Bones Part 22

No sooner had his letters been posted than he changed his mind, and he addressed three and twenty more letters to the publishers, altering the t.i.tle to:

THE TYRANNY OF THE WILDS.

Being Some Observations on the Habits and Customs of Savage Peoples.

BY

AUGUSTUS TIBBETTS (LT.).

With a Foreword by Captain Patrick Hamilton.

"You wouldn't mind writing a foreword, dear old fellow?" he asked.

"Charmed," said Hamilton. "Have you a particular preference for any form?"

"Just please yourself, sir," said a delighted Bones, so Hamilton covered two sheets of foolscap with an appreciation which began:

"The audacity of the author of this singularly uninformed work is to be admired without necessarily being imitated. Two months' residence in a land which offered many opportunities for acquiring inaccurate data, has resulted in a work which must stand for all time as a monument of murderous effort," etc.

Bones read the appreciation very carefully.

"Dear old sport," he said, a little troubled, as he reached the end; "this is almost uncomplimentary."

You couldn't depress Bones or turn him from his set purpose. He scribed away, occupying his leisure moments with his great work. His normal correspondence suffered cruelly, but Bones was relentless. Hamilton sent him north to collect the hut tax, and at first Bones resented this order, believing that it was specially designed to hamper him.

"Of course, sir," he said, "I'll obey you, if you order me in accordance with regulations an' all that sort of rot, but believe me, sir, you're doin' an injury to literature. Unborn generations, sir, will demand an explanation----"

"Get out!" said Hamilton crossly.

Bones found his trip a blessing that had been well disguised. There were many points of interest on which he required first-hand information. He carried with him to the _Zaire_ large exercise books on which he had pasted such pregnant labels as "Native Customs," "Dances," "Ju-jus,"

"Ancient Legends," "Folk-lore," etc. They were mostly blank, and represented projected chapters of his great work.

All might have been well with Bones. More virgin pages might easily have been covered with his sprawling writing and the book itself, converted into honest print, have found its way, in the course of time, into the tuppenny boxes of the Farringdon book-mart, sharing its soiled magnificence with the work of the best of us, but on his way Bones had a brilliant inspiration. There was a chapter he had not thought of, a chapter heading which had not been born to his mind until that flas.h.i.+ng moment of genius.

Upon yet another exercise book, he pasted the label of a chapter which was to eclipse all others in interest. Behold then, this enticing announcement, boldly printed and ruled about with double lines:

"THE SOUL OF THE NATIVE WOMAN."

It was a fine chapter t.i.tle. It was sonorous, it had dignity, it was full of possibilities. "The Soul of the Native Woman," repeated Bones, in an ecstasy of self-admiration, and having chosen his subject he proceeded to find out something about it.

Now, about this time, Bosambo of the Ochori might, had he wished and had he the literary quality, have written many books about women, if for no other reason than because of a certain girl named D'riti.

She was a woman of fifteen, grown to a splendid figure, with a proud head and a chin that tilted in contempt, for she was the daughter of Bosambo's chief counsellor, grand-daughter of an Ochori king, and ambitious to be wife of Bosambo himself.

"This is a mad thing," said Bosambo when her father offered the suggestion; "for, as you know, T'meli, I have one wife who is a thousand wives to me."

"Lord, I will be ten thousand," said D'riti, present at the interview and bold; "also, Lord, it was predicted at my birth that I should marry a king and the greater than a king."

"That is me," said Bosambo, who was without modesty; "yet, it cannot be."

So they married D'riti to a chief's son who beat her till one day she broke his thick head with an iron pot, whereupon he sent her back to her father demanding the return of his dowry and the value of his pot.

She had her following, for she was a dancer of fame and could twist her lithe body into enticing shapes. She might have married again, but she was so scornful of common men that none dare ask for her. Also the incident of the iron pot was not forgotten, and D'riti went swaying through the village--she walked from her hips, gracefully--a straight, brown, girl-woman desired and unasked.

For she knew men too well to inspire confidence in them. By some weird intuition which certain women of all races acquire, she had probed behind their minds and saw with their eyes, and when she spoke of men, she spoke with a conscious authority, and such men, who were within earshot of her vitriolic comments, squirmed uncomfortably, and called her a woman of shame.

So matters stood when the _Zaire_ came flas.h.i.+ng to the Ochori city and the heart of Bones filled with pleasant antic.i.p.ation.

Who was so competent to inform him on the matter of the souls of native women as Bosambo of the Ochori, already a crony of Bones, and admirable, if for no other reason, because he professed an open reverence for his new master? At any rate, after the haggle of tax collection was finished, Bones set about his task.

"Bosambo," said he, "men say you are very wise. Now tell me something about the women of the Ochori."

Bosambo looked at Bones a little startled.

"Lord," said he, "who knows about women? For is it not written in the blessed Sura of the Djin that women and death are beyond understanding?"

"That may be true," said Bones, "yet, behold, I make a book full of wise and wonderful things and it would be neither wise nor wonderful if there was no word of women."

And he explained very seriously indeed that he desired to know of the soul of native womanhood, of her thoughts and her dreams and her high desires.

"Lord," said Bosambo, after a long thought, "go to your s.h.i.+p: presently I will send to you a girl who thinks and speaks with great wisdom--and if she talks with you, you shall learn more things than I can tell you."

To the _Zaire_ at sundown came D'riti, a girl of proper height, hollow backed, bare to the waist, with a thin skirting of fine silk cloth which her father had brought from the Coast, wound tightly about her, yet not so tightly that it hampered her swaying, lazy walk. She stood before a disconcerted Bones, one small hand resting on her hip, her chin (as usual) tilted down at him from under lashes uncommonly long for a native.

Also, this Bones saw, she was gifted with more delicate features than the native woman can boast as a rule. The nose was straight and narrow, the lips full, yet not of the negroid type. She was in fact a pure Ochori woman, and the Ochori are related dimly to the Arabi tribes.

"Lord, Bosambo the King has sent me to speak about women," she said simply.

"Doocidly awkward," said Bones to himself, and blushed.

"O, D'riti," he stammered, "it is true I wish to speak of women, for I make a book that all white lords will read."

"Therefore have I come," she said. "Now listen, O my lord, whilst I tell you of women, and of all they think, of their love for men and of the strange way they show it. Also of children----"

"Look here," said Bones, loudly. "I don't want any--any--private information, my child----"

Then realizing from her frown that she did not understand him, he returned to Bomongo.

"Lord, I will say what is to be said," she remarked, meekly, "for you have a gentle face and I see that your heart is very pure."

Then she began, and Bones listened with open mouth ... later he was to feel his hair rise and was to utter gurgling protests, for she spoke with primitive simplicity about things that are never spoken about at all. He tried to check her, but she was not to be checked.

"Goodness, gracious heavens!" gasped Bones.

She told him of what women think of men, and of what men _think_ women think of them, and there was a remarkable discrepancy if she spoke the truth. He asked her if she was married.

"Lord," she said at last, eyeing him thoughtfully, "it is written that I shall marry one who is greater than chiefs."

"I'll bet you will, too," thought Bones, sweating.