The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

I

When Eva, resolved on confession, had come to the door of her brother’s room and knocked, she had not been altogether surprised at his anxiety to be left alone. James had always been like that, and she knew that there was nothing to be gained by disturbing him. Through the heat of that peerless afternoon she waited. But when the evening came and he had not yet emerged from his chosen solitude, she began to be more anxious. Even if he were in a state of extreme spiritual depression, starvation wouldn’t improve matters. It had always been a great part of her function in life to see that he was properly supplied with food and raiment and all the physical comforts which his spirit so heartily despised, and even in this extremity her thoughts moved in the accustomed channel. Seeing herself, as from a distance, pursuing these eminently practical affairs, she was even faintly thankful that she had still the distraction of her habitual activities. She went into the garden to find the boys. Onyango was there alone, sleeping in the sun. She woke him, and in a little while he returned, bringing with him a yellow gourd full of the thin milk of the country. She boiled a little of this over her fire of sticks, and took it to the door of James’ room. This time there was no answer. Perhaps, she thought, he was asleep. A blessed relief from all his troubles.

Two hours later she knocked again, and when, again, she received no reply, she suddenly took fright. She wasn’t afraid that he had done anything very desperate: she knew that his religious sense was too strong for this: but she knew that he was the lightest of sleepers, and his silence suggested to her a return of the illness which had robbed him of consciousness before. She remembered so well the ghastly sight which he had presented to her on that day, when he had laid on his back with his eyes staring at the ceiling, breathing stertorously. She listened carefully at the door, trying to hear if he were breathing like that now. She remembered her despair on that terrible night and the callous unconcern of Godovius, and her thoughts turned gratefully to M‘Crae. Now, thank heaven, she was not quite alone. She tried the door and found that it was bolted. The window. . . . It opened on to the stoep at the place where the great bougainvillea hung in thick festoons, mitigating kindly the whiteness of the light. At her passage a flight of nectarinidæ passed with whirring wings. The window stood open. The room was empty . . . that little room of James’, pathetic in its bareness, with no ornamentation but a cabinet photograph of old Aaron Burwarton and the coloured texts which James himself had achieved in his schooldays. On the table lay the open Bible and a sheet of paper on which James had scribbled texts. If she had looked up the references she might have discovered a series of obvious clues to the mystery of his new adventure. But she didn’t. She folded the paper and closed the Bible. She saw that he had lain on the bed, and even while she wondered what could have happened to him, she was smoothing the sheets and putting the creased bedclothes in order. She was only thankful that he was not ill. It didn’t so much concern her where he had gone; for it was a very rare thing for James to invite her confidence in his plans. Even at Far Forest he would often annoy her by an air of secrecy which emphasised his importance. So when she had put his room, that scene of so recent a spiritual anguish, in order, she sighed, and returned to the kitchen with her cup of milk.

All that afternoon she did not go to M‘Crae. Since the day on which Godovius had threatened her she had never been quite comfortable with him. She had felt an awkwardness which it was hard to explain: almost as if M‘Crae were aware of the character which Godovius had given to their relation. In some subtle way it seemed that the frankness of their first friendship had been spoiled. That was how she put it to herself; but the more probable reason for their awkwardness was the fact that he knew that she was excluding him from her confidence and would not say so. She would not admit to herself that she, more directly than Godovius, was responsible for the strained atmosphere.

In a very little while night fell. Still James did not come; and this seemed to her unusual, for the thorn bush about Luguru is no place for a man to wander in at night. From her chair in front of their living-room window on the stoep she watched the rising of the moon. At that very moment James was crossing the M’ssente River. A beautiful slip of a thing she seemed to Eva, and of an amazing brilliance. Even before her shining sickle had floated above Kilima ja Mweze the sky was flooded with a pale radiance, and the outlines of the trees which climbed the sky-line and had already been merged in the soft darkness of the mountain’s bulk grew suddenly distinct. . . . Then the restless noises of the night began. Eva felt suddenly and rather hopelessly alone. She was not very happy in the dark.

Now she would not have to wait very long for James. No doubt, too, he would be hungry. She went into the house and laid the table for supper. After all, one must eat. On the table she placed a single lighted candle. Then she pulled on a pair of leather mosquito boots to protect her ankles, and sat there, waiting, and listening to the night. Far away in the forest she heard the sound of drumming. It did not bring to her mind the sinister suggestions with which it troubled that of James. But she felt unhappy, and, somehow, a little cold. She found herself shivering. And just as she had begun to wonder if she, like James, were on the edge of the inevitable fever, a strong-winged moth, hurling out of the darkness at her candle, put out the flame, with a noise of singeing wings, and left her in darkness.

It was a small thing, but it frightened her. She relighted the candle and settled down again to waiting for James; but now she found it more difficult than before to be self-contained. Indeed this culmination to her long day’s anxiety had been rather too much for her; she had tried too daringly to walk alone. The incident of the empty church, which at first had seemed to her no more than a set-back to be encountered, now returned to her with a more sinister suggestion. All atmospheres of that kind are more formidable by night: and this night of Africa, with its high and velvety sky in which the crescent moon was still ascending, seemed peculiarly vast, and alien in its vastness. All the time, from the recesses of the forest, she heard the beating of drums.

The little clock on the mantelpiece struck eight. The candle on the supper-table was burning down with a steady flame. James had never in all their life at Luguru been as late as this. It occurred to her that perhaps she was feeling nervous just for want of food. She decided that at the very worst she would not have to wait much longer, and that in any case it would be foolish to give way to her fancies. And then, at a moment when she was really feeling more secure, fear came to her, as swiftly and blindly as the moth which had blundered in out of the night, and all her bravery was extinguished. She left the light burning in the room and ran along the garden path to M‘Crae’s banda.

“I was frightened,” she told him, quite simply. And then she told him of the surprise at the church that morning; of how James had left her and locked himself in his room; how he had left the mission and had not yet returned. And when once she had begun to tell him these things, and had heard his grave replies in a voice that was steady and devoid of fear, she began to feel lighter and happier. When once she had managed to talk like this she found it wonderfully easy to go on, and in a little while she had unbosomed herself of the whole story of her meeting with Godovius, his entreaties and his threats. Until she had ended he did not speak; but she knew that it was with difficulty that he heard her through. At the end he said:

“You should have told me. It would have been more like you.”

“I don’t know . . .” she said. “Perhaps I was ashamed. I think I was ashamed. At the suggestion . . . you know . . . that we were anything but friends.”

He gave a short laugh. “I’m not laughing at you,” he said quickly.

“I know you’re not. It was silly of me. I ought to have trusted you. I wanted to. But I was shy, I suppose. And shocked by the mistake that he’d made. I was afraid that you might suffer because of his mistaken idea. And I was selfish. I couldn’t bear the thought of your not being here: and I thought that I could somehow wait until things cleared up. I thought I could just keep it to myself and hold on.”

“You were wrong. It never pays to put things off. No doubt it was a shock for you to have it taken for granted that I had made love to you. I wouldn’t have you worried by that. I suppose I am old enough to be your father. You mustn’t think any more of that.”

Quite candidly she said: “I won’t.” It was no more than he expected.

She sighed. “I am happier now,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I have gone through in these days.” And then her thoughts returned suddenly to her fears for James.

“You must tell me what to do. I don’t feel as if I can do any more thinking. I’ve been such a failure when I tried to do it. I can’t think. I don’t believe I can feel. I’m not like a woman at all. I’m callous. No . . . I’m not really callous, but awfully tired. Oh, what can we do?”

“There’s nothing to be done in the night,” he said. “You don’t know where he went. In the night we are quite helpless. On the night when you found me it was just a matter of luck . . . a matter of Providence. When you get to my age you begin to believe in Providence. If you are lonely or frightened you had better stay here with me.”

“I’m not frightened now,” she said. “But . . . but I think I’ll stay here.”

M‘Crae made room for her on the heap of sisal beside him. They sat there for a long time without speaking amid the restless sounds which passed for silence in that night. In the remotest distance they heard the drums at Kilima ja Mweze. They were like the beating of a savage heart.

“I shouldn’t have kept it all to myself,” she said at last. “Are you very angry with me?”

He was a long time answering her childishness. “I couldn’t be angry with you. You should have known that. But if I had heard what he said to you I should have killed him. I couldn’t have missed him.”

“Then I’m thankful you didn’t.”

In the long silence which followed her tiredness gradually overcame her. It was no great wonder that in a little while she fell asleep. M‘Crae, lying beside her, felt her tired limbs twitch from time to time, as the muscles, conscious of the brain’s waning control, tried to keep awake. These feeble movements aroused in M‘Crae’s mind an emotion which was nearer to pity than to anything else. They reminded him of the helpless incoordinate movements which he had often seen in the limbs of young animals. He pitied her childishness, and loved it; for he had come to an age in which youth seems the most pathetic and beautiful of all things. Gradually this restlessness ceased. Eva sighed in her sleep, and the hand which lay nearest to him slipped down until it touched his bare arm. In its unconsciousness the action was as tender as a caress. He permitted himself to be conscious of the hand’s slenderness; but it seemed to him very cold. Gently, without disturbing her slumber, he lifted with his foot the blanket which she had lent him and pushed it over her. Then, lying still in the same cramped position, he settled down to think.

II

It was plain to M‘Crae from the noise of drumming which had filled the forest all that evening that some great festival was in progress at the Hill of the Moon. Lying awake in his banda, he listened to the sound. It accompanied, with its bourdon of menace, all the deliberations of that night. It was now evident to him that if a way were to be found out of Eva’s difficulties he must find it himself; and though he had fought his way often enough out of a tight corner, he had never been faced with a problem of equal delicacy. On the face of it, the matter seemed insoluble. In the first place, he could not count on James for any behaviour that was not admirably perverse. In any project of escape James counted for so much dead weight. Again, even if James should not return from his adventure on this night—and there was no reason to suppose that he would not do so—M‘Crae’s peculiar position as a man “wanted” by the German Colonial Government made it impossible for him to be a free agent. Here, as in most things, Godovius had the whip-hand, and however gallantly M‘Crae might have desired to play the knight-errant in the case of Eva, it would always be doubtful if her association with him could be of any use. It might even be better for her if he were to disappear, as a man with his knowledge of bushcraft might conceivably do, and leave her unhampered by his unfortunate association. But he couldn’t do that. For if he left her, only James would remain, and of what use in the world was James?

Thinking the matter over coldly and with deliberation, he regretted that he had not been able to hear the shameful suggestions of Godovius on the evening of the rains; for if he had heard him he would assuredly have shot him where he stood, and the world would have been rid of another wild animal, as savage as any beast in the bush but without any redeeming dower of beauty. He would have shot him. There would have been another murder to his account. But this time he would not have needed to change his name, to lie hidden in an opium house or ship furtively under a strange flag. No . . . the matter would have been far simpler. He would have stepped out into the bush a free man, and then the vastness of Central Africa would have swallowed him up, him and his name. He would have trekked to recesses where no European could have found him. He would simply have disappeared. Perhaps he would have lived for many years: the M‘Craes were a long-lived race. Perhaps he would have died soon and in violence: it would have made no difference. The life which he would have led would not have been very much more solitary than his life had been for the last thirty years, except for one thing—the fact that he would be condemned to it for ever. And here, even though his love for Africa was so vast and varied, he found that there was more to renounce than he would have believed. For many years, as he had told Eva, the memory of his early life in Arran had been nothing more to him than a memory: he had never really hoped to return to her misty beauty. But now, when he found himself faced by an absolute renunciation of the possibility of returning, he couldn’t quite face it. The sacrifice would be as final as death. For a short moment he was troubled by a vision of his ancient home: a day, as chance would have it, of lashing rain without and the smell of peat within. And he knew that if he did return he would have no more part or lot in the life of that remote island than a ghost revisiting the haunt of vanished love. For a little while the picture held his fancy: and then, imperceptibly, faded. The huge insistence of the tropical night, the high note of the cicalas, the whistling of the frogs rejoicing in the vanishing moisture of the rains, recalled him to the life which he had chosen, and he realised how imponderable was his dream. If he had killed Godovius that dream must have been surrendered. Very well . . . let it go. Even now it might be that he would have to kill Godovius . . .

He wished that he could smoke. Such meditations as these were less easy without tobacco. His tobacco hung in a yellow canvas bag at his belt, but his pipe was in his pocket, and in any case his hand was not free, for Eva’s fingers lay upon his arm, and she, poor child, must sleep. By this time his eyes were so accustomed to the dim light of the banda, now faintly illumined by starlight and the beams of the rising moon, that he could see every feature of her pale face and the gloom of her hair. He had never before been able really to see Eva’s face. In the daylight the candour of her eyes would have abashed him; he would not have dared to look at her eyes. Now he saw how much her beauty meant to him. If he should kill Godovius he would never see her again . . .

Against this final cruelty his spirit rebelled. It was not for nothing that he had been brought up in the hard creed of Calvinism. Here, even in spite of the new beliefs which life had taught him so bitterly, he found himself instinctively remembering the words of the Old Testament, and the brand of the murderer Cain, whose fate it had been to wander to and fro upon the face of the earth. So deeply ingrained in his mind were the teachings of his childhood that he was almost ready to accept this cruelty as justice: a kind of religious justice which decreed that if he were to save her loveliness from the defilement of Godovius he must relinquish for ever the one surpassing revelation of beauty which had crowned his wanderings.

Even so it seemed probable that he would have to kill Godovius. There was no other way out of it. At his side lay his rifle. The chambers were loaded with soft-nosed four-fifty bullets. He remembered the scandals which centred in the soft-nosed bullet in the Boer War. A bullet of that kind inflicted terrible wounds. That wouldn’t matter if only he shot straight: and there was no fear of his missing, for his rifle was almost part of his maimed body.

Eva stirred very gently in her sleep. She made a strange choking noise that was like a sob. M‘Crae’s fingers grasped her hand. He had never done anything like that before: but it seemed natural to take hold of the hand of a child who was frightened in the dark.