In the market-place they parted. Willard Bent, after some hesitation,
had asked Harry Spink to come to the Mission that evening. “You’d better
come to supper—then we can talk quietly afterward. Mr. Blandhorn will
want to see you,” he suggested; and Mr. Spink had affably acquiesced.
The prayer-meeting was before supper, and Willard would have liked to
propose that his friend should come to that also; but he did not dare.
He said to himself that Harry Spink, who had been merely a lay
assistant, might have lost the habit of reverence, and that it would be
too painful to risk his scandalizing Mr. Blandhorn. But that was only a
sham reason; and Willard, with his incorrigible habit of
self-exploration, fished up the real one from a lower depth. What he had
most feared was that there would be no one at the meeting.
During Mrs. Blandhorn’s lifetime there had been no reason for such
apprehension: they could always count on a few people. Mrs. Blandhorn,
who had studied medicine at Ann Arbor, Michigan, had early gained renown
in Eloued by her miraculous healing powers. The dispensary, in those
days, had been beset by anxious-eyed women who unwound skinny
fig-coloured children from their dirty draperies; and there had even
been a time when Mr. Blandhorn had appealed to the Society for a young
lady missionary to assist his wife. But, for reasons not quite clear to
Willard Bent, Mrs. Blandhorn, a thin-lipped determined little woman, had
energetically opposed the coming of this youthful “Sister,” and had
declared that their Jewish maid-servant, old Myriem, could give her all
the aid she needed.
Mr. Blandhorn yielded, as he usually did—as he had yielded, for
instance, when one day, in a white inarticulate fury, his wife had
banished her godson, little Ahmed (whose life she had saved), and issued
orders that he should never show himself again except at prayer-meeting,
and accompanied by his father. Mrs. Blandhorn, small, silent and
passionate, had always—as Bent made out in his long retrospective
musings—ended by having her way in the conflicts that occasionally shook
the monotony of life at the Mission. After her death the young man had
even suspected, beneath his superior’s sincere and vehement sorrow, a
lurking sense of relief. Mr. Blandhorn had snuffed the air of freedom,
and had been, for the moment, slightly intoxicated by it. But not for
long. Very soon his wife’s loss made itself felt as a lasting void.
She had been (as Spink would have put it) “the whole show”; had led,
inspired, organized her husband’s work, held it together, and given it
the brave front it presented to the unheeding heathen. Now the heathen
had almost entirely fallen away, and the too evident inference was that
they had come rather for Mrs. Blandhorn’s pills than for her husband’s
preaching. Neither of the missionaries had avowed this discovery to the
other, but to Willard at least it was implied in all the circumlocutions
and evasions of their endless talks.
The young man’s situation had been greatly changed by Mrs. Blandhorn’s
death. His superior had grown touchingly dependent on him. Their
conversation, formerly confined to parochial matters, now ranged from
abstruse doctrinal problems to the question of how to induce Myriem, who
had deplorably “relapsed,” to keep the kitchen cleaner and spend less
time on the roofs. Bent felt that Mr. Blandhorn needed him at every
moment, and that, during any prolonged absence, something vaguely
“unfortunate” might happen at the Mission.
“I’m glad Spink has come; it will do him good to see somebody from
outside,” Willard thought, nervously hoping that Spink (a good fellow at
bottom) would not trouble Mr. Blandhorn by any of his “unsettling”
questions.
At the end of a labyrinth of lanes, on the farther side of the Jewish
quarter, a wall of heat-cracked clay bore the inscription: “American
Evangelical Mission.” Underneath it a door opened into a court where an
old woman in a bright head-dress sat under a fig-tree pounding something
in a mortar.
She looked up, and, rising, touched Bent’s draperies with her lips. Her
small face, withered as a dry medlar, was full of an ancient wisdom:
Mrs. Blandhorn had certainly been right in trusting Myriem.
A narrow house-front looked upon the court. Bent climbed the stairs to
Mr. Blandhorn’s study. It was a small room with a few dog-eared books on
a set of rough shelves, the table at which Mr. Blandhorn wrote his
reports for the Society, and a mattress covered with a bit of faded
carpet, on which he slept. Near the window stood Mrs. Blandhorn’s
sewing-machine; it had never been moved since her death.
The missionary was sitting in the middle of the room, in the rocking
chair which had also been his wife’s. His large veined hands were
clasped about its arms and his head rested against a patch-work cushion
tied to the back by a shoe-lace. His mouth was slightly open, and a deep
breath, occasionally rising to a whistle, proceeded with rhythmic
regularity from his delicately-cut nostrils. Even surprised in sleep he
was a fine man to look upon; and when, at the sound of Bent’s approach,
he opened his eyes and pulled himself out of his chair, he became
magnificent. He had taken off his turban, and thrown a handkerchief over
his head, which was shaved like an Arab’s for coolness. His long beard
was white, with the smoker’s yellow tinge about the lips; but his
eyebrows were jet-black, arched and restless. The gray eyes beneath them
shed a mild benedictory beam, confirmed by the smile of a mouth which
might have seemed weak if the beard had not so nearly concealed it. But
the forehead menaced, fulminated or awed with the ever-varying play of
the eyebrows. Willard Bent never beheld that forehead without thinking
of Sinai.
Mr. Blandhorn brushed some shreds of tobacco from his white djellabah
and looked impressively at his assistant.
“The heat is really overwhelming,” he said, as if excusing himself. He
readjusted his turban, and then asked: “Is everything ready downstairs?”
Bent assented, and they went down to the long bare room where the
prayer-meetings were held. In Mrs. Blandhorn’s day it had also served as
the dispensary, and a cupboard containing drugs and bandages stood
against the wall under the text: “_Come unto me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden._”
Myriem, abandoning her mortar, was vaguely tidying the Arab tracts and
leaflets that lay on the divan against the wall. At one end of the room
stood a table covered with a white cloth, with a Bible lying on it; and
to the left a sort of pulpit-lectern, from which Mr. Blandhorn addressed
his flock. In the doorway squatted Ayoub, a silent gray-headed negro;
Bent, on his own arrival at Eloued, ten years earlier, had found him
there in the same place and the same attitude. Ayoub was supposed to be
a rescued slave from the Soudan, and was shown to visitors as “our first
convert.” He manifested no interest at the approach of the missionaries,
but continued to gaze out into the sun-baked court cut in half by the
shadow of the fig-tree.
Mr. Blandhorn, after looking about the empty room as if he were
surveying the upturned faces of an attentive congregation, placed
himself at the lectern, put on his spectacles, and turned over the pages
of his prayer-book. Then he knelt and bowed his head in prayer. His
devotions ended, he rose and seated himself in the cane arm-chair that
faced the lectern. Willard Bent sat opposite in another arm-chair. Mr.
Blandhorn leaned back, breathing heavily, and passing his handkerchief
over his face and brow. Now and then he drew out his watch, now and then
he said: “The heat is really overwhelming.”
Myriem had drifted back to her fig-tree, and the sound of the pestle
mingled with the drone of flies on the window-pane. Occasionally the
curses of a muleteer or the rhythmic chant of a water-carrier broke the
silence; once there came from a neighbouring roof the noise of a short
cat-like squabble ending in female howls; then the afternoon heat laid
its leaden hush on all things.
Mr. Blandhorn opened his mouth and slept.
Willard Bent, watching him, thought with wonder and admiration of his
past. What had he not seen, what secrets were not hidden in his bosom?
By dint of sheer “sticking it out” he had acquired to the younger man a
sort of visible sanctity. Twenty-five years of Eloued! He had known the
old mad torturing Sultan, he had seen, after the defeat of the rebels,
the long line of prisoners staggering in under a torrid sky, chained
wrist to wrist, and dragging between them the putrefying bodies of those
who had died on the march. He had seen the Great Massacre, when the
rivers were red with French blood, and the Blandhorns had hidden an
officer’s wife and children in the rat-haunted drain under the court; he
had known robbery and murder and intrigue, and all the dark maleficence
of Africa; and he remained as serene, as confident and guileless, as on
the day when he had first set foot on that evil soil, saying to himself
(as he had told Willard): “_I will tread upon the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the dragon will I tread under foot._”
Willard Bent hated Africa; but it awed and fascinated him. And as he
contemplated the splendid old man sleeping opposite him, so mysterious,
so childlike and so weak (Mrs. Blandhorn had left him no doubts on that
point), the disciple marvelled at the power of the faith which had armed
his master with a sort of infantile strength against such dark and
manifold perils.
Suddenly a shadow fell in the doorway, and Bent, roused from his dream,
saw Harry Spink tiptoeing past the unmoved Ayoub. The drummer paused and
looked with astonishment from one of the missionaries to the other.
“Say,” he asked, “is prayer-meeting over? I thought I’d be round in
time.”
He spoke seriously, even respectfully; it was plain that he felt
flippancy to be out of place. But Bent suspected a lurking malice under
his astonishment: he was sure Harry Spink had come to “count heads.”
Mr. Blandhorn, wakened by the voice, stood up heavily.
“Harry Spink! Is it possible you are amongst us?”
“Why, yes, sir—I’m amongst. Didn’t Willard tell you? I guess Willard
Bent’s ashamed of me.”
Spink, with a laugh, shook Mr. Blandhorn’s hand, and glanced about the
empty room.
“I’m only here for a day or so—on business. Willard’ll explain. But I
wanted to come round to meeting—like old times. Sorry it’s over.”
The missionary looked at him with a grave candour. “It’s not over—it has
not begun. The overwhelming heat has probably kept away our little
flock.”
“I see,” interpolated Spink.
“But now,” continued Mr. Blandhorn with majesty, “that two or three are
gathered together in His name, there is no reason why we should
wait.—Myriem! Ayoub!”
He took his place behind the lectern and began: “Almighty and merciful
Father—”