Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales

by Arthur Shearly Cripps

After breakfast, there was no hurry about our inspanning. But when we had once got off we were soon up level with the farmhouse on the hill's shoulder. We halted for friendship's sake, and waited for the cups of coffee that we were assured would be soon ready. Our host was Dutch-looking, but seemed British; I thought rather narrowly British in his sympathies. He discussed the War keenly and thoughtfully with my companion. He had two brothers in German East, I knew, and he was soon asking me about them. But our paths up that way had not converged. I could only tell him by hearsay about the main advance, wherein they had been sharing, and I had not. As I told, a dark handsome, gentle-voiced woman brought our coffee out. Soon a shy little girl put her head round the corner of the stoep, and withdrew' it again. I jumped down to greet her. Then she agreed to come and shake hands with us both. Her father colored up, and smiled as he told me of a great scheme. A lady in town had offered to board this child. So kind, wasn't it? She was of sturdy English make (her father's father was an Essex man. I had been told). Her hair and eyes were very dark; she looked ever so capable.

'Yes, very kind,' I murmured, but I was reflecting that the lady's kindness might not be so very ill-rewarded. The child might prove useful and cost little. She might give the sort of help that is apt to be useful and costly in a country like ours. 'Yes,' said the father smiling, 'and she may get to the day school that way, the lady says. We couldn't have nearly afforded to send her into town otherwise. But now she's got her chance of a regular school.' 'Oh, really,' said my friend. His kind ugly face looked none too pleasant as he said it, I remember noticing that.

Then he went to his mules to 'buckle' up a strap somewhere. I was surprised to hear him cursing something under his breath. It was not his manner, I thought, to curse straps or mules. We said good-bye a very cordial one and then drove down towards the main road. It winds through a vlei towards the town. We had got almost to the big water-course so banked up in thirsty sand, when he told me what he was cursing. He repeated his words deliberately: 'Damn it, damn it to hell,' he said. I protested faintly till he made it clear to me what he was damning, then I recklessly endorsed his damnation. For he was not cursing Heaven or humanity; he was cursing that blessed Anglo-Dutch, or rather Dutch-English, institution of South Africa, the color-bar. He had been told by one of the managers that should the father apply for admission to school on behalf of the child we had seen, he would be certainly refused. The father was really much too poor to send her away, he told me.

'They're ever so honest and hard-worked. They've put up a great fight on mealie meal against bad seasons. They've pinched hard for the child's poor little outfit. He's got into debt for it. He's a Britisher, and has got two brothers fighting. Very dubious, dark children have been admitted already, as presumably Dutch. Dutch and colonials rule the roost here. And to leave Christianity alone, where does British Imperialism come in? It's risking spoiling a life, and the life of such a decent kid.'

Thereat he certainly condemned guiltily, as he should not have condemned, Dutchmen and colonials, their churches, their social order, and their sanctimony. 'Thank God I was at plebeian Oxford,' he said, 'and was free to mix with colored men. This is far more select, this dorp academy, with its elect Principal and its supermen-managers.' We nearly had a row about his language.

We came over a rolling down towards the commonage. 'They've kept free from fires here,' I said. 'Yes,' he said, 'but I'm doubtful if their vigilance pays, if their game's worth the candle. I mean if such absence of illumination is worth all their watching about.' 'It saves waste of life.' I said, 'animal and vegetable, if you can only keep the fires away.' I appealed to the wisdom of our laws as well as to the argument of mercy which I appealed to me. 'And you get that sort of thing.' he said, pointing to the thick brown tufts of unappetizing feed. 'That's been going more than a year, hasn't it? 'Oh for a wind and a fire,' say I.

We passed over the commonage, which showed very black with recent fires. 'It looks rather knocked out,' I said. 'Yet not without hope,' he answered. We were driving back about the same time next fore-noon. A great fire was rushing wind-driven over that rolling upland. 'At last,' he said. I sighed. A mile further on we came into the smiling green vlei. 'This was black a while back,' he said. 'Doesn't the fire help a bit after all? Who wants that moldy stuffy old feed, isn't it parabolic of that fusty Dutch-Anglo dorp and its prejudices? What are they meant for, and it? 'Fuel of fire,' say I.' I smiled indulgently. Since we had got into town things had happened. We had had our memorial services for the Dead that last night, and this same morning. It was the week of All Hallows and All Souls, a time that often tempts me to homesickness. One is apt to think of hazy, yellow-leaved, dreamy times in old England just about then not to speak of old familiar faces. That night of the first Service was very starry, and the morning of the second Service was brilliantly clear, the rain seemed to be very far away for the time being. People had come at night rather well. Not to speak of one of the school managers having died quite recently, news of one of our police's death out scouting had leaked through from German East. I preached Paradise to that attentive congregation in the iron-roofed church that natives had been so discouraged from attending. I was glad one straggled into the back seats I had battled for, just to demonstrate one's principle of barring out the color-bar. It was all very soul-soothing, thought I, that Memorial Evensong, the stars outside, and the golden evening brightening in the west of the hymn, and the lesson about white robes and palms, presumably of victory or harvest-homing. My friend waited for me outside under the lamp. 'Very fine,' he said in his grimmest way, 'the Anglican view of hopeful souls turned promiscuously into a sort of orchard and rose-garden with plenty of light to gild them, and rest to wrap them.' I smiled. 'True enough in its way,' I said. 'There's another side doubtless, yet the preaching of that doesn't appeal to me particularly. I don't want to work on people's apprehensions. But don't let me stand in your light. You're a lay reader with a bishop's license. You can preach and welcome to-morrow morning.' 'Trust me not to refuse,' he said. 'I don't want to play up to apprehensions exactly. I want to state what seem to me to be relentless laws of cause and effect, and to show the only way with any sort of hope in Christ that I happen by faith to see.' So he had preached that morning. He preached quite simply on the trying of every man's work, on the burning of flimsy work, on the saving of the workman, yet so as by fire. There was a small but select gathering in the Church of Saint Tertullian; two of the school managers even were there. Surely I had baited the trap, I thought guiltily as I looked upon them, by my over-amiabilities of the night before.

Yet that side was true enough, the side I had preached. And was not this side also true in its way? The preacher seemed at first to be referring to my own obsession with the words 'resist not evil,' my following of Tolstoy in my own evangel. He was warm in his commendation. 'And yet,' he said, 'let us remember a just God's resistance to evil. He resists and judges righteously, where we may neither resist nor judge. If we agree not to resist evil violently for Jesus' sake, yet ought we not to warn people of their God's unrelenting resistance? While we would not obscure the fear of our just God by the fear of us unjust men, let us remember our just God!' He spoke of judgment and of purgation, of what seemed to be indicated hereafter by the stupidity and cruelty of people's prejudices in South Africa. He painted quite luridly the purgation he anticipated as likely for such as would dare to wreck a child's education, and possibly her life for a color-scruple. He glowed and kindled. There was no mistaking his drift. He painted the fires of purgation. He painted, too, their presumable fuel, much as I believe old preachers limned the flames of hell and their denizens. 'And it may lengthen out into hell! Who knows?' he kept interjecting. 'Who knows but that that prejudiced spirit you play with may be a damned spirit after all, fuel for the fire that is not quenched, food for the worm that does not die?'

T could not have preached happily on his lines, but for all that I acknowledged that the thing might well be of God this bizarre surprise at his preaching that was glassed in at least two of his listeners' eyes. Did that sermon do any good? Let me anticipate! The child came into town as a half-time servant. Somebody's letter got handed up to the Administrator, and he made a request to the managers. The child was clearly European by predominance of race. They spent five hours of their precious time in discussion. The officials wanted to oblige the Administrator, and they had their way at last. But whether the child once admitted will have much of a time, I am inclined to doubt, should she pass into the Paradise of so select an academy. I heard an ominous story of the Dutch minister last week, how he had threatened a hiding to any child of his that spoke to this forlorn little girl, who seems hard up for playmates. I heard yesterday that one of my Church magnates had asked that the child should not come up to play with his own. Yet the Fire of God has been preached, and I am willing to allow that the thing may have wanted doing rather badly in my amiable parish. Doesn't any real true Christian Peace Doctrine mean spiritual fire and sword? Doesn't it mean burning and fuel of fire as set against the confused noise and garments rolled in blood of earthly campaigns? Doesn't any real true Christian Imperialism mean the sword of the Spirit and the fire of the Gospel against South African Racialism? Perfect love casteth out fear, but what has Racialism to do with such a perfect love as will banish the fear of God?

After all, can any reasonable and lively Christian Faith avail to find any evangelically reasonable destination short of hell for South African Racialists dying in their Racialism save such place of purgation as my friend indicated? Yes, of course, God's prerogative of mercy in Jesus is limitless, but are these Racialists so merciful to little colored children that they should obtain mercy without judgment from Jesus' judgment?