By Veldt and Kopje Part 16

"Fish? Rather; it's my favourite sport. But where? I've not heard of any river about here."

"I was meanin' in the Apostolic sense--'fishers o' men,' you know."

"Oh, that's quite out of my line. I'm a pedagogue, not a missionary."

"Well, ye'll have to cast a line at the prayer-meetin' here. If ye don't, Mactavish'll gie ye drumsticks. It appears they have fowls for dinner five days a week regularly--sometimes oftener. It's the rule that if ye don't fish ye'll never get a wing, but if ye cast a good long line wi' a takin' text for bait, not alone will ye get a wing, but sometimes a piece of liver as well."

"Oh, nonsense; the carpenter has been pulling your leg."

"All right; just wait an' ye'll see."

Just then the dinner-bell sounded, and the two friends descended to the refectory together. The only meat on the table was a pair of boiled fowls. Mr Mactavish, with great deliberation and a skill born of long practice, dismembered them. Then he paused as though to rest after his exertions.

"Ye'll be comin' to oor prayer-meetin' this evenin'?" he said, addressing Benson.

"I don't know that I shall."

"But we've counted on a discoorse from ye, and I've told Mr Campbell that ye'll tak' your turn to-night."

"Very good of you, I'm sure," replied Benson, nettled, "but I know what I've engaged to do, and holding prayer-meetings is not included. You had no authority to tell Mr Campbell anything of the kind."

"Well, Mr Allister, we'll just have to ca' your services into requisition."

"Ye'll find me in the office frae nine till five every day. Outside that time I'll do no wark, unless ye want me to pull a tooth or compound a powder. In these cases I'll oblige at any hour of the four-an'-twenty."

Mr Mactavish uttered, with alarming intonation, a sound which cannot be expressed by the whole twenty-six-fold force of the alphabet, but which used to be expressed as "humph!" Then he proceeded to divide the members of the fowls. One of these had been rather more debilitated than the other. The inferior drumsticks were, after the ladies had been helped, duly apportioned to Benson and Allister, respectively. Benson looked up and caught Allister's eye which was bent on him with great gravity. Then his sense of humour overcame the schoolmaster and he fell into an absolutely uncontrollable fit of laughter.

All proceedings stopped. Miss Mellish glared indignantly at the delinquent; Miss Angus gasped and winked her eyes with hysterical vigour. Allister's face expressed nothing but sombre surprise; the boarding-master turned purple with inarticulate fury. The contagion of Benson's laughter spread to the boys; within a few seconds the forms rocked with mirth. Then Mr Mactavish leaped up, seized the smallest boy on the nearest form and dragged him out of the room. Benson, who had regained command of himself under stress of the tragic situation, noticed that the ejected boy had given little or no cause for complaint.

Dinner over, Benson went to his room, threw himself on the bed, and laughed so violently that the room shook. Allister came in, lit his pipe, and regarded his distressed friend with inscrutable gravity.

"Well," he said, "was I not right?"

"Oh yes," replied Benson, between paroxysms, "but I think I'll roll under the table and die if such a thing happens again."

"I don't despair o' oor gettin' wings, and even an occasional liver, although we don't fish," said Allister, after a contemplative pause.

"Leg, wing or liver, for mercy's sake don't look at me again as you did to-day. I hate putting myself in the wrong, and my performance was very discreditable."

"An interestin' fact I ascertained from Maclean was that Mactavish suffers from severe gout periodically, and that the malady only yields to treatment wi' colchic.u.m," said Allister, with a suspiciously innocent expression.

_Two_.

Next day Benson and Allister received a note apiece from Jeanie, asking them to come over to the Girls' School in the afternoon and take tea.

On arrival they were ushered into a prim little parlour. This soon became filled to overflowing with guests. Here they met, for the first time, Mr Drew, the senior teacher of the theology section, and his wife.

Mr Drew was short, stout, dark and wide-awake-looking. He appeared to be under the influence of his wife, who was evidently much older than he. She was a woman of large frame, with hollow cheeks and light-red hair. Her face and eyes were pale; her voice suggested pulmonary delicacy.

The three ladies having charge of the female department of the Inst.i.tution acted jointly as hostesses. Miss Meiklejohn, the eldest, was a tall, angular Scotswoman with a strong, intellectual face. She spoke with measured deliberation and was evidently unaccustomed to having her authority questioned. Miss Struben was short and exceedingly stout. She had a depressed and disappointed look, and whenever she made a remark, glanced apprehensively at Miss Meiklejohn to see how it would be taken. These two had been for many years members of the Inst.i.tution staff; they regarded Mr Mactavish with the utmost reverence. Apart from their work they had one object only in life, and that was to see a match between the boarding-master and Miss Mellish. They had noted and deplored the Great Man's weakness for Jeanie. However, as they looked upon this untoward circ.u.mstance as due to her siren wiles, they regarded the aberration with pity rather than blame.

Miss Robertson, the junior teacher, had only recently been imported from Scotland. A comely girl with rosy cheeks, bright brown eyes and a generous figure, she gave one the idea that she longed for a different life and that she felt as irksome the perpetually revolving treadmill of ultra propriety that Fate compelled her to climb. In fact she struck Benson as having a healthy spice of the World, the Flesh and the Devil under her coil of abundant hair.

Jeanie was the only one of the ladies who appeared to be at ease; she laughed and chatted gaily, while the others only interjected formal remarks now and then. Allister felt drawn towards little Miss Robertson; the suppressed vitality in her brown eyes aroused his interest and sympathy. With some difficulty he made his way across the crowded room to where she was sitting.

"You and I are among the latest arrivals, I believe," he said pleasantly.

"So we are, but I have been through my ordeal, so am only a spectator to-day."

"Might one ask what you mean?"

"Don't you know that this is a state function, got up to welcome you and Mr Benson?"

"Indeed I did not. Oh, the guilefulness of women!--and Miss Jeanie called it a simple tea-party."

"Well, you had better begin preparing your speech. I had to make one.

Mind and be careful to make a good first impression."

Just then the ominous sound of Mr Mactavish clearing his throat was heard, and an apprehensive silence fell upon the a.s.semblage. Jeanie looked at Benson with unutterable mischief in her eyes. Then the voice of the boarding-master began in measured, lugubrious tones--

"Leddies and gentlemen,--fellow-warkers i' the vineyard, we have met to-day to welcome two who have just put hands to the plough which runs in oor furrows o' grace. One o' them comes frae the land we left--most o' us many years ago--to dwell in this clime o' savagery and spend oor lives in reclaimin' the heathen frae his barbarism. We know what we have done in the past; we know how hard oor labour was at first; but we must be thankful that strength was given tae enable us tae break the hard, virgin sod, and thus make the wark lighter for those who come after.

"We will humbly trust that oor friends will duly appreciate the enorrmous responsibilities restin' upon them as missioners, an' that they will a.s.sist in keepin' this little community what it is--'a light tae lighten the Gentiles,' and a continual example tae the heathen o'

the true Christian life.

"One o' the things we most firrmly endeavour tae cultivate is a true earnestness o' purpose in _a'_ branches o' oor wark, and the consequent avoidance o' freevolity o' a' sorts. Oor little warld has its laws and salutary customs, and tae these a' must conforrm. As to what these are, I, as senior member o' the Inst.i.tution staff, will be glad to gie information. Mr Allister and Mr Benson, in the unavoidable absence o'

oor respected Princ.i.p.al, I bid ye a hearty welcome."

Allister flatly refused to respond, so Benson arose and made a few appropriate remarks. Soon afterwards the meeting broke up. Jeanie and Benson met at the door and walked on together.

"Are you not ashamed of yourself?" he asked, "for getting us down to that function under false pretences."

"I am, rather; but I knew that if Mr Allister had had any inkling as to what was going to happen, he would not have come. But all my dissimulation was thrown away, for he did not make a speech after all.

But do tell me what you think of us?"

"Well, my dominant feeling is one of hopeless inability to live up to your ideals. You see, I am not in any way cut out for a missionary.

Moreover, I could not conscientiously recommend any self-respecting Gentile to light his candle at my lamp."

"Oh, so far as that goes, Mr Mactavish's lamp is so overflowing with oil, and s.h.i.+nes so vividly that we might all quench ours without putting the Gentile public to any inconvenience. But I am keen on hearing original impressions; do oblige by telling yours."

"It is quite clear you have not even guessed at the magnitude of my limitations. Nothing, as a rule, strikes my imagination unless it be funny. And I have not yet got sufficient 'atmosphere,' as the artists say, to enable me to appreciate properly the local humour. Truly, the pursuit of the humorous is my only serious occupation."

"You are a disappointing man. Now, I am as fond of running other people's impressions to earth as you are of hunting jokes. You must have acquired some impressions; do communicate them."

"Well, the thing which strikes me as most remarkable about these people is the utter absence of anything like friendliness towards each other, or, in fact, towards anyone."

"Ah, but when you have been here as long as I, you will look upon this afternoon as an oasis in a desert of unfriendly days. Why, most of these people hardly speak to each other when they meet, unless it be at a function such as this. There is, of course, one exception; outside the church on Sunday morning they all shake hands and smile sweetly.

But from Monday to Sat.u.r.day, when not at work, they glower and spend all their time brooding over imaginary slights and each other's shortcomings."