I was lucky to get a lift. We had risen before the moon took to
her bed, and the sun had left his. We were driving through green
woodlands when the light grew clear around us. A little while ago
their graceful trees had been ruddy or bronze doubtless. Now it
was the turn of the hill-trees on the great kopje that we passed
within a mile, to grow bronzed and to redden. For the month of
November had only just come in. We outspanned in a valley where
the new green of the grass had come already. No doubt a month ago
it had looked very black and fire-scathed. Now the showers had
brought kind healing and amendment. We made our morning Memorial
together (being all of us Christians bound on some sort of a
Christian pilgrimage), and after that we breakfasted and smoked
at ease while the mules grazed close by, and the driver boiled
his pot, and fed it with meal, and stirred and ladled out, and
ate in the fullness of time. My heart was very thankful. How much
better and kindlier one's lot seemed now fallen as it was once
again in this fair ground of a country at peace in Wartime. This
countryside pleased me ever so much better than British East or
German East this Mashonaland. There to north I remembered without
enthusiasm the tropical passions of the elements, I remembered
rather miserably some of the things that a state of war had
meant.
After breakfast, there was no hurry about our inspanning. But
when we had once got off we were soon up level with the farmhouse
on the hill's shoulder. We halted for friendship's sake, and
waited for the cups of coffee that we were assured would be soon
ready. Our host was Dutch-looking, but seemed British; I thought
rather narrowly British in his sympathies. He discussed the War
keenly and thoughtfully with my companion. He had two brothers in
German East, I knew, and he was soon asking me about them. But
our paths up that way had not converged. I could only tell him by
hearsay about the main advance, wherein they had been sharing,
and I had not. As I told, a dark handsome, gentle-voiced woman
brought our coffee out. Soon a shy little girl put her head round
the corner of the stoep, and withdrew' it again. I jumped down to
greet her. Then she agreed to come and shake hands with us both.
Her father colored up, and smiled as he told me of a great
scheme. A lady in town had offered to board this child. So kind,
wasn't it? She was of sturdy English make (her father's father
was an Essex man. I had been told). Her hair and eyes were very
dark; she looked ever so capable.
'Yes, very kind,' I murmured, but I was reflecting that the
lady's kindness might not be so very ill-rewarded. The child
might prove useful and cost little. She might give the sort of
help that is apt to be useful and costly in a country like ours.
'Yes,' said the father smiling, 'and she may get to the day
school that way, the lady says. We couldn't have nearly afforded
to send her into town otherwise. But now she's got her chance of
a regular school.' 'Oh, really,' said my friend. His kind ugly
face looked none too pleasant as he said it, I remember noticing
that.
Then he went to his mules to 'buckle' up a strap somewhere. I was
surprised to hear him cursing something under his breath. It was
not his manner, I thought, to curse straps or mules. We said
good-bye a very cordial one and then drove down towards the main
road. It winds through a vlei towards the town. We had got almost
to the big water-course so banked up in thirsty sand, when he
told me what he was cursing. He repeated his words deliberately:
'Damn it, damn it to hell,' he said. I protested faintly till he
made it clear to me what he was damning, then I recklessly
endorsed his damnation. For he was not cursing Heaven or
humanity; he was cursing that blessed Anglo-Dutch, or rather
Dutch-English, institution of South Africa, the color-bar. He had
been told by one of the managers that should the father apply for
admission to school on behalf of the child we had seen, he would
be certainly refused. The father was really much too poor to send
her away, he told me.
'They're ever so honest and hard-worked. They've put up a great
fight on mealie meal against bad seasons. They've pinched hard
for the child's poor little outfit. He's got into debt for it.
He's a Britisher, and has got two brothers fighting. Very
dubious, dark children have been admitted already, as presumably
Dutch. Dutch and colonials rule the roost here. And to leave
Christianity alone, where does British Imperialism come in? It's
risking spoiling a life, and the life of such a decent kid.'
Thereat he certainly condemned guiltily, as he should not have
condemned, Dutchmen and colonials, their churches, their social
order, and their sanctimony. 'Thank God I was at plebeian
Oxford,' he said, 'and was free to mix with colored men. This is
far more select, this dorp academy, with its elect Principal and
its supermen-managers.' We nearly had a row about his language.
We came over a rolling down towards the commonage. 'They've kept
free from fires here,' I said. 'Yes,' he said, 'but I'm doubtful
if their vigilance pays, if their game's worth the candle. I mean
if such absence of illumination is worth all their watching
about.' 'It saves waste of life.' I said, 'animal and vegetable,
if you can only keep the fires away.' I appealed to the wisdom of
our laws as well as to the argument of mercy which I appealed to
me. 'And you get that sort of thing.' he said, pointing to the
thick brown tufts of unappetizing feed. 'That's been going more
than a year, hasn't it? 'Oh for a wind and a fire,' say I.
We passed over the commonage, which showed very black with recent
fires. 'It looks rather knocked out,' I said. 'Yet not without
hope,' he answered. We were driving back about the same time next
fore-noon. A great fire was rushing wind-driven over that rolling
upland. 'At last,' he said. I sighed. A mile further on we came
into the smiling green vlei. 'This was black a while back,' he
said. 'Doesn't the fire help a bit after all? Who wants that
moldy stuffy old feed, isn't it parabolic of that fusty Dutch-Anglo
dorp and its prejudices? What are they meant for, and it?
'Fuel of fire,' say I.' I smiled indulgently. Since we had got
into town things had happened. We had had our memorial services
for the Dead that last night, and this same morning. It was the
week of All Hallows and All Souls, a time that often tempts me to
homesickness. One is apt to think of hazy, yellow-leaved, dreamy
times in old England just about then not to speak of old familiar
faces. That night of the first Service was very starry, and the
morning of the second Service was brilliantly clear, the rain
seemed to be very far away for the time being. People had come at
night rather well. Not to speak of one of the school managers
having died quite recently, news of one of our police's death out
scouting had leaked through from German East. I preached Paradise
to that attentive congregation in the iron-roofed church that
natives had been so discouraged from attending. I was glad one
straggled into the back seats I had battled for, just to
demonstrate one's principle of barring out the color-bar. It was
all very soul-soothing, thought I, that Memorial Evensong, the
stars outside, and the golden evening brightening in the west of
the hymn, and the lesson about white robes and palms, presumably
of victory or harvest-homing. My friend waited for me outside
under the lamp. 'Very fine,' he said in his grimmest way, 'the
Anglican view of hopeful souls turned promiscuously into a sort
of orchard and rose-garden with plenty of light to gild them, and
rest to wrap them.' I smiled. 'True enough in its way,' I said.
'There's another side doubtless, yet the preaching of that
doesn't appeal to me particularly. I don't want to work on
people's apprehensions. But don't let me stand in your light.
You're a lay reader with a bishop's license. You can preach and
welcome to-morrow morning.' 'Trust me not to refuse,' he said. 'I
don't want to play up to apprehensions exactly. I want to state
what seem to me to be relentless laws of cause and effect, and to
show the only way with any sort of hope in Christ that I happen
by faith to see.' So he had preached that morning. He preached
quite simply on the trying of every man's work, on the burning of
flimsy work, on the saving of the workman, yet so as by fire.
There was a small but select gathering in the Church of Saint
Tertullian; two of the school managers even were there. Surely I
had baited the trap, I thought guiltily as I looked upon them,
by my over-amiabilities of the night before.
Yet that side was true enough, the side I had preached. And was
not this side also true in its way? The preacher seemed at first
to be referring to my own obsession with the words 'resist not
evil,' my following of Tolstoy in my own evangel. He was warm in
his commendation. 'And yet,' he said, 'let us remember a just
God's resistance to evil. He resists and judges righteously,
where we may neither resist nor judge. If we agree not to resist
evil violently for Jesus' sake, yet ought we not to warn people
of their God's unrelenting resistance? While we would not obscure
the fear of our just God by the fear of us unjust men, let us
remember our just God!' He spoke of judgment and of purgation, of
what seemed to be indicated hereafter by the stupidity and
cruelty of people's prejudices in South Africa. He painted quite
luridly the purgation he anticipated as likely for such as would
dare to wreck a child's education, and possibly her life for a
color-scruple. He glowed and kindled. There was no mistaking his
drift. He painted the fires of purgation. He painted, too, their
presumable fuel, much as I believe old preachers limned the
flames of hell and their denizens. 'And it may lengthen out into
hell! Who knows?' he kept interjecting. 'Who knows but that that
prejudiced spirit you play with may be a damned spirit after all,
fuel for the fire that is not quenched, food for the worm that
does not die?'
T could not have preached happily on his lines, but for all that
I acknowledged that the thing might well be of God this bizarre
surprise at his preaching that was glassed in at least two of his
listeners' eyes. Did that sermon do any good? Let me anticipate!
The child came into town as a half-time servant. Somebody's
letter got handed up to the Administrator, and he made a request
to the managers. The child was clearly European by predominance
of race. They spent five hours of their precious time in
discussion. The officials wanted to oblige the Administrator, and
they had their way at last. But whether the child once admitted
will have much of a time, I am inclined to doubt, should she pass
into the Paradise of so select an academy. I heard an ominous
story of the Dutch minister last week, how he had threatened a
hiding to any child of his that spoke to this forlorn little
girl, who seems hard up for playmates. I heard yesterday that one
of my Church magnates had asked that the child should not come up
to play with his own. Yet the Fire of God has been preached, and
I am willing to allow that the thing may have wanted doing rather
badly in my amiable parish. Doesn't any real true Christian Peace
Doctrine mean spiritual fire and sword? Doesn't it mean burning
and fuel of fire as set against the confused noise and garments
rolled in blood of earthly campaigns? Doesn't any real true
Christian Imperialism mean the sword of the Spirit and the fire
of the Gospel against South African Racialism? Perfect love
casteth out fear, but what has Racialism to do with such a
perfect love as will banish the fear of God?
After all, can any reasonable and lively Christian Faith avail to
find any evangelically reasonable destination short of hell for
South African Racialists dying in their Racialism save such place
of purgation as my friend indicated? Yes, of course, God's
prerogative of mercy in Jesus is limitless, but are these
Racialists so merciful to little colored children that they
should obtain mercy without judgment from Jesus' judgment?
And if the purgative fire seem so inevitable, why not warn its
prospective fuel?
Granted the Love of Jesus (Who was certainly what South Africans
would call a Jew Boy, Who was possibly so dark that any dorp
school would have hummed over His admission, Who enrolled Himself
in that House of David one of Whose ancestresses was the Hamitic
Rahab apparently, Who took Ham's curse as well as Japheth's);
granted that that Love is the one and only supreme motive for
Christian Reform, yet for all that, facts are facts, and it may
be kind to tell people into what fires the fires of Racialism
threaten to merge their selves. On the whole, I am glad that our
lay reader preached on that bright morning that over-gloomed
sermon, preaching from my own soothing pulpit to my startled
congregation. They did not seem to know what to make of it. But
the preacher himself seemed quite unrepentant about it. He was
talking to me about it that morning when we drove home again, he
to his farm and I with him, to walk on to my mission. We
outspanned in a very green valley, I remember, and sat long over
roast monkey-nuts that his driver benignantly provided.
'The Lord put a word into my mouth,' my friend said quite firmly
and simply. 'Was there not the cause the cause of a child's
career? Didn't our Savior speak plainly as to the ugly analogy of
the man drowned like a dog with a stone round his neck in the
deep of the sea? Weren't His children in question when Jesus
spoke; wasn't there a Christian child in question when I
preached?'
I thought he made out something of a case for his position as a
preacher of fiery doom. We were sitting on a beautiful green
carpet. The Earth there had come through her bad time. Away
on the hillside a black forbidding patch testified to the
unpleasantness of the remedial stage. Away in the distance was a
beautiful tree-shaded granite hill with much show of brown
foliage and purplish underspaces. Just beside that hill the
flames came driving (through the old last year's feed, I
suppose). His eyes followed mine the way of the flames. 'Hurray!'
he said heartily. 'Now we shan't be so very long surely after
all. Don't you see the green grass on its way? It was a snug
corner, verily, for the old dry stuff. Look, how the flames leap
up in the thick of it! Not very juicy browse nor tasty feed, but
fine fuel for the fire; good for that, anyway. It was a snug
corner, but at last the time was ripe when the fire came driving
straight for it the fire with the wind behind. 'Which things are
a parable,' he said, his ugly sunburnt face twitching curiously,
his eyes quite handsome, nay, even splendid with honest scorn. He
was shaking his fist towards the prim little dorp that we had
left behind over the ridges. 'No doubt but ye are the people,' he
said, 'ye that have made the freedom of England and the franchise
of Jesus of no effect by your tradition your sacrosanct
tradition. What's the good of the frowsy old stuff? It must be
some good; what is it? It isn't very good pasture for sheep or
horses, not to speak of dairy cattle, but it's noble food for
fire, don't you think?
There it lies-up so snug and sheltered and screened the old dead
survival hidden in the prim little corrugated iron-roofed houses,
and the narrow gumtree avenues, and the whitewashed Dutch
tabernacle where they sing "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" (would you
believe it?) But the time will come, it mayn't come in my day or
in yours, but the time will come sure enough, when the Fire will
trek dead straight for this old dead-ripe stuff, the Fire with
the Wind behind. Then God have mercy on them whose work it was!
For their work shall be burnt, aren't we sure of that? But as to
they themselves being the sort to be saved so as by fire can we
be so very sanguine? Meanwhile. . . . . . .
The way he so humbly appealed to me for my opinion on that moot
point, did much to conciliate me. He had not carried me with him
all the while. He seemed to me a bit out of date, too like an
ante-Christian prophet. Yet how my heart went out to him as he
ended up so very abruptly with his 'meanwhile.' His voice broke
queerly, and his eyes shone. 'Meanwhile they may manage to give a
child or two a rough passage. They've got pluck enough for that,
the blighters, haven't they?' He turned away from me with a sort
of a sob. 'The time'll come sure enough, but it's their time now,
and they know it,' he said. 'God pity her!'
'LA BELLE DAME'
Inhabiting this country you inhabit the Middle Ages, you dwell in
the wild Marchlands without the pale of Christendom. Here a man
may take to the forest roads in the old spirit of errantry. How
darkly the shadow of witchcraft falls upon the path; we might be
in Lapland or Thessaly! What strange satyr voices the drums have
of nights! I suppose it is the reading about such things long ago
that gives me this sense of having been here before, of having
come back to this country!'
His eyes glistened as he sat over his wine, and smoked Transvaal
tobacco in a calabash pipe. He looked much more as he used to
look twenty years back, I thought. I had deemed him aged almost
out of recognition when first we sat down to dinner. He had come
up to Mashonaland with some learned association on a holiday
trip. His name was Gerald Browne; he had lectured on English
literature these many years in an ancient northern university.
With him came his wife, a very plain and quiet lady, and also an
undergraduate pupil named Drayton.
I was asked to meet them, and to stay in the same house with them
by a certain minor potentate of Rosebery, who had had rooms near
Browne's and mine in years gone by. It was Saturday night, and I
had just come in from the veld, while Browne's party had reached
Rosebery by the morning train. Dinner had gone rather quietly,
and our host had looked bored, I thought. Then, when the ladies
had left us, Browne had kindled up, and we all three had a
glorious hour, voicing the praises of Africa in a sort of
three-man descant or glee. Meanwhile the fourth man, Drayton, a
dark, plump and smiling youth, listened to us with a charming air
of respectful attention. Transvaal tobacco was good, and the talk
was good, though I say it who should not. Drayton's silence
was also good, a very complimentary silence with a distinct
character, as it seemed to me. On Sunday after lunch this youth
came for a walk with me, while the Brownes and our host reclined.
'Mr. Browne's got a sort of call to the Simple Life,' he suddenly
blurted out with a grin. 'It's even money on his selling up at
Oxford and coming out here for good. What's going to happen to
Mrs. Browne, I wonder?'