'When you have set Thought free for one particular end you cannot
bind her again as you will.' Such is the purport of a certain
historian's dictum, and I have proved the truth of what he says.
Edgar used to go to the Place of Pilgrimage long ago in his
holidays, but I used not to go with him. I did not sympathize
with his veneration overmuch in those times of long ago. But I
respected the desire for hero-worship, and helped him thither
each year that he wanted to visit his shrine. He used to come up
for his long holidays every year from the colony. I had known his
father rather well, and he had not any settled home. His mother
was dead, as well as his father. No one now that knew him need
know what she was like, for he took after his father almost
unmitigatedly. His father was blonde and aggressively Saxon in
appearance. His mother had been Dutch, semi-Dutch, of the colored
Dutch type, as I very well knew. She came from the Western
province, and died when he was but a year old, to be followed
by his father some ten years later, just when he had come
back to South Africa from England. Then I, acting on my own
responsibility, sent him to school in the Eastern Province.
No one seemed to bother, even if they had any inkling of his
mother's parentage; he looked to be so completely his father's
son.
It was in Edgar's schooldays that the Place of Pilgrimage was
inaugurated, and that a big star of hope swam into his ken. I had
told him about Oxford before, but there had then seemed no sort
of path open for him to go up thither. Now, in the midst of his
schooldays, there opened out to him a path that he thought he
might climb. It was then in the next long holiday time that he
took his path, a curious and grateful pilgrim, to the Matopos, to
explore the shrine and to give thanks before it.
He dreamed of being a Rhodes scholar years before it came off
that Rhodes scholarship of his. It came in the fullness of time a
thing of many struggles and prayers, of star-led hopes and paths
steep with uphill climbing.
Then at last it was that I agreed to go with him on his yearly
pilgrimage, in September, the month of his sailing for home. May
used to be a Canterbury month in England, the hawthorn month that
pricked men in their courages and sent them out on the Kentish
road. September had been Edgar's pilgrimage month every year a
spring month in our southern country. The masasa leaves were
taking many tints then in Mashonaland. Speaking generally, the
dominant note of our woodland world was rose-color as we tramped
together to the station. Matabeleland by contrast seemed rather
drab and drouthy, yet she was showing signs of spring. One great
rock stood up very beautiful in a pink lichen garment. It was
hard by the path that led to the last hill-climb, ere you reached
the burial-place. We camped out close beside it, two Mashona boys
who had come to seek their fortunes in Bulawayo, and Edgar and I.
When the morning light came I was up. When the sun rose I had all
but finished my service. There, on his own ground, so to speak,
it seemed easier to pray for the Patron with a sanguine heart,
and to give thanks for him with a clear conscience. Over our
breakfast we sat on and talked, and looked about us. Edgar seemed
to me to be growing in discernment. Once he had seemed so
provocatively cock-sure about his mighty patron. To pray for him
as we had prayed that morning in the language of a race he had
contemned might have sounded to him in years past mere clerical
impertinence. Now he seemed to suffer me rather gladly.
But he said little. We had scant time to spare just then; there
were so many miles to go to the railway. He was to leave for
Oxford that very night. While the carriers were cooking their
breakfast he came with me to the grave and knelt at the head,
looking northwards. I said nothing aloud, nor did he. The rocks
bulked dark in the bright air, the hills wore mystic colors, the
sun shone passionately in a setting of tender blue. Words seemed
a presumption just then, too much of a time or nation or age that
passes. That which may or may not take shape in words remained
the untied power of silent prayer. That morning among the
many-colored hills I looked to sight the faith that can remove such
as these. And I prayed there quietly, in prayer that seemed to
need no words, for Edgar. I asked for him that he might see those
visions without which! people are apt to perish.