THE REV. MR. FLAD.
The Rev. Father Daniels, the Roman Catholic priest to whom I have referred, made regular visitation to the camp, and we had, furthermore, occasional ministration from a Protestant divine, the Rev. Mr. Flad. This gentleman appeared in our midst with great suddenness one morning, and there was much ado to beat up a creditable congregation for him. This ultimately being forthcoming, and at the moment when the pastor was inviting us to accompany him with a pure heart to the Throne of Heavenly Grace entered Hans with an urgent and whispered message, which turned out to be an invitation to lunch from the Grand Duchess of Baden. The summons left the good padre obviously preoccupied during the service, and necessitated a postponement of the Communion until the afternoon. This led to a suggestion that the pastor might lecture us in the evening on his experiences in Abyssinia.
The father of Mr. Flad was a missionary in Abyssinia during the reign of King Theodore. His mother, a friend of Florence Nightingale, was a deaconess in the Church. When trouble arose between the King and the British Government—through the ignoring of the former’s letter suggesting a latter-day crusade for the liberation of the Holy Land from the Turks—Flad senior and fifty-eight other Europeans were imprisoned, and many of them had to undergo the punishment of being chained to a native soldier for four and a half years.
The native soldier, it is a relief to learn, was changed every week—a transaction which one can imagine as being welcome as a change of linen!
Ultimately Flad was despatched as Ambassador from King Theodore to Queen Victoria, with whom he had two interviews at Osborne, his wife being meanwhile held as hostage for his return. “I have here your two eyes and your heart,” said King Theodore.
During these difficult and dangerous years Mrs. Flad kept a diary, which was published, but which is now out of print. With the coming of Lord Napier the prisoners were released, and King Theodore came to a tragic end by his own hand. The pastor is hopeful of some day taking up his father’s work and he passed round a book printed in Geëz, I take it, a page of which he reads every day. His father used to tell him how in the native cafés he had heard discussion as to whether the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon was ruler of Abyssinia or Arabia.
One need not be in Abyssinia to be chained to a black mood at least, if not a black man. Sitting in the court at Carlsruhe, watching the barbed wire shake and shiver like a man in an ague to the play of my foot, I have been seized with a sudden fear of the horrors from which I have emerged. This fear in retrospect, so to speak, was greater far than anything I can confess to have felt in actuality; as if one who had boldly and blindly crossed a profound abyss on a tight-rope should faint or falter, grow dizzy and fall, having reached firm ground once more; as if one had all the past still to pass through, and it were not possible that one should safely pass through it.
To me, on such an occasion, appeared my buoyant young Italian friend Cotta, who, passing an arm through mine, haled me off for a glass of the atrocious white wine of the country—or at least of the Kantine. Thereafter we walked together in the Close, Cotta giving his English an airing.
“Yes, I speak English very well, very well. Have you see the donkey?”