I have little doubt that had Mr. Trimblerigg’s diverted attention—diverted to the saving of democracy, the skinning of the scapegoat and the hewing of Agag,—had it been recalled a little earlier in the direction where it would have done more good, and had he promulgated his idea of a Free State Limited five years sooner, when the call first came for Puto-Congo to assist in the saving of civilization, I have very little doubt that he could have done what he now failed to do, by methods which would have left his reputation very much as they found it. But when he arrived upon the scene the natives had got to a state of mind in which they could see nothing with any appetite except blood, and hear nothing except the cries of their victims; and in spite of Mr. Trimblerigg’s proclamations of peace and goodwill (under certain governing conditions) the burying habit, with its painted accompaniments, went on: got worse, in fact, instead of better.
No doubt had Mr. Trimblerigg been able to announce to the natives, that the white race with its civilizing mission, its religious principles, its rubber interests, and its shares, was prepared to clear out of the country, lock, stock, and barrel, and restore them the crude independence they had never willingly let go,—no doubt had he begun withdrawing his missions to the coast, and made the interior prohibited territory to his rubber-collectors, he would have found fewer of his missionaries entered head-downwards into future life as he advanced his armed guards, his rescue-work, and his reforms. But so long as the white missions and the traders remained active the natives could not be convinced. Nor was Mr. Trimblerigg entirely a free agent, he still had the shareholders behind him—albeit shareholders professing Christianity; and these were people who believed in the civilizing mission not only of race but of organized capital. And because native ways of shedding blood were a savagery which must be put down, while civilized ways of restoring order were a ‘military necessity’ and a ‘moral obligation’ combined; and because if they did not get the rubber somebody else would, and their civilizing trade would suffer,—therefore they hung on, and would not let go. And though Mr. Trimblerigg had full power given him, it was power that must be used to a certain end; and the end, put briefly, was that Christianity and Capital must continue their civilizing mission in company, and win back Puto-Congo to the ways of the world.
Having stated the moral obligation I draw as much of a veil over it as I can, making history brief; for Mr. Trimblerigg, much against his will, was obliged to fulfil it in terms of Relative Truth, such as the natives could understand. In a crisis the Mosaic law is so much easier and quicker to explain to primitive races than the other law which came later. For these races stand at a stage of the world’s history; and what the higher races went through, by way of judicial experiment, they must go through also. Even by Christians, when it comes to the point, Christianity has never been regarded as a short cut—not even among themselves. For them and for all the rest of the civilized world, Moses is still the law-giver, and there is no transfiguration yet for the thunders of Mount Sinai; its lightnings continue to strike under the New Dispensation as of old.
So it had to be now. The natives of Puto-Congo themselves indicated what form of instruction best suited them; and under Mr. Trimblerigg’s dispensation it was no longer only the missionaries who were buried head-downwards and painted black-and-tan, to match the landscape with its foregrounds of burnt-out villages and long tracks of charred jungle wherein nothing lived or moved.
For this painful necessity Mr. Trimblerigg had good material provided him. Civilization had trained for war far more men than it could now employ in peace; and what, at the call to her children of a country in danger, had been an act of heroic sacrifice had degenerated in course of time into a confirmed habit, wherein fierce craving and dull routine were curiously mixed. And when peace supervened and became in the hands of diplomats a feverish and restless thing, almost as nerve-racking as war, then by many hundreds of warriors unwanted by the State and without employ, the dull routine was forgotten while the fierce craving remained. Thus, here and there, as luck would have it, in a still unsettled world, use was found for them, and governments to which they owed no allegiance and for which they had no affection, and as to whose rights and wrongs they knew nothing and cared less, sent and hired them as experts for the shedding of blood in quarrels not their own. And because governments, good or bad, are organized things, and because men are accustomed to have a government over them justifying them in what they do, therefore, without trouble of conscience, to these foreign governments they gave themselves, and shedding blood to order, on a contract which promised them good pay, were not regarded as murderers at all, but as men still honourably employed in the service of civilization.
And some of these having returned home in the nick of time from building castles in Spain, cheated of their pay, and very much disgusted with the camps and the food and the sanitary arrangement which had been provided for them, hearing that there was more employment of a similar kind to be had in Puto-Congo and Ray River Territory, went and offered themselves to the Chartered Company and found grateful acceptance. And when a thousand of them had been collected, they were sent out to the help of Mr. Trimblerigg, well supplied with arms and ammunition, also with spades and tar-brushes. And when they arrived Mr. Trimblerigg gave them their welcome instructions, plenty of work at blacking and tanning, one pound a day, and their keep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Civilized and Simple
IT was unfortunate that Mr. Trimblerigg, at this crucial stage of his career, not having Davidina to worry him, had no need to worry about Davidina. Some six months earlier she had started upon a career of her own on rather a big scale—a research expedition, which, though merely an extension of that taste for travel in strange places which she had already indulged, was now organized upon such novel lines and to cover so far-stretched a route that it had attracted public notice, and had won for her at the moment of departure many send-off paragraphs in journals of science and in the daily press. It was still something of a novelty for a lone woman to head an expedition into tropical wilds south of the equator, for no other apparent object than to collect botanical specimens, and incidentally study the habits of the native tribes encountered on the way. In addition, Davidina admitted that she had a theory which she wished to put to the test; for though not a Christian Scientist, she was one of those curious people who are without fear; and being without fear she believed herself safe; and as she did not mind dying she did not intend to carry fire-arms. The whole gist of the experiment lay in the fact that, disappearing from the eye of civilization to the south-east of trails which no white woman had ever yet penetrated, she intended to re-emerge 2,500 miles to the north-west, an unharmed specimen of that superior race-product which she believed herself to be.
She and Jonathan had not been pleased with each other during the War; and for the first time in his grown-up life Mr. Trimblerigg had adopted toward his sister the superior moral tone which circumstances seemed to justify; for in this contention he had not only the world with him but all the Churches. He told Davidina that she was wrong. Davidina’s reply was: ‘Seeing is believing; and at present I don’t see much except mess, nor do you. In war nobody can.’ And having waited till travel by land and sea had once more become possible, Davidina sent him word of the object-lesson she was going to give him. ‘And if,’ she concluded, ‘you don’t see me again, you needn’t believe in my method any more than I believe in yours. In any case, I shan’t haunt you; and I’ve left you my love in my will.’ And with that cryptic remark she took herself off, leaving no address.
It would be hard to say what exactly Mr. Trimblerigg wished, hoped, or expected to be the outcome of her attempt to give him the promised lesson. Probably he thought she would come back the way she had gone, with a good record of adventure to her credit, a safe failure; for he had great faith in Davidina’s powers of survival. What he did not expect in the least was what actually happened. Mr. Trimblerigg was inattentive to maps and unattracted to geography; and when Davidina started on her adventure she was more than 2,000 miles away from any part of the world in which Mr. Trimblerigg had interests.