"I thought people who had been abroad always ran down missionaries, and scoffed at missionary work?"
"They do very often," Grenville replied, with frankness, "and not without reason. A great many missionaries are naturally not very suitable men. It is almost impossible to pick and choose."
"There are some," put in Stanley disgustedly, "who just confirm all the blacks they can, without bothering about how much they understand, and then make communicants of them so that they can send good figures home to their society for the missionary magazines. They don't teach them anything useful at all, and they do a roaring trade with the garments sent out by pious ladies' work guilds; as if the natives weren't better in their own natural state than they are ever likely to be dressed up in clothes and fuddled with doctrines."
Mr. Grenville, standing very upright and looking every inch a man, said simply, "It isn't entirely their fault always. The home folk like the figures; they imagine they stand for progress, and they know nothing about the conditions. Many missionaries are very fine men, and they would do even better work if left a little more to their own initiative, and not cursed with this atmosphere of competition in figures. It isn't fair to damn the whole flock because a few of the sheep are black."
"And don't you ever feel you are wasting your talents?" Meryl asked him a little shyly.
He threw his head back and squared his shoulders with a characteristic movement. "It is better than the hypocrisy and feebleness of the condition of affairs at home; and I am very fond of the natives. They are most lovable, when one once gets their confidence and understands them. And the freedom is good, and the primitive conditions. The getting right down to the bedrock of nature, so to speak, without too much highly developed civilisation. Yes, it is a good life for a man. Sometime I should like to show you the mission farm. We've made tremendous strides lately."
"And you?..." Diana turned with a winsome air to Ailsa Grenville. "Do you find the natives lovable, and the primitive conditions?... And are you proud of the mission farm?... Or doesn't it all sometimes make you just long to scream?... It would me!..."
Ailsa smiled into her eyes. "One grows adaptable very quickly. I confess I am very happy here. Certainly there are times when one feels rather as if one had dropped off the world into space, but it doesn't take long to struggle through it. But then, of course, it is well to remember that Billy and I are rather an exceptional couple; quite absurdly, idiotically satisfied with each other's company. If it were not so our lives would be purgatory. The tragedies of these far countries are for the husbands and wives isolated from all other companionship, and having perhaps nothing in common with each other. There are few conditions worse than isolation under those circumstances. It breaks the woman's spirit and sours the man and brings shipwreck, where a little other congenial companionship might have brought them through in safety."
They were interrupted by the sound of voices outside, and found that Mr. Pym and his engineer, having encountered Major Carew returning from Edwardstown, had persuaded him to show them the way to the mission. Mr. and Mrs. Grenville greeted them with eager warmth, and, the afternoon sun having sunk behind some trees, tea was spread outside the huts, so that they could drink it while admiring the view. Carew, though silent as ever, was less rigid, and Meryl saw how insistently his eyes strayed back to the blue vista of kopjes. She wondered what he thought of all day long, in his continuous silences, and behind the quiet, forceful eyes. It was noticeable that Diana seemed to have outgrown both her awe and chagrin towards him; and though at first he proved very unbending, she eventually won something like a repartee out of him. Ailsa watched them quietly from the background, and waited hopefully, but in vain, to see his eyes stray to Meryl. Indeed, he seemed almost to shun her, and she noted it with regret. Was it possible that already his preference was given to Diana, with her light raillery and ready laugh? Diana so pretty, so attractive, so original, and yet to Ailsa's thinking, so far less reliable and restful than Meryl. In the end, by a clever little manœuvre, she brought Carew and Meryl together.
"You are almost outvied, Major Carew," she told him lightly. "Miss Pym likes my view already, as much, if not more, than you. I told her you loved to sit and look at it, and that is exactly what she likes to do."