Albert Leffingwell - "An Ethical Problem"

Rev. Charles Kingsley et al - "Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet"

George W. Ogden - "Trail's End"

Henry Beam Piper - "Space Viking"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Major Vigoureux

A >> A. T. Quiller Couch >> Major Vigoureux




"Forgive me!" she pleaded, but her voice, too, betrayed her.

"You are not penitent in the least."

"As you are only pretending to be angry. Remember that I belong to the
'profession,' and no amateur acting can impose on me."

"You will admit that you have behaved abominably." The Commandant
conceded a smile.

"Oh, abominably!"

"And perhaps you will be good enough to indicate how I am to restore my
credit with--with those people. When I met them coming down the hill
and pulled up to salute, Miss Gabriel froze me with a stare, Mrs. Pope
looked the other way, and her husband could only muster up a furtive
sort of grin. 'Excuse me,' it seemed to say; 'things may right
themselves by and by, but for the present I cannot know you.' The three
between them knocked me all of a heap. Of course I could not guess what
had happened, but I made sure they had seen you."

"It was the closest miss that they did not. When they hove in sight I
was actually standing in front of our masterpiece, with my back to the
road; calling orders to Archelaus and Treacher, who were at work
stuffing _them_ (so to speak) with straw. I fancy they have forgotten,
on Garrison Hill, to guard against surprises. At any rate, we should
have been taken in a highly unsoldier-like fashion if Mrs. Treacher
hadn't kept her eye lifting. She gave the alarm, and we scuttled into
the bushes like rabbits, and watched while she held the gate. What is
more, I believe she would have fended off the danger if Sergeant
Archelaus hadn't sneezed; and then--oh, then!--" Vashti paused, her
eyes brimful of laughter.

"He broke cover?"

"I snatched at the tail of his tunic--hastily, I will admit--but until
he had stepped past me I had no idea he meant to be so foolish. It came
away in my hand. They heard the noise it made in ripping."

"But they did not see you?"

"No; for seeing that the mischief was done Sergeant Treacher stepped
out too. You should have heard them explaining to Miss Gabriel! But
they were quite brave and determined. They told me afterwards that
rather than allow one of the visitors to enter and catch sight of me
they would have picked up all three and carried them outside the
garrison gate."

"The Lord Proprietor will certainly hear of this," said the Commandant,
musing.

Vashti, who had bent to pin the sheet closer, lifted her head and
regarded him with a puzzled frown; then, averting her eyes, let them
travel under the foot of the sail towards the sunset.

"Decidedly the Lord Proprietor will hear of it," she said, after an
interval during which he almost forgot that he had spoken. "Indeed, if
it will help to get you, or Archelaus, or anyone out of a scrape, I
propose to call on him to-morrow and confess all. Do you think he will
be lenient?"

There was a shade of contempt in the question, and it called a flush to
the Commandant's cheek. He was about to answer, but checked himself and
sat silent, looking down at the foam that ran by the boat's gunwale.

"He must be worth visiting, too; that is, if one may reconstruct him
from--from them."

The Commandant smiled. "My dear lady, you have already made one attempt
to reconstruct him from them."

Vashti pondered awhile, her chin resting on her hand and her eyes yet
fixed upon the sunset.

"I give you fair warning that I am here on a holiday," she murmured.

"I don't know what you consider a fair warning; but I had guessed so
much."

"The first for fifteen years," she pursued; "and I won't promise that I
shall not behave worse--considerably worse. Are you very angry with
me?"

"My dear," answered the Commandant ("My dear," it should be explained,
is the commonest form of address in the Islands, and one that even a
prisoner will use to the magistrate trying him), "if you really wish to
know, I am enjoying myself recklessly; and it would be idle to call my
garrison to put you under restraint, since you have already suborned
them. I started, you see, with the imprudence of showing you my
defences, and now you have us all at your mercy."

"You have been more than good to me," said Vashti, after a pause; "but
the fortress is already vacated." She nodded towards a valise which
rested under the thwart by the foot of the mast. "Mrs. Treacher packed
it for me," she explained, "and her husband carried it down to the
boat. If Ruth needs me--as she almost certainly does--and if her
husband will tolerate me, I shall sleep on Saaron to-night."

"But you will come back?" he asked, dismayed.

"Certainly not, unless the Lord Proprietor drives me to seek refuge."

The Commandant did not answer. He had known that this happy time must
be short; he had known it from the first, and that the end would come
unexpectedly.

The wind had fallen slightly, and the boat crept up to the entrance of
Cromwell's Sound with sail that alternately tautened its sheet and let
it fall slack. The single bell of Brefar Church yet rung to service;
but the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the sea-lights were
flashing around the horizon before Saaron loomed close on the port
hand; and as they crept towards the East Porth under the loom of the
Island, a row-boat shot out from the beach there, and headed up the
Sound towards Brefar.

"Hush!" commanded Vashti, and peered forward.

But a boat putting out from Saaron at this hour could only belong to
Saaron's only inhabitants, and could be bound but on one errand. And
Ruth was in her, for, presently, as the children's voices travelled
back across the still water, Vashti heard Matthew Henry's pitched to a
shrill interrogative and calling his mother by name.

"They are rowing to church, the whole family," said Vashti. "We can
follow as slowly as we choose."

She listened a moment, but the oars in the boat ahead continued their
regular plash. It may be that Tregarthen had failed to discern the
small sail astern of him in the gloom of the land. She lowered it
quietly, stowed it, found and inserted the thole-pins, and shipped the
paddles. Yet it seemed that she was in no hurry to row. She but dipped
a blade twice to check the boat from swinging broadside-on to the tide,
and so rested silent for minute after minute, gazing through the gloom
towards the bright sea-lights.

And it seemed to the Commandant, seated and watching her, that he could
read some of the thoughts behind her gaze. His own went back again to
the night of his first coming to the Islands, when, as at sunset he
supposed himself to have discovered them, all of a sudden they
discovered him--reef after reef opening a great shining eye upon him;
and some of the eyes were steady, but most of them intermittent, and
all sent long gleaming rays along the floor of the sea; a dozen
sea-lights and eleven of them yellow, but the twelfth (that upon North
Island) a deep glowing crimson. Since then and for fifteen years they
had been his friends. Nightly he watched them for minutes from his
window before undressing for bed; and in fanciful moments they seemed
to draw a circle of witchcraft around the Islands.

If they meant so much to him what must they mean to her who had left
home, dear ones, and all memories of youth?--and who, returned from
exile, stood with her hand upon the latch of the old cupboard!

"Ruth will have changed," said Vashti, speaking aloud, but to herself.
"It is impossible that she has not changed."

She dipped her paddles and began to pull, gently at first and almost
languidly; but by and by strength came into her arms and the boat began
to move at a pace that astonished the Commandant.

* * * * *

Brefar Church stands on a green knoll close by the water's edge and
only a few yards above a shingly beach where the Islanders bring their
boats to shore. Its bell had ceased ringing long before its windows
came into view with the warm lamp light shining within; and the beach
lay dark under the shadow of the tamarisks topping the graveyard wall.
Vashti, not in the least distressed by her exertions, sprang ashore and
sought about for a good mooring-stone. She had found one almost before
the Commandant, following, could offer to help her in her search.
Together they hauled the boat a few yards up from the water.

"Are we to go inside?" the Commandant asked, looking up at the lighted
building.

Before Vashti could answer a reedy harmonium sounded within and the
congregation broke into the "Old Hundredth" hymn--

"All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice----"

The incongruity of it, sung by a handful of fisherfolk here on an islet
of the Atlantic--the real congruity (if indeed the Church be, as the
Bidding Prayer defines it, "the whole body of Christian people
dispersed throughout the world")--was probably less perceptible to the
Commandant after fifteen years' sojourn on the Islands than to Vashti,
newly returned from great continents and crowded cities. But if she
smiled the darkness did not betray her. The Commandant saw her lift a
hand beckoning him to follow, and followed her up the knoll to a
whitewashed gate glimmering between the dark masses of the tamarisks.

She opened it and disappeared into the churchyard. He followed,
stumbling along the narrow path, and overtook her at the angle of the
south porch. She was in the act of mounting upon a flat tombstone which
lay close in the wall's shadow. A panel of light streamed from the
window directly above, and fell on Vashti's face as she drew herself
erect upon the slab and leaned forward, her fingers resting on the
granite mullions; but a light not derived from this shone in her eyes a
moment later. With a little sob of joy she pressed her forehead close
against the leaded panes.

The Commandant heard the sound, and guessed the cause of it. The light
in her eyes he could not see. He stood among the dark nettles, looking
up at her, waiting for the hymn to conclude.

The "Amen" came at last. He heard the shuffling of feet as the
congregation knelt to pray ... and, with that, Vashti turned and bent
to whisper to him.

"She is there--almost abreast of us, standing by the pillar. She is
kneeling now--my own Ruth--and her face is hidden."

He supposed that she bent to step down from the slab, and he put up a
hand to help her. A tear fell on the back of his fingers, as it were a
single raindrop out of the night.... But she turned impulsively, and
pressed her face again to the glass.

"She is praying. She will not look up again.... She would not turn her
eyes just now, though her own sister stood so close! They were lifted
to the lights in the chancel and to the dark window." Then, as it
seemed, with sudden inconsequence, she added: "Forgive me, sir! You
have been kind to me, and it is so many years--so many years----"

"My dear," said the Commandant, gravely, as he handed her down, "you
honour me more than I can tell. All my life I shall remember that you
have so honoured me."

But it did not appear that she heard him. Letting go his hand, she
seated herself on the edge of the tombstone, and looked up at him with
eyes that, barely touched by the light from the window, seemed to him
strangely, almost pitifully childish--eyes of a child that had lost its
mother young.

"Her face was not changed, or a very little; far less than I feared.
She is beautiful, my own Ruth--beautiful as she is good."

"And happy?" he found himself asking.

"Happy and unhappy. Happy in her good man, in her children?--oh, yes.
But unhappy, just now, because they are unhappy and in trouble. There
was a gloom upon Eli Tregarthen's face, a look of pain----"

"Of anger, too, and of wonder mixed with it, I daresay. He has been hit
by a blow he does not understand."

"But we will help them."

The Commandant stared into the darkness. There was gloom, too, on his
face, had there been light enough to reveal it.

"The Lord Proprietor is a very obstinate man."

"Yes, yes; but I mean that we will help them to-night. I cannot bear to
think of Ruth carrying her trouble home and lying awake with it."

"Perhaps she will not." The Commandant remembered how he himself had
carried a burden to church that morning and left it there.

"Ah!" exclaimed Vashti, swiftly, guessing his thought, though not the
occasion of it. "That may do for you and me. For my part, I am not a
religious woman--I mean, not religious as I ought to be. Yet I
understand. Often and often when worried or out of temper I go to
church and sit there alone until peace of mind comes back to me. But I
have no husband, and you no wife; whereas with Ruth all her soul's
comfort is bound up in those she loves. While Eli Tregarthen wears that
look on his face, she can never go home happy."

"But have we power to lift it?"

"We will try, and to-night."

She stood up, cast one look behind her at the lighted window, and led
the way back along the path, through the gate, and down the knoll to
the beach. While she cast off the rope from its mooring-stone he eased
the boat off and launched her.

"Shall I take the paddles?" he asked.

No; Vashti would pull back as she had come; and as she pulled she
talked of Ruth, out of her full heart. He listened, between joy and
pain--joy to be sitting here, honoured with her confidences, though he
had none but a listener's share in them--here, in the still, scented
evening, caressed by her marvellous voice; and pain, not because her
talk charged life full of new meanings, every one of which he felt to
be vitally true and as certainly missed by his own starved experience,
but because it took him for granted as a kindly stranger, an outsider
admitted to these mysteries, and warned him that his time on this holy
ground was short; nay, that it was drawing swiftly to a close. And how
could he go back to the old monotony, the old routine?

He remembered that, to whatever he went back, it would not be to
these--at any rate, not for long. The future might hold degradation,
poverty of the sharpest, hard work for a pittance of daily bread; but
at least his dismissal would send him back to a life in which lay
somewhere these meanings that trembled like visions of light in the
heart of Vashti's talk. They gave him glimpses of the heaven which, by
their remembered rays, he must seek for himself. How many years had he
wasted--how many years!

They moored the boat close under the cliff's shadow, and, climbing the
rocks, between the cove and the East Porth, sat down to wait. Vashti
sat in reverie, plucking and smelling at small tufts of the thyme;
then, rousing herself with a happy laugh, she challenged the Commandant
to name her all the islets, rock by rock, lying out yonder in the
darkness. He tried, and she corrected omission after omission, mocking
him. What did he care? It was enough to be seated here, close with her
in the starry, odorous night.

Presently she tired of the contest, and clasping her knees began,
without warning given, to croon a little song--

"Over the rim of the moor,
And under a starry sky,
Two men came to my door
And rested them wearily.

Beneath the bough and the star
In a whispering foreign tongue,
They talked of a land afar,
And the merry days so young."

She sang it as though to herself, or as though answering the murmur of
the tide on the rocks at their feet; but at the third verse her voice
lifted:

"Beneath the dawn and the bough
I heard them arise and go--
But my heart, it is aching--aching now,
For the more it will never know."

The song died away in a low wistful minor, as though it breathed its
last upon a question. "The merry days--the merry days, so young," she
echoed, after a pause, and lifted her head suddenly.

"Hark!"

The sound--it was the plash of oar--grew upon the darkness. A light
shot out beyond the last point of Brefar, and its ray fell waving on
the black water. It came from a lantern in the bows of the Tregarthen's
boat, and as it drew nearer the two listeners could distinguish the
children's voices.

They shrank back there in the shadow above the ledge, as the boat took
ground and Eli Tregarthen, stepping ashore in his sea-boots, set the
lantern on the stones of the beach, lifted out the children, and lent a
hand to Ruth. The little ones scampered up the path; but Ruth waited by
her husband while he heaved the boat high and dry with his easy,
careless strength, and saw to her moorings. When all was done, and as
he stooped to pick up the lantern, she came to him, and put a hand on
his arm. So, and without speech, they went up the path together.

The rays of the lantern danced on the furze-bushes to right and left of
the path.... Vashti leapt to her feet; her hands went up to her lips
and hollowed themselves to a low call.

"Lul--lul--loo--ee!"

From the brake above came a little cry, a little gasping cry; and
gruffly upon it Eli Tregarthen's voice challenged--

"Who goes there?"

"Caa-ra! caa-ra!... Oh, Ruth--my sister!"

The Commandant saw Tregarthen's lantern lifted above the gorse, and by
the light of it Ruth came down to the narrow pathway--came with the
face of a ghost, as Vashti sprang up the slope towards her.

"Vassy! Not Vassy!-----"

But Vashti's arms were about her for proof. The Commandant, standing
below in the shadow of the brake, heard the younger sister's sobs.

"Vassy! And to-night!"

"To-night, and for many nights-----"

"Thank God! Thank God!"

The Commandant, by the light of the lantern which Eli Tregarthen held
stupidly, saw them go up the path, their arms holding each other's
waist. They disappeared, but their questions and eager, broken answers,
as they climbed towards Saaron, came down to him where he stood alone,
forgotten.

He stood there for half an hour almost. Then, as he felt the chill of
the night he recalled himself to action with a shiver, and shouldered
Vashti's valise. Slowly he climbed the hill with it, to Saaron Farm,
and rapped on the door.

Tregarthen opened to him, staring.

"I have brought your sister-in-law's luggage."

"Is it the Governor?... But won't you step inside, sir?"

"I thank you; no. It is late," answered the Commandant, curtly, and
turned on his heel.

As he went by the window he saw--he could not help seeing--Ruth in her
chair, with Vashti on the hearth beside her, clasping her knees. The
children looked on in a wondering semi-circle.

He stumbled down the hill, and as he went he heard the door softly
close behind him.




CHAPTER XVI

THE LORD PROPRIETOR'S AUDIENCE


Sir Caesar Hutchins, Lord Proprietor, paced the terrace of his great
house at Inniscaw, and paused ever and anon to survey the prospect with
a lordly proprietary eye. He had breakfasted, and at breakfast (to use
his own words) he always did himself justice. Indeed, throughout a
strenuous business career he had never failed to take very good care of
himself, and was now able to enjoy a clear conscience with an easy
digestion.

The reader may ask with some surprise how such a man, accustomed all
his life to the bustle and traffic of Finsbury Pavement, E. C., could
choose, in his middle age, to turn his back on these and purchase an
exile out in the Atlantic, where no one bought or sold shares, and
where only Mr. Fossell, perhaps--and he from a week-old
newspaper--caught an echo of the world's markets, whether they rose or
fell. But, in truth, Sir Caesar had chosen carefully, deliberately. He
had always intended to enjoy in later life the wealth for which he had
worked hard in his prime; and as soon as his fortune was assured, he
had made several cautious but determined experiments to discover where
enjoyment might abide. He had, for instance, rented a grouse-moor, and
invited a large company to help him, by shooting the birds, to feel
that he was getting a return for his money. But somehow his guests,
though very good fellows in London, did not harmonize (to his mind)
with the highland wastes. He was glad when they departed; the scenery
improved at once--at any rate, he took more pleasure in it. He tried a
deer forest and found this tolerable, but he soon made the further
discovery that shooting bored him, that is to say, all shooting of
higher rank that the potting of rabbits. He was one of those enviable
persons who "know what they like." If he made trial of these expensive
recreations, it was simply because he saw men ambitious for them, and
supposed they would certainly yield some gratification to explain it;
but, having made trial for himself and missed the gratification, he
abandoned them without a sigh. Hence his wardrobe had come to include a
pair of deer-stalking breeches, very little the worse for wear. (He had
never anticipated any satisfaction in wearing a kilt).

At another time he had owned a steam yacht; and this had taught him
that he liked the sea and suffered no inconvenience from its motion.
But from the yacht itself he derived small satisfaction after he had
shown it to his friends, and been envied by poorer men for possessing
such a toy. It might have been amusing to carry these admirers about
with him in extended cruises; but they, being poor, were busy and could
not afford the time, while his rich acquaintances owned steam yachts of
their own. Moreover, though unaccustomed to sport, he had always taken
a fair amount of exercise; his liver required it; and at yachting--that
is to say, sitting on deck in a comfortable chair--he put on flesh at
an alarming rate. Therefore, from this pastime also he retired.

Though these experiments were in themselves uniformly unsuccessful, he
had not made them in vain; but, keeping his wits about him, had arrived
by a process of exhaustion at some of the essentials of pleasure; and
this, after all, was not so bad for a man who had started with no
knowledge concerning it and with a deal of false information. He knew
now that he required exercise, that he could be happy in solitude, and
that his landscape would be all the better if it neighboured on the
sea. (Of his immunity from sea-sickness he was honestly prouder than of
anything his money had been able, as yet, to purchase.) He had scarcely
made these discoveries when the lease of the Islands came into the
market.

Then, as he read the advertisement in the _Times_ newspaper, in a flash
he had divined his opportunity, had seen a happy future unrolled before
him. His error hitherto had lain, not in exchanging Finsbury Pavement
for scenes where the free elements had play, but in seeking to change
himself and do violence to his own habits of mind and body. In the
Islands he could practice, as a benevolent despot, that mastery of men
which had given him power in the city; he could devote uncontradicted
to the cause of philanthropy--or with only so much contradiction as
lent a spice to triumph--those faculties which he had been sharpening
all his life in quest of money. They remained sharp as ever, though the
old appetite had been dulled.

He was a widower. He had no ambition but his own to consult; he alone
would suffer if he made a mistake--and he felt sure he was not making a
mistake. Though not given to day-dreams (Finsbury Pavement discouraged
him), he had an ounce of imagination distributed about his brain (few,
even among money-making men, succeed with less), and it had once or
twice occurred to him that a king's must be, in spite of drawbacks, a
highly enviable lot--at any rate in countries west of Russia. Well,
here was his chance.

He took it boldly; and to-day, had you asked him, he would have
acknowledged with a smile that he did not repent. All kings, to be
sure, have their worries. The army had not shown itself too well
affected towards the new reign. But when an army consists of three
soldiers....

The Lord Proprietor, gazing down from his terrace upon the twinkling
waters of the roadstead, caught sight of a row-boat coming across from
St. Lide's, and as it drew near, recognised its sole occupant for
Sergeant Archelaus.

He felt for his cigar case, chose and lit a cigar, and rested his
elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, watching, while the old man
brought his boat to the landing-quay, landed leisurely, and crossed the
meadow to the foot of the gardens, where, at the pace he was keeping,
one might allow him a couple of minutes at least before he re-emerged
into view at the foot of the steps leading up to the terrace. But, as
it happened, a bare fifty seconds elapsed before he came darting out of
the boscage and scrambled up the stairway in a sweating hurry, two
steps at a time.

"You shouldn't, Sergeant; you really shouldn't--at your time of life,"
expostulated the Lord Proprietor, kindly, withdrawing the cigar from
his mouth.

"Then you shouldn't keep ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he
gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank
against a pilaster and mopped his brow.

"Take care of that urn!" cried the Lord Proprietor, in a warning voice.
"It contains a _Phormium tenax_ that I wouldn't lose on any account."

"A what?"

"A New Zealand Flax.... The ostriches chased you, did they?"

"They did--the pair of 'em. It goes against a man's stomach, too, being
chased by a bird."

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