The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

“I know other things. I happen to know exactly how much your pretence of immaculate virtue is worth. We have always known that the first characteristic of the English is hypocrisy. Do you think I don’t know all about the guest in your banda? No doubt the news would entertain your brother, who is already shocked by the morals of the Waluguru. A very pretty little romance, which has no doubt been more amusing to you than it would have been to him. I believe your missionaries are very particular on the point of personal example, and it is possible that he would . . . shall we say? . . . disapprove. Oh, but you need not be frightened. I shall not tell him, unless it happens to suit me. As a nation we are very broad-minded. We do not preach. And I do not condemn you. That is the most orthodox Christianity. It is natural that a young and beautiful woman should have a lover. It is natural that she should have more than one lover. I am gentleman enough not to grudge you your romance, even if I don’t altogether approve your taste. So, now that your pretence of indignant virtue is disposed of, there is a possibility that you will be natural. I am not unreasonable. I merely ask that I may share these distinguished privileges. Obviously no harm can be done. I am content to be one of . . . as many as you wish. Women have found me a lover not wholly undesirable. I am not old, or unappreciative of your beauty. Now you will understand.”

She understood.

“You have nothing to say? I have sprung a little surprise on you? Very well. I am sufficiently gallant not to hurry you. You shall think it over. A week will give you time to think. It is always a shock for a virtuous woman to realise. . . . But we will leave it at that. You will see that I am neither jealous nor ungenerous. You have an opportunity of doing a good turn to your brother and to the man in whom, to my mind, you are so unreasonably interested. One may be magnanimous. You call it ‘playing the game.’ You shall think it over, and then we shall come to an agreement—but you wouldn’t be so foolish as not to do so—certain unavoidable things will happen; as unavoidable as if they were acts of God. I am God here. And you will have yourself to thank. So, for the present, we’ll say ‘Auf Wiedersehn.’ Perhaps you would like to return to your friend in the banda. He will help you to make up your mind. You can tell him that this is a bad place for ivory. The elephants played the devil with my plantations and were all killed years ago. When he wants to go back he had better apply to me for his porters. As to whether he’ll have any further need for porters . . . well, that’s for you to decide. His fate is in your very beautiful hands.”

With this he left her.

CHAPTER IX

He left her standing alone under the avenue of acacia. A variety of projects swiftly filled her mind. She must go to M‘Crae, and tell him everything. It was strange that M‘Crae came first. She must find James without further delay and explain to him the difficulty in which she was placed. But it wouldn’t be easy to explain; the process involved the whole story of the fugitive, and she wasn’t sure that this was hers to tell. And in any case, James would be sure to misunderstand. She realised, for the first time, that her relation with M‘Crae actually might be misunderstood; and this filled her, more than ever, with a sort of blind anger which wouldn’t let her see things clearly. It overwhelmed her with shame to think that M‘Crae, too, must look at the matter in the odious light which Godovius had suggested. It seemed to her that the lovely innocence of their relation had been smirched for ever. She must have time to think. Now she couldn’t think at all. If she were to creep quietly into the house and shut herself up in her bedroom she would be able to cry; and then, perhaps, it would be easier. Beneath this awful heavy stillness of the charged sky she could do nothing. It seemed to her in the silence that all the enormous, unfriendly waste of country was just waiting quietly to see what she would do. Yes, she had better go to her room and cry. And then, before she knew what was happening, a demon of wind swept down from the sky and filled the branches of the avenue above her with rushing sound. A scurry of red sand came whirling along the path, and above her the black sky burst into a torrent of rain; rain so violent that in a moment her flimsy dress was saturated. Beneath this radical and alarming remedy for mental anguish she abandoned any attempt at making up her mind. She simply ran for shelter to the nearest that offered itself, and this was naturally the banda of M‘Crae.

She arrived, breathless, and beautifully flushed. M‘Crae was lying at the end of the banda next the path. She could see that he had been watching them all the time, even though he could not have heard them. Through the flimsy wall of grass he had pushed the muzzle of his rifle.

He smiled up at her. “You see, I had him covered,” he said. “Now you’d better tell me all about it.”

Then, quite against her will, she began to cry, making queer little noises of which she would have been ashamed if she had been able to think about them. It had to come . . .

To M‘Crae the position, in its sudden intimacy, was infinitely embarrassing. At any time it would have been painful for him to have seen a woman cry; but Eva was no ordinary woman in his eyes. She had brought, in a little time, a tender and very beautiful ideal into his life. He had thought of her as the incarnation of all the lovely and desirable things which had passed for ever out of his grasp, and chiefly of youth, which carries an atmosphere of beauty in itself. But even more than this, he had worshipped her naturalness and bravery, so that it was a terrible thing for him to see her in tears. He knew that no everyday trouble could have broken her simple and confident courage, and the consciousness of this adorable weakness overwhelmed him even more than his admiration of her strength. He saw in a moment what a child she was, and longed to protect her, as a young man and a lover might have done. He realised suddenly that the right to do this had passed from him, years ago . . . years ago. His eyes filled with tears, and he could do nothing; for the only things which he might naturally have done were obviously included in the prerogative of that parental interest which is the name under which the middle-aged man most often hides a furtive sensuality. Altogether, the matter was too harrowing in its complications for an honest man to deal with, and M‘Crae, as we have said, found himself in these days a mass of the most sensitive scruples. For all this he felt that he couldn’t merely sit there with tears in his eyes and do nothing. It was natural for him to put out his hand and take hold of her arm. Though she had often enough been nearer to him than this in her ministrations, he had never actually touched her before. Through the sodden muslin of her sleeve his fingers became conscious of her arm’s softness.