Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk Part 1

c.u.mner & South Sea Folk.

by Gilbert Parker.

INTRODUCTION

In a Foreword to Donovan Pasha, published in 1902, I used the following words:

"It is now twelve years since I began giving to the public tales of life in lands well known to me. The first of them were drawn from Australia and the islands of the southern Pacific, where I had lived and roamed in the middle and late eighties.... Those tales of the Far South were given out with some prodigality. They did not appear in book form, however; for at the time I was sending out these antipodean sketches I was also writing--far from the scenes where they were laid--a series of Canadian tales, many of which appeared in the 'Independent' of New York, in the 'National Observer', edited by Mr. Henley, and in the 'Ill.u.s.trated London News'. On the suggestion of my friend Mr. Henley, the Canadian tales, Pierre and His People, were published first; with the result that the stories of the southern hemisphere were withheld from publication, though they have been privately printed and duly copyrighted. Some day I may send them forth, but meanwhile I am content to keep them in my care."

These stories made the collection published eventually under the t.i.tle of c.u.mner's Son, in 1910. They were thus kept for nearly twenty years without being given to the public in book form. In 1910 I decided, however, that they should go out and find their place with my readers.

The first story in the book, c.u.mner's Son, which represents about four times the length of an ordinary short story, was published in Harper's Weekly, midway between 1890 and 1900. All the earlier stories belonged to 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1893. The first of these to be published was 'A Sable Spartan', 'An Amiable Revenge', 'A Vulgar Fraction', and 'How Pango w.a.n.go Was Annexed'. They were written before the Pierre series, and were instantly accepted by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, that great journalistic figure of whom the British public still takes note, and for whom it has an admiring memory, because of his rare gifts as an editor and publicist, and by a political section of the public, because Mr.

Greenwood recommended to Disraeli the purchase of the Suez Ca.n.a.l shares.

Seventeen years after publishing these stories I had occasion to write to Frederick Greenwood, and in my letter I said: "I can never forget that you gave me a leg up in my first struggle for recognition in the literary world." His reply was characteristic; it was in keeping with the modest, magnanimous nature of the man. He said: "I cannot remember that there was any day when you required a leg up."

While still contributing to the 'Anti-Jacobin', which had a short life and not a very merry one, I turned my attention to a weekly called 'The Speaker', to which I have referred elsewhere, edited by Mr. Wemyss Reid, afterwards Sir Wemyss Reid, and in which Mr. Quiller-Couch was then writing a striking short story nearly every week. Up to that time I had only interviewed two editors. One was Mr. Kinloch-Cooke, now Sir Clement Kinloch-Cooke, who at that time was editor of the 'English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine', and a very good, courteous, and generous editor he was, and he had a very good magazine; the other was an editor whose name I do not care to mention, because his courtesy was not on the same expansive level as his vanity.

One bitter winter's day in 1891 I went to Wemyss Reid to tell him, if he would hear me, that I had in my mind a series of short stories of Australia and the South Seas, and to ask him if he could give them a place in 'The Speaker'. It was a Friday afternoon, and as I went into the smudgy little office I saw a gentleman with a small brown bag emerging from another room.

At that moment I asked for Mr. Wemyss Reid. The gentleman with the little brown bag stood and looked sharply at me, but with friendly if penetrating eyes. "I am Wemyss Reid--you wish to see me?" he said. "Will you give me five minutes?" I asked. "I am just going to the train, but I will spare you a minute," he replied. He turned back into another smudgy little room, put his bag on the table, and said: "Well?" I told him quickly, eagerly, what I wished to do, and I said to him at last: "I apologise for seeking you personally, but I was most anxious that my work should be read by your own eyes, because I think I should be contented with your judgment, whether it was favourable or unfavourable." Taking up his bag again, he replied, "Send your stories along. If I think they are what I want I will publish them. I will read them myself." He turned the handle of the door, and then came back to me and again looked me in the eyes. "If I cannot use them--and there might be a hundred reasons why I could not, and none of them derogatory to your work--" he said, "do not be discouraged. There are many doors. Mine is only one. Knock at the others. Good luck to you."

I never saw Wemyss Reid again, but he made a friend who never forgot him, and who mourned his death. It was not that he accepted my stories; it was that he said what he did say to a young man who did not yet know what his literary fortune might be. Well, I sent him a short story called, 'An Epic in Yellow'. Proofs came by return of post. This story was followed by 'The High Court of Budgery-Gar', 'Old Roses', 'My Wife's Lovers', 'Derelict', 'Dibbs, R.N.', 'A Little Masquerade', and 'The Stranger's Hut'. Most, if not all, of these appeared before the Pierre stories were written.

They did not strike the imagination of the public in the same way as the Pierre series, but they made many friends. They were mostly Australian, and represented the life which for nearly four years I knew and studied with that affection which only the young, open-eyed enthusiast, who makes his first journey in the world, can give. In the same year, for 'Macmillan's Magazine', I wrote 'Barbara Golding' and 'A Pagan of the South', which was originally published as 'The Woman in the Morgue'. 'A Friend of the Commune' was also published in the 'English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine', and 'The Blind Beggar and the Little Red Peg' found a place in the 'National Observer' after W. E. Henley had ceased to be its editor, and Mr. J. C. Vincent, also since dead, had taken his place.

'The Lone Corvette' was published in 'The Westminster Gazette' as late as 1893.

Of certain of these stories, particularly of the Australian group, I have no doubt. They were lifted out of the life of that continent with sympathy and care, and most of the incidents were those which had come under my own observation. I published them at last in book form, because I felt that no definitive edition of my books ought to appear--and I had then a definitive edition in my mind--without these stories which represented an early phase in my work. Whatever their degree of merit, they possess freshness and individuality of outlook. Others could no doubt have written them better, but none could have written them with quite the same touch or turn or individuality; and, after all, what we want in the art of fiction is not a story alone, not an incident of life or soul simply as an incident, but the incident as seen with the eye--and that eye as truthful and direct as possible--of one individual personality. George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevenson might each have chosen the same subject and the same story, and each have produced a masterpiece, and yet the world of difference between the way it was presented by each was the world of difference between the eyes that saw.

So I am content to let these stories speak little or much, but still to speak for me.

c.u.mNER'S SON

I. THE CHOOSING OF THE MESSENGER

There was trouble at Mandakan. You could not have guessed it from anything the eye could see. In front of the Residency two soldiers marched up and down sleepily, mechanically, between two ten-pounders marking the limit of their patrol; and an orderly stood at an open door, lazily shifting his eyes from the sentinels to the black guns, which gave out soft, quivering waves of heat, as a wheel, spinning, throws off delicate spray. A hundred yards away the sea spread out, languid and huge. It was under-tinged with all the colours of a morning sunrise over Mount Bobar not far beyond, lifting up its somnolent and ma.s.sive head into the Eastern sky. "League-long rollers" came in as steady as columns of infantry, with white streamers flying along the line, and hovering a moment, split, and ran on the sh.o.r.e in a crumbling foam, like myriads of white mice hurrying up the sand.

A little cloud of tobacco smoke came curling out of a window of the Residency. It was sniffed up by the orderly, whose pipe was in barracks, and must lie there untouched until evening at least; for he had stood at this door since seven that morning, waiting orders; and he knew by the look on Colonel c.u.mner's face that he might be there till to-morrow.

But the ordinary spectator could not have noticed any difference in the general look of things. All was quiet, too, in the big native city. At the doorways the worker in bra.s.s and silver hammered away at his metal, a sleepy, musical a.s.sonance. The naked seller of sweetmeats went by calling his wares in a gentle, una.s.sertive voice; in dark doorways worn-eyed women and men gossiped in voices scarce above a whisper; and brown children fondled each other, laughing noiselessly, or lay asleep on rugs which would be costly elsewhere. In the bazaars nothing was selling, and no man did anything but mumble or eat, save the few scholars who, cross-legged on their mats, read and laboured towards Nirvana. Priests in their yellow robes and with bare shoulders went by, oblivious of all things.

Yet, too, the keen observer could have seen gathered into shaded corners here and there, a few sombre, low-voiced men talking covertly to each other. They were not the ordinary gossipers; in the faces of some were the marks of furtive design, of sinister suggestion. But it was all so deadly still.

The gayest, cheeriest person in Mandakan was Colonel c.u.mner's son. Down at the opal beach, under a palm-tree, he sat, telling stories of his pranks at college to Boonda Broke, the half-breed son of a former Dakoon who had ruled the State of Mandakan when first the English came. The saddest person in Mandakan was the present Dakoon, in his palace by the Fountain of the Sweet Waters, which was guarded by four sacred warriors in stone and four brown men armed with the naked kris.

The Dakoon was dying, though not a score of people in the city knew it.

He had drunk of the Fountain of Sweet Waters, also of the well that is by Bakbar; he had eaten of the sweetmeat called the Flower of Bambaba, his chosen priests had prayed, and his favourite wife had lain all day and all night at the door of his room, pouring out her soul; but nothing came of it.

And elsewhere Boonda Broke was showing c.u.mner's Son how to throw a kris towards one object and make it hit another. He gave an ill.u.s.tration by aiming at a palm-tree and sticking a pa.s.sing dog behind the shoulder.

The dog belonged to c.u.mner's Son, and the lad's face suddenly blazed with anger. He ran to the dog, which had silently collapsed like a punctured bag of silk, drew out the kris, then swung towards Boonda Broke, whose cool, placid eyes met his without emotion.

"You knew that was my dog," he said quickly in English, "and--and I tell you what, sir, I've had enough of you. A man that'd hit a dog like that would hit a man the same way."

He was standing with the crimson kris in his hand above the dog. His pa.s.sion was frank, vigorous, and natural.

Boonda Broke smiled pa.s.sively.

"You mean, could hit a man the same way, honoured lord."

"I mean what I said," answered the lad, and he turned on his heel; but presently he faced about again, as though with a wish to give his foe the benefit of any doubt. Though Boonda Broke was smiling, the lad's face flushed again with anger, for the man's real character had been revealed to him on the instant, and he was yet in the indignant warmth of the new experience. If he had known that Boonda Broke had cultivated his friendship for months, to worm out of him all the secrets of the Residency, there might have been a violent and immediate conclusion to the incident, for the lad was fiery, and he had no fear in his heart; he was combative, high-tempered, and daring. Boonda Broke had learned no secrets of him, had been met by an unconscious but steady resistance, and at length his patience had given way in spite of himself. He had white blood in his veins--fighting Irish blood--which sometimes overcame his smooth, Oriental secretiveness and cautious duplicity; and this was one of those occasions. He had flung the knife at the dog with a wish in his heart that it was c.u.mner's Son instead. As he stood looking after the English lad, he said between his teeth with a great hatred, though his face showed no change:

"English dog, thou shalt be dead like thy brother there when I am Dakoon of Mandakan."

At this moment he saw hurrying towards him one of those natives who, a little while before, had been in close and furtive talk in the Bazaar.

Meanwhile the little cloud of smoke kept curling out of the Governor's door, and the orderly could catch the fitful murmur of talk that followed it. Presently rifle shots rang out somewhere. Instantly a tall, broad-shouldered figure, in white undress uniform, appeared in the doorway and spoke quickly to the orderly. In a moment two troopers were galloping out of the Residency Square and into the city. Before two minutes had pa.s.sed one had ridden back to the orderly, who reported to the Colonel that the Dakoon had commanded the shooting of five men of the tribe of the outlaw hill-chief, Pango Dooni, against the rear wall of the Palace, where the Dakoon might look from his window and see the deed.

The Colonel sat up eagerly in his chair, then brought his knuckles down smartly on the table. He looked sharply at the three men who sat with him.

"That clinches it," said he. "One of those fellows was Pango Dooni's nephew, another was his wife's brother. It's the only thing to do--some one must go to Pango Dooni, tell him the truth, ask him to come down and save the place, and sit up there in the Dakoon's place. He'll stand by us, and by England."

No one answered at first. Every face was gloomy. At last a grey-haired captain of artillery spoke his mind in broken sentences:

"Never do--have to ride through a half-dozen sneaking tribes--Pango Dooni, rank robber--steal like a barrack cat--besides, no man could get there. Better stay where we are and fight it out till help comes."

"Help!" said c.u.mner bitterly. "We might wait six months before a man-of-war put in. The danger is a matter of hours. A hundred men, and a score of n.i.g.g.e.rs--what would that be against thirty thousand natives?"

"Pango Dooni is as likely to butcher us as the Dakoon," said McDermot, the captain of artillery. Every man in the garrison had killed at least one of Pango Dooni's men, and every man of them was known from the Kimar Gate to the Neck of Baroob, where Pango Dooni lived and ruled.

The Colonel was not to be moved. "I'd ride the ninety miles myself, if my place weren't here--no, don't think I doubt you, for I know you all!

But consider the nest of murderers that'll be let loose here when the Dakoon dies. Better a strong robber with a strong robber's honour to perch there in the Palace, than Boonda Broke and his cut-throats--"

"Honour--honour?--Pango Dooni!" broke out McDermot the gunner scornfully.

"I know the man," said the Governor gruffly; "I know the man, I tell you, and I'd take his word for ten thousand pounds, or a thousand head of cattle. Is there any of you will ride to the Neck of Baroob for me?

For one it must be, and no more--we can spare scarce that, G.o.d knows!"

he added sadly. "The women and children--"

"I will go," said a voice behind them all; and c.u.mner's Son stepped forward. "I will go, if I may ride the big sorrel from the Dakoon's stud."

The Colonel swung round in his chair and stared mutely at the lad.

He was only eighteen years old, but of good stature, well-knit, and straight as a sapling.

Seeing that no one answered him, but sat and stared incredulously, he laughed a little, frankly and boyishly. "The kris of Boonda Broke is for the hearts of every one of us," said he. "He may throw it soon--to-night--to-morrow. No man can leave here--all are needed; but a boy can ride; he is light in the saddle, and he may pa.s.s where a man would be caught in a rain of bullets. I have ridden the sorrel of the Dakoon often; he has pressed it on me; I will go to the master of his stud, and I will ride to the Neck of Baroob."