A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 1/Chapter 10
It was long after midnight when Philip was awakened out of a deep sleep by a sound like thunder. Sitting up in his bunk (for he always wakened quickly and sharply) he experienced a feeling of delight that it would rain soon, putting an end to the long, baking drouth. And then slowly he understood that there could be no thunder at this season, and that it was not the sound of thunder; it was too small and sharp and ordered. It was a sound made by man lacking in the grandiosity of the preposterous Nature that dominated Megambo.
Sitting on the edge of the rough bed, he saw the familiar outlines of the mission take form in the darkness—the hut with the eternal insects and animals rustling in the thatch, the bunk opposite where Naomi lay sleeping quietly, all her dislike of Lady Millicent effaced now by the blank look of contentment. He saw the storeroom and Swanson's hut, and last of all the great, lumpy figure of Swanson himself, sitting by a fire that was almost dead. He was asleep with his head sunk between his knees, his great hands hanging like clusters of sausages. (He always fell asleep, careless of danger, certain that God was watching over him.)
It was a clear night, but moonless, when the monstrous trees showed black against the star-powdered sky, and save for the reverberant, thumping sound, silent, as if the unnatural thunder had frightened the very animals to take cover, to listening with hair and ears bristling. Fascinated by the sound, Philip rose and walked out into the enclosure; he wore, in the hut, only a cloth wrapped about his waist, and standing there beside the dying fire he looked and felt a part of all that untamed wild. He was not a big man, but a singularly well-built one, with muscles hard yet supple—a man such as his father must have been when he aroused such turbulent emotions in a breast so chaste as that of Emma Downes.
Listening to the unearthly sound, Philip extended his arms, watching the muscles flex beneath the tanned smooth skin, and suddenly there swept over him a vivid and poignant sense of delight in being alive. He felt the warm life sweeping through him and a sudden fierce pride in a body of which he had never before been conscious. He had a wild desire to leap the flimsy barricade and running, running in the light of the stars, to lose himself in the sable shadows of the forest.
He thought, "I am alive! I am alive!"
He was aware of the things that exist only in the night, of the demons worshiped by the witch-doctor of Megambo, of unearthly creatures that hovered in the shadows of the forest. The scene by the lake returned to him . . . the procession of virgins pouring the fertile waters of the lake over the belly of a repulsive idol.
He thought, "We are bewitched—Swanson and Naomi and I. We will die prisoners without ever having broken the spell."
In the heat of the still night death seemed all about on every side.
"I am awake and yet asleep. I am the only one who sees. . . ."
The strange thunder kept on and on, now near at hand, now far away, rising and falling in volume.
Again the odd, voluptuous feeling of power lying in his own supple body swept over him. Leaning down he touched Swanson's soft, heavy shoulder. "Swanson," he said, and there was no answer. He shook the man savagely, and Swanson, coming out of a deep sleep, stared up at him.
"Yes, I fell asleep again. . . . I can't help it."
"Listen!" Philip commanded.
After a silence, Swanson said, "It's thunder . . . it's going to rain."
"It's not thunder—look at the sky—what is it? You ought to know."
Swanson was humble with that childlike humbleness that always put Philip to shame, as if he said, "I won't be presumptuous. You're much more clever than I am."
"I don't know," he said; "maybe we'd better ask Naomi."
She wakened quickly, catching at once their vague sense of alarm, for Swanson appeared now to be frightened and uneasy for the first time. She, too, listened and said, "I don't know. I never heard it up North in Pa's country. It sounds like drums—like tom-toms. I've heard that sometimes they signal that-a-away."
The three of them—Philip and Swanson still half-naked (for they had forgotten even decency) and Naomi in a long, shapeless calico nightgown—went out again to stand under the open sky by the fire to listen.
After a long time Naomi said, "Yes, it's drums all right. It must mean some kind of trouble."
They slept no more that night and toward morning as the sky beyond the burnished, black surface of the lake began to turn the color of a flamingo's breast, the sound seemed to die away a little, bit by bit, as if it were a long piece of cane being broken off, a morsel at a time. At daylight it died altogether, leaving only a hot, empty stillness, and far away, near the place where Philip had seen the black virgins, the glow which they had mistaken for the rising dawn turned to the gray smoke of a burning village. The gray column spread fan-wise against the horizon until all the bush for miles lay covered by a thick blanket of gray rising above an angry red line. On the surface of the lake the fragile, black silhouette of a canoe jumped for a moment like a water-spider against the horizon, and disappeared.
The sun, dimmed and red, flooded the basin of the lake and the marshes with dull, yellow light, and revealed the village below them—their own village, Megambo—standing silent and deserted. There was no echo of loud, carefree banter, no crowing of cocks, no sound of women screaming at one another over the morning fires. It was silent like a village stricken with a plague wherein all were dead.
As the day advanced it seemed to Philip that they, too, were dead. In that empty world, he could not bring himself to go off alone into a menacing silence where the sound of a rifle-shot might rouse all the forest into life. It was as if thousands of eyes watched them from out of the shadows. He went as far as the village and found there not so much as an earthen pot. A whole people had disappeared, with everything they possessed, as if the earth had swallowed them up.
The hours dragged one into the next while they waited; there was no work, for there were no black people. It was impossible to leave when one did not even know what there was to flee from. Swanson pottered about with his clumsy hands, suffering less than Philip or Naomi. He tried vainly to fill in the silence.
As for Naomi, she seemed to have grown suddenly helpless and dependent, now that the very foundation of her existence, her reason for living was withdrawn. Philip, watching her, found a shameful satisfaction in the sight of Naomi, rudderless and the prey of a nameless terror. Her pale complacence melted into uneasiness. She retired now and then into the hut to pray. She prayed to the Lord to send them some sign by which to interpret the silence and the emptiness. He would, she was certain, perform some miracle as he had done in guiding the Children of Israel out of the Wilderness. He would not abandon them, his chosen servants. She abased herself before God, groveling in the dust as the black women had done before the monstrous idol.
As they watched the distant fire, driven by the changing wind, eating its way toward them, the terror mounted, gnawing at their tired nerves.
The faith of Naomi was rewarded, for at last there came a sign, although it was not in the least religious and came from the most profane and unmystical of all sources. At noon Philip, standing in the gateway, saw emerging from the forest the weather-beaten figure of Lady Millicent Wimbrooke. Across her arm with an air of easy repose lay a rifle. Across her thin back was slung a second gun, and across her flat breast were slung bandolier after bandolier of cartridges. The pockets of her weather-beaten skirt and jacket bulged with more ammunition. She gave the effect of a walking arsenal. Before her, carrying the collapsible bathtub, walked the Arab, Ali, the muzzle of a third rifle pressed into his back.
Watching her, Philip wished that she had not returned, and Naomi, instead of feeling relief at the sight of a white woman, was frightened, more frightened and more resentful than she had been of the silence. It was a nameless fear, but because of that all the more dreadful. Naomi, who believed that all people were the children of God, hated Lady Millicent Wimbrooke.
The invincible spinster appeared to believe that they knew what was taking place in the forest and on the distant plain. She did not speak of the silence. Without greeting them she said, "I must have a bath now, but I can't leave Ali unguarded." She glanced at the three of them and then quickly, with the air of conferring an honor, she handed her rifle to Philip. "Here," she said. "You watch him. If he gets away, he'll make trouble and without him we're lost. He knows the way to the coast. He used to come here in the days of the slave-traders."
She explained briefly that the sound of drums had wakened her in the night and that when she rose to look about, she discovered that not one of her bearers remained. They had vanished into the bush. "They're like that, these damned niggers." She had caught Ali in the act of robbing her and since then she had not left him out of range of her rifle. She finished by saying, "How soon will you be ready to leave?"
It was Naomi who asked, "Leave? Why are we leaving?"
"You can't stay here unless you want to die."
The return of the Englishwoman had an amazing effect upon Naomi. The terror seemed to have left her, giving way to a sudden, resentful stubbornness, tinged by hatred.
"God means us to stick to our post," she said. "He will care for us."
Lady Millicent laughed. It was a short, vicious, ugly sound. "You can trust to God if you like. I intend to leave within an hour. I shan't argue it with you, but I mean to take Ali, and without him you'll be lost."
"But why?" Philip asked suddenly. "Is it necessary?"
She gave him a look of utter scorn. "Do you know anything about this country? Do you know what's happened?"
"No," said Philip, meek as a lamb, "I don't."
"Well, they've come down for blood—from the North, and they aren't afraid of any white man and they never heard of God. Besides, before night the fire will be here."
She turned suddenly and poured out a torrent of guttural sounds on the miserable Arab, who turned and entered Swanson's hut.
"If he tries to escape," she told Philip, "just shoot him, and remember I know what I'm talking about . . . I've lived among 'em."
Taking her canvas bathtub, she left them, going down to the Lake.
They knew now what they had to fear, and with the knowledge Naomi seemed once more to gain control of her flagging spirit. There was even color in her cheeks and a new light in her pale eyes. To Philip she seemed almost pretty.
After the Englishwoman had disappeared, she called Philip and Swanson and said, "I am not going to leave. God means us to stay. He has refreshed my spirit."
Philip argued with her. "The Englishwoman knows best; she has lived here."
"She is sent by the Devil to tempt us," said Naomi in a strangely hysterical voice. "She's an evil woman . . . I've prayed and God has answered me." It was difficult to know whether she was stubborn because of faith or because she hated Lady Millicent Wimbrooke.
When Philip didn't answer her, she turned to Swanson. "You'll stay, won't you?"
"If God means us to stay," he answered weakly. "I don't know."
A kind of scorn suddenly colored her voice. "And you, Philip . . . will you stay or will you go off with your friend?"
"What friend?" asked Philip.
"Her," said Naomi, who could not bring herself to say "Lady Millicent."
"Friend?" he echoed. "Why friend?"
"Oh, you know why. You seem to agree with her. You never said a word in our defense."
This was a new Naomi who stood looking at him, a woman excited and hysterical, and desperate, whom he did not recognize. This new Naomi was the martyr prepared to die for a Heavenly crown, moved by some inward fire that was terrifying and quite beyond control and reason. Between them, husband and wife, the chasm had opened again. He saw her suddenly as he had seen her when she was indifferent to the danger of his staying at Megambo—a woman to whom he was less than nothing, who would sacrifice him for the mad faith he no longer shared.
He looked away because he suddenly found her face hard and repulsive, saying, "You're crazy, Naomi. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, yes, I'm crazy, but I know what I mean and you do, too. You've abandoned God and faith. You're like her now."
She was growing more and more excited. It struck him suddenly that she was jealous of Lady Millicent—that strange, battered, weather-beaten old maid; but the idea was too fantastic. He put it away. She might, perhaps, be jealous because the Englishwoman had picked him as the one who was most sane, but it couldn't be more than that. Before he was able to answer, he saw Lady Millicent herself entering the gate and barring it behind her. She looked in at the door of Swanson's hut. "He's pretending to be asleep," she said. "I know the Arab tricks."
Then wiping the sweat from her face, she said, "We may have to fight for it. There's a band of them painted like heathen images coming along the lake." Again she addressed Philip. "Do you know how to use a gun?"
"Yes."
"The others?" she asked, indicating Naomi and Swanson, "are they any good?"
"No."
Naomi came forward. "Philip, I forbid you to kill." She placed herself suddenly between him and Lady Millicent, but the Englishwoman pushed her aside.
"This is no time for rot!" She gave such a snort that it seemed to him sparks must fly from her nostrils. "I can't defend all of you . . . with two able-bodied, strong men."
"We're missionaries," said Philip. "We didn't come to kill the poor heathen but to save."
"Well, I mean to kill as many as possible."
Suddenly there was the cannon-like report of an old-fashioned musket, and a bullet sang past them, embedding itself in the thatch of Swanson's hut. Philip saw Lady Millicent thrusting a rifle on Swanson to guard the wily Arab—Swanson who couldn't bear to kill a rat. There was another report and the slow whistle of a bullet. Then he found himself suddenly on the forest side of the stockade, beside the Englishwoman. There was a rifle in his hands and he heard her saying, "Don't fire till they get clear of the forest—then they'll have no shelter."
She was crouching behind the barricade like an elderly leopard, peering toward the forest. The bathtub lay where she had tossed it aside. Through a gap in the wall he saw seven black men, hideously painted and decorated with feathers, running toward them. He raised the rifle and some one seized his arm. It was Naomi, screaming, "Don't! Don't! Thou shalt not kill!"
He heard the hoarse voice of Lady Millicent calling out, "If you want to live, fire! Fire now!"
He struck Naomi savagely, pushing her into the dust. She lay there praying hysterically. He fired. He heard Lady Millicent firing. He saw one black man after another pitch forward and fall. She was (he thought) an excellent shot. The voice of Naomi praying wildly rose above the noise, the shots and the wild cries of the attacking niggers. Then all at once, those who remained alive turned and ran for the forest. He took careful aim, and one of them fell, kicking grotesquely. There was another report beside him, and the second fell on the edge of the forest. He saw the last of them turn and fire his musket. Then something struck him on the head like the blow of a club.
He heard a great voice calling, "I want to live! I want to live!" and all the world about him exploded with a great flash of light.