If I had been the King conferring on him the t.i.tle of Duke with a corresponding income, his face could not have expressed greater surprise and ecstasy.
He replied with a torrent of French, of which I understood nearly all, except the point.
Taking my arm (the coat-sleeve never recovered from the oily stain), he led me to the ship"s side and steadied the rope ladder while I went down, the purser following behind, or rather on my head. We sat on the barrels, M. Jacques took a paddle to steer, and hissing and gasping, the queer-smelling crew started for the beach. When we came near, M. Jacques turned with his pleasant smile to the purser, and said, "Surf no good!
Plenty purser live for drown this one place."
"That"s all right," said the purser. Then the paddling stopped, and M.
Jacques looked over the stern to watch the swell. For a long time we hung there, the waves rolling smoothly under us and crashing against the steep bank of sand just in front, as a stormy sea crashes against a south-coast esplanade at full tide under a south-west wind. Gently moving his paddle this way and that, M. Jacques held the stern to the swell, till suddenly he shouted "One time!" and the natives drove their paddles Into the water like spears. On the top of a huge billow we rushed forward. It broke, and we crashed down upon the beach. In a dome of green and white the surge pa.s.sed clean over us, and then, with a roar like a torrent, it dragged us back. Another great wave broke over the stern, and again we were hurled forward beneath it. This time a crowd of natives rushed into the foam and, clinging to the gunwale, held us steady against the backwash. Out we all sprang into two feet of rushing water, and hauled the boat clear up the sh.o.r.e.
"Surf no good!" observed M. Jacques; "but purser live this time," Then he shook himself like a dog, rolled on the fine sand, shook himself again, and with the smile of all the angels, remarked, "Now we fit for go get one dilly drink."
Leaving the natives to roll up the great barrels from the boat, we climbed the beach to a long but narrow strip of fairly hard ground, on which one solitary thorn-tree had contrived to grow. The further side of the bank fell steeply into the vast swamp of the coast. There the mangrove trees stood rotting in black water and slimy ooze, so thick together that the misty sun never penetrated half-way down their inextricable branches, and even from the edge of the forest one looked into darkness. On the top of that thin plateau between the roaring sea and the impenetrable swamp, M. Jacques had made his home. It was a ramshackle little house, run together of boards and corrugated iron, and bearing evidence of all the mistakes of which a West African native is capable. At midday the solitary thorn afforded a transparent shade; for the rest of daylight the dwelling sweltered and boiled unprotected.
Round house and tree ran a mud wall, about five feet high, loop-holed at intervals. And just inside the house door was fastened a rack of three rifles, kept tolerably clean.
"Plenty pom-pom," said M. Jacques, as I looked at them (he returned to the language that I evidently understood better than his own). "Black man he cut throats too plenty much."
Opening a padlocked trap-door in the flooring, he disappeared into an underground cavern. Calling to me, he struck a match, and I looked down into a kind of dungeon cell, smelling of damp like a vault There I saw a broken camp-bed, covered with a Kaffir blanket.
"Here live for catch dilly sleep," he cried triumphantly, as though exhibiting a palace. "Plenty cool night here."
Then, with a bottle in one hand, he came up the ladder, and carefully locking the trap-door and pulling a table over it, he observed, "Black man he thief too plenty much."
With one thought only--the longing for liquid of any kind but salt water-we sat in crazy deck-chairs under the iron verandah, where a few starved chickens pecked unhappily at the dust. Presently there came the padding sound of naked feet upon the hard-baked earth, and a dark figure emerged from an inner kitchen. It was a young negress. Her short, woolly hair was cut into sections, like a melon, by lines that showed the paler skin below. The large dark eyes were filmy as a seal"s, and the heavy black lips projected far in front of the flat nostrils, slit sideways like a bull-dog"s. From breast to knee she was covered with a length of dark blue cotton, wound twice round her body, and fastened with two safety pins. In her hands, which were pinkish inside and on the palm like a monkey"s, she held a tray, and coming close to us, she stood, silent and motionless, in front of M. Jacques.
Into three meat-tins that served for cups, he poured out wine from the bottle he had brought up from his subterranean bedroom. Then he filled up his own cup from a larger meat-tin of water fresh from the marsh. We did the same to make the wine go further, and at last we drank. It was the vilest wine the chemists of Hamburg ever made, though German education favours chemistry; and the water tasted like the bilge of Charon"s boat. But it was liquid, and when we had drained the tins--I will not say to the dregs, for Hamburg wine has no dregs--M. Jacques lay back with a sigh and said, "Drink fine too much."
The girl handed us sticky slabs of Africa"s maize bread, and then padded off with the tray. Coming out again, she crouched down on her heels against the doorpost, and silently watched us with impenetrable eyes, that never blinked or turned aside, no matter how much one stared.
Meantime, the natives from the beach, with many sighs and groans, were rolling up the cargo of barrels, and setting them, one by one, in a barricaded storehouse. "That"s Bank of France," said M. Jacques, locking the door securely when all the barrels were stowed. "Plenty rum all the same good for plenty gold."
Their spell of labour finished, the natives stretched themselves in the shadow of the enclosure wall, and slept, while we sat languidly looking over the steaming water at the ship, now dim in the haze. The heat was so intense that, in spite of our drenching in the surf, the sweat was running down our faces and backs again. The repeated crash and drag of the waves were the only sounds, except when now and again a parrot shrieked from the forest, or some great trunk, rotted right through at last, fell heavily into the swamp among the tangled roots and slime.
Even the mosquitoes were still, and the only movement was the hovering of giant hornets, attracted by the smell of the wine.
"Holiday fine too much," said M. Jacques, smiling at us dreamily, and stretching out his legs as he sank lower into his creaking chair.
"One month, one ship; holiday same time," he explained, and he went on to tell us he worked too plenty hard the rest of the month, stowing the palm-oil and kernels as the natives brought them in by hardly perceptible tracks from their villages far across the swamp.
"Bit slow, isn"t it, old man?" said the purser.
"Not slow," he answered quickly; "plenty black man go thief, go kill; plenty fever, plenty live for die."
"I should think you miss the French cafes and concerts and dancing and all that sort of thing," I remarked.
"No matter for them things," he answered. "Liberty here. Liberty live for this one place."
""Where there ain"t no Ten Commandments,"" I quoted.
"No ten? No _one_," he cried, shaking one finger in my face excitedly, so as to make the meaning of "one" quite clear.
Just then the steamer sounded her siren.
"The old man"s getting in a stew," said the purser, slowly standing up and mopping his face.
The crew stretched themselves, tightened their wisps of cotton, and slowly stood up too.
As M. Jacques led us politely down to the surf-boat again, I heard him quietly singing in an undertone, "Liberte, Liberte, cherie!"
"What part of France do you come from?" I asked.
"From Ma.r.s.eilles, monsieur," he answered, and having helped push off the boat, he stood with raised hat, watching us dive through the breakers. Then he slowly climbed the sand again, and I saw him pa.s.s into the gate of his fortified wall.
It was strange. Against that man every possible Commandment could be broken, but there was only one which he could have had any pleasure in breaking himself. And as I sat at Ma.r.s.eilles, watching the happy crowds of men and women pa.s.s to and fro, it appeared to me that he would have been at liberty to break that Commandment without leaving his native city.
x.x.xVIII
A FAREWELL TO FLEET STREET
It is still early, but dinner is over--not the club dinner with its buzzing conversation, nor yet the restaurant dinner, hurried into the ten minutes between someone"s momentous speech and the leader that has to be written on it. The suburban dinner is over, and there was no need to hurry. They tell me I shall be healthier now. What do I care about being healthier?
Shall I sit with a novel over the fire? Shall I take life at second-hand and work up an interest in imaginary loves and the exigencies of shadows? What are all the firesides and fictions of the world to me that I should loiter here and doze, doze, as good as die?
They tell me it is a fine thing to take a little walk before bed-time. I go out into the suburban street. A thin, wet mist hangs over the silent and monotonous houses, and blurs the electric lamps along our road.
There will be a fog in Fleet Street to-night, but everyone is too busy to notice it. How friendly a fog made us all! How jolly it was that night when I ran straight into a _Chronicle_ man, and got a lead of him by a short head over the same curse! There"s no chance of running into anyone here, let alone cursing! A few figures slouch past and disappear; the last postman goes his round, knocking at one house in ten; up and down the asphalt path leading into the obscurity of the Common a wretched woman wanders in vain; the long, pointed windows of a chapel glimmer with yellowish light through the dingy air, and I hear the faint groans of a harmonium cheering the people dismally home. The groaning ceases, the lights go out, service is over; it will soon be time for decent people to be in bed.
In Fleet Street the telegrams will now be falling thick as--No, I won"t say it! No Vallombrosa for me, nor any other journalistic tag! I remember once a young sub-editor had got as far as, "The cry is still--"
when I took him by the throat. I have done the State some service.
Our sub-editors" room is humming now: a low murmur of questions, rapid orders, the rustle of paper, the quick alarum of telephones. Boys keep bringing telegrams in orange envelopes. Each sub-editor is bent over his little lot of news. One sorts out the speeches from bundles of flimsy.
The middle of Lloyd George"s speech has got mixed up with Balfour"s peroration. If he left them mixed, would anyone be the less wise?
Perhaps the speakers might notice it, and that man from Wiltshire would be sure to write saying he had always supported Mr. Balfour, and heartily welcomed this fresh evidence of his consistency.
"Six columns speeches in already; how much?" asks the sub-editor.
"Column and quarter," comes answer from the head of the table, and the cutting begins. Another sub-editor pieces together an interview about the approaching comet. "Keep comet to three sticks," comes the order, and the comet"s perihelion is abbreviated. Another guts a blue-book on prison statistics as savagely as though he were disembowelling the whole criminal population.
There"s the telephone ringing. "Hullo, hullo!" calls a sub-editor quietly. "Who are you? Margate mystery? Go ahead. They"ve found the corpse? All right. Keep it to a column, but send good story. Horrible mutilations? Good. Glimpse the corpse yourself if you can. Yes. Send full mutilations. Will call for them at eleven. Good-bye." "You doing the Archbishop, Mr. Jones?" asks the head of the table. "Cup-tie at Sunderland," answers Mr. Jones, and all the time the boys go in and out with those orange-coloured bulletins of the world"s health.
What"s a man to do at night out here? Let"s have a look at all these posters displayed in front of the Free Library, where a few poor creatures are still reading last night"s news for the warmth. Next week there"s a concert of chamber-music in the Town Hall I suppose I might go to that, just to "kill time" as they say. Think of a journalist wanting to kill time! Or to kill anything but another fellow"s "stuff," and sometimes an editor! Then there"s a boxing compet.i.tion at the St. John"s Arms, and a subscription dance in the Nelson Rooms, and a lecture on Dante, with ill.u.s.trations from contemporary art, for working men and women, at the Inst.i.tute. Also there"s something called the Why-Be-Lonesome Club for promoting friendly social intercourse among the young and old of all cla.s.ses. I suppose I might go to that too. It sounds comprehensive.
There seems no need to be dull in the suburbs. A man in a cart is still crying c.o.ke down the street. Another desires to sell clothes-props. A brace of lovers come stealing out of the Common through the mist, careless of mud and soaking gra.s.s. I suppose people would say I"m too old to make love on a County Council bench. In love"s cash-books the balance-sheet of years is kept with remorseless accuracy.
The foreign editors are waiting now in their silent room, and the telegrams come to them from the ends of the world. They fold them in packets together by countries or continents--the Indian stuff, the Russian stuff, the Egyptian, Balkan, Austrian, South African, Persian, j.a.panese, American, Spanish, and all the rest. They"ll have pretty nearly seven columns by this time, and the order will come "Two-and-a-half foreign," Then the piecing and cutting will begin. One of them sits in a telephone box with bands across his head, and repeats a message from our Paris correspondent. Through our Paris man we can talk with Berlin and Rome.
From this rising ground I can see the light of the city reflected on the misty air, and somewhere mingled in that light are the big lamps down in Fleet Street. The City"s voice comes to me like a confused murmur through a telephone when the words are unintelligible. The only distinct sounds are the dripping of the moisture from the trees in suburban gardens, and the voice of an old lady imploring her pet dog to return from his evening walk.
The voice of all the world is now heard in that silent room. From moment to moment news is coming of treaties and revolutions, of sultans deposed and kings enthroned, of commerce and failures, of shipwrecks, earthquakes, and explorations, of wars and flooded camps and sieges, of intrigue, diplomacy, and a.s.sa.s.sination, of love, murder, revenge, and all the public joy and sorrow and business of mankind. All the voices of fear, hope, and lamentation echo in that silent little room; and maps hang on the walls, and guide-books are always ready, for who knows where the next event may come to pa.s.s upon this energetic little earth, already twisting for a hundred million years around the sun?