Chapter 5 No.5

It was on a warm night in late Spring that Miss Elizabeth Blake sat under the verandah which ran along the whole front of the mission house. A slight thunderstorm had just passed, and another was following on its trail. Summer lightnings were gleaming through the soft haze, and distant thunders muttered from time to time. Brown, furry beetles dashed themselves violently against the windows of the dining-room, where a lamp still burned, and the pneumoras wailed their melancholy love-songs from the willow trees along the water-furrow.

The junior teacher was seeing her charges to bed, for prayers were just over, and Miss Blake was enjoying a few moments' rest in the mild air before taking up her task of preparing the next day's work. The missionary and his wife were away, visiting at the next-neighbouring mission, and were not expected back until the following afternoon.

Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, Miss Blake looked round, and saw Samuel Gozani approaching. He came slowly up the steps, and stood silently before her, leaning against one of the verandah poles.

"Good evening, Samuel," she said.

"Good evening, Miss Elizabeth; you do not often take a rest."

"I seldom have time."

Samuel remained silent, and the girl regarded him intently. She had long noticed his demeanour, and had often wondered as to what was on his mind.

"Samuel," she said, sympathetically, "why have you been so strange of late? Is anything the matter with you?"

Samuel cleared his throat as if to speak, shifted his feet, but said nothing.

"Do you not know," she continued, "that your class is going backward, that you often forget to set the lessons, and that half the time you are teaching you appear as if you do not know what you are doing? Tell me, is there anything on your mind? Have you done anything you are sorry for?"

Samuel again cleared his throat, shifted his feet, and with an evident effort replied:

"I have not committed any sin, but I know my work is done badly. My heart is so heavy that I can hardly bear the weight."

"What is this heaviness?"

Samuel did not reply, but after a pause asked this question:

"Miss Elizabeth, do you believe that all men, white and black, are equal?"

The girl paused for a moment. In her heart of hearts she knew she did not think so, but the fundamental axiom weighed heavily on her, the well-worn arguments of the missionary arose and threatened her, pointing with skinny fingers at the abyss which lay in the road of the opposite view, so she muffled her answer up carefully in a platitude, and handed it to her hearer, trusting that the muffler would somewhat conceal its nakedness.

"Of course," she said, "the bad are not equal to the good; but if God holds that otherwise all men are equal, it would be wrong of any one to think differently."

"But white people never really think that we blacks are equal to them," said Samuel, speaking in a strained tone, "no matter what they say."

Miss Blake felt unable to reply, so after a short pause Samuel continued:

"When a black man walks in the ways of the whites, he becomes a stranger to his own kind, and he has really no friends. The white man says 'Come here to us,' and when the black man comes as near as he can, there is still a gulf that he cannot pass. I am a lonely man, Miss Elizabeth; I have left my own people, and there is no one that I can call a friend. Even you only tolerate me because you think it pleasing to God that you should do so; but you would never be my friend or let me be yours."

"There you are wrong, Samuel," replied the girl, moved by a sense of great pity; "I have the warmest friendship and regard for you, and I like you as well as if you were white."

Samuel then did an unusual thing-he held out his hand to the girl, who took it and pressed it cordially.

"Good night. Miss Elizabeth," he said. "I will do my duty better, and try to be worthy of your friendship. You have lightened my heart."

Miss Blake went in to the empty class-room and arranged the morrow's work. She was filled with a vague sense of uneasiness, and she felt that in her conversation with Samuel she had not been quite ingenuous; especially in her closing remark.

Samuel went to his room, and, as was his wont, read several chapters of the Bible before going to bed. On this occasion his choice fell upon the Song of Solomon. This he read right through. He began it again, and read until he reached the words, "I am black but comely." He went to sleep with these words on his lips, and with a strange dream at his heart.