Publisher's Synopsis
"On Sunday next, the 14th inst., the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of Magdalen College, Oxford, willpreach in Walton Magna Church, on behalf of the Gold Coast Mission." Not a very startlingannouncement that, and yet, simple as it looks, it stirred Ethel Berry's soul to its inmost depths. ForEthel had been brought up by her Aunt Emily to look upon foreign missions as the one thing onearth worth living for and thinking about, and the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., had a missionaryhistory of his own, strange enough even in these strange days of queer juxtapositions between uttersavagery and advanced civilization."Only think," she said to her aunt, as they read the placard on the schoolhouse-board, "he's a realAfrican negro, the vicar says, taken from a slaver on the Gold Coast when he was a child, andbrought to England to be educated. He's been to Oxford and got a degree; and now he's going outagain to Africa to convert his own people. And he's coming down to the vicar's to stay onWednesday.""It's my belief," said old Uncle James, Aunt Emily's brother, the superannuated skipper, "that he'dmuch better stop in England for ever. I've been a good bit on the Coast myself in my time, afterpalm oil and such, and my opinion is that a nigger's a nigger anywhere, but he's a sight less of anigger in England than out yonder in Africa. Take him to England, and you make a gentleman ofhim: send him home again, and the nigger comes out at once in spite of you.""Oh, James," Aunt Emily put in, "how can you talk such unchristianlike talk, setting yourself upagainst missions, when we know that all the nations of the earth are made of one blood?""I've always lived a Christian life myself, Emily," answered Uncle James, "though I have cruised agood bit on the Coast, too, which is against it, certainly; but I take it a nigger's a nigger whatever youdo with him. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, the Scripture says, nor the leopard his spots, and a nigger he'll be to the end of his days; you mark my words, Emily."On Wednesday, in due course, the Reverend John Creedy arrived at the vicarage, and much curiositythere was throughout the village of Walton Magna that week to see this curious new thing, a coalblack parson. Next day, Thursday, an almost equally unusual event occurred to Ethel Berry, for, toher great surprise, she got a little note in the morning inviting her up to a tennis party at the vicaragethe same afternoon. Now, though the vicar called on Aunt Emily often enough, and accepted herhelp readily for school feasts and other village festivities of the milder sort, the Berrys were hardlyup to that level of society which is commonly invited to the parson's lawn tennis parties. And thereason why Ethel was asked on this particular Thursday must be traced to a certain pious conspiracybetween the vicar and the secretary of the Gold Coast Evangelistic Society. When those twoeminent missionary advocates had met a fortnight before at Exeter Hall, the secretary hadrepresented to the vicar the desirability of young John Creedy's taking to himself an English wifebefore his departure. "It will steady him, and keep him right on the Coast," he said, "and it will givehim importance in the eyes of the natives as well." Whereto the vicar responded that he knewexactly the right girl to suit the place in his own parish, and that by a providential conjunction shealready took a deep interest in foreign missions.
