It is now more than two years since I was invalided out of my
country parish one bitter March, and sent on a southern voyage. I
had ten weeks to recruit in, and I passed by the Mediterranean to
the eastern coast of Africa. It was hard to tear myself away from
Zanzibar, but at last I went on southward and struck up into the
wilder country of the central tableland. I meant to take the rail
for Cape Town when my time should be up.
It happened in Easter week that I camped out disconsolately, and
rose anxiously, having lost my way overnight. I had spent Easter
Day in a cathedral, or pro-cathedral, town, and was now on my way
to a certain mission. I had hoped to make it that last night
the third night of the journey but had somehow missed it in the
dark after a big effort. There seemed to be no native village
near, and no passers-by. My carriers were strangers to that
neighborhood, and I was afraid of going far past the house in
benighted wanderings, so I bent my resolution and lay down. I
rose just before the sun did. It was April and the dews were very
heavy.
From a rocky hill above me the baboons were barking. Just below
us was a fair stream with a rich grove of native trees on the
further bank. Some native gardens showed on the slope above. The
white path wound through them, then away among boulders, some of
them very big ones. While I watched the stream I saw a white body
of mist mounting up. Just at that moment the sun showed. As I
looked on the sacred sight I saw somebody coming down the path.
It was the man whose mission station I had been looking for. He
was coming through the long grass in a hurry. Soon he splashed
through the drift. After that he caught sight of me, and rushed
up to our camp, glowing. It was Leonard Reeve. He looked much the
same as he did that day in London three years before--dark, pale,
slight, earnest. I had been to his sendoff and gone down to
Victoria Docks with him. I had written to tell him; I was most
likely coming his way after Easter. He seemed ever so glad to see
me.
'But where were you off to?' I said.
'It's only a mile on that I'm going,' he answered. 'There's a
little chapel on that hill over there with some native villages
near by. I want to have an Easter service there.'
'Let me come,' said I. 'You can be back to breakfast here, can't
you, when we've done?'
He said he could. Even as he nodded I felt a little anxious when
I remembered that we had no meat of any sort left. I took Jack,
my head carrier, aside and asked him to do what he could while we
were gone. Couldn't he buy some eggs for salt, or do something
useful in the way of foraging? He said three words in kitchen
Kaffir that sounded hopeful.
Then I went on with my chill, damp little friend. One of the
coldest ways surely of taking a bath is to tramp through the long
grass (it is very long in that country) when it is drenched with
dew or rain. However it is all right if you are sturdy and in
good heart, and keep going a stirring pace, and never sit down
till you are dry again. My companion did not seem very buoyant,
though he made no complaint and trudged on without flagging. We
had a glorious service in a quaint church of wattles and earth
and grass on a hill-top. One way it looked over a great spread of
village gardens I think there were at least three villages in
sight. The other way it looked on some well-wooded uplands that
the eastern sun lighted tenderly. There were only a few people in
church at the end of the rite, though a great crowd was there at
the outset, and the 'Kyrie' and first two hymns raised the hill
echoes.
There was no sermon. When the unbaptized were gone the tiny
church, that had seemed so thronged and stifling, grew to be
roomy and cool.
That was to me a very beautiful rendering of the Liturgy. Yet I
only understood a word here and there. I could follow the action
of the Divine Pageant throughout, and I would not have had the
mystery and aloofness of the words one whit lessened.
After it was over Reeve took me across to the native teacher's
house, where we found a very shy wife and a very composed baby to
greet us. Meanwhile the husband bustled about and gave us tea. I
liked his laugh and his boyish face, as well as his Biblical
English. He did not stint the tea in his blue pot. Soon we were
on our way back to my camp.
Jack had got a real good fire now in the shelter of the rocks,
and a hearty smell of fish frying reassured me as we drew near.
Reeve, who had seemed a little tired and washed out as we came
away from the church, now brightened up marvelously.
'I declare,' he said, 'it's just like old times. You know the
Tooting Road, where I used to work? It's just like the fried-fish
shop there, next door to the Surrey Arms. If we'd only got the
fog and the trams and a few of the old people here how fine it'd
be!'
We had found a subject that interested us both and lasted most of
the breakfast-time. His enthusiasm struck me as a little too
emphatic. I remarked that I thought he was well out of the
Tooting Road and out under blue sky on an African moorland.
'Look up there!' I said. 'That makes the Tooting Road seem rather
monstrous when one comes to think of it.' I pointed to the many
cattle and sheep and goats coming down to the stream at a
swinging pace through the gleaming woodland.
Two little boys were mounted on bulls; two or three others came
rushing behind. There was a barking of dogs and an ecstasy of
shouting.
'Oh, it's all very well,' he said, and his eyes flashed a little
scornfully.
Afterwards he took me to his home. His church stood out nobly as
we came up the path towards it. Within it was beautifully kept,
but I confess I was disappointed. It was all very neat, but it
suggested the skill of the church-furnishing firm too strongly. I
sighed a little as he showed me four enormous brazen vases of a
too familiar type. I longed for the two or three little red and
black earthen vases that I had seen on his teacher's altar; but I
kept my longing to myself.
He was a marvelous man for method, Leonard Reeve. He seemed to me
to organize classes with real talent anybody who came to the
Mission at all habitually was pigeon-holed as 'Inquirer,'
'Hearer,' 'Catechumen,' 'Under a cloud,' or something else, and
dealt with accordingly. His work, as I watched it day by day, and
evening by evening in church and school and villages and Mission
farm seemed to me well-considered and painstaking. On the other
hand he seemed to me not so happy, and not so very well.
The mail came in on the Monday.
I was to start the following Thursday for the railroad on my way
to my home again. We gloated over the letters and papers that
evening it was really a superb mail. The native boy with the bag
(I remember he was lanky and handsome and wore a rose-and-blue
zephyr) came up just as we stood in the avenue leading to the
house. We were smoking our pipes and arguing. The sun was almost
down.
What were we arguing about? Oh, he was arguing rather recklessly
about the glories of town-work. I retorted with few words, but
strong ones, in favor of work out in the country. Once I pressed
him rather inquisitively and mischievously as to his present work
on the veld. 'How can you hold such views and do it?' I asked him
point-blank. Thereat the fine side of the man showed.
His face flushed and his lips quivered. 'It's my job,' he said,
'and I'm not going to talk against it. I was arguing about
country-work in the abstract over there in England.' Then it was
that the boy came in sight with the letters. Reeve looked up and
watched him with real pleasure and gratitude. He said something
to him in the native language that seemed to amuse the boy very
much. I had thought his manners towards his flock very courteous,
but cold. I noticed a new tenderness now and from this night
forward.
I could read him like a book, this town-lover so I thought. He
had said too much to me, he had avowed to me his want of
affection for his work in so many words, and now he was on the
watch against himself, and burning to render reparation to a very
quick conscience.
He had a big mail, but he was not communicative about it. Indeed
we had not much time for our letters just then. We had Evensong
soon after sunset, then there was a class for catechumens that I
attended. I could not understand much, but it was good to watch
how they listened, all but the vigorous mail-boy, who nodded at
whiles unless I am mistaken. Afterwards we had a meal. It was by
mutual agreement that we read our letters over our bread and tea
and cheese. I read one of my letters with some indignation. It
was a letter from my schoolmaster, who was not very encouraging
on the subject of my locum tenens' industry.
'I thought I had got a first-rate man in Cochrane,' I said aloud.
'Cochrane of Peckham Downs?' asked Reeve, looking up and eyeing
me. 'What about him? Yes, I should say he was in his way quite
first-rate.'
'I'm glad to hear it, but I wish he would find country work more
congenial. My correspondent says he's quite got the hump about
our village.'
Leonard smiled. 'Some villages do tend to give people like
Cochrane and me the hump,' he said. 'But of course yours is
different.' 'Of course it is. Come and see it some day.' His
mouth twitched. 'If I get home-leave in two years' time,' he
said. 'I don't want to spend it in the country, not any of it,
thank you all the same. I like the town much too well.'
'The smell of the shop you named attracts you just like thyme
does me.'
'Yes,' he said, with a rather wry smile and a very real sigh.
Then we went on reading till bed-time. In the morning Lorenzo,
his house-boy, knocked me up just as the sun was rising. 'The
father is very sick,' he said. So he was very bad indeed with
fever, at least so it seemed to me. But I am not used to nursing
that malady. I think his temperature was 103 that day, which may
seem a modest figure to a pioneer, but struck a chance visitor as
none too reassuring. However, I kept my anxieties to myself, and
looked after him quietly. He said there was no need to worry
about a doctor. That night he seemed to be delirious, and talking
at large. I made up my mind I would send for the doctor in the
morning if his symptoms should last. But they did not. He
appeared to be quiet and sensible at sunrise, and his temperature
was a normal one. The morning after that, again, he seemed so
well that I left him with a fairish conscience on my return
journey for England. I want to tell you about that anxious night.
He gave himself away then. I don't think he remembered much
of what he had said next morning. It seemed sad to me his
self-revelation. He said he did not know what in the world to do,
he felt so ill and anxious. He was a Cockney born, and he had
loved his South London work. He really wanted to tackle the job in
front of him here. But the romance was there behind him in that
English city the unique sense of being in the right place the
great adventure the gleam.
Oh! why had he caught the fever? Not this fever, but the malaria
of Imperialism, and felt drawn to go so very far afield. He
didn't abuse the veld, the camping-out, the foot-slogging, the
primitive people. He was a very chivalrous person even in his
delirium.
But he spoke ecstatically of the streets, the tram-roads, the
lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the delights of
their up-to-date humor.
The tragedy thickened. He told me of her who had promised to
marry him by Eastertide next year. Cecilia was her name.
She was a Londoner, and shared his views. 'Whatever will she
think of this place?' he asked. My eyes wandered to the iron
roof, to the floor-boarded walls, to the candle in a bottle that
fought the draught so bravely. He told me about a letter of hers
he had got by this mail. She had been working as a governess
these last few months at a country rectory in the Berkshire
moors. She found the village, and the neighborhood, and the life
there in general very flat indeed. They bored her; yet she was
keen, he said, on 'the work,' 'the work' as she had known it when
she worked for him in London. 'Whatever will she think of this
place?' he repeated. I looked at the floor, freshly treated with
cow-dung, and thought again for an answer, but I could think of
no very suitable one.
'I'll give you her letter to read,' he said, in a burst of
confidence. 'That puts it far more plainly than I can. My head's
so bad.' He looked worried, and I thought I had better leave him.
'No,' he said; 'do read to me a bit before you go.'
'What shall I read?'
He looked at me meditatively. 'You'll find something to the point
in there,' he said. He reached up to the little candle-box
bookcase over his head, and showed me a little crimson book. It
was an anthology. I should think it might be commendably put on
the 'Index Expurgatorius' of upcountry missionaries.
It was called 'The Cheerful City,' and dwelt on the delights of
civilization and urbanity. Doubtless it may serve a useful
purpose, thought I, in reconciling Londoners to their wen; but,
here, what does it spell for my delirious Cockney save only
desiderium?
I read him two or three selections obediently, but without
enthusiasm. Were they from Herrick and Charles Lamb? I rather
think they were.
Afterwards he asked me for a few verses of the Gospel. I cheered
up.
'What would you like?'
'Oh, that story at the end of St. John. I've often thought of it
since I was so cold and wet; and got to your camp-fire. "The fire
of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread," that's it.'