_Civilized and Simple_
It was unfortunate that Mr. Trimblerigg, at this crucial stage of his
career, not having Davidina to worry him, had no need to worry about
Davidina. Some six months earlier she had started upon a career of her
own on rather a big scale--a research expedition, which, though merely
an extension of that taste for travel in strange places which she had
already indulged, was now organized upon such novel lines and to cover
so far-stretched a route that it had attracted public notice, and had
won for her at the moment of departure many send-off paragraphs in
journals of science and in the daily press. It was still something of
a novelty for a lone woman to head an expedition into tropical wilds
south of the equator, for no other apparent object than to collect
botanical specimens, and incidentally study the habits of the native
tribes encountered on the way. In addition, Davidina admitted that
she had a theory which she wished to put to the test; for though not
a Christian Scientist, she was one of those curious people who are
without fear; and being without fear she believed herself safe; and as
she did not mind dying she did not intend to carry fire-arms. The whole
gist of the experiment lay in the fact that, disappearing from the
eye of civilization to the south-east of trails which no white woman
had ever yet penetrated, she intended to re-emerge 2,500 miles to the
north-west, an unharmed specimen of that superior race-product which
she believed herself to be.
She and Jonathan had not been pleased with each other during the War;
and for the first time in his grown-up life Mr. Trimblerigg had adopted
toward his sister the superior moral tone which circumstances seemed
to justify; for in this contention he had not only the world with him
but all the Churches. He told Davidina that she was wrong. Davidina’s
reply was: ‘Seeing is believing; and at present I don’t see much except
mess, nor do you. In war nobody can.’ And having waited till travel by
land and sea had once more become possible, Davidina sent him word of
the object-lesson she was going to give him. ‘And if,’ she concluded,
‘you don’t see me again, you needn’t believe in my method any more than
I believe in yours. In any case, I shan’t haunt you; and I’ve left you
my love in my will.’ And with that cryptic remark she took herself off,
leaving no address.
It would be hard to say what exactly Mr. Trimblerigg wished, hoped,
or expected to be the outcome of her attempt to give him the promised
lesson. Probably he thought she would come back the way she had gone,
with a good record of adventure to her credit, a safe failure; for
he had great faith in Davidina’s powers of survival. What he did not
expect in the least was what actually happened. Mr. Trimblerigg was
inattentive to maps and unattracted to geography; and when Davidina
started on her adventure she was more than 2,000 miles away from any
part of the world in which Mr. Trimblerigg had interests.
Miss Trimblerigg’s travels have since been published in two large
volumes, with photographs taken by herself of things never seen before,
and of some, towards the end, which Mr. Trimblerigg would rather she
had not seen. For the scientific side of her work, two rival societies
awarded her their gold medal for the year--the first time these
had ever been won by a woman; for the other and more adventurously
experimental side, she received an address of commendation from
certain philanthropical and humanitarian societies and other bodies
with crank notions, whose zealous leaflets and public meetings give
them an appearance of life, but whose influence in the world is
negligible.
Davidina had as her companions two other whites, husband and wife,
whom she chose for the curious reason that they were both deaf and
dumb,--very insensitive therefore to shock, very uninterfering and
very observant of the natural phenomena that lay around them. By this
means she secured undisputed control of the expedition, and as much
insulation for her moral experiment as was practically possible. The
deaf-mutes were a great success with the natives whom she employed as
carriers: they regarded them as holy mysteries, and held them in as
much awe as they did Davidina herself. Another curious choice she made
was to have in her following no native Christians. For this particular
experiment she regarded the unspoiled pagan as the better material;
and there was plain horse-sense in it, seeing that before long her
following not only looked upon her as a goddess, but worshipped her as
well. This great sin (though by some it might be regarded merely as
an example of Relative Truth) Davidina committed for more than a year
and over a space of 2,000 miles with great apparent success, and was
not punished for it. It was not my affair: those who read this record
will have discovered before now that I do not hold myself responsible
for Davidina: she belonged, and belongs still, elsewhere; and what
were her inner beliefs or her guiding authority I have never been able
to discover. She never applied to me. And yet between us we shared,
or divided the conscience of Mr. Trimblerigg. The phenomena of the
spiritual world are strange, and many of them, to gods and mortals
alike, still unexplained.
Davidina, then, went upon her travels unarmed--unarmed, that is to
say, with civilized weapons of war, or even of the chase--but by no
means unprovided for. Weapons of a certain kind she had, weapons of
precision, very subtle and calculated in their effect. But these were
aimed not at the bodies but at the minds of those denizens of the
forest and swamp and high table-land whom she encountered in her march.
Every member of the expedition carried a toy air-balloon: and they
had mouth-organs and bird-warblers; and the two deaf-mutes carried
concertinas on which they played with great effect tunes by no means in
unison. Natives, chiefs and warriors, coaxed to the encounter--often
with difficulty--wept and bowed down to their feet as they performed;
also they blew soap-bubbles which had an even greater effect, so that
word of them went far ahead and on all sides, and the route they
followed became populous.
Upon Davidina’s shoulder, for mascot, sat a small pet monkey in
scarlet cap and coat; and he too, when the occasion fitted, carried a
toy air-balloon. And as it went by land or by water, the expedition,
instead of going secretively and silently, made music and song,
and bird-warbled; and waving its toy air-balloons, and blowing its
soap-bubbles--with nods, and wreathed smiles, and laughter, and
hand-clappings--was safe by ways that never varied but never became
dull.
Again and again, in the dense forest jungle, ambushers who had hung
in wait for them, fled howling at their approach--first to report
the heavenly wonder to the heads of their tribe, then returning as
watchers from a distance to be won by the beauty of their sound and
the delicacy of their going--the decorativeness, the ritual, the
blithe atmosphere of it all. And at the next settlement to which they
came, the natives in holiday attire would turn out to greet them with
propitiatory offerings, and songs which had no tune in them, but which
meant that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Month after month, sometimes camping for weeks, sometimes marching
in the track of rivers or skirting swamps, the expedition wore its
way steadily on, making for the point of the compass to which it
had set its face, north-north-by-west. And still word went ahead,
through a thousand miles of virgin forest; and Davidina coming after,
continued--however bad her theology might be--to prove the thesis
she had set out to demonstrate; always triumphal in her progress,
successfully collecting botanical specimens, her course unpunctuated
by gunfire and unstained by blood. For when, in the languages of the
native tribes they became variously known as the Music-makers, the
Ball-bearers: the Breathers of the breath of life, their way was not
made merely safe but prepared before them, and a choice of many roads
was offered them. Runners from a hundred miles distance to right and
left of their route would come entreating them to turn aside and do
honour to communities waiting to welcome them.
For food they depended entirely on the skill of the native bow-men,
slingers, trappers, and blowers of darts who formed their company;
for Davidina had quite correctly calculated that if by this means the
natives could support themselves in life, they could also support an
expedition in which the whites were only as one to ten. Had these
followers deserted, she and her two companions would speedily have
starved. It was a risk--not greater, she maintained, than the carrying
of fire-arms; and since some risk must be taken, that was the one she
preferred.
In the end she had actually to face it and come through on her own; but
the goal of her itinerary was then not far.
It happened one night, after a heavy march that, without knowing it,
she had pitched her camp upon the confines of the Ray River Company’s
sphere of operations,--at the point, therefore, where civilization
might be said to begin. When she turned in for the night all appeared
to be well. Outside her tent the native guards sat motionless upon
their haunches looking out into the black bush; the toy air-balloons
floated dreamily on their pole in the centre of the camp, and about its
base all the impedimenta of the expedition stood neatly piled: there
was then neither sign of danger, nor prospect of alarm, for up to that
time nobody knew that they had touched civilization.
But during the dead hours, some sense--sight, or sound--of peril
lurking ahead: native runners, perhaps, from a distance, or hidden
dwellers in the surrounding forest, had struck the hearts of her
followers a blow. In the morning the camp was empty. The cases of
botanical specimens lay undisturbed, but the toy air-balloons had
vanished. The pipes, the soap, the bird-warblers, the monkey, and the
two concertinas remained, also a small amount of food--rice, flour,
extracts of meat, and other medicaments which white men think that they
require when travelling. It was panic not the loot-instinct which had
cleared the camp of its carriers.
But the cause of the trouble--the propinquity of civilized man--was
also the way out of it. Shouldering what they could of the things
most necessary to life, and striking the downward course of the Ray
River--here a baby stream, shallow and fordable,--they headed toward
civilization.
Toward the end of the second day they came upon the sun-dried bodies of
six natives planted head-downwards in the soil: their withered limbs
trained upright on stakes, their dark leathery trunks still showing the
scores of stripes borne by the flesh.
Davidina had been, for over a year, so far removed from civilization,
that she did not know the latest things that civilization in its
military necessities had been doing; nor had she at that time any
clue for connecting this unsightly object-lesson with the pacific and
missionary efforts of her brother Jonathan. But that night, coming into
a white camp, well fenced and armed--offshoot of the larger expedition
now actively out to impose peace by reprisals--she got the situation
fully explained.
On the same spot where she had seen the impaled natives, a
lay-missioner a few weeks earlier had been found dead from the same
causes.
‘This time we only managed to catch six,’ explained the commandant;
‘our regulation number is twenty.’
‘Regulation number is good,’ was her tart comment. ‘It suggests order
and discipline. Do you reduce the number as you go on; or do you
increase it?’
‘Increasing isn’t much good,’ replied her informant. ‘These beggars can
only count up to ten. We chose twenty as a good working average: it’s
the number we can generally manage to bag if we butt in quick enough.’
‘But a higher scale,’ said Davidina, ‘would give you a better
clearance: rid you of more dangerous characters.’
‘Not necessarily. The dangerous ones can run. We only get what’s left.’
‘You are acting strictly to order, I suppose? Whose?’
‘Trimblerigg’s,’ said the man.
‘I’m Trimblerigg’s sister.’
After that he treated her as though she were royalty--a little puzzled,
however, not quite understanding her. Her dry ironic commendations were
thrown away on him; he was the plain blunt man, doing his job honestly
according to the light or darkness with which others provided him.
The information she got from him decided Davidina not to stay the
night. The natives, it appeared, had a wonderful faculty for moving
invisibly and without sound in the darkness; so in that camp throats
were sometimes found cut in the morning; and Davidina wished rather
particularly not to come to that end before she had seen Jonathan.
She spent the rest of that night and the whole day following in a
canoe rowed by picked Christian natives; the two other members of the
expedition going back under an escort to recover what could be saved of
the impedimenta and botanical specimens which they had been forced to
abandon.
Late the next evening she arrived ahead of rumour at the armed camp of
the central mission. Off the river’s landing-stage she met some one she
knew who directed her to Mr. Trimblerigg’s quarters. ‘I think he has
turned in. Shall I call him?’ he asked.
‘I’ll call him myself,’ she replied, ‘if you don’t mind. It will be a
nice little surprise for him.’
He gave her the necessary password through the lines, for the camp was
well guarded, double sentries everywhere.
The coming of a white woman seemed to startle them, being so much less
explainable than a ghost; but she and her monkey got through. Coming to
a window covered by a chick-blind and showing no light, she lifted the
blind and looked in.