The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

“My dream,” he said, “while I remember it; for you were in it; we were both of us in it.” He told her how he had dreamed that they were walking together on a Sunday afternoon in the country to the west of Far Forest. A beautiful day, and they were going hand in hand, as they used to do when they were children. The road along which they moved was a grass-grown track which had once been used by the Romans. That afternoon it was full of people; but all the people were moving in the opposite direction, so that at last he had begun to think that they were going the wrong way. So he had stopped an old man with a white beard who was running back as hard as he could go, and asked him if they were on the right road. “Yes,” he said, “you are on the right road. But can you guess what the end will be?” Then suddenly, as he caught sight of James’s face, he had made a gesture of terror and rushed away. James would have stopped others of that running stream of people, but as soon as they saw him they covered their eyes and ran. “And although they were sometimes near enough to brush us as they passed,” he said, “it was just as if the whole thing were going on many miles away, and we were watching them from a distance: just as if they were in a different world or in a different patch of time.” At last they had come to a little crest (Eva knew it well) where the green lane falls to a valley through the slant of a grove of beeches. All the time the moving stream of people with averted faces never ceased, and at the bottom of the hill, where, in reality, the grass lane cuts down beside a stream into a piece of woodland, a sudden change came over the scene. It was night. People were brushing past them in the darkness. And instead of Shropshire it was Africa; he could have been sure of that from the peculiar aromatic odour of brushwood in the air. Between the branches of the trees above the stream a new moon was shining: an African moon all the wrong way round. Perhaps Eva had never noticed that the moon was the wrong way round in Africa? A man whispered as he passed them: “Hurry up, or you’ll be too late for the end.” They hurried on. There was no sound in the wood but a crooning of pigeons. In a clearing there stood a little church of galvanised iron of the same shape and size as the mission church at Luguru. However it had got there James could not imagine. It never used to be there. From the narrow doors of this church people were pouring in a steady stream like the sand in an egg-boiler. Both he and Eva were hot and tired, but they pressed on: for they felt that after all they might not be in time: and when they came to the door the stream of people, who covered their eyes, divided on either side of them, so that they could easily have entered. “But I couldn’t get you to go in,” said James. “You told me that you couldn’t bear to look at it. So I went in myself. A funny thing: the church smelt of Africans; it smelt like a Waluguru hut. And it was empty. Except for one man. And he was a European in black clothes—I couldn’t see his face, for his head lolled over. He was stretched out on the front of the pulpit, hung there with big nails through his hands. I called to you; but as I shouted it went dark. I’ve never had a dream like that before. It isn’t like me to dream. What tricks fever will play with a man!”

All the time she had scarcely been listening to him. “I don’t think you’ll dream again,” she said. She knew that this sort of extravagance was not good for James. Still, it was better that he should be talking excited rubbish than lying there unconscious. She tried to make him comfortable with a sponge wrung out in water and eau-de-Cologne. While she was sponging him he still wanted to go on talking; but she knew that it would be wiser not to encourage him, and a little later he fell asleep.

She left him: tired as she was, she knew that it was no use trying to sleep herself. She went out on to the stoep and sat there in faint moonlight under the watery sky. The night was chilly and she wrapped herself in a blanket, and sat there, thinking of that strange night and of the doubtful future until the black sky grew grey and birds began to sing in some faint emulation of the chorus of temperate dawns. She listened to them for a little while, and then, sighing, with fatigue, but strangely happy, went into the house.

She could not tell how long she had sat there. It must have been several hours at least, for a heavy dew had drenched the blanket which she had wrapped round her.

CHAPTER VII

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.