by admin » Thu May 31, 2018 6:21 am
Part 2 of 2
“Oh, you do ask such curious questions,” said Peter. “If they don’t like the Turks, why should they have ‘em? If the French came now and conquered us, and we tried to drive them out first chance we had; you wouldn’t call us rebels! Why shouldn’t they try to turn those bloody Turks out? Besides,” said Peter, bending over and talking in the manner of one who imparts secret and important information; “you see, if we don’t help the Armenians the Russians would; and we,” said Peter, looking exceedingly knowing, “we’ve got to prevent that: they’d get the land; and it’s on the road to India. And we don’t mean them to. I suppose you don’t know much about politics in Palestine?” said Peter, looking kindly and patronisingly at the stranger.
“If these men,” said the stranger, “would rather be free, or be under the British Government, than under the Chartered Company, why, when they resist the Chartered Company, are they more rebels than the Armenians when they resist the Turk? Is the Chartered Company God, that every knee should bow before it, and before it every head be bent? Would you, the white men of England, submit to its rule for one day?”
“Ah,” said Peter, “no, of course we shouldn’t, but we are white men, and so are the Armenians—almost—” Then he glanced at the stranger’s dark face, and added quickly, “At least, it’s not the colour that matters, you know. I rather like a dark face, my mother’s eyes are brown—but the Armenians, you know, they’ve got long hair like us.”
“Oh, it is the hair, then, that matters,” said the stranger softly.
“Oh, well,” said Peter, “it’s not altogether, of course. But it’s quite a different thing, the Armenians wanting to get rid of the Turks, and these bloody niggers wanting to get rid of the Chartered Company. Besides, the Armenians are Christians, like us!”
“Are YOU Christians?” A strange storm broke across the stranger’s features; he rose to his feet.
“Why, of course, we are!” said Peter. “We’re all Christians, we English. Perhaps you don’t like Christians, though? Some Jews don’t, I know,” said Peter, looking up soothingly at him.
“I neither love nor hate any man for that which he is called,” said the stranger; “the name boots nothing.”
The stranger sat down again beside the fire, and folded his hands.
“Is the Chartered Company Christian also?” he asked.
“Yes, oh yes,” said Peter.
“What is a Christian?” asked the stranger.
“Well, now, you really do ask such curious questions. A Christian is a man who believes in Heaven and Hell, and God and the Bible, and in Jesus Christ, that he’ll save him from going to Hell, and if he believes he’ll be saved, he will be saved.”
“But here, in this world, what is a Christian?”
“Why,” said Peter, “I’m a Christian—we’re all Christians.”
The stranger looked into the fire; and Peter thought he would change the subject. “It’s curious how like my mother you are; I mean, your ways. She was always saying to me, ‘Don’t be too anxious to make money, Peter. Too much wealth is as bad as too much poverty.’ You’re very like her.”
After a while Peter said, bending over a little towards the stranger, “If you don’t want to make money, what did you come to this land for? No one comes here for anything else. Are you in with the Portuguese?”
“I am not more with one people than with another,” said the stranger. “The Frenchman is not more to me than the Englishman, the Englishman than the Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard,” said the stranger, “the black infant cry as it crept on its mother’s body and sought for her breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also the rich man’s child wail in the palace. I hear all cries.”
Peter looked intently at him. “Why, who are you?” he said; then, bending nearer to the stranger and looking up, he added, “What is it that you are doing here?”
“I belong,” said the stranger, “to the strongest company on earth.”
“Oh,” said Peter, sitting up, the look of wonder passing from his face. “So that’s it, is it? Is it diamonds, or gold, or lands?”
“We are the most vast of all companies on the earth,” said the stranger; “and we are always growing. We have among us men of every race and from every land; the Esquimo, the Chinaman, the Turk, and the Englishman, we have of them all. We have men of every religion, Buddhists, Mahomedans, Confucians, Freethinkers, Atheists, Christians, Jews. It matters to us nothing by what name the man is named, so he be one of us.”
And Peter said, “It must be hard for you all to understand one another, if you are of so many different kinds?”
The stranger answered, “There is a sign by which we all know one another, and by which all the world may know us.” (By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.)
And Peter said, “What is that sign?”
But the stranger was silent.
“Oh, a kind of freemasonry!” said Peter, leaning on his elbow towards the stranger, and looking up at him from under his pointed cap. “Are there any more of you here in this country?”
“There are,” said the stranger. Then he pointed with his hand into the darkness. “There in a cave were two women. When you blew the cave up they were left unhurt behind a fallen rock. When you took away all the grain, and burnt what you could not carry, there was one basketful that you knew nothing of. The women stayed there, for one was eighty, and one near the time of her giving birth; and they dared not set out to follow the remnant of their tribe because you were in the plains below. Every day the old woman doled grain from the basket; and at night they cooked it in their cave where you could not see their smoke; and every day the old woman gave the young one two handfuls and kept one for herself, saying, ‘Because of the child within you.’ And when the child was born and the young woman strong, the old woman took a cloth and filled it with all the grain that was in the basket; and she put the grain on the young woman’s head and tied the child on her back, and said, ‘Go, keeping always along the bank of the river, till you come north to the land where our people are gone; and some day you can send and fetch me.’ And the young woman said, ‘Have you corn in the basket to last till they come?’ And she said, ‘I have enough.’ And she sat at the broken door of the cave and watched the young woman go down the hill and up the river bank till she was hidden by the bush; and she looked down at the plain below, and she saw the spot where the kraal had been and where she had planted mealies when she was a young girl—”
“I met a woman with corn on her head and a child on her back!” said Peter under his breath.
“—And tonight I saw her sit again at the door of the cave; and when the sun had set she grew cold; and she crept in and lay down by the basket. Tonight, at half-past three, she will die. I have known her since she was a little child and played about the huts, while her mother worked in the mealie fields. She was one of our company.”
“Oh,” said Peter.
“Other members we have here,” said the stranger. “There was a prospector”—he pointed north; “he was a man who drank and swore when it listed him; but he had many servants, and they knew where to find him in need. When they were ill, he tended them with his own hands; when they were in trouble, they came to him for help. When this war began, and all black men’s hearts were bitter, because certain white men had lied to them, and their envoys had been killed when they would have asked England to put her hand out over them; at that time certain of the men who fought the white men came to the prospector’s hut. And the prospector fired at them from a hole he had cut in his door; but they fired back at him with an old elephant gun, and the bullet pierced his side and he fell on the floor:—because the innocent man suffers oftentimes for the guilty, and the merciful man falls while the oppressor flourishes. Then his black servant who was with him took him quickly in his arms, and carried him out at the back of the hut, and down into the river bed where the water flowed and no man could trace his footsteps, and hid him in a hole in the river wall. And when the men broke into the hut they could find no white man, and no traces of his feet. But at evening, when the black servant returned to the hut to get food and medicine for his master, the men who were fighting caught him, and they said, ‘Oh, you betrayer of your people, white man’s dog, who are on the side of those who take our lands and our wives and our daughters before our eyes; tell us where you have hidden him?’ And when he would not answer them, they killed him before the door of the hut. And when the night came, the white man crept up on his hands and knees, and came to his hut to look for food. All the other men were gone, but his servant lay dead before the door; and the white man knew how it must have happened. He could not creep further, and he lay down before the door, and that night the white man and the black lay there dead together, side by side. Both those men were of my friends.”
“It was damned plucky of the nigger,” said Peter; “but I’ve heard of their doing that sort of thing before. Even of a girl who wouldn’t tell where her mistress was, and getting killed. But,” he added doubtfully, “all your company seem to be niggers or to get killed?”
“They are of all races,” said the stranger. “In a city in the old Colony is one of us, small of stature and small of voice. It came to pass on a certain Sunday morning, when the men and women were gathered before him, that he mounted his pulpit: and he said when the time for the sermon came, ‘In place that I should speak to you, I will read you a history.’ And he opened an old book more than two thousand years old: and he read: ‘Now it came to pass that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab king of Samaria.
“‘And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house: and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seemeth good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.
“‘And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my father unto thee.
“‘And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken unto him; for he had said, I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers.’
“The man read the whole story until it was ended. Then he closed the book, and he said, ‘My friends, Naboth has a vineyard in this land; and in it there is much gold; and Ahab has desired to have it that the wealth may be his.’
“And he put the old book aside, and he took up another which was written yesterday. And the men and women whispered one to another, even in the church, ‘Is not that the Blue Book Report of the Select Committee of the Cape Parliament on the Jameson raid?’
“And the man said, ‘Friends, the first story I have read you is one of the oldest stories of the world: the story I am about to read you is one of the newest. Truth is not more truth because it is three thousand years old, nor is it less truth because it is of yesterday. All books which throw light on truth are God’s books, therefore I shall read to you from the pages before me. Shall the story of Ahab king of Samaria profit us when we know not the story of the Ahabs of our day; and the Naboths of our land be stoned while we sit at east?’ And he read to them portions of that book. And certain rich men and women rose up and went out even while he spoke, and his wife also went out.
“And when the service was ended and the man returned to his home, his wife came to him weeping; and she said, ‘Did you see how some of the most wealthy and important people got up and went out this morning? Why did you preach such a sermon, when we were just going to have the new wing added to our house, and you thought they were going to raise your salary? You have not a single Boer in your congregation! Why need you say the Chartered Company raid on Johannesburg was wrong?’
“He said, ‘My wife, if I believe that certain men whom we have raised on high, and to whom we have given power, have done a cowardly wrong, shall I not say it?’
“And she said, ‘Yes, and only a little while ago, when Rhodes was licking the dust off the Boers’ feet that he might keep them from suspecting while he got ready this affair, then you attacked both Rhodes and the Bond (The Afrikander Bond, the organised Dutch political party, through whom Mr. Rhodes worked, and by whom he was backed.) for trying to pass a Bill for flogging the niggers, and we lost fifty pounds we might have got for the church?’ And he said, ‘My wife, cannot God be worshipped as well under the dome of the heaven He made as in a golden palace? Shall a man keep silence, when he sees oppression, to earn money for God? If I have defended the black man when I believed him to be wronged, shall I not also defend the white man, my flesh-brother? Shall we speak when one man is wronged and not when it is another?’
“And she said, ‘Yes, but you have your family and yourself to think of! Why are you always in opposition to the people who could do something for us? You are only loved by the poor. If it is necessary for you to attack some one, why don’t you attack the Jews for killing Christ, or Herod, or Pontius Pilate; why don’t you leave alone the men who are in power today, and who with their money can crush you!’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, those Jews, and Herod, and Pontius Pilate are long dead. If I should preach of them now, would it help them? Would it save one living thing from their clutches? The past is dead, it lives only for us to learn from. The present, the present only, is ours to work in, and the future ours to create. Is all the gold of Johannesburg or are all the diamonds in Kimberley worth, that one Christian man should fall by the hand of his fellows—aye, or one heathen brother?’
“And she answered, ‘Oh, that is all very well. If you were a really eloquent preacher, and could draw hundreds of men about you, and in time form a great party with you at its head, I shouldn’t mind what you said. But you, with your little figure and your little voice, who will ever follow you? You will be left all alone; that is all the good that will ever come to you through it.’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, have I not waited and watched and hoped that they who are nobler and stronger than I, all over this land, would lift up their voices and speak—and there is only a deadly silence? Here and there one has dared to speak aloud; but the rest whisper behind the hand; one says, ‘My son has a post, he would lose it if I spoke loud’; and another says, ‘I have a promise of land’; and another, ‘I am socially intimate with these men, and should lose my social standing if I let my voice be heard.’ Oh my wife, our land, our goodly land, which we had hoped would be free and strong among the peoples of earth, is rotten and honeycombed with the tyranny of gold! We who had hoped to stand first in the Anglo-Saxon sisterhood for justice and freedom, are not even fit to stand last. Do I not know only too bitterly how weak is my voice; and that that which I can do is as nothing: but shall I remain silent? Shall the glow-worm refuse to give its light, because it is not a star set up on high; shall the broken stick refuse to burn and warm one frozen man’s hands, because it is not a beacon-light flaming across the earth? Ever a voice is behind my shoulder, that whispers to me—‘Why break your head against a stone wall? Leave this work to the greater and larger men of your people; they who will do it better than you can do it! Why break your heart when life could be so fair to you?’ But, oh my wife, the strong men are silent! and shall I not speak, though I know my power is as nothing?’
“He laid his head upon his hands.
“And she said, ‘I cannot understand you. When I come home and tell you that this man drinks, or that that woman has got into trouble, you always answer me, ‘Wife, what business is it of ours if so be that we cannot help them?’ A little innocent gossip offends you; and you go to visit people and treat them as your friends, into whose house I would not go. Yet when the richest and strongest men in the land, who could crush you with their money, as a boy crushes a fly between his finger and thumb, take a certain course, you stand and oppose them.’
“And he said, ‘My wife, with the sins of the private man, what have I to do, if so be I have not led him into them? Am I guilty? I have enough to do looking after my own sins. The sin that a man sins against himself is his alone, not mine; the sin that a man sins against his fellows is his and theirs, not mine: but the sins that a man sins, in that he is taken up by the hands of a people and set up on high, and whose hand they have armed with their sword, whose power to strike is their power—his sins are theirs; there is no man so small in the whole nation that he dares say, ‘I have no responsibility for this man’s action.’ We armed him, we raised him, we strengthened him, and the evil he accomplishes is more ours than his. If this man’s end in South Africa should be accomplished, and the day should come when, from the Zambezi to the sea, white man should fly at white man’s throat, and every man’s heart burn with bitterness against his fellow, and the land be bathed with blood as rain—shall I then dare to pray, who have now feared to speak? Do not think I wish for punishment upon these men. Let them take the millions they have wrung out of this land, and go to the lands of their birth, and live in wealth, luxury, and joy; but let them leave this land they have tortured and ruined. Let them keep the money they have made here; we may be the poorer for it; but they cannot then crush our freedom with it. Shall I ask my God Sunday by Sunday to brood across the land, and bind all its children’s hearts in a close-knit fellowship;—yet, when I see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all, shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after justice; but the little finger of the speculator and monopolist who are devouring this land will be thicker on the backs of the children of this land, black and white, than the loins of the Dutchmen and Englishmen who have been.’
“And she said, ‘I have heard it said that it was our duty to sacrifice ourselves for the men and women living in the world at the same time as ourselves; but I never before heard that we had to sacrifice ourselves for people that are not born. What are they to you? You will be dust, and lying in your grave, before that time comes. If you believe in God,’ she said, ‘why cannot you leave it to Him to bring good out of all this evil? Does He need YOU to be made a martyr of? or will the world be lost without YOU?’
“He said, ‘Wife, if my right hand be in a fire, shall I not pull it out? Shall I say, ‘God may bring good out of this evil,’ and let it burn? That Unknown that lies beyond us we know of no otherwise than through its manifestation in our own hearts; it works no otherwise upon the sons of men than through man. And shall I feel no bond binding me to the men to come, and desire no good or beauty for them—I, who am what I am, and enjoy what I enjoy, because for countless ages in the past men have lived and laboured, who lived not for themselves alone, and counted no costs? Would the great statue, the great poem, the great reform ever be accomplished, if men counted the cost and created for their own lives alone? And no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. You cannot tell me not to love the men who shall be after me; a soft voice within me, I know not what, cries out ever, ‘Live for them as for your own children.’ When in the circle of my own small life all is dark, and I despair, hope springs up in me when I remember that something nobler and fairer may spring up in the spot where I now stand.’
“And she said, ‘You want to put everyone against us! The other women will not call on me; and our church is more and more made up of poor people. Money holds by money. If your congregation were Dutchmen, I know you would be always preaching to love the Englishmen, and be kind to niggers. If they were Kaffirs you would always be telling them to help white men. You will never be on the side of the people who can do anything for us! You know the offer we had from—’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, what are the Boer, and the Russian, and the Turk to me; am I responsible for their action? It is my own nation, mine, which I love as a man loves his own soul, whose acts touch me. I would that wherever our flag was planted the feeble or oppressed peoples of earth might gather under it, saying, ‘Under this banner is freedom and justice which knows no race or colour.’ I wish that on our banner were blazoned in large letters “Justice and Mercy”, and that in every new land which our feet touch, every son among us might see ever blazoned above his head that banner, and below it the great order:—“By this sign, Conquer!”—and that the pirate flag which some men now wave in its place, may be torn down and furled for ever! Shall I condone the action of some, simply because they happen to be of my own race, when in Bushman or Hottentot I would condemn it? Shall men belonging to one of the mightiest races of earth, creep softly on their bellies, to attack an unwarned neighbour; when even the Kaffir has again and again given notice of war, saying, ‘Be ready, on such and such a day I come to fight you?’ Is England’s power so broken, and our race so enfeebled, that we dare no longer to proclaim war; but must creep silently upon our bellies in the dark to stab, like a subject people to whom no other course is open? These men are English; but not English-MEN. When the men of our race fight, they go to war with a blazoned flag and the loud trumpet before them. It is because I am an Englishman that these things crush me. Better that ten thousand of us should lie dead and defeated on one battlefield, fighting for some great cause, and my own sons among them, than that those twelve poor boys should have fallen at Doornkop, fighting to fill up the pockets of those already oe’r-heavy with gold.’
“And she said, ‘YOU, what does it matter what you feel or think; YOU will never be able to do anything!’
“And he said, ‘Oh my wife, stand by me; do not crush me. For me in this matter there is no path but one on which light shines.’
“And she said, ‘You are very unkind; you don’t care what the people say about us!’ and she wept bitterly, and went out of the room. But as soon as the door was shut, she dried her tears; and she said to herself, ‘Now he will never dare to preach such a sermon again. He dares never oppose me when once I have set down my foot.’
“And the man spoke to no one, and went out alone in the veld. All the afternoon he walked up and down among the sand and low bushes; and I walked there beside him.
“And when the evening came, he went back to his chapel. Many were absent, but the elders sat in their places, and his wife also was there. And the light shone on the empty benches. And when the time came he opened the old book of the Jews; and he turned the leaves and read:—‘If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, ‘Behold we knew it not!’ Doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth he not know it?’
“And he said, ‘This morning we considered the evils this land is suffering under at the hands of men whose aim is the attainment of wealth and power. Tonight we shall look at our own share in the matter. I think we shall realise that with us, and not with the men we have lifted up on high, lies the condemnation.’ Then his wife rose and went out, and others followed her; and the little man’s voice rolled among the empty benches; but he spoke on.
“And when the service was over he went out. No elder came to the porch to greet him; but as he stood there one, he saw not whom, slipped a leaflet into his hand. He held it up, and read in the lamplight what was written on it in pencil. He crushed it up in his hand, as a man crushes that which has run a poisonous sting into him; then he dropped it on the earth as a man drops that he would forget. A fine drizzly rain was falling, and he walked up the street with his arms folded behind him, and his head bent. The people walked up the other side; and it seemed to him he was alone. But I walked behind him.”
“And then,” asked Peter, seeing that the stranger was silent, “what happened to him after that?”
“That was only last Sunday,” said the stranger.
There was silence again for some seconds.
Then Peter said, “Well, anyhow, at least he didn’t die!”
The stranger crossed his hands upon his knees. “Peter Simon Halket,” he said, “it is easier for a man to die than to stand alone. He who can stand alone can, also, when the need be, die.”
Peter looked up wistfully into the stranger’s face. “I should not like to die myself,” he said, “not yet. I shall not be twenty-one till next birthday. I should like to see life first.”
The stranger made no answer.
Presently Peter said, “Are all the men of your company poor men?”
The stranger waited a while before he answered; then he said,—“There have been rich men who have desired to join us. There was a young man once; and when he heard the conditions, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”
There was silence again for a while.
“Is it long since your company was started?” asked Peter.
“There is no man living who can conceive of its age,” said the stranger. “Even here on this earth it began, when these hills were young, and these lichens had hardly shown their stains upon the rocks, and man still raised himself upwards with difficulty because the sinews in his thighs were weak. In those days, which men reck not of now, man, when he hungered, fed on the flesh of his fellow man and found it sweet. Yet even in those days it came to pass that there was one whose head was higher than her fellows and her thought keener, and, as she picked the flesh from a human skull, she pondered. And so it came to pass the next night, when men were gathered around the fire ready to eat, that she stole away, and when they went to the tree where the victim was bound, they found him gone. And they cried one to another, ‘She, only she, has done this, who has always said, ‘I like not the taste of man-flesh; men are too like me; I cannot eat them.’ ‘She is mad,’ they cried; ‘let us kill her!’ So, in those dim, misty times that men reck not of now, that they hardly believe in, that woman died. But in the heads of certain men and women a new thought had taken root; they said, ‘We also will not eat of her. There is something evil in the taste of human flesh.’ And ever after, when the fleshpots were filled with man-flesh, these stood aside, and half the tribe ate human flesh and half not; then, as the years passed, none ate.
“Even in those days, which men reck not of now, when men fell easily open their hands and knees, they were of us on the earth. And, if you would learn a secret, even before man trod here, in the days when the dicynodont bent yearningly over her young, and the river-horse which you find now nowhere on earth’s surface, save buried in stone, called with love to his mate; and the birds whose footprints are on the rocks flew in the sunshine calling joyfully to one another—even in those days when man was not, the fore-dawn of this kingdom had broken on the earth. And still as the sun rises and sets and the planets journey round, we grow and grow.”
The stranger rose from the fire, and stood upright: around him, and behind him, the darkness stood out.
“All earth is ours. And the day shall come, when the stars, looking down on this little world, shall see no spot where the soil is moist and dark with the blood of man shed by his fellow man; the sun shall rise in the East and set in the West and shed his light across this little globe; and nowhere shall he see man crushed by his fellows. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall nowhere crush man on all the holy earth. Tomorrow’s sun shall rise,” said the stranger, “and it shall flood these dark kopjes with light, and the rocks shall glint in it. Not more certain is that rising than the coming of that day. And I say to you that even here, in the land where now we stand, where today the cries of the wounded and the curses of revenge ring in the air; even here, in this land where man creeps on his belly to wound his fellow in the dark, and where an acre of gold is worth a thousand souls, and a reef of shining dirt is worth half a people, and the vultures are heavy with man’s flesh—even here that day shall come. I tell you, Peter Simon Halket, that here on the spot where now we stand shall be raised a temple. Man shall not gather in it to worship that which divides; but they shall stand in it shoulder to shoulder, white man with black, and the stranger with the inhabitant of the land; and the place shall be holy; for men shall say, ‘Are we not brethren and the sons of one Father?’”
Peter Halket looked upward silently. And the stranger said: “Certain men slept upon a plain, and the night was chill and dark. And, as they slept, at that hour when night is darkest, one stirred. Far off to the eastward, through his half-closed eyelids, he saw, as it were, one faint line, thin as a hair’s width, that edged the hill tops. And he whispered in the darkness to his fellows: ‘The dawn is coming.’ But they, with fast-closed eyelids murmured, ‘He lies, there is no dawn.’
“Nevertheless, day broke.”
The stranger was silent. The fire burnt up in red tongues of flame that neither flickered nor flared in the still night air. Peter Halket crept near to the stranger.
“When will that time be?” he whispered; “in a thousand years’ time?”
And the stranger answered, “A thousand years are but as our yesterday’s journey, or as our watch tonight, which draws already to its close. See, piled, these rocks on which we now stand? The ages have been young and they have grown old since they have lain here. Half that time shall not pass before that time comes; I have seen its dawning already in the hearts of men.”
Peter moved nearer, so that he almost knelt at the stranger’s feet: his gun lay on the ground at the other side of the fire.
“I would like to be one of your men,” he said. “I am tired of belonging to the Chartered Company.”
The stranger looked down gently. “Peter Simon Halket,” he said, “can you bear the weight?”
And Peter said, “Give me work, that I may try.”
There was silence for a time; then the stranger said, “Peter Simon Halket, take a message to England”—Peter Halket started—“Go to that great people and cry aloud to it: ‘Where is the sword was given into your hand, that with it you might enforce justice and deal out mercy? How came you to give it up into the hands of men whose search is gold, whose thirst is wealth, to whom men’s souls and bodies are counters in a game? How came you to give up the folk that were given into your hands, into the hand of the speculator and the gamester; as though they were dumb beasts who might be bought or sold?
“‘Take back your sword, Great People—but wipe it first, lest some of the gold and blood stick to your hand.
“‘What is this, I see!—the sword of the Great People, transformed to burrow earth for gold, as the snouts of swine for earth nuts! Have you no other use for it, Great Folk?
“‘Take back your sword; and, when you have thoroughly cleansed it and wiped it of the blood and mire, then raise it to set free the oppressed of other climes.
“‘Great Prince’s Daughter, take heed! You put your sword into the hands of recreant knights; they will dull its edge and mar its brightness, and, when your hour of need comes and you would put it into other hands, you will find its edge chipped and its point broken. Take heed! Take heed!’
“Cry to the wise men of England: ‘You, who in peace and calm in shaded chambers ponder on all things in heaven and earth, and take all knowledge for your province, have you no time to think of this? To whom has England given her power? How do the men wield it who have filched it from her? Say not, What have we to do with folk across the waters; have we not matter enough for thought in our own land? Where the brain of a nation has no time to go, there should its hands never be sent to labour: where the power of a people goes, there must its intellect and knowledge go, to guide it. Oh, you who sit at ease, studying past and future—and forget the present—you have no right to sit at ease knowing nothing of the working of the powers you have armed and sent to work on men afar. Where is your nation’s sword—you men of thought?’
“Cry to the women of England: ‘You, who repose in sumptuous houses, with children on your knees; think not it is only the rustling of the soft draped curtains, or the whistling of the wind, you hear. Listen! May it not be the far off cry of those your sword governs, creeping towards you across wide oceans till it pierces even into your inmost sanctuary? Listen!
“For the womanhood of a dominant people has not accomplished all its labour when it has borne its children and fed them at its breast: there cries to it also from over seas and across continents the voice of the child-peoples—‘Mother-heart, stand for us!’ It would be better for you that your wombs should be barren and that your race should die out; than that you should listen, and give no answer.’”
The stranger lifted his hands upwards as he spoke, and Peter saw there were the marks of old wounds in both.
“Cry aloud to the working men and women of England: ‘You, who for ages cried out because the heel of your masters was heavy on you; and who have said, ‘We curse the kings that sit at ease, and care not who oppresses the folk, so their coffers be full and their bellies satisfied, and they be not troubled with the trouble of rule’; you, who have taken the king’s rule from him and sit enthroned within his seat; is his sin not yours today? If men should add but one hour to your day’s labour, or make but one fraction dearer the bread you eat, would you not rise up as one man? Yet, what is dealt out to men beyond seas whom you rule wounds you not. Nay, have you not sometimes said, as kings of old: ‘It matters not who holds out our sword, marauder or speculator, so he calls it ours, we must cloak up the evil it has done!’ Think you, no other curses rise to heaven but yours? Where is your sword? Into whose hand has it fallen? Take it quickly and cleanse it!’”
Peter Halket crouched, looking upwards; then he cried: “Master, I cannot give that message, I am a poor unlearn’d man. And if I should go to England and cry aloud, they would say, ‘Who is this, who comes preaching to a great people? Is not his mother with us, and a washerwoman; and was not his father a day labourer at two shillings a day?’ and they would laugh me to scorn. And, in truth, the message is so long I could not well remember it; give me other work to do.”
And the stranger said, “Take a message to the men and women of this land. Go, from the Zambezi to the sea, and cry to its white men and women, and say: ‘I saw a wide field, and in it were two fair beasts. Wide was the field about them and rich was the earth with sweet scented herbs, and so abundant was the pasturage that hardly might they consume all that grew about them: and the two were like one to another, for they were the sons of one mother. And as I looked, I saw, far off to the northward, a speck within the sky, so small it was, and so high it was, that the eye scarce might mark it. Then it came nearer and hovered over the spot where the two beasts fed:—and its neck was bare, and its beak was hooked, and its talons were long, and its wings strong. And it hovered over the field where the two beasts were; and I saw it settle down upon a great white stone; and it waited. And I saw more specks to the northward, and more and more came onward to join him who sat upon the stone. And some hovered over the beasts, and some sharpened their beaks on the stones; and some walked in and out between the beasts’ legs. And I saw that they were waiting for something.
“‘Then he who first came flew from one of the beasts to the other, and sat upon their necks, and put his beak within their ears. And he flew from one to the other and flapped his wings in their faces till the beasts were blinded, and each believed it was his fellow who attacked him. And they fell to, and fought; they gored one another’s sides till the field was red with blood and the ground shook beneath them. The birds sat by and watched; and when the blood flowed they walked round and round. And when the strength of the two beasts was exhausted they fell to earth. Then the birds settled down upon them, and feasted; till their maws were full, and their long bare necks were wet; and they stood with their beaks deep in the entrails of the two dead beasts; and looked out with their keen bright eyes from above them. And he who was king of all plucked out the eyes, and fed on the hearts of the dead beasts. And when his maw was full, so that he could eat no more, he sat on his stone hard by and flapped his great wings.’
“Peter Simon Halket, cry to the white men and women of South Africa: ‘You have a goodly land; you and your children’s children shall scarce fill it; though you should stretch out your arms to welcome each stranger who comes to live and labour with you. You are the twin branches of one tree; you are the sons of one mother. Is this goodly land not wide enough for you, that you should rend each other’s flesh at the bidding of those who will wet their beaks within both your vitals?—Look up, see, they circle in the air above you!’”
Almost Peter Halket started and looked upward; but there was only the black sky of Mashonaland over his head.
The stranger stood silent looking downward into the fire. Peter Halket half clasped his arms about his knees.
“My master,” he cried, “how can I take this message? The Dutchmen of South Africa will not listen to me, they will say I am an Englishman. And the Englishmen will say: ‘Who is this fellow who comes preaching peace, peace, peace? Has he not been a year in the country and he has not a share in a single company? Can anything he says be worth hearing? If he were a man of any sense he would have made five thousand pounds at least.’ And they will not listen to me. Give me another labour!”
And the stranger said: “Take a message to one man. Find him, whether he sleep or wake, whether he eat or drink; and say to him: ‘Where are the souls of the men that you have bought?’
“And if he shall answer you and say: ‘I bought no men’s souls! The souls that I bought were the souls of dogs?’ Then ask him this question, say to him, ‘Where are the—’
“And if he cry out, ‘You lie, you lie! I know what you are going to say. What do I know of envoys? Was I ever afraid of the British Government? It is all a lie!’ Then question him no further. But say: ‘There was a rushlight once. It flickered and flared, and it guttered down, and went out—and no man heeded it: it was only a rushlight.
“‘And there was a light once; men set it on high within a lighthouse, that it might yield light to all souls at sea; that afar off they might see its steady light and find harbour, and escape the rocks.
“‘And that light flickered and flared, as it listed. It went this way and it went that; it burnt blue, and green, and red; now it disappeared altogether, and then it burnt up again. And men, far out at sea, kept their eyes fixed where they knew the light should be: saying, ‘We are safe; the great light will lead us when we near the rocks.’ And on dark nights men drifted nearer and nearer; and in the stillness of the midnight they struck on the lighthouse rocks and went down at its feet.
“‘What now shall be done to that light, in that it was not a rushlight; in that it was set on high by the hands of men, and in that men trusted it? Shall it not be put out?’
“And if he shall answer, saying, ‘What are men to me? they are fools, all fools! Let them die!’—tell him again this story: ‘There was a streamlet once: it burst forth from beneath the snow on a mountain’s crown; and the snow made a cove over it. It ran on pure and blue and clear as the sky above it, and the banks of snow made its cradle. Then it came to a spot where the snow ended; and two ways lay before it by which it might journey; one, on the mountain ridges, past rocks and stones, and down long sunlit slopes to the sea; and the other, down a chasm. And the stream hesitated: it twirled and purled, and went this way and went that. It MIGHT have been, that it would have forced its way past rocks and ridges and along mountain slopes, and made a path for itself where no path had been; the banks would have grown green, and the mountain daisy would have grown beside it; and all night the stars would have looked at their faces in it; and down the long sunny slopes the sun would have played on it by day; and the wood dove would have built her nest in the trees beside it; and singing, singing, always singing, it would have made its way at last to the great sea, whose far-off call all waters hear.
“‘But it hesitated.—It might have been, that, had but some hand been there to move but one stone from its path, it would have forced its way past rocks and ridges, and found its way to the great sea—it might have been! But no hand was there. The streamlet gathered itself together, and (it might be, that it was even in its haste to rush onwards to the sea!)—it made one leap into the abyss.
“‘The rocks closed over it. Nine hundred fathoms deep, in a still, dark pool it lay. The green lichen hung from the rocks. No sunlight came there, and the stars could not look down at night. The pool lay still and silent. Then, because it was alive and could not rest, it gathered its strength together, through fallen earth and broken debris it oozed its way silently on; and it crept out in a deep valley; the mountains closed it around. And the streamlet laughed to itself, ‘Ha, ha! I shall make a great lake here; a sea!’ And it oozed, and it oozed, and it filled half the plain. But no lake came—only a great marsh—because there was no way outwards, and the water rotted. The grass died out along its edges; and the trees dropped their leaves and rotted in the water; and the wood dove who had built her nest there flew up to the mountains, because her young ones died. And the toads sat on the stones and dropped their spittle in the water; and the reeds were yellow that grew along the edge. And at night, a heavy, white fog gathered over the water, so that the stars could not see through it; and by day a fine white mist hung over it, and the sunbeams could not play on it. And no man knew that once the marsh had leapt forth clear and blue from under a hood of snow on the mountain’s top: aye, and that the turning of one stone might have caused that it had run on and on, and mingled its song with the sea’s song for ever.’”
The stranger was silent for a while.
Then he said, “Should he answer you and say, ‘What do I care! What are coves and mountain tops to me? Gold is real, and the power to crush men within my hand’; tell him no further.
“But if by some chance he should listen, then, say this one thing to him, clearly in the ear, that he may not fail to hear it: ‘The morning may break grey, and the midday be dark and stormy; but the glory of the evening’s sunset may wash out for ever the remembrance of the morning’s dullness, and the darkness of the noon. So that all men shall say, ‘Ah, for the beauty of that day!’—For the stream that has once descended there is no path upwards.—It is never too late for the soul of a man.’
“And if he should laugh, and say: ‘You fool, a man may remake himself entirely before twenty; he may reshape himself before thirty; but after forty he is fixed. Shall I, who for forty-three years have sought money and power, seek for anything else now? You want me to be Jesus Christ, I suppose! How can I be myself and another man?’ Then answer him: ‘Deep in the heart of every son of man lies an angel; but some have their wings folded. Wake yours! He is larger and stronger than another man’s; mount up with him!’
“But if he curses you, and says, ‘I have eight millions of money, and I care neither for God nor man!’—then make no answer, but stoop and write before him.” The stranger bent down and wrote with his finger in the white ashes of the fire. Peter Halket bent forward, and he saw the two words the stranger had written.
The stranger said: “Say to him: ‘Though you should seek to make that name immortal in this land; and should write it in gold dust, and set it with diamonds, and cement it with human blood, shed from the Zambezi to the sea, yet—.” The stranger passed his foot over the words; Peter Halket looked down, and he saw only a bed of smooth white ashes where the name had been.
The stranger said: “And if he should curse yet further, and say, ‘There is not one man nor woman in South Africa I cannot buy with my money! When I have the Transvaal, I shall buy God Almighty Himself, if I care to!’
“Then say to him this one thing only, ‘Thy money perish with thee!’ and leave him.”
There was a dead silence for a moment. Then the stranger stretched forth his hand. “Yet in that leaving him, remember;—It is not the act, but the will, which marks the soul of the man. He who has crushed a nation sins no more than he who rejoices in the death throe of the meanest creature. The stagnant pool is not less poisonous drop for drop than the mighty swamp, though its reach be smaller. He who has desired to be and accomplish what this man has been and accomplished, is as this man; though he have lacked the power to perform. Nay, remember this one thing more:—Certain sons of God are born on earth, named by men Children of Genius. In early youth each stands at the parting of the way and chooses; he bears his gift for others or for himself. But forget this never, whatever his choice may be; that there is laid on him a burden that is laid not on others—all space is open to him, and his choice is infinite—and if he falls beneath it, let men weep rather than curse, for he was born a Son of God.”
There was silence again. Then Peter Halket clasped his arms about the stranger’s feet. “My master,” he cried, “I dare not take that message. It is not that men may say, ‘Here is Trooper Peter Halket, whom we all know, a man who kept women and shot niggers, turned prophet.’ But it is, that it is true. Have I not wished—” and Peter Halket would have poured out all his soul; but the stranger prevented him.
“Peter Simon Halket,” he said, “is it the trumpet which gives forth the call to battle, whether it be battered tin or gilded silver, which boots? Is it not the call? What and if I should send my message by a woman or a child: shall truth be less truth because the bearer is despised? Is it the mouth that speaks or the word that is spoken which is eternal? Nevertheless, if you will have it so, go, and say, ‘I, Peter Halket, sinner among you all, who have desired women and gold, who have loved myself and hated my fellow, I—‘” The stranger looked down at him, and placed his hand gently on his head. “Peter Simon Halket,” he said, “a harder task I give you than any which has been laid upon you. In that small spot where alone on earth your will rules, bring there into being the kingdom today. Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you. Walk ever forward, looking not to the right hand or the left. Heed not what men shall say of you. Succour the oppressed; deliver the captive. If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he is athirst give him drink.”
A curious warmth and gladness stole over Peter Halket as he knelt; it was as, when a little child, his mother folded him to her: he saw nothing more about him but a soft bright light. Yet in it he heard a voice cry, “Because thou hast loved mercy—and hated oppression—”
When Trooper Peter Halket raised himself, he saw the figure of the stranger passing from him. He cried, “My Master, let me go with you.” But the figure did not turn. And, as it passed into the darkness, it seemed to Peter Halket that the form grew larger and larger: and as it descended the further side of the kopje it seemed that for one instant he still saw the head with a pale, white light upon it: then it vanished.
And Trooper Peter Halket sat alone upon the kopje.