'That's it,' he said. 'It seems to bring back the fog, and going
to early Service past that coffee-stall, and the smell of that
shop next to the Surrey Arms.'
I thought of his homely comparison after I had left him for the
night. It moved me strangely. I read the letter he had lent me
the letter of Cecilia, who found the Berkshire moors so banal.
Yes, she promised to prove a very undesirable help-meet on the
veld, so far as I could judge. I thought over things generally
that night, and I made up my mind to make a Quixotic offer in the
morning. I would offer to take on Leonard's work. Let him go home
and be happy in his scented town, with his intolerantly urban (or
suburban) Cecilia. He was splendid stuff. He might do much,
surely, in that quaint atmosphere of light and locomotion and
fragrance that his sense of romance demanded. Here Cecilia would
surely be either impossible or a very great nuisance. While, even
without Cecilia, Leonard did not seem well suited in his sphere,
and I judged that he would soon be rotten with fever and wouldn't
last.
As for me, I liked country life much, and roughing it a little. I
had no particular fear of fever. I compared my physique with
Leonard's not without complacency. I thought of the other side,
too: the east country that village of all villages, those
villagers of all villagers.
But that night I was full of over-seas fervor. I remembered
phrases that had rung cut finely at meetings Outpost Duty, the
Church in Greater Britain, The White Man's Burden, In Darkest
Africa, etc., etc. When I fell asleep there seemed to be a
symphony in my ears sounding brass and tinkling cymbals enough
and to spare, but flute-voices of honest pity and sympathy as
well.
In the morning I took Leonard's place in his church. We had the
English Liturgy again. The thatched dome, with much tinier
windows than the windows at home, but much more sun to fill them,
seemed a sort of parable to me that morning. After I had finished
the rite, I stayed on in the church, and spread out two letters
before the Lord, so to speak. One was my schoolmaster's, the
other was that one from Cecilia.
It took me half an hour to feel fairly sure of my answer. But I
felt very sure then just as sure as I had been the night before
but the answer was different.
I thought of my own fold and flock as I read my own friend's
letter. How little the locum tenens seemed to see what I saw in
them! I read Cecilia's letter, and compared 'her view of the
importance of a country cure with my own. After all, I thought,
the latter tended to be an exceptional view in our megalomaniac
days. On the other hand, the locum tenens' view might be rather a
normal one, and so might Cecilia's be. Cecilia's scorn, it was,
that materially helped the answer to come as clearly as it did.
The thought of a Cecilia reigning in that east-country vicarage
seemed no more right than pleasant. It sounds a callous thing to
say, but I left my lonely and convalescent friend with something
of a sigh of relief, and no real misgiving. I felt troubled about
his future certainly, but I saw clearly that I was not meant to
take his place. I hoped to find the man who was meant to take it,
however.
And, by God's help, I believe that I really did find him before
many months were over.
A cousin of mine Richard East had been persuaded by a certain
bishop to accept an urban charge.
I fancy the said bishop had been reared in a rather strait school
of enthusiasts, who regarded work in slums as ideally the best
sphere for clerics of activity. So he had routed my cousin out of
his west-country village, and brought him to a big town--my
cousin, who was an outdoor man from his youth. Curiously enough,
at Cape Town, there was a letter waiting for me from him.
Wouldn't I tell him something about the 'great spaces washed with
sun'? The midland town in general seemed not to have gained his
affections, though he loved his people one by one. 'I want to
clear out,' he wrote, 'for the parish's sake more than for my
own, if only I can find the right place to clear to. I'm not
a townsman, and I think by now the bishop understands my
small-mindedness. I haven't the breadth of a good modern citizen.
I want to go to some Little Peddlington an African village might
suit me. No, directly the right man turns up, I don't doubt the
bishop will want to put him here in my room. Do you know of
anyone likely?' I did know of someone.
I did not write back; I got on my boat and started off for home.
I went down to the east country and set free the locum tenens.
The village had a bridal look for my eyes; the red-thorn tree was
just coming out, the roses would not be long now. I was in time
to be at our yearly May games after all. Next day I went to the
Midland town and saw my cousin; also, I saw his charge. I tried
to look at it with Leonard Reeve's eyes, recalling to my
remembrance that delirious night of his. Yes, though it was not
South London, it had a drab look on a dull June day. There was a
Warwick Arms, if no Surrey Arms. There was a shop with the
authentic fragrance only two or three doors off. I knew that
bishop, and I found him in, and in a listening mood, on the
following day. He wanted to hear about Africa. I described
missions and missionaries to him. Then I told him at some length
about Leonard Reeve.
'Yes, you have drawn the man convincingly,' he said. 'You didn't
invent those touches. I think he's a man after my own heart. I
don't understand you people that bury yourselves in little
rose-covered, immoral, earthy country villages. But I think I do
understand the man that you have described.' I went straight to
the point, and spoke of my cousin's parish. He agreed that my
cousin was a disappointment. 'He's got the same peddling way of
looking at things as you,' he said. 'I thought he'd flourish
after transplantation, but I admit he doesn't seem to. Yes, I
should think a desert and a barbarous people might suit him. I
don't deny that he has vision, but his sense of perspective seems
to be rather ridiculous.' I tried to arrange matters there and
then after that, but his lordship became politic, and seemed a
little afraid that he had said too much to me.
However, the business was on the way to be settled before I
parted from him. It has been settled quite a long while now. My
cousin, Richard East, now tramps the Kaffir paths and ministers
in the hill chapel and in that seven-domed church at the mission
station. I do not think that there is any Cecilia in his case,
nor that there is likely to be one. He personifies the abstract
too passionately to need the love of women.
Africa is personified to him the Cinderella of the continents,
the drudge with a destiny worthy of her charms and her good-temper.
He is writing a monograph on the Song of Solomon, he tells
me. He follows certain scholars in his conjecture that the
Shulamite was given back to a humble shepherd by Solomon, when
she had conquered the latter by the power of her impassioned
chastity. But he has his own theory as well that the true lovers
were both of African blood, that she came from the Ophir-land
south of the Zambesi, and thither returned in peace at last from
the foam of perilous seas. Perhaps his argument is slender; but
it is good for him to believe in it himself, I think, for surely
it helps his work among those that he deems her descendants.
He works on out there, personifying and idealizing. I think he
is as much in love with his country parish as I am with mine in
England. May we both, in our placid and unfashionable ways, dream
our dreams and see our visions! Meanwhile Leonard Reeve reigns
in that midland town, and is treasured by the bishop who was not
deceived when he expected a kindred spirit. He and Cecilia have
chosen a date in this next November for their deferred marriage.
Their choice of month seems to me characteristic. I do not think
they will be disappointed if the day is a little urban in its
murkiness.
It is good for a man to be in love with his charge, is it not?
Next time some fanatic of West-End work, or East-End work, or
foreign mission work gets hold of you and talks excellent sense
about discipline, and offering yourself to your bishop, and
packing up your kit at a week's notice remember this story of
mine!
Is it not well to import something of the precise devotion of
Holy Matrimony into the general self-oblation of Holy Orders?
It is good to think that three of us friends have the very same
sort of feeling Leonard Reeve for the crowds and the fogs and the
odors; my cousin for the rock-sown plains and the little circles
of thatched huts; I for the cornlands and the elm-shaded ridges
and the cottage people.
Yes, to Leonard anything grimy is just as romantic as green
fields to me, or brown veld to my cousin.
Do you know, I was asked to preach Leonard's Institution sermon
last Whit Monday, and I dared to preach it? Cecilia, who was
stately but really pleasant-looking, sat beneath me in the front
pew. Leonard, in his stall, looked oppressed with the weight of
the ceremony.
But his eyes lighted up, I saw, as I gave out my text. It was
from the end of St. John's Gospel. I preached very shortly. I
drew for that poor and earnest-looking congregation the picture
of a dripping missionary as I had seen him. I told of him going
about his business at dawn, cheered by the Easter Feast in front
at the chapel on the hill. I passed up to it by the cheery
camp-fire. I did not forget the smell of breakfast cooking, with
its reminder of home afterwards.
Then I spoke of the charm of the town work that Leonard had been
called to take up once again. I tried to paint it as he dreamed
of it the crowds, the classes, the fog, the scent of the streets.
Then I went higher to the Easter scene, the shore in the morning,
the vision of the altar that dawns on a true man's work however
deep the night of his failure may have been, wheresoever in all
the world he is working.
Leonard looked gratefully at me as I came down the pulpit steps.
While we hurried along from the Service on our way to the station
(Reeve was coming to see me off), I quoted some words to him. We
were just passing that fish-shop.
'Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south; blow upon my garden
that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into
his garden.'
His eyes kindled. 'Yes, old man,' he said; 'I've come into my
garden. How I used to dream of this sort of reek out in Africa!'
I felt a gross materialist as I hurried home to my roses and
red-thorn, leaving him to that visionary garden and those mystical
spices.