The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

Bojedi’s argument therefore was not without plausibility, and all these facts that I have related he marshalled to his defense very ably and with intense feeling, as we sat there in the dark schoolhouse. It was plain that he had thought of all this before, and that before entering on this relationship he had argued long with his conscience as he now argued with me. But it was also plain that he argued in his defense and not his justification, and that he had allowed his reason to coerce his conscience. I replied that where there was nothing outward except a public announcement to distinguish marriage from an illicit relation, then the announcement became a duty binding on the conscience quite as much as a ceremony; and that if marriage be not so distinguished we have a society of “free love.” And again, as to the inwardness of the marriage relation, upon which he dwelt, that it implied always, whether with or without a ceremony, a sincere intention of permanency. I added: “From the regard that you have expressed for Antyandi you would probably desire that your present relation be permanent. But desire is not sufficient without expectation also; and you know as well as I do that when you leave Gaboon to return to your own people Antyandi will never go with you, and even if she should remain here she would not be true to you. You have therefore, with full knowledge, entered into a temporary relationship; which is no marriage in any sense that a Christian can admit.”

As repentance is the chief act of man, so it is also the hardest. To make the admission of wrong to me was not so hard as to admit it to himself, with all its consequences. But at last the admission came: a moment later he was on his knees, in tears and sobs. He said: “It is not that I cannot give up Antyandi; it will be hard enough, but I’ll do it. But it is the wrong I have already done and the loss to myself that I feel. These two years while I have been teaching your school I have lived differently from all the other years of my life. Many things that I used to do I had stopped doing. I was happy because my heart was clean, and because the schoolboys all loved me and believed in me. And now all that I have built up in these two years is pulled down. And what will the boys think of me?”

It would be cruel to repeat all that was said in that conversation. He wept until I felt that tears could do no more, and then I tried to quiet and comfort him. It was midnight when I left him.

Next day he sent a brief letter to Antyandi telling her that he had done wrong, that he was very much ashamed, and that she must not expect him ever to enter her house again. He fully realized that there was a hard fight ahead of him and he thought best not to see her at all. She made many attempts and plied her arts to get him again in her power. She wrote him letters in which she professed to be dying for love of him. I went to her and ordered her not to set her foot on the mission premises. She regarded the order by day, but she came at night. She came to his window waking him suddenly out of his sleep. She tried his door. She came at all hours of the night. One night he found that he could not lock his door. She had probably tampered with it; but he did not think of that, for she had not been there for several nights. That night at midnight she came. He broke loose from her and ran straight for my room, where I was in bed asleep. He knocked and entered; then told me what had happened and begged me to protect him. I told him he must stay in my room the rest of that night; which he did, and slept on the floor. I kept him there every night for a week; for more than once he had wavered though he had not fallen. Thus she continued to do for two months; but the subject is not a pleasant one, and we need not follow the course of events during that period.

After two months we heard that she was in Libreville, the mistress of a dignitary of the government, and Bojedi supposed that that would be the last of her; but it was not. A month later the white man suddenly left Libreville or died—I have forgotten which—and Antyandi returned home. A few days afterwards, returning from the beach one morning, I observed that in my absence some one had closed the door of my study which I had left open; the windows also were closed and the blinds down. I hurried in with a vague apprehension of something wrong. There sat Bojedi in the darkened room, his face buried in his hands and sobbing as if his heart would break. I knew instantly what had happened.

“How can I tell you!”

“There is no need to tell me,” I replied; “go to your own house, Bojedi, and I shall follow you in a little while.”

I went to his house and he told me the whole story of his temptation and fall, a story that I cannot repeat here. He told it with a broken voice and crying all the time. The school had been closed two weeks before, the boys were all gone and nobody around. Bojedi was waiting for the English steamer, on which he was going home. This complete idleness after his responsible and constant work was perhaps the devil’s opportunity. Still crying he rose at length and opening a box took out all sorts of native riches, presents from Antyandi, native robes which must have been paid for by white men, a fancy bed-quilt and embroidered pillow-covers. Without saying a word, but still sobbing, he made a pile of these things just outside his door, while I looked on not knowing what he was going to do, until he struck a match and set fire to them. Then he remarked: “I should have done that long ago;” which I fully admitted; or else he should have returned them, which would have been better. The next day he left for home.

I felt that this moral fall was peculiarly serious, much more so than some sin of sudden impulse. It was no doubt the very crisis of his life, a long deliberate battle in which all his moral resources were called out and all his moral energy engaged. Victory in such a fight transforms temptation into a purifying alembic; but to fall in such a fight means usually to be maimed for life.

Very soon after this I left Africa. Bojedi remained at home the following year. He was married during the year. The last letter that I received from him was dated at Brazzaville, in the very heart of Africa, on the Upper Congo, where he had a good position with the Commissaire Général. He says: “Your letter dated at Lebanon, Indiana, August 21, 1906, was received March 20, 1907,” after which he tells me that just before he left his home in Benito a son was born to him, whom he has named Robert Milligan! May his tribe increase!