The slave ship
came to help me, to give me a kind of gleam.
I saw in a sort of moonlight how general was the problem, how general
and how deep, and how it allied with all other delays and struggles,
how they were all one, mere varieties of one another, and how both ill
and remedy might lay somewhere in that mysterious other-world called
“Within.”
I saw it, I say, as by moonlight, but it went then no further. Instead,
when I had been six months at My Fancy my soul entered Egyptian
darkness. Outer life went on as it had done, but within I sat in
blackness, and before me sat the Sphinx, and I did not move and she did
not move.
There was a bit of beach, a lonely place, that I haunted in these
months. At dawn I went to it to bathe. There were no great breakers,
but I swam and floated, and then came out and lay naked upon the
bone-white sand.
The sun rose, but my soul was dark and my mind a treadmill. And
there was a narrow estuary, sluggish water and shoal, winding between
mangroves. I came down through the cane to this and found a boat and on
winter days that knew far more heat than summer days in Scotland, rowed
myself up and down or sat idle in a shadow from the dismal growth. Here
and yonder stood a long-legged wading bird, motionless as I. Crabs
scuttled over the mud; at low tide the oysters were visible fastened
to the mangrove roots, the forlorn forest of them; where the soil was
firmer tall trees overhung the water that mirrored an azure, empty sky.
It was not so unlike Africa, but I lacked Rathbone Lace. I did not
want him; I wished now to be alone. Sometimes I rode into the hills
but not often. At long intervals I rode three leagues or so to the
nearest town, sat for an hour or two in the inn, wine before me that I
did not always drink, then rode back to My Fancy. But it was the house
itself, the house at eve when Atkins had said good night, the house in
the night time--I slept, then I waked. My room was large, with a bare,
stained floor, with a couple of tall presses, with three windows giving
upon the cane and the sea. I rose when I could not sleep and paced
this floor or took my station at now the one and now the other window.
Sometimes when the moon shone I opened my door and paced barefooted the
great upper hall or wandered in the vacant rooms. These windows were
closed. I returned and from my own heard the wind in the cane and the
surf upon the shore.
It was now the world, not one part of it but the whole.
It was now, _What am I and what is He?_ not a particular year and
plan in the so-called existence of a so-called David Scott.
It was a deep and large place, not the Slave Coast nor the slave ship,
nor Amory Hall, nor Daniel Askew’s, nor My Fancy, nor the _King
William_, nor the Tolbooth, nor Culloden Field where white men
shot one another down, though all of them were in that ocean and that
whirlwind and that mountain of fire.
The place was dark, the fire was dark. At times there were plains of
ashes and then I thought, “Why not kill myself?”
But I was not the kind to kill myself. Had I been so I should have done
it at Daniel Askew’s.
There I had been the slave. Now I was, so to speak, the master, being
manager for a master. There I had thought, “Why not kill myself?” Here
I thought the same. For all the worldly difference, the state was the
same.
I could leave My Fancy and I could leave the _Janet_. But others
would step into my shoes as I had stepped into theirs. I did not know
then what I felt, but now I know that I felt the General Man and his
self-destructiveness.
Up and down, up and down, I walked barefoot up and down. I walked the
long hall as it were the deck of a ship and saw the moon framed in
the western window, and each time I faced that way it was nearer the
sea.--As I walked the old Lykewake Dirge came and walked with me.
This ae night, this ae night,
_Every night and alle_,
Fire and sleet and candle light,
_And Christ receive thy saule_.
I read it with Mysie Johnston in the glen at home, and the bird was
singing in the thorn.--Then I was at Daga and in the Oil Palm village,
and a desolate wind howled in my soul. I saw the _Janet_, and
Fanny lying dead upon the heaped slave deck.--O Mysie Johnston and the
throstle in the white thorn!--O the gross, thick darkness!
To Brigg o’ Dread thou comest at laste.
It was not my own fortune but the world’s fortune. My own and the
world’s were one fortune, and it was bad.
From Brigg o’ Dread when thou mayst passe,
_Every night and alle_,
To Purgatory fire thou comest at laste,
_And Christ receive thy saule_.
The moon hung just over the sea. I stood in the window and watched it,
but my soul was away with the Sphinx.
If ever thou gavest meat and drink
_Every night and alle_
The fire sall never make you shrink.--
If meat and drink thou never gavest nane,
_Every night and alle_.
The fire sall burn thee to the bare bane.--
What was meat and drink?
“To do the will of Him who sent me.” That started out. Who sent me?
What am I and what is He? _The same, and I feel my own wounding?_
The fire sall burn thee to the bare bane.
The moon touched the sea. Cæsar began to bark. A voice outside was
calling. I went to the window at the rear of the hall and heard Dick
quieting Cæsar, then Atkins’ “What’s the matter there?”
“It’s a child very sick, sah. Maria’s child. She say for Jesus’ sake
give her some medicine!”
Maria cooked for us and lived just by the kitchen across the yard. I
called down, “I’ll come, Bob.”
A torch lighted the hut. The child lay contorted upon a mat on the
earthen floor. I thought it was poison and went back to the house
for remedies out of a big closet that looked and smelled a veritable
apothecary’s shop, then recrossed the yard and got the stuff at last
down the child’s throat, after which we made a fire and held him by it,
rubbing his body. The medicine worked, he vomited, the small twisted
frame relaxed, he opened his eyes, gasped and began to wail. Maria
gathered him into her lap, I gave him a spoonful of weakened rum; he
hushed, stretched himself, then curled into a ball and went to sleep.
“He’s all right now.”
Maria laid him upon the mat, then stood up. She was a slender,
charcoal-dark, dramatic creature. Now she raised her hands to heaven,
then spread them abroad, then curtseyed to me not once but thrice, each
time more profoundly than the foregoing, just as, I think, she may have
seen the young ladies of the North family practise for the Governor’s
ball in Spanish Town. “Thank you, master! Maria thanks you, master! May
the Lawd Jesus stand for you at the end! O Maria and Bob and Little Bob
thanks you, master! May the Lawd Jesus step up to the Big Chair and
say, ‘I was a little black boy and I took what was bad for me, and this
white man worked over me and brought me through!’--Yaas, master, what
you want you just say----”
David Scott went back to the great house. He had seen abundant small
kindnesses, abundant small, right actions through life. A kind of surge
of these everywhere and in all times came upon him. But there rose to
meet it a corresponding wave of cruelties and stupidities.--Something,
something was needed so tall that it saw through and over both and
built another sea!
I threw myself on my bed and slept and waked unhappy. I went down to
the mill and did a round of things, and then I rowed again among the
mangroves, and felt again oppressive night, more deep, more black than
before.
Another week and the time came round to drink and forget in a paradise
not without horror.
That two weeks was over. I came down to the sea at dawn, stripped and
plunged in and swam across to the reef. And here I sat and watched the
coming of the sun, and all the world was still and dry and empty to me.
After an hour I swam back to shore, dressed and came up through the
screen of sea grape to the road. A man walking by turned his face
toward me. A white man, rather tall and plainly dressed, with a long,
pale, quiet face, broken and made animate by very bright, dark eyes. He
seemed to have been upon the road some time, judging by the dust upon
him and his broken shoes and an air of not being fresh from bed and
ease. He carried a staff and leaned upon it when he stopped to greet
me. “Good morning, friend!”
I answered “Good morning!” and made to cross the road toward the My
Fancy opening.
“Can thee tell me how far I am from the town?”
“Three leagues,” I said, and noticed again his weariness. “Have you
been walking through the night?”
“Through much of it, friend.”
“Do you want breakfast? This is the My Fancy estate. If you will go to
the house they will give you bread and meat and coffee.”
He stood as if pondering, his hand upon his staff, his eyes level, then
raised. “Why, friend, if thee will I shall be grateful.”
“Come along then. I am going there myself. The family is from home.”
For a few paces we moved together upon the highway, then turned under
the huge cotton tree into the road through the cane. He looked at it,
on either hand, tall and waving in the early light.
“Thee grows so green and high! Thee, too, gives praise, and thy great
longing is to give full and innocent praise.” He turned his eyes upon
me. “What is thy name, friend?”
“David Scott.”
“Then, David, if thee did know how empty is my stomach, thee would be
glad thee has the means to fill it!”
“Why, hunger is hunger,” I said. “I have been hungry. ‘Thee’ and
‘friend’ and ‘David.’ Are you a Quaker?”
“So thee calls us,” he answered cheerfully.
“I have met two or three in my life,” I said, “and found them very good
folk. But there are few of you in Jamaica, and I seem to have heard
that you are not particularly welcome.”
He laughed. “Thy qualifying word is not strong enough! I have been five
months in Jamaica, and truly, David, thee is the only man, apparently
in authority, whose voice I have heard say ‘Quaker’ and yet continue
friendly. Thee is in authority?”
“I am manager of this estate.”
“If thee asks me to breakfast will thee not get into trouble with thy
master?”
“I do not precisely call him master,” I answered. “Besides, he is in
London.”
We walked on between the cane shaking in the morning wind. I did not
care if he were sectary, Jew or paynim. My likes and dislikes did not
depend on these things. Presently we met two great wagons and their
oxen with half a dozen men bound for the Five Trees field. Some were
riding, some walking, and all cheerful enough in the bright air and
free with “Morning, master! Morning, master!” We stood aside to let all
pass, and when they were by the Quaker turned and watched them into the
distance.
“I gather, friend David, that it is a kindly plantation. Good the child
in the arms of Giant Ill.”
I did not answer. The house now rose before us, and from the rear was
blown a great conch shell.
“That sounds sweetly!” he said. “I do not suppose thee has been in
Africa?”
“Yes, I have. Many times.”
He looked surprised. “As a trader?”
“Yes. On the slave ship _Janet_.”
Checking his long, deliberate stride, he stood under a palm--we now
had left the cane--and looked at me with a new interest, but hardly a
flattering one. “Ah!” he said. “And what made thee do that?”
I answered, “Needs must when the devil drives.”
“Is thee sure he drives?”
“Not wholly but sufficiently sure,” I answered and preceded him up the
ten stone steps to the door.
At breakfast I proposed to him that he rest with us until to-morrow.
He was evidently footsore, had been walking, he said, for the better
part of a week. Now and then he met with a lift but not often. In the
town to which he was making lived a brother Friend who could give him