Edward turned to Delgado’s note-book. The last day’s work was entered properly in an evidently fresh ink, that of the previous two days looking proportionately blacker and older. There could be very little doubt, indeed, which of the two posted his books daily with the greater care and accuracy.
He heard the case out patiently and temperately, in spite of Delgado’s occasional wild outbursts and Tom Dupuy’s constant sneers, and at the end he proceeded to deliver judgment as calmly as he was able, without prejudice. It was a pity that the first case he heard should have been one which common justice compelled him to give against Tom Dupuy, but there was no helping it. ‘The court enters judgment for the plaintiff,’ he said in a loud clear voice. ‘Delgado’s books, though unfortunately kept only in Arabic for his own reference, have been carefully and neatly posted.—Yours, Mr Dupuy, I regret to say, are careless, inadequate, and inaccurate; and I am also sorry to see that the case was heard in the first instance by one of your own near relations, which circumstance, it would have been far wiser, as well as more seemly, to have avoided.’
Tom Dupuy grew red and pale by turns as he listened in blank surprise and dismay to this amazing and unprecedented judgment. A black man’s word taken in evidence in open court against a white gentleman’s! It was too appalling! ‘Well, well, Uncle Theodore,’ he said bitterly, rising to go, ‘I expected as much, though it’s hard to believe it. I knew we should never get decent justice in this court any longer!’
But Delgado stood there, dazed and motionless, gazing with mute wonder at the pale face of the new judge, and debating within himself whether it could be really true or not that he had gained his case against the powerful Dupuy faction. Not that he understood for a moment the exact meaning of the legal words, ‘judgment for the plaintiff;’ but he saw at once on Tom Dupuy’s face that the white man was positively livid with anger and had been severely reprimanded. ‘De Lard be praise!’ he ejaculated at last. ‘De judge is righteous judge, an’ him lub de black man!’
Edward would have given a great deal just then if Delgado in the moment of his triumph had not used those awkward words, ‘him lub de black man!’ But there was no use brooding over it now; so, as the court was clearing he merely signed with his finger to Delgado, and whispered hastily in his ear: ‘Come to me this evening in my own room; I want to hear from you how and where you learned Arabic.’
CHAPTER XXI.
When Edward made his way, wearied and anxious, into his own room behind the courthouse, Delgado was waiting for him there, and as the judge entered, he rose quickly and uttered a few words of customary salutation in excellent Arabic. Edward Hawthorn observed at once that a strange change seemed to have come over the ragged old negro. He had lost his slouching, half-savage manner, and stood more erect, or bowed in self-respecting obeisance, with a certain obvious consciousness of personal dignity which at once reminded him of Sheik Abdullah. He noticed, too, that while the man’s English was the mere broken Creole language he had learned from the other negroes around him, his Arabic was the pure colloquial classical Arabic of the Cairo ulemas. It was astonishing what a difference this change of tongue made in the tattered old black field-labourer: when he spoke English, he was the mere ordinary plantation negro; when he spoke Arabic, he was the decently educated and perfectly courteous African Moslem.
‘You have quite surprised me, Delgado,’ Edward said, still in colloquial Arabic. ‘I had no idea there were any Africans in Trinidad who understood the language of the Koran. How did you ever come to learn it?’
The old African bowed graciously, and expanded his hands with a friendly gesture. ‘Effendi,’ he answered, ‘Allah is not wholly without his true followers in any country. Is it not written in your own book that when Elijah, the forerunner of the Prophet, cried in the cave, saying: “I alone am left of the worshippers of Allah,” the Lord answered and said unto him in his mercy: “I have left me seven thousand souls in Israel which have not bowed the knee to Baal?” Even so, Allah has his followers left even here among the infidels in Trinidad.’
‘Then you are still a Mussulman?’ Edward cried in surprise.