The Black Death

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Title:     The Black Death
Author: Arthur Shearly Cripps [More Titles by Cripps]

This is a story of a voyage home. The boat was one of the finest on the line and we were not overcrowded. We had wonderful weather that trip, brilliant sunshine relieved by a fresh little breeze that kept its place, doing its duty without taking too much upon itself, or making itself obnoxious. In the third-class we were quiet on the whole, and what is called well-behaved, though neither with millennial serenity nor millennial sobriety.

A red-cheeked gentleman took a red-cheeked married lady and her child under his vigilant protection. Two or three Rhodesians and Jo'burgers enriched the bar with faithful fondness. Cards and sweeps on the run of the boat and the selling of sweep-tickets these all stimulated the circulation of savings. Hues of language vied with hues of sunset not seldom of an eventide.

Life was not so very thrilling on that voyage, the treading of 'border-land dim 'twixt vice and virtue' is apt to be rather a dull business.

There was no such incident as that which stirred us on another voyage the taking of a carving knife to the purser by a drunkard. On the other hand there was no unusual battle-noise of spiritual combat such as may have quickened the pulses of one or two of the boats the year of the English Mission.

We were middling, and dull at that, on the "Sluys Castle," till we reached Madeira. Then the description I have given of our voyage ceases to apply. The two or three days after that were exciting enough to one or two passengers at any rate.

James Carraway had come down from Kimberley, he told me. He was a spare, slight man, with a red moustache. He sought me occasionally of an eventide, and confided to me views of life in general, and of some of his fellow-passengers in particular. I remember one night especially, when the Southern Cross was in full view and the water about the keel splotched with phosphorescence. Carraway had a big grievance that night. He commented acridly on a colored woman that I had espied on board. She was not very easily visible herself, but one or two faintly colored children played often about the deck, and she herself might now and then be seen nursing a baby. I had seen her on a bench sometimes when I had gone to the library to change a book. I had seen her more rarely in the sunshine on deck, nursing the aforesaid baby.

'One man's brought a Kaffir wife on board,' growled Carraway.

I said, 'I thought she might be a nurse.'

'No, she's his wife,' contended Carraway. 'It's cheek of him bringing her on board with the third-class passengers.'

I said, 'Which is her husband?'

'He's been pointed out to me,' he said. 'The other white men seem rather to avoid him. I don't know what your opinion on this point may be,' he said. 'I consider that a man who marries a Kaffir sinks to her status.'

I said nothing. He did not like my silence much, I gathered. He was not so very cordial afterwards. He was a man with many grievances Carraway.

When we were drawing close to Madeira, two nights before, on the Sunday, Carraway touched the subject again.

The parson had preached incidentally on the advisability of being white--white all round. I thought he played to his gallery a bit, in what he said.

'An excellent sermon,' said Carraway. 'Did you hear how he got at that josser with the Kaffir wife? That parson's a white man.'

I said nothing.

'What God hath divided let no man unite,' said Carraway, improving the occasion. 'I don't uphold Kaffirs. The white man must always be top dog,' etc., etc.

Carraway grew greasily fluent on rather well-worn lines. I smoked my pipe and made no comment. By-and-bye he tired of his monologue.

He gave me no further confidences till the night after we left Madeira.

Then he came to me suddenly about eleven o'clock as I stood on the well-deck, smoking a pipe before turning in.

'Come and have a walk,' he said, in a breathless sort of way.

We climbed some steps and paced the upper deck towards the wheel-house. There were few electric lights burning now. After a turn or two he drew up under one of them, and looked round to see whether anyone listened.

'Don't give me away for God's sake,' he said. He held up a hand towards the light pathetically. 'It's showing,' he said. 'God knows why. God knows what I've done to bring it.'

I said nothing, but looked at him and considered him carefully. He certainly did not seem to be drunk.

Then I examined the hand he gave me.

'I don't see anything particular,' I said. 'What's wrong?'

'Good Lord! The nails.'

But the nails looked to me pink and healthy.

'Tell me,' I said, 'What you think's wrong.'

Yet he could not tell me that night. He tried to tell me. He was just like a little boy in most awful trepidation, trying to confess some big transgression. He gasped and spluttered, but he never got it out that night. I couldn't make head nor tail of what he said. After he was gone to bed it is true I put two and two together and guessed something. But I was fairly puzzled at the time.

'You're a bit upset to-night,' I said. 'You're not quite yourself, it's the sea I suppose, or something. Come to bed and get a good night.' His teeth chattered as he came down the ladder. I got him down to his cabin.

'Thanks!' he said. 'Good night! I may come all right in the morning. Anyhow I'll have a bath and try.'

He said it so naively that I could not help laughing.

'Yes, have a sea-water-bath, a jolly good idea,' I said. 'You'll have to be up early. There's only one and there's a run on it before breakfast. Goodnight!'

I saw him again in the morning outside the bathroom. He came out in his pink-and-white pyjamas; the pink was aggressive and fought with the tint of his moustache. He looked very blue and wretched.

'Well,' I asked, 'Have you slept it off whatever it was?'

'No,' he said, 'let me tell you about it.' He began to gasp and splutter.

Just then another postulant came up, making for the bath-room door.

'Afterwards!' I said, 'After breakfast.' And I vanished into the bath-room. It was probably Carraway, I thought, that had left a little collection of soaps in that bath-room. He had brought a bucket of fresh water with him apparently to give them a fair trial. There was yellow soap, a pumice stone, and carbolic soap, and scented soap. 'I'll keep them for him,' I thought. 'Somebody may jump them if I leave them here. I wonder why in the world he's so distrait.' I had my suspicions as to the reason, and I laughed softly to myself.

After breakfast he invited me back to the bathroom; there was no run on it then.

'It's quiet,' he said. Then after many gasps and splutters he enlightened me. His nails were turning color, he told me.

'Anyone would think I had Kaffir blood in me,' he said.

Also his skin was giving him grave cause for solicitude. I did not resist the temptation to take him rather seriously. I administered philosophic consolation. I reminded him of Dumas and other serviceable colored people. I rather enjoyed his misery; poetic justice seemed to me to need some satisfaction. He, the negrophobe, who was so ultra-keen on drawing the line was now enjoying imaginative experiences on the far side of it.

'It seems then,' I remarked, 'That you are now a person of color.'

He nearly fainted. He did not swear. He seemed to have lost all his old truculence. He began to whimper like a child.

'After all, I never shared your prejudices.' I said. 'Cheer up, old man, I won't drop you like a hot potato even if you have a touch of the tar brush.'

He cried as if his heart would break. I saw I had gone too far. If was like dancing on a trodden worm.

'Carraway,' I said, 'It's a pure delusion. Your nails are all right, and so's your skin. You're dreaming, man. You've got nerves or indigestion, or something. It's something inside you that's wrong. There's nothing outside for anyone to see.'

His eyes gleamed. He shook my hand feebly. Then he held up his own hand to the light.

'It's there,' he said wearily, after a while. 'You want to be kind, but you can't make black white. That's what I've always said. It's the Will of God, and there's nothing to gain by fighting it. Black will be black, and white will be white till crack of doom.'

I told him sternly that I was going to fetch the doctor to him. He sprang at me and gripped my arm.

'I trusted you,' he said. 'I needn't have told you. You promised.'

So I had like a simpleton.

'Only give me two days,' he said, 'then I'll go to the doctor myself, if nothing works in all that time.'

So I said I would respect my promise loyally for those two days.

'I only told you,' he said, 'because my head was splitting with keeping it in. It's awful to me. I thought you were a negrophile and wouldn't think so much of it as other fellows. But for God's sake don't give me away to them. There's lots of things to try yet. By the way, ask that parson to pray for one afflicted and distressed in mind, body, and estate.'

He did try many sorts of things, poor fellow. He was in and out of that bath-room a good share of both days. He also tried drugs and patent medicines. I saw his cabin littered with them. He would sneak into meals those two days when people had almost finished, and gobble his food furtively.

I caught him once or twice smoking his pipe in the bath-room or the bath-room passage. He would not venture amid the crowd on deck. Only when many of the passengers were in bed would he come up with me, and take my arm and walk up and down. That was on the Wednesday night.

Wednesday night came, then Thursday morning. Thursday forenoon was long, and Thursday afternoon longer.

At last the sun was low, and I began to count the hours to the time when I might consult the doctor.

I secured an interview with Carraway in the bathroom soon after sunset.

'Any better?' I asked for about the twentieth time.

He shook his head dejectedly.

'All right. We must go to the doctor to-morrow morning. But, O Carraway, do go to him to-night, don't be afraid. It's only imagination. Do go.'

'I'll see,' he said in a dazed, dreary sort of way, 'I'll see, but I want to play the last card I have in my hand before I go. It's a trump card perhaps.'

'On my honor,' I said, 'You're tormenting yourself for nothing. You're as white as ever you were.'

Then I said 'Good-night.' I stopped for a moment outside the door, and heard him begin splashing and scrubbing. The thing was getting on my own nerves.

I went off up on deck, and smoked hard, then I read, and wrote letters, and smoked again, and went to bed very late. I had steered clear of the bathroom and all Carraway's haunts so far as I could. Yes, and I had gone over to the second class, and I had asked the parson to do as he wanted. I had asked him the day before. Now I asked him over again.

The steward handed me a letter when he brought me my coffee in the morning. I opened it and read:

DEAR SIR, Perhaps my negrophoby is wrong. Anyhow, it's real to me. I had and have it, and see no way to get rid of it properly here on earth. Now God has touched me, me the negrophobe, and colored me. And to me the thing seems very hard to bear. Therefore I am trying the sea to-night.

'In the bath-room there never seemed to be enough water. I want to try a bath with plenty of water. But I am afraid it may be with me as it would have been with Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. Those red hands of murder could not be washed white by the ocean, they could only "the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." What if I cannot be decolorized by any sea? What if my flesh only pollutes the sea, when I plunge, and makes all black? God help me!!! You are a negrophile and don't half understand.

'Yours truly,

'J. CARRAWAY.'

I questioned the steward. He had found the letter in my place at table.

Sure enough there was a third-class passenger missing. I suppose Carraway had slipped off quietly in the moonlight to try his desperate experiment. It was a cruel business his monomania.

If I had broken my promise and called the doctor earlier, could he have been cured? Or would he have lingered in an asylum shuddering over the fictitious glooming of his nails and skin, shaking in a long ague of negrophoby.

Anyhow, I'm sorry I didn't do more for him, didn't walk him round the deck the last night at least, and try my best to cheer him. Yes, I blame myself badly for not doing that.

May God who allowed his delusion pardon that last maneuver of his! I do not think Carraway had any clear wish to take his own life.

I can imagine the scene so convincingly Carraway pausing, hesitating, then plunging into the moon-blanched water from the dizzy height above, eager to find which the multitudinous seas would do would they change his imagined color, or would they suddenly darken, matching in their tints his own discoloration?

[The end]
Arthur Shearly Cripps's short story: Black Death

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