Chapter XXIV

“_My story is told as, long ago,_ _My story was told to me._”

To Leslie, as the little procession disappeared, came the feeling that had assailed her when she had first landed in Calabar--that of all known things gliding away from her.

Presently, out of the world of unreality surrounding her, a voice came.

“Come, little rose, let me take you where you can rest and have tea.”

In a dazed manner she looked up at Lebrassa.

“You can’t stand here any longer,” he said gently. “You must come with me now.”

There was nothing else to do but obey.

Like one numbed, she walked with him up to the gilded gates, and on through a maze of flowers and trees until a building was reached. She passed through an arch into a room--a room all white and green, with marble floor and walls, and little fountains dripping into carved shells filled with ferns. There were alcoves draped with glistening gauze and heavy silver lamps hung from the ceiling. The place had no windows, but all one side was columned arches around which roses twined.

Leslie noticed nothing of her surroundings. Lebrassa took her across to one of the curtained alcoves, and held the silver gauze aside so that she might pass through. She looked at his brown hand, so dark against the curtain, wondering why it left no red stain on the whiteness.

Beyond was a door. This he opened.

“You’ll find all you want in there, Leslie. Then you must come back to me and have tea.”

The place proved to be an ordinary bedroom which, but for the mosquito net drawn round the bed, the marble floor and walls, and the fretted arches screened with reed blinds, might have been any girl’s room in far-away England.

Taking off her hat, she sank down on one of the chairs and stayed there, with hands clasped tightly on her knee.

A knock roused her. A woman entered--a negress in a loose, blue cotton smock, with big, gold hoops in her ears.

Guessing the woman to be an emissary from her captor, Leslie rose, and went through the shimmering draperies into the room beyond.

Her entrance made Lebrassa, who was bending over a tea-table, look around.

“Sit down,” he said gently.

She sank down on the nearest lounge. And there she stayed, watching him hostilely. The thought of Captain Fletcher’s safety had lessened her own burden of horror.

Presently he came to her side, a cup of tea in one hand, in the other a cake-stand with various dishes of assorted dainties.

“Tea, Leslie,” he said.

She took the cup he was offering. And then sat holding it, forgetting it was there.

How silent the room was! No sound but dripping water and this man’s soft movements. She could quite understand Molly’s hell now!

His voice broke into her thoughts.

“Now, what would you like?”

She looked, not at the array of dainties he was offering, but at the swarthy face above them.

“Nothing, thank you.”

Her voice must have lashed him with its depths of scorn and aversion. But no flicker of feeling came to his face.

“Drink your tea then,” he said quietly. “Afterwards we’ll talk.”

Turning away, he went to one of the arches leading out into a center courtyard. There he lounged, his gaze fixed in an unseeing manner on the beauty outside.

He looked so thoroughly English as he stood there, his face half turned away, his hands deep in his pockets, so that she could not see their darkness, that again Leslie had the feeling of moving in some ghastly nightmare. She could still hardly realize _he_ was the Hyena. Mr. Lebrassa! A man she had once liked and been drawn to!

The sound of her cup being put on a table, roused him. With a quick, feverish movement he crossed to where she sat. There was a moment of quivering silence as he stood with one hand on the back of her chair, watching her hungrily.

“I suppose your mind is made up to hate and despise me,” he said tensely.

“Do you expect me to do anything else?” she asked, in a cold, scornful manner.

“I expect a lot from you, Leslie. And, since you’ve driven me to it, I’ll tell you why.”

Then from Lebrassa’s lips came a flood of words, low, fierce and passionate.

“I’ve had the world’s scorn and contempt, Leslie, but I won’t have yours. God knows I would not smirch the whiteness of my rose. I don’t like to tell you what I’m about to tell you now. It’s no story for a girl’s ears. But I want so much from you, and you will give me nothing willingly. Not a grain of pity. Not a shred of toleration. Not a shadow of the sympathy that was so sweet. Nothing but scorn, contempt and aversion--what all your color have dealt out to me.”

As if gathering his words together he stopped for a moment.

“Do you think I should have become the brute I am without a reason?” he asked. “Don’t you know me well enough to have asked yourself that question? Have you never wondered why I took that letter?”

There was no answer.

“_Your_ signature on the envelope made me take it, Leslie. I’d been looking for someone of that name for years. And I’ll tell you why. It started forty-five years ago, with a man’s desire for travel and romance. There were two brothers, orphans, sons of an English nobleman, the last of an old family. The elder was twenty-five when his father died, the other twenty-two. Even at that age the younger one’s life had been so vicious that his father had disinherited him. Yet his brother stood by him, paid off his debts and gave him a fresh start in life. Then the elder one followed his own bent. He was by nature an artist and a dreamer, a brave man who loved travel and adventure, and the wild romance civilization cannot bring. Fate brought him out to Africa, to the heart of the unknown. There was a queen reigning there, in the corner of a ruined city, a girl barely fifteen. She was the daughter of an African Sultan and his chief wife, a negress with a dash of white blood in her. This young queen was a girl of great beauty, resembling more her unknown white ancestors than her negro parents. See, Leslie, here she is! Irena, Queen of Kallu, Daughter of the Stars.”

Lebrassa drew aside a curtain screening an alcove near.

A life-size portrait was behind, a picture of a girl with a tawny, yellow skin, who looked like a lovely purring tigress. But her great, black eyes smiled out at the world, full of love and tenderness.

The artist had been clever and realistic, for the stars flashing among her wealth of black curls glittered with gold-dust put on before the paint had dried. Golden armlets, strewn with golden stars, glistened against her golden skin. A robe of purple gauze, like the darkest night, draped her from shoulder to ankle, scarcely hiding the golden sheen of herself. Stars held the sleeveless garment on her tawny shoulders, and were strewn about its hem. On her softly rounded bosom was a golden ornament, the shape of a hyena’s head, with lips curled back on a vicious snarl over tiny white fangs, and green eyes that leered diabolically.

She stood, a daughter of Sultans, proudly smiling, a slim girl, like a golden reed, draped in the garment of the night, with the crest of her race on her bosom.

The curtain dropped, and Lebrassa’s low, tense voice started again.

“Her European ancestry was shown in more than her light skin and unusual beauty. It was shown in her aversion to marry with any of the negro chieftains from neighboring districts. And this Englishman was brought to her, a prisoner found trespassing on her lands--the first white man she had seen. She was a queen. The priests desired her marriage. If her choice fell on this stranger, a man fair-skinned, with hair that gleamed like her golden jewels, was it very surprising? The surprise was not there, but on the other side. This Englishman, her prisoner, grew to love her as few women are loved--this wild, golden girl who had picked him for her consort, this daughter of savage negro Sultans, Irena, Queen of Kallu. He was a man who honored and respected women. He took her away, far beyond the bounds of the corner where she ruled, and married her at a Protestant mission. She was his legal wife as surely as if she had been an Englishwoman.”

There was a brief pause.

Dark shadows were creeping into the arched recesses of the room. Lebrassa struck a tiny gong. Its mellow voice brought a soft-footed servant who lighted the lamps and vanished as noiselessly as he had appeared. Their glow gave a golden sheen to the purple of advancing night, a purple that was rapidly growing deeper.

“They came back to Kallu,” Lebrassa went on when the servant had disappeared. “This little palace he had built from the ruins of a once great city. And he lived here with his wife, teaching her, dreaming, and painting. A time came when he was awakened. For something occurred to the possibility of which I doubt if he had ever given a thought. A third came into the little paradise he had made for himself and one other. A problem confronted the dreamer: a problem he had created and was responsible for. A son was born, heir alike to all that was his father’s and his mother’s, to light and darkness, to civilization and barbarism, to English culture and African savagery. But he was a just man, and he determined his son should have every chance.”

Lebrassa stopped for a moment, then he went on again, but in a quiet, dreary way.

“A little, a very little of my history I once told you, Leslie, so pleased that you should wish to hear. I was a year old when my father took me to England. He did not take me as his son, but under another name, the one you know me by. Afterwards I kept it, because I couldn’t prove my claim to a better. I was put into an English clergyman’s family as a mulatto boy in whom he was interested, to be brought up in the ways of civilization. I was five years old when I first remember seeing the man I afterwards knew to be my father. Just when I was beginning to realize I was not as the other children at the vicarage, but a nigger. It was some time before I knew all that the word meant, but I felt it was one of contempt.”

He paused, as if hoping for some word from Leslie. Her gaze was on the picture. The name “Irena” was familiar. It had been on the golden armlet she had found among her father’s possessions. It had been on his lips occasionally, when attacks of raving, which subsequent knowledge of the world had told her were delirium tremens, had him in their grip. Although she had no idea what Lebrassa’s confession was leading up to, a feeling of dire disaster, outside of anything to do with her being in his power, gradually was creeping over her.

“I remember quite well how I felt when I reached the stage of reading for myself and crept into the library to find out the meaning of the word they threw at me in anger,” his voice continued. “The next time it came from English lips, from a boy two years my senior, I fought him and made him take his word back. I believe I would have killed him, for I was a Sultan of Kallu even in those days, but the nurse separated us. She called me ‘a little black devil’ and locked me in my room for the rest of the day. A few weeks after this I first saw my father--my guardian I thought he was. That episode was told him, together with other instances of uncontrollable temper and childish arrogance. The short time he stayed in England we spent together. He explained to me the mixed blood in me. He said he wanted me to grow up to be an Englishman. He said I must not let my savage instincts conquer me. That I must learn to control myself, to prove myself worthy to be called a white man. I knew he liked me, and I loved him. After that God alone knows how I fought with myself to try to become the man he wished. As I grew up I fought the white race, but in a different manner, with my brains. And I always won. I was first in my studies and in my games. But I still remained ‘that nigger.’ Jealousy applied the term to me then. I made no friends at school. The boys I would have liked to be friendly with avoided me. Those who would have had me for their friend, I avoided. From Africa letters came frequently, encouraging, helpful letters from the man I loved and was striving to please.”

Lebrassa’s voice trailed off into silence, to become one with the sigh of the night wind drifting through the arches.

“I only saw my father three times,” he continued, “the last when I was about sixteen. I remember how elated I was on that occasion. I’d just won a scholarship that would take me on to college. I was delighted to tell my benefactor this, to know I should be no further expense to the man who had done so much for me. I remember wondering why he laughed when I told him, and how he told me he would give me a good allowance in spite of my scholarship. And I knew he was pleased with me, my success, my control over myself. For he told me I was a ‘white man,’ and how glad he was that he had given me my chance. Then he gave me a sealed letter, saying he could rely on my word of honor not to open it until I was eighteen. I sometimes wonder why he did so. But afterwards I learnt he had a weak heart, and he may have felt his doom was upon him.”

As if brooding on the long-dead past, Lebrassa paused again.

“I went on to college,” he began. “But at the end of the second term my allowance stopped. The firm of solicitors who forwarded the money could tell me nothing except that my patron, Mr. Godfrey--the name I knew him by--had not sent his usual remittance to them. My scholarship kept me going. At the bottom of my box was a sealed letter, my most cherished possession, to be opened when I was eighteen. I was very honorable in those days, Leslie, too honorable to open that letter after I had given my word. And you will hear now all that honor did for me. Had I been less honorable there would have been no Hyena. I should have been able to outwit my enemy.”

Lebrassa stopped again, as if hoping for some comment from the girl. But she said nothing.

“I can’t make you understand what that letter was to me, Leslie. It was a legacy from my lost friend who I felt must be dead. It kept me silent and uncomplaining under the burden of gibes and insults your color heaped upon me. Some of the fault may have been mine. At times I forgot I was a ‘nigger’ and stated my ideas and opinions in a manner my colleagues would not brook from a person they considered so much their inferior.”

There was another pause.

From beyond the garden the flare of bonfires lit the sky, and sparks flew out in golden showers drenching the soft purple of the night. The wind sighed through the open arches, bringing the scent of roses and the sound of distant merrymaking--of crowds rejoicing over their Sultan’s happiness.

Tense and low the mulatto’s voice came again, whispering and sighing away into the depths of the silent room.

“Then my eighteenth birthday came. And what that letter told me! It was from a father to a son he was proud of, who he had once thought might bring dishonor on an ancient name, but who had proved himself worthy of his heritage. I was not Essel Lebrassa, the bastard son of a negro woman as I had imagined myself to be, a waif, brought to England out of charity by a man who desired to experiment. I was Essel de Tourville, only and legal son of Richard, Earl of Alglenton, heir to one of the oldest names in England. My existence was known only to two English people, my father and his brother. There was a lot about my mother in the letter, and it told me of my African heritage and where it was situated. I did not want that. It was the English one I craved, because it took the stigma from me. Shall I tell you of the dreams I dreamt that night? Not dreams of self-advancement, but of all I could do for the country I loved in spite of the insults it had dealt out to me. I would be one of its peers, would have a voice in its management, could do for it in its African possessions what no other man could do, understanding so well both the black and white sides of all the problems different colors bring, having both black and white in me. They were a boy’s dreams, rudely shattered. The next morning I was up in Town with the solicitor who had sent me notice of the cessation of my allowance nearly two years before. I showed him my letter. He laughed at me. Richard, Earl of Alglenton had died unmarried and had been succeeded by his brother, the Honorable Lionel de Tourville. My letter was a hoax. The invention of a madman. It proved nothing. ‘Would the present peer, knowing the existence of his brother’s son, have deprived him of his heritage?’ ‘Would the late Earl of Alglenton have so far forgotten what was due to him as a peer of England to have legally married a negro woman?’ These and other questions he put to me, all the time laughing at me. I must produce my mother’s marriage certificate, my own birth certificate, before I could expect anyone to listen to a story as mad as mine.”

By now Leslie was looking at Lebrassa in a strained way, her eyes brought to his by the mention of the names “Richard” and “Alglenton.”

“My faith in my letter was unshaken,” he went on. “I left the office laughing at myself. In my excitement I had forgotten such things as certificates were necessary. Then out of the whirl I was moving in, came another thought. Why had my uncle sent me no news of my father’s death? Why had he stepped so calmly into my place? I thought no evil of my father’s brother, and I soon found an answer to my own questions. It was my father’s wish that all facts should be kept from me until my eighteenth birthday. My uncle had taken my place to avoid explanations. I had yet to find out what manner of man I was dealing with. I decided to go and see my uncle. I consulted a directory and found my own town address. I found him in my own house. He was a clever villain. My card was given to him and he had me admitted. I recognized him at once by his likeness to the Mr. Godfrey I’d known. I did not expect him to claim me kin until he had seen my father’s letter. I said why I’d come and brought out my letter. He took it in a strangely quiet way. I know now that he had no idea I had it. It was some evidence. Experts could prove that the handwritings of Mr. Godfrey and Richard, Earl of Alglenton, were identical, the work of the same man. I was not expecting treachery. I judged him by my father. I had to learn they were very different. He left me, crossed to the fire and stood there reading my letter. Then, Leslie, before I knew what was happening, he had burnt it! Burnt my letter!”

As if the agony of that moment were still upon him, Lebrassa paused.

“Then he turned on me in mockery, asking me what I meant by bringing such a lunatic’s tale to him. He denied all knowledge of my existence, of my father’s marriage; of all my letter contained. I was dumbfounded. Too late I realized the villain I was dealing with. I knew it was his intention to defraud me, to keep my heritage from me. Although he had burnt my letter, I knew its contents by heart. In it had been given cursory information as to the whereabouts of my mother’s country. But it was enough for me. I determined to go there, get my certificates and again confront him. During the few days I remained in England I learnt more of my father and uncle. How my father had died suddenly of heart disease two days after I’d last seen him, just as he was about to start out to Africa. No one but my uncle knew what took him there. Society had long since ceased to talk about him, dubbing him an eccentric man who preferred the wilds to England. My uncle spent the year following his brother’s death abroad, before launching himself as the Earl of Alglenton. I was soon to know how his time had been spent.”

There was a brief pause. Leslie’s gaze was still on Lebrassa, in a fixed, anxious manner, as if she dreaded what he might say next.

“God knows, little rose, I wouldn’t tell you this,” he went on in a strained way, “but I want your love and sympathy. It is my right and due as surely as was the Earldom of Alglenton.”

He laid his hand on her shoulder, looking down at her hungrily. She did not shrink from his touch. She did not even know his hand was upon her. She sat just waiting, petrified, at the knowledge of some unknown, ghastly horror that was sweeping toward her.

“Within a few days I left England for Africa,” he continued a moment later. “It was months before I reached Kallu, longing for my unknown mother, to lay my head on her knee and tell her how they had served me. And what do you think I found? A tribe of maddened savages. Ten thousand tongues clamoring for the blood of a white man, the murderer of their queen. No certificates were needed to satisfy them who I was. My word was enough. There were those among my mother’s people who could speak English, taught them by my father. From them I learnt the rest of the story. Two years before, a second white man had found his way to Kallu. He called himself an emissary from England, sent by the queen’s consort to ask her for certain papers she held, that her husband needed to prove the identity of their only child. My mother took him into the temple where she kept these treasures of hers in a golden casket on the altar of her heathen ancestors. What happened in there no one knew. Whether my mother suddenly suspected him of treachery and refused to give them into his keeping, I don’t know. She was a savage in spite of everything. Some of the instinct civilization stifles may have come to her, telling her not to part with the papers that gave her son his English heritage.”

Once more Lebrassa paused, as if he saw that slim, golden girl, his mother, alone in the Temple of the Night, standing by an ancient altar, with her treasured papers pressed against her heart, wondering if she dared give them into the keeping of the man who said he was a messenger from the white husband she adored, and whose lightest word to her was law.

“That stranger left the temple alone,” he continued. “Nothing was thought of it. The Queen Irena often stayed there to muse among the forgotten gods of her ancestors. Hours passed and she still did not appear. Then the priests entered. They found her dead, strangled on the altar, and the casket empty.”

The wind took up Lebrassa’s words, and they seemed to die away like a sob in the far corners of the great room.

“From one of the men my father had taken with him, I learnt the whereabouts of the Mission where my parents had been married. I went there, thinking I might prove something. I was too late again. I might have known that villain would leave me nothing. The man who had married them was long since dead. But there were people about the place who remembered the marriage of an Englishman with a yellow girl of great beauty. They searched all the books for a record of the event. A book was found where the record should have been. But--the page containing the entry was missing! I asked if any stray white man had been there during the last two years. There had been several, and one answered to my uncle’s description. I was the Sultan of Kallu. This heritage brought me riches far surpassing my English one, if not the honor. I went back to England, to my uncle, accusing him of treachery. I swore I would have his life in exchange for my mother’s unless he gave me my due. He laughed at me. In my rage I would have killed him there and then, had not the servants stopped me. The next year I spent in an English prison, and narrowly escaped being shut up for life as a criminal lunatic. Twenty-two years ago England was ringing with the story of a ‘nigger’ who imagined himself to be an English earl. Then I went mad. I forgot civilization altogether. In an English prison was born a man now called the Hyena.”

Lebrassa’s hand left Leslie’s shoulder. He moved a few steps away, to a curtain screening another alcove.

“I went back to Kallu,” he continued. “I took up every rite and ceremony of my negro ancestors. On the altar of my heathen forefathers I swore to have the life of the man who had defrauded me. Not only his, but all who sprang from him. Revenge on the whole white race for the sneers, insults, and the final degradation they had put upon me. Then my uncle learnt that I meant what I said. And he dared not remain in public life. So very soon England was ringing with another story--the mysterious disappearance of the Earl of Alglenton, his countess and infant son. For fourteen years my servants hunted him, and in the end I caught him. But he died of pneumonia a week later. His death left me rabid, for it seemed he had robbed me of everything, even vengeance. Yet, presently, I was glad I had not killed him. Madly I searched for his son, to make him pay the penalty his father had escaped. It was not until many years later I heard his son had died in infancy but there was--a daughter. Who was he, Leslie, this man who stole all from me when I was a boy?”

With a quick, passionate gesture Lebrassa drew the curtain screening the alcove. It showed a portrait of an Englishman of about thirty, in light, tropical garb, tall and fair and with gray eyes.

In a dazed way Leslie looked at the picture. In spite of the difference twenty years would make, only too well she knew of whom it reminded her.

“That is my father, Leslie, Richard, Earl of Alglenton. _Your_ father’s brother.”

It had broken over her at last, that great wave of blood and blackness and treachery that had been rapidly rising. Broken over her and swamped her completely.

There were a dozen things to confirm Lebrassa’s statements. Her lack of knowledge as to who and what she really was. The wandering life her father had led. His mysterious disappearance. His dislike of Africa, where he said he had never been, yet his own ravings proved to the contrary, and the names of Richard, Irena, Alglenton and Kallu had always been on his tongue when drink had him firmly within its grip. The armlet she had found among his possessions, similar to the ones the pictured girl wore.

Leslie had loved her father; he was the only relative life had given her. For all that, as she grew older she had realized he had been a wastrel, that his ways had not been those of an upright and honorable man.

Through the black cloud that seemed to choke her, Lebrassa’s voice came.

“And then your letter came into my hands, with the name of the son of my enemy. And I saw _you_, heard you speaking in my defense. I had to learn you were my cousin, my one white relative. You came to my room, and I found out the truth. You stayed talking to me, treating me just as if I were a white man. I went back to Africa, intending to keep my oath. I schemed to get you to Kallu. I meant to make you pay for your father’s crimes. Yet, when I saw you again, my only desire was to turn you away from the trap I had laid. I had no chance against you. I couldn’t hate you, much as I tried. I could only love you, Leslie. If I were the man I might once have been I wouldn’t have forced you to come to me now, knowing you had nothing but hatred for me. I’ve been a savage too long. Too long the Sultan of Kallu. But I could be so patient, if patience would win me a little toleration, a little liking perhaps. God knows I’m a brute, steeped in every vice and crime, not fit to touch you. Yet, little rose, is the blame all mine? If I went back to savagery, who drove me?”

Leslie’s hands had gone to her face, as if to shut out the picture of vile treachery he had put before her.

“I didn’t know. I’d no idea,” she moaned.

That heart-broken wail made him touch her gently.

“I know you hadn’t, darling,” he whispered. “It’s just a ghastly mess, no more your fault than mine. The sins of the fathers that we have to pay for.”

There was no response. Instead came the sound of stifled sobbing.

Her tears made him drop on his knees beside her, whispering words of consolation.

“You mustn’t cry, little cousin. It’s no fault of yours. I can forgive everything if only you’ll try to love me, touch me willingly again. He’s not my enemy now. He’s the father of my rose. The sweetness he created can do more than ease my pain. I was a brute to tell you. But I couldn’t stand your hatred. Don’t cry, little cousin, dearest, don’t. I can’t bear it.”

The broken-hearted sobs went on, but a small, shaking, white hand came trembling on to Lebrassa’s head. At its touch, he buried his face on Leslie’s knee, and knelt there with his arms around her.