Chapter 2

'We let fly with the Maxim at some natives and one European on shore,' the gun-worker shouted, as they drew up at the ship's side. 'We saw some canoes, three of them. Askaris were in them, and urging the paddlers on. Then, of all times, the Maxim took it into its head to jam badly. So we didn't get them.' I happened to catch my friend in khaki's eye as the other lamented. He looked quite cheerful about things, while the other went on, 'We'd have sunk the lot, if it hadn't jammed just then.'

The thought flickered into my mind as to whether anybody was responsible for that singular coincidence. I looked in my friend's face with some sort of an uneasy question. But he only smiled. His face was strangely prepossessing, so entirely fearless, yet not the least truculent. His brown eyes and boy's lips answered my question with the most engaging of smiles. Those brown eyes assorted piquantly with his very fair hair. He had pushed his white helmet far back on his yellow head. Half an hour later we were in our action stations once more. Our riflemen were firing at individual askaris (were they all askaris, and not unhappy villagers?) who could be descried upon the shore. The signalman, passing by again, snatched a rifle and fired just beside me. One of the Maxims meanwhile was working away grimly, the officer's face was set firm as he steadied his coughing machine. Then it was that I saw my unattached friend step towards him, and take up his stand behind him. Ping! A bullet came just over the gun-director's head. 'That was a near shave,' the warrant officer told me afterwards. 'Someone aimed too high, or he'd have got him that worked the gun.'

Yet it was a mystery to me why the bullet did not get that handsome head behind and above him, the head that I reflected had doubtless helped to draw the fire so high. He who had exposed himself came to me untouched. 'It looked near,' he allowed to me smiling. He stayed by us for the rest of that fell morning. He smiled, and bade me cheer up, when the naval commander went by; had he not twitted me for sitting safe under the bulwark and wincing when the four-inch gun roared? He smiled also a little ironically when my colleague came up, still fondling his trophy and dilating on its splendor. Then he smiled again and again as he moved behind him to and fro on the deck, watching him in the pitiless firing. He smiled moreover when he moved up to the gun; he was revising the gunlayer's work now and then, so far as I could make out his movements. He smiled afterwards when the Intelligence Officer made such sanguine estimates of the slaughter we had dealt out to forts and trenches. They were talking together, he and his comrade of the Maxim gun, discussing whether the bag was really a big one, the former as glib with the pros as the latter was with the cons. The tall listener smiled rather wistfully as he heard them. After the last round from the six-pounder had been fired, before we went to lunch, he came up and said farewell to me. 'But I shall see you again on board, shan't I?' I asked. 'We shan't put you off at the Bay till nearly sunset, shall we?' 'I may be getting off long before then,' he said, but he did not explain how. My prayer book had fallen on the deck, and he picked it up and gave it to me. 'Mind you keep to your own line,' he said. 'I like that prayer in your prayer book about Saint Michael. Doubtless he's covered not a few people's heads in this day of battle, not all of them on the one side. It's likely enough he has unearthly notions about war, as he's an unearthly being. Perhaps the dragon he makes war on, war to the death, is neither England nor Germany, but just the scrapping between them.'

'What do you mean?' I asked, rather puzzled. Yet he only smiled, he was not very explicit.

'Oh, by the way,' he said. 'They tell me you've promised to build a mission church to Saint Michael if you get back to the south safe and sound.' I wondered afterwards who they were that had told him.

'Yes, I said, 'and if I don't, the building of it's endowed in my will.'

'Why not take the shell-cases,' he said, 'if they offer you some? You needn't use them in your church as altar-vases. They'd make a splendid trophy under Saint Michael's feet, a gleaming, sleek-barreled serpent of slaughter, just the sort of dragon for him to tread, and delight in treading. Good-bye.'

He was gone amongst the sailors, just as the steward called me up to the cold soup. I saw no more of him on the voyage, nor have I seen him since that September day. The one or two I asked about him seemed not to know whom I meant. I have often wondered who he was since then, and have framed a theory. Perhaps you can guess what it is without my needing to write it down.

FUEL OF FIRE

I was lucky to get a lift. We had risen before the moon took to her bed, and the sun had left his. We were driving through green woodlands when the light grew clear around us. A little while ago their graceful trees had been ruddy or bronze doubtless. Now it was the turn of the hill-trees on the great kopje that we passed within a mile, to grow bronzed and to redden. For the month of November had only just come in. We outspanned in a valley where the new green of the grass had come already. No doubt a month ago it had looked very black and fire-scathed. Now the showers had brought kind healing and amendment. We made our morning Memorial together (being all of us Christians bound on some sort of a Christian pilgrimage), and after that we breakfasted and smoked at ease while the mules grazed close by, and the driver boiled his pot, and fed it with meal, and stirred and ladled out, and ate in the fullness of time. My heart was very thankful. How much better and kindlier one's lot seemed now fallen as it was once again in this fair ground of a country at peace in Wartime. This countryside pleased me ever so much better than British East or German East this Mashonaland. There to north I remembered without enthusiasm the tropical passions of the elements, I remembered rather miserably some of the things that a state of war had meant.

After breakfast, there was no hurry about our inspanning. But when we had once got off we were soon up level with the farmhouse on the hill's shoulder. We halted for friendship's sake, and waited for the cups of coffee that we were assured would be soon ready. Our host was Dutch-looking, but seemed British; I thought rather narrowly British in his sympathies. He discussed the War keenly and thoughtfully with my companion. He had two brothers in German East, I knew, and he was soon asking me about them. But our paths up that way had not converged. I could only tell him by hearsay about the main advance, wherein they had been sharing, and I had not. As I told, a dark handsome, gentle-voiced woman brought our coffee out. Soon a shy little girl put her head round the corner of the stoep, and withdrew' it again. I jumped down to greet her. Then she agreed to come and shake hands with us both. Her father colored up, and smiled as he told me of a great scheme. A lady in town had offered to board this child. So kind, wasn't it? She was of sturdy English make (her father's father was an Essex man. I had been told). Her hair and eyes were very dark; she looked ever so capable.

'Yes, very kind,' I murmured, but I was reflecting that the lady's kindness might not be so very ill-rewarded. The child might prove useful and cost little. She might give the sort of help that is apt to be useful and costly in a country like ours. 'Yes,' said the father smiling, 'and she may get to the day school that way, the lady says. We couldn't have nearly afforded to send her into town otherwise. But now she's got her chance of a regular school.' 'Oh, really,' said my friend. His kind ugly face looked none too pleasant as he said it, I remember noticing that.

Then he went to his mules to 'buckle' up a strap somewhere. I was surprised to hear him cursing something under his breath. It was not his manner, I thought, to curse straps or mules. We said good-bye a very cordial one and then drove down towards the main road. It winds through a vlei towards the town. We had got almost to the big water-course so banked up in thirsty sand, when he told me what he was cursing. He repeated his words deliberately: 'Damn it, damn it to hell,' he said. I protested faintly till he made it clear to me what he was damning, then I recklessly endorsed his damnation. For he was not cursing Heaven or humanity; he was cursing that blessed Anglo-Dutch, or rather Dutch-English, institution of South Africa, the color-bar. He had been told by one of the managers that should the father apply for admission to school on behalf of the child we had seen, he would be certainly refused. The father was really much too poor to send her away, he told me.

'They're ever so honest and hard-worked. They've put up a great fight on mealie meal against bad seasons. They've pinched hard for the child's poor little outfit. He's got into debt for it. He's a Britisher, and has got two brothers fighting. Very dubious, dark children have been admitted already, as presumably Dutch. Dutch and colonials rule the roost here. And to leave Christianity alone, where does British Imperialism come in? It's risking spoiling a life, and the life of such a decent kid.'

Thereat he certainly condemned guiltily, as he should not have condemned, Dutchmen and colonials, their churches, their social order, and their sanctimony. 'Thank God I was at plebeian Oxford,' he said, 'and was free to mix with colored men. This is far more select, this dorp academy, with its elect Principal and its supermen-managers.' We nearly had a row about his language.

We came over a rolling down towards the commonage. 'They've kept free from fires here,' I said. 'Yes,' he said, 'but I'm doubtful if their vigilance pays, if their game's worth the candle. I mean if such absence of illumination is worth all their watching about.' 'It saves waste of life.' I said, 'animal and vegetable, if you can only keep the fires away.' I appealed to the wisdom of our laws as well as to the argument of mercy which I appealed to me. 'And you get that sort of thing.' he said, pointing to the thick brown tufts of unappetizing feed. 'That's been going more than a year, hasn't it? 'Oh for a wind and a fire,' say I.

We passed over the commonage, which showed very black with recent fires. 'It looks rather knocked out,' I said. 'Yet not without hope,' he answered. We were driving back about the same time next fore-noon. A great fire was rushing wind-driven over that rolling upland. 'At last,' he said. I sighed. A mile further on we came into the smiling green vlei. 'This was black a while back,' he said. 'Doesn't the fire help a bit after all? Who wants that moldy stuffy old feed, isn't it parabolic of that fusty Dutch-Anglo dorp and its prejudices? What are they meant for, and it? 'Fuel of fire,' say I.' I smiled indulgently. Since we had got into town things had happened. We had had our memorial services for the Dead that last night, and this same morning. It was the week of All Hallows and All Souls, a time that often tempts me to homesickness. One is apt to think of hazy, yellow-leaved, dreamy times in old England just about then not to speak of old familiar faces. That night of the first Service was very starry, and the morning of the second Service was brilliantly clear, the rain seemed to be very far away for the time being. People had come at night rather well. Not to speak of one of the school managers having died quite recently, news of one of our police's death out scouting had leaked through from German East. I preached Paradise to that attentive congregation in the iron-roofed church that natives had been so discouraged from attending. I was glad one straggled into the back seats I had battled for, just to demonstrate one's principle of barring out the color-bar. It was all very soul-soothing, thought I, that Memorial Evensong, the stars outside, and the golden evening brightening in the west of the hymn, and the lesson about white robes and palms, presumably of victory or harvest-homing. My friend waited for me outside under the lamp. 'Very fine,' he said in his grimmest way, 'the Anglican view of hopeful souls turned promiscuously into a sort of orchard and rose-garden with plenty of light to gild them, and rest to wrap them.' I smiled. 'True enough in its way,' I said. 'There's another side doubtless, yet the preaching of that doesn't appeal to me particularly. I don't want to work on people's apprehensions. But don't let me stand in your light. You're a lay reader with a bishop's license. You can preach and welcome to-morrow morning.' 'Trust me not to refuse,' he said. 'I don't want to play up to apprehensions exactly. I want to state what seem to me to be relentless laws of cause and effect, and to show the only way with any sort of hope in Christ that I happen by faith to see.' So he had preached that morning. He preached quite simply on the trying of every man's work, on the burning of flimsy work, on the saving of the workman, yet so as by fire. There was a small but select gathering in the Church of Saint Tertullian; two of the school managers even were there. Surely I had baited the trap, I thought guiltily as I looked upon them, by my over-amiabilities of the night before.

Yet that side was true enough, the side I had preached. And was not this side also true in its way? The preacher seemed at first to be referring to my own obsession with the words 'resist not evil,' my following of Tolstoy in my own evangel. He was warm in his commendation. 'And yet,' he said, 'let us remember a just God's resistance to evil. He resists and judges righteously, where we may neither resist nor judge. If we agree not to resist evil violently for Jesus' sake, yet ought we not to warn people of their God's unrelenting resistance? While we would not obscure the fear of our just God by the fear of us unjust men, let us remember our just God!' He spoke of judgment and of purgation, of what seemed to be indicated hereafter by the stupidity and cruelty of people's prejudices in South Africa. He painted quite luridly the purgation he anticipated as likely for such as would dare to wreck a child's education, and possibly her life for a color-scruple. He glowed and kindled. There was no mistaking his drift. He painted the fires of purgation. He painted, too, their presumable fuel, much as I believe old preachers limned the flames of hell and their denizens. 'And it may lengthen out into hell! Who knows?' he kept interjecting. 'Who knows but that that prejudiced spirit you play with may be a damned spirit after all, fuel for the fire that is not quenched, food for the worm that does not die?'

T could not have preached happily on his lines, but for all that I acknowledged that the thing might well be of God this bizarre surprise at his preaching that was glassed in at least two of his listeners' eyes. Did that sermon do any good? Let me anticipate! The child came into town as a half-time servant. Somebody's letter got handed up to the Administrator, and he made a request to the managers. The child was clearly European by predominance of race. They spent five hours of their precious time in discussion. The officials wanted to oblige the Administrator, and they had their way at last. But whether the child once admitted will have much of a time, I am inclined to doubt, should she pass into the Paradise of so select an academy. I heard an ominous story of the Dutch minister last week, how he had threatened a hiding to any child of his that spoke to this forlorn little girl, who seems hard up for playmates. I heard yesterday that one of my Church magnates had asked that the child should not come up to play with his own. Yet the Fire of God has been preached, and I am willing to allow that the thing may have wanted doing rather badly in my amiable parish. Doesn't any real true Christian Peace Doctrine mean spiritual fire and sword? Doesn't it mean burning and fuel of fire as set against the confused noise and garments rolled in blood of earthly campaigns? Doesn't any real true Christian Imperialism mean the sword of the Spirit and the fire of the Gospel against South African Racialism? Perfect love casteth out fear, but what has Racialism to do with such a perfect love as will banish the fear of God?

After all, can any reasonable and lively Christian Faith avail to find any evangelically reasonable destination short of hell for South African Racialists dying in their Racialism save such place of purgation as my friend indicated? Yes, of course, God's prerogative of mercy in Jesus is limitless, but are these Racialists so merciful to little colored children that they should obtain mercy without judgment from Jesus' judgment?

And if the purgative fire seem so inevitable, why not warn its prospective fuel?

Granted the Love of Jesus (Who was certainly what South Africans would call a Jew Boy, Who was possibly so dark that any dorp school would have hummed over His admission, Who enrolled Himself in that House of David one of Whose ancestresses was the Hamitic Rahab apparently, Who took Ham's curse as well as Japheth's); granted that that Love is the one and only supreme motive for Christian Reform, yet for all that, facts are facts, and it may be kind to tell people into what fires the fires of Racialism threaten to merge their selves. On the whole, I am glad that our lay reader preached on that bright morning that over-gloomed sermon, preaching from my own soothing pulpit to my startled congregation. They did not seem to know what to make of it. But the preacher himself seemed quite unrepentant about it. He was talking to me about it that morning when we drove home again, he to his farm and I with him, to walk on to my mission. We outspanned in a very green valley, I remember, and sat long over roast monkey-nuts that his driver benignantly provided.

'The Lord put a word into my mouth,' my friend said quite firmly and simply. 'Was there not the cause the cause of a child's career? Didn't our Savior speak plainly as to the ugly analogy of the man drowned like a dog with a stone round his neck in the deep of the sea? Weren't His children in question when Jesus spoke; wasn't there a Christian child in question when I preached?'

I thought he made out something of a case for his position as a preacher of fiery doom. We were sitting on a beautiful green carpet. The Earth there had come through her bad time. Away on the hillside a black forbidding patch testified to the unpleasantness of the remedial stage. Away in the distance was a beautiful tree-shaded granite hill with much show of brown foliage and purplish underspaces. Just beside that hill the flames came driving (through the old last year's feed, I suppose). His eyes followed mine the way of the flames. 'Hurray!' he said heartily. 'Now we shan't be so very long surely after all. Don't you see the green grass on its way? It was a snug corner, verily, for the old dry stuff. Look, how the flames leap up in the thick of it! Not very juicy browse nor tasty feed, but fine fuel for the fire; good for that, anyway. It was a snug corner, but at last the time was ripe when the fire came driving straight for it the fire with the wind behind. 'Which things are a parable,' he said, his ugly sunburnt face twitching curiously, his eyes quite handsome, nay, even splendid with honest scorn. He was shaking his fist towards the prim little dorp that we had left behind over the ridges. 'No doubt but ye are the people,' he said, 'ye that have made the freedom of England and the franchise of Jesus of no effect by your tradition your sacrosanct tradition. What's the good of the frowsy old stuff? It must be some good; what is it? It isn't very good pasture for sheep or horses, not to speak of dairy cattle, but it's noble food for fire, don't you think?

There it lies-up so snug and sheltered and screened the old dead survival hidden in the prim little corrugated iron-roofed houses, and the narrow gumtree avenues, and the whitewashed Dutch tabernacle where they sing "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" (would you believe it?) But the time will come, it mayn't come in my day or in yours, but the time will come sure enough, when the Fire will trek dead straight for this old dead-ripe stuff, the Fire with the Wind behind. Then God have mercy on them whose work it was! For their work shall be burnt, aren't we sure of that? But as to they themselves being the sort to be saved so as by fire can we be so very sanguine? Meanwhile. . . . . . .

The way he so humbly appealed to me for my opinion on that moot point, did much to conciliate me. He had not carried me with him all the while. He seemed to me a bit out of date, too like an ante-Christian prophet. Yet how my heart went out to him as he ended up so very abruptly with his 'meanwhile.' His voice broke queerly, and his eyes shone. 'Meanwhile they may manage to give a child or two a rough passage. They've got pluck enough for that, the blighters, haven't they?' He turned away from me with a sort of a sob. 'The time'll come sure enough, but it's their time now, and they know it,' he said. 'God pity her!'

'LA BELLE DAME'

Inhabiting this country you inhabit the Middle Ages, you dwell in the wild Marchlands without the pale of Christendom. Here a man may take to the forest roads in the old spirit of errantry. How darkly the shadow of witchcraft falls upon the path; we might be in Lapland or Thessaly! What strange satyr voices the drums have of nights! I suppose it is the reading about such things long ago that gives me this sense of having been here before, of having come back to this country!'

His eyes glistened as he sat over his wine, and smoked Transvaal tobacco in a calabash pipe. He looked much more as he used to look twenty years back, I thought. I had deemed him aged almost out of recognition when first we sat down to dinner. He had come up to Mashonaland with some learned association on a holiday trip. His name was Gerald Browne; he had lectured on English literature these many years in an ancient northern university.

With him came his wife, a very plain and quiet lady, and also an undergraduate pupil named Drayton.

I was asked to meet them, and to stay in the same house with them by a certain minor potentate of Rosebery, who had had rooms near Browne's and mine in years gone by. It was Saturday night, and I had just come in from the veld, while Browne's party had reached Rosebery by the morning train. Dinner had gone rather quietly, and our host had looked bored, I thought. Then, when the ladies had left us, Browne had kindled up, and we all three had a glorious hour, voicing the praises of Africa in a sort of three-man descant or glee. Meanwhile the fourth man, Drayton, a dark, plump and smiling youth, listened to us with a charming air of respectful attention. Transvaal tobacco was good, and the talk was good, though I say it who should not. Drayton's silence was also good, a very complimentary silence with a distinct character, as it seemed to me. On Sunday after lunch this youth came for a walk with me, while the Brownes and our host reclined.

'Mr. Browne's got a sort of call to the Simple Life,' he suddenly blurted out with a grin. 'It's even money on his selling up at Oxford and coming out here for good. What's going to happen to Mrs. Browne, I wonder?'

I laughed, as I thought he expected me to do.

'He seems rather smitten,' I admitted. 'He certainly raved a bit last night; but, then, so many people do that when they first come out.'