'It's very popular, I've heard, among the town boys. It's so very
European to native eyes, so extra corrugated and angular.'
We came up at last to that which we sought a huge ellipse and
dome of stones and earth, rising and broadening under our very
eyes. It was on a farm among the granite hills, many miles from
Rosebery. 'It's only a glorified stone cattle-byre, and an
intensified stone Kaffir hut,' Spenser commented. 'It's not even
built the old Mabgwe way. These are only blocks of granite; a few
of them broken, but not one of them dressed. And there's lots of
mud to eke them out.'
'Yet there's hope in the thing. It's not an artistic dead-end
like Saint Uriel's,' I pleaded.
One or two Europeans, very unskilled ones I could see, had
planned this bit of work, and taken part in it. They had made
themselves at charges for it, though African gifts had not been
wanting. They had, so to speak, coaxed their African pack on to
try an old scent. Now the moving European spirit was gone home
for months to England. Before he went the former rains had ruined
some of the work. He had been too ambitious, too scornful of
delay. Forewarned by Africans, he had pressed to a midsummer
disaster. Now he had left Africans in charge. He had trusted them
to go on. One Christian, in particular, he had trusted his fellow
and his master in building. The boy had built at a colonial's
cattle-kraal once. His skill had multiplied as he built on at the
great church, and now he was a master craftsman. Doggedly he was
building up again the rain-ruined bastions. The work was going
with a swing, if a slow one. The scent was no longer a cold one.
The pack were belling and chiming over it, and they were running
with their huntsman out of sight.
'I don't understand this bit of work properly,' Spenser said.
'What's made the dry bones live?'
'Inspiration,' I said reverently. 'Looked at in one way it's Art.
Looked at all ways it's Religion. It's the same sort of thing as
went on, I suppose, when the faith of sun and moon was a power.
Now the faith of Christ is gathering force in the land. The land
isn't an Italy, and our twentieth century isn't that old
thirteenth century; yet look out for the signs and wonders you
spoke of. Likely enough they're to be expected.'
We went to the Pageant Master's lecture on the Mabgwe Ruins that
night, when we had driven back to Rosebery. It was more
interesting to me as a subjective study than an objective display
of learning.
'Poor creatures!' the lecturer said of the natives. 'Don't put
them in a false light. Whatever claims they may have to equable
treatment, they have no claim to be considered romantic. The
ancient romance of this country is the romance of a nobler race
the romance of the Tyrian trader, Tyrian or Sabaean. Allow me but
a trifling emendation, and Matthew Arnold's lines will serve to
indicate that romance.' Substituting 'Zambesians' for 'Iberians,'
he gave us the last lines of 'The Scholar Gipsy.' 'In that era of
Tyre's trade,' he concluded, 'I place the golden age of our
country a golden age which under our own Imperial rule begins
anew.'
'H'm,' said Spenser. 'That live Mashona building-boy's worth many
dead Phoenicians to me, at any rate. As to defining romance, we'd
better agree to differ. 'Do well unto thyself, and all men will
speak well of thee,' he went on, with a tang of bitterness.
'Jew-boys and Arabs mopped up trade when they were living, now they
jump other men's kudos, being dead.'
'Never mind.' I said. 'Art for Art's sake, aspiration for
aspiration's, faith for faith's! And some there be which have no
memorial; who are perished as though they had never been; and are
become as though they had never been born; and their children
after them.'
'Never mind,' it was his turn to say. 'That granite kopje church
is rising, and Magbwe Ruins stand the quick and the dead. These
shall both come up for judgment and get justice. Yes, if they
have to wait for it till the Supreme Court of Alt holds session.'