Cinderella in the South Part 7

They both watched the churchgoer as he pa.s.sed up the steps. Then he was gone from their view.

In the afternoon of the next day, when the triumphal services of Dedication were over, the Bishop was being driven to a farmhouse not very far distant. It was not till his mule-cart had almost reached home again that his driver ventured to question him. He had seemed rather preoccupied that driver all the dusty journey.

Now he asked a question that was being wildly debated in native circles that very afternoon. 'My lord, has Mr. Smythe paid all the thousand pounds yet?'

The Bishop started and stared; then he laughed. 'What do you know of Mr. Smythe's thousand pounds?' he asked. Then he answered, 'No, Jack; why should he?'

Why indeed? So Mombe, the ox-man to give him his native name was trying to evade his obligations, was he? Almost bursting with importance, Jack told his master what Jim and he had seen last night. The Bishop listened carefully, and asked two or three questions. Then he told Jack that he might want him and his stable-boy later on that evening. He felt sure that the story was no mere willful fiction. When they were home he wrote a letter to Smythe asking him if he could come over and smoke after dinner.

Then he went off to his sunset Evensong.

Conyers Smythe came about an hour afterwards. The Bishop and he had had but two bookish evenings together since that rather bizarre one in Christmas week. They met cordially enough on this April night.

Smythe was looking far from well. He had been worried about his wife's health she was away in England. The last news of it had been rather disquieting. Smythe was glad enough of sympathy; he was in no truculent mood.

They smoked by the fire in the Bishop's study as the night was cold. The Bishop had some new books to show and points to debate.

The two began with Greek pagan cults, but pa.s.sed on to Christian hagiology, and discussed the legend of St. Mark with a fair measure of agreement. Then, when the coffee had come in, and they had I become friends at ease and amity, the Bishop told Smythe the boys' tale.

Smythe grew curiously white and seemed angry.

Then he laughed. 'Let's have 'em in and hear their yarn!' he said.

So Jack and Jim were sent for, and, after some slight delay, appeared. They were well washed and in their Sunday clothes. They were disposed to be deferential enough, but withal very confident, both of them. They cast somewhat awed glances at Smythe in his armchair, but they told their tale clearly on the whole, in fair Biblical English, Jack first, slowly, and Jim, at a great pace, after his superior. Smythe appeared to be busily consulting a reference while Jim was ending. There was a pause.

Then the guest looked up from his book and stated his alibi: 'I was in my stable, sitting up with a sick horse,' he said. 'I came away long after the church service was over when the poor beast died with frothing at the nose. You can ask my stable-boy.'

Jack bowed his head respectfully. 'Your stableboy, Mutenu, has told me so this evening,' he said. 'But, O master, why should we lie? Is it not known that people have been seen in two places at one time'?'

Smythe frowned. He was not anxious to discuss hypotheses with natives. Then the Bishop told the boys that he had heard enough.

Let them think that although they had spoken truth, they had been mistaken.

'How do you explain it?' said the Bishop rather eagerly when they had gone out.

'O,' said Smythe with a rather bitter smile, 'supposing it not to be a native lie--natives have been known to lie, my lord--it's the sort of story one reads about in the Middle Ages, the sort of legend likely to linger. He was seen going into a church on a certain ill-starred night.'

The Bishop gave a start and interrupted him. 'Do you know what yesterday evening was? Why, it was Saint Mark's Eve.'

Smythe smiled a queer livid smile. 'Yes, I thought of that all along, since the boy mentioned the porch,' he said. 'I've just been looking up the old belief in that new book of yours. I was seen going in, therefore I must look to go out in these next twelve months.

A year, a month, a week, a natural day That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus will be d.a.m.n'd.

The Bishop smiled at the quotation, but looked anxiously at his guest. Was he really taking his subliminal self's choice of date to heart? He proceeded to recount his own unfaith in thirteen's black magic, also in the traditional properties of salt and broken mirrors. He gave instances of disproof in his own unended career.

But Smythe, though he laughed with him, seemed rather restrained and silent: the last hour of that evening appeared to hang fire somehow. Towards the end of it, Smythe talked of his wife. 'She is at her old home,' he said, and mentioned a village very near to Oxford.

'I know,' said his host, looking into the wood fire. He was watching the Cherwell swirl through a narrow archway. He was conscious of heavenly blue in the white limbo ceiling above him, and the cushions of his chair had a gra.s.sy feel.

'She's gone home,' said Smythe, 'and she's not well, and I've not been well.'

'You look as if you want rest and change,' said the Bishop uneasily.

'I think of going a trip to the old country,' said Smythe. 'I was born out here, and haven't ever seen it. I'd like to see it once.'

'O, do go,' said his host. 'It is worth going far. Yes, all that long way.'

Not many minutes after they said good-night.

But the Bishop did not go to bed at once after his guest had gone. He reached for his Keats, and read, 'The Eve of Saint Mark'; then he reflected.

'Strange are the uses of leper windows,' he thought. 'How I should like to know what I may know this time next year, if only I didn't know I'd better not know it now! Well, be it a sign or a mock sign, G.o.d see him through with it!'

Conyers Smythe started home by the next mail boat save one. The same boat carried a letter in the Bishop's handwriting to a pastoral divine in Oxford.

'He's a sick sheep, anyhow,' said the writer, 'and I've a presentiment that he mayn't last out a year.'

As it befell, Conyers Smythe died rather suddenly in England before November was over. People remarked on the dreadfulness of the event. But Mrs. Smythe bore the shock bravely, as if she had been well prepared to bear it. It seemed that she had known the truth about his heart-disease in May, almost as soon as he was told it by the London doctor. Smythe had grown to be intimate in those last months with two or three English scholars one was an expert in tribal cults, and the other was that pastoral divine.

It was one or other of these Oxford friends of his who sent on his last letter to the Bishop in December after he had gone away.

Among other messages, the letter brought this one:

'There was something in that Saint Mark's Eve business I suppose.

But I had had my warnings before of an event that is likely enough to occur this very week. I am glad indeed that I came home and saw things from other sides before the end. Perhaps those crowded-out Kaffirs by your leper windows hurried me up with their intelligence. I am grateful to them for that. Otherwise I might have delayed, and never started on the home voyage.

'You must make some allowance for my old point of view, as I was born into it. But now I want to give both Transepts to the Glory of G.o.d on condition that colored folk and natives shall, have them to themselves undisturbed. Forgive my narrow-mindedness, but I'd rather have it so than have all races mixed up together, and perhaps they'd rather have it so themselves! No, I really don't think I'm dying in the creed of the tribal G.o.d Xanthos, but in the faith of Someone bigger. I can trust you to befriend me at some altar of His. . . . I wish I could afford the Tower.'

'Alms!' said the Bishop. 'Thank G.o.d they'll not be built now by bazaars or fancy fairs or even by cafes-chantants. Poor base-born little churches out here, that one so often hears of, aren't they only too likely to grow up into the temples of the tribal G.o.d?'

Thus the Transepts were destined to be of purer lineage than Chancel or Nave or Lady-chapel. Only the Leper Windows are their equals in descent as yet among their fellow-buildings. But there is good hope of an honorable birth for the yet unborn Tower.

THE BURNT OFFERING A SEQUEL TO 'THE LEPER WINDOWS'

['The Headman made it generally known that he expected all the men, both Christian and heathen, to subscribe to the funds. One man refused to give anything, and was taken before the Magistrate in consequence.' Extract from a South African Church paper, December 22, 1910.]

The transepts had been built and blessed, the five leper windows were no longer over-crowded. Xanthos and Melanthos, G.o.ds of the fair and the swart skins, had in a measure met together, and in a sense kissed each other. Much remained to be achieved in the matter of mutual good understanding, and much more again in the supercession of these tribal deities by a Greater.

On the other hand, something had been done to teach the devotees of Xanthos toleration and a spirit of alms. The Bishop now turned his attention towards Melanthos more particularly what could he do to enn.o.ble the aims and methods of his clients? He had made a journey to England and back not long before the blessing of the transepts. He regretted leaving his flock at the time. Yet certain observations he had made just ere he started gave him much food for thought on the voyage. And when he was home in the old country he was glad to find time and occasion to observe afresh, supplementing Africa by Europe, intuitions by research.

The Rev. Charles Topready, a keen missionary, had asked him to visit him the week before he went homewards. It was the season when that countryside threshed out its millet-grain in a revel of rhythmic labor. The Bishop delighted in some of those airs that the sticks beat time to. He was greedy of fantastic interpretations as he wrote their voweled refrains down in a note-book.

'We may have a Harvest Thanksgiving in church, may we not, this coming Sunday?' he said.

Now Harvest Thanksgivings were as red rags to Topready. 'Why should we bind upon Africa a burden that irks England?' he groaned. 'Surely it is a mercy that we can start afresh on the veld with no tradition of a Feast of Pumpkins.'

The Bishop smiled and smoked and argued by the hour. His point was that festivals of the soil were serviceable for sons of the soil. That agricultural festivals were serviceable for husbandmen, pastoral feasts for shepherds and goat-herds, hunting commemorations like that of Saint Hubert, for those who hunted.