THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 FAERYLANDS FORLORN
 
 FAERYLANDS 
 
 FORLORN 
 
 AFRICAN TALES 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS 
 
 Author of 
 
 ' Lyra Evangelistica ' and ' Magic Casements ' 
 Joint Author of ' Primavera ' 
 
 Oxford 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET 
 London 
 
 S1MPK1N, MARSHALL & CO., LIMITED 
 1910
 
 TO THE RADIANT MEMORY OF 
 
 LIEUT.-COL. SIR MARSHAL CLARKE, 
 
 K.C.M.G. 
 
 SOMETIME RESIDENT COMMISSIONER 
 IN MASHONALAND 
 
 ' He that overcometh, and keepeth My works unto 
 the end, to him will I give power over the nations : . . 
 And I will give him the morning star.' 
 
 1216814
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FAERYLANDS FORLORN I 
 
 I. THE OPEN WAY .... 3 
 
 II. ISRAEL IN OPHIR 2O 
 
 III. THE LAST FENCE .... 31 
 
 IV. CHARNWOOD FOREST 47 
 V. THE HORNED HORSE ... 65 
 
 vi. A TRAVELLER'S TALE : A TRADER'S 
 
 STORY 81 
 
 VII. THE OLD BOY ... 96 
 
 VIII. THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY - 106 
 IX. A CHANGE OF COLOUR - - - Il6 
 
 X. LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY - - 130 
 
 XI. FORT STUBBS: A TROOPER'S STORY 148 
 
 XII. TRIAL BY JURY: A FARMER'S STORY 157 
 
 XIII. ART THOU FOR US, OR FOR OUR 
 
 ADVERSARIES? - - - - 171 
 
 XIV. THE VELD FIRES: A MINER'S STORY 179 
 XV. THE SCALES OF PASSION I A 
 
 FRIEND'S STORY .... 189 
 
 XVI. THE OPEN HOUSE ... 200 
 
 XVII. THE EVE OF ST. AGNES - - 213 
 
 TO OUR MOTHER-COUNTRY - - 233 
 
 vii
 
 NOTE 
 
 I AM indebted to The Spectator, The 
 Commonwealth, The Treasury, The 
 Nation, and two magazines connected 
 with the Mashonaland Mission for leave 
 to reproduce certain matter that has 
 appeared in their pages. 
 
 A. S. C.
 
 FAERYLANDS FORLORN 
 
 ' Perilous seas in faery lands forlorn? 
 
 KEA TS. 
 
 Dreamers by Usk and A valon, 
 
 Dwellers by Uricon or Dee, 
 
 The way your forebears might have gone 
 
 May ye not wend at liberty ? 
 
 If briars about the palace be, 
 
 Where Quests allured and armour shone- 
 
 If locked the postern, lost the key 
 
 More fiefs hath Faeryland than one ! 
 
 West from the crown-lands of the sun 
 
 Sailed Paul, that prince of heraldry 
 
 No purple drops he poured upon 
 
 Troy's pomp of graves aside the sea, 
 
 Lulled by no epic euphony 
 
 His rapt eyes stared as eyes of stone 
 
 On carven Zeus or Cybele. 
 
 More fiefs hath Faeryland than one !
 
 2 FAERYLANDS FORLORN 
 
 Clear on Troy's beach from Macedon 
 ' Come ! Help !' he heard Europa's plea, 
 He sped by forest tracks o'er grown 
 The red sun-way of chivalry ; 
 White honour, wild knight-errantry, 
 Altar and fane and anchorage lone 
 He willed our sires such birthright free. 
 More fiefs hath Faery land than one ! 
 
 Seers norland-born, sail south with me ! 
 Now ! For our sands are fleet to run ! 
 Come, ride our moors in knightly glee ! 
 More fiefs hath Faery land than one !
 
 I 
 
 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 I RECOGNISED his name at once when 
 they told it me' Dick Ward.' I had 
 known him at Oxford years ago. His 
 world a fairly earnest and vociferous 
 one acclaimed him as the illustrator of 
 the ' Morte d' Arthur ' and the ' Legenda 
 Aurea.' His designs had even reached 
 at least one illiterate exile in Rhodesia. 
 Only last month someone had sent 
 them on to me in the covers of a new 
 Art series. 
 
 What could have possessed Dick that 
 he should elect to make holiday among 
 artless pioneers ? 
 
 Here he was stranded in our tiny 
 township, ninety miles or more from the 
 railway. His borrowed mules were sick 
 
 3 B 2
 
 4 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 of one of the cryptic sicknesses of our 
 cryptic country. His inexorable boat 
 was due to steam away from Beira in 
 less than a week's time, so he told me. 
 I had come into town that day in 
 Christmas week to make ready for a 
 cross-country journey of my own. In 
 the lurid heat of a summer lunch Dick 
 told me his troubles, piquantly enough, 
 considering the ennui of his theme. 
 
 Our country had not impressed him, 
 I gathered. How he had ever been 
 fool enough to conjecture that it would, 
 was now a favourite subject for his 
 inquiry. 
 
 In the cool of the stoep, when the 
 solace of tobacco had been vouchsafed 
 him, he found strength to let be the 
 past and to face the future. How was 
 he to catch his boat without ruining 
 himself ? 
 
 The second time that he asked me 
 the question a flash of real illumination 
 dazzled me. He should not have such
 
 a bad holiday, after all, if he would only 
 heed what I had in mind to say to 
 him. 
 
 He was sallow and rather listless to 
 look at as he lolled there in a deck- 
 chair, but he was by no means in such 
 shocking training as some wealthier and 
 less artistic African explorers I have 
 known. I remembered what pilgrim- 
 ages we two would go to Dorchester or 
 Witney on old Oxford Sundays, also 
 with what a raking stride he set the 
 pace on a certain historic night. He 
 still looked much as he did then, 
 only he had grown grey over the 
 temples. 
 
 So I asked him if he would bear me 
 company. 
 
 ' You may catch the boat if you'll 
 come with me,' I said. ' We should 
 strike the rail on the fourth day.' 
 
 He did not seem over keen about 
 coming, but he said he would. 
 
 ' I make no promises,' I said, ' but
 
 6 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 you may see something by the way 
 quite worth your coming out from home 
 for.' 
 
 ' And what is that ?' he asked. 
 
 ' Why, the Way itself,' I said. 
 
 Then I told him a Mashona riddle: 
 
 What is that which has no end?' 
 
 Whereof the answer is ' The Way ' ; 
 
 and I expatiated on its significance as 
 
 to the magic of the open road. 
 
 ' All right,' he said ; ' you seem quite 
 keen. I suppose it's this sort of thing, 
 isn't it ? 
 
 And this shall be for music when no one else is 
 
 near, 
 The fine song for singing, the rare song to 
 
 hear ; 
 
 That only I remember, that only you admire, 
 Of the broad road that stretches and the road- 
 side fire.' 
 
 ' Yes, that's the sort of thing,' I said ; 
 ' but don't expect too much ; you know 
 for yourself what our waggon roads are, 
 and the narrow Kaffir paths will worry
 
 THE OPEN WAY 7 
 
 you ; yet it's that sort of thing really 
 and oh, it's worth it!' 
 
 ' It's worth trying, after all I've gone 
 through,' he said. ' I'm out here, and 
 I've had a bad poor time, and dropped 
 a lot of money.' 
 
 He fell to talking of the glories of 
 European civilisation as they glared so 
 raw and unbaked in this seventeen-year- 
 old state of ours. 
 
 Some of his mots were delicious in 
 themselves, others were platitudinous ; 
 yet I was uncharitable enough to revel 
 in the irony of all alike. Irony so rarely 
 came my way nowadays; we noble 
 pioneers took ourselves so seriously. 
 
 Under a clear and windless heaven 
 we made our way as far as my house 
 that evening. 
 
 He told me on the road of company 
 promoters and of officials who had 
 beset his journey, of grossly gorgeous 
 meals, of artless pomp and ineffective 
 luxury.
 
 8 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 The corrugated iron of the country, 
 so terribly symbolical, had entered even 
 into his soul. Yet censorious though he 
 was as to the banalities of the Chosen 
 British People in this Land of Promise, 
 he was not without sympathy for his 
 many hosts, nor without gratitude for 
 the kindnesses they had shown him. 
 
 ' A mission !' he muttered, as we came 
 down the last hill. His tone was rather 
 melancholy. ' I was driven out to see 
 a mission by the head of a department 
 only last week,' he said. I asked for 
 particulars. 
 
 He said he had not thought the build- 
 ings very edifying. 
 
 ' Oblong brick and iron. I dare say 
 they find them very useful. The church 
 had as much style as the others. A 
 plethora of Bavarian chromos inside it ! 
 It must have been a little hard to learn 
 to pray there ! There was a praise- 
 worthy general atmosphere of blue- 
 mottled soap and staring and glaring
 
 THE OPEN WAY 9 
 
 prints and chintzes. It all seemed very 
 American and efficient in its own way. 
 There was no sort of attempt to con- 
 fuse beauty and truth. Perhaps it was 
 all for the best.' 
 
 His remarks nettled me. I fired up 
 and fought the battles of my fellow- 
 Philistines against this languid onlooker. 
 At last we were home. 
 
 I need not describe at length his 
 sojourn there. It was a blessed surprise 
 for me to find him so uncritical. Haply 
 he was conscious of having smitten to 
 right and left rather relentlessly those 
 last few hours. He certainly took a 
 kindly view of his surroundings, both 
 by night and in the morning. He 
 spared their futilities, he praised their 
 rusticities. 
 
 I ventured even to invite him to the 
 Liturgy at dawn. ' How can we live 
 the primitive life without the primitive 
 love of sacrifice ?' I pleaded. 
 
 He demurred, but came. He approved
 
 io THE OPEN WAY 
 
 the dome of our church. The use of a 
 stringed instrument as a sacring bell 
 pleased his fancy. The coloured metal- 
 work by native artificers won his real 
 regard. On the whole he was contented 
 with the rendering of the Rite. There 
 were large reservations in his content- 
 ment, but he was disposed towards 
 toleration, if nothing more, and that you 
 would say, if you knew the man, was 
 much to gain from him. 
 
 It was Childermas Day, and he was 
 pleased to approve our anthem of the 
 guileless and undefiled, and of the 
 Following of the Lamb. He told 
 me so afterwards, as we walked up 
 to the house between the banana 
 palms. 
 
 Thus it came about that we went on 
 our way after breakfast fairly hopefully, 
 and at amity one with another. He was 
 resigned to wander in the wilderness 
 among Kaffir Amalekites and Philistines. 
 He had had a bitter bad time among
 
 THE OPEN WAY n 
 
 the little country towns of the Chosen 
 British People. He had some small 
 hope that the wilderness might use him 
 much better. 
 
 The rain came on that morning, but 
 we trudged on by deeply furrowed paths 
 in our dank clothes, hardily. The bright 
 weather of the afternoon came like a 
 dream as we left the stump-sown millet 
 and maize gardens, and climbed up into 
 a rolling country of rocks and foaming 
 streams and woodlands. 
 
 Our carriers travelled fast, and we 
 made but one halt for the boiling of 
 a kettle the clear weather was too 
 precious in our eyes. 
 
 So it came about that at red sundown 
 we fell to at a huge Homeric meal out- 
 side a Mashona hill village. 'This is 
 hunger,' Ward said. The black pot 
 bubbled and sputtered, the kettle hissed 
 and steamed. We said grace and drank 
 the sweet and ate the strong, and 
 smoked and talked on under the stars.
 
 12 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 We watched one of the carriers feeding 
 their steaming pot with meal while 
 another stirred ; then he who stirred 
 served out the dark red millet dough. 
 We watched the frizzling of a fowl on 
 the embers. The feasters had brown 
 locusts, too, enough and to spare, given 
 them by the people of the village, so 
 they knew no lack of meat for that 
 supper. 
 
 Dick laid his pipe down afterwards, 
 and listened while we used our voices. 
 How much more fluent than English is 
 the patois of this country for singing 
 and praying ; since, whatever the word 
 you use, a vowel should end it ! 
 
 They made Dick a bed of leaves, and 
 he lay in his blankets smoking and say- 
 ing little. At last he sighed, and said 
 ' Good-night.' His head went under his 
 grey blanket, just as a mosquito began 
 to wind ' its small but sullen horn ' 
 without. No rain came in the night, so 
 we had no recourse to the huts. Indeed,
 
 THE OPEN WAY 13 
 
 the weather kept a charming truce with 
 us all the days that were left of our 
 journey. 
 
 We saw no lions or big game, and 
 the few small buck and guinea-fowl that 
 we saw we left unmolested ; not even a 
 snake splashed our peaceful path with 
 blood. I would rather not try to 
 chronicle those days. Should I set down 
 fully what befel in them you would be 
 likely enough depressed by the dulness 
 of our steady going forward. But with 
 us who went the way it was far other- 
 wise. 
 
 I would only hint at the awe of the 
 towering ironstone range of Che Wasi- 
 kana and Che Wakomana, and of the 
 three swollen rivers that we forded. 
 My friend was carried through two of 
 them ; at the second crossing his bearer 
 slipped on a sunken rock, and half 
 plunged him under. At the third cross- 
 ing he would go his own way barefoot, 
 and, hand-in-hand with two Mashonas,
 
 14 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 he strove with the rush of the tide. He 
 came dripping and glowing to the sands 
 where the fire was already lit, and the 
 water simmering refreshfully. That was 
 on the last afternoon when we were 
 nearing our goal. 
 
 It was a happy old-year night, that 
 last night of our journey. Yet we were 
 running short of food then, for all my 
 care. Dick had been too lavish with his 
 gifts, alike to friends by the road and 
 to lithe and comely fellow-travellers. 
 In the panegyric that he pronounced on 
 that night of nights, he remembered all 
 alike, and taxed my powers of inter- 
 pretation exorbitantly. He remembered 
 the carriers all not forgetting that one, 
 the one with the terra-cotta skin and 
 Punic features, whose treadings had 
 slipped in the drift ; he remembered the 
 trader who made us coffee and scones 
 when we reached him in the midday 
 heat ; he remembered the dark Wesleyan 
 neophytes, whose kindness had con-
 
 -THE OPEN WAY 15 
 
 doned their dingy tweeds and burning 
 print dresses; he remembered, too, the 
 white sundowner who proffered us his 
 last drink. 
 
 ' The new sun rose, bringing the new 
 year.' We were camping on a height, 
 with a stream racing down the granite 
 beneath us. Hills rose up behind us 
 and before. Our morning altar was a 
 grey rock-slab, with the dawn-coloured 
 east for altar-piece. 
 
 We broke fast, then we followed a 
 track downwards. 
 
 Soon we were in the valley of the 
 railway. The train was due at sunset 
 to-night ; his boat was to sail in two 
 days from to-morrow. 
 
 I had but a few miles more to go of 
 my own journey. 
 
 We called a long halt in the bush a 
 mile from the town. We were all but 
 out of bread now, yet rice and monkey- 
 nuts made amends at this, our last meal 
 together.
 
 16 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 ' It was worth coming out for,' he 
 said. 
 
 ' What was worth ?' 
 
 ' The Way,' he said. ' It's a parable 
 of your whole country,' he went on. 
 ' The Way is far more than aught it 
 leads to. I'd like to come again to this 
 new-old world. But, another time, I'd 
 rather not waste five-sixths of my days 
 seeking what our own old-new world 
 could give me far better.' 
 
 Soon, after we had smoked much and 
 talked little, I begged a picture of him. 
 ' Paint us a picture of the Way,' I said. 
 ' I want to hang it somewhere by the 
 wayside, if you will send it me.' He 
 said he was willing to try. 
 
 He has not come back yet, but I do 
 not doubt his will to come next year. 
 His picture has come on before him. 
 We have hung it in a new chapel under 
 that ironstone range we built this 
 chapel on a site he praised himself ; as 
 we came by, on the Way, he said it
 
 THE OPEN WAY 17 
 
 reminded him of one of the Franciscan 
 holy places. 
 
 In the picture there is set forth a 
 hugely wide Mashonaland hillside, with 
 a white Way running up it. The 
 heavens are full of gold, and the grass 
 of silver ; everywhere is the clear shining 
 after night-dews or rain. 
 
 As you look and look, you see a Figure 
 that at first, perhaps, was hidden from 
 you. 
 
 The white Way becomes to your eyes 
 a white Body. Just where the Feet 
 show white they are studded by rocks. 
 The Arms are white tracks converging 
 on the middle way. The Hands again 
 are rock-studded. The Face smiles out 
 of a beard of tangled bushes. 
 
 On the Brow is set a circle of peaked 
 huts a Kaffir village that It wears as 
 a Crown. The legend under the picture 
 is only four short words long : ' I am 
 the Way.' The picture grows upon me 
 each month as I stand at the altar
 
 i8 THE OPEN WAY 
 
 before it, and I have seen a swart wor- 
 shipper or two looking and looking at it 
 longer than I have ever done. One of 
 the Chosen British People saw it last 
 week, when he came riding through our 
 missionary Bohemia. 
 
 He looked at it for quite a long time, 
 and then he looked at me kindly, as if 
 he did not want to wound my feelings. 
 He said : ' Do you mean to tell me that 
 such a famous artist as Mr. Ward found 
 nothing better to paint in all Rhodesia ? 
 Why didn't he paint our bridge over 
 Victoria Falls, or our Founder's Tomb, 
 or Government House at Salisbury or 
 something with some human interest 
 in it ?' 
 
 I laughed a little. 
 
 ' It is an unsatisfactory sort of picture,' 
 he went on. ' Don't you think so your- 
 self?' 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders. 
 
 I risked a question : ' Is not the mea- 
 sure of that picture's failure to satisfy,
 
 THE OPEN WAY 19 
 
 the measure of its power to suggest?' 
 He did not follow me ; but then, he did 
 not know what Ward and I knew about 
 the secrets of the Way. 
 
 C 2
 
 II 
 
 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 
 
 WHEN I first saw him he was at break- 
 fast in the hotel. I think the breakfast 
 was a four-shilling one ; the courses were 
 mostly out of tins, and the surroundings 
 were not luxurious. The alabastine that 
 tinted the walls, though, was a joyous 
 and brave rose-colour, and the atmo- 
 sphere it gave was cheering. I remember 
 I didn't like his ostentatious way of eat- 
 ing sausages, and calling for a second 
 helping of them. I was new then to the 
 ways of his compatriots in South Africa. 
 I shuddered for his murdered scrupu- 
 losity, but he seemed quite callous. 
 
 Afterwards, as we walked out together 
 he to his trading-station, I to my Mis- 
 sion I began to understand. His nation- 
 
 20
 
 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 21 
 
 ality held him fast, his national faith 
 very lightly. He regarded the Law's 
 prescriptions as eminently sanitary, and 
 salutary for his ancestors. As a modern, 
 he felt neither the need nor the obliga- 
 tion to observe them. He was very 
 close, I thought, from observing his 
 dealings with his carriers. His altruistic 
 sense seemed rather torpid. Curiously 
 enough, he quoted Omar Khayyam with 
 more zest and correctness than he did 
 the Old Testament. Four to one, I 
 thought, and the one a very hashy and 
 hazy reminiscence ! On the other hand, 
 the four were very correct repetitions, 
 with an unpleasant twang of heterodoxy 
 about them all four. 
 
 His name was Samuel Roseway, and 
 he was trading near me at least, only 
 six miles or so off, which is near for our 
 country. 
 
 When I passed his way a fortnight 
 later, we had some coffee together. He 
 seemed to have Old Testament feelings
 
 22 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 
 
 about the spoiling of the Mashonas as a 
 sort of Egyptians. Afterwards I gathered 
 that he had Old Testament feelings 
 about myself as a somewhat provocative 
 type of Gentile a species of Edomite. 
 I was disposed, I confess, to toy with 
 certain Satanic feelings of my mediaeval 
 ancestors. He looked rather sleek that 
 day, and not positively decisive as to 
 shaving or neglect of shaving ; he was 
 very swarthy, and his jewellery was 
 florid. He showed me before I went 
 something worth seeing. 
 
 It was in a sort of grove about a mile 
 from his store, a tiny conical tower rising 
 among great rocks, of the Zimbabwe 
 pattern a modest and sincere trophy, 
 as it seemed, of Art. ' A tower of Ash- 
 taroth,' I said. I quoted Scripture to 
 him, then I told him some shreds of 
 Zimbabwe theory. ' How grim it must 
 look by moonlight !' I said. ' We shall 
 have you falling away, as did your fore- 
 fathers.' He resented the idea ; he had
 
 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 23 
 
 not much turn for Gentile humour. ' A 
 Jew has too much sense for heathen 
 monkey-tricks,' he said. I ventured to 
 hint that any faith with a spark in it was 
 better than one in ashes. I quoted his 
 own Omar instinctively, and declared 
 
 One glimpse of It within the Tavern caught 
 Better than in the Temple lost outright. 
 
 He grunted. When I went away, the 
 vision of that forlorn tower of Astarte 
 went with me. My thoughts went back 
 to it again and again. I must see how 
 the stones looked, with a sickle of moon 
 above them. So I willingly arranged to 
 take a night tramp that way when I 
 should be travelling in the east country. 
 I would try to press on three miles 
 farther towards the river before en- 
 camping. 
 
 When I got to his station the sun had 
 just set, and the five-day moon was 
 beginning to look about her. Roseway 
 wasn't at his station. It was locked and
 
 24 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 
 
 silent. I sat down on a grain-bag, wait- 
 ing for my boys to come up. Soon I 
 heard someone lurching through the 
 trees, coughing and spitting. It was 
 Roseway coming home from the kraal 
 on the tower road, not very steadily. 
 It was beer-time then, the time when 
 they were beginning to thresh out the 
 millet corn. I could see by his rolling 
 what he had been after. His language 
 wasn't very choice, and I won't put it 
 down. He wanted his pick and crow- 
 bar, he said. He found them, and went 
 off by himself. He kept cursing and 
 threatening some place or other. I 
 thought it must be a kraal, and I tried 
 to get him to give me tea, and stop at 
 home, and keep the peace. But he 
 wouldn't; he was in too much of a hurry. 
 He would cook me something when he 
 came back, he said. ~ He'd be quick, if 
 I'd stop and boil the kettle. He said he 
 wasn't going to do anybody any harm. 
 So I started cooking with my boys. We
 
 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 25 
 
 had all eaten, and waited, when I thought 
 it was about time to go and look after 
 him. I left one boy to watch our things, 
 and took another. We went up the 
 track that he had gone by, and found 
 him, sure enough, by the poor little tower 
 that used to be. He was sweating and 
 panting. ' I've made a job of it,' he 
 said ; ' I used to be a housebreaker down 
 Whitechapel way.' He had indeed made 
 a job of it. There were not many stones 
 left upon other stones. I called him 
 Philistine and Goth, but he did not seem 
 to mind. Then we came home to tea. 
 He told me on the way how the place 
 had bothered him. He'd got round 
 there one night, and got some of his 
 clothes off, and made a fool of himself 
 before the Kaffirs. ' I suppose it's a bit 
 in my blood/ he said. ' I thought about 
 what you told me, and I got scared of 
 the place. There was something else, 
 too, I can't tell you. I didn't get much 
 beer this afternoon. I didn't really.
 
 26 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 
 
 I've worked it all off now, and I'm not 
 a bit sorry I've broke this idol-shop.' 
 
 I did not stop long with him that 
 night. I was rather sore as to the 
 tower. If I'd chosen to report him, the 
 Government might have made a row. 
 I had half a mind to. That night, as I 
 went by the ruined place, the moon was 
 framed in the great grove of trees. 
 ' He'll cut down the grove next,' I 
 thought. But he didn't, and, after all, 
 there was an abundance of rocks and 
 groves in that land of rocks and groves 
 for the night visitations of the moon- 
 goddess. The place wasn't well known, 
 like the Great Zimbabwe, and I didn't 
 tell many tales, so I don't think he ever 
 got into trouble over it. 
 
 But it was wonderful, when I came the 
 same way again four months afterwards, 
 to see the change in the man. I stopped 
 with him a night that time. Was there 
 ever a stricter Jew than he had become? 
 It was good to see it, he was so evidently
 
 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 27 
 
 in earnest about righteousness and 
 mercy and the light of the Countenance 
 of God. He only had meat once while 
 I was with him. He showed me that it 
 came from a sealed tin with a London 
 Rabbi's signature upon it, to attest its 
 cleanliness. He told me that he had 
 been down to Bulawayo, and had his 
 cattle-marriage with a Mashona girl 
 legitimatized with full rites. ' She 
 believes,' he said. She came in at his 
 call. She had almost Jewish features 
 herself. A very tender face it was, 
 tender-eyed, as was said of Leah's. I 
 said something about the similarity of 
 features. ' Wait till to-night ; I will 
 show you something,' he said. We all 
 went to the broken tower that sunset. 
 The ruins lay full in the full moon's blaze. 
 ' This is the watch-tower of Ashtaroth, 
 the seducer of our people,' he said, and 
 finished with a curse. How eagerly the 
 woman's voice assented to it ! Then she 
 spat fiercely upon the stones.
 
 28 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 
 
 ' I will tell you a story,' he said. ' It 
 was in the kraal hard by, four months 
 ago. She was possessed in spirit. She 
 cried out that she and her people came 
 long ago seeking gold, that the moon- 
 goddess had deceived them, and they had 
 forsaken the Rock of their might. And 
 she cursed the tower of the moon, that 
 evil goddess who will come night after 
 night to laugh over God's people that 
 have married with the heathen, and 
 learned their ways.' 'Your blood was 
 up against the beguiler of her fathers,' I 
 suggested. ' Yes,' he answered, ' and 
 the place seems more wholesome since 
 I broke the tower.' 
 
 When we got back to the house, the 
 girl came and repeated to me certain 
 words that he had taught her in the 
 Mashona. My knowledge of the tongue 
 was good enough to guide me to their 
 meaning. ' Intreat me not to leave thee, 
 neither to refrain from following after 
 thee, for whither thou goest, I will go ;
 
 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 29 
 
 and where thou lodgest, I will lodge ; thy 
 people shall be my people, and thy God 
 my God.' She stood by the wood-fire, the 
 sacred hearth of her husband's home ; 
 the door was open, and Astarte looked 
 through after her rather regretfully. 
 Away in the groves about the house a 
 certain dove crooned and crooned again 
 in the moonlight. I thanked her for her 
 recitative. Then I burst forth into the 
 rhetoric of her husband's prophet. I 
 had been rendering him only that last 
 week into the Mashona, ' Who are these 
 that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to 
 their windows ? Surely the isles shall 
 wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish 
 first, to bring thy sons from far, their 
 silver and their gold with them, unto 
 the name of the Lord thy God, and to 
 the Holy One of Israel, because He hath 
 glorified thee.' 
 
 Her eyes glowed certainly; his, too, 
 unless I am mistaken. Those who have 
 come so far may come farther in Israel.
 
 30 ISRAEL IN OPHIR 
 
 The words that he had taught her were 
 the words of Ruth the Moabitess on 
 the road that brought her even unto 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 NOTES BY EXPERTS 
 
 R. N. H. The woman's statement is de- 
 cidedly interesting as corroborating the theory 
 of a Semitic settlement in Rhodesia. 
 
 D. MAC!. The woman's statement was 
 obviously fictitious. Vide my book.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 I WENT to the New Year sports in Zit- 
 plaaten more than a year ago. It is a 
 drunken little dorp among the hills. I 
 had heard that Gwynne was to be there 
 for the races, and I found him there. 
 
 I had known him at school, but we 
 had met very seldom since we came out 
 to this country. After we left school he 
 had been at Cambridge while I was at 
 Oxford, and I had heard his fame from 
 time to time. Then he had gone to 
 Africa long before I did. I want to tell 
 you more about him by-and-by. 
 
 Now, as to the day of the sports last 
 year. Gwynne's mare was Rhodesian- 
 born. He had bred her in the days of 
 his prosperity ; she had been foaled just
 
 32 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 five years before. She was a bright 
 chestnut, with a star under her forelock. 
 She had won a race or two. Now she 
 came winning all the way, her owner 
 riding in the most important steeple- 
 chase of the day the Zitplaaten Plate. 
 There was a sudden lull in the shout- 
 ing. She had fallen at the last fence, 
 and she did not get up. Gywnne stood 
 over her, biting his lip. Many tendered 
 advice. But she never got up again : 
 she was shot that evening. Gwynne 
 fought shy of me in his desperation. 
 He told me afterwards he thought he 
 should have done for himself, but some- 
 one came and knocked him up just 
 before he was ready. So they got drunk 
 together, and he forgot what he had 
 meant to do till he had slept upon it. 
 A day or two after he came to my place 
 and talked over things with me. He 
 was very pale, but then he was always 
 curiously pale. He had fallen on very 
 bad times lately. At Cambridge he had
 
 THE LAST FENCE 33 
 
 been quite brilliant, people have told 
 me. Yet, even there, he had had one 
 or two shady seasons. He wrote light 
 verse rather well, he played billiards 
 rather extra well. But his chief mark 
 was made at the Union. He should 
 have been President in due course, but 
 for something that he did in his last term 
 that put him right out of the running. 
 
 Then he should have got a First Class, 
 but only got a Third. He came out 
 here rather in a hurry, learnt two native 
 languages very soon and very efficiently, 
 and was not long in rising to be a full- 
 fledged Native Commissioner. 
 
 Neither the country nor the position 
 was suited to a man of his type. God 
 knows, the position is made hard enough 
 under the country's conditions. A man 
 is set up as a Superparamount Chief of 
 Natives, and is beset by a swarm of 
 not very scrupulous colonists, who are 
 allowed to apply to him for such native 
 labour as they require. He is certainly 
 
 D
 
 34 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 cautioned not to force labour, but in 
 out-of-the-way places there are big 
 temptations to do things that should 
 not be done. At his back is the effective 
 engine of a British police- system, and 
 it is lamentable when that high-power 
 engine is used to enforce a rough-and- 
 ready tyranny. How many in the 
 position have come to grief ! 
 
 Gwynne came to grief. 
 
 How he could have done what I 
 know he did, I do not find it easy to 
 understand. 
 
 A sensitive man should surely have 
 more sense than to amass, month after 
 month and year after year, bad debts of 
 remorse. He sold natives, I am told, by 
 the hundred to a particularly unhealthy 
 mine, and made his pile fast. Then 
 somebody (urged by spite, I fear, rather 
 than philanthropy) did an exceedingly 
 useful work in denouncing him. 
 
 Afterwards he drank freely while his 
 pile lasted, and did very little else.
 
 THE LAST FENCE 35 
 
 Then, when his funds ran out, he sought 
 a rather slouching employment as a 
 buyer of natives' cattle on commission. 
 He did rather well at that so long as he 
 kept sober. 
 
 It was curious how he had kept his 
 beautiful mare so long, when so much 
 had gone from him. Now she was 
 gone. He came and talked to me about 
 her when the wrench was over. He was 
 astonishingly full of hopes and plans as 
 well as regrets. Yet at the time I did 
 not believe much in what he was saying. 
 
 He was going to keep straight now, 
 and make money and start for home 
 before a year was out ; then he would get 
 married, and live on a farm in Wiltshire 
 that had just been left him. He had 
 no doubt at all what he would do, so 
 help him God ! 
 
 And he did much of it. 
 
 Next year, or rather the end of that 
 same year, when he came to my place 
 on his way to the dorp for the New Year 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 coach, he told me he had come to say 
 good-bye. He had kept straight. He 
 was quite well off. His eyes were clear 
 and steady, and could meet mine. He 
 had knocked about in as burning suns 
 and charing winds, I suppose, as most of 
 us, but his face looked, as always, very 
 pale. I thought this time the pallor 
 was more marked than ever. 
 
 ' Have you had much fever?' I asked. 
 
 * Yes, off and on,' he said. ' I can't 
 sleep sometimes for three or four nights 
 at a time, but I'm used to it now.' 
 
 As we sat in the stoep and smoked 
 and watched the stars (it was one of 
 those nights when falling stars seemed 
 in season), he sketched out for me some- 
 thing of what he hoped to do at home. 
 
 ' I'm going to try and speak, and write 
 quite a lot,' he said. * I've no end of 
 ideas ready to put into shape.' 
 
 ' For instance ?' 
 
 ' Oh, for one thing, I'll try and pay 
 some of the debt I owe this country.
 
 THE LAST FENCE 37 
 
 I'll try and show some of the rotten- 
 ness of the present system so as to get 
 it reformed. I'll try and do something 
 to undo certain things in the past.' 
 
 I tried to get him to go more into 
 details. But he sidled off uneasily. He 
 shrank from the veriest mention of 
 mines or natives, or abuse of executive 
 power. As it was, I expect I said too 
 much. For, before the night was over, 
 I heard him shriek. He was sitting up 
 in bed ; when I lighted a candle I could 
 see he was sweating, as if he were in 
 high fever. 
 
 ' Don't mind my shouting,' he said. 
 ' It's only something that comes when 
 the cocks crow the first time, as regular 
 as clockwork. I'm getting rather sick 
 of it. I'm glad I've got my seat in the 
 post-cart this week, and my passage 
 taken by the mail from Cape Town. At 
 any rate, it may get less, if it won't go 
 away, but here on the Veld it seems to 
 grow.'
 
 38 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 ' What ?' I said, but he didn't answer. 
 Just before he went away he told me. 
 He went away in the afternoon just 
 after our dinner. He was bound for the 
 dorp ten miles or more distant, so as to 
 catch the coach there. 
 
 ' It's a boy with a waistcoat and a 
 yellow tie with blue stripes,' he said ; 
 'he comes always at the same time, 
 the very moment that the cock crows. 
 I don't know quite what he's after. I 
 don't remember any boy like him at all 
 at all.' 
 
 ' Yellow and blue stripes. I seem to 
 have heard a yarn about the very 
 colours,' I muttered. ' Let me try and 
 remember!' 
 
 But I didn't remember, I couldn't 
 even be at all sure that there was any- 
 thing for me to remember, though the 
 words seemed old friends. Then the 
 time for him to be starting came. 
 
 We went into the church together 
 before he left. I suggested that we
 
 THE LAST FENCE 39 
 
 should say Te Deum. He rather de- 
 murred. ' But,' I said, ' you have a deal 
 to be thankful for, getting the new start 
 you have. And, remember, the hymn's 
 not all Gloria, it is Miserere near the 
 end.' 
 
 So I had my way, and we said it 
 together before we said good-bye. 
 
 I took stock of him as he went from 
 me. We had parted at the drift, and 
 he went up the hill-track, turning more 
 than once to wave from the green ascent, 
 with the sun shining strongly upon him, 
 and a tiny shower spattering him feebly. 
 He was a tall, fair, intellectual, even 
 spiritual-looking man. He seemed full 
 of the fire and zest of life, despite that 
 terribly pale face of his. 
 
 ' Unstable as water ' the words 
 seemed to come with the spitting of 
 the shower. But there came other 
 and sunnier words hard behind them, 
 'springing out of the earth by clear 
 shining after rain.'
 
 40 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 This man had been very far into a 
 country that lacks well-informed histo- 
 rians. He was the sort of man who had 
 the wit to make his experiences useful 
 to others. It was astonishing that he 
 should have come so straight on his 
 home journey. Now, there seemed to 
 be no fence in his way to stop him, so 
 far as I could discover. 
 
 Next morning there came news from 
 town, and I went in in a hurry. It 
 was a grim tale that had come out to 
 me, but confused. 
 
 By the time I had been in town a few 
 minutes, and listened to story after story, 
 I began to form a fairly clear picture of 
 what had happened the evening before. 
 Gwynne had come into town at five 
 o'clock from the north-east. About half 
 an hour before a party had also come into 
 town from the south. They were traders 
 and miners coming to the New Year 
 sports. Wilgress the trader, who had 
 had a row with Gwynne just a year ago,
 
 THE LAST FENCE 41 
 
 was one of them. He had with him his 
 cousin, and they went to the store and 
 annexed a bottle a-piece. They went to 
 the room they had engaged, opposite to 
 the hotel stables, and there made merry. 
 They were very fresh for a fight at six 
 o'clock. 
 
 To them entered, punctually on the 
 stroke of six, Alfred Gwynne. They 
 both rushed for him. Gwynne tried to 
 get away. He was weak as water. His 
 white face really meant something. He 
 did not want to fight. If he had wanted, 
 the two would scarcely have given him 
 much of a field, in their glow of Cape- 
 brandy courage. They made at him as 
 rat-catchers make at their vermin. They 
 were not scrupulous as to where hands 
 or feet struck home. Only one man 
 tried to help Gwynne. Others looked on 
 interested, till the decisive moment was 
 gone by. He was knocked down two or 
 three times over, he was pummelled and 
 kicked on the ground. It was not a
 
 42 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 struggle with much art or many graces 
 to adorn it. When they were at last 
 dragged off him, he was done for. In 
 ten minutes he was dead. 
 
 As to the rest of the history, it did 
 not interest me much what particular 
 dregs of language Wilgress and his 
 partner had used on this occasion ; how 
 soon they were in a liquorish sleep after 
 they were got to gaol; what an ab- 
 normal state Gwynne's spleen was in at 
 the time of death, so the doctor said. I 
 listened, but I was not so very much 
 interested. How he had picked himself 
 up after a very bad fall I remembered. 
 How hard and straight he had ridden 
 for home I had seen for myself. And 
 now he was down at the last fence, and 
 his racing was over. He would never 
 win the Reform Stakes for the country 
 he had wronged. I roused myself to 
 ask a question or two. ' Was he sober ?' 
 'No doubt about that. He hadn't 
 touched a drop for nearly a year.'
 
 THE LAST FENCE 43 
 
 ' But how was it he got into the brawl ?' 
 ' Because he went into the room where 
 the two were drinking.' ' But why in 
 the world did he go ?' There was no 
 satisfactory answer. Yet perhaps there 
 was no particular mystery in the matter, 
 after all. 
 
 We went to his burial. The rain 
 slopped over us on the way, and the 
 cemetery looked peculiarly ragged. 
 Some mules had been Christmasing 
 rather riotously among its mulberry 
 hedges. 
 
 After the public prayers, I said the 
 last bit of the Te Deum to myself, 
 wondering if he could hear me. It was 
 only a few hours then, since we had 
 said it together. 
 
 Late that afternoon I heard something 
 that interested me. I was talking to a 
 twelve-year-old English boy of my 
 acquaintance. He told me he had liked 
 Mr. Gwynne very much. He said some- 
 thing about Wilgress under his breath
 
 44 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 that I fear was unprintable ; the language 
 of pioneers' children is apt to be Eliza- 
 bethan, but not in the best sense. 
 
 1 Mr. Gwynne gave me a bottle of 
 mixed sweets yesterday, and we walked 
 up from the store together. Then he 
 went into the room at the hotel, and I 
 do wish he hadn't gone.' 
 
 ' Why did he go into the room, Bob ?' 
 I asked. 
 
 Bob looked scared. ' He said he saw 
 the boy with the yellow tie and the blue 
 stripes go in there. He asked me if I 
 didn't see him. But I didn't see any 
 boy!' 
 
 ' Are you quite sure he said that ?' I 
 asked. 
 
 * Do you think I'd forget, and him 
 dead and all ?' 
 
 Who was the boy with the yellow tie 
 and the blue stripes ? 
 
 I seemed to have heard of him, yet I 
 could not remember where. Of course 
 I remembered what Gwynne had said
 
 THE LAST FENCE 45 
 
 about his night-terror, but there was 
 something before that to be remem- 
 bered. Should I ever remember it ? 
 
 I did remember it after three weeks. 
 It came like lightning. Someone men- 
 tioned the name of the Scotsman who 
 had told me the boy's story. Then the 
 story rushed back to me. I had been 
 told it two or three years back, just after 
 Gwynne's loss of his billet. Now that 
 I was once put on to it, I could re- 
 member it almost word for word. ' We 
 were stuck for boys some years ago, and 
 the rains were coming on. I had heard 
 Gwynne wasn't very particular, but I did 
 not know him very well. So I got a 
 letter from his headquarters to him, to 
 ask him to give me any assistance in his 
 power. He construed it in his own way, 
 and sent his black police to turn some 
 out for me. The draft came to me next 
 night. There was one boy who was in 
 it with a waistcoat and a yellow tie 
 with blue stripes that I took particular
 
 46 THE LAST FENCE 
 
 note of. He looked too much dressed 
 up for a working nigger. Next morn- 
 ing, to my horror, I heard this particular 
 boy was dead. It gave me a turn. I 
 don't think I'll ever have anything to do 
 again with forced labour; at least, it 
 will be long before next time comes. 
 The poor wretch had been sick, and the 
 police-boy had rapped him with a knob- 
 kerrie to make him come out. Then 
 he had been marched eighteen miles or 
 so. It gave me a turn.' 
 
 So I understood something of the 
 mystery of that last fence. I understood 
 why Gwynne went out of his course, 
 exploring those drunkards' quarters. 
 Someone had been sent to lead him by 
 that way of destiny the way to follow 
 his mare.
 
 IV 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 THIS is, in a way, a dull story, as being 
 such a very stale one ; yet sometimes it 
 is worth while to retell that which has 
 a knack of recurring again and yet 
 again. 
 
 He was a friend of Ward's, who 
 came out to South- East Africa, and 
 Ward had told him of me. But Ward 
 had not written to tell me of this, 
 so I was surprised when he came to 
 see me. 
 
 I will not mention his name for suffi- 
 cient reasons ; I will call him Celestine, 
 as it is a pleasant name. Possibly those 
 who know their Dante will understand 
 how I came to pitch upon it. 
 
 I had seen in a local paper that Mr. 
 47
 
 48 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 Celestine, the distinguished sculptor, was 
 visiting the country with a view to the 
 fulfilment of a commission he had in 
 hand. 
 
 He was commissioned to execute a 
 very notable statue that of a magnate 
 in our capital, who had been chosen 
 for apotheosis in his prosperous life- 
 time. 
 
 I was not enthusiastic about the mag- 
 nate, and I did not read the paragraph 
 with any particular interest. 
 
 It was about a month after its appear- 
 ance that Celestine came. He arrived 
 one sunset with three carriers. I thought 
 he was a Government official of some 
 sort when I saw him. He was yellow- 
 haired and sunburnt, he was dressed in 
 fairly fresh white, and sprucely shaven, 
 and he looked jolly, even though he had 
 come thirty miles that day. 
 
 He sat down to bread and cheese, and 
 seemed to have a good appetite. We 
 talked about the crops, the present
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 49 
 
 drought (the time was the end of 
 January), and the road he had come. 
 
 Then at last, when we were smoking 
 after supper, he to|d me who he was. 
 
 I was staggered when he said that he 
 had come to stay for a month, if I did 
 not mind. 
 
 * What will you do with yourself in a 
 place like this ?' I asked, aghast. 
 
 He smiled. ' Ward hinted to me that 
 I might find plenty to do,' he said. ' I 
 don't want to play all the time. I want 
 to make studies and models of relief 
 designs for my pedestal in Rosebery. 
 Mayn't I stay T 
 
 Of course I could not refuse. I said 
 I would try and make him comfortable 
 in the way of our countryside, but that 
 I had not much of things in general, 
 especially of time, to spare. 
 
 He told me his view of our section of 
 Anglo-Africa. His criticism resembled 
 that of Ward. He admitted that he 
 had bowed in the House of Rimmon
 
 50 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 these last two months. But he had no 
 serious illusions as to its claims to 
 respect. 
 
 ' What I have endured is all in the 
 way of business,' he said. ' These people 
 will have the statue that they want. 
 They won't get a pearl, if I know it. 
 Therefore they won't want to rend 
 me.' 
 
 In the morning he surprised me by 
 his punctuality at church, and by his 
 bonhomie at breakfast. Afterwards he 
 drew me a little sketch of the Rose- 
 bery statue, over which he smiled. 
 
 It was clever ; the cruelty of the con- 
 ception was decently subdued, but it 
 was not to be mistaken. There stood 
 the father of his people very puffy, 
 almost breathless, in his evident desire 
 to demonstrate his goodwill to the 
 crowds beneath. The crafty little eyes 
 asked : ' How far can I go ?' The out- 
 stretched hand pleaded : ' How much 
 will you give ?' The paunchiness of the
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 51 
 
 figure and the folds of the chin reinforced 
 the effect. I laughed. 
 
 ' It is really like that,' he said. 'It is 
 ; ust a shade more reticent. But it is a 
 truly Rhodesian work of art, I can assure 
 you. Aspirations are restrained, ani- 
 mality is indulged. They will know 
 their man, and rejoice in him; they will 
 not grudge their cheque; they may even 
 give me a further commission.' He 
 sighed. 
 
 I made over to him a huge shed that 
 had been planned for a tobacco-barn. 
 It was only thatched at one end, so far. 
 He would find light as well as shelter 
 there for his work. Then he questioned 
 me about pot-clays and coloured earths, 
 and went away to make experiments. 
 
 When we strolled out together just 
 before sunset, we took the road by the 
 river. The sun was shining brightly, 
 but there were many white clouds, and 
 the wind blew cool. We met a train 
 of women crowned with gourd-pitchers 
 
 E 2
 
 52 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 coming from a spring, and he began to 
 sketch them greedily. He showed me 
 the sketch afterwards ; he had entitled 
 it ' Choephorse.' 
 
 ' Listen/ he said, as the sun set just 
 where a poort divided the hills to west ; 
 ' I will tell you something.' 
 
 Then he told me that the idea had 
 come to him of redeeming that banal 
 piece of work in Rosebery. He was 
 designing four elaborate panels in high 
 relief for the pedestal. 
 
 ' I have come here to go into a sort 
 of retreat,' he said. 
 
 He took out his sketch-book just as 
 the gong clanged out the Angelus. He 
 bowed his head, and waited reverently. 
 Then he showed me that sketch-book. 
 He had really worked these few days, 
 since he had left the town. Therein 
 were children dancing rhythmically; 
 therein were men swinging and swaying 
 at their hoe-work and their wood-cut- 
 ting ; therein were small boys riding
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 53 
 
 cattle home at night ; therein was a 
 heifer or horned beast of some sort, 
 ' lowing at the skies ' ; therein were 
 wondrous studies of the straight backs 
 of his carriers as they brought him 
 across the Veld. 
 
 ' The valleys here are valleys of 
 vision,' he said. ' I understand now 
 what one used to be taught about 
 Athens. There, in a continual pageant 
 of knotty backs and square shoulders 
 and draperies that flowed, one could 
 aspire to carve gods and goddesses. 
 That is to say, if the wind blew.' 
 
 ' It blows where it lists,' I said ; ' and 
 I doubt whether It would blow here. 
 It's a great temptation to get slack 
 in these lonely places. It comes hard 
 to most people to work for work's 
 sake.' 
 
 When we got home that night we 
 found a police-trooper established in the 
 house. He had been sent out to search 
 for Celestine. The magnate had been
 
 54 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 puzzled and concerned at his mysterious 
 disappearance. The policeman seemed 
 pleased at finding him safe and sober. 
 
 'The last case I had to hunt up I 
 found very bad in the rats at a Kaffir 
 kraal,' he explained. 
 
 He rode off next morning with the 
 news that Celestine was in fair hands, 
 and had come out into the Veld on a 
 tour of exploration. 
 
 Celestine seemed very quiet and con- 
 tent as the weeks went by. He asked 
 me to let him leave me for almost all 
 the mornings, and not to come to watch 
 him at work just yet. The magnate 
 wrote him a letter, rallying him on his 
 predilection for Mashona beauty and 
 Mashona brewing, but he did not suc- 
 ceed in getting him back to Rosebery. 
 Celestine thanked Heaven emphatically 
 that he didn't feel obliged to see the 
 magnate again in solid flesh, at any 
 rate until another commission had been 
 offered him. He sent Mrs. Magnate a
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 55 
 
 beautiful dwarf model of a Mashona 
 woman suckling her baby. I expressed 
 a doubt as to her appreciation of it. 
 
 ' If it doesn't edify her, she has only 
 to let it fall,' he said. 
 
 He worked harder and harder, as it 
 seemed to me, at his studying and 
 modelling. He came to the Sacrifice 
 every day. He made our altars his 
 special care. Shall I ever forget the 
 beauty of the High Altar on February 6 
 the Feast of St. Dorothy ? He knew 
 strange bits of old lore, and he said that 
 this saint was a patroness good to invoke 
 in thunderstorms. He owed her special 
 thanks for her care in a storm this last 
 Christmas. Roses and lilies, peaches 
 and apricots and red apples he ran- 
 sacked the country for them to recall 
 her story on her festival. 
 
 In the last week of our stay together 
 he seemed to grow very thoughtful. He 
 would excuse himself time and time 
 again from afternoon excursions. All
 
 56 GHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 the while he never asked me to come to 
 his workshop, and I never went. 
 
 The day before his start for home 
 was a Monday. Then, at last, in the 
 afternoon, he asked me to come and see 
 what there was to see. 
 
 The panels for the Rosebery pedestal 
 were of fired clay, the figures were in 
 high relief. On one side there was to 
 be shown a hunting-scene. On another 
 there was to be shown a beer-party, 
 whereat neighbours forgathered to cut 
 down bush and hoe a new garden. For 
 another side was planned a procession 
 of women, carrying pitchers on their 
 heads from a rocky river-bed up a hill 
 to a village. For the remaining panel 
 he had modelled a delightful design of 
 small herd-boys in forest country, among 
 the goats and sheep and cattle. 
 
 ' I am so glad you like these children 
 and these goats,' he said. ' I put 
 much work into them. But they are 
 worth it.'
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 57 
 
 ' These panels,' I said. ' Think who's 
 going to surmount them !' 
 
 He laughed, and brought out the 
 sketch of the statue. 
 
 ' As I told you,' he said, ' the statue 
 itself is slightly more reticent. Even if 
 it does amuse us two, there are not so 
 many Roseberyites likely to see the 
 joke.' 
 
 ' It's too bitter a jest,' I said. 
 
 ' Do you really think so ? He's made 
 an average beast of himself on occa- 
 sions, they tell me. What if I avenge 
 certain offences of his against a weaker 
 race ? What if I contrast their sym- 
 metry with his obesity, native eugenics 
 with European degeneracy? Lo, and 
 behold 
 
 The victor victim bleeds ! 
 
 Why not ? I don't feel disposed to let 
 him off. I expressly stipulated that if I 
 submitted for the committee's approval 
 my figure's design, they should leave
 
 58 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 me a free hand as to the panel work of 
 the pedestal. They did not understand 
 what I was up to. I have given them a 
 work of art, possibly at the expense of 
 a work of adulation. So be it !' 
 
 Then he showed me a real wonder 
 an earthen reredos, with figures in fairly 
 high relief, that he had wrought me. 
 
 ' It is very rough,' he said, ' but I 
 worked at speed. The idea only came 
 to me ten days ago in church one morn- 
 ing. I worked almost anyhow to get it 
 done.' 
 
 It is rough, but enormously effective. 
 The central design is of the wounded 
 Lamb. Group after group husband- 
 men, water-carrying women, herd-boys 
 with their cattle all converge on the 
 centre. 
 
 Around the throne of the Victim a 
 dance of girls and boys sweeps in a 
 whirl of joy: they are dancing before 
 the Lord. I took in detail after detail 
 as the sunlight streamed in through the
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 59 
 
 roof-timbers to west, and caught the 
 faces. 
 
 Suddenly I saw a tall figure of a man 
 in a working smock. His face was 
 averted from the Vision, in curious con- 
 trast to those of his comrades. He 
 seemed to be moving away. The sad 
 face was meant for a portrait, I felt 
 sure, as I compared it with a face 
 beside me. 
 
 ' Do you understand ?' asked Celes- 
 tine. 
 
 'No,' I said. * Tell me what you 
 mean.' 
 
 ' Forgive me for introducing myself,' 
 he said. ' Donors used to introduce 
 themselves into pictures sometimes, 
 didn't they? I'll tell you very briefly 
 what I mean. I am clearing out of 
 Rhodesia. If I stayed, I suppose I 
 should live at Rosebery or some other 
 small town, with roofs of corrugated 
 iron. I should gamble on mines pos- 
 sibly, philander with Kaffir models pos-
 
 60 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 sibly, ride in rickshaws with natives to 
 tug me possibly, drink hard very prob- 
 ably. No, Rhodesia might be bad for 
 my art if I stayed. I am not a big man, 
 but I have some sense, so I choose to 
 go home. On the other hand, if I were 
 a big man, a very big man indeed, I 
 think I might choose to stay with you, 
 to eat bread and cheese, and be a sort 
 of Fra Angelico. I might do some work 
 on your cathedrals or churches on the 
 Veld that might help people.' 
 
 ' Why don't you try ?' I said. 
 
 ' Quite frankly,' he said, ' I want to 
 get married. I want to have my father's 
 house to live in. I want to dine 
 properly, and ride in my car, and read 
 paragraphs about myself or my work in 
 the papers every other day. And yet I 
 know all the time what a fool I am. So 
 don't demolish my figure, if you don't 
 mind. Pray for me sometimes when, 
 as you stand at your altar, your eyes 
 happen upon my face.'
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 61 
 
 ' It sounds sad,' I said. ' Isn't it any 
 good my saying anything?' 
 
 ' No, I don't think so,' he said. 
 
 He was very quiet that evening, but 
 we talked with some enthusiasm about 
 a favourite book or two. 
 
 In the morning Celestine started. I 
 had begged him to hurry on and 
 join some waggons going down the 
 road, for the weather looked like break- 
 ing. 
 
 So we had our Service very early, 
 before sunrise. His reredos was there 
 in position. 
 
 ' Does it want some gold and colours 
 used on the Vision ?' he said ; ' or do 
 you like the earth-colours through- 
 out?' 
 
 We decided in the end to leave it as 
 it was. I was sorry in a way at our 
 decision, as I think he might have stayed 
 to enrich his work if we had decided 
 otherwise. He gave me a book that he 
 had written my name in. It was the
 
 62 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 biography of an English painter whose 
 work I loved. 
 
 ' When you have read it,' he said, 
 ' write and tell me what you think of it. 
 The bit about his young working days, 
 when the London skies seemed always 
 blue, and the London air full of bells, 
 appealed to me. Yet I have been 
 haunted even more by the bit about his 
 going to Charnwood Forest, and hanker- 
 ing to live in a cell there. Doesn't the 
 book say that he would look back to 
 that old desire of his long afterwards ? 
 Tell me if the book doesn't sadden you 
 as it draws towards its end? The hero 
 is so plainly wishful for the wings of a 
 dove. Yet Society draws its meshes 
 about him tightly, and yet more tightly. 
 If only he had gone to Charnwood 
 Forest !' 
 
 ' This place is your Charnwood 
 Forest,' I said. 
 
 He gave a sort of gulp. He was not 
 long starting. Thus he made his great
 
 CHARNWOOD FOREST 63 
 
 refusal. He went, I suppose, to be a 
 considerable success, yet not to attain 
 as he might have attained. 
 
 I see his face every time I minister at 
 our High Altar. 
 
 He may have had great possessions 
 at home. But what were they to the 
 possessions he displays in his portrayal 
 of that surrounded Figure, and of those 
 groups ' coming to the Sacrifice ' 
 tenderness, reverence, rapture ? What 
 were they to the gifts he shows in those 
 panels (too little valued) that are 
 wrought in bronze about the pedestal 
 at Rosebery sympathy, grace, humour? 
 There the monument stands in the 
 market-place. The blatant face is set 
 on high, the groups in their arrested 
 exuberance are set low. But these latter 
 seem to be exalted in their way, ' all 
 breathing human passion far above.' 
 
 What is he doing now who offered 
 us exiles so much, and yet denied us so 
 much more ?
 
 64 CHARNWOOD FOREST 
 
 It makes me rather wretched some- 
 times to think of him. He never writes. 
 He went away with a laughing face 
 enough, yet I know that he went away 
 sorrowful.
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 IT was Christmas Eve, and I was hard 
 put to it to make home in time for 
 Christmas Day. I had been riding my 
 tired horse on a waggon track with 
 break-your-leg wash-outs that afternoon. 
 At last I saw a clump of gum-trees in 
 front of me ; the sun was very low then. 
 Soon I was in sight of the white thatched 
 house and of the garden so full of roses 
 and sunflowers. Davenant was standing 
 leaning against his fence. He shaded 
 his eyes and watched me intently as I 
 came up the road. Suddenly, from a 
 Kaffir track that came into it almost in 
 front of the first post of the fence, there 
 rushed a small red bull, with a Mashona 
 boy whooping and yelling astride of him. 
 65 F
 
 66 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 The old horse had broken into a canter 
 at near view of a habitation, and we 
 raced home. But the bull had much 
 the better of it. My mount was hope- 
 lessly outpaced, and the bull swung round 
 into the yard in triumph. In due time 
 we followed a rather sorry pair the 
 rider in splashed and green-worn black, 
 the horse, always a dingy and livid 
 colour, now bemired, and with the tale 
 of his years writ large on his heaving 
 flanks. Davenant looked at us as we 
 came into the yard like a man in a 
 dream, not a very happy dream, as it 
 seemed to me. Then he roused himself 
 and came and shook hands of welcome. 
 He had been living there ever so long. 
 The green oasis of his garden was there 
 when I first came that desert road, the 
 trees already tall, and the roses already 
 profuse in blossom. 
 
 He was an interesting sort of pioneer, 
 this Davenant, an ultramontane devotee 
 of Tolstoi, a before-his-time reactionary,
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 67 
 
 refreshingly unlike most of his fellow- 
 settlers. 
 
 It is quaint in Mashonaland how you 
 find extremes jostling electric light and 
 camp fires, the steam-plough and Kaffir 
 hoes, positivists and pagans, new-world 
 hustlers and quietists, whether primaeval 
 or ultra-modern. 
 
 On that Christmas Eve I followed 
 Davenant into his one great room. The 
 furniture was very rude, yet not without 
 some beauty of design. In the two 
 shelves of the long book-case there were 
 books of many poets, old and new. 
 There were four pictures in the room, 
 all spacious ones, one on each of the 
 walls. There was an engraving of 
 Millais' ' Christ in the Carpenter's 
 Shop.' There was an engraving of 
 Tolstoi in a peasant's smock. There 
 was a cartoon called ' Love rules His 
 Kingdom without a Sword ' an idyl of 
 beasts and birds and the sway of gentle- 
 ness. There was also a rather noble 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 copy in oils of Watts's picture 'The 
 Rider on the White Horse.' 
 
 I stood looking at this last awhile, 
 when he was making ready for supper. 
 He did not keep me waiting long. Then 
 we sat down to a jug of milk and a loaf 
 of bread with apricots, peaches, and 
 figs in abundance. 
 
 It was after supper, when I had lighted 
 my pipe, that the moon rose and shone 
 in at the window. I was thinking of 
 saddling up for the last twenty miles 
 home when he said something that led 
 towards a story. The prefaces to that 
 story were a remark of his and the con- 
 versation that followed it. He said 
 suddenly, ' I haven't seen that horse of 
 yours before.' 
 
 ' No,' I said, ' I only bought him this 
 last September.' I told him how much 
 I had given, and he congratulated me 
 on my bargain. 
 
 'The only thing I see against him 
 beside his age is his colour,' he said.
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 69 
 
 ' I have a reason against it. But he 
 may suit you well enough.' 
 
 ' What name would you give his 
 colour?' I asked. 
 
 * He's what I should call a pale horse,' 
 he answered. 
 
 Then we talked of something else. 
 
 But just as I got up to go, he said, 
 ' You've got a Bible with you, I expect. 
 The last leaves of mine were loose when 
 I had the fever this month, and they got 
 burnt by accident. I wonder if you'd 
 read me a few verses I want to recall in 
 Revelation. Just begin the sixth chapter, 
 if you don't mind.' 
 
 Wondering, I pulled out my Bible 
 and read. When I came to the second 
 verse, I remembered the passage well. 
 I was going to read about the pale horse. 
 I was curious, indeed, to know why. 
 
 ' And I saw and behold a white horse 
 . . . and He that sat on him . . . went 
 forth conquering and to conquer. . . And 
 there went out another horse that was
 
 70 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 red ; and power was given to him .... 
 that they should kill one another. . . . 
 And I beheld, and lo a black horse. . . . 
 And I heard a voice . . . say, " A measure 
 of wheat for a penny." . . . And I looked 
 and behold a pale horse, and his name 
 that sat on him was Death, and Hell 
 followed with him.' 
 
 'That will do,' he said. 'You see 
 what it means ; you may believe it or 
 not, but I think that it is true.' 
 
 Then he told me his story, and I 
 knew that it was true, at least to him. 
 There was truth in the well of each eye, 
 calm eyes that looked into mine and 
 deprecated my unbelief. It was not a 
 bad scene or time for such a story. 
 Christmas Eve ! From the little 
 Mashona School in the field behind 
 came an old English carol tune; jolly 
 and beefy, it lumbered on, drawing the 
 well-vowelled African words lightly 
 along with it. 
 
 From a kraal far away came the thud
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 71 
 
 of drums. Through the window you 
 could see the moon lighting up the road 
 that led either way into a wilderness. 
 
 ' It was on the Christmas Eve of 1894, 
 the year of my coming here, that I noted 
 the first sign. There are not many that 
 come this road now, and there were 
 fewer then. I had risen before the sun 
 did, and gone down to the river to bathe. 
 As I came glowing out of the water, I 
 saw the sun just showing to east. And 
 as I looked, I saw someone riding down 
 the east road, a mile away, in the dazzle 
 of his beams. It was a white figure that 
 came. As he rode up, I saw that the 
 horse was white, and the rider wore 
 white as well. I could not conceive who 
 this could be, and strangely enough I 
 thought of that picture you were 
 praising. 
 
 ' I had bundled on my clothes, and 
 had just time to meet him at the gate, 
 as I met you. It was Father Allis from 
 the Mission that there used to be, seven
 
 72 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 miles to the east in the Karuma hills. 
 He died two or three years after they 
 shifted the station away. He gave me 
 a sign as he came up to me, and I bent 
 my knee. He was carrying the Viaticum 
 to a prospector some ten miles beyond 
 my place. I was glad to see him indeed, 
 it being Christmas-time, and all. But 
 I need not tell you about that. Suffice 
 it, that Christ Who goes forth from His 
 Tabernacle, conquering and to conquer, 
 came riding by my homestead that day. 
 
 I need not tell you what victory He 
 won here. Suffice it that the Rider on 
 the White Horse came. 
 
 It was the year after that, not Christ- 
 mas Eve, but a day in the beginning of 
 December, that the Rider on the Red 
 Horse followed Him here. 
 
 Hewas a police-trooper riding a pretty 
 enough chestnut. 
 
 He off-saddled just as it was growing 
 dark, and stopped the night with me. 
 He told me something of what was in
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 73 
 
 the wind. He was going with the 
 Raiders. ' How they fared in the Trans- 
 vaal you will remember, also how the 
 Matabele rose in March and these 
 Mashona people in June. There was 
 much killing one another close here. 
 They left me safe enough. But you 
 will have heard of what happened at 
 Smith's Drift, and of the reprisal that 
 our people made. You will have heard 
 how they wiped out that kraal on the 
 round hill you pass to-night.' 
 
 I nodded. His story was fantastic, 
 but he told it truthfully. He had looked 
 at me in doubt once or twice to see how 
 I took it. Was I laughing at him or 
 disbelieving his sanity ? 
 
 He seemed reassured now. He went 
 to the fire, and fetched me a live 
 ember for my pipe. When it had 
 done its kindling work, he began once 
 more. 
 
 ' You were here yourself when the 
 Black Horse passed, weren't you?'
 
 74 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 I started. 
 
 ' When was it ?' I said, trying to 
 remember. 
 
 ' The day before Old Christmas Day, 
 January 5, 1902,' he said. ' Don't you 
 recall it ? - 
 
 ' I was certainly here early in January 
 that year,' I said. ' Yes, and I do re- 
 member a black horse.' 
 
 I had got to his place just as the rain 
 came on on that 5th of January the 
 rain we had been waiting for so long to 
 save the crops. I remembered well now 
 the big drops pelting and the cattle 
 frisking ; then, just as I was hastily off- 
 saddling, another rider had come the 
 other way of the road, riding fiercely. 
 He looked to be a full-bearded Dutch- 
 man riding a black horse. Davenant 
 and I had wondered a deal about him, 
 and why he went on in the rain. 
 
 ' Did you ever hear who he was ?' I 
 asked. 
 
 ' No,' said Davenant, ' but he brought
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 75 
 
 a true sign enough. I did not tell you, 
 but I guessed it that very evening. 
 We were not going to be saved by the 
 rain, after all ; it was to give out only 
 the next day, and the crops were to be 
 terribly short. The famine came next 
 season. It was God's own mercy that 
 it was an early season, and that the 
 mealies made haste. Did people want 
 food out your way ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' I said. ' It was ghastly.' 
 ' I remember making up my mind,' 
 he said, ' that Christmas Day, to touch 
 no food till the sun went down. It 
 seemed no time for feasting. People 
 foraged for wild fruit, and leaves, and 
 mushrooms people who were too weak 
 to work much in their gardens when the 
 weeding work was wanted. White men 
 bought up goats and sheep fearfully 
 cheap, and sold grain or meal fearfully 
 dear. Yes, it came true all right, the 
 sign of that Black Horse.' He hesitated. 
 ' And now you come riding '
 
 76 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 ' Riding on my pale horse,' I said. 
 ' And what's going to happen now ?' 
 
 ' Oh, it's a sign,' he answered. ' I've 
 had such bouts of fever this last year. 
 The next will be the last, I suppose.' 
 
 I told him that the red horse had not 
 meant his own murder, nor the black 
 horse his own starvation, so why need 
 he suppose he was the one to die ? 
 
 ' Because I've had other signs. I 
 guessed this sign of the horse was 
 coming some day, and I guessed it 
 would have the one meaning. It's 
 curious how one looks up and down a 
 road, expecting people and things. And 
 now it's come.' 
 
 I didn't like the faith in his tone ; 
 faith is apt to be so very influential in 
 cases like his. I smoked my pipe 
 thoughtfully, but I could find nothing 
 that it seemed of much use to say. 
 
 Then I remembered where I was, and 
 how far I had to ride, and how much I 
 had to do ere dawn of to-morrow's
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 77 
 
 Christmas, and I sped off in the broad 
 moonshine. 
 
 I had ridden just about a mile when 
 I swung my ominous horse's head round, 
 and clattered back to the homestead. I 
 had thought of something that it might 
 be of some use to say. 
 
 I threw the reins over a post, and 
 rushed in. He was sitting as in a dream 
 by the fire, looking rather down, I 
 thought. It took him a second or two 
 to remember who I was. 
 
 ' I came back to say just this,' stut- 
 tered I : ' the pale horse did not win the 
 race to your house this evening. Re- 
 member the child on the red bull. He 
 rode the race, and he came in winner.' 
 
 ' I don't quite understand,' he said 
 dreamily, with a slow smile. ' Who's 
 the child, and why does he ride the red 
 bull ?' 
 
 'Ask your own Christian sense,' I 
 said. ' The boy was your herd-boy, and 
 the bull was yours, I imagine. But these
 
 78 THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 things are an allegory. This is a little 
 peasant with a mount from a Christmas 
 cattle-byre, that comes racing to your 
 homestead. He comes just in time to 
 race me (as you will have it I'm Death) 
 and my pale horse. And he leads us 
 home by lengths. Surely it's a clear 
 sign enough.' 
 
 ' Rather fanciful, isn't it ? 
 
 ' What about the sign of the pale horse 
 then ? If you are going in for fancies, 
 why draw the line ? Good-bye, and a 
 happy Christmas, and may you see many 
 more ! Now, do cheer up ! If you've 
 lost interest in life for yourself, be con- 
 tent to live on for the sake of the Peasant 
 Christ. What would your Mashonas do 
 poor beggars, little and big without 
 you here ? Fancy, if they got a brute 
 who didn't admire Tolstoi or adore 
 Christ on this very farm ! No ; Christ 
 wins, and the pale horse loses. Good- 
 night, old man.' 
 
 It was a bad fever season that came
 
 THE HORNED HORSE 79 
 
 on in the next March and April. But 
 when I went back that way at Whitsun- 
 tide, Davenant was alive, and looked 
 well. We smiled a little as we talked 
 of the portents. 
 
 ' You were right,' he said. ' I am glad 
 you rode back and put me right about 
 the sign.' 
 
 ' Well,' said I, ' it came to me like a 
 flash that it was the right thing to do. 
 You wanted the thing put figuratively 
 just in the way that you were looking 
 at it. I didn't want to come this way 
 and find Tolstoi Garth gone the way of 
 so many homesteads a few gum-trees 
 towering up out of the Veld that has got 
 its own again. Question : " Which does 
 he lie under ?" ' 
 
 He smiled. ' Yes, I know that sort 
 of thing too well at Lead-Mine Vale and 
 the other places down east. I admit 
 you did reassure me wonderfully. 
 Who'd have thought of your interpreta- 
 tion of the race between the pale horse
 
 8o THE HORNED HORSE 
 
 with you up, and my herd-boy's mount, 
 the horned horse of Bethlehem ?' 
 
 ' I am glad I came back ; I am glad 
 I told you not to forget the Peasant 
 Christ,' I said. " Answer a fool accord- 
 ing to his folly." I answered a seer 
 according to his sight.'
 
 VI 
 
 A TRAVELLER'S TALE: A 
 TRADER'S STORY 
 
 THIS is the story of Nikopulos, who died 
 and was buried at my station the second 
 year that I went trading far away in the 
 Karuma hills. 
 
 I wrote it down on scraps of paper in 
 Greek and French and English, as he 
 lay that morning in the heat of the 
 fever. He told a vague tale, as it seemed 
 to me, with gaps of lost meaning. But 
 as I came through a certain South 
 African town on my way home, I sought 
 out first one Greek and then another 
 (there are many of them in that town) ; 
 and I hired first one, and then another 
 by the day, whilst I sought interpreta- 
 tion and elucidations. 
 
 81 G
 
 82 A TRAVELLER'S TALE: 
 
 The first Greek was dull indeed ; the 
 second helped me a great deal. 
 
 I think now that I have gathered the 
 sense of much that was told me in those 
 two hours of that autumn morning, when 
 Nikopulos lay on my old stretcher and 
 talked against time. You know the 
 lines : 
 
 Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
 The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
 To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
 The casement slowly grows a glimmering 
 square. 
 
 Those lines came back to me, I re- 
 member, on that morning as I heard the 
 pigeons cooing in my verandah, and saw 
 the light growing through the rose- 
 bushes beyond the uncurtained window. 
 It came to my mind that the end was 
 surely near. I was sad indeed that I 
 had been so tardy in sending in search 
 of aid. For he had come in two nights 
 ago now, and I had sent to the doctor 
 only last night.
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 83 
 
 But I had scarcely known what to 
 make of him when he came in that 
 evening. 
 
 We had been carrying poles from the 
 wood four miles away, four Mashonas 
 and I. I was deliciously tired, and I 
 drank my coffee, and ate my bread and 
 monkey-nuts. Then I lit my pipe, and 
 took the north-w T estern path in a blaze 
 of sheen from the low sun, while the 
 evening grew cool and happy. The 
 north-western path was the path of mys- 
 tery and wonder, as it seemed to me, 
 there in my Bohemia of the Bush- Veld 
 and hills. 
 
 From the south and east came Europe 
 and America pressing up the railways, 
 with their Age of (corrugated) Iron. 
 
 To the north and west there were 
 surely voids that might hold Ages of 
 more dainty metals. 
 
 He came down the north-western road, 
 a forlorn figure ; he had one carrier 
 behind him, a tall Yao, bearing his tiny 
 
 G 2
 
 84 A TRAVELLER'S TALE : 
 
 pack. His boots showed his naked feet, 
 his trousers showed his torn shanks 
 terribly festered. He had a very beauti- 
 ful Indian scarf wound about his head, 
 otherwise all about him was pitifully 
 worn and poor. 
 
 He had come through a very lonely 
 country, he said, this broken-down Greek 
 with a face that had been beautiful after 
 the fashion of his countrymen. He had 
 been ferried across the Zambesi far 
 above the Falls. 
 
 We did not understand one another 
 very well : I was ashamed of my Greek, 
 and he of his English. He could speak 
 French well, but I failed in my reminis- 
 cences in spite of several hardy attempts. 
 That night I fed him well, gave him a 
 fairly easy bed, and lent him some salve 
 for his sores. Grass-seeds had been his 
 traveller's bane on the way down; he 
 had been very ill-clad and short of food, 
 and desirous of going quickly. He did 
 not seem so very ill that night. He
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 85 
 
 talked long and feverishly of Greece and 
 especially of a farm under Mount Par- 
 nassos, a farm whose tobacco had miracu- 
 lously refused to recede with Heaven in 
 an age of unfaith. 
 
 The next day he was much worse in 
 the morning. I went and talked with 
 his boy about him. How far had he 
 come these last days ? Was he a good 
 traveller, and had he had much sick- 
 ness ? 
 
 The boy said he had engaged with 
 him beyond the Zambesi. He was nearly 
 dead of fever then, he said, and 'he had 
 lain seven days. But after that he had 
 travelled fast some days. He said I had 
 better send for a doctor ; he had thought 
 this last week that his master was in 
 extremity. So I sent that evening. 
 
 I sat up for some time that night ; 
 then I slept, when he had been sleep- 
 ing awhile. At cock-crow I awoke, and 
 it was soon afterwards that he began to 
 tell me what he told me.
 
 86 A TRAVELLER'S TALE: 
 
 The sun had not been up an hour 
 before he slept again, and this time he 
 did not wake. 
 
 This is his story : ' I went far, very 
 far, to the north-west, and I came where 
 white men had been that were lost many 
 years gone by.' 
 
 He repeated the words when I could 
 not understand them at first. Then he 
 said : ' You had better write the words 
 as I say them. There is little time. I 
 will say them slowly, but be fast. Write 
 the words, and Demetrios, who keeps 
 the store in Kimberley, or George, who 
 was my banker in Cape Town, they can 
 tell you what they mean.' I nodded, 
 and wrote as fast and as clearly as I 
 could. Greek, and French, and English, 
 and African I set the words down as 
 well as I could spell them. I did not 
 tease him with questions more than 
 twice or thrice. I made sure that we 
 were cut short for time. 
 
 ' It is a land that it is good to live in,'
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 87 
 
 he said, ' but it is far to go from either 
 coast, and hard to come at indeed. On 
 three sides there is a wide river, and on 
 the other side there are deep marshes 
 with much sickness all the year. I 
 should say the land itself is as great as 
 Crete, but much of it is forest-ground 
 still. It was as it were by chance that 
 I came thither. 
 
 ' I had started from the West Coast 
 on my last trading journey. I had gone 
 far to east-north-east from the Old 
 Slave Coast. I was seeking a secret 
 ware, and I bought much of it on my 
 way. Then I bestowed all I had bought 
 safely in a village that I knew. I went 
 on with my carriers farther than ever I 
 have gone before and I have gone 
 farther than most and then it was that 
 I lost my way. 
 
 ' I had gone out hunting with a little 
 food, so that I might stay out a day or 
 two if I found no game, for I was meat- 
 hungry. I lost myself altogether one
 
 88 A TRAVELLER'S TALE : 
 
 night, and found myself at morning in 
 a forest where one saw little of sun or 
 stars, and I could never find my way out 
 for four long days. I wandered much 
 in that time, stinting my food and 
 shooting on my way. I had no lack at 
 all of meat. Then, when those days 
 were done, I came into the dreary marsh- 
 land, and wandered on and on. I was 
 nearly dead with fever when, on the 
 sixth day, (or was it the seventh ?), just 
 before sunset, I neared the distant up- 
 lands I had seen for days, at last. A 
 water-course flowed beneath the ridge, 
 and a tower crowned it. Beneath I 
 found a ferryman's house and a ferry- 
 boat ; but after that I nearly died, and 
 knew naught for certain. You know the 
 fever; the ague-fits and the qualms and 
 faintness when one hates Africa. But 
 one knows one must stand one's ground 
 and fight on hers, for one is too weak 
 to slip away. When I saw clearly again, 
 I seemed to be in an old Prankish town
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 89 
 
 such as pictures show. But the people 
 that tended me were black enough, with 
 but a tinge of Northern blood. They 
 fed me well, and nursed me well, and 
 so it was I came back to life, yet I was 
 never the same since. Three months I 
 went in and out of their town and vil- 
 lages, and I found them in very fair 
 order for this unruly world. I had never 
 thought to find such a state in misbe- 
 gotten Africa. 
 
 'And I heard the story of how 
 their Prankish sires came thither. I 
 found some that could speak Latin a 
 little; and if I could not speak it, 
 I could read it when they wrote it 
 clearly. 
 
 ' It was a pilgrimage that brought 
 them thither long ago. There were 
 many that came, out of Brittany and 
 England for the most part some say a 
 hundred, some say twelve - score. A 
 Bishop led them from Brittany, and 
 there were seven Breton knights and
 
 90 A TRAVELLER'S TALE : 
 
 seven English knights, and there were 
 archers and men-at-arms in numbers. 
 
 ' When the English made truce with 
 the French (about a year or two before 
 Byzantium fell, was it not ?), these all 
 moved on towards Byzantium, meaning 
 to fight with the Prophet's people. 
 They were a great company indeed then 
 some five hundred but they left many 
 by the way. And Byzantium fell before 
 ever they came near it. 
 
 ' And so that Bishop vowed a vow to 
 seek the honour of Christ elsewhere. 
 He would win one of the Holy Places 
 or die in the adventure. And many 
 vowed with him. But one said that it 
 was madness and idle death to go with 
 him, for the Reign of Anti-Christ had 
 begun, and all the Holy Land in Asia 
 was kept by strong men armed. Then 
 came a Greek pilgrim to the Bishop, and 
 told him of a Holy Place in Africa far 
 south by the sources of the Nile. Thither 
 it was reputed that Our Lady brought
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 91 
 
 Our Lord long ago, when she fled from 
 Herod a beautiful place and a solemn, 
 by the fountain-head of Pharaoh's river ; 
 a cave of majesty and great wonder, amid 
 trees that never shed their leaves and 
 flowers that never lacked blossom. 
 
 ' When they heard of this noble place, 
 all of those adventurers with one accord 
 vowed to seek it, and departed into 
 Egypt, and took the way of the Nile. 
 They came to a lake following up the 
 river, but found no cave, and were in 
 doubt what to do. Then was it revealed 
 to the Bishop in a dream that they should 
 go to the south-west into a forest place, 
 and follow a stream that they should find 
 therein. Therefore they followed that 
 stream, and on the seventh day they 
 came to a river, and having crossed that 
 river, they found a pleasant land high- 
 set above the waters. And they grew 
 sure that it was the very land they 
 sought. For even as they forded the 
 river, a wood-dove came flying, and led
 
 92 A TRAVELLER'S TALE: 
 
 them into a path among the hills a 
 path worn, as it seemed, by the feet of 
 many pilgrims that came through Egypt 
 of old. 
 
 ' Then they marvelled how they had 
 missed so long the straight way, but 
 thanked God that they had found it at 
 last, and, going on, beheld the Cave, and 
 adored and built a Sanctuary. After 
 that they found no strife, for the folk 
 that were girdled by the river were goat- 
 herds and husbandmen who had hidden 
 themselves safely among the woods 
 and waters, and never needed to learn 
 war. 
 
 ' Then those pilgrims built houses, and 
 knight after knight carved himself out 
 a manor and cleared the woodland. 
 And they ploughed and hunted and 
 feasted as of old in the North, and 
 adored God in His Sanctuary. Then, 
 after a year, fully half of them started 
 to go home, and to take their kindred 
 word of that worshipful pilgrimage.
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 93 
 
 ' But the rest, who stayed with the 
 Bishop, promised to abide where they 
 were, till those should come again or 
 send. So they waited year by year, but 
 none ever came. What had befallen to 
 those that went homeward I do not 
 know, nor could ever find out. Those 
 others waited, and found death one by 
 one; and those that remained for awhile 
 were few and old, and there grew to be 
 little thought of returning among them. 
 There were no Northern women that 
 had come all that great way, and many 
 of them had taken wives of the wood- 
 dwellers. Now, the people are blacker 
 than Egyptians are, but you can see the 
 old blood very plainly sometimes in lips 
 and nostrils and in eyes of grey or blue. 
 They have built seven churches, I think, 
 and ten or twelve manor-houses with 
 red-tiled roofs, but of the round African 
 mould. Their law is the old feudal law, 
 that is alike sterner and milder than 
 ours. They have no wish to slip the
 
 94 A TRAVELLER'S TALE : 
 
 yoke that has grown to their necks, and 
 frets them no longer. 
 
 ' But oh, the blessed Faith there ! It 
 is, I think, as it was in the days of Louis 
 the King. Trust me, sir, that think to 
 die within this hour ! I saw miracles, and 
 wondered not overmuch, for I had seen 
 the faith of them that worked them. 
 
 'The Host is to man, woman, and 
 child, even to the perverse and wicked 
 there, the daily miracle of their Lord 
 and God. 
 
 ' O my God, I have got my death in 
 this journey of mine, but I think, too, 
 that I have got me life eternal ! When 
 I came into that land, I believed little or 
 nought, but now I believe all.' 
 
 With that he fell to his prayers, and 
 asked me to keep still and pray for him. 
 And so he told me no more, but slept 
 and passed in the Faith of the Resur- 
 rection just before the priest came 
 afoot from the Mission, and the doctor 
 on horseback from the town.
 
 A TRADER'S STORY 95 
 
 My boy, and his, and I, buried him, 
 under a great cactus-tree among the 
 rocks. 
 
 I cut a Greek cross to put over him, 
 and a Greek text upon it. And often I 
 would look towards the north - west 
 (towards the blue range of hills that 
 could purple so gloriously), and I would 
 wonder over the tale that he told me, 
 and sometimes I would dream about it 
 of nights.
 
 VII 
 THE OLD BOY 
 
 HE was a hard-headed man to my 
 thinking when I first saw him Bradlaw. 
 The time of that first seeing was only 
 last summer. 
 
 Perhaps he was too hard-headed, per- 
 haps there is danger in all extremes 
 robustious as well as sentimental per- 
 haps that is the moral of his tale. 
 Anyhow, here it is. 
 
 He came to our little township- of 
 Elgin, in Zambesia, last summer as 
 Civil Commissioner, and he set to work 
 to reform us. He put the township on 
 a business footing, its court, its gaol, its 
 library, its hospital, its tennis-club, its 
 Volunteers, its tree-planting, and public 
 works generally. He really did a fair 
 96
 
 THE OLD BOY 97 
 
 amount of useful business in a very short 
 time. It was on the native question 
 only that I dissented seriously from 
 him, and that question has a way of 
 mixing itself up with things in general 
 in Zambesia. 
 
 He insisted that our barbed-wire Pass 
 Law must be enforced to the last jot 
 and tittle. The gaol was full in his 
 time, in great part with black offenders, 
 who were condemned on highly technical 
 charges. He pressed upon the newly- 
 constituted Municipal Council by-laws, 
 minutely specifying the clothing re- 
 quirements of natives who should pre- 
 sume to enter our township. They 
 crossed the side-walks at their peril. An 
 admiring European populace applauded 
 his spirited policy. Yet storekeepers 
 soon began to swear into their beards. 
 Afterwards, when the Kaffir trade that 
 had kept them going dwindled away 
 to vanishing point, they were not so 
 guarded. 
 
 H
 
 98 THE OLD BOY 
 
 Bradlaw was not so very popular ere 
 that summer ended. People hinted that 
 he was a crank. He had some sound 
 ideas certainly, but he rode them to 
 hell. It was right at the end of the 
 summer that I gave him my candid 
 opinion about some of his doings. We 
 were sitting on his stoep at the time, 
 and he had done me the honour to 
 invite my criticism. 
 
 'Just picture to yourself,' I said, 
 ' the two worlds side by side the white 
 and the black. We are in the freedom 
 of modern England, or rather more 
 than that. They are in the helotage 
 of old Sparta, or something not so very 
 far in front of it. Pass Law and By- 
 laws enforced by a man like you mean 
 a continuous tyranny. Fancy living 
 under it day and night ! I'm glad my 
 skin's the right colour.' 
 
 He was pleased to chuckle good- 
 humouredly. 
 
 ' Go on. I like to get Exeter Hall
 
 THE OLD BOY 99 
 
 on the telephone. It's a poor weird 
 little voice out here, and not up to 
 much harm.' 
 
 ' Never mind. You'll know all about 
 it some day,' I said hotly. 'You deserve 
 to suffer a little of what you inflict. If 
 you could only eat something that 
 would turn your skin black, or do some- 
 thing yourself that would get you into 
 trunk without any option, or go dotty 
 and be boxed up in a lunatic asylum, 
 you'd know all about it !' 
 
 He started in his chair, and said 
 something nasty. I had succeeded in 
 drawing blood somehow. He growled 
 two or three words I couldn't properly 
 hear, and then changed the subject. 
 
 It was two or three months after that 
 he came riding over to our Mission to 
 say good-bye. He had been gazetted 
 to a good appointment. He had risen 
 on the stepping-stone of Elgin to higher 
 things. But I did not come down the 
 road to meet him, or line up our boys to 
 
 H 2
 
 loo THE OLD BOY 
 
 salute him in decorous lines. I was 
 otherwise employed. 
 
 I was in the churchyard, busy at a 
 funeral. The sun was very low; the 
 days were growing short then, and there 
 was much left to do. The side-chamber 
 of the dead must be screened off care- 
 fully, so that no earth might fall therein, 
 then the main grave must be filled, and 
 the night was coming fast. I was read- 
 ing that tremendous apostrophe to the 
 * most worthy Judge Eternal,' and my 
 eyes were filling. One of our Christians 
 had slipped away in the night : such a 
 handsome and friendly one so young, a 
 widow's child, and her only living boy. 
 What should I do when the mother 
 came from the other side of that blue 
 hill-range fifty miles away, and cried to 
 careless me for her son ? 
 
 I looked up, and saw Bradlaw's 
 sarcastic eyes watching me. He had 
 hitched his horse to the fence, and stood 
 looking over the stile.
 
 THE OLD BOY 101 
 
 A new train of thought absorbed me. 
 My tears dried, I read the phrase about 
 the delivering of the departed out of our 
 miseries with sudden ardour and zest of 
 triumph. No more Pass Law, no 
 bluffing, no doing-down, no stretching 
 of elastic regulations against him and 
 for his rulers ! I read exultantly with 
 a challenge in my voice. Soon I left the 
 grave in all the glory of sundown, 
 and went over to the house to give 
 my guest some tea. I was inclined 
 to be defiant. He, however, was not 
 contentious that night, to my sur- 
 prise. 
 
 It is pleasant to recollect how he 
 seemed at his best in saying his good- 
 bye, that was not to be good-bye after 
 all. When he rode away in the broad 
 moonlight, my dislike of him was tem- 
 pered with another feeling or two at 
 the very least. 
 
 Not many days after he sent me a 
 note, asking me to come to him, if I
 
 102 THE OLD BOY 
 
 could manage it anyhow, without delay. 
 I started almost at once. 
 
 I called at a house in the town on my 
 way up to the Residency. 
 
 'Very strange in his manner these 
 last three days,' I was told. ' Some 
 people said it was drink, others that it 
 was worse than that.' 
 
 He came and sat out on the stoep 
 with me. He took me to task very 
 severely. 
 
 'There's a boy of yours, a boy who 
 wears the red cross of your Mission, 
 who has been annoying me,' he said. ' I 
 can't think that a nigger would do what 
 he has done without being coached by 
 his master. You're at the bottom of it 
 all, I firmly believe.' His face grew 
 livid. His utterance grew thick and 
 hard to follow. He was much excited. 
 ' I go out for a walk at sunrise, you 
 know, every morning. These last three 
 mornings, he's been walking up the 
 side-walk, up and down. But I can't
 
 THE OLD BOY 103 
 
 catch him, and the police can't catch 
 him. I'm coming over to your Mission 
 to identify him this afternoon. It's no 
 good your trying to screen him.' 
 
 ' Wait a bit,' I said. ' I don't believe 
 it's one of our boys ; you've got boys on 
 the brain.' 
 
 He looked at me wildly. 
 
 ' I don't know what you mean,' he 
 said. 
 
 I had come into town with a photo- 
 graph of all the boys at the Mission, that 
 I was posting home to England. 
 
 ' Look here,' I said, cutting the 
 string. ' Here's a group of all the 
 boys on the place taken only a fortnight 
 ago, as clear as life. Is it one of 
 these ?' 
 
 He caught at the picture eagerly. 
 
 ' Here he is,' he said. ' Isn't this 
 one of your boys ?' 
 
 He pointed to the face next to my 
 own. I started. 
 
 ' It's an old boy,' I said.
 
 104 THE OLD BOY 
 
 I was going on to explain, but he 
 interrupted me. 
 
 'Oh, I'm so glad,' he said. 'Then 
 it's no blessed delusion !' 
 
 ' It's an old boy,' I repeated. ' It's the 
 boy I was burying that afternoon you 
 came. He passed away the night before, 
 after two days' illness. He's dead.' 
 
 He stared blankly at me. 
 
 ' Excuse me,' he said. ' Light up, 
 won't you ? I shan't be long gone.' 
 
 He stepped inside into the study. 
 He was gone full ten minutes, then he 
 came out with a letter written. The 
 envelope was addressed to myself. He 
 went back into the study, and I began 
 to read : 
 
 ' What I saw was no dream, nor was 
 it a delusion. It is a dreadful thought 
 that your Christian niggers are emanci- 
 pated after death from all wholesome 
 restrictions. I cannot see my way to 
 enforce the regulations properly under 
 such circumstances. What am I to
 
 THE OLD BOY 105 
 
 do ? On the other hand, people will 
 think I imagined what I saw. I shall 
 be put under restraint. It was you who 
 compared the state of white men in 
 asylums to that of natives under my 
 police orders. I can't face it. My brother 
 used to be under restraint. God forgive 
 me ! But I don't think He is likely to. 
 Good-bye !' 
 
 I rushed to the door when I had read 
 so far, but I was much too late. The 
 door was bolted, and he would not open 
 for all my knocking. It was after a 
 horridly drawn - out pause that the 
 sound of the shot came.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE 
 NATIVITY 
 
 THE priest from the north-west had 
 been telling Madambi and others of 
 the Mashonas about the Christmas at 
 Bethlehem, and he told the legend of 
 how Jewish ox and ass knelt and adored 
 there in the stable. He went on .to tell 
 how the cattle in his own West Country 
 overseas were reported to maintain the 
 observance, and to lout on English straw 
 every year at stroke of midnight. The 
 priest was not of the faithful sort that 
 watches day and night for miracles. If 
 he had been, I think he might have 
 healed many in that country-side, f for the 
 sick might have readily given themselves 
 to believe had he called upon them with 
 106
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 107 
 
 authority. Yet he told the legend very 
 well, despite his defects. 
 
 And Madambi, who had drunk the 
 Faith in thirstily as Wessex men of old, 
 believed the legend. 
 
 In Madambi's home of nights there 
 were both goats and sheep tethered, 
 while the cattle of the village would be 
 close at hand within their fences of great 
 poles. When Christmastide came round 
 again, and the great Day itself was now 
 but a few days in front, Madambi began 
 to think about all of these. His heart 
 was very full just then a great side of 
 it was given to expectation of feasting, 
 and a snug corner kept for Jesus and 
 Mary but he found room for goats and 
 sheep and cattle. 
 
 The Mass was to be after midnight, 
 not much before the first cock-crow. 
 (Cocks have not learnt yet to crow the 
 whole Christmas night long in pagan 
 Mashonaland.) So there would be time 
 and opportunity, he thought, to see
 
 io8 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 
 
 what might be seen as to goats and 
 cattle. 
 
 It would be easy to tell the time of 
 the midnight that year, as the priest 
 had told him that the moon would rise 
 then. So, in the evening, Madambi told 
 his pagan father and mother and his 
 two step-mothers, and his little brother 
 and two half-brothers and three half- 
 sisters, that he would wake them 
 that night, and they should see what 
 they should see, so that they might 
 believe and be saved. But he did not 
 tell Muzira, his half-brother, or promise 
 to wake him, for he was not there at 
 the time. 
 
 Muzira was the chief of all the young 
 boys of the village that minded the herd 
 and the flocks, and he had little time 
 to go to school now. Muzira believed 
 already, or wanted to believe, and he had 
 heard for himself in the church the story 
 about the Stable. 
 
 Madambi lay down soon after his
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 109 
 
 supper, which he took before sundown, 
 for he meant to be houselled before 
 cock-crow. He heard his father and 
 his mother talking long after they had 
 finished their meal; he heard the hen 
 and her brood crying out when they 
 were covered for the night with a basket. 
 He felt the white he-goat nosing at him, 
 and he heard now a sheep and now a 
 goat stamping. The fire was very 
 bright in his eyes, and the sing-song of 
 a carol dinned his ears for a while: 
 then the fire grew dim and the sing- 
 song far away, and he slept. 
 
 He woke with a start. There was 
 the moon shining on the threshold. He 
 grappled with the creaking door, then 
 gaped and stared wearily in the door- 
 way to eastward. The moon was up 
 quite high now, and a great ruddy star 
 glowed over the rocks ; the cocks would 
 be crowing soon. 
 
 As he looked, the gong of the church 
 clanged, and he could see a light or two
 
 no THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 
 
 and hear feet hurrying. He gathered 
 his blanket about him and made haste 
 to the mission-house. He must find 
 his white chrisom robe to wear at the 
 Feast. 
 
 Even as he tucked the folds about 
 him, he remembered the goats. Had 
 they observed midnight duly? He 
 could not tell, and there was no one to 
 tell him, for the folk around him were 
 sleeping sound. 
 
 But where had the goats and sheep 
 gone to ? 
 
 He could not stay to wonder. 
 
 Strange, as he went by the cattle- 
 fence, he could see no huddled beasts, 
 nor hear any snuffling. He felt a little 
 awed and scared as he slipped on his 
 white dress with the red cross over the 
 heart. 
 
 He stole into the church, where the 
 first hymn was finished, and the service 
 beginning. The Crib was glowing with 
 candles and flowers, the incense smelt
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY ill 
 
 very freshly. After the hymn before 
 the Credo, the unbaptized would be 
 dismissed. 
 
 But even as they knelt for the Bless- 
 ing, many new worshippers pressed in. 
 These were Muzira and his fellow-herd- 
 boys; he came up to the priest very 
 shamefacedly and besought him to do 
 somewhat for him. 
 
 The priest listened and nodded. He 
 came to the west door after he had 
 blessed the boys and girls, and he 
 blessed the lowing cattle and baaing 
 flocks that were gathered outside. 
 
 After that, some of the boys went off 
 to bed, but Muzira and the other herd- 
 boys stayed without the church with 
 their charges. A great crowd of people 
 began to grow around them, for these 
 had heard there was a sign coming. 
 
 One of the boys had waked many in 
 the village, so that most of those folk 
 whom Madambi had thought to illu- 
 minate at midnight were gathered ere
 
 112 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 
 
 cock-crow. The sign of the herd and 
 flocks came just ere the first crowing. 
 
 Before the High Altar knelt Munemo, 
 with his red-and-black earthen censer 
 steaming. The priest had taken it from 
 him and given it back to him but just 
 now. Of a sudden the sacring hands 
 covered the First Mystery Atiwagoni 
 beat thrice on the string with its sound- 
 ing-gourd as the priest louted. Then 
 the hands went up with the Burden, 
 and the string cried seven times. 
 
 There followed the second sacring 
 and uplifting, and the string's welcome 
 threefold and sevenfold. Next came 
 the Nativity Hymn. It was while they 
 were singing it that a hum and stir 
 began without. Muzira came whisper, 
 ing at the south door. Atiwagoni whis- 
 pered on to Munemo, who touched the 
 priest, and he turned and listened 
 patiently. Then he gave two candle- 
 sticks to Atiwagoni, who went in front, 
 carrying them.
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 113 
 
 Munemo stirred with his wooden 
 spoon in haste, and followed in a cloud. 
 Then came the priest with the Host, 
 dividing the ranks of the prostrate. He 
 passed out through the west door. 
 
 The great flocks and the general herd 
 were now gathered some fifty yards 
 away, but the boys told afterwards how 
 they bellowed and bleated welcome, and 
 how some of them stumbled and fell 
 down. The boys' tales are pleasant and 
 cloudy as incense. What is sure is that 
 Muzira and his own little drove three 
 young bulls and a sheep and three goats 
 did obeisance at the church door most 
 becomingly. Thus it was that although 
 unchristened they received the greater 
 Benediction, that with the Corpus 
 Domini. As for the crowd of heathen 
 hard by, some of them stared, and some 
 fell on their faces, but all were awed and 
 wondering. Then the priest went back, 
 and Muzira and his fellows marshalled 
 goats and sheep and kine with hushed
 
 114 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 
 
 voices, and began to move homewards 
 under the stars, the way of the pale east. 
 
 After the service was done, there was 
 questioning as to the marvel. 
 
 Madambi seemed as if he wanted to 
 jangle with Muzira for not taking him 
 into his counsel. Why had he not 
 awaked him and watched the cattle at 
 the holy midnight when Our Lord was 
 born ? But Muzira said, ' Christ was 
 born for us to-night on the altar. So I 
 did well to watch them at the new time 
 He chose, did I not ?' And the priest 
 approved the saying. 
 
 Afterwards Madambi indicted Muzira 
 for overmuch craft. The other herd- 
 boys confessed that he had taught those 
 three bulls they were wont to ride home 
 for these two months past. He had 
 schooled them to bow when bidden, and 
 had pledged all the little boys not to tell 
 what he was doing. He had, moreover, 
 taught that sheep and those three goats 
 every evening ere folding time. ' But I
 
 THE MIRACLE OF THE NATIVITY 115 
 
 taught them as gently as you taught 
 me,' said Muzira. ' I did not beat them. 
 Was it not good to teach them that 
 which you taught me ?' 
 
 The sign, then, of the kneeling cattle 
 was compassed by the forethought and 
 patience of one not yet baptized. Said 
 Muzira again when the morning light 
 came, * Why not teach pagan cattle here 
 the ways of Christian cattle ?' And the 
 priest said, ' The love of Muzira for his 
 cattle and goats and sheep is a marvel 
 of the love of God, and God turned it 
 at cock-crow to His own worship. But 
 beware, children, of seeking to compass 
 like wonders by blows and stripes. For to 
 drive dull beasts thus to worship were sin. 
 And remember, we are not all Muziras!' 
 
 Muzira was baptized on the Day of 
 the Three Kings ere that Christmas was 
 over, and he took the name Francesco, 
 remembering him who taught the birds, 
 and saved the lambs from the butcher, 
 and tamed the wolf. 
 
 I 2
 
 IX 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 THIS is the story of George Blunt, who 
 was wanted by the police in Mashona- 
 land a year ago, on the charge of selling 
 liquor to natives. Whatever the faults 
 of the Chartered Company may have 
 been and it has surely had difficulties 
 as well as faults it has established one 
 claim to magnanimity beyond question. 
 For it has enforced at least one noble 
 law. At any assize, here or otherwhere, 
 this alone should furnish a fair brief for 
 its defence. 
 
 But George broke this law, being 
 down on his luck, dissipated and dis- 
 inclined to be magnanimous. 
 
 He was not in a good place for getting 
 away. He was near a township and 
 116
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 117 
 
 not far from a Native Commissioner's 
 camp. Moreover, the rivers were very 
 full just then, and speedy and extended 
 flight was difficult. George had been at 
 Oxford before he took to the Police, and 
 he had held a commission in the Police 
 before he was chased out of it, and took 
 to trading. He had no mind to enlarge 
 his experience by a year's hard labour 
 in Salisbury. So he covered his tracks 
 as far as he could. 
 
 He was not without native friends, for 
 he was good to his boys on the whole, 
 and popular with his customers. He 
 had one powerful ally in the new 
 Commissioner's head native messenger. 
 He could not hope to deceive his native 
 neighbours by the disguise he had 
 planned, but he trusted in this ally to 
 impose silence upon them. As to white 
 men, he had a good hope of deceiving 
 any he was likely to come across. He 
 could sling the Mashona rather glibly, 
 he could stain his skin and arrange his
 
 n8 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 toilet with unforgotten theatrical craft. 
 He had a good knowledge of local 
 colour. So behold him a rather civilised- 
 looking Mashona, in old khaki coat and 
 breeches, with a gleaming shell charm at 
 his throat, a head-band of red and white 
 beads, shod with hide sandals, travelling 
 into the wild east country ! He had to 
 make money, that was evident, if he 
 was to clear out of Rhodesia presently. 
 Should he go to work, then, or trade 
 fowls? He decided in favour of the 
 fowls for the time being. When it 
 should be time to travel up the road to 
 sell them, he would have to try and get a 
 pass somehow. Now, in the Wanjanja's 
 country, with his police friend in power 
 to burke inquiries, he felt safe. One of 
 the mission boys at the station near 
 Ticharewa's kraal had bought the salt for 
 him. He had sent his pound and got 
 his pound's worth back by the aid of 
 the missionary. It wasn't so bad of this 
 functionary to obtain good value, and to
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 119 
 
 help with the transport for his retainer's 
 unknown friend. Just at present, al- 
 though sorely tempted, George Blunt did 
 not try his new face upon the missionary. 
 That trial might come later on. He had 
 fixed on the missionary as the softest 
 white man to try his dress rehearsal on. 
 After all, if the missionary wasn't as 
 blind as he looked, it wasn't certain that 
 he would report him if he detected him. 
 To practise a fraud on him would be as it 
 were to take a trial-flight from a trapeze, 
 with a possible net to break his fall, even 
 should the worst come to the worst. 
 
 He had a fair time in the Wanjanja's 
 country ; the boys who helped him carry 
 were hospitable and took him to their 
 own homes for food. There was some 
 awkwardness in his explanations, and it 
 was unpleasant hearing the laughter of 
 one to another when his story was told. 
 He was not versed enough in the lan- 
 guage to gather all that was said. 
 Where one cannot interpret sense, one
 
 120 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 is apt to imagine insolence. But I 
 think, on the whole, he managed more 
 easily than many white men I know 
 could have done. He had used natives 
 as men and boys, and not as dogs and 
 jackasses. Supposing that Fortune 
 knocked away the pedestal of race from 
 under the feet of some employers, and 
 knocked their sjamboks out of their 
 hands, how many close allies would 
 they find among their old servants, I 
 wonder ? Well, George in his somewhat 
 helpless condition found allies, and close 
 ones. His money was very short now. 
 How could he pay his retainers at the 
 end of another month ? He was glad 
 to live cheaply on native food for the 
 most part. He had coquetted with it 
 often in the past. Now needs must. 
 
 It is little hardship to walk when you 
 lead a horse that you can mount if you 
 tire. Millet meal is all very well for a 
 change, yet that and mealies and rice 
 and even monkey-nuts are apt to pall
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 121 
 
 on an English palate, when it has no 
 bread or cheese to fall back on. But he 
 traded fifty fowls for his pound's worth 
 of salt in the wild woodland country; 
 then he and his two companions set off 
 for the mission station. He would fain 
 try his black face before seeking his 
 passes. He attended church, evening and 
 morning ; then, before morning school, 
 with his friend to introduce him, he 
 sought the missionary. This last was 
 apt to be testy when he had a crowd of 
 postulants, but George won his services 
 discreetly by a most modest application 
 after most patient waiting. His Mashona 
 was in many respects better than the 
 missionary's own, he showed his teeth 
 in winning Mashona style, and his hand 
 went up again and again in a decorous 
 salute. So the good man wrote, for him 
 and his retainers, a note to the Commis- 
 sioner to secure them attention, and save 
 them delay. 
 
 George had expressed a sweeping view
 
 122 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 at times as to the use of missionaries. 
 Now he was in a black man's sandals, 
 he saw a very practical use in an intelli- 
 gent and not too inquisitorial go-between 
 set betwixt black and white, who was 
 willing to help the former without a fee. 
 So they went to the Native Commis- 
 sioner's, seeking passes to trade fowls in 
 Salisbury. O the ramifications of that 
 new, raw, unlicked Pass-law with its 
 many coloured passes, and the wanton 
 journeyings of scores of miles that it 
 entailed for many bare feet ! 'If only 
 one could sue the Company for com- 
 pensation for wasting time,' thought 
 George. ' But its all heads it wins, tails 
 I lose, now I've got a black face,' he 
 reflected. The crux of a registration 
 certificate had bothered him a great 
 deal, but he had dealt with it in his own 
 unscrupulous fashion. He had heard of 
 a boy whose character had been reck- 
 lessly endorsed on his certificate by an 
 ill-tempered master. The boy had been
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 123 
 
 told to clear once or twice now, when he 
 asked employers for work. His alleged 
 character was sufficiently damning : 
 ' Cheeky and quite useless.' So the 
 owner was anxious to destroy this fatal 
 possession, to allege that he had lost it, 
 and to pay a shilling for a new and clean 
 sheet. George struck a bargain with 
 him. He gave him the shilling, and 
 another shilling for himself. So he 
 secured the parchment with the precious 
 identification thumb-mark upon it. He 
 left the name on it. He trusted that the 
 Native Commissioner would not pursue 
 his researches too deeply. He carefully 
 erased the bad character. Then he 
 wrote in a character signed by himself, 
 and dated two months back, in his old 
 capacity as a white employer. He 
 was modest. He only applauded his 
 Mashona self judicially. ' Fair, a decent 
 cook.' So he faced the wary world of 
 Pass Officials with a stout heart. He 
 got his pass quickly, and so did his
 
 124 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 companions. How many natives were 
 squatting around, waiting and waiting, 
 as he came out of the office ! After all, 
 the work is heavy and delays not un- 
 reasonable. But George cursed the 
 Company very roundly, as he thought 
 of all the time they had wasted, just be- 
 cause they must tie up everybody's hands, 
 black and white, in knots of red tape. 
 
 Then he went up the road to Salisbury. 
 He sold most of his fowls to Govern- 
 ment servants at two shillings, and did 
 exceedingly well. If he had only stuck 
 to fowl-selling ! But when he came 
 back, he was seized by a native police- 
 man who did not know him, and made 
 to go with a Government gang that were 
 fetching a tank across country. He 
 thought of bolting on the way back ; he 
 was tired of walking and sweating, tired 
 even of Kaffir beer. But he managed to 
 stick it to the end. It was rough being 
 treated like a dog by the white man he 
 had been sent to. The amount of his
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 125 
 
 pay made him laugh when he went to 
 the office to receive it. His messenger 
 friend was ill, and another messenger 
 tried to blackmail him, threatening to 
 tell his secret. George grew frightened ; 
 he felt rather helpless : he wanted a white 
 protector. He heard of a decent em- 
 ployer that wanted boys, but he was 
 out of luck, and was refused ; the man 
 told him he had too many already. He 
 told him of another farmer that was 
 hard up for them. George engaged 
 himself very rashly ; the man was new 
 in the district, and he knew neither good 
 nor ill of him. He got kicked or cuffed 
 a good deal, and nearly knocked his 
 master down. He went and lodged a 
 complaint at the office, but he found 
 how delightfully one-sidedly Law and 
 Executive can be made to work. His 
 complaint was pooh-poohed, and he was 
 sent back to his master, and found his 
 temper not at all improved. George 
 had no very Christian standard. But I
 
 126 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 think he acted unconsciously as a Divine 
 instrument of wrath for that occasion. 
 He gave his master an extremely scien- 
 tific and merciless hiding. It came 
 about this way. His master knocked 
 him down. George sued him, for private 
 battery is against the law of the land, 
 would you believe it ? 
 
 His master was fined a shilling, and 
 George was sent back to him to finish 
 his time. In the evening George ad- 
 ministered the hiding, thus supplement- 
 ing the law very considerably. He broke 
 away that night across the wild country. 
 He had confidence in his disguise : in 
 both kitchen Kaffir and Mashona he 
 was now something of an expert. He 
 struck an east track. He would try and 
 slip over the Portuguese border near 
 Rusape, some 140 miles away. I don't 
 know if he would have succeeded ; the 
 Pass Law is a very wide net, and small 
 of mesh. But he would make a brave 
 bid for freedom. He would take some
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 127 
 
 risks, he would travel much of nights, 
 lions or no lions. It was a lonely way 
 that he went, but a very beautiful one. 
 The autumn weather was very clear and 
 windless. It was a delight to be up so 
 early and to rest so late, if only his 
 conscience had been a little quieter. He 
 had a few shillings and a few mealies, 
 he had a little coarse flour and salt, and 
 some tea to cook in his kettle. He had 
 also a good blanket and some good 
 tobacco, and a store of mealie-cob pipes, 
 so that this was quite a luxurious journey. 
 On the third night he asked to sleep in 
 a trader's outhouse. 
 
 Thake the trader was quaint, as 
 Europeans are apt to grow quaint to 
 their fellows, when they have lived long 
 in the wilds among Africans. He was 
 a good friend to many wayfarers. 
 
 It was the fever time, and in the 
 morning George felt a little shaky. He 
 asked the trader for some quinine with 
 politeness. The old man rummaged in
 
 128 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 
 
 his boxes and found a paper of white 
 powder. 
 
 George was glad enough to carry some 
 of it with him. He walked on and on. 
 At last in a lonely gorge he grew dread- 
 fully dizzy. He filled his cup at the 
 spruit, and took a dose of the white 
 grains. His eyes were dim, and he did 
 not notice much what he was doing. 
 Soon came a sultry thirst and a griping 
 anguish. These lasted an awful while, 
 but at last they were over. 
 
 A week or two afterwards some relics 
 of his clothes were found. The trader 
 heard the news, and was curious as to 
 what had become of him. He came up 
 to search the ground. The general 
 surmise was that a lion had met him, 
 but it was unsupported by proof. 
 
 Long afterwards the trader tried 
 doctoring his sick fowls with the white 
 powder. 
 
 Fatalities came fast. A mounted 
 traveller happened to come by that
 
 A CHANGE OF COLOUR 129 
 
 week, and heard of his losses. ' Bury 
 the stuff,' he said, ' shouldn't wonder if 
 it was arsenic.' Then the trader remem- 
 bered the strange Mashona who had 
 asked him for quinine, and he was sorry 
 indeed. But the disappearance of that 
 Mashona, however it came about, was 
 not connected in official minds with the 
 disappearance of George Blunt, who is 
 still wanted at Salisbury. 
 
 If only he could have written the book 
 that he planned, of pithy and intelligent 
 comment upon the conduct of employers 
 and Government officials in Southern 
 Rhodesia ! He had been for a couple of 
 months through something of the same 
 mill that the unfortunate Mashonas go 
 through to-day, and he was no fool at 
 putting a story together. May his dust 
 maintain, with dishonoured jackals and 
 vultures, an honourable freedom ! May 
 his soul find a date set to that penal 
 durance, which it doubtless needed 
 sorely to undergo !
 
 X 
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 THE month was April in South Central 
 Africa, and the rains were over. Just 
 as in England after the winter's foul 
 w r eather, so here after the summer's 
 rains country-folk are wont to feel the 
 zest of a new freedom and the itch to 
 travel. In the part of Africa I am tell- 
 ing of bridges are rare indeed, and roads 
 are apt to recall the roads of long-ago 
 days in our own country. Our rustic 
 folk here are far closer prisoners in the 
 bad weather than outlandish dwellers in 
 England of to-day, and so they are far 
 more apt to thrill at the setting-fair of 
 the season. 
 
 The Rev. John Wyld felt a very 
 pleasurable tingle indeed when the dry 
 130
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 131 
 
 season of this year set in, and the day 
 drew near for him to start for the tiny 
 cathedral town, there to re-unite himself 
 with his brother clergy. His main work 
 lay far away in the Veld among the 
 native villages. He was weighted, too, 
 with the charge of a microscopic Euro- 
 pean flock ten miles or more distant. 
 It was hard sometimes to keep going to 
 and fro in the summer heat and rain- 
 storms. Moreover, there was not much 
 to spare for up-to-date comforts in his 
 home. 
 
 Life would seem sometimes to him a 
 little bracing, with many battles to 
 fight, and the lack of anyone to fight 
 back-to-back with him. But his was, 
 indeed, a jolly life on the whole, to his 
 way of thinking, very full ; and full, too, 
 of the delight of constant changes of 
 work and the comings of the unexpected. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was good when the 
 expected morning broke and found him 
 with his packing almost done, and his 
 
 K 2
 
 132 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 last business letter almost written. He 
 went into church with a glad heart, and 
 the round quaint walls seemed to rock 
 with the sacrificial prayers and the 
 Gloria of thanksgiving. 
 
 Then he came out of church, snatched 
 his breakfast between whiles, and minis- 
 tered to many clients. He gave parting 
 admonition as to the feeding of live- 
 stock and the watering of trees, and the 
 harvesting of crops ; secured a temper- 
 ance pledge or two, saw to the rolling 
 up of his blankets, remembered in the 
 nick of time that he needed a cooking- 
 pot, then after one prayer he was off. 
 
 His carriers were already stepping on 
 in front, and a whole bevy of well- 
 wishers were about them. Some carried 
 their burdens a stage of the way, some 
 gave parting messages for friends at the 
 station that they went to; it was a 
 crowded scene on the narrow path. 
 
 Then the crowd thinned, the stragglers 
 grew few. At last they were all gone,
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 133 
 
 and the stern loneliness of the rocky 
 path succeeded. 
 
 It was good to feel the power of one's 
 feet after the first languid hour or two. 
 Now the ridges and the streams came in 
 due course one after the other, to be 
 easily scaled or forded. There was little 
 effort for those masterful feet once they 
 had fairly found their stride. John 
 rejoiced alike in his own prowess and in 
 that of his carriers; straight-backed, 
 long-limbed, cheery they were fellow- 
 Christians to be thankful for. That 
 night they slept within the screen of a 
 hedge about an old village. There was 
 a shrewd south-easter blowing at night- 
 fall, so they turned into an old ruinous 
 hut whose floor had been scoured, and 
 slept fairly warm. The next night they 
 just reached the head-waters of a great 
 river, having missed their way twice, 
 and scrambled through in the dusk. In 
 the chill of the next dawn came a steep 
 ascent into the hill-country. The cold
 
 134 
 
 gave out at last as the sun climbed, and 
 the dew no longer drenched the grass. 
 They camped by a hill-village, and after 
 the daily Sacrifice they broke their fast 
 heartily. They knew that the hardest 
 of the struggle was over. As he smoked 
 his pipe and pulled up his socks, John 
 was rejoicing in Arcadia. Yet his joy 
 was a little disloyal ; he was thinking 
 happily of his coming desertion of her, 
 of the comforts of the town ahead, and 
 the pleasure of meeting friends who 
 were not Arcadians. Such disloyal 
 thoughts went with him that day, they 
 were with him in the splendid tussles 
 with two great streams, one ere sun- 
 down, the other not so very long after 
 sunrise. 
 
 They followed him along the duller 
 stage of the way that came after, across 
 the railway, through the hamlet with its 
 two or three stores, and to the mission 
 station beyond, a station so much more 
 comfortable and urban than his own,
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 135 
 
 where he found an old friend waiting. 
 After a day of friendship and rest (how 
 good it was to be irresponsible amid 
 responsible work !) he took the north- 
 ward night train. His circle now grew 
 ampler ; not only had he gathered one 
 comrade on the road, but he found 
 others on the train making for the 
 meeting-point. How lightly they were 
 carried on now along the iron way after 
 those hard- won victories of old, snatched 
 so jealously by late marches and early 
 marches among the steep, rock-studded 
 hills ! With morning light they came 
 into the Cathedral town. Then, with 
 modest pomp, they met in the Cathe- 
 dral. John found himself exchanging 
 the eclectic symbolism of the Veld for 
 a more steadfast type of ritual. He 
 felt none too easy, I regret to say, as he 
 ministered at the altar and read the 
 Epistle. 
 
 The building seemed dizzily big, the 
 congregation excessively genteel, and
 
 136 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 the eyes of his fellow-clergy inclined to 
 be censorious. 
 
 One cannot have all things at once 
 as one will : he was to blame, of course, 
 for not forgetting himself better. But 
 how many consolations there were when 
 one left the Cathedral behind ! The old 
 and new interests to be discussed with 
 interesting people, the assurance of 
 sufficient and pleasantly varied meals, 
 the abundance of shops around ! It 
 was all very intense and vivid. Alas! 
 that now this great time had begun in 
 earnest, one seemed very close to its 
 ending. Only three more days at most, 
 and the day of parting would have 
 dawned the day of resolute striding, 
 the lonely hill-country before, the friends 
 once more behind. 
 
 It was trying for John to find silence 
 prescribed that very afternoon a silence 
 that was to last with brief respites till 
 the very morning of farewell. He began 
 his Retreat not without rebellion, he
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 137 
 
 sympathized with his nearest neighbour 
 in the Community tent. This neighbour 
 had a long tongue, and was by no means 
 convinced that he ought to bridle it 
 either for his own edification or that of 
 others. He gave John opportunities of 
 conversation, which, unhappily, he did 
 not always neglect. Moreover, the 
 galaxy of surrounding shops led him 
 astray. He must find excuses for going 
 shopping and spending more money 
 than he could afford between whiles. 
 Rare vistas of acquisition and extrava- 
 gance allured him ; he had been so used 
 to dealing at a single general store some 
 ten miles distant from his home. 
 
 Thus, with certain distractions, the 
 would-be healing time of Retreat slipped 
 away : John was glad enough of its 
 silence before it was all over. He was 
 wont to be constrained by conscience 
 to undergo feverish obsessions of busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Too often impatiently, he would heap
 
 138 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 advice upon advice as ecclesiastic, 
 lawyer, doctor, almoner, or agriculturist, 
 beset as he was by a swarm of humming 
 and buzzing postulants. 
 
 Now, he found the coincidence of 
 quietism with duty refreshing, however 
 tantalising it might be to look at old 
 friends, remember how long it was 
 since they had met, and how long it 
 was likely to be ere they would meet 
 again. 
 
 The time went by, and the morning 
 of the babel of released tongues broke 
 at last. On that morning John came 
 to grief privately if not publicly. 
 
 After two or three good hours, the 
 northward or southward trains took 
 most of his friends away. But he heard 
 of a possible chance of driving home in 
 a few days' time, and he ruthlessly 
 crushed his scruples. He said he would 
 stay a little while longer. He sent off 
 his faithful would-be fellow-travellers. 
 They had come to meet him and take
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 139 
 
 him home the shortest way a way that 
 was innocent of railroads a shorter 
 way than he had come. It is true he 
 cared tenderly for their supplies of meal 
 and meat, and saw to it himself that 
 their loads were not too heavy. But 
 that his desertion was a base one he 
 knew in his own heart. He thought 
 that night, in his well-blanketed bed, of 
 the camp-fire supper and the bed of 
 grass and the night-prayers together. 
 He thought next morning, on the 
 Sunday, as he ministered rather self- 
 consciously in rich vestments and knelt 
 on a soft pile carpet, of the woodland 
 Sacrifice that he might have offered full 
 two hours earlier with the sun just risen 
 in front, the grass to kneel on, and the 
 blue of Heaven to pray into. Yet, if 
 he repented a little, I fear he congratu- 
 lated himself much on the excellent 
 opportunities he had gained for the 
 study of light literature, for the eating 
 of excellent meals, and the smoking of
 
 140 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 endless pipes in the shades of stoeps 
 and summer-houses. 
 
 Here was a change after grilling 
 journeys on Sunday noons and after- 
 noons. It was fine to think that there 
 was no long ten miles to struggle home 
 to-night after preaching the evening 
 sermon. 
 
 Thus the man John fell, from no great 
 height, but from his own ideals, very 
 narrow ones maybe, yet his own. 
 
 After the Sunday he stayed on, wait- 
 ing for the friendly conveyance that had 
 the friendliness to delay its starting till 
 Thursday. Meanwhile a deeper sort of 
 treason was beginning to move him. 
 
 He had had a good many years of 
 loneliness. Might not a change be for 
 the best ? Of course, not for his sake 
 only. There was no lack of able and 
 altruistic arguments when once he 
 applied to his imagination to supply 
 them. Yes, he would apply to his 
 Diocesan before he started on Thursday,
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 141 
 
 and he would not be long in coming 
 back again. Then good - bye to a 
 number of things, and welcome to others 
 of a different sort. After all, it was no 
 good getting into a rut, and there were 
 other experts of the Christian life to 
 learn from besides poor old literal, 
 blunderheaded Tolstoi. 
 
 It was on the Monday morning that 
 John Wyld turned on the Veld that had 
 been so good to him these many years, 
 and discarded his flock of wild, coloured 
 sheep, that once he had loved hardly 
 less than his own soul. He smoked his 
 pipe in bed luxuriously that night, and 
 read the Courier for the day; he re- 
 flected on the advantage of seeing a 
 daily paper and receiving frequent mails. 
 Then he went to sleep. 
 
 His dreams were troubled. He saw 
 his patron saint, John Baptist, stand- 
 ing on a rock as it seemed, and howling 
 at him. He could not hear what he 
 said, the south-east wind was blowing
 
 142 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 over the Veld furiously, as it will often 
 do on a winter's day. But the prophet 
 in his shaggy fleece was very angry, and 
 Wyld could guess well enough the sort 
 of bitter words he said. So it went on, 
 hour after hour, dream after dream 
 the resentful face, the ragged form, the 
 roar of the wind, the husky fury of the 
 voice. 
 
 When John awoke he had rather a 
 dizzy head. He rose, and had just time 
 to slip into the cathedral before the pro- 
 clamation of the Gospel. Afterwards, 
 in the vestry, the two resident clergy 
 began to rebuke him. It seemed they 
 had good cause to say a chastening 
 word or two. 
 
 Into the Clergy House had burst at 
 some unearthly time before the light 
 when the cocks were crowing, a wild 
 and ragged native in a skin, with a 
 brown -and-white lamb tucked under his 
 arm. These details they were sure of, 
 for the apparition had carried with him
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 143 
 
 a huge torch of Veld grass, at terrible 
 risk to their bedclothes and all they con- 
 tained. Having made some remarks in 
 an uncouth language which neither of 
 them understood, he had set certain 
 unsavoury objects on the sideboard, and 
 gone out with a furious slam of the door. 
 How Wyld could have slept through it 
 all they could not imagine. 
 
 Justly incensed, they had sent the 
 highly respectable native Christian who 
 waited upon them to search for the 
 intruder, but he had not been traced. 
 Probably he was in the lock-up by 
 now, if the police had caught sight of 
 him. 
 
 ' Doubtless he was one of your con- 
 gregation, Wyld,' said Marks. ' I have 
 heard that you encourage sheepskins and 
 goatskins. Why on earth don't you 
 introduce woad ?' 
 
 'A little more discipline would not 
 be amiss on your station,' said Brown. 
 ' You'll have the natives rising before
 
 144 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 long, the way you neglect to boss 
 them up !' 
 
 Wyld nodded his puzzled head. He 
 was contrite indeed for certain offences, 
 but they were not the alleged ones of 
 his uncouth client or Patron. 
 
 'Come and see the things he left,' 
 said Brown. 'That is to say, if our 
 boy hasn't thrown them away. I was 
 ashamed for him to see them. Perhaps 
 you can enlighten us as to what these 
 abominable messes are.' 
 
 Two small calabashes were produced 
 by Aloysius with a deprecating look. 
 He was a nice Mashona boy, very nicely 
 dressed, but his disdain of ancestral 
 dainties seemed a little hypocritical. 
 He held them out to Wyld very deli- 
 cately. Wyld took the plug from the 
 one calabash, and dipped his finger in 
 and sucked it. Then he took up the 
 other, and drew out one of the brown, 
 date-like morsels within it, and began 
 to crunch it pensively.
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 145 
 
 Brown looked rather disgusted. So 
 did Aloysius. Marks laughed. 
 
 ' Tell us the menu,' he said. 
 
 Wyld looked very grave. 
 
 ' Locusts and wild honey,' he an- 
 swered. 'And so I must be off for 
 home directly after breakfast.' 
 
 The logic of his argument did not 
 seem very obvious, and Marks laughed 
 again. 'I see,' he said; 'if you aren't 
 quick, locusts will be getting out of 
 season.' 
 
 John explained to both of them at 
 breakfast that he really had a great deal 
 to do at home, and never ought to have 
 stayed in the hope of a drive ; he would 
 write to his charioteer, and excuse him- 
 self. Afterwards he went out, and 
 sought a dark friend or two to travel 
 with. As they rolled up his blankets, 
 he asked for the two calabashes as keep- 
 sakes. 
 
 ' Have you found the messenger that 
 brought them ?' asked Marks. 
 
 L
 
 146 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 
 
 ' No, I don't expect to just yet,' he 
 said. 
 
 ' Oh, do tell us if it is a mystery,' 
 Brown exclaimed. ' I gloat on mysteries: 
 they make the place seem like Africa.' 
 
 But John only smiled. He went off 
 to finish his packing. 
 
 'What a pity he's been left on the 
 Veld so long,' Brown said. ' It is curious 
 how every white man that lives on the 
 Veld long, goes cranky in one way or 
 another. Fancy his eating locusts !' 
 
 John caught the last words as he 
 came back to say good-bye. 
 
 ' They're all right if they are cooked 
 properly, not slowly fried to death,' said 
 he. ' I knew these particular ones were 
 all right.' 
 
 'How did you know?' said Brown 
 suspiciously. ' Tell us who it was 
 brought them.' 
 
 But John would not tell him, sure 
 enough though he felt. 
 
 Soon he was stepping out along the
 
 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 147 
 
 waggon -road, the town behind, the 
 wilderness before. The old wistful joy 
 came back to him again. Those few 
 (were they so few?) sheep or goats in 
 the wilderness meant once more a great 
 deal to him ; the luxuries and fashion and 
 talk of the town meant very little. 
 
 The rock-altar by the wayside, or the 
 altars under the thatched roofs of his 
 church at home, were more goodly in 
 his eyes than that rich cathedral altar. 
 
 Brown husbandmen and herdsmen 
 bulked big in his thoughts, even bigger 
 than his fellow-clergy. 
 
 He raised his heart in thankfulness to 
 his patron Saint, John Baptist, for that 
 token. Was it chance, or miracle, or 
 illusion ? 
 
 What did it matter which it was ? 
 The thing was of God, that he was 
 quite sure of. He had been sent the 
 token, he had understood it, and had 
 accepted it. Thanks to it, he had been 
 saved from himself. 
 
 L 2
 
 XI 
 
 FORT STUBBS: A TROOPER'S 
 STORY 
 
 THERE had been a kraal there in days 
 past, but we did not think of that. It 
 was only burnt in the last year. It was 
 none of our burning, and we had enough 
 of our own to reckon up, if we gave a 
 thought to that sort of thing. On the 
 hill's crown we began to build an open 
 fort, and the name of it was already 
 chosen by the Government. They 
 would have it called Fort Stubbs after 
 a servant of theirs who had died ad- 
 jacently. 
 
 There were eight of us, six B.S.A.P. 
 
 troopers with Gordon and me, who were 
 
 corporal and sergeant. That was six 
 
 too many for Gordon's liking and mine. 
 
 148
 
 A TROOPER'S STORY 149 
 
 We could have done much better with 
 the Cape Boys and the Mashonas from 
 the kraals, for all six were rotters and 
 wasters staunch and true. If it wasn't 
 whisky, it was dop, and if it wasn't dop, 
 it was Kaffir beer. Peace be with them, 
 for at least four of them are gone now, 
 to, my knowledge ! Rhodesia's not 
 exactly the country to send white men 
 to, when they want reforming. We 
 came when the rains were just giving 
 out, and for the first month or two we 
 got little fever. We had the horse sick- 
 ness in our camp, though, and I lost the 
 best horse I ever had on the black Friday 
 we got to building. They forced labour 
 for us from the kraals close by, and we 
 worked hard, or at least set the Mashonas 
 hard at it, which is what a white man 
 calls hard work in Rhodesia. Waggon- 
 load after waggon-load of stones came 
 groaning through the sludge with whips 
 cracking and teamsters' Dutch, then 
 up the stiff and greasy rise, with the
 
 ISO FORT STUBBS: 
 
 Mashonas yelling and the Britishers 
 cursing and hitting both mules and 
 them. 
 
 So it began to grow up at last Fort 
 Stubbs a huge roofless ring of yellow 
 stones dragged into their places with no 
 stint of African sweat and European 
 blows and blasphemy. 
 
 About May, many of the rotters were 
 sick, or said they were: we were glad 
 enough to get them out of the way, as 
 they had been in it for weeks past. So 
 they lay down one after another, in the 
 huts most days, with a few women to 
 look after them and cook their beer. 
 
 But with June the news came that 
 the country was unsafe around us, and 
 I chased away the women, and called in 
 my men to live in the fort. How the sun 
 grilled there ! How the walls held the 
 heat of nights ! How black the place was 
 with flies ! Was Egypt ever blacker ? 
 Then it was that Gordon went down 
 with the fever every third day, and I
 
 A TROOPER'S STORY 151 
 
 had a head on every second evening. I 
 nursed him, rather roughly at times, 
 I fear ; I did not guess he was so much 
 the worse of us two. I was frantic to 
 get Fort Stubbs coped and embrasured, 
 and pierced and finished. 
 
 It was a night still early in the month. 
 He had been talking with a light head 
 once or twice already. When I was 
 saying good-night, he said to me, in the 
 same sort of rambling way, ' I know 
 why it's all come now. The trouble 
 with the wasters, and the horse-sickness, 
 and the fever sticking to me. There 
 was a kraal here on this very plot of 
 sand. There's some yarn like ours in 
 the Bible.' When he said stupid things, 
 I felt like looking the other way, for I 
 was very fond of him. 
 
 That time I said ' good-night ' and no 
 more. By the twenty fifth of the month 
 he was very bad, and I had begun to 
 get frightened. We had had a week of 
 furnace weather, the furnace alight soon
 
 152 FORT STUBBS: 
 
 after sunrise till long after sundown, and 
 hardly cool before another sunrise. It 
 was bad, day after day. We seemed 
 held up so close to it on that cursed hill, 
 with walls so tight about us, and no 
 roof. One night at sunset I came in to 
 tell him good news before I had washed 
 or made the tea. ' Only one more day 
 and we're finished. We'll stop the 
 noise and put a proper double thatch 
 for you to lie under. So keep your 
 pluck.' 
 
 But when he heard my news, he said 
 he wanted to tell me something. I 
 hurried up and came back after skoff. 
 
 He said, ' You know what a drought 
 they had last year on that farm Stubbs 
 farmed for the Company. It was rain- 
 ing all around, but the people whose 
 kraal we burnt on his farm buried a 
 tortoise when they saw us coming, and 
 we never found where it was, so it kept 
 off the rain. All his crops died. You 
 believe that's true, don't you ?' ' It was
 
 A TROOPER'S STORY 153 
 
 quaint, his not getting the rain when he 
 wanted it,' I said. 
 
 ' Well ' said Gordon, ' You can laugh 
 if you like. But I believe that boy of 
 yours. He's all right, isn't he ? Like 
 most of 'em 'd be if one gave 'em a 
 chance ?' I allowed that my boy was 
 up to standard. 
 
 ' Well, he told me there was a kraal 
 here ; Stubbs and the town garrison 
 burnt it. There are none of the people 
 themselves left. The garrison wiped 
 the lot out, little and big, after the 
 manner of Dutch fighting.' ' Stubbs 
 ought to have known better,' I said. 
 ' But he didn't,' said Gordon ; ' they got 
 round this hill in the night and finished 
 them like rats in a rick.' ' The people 
 that are their relations don't talk much 
 about it then,' I said. ' No,' he answered; 
 'they say very little now, but I'll tell 
 you what they did in March. They got 
 a wise man to come all the way from 
 Wedza and curse this ground. It's like
 
 154 FORT STUBBS: 
 
 that thing in the Bible. He said, Who- 
 ever began must pay with life when he 
 started and when he finished. We're 
 on the beastly plot of sand this minute.* 
 I didn't say anything, I only whistled. 
 I didn't disbelieve him. I was sick of 
 the whole Rhodesian job, and I'd have 
 given all my pay to make him better. 
 
 He didn't say any more. He saw he 
 had said enough, and didn't want to 
 bother me. We were neither of us 
 blind, and we knew pretty well what 
 was coming, so we must try and make 
 the best of it. We talked of other 
 things, for he seemed ever so much 
 better that next hour or so. 
 
 When I said good-night, I told him, 
 ' We'll finish the fort to-morrow.' ' No,' 
 said he, 'not to-morrow; give us one 
 day to see to things a bit. Give the 
 boys a holiday.' So I gave it them. 
 And as there had been no more word 
 for weeks now of any attempt at rising, 
 I let the rotters have their heart's con-
 
 A TROOPER'S STORY 155 
 
 tent, and go off to the kraal. I and 
 Gordon and two Mashonas who seemed 
 to care for him stayed upon the hill 
 together. And we rigged up an awning 
 of double thick thatch over him. It 
 wasn't so much wanted, after all, as the 
 day was cloudy and cool. It was a real 
 holiday after those hot days. At whiles 
 he lay quiet. At whiles we spoke of 
 how our time would be up soon. We 
 would try and start again, once we had 
 got quit of the Chartered Company and 
 native wars and the business that makes 
 those wars nasty. So we talked, and 
 we meant some of it. He was quite 
 himself again, but towards sunset he 
 grew very sleepy. 
 
 He was sleeping heavily when I blew 
 out my light, and lay a long while think- 
 ing, watching the free stars that watched 
 him and me trapped in the gin of the 
 fort. He was sleeping in the morning 
 when I fixed up his thatch. I was going 
 to try and finish the fort before breakfast.
 
 156 FORT STUBBS 
 
 Then I went down the hill to see the 
 last load up, and we worked as quietly as 
 I could get the waggoner and the boys 
 to work. But we worked very hard. I 
 forgot all about kraals and prophecies 
 and the crack of fate in the hard work 
 over those last widths of coping. 
 
 Just as a Cape boy said ' Pelite",' and 
 a Mashona said ' Zwapera,' and I said 
 'Thank God,' I remembered Gordon 
 again, having finished Fort Stubbs. 
 For was not that his boy coming, run- 
 ning and howling ? 
 
 I guessed what his news must be. It 
 could not well be anything else when I 
 came to think about it. Just as I had 
 laid the foundation of Fort Stubbs in 
 my horse, I had set up its coping in my 
 friend.
 
 XII 
 
 TRIAL BY JURY: A FARMER'S 
 STORY 
 
 ' IF only they'd have given me a year or 
 two.' It was a sultry October evening, 
 and we were hoping for rain. He was 
 laid by with fever fifty miles or so from 
 the railway in a wild woodland country, 
 the man who was reserved for judgment. 
 
 I do not want to repeat his name; 
 probably you may have heard it, and 
 know part of his story. 
 
 He had got married just over a year 
 ago, and was trading cattle on my farm 
 within two miles of the homestead. His 
 wife and he should never have come 
 out here to make themselves miserable. 
 She had been used to a carriage and 
 electric light and all the comforts of
 
 158 TRIAL BY JURY: 
 
 Streatham. He was a true scholar, a 
 public-school man, who had kept up his 
 Greek, very kind-hearted, and sensitively 
 Christian. But he was not very steady. 
 He had come to grief badly some six- 
 teen or eighteen months ago. He was 
 now trying to make his wife happy and 
 comfortable, with an uneasy certainty 
 at heart that calamity was his due. 
 
 'Oh, don't talk like that,' I said. 
 ' Isn't there a place for repentance ? 
 Most people would think themselves 
 lucky getting off as you did. Don't say 
 you haven't done any good with the 
 chance they gave you ?' 
 
 He said nothing, and shut his eyes, as 
 if to sleep. I told his cook-boy he had 
 better lie on the floor in his room that 
 night. Then I started off homewards. 
 His wife was staying at our place now. 
 She had borne twins only yesterday, 
 and my wife was looking after her. He 
 had not seen his children, for he was so 
 bad with fever at this, his own trading
 
 A FARMER'S STORY 159 
 
 station, that I begged him not to come 
 across yet. His head was affected, I 
 thought ; his temperature seemed to me 
 far too high, and steady at that. It was 
 a good thing his wife was right away 
 from him. She was desperately ill her- 
 self, poor little thing ! The life these 
 last months had come hard to her, 
 and she was all too plucky. She, that 
 had been waited on by servants who 
 had servants to wait on them, had been 
 long acting as baker to her husband's 
 butcher. She really baked well, con- 
 sidering all things. But the struggles 
 with sickness and hardships that one 
 sees in old-country slums and villages 
 as well as in colonial outposts were 
 strangely new to her. She had lived in 
 such a comfortable suburb, and had had 
 such a comfortable time heretofore. I 
 was very sorry for her. 
 
 What had her husband done ? 
 
 Well, he was on the whole wonder- 
 fully good to natives, as white people
 
 160 TRIAL BY JURY: 
 
 go out here. But he got drunk one day, 
 five months before she came out to him 
 to be married, and he knocked a boy 
 about. Death resulted. He pulled him- 
 self together, and faced the music like a 
 man. He was committed for trial, let 
 out on heavy bail, then tried by the 
 High Court, when he ought to have 
 been awarded a stern sentence on his 
 own admissions. But the jury would 
 not convict a fairly popular white man. 
 They were not without precedents, I 
 fancy, in the illustrious records of our 
 colony. He was acquitted. But he 
 was by no means overjoyed at that jury's 
 shameless verdict, rather, he was plunged 
 into a deep melancholy. He came and 
 saw me about what he called the jury's 
 refinement of torture. 
 
 ' I know fairly well what it amounts 
 to,' he said. ' I am reserved for judg- 
 ment. If only I had made some sort 
 of show of purging what I did in prison. 
 But it's no good now.'
 
 A FARMER'S STORY 161 
 
 He seemed dreadfully moody. Then, 
 just when his wife was coming out, he 
 seemed to brighten up. 
 
 But he was back again in gloom, I 
 found, one night not long afterwards. 
 That was the night when he came to 
 my farm with his waggon, bringing up 
 furniture to get their home ready. 
 
 ' He was to go back and fetch her by 
 that day week,' he said. He did not 
 say anything stupid before my wife or 
 before her brother. He only seemed 
 very quiet and thoughtful at supper and 
 afterwards. But he asked me to come 
 into the hut where he was sleeping 
 when the others went to bed, and there 
 he told me a story. 
 
 'That jury gave me away,' he said. 
 ' I'm reserved for judgment. I'll tell 
 you what I did the night before I started 
 up here. I wanted spiritual consola- 
 tion. I wouldn't go to our own parson 
 in Rosebery, rightly or wrongly. He 
 had as good as told me he didn't think 
 
 M
 
 162 TRIAL BY JURY: 
 
 much harm of what I had done. He 
 was on the committee of the club, and 
 they said he spoke against my being 
 turned out. He seemed to me to be 
 rather hard on natives himself, a thing I 
 don't care to notice in a parson. Any- 
 how, I didn't go to him. You remember 
 the story of how Lorenzo de Medici 
 would not have a Court confessor on his 
 death-bed, but sent for a Dominican 
 friar who, he had reason to know, was 
 not likely to flatter him much ? Do you 
 remember how he got true counsel even 
 if he missed pardon ?' 
 
 ' I remember the story,' I said. ' I 
 shouldn't much like to have been so hard 
 on a dying man as Savonarola was.' 
 
 ' He did what he thought was his 
 duty,' said my friend. ' He was a 
 straight man. Well, I wanted a straight 
 man, not a mealy mug. You know Eve 
 the missionary, the man who often gets 
 into hot water the red-headed Bor- 
 derer. I could see by the way he cut
 
 A FARMER'S STORY 163 
 
 me in the street he was a good man to 
 go to.' 
 
 I smiled, rather amused at his test. 
 
 ' I know I was acting on right lines in 
 going to him,' he went on. ' He dealt 
 with me faithfully. He's got the courage 
 of his opinions, and I admire him. He 
 received me quite kindly, and listened 
 to what I had got to say. Then he 
 asked me to kneel with him and to pray 
 for guidance. Next he asked me to tell 
 him the whole story of the case from 
 the beginning, and I told him. Then 
 he talked to me about the Love of God. 
 Then he read me the passage about what 
 St. Paul proposed doing with the man 
 who did that deed at Corinth, and asked 
 me, " Would I like him to act on that 
 suggestion ?" 
 
 ' " By all means," I said ; " I would 
 like to pay somehow." 
 
 '"Think what you are doing," he 
 said. " The price may be very hard to 
 pay. Remember the great Ransom 
 
 M 2
 
 164 TRIAL BY JURY : 
 
 that has been paid already! Cannot 
 you rest on the assurance of that alone?" 
 
 'I thought a bit. Then I said, "I 
 am not disparaging the great Ransom, I 
 think. But I feel called to pay some- 
 what myself. I agree to St. Paul's 
 way." So he called his wife> and the 
 native teacher and his wife, for witnesses, 
 and explained to them very briefly what 
 I had asked. He took my hand. 
 
 ' " In the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ," he said, " now that we two or 
 three are gathered together with the 
 power of our Lord Jesus Christ, I deliver 
 you unto Satan for the destruction of 
 the flesh, that the spirit may be saved 
 in the Day of the Lord Jesus." So I 
 had received what I had wanted, and I 
 came away.' 
 
 'Oh, why didn't you confess to a 
 decent priest ?' I said. What weird 
 haggard rites you Protestants do 
 fashion !' 
 
 He sighed.
 
 A FARMER'S STORY 165 
 
 ' Last night,' he went on, ' I was 
 camping out at the Maduna Drift. The 
 moon was to rise late. The evening star 
 went down, and our night-trek was 
 finished. I fell asleep long before she 
 came up. When I woke, or seemed to 
 wake, she had just risen. She was crest- 
 ing a rock to the east, and on that 
 crested rock a lion was standing. He 
 was only about forty paces away. He 
 roared, and some voices answered. 
 They were lamentable voices. There 
 came out into the moonlit Veld be- 
 tween my camp fire and the moon 
 twelve hyenas, and stood hearkening. 
 Then the lion began to roar and roar 
 again. He tossed his head towards me 
 and towards the moon. I noted that 
 distinctly. Then he tossed his head 
 towards me and growled on, and on, and 
 on. At first I was afraid, then I was 
 interested, then I fell into deep thought. 
 I seemed to recall the judge with his 
 gruff voice charging the jury you wot of.
 
 i66 TRIAL BY JURY: 
 
 More and more I grew sure of the 
 resemblance. I looked closer, and I 
 noted something in the lion's eyes. I 
 remembered to whom it was that I had 
 been delivered up. I realised somewhat 
 of Eve's warning. 
 
 'Then all the hyenas faced me and 
 howled together, howl on howl. I 
 looked in their eyes, and guessed who 
 and what they were. They were 
 mashawe, those witch-beasts ; outlandish 
 spirits seeking rest, and ill guests in 
 their restlessness ! At length my vision 
 faded, and I slept a heavy restful sleep 
 till sunrise. But I woke sadly oppressed 
 with the remembrance of all that I had 
 dreamt.' 
 
 I made but one comment on his story. 
 
 ' Old man, you ought never to have 
 come out to this country,' I said. 
 
 I thought about the tale now and 
 again ; then I almost forgot it till that 
 sultry evening when October was with 
 us once more. He had never spoken
 
 A FARMER'S STORY 167 
 
 to me of it since, though a few times he 
 had hinted at it, or seemed to do so. I 
 remembered the story with a start when 
 I was walking home from his sick-bed 
 on that sultry October evening. ' It's 
 just about a year ago,' I thought. 'Yes, 
 I remember the date. The moon rises 
 at twelve to-night. I wonder if this is 
 the anniversary.' It wasn't. The next 
 night was, as I have figured it out 
 since. He was much better next day, 
 and insisted on riding his donkey over 
 to my place. How pleased and proud 
 he was at the sight of his two babies ! 
 How much better his wife seemed ! I 
 went to bed with a strangely happy 
 heart. After all, this wasn't such a 
 penitential and purgatorial land, per- 
 haps, as I had been used to think it. 
 
 I woke with a start. Had I, or had I 
 not, heard a lion's roar ? A noise like it 
 was in my ears. I rose and looked out 
 of the window. The moon had risen 
 above the rocks in front of that window.
 
 168 TRIAL BY JURY: 
 
 What were yonder spot of fire and 
 yonder white-shirted figure doing on the 
 rock where I had threshed some wheat 
 only yesterday ? I went to the door. 
 As I passed my friend's bed (he had 
 chosen to sleep under the verandah), I 
 saw that he was gone. I went out to 
 the rocks and found him. There he 
 stood in the moonlight a sacrificial 
 figure, his hands uplifted. A fire was 
 beneath, on the stone. Even as I 
 watched, he turned and heaped gleam- 
 ing wood-ashes in an earthen vase before 
 him. He seemed not to feel their fiery 
 heat. Then he stood with hands up- 
 lifted again. 
 
 I didn't know what it meant at the 
 time. God forgive me! I waited 
 blindly and blankly. 
 
 Soon he had finished. He came back 
 to me with his eyes glowing. I stared 
 at him, and our eyes met. Then horrible 
 visions came into his, and troubled 
 them. He pressed his hands to his
 
 A FARMER'S STORY 169 
 
 temples. ' Sentence is executed,' he 
 said. Without another word he was 
 gone in the night. 
 
 At last I went to the fire. 
 
 You know what the native custom as 
 to twins used to be.* Well, I saw what 
 I saw in the vase under the glowing 
 wood -ashes. 
 
 The Power to whom he had been 
 delivered had passed his case on to a 
 jury of outcast spirits, and these had 
 dealt with him and sentenced him after 
 their kind. What wonder if he had 
 been tempted to act unaccountably from 
 our point of view ? I buried what was 
 left that night in secret, with such 
 honour as I might. 
 
 Next day the mother was laid by her 
 children. The father has never come 
 back to append any moral to this family 
 story. It seems to me that there are 
 more morals than one. 
 
 One moral is that if you minister to 
 * This custom, happily, is becoming obsolete.
 
 I7o TRIAL BY JURY 
 
 a mind diseased, you should use Pauline 
 discrimination in your application of a 
 Pauline anathema. 
 
 Another is, that where justice tends 
 to lose its savour, acquittal tends to lose 
 its exhilarating properties. 
 
 Another is, that the genii of the earth 
 of Africa, though not invincible, are 
 strong.
 
 XIII 
 
 ART THOU FOR US, OR FOR 
 OUR ADVERSARIES? 
 
 AN experienced and up-to-date mis- 
 sionary was making his way across the 
 wild country to the railway. He was 
 going home for rest. The missionary 
 who walked with him had come to 
 relieve him : he had little African experi- 
 ence, and had scarcely proved his man- 
 hood as yet in African adventure. So 
 he listened with some respect as his 
 companion lectured him on the policy 
 to be pursued with regard to his charges. 
 Soon it was time to part company. A 
 pleasant warmth of fare-well wishing 
 redeemed all differences and came from 
 the hearts of both of them. 
 
 The home-going traveller passed on 
 171
 
 i;2 ART THOU FOR US, 
 
 with four well-loaded carriers, his gun 
 under one arm, his Prayer-Book held in 
 hand, as he began his Evening Office. 
 The younger man rilled his pipe and lit 
 it. Then he turned back with his one 
 boy ; he took part of his load from him, 
 when his companion was safely out of 
 sight. He was going only five miles of 
 the way to his station that night ; he had 
 left two boys at the ford to make his 
 camp ready. When he reached it, just 
 as the sun was half-dipped behind rocks, 
 a fire was burning and a kettle singing. 
 He crossed himself and said his Angelus, 
 then he went to his supper. When it 
 was done, he lit his pipe and made a 
 pilgrimage up the cliff-side. It was one 
 of a range of cliffs that rises very sheerly 
 from the valley of the Sawi. On their 
 sides is iron shale in plenty : thence it is 
 that much iron for hoe-heads and spear- 
 heads is carried to be smelted. It was 
 at the foot of one of the hills that both 
 missionaries had halted at noon-day.
 
 OR FOR OUR ADVERSARIES? 173 
 
 The sun had been burning then, as the 
 younger one climbed up to gain the view 
 from the ridge. To his delight he had 
 come upon a cleft in the face of the 
 ascent, green with grass and foliage, and 
 a clear spring of water. As he had 
 drunk he had seemed to taste the iron 
 water of his own town in Kent. He 
 felt somewhat of what David felt about 
 that well by Bethlehem's gate, as he 
 thought of those Kentish springs. He 
 was glad, indeed, to revive his memories 
 of them, there in that far country. 
 
 Now at evening, when he came back 
 to drink of the water, a strong sense of 
 happiness was with him. He had felt 
 puzzled by his companion, whose out- 
 look on the life of the hills seemed so 
 different from his own. Now his com- 
 panion was gone, and had taken his 
 twentieth-century atmosphere away 
 with him. The lasting hills remained, 
 and the rustic life seemed in very little 
 peril. Far away down by the river, the
 
 174 ART THOU FOR US, 
 
 drums were beating in a kraal. A plover 
 that he had startled was crying down 
 the spruit, a jackal was yelping now and 
 then in the long grass close by. The 
 frogs were holding a concert of their 
 own; there was promise of rain before 
 many days were over. 
 
 He drank, kneeling down, and the 
 sense of imminent magic thrilled him. 
 
 It was no surprise when a bronze 
 figure came softly down the hollow 
 above the spring, brushing the charcoal 
 scrub lightly away before him. He was 
 a beautiful figure of a youth, naked but 
 for the leopard-skin about his loins and 
 the bead-fillet that bound his head. He 
 had a spear in his right hand, the handle 
 garnished with the work of the country 
 in three several colours of wire. His 
 face was of the type you sometimes see 
 in Mashonaland, the eyes soft and wist- 
 ful, the nose archly cut, an Egyptian 
 face, or Punic, or Jewish if you must 
 have a comparison with some other
 
 OR FOR OUR ADVERSARIES? 175 
 
 type, the Mashona type being so des- 
 pised. 
 
 He spoke in English, I suppose, as the 
 missionary understood him so clearly, 
 but at the time this did not seem at all 
 wonderful. After he had finished, his 
 hearer had no clear recollection of the 
 words, whether they had been Greek, or 
 Latin, or Mashona, or English. He 
 only knew that he understood very 
 perfectly, and been charmed with the 
 sound of what was said. His hearing 
 had not dwelt upon the words at all. 
 So I had better not try to set down the 
 similitude of them, but rather to give 
 their aim and argument. 
 
 He spoke of the goats and sheep, the 
 cattle and the crops, he spoke of the 
 droughts and the murrain, and of the 
 sickness that follows the east wind now 
 and again, or haunts the steaming land 
 when the rains are over. And he spoke 
 of the famines and the terror of Europe, 
 and the gun and game laws, and the
 
 176 ART THOU FOR US, 
 
 curse of the great taxing every year 
 when many of the people are caught 
 and cannot come home. He said how 
 many of the white masters are harsh 
 and a few gentle, and how many of the 
 folk draw to the few. And he revealed 
 and manifested the folk as sometimes 
 wild, shy, prone to trickery and deceit, 
 and violence unto those weaker than 
 themselves, selfish and indolent if you 
 call them to help others, but working 
 like giants if they spy their own vantage 
 close before them. Yet he told how so 
 many of them love their fathers and 
 mothers and wives and children nobly, 
 and how they are awed by death, and 
 reverence spirits, and remember the 
 dead. And he said, wisely and truly, 
 that these were to be likened to the iron 
 on the hills about them, that needs to 
 be worked in the prevailing love of the 
 fire, hour after hour, and hours after 
 that, day and night, and night and day. 
 He spoke fiercely of two missionaries
 
 OR FOR OUR ADVERSARIES? 17? 
 
 that had great farms and ruled as kings 
 not many miles away. They were not 
 kings in their own land, he said. And 
 he spoke well of two others that lived 
 poorly. He declared, not once nor twice, 
 that if the poor God that was born in a 
 stable and healed poor men freely, and 
 shares to-day with black folk as though 
 He were born in the same house with 
 them, were only to be declared, many 
 might yet believe. 
 
 ' And are you for our God ?' asked the 
 missionary curiously. ' I am for Love,' 
 he said, 'who lives among the flocks 
 and the herd-boys, and the gardens and 
 the husbandmen, and the huts and the 
 wives and mothers. Some of your 
 teachers know little of Him, while 
 others know more than the Mashona 
 folk a great deal, since they are His, 
 and He is theirs, Body and Soul.' 
 
 ' And will you help me ?' said the 
 missionary. ' I will help Him,' he 
 answered, ' whether He makes war 
 
 N
 
 i;8 ART THOU FOR US? 
 
 with you or against you. Am I not 
 of His Host ?' And with that he was 
 gone. 
 
 The missionary looked and wondered. 
 Is there any number of His Armies? 
 Can it be that there is a South-land 
 regiment in the Sabaoth of the Lord, 
 and that His angels do not all wear albs 
 and stoles of the Western Church, or 
 dress like kings in Jewry ? There was a 
 flapping in the trees right over him. He 
 rubbed his dazed eyes, and the charm of 
 the water was spent. He could see, as 
 it were, a huge hawk or owl with wide- 
 spread wings, mounting and brooding 
 and soaring over the crests of the cliffs.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE VELD FIRES: A MINER'S 
 STORY 
 
 THERE were three men going east when 
 the Fanny Mine closed down. There 
 was Jenkins, and there were Moore and 
 I. We had not spent so very ^much 
 before starting, so there was a chance 
 we might get home when once we got 
 to the railway. But there were also 
 many chances against our getting home, 
 the customs of the country being dead 
 against us. 
 
 It was June, and the fires were in full 
 swing. 
 
 We had not been in the way of seeing 
 them much, the last season or two at 
 the mine. Now the country we were 
 travelling through towards the post- 
 179 N 2
 
 i8o THE VELD FIRES: 
 
 town was a fine country to see them 
 in. 
 
 I shall never forget that last stage to 
 Zitplaaten. We had had dinner about 
 noon, when we were at the store twenty 
 miles or so away. Then we had sat an 
 hour or two over a bottle of whisky. 
 We had barely three hours of light 
 before us when we started away through 
 the Kaffir gardens. 
 
 The boys were singing here, there, 
 and everywhere along our road: their 
 time of threshing was now fully come, 
 and their sticks were drumming fiercely. 
 
 A fresh breeze came from the south- 
 east, and it was good as we came by a 
 rock-floor to see the women winnowing. 
 How briskly the grain was tossed and 
 fell in the trays, with the greenish 
 spindrift speeding away on the gusts ! 
 We stopped for a drink once or twice, 
 and lit our pipes a dozen times, but 
 there was not much comfort in them, the 
 draught being so snatchy and greedy.
 
 A MINER'S STORY 181 
 
 When we came to the gorge among the 
 rocks, the sun was setting without much 
 fuss in a cloudless sky. When we had 
 climbed over the crest and louped down 
 to the ford, the darkness was almost 
 gathering. 
 
 Afterwards, when it fell, we saw 
 things. The grass fires were burning 
 queerly and patchily that night in that 
 country-side, and one man might make 
 one thing of them, another another. I 
 know what I made of them, and I will 
 tell you, though I never said a word at 
 the time of what I saw. 
 
 We were walking single file on the 
 Kaffir path, Jenkins behind and Moore 
 in front of me. We had not said any- 
 thing since we passed the ford. Now 
 the weather was quieter, and we puffed 
 luxuriously as the stars came out, clear 
 and many, above. It was the moon's 
 black quarter, and the dark threw up 
 the glory of the fires. 
 
 Suddenly I looked and saw Charter-
 
 182 THE VELD FIRES: 
 
 house, just as it used to look up the hill 
 of nights. The lights lay along the 
 other hill above me, looking just as they 
 used to look in that last Long Quarter, 
 the one before I left. I would be 
 coming back late after school from a 
 master, with whom I read Hecuba and 
 Medea for Oxford. There was just a 
 scatter of lights that told of the houses 
 on the hill I was tramping over. Yes, 
 and behind me was the water-tower. 
 Up there was the main show ! Not so 
 many lights, but enough to show the 
 bulks of tower-tops and class-rooms and 
 cloisters. I thought about it all, and 
 wanted lots of things that might have 
 been, but now couldn't be, and made up 
 my mind as to one or two things so far 
 as I could. 
 
 Another mile, and the school was out 
 of sight. Jenkins shouted at his boy, 
 who was lagging far back in the valley, 
 and the youngster yelled in answer. I 
 was again in Rhodesia. I had been
 
 A MINER'S STORY 183 
 
 going so smoothly, knowing nothing of 
 broken path or blisters ; surely Fate takes 
 a safe and tender grasp of all remorseful 
 dreamers. 
 
 Now I put my foot out of the straight 
 way, and explored a grip to the right 
 that gave me a brutal shaking. I cried 
 out, and the others sympathised. Then 
 we pitched a sort of a camp to take stock 
 of my injuries, and fettle ourselves for 
 our last lap. 
 
 At length we got on again, and the 
 fires began to pose anew, or rather I had 
 new eyes for new fires. Now I was in 
 Oxford right enough. First I thought 
 I saw the very line of the High : there 
 was the bit with Queen's and Magdalen 
 School, and that famous curve of beauty. 
 But then, after that, I was ever so much 
 more surely by Trinity in the Broad. I 
 wasn't looking on to it like I was on to 
 the High just before. I was walking 
 down it. I saw a book-shop, and 
 some Csesars on the other side. Then
 
 184 THE VELD FIRES: 
 
 I saw the Lodge and the Iron Gates 
 coming. 
 
 There, close by me, were the Cottages, 
 with the room I had my first year in, 
 lighted through a striped blind ! 
 
 I don't think I saw anything more at 
 all distinctly, except Trinity Chapel and 
 the Archway. I know I missed the 
 Lime Walk. I began to think over 
 what I had seen, and went dizzy with 
 a qualm of sickness that would not go, 
 but clung. 
 
 When I woke up, it was black dark. 
 We were long out of the fires and almost 
 into the coach road : Jenkins and Moore 
 were cursing me with one consent for 
 not answering. When we got into town, 
 I went into the bar and had one drink 
 with them. I wouldn't have any supper 
 after that : * I'm to catch the post-cart 
 at 6.30,' I said ; ' I'm going to turn 
 in now.' 
 
 I thought the other two would make 
 a horrid row about it, but they didn't.
 
 A MINER'S STORY 185 
 
 Moore said he was coming too. He 
 came to his own doss in the same dirty 
 little shed of floor-boards and iron. 
 Jenkins said he was going to make a 
 night of it, but he didn't badger us to 
 stay. 
 
 When I was called by the fat barman 
 at five, I did not seem to have been 
 asleep very long. Jenkins had come in 
 making a ghastly row just before some 
 cocks crowed. I wasn't rightly awake 
 when he came hauling and howling at 
 me. Soon someone had pulled him off 
 and out of the room ; there had been a 
 great banging and cursing. Then I had 
 dozed off. 
 
 When I got up, the dawn was just 
 coming. I was dressed before Moore 
 turned out. 
 
 Jenkins had shown fight, I was told, 
 and I had better not go near him: it 
 was touch and go whether he would be 
 in the rats before the day was out. 
 
 It didn't seem the game leaving him
 
 186 THE VELD FIRES: 
 
 so, but I knew what I'd vowed to do 
 last night, and this seemed about the 
 only chance. I paid the barman to send 
 me a wire at Bulawayo, and another if 
 needed at Cape Town. He would get 
 our mate into hospital, supposing it 
 wanted doing, and he would tell me how 
 he fared. 
 
 Then, in the first fresh ardour of the 
 sun on the metal roofs, with the white 
 frost spangling the unburnt grass at the 
 roadside, we started. 
 
 As our mules jingled along, I was 
 dreaming another sort of dream great 
 part of that day. The blue heavens 
 smiled over the dead black of the plains, 
 and somehow I seemed back in Essex 
 snows on a fine Christmas morning. 
 The black winter brought back the 
 white winter somehow, and I was home 
 thus early in my trek. 
 
 At Bulawayo there was a wire with 
 bad news of Jenkins, in the rats un- 
 doubtedly.
 
 A MINER'S STORY 187 
 
 At Cape Town there was news of the 
 end. We were both of us cut up a good 
 deal, but we kept steady. Moore puzzled 
 me; he seemed to have made up his 
 mind, just as I had, to take no risks, 
 but to try and get home for certain this 
 time, if only the way were not barred. 
 
 When we had been on the boat about 
 fourteen days, we talked a little of what 
 had happened. It was twelve o'clock ; 
 the bells had just gone for midnight, 
 and the watch been changed. 
 
 It was sultry indeed. The sea glowed 
 in lava about the keel as we looked over. 
 The stars above looked feverish. I 
 talked about what I had seen in the 
 fires, and how I had made up my mind 
 not to lose my chance to get home. To 
 my surprise, Moore told me that he had 
 seen things himself that other night. 
 
 ' I saw the old railway junction where 
 I used to work, almost as plain as I see 
 you,' he said.
 
 i88 THE VELD FIRES 
 
 ' I wish Jenkins had seen something 
 to fetch him home,' said I. 
 
 ' He did see something,' Moore said. 
 ' He told me that last night when you 
 were out of the room. He told me he 
 saw hell fires, and they'd got on his 
 nerves. I do believe they helped to 
 make him play the goat so.' 
 
 Those are wonderful mirages that the 
 fires contrive in the wilderness. 
 
 If there is anyone who scoffs at this 
 story, let him go in June thither, to see 
 such sights, remorseful or complacent, 
 as the night may show him !
 
 XV 
 
 THE SCALES OF PASSION : A 
 FRIEND'S STORY 
 
 ' All breathing human passion far above, 
 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, 
 A burning forehead and a parching tongue.' 
 
 KEATS. 
 
 HE was sitting in a boat far up the 
 Upper River it was near Cassington, I 
 think when he propounded to me the 
 theory of the Scales of Passion. Hay 
 was being made in a meadow close by, 
 and the breeze was in the right quarter. 
 What with the scent and the shade and 
 the sunlight and the running water, we 
 were well off indeed that June afternoon. 
 I was so well contented that I was in no 
 mood to criticise fiercely. The theory 
 was a pleasant enough one, and it mean- 
 189
 
 igo THE SCALES OF PASSION: 
 
 dered on and on, while I lay and smoked 
 and wondered not a little. It was to 
 this effect : 
 
 Passion in pure and fervent souls is 
 active, not quiescent ; but it is balanced. 
 Read the Passion of St. Agnes in the 
 Acts of the Martyrs. Her desire here 
 on earth, both pure and fervent, is for 
 Christ in Glory. Therefore she lives in 
 the Church of her Beloved here on earth, 
 as not content with possessing Him 
 therein. Follow that same martyr to 
 the other side of death. Assuredly you 
 will find that her desire is now to Christ, 
 who is in poverty on the earth that she 
 has left. Until consummation come, 
 and the transcending change of our 
 natures, it will always be so. 
 
 St. Michael, or whoever is the weigher 
 and appraiser of human souls, contrives 
 this balance of the Scales of Passion 
 the everlasting dissatisfaction of some 
 souls with their own satisfaction, the 
 ebb and flow of fervent tides of self-
 
 A FRIEND'S STORY 191 
 
 sacrifice between two worlds that have 
 need of one another. 
 
 My friend spoke with a real conviction, 
 and he had a dainty trick of style in 
 presentment. So I heard his theory 
 out with patience, though it seemed to 
 me perverse and fanciful. 
 
 'What practical good or sense is 
 coming after all this demonstration ?' I 
 asked him. 
 
 He hesitated. ' Well, it's true,' he 
 said ; ' and it's always good to hear 
 any truth nowadays that anyone's quite 
 sure about. I'm quite sure about this 
 theory.' 
 
 ' How can you be ?' I said. ' You 
 haven't been to and fro, and sampled 
 these two worlds you are theorising 
 about.' 
 
 He looked puzzled. His grey eyes 
 had that quaint look I have often seen 
 in them, the harking-back sign, the 
 shrinking of the pupils all of a sudden 
 in a forced march of memory.
 
 192 THE SCALES OF PASSION: 
 
 ' No, I can't be quite sure,' he ad- 
 mitted after a pause. ' I am arguing 
 from my own experience, which isn't 
 very pure or very fervent, and I am 
 arguing from feelings about two ends of 
 this one and the same world. Yet I'm 
 sure I'm about right.' 
 
 I laughed. ' You have made a man's 
 retractation, but covered and gone behind 
 it like a girl,' I said. 
 
 So we argued on, drawing away as it 
 turned out from the real subject we 
 were both interested in. I never drew 
 from him on that day any real personal 
 experiences as to the Scales of Passion. 
 
 I would rather not tell you the name 
 of this friend of mine. He was reading 
 in libraries and writing books (that were 
 not destined to be very popular) in 
 Oxford. He had won a prize fellowship. 
 He was in his right place, I felt, just 
 where he was. He would be wise, as I 
 thought, in settling down in Oxford and 
 marrying. Yet for selfish reasons I was
 
 A FRIEND'S STORY 193 
 
 glad enough that he delayed. I managed 
 to see much of him meanwhile, with a 
 fear often in the background as to our 
 time together beginning at last to grow 
 short. 
 
 I went back to my work in the country 
 the very day after that river scene. 
 
 We were not to take up the same 
 subject for a very long time. I am not 
 given to letter-writing on abstract sub- 
 jects, nor in those days was he. As it 
 turned out, I was not to see him again 
 till I went up in the first week of the 
 New Year. It was snowy then, and 
 night fires were very comfortable. It 
 was after dinner on the third night that 
 we found ourselves with nothing much 
 to do and no intrusive friends. He 
 stirred up the logs and lit his pipe. He 
 settled me in his best arm-chair. Then 
 at last he told me much that was in his 
 mind, without using many words to 
 tell it. 
 
 ' It's this way,' he said. ' I was born 
 
 o
 
 194 THE SCALES OF PASSION : 
 
 in Africa a wild part in the Transkei. 
 My father worked for the natives, and I 
 want to take up his work in another part 
 of Africa. I can't explain to you well 
 the whole host of attractions. Of course 
 there is the main reason that one ought 
 to go and do what one may. Then 
 there are many spells and charms. The 
 thatched villages, the country people, 
 who might have stepped out of Theo- 
 critus if their skins were fairer. Spring, 
 summer, autumn, winter! Hoeing, 
 weeding, harvesting, threshing, and 
 garnering. The cattle and the goats 
 herded under the spread of sky with its 
 great winds and storms and stars ! Here 
 in Oxford I think much of that waste 
 country, where I don't think my life 
 would be wasted.' 
 
 ' And are you wasting it here ?' I 
 asked him gloomily. ' You have taken 
 root rather deeply, I should say.' 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, ' I know that. I know 
 when I get out there my desire will be
 
 A FRIEND'S STORY 195 
 
 towards this paradise. But that will do 
 me good, as I conceive.' 
 
 ' I don't see why,' I answered. ' I 
 should find it very distracting out there 
 to be always craving to be back again.' 
 
 ' You don't understand my theory of 
 life,' he said. ' Don't you remember 
 what I said about the Scales of Passion ? 
 You didn't understand then what I 
 meant about my own experience. I 
 will try and tell you now. I was arguing 
 about the desires of earnest people (here 
 and in the world hereafter) stretching 
 from world to world. I was really 
 arguing from my own experience of the 
 craving I feel in Oxford for Africa, and 
 that I used to feel long ago in Africa 
 for Oxford.' 
 
 He told me of his night rides and 
 trampings over the Veld of old. Strange 
 it seemed to me that he had told me so 
 little of these in all our years of friend- 
 ship. He told me how he would know 
 Arnold's Oxford poems by heart. How 
 
 O 2
 
 196 THE SCALES OF PASSION : 
 
 he, a true gipsy scholar, would wander 
 among those native gipsies, sleep in 
 their huts, or by their camp fires, with 
 the desire of Oxford in his heart. He 
 wasn't sure then whether he had known 
 Oxford in some pre-natal state or not. 
 He sometimes felt really sure that he 
 had. He was glad of his desire and his 
 dream in those far-back African years 
 of waiting. He told me that he thought 
 they had helped him to true sympathy 
 with the Theocritean life of pagan 
 Africans, and with the mediaeval glamour 
 of African Christianity. 
 
 Then at last he had come to Oxford 
 in the flesh. Consequently, in due course 
 the higher desire of his heart went back in 
 its homing journey to scenes and peoples 
 he had left in Africa. He had walked 
 Trinity Lime Walk and planned arcades 
 of the crimson-budded Kaffir-tree in 
 some future Oxford of the Africans. 
 He had watched English country life in 
 those Upper River villages, and planned
 
 A FRIEND'S STORY 197 
 
 to deliver his own rustics from European 
 violence, fraud, and contempt. 
 
 He had worshipped before the All 
 Souls' reredos and seen the vision of the 
 souls of Africa. 
 
 He had watched that inscrutable 
 Christ of all times and all races in the 
 Keble picture, and yearned towards the 
 rejected Black Christ with new glows of 
 devotion. 
 
 Now this New Year the turn of time 
 had come in its due course, as it seemed 
 to him. 
 
 ' I am sailing after Easter, I hope. 
 Times go by turns, and the time for my 
 journey has come.' 
 
 I was very sorry for myself when I 
 heard him. But I saw that he was 
 right, and I had the grace to say so, 
 rather grudgingly. 
 
 I marvelled that I had not grasped 
 his theory of life better all this time, 
 having known him so well and so long. 
 
 He went ten years ago now, and I
 
 198 THE SCALES OF PASSION : 
 
 have only seen him for a week or two 
 in one year of those ten. But he has 
 grown into a steadfast letter-writer, and 
 his desire is to England and Oxford 
 still. Will a new turn of the times 
 come to him ? I do not think it will in 
 our life-time now, for his work seems to 
 twist itself tightly about him as the 
 years go by. 
 
 Yet he means coming for awhile this 
 very year, and I hope he may come 
 again and again, once at least for every 
 lustre that we shall live to see. His 
 last letter was a rhapsody, the greater 
 part of it, on the old lines. He was 
 speaking of Oxford and Africa, of earth 
 and purgatory. 
 
 He gave thanks that among all the 
 noble orderings of God none seemed 
 nobler than that of the balance of the 
 Scales of Passion. He said he was very 
 thankful for his divided heart. It had 
 kept him from ever so many perils or 
 dubieties he instanced matrimony, con-
 
 A FRIEND'S STORY 199 
 
 servatism, the new criticism, the new 
 imperialism, the new drama, charity 
 organisation. I am sure that I have got 
 to know him to more real purpose in 
 these ten years of his absence than in 
 those ten years of friendship that went 
 before them, when we lived so often 
 side by side. His treasure seems fated 
 to be in the other of his two worlds. If 
 he is in Africa you should look for it 
 in England. ' Where your treasure is, 
 there will your heart be also.' I had 
 better stay where I am, probably, if I 
 want to read and rejoice in the heart of 
 my friend.
 
 XVI 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 IT was a cold winter season when John 
 Service began to build. He was on a 
 lonely trading station in the Karuma 
 range lonely, that is to say, as being 
 remote from people of his own race: 
 there were people enough of the race 
 who dealt with him settled around. 
 That year was not a good trading year, 
 and John Service's returns to his em- 
 ployers were scanty. But he was not 
 particularly depressed, he did not indeed 
 take any particular note of his failing 
 custom. He had traded in this same 
 place year after year, now doing well, 
 now indifferently. He had grown to 
 regard himself as a fixture. 
 Therefore with but few misgivings 
 200
 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 201 
 
 and much happy confidence, he began 
 to build. He was engaged to the second 
 daughter of the house on a farm twenty 
 miles away. She was very young, and 
 very dainty, and the thought of her 
 made him fastidious in his architecture 
 and in his execution of detail. He 
 designed a very long body to his house, 
 with a round tower at each end that 
 gave to the whole face of the building 
 an African expression. He was very 
 neat in his finish, or he would have been, 
 I think, had he seen the work through. 
 He was saving as he might for his 
 marriage, so he did not spend much on 
 hiring labour, he worked very hard 
 himself. 
 
 The walls were of solid earth worked 
 in a timber frame with a promise of 
 splendid durability if only they should 
 be well covered, and he meant that they 
 should be. He amassed a mighty stack 
 of cleaned grass by trading salt for it. 
 Slowly it grew to grand proportions. By
 
 202 THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 the time it did, the doors of stout floor- 
 boards that had come by waggon from 
 the township were ready. There had 
 also come some very ample windows that 
 were the admiration of his customers. 
 These were laid by to wait for the day 
 when the roofs should be finished. 
 
 He had hired a coloured driver an 
 old bricklayer's labourer to build the 
 great chimney of fired bricks for him. 
 It was cunningly built out, that there 
 might be no fear of fire about it. When 
 it was finished, Marofu, who had chosen 
 fine hard-wood poles, began to fix the 
 roof-timbers. Marofu was Service's 
 Mashona factotum and a carpenter of 
 considerable parts. Service did not 
 stint him in nails, and the cross-timber 
 was lavishly done. Then just as the first 
 rains were threatening, the architect 
 and master-builder began to thatch. He 
 took pride in his thatching : he had taken 
 lessons long ago in Essex, where they 
 use good wheaten straw, from a thatcher
 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 203 
 
 of the old school. Now with picked 
 grass of the Veld he worked almost 
 pauselessly from dawn to dark, while 
 Marofu took charge of his trading. 
 
 He finished the long ridge of the main 
 roof with its deep eaves, he finished the 
 eaved dome to east, he had almost 
 finished the eaved dome to west, well 
 enough to cover the earthen walls from 
 a deluge, when the news came. 
 
 The news ! It came so suddenly by 
 the mail it seemed, somehow, part of 
 the first storm of the year that burst in 
 the afternoon of that mail-day. The 
 news came from Rosebery, a hundred 
 miles off, and was as bad in one way as 
 it could well be. The store was to be 
 closed down at the end of the trading 
 season in a month's time, and John 
 Service was free to seek another sphere. 
 He had been foolish with the folly of 
 youth to count so recklessly on the next 
 year, and on the next after that. Now 
 his very days were numbered.
 
 204 THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 He sent me over a line to tell me, 
 and I came those eight miles, and beheld 
 the glory of his house. I had seen the 
 walls but beginning to rise the last time 
 I came. Now I saw the glory of the 
 work a glory condemned to desola- 
 tion. 
 
 ' Can't you knock out a living on your 
 own here ?' I said. 
 
 He sighed. ' Don't you think I'd 
 stay if I had the least little hope of it ? 
 But I'm going.' He took me into the 
 big undivided room and showed me a 
 wonderful frieze a native (he was good 
 friends with natives) had designed for 
 him. It looked like white crayon work, 
 but it was executed with tsengo roots, 
 roots that natives grow in swampy 
 places. The designs of beasts and birds 
 and hunters were much as in the so- 
 called ' Bushmen ' paintings you find 
 here and there throughout the country ; 
 the dappling of the leopards was espe- 
 cially well conceived, and a study of a
 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 205 
 
 baboon in simple white was strangely 
 lifelike. 
 
 Then he showed me the carving of 
 the lintels, and the coloured wire-work 
 that had been begun on the verandah 
 pillars. 
 
 He did not say much, but he said 
 enough to show me something of what 
 he felt. ' I'm going to send back the 
 windows,' he said; 'they'll take them 
 back all right, I know. How long will 
 the house be falling to pieces, I wonder, 
 with no one here ? You might have 
 thought that Marofu would be glad of 
 this house, but he isn't. He's a be- 
 nighted heathen, and he doesn't like 
 this place. Says that people lived here 
 long ago and found much sickness ; that 
 there are many graves.' ' Why,' I said, 
 ' there are kraals all round.' ' But not 
 just here,' Service said reflectively. It 
 was true. The house stood on a high 
 rocky platform with a stream on either 
 side: the streams mingled a mile beneath.
 
 2o6 THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 Across either stream there were villages. 
 There were two villages not far from the 
 trading store on the south side. There 
 were two villages, one on the brow and 
 one in the valley beneath, to the north. 
 But the platform itself was a desolate 
 place save for the new house that stood 
 so proudly forlorn. 
 
 ' Doubtless it's all for the best,' I said. 
 ' You'd have been sorrier had you buried 
 a wife and a child here.' 
 
 Then after he had given me some tea, 
 and talked about his plans, or want of 
 plans, rather despairingly, I said good- 
 bye, and started for my home. He 
 came my way when he went for good. 
 ' I'll give you the house so far as a man 
 may,' he said. ' The place is our Native 
 Reserve. I should apply for a ten-acre 
 grant if I were you. The house itself is 
 built on what was a glorious little patch 
 of mealie ground. There must have 
 been graves or something about, things 
 grew with such a will there. I paid the
 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 207 
 
 owner two pounds last tax time when 
 he was hard up, and he was pleased 
 enough to sell me the rights of the 
 ground, so far as he was concerned. 
 But don't say another word about the 
 place now, I do beseech you. I'm 
 rather sore.' 
 
 I thought over what he had said, but 
 I did not act upon it that year. I had 
 my own work at hand. Why should I 
 want to live eight miles away ? But I 
 passed that way twice before the year 
 went out. 
 
 The first time I went, dusk was 
 deepening a grey November dusk. 
 
 I had come from the south past a 
 hill's shoulder when suddenly the great 
 bulk of the house loomed before me. 
 
 Cheerless and fireless it stood up there, 
 and I thought what might have been 
 the light just being lit for eventide, the 
 fire crackling up the chimney, John 
 smoking his pipe beside it, my hostess 
 hurrying to make me a cup of tea. I
 
 ao8 THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 filled my pipe and lit it, and I went 
 away sorrowful. 
 
 The next time I passed that way I 
 went on the morning after Christmas. I 
 was making for a farm ten miles beyond 
 it. I had finished my duties in church 
 very early, and I hurried over my break- 
 fast. I had brought one native com- 
 panion with me, and we had a kettle 
 with us and some food. 
 
 Now as I came on that would-be 
 castle of delight something inspired me 
 to go in and make a further breakfast 
 there. 
 
 It was a little lonely within. 
 
 A toad hopped to and fro, and a 
 lizard darted up and down one wall. 
 
 As the fire shone on the hearth, I 
 looked into one or two dark corners 
 watchfully. But there were no ghosts 
 there, or I did not see them. The place 
 seemed pleased to see me, a shell of a 
 place, a poor dead body. The kindling
 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 209 
 
 of that fire seemed to put a spark of life 
 into it. 
 
 Early in the new year a thought came. 
 If I could not live there myself, some- 
 one better might. So we made a church 
 of the place at Candlemas, ere Christ- 
 mastide was gone by. ' The Church of 
 the Holy Family,' we called it. It 
 made a good church. In the eastern 
 dome the Family Board was set, and in 
 the western dome the Bowl of Adoption, 
 and in the long body of the house boys 
 and girls met together and were taught 
 the Family Tradition and the obligation 
 of the Family Honour, and the Arcana 
 and Mysteria of the Household. 
 
 I would come there every week as a 
 rule, and after awhile another came and 
 lived where the old store had stood. 
 Then the candles would burn every 
 morning and every evening, and the 
 place looked cheerful and friendly all 
 the year round. 
 
 As to John Service, things seem to 
 
 p
 
 2io THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 have gone well with him since his old 
 dark days, and not a little because of 
 them. 
 
 For he wandered about awhile seek- 
 ing work, and finding none he went 
 home to take up a share in a fruit 
 farm. 
 
 There he did well, and came out for 
 his Jacomina, who had been disappointed 
 of that first home. The home he offered 
 her in Worcestershire, though not so 
 romantically lonely as that first home 
 would have been, was by no means 
 urban, and they could both indulge their 
 rural tastes therein. Service told her 
 about it when he came out for her, and 
 she agreed to go back with him. 
 
 Thus it came about that they crossed 
 the threshold of their first home that 
 was to be very joyously. 
 
 They were married in the Mission 
 Church of the Holy Family ere they 
 took train and boat for England. Many 
 of the villagers were in the church or
 
 THE OPEN HOUSE 211 
 
 outside. The day was a Christmas 
 Day. 
 
 ' But the chimney ?' he asked, as we 
 went over to the site of his old store. 
 The Mission house there provided the 
 guest-chamber of their wedding break- 
 fast. 
 
 ' The south tower,' I said. ' I admit 
 we don't use it very often just for a 
 few family festivals. This is one.' 
 
 In the evening bride and bridegroom 
 came back to the church again. 
 
 The Christmas-tree was planted in 
 the church German-fashion. We sang 
 carols; then the presents were given 
 away from the glowing branches. They 
 were both pleased, bride and bridegroom. 
 They sat by the lighted hearth holding 
 one another's hands, and watching the 
 children, Marofu's and the rest. 
 
 When we came back to the Mission 
 house we found a trader and his carriers 
 had dropped in to share our hospitality. 
 
 ' It gave me quite a start,' he said, 
 
 P 2
 
 212 THE OPEN HOUSE 
 
 ' coming round the corner of the kopje 
 to see a big homestead with all the lights 
 flaring for Christmas. It put me back 
 in the old country. You don't see many 
 such sights out here.' 
 
 The other day John Service wrote to 
 me from Worcestershire. He said, ' I 
 think I have got bigger views of things 
 than I used to have. Once it made me 
 a trifle bitter to think of my luck, losing 
 my job just as I was getting the poor 
 little house into shape. Now I have 
 seen your happy family at Christmas, 
 and it's bigger than mine would ever 
 have been. " The greater good of the 
 greater number " there's something in 
 that. Also Jacomina and the child seem 
 very healthy in the west country. There, 
 at the home I planned, they might by 
 now be dead of fever. Whereas your 
 Mother and your Child are alive for ever- 
 more. Plenty and peace and length of 
 days then be to your Open House !'
 
 XVII 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 IT was the Eve itself, and the year was 
 the current year. I keep it carefully all 
 years, this Eve, not only in memory of 
 the Saint herself, and her illuminators, 
 Keats and Tennyson, but in memory of 
 a bygone romance of my own that is 
 not so remote as theirs. 
 
 This year the anniversary fell upon 
 the day when I had planned to leave 
 my mission station for a four months' 
 homeward journey. 
 
 The still and soft light that comes 
 before a fine sunrise following days of 
 rain was in our church, as I stood at 
 our High Altar ministering. 
 
 Some of the peace and hope and 
 yearning of the day's legend came to 
 213
 
 214 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 me in gleams as the sun rose and the 
 mystery of Sacrifice culminated. When 
 I had left the church, I called at the 
 Sisters' house to say farewell. 
 
 Sister Irene received me with an air 
 of resignation. I had tried her much 
 these last days which had been days 
 of holiday-making for the boys and girls 
 of our mission. 
 
 ' You had better come and see Agnese. 
 Tell her to cheer up, and make herself 
 contented. She must not make an 
 upset, even if Stefano should come 
 back to-morrow. Now you are gone, 
 she cannot well be married until the 
 Archdeacon comes for Easter.' I went 
 and saw Agnese. She had put on a 
 clean white toga, or whatever the right 
 name for that sort of long robe is, and 
 looked quite dazzling. But her big 
 eyes were very sad. She was sitting 
 by the wood-fire in the girls' round 
 kitchen, while a diligent younger sister 
 swept around.
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 215 
 
 ' O Agnese, how can you be so idle ?' 
 said Sister Irene. But she went away 
 and left us, without edifying us further. 
 
 * O Agnese !' I said, ' so Stefano has 
 never come. I suppose he won't come 
 in time for me to marry you two. I 
 must be off to town now ; I am leaving 
 there in the morning. You will have 
 to wait for your marriage now a weary 
 while.' 
 
 She began to cry. 
 
 I said a word or two of Christ's own. 
 Then I told her the wisdom of her own 
 St. Agnese. Of course she knew about 
 the Angel and the white robe, and the 
 suitor's blinded eyes. I had been telling 
 of these in church only that morning. 
 Now I went on to tell her about the 
 legendary wisdom of the season about 
 'Agnes 1 dreams, the sweetest of the 
 year.' I told her about the going 
 supperless to rest, the couching supine, 
 the not daring to look behind * lest all 
 the charm be fled.'
 
 216 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 I was not dogmatic, but I spoke 
 sanguinely, I wanted to cheer her. The 
 rapt way she hung upon my lips made 
 me careful to assure her I was not 
 speaking with the authority of the 
 Gospel. But I think I really brightened 
 her, and persuaded her to try hard to 
 please Sister Irene, and to wait with 
 patience ; I would intercede for her, I 
 promised, and try hard to help her to a 
 speedy wedding. I said good-bye and 
 left her it might be to sleep that night 
 ' in lap of legends old.' I kept my own 
 counsel, and did not enlighten Sister 
 Irene as to the romantic turn my parting 
 counsels had taken. 
 
 Soon I was off. I had an English 
 wedding to solemnise at the town some 
 twelve miles away. Agnese came with 
 others of Sister Irene's girls to open 
 her lips, and rap her cheeks, and shrill 
 a wild farewell to me. 
 
 Long after I failed to distinguish 
 her companions, I could see her
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 217 
 
 perched on a rock and waving ecstati- 
 cally. 
 
 On the road, remorse came to me, 
 and I reproached myself. I ought to 
 be more careful, I thought. These 
 young Mashona people take things so 
 simply. Agnese may have no vision 
 to-night, or not the right vision, then 
 how sad she will be. She may think 
 she has done something out of the way 
 wrong, and be more unhappy. 
 
 ' Do use a little more forethought in 
 dealing with my children !' The words 
 were Sister Irene's. 
 
 I need not dwell long on the English 
 wedding. Suffice it that the couple 
 drove off in bright sunlight early that 
 afternoon. They were to spend their 
 honeymoon at the bridegroom's own 
 homestead. 
 
 The bridegroom was rather Byronic 
 in appearance, but he was respectable 
 and good-tempered ; the bride was a 
 little fair-haired Dutch girl.
 
 2i8 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 The wedding-party talked and laughed 
 with the uproarious gaiety of middling 
 colonial society. Art, poetry, religious 
 idealism those imperious winds these 
 vex its shallow waters seldom. The 
 hard work that, I imagine, sweetens 
 and seasons English society in Canada, 
 is but a Kaffir concern too often in South 
 Africa. 
 
 The scandals simmered, the factions 
 of the two or three castes in our tiny 
 white community were adjusted, picnics, 
 frocks, the delinquencies of native 
 servants, the good things of the table, 
 were discussed with touching serious- 
 ness. 
 
 At last we had recourse to a gramo- 
 phone. After preliminary scrapings the 
 strong voice of Mr. Willie Carver of the 
 Cambridge Theatre of Varieties was 
 heard in recitative and refrain. His 
 wit did not equal his reputation, or was 
 it that it had eluded the skill of its 
 recorder? Or was it, again, that the
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 219 
 
 climate was unsuited to its keeping 
 qualities ? 
 
 At last, I got away into the garden. 
 
 I had a ten minutes' discussion of 
 * The Martyrdom of Christabel ' with 
 Mrs. Champain. I was plied with tea 
 and cake by my hostess, Mrs. Clinker, 
 a woman who really looks after her 
 children and her home. (' O si sic 
 omnes!') I listened to Mr. Durward's 
 views on how to corner the grain of the 
 district, while Mrs. Norham and Miss 
 Castle close by interspersed anecdotes of 
 Miss Surrey's hauteur and impropriety. 
 It was time to be going ; the sun was 
 low indeed. 
 
 Then it was that Annie Severn, the 
 sister of the bridegroom (she was as 
 fair as he was dark), came and spoke to 
 me. She had had rather a dull day, I 
 gathered. She wanted me to come up 
 again after dinner, to Mrs. Clinker's, 
 and talk over her plans with her. She 
 was an English girl who had only come
 
 220 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 out six months ago to keep house for 
 her brother before he was engaged. She 
 had been assigned in betrothal by Mrs. 
 Norham to at least three of our six 
 fairly eligible bachelors. But that was 
 not her fault. 
 
 ' How I hate it !' she said, as we sat 
 on the stoep after dinner. ' They think 
 I came all the way from England to 
 keep house for Leonard with the usual 
 
 intention. They say Mrs. had 
 
 a wedding - dress in her trunk, and 
 
 Miss was contracted for, by her 
 
 sister, before ever she arrived. So 
 they won't believe in any sort of dis- 
 claimer. 
 
 ' I don't want to be really uncharit- 
 able. But I don't think I was brought 
 up judiciously enough to admire colonial 
 society. I like to be sure my brother's 
 friends will be sober when they come to 
 call.' 
 
 I smiled sadly. ' You had better get 
 home/ I said, ' now Leonard's married.
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 221 
 
 Write to Cape Town to-morrow and 
 arrange which Line. I don't think 
 you'd be very happy out here. We 
 don't seem to get the right sort some- 
 how, though we do fly the English 
 
 She looked at me. It is curious 
 how particular black faces resemble 
 particular white faces; her face was 
 finely cut, she had bright hair and 
 grey eyes, but the expression and cast 
 of her features was almost Agnese's 
 own. 
 
 ' You seem fairly happy,' she said. 
 
 ' Yes, but I have my call and my 
 work. I don't live in a little country 
 town (you remember what Tennyson 
 said about the little country town) or 
 depend much on its society. I depend 
 on the Veld a great deal.' 
 
 'Why shouldn't I live on the Veld, 
 and have my call and my work ?' she 
 said. ' I have arranged it all with your 
 Bishop. I am to help Sister Irene and
 
 222 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Sister Maud that is, if they or you 
 don't demur.' 
 
 I was astonished. The grim material 
 clouds of Africa seemed to lift. I looked 
 out from the stoep at the stars. 
 
 The gramophone in the parlour was 
 making some amends for the afternoon's 
 debauch of Willy Carver. It was play- 
 ing a setting of the fifteenth century an 
 A ve Maria an air with a throb in it. 
 'Do you know?' Annie went on, 'this 
 is St. Agnes' Eve. I learnt about it 
 at school. Not that they used to take 
 much account of Saints' days there. 
 But Keats and Tennyson both happen 
 to have written about it, and we had a 
 nineteenth century Poetry prize. I used 
 to know Keats' Eve by heart, and dream 
 about it. And, as for Tennyson's, I 
 painted a picture of it that was not 
 so bad as other things I've painted. I 
 used to think a lot about Keats' version. 
 That didn't come true, as once I thought 
 it might. Tennyson's version is going
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 223 
 
 to come true, so help me God ! Now 
 you must be off, as you start so early. 
 Good-bye.' 
 
 I strolled back towards my corrugated 
 iron-roofed lodging. As I went, I said 
 the lines over to myself about the 
 convent and the convent-towers, and 
 the robes, and the snow, and the taper, 
 and the moon, and the stars, and the 
 Lamb. 
 
 How often had I come to this little 
 town expecting nothing, or worse than 
 nothing, in the way of heavenly aspira- 
 tion. Doubtless my want of expecta- 
 tion, and reverence, and hope, had 
 blinded my eyes to many glories. Now, 
 after a rather cynical afternoon, I had 
 come face to face with a splendour I 
 had seen the glory of one in love with 
 Love Himself. 
 
 When I was back in the front bed- 
 room at the hotel a rather blank 
 place I lighted my pipe and lay on the 
 bed wondering.
 
 224 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 A knock at the door came. 
 
 It was Stefano, a very lithe and very 
 tall Mashona Stefano who had been 
 working at Bulawayo ; Stefano for 
 whom Agnese waited. 
 
 'You should have been here yester- 
 day, Stefano,' I said. 'Yesterday I 
 wanted to marry you and Agnese before 
 I went away. Now I must be off early 
 to-morrow. Therefore Agnese weeps.' 
 Then Stefano told me how it was not 
 his fault that he was late. He did not 
 know of the haste of my setting-out for 
 my home. 
 
 ' What shall I do ?' he said; ' my heart 
 is very sad, Father.' 
 
 I considered. Then I said ; ' Are you 
 very tired, Stefano ?' 
 
 ' No,' he said, ' for I have come but 
 a little way to-day. I did not hurry. 
 I stayed with my kindred outside the 
 town, not knowing your tidings. How 
 should I know that you were going forth 
 so soon ?'
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 225 
 
 I said, ' Go, if you will, Stefano, 
 and wake Agnese, and, if she is fain, 
 bring her hither. So I may wed you 
 in the Location Church at the sunrise, 
 before my setting forth.' 
 
 Stefano was overjoyed. * I will go,' 
 he said. 
 
 ' Listen,' said I, ' Agnese sleeps in the 
 kitchen now, by the ordering of Sister 
 Irene, and she sleeps alone. To-night 
 is a blessed night. To-morrow is the 
 day of the girl Agnese who refused the 
 heathen man, and chose our Lord. 
 Our people have a story that girls who 
 fast and pray and order themselves 
 rightly to-night may see good dreams 
 of the boys that shall marry them. 
 Agnese, I think, will go to sleep to-night 
 with the hope that she may see you in 
 her dream.' 
 
 Stefano smiled. ' I will not frighten 
 her or harm her,' he said; ' I will take 
 care of her, Father. I will play a little 
 song on the marimba that she loves,
 
 226 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 that I may awake her just a few harp- 
 ings.' 
 
 ' A very few,' I said. ' Remember 
 Sister Irene.' Even Stefano looked a 
 little awed. 
 
 ' I will be very careful,' he explained. 
 'The great dog of the Sister is my 
 friend. Do you think that he will bark 
 much when he sees that it is I ? It is 
 good that Agnese sleeps in the kitchen. 
 The Sister will not hear. For it is far 
 from her house.' 
 
 ' Mind she does not. She will think 
 you are a thief, and set Raphael the 
 teacher to bring his gun to you. She 
 will loose her small and hungry dog.' 
 I remembered that dog's teeth in my 
 own shin. 
 
 Stefano laughed. ' She will not 
 know,' he said. ' If God be pleased, I 
 will make Agnese a feast in the kitchen, 
 and then we will come by the light of 
 the great moon. Look for us before 
 the sun rises.'
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 227 
 
 ' It is well, Stefano,' I said. ' Now, 
 do not disturb the good Sisters. More- 
 over, I pray you, take great care of 
 Agnese.' 
 
 He went, and I was not long in turn- 
 ing into bed. 
 
 I drew up the blind so that the first 
 of the light might reach me. What a 
 grand moon there was to-night ! I 
 thought of that high and triple-arched 
 casement, and that splendid scutcheon, 
 and of Madeline. Then I thought of a 
 round dome of a hut (with perhaps a 
 crevice in one wall for the moon to 
 shine through) where Agnese knelt, her 
 small silver cross suffused with glory : 
 soon she stretched herself on her reed- 
 mat, and gathering up her blanket, 
 covered her face. Meanwhile, her fire 
 burnt up again, the sticks crackled and 
 the firelight danced in the moonshine. 
 With that pleasant dance before my 
 eyes, I fell asleep. 
 
 I started and looked at the time. It 
 
 G 2
 
 228 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 was a quarter to four. I turned again. 
 At half-past four I woke with a start, 
 and began to dress. There came a 
 knock at the door. ' The girl is here,' 
 said Stefano. Agnese looked happy. 
 
 I questioned her as to the story of the 
 night. She said she woke with the 
 moon shining through a hole in the wall, 
 and Stefano was playing the marimba 
 softly, and she was very glad. ' Then 
 I began to cry,' she said, ' for I knew 
 that our priest was gone away, and I 
 did not mean to be married like the 
 heathen. Therefore I bade Stefano to 
 go away.' 
 
 ' But I told her of the wedding at 
 sunrise,' said Stefano, ' and forthwith 
 made her a feast. Was it not good to 
 make her a feast, Father?' 
 
 'A feast!' I sighed. 'Was it a 
 heap 
 
 Of candied apple, quince and plum, and gourd; 
 With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
 And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon ?'
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 229 
 
 Stefano looked doubtful. ' Father, 
 we had bread, and a tin of beef, and 
 coffee and sugar,' he said. ' We were 
 hungry.' 
 
 I reflected that the little-known has a 
 savour of romance. To me locusts and 
 wild honey suggested faerylands forlorn, 
 to Stefano they were commonplace ; to 
 me bread and bully-beef and coffee and 
 sugar seemed humdrum, to Stefano they 
 were as grapes of Eshcol, perilous spoil 
 from the white man's Canaan. 
 
 ' And Sister Irene ?' 
 
 Agnese shook with laughter. ' I for- 
 got her,' said she. ' I laughed so loud 
 at the time when the coffee burnt me 
 that I think I woke her. I heard her 
 ask, " Who is it ?" as we crept by the 
 Sisters' gate, and the great dog growled. 
 Then her little dog began to bark much.' 
 
 'The Sister is very good,' I said. 
 ' She keeps watch that she may help 
 you.' 
 
 Agnese went OD ' We feared that she
 
 230 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 would come after us, so we ran a great 
 way. Then on the hill we heard a noise 
 as of people waking. Then it rained a 
 little as we hurried on the path, and 
 there was some lightning and thunder 
 Then the cocks crowed the first time 
 and the moon shone bright above us. 
 Now we are come.' 
 
 ' But the ring, my Father ?' said 
 Stefano. 
 
 I found a dull old ring wherewith I 
 ministered to them in the brown Loca- 
 tion Church of St. Francis. The sun 
 came in and gilded it, as I linked their 
 hands in the bond. A faint sound of 
 hoofs and of voices drew near, just as 
 we were signing our names. There was 
 a surprised bustle among the few women 
 and children who were gathered outside. 
 
 ' It is the Sister,' said Johannes, my 
 first witness. ' It is the great Sister,' said 
 Francesco, my second witness. It was 
 Sister Irene riding up to the door on 
 her white donkey ! I was a little scared ;
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 231 
 
 yet I much admired her pluck and 
 watchfulness. 
 
 It was somewhat hard to explain 
 matters to her. 
 
 Why hadn't I told her what I was 
 going to do ? Why did I tell my pupils 
 they might do such strange things ? 
 She thought what I had done was 
 perilous. No, she had not read the 
 poem, at least she thought not. Any- 
 how, what rules could there be in it for 
 the conduct of a mission station ? Yet, 
 after a good breakfast at Mrs. Clinker's, 
 she proclaimed her forgiveness towards 
 Agnese and Stefano and myself, and 
 grew quite cordial. She remembered 
 'The Eve of St. Agnes.' Why, of 
 course she did ! Then I told her the 
 news about Annie Severn Sister Annie 
 that was to be. She was glad indeed. 
 ' Don't tell me there are no magic case- 
 ments now,' I said, as I shouldered my 
 knapsack, ' or that St. Agnes' Eve is 
 mere pious fiction ! Remember Sister
 
 232 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Annie giving herself, a glittering star, to 
 the Divine Head of our Mission ! Re- 
 member how Agnese and Stefano fled 
 away into the storm this very year, this 
 year of years!' 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 I SAW Africa little Town as well as 
 Veld in her true light that morning. I 
 had repented of my years of blindness. 
 The graceless scales of yesterday had 
 fallen from my eyes. How could I 
 ever have been so blind, as I was those 
 few hours ago, to the good-will about 
 me ? Now I was healed and I saw- 
 saw the pity and love of all faces, how- 
 soever blanched or coloured, in that 
 hour of farewell. I beheld each face 
 as it was meant to be beheld 
 
 ' Apparell'd in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream.'
 
 TO OUR MOTHER-COUNTRY 
 
 In God's cathedral, huge as earth, I stand, 
 A child before an empire's A liar high 
 O mother, mould and school our childish 
 
 land, 
 
 Thy cords of love in love yet faster tie : 
 Our age is school-age, neither more nor less; 
 Leave us not free to suffer or oppress ! 
 
 Lady of realms, an exile son I kneel 
 
 Within thy Lady -Chapel arched and 
 strait. 
 
 Guide exile sows thine own steep way to 
 weal ; 
 
 Teach them what made thy little England 
 great : 
 
 Bring us to know, we know not righteous- 
 ness, 
 
 Leave us not free to suffer or oppress ! 
 233
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD. 
 GUILDFORD
 
 Ik;, u i. :. ni it? .u~ u. 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 JAN
 
 3 1158 00849 5870 
 
 000505065