It is now more than two years since I was invalided out of my country parish one bitter March, and sent on a southern voyage. I had ten weeks to recruit in, and I passed by the Mediterranean to the eastern coast of Africa. It was hard to tear myself away from Zanzibar, but at last I went on southward and struck up into the wilder country of the central tableland. I meant to take the rail for Cape Town when my time should be up.
It happened in Easter week that I camped out disconsolately, and rose anxiously, having lost my way overnight. I had spent Easter Day in a cathedral, or pro-cathedral, town, and was now on my way to a certain mission. I had hoped to make it that last night the third night of the journey but had somehow missed it in the dark after a big effort. There seemed to be no native village near, and no passers-by. My carriers were strangers to that neighborhood, and I was afraid of going far past the house in benighted wanderings, so I bent my resolution and lay down. I rose just before the sun did. It was April and the dews were very heavy.
From a rocky hill above me the baboons were barking. Just below us was a fair stream with a rich grove of native trees on the further bank. Some native gardens showed on the slope above. The white path wound through them, then away among boulders, some of them very big ones. While I watched the stream I saw a white body of mist mounting up. Just at that moment the sun showed. As I looked on the sacred sight I saw somebody coming down the path. It was the man whose mission station I had been looking for. He was coming through the long grass in a hurry. Soon he splashed through the drift. After that he caught sight of me, and rushed up to our camp, glowing. It was Leonard Reeve. He looked much the same as he did that day in London three years before—dark, pale, slight, earnest. I had been to his sendoff and gone down to Victoria Docks with him. I had written to tell him; I was most likely coming his way after Easter. He seemed ever so glad to see me.
'But where were you off to?' I said.
'It's only a mile on that I'm going,' he answered. 'There's a little chapel on that hill over there with some native villages near by. I want to have an Easter service there.'
'Let me come,' said I. 'You can be back to breakfast here, can't you, when we've done?'
He said he could. Even as he nodded I felt a little anxious when I remembered that we had no meat of any sort left. I took Jack, my head carrier, aside and asked him to do what he could while we were gone. Couldn't he buy some eggs for salt, or do something useful in the way of foraging? He said three words in kitchen Kaffir that sounded hopeful.
Then I went on with my chill, damp little friend. One of the coldest ways surely of taking a bath is to tramp through the long grass (it is very long in that country) when it is drenched with dew or rain. However it is all right if you are sturdy and in good heart, and keep going a stirring pace, and never sit down till you are dry again. My companion did not seem very buoyant, though he made no complaint and trudged on without flagging. We had a glorious service in a quaint church of wattles and earth and grass on a hill-top. One way it looked over a great spread of village gardens I think there were at least three villages in sight. The other way it looked on some well-wooded uplands that the eastern sun lighted tenderly. There were only a few people in church at the end of the rite, though a great crowd was there at the outset, and the 'Kyrie' and first two hymns raised the hill echoes.
There was no sermon. When the unbaptized were gone the tiny church, that had seemed so thronged and stifling, grew to be roomy and cool.
That was to me a very beautiful rendering of the Liturgy. Yet I only understood a word here and there. I could follow the action of the Divine Pageant throughout, and I would not have had the mystery and aloofness of the words one whit lessened.
After it was over Reeve took me across to the native teacher's house, where we found a very shy wife and a very composed baby to greet us. Meanwhile the husband bustled about and gave us tea. I liked his laugh and his boyish face, as well as his Biblical English. He did not stint the tea in his blue pot. Soon we were on our way back to my camp.
Jack had got a real good fire now in the shelter of the rocks, and a hearty smell of fish frying reassured me as we drew near.
Reeve, who had seemed a little tired and washed out as we came away from the church, now brightened up marvelously.
'I declare,' he said, 'it's just like old times. You know the Tooting Road, where I used to work? It's just like the fried-fish shop there, next door to the Surrey Arms. If we'd only got the fog and the trams and a few of the old people here how fine it'd be!'
We had found a subject that interested us both and lasted most of the breakfast-time. His enthusiasm struck me as a little too emphatic. I remarked that I thought he was well out of the Tooting Road and out under blue sky on an African moorland.
'Look up there!' I said. 'That makes the Tooting Road seem rather monstrous when one comes to think of it.' I pointed to the many cattle and sheep and goats coming down to the stream at a swinging pace through the gleaming woodland.
Two little boys were mounted on bulls; two or three others came rushing behind. There was a barking of dogs and an ecstasy of shouting.
'Oh, it's all very well,' he said, and his eyes flashed a little scornfully.
Afterwards he took me to his home. His church stood out nobly as we came up the path towards it. Within it was beautifully kept, but I confess I was disappointed. It was all very neat, but it suggested the skill of the church-furnishing firm too strongly. I sighed a little as he showed me four enormous brazen vases of a too familiar type. I longed for the two or three little red and black earthen vases that I had seen on his teacher's altar; but I kept my longing to myself.
He was a marvelous man for method, Leonard Reeve. He seemed to me to organize classes with real talent anybody who came to the Mission at all habitually was pigeon-holed as 'Inquirer,' 'Hearer,' 'Catechumen,' 'Under a cloud,' or something else, and dealt with accordingly. His work, as I watched it day by day, and evening by evening in church and school and villages and Mission farm seemed to me well-considered and painstaking. On the other hand he seemed to me not so happy, and not so very well.
The mail came in on the Monday.
I was to start the following Thursday for the railroad on my way to my home again. We gloated over the letters and papers that evening it was really a superb mail. The native boy with the bag (I remember he was lanky and handsome and wore a rose-and-blue zephyr) came up just as we stood in the avenue leading to the house. We were smoking our pipes and arguing. The sun was almost down.
What were we arguing about? Oh, he was arguing rather recklessly about the glories of town-work. I retorted with few words, but strong ones, in favor of work out in the country. Once I pressed him rather inquisitively and mischievously as to his present work on the veld. 'How can you hold such views and do it?' I asked him point-blank. Thereat the fine side of the man showed.
His face flushed and his lips quivered. 'It's my job,' he said, 'and I'm not going to talk against it. I was arguing about country-work in the abstract over there in England.' Then it was that the boy came in sight with the letters. Reeve looked up and watched him with real pleasure and gratitude. He said something to him in the native language that seemed to amuse the boy very much. I had thought his manners towards his flock very courteous, but cold. I noticed a new tenderness now and from this night forward.
I could read him like a book, this town-lover so I thought. He had said too much to me, he had avowed to me his want of affection for his work in so many words, and now he was on the watch against himself, and burning to render reparation to a very quick conscience.
He had a big mail, but he was not communicative about it. Indeed we had not much time for our letters just then. We had Evensong soon after sunset, then there was a class for catechumens that I attended. I could not understand much, but it was good to watch how they listened, all but the vigorous mail-boy, who nodded at whiles unless I am mistaken. Afterwards we had a meal. It was by mutual agreement that we read our letters over our bread and tea and cheese. I read one of my letters with some indignation. It was a letter from my schoolmaster, who was not very encouraging on the subject of my locum tenens' industry.
'I thought I had got a first-rate man in Cochrane,' I said aloud.
'Cochrane of Peckham Downs?' asked Reeve, looking up and eyeing me. 'What about him? Yes, I should say he was in his way quite first-rate.'
'I'm glad to hear it, but I wish he would find country work more congenial. My correspondent says he's quite got the hump about our village.'
Leonard smiled. 'Some villages do tend to give people like Cochrane and me the hump,' he said. 'But of course yours is different.' 'Of course it is. Come and see it some day.' His mouth twitched. 'If I get home-leave in two years' time,' he said. 'I don't want to spend it in the country, not any of it, thank you all the same. I like the town much too well.'
'The smell of the shop you named attracts you just like thyme does me.'
'Yes,' he said, with a rather wry smile and a very real sigh.
Then we went on reading till bed-time. In the morning Lorenzo, his house-boy, knocked me up just as the sun was rising. 'The father is very sick,' he said. So he was very bad indeed with fever, at least so it seemed to me. But I am not used to nursing that malady. I think his temperature was 103 that day, which may seem a modest figure to a pioneer, but struck a chance visitor as none too reassuring. However, I kept my anxieties to myself, and looked after him quietly. He said there was no need to worry about a doctor. That night he seemed to be delirious, and talking at large. I made up my mind I would send for the doctor in the morning if his symptoms should last. But they did not. He appeared to be quiet and sensible at sunrise, and his temperature was a normal one. The morning after that, again, he seemed so well that I left him with a fairish conscience on my return journey for England. I want to tell you about that anxious night. He gave himself away then. I don't think he remembered much of what he had said next morning. It seemed sad to me his self-revelation. He said he did not know what in the world to do, he felt so ill and anxious. He was a Cockney born, and he had loved his South London work. He really wanted to tackle the job in front of him here. But the romance was there behind him in that English city the unique sense of being in the right place the great adventure the gleam.
Oh! why had he caught the fever? Not this fever, but the malaria of Imperialism, and felt drawn to go so very far afield. He didn't abuse the veld, the camping-out, the foot-slogging, the primitive people. He was a very chivalrous person even in his delirium.
But he spoke ecstatically of the streets, the tram-roads, the lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the delights of their up-to-date humor.
The tragedy thickened. He told me of her who had promised to marry him by Eastertide next year. Cecilia was her name.
She was a Londoner, and shared his views. 'Whatever will she think of this place?' he asked. My eyes wandered to the iron roof, to the floor-boarded walls, to the candle in a bottle that fought the draught so bravely. He told me about a letter of hers he had got by this mail. She had been working as a governess these last few months at a country rectory in the Berkshire moors. She found the village, and the neighborhood, and the life there in general very flat indeed. They bored her; yet she was keen, he said, on 'the work,' 'the work' as she had known it when she worked for him in London. 'Whatever will she think of this place?' he repeated. I looked at the floor, freshly treated with cow-dung, and thought again for an answer, but I could think of no very suitable one.
'I'll give you her letter to read,' he said, in a burst of confidence. 'That puts it far more plainly than I can. My head's so bad.' He looked worried, and I thought I had better leave him.
'No,' he said; 'do read to me a bit before you go.'
'What shall I read?'
He looked at me meditatively. 'You'll find something to the point in there,' he said. He reached up to the little candle-box bookcase over his head, and showed me a little crimson book. It was an anthology. I should think it might be commendably put on the 'Index Expurgatorius' of upcountry missionaries.
It was called 'The Cheerful City,' and dwelt on the delights of civilization and urbanity. Doubtless it may serve a useful purpose, thought I, in reconciling Londoners to their wen; but, here, what does it spell for my delirious Cockney save only desiderium?
I read him two or three selections obediently, but without enthusiasm. Were they from Herrick and Charles Lamb? I rather think they were.
Afterwards he asked me for a few verses of the Gospel. I cheered up.
'What would you like?'
'Oh, that story at the end of St. John. I've often thought of it since I was so cold and wet; and got to your camp-fire. "The fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread," that's it.'
I read with a will, but rather sadly.
'That's it,' he said. 'It seems to bring back the fog, and going to early Service past that coffee-stall, and the smell of that shop next to the Surrey Arms.'
I thought of his homely comparison after I had left him for the night. It moved me strangely. I read the letter he had lent me the letter of Cecilia, who found the Berkshire moors so banal. Yes, she promised to prove a very undesirable help-meet on the veld, so far as I could judge. I thought over things generally that night, and I made up my mind to make a Quixotic offer in the morning. I would offer to take on Leonard's work. Let him go home and be happy in his scented town, with his intolerantly urban (or suburban) Cecilia. He was splendid stuff. He might do much, surely, in that quaint atmosphere of light and locomotion and fragrance that his sense of romance demanded. Here Cecilia would surely be either impossible or a very great nuisance. While, even without Cecilia, Leonard did not seem well suited in his sphere, and I judged that he would soon be rotten with fever and wouldn't last.
As for me, I liked country life much, and roughing it a little. I had no particular fear of fever. I compared my physique with Leonard's not without complacency. I thought of the other side, too: the east country that village of all villages, those villagers of all villagers.
But that night I was full of over-seas fervor. I remembered phrases that had rung cut finely at meetings Outpost Duty, the Church in Greater Britain, The White Man's Burden, In Darkest Africa, etc., etc. When I fell asleep there seemed to be a symphony in my ears sounding brass and tinkling cymbals enough and to spare, but flute-voices of honest pity and sympathy as well.
In the morning I took Leonard's place in his church. We had the English Liturgy again. The thatched dome, with much tinier windows than the windows at home, but much more sun to fill them, seemed a sort of parable to me that morning. After I had finished the rite, I stayed on in the church, and spread out two letters before the Lord, so to speak. One was my schoolmaster's, the other was that one from Cecilia.
It took me half an hour to feel fairly sure of my answer. But I felt very sure then just as sure as I had been the night before but the answer was different.
I thought of my own fold and flock as I read my own friend's letter. How little the locum tenens seemed to see what I saw in them! I read Cecilia's letter, and compared 'her view of the importance of a country cure with my own. After all, I thought, the latter tended to be an exceptional view in our megalomaniac days. On the other hand, the locum tenens' view might be rather a normal one, and so might Cecilia's be. Cecilia's scorn, it was, that materially helped the answer to come as clearly as it did. The thought of a Cecilia reigning in that east-country vicarage seemed no more right than pleasant. It sounds a callous thing to say, but I left my lonely and convalescent friend with something of a sigh of relief, and no real misgiving. I felt troubled about his future certainly, but I saw clearly that I was not meant to take his place. I hoped to find the man who was meant to take it, however.
And, by God's help, I believe that I really did find him before many months were over.
A cousin of mine Richard East had been persuaded by a certain bishop to accept an urban charge.
I fancy the said bishop had been reared in a rather strait school of enthusiasts, who regarded work in slums as ideally the best sphere for clerics of activity. So he had routed my cousin out of his west-country village, and brought him to a big town—my cousin, who was an outdoor man from his youth. Curiously enough, at Cape Town, there was a letter waiting for me from him. Wouldn't I tell him something about the 'great spaces washed with sun'? The midland town in general seemed not to have gained his affections, though he loved his people one by one. 'I want to clear out,' he wrote, 'for the parish's sake more than for my own, if only I can find the right place to clear to. I'm not a townsman, and I think by now the bishop understands my small-mindedness. I haven't the breadth of a good modern citizen. I want to go to some Little Peddlington an African village might suit me. No, directly the right man turns up, I don't doubt the bishop will want to put him here in my room. Do you know of anyone likely?' I did know of someone.
I did not write back; I got on my boat and started off for home. I went down to the east country and set free the locum tenens. The village had a bridal look for my eyes; the red-thorn tree was just coming out, the roses would not be long now. I was in time to be at our yearly May games after all. Next day I went to the Midland town and saw my cousin; also, I saw his charge. I tried to look at it with Leonard Reeve's eyes, recalling to my remembrance that delirious night of his. Yes, though it was not South London, it had a drab look on a dull June day. There was a Warwick Arms, if no Surrey Arms. There was a shop with the authentic fragrance only two or three doors off. I knew that bishop, and I found him in, and in a listening mood, on the following day. He wanted to hear about Africa. I described missions and missionaries to him. Then I told him at some length about Leonard Reeve.
'Yes, you have drawn the man convincingly,' he said. 'You didn't invent those touches. I think he's a man after my own heart. I don't understand you people that bury yourselves in little rose-covered, immoral, earthy country villages. But I think I do understand the man that you have described.' I went straight to the point, and spoke of my cousin's parish. He agreed that my cousin was a disappointment. 'He's got the same peddling way of looking at things as you,' he said. 'I thought he'd flourish after transplantation, but I admit he doesn't seem to. Yes, I should think a desert and a barbarous people might suit him. I don't deny that he has vision, but his sense of perspective seems to be rather ridiculous.' I tried to arrange matters there and then after that, but his lordship became politic, and seemed a little afraid that he had said too much to me.
However, the business was on the way to be settled before I parted from him. It has been settled quite a long while now. My cousin, Richard East, now tramps the Kaffir paths and ministers in the hill chapel and in that seven-domed church at the mission station. I do not think that there is any Cecilia in his case, nor that there is likely to be one. He personifies the abstract too passionately to need the love of women.
Africa is personified to him the Cinderella of the continents, the drudge with a destiny worthy of her charms and her good-temper. He is writing a monograph on the Song of Solomon, he tells me. He follows certain scholars in his conjecture that the Shulamite was given back to a humble shepherd by Solomon, when she had conquered the latter by the power of her impassioned chastity. But he has his own theory as well that the true lovers were both of African blood, that she came from the Ophir-land south of the Zambesi, and thither returned in peace at last from the foam of perilous seas. Perhaps his argument is slender; but it is good for him to believe in it himself, I think, for surely it helps his work among those that he deems her descendants.
He works on out there, personifying and idealizing. I think he is as much in love with his country parish as I am with mine in England. May we both, in our placid and unfashionable ways, dream our dreams and see our visions! Meanwhile Leonard Reeve reigns in that midland town, and is treasured by the bishop who was not deceived when he expected a kindred spirit. He and Cecilia have chosen a date in this next November for their deferred marriage.
Their choice of month seems to me characteristic. I do not think they will be disappointed if the day is a little urban in its murkiness.
It is good for a man to be in love with his charge, is it not? Next time some fanatic of West-End work, or East-End work, or foreign mission work gets hold of you and talks excellent sense about discipline, and offering yourself to your bishop, and packing up your kit at a week's notice remember this story of mine!
Is it not well to import something of the precise devotion ofHoly Matrimony into the general self-oblation of Holy Orders?
It is good to think that three of us friends have the very same sort of feeling Leonard Reeve for the crowds and the fogs and the odors; my cousin for the rock-sown plains and the little circles of thatched huts; I for the cornlands and the elm-shaded ridges and the cottage people.
Yes, to Leonard anything grimy is just as romantic as green fields to me, or brown veld to my cousin.
Do you know, I was asked to preach Leonard's Institution sermon last Whit Monday, and I dared to preach it? Cecilia, who was stately but really pleasant-looking, sat beneath me in the front pew. Leonard, in his stall, looked oppressed with the weight of the ceremony.
But his eyes lighted up, I saw, as I gave out my text. It was from the end of St. John's Gospel. I preached very shortly. I drew for that poor and earnest-looking congregation the picture of a dripping missionary as I had seen him. I told of him going about his business at dawn, cheered by the Easter Feast in front at the chapel on the hill. I passed up to it by the cheery camp-fire. I did not forget the smell of breakfast cooking, with its reminder of home afterwards.
Then I spoke of the charm of the town work that Leonard had been called to take up once again. I tried to paint it as he dreamed of it the crowds, the classes, the fog, the scent of the streets. Then I went higher to the Easter scene, the shore in the morning, the vision of the altar that dawns on a true man's work however deep the night of his failure may have been, wheresoever in all the world he is working.
Leonard looked gratefully at me as I came down the pulpit steps.
While we hurried along from the Service on our way to the station (Reeve was coming to see me off), I quoted some words to him. We were just passing that fish-shop.
'Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south; blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden.'
His eyes kindled. 'Yes, old man,' he said; 'I've come into my garden. How I used to dream of this sort of reek out in Africa!'
I felt a gross materialist as I hurried home to my roses and red-thorn, leaving him to that visionary garden and those mystical spices.
'When you have set Thought free for one particular end you cannot bind her again as you will.' Such is the purport of a certain historian's dictum, and I have proved the truth of what he says. Edgar used to go to the Place of Pilgrimage long ago in his holidays, but I used not to go with him. I did not sympathize with his veneration overmuch in those times of long ago. But I respected the desire for hero-worship, and helped him thither each year that he wanted to visit his shrine. He used to come up for his long holidays every year from the colony. I had known his father rather well, and he had not any settled home. His mother was dead, as well as his father. No one now that knew him need know what she was like, for he took after his father almost unmitigatedly. His father was blonde and aggressively Saxon in appearance. His mother had been Dutch, semi-Dutch, of the colored Dutch type, as I very well knew. She came from the Western province, and died when he was but a year old, to be followed by his father some ten years later, just when he had come back to South Africa from England. Then I, acting on my own responsibility, sent him to school in the Eastern Province. No one seemed to bother, even if they had any inkling of his mother's parentage; he looked to be so completely his father's son.
It was in Edgar's schooldays that the Place of Pilgrimage was inaugurated, and that a big star of hope swam into his ken. I had told him about Oxford before, but there had then seemed no sort of path open for him to go up thither. Now, in the midst of his schooldays, there opened out to him a path that he thought he might climb. It was then in the next long holiday time that he took his path, a curious and grateful pilgrim, to the Matopos, to explore the shrine and to give thanks before it.
He dreamed of being a Rhodes scholar years before it came off that Rhodes scholarship of his. It came in the fullness of time a thing of many struggles and prayers, of star-led hopes and paths steep with uphill climbing.
Then at last it was that I agreed to go with him on his yearly pilgrimage, in September, the month of his sailing for home. May used to be a Canterbury month in England, the hawthorn month that pricked men in their courages and sent them out on the Kentish road. September had been Edgar's pilgrimage month every year a spring month in our southern country. The masasa leaves were taking many tints then in Mashonaland. Speaking generally, the dominant note of our woodland world was rose-color as we tramped together to the station. Matabeleland by contrast seemed rather drab and drouthy, yet she was showing signs of spring. One great rock stood up very beautiful in a pink lichen garment. It was hard by the path that led to the last hill-climb, ere you reached the burial-place. We camped out close beside it, two Mashona boys who had come to seek their fortunes in Bulawayo, and Edgar and I.
When the morning light came I was up. When the sun rose I had all but finished my service. There, on his own ground, so to speak, it seemed easier to pray for the Patron with a sanguine heart, and to give thanks for him with a clear conscience. Over our breakfast we sat on and talked, and looked about us. Edgar seemed to me to be growing in discernment. Once he had seemed so provocatively cock-sure about his mighty patron. To pray for him as we had prayed that morning in the language of a race he had contemned might have sounded to him in years past mere clerical impertinence. Now he seemed to suffer me rather gladly.
But he said little. We had scant time to spare just then; there were so many miles to go to the railway. He was to leave for Oxford that very night. While the carriers were cooking their breakfast he came with me to the grave and knelt at the head, looking northwards. I said nothing aloud, nor did he. The rocks bulked dark in the bright air, the hills wore mystic colors, the sun shone passionately in a setting of tender blue. Words seemed a presumption just then, too much of a time or nation or age that passes. That which may or may not take shape in words remained the untied power of silent prayer. That morning among the many-colored hills I looked to sight the faith that can remove such as these. And I prayed there quietly, in prayer that seemed to need no words, for Edgar. I asked for him that he might see those visions without which! people are apt to perish.
He did not write much, and he did not come for five years. When he came he was not at first communicative. He seemed to take more interest than he used to do in the Mission, I noticed. He had always been a hero among the Mashona boys: that was no new thing. And I was thankful indeed to see that he had not lost his old artless art of making friends with them. So many things might have conspired to rob him of it. He stayed but a month in all at the Mission, and he said little all that time, but his eyes were full of thought as I talked to him passing on to him hopes, disappointments, joys of battle unabating and enhanced. He was a good listener. I did not try to force the pace with him. But for all that I was eager to know his mind. And it seemed a long while waiting and waiting, thinking he might be going to speak day after day. Then at last the time did come for him to speak, but it was after he had left the Mission.
History repeated itself, and we camped in the old place once more. The camp-fire shone out, and the moon rose broad and golden over the grave of pilgrimage. There he lay with his feet to the north on the height above us the founder and name-giver of our State. It was strange how his patronage seemed to dominate us. We said our evensong rather northwards than eastwards; we scanned the northern horizon as though seeking a sign. The wind blew that way as we paced to and fro afterwards, and our thoughts went the way of the wind.
At last I broke the silence. We were resting on a ledge of rock then, smoking, staring away north-wards among the moonlit kopjes. There he sat beside me, fair-haired and tall, strong and rejoicing in his strength, always courteous but strangely dumb. He was going to-morrow. Would he go without a revealing word?
'So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be.'
I paused doubtfully.
He turned to me, and his eyes sparkled as they looked into mine. 'Listen,' he said. Then he told me his heart. Little I knew what it was. I trembled for my crusade, yet not without hope. I had preached to him little, but I had prayed for him much. Now I learned that his heart was as my heart, his desire as my heart's desire, yet, like wine to water, like sunlight to moonlight. I sat at his feet, so to speak, and listened on and on.
The next morning broke very brightly, yet there were clouds enough on high to mystify its clear shining. There had been a thunder-shower on the day before yesterday: our former rains had sent on an advance-guard. We had finished our service before the day grew hot, in the prime and cool of the morning. The place had been kept very sacred all that service-time. No hoot of a motor-car had scared the sleep of those lonely hills. Afterwards it was different. People came out in crowds from Bulawayo. There was a special excursion from the Transvaal, I believe, that arrived on that day of all days. We had breakfasted by our camp-fire. Then we came up the hill to the shrine once more, while the boys were clearing up. 'Listen,' said Edgar. A stout Bulawayo bourgeois was holding forth on the crankiness of Cecil Rhodes in choosing to be so lonely. 'He might have considered the town and trade of Bulawayo' seemed to be the burthen of his song. A pioneer shut him up rather roughly. 'He knew best,' he said. 'Where would your town and trade be if he hadn't cleared the path?' Edgar went up to the old fellow, ruddy, stalwart, more or less spirituous, indomitably good-humored. 'Tell me about it please, sir the burial; you were here for it, weren't you?' The old fellow complied with great goodwill.
Bareheaded we stood looking north while he told us of the great camping-out, with the many twinkling fires, by the dam some miles away, on the eve of the entombment. He told, too, of the concourse of Matabele at the place itself next day, and of the auspicious climbing of the yoked cattle as they drew the body. 'They never turned. They went straight up,' he said. 'You can see the track-way up the rock now. It meant luck surely, and we took it so, both black and white of us.'
Then he told us of him who lay there, in words of rugged tenderness the hero of the old era who brought on the new era so fast; he who had tasted the old and knew the old was better, testifying the same by his choice of a burying-place.
We were grateful, indeed, to that guide. A few yards in front of us two beaked Afro-Hebrews were arguing as to what the hero's leavings had been.
'What did he die worth?' was to one of them a subject of earnest enquiry. A few yards in front of them again, as we passed, some bar-loungers foregathered. 'He stood no nonsense about niggers,' one was saying as we went by him. Edgar nudged me. 'We all have our different views of him,' he said, 'haven't we? He gave us views and visions. Thank God that he distrusted himself, and sent us straight to learn where he learned, haply to learn what he missed learning from Oxford, his Mistress of Vision, so far to the west and the north.'
'You see, it's this way,' he said, when the place had grown quiet again in the drowsy noonday. They had gone off then, the Jo'burgers, three wagonettes and a motor-car crowded with them. 'We must keep the road open to the north, mustn't we?—-the way his feet lie, the way that goes beyond his vision into bigger visions.'
'I'll try and do something,' I said humbly. 'There are plenty who want to travel far, or think they do.' I glanced at the three Mashonas by the fire. One was teaching the other two. They were spelling out Saint John's Gospel together. 'Is he one of the most adventurous?' Edgar asked. 'He's very willing,' I muttered. 'You ask him whether he'd like to go to school down south.'
The boy's face lighted up when Edgar asked him. It was a rounded, soft-featured Mashona face with large bright eyes. The lips were not so very thick; the nostrils were cut like an Arab's.
'Tell him I'll pay for him and for another who wants to go,'Edgar said. 'He's probably got a particular friend. What aboutAtiwagoni?' 'He might be keen to go,' I said, 'and he's quickerthan most of them.'
We began to smoke a last pipe silently. The time was drawing near to strike our camp. We must start for Bulawayo at once if we would catch Edgar's midnight train easily.
I reached for my wallet, and brought out an Oxford anthology.
I turned over the pages and began to read rather sadly
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,To laugh as he sits by the river,Making a poet out of a man:The true gods sigh for the cost and the painFor the reed which grows nevermore againAs a reed with the reeds in the river.
'There's that point of view to consider,' I said. 'I'm fond of Arcadia and Arcadians, and there's loss entailed if you send Arcadians on the way of Athens.' Edgar sighed. 'I know what you mean,' said he; 'and I feel it as you do. But Arcadia's got Lacedaemon at her throat, a southern state not much troubled with scruples, neither very philosophic nor very literary. The way has been opened by him we wot of to Oxford, to the Athens of the north. It was opened, as men thought, for the benefit of young Lacedaemonians. The man that was hand-in-glove with Africanders, with our Lacedaemonians of the south, did that. He imperiled Lacedaemonian stability by opening the way to northern stars and their influences to Shelley, Burke, and Mill, and to all manner of people dangerous to the back-veld views of Lacedaemon. He opened the way to Tolstoy's rediscovery of the Christian Law, amongst other northern treasures, didn't he? And I, with the Arcadian taint in my veins, saw the way open and went northwards. Now it has come to pass that I remember my own people as Moses did, and use the wisdom of Oxford as he used the wisdom of Egypt, to help one's own people towards a promised land. They want leaders, don't they? Is there not a cause? Is it healthy for Lacedaemon to go on as she does in Arcadia, setting aside Arcadia's own happiness?' 'I'll be back again next year,' Edgar said, 'to compare notes and report progress, should all fall well. If I forget thee, O my Darien-peak, let my right hand forget her cunning!' We knelt long at the grave with the feet of its sleeper laid true north; then we said 'Good-bye' to it. 'Bless him,' Edgar said to me as we turned away.' He opened a wider way than he knew perchance; God prosper the Great North Road, the Road to Oxford rather than to Cairo!'
Its Cathedral was rising at last in a small South African capital. For many years a pro-Cathedral of corrugated iron had sufficed. Now the first stage of a noble design in ruddy sandstone was all but completed.
The new Bishop who had been called to sit in its Cape-oak throne was complacent of its charms. Chancel and Lady-chapel were provided; transepts and tower might be expected in due course of time. The Bishop was long and lean and dark-haired, very closely shaven. He came from Oxford, yet he was wise enough to obtrude that fact but seldom on South Africa. He watched and listened intently and said strangely little; nevertheless, when he did speak, he seemed to have no lack of things to say. His speech to the Cathedral Building Committee after a three months' silence was not without its interest. He spoke well of both design and execution.
He turned to the shyer subject of the raising of the funds. How had they attained to such wealth as their secretary announced? Mainly by means of three fancy fairs and a cafe chantant. Alas! that it should be so. Yet he did not propose to hold inquests. Let the dead bury their dead! Let them, however, set their hearts as the nether millstone against the adding of transept or tower save only by alms made to God. He went on to ask with whose memory the Lady-chapel was to be associated. Was it not the fact that they had associated the chapel of Christ's Mother with the memory of a visionary statesman? There seemed to be want of consideration for the great dead shown in their popular decision, inasmuch as he had not seen his way to accept her Son. Was it not something of a felony to have stolen the dead man's name—a felony that had assisted their funds very lavishly? But, likely enough, the Committee had had some noble thought in mind when they gave to the dead such reckless honor. The last touches were now being given to the nave. He wished to make a personal request of his own. He understood that colored persons and natives were not to be encouraged to frequent this mother of churches. Their status within was, to say the least, precarious and hard to reconcile with due respect for the second chapter of Saint James. He asked to put in at his own expense five windows after the likeness of leper windows in England windows that colored persons and natives might use freely and without reproach. By this means someone at least of them from without the walls might be made free of the vision of the services within.
The irony of the speech escaped its hearers for the most part.After the usual type of debate on such a subject as viewed inSouth African Church circles, the request was granted.
Now it happened that Mr. Conyers Smythe, the most prosperous man in the whole community, was not present at that Committee meeting. He was a Master of Arts of a South African University, and a real scholar, not a mere qualifier. He was, moreover, both sufficiently educated to understand the irony of a critical friend, and habitually inclined to resent it. He spoke fierily to certain of his intimates when the Bishop's speech was reported to him. He went to see him himself next day in the evening time.
His host came and sat with him on the stoep, lighted the lamp to show him a new book of his, and gave him coffee and a cigar. The hour was about half-past seven, and the week was Christmas week. There was a new moon of very dim silver in the West looking through the rose trellis upon them, and masses of inflammatory cloud were heaped about her. The host looked at the guest meditatively as he lighted his pipe.
The guest was fair-haired and well-featured, as well as magnificently built; but his deep color was not exactly the hue of health. His eyes had been glowing when he had first come on the scene, prepared to open battle. But when his host masterfully gained an armistice they became dull and rather worn eyes, that seemed not to be seeing good days somehow.
Their possessor only grew eager by flashes now and again as the Bishop showed him a second new book one that they both deemed highly delectable turning the passages and discussing various phases of its general subject the cults of the Greek States.
They had come together, these two, in a very tiny and remote city each an enthusiast as to this same by-path of erudition.
It was not until he had shown his guest the road on to a large extent of commonage—commonage of mutual delight that the Bishop led the way to a spot therein convenient for the desired engagement. He began to discuss the relations of Xanthos, the fair god, and Melanthos, the dark god, in Hellenic society.
'That's the trouble here,' he said. 'I hope you won't draw the line even at my leper windows. They may at least ease the isolation of our two cults here. I find established so to speak in this Christian city the cult of Xanthos, tribal god of the fair-skins at the Cathedral, or for the present the Pro-Cathedral. Also I find the cult of Melanthos multiplying itself at the tin temple of Saint Simon the Cyrenian.'
Mr. Smythe's cheeks became more deeply empurpled and his eyes danced.
'You must know,' went on the Bishop, 'I don't believe in tribal-gods at this time of day. I believe in Someone bigger. So it was that leper windows, modeled on those of the Middle Ages, seemed to me possible easements. There, at least, Lazarus may feel at home and join in worship, as his forerunners in the Middle Ages did, at their own wall-slits. Thus at least one step will be taken towards the supercession of Xanthos. As to the cult of Melanthos, I hope to help to infuse more of the joy of the Universal into it, so help me God!!! Yes, let me hear your objections.'
Mr. Smythe began quite conclusively. Yet there was more moderation and more argument in his rather indistinct beginning than in the flowing harangue that followed, when his voice cleared and his periods found their stride. The speech fell from level to level. Ere the end it fell to the level of that sort of invective against natives one hears so often where mean whites forgather a not very dizzy level, believe me!
Finally, Mr. Smythe vowed to give no penny for the future to Church purposes, and never to darken the doors of the new Cathedral, should the concession of those leper windows be confirmed. He would agree to forfeit a thousand pounds should he break his word, he said. Thereupon they closed the subject. The host tried to lead back to the cults of the Greek States, but the guest was now too rapt and breathless to follow to much purpose. Soon, by mutual consent, they ended the interview, not without private friendliness, but with civic war at heart.
This was in Christmas week, and things went much as might have been expected during the months that followed. The concession had been granted by the Committee, and the concessionaire thought it his duty to be grateful for that small mercy and to act upon it. The malcontent repeated his vow, and it rang throughout the village-city. A good many of the natives who worshipped at the tin temple managed to hear of it, and laughed to one another; they would watch for the darkening of the doors.
The Cathedral was to be dedicated to Saint Mark as a saint who was martyred in Africa, but lacked a cathedral in the south.
His day was chosen for the hallowing. On the eve some pomp of Procession, Recession, and Anthems had been prepared, and the Bishop was to preach. He had been away much of these last months to north, south, east and west. So custom had not staled his variety of appeal to the outer circle of citizens or villagers. They, as well as the devotees, thronged the nave. At the leper windows there were knots of dark participants in the service.
The windows gave; a few the chance of sight, but they were only five in number, and it would seem that many had to be content with very scanty views. It is questionable whether a number of the smaller folk nurse-boys, kitchen boys and telegraph messengers got any sort of a glance ere the pageantry was over.
The night was very clear; the autumn wind was somewhat bitter.
The hymn after the Blessing had been reached 'Brief life is here our portion' and the banners streamed down the central aisle in glory. The leper windows grew very starry with observation.
One boy who had come late had no chance of a view now. He was the Bishop's coachman, a lanky Bechuana, and he stood humming the hymn's air with his back to a window a window near the western door. Suddenly he started. Somebody was striding up to the porch. Surely there was no mistaking Mr. Conyers Smythe's fine shoulders in that figure nor the jaunty carriage of his massive head. Now he drew near, and the light of the porch-lamp fell upon him.
The coachman caught the arm of his stable-boy, who was standing next to him a rather Jewish-looking Mashona.
'Look! look!' he cried.
They both watched the churchgoer as he passed up the steps. Then he was gone from their view.
In the afternoon of the next day, when the triumphal services of Dedication were over, the Bishop was being driven to a farmhouse not very far distant. It was not till his mule-cart had almost reached home again that his driver ventured to question him. He had seemed rather preoccupied that driver all the dusty journey. Now he asked a question that was being wildly debated in native circles that very afternoon. 'My lord, has Mr. Smythe paid all the thousand pounds yet?'
The Bishop started and stared; then he laughed. 'What do you know of Mr. Smythe's thousand pounds?' he asked. Then he answered, 'No, Jack; why should he?'
Why indeed? So Mombe, the ox-man to give him his native name was trying to evade his obligations, was he? Almost bursting with importance, Jack told his master what Jim and he had seen last night. The Bishop listened carefully, and asked two or three questions. Then he told Jack that he might want him and his stable-boy later on that evening. He felt sure that the story was no mere willful fiction. When they were home he wrote a letter to Smythe asking him if he could come over and smoke after dinner. Then he went off to his sunset Evensong.
Conyers Smythe came about an hour afterwards. The Bishop and he had had but two bookish evenings together since that rather bizarre one in Christmas week. They met cordially enough on this April night.
Smythe was looking far from well. He had been worried about his wife's health she was away in England. The last news of it had been rather disquieting. Smythe was glad enough of sympathy; he was in no truculent mood.
They smoked by the fire in the Bishop's study as the night was cold. The Bishop had some new books to show and points to debate.
The two began with Greek pagan cults, but passed on to Christian hagiology, and discussed the legend of St. Mark with a fair measure of agreement. Then, when the coffee had come in, and they had I become friends at ease and amity, the Bishop told Smythe the boys' tale.
Smythe grew curiously white and seemed angry.
Then he laughed. 'Let's have 'em in and hear their yarn!' he said.
So Jack and Jim were sent for, and, after some slight delay, appeared. They were well washed and in their Sunday clothes. They were disposed to be deferential enough, but withal very confident, both of them. They cast somewhat awed glances at Smythe in his armchair, but they told their tale clearly on the whole, in fair Biblical English, Jack first, slowly, and Jim, at a great pace, after his superior. Smythe appeared to be busily consulting a reference while Jim was ending. There was a pause. Then the guest looked up from his book and stated his alibi: 'I was in my stable, sitting up with a sick horse,' he said. 'I came away long after the church service was over when the poor beast died with frothing at the nose. You can ask my stable-boy.'
Jack bowed his head respectfully. 'Your stableboy, Mutenu, has told me so this evening,' he said. 'But, O master, why should we lie? Is it not known that people have been seen in two places at one time'?'
Smythe frowned. He was not anxious to discuss hypotheses with natives. Then the Bishop told the boys that he had heard enough. Let them think that although they had spoken truth, they had been mistaken.
'How do you explain it?' said the Bishop rather eagerly when they had gone out.
'O,' said Smythe with a rather bitter smile, 'supposing it not to be a native lie—natives have been known to lie, my lord—it's the sort of story one reads about in the Middle Ages, the sort of legend likely to linger. He was seen going into a church on a certain ill-starred night.'
The Bishop gave a start and interrupted him. 'Do you know what yesterday evening was? Why, it was Saint Mark's Eve.'
Smythe smiled a queer livid smile. 'Yes, I thought of that all along, since the boy mentioned the porch,' he said. 'I've just been looking up the old belief in that new book of yours. I was seen going in, therefore I must look to go out in these next twelve months.
A year, a month, a week, a natural dayThat Faustus may repent and save his soul!O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,The devil will come, and Faustus will be damn'd.
The Bishop smiled at the quotation, but looked anxiously at his guest. Was he really taking his subliminal self's choice of date to heart? He proceeded to recount his own unfaith in thirteen's black magic, also in the traditional properties of salt and broken mirrors. He gave instances of disproof in his own unended career.
But Smythe, though he laughed with him, seemed rather restrained and silent: the last hour of that evening appeared to hang fire somehow. Towards the end of it, Smythe talked of his wife. 'She is at her old home,' he said, and mentioned a village very near to Oxford.
'I know,' said his host, looking into the wood fire. He was watching the Cherwell swirl through a narrow archway. He was conscious of heavenly blue in the white limbo ceiling above him, and the cushions of his chair had a grassy feel.
'She's gone home,' said Smythe, 'and she's not well, and I've not been well.'
'You look as if you want rest and change,' said the Bishop uneasily.
'I think of going a trip to the old country,' said Smythe. 'I was born out here, and haven't ever seen it. I'd like to see it once.'
'O, do go,' said his host. 'It is worth going far. Yes, all that long way.'
Not many minutes after they said good-night.
But the Bishop did not go to bed at once after his guest had gone. He reached for his Keats, and read, 'The Eve of Saint Mark'; then he reflected.
'Strange are the uses of leper windows,' he thought. 'How I should like to know what I may know this time next year, if only I didn't know I'd better not know it now! Well, be it a sign or a mock sign, God see him through with it!'
Conyers Smythe started home by the next mail boat save one. The same boat carried a letter in the Bishop's handwriting to a pastoral divine in Oxford.
'He's a sick sheep, anyhow,' said the writer, 'and I've a presentiment that he mayn't last out a year.'
As it befell, Conyers Smythe died rather suddenly in England before November was over. People remarked on the dreadfulness of the event. But Mrs. Smythe bore the shock bravely, as if she had been well prepared to bear it. It seemed that she had known the truth about his heart-disease in May, almost as soon as he was told it by the London doctor. Smythe had grown to be intimate in those last months with two or three English scholars one was an expert in tribal cults, and the other was that pastoral divine. It was one or other of these Oxford friends of his who sent on his last letter to the Bishop in December after he had gone away. Among other messages, the letter brought this one:
'There was something in that Saint Mark's Eve business I suppose. But I had had my warnings before of an event that is likely enough to occur this very week. I am glad indeed that I came home and saw things from other sides before the end. Perhaps those crowded-out Kaffirs by your leper windows hurried me up with their intelligence. I am grateful to them for that. Otherwise I might have delayed, and never started on the home voyage.
'You must make some allowance for my old point of view, as I was born into it. But now I want to give both Transepts to the Glory of God on condition that colored folk and natives shall, have them to themselves undisturbed. Forgive my narrow-mindedness, but I'd rather have it so than have all races mixed up together, and perhaps they'd rather have it so themselves! No, I really don't think I'm dying in the creed of the tribal god Xanthos, but in the faith of Someone bigger. I can trust you to befriend me at some altar of His. . . . I wish I could afford the Tower.'
'Alms!' said the Bishop. 'Thank God they'll not be built now by bazaars or fancy fairs or even by cafes-chantants. Poor base-born little churches out here, that one so often hears of, aren't they only too likely to grow up into the temples of the tribal god?'
Thus the Transepts were destined to be of purer lineage than Chancel or Nave or Lady-chapel. Only the Leper Windows are their equals in descent as yet among their fellow-buildings. But there is good hope of an honorable birth for the yet unborn Tower.
['The Headman made it generally known that he expected all the men, both Christian and heathen, to subscribe to the funds. One man refused to give anything, and was taken before the Magistrate in consequence.' Extract from a South African Church paper, December 22, 1910.]
The transepts had been built and blessed, the five leper windows were no longer over-crowded. Xanthos and Melanthos, gods of the fair and the swart skins, had in a measure met together, and in a sense kissed each other. Much remained to be achieved in the matter of mutual good understanding, and much more again in the supercession of these tribal deities by a Greater.
On the other hand, something had been done to teach the devotees of Xanthos toleration and a spirit of alms. The Bishop now turned his attention towards Melanthos more particularly what could he do to ennoble the aims and methods of his clients? He had made a journey to England and back not long before the blessing of the transepts. He regretted leaving his flock at the time. Yet certain observations he had made just ere he started gave him much food for thought on the voyage. And when he was home in the old country he was glad to find time and occasion to observe afresh, supplementing Africa by Europe, intuitions by research.
The Rev. Charles Topready, a keen missionary, had asked him to visit him the week before he went homewards. It was the season when that countryside threshed out its millet-grain in a revel of rhythmic labor. The Bishop delighted in some of those airs that the sticks beat time to. He was greedy of fantastic interpretations as he wrote their voweled refrains down in a note-book.
'We may have a Harvest Thanksgiving in church, may we not, this coming Sunday?' he said.
Now Harvest Thanksgivings were as red rags to Topready. 'Why should we bind upon Africa a burden that irks England?' he groaned. 'Surely it is a mercy that we can start afresh on the veld with no tradition of a Feast of Pumpkins.'
The Bishop smiled and smoked and argued by the hour. His point was that festivals of the soil were serviceable for sons of the soil. That agricultural festivals were serviceable for husbandmen, pastoral feasts for shepherds and goat-herds, hunting commemorations like that of Saint Hubert, for those who hunted. His knowledge of Greece and Rome, pagan and Christian, of mediaeval England and modern Brittany helped him with many apt illustrations. Topready stuck out his chin and kept bravely to his two points the danger of materialism and the menace to the spiritual cults and festas of Holy Church as by law established in the England of to-day.
'All right,' said the Bishop, 'let us have no Harvest Thanksgiving for the tillage of African earth. That is to say not this year. But keep an open mind.' Topready promised dubiously.
That struggle and waiving of victory had put the Bishop on his mettle. He had thought out the subject to some purpose before they met again.
Here are some pages from his English diary:
Sept. 21. Preached at a Thanksgiving in Essex. 'Happy harvest fields,' quiet tints in the Vicarage garden. A sun that seemed to make better use of a short day than an African sun would of a long one. What a festival Topready might have just about this time if he only liked. The masasas tinted with copper, crimson; mauve, and pink, and other leaves showing faery green and gold.
Saint Matthew's Day. The festival of the foolery of riches whenSpring is everywhere and the sun is shining.
Oct. (date illegible). Preached at the blessing of the boats in a small Sussex harbor the herring season just beginning. What glorious girls' names some of the boats had that we prayed for 'Diana Elizabeth,' for instance, might have sailed out of the 'Faerie Queene.'
Nov. 1 (All Saints'). Went to church at Saint Paul's in a side chapel.
Nov. 2 (All Souls'). Went to pray in a cemetery chapel.
Both were misty mornings, but the sun each day came out before we had done, and broke through the dingy windows in a carnage of color. How fine a side of death, November, the month of the dead, presents here. Damp and fog and fall of the leaf doubtless the sorryness of the bad business of decay and punishment but on the other hand what bravery of sunlight at times, and what colors for the sun to shine upon. In Africa it's so different. There the month is a spring month. The gay side of death as a release from Africa's plentiful curses and bondages is happily prominent. All Saints' Day our May Day our Feast of Flora and the Rosa Mystica! What a day for converts suckled in animism! Let us commemorate the African Saints with garlands of spring flowers as well as with palms in their hands. Have written to Topready to suggest a May-Day Festival with African drums to dance to, if no English May-pole to plait.
Jan. 21 (St. Agnes' Day). Went to a down church, where they had a sort of special service. Lambing-time among the South Downs just coming on. The sacrifice pleaded with one main request in view the blessing on the flocks. If they had only brought some lambs in! I hope to live to see some pied African lambs and kids in church yet.
June 21. Went to Stonehenge on the longest day. Would have camped out there on the eve if the policeman would have let me. Took observations as to Flame-Stone. Compared notes with those I took at Zimbabwe this time last year on my way to Topready's.
June 24 (Saint John). Yes, in African Mission Stations we should have St. John's Fires or fires corresponding to them about Christmas time.
Then in Mashonaland, summer is at height. Yes, the other Saint John's Day, or its Eve, would do. Let us give thanks for the Light of the World and the Sun of Righteousness symbolized by things seen and enjoyed. What did Saint Patrick do about the sacred fire? He kept it going, didn't he? Let us light our bonfires with a good will this coming Christmastide we who live by sun-time so often.
Back from England came the Bishop full of the lore of early missions. He had enriched his zeal for broad-basing the people's worship on their own everyday earth, and for enlightening things opaque with effulgences invisible. He saw his way more clearly to further what he had at heart. Topready had had many letters, and they had had their effect. But he had not capitulated yet. He capitulated at a price, as we shall see.
'Church ready by Christmas,' wrote Topready, 'please come and consecrate.' 'Expect me the day after,' telegraphed the Bishop. He thought about a bonfire as he rode along on that Saint Stephen's Day. 'The kopje above the Mission!' he reflected. 'A magnificent place for a beacon-fire.'
To his delight the new church crowned the very kopje he had been thinking of. There it stood on the sky-line, its gold of fresh thatch crowned a huge pole building, and was itself crowned by a white cross.
'How fine!' said the Bishop to himself, 'but there's no room up there for a bonfire as well, alas!'
Topready did not look over-cheerful when his leader greeted him with congratulations on the building of the church.
'It's all very well, or rather it might have been ever so much better,' he said, as they went in.
In the evening there was much time to talk. They sat on the stony rise above the house with a wide valley view. The starlight was brilliant above them eager, perfervid, passionate. They were on the rocks smoking, the Bishop between Topready and Manners, who was not a parson, but a policeman.
'It's like this,' said Topready. 'Holy Innocents' is the first church that has been built since I came here. It was built on a system.'
He explained roughly how it worked. The native teacher used his personal and official majesty for what it was worth. The people on the Mission ground were asked for poles, grass, work, &c. 'These were given,' said Topready, 'or at least "given" is the word that I understand my predecessor would have chosen. The headman proclaimed that his will coincided with the will of the native teacher. They wanted a church built that would compare favorably with churches erected under the auspices of other native teachers and other headmen.
'The contributions came in plentifully, sylvan or grassy. People who never come to church, heathens who do not seem much overjoyed with the Gospel, gave just as handsomely as Church officers. No one was paid. The church is cheap and big, and the headman and native teacher are both unhealthily contented.'
'Well, what's the matter?' said Manners; 'it's the way we do these little things in Africa. White men don't build churches from base to spire on ideal principles exactly, do they. Bishop?'
'At least we haven't had a cafe chantant lately,' the Bishop said.
'Well, don't you be too sure one isn't going on in some outlying parish while we sit here. As it happens, I know of one advertised for next month.'
'Be sure of your facts,' said the Bishop.
'Anyhow, before you came, plenty of the society lash used to be applied to get church-building doles out of Europeans. Moreover, if you look into it, generally you'll find things at Missions much as you find them here. These gloriously "given" Mission churches on Mission lands that the home magazine ecstasizes over are not given so very freely, to say the least of it. They are put up by a sort of social pressure immensely effective,' Topready broke in.
'They say most of the churches this side of the river are built the one way and I don't like the one way. Archdeacon Maynard used to advocate the one way, and impress it on his missionaries black and white. It was he who started the church-rate and debarred defaulters from Easter Communion. I've stopped that, and I want to stop the one way.'
The Bishop groaned. 'Archdeacon Maynard's a vice-president of theFree and Open Churchmen in England. I heard him speak eloquently,if a little floridly, on the right of the poor to the House ofGod.'
Manners chuckled. 'England's some way off,' he said.
Topready spoke from his heart. 'I don't like it. I told the people that the proper way was for Christians and philo-Christians to build accordingly as they could spare money and time. But they said that they were too few. I answered "Then let them wait in the old church awhile." They said they wanted a new church this year, and that the heathen should be called to help the faithful as in other places. They said they ought to have a kraal levy as other places did it saved a great deal of trouble. They thought me mad, I think. Azariah, the teacher, practically told me so.'
The Bishop lit his pipe again.
'We'll think about it,' he said. 'The consecration is fixed for the day after to-morrow, is it not? It was to be christened Holy Innocents' Church on Childermas Day, was it not? Will you have it consecrated on the Eve instead, Saint John's Night? Time Sunset.'
Topready started. 'Rather late, is it not?' he asked.
It was a great concourse that lined the hillside on the morrow when the sun was going down. The Bishop had spoken that morning in the old plain church of how he wished them to observe certain days of prayer and thanksgiving.
He asked them to keep a festival of flocks on Saint Agnes' Day.
He asked them to keep a festival of herds on Saint Luke's Day.
He asked them to keep the feasts of Loaf-Mass in August andWood-Mass in September as feasts of Harvest and Forestry.
He asked them to keep a thanksgiving for summer after Christmas on the night of Saint John, if they and their priest thought good.
He spoke of how the heathen had worshipped the sun in the grey northern lands. Then Christians better taught had thanked Christ, the Light of the World, for the glory of the sun, and lighted their joy-fires to a better purpose.
Doubtless, some in this land long ago, not only at Zimbabwe, but on many hills and high places, had honored the strong sun of the South. He asked them as Christians to be glad for that same sun's blessings at Christmas time. It seemed to him good for those who wished it (he gave no law) for those to light their bonfires to-night and to thank God not only for the summer, but for the Sun of righteousness. He himself had a mind to light a fire on that Saint John's Night to the glory of God.
Topready looked thoughtful after church. 'If I adopt your calendar loyally as far as may be, do you see your way to help me against the system?' he asked of a sudden. His grey-blue eyes were full of fight.
The Bishop nodded. He talked with him quietly a little while.
'The pact is made, then?' said Topready. 'No, I don't think we have sold our convictions, either of us. I don't feel penitent about my side of the bargain.'
'I feel it's a holy alliance,' said the Bishop, and his face glowed. 'People will keep this night, and remember what was done on it, may be, long after we are forgotten.'
That sunset a mighty crowd was there among the rocks. Much dead wood had been brought. Fathers, mothers, and children in costumes that ranged from skins to European fashions shouldered or headed their faggots.' A grim thought obsessed the Bishop as he watched them. These people, so quiet and yielding as to the selling of sacrament, and levying of church vote how easily they might be swayed to more sinister reminiscences of the Middle Ages! If he and Topready and Azariah and the headman enjoined it, what would save certain aged heathen neighbors from an auto-da-fe for alleged witchcraft one of these nights? Were not some of those old scenes at the stake much like this scene before him? Did not country people come together much as these, with dark impassive faces and bundles of firewood? Did not they listen and listen so, until the time came to pile faggots to the glory of God?
He stood on a rock and looked down on the faces. Topready stood close beneath him looking cheerful, the native teacher was near looking dubious, next to him stood the headman with his white beard, looking amused. Around them the crowd poised and posed itself among the rocks with innate grace and imposing silence. Even the babies in the goatskins were quiet.
The Bishop spoke of alms-giving. He said he did not like their plan of raising a house for Christ. Let people who loved Christ build churches if they wished to, but let them build churches according to their power to give! Let them not seek the labor or money of others, careless how it came! Rather let them worship in the old and the small, than build a new and great church anyhow! He, their Bishop, wished to buy their new church from them, paying back those who had helped to build, giving to each his due. He asked them, would they sell this church to him, to do with it as seemed to him good? If, when they built, they had made, as it were, a false start, let them start again, and this time so run that they might obtain the Promises of Christ. Would they sell their church to him?