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PROLOGUE
A LETTER FROM DR. JABEZ MANTON
“MY DEAR TONY,—I have addressed this letter to Dr. Anthony Manton, c/o The Congo Bolobo Mission, though if you are anything like your dear father was, before he made money and was spoilt for research work, you are probably masquerading as plain Mr. Manton, and trusting to luck that your brilliant essays in the Journal of Tropical Medicines have escaped the notice of your kind hosts.
“I hate telling young men that their work is brilliant, because a little praise from a fellow-craftsman has, as a rule, a disastrous effect; but family pride, no less than the fact that the opportunities for expressing my views are not likely to be many, induce me to pay this tribute to your genius. I do not entirely agree with your monograph on the Donovan-Leichmann body; that hypothesis seems to be fairly established, but you are on the spot and may know better.
“It was not to gossip about bugs that I sat down to write to you; it is of a more serious matter, because I believe that very soon I shall be in that state where either all things will be revealed or every sense of understanding will be obliterated.
“Picture me, a stoutish and elderly gentleman, red-faced, white-haired—though I swear that my venerable appearance is often ill in keeping with the evil passions which rage in my aged breast, ascending the stairs of Lady Heron Wendall, the wife of Bulboro’s rector. (I have written about this lady before; indeed, you know something about the circumstances which led to her marriage sixteen years ago—did not the erring Frenchman die most picturesquely in your care? But this is not the time to revive scandal.)
“I found her in bed, radiating that delicate beauty which a certain type of skinny woman has, which in my mind is always associated with a process of caducity. I forget now what exactly was the matter with her: I believe, when I come to think of it, she wanted to gossip about the latest curate’s delinquencies. Certain it is that, for very shame’s sake, she had to discuss the terms of her health. I leant over the bed to take her pulse, and then I straightened up, for I heard and felt something inside me which interested me as a doctor and saddened me as an individual. Mitral murmurs sufficiently distinct to be audible without stethoscopic examination would not bother me, indeed, have not bothered me, for I have been suspicious of the existence of some aortal thickening for some time.
“I went back to my surgery and had a little self-examination, and, my dear Tony, nothing which the musical-instrument makers produce for their Christmas patrons was half as musical as my cardiac region.
“To make absolutely sure, I went up to town and saw Gregorley. He wanted to talk to me about his fans—he is a devil of an old woman, you know, outside his job of work, and collects all sorts of fripperies and frumperies. But I cut short his talk of Greuze and Watteau and made him begin a nice cheap examination. He positively gloated over me, and really I had that pleasing sensation which every benefactor, who gives an unexpected treat to the poor, must possess, for I recognized that I was an exceptional case.
“He tells me that I have three weeks to live, and he was anxious that I should pack myself in wadding, stretch myself calmly upon cee-springs and await dissolution like a gentleman. That, of course, is absurd. If I thought that I should go out in an inconvenient manner I should do as he suggests, but I have made up my mind to die in the library, which is a nice, cosy, cheerful room, and one in which any man, with a taste for books and good prints, would elect to die in.
“Now, the climax of this letter comes hereunder.
“I have the best practice in England in this town, and I am most anxious that you shall come along and take it. You’ve got plenty of money—I am leaving you some twenty-four thousand pounds to add to your fortune—this house is a beautiful old place, dating back to the Elizabethan period, and the grounds and garden have been my especial care. I want you to take charge of my papers, destroying such as you wish, and publishing the others anonymously, for I think I have collected one or two facts concerning the Renaissance.
“You will get on with my patients if you are rude to them systematically, if your attitude is one of brusqueness tempered with scepticism. Keep clear of the churches—this place is a veritable hotbed of Christianity—avoid open partisanship, vote solidly Tory, and you will be happy.
“You will find Bulboro as full of microbes as the most pestilential of Congo swamps. The microbe which devastates this town most is the microbe of intolerance, and a genial hatred of every other person’s religion is a predominant characteristic of every citizen.
“I speak of the churches, because, between them, they make up Bulboro’s life. Not one of our hundred thousand but has a conviction amounting almost to a certainty, that life on the other side of the veil will hold something more precious for him than it holds for his neighbour.
“You will find Heron Wendall something of a slacker, but clever. He is the Rector, tending to the moral and spiritual needs of such as do not require salvation so much as encouragement to continue in the faith that salvation is superfluous in their cases; they are the old soldiers of Christianity, skilled in its goose-steps, in its battalion drills and its conventional formations.
“Childe is of the rabble, a Baptist, a Saint and a Martyr (he was in Bulboro jail for three weeks for non-payment of rates on the education question). Short, another variety of Baptist, is oleaginous, full of ‘God-bless-you’s!’ delivered with mechanical fervour. He has a history of gastric trouble. I think you will have him on your hands one of these days.
“Stope is the Congregationalist—a lean, youngish man with a stoop, and declamatory in conversation. An ambitious man, he’ll be the Liberal candidate at the next election. He is pleasant, sound on questions of research (’ware Childe, by the way, who is anti-vivisection, anti-vaccination and a vegetarian), but a dangerous man.
“The Papist is Carter, austere, tolerant as a Jesuit, a gentleman and straight. Regarding you as irretrievably damned in the next world, he will do his best to entertain you in this.
“The lesser lights I won’t bother you with: there’s Wastrum, who burns incense, crosses himself, and is loathed by the Kensit people. He’s Oxford and enthusiastic. He has a watch-chain hung with bronze medallions, and like Catherine with her charms ‘jingles like a mule.’ He is suspected of having taken a vow of chastity, which has annoyed the rabid section of Nonconformity, with their teeming nurseries and overloaded bassinets, no end. (Painter does all my maternity work—you’ll like him.)
“And now, dear lad, I take farewell of you, kissing you in the spirit as I kissed you as a dear child. To ‘whatever God there is’ I offer the record of my life for audit. I shall await you on the other side of the curtain, full of eagerness and curiosity. By the way, look after that grey filly of mine; she is by Grey Leg out of a Galopin mare. She is up to thirteen stone, and is a rare lepper. Later I should send her to stud; you might get a good foal, who knows?
“Am tag! as the German officers said.—Your uncle and friend,
