A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 4/Chapter 2
It was Swanson who saw them coming and went out to meet them on the edge of the forest. He had heard the news from a black runner on his way up the lake to join a party of German engineers who were bound inland. He was so changed that Philip looked at him for a moment with the air of a stranger. He was much thinner and had lost most of his hair. As if to compensate the loss, he had grown an immense sandy beard, which gave him the air of a comic monk. But the slow, china-blue eyes were the same, and the way of talking slowly, as if he were always afraid that his tongue would run faster than his dull brain.
Philip said, "This is my wife," and the shadow of Naomi suddenly fell on the three of them. "You got my letter?"
Poor Swanson had turned crimson, and stood awkwardly, holding his battered straw hat in his sausage-like hands. "No," he stammered. "No—what letter?"
For a moment there was a terrible silence. They both saw that he had expected Naomi. He had thought all the while that the woman he saw from afar off with the train of bearers that wound along the river was Naomi . . . coming back. And it was true. She had come back. She had returned in the strangest way to take possession of them all. She was there in the stupid, puzzled eyes of Swanson, in the confusion of Mary, in the tragic silence of Philip.
It was Philip who spoke suddenly. "Naomi is dead!" And Mary thought bitterly, "She isn't dead! She isn't dead! This place belongs to her. This strange man wishes that I were Naomi."
"We've missed you," said Swanson dully.
"I'll tell you about it . . . later, when we're settled. Let's be moving on now."
"I'm glad you've come back. I got no letter from you; I only knew from the Germans who came through a week ago." Swanson had suddenly the air of a child who has forgotten the poem that he was to recite before a whole audience of people. He was aware, in his dull way, that he had blundered.
Philip said quickly, "I'm not coming back to work . . . at least not as a missionary. That's all finished."
"We never get any news out here," said Swanson humbly. "I didn't know."
"Are you alone?"
"No . . . there's a new man. Murchison . . . he's a preacher. He's doing Naomi's work."
(Naomi! Naomi! Naomi!)
"Let's go on now," said Philip. He shouted at the bearers an order to march, and as they walked, Philip said, "We passed a train of bearers in the distance yesterday . . . over beyond the Rocks of Kami. Who was it?"
For a moment Swanson was silent. He scratched his head. "Oh, that . . . that . . . it must have been that queer Englishwoman's train . . . going back alone."
They were entering the borders of the real forest, where the moist earth was covered by a tangle of vines and a pattern of light and dark. Phillip asked, "Why . . . alone?"
"She died three days ago . . . of the fever. Murchison would have sent her away if she hadn't been sick. She abused missionaries. She said we were spoiling her country."
"Yes . . . she thought it belonged to her."
The shadows grew thicker and thicker all about them. They walked in silence, save for the occasional chatter of a monkey.
"It was the third time she'd been back," said Swanson.
"She must have been quite old."
"About sixty, maybe. She told Murchison to stop praying over her. 'Stop slobbering over me,' is what she said."
"Yes . . . she would say that. Where did you bury her?"
"Down the lake . . . by the lagoon."
By the lagoon . . . the spot where Philip had come upon the black women carrying water from the lake. It was a beautiful spot, a quiet place to rest.
"She asked to be buried there. She liked the place."
They walked in silence until suddenly through the trees and the tangle of vines the glittering lake became visible, and a moment later the clearing on the low hill where Philip had once fought back the ravenous jungle. There was no trace of the old mission that had been burned; there were two new huts, larger than the old, built by the patient Swanson of mud and of stones dragged up from the river-bed in dry season.
Mary, watching Philip, knew what he was seeing. Naomi . . . Naomi. The place belonged to her in a strange, inexplicable fashion. She saw suddenly that Naomi perhaps belonged in a place like this with a stupid man like Swanson . . . a man who was all faith, too stupid even to have doubts.
On a platform before one of the huts a strange figure sat before a table reading aloud in the native tongue some long harangue which was repeated after him by ten or a dozen black girls who sat swaying monotonously to the rhythm of their own voices. The sound was droning and monotonous, like the sound of a hive of bees.
"That's Murchison," said Swanson. The figure was dressed in a black suit-like an undertaker, with a high white celluloid collar gaping about a reedlike neck, which it no longer fitted. On his head was a stiff straw hat, yellowed with age. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles that in the heat had slipped well down upon a long nose.
"He's dressed up to greet you," said Swanson.
The black girls, all save one or two, had ceased their buzzing and were staring now with pokes and giggles at the newly arrived procession. The Reverend Mr. Murchison halted the two dutiful girls who were going mechanically on with their lesson, and stepped down from his throne. He was an ugly little man with a sour expression.
He shook hands and to Mary he said, "I suppose you'll want to take back your girls. I've been teaching them while you were away. We've made a good deal of progress, I guess. . . ."
There was a silence and Mary said:
"But I'm not Naomi . . . Naomi is dead."
The Reverend Mr. Murchison passed lightly over his error. "Like true children of God," he said, "let us kneel here in the dust and humbly thank Him for having brought you safely through a perilous journey."
The little man flopped duly to his knees, followed by Swanson. Mary waited, watching Philip, and then she saw him kneel along with the others. He didn't protest. He knelt and bowed his head. She knew suddenly why he was doing this—because it would have pleased Naomi. Then she knelt, too, with the old fear in her heart. She was afraid, because he was praying. . . . He kept slipping further and further. . . .
"O Just and Almighty God," said the dry, flat voice of the withered Mr. Murchison, "we thank. Thee for having brought these poor humble travelers safely through their perilous journey. . . ." Swanson knelt dumbly, his head bowed. It was the gnatlike Mr. Murchison who ruled the mission. But it was the meek Swanson who was the servant of God. Mary saw all at once the vast and immeasurable difference.