Then, through his interpreter, he spoke the final word, in so persuasive a voice and with so smiling a face, that they could not but feel that all was now well; and with nod and grunt, and soft patting of palm on thigh, and slow swayings to and fro, they glimmered back at him, suspicious no more of one so equal and fearless, and confiding, sitting peacefully in their midst.
‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘these are your white friends, who have come, feeling their way through the dark night with hands eager for the dawn, to know whether we have indeed made peace. We have, have we not? I told them that I should be here sowing seed fit for fruit-bearing, and that in the night it would take root, and grow, and become a tree wherein the love-singers would nest: I told them to wait and hope. But their hope was so great that they could wait no more; therefore have they come. Their eager hearts have led them through the blackness and terror of night to behold the glad faces of their dark brothers shining to welcome them. O Brothers, what matters a little giving and taking on this side or on that, if only we can be at peace, and share together the heat and light of the sun which are, indeed, so abundant that if we each take half it will be better for us. Hark! they have learned your song of love, and you shall learn ours; let us go out and meet them!’
He rose and led the dazed and awe-struck natives to the gate of their stockade; then, as it opened, skipped nimbly across to the shelter of that happy band of pilgrims, who, wearing white robes and carrying guns concealed under palm-branches, stood and smiled amicably upon the situation which Mr. Trimblerigg had prepared for them.
The faces of the chiefs fell; without a word they stepped back into the council chamber where lay the drafted treaty, cut each a small wrist-vein and signed it in his blood. ‘Our tribe will kill us for this,’ said one chief as he affixed his mark. And two months later he was dead.
And Mr. Trimblerigg, having successfully won his point, by a judicious mixture of incompatible principles, was quite pleased with himself—and me. For while he took over most of the credit, he did not forget his stars for having made him the man he was. Grateful as well as gratified, and very tired after all his efforts, he fell asleep without having risen from his knees. And as in that attitude he slept the sleep of the just, with just a suspicion of the crocean dawn once more illuminating the pillow on which at sideway turn his head so confidingly rested, I felt once again that curious sense of helplessness which his achievement of a good conscience always imposed on me; and the old doubt recurred—difficult to put into words, but virtually to this effect: was the relation between us a reality or only a dream; did he belong to me, or did I belong to him? Was I using him, or was he using me? Ought I to consider myself anything more than a rather shining reflector of his brain?
All through the world’s history there have been men doubtful of their makers, honestly incredulous of the source from which they sprung—infidels, sceptics, atheists—of lives too short to mark the changes, vicissitudes and final disappearance of the creeds they would not hold. Many such have I known with sympathy and with understanding; but Mr. Trimblerigg, so far as my experience goes, is the unique instance of that process reversed—one who has raised a like doubt in the mind of his creator. Was he really mine, or did I only dream of him as fantastically as he so often dreamed of me? Now he has gone from me, and I do not know: perhaps I never shall. But if in that other region to which he has now passed he has at last found not me but himself—and in that image has satisfied the requirements of his soul—can it be called a lost one—so far as he is concerned?
His work accomplished, he returned home. Incidentally the ship which bore him and his fortunes back to the old world encountered storm almost the whole way. But Mr. Trimblerigg’s conscience was at peace, and he was not afraid. For myself I own that I was anxious; I never quite know how storms are going to end; and I did not wish, at this juncture, to lose Mr. Trimblerigg merely by accident.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Second Wind
MR. TRIMBLERIGG’S home-coming, in spite of the triumphal note sedulously given to it by his out-and-out supporters, was a sad one. He found Free Evangelicalism divided against him. His results had not wiped out the memory of his methods; and as there had been loud protest while these were still going on, there was now controversy as to whether they had in the least helped to the more peaceful dénouement which had followed. In the main his only backers among the Free Evangelicals were the armed missionaries who had carried out his policy, and the shareholders whose investments he had saved from ruin. And though True Belief had rallied whole-heartedly to the support of his more than Mosaic discipline—finding for it the warrant of Scripture—True Belief, in spite of the new importance thus given to it, was not the mould into which he could pour himself at this advanced stage of his career upon his return to civilization. Except in the mission field, where he had used it to meet an emergency, its die-hard tenets were incompatible with Relative Truth; yet though some of its followers still held that the world was flat, and others that it did not go round, in a matter of religious war against the barbarism of savage tribes he could work with them, and in their eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth standpoint find the Relative Truth which served his need. But they, for their part, would not doctrinally budge an inch to come to him.
So when the main body of Free Evangelicalism turned against him, intimacy with True Belief stood rather as a liability than as an asset; though for a time it was a question whether he had anywhere else to turn—whether any religious connection large and lively enough to serve his purpose was willing to have him except on terms into which even his diversified record could not fit without foolishness.