Tales of Adventurers by Geoffrey Household Page A

and was seizing the opportunity of Lee-Armour’s departure to travel down with him to the coast.
    The vigil of grief ended, sharply and by almost telepathic consent between Mark Lee-Armour and his Bagai. He climbed into the cab of the loaded lorry and drove off. The new district
commissioner, after a few halting words of promise and sympathy to the Bagai, mounted his pony and rode away. The archdeacon’s black and gaudy driver followed the lorry, playing hosannas on
his horn; he wore a clerical collar, as self-chosen badge of office, above the open neck of his yellow shirt, and he despised the uncivilized. The warriors themselves stood still, eyes raised to
the mist of dust that hung, until it merged with the westward-flowing clouds, above the narrow road of rammed mud.
    The archdeacon watched the swaying, uncompromising back of the lorry, a blind wall against farewells, and envied this departing district commissioner his life of devoted service to the neighbor.
It was the life for which he himself, with half his being, had longed as a young man. The other half, however, had demanded from him a still higher service. Africa had happily integrated the
two.
    He was of the caste of the colonial officials, of their dress – at any rate when on tour – and even of their build except for a slight ecclesiastical portliness; but, unlike these
younger sons of empire, he had no material need to make a career in Africa. Even the missionaries had to admit – however strictly they preserved their charity for their converts – that
a man of his fortune and family who had chosen a droughty diocese of three million square miles rather than the fat lawns of an English cathedral close could not be wholly worldly. They were also
glad – and glad the archdeacon, too – that his checkbook was wide open as any apostle’s moneybag.
    He had looked forward to the journey. To pass three days and nights in sole company with greatness would be a memorable experience. Yet when the sun had gone down and the scrub thorn around the
camp was black lace against a crimson sky, the confiding dusk was full of disappointment. Lee-Armour never came out of the shadows. In a physical sense, as well, that was true. He followed as any
shy animal the pattern and contours of darkness, and after supper – an unrevealing interlude as well-bred as any formal dinner party – while they sat and smoked by the fire, his face
was always half obscured by the straight column of smoke or caught at evasive angles by any sudden spurt of flame. The archdeacon assumed that the cause of this reserve was just unhappiness. He
knew that Lee-Armour’s heart was still on the Bagai plateau, and would remain there, perhaps for years, until some other helpless people won his second and calmer love.
    For three long days of travel and camp there was no getting close to the man. His courtesy, his solicitude for his companion’s comfort were beyond reproach, but he himself seemed to be
writhing in some abyss which he did not dare to have others contemplate, or to contemplate himself. Only once did he show any emotion, and that was when the archdeacon referred to the religion of
the Bagai.
    “Little and uncomplicated,” said Lee-Armour. “They believe in a sort of collective soul of the people and another collective soul of the cattle. All the rest they leave to
professionals.”
    “Their priests?”
    “A family group of witch doctors – if one can call them priests.”
    “One can,” the archdeacon answered cheerfully. “Clergy is clergy the whole world over. Provided always that what they serve is the best they can imagine.”
    “God knows what they serve,” Lee-Armour exclaimed with sudden bitterness.
    “That is just what I meant,” said the archdeacon.
    When the journey down to the sea was done and Mark Lee-Armour had gone to his hotel – that, too, was odd when there were a dozen officials in the capital, including the governor himself,
who would have