Lechworthy’s project for a pamphlet dealing with mission work in the
South Seas had never been of a very ambitious character. It was to be
nothing more than the notes of a passing traveller, with no intention
of comprehensiveness or finality, designed only to awaken more interest
in the missions. Very rarely did Lechworthy lay aside any work that he
had projected and actually begun; persistence and self-reliance had
been the distinguishing notes of his commercial career. But now he
gathered together the memoranda that he had already made, wrapped them
in a big envelope, endorsed it and sealed it.
“Hilda,” he said, “you remember an idea I had of writing something
about the missionary work, you know--I’ve given that up.”
“Yes,” said Hilda, who understood him well, “I suppose so. There’s a
good deal else, isn’t there?”
Lechworthy’s mind had always been far less constricted than his
opponents had supposed, and he was beginning now to adjust himself to
the new ideas and facts that had lately come within his experience.
Some change of view had been dawning upon him before he ever reached
Faloo. His belief in Christianity as expounded by the evangelical
section of the Church of England remained unshaken, the main pillar
of his life as it had ever been. He still felt the encouragement of
missionary enterprise to be part of his religious duty. But he had seen
things, and he had lost faith in some of the faithful.
He had found quite good men making hypocrites and calling them native
converts, and had regretted that the wisdom of the serpent is so seldom
joined to the harmlessness of the dove. He had found that the teaching
of Christianity had involved too often the teaching of much which
was worthless in European civilisation and positively dangerous when
transported to these islands. With many illustrations the King had made
that clear to him. He had found, too, that much good work was being
done by men whom he regarded as lost heretics and spoke of as “Romans.”
To write the truth as he had found it might do harm. And here, in this
remote island, out of the political and commercial atmosphere that had
sometimes distorted his vision, and far from the petty wars of sects,
specious misrepresentation refused to be called by any prettier name.
Hilda herself would not have shrunk from it with more acute disgust.
Accustomed as he was to regard all that happened to him as specially
ordained by Providence, he meekly submitted to the change in his plans
which it seemed to him that Providence had directed. The work which he
had designed had been taken out of his hands; it might be that some
vainglorious thoughts had mingled with that design. And other work had
been given him. He regarded it as no blind chance which had brought
him to Faloo, had saved him from Bassett’s revolver and Hilda from the
island fever, and had put him into the hands of this strange native
king, with his scheme for making of his own little island a refuge
for some remnant of his race against the devastating inroad of an
unsuitable civilisation.
In his new work Lechworthy was yoked with an unbeliever, or at least
with one who doubted. The King made no profession of Christianity.
With the fundamental facts of Christianity he was already acquainted,
and for a philosophical discussion of them he was always ready. He
professed a general toleration and a readiness to be convinced by
events. But he left Lechworthy with no more than a conviction of his
honesty and a hope for his future.
“You see,” said the King, one evening, “we are very good and mild
people here, and we wish to please. On some islands they fight very
often, and they eat man. But my people are gentle, unless they are
greatly hurt, and so also am I. You, too, I specially wish to please,
and a little lie is easy and costs nothing. But suppose you find me
out, what then? Would you be pleased?”
“I should not, sir,” said Lechworthy. “I should resent it. In fact, it
would make it impossible for us to work together.”
“All right. Very good. That is what I thought. So I do not say I think
just the same as you and repeat pieces of your sacred books. It would
be pleasant but untrue. So when I say something else that may please
you, then you can believe me. You go to get me British protection, to
shut out the white men, to leave Faloo for its own people. But you
want Protestant religion. I say that shall be. In return I give this
Protestant religion a very good chance. I bring in the best native
converts I find, and they shall teach the religion. Not boots, and
square-face, and English weights and measures, but just the religion.
And I build a fine church all correct. If I do not do all I have said,
then I am a liar and you may take the British protection away from us
again.”
Lechworthy smiled patiently. “You will keep talking as if I carried
British protection in my pocket. I hope that something can be done, and
I shall do my best. But how often have I told you that it is all very
doubtful and may end in nothing?”
“No,” said the King, stolidly, “you are a political man, just the same
as Gladstone. So you understand how this can be managed.”
“But I’m not at all the same as Gladstone,” said Lechworthy. “I have
not the gifts, nor the position, nor the influence that he had. I--”
“But still you will do it. You have a newspaper, much money, many
friends. I think you too modest. If you wish you will do it. If you do
it I will give your Protestant religion a very good chance.”
“Wouldn’t the chance be better,” said Lechworthy, “if you allowed one
white missionary. I could select the man myself--a man who would be in
sympathy with your views.”
“It is not then a religion for all races?” asked the King. “Without
the help of the white man it cannot work--eh?” These were calculated
questions.
Gradually he brought Lechworthy to agree with him. In the face of the
doubter Lechworthy felt that he himself must show no doubt. In uplifted
moments he did really feel enthusiastic and confident.
Lechworthy went on in a steady and business-like way, preparing
his appeal for a native Faloo, and requiring from the King endless
information. Were the people sober? They were. As a matter of fact
they had no chance of drinking. Were they industrious? Here the King
hesitated a little. The people of his race were naturally less active
than Europeans. But they could be made to work--oh, yes. What were the
statistics as to the prevalence of crime and violence? There were no
statistics, but the King could give a general assurance. Above all, was
the Government strong and stable, able to control the inhabitants, and
properly representative of their interests?
“But I myself am the Government,” said Smith, slightly aggrieved. “And
what does it matter?”
“I must show that your people are quiet and orderly, and that they can
with safety and humanity be left to themselves; that no interference,
even in the guise of help, from the more civilised nations is required
here. It is part of the foundation of the whole thing--the essential
foundation.”
And Lechworthy went on collecting such facts and concrete instances as
he could, showing an appetite for names and figures that dismayed the
King. None the less, the King was quite docile and did his best. Either
by the extent of his knowledge, or by the extent of his ignorance, he
was always astounding Lechworthy.
The Exiles’ Club also astounded--and possibly illuminated--Lechworthy.
He got on well, amazingly well, with Dr Pryce, whom he could not help
liking and admiring, and to whom he was very deeply and sincerely
grateful, but Pryce was very reticent as to his fellow-members. It was
the King who was Lechworthy’s principal source of information, and the
King had many strange stories to tell of the Exiles’ Club.
Lechworthy had not often been brought into contact with bad men and
criminals, and his idea of the bad man was crude to the point of
childishness. He would have admitted that we were all sinners, and that
even the best of men have their trivial defects and lapses, but he
had always thought of criminals as men bad all through, bad in every
thought and act. He had never realised the share in humanity that even
the worst men sometimes hold.
It did not surprise him that there were occasional scenes of disorder
and excess at the Exiles’ Club, but it did surprise him to find that as
a rule all was orderly and well-organised, and that, without policeman
or magistrate, they obeyed the laws that they had been forced to make.
It did surprise him to hear that the Rev. Cyril Mast, when he first
came to the island, instituted a Sunday morning service, and that
several members of the club, Sir John Sweetling among them, attended it
regularly. It was Mast himself who, under an acute and slightly maudlin
sense of his own unworthiness, had discontinued these services.
“Yes,” said Smith, simply, “this Mast lives badly, talks badly, drinks
very much. But he is a religious man and most unhappy about it. If he
had a choice I think he would sooner be quite good.”
“Every man has the choice,” said Lechworthy, firmly; but to himself he
admitted that every man has not the same kind of choice.
The King was perfectly fair, too, in speaking of the trouble between
the exiles and the natives. It was due to one special cause, and it was
a cause which drove the natives mad; it made them forget all benefits
that they had received, and include both the innocent and the guilty in
one condemnation.
“The innocent?” said Lechworthy.
“Yes, innocent so far as the natives are concerned. The native servants
at the club are treated well as a rule, well fed and well paid, and
they get many presents. Some of the members have handled them roughly
at times, through drink or anger, but that is uncommon, and Sir John
does not like it. If any of them is sick then Pryce comes and makes
him well again, just as he is making your niece well again, and never
anything to pay. The native who has something good--fish or fruit or
fresh milk, can sell it better to the white man than to another native.
It is a few of the younger men at the club who have greatly wronged my
people, but there are many of my people who would like to destroy them
all.”
“I wish you could tell me more of this Dr Pryce. Apart from all he has
done for us I like him. I can’t understand your ideas about him.”
“What ideas?”
“When Hilda was ill you said--truly, I think--that Dr Pryce could
save her. But you said it would be necessary to frighten him. Did you
frighten him? Why was it necessary?”
“I thought he might like to kill her--you too. But I did not frighten
him, and I believe I was wrong.”
“And that story of yours about the _Snowflake_?”
“I do not know. He asked me to get him a passage on the _Snowflake_.
I wondered--and then I warned you. I said the ship and all aboard her
would be lost. I think I was right then, and that it would not be so
now.”
“Well, sir, I think you were wrong. He knows that I would give him that
passage, that I’d give him the boat, that I’d give him anything. He has
asked for nothing.”
“That is because, when your niece was ill, I made a little mistake, and
he saw that I suspected him. If he is suspected then his plan is no
good. He would know that.”
“It’s not an easy thing to find a good man who’ll sacrifice his life
for his friends. Why should Dr Pryce do it for the scum at the Exiles’
Club?”
Smith shook his head. “I do not understand him,” he said. “He is the
one man there that I do not see through. He is straight--yes, but then
he has plenty. He does not take much care of his own skin. I myself
have seen him risk his life--just for a game, for the sport. Why not
then also for the sake of the men with whom he has lived for so long?”
“But you think he means us no harm now?”
The King waved his hand, as though to put the suggestion aside.
“I leave him here alone with you. He takes you out--you and your
niece--shows you the island. Very well. Every day he has a hundred
chances, if he meant harm. If I did not know that he meant no harm he
would have no chance at all. You are the guest of the King of Faloo,
and that is an important thing with me. Besides, on your safety all my
plan depends.”
“I’m glad you think that way about him now. You certainly would not be
able to convince me of the opposite. Why did he ever come to Faloo?”
The King shrugged his shoulders. “I did once ask him that question.
I have not asked it of many of the exiles. The man they call Charles
will chat and laugh about anything, past or present. Bassett once, when
he had drunk a little cognac, told me about himself. Mast has made
confessions when he was drunk, and said they were all lies when he was
sober again. But most of them will not speak of the past, and questions
make them very angry. However, I was very sick, and Pryce looked after
me. Perhaps he saved my life--who knows? So I thought he would make me
his friend, and one night when he had sat late with me I did ask him.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said, ‘Go to the devil!’ and put the little thermometer-machine in
my mouth.”
“Well,” said Lechworthy, “I’ve half a mind to ask him myself.”
“If you take my advice, then no. If he wishes to tell you, he will tell
you. If he does not wish it will be no good to ask.”
The general tendency of Lechworthy’s mind was optimistic. His
perplexities did not lead him to depression. With a complete
confidence in an omnipotent power of good, cognisant of and concerned
in the smallest details of even the least of the human swarm, pessimism
is impossible. Side by side with “I do not understand” comes the
consolatory “I do not need to understand.” It is probable that a
patient submission to the limitation of knowledge, at those very points
where the thirst to know is most acute, is one of the conditions of
happiness. It is rare among the thoughtful men of the day.
His nature being simple and without vanity, the ludicrous had no
terrors for him. When, for example, Tiva and Ioia made for him a
garland of flowers, he wore it with as little concern as he would have
worn a hat, and met the cheerful chaff of Hilda or the doctor quite
unperturbed. He took a paternal interest in Tiva and Ioia, but after
one trial relinquished any attempt to instruct them in Christianity.
Their readiness to make any declaration which they thought was wanted,
without the slightest regard to its basis in fact, baffled him, and
their unintentional irreverence appalled him. He had to admit that
his knowledge of the native mind was insufficient for his purpose.
He found himself at times regarding these pleasant, brown, graceful,
unthinking creatures rather as some new kind of pet animal than as
human beings; and, finding himself in this attitude, repented of it. He
and Hilda learned from them a native game, a sort of “knuckle-bones.”
It is doubtful whether Tiva or Ioia cheated the more shamelessly at
it; when detected, they laughed cheerfully. In return he taught them
to avoid a frequent use of the word “damn” as a simple intensive, and
answered so far as he could their many questions about Queen Victoria
and the British method of executing murderers. He was equally ready to
instruct them about tube railways and telephones. But when he spoke of
such things they became very polite but asked no questions; they did
not believe a word he said on those subjects and were not interested.
It was a time of relief after danger--danger to his own life and to
Hilda’s. And of any further danger that threatened Lechworthy knew
little or nothing. But the patrol at the King’s house got plenty of
shooting-practice under the direction of the King himself; and the King
wore the air of a man who was watching and listening, always listening.