"Don't think," she wrote home, "that there is any difference in my designation. I am Mary Mitchell Slessor, nothing more and none other than the unworthy, unprofitable, but most willing, servant of the King of Kings. May this be an incentive to work, and to be better than ever I have been in the past."
At home the honour was made known chiefly through the Record of the Church, in which Mr. Macgregor gave some account of her romantic career. He stipulated that this should be anonymous, for "Ma," he feared, would never forgive him if she knew that he had been connected with it. She gained a repute that was akin to fame. Congratulations from all parts of the world were showered upon her. Sir Frederick Lugard sent his "hearty and sincere congratulations, and his appreciation of this well-earned reward for her life of heroic self- sacrifice." In confusion of heart she escaped to Ikpe. "I shall never look the world in the face again until all this blarney and publicity is over," she said. "I feel so glad that I can hide here quietly where no one knows about newspapers and Records, and do my small portion of work out of sight."
For a time she was kept busy replying to the correspondence that the event evoked, and to all she made the same modest reply, that she saw in the honour "God's goodness to the Mission and her fellow-labourers, who were levelling and building and consolidating the work on every side. It is a token that He means to encourage them in the midst of their discouraging circumstances."
XIII. BATTLE FOR A LIFE
Each new kindness shown her was an incentive to harder service. She threw herself again into work with an extraordinary keenness. Dissatisfied with what she was doing at Ikpe, she moved in all directions in her "box on wheels," prospecting for new spheres of usefulness, fording rivers, crossing swamps, climbing hills, pushing through bush, traversing roads that were unsafe and where by the law people had to go in couples, and often putting up at villages six or ten miles distant. She saw crowds of people, and hundreds of women and children in every street, but no light; not even a desire for it, though here and there she found a disciple or two. She met with more opposition from the chiefs than she had done in all her experience. They would not hear of "God fashions," and would not permit teachers to enter their districts or churches to be built; they forbade all meetings for worship. She braced herself, body and mind, for the fight. She spent days in palaver, but they would not give in. She insisted that at least the right of the disciples to meet and worship in their own homes must be recognised. When the chiefs saw her face, set with iron resolution, they were afraid, wavered, and agreed. They then became quite friendly. "We don't object to schools," they admitted. "We want our children to learn to read and write, but we want no interference with our fashions. If houses of God are built, we shall all die, and we are dying fast enough."
"I shall never give you teachers without the Gospel," she declared. "If you don't take the one, you won't have the other. But I'm going to bring both. I shall put up a shed on the roadside, and hold services there whenever I get a chance."
"All right, Ma," they said with something like admiration. "Come yourself, but don't send boys."
And then she remembered. "How can this poor tabernacle do it, even with six lads to push and pull and carry the cart through the streams? But I have opened the way, and that is something."
In Ikpe itself the currents of heathenism ran deep and strong, and she found progress as difficult as in Okoyong. But she solved all the problems in the same fearless way as she had done there. Unlike those in other centres, the women and girls of the town took no interest in the work, and would not come forward, and she knew there was no hope for the community unless she secured their sympathy and attachment to the cause. At first a few girls had ventured to sit by themselves in church. Then some village accident made the chiefs believe that their juju was angry because the girls had forsaken their sacrifices and deserted the heathen plays, and they placed pressure on them to return. Some were flogged and made to pray before a clay-pot with an egg in it, and all were forced out on the moonlight nights to take part in the plays. "If they don't do that," demanded the chiefs, "how can they have children for us?" The girls lost courage and forsook the church, but she did not blame them. "Poor things, they are as timid as hares, and have never had a choice of what to do until I came. But the chiefs—I will be hard on them!"
One day she gathered all those who were faithful to the church laws, and interviewed the chiefs. The spokesman for her party urged that the antagonism that had been shown should cease; he agreed that any one who broke the ordinary laws should be punished, but no girl or young man should be compelled to sacrifice or pray to idols, or be ostracised or fined for fearing God. The words were received with scornful looks and laughs, the chiefs being hardly able to restrain themselves, but they had a wholesome fear of "Ma," and were never outwardly disrespectful in her presence. They looked at her. She kept a severe and solemn face, and they were a little nonplussed.