Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary Part 29

After much talk they said, "Go home, Ma, and we shall discuss it and see you again"--the native way of ending a matter.

Her next discussion was with the town of Odoro Ikpe itself. The old chief was urbane, and gave her every honour. Bringing out a plate with _3_s. upon it, he said, "Take that to buy food while staying here, as we have no market yet." She took the money, kissed it, put her hands on his head, and thanked him, calling him "father," but requested him to take it and buy chop for the children, and she would eat with him another day. The old man went away and returned with some yams, which he asked her to cook and eat. As they talked he gradually lost his fear, and then she asked him bluntly about his att.i.tude to the Gospel.

He and his big men told her frankly what their difficulties were, and these she demolished one by one. After two hours' fencing and arguing the tension gave way to a hearty laugh, and the old chief said, with a sweep of his hand toward the crowd:

"Well, Ma, there they are, take them and teach them what you like--and you, young men, go and build a house for book."

"No!" cried "Ma," "we don't begin or end either with a house. We begin and end with G.o.d in our hearts."

A young man came forward, and without removing a quaint hat he wore, said, "Ma, we can't take G.o.d's word if you bring twins and twin-mothers into our town."

It was out at last. Instead of arguing, "Ma" looked at him as witheringly as she could and replied; "I speak with men and people worthy of me, and not with a puny bush-boy such as you have shown by your manners you are."

Off came the hat, and then "Ma" spoke to him in such a way that the crowd were fain to cry:

"Ma, forgive! forgive! he does not know any better."

There was no more after that about twins, and when she left she felt that progress had been made.

Striking while the iron was hot she sent to Ikpe for school books, and going into the highways and byways, she began to coax the lads to come and learn. They stood aloof, half-afraid and half-scornful, and would not respond. Then she adopted a flank movement, and began to speak to them about the rubber and cocoa which the Government were planting in the district, and tried to awaken their interest and ambitions by telling them how the world was moving outside their home circle.

Gradually the sullenness gave way, and they began to ask questions and to chat. She took the alphabet card, but they s.h.i.+ed at the strange- looking thing, and would not speak. One little fellow who had been at Ikpe, and knew more than the others, began tremblingly, "A--B--," and she and Alice who was with her, joined in until one after another surrendered, and before long all were shouting the letters. By the end of the week the lads were coming every spare hour for lessons, and would scarcely give her time to eat.

The Ikpe disciples had ruefully watched this development, and at last went to her:

"Ma, we are glad you have got a footing out here, but are you forsaking us?"

Her heart ached at the words, and although now reduced to coming and going in her Cape cart, she determined to give them every alternate week when she was not at Use. Thus from now onwards she was keeping three centres going by her own efforts.

After a week at Ikpe in fulfilment of her promise, she returned to Odoro Ikpe to hold the first Sabbath service. A play was being enacted in the town, and scores of naked young men and women were dancing to the compelling throb of the drum. But some Ikpe and Ndot lads came to support the service, and their presence helped the local sympathisers to come forward. It was very simple; she said it would have seemed babyish to Europeans, but it was an epoch to the natives. Another meeting was held in the afternoon; and at night in the dark square, lit only by the light of the fires where the women were cooking their meal, she stood, and again proclaimed, with pa.s.sionate earnestness, the love of G.o.d and the power of Christ to save and uplift. It was, no doubt, a day of small things, but she knew from long experience that small things were not to be despised.

A month later, when she was at Ikpe holding the services, she was astonished to see thirty of the Odoro Ikpe lads marching into church.

They had grown so interested, that they had come the five miles to hear her speak. The Ikpe people at once rose and gave the strangers their seats, finding a place for themselves on the floor. It was pathetic to see their earnest faces and their ignorance as to what they should do during the service, which was more elaborate than they had been accustomed to. Having brought some food they cooked it at the house and remained all day.

On her return to Odoro Ikpe the chiefs appeared one morning, and asked her to come out at once and survey the land, and choose a site for a station. Her heart leapt at the significance of the request. She happened to be in her night attire, but as it might have been full Court dress for all they knew, she went and tramped over the land and chose what she believed would be the best situation in the Mission. It was on the brow of a hill overlooking a magnificent stretch of country, across which a cool breeze blew all the time. She immediately planned a house--one of six rooms--three living rooms above and stores and hall and girls' rooms below, with a roof of corrugated iron for security against wind and insects, and prepared to go down to Use to buy the material.

There was one town still holding out, Ibam (where she had been told to "go home and they would think about it"), and she prayed that it, too, might accept the new conditions. On the Sunday before she left for Use, while she was conducting service, six strange men came in and waited until all had gone. "We are from Ibam," they said. "Come at once, Ma, and we will build a place to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d, and will hear and obey." She was so uplifted that she seemed to live on air for the next few days.

The villagers of Ibam gave up their best yard to her, and, crowds came to the meetings.

All the citadels of heathenism in the district had now been stormed.

Sitting one night on the floor of the Rest House, her aching back leaning against the mud wall, a candle, stuck in its own grease, giving her light, she wrote to her friends in Scotland, telling them that she was the happiest and most grateful woman in the world.

XVI. CLARION CALLS

The discovery of coal up in the interior at Udi brought a new interest into her life, for her far-seeing mind at once realised all the possibilities it contained. She believed it would revolutionise the conditions of West Africa. And when a railway was projected and begun from Port Harcourt, west of Calabar, to Udi, and there was talk of an extension to Itu, she sought to make her friends at home grasp the full significance of the development. That railway would become the highway to the interior, and Calabar would cease to be so important a port.

Great stretches of rich oil-palm country would be opened up and exploited. She urged the need for more men and women to work amongst the rank heathenism that would soon collect and fester in the new industrial and commercial centres. Up there also was the menace of Mohammedanism. "Shall the Cross or the Crescent be first?" she cried.

"We need men and women, oh, we need them!"

She had been saddened by the closing of stations for furloughs, and the apathy of the Church at home.

We are lower in numbers in Calabar than ever--fewer, if you except the artisans in the Inst.i.tute, than in the old days before the doors were opened! Surely there is something very far wrong with our Church, the largest in Scotland. Where are the men? Are there no heroes in the making among us? No hearts beating high with the enthusiasm of the Gospel? Men smile nowadays at the old-fas.h.i.+oned idea of sin and h.e.l.l and broken law and a peris.h.i.+ng world, but these made men, men of purpose, of power and achievement, and self-denying devotion to the highest ideals earth has known. We have really no workers to meet all this opened country, and our Church, to be honest, should stand back and give it to some one else. But oh! I cannot think of that. Not that, Lord! For how could we meet the Goldies, the Edgerleys, the Waddells, the Andersons? How can our Church look at Christ who has given us the privilege of making Calabar history, and say to Him, "Take it back.

Give It to another?"

She had been deeply interested In the great World's Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, and had contrasted it with State diplomacy and dreadnoughts, but was disappointed that so little practical result had followed. "After all," she said, "it is not committees and organisations from without that is to bring the revival, and to send the Gospel to the heathen at home and abroad, but the living spirit of G.o.d working from within the heart."

All this made her more than ever convinced of the value of her own policy. She believed in the roughest methods for a raw country like Nigeria. Too much civilisation and concentration was bad, both for the work and the natives. There should be, she thought, an office of itinerating or travelling missionary permanently attached to the Mission. It would have its drawbacks, as, she recognised, all pioneer work had, but it would also pay well. She was not sure whether the missionaries did right in remaining closely to their stations, and believed that short regular expeditions into the interior would not only keep them in better health, but give them a closer knowledge of the people. Not much teaching could be given in this way, but their confidence would be won, and the way would be prepared for further advance. Her hope lay in women workers; they made better pioneers than men, and as they were under no suspicion of being connected with the Government, their presence was un.o.bjectionable to the natives. They could move into new spheres and do the spade-work; enter the homes, win a hearing, guide the people in quiet ways, and live a simple and natural life amongst them. When confidence had been secured, men missionaries could enter and train and develop, and build up congregations in the ordinary manner.

Even then she did not see why elaborate churches should be erected. She was always so afraid to put anything forward save Christ, that she was quite satisfied with her little "mud kirks." The raw heathen knew nothing of the Church as white people understood it. To give them a costly building was to give them a foreign thing in which they would wors.h.i.+p a foreign G.o.d. To let them wors.h.i.+p in an environment of their own setting meant, she believed, a more real apprehension of spiritual truth. The money they were trained to give, she would spend, not on buildings so much as on pioneer work among the tribes.

So, too, with the Mission houses. She thought these should be as simple as possible, and semi-native in style; such, she believed, to be the driest and most healthy. In any case disease could come into a house costing 200, as into one costing 20, and "there was such a thing as G.o.d's providence." Still, she recognised the importance of preserving the health of newcomers, and admitted that her ideas might not apply to them. "It would be wrong," she said, "to insist on mud-huts for a nervous or aesthetic person."

It was much the same feeling that ran through her objection to the natives suddenly transforming themselves into Europeans. Her views in this respect differed a good deal from those of her co-workers. One Sunday, after a special service, a number of women who had arrayed themselves in cheap European finery, boots and stockings and all, called upon her. She sat on a chair, her back to them, and merely threw them an occasional word with an angry jerk of her head. They were very upset, and at last one of them ventured to ask what was the matter.

"Matter!" she exclaimed, and then spoke to them in a way which brought them all back in the afternoon clothed more appropriately.

On all these questions she thought simply and naturally, and not in terms of scientific theory and over-elaborated system. She believed that the world was burdened and paralysed by conventional methods. But she did not undervalue the aesthetic side of existence. "So many think that we missionaries live a sort of glorified glamour of a life, and have no right to think of any of the little refinements and elegancies which rest and sooth tired and overstrained nerves--certainly coa.r.s.eness and ugliness do not help the Christian life, and ugly things are not as a rule cheaper than beautiful ones." Her conviction was that a woman worth her salt could make any kind of house beautiful. At the same time she believed--and proved it in her own life--that the spirit- filled woman was to a great extent independent of all accessories.

What always vexed her was to think of thousands of girls at home living a purposeless life, spending their time in fas.h.i.+onable wintering- places, and undergoing the strenuous toil of conventional amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Why," she asked, "could they not come out here and stay a month or six months doing light work, helping with the children, cheering the staff?

What a wealth of interest it would introduce into their lives!" She declared it would be better than stoning windows, for she had no patience with the policy of the women who sought in blind destruction the solution of political and social evils. "I'm for votes for women, but I would prove my right to it by keeping law and helping others to keep it. G.o.d-like motherhood is the finest sphere for women, and the way to the redemption of the world."

Many a clarion call she sent to her sisters across the waters:

"Don't grow up a nervous old maid! Gird yourself for the battle outside somewhere, and keep your heart young. Give up your whole being to create music everywhere, in the light places and in the dark places, and your life will make melody. I'm a witness to the perfect joy and satisfaction of a single life--with a tail of human tag-rag hanging on.

It is rare! It is as exhilarating as an aeroplane or a dirigible or whatever they are that are always trying to get up and are always coming down!... Mine has been such a joyous service," she wrote again.

"G.o.d has been good to me, letting me serve Him in this humble way. I cannot thank Him enough for the honour He conferred upon me when He sent me to the Dark Continent."

Over and over again she put this idea of foreign service before her friends at home. Some were afraid of a rush of cranks who would not obey rules and so forth. She laughed the idea to scorn. "I wish I could believe in a crush--but there are sensible men and women enough in the Church who would be as law-abiding here as at home."

XVII. LOVE-LETTEBS

During the course of her career Miss Slessor wrote numberless letters, many of them productions of six, ten, twelve, and fourteen pages, closely penned in spidery writing, which she called her "hieroglyphic style." She had the gift, which more women than men possess, of expressing her ideas on paper in as affluent and graceful a way as in conversation. Her letters indeed were long monologues, the spontaneous outpouring of an active and clever mind. She sat down and talked vivaciously of everything about her, not of public affairs, because she knew people at home would not understand about these, but of her children, the natives, her journeys, her ailments, the services, the palavers, all as simply and naturally and as fully as if she were addressing an interested listener. But it was essential that her correspondent should be in sympathy with her. She could never write a formal letter; she could not even compose a business letter in the ordinary way. Neither could she write to order, nor give an official report of her work. The prospect of appearing in print paralysed her.

It was always the heart and not the mind of her correspondent that she addressed. What appeared from time to time in the _Record_ and in the _Women's Missionary Magazine_, were mainly extracts from private letters, and they derived all their charm and colour from the fact that they were meant for friends who loved and understood her. In the same way she would be chilled by receiving a coldly expressed letter. "I wish you hadn't said _Dear Madam_," she told a lady at home. "I'm just an insignificant, wee, auld wifey that you would never address in that way if you knew me. I'll put the _Madam_ aside, and drag up my chair close to you and the girls you write for, and we'll have a chat by the fireside."

She could not help writing; it was the main outlet for her loving nature, so much repressed in the loneliness of the bush. Had she not possessed so big and so ardent a heart, she would have written less.

Into her letters she poured all the wealth of her affection; they were in the real sense love-letters; and her magic gift of sympathy made them always prized by the recipients. She had no home people of her own, and she pressed her nearest friends to make her "one of the family." "If," she would say, "you would let me share in any disappointments or troubles, I would feel more worthy of your love--I will tell you some of mine as a counter-irritant!" Many followed her behest with good result. "I'm cross this morning," wrote a young missionary at the beginning of a long letter, "and I know it is all my own fault, but I am sure that writing to you will put me in a better temper. When things go wrong, there is nothing like a talk with you....

Now I must stop, the letter has worked the cure." Her letters of counsel to her colleagues when they were in difficulties with their work were helpful and inspiring to the highest degree. On occasions of trial or sorrow she always knew the right word to say. How delicately, for instance, would she try to take the edge off the grief of bereaved friends by describing the arrival of the spirit in heaven, and the glad welcome that would be got there from those who had gone before. "Heaven is just a meeting and a homing of our real selves. G.o.d will never make us into new personalities. Everlasting life--take that word _life_ and turn it over and over and press it and try to measure it, and see what it will yield. It is a magnificent idea which comprises everything that heart can yearn after." On another occasion she wrote, "I do not like that pet.i.tion in the Prayer Book, _From sudden death, good Lord deliver us_. I never could pray it. It is surely far better to see Him at once without pain of parting or physical debility. Why should we not be like the apostle in his confident outburst of praise and a.s.surance, 'For I am persuaded...'?" Again: "Don't talk about the cold hand of death--it is the hand of Christ."

It was not surprising that her correspondence became greater at last than she could manage. The pile of unanswered communications was like a millstone round her neck, and in these latter days she began to violate an old rule and s.n.a.t.c.h time from the hours of night. Headings such as "10 P.M.," "Midnight," "8.45 A.M.," became frequent, yet she would give love's full measure to every correspondent, and there was seldom sign of undue strain. "If my pen is in a hurry," she would say, "my heart is not." When she was ill and unable to write, she would simply lie in bed and speak to her Father about it all.

There was a number of friends to whom she wrote regularly, and whose relations to her may be judged from the manner in which they began their letters. "My lady of Grace," "My beloved missionary," "Dearest sister," were some of the phrases used. But her nature demanded at least one confidante to whom she could lay bare her inmost thoughts.

She needed a safety-valve, a city of refuge, a heart and mind with whom there would be no reservations, and Providence provided her with a kind of confessor from whom she obtained all the understanding and sympathy and love she craved for. This was Miss Adam, who, while occasionally differing from her in minor matters of policy, never, during the fifteen years of their friends.h.i.+p, once failed her. What she was to the lonely missionary no one can know. Mary said she knew without being told what was in her heart, and "how sweet," she added, "it is to be understood and have love reading between the lines." Month by month she sent to Bowden the intimate story of her doings, her troubles, hopes, and fears, and joys, and received in return wise and tender counsel and encouragement and practical help. She kept the letters under her pillow and read and reread them.

Never self-centred or self-sufficient, she depended upon the letters that came from home to a greater extent than many of her friends suspected. She needed the inflow of love into her own life, and she valued the letters that brought her cheer and stimulus and inspiration.

Once she was travelling on foot, and had four miles of hill-road to go, and was feeling very weary and depressed at the magnitude of the work and her own weakness, when a letter was handed to her. It was the only one by that mail, but it was enough. She sat down, and in the quiet of the bush she opened it, and as she read all the tiredness fled, the heat was forgotten, the road was easy, and she went blithely up the hill.