LITMIR.BIZ

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1929 by S. Fowler Wright

      Copyright © 2009, 2013 by the Estate of S. Fowler Wright

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      This book is complete in itself, but is a sequel to Deluge in the sense that some of the characters are the same, and the latter part of the book continues the narrative of Deluge beyond the point at which that book closes.

      BOOK ONE

      No abstract doctrine is more false and mischievous than that of the natural quality of men.

      —Sir James Fraser,

      The Scope of Social Anthropology

      Chapter One

      The May sun shone through the unblinded window of Muriel Temple’s bedroom, and a warm wind lifted the curtains. A moving shaft of light fell on her face, and she stirred and wakened to a sense of impending evil. For a moment she could not recall the nature of the trouble which had overshadowed her mind. “To be with Christ, which is far better”—the words which had brought sleep came back, and with them she remembered. Six months, the specialist had said, or it might be twelve, or eighteen, but it was not likely to be so long. He could not recommend an operation. He had been very kind, but quite definite. There would be more pain later, he admitted, but much could be done to deaden it. She hesitated about that. It might be better to endure the pain, if it were God’s will. She was not afraid. She would want to be conscious of death when it came. “To be with Christ, which is far better.” She did not doubt it.

      She had been urged to rest this morning, and had reluctantly promised. She knew that her days of active service were over. She tired so easily. And now that her voice had gone…. But she would far rather have risen for the Sunday morning service as usual.

      She had hoped that another operation might have been possible, and followed by some degree of recovered activity, though she knew that she would never see South Africa again. But that hope was over now. If God had decided that He did not need her further, she must not be faithless and defiant. He could build the new mission church at Nizetsi, on which her heart had been set, without her aid should He will it. She knew that; but she did not think that it was His will, or He would not have sent her this summons to lay aside the work she was doing. Perhaps, had she made better use of the time she had….

      It was twenty years since she had sailed from Southampton for her first station in Basutoland. Life had seemed long then, and now…. “The night cometh, when no man can work.”

      The night had come.

      Her thought paused as the bells of Sterrington Church commenced their summons for the early Communion. She did not like the Anglican service. She knew it to be full of superstitions and laxities. Sinners should be converted, not confirmed. But she had a wide charity of mind, and today she would gladly have knelt in any place that was dedicated to her Master’s service, however blindly.

      She thought of dawn moving over the earth, and of a world that waked to worship.

      Fast as the light of morning broke

      On island, continent, and deep,

      Thy far-spread family awoke,

      Sabbath all round the world to keep.

      She remembered how she had used that great conception of James Montgomery to move a Zulu audience. She did not think of it as James Montgomery’s hymn. She did not know or care who had written it. She had no literary sense, but she had imagination, if only she were approached on the one side on which her mind was open, and she had a gift of clear and musical speech which could take an audience with her—till her throat had failed. Even in the harsh Zulu gutturals. “She who speaks as we speak,” so they had called her.

      Thy poor have all been freely fed,

      Thy chastened sons have kissed the rod,

      Thy mourners have been comforted,

      Thy pure in heart have seen their God.

      The familiar words brought comfort. God was so very near to those who sought Him. She reached out for the Bible on her bedside table. She would read the usual morning chapter. As she did so Mrs. Wilkes knocked timidly, and, being answered, brought in her breakfast.

      Mrs. Wilkes brought some gillies also. She knew that Muriel loved flowers. It was a world full of kindness, even for those for whom Death was waiting impatiently. Death might be near, but God was always nearer.

      Chapter Two

      Muriel’s mind wandered from selfish considerations, which it was unusual to indulge, to an incident of the previous afternoon, when she had gained the frightened confidence of Lena Atkins, a girl whose parents lived at the farther end of the village.

      She was employed as a factory hand at the Larkshill Iron Works, four miles way, and had been lodging with a girl friend in Larkshill during the week, and coming home each Saturday.

      She had contracted a foolish intimacy with the girl’s brother, the result of which could be concealed no longer, either at home or factory, and she had a terrified anticipation of the contempt and wrath of her parents, and of dismissal from her employment, as the first consequences of the folly which she had committed.

      Muriel was not entirely free from the subconscious bitterness or jealousy which is commonly felt by the childless woman who has maintained her maidenhood toward those of less circumspect experiences, but she was controlled by the larger charity of her Master’s teaching, and she had sufficient knowledge of life, and of the human nature of two continents, to be aware that the girl’s condition was evidence of a comparative innocence rather than of exceptional vice.

      She had already met the head forewoman, and the welfare worker, who were perfunctorily responsible for the conditions prevailing among the three hundred girls and women employed at the Larkshill Works. She knew that devilish contrivances to enable them to lose their chastity and their self-respect, without experiencing the condoning mystery of procreation, were openly sold at the factory gates, and that it was a thriving traffic. She knew that many of the girl’s companions, who would be contemptuous of an illegitimate child, would excuse abortion. She knew that immediately the girl’s condition should become known among her acquaintances she would be exposed to tempting whispers, advising her of the ease and safety with which she could destroy her child through the agency of noxious drugs, or with the aid of some repulsive hag who made a living by that unnatural wickedness. She knew that a large part even of the medical profession had surrendered to a vice so popular and so profitable, and that it was not only in the cottage or the slums that a doctor would look hard at a woman who suggested the probability of a third or fourth child, and ask if she felt she were strong enough; or did she really want it?

      But this knowledge did not deflect the rigidity of her mind in its recognition of what is honourable and decent living, whether in a savage kraal or amidst the recondite vices of a dying civilization. Nor had she that perversion of mind, not uncommon among professional exponents of righteousness, which imagines a universal degradation among a population that does not give much attention to the teaching they offer.

      She did not doubt that there were many happy and natural marriages among the eight hundred workpeople employed by the Larkshill Iron Works, in spite of the squalid lives to which their boasted civilization had brought them: many clean engagements of unsoiled romance: many integrities, both of men and women, which lived aloof and undegraded….

      She had heard the tale with a ready sympathy, and with the occasional helping word or the well-judged silence that made it easy to tell. She had heard so many like it before!

      Her thoughts wandered to a kindred trouble in a Zulu kraal, where a girl who had crouched stolidly in expectation of death had waked to a trembling terror at the knowledge that the white woman had interposed, and

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