Part 16 (2/2)
And now, dear little friend, good-bye. Be good and brave, and hurry putting your pennies in the bank so that you can come to see us and stay a long time. Janie sends her compliments to you and to all, and says, ”Do not forget us.” So say I.
Joyful days in Ratcliffe's life were these when letters arrived from Ma, ”bang, bang from the wilds,” as she said. In all she spoke of the mysterious secret. ”Now, sonny,” she would say, ”do you remember our little secret treaty? I do, and keep it. There is a telephone and a telegraph, secret, wireless, swift, which never fails, and it carries to Canary _via_ the Kingdom of G.o.d.” Or this, ”Are you remembering our old secret? Dear old sweet-heart, so am I, and I get surer and surer than ever for the BEST. Keep on!”
Sometimes Ratcliffe wrote in reply, sometimes his mother or auntie, but always there was a message to say that ”the secret was being kept.”
Ratcliffe liked to hear about the children and their doings and about the teeming life of the forest, ”cunning things among insects and beautiful flies and b.u.t.terflies and small creatures among the bushes glistening like fine stones or flowers,” but best of all he loved the snake stories like this:
One night in the dark there came up to my ears small screams from below. Janie was jumping about and Annie and she were throwing things, and by the light of the fire it looked awful.
Janie laughed back to my screams, ”It is a snake, don't come,”
and she was las.h.i.+ng all she was able with a stick. Annie was making noise, and not much more. I got round in my slow way to the outside. Janie had forced it back till she and Annie and Maggie were all on the outside and could run, but Janie held on, and I threw her a machete and she hacked the things into bits.
In the morning the bits were all gone, some other beast had eaten it, and there were only marks. Another day Janie was chasing with the others a horrid thing we call Asawuri. I don't know what it is in scientific English. It makes a long oo-o-oo-o of a note and lives in the bush in a hole. It is bigger than a lizard and marked handsomely like a snake, and has a deadly poison; that's why G.o.d has given it the note of warning, I suppose. Janie killed it.... I am always keeping my secret. Are you? Don't slacken! Don't tell.
Ma always tried to cheer and help him:
I expect you will be at school by this time. Are you? How do you like it? Do the masters give any punishments? I am sure they won't need to do that with you, for you will be doing your best.
But it will sometimes be hard to do lessons when it is hot, and you will want to do other things; and let me whisper a secret to you. I, too, am an awful duffer at arithmetic! I simply can't do it. Never mind, I've got on fairly well, and so will you; and now I have only the sums of the boys in the school to bother me, and I never give them harder ones than I can do quickly and explain well myself. You will come out on top some day. All the same, try for all you are worth and catch up. Auntie and mother will help you--that's what aunties and mothers are for, you know. Just you put your arms round auntie's neck and look at her with your bonnie speaking eyes, and you'll see what will happen.
Janie can't count at all, she never could, and I had a great pity always for her, and yet what could I do without Janie? She is worth a thousand mathematicians to me and to our people.
Ma rejoiced that she was able to do a little more for her beloved Master, and she began to take more care of her health. She did not want to be great or famous, only to walk very quietly from day to day, and do simple things, looking after the needs of her people and fighting the sin and ignorance that marred their lives. So we find her again at Use and Ikpe spending the long hours preaching, teaching, doctoring, building, cementing, painting, varnis.h.i.+ng--a very humble and happy woman.
She paid a visit to Okoyong, the first since she had left eight years before. The wild old station had become so quiet and peaceful that it was almost like a bit of Scotland, and there was a fine new church.
Everybody came to ”kom” her, and she could scarcely get her meals for talking about the long ago. She saw Eme Ete and Mana, and Iye the mother of Susie, and Esien, now a leading Christian, and many others; and when she went over to the church she found four hundred people gathered to hear her, the men and boys in the centre, and the women in coloured frocks and head-dresses at the side, while the children sat in rows on the floor. All were clean and tidy, and she thought what a big change it was from the terrible days when the naked villagers were only fond of drink and bloodshed.
”Yes,” said a church member later to one of the lady missionaries, ”even the leopards became less bold and dangerous when Ma came!”
She was glad to have a talk with Eme Ete, but sorry to know that she was still a heathen, and sacrificed every day in her yard to a mud white-washed figure of a woman that had egg-sh.e.l.ls for eyes. There was also a mud altar on which she laid her offerings of palm-wine, gin, and food, and sometimes she put a fowl or eggs in the lap of the image. Her rooms were full of charms, such as bunches of gra.s.s and feathers and bottles. It made Ma very sad. Eme Ete died soon after, and from the roof of her house was hung a great fold of white satin, which is a sign of death in a heathen home, and the doors were shut and the place left to rot and fall to pieces.
Though Ma was hidden away in the African forest and thought she was a n.o.body, there were others who, knowing what she had done, and having been helped by her example, made up their minds that her story should not be left untold. They wrote it out, and by and by it came into the hands of Sir Frederick Lugard, the Governor-General of Nigeria, as the whole country was now called, and he, marvelling at the tale, sent it home so that it might be brought to Royal notice.
One day a native runner appeared in the yard at Use with a bundle of letters, amongst which was a large one that looked important. Ma turned it over and wondered what it could be. It was from a very famous and ancient society, the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, which has the King at its head and other Royal persons amongst its officials, begging that she would agree to become one of its Honorary a.s.sociates and accept the Silver Cross which it gave to those who were noted for goodness and good work.
She looked at her torn dress and her rough hands and her bare feet, and around at the poor little shanty of a house, and chuckled.
”Fancy me with a Royal medal!” she said. ”What have I done? I dinna deserve anything for doing my duty. I couldna' even have done that unless G.o.d had been with me all the time. To Him be all the honour.”
”But,” she added, ”it's nice too, for it will let the folk here ken that the King is interested in the work that we are doing.” And so, being a loyal subject, she wrote back, saying ”Yes.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: MA'S SILVER CROSS.
Now in the Museum of the United Free Church.]
Another letter arrived telling her that her election had been approved by King George V., and then came the beautiful diploma. But she had to go down to Duke Town to be given the Cross at a public meeting, and this was a great trial. Everybody, however, was kind and treated her like a princess. While they were praising her she sat with her face buried in her hands, and when she spoke she made it seem as if the honour were done to the Mission and not to herself. A bouquet of roses was handed to her, and when she got home to Use she planted a stem beside the rough-hewn steps, and to her delight it grew and flourished. When she died a cutting from it was planted on her grave.
Of course she had to tell Ratcliffe all about the affair. ”The Silver Cross,” she said, ”is a nice thing called a decoration, which one wears on special occasions, and is just like a prize given at school to a boy.
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