Trimblerigg

by Laurence Housman

Similarly when Mr. Trimblerigg opened his mouth to me, he was doing so for a genuine reason, as do most people: and why should I complain?

I get a meal—something that adds to my interest in life. Far more prayers mount up from the world below for selfish than for unselfish reasons (I have experience, and I know); and they are not the less sincere, or the less eloquent, or the less emotional, because they have a mundane and a self-centred object.

Now when I compare Mr. Trimblerigg to a crocodile, I hope nobody will suppose that I am taking the ordinary sentimental view of crocodiles, as of creatures more cruel than other creatures. A crocodile when it eats a human being is no more cruel than a thrush when it eats a worm; and if people could only get that well into their heads theology would have a better basis than it has at present. A crocodile only appears more cruel than nature’s average because it is peculiarly efficient to its end, and makes a wider sweep. Being big, it requires a larger meal than others of the predatory species; also it happens to carry on its countenance an almost unchangeable expression of self-satisfaction, and so by appearing pleased it appears more callous. And the fact that it does not always wait for its offal to die is another point which the sentimentalists have against it.

In all these characteristic features—not to mention the tears, which are merely accidental—there was between Mr. Trimblerigg and the crocodile a resemblance. He was in his own line—the line of getting on at the expense of others—preternaturally efficient; and as his efficiency took a wider sweep, and required for the fulfilment of its plans a larger contribution of sacrifice from assistants and opponents alike, he appears in retrospect, even on the ministerial side of his career, more rapacious, more predatory, and more callous than others. This arose partly from the size, the necessary size of his meal, and partly from the satisfaction it gave him; and if, when all was done, that satisfaction did not break out in smiles, he would have been a hypocrite. Being surface-honest, he smiled, quite aware that his success was for ever being built up on the failure of others—failure which he sometimes forced on them, or more often into which he tricked them, when they themselves were reluctant to stand aside.

But was that a reason why his smile should diminish? His smile only diminished when his meal did not agree with him. There have been occasions when he did not devour soon enough, when the nuisance which was obstructing his path had time to turn and give him one in return before the happy despatch could be effected. Then and only then did Mr. Trimblerigg ever appear sore. He much preferred to swallow a nuisance before it could retaliate.

The Puto-Congo nuisance, which had now come to so large a head, had done so while his attention and energy had been turned elsewhere. The fight for Relative Truth in one direction is apt to give Relative Untruth its opportunity in another; for the good that man does, or intends to do, is never absolute and all-embracing; and if Relative Truth is only relatively successful,—the untruths incidental to its propagation come into undue prominence and take the shine out of it.

So it was now with Mr. Trimblerigg’s evangelical war record; the recrudescence of the Puto-Congo trouble had begun to take the shine out of it; the nuisance had become monstrous and must be stopped.

For obviously what had happened was not fair to Mr. Trimblerigg. Years ago he had planned beneficently a working compact for the development of native races between Free Evangelicalism and Capital. By a lightning stroke of genius he had brought a business organization of vast proportions virtually, if not actually, under the control of the most active missionizing body in the whole world. It almost seemed as if the stainless record of the Quakers, whose peaceful but profitable contact with Red Indian scalp-hunters had extended over seventy-five years of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, might now repeat itself on a larger scale; and if Mr. Trimblerigg on the flush of that generous prospect, saw in vision his name pass down to posterity as the great Liberator,—saviour of an oppressed race, is he to be blamed for anything but a too sanguine temperament? Hitherto it was that very temperament which had brought to pass things almost impossible; but now here, just once, because his attention had been diverted, the scheme had gone wrong, so wrong as to become unrecognizable; and since he could not recognize its distorted features, he denied himself with a clear conscience either the parentage or the responsibility of it. A thing so remote from his intentions was necessarily the doing of others; and when crossing the sea for the first time he set out on the adventure, he had no other aim but to put it right and re-establish, on a sound basis, the concordat between Christianity and Capitalism which he had originally planned.

But when he got there he found things very much worse than even his enemies and traducers had either discovered or declared; for in the restoration of order the missionaries of Free Evangelicalism had become implicated; very much as in former time they had become implicated on the commercial and profit-making side; and the natives, to whom sequences were the same as consequences, had begun to turn on the missionaries.

And they also were hardly to blame; for wherever the missionaries went before, order—or attempted order—had come after. Submission had been preached till the natives would no longer submit; civilization had been painted in all the colours of the rainbow, till civilization had come and bruised them black and blue, and tanned their hides for them; or did so when it caught them. For to begin with the natives had only rebelled by ceasing to hew wood and draw water, or collect the rubber and other commodities which the Chartered Company was out to collect; and running away into the woods had hidden themselves; only defensively setting traps and laying ambushes, when the emissaries of the Chartered Company came to fetch them back again. And because, in many cases, the missionaries were sent as fore-runners, they started to make examples of the missionaries; and when the missionaries came and opened deceiving mouths at them, they devised a sure method for keeping their mouths shut by burying them head-downwards in the ground. And when the missionaries showed them those rainbows of promise, in which they no longer believed, they painted the missionaries in the truer colours of black and tan. And so it had come about that, when Mr. Trimblerigg got to the country, the mortality among the missionaries and their lay-followers was very nearly as high and very nearly as painful as the mortality had been among the natives of the Puto-Congo and Ray River Territory, till they had taken to the woods to save themselves.