I did not welcome that railway with any warmth. The district that it tapped had seemed to me a camping-ground of refuge, as civilization pressed on. That district was a haven for the Kaffir-trader, a haven for the transport-rider, a haven too for the foot-slogging missionary, like myself. We have our faults, all three doubtless, and deserve the spurning of civilization's iron feet, when our time comes, doubtless. On the other hand our displacement is a matter for some sympathy, it is likely to hurt like other displacements. Also we are prone to note that the admirable iron feet of our displacer are not unmixed with baser clay.
I came to Shumba Siding last Eastertide, on my way to Alexandra. Charles Miller was there in charge of the line, and he offered me a thirty-one mile ride in to within two miles of town if I would only wait for a construction train. I declined in my stupid sentimentality. For one thing I hate breaking up a plan of combined foot-travel; it seems to me hard on one's native fellow-travelers, on whom one is apt to call for big efforts. To ride on ahead, and leave them struggling alone with the sandy monster of a road for any long distance, seems vile desertion, and I was by no means sure that the invitation to board the train included them. Moreover, this might be my last journey in, on the old road, under the old order.
So I declined, but I lunched with Charles Miller Before I went on. Marvell was there, the Kaffir store-keeper from ten miles away. He had much to tell me of his wonderful good luck. The big firm that were putting up the new Store at Alexandra, that rail-head terminus designate, had asked him to manage it.
He could marry now on his prospects. He had wanted to see me, and
had waylaid me on my road. The bride was due by coach to-morrow.
He hoped to get a Special License when once she had arrived.
Would I marry them on Monday?
We had a good lunch with healths afterwards, but they let me drink them in tea. Miller proposed the health of the bridegroom, to whom the railway, or ever it came, had brought luck. Might his luck last while the rails lasted, and grow heavier when they should be replaced by heavier metals! Might he never make less in a year than that railway had cost per mile! 'Three thousand five hundred will take some making,' Marvell sighed to me. He acknowledged the toast and proposed the Railway's prosperity. He grew rather florid to my thinking, about the benefit to the District how Kaffir gardens were to be displaced by up-to-date farming, how tourists were to pour in athirst to explore its ruins. He discoursed of the blessedness of ranching, and of chrome and asbestos syndicates. He said that we were in at the death alike of malaria, of blackwater, and horse-sickness. Then I spoke up for the other side. I asked them to remember the old Era in silence, and if they must drink, to drink to the transport-road and the transport-riders, and to all pioneers, and old hands going and gone, to the big native district and its dependencies, so rich in cattle and so rich in grain, to God's Eden of a country, and the people that He Himself had chosen to set there to dress it, and to keep it before our coming. My toast fell rather flat, I noticed. They both looked rather bored.
Soon I pressed on, with fifteen miles or so to cover before our camping-place would be reached.
I had gone some ten miles before the construction train passed me, and my carriers pressed through bushes and long grass for a nearer view of it.
With three or four white men on the engine, a Black Watch or two and a few other natives on the trucks, it snorted along through the woodland. As the night deepened and the moon rose, we came close to the last coach-stable, and were soon encamped.
The old Basuto near by gave me a drink of fairish water, but water was far away, I was told. My boys straggled away wearily, and came back at last, having seemingly missed the dipping-place. They had brought something between a liquid and a solid. Boiled, it was no doubt wholesome enough, but its taste was not such as to tempt to excess.
That night I dreamed, with a tag of Marvell's speech buzzing in my head (I had garrisoned it with quinine before I slept). That tag rang out in boastful refrain like the natives' curfew-bell of Alexandra, a bell not always very punctually rung. 'We are in at the death of malaria, of black-water, and of horse-sickness.'