The next morning broke very brightly, yet there were clouds
enough on high to mystify its clear shining. There had been a
thunder-shower on the day before yesterday: our former rains had
sent on an advance-guard. We had finished our service before the
day grew hot, in the prime and cool of the morning. The place had
been kept very sacred all that service-time. No hoot of a motor-car
had scared the sleep of those lonely hills. Afterwards it was
different. People came out in crowds from Bulawayo. There was a
special excursion from the Transvaal, I believe, that arrived on
that day of all days. We had breakfasted by our camp-fire. Then
we came up the hill to the shrine once more, while the boys were
clearing up. 'Listen,' said Edgar. A stout Bulawayo bourgeois was
holding forth on the crankiness of Cecil Rhodes in choosing to be
so lonely. 'He might have considered the town and trade of
Bulawayo' seemed to be the burthen of his song. A pioneer shut
him up rather roughly. 'He knew best,' he said. 'Where would your
town and trade be if he hadn't cleared the path?' Edgar went up
to the old fellow, ruddy, stalwart, more or less spirituous,
indomitably good-humored. 'Tell me about it please, sir the
burial; you were here for it, weren't you?' The old fellow
complied with great goodwill.
Bareheaded we stood looking north while he told us of the great
camping-out, with the many twinkling fires, by the dam some miles
away, on the eve of the entombment. He told, too, of the
concourse of Matabele at the place itself next day, and of the
auspicious climbing of the yoked cattle as they drew the body.
'They never turned. They went straight up,' he said. 'You can see
the track-way up the rock now. It meant luck surely, and we took
it so, both black and white of us.'
Then he told us of him who lay there, in words of rugged
tenderness the hero of the old era who brought on the new era so
fast; he who had tasted the old and knew the old was better,
testifying the same by his choice of a burying-place.
We were grateful, indeed, to that guide. A few yards in front of
us two beaked Afro-Hebrews were arguing as to what the hero's
leavings had been.
'What did he die worth?' was to one of them a subject of earnest
enquiry. A few yards in front of them again, as we passed, some
bar-loungers foregathered. 'He stood no nonsense about niggers,'
one was saying as we went by him. Edgar nudged me. 'We all have
our different views of him,' he said, 'haven't we? He gave us
views and visions. Thank God that he distrusted himself, and sent
us straight to learn where he learned, haply to learn what he
missed learning from Oxford, his Mistress of Vision, so far to
the west and the north.'
'You see, it's this way,' he said, when the place had grown quiet
again in the drowsy noonday. They had gone off then, the
Jo'burgers, three wagonettes and a motor-car crowded with them.
'We must keep the road open to the north, mustn't we?---the way
his feet lie, the way that goes beyond his vision into bigger
visions.'
'I'll try and do something,' I said humbly. 'There are plenty who
want to travel far, or think they do.' I glanced at the three
Mashonas by the fire. One was teaching the other two. They were
spelling out Saint John's Gospel together. 'Is he one of the most
adventurous?' Edgar asked. 'He's very willing,' I muttered. 'You
ask him whether he'd like to go to school down south.'
The boy's face lighted up when Edgar asked him. It was a rounded,
soft-featured Mashona face with large bright eyes. The lips were
not so very thick; the nostrils were cut like an Arab's.
'Tell him I'll pay for him and for another who wants to go,'
Edgar said. 'He's probably got a particular friend. What about
Atiwagoni?' 'He might be keen to go,' I said, 'and he's quicker
than most of them.'
We began to smoke a last pipe silently. The time was drawing near
to strike our camp. We must start for Bulawayo at once if we
would catch Edgar's midnight train easily.