Chapter Eighteen.
Elijah.
It was late in the afternoon when Elijah arrived, somewhat tired from his long walk. He was a spare, loosely built youth with heavy features and a gloomy expression of countenance. His mother greeted him with much tenderness, and his father tried to be genial. But conversation between this father and son was extremely difficult. The involuntary mutual foundation of feeling was contempt, and the superstructure of conventional tolerance which formed their plane of communication was not conducive to geniality. They had thus got into the habit of having as little to say to each other as possible, and Noquala usually felt it necessary to start on one of his rounds of inspection of his “ngqoma” cattle within a few days of his son’s return for the holidays.
On the present occasion the cordiality which usually was maintained between the mother and son as soon as the father’s back was turned was somewhat impaired. There was a strong restraint on the son’s side, which the mother found it hard to combat. When, however, Elijah had been at home for a week the cause was made clear in the following conversation:—“Mother,” said Elijah, after an awkward interval, “when were you at church last?”
Makalipa flashed her keen eyes upon her son’s gloomy face for an instant before she answered—
“You know quite well how it is that I do not go to church.”
“Yes, mother, but I want you to go. Think what people must say about me, a man who wants to be a minister, and who has a mother who, although she is a Christian, does not go to church.”
“Elijah, my son, I do not go to church, it is true, but I can read my Bible, and I don’t remember the chapter in which it teaches that a son should instruct the mother who bore him. Of course, when you are a minister it will be different. Then I will go and hear you preach. So you had better make haste and have a church of your own if you want to save my soul.”
Elijah walked away without replying. The day was warm, so he went and threw himself down upon his mat in the big hut in which his father and mother also slept. His mother, remorseful of having snubbed him, brought him some food a short time afterwards, but he refused to eat and said that he only wanted to sleep. Makalipa put this down to the sulks—a complaint to which Elijah had been subject to from earliest childhood—so she set the food aside and went down to the fields to superintend the harvesting of the grain.
When she returned the sun was down. Elijah was still lying on his mat, apparently asleep. His mother tried to arouse him, but he at once relapsed into a doze, after just murmuring that he had a bad headache. So Makalipa, after placing some food next to him, retired to bed and slept soundly until dawn.