White Fire. John Oxenham
and only because it was represented to him as a matter of duty.
As the time drew near he began to fear that he was in for more than he had expected. But he had given his word, and he would not draw back.
There were clever men at the head of the movement. Thousands of interested men and women were hungering for a sight of the almost-martyr. They had seen his portrait in the illustrated papers—how joyously the old mother had responded to the many requests for it!—but they wanted to see him with their eyes and hear him with their ears, and the younger folk were to remember all their lives that they had done so. And so, without going into details with him, the leaders of the various societies quietly arranged matters on a generous scale. There were men of imagination among them too, and they prepared a dramatic touch for the meeting which they calculated would make it go with a swing. It went beyond their expectations.
When the young missionary stepped on to the platform he stopped short, and for a moment looked almost as fey as he had done when he leaped out of the white boat that morning on the beach of Dark Island. But there must be no drawing back. He had flinched once—never again!
The chairman of the meeting was a philanthropic Cabinet Minister. As he welcomed the hero of the hour the great audience rose and waved and shouted.
The young man clasped the chairman's welcoming hand as though he were a drowning man, and that hand the one only hope of safety. Then he sank into the chair provided for him, and dropped his face into his hand.
All this was torture to him. Why could they not have let him go out quietly to his work, to his death? No bristling mob of savages that ever could confront him was half so appalling to him as that great well-dressed crowd of enthusiastic men and women and children, gathered to do him honour. Honour! And he before God a dishonoured man—a man who had failed when the pinch came. He groaned in his heart, and wished that he had not come.
But the chairman was speaking, speaking of him, and what he had done—what he was supposed to have done—in warm, appreciative words and flowing periods, and the audience was as still as a flower-garden on a summer afternoon. In the young man's soul there was a great stillness also, a stillness equal almost to that which had fallen on him when he came out of the shadows and lay in the verandah of the mission house.
His eyes wandered unseeingly over those solid banks of faces, all turned on him in eulogy of what he had not done. Those thousands of eyes seemed to pierce his soul.
One face caught his attention and held it, the face of a girl sitting in the third row from the front. Even in his agony he recognised it, as how could he help when it had been so constantly with him in his thoughts. The smooth white brow, like a little slab of polished ivory; the level brows; the large dark eyes looking up at him with something akin to reverence—the beautiful eyes with lustrous points in them; the sweet oval of the lower part of the face; the firm little chin and slightly parted lips, emphasising the old inquiring look which he knew so well: it was a face any man might remember with gratitude for the mere sight of it. It was the face he had at once longed for the sight of and feared to meet, since ever the thought of coming home had been suggested to him. And now here it was, more beautiful than even his dreams of it—inquiring, hopeful, trustful. And he must satisfy the inquiry—and dash the hope, and shatter the trust for ever. Oh, it was hard! It was grievously hard! His life laid down then and there would have been a small price to pay for the confirmation of her belief in him. And he must destroy it and still live on!
But what was this? The chairman had turned to him in his speech, the flower-garden in front had suddenly become a fluttering snowbank.
"Mr. Blair does not happen to belong to that particular section of the Church to which I belong, and which, as the State Church of the realm, retains, and rightly retains, within its own hands the appointment of its own high officers. There are some of us who, as we grow older, and perhaps wiser, regret more and more that any differences should remain among the followers of Christ. We would fain see them done away with. We would cast down all fences and walls of partition, and meet our Christian brothers and sisters on an absolute equality, on the common platform of love and service to the one Master.
"This meeting to-night, of many sects with one common object, is one step in the right direction—a great step. And here is another. The necessity for a supreme hand and head in the guidance of the mission enterprises of the Outer Islands is apparent to all. For such a position we require a man of tried courage and endurance, a man who can look death in the face without flinching, a man who holds his own life of small account, and who is ready at any moment to lay it down in the service of the cause he loves. Of such stuff martyrs are made. That the man who has given us such signal proofs of his fidelity and courage should be chosen for so onerous and so honourable a post is a matter of great satisfaction to us all. Mr. Blair, as all the world knows, has proved his fitness in a time of grievous danger and perplexity.—a time which I do not hesitate to say would have tried the nerve of any man to breaking-point, under a strain which might have broken any ordinary man, and small blame to him. But here"—and he laid his hand upon young Blair's shoulder—"we have the one man who did not break down, and it is this man whom we would rejoice to recognise as the first bishop of the Outer Islands. I am authorised to request Mr. Blair's acceptance of this arduous and honourable post, without reference to any question of form or creed. And that request is made, not in the name or on behalf of my own Church only, but in the names and on behalf of all the Churches represented by the missions to the Outer Islands. It is a common point of union. Mr. Blair's acceptance of the post will, perhaps, be one step towards that greater union of the Churches to which we look hopefully forward, and I earnestly hope that he will see fit to accept this joint and unanimous request of the Churches." And he sat down with glowing face amidst thunders of applause.
And Kenneth Blair? Oh! why could they not have left him to work out his redemption in quietness and silence? Now it was not possible. Those thousands of eyes burnt into his soul. The words he had listened to pierced him like two-edged swords. Silence was no longer possible. To accept all this, as if it were his rightful due, was to hang a millstone round his neck which would drag him down to perdition.
When the tumult died at last into silence, the young man got up and stood and gripped the railing of the platform.
His face was white and set. "A man of indomitable will," they said.
His eyes burnt with a gloomy fire. "He has seen strange and terrible things," they said.
He swayed slightly once or twice before he found his voice. "He has been very near to death," they said.
And then he began to speak, quietly, as one who might need all his strength before he was done; but there was a timbre in it, born of outdoor speaking, which carried to the remotest corner, and a thrill in it which found its way to every heart. And, of all that great assembly, the only face he saw with any distinctness was the face of the girl in the third row, with its calm brow and its lustrous up-glance. He spoke to it. He watched it. If he could convince that one face of all that was in him, he felt that it would be well with him.
In his emotion he overlooked all formalities. He found his voice at last, and said, "My friends, the words I have just been listening to have been to me as sword-thrusts through the heart."
The silence was intense. Every ear and every eye was upon him. He saw only the calm, sweet face of the girl in the third row.
"I have a very terrible confession to make to you. Had I known what was intended this evening I should not have been here, but no slightest word of it reached me. My sole desire has been to get back to my work out yonder, and to lay down my life in it. I have been told that I am a man of courage and endurance … of tried nerve … of unflinching fidelity. There was a time when I too believed this of myself." He spoke very slowly and with a solemn impressiveness which those who heard it never forgot to the last day of their lives. "But between that and this there is a deep gulf … and at the bottom of that gulf lies the dead body of my dear friend and chief. His death lies at my door."
An almost imperceptible movement ran through the audience, as though a cold breath shook it with a simultaneous chill. The face of the girl in the third row remained steadfastly calm.