England -- Fiction; Short stories, English; Villages -- Fiction; Wales -- Fiction
Perhaps the climax was reached when he converted Ganem the slave of Love,
into the amiable, somewhat corpulent, and eminently respectable squire,
Sir John Vaughan, at Llanselyf. The whole tale was told with so much
circumstance and such actuality, that next Sunday, when the squire came
to church, he found himself the object of intense interest, observation,
and private whispered comment.
It may be remembered that in the original tale Ganem was up a tree
overhanging a cemetery when he saw some slaves bury a chest, at the
dead of night, in the earth. When they were gone he descended from the
tree, dug down to and opened the chest, when he found it contained a
lady of incomparable beauty who “as soon as she was released from her
confined situation, and exposed to the open air began to sneeze, and
half-opening her eyes and rubbing them exclaimed, ‘Zohorob Bostan (Flower
of the Garden), Schagrom Marglan (Branch of Coral), Cassabos Souccar
(Sugar-cane), Nouronnihar (Light of Day), Nagmatos Sohi (Star of the
Morning), Nouzhetos Zaman (Delight of the Season), speak, where are you?’”
This, as related by the carpenter, took a very local and personal
complexion. The incident was transferred to the churchyard of his own
parish, and to a certain elm tree that grew there; it was Sir John
Vaughan who climbed the tree, and the lady when released from the box
exclaimed, “Mary Jones, my housemaid, Flower of the Garden, and you,
Susanna Rees, scullery-maid, Branch of Coral; and you also, Elizabeth
Thomas, tweenie maid and Sugar-cane; and you, Margaret Cole, the
lady’s-maid, Light of Day, and under housemaid Joan, Star of the Morning,
and third housemaid Wilmot, Delight of the Season, speak, my dear tried
servants, where are you?”
Now, on this particular Sunday morning, not only was Sir John an object
of great interest, but so was Lady Vaughan, and when, during the
service, she sneezed, it produced a general agitation; so also were the
maid-servants of the family. On their arrival there were nudgings, “Here
comes Branch of Coral, and there is Light of the Day. But where is Flower
of the Garden?” To which an answer came in a whisper, “Got a bad cold in
her head, and can’t come to church.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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