E. Phillips Oppenheim - "Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo"

John Richard Green - "History of the English People, Volume III (of 8)"

F. Jewell - "Little Abe"

Victor Appleton - "Tom Swift and his Wireless Message"

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.

The Gentleman

A >> Alfred Ollivant >> The Gentleman




"Thank-ye!" he called, pert and patronising. "Lucky shot!"

"Run, fool, run!" yelled Kit. "The sentry!"

On the crest of the hill, against the sky-line, the sentry was
kneeling as he took aim.

"What!--eh!--oh!--im?--blime!" and Knapp buckled to again in earnest.

The sentinel fired.

It was a long shot; but the man was a Grenadier of the Guard, and
picked at that.

Up went Knapp's arms, and down into the creek he stumbled, there to
fall on his face. Up again to run a little further; down once more;
turned head over heels; up again and out of sight.

Kit's heart rose and fell with the little man.

What to make of it?--was he hard hit?--or was he at his eternal
fooling once more?




CHAPTER LII


OLD TOADIE


I


He had no time for further questions. He must see to his own line of
retreat.

The Gentleman was winded, and nothing more. The opening of the drain
was discovered. No matter. It had done its work, or would have when
once it had seen him home.

He clambered up the bank, brushed through the tamarisk, back into the
comfortable darkness.

Thank heaven! Blob, the faithful, was still there.

He marked the cheerful gleam of the lantern, a tiny red spark in the
darkness.

As he shuffled rapidly along he saw the patch of light on the floor
beneath the man-hole.

But--was he mistaken?--or was not that patch, dim and dappled before,
bright now as the moon?

He stopped. His heart was thumping so that he almost expected the
covering drain to crack, and reveal him to the world.

Suddenly the patch vanished. All was darkness save the red eye of
Blob's lantern far away.

Then that too went out.

The blackness was stifling, horrible. He opened his mouth to draw
breath.

Then the light at the man-hole appeared again, shining now no longer
on the floor, but on a man's head, bristling, and with huge ears.

Some one was squatting in the drain.

His heart that had been racing brought up bump.

"Any one there, Toadie?" came a voice through the man-hole.

"Only the boy," rumbled the man in the drain.

The words woke Kit to his position. With a ghastly effort he confirmed
his mind and faced the situation.

There was one thing for it--to make for the opening, and trust his
heels.

Better to be shot down in the open, anyway, than killed in the drain
like a rabbit.

He turned round.

As he did so, a hand appeared at the opening, and swept back the
tamarisk. A smiling face showed at the mouth of the drain.

"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
In the forest of the night,"

came the voice of a playful ogre. "Did you ever hear of a man called
Blake, Little Chap? One of God's own."

As he said it, a door slammed violently; a great gust of wind rushed
past the boy down the drain.

Blob, the faithful, had obeyed his orders.

The boy was alone in Hell, and the Devil was stalking him.


II


Kit turned round.

Under the man-hole squatted old Toadie. The light bathed his hunched
shoulders, his receding forehead, his projecting teeth.

The horror of it, the darkness, here in the bowels of the earth,
hidden from sun and wind and light of heaven, undid the boy.

He tried to scream and could not. He battered madly at the bricks,
caging him like an iron destiny, and only hurt his hands.

Surely, surely God would hear him!

Toadie began to hop towards him--hop--hop--hop.

The boy was breathing stertorously through his nose, almost snorting.
The saliva was dribbling down his chin. He sank in a heap against the
bricks and said,

"Hullo!"

_"Ello!"_ came a deep voice. _"Feel sick?"_

"I don't know," giggled the boy, crouching limp on the brick-floor.

He knew now what those rabbits he and Gwen had ferreted with glee
felt, old Yellow Jack worming down the burrow after them.

Yes: it was nicer to ferret than to be ferreted.

Nicest of all perhaps to be the ferret and suck blood, suck blood,
suck blood, glued between the eyes of your victim.

Again the boy giggled.

The horror was passing. It was only a nightmare now, too terrible to
be true, and a familiar nightmare. To be hemmed in thus in darkness,
an ogre creeping in upon him, he just a throbbing heart and breathing
nostrils.... Often before ... in life, in death, in dreams.... He
didn't know, and didn't greatly care.... Time to wake soon.... Mother
or old Nan would knock in a minute.... This sort of dream always ended
in that knock.

He beckoned to the hopping toad, smiling. They might just as well be
friends. Mother's knock would disturb them soon enough.

A noise roused him from his waking death.

It was the shuffling of feet.

Old Toadie heard it too, and snarled across his shoulder.

"Who the hell's that?"

In the darkness there was a falling flash.

It was Blob; Blob, the brave, who had fulfilled his orders and more.
Loyal to his brother-boy, he had slammed the door as bidden, and,
himself, the wrong side of it, had come to Kit's assistance.

After all he was a boy, and was not the young gentleman a boy?--and is
not all the world against boys?--Boys that must hold together, or they
will surely all be lost. Kit heard and lived anew.


III


Before him in the darkness was a muffled tumult. Out of it came Blob's
plaintive squeak,

_"Give over squeegin"_

And the bass reply,

_"I'll squeege your eart out !"

"Hullo! hullo! hullo!--what's forrad there?"_ came the Gentleman's
echoing voice, as he crept towards them.

Kit scuffled down the drain, and tripped over a tumbling mass. It
writhed; it stank; it was hot; it had two voices that growled and
squeaked.

"Well done, Blob!" he panted. "Which is you?"

_"Oi'm me,"_ came a smothered treble from the heart of the
tumble.

The boy's hand felt a shirt, warm and wet.

"Is that you?" prodding with his dirk.

_"G-r-r, you young--"_

Kit slid the dirk home. He was surprised to find how smoothly the
steel ran in. It was not hard, then, to kill a man, and it was
strangely pleasing.

The man shivered and relaxed.

_"Is that old Toadie you've got there?"_ called the Gentleman,
crawling leisurely along.

"It was."

_"What you doing to him?"_

"Killing him."

_"Ah, well,"_ said the Gentleman, _"I never cared much for old.
Toadie. We weren't simpatico. If you care to wait a minute I'll--"_

"Can't," gasped Kit. "No time. Now, boy, hurry!"

Blob crawled out from beneath the dead man.

"Anudder pennorth for Blo-ub!" he gurgled, and added jealously, one
hand on the corpse, "He's moine. Oi killed un first."

"Never mind about that! This way."

There was one chance and one only. The door blocked one end; the
Gentleman the other; the only exit was the man-hole. They must risk
it.

"Here, Blob!--up here!--quick now!--give us a leg!"

Blob gave him a heave. Up he went into the light, like a cork from a
bottle. Staying himself on his elbows, he hung, half in the hole, half
out of it, the light dazzling him.

A roar of laughter smote him in the heart.

Blinking, he looked about him.

Above waved the sycamores, breeze-stirred and dark, and walling him
round, the Gap Gang.

Kit's first thought was to drop.

Two soft arms seized him from behind; a sickening breath was on his
cheek; a smooth face pressed his; and a fawning treble was saying in
his ear with appalling tenderness,

"Let ole George elp you, Lovey."




CHAPTER LIV


THE PARSON'S AGONY


I


The Parson stamped up and down the loft, gnawing his thumb.

Those long shots from the rear had ceased half an hour ago. A tall
Grenadier drooped across the wall. How should he have known there was
one in the cottage could reach out a fatal finger and tap him on the
forehead at two hundred yards?

The Parson's jolly face was haggard.

Now and then he peered out of the seaward window, listening. On the
knoll all was still. He could see nothing, could hear nothing. Blue
Knickers had withdrawn; he could mark no prowling figures. Only among
the tree-trunks a pale wisp of smoke meandered upwards, telling of a
camp-fire behind.

About him was the drowsy buzz-z-z of an August noon. A cabbage
butterfly sailed by. The creature's insufferable airs annoyed him. The
fate of Nelson, the life of a noble lad, these were nothing to it,
curse it for its callousness!

The minutes passed. The silence was so oppressive that he could hear
it. It stifled him.

What an age the boy was! Good heavens!--he could have got to the mouth
of the drain and back half-a-hundred times by now! What was the
delay?--Things must have gone awry! Yet how could they?--It was always
the way! There was no trusting any living soul but yourself! Why the
devil couldn't he be in two places at once?--It was _damnable!_

He pulled himself together with a jerk.

Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had
always most despised in a man of action.

A shout came to him from seaward.

A shot followed.

The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head.

In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert
beside the black square of the open trap.

Piper was stooping forward, one great hand curved at his ear,
listening intently.

"Piper!"

"Sir."

"All well below there?"

"Well, sir, I'm not justly sure. A minute back I seemed to feel like a
gush o wind--"

"Then hail the boy, man!"

"Boy Hoad! below there!" in stentorian tones.

The only answer was a rush of air through the open trap, and the
muffled slam of a door, house-shaking.


II


The Parson ran down into the cellar.

Blob's lantern glimmered on the floor, but there was no Blob.

He felt the door, cold to his hands as a corpse. It was shut fast as
death. The catch had snapped; but the bolts were not home.

His first impulse was to open; his second to refrain. A man with a
musket anywhere in the drain could not miss him. And he once down, the
door open, all was over!--the cottage stormed, the despatches taken,
old man Piper slain, and Nelson lost.

His ear against the clammy iron, he listened. Yes; outside the door he
could detect the sound of faint breathing.

A distance away, he could hear the scuffling of feet.

He saw it all. They had shot Blob, who lay without, breathing his
last. The door, left unguarded, had slammed, and they were nabbing Kit
and Knapp in the drain.

His hand was upon the catch once more. Should he go?--dared he stay?

His spirit wrought within him.

Strong man though he was, he was whimpering in the darkness.

To slink behind that iron door was eternal shame; to go was inevitable
ruin. Could he save his own old skin at the cost of that boy's? And
yet he could not get away from the remorseless fact that to save his
own skin might be to save his country.

His agony was short but terrible. The patriot prevailed over the man.
The discipline of twenty years' soldiering had taught him life's
hardest lesson--to sacrifice his feelings to his duty. He made his
choice, and chose the path that has always seemed best to Englishmen
in such case.

He slammed the bolts home.

He was up the ramp in a moment, and had banged the trap-door behind
him.

Old Piper turned from the loop-hole.

"Seems there's summat up yonder behind the trees, sir. I yeard--Ah!
what'll that be?"

From behind the knoll came a sudden holloa, then an uproarious burst
of laughter.

"They've got em, by God!" The old man swung his chair about with lion-
like eyes. "By your leave, sir, you must go to them lads."

The Parson was tearing off coat and cravat.

"I'm going.... I'll slip out of the dormer-window so as to leave the
door shut."

He sped up the ladder, and down again in a twinkling.

"Here are the despatches! If I go down, it'll take em ten minutes to
rush the place and give you time to burn the papers. Here are my
pistols! one for the first Frenchman, and t'other--well, you're a
better man than I am, Piper, you know what's right, but--"

"I'll trust my Maker before the Gap Gang," said the old man. "He'll
understand.... Good-bye, sir. God help you."

"He will," cried the Parson. "It's His battle. Good-bye, Piper. I'm
cut to the heart to leave you. But--"

He was up the ladder and out of the window in a moment, stealing
across the greensward, Polly in one hand, and Knapp's bugle in the
other.

No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures
retreated before him. All was peace, and the fair breeze ruffling the
sycamores.

The Gap Gang were at some bloody business behind the trees.




CHAPTER LV


PRETTY POLLY-KISS-ME-QUICK

Kit's life stopped short.

"That's one on em. Where's t'other?" growled Beardie.

"Oi'm here," said Blob, and thrust up, pink and impassive, in his
cheek an obvious slice of apple.

"That's right," said Fat George in sleek, caressing voice. "Give the
genelman your and, my dear. He'll elp you out. There you are! There's
no call for _you_ to be scared. _You're_ among old friends."

The Gang had gathered round the hole.

Beardie on his hands and knees was peering down into the drain.

Then he threw up his head with a savage roar.

"My God! they've done old Toadie."

He burst through the crowd at the boy, eyes and beard ablaze.

Kit, tight-clutched in Fat George's arms, shut his eyes.

There flashed before his mind a lonely figure, bound and buffeted in
the palace of a high-priest eighteen hundred years ago. He saw it,
patient among its persecutors, with the eyes of perfect vision, and
grew strangely calm and comforted.

These evil men appeared to him in a clearer, a purer light. For one
splendid second he was sorry for them.

"Father, forgive them," he prayed, and added aloud, "Good-bye, Blob."

The voice at his ear brought him back from heaven.

"Stidy, Beardie!--You're spiling sport. Ave the Mossoos twigged
anything up?"

"Nay," said Dingy Joe. "They're a'ter the naked chap."

"Then we've got this little bit o business all to ourselves, the
Genelmen o the Gap Gang ave. Let's take im up among the trees, and gag
im first."

Was God in heaven? would He allow it?

As though in answer, close at hand a bugle sounded.

The boy had a vision of a winged figure, sword in hand, swooping
wrathfully down upon them.

Surely he knew it--that swoop, that sword, that splendid rage.

It was St. Michael, the Archangel, in the famous picture by Guido
Reni, a copy of which hung in the drawing-room at home.

"Remember the crew o the Curlew, men!" roared a mighty voice.

The arms about the boy loosened.

"The sogers!" shrilled Fat George, and bolted with a scream.

The rest followed in cataract rout. They pelted past the lad,
bellowing, bleating: a tumult of arms, legs, aweful eyes in aweful
faces. Only Beardie had the strength of mind to aim a smashing blow at
the boy's head as he fled, and he missed.

"Make for the cottage, boys!" thundered the Parson, storming by. "Oh,
Polly, my love and my lady!" and his sword flashed and sang and swept
against the sky.

"Grenadiers!" rang an imperious voice from out of the ground.

Kit jumped round.

The Gentleman's head was thrust through the manhole; his eyes sweeping
the greensward.

Fighting Fitz had seized the situation in a glance. Could he thrust
his Grenadiers between the boys and the cottage, victory was his.

Lifting himself on his hands, his head thrown back, he sent the
singing voice that the veterans of the Prussian Guard had heard at
Marengo out of the cloud as Kellerman's Green Brigade roared down on
them--he sent it swinging over grass and knoll,

"_A la maison, mes enfants!"_

Kit did not hesitate. Dirk in hand, he leapt at the head flashing in
the sun. Here, in the heat and hell of battle, he had no thought of
mercy.

The Gentleman heard the patter of his coming, and swept about.

"Sold again, Little Chap!" he laughed, and bobbed underground.

The chance was gone. There was not a second to be lost.

"This way, Blob!" yelled the boy, and dashed up the knoll, making for
the cottage.




CHAPTER LVI


THE RACE FOR THE COTTAGE


I


And it was full time.

As he stormed up the knoll, he heard upon his right the clink of arms,
and the sound of a Frenchman shouting.

Down through the sheltering sycamores he plunged, and burst out into
the open.

A tall Grenadier, who had been sentry upon the shingle-bank, was
racing up on his right across the greensward, screaming as he ran.

His yells were of effect. Half a dozen ragged ruffians bobbed up from
behind the broken wall in the rear, and seeing only the boys, made
fiercely for them.

It was a race for the cottage; and the door of the cottage was shut.

That dead mask of wood stared at Kit blankly. Had it no eyes? no soul?
no understanding? was it not English, heart of oak, its life sucked
these centuries from the breast of the same mother? could it not
_feel_ his agony?

"Piper! Piper! the door's shut!"

"_Ay, sir, but it wun't be drackly-minute_," came a straining
voice from within; and the boy could hear the rending of torn boards,
and the splintering of terrific hatchet-work.

The Grenadier with set teeth and blue-black muzzle was launching
forward with huge strides.

Kit could hear the rattle of his cartridge-pouch flopping as he ran.

Would the door open? if so, which would reach it first?

"Faster, Blob, faster!"

"Oi'd run faaster, if ma legs would," panted Blob, lumbering behind.

He was doing his best; but he was no match for the fawn-footed
gentleman, who led him. Lumps of ghostly clay, inherited from a long
line of furrow-following ancestors, clung to his heels, impeding him.

Kit gripped his dirk and ran.

His eyes were on the Grenadier, a black and yellow fellow, with a wart
between the brows. That wart held Kit's imagination. It sickened him.
It was just his luck to have to deal with a warted man, when he had
always loathed warts! But for the wart he felt he could have been
heroic.

At the thought the tide of his humour welled within him; and the
Grenadier was amazed to see a smile in the eyes of this boy with the
long face, ghastly-pale, racing against him.

Taken off his guard, he smiled too.

So each ran towards the other, whom he meant to kill, with smiling
eyes.


II


The cottage door began to open slowly, so slowly.

The boy could see the old foretop-man in the darkened passage. A
hatchet was in his mouth; he was handling the door with one hand, and
his chair with the other.

So easy for a whole man to open the door, so hard for the disabled
seaman!

The Grenadier, hounding with huge strides, was already almost there.

"Man on your left, Piper!" the boy screamed.

"All right, sir!" mumbled the old seaman. "Give me cutlass room--all I
ask!"

He put both hands to the wheels of his chair, and spun out into the
open, hatchet in mouth.

As he did so, round the corner of the cottage swooped half a dozen
yelling cut-throats.

"Take the Frenchman, sir!" roared the old man. "I'll tackle these--"

With a wrench, he slewed his chair, spun the wheels furiously, and
shocked into the cloud of them.

The Grenadier launched at his back, bayonet at the charge.

"Coward!" gasped Kit, still five yards away, and flung his dirk.

It stuck in the ground at the man's feet, and tripped him. He plunged
forward on hands and knees, and gathered himself as a wave about to
break.

As he rose, Kit leapt on him, naked-handed.

The man was hurled through the open door, and brought up against the
inner wall with an appalling shock.

For a moment man and boy hugged cheek to cheek.

Kit's legs were round the other's hips, his arms about the other's
neck.

"Beast! don't bite!" he gurgled, as the man munched his shoulder; and
the image of Gwen, who when hard-driven used her teeth effectively,
rose before him.

The image faded. The man had the under-grip, and was squeezing his
soul out. Another moment, and his ribs must go.

"Blob!" he choked.

A dark something shot through the door and shocked against the
Frenchman.

"Where'll Oi kill him?" asked a voice.

"Where you like," muttered Kit, swooning.

A hand rose and fell.

The man relaxed his grip. Kit could feel him fading and fading away,
as the life oozed out of him. He was a-horse on Death.

"Assez," muttered the Frenchman sleepily, swayed and fell.

Dazed and dizzy, Kit staggered to his feet.

A shadow darkened the door; a strange voice cried in horrible triumph:

"_Our'n!_"

Two pistols lay on the table. Blindly the boy snatched both.

"Now!" he said, as one in a dream, and, shoving a pistol against the
man's bare and shaggy bosom, fired.

Blindly he stepped over the fellow's body, and out into the open.

A man, on hands and knees, was crawling away round the corner of the
cottage; another lay dead on his face across the way.

Before him he saw a little cloud of men, and the gleam of a silver
head thrusting out moon-like from among them.

Blindly he fired into the brown, and blindly followed up.

One man fell; others slunk away, snarling.


III


The whole thing was over.

Buzzing August prevailed again.

"Are you hurt?" sobbed Kit.

"No, sir, I'm bravely, thank you. Properly shook up, though." The old
man was heaving like the sea. "They'd no knives nor nothin, only one
on em, and Boy Hoad stuck him as he passed. They hurt emselves more'n
me. I bluv I'm a better man above the waist nor ever I were. All the
juice like goes to my arms now I've no legs--that's how I reck'n it
be."

"We must get in before they come again. Quick!"

"Ah, they won't come again, sir. Easy satisfied, the Gap Gang. Got no
guts because they got no God.... Ah, here's Mr. Joy!"

The Parson was coming across the greensward, high and mighty as a
turkey-cock.

The Gentleman was standing among the sycamores, laughing.

He waved his hand to the boy.

"Congratulations, Little Chap," he called.

"Don't accept em," snarled the Parson. "Posing impostor!--coxcomb!--
cad!"

"What! has he wounded you, sir?" asked old Piper.

"Pinked me in the calf, the coward!" snapped the Parson. "He's not a
gentleman. I always knew he wasn't!--Frenchified feller!"

He looked round with grim satisfaction.

"So you've been busy, too. I reckon they're half a dozen short o what
they were before the sally. And we've got our man through, too!"

He pointed across the plain.

From the foot of the Downs a string of Grenadiers were coming back at
the double.

They had no prisoner.




III

THE SHADOW OF THE WOMAN




CHAPTER LVII


THE PARLEY


I


The door was shut, and all once again darkness in the cottage of the
kitchen.

Something slithering along the floor caught Kit's ear.

Then he saw that Blob had by the collar the Grenadier he had killed,
and with groanings and pantings and strange animal noises, was hauling
his victim towards the dark mouth of the cellar.

"Leave him alone," called Kit sternly. "D'you call that a respectable
way to treat the dead?" He laid a piece of sacking over the corpse,
adding--"That'll do to cover him up till we can bury him properly."

"But Oi don't want un buried," whined Blob. "Oi be goin to keep un
agin the fifth o Novambur--guy for Bloub!"

"You're going to do no such thing, you disgusting little beast. You'll
get your tuppence, and you don't deserve that."

"Ah," said Blob cunningly, "this un'll be worth a little better'n
tuppence surely. You knaw who he be, Maaster Sir?"

"Who then?"

Blob dropped his voice to a mysterious whisper.

"Squoire Nabowlin. Mus. Poiper tall me."

"Who?"

"Squoire Nabowlin," reiterated the boy. "Nabowlin Bounabaardie--the
top Frenchie. See the legs on him! red and gold and buttons and all."


II


The Gentleman was sauntering across the grass towards the cottage, his
hands behind him.

The Parson brushed aside the mattress, and thrust out, snarling.

"Keep your distance, sir, or take the consequences."

The Gentleman strolled forward.

"Ah, there you are, Padre. I came to have a little chat."

"Stand fast then, and state your business!--This is war, not play-
acting. I hate your silly swagger."

"Well, in the first place I thought you might care to know that your
man's through."

"Thank you for nothing. Knew that already."

"But you know--there's always a little but in this world--hateful
word, isn't it?--but, but, but--he's too late."

"What ye mean?"

"I mean that Nelson reached Dover last night, and sails this
afternoon. The _Medusa_'ll be off here at dawn if this breeze
holds."

Dover!

The Parson had forgotten Dover. Chatham, the Admiralty, Merton! in his
note he had urged Beauchamp to send messengers post-haste to all
three; but Dover!

"That's all right," he called calmly. "I've a galloping express half-
way there by now, thank ye."

The other shook his head with a grave smile.

"It's sixty miles in a bee-line from Lewes to Dover, and plenty of
public-houses on the road. No Englishman could do it under eight hours
on a hot day. If your romance-man gets there by midnight, he'll do
well--and still be hours too late."

The Parson remained unmoved.

"It makes no odds," he called loftily. "If you want to know, Nelson's
not in England."

"Is he not? where is he then?"

"Why, where he ought to be--hammering the Combined Squadron somewhere
St. Vincent way."

"How d'you know?"

"He's my cousin on my father's side. I heard from his mother only--
only--"

"By last night's mail!" suggested the Gentleman. "May I ask then why
you trouble to send a galloping express to Dover to stop him?"

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