II
EVENING
Mr Pinmay’s trials, doubts and final triumphs are recorded in a special pamphlet, published by his Society and illustrated by woodcuts. There is a picture called ‘What it seemed to be’, which shows a hostile and savage potentate threatening him; in another picture, called ‘What it really was!’, a dusky youth in western clothes sits among a group of clergymen and ladies, looking like a waiter, and supported by under-waiters, who line the steps of a building labelled ‘School’. Barnabas (for such was the name that the dusky youth received at his baptism) – Barnabas proved an exemplary convert. He made mistakes, and his theology was crude and erratic, but he never backslid, and he had authority with his own people, so that the missionaries had only to explain carefully what they wanted, and it was carried out. He evinced abundant zeal, and behind it a steadiness of purpose all too rare. No one, not even the Roman Catholics, could point to so solid a success.
Since Mr Pinmay was the sole cause of the victory, the new district naturally fell to his charge. Modest, like all sincere workers, he was reluctant to accept, refusing to go although the chief sent deputation after deputation to escort him, and only going in the end because he was commanded to do so by the Bishop. He was appointed for a term of ten years. As soon as he was installed, he set to work energetically – indeed, his methods provoked criticism, although they were fully justified by their fruits. He who had been wont to lay such stress on the Gospel teaching, on love, kindness, and personal influence, he who had preached that the Kingdom of Heaven is intimacy and emotion, now reacted with violence and treated the new converts and even Barnabas himself with the gloomy severity of the Old Law. He who had ignored the subject of native psychology now became an expert therein, and often spoke more like a disillusioned official than a missionary. He would say: ‘These people are so unlike ourselves that I much doubt whether they have really accepted Christ. They are pleasant enough when they meet us, yet probably spread all manner of ill-natured gossip when our backs are turned. I cannot wholly trust them.’ He paid no respect to local customs, suspecting them all to be evil, he undermined the tribal organization, and – most risky of all – he appointed a number of native catechists of low type from the tribe in the adjoining valley. Trouble was expected, for this was an ancient and proud people, but their spirit seemed broken, or Barnabas broke it where necessary. At the end of the ten years the Church was to know no more docile sons.
Yet Mr Pinmay had his anxious moments.
His first meeting with Barnabas was the worst of them.
He had managed to postpone it until the day of his installation by the Bishop, and of the general baptism. The ceremonies were over, and the whole tribe, headed by their chief, had filed past the portable font and been signed on the forehead with the cross of Christ. Mistaking the nature of the rite, they were disposed to gaiety. Barnabas laid his outer garment aside, and running up to the group of missionaries like any young man of his people said, ‘My brother in Christ, oh come quickly,’ and stroked Mr Pinmay’s flushed face, and tried to kiss his forehead and golden hair.
Mr Pinmay disengaged himself and said in a trembling voice: ‘In the first place send your people each to his home.’
The order was given and obeyed.
‘In the second place, let no one come before me again until he is decently clad,’ he continued, more firmly.
‘My brother, like you?’
The missionary was now wearing a suit of ducks with shirt, vest, pants and cholera belt, also sun-helmet, starched collar, blue tie spotted with white, socks, and brown boots. ‘Yes, like me,’ he said. ‘And in the third place are you decently clad yourself, Barnabas?’
The chief was wearing but little. A cincture of bright silks supported his dagger and floated in the fresh wind when he ran. He had silver armlets, and a silver necklet, closed by a falcon’s head which nestled against his throat. His eyes flashed like a demon, for he was unaccustomed to rebuke but he submitted and vanished into his stockade.
The suspense of the last few weeks had quite altered Mr Pinmay’s character. He was no longer an open-hearted Christian knight but a hypocrite whom a false step would destroy. The retreat of Barnabas relieved him. He saw that he had gained an ascendancy over the chief which it was politic to develop. Barnabas respected him, and would not willingly do harm – had even an affection for him, loathsome as the idea might seem. All this was to the good. But he must strike a second blow. That evening he went in person to the stockade, taking with him two colleagues who had recently arrived and knew nothing of the language.
The chief received them in soiled European clothes – in the interval he had summoned one of the traders who accompanied the baptismal party. He had mastered his anger, and speaking courteously he said: ‘Christ awaits us in my inner chamber.’
Mr Pinmay had thought out his line of action. He dared not explain the hideous error, nor call upon his fellow sinner to repent; the chief must remain in a state of damnation for a time, for a new church depended on it. His reply to the unholy suggestion was ‘Not yet’.
‘Why not yet?’ said the other, his beautiful eyes filling with tears. ‘God orders me to love you now.’
‘He orders me to refrain.’
‘How can that be, when God is Love?’
‘I have served him the longer and I know.’
‘But this is my palace and I am a great chief.’
‘God is greater than all chiefs.’
‘As it was in your hut let it here be. Dismiss your companions and the gate will be barred behind them and we close out the light. My body and the breath in it are yours. Draw me again to your bosom. I give myself, I, Vithobai the King.’
‘Not yet,’ repeated Mr Pinmay, covering his eyes with his hand.
‘My beloved, I give myself . . . take me . . . I give you my kingdom.’ And he fell prone.
‘Arise, Barnabas . . . We do not want your kingdom. We have only come to teach you to rule it rightly. And do not speak of what happened in the hut. Never mention the hut, the word hut, the thought, either to me or to anyone. It is my wish and my command.’
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘Come, my gods, come back to me,’ he cried, leaping up and wrenching at his clothes. ‘What do I gain by leaving you?’
‘No, no, no!’ prevaricated Mr Pinmay. ‘I said Never speak, not that I would never come.’
The boy was reassured. He said: ‘Yes. I misunderstood. You do come to Christ, but not yet. I must wait. For how long?’
‘Until I call you. Meanwhile obey all my orders, whether given directly or through others.’
‘Very well, my brother. Until you call me.’
‘And do not call me your brother.’
‘Very well.’
‘Or seek my company.’ Turning to the other missionaries, he said, ‘Now let us go.’ He was glad he had brought companions with him, for his repentance was still insecure. The sun was setting, the inner chamber garlanded, the stockade deserted, the boy wild with passion, weeping as if his heart had broken. They might have been so happy together in their sin and no one but God need have known.
III
DAY
The next crisis that Mr Pinmay had to face was far less serious, yet it shocked him more, because he was unprepared for it. The occasion was five years later, just before his own marriage. The cause of Christ had progressed greatly in the interval. Dancing had been put down, industry encouraged, inaccurate notions as to the nature of religion had disappeared, nor in spite of espionage had he discovered much secret immorality. He was marrying one of the medical missionaries, a lady who shared his ideals, and whose brother had a mining concession above the village.
As he leant over the veranda, meditating with pleasure on the approaching change in his life, a smart European dog-cart drove up, and Barnabas scrambled out of it to pay his congratulations. The chief had developed into an affable and rather weedy Christian with a good knowledge of Engli
sh. He likewise was about to be married – his bride a native catechist from the adjoining valley, a girl inferior to him by birth but the missionaries had selected her.
Congratulations were exchanged.
Mr Pinmay’s repentance was now permanent, and his conscience so robust that he could meet the chief with ease and transact business with him in private, when occasion required it. The brown hand, lying dead for an instant in his own, awoke no reminiscences of sin.
Wriggling rather awkwardly inside his clothes, Barnabas said with a smile: ‘Will you take me a short drive in your dog-cart, Mr Pinmay?’
Mr Pinmay replied that he had no dog-cart.
‘Excuse me, sir, you have. It stands below. It, and the horse, are my wedding gift to you.’
The missionary had long desired a horse and cart, and he accepted them without waiting to ask God’s blessing. ‘You should not have given me such an expensive present,’ he remarked. For the chief was no longer wealthy; in the sudden advent of civilization he had chanced to lose much of his land.
‘My reward is enough if we go one drive, sir.’
As a rule he did not choose to be seen pleasuring with a native – it undermined his authority – but this was a special occasion. They moved briskly through the village, Barnabas driving to show the paces of the horse, and presently turned to the woods or to what remained of them; there was a tolerable road, made by the timber-fellers, which wound uphill towards a grove. The scene was uninteresting, and pervaded by a whitish light that seemed to penetrate every recess. They spoke of local affairs.
‘How much of the timber is earmarked for the mines?’ inquired Mr Pinmay, in the course of the conversation.
‘An increasing amount as the galleries extend deeper into the mountain. I am told that the heat down there is now so great that the miners work unclad. Are they to be fined for this?’
‘No. It is impossible to be strict about mines. They constitute a special case.’
‘I understand. I am also told that disease among them increases.’
‘It does, but then so do our hospitals.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Can’t you grasp, Barnabas, that under God’s permission certain evils attend civilization, but that if men do God’s will the remedies for the evils keep pace? Five years ago you had not a single hospital in this valley.’
‘Nor any disease. I understand. Then all my people were strong.’
‘There was abundant disease,’ corrected the missionary. ‘Vice and superstition, to mention no others. And inter-tribal war. Could you have married a lady from another valley five years ago?’
‘No. Even as a concubine she would have disgraced me.’
‘All concubines are a disgrace.’
‘I understand. In regard to this marriage, sir, there is, however, a promise that you made me once.’
‘About the mining concession, of course? Exactly. Yes, I never thought you were treated fairly there. I will certainly approach my future brother-in-law to get you some compensation. But you ought to have been more careful at the time. You signed your rights away without consulting me. I am always willing to be consulted.’
‘It is not the mining concession,’ said Barnabas patiently; although a good steward for the Church, he had grown careless where his own affairs were concerned. ‘It is quite another promise.’ He seemed to be choosing his words. Speaking slowly and without any appearance of emotion, he said at last: ‘Come to Christ.’
‘Come to Him indeed,’ said Mr Pinmay in slightly reproving tones, for he was not accustomed to receive such an invitation from a spiritual inferior.
Barnabas paused again, then said: ‘In the hut.’
‘What hut?’ He had forgotten.
‘The hut with the Mercy Seat.’
Shocked and angry, he exclaimed: ‘Barnabas, Barnabas, this is disgraceful. I forbad you ever to mention this subject.’
At that moment the horse drew up at the entrance of the grove. Civilization tapped and clinked behind them, under a garish sun. The road ended, and a path where two could walk abreast continued into the delicate gray and purple recesses of the trees. Tepid, impersonal, as if he still discussed public affairs, the young man said: ‘Let us both be entirely reasonable, sir. God continues to order me to love you. It is my life, whatever else I seem to do. My body and the breath in it are still yours, though you wither them up with this waiting. Come into the last forest, before it is cut down, and I will be kind, and all may end well. But it is now five years since you first said Not yet.’
‘It is, and now I say Never.’
‘This time you say Never?’
‘I do.’
Without replying, Barnabas handed him the reins and then jerked himself out of the cart. It was a most uncanny movement, which seemed to proceed direct from the will. He scarcely used his hands or rose to his feet before jumping. But his soul uncoiled like a spring, and thrust the car violently away from it against the ground. Mr Pinmay had heard of such contortions, but never witnessed them; they were startling, they were disgusting. And the descent was equally sinister. Barnabas lay helpless as if the evil uprush had suddenly failed. ‘Are you ill?’ asked the clergyman.
‘No.’
‘Then what ails you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you repent of your words?’
‘No.’
‘Then you must be punished. As the head of the community you are bound to set an example. You are fined one hundred pounds for backsliding.’
‘No.’ Then as if to himself he said: ‘First the grapes of my body are pressed. Then I am silenced. Now I am punished. Night, evening and a day. What remains?’
What should remain? The remark was meaningless. Mr Pinmay drove back alone, rather thoughtful. He would certainly have to return the horse and cart – they had been intended as a bribe – and the hundred pounds must be collected by one of his subordinates. He wished that the whole unsavoury business had not been raked up into the light just before his wedding. Its senselessness alarmed him.
IV
MORNING
The concluding five years of Mr Pinmay’s ministry were less satisfactory than their predecessors. His marriage was happy, his difficulties few, nothing tangible opposed him, but he was haunted by the scene outside the grove. Could it signify that he himself had not been pardoned? Did God, in His mystery, demand from him that he should cleanse his brother’s soul before his own could be accepted? The dark erotic perversion that the chief mistook for Christianity – who had implanted it? He had put this question from him in the press of his earlier dangers, but it intruded itself now that he was safe. Day after day he heard the cold voice of the somewhat scraggy and unattractive native inviting him to sin, or saw the leap from the cart that suggested a dislocated soul. He turned to the Christianity of the valley, but he found no consolation there. He had implanted that too: not in sin, but in reaction against sin, and so its fruits were, as bitter. If Barnabas distorted Christ, the valley ignored Him. It was hard, it lacked personality and beauty and emotion and all that Paul Pinmay had admired in his youth. It could produce catechists and organizers, but never a saint. What was the cause of the failure? The hut, the hut. In the concluding years of his stay, he ordered it to be pulled down.
He seldom met Barnabas now. There was no necessity for it, since the chiefs usefulness decreased as the community developed and new men pushed their way to the top. Though still helpful when applied to, he lost all capacity for initiative. He moved from his old stockaded enclosure with its memories of independence, and occupied a lofty but small modern house at the top of the village, suitable to his straitened circumstances. Here he and his wife and their children (one more every eleven months) lived in the semi-European style. Sometimes he worked in the garden, although menial labour was regarded as degrading, and he was assiduous at prayer meetings, where he frequented the back row. The missionaries called him a true Christian when they called him anything, and congratulated the
mselves that witchcraft had no rallying-point; he had served their purpose, he began to pass from their talk. Only Mr Pinmay watched him furtively and wondered where his old energies had gone. He would have preferred an outburst to this corrupt acquiescence; he knew now that he could deal with outbursts. He even felt weaker himself, as if the same curse infected them both, and this though he had again and again confessed his own share of the sin to God, and had acquired a natural loathing for it in consequence of his marriage.
He could not really feel much sorrow when he learned that the unfortunate fellow was dying.
Consumption was the cause. One of the imported workers had started an epidemic, and Mr and Mrs Pinmay were busied up to the moment of their own departure, negotiating an extension to the cemetery. They expected to leave the valley before Barnabas did, but during the last week he made, so to speak, a spurt, as if he would outstrip them. His was a very rapid case. He put up no fight. His heart seemed broken. They had little time to devote to individuals, so wide was the scope of their work, still they hurried over to see him one morning, hearing that he had had a fresh haemorrhage, and was not likely to survive the day. ‘Poor fellow, poor lad, he was an important factor ten years back – times change,’ murmured Mr Pinmay as he pushed the Holy Communion under the seat of the dog-cart – Barnabas’s own cart, as it happened, for Mrs Pinmay, knowing nothing of the incident, had acquired it cheaply at a sale a couple of years back. As he drove it briskly up through the village Mr Pinmay’s heart grew lighter, and he thanked God for permitting Barnabas, since die we must, to pass away at this particular moment; he would not have liked to leave him behind, festering, equivocal, and perhaps acquiring some sinister power.
The New Collected Short Stories Page 25
