The railway had almost crept up to Alexandra Then--the seventy-three
miles of its sandy pilgrimage were all but complete. In three
months or so it would be open to those who could afford their
penny a mile no, but I am forgetting, on the privileged group
to which it belongs no European may travel third-class.
I did not welcome that railway with any warmth. The district
that it tapped had seemed to me a camping-ground of refuge, as
civilization pressed on. That district was a haven for the
Kaffir-trader, a haven for the transport-rider, a haven too for
the foot-slogging missionary, like myself. We have our faults,
all three doubtless, and deserve the spurning of civilization's
iron feet, when our time comes, doubtless. On the other hand our
displacement is a matter for some sympathy, it is likely to hurt
like other displacements. Also we are prone to note that the
admirable iron feet of our displacer are not unmixed with baser
clay.
I came to Shumba Siding last Eastertide, on my way to Alexandra.
Charles Miller was there in charge of the line, and he offered me
a thirty-one mile ride in to within two miles of town if I would
only wait for a construction train. I declined in my stupid
sentimentality. For one thing I hate breaking up a plan of
combined foot-travel; it seems to me hard on one's native
fellow-travelers, on whom one is apt to call for big efforts. To
ride on ahead, and leave them struggling alone with the sandy
monster of a road for any long distance, seems vile desertion,
and I was by no means sure that the invitation to board the train
included them. Moreover, this might be my last journey in, on the
old road, under the old order.
So I declined, but I lunched with Charles Miller Before I went
on. Marvell was there, the Kaffir store-keeper from ten miles
away. He had much to tell me of his wonderful good luck. The
big firm that were putting up the new Store at Alexandra, that
rail-head terminus designate, had asked him to manage it.
He could marry now on his prospects. He had wanted to see me, and
had waylaid me on my road. The bride was due by coach to-morrow.
He hoped to get a Special License when once she had arrived.
Would I marry them on Monday?
We had a good lunch with healths afterwards, but they let me
drink them in tea. Miller proposed the health of the bridegroom,
to whom the railway, or ever it came, had brought luck. Might his
luck last while the rails lasted, and grow heavier when they
should be replaced by heavier metals! Might he never make less in
a year than that railway had cost per mile! 'Three thousand five
hundred will take some making,' Marvell sighed to me. He
acknowledged the toast and proposed the Railway's prosperity. He
grew rather florid to my thinking, about the benefit to the
District how Kaffir gardens were to be displaced by up-to-date
farming, how tourists were to pour in athirst to explore its
ruins. He discoursed of the blessedness of ranching, and of
chrome and asbestos syndicates. He said that we were in at the
death alike of malaria, of blackwater, and horse-sickness. Then I
spoke up for the other side. I asked them to remember the old Era
in silence, and if they must drink, to drink to the transport-road
and the transport-riders, and to all pioneers, and old hands
going and gone, to the big native district and its dependencies,
so rich in cattle and so rich in grain, to God's Eden of a
country, and the people that He Himself had chosen to set there
to dress it, and to keep it before our coming. My toast fell
rather flat, I noticed. They both looked rather bored.
Soon I pressed on, with fifteen miles or so to cover before our
camping-place would be reached.
I had gone some ten miles before the construction train passed
me, and my carriers pressed through bushes and long grass for a
nearer view of it.
With three or four white men on the engine, a Black Watch or two
and a few other natives on the trucks, it snorted along through
the woodland. As the night deepened and the moon rose, we came
close to the last coach-stable, and were soon encamped.
The old Basuto near by gave me a drink of fairish water, but
water was far away, I was told. My boys straggled away wearily,
and came back at last, having seemingly missed the dipping-place.
They had brought something between a liquid and a solid. Boiled,
it was no doubt wholesome enough, but its taste was not such as
to tempt to excess.
That night I dreamed, with a tag of Marvell's speech buzzing in
my head (I had garrisoned it with quinine before I slept). That
tag rang out in boastful refrain like the natives' curfew-bell of
Alexandra, a bell not always very punctually rung. 'We are in at
the death of malaria, of black-water, and of horse-sickness.'
So clanged the bell, the bell in the market tower, the tower of
the dismantled pioneer fort. And it seemed to me that I saw
Malaria a lean yellow ague-shaken shape with a Cape-boy sort of
face, steal away out of the town past the new Railway Station,
and across the river. He went, like a frightened Kaffir dog with
a jackal-like yelp, far away into the Veld. I am not sure whether
he did not become canine on the way, at least cynocephalous. I
followed him. I went far in that following, over country that I
remember as very difficult, there were so many stumps of trees
about. Moreover, it had abundance of black-jacks to stud one's
socks with. 'He is going through dry places seeking rest,' I
thought. 'Soon he will return.' And sure enough we were to return
by-and by. And a jackal pack of seven, that I was somehow
expecting to come, came with us. We saw the lights of Alexandra
soon, but the people had gone to bed, it seemed. There was no one
about anywhere. Then the leading jackal fed foul and lapped long
at a great black drain. Afterwards he howled under a window of
the Hospital, and leaped through it, straddling his legs. Then I
awoke.
I married Marvell on the following Monday, and partook of his
wedding-lunch. He made a far more florescent speech than that
earlier one, it compared with it as the nuptial champagne with
Miller's bottled beer.
'The old Pioneer is now dead,' he told us, 'as dead as the Dodo
or the Great Auk. No longer need we take Quinine to be "our grim
chamberlain to usher us and draw" . . .' (here his memory of Hood
failed him). 'No more need we shiver in our Kaffir blankets at
Kaffir Stores 'fifty miles from the dead-ends of rail-less
post-towns. "Le roi est mort." Malaria is dead or dying so far
as Alexandra is concerned. We Alexandrians are now becoming
wholesome Englishmen in a wholesome White Man's country. Long
live the railway, and may it perforate the Alexandra District!'
'Amen,' said the best-man fervently. But I said nothing.
I admired Marvell. It was just like him to press a guinea on me for
my Mission, though I told him there was no fee of any kind, and
that I was ever so glad to be there. The remembrance of my dream
stung me. I said something for conscience sake. 'Civilization has
its perils,' I said dully, 'immature civilization. The period
between no-drains and the up-to-date drainage system wants some
living through.' 'That's all right,' Marvell declared. 'I'll watch
it. I didn't go through Bloemfontein in the War for nothing.'
'Le roi est mort: vive le roi! 'Alack! If Malaria slackened hold,
enteric tightened its clutch. People were found to say that the
latter state of Alexandra was worse than the former. Marvell and
Rose Marvell both got enteric. But, thank God, the uneasy
misgivings engendered by that eight-devil dream of mine about
Alexandra were not justified! They both won through. They are
going back to England for a change next month (the hay-making
month at home), they tell me.
'God made the country, and man made the town, and the devil made
the little railway-swollen, transitional, Alexandra-sort-of-town.'
So Marvell wrote to me by last mail. He is not so keen now on
the transition stage of civilization for his wife's residence.
He is thinking of a pioneer place in Northern Rhodesia, either
that or London. If the perils of the old regime in Alexandra are
diminished, the perils of the new regime appear to have a knack
of growing.