The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

I

Now it was far too light for her to think of sleep, and so she went into the house to change her clothes and to make herself clean. When she saw her own reflection in the little mirror she was shocked, for it seemed to her a strange thing that she should have passed through so many hours of intense experience and show so little for it. Her blouse was torn and her skirt caked with black mud, but that was all. She would not have been surprised if she had found that her hair had turned white. But it hadn’t: only, when she took it down, she was puzzled for a moment by an unfamiliar perfume which seemed to have been imprisoned in its folds. She shuddered, realising all at once that it was the scent of Godovius’s room. But when she had bathed and changed her clothes and stepped out into the summery sunshine of early morning she felt as though she had really managed to wash that damnable atmosphere away. There wasn’t really a vestige of it left. She just felt a little light-headed and nervous, as if her legs didn’t quite belong to her. But she did realise that she had got her hands full.

In the first place, James. Several times she passed in and out of his room. He was still sleeping peacefully, and she did not disturb him; but somewhere about nine o’clock, when she had breakfasted, she found that he had wakened. He was lying on his back with his arms folded in front of his chest and his eyes wide open. He smiled at her.

“I think I’m all right now,” he said. “It’s been a funny time.”

She was unfeignedly thankful. She washed him tenderly, and from time to time he asked her short questions which she thought it her duty to evade for fear of exciting him. And he was easily satisfied.

“I’m afraid you’ve been up all night with me,” he said. “It was a strange night. Did I talk to you in the night? I seem to remember . . .”

“You told me a silly nightmare,” she said, “that was all. You had been dreaming.”

He laughed softly. “I’m always dreaming. Even when I’m awake. I don’t remember anything about it. Everything at Luguru is like a dream.”

And so she left him for a little. She had begun to wonder about her hidden guest. Now for the first time, in broad daylight, and removed from all the romantic circumstances of the night before, she realised the results of her hospitality. The possibilities were frightening. A law-abiding citizen, she was sheltering a felon; a modest young woman, she was hiding a strange man of whom she knew nothing at all. But there was no running away from it. She had taken on the job and must see it through. That was the way in which she looked at it, even in the face of a considerable anxiety. It struck her as strange that she hadn’t for a moment counted the cost the night before. She smiled at herself, a little indulgently. “I always do things like that and think about them afterwards,” she thought.

Meanwhile she had a great deal to be thankful for in the recovery of James. Freed of this anxiety, she was far more capable of tackling the problem which Hare presented. Godovius was her other concern, and it seemed to her providential that things had really come to a head at Njumba ja Mweze that night, for after what had happened there he couldn’t very well pursue his attentions. She was thinking all the time of Godovius as a possible threat to her two protégés. For the sake of both of them it was essential that he should be kept away from Luguru. Nothing could have happened better. Now he couldn’t have the face to come. That was all she knew about Godovius.

In this way, scheming for his protection, searching for every probable contingency which might threaten his safety, and arming herself against them with an unusual caution, she came to Mr. Bullace’s banda. It was now midday and very hot. Close to the banda, dangerously close, the shamba boys were cutting down the poles on which the sisal spires had withered. They hacked at the pulpy poles with iron pangas, and sang to each other a queer antiphonal song which had lightened the labours of black men cutting wood for untold generations. Hamisi had climbed up the pole, and when the trunk was nearly severed he swung himself to and fro until the whole thing toppled over with a tearing sound. When the pole fell they shouted to one another and laughed; and one of them, a naked M’luguru who had sat in the garden path busily excavating a jigger from his toe, looked up and laughed too, as though the occasion were one for universal happiness. He was an ugly creature with shining cicatrices on either cheek and porcupine quills which he had picked up stuck through his hair, and as soon as he had done with his surgery he jumped to his feet and lolled up against the side of the banda.

It suddenly came to Eva that only the thin grass wall of the banda now separated him from the place where Hare was lying. Already her secret seemed on the point of being discovered. She remembered hearing Godovius tell her brother one day that the Waluguru, in common with other African races, could detect the presence of a white man by his smell. She was so frightened that she hurried to the side of the banda and pulled the lounging Luguru away. It was the first time in her life that she had handled a native roughly. The others, standing idle in their dirty red blankets, laughed. She felt that they were jeering at her; but if she had laid open their comrade’s back with the cut of a kiboko they would have laughed in the same way. She called Hamisi, and told him to see to the other side of the hedge first. He said: “N’dio, Bibi,” and smiled. She hated all their smiling. He was smiling, she thought, at her secret. Probably they all knew it by now. Soon Godovius would know . . .

The boys moved off to the other end of the garden and still she stood at the corner of the banda thinking. Around her the lazy life of the morning stirred. Among the aromatic herbs which had invaded that neglected garden with their ashen foliage and clustered flowers, purple and cinnabar, the restless butterflies of Africa hovered in mazy flight. Most of them were small and barred with cinnabar, like the little orange tips which brightened the Shropshire lanes in spring. A green lizard moved as quietly as a shadow at her feet. Through the green curtain of acacia a flight of honey-suckers passed with a whir of wings. She hated all this busy, mocking life, this land that smiled eternally and was eternally cruel. She felt that she had no part in it. It was all wrong.

She went into her banda and tapped at the partition. Hare answered her in a whisper. He said that he was quite comfortable. He had slept and was not hungry. All that morning he had lain listening to the chatter of the boys as they worked on the sisal hedge, and he had heard many curious things of which they would never have spoken if they had known that he was there. He wanted to know all about James, and seemed relieved when she told him of his calm awakening. “Now he should be all right,” he said, and told her what to do in the matter of food and of quinine. “But you sound tired,” he said. “You must rest yourself. The night of quiet and comfort has made all the difference to me. I’m afraid I’m an anxiety to you; and you have enough to worry about already.”

Although this was almost an echo of her own thought, she denied it hastily.

“Ah, but I need not be an anxiety much longer,” he said. “A day or two and I shall be able to fend for myself. I could hear that you were nervous when you spoke to the boys.”

She wanted to explain herself; for suddenly, thinking of what life at Luguru would be like if he left her, she realised what the presence of the fugitive meant to her. But this was no time for talking, even in whispers. After sunset, when the Africans had gone to sleep. . . . She asked him if there was anything that he needed particularly. He told her that he only wanted two things, water to wash in and a pencil.

“But you can’t use either of them,” she said, “as you are now.”

She heard him laugh softly. “You don’t know how clever I am with no hands to speak of.”

She moved away softly, and a little later she returned, bringing with her a gourd full of water, soap and a towel, and the pencil for which he had asked her. Very carefully she moved aside the partition and pushed them inside. But she did not see him, for the inside of the banda was dark and the sound of a step on the garden path made her close the open space hurriedly. And even though she found that her fancy had deceived her, this sort of thing was not over-good for her nerves.

II

In this manner, all through that day which was the first and the most trying, she hovered between her two anxieties. James was more than usually difficult and talkative. With the vanishing of his fever it seemed as if all the accumulated nervous energy which disease had beneficently drugged were suddenly released. He prayed aloud; he made plans, and in the intervals he would call to Eva to remind her of some small thing that had happened at Far Forest many years before. It was all encouraging in a way, but tiring . . . very tiring. In the evening, about the time of sunset, he fell asleep over his Bible, and the relief to Eva was as great as if he had been delirious all day.

She sat on the stoep in that sudden interval of silence and relief, watching the hot sky grow cool and temperate, watching, a little later, the growing crescent of the young moon free itself from the topmost tangles of the forest and then go sailing, as if indeed it had been caught and were now released into a dusky sky. Almost before she had realised that the light was failing, it was night. The crescent now was soaring through the crowns of her own tall crotons. From every grassy nullah where water once had flowed the frogs began their trilling. She wondered if she would ever taste the long coolness of twilight again.

Then, when she had made a small meal and put aside some food for Hare, she lit a blizzard lantern and carried it to her banda. From the other end of the compound, where the Africans slept, she heard the twanging of a strange instrument. One of the boys was singing an interminable, tuneless native song. At any rate they were safe for the night.

Hare was waiting for her. She placed the lantern on her own side of the partition, so that only a wide panel of light fell within the inner chamber. He was sitting up on his bed of sisal fibre, making a savage but intensely pathetic figure. I don’t suppose he knew for one moment what a ruffian he looked. For many years he had lived a life in which one does not consider appearances, but, for all that, he had tried to make himself as clean as he could with one imperfect hand. He had combed his long hair and even attempted to make a job of his beard. This was really the first time that Eva had properly seen him. The night before, in spite of his exhaustion, he had seemed so collected and capable, so eager not to make trouble, and she had been so anxious about James and distressed by the difficulty of the situation that she hadn’t quite taken in his absolute helplessness. It came to her in a sudden flash of realisation. She felt guilty and ashamed. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Now I am much more comfortable,” he said, making matters worse than ever.

“But how on earth have you managed?” she whispered. “Your poor arm. . . . I’ve neglected you shockingly.”

All at once she became maternal and practical. It was not very difficult for her. For the greater part of her life she had been looking after helpless male creatures: first her old father and then James. Now she would not be denied.

“Where is the arm broken?” she asked.

It was nothing, he said, only a smashed collar-bone. It had been broken before. “Only, you see, I must keep the upper arm close to the side. It acts as a sort of splint. In a fortnight it will be sound. I know all about this sort of thing. I have to.”

“I’m going to wash you, anyway,” she said.

I do not suppose such a thing as this had ever happened to Hare in all his life; but now he was too helpless and the idea too reasonable for him to protest. To Eva the business came quite naturally. Very tenderly she disentangled the dirty shirt of khaki drill from his left shoulder, slipping the sleeve over the poor pointed stump of what had once been one of the wiriest arms in Africa. It was a painful process to her; all the time she felt that she was hurting him; but he smiled up at her with a look of confidence and shyness which one might more easily have seen on the face of a child than of this old hunter.

The shirt was dirty . . . horribly dirty; but he made no apologies which might have embarrassed them both. The injured shoulder was more difficult. Pain twisted his lips into a sort of smile. “Easy . . . if you don’t mind,” he said.

“If you wouldn’t mind my slitting up the sleeve,” she suggested.

“No . . . that wouldn’t do. It’s my only shirt. It’s only dirty because of this accident. I generally wash it every few days.”

At last it was over. Now she could see the angle of the broken collar-bone, and from it a great bruise, purple and yellow, tracking down into the axilla. She washed him, passing gently over the bruised area. When she had finished he thanked her. “This is not a woman’s work,” he said.

“Oh, but it is,” she smiled.

“Perhaps I am wrong. It is many years since I have spoken to a woman. I live a very solitary life. Even before I had the misfortune to lose my arm.” It was funny to see how his little self-consciousness showed itself.

Now she was anxious to rescue his very awful shirt; for she had decided that it would be easy to fit him out in one of James’s until it was clean. He was almost as anxious about that as he had been about the rifle. He didn’t want to offend her; but for all his gentleness he was determined to get it back.

“But we must wash it,” she said. “What is the matter with you?”

“You can have it, but . . . did you notice that there’s a big pocket in the left breast? Yes . . . that’s it. Will you be kind enough to look in it. There’s a wee packet of papers in a waterproof cover. That’s what I want. It’s very near the only thing in my gear that I’ve saved. It has only a personal value.” He paused and then modestly added: “It’s the fruits of several adventurous years. It’s a book—”

He looked at her very narrowly. She could see now that his eyes were of a very clear blue-grey. In the lamplight they sparkled like the eyes of a bird. Then he smiled.

“I may tell you,” he said, “that you are the first human being I have ever told that to . . . and there aren’t many . . . who would not have thought it rather a joke.”

“But that would be ridiculous,” she said. “For I don’t know you. When I come to think of it, I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m called Hare,” he said, “Charles Hare. It’s possible you’ve heard the name. Not probable you’ve heard any good of it.” It sounded as if he were trying to make the best of it himself.

She repeated: “Charles Hare.” But when he heard the words in her voice his incorrigible romanticism wouldn’t permit him to let them pass. It was like Hare to abandon in one moment an alias that he had carried for a quarter of a century. I suppose it was just the directness and simplicity of Eva that worked the miracle: it suddenly occurred to him that it would be a shame to deceive her in the least particular. He said:

“You can forget that name. It’s none the better for my having carried it. I don’t know”—there was a bright challenge in his eyes—“that it’s really much worse. But it isn’t mine. My name is M‘Crae. Hector M‘Crae.”

She was bewildered. “But why—” she began.

“I had sufficient reasons for losing it,” he said. “I’ve found it again. I’ve found a lot of things during the last four days. You must forgive me for having deceived you. One gets into the habit . . .”

It sounded rather a lame finish.

“Oh, it’s a long story,” he said, “a long story. Some day if you’ll listen to me I’ll tell it to you. Now, if you please, we’ll leave it. I want to know about your brother. I should like to know a little about you . . .”

He began to question her narrowly on the subject of James, approving, with monosyllables, what she had done. And then he told her seriously that she was looking over-tired. “You want sleep,” he said. “We mustn’t talk any more to-night. Will you throw this blanket over my shoulders? Oh . . . and there’s one thing more. I’ve been clumsy enough to break the point of your pencil. There’s a knife on my belt. Will you sharpen it for me?”