Cable, Mildred

A tremendous task lay before them. The awful catastrophe of the Boxer outbreak had left the Church paralyzed with shock, and while some were stronger and more robust for the experience, others seemed unable to recover themselves. It was necessary for the missionaries to stay in every village, visit every Christian home, and spend long hours in listening to heart-rending stories, before it was possible even to begin with encouragement, advice or exhortation. Eva French was at her best in this work, and the experience which Mildred Cable gained as she sat, a silent listener, was the finest training she could possibly have had.
The two friends prayed, discussed and conferred, and then decided that what the Church needed at this time was the stimulus of a new step forward. There were hundreds of girls in Christian homes who had no hope of even learning to read and write. As they went round the villages, the Christian parents begged for a girls’ school with such insistence that they yielded. The school would be Mildred’s special sphere, and with such an immeasurable evangelistic opportunity she saw visions of great things that might be. It was with reluctance that she saw curtailment of the happy, free village tours, but she accepted the exacting demands of institutional life, confident that they constituted her immediate duty, and set herself to the initial task of training her first band of teachers. They were all young women of exceptional strength of character, each had a personal experience of conversion, and they were to her a joy and crown of glory. She worked and they worked, and together they carried to a successful issue a task which at the commencement looked almost impossible.
In later years, when visitors walked round the large compound and saw the school organization working so smoothly through every grade, from kindergarten to normal training, it was hard for them to realize that all this had grown from the first summer school when Mildred Cable, herself far from proficient in the language, sat with half a dozen Chinese girls around her, teaching them the first elements of arithmetic and geography, and at the same time inspiring them with a great enthusiasm for the task to which they, and she, had been called together by God. For seven strenuous years they toiled unceasingly, and during that period the Church grew exceedingly, and that other department of women’s education, the Bible School, came into being.
Eva passed through that bitter experience of hearing week by week of her mother’s decreasing strength and, before she was able to take furlough, of her death. Eva’s English home was broken up, Mildred shrank from renewing old contacts, and for neither could the thought of furlough be disassociated from pain.
When, after crossing Siberia, they landed at dingy, grimy Liverpool Street Station and found there was no one to meet them, and that no one apparently knew of their arrival, they clung to each other for protection in a whirling multitude, each one of which seemed so competent, so absorbed and so bent on his own business that there was no place for the two waifs who had even forgotten their way about London.
Of course telegrams had miscarried, and anxious relatives were keeping the telephone busy, trying to find out by what Channel route they were to be expected. It ended in Evangeline being carried off to Mildred’s home and Francesca being summoned by telegram to come to her.
“So this is Mildred Cable!”
“And you are Francesca!”
The two women looked at each other with a long, searching glance before which neither flinched from the other’s scrutiny. They stood in the porch of Mildred’s home, for, at the sound of the door bell, she had rushed out to welcome her friend’s sister.
Eva was fast asleep upstairs, exhausted by the stormy night crossing, but a little later they were all three together with a large family party. There was any amount of lively talk, but three of the company were conscious that great issues were at stake, and that this was a crucial hour.
Francesca observed, and saw that there was a greater intimacy between Eva and Mildred than she had ever yet met between two friends. She could not see them together without detecting a deep and subtle understanding which indicated oneness of instinct and purpose. “Such a union,” she thought, “may, in God’s hands, accomplish so great things that there certainly will be inimical forces whose purpose it is to mar the friendship. I must be careful to have no part in anything which is calculated to hurt it.”
Mildred knew Eva so well as to completely understand her feelings towards Francesca, and during the months when such sad letters had come from home she had shared with Eva the knowledge of Francesca’s suffering. She watched them both and determined that so far as in her lay, nothing should be allowed which would cause pain to either sister. “If our friendship reveals an exclusive element it will bring unhappiness to both, but if there be nothing of the kind, the relationship between the three of us might develop and grow into something better than we have yet known.”
Eva sat and looked at her friend, and then at her sister, and thought: “If these two can only get to know each other they will fit, but how easily they may glance off, and never come into vital contact.”
From the first moment all three behaved with complete honesty, simplicity and truthfulness. Fortunately for their future happiness no one sentimentalized, and no one pretended anything at all.
By the close of that long afternoon each one knew that a big thing had happened. Three lives, each one of which had been drastically disciplined by a loving Father, were to be twisted by His hands into a three-fold cord, which could not easily be broken.

* * * * * * * * *

Most of the things which Francesca French felt deeply she never put into words; among them was the intensely coveted privilege of being commissioned to proclaim Christ among the heathen, but she could never have borne to suggest that her mother’s life stood between her and a possible call, therefore her desire had never been spoken. There were, however, some things which her mother did not require to be told, and she had made up her mind that Francesca, at her age, would find the mission field a trying place.
Therefore when she died, of set and deliberate purpose, she left her home with several years of lease to run. It was her way of saying to her daughter: “My child, you have fulfilled your responsibilities, now do not take on yourself hardships which will press on you quite differently to what they would have done when you were a young girl. Be satisfied to live in comfort, and serve God in the state in which it shall please Him to call you.”
It was kind and well meant, but it was mistaken, and the finger of God pointed otherwise. Something happened. As the mother lay dying, a little crack appeared in a wall of the house, which widened and grew apace, so that when the end had come, the owner was grateful to relieve Francesca of the remaining years of lease, and set himself to salvage the building. Thus, without having to take any step, she found herself relieved of the property, which must have been a great handicap to her plans. Within three weeks the furniture had been disposed of, and she was an unhampered woman. After a holiday in the country she filled up the remaining time, until her sister’s furlough, with nursing, which she loved as intensely as Eva had disliked it.
The life of a hospital nurse was so congenial to her that nothing but the commission to be a missionary would have drawn her away from it, but there was one aspect against which her mind constantly rebelled. It was to see patients come and go, bear the terror and strain of operations, descend to the very gates of death, and no place be allowed for other than organized religious ritual, in that tremendous hour. It was searing to the soul of a Christian nurse, to have only surreptitious means of speaking to her patients about God and eternity, and no time or opportunity when she might seek to lead the dying to their Savior.
After the three met, still not a word passed her lips about going to China, but during the long minute in which she and Mildred Cable looked into the depths of each other’s eyes, unformulated questions were met by unspoken answers, and she was not surprised when, some time later, the question was asked: “What about China?”
Guidance had always come to her by way of the strictly rational, and when the council of the China Inland Mission wished to know how she received her call, she could only answer: “God would not have taught me that the evangelization of the world is the function of the Church, and then removed one by one the obstacles from my path, if He had not intended me to step forward in the way in which He opened before me.” Some members of the council seemed to question the definiteness of a call which came so simply, but it was ever so, for her. Direction was never given as from a glaring arc-light, but by the glimmer of such a little oil lamp as threw a circumference of light only enough for the next step. She was beyond the age limit, but the way was made easy for her by the fact of her good health, so that the doctor, while he was turning down younger candidates, accepted her without hesitation.
They certainly never styled themselves “The Trio,” and scarcely know how they came to be called by that name, but in time it was evident that by this title their friends referred to them. It was undeniably appropriate, because the three people were equally involved in the fulfillment of the commission, so the Trio they remain.
The Chinese had their own way of saying it and it leaked out one morning at prayer meeting, when an earnest petition was voiced for blessing on “our three-in-one teachers.”
Later, when they went to Kansu, the City of Prodigals had a saying all ready for them, for “to stick like Suchow (Chinese name for City of Prodigals) glue” is the Central Asian proverb which was immediately applied to the friendship which bound together as one Feng Precious Pearl, Kai All Brave and Feng Polished Jade to give them their Chinese names.
The journey to China was the first of many delightful wanderings which they have since enjoyed together. It began with a pilgrimage to Francesca’s birth-place in Bruges, then turned off to Brussels, to Cologne, and to Berlin with its art galleries. Moscow, which was then the city of churches and shrines, held them for as many days as passport regulations permitted, then came the long, quiet journey across Siberia, and Francesca had her first introduction to China in romantic Peking. From here they plunged inland, and finally the mule-litters swung into the mission compound at Hwochow, which to Eva and Mildred was home. A crowd of joyful converts was gathered to welcome them, and to satisfy curiosity regarding “the second Miss Feng,” as Francesca was to be called.
She was now a member of the most Christian household of which she had ever formed part. The School existed for the sole purpose of educating the daughters of Christians and bringing them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord; the Women’s School bore the title “Bible School,” and from these two institutions there streamed out a constant flow of Christian workers of every kind.
But it was not only the contacts of the immediate household, but acquaintance with circles of fellow-missionaries that amazed her by the undiluted quality of their Christianity. They were kinder, more hospitable and more unselfish than any people she had ever met. She observed in many of their houses a motto hanging on the wall which declared:
Christ is the Head of this House,
The Unseen Guest at every meal,
The Silent Listener to every conversation,
and the families evidently set out to make this thing true; yet sometimes as meals progressed and conversation took its course, Francesca became conscious of an unwritten law, which forbade the expression of anything to which anybody present might not give whole-hearted agreement. Again and again she began to say things with intention to draw spiritual illumination from those whom she felt ought to be her teachers, but a tremor in the eye of her hostess warned her she was nearing the rocks, and she fell silent.
She would look at the motto and say to herself: “If my Lord were indeed sitting at the head of this table as Listener to, and Sharer in, all our talk, how freely we should express ourselves to Him, and all of us would drop our masks and come out with thoughts bolder than we knew we had it in us to think.” It was also among her fellow-missionaries that she first learnt that timid phrase: “It might be misunderstood . . .”―such a dangerous point of view, it seemed to her, as translated into action might lead one anywhere.
Strange to relate, these same people were as bold as lions in facing and fighting the cruelties, the vices and the horrors of heathendom, and were prepared to die for their faith. Yet among these were some men and women of whom the world was not worthy, who, in the realm of thought, feared their own shadows. She saw for herself that there was truth in what she once heard pithily expressed: “The Christian army is the only one where the soldiers are more afraid of each other than they are of the enemy.”
Great interest was taken in the reappearance of Evangeline and Mildred, with a third person who was sister to one and whose relation to the other was complicated by the fact that, though her senior in years, she would be her junior in Mission standing. Would it work? Many questioned it. By the grace of God it did work, and that not by reason of similarity of tastes nor by easy yieldingness of temperaments. There was unity in the deepest things, but dissimilarity in most of those that appeared above the surface. Without complete mutual confidence and bed-rock security, the thing could never have been, nor would it have worked if there had not happened to each one that which made the will of God her final court of appeal.
Gradually, and without any spoken arrangement, the different parts learned to fit in and make the best use of any resources of talent, equipment and money which were at their common disposal. The work was far too important to be held up, or even enfeebled, because of some rigid or artificial rule of precedence, and the communal basis on which the three lived finally prevented anyone from looming larger than the others, as the talents, gifts and qualifications of each were a common possession of all. Concerning money, there was never a question. It was a trust to be used as directed by, and for, the Lord Who gave it.
They were all tough fighters for a measure of their own way, but when any one of them saw the other deliberately yielding her right, it so emptied victory of pleasure, that she only coveted to have an equal share in yielding also. The harmony which has existed for more than a quarter of a century, and the joys of friendship, have been Christ’s “hundredfold more in this present” for the Trio.
They have often seen themselves depicted in the similitude of the mule team, which has drawn them over so many mountains, through such dangerous rivers and across burning desert plains. The alert beast in the traces gets the first flick of the whip when there is difficulty ahead. She responds with a bound, but before the impetus of her pull has slackened, the driver has touched the steady, reliable mule in the shafts, which can be counted on to brace itself to bear the strain. Then the two pull together to one purpose and one end, but without the third mule, hitched so as to get an equal share of the weight, the mountain pass would never be crossed, nor the exhaustion of the wearisome plain endured. The beasts of the team do not select each other; that is the driver’s business, as it is his also to give the signals.
One summer there was a five-days’ retreat in the Valley of Water-mills. Everything was done to secure complete withdrawal from the ordinary ways of life, and simple meals were provided for a large party of missionaries who camped out in the courtyard, through which the mill-race rushed. A rule of silence was respected, and there was almost no preaching, but much reading of the Scripture, leisure for meditation and opportunity for silent prayer. There was joyful singing, and during the periods of intercession the group was so gripped by the power of the Spirit, that all were conscious of something happening. Something certainly happened to the Trio.
There was present a woman just back from the distant North-West province of Kansu, where she had glimpsed the magnitude of the unevangelized areas. One day she voiced an importunate reminder of the great cities where the name of Christ was not even known. As the prayer-meeting went on, there was a mighty shaking of hearts, and at the close all knew that some wall of Jericho came tumbling down that day. The holiday over, all went back to work, but the claims of that unevangelized land on the Trio could not be stifled, so they bought a map of Kansu and put it on the wall as a reminder.
Something had to be done, and someone had to do it. As they mused the fire burned, and a letter was written to the person who could best give them the information they required. Their question was this: “Are the conditions in the North-West such that experienced, middle-aged missionaries, with a working knowledge of the Chinese language, would be useful, or do they more definitely demand young people who lack experience, but have greater physical vigor?” The answer was unequivocal: “Experience, in this case, is more valuable than youth,” and, strengthened by this confirmation, the Trio forthwith wrote a letter to the Mission authorities, volunteering for service in the unevangelized areas of China’s great North-West.
It was the beginning of a correspondence distressing to all concerned. They were up against one of the more difficult aspects of guidance, for it seemed as though the people concerned were being led diversely. This could not be recognized as a part of Divine procedure, and the only way to unmask the satanic deception was to stand still and wait for true light to break through, show the path, and unify the purposes of all God’s servants who were concerned.
For twelve months they waited on the issue, unable to withdraw, because the hand of God pointed onward, and unwilling to advance until they could do so with the consent of those whose authority they recognized.
Even though the correspondence was confidential, the secret leaked out and many people took strong sides, which only helped to confuse the issue. Some wrote, saying in more or less parliamentary language, that there were no fools like old fools. Others asked the junior members of the party if they had visualized what it would be to have the senior die on their hands, and know that they had been the cause of the disaster. There were those who simply received a superficial impression that after twenty-one years of grind the Trio wanted a change. The postman was busy bringing suggestions of the varied spheres which they might fill, until it became a source of amusement that they should be considered suitable to such a variety of duties; but the manifold propositions, the insistent urgings and distracting suggestions were enough to deceive the very elect, and to wear out their tired spirits.
This year of uncertainty was spent in the valley of humiliation, but at last the consent they expected came and when it came, true to the courageous lines laid down in the constitution of the China Inland Mission, it bade them go forward and preach, wherever God should lead them.
The Trio went forward, but the one place on earth which was home had to be abandoned, and everything which bore the value of association must be handed over to others. The aged Chinese pastor, on hearing the news, laid his head on his hands and sobbed like a child. School teachers were stunned, and converts begged the missionaries not to leave them.
As time narrowed in, the emotions escaped from control and everything was poignant. “This is the last Christmas we shall spend together,” “the last time we shall see our courtyard vine in blossom”; then “Farewell, farewell.” It was over, and with bleeding hearts they plunged into the unknown.
Immediately every manner of doubt was released on them. Each indication of guidance, each leading was suddenly made to look trivial, uncertain, unreliable. Every earnest of a commission ahead was called into question, and when, in the final issue, one of the three broke a wrist, another snapped a tendon and they journeyed on, maimed and halt, they were utterly silenced towards those who called it a fool’s errand and who now might well consider themselves justified by events.
It was well for the Trio that there were some few who stood by them, prayed for them, encouraged them and held over them the shield of faith. Among these was one friend who seemed specially appointed to strengthen them in their darkest hours. Her friendship with Francesca was of long standing and dated from a day when, sitting in a shelter on a very lonely shore, she and her mother, in pursuit of one of the long debates which their souls loved, were turning a subject to and fro, trying, by viewing it in its every facet, to gain that general aspect which would come nearest to the complete truth.
They thought themselves alone when, suddenly, an incisive voice cut into the discussion. It came from a lady sitting at right angles to them, who was hidden behind her own glass partition. She had been a silent listener to the talk for as long as she could refrain from breaking in. At a certain point, however, convention yielded to compulsion, and she burst in with an adroit rebuke to the younger woman for what she was pleased to call her “specious arguments.” For the next hour the discussion raged, for neither would yield an inch, and an acquaintanceship begun under such propitious circumstances could scarcely fail to ripen. This was the commencement of a mental and spiritual intimacy between Francesca and this lady which resulted in great things for the Trio.
The Lady of the Shelter had a master mind, dominated by the Spirit of God. Sternly limited in her physical activities by ill-health, her body was mostly tied to a sofa in her own comfortable home, but her mind roamed among things cosmic and eonian. By the exercise of her powers of spiritual and mental insight she was able to co-ordinate facts which to the ordinary person appeared insignificant, sorting them and giving to each its correct place in the general plan. At the given moment the scriptural key would be accurately fitted to the lock of world politics and the ray of light released by the most recent discovery of science, so focused as to illumine the Christian path and the conflict which besets it.
Through the Babel of confused voices which made it almost impossible to distinguish between the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, the promptings of one’s own desire and those of other people’s interference, simple clear words came to the Trio from this prophet of God, which restored order and dispersed confusion.
“I have seemed from the very first,” she wrote, “to grasp the inner movement of your hearts in the matter of your move to Kansu and have felt its imperativeness. But then we share the same spirit of prophecy, and that acts as an amazing eye-opener. I feel the urgency of the currents of spiritual forces set into motion by your message to that province, coming, as it evidently does, in a pause before a storm. There is something very remarkable about this call―the place and the moment and the quality of your triple service. Evidently there are unique links here, forged back in the spirit and brought forth now in the body. There ought to emerge from this a piece of clean-cut, apostolic work before the great trial comes. Anyhow, you will feel full of confidence, full of calmness and power, the Lord being with you and with your hearers, to re-create souls and bring them to the birth. . . .
“These are days of fear. These are days of psychic suggestion. These are days of old, old bogy tales coming back to paralyze, to haunt and to confuse―most of all to confuse. Satan makes up old ghosts into new ones and people are mystified and nervous, and it all helps him. Have none of it! Our souls and bodies are redeemed, bought back; only the body is left to wear the veil so that it should not yet see all things as they really are, and thus have no need of faith. Satan will lose, lose everything. Therefore we are free, and being so we claim from God absolute freedom from satanic tormenting, because Jesus the Messiah reigns.”
These were remarkable words to come from the quiet surrounding of a continental hotel, the more so as the one who wrote them had never set foot in China. The reiterated message which she delivered at that time was the urgency of going forward without delay, being neither hindered, confused nor side-tracked. “For,” she urged, “you have barely time to fulfill your commission. Commit it to God that you be kept from doing anything except to take His message to the people whom He has prepared to hear it.”
At the time the provinces of North-West Kansu and Turkestan were the quietest parts of the Chinese Republic, but she was alert to the first indications of coming events and detected their inevitable trend to be conflagration and revolution, with their handmaids, brigandage and massacre. By the end of a decade it had all come to pass, and there are thousands who heard the Gospel during that time who will never hear it again from human lips. They lie dead in razed cities and on Gobi battlefields.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

There were three ways of travel open to the North-West: by camel across the desert of Mongolia, by raft up the Yellow River, or by cart over the main road. The last was chosen. None of the routes were safe and the Chinese authorities insisted upon military escort through brigand-infested areas. Accustomed to thinking of journeys in terms of days, it needed some adjustment to realize that the carts in which they left the railhead would, a month later, still be carrying them on. They passed by many mission stations and at last reached the provincial capital of Kansu. Here, it being the depth of winter, a month of halt was called among fellow-workers whose kindness and hospitality was a brimming bowl. In more than one place the question was asked:
“What is your destination?”
“We do not know,” they answered.
“Have you not been appointed anywhere?”
“No, not yet.”
“Then may not this be the end of your quest?”
“We have no indication that it is.”
“But the need here is great, and in an area where you travel seven days from one station to the next, there is surely scope for pioneer work.”
Everything their friends said was so true and so reasonable that the three women had not a word to answer, and passed on feeling foolish and visionary, yet knowing perfectly well in their inner consciousness that they must courageously move forward until they reached the place of God’s appointment.