Louis Joseph Vance - "The Black Bag"

Tennyson - "The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson"

Lucas Malet - "The Far Horizon"

various various - "The Belgian Cookbook"

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.

Earth\'s Enigmas

C >> Charles G. D. Roberts >> Earth\'s Enigmas




There was a long silence, while Desbra kept gazing on the mystic gleam
as if fascinated. At last Jessie made a move as if she thought it time
to return to the house, whereupon the young man, waking out of his fit
of abstraction, said slowly:--

"Do you know, it seems to me now as if you had been telling me an old
story. I feel as if you had merely recalled to my memory incidents which
I had long forgotten. I remember it all now, with much that I think you
did not tell me. Looking at that strange point of light I have
seen,--_did_ you tell me anything of an old man dying in a boat and
being brought to shore just as Marie was leaving for the ship? That is a
scene that stands out upon my memory sharply now. And did you say
anything about an old priest? I saw him leaning over the side of the
boat and slipping something into Mane's sack."

"No," said Jessie, "I didn't tell you any of that, though it all
happened as you say. Let us go home, Jack, it frightens me terribly. Oh,
I wish you hadn't bought that Marsh!" and she clung trembling to the
young man's arm.

"But what can it mean?" persisted Desbra, as they descended the hill.
"Why should I think that I was there when it all happened,--that it all
happened to me, in fact? My grandmother was of French blood,--perhaps
Acadian blood, for my grandfather married her, in the West Indies. After
the exile the Acadians, you say, were scattered all over the face of the
New World! Can there be in my veins any of the blood of that unhappy
people?"

Jessie stopped short and looked up at her lover's face. "Why, your
name," she cried, "sounds as if it might have been French once!"

"My grandfather's name was Manners Sutton," responded Desbra, musing.
"My father had to take my grandfather's name to inherit some property in
Martinique. I, of course, pronounce my name in English fashion, but it
is spelled just as my father's was--D-e-s-b-r-a!"

As the young Englishman gave his name its French accent and
pronunciation, Jessie uttered a little cry of intelligence and wonder.
She looked at her lover a moment in silence, and then said very slowly,
very deliberately, pausing for every word to tell.

"The name of Marie's lover, the young man who found the 'Witch's Stone,'
was--Pierrot Desbarats! D-e-s-b-a-r-a-t-s. You are none other, Jack,
than the great-grandson of Marie and Pierrot."

"Truly," said Desbra, "when I come to think of it, the name was spelled
that way once upon a time!"

"Well, you shall _not_ be a man of Destiny, Jack!" exclaimed the girl.
"I won't have it! But as for me, that is another matter. We shall see if
the 'Eye of Gluskap' has any malign influence over _me_!"


IV.

Early in December, having just returned to Grand Pre from their wedding
journey, Jack Desbra and his wife were standing one evening in a window
that looked out across the marshes and the Basin. It was a wild night. A
terrific wind had come up with the tide, and the waves raged in
thunderously all along the Minas Dykes. There was nothing visible
without, so thick was the loud darkness of the storm; but the young
Englishman had suggested that they should look to see if the "Star"
would shine a welcome to their home-coming.

"It is _my_ Star, remember, Jack," said his wife, "and it will be guilty
of no such irregularity as showing itself on a night like this."

"You forget, my lady," was the reply, "that the Star is now mine. The
Marsh has the Star, and my lady has the Marsh; but I have my lady, and
so possess all!"

"Oh, Jack," cried the girl, with a shudder, "there it is! I am sure
something will happen. Let us sell the Marsh to-morrow, dear; for now
that I belong to you I can no longer protect you from the spell. I had
forgotten that!"

"Very well," said Desbra, lightly, "if you say so, we'll sell
to-morrow."

As the two stood locked in each other's arms, and straining their eyes
into the blackness, the violet ray gathered intensity, and almost seemed
to reveal, by fits, the raving turmoil of the rapidly mounting tide.

In a few moments Desbra became absorbed, as it were, in a sort of waking
dream. His frank, merry, almost boyish countenance took on a new
expression, and his eyes assumed the strange, far-focused steadfastness
of the seer's. His wife watched, with a growing awe which she could not
shake off, the change in her husband's demeanor; and the fire-light in
the cheerful room died away unnoticed.

At last the girl could bear no longer the ghostly silence, and that
strange look in her husband's face. "What do you see, Jack?" she cried.
"What do you see? Oh, how terribly it shines!"

When Desbra replied, she hardly recognized his voice.

"I see many ships," said he, slowly, and as if he heard not the sound of
his own words. "They sail in past Blomidon. They steer for the mouths of
the Canard and Gaspereau. Some are already close at hand. The strange
light of the 'Eye of Gluskap,' is on the sails of all. From somewhere I
hear voices singing, '_Nos bonnes gens reviendront._' The sound of it
comes beating on the wind. Hark! how it swells over the marshes!"

"I do not hear anything, Jack, dear, except these terrible gusts that
cry past the corners of the house," said Jessie, tremulously.

"How light it grows upon the New Marsh, now!" continued her husband, in
the same still voice. "The 'Eye' shines everywhere. I hear no more the
children crying with the cold; but on the Marsh I see an old man
standing. He is waiting for the ships. He waves his stick exultantly to
welcome them. I know him,--it is old Remi Corveau. They told me he died
and was buried when the ships sailed away from Grand Pre.

"There comes a great ship heading for Long Island shoal. Cannot the
captain see how the waves break furiously before him? No ship will live
a moment that strikes the shoal to-night. She strikes! God have--No! she
sails straight through the breakers!--and not three feet of water on the
shoal!

"Two ships have reached the creek," continued Desbra, speaking more
rapidly. "How the violet light shines through their sails! How crowded
the decks are! All the faces are turned toward shore, with laughter and
with streaming eyes, and hands outstretched to the fields of Grand Pre.
I know the faces. There is Evangeline, and there is Jaques Le May,--but
why don't they drop anchor? They will ground if they come any nearer
shore! And in this sea--Merciful Heaven, they are on the dikes! They
strike--and the dike goes down before them! The great white waves throng
in behind them--the Marsh is buried--and the light goes out!"

The young man started back and put his hand to his eyes, as if awaking
from a dream. He caught the sound of his wife's sobbing, and, throwing
both arms about her, he stooped to kiss her hair, which gleamed in the
dark.

"What's the matter, darling?" he whispered, anxiously. "And what has
become of our fire?"

"Oh, Jack, you have frightened me so!" replied the girl. "You have been
dreaming or in a trance, and seeing dreadful things that I could not see
at all! I could see nothing but that hateful 'Eye,' which has been
shining as if all the fires of hell were in it. Come away! we will sell
the Marsh to-morrow at _any_ price!"

"But, dear," said Desbra, "the Star has gone out! There is not a sign of
it to be seen. All outside is black as Egypt. Look!"

Reluctantly the girl turned toward the window. She gave a little cry.
"That's just what you said a minute ago!" she exclaimed. "You said 'the
light goes out,' and then you came to yourself. I believe the dike is
washed away!"

"Well," said Desbra, "we'll see to-morrow." And they drew the curtains
and lit the lamps and stirred the fire to a blaze; and between the
shriekings of the wind they heard the roar of the breakers, trampling
the low and naked coast.

When morning broke over the Gaspereau hills, and men looked out of their
windows, every vestige of the dike that had inclosed the New Marsh was
gone. The site of the Marsh was much eaten away, and a bank of sand was
piled at the other side of the creek, near the mouth, in such a way as
to divert the channel many feet from its old course.

Thereafter the tides foamed in and out with daily and nightly clamor
across the spot where the "Star on the Marsh" had gleamed; and men made
no new effort to reclaim the ruined acres.

THE END.

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