Read Ebook: Juju by Leinster Murray

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Ebook has 518 lines and 28717 words, and 11 pages

"Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?"

reject, and turn away from the impostures of a sorrowing imagination?

In sleep there is no struggle of the will; and he communes with his own heart, which is beating so low; a condition that must be caused by a sense of "something lost."

"Break," he says, still addressing his heart, but in metaphor;

"Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost."

This must refer to the scientific fact, that water can be lowered in temperature below the freezing point, without solidifying; but it expands at once into ice if disturbed; and the suddenness of the expansion breaks the containing vessel.

Clouds of undefined trouble, such as "dreams are made of," pass "below the darken'd eyes," that is, figure themselves on the brain under the eyelids; but on awaking, the will reasserts its power, and protests against the folly of such mourning. He would therefore dismiss the phantom, Sorrow.

He sometimes hesitates, as at something half sinful, when giving expression to his sadness; because words at best only partially declare what the Soul feels; just as outward Nature cannot fully reveal the inner life.

But "after all" words act like narcotics, and numb pain: so, as if putting on "weeds," the garb of mourning, he will wrap himself over in words; though these, like coarse clothes on the body, give no more than an outline of his "large grief."

The "common" expressions of sympathy with our trouble are very "commonplace"--

"Vacant chaff well-meant for grain."

A friend asks, "Why grieve?" "Other friends remain;" "Loss is common to the race;" as Hamlet's mother says, "All that live must die." Is this comfort? rather the contrary. We know it is so--

"Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break."

The father drinks his son's health at the war, in the moment when that son is shot.

The mother prays for her sailor-boy when

"His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave."

The girl is dressing before the glass, and strives to array herself most becomingly for her expected lover; and he meanwhile is either drowned in the ford, or killed by a fall from his horse--

"O what to her shall be the end? And what to me remains of good? To her perpetual maidenhood, And unto me no second friend."

These were all as unconscious of disaster as was the Poet, who, "to please him well," was writing to Hallam in the very hour that he died.

There is a fine passage in Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Dying," which contains a like rumination on the uncertainty of life.

"These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs; a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, an hard rock and a rough wind dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck."

He persists in indulging his melancholy, and so creeps, "like a guilty thing," at early morning to the door of the house in London where Hallam had lived--Wimpole Street--but this only serves to remind him that

"He is not here; but far away."

The revival of busy movement on a wet morning in "the long unlovely street," is vividly described--

"The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day."

He next compares himself to the disappointed lover who "alights" from his horse, calls at the home of his mistress,

"And learns her gone and far from home."

So, as the disappointed lover, to whom the whole place has at once become a desert, wanders into the garden, and culls a rain-beaten flower, which she had fostered; even thus will he cherish and plant "this poor flower of poesy" on Hallam's tomb, because his friend when alive had been pleased with his poetic power.

This poem commences an address to the ship that brings Hallam's body from Vienna to England--

"My lost Arthur's loved remains."

No words can be more touching than his appeal to the vessel, for care and tenderness in transporting its precious freight. He bids it come quickly; "spread thy full wings," hoist every sail; "ruffle thy mirror'd mast;" for the faster the ship is driven through the water, the more will the reflected mast be "ruffled" on its agitated surface. May no rude wind "perplex thy sliding keel," until Phosphor the morning star, Venus shines; and during the night may the lights above and the winds around be gentle as the sleep of him--

"My Arthur, whom I shall not see, Till all my widow'd race be run--"

until my life, bereaved of its first affection, be over.

"The animal may have dropped the trail, or it may be dead," I commented thoughtfully, "but I don't blame you for wanting to be careful."

"The thought of that huge ape perhaps lurking outside, perhaps about to drop down at any moment, with Alicia here," said Arthur desperately, "it's enough to drive a man insane. You know they carry off native women sometimes. We've got to protect Alicia. If it kills me, it doesn't matter. Evan won't believe it's around. He's going armed to humor me, but the beast is near; it's somewhere about."

I felt myself growing pale. A monstrous ape, lingering about the place with malignant intent, and Alicia laughing unconsciously inside the house, was enough to make me feel squeamish. I unconsciously tightened my grasp on my rifle. Alicia came out on the porch at that moment and beckoned to us.

"We'll not mention this--yet," said Arthur, as we went up.

I nodded. Alicia was all enthusiasm about the comforts Evan had managed to put into his house so far inland, and when we sat down to dinner, the bright silver and white tablecloth did give an effect of civilization. When one looked at the black faces of the servants who waited on us, and at the tattooing and nose rings that disfigured them, however, the illusion vanished at once.

I was a long time getting to sleep that night. The next morning would see me going on my way into the interior, and I would in all likelihood never see Alicia again. When I at last fell asleep, I was uneasy, and when I woke, it was in a strangely silent house. Evan Graham's voice aroused me. He was calling me to get up. His ease of manner and absence of worry had vanished. Arthur, over his shoulder, looked even more apprehensive than before.

"Get up," said Evan briefly. "The servants skipped out during the night. Your boys have gone, too. There's juju business going on. And the oxen that pulled Alicia's cart have been clubbed to death in their stalls."

The servants had fled from the house. There was not another white man within a hundred and fifty miles. All about us were natives who might fear Evan Graham but certainly hated him, and somewhere in the woods, we had reason to believe, a monstrous ape lurked, awaiting an opportunity to wreak his bestial vengeance upon the slayer of his mate.

EVAN'S SORTIE.

We explored the house first and came upon a surprise. The native girl I had seen conducted to the house by the juju procession two months before crouched in one corner. She was too much frightened to give any coherent account of the other servants' leaving.

They had simply gone, she said. No one had said anything to her, and she had been left behind. The oxen lay in their stalls, their heads beaten in with blows from a heavy iron bar that lay bent on the ground beside them. Even my own boys had vanished. That struck me most forcibly of all, because I had treated them well and had thought I could count on as much loyalty from them as any white man can expect from the average native.

Mboka's defection really bothered me. I had believed well of him and was in a way genuinely fond of him. He had gone with the rest, though. The loads of the carriers lay in a huge pile. Small and precious possessions of my boys lay about them. That was perhaps the queerest part of the whole affair. In leaving secretly in the middle of the night, the servants had not stopped to steal, or even to take with them what was their own. They had apparently risen and stolen away in shivering fear.

We went back to the house from the servants' quarters full of rather uneasy speculations. Juju was obviously at the bottom of whatever was happening, and there is no telling what may enter the head of a juju doctor. Passing through the rear rooms, Evan paused to order the solitary native girl to prepare food for us. We went on to find Alicia and Mrs. Braymore up and curious. They were on the front porch when they heard us, and Alicia came inside to smile at all of us and ask questions.

"Where are all the servants, Evan?" she demanded. "We had not a drop of water this morning. And what's happened to the native village? On the way up here we saw lots of villages, but none of them were quite like yours."

We looked down at the squalid huts of the village. Not a sign of life could be seen. Not one of the usually innumerable tiny fires of a native village was burning, and the single street was absolutely deserted.

"We'll take a look at it," said Arthur grimly. "I don't like this business. Murray, you'll come?"

I picked up my rifle and moved forward. As we walked across the clearing before the casa, Arthur turned to me.

"Don't forget about that big ape, either. He's probably waiting for a chance to drop out of a tree on top of us."

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