Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales. Arthur Shearly Cripps

didactic building, so the Pageant-Master told us. We passed it on our way out to the kopje country.

      'About as sensuously lovely as a Pills' advertisement,' was

       Spenser's comment. 'A good pity and terror purge.'

      I sighed indulgently.

      'It's very popular, I've heard, among the town boys. It's so very

       European to native eyes, so extra corrugated and angular.'

      We came up at last to that which we sought a huge ellipse and dome of stones and earth, rising and broadening under our very eyes. It was on a farm among the granite hills, many miles from Rosebery. 'It's only a glorified stone cattle-byre, and an intensified stone Kaffir hut,' Spenser commented. 'It's not even built the old Mabgwe way. These are only blocks of granite; a few of them broken, but not one of them dressed. And there's lots of mud to eke them out.'

      'Yet there's hope in the thing. It's not an artistic dead-end like Saint Uriel's,' I pleaded.

      One or two Europeans, very unskilled ones I could see, had planned this bit of work, and taken part in it. They had made themselves at charges for it, though African gifts had not been wanting. They had, so to speak, coaxed their African pack on to try an old scent. Now the moving European spirit was gone home for months to England. Before he went the former rains had ruined some of the work. He had been too ambitious, too scornful of delay. Forewarned by Africans, he had pressed to a midsummer disaster. Now he had left Africans in charge. He had trusted them to go on. One Christian, in particular, he had trusted his fellow and his master in building. The boy had built at a colonial's cattle-kraal once. His skill had multiplied as he built on at the great church, and now he was a master craftsman. Doggedly he was building up again the rain-ruined bastions. The work was going with a swing, if a slow one. The scent was no longer a cold one. The pack were belling and chiming over it, and they were running with their huntsman out of sight.

      'I don't understand this bit of work properly,' Spenser said.

       'What's made the dry bones live?'

      'Inspiration,' I said reverently. 'Looked at in one way it's Art. Looked at all ways it's Religion. It's the same sort of thing as went on, I suppose, when the faith of sun and moon was a power. Now the faith of Christ is gathering force in the land. The land isn't an Italy, and our twentieth century isn't that old thirteenth century; yet look out for the signs and wonders you spoke of. Likely enough they're to be expected.'

      We went to the Pageant Master's lecture on the Mabgwe Ruins that night, when we had driven back to Rosebery. It was more interesting to me as a subjective study than an objective display of learning.

      'Poor creatures!' the lecturer said of the natives. 'Don't put them in a false light. Whatever claims they may have to equable treatment, they have no claim to be considered romantic. The ancient romance of this country is the romance of a nobler race the romance of the Tyrian trader, Tyrian or Sabaean. Allow me but a trifling emendation, and Matthew Arnold's lines will serve to indicate that romance.' Substituting 'Zambesians' for 'Iberians,' he gave us the last lines of 'The Scholar Gipsy.' 'In that era of Tyre's trade,' he concluded, 'I place the golden age of our country a golden age which under our own Imperial rule begins anew.'

      'H'm,' said Spenser. 'That live Mashona building-boy's worth many dead Phoenicians to me, at any rate. As to defining romance, we'd better agree to differ. 'Do well unto thyself, and all men will speak well of thee,' he went on, with a tang of bitterness. 'Jew-boys and Arabs mopped up trade when they were living, now they jump other men's kudos, being dead.'

      'Never mind.' I said. 'Art for Art's sake, aspiration for aspiration's, faith for faith's! And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.'

      'Never mind,' it was his turn to say. 'That granite kopje church is rising, and Magbwe Ruins stand the quick and the dead. These shall both come up for judgment and get justice. Yes, if they have to wait for it till the Supreme Court of Alt holds session.'

NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD CHAMPION

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      We were going on an expedition long before the morning light came. Our ship was an armed steamer a converted cargo boat. We had reinforced our naval guns' crews and our Indian ship's guard by taking officers and native soldiers (askaris) aboard at a certain bay. We had reinforced our artillery by borrowing a Maxim from the shore. I had a guest on board that night, a cheerful padre. How he seemed to relish his craft, and how able I esteemed him. I was very raw at the work, and he helped me to understand what my defects were both in nature and grace. He had the sort of smile, I thought the real, right sort to warm a naval parishioner's heart. He was very keen on the new sort of thrills and experiences that he had sought for himself by coming aboard.

      We reclined on camp beds high up on the bridge-deck, but we did not drop asleep when the electric light failed and faded. We asked each other's ages, and discussed parts of England as we had known them in more peaceful days; then we assured one another that we wanted to rise early. We were to steam off on our sudden raid in the dark. Coffee had been ordered about 5:30; action might be expected to begin not much later than 6 a.m. We speculated as to whether it were true that our ship would have to face an old field gun's fire on the morrow, as well as a Maxim's. I was eloquent as I told how our four-inch gun might be expected to shake the ship. After that, in the dimness we talked shop; we had neither of us possibly had many easy openings for that ravishing employment lately.

      Was it right to pray for our own side's success? I was steadfast in my scruples as to praying thus, my new-found friend was inclined to be a little scornful of them. 'Is there a God of the Germans fighting the English tribal God?' I asked rather irreverently, and my friend showed that he was shocked. I apologized. 'Let's leave the Supreme Power out,' I said. 'Let's consider the action of the saints in this war. Are they supposed to be scrapping like the gods in Homer English Saint George against German Saint Michael and so on?' But my friend did not seem very keen about either Homer or hagiology. He explained that he was a C.M.S. man, and not a medievalist. The discussion languished, ere he murmured 'Good night.'

      I slept rather fitfully. I was awake long before the ship moved away on her fierce errand. At last, when she had been steaming some while, I stole down in the dark to the bathroom. When I came out of it the grey twilight was beginning. I crept aft and looked over the bulwark, wondering how far we were away now. The shore Maxim was in place there with plenty of sand bags about it, but the officer in charge of it was still stretched abed. His friend the Intelligence Officer, who had messed with us last night, was snoring on another bed beside him. I stood looking at a dusky island in the moonlight, and began praying a favorite prayer of mine for those times, asking God to let Saint Michael cover our heads in the day of battle. I muttered the prayer very low, but it appeared that somebody heard. A slim figure, seemingly in khaki, that I had not noticed, rose up from a seal; on the sand bags.

      'Are you praying something about battles?' it asked. I started, and assented clumsily.

      'How does one pray about battles nowadays?' the investigator proceeded. He spoke in the friendliest way, and managed to set even me at ease. So I told him what I had prayed for.

      'It sounds a fair sort of prayer; better than some I've heard,' he allowed, as he sat down again. 'Some people seem to forget the last lot of the Books in the Bible when they pray nowadays.' I heartily agreed.

      'I don't believe for one,' he went on, 'that Saint Michael is passionately interested in wiping out either English or askaris or Germans. It's surely better to pray about him like you prayed. I should think the negative work appeals to him more than the positive, the salvage more than the blotting.'

      His voice was clear, and evidently carried. The Maxim's warden grumbled, and began to sit up in bed.

      'Possibly,' this disturber of slumber went on quite unconcernedly, 'Saint Michael has a clearer notion as to the real enemy than some clients who invoke