EVEN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DOESN’T MATTER MUCH.
“I did not intend to stay for lunch,” said Phyllis, “but your
overpowering will swept me along with it, Ella. But I hope you will
let me say that I don’t think you should jest about what is--what some
people at any rate think very serious.”
“Phyllis is of Philistia,” said Ella, “and Philistia was always given
to ordeal by champions. She thinks the attack made upon you by two
missionaries in their newspaper organ quite disgraceful. It doesn’t seem
so disgraceful after all.”
“I haven’t seen the attack,” said he. “But I feel it to be very good of
Miss Ayrton to think it disgraceful.”
“Of course I thought it disgraceful,” said Phyllis, “and I came to Ella
to talk it all over. The article accuses you of atrocities, and said
that a question would shortly be put to the Minister of the Annexation
Department in the House of Commons. Now, I know that there is nothing
my father enjoys more than snubbing those detestable men who endeavor to
get up a reputation for philanthropy, and temperance, and bimetallism,
and other virtues, by putting questions on the paper; and he could,
I think, ask some counter question in this particular case that would
ridicule the original busybody.”
“It was very good of you to think so, Miss Ayrton,” said he. “I can’t
say that, personally, I mind all the attacks that all the missionaries
who earn precarious salaries in South Seas may make upon me; but I must
confess that I have a weakness for seeing busybodies put to shame.”
“You may depend upon Mr. Ayrton’s satire,” said Ella. “It never misses
the point in the harness. The barb of the dart is, I believe, Mr.
Ayrton’s, the feather at the other end is Phyllis’.”
“Only once that happened,” said Phyllis. “Oh, no! papa manufactures his
own darts, from feather to tip.”
“But supposing that the charges brought against me are true?” suggested
Mr. Courtland.
“Why, then, can’t you see there is all the greater need for ingenuity in
your defense?” said Ella.
“It is impossible to think of the charges as true,” said Phyllis
stoutly.
“For example?” said he.
“Well, the article said that you had made slaves of some of the natives
of New Guinea, purchasing them by a promise to help a native chief
against his enemies.”
“There wasn’t much harm in that: I did it,” said he.
“And then it went on to say that you kept your promise,” said Phyllis.
“What! They accused me of keeping my promise?” said he. “Well, I’m
afraid I can’t deny that charge either.”
“Did you really slaughter the natives?” cried Phyllis.
The interest which she felt appeared in her eyes.
“I did my best for the savages who had purchased my services,” he
replied. “The campaign was not a protracted one. Two days after the
outbreak of hostilities brought things to a climax. We fought
our decisive battle--the Sedan of King Mubamayo. You see, I had a
trustworthy Winchester. I believe that about seventy of the enemy bit
the dust.”
“Only seventy? That was unworthy of you, Mr. Courtland,” cried Ella.
“Nothing short of thousands counts as a civilized battle. Seventy! Oh,
I’m afraid you don’t do yourself justice.”
“Of course a battle is a battle,” said Phyllis stoutly. “If you hadn’t
killed them they would have killed you. You were in the right, I’m
sure.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said he, shaking his head. “To tell you the
truth, the elements of the crisis of Headman Glowabyola were somewhat
involved. The original dispute was difficult for a foreigner to
understand--it was, in fact, the Schleswig-Holstein question of
Kafalonga.”
“You settled it, anyway,” suggested Ella. “You were the Bismarck of
what’s-its-name?”
“I doubled the parts of Bismarck and Von Moltke,” said he.
“And that’s why they worshiped you as their god? I don’t wonder at
the heathen in his blindness doing that. Any man who was the same as
Bismarck and Von Moltke would certainly shoulder a deity out of his
way,” laughed Ella.
“It so happened, however, that my deification was due neither to my
recognition as a diplomatist nor as a military strategist,” said the
explorer. “No, they wanted something beyond the mere fighting man to
worship, and my knowledge of that fact combined with their paeans of
victory--to the _obbligato_ of a solid iron-wood drum beaten with the
thigh bones of the conquered--to keep me awake at night. But one morning
the headman came upon me when I was about to boil my kettle to make
myself a cup of tea. I had a small lamp that burned spirits, and he
stood by while I filled it up from the bottle that I carried with me.
He took it for granted that the spirit was water, and he was greatly
impressed when he saw it flare up as I applied a lighted match to it. He
asked me if I possessed the power to set water in a blaze, and I assured
him that that was something for which I had long been celebrated; adding
that when I had had my breakfast I meant to while away an hour or two
by setting fire to the ocean itself. He implored of me to reconsider my
decision, and when I had poured a little spirit into the hollow of my
hand and lighted it in the presence of his most eminent scientists, they
said that they also desired to associate themselves with the headman’s
petition. I was, however, inexorable; I walked down to the beach and
had just struck a match on the brink of the ocean when the whole tribe
prostrated themselves around me, promising to continue worshiping me if
I would only stay my hand. Well, what could I do? I weakly yielded and
spared the multitudinous sea from being the medium of what would in all
likelihood have been the greatest conflagration on record. From that
moment, I’m happy to say, they worshiped me as their supreme deity,
and I’m bound to say that I behaved as such; I was certainly the most
superior class of god they had ever had, and they gave me a testimonial
to this effect in case I might ever be looking out for a new situation.”
“That was how you managed to get such a collection of birds, including
my meteor-bird,” said Ella. “But Phyllis of Philistia is shocked at the
bare recital of such a tale of idolatry. Are you not, Phyllis?”
“I think I am a little shocked,” said Phyllis. She did not say that her
first thought just then was that the feather fan was not, after all, the
price of blood: it was something much worse. “It was an encouragement of
idolatry, was it not, Mr. Courtland?”
“Scarcely,” said he. “On the contrary, it was an honest attempt to lead
them from their idols to something higher and better.”
“You are something higher and better,” suggested Ella.
“Quite so; I am a little lower than the angels, but a good deal higher
than the awful image which they worshiped before I turned up,” said he.
“The whole tribe admitted in the most honorable manner that I was by far
the best god they had ever had; they had not an unlucky day so long as
they worshiped me, and I retained my Winchester and a full supply of
cartridges.”
“The testimony was flattering,” said Ella. “But still Phyllis is
shocked.”
“I am,” said Phyllis. “I believe in God. Mr. Courtland believes in a
Principle.”
“Anyhow, I led some thousands of savages from idolatry and cannibalism
to something higher, and that’s a better record than most gods of my
acquaintance can show. Everything must be done gradually to be done
permanently. Nothing could be more absurd than the _modus operandi_ of
your missionary. Most of them have got rid of their Christianity to make
way for their theology. They endeavor to inculcate upon the natives the
most subtle points of their theological system, immediately after
they have preached against the wickedness of economy in the matter of
clothing.”
“A large missionary work might be done among husbands at home,” said
Ella. “But what about the dynamite, that is the charge which still hands
over you--a charge of dynamite?”
“That was my worst hour,” said Courtland. “I had gone up the Fly River
in my steam launch to a point never previously reached by a European.
I was fortunate enough to get some specimens that had never been
seen before, and I was returning to the coast. My engineer and I were
captured when ashore one night getting fuel for our furnace. They took
us into the forest a long way, binding our hands with the fiber of one
of the creepers, and I had no trouble whatever gathering that it was
their intention to make a feast of us--a sort of high tea, it was to be,
for they began brewing the herbs which I knew they used only when
they were cannibalizing. We were courteously permitted to watch these
preparations, for it was rightly assumed that they would be in some
degree interesting to us. We were, indeed, greatly interested in all
we saw, but much more so when, toward evening, a number of the natives
arrived on the scene carrying with them some of the stores which they
had found aboard the steam launch. They broke open with a stone hatchet
some tins of preserved meat, and seemed to enjoy the contents greatly.
The biscuits they didn’t care for much, and the cakes of soap which
they began to eat could not honestly be said to be an entire success as
comestibles. But while we watched them at these _hors d’oeuvres_ to the
banquet at which we were expected to take a prominent part, a straggler
came up with some reserve supplies; I saw them; tins of dynamite--we
carried dynamite for blowing up the snags that obstructed the narrower
reaches of the river. We watched the thieves crowd around the bearer
of the tins, and we saw that the general impression that prevailed
in regard to them was that they had come upon some of the most highly
concentrated beef they had ever had in their hands. When they laid the
tins among the hot ashes of their fires and began to break them open
with their stone hatchets, my engineer thought with me that all the
interest there would be in the subsequent proceedings could not possibly
compensate us for the waste of precious time which would be entailed by
our remaining. We bolted in spite of our fettered hands, but before we
had got more than a couple of hundred yards from the camp, there took
place the severest earthquake, coincidental with a thunderstorm and the
salute of a battery of a thousand heavy guns. We were whirled into the
air like feathers in a breeze, but managed to cling--our bonds being
broken--to some of the boughs among which we found ourselves. Shortly
afterward, a quarter of an hour or so, there came on the heaviest shower
I had ever experienced. Such a downpour of branches of trees, gnarled
roots, broken fruits, birds’ feathers, mutilated apes of many species,
and--well, anatomical specimens! It went on and on until the boughs
around us were made into splinters and we were beaten to the ground with
the force of those missiles, all the dense forest around us echoing to
the shrieks of the lories and parrots, the monkeys and the wildcats.”
“And now the missionaries,” said Ella, after a pause.
“And what happened after that?” whispered Phyllis.
He shook his head.
“After that we came away,” he said. “We couldn’t see that there was any
need for us to stay loafing about the forest when we had our business
to mind in another direction. It took us two days, however, finding our
launch.”
“And that is what the missionaries call your dynamite outrage against
the natives?” said Ella.
“So it would seem,” said he. “I suppose they managed to get some account
of the business; one can’t hush up a dynamite outrage even in the
interior of New Guinea.”
“But what a gross misrepresentation of facts it was to say that you had
massacred the natives,” cried Phyllis indignantly.
He laughed with a shrug.
“Oh, we must all live,” he said.
“Unless those who treat tins of dynamite as though they were tins of
brawn,” said Ella. Then turning to Phyllis she smiled.
Phyllis had no difficulty interpreting the smile.
“Yes,” she said, “your opinion was quite correct: Mr. Courtland doesn’t
care what people say, and it doesn’t matter in the least what they do
say, or what falsehoods are spread abroad.”
“Not in the smallest degree,” said Ella. “Herbert Courtland is still
Herbert Courtland.”
“But so far as I can gather,” said Mr. Courtland, “all that the
missionaries said of me was substantially correct.”
“Read the paper and you will see how detestably false all the charges
are,” cried Phyllis, rising,--the servants had now left the room,--and
picking up the _Spiritual Aneroid_ from where Ella had laid it on a
chair.
Herbert Courtland had not yet opened it. He took it from her, saying:
“Thank you, Miss Ayrton. But I really don’t see that it concerns me very
much whether or not the charges brought against me are true or false.
The matter is certainly one for the--the--ah--_Spiritual Aneroid_ and
its special _clientele_.”
“But a question is to be asked about it in the House of Commons. I said
so just now,” cried Phyllis.
“And even the House of Commons doesn’t matter much,” said Ella.
“That is what papa thought,” said Phyllis meekly. “Only I know that if
Mr. Courtland thought it worth noticing, papa would be quite pleased to
put a counter question. That is why I came here to-day.”
“It was so good of you,” said the man.
“My Phyllis is all that is good. Let us return to the drawing room,”
said Ella, rising.
They returned to the drawing room; but when they had been in the
apartment for perhaps four minutes, certainly not five, Phyllis said it
was necessary for her to hurry home in order that the afternoon letters
should be sent to her father at the House.
With another word of appreciation of her kindness, Mr. Courtland held
her hand a second longer than was absolutely necessary to maintain a
character for civility.
“She is the most charming girl in the world,” remarked Ella to the
visitor, who remained when Phyllis had left.
“Is she?” said he.
“I know it. Don’t you?” asked she.
“How do I know?” he said. “I have thought nothing about it. If you say
she is charming, I am pleased to hear it. It matters no more to me that
the world is full of charming girls than that the kraken is still at the
bottom of the sea. One woman fills all my thoughts. My heart is full of
her.”
“And you want her to risk the salvation of her soul for you?”
“Yes; that is just what I want.”
He remained with her for another hour.