The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

She denied it hastily. There was a hint of pity in his question. All the time she was conscious of the scrutiny of his eyes from within their dark circles. She told him that she came from the Luguru mission, a mile or two away, and that her brother was there. She told him their name.

He said: “A minister?” as though he were uncertain whether the information suited his plans. It was ludicrous that a man in this extremity should pick and choose his host.

There followed a long silence. At last he spoke:

“Now I think I can manage. I mean I think I can walk as far as the mission. But I want to put the case to you, Miss Burwarton, for it’s possible under the circumstances that you won’t like me to come.”

“Whatever the circumstances were,” she said, “I couldn’t let you go.” She meant that ordinary humanity wouldn’t let her turn him away; but I suspect that she was clutching also at the shadow of a strong man in him, because his gentleness had shown her already that he could help her. She could not have abandoned him if only for that reason.

“Well, don’t be hasty . . . you shall judge,” he said. “I’ll be perfectly frank with you and I shall expect you to be the same with me. My name is Hare. If you had been longer in this country you’d have heard of me; and you wouldn’t have heard much good. A fellow who makes his living as I do is not usually an exemplary person. No doubt a lady would be shocked by my way of living. I don’t know any, so that is no odds to me. When your neighbour Godovius hears that I was here, and probably he will hear sooner or later, I shall find myself clapped into jail at Dar-es-Salaam. If only I had the use of my hands I could get out of this country. In B. E. A. they know me well enough. And I’m not “wanted” for anything I’m more than usually ashamed of. It’s ivory poaching. I’ve never been a great believer in any game laws: and particularly German ones. But I realise that I’m done . . . more or less. There are only two alternatives: to shelter with you at Luguru and fight it out, or to throw in my hand on Godovius’s doorstep. In either case I sha’n’t starve: but the Germans have a long score to settle with me, and I doubt if they’ll kill any fatted calves when they get me. The other is a fair sporting chance. If your brother can find it in accordance with his conscience to aid and abet a felon. . . . Well . . . that’s all.”

But already she was convinced that the felon was a man that she could trust. I think she would have trusted him if the crimes to which he had confessed had included a murder. “Whatever it had been,” she said, “I couldn’t have thrown him over. It was so pathetic to see such a strong, hard man as that absolutely beaten. It wouldn’t have been fair. And I felt . . . I knew . . . that he had been somehow sent to help me.” (She wasn’t ashamed of the words.) “Even then I knew it.”

Perhaps she did. I think most of the things which Eva Burwarton did were dictated to her by instinct rather than reason: but there was another factor which she possibly discounted, or did not realise, and this was the knowledge that this man too was an enemy of Godovius. It struck her that they were both in the same boat.

As for James . . . whatever James might think—and it was quite possible that he wouldn’t countenance the protection of a man who was “wanted” by the German authorities as a matter of principle, if not for the protection of the mission’s name—whatever James might think, she had determined to take this man and to hide him. After what had happened that night she felt that she couldn’t take any risks of being left alone to deal with Godovius. For all she knew, James might be dead by the time she returned; and the mere presence of another man of kindred race had made her a little easier. It is in the way of a compliment to our race that she had so quickly decided that she could trust a gaunt and battered wreck of an adventurer—for that is what it came to—just because he was British. She clung to the happy chance of their meeting as if it were indeed her salvation. And she wanted from the first to tell him all her story, as a child might do to any stranger who sympathised with its loneliness. That was why she couldn’t answer him at first. She didn’t know where to begin.

He mistook the causes of her hesitation. “Very well then,” he said. “I quite understand. I can shift for myself. And I am grateful for your kindness. I had no right to ask for more.”