Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1920 — WHITE MAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHITE MAN

By George Agnew Chamberlain

Author of ■Home." "Through Stained GUss.’’ "John Bogardua," etc.

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I.—Andrea Pellor, handsome daughter of Lord Pellor, impecunious aristocrat, is doomed to marry an illiterate but wealthy mfddle-aged diamond mine owner. She disconsolately wanders from her hotel in South Africa and discovers an aviator about to fly from the beach. Impulsively, of course imagining that the trip will be merely a pleasant excursion, and a welcome relief from -thoughts of her Impending loveless marriage, she begs to be taken for a flight, although she does not know him. He somewhat unwillingly agrees, and they start. CHAPTER ll.—When she realizes her anknown aviator is not going back Andrea in desperation tries to choke him with one of her stockings. He thwarts her and they sail on into the very heart of Africa. Landing in an immense craal, Andrea finds the natives all bow in worship to her mysterious companion. She is given a slave boy, "Bathtub," and the White Man sets about building a hut for her. CHAPTER IV.—Andrea Is awakened from sound Bleep next morning by loud pounding on her doorway and is told to prepare for a day's hunt with White Man. She thoroughly enjoys the exciting trip and begins to understand more of he "host’s’" character and the reason for his apparently ruthless slaughtering of animals. He Is providing for the force of blacks he employs and who look to him for sustenance. CHAPTER V.—Andrea, worrying over her deplorable lack of change of clothing, (■ surprised and delighted when a trunk, loaded with everything in the way of clothing dear to the feminine heart, is dropped at her doorway by stalwart natives and she is told by white Man that they are hers. White Man by a skillful snot saves her from the attack of a •able bull and she is fast becoming reconciled to her fate after eight days in the craal. , CHAPTER Vl.—On another expedition the donkey on which Andrea Is mounted runs away with her and she Is for a moment made ridiculous. White Man explains the African method of wife purchase "obolo.”' She Is horrified. Afterward she listens to the report of native runners that a herd of elephants is in the district and Is invited to the hunt by White Man. They start down a croco-dile-infested stream for the scene of the hunt CHAPTER Vll.—After a tedious tramp three bull elephants are sighted and Andrea Is transfixed by the excitement of the chase. Overcome by the spectacle the killing of two elephants Andrea tfcddenly finds herself in the warm em•flce of White Man. To her surprise Whe Is by no means indignant. Andrea J learns that another white man is encamped near their craal, but when she declares she would like to see him White Man warns her she must never try to see or communicate with the stranger. He refuses to give his reasons, and Andrea resolves to meet the other man. CHAPTER VIII. — White Man announces that his work is ended, and preparations are made for the shipment or the materia! on hand. One rainy night Andrea allows herself to become ae•pondent. She gives the signal agreed on between them to summon White Man to her in case of danger. >Vlth a mixture of ridicule and comfort he coaxes her from her despondent fit. His strong character and his ideas of a life of usefulness are something of a revelation to Andrea, used to the frivolous existence common to most "aristocrats, and she begins to realize with a little alarm that ehe is beginning to care deeply for him. CHAPTER IX.—Next day Andrea is seized with a violent attack ofP e .™lclous malaria and for three days White Man wages a desperate fight for her life He succeeds and the incident results in the discovery of their love for each other. Andrea learns tfiat her companion is Robert Oddman Trevor once famous flyer, victim of nervous shock and Incapacitated for work in the air. The trip to the coast, where he met Andrea was undertaken through necessity, and he is afraid to risk her safety in another ascent.

CHAPTER X. From that day Andrea’s health began to mend with tremendous rapidity. Trevor never tired of watching her; never ceased to wonder at a recovery so rapid that Its dally transitions were visible. It reminded him of one of the marvels of bls boyhood. An old man had said to him one dawn, “Hear the corn growing, sonny?” and he laughed, whereupon the granddad had taken him by one ear and marched him to the nearest furrow. “Pick out a stalk and watch It, you Uttle egg-sucker,” he commanded. “See It grow, if you can’t hear.” Andrea was like that; she was unfurling as though in the morning of a new youth. Never had her eyes been brighter; never her cheeks so quick to play with fire. Incidentally, she was full of a devil of mischievous reminiscent innuendo. “It’s all a great joke now, young lady,” Trevor would defend himself, ■“but If you’d seen what I have of pernicious malaria, you’d keep grave for A year. I’ve seen three Swahilis that had nourished mosquitoes from their youth up, fall like dogs, one after another, within a mile and a half of an infected camp and the best of them went stone blind for a month.” “Did you nurse them, White Man? Did you see them through?” These were the questions that drove <jhlm nearest to desperation, but the gleam in the eyes above the demure mouth from which they issued invariably warned him of the trap in time. He was on his guard; he knew that there were things between him and

Andrea that turn Into ghastly skeletons walking by day and which only consistent silence could entomb. But sodecp had grown his sympathies that even In this he understood her. It was not that she was perverse, but that her pride demanded a constant test of hl's loyalty to her other self—that Internal self thut had lain bared, revealed and helpless in his arms. About those things iXhlch might have •roused a legitimate curiosity, she asked few questions. Without a word of inquiry she saw him despatch twelve picked men on some mysterious mission whose intricacies and importance necessitated a preliminary painter of an hour’s duration. Equally silent, she watched his detailed preparations of a well-appointed safari. Tents were brushed and set to air; cots and mattresses put out for a sun-bath; provisions of all sorts packed In one-load cases; water boiled, filtered and hung in canvas coolers. Only a few days before, Just such signs as these had made her heart heavy with unanswerable questionings, but her Illness had changed all that. The successive moments of the throbbing present eacjj in its turn filled her whole horizon. She knew instinctively that he had something big up his sleeve, and that he would shake it out on the slightest provocation. She also had a long memory, and had no difficulty in recalling his exact boast as to what he would do when she was well. He was going to take her in free fight. She was well now, she reflected; she had never felt better In her life, and if there was one ■thing she hungered for more than another, it was the promised combat. There* is no telling how long Andrea’s Innate stubbornne. •. would ■have held out, nor at w*t; t point Trevor's exasperation woul 1 ire.vc him', for their wordless contest i was interrupted by an event which he had foreseen and feared. They were sitting at table after dinner on a cloudless night, brilliant under a full moon, when a far-away sound came to disturb their purposeful silence. Trevor straightened in his chair and leaned forward,’his whole body tense in the effort of listening. It came again, a ghost of a sound that gradually aswumed substance and rhythmic form until after five long minutes it was recognizable as the cadenced rumble of an African river chantey.

Instantly Trevor was on his feet. He Issued orders to Bathtub, who immediately began to clear the table and eliminate every Item of furniture that would indicate a dual occupancy of the white portion of the camp. They had dressed that night for dinner, not as a celebration or any special event, but because they were both bored with too much time on their hands. Trevor now excused himself to Andrea and withdrew to his room. In a few minutes he reappeared garbed in his roughest khaki shirt and trousers. His face was grave as he advanced on Andrea with a nod toward her but. “MacCloster will be here In half an hour," he stated. “I ask you to go to your room, close and bar both doors and stay there until I call you." Without waiting for her comment, and left her. She sat on, wltTi narrowed eyes, until she bad finished her cigarette, and then, with a glance around to see if Trevor were watching, she arose and walked slowly across the open court of the craal. In her breast was a great rebellion at the curt manner in which he had made his request, but she had to admit to herself that no other form of address, coming from him, could have impressed her so deeply, moved her so quickly. She went to her room, closed the front door, but did not bar It, chose a book and sat down to make a pretense of reading. The sound of the chantey rumbled near and then wavered afar according to the bends of the river, but in- spite of this variation the sum of its volume swelled steadily in an ominous approach until it died quite suddenly at the boat landing. There was a distant rattle of a dozen puntlng-poles dropped across the thwarts, a spoken .word or two that carried marvelously across the still night, and then a long silence suddenly shattered by a bellowing voice: “Ship ahoy I Show your port and starboard lights, d you. How in the h d’you think I’ll make the channel?" - Andrea rose quickly and laid her ear to arrack In the door. Her pulse was beating fast, but she was smiling. She heard Trevor come out and presently she heard him speak. His voice was almost unrecognizable, It was so cold and so Incisive, like sharpened steel. In strange Incongruity, the words he let fall were like drops of molten metal. _ “Hello, MacCloster, you dirty, drunken brute! What’s your price to go away from here tonight? I can offer you a case of Bols, and all the kafflr dogs in the craal to see you off." The words and their manner astounded Andrea J for a moment it seemed to her that these two men must be Joking. Then she felt the impact of an undercurrent of malevolence such as she had never In her life Imagined, much less encountered. She quivered to the thought that here was Trevor absolutely without gloves at last, every word an intentionally naked blow. “Trevor," said MacCloster in an oily voice that was strangely softened and indescribably aggravating, “I like you. I can’t help likin’ you; you’re so d unblblical. Not a whisper about a sanguinary fatted calf. You go right to my heart with a case of gin. I accept; bring It out" • “No,” said Trevor, “Til send it up. I'll have it waiting for you by the time you get back if you don’t rot and fall

f apart cm tne way." “There you go,” said MacCloster, pleasantly, “always cheerful, warm welcome on your tongue.” Then, with • change that was'tlke a thunder-clap: “Send it up, you dunghill bantam I Why the h haven’t you sent my music box?” Andrea pressed her hands, her face and her whole body against the door. She was trembling plightly, but she was not frightened; her intelligence was too busy. It had leaped to an understanding of Trevor's part in what was going on outside. She forgot that she had ever thought it a mere battle of tongues. She could Imagine this man, MacCloster, as a mountain of brawn and sinew against which Trevor was deliberately opposing all the moral weight of the old fighting slogan, “Bully a bully I” • More than that; she could now feel that the suppressed hatred she hnd guessed at their words had come boldly Into the open and that It w-as In a sense labored and forced only because Its Intensity was beyond actual expression. These mon were stripped to almost unbelievable nakedness — rapier and broadsword, lapping, thirsting mightily for heart’s blood and nothing less. In comparison with her own little struggle with Trevor, the encounter assumed the proportions of a meeting of elements. “I didn’t send it,” said Trevor softly, “because I didn’t want to remind myself you were still unburied. Besides. it looks so clean —” “I know,” interrupted MacCloster. Once more his astonishingly flexible voice changed its tone to one of unfeigned calm. "I can understand, of 'cc irse,” he remarked conversationally, “you dislike the idea of canricn in conjunction with t'he virgin ' polish of a mahogany box. Well, • let’s have a look at the thing.” “I don’t remember having seen you so sober before,” said Trevor, in the same easy tone, and from its sound she knew he had turned toward his room. ‘‘Enforced, I can assure you,” replied MacCloster. “Been strapped on the wagon by lack of the neecs —” The sound of his voice was cut short by the closing of Trevor’s door. Andrea opened her own, Just a crack, and looked out. In the very center of the circular court squatted In

a ring a dozen half-naked boat-boys. Their torsos were still glistening in the moonlight from the sweat of their labor. They all seemed dull of face but mighty of muscle. None, not one, of Trevor’s people was in sight—a very surprising fact, for the African loves a gossip with the stranger within his walls. There was quite a long silence; then came the muffled tones of the phonograph, rising bell-like through the night in a climbing aria from “Faust." Suddenly the sound wavered, swerved and fell to a wrangling of frightened notes as though some one had swept the instrument from Its balance. A second later there was the thud of a heavy boot on wood, Trevor’s door flew open and the still wailing phonograph was hurled as from a catapult fifteen feet through the air. It fell to the hard-beaten ground of the patio with a terrific splintering crash, rolled over on one side and was still. Andrea’s eyes had been watching It, fascinated; now they swerved and stopped almost with a click of the suddenly arrested muscles. Between her and the door of Trevor’s hut stood the towering figure of a man in quarter profile. She could see his great shock of bushy red hair, a bit of his shaggy beard, his enormously broad shoulders and the white gleam of his two hands hanging almost at his knees. He was hatless and dressed in faded blue dungarees many sizes too small for his bulk. As she watched him he raised his arms in a wide still gesture and began to sing. At the first note, quite unconscious of action, she let the door swing ‘open and stepped out on the veranda. It was the aria from “Faust," the same aria, but oh! how different. The voice of this man was like a huge and glittering serpent of sound that writhed smoothly into the air, challenging the dome of heaven itself. It there thing that Andrea

knew better than another. It was the accurate valuation of every operatic voice that had sung In Europe ftifrlng the last decade. She had been taken to Covent Garden regularly before she was out, as a matter of education, and no less regularly after her eighteenth birthday, as a matter of matrimonial business. She knew- instantly that this extraordinary apparition in the wilderness was nothing less than the solution of a world mystery. He could be but one man and that a person whose tremendous triumph hnd been so short as to leave him with fame but without a name. She was henring the Great Voice—the voice of the star that had shone for a single night; resounded but once through the Scala, set as swiftly as it hnd risen and disappeared forever, leaving behind no trace beyond a memory so shod that it had becoihe a recollection almost unbeliev? able to the few that had heard It. — Now her ears were filled with its music to the exclusion of thought or reason or consciousness of self. Sho became nothing more than n sentient channel. The easy power of the Voice lifted It beyond the common standards of vocal classification and gave it the allure nnd the terror of the superrfuman. Its tenuity seemed a tiling incorporated apart, an actual substance with beckoning arms and hands. It drew her slowly, steadily out into the quivering moonlight, held her, lifted her face with it toward the sky. With her breast rising nnd falling in aching accompaniment to the mounting rhythm, cheeks pale, lips parted, eyes staring In vain pursuit of the incredible flight of sound, she stood, a slim tense figure for once made free of that domain that is beyond art, beyond genius and is called quite simply, Gift of God. With a toss and a backward shake of the man’s great head, the voice climbed smoothly to that stupendous high C that has wrecked the reputation of many pygmies and brought fame to a daring few. It held and still held until earth and moon nnd stars seemed little things that paused to listen, obstructed in unimportant courses. Breath suspended until her lungs were near to bursting, Andrea waited for that note to come down into the range of normal belief, hut to her mind at least it was destined to hang eternally In the heavens, for the man had turned.

Her eyes knew horror for the first time. The man’s face was half obliterated. "It had been plowed by confluont smallpox and destroyed by a worse disease. The nose was gone, leaving an ignoble ruin-of stripped cartilage, dried in the air till It was like wrathcred parchment. Ono enr had been ravaged in a clean cut so that it £ose to a needle-point. That the wounds were healed only added an Inexorable finally to their repulsiveness. Only the man’s thick red lips and his blazing eyes seemed to have escaped the pestilence. As his startled gaze fell upon Andrea his mouth opened to a wide, soundless laugh. With broad shoulders stooped, his abnormally low-hanging hands curved up like monstrous talons and his shaggy beard wagging to that silent laughter, he advanced upon her, encircled her waist with his fingers and shot her up lightly so that she fell doubled across his back and chest. He gave a low whistle and sped from the craal at an Incredible pace. The boat-boys arose stealthily and flitted after him. To Andrea’s transfixing terror was added a memory—a fleeting glimpse—of Trevor, standing, hands In pockets, before his door. On his face’was anger—cold, white, unforgiving anger. She thought she cried out to MacCloster to stop, to give her but one moment to explain, to beg forgiveness, to grovel at the feet of the one man In all the world, but no sound came from her lips. Not until she stood tottering on the canted bottom of MacCloster’s boat did life come back to her heart and veins and lungs. She threw up her head and screamed as she had never known mortal could scream —a wild, terrorwinged wail of desperate appeal. MacCloster snatched tiller from rudder, struck her across the shoulders, knocked her, face down, Into fetid bilge-water. The stench of the stale water produced in her a reaction; it was so nauseating that it momentarily drove thoughts of all other things from her mind. She drew away from it and, crawling to the grated floor of a small cockpit, crouched in the corner formed by the gunwale and the after thwart. Just to her left, so close that even with head bowed she could not avoid seeing his enormous feet, sat MacCloster. He talked to her steadily In a muttering undertone, but a long time passed before she began to distinguish one word from another. The muttering swelled slowly to a clear and liquid enunciation; the voice became like music undeflled. But no longer could it drug her senses; she shuddered, cringed under Its terrible caress. Its beauty had become forever leprous. “Dear, lovely, vile and sullen person,” It was saying, “who would have thought it? Who would hpve imagined that you, a Helen among women, possessed of 'beauty, youth arid a really lovely evening frock, should have come so far for a man? Cheer up! You’ve found two; one dunghill bantam and —and me.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

It Was the Aria From Faust.