Tacitus - "The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus"

Amy E. Blanchard - "Little Maid Marian"

Frank Chouteau Brown - "Letters and Lettering"

Horace - "The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos"

Editorial
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 Great Amulet

M >> Maud Diver >> The Great Amulet



THE GREAT AMULET

by

MAUD DIVER







"Love is the greatest Amulet that makes this world a garden: and 'Hope
comes to all' outwears the accidents of life; and reaches with
tremulous hands beyond the grave and Death."

--R. L. S.


"Four things come not back to man or woman: the sped arrow; the spoken
word; the past life; and the neglected opportunity."

--Omar El Khuttub.




THE GREAT AMULET

by

MAUD DIVER

Author of "Captain Desmond, V.C."

Shilling Edition




William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
MCMXV
All rights reserved




_THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO_

_TRIX FLEMING_


_IN MEMORY OF DALHOUSIE DAYS._


Let thy heart see that still the same
Burns early friendship's sacred flame,
The affinities have strongest part
In youth, to draw men heart to heart:
As life draws on, and finds no rest,
The individual in each breast
Is tyrannous to sunder them.

--Rossetti.




CONTENTS.


PROLOGUE


BOOK I.

AFTER FIVE YEARS


BOOK II.

JUST IMPEDIMENT


BOOK III.

THE TENTS OF ISHMAEL


BOOK IV.

THE VALLEY OF DECISION




THE GREAT AMULET.


PROLOGUE.

I.

"The little more, and how much it is!
The little less, and what worlds away."
--Browning.


No one in Zermatt dreamed that a wedding had been solemnised in the
English church on that September afternoon of the early eighties.
Tourists and townsfolk alike had been cheated of a legitimate thrill of
interest and speculation. Nor would even the most percipient have
recognised as bride and bridegroom the tall dark Englishman, in a rough
shooting suit, and the girl, in simple white travelling gear, who stood
together, an hour later, on the outskirts of the little town, and took
leave of their solitary wedding guest:--an artist _cap-a-pie_;
velveteen coat, loosely knotted tie, and soft felt hat complete.

In this Bohemian garb Michael Maurice,--as the bride's brother,--had
led his sister up the aisle, and duly surrendered her to Captain Lenox,
R.A., serenely unaware, the while, of censorious side-glances bestowed
upon him by the ascetic-featured chaplain, who had an air of
officiating under protest, of silently asserting his own aloofness from
this hole-and-corner method of procedure. But his attitude was
powerless to affect the exalted emotion of that strange half-hour,
wherein, by the repetition of a few simple, forcible words, a man and
woman take upon themselves the hardest task on earth with a valiant
assurance which is at once pathetic and sublime.

To Quita Maurice, impressionable at all times, the absence of ceremony,
of those trivialities which obscure and belittle the one supreme fact,
gave an added solemnity to the unadorned service: forced upon her a
half-disturbing realisation that she was passing from an independence,
dearer to her than life, into the keeping of a man:--a man of whom she
knew little beyond the fact that he loved her with a strength and
singleness of heart which is the heritage of those who reach life's
summit without indulging in emotional excursions by the way.

And now all needful preliminaries were over; even to the wedding
breakfast, a cheerful, casual meal of cold chicken, iced cake, and a
bottle of champagne, served in Maurice's unpretentious rooms, on the
pastry-cook's second floor.

The scene of their brief courtship lay behind them, dozing in the
golden stillness of late September: before them a footpath climbed
through a forest of pine and fir to the Eiffel Alp Hotel; and on all
sides multitudinous mountains flung heroic contours outward and upward,
to a galaxy of peaks, that glittered diamond-bright upon a turquoise
sky. A mule, ready-saddled, champed his bit at a respectful distance
from the trio: for Lenox, an indefatigable mountaineer, had insisted on
taking the footpath up to the Eiffel; where they would spend ten days,
before crossing into Italy, and so on to Brindisi, _en route_ for his
station in India.

The expiration of his leave, and his determination to take Quita
Maurice back with him, were responsible for the brevity of their
engagement, and for the absence, in both, of that brand-new aspect
which proclaims a bride and bridegroom to an eternally interested world.

For this last Eldred Lenox was abundantly grateful. All the Scot in
him asserted itself in a fierce reticence, an inbred sense of privacy
where a man's deepest feelings were concerned: and now, as he stood
battling with his impatience to be gone, he was suffering acute
discomfiture from the demonstrative leave-taking in progress between
Maurice and his sister. For their sakes, at least, he would fain have
effaced himself: while they, as a matter of fact, were momentarily
oblivious of his existence.

Artists both, of no mean quality, they had lived and worked together
for five years, since the day when Michael had rented his first modest
studio in the King's Road, Chelsea: and, setting aside Art, his feeling
for Quita was the one serious element in a nature light and variable as
a summer cloud. From his French mother he derived an elastic spirit
that yielded itself to the emotion of the passing moment; and Lenox,
watching him, marvelled at the sharp dividing-lines drawn between the
different races of earth.

He half resented such facility of self-expression. Possibly he envied
it: though no doubt he would have denied the impeachment with an oath.

Eventually it occurred to Maurice that he could not well stand in the
roadway till sunset, taking leave of the sister he was so loth to lose,
and, with a sigh of exasperation, he pushed her gently towards her
husband.

"_Voila, cherie_, . . . enough of my endless adieux, or _ce bon_ Lenox
may be tempted to break the sixth commandment on my account, in
addition to the eighth."

Lenox smiled tolerantly down from six feet of height upon his slim,
fair brother-in-law.

"That temptation should be your own prerogative, my dear fellow, since
I am taking her from you for good."

Maurice laughed.

"_Mon Dieu_, yes. You have certainly given me a fair excuse to hate
you. And I have wondered more than once, in the last three months, why
one could not manage it."

"Too fatiguing for a man of your calibre!" the other answered with
good-humoured bluntness. "You could never be bothered to keep it up."

"Ah, _mon ami_, you men who speak little speak to the point! You are
altogether too discerning. But for Quita's sake, at least, we could
never be otherwise than firm friends. With all my heart I wish good
fortune to you both, and count the days to your return."

The two men shook hands cordially: and Lenox, beckoning the muleteer,
lifted his wife into the saddle; thus averting a final demonstration.
She waved her hand to a blurred vision of her brother, smiling
resolutely, till his back was turned: and he departed townward;--a
lonely brown figure, to which a slight stoop of the shoulders lent an
added air of pathos.

Quita sat looking after him, her stillness belying the clash of
emotions at her heart.

That vanishing figure on the sunlit road stood for all that she knew
and loved best in the world: for Art, independence, good comradeship:
for the happy, irresponsible, hand-to-mouth life of Bohemia: for the
Past, dear and familiar, as a well-loved voice: while the quiet man at
her side,--whose mere presence suggested latent force, and gave her a
sense of protection wholly new to her,--stood for the Future; the
undiscovered country, peopled with possibilities, dark and bright. And
Quita Lenox, being blest, or curst, with the insight and detached
spirit of the artist, saw clearly that the Great Experiment held, for
her, a large element of hazard; that she had staked her all upon a turn
of the wheel, with what resulting Time alone could show.

Her husband's hand on her arm brought reflection abruptly to an end.

"He is almost out of sight now," Lenox said quietly. "And I think it's
time we made a start. Will you come?"

She turned to him at once, with a smile whose April quality heightened
its charm.

"Of course I will; and gladly. Don't think me horrid, Eldred. I have
always been frank with you, haven't I? And . . . it _is_ a wrench
leaving Michael to live and work alone."

"I quite understand that: and I value your devotion to him for selfish
reasons. It proves what you may be capable of feeling . . . for me,
one of these days."

The mingled dignity and humility of his tone so moved her that her only
answer was an impulsive pressure of the hand resting on her arm: and
they went forward for a long while without further speech, the muleteer
having set off for the summit by a series of short cuts known to his
kind.

Before long massed pines were above and below them; their jagged stems
and branches sharply imprinted on stretches of sunlit glacier, and on
the pathway in mottled patches of shadow.

Eldred Lenox walked close to his wife, one hand resting on the crupper
behind her. The man's intensity of feeling did not rise readily to the
surface; and a certain proud sensitiveness, the cardinal weakness of
big natures, withheld him from the full expression of an emotion to
which she could not adequately respond. He was content to wait, and
hope; and in the meanwhile, he walked at her side wrapt in the mere joy
of possession; one of the strongest, yet least recognised passions of a
man's heart. From time to time he glanced at her attentively; and each
glance strengthened his faith in that which had come upon him, sudden
as an earthquake, and no less subversive of ancient landmarks, of
confirmed prejudices and convictions in regard to the woman element in
man's life.

For Quita Lenox, though far from beautiful, in the accepted sense, was
undeniably good to look at. Coils of soft hair, golden in the sun,
brown in the shade; eyes neither grey nor green, intensified by
unusually large pupils, and by brows and lashes almost black; a
straight nose, low at the root; a mouth too long, too mobile for
beauty, its emotional quality safeguarded by an uncompromising chin,
completed a face whose charm lay in no particular excellence of
details; but in the vivid spirit,--quick to see, to feel, to
understand,--that informed and harmonised a somewhat contradictory
whole. An abiding sense of humour, hovering about her lips and in her
eyes, kept the world sane and sweet for her, and leavened her whole
outlook on life. A minor quality completed her charm. By virtue of
the French blood in her veins, she imparted, even to the simplest
garments, an air of distinction, of exquisite finish, to which an
Englishwoman rarely attains.

At three-and-twenty Quita Lenox was very artist, though not, as yet,
very woman. The complex Ego, which is the keystone of Art, had not
been tested and dominated by the great simple forces, which are the
keystone of life.

But her husband was in no mood to analyse her appearance, or her charm.
He wanted beyond all things to know what was passing in her mind, and
because his own thoughts were too passionate for utterance, he waited
for her to speak. But for the first time in his knowledge of her, he
waited in vain. Protracted silence on her part was a phenomenon so
unusual, that at length he turned to her definitely, a shadow of
misgiving in his clear Northern eyes.

"Are you thinking over it all very seriously . . . now that it is done
past undoing?"

He smiled in speaking, and she met his look with her accustomed
frankness.

"And if I am . . . ? Surely that service gives one food for
reflection. I had not so much as looked at it since early days when
curiosity impelled me to read it through; and weddings have never been
in my line. As a matter of fact, I was thinking just then what
unaccountable creatures we men and women are! How we ponder, and
debate, and fuss over trifles, and then plunge headlong past the big
turning-points of life, without a thought of the consequences lurking
round the corner. Which doesn't mean that you and I need spell our
consequences with a capital C, or label them tragic in advance," she
added with a laugh. "For honestly, it seems to me that a rising
artist, and a rising explorer, both devout worshippers of the eternal
hills, may reasonably expect to possess many ideas and interests in
common: and those are the bricks out of which two people build their
House of Happiness, _n'est-ce pas, mon ami_?"

"Yes; if you choose to leave mutual trust, and mutual devotion, out on
the doorstep."

"I don't choose: only, they are not the bricks, Eldred. One is the
foundation-stone; and the other,--the other is a great mysterious
Something, that transforms the House into an enchanted palace. But we
must be content to begin with the House,--do you see?"

"Yes--I see. I am abundantly content to begin on any terms."

Something in the man's tone impelled her to lean outward a little, so
that her shoulder rested lightly against the arm passed behind her.

"You are much too good to me, dear," she said softly. "I don't think
one could possibly live with you and fail to love you. That is why I
have dared to take the risk."

He did not answer in words, nor did he give her the kiss she half
expected; but his hand deserted the crupper, and the mule pricked a
velvet ear at the check in his progress. Then Quita straightened
herself, as if reasserting her cherished independence.

"After all, it is more interesting, in some ways, not to have
everything cut and dried from the start," she went on, striking off at
a tangent, with an innate perversity incomprehensible to a mere man.
"It prevents a headlong fall into the commonplace: and there is a
certain excitement in looking on, so to speak, at one's own personal
drama, without feeling quite sure of its developments."

Lenox knitted his brows. He could not always keep pace with her more
fantastic moods.

"Quita, are you talking nonsense?" he asked with a touch of irritation.

"No."

"Well, I wish you were. I don't like that sort of attitude towards
serious things; and I don't understand what you mean about looking on
at one's own life. It sounds brutally detached, not to say
egotistical."

"That is because you only climb mountains and handle men, _mon cher_,
instead of trying to paint them, or translate them into verse. You are
spared the artist's complication of a dual personality; of two souls
imprisoned in one body; the one who enjoys, and loves, and suffers; and
the one who looks on, and picks every emotion to pieces. I am afraid
the one you disapprove of has had the upper hand in me so far. Perhaps
it is your mission to develop the other into a healthier state of
activity."

"I hope to Heaven it may be," her husband answered fervently. "The
present state of things strikes me as a trifle inhuman."

"But indeed I am not inhuman! Only . . . we have still a good deal to
learn about one another, Eldred, although we are man and wife. You
confess to an amazing ignorance of women; while my own varied
experience of men has lain chiefly among 'the sayers of words'; and one
can hardly class you under that heading!"

"Good Lord, no! I should hope not."

Quita threw up her head and laughed outright.

"Really, Eldred, you are delightful!"

"Glad to hear it," Lenox replied, a shade of sarcasm in his tone.
"It's the first time I have been accused of such a thing."

He quickened his pace; and she, divining a slight jar in the
atmosphere, said no more. The supreme art in human intercourse is the
art of punctuation, and in the long pause that ensued, silence
accomplished her perfect work.

Higher up they emerged on an open space of roadway, where the pines
came abruptly to an end; and the path shelved sheer from its broken
railing to the Visp Valley below. Instinctively Quita drew rein and
drank in every detail of the vision before her with the wordless
satisfaction that is the hall-mark of the true Nature-worshipper.
Lenox stood quietly at her side, his gaze riveted on her face. He had
seen many mountains, giants among their kind; but never till now had he
beheld the glory of them reflected in a woman's eyes. At that moment
they seemed the only sentient things in a world of rock, and snow, and
sunshine. It was as if the round earth, and the pillars thereof, had
been made for them, and them alone.

Above the road a weather-beaten hut struck an isolated note of life,
and across the valley Matterhorn towered,--solitary, superb,--his
rugged head and shoulders thrust heavenward through a diaphanous scarf
of cloud. Suddenly Quita Lenox fronted her husband, and his face
softened to a smile that hovered in the eyes an appreciable time before
it reached his lips.

"_A la bonheur_!" she said, smiling back at him. "We will break our
journey here. You can tether 'Modestina' to that stump. I must do a
rough sketch of this, and put in notes for colouring, while you sit
beside me and smoke, and talk. When it's complete, I'll present it to
you as a memento of to-day. Will that suit you?"

"Rather!"

He lifted her from the saddle, in defiance of her laughing protest,
and, holding her at arm's length, looked long and steadily into her
eyes, as though he would reach and capture, by force of will, the
elusive spirit that lived in their depths.

It was in these rare moments of revelation that Quita was troubled by a
disconcerting sense of exchanging false coin for gold. She tried to
free herself from his grasp; and the colour deepened in her cheeks.

"Eldred,--let me go!" she said, with something less than her wonted
assurance. "It frightens me when you look right into me like that."

"Frightens you? Dearest, . . . what nonsense!" But for once he
disregarded her behest.

"It's not nonsense. It makes me see too clearly the chained-up forces
hidden under that surface quietness of yours. I think you might be
rather terrible if they ever broke loose."

He laughed abruptly, and let her go.

"I keep them chained up, I promise you: and they are never likely to do
you any harm. Now, begin upon your picture, and don't alarm yourself
about nothing."

She watched him thoughtfully as he led "Modestina" away, and tethered
her to a pine stump. It needed small discernment to perceive that the
equitable poise of his character rested upon the noiseless conviction
that he was a man, and a gentleman: and it seemed to her that she did
well to feel proud of her husband.

With which satisfying conviction she settled herself upon a slab of a
rock, whipped out the sketch-book, that hung permanently in a flat
leather bag at her waist, and plunged headlong into her picture. For
in her case, impression and expression were almost simultaneous: the
most distinctive quality of her work being the rapidity and certainty
with which she produced her effects.

Lenox, returning, extended his firmly-knit length of figure on the
sloping ground near by, and flung aside his cap; thus revealing more
clearly the rugged contour of his head, and the black hair whose
obstinate ripple no amount of brushing could subdue. With leisurely
deliberation he filled his pipe, and surrendered himself to the
enchantment of the hour, before it slipped from him into the region of
accomplished things. And it is this very evanescence, this rainbow
quality of our hill-top moments, that adds such poignant intensity to
their charm.

Much of their brief courtship had been spent in such wordless
companionship: the man smoking beside her, with, or without, a book,
while she worked; and he never wearied of watching that abiding
miracle, a picture springing to life under an artist's fingers.

"You're not likely to give up this sort of thing, I suppose?" he asked
suddenly; and she turned upon him with blank astonishment in her eyes.

"Give it up? . . . You might as well ask if I shall ever give up
seeing, or hearing, or feeling. It is a part of me. You don't want me
to give it up, do you?"

"Far from it. I was merely thinking that it seems suicidal for an
artist of your quality to bury herself alive in a little Frontier
station, on the edge of a desert, more than a hundred miles from
anywhere."

"Rubbish! It simply means a new range of subjects for my brush. Tell
me a little about it, please. I like to try and picture things in
advance; and I am lamentably ignorant about this remarkable Frontier
Force, to which I now have the honour to belong. Are we all on the
wrong side of the Indus, always?"

"Yes, for ever and ever; except when we get away on leave."

"And then we go camping and climbing in the far hills beyond Kashmir,
don't we?"

"Yes, invariably! For the rest of the time we keep 'cave' along six
hundred miles of heart-breaking Border country."

"In other words, you are watch-dogs guarding the gates of an Empire?"

"That sounds far more imposing; and it's no less true. We are also
actively engaged in helping the Indian Government to cultivate friendly
relations with the tribes at the point of the bayonet!"

"And don't the tribes respond?"

"Yes, vigorously, to the tune of bullets and cold steel; so that we
manage to keep things pretty lively between us! Since we annexed the
Frontier, nearly forty years ago, the Piffers have taken part in more
than thirty Border expeditions, all told, to say nothing of the Afghan
War."

Quita's attention had been diverted from her picture to her husband's
face.

"You get your fill of fighting at that rate," she said, "And I think
you must be rather magnificent when you are fighting, Eldred."

Lenox shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.

"I'm a keen soldier, if that's what you're driving at: and I believe
the world holds no finer school for character than constant active
service."

"I confess I never thought of looking at war in that light! But I can
well believe it, if its horrors and hardships turn out many men . . .
like you."

Words and tone set the man's pulses in commotion. But he clenched his
teeth upon his pipe-stem, and ignored the personal allusion.

"Well, you can see for yourself, when you get there. Taking 'em all
round, I think you'll find the Piffers as fine a set of fellows as you
could wish to meet anywhere; and it's hard work, and hard conditions of
life, that thrash them into shape."

"And the stations, where I am to be 'buried alive' in such good
company?"

"I'm afraid the stations are the least satisfactory part of the
programme. There are five of them along our north-west strip of
desert; all more or less hopeless to get at. We play general post
among them every two or three years, to avoid stagnation and keep the
men fit. Just now my battery's quartered at Dera Ghazee Khan, a
God-forsaken place, right down by Scindh. I don't know how I have the
cheek to think of taking you there."

"But if I refuse to be left behind . . . ?"

"Well, of course . . . in that case . . ." His eyes, looking up into
hers, completed the sentence.

"I'm not a 'society woman,' remember; and setting aside your
companionship, I should prefer a 'God-forsaken place' on the Indian
Frontier to St. John's Wood or Upper Tooting, any day! I am prepared
to find it all very interesting."

"So you may, at the start. But the interest is likely to wear thin
after the first few years of it."

"Well, perhaps by that time we shall have arrived at the enchanted
palace, and then nothing else will matter at all!--There now; I've done
all I can to my sketch for the present. Shall we go on?"

Lenox roused himself, not without reluctance, and they went on
accordingly.

Towards the summit, trees grew rare: and they found the solitary hotel
perched aloft, upon an open space; a hive of restless shifting human
life, set in the midst of the changeless hills.

After a short interview with the manager's wife, they found themselves
alone again, in the private sitting-room engaged by Lenox. A wood fire
burned merrily in the open hearth, for September evenings are chilly at
that altitude; and the windows, looking westward, gave generous
admittance to a flood of afternoon sunlight.

Eldred, standing on the hearth-rug, surveyed all things in an access of
silent satisfaction; while Quita moved lightly to and fro, frankly
interested in details.

"Oh, how I love the cleanness and emptiness of these Swiss rooms!" she
exclaimed at last. "They make one feel so unspeakably wholesome and
good. And we are actually going to have dinner here, you and I? Just
our two selves! How strange!"

On a sudden impulse she came close to him, and standing before him,
took the lapels of his coat, one in each hand.

"Eldred, . . . I don't seem able to take it in at all! Other brides
have so much of external paraphernalia to emphasise the fact they have
closed one chapter of life, and begun another. But except for that
dreamlike half-hour in church, you and I seem merely to have come away
together for an everyday outing; and there is nothing anywhere, . . .
except this,"--she lifted the third finger of her left hand,--"to make
me realise that we are actually . . . married."

She spoke the last word under her breath; and almost before it was out,
he had caught her to himself, and kissed her fervently, again and again.

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