darkness. “There in a cave were two women. When you blew the cave up
they were left unhurt behind a fallen rock. When you took away all the
grain, and burnt what you could not carry, there was one basketful that
you knew nothing of. The women stayed there, for one was eighty, and one
near the time of her giving birth; and they dared not set out to follow
the remnant of their tribe because you were in the plains below. Every
day the old woman doled grain from the basket; and at night they cooked
it in their cave where you could not see their smoke; and every day
the old woman gave the young one two handfuls and kept one for herself,
saying, ‘Because of the child within you.’ And when the child was born
and the young woman strong, the old woman took a cloth and filled it
with all the grain that was in the basket; and she put the grain on
the young woman’s head and tied the child on her back, and said, ‘Go,
keeping always along the bank of the river, till you come north to the
land where our people are gone; and some day you can send and fetch me.’
And the young woman said, ‘Have you corn in the basket to last till they
come?’ And she said, ‘I have enough.’ And she sat at the broken door of
the cave and watched the young woman go down the hill and up the river
bank till she was hidden by the bush; and she looked down at the plain
below, and she saw the spot where the kraal had been and where she had
planted mealies when she was a young girl--”
“I met a woman with corn on her head and a child on her back!” said
Peter under his breath.
“--And tonight I saw her sit again at the door of the cave; and when the
sun had set she grew cold; and she crept in and lay down by the basket.
Tonight, at half-past three, she will die. I have known her since she
was a little child and played about the huts, while her mother worked in
the mealie fields. She was one of our company.”
“Oh,” said Peter.
“Other members we have here,” said the stranger. “There was a
prospector”--he pointed north; “he was a man who drank and swore when it
listed him; but he had many servants, and they knew where to find him in
need. When they were ill, he tended them with his own hands; when they
were in trouble, they came to him for help. When this war began, and all
black men’s hearts were bitter, because certain white men had lied
to them, and their envoys had been killed when they would have asked
England to put her hand out over them; at that time certain of the
men who fought the white men came to the prospector’s hut. And the
prospector fired at them from a hole he had cut in his door; but they
fired back at him with an old elephant gun, and the bullet pierced
his side and he fell on the floor:--because the innocent man suffers
oftentimes for the guilty, and the merciful man falls while the
oppressor flourishes. Then his black servant who was with him took him
quickly in his arms, and carried him out at the back of the hut, and
down into the river bed where the water flowed and no man could trace
his footsteps, and hid him in a hole in the river wall. And when the men
broke into the hut they could find no white man, and no traces of his
feet. But at evening, when the black servant returned to the hut to get
food and medicine for his master, the men who were fighting caught him,
and they said, ‘Oh, you betrayer of your people, white man’s dog,
who are on the side of those who take our lands and our wives and our
daughters before our eyes; tell us where you have hidden him?’ And when
he would not answer them, they killed him before the door of the hut.
And when the night came, the white man crept up on his hands and knees,
and came to his hut to look for food. All the other men were gone, but
his servant lay dead before the door; and the white man knew how it must
have happened. He could not creep further, and he lay down before
the door, and that night the white man and the black lay there dead
together, side by side. Both those men were of my friends.”
“It was damned plucky of the nigger,” said Peter; “but I’ve heard of
their doing that sort of thing before. Even of a girl who wouldn’t tell
where her mistress was, and getting killed. But,” he added doubtfully,
“all your company seem to be niggers or to get killed?”
“They are of all races,” said the stranger. “In a city in the old Colony
is one of us, small of stature and small of voice. It came to pass on a
certain Sunday morning, when the men and women were gathered before him,
that he mounted his pulpit: and he said when the time for the sermon
came, ‘In place that I should speak to you, I will read you a history.’
And he opened an old book more than two thousand years old: and he read:
‘Now it came to pass that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, which
was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab king of Samaria.
“‘And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may
have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house: and I
will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seemeth good
to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.
“‘And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the
inheritance of my father unto thee.
“‘And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the word
which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken unto him; for he had said, I will
not give thee the inheritance of my fathers.’
“The man read the whole story until it was ended. Then he closed the
book, and he said, ‘My friends, Naboth has a vineyard in this land;
and in it there is much gold; and Ahab has desired to have it that the
wealth may be his.’
“And he put the old book aside, and he took up another which was written
yesterday. And the men and women whispered one to another, even in the
church, ‘Is not that the Blue Book Report of the Select Committee of the
Cape Parliament on the Jameson raid?’
“And the man said, ‘Friends, the first story I have read you is one of
the oldest stories of the world: the story I am about to read you is
one of the newest. Truth is not more truth because it is three thousand
years old, nor is it less truth because it is of yesterday. All books
which throw light on truth are God’s books, therefore I shall read to
you from the pages before me. Shall the story of Ahab king of Samaria
profit us when we know not the story of the Ahabs of our day; and the
Naboths of our land be stoned while we sit at east?’ And he read to them
portions of that book. And certain rich men and women rose up and went
out even while he spoke, and his wife also went out.
“And when the service was ended and the man returned to his home, his
wife came to him weeping; and she said, ‘Did you see how some of the
most wealthy and important people got up and went out this morning? Why
did you preach such a sermon, when we were just going to have the new
wing added to our house, and you thought they were going to raise your
salary? You have not a single Boer in your congregation! Why need you
say the Chartered Company raid on Johannesburg was wrong?’
“He said, ‘My wife, if I believe that certain men whom we have raised on
high, and to whom we have given power, have done a cowardly wrong, shall
I not say it?’
“And she said, ‘Yes, and only a little while ago, when Rhodes was
licking the dust off the Boers’ feet that he might keep them from
suspecting while he got ready this affair, then you attacked both Rhodes
and the Bond (The Afrikander Bond, the organised Dutch political party,
through whom Mr. Rhodes worked, and by whom he was backed.) for trying
to pass a Bill for flogging the niggers, and we lost fifty pounds we
might have got for the church?’ And he said, ‘My wife, cannot God be
worshipped as well under the dome of the heaven He made as in a golden
palace? Shall a man keep silence, when he sees oppression, to earn money
for God? If I have defended the black man when I believed him to be
wronged, shall I not also defend the white man, my flesh-brother? Shall
we speak when one man is wronged and not when it is another?’
“And she said, ‘Yes, but you have your family and yourself to think of!
Why are you always in opposition to the people who could do something
for us? You are only loved by the poor. If it is necessary for you to
attack some one, why don’t you attack the Jews for killing Christ, or
Herod, or Pontius Pilate; why don’t you leave alone the men who are in
power today, and who with their money can crush you!’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, those Jews, and Herod, and Pontius Pilate are
long dead. If I should preach of them now, would it help them? Would it
save one living thing from their clutches? The past is dead, it lives
only for us to learn from. The present, the present only, is ours to
work in, and the future ours to create. Is all the gold of Johannesburg
or are all the diamonds in Kimberley worth, that one Christian man
should fall by the hand of his fellows--aye, or one heathen brother?’
“And she answered, ‘Oh, that is all very well. If you were a really
eloquent preacher, and could draw hundreds of men about you, and in time
form a great party with you at its head, I shouldn’t mind what you said.
But you, with your little figure and your little voice, who will ever
follow you? You will be left all alone; that is all the good that will
ever come to you through it.’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, have I not waited and watched and hoped that
they who are nobler and stronger than I, all over this land, would lift
up their voices and speak--and there is only a deadly silence? Here
and there one has dared to speak aloud; but the rest whisper behind the
hand; one says, ‘My son has a post, he would lose it if I spoke loud’;
and another says, ‘I have a promise of land’; and another, ‘I am
socially intimate with these men, and should lose my social standing if
I let my voice be heard.’ Oh my wife, our land, our goodly land, which
we had hoped would be free and strong among the peoples of earth, is
rotten and honeycombed with the tyranny of gold! We who had hoped to
stand first in the Anglo-Saxon sisterhood for justice and freedom, are
not even fit to stand last. Do I not know only too bitterly how weak is
my voice; and that that which I can do is as nothing: but shall I remain
silent? Shall the glow-worm refuse to give its light, because it is not
a star set up on high; shall the broken stick refuse to burn and warm
one frozen man’s hands, because it is not a beacon-light flaming across
the earth? Ever a voice is behind my shoulder, that whispers to me--‘Why
break your head against a stone wall? Leave this work to the greater and
larger men of your people; they who will do it better than you can do
it! Why break your heart when life could be so fair to you?’ But, oh my
wife, the strong men are silent! and shall I not speak, though I know my
power is as nothing?’
“He laid his head upon his hands.
“And she said, ‘I cannot understand you. When I come home and tell
you that this man drinks, or that that woman has got into trouble, you
always answer me, ‘Wife, what business is it of ours if so be that we
cannot help them?’ A little innocent gossip offends you; and you go to
visit people and treat them as your friends, into whose house I would
not go. Yet when the richest and strongest men in the land, who could
crush you with their money, as a boy crushes a fly between his finger
and thumb, take a certain course, you stand and oppose them.’
“And he said, ‘My wife, with the sins of the private man, what have I to
do, if so be I have not led him into them? Am I guilty? I have enough to
do looking after my own sins. The sin that a man sins against himself is
his alone, not mine; the sin that a man sins against his fellows is his
and theirs, not mine: but the sins that a man sins, in that he is taken
up by the hands of a people and set up on high, and whose hand they have
armed with their sword, whose power to strike is their power--his sins
are theirs; there is no man so small in the whole nation that he dares
say, ‘I have no responsibility for this man’s action.’ We armed him, we
raised him, we strengthened him, and the evil he accomplishes is more
ours than his. If this man’s end in South Africa should be accomplished,
and the day should come when, from the Zambezi to the sea, white man
should fly at white man’s throat, and every man’s heart burn with
bitterness against his fellow, and the land be bathed with blood as
rain--shall I then dare to pray, who have now feared to speak? Do not
think I wish for punishment upon these men. Let them take the millions
they have wrung out of this land, and go to the lands of their birth,
and live in wealth, luxury, and joy; but let them leave this land they
have tortured and ruined. Let them keep the money they have made here;
we may be the poorer for it; but they cannot then crush our freedom with
it. Shall I ask my God Sunday by Sunday to brood across the land, and
bind all its children’s hearts in a close-knit fellowship;--yet, when I
see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the
hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land
being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall
be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all,
shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this
land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after
justice; but the little finger of the speculator and monopolist who are
devouring this land will be thicker on the backs of the children of this
land, black and white, than the loins of the Dutchmen and Englishmen who
have been.’
“And she said, ‘I have heard it said that it was our duty to sacrifice
ourselves for the men and women living in the world at the same time as
ourselves; but I never before heard that we had to sacrifice ourselves
for people that are not born. What are they to you? You will be dust,
and lying in your grave, before that time comes. If you believe in God,’
she said, ‘why cannot you leave it to Him to bring good out of all this
evil? Does He need YOU to be made a martyr of? or will the world be lost
without YOU?’
“He said, ‘Wife, if my right hand be in a fire, shall I not pull it out?
Shall I say, ‘God may bring good out of this evil,’ and let it burn?
That Unknown that lies beyond us we know of no otherwise than through
its manifestation in our own hearts; it works no otherwise upon the sons
of men than through man. And shall I feel no bond binding me to the men
to come, and desire no good or beauty for them--I, who am what I am,
and enjoy what I enjoy, because for countless ages in the past men have
lived and laboured, who lived not for themselves alone, and counted no
costs? Would the great statue, the great poem, the great reform ever be
accomplished, if men counted the cost and created for their own lives
alone? And no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. You
cannot tell me not to love the men who shall be after me; a soft voice
within me, I know not what, cries out ever, ‘Live for them as for your
own children.’ When in the circle of my own small life all is dark, and
I despair, hope springs up in me when I remember that something nobler
and fairer may spring up in the spot where I now stand.’
“And she said, ‘You want to put everyone against us! The other women
will not call on me; and our church is more and more made up of poor
people. Money holds by money. If your congregation were Dutchmen, I know
you would be always preaching to love the Englishmen, and be kind to
niggers. If they were Kaffirs you would always be telling them to
help white men. You will never be on the side of the people who can do
anything for us! You know the offer we had from--’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, what are the Boer, and the Russian, and the
Turk to me; am I responsible for their action? It is my own nation,
mine, which I love as a man loves his own soul, whose acts touch me. I
would that wherever our flag was planted the feeble or oppressed peoples
of earth might gather under it, saying, ‘Under this banner is freedom
and justice which knows no race or colour.’ I wish that on our banner
were blazoned in large letters “Justice and Mercy”, and that in every
new land which our feet touch, every son among us might see ever
blazoned above his head that banner, and below it the great order:--“By
this sign, Conquer!”--and that the pirate flag which some men now wave
in its place, may be torn down and furled for ever! Shall I condone the
action of some, simply because they happen to be of my own race, when in
Bushman or Hottentot I would condemn it? Shall men belonging to one of
the mightiest races of earth, creep softly on their bellies, to attack
an unwarned neighbour; when even the Kaffir has again and again given
notice of war, saying, ‘Be ready, on such and such a day I come to fight
you?’ Is England’s power so broken, and our race so enfeebled, that we
dare no longer to proclaim war; but must creep silently upon our bellies
in the dark to stab, like a subject people to whom no other course is
open? These men are English; but not English-MEN. When the men of our
race fight, they go to war with a blazoned flag and the loud trumpet
before them. It is because I am an Englishman that these things crush
me. Better that ten thousand of us should lie dead and defeated on one
battlefield, fighting for some great cause, and my own sons among
them, than that those twelve poor boys should have fallen at Doornkop,
fighting to fill up the pockets of those already oe’r-heavy with gold.’
“And she said, ‘YOU, what does it matter what you feel or think; YOU
will never be able to do anything!’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, stand by me; do not crush me. For me in this
matter there is no path but one on which light shines.’
“And she said, ‘You are very unkind; you don’t care what the people say
about us!’ and she wept bitterly, and went out of the room. But as soon
as the door was shut, she dried her tears; and she said to herself, ‘Now
he will never dare to preach such a sermon again. He dares never oppose
me when once I have set down my foot.’
“And the man spoke to no one, and went out alone in the veld. All the
afternoon he walked up and down among the sand and low bushes; and I
walked there beside him.
“And when the evening came, he went back to his chapel. Many were
absent, but the elders sat in their places, and his wife also was there.
And the light shone on the empty benches. And when the time came he
opened the old book of the Jews; and he turned the leaves and read:--‘If
thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that
are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, ‘Behold we knew it not!’ Doth not
he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul,
doth he not know it?’
“And he said, ‘This morning we considered the evils this land is
suffering under at the hands of men whose aim is the attainment of
wealth and power. Tonight we shall look at our own share in the matter.
I think we shall realise that with us, and not with the men we have
lifted up on high, lies the condemnation.’ Then his wife rose and went
out, and others followed her; and the little man’s voice rolled among
the empty benches; but he spoke on.
“And when the service was over he went out. No elder came to the porch
to greet him; but as he stood there one, he saw not whom, slipped a
leaflet into his hand. He held it up, and read in the lamplight what was
written on it in pencil. He crushed it up in his hand, as a man crushes
that which has run a poisonous sting into him; then he dropped it on
the earth as a man drops that he would forget. A fine drizzly rain was
falling, and he walked up the street with his arms folded behind him,
and his head bent. The people walked up the other side; and it seemed to
him he was alone. But I walked behind him.”
“And then,” asked Peter, seeing that the stranger was silent, “what
happened to him after that?”
“That was only last Sunday,” said the stranger.
There was silence again for some seconds.
Then Peter said, “Well, anyhow, at least he didn’t die!”
The stranger crossed his hands upon his knees. “Peter Simon Halket,”
he said, “it is easier for a man to die than to stand alone. He who can
stand alone can, also, when the need be, die.”
Peter looked up wistfully into the stranger’s face. “I should not like
to die myself,” he said, “not yet. I shall not be twenty-one till next
birthday. I should like to see life first.”
The stranger made no answer.
Presently Peter said, “Are all the men of your company poor men?”
The stranger waited a while before he answered; then he said,--“There
have been rich men who have desired to join us. There was a young man
once; and when he heard the conditions, he went away sorrowful, for he
had great possessions.”
There was silence again for a while.
“Is it long since your company was started?” asked Peter.
“There is no man living who can conceive of its age,” said the stranger.
“Even here on this earth it began, when these hills were young, and
these lichens had hardly shown their stains upon the rocks, and man
still raised himself upwards with difficulty because the sinews in his
thighs were weak. In those days, which men reck not of now, man, when
he hungered, fed on the flesh of his fellow man and found it sweet. Yet
even in those days it came to pass that there was one whose head was
higher than her fellows and her thought keener, and, as she picked the
flesh from a human skull, she pondered. And so it came to pass the next
night, when men were gathered around the fire ready to eat, that she
stole away, and when they went to the tree where the victim was bound,
they found him gone. And they cried one to another, ‘She, only she, has
done this, who has always said, ‘I like not the taste of man-flesh; men
are too like me; I cannot eat them.’ ‘She is mad,’ they cried; ‘let us
kill her!’ So, in those dim, misty times that men reck not of now, that
they hardly believe in, that woman died. But in the heads of certain men
and women a new thought had taken root; they said, ‘We also will not eat
of her. There is something evil in the taste of human flesh.’ And ever
after, when the fleshpots were filled with man-flesh, these stood aside,
and half the tribe ate human flesh and half not; then, as the years
passed, none ate.
“Even in those days, which men reck not of now, when men fell easily
open their hands and knees, they were of us on the earth. And, if you
would learn a secret, even before man trod here, in the days when the
dicynodont bent yearningly over her young, and the river-horse which you
find now nowhere on earth’s surface, save buried in stone, called with
love to his mate; and the birds whose footprints are on the rocks flew
in the sunshine calling joyfully to one another--even in those days when
man was not, the fore-dawn of this kingdom had broken on the earth. And
still as the sun rises and sets and the planets journey round, we grow
and grow.”
The stranger rose from the fire, and stood upright: around him, and
behind him, the darkness stood out.
“All earth is ours. And the day shall come, when the stars, looking down
on this little world, shall see no spot where the soil is moist and dark
with the blood of man shed by his fellow man; the sun shall rise in the
East and set in the West and shed his light across this little globe;
and nowhere shall he see man crushed by his fellows. And they shall
beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree;
and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall
nowhere crush man on all the holy earth. Tomorrow’s sun shall rise,”
said the stranger, “and it shall flood these dark kopjes with light, and
the rocks shall glint in it. Not more certain is that rising than the
coming of that day. And I say to you that even here, in the land where
now we stand, where today the cries of the wounded and the curses of
revenge ring in the air; even here, in this land where man creeps on
his belly to wound his fellow in the dark, and where an acre of gold
is worth a thousand souls, and a reef of shining dirt is worth half a
people, and the vultures are heavy with man’s flesh--even here that day
shall come. I tell you, Peter Simon Halket, that here on the spot where
now we stand shall be raised a temple. Man shall not gather in it to
worship that which divides; but they shall stand in it shoulder to
shoulder, white man with black, and the stranger with the inhabitant of
the land; and the place shall be holy; for men shall say, ‘Are we not
brethren and the sons of one Father?’”
Peter Halket looked upward silently. And the stranger said: “Certain
men slept upon a plain, and the night was chill and dark. And, as they
slept, at that hour when night is darkest, one stirred. Far off to the
eastward, through his half-closed eyelids, he saw, as it were, one faint
line, thin as a hair’s width, that edged the hill tops. And he whispered
in the darkness to his fellows: ‘The dawn is coming.’ But they, with
fast-closed eyelids murmured, ‘He lies, there is no dawn.’
“Nevertheless, day broke.”
The stranger was silent. The fire burnt up in red tongues of flame that
neither flickered nor flared in the still night air. Peter Halket crept
near to the stranger.
“When will that time be?” he whispered; “in a thousand years’ time?”
And the stranger answered, “A thousand years are but as our yesterday’s
journey, or as our watch tonight, which draws already to its close. See,
piled, these rocks on which we now stand? The ages have been young and
they have grown old since they have lain here. Half that time shall
not pass before that time comes; I have seen its dawning already in the
hearts of men.”
Peter moved nearer, so that he almost knelt at the stranger’s feet: his
gun lay on the ground at the other side of the fire.
“I would like to be one of your men,” he said. “I am tired of belonging
to the Chartered Company.”
The stranger looked down gently. “Peter Simon Halket,” he said, “can you
bear the weight?”