Cinderella in the South Part 6

The next morning broke very brightly, yet there were clouds enough on high to mystify its clear shining. There had been a thunder-shower on the day before yesterday: our former rains had sent on an advance-guard. We had finished our service before the day grew hot, in the prime and cool of the morning. The place had been kept very sacred all that service-time. No hoot of a motor-car had scared the sleep of those lonely hills. Afterwards it was different. People came out in crowds from Bulawayo. There was a special excursion from the Transvaal, I believe, that arrived on that day of all days. We had breakfasted by our camp-fire. Then we came up the hill to the shrine once more, while the boys were clearing up. 'Listen,' said Edgar. A stout Bulawayo bourgeois was holding forth on the crankiness of Cecil Rhodes in choosing to be so lonely. 'He might have considered the town and trade of Bulawayo' seemed to be the burthen of his song. A pioneer shut him up rather roughly. 'He knew best,' he said. 'Where would your town and trade be if he hadn't cleared the path?' Edgar went up to the old fellow, ruddy, stalwart, more or less spirituous, indomitably good-humored. 'Tell me about it please, sir the burial; you were here for it, weren't you?' The old fellow complied with great goodwill.

Bareheaded we stood looking north while he told us of the great camping-out, with the many twinkling fires, by the dam some miles away, on the eve of the entombment. He told, too, of the concourse of Matabele at the place itself next day, and of the auspicious climbing of the yoked cattle as they drew the body.

'They never turned. They went straight up,' he said. 'You can see the track-way up the rock now. It meant luck surely, and we took it so, both black and white of us.'

Then he told us of him who lay there, in words of rugged tenderness the hero of the old era who brought on the new era so fast; he who had tasted the old and knew the old was better, testifying the same by his choice of a burying-place.

We were grateful, indeed, to that guide. A few yards in front of us two beaked Afro-Hebrews were arguing as to what the hero's leavings had been.

'What did he die worth?' was to one of them a subject of earnest enquiry. A few yards in front of them again, as we pa.s.sed, some bar-loungers foregathered. 'He stood no nonsense about n.i.g.g.e.rs,'

one was saying as we went by him. Edgar nudged me. 'We all have our different views of him,' he said, 'haven't we? He gave us views and visions. Thank G.o.d that he distrusted himself, and sent us straight to learn where he learned, haply to learn what he missed learning from Oxford, his Mistress of Vision, so far to the west and the north.'

'You see, it's this way,' he said, when the place had grown quiet again in the drowsy noonday. They had gone off then, the Jo'burgers, three wagonettes and a motor-car crowded with them.

'We must keep the road open to the north, mustn't we?---the way his feet lie, the way that goes beyond his vision into bigger visions.'

'I'll try and do something,' I said humbly. 'There are plenty who want to travel far, or think they do.' I glanced at the three Mashonas by the fire. One was teaching the other two. They were spelling out Saint John's Gospel together. 'Is he one of the most adventurous?' Edgar asked. 'He's very willing,' I muttered. 'You ask him whether he'd like to go to school down south.'

The boy's face lighted up when Edgar asked him. It was a rounded, soft-featured Mashona face with large bright eyes. The lips were not so very thick; the nostrils were cut like an Arab's.

'Tell him I'll pay for him and for another who wants to go,'

Edgar said. 'He's probably got a particular friend. What about Atiwagoni?' 'He might be keen to go,' I said, 'and he's quicker than most of them.'

We began to smoke a last pipe silently. The time was drawing near to strike our camp. We must start for Bulawayo at once if we would catch Edgar's midnight train easily.

I reached for my wallet, and brought out an Oxford anthology.

I turned over the pages and began to read rather sadly

Yet half a beast is the great G.o.d Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true G.o.ds sigh for the cost and the pain For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.

'There's that point of view to consider,' I said. 'I'm fond of Arcadia and Arcadians, and there's loss entailed if you send Arcadians on the way of Athens.' Edgar sighed. 'I know what you mean,' said he; 'and I feel it as you do. But Arcadia's got Lacedaemon at her throat, a southern state not much troubled with scruples, neither very philosophic nor very literary. The way has been opened by him we wot of to Oxford, to the Athens of the north. It was opened, as men thought, for the benefit of young Lacedaemonians. The man that was hand-in-glove with Africanders, with our Lacedaemonians of the south, did that. He imperiled Lacedaemonian stability by opening the way to northern stars and their influences to Sh.e.l.ley, Burke, and Mill, and to all manner of people dangerous to the back-veld views of Lacedaemon. He opened the way to Tolstoy's rediscovery of the Christian Law, amongst other northern treasures, didn't he? And I, with the Arcadian taint in my veins, saw the way open and went northwards.

Now it has come to pa.s.s that I remember my own people as Moses did, and use the wisdom of Oxford as he used the wisdom of Egypt, to help one's own people towards a promised land. They want leaders, don't they? Is there not a cause? Is it healthy for Lacedaemon to go on as she does in Arcadia, setting aside Arcadia's own happiness?' 'I'll be back again next year,' Edgar said, 'to compare notes and report progress, should all fall well. If I forget thee, O my Darien-peak, let my right hand forget her cunning!' We knelt long at the grave with the feet of its sleeper laid true north; then we said 'Good-bye' to it.

'Bless him,' Edgar said to me as we turned away.' He opened a wider way than he knew perchance; G.o.d prosper the Great North Road, the Road to Oxford rather than to Cairo!'

THE LEPER WINDOWS

Its Cathedral was rising at last in a small South African capital. For many years a pro-Cathedral of corrugated iron had sufficed. Now the first stage of a n.o.ble design in ruddy sandstone was all but completed.

The new Bishop who had been called to sit in its Cape-oak throne was complacent of its charms. Chancel and Lady-chapel were provided; transepts and tower might be expected in due course of time. The Bishop was long and lean and dark-haired, very closely shaven. He came from Oxford, yet he was wise enough to obtrude that fact but seldom on South Africa. He watched and listened intently and said strangely little; nevertheless, when he did speak, he seemed to have no lack of things to say. His speech to the Cathedral Building Committee after a three months' silence was not without its interest. He spoke well of both design and execution.

He turned to the shyer subject of the raising of the funds. How had they attained to such wealth as their secretary announced?

Mainly by means of three fancy fairs and a cafe chantant. Alas!

that it should be so. Yet he did not propose to hold inquests.

Let the dead bury their dead! Let them, however, set their hearts as the nether millstone against the adding of transept or tower save only by alms made to G.o.d. He went on to ask with whose memory the Lady-chapel was to be a.s.sociated. Was it not the fact that they had a.s.sociated the chapel of Christ's Mother with the memory of a visionary statesman? There seemed to be want of consideration for the great dead shown in their popular decision, inasmuch as he had not seen his way to accept her Son. Was it not something of a felony to have stolen the dead man's name--a felony that had a.s.sisted their funds very lavishly? But, likely enough, the Committee had had some n.o.ble thought in mind when they gave to the dead such reckless honor. The last touches were now being given to the nave. He wished to make a personal request of his own. He understood that colored persons and natives were not to be encouraged to frequent this mother of churches. Their status within was, to say the least, precarious and hard to reconcile with due respect for the second chapter of Saint James.

He asked to put in at his own expense five windows after the likeness of leper windows in England windows that colored persons and natives might use freely and without reproach. By this means someone at least of them from without the walls might be made free of the vision of the services within.

The irony of the speech escaped its hearers for the most part.

After the usual type of debate on such a subject as viewed in South African Church circles, the request was granted.

Now it happened that Mr. Conyers Smythe, the most prosperous man in the whole community, was not present at that Committee meeting. He was a Master of Arts of a South African University, and a real scholar, not a mere qualifier. He was, moreover, both sufficiently educated to understand the irony of a critical friend, and habitually inclined to resent it. He spoke fierily to certain of his intimates when the Bishop's speech was reported to him. He went to see him himself next day in the evening time.

His host came and sat with him on the stoep, lighted the lamp to show him a new book of his, and gave him coffee and a cigar. The hour was about half-past seven, and the week was Christmas week.

There was a new moon of very dim silver in the West looking through the rose trellis upon them, and ma.s.ses of inflammatory cloud were heaped about her. The host looked at the guest meditatively as he lighted his pipe.

The guest was fair-haired and well-featured, as well as magnificently built; but his deep color was not exactly the hue of health. His eyes had been glowing when he had first come on the scene, prepared to open battle. But when his host masterfully gained an armistice they became dull and rather worn eyes, that seemed not to be seeing good days somehow.

Their possessor only grew eager by flashes now and again as the Bishop showed him a second new book one that they both deemed highly delectable turning the pa.s.sages and discussing various phases of its general subject the cults of the Greek States.

They had come together, these two, in a very tiny and remote city each an enthusiast as to this same by-path of erudition.

It was not until he had shown his guest the road on to a large extent of commonage--commonage of mutual delight that the Bishop led the way to a spot therein convenient for the desired engagement. He began to discuss the relations of Xanthos, the fair G.o.d, and Melanthos, the dark G.o.d, in h.e.l.lenic society.

'That's the trouble here,' he said. 'I hope you won't draw the line even at my leper windows. They may at least ease the isolation of our two cults here. I find established so to speak in this Christian city the cult of Xanthos, tribal G.o.d of the fair-skins at the Cathedral, or for the present the Pro-Cathedral.

Also I find the cult of Melanthos multiplying itself at the tin temple of Saint Simon the Cyrenian.'

Mr. Smythe's cheeks became more deeply empurpled and his eyes danced.

'You must know,' went on the Bishop, 'I don't believe in tribal-G.o.ds at this time of day. I believe in Someone bigger. So it was that leper windows, modeled on those of the Middle Ages, seemed to me possible eas.e.m.e.nts. There, at least, Lazarus may feel at home and join in worship, as his forerunners in the Middle Ages did, at their own wall-slits. Thus at least one step will be taken towards the supercession of Xanthos. As to the cult of Melanthos, I hope to help to infuse more of the joy of the Universal into it, so help me G.o.d!!! Yes, let me hear your objections.'

Mr. Smythe began quite conclusively. Yet there was more moderation and more argument in his rather indistinct beginning than in the flowing harangue that followed, when his voice cleared and his periods found their stride. The speech fell from level to level. Ere the end it fell to the level of that sort of invective against natives one hears so often where mean whites forgather a not very dizzy level, believe me!

Finally, Mr. Smythe vowed to give no penny for the future to Church purposes, and never to darken the doors of the new Cathedral, should the concession of those leper windows be confirmed. He would agree to forfeit a thousand pounds should he break his word, he said. Thereupon they closed the subject. The host tried to lead back to the cults of the Greek States, but the guest was now too rapt and breathless to follow to much purpose.

Soon, by mutual consent, they ended the interview, not without private friendliness, but with civic war at heart.

This was in Christmas week, and things went much as might have been expected during the months that followed. The concession had been granted by the Committee, and the concessionaire thought it his duty to be grateful for that small mercy and to act upon it.

The malcontent repeated his vow, and it rang throughout the village-city. A good many of the natives who worshipped at the tin temple managed to hear of it, and laughed to one another; they would watch for the darkening of the doors.

The Cathedral was to be dedicated to Saint Mark as a saint who was martyred in Africa, but lacked a cathedral in the south.

His day was chosen for the hallowing. On the eve some pomp of Procession, Recession, and Anthems had been prepared, and the Bishop was to preach. He had been away much of these last months to north, south, east and west. So custom had not staled his variety of appeal to the outer circle of citizens or villagers.

They, as well as the devotees, thronged the nave. At the leper windows there were knots of dark partic.i.p.ants in the service.

The windows gave; a few the chance of sight, but they were only five in number, and it would seem that many had to be content with very scanty views. It is questionable whether a number of the smaller folk nurse-boys, kitchen boys and telegraph messengers got any sort of a glance ere the pageantry was over.

The night was very clear; the autumn wind was somewhat bitter.

The hymn after the Blessing had been reached 'Brief life is here our portion' and the banners streamed down the central aisle in glory. The leper windows grew very starry with observation.

One boy who had come late had no chance of a view now. He was the Bishop's coachman, a lanky Bechuana, and he stood humming the hymn's air with his back to a window a window near the western door. Suddenly he started. Somebody was striding up to the porch.

Surely there was no mistaking Mr. Conyers Smythe's fine shoulders in that figure nor the jaunty carriage of his ma.s.sive head. Now he drew near, and the light of the porch-lamp fell upon him.

The coachman caught the arm of his stable-boy, who was standing next to him a rather Jewish-looking Mashona.

'Look! look!' he cried.