Chapter XII: “Yes, the times are changed, for better or worse.”

Roses nodded sleepily over the veranda rail of Cooper’s bungalow, saturating the air with their sweetness. Their scent mingled with that of a hundred subtle foreign perfumes until the place had the languorous atmosphere of an Eastern harem. Around the dwelling lay a wilderness of a garden--a tangle of beautiful tropical trees and shrubs, fenced with a high thorny hedge which protected from inquisitive eyes its wealth of gorgeous flowers and cool greenery.

One corner of the balcony was grown over by roses whose blossoms shut out the blazing glare and turned the spot into a cool, scented bower.

There two girls sat, one on a long cane lounge, the other on a quaintly carved native stool, a tea-table beside them.

Nearly three weeks had passed since Leslie’s arrival in Duke Town, and during the time she had nursed Molly to convalescence.

As Leslie was pouring tea, footsteps along the veranda made her glance in that direction, a rather strained look in her eyes. Since only colored people came to the bungalow, and as Cooper never returned before dusk, she feared it was one of the native doctors of whom she had seen more than enough during the last few weeks.

Coming round the corner was a big, dark man in spotless white. On seeing him an expression of relief came to her face.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Lebrassa?” she asked with mock severity. “My patient isn’t allowed any visitors as yet.”

“I heard Mrs. Cooper was able to get up to-day, and I wanted to be the first outsider to congratulate her on her recovery,” he explained, as he paused beside Molly’s chair.

“You must congratulate my nurse, not me. But for Leslie I should never have pulled through.”

“I didn’t do much,” the younger girl replied. “I just sat round and gave you bites and sups.”

Affectionately, Molly’s thin arms went round the neck of the girl sitting on the low stool beside her.

“Modesty is Leslie’s great failing, as you may have noticed, Mr. Lebrassa. Won’t you sit down?” she finished, glancing at a chair beside them.

As Molly poured out tea for the visitor, Leslie studied him.

She had seen nothing of Lebrassa since the morning following her arrival at the bungalow. He came as a welcome change after society limited to Cooper, whom she avoided as much as possible, and the two negro physicians who were rapidly becoming a nightmare.

She could quite understand Molly’s thinking Mr. Lebrassa almost an Englishman; he was so different from those others.

His voice broke in on her thoughts.

“I hear you’ve not been out since you came here, Miss Graham,” he said. “May I show you some of the local sights to-morrow afternoon?”

“I’ve promised to have dinner with Major Harding to-morrow, and I shouldn’t care to leave Molly both afternoon and evening.”

Since leaving the steamer, Leslie had seen nothing of her two English friends, but she had heard from one or the other daily. And with Molly’s convalescence had come an invitation to dine with Harding the following evening.

Her reply brought a baulked look to Lebrassa’s eyes.

His one desire was to keep Leslie away from all her own color, so that she would not be able to make comparisons that would be to his disadvantage.

However, nothing of what was in his mind showed on his face as he looked at the girl.

“I was told you couldn’t be induced to leave Mrs. Cooper, even for necessary exercise. Now I find you’re willing to desert her for a whole evening.”

“I’m the one to blame,” Molly put in quickly. “Leslie wouldn’t have gone but I made her. She ought not to desert those nice men she met on the boat. She’ll have few enough friends out here, goodness knows.”

“You were wise in persuading her to go,” he said suavely.

Then he looked again at Leslie.

“When does my turn come? When may I take you sight-seeing?”

“Any day that isn’t to-morrow,” she replied.

“What about the day after? And what would you like to see?”

“Something typically African.”

“What’s your idea of ‘something typically African’?”

“A place far away from missionaries and traders, that has never come under white influence,” Leslie answered.

“Away in the wilds, where the African can be seen in all his primitive savagery, unrefined by the least touch of civilization, where human sacrifice goes on daily in the local temple, and where human flesh is displayed for edible purposes in the market square,” Lebrassa said, continuing the theme.

But although he spoke in his usual bored manner, a twitch of amusement and teasing took the hard, set look from his mouth.

Reproachfully Leslie looked at him.

“You’re making fun of me again,” she said.

“There’s a bush village a few miles away. What about that?” Molly suggested, as she poured out a second cup of tea for the visitor.

“Do you think that will be sufficient to satisfy Miss Graham’s craving for undiluted savagery?” he asked.

“You know I don’t like savage things,” Leslie exclaimed.

Her remark silenced Lebrassa.

Presently, he rose to go.

After farewells were made, he lingered for a moment at Leslie’s side.

“Can I persuade you to accompany me as far as the gate, Miss Graham?” he asked.

Because of all his kindness to Molly, Leslie was full of gratitude. This brought her to her feet at once, anxious to comply.

“I shall be glad of a walk,” she said. “And you can tell me the names of some of these wonderful tropical flowers.”

It was pleasant in the garden. The doves were cooing sleepily in the waning afternoon sun. Butterflies, orange, scarlet, brown, opalescent green, mauve, yellow and velvety-black flitted among the drowsy blossoms. From bubbling fountains water dripped, and trees sighed languidly in a light breeze that brought a rainbow shower of petals falling slowly to the ground.

Lebrassa seemed in no hurry to reach the gate. He went along leisurely, pausing frequently, watching with veiled eyes the girl at his side, answering her question about the flowers in a manner that suggested he had a good knowledge of botany.

Eventually when the gate was reached, he came to a halt.

“Miss Graham,” he said earnestly, “will you believe me when I say that had I known six months ago what I know now I’d have done my best to stop your friend’s marriage?”

“But what could you have done?” she asked with some surprise.

“I ought to have known that a man of Cooper’s power would be able to persuade a girl of your friend’s caliber into almost anything he wished, if there was no counter-influence at work. I saw what was happening, and I did nothing to prevent it. It pleased me to see her going headlong to destruction, for I’ve a grudge against the universe, a desire that the rest of mankind should suffer a modicum of what I’ve been through in my time. But had I known she was the friend of my little friend that was to be, I’d have put a stop to it.”

There was a dreary note in his voice that Leslie now knew.

“You’re blaming yourself for something that is not your fault at all,” she said in a sympathetic manner. “And you mustn’t have a grudge against the universe because of--your color. You imagine everybody despises you because of it, and being proud, you get your oar in first, and look at everybody with the deepest contempt. The world won’t stand that sort of thing, and pays you back in your own coin. You should look more amiably at the world. It’s not such a bad place really if… if it weren’t for the mistakes that sometimes happen.”

There was a strained look on Lebrassa’s face as he watched the girl who gazed up at him earnestly and kindly.

“I’m one of the mistakes,” he said. “But so long as you don’t despise me, I’ll endeavor to mend my ways, and be more amiable to the world.”

“Why should I despise you? You’ve never given me any cause to. Now you’re standing in the sun without your hat,” she added.

As if to draw him into the shade, Leslie laid a small, anxious hand on his sleeve.

Almost boyishly, he laughed.

“The sun won’t hurt my head. That’s one of the few advantages attached to being a nigger.”

“You mustn’t call yourself that.”

“Why not? It’s what the world has called me from my earliest days. I don’t mind now, since you don’t despise me because of it. But there was a time when the word made me absolutely rabid, when it left me hovering between murder and suicide. It stirred depths in me your mind could never conceive. I’d high ideals as a youngster. That word stood between me and all of them. It was maddening to have ambitions and yet be a ‘nigger,’ with sufficient white blood in me to make me appreciate the fact in all its fullness. I----”

As if afraid of where confessions might carry him, Lebrassa broke off suddenly.

“But I mustn’t worry my little friend with the career of a ‘mistake,’” he continued more calmly. “For in the end I succeeded, but not in the way I’d once hoped.”

“You don’t worry me. I like to hear you talk about yourself. It doesn’t do to keep things of that sort bottled up. They’re apt to ferment and cause a terrific explosion.”

“It was so with me, little friend. I fermented, and there was a big explosion.”

In his remarks Leslie saw nothing more than a reference to the huge business he had built up in Calabar, and the fact that rumor said his private life did not bear inspection. But the more she saw of the man, the more excuses she could find for him.

She returned to the house, pitying him from the depths of her heart, guessing a little of what he had suffered.

Lebrassa was well to the fore in her mind the next evening as she dressed for Harding’s party.

In from the balcony drifted the sound of the strange negro voices. To celebrate his wife’s recovery Cooper had invited a dozen or so guests to dinner.

Leslie knew she would have to make an appearance in the drawing-room before she left. She also knew that with Molly’s recovery there would be more and more of the negro element to contend with.

Presently, erect and fearless-looking, Leslie entered the drawing-room.

A coal-black negro, male or female, in evening dress, is not a pretty sight. This the girl realized as she gazed at the assembly. Her thoughts went to Lebrassa as she had seen him the afternoon before, olive-skinned, with well-cut features, immaculate in white drill, bare-headed in the sun that marked out the silver threads in his crisp, wavy black hair, and the deep-cut lines of dissipation on his face. He had been laughing in a way she had never seen him laugh before, laughing as if his black burden had suddenly dropped from him, laughing in a way that took all the cruel look from his mouth--laughing and calling himself a “nigger”!

And she had come out to Africa thinking all educated negroes would be like Mr. Lebrassa!

As Leslie entered the room one of the black doctors crossed to her, taking in every detail of her frock, letting his eyes dwell on her slim, bare arms and slender white shoulders in a manner particularly offensive.

The girl detested him, and Molly’s convalescence had come as a blessed relief from his almost constant presence in the bungalow.

“I was wondering where you were, Miss Graham,” he said. “I have been looking forward to meeting you unofficially, and without the reserve professional etiquette demands between doctor and nurse. It is quite ten years since I had the pleasure of dining with an English lady, except, of course, my hostess. It will remind me of my college days, when, if I may say so, I numbered many charming English ladies among my friends.”

“I’m dining with Major Harding to-night.”

It gave Leslie untold pleasure to be able to say this. Those other “charming English ladies” this specimen of educated African referred to would hardly have been invited to grace Harding’s table.

“Is that not somewhat unusual?”

“Unusual! What do you mean?”

“I fancied from what I saw of English society--I may, of course, have been mistaken--that it was not customary for young ladies, unchaperoned, to go to the residences of their gentlemen friends.”

A small face, very white and cold, looked back unflinchingly at the leering, insinuating black one.

“I’m not a member of English society now, so I needn’t consider its customs.”

With that Leslie turned her back on him. She crossed to where Molly was sitting. There she stayed for a few minutes, watching the crowd of black faces that seemed suddenly to bear down upon her, bowing coldly as Cooper introduced his various friends.

With a sense of unspeakable relief she heard her hammock announced.

As Leslie was jogged along to Harding’s bungalow, she found it in her heart to wish she had taken Lebrassa’s advice and remained in England. Although Molly had warned her what to expect from the white side, she had not said what Leslie might have to put up with from the black.

She was very quiet and subdued during her dinner with the Major, so much so that he was sorely tempted to ask what the matter was.

However, during the course of dessert, she told him of her own accord.

“Major Harding, it was kind of you to ask me here to-night. Molly has a dinner party on, so I hesitated about coming here because of that. But she insisted on my coming.”

“I’m sorry if my invitation clashed with Mrs. Cooper’s arrangements.”

“It doesn’t matter in the least. I… I’d much rather be here.”

Wondering what had happened, in a very fatherly manner he looked across at her.

“Whenever you feel ‘you’d much rather be here,’ come without waiting for any invitation. I want you to look upon my bungalow as your second home, a place you can run in and out of just as you wish. Whenever Cooper has friends, you come to me. For I don’t think you’ll care much for colored society.”

Leslie’s big, beautiful eyes suddenly grew moist.

“No, I don’t think I shall,” she said huskily.

By now Harding knew what the matter was. He turned the conversation into other channels. And as they talked together, he wondered how long it would be before this foolish, quixotic little girl came and told him she had decided to return to England.