George Durston - "The Boy Scouts on the Trail"

Belle K. Maniates - "Amarilly of Clothes line Alley"

John Mavrogordato - "The World in Chains"

Laura Lee Hope - "The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island"

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 Great Amulet

M >> Maud Diver >> The Great Amulet




Lenox stooped to caress Brutus, who was urgently demanding attention.

"Upheavals belong to the natural order of things," he said quietly.
"The world would come to a standstill without them. Light a fresh
cheroot, and fill up."

He indicated the chair vacated by Brutus, sat down by the
writing-table, and picking up a pipe proceeded to clean it out with
scrupulous care. Richardson watched him the while, his face grown
suddenly thoughtful. Once he leaned forward, as though he had some
urgent matter to communicate, but apparently changed his mind, and
spoke conversationally between puffs at his cigar.

"Zyarulla said you were at the Desmonds. Is that the cavalry Desmond,
the V.C. chap, whose wife was shot by a brute of a Ghazi four years
ago?"

"Yes;--a hideous affair. Yet, in the face of his second marriage, one
can hardly call it a misfortune. It was one of those evils that had
far better happen to a man than not--that's a fact; and there are a
good many such on this amazing planet."

"Sounds a bit brutal, though, when the murder of a man's wife is in
question."

"Facts are apt to be brutal; even facts relating to the holy estate of
matrimony!" Lenox's tone had an edge to it, and Richardson somewhat
hastily shifted to another aspect of the subject.

"You are really intimate with these Desmonds,--both of them?"

"Yes. Both of them. I dine there about once a-week, just myself and
Desmond's inseparable pal, Wyndham, who is over there most days. You
must call at once. She is Colonel Meredith's sister, a magnificent
woman in every way."

"A miraculous one, I should say, to have dragged such an adjective out
of you!"

Lenox smiled. "No. Only one of the right sort. The sort that makes
fine sons. She has one already; splendid little chap. The three of
'em are off to Dalhousie early in May, and they have just persuaded me
to spend my two months there instead of beyond Kashmir. Mrs Desmond
has a misguided notion that I am knocking myself to bits over my work
in the interior."

"Deuced sensible woman!" laughed Richardson. "It'll give me the
greatest pleasure in life to shake hands with her."

"Come and do it to-morrow then. I'll go along with you."

While he talked Lenox had filled a long German pipe with a bowl of
generous dimensions. Now he set a match to it, and as the first blue
clouds curled upward a peculiarly aromatic fragrance filled the room.

"That stuff of yours is A1," Richardson remarked, with an appreciative
sniff. "Pretty costly, I suppose?"

"Yes. My one extravagance. A special brand that I get out from home,
a big batch at a time. Nothing like it for settling a man's nerves in
the small hours."

"Do you still sit up over that sort of thing till the small hours?"

"Yes, most nights. What moonshine are you bothering your head about
now?"

"Strikes me that sleeplessness of yours must be becoming serious. You
look several degrees less fit than you did a year ago, and that's
saying a good deal."

Lenox took his pipe from between his teeth, and regarded his subaltern
steadily for a few seconds.

"When I need medical advice I'll send for Courtenay," he said, a hint
of authority in his bantering tone. "We were discussing tobacco, and a
woman; and the conjunction reminds me of an inspired German proverb I
happened on the other day. 'God made man first; then He made woman;
then He felt so sorry for man that He made--tobacco.' Supreme, isn't
it?"

Lenox chuckled with keen appreciation over the characteristically
Teuton bit of cynicism, and Richardson laughed aloud.

"Rather rough on woman, that. You might almost have originated it
yourself."

"Wish I had. I'd be proud of it. Stick to tobacco, Dick, and you'll
never be tempted to blow your brains out. You may take my word for it,
that jar of Arcadian mixture," he specified it with his pipe-stem, "is
worth all the women in creation put together."

The bitterness that of late years had so puzzled and distressed his
friend sounded again in his tone, and the laughter went out of
Richardson's eyes.

But Lenox, absorbed in his own reflections, noticed nothing.

"Let's hear what you've been doing with yourself at home, Dick," he
said suddenly. "You're not coherent on paper. I want a few facts.
You went abroad latterly, didn't you? Toboganning, and that sort of
thing, I suppose?"

"Yes; went with those cousins I told you of--to Zermatt."

"Delectable spot," Lenox remarked drily, his eyes on the bowl of his
pipe. "Hope you enjoyed yourself there?"

"Yes, rather so. Had a rattling good time." Then he leaned forward
again, elbows on knees. "Look here, Lenox, old chap; I'm no hand at
skirting round a subject, and I feel bound to tell you that I know now
. . . what happened there five years ago."

Lenox started so violently that the pipe dropped from his hand. A
minimum of sleep and a maximum of tobacco do not tend to steady a man's
nerve.

"How the devil d'you come to do that?" he asked, picking up his fallen
treasure, and readjusting its contents.

"Well, you see, I happened to be with my cousins when they found out
about it. Queer what a deal of trouble some women will take just to
satisfy a bit of curiosity."

"Damn their curiosity!" Lenox muttered between his teeth, adding
something hastily, "You can spare me the details. Nothing stands a
chance against a woman's passion for other people's affairs. Very
straight of you to speak out at once. Don't allude to it again,
though;--that's all."

"But, Lenox," Richardson persisted, not without misgiving, for it is
ill work tampering with the reserve of a Scot, "there's just one
question I want to ask you, and I think I have a right to know the
truth. I remember writing a certain letter to you that autumn; a
rather disparaging letter about--Miss Maurice." The name tripped him
up, and he reddened. "I beg your pardon; I ought to say Mrs Lenox,
though she still paints under the other name."

"Say Miss Maurice, then, by all means," Lenox answered coldly. "She is
welcome to call herself what she pleases so far as I am concerned. Go
on."

"I want to know when that letter reached you."

"On the afternoon of the day--I was married."

"Good Lord!" the other ejaculated blankly. "And all that I wrote
of,--was it news to you?"

Lenox nodded without looking up.

"My dear fellow, for God's sake don't tell me that a thoughtless letter
of mine was responsible----"

Lenox rose and went over to the mantelpiece. The full light on his
face was more than he cared about just then.

"You asked for the truth," he said, in a hard, even voice, "and--you
have made a clean shot at it. We separated that day. I have neither
seen nor heard of her since."

A long silence followed this bald statement of the case. Max
Richardson had no words in which to express the pain he felt. Brutus
arose, and rubbed himself against his master's legs, as if dimly aware
that sympathy of some sort was required of him, and the regular beat of
the sentry's footsteps asserted itself in the stillness.

At last Richardson spoke. "Wonder you cared about shaking hands with
me again after that."

Lenox came nearer, and took him by the shoulder.

"My dear good Dick," he said quietly, "don't talk rubbish; and oblige
me by putting the whole affair out of your head. It's as dead as a
door-nail. Has been these five years. After all, you were simply an
instrument--a providential instrument," he added grimly--"in the
general scheme of things." He paused for a moment; then returned to
his station on the hearth-rug.

"You say she has been painting under her own name. Has she been doing
much in that line lately?"

"Yes. She has made great strides. Her Academy pictures fetched high
prices last year."

"I am glad of that."

The words were spoken with such grave politeness that Richardson looked
up as if suspecting sarcasm. But the other's face was inscrutable.
"Do you happen to know where she is at present?" he asked, after a
pause.

"No. I believe she and her brother travel about Europe. They never
came back to England. That's what made my cousins feel sure there was
something behind."

"Yes, naturally." Then, with an abrupt return to his usual manner, he
added, "Now, old chap, I'm going to send you packing, and get to work.
Deuced glad to have you back again. Hodson's a slacker of the
slackest. We shan't keep _him_ up here much longer, I fancy. Border
notions of work don't agree with his delicate digestion! See you again
at early parade:--sharp up to time."

And as Richardson's footsteps died into silence, Eldred Lenox went
slowly back to the writing-table.

The past five years had not dealt tenderly with this man of surface
hardness and repressed sensibilities. The black hair at his temples
was too freely powdered with silver, the lines between his brows, and
about his well-formed mouth and jaw, were too deeply indented for a man
of five-and-thirty. The whole rugged face of him was only saved from
harshness by a humorous kindliness in the keen blue eyes, that had
measured distance and faced death with an equal deliberation; and by a
forehead whose breadth made the whole face vivid with intellect and
power. He looked ten years older than the inwardly exultant bridegroom
who had stood upon that sunlit road outside Zermatt, waiting to take
possession of the woman he had won.

The attempt to relieve bitterness of spirit with the stimulant of
incessant work, and the questionable sedative of tobacco strongly
tinctured with opium, was already producing its insidious, inevitable
result--was, in truth, threatening to undermine an iron constitution
while failing conspicuously to achieve the end in view.

After sitting for twenty minutes before a blank sheet of foolscap,
Lenox gave up all further effort at mental concentration. A nostalgia
of vast untenanted spaces was upon him,--of those great glacier regions
where a man could stand alone with God and the universe, could shake
himself free from the fret of personal desire. And he had agreed to
forgo this--the one real rest and refreshment life afforded him,--to
"suffer gladly" the insistent trivialities of hill-station life,
merely, forsooth, because a woman had asked it of him. He
anathematised himself for an inconsistent weak-minded fool. But he had
no intention of breaking his promise to Mrs Desmond.

Since work was out of the question, he pushed his chair back
impatiently, left the table, and flung out both arms with a gesture of
desperate weariness. Yet sleep was far from him, and he knew it;
unless he chose to induce it by the only means ready to his hand.

And to-night he did so choose. In general he had steeled himself to
resist the temptation to smoke no more than was needed to quicken and
clarify thought. But the short talk with Richardson had set all his
over-strained nerves on edge. His sum of sleep in the past week did
not amount to twenty-four hours, and for once in a way oblivion must be
purchased at any cost.

Going over to the tall tobacco-jar that supported his library, he
refilled his pouch with cool deliberation, stretched himself out upon
the deck-lounge, and smoked pipe after pipe, till the portion of the
drug contained in each accumulated to a perceptible dose. Then the
great Dream Compeller took pity upon him, deadening thought, feeling,
consciousness itself, till the pipe fell from between his fingers,--and
he slept.




CHAPTER II.

"And, at each turn, it seemed as though
Fate some huge net round both did throw
To stay their feet, and dim their sight."
--W. Morris.


Three weeks later, on a diamond-bright morning of early May, Eldred
Lenox was in the saddle, riding at a foot's pace along a strip of a
path that links the Strawberry Bank Hotel with Dalhousie's central
hill. Brutus trotted soberly to heel, while Shaitan--a black Galloway,
half Biluch, half Arab--tossed an impatient head, sneezed several times
in succession, and generally declared his intention of taking matters
into his own hands, so soon as he should reach the broader expanse of
Terah Mall. But Lenox, impelled by an inbred desire to climb, was
minded to push on to the higher, emptier levels of Bakrota--the great
hill that towered, formidable, directly ahead of him. For the
chalet-like dwellings of Dalhousie are scattered sparsely over three
hills, Bakrota, Terah, Potrain; and the summit of the last and lowest
is crowned by Strawberry Bank Hotel, mainly the resort of captains and
subalterns from the four plains stations of the district, doing their
two months of signalling, Garrison Class, or of unadulterated loafing,
as the case may be.

Lenox himself came under none of these headings. The man had a trick
of refusing to be classed collectively, soldier though he was; a trick
of isolation, inbred, unconscious, the outcome, perhaps, of much
solitary wandering, of intimate association with the uttermost hills.
It was as if they had imparted to him something of their own
ruggedness, their aloofness, their stoical power of endurance.

A cheery little breeze stirred the branches of horse-chestnuts and
rhododendrons, tossed the silver-backed foliage of the ilex, and set
the cedar boughs swaying with slow, dignified indolence. Hidden within
their depths of shadow, birds and monkeys twittered and chattered; and
at intervals there came to Lenox the peculiar long-drawn note with
which the hill villagers call to one another across the valleys. An
infectious spirit of jubilation pervaded the air. The sun himself, in
these cheerful latitudes, is transformed from an instrument of torture
to the golden-locked hero of Norse and Greek legend; and with every
step of the ascent Lenox felt the blood course more swiftly through his
veins.

Ilex and rhododendrons, clustering close to the road's edge, shut off
the vast prospect on his left; till, at an abrupt turn of the road,
they gave place to a watercourse, descending in a cataract of boulders
to the valley below. Then the glorious company of the mountains sprang
suddenly into view, lifting scarred heads to heaven, and greeting the
new day with a Te Deum audible to the spirit, if not to the ear itself.
To the spirit of Eldred Lenox these outward symbols of the eternal
verities, fit emblems of the stern faith in which he had been reared,
spoke with no uncertain voice; and their message was a message of
aspiration, of conquest, of the iron self-mastery and self-restraint
indispensable to both. They reminded him, also, that life held many
good gifts in atonement for the one gift denied; that a man might do
worse than live and work unhindered by the volcanic forces of passion.

The past five years had, after all, been years of fruitful service to
the great country he loved; the three letters after his name assured
him of that. And there remained much more to be done in the same
direction; work that would make unstinted demands upon his energy and
fortitude; work that must, in due time, force him to forget.

Arrived on the Mall, with its far-reaching view of valley and hill, and
its outcrop of glittering granite, a word of encouragement set Shaitan
into a smart canter that brought them speedily to the half-way corner,
whence a densely shadowed road climbs upward to the great forest of
Kalatope. The glimpse of sun-splashed path and red pine-stems drew
Lenox aside from the open Mall; and horse and rider passed into the
stretch of scented coolness at a brisk trot. The path, little more
than six feet wide, was innocent of railing. But much riding in the
Himalayas hardens the nerves to these tight-rope performances, which
are part and parcel of life in the hills.

For a while they went steadily forward, well content; till, on rounding
a sharp corner, Shaitan stopped dead, his forefeet firmly planted on
the roadway, his sensitive ears thrust forward; and Lenox, who had
fallen into an absorbing train of thought, found himself confronted by
a sufficiently startling reality.

The path ahead of him was blocked by the unwieldy forms of five
buffaloes, in charge of a naked brown wisp of humanity four feet high,
armed with a no more formidable weapon than a pine branch stripped of
its needles. But the crux of the situation lay in the fact that,
between the fourth and fifth buffaloes an Englishwoman, in a brown
habit, mounted on a restive chestnut pony, was in imminent danger of
slipping off the road to certain death among the rocks and boulders
below. For the chestnut had succeeded in wrenching his hindquarters
outward, his heels were already over the edge, and his rider, leaning
well forward, was applying whip and spur with a coolness and vigour
that could not fail to excite the man's admiration.

It was a matter of seconds: Lenox could not stop to calculate possible
risks. Buffaloes and herd-boy scattered right and left before his
furious onset. A swinging blow from his hunting-crop sent two of the
bulky beasts scrambling up the inner slope, while Brutus, who found the
situation all that heart of dog could desire, sent a third crashing
over the khud to the accompaniment of shrill lamentations from the
terrified child in charge.

The whole thing passed in a flash; the pony, by a frantic but futile
effort to right himself, had just sent a shower of loose stones
rattling from under his hind feet, when Lenox, dismounting, gripped the
cheek-strap with one hand, the other being occupied with his own reins.

A vigorous forward pull landed the chestnut, panting and quivering,
with all four feet on terra firma. But the rider's right arm had
fallen limply to her side, and Lenox, looking up, for the first time,
into a face deeply shadowed by a wide-brimmed helmet, recognised . . .
his wife.

Her breath was still coming In small, quick gasps; but there was no
shadow of fear in her eyes; no lightest tremor about her close-set lips.

"Great God! _You_!" he ejaculated under his breath, and involuntarily
took a backward step away from her.

At the shock of their encountering glances her cheeks flamed, and she
lowered her lids.

"I suppose I may say thank you for that," she said, and her voice shook
ever so little. "A minute later, I should have gone over."

He nodded, keeping his teeth close, his eyes down; and a deadweight of
silence fell between them.

Small sounds became suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels
along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a
charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a
dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn
with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side.
He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found
the buffalo incident very much more to his taste.

At length, in desperation, Quita made a movement as if to pass on. But
Lenox laid a peremptory hand upon her bridle.

"Tell me, how do you come to be _here_ of all impossible places on
earth?"

His voice was harder than he knew, and a slight shadow passed across
her face.

"Is it really necessary to explain?" she asked, coldly.

He relinquished her bridle at that.

"As you please, of course. Only--it is a little awkward our being here
together; and it might be as well to come to some sort of understanding
before we separate. Are you up here for the season?"

"Yes, we have been up all the winter, Michael and I, except for two
months at Lahore. When the snow melted we moved to the highest cottage
on Bakrota. It is beautiful up there. We came out here eighteen
months ago," she went on a trifle hurriedly, grateful, now that the ice
was broken, for the relief of commonplace speech. "I had heard a good
deal about India, you know. I wanted to see it for myself, and if
possible put a little of it on canvas."

"And you are not disappointed?"

"No, indeed. It is wonderful beyond words."

They had themselves well in hand now. Each had given the other a false
impression at the start, and when two people are living at
cross-purposes it is easier to move mountains than to remove that most
intangible of all barriers, a false impression.

"And are you--up for the season?" Quita added, after a pause, with a
natural touch of hesitancy.

"No. Two months' leave. I am free, therefore, to go elsewhere, if my
presence here is in the least degree . . . annoying to you."

"Oh, but that would be a pity. You must have had a special reason for
choosing Dalhousie."

"Some friends of mine were coming up, and asked me to come too. But
they will quite understand if I say I should prefer to go shooting
beyond Chumba."

"Don't say it, though, please. I would really rather you did not put
yourself out in the smallest degree on _my_ account. Besides," she
added, achieving a rather uncertain smile, "we need not meet often, and
no one--except Michael--will have any notion of . . . the truth."

"Of course not," he agreed, with glacial dignity. "I was forgetting
that you had--discarded my name."

Again the blood flew to her cheeks.

"It seemed the simplest way to avoid possible complications, or
unnecessary lies."

"And you flung away--my ring also?"

The question came out in spite of himself, for he had noted her
ungloved left hand.

"No. Only I could not very well wear it--under the circumstances."

He stood aside now to let her pass. He himself then mounted, and
followed her along the narrow path, raging against the irony of
circumstance, as a man bites upon a sore tooth.

On reaching the spaciousness of Bakrota Mall, he had no choice but to
ride abreast of his companion. He did so without remark, and since
Quita lacked courage to spur her pony to a canter, they continued to
ride thus for a time; each, under an admirable mask of composure,
painfully aware of the other's presence.

Speech seemed only likely to widen the gulf between them, and at all
times Lenox had a large capacity for silence.

Not so Quita. The last ten minutes had been overcrowded with
conflicting emotions; her husband's mute proximity got upon her nerves,
and a setting of pine and mountain put a finishing touch to an already
intolerable situation. She turned upon him at length, with a small
gesture of defiance,--a well-remembered tilt of her chin that pierced
him like a sword-thrust.

"Don't feel bound to escort me, please. I am constantly out alone.
You may have a long way to go; and we need hardly play at polite
conventionalities--you and I."

He glanced at her keenly for a second.

"Thanks; I am in no hurry. But--if you would prefer it?"

"I think it would be less--uncomfortable for us both," she made answer
desperately.

"In that case, of course . . ." He gathered up his reins, and lifted
his hat, "At least I am glad to have been of some small service to
you," he added, quietly. And before her brain or lips could formulate
an answer, he had cantered off and vanished round a shoulder of the
hill.




CHAPTER III.

"Flower o' the clove,
All the Latin I construe is 'Amo, I love'!"
--Browning.


Quita drew rein and sat motionless for several seconds, looking
straight before her.

"I wonder . . . I wonder very much," she mused, "exactly what one may
infer from all that. Either he has superb self-control, or I have been
wiped off the slate altogether. Most probably the latter."

Then she moved forward slowly, in a state of mind so complicated that,
for all her skill in self-analysis, she could not unravel her own
sensations. She only knew that she felt jarred through and through,
and in a mood to give way to her most dare-devil impulses. But happily
for her, no egregious piece of folly was ready to hand at the moment.

Her appearance in India was itself the outcome of an impulse generated
by the arrival of two cheques, whose united figures took away her
breath; and confirmed by the fact that Michael's relations with the
inevitable woman of the moment threatened serious complications--for
the woman. For Michael himself serious complications seemed out of all
question. Frank Pagan though he was, he lacked, in a peculiar degree,
the needful leavening of common clay. Love, as he knew it, was not
inevitably based on passion. It was his imagination rather than his
heart that took fire, and only under the influence of a dominant
emotion did he appear to be capable of the highest achievement.
Briefly, he was in love with Love, with that elixir of the heart that
stirs the pulses, and quickens inspiration. The object loved stood
second. But, so long as the enchantment held, so long as no new
impression caught and whirled him in another direction, he honestly
believed her to be supreme.

Hence complications, many and embarrassing, which went far to interpret
Quita's inconsequent flittings from one continental town to another.
For, although the younger by eighteen months, she was many years older
in thought and character than her irresponsible brother; and in all
matters of moment she took, and was expected to take, the lead.

The key to a perplexing character may often be found in the
idiosyncrasies of its nearest and dearest; and this reversal of the
natural order of things explained much in Quita that appeared
_difficile_ and contradictory; explained also her instant gravitation
to Lenox, in whom she divined a supply of moral force, and the
masculine spirit of protection, both strangely undeveloped in the
brother she so devoutly loved. And if at times the uncongenial task of
conscience-keeper, and general financier, coupled with complexities,
arising from her own false position, had proved something of a strain
upon her, Michael had never yet discovered the fact. She understood
and shared enough of his Pagan spirit to accept his emotional aids to
self-expression at their true value. Do what he might, she could not
find it in her heart to be angry with him for long. He carried his
fine crop of failings with a cheerfulness and assurance so engaging,
that it seemed almost ungracious to be aware of them.

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