William Noyes - "Handwork in Wood"

A. A. Milne - "First Plays"

Erasmus Roterodamus - "Selections from Erasmus"

Joseph Coppinger - "The American Practical Brewer and Tanner"

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 Girl on the Boat

P >> Pelham Grenville Wodehouse >> The Girl on the Boat




"I had anticipated that difficulty, sir. In 'Footpaths of Fate' there
was a nurse who assisted the hero by drugging the child."

"By Jove!" said Sam, impressed.

"He rewarded her," said Webster, allowing his gaze to stray nonchalantly
over the countryside, "liberally, very liberally."

"If you mean that you expect me to reward you if you drug the dog," said
Sam, "don't worry. Let me bring this thing off, and you can have all
I've got, and my cuff-links as well. Come now, this is really beginning
to look like something. Speak to me more of this matter. Where do we go
from here?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I mean, what's the next step in the scheme? Oh, Lord!" Sam's face fell.
The light of hope died out of his eyes. "It's all off! It can't be
done! How could I possibly get into the house? I take it that the little
brute sleeps in the house?"

"That need constitute no obstacle, sir, no obstacle at all. The animal
sleeps in a basket in the hall.... Perhaps you are familiar with the
interior of the house, sir?"

"I haven't been inside it since I was at school. I'm Mr. Hignett's
cousin, you know."

"Indeed, sir? I wasn't aware. Mr. Hignett has the mumps, poor
gentleman."

"Has he?" said Sam, not particularly interested. "I used to stay with
him," he went on, "during the holidays sometimes, but I've practically
forgotten what the place is like inside. I remember the hall vaguely.
Fireplace at one side, one or two suits of armour standing about, a sort
of window-ledge near the front door...."

"Precisely, sir. It is close beside that window-ledge that the animal's
basket is situated. If I administer a slight soporific...."

"Yes, but you haven't explained yet how I am to get into the house in
the first place."

"Quite easily, sir. I can admit you through the drawing-room windows
while dinner is in progress."

"Fine!"

"You can then secrete yourself in the cupboard in the drawing-room.
Perhaps you recollect the cupboard to which I refer, sir?"

"No, I don't remember any cupboard. As a matter of fact, when I used to
stay at the house the drawing-room was barred. Mrs. Hignett wouldn't
let us inside it for fear we should smash her china. Is there a
cupboard?"

"Immediately behind the piano, sir. A nice, roomy cupboard. I was
glancing into it myself in a spirit of idle curiosity only the other
day. It contains nothing except a few knick-knacks on an upper shelf.
You could lock yourself in from the interior, and be quite comfortably
seated on the floor till the household retired to bed."

"When would that be?"

"They retire quite early, sir, as a rule. By half-past ten the coast is
generally clear. At that time I would suggest that I came down and
knocked on the cupboard door to notify you that all was well."

Sam was glowing with frank approval.

"You know, you're a master-mind!" he said, enthusiastically.

"You're very kind, sir!"

"One of the lads, by Jove!" said Sam. "And not the worst of them! I
don't want to flatter you, but there's a future for you in crime, if you
cared to go in for it."

"I am glad that you appreciate my poor efforts, sir. Then we will regard
the scheme as passed and approved?"

"I should say we would! It's a bird!"

"Very good, sir."

"I'll be round at about a quarter to eight. Will that be right?"

"Admirable, sir."

"And, I say, about that soporific.... Don't overdo it. Don't go killing
the little beast."

"Oh, no, sir."

"Well," said Sam, "you can't say it's not a temptation. And you know
what you Napoleons of the Underworld are!"




CHAPTER XVII

A CROWDED NIGHT


Sec. 1

If there is one thing more than another which weighs upon the mind of a
story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to
describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient
with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting
himself to what are, after all, minor developments. This story, for
instance, opened with Mrs. Horace Hignett, the world-famous writer on
Theosophy, going over to America to begin a lecturing-tour; and no one
realises more keenly than I do that I have left Mrs. Hignett flat. I
have thrust that great thinker into the background and concentrated my
attention on the affairs of one who is both her mental and her moral
inferior, Samuel Marlowe. I seem at this point to see the reader--a
great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram of
a battleship, the sort of fellow who is full of determination and will
stand no nonsense--rising to remark that he doesn't care what happened
to Samuel Marlowe and that what he wants to know is, how Mrs. Hignett
made out on her lecturing-tour. Did she go big in Buffalo? Did she have
'em tearing up the seats in Schenectady? Was she a riot in Chicago and a
cyclone in St. Louis? Those are the points on which he desires
information, or give him his money back.

I cannot supply the information. And, before you condemn me, let me
hastily add that the fault is not mine but that of Mrs. Hignett herself.
The fact is, she never went to Buffalo. Schenectady saw nothing of her.
She did not get within a thousand miles of Chicago, nor did she
penetrate to St. Louis. For the very morning after her son Eustace
sailed for England in the liner "Atlantic," she happened to read in the
paper one of those abridged passenger-lists which the journals of New
York are in the habit of printing, and got a nasty shock when she saw
that, among those whose society Eustace would enjoy during the voyage,
was "Miss Wilhelmina Bennett, daughter of J. Rufus Bennett of Bennett,
Mandelbaum and Co.". And within five minutes of digesting this
information, she was at her desk writing out telegrams cancelling all
her engagements. Iron-souled as this woman was, her fingers trembled as
she wrote. She had a vision of Eustace and the daughter of J. Rufus
Bennett strolling together on moonlit decks, leaning over rails damp
with sea-spray and, in short, generally starting the whole trouble all
over again.

In the height of the tourist season it is not always possible for one
who wishes to leave America to spring on to the next boat. A long
morning's telephoning to the offices of the Cunard and the White Star
brought Mrs. Hignett the depressing information that it would be a full
week before she could sail for England. That meant that the inflammable
Eustace would have over two weeks to conduct an uninterrupted wooing,
and Mrs. Hignett's heart sank, till suddenly she remembered that so poor
a sailor as her son was not likely to have had leisure for any strolling
on the deck during the voyage on the "Atlantic."

Having realised this, she became calmer and went about her preparations
for departure with an easier mind. The danger was still great, but there
was a good chance that she might be in time to intervene. She wound up
her affairs in New York, and on the following Wednesday, boarded the
"Nuronia" bound for Southampton.

The "Nuronia" is one of the slowest of the Cunard boats. It was built at
a time when delirious crowds used to swoon on the dock if an ocean liner
broke the record by getting across in nine days. It rolled over to
Cherbourg, dallied at that picturesque port for some hours, then
sauntered across the Channel and strolled into Southampton Water in the
evening of the day on which Samuel Marlowe had sat in the lane plotting
with Webster, the valet. At almost the exact moment when Sam, sidling
through the windows of the drawing-room, slid into the cupboard behind
the piano, Mrs. Hignett was standing at the Customs barrier telling the
officials that she had nothing to declare.

Mrs. Hignett was a general who believed in forced marches. A lesser
woman might have taken the boat-train to London and proceeded to Windles
at her ease on the following afternoon. Mrs. Hignett was made of sterner
stuff. Having fortified herself with a late dinner, she hired a car and
set out on the cross-country journey. It was only when the car, a
genuine antique, had broken down three times in the first ten miles,
that she directed the driver to take her instead to the "Blue Boar" in
Windlehurst, where she arrived, tired but thankful to have reached it at
all, at about eleven o'clock.

At this point many, indeed most, women would have gone to bed; but the
familiar Hampshire air and the knowledge that half an hour's walking
would take her to her beloved home acted on Mrs. Hignett like a
restorative. One glimpse of Windles she felt that she must have before
she retired for the night, if only to assure herself that it was still
there. She had a cup of coffee and a sandwich brought to her by the
night-porter whom she had roused from sleep, for bedtime is early in
Windlehurst, and then informed him that she was going for a short walk
and would ring when she returned.

Her heart leaped joyfully as she turned in at the drive gates of her
home and felt the well-remembered gravel crunching under her feet. The
silhouette of the ruined castle against the summer sky gave her the
feeling which all returning wanderers know. And, when she stepped on to
the lawn and looked at the black bulk of the house, indistinct and
shadowy with its backing of trees, tears came into her eyes. She
experienced a rush of emotion which made her feel quite faint, and which
lasted until, on tiptoeing nearer to the house in order to gloat more
adequately upon it, she perceived that the French windows of the
drawing-room were standing ajar. Sam had left them like this in order to
facilitate departure, if a hurried departure should by any mischance be
rendered necessary, and drawn curtains had kept the household from
noticing the fact.

All the proprietor in Mrs. Hignett was roused. This, she felt
indignantly, was the sort of thing she had been afraid would happen the
moment her back was turned. Evidently laxity--one might almost say
anarchy--had set in directly she had removed the eye of authority. She
marched to the window and pushed it open. She had now completely
abandoned her kindly scheme of refraining from rousing the sleeping
house and spending the night at the inn. She stepped into the
drawing-room with the single-minded purpose of routing Eustace out of
his sleep and giving him a good talking-to for having failed to
maintain her own standard of efficiency among the domestic staff. If
there was one thing on which Mrs. Horace Hignett had always insisted it
was that every window in the house must be closed at lights-out.

She pushed the curtains apart with a rattle and, at the same moment,
from the direction of the door there came a low but distinct gasp which
made her resolute heart jump and flutter. It was too dark to see
anything distinctly, but, in the instant before it turned and fled, she
caught sight of a shadowy male figure, and knew that her worst fears had
been realised. The figure was too tall to be Eustace, and Eustace, she
knew, was the only man in the house. Male figures, therefore, that went
flitting about Windles, must be the figures of burglars.

Mrs. Hignett, bold woman though she was, stood for an instant
spell-bound, and for one moment of not unpardonable panic tried to tell
herself that she had been mistaken. Almost immediately, however, there
came from the direction of the hall a dull chunky sound as though
something soft had been kicked, followed by a low gurgle and the noise
of staggering feet. Unless he were dancing a _pas seul_ out of sheer
lightness of heart, the nocturnal visitor must have tripped over
something.

The latter theory was the correct one. Montagu Webster was a man who, at
many a subscription ball, had shaken a gifted dancing-pump, and nothing
in the proper circumstances pleased him better than to exercise the
skill which had become his as the result of twelve private lessons at
half-a-crown a visit; but he recognised the truth of the scriptural
adage that there is a time for dancing, and that this was not it. His
only desire when, stealing into the drawing-room he had been confronted
through the curtains by a female figure, was to get back to his bedroom
undetected. He supposed that one of the feminine members of the
house-party must have been taking a stroll in the grounds, and he did
not wish to stay and be compelled to make laborious explanations of his
presence there in the dark. He decided to postpone the knocking on the
cupboard door, which had been the signal arranged between himself and
Sam, until a more suitable occasion. In the meantime he bounded silently
out into the hall, and instantaneously tripped over the portly form of
Smith, the bulldog, who, roused from a light sleep to the knowledge that
something was going on, and being a dog who always liked to be in the
centre of the maelstrom of events, had waddled out to investigate.

By the time Mrs. Hignett had pulled herself together sufficiently to
feel brave enough to venture into the hall, Webster's presence of mind
and Smith's gregariousness had combined to restore that part of the
house to its normal nocturnal condition of emptiness. Webster's stagger
had carried him almost up to the green baize door leading to the
servants' staircase, and he proceeded to pass through it without
checking his momentum, closely followed by Smith who, now convinced that
interesting events were in progress which might possibly culminate in
cake, had abandoned the idea of sleep, and meant to see the thing
through. He gambolled in Webster's wake up the stairs and along the
passage leading to the latter's room, and only paused when the door was
brusquely shut in his face. Upon which he sat down to think the thing
over. He was in no hurry. The night was before him, promising, as far as
he could judge from the way it had opened, excellent entertainment.

Mrs. Hignett had listened fearfully to the uncouth noises from the hall.
The burglars--she had now discovered that there were at least two of
them--appeared to be actually romping. The situation had grown beyond
her handling. If this troupe of terpsichorean marauders was to be
dislodged she must have assistance. It was man's work. She made a brave
dash through the hall mercifully unmolested; found the stairs; raced up
them; and fell through the doorway of her son Eustace's bedroom like a
spent Marathon runner staggering past the winning-post.


Sec. 2

At about the moment when Mrs. Hignett was crunching the gravel of the
drive, Eustace was lying in bed, listening to Jane Hubbard as she told
the story of how an alligator had once got into her tent while she was
camping on the banks of the Issawassi River in Central Africa. Ever
since he had become ill, it had been the large-hearted girl's kindly
practice to soothe him to rest with some such narrative from her
energetic past.

"And what happened then?" asked Eustace, breathlessly.

He had raised himself on one elbow in his bed. His eyes shone excitedly
from a face which was almost the exact shape of an Association football;
for he had reached the stage of mumps when the patient begins to swell
as though somebody were inflating him with a bicycle-pump.

"Oh, I jabbed him in the eye with a pair of nail-scissors, and he went
away!" said Jane Hubbard.

"You know, you're wonderful!" cried Eustace. "Simply wonderful!"

Jane Hubbard flushed a little beneath her tan. She loved his pretty
enthusiasm. He was so genuinely stirred by what were to her the merest
commonplaces of life.

"Why, if an alligator got into _my_ tent," said Eustace, "I simply
wouldn't know what to do! I should be nonplussed."

"Oh, it's just a knack," said Jane, carelessly. "You soon pick it up."

"Nail-scissors!"

"It ruined them, unfortunately. They were never any use again. For the
rest of the trip I had to manicure myself with a hunting-spear."

"You're a marvel!"

Eustace lay back in bed and gave himself up to meditation. He had
admired Jane Hubbard before, but the intimacy of the sick-room and the
stories which she had told him to relieve the tedium of his invalid
state had set the seal on his devotion. It has always been like this
since Othello wooed Desdemona. For three days Jane Hubbard had been
weaving her spell about Eustace Hignett, and now she monopolised his
entire horizon. She had spoken, like Othello, of antres vast and deserts
idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touched heaven, and of
the cannibals that each other eat, the Anthropophagi, and men whose
heads do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear would Eustace
Hignett seriously incline, and swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas
passing strange, 'twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful. He loved her for
the dangers she had passed, and she loved him that he did pity them. In
fact, one would have said that it was all over except buying the
licence, had it not been for the fact that his very admiration served to
keep Eustace from pouring out his heart. It seemed incredible to him
that the queen of her sex, a girl who had chatted in terms of equality
with African head-hunters and who swatted alligators as though they were
flies, could ever lower herself to care for a man who looked like the
"after-taking" advertisement of a patent food.

But even those whom Nature has destined to be mates may misunderstand
each other, and Jane, who was as modest as she was brave, had come
recently to place a different interpretation on his silence. In the last
few days of the voyage she had quite made up her mind that Eustace
Hignett loved her and would shortly intimate as much in the usual
manner; but, since coming to Windles, she had begun to have doubts. She
was not blind to the fact that Billie Bennett was distinctly prettier
than herself and far more the type to which the ordinary man is
attracted. And, much as she loathed the weakness and despised herself
for yielding to it, she had become distinctly jealous of her. True,
Billie was officially engaged to Bream Mortimer, but she had had
experience of the brittleness of Miss Bennett's engagements, and she
could by no means regard Eustace as immune.

"Do you suppose they will be happy?" she asked.

"Eh? Who?" said Eustace, excusably puzzled, for they had only just
finished talking about alligators. But there had been a pause since his
last remark, and Jane's thoughts had flitted back to the subject that
usually occupied them.

"Billie and Bream Mortimer."

"Oh!" said Eustace. "Yes, I suppose so."

"She's a delightful girl."

"Yes," said Eustace without much animation.

"And, of course, it's nice their fathers being so keen on the match. It
doesn't often happen that way."

"No. People's people generally want people to marry people people don't
want to marry," said Eustace, clothing in words a profound truth which
from the earliest days of civilisation has deeply affected the youth of
every country.

"I suppose your mother has got somebody picked out for you to marry?"
said Jane casually.

"Mother doesn't want me to marry anybody," said Eustace with gloom. It
was another obstacle to his romance.

"What, never?"

"No."

"Why ever not?"

"As far as I can make out, if I marry, I get this house and mother has
to clear out. Silly business!"

"Well, you wouldn't let your mother stand in the way if you ever really
fell in love?" said Jane.

"It isn't so much a question of _letting_ her stand in the way. The
tough job would be preventing her. You've never met my mother!"

"No, I'm looking forward to it!"

"You're looking forward...!" Eustace eyed her with honest amazement.

"But what could your mother do? I mean, supposing you had made up your
mind to marry somebody."

"What could she do? Why, there isn't anything she wouldn't do. Why,
once...." Eustace broke off. The anecdote which he had been about to
tell contained information which, on reflection, he did not wish to
reveal.

"Once--...?" said Jane.

"Oh, well, I was just going to show you what mother is like. I--I was
going out to lunch with a man, and--and--" Eustace was not a ready
improvisator--"and she didn't want me to go, so she stole all my
trousers!"

Jane Hubbard started, as if, wandering through one of her favourite
jungles, she had perceived a snake in her path. She was thinking hard.
That story which Billie had told her on the boat about the man to whom
she had been engaged, whose mother had stolen his trousers on the
wedding morning ... it all came back to her with a topical significance
which it had never had before. It had lingered in her memory, as stories
will, but it had been a detached episode, having no personal meaning for
her. But now.... "She did that just to stop you going out to lunch with
a man?" she said slowly.

"Yes, rotten thing to do, wasn't it?"

Jane Hubbard moved to the foot of the bed, and her forceful gaze,
shooting across the intervening counterpane, pinned Eustace to the
pillow. She was in the mood which had caused spines in Somaliland to
curl like withered leaves.

"Were you ever engaged to Billie Bennett?" she demanded.

Eustace Hignett licked dry lips. His face looked like a hunted melon.
The flannel bandage, draped around it by loving hands, hardly supported
his sagging jaw.

"Why--er--"

"_Were_ you?" cried Jane, stamping an imperious foot. There was that in
her eye before which warriors of the lower Congo had become as chewed
blotting-paper. Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled
with an unendurable sense of guilt.

"Well--er--yes," he mumbled weakly.

Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. She
might know what to do when alligators started exploring her tent, but
she was a woman.

This sudden solution of steely strength into liquid weakness had on
Eustace Hignett the stunning effects which the absence of the last stair
has on the returning reveller creeping up to bed in the dark. It was as
though his spiritual foot had come down hard on empty space and caused
him to bite his tongue. Jane Hubbard had always been to him a rock of
support. And now the rock had melted away and left him wallowing in a
deep pool.

He wallowed gratefully. It had only needed this to brace him to the
point of declaring his love. His awe of this girl had momentarily
vanished. He felt strong and dashing. He scrambled down the bed and
peered over the foot of it at her huddled form.

"Have some barley-water," he urged. "Try a little barley-water."

It was all he had to offer her except the medicine which, by the
doctor's instructions, he took three times a day in a quarter of a glass
of water.

"Go away!" sobbed Jane Hubbard.

The unreasonableness of this struck Eustace.

"But I can't. I'm in bed. Where could I go?"

"I hate you!"

"Oh, don't say that!"

"You're still in love with her!"

"Nonsense! I never was in love with her."

"Then why were you going to marry her?"

"Oh, I don't know. It seemed a good idea at the time."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!"

Eustace bent a little further over the end of the bed and patted her
hair.

"Do have some barley-water," he said. "Just a sip!"

"You _are_ in love with her!" sobbed Jane.

"I'm _not_! I love _you_!"

"You don't!"

"Pardon _me_!" said Eustace firmly. "I've loved you ever since you gave
me that extraordinary drink with Worcester sauce in it on the boat."

"They why didn't you say so before?"

"I hadn't the nerve. You always seemed so--I don't know how to put it--I
always seemed such a worm. I was just trying to get the courage to
propose when I caught the mumps, and that seemed to me to finish it. No
girl could love a man with three times the proper amount of face."

"As if that could make any difference! What does your outside matter? I
have seen your inside!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean...."

Eustace fondled her back hair.

"Jane! Queen of my soul! Do you really love me?"

"I've loved you ever since we met on the Subway." She raised a
tear-stained face. "If only I could be sure that you really loved me!"

"I can prove it!" said Eustace proudly. "You know how scared I am of my
mother. Well, for your sake I overcame my fear, and did something
which, if she ever found out about it, would make her sorer than a
sunburned neck! This house. She absolutely refused to let it to old
Bennett and old Mortimer. They kept after her about it, but she wouldn't
hear of it. Well, you told me on the boat that Wilhelmina Bennett had
invited you to spend the summer with her, and I knew that, if they
didn't come to Windles, they would take some other place, and that meant
I wouldn't see you. So I hunted up old Mortimer, and let it to him on
the quiet, without telling my mother anything about it!"

"Why, you darling angel child," cried Jane Hubbard joyfully. "Did you
really do that for my sake? Now I know you love me!"

"Of course, if mother ever got to hear of it...!"

Jane Hubbard pushed him gently into the nest of bedclothes, and tucked
him in with strong, calm hands. She was a very different person from the
girl who so short a while before had sobbed on the carpet. Love is a
wonderful thing.

"You mustn't excite yourself," she said. "You'll be getting a
temperature. Lie down and try to get to sleep." She kissed his bulbous
face. "You have made me so happy, Eustace darling."

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