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THE DRIFT OF PINIONS. 
 
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 Worship Street, E.C. a. 
 
THE DRIFT ^ ^ 
 ^ OF PINIONS 
 
 By ROBERT KEABLE, 
 
 Author of ** A City of the Dawn,** " Simon Called Peter,*' etc. 
 
 Not where the wheeling systems darken, 
 And our benumbed conceiving soars ! — 
 
 The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 
 Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 
 
 Francis Thompson. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION, 
 
 SKEFFINGTON & SON, LTD. 
 PATERNOSTER HOUSE, ST PAULS, £.€,4. 
 
Note.— Fo/* leave io reprint i.u\ih of these as have 
 appeared in " The Treasury " / have to thank the 
 Editor of that Magazine. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 My dear Stephanie, 
 
 It seems years ago since you, among 
 the first, were good enough to hke my stories, and, 
 still better, that great subject with which most of 
 them had to do. Do you remember how I would 
 sit on the buffet by the side of the big fire, and how 
 you would lose yourself in the depths of the great 
 chair opposite ? Others there were, but I think you 
 understood the best of all, although you said so little 
 while the firelight flickered on your hair. Most of 
 the stories of this book I did not know then ; but 
 indeed I think "the drift of pinions '* against my door 
 has grown with the years, and that therefore you will 
 like these at least as well. At any rate, I offer them 
 to you, in very grateful remembrance (but with a 
 little wistfulness) of the days that come not again. 
 
 But this alone will not quite content you. I 
 remember, if you do not, that you would always 
 lean forward at the close of a story and say : "7s 
 it really true ? ". And you will be sure to want to 
 know that same about my stories now. 
 
 I can content you : I would not dare to play with 
 the " traffic of Jacob's ladder." I have no use for 
 stories that are not true of that wonderful land to 
 which it leads— especially in these days, when all of 
 us have such interests there. But you must forgive 
 
 5c\-^ r^ii ■> 
 
me if I have very thoroughly disguised my stories, 
 and, in their own interest, dared to set them in frames 
 of my own that seem best to show them up. Tell 
 your friends not to try to guess identities ! Camouflage, 
 you know, is well learnt here. 
 
 So read idly, shall we say. Sit back in your chair 
 by the fire this winter, and try to forget for a little 
 that there is hell let loose on earth. Trust me : I 
 tell you that I know, that the land that is very far 
 off is very near, and that the King may be seen there 
 in His Beauty. You will believe it, Stephanie ? 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 R. K. 
 
 B.E.F., France. 
 
 In the Octave of the Angels, 19 17. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. In No Strange Land .... 9 
 
 II. Our Lady's Pain . . . . .23 
 
 III. The Call 38 
 
 IV. Jonathan Haynes 49 
 
 V. Cattle Money 58 
 
 VI. Father Francis 68 
 
 VII. The Penitence of Peter ... 78 
 
 VIII. The Kingdom 88 
 
 IX. Black Magic . . . . . .98 
 
 X. St. Michael Archangel . . . 107 
 
 XL The Iron Bracelet .... 118 
 
 XII. "So AS BY Fire" 127 
 
 XIII. Stefano 136 
 
 XIV. Judas 151 
 
 XV. The Midnight Mass .... 162 
 
 XVI. The Acts of the Holy Apostles . 172 
 
' i 1 J 
 
 IN NO STRANGE LAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 In No Strange Land 
 
 " No ; I don't see exactly what you mean," said 
 the httle lady, a trifle impatiently perhaps. " I can 
 believe you're not avoiding a straight issue, because 
 I know you, but I'm certain other people might call 
 it an attempt to do so. You've no right to change 
 every outward circumstance in a story and then call 
 it true. If an angel appeared to a Mosuto in this 
 garden, you've no right to tell, on that account, as 
 a * true ' story, how Gabriel appeared to a Frenchman 
 in the trenches. The mentality of the Mosuto has 
 a distinct bearing on the likelihood of the event ; 
 and so might the environment of the trenches, and 
 the imminence of sudden death, affect the judgment 
 of a Frenchman." 
 
 The ugly-looking man in the wicker chair, sitting 
 next her under the mimosa, looked up thoughtfully 
 and gazed at her a minute before replying. Then 
 he leant forward to pick a fallen leaf out of his tea- 
 cup which stood on the httle table between them, 
 and spoke as he did it. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " you're right in a way. At least 
 I can see that it should be made plain, before the 
 story is told, that that has been done, if only to 
 indicate the view of things that makes one rather 
 like such a transformation process, and also to dis- 
 credit, at the start, a good deal of the criticism that 
 is usually made about stories of this sort. But your 
 common sense is not going to browbeat my spirit 
 sense." 
 
10 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " Explain," she put in, leaning forward a little. 
 
 " Well," he said, " take the last first. People bring 
 entirely false standards to the test of the super- 
 natural. By hypothesis, the supernatural is not the 
 natural, and it is not therefore to be, at least finally 
 and conclusively, tested by the standards one applies 
 to the natural. Spiritual things must be judged by 
 spiritual tests. You don't lick a picture to find out 
 if it's pretty, and a Gothic cathedral may be the 
 most wonderful song in stone imaginable, but a blind 
 man cannot hear it. Well, now, I maintain that we 
 know so little about the supernatural that we honestly 
 don't know by what to test it. People demand that 
 a spirit shall prove itself intangible ; I fail to see 
 the necessity. They insist that the environment and 
 psychology of the seer of the vision have a great 
 deal to do with the likelihood of his seeing at all in 
 the first place, and of what he sees in the second. 
 I believe that there is a spiritual world entirely indif- 
 ferent to human psychology and environment, so far 
 as any limitation of its activities is involved ; indeed, 
 I am inclined to believe that any manifestation which 
 appears to depend entirely upon such things united 
 in the person of some one or other medium, is likely 
 to be either not strictly supernatural at all, or, at 
 best, the activity of a much inferior and probably 
 debased portion of the spirit world." 
 
 ** And the Mosuto in this garden ? " 
 
 " Well, it's a good case. I think we lay far too much 
 stress on the Mosuto and the garden in every instance. 
 If there is to be a genuine angel- visit, I'm perfectly 
 certain that it is indifferent to the angel whether he 
 comes to this garden or to the trenches, to a Mosuto 
 or a Frenchman, in war or peace, by day or night 
 — though I will admit that I think there is one thing 
 for which he looks. I don't think he troubles much 
 
IN NO STRANGE LAND 11 
 
 about race or place, but I think he looks for the 
 characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven. And the 
 Kingdom of Heaven is within you, remember. . . . 
 So I don't believe it matters in the least how I 
 disguise my story, provided I keep the things of the 
 spirit the same throughout." 
 His companion smiled. " I see," she said. Then : 
 
 The gates of heaven are lightly locked, 
 
 We do not guard our gain. 
 The heaviest hind may easily 
 Come silently and suddenly 
 
 Upon me in a lane ; 
 
 And any little maid that walks 
 
 In good thoughts apart. 
 May break the guard of the Three Kings, 
 And see the dear and dreadful things 
 
 I hid within my heart 
 
 she quoted. " That's what our Lady said, according 
 to G. K. C, and I suppose it's much what you mean ? " 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 A little silence fell between them, as it may fall 
 between friends, a silence in which communication 
 did not, however, cease. On the contrary, something 
 beyond speech seemed to be explaining the one to 
 the other. Across the lawn and the new rose-garden, 
 and the dip down to the spruit that was full of young 
 willows, where the rough road wound up and round 
 a kopje, a Scotch-cart was lumbering slowly along, 
 driven by a couple of red-shirted prisoners. The man 
 watched it intently, and you might have thought he 
 was speculating upon it. So he was — in a manner. 
 
 '* You see," he went on suddenly, " I don't believe, 
 to go on with, that we have any true idea as to the 
 real values of sensory objects at all. Scent, touch, 
 sight, hearing — these are not delusions, as some have 
 thought, most emphatically not, and the objects 
 which we apprehend by them are not delusions either. 
 
12 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 But I feel equally certain that the reality of anything 
 is not what we take it to be. . . . It's hard to express, 
 but what I mean is this : I don't believe that trees, 
 beasts, flowers, rocks, the very earth, are only fleeting 
 phantoms ; I believe that they have, or will have, 
 some real value in the spiritual world ; but at the 
 same time I am pretty sure that we have no idea 
 what that value is, and that there is no objective 
 reality in the sense-impressions themselves." 
 
 The lady leaned back and her brown eyes glistened. 
 ** You mean that this garden may be just, in truth 
 — well, the robe of God ? " she queried. 
 
 " Yes," he said, reverently. 
 
 " So you see where that gets you to," he went on, 
 rather excitedly. " In the first place, if there is to 
 be any sort of manifestation, that spiritual world is 
 bound to wear a dress composed of our sense-impressions, 
 including, very likely, that of materiality ; but I 
 dechne to beheve that that dress has any objective 
 reality either, or that you can argue anything from 
 it. If an angel wishes to approach a soul on earth 
 in anything other than (for the man) a purely spiritual 
 manner, he must approach by means of sense- 
 impressions ; moreover, if he wants to inform the 
 individual that he is an angel, he must approach in 
 such sense-wise that he is recognised as such. If an 
 angel wanted to approach you, now, as an angel, it 
 would be no use his coming as a prisoner in a red 
 shirt with the broad-arrow on it, with a black face 
 sticking out, and with language that would sound to 
 you, down the telephone which we call hearing, as 
 commonplace Sesuto remarks. You would say he 
 was not an angel, but a Mosuto prisoner. But so, too, 
 I can see not the least reason in the world why Sir 
 Oliver Lodge's son, Ra5miond, should not speak to his 
 father of whisky-sodas and cigars in the spiritual 
 
IN NO STRANGE LAND 13 
 
 world. Doubtless there are no such things there, but 
 neither are there harps and vials. Granted Raymond 
 — about whom, by the way, I express no opinion — 
 there is no reason why he should not use such a 
 form of language to convey an idea — though what 
 that idea may be I have hardly the faintest concep- 
 tion. But that doesn't surprise me. I am perfectly 
 certain that this side of death I shall never under- 
 stand at all what reahty of the spiritual world it is 
 which produces upon me the sense-impression that 
 we call whisky-soda ! " 
 
 ** All the same, the whisky-soda notion jars me,'* 
 said his hearer, without a smile. 
 
 " You're right, too, I'm pretty sure. I should be 
 sorry if the spiritual world had to use such a dress 
 in which to convey something to me, or to convey 
 something about a person I loved. Mind you, we 
 may be wrong. For heaven's sake, don't let us argue 
 as if there were anything more actually evil or earthly 
 in whisky than in water, but I feel that the real value 
 of a great many things is raised or lowered by our 
 use of the sense-impressions we get from them. Well, 
 there's not much doubt but that the human use of 
 whisky has depressed it pretty low ! But let's drop 
 that. The second great deduction I make is this : 
 I believe that often the spiritual world does not wish 
 us to know that it has obtruded, and that therefore 
 the dress it assumes is such that it is not determinable 
 whether or no the affair is a manifestation of the 
 spiritual, or not. ... Do you know of Panhandle ? " 
 
 " No ; who is he ? " 
 
 " Get Professor Jacks to tell you. The point is 
 that he was a ghost all the time, and the Professor 
 never knew it. He dressed himself up in whisky- 
 sodas and so on — and sky-signs, and shot-guns, 
 and " 
 
14 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 The brown eyes twinkled. " That's fiction/' she 
 said. " I can see you're ragging me. But I'll read 
 it sometime. Just now, though, do you know a story 
 to show me what you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, thoughtfully, " I do." 
 
 " Well, tell it me," she pleaded. 
 
 " Pour me out another cup of tea, then," he said, 
 *' and let me light a cigarette. Their spiritual values, 
 an3rway, are " 
 
 " Oh, shut up," she laughed. " Here you are. 
 Now fire away. Only I shall know that you've put 
 any dress you thought fit, on an otherwise true 
 incident." 
 
 " Have it that way if you like," he said ; " only 
 remember that the characteristic of this glimpse of 
 the spiritual world, if it were a glimpse, was that it 
 showed hardly a trace of its being a strange land 
 at all. That is the point of it. Therefore I'm not 
 sure that it was a manifestation. I think — but, there, 
 I'll say no more. Judge for yourself." And then, 
 while the butterflies danced across the flowers, he 
 told his tale. 
 
 " It was in Paris, before the war, but not long 
 before, just at the time when the Anti-clerical legisla- 
 tion was pretty nearly at its worst. That legislation 
 was popular, too, to a great extent, and in any case 
 it had given a handle to the dregs of the people which 
 they were not slow to fit into the weapon of their 
 lust and greed. I, then, was staying in Paris, with 
 that Abbe of whom I have often told you, and although 
 it was time for me to return to England, I could not 
 bring myself to leave him. His Httle church had its 
 door locked on to the back street in which it stood, 
 and the faithful sHpped in at the side. Every day 
 in the very early dawn we would go down, he looking 
 
IN NO STRANGE LAND 15 
 
 so frail, and I feeling fearful, and the old sacristan, 
 who had served the office for a generation, would 
 meet us by the little side entrance. He would open 
 the door, and stand there on guard while we made 
 ready for Mass — though he would not have been much 
 use as guard anyway. The Abbe would vest in the 
 httle sacristy, with a back glance over his shoulder 
 now and again, and the little congregation would 
 gather — a woman with a child or two, an old bent 
 bookseller from the barrows near Notre Dame, who 
 never missed, and two who had been used to pass 
 the streets in the habit of their order, and now could 
 not. And I would kneel at the back and watch it 
 all, and take the sacrist's place when the Abbe went 
 to the altar and the old man served him. The dull 
 light used to filter in through the dusty glass, and 
 shine on the dingy Renaissance altar with its gilded 
 angels and heavy Madonna and wax flowers and 
 brown and gold reliquaries — and holy priest. For he 
 was holy, and I would, at the last, have changed not 
 so much as a glass case of wax flowers, since they 
 were knit up in some way with his spirit. And then 
 he would come down and kneel for the Pope's prayers, 
 and his thin voice, so acute in its cry, always brought 
 tears to my eyes at the last : 
 
 " ' Sacred Heart of Jesus — ^Have mercy upon us.' 
 " During the day he went out but seldom, and then 
 only at a sick-call. I, too, had lost a great deal of 
 my love for Paris, for the sufferings and fears of the 
 Church had taken hold on me. Paris seemed drunken 
 in her beauty and fury. The gay restaurant life, the 
 moving crowds, the thronged shops — I had used to 
 love them, but now Paris seemed to me like some 
 wanton, painted and daubed, that played with souls 
 for sport. I would go, perhaps, to the Bois ; or to 
 the bookstalls, for a chat, if we could get out of 
 
16 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 ear-shot, with the faithful old fellow who sold there ; 
 or to the heights of Montmartre — but little where 
 else, until the evening. But after supper, with his 
 office said, my friend and I would slip out to the 
 river and walk by the bridges and the water, almost 
 unseen. 
 
 " One night we had strayed farther ^than we intended. 
 The moon had stamped the towers of the great Cathe- 
 dral out against the sky, and had deepened to black 
 the shadows of the bridges on the water» and of the 
 trees on the boulevards ; and we had walked far, 
 almost in silence, drinking in the beauty of the night. 
 As a matter of fact, we had reached a part of the 
 city that I did not know at all, and I was just about 
 to say to the priest that I thought we should be 
 returning, when I felt him clutch my arm. 
 
 ** ' Dick,' he said, ' look over there — under the trees 
 across the way — can you see anything ? ' 
 
 " I looked. It was not so easy to see, but I thought 
 I could make out two or three figures. I said as 
 much. 
 
 " * They're following us, Dick,' said the Abbe ; * we 
 ought not to have come so far. It is a bad quarter 
 just here, and they look to me very like Apaches. 
 Let us turn back.' 
 
 " ' Well, not in a hurry,' said I, * or they will think 
 we suspect something. Stop and look at the water 
 a minute, natural^, and then turn back.' 
 
 " We did so. We stood there, looking down at the 
 moon-lit water, the priest's arm through mine, for 
 what seemed interminable minutes, while no one 
 moved across the road ; and then, turning round, 
 we set off back, down the deserted boulevard, towards 
 the lights of more-inhabited Paris. 
 
 " But we had hardly turned, before a party of 
 three men and one woman crossed the road towards 
 
IN NO STRANGE LAND 17 
 
 our side, plainly to cut off our retreat. ' Keep on/ 
 I whispered, ' maybe they will do nothing ' ; and 
 without, I think, quickening our pace perceptibly, we 
 walked on. I could hear the Abbe praying beneath 
 his breath. 
 
 " The party reached the pathway ten yards or so 
 before us, and glanced behind them. Then, seeing 
 they were plainly alone, they spread out across the 
 pavement and all attempt at concealment died out 
 of their faces. 
 
 " The Abbe stopped me. ' What is it you want, 
 my children ? ' he asked them. 
 
 " ' Your life, you black — devil,' spat out one of 
 them without another word, and drew a knife. 
 
 " My heart stood still : I don't thmk I could have 
 moved if I had been alone. There was nobody in 
 sight, and in any case I knew only too well what 
 would be the temper of any Paris crowd from that 
 quarter. Yet even then I remember noticing how 
 the light from the nearest lamp-standard ahead 
 twinkled and laughed on the rippling water before us. 
 
 " ' Run,' cried my friend, dragging me round on 
 the instant. I caught sight of the woman's face as 
 he did so, and the horror that thrilled me then did 
 something to stir me into life. Till that night I 
 did not beheve that a soul could be devil-possessed, 
 but a devil of lust and hate stared from that woman's 
 white face — and a young woman she was, too. I 
 heard her laugh and yell : ' After them, my braves. 
 And keep the little priest for me ! ' and we were 
 away. 
 
 *' I suppose terror does lend one wings ; anyway, 
 I ran as I have never run before ; and although those 
 street Apaches know how to run, I had been counted 
 good at the 'Varsity, and the little Abbe in the old 
 days, not so long before, had been athletic enough, too. 
 
18 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 So, somehow, we distanced them at first. We had 
 been compelled to run away from home and the more 
 populous streets, and we were soon at a place at 
 which we must turn inland from the river. We did 
 so, doubling down one street, up and down another, 
 and gradually losing what we had gained. * Where 
 are we ? ' I managed to gasp at one corner, and the 
 Abbe just replied : ' Don't know.' It was a terrible 
 prospect. Every house we flew by was dark and still ; 
 a good many shuttered shops offered us still less 
 hope of help ; and we had neither breath nor courage 
 to cry for assistance. 
 
 " And then, so quickly that a few seconds sufficed 
 for it all, came the rescue. We had darted round 
 a corner, and were running down a street, when we 
 noticed that the houses had given place to a high 
 wall and that in the wall was a little door, ajar, from 
 which came a pencil of yellow light. The little Abbe 
 was nearest the wall, and it was he who gasped, ' In 
 there.' In a second, and just as we could hear the 
 feet of our pursuers coming round the corner, we 
 pushed open the door and darted in. 
 
 " Now I cannot hope to make you feel our incredible 
 amazement at what we found inside. We were in 
 a small chapel, stone-pillared and flagged ; before 
 us was an altar with eight or ten hghts blazing on 
 it, and in the centre of the lights, in a monstrance, 
 the Blessed Sacrament. And before the altar, at a 
 prie-dieu, praying, a nun knelt in her habit, who 
 neither moved at our sudden noisy entry, nor stirred 
 at all when we left. As I say, we blundered in. Per- 
 sonally, I was half dazed by the light and the contrast. 
 It was simply Heaven after Hell. I don't think I 
 thought for a second of what our pursuers might do ; 
 I just gasped half-audibly : ' Oh, my God,' and 
 staggered forward to kneel at a high chair, bow my 
 
IN NO STRANGE LAND 19 
 
 head and close my eyes, and try to stay the beating 
 of my heart. 
 
 "But I did hear the Abbe push the door to, and 
 I was conscious that he came swiftly forward and 
 stood by me, irresolute. Practically at once, however, 
 the footsteps reached the door, the handle rattled, 
 and the door itself was opened. Then there followed 
 a kind of eternity. I braced myself to get up on 
 the instant and do battle to push the Apache without 
 and close the door ; I reproached myself that in the 
 overwhelming amazement of my surprise I had not 
 held it ; and I struggled with a kind of torrent of 
 hideous thoughts as to what might happen to that 
 kneeling nun and that which she adored — for, remem- 
 ber, men stopped at nothing in those days. I tell 
 you, it seemed an instant hanging on the brink of 
 eternity. I was all but springing up ; I seemed to 
 know I would be up in a second ; and yet that second 
 died out and lengthened, and still I knelt. 
 
 " And then the door banged, and the Abbe gave 
 a choking sob and fell on his knees at my side. I 
 looked up at him, and could see that he was but 
 praying through tears, and so again I hid my face. 
 No sound of steps or voices reached us — no sound at 
 all save that once a bit of wax fell from a candle on 
 to the altar. We waited perhaps an hour, and then 
 I rose to my feet. The Abbe's white face looked up 
 at me, but we neither of us spoke. I genuflected and 
 stole silently to the door. I listened ; I could hear 
 nothing. I opened it bit by bit, ever so slowly, and 
 peered out : the street was empty. I beckoned the 
 priest, and he came to me. ' Shall we go ? ' I whisperedj 
 and he nodded. Together we stole out, and in fears 
 enough, but, unseen and unmolested, reached, in half 
 an hour or so, a street my friend knew, and so at 
 length his house. 
 
20 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " We hardly spoke on that rapid half- walk, half-run 
 home, but once in his study, my friend faced me. 
 
 " ' Dick,' said he, ' what do you make of it ? ' and 
 his voice trembled. 
 
 " * Make of it ? ' I queried, for I did not understand 
 the drift of his meaning. He made a gesture of 
 impatience. 
 
 " * First,' he said, ticking the points off on his 
 fingers, ' the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, 
 and even, as you know, its Reservation, except under 
 most peculiar and stringent circumstances, is for- 
 bidden to-day in Paris. Secondly, I know Paris well, 
 and there is no Order of Perpetual Adoration left. 
 Thirdly, by what conceivable carelessness could the 
 door into the street from such a chapel have been 
 left open? Fourthly — although I admit this is not 
 conclusive — how came the nun never to stir or to 
 have her vigil relieved, though we were there 'a long 
 time ? And fifthly, what did the man see at the 
 door which prevented him and his friends from coming 
 in?' 
 
 '*/ Oh ! ' I said, ' as to that, the sudden sight of the 
 chapel and the Sacrament, as with us, acted upon 
 him so strongly that he could not break its sanctity.' 
 
 " ' Ah ! ' said the priest with a French shrug of 
 his shoulders. ' My friend, you do not know these 
 poor souls. . . . No, it was just such a heaven as 
 they love to make into hell. Why, I tell you, when 
 I saw where we were, I was for going out and on, and 
 trying to save it. Only there was no time, and as 
 soon as that man opened the door, the sight of his 
 face stopped me.' 
 
 ** ' His face ? ' queried I, stupidly. 
 
 *' ' Yes, his face,' repeated the Abbe, impatiently. 
 ' My friend Dick, what would you have expected to 
 see on his face ? ' 
 
IN NO STRANGE LAND 21 
 
 "'Well/ said I, hesitatingly, 'I don't know. 
 Astonishment, of course, at finding himself at a chapel 
 door. Fear, I should have thought, on my assumption 
 that it was a sense of sanctity that kept him out ; 
 but on yours, well, triumph perhaps.' 
 
 " * Exactly,' exclaimed the Abbe, exultantly, * and 
 it was just because there were no such emotions there, 
 that I was arrested where I stood. My friend, I 
 could swear that he saw nothing. Into what he thought 
 the door opened, I do not know ; but this I know, 
 that his face, as I saw it, was flushed and hot and 
 eager, as you would expect from the chase, and that 
 it changed absolutely not at all. He looked in, and 
 out again in a second, as one might hastily snatch 
 open a cupboard door, and find nothing, and close it/ 
 
 " He stopped, with a gesture. I stared at him. 
 
 * But they must have seen that we were not in the 
 street into which we had plainly turned a minute 
 before,' I objected. 
 
 " The Abbe hfted his hands, with a shrug, and 
 elevated his eyebrows. Then, peering at me eagerly, 
 he almost whispered : ' And did you hear their 
 footsteps departing ? ' 
 
 " I looked at him with a sudden sense of awe. 
 
 * Why, no,' I said ; and silence fell between us as we 
 stood there." 
 
 The story-teller threw away his cigarette, which had 
 gone out, and lifted a warning hand. " No, my dear," 
 he said. " Don't ask questions. There's absolutely 
 no more to be said, except perhaps this : that my 
 friend made inquiries from authorities who were 
 positive that no such infringement of the ecclesiastical 
 rule of the time could have been possible, and who 
 were, moreover, plainly distrustful of my friend when 
 he pressed them, for tiiey asserted that no such Order 
 
28 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 existed, or had existed (so far as they knew) in that 
 quarter of Paris. He and I, with some Enghsh friends 
 of mine, tried to retrace our steps, but could not, 
 though that in itself is not surprising — ^we had been 
 lost, and Paris is labyrinthine in certain parts. Nor 
 can I aid your curiosity about the chapel. At the 
 time, I had no thought but that all was normal, although 
 providentially fortunate, and I noted nothing in the 
 chapel to give any indication of date or place. And 
 even now I absolutely decline to pass a judgment. 
 It is not a matter for judgment. No hypothesis, 
 natural or non-natural, can be either proved or dis- 
 proved. Only one thing I know : our lives were saved 
 by a miracle that night, and no explanation that I 
 may learn, hereafter, will surprise me." 
 
 The little woman smiled. " You stupid person,*' 
 she said, ** I wasn't even going to ask that sort of 
 question. But I am wondering where, when, and to 
 whom it all happened, and what it was that happened 
 — in short, the truth that makes it true." 
 
 But Dick will tell neither her nor anyone. 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Our Lady's Pain 
 
 Geographically Basutoland is one and undivided, 
 but those who work in it labour under no such delusion. 
 It is not one land but two. There is the Lesuto, the 
 fertile strip that lies to the west of the Malutis, bordered 
 by the Free State on the one hand and the mountains 
 on the other, the land of mealies and shops, the land 
 whose people ought to be well off but never seem to have 
 much to give away ; and then there is the Sehonghong, 
 the land of rivers, which rise for the most part in Mont 
 aux Sources, and flow down parallel to the steep Natal 
 border, where are kranzes that drop several thousand 
 feet in sheer descent to the plains below. Here are 
 river- valleys deep in wheatfields, and few white men, and 
 seeming poverty, but riches of kind and of generosity 
 that are not much known in the Lesuto. In between 
 the two, over that first barrier as one comes from the 
 Lesuto, lies a no-man's land of hiU upon hill, rough and 
 rugged and inhospitable, although a thousand clear 
 streams and scores of fantastic peaks, often white with 
 snow against the blue of the sky, make it a land of 
 great dehght. Almost anywhere, by any of the half- 
 dozen-odd passes and tracks, euphemistically designated 
 roads, by which one can travel from the Lesuto to the 
 Sehonghong, and back, there are rather more than 
 twenty-four hours to be spent between the last settle- 
 ments of the one and the first huts of the other. The 
 traveller has a long, hard, solitary day and a lonely night 
 before him when he leaves his outpost camp, and then, 
 some time or another before the set of the next day's 
 
24 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 sun, he will be among villages once more. It is just 
 the one night's camp between, for which it will be 
 impossible to get a roof over one's head if it rains or 
 snows, difficult to procure firewood, hopeless to think 
 of milk. 
 
 Of course, if one journeyed with a wagon none of 
 these things would matter, but only the mountain 
 ponies can scramble up those tiny trails to the 10,000- 
 feet level, or make their way, like so many cats, among 
 the crags and steeps of the constant climbing that 
 follows. So one looks forward to a camp, jolly in the 
 spring, possibly uncomfortable in summer when the 
 thunder-storms are about, nastily cold in autumn, 
 dangerous among the snows of winter, but lonely all 
 the year round. And yet no one who has watched the 
 moon creep up the steep mountain side till the red glow 
 of the fire is black in her radiance, or lain, rolled in 
 blankets, while the sharp peaks about glow in the rosy 
 dawn, but dreams of the night that shall find him once 
 again between Sehonghong and Lesuto. 
 
 For all that, Michael Carlile, the missionary, was not 
 in the happiest of tempers as his pony stumbled, at 
 three miles an hour, up the last ascent of a seemingly 
 unending series of ridges which he intended to climb 
 that day. They had crossed the Sinko (which, later, 
 people call the Orange) in the dawn, and the Semena 
 had proved a nuisance about nine of the clock. Michael's 
 pack-horse, an obstinate brute, had declined to follow 
 the others through the one ford where the water was 
 only middle-deep, and the river had swept him down 
 for a jolly little swim that had meant a magnificently 
 wet breakfast for Michael at ten. Ever since then 
 they had been going up and down, each ascent leading 
 to a skyline which only showed another beyond it. 
 Nor had they seen a soul all day. Nor had the sun 
 been hot enough thoroughly to dry the blankets in which 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 26 
 
 they must sleep that night. Nor was there anything 
 for supper but the scant remains of a fortnight's provi- 
 sions, consisting chiefly of a tin of sardines and some 
 ancient bread, which could not be contemplated with 
 pleasure. Besides, Michael was saddle-sore from a long 
 trek, and the horses dead tired, and a day's ride on a 
 tired horse is calculated to impair the temper of the 
 best of missionaries. Michael, therefore, jogged his horse 
 to the summit in a dull wonder as to why he had ever 
 been ass enough to come to the Lesuto at all. 
 
 A last pull, and they were up — and Michael reined 
 up for a moment with an exclamation of surprise. 
 Across the little valley, with its spring of mountain 
 water by which they would camp, was another 
 skyline, and, as he topped his own, a man rode up to 
 that other. It was not so far across that he could not 
 see that the man was white, and even while he waited 
 for his boy and his pack-horse to stumble up alongside, 
 the other man's boy and pack joined him. Both parties 
 quickened up for the descent, and in a quarter of an 
 hour the Rev. Michael Carlile was shaking hands with 
 the Rev. John Meredith of his own Mission. 
 
 They had met but once before, though their 
 parishes adjoined, and that at the conference among 
 the flesh-pots of the central station, with its several 
 churches, and considerable European population, and 
 quite imposing conventionalities. That they had met 
 but once was not surprising, however, as Michael's 
 parish exceeded 4,000 square miles, and John's ran a 
 good second. But it seemed that both chanced to be 
 travelling that day on the border, and that so they had 
 met. And both were pleasantly surprised at the 
 meeting. 
 
 The united forces soon had a camp comfortably 
 arranged. The big fire flamed up, and Michael's inner 
 man warmed still more on the discovery that his friend 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 was more recently from civilisation, and that it would 
 not be necessary to fall back on sardines. While he 
 saw to the drying of his blankets, Meredith spread a 
 ground-sheet and divided his own sleeping equipment 
 into two couches, whereon each man could stretch 
 himself, and eat with the luxury of ancient Romans. 
 Michael returned to view a feast — a soup of meat extract, 
 a cold fowl and fried potatoes, new bread, butter and 
 jam, and — incredible kindness of Providence ! — ^half 
 a box of dates ! They washed it down with coffee, and 
 lit their pipes while the moon came up over the crests 
 in a glory of pure silver light. 
 
 There was nothing said, at first, that is of any interest 
 here. They discussed the usual topics — their horses, 
 their respective routes (with many barbarous names), 
 and their past experiences of the trail. It was all such 
 as you might have heard at a hundred African camp- 
 fires that night. Then they said a little of religion, 
 as might have been expected, and the talk died down. 
 Both were tired. Carlile knocked out his pipe, and it 
 sounded sharp and clear in the still night. 
 
 " Shall we have Mass to-morrow ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, I think so," said Meredith ; " that flat stone 
 will do well for an altar. Will you say it, or shall I ? " 
 
 '* I don't mind,'* said the other, " though as a matter of 
 fact I'm horribly tired and I should be glad if you did." 
 
 " I should very much like to, to-morrow," said 
 Meredith, " as it's an anniversary with me. Do you 
 mind if I say a votive mass of the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus ? I always feel that one can say votive masses 
 more or less when one likes in the mountains, and I try 
 to say one of the Sacred Heart every year on February 
 the 5th." 
 
 "Why, of course," said Michael, " I don't mind, but, 
 if it isn't obtruding, I should be interested to know why 
 you keep the day in that way." 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 27 
 
 The other did not answer for a moment, and Michael 
 felt reproached. 
 
 " Oh ! T shouldn't have asked," he said ; " please don't 
 mind not telling me." 
 
 Father Meredith raised himself on his arm and looked 
 out over the valley. The stars shone clear and it was 
 very still. He was the older man, and Michael regarded 
 him a little curiously. He looked as if he wished to 
 speak, but hardly knew how to frame the words. But 
 a bit of liso fell in the fire with a slight noise, and at 
 that triviality he looked over at Carlile. 
 
 " I'll tell you, if you like," he said slowly, " but to 
 be frank, I don't know you well enough to be sure what 
 you will make of it. It's a curious story, and will take 
 a httle time. Are you sure you care to hear ? " 
 
 " Rather," said the younger man. Meredith had a 
 bit of a reputation. He was thought the most devoted 
 priest in the diocese, and he was unhke the rest in many 
 ways. Not the least, he practised his religion with a 
 single directness that was rather striking. Michael 
 was keen, therefore, to hear what he had to say. 
 
 " I'll just fill my pipe again," he said, " if you don't 
 mind." 
 
 " Not a bit," said the other, and then, *' Do you 
 believe in relics ? " 
 
 Michael stopped pushing in the dry Transvaal leaves, 
 and looked up expectantly. " Well . . ." he said, and 
 hesitated. " Yes," he added. 
 
 Father Meredith smiled. " Not prepossessed against 
 them, eh ? " he said. " Well, I admit I was, up to four 
 years ago, come to-morrow. I'd seen the Holy House, 
 you know, and I can't abide the hideous trunks that 
 disfigure the French altars under the name of reliquaries. 
 But four years ago to-morrow I saw something which 
 left me less critical, and I think a little more humble 
 It was this way." 
 
28 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 And so Michael Carlile heard the story of our Lady's 
 sorrow as he lay on a blanket away among the Malutis 
 under the light of the moon. 
 
 " I had a friend in London some years back," said 
 Father John, " who was one of those odd people whom 
 you sometimes meet, a shrewd person enough, fairly 
 well off, clever, very sympathetic to rehgion, but 
 by no means a practising Catholic. He had a house 
 down ^Chelsea way, a nice old place, in which he had 
 stored a great collection of rare and strange things, 
 many of them beautiful and a good few ecclesiastical. 
 I always go to see him when I am in England, and 
 he always shows me anything new that he has 
 acquired since I was there last. Four years ago, on 
 my last furlough, after I had been home for a 
 month or so, I went up to Town to visit my tailor and 
 do a little business, and towards six o'clock ran down to 
 Chelsea for dinner. My friend was not expecting me, 
 but I knew he was in Town, and he was the kind of man 
 a Colonial can get on with, since he rather liked his 
 friends to drop in entirely unexpectedly. Moreover, if 
 he had been out, I should have gone on to the priest 
 with whom I was staying. 
 
 " His man answered my knock, and showed me at 
 once into my friend's sanctum. He was smoking in an 
 armchair before a fire as I entered, but he jumped up 
 at my name and came forward eagerly. I was struck 
 at once with the fact that he was excited. 
 
 " ' Meredith ! ' he exclaimed, * by all that's odd. I had 
 no idea you were in England or I should most certainly 
 have asked you here to-night. Come in, my dear man. 
 I'm delighted to see you. Benson, tell the cook Father 
 Meredith will stay for dinner.' 
 
 " He gave me one of his excellent cigars, and forced 
 me down into his own chair. He himself leaned on the 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 29 
 
 mantelpiece and watched me, and all the while that he 
 courteously asked the usual questions I could see that 
 something lay on his mind about which he burned to 
 speak. So I said at last : ' Come along, Fenton ; out 
 with it ; what's on your mind ? ' 
 
 ** He laughed at that and took two or three restless 
 little marches up and down the room before he spoke. 
 * Yes,' he said, ' I suppose you can see that I'm 
 especially interested in something, and the truth is, 
 Meredith, that so I am, very interested. Fve hit on 
 something which is more extraordinary than anything 
 else I've known in the whole course of my life, and I 
 can't get rid of the sense of it. Here, take this. What 
 do you make of it ? ' 
 
 "As he spoke he hurried across the room, pulled 
 open a drawer in his writing desk, and lifted something 
 carefully out. He came back to me more quietly, 
 and put an object in my hands. It was a cross of 
 black wood, heavy and solid, about two feet long and 
 six inches thick." 
 
 Meredith paused a moment, and put his pipe down. 
 He had been tranquilly smoking up till now. Then 
 he leant a little forward and said quietly and evenly, 
 but rather slowly : — 
 
 " Now, Carlile, you have got to take my word for 
 what I say. I'm not a sentimentahst, and I don't 
 know anything about psychology and all the rest of 
 it, but I must tell you what happened when Fenton 
 put that cross in my hands. I was sitting in my chair, 
 you remember. Well, I had leaned forward to take 
 the thing, and until that moment I had no idea at all 
 what I was to see. Even then I did not know what 
 I know now. But the moment that object lay in my 
 hands, Fenton, the room, the thing itself, passed 
 absolutely out of my mind. I don't mean to say that 
 they faded away or anything like that ; only that 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 suddenly my mental senses were overpowered by some- 
 thing else. Do you know how sometimes a bit of music, 
 or a picture, or, more often still, a scent, will recall 
 some memory so strongly that present circumstances, 
 for a second or two, almost disappear ? Well, it was 
 like that, only the sensation was far more powerful 
 than anything I have ever experienced before. I forgot, 
 absolutely, all my surroundings. I just sat, leaning 
 forward, with that in my hands. 
 
 " And that was not all. It was not mere forgetfulness 
 of external things ; I was conscious of something else. 
 How can I explain it ? I was conscious of an over- 
 whelming sense of desolation and sorrow, but not as 
 if it were my own, only as if someone I loved was 
 suffering, and I was a spectator of it. That sense 
 racked me through and through. I found, when I 
 looked up, that my eyes were full of tears. 
 
 " But even that was not all. You have formed, doubt- 
 less, an explanation so far, in your mind, but I do not 
 think you will expect this. I was also overwhelmingly 
 conscious that the person whose suffering I felt was 
 a woman. You may ask how that could possibly have 
 been, and I cannot answer you ; I do not know. All 
 I do know is that my sense was exactly that of standing 
 by the side of a woman, at whom I was looking and 
 whom I loved, and who was stabbed and torn with 
 an emotion so terrible that it communicated itself to 
 me in crushing desolation. 
 
 " Then I heard Fenton speaking. ' You, too ! ' he 
 exclaimed. ' My God, why not I ? ' And I looked up, 
 as I have said. 
 
 " There was a silence between us for a little. I still 
 felt moved — I remember I was even trembHng ; but 
 the original sense had passed, and I could look 
 at that cross without feeling it. But still I had not 
 moved. Then I broke our silence by an effort, and 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 31 
 
 I think I said, ' What is it, Fenton, and where did 
 you get it ? ' 
 
 '* * Look closer,' he said. 
 
 '* I turned the thing over, and saw at once that it 
 was a cleverly contrived box. There was a little spring, 
 which I released, and at once a most beautiful silver 
 reliquary, as I did not doubt, was exposed to view, 
 itself a chased silver cross lying within the outer casket 
 of wood. I took it out, and momentarily the sensation 
 I have described returned to me. But it passed, and 
 I saw that the silver cross also opened. I released that 
 spring, and there lay in my hand an ivory and enamel 
 cross, a few inches long only, a perfect gem of work- 
 manship, it also a box. I was just about to open this 
 latter cross when Fenton stopped me, and even as he 
 did so I became aware that I had forgotten him again, 
 and that I was slowly returning to that state which 
 had come upon me so suddenly before. ' No,' said he, 
 * don't open that. Close them again. Father, and give 
 them to me. I want to tell you the story. There is 
 just time before dinner.' 
 
 " He spoke normally again, and I put the three 
 together and returned him the cross. Then he sat down 
 opposite me, and told me this history. 
 
 *' * A few weeks ago,' he said, ' I had nothing to do 
 one afternoon, so I thought I would stroll down to 
 Isaacson's, the old Jew at the comer of Beaufort 
 Street, whom I had not seen for some months, and who 
 often keeps things for me to see if I care for them. 
 I reached his shop and found him apparently doing 
 nothing as usual, and after we had greeted each other, 
 I asked him if he had anything to show me. 
 
 ** ' He said, '* Yes," and produced a bit of Sheffield 
 plate, for which I care nothing ; an Egyptian ring, 
 curious but not unlike several more I have ; a 
 Renaissance stole, which I bought to give to the 
 
32 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 "Art and Book Co." man, for whom I often pick up 
 such things. 
 
 " ' "Well," said I, "that's not much, Isaacson. Can't 
 you better that ? " 
 
 " ' " No, sir," said he, and as he said it I knew he 
 lied He's a nice old chap, Isaacson — to me, an5rway — 
 and looks you straight in the face as a rule, but as he 
 said that, he kept his eyes on the case before him. 
 
 " ' "Isaacson," said I, " you have. Out with it ! 
 Why shouldn't I see it, even if you can't part with it? " 
 
 " ' I won't go on with our argument. It's enough 
 that he refused for a long time, but at length gave in. 
 
 " ' "Well, Mr. Fenton," he said, " if you step round 
 here you can see something, for I won't touch it. 
 I won't sell it you, sir ; no, not for anything. So it's 
 no use your trying to buy it. but seeing as how we've 
 done a bit together, you and I, you can see it, sir, for 
 yourself ! " 
 
 " * "Does it bite, Isaacson? " said I, laughing, and 
 passed round the counter ; and there on a shelf at the 
 back that looked as if it had been cleared for it, lay 
 that cross. It was a curious thing to see in an old Jew's 
 shop, and more curious still to hear the old man speak 
 like that. So I picked it up right away without a 
 word. 
 
 " ' "Ah ! " exclaimed old Isaacson. " Do you feel 
 nothing, sir ? " " Feel anything ? " said I. "Why of 
 course I don't, except old wood." (Then I sprang the 
 catch.) " Why it's a reliquary, and fine at that ! 
 What, an ivory one inside, too ! What's in that ? " 
 
 " * "Don't open that, sir ! " exclaimed the old man. 
 
 " ' Well, it was a bit foolish, I suppose ; but we stood 
 and looked at each other behind the counter for a 
 second or two without a word. Something in that old 
 man's face silenced me, but I was never more surprised 
 in my life than when he said suddenly : 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 33 
 
 '" " There, sir, take it away, i won't sell it you, and 
 I didn't mean to speak of it, but seeing as how you feel 
 nothing y sir, take it away/* 
 
 " ' I couldn't move him to name a price, and he would 
 say no more, neither how he had got it, nor what was 
 inside that ivory cross, though I guessed what he 
 thought was there. So I came away here, and opened 
 the whole. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I, ' and what is in it ? ' 
 
 " ' A thin slither of wood,' replied Fenton slowly, 
 * a mere splinter, black with age and very brittle.' 
 
 " The clock ticked on without interruption for a good 
 minute, and then he went on, for I would not speak : 
 
 " * But I must tell you the rest. That night I took 
 the case round to Father Andre, at the Servite Church — 
 you know ? ' 
 
 " I nodded. ' Well, I gave it to him, just saying 
 that it was a curious old reliquary that I had come 
 across that afternoon ; but the moment his hands 
 closed on it, he looked as you did just now.' 
 
 " ' How did I look ? ' said I. 
 
 *' ' Never mind,' said Fenton ; ' just listen a minute. 
 When he looked up, I said to him : "Well, Father, what 
 do you feel, for I can feel nothing"; and he answered 
 me, as far as I can remember, in these words — remember 
 he knew no more than you did. 
 
 " ' "I feel as if I had seen my mother with a breaking 
 heart, and as if mine would break too." Is that how 
 you *felt ? ' 
 
 *' I nodded ; I could say nothing ; and again the old 
 clock held the field. 
 
 *' ' Come,' Fenton said suddenly, * I am forgetting 
 we must dress for dinner and I've not finished. Have 
 you heard of Mademoiselle Duville ? Well, she is 
 coming here to-night, after dinner, to hold that in her 
 hands. A man I know, to whom I told the story, 
 
34 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 suggested it, for I know nothing whatever of mediums 
 and clairvoyants. But it appears that she was very- 
 famous once, and that now she is a good CathoUc and 
 won't ordinarily touch the subject ; but he is bringing 
 her. I've asked Father Andre too, though he doesn't 
 know why, and I should have asked you if you were in 
 England — and here you are ! Now let's go and dress.' 
 
 " But at the door I stopped him. ' Fenton/ I said, 
 * did Father Andre say any more ? ' 
 
 " ' Why do you ask that ? ' he queried. 
 
 " * Only curiosity ' I said, ' Why ? ' 
 
 " * Well ' he said rather grimly, ' because he did say 
 one other thing as we parted at the door in the Fulham 
 Road. It was this : '* I shall pray God, Mr. Fenton, 
 that you may come to feel as I felt too." ' " 
 
 Meredith stopped for so long, that Carlile interrupted 
 his silence. " Is that all?" he asked. " Nearly," said 
 Meredith, " but I am sorry, for the climax is to come 
 and it is getting late, only, somehow, I hardly dare 
 speak of what follows ; I will try to put it briefly. 
 
 ** We dined, and talked of Africa rather constrainedly 
 the while. There was a ring as Benson brought in the 
 coffee, and he came back to say * Father Andre, sir.' 
 At that we went into the study, and I shook hands 
 wdth a stout, quiet-looking clergyman whom I had met 
 at Fenton's house before. We talked indifferently for 
 a few minutes and then there was another ring, and we 
 heard Benson go to the door. 
 
 " * Father Andre,' said Fenton quickly at that, ' I 
 have asked you here to-night, without your knowledge, to 
 witness something. I hope you will forgive me. There 
 are at the door now, I expect, a Dr. Paget, a friend of 
 mine, and Mademoiselle DuviUe, a clairvoyante. She 
 does not know for what particular purpose she is here, 
 but I intend to put that reliquary in her hands. Please 
 say nothing whatever to her first/ 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 35 
 
 *' Before he could reply, Benson ushered them in. 
 I don't in the least know what Fenton meant to do, 
 but I suppose he would have introduced us and then 
 casually got on to the subject, but what followed 
 happened so suddenly that even Benson was startled 
 out of his usual calm, and did not so much as get out 
 of the door before it was all over. 
 
 " The doctor came in first, a middle-aged, clean-shaven, 
 keen-looking man, an agnostic, I believe, and I was just 
 wondering why he had preceded the lady, when I saw 
 her. It appeared that she had refused to go first, 
 indeed almost to enter at all, and the moment she was 
 inside, as Fenton was beginning a conventional 
 greeting, she seized Paget by the arm and cried out : 
 ' I cannot stay in this room. Dr. Paget, take me out 
 instantly ! ' 
 
 " We had risen, Andre and I, and stood amazed, but 
 at that Fenton, without hesitation, strode across the 
 room, pulled open the drawer, and I heard a quick 
 snap ! snap ! of catches. Then he turned and took a 
 few paces forward, thrust something into the lady's 
 hand, and said : 
 
 " ' What is this. Mademoiselle ? ' 
 
 *' I could see it was the ivory cross. 
 
 " And then the most tender and the most wonderful 
 thing I have ever seen, or ever expect to see, occurred. 
 The girl, for she was only a girl, sank on her knees 
 before us and burst into tears, gasping between her 
 sobs : 
 
 "' Oh, my God, my God ! His Mother! His Mother ! 
 ... Oh, my God ; Oh, my God ! " 
 
 Michael's breath, as he lay listening, caught in his 
 throat with a little choking sound, but Meredith went 
 steadily on now. 
 
 " I don't know how it happened reallyj but Andre 
 and I were on our knees when Mademoiselle Duville 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 spoke again as well as she could for tears. It was plain 
 she was clairvoyante, but it was not like anything I 
 should have imagined. 
 
 *' ' We are on a hill/ she said. ' Why is it so 
 dark ? . . . I wish the crowd would keep still ; I can't 
 see or hear properly. . . . Oh, don't, don't, don't ! 
 Don't look like that, Lady ! What do you see ? . . . 
 Oh, my God, a cross, and — and — ... oh ! her face is 
 white with pain ! . . . ' 
 
 " Then Andre got up swiftly and took it away, his 
 lips set as he did so, and Mademoiselle Duville fainted 
 away." 
 
 The South African night was all about those two on 
 the mountains as Meredith finished, for the fire had died 
 down to nothing and there was no sound to be heard. 
 Then, far away, there arose that faint murmur that an 
 African knows so well, the murmur which swells and 
 swells into a sudden storm of wind and may pass as 
 quickly and as mysteriously as it came. 
 
 " The wind is coming," said Meredith, " we had better 
 get into our blankets." 
 
 They rose at that, and each man was busy for a little. 
 Then, rolled there in their blankets, the wind swept 
 down upon them, and screamed among the rocks, and 
 bent the tall grasses which sighed as it passed, so that 
 neither could sleep. And then, slowly, slowly, the 
 tumult grew less, and the sighing of the grasses died 
 down, and the faint moaning that followed passed 
 itself at last, until the world slept again. 
 
 " Father Meredith," said Michael. 
 
 " Yes," said the priest. 
 
 *' But why should you say a votive mass of the 
 Sacred Heart on the 5th of February ? " 
 
 " Well, you see, Fenton asked me to do so. It was 
 on that date, about a month after the incident I have 
 
OUR LADY'S PAIN 37 
 
 told you, that he went as a Carthusian novice to St. 
 Hugh's Carminster." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Michael, " and the relic ? '* 
 
 '* He took it with him,'* said Father Meredith. 
 
 "But why our Lady ? " persisted the other. 
 
 " I do not know," said Father Meredith, ** unless 
 it had been her fragment." 
 
 Carlile was up early although he was tired. It was 
 he who set the small black cross and the two candles on 
 the unhewn stone, and who spread the altar cloths 
 over the little portable slab that lay on the rough 
 surface. He knelt, too, to serve his friend, and heard 
 while Father Meredith read of the wounds that were 
 given in the House of Friends, and of the piercing of 
 that spear on Calvary. And then, when the white 
 Host was lifted in the One Sacrifice, he, too, raised 
 his head, and looked beyond it to the green of the 
 sloping hill-side, and the grey stones of the way, and the 
 blue of the morning sky, and the radiance of the sun 
 new-risen on a hundred peaks, but saw instead the 
 narrow hmits of a Carthusian cell, and wondered if 
 Fenton had learnt his share yet in the sorrows of God 
 and of His Mother. 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Call 
 
 I HAVE got leave to set this story, such as it is, upon 
 paper, for otherwise I should not attempt it. There 
 is a certain intimacy about it, and that in connection 
 with the most delicate of all subjects, which would 
 compel me to stay my hand if it were not for that 
 leave. Indeed, even apart from the question of permis- 
 sion, I hesitated a little about the writing, for I have a 
 great affection for my friend, and never remember his 
 words without a sense of great peace taking possession 
 of my heart. That is due, I doubt not, as well to the 
 contact of his own quiet and simple personality as to 
 the story itself. The story, therefore, may have a 
 hard reception from the cold world, and I should be 
 sorry for that. And yet — well, it is anciently writ that 
 no record of God's word to a soul is void of power. 
 
 At least, I have the right to shepherd what I have to 
 say, by trying to suggest the personality of him who has 
 made the trivial incidents — chances I had almost 
 written, but I will not affect what I do not beheve — 
 what they are to me. He is an elderly missionary. 
 Some time back now, he was a considerable figure at a 
 big University, a many-sided man — sportsman, ready 
 speaker, litUrateur — who made his mark. When he 
 crowned his undergraduate years with a brilliant degree 
 and was finally given Holy Orders, his friends all said 
 of him that he would go very far. I doubt not but 
 that he has ; but not as his friends thought. He is a 
 missionary in the Lesuto, with a church that seats 
 less than 200 souls, and a parish hidden away out of the 
 
THE CALL 
 
 run of even diocesan events, and hard and unresponsive 
 at that. He is in what you would call a backwater, and 
 he knows it ; but he is entirely serene and simply happy, 
 and very far indeed from being a back number himself. 
 He cannot, it is true, keep exactly in touch with the 
 movements of modern thought and life, for half his 
 stipend goes into his parish, and it would not buy many 
 books at best, while a library or the use of another's 
 purchases is out of the question. Some considerably 
 worn and second-hand copy of the book of the year that 
 we have all discussed, does usually reach him about 
 five years late, and it is a little pathetic to find him so 
 eager over something we have almost forgotten. And 
 yet I have noticed that he invariably has something 
 to say about it that occurred to no one else at the time. 
 To reach his station, then, you must go through an 
 incredibly back-veld dorp, whose railway station is six 
 miles from the houses which cluster round an unneces- 
 sarily huge and proportionately ugly Dutch Reformed 
 church, not yet out of debt. There you get on a horse 
 and enter Basutoland after a while, at a place where 
 reasonable roads north may be said to end. But you go 
 north. Presently you leave even an unreasonable 
 road, and again even that, and take to the native veld. 
 Before you, at that moment, lies Tulo ea Khotso, a big 
 cluster of trees on a hillside that is itself a spur of a 
 towering and magnificent amphitheatre of mountains 
 and rocks in the central range itself. There are no 
 such trees for miles, as the birds know well. They 
 greet you as you ride past the little Calvary at the 
 entrance and up the double avenue of oaks. There is 
 a perpetual melody of innumerable doves ; there is a 
 heronry across a field where the orchard slopes down to 
 high blue gums and gigantic willows ; and by the house 
 itself is a rookery disputed by a host of migratory 
 hawks year by year. The tiny humble church is to the 
 
40 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 left, with thick stone walls and lancet windows, and low 
 altar unscreened and unrailed, so that it might be some 
 ancient East Anglian anchorage ; and to reach the 
 house, you pass through a rickety wooden gate that is 
 apparently not meant to shut, into a garden that seems, 
 at first sight, one wilderness of tangled rose trees ablaze 
 with colour. It has a stoep, on which we were sitting 
 in the afternoon shade when my friend told me his 
 story. Before the stoep is a square patch where the 
 hardiest flowers — phlox, petunia, zinnia, marigolds 
 and portulaca — riot in a glory. Beyond that again, is 
 the orchard ; and past a walnut and an old apricot one 
 reaches " the study.'' 
 
 When first I saw it I knew at once that it was the 
 place of my dreams. Great tangled brakes of wild 
 brier enclose an open space, in the centre of which is 
 an old stone well, long disused. Willows whisper above 
 it and hang down green streamers almost to the grass. 
 To the right is a small thatched shelter of rough 
 stone, walled on three sides, and open as to the fourth, 
 so that he who sits within at the rough table (and 
 there is no other furniture than a rude hanging book- 
 shelf and a chair), looks across the open circle and the 
 well to where a crucifix, about eight feet high, stands 
 silently. Before it is a prie-dieu fixed in the ground, of 
 such a height that a man may lean his arms upon it. 
 To the right, a little path wanders off among the trees, 
 and makes a sudden turn, after fifty yards or so, by 
 a great clump of pines. Just there, in a simple wooden 
 shrine, stands a white statue of the Mother, and, when 
 I saw it first, a clump of the big blue African lily was 
 in full bloom at her feet. Past the shrine you go, 
 and back a little on your way, till the path ends at 
 a sudden break in the trees. From the gap one looks 
 across the veld to the mountains — across village after 
 village where, for the most part, men do not know 
 
THE CALL 41 
 
 either the Son's perpetual sacrifice or the Mother's 
 endless prayer. The grass, even, is worn away there, 
 v/here a man may stand and gaze, and pray. 
 
 It was not, therefore, that Tulo ea Khotso lacked in 
 beauty : indeed it might well have attracted a poet, 
 a dreamer, a hermit saint ; but my friend was, if some- 
 thing of all these, a good deal more besides. He was 
 made for a bishopric. He would have governed well — 
 inspired, designed, completed. His was an acute mind, 
 eager for conversation and for the exchange of ideas, 
 and it was also the mind of a master of men. Here, 
 then, all these things were denied him. His little 
 flock, despite all his care, was drunken and un- 
 imaginative. Beauty in religion, and, still less, wisdom, 
 made little appeal to them. Nor was there a white 
 man near for a companion, nor a city, nor, as I have 
 said, even a library. And yet my friend struck one 
 always as the contented, occupied man who has found 
 his vocation. 
 
 This, then, was what I tried to say to him as we sat 
 the fourth afternoon on the stoep. We had been to 
 see a local chief who was making himself a particular 
 nuisance at the time, and we had found him swinishly 
 drunk. My friend had been incredibly patient, it 
 seemed to me ; but I could tell that he was sad at 
 heart. So on the stoep I ventured to suggest a 
 change. 
 
 " Why don't you come home to England ? " I said. 
 " You have been out here long enough, and we want 
 — without flattery — men like you at home. You ought 
 to be vicar of a big city church, or, better still, the 
 principal of a theological college, and here you are, 
 wasted on Africa." 
 
 " That's what you think," said my friend. 
 
 "But you are not, in a sense, satisfied ? " I 
 questioned. 
 
42 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 " I don't see what that has to do with it/' he said. 
 
 " But/' I urged, " everyone agrees with me who 
 knows you/' 
 
 " Do they ? " he answered, placidly. 
 
 " But, good heavens ! man," I said, almost angrily, 
 " you ought to think about others and the wider 
 interests of the Church/' 
 
 " Ought I ? " he said. " As to the latter, at least 
 I don't think it is I who should do the worrying." 
 
 " Well," I said, " if the Bishop won't make a 
 move " 
 
 " I wasn't thinking of the Bishop," he interrupted. 
 
 " Whom, then ? " I asked. 
 
 " God," said he, looking straight at me. 
 
 We sat so for a minute or two, and then he sighed and 
 looked away, shifting in his chair and crossing his legs. 
 
 " Look here, Wilfrid," he said, " I'll tell you my 
 story. You may not agree with me, but at least you 
 won't think it rubbish. And you will see why I believe 
 God sent me here and why I do right to stay here till 
 God sends me on." 
 
 So I listened, while the afternoon shadows lengthened 
 among the rose bushes. 
 
 " When I left my theological college," said my 
 friend, " I was in a very perturbed state of mind. 
 To speak honestly, I did not want to be a priest at 
 all ; I wanted to be a politician and an author. I had, 
 however, a fairly defined ambition that, if I were 
 ordained, I would certainly be the author as well, and, 
 maybe, in the long run, a good deal of the other. 
 I was fool enough " (and he smiled reminiscently) 
 '' to listen to my friends, and I thought I might get 
 a seat in the Upper if not in the Lower House one day. 
 
 *•' It was not that I was not rehgious ; I was ; only, 
 if anything, that made things worse. I almost hated 
 
THE CALL 43 
 
 the Church of England. I was not by any means 
 exactly like Dostoviesky's inquisitor who would better 
 the Christ-plan, but, still, I thought things had changed 
 since the first century, and that what we wanted was 
 poHcy and authority. That was why I hated the Church 
 of England ; it seemed to me to have neither. I 
 suppose I was a zealot, and the Church of England is 
 a bad place for zealots — or used to be. Of course 
 I was young, too, and dreamed dreams. 
 
 " In this temper, then, I got a curacy in a big 
 northern town, where there was plenty of * scope,' 
 and a keen, modern, but spiritual vicar. The one 
 disadvantage was that it lay in the bishopric of Hexham, 
 where the Bishop was an Early Victorian broad-church- 
 man and everything to do with him was laid on the 
 same lines. I did not think much about that, however, 
 and I went. And the first crisis came at the ordination. 
 
 '* You, Wilfrid, will hardly credit that ordination. 
 Good heavens, through what has not Almighty God 
 brought the Church of England ! I shan't tell you 
 all about it, only little things : how we were allowed 
 to go to any inn in the village to put up ; how I found 
 my first confrere in the smoke-room, his legs on the 
 mantelshelf, a glass of whisky by his side, and a cram 
 copy of Old Testament History in his hand ; how we 
 dined the first night of our ' Retreat ' with my lord, 
 in evening dress, and were entertained in the drawing- 
 room afterwards by some delightful ladies and some 
 amateur alfresco conjuring ; how the services were 
 deadly, deadly dull ; how every conceivable bit of 
 business was muddled ; and how finally a powerful 
 dignitary descended upon us from London with an 
 address the night before the ordination Sunday, which 
 denied the Resurrection of our Lord as the Apostles 
 believed in it, and bristled with ridicule of the Catholic 
 Church. But that's what happened. And after that 
 
44 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 address I flung away into the fields under the stars 
 alone ; I prayed under a hedge with tears ; I tired 
 myself ; I despaired ; I proposed leaving at once 
 for — if you must know — a Jesuit monastery. Then, 
 as I walked home, an idea came to me. You may think 
 it foolish, but the truth is that I had, at my inn, a tiny 
 text-book, given me as a boy at my confirmation 
 years before, in which 1 often found much comfort. 
 It was a very simple thing, and you would have thought 
 that I should have given it up, since it was most 
 dreadfully Protestant, and the texts had no relation 
 to the Christian Year or anything of that sort. But 
 I hadn't. I kept it. I glanced in it occasionally, 
 and — and this is what you may think foolish — I often 
 found that the disjointed, unconnected texts seemed 
 to have a strange significance for me. Anyway, as 
 I walked back close on midnight that evening, almost 
 broken-hearted, certainly in despair, it came into my 
 mind that I would try the sortes of that httle book. 
 If it had no message, I would go ; if it had a message, 
 I would abide b}^ it. I quickened my pace. I almost ran 
 through the cottages on the outskirts of the little town, 
 And in a minute, on my knees by my bedside, I was 
 staring at these texts for the evening of that date — 
 
 *' * y^ have not chosen me, hut I have chosen you.* 
 
 " ' Peace, he still: 
 
 *' So I was ' still,' and I even had peace next day. . . . 
 
 ** Well, off I went to my curacy ; and I think it 
 isn't foolishness to say that I got on rather well. It 
 amused and inspired me to find that, even as a deacon, 
 I was getting an engagement book full of sermon 
 bookings, and some quite big ones. I was elected to 
 this and that committee ; I had a good deal to do in 
 the planning of a very successful mission for the whole 
 city ; I made time for reading ; I was on a library com- 
 mittee : I had a book on the stocks. Don't think I was 
 
THE CALL 45 
 
 merely ambitious ; I wasn't ; I had a big slum district, 
 and I did not neglect it. But — ^well, you can see the 
 sort of man I was when I tell you what happened. 
 
 ** One morning I came down to breakfast, and was 
 taken absolutely by surprise to find an episcopal letter 
 on the table, asking me, in a dozen lines, to come out 
 to the Lesuto. It struck me all of a heap. I had 
 always been keen on Missions ; I had even thought I 
 might quite possibly go abroad one day ; I had always 
 said as much (that was why, I believe, my name had 
 got round to the Bishop) ; but to clear clean off to 
 a remote corner of Africa — I — just when things were 
 opening up so splendidly. ... I tell you, Wilfrid, I 
 paced up and down by my untouched breakfast for 
 half an hour, in a tumult. 
 
 " And then I pulled myself together. Inwardly I 
 knew I had already determined not to go, but I said 
 to myself that I ought to pray about it. So I went 
 over to my prie-dieu in the corner of my little sitting- 
 room and knelt mechanically down. There was a prayer 
 book open on it, open at the collect for the day, but I 
 did not so much as notice it; I just knelt in silence. 
 But as I knelt, my mind cleared. I saw perfectly 
 plainly that I was playing the coward, and that I must 
 find out and do GOD's will in the matter. I had to 
 wrestle to get even that plain ; but I succeeded so far at 
 last. Then I grew rather afraid, but determined not to 
 do either thing on my own choice only. And then, at 
 an end, I opened my eyes, and my glance dropped down. 
 I read mechanically, but, as I read, the words burned 
 themselves into my brain. 
 
 *"0 Almighty GOD, Who alone canst order the unruly 
 wills and ejections of sinful men ; Grant unto Thy 
 people that they may love the thing that Thou commandest, 
 and desire that which Thou doest promise; that so, 
 among the sundry and manifold changes of the world. 
 
46 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are 
 to he found ; through JESUS Christ our Lord. Amen.' 
 
 " You may hardly see the points as I saw them, but I 
 wired to the Bishop that day. 
 
 " Well, I'm boring you, but it's almost over. I came 
 out in a month or two with (such is my nature) consider- 
 able elation. I had had a big send-off, and I rather 
 thought I was doing a fine thing. There's a glamour, 
 you know, even about the cross — until you actually 
 shoulder it, and then, if there is any glamour at all, 
 it is only other people who see it. Anyway, I came out. 
 I met my Bishop in Cape Town, and he was very kind, 
 and I was pleased to find so much going on, and a 
 distinct sense of bigness about things. I remember 
 I determined, really, on my first curacy because of the 
 fact that I arrived in the town on a Saturday night 
 and was agreeably struck with the crowds of the people 
 in the streets. There were enough, I thought, to make 
 even a martyrdom worth while. (You see how sly 
 the Devil is, Wilfrid !) Well, it was the same at Cape 
 Town. I stayed a week, and I set off up-country 
 really keen. 
 
 " I shall never forget that journey. We seemed to get 
 farther and farther away from everything. That 
 dorp you came through — ^heavens ! I had to wait there 
 three hours for a horse, and I thought to myself, if 
 
 this is my nearest town ! And then when I got 
 
 among the people, after the first pleasure at the scenery 
 had worn off, and so on, I was miserable. All the old 
 tribal colour had gone. This was no conquest worth 
 the making. These hideously dressed women, and civi- 
 lised drunken men, were about as far removed from my 
 interior and secret picture (drawn chiefly from Rider 
 Haggard's novels) as they could be. And my feehngs 
 came to a head after the first Sunday. I was told it 
 was a big congregation — and I could have counted the 
 
THE CALL 47 
 
 men on my fingers ! And the singing, and the disorder 
 and the slovenhness — I was overwhelmed by it all. 
 
 ** That evening, then, I crept into the church like 
 a beaten man. I had that very morning reserved the 
 Blessed Sacrament in the little Tabernacle, but I knelt 
 before our Lord so oppressed that I could scarcely pray. 
 Probably it was largely physical, but I felt as if I could 
 not stay ; as if I had no welcome ; as if I were all alone ; 
 as if the burden were too great for me. And then, as 
 I knelt, a strange sense of the Presence came over me. 
 It was almost as if some mighty, irresistible sea flooded 
 slowly about me in waves of sensible silence, while 
 I sank down, beaten, before it. The bitter-sweet of 
 that Presence was too much for me. I think, as I knelt 
 in the half-dark, that I was afraid to move, and yet, 
 in my fear, I felt as if there was somehow a message 
 for me. To pull myself together I began to read my 
 Evensong — the catechist had said it before, and I had 
 understood nothing in Sesuto — ^but I scarcely noticed 
 what I read, until, at the end of the second Lesson, a 
 verse leaped out at me like the Voice of GOD : * / went 
 in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit ; hut the Rand, of 
 the Lord was strong upon me,' " 
 
 There was silence a minute, and then my friend said : 
 *' That was twenty years ago, now, and I think that I 
 shall stay until GOD bids me go. The Bishop suggested 
 moving me once, but he said he did it of himself to give 
 me the chance. I had no voice at all from GOD ; so 
 I stayed. And — ^well, I have peace." 
 
 As I said, association with tlie personality of my 
 friend may make the story what it is to me — ^a very 
 tender and delicate thing. It would be false, I suppose, 
 to argue that we should all govern ourselves by such 
 possible indications of GOD's will, although perhaps 
 the turmoil and stress in which many of us hve tend to 
 
48 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 hinder what ought to be our reading of His ordering of 
 httle things, without Whom not one sparrow falls to the 
 ground. I do not know. But — so strange is the power 
 of sound — the cooing of many doves is not for me a 
 melancholy thing, but instead it has power to conjure 
 up the memory of that quiet and hidden sanctuary 
 where my friend awaits so tranquilly the Will of 
 the Father. 
 
JONATHAN HAYNES 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Jonathan Haynes 
 
 No doubt, strictly speaking, there is no story at all in 
 the matters about to be related. I should feel, indeed, 
 a certain reticence in relating them if it were not for 
 the effect they produced upon the mind of the Rev. 
 Jonathan Haynes. His was not a particularly 
 striking mind, it is true — only the mind of a common- 
 place simple person, who did his work obediently and 
 methodically, but with a singular absence of success 
 or enthusiasm. In consequence, perhaps, the chief 
 departure of Hajmes from the ordinary was into 
 the depressed. He would sit on his stoep at nights, 
 and hsten to the crickets in the trees, and reflect 
 that he was a failure, and his work with him. Then 
 he would steel himself, in a commonplace way, with 
 a reflection that the Catholic Church had existed 
 before him and would exist after him ; that his business 
 was not necessarily to succeed, but to go on with what 
 was given him to do ; and that if his labours did not 
 evangelize the nation, at least he put stones in the road 
 along which someone else might tread to its evangeliza- 
 tion in the future. It must be admitted that such 
 thoughts, however correct, were not inspiring. Hence 
 there may be some value in a series of incidents which 
 led him for once " to start a wing " and thank God and 
 take courage. 
 
 The three incidents occurred within twenty-four 
 hours. Haynes had under his care a huge tract of 
 mountainous country somewhere south of the Zambesi, 
 a trying land of rivers often impassable in the rains ; 
 
50 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 of steep rocky paths climbable only to the rough 
 mountain ponies ; of difficult dongas which took a 
 weary time to negotiate ; of plains, beautiful as all 
 the rest, but apt to grow monotonous when one had to 
 jog across them at five miles an hour for six or seven 
 hours on end. The district was fairly well populated 
 however. You might ride a day without seeing much, 
 but the big villages were hidden away on the spurs of 
 the hills, and the huts were scattered fairly regularly 
 where there were no villages. Haynes had the usual 
 complement of out-stations to work. He used to figure 
 on a fortnightly visit as far as possible, when he would 
 arrive overnight and say Night Prayers ; offer the Holy 
 Sacrifice, after Confessions as a rule, in the morning ; 
 instruct catechumens ; visit the school, and return. 
 He had enjoyed it at first, but in five or six years he 
 had covered the same ground rather frequently. 
 Consequently he contemplated drearily, during three 
 extra minutes in bed, the fact that he had to leave for 
 a mountain station, six hours away, on the particular 
 morning in question. 
 
 His meditations were cut short by a knock on his 
 door. " Come in," he said. Augustino, his boy, en- 
 tered. " A messenger has come from Mapenzi's village, 
 father," he said, " and old Samuel is dying. They say, 
 wilt thou take the Sacraments to him as soon as thou 
 canst." 
 
 Now Haynes' subsequent reflections and actions 
 were characteristic of him. In the first place he was 
 distinctly annoyed — almost, even, with old Samuel. 
 This all meant at least an hour and a-half added to his 
 proposed trek, and it involved haste and inconvenience 
 as well. At the same time he might easily have put off 
 the longer journey in consequence of the shorter, or he 
 might have served Samuel sufficiently by eating his 
 breakfast quietly at home, and then taking the Oil and 
 
JONATHAN HAYNES 51 
 
 the Reserved Sacrament out of the Church. On the 
 contrary, however, but protesting and without any 
 enthusiasm whatever, as usual, he got up, dressed 
 hastily, and rode off at once. He proposed, not merely to 
 communicate the sick man, but also to say Mass in 
 his room. Old Samuel had been a pious person, and 
 Haynes thought he might like it, if he were conscious. 
 If he were too sick for the service, then Haynes resolved 
 to celebrate in the next hut. It would be good for the 
 place, he thought. 
 
 So he rode off in the early morning, one big grumble 
 interiorly, which was profoundly wrong of him, but 
 interesting, as it shows how little he expected anything 
 in the nature of vision. But perhaps it will be better to 
 leave psychological reflections to those who are capable 
 of making them. They can conclude precisely what 
 they please. 
 
 Old Samuel lived in one of eight huts set on a ridge 
 which ran on towards a big hill and itself separated a 
 couple of valleys with their attendant streams. It was 
 about 8 a.m. when Haynes rode up, and three naked 
 children sprawling in the dust, an energetic hen, 
 and a couple of lazy pigs greeted him. He off-saddled 
 before anyone came ; then a taU native in a preposterous 
 assortment of European clothes emerged from the hut. 
 He looked at Haynes inquiringly, but Haynes shook his 
 head and said he had come to say Mass in the presence of 
 the sick man if he were able to bear it. The young man 
 said that he thought that his father would hke it, and 
 Haynes stooped and entered. In the hut were four old 
 women, one of them Samuel's wife, a younger woman, 
 the latest catechumen, and a good half dozen children, 
 Haynes greeted them collectively and turned to the 
 corner. It was rather dark after the sun outside, 
 but he made out a pile of blankets, and a head appearing 
 from a kaross, and he wefit across to it. The old. 
 
52 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 wrinkled face looked at him with bright, fevered eyes, 
 and lighted up as it recognised him. Haynes bent over 
 him, strangely tender. 
 
 *' They sent for me, and I came at once," he said. 
 " Are you in pain, Samuel ? " 
 
 The old eyes gazed at him as if uncomprehendingly. 
 
 " I have brought the holy Oil, Samuel," went on the 
 priest, " for you know you will be going to see our Lord 
 soon, and I must prepare you for your journey. And I 
 wondered if you would like me to say Mass here, so that 
 you might hear it again before you go. Would you ? " 
 This time the head nodded once vigorously ; but there 
 was nothing said. 
 
 " I am glad, Samuel," said Haynes; '* but first there 
 is one thing you should try to do. You know that 
 before we receive our Lord we should make our heart 
 clean for Him. Would you not like " 
 
 " Confession," interrupted the old man, eagerly, 
 
 Haynes sat back and looked round. For the first 
 time he noticed the old soap-box covered with a white 
 handkerchief, the two candles stuck to the lids of old 
 tins, and the Crucifix hung on the wall behind. The 
 careful preparation moved him somehow. ** Will 
 you all go out," he said, " while I hear Samuel's 
 confession ? " 
 
 The children hastily, the women ponderously, left him, 
 while he unstrapped his roll and put on cotta and stole. 
 He bent over Samuel. The old man was weaker he 
 thought. " I will say the Confession for you," he said 
 gently, " and then you can try to tell your sins as slowly 
 as you like." The old face nodded again. " I confess 
 to Almighty God " began Haynes carefully. . . . 
 
 He called the others in while he was making ready 
 for Unction and the Mass ; and after the psalm and the 
 prayer, it seemed to him that it was in a strange 
 stillness that he approached the pile of blankets with 
 
JONATHAN HAYNES 53 
 
 the Oil. Firmly, with wet thumb, he pressed back the 
 eyelids and anointed the old eyes. *' By this anointing, 
 and His most loving mercy, the Lord forgive thee all 
 that thou hast sinned by sight." Haynes noticed 
 the tears in them as they opened again. Then the 
 rest — the gnarled, old hands and the hard feet, already 
 cold, especially. Haynes remarked that he must 
 make haste. 
 
 He was at the rude altar now. Quickly but reverently 
 he pronounced the words, and at last bent himself for 
 the Sanctus. The sound of a sheep-bell startled him : 
 he had not thought that they would remember that. He 
 straightened himself, and began the Canon. In the 
 stillness a quavering voice broke the silence, and they 
 all took it up. They were singing, " Blessed is He that 
 Cometh," as at a service in church, and without instruc- 
 tion. Haynes was strangely moved again. 
 
 The bell rang out once more, and again came the 
 
 surprise. '* O Lamb of God " that quavering voice 
 
 began. Could it possibly be Samuel ? But surely he had 
 not the strength ! Haynes wished he could turn to see. 
 
 But in a few minutes the opportunity came as he 
 turned with the Sacrament, and he was amazed by 
 what he saw. The old man was sitting up in bed, his 
 eyes glistening, his arms outstretched. Haynes 
 moved quickly towards him, and sank to his knees. 
 " The Body of our Lord JESUS Christ which was given 
 for thee," he said, in the musical Sesuto. . . . 
 
 Then the Cup ; and the old man sank back with 
 those bright eyes closed and a smile on his face. 
 Haynes returned to the altar, and the drama moved 
 to its close. At the Benediction his eyes wandered 
 against his will to that comer, and he saw a movement 
 as the toil-worn hand moved in the sign of the Cross. 
 It failed, he thought, to complete it, as he turned back 
 to the altar. 
 
54 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 During the last Gospel he heard a movement 
 behind him, and as soon as he could, he turned again 
 to see. From where he stood he could see that there 
 was no need to go again to the comer. Old Samuel 
 was not there. . . . 
 
 About II a.m. Haynes got into the saddle for his 
 long ride. He had arranged for the native priest to be 
 called for the funeral, and there was nothing more 
 for him to do. They all came out to see him off, and 
 he rode slowly away. He had no one to talk to for 
 six hours, and it proved a trying ride. The sun was 
 unusually fierce, and the way rougher from Mapenzi's 
 than it would have been from the centre station. Three 
 times he had the lamentable business of climbing 
 painfully up and up a rocky valley and over a bleak 
 crest, only to find another long ascent before him ; 
 and when at last he dropped down on Ledinmane he 
 was as tired as a man could be. They gave him a hut, 
 however, and he got out his bread and a tin of sardines and 
 sat down to that and his kettle of tea, content with the 
 food and the rest if only he might be left alone. But 
 that was not to be. He had not finished his last cup 
 when the catechist appeared. It was a penitent ; he had 
 come very far over the mountains, and as the Father 
 was celebrating among the people an hour farther on 
 in the morning, he begged to be shriven that night, 
 there and then. 
 
 Haynes looked at his pipe wistfully and at his roll 
 with some despair, but he was priest enough to give a 
 gruff assent. It was a perfunctory business altogether, 
 partly because the man was very ignorant, and partly 
 because Haynes was extremely tired ; but it was over 
 at last. The man got up slowly and departed with a 
 little limp, and Haynes, with a sigh, pulled his cotta 
 over his head. Ridiculously, he stopped with it on 
 his arms, staring at something on the floor. Then 
 
JONATHAN HAYNES 55 
 
 he bent to see. He was right. It was a half-footprint 
 marked in blood. There were three others, altogether, 
 on the way to the door. The man had indeed come far. 
 It is a changeable climate, and next morning it was 
 cold enough to freeze the marrow in one's bones. After 
 all, the hut was at least 7,000 feet high in the mountains, 
 and it was early winter, but neither reflection helped 
 Haynes at all. It was too cold to wash much, especially 
 as he had to be in the saddle with the early dawn for an 
 hour's ride to the place of the Station ; and he put on 
 his clothes over his pyjamas, and his coat and a blanket 
 over them, in a vain attempt to keep warm. The wind 
 blew fiercely in his face, and the ground was pocketed 
 with snow. The path was not level for a hundred 
 yards, and the ponies had to pick their way over slippery 
 stones in the streams and up the frozen earth- trails like 
 so many cats. The catechist rode ahead, and Haynes 
 tied his reins to his coat, and put his hands in his 
 pockets to keep out the cold. His horse could only 
 walk, and besides he did not much care at that moment 
 what happened. Half-way there, however, he woke 
 up to some sort of interest, because from his high 
 station he could see all the vaUey, and he noticed 
 moving specks of red blankets and black coats dotted 
 here and there about it. He and his companion 
 reached the village at last, however, and then came 
 the heart-breaking wait on an empty stomach while 
 the congregation arrived. Finally, nevertheless, he 
 could begin the preparation with the communicants, 
 and then it angered him to find that they had for- 
 gotten the simple prayers he had taught them on 
 his last visit. He reflected, however, that that had 
 been over a month ago, and kept silent. But on 
 his way to the door, he got another sense of 
 shock. Kneehng there was old Marta. Now Marta 
 was as stupid as a native of seventy converted at 
 
56 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 sixty-five can be, and that is saying a great deal. 
 Haynes had always half thought that he had done 
 wrong to have her confirmed ; for instance, on his last visit 
 only, she had actually broken down in the Lord's 
 Prayer. He determined to tell her not to receive 
 that day. Then he changed his mind again. He would 
 make an address at the Offertory, and yet another 
 short one just before the Canon, and then his 
 responsibility would end. But he was in a poor frame 
 of mind as he went to the Altar. 
 
 He grew worse as things went on. The singing was 
 incredibly awful. There was a woman at the back 
 somewhere with an unbehevable voice who would 
 sing loudly and persistently. It was hterally • ' awful ' ' ; 
 Haynes felt that he could not endure it to the end. 
 Fortunately, as his endurance was at the breaking- 
 point, the opening hymn concluded, and he began. 
 
 At the Offertory he noticed that old Marta had come 
 right up to the front. Perhaps it was that that made 
 him speak so coldly and judicially. Anyway, the 
 upturned blank faces gazed at him stonily from where 
 their owners sat or crouched on the mud floor. It 
 was not a successful sermon. 
 
 But the collection finished it. He had drummed 
 into his people the value of making some offering to 
 God when they received the great Gift from God, until 
 he was tired, and then that day they handed him the 
 bag with one " tikki " in it. . . . He set himself to go 
 on in a kind of despair. 
 
 Right up to the beginning of the Canon he was in 
 two minds as to whether he should (horribly un- 
 orthodoxically) say anything, or whether he should 
 leave them alone ; but the sight of Marta, as he said 
 the Comfortable Words, decided him. She really was too 
 ignorant ; he must impress upon her what was to happen. 
 So he turned, after the Benedictus, for a word or two. 
 
JONATHAN HAYNES 57 
 
 They were never spoken. As he turned he saw that 
 old Marta had changed her position yet once more. 
 She was stretched at full length on the ground ; her 
 black and wrinkled hands were held out and work- 
 ing convulsively within a few inches of the edge of his 
 alb, and the tears were streaming down her face. 
 Her lips were working too. Then he caught her 
 prayer. " JESUS— JESUS— JESUS "—she was say- 
 ing ; that was all. The crude oleograph on the wall 
 behind the mud altar looked all blurred to him as he 
 turned back without a word. 
 
 Somehow or another the sum-total of the three inci- 
 dents did not strike Haynes till he got back home. He 
 was alone at supper, but his boy noticed nothing until he 
 brought in the cheese. Then he saw that his master 
 had put down his knife and was sitting back from the 
 table, his hands on the edge of it, staring hard at nothing. 
 He did not touch the cheese either. Instead he rose 
 suddenly and went into church. There he knelt 
 before the Tabernacle for a long time in silence ; and 
 thanked God and took courage, as I have said. 
 
58 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Cattle Money 
 
 Sekeke had been walking since daybreak, and he was 
 mightily tired. He had come from the camp by a 
 path that would never run straight, but travelled up 
 and down, over hills and down to streams, as it pleased. 
 An hour ago, however, he had reached the worst part, 
 for, striking the Caledon river as a tiny stream a foot 
 broad, he had just followed it to the spring where it 
 rose, and then pushed straight on up the mighty pass, 
 through the two great hummocks of rock, each five 
 hundred feet high, that seem to guard it, and had now 
 come out on the flat plateau above. It was a wonder- 
 ful view, though Sekeke hardly appreciated it. Due 
 west, endless jagged peaks pushed up into the clear sky, 
 and one seemed to be above them all ; due east, 
 there was a rapid fall of thousands of feet, a sheer drop 
 in places, to the Free State. Sekeke had to follow the 
 little footpath that led down. He would sleep in a 
 cave that night, and by chance at a store after that. 
 The third day he would come to the dorp, and five miles 
 beyond the dorp lay the farm to which he was 
 journeying. Despite all that, though he could not see 
 the farm, it looked as if you could throw a stone into 
 the dorp itself from where he sat. 
 
 He took off the old deer-stalker which he had got 
 at about half as much again as its original value from 
 a Jew in Kimberley, and wiped it carefully with a red 
 handkerchief. Then he drew a small purse of very 
 poor leather (5s. at the store — is. in England, only 
 no one would buy them there) from his pocket, and 
 
CATTLE MONEY 59 
 
 counted out slowly one, two, three, . . . ten pounds. 
 Certain that they were safe, he counted them all back 
 again and put the purse once more into his pocket, 
 and then, and only then, did he take out his 
 breakfast, some mealie bread and a piece of dried 
 cooked mutton, washed down by a drink from the 
 stream at his feet. What could a man want more ? 
 And since he was a catechumen, he made the sign of the 
 Cross before he ate. 
 
 Sekeke's affairs, from being extremely simple, had 
 grown profoundly compHcated about a year before. 
 He had been born in Kimberley, but had long since 
 lost track of any near relations, and had drifted on to 
 that Free State farm far below as little more than a boy. 
 His life really began there. He had never been properly 
 taken on, and he was not properly paid ; but he did 
 odd jobs, and shared a corner of a hut on the location, 
 and got his skoff and occasional pay from the farmer, 
 and was happy. Occasionally his master threw him 
 an old shirt in lieu of a month's pay, and occasionally, 
 in very good times, gave him a sheep or two, and once 
 even a skinny heifer which appeared to be about to die. 
 But it did not die ; Sekeke nursed it a great deal better 
 than he would have nursed himself. Also he sold his 
 sheep and kept his shilHngs, and bought cattle as he 
 could, until, a year ago, he had had five beasts that ran 
 with the herd of a Mosuto headman in return for the 
 milk of the two cows among them. 
 
 Sekeke had not collected beasts for nothing. In 
 the location was a girl, young, tall, well developed, 
 whom Sekeke loved. He had visions sometimes, as 
 he lay wrapped in his blanket at the end of the day, of 
 Agnesi nursing his baby or bringing the meahes in 
 from his fields. Of course, as yet he had neither, but 
 that was where the cows came in. Agnesi 's father 
 had promised her to him for five beasts and five sheep. 
 
60 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 and his friend the headman had promised the corner of a 
 field and the place for a hut and five sheep as soon as 
 the girl was his. It sounds a bit complicated, but it 
 was not so to Sekeke. He had only to persuade the 
 headman to give him the five sheep first, and the thing 
 was done. To that end, a year ago, he had begged a week's 
 holiday from his master and set out for the hills via 
 the location. 
 
 First, however, a word about Agnesi. She was a 
 Christian, and of her family none other except Gabrieli, 
 aged six. Her grandfather, however, was a catechu- 
 men, and her mother, since dead, had also been baptised. 
 Her father went to the Mission service on Sundays 
 sometimes, and he knew what he ought to do at heart, 
 only he didn't do it. It was Agnesi who had brought 
 Sekeke to church ; but Sekeke had asked for baptism 
 of his own accord. Father Mark had signed him, and 
 undertaken his instruction, and he had got something 
 into the boy's head, but not much as yet ; not enough, 
 anyway, to prevent what happened when Sekeke came 
 to the location on his way to the hills. 
 
 It was not all Sekeke's fault, though, of course, he was 
 guilty. Anyway, there had been a drinking, and 
 Sekeke, excited with the prosperity of his affairs, had 
 gone to it. Then there had been a quarrel and a fight, 
 with disastrous consequences, and Sekeke had been 
 arrested among others. There was enough to show 
 that he had been of the party, but not enough to secure 
 a big conviction. He got £io or two years, and was 
 lucky at that. 
 
 In his distress Sekeke turned first to Father Mark. 
 He presented himself, shamefacedly, and tried to 
 borrow £io. The Father simply had not got £io to 
 lend him, and he was obliged to send him sorrowfully 
 away, and after that Sekeke returned to the farm and 
 tried the farmer. Yes, he would lend him £io — on the 
 
CATTLE MONEY 61 
 
 security of the five beasts. It sounded all right, and 
 the beasts were driven in and the fine paid. But what 
 of Agnesi ? Memories of Kimberley helped him out. 
 He would go there, earn his money in the mines, redeem 
 his cattle, marry his girl, and be happy yet ! Such is 
 the simplicity of the negro that it seemed accomplished 
 when he and she went to the priest for a blessing on 
 the eve of his setting out. Father Mark smiled on 
 them, read a bit of sound advice to Sekeke, hung a 
 medal round his neck, and sent him out. 
 
 All this had been a year ago. Sekeke was on his 
 way now to redeem the cattle. He did not know any- 
 thing about it, but he was a kind of Jacob. And his 
 troubles were to come. 
 
 Three days after Sekeke had climbed that pass he 
 came up to the farm beyond the dorp. The veld was 
 rather dry and the sun pretty hot, and the farmer a 
 little annoyed because the ploughing was a slow 
 business. Sekeke found him on the big field by the 
 spruit, and swung off his hat, all smiles. 
 
 ** Morro, baas,'' he said. 
 
 " Morro," growled the farmer, without recognising 
 him. 
 
 Sekeke waited, still smiling. Presently he sat down, 
 still smiling. He was in no particular hurry ; the 
 white man would attend to him when he was ready, 
 and besides he recognised two of the oxen in the team. 
 
 But at the next furrow he was in the way, and the 
 vials of the white man's wrath were poured out. 
 
 *' What the devil do you want, you black nigger, you. 
 Get out of the way, confound you ! " he yelled. 
 
 " Right, baas," said Sekeke, and then (still smihng), 
 " I think baas forget I." 
 
 " Who are you ? " asked the farmer. 
 
 " I Sekeke," said our hero, grinning all over his face. 
 " I come from Kimberley, baas, for my oxen." 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " Ho, you're Sekeke, are you ? ** said the farmer. 
 " Oh, I can see you are now, you black scoundrel. 
 Been killing any more men ? " 
 
 " No, baas/' said Sekeke, as if it were the best joke 
 in the world, *' but I want my oxen." 
 
 " Your oxen ? " said the farmer. " Confound you ; 
 but Where's my £io ? You've not got that, anyway, 
 and you can't have your beasts till then." 
 
 It was the moment of Sekeke's triumph, longed for 
 during a year of servitude, and it was very sweet. Out 
 came the cheap purse, and out the ten sovereigns. 
 
 " Here is the £io, baas," said he. ''Now I have my 
 oxen." 
 
 The white man counted them heavily. He was 
 extremely annoyed, as he had reckoned on the beasts, 
 which were worth a great deal more than £io, and his 
 mind was working quickly. Suddenly he saw hght. 
 
 " What's this for? " he asked with a leer. 
 
 " My oxen, baas," said poor Sekeke, with a horrible 
 fear at his heart, puzzled though he was, for it seemed 
 straight enough to him. *' You lend me {lo for my 
 oxen, and said I get my oxen back when I bring de 
 money to baas," he stammered, losing his grammar 
 every minute. 
 
 " You black scoundrel," roared the fctrmer, assuming 
 anger to cover the injustice, ** and what about the food 
 your beasts have been eating all this year ? Who is 
 to pay for that ? Five pounds at least they've eaten 
 this year. I'll have another fiver, or you don't touch 
 one." 
 
 " Fiver, baas ? I not got any more," stammered poor 
 Sekeke. 
 
 *' Well, then, what you come worrying me for ? Get 
 
 out of it, you nigger. Get off my farm, or I'U put 
 
 the police on you. Do you hear ? Get off." 
 
 " But my ten pounds, baas — ^give me," said Sekeke. 
 
CATTLE MONEY 63 
 
 " Oh, no, you don't, my beauty/' answered the farmer, 
 slipping them into his pocket. " You owe me these. 
 Go and get another five, and then you'll get your oxen. 
 Do you hear ? Go ! " 
 
 The world had never been quite so black to Sekeke 
 before as he plodded back to the location. He was hard at 
 work on a problem which puzzles the understanding of 
 several million black men in South Africa, the problem 
 of the white man's justice and the white man's logic. 
 Sekeke was much too well tamed to think of revenge or 
 the law, even if he could have got it ; no, it seemed to 
 him that he was up against the blackest, most iron fate, 
 and that the sun had ceased to shine in the sky. So he 
 came into the location on leaden feet, and even the deer- 
 stalker had lost its glory. Agnesi therefore saw him before 
 he saw her. She was grinding, in her old blanket, and 
 she promptly ran inside the reed fence and put on her 
 new one. Then she came to greet him, as carelessly 
 as only a native girl can. 
 
 " Hullo, Sekeke," she said (or something like it in 
 Sesuto). " Hast thou returned ? " 
 
 ** Yes," said Sekeke, and was silent. 
 
 " And what is the news of the great town," she 
 asked, a little surprised at his tone. 
 
 " Good," said he, and sat down on a log. 
 
 ** Oh," said she, and went over to her grinding of 
 meal without a word more. 
 
 But it was more than human nature could bear. She 
 glanced at him sideways. " Thou hast new clothes," 
 said she. 
 
 " Have I ? " said he, and then, fumbling in a side 
 pocket, he drew out a parcel wrapped in newspaper, 
 and from it two hat-pins representing big swallows in 
 amazing flight. " This is for thee," he said.' 
 
 Agnesi had never worn a hat in her Hfe, and could 
 not pin one on if she tried ; but she was overjoyed. 
 
64 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " Tanki, tanki, very much/' she said, and pinned them 
 into her blanket, and then, pride worn down, she came 
 over to him. " Hast thou the ten pounds ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " Come and walk," he said, and got up, and told 
 his tale as they went. Father Mark found them behind 
 his fence, she sobbing, he stretched sullenly on the 
 ground, ten feet away. 
 
 Now this is not the story of Father Mark, and so we 
 are not concerned with what he said. It was he, 
 however, who suggested a visit to the church, before 
 he rode off, with wrath in his heart, to a fruitless 
 interview with the farmer, by whom he was mag- 
 nificently and gratuitously insulted. And in church 
 Agnesi had her inspiration. 
 
 They were kneeling together at the back, and our 
 Lady's picture hung above them. Agnesi noticed it. She 
 looked at it fixedly, and she remembered some of the 
 stories Father Mark had often told them, to the despair 
 of some of his brethren. 
 
 " Sekeke," she said, " the Father told us once how 
 our Lady heard the prayer of a girl who asked her, 
 and sent much cattle to a man in need. I do not 
 remember all his words, but he said the Mother of God 
 stands near the throne of God, and whatever she asks 
 of God, God gives. Let us therefore ask that she may 
 give you five pounds. 
 
 " I am not washed," said Sekeke. 
 
 " But I am," said Agnesi, " and I will pray." 
 
 *' Pray then," said Sekeke. 
 
 Agnesi looked up at the picture, and her courage 
 failed her. She crouched on the ground, and said 
 nothing. Thus it was Sekeke who prayed, and, not 
 knowing what else to say, he said : 
 
 *' O Mother of God, thou knowest I cannot get the 
 cattle with which to satisfy the father of Agnesi. I 
 
CATTLE MONEY 65 
 
 want five pounds. Please give me five pounds, for 
 Jesus Christ's sake. Amen/' 
 
 Agnesi bent lower and trembled. She rather expected 
 the appearance of an angel with five new-minted 
 sovereigns, and she believed enough to be afraid of 
 his approach. What Sekeke expected no man can say. 
 Anyway, they waited about a quarter of an hour, 
 and then he said abruptly, " Come.'' They went out. 
 Outside he turned on her quickly. " Agnesi," he said, 
 " I go to the mines now to earn the five pounds. It 
 is a bad time, and I, maybe, will be away another year. 
 Meanwhile thou art to wait for me, and if thou hast 
 anything at all to do with another while I am not 
 here, I will beat thee on my return. Farewell." And 
 there and then he turned and left her, and set out 
 for the mines. 
 
 Agnesi wept at such an extraordinary exhibition of 
 energy. 
 
 In astonishment Father Mark put back the purse, 
 out of which he had been trying to conjure five gold 
 sovereigns and thought again regretfully of the dangers 
 of the city. Probably only our Lady was content ; 
 it must have been her plan 
 
 Anyway, the absolutely unexpected happened, an 
 occurrence not in itself miraculous, but one which had 
 no other explanation to the principals concerned. There 
 is one great and golden daydream perpetually 
 before the eyes of all boys who work in the mines, 
 and that is that by chance they may find a diamond, 
 and become rich in a moment, not on its value, but 
 on the bonus given to the finder. Sekeke went straight 
 from Agnesi to the dorp, and slept that night on a 
 pile of skins outside a store. The next day he was 
 taken on by a labour agent, and the next left for Kimber- 
 ley in one of those open carriages which the S.A.R. 
 provide for natives. In due course, having been much 
 
66 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 inspected and marshalled and cursed, he and his gang 
 arrived at the Diamond City and went out to the mines. 
 For a week he laboured, chiefly underground, and fed 
 and slept with the rest of the boys in their place, and 
 on the eighth day he had not been five minutes in the 
 mines when he picked up a diamond. It happens 
 to be the simple truth that it was the eighth of December. 
 Of course, the settlement of the business took some time; 
 but one day the bewildered Sekeke was handed his 
 discharge and eighty-five pounds in the central police 
 station at Kimberley. The diamond was sold in 
 England for four figures, but Sekeke never knew that. 
 
 The news reached the location on the Eve of the 
 Epiphany, and it was brought by Sekeke himself. 
 Agnesi had just come from the sprmg with an empty 
 paraffin-tin of water on her head, when a man on a 
 horse rode hard up to her door. It was Sekeke, gloriously 
 dressed in full European clothes. 
 
 " Greeting/' said Agnesi. 
 
 " Greeting, Agnesi,'' said Sekeke. " I have come 
 for thee. See, here is a handkerchief and a blouse 
 and a skirt for thee from the big city, and this is my 
 horse that I ride, and I have redeemed my cattle. 
 A boy is driving them even now to thy father. And 
 I have much money more, for oxen and sheep, and it is 
 well with us for ever.'* 
 
 Agnesi recovered slowly. " But how didst thou 
 get it ? " she asked finally. 
 
 " Thy Mary showed me a diamond," he said, as one 
 who describes the commonplace. 
 
 They paid their thanks, doubtless, but Father Mark 
 did not see them. What he did see was the thanks- 
 giving of GabrieU and the old grandfather. The 
 two were inseparables, and the manner of their thanks- 
 giving was as follows : Father Mark had a crib in the 
 church, and that night, after supper, as he said his night 
 
CATTLE MONEY 67 
 
 prayers, he heard steps at the door. He turned from 
 his place to see who should be visiting the church so 
 late, and from his own dark corner he saw Gabrieli 
 and the old man come in. They adored the Sacrament, 
 but went straight over to the crib. There they knelt 
 awhile, fixing eyes of wonder on the three figures, 
 and on the ox and ass. Then the old man, kneeling 
 straight up, raised his hand in the old half- forgotten 
 royal salute, and Gabrieli stretched out his towards 
 the manger and deposited there a sticky handful of 
 sweets, which had been his share, up to date, of 
 Sekeke's treasure. 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Father Francis 
 
 CouRTENAY was new to the Mission, and, frankly, it 
 astonished him. He had a kind of notion, when his 
 letter of introduction had secured for him an invitation 
 for the week or so while he waited for his boat, that he 
 should be bored a little by the spectacle of a suc- 
 cession of religious activities from which he could 
 not escape. He imagined, dimly, that there would be 
 frenzied preaching to crowds of evil-smelling natives, 
 a continual round of Bible classes, and a general 
 atmosphere of a parish room combined with a church 
 vestry. But there were none of these things. The 
 talk in the Common Room and at table was frankly 
 secular, and ranged from an animated discussion of the 
 works of modern fiction to the perpetual problem of 
 the European complications. (It was not so long 
 before the Great War, and the Mission was not a little 
 involved in Kaiserism.) There was a great deal of 
 church-going, it is true, but Courtenay was not in the 
 least pressed to attend, and when he did so he found a 
 variety of services which struck him as being totally 
 unlike anything he had expected. Not that he knew 
 exactly what he did expect ; but vague accounts of 
 the Welsh Revival probably accounted for a good deal. 
 Well, there was nothing revivalistic about the services. 
 The morning ones were mostly silent, and in the rest 
 Plainsong figured largely — ^which is a far cry from either 
 Moody and Sankey or Torrey and Alexander. Then 
 the laymen were largely busy in rational secular 
 employments ; the hospital was the same as a normal 
 
FATHER FRANCIS 
 
 hospital usually is ; and the priests were busy, for the 
 most part, on strange errands which took them out on 
 bicycles in the heat of the day, or equally mysteriously 
 into church. Courtenay accompanied one who rode for 
 about four hours over unspeakable paths for the sake 
 of a sick-visit, and his mind was a conflict of emotions on 
 the way back. He was extraordinarily hot, and had 
 swallowed (or felt as if he had) quantities of sand ; 
 why, then, men should devote their lives to that sort 
 of thing, for no conceivable reward, was a matter 
 beyond his stock of reason or religion. 
 
 For six days he heard no sermons at all, but on the 
 seventh came one which filled him with amazement. 
 It was preached by a newcomer, and therefore through 
 an interpreter, so that Courtenay was able to follow 
 it. The day chanced to be the Sunday within the 
 Octave of St. Michael, and the sermon had taken for 
 granted angels and devils and supernatural things 
 generally to such an extent that Courtenay could hardly 
 believe his ears. Did these people believe in such 
 things ? He was resolved on some sort of inquiry. 
 
 After dinner he got an admirable opportunity. It 
 was suggested that they should have the coffee on the 
 verandah, and a layman had produced some excellent 
 cigars — cheap enough out there. They all sat in easy 
 lounge chairs, and Courtenay lazily contemplated the 
 native huts, the glistening cocoanuts, and the still water 
 of the creek, as the glory of a full moon illuminated 
 the tropical world. Odd sounds came up to them 
 without destroying the sense of stillness — the bark of 
 a dog, the occasional shrill voice of a woman, the 
 rustle of the leaves in a faint breeze. It was all very 
 different from the matter-of-fact world. Courtenay 
 commenced operations : 
 
 " You see a side of the native of which most Euro- 
 peans never catch more than a glimpse, I suppose ? " 
 
70 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 he said, vaguely, without addressing anyone in 
 particular. 
 
 The Canon moved impatiently. He disliked that 
 sort of thing. " Oh, I don't know," he said. " Any- 
 way, I must be going. Good night, my lord ; good 
 night, everybody.'* 
 
 Courtenay felt rebuked. He turned towards the 
 Bishop and opened a frontal attack apologetically. 
 " I say," he said, " I hope I did not ask anything 
 impossible, don't you know ; but your doings out here 
 interest me tremendously. You seem to take so much 
 for granted that most of us don't so much as consider 
 any longer, and I thought, perhaps, among the natives 
 you saw a side of things that we never see. All these 
 stories, now, about African magic and devils and so 
 on — do you believe them ? " 
 
 The Bishop looked at him with a half-smile. *' It 
 would be absurd to say that one beheved in all," he said ; 
 " but I fancy you can't be long in this country without 
 feeling that the commonplace explanation does not 
 get to the bottom of everything ; and you see we have 
 to deal with a people to whom murder and witchcraft, 
 and the power of the witch-doctor, and the truth of 
 dreams, are as real as electricity and radio-activity 
 are to you. We can't ignore it, and so we investigate 
 a little, and sometimes one gets up against the im- 
 possible that as far as the evidence goes has happened — 
 and there it is." 
 
 Courtenay looked interested. " Tell me just what 
 you mean, can you ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well," said the Bishop, " most Africans believe, 
 for instance, that a witch-doctor can enter a locked 
 and barred house without disturbing locks or bars, 
 and leave again, having worked his mischief with 
 the place as secure behind him as if he had never 
 entered." 
 
FATHER FRANCIS 71 
 
 Courtenay smiled frankly. " Oh," he said, '' Devant 
 does that most days at 2.30 and 7.30 in St. George's 
 Hall ; but you don't mean to tell me it can be done 
 here, in a hut like that, on the bare ground under the 
 trees," and he waved his hand towards the town. 
 
 From somewhere or another a woman's scream came 
 up to us, and we listened a moment after it had died 
 away. Then the face of the Bishop was grave as he 
 said : '' Don't ask me ; I don't know. I only know I 
 had to move a teacher from a promising village only 
 the other day because, irrefutably, his hut, windowless, 
 and locked as to the door with a new Yale lock I gave 
 him, was entered three nights running and the worst 
 of mischief done. / don't know how it happened ; 
 I only know what I had to do." 
 
 " But " began Courtenay, and then broke off. 
 
 " Well," he said at last, " dreams and so on — do they 
 ever come true ? " 
 
 The Bishop put down his pipe and settled back in 
 his chair. " I'll tell you the strangest story I've known 
 of that sort, if you like, and one of the most beautiful, 
 too. I don't know what you will make of it, but I 
 don't mind your hearing." 
 
 Courtenay and I looked our eagerness, and this is 
 what we heard : 
 
 " Some years ago," said the Bishop, " when I was 
 priest in charge of an up-country station, a new man came 
 out from England to join us. Father Mallory was his 
 name, bat we called him Father Francis, after his 
 patron saint, for whom he had a great love. He was a 
 slight-built man, and did not look a bit strong ; but I 
 never saw anyone out here so zealous before. He 
 loved his work, and he had the gift of being able to 
 relate every bit of it to the great central theme, so that 
 even close study of Chinyanja, with the glass at ninety 
 degrees in the shade, had attractions for him. What 
 
72 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 was more, he got on wonderfully with the natives. 
 Before he could say anything more than a phrase or 
 two he would be out among the huts, and you would 
 come across him, sitting on the ground playing with 
 the children, with all the zest in the world. That 
 was why * Father Francis ' stuck to him, I believe. 
 The people loved him instinctively, and he them. 
 He used to spend hours in the day just praying. 
 None of us on the station felt otherwise, I fancy, than 
 that he had the makings of a saint. 
 
 " He preached a course in the village church that 
 Lent, I remember, in a curious mixture of English and 
 Chinyanja. The amazing thing was that the church 
 was crowded, and that they all seemed to understand 
 him as he sat there, talking quietly, like a man who 
 sees the thing he describes. From my place in the 
 stalls I used to watch the astounding performance 
 with a half-text running in my head : * Every man 
 heard in his own language in which he was born.' 
 
 "But you don't mean ..." broke in Courtenay. 
 The Bishop silenced him by a kind of gesture, and 
 went on. 
 
 " You will guess, of course, what comes next. The 
 fever got him, and he couldn't shake it off. He only 
 lasted a day or two. I was with him all the last day, 
 and he died like a man who sleeps, his fingers round 
 his beads, towards evening. We buried him in the 
 little cemetery in the morning, after a requiem in 
 church, all the village following, and we settled down 
 to our loss. I remember I wrote to his people ; he 
 had been out seven months. 
 
 " About a week later I was sitting writing in my 
 study, when I heard the entrance call spoken outside. 
 I said * Come in,' and there walked in one of our best 
 boys, a tall lad, about seventeen then. I ought to tell 
 you that we had a small school on the place, and that the 
 
FATHER FRANCIS 78 
 
 boys sat in the front rows in church, just beyond the 
 rood screen, which was native work, and open, the 
 rood held up by a pillar or two. 
 
 " ' Hulloa, Lawrence,' said I, ' what do you want ? " 
 
 " Now a native rarely answers you at once on the 
 subject of his visit ; but on this occasion the boy said 
 instantly : 
 
 *' ' Father, I have seen a vision, and I want to tell it you/ 
 
 " I looked at him sharply. His eyes looked into mine 
 absolutely steadily, and there was that about him 
 which caught my attention. I was very busy, but I 
 put my pen down, leaned back in my chair, and said : 
 * Well, Lawrence, and what was it ? ' " 
 
 The Bishop was silent a while. I stirred in my 
 wicker chair, and the creaking recalled him. 
 
 " Fm sorry," he said, " but I was wondering how to 
 tell it you. I had better say just what Lawrence said, 
 as far as I can remember his words. I don't attempt 
 to explain them, mind. This is what he said : 
 
 " * It was in the night, father, and I was sleeping be- 
 tween Ambrose and John, as thou knowest. Suddenly, 
 in my sleep, I felt cold, and I heard a lizard stir in 
 the thatch, and I awoke. Then I saw that I was 
 not in the hut, but in the church, and that the 
 altar was lit with the lights as for Mass. I wondered 
 to myself at being there, and looked round. Yes, all 
 the other boys were there, and many people, and all 
 looked towards the altar as if they waited for something. 
 Then did I look again, and then, my father, I grew 
 very afraid. At first I did not know why I was afraid, 
 but then I understood. Thou knowest the screen in 
 the church, my father ? Well, I knelt near it, where is 
 my place, and the altar seemed but a little way beyond 
 it ; but I knew, on a sudden, that it was very far. I 
 grew cold as that knowledge came to me. It seemed 
 to me that a great gulf stretched in between us and 
 
74 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 the holy place, and yet I could see easily. And, 
 as I feared, the door from the sacristy opened and 
 the boys came in for Mass. I did not know any of the 
 boys, father, but they came, the Cross and the lights 
 and the incense, all but the serving boy and the priest, 
 and instead of them came a man whom also I did not 
 know. I could see his face very clearly, my father, and 
 I should know it again. He had a small brown beard 
 and blue eyes which looked through you, and I 
 noticed particularly that he was dressed in a very 
 patched cassock, my father. He came right down 
 to the steps under the big cross on the screen, 
 and he looked down at us boys sitting below him. 
 And then he spoke, my father, and his words were 
 these : " Father Mallory is here and waiting to say his 
 Mass. Which of you boys will serve him ? " At 
 that my heart turned to ice, and my feet were like lead. 
 I felt that I wanted to jump up and say; '*I," father, 
 but I dared not move. And as I sat I was not in 
 the church, but in my bed, and the hzard still rustled 
 in the thatch.' " 
 
 " Well, I questioned him,'* said the Bishop, '* but 
 1 could get no more out of him than that. He was 
 curiously particular about the face of the man who 
 had spoken, and that was all. I feared he might 
 have some suspicion as to why he had seen that thing 
 and so I asked him right out at last : ' And what 
 do you think it means, Lawrence ? ' At that he 
 stared at me without answering for quite a long time, 
 and then said : ' I do not know, my father. But I 
 shall not die. I should have had to die if I had stood 
 up/ - 
 
 The clock in the church tower near struck slowly 
 just then, and we allowed it to finish without a word. 
 Then : " Well ? " said Courtenay, a Httle impatiently, 
 I thought. 
 
FATHER FRANCIS 75 
 
 *' Yes, there is a sequel," said the Bishop, " though 
 I think it a chance that I know it. The sequel only 
 happened the other day. I had long left the station, 
 and had been made Bishop, and Lawrence was a 
 certificated teacher somewhere up in the hills; I did 
 not quite know where. However, I had to make a 
 tour of his district, and towards evening, on my way 
 to the coast, I reached his village. He seemed very 
 pleased to see me, and we talked for a long time about 
 many things, but not at all of the old station. As 
 a matter of fact I did not particularly remember 
 Lawrence, as he had grown out of all knowledge. 
 I certainly had no thought at all of his vision. In 
 the morning I said Mass, and talked to his people, 
 and arranged to set out for the coast, a three days* 
 walk still, at nine o'clock ; and then went to my 
 breakfast. Half way through it Lawrence presented 
 himself at the tent door. I told him to come in and 
 sit down while I finished, and he came in and sat 
 down on the floor, talking about odd things, while 
 I drank up my coffee and finished the marmalade. 
 Then I lit my pipe, pushed back my chair, and said, 
 
 * Well, Lawrence, and what do you want especially ? ' 
 
 " I was all attention the moment he spoke. * Dost 
 thou remember my vision w^hen I was a boy at school, 
 my father ? * he said. 
 
 " Then, of course, I remembered. * Oh, yes,' 
 said I, ' what about it ? ' 
 
 " ' Only this, my father, that I saw it again last 
 night, and now I know I am to die.* 
 
 " That was a Httle startling, and I knew that it does 
 not do for natives to get ideas like that ; so I thought 
 that I would laugh and pass it off. But then I looked 
 more closely at him, and instead I said, * Tell me.' 
 
 " I'll spare you all the story. It seems he had 
 
 * woke ' in the night again, and * found himself ' in 
 
76 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 the old church. This time, however, he was not 
 with the boys, but behind with the congregation. 
 He said that, just as before, he had no sense at first 
 of anything strange, and no immediate remembrance 
 of his former vision ; but as he looked towards the altar 
 he was conscious of 'the gulf,' and remembered. 
 Then the procession came in as before — all but the 
 priest and the server. And this is how he finished 
 telHng me the story : * The same man as before, my 
 father — I knew him at once — came in, and he came 
 right forward to the steps and looked down the 
 church. I was horribly afraid, because I knew 
 what he would say. And he said it : '* Father 
 Mallory is here and waiting to say his Mass. Which 
 of you will serve him ? " But the moment he had said 
 it, my father, I knew that I feared no more at all. 
 I got up, just where I was, at once, and I said, " I will," 
 and the man looked full at me and smiled, and held 
 up his hand as if to beckon me, and I saw that he had a 
 wound in his hand — and I was again in my house, my 
 father.' " 
 
 " Well, I examined him, and he was as sound as a bell. 
 I laughed at the idea of his death, and told him we 
 ought not to put our trust in visions, but only in God, 
 and he was respectful and quiet. But he wished me 
 ' good-bye ' with a strange air of finality, and knelt 
 for a moment or two after my blessing. 
 
 " I got to the coast in good time, and found my 
 mail not in, so that that night I slept in the hotel. 
 At breakfast the waiter told me that a native was 
 outside asking for me, and when I had finished I went 
 to him. I don't know why, but I had a strange pre- 
 monition of bad news, and I got it at once. It seems 
 that Lawrence was killed by the chance fall of a heavy 
 branch from a cocoanut tree the morning after I had 
 left his place. He had put all his affairs in order. 
 
FATHER FRANCIS 77 
 
 and had told his wife to send word to me when he died. 
 Then he went about his work as usual. He had taught 
 in school all the morning, and gone out to visit some 
 Christians in another village that afternoon. On his 
 way back one of those dead boughs that swing 
 from the cocoanuts till some sharp gust brings them 
 unexpectedly down, fell right across his path. The 
 heavy end struck his head, and he died without a 
 word. He had stood up, you see." 
 
 I looked at Courtenay. He was staring at the 
 Bishop without a word, a curious, tense look on his face. 
 " Come," said the Bishop, pulling out his watch, 
 " it's time for Compline. Do you care to come, Mr. 
 Courtenay ? " We went down the stairs. I hung back 
 at the top, and the Bishop passed near me. " The man 
 with the pierced hand," I said. " What do you 
 think ? " "A httle beyond Mr. Courtenay, I fear," 
 he said ; " but then he could scarcely be expected to 
 credit the stigmata." 
 
78 THB DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Penitence of Peter 
 
 I HAD often wanted to visit St. Agatha's, but had 
 never been able to make the time. Fifty-odd miles 
 constitute a barrier of no little importance when the 
 only road is a trail hardly discernible in parts, spruit- 
 cut in places, and at its best a dusty or sandy way 
 according to the time of year. But I had real need 
 at last, and the opportunity had to be made. So one 
 fine morning, the air still fresh and clear after a heavy 
 shower or two a few days before, I ordered out my 
 horse, packed my saddlebags with what constitutes a 
 change of clothing in these parts, cut myself a package 
 of sandwiches, and rode away. The route lay down the 
 hill and over the river ; then round the spur of a near 
 mountain, and so out to the open plain ; then through 
 the nearly ripe fields of mealies and Kafhr corn, where 
 the birds sang and the wind passed with music, to 
 the distant Nek in the hills that lay between us. There 
 are days in Africa when the feeling that it is good to 
 be alive is stronger here than anywhere else. This 
 was one of them. The sky was blue above ; the herd- 
 boy^ on the veld had discarded their blankets, and 
 for the most part were lying hid among the rocks ; 
 and the wind caught up and spun by little cones 
 of dust that whirled from nowhere into nowhere as 
 if they were glad of it. At the same Nek I lunched. The 
 way was plain before and behind ; behind, almost to 
 the hilly camp I had left ; before, to where hills closed 
 in again not far from St. Agatha's. Through the 
 
THE PENITENCE OF PETER 79 
 
 long afternoon we wandered on, my horse and I, over 
 a river or two — shining Hke silver under the rare 
 trees — and through the lands, leaving the villages 
 perched on the hillsides that we skirted, until the sun 
 bid fair to set in an hour or so. We had mounted a 
 bit of a rise, and it was plain that the land sloped to 
 a river some distance away which skirted a range 
 of unusually rocky heights. Above it, perhaps a mile 
 to the north, on a little elevation, stood out a bare, 
 tall cross. I called to Johnny, and we were away 
 at a canter. 
 
 The Mission buildings clustered on the slope beyond 
 the cross, among mealie fields. First there was the 
 tiny church, and then the three or four thatched mud 
 huts of the priest and his people behind. He came 
 to meet me as I rode up, a tall, spare figure in his old 
 black cassock ; and although I was a layman and my 
 life as different as possible from his, I think we were 
 friends almost at once. I had a tin mug of tea 
 immediately in the living hut, and then was shown 
 round the estate. Dogs, horses, fowls and possibly 
 pigs assume an importance out here almost beyond 
 a city imagination. Then we came to the church. 
 
 It is years ago now since I saw it, but the memory 
 has remained with me as fresh as ever till this day. 
 The walls were stone, but the roof was mud and thatch. 
 A bowl of holy water stood on a rude wooden pedestal 
 at the door. Coloured oleographs of the Stations hung 
 on the walls. There were no benches or chairs, but the 
 altar was set up under a simple baldacchino, and 
 two white statues graced the far windows of the north 
 and south sides. In the centre of the west wall hung 
 a big picture of the Madonna, and a red, flickering 
 sanctuary lamp before the altar told of the presence 
 of her Son. But I am old man enough now to know 
 that none of these things accounted for the atmospher« 
 
80 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 of the place. I do not know the theology or the 
 psychology of it, but I know there are shrines where 
 God's Self can be felt. So I knelt on the mats under 
 our Lady's picture, and the peace of God that I had lost 
 awhile came back to my soul. 
 
 Then Father Hugh explained things. Churches with 
 a five hundred or a thousand pound reredos, designed 
 by a famous artist, never know the joy of offering 
 a baldacchino constructed by oneself out of old curtains 
 and ceiling boards. I entirely agreed with him that it 
 was better for the painted stars to look down on one 
 from the roof in the order of their constellations, 
 rather than in the conventional lines of a Prussian 
 regiment, even if the Great Bear and the Southern 
 Cross do not, in fact, occupy precisely that relative 
 position in the heavens themselves. After all, as Father 
 Hugh explained, one can only put in the constellations 
 one knows. And so I heard his story — ^heard how the 
 heathen herd-boys, in loin cloth and blanket, had 
 come and asked to be shown the pictures of our Lord's 
 passion ; how the simple folk had adored the poor 
 little Crib that first Christmas of its appearing ; and 
 how Blandina of her own initiative had gathered 
 a bunch of the scarlet spring aloes of the wilderness 
 to lay upon the floor, where they would wilt before our 
 Lady. I remained while the priest rang Angelus 
 and the bell for evensong. Then I knelt on the 
 ground by the half-dozen of Christian natives who 
 hved within its sound, and joined in the prayers which 
 grew richer somehow in that atmosphere of heaven. 
 
 But it was our evening's talk that paved the way for 
 this story. We had eaten our bacon and eggs off the tin 
 plates, and had drunk quantities of tea ; and then, 
 with our pipes going strongly, while the lamplight 
 shone on the mud walls, and we rested in deck chairs, 
 we fell to talking. We shook the seats of bishops, and 
 
THE PENITENCE OF PETER 81 
 
 speculated on the destinies of churches. I brought the 
 news ol the world to the bar of an outlook which 
 judged it as the daily papers and the clubs do not. 
 And then we fell to talking of the prospects of the 
 native race with which we had to do. I contributed 
 from the standpoint of hut-tax and labour agents ; 
 he, from the church and the homestead. He was no 
 deluded negrophile enthusiast, but he had seen what 
 was never shown to me. 
 
 " But," I said at last, " do you honestly think the 
 native has what I suppose one would call spiritual 
 perception ? Is he ever likely to produce saints ? " 
 
 The priest smiled. " Well," he said, in his quaint 
 way, " I've seen none as yet, I'll admit, nor any who 
 might develop into a Theresa or an Aquinas, but I 
 think I have come across something very hke the 
 penitence of Peter, and I think the love of a St. John." 
 
 " Have you ? " said I. " Tell me." 
 
 *' What are you going to do to-morrow ? " he asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 *' Anything you please." I said, "so long as I can 
 see something of you." 
 
 " Well," said he, " come for a walk with me in the 
 afternoon. I have to visit a village across the river, 
 and I'll introduce you to a woman who learned penitence 
 as I wish I might learn it, and I'll tell you her story as 
 we return." 
 
 Naturally I agreed forthwith. 
 
 We set out after a bit of luncheon next day. It 
 was an easy walk down to the river, and the river 
 itself was not much to boast of in the way of water. 
 But the great boulders looked cool, and the thin runnel 
 sang softly among them. We crossed, and climbed up. 
 Father Hugh called out a greeting to a tall young 
 girl of thirteen or so, who, clad only in the bead girdle, 
 was carrying a tin of water uphill on her head with 
 
82 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 the grace of a Greek statue. " Why wast thou not 
 at Mass on Sunday ? " he asked. 
 
 " My mother was sick, and I had to go into the 
 fields, O my father," said she; and we passed on 
 satisfied. 
 
 In a Httle time we came on a village. The round 
 huts were set down in accustomed irregularity, and 
 each had its neat grass fence outside it to keep off the 
 winds. Dogs ran out barking, to be followed by 
 children, who all seemed to know Father Hugh, and 
 who promptly drove off the dogs. He had a greeting 
 for one and a question for another ; but at last we 
 stopped before a hut, outside of whose door, in the sun, 
 sat a middle-aged man, with the shadow of sickness on 
 his face. 
 
 Father Hugh sat down beside him. " How art 
 thou to-day, Isaaca ? " he asked. 
 
 " No better, my father," answered the sick man. 
 " My cough was bad when I awoke, and to-day I have 
 been spitting blood much again. I am near to my rest, 
 my father, I think." 
 
 " I am sorry, Isaaca," said the priest, " but hast 
 thou remembered about not doing hard work, as I 
 told thee ? " 
 
 " I remember, my father, and I do not do much, as 
 thou orderest. But yesterday I cut new grasses for 
 this house, which needs them before the rains ; that 
 was all, father." 
 
 Father Hugh turned to me with a helpless gesture. 
 " What is one to do ? " he said. *' This fellow is 
 dying of consumption, and he goes into the hot sun and 
 climbs the steep hillside for hours, cutting grass. 
 Hi, Cypriani, there ! " 
 
 A tall boy came up, all smiles. 
 
 " Cypriani," said the priest, " do thou behold 
 Isaaca ? He is sick and cannot work. Wilt thou cut 
 
THE FEKITENGE OF PETER 88 
 
 the grass for his house that Mama-David may thatch for 
 him ? Thou wilt not be doing it only for him/' 
 he added. 
 
 The boy looked at the sick man and then at the 
 priest. "I go, my father," he said, simply, and 
 walked away. 
 
 " Go in peace," said Father Hugh, smiling, and then, 
 to the sick man, " Where is thy wife this day, Isaaca ? *' 
 
 " She is grinding in the other house, father," said he. 
 " I will call her." 
 
 " No, no," said Father Hugh, " we will seek her. 
 Be thou in peace." 
 
 "Go in peace, my father," echoed the sick man; 
 and we made for another hut. 
 
 Within, in the shade, a somewhat toilwom woman was 
 busily rolhng a stone backwards and forwards on another 
 hollowed fiat one, pouring a handful of mealies, from time 
 to time, into the hollow. Two others watched her. 
 She stopped as we came in, and as Father Hugh 
 greeted them, the other two by their heathen names 
 and her as Mama-David, she got up elaborately to 
 shake hands. I looked at her closely. She was just 
 a typical native woman, clad in two blankets, rather 
 heavy-looking, with tired eyes. A cheap medal of 
 the Blessed Virgin hung by a string of beads round her 
 neck, and she wore a rosary also. She was glad to see us. 
 
 Father Hugh made her sit down. They talked of 
 various things, and then he asked her a question or 
 two about last Sunday's instruction. She answered 
 rather feebly, and broke down in the Divine Praises. 
 He turned to me with a rather quizzical smile, and 
 said in English, " You see, our converts haven't much 
 intellectual perception anyway, Mr. Magistrate. How 
 can you expect the spiritual ? " Then he said a prayer 
 or two, and we made our departure with the usual 
 salutations, and walked out into the sun. 
 
S4 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 A little way down the hill he turned to me and said : 
 "It is of Mama-David that I want to tell you ; but 
 I wanted you to see her first. I don't know what you 
 will make of the story, but you shall hear it, anyway. 
 
 " Two years ago Isaaca was a heathen, but his 
 wife a Christian. He never opposed her religion, but 
 he would make no effort at all to accept it. She used 
 to come fairly regularly to her duties, and he used to 
 sit at home and cough as his sickness grew on him. 
 One day, however, as she was setting out for Mass 
 and for her communion, he said to her : 
 
 " * Thou art going to receive thy sacrament to-day, 
 woman ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes,' said she. 
 
 *' ' It is very strong medicine, is it not ? ' he asked. 
 
 *' She hesitated a minute, and then said, * Yes.' 
 
 '* ' Well,' said he,* Thou must this day do as I tell 
 thee. When the priest gives thee thy sacrament, 
 thou shalt not eat of it, but bring it in thy hand to me, 
 who am sick, that I may eat and be well.' 
 
 " I believe that at first she refused vehemently ; 
 but he insisted. She said she knew that it would be 
 a great sin, first because it was unlawful for him to 
 eat of that Bread, being unbaptized, and secondly 
 because she would deceive me, in hiding it. ' But how 
 should the Washing make any difference to the power 
 of the medicine ? ' said he, ' and no one will know 
 what thou doest.' She could not answer him as to the 
 theology, naturally, but she was prompt on the second 
 point. ' Our Lord Jesus Christ will know,' said she, 
 * for it is His Body that thou askest me to steal for 
 thee, and I cannot do it.' 
 
 " Then he swore at her, and seized a stick to beat her, 
 and the effort brought on the cough again, and for the 
 first time he spat blood. That frightened her, I 
 think, and she promised to conceal the Host when 
 
THE PENITENCE OF PETER 85 
 
 I placed it in her hand, and only make a pretence of 
 eating. She said she would bring it straight to him 
 from the church. 
 
 " Of course I knew nothing of this at all, and that 
 morning the service went as usual. It happened 
 to be a feast day of some importance, and there were 
 many communicants, which made her task easier. 
 Perhaps also I was quicker than usual. Anyway, 
 when I placed our Lord's Body on her hand, she 
 made a pretence only of eating, and then, closing 
 her hand firmly, she placed it behind her, and received 
 from the chalice without touching it, as I have taught 
 them to do. She went back to her place for the rest 
 of the service, and did not open her hand. Then, as soon 
 as possible, she left the church and made straight for 
 home. Neither I nor anyone else knew, or need have 
 known, anything of it. 
 
 " I had said my thanksgiving, and come into the hut 
 for my late breakfast. I was just pouring out my tea 
 when I heard Cypriani, outside the door, call out 
 sharply in surprise. * What is it, Cypriani ? ' I said. 
 ' There is a woman running, father,' he said, ' and she 
 seems in great fear.' 
 
 "At that I went outside, and stood in the doorway 
 by his side. Sure enough, coming up the hill between 
 the fields was a woman, half-running, half-walking, 
 evidently as one who is nearly exhausted. Even 
 from there we could see that she was much alarmed. 
 The handkerchief had gone from her head, and, what 
 was strangest, she held her right arm straight before 
 her as she came, with the hand tightly clenched. I hur- 
 ried down towards her, and when she saw me she broke 
 into a run until, reaching me, she dropped on her 
 knees, her hand still tightly clenched before her, and 
 sobbed out, gaspingly, * Father, save me ! The Blood 
 is on my hand ! The Blood is on my hand 1 ' 
 
86 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 " I could not conceive what she meant. I knelt 
 beside her and tried to quiet her, but she would do 
 nothing but cry, ' The Blood is on my hand 1 The 
 Blood is on my hand ! ' ' Which hand ? ' I asked, 
 and she thrust her right hand into my lap. 
 
 " Then I think I guessed a little. A small crowd 
 had gathered, and I ordered them all away, and 
 told her to come with me to the church. She was 
 afraid at first ; but I ordered it, and I led her by the 
 arm out of the sun into the quiet of the sanctuary. 
 We knelt together before the altar, and then I told 
 her to open that right hand. At first again she refused, 
 but then at last, holding it straight before her, she 
 unclasped her fingers. As they opened, her face 
 grew grey, as a negro's will, and she dropped forward 
 on the floor in a perfect terror, crying, ' The Blood ! 
 the Blood ! Oh, my father, the Blood is on my hand I ' 
 
 " But I could see nothing there." 
 
 The priest walked on in silence for so long that I 
 interrupted his thoughts. '' What did you do ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " I took her hand in mine," he said, " which calmed 
 her, and then I got out the whole story. It seemed 
 that the moment she opened her hand in the hut to 
 give her husband what she had stolen, it seemed to 
 her that the pahn and fingers were red with blood. 
 She had shrieked in the hut, and ran instantly, just 
 as she was, straight back to me, conscience-stricken 
 and terrified as I had found her. So she gasped the 
 tale out to me while I held her hand." 
 
 " And what then ? " I persisted. 
 
 His face changed rather^ as he answered, " It was 
 very beautiful," he said. " I made her confess to that 
 and all her other sins, and I gave her absolution, 
 with a prayer in my heart such as I have never prayed 
 before. Then I led her to the altar, and once more 
 
THE PENITENCE OF PETER 87 
 
 bade her open her hand. She did it slowly, one 
 finger after another, at first with half-averted head, 
 then with the dawn of a great gladness in her eyes ; 
 and as the last finger opened, she burst into a flood 
 of happy tears, murmuring something that I could not 
 catch. 
 
 " ' What is it ? ' I said, bending down. 
 
 " ' The Blood is on my soul now, father,' she 
 whispered. ' The Blood is on my soul.' " 
 
 I don't think we spoke again until we reached the 
 church door, and then — " * The penitence of Peter,' 
 but what about ' The love of John,' father ? " I asked. 
 
 He smiled. " Oh, that is another story," said he. 
 
88 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Kingdom 
 
 During the great war, the Union-Castle boats had to 
 take on their passengers at Tilbury, and many of the 
 usual experiences of African travel were upset. There 
 was no slipping over to Marseilles and steaUng a march 
 of a week on your boat ; and there was no crowded 
 ship at Southampton, with pretty girls and anxious 
 mothers on all the decks, blocking up the gangways 
 and getting cups of tea in the saloon, as there used 
 to be. Instead, passengers said good-bye to their 
 friends at Fenchurch Street Station, which was enough 
 to depress anyone at any time, let alone the friends 
 of people off to the Tropics along routes patronised by 
 German submarines. Even to old travellers, therefore, 
 there was something new in the process of departure ; 
 and although the Rev. Stuart Malcolm was an old 
 traveller, and the Rev. John Mason was a young one, 
 they both elbowed their way through the unaccustomed 
 crush, and struggled frantically to get their stuff into 
 carriages without the aid of porters, who had been long 
 since swallowed up in the crowd. The Rev. Stuart 
 got in first, and found the fifth place in the first-class 
 carriage. The Rev. John, a stranger to him, arrived 
 second, and got the sixth by a sprint in order to forestall 
 a person witii endless small parcels and an enormous 
 trombone in a case, but a sprint which caused him 
 to abandon a suit case half way down the platform. 
 However, that was how they formed their friendship. 
 
 " Phew ! that was a near thing/ said the Rev. John. 
 " Fearful crowd here. It's all rubbish, I think, their 
 
THE KINGDOM 88 
 
 not allowing passengers' friends at the dock. Let me 
 see, is all my stuff in ? No, Fve left that suit case ! 
 I say, sir, would you mind keeping my seat for me 
 while I go and get it ? " 
 
 The gentleman addressed — about sixty and apparently 
 gouty — looked up from his Land and Water with no 
 vast amount of eagerness. Therefore the Rev. Stuart 
 sailed in. " I will," he said. 
 
 " Thanks," said John, and then, noticing for the 
 first time that he was a parson, with just that right 
 touch that shows you feel that there is something be- 
 tween you in common, " Thanks very much." 
 
 At Tilbury they got separated in the rush for the 
 luggage that ought to be in the cabins and isn't, but they 
 met on the promenade deck as the ship was casting off. 
 Casting-off can be an interesting operation, but there 
 is not much to be said for it at five o'clock on a late 
 November foggy day in the Thames Basin when there 
 are no friends on the wharf. 
 
 " We shall see our last of England better off Dover, 
 or Falmouth, where they drop the pilot these days," 
 said the Rev. Stuart. " Come and have some tea." 
 And they went down into the saloon together. 
 
 That, of course, clinched the matter. The tribe of 
 chief stewards, anxiously trying to arrange their 
 passengers by the light of a remarkably limited intelli- 
 gence, always look out the parsons and put them 
 all together. Perhaps they think that is safest. Any- 
 way, your new curate, just off to missionise in 
 Timbuctoo with a certain sense of satisfaction in 
 having abandoned (finally, as he desperately hopes) 
 all thraldom of frock coats and rural deans, is usually 
 taken confidently aside by the representative of this 
 worthy tribe for the time being, with an air which 
 would have sat well on Guy Fawkes, and informed : 
 " I've put you next the other reverend gentleman. 
 
90 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 sir, at the captain's table." It requires more than the 
 average nerve to say : " Well, then, for heaven's sake 
 put me somewhere else quickly. Who was that girl in 
 the blue hat I saw on deck just now ? Miss Helena? 
 Well, put me near Miss Helena at the second officer's 
 table," and so it does not often get said. Therefore 
 the old haunting danger remains — that you will have 
 to talk the Oxford Movement with a Simeonite, or 
 (worse still) Church Reform with a member of the 
 Board of Finance, all the way from the Nore to Kilindini 
 or the Cape. 
 
 Anyway, to go down to tea the first night with the 
 other parson is to throw up the sponge, and of course 
 Malcolm and Mason found themselves opposite at dinner. 
 But there Providence stepped in. The two men, 
 different as they were from one another, formed a 
 friendship which still continues. 
 
 Stuart Malcolm had been on the East Coast a good 
 many years, and he was going out now to the Cape 
 because the war had limited missionary effort in the 
 East more than a Httle. He was a man of no peculiar 
 gifts except those of strong sympathy and that delicate 
 apprehension of the meaning of things which comes near 
 to being spiritual second-sight. But he was genial 
 and honest, frankly interested in everybody and every- 
 thing, no vain talker and no fool ; in fact, an ideal 
 companion. John Mason was young and at present 
 enthusiastic, the sort of priest who may develop into 
 the man whom the Church at home forgets and some 
 native tribe remembers, as Wessex men remembered 
 Wilfrid, or who may, on the contrary, be so horribly 
 discouraged in a couple of years that he returns 
 home, and marries, and accepts what he thinks 
 will be an easy billet — only there are no easy billets 
 in the Church, though some men will only discover 
 that before the Judgment Seat. 
 
THE KINGDOM 91 
 
 Stuart and John, then, became real friends. At 
 first they talked mostly of the obvious things^ that 
 is to say, of the war and of the future of Europe, and 
 they could hardly do otherwise when the bulkheads 
 were closed and the boats lowered all down Channel ; 
 when searchhghts pierced each night from hidden 
 warships and from distant forts ; and when destroyers 
 and other light craft, including an aeroplane squadron 
 the second day out, were constantly objects of interest. 
 But they dropped the pilot at Falmouth and got their 
 last papers, and the Wireless Mail had neither the 
 opportunities nor the imagination of the Harmsworth 
 dailies. By the time they were over the Line you 
 scarcely knew that Europe was at war, and it was then 
 that the two priests got on to other topics. 
 
 One night, comfortably hidden behind the wind- 
 screen in two easy chairs, pipes going, and Jupiter 
 bobbing up and down astern as if the ship were motion- 
 less and he at sea, John spoke his soul. "I'm longing, 
 father," he said, " to see a native congregation at the 
 Mass. I want to see the ancient sacrifice part and parcel 
 of the life of a new race, and to hear the holy words 
 in the new tongue. And then, when I can speak it ! 
 Of course, I know there are disappointments and all 
 that, but I think the lift of things must be tremendous 
 if only one has eyes to see and a soul to feel." 
 
 " That's exactly how I felt twenty years ago," 
 said Malcolm, slowly. 
 
 '* And don't you now ? " queried John. " Forgive 
 me, but I should have thought you would have done 
 so, anyway, father." 
 
 The older priest moved slowly in his chair and looked 
 at him. " Have you thought of what the words of our 
 Blessed Lord and of the Evangelists and Apostles 
 might mean ? " he asked. 
 
 " What words especially ? " queried John. 
 
THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " ' I came not to call the righteous, but sinners ' ; 
 * They brought unto Him the maimed, the blind, 
 the halt, the lame * ; ' You see your calling, brethren ; 
 not many noble, not many wise ' ; * He that loseth his 
 life shall find it,' " he quoted, softly. 
 
 The wind-screen flapped for a minute or two before 
 either spoke again. 
 
 Then said John : " I don't think I see exactly 
 what you mean." 
 
 *' No," said Malcolm, " I don't think you could be 
 expected to, but, you see, you are looking forward to 
 congregations, and to big savages kneeling before 
 the altar, and — and all that, aren't you ? Of course, 
 you're sensible enough to know of the other side, but 
 still, honestly, you expect success ? " 
 
 " Well," said John, a Httle sententiously, " ' My 
 Word shall not return to Me void.' " 
 
 " Exactly," said Malcolm, " but what does He 
 count success ? " 
 
 Again the wind-screen rattled on. 
 
 " Tell me," said John. 
 
 " I will if you hke," said Malcolm. " I'll tell you of 
 my first thirty-six hours in the Mission, and of what 
 our Lord showed me then. Things have looked a little 
 different ever since." 
 
 " It's twenty- two years, as I said, since I first went 
 out," he went on. " In those days the boats were 
 smaller and one went more slowly, but otherwise it 
 has not changed much. I travelled in a British India 
 that first time, and she did not carry string bands or 
 rich Jews. We lumbered along through the Mediter- 
 ranean, and broiled in the Red Sea, but the longest bit 
 of all was between Aden and Zanzibar. You longed 
 for trees, and the shore, and a church, I can tell you. 
 And then one morning we dropped anchor off the 
 Sultan's palace, in fairyland. I remember to this day 
 
THE KINGDOM 98 
 
 how blue was the sky and how clear the water, and how 
 they got the huge barges alongside and began to unload, 
 while a small boat came out for us, rowed by four 
 stalwart Swahih, with the St. George's Cross at her 
 stern. It was a sheer marvel how they got our trunks 
 down the side, but soon we were dancing away over 
 the sea, and the layman in the stern was telling us that 
 the Bishop was there, and (what we had nearly forgotten) 
 that it was the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Then we landed, 
 and went up through the narrow streets. My word ; 
 but I can still feel the heat from the white walls 
 of the old fort, and smell the smells of the Indian 
 shops, with their strings of beads and piles of cottons, 
 and dirty yellow salesmen sitting on big red cushions 
 and smoking. Then there were the Indian women 
 in yellows and brick-reds and silver, and the little 
 naked children, and the stately native women with 
 baskets of yellow fruit on their heads, and the goats, 
 and the donkeys, and the tall cocoanut trees — it has 
 never been quite the same since. So we came by the 
 narrow streets to where the gate opens on to a veritable 
 garden, as it seemed, and in it was the slim-spired, 
 beautiful cathedral. Service was on, our guide said. 
 Instantly I was afire to go. I longed to see the packed 
 building, with everyone praising God. So we went in 
 through the door. 
 
 *' The altar was as I had seen it in the pictures, and 
 the six tall lights were burning in the hot sun, and 
 there was the cool apse of the sanctuary, and I knew 
 that the slave market had been there before. But 
 Mass was over, and everyone kneeling. And they were 
 singing — it was the custom then, in Lent — the Miserere, 
 to a plainsong chant. I went in, kneeled with the rest, 
 and took it up. ' Thou shalt purge me with hyssop 
 and I shall be clean ; Thou shalt wash me and I shall 
 be whiter than snow,' but somehow it was as if someone 
 
94 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS. 
 
 had laid cold fingers on my heart. I can't explain ; it 
 was only just an impression ; you may not understand 
 it. But wait. 
 
 " After church we went up to the house, and it was 
 all very wondeiful. I could have sat and looked at 
 the Bishop without speaking for a long time, and 
 there was everyone else of whom I had heard so much, 
 and the buildings that had almost been laid in blood. 
 But after lunch they told us the news they had hitherto 
 kept back so as not to damp our arrival. It was 
 in the days of much fever, you know, and no one really 
 understood then how to combat it, so that Death 
 walked pretty near everyone there. And he had 
 touched one of the staff the night before. The 
 funeral was to be that very afternoon. It was my 
 second service. 
 
 ••* I shall never forget a single detail of that walk to 
 the cemetery — out of the city, down by the creek, past 
 the African quarters with the brown huts and the 
 tall trees, and away to the httle enclosed place with its 
 tall cross and its simple mounds. Two enormous 
 trees of frangipanni stood by the gate in full bloom, 
 and another had dropped some of its waxen sweet- 
 scented flowers into the open grave. The service was 
 very solemn ; the Bishop in a black cope and mitre, the 
 swinging censer, the little African servers in their red 
 cassocks, and the silent crowd of Christians and Indians 
 and Mohammedans who stood in or around the grave- 
 yard. I was near the Bishop and the grave, and I could 
 see the name-plate distinctly as the cofhn was lowered 
 in. One thing, however, stood out on it to me as 
 nothing else did. 'Aged 19.' I could not get away 
 from that. 'Aged 19.' So young, so keen, so full 
 of life, he had only come out to the Mission six months 
 before, and I suppose he, too, had delighted in the 
 scents and sounds and sights: and now, dead. The 
 
THE KINGDOM 96 
 
 tropic evening fell swiftly as we walked on by the shore, 
 for I was to go to the big school for a little, and that 
 lay out of the town by the sea. The crickets, new 
 to me then, were shrilling away in the African almond 
 trees, and the water lapped on the coral beach in the 
 way that I have never ceased to love, but I kept on 
 saying to myself, ' Aged 19, aged 19.' What sort of 
 Master was this to serve, Who called His servants so 
 speedily away ? What sort of service was this on which 
 to embark, which had its reward so early in the grave ? 
 
 " The big school revived me, however. It was a 
 wonderful place. I saw the boys drawn up in two 
 long files under the cloisters near the chapel for the 
 evening roll-call, all of them looking clean and neat, 
 and then I heard them sing Evensong exquisitely in 
 the solemn little chapel. We were very merry, too, at 
 dinner, talking of the home news, and getting first 
 introductions to African curries and papai, and then 
 afterwards we had coffee on the fiat roof under the 
 wonderful stars, and looked away over the thick woods 
 where the fireflies glinted under the trees, to the 
 lights of the city and the headlights of the ships at sea. 
 
 " I was keen to begin the language in the morning 
 right away, and sat in the library, a cool room full of 
 books, a bit insect-bitten, but still a library and books ; 
 and at lunch I was very keen to see something of the 
 island. 
 
 " ' Well,' said one of the priests, ' I can give you a 
 chance. I have to go about six miles inland to take a 
 baptism this afternoon, and you can come if you like.* 
 
 " * Rather,' said I, * when shall we start ? ' 
 
 " * Immediately after lunch,' said he, and imme- 
 diately after lunch we set out, he and I together, I 
 carrying a bag with the little font and the shell in it, 
 he another with his vestments. It was a jolly walk. 
 Everything was new to me, and behind my sense of 
 
96 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 the brightness of the woods and the fairness of the 
 world was a sense of triumph, too, for I was going to 
 a baptism on my first day, and * Go, teach, baptize,* 
 unconsciously rang in my ears. 
 
 " We were hot before we got to the place, but at 
 last my companion pointed to a clearing among the 
 clove trees we were walking through, and said, * That's 
 the place. Do you see that hut, just past the big one ? 
 He lives there, the boy we have come to baptize.' 
 
 " Just then a peculiar sonorous noise fell on my ears. 
 ' What's that ? ' asked I. ' What ? ' said he, and listened. 
 * Oh,' he went on, * that's the sound of chanting in the 
 mosque. It'll be the time of afternoon prayer.' 
 
 " * Which is the mosque ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' That big hut with the Httle apse sticking out on 
 this side,' he said. ' You'll see in a minute.' 
 
 " And we did. We paused for a moment as we passed 
 the door. The dark interior was full of men in white, 
 their heads bowed to the ground, at prayer. There 
 seemed to me to be many for this lonely place. I said 
 as much to the priest. 
 
 '* * Yes,' he said, ' there are mosques everywhere, 
 and the people are all Mohammedans. Practically, 
 we haven't touched them. But come on.' 
 
 *' We walked on thirty yards, and entered the hut 
 he had just shown me. It was very hot and oppressive 
 and dark inside, and I could see nothing for a little ; 
 but then I made out the centre pole and a few calabashes 
 and a big jar of brown pottery, and three kneehng 
 women, and a native litter of poles and cocoanut rope 
 in the corner. On it lay a boy about sixteen years old. 
 I thought his face looked strange in the half-light, but 
 I realised nothing till a movement, as he turned, 
 let fall part of the cotton sheet over him, and then I 
 saw where his hand had been. .... He was a leper, 
 far gone in the disease. 
 
THE KINGDOM 97 
 
 " God forgive me, but I knelt by the door all the time 
 in a kind of horror ; I couldn't have gone nearer. 
 I was even angry for not having been told. But I 
 forgot my anger soon for another thought. I fought 
 against it, but could not help it — the Prophet with 
 his big hut packed with stalwart men, and my Master 
 with the three women and the dying leper boy. I 
 watched it all in a kind of dream. Even when the priest 
 propped the lad up in bed, and when there came the 
 tinkle of the falling water, and the triumphant words, 
 * Michael, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father 
 and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,' it meant nothing 
 to me. Only ' Michael ' I thought : what a name for 
 a leper boy ! It was my third service. 
 
 " All the way home I fought the disappointment and 
 the sickening sense of fear, but I won no victory at all. 
 After Evensong I knelt on in church in a little side 
 chapel before the Blessed Sacrament, and there, with 
 no light but that of the flickering lamp, I learned my 
 lesson. I had looked up at the Tabernacle, and tried 
 to make out the carving, and at last I realised that 
 the artist had cunningly decorated the woodwork all 
 round with twining thorns that seemed almost alive. 
 And then, suddenly, I bowed my head into my hands, 
 and I knew what the Miserere, and the young life cut 
 short, and the leper boy, Michael, all meant. Our 
 Lord had been crowned with thorns, and this was 
 His Kingdom." 
 
 John sat on with never a word. '* Somehow," 
 said Malcolm at last, " I have been content, ever 
 since, to serve." 
 
98 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Black Magic 
 
 Sethlare had a hut all by itself fairly high up in the 
 lower Malutis, and he was a witch-doctor. Unfor- 
 tunately, however, for the teller of true stories, he was 
 not at all like the wizard of romance, nor was his resi- 
 dence in keeping. That was as neat a rondhavel as you 
 could find in the Lesuto, the reed fence to keep out the 
 wind a good eight feet high and strong at that, and 
 the interior very clean swept and practically empty. 
 He had bones, but he kept them in a small tin trunk, 
 with a lock (key long since lost), painted chocolate and 
 yellow, and made in the Midlands. He never wore 
 them, nor the insides of animals, nor their skins either, 
 if you except a very nice cap of catskins which Gunning 
 had tried to buy for as much as half-a-sovereign — and 
 failed. The cap, and a good blanket, and a pair of 
 corduroy trousers that had once belonged to a trooper 
 of the B.M.P. (since deceased), made up the old man's 
 entirely respectable wardrobe. 
 
 There was only one noticeable fact against Sethlare, 
 in short, and that was that he lived alone. Men do 
 not live alone in the world of the Bantu except for 
 some uncommon reason. Sethlare therefore, at first 
 sight, was pecuHar. Inquiry substantiated the suspicion. 
 He came from no one knew where, though he was a 
 true enough Mosuto, and he had the greatest reputation 
 for doctoring of anyone within a hundred miles. 
 
 After Sethlare and Gunning, Father Paul is the 
 third person of importance in this history, and 
 
BLACK MAGIC 
 
 he was an old man with a stubbly, short, white 
 beard who knew more about the ways of the 
 people than anyone else in the Protectorate, and 
 who said considerably less about them than anyone else 
 either. It fell to his lot in life to travel ceaselessly 
 up and down the mountains after his Christians, and he 
 did it, unromantically, on a chestnut pony that was 
 blind of an eye, and so old that no one knew his age, 
 with a boy called Laurence, who looked after the old 
 priest's outfit as if he was his father. 
 
 Now since Sethlare lived in a rather secluded valley, 
 it chanced that he arrived (from no one knew where) 
 and settled down and abode two years before Father 
 Paul came to hear of his existence. But one day, 
 about midsummer, riding up the valley of the Sinku 
 rather more slowly than usual since old Masupong had a 
 cough and a cold, the Father spotted the new hut 
 where previously no hut had been. It was placed, 
 with extreme respectability, on the slope of the hill, 
 near neither rocky gorge nor lightning-split trees 
 (as it ought to have been), and consequently the 
 reverend father made no guess as to its occupant. 
 He merely called up Laurence and asked for information. 
 
 Laurence, as has been said, looked after Father 
 Paul as if Father Paul were his own son instead of the 
 boot being on the other leg, so he replied, although he 
 knew all about Sethlare, much as follows : 
 
 " That hut, as thou sayest, my father, is new since 
 the father was last in this place. No Christian, however, 
 lives there, so thou needest not leave the road. There 
 is only a man there who has come from no one knows 
 where, and who has built for himself in this valley." 
 
 Laurence hoped that that would end it ; but he 
 had made one mistake. " With whom does he live ? " 
 asked Father Paul. "Is he married ? Has he any 
 children.'^ If he has come from a place unknown, 
 
100 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 maybe it is a Christian place, and perhaps his children 
 have been taught." 
 
 Laurence sighed his gratitude. Father Paul would 
 ride ten miles for the sight of a new child. " He has 
 no children, father," said he. 
 
 " No children ? " asked Father Paul. " Is his 
 wife there, then ? " 
 
 " He has no wife, father," said Laurence. 
 
 The old man reined up Masupong, who stopped, 
 indeed, by instinct. " Then with whom does he live ? " 
 asked he. 
 
 " He lives alone," said Laurence, and knew he was 
 done at that. 
 
 " Alone ! " exclaimed the missionary ; " and what 
 then is this strange man who comes from no one knows 
 where and settles far from houses up here, and who 
 lives alone at that ? What is he, Laurence ? " 
 
 "I do not know," said Laurence, and lied — 
 desperately, it is true, but in the hope that the reverend 
 father might even then be content to go on. 
 
 " Then I will go and see," said Father Paul, " and 
 do you stay here." He turned his horse to the hill, 
 and Laurence, stopping long enough to hobble the 
 pack-horse, turned his horse after him — ^which was the 
 way of the pair of them. 
 
 Father Paul reined up his horse at the door, and 
 asked if anyone was in. " Come in, my father," 
 said a voice. " I am glad to see you." 
 
 *' There," said Father Paul to Laurence, " he has 
 seen us from afar, and he knows that I am a priest. 
 I am glad we have come " ; and he got off his horse and 
 entered, a queer, short figure, with his old cassock 
 tied up round his waist, and an ancient terai on his head. 
 
 " How do you do ? " he said, speaking like a native. 
 
 * I am very glad to see you. I do not pass this way 
 
 dften, and when I was on this road last you were not 
 
BLACK MAGIC 101 
 
 here, so that now I thought I would visit you. Where 
 do you come from ? " 
 
 " I am glad to see you also, my father/' said the 
 native. "Has the father come far ? Is he tired ? 
 Will he stay here the night ? I am the servant of my 
 father, and will kill a sheep if he will stay." 
 
 " Have you a sheep ? " asked Father Paul. " I saw 
 no kraal." 
 
 " There is a sheep that is lost in the valley behind 
 this, my father. Its owner is on his way here to me 
 to find it, and he will not mind if I kill it, for I will 
 pay him well. He knows me." 
 
 Father Paul looked at him curiously. (Laurence 
 made the sign of the Cross unperceived.) Then his 
 eyes strayed round the hut and over Sethlare, and he 
 found all, as I have said, clean and tidy. 
 
 " How do you know there is a sheep yonder ? " 
 asked he. 
 
 " I know," said Sethlare, simply. " Will the father 
 stay here one night ? " 
 
 " The father goes on to the chief Gunning at the store, 
 O Sethlare," said Laurence, " and the white man 
 expects him, so that he cannot stay." 
 
 Father Paul glanced from one to the other, quickly. 
 Laurence knew the man's name, and had not told him ! 
 Laurence was strongly opposed to staying the night — 
 and the man lived alone, and knew of the sheep. 
 
 " What are you ? " said Father Paul. 
 
 '' I am a doctor," said Sethlare, simply. 
 
 For myself I should like to have heard Father Paul 
 talk, for the old man is no fool. He knew perfectly 
 well that there was black magic and white magic, 
 and that both hide secrets that have not yet been 
 docketed and labelled and stored and reduced to a 
 collection of Greek syllables by your intelligent men 
 of science who journey with regularity, and a large 
 
102 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 entourage, through the wilder portions of Africa 
 solely to that end. So he neither laughed nor ran 
 away, just yet. Instead, I believe, he talked first of the 
 weather, and then of the crops, and then of the cattle, 
 and only finally of doctoring, with the most simple 
 air in the world. Also he stayed the night with 
 Sethlare. 
 
 About four, Laurence was dispatched to fetch 
 the sheep. " Cross the hill," said the doctor, " and 
 from the top of it you will see a little kloof on the 
 right in the valley having a big white stone near its 
 summit. Below the kloof is a small spruit, with six 
 peach trees growing together. The sheep is feeding 
 near the peach trees. Bring him." He was, and 
 Laurence brought him. He was killed and eaten 
 that night, in our Biblical and primitive manner, 
 and afterwards, over the fire, they talked of many 
 things. 
 
 " Yes," said Sethlare. " I am a doctor, my father, 
 but I have heard of the Faith of the Church, and it is 
 a good Faith. Therefore I am not as the old doctors. 
 I find the cattle when they are lost, and I have know- 
 ledge of medicines which you white men do not know, 
 or despise. Nevertheless I can curse if I will. But I 
 do not curse, my father. I desire to abide here in peace. 
 And I am old, as thou art, and shall go soon whither 
 there is no return, and I shall learn then what now I 
 do not understand." 
 
 " There is a return," said Father Paul, and he 
 preached Jesus and the Resurrection, while Laurence 
 sat on the ground and said nothing. 
 
 " I have heard the words of the father," said the 
 old heathen, when he had done, " and they are good 
 words ; but there is much that I cannot understand. 
 If these things are so, why have the white people left 
 us so long without telling ? And why are the white 
 
BLACK MAGIC 108 
 
 people, for the most part, men of no religion at all 
 or of none that we can see ? Thou art not as the 
 others, I know ; but I will join the spirits of my 
 people, wherever they be, since thou hast come late, 
 my father." 
 
 Father Paul answered him, but it was hard. He 
 felt old as he answered. He wished, as he had wished 
 often before in his simple way (and he was ashamed a 
 little as he wished) that he had lived in other days, 
 when he might have travelled, like Loyola, where 
 others had not been, and the world, if wilder, was a 
 simpler place. So at length they prayed together — 
 and it was significant that he said the well-known 
 prayer and few others, I think — and slept. 
 
 In the morning he was awakened by voices, and, 
 hearing a word or two, he went out to see. There was 
 a man at the door with a smoking horse, and Sethlare 
 was talking to him — a changed SeQilare. He was very 
 angry, and he poured his anger out on Father Paul 
 when he appeared. ''Ha, father! "said he, "See this 
 man ! He has a child, a girl, the light of his eyes, and she 
 has been stolen. But yesterday she went to fetch water, 
 and did not return, but a herd-boy saw her seized by 
 the boys of the white man. Gunning, at the store. She 
 was seized ; but she went with them easily, father, 
 because her heart had been bought by the white man's 
 gold. Mothlape has feared it for many days. And 
 now it has come to pass, and he has come to me to 
 find her. What of thy faith, now, missionary, and 
 thy white men ? Canst thou help Mothlape ? But I, 
 I can ; I, Sethlare, the doctor." 
 
 There was a great scene, and Father Paul won this 
 much at least, that there was no bone-throwing that 
 day, and that they all set out for the store. Gunning 
 saw them coming — a strange party, Sethlare on foot, 
 Mothlape on his horse, and the father and his boy 
 
104 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 behind, with their pack and their old-fashioned air. 
 He ignored the natives and held out his hand to 
 Father Paul. " Good day, father," said he, " why did 
 you not come last night ? We expected you." 
 
 " I stayed with Sethlare in his hut," said the priest, 
 " and — I must say it, Gunning — he has come with 
 this native and a strange story this morning. They 
 accuse you of taking this man's girl. Is it true ? " 
 
 Gunning stood there in the sunlight, a tall, healthy 
 figure of a man, and looked at them. Then he flipped 
 his leg with his sjambok, and laughed nastily. " Well, 
 Father Paul, you are licensed, I suppose, but don't do 
 it again. Of course I know nothing of this business, 
 and as for that damned old nigger — begging your pardon 
 for the language, but I can't help it — if he comes 
 yelping round again I'll skin him for it." 
 
 Well, of course there was a lot more talk, but there 
 were no witnesses, and, as often before, nothing could 
 be done either way. Gunning's boys swore they had 
 never been off the store the day before, and Mothlape 
 had not his witnesses with him. So it went on, Gunning 
 laughing now uproariously in the sunlight, until 
 Sethlare stepped forward and silenced them all by the 
 look on his face. " White man," he said, " thou art 
 great and cunning, but this time maybe thou hast gone 
 too far. I will throw the bones and find the girl, 
 and if thou hast hidden her, I will curse thee as I do 
 not often curse, and thou shalt die." And he was gone 
 before anyone could say anything. 
 
 Gunning yelled something after him in Zulu, which 
 Father Paul did not know ; but it shows, he thinks, 
 where Sethlare came from ; and they went into the 
 house. Relations were a little strained, I fancy. The 
 old priest was too well known and respected for Gunning 
 to say much ; but at the same time Father Paul knew 
 that he was not wanted, and he made an excuse to 
 
BLACK MAGIC 105 
 
 leave the store early next day. But that night the 
 climax came. They were at supper when Gunning's 
 great retriever leaped to his feet growling. Gunning 
 broke off his talk to look at him, and then they 
 heard the voice outside. Gunning's boy threw open 
 the door, which opened straight from the hut to 
 the veld, and the retriever ran out. " Go for him ! 
 Good dog ! " said Gunning ; but the dog ran a little 
 way, howled, and ran back instead. " Funny," said 
 Gunning. '* Let's go and see." He and Father Paul 
 went out at that, and this is what they saw. Sethlare 
 stood in the moonlight thirty yards away. He was 
 nearly naked, and held a huge stick in his hand. He 
 was mouthing words in Zulu at a great rate, and 
 waving his hand, but when the two appeared he 
 changed to Sesuto, and his voice rang clear. 
 
 *' Liar and betrayer," he said, " thy doom is on 
 thee at last. I curse thee ; I, Sethlare, I set my curse 
 upon thee. Thirty days shalt thou live, and then the 
 incurable shall strike thee down. They shall bear thee 
 hence on neither horse nor cart nor wagon, and thou 
 shalt die among strangers in a strange land." 
 
 Gunning leapt for his sjambok ; but Father Paul 
 blocked his way, and when he got through, Sethlare 
 was gone. He came in after a vain hunt, and he and 
 the priest spent a strange evening. He vowed again 
 that he had not touched the girl, and they dismissed 
 the subject. At breakfast Father Paul saw that he 
 had been drinking ; but he said nothing, and left 
 early. I think the old man's heart had never been 
 heavier, and I don't believe he is certain to this day 
 whether he did right to go. 
 
 He was five weeks on trek, and then dropped down 
 a pass into Natal to see another priest whose cure 
 lay in a small township where decent roads began. 
 They had a lot to say to each other, and it was not 
 
106 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 until they had finished the commoner subjects that 
 his friend broke a silence by asking : 
 
 " Did you ever meet a man called Gunning in the 
 mountains, Paul ? He had a store somewhere up 
 your way, I think." 
 
 " Yes," said Father Paul, " I did ; what of him ? " 
 
 " Well, it's one of the strangest and most terrible 
 things IVe heard," said the other. " But three days 
 ago now they brought him down here and took him on 
 in a motor-car to Maritzburg. He fell ill three or 
 four weeks ago, and it turned out to be a malignant 
 cancer. I don't know how they got him down the 
 pass, but they took him on a special car for operation 
 at Maritzburg Hospital. I heard to-day that they 
 operated, but could do nothing. They're sending 
 him home to his friends, but they doubt if he'll live 
 to get there." 
 
 He did not. He was dying at Madeira, and they 
 put him on shore in the hospital there. There he 
 died — among strangers. Father Paul told me the 
 story as we stood by the grave, the last time I came out. 
 
 In Loving Memory 
 
 of 
 
 George Henry Gunning 
 
 Born 29th September, 1877 
 
 Died 30th November, 1910 
 
 R.I.P. 
 
 it said. 
 
 " Well, but what do you think ? " I asked. 
 " There are some things," Father Paul said slowly, 
 " that are best left to God." 
 
MICHAEL ARCHANGEL 107 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Michael Archangel 
 
 Hubert reined up his horse and looked around. 
 North, south, east and west were mountains, jagged 
 and bare, with a certain majesty in their barrenness 
 which had entered deep into his soul and left him 
 content. But he was not so content as usual just now. 
 The little mountain trail that they had been following 
 all day, scarce a couple of feet wide, and rough at that, 
 ran forlornly down hill behind him, descended still 
 more steeply to a hidden stream (cut, as if with 
 a monstrous knife, out of the hillside), and ascended 
 steeply opposite. Coming slowly down it to the 
 stream were : first, a native on a white pony, which 
 limped; secondly, a heavily laden pack-horse which 
 walked with its head down ; and thirdly, a boy on 
 another pony, which looked, perhaps, the freshest of the 
 lot, but was obviously tired at that. Hubert glanced 
 back at them, and then looked ahead. The road in 
 that direction continued to run uphill for a mile or so, 
 and then disappeared over a crest. There was not 
 much comfort there. He looked at his watch ; it 
 was half-past four ; then at the sky for the hundredth 
 time, and sighed. It was white with hurrying clouds ; 
 already small white flakes were floating down through 
 the air ; it must snow heavily soon. 
 
 " It's no good,'' he said aloud to nobody; " we can 
 never make the camp to-night. The only thing is 
 to find a village. Perhaps Edwin knows one." Then 
 to his horse : " AD right, old man. You shan't try to 
 
108 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 keep 'em at it any longer. We'll knock off here, or 
 at the next hut." 
 
 A minute later the weary cavalcade was within hail. 
 
 " How far to the camp, Edwin ? '* sang out Hubert. 
 
 The boy on the white horse said something which 
 Hubert could not catch. 
 
 " What ? " he called. 
 
 " He says it is over those far hills ahead, father," 
 answered the boy behind. 
 
 "Over the far hiUs ! " cried Hubert. "Good 
 heavens, as far as that ! Well, we're done, that's all. 
 We can't do it to-night. Are there any houses near ? " 
 
 The party, which had now come up, visibly 
 brightened. 
 
 " The men in the last village said we must sleep in 
 the houses over this hill, father," said Edwin. " If the 
 father will ride on, he will see them." 
 
 " If you hadn't wasted your time in every village 
 we might have made the camp, you rascal," Hubert 
 said irritably. " However, come on now. It'll snow in 
 half an hour, and we shall be done then. Come on." 
 
 He shook his reins, and the patient ponies set off 
 again. It was already horribly cold, and as they 
 reached the crest a keen wind seemed to bite clean 
 through them. Hubert pulled his coat tighter, and 
 tried to forget how hungry and dirty he was. Edwin 
 got a canter of some sort out of his lame pony, and 
 came up on the right. He pointed with his sjambok 
 to a cluster of huts on the spur below, which seemed 
 to stand alone in the desolation. " The father must 
 sleep there," he said. 
 
 " The father could sleep anywhere," said Hubert, 
 smiling. " Come on." 
 
 The whole party pushed on at a shuffling kind of 
 trot, and rode up in a few minutes to the biggest hut 
 of the group. Here Hubert fell back a little, and sat 
 
MICHAEL ARCHANGEL 109 
 
 silent on his horse, while Edwin bargained in the 
 vernacular. He smiled inwardly, even in the cold, 
 at the strangeness of it all. He was unshaven and 
 horribly dirty, but he knew there would not be much 
 washing that night. Water to make the tea was as 
 much as they could hope for. He glanced at the 
 huddled ponies, and at Edwin, in his tasselled knitted 
 cap, his old riding breeches and his blanket, talking 
 rapidly to a tall native in more blankets, who leaned 
 against the reed fence and looked at him indifferently. 
 The white man was of no particular importance here ! 
 Then he took in the surroundings : the stone kraal 
 full of beasts, which lowed occasionally as the wind 
 blew gustily ; the earth, bare till the stones and 
 rough grass began ; the pile of dung-fuel in front of 
 the beehive hut ; and the sounds of talk which drifted 
 out with the coarse smoke from the clay archway 
 of the low door. But Edwin was speaking : 
 
 " This man says we can sleep in that house down 
 there, father," said he, pointing to a hut a hundred 
 yards below. 
 
 " Thank him, Edwin," said Hubert, '* and let's 
 get down there." 
 
 At the entrance they all got off. Hubert's boy 
 began to take the saddlery oS the tired horses, and 
 Edwin to knee-halter them. Hubert made for the 
 door, and went in. At first he could see nothing in 
 the gathering dark but the flickering flame of the 
 dung-fire, but soon he made out a man who sat behind 
 weaving grass-rope, a woman stoically grinding native 
 tobacco, a couple of children asleep on a pile of evil- 
 smelling sheepskins, and a number of pots and bales 
 that looked as if they had come from the last word 
 in old-clothes shops. The pungent smoke he was 
 more or less used to, and with a greeting he went 
 forward to the fire. The man pushed aside his grass 
 
no THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 to make a place, and went on with his work without 
 a word. Hubert smiled to himself, and prepared for 
 anything. Anyhow, he thought, nothing much 
 mattered so long as they were out of the cold and the 
 snow. 
 
 Hubert had once been vicar of a quite fashionable 
 
 church in London, and what his people would have 
 
 thought of him that night I do not know. He was 
 
 perfectly right : there was no water to wash in, as it 
 
 all came from a stream down the hill, and it was far 
 
 too cold for anyone to venture out in the bhzzard to get 
 
 it. Besides, he would have been as dirty five minutes 
 
 afterwards, and I doubt if he would have ever got 
 
 warm again. So they made a cheerful party round the 
 
 fire — he and his boys and the man, for the woman and 
 
 the children had gone to their own place. He was 
 
 lavish that night, and gave Edwin and the boy one tin 
 
 of sardines, while he and the man had the other. There 
 
 was plenty of bread, too, and Hubert had the last 
 
 of the marmalade, while the tea was hot and sweet 
 
 and good, even if there was no milk. So they sat on 
 
 the sheepskins in the smoke, and Hubert smoked hard 
 
 himself to make another atmosphere in his immediate 
 
 neighbourhood. Odd snowflakes drifted in through 
 
 a hole in the roof and through the meagre reeds that 
 
 made a door. Occasionally Hubert or one of the 
 
 others would put on some more dried dung, and 
 
 occasionally they passed the mug of tea round again. 
 
 The boys talked mostly of the day's journey and of 
 
 the ponies ; Hubert amused himself and them by 
 
 learning a few more words in the native ; then he said 
 
 his ofhce by the light of a candle, and then night 
 
 prayers for them all. Then the man spread a big oxhide 
 
 kaross on the floor, and piled the sheepskins for a long 
 
 pillow. Each took off his boots, and Hubert his collar, 
 
 and then each rolled in his blankets on the kaross. 
 
MICHAEL ARCHANGEL 111 
 
 The priest was asleep in five minutes. He told me he 
 remembered thinking how nothing really matters 
 except warmth and food ; and that was all. 
 
 Once in the night he half awoke when a sheep 
 tried to force his way in, and the man got up to turn 
 him out. Hubert hardly noticed it then, but he was 
 sorry when he found the poor beast frozen outside 
 in the morning. 
 
 Oh, that morning ! The wind was like a knife, and 
 the air was full of sleet, though there was not much of it 
 because the wind was too strong. The boy, Ben, was 
 awake first, and got the fire going, and Edwin dis- 
 appeared, second, out of the door to look for the horses. 
 It was impossible to say Mass, so Hubert had some tea 
 and some bread, and then put his nose outside to look 
 for Edwin. He was an hour in coming, and then he 
 reported that two of the horses were missing. There 
 followed two terrible hours, in which all three of them 
 took it in turns to ride Ben's horse in a fruitless effort 
 to find the missing ponies. Hubert made an excursion 
 to the river, and thought he would never get back, and 
 just as Edwin got in from an equally fruitless attempt 
 up the hill — and had to sit by the fire and get himself 
 thawed out — Michael came in. 
 
 He wasn't Michael then, but his appearance was as 
 fortunate as his heavenly namesake-to-be would 
 have been. He was a big trooper of the B.M.P., and 
 he came in out of the snow as cheerfully as possible. 
 
 " Greeting, father," said he in the native. " The 
 sergeant heard thou wast coming, and when thou 
 didst not arrive last night, he sent me to look for 
 thee this morning." 
 
 " Greeting," said Hubert. " I am very pleased to 
 see thee. Two of our horses are lost, and we don't 
 know the road to the camp. And I am hungry," 
 he added. 
 
112 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 The big trooper took charge of the situation. '* Dost 
 thou know the road to camp ? " he asked the man of 
 the hut, and when he found that he did, marshalled his 
 forces admirably. 
 
 " Then do thou take the father on the good horse 
 that is left to the camp ; Ben, do thou stay here with 
 the luggage ; and Edwin, come thou with me for the 
 horses. Do not fear, father, but ride in and eat and 
 be warm ; it is only one hour away. We will find 
 thy horses." 
 
 Except that the one hour was two, it turned out as 
 he said, and that was how Hubert met Michael. The big 
 trooper acted orderly to him while he stayed among the 
 Christians near the camp, and when he set out back 
 over the mountains to his flock on the plains, the 
 sergeant sent the trooper as guide. The return j oumey , 
 everyone well rested with a week in camp, was a simple 
 business, the more so as, with the quick change of the 
 country, the snow had given place to the sun, and 
 the sky was as blue over the hills as it is over the 
 Italian lakes. In camp Hubert found that the trooper 
 was a catechumen whose work had given him little 
 time for learning, and on the way the priest finished his 
 preparation for baptism. I should like to have seen 
 the party. They rode in single file up and down 
 and in and out, the guide first and the father second, 
 and Hubert would say : 
 
 " Who gave you that name ? " 
 
 Back would come the answer, stumbling at first : 
 
 " My godfathers and godmother in my baptism, 
 
 wherein I was made a child of God " — but he was 
 
 not made yet. 
 
 Or, ** Blessed be God," the priest would call. 
 
 " Blessed be God," responded the guide. 
 
 " Blessed be His Holy Name," shouted the priest, 
 whose horse had fallen a little behind. 
 
MICHAEL ARCHANGEL 113 
 
 " Blessed be His Holy Name/' came the answer, 
 and so on. 
 
 Each night Ben picketed the horses, and then cooked 
 the chops ; the big trooper collected fuel and then took 
 over the pitching of the tents where Hubert had left 
 them ; and Hubert, thereafter, said his office. Round 
 the fire they talked, and wound up with the night 
 prayers, and among them always, since one believes in 
 angels and devils in the wilds and on mission : 
 
 " Holy Michael, Archangel, Prince of the heavenly 
 host, be thou our safeguard against the snares and 
 assaults of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly 
 pray ; and, do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by 
 the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan and all 
 wicked spirits who wander through the world for 
 the ruin of souls." 
 
 Hubert said it also, with the Divine Praises, after the 
 morning's Mass on the nearest big flat rock, and Napo 
 (for that was the trooper's native name) used to say 
 it after him. He seemed to think it a suitable devotion 
 for the Mounted Police. Anyhow, when one day 
 they rode into the first out-station of the plains, whence 
 the guide was to turn back in the morning, Hubert 
 asked : 
 
 " Thou belie vest in God and His Holy Church, with 
 all thy heart, Napo ? " 
 
 " Yes, father," said the catechumen. 
 
 ** Then will I baptize thee to-morrow before Mass, 
 if thou art willing," said the priest. 
 
 " I should be very grateful to my father if he would 
 do this for me," answered Napo. 
 
 " And what name wouldst thou like to be baptized 
 by, Napo," went on Hubert. 
 
 " If the father is willing, I would be called Michael, 
 that the Prince may protect me, my father." 
 
 So Napo was washed, and received into Christ's 
 
114 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 flock by the name of the Archangel in the httle priest's 
 hut (for the church was not yet finished) that very next 
 day ; and the first incident was closed. 
 
 Now so far there is nothing out of the common in 
 this story, but in the rest of it there is. Hubert told 
 it me in that same little hut one night when we were 
 travelling together, and he told it me because I had 
 asked him why he had dedicated the mud and reed 
 church to St. Michael Archangel. 
 
 "I'll tell you," he said ; '* but come here a moment 
 and look first." 
 
 I went to the door obediently, and looked. The 
 hut commands the view of a long valley with a river at 
 the foot of it, and at its head the road winds between 
 great rocks that overhang and almost block it. Behind 
 the hut, however, a little path runs up the mountains 
 and disappears over its crest. 
 
 " Do you see those two paths ? " said Hubert; 
 pointing them out. 
 " Yes," said I. 
 
 " Well," said he, " those are the two ways to 
 Rambolla where is the camp that I reached in the storm 
 the day I first met Michael — you know the story." 
 I nodded. " It's three days' possible journey by each," 
 he went on, " but the valley road is easier, though 
 longer, and I usually go that way and take four days 
 over it. And now come in again, and I will tell you 
 the reason why this church is the church of St. Michael 
 Archangel. 
 
 " Last season, two years after I had baptized Michael 
 it was, I was up here on my way to Rampolla. The 
 church was nearly finished then, and we were wonder- 
 ing what to call it. In the morning I said Mass at the 
 mud altar, and cleared away all the ornaments after- 
 wards as the roof was not on, and Michael served me, 
 as he always hked to do if he was at the station when 
 
MICHAEL ARCHANGEL 115 
 
 I visited it. Then I had my breakfast, and set out, by 
 the valley road, for Rampolla. Michael was not coming 
 as I knew the way well by then, and he was on duty 
 at the camp. It was a fine, bright morning after rain, 
 and we were all of us very cheerful. 
 
 " Well, we had got about an hour's ride down that 
 valley, when I heard a shout behind. I turned to see 
 who it could be, and saw a man riding headlong down 
 the road after us. At that distance I could not make 
 out his figure, but my boy, with his keen native eyes, 
 said, * It is Michael.' 
 
 *' ' What can he want ? ' I said. " ' I suppose I 
 must have left something behind. Did you put every- 
 thing in, Ben ? ' 
 
 '* * Yes, father,' he said, * I am sure I did,' 
 
 " ' Well, then,' said I, * let's wait for Michael.' 
 
 " His horse brought him quickly up to us, and sure 
 enough Michael got off. * The father must forgive me,' 
 he said, ' but he must not travel this road.' 
 
 " ' Why ever not, Michael ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' The father must not travel by this road,' he 
 reiterated. 
 
 *' * But nonsense, Michael,' I said. * Why ever not ? 
 It's much better, and I have plenty of time, and besides, 
 you agreed this very morning that it would be good for 
 me to go this way,' 
 
 " ' The father must forgive me,' said he, * but he 
 must not travel this road.' 
 
 " By this time I was fairly angry. ' But why not, 
 man ? ' I argued. ' Is it bad, or is there trouble with 
 the natives ? Tell me.' 
 
 " * It is none of these things, father,' said he, ' but 
 the father must not travel by it.' 
 
 " ' Good heavens ! ' I fear I said, ' what rubbish. 
 Get on, Ben. Good-bye, Michael, I am going.' And 
 I shook up Alec's reins. 
 
116 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " Then Michael took a step forward, and seized my 
 bridle. * Stop, my father,' he said, * and I will tell you/ 
 
 " * Well, tell me,' I said, * and I warn you, if it is not 
 a good reason, I shall be very angry.' 
 
 ** Michael shifted my bridle to his other hand, and 
 pushed his hat back on his head in a kind of nervous 
 way he has. 
 
 " * The father must not be angry,' he said, * but 
 just now, as I came out of the hut which I had been 
 cleaning, I looked down the valley after the horses. 
 And then I saw, standing over the valley, Michael 
 the Archangel, with his sword drawn in his hand.' 
 
 " I was utterly amazed. He said it quite simply, 
 just as I have told you. I could not say a word for 
 a minute, and then I asked, * What was he like ? ' 
 
 " It was the man's description, I think, that made 
 me believe his vision. ' He was black, father,' said 
 Michael, ' and he was very tall. His feet stood above 
 the river, and his head was in the clouds. I could 
 not see the tops of his wings, for they met above his 
 head. He was clothed only in brightness, and his 
 sword pointed towards the road. The father must 
 not travel this way.' 
 
 •* Well, that's all of it. He was the first native I 
 had ever met who beheved he had seen an angel, 
 and that was entirely his own description. As for me, 
 I turned back ; anyway I don't think my boys would 
 have gone on. And they were right. An hour later 
 a party passed down the same way — an Indian 
 storekeeper and two boys — and Michael let them go. 
 He told me afterwards that he had never imagined 
 that the warning was more than a personal one for me. 
 Anyhow, say what you will, as that party passed 
 beneath the rocks at the head of the valley, just where 
 the path overhangs the stream, there was a small land- 
 slip, caused, they say, by the tread of the horses on stones 
 
MICHAEL ARCHANGEL 117 
 
 loosened by rain, and the whole path broke away. 
 Two were killed outright, and the third injured. I 
 heard it as I came back, and went to see the place. 
 There was no doubt that the rocks had been loosened 
 by natural causes to such an extent that the first 
 persons to pass after the loosening had become critical, 
 had paid the penalty that this land of rocks and 
 mountains exacts from time to time.'* 
 
 Hubert finished. " So you called the church St. 
 Michael ? " I said. 
 
 " St. Michael Archangel," said he. 
 
 " Well," said I, " I don't know much about these 
 things, but I think it was the least you could do/* 
 
118 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Iron Bracelet 
 
 They hadn't seen each other for ten years, not since the 
 one got a Government job on a convict island in the 
 Malays, and the other sailed for East Africa under the 
 auspices of a Missionary Society, which gave him his 
 keep and £20 a year in return for his services. Ten 
 years before they had rowed three and four respectively 
 in a college boat which got its oars in a memorable May, 
 and parted, after the Bump Supper, under the moon 
 in the First Court. Riley had left next morning for 
 Scotland before Enderby was out of bed, and Enderby 
 had sailed for Mombasa while Riley was still in the 
 North. 
 
 They met in Piccadilly Circus, outside the Criterion, 
 where, within an area about the size of Riley's Malay 
 island, one meets everybody if one waits long enough. 
 Enderby had landed the day before in a suit of moth- 
 eaten grey flannels and a sun helmet, and Riley had 
 spent most of his ten years in a shirt and cotton drill, 
 while Singapore had been the best in the shape of a 
 giddy metropolis that either had seen in the decade. 
 But twenty-four hours had wiped most of it out. They 
 had assumed London clothes and dropped into London 
 manners as if they had never been out of Town. Yet 
 each heard that the other had come from the ends of 
 the Empire with a sang-froid that is only the possession 
 of men of their sort. 
 
 They found that neither had many friends in Town, 
 so they dined together that night in a new palace 
 
THE IRON BRACELET 119 
 
 of a restaurant that had been Exeter Hall when 
 they were last in England, and went to a theatre 
 together afterwards. Next day Riley introduced 
 Enderby to the mysteries of the Chinese eating-house in 
 the Circus, and fixed up a visit to Cambridge for the 
 week-end. Enderby was host at the Union their 
 first night, and by that time they were fairly intimate 
 again. Immediate recognition by the amazing Union 
 authorities seemed to have rolled back the years, 
 and by the time they had reached the coffee they 
 felt they could talk freely. 
 
 Enderby passed the sugar, and in doing so Riley 
 caught sight of a curious iron chain bracelet on the 
 other's arm. " What's that ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, just a native bracelet that was given me on 
 the slopes of Kilimanjaro," said Enderby, ''of no 
 value, except to me." 
 
 " Let's see it," said Riley. 
 
 Enderby stretched out his arm again. The bracelet 
 was a roughly made chain of wrought iron, and it had, 
 as pendant, a circular piece of metal, pierced with a hole, 
 which might have been the shank of an old button. 
 Riley twisted it curiously for a moment or two, and 
 then asked : " Why do you wear it ? " 
 
 '* Because of the way I came to get it, and because 
 I was asked to do so," explained Enderby. 
 
 " A yarn, is it ? " asked the other. 
 
 " Well," said Enderby, " it is a yam, of course, but 
 I don't know that you would think much of it. Also, 
 it is not easy to tell. The value lies behind, if you 
 understand me. I think it's a loose sheet out of the 
 Acts of the Apostles, but you would probably place 
 it in some other category." 
 
 " Anyway you arouse my curiosity," said Riley, 
 " Tell it me and let me see. I'll respect your opinion 
 at least." 
 
120 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 Enderby looked at him a moment or two before 
 replying. Then he said, smiling : '' You know that 
 yam of the Yankee who could not see much in the 
 pictures of Botticelli, and of the old guide who told 
 him that he and not the picture was on trial ? Well, 
 if I tell you the story, in my mind, an3rway, I shall 
 put you in much the same position. But you can 
 have it if you like.'" 
 
 " Good," said Riley, " I'll take the risks." 
 
 So Enderby lit a cigarette, pulled at it once or twice 
 in silence, and then began : 
 
 " It happened about a year ago," he said. '' I had 
 had a bout of fever, nastier than usual, and cleared of! 
 to the mainland for a change. I ought by custom to 
 have spent my month on one of our up-country mis- 
 sion-stations, lovely enough in all conscience, especially 
 one which stands on a hill, approached by an avenue 
 of orange trees, and surrounded by a tropical stream of 
 clear water, and huge rocks, and thick reeds that the 
 weaver birds love. But I was always rather keen on 
 getting about, and so I put a week in there, and then 
 caught the German mail train that used to run to a 
 place called Arusha, a couple ot hundred miles or so 
 inland. It was a wonderful run. The line wanders in 
 and out of the Usambara hills, through banana and 
 rubber forests, till it reaches the Usambara mountain 
 itself, which is too big to do anything else with but 
 skirt. The stations are just a collection of iron- 
 roofed huts, but each one is thronged by natives, of 
 tribes which vary as one gets inland. Then you skirt 
 the Para Mountains which rise abruptly off the great 
 plain of the Masai Reserve, and the Masai themselves 
 are visible at each halt. They come on to the platforms 
 with their spears, smelling for half a mile of train-oil, 
 and wearing a tattered goatskin apiece (which just 
 about covers their shoulders) for decency. I remember 
 
THE IRON BRACELET 121 
 
 I got a good snap-shot of a group of Masai married 
 women, who wear enormous broad metal hoops round 
 their necks — ten or a dozen to a woman — and not 
 much else. We got to Arusha about midnight, and 
 were dumped out on to a stretch of bare earth littered 
 with railway refuse and crowded with semi-naked 
 savages all wanting to carry your bag. I had only 
 a small suit case with me, and some ruffians collared 
 it and led me off to the hotel. 
 
 *' That was a queer business, I can tell you. There 
 was no moon and no road, and we just wandered, 
 seemingly hopelessly, till a hght glimmered in the 
 distance. It turned out to be a half -open door. I 
 knocked, and who do you think opened it ? A girl, 
 white, thin silk, low-cut blouse, necklace and rings 
 complete, as if she had stepped straight out of a 
 Berlin hotel ! I asked in EngHsh for a room, and she 
 replied, in German, that she didn't speak English. 
 I know just about enough German to understand that. 
 Things began to look desperate till I tried her in Swahili, 
 and then she beamed all over and said they were 
 hopelessly full up. I said I was profoundly sorry, 
 but that I must sleep there, and I sent her for the boss. 
 While she was away I tried strategy, paid off my Masai, 
 and flung my bag inside the door. Then the boss 
 appeared, talking good English, and he was equally 
 emphatic that he could do nothing. However, at 
 last, with many apologies, he said he could manage 
 something for the night, at a push, and led the way 
 across a big yard to a long, low building built as a big 
 store room. He opened the door and went in, and 
 held his candle high up inside to show me things. It was 
 quite empty, and so big that I could only just make 
 out two old abandoned beds, one in each of the far 
 corners. It was a case of needs must, and so I accepted ; 
 and presently I was alone in that great barrack of a 
 
122 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 place, with a tiny island of light, thrown from a single 
 candle, in a sea of gloom. I turned in somehow, 
 and you can guess how I slept when I tell you that 
 next morning I found a man in the other bed who had 
 been through a like business without my hearing a 
 word ! 
 
 " He turned out to be a German Lutheran missionary, 
 not a bad sort, and over our sausage breakfast he put 
 me up to an itinerary. First we walked the entire day 
 to his station — a regular German farmstead, with 
 the grandparents and the grandchildren all complete. 
 I remember a flaming bed of nasturtiums in the front 
 of the house which came like a vivid reminder of home, 
 a reminder one needed since the Mission itself was 
 high up on foothills covered with banana forests and 
 surrounded by the bee-hive huts of Wachaka natives. 
 On the way, however, he would talk theology, and as we 
 had mostly to use the Swahili, it was very profitless 
 and I was hopelessly bored. However, I slept there 
 that night, and set off, next morning, with two Lutheran 
 sisters for another station, another day's journey 
 away. Those two women were an experience. They 
 dressed in very short skirts and hideous home-made 
 woollen stockings and thick, clumsy boots, but they 
 were kindly enough, and we shared our meals, and 
 chatted as well as we could, till night found us at their 
 Mission. Next morning I saw the snow-crowned head 
 of the mountain for the first time ; at sunrise, it was, 
 and as the sun cleared the upper mists, that great 
 rounded back of glistening white swam out above the 
 fleecy clouds into the light like a sudden vision from 
 another land. I resolved then and there to get as 
 near to that snow-line as I could, and set out after 
 breakfast for the next stage. 
 
 " All day I, and the boy they had lent me, tramped 
 on and up. The road wound under masses of tropical 
 
THE IRON BRACELET 123 
 
 creeper in the valleys, through thick banana brakes 
 on the level, and then climbed to the higher ground 
 where coarse bracken and heath grew. By night we 
 reached a Catholic monastery, and the good fathers 
 put me up for a day or two ; and then I was off again to 
 one ol those queer places one finds in the wilds. 
 
 " Years before a German professor of psychology had 
 come out to German East Africa on a visit for his 
 health. He had always had a love of mountaineering, 
 and was at once amazed by the surprising splendour 
 of Kilimanjaro, till then unclimbed. He had been 
 first on the summit, and then, as if fascinated, he had 
 given his life to the mountain. He built an hotel about 
 8,000 feet up — a big, sprawling bungalow of a building, 
 set in glorious gardens, where everything, tropical and 
 temperate, seemed to grow ; and he had studied the 
 great snow-crowned mass until he knew the best 
 paths and the best times and every secret of the 
 mountain. He trained native guides, erected huts 
 at easy stages, and sat down there, on the skirts of 
 the monster, like some guardian of secret mysteries. 
 The fame of him reached to Germany, I suppose ; any- 
 way, little parties came out from time to time and 
 climbed under his supervision. It was a strange place. 
 I couldn't help feeling that there was a curious kind of 
 paganism about it all. The mountain was all one 
 talked about ; the boys about the place were raw 
 heathen ; and I had a sense as if the centuries had 
 rolled back and the gods had come into their own 
 again. Every evening, when the dying sun stained 
 that white crest with crimson, we gathered as if to 
 worship it. Anyway, no one worshipped much else. 
 
 " Well, I found I had hit a bad season, when ascents 
 were nearly impossible, and also that I had not enough 
 time left for the attempt. My host saw my disappoint- 
 ment; and he told me how, by means of an early start and 
 
124 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 a long climb; I might cross a high spur on my way back 
 which would land me on the rocky plateau from which 
 the snow-head rises. One cannot make the summit that 
 way, but one can see the glory of it. Feeling some- 
 thing like a Moses on a Pisgah, I set out. 
 
 " I shall never forget that day. First I passed a few 
 villages of entirely savage heathen folk, and then I 
 seemed to leave all habitations as I climbed up. The 
 trees thinned ; even the belt of bush gave way ; and 
 at last I was out on a rocky spur which hid any further 
 view from me. I climbed slowly up it, passed the 
 crest, and then saw what I had come so far to see. 
 
 " Before me lay a mile or two of stony ground and 
 rough grass, and then, seemingly very near in that 
 clear air, there rose sharply and wonderfully three or 
 four thousand feet of untrodden snow, gleaming in 
 the sun, silent, pure, against the blue. Then I turned 
 and looked below. Far, far beneath lay the great 
 plain, stretching unbroken to the horizon. The glass 
 showed the villages like tiny ant-hills, and the thin 
 silver of rivers ; and intense silence brooded over all. 
 I sat down to gaze and think." 
 
 Enderby paused a moment, fingering a wineglass 
 nervously. 
 
 " I don't think I can tell you all I thought, Riley," 
 he said at last, " but it was a little like this. I seemed 
 to be seeing the world as God must see it from the pure 
 height of Heaven, and I thought how it had looked to 
 Him from the Cross, and that it seemed so sorrowfully 
 unclaimed. . ; but then I heard a noise behind me. 
 
 " I turned, to, see an old native leaning on a stick, 
 a queer old savage of a chap, wearing positively nothing 
 but a goatskin, and behind him a dozen or so of goats 
 busy at the rough grass. I had a little pocket camera 
 with me, and I whipped it out for a photograph. At 
 the click of the shutter he dropped his stick and covered 
 
THE IRON BRACELET 125 
 
 his face with his hands in fear. At that I got up and 
 went towards him, saying in SwahiH : * Don't be 
 afraid ; I won't hurt you.' He muttered something 
 about the Evil Eye, so I said : * I am only taking a 
 picture ; it won't hurt you ; come and see the picture 
 box,' or rubbish of that sort. He came near at thai 
 and sat down beside me. It's jolly hard to explain 
 the art of photography in the native, but I tried, 
 and was at least rewarded by his losing all sense of fear. 
 
 " ' Where do you live ? ' I asked. 
 
 " He pointed to a tiny hut a good way down the slope 
 (which I had overlooked) and added that he lived 
 alone with his wife. 
 
 " * What do you do for a living up here ? ' I said. 
 
 " He rephed that he kept goats and grew bananas, 
 and apparently he wanted no more. And then he 
 looked at me curiously and asked : 
 
 " ' What does the Master do up here ? ' 
 
 '"I came to see the mountain,' I said. 
 
 " * Is the Master a servant of the Government, 
 then ? ' he asked. 
 
 " ' No,' said I. 
 
 " ' What is the Master then ? ' he persisted. 
 
 " 1 don't know quite why I used exactly the words 
 that I did but I answered at once : * A priest of Jesus 
 Christ.' It comes easier in the native. 
 
 ''And then the strange thing happened. The old 
 chap's eyes fairly glistened. He jumped to his feet, 
 dropped on his knees, and said ' The father is a priest. 
 I am a child of Jesus. Bless me in His Name ! ' 
 
 " I was so amazed that I hardly knew what to say, 
 but I blessed him and we talked. He had a simple 
 faith, that old savage .... Presently I said I must 
 go, and then he seized his own left wrist and tugged 
 off something. Catching my hand he forced it on — 
 that iron bracelet. ' Father,' he said, in words I can 
 
126 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 hardly translate, * I have little to give, but wear this 
 from me. And when the father stands at the altar 
 and feels it, perhaps even in his own land, let him 
 remember me and pray for me and my country. And 
 let him show it to people that they may remember too.' 
 
 " I thanked him and came away. I don't mind 
 
 telling you that I stumbled down that bit of hill 
 
 I'll tell you what I thought. Nineteen hundred 
 years ago they had taken our Lord and hung Him up 
 on a hill that His Name might be a byword and a 
 hissing, and yet here on a hill beyond the borders of 
 the world, and unknown a score of years ago, an old 
 savage could be found to drop on his knees at the 
 mention of that Name. Tell me, Riley, is there any 
 other name in Heaven or in Earth that can do that ? 
 And there hummed a text through my mind all the 
 way down : ' He shall see of the travail of His soul and 
 shall be satisfied.' . . . 
 
 *' There ! I'm sorry ; it's a queer yarn for a dinner- 
 table talk, but you asked, you know." 
 
 That night Riley met an old chum in the street, 
 a don now, who had been up with him. He went with 
 him to his rooms, and a few more came in, and they 
 had rather a good time. " By the way," he said, as 
 he got up to go, " do you remember Enderby of ours ? 
 He's up too. Met him in Piccadilly by chance the other 
 day. Been knocking around in Africa for ten years." 
 
 *' Really? " said his host. " Yes, I remember him. 
 A decent man he was, but rather queer. What's 
 he like now ? " 
 
 " Oh, all right — a good sort; rather queer, though, 
 still," said Riley. 
 
so AS BY FIRE" 127 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 *' So AS BY Fire " 
 
 The "Pevensey Castle" had been five days in the 
 harbour of KiHndini, and her people were contemplating 
 two more with anything but indifference. There is a 
 moment when Kilindini looks like Paradise. After 
 the last date-palms of Port Suez, the traveller East 
 has nothing before him but the harsh, brown deserts 
 and mountains of Egypt, Sinai, Aden and Somaliland 
 (except for some sweltering days at sea), until they 
 let the anchor go in the long, narrow creek, and he 
 rushes up on deck to see the white beach, the green 
 cocoanuts and the grey baobabs of Mombasa Island, 
 set mostly in a glowing sun under a fairy sky. Then 
 he trollies up to the town under his first bananas and 
 mangoes, and takes ices at the big hotel with the 
 purple bougainvillias and creamy- white frangipannies 
 opposite. Then he sees his first Swahili, and gets an 
 introduction to the freedom of East Africa. And 
 it is all glorious — until the coaling begins, and the 
 small island is fairly done, and there is nothing for 
 it but to sit in a deck-chair and try not to remember 
 the price of iced drinks. 
 
 Hugh Everton had tired of it almost as soon as the 
 train had borne north to Nairobi the greater number 
 of the " Pevensey's " people with whom the voyage had 
 been spent so easily, and perforce he had been thrown 
 a little into the company of old Brooke, who, after 
 aU, was bound for the same destination and had been 
 that way before. Hugh was going to superintend 
 other people planting cocoanuts in Zanzibar ; and 
 he regarded the prospect with a certain complacency, 
 
128 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 a little marred just now by his first experience of 
 tropical heat, African mosquitoes, and the fleeting 
 nature of colonial friendships. Brooke had looked 
 after black men's souls for an unknown period, and 
 appeared to wish to do so to the end, with a queer 
 lack of enthusiasm, and yet with a certain deter- 
 minedness which rather bewildered the other. Everton 
 would have told you that he was a " churchman," 
 and that of course Missions were *' all right," but all 
 the missionaries he had known had been either (as 
 he sized them up) young fools, or men seemingly 
 inspired with an enthusiasm astonishingly remote 
 from his own outlook on life. Yet old Brooke was 
 neither the one nor the other. Sitting side by side 
 with him in a deck-chair, he was lazily contemplating 
 that fact just now. 
 
 A little motor-boat ran fussily out from the quay, 
 and Hugh watched it idly round the point. Then 
 he ventured on a remark. 
 
 " Your chaps always seem pretty keen when they 
 come out. Do they keep it up, Mr. Brooke ? " 
 
 The other waited till the noise of the donkey- 
 ejigines had died down for a minute, and then said 
 with a smile : 
 
 " So you're tired of East Africa already, are you ? " 
 
 Hugh started. " What do you mean ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, only that I guessed your train of thought ! 
 I remember feeling just the same. First it's like 
 Robinson Crusoe come to life, and then one gets 
 sick of the heat and flies and damp, and rather wants 
 a bit of the breeze over a Yorkshire moor — if one's 
 from Yorkshire ! " 
 
 Hugh laughed. ** I was wanting half an hour in 
 the Solent," he said. ** But I guess it's the same 
 thing. However, do your chaps get tired; that's what 
 I asked ; and what happens if they do ? " 
 
so AS BY FIRE" 129 
 
 " Some of them go to the devil, '* said old Brooke 
 simply. 
 
 "Oh, I say," said Hugh, leaning forward, ** you 
 don't mean that ? " 
 
 " I do, if you want the truth. Missionaries are not 
 much different from other men, you know, and a 
 good many of them go to him too. Only our fellows 
 go differently — perhaps . ' ' 
 
 " Have you ever known any to go ? " asked Hugh. 
 
 " Yes," said the other, and added slowly, " and 
 some come back." 
 
 " Tell me," said Hugh. 
 
 Brooke shifted a little and looked at him. He 
 took his questioner in, from his Leander tie to his 
 rather neat deck shoes, and he told himself, without 
 conscious expression, that he had seen many others 
 of the same type. Then he glanced out to where the 
 palms thinned on the other bank, visible now as 
 the i*Pevensey Castle" swung round on the tide, and 
 then he glanced at his watch. " Very well," he said, 
 " before the dressing bell. 
 
 "Young Fraser came out in the 'nineties, and I 
 believe his people had a country vicarage down in 
 Hampshire. He was just the sort we want — trial 
 cap, Harrow before that, I fancy, and quite a decent 
 degree, and he was as keen as could be. He'd gone 
 up keen; I think, and only developed it more definitely 
 up there ; and although he wasn't a fool at all, I 
 think he expected street-preaching and hut-to-hut 
 visiting, after a kind of Bermondsey-in-the-Tropics. 
 He was awfully set up, too, with the natives and 
 the country, and he got on with them all right into 
 the bargain. We gave him six months in a big Mission, 
 and then packed him off to an island, with another 
 priest and a couple of laymen. Moshi-Ntumbi, it was. 
 It's a station on the side of a hill among the palms, 
 
180 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 and you can look down through them to the sea, 
 while behind, the slope runs up till the wood thins 
 and the bush begins, and at last you come out on 
 a dry summit sown thick with thyme and a little 
 yellow flower the bees love. Fraser used to climb 
 up pretty often at one time. He liked the monkeys 
 in the wood, but most of all the view from the top. 
 Below, stood out plainly the Mission-house and the 
 church, and a hundred yards or so away the native 
 village by the water ; and behind, the island lay like 
 a map, with the smoke of a score of villages rising 
 into the blue with every sunset and sunrise. Fraser 
 used to plan a visit to one or another of those villages 
 at every climb, but I don't think he got to more 
 than three or four. You see, at first he was most of 
 the time at the language, and beastly he found it. 
 The Tropics are not the best place to swelter grammar 
 in. Then his fellow-priest got blackwater and they 
 sent him home, and it used to take Fraser an hour 
 to get up the psalms and lessons for Evensong, and 
 even then he didn't understand them. Then the 
 laymen quarrelled, and the Bishop removed one, and 
 Fraser didn't hit it with the other. They hadn't 
 much in common outside of church, and even there 
 it wasn't all smooth sailing. There was a lot to be 
 said for the layman ; he talked the language, and 
 Fraser didn't, and yet Fraser had to preach and he 
 wasn't allowed even to try. Not that he wanted to 
 — but he was a stiff critic. Then Fraser had his own 
 ideas about the new school, and if he wasn't a car- 
 penter, at least he was * priest-in-charge ' ; and so it 
 went on. But the native work broke him in the end. 
 " First there was old James, the catechist. James 
 had his own ideas, but they were mostly African and 
 concerned with sitting still and not worrying. To 
 Fraser, James was a heathen who had seen the light 
 
. tit^r v ^'yv- 
 
 SO AS BY FIRE" 181 
 
 and must now be more than eager to let it in elsewhere ; 
 to James, Fraser was a young white man, wholly 
 inexplicable and always in a hurry. Then Fraser was 
 very sure about a certain boy, Athanasio, who used 
 to help him with his sermons and look after his donkey. 
 He was broken-hearted when Athanasio made a 
 heathen marriage and was entirely untroubled over 
 it. But it was a girl, Mary Kanjai, who finished him. 
 
 " Mary was born and bred at Moshi, and used to 
 teach the kiddies in the school. She was nothing 
 much to look at, but as keen as anything, and you 
 would find her before the altar every night with a 
 nipper or two, teaching them to say their prayers. 
 Fraser wrote home about her, and he used to say 
 that a few like that were the hope of the race. (That 
 was when he found that the heathen did not respond 
 in crowds to his preaching.) And then, one night 
 of a full moon, while he sat on his verandah getting 
 up a lesson for next day, his boy, Yusuf, broke in on 
 him excitedly. 
 
 " ' Padre,' he said, ' there's a big dance over at 
 Pani-Samaki, and Mary's gone to it ! ' 
 
 " ' What sort of a dance ? ' said Fraser, in terror 
 of the truth. 
 
 " 'A bad, bad, devil dance/ said Yusuf. ' Plenty 
 men drink, and much people dance, and devil come 
 and speak through Mary ! ' 
 
 " Fraser got up with his face white. It had come 
 at last — the heroic, the real. He would go and rescue 
 the lost sheep. And go he did, Yusuf and he, five 
 miles through the bush, with the fire-flies dancing 
 among the tall grasses, and the moon shining wetly 
 on the high cocoanut fronds. The path gave abruptly 
 on to the shore, and he could see the firelight, five 
 hundred yards away, shining ruddily on an old boat 
 and a disused palm-shelter. At the place, a row of 
 
132 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 girls knelt on a raised board and chanted ; a couple 
 of men in devil-masks danced ; and a goat lay, with 
 its body ripped up, between them. Mary was on 
 her knees before it, with her hands buried in it, and 
 she blasphemed through her lips. She blasphemed 
 him; too, when he got there and ordered her in bad 
 Swahili and much agitation to come away, and it 
 was only because he was white and new that he got 
 away alive himself. And he came back to his lonely 
 house with the consciousness of failure on him and 
 the beginnings of a bad fever. 
 
 " Simpson nursed him round, Simpson was a 
 Government collector just put in at Moshi; and it 
 was he who introduced Fraser to the whisky. Fraser 
 did not last six months after that. Then he cleared 
 out just before the Bishop came, and went up into 
 the Protectorate. And they wrote him off the books." 
 
 Brooke relapsed into silence. Hugh Evert on 
 relaxed his hands round his knees and broke it. *' By 
 Jove," he said, " I never guessed it might be like 
 that." 
 
 " No," said Brooke. " You wouldn't." 
 
 ** But," said Everton, *' are Missions a failure, 
 then ? What do you mean ? Why do you go on 
 with it ? " 
 
 The boys unloading iron rails alongside for the 
 Uganda Extension must have settled a score or more 
 into the lighter before Brooke replied. Then he said 
 slowly : "Do you want to know ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the other, " rather." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you what happened to Fraser, if 
 you like," said the old, weather- tanned priest. " It's 
 a queer sort of yam, but it illustrates both your 
 questions. 
 
 " About two years after that, a couple of hunters 
 out from Nairobi crossed the German boundary and 
 
so AS BY FIRE" 133 
 
 began a big shoot on the Kilimanjaro slopes. There 
 was a good deal of elephant there then, and things 
 were pretty rough. About two miles below a place 
 called Marengo, they rounded up a good-sized herd 
 in a little valley with steep sides, where a bit of a 
 waterfall drops a hundred feet or more into a basin 
 among long grass. There wasn't any beating, but 
 the Masai guides led them there, and they had the 
 beasts in a trap, and got several cows and a bull or 
 two each towards evening when the big beasts came 
 to drink. Then they cut out the tusks and the best 
 of the meat, and set out for Marengo, a Ki-chaka 
 village — all of them, white and black together, as 
 excited as they could be. The chief turned out of 
 his hut for them — or they turned him out, really ; 
 and then they laid out for an evening of it. The chief's 
 hut was set in a kind of thick aloe fence, and all the 
 enclosure was overgrown with banana trees. The 
 boys made a huge fire outside and spread a table near 
 the fire (for it's cold in the evening on Kilimanjaro) 
 that looked like civilisation almost. Both men meant 
 to do themselves well that night. They hadn't a 
 table-cloth, but there was plenty of whisky and new- 
 roasted corn-cobs, and a banana stew, and some birds 
 they'd knocked over, and the best of the elephant 
 meat. Half way through, they called old Mataka the 
 chief, and gave him whisky and sent him out to find 
 girls to dance. It was a scene that, I can tell you — 
 the red sparks of the fire, the natives clustering round, 
 the girls dancing, the open, dark hut behind with the 
 blankets spread and the mosquito-nets rigged up, and, 
 far behind all, the moon, white on the snows of 
 Kilimanjaro. Then came swift tragedy. The younger 
 of the two white men wanted one of the dancing girls, 
 and she refused. He got up drunkenly and staggered 
 over to her and took her by the arm, and she broke 
 
184 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 away. He swore and asked why. She — despite the 
 dancing and the savagery — said she was a Christian ; 
 and he — ^well, he kicked her badly for her pains. They 
 carried her out, and both men contented themselves 
 with others. 
 
 '' When the sun was well up, the older awoke and 
 drank his coffee, and at that he heard the news. He 
 turned back to the hut and woke the younger. 
 
 " ' You're a cursed fool, Jim,' he said. ' That 
 beastly girl you kicked died last night, and now 
 there'U be the deuce to pay, for as likely as not we 
 shall have a row with the Government.' 
 
 " ' Which girl, Charlie ? ' said Jim, who hadn't got 
 his memory back all that much yet. 
 
 " ' Why, you fool,' replied Charlie, ' that girl who 
 danced and wouldn't come in because she said she 
 was a Christian. You took Sikujua instead — ^remem- 
 ber ? You'd better go and look at her and give her 
 man fifteen chips (i.e., rupees) and a new knife. And 
 be quick about it ; breakfast's getting cold.' 
 
 " Jim, swearing hugely, went out of the enclosure. 
 A few yards away a big native squatted by a door- 
 way, and presently took him in. In the corner lay 
 the girl. She wore a crucifix by a bit of dirty string 
 round her neck. 
 
 '' ' She my girl, good girl,' rattled on the native. 
 ' Worth very much — knew to read, to write. She 
 Mission girl, called Mary, came from far away and 
 live with me. White man pay much money or I 
 make great trouble. He kick her ; she die last night 
 — my girl, good girl. Mission people call Mary.' Jim 
 heard as from a great way off, but there was another 
 woman by the body, and she took up the tale in better 
 English. ' I Mission girl too,' she said ; ' Catholic 
 Mission. Mary English Mission, and all last night 
 she have much pain and she say : it I want to make 
 
^ ««S0 AS BY FIRE» 185 
 
 confession ; why are there none of my priests here ? 
 I big sinner, but very sorry. Never done some wrong, 
 but I want a priest : why none of my priests here ? " 
 So she die, white man, and you very bad man.' 
 
 " Jim turned without a word and left the hut. He 
 was as white as a piece of paper. Outside, the sun, 
 hot already, made the air flicker over the banana 
 slopes, and glittered on the white head of Kilimanjaro. 
 But Jim saw nothing of it, nor heard Charlie calling. 
 Instead he saw a fire on the beach in the night, and a 
 girl possessed, over a sacrificed goat, and himself 
 vehemently judging and condemning. And as he saw, 
 heedless of the natives and of his companion, he 
 staggered away among the bananas and dropped on 
 his knees. And all the grim tragedy of it smote on 
 his brain : ' Why are there none of my priests here ? ' 
 And there had been — in the next hut ! " 
 
 The voice of old Brooke broke curiously and ceased. 
 Hugh Everton swallowed a little in his throat, and 
 looked out over the blue water to where the " Pevensey 
 Castle," in her swing, showed him the white foam on 
 the reef. " And that's the answer to more than one 
 of your questions," said Brooke, after a minute. 
 
 Hugh glanced swiftly at him. " How did you know 
 all that ? " he asked. 
 
 Brooke pulled a pipe out of his pocket and began 
 to pack it. " Oh ! one hears yams Hke that in Africa," 
 he said evenly. 
 
186 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Stefano 
 
 All the boys had gone to football except Stefano, 
 whom a slightly sprained ankle kept at home that 
 afternoon. He was a well-built lad, a Yao, with 
 remarkably Bantu features that could not be called 
 beautiful, except by such as have the wit to set small 
 store on earthly standards of beauty, and who look 
 instead at the light in the eye and the play of the 
 soul. In Stefano's eyes, then, was a light which was 
 capable of almost transforming his face, and which 
 sometimes made the padre who taught him look at 
 him a moment longer, when he asked him a question 
 in class, than he looked at other boys. Not that the 
 padre quite fathomed those eyes : far from it. They 
 showed a boy who was veiy much of a boy, and 
 annoyingly keen on mischief, and a boy who had a 
 very considerable intelligence hidden behind them ; 
 but there was a look there also which rather baffled 
 the observer. The padre said it was a puzzled look, 
 and probably he was right. Stefano, for all his black 
 skin, was by way of being a bit of a Socrates. He 
 never accepted things at their face value merely, and 
 he was perpetually grappling with the problems of 
 his universe. He was scarcely conscious of grappling 
 with them ; he was chiefly conscious, unlike his fellows, 
 that there were inconsistencies in life, even in life as 
 set out by the (obviously) immensely rich and per- 
 fectly infallible Mission. It is not really very polite 
 to Stefano, but the padre often said that he looked 
 at you as a very intelhgent and affectionate dog 
 
STEPANO. 137 
 
 sometimes looks when his master is preparing for a 
 journey, or is in trouble. The dog is aware that the 
 god-like being is disturbed, which, in a god, if one is 
 intelligent enough to think it out, is amazing. So 
 Stefano, with an implicit trust in the system that 
 enmeshed him, was intelligent enough to realise 
 sufficient of the paradoxes of life to be almost per- 
 petually puzzled. . . . But he never doubted, you 
 understand. 
 
 It was just such a paradox that came his way 
 that afternoon, while he sat in the airy whitewashed 
 schoolroom with its glassless windows, through which 
 the mason-bees hummed every now and again, and 
 the hot air faintly stirred. He had sat down to enjoy 
 an enormous treat to such a boy as he. The padre, 
 a prisoner before a pile of exercise books at the far 
 end of the room, had lent him, at his own inimitable 
 half-bold, half-careless request, a startling production 
 known (I believe) as The Twentieth Century Atlas. 
 It was no ordinary atlas. It not merely pictured remote 
 lands in bold colours, which was interesting enough, 
 but it gave further pictures of those same lands in 
 other further colours and markings, with odd little 
 representations below, of, for example, a series of 
 cows, or of ships, or of soldiers, or of coal-blocks, all in 
 ascending sizes. This, then, was one of those mys- 
 terious things that Stefano loved. He knew, dimly, 
 that the soldiers, for instance, represented armies ; 
 and yet the English soldier in red was the smallest 
 on the page, whereas everybody knew that the armies 
 of the great King were as the trees of the forest for 
 multitude. Stefano never talked of such a thing, but 
 it was strange to him. So was also the page at which 
 he was even now looking. 
 
 It represented the world ; he knew that (howbeit 
 it was square on the map and flat, although the padre 
 
188 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 said it was round) ; but the world in a variety of 
 colours which seemed to correspond to nothing under 
 the sun. The greater part of Europe and South 
 America, for instance, were red, whereas England and 
 most of Germany were white. Now, why, why in the 
 world ? As all Stefano's fifteen years had been hved 
 in German East Africa, he knew exactly how much 
 there was in common between the Germans and the 
 English, and if he had been map-making he would 
 most certainly have not made them both white. He 
 heaved a tremendous sigh. 
 
 " What is it, Stefano ? " asked the padre, looking 
 up. ** Want to go out ? " 
 
 Stefano grinned and said nothing, which was rather 
 his way. 
 
 " Well, what is it then ? " the priest persisted, and, 
 glad of a momentary interruption, sauntered down the 
 room. 
 
 Stefano promptly turned the page, which was again 
 his way, but the padre knew him, and as promptly 
 turned it back. He was at once confronted with 
 the Harmsworth faith in The Religions of the World. 
 
 " Oh ! " said he, rather spotting a chance, " that's 
 a map of the religions of all the people in the world. 
 The green shows the lands where the people believe 
 in Mohammed, and the black is heathen, and the 
 red is — er — ^well, is — er — ' Katoliki.' " 
 
 " Ah ! *' said Stefano. 
 
 *' Now, where were you bom ? " said the padre, an 
 inquiring finger wavering over the page. 
 
 " Mataka," said Stefano promptly. 
 
 " Exactly/' said the triumphant padre, stabbing the 
 page ; " that's there, and it's black, you see. Now in 
 your village the people were all heathen, weren't 
 they ? " 
 
 *' No," said Stefano. " Mataka built a mosque in 
 
STEFANO 139 
 
 the time of my father, and all the people hear the 
 Koran now." 
 
 " Oh, well, you see, this map was printed before 
 that was known in England," said the slightly less 
 enthusiastic but still painstaking priest. '* Look at 
 Zanzibar, now, that's Mohammedan, and you see it's 
 green, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Stefano, not over-con vincedly ; " but 
 the Great Churches of the Mission and of Roma are 
 there. And what does red mean ? " 
 
 " Katoliki," said the padre, on surer ground. 
 
 '' Then what does white mean ? " persisted the boy. 
 
 '' Oh, well," said the priest, " it means Christians 
 that are not Katoliki, you know." 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Stefano. 
 
 " Weil, you see," said the lecturer, " they do really 
 love and worship our Lord, but they've forgotten, or 
 not understood, all His Words. They don't listen to 
 the Bishops He put into the world to teach the people. 
 But they really love our Lord," he added lamely. 
 
 " Ha ! " said Stefano again, and then, with a 
 remembrance of the Friends' Mission in Pemba, seen 
 on a holiday : " Are the other white men in Pemba 
 Christians, then ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the priest. 
 
 " But a boy told me they don't baptise the people," 
 objected Stefano. 
 
 " No," said the priest, " they don't " (and began to 
 hanker after the exercise books) ; " but they do love our 
 Lord, only they think His Words don't — er — quite 
 mean that now." 
 
 Stefano sat amazed. '* But they don't have a Bishop," 
 he said. 
 
 " No," said the priest. 
 
 " And they don't go to Mass, and they don't confess 
 their sins for God to speak forgiveness by the priest." 
 
140 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " No," said the priest. 
 
 " But are they Christians, then ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the padre, plunging in up to the neck 
 again. " Yes, Stefano, they are, but, as I told you, 
 they've forgotten the Words of our Lord. He lived a 
 long time ago, you know, and they left the Bishops, 
 and now they don't do these things. You mustn't 
 worry about them. You know the Words of our 
 Lord." 
 
 " But," said Stefano slowly, " but I don't under- 
 stand, father ; they read the Bible." 
 
 " They do, Stefano, but it is as I say," said the 
 priest hopelessly. 
 
 " Well," said Stefano, " I should he afraid.'* 
 
 That was the sort of boy he was, and what could 
 you do with him ? And there was another side to 
 his character, too, that came out in this way. 
 
 One night the padre and the priest-in-charge were 
 sitting on the mosquito-proof baraza, talking after 
 supper. The tree-crickets had a parliament on just 
 outside, and it was not any too easy to talk com- 
 fortably, but the two were rather deep over a new 
 book that discussed the philosophy of Nietzsche and 
 one or two other unimportant matters. Suddenly, 
 however, the crickets ceased to sing, and in the silence 
 they heard a cry. 
 
 " Hullo," said the padre, " what's that ? " 
 
 It came again and nearer, a woman's cry, and then 
 the pad-pad of bare feet running. They listened 
 eagerly. Under the baraza the feet stopped, and a 
 man's voice cried up : 
 
 " My father, oh, my father, art thou there ? " 
 
 " Yes," called back the priest-in-charge. " Who 
 is it ? " 
 
 " It is I, thy son, Wilfridi, and my wife. Come to 
 us quickly, my father ; we are bewitched.' 
 
STEFANO 141 
 
 The woman's lamentations rang out again at that, 
 and the priests rose hastily and went downstairs. 
 
 At the door, the padre saw a strange sight. Against 
 the background of palms that glistened in the white 
 moonlight stood a native man. His left hand gripped 
 the arm of a woman, who crouched on the ground, 
 wrapped up in her sheeties and crying monotonously. 
 His right was held rigidly in front of him, and in the 
 clenched fist was a small object. 
 
 " Oh, my father," broke out the man the moment 
 the door was opened, " we are here, thy children, and 
 we are bewitched. As Fidesi, my wife, went to the 
 bed but now, she saw beneath it this medicine, a 
 great medicine, my father, by which I shall go mad 
 and kill my wife, and die myself. And even now the 
 madness works in my brain, oh, my father," he added. 
 
 At this the woman's cries redoubled, and she tried 
 to pull away her arm. " Peace, woman," said the 
 man roughly but fearfully, " or the spirit will seize 
 upon me." 
 
 " What rubbish and foolish talk is this, Wilfridi ? " 
 said the elder priest sternly. '* Are you not a Christian, 
 and have you not a cross about your neck that 
 you should talk like this ? Is not Christ our Lord 
 stronger than Satan ? Give me the medicine and 
 go quietly to your home, and in the morning I 
 will come and pray, and no evil thing shall have power 
 over you." 
 
 The man mumbled shamefacedly, and pushed his 
 right hand towards the priest, who took from it a 
 curious little bundle. He put it behind his back, 
 and the woman ceased at once to cry. 
 
 ** Kneel now," he said to them. 
 
 The man knelt, and the woman shuffled up on to 
 her knees and made the sign of the Cross. 
 
 " Holy Michael Archangel," prayed the priest. 
 
142 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " defend us in the day of battle. Be thou our safeguard 
 against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May 
 God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince 
 of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust 
 down to Hell, Satan and all wicked spirits who wander 
 through the world for the ruin of souls." He added a 
 blessing. The two signed themselves again, and 
 with profuse thanks moved off into the darkness, 
 talking excitedly as they entered the trees. The 
 Enghshmen remained in the light of the doorway, 
 and both bent to examine the medicine. 
 
 It was a httle bundle, tied with a fragment of dirty 
 cloth, and consisting of a few twigs of the cassarina 
 tree bound to a few inches of hard wood. 
 
 " I know it," said the elder. " The medicine-man 
 cuts the wood on a night of the new moon, and the 
 blood of a goat slain in sacrifice is sprinkled over it. 
 See, it is stained on this side. Then you can combine 
 the wood with various leaves for different magics. 
 This one is to separate husband and wife. Some 
 man wants the woman put out of the way, and by 
 this he will cause the man to slay his wife. I've known 
 it done too. So much for the power of super- 
 stition." 
 
 The younger padre turned it in his hand. " Do 
 they all beheve that ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," said the other, " it's very widespread I 
 think." 
 
 *' Give it me, will you ? " asked the first. 
 
 " All right," said the other man, " only lock it up. 
 These things are really best destroyed. Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night," said the other, and turned away, 
 the thing in his hand. 
 
 As he crossed the moonlit courtyard, a light in 
 a window opposite attracted him. He hesitated 
 a minute, and then turned in under the cloisters, 
 
STEFANO 148 
 
 climbed a narrow stone stair, and opened a door. 
 Within were a dozen beds, six a side. A big crucifix 
 hung on the bare wall opposite, and the dormitory 
 was lit by a small lamp. 
 
 The priest took a few steps in, one hand behind his 
 back. " Asleep yet, Stefano ? " he said softly. 
 
 A boy stirred on a bed and sat up, his clean, black 
 skin catching the lamplight. " No, father/' he said. 
 
 " Come here, then," ordered the priest. 
 
 Stefano got out of bed, gingerly, and, wrapping 
 his covering blanket round his waist, approached the 
 priest. Two or three others moved a little to watch. 
 
 " Stefano," said the priest, " you are a Christian, 
 aren't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the boy, wonderingly. 
 
 " Well," said the priest, " then take this," and 
 he thrust his hand holding the medicine towards 
 the boy. 
 
 The light fell on it plainly. A boy in bed uttered 
 a cry and drew his blanket over his head. Another 
 sat up hurriedly, and held his hand, with the fingers 
 spread, before his face. Stefano blanched under his 
 black skin, and fell back a pace. A dead silence 
 fell on them all. 
 
 " Take it, Stefano," said the priest again. 
 
 "It is a medicine which makes madness, oh, my 
 father,'* whispered Stefano ; ''I myself have seen 
 it." 
 
 *' Stefano," said the priest again, " who is stronger, 
 Christ or Satan ? Take it into your hand. Does it 
 harm me ? " 
 
 " The white priest cannot be harmed," said Stefano. 
 
 The padre did not reply. He simply stood there 
 and held it out. 
 
 The minutes passed. Almost he lost patience, 
 but then the boy before him stirred. Very slowly. 
 
144 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 his eyes on the priest, he made a big sign of the Cross, 
 and then, never looking down, he held out his hand. 
 The priest put what he held into it for a moment, 
 and then withdrew his own again. 
 
 " God bless you, boy," he said huskily ; "get back 
 to bed." 
 
 He turned and went out, but Stefano stood a minute. 
 Then he, too, made for his bed. The boy next him 
 rolled farther away, and Stefano got in slowly. 
 
 " But I myself have seen it," he muttered half 
 audibly, and again more determinedly, " I myself 
 have seen it." 
 
 That was the kind of boy Stefano was ; and when 
 the padre gave him, next day, a medal of St. Michael 
 Archangel treading Satan under foot, he thanked 
 him gravely, but never appeared with it, so that 
 the padre concluded that for some reason of his own 
 he would not wear it. That, again, was the kind of 
 boy Stefano was. 
 
 The years pass quickly in Africa, and the pries t-in- 
 charge was almost startled when Stefano came to him 
 one day and said he wanted to marry the girl his 
 father had chosen, and leave the school. 
 
 " But will you not go to Zanzibar to college ? " 
 asked the priest. " You are a good boy ; we will 
 send you." 
 
 " No, my father," said the boy. " I do not wish 
 to be a teacher. My father has chosen a Christian 
 girl, and I like her. We will marry, and live in my 
 father's village." 
 
 " But it is twenty miles away, and all heathen ! " 
 exclaimed the priest. 
 
 " I am sorry," said Stefano-, "if it grieves my 
 father, but it is the wish of my people, and I go. I 
 am strong ; I will walk in to the Mission very often 
 for my Church, and my wife with me." 
 
STEFANO 146 
 
 There was nothing to stop him, and so it happened. 
 Only the foreboding of the priest-in-charge came to 
 nothing. Stefano was strong and he did walk in. He 
 became one of those curious natives that a little bit 
 vex a missionary's heart. He came to his duties three 
 or four times a year, and fairly often for other things as 
 well, but he said very little and he seemed to progress 
 not at all. But all was straight at the village on the 
 hills, and as his goats increased he became a man of 
 importance there, with his children growing up about 
 him. And all went well till about the middle of 
 August, 191 4. 
 
 Stefano's village was small and far away, and it 
 was not until about the tenth of the month that a 
 man came in with the news : " The Germans are at 
 war with the English," he said, " and there will be 
 pain in the land." 
 
 They discussed it half the night, and in the morning 
 Stefano said : 
 
 ** I will go to the Mission and see. I was going up 
 for the great day of our Lady, but now I go a little 
 earlier, that is all. And my wife will stay here till I 
 return with the news." 
 
 " It's no good thy going," said the man. " The 
 priests have left." 
 
 " I do not believe that the priests will leave," said 
 Stefano. 
 
 " But I heard on the railway that the Germans had 
 taken them, they and the hihis, top. The place is 
 empty. Thou canst not go," said the man. 
 
 *' Bring me food, woman," said Stefano to his wife. 
 " I go.'' 
 
 But it was as the man had said. As he climbed up 
 the hill under the orange trees, there were no boys 
 in the river below washing their clothes and bathing. 
 The gate of the courtyard gaped open, and it seemed 
 
146 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 silent as the grave within. But Stefano went to the 
 priest's room, and called to come in from habit. 
 
 " Come in," said a guttural voice, and Stefano was 
 amazed. He stood silently. At that the door was 
 flung open, and there appeared in the entrance an 
 officer in German uniform. " What do you want ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " The priest," said Stefano. 
 
 *' He has gone," said the German. " Where do you 
 come from ? " 
 
 Stefano told him, and the man looked him up and 
 down a moment. Then he pushed by him and whistled. 
 A native askari came running round the comer and 
 saluted. " Take this man and keep him," said the 
 German. *' He can go with the levy to-morrow to 
 the rail. That is all." 
 
 He turned and went inside, shutting the door. 
 Stefano stared at it. Then he moved away. " Not 
 that way," said the man, " come here." 
 
 " I go home," said Stefano simply. 
 
 " No you don't," said the askari with a broad grin. 
 *' You go and fight. The capitani say so. You fight 
 the EngHsh now, and have much fun. You can kill, 
 and take women, and you will get much money. 
 Come with me." 
 
 Stefano stood silently, then he turned away. In a 
 moment the askari had run round him, and Stefano 
 was brought up against a bayonet point. And that 
 was how Stefano became a German askari. 
 
 They took him down to the railway, and he spent 
 the night with thirty other young men, under lock 
 and key and an armed guard, but he was given plenty 
 to eat and drink. The rest were all heathen, and 
 rather disposed to make merry. They had got over 
 their first fear, and the native guard had given them 
 visions of glorious things — ^women and loot and killing. 
 
STEFANO 147 
 
 Stefano said very little, but omitted his prayers. He 
 felt, dumbly, that God had already omitted him from 
 His care of the universe. 
 
 Then ensued a hard three months for the recruits. 
 They were taken up country to Arusha, and Stefano 
 saw his first snow on the summit of Kilimanjaro. 
 They were marched up the mountain side to a boma 
 near a Lutheran Mission, whose clergy were all under 
 arms except one old man, who preached to the recruits 
 once or twice. It seemed God was tired with the 
 English for their pride and sin, and that He had spoken 
 to His friend, the great Emperor, telling him to set 
 the people of Africa free from the yoke of the cruel 
 English. So the great Emperor had gathered his 
 armies, and already the English were being swept from 
 the earth. 
 
 Stefano pondered these things and kept quiet. 
 Maybe he remembered the old map, but he had not 
 much time for reflection, since they put him into a 
 uniform and gave him a rifle, a bayonet, and a knife, 
 and drilled him with the rest from morning till night. 
 The others grumbled much at first, and a man even 
 refused to clean his rifle one day and sat in the sun 
 instead. The next saw a solemn performance which 
 impressed Stefano and the rest very much. They 
 were formed up and marched under guard to the 
 clearing before the boma, where a group of white oflicers 
 were smoking and laughing. The offender then 
 appeared between soldiers, and was stripped naked. 
 He was then tied up to a framework of wood and 
 flogged to death. Thereafter they all drilled satis- 
 factorily. 
 
 And then the day came when they moved off. There 
 was a stir in the boma, and soon the news got about 
 that big guns from one of the victorious German 
 men-of-war had been shipped up-country^ ready for 
 
148 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 ' "■ ■' —■■—II I I I ■^—11 — I ^ II I ■ 
 
 an advance on the British Uganda Railway. Three 
 companies strong, the new levies moved down to 
 Arusha to join a considerable force there assembled. 
 A week's marching took them well into British terri- 
 tory, and with never a casualty. It was an exciting 
 march : one day, at least, had brought them the 
 spoil of an enemy's village, and Stefano's companions 
 had seen blood on their knives. He himself had 
 kept apart from the night orgy. Indeed, one of his 
 officers, coming on him sitting apart, had asked him, 
 as he sprang up to attention, why he was not " over 
 there." There, in the light of the fire, a score of half- 
 dressed askaris drank beer from the hands of the 
 terrified women who were forced to supply them. He 
 had merely saluted again, and had as promptly been 
 knocked down. He got up and said nothing, but he 
 was a marked man. 
 
 So it was the close of the week that brought also 
 the close of the story. A night march had carried 
 them to within range of the British positions, appa- 
 rently unseen. Stefano's company were set to line 
 the thick grass at the head of a kind of glade beyond 
 which lay the enemy's lines. There had been a grim 
 speech from their white officer before they got into 
 position, and every man knew it was serious business 
 now, and death as possible behind as before. They 
 lay there, those dark figures, a fit subject for the 
 moralist. Drawn into a world-war for causes utterly 
 beyond them, at the bidding of theories and move- 
 ments as remote (and about as human) as the politics 
 of Mars, they confronted, not merely the spears of 
 native war, but every hellish device that science has 
 perfected for the world's greatest civilisation fittingly 
 to slay with. They knew nothing of them — nothing 
 of the screaming, murderous hail of machine-guns, 
 nothing of the irresistible shell that tears and maims 
 
STEFANO 149 
 
 beyond recognition. Poor " cannon-fodder/' as pitiful 
 as the victims that ancient empires slew in sacrifice 
 to bloody gods. 
 
 Stefano, of course, was as ignorant as the rest, and 
 nothing in particular occupied his mind. There was 
 that look in his eyes that the padre had seen years 
 before, but he did not know it. He lay with the rest 
 and waited for the word, waited till the last problem 
 of his life was offered him. 
 
 Across the end of the glade began to creep a line 
 of men unconscious of the hidden enemy. The 
 keen native eye saw clearly the tense white faces 
 above the khaki, and noticed the very muscles 
 that gripped the rifles in their hands. The German 
 officer waited a little for his best opportunity, 
 and in that moment Stefano gave a short grunt 
 of surprise. The German growled a low curse, and 
 drove the muzzle of his pistol into the small of the 
 boy's back. But Stefano was too amazed to care. 
 There was one man of that file (who ought not indeed 
 to have been there) who carried no rifle, and whose 
 collar was marked by a black Maltese cross. That 
 would have meant nothing to Stefano, but he knew 
 the face above the collar. Not since the priest had 
 been transferred to Zanzibar, years before, had Stefano 
 seen his padre. 
 
 " Charge ! " yelled the German behind him. The 
 black line sprang up and away, but only as the clatter 
 of machine-guns broke out ahead. Not that it mattered 
 to Stefano. He had leaped to his feet with the rest, 
 but had taken no pace forward. For a second he 
 stood motionless, with those troubled eyes, and the 
 next he pitched sharply forward with a German bullet 
 in his brain. 
 
 That, at least, was what they gathered when, in 
 
150 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 the evening, the British stretcher-party made their 
 way through the glade up and down which the battle 
 had swayed. 
 
 " Hullo 1 " said an officer, " that beggar was shot 
 at close range from behind/' 
 
 The chaplain turned him over — and started. He 
 searched his memory for the face, the while mechanically 
 opening the tunic to see if there might be a cross. 
 Instead he pulled out a greasy bit of string, and a 
 medal of St. Michael. It lay in his hand in the fading 
 light, till there was that in the eyes of the padre 
 which dimmed his vision. 
 
 So they said the familiar words over Stefano's 
 body by the shine of the moon, and his name was 
 on the padre's lips — ^when next there was opportunity 
 to set up a little altar — ^which was all they could do. 
 But somewhere — if it be a " where " — Stefano was, 
 maybe, finding things simpler than he had found 
 them hitherto. 
 
JUDAS 151 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Judas 
 
 We started together, Father Jim and I, on a Monday, 
 and a curious turn-out we made. I rode Johnny, who 
 (to me at least) always seems a wise beast ; and that 
 morning, with ears a bit back and^eyes very cunning, 
 he as good as remonstrated with me for going at all 
 in such company. And no wonder. Edwin rode his 
 beast with a bridle and saddle that held together by 
 a miracle, and two friends accompanied him : the one 
 in a cap of wild-cat skin and a blanket ; and the other 
 in an ancient deer-stalker, a coat that proclaimed, 
 with difficulty, that it had originally been Norfolk, 
 and a pair of riding breeches which might have been 
 useful for bathing, but were certainly not up to much 
 for riding. Then there was Benet, combining business 
 with pleasure, and burdened with an overcoat, a cassock, 
 two blankets and a pile of books, in addition to his 
 usual kit. Then there were two packs, the one a 
 Government turn-out, kindly lent, and incredibly 
 smart ; the other an affair belonging to the Mission 
 and composed of the debris of three or four of its 
 predecessors. The bags of this were small, so that 
 most of the burden had to ride outside ; and a frying- 
 pan and a kettle, balanced neatly on either side of 
 the roll of blankets, lent a further gipsy air to the 
 turn-out. 
 
 However, Edwin's two friends parted with us the 
 next morning, and set off for Sehonghong, a three 
 days' ride through, for the more part, uninhabited 
 country, with no more visible sustenance than the 
 
152 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 bread they had saved from their breakfast ; and when 
 we left the Caledon Valley, the boys and packs went 
 on ahead, and left me to accommodate myself to 
 Father Jim's leisurely pace. In the remote and 
 mosquito-haunted parts from which he hails, they do 
 not ride horses — as he, unnecessarily, assured me. 
 But we were in no haste, and he and I had a deal 
 to say to each other. Except that I didn't much like 
 the look of the weather, it did not matter whether 
 we got to Mont aux Sources that week or the 
 next. 
 
 We ambled on, therefore, talking desultorily — and 
 to a stranger, had there been one, uncomprehensively, 
 for words of many languages obtruded, and we mostly 
 spoke of our craft — until he noticed an extraordinary 
 person bounding down the side of the mountain 
 towards us. His dress was a loin-cloth and a sheep- 
 skin, and he had a big staff in his hand. He leapt 
 from rock to rock, now out of sight, and now nearer 
 as he came into view again, until he was near enough 
 to be hailed. 
 
 " Hail ! " said I politely in Sesuto. " Why do you 
 hurry ? " 
 
 " Lumela, Morena," said he. "Ho nale molumo oa 
 pula ! " 
 
 " What does he say ? " asked Jim, as the fellow 
 ran on. " He looks for all the world hke a Jewish 
 prophet." 
 
 " Well," said I, " and so he might be. Anyway, 
 a Jewish prophet once said exactly what he said : 
 * Hail, King, there is a sound of rain.' " 
 
 " Good Lord ! " said the father unfatherly, half 
 reining up in astonishment, " and there is the ' Man's 
 Hand ' ! " 
 
 Sure enough, there was. Over the high ridge that 
 hid our view, into the almost cloudless blue, was 
 
JUDAS 153 
 
 sailing a small, black cloud. Almost at once, too, the 
 wind got up around us, and the air became filled with 
 that strange, low sound that one hears in lands of 
 sudden storms — " the sound of abundance of rain/* 
 The heavens grew black with amazing rapidity. We 
 urged our horses on, and, when we almost despaired 
 of shelter, topped a rise, to see ahead of us a wall of 
 cliff, and a large natural cave in which the packs and 
 boys were already sheltering. 
 
 " Half-way House I" I exclaimed, " by all that's 
 lucky ! It's the big cave in which travellers who 
 climb the mountain often stop the night, though I 
 did not recognise the road to it, as I have been before, 
 as I told you, by the road from the Hoek." 
 
 " Well, we shall spend the night there, too, I 
 should say," said Jim, " unless the weather changes 
 as quickly as it came." 
 
 He was quite right. The water came down in 
 sheets. One bathed by standing outside the over- 
 hanging shelf, and never for a second did the noise of 
 it cease until after we had made our fire of dried dung, 
 and eaten our evening skoff, and lit our pipes before 
 the blaze. I must say I was perfectly content. The 
 place was a little goaty, for its normal use is to shelter 
 goats, and the floor was mainly fit for liso fuel such 
 as that which burned on the fire, but that was on the 
 whole a convenience, for one had only to scrabble a 
 handful of the carpet to replenish the blaze. But it 
 grew still more pleasant as the night fell. The earth- 
 smell was fresh and clean as it blew in. The stars 
 came out by companies. And finally the moon rode 
 high, and the shadows stole off the valley at our feet. 
 
 By mutual consent, we got out our office-books, 
 and when we had finished I spoke what was in his 
 mind, too. 
 
 " Extraordinary coincidence," I said. " You 
 
154 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 noticed that the evening lesson was of Ehjah and the 
 rain ? " 
 
 " Yes/' said he. " Tve known the same thing 
 before now." 
 
 " What, of EUjah ? " I asked. 
 
 " No," said he, " not of EHjah, but equally strange 
 coincidences of other people." 
 
 He paused rather abruptly. *' Whom ? " I asked, 
 expectantly. 
 
 " Well," he answered, " you've just brought the 
 story to my mind. It isn't very pleasant." 
 
 " I couldn't help it," I persisted. " Of whom is it ? " 
 
 " Judas," said he, and fell on silence. 
 
 *' It's no good, Jim," said I, after a little, " you 
 must tell me the story." 
 
 And he did. 
 
 " When I was first ordained," he said, " I went to a 
 Mission in which were two other men, both my senior : 
 the Rector, a very able priest, and his colleague, an 
 extremely pleasant person a little younger. Father 
 Gerard was one of the most delightful people I have 
 ever met, and a great success. He had an admirable 
 gift of genial repartee, and a perfect fund of stories, 
 so that he made the best dinner companion in the 
 world. He was always being asked out, and as either 
 the Rector or myself were usually included in the 
 invitation, we were rather glad of it. He had a 
 rollicking way with the poor, too, and got in the dues 
 with more success and less trouble than either of us. 
 Then he had a great power in the pulpit. I've seen 
 a packed congregation moved to the last man, and 
 he never hesitated to make them smile either. His 
 confessional was crowded, too ; he certainly confessed 
 the majority of the women in the parish. And 
 
JUDAS 165 
 
 children loved him: there was no escape from that. 
 Old Sister Mary Ancila used to vow that the very 
 babies did not cry when he christened them 1 
 
 " He and I were very good friends. I confess I 
 liked him. I used to think that he rather loved his 
 success, and that he rather grasped after it, but 
 otherwise he was always companionable. He'd come 
 in most evenings that we were both free, and often 
 help me in the sermons I found rather difficult. He'd 
 sit opposite the fire in my big chair, smoking, and toss 
 off, in a minute, thoughts and expressions that would 
 have taken me an hour or two to work oat ; and 
 he'd do it in his merry way, laughing at my hesitancies 
 if he suggested anything a little unusual. ' Well,' I 
 would say, ruefully, when he had finished, ' the only 
 trouble is that everybody will know that it is you 
 and not I.' * Not when you're in the pulpit,' he 
 would return banteringly. 
 
 " Well, then, so things went, till the second of Novem- 
 ber, All Souls' Day. I was to sing the big Mass, and 
 Father Gerard was to say one first, for a particular 
 person whose year, mind, it was, which meant that 
 he was up nearly an hour before me. I was just 
 finishing dressing when I heard a hurried step on the 
 stairs, and the door of my room was pushed violently 
 open. Gerard stumbled in, in his cassock, with a 
 face white and drawn and horror-stricken as if he 
 had aged ten years and seen a tragedy. I dropped 
 my hair-brush and rushed towards him. 
 
 " ' Whatever is it, Gerard ? ' I demanded. 
 
 " He said not a word. He just stood gazing at 
 me with those terrified eyes, swaying slightly. * What- 
 ever is it, old fellow ? ' I repeated. 
 
 " With that, he opened his mouth as if to speak, 
 but no sound came, only he staggered forward a foot 
 or two, and fell on the bed. 
 
156 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " I was by him in a moment. * Are you ill ? ' I 
 asked. He shook his head. ' Well, I'll call the Rector/ 
 I said, ' anyway ' ; but at that he seized my arm and 
 shook his head still more. 
 
 " ' All right,' said I, ' but Til get some brandy : 
 that will pull you round.' 
 
 " I fetched the spirit, and after a bit he seemed 
 better. 
 
 " ' Now, what is it ? ' I repeated. 
 
 " ' The Host,' he said stumblingly ; ' it was taken 
 from my hands.' 
 
 " ' Taken from your hands ! ' I said. * What do 
 you mean, man ? Was there sacrilege done ? Speak 
 up.' I shook him. ' Perhaps we ought to do something 
 at once.' 
 
 *' * Not that,' he said feebly, ' not that. Nobody 
 took it. It went.' 
 
 " * What ? ' I echoed. ' Come, Gerard, pull your- 
 self together and tell me. How could it go ? What 
 do you mean ? ' 
 
 " I got the story out of him at last, and when it 
 was over, stood staring there, almost as upset as he 
 was. This is what he said. 
 
 " He had vested and gone to the altar as usual, 
 and had gone on with Mass perfectly normally. He 
 made the oblations, said the Sursum Corda, and the 
 Sanctus and the Benedictus, and began on the Canon 
 as usual. He had blessed the sacred elements accord- 
 ing to the rubric and was sure that nothing was wrong, 
 but after he had raised his eyes for one minute, saying : 
 ' Hear us, O merciful Father,' on lowering them 
 again, he saw that the priest's Host was gone. In 
 his own words : 
 
 " ' I was amazed, Jim. I was positive that the 
 wafer was there a second before, and equally it was 
 not there then. My first thought was that perhaps 
 
JUDAS 157 
 
 the vestments had brushed it aside at my movement, 
 but it was not on the floor. Then I thought a gust 
 of wind had perhaps blown it along the altar, but 
 it was not there, and besides there had been no wind ; 
 then I suppose my feelings overcame me, for I swayed 
 a bit, and the server — that big chap, Thomas, you 
 know, leaned forward and said : " Are you ill, father ? " 
 I think I said : " There's no Host," or something like 
 that ; anyway, he looked perplexed, and whispered : 
 " I saw you place it, father." Then I think I stood a 
 minute staring at him, for he whispered at length : 
 "Shall I get one, father?" And then I said: **No: 
 vestry," and he helped me down. I had wit enough 
 to fold the corporal and bring the chalice away, and 
 then I threw off my vestments and came to you. 
 Oh, Jim, Jim, I'm accursed!' 
 
 "When he had finished, I stood as I have said; 
 then I asked : ' Was there anyone in church ? ' 
 
 " ' Just Mr. Lancing and his daughter ' he replied, 
 naming the father and sister of the dead girl for whom 
 he had been saying Mass. 
 
 " ' They'll suppose you ill,' I said, ' and they'd 
 better ; but come, Gerard, this is madness ; I'll go 
 and see for myself.* 
 
 " ' All right,' he said, ' I'll wait here.' 
 
 " I slipped on my cassock and went down to the 
 hall. I was just stepping into the sacristy, when 
 the bell rang, and guessing who was there, I opened it. 
 
 " ' Is Father Gerard ill, father ? ' asked Mr. Lancing. 
 
 " * Yes,' said I, ' but nothing much. I'm so sorry 
 about the Mass ; I'll pray for Edith myself, especially 
 at High Mass.' 
 
 " He said something, and turned off, when his 
 daughter added : ' Tell Father Gerard, father, will 
 you, that I'm so sorry, but I hope it won't matter ? ' 
 
 " * Yes,' said I, and passed on to the sacristy. 
 
158 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " On the table were the tumbled vestments. I 
 went over to the place before the crucifix where the 
 chalice stood, and uncovered it. Then I think I was 
 nearly as amazed as Gerard had been. In the paten 
 lay a priest's Host. 
 
 " I called Thomas, who was lingering in the vestry. 
 No, he had not touched the vessels. He had done 
 nothing but take off his cotta and cassock. He 
 hoped Father Gerard was not ill. 
 
 " I sent him home and walked slowly back to my 
 bedroom. I supposed, inwardly, that Gerard must 
 have been really ill, but it was an extraordinary 
 illness. The Host lying where it did, it must absolutely 
 have been that he did not see it. Yet he said he had 
 placed it as usual on the corporal. Then how could 
 it possibly have got back to the paten, or why should 
 he not have seen it there ? I was utterly bewildered, 
 and if everything had not looked so ordinary, I 
 should have been frightened. 
 
 ** * Well ? ' queried Gerard as I went in. 
 
 *' * The Host was on the paten beneath the veil,' 
 said I. He stared at me. * But I — perhaps Thomas 
 found it ? ' he ventured. 
 
 " ' He said not,' said I. 
 
 " Again a silence fell between us. ' Come,' I said 
 at length, ' you must have been ill, Gerard. I met 
 Lancing at the door, and his daughter Ruth, and gave 
 them to understand so. You'd better lie down. 
 I'll tell the Rector you're not well. The Lancings 
 said they hoped you'd soon be all right, and that it 
 wouldn't matter.' 
 
 " ' The Lancings ? ' he asked sharply. 
 
 *' * Yes, who else ? ' I said patiently, thinking him 
 still unwell. 
 
 " ' Did the father or the daughter say that ? ' he 
 repeated. 
 
JUDAS 159 
 
 " ' Oh, the daughter, I think,' said I, ' but go and 
 he down now.* 
 
 " The morning passed, and at lunch Gerard said 
 he was better. (We just told the Rector that 
 he had been taken faint at Mass and kept silence 
 otherwise between ourselves.) After lunch he said 
 he should go round and see the doctor and get a medicine 
 of some sort, and I went off visiting. At tea the 
 Rector and I were alone, but we thought nothing 
 of that at all until, just as we finished, the maid 
 knocked at the door, and said to the Rector : 
 " ' Mr. Lancing to see you, father.' 
 " * Oh, show him in,' said the priest, 'and bring 
 another cup. No, don't bother ; Father Gerard 
 is out, and his will do.' 
 
 " She went out, and in a minute Lancing came in. 
 " ' What's the matter ? ' we exclaimed simultaneously 
 at sight of his face. 
 
 He shut the door. * Where's Gerard ? ' he said. 
 " ' Out,' said the Rector, surprised at his abruptness. 
 'Why?' 
 
 " Lancing seemed about to speak. Then he choked 
 a little in his throat, made a movement, and pushed 
 a paper into the Rector's hands. * Read that,' he 
 said. It was a short letter. 
 " ' Dear Father (it ran), 
 
 " ' When you find this, I shall have left home. 
 You know I have always wanted to do so, and for 
 a long time I have not believed the Faith as you and 
 Mother believe it. I'm going to be married, and as 
 you would not have hked it in any case, and there 
 is a reason why it must be done quickly, it is better 
 done so. Try and forgive me. ' Ruth.' 
 
 " ' Mr. Lancing, I'm so sorry ' — began the Rector, 
 correctly, and then saw something in the other's 
 face. ' Good God,' he said, ' you don't mean — Gerard ? ' 
 
160 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 " The other made a quick gesture. * The servant 
 saw them leave the house together at a httle after 
 two/ he said hopelessly. 
 
 " None of us said anything more, I remember. 
 The Rector sat with his head in his hands ; Lancing, 
 coldly as I thought, poured himself a cup of tea. 
 I stared at him foolishly, and tried not to remember 
 a thousand little things that looked like the conclusion 
 we dreaded. ' Just go to his room and look,' said 
 the Rector to me presently. It did not take a minute. 
 A handbag and a few toilet necessaries had gone. 
 There was no letter. I came back. They both looked 
 up as I opened the door. I remember I just nodded. 
 
 *' Well, we had to do the work. I said Evensong 
 and the Rector read the lessons. As he got into 
 the second, his voice faltered, and recalled me. He 
 read : 
 
 " ' Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, 
 being of the number of the twelve. And he went 
 his way, and communed with the chief priests and 
 captains, how he might betray Him unto them. And 
 they were glad, and covenanted to give him money. 
 And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray 
 Him unto them in the absence of the multitude. . . . 
 " ' And when the hour was come, Jesus sat down 
 and the twelve apostles with Him, . . . And He took 
 bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto 
 them, saying. This is My Body which is given for you : 
 this do in remembrance of Me. Likewise also the cup 
 after supper, saying. This cup is the New Testament 
 in My Blood, which is shed for you. 
 
 *' * But, beholdg the hand of him that betrayeth 
 Me is with Me on the table.' 
 
 " On my honour, I had hardly remembered the 
 events of the morning in the shock of the evening. 
 But at that I looked up and saw where the hand of 
 
JUDAS 161 
 
 him who had planned so gross a betrayal for that 
 very day had lain upon the table. And as I remem- 
 bered the sign, I feared for myself, lest I — one day — 
 might — Satan is very strong. , . .*' 
 
 Father Jim leaned forward and held his hands 
 nearer the fire. I looked at the set, stern face, and 
 wondered at how it had changed. But I ventured 
 to ask : " What of him now, father ? " 
 
 " Oh, you'd know the name, probably, if I told you/' 
 he said, rather bitterly. " The modern Judas puts 
 out his thirty pieces of silver to a good interest, and 
 doesn't fool it away. He and his clever wife are big 
 people, very popular, too, and charitable. She's a 
 Unitarian I believe ; I don't think he goes anywhere. . . 
 Let's turn in : It is night." 
 
162 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Midnight Mass 
 
 The small sounds of the hospital ward only seemed 
 to emphasise the silence of the night. A man muttering 
 or groaning in his sleep ; the fall of a coal in the grate ; 
 the creak of a bed as a patient turned restlessly ; and 
 those strange cracks that sound in the boards, however 
 truly laid ; all these the watcher noted one by one. 
 Then, far away, a clock told the hour, and the sleeper 
 stirred. 
 
 " Was that eleven, father ? "he asked in the faint 
 voice the other hardly knew. 
 
 " Yes," said the priest ; " But you go to sleep now." 
 
 " Eleven," said the other, half to himself ; " the 
 bells will go for the Midnight Mass soon — all over 
 the world will they ring. God must be glad that 
 His Church watches with the shepherds and angels 
 and the holy dead, while the heathen sleep. And the 
 angels and the dead are glad too. I shall be glad soon. 
 Glad to be able to watch, too. . . . Father ! " 
 
 *' Yes," answered the other again. 
 
 " Did you know that the angels and the dead were 
 glad of the Midnight Mass ? " 
 
 "Well". . . hesitated the other; "yes, I think so. 
 Only not specially of that Mass. But you must sleep 
 now." 
 
 ** Sleep ? I can't sleep more now. I don't want 
 to sleep. I'm in no pain now, and I would rather lie 
 awake like this till perhaps I shall hear the bell of His 
 birth in some church. I think I shall hear the bell of 
 His birth, and perhaps I shall see Him, too, by twelve 
 
THE MIDNIGHT MASS 163 
 
 o'clock. Besides, I want to tell you something. I must. 
 I have never told anyone — about the angels and the 
 holy dead at the Midnight Mass. It was in Africa, you 
 know ; the year before I volunteered, the first year 
 of war. May I tell it you, father ? " 
 
 The watcher glanced round uneasily. He really 
 did not know what to do. He was under strict orders 
 to see that the sick man — a badly wounded priest- 
 soldier from the Somme — ^lay still and slept. They 
 had been friends long ago, but the one had gone to 
 South Africa, and the other had become engrossed 
 in a big English parish, until the war had thrown 
 them together again. It had thrown them together 
 strangely too. He had become a regular visitor 
 at the new military hospital in the parish, and one 
 evening, as he was about to leave, he had been called 
 to a new case. It was his old friend who had enlisted 
 in 1915, and fallen at last on the Somme. He was 
 very ill, they said. So he had asked to watch the 
 night by his side, for the sick man knew him, and 
 seemed to wish it. He had gone for the Sacraments, 
 and done all he could that way. He would never forget, 
 he told himself, how eagerly, but how weakly, the 
 soldier, who was a priest himself, had told his sin, 
 and received our Lord, and then, with the Anointing 
 scarcely over, had folded his hands and slept. It 
 
 had not seemed that he would need to watch for long 
 
 But what now should he do ? He glanced round 
 again for the nurse. 
 
 The other moved ever so little. " Father," he 
 said, " let me call you * father,' Tom, for it's the 
 priest I want in you so badly now — don't worry. I'm 
 all right. Don't call nurse. I just want to tell you 
 something which I ought, I think, to have told before. 
 Then I'll sleep. I can do it easily, if you'll bend a bit 
 to listen. It's not a long story. ..." 
 
164 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 The listener felt a great surge of tenderness rise 
 in him. He slipped to his knees, and took one of those 
 weak hands. " All right, old fellow," he said, '' tell 
 me — just as you like ; I'll understand." 
 
 So the other told. He did not look at his listener 
 as he spoke, partly, perhaps, because he was so wounded 
 that he could not easily turn his head ; but to the priest 
 it seemed that the dying man saw again, as the 
 sentences trickled painfully out, the things that 
 he had seen. In any case, time and place slipped 
 away to that listener. He was in the African village 
 under the clear shining of the moon, with the crickets 
 busy in the shaded trees. 
 
 " Christmas, 1914, it was, Tom, and we had a very 
 busy time. I think I wrote you once about the parish. 
 There's a little path rims down from the Rectory, past 
 some big deodars, to the gate in the wall ; and across 
 the road, by itself in an open space of grass, stands 
 the church — the Church of our All-Holy and Merciful 
 Saviour, they called it, an Eastern dedication I think. 
 Then beyond the church is the wall of the sisters' 
 garden, and that, too, has a little path that runs 
 through trees to St. Mary's — a very beautiful little 
 place, it always seemed to me. I expect it was ordinary 
 to them, but it seemed holy to me. The flowers 
 seemed holy there — I don't know why. Imagination, 
 I suppose. . . . (He paused a httle. The other knelt 
 on silently.) 
 
 " What was I saying ? Oh yes ! that Christmas. 
 We had a very busy time. All the communicants were 
 in church for a preparation about eight p.m. — full 
 it was, and we had many confessions afterwards. 
 I had been shriving all day, and when the last left 
 me about ten, I was very tired. They couldn't 
 help coming late, you know. Poor souls — it is a long 
 way from some of the out-stations. When will we 
 
THE MIDNIGHT MASS 165 
 
 have simple native priests ? They will try to teach 
 them so much that's no good. The folk want sacra- 
 ments, not Jewish history. . . , But that's not it. . . 
 I must go back. . . Where was I ? . . . 
 
 " Oh yes, I remember. Well, about ten I thought 1 
 must j ust go and lie down for an hour. I was a bit ashamed 
 to go because of what the Master said — you remember : 
 ' Could ye not watch one hour ? ' But I went. I was 
 very tired, Tom. I'd been thinking furiously about 
 the war, you see, and I'd made up my mind to go, 
 although nobody knew it then. But I was not sure 
 that I was right, and so I was worried. I didn't 
 watch. That's just it — I did not watch. . . . Not 
 then nor afterwards. So is it written : 'And when 
 I looked there was no man — no man' (his voice 
 tailed off). 
 
 " Well, I went to lie down. I don't think I slept. 
 Anyway, at eleven I got up wide awake, and I bathed 
 my face and hands in cold water so that I was quite 
 fresh. There was a little wind blowing when I 
 opened the door : I could hear it among the trees : 
 and there was a full moon. It was like Paradise out 
 of doors. I could see the mountains, all black and 
 silver, through the trees, and there was a sweet scent of 
 tobacco- plant flowers in the air. I thought our Lord 
 must have arranged it so that night for the joy of His 
 Mother. 
 
 " So I walked down to the gate, and when I got 
 there I saw three men standing in the path, their 
 backs to me. They wore blankets as our people do, 
 and they were looking through the gate across the road. 
 They did not move as I came near, and I thought 
 they could not have heard me. I wondered what 
 they were doing there at that time, too, so I greeted 
 them and said : * Do you want anything ? ' 
 
 " But they took no notice. I thought they could 
 
166 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 not have heard, so I spoke again, and stepping between 
 them, put out my hand to the shoulder of the nearest. 
 Then I knew in a second, for I touched nothing, 
 
 '' ' A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me 
 have ' — that was what I thought suddenly, I don't 
 know why. Maybe our Lord said it to me that I 
 should not be fearful, thinking of Him. Anyway, I 
 was not a bit afraid, and it did not seem strange that 
 I should not be. I just passed between them, 
 and stepped to the gate, opened it, and went through. 
 Then I saw that the grass was covered with people, 
 in twos and threes, some moving, some sitting. I 
 walked on as one who walks on air. I don't know now 
 who they were — some our own living folks, perhaps, 
 and some the dead. But I did not think at all — that 
 is the strange part of it. I just walked right through 
 them to the little porch, touching no one and speaking 
 to no one, with that strange exultation thrilling 
 through me. 
 
 " You won't know the porch, father. It's on the 
 south side, at right angles to the building, and one 
 can't see those inside until one is within the porch 
 itself. There is a door from the porch to the church, 
 but only the entrance way from the porch to the 
 outside, and I came in swiftly on rubber shoes. 
 
 *' In the porch I stopped to take holy water, and 
 stood there, with my hand on the stoop, rigid. For 
 the church was full of people. I had not expected 
 it a bit. I thought, as always, that some would 
 keep the vigil, but not that I should see the place full. 
 The few benches were packed, but most of the people, 
 as they have to do, sat on the floor tight together. 
 The sisters, and a church officer or two, were moving 
 about putting children into the pulpit out of the way, 
 and so on ; but the rest were still enough. They 
 made some sounds, though. I should have said that 
 
THE MIDNiaHT MASS 167 
 
 I heard, as it were, people sighing. I thought at first 
 they were the dead, hke those outside, but then I saw 
 some I knew, and thought that all lived. Now I don't 
 know who were alive and who were dead ; perhaps 
 both were there 
 
 " So I passed in. I was almost laughing in my 
 heart with gladness, and I touched little children, 
 who smiled at me, that I might pass through to the 
 sanctuary. There, then, I knelt, and since it wanted 
 nearly twenty minutes yet to Mass, I took out my 
 rosary, and said that we would say it together. Dark 
 it was, inside, with only a lamp or two, and the 
 sanctuary hght. The white-draped altar and the 
 candles gleamed in the glow, however, and as we sat 
 or knelt, we prayed. ' Jesus — Mary,' ' Jesus — 
 Mary ' — the words rocked backwards and forwards 
 among us, as we responded each to each. Oh! but 
 it was the atmosphere of Heaven. . . . 
 
 " Why does one not want that more, on earth, 
 father ? We get glimpses, you know, and they are so 
 wonderful. . . . And yet, one does not even want them 
 at times. Out there, in that Hell, I didn't want them. 
 I doubt one does, in Hell. . . . That's the awful thing, 
 father. Do you know what I wanted, out there ? 
 Yes, yes, you do know. . . . Oh, my God ! that I should 
 have wanted such things, and wanted them there " 
 
 (The sick man's lips closed tightly. The watcher 
 felt a tremor as of cold pass through him. He could 
 not have spoken, only he pressed the hand he held 
 ever so slightly, and he prayed — strange prayers. 
 " Oh, my God ! oh, my God !...." that was all he said.) 
 
 " Well, at twenty past — it's that now, father, isn't 
 it ? — I went to the sacristy. Oh, I love the Christmas 
 sacristy ! There was bruised fir before the figure 
 of our Lady, and it smelled so sweet. They had lit 
 the censer too, and the white and gold of the vestments 
 
168 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 shone like a saint's robe. The boys looked eager and 
 expectant : we were all wonderfully glad somehow. 
 And so I got to the altar. 
 
 " We had a very simple Mass : we did not know 
 any proper introits or things. They sang 'Once in 
 Royal David's City ' at the entry instead, and they did 
 sing it well, too. I could hardly say the Preparation, 
 with Philip and Peter, the dear, eager lads. And so it went 
 on. I preached a little sermon — if you believe me, 
 with shut eyes. I couldn't look at the people somehow. 
 Indeed I never saw them until I turned for the Sursum 
 Corda. I should have turned back I know, but I could 
 not. I lifted my hands and looked full at them and 
 saw — oh, father ! what did I see ? . . .^ 
 
 " I hardly know. The church was one sea of faces 
 in that dim light. It was one black sea. But the 
 faces that gazed up to me were not all on the floor 
 level, if you can understand. It was like looking 
 at a packed theatre from the stage, where one sees 
 tier on tier. It was not strange, you understand : 
 quite natural rather — only the chairs and forms 
 are not really in tiers. So I knew there were more 
 than the living visible to me that night. And I looked 
 up, and I sang — how it seemed to me that I sang ! — 
 
 **'Lift up your hearts.* 
 
 "And they replied to me, all of them. It was like 
 the sound of many waters. It thundered about me ; 
 it beat upon my ears ; it seemed to go on and on. 
 I stood, as I thought, like one spell-bound for ages 
 and ages while that reply rang in my ears — 
 
 * We lift them up unto the Lord.* 
 
 "Then it seemed that it ceased, and as from very, 
 very far away my own voice came to me, thin and clear — 
 
 *y Lei us give thanks unto our Lord God.' 
 
THE MroNIGHT MASS 169 
 
 " So I turned back to the altar, and soon, as our 
 custom was, I was kneeling on the bottom step with 
 the boys about me, while acolytes placed lighted 
 candles on the altar, and we all sang together — 
 " ' come, all ye faithful, 
 Joyful and triumphant, 
 come ye, come ye, to Bethlehem. . . / 
 " The rest of the Mass was, for me, on a lower key, 
 as it were. I was just happily elated, no more, only 
 as we passed down to the Crib singing our Mary hymn 
 at the close of the Eucharist, I looked right and left 
 on the faces that I passed, and there were none but 
 the living there. Nor did I see more that night.'* 
 
 " Yes, father, I know what you are thinking — that 
 it was a beautiful dream, born perhaps of my fasting 
 and weariness ; but Hsten. I said nothing to any- 
 one — I have not to this night — but two days later 
 the principal sister of our little branch-house came to 
 me. 
 
 " ' Father,' she said. * Will you please say a Mass 
 with special intention for me ? ' 
 
 " * Why, yes, sister/ I said, ' gladly. For what 
 shall I say it ? ' 
 
 " She hesitated. ' I don't quite know how to say 
 it,' she said, ' nor if I shall ask aright. Can one pray 
 for the heathen dead ? ' 
 
 " I started, and stared at her. ' The heathen 
 dead ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said she. ' Supposing, father, some — 
 many — had died here, as they have died, who never 
 had a chance of hearing, might one not pray for 
 them?' 
 
 " ' Sister,' said I, ' you have something to say. 
 TeU me.' 
 
 " ' But I hardly like to, father,' said she, clasping 
 
170 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 and unclasping her hands. ' You may think me 
 fooUsh, but it is hke this. On Christmas Eve, as I 
 was leaving the church, the last of all, to go home, 
 I was surprised to find many people on the path 
 leading to the Home. The people wore blankets, but 
 I could not see their faces in the shade. Half-way 
 to the gate, there were some who blocked my path, 
 and I asked them to move. They did not take any 
 notice, so I put out my hand to pull at the blanket 
 of a woman. Well, father, my fingers closed on the 
 blanket, and passed through it ; there was nothing 
 there. I wasn't in the least frightened, only as I 
 went quickly home I saw that the garden, too, was 
 full of them. I went to sleep quite easily, feeling 
 only very, very grateful for that wonderful Mass and 
 the way the people sang. But now I feel that God 
 sent me that vision for some purpose, and that maybe 
 the dead who have died here are hearing the voice of 
 the Son of God, and need our prayers.' 
 
 ** She ceased, and I stared at her a little long. ' I 
 am sorry, father, if you think it foolish . . .' she 
 began ; but I cut her short. I had decided to say 
 nothing, but just to offer the sacrifice. I thought 
 it was better, perhaps, for her not to know that I 
 too had seen. 
 
 '' ' It is not a bit foolish, sister,' said I. ' I think 
 you should thank God for His great mercy, and I 
 will sacrifice for all poor souls as soon as I can.' 
 
 " But, oh, Tom, even then I did not know ! I 
 did not see why God had sent me the vision, and I 
 went to the Front and left my people. My hands are 
 red with blood, now, father. . . . But yours are not. 
 Will you go on with my masses, father, each year, 
 as soon after Christmas, always, as you can ? Will 
 you ? " 
 
 The other knew that his eyes were full of unshed 
 
THE MIDNIGHT MASS 171 
 
 tears, but he did not care. " Every year, old man, 
 every year," was all he said — huskily. 
 
 And then, in the silence, the sick man half moved 
 again. ** Do you hear it, Tom ? " he whispered, " do 
 you hear it ? " 
 
 " What ? " cried the other, a little fearful. 
 
 But the sick man answered Tom not at all. 
 
 " It is meet and right so to do," he sang in a feeble, 
 choked voice, but with his eyes afire. . . . 
 
 At that voice the watcher bent his head to his 
 hands and cried on our Lord, and so stayed. Neverthe- 
 less it was but a few seconds later that he heard the 
 sound of the nurse behind him as she moved closer to 
 the bed. 
 
 " He is with them, father," she was saying brokenly. 
 
172 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Acts of the Holy Apostles 
 
 Halsbury is only twenty miles from London, and 
 when the 5.20 King's Cross express from the North 
 pulled up there, the very engine itself seemed annoyed 
 at the break in the run almost on the terminus. The 
 5.20 usually slid through Halsbury with a roar, the 
 half-dozen-odd people on the sleepy little platform 
 backing against the wall of the station to let her pass. 
 But she stopped for each of the three days of the 
 big horse market, and found a Halsbury transformed. 
 So it came about that the young man who stepped 
 out smartly with a suit case in one hand and a small 
 gladstone in the other, and then turned to pull out 
 after him an overcoat and a few books, found him- 
 self unaided in that operation and equally abandoned 
 afterwards. 
 
 He collected his goods, and looked about him as 
 if expecting to be met. The little place seethed with 
 horsey-looking individuals, and the occasional porter 
 who met his eye appeared to be engaged on business 
 of life and death. Merton himself stood irresolutely 
 for a little, accosted a person in uniform who had 
 scarcely time to jerk out " Busy, sir,*' and then walked 
 the length of the platform inquiringly. Nobody had 
 so much as a glance for him. He found himself back 
 at his luggage in a httle, and stood by it to wait till 
 the train left the station. '' Fm in for it now," he 
 said to himself, and pulled out his pocket-book to 
 make sure of the clue. " 'Anathoth,* *' he read slowly. 
 *' Blest if I know how to pronounce the name even ! " 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 173 
 
 The inevitable whistle came at last, and the 5.20 
 snorted herself off. The crowd thinned a bit. Merton 
 caught sight of a porter mopping his face with a red 
 handkerchief, and darted at him. '' I say," he said, 
 " I expected to be met, and there's nobody here. Do 
 you know a house named ' Anathoth ' hereabouts ? " 
 
 " Named what, mister ? " said the man. 
 
 '''Anathoth/'* read Merton, pulling out the card 
 again. 
 
 *' Never 'eaid no name like that, sir," said the 
 porter — " outlandish sort of name. Can I have a 
 look at the card, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Merton, and handed it over. 
 
 " The Rev. Father Borromeo Mary Sidonia, 
 Anathoth, 
 
 Halshury, 
 read the man stumblingly : " No, sir, ain't never 
 'eard of 'im, sir," he said. " Sounds foreign like. 
 I'll ask my mate." He went off, and returned with 
 another man in a minute or so. 
 
 The two of them turned the card over and shook their 
 heads. JMerton began to be anxious to be off, and 
 tried an explanation. "He is a CathoUc priest," he 
 said, " and lives about a mile away, I think." 
 
 " Lor' bless me. Bill," exclaimed the other porter, 
 *' 'e means the priest up at the Cross ! " And then, 
 turning to Merton : " Is that who you mean, sir ? " 
 
 " I don't know anything about the Cross," said 
 Merton, " but it's a Catholic priest who lives at 
 ' Anathoth,' Halsbury, that I'm wanting, and I don't 
 suppose there are two about. How can I get out to 
 the Cross, anyway ? " 
 
 " 'E wants the priest at the Cross ! " said the first 
 man, staring at him, and Merton became conscious that 
 both were looking at him queerly. An inspector 
 
174 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 joined the group and had the news broken to him. He 
 stared hkewise. Merton began to feel foolish. " Well, 
 how can I get there," he said impatiently. " Is there 
 a cab about ? " 
 
 The inspector roused himself, and picked up the 
 gladstone. " No, sir," he said, " I don't think so. 
 Town's very full to-day, sir. But I think they've got 
 a trap at the Railway Arms that'll take you out. 
 Come this way, sir." 
 
 At the Railway Arms, Leonard Merton discovered 
 that his desire to go to " The Cross " provoked the same 
 kind of surprise as before. The ostler thought " as 
 'ow, if the gen'leman really ^if^ want to go to the Cross," 
 they could find a trap to take him ; but when, in half 
 an hour or so, he drove out of the station yard, it was 
 to leave a little group behind him, staring after the 
 departing trap as if they expected to see neither it nor 
 its occupants again. 
 
 Merton thought he would glean a little information. 
 " Has Father Borromeo been here long ? " he asked his 
 driver. That worthy flicked up his horse and moved 
 a bit on his seat before replying oracularly, " Not so 
 long, sir." 
 
 " Are there many Roman Catholics hereabouts ? " 
 hazarded Leonard, after an interval. 
 
 " So and so, as you might say," said his Jehu. 
 
 " Whereabouts is the house ? " pursued his passenger 
 cheerfully. 
 
 " You'll see it in a minute or two, sir," was the 
 answer — "over there"; and the whip indicated the 
 north-eastern horizon with a generous charity. 
 
 Merton gave it up at that, and followed his own 
 reflections as the trap jolted down the country lane. 
 He had met Father Borromeo the term before at 
 Oxford, at an "At Home," given chiefly for Roman 
 CathoHc students, to which he had been taken by a 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 176 
 
 friend. Merton was perplexed by the phenomenon of 
 Catholicity, and the arrival of Father Borromeo after 
 thirty-odd years' exile in the heart of South America 
 had given him the chance of meeting a genuine Catholic 
 missionary of the old type. He remembered his 
 introduction to the spare, quiet figure in the old cassock 
 who seemed so out of place among the teacups and 
 trivial talk, and who nevertheless carried himself as 
 if he created his own atmosphere, and was not troubled 
 at all by that in which he might chance to be. " May 
 I introduce Mr. Merton, father ? " his friend had said ; 
 " he is very interested in American Missions ; '' and he 
 could still recall his amazement as the old priest's 
 face instantly lit up, his keen old eyes literally blazing 
 with fire, the words pouring from him who had hitherto 
 been silent with an utter disregard of what is usually 
 considered talk for a drawing-room. One or two about 
 them began to listen, he remembered, and he had felt 
 a curious sensation of deception, so that he had said, 
 seizing a chance pause : " I think I ought to tell you, 
 father, that I am not a Catholic." And even now he 
 had that strange sense, half of shock, half of fear, as 
 the old man had instantly asked, without a trace of 
 self-consciousness and without the faintest lowering 
 of his voice : " Oh, but you love our Lord, do you not, 
 Mr. Merton ? " 
 
 They had seen each other twice and exchanged a letter 
 or two since then, and so it came about that Merton was 
 on his way, after a vacation in the north, to spend 
 a few days at "Anathoth," which was some sort of 
 monastery for a purpose a little indistinct to the visitor. 
 He had purposely been vague as to the length of his 
 stay. Would he get enough to eat ? he wondered ; 
 and somehow he was already conscious that that 
 atmosphere about the father carried with it a demand 
 for complete response, or would create an intolerable 
 
176 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 situation before very long. Merton was doubtful if he 
 would respond at all, and he had a kind of feeling that 
 if he submitted to it, his very world would be turned 
 upside down. He almost wished he had not come, and 
 yet he was conscious of an attraction to the old priest 
 the like of which he had never felt before for anyone. 
 Well, anyway, he could make an excuse and go when 
 he pleased ; he was not in mediaeval Europe or 
 
 " That's the house, sir," said the driver ; " you can 
 see the Cross." 
 
 Merton glanced over the fields and gave a start of 
 surprise. Towering above the hedges was a great 
 black " tau" cross, the weirdest of all possible objects 
 in the English pastoral scenery, and behind it, half- 
 hidden as yet, a new, red-brick house. " The cross 
 is over the gate, sir," added the man, without looking 
 at him. 
 
 The trap turned a corner, and stopped in a minute 
 or two before a gate and a house which caused the 
 visitor to sit still on his seat for a minute in dumb 
 surprise. Then he glanced round. Yes, it was an 
 ordinary English lane of the home counties, and the 
 house was a perfectly modern, biggish building, com- 
 pleted in red brick and blue slate, but in a garden 
 mostly untended, except where some potatoes and cab- 
 bages grew healthily along the drive. A big coach- 
 house stood a httle to the right, but the yard had never 
 been finished and obviously there were no horses. 
 The gate was the biggish five-barred affair that you 
 would associate with the house, but the enormous 
 black cross he had seen sprang from the side-posts, 
 and across the top bar, in black letters on a red ground, 
 ran the words : " The House where Jesus lives." On 
 one gate-post was painted an open Bible, and on the 
 other the sign of the Blessed Sacrament. 
 
 " This is the house, sir," said the driver, looking 
 
THE ACTS OP THE HOLY APOSTLES 177 
 
 at him curiously, and recalling Merton to his 
 senses. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said, jumping down before that amazing 
 gate as if he had been used to the Hke all his life ; " sling 
 out my bags, will you ? " Just then, however, a lad 
 of about eighteen, in a tattered pair of trousers and the 
 shirt of a rustic, appeared from the garden in which 
 he had apparently been working, and, all smiles, 
 approached the visitor. Merton, supposing him to be 
 the gardener, told him to take the baggage ; and, without 
 paying him more attention, paid his driver, and 
 turned towards the house. He was in time to see 
 " the gardener " enter the front door with his bags, 
 and as he reached the step, the father himself hurried 
 out. " Welcome to * Anathoth,* Mr. Merton," he said ; 
 " we are delighted to have you. But when did you 
 come ? Brother John met the 4.30 train, and when 
 you were not in it, we thought you had put off your 
 visit. But it doesn't matter ; you are here. Come in. 
 Come this way. Let me take you at once to the Author 
 and Director of our work. Through here. Will 
 you go in ? " 
 
 As he spoke, Merton, who had been sufficiently 
 surprised already by the hall, passed into a room on 
 the right which he took to be the drawing-room — or 
 whatever they called it — expecting to meet some 
 other priest of whom he had not before heard. He was 
 dumbfounded at what he found. He was in the 
 chapel, and no one was there. He glanced back at 
 his host, but he was already on his knees, and praying, 
 as was evident, with a sincerity not for an instant 
 to be denied. Merton glanced back ashamed. Then 
 he noted the Tabernacle, and he, too, kneeled in an 
 attitude of prayer. And the silence fell on them. 
 
 Looking back afterwards on the few minutes that 
 followed, Leonard realised that in them he had his 
 
178 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 first sense that this visit was to be utterly unlike 
 anything that he had imagined or experienced. At 
 first he knelt with his head in his hands, a Httle ashamed, 
 very bewildered, and chiefly conscious that he was 
 very glad of the silence. Then he silently surveyed 
 the chapel, and his bewilderment so much increased 
 that he was aware that it had passed into something 
 deeper. And then — he has described it to me a httle 
 shamefacedly — an extraordinary change passed over 
 him. He let his head sink into his hands again. For 
 some unknown reason his emotion grew until he could 
 have wept silently and gladly. He felt like a tired 
 child who had found his mother's breast. Words 
 that he had hitherto secretly known to be, beautiful 
 as they were, no part of his eager Hfe, forced themselves 
 into his mind. He realised, suddenly, that his study 
 and his pleasure, his zeal for debate and his religious 
 search, had made him very tired. And here was 
 "Rest".... 
 
 They left the chapel together, and went out to the 
 bare-boarded staircase, the father going first, and 
 Merton following silently. At the head, on a small 
 table with a Httle lamp, stood an image of a brooding 
 figure, three feet high perhaps, fashioned rather 
 roughly but incisively in clay. Father Borromeo 
 stopped before it and began to speak eagerly. " The 
 image of our patron," he said, " St. Jeremias. Wonder- 
 ful, don't you think ? See how he looks down as if 
 he could see the ruined Jerusalem at his feet and is 
 making his lament over her. Yes, and he does see 
 ruined Jerusalem, Mr. Merton. ' How doth the city 
 sit soHtary that was full of people ! How is she become 
 as a widow ! The ways of Zion do mourn because 
 none come to the solemn feasts : all her gates are 
 
 desolate The Lord hath cast off His altar, He 
 
 hath abhorred His sanctuary, He hath given up into 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 179 
 
 the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces 
 
 Her gates are sunk into the ground ; he hath destroyed 
 and broken her bars ; her king and her princes are 
 among the Gentiles ; the law is no more ; her prophets 
 also find no vision from the Lord/ Is it not so, Mr. 
 Merton ? Look at the desolate altars in this land ! 
 See the days of the Lord's feasts unknown, unhonoured ! 
 And ' the law is no more ! ' Therefore God has called 
 me to make Reparation — and I will, till ' the punish- 
 ment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of 
 Zion/ ' I am the man that hath seen affliction by the 
 
 rod of His wrath,' Mr. Merton Yes, and so Jeremias 
 
 is our patron. God had told me to found this 
 Order, but I did not know where or how or under whose 
 protection. So I prayed, and slept. And in the 
 morning there was a letter, and I saw that God had 
 heard me. You know Sir Francis Scott, Mr. Merton ? 
 Well, he had given a friend of mine an image of 
 St. Jeremias fashioned after an idea which came to him 
 as he heard the Lamentations read in church. 
 He had made it, and given it to my friend, who was 
 struck with the thought that I might hke it — though 
 he did not know why — so that it was God who sent 
 it me after I had prayed and slept. So we have an image 
 of our patron by one of the greatest of living sculptors ; 
 we who could not have bought one a hundredth part 
 as good ! Our miraculous image, I call it, Mr. Merton. 
 Don't you think so ? See how he broods over the 
 desolate altars, and prays too. ' Turn us again, O Lord, 
 God of Hosts, and we shall be turned ' — But I am 
 keeping you ; will you come to your room, Mr. 
 Merton?" 
 
 Leonard had said no word while the old man, his 
 fiery old eyes blazing as at Oxford, and his thin hand 
 gesticulating, had poured out his confused story, and 
 now he followed him, still without a word. They turned 
 
180 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 down a passage with one or two big gloomy pictures 
 on the walls (of which he was to know more later), 
 and at the end his guide opened a door and he passed 
 in. "I hope you will find all you need here, Mr. 
 Merton," he said courteously. " If not, please ask for 
 anything. And I will leave you now. Supper will 
 be ready in about half an hour; you will hear a bell." 
 Leonard walked to the window the moment the door 
 was shut and looked out. His room was in the front 
 of the house, and he could see down into the unkempt 
 garden. In the fading light the black cross bourgeoned 
 out over the gate against the glow of the setting sun, 
 golden and clear and bright. He stood and watched 
 a Httle, and then turned back to look about him. He 
 was still chiefly curious, and a little amused. The room 
 itself was absolutely modern — high, light, spacious and 
 spotlessly clean ; but it was the furniture that amazed 
 him. There was no carpet, and the walls were white- 
 washed. In the middle stood a plain, unvarnished 
 kitchen table with a penny bottle of ink, some paper, 
 and a cheap wooden pen. Against the wall was an old 
 packing case, scrubbed till it was white, bearing a 
 few toilet necessities in tinware. The bed was of the 
 barest iron, spread with blankets and a pillow, but with 
 no sheets. A prie-dieu, obviously home-made, stood 
 against one wall, with a Bible open upon it; and that, with 
 one wooden chair of the kitchen variety, completed the 
 furniture, except for the pictures and an image. This 
 latter stood on the mantelpiece and Leonard contem- 
 plated it with growing disgust. Yet it held his gaze, so 
 that in a while he sat on the bed to see it better. It was 
 about two feet high, highly coloured, and old, of 
 Spanish-American sixteenth-century art, and it repre- 
 sented our Lord at the Pillar. The hair of the head 
 was real, and the figure hung from the hands as if half 
 dead. The scourges had opened the flesh of the back 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 181 
 
 and sides, and the ribs showed through "How 
 
 ghastly J' murmured Leonard, and went to his bed as I 
 have said ; and then — " But I suppose it was Hke 
 that. . . /' 
 
 There were three pictures in addition to the image. One, 
 a Crucifixion, over his head, struck him as so horribly 
 reaUstic that he never really learned to look at it, and 
 the other two represented martyrdoms. In the first, a 
 Jesuit priest suffered decapitation at the hands of 
 Indians ; in the other, Romans dressed as Spaniards 
 were torturing the breasts of St. Agatha. ... He 
 went over and poured out water and bathed his face 
 and hands. Well, and then the bell rang and he went 
 down to supper. 
 
 Father Borromeo met him in the hall with a 
 smile and ushered him at once into the refectory. 
 There awaited him Brother John and two others, 
 priests. Standing at the table Father Borromeo 
 signed himself and intoned an antiphon, upon which, 
 chanting a psalm, all five of them marched through 
 a connecting door into the chapel for prayers, and 
 so returned to supper. (Leonard preceded the Father 
 and found he had a prie-dieu prepared for him in the 
 chapel.) They sat down, and Brother John went for 
 the food. Before each was an enamelled mug and 
 plate, and a common knife, fork and spoon. The 
 others ate bread and drank tea ; Leonard was presented 
 with a chop and some potatoes. Then all had rice- 
 pudding, all except the father, that is. There was 
 butter offered to Leonard, who took of it, but never 
 again. He presumed it had waited for him since the 
 last visitor. There was silence till all had finished, 
 and in the silence Leonard struggled with his food 
 and looked about him. The furniture was entirely 
 plain, and there was nothing except the absolutely 
 necessary, with one exception. That stood at Leonard's 
 
182 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 left hand against the wall, and he did not notice it 
 at first, since he was occupied with a crucifix on the 
 mantelpiece as realistic as the scourging in his own 
 room, and with two or three martyrdoms of the same 
 period. But when he did, he nearly started to his 
 feet. The exception was a glass-topped case of plain 
 wood, such as one would see in a museum, and in 
 it lay the body of a man, naked except for a loin-cloth, 
 entire except for one arm, and incorrupt. It lay like 
 white wax, still and calm, and the face seemed to 
 smile. In a sense there was nothing repulsive, but 
 something rather attractive; about it ; but in such a 
 place, at such a time . . . . ! Father Borromeo noticed 
 his start, and when grace had been said (with the 
 same procession to the chapel) and they had seated 
 themselves for the time which their rule allowed for 
 recreation, he explained. 
 
 *' I saw you noticed the body of our saint, Mr. 
 Merton," he said, " and I do not wonder. He is 
 incorrupt, you see, and smiles. He is Father Juan 
 Rodriguez, who was martyred in the Argentine in 
 1584, I think. He was a very saint, and converted 
 thousands to our Lord, but the Indians killed him 
 with the slow thrust of an arrow ; look, you can see 
 the wound in his side. You must hear his story 
 some time. I found him at Notre Dame de Seccours 
 in the Argentine, buried under the floor of the refec- 
 tory, and I brought him away with me. The arm 
 is in Rome, and we await his Beatification. But we 
 are sure of it ; his relics and his intercessions have 
 worked many miracles, Mr. Merton. I saw a blind 
 woman cured, the day I found him, by the touch of a 
 handkerchief that lay on his body, and many followed. 
 It is always so with a saint, Mr. Merton. Do you 
 remember : ' God wrought miracles by the hand 
 of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 183 
 
 sick, handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed 
 from them ' 7 " 
 
 " Yes," said Leonard feebly ; and then: "but how 
 did you know the body was there ? " 
 
 " He came to me in a dream of the night and told 
 me to dig there, Mr. Merton. Ah ! but God was with 
 us in that city. We baptized seventeen hundred in 
 one week, I remember. They cried out to be saved : 
 the whole city seemed to come together. It is a 
 holy country. Why, when I left, they asked me for 
 relics, and I gathered a handful of the dust of the 
 road for them. ' God is here, my children,' I said, 
 ' this is your relic ; it is holy land.' " 
 
 "But if you baptized so many, did they not fall 
 away, father ? " asked Leonard. 
 
 " Fall away ! " cried the old man. " No ! — by the 
 Grace of God and the power of the sacraments. Why, 
 it was there that God gave us another saint, I am sure, 
 though I do not think we shall ever hear of her. She 
 was a young widow, and she had a little house and 
 a poor garden near the church. She lived by selling 
 what vegetables she could raise, but when she was 
 converted, she asked to be allowed to keep the altar 
 in flowers, and for that gave up more and more of 
 her poor garden. She was told she could not spare 
 the space to grow flowers; but what do you think 
 God did, Mr. Merton ? He made that poor, stony 
 strip of ground into a Paradise. Such roses, liUes, 
 orchids — you never saw ! People used to come miles 
 to see that garden, and all around it was as poor 
 and as bare as before. Her vegetables, too — a miracle ! 
 On half the space she grew ten times what she had 
 grown before. Why, she could have been rich, for her ; 
 but she lived poorly till the end, and gave all the 
 rest to others worse off than she. I have seen her 
 face as the face of an angel, at the altar where she 
 
184 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 fed daily, Mr. Merton. And when she died — cancer, 
 but she never ceased to praise our Lord and His 
 Mother — her grave blossomed with HHes that bloom 
 to this day. ' Such honour have all His saints.* . . . 
 But we rest early here. Mass is at six. May I show 
 you to your room ? " 
 
 They shook hands at his door, and within, Leonard 
 stood bewildered for a little. I must say I should 
 like to have seen him. Then he went over to his 
 suit-case, and searched for some chocolate and biscuits, 
 congratulating himself on his forethought. 
 
 II 
 
 Merton has never given me a complete account of 
 his six days — for he stayed from Monday till Saturday, 
 although that first night he had decided to leave on 
 the Wednesday — but it is possible to piece the story 
 together more or less. The next day, for instance, 
 he became acquainted with the house ; and the effect, 
 on the whole, although so overwhelmingly unusual and 
 — if I may say so — grotesque, was to stagger him out 
 of his first repugnance as of something unreal and 
 theatrical. It was overdone, if that had been meant ; 
 besides, in the chapel that second night a chance inci- 
 dent destroyed for ever any such conception . It appears 
 that he found they had night-prayers after an hour 
 of silence each evening which followed the recreation 
 after supper, and he asked to be allowed to go. He 
 had no book, of course, so Brother John passed him 
 his. Idly he had glanced at the title-page, and there 
 read : 
 
 John Valentine Debenham, 
 
 and beneath, a series of dates, which showed that 
 the boy was really the same age as himself, and had 
 been professed a year ago. Leonard glanced at him, and 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 185 
 
 then something of the meaning of it — httle as he knew 
 the reaUty — dawned on him. At twenty committed 
 to a Hfe Hke this ! And the face, unconscious of his 
 watching, was gazing towards the Tabernacle with a 
 smile on the lips and a light in the eyes which sent 
 Leonard back to his own business with a lump in his 
 throat. . . . 
 
 The house, then, had neither carpet nor china nor 
 comfort from hall to attic. There was no utensil not of 
 tinware ; and never a picture other than an extraordinary 
 number — over eighty in all — of similar pictures to those 
 in his room, valuable in their way, he guessed, and 
 pictures which had been dug from hiding-places and 
 given to the father by his Indian Catholics. The 
 crucifixes and images, too, were all as he had seen in 
 the refectory and in his bedroom. Then he had 
 discovered that no one at any time took meat — only 
 bread (hard as a bullet, said Leonard), tea, sometimes 
 a little rice and tapioca and such like, and an occasional 
 egg. As to Father Borromeo, it staggered Leonard 
 that he ate practically nothing ; a little bread and water 
 in the morning, no lunch (dinner they called it), and a 
 little bread and tea for supper, that had been his menu 
 that day. Leonard had even wondered if he ate 
 secretly, but twelve hours had been enough to dispel 
 any such illusion. 
 
 He had seen, too, where the father slept, and how, and 
 that by chance. On going to his room after lunch, 
 the father had asked another priest. Father Mark, to 
 fetch for his visitor a copy of a compendium of scrip- 
 ture texts which he had made, and Merton had accom- 
 panied this priest for it to Father Borromeo's room. 
 He had come out in a state of complete revolt. The 
 room was perhaps eight feet by nine, an attic, and it was 
 painted a dead black. The *' bed " was a long, narrow, 
 
186 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 black box, with one blanket to spread over its occupant 
 and no mattress at all. Nor was there any other 
 furniture, except a crucifix and a shelf of the books of 
 which he had been given one. The old man of over 
 seventy washed, in all weathers, at a tap in the yard 
 beneath a lean-to of zinc, like the rest. Only one other 
 object in the room had struck his eye, and that he 
 recalled almost with a shudder. It was a small whip 
 of wire and string, and the string was red. . . . 
 
 The chapel completed his amazement. It was quite 
 small, pictureless, except for a small Mexican repre- 
 sentation in one piece of the Stations of the Cross, our 
 Lord starting from Pilate's Hall in one corner and 
 travelling, in fourteen httle scenes, along a winding 
 road which ended in the opposite corner at the 
 Sepulchre. 
 
 His prie-dieu was just before it, and he used to kneel 
 and stare at it. Curiously enough, his thought was the 
 utterly commonplace one that what it represented 
 had really happened. It was as if he had never 
 realised that before. 
 
 The altar occupied one side. It was compacted of a 
 number of rough stones, unhewn, of varying shapes, a 
 curious jumble. But all were lettered, and he learned 
 that each stone had come from a desecrated church, 
 many being from old English monastery churches, 
 although most countries were represented. The crucifix 
 was another of the Spanish- American things, only much 
 bigger ; to the end he could scarcely contemplate it. 
 Hung from the ceiling was a broken three-legged rush 
 chair, much the worse for wear, strung up to keep it 
 out of the way, with no attempt at concealment. He 
 asked about that. '' Why," said the father, tears in his 
 eyes, " that will be a relic one of these days. Do you 
 know who sat in that chair ? " (His voice sank to a 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 187 
 
 whisper and he gripped his guest by the arm.) *' The 
 Blessed Cure d'Ars, and I keep it till he is canonized. 
 He sat in that to hear confessions, the saint of God, 
 aye, sat day and night upheld by the love of God and 
 the prayers of our Lady, that he might save the soul 
 of France. . . . And God save it too,'* he added 
 brokenly. 
 
 But with it all, the courtesy and kindness of the old 
 man and of the rest gripped Leonard Hke a spell. For 
 instance the father asked suddenly at lunch, as if remem- 
 bering a forgotten thing, if he liked marmalade, and at 
 supper a jar stood by him. Then he had planned walks 
 for his guest to a wood near, to a ruined abbey, to the 
 town, and some books had appeared mysteriously on 
 Leonard's table because he had chanced to say how much 
 he hked to read at night. And they had walked up and 
 down the drive, he and the old man together who was 
 too weak to go far, and Leonard had been more 
 bewildered than ever at his talk. First, he could speak 
 of nothing at all but of the love of God ; it was plain 
 that no other subject existed for him. Then he had 
 talked of his work and of his converts, with a simplicity 
 and an affection and yet with an utter self-effacement 
 that seemed to Leonard the most beautiful thing that 
 he had ever heard, and mingled with it had been a 
 humour and a commonsense that dumbfounded him, 
 the more because, with it all, was interwoven a thread 
 of the supernatural utterly beyond his hearer. Of 
 course, you could discount it all. The old man gave 
 no proofs — never, indeed, seemed to conceive that his 
 visitor would want them, and never narrated a wonder 
 as anything but the simplest and most natural of the 
 works of God. Leonard was conscious that his evidence 
 was worth nothing, and yet that, given the miracle of the 
 man himself, there was no evidence wanted more. He 
 
188 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 lived solely and only for God ; the scourge, the fasting, 
 the poverty — fantastic if you like — was prompted solely 
 by a sense of sin in the world and in himself ; and the 
 hours that slipped so strangely and quickly away were 
 spent in a labour of prayer which could not be denied, 
 whether it were misspent or not. 
 
 Merton used to watch the old man like a person 
 fascinated. He would kneel in chapel, his eyes wide 
 open, his lips moving rapidly, his face rapt, his soul 
 indifferent to time and space, and Merton would 
 remember the tireless journeys, the complete self- 
 surrender, the utter abandonment that had seamed and 
 aged him. Or he would meet him in the corridor, the 
 old father's face abstracted as always, until he would 
 suddenly be aware of his guest, and would come back 
 as from a far country, but with a ready and immediate 
 courtesy which was very beautiful to see. Or he would 
 sit at the table in the recreation hour, the candle-Hght 
 flickering on that dreadful crucifix and that still, white 
 form ot the saint, and lighting momentarily, as it danced, 
 the darker corners and the shaded faces of the others, 
 and his expression would be live and eager as a young 
 man's as he told what God had done before his eyes in 
 that far-off world. The tales would be so human too — 
 now humorous, with the human mixed with this 
 amazing faith ; now simple ; now blackly, evilly tragic. 
 
 There was the Story of the Pill. " Yes," said the old 
 father, " we left Peru, Mr. Merton, despite all their warn- 
 ing and struck away for the Amazon and Brazil. The 
 porters abandoned us at last, and we went on from tribe 
 to tribe, I and my boy, with next to no luggage, preaching 
 as we went. The people got more and more savage as we 
 advanced, and each tribe warned us of the next and 
 expressed astonishment that we had got through the 
 last — ^which is human nature, Mr. Merton, the world 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 189 
 
 over. (" Were you not afraid, father ? " interrupted 
 Merton. " Afraid ? no, why should we have been ? 
 God was with us," came the simple answer.) Well, 
 at last we did jump into the fire though. We came to a 
 village unusually silent, and we found that the chief's 
 son, a lad of fifteen or so, was dying. But the chief 
 brightened up when he saw us. We were straightway 
 stripped of our goods and taken before him — a fat old 
 savage with his men about him, but somehow I believed 
 that he was really in grief about his son, and I even liked 
 him then. He explained at once that he had tried 
 goats, chickens, a bull, even a woman, by way of sacrifice 
 to avert the evil, but that the gods had evidently sent 
 us along. So we should die in the morning, and the 
 doctor would make a medicine of our kidneys which 
 would cure the boy. We looked on death then, Mr. 
 Merton. So I said, Yes, he should kill us in the morning, 
 but might I preach to them that afternoon, first ? He 
 said that that was a fair arrangement ; so I begged the 
 help of our Lady and St. Ignatius Loyola, and began. 
 They did not object to a long sermon, so I told them the 
 story of our Lord from the beginning." 
 
 Merton had a mental picture of the amazing scene ; 
 had it really taken place in the nineteenth century ? 
 He conjured up the green encircling forest of giant trees 
 and creepers, the open space by the slow-moving river, 
 the hum of brilliant insects, the background of brown 
 huts, the listening savage and his circle of armed men, and 
 the bearded priest in his torn cassock and uplifted cross 
 preaching the story of Jesus and His love. He seemed 
 to see it all in the keen eyes that looked into his. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Merton, I had just finished the raising of 
 the widow's son at Nain (which was one of the miracles 
 I put in) when the chief interrupted me. 
 
 " ' Where is that Jesus now ? ' he asked. 
 
190 THE DRIFT OP PINIONS 
 
 " ' In Heaven, in the Sacrament of the altar in every 
 church, and here,' said I. 
 
 " ' Here ? ' he repeated. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I, ' by my side and by yours, reading your 
 heart, is the spiritual presence of Jesus Christ our 
 God, according to His words : " Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even unto the end.'" 
 
 '' The old chief glanced about uneasily : then he laughed. 
 * Good,' said he, ' then if He is here, let Him cure my 
 son.' 
 
 *' For a moment, Mr. Merton, I was silent, but then 
 God told me what to do. * Show me the boy,' I said, and 
 they brought him. Now, Mr. Merton, I had no medicines, 
 only a box of calomel pills, with but one left, and I did 
 not know what was the matter with the boy at all. 
 But I committed him and myself to Almighty God and 
 our Blessed Lady, and I gave him the pill. Then we 
 slept. He was well in the morning, by the power of 
 God, and I baptized the whole village before I left." 
 
 But it was on his guest's last evening that he related 
 the story of the great horror. Leonard Merton had been 
 told in Oxford that Father Borromeo had ' strange fancies ' 
 about the Devil and his works, but that, since he believed 
 so deeply in the truth of what he thought he had seen, 
 he could rarely be got to speak on the subject. So 
 Leonard tried hard that night. The old man had been 
 much moved, telling how his poor Indian converts had 
 dug up the pictures and images in their houses — treasures 
 long buried for fear of your modem republican South 
 American— and had given them to him, in lavish 
 generosity, for his new * Anathoth'; of how they had added, 
 in all, the equivalent of twenty thousand pounds sterling 
 for the conversion of Protestant England ; of how he had 
 translated the Scriptures into the vernacular for them, 
 and distributed three editions of 25,000 copies each ; 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 191 
 
 of how he had met with fierce opposition and abuse from 
 the coast cities, and particularly from the German 
 element ; and of how — told with a simple acceptance of 
 diabolical agencies — ^he had fought with devils and 
 beasts in the gambhng hells and dancing saloons of San 
 Francisco. Leonard drew out the story from that. 
 
 It opened ramblingly with an account of his early 
 voyages, and of how this had occurred on the second 
 in company with a number of German and German- Jew 
 emigrants ; and Leonard had allowed his attention to 
 wander to the faces about him and the strange room, 
 particularly to the young priest — the younger of the 
 two — ^who chanced to be opposite to him, whose grey 
 eyes, Ht with horror, never left the old man, and whose 
 hand moved rapidly in the sign of the cross when- 
 ever the father spoke of the Devil. He was recalled by 
 the old man's words. 
 
 " In those days, Mr. Merton, the quarantine station 
 was the island of Flores, a small sandy place in the mouth 
 of the river, and there was nothing there but a desecrated 
 chapel (there is a stone on the altar still), a dilapidated 
 hospital, and the shanties for persons quarantined. 
 So we were put there. I got a room to myself, but our 
 passengers got drunk at dinner, and some of the men came 
 round to abuse me with their wantons on their arms. 
 I tried to pray in silence within for a Httle, but they 
 hammered on the door, and at last I went out to see. 
 The moon was up, Mr. Merton, and in its light lay bathed 
 the bare island with its few twisted trees, the still sea, 
 and their hot, lustful faces. It seemed God had spread 
 His peace abroad on nature, but that the devil rioted in 
 men. Away on the north beach was the old chapel, its 
 broken windows showing black and empty in the moon. 
 So I came out to them, and they cursed me and sought a 
 quarrel, but when I could, I spoke to them in the Name 
 
192 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 of God. Then one blasphemed the honour of God's 
 Mother, and I cried in my youth : * O God, show them the 
 horror of hell that they may be saved ! ' The man who 
 had spoken — a German- Jew — leaned forward and struck 
 me in the face, crying : * Damn your — God ; there is no 
 hell ! ' And I answered him, lifting my hand, * The 
 mouth of hell shall open upon you, unless you repent ! ' 
 
 " For a moment or two, Mr. Merton, that silenced 
 them, but at last one cried : ' Come away ! Wine 
 and women are better than this fool.' And they 
 all took up his cry, streaming off with ribald 
 songs. And then I saw, to my horror, as I stood in 
 the door with blood on my face, that they were going 
 to the chapel to fulfil their lust there. I tried to cry 
 out to them, but even as I tried, the words died in 
 my throat, because I saw a light in the chapel." 
 
 The old man leant forward, and Leonard, overcome 
 in spite of himself as much by his manner as his 
 words, glanced round fearfully. Brother John was on 
 his knees with his beads ; the priest opposite, white 
 as the body of the saint. So it was he who whispered 
 in the stillness of the room : " Yes, father ? " 
 
 " Well, as I looked, the light grew and grew — a 
 lurid red light. One of the women saw it at last, and 
 screamed out at it. They were near then, perhaps 
 fifty yards away. But even as they hesitated, one 
 man, with a curse, called them all to come, as he 
 would like to see the Devil. And then — then — the 
 hght burned higher (it was as if there was a fire within 
 the chapel), and with a yell such as I pray God I 
 may never hear again, the Devil leaped out upon 
 them. 
 
 " They fled, naked and wounded," went on the old 
 man as if he saw it all again, and there was no interrupt- 
 ing him for an explanation, " and I thank God I had 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 193 
 
 the courage to go out with my crucifix and bring in 
 him who had wished to see the Devil and his woman, 
 who lay on the sand. I took them into the hospital, 
 and I made holy water, and I prayed by them 
 while they raved — oh, my God, how they raved ! 
 Oh, my children, but that was a night ! Never have 
 I seen such a night ! All the time the chapel flamed 
 and was not burnt, and the island resounded with 
 the cries of the damned and the yells of the Devil. 
 They even heard the noise in the town, and came 
 off in a boat in the morning, when they dared, to 
 ask us of it. But as for me, I prayed and prayed. 
 The Devil himself tried to enter the hospital — 
 every one had taken refuge there then — but I 
 confessed and shrived them all, and then we told 
 our beads — all, that is, but those that held the 
 door and the two on the beds. All night through 
 those two saw Hell opened before them. The 
 Devil even clawed on the door to reach them, but 
 he could not pass the crucifix, and with the dawn, 
 God stretched out His Hand, and the gate of Hell 
 was shut again. But in the morning light, when we 
 opened the door, it was scored as with red-hot fingers 
 from lintel to floor." 
 
 " Oh, my God ! '' burst from the young priest ; 
 " and what then, father ? " 
 
 " Except for the two, who died that day, God gave 
 me all the souls in the place, my son. And we cleaned 
 the chapel and did penance in it, and restored it as 
 best we could, and at last I said Mass there. Our 
 quarantine was a fourteen-days' retreat, through the 
 mercy of God. But we had seen the mouth of Hell 
 opened upon us, and the Devil had taken two to 
 himself." 
 
 Back in his room, Leonard could not sleep. I 
 
194 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 believe, truth to tell, that he was afraid. He drew 
 every modern weapon from his armoury and used 
 them, but he fell back on his New Testament at last. 
 That was cold comfort, however. ** Your adversary 
 the Devil goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom 
 he may devour," he read ; and " In My Name ye 
 shall cast out devils." Curiously enough, however, 
 one other verse was even more disturbing, a verse 
 that really seems far from the subject : " How hardly 
 shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom 
 of Heaven." 
 
 Ill 
 
 There was no doubt about it, Leonard Merton was 
 sorry to go next morning. As he dressed for the last 
 Mass, he was amazed to realise that he had not touched 
 his chocolate or biscuits for four days, and had not 
 wanted them, and that a novel in his gladstone, which 
 he had read half through the first day, was still 
 unfinished. Also he was looking forward to Mass 
 and breakfast more than the lunch in town he had 
 planned for himself, which was the more amazing the 
 more he thought of it. 
 
 Breakfast was, indeed, a sad meal. Just at the 
 end, the old priest forgot himself for the first time, 
 and, leaning over suddenly, burst out irrelevantly : 
 " But Mr. Merton, it's so plain ! Our Lord said : 
 ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock ' — fetros, petra, 
 you know — ' I will build my church.' And Peter did 
 go to Rome, and our Lord has built His church upon 
 him, and it is a rock. Can't you see ? Why are you 
 not a Catholic ? " Merton gazed at him hopelessly — 
 how could one argue with Father Borromeo ? — and 
 said helplessly : " Yes, father." And the young 
 
THE ACTS OP THE HOLY APOSTLES 196 
 
 priest looked up suddenly, and then down again ; 
 and so they finished. 
 
 Brother John had carried his luggage to the station, 
 as ragged and smiling as ever, and Father Mark was 
 to walk with him there. They set out through that 
 amazing gate which Leonard had somehow come to 
 welcome as he came back from his walks, and Father 
 Borromeo hardly spoke as they shook hands. He 
 stood there in his greenish-black old cassock in the 
 sun as they went down the lane, and waved pleasantly 
 as they turned. Then Leonard and Father Mark 
 went on for a little in silence. 
 
 "He is a wonderful man,'' said Leonard at length. 
 " Yes," said Father Mark, " and I thank God that 
 I am with him. 
 
 " Will he go back to America, do you think, father ? " 
 asked Leonard. 
 
 " Oh, no,*' said the priest. "He is dying ; the 
 doctors only give him a year or two to live. But they 
 say he may die sooner. He will die when God pleases," 
 he added. 
 
 " Oh," said Leonard, and they walked another 
 quarter of a mile. " Are there many of you ? " asked 
 Leonard at length. 
 
 " Not here," said Father Mark, " but we have 
 several other houses in South America. Here there 
 are only Father Francis and Brother John in addition 
 to myself and Father Borromeo." 
 " And have you been here long ? " 
 " Since Father Borromeo began, a couple of years 
 ago, but I was professed in South America soon after 
 I went out. Father Francis joined us last year ; 
 Brother John two years ago. He came from the 
 novitiate of another Order ; he was professed by 
 special dispensation last year. Brother John will be 
 
196 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 a great monk, if God pleases ; he has such a definite 
 sense of vocation, and has had from his boyhood. I 
 do not know how we should get on without him." 
 
 " He looks after the garden and kitchen, doesn't 
 he?" 
 
 " Yes ; he is our only lay-brother here, though 
 two more are coming. He will be ordained soon; 
 indeed he gets sub-deacon's orders at Advent, I 
 believe." 
 
 " Debenham his name was, wasn't it ? I saw it in 
 his prayer-book." 
 
 " Yes," said Father Mark. 
 
 *' Debenham," repeated Leonard. "Is he any 
 relation of the Orfords ? It's their name." 
 
 '* Yes," said Father Mark quietly ; " he is the eldest 
 son. 
 
 '* The eldest son of the Earl of Orford ! " cried 
 Leonard in amazement, stopping short. 
 
 " Yes," said Father Mark again, looking at him. 
 
 " But then he is a peer ! " cried Leonard. 
 
 " Yes," said Father Mark, "or at least he was ; 
 he gave up all title and place on his profession ; as far 
 as could be of course." 
 
 "But," stammered Leonard, " a Viscount, and 
 heir to the Orford estates ! What does his father say ? " 
 The Earl is a Catholic," said Father Mark quietly. 
 But. . ." began Leonard again, and was silent. 
 
 They walked on down the country lane, and Merton 
 looked at the hedges and the sunshine in a kind of dream. 
 He was thinking what it would be like to be the eldest 
 son of an earl, and then of that bare house, of the 
 dry bread, of the scourge, of the years ahead.... 
 He saw again, against the beauty of the English 
 summer, that devout face in the chapel, that white 
 set face over the beads. 
 
 (( 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 197 
 
 But Father Mark was speaking. " We had the 
 honour of a visit from the Cardinal Archbishop, last 
 month/* he said, " and he definitely approved Father 
 Borromeo's work. He will ordain Brother John 
 himself. I think," he added half humorously, " that 
 Father Borromeo rather feared his coming as His 
 Eminence is an exceedingly practical man. But 
 he approved all we do, and he asked for Father 
 Borromeo's blessing before he left. Father Borromeo 
 gave him a Madonna for his chapel, one given him 
 by a poor Indian who was flogged to death in the 
 ruins of his house not long after, and the Cardinal 
 said he should value it as highly as anything he had. 
 Have you seen the Cathedral, Mr. Merton ? It is not 
 finished, of course, but it will be a fine building. Some 
 people say " But Leonard heard no more. 
 
 ** Does he never eat more than that ? " asked 
 Leonard suddenly. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mr. Merton ? " said the priest, 
 surprised. 
 
 " Oh, I beg yours, father," said Merton in some 
 
 confusion. " I was thinking of Father Borromeo 
 
 I am sorry. But, father, why do you all do that ? " 
 
 The priest looked at him gravely for a minute, and 
 then he said : "I will explain if I can, Mr. Merton, 
 but it may sound a little strange to you. You see, 
 our Lord's mystical Body of the Catholic Church is 
 spread throughout the whole world, and everywhere, 
 and in every age, our Lord carries on through it, all 
 that He did on earth. So He lives in humble homes, 
 He heals the sick. He preaches to the poor, He offers 
 Himself on Catholic altars — He is always in Nazareth, 
 about Galilee and on Calvary again. And He is in 
 Gethsemane too. I mean, some members of His 
 mystical Body are called to hve by prayer of a kind 
 
198 THE DRIFT OF PINIONS 
 
 that means no less than a veritable sweat of blood, 
 and that because our Lord may then have to offer, 
 as He once offered on the Cross, all that labour of 
 prayer and pain on behalf of sinners and His enemies — 
 Judas, Peter, Pilate, the Jews. In the Catholic Church 
 there are Orders which accept that vocation of repara- 
 tion and live for it always. Such is Father Borromeo's. 
 We make reparation especially for insults offered to 
 our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar." 
 
 Leonard glanced at the quiet face of the priest 
 beside him, and could not resist a vulgarity which he 
 regretted the next moment. " And so you all use the 
 disciphne, and let your bread get stale ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," said Father Mark quietly and simply ; and 
 Leonard was ashamed. 
 
 They said no more till they reached the station, 
 and as Leonard leant from his window he asked what 
 he had never asked before. " Pray for me, father," 
 he said, in some confusion. 
 
 " Why, yes," said the priest again, imperturbably. 
 
 Leonard threw himself back in a corner and watched 
 the world slide by outside. He had not seen a paper 
 for a week, and several lay beside him, but he did not 
 open them. He scarcely moved till the express ran 
 into King's Cross, and a porter flung open the door. 
 
 ''Taxi, sir?" 
 
 " Yes," said Leonard, and cHmbed out into the 
 common-sense, of London. 
 
 All this was some time ago now, and Merton rarely 
 speaks of it. Indeed I would not write it down, if it 
 were not that he never reads anything I write, on 
 principle, and nobody else will recognise him. Not 
 that we are anything but the best of friends, and I 
 
THE ACTS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 199 
 
 must say I delight in a week now and again within 
 the precincts of the cathedral of which he is an orna- 
 ment. His wife is delightful, and they keep an admir- 
 able table. Besides, there is a certain air about the 
 estabhshment, from the butler downwards, of dignified 
 yet cheerful Conservative AngHcanism that is really 
 rather restful. Merton subscribes largely to missionary 
 societies, too, and he has even appeared on the platform 
 of the Christian Social Union. But, as I say, he 
 rarely speaks of Father Borromeo, and I know why. 
 You see, if the Acts of the Apostles were really lived 
 over again, it would turn the world upside down once 
 more, which would be extraordinarily disagreeable 
 to most of us. Fancy meeting St. Paul ! Fancy having 
 met him, or his like, if only for the inside of a 
 week .... 
 
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