"On Sunday next, the 14th inst., the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of
Magdalen College, Oxford, will preach in Walton Magna Church, on behalf
of the Gold Coast Mission." Not a very startling announcement that, and
yet, simple as it looks, it stirred Ethel Berry's soul to its inmost
depths. For Ethel had been brought up by her Aunt Emily to look upon
foreign missions as the one thing on earth worth living for and thinking
about, and the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., had a missionary history of
his own, strange enough even in these strange days of queer
juxtapositions between utter savagery and advanced civilization.
"Only think," she said to her aunt, as they read the placard on the
schoolhouse-board, "he's a real African negro, the vicar says, taken
from a slaver on the Gold Coast when he was a child, and brought to
England to be educated. He's been to Oxford and got a degree; and now
he's going out again to Africa to convert his own people. And he's
coming down to the vicar's to stay on Wednesday."
"It's my belief," said old Uncle James, Aunt Emily's brother, the
superannuated skipper, "that he'd much better stop in England for ever.
I've been a good bit on the Coast myself in my time, after palm oil and
such, and my opinion is that a nigger's a nigger anywhere, but he's a
sight less of a nigger in England than out yonder in Africa. Take him to
England, and you make a gentleman of him: send him home again, and the
nigger comes out at once in spite of you."
"Oh, James," Aunt Emily put in, "how can you talk such unchristianlike
talk, setting yourself up against missions, when we know that all the
nations of the earth are made of one blood?"
"I've always lived a Christian life myself, Emily," answered Uncle
James, "though I have cruised a good bit on the Coast, too, which is
against it, certainly; but I take it a nigger's a nigger whatever you do
with him. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, the Scripture says, nor
the leopard his spots, and a nigger he'll be to the end of his days; you
mark my words, Emily."
On Wednesday, in due course, the Reverend John Creedy arrived at the
vicarage, and much curiosity there was throughout the village of Walton
Magna that week to see this curious new thing, a coal-black parson. Next
day, Thursday, an almost equally unusual event occurred to Ethel Berry,
for, to her great surprise, she got a little note in the morning
inviting her up to a tennis party at the vicarage the same afternoon.
Now, though the vicar called on Aunt Emily often enough, and accepted
her help readily for school feasts and other village festivities of the
milder sort, the Berrys were hardly up to that level of society which is
commonly invited to the parson's lawn tennis parties. And the reason why
Ethel was asked on this particular Thursday must be traced to a certain
pious conspiracy between the vicar and the secretary of the Gold Coast
Evangelistic Society. When those two eminent missionary advocates had
met a fortnight before at Exeter Hall, the secretary had represented to
the vicar the desirability of young John Creedy's taking to himself an
English wife before his departure. "It will steady him, and keep him
right on the Coast," he said, "and it will give him importance in the
eyes of the natives as well." Whereto the vicar responded that he knew
exactly the right girl to suit the place in his own parish, and that by
a providential conjunction she already took a deep interest in foreign
missions. So these two good men conspired in all innocence of heart to
sell poor Ethel into African slavery; and the vicar had asked John
Creedy down to Walton Magna on purpose to meet her.
That afternoon Ethel put on her pretty sateen and her witching little
white hat, with two natural dog-roses pinned on one side, and went
pleased and proud up to the vicarage. The Reverend John Creedy was
there, not in full clerical costume, but arrayed in tennis flannels,
with only a loose white tie beneath his flap collar to mark his newly
acquired spiritual dignity. He was a comely looking negro enough,
full-blooded, but not too broad-faced nor painfully African in type; and
when he was playing tennis his athletic quick limbs and his really
handsome build took away greatly from the general impression of an
inferior race. His voice was of the ordinary Oxford type, open,
pleasant, and refined, with a certain easy-going air of natural
gentility, hardly marred by just the faintest tinge of the thick negro
blur in the broad vowels. When he talked to Ethel--and the vicar's wife
took good care that they should talk together a great deal--his
conversation was of a sort that she seldom heard at Walton Magna. It was
full of London and Oxford, of boat-races at Iffley and cricket matches
at Lord's; of people and books whose very names Ethel had never
heard--one of them was a Mr. Mill, she thought, and another a Mr.
Aristotle--but which she felt vaguely to be one step higher in the
intellectual scale than her own level. Then his friends, to whom he
alluded casually, not like one who airs his grand acquaintances, were
such very distinguished people. There was a real live lord, apparently,
at the same college with him, and he spoke of a young baronet whose
estate lay close by, as plain "Harrington of Christchurch," without any
"Sir Arthur"--a thing which even the vicar himself would hardly have
ventured to do. She knew that he was learned, too; as a matter of fact
he had taken a fair second class in Greats at Oxford; and he could talk
delightfully of poetry and novels. To say the truth, John Creedy, in
spite of his black face, dazzled poor Ethel, for he was more of a
scholar and a gentleman than anybody with whom she had ever before had
the chance of conversing on equal terms.
When Ethel turned the course of talk to Africa, the young parson was
equally eloquent and fascinating. He didn't care about leaving England
for many reasons, but he would be glad to do something for his poor
brethren. He was enthusiastic about missions; that was a common
interest; and he was so anxious to raise and improve the condition of
his fellow-negroes that Ethel couldn't help feeling what a noble thing
it was of him thus to sacrifice himself, cultivated gentleman as he was,
in an African jungle, for his heathen countrymen. Altogether, she went
home from the tennis-court that afternoon thoroughly overcome by John
Creedy's personality. She didn't for a moment think of falling in love
with him--a certain indescribable race-instinct set up an impassable
barrier against that--but she admired him and was interested in him in a
way that she had never yet felt with any other man.
As for John Creedy, he was naturally charmed with Ethel. In the first
place, he would have been charmed with any English girl who took so much
interest in himself and his plans, for, like all negroes, he was
frankly egotistical, and delighted to find a white lady who seemed to
treat him as a superior being. But in the second place, Ethel was really
a charming, simple English village lassie, with sweet little manners and
a delicious blush, who might have impressed a far less susceptible man
than the young negro parson. So, whatever Ethel felt, John Creedy felt
himself truly in love. And after all, John Creedy was in all essentials
an educated English gentleman, with the same chivalrous feelings towards
a pretty and attractive girl that every English gentleman ought to have.
On Sunday morning Aunt Emily and Ethel went to the parish church, and
the Reverend John Creedy preached the expected sermon. It was almost his
first--sounded like a trial trip, Uncle James muttered--but it was
undoubtedly what connoisseurs describe as an admirable discourse. John
Creedy was free from any tinge of nervousness--negroes never know what
that word means--and he spoke fervently, eloquently, and with much power
of manner about the necessity for a Gold Coast Mission. Perhaps there
was really nothing very original or striking in what he said, but his
way of saying it was impressive and vigorous. The negro, like many other
lower races, has the faculty of speech largely developed, and John
Creedy had been noted as one of the readiest and most fluent talkers at
the Oxford Union debates. When he enlarged upon the need for workers,
the need for help, the need for succour and sympathy in the great task
of evangelization, Aunt Emily and Ethel forgot his black hands,
stretched out open-palmed towards the people, and felt only their hearts
stirred within them by the eloquence and enthusiasm of that appealing
gesture.
The end of it all was, that instead of a week John Creedy stopped for
two months at Walton Magna, and during all that time he saw a great deal
of Ethel. Before the end of the first fortnight he walked out one
afternoon along the river-bank with her, and talked earnestly of his
expected mission.
"Miss Berry," he said, as they sat to rest awhile on the parapet of the
little bridge by the weeping willows, "I don't mind going to Africa, but
I can't bear going all alone. I am to have a station entirely by myself
up the Ancobra river, where I shall see no other Christian face from
year's end to year's end. I wish I could have had some one to accompany
me."
"You will be very lonely," Ethel answered. "I wish indeed you could have
some companionship."
"Do you really?" John Creedy went on. "It is not good for man to live
alone; he wants a helpmate. Oh, Miss Ethel, may I venture to hope that
perhaps, if I can try to deserve you, you will be mine?"
Ethel started in dismay. Mr. Creedy had been very attentive, very kind,
and she had liked to hear him talk and had encouraged his coming, but
she was hardly prepared for this. The nameless something in our blood
recoiled at it. The proposal stunned her, and she said nothing but "Oh,
Mr. Creedy, how can you say such a thing?"
John Creedy saw the shadow on her face, the unintentional dilatation of
her delicate nostrils, the faint puckering at the corner of her lips,
and knew with a negro's quick instinct of face-reading what it all
meant. "Oh, Miss Ethel," he said, with a touch of genuine bitterness in
his tone, "don't you, too, despise us. I won't ask you for any answer
now; I don't want an answer. But I want you to think it over. Do think
it over, and consider whether you can ever love me. I won't press the
matter on you. I won't insult you by importunity, but I will tell you
just this once, and once for all, what I feel. I love you, and I shall
always love you, whatever you answer me now. I know it would cost you a
wrench to take me, a greater wrench than to take the least and the
unworthiest of your own people. But if you can only get over that first
wrench, I can promise earnestly and faithfully to love you as well as
ever woman yet was loved. Don't say anything now," he went on, as he saw
she was going to open her mouth again: "wait and think it over; pray it
over; and if you can't see your way straight before you when I ask you
this day fortnight "yes or no," answer me "no," and I give you my word
of honour as a gentleman I will never speak to you of the matter again.
But I shall carry your picture written on my heart to my grave."
And Ethel knew that he was speaking from his very soul.
When she went home, she took Aunt Emily up into her little bedroom, over
the porch where the dog-roses grew, and told her all about it. Aunt
Emily cried and sobbed as if her heart would break, but she saw only one
answer from the first. "It is a gate opened to you, my darling," she
said: "I shall break my heart over it, Ethel, but it is a gate opened."
And though she felt that all the light would be gone out of her life if
Ethel went, she worked with her might from that moment forth to induce
Ethel to marry John Creedy and go to Africa. Poor soul, she acted
faithfully up to her lights.
As for Uncle James, he looked at the matter very differently. "Her
instinct is against it," he said stoutly, "and our instincts wasn't put
in our hearts for nothing. They're meant to be a guide and a light to us
in these dark questions. No white girl ought to marry a black man, even
if he _is_ a parson. It ain't natural: our instinct is again it. A white
man may marry a black woman if he likes: I don't say anything again him,
though I don't say I'd do it myself, not for any money. But a white
woman to marry a black man, why, it makes our blood rise, you know,
'specially if you've happened to have cruised worth speaking of along
the Coast."
But the vicar and the vicar's wife were charmed with the prospect of
success, and spoke seriously to Ethel about it. It was a call, they
thought, and Ethel oughtn't to disregard it. They had argued themselves
out of those wholesome race instincts that Uncle James so rightly
valued, and they were eager to argue Ethel out of them too. What could
the poor girl do? Her aunt and the vicar on the one hand, and John
Creedy on the other, were too much between them for her native feelings.
At the end of the fortnight John Creedy asked her his simple question
"yes or no," and half against her will she answered "yes." John Creedy
took her hand delicately in his and fervidly kissed the very tips of her
fingers; something within him told him he must not kiss her lips. She
started at the kiss, but she said nothing. John Creedy noticed the
start, and said within himself, "I shall so love and cherish her that I
will make her love me in spite of my black skin." For with all the
faults of his negro nature, John Creedy was at heart an earnest and
affectionate man, after his kind.
And Ethel really did, to some extent, love him already. It was such a
strange mixture of feeling. From one point of view he was a gentleman by
position, a clergyman, a man of learning and of piety; and from this
point of view Ethel was not only satisfied, but even proud of him. For
the rest, she took him as some good Catholics take the veil, from a
sense of the call. And so, before the two months were out, Ethel Berry
had married John Creedy, and both started together at once for
Southampton, on their way to Axim. Aunt Emily cried, and hoped they
might be blessed in their new work, but Uncle James never lost his
misgivings about the effect of Africa upon a born African. "Instincts is
a great thing," he said, with a shake of his head, as he saw the West
Coast mail steam slowly down Southampton Water, "and when he gets among
his own people his instincts will surely get the better of him, as safe
as my name is James Berry."