The Scented Town (A Tripper's Tale)

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Title:     The Scented Town (A Tripper's Tale)
Author: Arthur Shearly Cripps [More Titles by Cripps]

It is now more than two years since I was invalided out of my country parish one bitter March, and sent on a southern voyage. I had ten weeks to recruit in, and I passed by the Mediterranean to the eastern coast of Africa. It was hard to tear myself away from Zanzibar, but at last I went on southward and struck up into the wilder country of the central tableland. I meant to take the rail for Cape Town when my time should be up.

It happened in Easter week that I camped out disconsolately, and rose anxiously, having lost my way overnight. I had spent Easter Day in a cathedral, or pro-cathedral, town, and was now on my way to a certain mission. I had hoped to make it that last night the third night of the journey but had somehow missed it in the dark after a big effort. There seemed to be no native village near, and no passers-by. My carriers were strangers to that neighborhood, and I was afraid of going far past the house in benighted wanderings, so I bent my resolution and lay down. I rose just before the sun did. It was April and the dews were very heavy.

From a rocky hill above me the baboons were barking. Just below us was a fair stream with a rich grove of native trees on the further bank. Some native gardens showed on the slope above. The white path wound through them, then away among boulders, some of them very big ones. While I watched the stream I saw a white body of mist mounting up. Just at that moment the sun showed. As I looked on the sacred sight I saw somebody coming down the path. It was the man whose mission station I had been looking for. He was coming through the long grass in a hurry. Soon he splashed through the drift. After that he caught sight of me, and rushed up to our camp, glowing. It was Leonard Reeve. He looked much the same as he did that day in London three years before--dark, pale, slight, earnest. I had been to his sendoff and gone down to Victoria Docks with him. I had written to tell him; I was most likely coming his way after Easter. He seemed ever so glad to see me.

'But where were you off to?' I said.

'It's only a mile on that I'm going,' he answered. 'There's a little chapel on that hill over there with some native villages near by. I want to have an Easter service there.'

'Let me come,' said I. 'You can be back to breakfast here, can't you, when we've done?'

He said he could. Even as he nodded I felt a little anxious when I remembered that we had no meat of any sort left. I took Jack, my head carrier, aside and asked him to do what he could while we were gone. Couldn't he buy some eggs for salt, or do something useful in the way of foraging? He said three words in kitchen Kaffir that sounded hopeful.

Then I went on with my chill, damp little friend. One of the coldest ways surely of taking a bath is to tramp through the long grass (it is very long in that country) when it is drenched with dew or rain. However it is all right if you are sturdy and in good heart, and keep going a stirring pace, and never sit down till you are dry again. My companion did not seem very buoyant, though he made no complaint and trudged on without flagging. We had a glorious service in a quaint church of wattles and earth and grass on a hill-top. One way it looked over a great spread of village gardens I think there were at least three villages in sight. The other way it looked on some well-wooded uplands that the eastern sun lighted tenderly. There were only a few people in church at the end of the rite, though a great crowd was there at the outset, and the 'Kyrie' and first two hymns raised the hill echoes.

There was no sermon. When the unbaptized were gone the tiny church, that had seemed so thronged and stifling, grew to be roomy and cool.

That was to me a very beautiful rendering of the Liturgy. Yet I only understood a word here and there. I could follow the action of the Divine Pageant throughout, and I would not have had the mystery and aloofness of the words one whit lessened.

After it was over Reeve took me across to the native teacher's house, where we found a very shy wife and a very composed baby to greet us. Meanwhile the husband bustled about and gave us tea. I liked his laugh and his boyish face, as well as his Biblical English. He did not stint the tea in his blue pot. Soon we were on our way back to my camp.

Jack had got a real good fire now in the shelter of the rocks, and a hearty smell of fish frying reassured me as we drew near.

Reeve, who had seemed a little tired and washed out as we came away from the church, now brightened up marvelously.

'I declare,' he said, 'it's just like old times. You know the Tooting Road, where I used to work? It's just like the fried-fish shop there, next door to the Surrey Arms. If we'd only got the fog and the trams and a few of the old people here how fine it'd be!'

We had found a subject that interested us both and lasted most of the breakfast-time. His enthusiasm struck me as a little too emphatic. I remarked that I thought he was well out of the Tooting Road and out under blue sky on an African moorland.

'Look up there!' I said. 'That makes the Tooting Road seem rather monstrous when one comes to think of it.' I pointed to the many cattle and sheep and goats coming down to the stream at a swinging pace through the gleaming woodland.

Two little boys were mounted on bulls; two or three others came rushing behind. There was a barking of dogs and an ecstasy of shouting.

'Oh, it's all very well,' he said, and his eyes flashed a little scornfully.

Afterwards he took me to his home. His church stood out nobly as we came up the path towards it. Within it was beautifully kept, but I confess I was disappointed. It was all very neat, but it suggested the skill of the church-furnishing firm too strongly. I sighed a little as he showed me four enormous brazen vases of a too familiar type. I longed for the two or three little red and black earthen vases that I had seen on his teacher's altar; but I kept my longing to myself.

He was a marvelous man for method, Leonard Reeve. He seemed to me to organize classes with real talent anybody who came to the Mission at all habitually was pigeon-holed as 'Inquirer,' 'Hearer,' 'Catechumen,' 'Under a cloud,' or something else, and dealt with accordingly. His work, as I watched it day by day, and evening by evening in church and school and villages and Mission farm seemed to me well-considered and painstaking. On the other hand he seemed to me not so happy, and not so very well.

The mail came in on the Monday.

I was to start the following Thursday for the railroad on my way to my home again. We gloated over the letters and papers that evening it was really a superb mail. The native boy with the bag (I remember he was lanky and handsome and wore a rose-and-blue zephyr) came up just as we stood in the avenue leading to the house. We were smoking our pipes and arguing. The sun was almost down.

What were we arguing about? Oh, he was arguing rather recklessly about the glories of town-work. I retorted with few words, but strong ones, in favor of work out in the country. Once I pressed him rather inquisitively and mischievously as to his present work on the veld. 'How can you hold such views and do it?' I asked him point-blank. Thereat the fine side of the man showed.

His face flushed and his lips quivered. 'It's my job,' he said, 'and I'm not going to talk against it. I was arguing about country-work in the abstract over there in England.' Then it was that the boy came in sight with the letters. Reeve looked up and watched him with real pleasure and gratitude. He said something to him in the native language that seemed to amuse the boy very much. I had thought his manners towards his flock very courteous, but cold. I noticed a new tenderness now and from this night forward.

I could read him like a book, this town-lover so I thought. He had said too much to me, he had avowed to me his want of affection for his work in so many words, and now he was on the watch against himself, and burning to render reparation to a very quick conscience.

He had a big mail, but he was not communicative about it. Indeed we had not much time for our letters just then. We had Evensong soon after sunset, then there was a class for catechumens that I attended. I could not understand much, but it was good to watch how they listened, all but the vigorous mail-boy, who nodded at whiles unless I am mistaken. Afterwards we had a meal. It was by mutual agreement that we read our letters over our bread and tea and cheese. I read one of my letters with some indignation. It was a letter from my schoolmaster, who was not very encouraging on the subject of my locum tenens' industry.

'I thought I had got a first-rate man in Cochrane,' I said aloud.

'Cochrane of Peckham Downs?' asked Reeve, looking up and eyeing me. 'What about him? Yes, I should say he was in his way quite first-rate.'

'I'm glad to hear it, but I wish he would find country work more congenial. My correspondent says he's quite got the hump about our village.'

Leonard smiled. 'Some villages do tend to give people like Cochrane and me the hump,' he said. 'But of course yours is different.' 'Of course it is. Come and see it some day.' His mouth twitched. 'If I get home-leave in two years' time,' he said. 'I don't want to spend it in the country, not any of it, thank you all the same. I like the town much too well.'

'The smell of the shop you named attracts you just like thyme does me.'

'Yes,' he said, with a rather wry smile and a very real sigh.

Then we went on reading till bed-time. In the morning Lorenzo, his house-boy, knocked me up just as the sun was rising. 'The father is very sick,' he said. So he was very bad indeed with fever, at least so it seemed to me. But I am not used to nursing that malady. I think his temperature was 103 that day, which may seem a modest figure to a pioneer, but struck a chance visitor as none too reassuring. However, I kept my anxieties to myself, and looked after him quietly. He said there was no need to worry about a doctor. That night he seemed to be delirious, and talking at large. I made up my mind I would send for the doctor in the morning if his symptoms should last. But they did not. He appeared to be quiet and sensible at sunrise, and his temperature was a normal one. The morning after that, again, he seemed so well that I left him with a fairish conscience on my return journey for England. I want to tell you about that anxious night. He gave himself away then. I don't think he remembered much of what he had said next morning. It seemed sad to me his self-revelation. He said he did not know what in the world to do, he felt so ill and anxious. He was a Cockney born, and he had loved his South London work. He really wanted to tackle the job in front of him here. But the romance was there behind him in that English city the unique sense of being in the right place the great adventure the gleam.

Oh! why had he caught the fever? Not this fever, but the malaria of Imperialism, and felt drawn to go so very far afield. He didn't abuse the veld, the camping-out, the foot-slogging, the primitive people. He was a very chivalrous person even in his delirium.

But he spoke ecstatically of the streets, the tram-roads, the lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the delights of their up-to-date humor.

The tragedy thickened. He told me of her who had promised to marry him by Eastertide next year. Cecilia was her name.

She was a Londoner, and shared his views. 'Whatever will she think of this place?' he asked. My eyes wandered to the iron roof, to the floor-boarded walls, to the candle in a bottle that fought the draught so bravely. He told me about a letter of hers he had got by this mail. She had been working as a governess these last few months at a country rectory in the Berkshire moors. She found the village, and the neighborhood, and the life there in general very flat indeed. They bored her; yet she was keen, he said, on 'the work,' 'the work' as she had known it when she worked for him in London. 'Whatever will she think of this place?' he repeated. I looked at the floor, freshly treated with cow-dung, and thought again for an answer, but I could think of no very suitable one.

'I'll give you her letter to read,' he said, in a burst of confidence. 'That puts it far more plainly than I can. My head's so bad.' He looked worried, and I thought I had better leave him.

'No,' he said; 'do read to me a bit before you go.'

'What shall I read?'

He looked at me meditatively. 'You'll find something to the point in there,' he said. He reached up to the little candle-box bookcase over his head, and showed me a little crimson book. It was an anthology. I should think it might be commendably put on the 'Index Expurgatorius' of upcountry missionaries.

It was called 'The Cheerful City,' and dwelt on the delights of civilization and urbanity. Doubtless it may serve a useful purpose, thought I, in reconciling Londoners to their wen; but, here, what does it spell for my delirious Cockney save only desiderium?

I read him two or three selections obediently, but without enthusiasm. Were they from Herrick and Charles Lamb? I rather think they were.

Afterwards he asked me for a few verses of the Gospel. I cheered up.

'What would you like?'

'Oh, that story at the end of St. John. I've often thought of it since I was so cold and wet; and got to your camp-fire. "The fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread," that's it.'

I read with a will, but rather sadly.

'That's it,' he said. 'It seems to bring back the fog, and going to early Service past that coffee-stall, and the smell of that shop next to the Surrey Arms.'

I thought of his homely comparison after I had left him for the night. It moved me strangely. I read the letter he had lent me the letter of Cecilia, who found the Berkshire moors so banal. Yes, she promised to prove a very undesirable help-meet on the veld, so far as I could judge. I thought over things generally that night, and I made up my mind to make a Quixotic offer in the morning. I would offer to take on Leonard's work. Let him go home and be happy in his scented town, with his intolerantly urban (or suburban) Cecilia. He was splendid stuff. He might do much, surely, in that quaint atmosphere of light and locomotion and fragrance that his sense of romance demanded. Here Cecilia would surely be either impossible or a very great nuisance. While, even without Cecilia, Leonard did not seem well suited in his sphere, and I judged that he would soon be rotten with fever and wouldn't last.

As for me, I liked country life much, and roughing it a little. I had no particular fear of fever. I compared my physique with Leonard's not without complacency. I thought of the other side, too: the east country that village of all villages, those villagers of all villagers.

But that night I was full of over-seas fervor. I remembered phrases that had rung cut finely at meetings Outpost Duty, the Church in Greater Britain, The White Man's Burden, In Darkest Africa, etc., etc. When I fell asleep there seemed to be a symphony in my ears sounding brass and tinkling cymbals enough and to spare, but flute-voices of honest pity and sympathy as well.

In the morning I took Leonard's place in his church. We had the English Liturgy again. The thatched dome, with much tinier windows than the windows at home, but much more sun to fill them, seemed a sort of parable to me that morning. After I had finished the rite, I stayed on in the church, and spread out two letters before the Lord, so to speak. One was my schoolmaster's, the other was that one from Cecilia.

It took me half an hour to feel fairly sure of my answer. But I felt very sure then just as sure as I had been the night before but the answer was different.

I thought of my own fold and flock as I read my own friend's letter. How little the locum tenens seemed to see what I saw in them! I read Cecilia's letter, and compared 'her view of the importance of a country cure with my own. After all, I thought, the latter tended to be an exceptional view in our megalomaniac days. On the other hand, the locum tenens' view might be rather a normal one, and so might Cecilia's be. Cecilia's scorn, it was, that materially helped the answer to come as clearly as it did. The thought of a Cecilia reigning in that east-country vicarage seemed no more right than pleasant. It sounds a callous thing to say, but I left my lonely and convalescent friend with something of a sigh of relief, and no real misgiving. I felt troubled about his future certainly, but I saw clearly that I was not meant to take his place. I hoped to find the man who was meant to take it, however.

And, by God's help, I believe that I really did find him before many months were over.

A cousin of mine Richard East had been persuaded by a certain bishop to accept an urban charge.

I fancy the said bishop had been reared in a rather strait school of enthusiasts, who regarded work in slums as ideally the best sphere for clerics of activity. So he had routed my cousin out of his west-country village, and brought him to a big town--my cousin, who was an outdoor man from his youth. Curiously enough, at Cape Town, there was a letter waiting for me from him. Wouldn't I tell him something about the 'great spaces washed with sun'? The midland town in general seemed not to have gained his affections, though he loved his people one by one. 'I want to clear out,' he wrote, 'for the parish's sake more than for my own, if only I can find the right place to clear to. I'm not a townsman, and I think by now the bishop understands my small-mindedness. I haven't the breadth of a good modern citizen. I want to go to some Little Peddlington an African village might suit me. No, directly the right man turns up, I don't doubt the bishop will want to put him here in my room. Do you know of anyone likely?' I did know of someone.

I did not write back; I got on my boat and started off for home. I went down to the east country and set free the locum tenens. The village had a bridal look for my eyes; the red-thorn tree was just coming out, the roses would not be long now. I was in time to be at our yearly May games after all. Next day I went to the Midland town and saw my cousin; also, I saw his charge. I tried to look at it with Leonard Reeve's eyes, recalling to my remembrance that delirious night of his. Yes, though it was not South London, it had a drab look on a dull June day. There was a Warwick Arms, if no Surrey Arms. There was a shop with the authentic fragrance only two or three doors off. I knew that bishop, and I found him in, and in a listening mood, on the following day. He wanted to hear about Africa. I described missions and missionaries to him. Then I told him at some length about Leonard Reeve.

'Yes, you have drawn the man convincingly,' he said. 'You didn't invent those touches. I think he's a man after my own heart. I don't understand you people that bury yourselves in little rose-covered, immoral, earthy country villages. But I think I do understand the man that you have described.' I went straight to the point, and spoke of my cousin's parish. He agreed that my cousin was a disappointment. 'He's got the same peddling way of looking at things as you,' he said. 'I thought he'd flourish after transplantation, but I admit he doesn't seem to. Yes, I should think a desert and a barbarous people might suit him. I don't deny that he has vision, but his sense of perspective seems to be rather ridiculous.' I tried to arrange matters there and then after that, but his lordship became politic, and seemed a little afraid that he had said too much to me.

However, the business was on the way to be settled before I parted from him. It has been settled quite a long while now. My cousin, Richard East, now tramps the Kaffir paths and ministers in the hill chapel and in that seven-domed church at the mission station. I do not think that there is any Cecilia in his case, nor that there is likely to be one. He personifies the abstract too passionately to need the love of women.

Africa is personified to him the Cinderella of the continents, the drudge with a destiny worthy of her charms and her good-temper. He is writing a monograph on the Song of Solomon, he tells me. He follows certain scholars in his conjecture that the Shulamite was given back to a humble shepherd by Solomon, when she had conquered the latter by the power of her impassioned chastity. But he has his own theory as well that the true lovers were both of African blood, that she came from the Ophir-land south of the Zambesi, and thither returned in peace at last from the foam of perilous seas. Perhaps his argument is slender; but it is good for him to believe in it himself, I think, for surely it helps his work among those that he deems her descendants.

He works on out there, personifying and idealizing. I think he is as much in love with his country parish as I am with mine in England. May we both, in our placid and unfashionable ways, dream our dreams and see our visions! Meanwhile Leonard Reeve reigns in that midland town, and is treasured by the bishop who was not deceived when he expected a kindred spirit. He and Cecilia have chosen a date in this next November for their deferred marriage.

Their choice of month seems to me characteristic. I do not think they will be disappointed if the day is a little urban in its murkiness.

It is good for a man to be in love with his charge, is it not? Next time some fanatic of West-End work, or East-End work, or foreign mission work gets hold of you and talks excellent sense about discipline, and offering yourself to your bishop, and packing up your kit at a week's notice remember this story of mine!

Is it not well to import something of the precise devotion of Holy Matrimony into the general self-oblation of Holy Orders?

It is good to think that three of us friends have the very same sort of feeling Leonard Reeve for the crowds and the fogs and the odors; my cousin for the rock-sown plains and the little circles of thatched huts; I for the cornlands and the elm-shaded ridges and the cottage people.

Yes, to Leonard anything grimy is just as romantic as green fields to me, or brown veld to my cousin.

Do you know, I was asked to preach Leonard's Institution sermon last Whit Monday, and I dared to preach it? Cecilia, who was stately but really pleasant-looking, sat beneath me in the front pew. Leonard, in his stall, looked oppressed with the weight of the ceremony.

But his eyes lighted up, I saw, as I gave out my text. It was from the end of St. John's Gospel. I preached very shortly. I drew for that poor and earnest-looking congregation the picture of a dripping missionary as I had seen him. I told of him going about his business at dawn, cheered by the Easter Feast in front at the chapel on the hill. I passed up to it by the cheery camp-fire. I did not forget the smell of breakfast cooking, with its reminder of home afterwards.

Then I spoke of the charm of the town work that Leonard had been called to take up once again. I tried to paint it as he dreamed of it the crowds, the classes, the fog, the scent of the streets. Then I went higher to the Easter scene, the shore in the morning, the vision of the altar that dawns on a true man's work however deep the night of his failure may have been, wheresoever in all the world he is working.

Leonard looked gratefully at me as I came down the pulpit steps.

While we hurried along from the Service on our way to the station (Reeve was coming to see me off), I quoted some words to him. We were just passing that fish-shop.

'Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south; blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden.'

His eyes kindled. 'Yes, old man,' he said; 'I've come into my garden. How I used to dream of this sort of reek out in Africa!'

I felt a gross materialist as I hurried home to my roses and red-thorn, leaving him to that visionary garden and those mystical spices.

[The end]
Arthur Shearly Cripps's short story: Scented Town (A Tripper's Tale)

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