.
of these people's children, the change will come."
He looked at Nares, the man of action, who bore with waiting ill, and he, flushed with fever, laid a hand that was clenched hard upon the table.
"You expect them to endure to the second generation. I tell you that they are forging spears in the interior now. A little more, and they will come down and wipe out every bush mission and garrison, and can we blame them, who stand by and tolerate the abominable traffic in black men's souls and bodies? There was more excuse for the old-time slavery. Horrible as it would be, one could almost welcome the catastrophe which would force the outside world to recognize what white men are doing here."
There were, perhaps, men in the outside world who knew it already, and could suggest no remedy. After all, labor is essential to the prosperity of any African colony, and while in some which are ruled as justly as circumstances permit the negro is offered wages for his services, and can go home with his earnings when he likes, there are others where more drastic measures are adopted. There the labor purveyor collects the white man's servants in the bush, and it is not the business of the Administration to inquire whether they are prisoners of war or have been sold by their friends. They are bound down to toil for a term of years, and if they die off during it few troublesome questions are asked. The African climate is an unhealthy one, as everybody knows.
In the meanwhile neither of Nares' companions said anything for a space. They were thinking of the same thing, each in his own way, while the dense steamy blackness of the African night shut them in. Ormsgill, who had been driven until the sweat of anguished effort dripped from him, wondered vaguely what a man with brains and nerve and money might do on the negroes' behalf in spite of the opposition of a corrupt administration. The priest was also wondering how much he could accomplish with Lamartine's bequest, very little of which would, however, in all probability, be allowed to remain in his hands, though he knew that it would in any case not go very far, for he was one who recognized that the new beneficent order must be evolved slowly, here a little and there a little, with other men to carry out what he had begun. Father Tiebout seldom rode a tilt at impossibilities, as Nares and Ormsgill occasionally did. He was a wise man, and knew the world too well. At last Nares made a little gesture of weariness.
"Well, the thing may happen, but that hardly concerns us in the meanwhile, and our work here is done. I wonder if you remember that you haven't read the letters Father Tiebout brought up, Ormsgill?"
Ormsgill had, as it happened, quite forgotten them. He had arrived worn out with a long and hasty journey, and Nares and he had then kept close watch beside his comrade's bed. When at last their watch was over there was still much to be done, and now for the first time he had leisure to open the packet the priest had handed him. He took out a stiff blue envelope with an English postmark, and gazed at it heavy eyed and vacantly before he broke the cover. Then he slowly straightened himself in his chair, and incredulity gave place to bewilderment as he read the letter he shook out. Lamartine's death had left him an outcast and one obnoxious to constituted authority again. Five minutes ago he had not known what his next step would be, but the stiff legal writing held out before him dazzling possibilities. Then he laid down the letter, and turned to his companions with a curious little laugh.
"The thing is almost incredible," he said. "A man who I was told would never forgive the discredit I brought upon the family has died in England and left me what looks very like a fortune. The other letters may bear upon it. You'll excuse me."
They watched him in silence for ten minutes, and there was a faint flush in his bronzed face when he quietly rose and took out a photograph from a little tin box.
"Padre," he said, "you are the wisest man I know, and, though distinctions are invidious, Nares is, I think, the honestest. That is why I am going to put a case before you. Well, I had a good upbringing, and I think my English friends expected something from me before I was flung out of the British service and became a pariah. After that I never troubled them again, which was no doubt a cause of satisfaction to everybody. There was, however, a thing I had to do which was not easy, and this picture should make it clear to you. It was arranged that we should be married when I had brought my laurels home from Africa."
He handed Nares the photograph. "When I was made a scapegoat I gave her back her liberty. It is now intimated that she has not so far profited by it."
Nares bent over the portrait of a young and very comely English girl, and saw only the fresh, innocent face, and the smiling eyes. Then he handed it to the little haggard priest, who had a deeper understanding, and saw a good deal more than that.
"It is a beautiful face," he said when Father Tiebout had gazed at it steadily, but the latter said nothing, and turned towards Ormsgill, as though still ready to give him his attention, which he seemed to understand.
"It is more than four years since I saw her, and I have spent them with the outcasts," he said. "You can realize what effect that has upon one, padre. The stamp this country sets on the white man is plain on you, but you have not lived here as I have been forced to do. Well, I think the woman is still the same, and I have greatly changed. I do not know my duty."
Father Tiebout sat silent for at least a minute, looking reflectively at the man before him. Ormsgill was young still, but his lean face was furrowed, and there was a suggestiveness in the lines on it. He had seen death and pestilence, human nature stripped naked, and unmentionable cruelty; and the priest was quite aware that one cannot live with the outcast, in Africa, and remain unchanged. Then he looked at the photograph again, for he knew that the four years had also had their effect upon the woman.
"Ah," he said, "we all grow, some towards the beneficent light, and some in the blighting shadow. The training and the pruning we are subjected to also has its effect. Her people?"
"I almost think you would consider them children of this world," said Ormsgill dryly.
"And you have been left a good deal of money?"
Ormsgill told him what the amount was, and once more the priest said nothing for awhile. Quiet and unobtrusive as he was, he never forgot that he was one of the vanguard of the Church militant, and was ready to use with skill any weapon that was offered him. It was also necessary to thrust hard now and then, and he knew that in his hands the man who had lived with the outcast and the oppressed would prove a reliable blade. Ormsgill, as he recognized, had capacities. Still, his counsel had been asked, and he would answer honestly, knowing that he could afford to do it if his knowledge of human nature, and the girl's face, had not deceived him. After all, he fancied, whatever he said the result would be the same, and he was playing a skillful game of which the stakes were black men's bodies, and, perhaps, human souls.
"With a sum like that there is so much that one could do," he said. "With discretion—you understand—here and there a little. Domingo put down, women dying at their tasks redeemed and enfolded in the shelter of the Mission, men with brutal masters set at liberty, and concessions where they are driven to death suppressed. One could also bring about a reckoning with corrupt authority. When admonition is of no service one may try the scourge."
He saw the little glint in Ormsgill's eyes, and made a deprecatory gesture with his hands. "Still, you have asked for counsel, and you have another duty. With us marriage is not a social contract, and the promise that precedes it is almost as sacred. You are pledged to this Englishwoman if she has not released you, and that you are changed will not matter if she loves you. It is your duty to go back to her."
Nares looked up and nodded. "Of course!" he said. "You must go."
Ormsgill's forehead was furrowed, and the perspiration stood in beads on it. The love that had driven him out to win his spurs in the land of shadow still in some degree, at least, remained with him; but he was conscious of the change in him which the girl with her upbringing might well shrink from. He had lived with the outcasts until he had become one of them, a hater of conventional formulas and shams, while there had crept into his nature a trace of the somberness of the dark land. What, he wondered, would the sunny-tempered English girl he had left make of such a man. Still, as the priest had said, his duty was clear, and, what was perhaps more, his inclination marched with it. He straightened himself suddenly with a little resolute