The Life to Come

1. Night

Love had been born somewhere in the forest, of what quality only the future could decide. Trivial or immortal, it had been born to two human bodies as a midnight cry. Impossible to tell whence the cry had come, so dark was the forest. Or into what worlds it would echo, so vast was the forest. Love had been born for good or evil, for a long life or a short.

There was hidden among the undergrowth of that wild region a small native hut. Here, after the cry had died away, a light was kindled. It shone upon the pagan limbs and the golden ruffled hair of a young man. He, calm and dignified, raised the wick of a lamp which had been beaten down flat, he smiled, lit it, and his surroundings trembled back into his sight. The hut lay against the roots of an aged tree, which undulated over its floor and surged at one place into a natural couch, a sort of throne, where the young man’s quilt had been spread. A stream sang outside, a firefly relit its lamp also. A remote, a romantic spot… lovely, lovable… and then he caught sight of a book on the floor, and he dropped beside it with a dramatic moan as if it was a corpse and he the murderer. For the book in question was his Holy Bible. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not—” A scarlet flower hid the next word, flowers were everywhere, even round his own neck. Losing his dignity, he sobbed “Oh, what have I done?” and not daring to answer the question he hurled the flowers through the door of the hut and the Bible after them, then rushed to retrieve the latter in an agony of grotesque remorse. All had fallen into the stream, all were carried away by the song. Darkness and beauty, darkness and beauty.

“Only one end to this,” he thought. And he scuttled back for his pistol. But the pistol was not with him, for he was negligent in his arrangements and had left it over with the servants at the further side of the great tree; and the servants, awoken from slumber, took alarm at his talk of firearms. In spite of all he could say, they concluded that an attack was impending from the neighbouring village, which had already proved unfriendly, and they implored their young master not to resist, but to hide in the brushwood until dawn and slip away as soon as the forest paths were visible. Contrary to his orders, they began packing, and next morning he was riding away from the enchanted hut, and descending the watershed into the next valley. Looking back at the huge and enigmatic masses of the trees, he prayed them to keep his unspeakable secret, to conceal it even from God, and he felt in his unhinged state that they had the power to do this, and that they were not ordinary trees.

When he reached the coast, the other missionaries there saw at once from his face that he had failed. Nor had they expected otherwise. The Roman Catholics, far more expert than themselves, had failed to convert Vithobai, the wildest, strongest, most stubborn of all the inland chiefs. And Paul Pinmay (for this was the young man’s name) was at that time a very young man indeed, and had partly been sent in order that he might discover his own limitations. He was inclined to be impatient and headstrong, he knew little of the language and still less of native psychology, and indeed he disdained to study this last, declaring in his naïve way that human nature is the same all over the world. They heard his story with sympathy but without surprise. He related how on his arrival he had asked for an audience, which Vithobai had granted inside his ancestral stockade. There, dictionary in hand, he had put the case for Christ, and at the end Vithobai, not deigning to reply in person, had waved to a retainer and made him answer. The retainer had been duly refuted, but Vithobai remained impassive and unfriendly behind his amulets and robes. So he put the case a

second time, and another retainer was put up against him, and the audience continued on these lines until he was so exhausted that he was fain to withdraw. Forbidden to sleep in the village, he was obliged to spend the night all alone in a miserable hut, while the servants kept careful watch before the entrance and reported that an attack might be expected at any moment. He had therefore judged it fitter to come away at sunrise. Such was his story—told in a mixture of missionary jargon and of slang—and towards the close he was looking at his colleagues through his long eyelashes to see whether they suspected anything.

“Do you advise a renewed attempt next week?” asked one of them, who was addicted to irony.

And another: “Your intention, I think, when you left us, was to get into touch with this unapproachable Vithobai personally, indeed you declared that you would not return until you had done so.”

And a third: “But you must rest now, you look tired.”

He was tired, but as soon as he lay down his secret stole out of its hiding-place beyond the mountains, and lay down by his side. And he recalled Vithobai, Vithobai the unapproachable, coming into his hut out of the darkness and smiling at him. Oh how delighted he had been! Oh how surprised! He had scarcely recognized the sardonic chief in this gracious and bare-limbed boy, whose only ornaments were scarlet flowers. Vithobai had laid all formality aside. “I have come secretly,” were his first words. “I wish to hear more about this god whose name is Love.” How his heart had leapt after the despondency of the day! “Come to Christ!” he had cried, and Vithobai had said, “Is that your name?” He explained No, his name was not Christ, although he had the fortune to be called Paul after a great apostle, and of course he was no god but a sinful man, chosen to call other sinners to the Mercy Seat. “What is Mercy? I wish to hear more,” said Vithobai, and they sat down together upon the couch that was almost a throne. And he had opened the Bible at I. Cor. 13, and had read and expounded the marvellous

chapter, and spoke of the love of Christ and of our love for each other in Christ, very simply but more eloquently than ever before, while Vithobai said, “This is the first time I have heard such words, I like them,” and drew closer, his body aglow and smelling sweetly of flowers. And he saw how intelligent the boy was and how handsome, and determining to win him there and then imprinted a kiss on his forehead and drew him to Abraham’s bosom. And Vithobai had lain in it gladly—too gladly and too long—and had extinguished the lamp. And God alone saw them after that.

Yes, God saw and God sees. Go down into the depths of the woods and He beholds you, throw His Holy Book into the stream, and you destroy only print and paper, not the Word. Sooner or later, God calls every deed to the light. And so it was with Mr Pinmay. He began, though tardily, to meditate upon his sin. Each time he looked at it its aspect altered. At first he assumed that all the blame was his, because he should have set an example. But this was not the root of the matter, for Vithobai had shown no reluctance to be tempted. On the contrary… and it was his hand that beat down the light.

And why had he stolen up from the village if not to tempt?… Yes, to tempt, to attack the new religion by corrupting its preacher, yes, yes, that was it, and his retainers celebrated his victory now in some cynical orgy. Young Mr Pinmay saw it all. He remembered all that he had heard of the antique power of evil in the country, the tales he had so smilingly dismissed as beneath a Christian’s notice, the extraordinary uprushes of energy which certain natives were said to possess and occasionally to employ for unholy purposes. And having reached this point he found that he was able to pray; he confessed his defilement (the very name of which cannot be mentioned among Christians), he lamented that he had postponed, perhaps for a generation, the victory of the Church, and he condemned, with increasing severity, the arts of his seducer. On the last topic he became truly eloquent, he always found something more to say, and having begun by

recommending the boy to mercy he ended by asking that he might be damned.

“But perhaps this is going too far,” he thought, and perhaps it was, for just as he finished his prayers there was a noise as of horsemen below, and then all his colleagues came dashing into his room. They were in extreme excitement. Cried one: “News from the interior, news from the forest.

Vithobai and the entire of his people have embraced Christianity.” And the second: “Here we have the triumph of youth, oh it puts us to shame.” While the third exclaimed alternately “Praise be to God!” and “I beg your pardon.”

They rejoiced one with another and rebuked their own hardness of heart and want of faith in the Gospel method, and they thought the more highly of young Pinmay because he was not elated by his success, on the contrary, he appeared to be disturbed, and fell upon his knees in prayer.

2. Evening

Mr Pinmay’s trials, doubts and final triumphs are recorded in a special pamphlet, published by his Society and illustrated by woodcuts. There is a picture called “What it seemed to be”, which shows a hostile and savage potentate threatening him; in another picture, called “What it really was!”, a dusky youth in western clothes sits among a group of clergymen and ladies, looking like a waiter, and supported by under-waiters, who line the steps of a building labelled “School”. Barnabas (for such was the name that the dusky youth received at his baptism)—Barnabas proved an exemplary convert. He made mistakes, and his theology was crude and erratic, but he never backslid, and he had authority with his own people, so that the missionaries had only to explain carefully what they wanted, and it was carried out. He evinced abundant zeal, and behind it a steadiness of purpose all too rare. No one, not even the Roman Catholics, could point to so solid a success.

Since Mr Pinmay was the sole cause of the victory, the new district naturally fell to his charge. Modest, like all sincere workers, he was reluctant to accept, refusing to go although the chief sent deputation after deputation to escort him, and only going in the end because he was commanded to do so by the Bishop. He was appointed for a term of ten years. As soon as he was installed, he set to work energetically—indeed, his methods provoked criticism, although they were fully justified by their fruits. He who had been wont to lay such stress on the Gospel teaching, on love, kindness, and personal influence, he who had preached that the Kingdom of Heaven is intimacy and emotion, now reacted with violence and treated the new converts and even Barnabas himself with the gloomy severity of the Old Law. He who had ignored the subject of native psychology now became an expert therein, and often spoke more like a disillusioned official than a missionary. He would say: “These people are so unlike ourselves that I much doubt whether they have really accepted Christ. They are pleasant enough when they meet us, yet probably spread all manner of ill-natured gossip when our backs are turned. I cannot wholly trust them.” He paid no respect to local customs, suspecting them all to be evil, he undermined the tribal organization, and—most risky of all—he appointed a number of native catechists of low type from the tribe in the adjoining valley. Trouble was expected, for this was an ancient and proud people, but their spirit seemed broken, or Barnabas broke it where necessary. At the end of the ten years the Church was to know no more docile sons.

Yet Mr Pinmay had his anxious moments.

His first meeting with Barnabas was the worst of them.

He had managed to postpone it until the day of his installation by the Bishop, and of the general baptism. The ceremonies were over, and the whole tribe, headed by their chief, had filed past the portable font and been signed on the forehead with the cross of Christ. Mistaking the nature of the

rite, they were disposed to gaiety. Barnabas laid his outer garment aside, and running up to the group of missionaries like any young man of his people said, “My brother in Christ, oh come quickly,” and stroked Mr Pinmay’s flushed face, and tried to kiss his forehead and golden hair.

Mr Pinmay disengaged himself and said in a trembling voice: “In the first place send your people each to his home.”

The order was given and obeyed.

“In the second place, let no one come before me again until he is decently clad,” he continued, more firmly.

“My brother, like you?”

The missionary was now wearing a suit of ducks with shirt, vest, pants and cholera belt, also sun-helmet, starched collar, blue tie spotted with white, socks, and brown boots. “Yes, like me,” he said. “And in the third place are you decently clad yourself, Barnabas?”

The chief was wearing but little. A cincture of bright silks supported his dagger and floated in the fresh wind when he ran. He had silver armlets, and a silver necklet, closed by a falcon’s head which nestled against his throat. His eyes flashed like a demon, for he was unaccustomed to rebuke, but he submitted and vanished into his stockade.

The suspense of the last few weeks had quite altered Mr Pinmay’s character. He was no longer an open-hearted Christian knight but a hypocrite whom a false step would destroy. The retreat of Barnabas relieved him. He saw that he had gained an ascendancy over the chief which it was politic to develop. Barnabas respected him, and would not willingly do harm—had even an affection for him, loathsome as the idea might seem.

All this was to the good. But he must strike a second blow. That evening he went in person to the stockade, taking with him two colleagues who had recently arrived and knew nothing of the language.

The chief received them in soiled European clothes—in the interval he had summoned one of the traders who accompanied the baptismal party. He

had mastered his anger, and speaking courteously he said: “Christ awaits us in my inner chamber.”

Mr Pinmay had thought out his line of action. He dared not explain the hideous error, nor call upon his fellow sinner to repent; the chief must remain in a state of damnation for a time, for a new church depended on it.

His reply to the unholy suggestion was “Not yet”.

“Why not yet?” said the other, his beautiful eyes filling with tears. “God orders me to love you now.”

“He orders me to refrain.”

“How can that be, when God is Love?”

“I have served him the longer and I know.”

“But this is my palace and I am a great chief.”

“God is greater than all chiefs.”

“As it was in your hut let it here be. Dismiss your companions and the gate will be barred behind them, and we close out the light. My body and the breath in it are yours. Draw me again to your bosom. I give myself, I, Vithobai the King.”

“Not yet,” repeated Mr Pinmay, covering his eyes with his hand.

“My beloved, I give myself… take me… I give you my kingdom.” And he fell prone.

“Arise, Barnabas…. We do not want your kingdom. We have only come to teach you to rule it rightly. And do not speak of what happened in the hut. Never mention the hut, the word hut, the thought, either to me or to anyone. It is my wish and my command.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Come, my gods, come back to me,” he cried, leaping up and wrenching at his clothes. “What do I gain by leaving you?”

“No, no, no!” prevaricated Mr Pinmay. “I said Never speak, not that I would never come.”

The boy was reassured. He said: “Yes. I misunderstood. You do come to Christ, but not yet. I must wait. For how long?”

“Until I call you. Meanwhile obey all my orders, whether given directly or through others.”

“Very well, my brother. Until you call me.”

“And do not call me your brother.”

“Very well.”

“Or seek my company.” Turning to the other missionaries, he said, “Now let us go.” He was glad he had brought companions with him, for his repentance was still insecure. The sun was setting, the inner chamber garlanded, the stockade deserted, the boy wild with passion, weeping as if his heart had broken. They might have been so happy together in their sin and no one but God need have known.

3. Day

The next crisis that Mr Pinmay had to face was far less serious, yet it shocked him more, because he was unprepared for it. The occasion was five years later, just before his own marriage. The cause of Christ had progressed greatly in the interval. Dancing had been put down, industry encouraged, inaccurate notions as to the nature of religion had disappeared, nor in spite of espionage had he discovered much secret immorality. He was marrying one of the medical missionaries, a lady who shared his ideals, and whose brother had a mining concession above the village.

As he leant over the veranda, meditating with pleasure on the approaching change in his life, a smart European dog-cart drove up, and Barnabas scrambled out of it to pay his congratulations. The chief had developed into an affable and rather weedy Christian with a good knowledge of English. He likewise was about to be married—his bride a

native catechist from the adjoining valley, a girl inferior to him by birth, but the missionaries had selected her.

Congratulations were exchanged.

Mr Pinmay’s repentance was now permanent, and his conscience so robust that he could meet the chief with ease and transact business with him in private, when occasion required it. The brown hand, lying dead for an instant in his own, awoke no reminiscences of sin.

Wriggling rather awkwardly inside his clothes, Barnabas said with a smile: “Will you take me a short drive in your dog-cart, Mr Pinmay?”

Mr Pinmay replied that he had no dog-cart.

“Excuse me, sir, you have. It stands below. It, and the horse, are my wedding gift to you.”

The missionary had long desired a horse and cart, and he accepted them without waiting to ask God’s blessing. “You should not have given me such an expensive present,” he remarked. For the chief was no longer wealthy; in the sudden advent of civilization he had chanced to lose much of his land.

“My reward is enough if we go one drive, sir.”

As a rule he did not choose to be seen pleasuring with a native—it undermined his authority—but this was a special occasion. They moved briskly through the village, Barnabas driving to show the paces of the horse, and presently turned to the woods or to what remained of them; there was a tolerable road, made by the timber-fellers, which wound uphill towards a grove. The scene was uninteresting, and pervaded by a whitish light that seemed to penetrate every recess. They spoke of local affairs.

“How much of the timber is earmarked for the mines?” inquired Mr Pinmay, in the course of the conversation.

“An increasing amount as the galleries extend deeper into the mountain. I am told that the heat down there is now so great that the miners work unclad. Are they to be fined for this?”

“No. It is impossible to be strict about mines. They constitute a special case.”

“I understand. I am also told that disease among them increases.”

“It does, but then so do our hospitals.”

“I do not understand.”

“Can’t you grasp, Barnabas, that under God’s permission certain evils attend civilization, but that if men do God’s will the remedies for the evils keep pace? Five years ago you had not a single hospital in this valley.”

“Nor any disease. I understand. Then all my people were strong.”

“There was abundant disease,” corrected the missionary. “Vice and superstitition, to mention no others. And intertribal war. Could you have married a lady from another valley five years ago?”

“No. Even as a concubine she would have disgraced me.”

“All concubines are a disgrace.”

“I understand. In regard to this marriage, sir, there is, however, a promise that you made me once.”

“About the mining concession, of course? Exactly. Yes, I never thought you were treated fairly there. I will certainly approach my future brother-in-law to get you some compensation. But you ought to have been more careful at the time. You signed your rights away without consulting me. I am always willing to be consulted.”

“It is not the mining concession,” said Barnabas patiently; although a good steward for the Church, he had grown careless where his own affairs were concerned. “It is quite another promise.” He seemed to be choosing his words. Speaking slowly and without any appearance of emotion, he said at last: “Come to Christ.”

“Come to Him indeed,” said Mr Pinmay in slightly reproving tones, for he was not accustomed to receive such an invitation from a spiritual inferior.

Barnabas paused again, then said: “In the hut.”

“What hut?” He had forgotten.

“The hut with the Mercy Seat.”

Shocked and angry, he exclaimed: “Barnabas, Barnabas, this is disgraceful. I forbad you ever to mention this subject.”

At that moment the horse drew up at the entrance of the grove.

Civilization tapped and clinked behind them, under a garish sun. The road ended, and a path where two could walk abreast continued into the delicate gray and purple recesses of the trees. Tepid, impersonal, as if he still discussed public affairs, the young man said: “Let us both be entirely reasonable, sir. God continues to order me to love you. It is my life, whatever else I seem to do. My body and the breath in it are still yours, though you wither them up with this waiting. Come into the last forest, before it is cut down, and I will be kind, and all may end well. But it is now five years since you first said Not yet.”

“It is, and now I say Never.”

“This time you say Never?”

“I do.”

Without replying, Barnabas handed him the reins, and then jerked himself out of the cart. It was a most uncanny movement, which seemed to proceed direct from the will. He scarcely used his hands or rose to his feet before jumping. But his soul uncoiled like a spring, and thrust the cart violently away from it against the ground. Mr Pinmay had heard of such contortions, but never witnessed them; they were startling, they were disgusting. And the descent was equally sinister. Barnabas lay helpless as if the evil uprush had suddenly failed. “Are you ill?” asked the clergyman.

“No.”

“Then what ails you?”

“No.”

“Do you repent of your words?”

“No.”

“Then you must be punished. As the head of the community you are bound to set an example. You are fined one hundred pounds for backsliding.”

“No.” Then as if to himself he said: “First the grapes of my body are pressed. Then I am silenced. Now I am punished. Night, evening and a day.

What remains?”

What should remain? The remark was meaningless. Mr Pinmay drove back alone, rather thoughtful. He would certainly have to return the horse and cart—they had been intended as a bribe—and the hundred pounds must be collected by one of his subordinates. He wished that the whole unsavoury business had not been raked up into the light just before his wedding. Its senselessness alarmed him.

4. Morning

The concluding five years of Mr Pinmay’s ministry were less satisfactory than their predecessors. His marriage was happy, his difficulties few, nothing tangible opposed him, but he was haunted by the scene outside the grove. Could it signify that he himself had not been pardoned? Did God, in His mystery, demand from him that he should cleanse his brother’s soul before his own could be accepted? The dark erotic perversion that the chief mistook for Christianity—who had implanted it? He had put this question from him in the press of his earlier dangers, but it intruded itself now that he was safe. Day after day he heard the cold voice of the somewhat scraggy and unattractive native inviting him to sin, or saw the leap from the cart that suggested a dislocated soul. He turned to the Christianity of the valley, but he found no consolation there. He had implanted that too: not in sin, but in reaction against sin, and so its fruits were as bitter. If Barnabas distorted Christ, the valley ignored Him. It was hard, it lacked personality and beauty and emotion and all that Paul Pinmay had admired in his youth. It could

produce catechists and organizers, but never a saint. What was the cause of the failure? The hut, the hut. In the concluding years of his stay, he ordered it to be pulled down.

He seldom met Barnabas now. There was no necessity for it, since the chief’s usefulness decreased as the community developed and new men pushed their way to the top. Though still helpful when applied to, he lost all capacity for initiative. He moved from his old stockaded enclosure with its memories of independence, and occupied a lofty but small modern house at the top of the village, suitable to his straitened circumstances. Here he and his wife and their children (one more every eleven months) lived in the semi-European style. Sometimes he worked in the garden, although menial labour was regarded as degrading, and he was assiduous at prayer meetings, where he frequented the back row. The missionaries called him a true Christian when they called him anything, and congratulated themselves that witchcraft had no rallying-point; he had served their purpose, he began to pass from their talk. Only Mr Pinmay watched him furtively and wondered where his old energies had gone. He would have preferred an outburst to this corrupt acquiescence; he knew now that he could deal with outbursts.

He even felt weaker himself, as if the same curse infected them both, and this though he had again and again confessed his own share of the sin to God, and had acquired a natural loathing for it in consequence of his marriage.

He could not really feel much sorrow when he learned that the unfortunate fellow was dying.

Consumption was the cause. One of the imported workers had started an epidemic, and Mr and Mrs Pinmay were busied up to the moment of their own departure, negotiating an extension to the cemetery. They expected to leave the valley before Barnabas did, but during the last week he made, so to speak, a spurt, as if he would outstrip them. His was a very rapid case.

He put up no fight. His heart seemed broken. They had little time to devote

to individuals, so wide was the scope of their work, still they hurried over to see him one morning, hearing that he had had a fresh haemorrhage, and was not likely to survive the day. “Poor fellow, poor lad, he was an important factor ten years back—times change,” murmured Mr Pinmay as he pushed the Holy Communion under the seat of the dog-cart—Barnabas’s own cart, as it happened, for Mrs Pinmay, knowing nothing of the incident, had acquired it cheaply at a sale a couple of years back. As he drove it briskly up through the village Mr Pinmay’s heart grew lighter, and he thanked God for permitting Barnabas, since die we must, to pass away at this particular moment; he would not have liked to leave him behind, festering, equivocal, and perhaps acquiring some sinister power.

When they arrived, Mrs Barnabas told them that her husband was still alive, and, she thought, conscious, but in such darkness of spirit that he would not open his eyes or speak. He had been carried up onto the roof, on account of the heat in his room, and his gestures had indicated that he would be left alone. “But he must not be left alone,” said Mr Pinmay. “We must watch with him through this dark hour. I will prepare him in the first place.” He climbed the staircase that led through a trapdoor onto the roof. In the shadow of the parapet lay the dying man, coughing gently, and stark naked.

“Vithobai!” he cried in amazement.

He opened his eyes and said: “Who calls me?”

“You must have some covering, Barnabas,” said Mr Pinmay fussily. He looked round, but there was nothing on the roof except a curious skein of blue flowers threaded round a knife. He took them up. But the other said,

“Do not lay those upon me yet,” and he refrained, remembering that blue is the colour of despair in that valley, just as red is the colour of love. “I’ll get you a shawl,” he continued. “Why, you are not lying upon a mattress, even.”

“It is my own roof. Or I thought it was until now. My wife and household respected my wishes. They laid me here because it is not the custom of my ancestors to die in a bed.”

“Mrs Barnabas should have known better. You cannot possibly lie on hard asphalt.”

“I have found that I can.”

“Vithobai, Vithobai,” he cried, more upset than he expected.

“Who calls me?”

“You are not going back to your old false gods?”

“Oh no. So near to the end of my life, why should I make any change?

These flowers are only a custom, and they comfort me.”

“There is only one comforter….” He glanced around the roof, then fell upon his knees. He could save a soul without danger to himself at last.

“Come to Christ,” he said, “but not in the way that you suppose. The time has come for me to explain. You and I once sinned together, yes, you and your missionary whom you so reverence. You and I must now repent together, yes, such is God’s law.” And confusedly, and with many changes of emotion and shiftings of his point of view and reservations, he explained the nature of what had happened ten years ago and its present consequences.

The other made a painful effort to follow, but his eyes kept closing.

“What is all this talk?” he said at last. “And why do you wait until I am ill and you old?”

“I waited until I could forgive you and ask your forgiveness. It is the hour of your atonement and mine. Put away all despair, forget those wicked flowers. Let us repent and leave the rest to God.”

“I repent, I do not repent…” he wailed.

“Hush! Think what you say.”

“I forgive you, I do not forgive, both are the same. I am good I am evil I am pure I am foul, I am this or that, I am Barnabas, I am Vithobai. What

difference does it make now? It is my deeds that await me, and I have no strength left to add to them. No strength, no time. I lie here empty, but you fill me up with thoughts, and then press me to speak them that you may have words to remember afterwards…. But it is deeds, deeds that count, O

my lost brother. Mine are this little house instead of my old great one, this valley which other men own, this cough that kills me, those bastards that continue my race; and that deed in the hut, which you say caused all, and which now you call joy, now sin. How can I remember which it was after all these years, and what difference if I could? It was a deed, it has gone before me with the others to be judged.”

“Vithobai,” he pleaded, distressed because he himself had been called old.

“Who calls me the third time?”

“Kiss me.”

“My mouth is down here.”

“Kiss my forehead—no more—as a sign that I am forgiven. Do not misunderstand me this time… in perfect purity… the holy salutation of Christ. And then say with me: Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

“My mouth is down here,” he repeated wearily.

Mr Pinmay feared to venture the kiss lest Satan took an advantage. He longed to do something human before he had the sinking man carried down to receive the Holy Communion, but he had forgotten how. “You have forgiven me, my poor fellow,” he worried on. “If you do not, how can I continue my vocation, or hope for the forgiveness of God?”

The lips moved.

“If you forgive me, move your lips once more, as a sign.”

He became rigid, he was dying.

“You do still love me?”

“My breast is down here.”

“In Christ, I mean.” And uncertain of what he ought to do he laid his head hesitatingly upon the poor skeleton. Vithobai shivered, then looked at him with surprise, pity, affection, disdain, with all, but with little of any, for his spirit had mainly departed, and only the ghosts of its activities remained.

He was a little pleased. He raised a hand painfully, and stroked the scanty hair, golden no longer. He whispered, “Too late,” but he smiled a little.

“It is never too late,” said Mr Pinmay, permitting a slow encircling movement of the body, the last it would ever accomplish. “God’s mercy is infinite, and endureth for ever and ever. He will give us other opportunities.

We have erred in this life but it will not be so in the life to come.”

The dying man seemed to find comfort at last. “The life to come,” he whispered, but more distinctly. “I had forgotten it. You are sure it is coming?”

“Even your old false religion was sure of that.”

“And we shall meet in it, you and I?” he asked, with a tender yet reverent caress.

“Assuredly, if we keep God’s commandments.”

“Shall we know one another again?”

“Yes, with all spiritual knowledge.”

“And will there be love?”

“In the real and true sense, there will.”

“Real and true love! Ah, that would be joyful.” His voice gained strength, his eyes had an austere beauty as he embraced his friend, parted from him so long by the accidents of earth. Soon God would wipe away all tears.

“The life to come,” he shouted. “Life, life, eternal life. Wait for me in it.”

And he stabbed the missionary through the heart.

The jerk the knife gave brought his own fate hurrying upon him. He had scarcely the strength to push the body onto the asphalt or to spread the skein of blue flowers. But he survived for a moment longer, and it was the most exquisite he had ever known. For love was conquered at last and he was

again a king, he had sent a messenger before him to announce his arrival in the life to come, as a great chief should. “I served you for ten years,” he thought, “and your yoke was hard, but mine will be harder and you shall serve me now for ever and ever.” He dragged himself up, he looked over the parapet. Below him were a horse and cart, beyond, the valley which he had once ruled, the site of the hut, the ruins of his old stockade, the schools, the hospital, the cemetery, the stacks of timber, the polluted stream, all that he had been used to regard as signs of his disgrace. But they signified nothing this morning, they were flying like mist, and beneath them, solid and eternal, stretched the kingdom of the dead. He rejoiced as in boyhood, he was expected there now. Mounting on the corpse, he climbed higher, raised his arms over his head, sunlit, naked, victorious, leaving all disease and humilation behind him, and he swooped like a falcon from the parapet in pursuit of the terrified shade.

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