The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
was before Kaffirs started jumpin’. Old feller, you can have it!” He said this with grotesque emphasis, standing with his legs wide apart, his hat perched on the back of his head, his plump hands dramatically outstretched: and Mainward laughed outright.
“Sixteen thousand?” he asked.
“Or twenty,” said the other impressively. “I want to show you—” Somebody called him, and with a hurried apology he went blundering up the green slope, stopping and turning back to indulge in a little dumb show illustrative of his confidence in Mainward and his willingness to oblige.
Mainward was laughing, a low, gurgling laugh of pure enjoyment. Venn, of all people! Venn, with his accursed questions and talk of securities. Well! Well!
Then his merriment ceased, and he winced again, and his heart beat faster and faster, and a curious weakness came over him — How splendidly cool she looked.
She walked in the clearing, a white, slim figure; he heard the swish of her skirt as she came through the long grass — white, with a green belt all encrusted with gold embroidery. He took in every detail hungrily — the dangling gold ornaments that hung from her belt, the lace collar at her throat, the — She did not hurry to him, that was not her way.
But in her eyes dawned a gradual tenderness — those dear eyes that dropped before him shyly.
“Ethel!” he whispered, and dared to take her hand.
“Aren’t you wonderfully surprised?” she said.
“Ethel! Here!”
“I — I had to come.” She would not look at him, but he saw the pink in her cheek and heard the faltering voice with a wild hope. “I behaved so badly, dear — so very badly.” She hung her head.
“Dear! dear!” he muttered, and groped toward her like a blind man.
She was in his arms, crushed against his breast, the perfume of her presence in his brain.
“I had to come to you.” Her hot cheek was against his. “I love you so.”
“Me — love me? Do you mean it?” He was tremulous with happiness, and his voice broke— “Dearest.” Her face was upturned to his, her lips so near; he felt her heart beating as furiously as his own. He kissed her — her lips, her eyes, her dear hair— “O, God, I’m happy!” she sobbed, “so — so happy—”
Sanders sprang ashore just as the sun was rising, and came thoughtfully through the undergrowth to the camp. Abiboo, squatting by the curtained bed, did not rise.
Sanders walked to the bed, pulled aside the mosquito netting, and bent over the man who lay there.
Then he drew the curtains again, lit his pipe slowly, and looked down at Abiboo.
“When did he die?” he asked.
“In the dark of the morning, master,” said the man.
Sanders nodded slowly. “Why did you not send for me?” For a moment the squatting figure made no reply, then he rose and stretched himself.
“Master,” he said, speaking in Arabic — which is a language which allows of nice distinctions—’this man was happy; he walked in the Forest of Happy Thoughts; why should I call him back to a land where there was neither sunshine nor happiness, but only night and pain and sickness?”
“You’re a philosopher,” said Sanders irritably.
“I am a follower of the Prophet,” said Abiboo, the Kano boy; “and all things are according to God’s wisdom.”
VIII. The Akasavas
You who do not understand how out of good evil may arise must take your spade to some virgin grassland, untouched — by the hand of man from the beginning of time.
Here is soft, sweet grass, and never a sign of nettle, or rank, evil weed. It is as God made it. Turn the soil with your spade, intent on improving His handiwork, and next season — weeds, nettles, lank creeping things, and coarse-leafed vegetation cover the ground.
Your spade has aroused to life the dormant seeds of evil, germinated the ugly waste life that all these long years has been sleeping out of sight — in twenty years, with careful cultivation, you may fight down the weeds and restore the grassland, but it takes a lot of doing.
Your intentions may have been the best in disturbing the primal sod; you may have had views of roses flourishing where grass was; the result is very much the same.
I apply this parable to the story of a missionary and his work. The missionary was a good man, though of the wrong colour. He had large ideas on his duty to his fellows; he was inspired by the work of his cloth in another country; but, as Sanders properly said, India is not Africa.
Kenneth McDolan came to Mr Commissioner Sanders with a letter of introduction from the new Administration.
Sanders was at “chop” one blazing morning when his servant, who was also his sergeant, Abiboo, brought a card to him. It was a nice card, rounded at the corners, and gilt-edged, and in the centre, in old English type, was the inscription — REV. KENNETH McDOLAN.
Underneath was scribbled in pencil: “On a brief visit.” Sanders sniffed impatiently, for ‘reverend’ meant ‘missionary,’ and ‘missionary’ might mean anything. He looked at the card again and frowned in his perplexity. Somehow the old English and the reverendness of the visiting card did not go well with the rounded corners and the gilt edge.
“Where is he?” he demanded.
“Master,” said Abiboo, “he is on the verandah. Shall I kick him off?” Abiboo said this very naturally and with simple directness, and Sanders stared at him.
“Son of sin!” he said sternly, “is it thus you speak of God-men, and of white men at that?”
“This man wears the clothes of a God-man,” said Abiboo serenely; “but he is a black man, therefore of no consequence.”
Sanders pulled a pair of mosquito boots over his pyjamas and swore to himself.
“White missionaries, yes,” he said wrathfully, “but black missionaries I will not endure.”
The Reverend Kenneth was sitting in Sanders’ basket-chair, one leg flung negligently over one side of the chair to display a silk sock. His fingertips were touching, and he was gazing with goodnatured tolerance at the little green garden which was the Commissioner’s special delight.
He was black, very black; but his manners were easy, and his bearing self possessed.
He nodded smilingly to Sanders and extended a lazy hand.
“Ah, Mr Commissioner,” he said in faultless English, “I have heard a great deal about you.”
“Get out of that chair,” said Sanders, who had no small talk worth mentioning, “and stand up when I come out to you! What do you want?” The Reverend Kenneth rose quickly, and accepted the situation with a rapidity which will be incomprehensible to any who do not know how thumbnail deep is the cultivation of the cultured savage.
“I am on a brief visit,” he said, a note of deference in his tone. “I am taking the small towns and villages along the coast, holding services, and I desire permission to speak to your people.” This was not the speech he had prepared. He had come straight from England, where he had been something of a lion in Bayswater society, and where, too, his theological attainments had won him regard and no small amount of fame in even a wider circle.
“You may speak to my people,” said Sanders; “but you may not address the Kano folk nor the Houssas, because they are petrified in the