Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary Part 28

The Secretary of State was equally impressed, and laid the matter before the Chapter-General of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, of which the King is Sovereign Head, and the Duke of Connaught Grand Prior. This was done, and she was selected for admission. When she received the august-looking doc.u.ment asking her to accept the honour, she said to herself, "Now, who has done this? Who am I, and what is my distinction that I should have it?" She was in a quandary how to answer, but eventually complied with the request, thinking that would be the end of it. Shortly afterwards came a letter stating that "her selection had received the sanction and approval of His Most Gracious Majesty King George V." The Chapter-General, it was stated, elected her "with particular satisfaction" to the grade of Honorary a.s.sociate. This honour is only conferred on persons professing the Christian faith, who are eminently distinguished for philanthropy, or who have specially devoted their exertions or professional skill in aid of the objects of the Order. The Badge of an Honorary a.s.sociate is a Maltese Cross in silver, embellished at the four princ.i.p.al angles with a lion pa.s.sant guardant and a unicorn pa.s.sant alternately. It is worn by women on the left shoulder, attached to a black watered riband tied in a bow.

"Ma" kept the matter a secret, even after she had received the diploma, but the silver Badge came through the Colonial Office to the Commissioner at Duke Town, and the honour being made public, her friends schemed to get her down to a formal presentation. It was a difficult problem, but it was solved by a letter being sent stating that the decoration had arrived, that, of course, she would not care to have it given to her surrept.i.tiously, and that her duty was to come to Calabar for it. A telegraph form, ready for dispatch, and bearing the one word "Coming," was enclosed. They knew she would get agitated, and have no peace until the telegram was out of her hands. Their surmise was correct. She sent the message and committed herself to the ordeal.

She was not elated at the prospect of appearing at a Government function; neither was she perturbed, and she went about her duties as usual. Miss Gilmour, one of the new lady agents, tells how on the eve of her departure she gathered the bairns for family wors.h.i.+p, and in a simple and beautiful way read to them the story of the Good Shepherd and the sheep that followed. Then, as an ill.u.s.tration, she took the story of Peter's denial of our Lord, and showed that Peter sinned because he followed "afar off." "Eh, bairns," she said, "it's the wee la.s.sie that sits beside her mother at meal times that gets all the nice bittocks. The one who sits far away and sulks disna ken what she misses. Even the p.u.s.s.y gets more than she does. Keep close to Jesus the Good Shepherd all the way."

A Government launch was sent to bring her down, an honour she felt as much as the bestowal of the insignia, and as she walked up to the Macgregors' house--the Wilkies were in Scotland--there were many who were struck by the dignity of her appearance, dressed though she was in an old but clean cotton dress, straw hat, and list shoes. On the Sat.u.r.day afternoon she went to an "At Home" at the Barracks, where she was lionised in a quiet way. She attended a cricket match--she was an advocate of all games, and believed they were excellent civilising agencies--and also witnessed a sham fight, where the "enemy" dressed themselves up as "savage warriors" and attacked the Barrack Hill. She was much impressed, and kept saying to her old friend the Hon. Horace Bedwell, the Provincial Commissioner, "That's just splendid. Look how the officers lead them." On Sunday she spoke for three-quarters of an hour to the boys in the Inst.i.tute in Efik, and no boys could have listened more intently. On Monday night she was at Government House at dinner.

The presentation took place in the Goldie Memorial Hall on Wednesday, Mr. Macgregor presiding. All the Europeans who could leave business gathered to do her honour. The boys of the Training Inst.i.tute and the girls of the Edgerley Memorial School were also in the hall. Had it not been that Mr. Bedwell and Mrs. Bedwell were beside her, and that it was the former who made the presentation, she would have felt more nervous.

As it was, she sat with her head buried in her hands. Mr. Bedwell spoke of her unique work and influence, and of her genius for friends.h.i.+p in a way that overcame her. She could not at first find words to reply. She turned to the children, and in Efik told them to be faithful to the Government, for at bottom it was Christian, and, as the silver Badge proved, friendly to missions. Self was thus entirely effaced in her interpretation of the act; she made it appear to be the recognition by the Government of the work of the Mission, and suggested that it might have been awarded to any member of the staff.

Having recovered her courage she spoke in English, saying that she did not understand why she had been chosen for the distinction, when others deserved it more. In a closing pa.s.sage of simple beauty, she gave G.o.d the honour and praise for all she had been able to accomplish. What had impressed her at the sham fight was that the officer was always in front leading and guiding his men. "If I have done anything in my life it has been easy because the Master has gone before."

Forty Europeans came to tea at the Macgregors', and "Ma" was brilliant and entertaining. On Thursday her hosts convoyed her back to Use. Mrs.

Bedwell had presented her with a bouquet of flowers, and she had taken out the roses--of which she was pa.s.sionately fond--and placed them in water. On her arrival she carefully planted one of the stems, and to her great joy it grew and flourished in front of her hut.

"Don't think," she wrote home, "that there is any difference in my designation. I am Mary Mitch.e.l.l 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 "G.o.d'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 circ.u.mstances."

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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 "G.o.d fas.h.i.+ons," and would not permit teachers to enter their districts or churches to be built; they forbade all meetings for wors.h.i.+p. 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+ons. If houses of G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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.

"Ma, have you heard?" they asked,

"Am I not here?" she replied.

Taking the gift of rods that had been offered, the chiefs retired. When they returned they said: "Ma, we hear. Let the present of rods lie, we accept of it, and we promise that we will respect G.o.d's laws, in regard to the joining in our sacrifices; and in regard to the Sabbath, we shall respect it and leave our work; but we will _not_ join in the confusions of the church, that we cannot do."

"G.o.d will doubtless be immensely pleased and benefited by your wondrous condescension," said she with good-humoured sarcasm, and they laughed heartily and tried to be friendly, but Mary airily told her people to rise and go.

Fearing she was not pleased, the chiefs made to accompany her.

"I'm going round to see a woman in the next street," said Mary pointedly. They stopped dead at once. Here was the "confusion" they referred to, for the woman was a twin-mother.

It was the old weary battle over again,

Her patience and persistence eventually won a victory for the girls.

They were allowed to return to church, but the line was drawn at the day-school. The chiefs said girls were meant to work and mother the babies, and not to learn "book." Even the boys who attended, each burdened with an infant to justify the waste of time, were not allowed to bring a baby girl. If the baby of the home was a girl, he looked after her there and his place was vacant. Mary began to think of teaching the girls apart from the boys, when one day several girls marched in; she courted them with all the skill she possessed, and gradually one or two chiefs brought their daughters, who returned with dresses from the Mission box, and that ended the opposition.

But there was no end to the struggle over twins. Time and again she had to send the girls to bring babes to the Mission House, and many a stirring night she had, she sleeping with them in her bed, whilst outside stealthy forms watched for a chance to free the town from the defilement of their presence. The first that survived was a boy. The husband, angry and sullen, was for murdering it and putting the mother into a hole in the swamp. She faced him with the old flash in her eye, and made him take oath not to hurt or kill the child. He even promised to permit it to live, for which magnanimity she bowed ironically to the ground, an act that put his courage at once to flight. She had come to realise that it was not good to take twins from their mother, and she insisted on the child being kept in the home. Jean was sent to stay and sleep with the woman, and as she had, on occasion, as caustic a tongue as "Ma," the man had not a very agreeable time. It was decided later to bring the woman and child to the hut, and there, beneath her verandah, they rigged up a little lean-to, where they were housed, Jean sleeping with them at night and keeping a watchful eye on the mother. "It is really," said "Ma," "far braver and kinder of her to live with that heathen woman with her fretting habits than it is for her to go out in the dark and fight with snakes. Jean has as many faults as myself, but she is a darling, none the less, and a treasure." All going well, they went on Sunday to church and left the mother. When they returned they found she had broken the baby's thigh and given him some poisonous stuff. With care the boy recovered, but they redoubled their precautions, hoping that when the parents saw how handsome and healthy and normal the little fellow was, they would consent to keep him.

"Ma" was due at Use, but she would not leave Ikpe until she had conquered. Another month pa.s.sed, and she was running out of provisions, including tea. To be without tea was a tremendous deprivation. She thought of the big fragrant package that had been sent out as a gift, and was lying fifty miles away but un-get-at-able, and felt far from saintly as she resorted to the infusion of old leaves. One Sunday evening there was a shout. A canoe had arrived, and in it was a box.

With sudden prescience Jean flew for a hammer and chisel and broke it open, and sure enough inside was the tea from Use. Mary marvelled, and with all the young folk round her stood and thanked G.o.d, the Lord of the Sabbath, for His goodness. The beverage had never tasted so sweet and invigorating. Though her thrifty Scottish nature rejoiced that she had been able to save a little, she confessed that she would never be a miser where tea was concerned, Whenever she received a package she invariably sent a share to old Mammy Fuller at Duke Town. "Mammy," she told a home friend, "has lived a holy and consecrated life here for fifty years, and is perhaps the best-loved woman in Duke Town. Uncle Tom in the old cabin is a child in the knowledge of G.o.d to Mammy. So we all love to share anything with her, and she especially loves a cup of tea."

The parents of the twin were at last persuaded to take the big happy child home and provide for it. Four days later they sent for Jean, who returned, carrying a weak, pinched form that had death written on its face. It succ.u.mbed shortly afterwards--and that was the end of "Ma's"

strenuous fight and Jean's ten weeks' toil by night and day.

XIV. A VISION OF THE NIGHT

She was down at Use for Christmastide with all her children about her, and was very happy at seeing the consummation of her efforts to build a new church. The opening took place on Christmas Day,

"A bonnie kirk it is," she wrote. "Mr. Cruickshank officiated, and was at his very best. Miss Peac.o.c.k, my dear comrade and her young helper Miss Cooper--a fine la.s.sie--came and spent the whole day, so we had a grand time, the biggest Christmas I've ever had in Calabar. Three tall flag-poles with trade-cloth flags in the most flaming colours hung over the village from point to point embracing the old and the new churches.

The people provided a plain breakfast in their several homes for over eighty of our visitors, who therefore stayed over the forenoon. It made our Christian population look fairly formidable, and certainly very reputable as a force for uplifting and regenerating society. It looks but yesterday that they were a horde of the most unlikely and unresponsive people one could approach, and yet the Gospel has made of them already something to prove that it is the power of G.o.d unto salvation to a people and to an individual every and anywhere."

It was to her "one of the reddest of red-letter days," such a day as only comes at rare intervals, and she fell into the snare, as she said, "of being carried away with it," with the result that at night she was down with fever. This kept recurring every alternate night. It was the harmattan season, in which she always wilted like some delicate flower in the sun, and she grew so limp and fragile that she could not sit up.

She felt that she would be compelled to go home in the summer with the Macgregors, but the idea frightened her, chiefly because of the stir that had been caused by the honour she had received. "I dare not appear at home after all this publicity," she said. "I simply could not face the music." As she recovered a little she superintended the work of the girls outside, and was amused at the way her advice was now received.

"Jean and Annie do not hesitate to set it aside quietly in their superior way; it often works out better than mine, truth to tell-- though I say it does so by accident!" This was a different house-mother from the one who ruled years before.

In one of her fever nights, tossing in semi-delirium, she had a vision.

She had been following the Chapman-Alexander Mission in Glasgow with keen interest, and in the long watches her excited brain continued to dwell on the meetings. She dreamt, or imagined, that out of grat.i.tude for what had been accomplished, two young Glasgow engineers had taken a six months' holiday, and come out with their motor car to Calabar. They spent their days running up and down the Government Road through Ibibio, singing and giving evangelistic addresses, she interpreting, the girls, who were packed into the cars, doing the catering and cooking, and the Government Rest Houses providing the lodging. "What a night it was!" she wrote. "The bairns were afraid, for I was babbling more than usual, but to me it was as real as if it had all happened. We ran backwards and forwards between Itu and Ikpe, spending alternate Sundays with the Churches, and taking Miss Peac.o.c.k to her outstations, and visiting Miss Welsh, It was magnificent."

The vision did not pa.s.s away; she took it as a sign from G.o.d; and out of it in the morning she formulated a scheme which one day she hoped would be realised. "It is strange," she said, "that it has never dawned on us before. Here is the Government making use of the motor car to do its work. Why should not the Church do the same when the roads are here? It would permit one man to do the work of three, it would save strength, and make for efficiency. The reason why I have been able to go farther than my colleagues, is that I have had the privilege of using Government conveyances by land and water; to have a car and a mechanic missionary would be supplying us with a grand opportunity for multiplied service." She expatiated on the matter in letters to her friends at home, and the longer she thought of the idea, the more it fired her imagination. Within a few days she was flying over the ground in the Government car on her way to Ikpe--with many a "ca' canny" to the driver--and her experience brought the conviction that the proposal was a good one. It might be too novel a plan for the Church to take up officially, but she thought wealthy men in Scotland might materialise her vision as a thank-offering.

XV. STORMING THE CITADELS

The Government road went as far as Odoro Ikpe, where a Rest House, used as a shelter by officials on the march or on judging tours, and the one seen by Mr. Macgregor, had been built on the brow of a hill above the towns.h.i.+p. It was Sat.u.r.day when she arrived here, and she climbed the ascent, taking over an hour to do it, and was captivated by the situation. It had the widest outlook of any spot she had seen; she seemed to be on the very roof of the world. A vast extent of bush stretched out before her, unbroken save by the white road winding down the hill, and instead of the stifling stillness of the plains, a soft breeze blew and cooled the atmosphere. It was five miles from Ikpe, and the centre of a number of populous towns. For months past she had been praying for an entrance into these closed haunts of heathenism, and as she sat down in the lonely little Rest House, she made up her mind not to move a step further until she had come to grips with the chiefs.

Knowing that the Government would not object, she took possession of the building. It had a doorway but no door; the windows were holes in the wall high up under the eaves; the floor was of mud, and there was no furniture of any kind. But these things were of no consequence to the gipsy-missionary. She slept on a camp-bed borrowed from Miss Peac.o.c.k, the girls lay on the mud floor among the lizards, and some pots and pans were obtained from the people until she could procure her own from Ikpe. The commissariat department was run on the simplest scale. A tin of fat, some salt and pepper, tea, and sugar, and roasted plantain for bread, formed the princ.i.p.al const.i.tuents of the frugal meals. Their clothes were taken off piece by piece as each could be spared, and washed in a pail from the little prison yard. "Ma's" calico gown went through the process in the forenoon, was dried on the fence in the hot sun, and donned in the afternoon, in order, as she humorously put it, to be ready for "visitors and tea." In her eyes it was a sort of glorified picnic. She did not pity the girls; she thought such an experience was better for them as African citizens and missionaries than a secondary education.

From this high centre as from a fort, she began to bombard the towns in the neighbourhood. Next day she summoned some disciples from a place called Ndot, and service was held in the yard. Then the lads pushed her chair out to Ibam, two miles distant, where she met the headman and his followers. These were an arrogant, powerful sept--not Ibibios--who had been allies of the slavers of Aros, and were disliked and suspected by all. She told them that she wanted the question of Gospel entrance settled. They looked at her indulgently. "We have no objection to you coming, Ma," said the chief.

"And the saving of twins, and the right of twin-mothers to live as women and not as unclean beasts in the bush?" she asked.

"No, no, we will not have it. Our town will spoil."