II
The scene was a mission station once more, but a different sort of interest appeared to be paramount in this busy station, other than plain Evangelism. This was a Lutheran Mission, used now in time of war as a collecting centre for the rice of the countryside. The foreboding of Isaka’s teacher had come but too true. When Isaka had been telling him (on the day after the great day) his dream of the White Horse and his Rider, he had read to him the story of other horses and other riders out of Saint John’s Vision. And his face had grown troubled as he added, ‘We have proved what the riding of the black horse means here in this mission of ours. Do you remember years ago how the rains were short here, and how the people went hungry afterwards? And now there are clouds in the sky clouds not of rain. Will the Red Horse be ridden, as some prophesy? I seem to see him with the bit in his teeth spurred by his rider our way. Pray, Isaka, I beseech you, that the Red Horse and his rider be turned in their road.’ And he told Isaka something of what he meant, also something of what that riding might mean to them all. And he would have Isaka pray, and his schoolmates pray also. And they prayed, but for all that this mad rider came galloping, the rider of whom Saint John wrote, ‘And there went out another horse that was red; and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another:...’
It was nearly a year now since that morning Isaka remembered so well, when the White Horse was ridden his way. Once again when awaked.
Isaka, Kadona, was not sure if he was dreaming, but this time the main reason for doubt was that things seemed too bad rather than too good to be true, things that had come or were coming, upon the earth. Nearly a year ago now the news of the riding of the Red Horse had come. Europe was in a horrible temper, and Africans must do as usually, not what they wanted to do, but what Europe bade. Isaka’s English teacher must leave his school or his liberty, he must either run away or stay fast in the Government’s hands a Government that was fighting England. He chose to remain, hoping to help Isaka and others, but he had very little power on earth left to him. For a little while he was allowed to stay in his old home, and the school began to be broken up only little by little. Then the pace quickened; some were drafted off as porters, some as soldiers, some were allowed to stay and cultivate for the Government. Its local officials’ tempers had apparently not improved with its troubles. None on this alien mission within its borders were liable to be accounted trustworthy, all were liable to suspicion. Yet Isaka worked on happily for a while. When his teacher was moved to a place of internment he was allowed to keep one body servant. He invited Isaka to come, and Isaka came right willingly. He might have been passed by, and the choice lain among others, but his teacher asked him as the first choice of all, if he would come with him? Was it likely that he would refuse?
Then suspicion fell upon Isaka in a day of rebuke and blasphemy. Probably he was to blame, probably he said more than he should have said, probably he did not recognize how well off he was. Anyhow the blow fell, and he was to be envied no longer, as he had been.
He was beaten rather mercilessly, and taken to be a Government porter in a district far away. The tears came into his teacher’s eyes when he bade Isaka farewell; his own captivity was wearisome, he was beginning to feel his age now; also this boy had been as a son to him.
It was all like an evil dream, this war, so fecund of death and parting among friends, this riding of the Red Horse that had haunted Isaka’s visions of the night. The light was just coming when he awaked from them at the German Mission Station. He was loath and slow to unroll himself from his one torn blanket and to step out of it. But someone kicked him angrily, and then needs must. He had come on these last days ever so many miles, and carried a full load. He struggled up stiffly, and crept to the little fire that two of his fellows were heaping and lighting while they chattered together. They were tribesmen of a district far from his own. One was telling a story of how their white masters with native soldiers had raided, a village. The other, whose village it was, full-stopped the story with grunts or deprecations. There had been some throats cut. Folk had been bidden to lie down, so the teller said; they had lain down as for the lash, but they had been paid in cold steel. Isaka listened dazedly. The end of his Christian era seemed to have come as suddenly and unexplainedly as the end of his Pagan era. His teacher had preached ‘love,’ ‘love,’ ‘love,’ with Pauline iteration, and not a little self-repetition. His teacher had taught that war was an unclean thing haunting the heathen world, and lurking in the blackness of Pagan villages. His teacher had deprecated violence; it was his rule never to strike, nor ever to rule by such fear as cast out love.
Now, an askari (a native soldier) came up to the three, and he was storming furiously. He laid on his lash right and left. Isaka did not escape. They were to carry their loads at once, it was said, by forced marches to a rice mill at the lakeside. In another five minutes the big train of porters took the road, and spread itself like a serpent up the trackway. Isaka was the twentieth or the twenty-first in their advance. I do not think that his illness which was to show itself in a day or two, was really manifest on that day. Yet he went very heavily. Such maladies were certainly upon him as a poet has diagnosed, ‘blank misgivings of a Creature moving about in worlds half realized.’ The ridings of Red and White Horses had so fast succeeded one another in Isaka’s circle, and had brought such different worlds and atmospheres in their respective wakes!