes over the borderline whenever she sees fit. The king’s writ runs maybe for thirty miles north o’ this railway. Once over that they can’t catch you. But unless you’re a black man, or Pioneer Jane, the natives tip the gov’ment off an’ gov’ment rounds you up afore you get two-thirds the way. They’ll take less than half a chance with her ladyship or I’m a Dutchman. Why! How would it look to have to bring her back between two native policemen? She’ll not be allowed five miles outside Nairobi township!”
He up-ended his whisky again, consumed about a pint of it, and settled down to sleep. We took him by the legs and arms and threw him on the upper berth to stew in the cabined heat under the roof.
“It’s good Monty’s not with us,” said Fred. He sat down and laughed at our surprise that he should state such heresy. “Monty mustn’t break laws, but who cares if we do?”
“Laws?” said Will disgustedly. “I don’t care who makes, or breaks the laws of this land! Let’s beat it! Let’s join Monty in London and make plans for some other trip. Everybody’s after this i
vory. We haven’t a look-in. Even if we knew where to look for it we’d be followed. Let’s take the next train back from Nairobi, and the next boat for Europe!”
Fred rubbed his hands delightedly, and stroked his beard into the neat point it refuses to keep for long at a time in very hot weather.
“Let’s stay in Nairobi” he said, “at least until Courtney sends that boy he promised us. We can put in the time asking questions, and then—”
“What then?” grumbled Will.
“There may be truth in what Brown of Lumbwa says about a dead-line.”
“Dead-line?”
“Beyond which the king’s writ doesn’t run.”
“Betcherlife there’s truth in it!” Brown mumbled from the upper berth.
Will exploded silently, going through the motions of reeling off all the bad language he knew — not an insignificant performance.
“He’s really asleep now,” I said, standing on the lower berth and lifting the man’s eyelid to make sure.
“Who cares?” said Will. “He’s heard. We’ve given the game away. The woman heard Courtney shout about how to reach Mount Elgon. So did this sharp. Now he hears Fred talk about dead-lines and the king’s writ and breaking laws! The game’s up! Me for the down-train and a steamer!”
We smoked in silence, rendered more depressing by the deepening gloom outside. With the evening it grew no cooler. What little wind there was followed the train, so that we traveled in stagnation. Utter darkness brought no respite, but the fascination of flitting shadows and the ever-new mystery of African night. The train drew up at last in a station in the shadow of great overleaning mountains, and the heat shut down on us like hairy coverings. We seemed to breathe through thicknesses of cloth, and the very trees that cast black shadow on the platform ends were stifling for lack of air.
“One hour for dinner!” called the guard, walking limply along the train.
“Just an hour for dinner! Dinner waiting!”
He was not at all a usual-looking guard. He was dressed in riding breeches and puttee leggings, and wore a worn-out horsey air as if in protest against the obligation to work in a black man’s land. In countries where the half-breed and the black man live for and almost monopolize government employment few white men take kindly to braid and brass buttons. That fellow’s contempt for his job was equaled only by the babu station master’s scorn of him and his own for the station master. Yet both men did their jobs efficiently.
“Only an hour for dinner, gents — train starts on time!”
“Guard!” called a female voice we all three recognized— “Guard! Come here at once, I want you!”
We left Brown of Lumbwa snoring a good imitation of the Battle of Waterloo on the upper berth, and filed out to the dimly-lighted platform. A space in the center was roofed with corrugated iron and under that the yellow lamplight cast a maze of moving shadows as the passengers swarmed toward the dining-room. The smell of greasy cooking blended with the reek of axle and lamp oil. At the platform’s forward end shadowy figures were throwing cord-wood into the tender, and the thump-thump-thump of that sounded like impatience; everything else suggested lethargy.
“Guard!” called the voice again. “Come here, guard!”
He stopped in passing to close our windows and lock our compartment door against railway thieves.
“There’s a man asleep in there,” I said.
“The ‘eat ‘ll sober ‘im!” he grinned, slamming the last window down. “What’ll you bet ‘er ‘ighness don’t want me to fetch dinner to ‘er? She was in the train in Mombasa two hours afore startin’ time, an’ the things she ordered me to do ‘ud have made a ‘alf-breed think ‘e was demeaning of ‘imself! I ‘aven’t seen the color of ‘er money yet. If she wants dinner she gets out and walks or ‘er maid fetches it — you watch!”
Coutlass, the other Greek and the Goanese staggered out beside us on to the platform, drunk enough not to know whether Hassan was with them or not. He came out and stood beside them in a sort of alert defensive attitude.
“Guard!” called the voice again. “Where is the man?”
We followed the last of the crowd through the screened doors, and took seats at a table marked “First Class Only!” There were four men there ahead of us, two government officials disinclined to talk; a missionary in a gray flannel shirt, suffering from fever and too suspicious to say good evening; and a man in charge of that section of the line, who checked the station master’s accounts and counted money in a tray between mouthfuls. Between us and the second-class tables was a wooden screen on short legs, and beyond that arose babel. Second-class is democratic always, and talks with its mouth full. In addition to our privilege of paying more for exactly the same food, we enjoyed exclusiveness, a dirty table-cloth, and the extra smell from the kitchen door. (The table-cloth was dirty because the barefoot Goanese waiters invariably stubbed their feet against a break in the floor and spilt soup exactly in the same place.)
We had scarcely taken our seats when Coutlass swaggered in, closely followed by his gang. Inside the door he turned on Hassan.
“Black men eat outside!” he snarled, and shoved him out again backward.
Then he came over to us and stood leering at the framed sign, “First
Class Only,” avoiding our eyes, but plainly at war with us.
“Gassharamminy!” he growled. “You think you’re popes or something! You three would want a special private piece of earth to spit on!” He raised his voice to a sort of scream. “I proclaim one class only!”
At that he lifted his foot about level with his chest and kicked the screen over. The crash brought everybody to his feet except the two officials and the railway man. They continued eating, and the railway man continued counting copper coins as if life depended on that alone.
“Sit down all!” yelled Coutlass. “You will eat with better appetite now that you can behold the blushes of these virgins!” Then he swaggered over to the long table, thrust the other Greek and the Goanese into chairs on either side of him, and yelled for food. It was the first time we had been referred to publicly as virgins, and I think we all three felt the strain.
The Goanese manager — a wizened old black man with perfectly white hair — came running from the kitchen in a state of near-collapse, the sweat streaming off him and his hands trembling.
“What shall I do?” he asked, almost upsetting the railway man’s tray of money. “That man is crazy! He came in once before and broke the dishes! Twice he has come in here and eaten and refused to pay! What shall I do?”
“Nothing,” said the railway man. “Go on serving dinner. Serve him too.”
The manager hurried out again and the running to and fro resumed. Then in came the guard.
“First-class for two on trays!” he shouted.
The railway man beckoned to him and he winked as he passed by us.
“When you’ve seen to that, and had your own meal, I want you,” said the railway man.
“Thought you said the lady’s maid would have to come and fetch the food?” I said maliciously as the guard passed my chair a second time.
“So I did. But if you know how to refuse her, just teach me! I told her flat to have the maid fetch it. She let on they’re both too frightened to cross the platform in the dark! Never saw anything like ’em! Tears! An’ dignified! When I climbed down they was too afraid next to be left alone. Swore train-thieves ‘ud murder ’em! I had to leave ’em my key to lock ‘emselves in with until I come back with the grub! What d’you think of that?”
But our soup came, and one could not think and eat that stuff simultaneously. The railway man looked up for a moment, saw my face, and explained in a moment of expansiveness that meat would not keep in that climate but was “perfectly good” when cooked.
“Besides,” he added, “you’ll get nothing more until you reach Nairobi tomorrow noon!”
That turned out to be not quite true, but as an argument it worked. We swallowed, like the lined
-up merchant seamen taking lime-juice under the skipper’s eye.
The guard grew impatient and went into the kitchen, but had scarcely got through the door when a scream came from the direction of the train that brought him back on the run. No black woman ever screams in just that way, and in a land of black and worse-than-black men imagination leaps at a white woman’s call for help.
There was a stampede for the door by every one except the Greeks and Goanese and the railway man. (He had to guard the money.) We poured through the screen doors, the guard fighting to burst between us, and, because with a self-preserving instinct that I have never thought quite creditable to the human race, everybody ran toward his own compartment, it happened that we three and the two officials and the guard came first on the scene of trouble.
Brown of Lumbwa was still drunk-affectionate, it seemed, by that time.
“You’ve no call to be ‘fraid of me, li’l sweetheart!” The door was open. Within the compartment all was dark, but every sound emerged. There came a stifled scream.
“Li’l stoopid! What d’you come in for, if you’re ‘fraid o’ poor ole
Brown? I won’t hurt you.”
The guard passed between us and went up the step. He listened, looked, disappeared through the open door, and there came a sound of struggling.
“Whassis?” shouted Brown. “An interloper? No you don’t! This is my li’l sweetheart! She came in to see me — didn’t you, Matilda Ann?”
The woman apparently broke free. The guard yelled for help. Fred and one of the government officials were nearest and as they entered they passed the woman coming out. I recognized Lady Saffren Waldon’s Syrian maid, with the big railway key in her fist that the guard had left with her. By that time there was a considerable crowd about our car, unable to see much because it stood in the way of the station lamp-light. She slipped through — to the right — not toward Lady Isobel’s compartment, and I lost sight of her behind some men. I ran after her, but she was gone among the shadows, and although I hunted up and down and in and out I could find her nowhere.
When I returned to our car Brown of Lumbwa was out on the platform with his hair all tousled and a wild eye. The guard was wiping a bloody nose and everybody was inventing an account of what nobody had seen.