the night was exceedingly close. willard bent, after spink’s departure, had undressed and stretched himself on his camp bed; but the mosquitoes roared like lions, and lying down made him more wakeful.
“in any christian country,” he mused, “this would mean a thunderstorm and a cool-off. here it just means months and months more of the same thing.” and he thought enviously of spink, who, in two or three days, his “deal” concluded, would be at sea again, heading for the north.
bent was honestly distressed at his own state of mind: he had feared that harry spink would “unsettle” mr. blandhorn, and, instead, it was he himself who had been unsettled. old slumbering distrusts and doubts, bursting through his surface-apathy, had shot up under the drummer’s ironic eye. it was not so much spink, individually, who had loosened the crust of bent’s indifference; it was the fact of feeling his whole problem suddenly viewed and judged from the outside. at eloued, he was aware, nobody, for a long time, had thought much about the missionaries. the french authorities were friendly, the pacha was tolerant, the american consul at mogador had always stood by them in any small difficulties. but beyond that they were virtually non-existent. nobody’s view of life was really affected by their presence in the great swarming mysterious city: if they should pack up and leave that night, the story-tellers of the market would not interrupt their tales, or one less bargain be struck in the bazaar. ayoub would still doze in the door, and old myriem continue her secret life on the roofs . . .
the roofs were of course forbidden to the missionaries, as they are to men in all moslem cities. but the mission-house stood close to the walls, and mr. blandhorn’s room, across the passage, gave on a small terrace overhanging the court of a caravansary upon which it was no sin to look. willard wondered if it were any cooler on the terrace.
some one tapped on his open door, and mr. blandhorn, in turban and caftan, entered the room, shading a small lamp.
“my dear willard — can you sleep?”
“no, sir.” the young man stumbled to his feet.
“nor i. the heat is really . . . shall we seek relief on the terrace?”
bent followed him, and having extinguished the lamp mr. blandhorn led the way out. he dragged a strip of matting to the edge of the parapet, and the two men sat down on it side by side.
there was no moon, but a sky so full of stars that the city was outlined beneath it in great blue-gray masses. the air was motionless, but every now and then a wandering tremor stirred it and died out. close under the parapet lay the bales and saddle-packs of the caravansary, between vaguer heaps, presumably of sleeping camels. in one corner, the star-glitter picked out the shape of a trough brimming with water, and stabbed it with long silver beams. beyond the court rose the crenellations of the city walls, and above them one palm stood up like a tree of bronze.
“africa — ” sighed mr. blandhorn.
willard bent started at the secret echo of his own thoughts.
“yes. never anything else, sir — ”
“ah — ” said the old man.
a tang-tang of stringed instruments, accompanied by the lowing of an earthenware drum, rose exasperatingly through the night. it was the kind of noise that, one knew, had been going on for hours before one began to notice it, and would go on, unchecked and unchanging, for endless hours more: like the heat, like the drought — like africa.
willard slapped at a mosquito.
“it’s a party at the wool-merchant’s, myriem tells me,” mr. blandhorn remarked. it really seemed as if, that night, the thoughts of the two men met without the need of words. willard bent was aware that, for both, the casual phrase had called up all the details of the scene: fat merchants in white bunches on their cushions, negresses coming and going with trays of sweets, champagne clandestinely poured, ugly singing-girls yowling, slim boys in petticoats dancing — perhaps little ahmed among them.
“i went down to the court just now. ayoub has disappeared,” mr. blandhorn continued. “of course. when i heard in the bazaar that a black caravan was in from the south i knew he’d be off . . . ”
mr. blandhorn lowered his voice. “willard — have you reason to think . . . that ayoub joins in their rites?”
“myriem has always said he was a hamatcha, sir. look at those queer cuts and scars on him . . . it’s a much bloodier sect than the aissaouas.”
through the nagging throb of the instruments came a sound of human wailing, cadenced, terrible, relentless, carried from a long way off on a lift of the air. then the air died, and the wailing with it.
“from somewhere near the potter’s field . . . there’s where the caravan is camping,” willard murmured.
the old man made no answer. he sat with his head bowed, his veined hands grasping his knees; he seemed to his disciple to be whispering fragments of scripture.
“willard, my son, this is our fault,” he said at length.
“what —? ayoub?”
“ayoub is a poor ignorant creature, hardly more than an animal. even when he witnessed for jesus i was not very sure the word reached him. i refer to — to what harry spink said this evening . . . it has kept me from sleeping, willard bent.”
“yes — i know, sir.”
“harry spink is a worldly-minded man. but he is not a bad man. he did a manly thing when he left us, since he did not feel the call. but we have felt the call, willard, you and i— and when a man like spink puts us a question such as he put this evening we ought to be able to answer it. and we ought not to want to avoid answering it.”
“you mean when he said: ‘what is there in it for jesus?’”
“the phrase was irreverent, but the meaning reached me. he meant, i take it: ‘what have your long years here profited to christ?’ you understood it so —?”
“yes. he said to me in the bazaar: ‘what’s your bag?’”
mr. blandhorn sighed heavily. for a few minutes willard fancied he had fallen asleep; but he lifted his head and, stretching his hand out, laid it on his disciple’s arm.
“the lord chooses his messengers as it pleaseth him: i have been awaiting this for a long time.” the young man felt his arm strongly grasped. “willard, you have been much to me all these years; but that is nothing. all that matters is what you are to christ . . . and the test of that, at this moment, is your willingness to tell me the exact truth, as you see it.”
willard bent felt as if he were a very tall building, and his heart a lift suddenly dropping down from the roof to the cellar. he stirred nervously, releasing his arm, and cleared his throat; but he made no answer. mr. blandhorn went on.
“willard, this is the day of our accounting — of my accounting. what have i done with my twenty-five years in africa? i might deceive myself as long as my wife lived — i cannot now.” he added, after a pause: “thank heaven she never doubted . . . ”
the younger man, with an inward shiver, remembered some of mrs. blandhorn’s confidences. “i suppose that’s what marriage is,” he mused — “just a fog, like everything else.”
aloud he asked: “then why should you doubt, sir?”
“because my eyes have been opened — ”
“by harry spink?” the disciple sneered.
the old man raised his hand. “‘out of the mouths of babes — ’ but it is not harry spink who first set me thinking. he has merely loosened my tongue. he has been the humble instrument compelling me to exact the truth of you.”
again bent felt his heart dropping down a long dark shaft. he found no words at the bottom of it, and mr. blandhorn continued: “the truth and the whole truth, willard bent. we have failed — i have failed. we have not reached the souls of these people. those who still come to us do so from interested motives — or, even if i do some few of them an injustice, if there is in some a blind yearning for the light, is there one among them whose eyes we have really opened?”
willard bent sat silent, looking up and down the long years, as if to summon from the depths of memory some single incident that should permit him to say there was.
“you don’t answer, my poor young friend. perhaps you have been clearer-sighted; perhaps you saw long ago that we were not worthy of our hire.”
“i never thought that of you, sir!”
“nor of yourself? for we have been one — or so i have believed — in all our hopes and efforts. have you been satisfied with your results?”
willard saw the dialectical trap, but some roused force in him refused to evade it. “no, sir — god knows.”
“then i am answered. we have failed: africa has beaten us. it has always been my way, as you know, willard, to face the truth squarely,” added the old man who had lived so long in dreams; “and now that this truth has been borne in on me, painful as it is, i must act on it . . . act in accordance with its discovery.”
he drew a long breath, as if oppressed by the weight of his resolution, and sat silent for a moment, fanning his face with a corner of his white draperies.
“and here too — here too i must have your help, willard,” he began presently, his hand again weighing on the young man’s arm. “i will tell you the conclusions i have reached; and you must answer me — as you would answer your maker.”
“yes, sir.”
the old man lowered his voice. “it is our lukewarmness, willard — it is nothing else. we have not witnessed for christ as his saints and martyrs witnessed for him. what have we done to fix the attention of these people, to convince them of our zeal, to overwhelm them with the irresistibleness of the truth? answer me on your word — what have we done?”
willard pondered. “but the saints and martyrs . . . were persecuted, sir.”
“persecuted! you have spoken the word i wanted.”
“but the people here,” willard argued, “don’t want to persecute anybody. they’re not fanatical unless you insult their religion.”
mr. blandhorn’s grasp grew tighter. “insult their religion! that’s it . . . tonight you find just the words . . . ”
willard felt his arm shake with the tremor that passed through the other’s body. “the saints and martyrs insulted the religion of the heathen — they spat on it, willard — they rushed into the temples and knocked down the idols. they said to the heathen: ‘turn away your faces from all your abominations’; and after the manner of men they fought with beasts at ephesus. what is the church on earth called? the church militant! you and i are soldiers of the cross.”
the missionary had risen and stood leaning against the parapet, his right arm lifted as if he spoke from a pulpit. the music at the wool-merchant’s had ceased, but now and then, through the midnight silence, there came an echo of ritual howls from the potters’ field.
willard was still seated, his head thrown back against the parapet, his eyes raised to mr. blandhorn. following the gesture of the missionary’s lifted hand, from which the muslin fell back like the sleeve of a surplice, the young man’s gaze was led upward to another white figure, hovering small and remote above their heads. it was a muezzin leaning from his airy balcony to drop on the blue-gray masses of the starlit city the cry: “only allah is great.”
mr. blandhorn saw the white figure too, and stood facing it with motionless raised arm.
“only christ is great, only christ crucified!” he suddenly shouted in arabic with all the strength of his broad lungs.
the figure paused, and seemed to willard to bend over, as if peering down in their direction; but a moment later it had moved to the other corner of the balcony, and the cry fell again on the sleeping roofs:
“allah — allah — only allah!”
“christ — christ — only christ crucified!” roared mr. blandhorn, exalted with wrath and shaking his fist at the aerial puppet.
the puppet once more paused and peered; then it moved on and vanished behind the flank of the minaret.
the missionary, still towering with lifted arm, dusky-faced in the starlight, seemed to willard to have grown in majesty and stature. but presently his arm fell and his head sank into his hands. the young man knelt down, hiding his face also, and they prayed in silence, side by side, while from the farther corners of the minaret, less audibly, fell the infidel call.
willard, his prayer ended, looked up, and saw that the old man’s garments were stirred as if by a ripple of air. but the air was quite still, and the disciple perceived that the tremor of the muslin was communicated to it by mr. blandhorn’s body.
“he’s trembling — trembling all over. he’s afraid of something. what’s he afraid of?” and in the same breath willard had answered his own question: “he’s afraid of what he’s made up his mind to do.”
