Kafir Stories
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William Charles Scully >> Kafir Stories
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Whilst the hymn was being sung, the probationer's earnest eyes rested
as often on the yellow-haired girl at the harmonium as on his
particular charge, the dusky choir. The eleven girls stood in a
crescent, some modest and demure enough, but others looking bold, their
wanton, roving eyes and generously developed figures being much in
evidence. The youngest girl might have been twelve years of age, and
the eldest twenty. The latter, a girl named Martha Kawa, was of a much
lighter colour than any of her schoolmates, but her physiognomy was of
the usual Kafir type. Her father was an Englishman, and her mother a
Gaika Kafir; she had passed her childhood in a native hut, and when,
five years previously, she was sent to the mission, she was in a
condition of absolute savagery. In the mission school her Aryan blood
told; she kept easily ahead of the other girls, and took all the best
prizes.
The hymn over, the girls curtsied "good-night" to the missionary and
his wife, and went to the dormitory escorted by the junior teacher.
This room was the very picture of neatness. The whitewashed walls were
decorated with Biblical pictures and illuminated texts, and the beds,
with blue counterpanes and snow-white linen, were without crease or
wrinkle. On each bed, near the foot, the occupier's shawl was folded,
and the manner of folding varied considerably. Small prizes were given
for the best folding designs, and considerable individuality was shown
in the competition. Several of the designs were marvels of ingenuity,
and indicated a true artistic faculty.
In a few moments, eleven dusky heads were reposing on eleven snowy
pillows.
II.
The Reverend Gottlieb Schultz was far more intellectual and cultivated
than the average of his class. Sent to labour in the Lord's Vineyard in
reclaiming the heathen of South Africa, immediately after his
ordination as a minister of the German Evangelical Church, at the age
of twenty-four, he had spent thirty-five years at his task. His wife
Amalia, selected for him by the Missionary Society, was sent out under
invoice five years after his arrival. She had thus been his helpmeet,
and a faithful one, for thirty years. Although childless, she was of a
placid and contented disposition; so much so that her smile became
rather wearisome from its very continuousness.
The good old missionary had outlived many illusions, and of the few
still remaining, the larger proportion related to the Fatherland he had
left so long ago and which he never more would see. His passionate
loyalty to the Hohenzollerns was, long after the events now recorded
had happened, the cause of his removing a resplendent portrait of
Bismarck from a prominent place in the dining-room; and hiding it
ignominiously behind a book-shelf, where it remained until 1893, when
the reconciliation between Emperor William and the ex-chancellor took
place. Then the portrait was again brought forth, and hung next to that
of Count Caprivi which had supplanted it.
On his top bookshelf, triumphant over a dreary jungle of theological
literature, might have been found the works of Goethe, Schiller,
Lessing and Freiligrath, and in a secret receptacle behind his little
drug cabinet reposed a complete edition of Heine. He was very well read
in English theological literature. He thought Luther the greatest of
all theologians, but his favourite reading was Tauler. He had an
emotional understanding of, and sympathy with, the "Friends of God."
And what illusions had he not outlived! Had he not seen the natives,
for whose benefit his blameless and strenuous life had been
ungrudgingly spent, sinking lower and lower, exchanging the virtues of
barbarism for the vices of civilisation? Had he not seen the chosen
lambs of his flock sink back into the savagery that surrounded them,
lured by those tribal rites which bear a fundamental resemblance to the
ritual of the worship of the Cyprian Venus? Had he not seen the land
covered with plague-spots in the shape of canteens from which poisonous
liquor was set flowing far and wide, ruining the natives, body and
soul? All this and more he had seen; all this and more he had prayed
and struggled against through the weary years. He still prayed, but he
had almost ceased from struggling.
One illusion he still retained. This was the firm belief that the
average barbarian was fully the equal of the average civilised man--an
illusion so common amongst the missionary fraternity early in this
century, that this equality was almost, if not quite, a fundamental
axiom in all missionary reasoning. In Mr. Schultz's case, this illusion
had paled from time to time in the face of striking experiences, but it
was too deeply ingrained in his character ever to disappear. Experience
after experience faded out of his memory, but the fundamental axiom
remained. These experiences he, so to say, preached away, for whenever
he found the fundamental axiom waxing dim, he polished it up with a
liberal administration of theological logic, abstruse reasoning, and
illustrations from standard authorities.
Samuel Gozani, the probationer, was in several respects a remarkable
character. Son of a native headman of the Gealeka tribe, which
considers itself as forming, as it were, the Kafir aristocracy; he had,
fourteen years previously, been placed at the mission school. For six
years he was as backward in acquirement as he was unsatisfactory and
troublesome in conduct. But a change came. A native revivalist visited
the mission, and, behold--a shaking! Amongst the dry bones that moved,
none showed so much energy as Samuel. His whole life changed, and he at
once declared his intention of entering the ministry. He took to
theological study with the greatest avidity, and for several years was
looked upon as the coming man of the mission. Suddenly he again
changed; his moral conduct remained free from reproach, but his faculty
for serious study appeared to have left him. He brooded deeply, taught
the junior pupils in an irregular and, on the whole, very perfunctory
manner, and seemed to be consumed by a deep and abiding sadness. It was
afterwards noticed that this change dated from about a year after Miss
Blake had taken up her residence at the mission.
Samuel possessed A rich, full baritone voice, and he seemed to regain
his old vigour and enthusiasm only on those occasions when he sang in
the choir. There his voice rang out clear above the others as he led;
his eye flashed, and his countenance lit up. He was a tall and strongly
built man, with a face unlike the usual Kafir type. His lips were thin,
his nose narrow and prominent, and his eyes large and somewhat
protruding. In point of physiognomy, he somewhat resembled a North
American Indian.
III.
It was on a warm night in late Spring that Miss Elizabeth Blake sat
under the verandah which ran along the whole front of the mission
house. A slight thunderstorm had just passed, and another was following
on its trail. Summer lightnings were gleaming through the soft haze,
and distant thunders muttered from time to time. Brown, furry beetles
dashed themselves violently against the windows of the dining-room,
where a lamp still burned, and the pneumoras wailed their melancholy
love-songs from the willow trees along the water-furrow. The junior
teacher was seeing her charges to bed, for prayers were just over, and
Miss Blake was enjoying a few moments' rest in the mild air before
taking up her task of preparing the next day's work. The missionary and
his wife were away, visiting at the next-neighbouring mission, and were
not expected back until the following afternoon.
Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, Miss Blake looked round,
and saw Samuel Gozani approaching. He came slowly up the steps, and
stood silently before her, leaning against one of the verandah poles.
"Good evening, Samuel," she said.
"Good evening, Miss Elizabeth; you do not often take a rest."
"I seldom have time."
Samuel remained silent, and the girl regarded him intently. She had
long noticed his demeanour, and had often wondered as to what was on
his mind.
"Samuel," she said, sympathetically, "why have you been so strange of
late? Is anything the matter with you?"
Samuel cleared his throat as if to speak, shifted his feet, but said
nothing.
"Do you not know," she continued, "that your class is going backward,
that you often forget to set the lessons, and that half the time you
are teaching you appear as if you do not know what you are doing? Tell
me, is there anything on your mind? Have you done anything you are
sorry for?"
Samuel again cleared his throat, shifted his feet, and with an evident
effort replied:
"I have not committed any sin, but I know my work is done badly. My
heart is so heavy that I can hardly bear the weight."
"What is this heaviness?"
Samuel did not reply, but after a pause asked this question:
"Miss Elizabeth, do you believe that all men, white and black, are
equal?"
The girl paused for a moment. In her heart of hearts she knew she did
not think so, but the fundamental axiom weighed heavily on her, the
well-worn arguments of the missionary arose and threatened her,
pointing with skinny fingers at the abyss which lay in the road of the
opposite view, so she muffled her answer up carefully in a platitude,
and handed it to her hearer, trusting that the muffler would somewhat
conceal its nakedness.
"Of course," she said, "the bad are not equal to the good; but if God
holds that otherwise all men are equal, it would be wrong of any one to
think differently."
"But white people never really think that we blacks are equal to them,"
said Samuel, speaking in a strained tone, "no matter what they say."
Miss Blake felt unable to reply, so after a short pause Samuel
continued:
"When a black man walks in the ways of the whites, he becomes a
stranger to his own kind, and he has really no friends. The white man
says 'Come here to us,' and when the black man comes as near as he can,
there is still a gulf that he cannot pass. I am a lonely man, Miss
Elizabeth; I have left my own people, and there is no one that I can
call a friend. Even you only tolerate me because you think it pleasing
to God that you should do so; but you would never be my friend or let
me be yours."
"There you are wrong, Samuel," replied the girl, moved by a sense of
great pity; "I have the warmest friendship and regard for you, and I
like you as well as if you were white."
Samuel then did an unusual thing--he held out his hand to the girl, who
took it and pressed it cordially.
"Good night. Miss Elizabeth," he said. "I will do my duty better, and
try to be worthy of your friendship. You have lightened my heart."
Miss Blake went in to the empty class-room and arranged the morrow's
work. She was filled with a vague sense of uneasiness, and she felt
that in her conversation with Samuel she had not been quite ingenuous;
especially in her closing remark.
Samuel went to his room, and, as was his wont, read several chapters of
the Bible before going to bed. On this occasion his choice fell upon
the Song of Solomon. This he read right through. He began it again, and
read until he reached the words, "I am black but comely." He went to
sleep with these words on his lips, and with a strange dream at his
heart.
IV.
The mission was perplexed by another change in Samuel. He bought a new
suit of clothes; he parted his hair on the left side, teasing it up
into two high, unequal ridges; he became redolent of cheap scent; he
applied himself anew to his studies, with feverish activity, and he
pulled his disorderly class together so effectively, that when the
school inspector again came to the mission, that official dealt out
almost unstinted praise instead of the censure which was usually
Samuel's well-deserved portion.
Moreover, Samuel notified his intention of qualifying forthwith for his
next step towards the ministry. In the choir, his voice rang out with
an almost birdlike rapture that astonished all hearers.
It was then noticed that Martha Kawa began to lose her place at the top
of the class. It should be mentioned that all the boarders, as well as
the senior day pupils, were taught by Miss Blake, and that Samuel
taught the second class. The very small pupils were instructed by the
second lady-teacher. Martha grew thin and ill-tempered. On several
occasions she was very impertinent to Miss Blake. In church, or when
singing after evening prayers, she hardly ever took her eyes from
Samuel. This was, of course, remarked by the other girls, but a
chaffing allusion to the fact was met by such a burst of fury, that the
experiment was not repeated.
Samuel hardly ever spoke to Miss Blake; in fact he appeared to avoid
her. His usual taciturnity was unchanged, but it did not convey the
idea of moroseness. His general demeanour was as that of one in a
dream, but in Miss Blake's presence he became alert, with almost an
expectant look; and he gave, generally, the idea of being under the
influence of strong, but suppressed excitement.
Miss Blake was very fond of flowers, and on the hills around the
mission, watsonias, purple orchids, and other flowers grew; whilst on
the edges of the kloofs, sweet-scented clematis trailed. Samuel got
into the habit of gathering flowers--generally on Saturday afternoons,
when he was free from duty. After one of his rambles, a bouquet would
generally be sent to each of the teachers and to Mrs. Schultz, but it
was noticed that the choicest selection always reached the senior
teacher.
The Reverend Robley Wilson, a young Wesleyan minister who had been
ordained three years previously, became a more or less constant visitor
at the mission. He was in charge of a station about thirty miles
distant. A tall, spare man, with dark eyes and hair, he had the
reputation of being extremely shrewd. Belonging to the more modern
school, the fundamental axiom did not weigh heavily upon him; in fact
it was hardly a burthen at all, but rather a cloak that could be donned
or doffed as occasion demanded.
Mr. Wilson's attentions to the senior teacher became somewhat marked.
Strange to say, this fact appeared to be quite unnoticed by Samuel, who
still pursued his course of feverish study, and became more and more
abstracted in his manner. The unhappy man was consumed by a passionate
love. It was for Miss Blake that he was striving to qualify as a
minister; it was of her that he thought all day and dreamt all night.
Into his wild and elemental nature, in which hereditary savagery was
simply covered by a thin veneer of civilisation, this strong love for a
woman of an alien race had struck its roots deep down, and absorbed all
into itself. But instead of the savage element being transmuted into
gentleness, his love absorbed into itself the savage, and thus became
savage in its character. This resultant was a highly explosive psychic
compound. He never spoke to another being of what his mind was full of,
and the repression which he had to exercise at all natural vents caused
tidal waves of passion to roll back on his soul, fraught with
destruction to himself and to others.
Martha Kawa was as passionately attached to Samuel, as he was to Miss
Blake. In Martha, the Aryan element manifested itself mainly in force
of character, and ability; for in her tastes and desires, as in her
physiognomy, she followed her mother's race. Whilst Samuel was
secretive by nature, she was rendered so by force of circumstances; she
had hardly any opportunities of communicating with the man she loved,
and on the rare occasions when she diffidently attempted to gain his
confidence and friendship, she was met by a cold and impenetrable
indifference, She was not on terms of intimacy with any of the other
pupils, the fact of her being partly of another race preventing
anything of the kind.
It will be seen that the moral and social atmosphere of the mission was
heavily charged with tragic potentialities.
V.
In course of time, Miss Blake went away to spend her Christmas holidays
at a distant town, her native place. The Reverend Robley Wilson took a
holiday shortly afterwards, and followed her. He asked her to be a
helpmeet unto him, and she agreed. Whatever love existed between them
was mainly on his side. She came back to the mission engaged, but by
agreement the fact was to be kept secret for a time, even from the
Missionary and his wife.
During the holidays, Samuel had continued his course of feverish study.
His face had become thin and drawn, and his eyes looked unnaturally
bright and prominent. Martha was more ill-tempered and sulky than ever,
and repeated disobedience had led to talk of her expulsion. During the
holidays she had volunteered to stay at the mission rather than go back
to her mother's kraal. She was allowed to stay on condition that she
did the house-work, helping the old domestic, who was far from well.
She thus had many opportunities of cultivating Samuel's acquaintance,
and it was not long before her suspicions as to his passion for Miss
Blake were fully confirmed. Samuel allowed her to talk to him, but he
said very little in reply.
About a week after Miss Blake's return, Mr. Wilson managed to get an
invitation to preach at the mission on the following Sunday. He
arrived on Friday, and then, for the first time, Samuel began to
suspect the true state of affairs. On Saturday evening Miss Blake and
her lover were sitting together in a little summer-house in the garden,
Samuel had watched them enter and then, stealthily as a cat, had crept
up to the trellis, and taken a position where he could hear every word
spoken. What he heard left no room for any doubt as to the true state
of affairs. At first he felt as if stunned by the shock, the very force
of the blow precluding suffering for the time being. The mention of his
own name brought him to himself, and every word of the conversation
that followed burned itself into his brain.
"What a strange character that Samuel Gozani is," said Mr. Wilson; "I
have sometimes thought him slightly mad."
"So have I," replied the girl, and she then gave a rapid sketch of
Samuel's career at the mission.
"Has it never struck you that he may have presumed to fall in love with
you?"
"I do not like to speak about such a thing, but it has; and for some
time back I have hardly been able to bear his presence. I shudder
whenever he comes near me."
"I think it is such a mistake to let these fellows think they can be on
an equality with us," said Mr. Wilson, after a pause; "it always leads
to unpleasantness. The idea of his presuming even to think of you in
that way."
"I often recall his asking me such a strange question one night last
year. He asked if I thought all men, black and white, were equal, It
was not so much the question, as his manner of putting it, that struck
me as being strange."
"And what did you say in reply?"
"Oh, I said that before God all men were equal. He then asked whether I
thought one who was white could ever look on a black man as really his
equal. I did not like to say what I truly thought, and felt, so I made
an evasive answer."
"I know old Schultz and his school teach a lot of nonsense on that
point," said Mr. Wilson, scornfully, "although none of them truly
believe what they say. The equality idea is quite an exploded one, and
the black savage, superficially civilised, is no more the equal of the
European, than a Basuto pony is equal to a thoroughbred horse. But I
hope you will keep that fellow in his place!"
"Yes, of course I will. But I pity him nevertheless."
"Do you? I cannot say that I do. But after all, he is not so much to
blame as is the system which filled his head with nonsense. These old
missionaries have done a lot of harm in giving the natives false
notions as to equality, and making them generally conceited."
Samuel had heard enough. He crept away as noiselessly as he came.
Next day the Rev. Robley Wilson preached one of his very best sermons.
His preaching was ex tempore, and full of vigour. He discoursed of
righteousness, of temperance, and of judgment to come on the
unrighteous and the intemperate. He waxed more and more didactic. He
called upon his hearers to thank the Lord that such men as he, the
Reverend Robley Wilson, had thought fit to devote their lives to the
service of the children of Ham, instead of shining in metropolitan
pulpits and pouring vials of saving grace over the heads of the elect
of the children of Shem. He dwelt on the inconveniences of mission life
in South Africa, and drew a moving picture of the contrast between
such, and existence in a civilised, European city--comforted by the
appliances of Science and cheered by the achievements of Art. He again
called upon the children of Ham to thank their common Maker for the
blessings bestowed on them by the children of Shem, and he wound up
with a prayer so audaciously comprehensive, that had all thereby asked
for been granted, the members of the congregation, and all their
friends and relations--to say nothing of the whole human race which was
included in a general clause--would have had nothing more to hope for,
and must have succumbed to sheer repletion. It was a rousing sermon,
but it contained not a single reference to the fundamental axiom.
Whilst the blessings conferred upon the natives by the Europeans were
being enumerated, Miss Blake (quite involuntarily) thought of the
canteens in the village close at hand, coming from which, drunken men
and women often staggered past; the mission, and during the fascinating
description of life in a European city, she could not help recalling
certain accounts she had recently read of the experiences of
venturesome persons who explored regions called slums, said to exist to
a considerable extent in most large British cities. But it was a
rousing sermon; and well delivered.
Samuel led the choir, and his voice had, if possible, a more exultant
and triumphant ring than usual.
At evening service, the old missionary preached--or rather read his
sermon. His was a much humbler effort than that of his locum tenens of
the forenoon, but it left a more salutary and peaceful impression. None
of the ideas were original, the illustrations were commonplace, and
what passed for argument was rather threadbare. The fundamental axiom
was there, but was not aggressively flaunted: it was rather implied
than expressed. But in spite of all this, the hearers, or most of them,
were the better of the discourse, for the simple loving kindness and
faith of the old man permeated the congregation as a gentle and
soothing influence.
It was noticed that Samuel withdrew quietly from the church just at the
close of the last hymn, and before the final prayer and blessing. When
the junior teacher assembled the girls a few minutes later, in the
dormitory, Martha Kawa was missing.
The Reverend Robley Wilson and Miss Blake lingered in the church for a
few minutes after the congregation had left, and strolled together
across the grass plot to the Mission House. At the door, Mr. Wilson
excused himself, and walked down through the shrubbery towards the
visitors's house--a little one-roomed building, set apart for guests.
He meant just to leave his Bible and hymnbook on the table, brush his
hair, and then rejoin Miss Blake and the others in the dining-room,
where supper awaited them. He softly whistled the tune of a hymn as he
went along the path, thinking how very inconvenient it was that he had
to return home on the following day. It had been agreed that the
engagement was to be announced that evening to the kind old missionary
and his wife. He also thought of the inevitable opposition to a short
engagement, as he knew how difficult it would be to find a suitable
successor to Miss Blake. He had just begun to compare the sermon he had
just been listening to with his own of the morning--much to the
disadvantage of the former, through which he could perceive the
fundamental axiom protruding like a cloven foot, when he suddenly
ceased thinking for ever, for a blow from the heavy knob of a strong
stick crushed his skull in on his brain like an egg-shell, and he sank,
a limp mass, to the ground.
Then Samuel Gozani, for it was his arm that had struck the blow, sprang
from the footpath into the thickest part of the shrubbery, and there
came into violent physical contact with Martha Kawa, who had been a
witness of his murderous deed.
They waited in the dining-room, expecting the arrival of the guest, and
wondering at his long absence. Suddenly a loud shriek was heard coming
from the direction of the shrubbery, and the missionary left the
dining-room and walked quickly down the passage to the front door,
which Stood wide open. There he met Martha Kawa, whose demeanour showed
signs of the most frantic terror. Her face was of a dull, ash colour;
her mouth hung open and her eyes were dilated. She gasped for breath,
pointed towards the visitors' house, and then sank senseless to the
ground. The missionary returned to the dining-room, seized a candle,
and walked quickly down the shrubbery path, the flame of the candle
hardly flickering in the breathless night air. There was the body, a
huddled mass, lying on its face, with the arms stretched out at right
angles, and the palms of the bands turned upwards. A trickle of blood
ran down the slope for a few inches, and then formed a pool. The poor
old man stood for a few moments transfixed with horror, and then
staggered back to the house.
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