Needless To Say, Miss
Slessor Was Off, And Had That Waif Home.
It was truly in an awful
state, but just alive.
In a marvellous way it had been left by
leopards and snakes, with which this bit of forest abounds, and,
more marvellous still, the driver ants had not scented it. Other
ants had considerably eaten into it one way and another; nose, eyes,
etc., were swarming with them and flies; the cartilage of the nose
and part of the upper lip had been absolutely eaten into, but in
spite of this she is now one of the prettiest black children I have
ever seen, which is saying a good deal, for negro children are very
pretty with their round faces, their large mouths not yet coarsened
by heavy lips, their beautifully shaped flat little ears, and their
immense melancholy deer-like eyes, and above these charms they
possess that of being fairly quiet. This child is not an object of
terror, like the twin children; it was just thrown away because no
one would be bothered to rear it, but when Miss Slessor had had all
the trouble of it the natives had no objection to pet and play with
it, calling it "the child of wonder," because of its survival.
With the twin baby it was very different. They would not touch it
and only approached it after some days, and then only when it was
held by Miss Slessor or me. If either of us wanted to do or get
something, and we handed over the bundle to one of the house
children to hold, there was a stampede of men and women off the
verandah, out of the yard, and over the fence, if need be, that was
exceedingly comic, but most convincing as to the reality of the
terror and horror in which they held the thing. Even its own mother
could not be trusted with the child; she would have killed it. She
never betrayed the slightest desire to have it with her, and after a
few days' nursing and feeding up she was anxious to go back to her
mistress, who, being an enlightened woman, was willing to have her
if she came without the child.
The main horror is undoubtedly of the child, the mother being killed
more as a punishment for having been so intimately mixed up in
bringing the curse, danger, and horror into the village than for
anything else.
The woman went back by the road that had been cut for her coming,
and would have to live for the rest of her life an outcast, and for
a long time in a state of isolation, in a hut of her own into which
no one would enter, neither would any one eat or drink with her, nor
partake of the food or water she had cooked or fetched. She would
lead the life of a leper, working in the plantation by day, and
going into her lonely hut at night, shunned and cursed.
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