THING ***




Produced by Al Haines.





                            THE MAN WHO DID
                            THE RIGHT THING

                               A ROMANCE


                                   BY

                           SIR HARRY JOHNSTON



                                Mew York
                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                  1921

                         _All rights reserved_




                            COPYRIGHT, 1921,
                        BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

            Set up and electrotyped.  Published April, 1921.




                      *NOVELS BY THE SAME AUTHOR*

                            THE GAY-DOMBEYS
                         MRS. WARREN’S DAUGHTER




The central idea of this book came into my mind a great many years ago,
out in Africa, and was based to some extent on what actually happened at
Unguja and elsewhere.  Yet, though there is more realism than might be
supposed in my descriptions and incidents and the imagined personalities
that appear in these pages, I have endeavoured so to disturb and
re-present the facets of my truths that they shall not wound the
feelings of any one living or of the surviving friends and relations of
the good and bad people I have known in East Africa, or of those in my
own land who were entangled in East African affairs.

But although I have pondered long over telling such a story, this
Romance of East Africa was mainly projected, created and put down on
paper when my wife and I stayed in the summer-autumn of last year at the
Swiss home, in the mountains, of a dear friend. There we amused
ourselves, as we swung in hammocks slung under pine-trees and gazed over
the panorama of the Southern Alps, by arguing and discussing as to what
the creations of my imagination would say to one another, how they would
act under given circumstances within the four corners ruled by Common
Sense and Probability: two guides who will, I hope, always guard my
faltering steps in fiction-writing.

Therefore, though dedications have lost their novelty and freshness, and
are now incitements to preciosity or payments in verbiage, I, to satisfy
my own sentiments of gratitude for a most delightful holiday of rest and
refreshment, dedicate this Romance to my hostess of the Châlet Soleil,
who founded this new Abbaye de Theleme for the recuperation of tired
minds and bodies, and enforced within its walls and walks and woods but
one precept:

                         *FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS.*

H. H. JOHNSTON.

POLING,
       March, 1921.




                               *CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

I  The Baineses
II  John and Lucy
III  Sibyl at Silchester
IV  Lucy Hesitates
V  Roger’s Dismissal
VI  The Voyage Out
VII  Unguja—and Up-country
VIII  Letters To and Fro
IX  Mission Life
X  Roger Arrives
XI  The Happy Valley
XII  The Attack on the Station
XIII  The Return to Unguja
XIV  Lucy’s Second Marriage
XV  In England
XVI  Sibyl as Siren
XVII  Back to the Happy Valley
XVIII  Five Years Later
XIX  Trouble with Stolzenberg
XX  The Boer War
XXI  The Morals of the Happy Valley
XXII  Eight Years Have Passed By
XXIII  The End of Sibyl
XXIV  All Ends in the Happy Valley




                            *THE MAN WHO DID
                            THE RIGHT THING*



                              *CHAPTER I*

                             *THE BAINESES*


It was in the last week of June, 1886, and there really were warm and
early summers in the nineteenth century.

The little chapel had been so close and hot during the morning service
that in spite of the interest Lucy Josling felt in the occasion—it was
the first appearance of her betrothed, John Baines, as a preacher in his
native place, and the delivery of his farewell sermon before starting
for Africa—she could not repress a sigh of relief as she detached
herself from the perspiring throng of worshippers and stood for a few
moments in the bright sunlight, inhaling the perfume of distant
hayfields.

"You look a trifle pale, Lucy," said Mr. Baines, senior, a stumpy
red-faced man with light sandy hair and a long upper lip.  "It’s
precious warm.  I s’pose you’n John’ll want to walk back together?
Well, don’t keep dinner waiting, ’cos that always puts me out.  Now
then, Sarah, come along: it’s too hot to stand gossiping about.  Let’s
get home as quick as we can."

Mrs. Baines, a gaunt, thin woman with a long parchment-coloured face and
cold grey eyes, looked indignantly at her husband when he talked of
gossiping, but said nothing, took his arm and walked away.

Lucy put up her parasol and leant against the ugly iron railings which
interposed between the dusty chapel windows and the pavement.  The
congregation had not all dispersed.  Two or three awkward-looking young
men were standing in a group in the roadway, and, while pretending to
carry on a jesting conversation amongst themselves, were casting
sheepish looks at Lucy, who was deemed a beauty for ten miles round.
They evidently alluded to her in the witticisms they exchanged, so that
she had to restrict her angle of vision in case her eyes met theirs when
she wished to ignore their offensive existence.  Mrs. Garrett, the
grocer’s wife, who had been inquiring from Miss Simons, the little lame
dressmaker—why were village dressmakers of that period, in life and in
fiction, nearly always lame?—how her married sister progressed after a
confinement, walked up to Lucy and said:

"Well, Miss Josling, and how d’you like the idea of parting with your
young man?  Ain’t cher afraid of his goin’ off so far, and all among
savages and wild beasts too, same as ’e was tellin’ on?  It’s all right
and proper as how he should carry the news of the Gospel to them pore
naked blacks, but as I says to Garrett, I says, ’’E don’t ought to go
and engage ’isself before’and to a girl as ’e mayn’t never come back to
marry, and as ’ll spend the best years of ’er life a-waitin’ an’
a-waitin’ and cryin’ ’er eyes put to no use.’  However, ’t ain’t any
business of mine, an’ I s’pose you’ve set your heart upon ’im now, and
won’t thank me for bein’ so outspoken....?

"I’m sure ’e’s come back from London _quite_ the gentleman; and lor’!
’Ow proud ’is mother _did_ look while ’e was a-preachin’.  An’ ’e _can_
preach, too!  ’Alf the words ’e used was Greek to me....  S’pose they
_was_ Greek, if it comes to that"—she laughed fatly—"Though why th’
Almighty should like Greek and Latin better’n plain English, or even
’Ebrew, is what I never could understand....

"And to think as I remember ’im, as it on’y seems the other day, comin’
in on the sly to buy a ’aporth of sugar-candy at our shop.  ’Is mother
never liked ’is eatin’ between meals an’ ’e always ’ad to keep ’is bit
o’ candy ’idden away in ’is pocket till ’e was out of ’er sight....  I’m
sure for my part I wonder _’ow_ she can bring ’erself to part with ’im,
’e bein’ ’er on’y son, and she so fond of ’im too.  But then she always
set ’er ’eart on ’is bein’ a gentleman, and give ’im a good
eddication....  ’Ow’s father and mother?..."

"Oh quite well, thank you," replied Lucy, wondering why John was
stopping so long and exposing her to this tiresome garrulity and the
hatefulness of having her private affairs discussed in a loud tone for
the benefit of the Sunday strollers of Tilehurst.  "They would have come
over from Aldermaston to hear John preach, but father cannot bear to
take his eyes off the hay till it’s all carried, and mother’s alone now
because my sisters are away....  I just came by myself to the Baineses’
for the day....

"And, Mrs. Garrett," continued Lucy, a slight flush rising to her cheek,
"I don’t think you quite understand about my engagement to John Baines.
I—I—am not at all to be pitied.  You rather ought to congratulate me.
First, because I am very—er—fond of him and proud of his dedicating his
life to such a work, and, secondly, because there is no question of my
waiting years and years before I get married.  John goes out this month
and I shall follow six or seven months afterwards—just to give him time
to get our home ready.  We shall be married out there, at a place called
Unguja, where there is a Consulate...."

Lucy stopped short.  She was going on to give other good reasons for her
engagement when a slight feeling of pride forbade her further to excuse
herself to Mrs. Garrett—a grocer’s wife!  And she herself a National
school-teacher!  There could be no community between them.  She
therefore fell silent and gazed away from Mrs. Garrett’s red face and
blue bonnet across the white sandy road blazing with midday sunshine to
the house fronts of the opposite side, with their small shops closed,
the blinds drawn down and everything denoting the respectable
lifelessness of the Sabbath....  At this awkward pause John Baines
issued from the vestry door of the chapel, Mrs. Garrett nodded
good-naturedly, and went her way.

John was about four-and-twenty—Lucy’s age.  He was a little over the
average height but ungainly, with rather sloping shoulders, long arms,
large hands and feet; a face with not well-formed features; nose coarse,
fleshy, blunt-tipped; mouth wide, with his father’s long upper lip, on
which were the beginnings of a flaxen moustache, with tame ends curling
down to meet the upward growth of the young beard.  He had an under lip
that was merely a band of pink skin round the mouth, without an inward
curve to break its union with the broad chin.  His teeth were strong and
white but irregular in setting, the canines being thrust out of
position.  His eyes were blue-grey, and not without a pleasant twinkle.
The hair was too long for tidiness, not long enough for eccentric
saintliness.  It was a yellow brown and was continued down the cheeks in
a silken beard from ear to ear, the tangled, unclipped, uncared-for
beard of a young man who has never shaved.  His fresh pink-and-white
complexion was marred here and there with the pimples and blotches of
adolescence.  Lucy, however, thought him good to look at; he only wanted
a little smartening up, which she promised herself to impart to him when
they were married.  He looked what he was: a good-hearted,
simple-minded, unintellectual Englishman, an Anglo-Saxon, with a hearty
appetite for plain food, a love of cricket, who would with little
difficulty remain in all things chaste and sober; slow to wrath, but, if
really pushed against the wall, able to show berserker rage.

Having taken up a religious career he had acquired a certain pomposity
of manner which sat ill on his boyishness; he had to remember in
intervals of games or country dances or flirtations that he had been set
apart for the Lord’s work.  But he would make an excellent husband.  His
class has furnished quite the best type of colonist abroad.

John gave his arm silently to Lucy, who took it with a gesture of
affection, and patted it once or twice with her kid-gloved hand, which
lover-like demonstrations John accepted rather solemnly.  As they walked
up the sunny main street there was little conversation between them, but
when they turned down an old shady road running between red brick walls
overgrown with ivy and Oxford weed, behind which rose the spire of St.
Michael’s and the tall trees of its churchyard, their good behaviour
relaxed and John looking down, and seeing Lucy’s fresh, pretty face
looking up, and observing in a hasty glance around that nobody was in
sight, bent down and kissed her: after which he looked rather silly and
hurried on with great strides.

"Don’t walk so fast, John dear; you quite drag me along.  We need not be
in such a hurry.  Tell me, how did you spend your last days in London?"

"Why, Wednesday I went to the outfitters to superintend the packing of
my boxes; Thursday I bid good-bye to all my friends at the Bayswater
College. In the evening there was a valedictory service at the Edgware
Road Chapel, when Thomas, Bayley, Anderson and I were designated for the
East African Mission. The next day, Friday, I went in the morning to see
my boxes put safely on board the _Godavery_ lying in the Albert Docks;
and I also chose my berth—I share a cabin with Anderson.  Then in the
afternoon there was a big public meeting at Plymouth Hall.  Sir Powell
Buckley was chairman, and Brentham, the African explorer, spoke, as well
as a lot of others, and it ended with prayers and hymns.  The Reverend
Paul Barker, a very old African missionary, who was the first to enter
Abeokuta, delivered the Blessing.  Every one shook hands with us and
bade us Godspeed.

"After this the three brethren designated for the Mission, and myself,
of course, together with Brentham the explorer, Mr. Barker and a few
others from the platform, adjourned to Sir Powell Buckley’s, where we
had tea.  Here we four new missionaries were introduced to old Mrs.
Doland, that lady who, under God, has so liberally contributed to the
support of the East African Mission....  And also to Captain Brentham,
who has just returned from the East coast....

"I confess I didn’t like _him_ ... altogether.... In fact, I can’t
_quite_ make out why he came and spoke at the meeting, for I could see
at once by the way he stared about him during the hymns he was not one
of us ... in heart.  In his speech at Plymouth Hall he chiefly laid
stress on the advantages gained by civilization when a country was
opened up by missionaries, how we taught the people trades, and so on.
There was no allusion to the inestimable boon to the natives in making
known the Blessed Gospel and the promises in the Old Testament....

"In fact—am I walking too fast?  But father will be angry if we are late
for dinner—in fact, I thought Brentham inclined to sneer at us.  They
say he wants a Government appointment and is making up to Sir Powell
Buckley——

"Then Saturday—yesterday—I came down here and—er—well! here we are!  Are
you listening?"

Lucy gave John’s arm an affectionate squeeze by way of assurance, but on
this rare June day there was something in the still, hot air, thick with
hay-scent, which lulled her sensibilities and caused her to forget to be
concerned at her betrothed’s departure.  She had temporarily forgotten
many little things stored up to be said to him, and was vexed at her own
taciturnity. However, their walk had come to an end, and they stood in
front of John’s home.

Mr. John Parker Baines, the father of the missionary-designate, was a
manufacturer of aerated drinks and cider, whose premises lay on the
western side of Tilehurst and marred the beauty of the countryside and
the straggling village with a patch of uncompromising vulgarity and
garishness.  The manufactory itself was in a simple style of
architecture: a rectangular building of red brick, with two tall
smoke-blackened chimneys and a number of smaller ones.  "John Baines and
Co., Manufacturers of Aerated Drinks," was painted in large letters
across the brick front.

A Sabbath stillness prevailed, intensified by the smokeless chimneys and
the closed door.  Only a cur lay in the sun, and some dirty ducks
squittered the water in a dirty ditch which carried off the drainage of
the factory to a neighbouring brook.

A short distance apart from the main building stood the dwelling of the
proprietor, Mr. Baines, who had inherited the business from his wife’s
father and transferred it to his own name.  This home of the Baines
family, though designed by the same architect, had its aboriginal
ugliness modified by numerous superficial improvements.  A rich mantle
of ivy overgrew a portion of its red brick walls and wreathed its ugly
stucco portico.  The window-panes were brightly polished and gave a
vivacity to the house by their gleaming reflections of light and shade.
You could see through them the green Venetian blinds of the
sitting-rooms and the unpolished backs of looking-glasses and clean
white muslin curtains of the bedrooms.  In the short strip of front
garden there were beds of scarlet geraniums which added a pleasant note
of bright colour.

At the grained front door a cat was waiting to be let in with an air
about her as if she too had returned a little late from church or
chapel.  A strong, rich odour of roast beef filled the air and drowned
the scent of hayfields.  This intensified the feeling of vulgar comfort
which permeated the house when the door was opened by Mr. Baines,
senior, and increased the pious satisfaction of the cat, who arched her
black body and rubbed herself coyly against her master’s Sunday
trousers.

"Of course, you’re late," snapped Mr. Baines.  "I knew you would be.
Here’s mother, as cross as two sticks."

Mrs. Baines, who had stalked into the narrow hall from the dining-room,
gave them no greeting, but merely called to Eliza to serve the dinner,
as Mr. John and Miss Josling had arrived.

For Lucy this was not a pleasant meal.  Mrs. Baines was one of those
unsympathetic persons that took away her appetite.  She was a thoroughly
good woman in the estimation of her neighbours, austerely devout,
rigidly honest, an able housewife and a strict mother. But her future
daughter-in-law had long since classed her as thoroughly unlovable.  The
one tender feeling she evinced was her passionate though undemonstrative
devotion to her only son.  Even this, though it might beautify her dull
being in the eyes of an unconcerned observer, did not always announce
itself pleasantly to her home circle.  To John it had often been the
reason for a cruel smacking when a child and guilty of some small
childish sin; to her husband it was the excuse for vexatious economies,
which while they did not materially increase the funds devoted to his
son’s education, had frequently interfered with his personal comfort.

Mrs. Baines’s love of John was further manifested to Lucy by a jealous
criticism of her speech and actions; for, like most mothers of an only
son, she was bound to resent the bestowal of his affections on a
sweetheart, and determined to be dissatisfied with whomever he might
select for that honourable position.

So, although Lucy was pretty, relatively well-educated, earning her
living already as a National school-mistress, the daughter of a
much-respected farmer, and known by the Baines family almost since she
was a baby, Mrs. Baines found fault with her just because she had found
favour with John.  Lucy was "Church" and they were "Chapel."  She was
vain and worldly and quite unsuited to be the wife of a missionary.  The
fascination of worldliness was not denied.  The Devil knew how to bait
his traps. Through worldly influence one was led to read novels on the
Sabbath, to dispute the Biblical account of the Creation.

Lucy, it is true, had neither scoffed at Genesis, nor spoken flippantly
of Noah’s Ark, nor been seen reading fiction on a Sunday; but that
didn’t matter.  With her pretensions to an interest in botany, her talk
about astronomy and the distances of the fixed stars and such like
rubbish, she was quite capable of sliding into infidelity.  And as to
her observance of the Sabbath, it was simply disgraceful.  Of course,
her father was to blame in setting her a bad example and her mother,
too, poor soul, was much too easy-going with her daughters.  But then,
when you came to consider that Lucy had been so much with John, to say
nothing of the example set by John’s parents, you would have thought she
might have learnt by this time how the Lord’s Day should be passed.

It was this last point which strained the relations between Mrs. Baines
and Lucy on this particular Sunday.  Lucy had asked John to take her for
a walk in the afternoon.  It would be their last opportunity for a quiet
talk all to themselves before his departure. Although John Baines had
inherited his mother’s Sabbatarian scruples he consented to Lucy’s
proposal, partly because he was in love with her, partly because his
residence in London had insensibly broadened his views.  For once his
mother’s influence was powerless to alter his decision, and so she had
refrained from further argument.  But this first check to her domination
over her son had considerably soured her feelings.

Moreover, Mrs. Baines honestly believed, according to her lights—for
like all the millions of her class and period she knew absolutely
nothing about astronomy, geology, ethnology and history—that the Creator
of the Universe preferred you should spend the Sunday afternoon in a
small, stuffy back parlour with the blinds half down, reading the Bible
or Baxter’s sermons (or, if the spiritual appetite were very weak, an
illustrated edition of _Pilgrim’s Progress_) and continue this
mortification of flesh and spirit until tea time (unless you taught in
the Sunday-school).  You should then wind up the Day of Rest with
evening chapel, supper, more sermon-reading, and bed.

The only person disposed to be talkative during the meal was John Baines
the younger.  His mother, at all times glum, was more than ever inclined
to silence. Lucy was oppressed by her frigid demeanour and vouchsafed
very few remarks, other than those called for by politeness.  As to
Baines, senior, he was one of those short-necked, fleshy men who are
born guzzlers, and his attention was too much concentrated on his food
to permit of his joining in conversation during his Sunday dinner.  As a
set-off against abstention from alcohol he was inordinately greedy, and
his large appetite was a constant source of suffering to him, for his
wife took a grim delight in mortifying it.  Only on Sundays was he
allowed to eat his fill without her interference.  Mrs. Baines always
did the carving and helped everything, even the vegetables, which were
placed in front of her, flanking the joint.  The maid-of-all-work,
Eliza, waited at table and was evidently the slave of her mistress’s
eye.  The family dinner on Sundays was almost invariable in its main
features, as far as circumstances permitted.  A well-roasted round of
beef, with baked potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, was succeeded by an
apple or a treacle pudding, and a dessert of some fruit or nuts in
season. Of one thing there was no lack and abundant
variety—effervescing, non-alcoholic drinks: Ginger Beer, Ginger Ale,
Gingerade; Lemonade, Citronade, Orangeade; Phosphozone, Hedozone,
Pyrodone, Sparkling Cider and Perry Champagne: all the beverages
compounded of carbonic acid, tartaric acid, citric acid, sugar, water,
apple and pear juice, and flavouring essences.

The Apple champagne that John gallantly poured into Lucy’s glass did not
lighten her spirits or loosen her tongue.  What could she find to say to
that guzzling father whose face and hands were always close to his
plate, except during the brief intervals between the courses when he
threw himself back in his chair, blew his nose, wiped his greasy lips,
and passed his fat forefinger round the corners of his gums to remove
the wedges of food which had escaped deglutition?  Or to the gloomy
mother who ate her victuals with a sullen champing, and, beyond a few
directions to the submissive servant, made no attempts to sustain
conversation, only according to the garrulous descriptions of her son an
occasional snappish "Oh! indeed——," "Pretty doings, I can see——,"
"Little good can come of _that_——," and so on?  At length, when John’s
experiences in London had come to an end and the two dishes of cherries
had replaced the treacle pudding, whilst the servant handed round in
tumblers our own superlative Sparkling Cider, Lucy cleared her throat
and said, "I suppose John will be leaving you very early to-morrow
morning?"

"Eh?" returned Mrs. Baines, fixing her cold grey eyes on Lucy.  She had
heard perfectly well, but she thought it more consistent with dignity
not to lend too ready an ear to the girl’s remarks.  Lucy repeated more
distinctly her question.

"You had better ask _him_ all about it," replied John’s mother.  "I have
other things to think about on the Lord’s Day besides railway
time-tables."

"Why?  Are you coming to see me off, Lucy?" asked John.

"Well, yes; that is, if Mrs. Baines doesn’t mind."

"_I_ mind?" exclaimed the angry woman in a strident voice.  "What have
_I_ got to do with it; I suppose railway stations are free to every
one?"

"Yes," said Lucy, with an ache at the back of her throat and almost
inclined then and there to break off her engagement.  "But I thought you
might like to have John all to yourself at the last.  However, if you
have no objection, I should much like to see him off, poor old
fellow"—and Lucy gave his big-knuckled hand an affectionate pat—"I think
I can manage it. Father has to come into Theale.  He will drop me at the
station and pick me up again, and school doesn’t begin till nine.  What
time does your train go, John?"

"Twenty-five past seven.  I shall get to London soon after nine.  After
going to the head-quarters of the Mission and getting my final
instructions I shall drive straight down to the docks and go on board
the _Godavery_....  The first place we stop at is Algiers, then Malta,
then the Suez Canal and Aden.  I expect this is just what _you’ll_ have
to do, Lucy, when you come out next spring."

Lucy smiled brightly.  She had gradually grown into her engagement as
she grew from girlhood to womanhood, constrained by John’s bland
assumption that the damsel he selected was bound to be his wife. But
perhaps her main inducement was his fixed determination to become a
missionary and her intense longing to see "foreign parts," the wonderful
and the interesting world.  She was just rallying her spirits to make
some animated reply about Algiers when Mrs. Baines intervened and said
there were limits to all things, and if they didn’t wish to pass the
whole of the Lord’s Day eating, drinking, and talking they had better
rise and let Eliza clear away.  On hearing these words, Mr. Baines
turned the last cherries into his plate and hastily biting them off and
ejecting the stones, pushed his chair back with a sigh.  Then, rising
heavily, he stumbled into the armchair near the fireplace and composed
himself for a nap.  The maid began to clear away, longing to get back to
her Sunday dinner and concealed novelette.  Lucy went to put on her hat;
John yawned and drummed his fingers on the window-pane; and Mrs. Baines
seated herself stiffly in the armchair opposite her satiated husband,
with a large brown Bible on her lap and two or three leaflets covered
with small-print references to Scripture.

When John heard Lucy tripping downstairs he went to meet her, feeling
instinctively that her re-appearance in the dining-room would draw some
bitter comment from his mother.  He put on his felt wide-awake, took a
stout stick, and soon banged the front door on his sweetheart and
himself in a way which sent a shiver through the frame of Mrs. Baines,
who with an impatient sigh of disgust applied herself to a gloomy
portion of the Old Testament.

Probably had John remained to keep her company she would have made no
attempt to entertain him; but she would have applied herself with real
interest to Scriptural exegesis.  Of her class and of her time what
little romance and intellectuality she had was put into Bible study.
She believed the British—degenerate though they might appear as to
Sabbath observance—were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes, who had been
led by the prophet Jeremiah to Ireland in an unnecessary spurt of energy
and had then returned in coracles to the more favoured Britain,
Jeremiah—age being of no moment where the Divine purpose was
concerned—having taken in marriage a daughter of the Irish king——

But ... the ingratitude of her only son, who could not give up to his
mother’s society his last Sunday afternoon in England!  She choked with
unshed tears and read verse after verse of the early part of Jeremiah
without understanding one word, although she was told in her leaflets
that the diatribes bore special reference to England in the latter part
of the nineteenth century.... No, the thought of John wandering about
the hayfields with Lucy—for, of course, that girl would lead him into
the hayfields, perhaps throw hay at him—constantly rose before her, and
once or twice a few hot tears dimmed her sight....  "The Lord said also
unto me in the days of Josiah the King: Hast thou seen that which
backsliding Israel hath done?..."

She had devoted all the money she could save, all the time she could
spare to the bringing-up of this boy. She had sent him to college and
made him a gentleman. She had done her duty by him as a mother, and this
was the return he made.  He preferred to spend his last Sunday afternoon
frolicking about the country with a feather-headed girl to passing it
quietly by his mother’s side, as he formerly used to do.... They might
even have had a word of prayer together. Mrs. Baines was not usually a
woman who encouraged outbursts of vocal piety outside the chapel, but on
such an occasion as this....  She might not see him for another five
years..

"And I said, after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me.
But she returned not."—Now was it becoming for a grown man, a missionary
who had occupied the pulpit at Salem Chapel in the morning, to go
gallivanting about the meadows with a young woman in the afternoon?
What would any of the congregation say who saw him?  A nice spectacle,
to be sure!—  "And the Lord said unto me, The back-sliding Israel hath
justified herself more than treacherous Judah..."  "Let me see,"
reflected Mrs. Baines, trying to give her attention to her reading,
"Judah represents the Church of England, and Israel is ... Israel is ...
Baines!  For goodness _sake_ don’t snore like that.  You ought to be
ashamed of yourself! _How_ you can reconcile it with your conscience to
guzzle like a pig every Sunday at dinner and then pass the rest of the
afternoon snoring and snoozing instead of reading your Bible, _I_ don’t
know."

Mr. Baines’s bloodshot, greenish eyes regarded his wife with dazed
wonderment for a few seconds.  Then their red lids dropped and a gentle
breathing announced the resumption of his slumbers.  For a few moments
Mrs. Baines really devoted her attention to the third chapter of
Jeremiah; but when once more the respirations of her spouse degenerated
into raucous snores, she lost all patience with him, and put away her
Bible and pamphlets.  She could not stop in the house any longer.  It
was allowable to visit the sick on the Sabbath day.  She would go and
see old Mrs. Gannell in Stebling’s Cottages and read some tracts to her.
So she shook off imaginary crumbs from her skirts, went upstairs to put
on her Sunday bonnet, and left her husband—though he was unconscious of
the privilege—to snore and chuckle and drivel and snore unrebuked for a
couple of hours.




                              *CHAPTER II*

                            *JOHN AND LUCY*


John and Lucy strode rapidly through the outskirts of the village, past
the inspection of curious eyes from over the rim of window blinds, into
the quiet country, which lay sleeping in veiled sunshine; for the warmth
of the June sun had created a slight haze in the river valley and men
and beasts seemed drowsy with the concentrated, undispersed odour of the
newly-cut hay.  They crossed a little stream by a wooden bridge, climbed
two stiles—Lucy gaily, John bashfully, as if fearing that his new-born
dignity of preacher might suffer thereby—walked about a quarter of a
mile down a densely shaded lane where the high hedgerows were flecked
with pale pink, yellow-stamened dogroses, and where the honeysuckle
trailed its simple light green foliage and hung out its lank fists of
yellow fingers: and then arrived at an open space and a broad high road.
This they followed until they came to a white gate, marked in black
letters "To Englefield.  Private."  Without hesitation, from
long-established custom, they raised the latch and entered the dense
shade of a well-timbered wood with a glimpse here and there, through the
tree trunks, of open water.

Lucy sighed with relief and pleasure when the white gate swung to behind
her and she was walking on a turf-covered track under the shade of great
beech trees. Though the scene was familiar to her she exclaimed at its
beauty.  John mopped his face industriously, flapped away the flies,
blew his nose, and wiped the brim of his hat.  "Yes, yes," he would
reply, looking to see if his boots were very dusty or whether there were
any grass seeds sticking to the skirts of his frock-coat.  "Canterbury
bells, is that what you call them? Yes, there seem to be lots this year.
Here’s a nice, clean trunk of a tree.  Let’s sit down and have our
talk...."

"Oh, not here, John.  It’s too midgy.  We will go farther on to The
View: there’s a seat there."

So they followed the broad, turfy track which commenced to ascend the
flank of a down.  On the right hand the great trees rose higher and
higher into the sky; on the left the ground sloped away to the level of
the little lake with its swans and water-lilies; and the turf near at
hand was dark blue and purple-green with the bugle in flower.  In the
ascending woodland there were tall ranks of red-mauve foxgloves.  Here
the owner of the park had placed an ample wooden seat for the
delectation of all who loved landscape beauty.

John threw himself down with heavy abandonment on the grey planks.  Had
he been alone he would certainly have taken off his boots to ease his
hot and compressed feet, but some instinct told him his betrothed might
not think the action seemly.  Lucy stood for a few moments gazing at the
view over the Kennet valley and then sat down beside him.

"How dreadfully you perspire, my poor John," she said, looking at the
wet red hand which clasped the rail of the seat.

"Yes.  The least amount of walking makes me hot."

"Well, but how will you be able to stand Africa?"

"Oh, it’s a different kind of heat there, I believe. Besides, you don’t
have to go about in a black coat, a waistcoat and a starched shirt;
except perhaps at service time on Sundays."

"What a pity black clothes seem to be necessary to holiness!"—(then
seeing a frown settling on his face) "I wonder whether we shall see
anything so beautiful as _this_ out there?"

"As beautiful as what?  Oh!  The view.  Well, I s’pose so.  I believe
there are some high mountains and plenty of forest near the place where
I am to live."

"What is its name?"

"Hangodi, I think—something like that.  Bayley says it means ’the Place
of Firewood.’"

"Oh, _that_ doesn’t sound pretty at all; just as if there were nothing
but dead sticks lying about.  I hoped there would be plenty of palms and
those things you see in the pictures of African travel books—with great
broad leaves—plantains?  Is it a village?"

"Hangodi?  I believe so.  I think the chief reason it has been chosen is
its standing high up on a mountain and being near water."

"Oh, John," said Lucy after a minute’s silence, "I _do_ look forward to
joining you in Africa.  I’ve always wanted to travel, ever since I won a
geography prize at school.  Just think what wonderful things we shall
see.  Elephants and lions and tigers.  Will there be tigers?  Of
_course_ not.  I ought to have remembered they’re only found in India.
But at any rate there will be beautifully spotted leopards, and lions
roaring at night, and hippopotamuses in the rivers and antelopes on the
plains.  And ostriches?  Do you think there will be any ostriches,
John?"

"My dear, how do _I_ know?  Besides, we are not going out to Africa to
look for ostriches and lions, Lucy," said John, rather solemnly.  "We
have a great work before us, a _great_ work.  There is a mighty harvest
to be gathered for the Lord."

"Of course, John, of course," Lucy hastened to reply, "I know what is
the real object of your mission, and I mean to help you all I can, don’t
I?" (pushing back a wisp of his lank brown hair that fell over his
brow—for he had taken off the hot wide-awake). "But that won’t prevent
me from liking to see wild beasts and other queer African things; and I
don’t see the harm in it, either...."

"N—no, of course it isn’t _wrong_.  These things are among the wonderful
works of the Almighty, and it is right that we should admire them in
their proper place.  At the same time they are apt to become a snare in
leading us from the contemplation of holy things into vain disputes
about science.  I know more about these spiritual dangers than you do,
Lucy," continued John, from the superior standing of his three years’
education in London, "and I warn you against the idolatry of intellect"
(squeezing her little kid-gloved hand to temper his solemnity with a
lover’s gesture).  "I knew a very nice fellow in London once. He had
studied medicine at the hospitals and he came to Bayswater College to
qualify for the East African Mission; for he intended going out as a
medical missionary.  He was the son of a minister, too, and his father
was much respected.  But he was always spending his spare time at this
new Natural History Museum, and he used to read Darwin and other infidel
writers. Well, the result was that he took to questioning the accuracy
of Genesis, and _of course_ he had to give up all idea of joining the
Mission.  I don’t know what became of him, but I expect he afterwards
went to the bad.  For my part, I am thankful to say I never was troubled
with doubts.  The Bible account of Creation is good enough for me, and
so it ought to be for everybody else."

"John!  _John_!" exclaimed Lucy, shaking his arm, "you are just as bad
as your mother, who accuses me of disbelieving the Bible because I like
to take a walk on a fine Sunday afternoon.  How you _do_ run on!  I only
said I wanted to see elephants and lions in Africa and you accuse me
straight out of ’worshipping my intellect’ or some such rubbish.  Don’t
you know the chief reason I promised to marry you was because I thought
it was so noble of you to go to Africa to teach the poor natives?  Very
well, if you think African wild beasts will be a snare for my soul I
won’t run the temptation, and you shall marry some black woman whose
ears will come down to her shoulders, and a ring through her nose as
well, and no doubts at all about anything."

"Lucy!  I think you’re very flippant."

"John!  I think you’re much too sanctimonious! You’re a great deal too
good for me, and you’d better find a more serious person than I am—Miss
Jamblin, for instance."

"Ann Jamblin?  And a very nice girl too.  Oh! you may sneer at her.
She’s not pretty, I daresay, but she comes to all the prayer meetings,
so mother says; and she’s got a nice gift for sacred poetry."

"Yes, _I_ know her verses—flimsy things!  Just hymns-and-water, _I_ call
them.  She’s got a number of stock rhymes and she rings the changes on
them.  Any one could do that.  Besides, I’ve caught her lots of times
borrowing whole lines from Hymns, Ancient and Modern, which I suppose
aren’t good enough for chapel people, so they must needs go and make up
hymns of their own.  And as to the prayer meetings, it’s just the tea
and cake that attract _her_.  Bless you!  I was at school with Ann
Jamblin, and I know what a pig that girl is....  But if you think she’d
suit you better as a wife, don’t hesitate to change your mind.  Your
mother would be _delighted_.  And I’ve heard say that Ann’s uncle, who
keeps the ham-and-beef shop in Reading, means to leave her all his
money.  You won’t find Ann Jamblin caring much for wild beasts, _I_ can
promise you!  Why, I remember once when the school was out walking near
Reading and we met a dancing bear coming along with its keeper, she
burst out screaming and crying so loud that the youngest Miss Calthrop
had to take her _straight_ back."

"Now, _Lucy_!  _Is_ it kind to quarrel with me just before I am going
away?"  (Lucy’s unexpected spitfire prettiness and the hint she might be
willing to break off the engagement had roused John’s latent manliness
and he felt now he desired intensely to marry her.)

"My _dear_ John, I wasn’t _quarrelling_, I’ve nothing to quarrel about.
I only suggested to you before it was too late to change your mind that
Ann Jamblin would make you a more suitable wife than I should—there,
there!" (fighting off a kiss and an attempt at a hug) "remember where we
are and that any one might see us and carry the tale to your mother.  Of
course, I am partly in fun.  I know it is unkind to tease you, but
somehow I _can’t_ be as serious as you are....  Dear old John" (the
attempt at a hug and the look of desire in John’s eyes have somehow
mollified her) "I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings....  Did I? ... I’m
very sorry....  Just as you’re going away, too.... There, never mind....
Look bright and happy.... Now _smile_!"

John’s lips parted reluctantly and showed his pale gums and projecting
eye-teeth.

"What do you think, John? ... Let’s get up and walk on to the garden
gates, ... what do you think my Uncle Pardew is going to give us as a
wedding present?  A harmonium!  Won’t that be nice?  I shall take it out
with me, and then when you teach the people to sing hymns—only you
mustn’t teach them Ann Jamblin’s—I can play the accompaniments.  And in
the evenings when you are tired I shall try to play something that will
soothe you.  I have never tried the harmonium yet, but while you are
away I mean to practise.  It’s just like playing the piano, only you
have to keep working the pedals with your feet, like a sewing-machine.
Uncle Pardew would just as soon give us a piano, but I told him what you
said about the climate being bad for them.  So he settled that a
harmonium would do better.  I wonder what other wedding presents we
shall get?  I can tell to a certainty what your mother will give us."

"What?"

"Why, a very large Bible, bound in shiny brown leather like those in the
waiting-rooms at railway stations, with a blue ribbon marker; and a
dozen silver spoons.  Six large and six small.  I know she doesn’t
consider me worthy of the spoons, but she is bound by custom.  When she
was married _her_ mother-in-law gave _her_ spoons....  And your father
will give us a dinner-service and a gross of Sparkling Cider..."

"I hope to goodness he doesn’t.  The cost of transporting it up-country
would be quite beyond my means. I shall tell him..."

"And _my_ father," continued Lucy, "is going to give me a gold watch and
chain.  And mother, my own sweet little mother—what do you think she’s
been working at, John?"

"Can’t say, I’m sure."

"Why, _all_ the house linen....  Sheets, pillow-cases, tablecloths,
napkins, and such like.  She has been getting them ready ever since I
was first engaged.... John!  You must be _very_ kind to me in Africa."

"_Kind_ to you?  Why, of course!  Do you suppose I should be anything
else?"

"You don’t know _how_ I feel the idea of parting with mother.  I love
her better than any one in the world, better than you, John.  She never
says anything, but I know she is dreadfully unhappy at the idea of my
going away so far and for so long.  But then, I tell her, we can’t _all_
be old maids.  Father isn’t rich enough to keep us all at home, and I
don’t want to go on working at a National school all my life....  Oh, by
the bye, talking of mother, I had something so pleasant to tell you.
What do you think Lord Silchester has done? You know mother was maid to
old Lady Silchester? Well, when father went the other day to see Mr.
Parkins about a gate he met his lordship walking out of the agent’s
office.  They got into conversation and father told him I was going out
next year to marry you in Africa.  And last Wednesday mother got a
letter written by Lord Silchester himself, saying he had not forgotten
her faithful care of his mother and would she give the enclosed to her
daughter, out of which she might buy a wedding present, something to
remember Lord Silchester by when she got out to Africa.  And there were
four five-pound notes in the envelope.  Mother was so pleased she
positively _cried_."

"Yes.  That was very kind of his lordship.  I must tell my mother when I
get back to-night.  It may cheer her up."

"Oh, every one has been very nice about my engagement. The Miss
Calthrops, where I was at school in Reading, told me they were working
at some æsthetic mantel-borders for our house in Africa...."

"Mantel-borders!  Why, we shan’t have any mantel-pieces!"

"No mantel-pieces?  No fireplaces?"

"Only a fire for cooking, in the kitchen, and that will be outside."

"Oh well, then, we must put them to some other use; I couldn’t wound
their feelings by saying we didn’t want them."

"Lucy, you mustn’t imagine you are going to live in a mansion in Africa.
Our home will be only a cottage built of bamboo and mud and tree-stems
roughly trimmed, with a thatched or a corrugated-iron roof. I don’t
suppose it will contain more than four rooms—a bedroom, a bathroom, a
sitting-room, a store and an outside kitchen."

"Well, but even a log-hut might be made pretty inside, with some ’art’
draperies and cushions and a few Japanese fans.  I mean to make our home
as pretty as possible.  Shall we have a garden?"

"Oh, I daresay—a kitchen garden, certainly.  For the Mission Committee
wants to encourage the planting of vegetables and even some degree of
farming, so that we may live as much as possible on local products.  We
are taking out spades and hoes and rakes in plenty, a small plough, an
incubator, and any amount of useful seeds."

"I’m sure," said Lucy, still musing, "there ought to be lovely wild
flowers in Africa and beautiful ferns, too.  I mean to have a little
wild garden of my own, and I shall press the flowers and send them to
mother in my letters."

"I daresay you will be able to do that, when you have finished your
household work and done your teaching in the school."

"Teaching in the school?"

"Why, of course you will help me in that.  You’ll have to take the
girls’ class, whilst I take the boys’."

"Oh, shall I?  That’s rather horrid.  I didn’t think I was going out to
Africa to teach, just the same as at home.  The National School children
at Aldermaston are quite tiresome enough.  What will little black girls
be like, I wonder?"

"I’m told they’re very quick at learning....  I am sorry," continued
John, rather portentously, "that you don’t quite seem to realize the
nature of the duties you are about to undertake.  I love you very
dearly, Lucy"—and a tremor in his voice showed sincerity—"but that isn’t
the only reason I have asked you to come out to me in Africa and be my
wife.  I want a helpmeet, not a playmate; one who will aid me in
bringing these heathen to a knowledge of God’s goodness; not an idle
woman who only thinks of picking wild flowers and ornamenting her house.
Don’t pout, dear.  I only want to save you disappointment. You are not
coming out to a life of luxury, but one of hard work.  Besides, it would
be hardly fair to the Mission if you did not take certain duties on
yourself, because when I am married they will increase my pay to two
hundred and fifty pounds a year."

"What do you get when you are single?"

"One hundred and eighty.  You see a married man gets extra pay because
it is always supposed his wife will add her work to his.  A married
missionary, too, has more influence with the natives."

"All the same, John, we shall sometimes make time to steal away by
ourselves and have a nice little picnic without any of those horrid
black people near us...."

"Horrid black people, Lucy, have immortal souls...."

"I daresay, but that doesn’t prevent their having black bodies and
looking like monkeys.  However, I daresay I shall get used to them.  And
if I don’t at first ... By the bye, John, I forgot to ask, but I wanted
to, so as to relieve mother’s mind—are they cannibals?"

"What, the people of Hangodi?  I don’t know, but I scarcely think so.
And if they were, we should have all the more credit in converting
them."

"Yes; but suppose they wouldn’t wait to be converted, but ate you
first?"

"The little I’ve read and heard shows me they would never do that.
African cannibals, it seems, are rather careful whom they eat.
Generally only their war captives or their old people.  They wouldn’t
eat a peaceful stranger, a white man.  However, on the east side of
Africa the negroes are _not_ cannibals, any more than we are."

"Isn’t it curious, John, to think what different ideas of right and
wrong prevail amongst the peoples of the world?  Here, you say, there
are some tribes in Africa which eat their own relations.  Well, I
daresay it is thought quite a right and proper thing to do—out
there—just as we in England think the old folk ought to be cherished and
taken care of, and kept alive as long as possible.  Only fancy how funny
it would sound to us to be told that Mr. Jones showed very bad feeling
because he wouldn’t join his brother and sister in eating up old Aunt
Brown!  And yet I daresay that is what cannibal scandal-mongers often
say to one another.  Isn’t it wonderful how one lot of human beings can
think and act so differently to another lot; and yet each party
considers that nobody is right but those who believe as they do?
Supposing one day some black missionaries landed in England, dressed in
large earrings, bead necklaces, pocket handkerchiefs and nothing else,
and tried to persuade us to worship some hideous idol and leave off
wearing so many clothes. How astonished we would be ... and yet they
would think they were doing right, just as our missionaries do who go
out to teach savages the Gospel...."

"Well, I confess I don’t see the resemblance.  What we preach is the
Truth, the Living Truth.  What _they_ believe is a lie of the Devil."

"Yes, but they don’t _know_ it is.  They must think it is the truth or
they wouldn’t go on believing in it year after year.  When I was
teaching geography the other day, I was quite _astonished_ to find in
the Manual that about _four or five hundred millions_ of people were
Buddhists.  Isn’t it _dreadful_ to think of their all being wrong, all
living in vain.  Surely God won’t punish them for it hereafter?"

"It’s hard to say.  If they had the means of grace offered to them and
rejected the Message I should think He would.  But that is the chief
object of our Foreign Missions, to teach the heathen the true principles
of Christianity and bring the Light of the Gospel to them that sit in
darkness.  When this has been done throughout the earth, no one will
then be able to say he sinned in ignorance, ’because he knew not the way
of Life.’"

"And yet, John, see here in England what different views of religion
even good people take.  Father goes to Church; you go to Chapel; and
each thinks the other on the wrong road to Heaven."

"Oh no!  Lucy, I wouldn’t go so far as that.  Of course, I believe that
our Connection has been vouchsafed a special revelation of God’s Will
and Purpose among men.  But all the same I feel sure that many a Church
person comes into the way of Truth though it may be after much
tribulation.  Why, I wouldn’t deny that even _Roman Catholics_ may be
saved, if they have led a godly life and acted up to their lights.  At
the same time, those who have the Truth among them and are wilfully
blind to its teaching are incurring a heavy responsibility."

"Then you think father stands less chance of being saved than you do?"

"Well ... yes ... I do; because in his Church he does not possess the
same means of grace as are given to our Connection."

"But he is so good, so kind to every one, so fair in his dealings..."

"Good works without faith are insufficient to save a man."

"Well, for my part, I can’t believe that _any_ one will be lost because
he may not follow the most correct kind of religion.  I can’t believe
that God will punish any one who isn’t very, very wicked indeed.  He is
so great; we are so little....  Just think, supposing we saw an ant
doing anything wrong should we feel obliged to hurt it or burn it?
Should we not be rather amused and pitiful?  And mustn’t we seem the
very tiniest of ants to God?"

"Ah, Lucy!  The belief in the fierce judgments of the Almighty is a
fundamental Truth of our religion, and if your faith in _that_ is
shaken, everything will begin to go....  But the subject is too solemn
to be lightly discussed, so let’s talk about something else.  Have you
finished my slippers?"

"Yes, and they’re perfectly _lovely_.  A dark blue, with J.B.
embroidered in white silk.  I shall bring them with me to the station
to-morrow....  Why, here we are at the gates of the garden!  _How_ we’ve
walked and _how_ we’ve talked!  And look, John,"—drawing him back from
standing too near the iron gates, "there’s his lordship on the terrace,
and I do believe the young lady with him is the one he’s become engaged
to!"

John looked in the direction whither Lucy discreetly inclined her head,
beyond triumphs of carpet-bedding to the terrace which fronted the south
side of the great house.  And there, foremost of several groups of
Sunday callers who were taking tea at small tables, they saw specially
prominent a party of three: a pretty girl rather showily dressed in the
height of 1886 fashion, an old lady, and an elderly man, tall, a little
inclined to stoop, dressed in dark, loose-fitting tweeds. He had a long
face with a massive jaw and rather a big nose.  But though they were not
visible at a distance of fifty yards there were kindly wrinkles round
his dark grey eyes as he suddenly lifted them from the seated ladies and
glanced across the flower beds to see who was looking at him from the
outer world.

This was Lord Silchester; and John, not wishing to prolong his
indiscretion, raised his wide-awake and turned away with his betrothed.
He and Lucy then walked directly to Aldermaston, John leaving her at the
railway station, where he consummated his breach of the Sabbath by
taking an evening train back to Theale, and so returned to his home at
the Aerated Waters factory for the last night he was ever to pass there.


The next morning, punctually at seven o’clock, Lucy’s father drew up his
gig before the booking-office of Theale station, and, getting a porter
to hold the horse, helped Lucy down and accompanied her on to the
station platform, where they found the Baines family already assembled:
Mrs. Baines gloomily seated on a bench, Mr. Baines reading the old
newspaper placards of the closed bookstall, and John busy seeing his
numerous boxes labelled.

"Hullo, Baines!—and ma’am—hope you’re well ... a bit cast down, I
expect?  But there, it’s a fine career he’s starting on....  Still, it’s
always a wrench. John"—extending his hand—"I’ve just called in to wish
you good luck _and_ a prosperous voyage _and_ a happy return, by and
bye.  Mind you make a comfortable home out there for my little girl!  I
shall be feeling about as bad as you feel, ma’am" (Mrs. Baines kept a
perfectly impassive face during these attempts at sympathy and did not
even look at the speaker), "next—when is it to be?  March?—when I come
to part with Lucy.  But life’s made up of partings and meetings, which
is why, some’ow, I don’t like railway stations.  Now I can’t stop, and
if I could, I should only be in the way.  Must be off to market.  Leave
you Lucy.  She’ll walk back to school.  Good-bye, John...."

And Farmer Josling hurried out of the station and his horse’s hoofs
sounded in quick succession on the ascent to the main road.  Lucy, left
behind actually found herself regretting that father had brought her in
such good time as to give her five-and-twenty minutes or more of
irresolute attendance on John.  When she had presented him with the
slippers, had squeezed his hand two or three times, and adjured him to
write from the first stopping-place, besides sending a postcard from
London to say he was leaving "all right"; had made a few suggestions
about his luggage which, in spite of the urbanity of departure, were too
futile to be answered or adopted; and had insisted on pushing the band
of his blue tie under the shirt button at the back of his neck, so that
it might not rise up over the collar: there seemed to be nothing left to
say or do. The bookstall was not yet opened so there were no papers to
be bought.

She would have talked with Mrs. Baines, who had retired to the little
waiting-room and was pretending there to read a great roll of texts in
big print hung against one of the walls.  But at her first remark she
noticed Mrs. Baines’s eyelids were quivering and her under lip twitching
in a way to indicate that she was a prey to almost uncontrollable
emotion.  Although she mechanically turned the leaves of the texts, her
eyes were not focussing them, and something seemed to be moving up and
down her lank throat which she could not finally swallow.  She only
answered Lucy’s remark by an inarticulate gurgle and waved her away.
There was something so pathetic in her dismal ugliness, in her awkwardly
restrained emotion, that Lucy was suddenly moved to pity as she returned
to the platform. Her embarrassment was cut short by the tumult
occasioned by the approaching train, heralded by the clanging of the
station bell.  The train was full and John had hurriedly to pass all the
second class compartments in review to find a place not only for himself
but for the amorphous packages deemed too frail for the guard’s van.
When at last he had squeezed himself and his parcels past the
obstructing knees of the established passengers; he had just time to
twist round, stretch out over his surly neighbours’ laps, and squeeze
Lucy’s timorously extended hand.  Then the train gave a lurch forward
and a slide backwards which made him nearly bite his tongue off in an
attempt to say good-bye to his parents, and finally rolled slowly out of
the station, while the forms of father, mother, and sweetheart left
standing on the platform grouped themselves for one moment in an
attitude of mute farewell before the advance of the train cut them off
from his sight.

The retreating chain of carriages shut itself up like a telescope, and
the station began to resume its sleepy calm.  Mrs. Baines’s emotion now
could no longer be restrained from expression.  She tottered towards the
waiting-room and sinking heavily on to a hard wooden seat she choked and
hiccupped and sobbed, and the tears rolled regularly, one after the
other, down her cavernous cheeks.  Lucy took her trembling hands and
tried to soothe her; and then, Mrs. Baines, softened by this sympathy,
lost all that remained of her self-control and abandoned herself limply
on Lucy’s shoulder.

"Oh!" she gasped, "I’ve parted with him in anger—he’s gone! ... Perhaps
I shall never see him again.... My boy....  My only son.  I never said a
kind word to him before he left.  I thought there would be time....  I
thought John would come and make it up.  I was cross because he went out
walking with you and came back late by train yesterday.  You know I
always taught him to observe the Sabbath.  But I’d forgive him
_anything_ if he’d only come back and give me _one_ kiss ... my boy...."

But John was well on his way to Reading, and the London express, and all
his mother’s tardy plaints were fruitless to recall him.  Moreover, he
was not perceptive.  To him, his mother’s demeanour had seemed much as
usual; and he was certainly not conscious that she had parted with him
in anger.  He was fond of her in a way, but he had been used from
childhood to her being always in a huff about something or other.

Lucy restored her future mother-in-law to partial calmness, straightened
her bonnet, re-tied the bonnet strings, and walked a little of the way
back with her towards Tilehurst, while Mr. Baines followed submissively
behind.  For the rest of that day he enjoyed unrebuked freedom to do as
he liked.  He ate his fill and even smoked a pipe in the parlour.  His
wife having regained her composure held aloof from him in silent, stony
grief.

Lucy fortunately encountered the innkeeper of Aldermaston driving
thither in a chaise and got a lift, nearly as far as her home, a
substantial farmstead on the Mortimer road, close to both church and
school. This enabled her to begin her duties punctually.  She taught her
girls and boys from nine to twelve and two to four.  She thought of John
with gentle melancholy during the day, and even shed a tear or two at
night when she concentrated her mind on the scenes of her betrothed’s
departure, especially his mother’s wild display of grief.  But the next
morning as she walked from the farmstead to the school she actually
hummed a gay tune as she picked a spray of wild roses from the dewy
hedge and arranged them round her light straw hat.  At the same time she
had a twinge of remorse at her forgetfulness—poor John was doubtless now
at sea watching England fade from the exile’s view; and she forced
herself to assume before her scholars an aspect of restrained grief.

Nevertheless, as day after day of summer weather went by in her
surroundings of perfect beauty, she confessed to herself she had seldom
felt so happy, in spite of her sweetheart’s absence.




                             *CHAPTER III*

                         *SIBYL AT SILCHESTER*


They had ridden over from opposite directions—he from Farleigh Wallop on
the downs south of Basingstoke, she from Aldermaston in the Kennet
Valley: to meet on the site of the Roman Calleva Atrebatum, the modern
Silchester.  This was in the beginning of July, 1886.  The Roman city of
early Christian Britain was then—and now—only marked by two-thirds of an
encircling wall of rough masonry, crowned with ivy and even trees.
There were grassy hummocks concealing a forum, a basilica and a few
houses. An occasional capital of a column or obvious blocks of ancient
hewn stone, scattered here and there among the herbage, made it clear,
apart from tradition, that the place of their rendezvous had a momentous
past. But its present was of purely agricultural interest—waving fields
of green wheat, sheep grazing on the enclosed mounds, an opulent
farmstead—unless you were a landscape painter of the Birket Foster
school: then you raved about the thatched cottages, the old church and
its churchyard.

On this July morning Captain Roger Brentham and Sibyl Grayburn had the
untilled portion of the site of Calleva Atrebatum quite to themselves.
This, no doubt, was the reason why they had decided to meet there for an
explanation which the man deemed to be due to him from the young woman.
He, of course, arrived first, but Sibyl was not long in making her
appearance from the direction of Silchester common. A groom who rode
behind her at the sight of Captain Brentham touched his hat and trotted
away.... Brentham tied up the two horses in the shade of the Roman wall.

Sibyl disposed herself gracefully on a mound which covered the site of a
Roman dwelling, arranged the long skirt of her riding habit so that the
riding trousers and other suggestions of her limbs might not be too
obvious to the male eye.

Roger was a captain in the Indian Army, about twenty-eight or
twenty-nine, strongly built, tanned in complexion, supple in figure,
good-looking, keen-eyed. Sibyl Grayburn was a decidedly pretty young
woman of twenty-five, the daughter of Colonel Grayburn who had recently
moved from Aldershot to Aldermaston and was trying to live the life of a
gentleman farmer on rather slender means.  The Brenthams and Grayburns
of the younger generation were distant cousins.

_Roger_ (seating himself on the mound not too near to Sibyl, and
scanning her attentively): "Well, you’re just as pretty as you were five
years ago—a little filled out perhaps....  And _this_ is how we meet.
How _utterly_ different from what I had been looking forward to!  I
remember when we said good-bye at Farleigh _how_ you cried, and how for
the first four years you scarcely missed a mail....  And you can’t say
_I_ didn’t write—when I got a chance....  Or that I didn’t work like a
nigger to get a position to afford to marry—and _now_ I hear from Maud
you’re going to marry Silchester.  To tell you the truth it didn’t come
as a complete shock.  I saw hints of it in some beastly Society paper
that some one posted to me at Aden—I suppose it was _you_!  And this is
what women call _fidelity_!"

_Sibyl_ (at first keeps her eyes on the turf, but presently looks
Brentham defiantly in the face): "If women of my own age were to discuss
my case—not mere romantic school girls—they would say I had acted with
ordinary common sense, and _very_ unselfishly.  I am, as you know,
twenty-five, and I’m sure you won’t have enough to marry on for several
years—I should never again get such a chance ... and I really _do_ like
Lord Silchester, you don’t know _how_ kind he can be—and you can’t
_really_ care so very much.  You reached England a fortnight ago, and
never even _wrote_ to me...."

_Roger_: "I was too much taken aback by that paragraph in the _World_
... and Maud gave me a hint in the letter she sent to my club.  Besides,
I had to stop in London to see the Foreign Office and the India Office
... and ... and to attend a missionary meeting" (Sibyl ejaculates with
scorn: "_Missionary_ meeting!") "and get some clothes....  I had nothing
fit to wear when I landed...."

_Sibyl_: "Well, I’m not blaming you.  I only meant that if you were so
madly in love with me as you pretend you would have dashed down to get a
sight of me before you went hobnobbing with your missionary friends ...
or bothered about clothes.  I did not want my engagement to come to you
as a shock, so I _did_ post that _World_ to you and got Gerry to address
it—and I told Maud, so that she might prepare you. But _do_ let’s be
calm and sensible and not waste time in needless reproaches.  I _must_
get back to lunch. We’ve got Aunt Christabel coming—she helped to bring
it about, you know."  (Roger interpolates "_Damn_ her!")  "She’s got
twice mother’s determination.... Dear old Roger....  I _am_ sorry ... in
a way ... but you’ll find _heaps_ of girls, _much_ nicer than I am,
ready to jump at the prospect of marrying you."  (Here Sibyl’s eyes
glanced with a little regret at his turned-away face, with the bronzed
cheek, the firm profile and the upward twist of the dark moustache.)
"And you know our ’engagement’ was only boy-and-girl fun.  Besides, now
I know more about things—I was so young when you went away—I don’t
approve of cousins marrying....  Isn’t their—I mean aren’t their ...
children deaf and dumb or congenital idiots, or something
unpleasant?..."  (And here Sibyl, appropriately to the period in which
she was living, blushed a deeper rose than the ride had given her at the
audacity in alluding to children as the result of marriage.)

_Roger_: "Nonsense.  Heaps of cousins marry and everything turns out all
right if they come of healthy stock as we do.  Besides, we’re only
second cousins. But of course this is nothing but an evasion.  You
thought you could do better for yourself by marrying an elderly peer,
and so you threw me over...."

_Sibyl_: "Well!  I _did_ think I might, and _not_ selfishly. There’s
papa—more or less in a financial tangle over his farm....  There’s
mother, wearing herself ill, trying to make both ends meet ... and Clara
and Juliet to be brought out, and the boys to be educated and got into
professions..." (crying a little or pretending to do so out of
self-pity) "...I know I’m sacrificing myself for my family, but what
would you have me do?  I shall soon become an old maid, and you won’t be
able to marry for _ever_ so long...."

(Roger mutters: "I’ve five hundred a year and...")

_Sibyl_: "Yes, but what could we do on that?  Poor papa could afford to
give me nothing more than my trousseau....  Even on seven hundred a
year, _if_ you get a Consulate, we couldn’t manage two households, and
I’m perfectly certain I couldn’t stand the African climate long, and I
should have to come home.  I _don’t_ like roughing it, I should
_dislike_ hot countries; and I _hate_ black people....  No, Roger ...
dear ... be sensible...  If you want to carve out a great career in
Africa or India you don’t want to be hampered with a wife for several
years to come; and then ... I’ll—I’ll find some really _nice_ girl to
marry you, somebody with a little money.  And Silchester might help you
enormously.  They’ll probably take him into the new Government—aren’t
you glad that _horrid_ old Gladstone’s _gone_?—He’ll be at the Colonial
Office or somewhere like that and I know he’d do anything I asked him,
once we were married.  If you still want to go back to Africa he shall
get you made a Consul or a Governor or whatever it is you want...."  But
Roger was not going to listen to anything so cold-blooded, even though
all the time an undercurrent of thought was glancing at the advantages
that might accrue from Sibyl’s _mariage de convenance_.  He’d be
_hanged_ if he’d take anything from Lord Silchester....  He was entitled
to some such appointment, anyway, after all he had done.  But there, he
had lost all interest in life and if he went to the bad, Sibyl would be
to blame. All his interest in an African career had been bound up with
Sibyl’s sharing it.  With her at his side he felt equal to anything.  He
would conquer all Equatorial Africa, strike at the Mahdi from the south,
find Emin Pasha, lay all Equatoria at the feet of Queen Victoria, and in
no time Sibyl would be Lady Brentham——

"Yes," interjected Sibyl, "and lose my complexion and be old before my
time, riding after you through the jungle, or living stupidly like a
grass widow at home...."

Yet as he jerked out his tirade rather theatrically she noted him with
an approving eye.  His anger and extravagance brought out a certain
boyishness and, made him, with the freedom of the jungle about him,
still additionally attractive physically....  He certainly was
good-looking and in the prime of manhood ... she sighed ... the
remembrance of Lord Silchester’s pale, somewhat flabby face, his
slightly pedantic manner, his carefulness about his health....  He
rode—yes—they had already had decorous rides together, but she imagined
before the ride his cob had had some of the freshness taken out of him
by the groom....

Sibyl tried by broken phrases, and half-uttered hints, to convey the
idea that Lord Silchester being nearly sixty—at any rate close on
fifty-six—and not of robust health, might not live for ever; though
really she wouldn’t mind if _she_ died first, men were so perfectly
hateful, and so was your family—if you were a woman.  You were expected
to do all you could for your family, and abused into the bargain by
others who held you bound by foolish promises made when you were a mere
girl without any knowledge of the world.  Still, there was a
possibility—just a possibility—for weren’t we all mortal?—that she might
find herself a widow, a lonely widow some day.  Roger by then would have
made a great career, become a sort of Sir Samuel Baker; he’d have
discovered and named lakes after royalty; then they might meet again;
and who could say?  Certainly, if it came to _love_, she wouldn’t deny
she had never felt _quite_ the same towards any one as she had towards
Roger....

But Roger checked such philosophizings rudely, saying they were
positively indecent: at which she expressed herself as very angry.  Then
leading out the horses in eye-flashing silence, Roger helped her to
mount and swung himself into the saddle.  He escorted her silently to
Aldermaston main street, raised his hat, and rode off up the Mortimer
road with a set face and angry eyes on the way back to Basingstoke.

He paused however at Tadley to give his father’s cob—borrowed for the
day—a feed and a rest.  His ride lay through one of the loveliest parts
of England in those days, before "Dora" had commandeered timber from the
woods—to find afterwards she did not want it—before farmers had changed
tiles or thatch on barns to corrugated iron, and chars-à-bancs, motor
cycles and side-cars with golden-haired flappers, school treats and bean
feasts had made the country-side noisy, dangerous and paper-strewn.

Insensibly his mood softened as he rode.  It was more than four years
since he had been home.  Though he had spent all of his youth in this
country, save for school and military college, his eyes seemed never
before to have taken in the charm of English landscapes. Here was
England at its best in the early part of July: poppies blazing in the
green corn and whitish green oats, hay still lingering—grey on green—in
the fields, ox-eyed daisies fully out, wild roses still in bloom in the
hedge-rows, blue crane’s bill, blue vetch, and purple-blue campanulas in
the copse borders.  The plump and placid cows, with swinging udders, so
different from the gaunt African cattle with a scarcely visible
milk-supply, the splendid cart-horses, the sheep—neat and tidy after
shearing—the cock pheasants running across the sun-and-shadow-flecked
roads, the cawing rooks, and the cooing woodpigeons, the geese and
donkeys on the commons.  Here and there, off the main road, park gates
of finely wrought iron with a trim geranium-decked lodge and a vista of
some charming avenue towards an invisible great house; side turnings,
half-overgrown with turf, leading to villages quaintly entitled.  Some
of the details his eye and ear and nose took in—such as the braying of
barrel organs on the fringe of an unseen fair, on a rather burnt and
blackened gipsy-befouled common; or the smell of pig-sties in a hamlet,
or placards in big print pasted round an ancient stump or on an old oak
paling—it was irrational to call beautiful.  But together they made up
England at its best, with old churches packed with the history of
England, the little towns so prosperous, the straggling villages,
beautiful if insanitary, the signposts with their agreeable Anglo-Saxon
and Norman names, so pleasing to the eye after years of untracked
wilderness; the postman trudging his round in red-and-black, the
gamekeeper in velveteen, the hearty labourers in corduroy, blue-shirted,
bare-armed and hairy chested.  All this was England.  "Was there a
jollier country in the world?"  (There was not, in 1886.)

And as to Sibyl....  How differently he saw her now, after four years!
As pretty as paint, though rather overheated after a short ride; but
_how_ artificial! What a delusion to suppose such a woman would have
cared for a rough life in Africa.  Why she even spoke slightingly of
India, a country of romance far exceeding Africa.  Indeed, he had only
turned to Africa and African problems because all the great careers to
be made in India were seemingly over....  There was nothing to be done
in India without powerful backing....

Backing?  It was perhaps silly to have flouted the suggestion of Lord
Silchester’s influence....  It was difficult unless you were related to
permanent officials or members of Parliament to get a Consular
commission in East Africa.  Why not gradually—gradually of course—it
wouldn’t do to forgive her too quickly—become reconciled to Sibyl’s
marriage and pursue instead his second desire, a great African
career?...

So it was a comparatively happy Roger Brentham who cantered up the road
to the vicarage at Farleigh Wallop in the late afternoon of that day and
sat with his sister Maud in the arbour enjoying a sound English tea.
Maud, a pleasant-faced young woman of thirty, the only sister of three
stalwart brothers, one a soldier, another a sailor and the third
intending to be a barrister; housekeeper to her father, an absent-minded
archæologist; could not be called pretty, because she was too much like
a young man of twenty-five with almost a young man’s flat figure, but
she was in every way satisfactory as a sister.  Her father was out on
some archæological ramble and she was glad of it because she thought
Roger might have come to her with a heart to mend.  No doubt he felt
heart-broken over Sibyl’s defection.  She looked at him inquiringly
while she poured out tea, but would not of course broach the subject.

"You’ve been out a long time with the cob.  I hope you haven’t
over-ridden him?  Where did you go?"

"To Silchester and back; but I baited him at Tadley and gave him an
hour’s rest in Basingstoke; and another hour at Silchester.  I’ve jogged
along very quietly, looking up old haunts—and—and I’ve seen Sibyl
Grayburn.  She told me all about her engagement."

"Sibyl?  Then—you don’t mind so much?  I hardly knew how to break it to
you...."

"_Mind_?  Oh, well, there _was_ a boy-and-girl engagement, a flirtation
between us before I went away, as you knew.  But Africa drove all that
out of my mind. Besides, how can I marry on five hundred a year?  I dare
say Sibyl has done well for herself, and she’s getting on.  Girls can’t
afford to wait and look about them like a man can.  By the bye, old
girl, why doesn’t some one come along and marry _you_?  I don’t know a
better sort of wife than _you’d_ make...."

_Maud_: "Thank you, Roger, I’m sure you mean it. But I don’t suppose I
shall ever marry.  My line is to look after father for the rest of his
life, and then become everybody’s aunt.  I’m really his curate, you
know.  And his clerk and his congregation, very often. Oh, I’m quite
happy; don’t pity me; I couldn’t have nicer brothers ... or perhaps a
nicer life.  I love Farleigh——"

_Roger_ (not noticing, man-like, the tiny, tiny sigh that accompanied
this renunciation of marriage): "Jove!  How jolly all this is: you’re
right.  If I wasn’t a man I should think like you.  What could one have
better than this?"  And he looked away from the arbour and the prettily
furnished tea-table to the well-kept lawn with long shadows from the
herbaceous border.  Beyond that the wooded slopes of Farleigh Down and
the distant meadows of the lowland, and then the sun-gilt roofs of
Basingstoke’s northern suburb, and the distant trains, three, four, five
miles away with their trails of cotton-wool smoke indicating a busy
world beyond the quietude of the vicarage garden.  He could see the
slight trace of a straight Roman road athwart the northern landscape,
Winchester to Silchester; the downs of Hannington and Sydmonton and the
far-off woods of Sherborne.  When he was queer with sun-fever in
Somaliland he would sometimes be tantalized by this view, like a mirage,
instead of the brown-grey sun-scorched plains ringed by low ridges of
table-topped mountains and dotted with scrubby acacias, whitened by the
drought ... and would pull himself together, sit upright in the saddle
and wonder if he would ever see home again.  And here he was....  Hang
Sibyl!...


So when Sibyl Grayburn married Lord Silchester at the end of that
July—because he was fifty-six and impatient to have some summer for his
honeymoon before returning to take up the burden—a well-padded one—of
office in the Conservative Government—Captain Roger Brentham was among
the guests, the relations of the bride.  And his best leopard skin,
suitably mounted, was in Sibyl’s boudoir at Englefield awaiting Lady
Silchester’s return from the Tyrol.

                     *      *      *      *      *

And in the winter of 1886, Captain Brentham received from Lord Wiltshire
the offer of a Consulate on the Last Coast of Africa and accepted it.
It was provisionally styled the Consulate for the Mainland of Zangia
where the Germans were already beginning to take up the administration,
but Brentham was instructed to reside at first at Unguja, the island
immediately opposite the temporary German capital.  The British
Consul-General for the whole of Zangia had been recalled because of
heated relations with Germany.  Pending his return Captain Brentham was
to act as Consul-General without, however, taking too much on himself,
as Mr. Bennet Molyneux of the African Department rather acidly told him.

Molyneux, at the Foreign Office, was not at all pleased at Brentham’s
appointment: one of those things that Lord Wiltshire was wont to do
without consulting the permanent officials.  Molyneux had not long been
in the new African Department (hitherto disparagingly connected with the
Slave Trade section); and as Africa had barely entered world-politics,
British Ministers of State showed themselves usually indifferent as to
how the necessary appointments were filled up, adopting generally names
suggested by Molyneux, so that he was accustomed to nominating his poor
relations—he had a reserve of wastrel nephews and cousins—or the friends
of his friends—such as Spencer Bazzard (q.v., as they say in
Encyclopædias).  If they were "rotters," the climate generally killed
them off in a few months; if they made good, they established in time a
claim on the Foreign Office regard and got transferred to Consular posts
in South America, the Mediterranean, and Western Europe.

But Lord Wiltshire was not always asleep or uninformed, as he sometimes
appeared to be.  So his Private Secretary countered Bennet Molyneux’s
querulous Memo on Captain Brentham’s lack of qualification for such a
responsible East African post by reminding him that the gentleman in
question was well versed in Arabic through having accompanied a
Political Mission to the Persian Gulf, that he had served in Aden and
Somaliland and had conducted an expedition to the Snow Mountains of East
Africa for the Intelligence Division, had contributed papers to the
Royal Geographical Society, was a silver medallist of the Zoological
Society, and was personally vouched for by a colleague of Lord
Wiltshire’s: all of which information for the African Department was
summed up by the Private Secretary to Molyneux in a few words: "See
here, Molly; take this and look pleasant.  You can’t have all the
African appointments in your gift.  You must leave a few to the Old Man.
He generally knows what he’s about."  So Molyneux asked Brentham to dine
with him and apparently made the best of a bad job ... as he said with a
grin to his colleague, Sir Mulberry Hawk.




                              *CHAPTER IV*

                            *LUCY HESITATES*


When the school holidays supervened, Lucy spent her vacation quietly at
Aldermaston working at her African outfit—material and mental—in a
desultory way.  She supposed she would have to leave in the following
April to join her betrothed.  April seemed a long while ahead.  She had
not even given notice to the school managers yet of her intention to
give up teaching.  It would not be necessary to do so or to brace her
mind for the agony of separation from her home until John had announced
that all was in readiness and she had received the formal intimation of
his Missionary Society that they approved of her going out to join him
and would make the necessary arrangements for a steamer passage.

Meantime she gave herself up to the delight of reading such books about
African exploration or mission life in Africa as she could obtain from
the Reading libraries.  They served to strengthen her determination to
keep faith with John; while other ties and loves were pulling the other
way.  She had in her veins that imaginational longing to see strange
lands and travel which is such an English trait; yet this longing
alternated with fits of absolute horror at her foolishness in having
consented to such an engagement. Why could she not have recognized when
she was well off?  Could any one in her station of life have a more
delightful home?

The farmstead stood on a slope about a hundred feet above the Kennet
Valley.  The river was a mile away, though little subsidiary brooks and
channels permeated the meadows in between, and in spring, summer and
autumn produced miracles of loveliness in flower shows: purple
loosestrife, magenta-coloured willow herb, mauve-tinted valerian,
cream-coloured meadow-sweet, yellow flags, golden king-cups, yellow and
white water-lilies, water-crowsfoot and flowering rush. Lucy was an
unexpressed, undeveloped artist, with an exceptional appreciation (for a
country girl) of the beauty in colour and form of flowers and herbage of
the velvety, blue-green, black-green cedars which rose above the wall of
the Park and overshadowed the churchyard, of the superb elms, oaks,
horse-chestnuts, ashes and hawthorns studding the grassy slopes between
the house and the water meadows.  She loved the rich crimson colour of
the high old brick walls of the Park and the same tint in the farm
buildings, varied with scarlet and orange and the lemon and grey of
lichen and weather-stain.  The old farm-house in which she had been born
and had passed all her twenty-four years of placid life, save when she
was at boarding-school, seemed to her just perfect in its picturesque
ancientry and its stored smells of preserved good things to eat and
drink.  Their garden was carelessly ordered, but from March to October
had a wealth of flowers, the spicy odours of box borders, the pungent
scent of briar and honeysuckle.

She did take much interest in the details of farming—a trifle of
self-conceit made her think herself superior in her bookishness and
feeble water-colour painting to her younger sisters, who were already
experts in poultry-tending, butter-making, and bread-baking.  But she
accepted as a matter of course the delicious results (as we should think
them now) of living at a well-furnished, well-managed farm: the milk and
cream, the fresh butter and new-laid eggs, the home-cured bacon, the
occasional roast duck and chicken; the smell of the new-mown hay, the
sight of ripe wheat or wheat neatly grouped in its golden sheaves in
chessboard pattern; the September charms of the glinting stubble with
its whirring coveys of partridges, its revived flower shows—scarlet and
blue, bright yellow, dead white, lavender, russet, and mauve; the
walnuts in the autumn from their own trees; the Spanish chestnuts from
the Park; impromptu Christmas dances in the big barn; an occasional
visit to a theatre or a magic-lantern-illustrated lecture in Reading.
On one such occasion she saw for the first time Captain Roger Brentham,
the explorer, who whilst staying with Lord and Lady Silchester gave a
lecture on his recent travels and some wonderful snow mountain he had
visited in East Africa....  Why should she seek to leave such
surroundings?  She could read and hear about all that was most
interesting in the world without leaving her parents and her home.  Yet,
to disappoint poor John, who counted on her coming out to share his
work—and if she threw him over she might never get another offer of
marriage and grow stout and florid like Bessie Rayner, ten years older
than she was, up at the Grange farm....

But _was_ marriage after all, with its children and illnesses and house
drudgery, so _very_ attractive to a dreamer?  Might she not be happier
if she passed all the rest of her life at Aldermaston, saving up her
salary as a school-mistress against old age and a possible leaving of
the farm if—ever so far ahead—dear father died?  She had often thought,
with a little encouragement she might _write_ ... write stories! ... and
she thrilled at the idea.  But then, what experience had she of the
world—the great world beyond southern Berkshire—which she could set down
on paper?

So far, no one had proposed to her—even John had hardly asked her
definitely to marry him.  He had always taken it for granted, since he
was eighteen, that she would, and from that age herself she had tacitly
accepted the position of his fiancée.  Why had she acquiesced?  There
was a weakness of fibre about her and John’s stronger will had impressed
itself on her smiling compliance.  Her mother had rather pursed her lips
at the alliance, having her doubts as to John being good enough, and
John’s mother being even bearable as a mother-in-law.  This faint
opposition had made Lucy determined to persevere with the engagement.
She had a distaste for a farmer type of husband; it seemed too earthy.
And she wanted to travel.  A missionary ought to make a refined spouse
and be able to show her the strange places of the earth.

There were sides of John’s character she did not like. She was not
naturally pious.  The easy-going Church of England and its decorous
faith were good enough for her; she loved this world—the world of the
Kennet Valley with genial, worldly Reading on one side and
not-too-disreputable, racing Newbury on the other—too well to care
overmuch for the Heavenly Home in which John was staking out claims; if
she had known the word she would have called John priggish; instead, she
said "sanctimonious."  Yet withal she was conscious of a certain
manliness, a determined purpose about him....

Perhaps, however, in the summer months and the rich contentment of
September the balance of her inclination might have been tilted against
him, she might have nerved herself to writing that cruel letter which
should say she shrank from joining him in Africa; were it not that he
wrote faithfully from each stopping place, each crisis on his journey.
His letters—closely written in a facile running hand on thin foreign
paper—were stuffed with conventionally pious phrases, they contained
diatribes on his ungodly fellow-passengers who broke the Sabbath (with
an added zest from his remonstrances), played cards for money, told
shocking stories in the smoking-room, and conducted themselves on shore
in a manner which he could not describe.  But then he gave very good
descriptions of Algiers, of Port Said, Suez and Aden, and made her wish
to see these places with her own eyes, smell their strange smells, and
eat their strange viands.  His letter from Unguja announcing his arrival
there in August finally decided Lucy to throw in her lot with John.

There was also the further incentive that African adventure—missionary
and political—was again becoming fashionable and attracting attention.
Stanley was starting to find Emin Pasha; others had embarked or
threatened to embark on the same quest.  More and more missionaries were
going out.  It was rumoured that Ann Jamblin had announced her intention
to take up a missionary career.  Lucy wrote a little anxiously to
inquire.  Ann admitted she had toyed with the idea as she believed
herself capable of teaching and even of preaching to the savage.  But if
she did go it would probably be to West Africa where the climate was
even more deadly than in the South and East, and such a sacrifice might
be more acceptable before the Heavenly Throne than the comfortable and
assured position of a missionary’s wife, not expected to do more than
make a home for her husband.


John’s first Unguja letter said that Thomas, Bayley, Anderson and
himself had been very kindly received there by the Commercial Agent to
the East African Mission—commercial because from the first it had been
decided that a reasonable degree of trade should go hand in hand with
fervent propaganda and Brotherhood work.  The Mission must strive to
make itself self-supporting in the long run as it had no rich church
behind it.  So there were to be lay agents who traded in the products of
the country and whose stores would prove an additional attraction to the
native visitor and inquirer.  The Agent at their Unguja depôt—Mr.
Callaway—had been a trader on the West Coast of Africa, agent there to a
great distilling firm; who had become so shocked at the effects of cheap
intoxicants on the native mind and morals that he had thrown up his
employ and enlisted under the banner of a Trading Mission, pledged not
to deal in alcohol or gunpowder. Mr. Callaway had "got religion" and
"found Christ" (in Liverpool), but in spite of that—the naïve John wrote
thus unthinkingly—was a very pleasant fellow who had soon picked up the
native language and got on good terms with the Arabs of Unguja.  The
latter fully approved of his teetotalism—avoidance of alcohol being one
of the few good points in their religion. John described with unction
the prayer meetings and services they held in Mr. Callaway’s sheds and
go-downs on the shore of Unguja’s port; though he had to admit that his
fervour had been a little modified by the rancid smell of the copra[#]
stored in these quarters and the appalling stench that arose from the
filth on the beach.  But there was plenty of good Christian fellowship
at Unguja.  The representatives of the great Anglican Mission
established there—with a Cathedral and a Bishop and a thoroughly popish
style of service—had shown themselves unexpectedly good fellows.  One of
them, Archdeacon Gravening, had presented the four young recruits for
the East African Mission to the Arab sultan, and they had seen him
review his Baluchi and Persian troops at the head of whom was an English
ex-naval officer.  Even the Fathers of the French Roman Catholic
settlement had a certain elemental Christianity he had never thought to
find in the followers of the Scarlet Woman....


[#] Dried coco-nut pulp.


The great British Balozi or Consul-General who had been the
unacknowledged ruler of Unguja had just left for home ... rumour said
because he could not get on with the aggressive Germans, who were
obtaining a hold over the country.  They had paid their respects instead
to British authority in the person of a very uppish and sneering
Vice-Consul—Mr. Spencer Bazzard ... who had great doubts of the value of
Christianity so far as the negro was concerned. Mr. Bazzard, however,
was dead against the Germans and wanted as many British subjects as
possible to enter the interior behind the German coast so as to "queer
their pitch," if they attempted to put their "rotten protectorate," in
force.

Unguja, John wrote, was a wonderfully interesting island, despite its
horrible smells, its heat and mosquitoes, which never left you alone,
day or night. Such a mixture of Arabs and Persians, Indian traders,
fierce, long-haired Baluchis, plausible Goanese half-castes, Madagascar
people, Japanese and Chinese, and negroes from all parts of Africa....
He had already had a touch of fever and Bayley had broken out in boils;
Anderson had suffered from diarrhoea; but all three were overjoyed at
the prospect of leaving, soon after this letter was posted, in an Arab
"dhow" which would convey them and the porters of their expedition to
Lingani on the mainland, whence they would start on a two weeks’ journey
up-country. They were taking with them Snider rifles and ammunition to
defend their caravan against wild beasts on the road and also to shoot
game for the caravan’s meat supply.  At Mr. Callaway’s advice they had
been practising with these rifles at the shooting butts of the Sultan’s
army for the past week....  Thomas had been told off for Taita....

Then ensued a long silence and Lucy, now thoroughly interested, was
getting anxious.  But in January came a letter of many pages headed
"Hangodi, Ulunga, November, 1886."  John wrote that he and his
companions had encountered many difficulties.  On the fortnight’s march
inland from Lingani their porters had several times run away in alarm,
hearing that a bloodthirsty tribe called "Wahumba" were on the march, or
that there was famine ahead.  The German traders on the coast had not
been friendly, and the attitude of the Arab chiefs in the coast-belt was
surly. However, one of these Arabs, Ali bin Ferhani, was a kindlier man
than the others and had told off some of his slaves (John feared they
were, but what could you do?) to carry their loads to the Ulunga
country.  They also had with them a Christian convert, a native of
Ulunga and a released slave (Josiah Briggs) who could speak English to
some extent and was very useful as an interpreter and head man....
Well, they had reached Hangodi at last and liked its surroundings. There
were mountains—quite high ones—all round. Hangodi, itself, was over
three thousand feet above sea level and quite cool at nights.  Indeed
John now regretted he had spurned the idea of mantel-borders, for they
had fireplaces in the dwelling-houses, both those already built and
those they were planning.  A fire at night, in fact, was often welcome
and cheerful. The Chief approved of the settlement, wanted them to teach
his people, and keep off the "Wa-dachi," as he called the Germans, whom
he did not seem to like. But the Chief’s people, the Wa-lunga, were
suspicious and quarrelsome, and as he could not speak their language and
had to explain the Gospel through an interpreter, they paid him little
attention.  The elders of the tribe liked to come and talk with him in
his verandah, that is to say, _they_ did the talking—punctuated by a
good deal of snuff-taking and spitting; and he gleaned what he could of
its sense from the summaries given to him by Josiah Briggs.  It seemed
to consist of many questions as to how the white men became so rich and
why he could not teach this method to their young people.  If he tried
to expound Sacred things to them they asked in return for a cough
medicine or to be shown how to make gunpowder and caps, and how to cure
a sick cow.  Yet he felt sure their minds would be pierced ere long by a
gleam of Gospel light....

There were also some Muhammadan traders from the Coast settled for a
time with the Chief, who, he strongly suspected, was selling them
slaves, war-captives. Though the Chief seemed willing to listen to their
story of the Redeemer, he nevertheless sent out his "young men," his
warriors, on raiding expeditions against the tribes to the south, and
they sometimes returned from such forays with cattle, with men cruelly
tied with bush-rope and their necks fastened to heavy forked sticks, and
with weeping young women whom they took as wives....  The Wangwana, as
these black "Arabs" were called, were very hostile to his mission—more
so sometimes than the real Arabs. Occasionally he had met a
white-skinned Arab who reminded him most strongly of the Bible
patriarchs, and who seemed very desirous of being on friendly terms with
the white man.  But these black Arabs who spoke Swahili, the language of
Unguja, though they affected outward politeness, were working hard
against the good influence of the East African Mission and trying to
persuade the Chief to reconsider his first grant of land and expel the
white people who were spies in the service of the great Balozi and the
English men-of-war, watching to intercept slave dhows....

The children of the Wa-lunga were frightened of him and his two
companions and could not be induced, even by gifts of beads, to sit on
their knees.  But their mothers, on the other hand, worried the white
men incessantly for beads and calico, soap and salt, which last they ate
as though it was a sweetmeat.  Yet they ran away when he sent for the
interpreter and tried to tell them about God.  One woman had shouted
back at him that it was very wicked to talk about God; it would only
draw down the lightning ... much better leave God alone and then He left
you alone—this at least was how Josiah had translated her speech.

He could not see any idols about the place.  He fancied the people
worshipped the spirits of the departed, which they believed to dwell in
large hollow trees.  They were also terribly afraid of witch-craft....

Hangodi was, however, rather a pretty district, and Lucy would be
pleased with the site the Mission had chosen.  Bayley, who had some
knowledge of surveying, made out its altitude above sea-level to be
3,500 feet, more or less.  There was a clear stream of water running
through a gorge below the Mission enclosure—for they had constructed a
rough hedge.  A few wild date palms might be seen in the stream valley
and there were plenty of pretty ferns and wild flowers.

As to lions; they could be heard roaring every night in the open
country, but hitherto he had not actually seen one.  Then with a few
devout phrases and others expressive of his longing for her to join him
the letter came to a conclusion.


During all this time Lucy saw little of the Baines family.  But a few
days after she had read this letter from Hangodi, Mr. Baines called on
Lucy at the school—it was at the beginning of February—and put into her
hands a copy of _Light to Them that Sit in Darkness_. "There’s a letter
in here of John’s which they’ve printed," said Mr. Baines with
considerable exultation, "and mother thought you might like to read it.
Mind you return the magazine to her when you’ve done so. Good-bye.
S’pose you are starting in a couple of months?"

Lucy found a column scored at the side with pencil, where the following
matter appeared:


                     BLESSED NEWS FROM EAST AFRICA

We have received the following intelligence from Brother John Baines,
who has recently joined the East African Mission:

HANGODI, NGURU,
       _November_ 20, 1886.

MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON,—

We arrived here about a month ago after a pleasant stay with the
brethren at Unguja.  We reached Hangodi in about two weeks of travel
from the port of Lingani, accompanied by Broth’s Anderson and Bayley,
and were greeted most warmly on arrival by Brothers Boley and
Batworth—the "busy B.’s," as they are called—who feared from the rumours
afloat that we should be stopped by native disturbances on the road.  We
brought with us from Unguja Josiah Briggs, a convert who was originally
a freed slave from this very district of Hangodi.  He has lived for five
years at our depôt in Unguja or at the Presbyterian Mission station at
Dombasi.  He will be able to assist me materially as interpreter among
the Wa-lunga as Kagulu is his native tongue.

The journey from Lingani to Hangodi was rather a fatiguing one as the
donkeys we took with us to ride either fell sick poisoned by some herb,
or strayed and were eaten by lions.  So we ended by having to walk.  Our
Unguja porters ran away before we had got far inland, scared by rumours
of Wahumba raids or stories of the famine raging in the interior; but a
kindly Arab, who is supposed to have known Dr. Livingstone, came to our
assistance and sent a large number of his people to convey us and our
loads to Ulunga, as this district is called (the root—_lunga_—means the
"good" or the "beautiful" country, as indeed it will be, when it has
received the Blessed Gospel).

Mr. Goulburn, who is pioneering and is "spying out the land" to the
north, travelled with us as far as Gonja and then quitted us, after we
had prayed together in my tent.  We turned south and continued our
journey to the Ulunga mountains with the Arab’s porters and guided by
Josiah Briggs.

The country became very hilly, and as it was the beginning of the rainy
season we had occasional violent thunder-storms and the streams were
difficult to cross.  Fortunately, however, the early arrival of the
rains kept us from attacks on the part of the terrible roving tribes of
Masai or "Wahumba," who only seem to exist to raid and ravage their
agricultural neighbours, but who don’t like doing so in wet weather.
Moreover, they appreciate the springing up of the new green grass after
the drought and prefer taking their cattle—whom they worship—out to
graze.  This new grass attracts to the district incredible herds of
antelopes and zebras and gives the lions and leopards such abundance of
food and occupation that they never deemed it worth their while to
attack our caravan, though during the dry season—the Arabs told us—you
could hardly get through the plains without losing a proportion of your
carriers from lions, leopards or hyenas.  This early breaking of the
rainy season therefore seemed to us an act of special intervention on
the part of Divine Providence to ensure our safe arrival at our
destination.  When we reached Hangodi we were hospitably received by the
Chief Mbogo, to whom Brother Batworth introduced us.  Mbogo rules over
the district of Ulunga.  He rejoiced greatly that we had come to teach
the Gospel and asked me many questions about the Christian faith.  An
earnest spirit of inquiry prevails amongst all his people, who are
flocking to see us and who listen with rapt attention to my simple
exhortations delivered through the medium of Josiah.  The Arab traders
at this place are very annoyed that an English missionary should settle
here and expose their wicked traffic in slaves, but I hope to be able to
frustrate their intrigues and induce the Chief to expel them.  For that
reason I am working hard at the language with Josiah and with the
vocabularies I have obtained from Mr. Goulburn and Mr. Boley.

Many of the women in this place are eager to hear the blessed tidings
and bring their little ones with them while they listen spell-bound to
our teaching.  I trust soon to have beside me one whose sweet duty it
will be to lead these poor sinful creatures into the way of Truth and
Life....

The building of the houses, school and chapel was commenced, as you
know, two years ago by Brothers Boley and Batworth, whom we relieved,
and who are going to Taita to perform similar work for Mr. Goulburn.  In
completing the station we shall be our own architects, but Mr. Callaway
has sent us up two Swahili masons and a Goanese carpenter from Unguja.
Anderson is already doing a brisk business at our improvised store.

And now, dear Mr. Thompson, I remain in all Christian love,

Yours sincerely,
       JOHN BAINES.




                              *CHAPTER V*

                          *ROGER’S DISMISSAL*


"So it is really settled, Roger, that you are to go out to that African
place with the violent name—something about ’gouging’ I know," said Lady
Silchester, one evening in the winter-spring of 1887.

She believed she was _enceinte_ and treated herself—and was being
treated—with the utmost consideration. Lord Silchester was transfused
with delight at the possibility of having a direct heir and promised
himself the delicious revenge of taunting those officious friends and
advisers who had taxed him with folly in marrying a woman thirty years
younger than himself.  So she was lying on a couch in the magnificent
drawing-room of 6a Carlton House Terrace, clad in some anticipation of
the tea-gown.  It was nine o’clock in the evening, and Roger Brentham
had been summoned to dine alone with her and her husband and talk over
his personal affairs.  Lord Silchester would presently leave for the
House of Lords; meantime he was half listening to their conversation,
half absorbed in a volume of Cascionovo’s _Neapolitan Society in the
Eighteenth Century_ in its French edition.

Roger, with one eye and one ear on Lord Silchester, replied "Yes.  Lord
Wiltshire has definitely offered me the appointment—through Tarrington,
of course—his Private Secretary; and equally definitely I’ve accepted
it.  But technically it’s not Unguja, nothing so big.  Unguja is an
Agency and Consulate-General and is still held by Sir James Eccles, who
is only at home on leave of absence.  My post is a Consulate for the
mainland, for the part the German company is taking over.  It is styled
’for the mainland of Zangia with residence at the port of Medina.’  It
is supposed the Germans are going to style their new protectorate
’Zangia,’ the old classical name of the Persians for that part of East
Africa."

Sibyl Silchester yawned slightly and concealed the yawn with her fan of
Somali ostrich plumes which Roger had given her.  Lord Silchester put
down his book and turned suddenly towards Roger.

"How do you get on at the F.O.?"

"Oh, pretty well, sir," replied Roger, who still kept up his military
manners with older men in higher positions than his own.  "Pretty well.
I’ve been working in the African Department all the autumn and I think
I’ve got the hang of things; I mean, how to conduct a Consulate and the
sort of policy we are to observe in East Africa.  I’ve been down in
Kent, also, staying with Sir James Eccles and being indoctrinated by him
with the aims and ambitions he has been pursuing ever since 1866.  He’s
a grand man!  I hope they send him back.  I should be proud to serve
under him.  Of course, I saw something of him at Unguja in ’85-’86..."

"H’m, well, I’ve no business to express an opinion, but I much doubt
whether Wiltshire _will_ send him back—Wiltshire sets much value on good
terms with Germany, and Eccles is hated by the Germans...."

_Roger_: "I know....  They’ve told me I must try to maintain friendly
relations with our Teutonic friends, especially as I am to be, when the
Consul-General returns, ’on my own,’ so to speak, in the German sphere
of influence.  Meantime I am to live at Unguja and ’act’ for the
Consul-General till he or some one else comes out.  Awfully good of you,
sir, to get this chance for me ... it’s rare good luck to be going out
to act straight away for a man like Eccles.... I’ll try my utmost to do
you credit."

_Silchester_: "I don’t doubt you will.  But don’t rely too much on my
personal influence.  I’m only Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ... a
minister without portfolio, so to speak.  Cultivate the friendship of
the permanent officials.  Once you’re in—I mean once a Secretary of
State has given you the appointment, _they_ are the people who count.  I
remember when I was in diplomacy there was rather an uppish young fellow
from the 11th Hussars who’d been somebody’s A.D.C. in the Abyssinian
War. Dizzy, to oblige ’somebody,’ shoved him into the Slave Trade
Commission.  He took himself and his duties seriously and really did go
for the American slave-traders.  An Under Secretary hauled him over the
coals for _trop de zèle_.  Lord Knowsley supported him.  The Under
Secretary sent for him afterwards and said, ’Remember this, Bellamy;
Lord Knowsley is not _always here_.  WE ARE.’  And sure enough after
Knowsley left they found out something against him and ’outed’ him from
the service.  Moral: always keep in with the permanent officials and
you’ll never fall out with the Secretary of State.  Do you get on all
right with ’Lamps’?"

_Roger_: "Sir Mulberry?  I scarcely ever see him. He’s much too big a
pot to take an interest in me. Besides, he’s keenest about the Niger
just now.  No, I have mostly to do with Bennet Molyneux, who is head of
the Department; and I’m afraid I don’t care overmuch for him.  I like
awfully the clerks in the Department except that they don’t take Africa
very seriously, think it all a joke, a joke bordering rather on boredom.
Still, they’re some of the jolliest fellows I know.  It’s Molyneux I
can’t hit it off with, and they say in the Department it’s because I’ve
come in between some poor relation, some cousin of his he wants to push
on out there.  He got him appointed a Vice-Consul a year or two back and
thought he was going to be asked to act for Eccles whilst he was on
leave.  And now that Lord Wiltshire has said _I_ am to—I don’t doubt at
your suggestion, sir—Molyneux has turned quite acid.  Especially when he
had to draft my instructions! I think also he didn’t like my setting him
right when I first came to work in the office.  He wrote some minutes
about the Slave Trade and about the Germans which were the uttermost
rubbish you ever read, and he never forgave me for not backing him up at
a departmental committee they held—Sir Mulberry presided.  And the mere
fact that Thrumball and Landsdell have been awfully kind to me and had
me to dine with them seems to have soured him.  And when one day Lord
Wiltshire sent for me to answer some questions—Well, I thought
afterwards Molyneux would have burst with spleen.  He threw official
reserve to the winds and walked up and down in his big room
raving—’_I’ve_ been in this office since 1869,’ he said, ’and I don’t
believe Lord Wiltshire knows me by sight.  Yet he’s ready to send for
the veriest outsider if he thinks he can get any information out of him.
The Office is going to the dogs—and so on....’"

_Lord Silchester_: "Molyneux, Bennet Molyneux. I know him.  Not a bad
fellow in some respects, but a bad enemy to make.  He is a kind of
cousin of Feenix’s—Colonial Office, you know.  Well, your fate is in
your own hands ... you must walk warily..." (at this a servant enters
and informs his lordship that the carriage is waiting) "I must be off.
Sibyl! you _won’t_ stay up late?  Roger, don’t talk to her for more than
an hour.  Good-bye.  Of course, you’ll come and see us before you
actually sail?..." (goes out).

A pause.

_Sibyl_: "You may smoke now; but only a cigarette, not a cigar."  (Roger
lights a cigarette.)

_Sibyl_: "What dear old Francis said was very good advice.  Mind you
follow it.  Get on the right side of these old permanencies.  Whenever
Francis begins his instances and illustrations I feel what a perfect
book of reminiscences he will some day write.  But, of course, it
wouldn’t do till he’s reached an age when he can no longer serve in the
Government....  I want him some day to be at the Foreign Office or at
least the India Office.  I do so love the pomp of those positions, the
great parties in the season, the entertaining of delightful creatures
from the East with jewelled turbans...."

_Roger_ (a little abruptly): "Are you happy....?"

_Sibyl_ (turning her head and looking at him intently): "_Happy_?  Why,
_of course_.  _Perfectly_ happy.  Everything has gone splendidly.  And
now that I’m going to have a child....  I do hope it’ll be a boy.
Francis would be so happy.  You quite realize if he has no heir the
peerage and all the entailed estates go away to some perfectly horrid
second cousin out in Australia...."

_Roger_: "In view of that possibility I wonder he did not marry years
ago, when he was a young man...."

_Sibyl_: "My dear!  How _could_ he?  He was a younger son and in the
diplomatic service with barely enough to live on, respectably.  And then
he got tangled up with another man’s wife.  He thinks I know nothing
about that side of him, but as a matter of fact I know everything.  His
elder brother, the fifth Lord Silchester, was an awfully bad lot—treated
his wife very badly—they were separated and their only son was brought
up by his mother to be dreadfully goody-goody.  Francis’s elder brother
died in Paris—I daresay you have heard or read where and how.  It was
one of the closing scandals of the Second Empire. But then the
goody-goody son married after he succeeded—married a sister of Lord
Towcester.  She was killed in the hunting field and her rather limp
husband died of grief afterwards, or of consumption, and Francis came
into the title rather unexpectedly five years ago.  Then he was
embarrassed by his Darby and Joan attachment to Mrs. Bolsover.—However,
then _she_ died—and so—at last he felt free to marry....

"I met him first at a croquet party at Aldermaston Park.  I saw _at
once_ he was struck with me.... However, we won’t go over the old
argument again which we talked out that day at Silchester....  D’you
remember?  My ankles were so bitten by harvest-bugs after sitting on
those mounds, _I_ shan’t forget!..." (meditates)....  "I’m much happier
than if I had married you....  My dear, that would _never_ have done....
But that need not prevent our being the _best_ of friends, the most
attached of cousins....  It’s a bore having a confinement in the Jubilee
year.... I’d meant to rival Suzanne Feenix in my entertainments.... But
if I give Silchester a boy, he will refuse me _nothing_....  And I mean,
as soon as I’m up and about again, to push him on.  He’s rich—those
Staffordshire mines and potteries.  He’s got _lots_ of ability, but he’s
too fond of leisure and isn’t quite ambitious enough.  Complains of
being tired....  He’s only 57 ... but he much prefers spending the
evening at home and reading history and memoirs.  Still, if Lord
Wiltshire gets overworked at the Foreign Office, Francis simply _must_
succeed him.  He knows everything about foreign policy from A to Z,
after serving so many years in Vienna and Rome....  Well, dear old boy,
this is _really_ good-bye.  Make good out there, and don’t make a fool
of yourself with some grass widow going out, or some fair
missionaryess.... I suppose some of them _are_ fit to look at? ... Play
up to the permanencies, and try to write some dispatch that’ll interest
Lord Wiltshire.  Then Silchester may get a chance of putting his oar in
and have you shifted to a better post and a more healthy one.  After
that _I’ll_ take a hand and marry you to some nice girl with a little
money....  I wonder whether you’ll feel lonely out there?  But men never
are, so long as they can move about and get some shooting ... which
reminds me I want a _lot_ more leopard skins.  Don’t mount them: I like
to choose my own colours——"

(Enter Lady Silchester’s maid.)

_Maid_: "My lady, before his lordship went out he said I was to remind
your ladyship about going to bed early, so I ventured..."

"Quite right, Sophie....  I’ll come up in one minute."  (Exit maid.)
"By the bye, Roger, I ought to ask after the other cousins.  How’s
Maud?"  (Roger intimates that good old Maud’s all right.)  "Maud is an
excellent creature; I’ve always said so, though in a sort of
tight-lipped way she’s never approved of me. Because she’s lost her own
complexion in field sports and parish work Maud suspects all other young
women of powdering and painting.  And Geoffrey?"

"Geoffrey’s ship is coming back in May and then he ought to get some
leave; and to save your time, I might mention that Maurice will probably
be called to the bar in the autumn if he satisfies the Benchers; and as
to father, he’s more gone over to Rome than ever...."

"You mean Silchester?"

"Yes.  The vicar there is as frantic a ’Romanist’ as he is, and together
they’ve had a rare old quarrel with the farmer who grows corn where you
got the harvest-bug bites, and objects to excavations.  I think father
forgets at times he’s a nineteenth century Christian....  He is awfully
annoyed at the general opinion that Silchester only dates from Christian
times in Britain and that the Temple to Venus is really a Christian
church.  That’s what comes from a Classical education....  Now I shall
get into a row with your spouse for keeping you up.  Besides.  You don’t
_really_ care for the others...."

_Sibyl_: "To be frank, I don’t.  You were the only one that interested
me....  I ... well, then, Roger, this is the last good-bye but one..."
(extends her hand on which he imprints a kiss).  "That’s quite enough
show of affection; Sophie might come back at any moment and forget we
are cousins.  By the bye, it might be wise if you got some one—I dare
say Francis would—to introduce you to the Feenixes before you go.  They
might serve to mitigate the hostility of Bennet Molyneux.  Only don’t
fall in love with Suzanne and desert _me_!  She’s got the Colonies, it’s
true, but I’m going to have the Foreign Office before you’re back....
You mark my words!  Ta-ta! Coming, Sophie."




                              *CHAPTER VI*

                            *THE VOYAGE OUT*


Lucy said to herself she had never felt so miserable in her life as she
did during the first night on board the _Jeddah_, the British India
Co.’s steamer that was taking her to East Africa.  She occupied one of
the upper berths in the cabins off the Ladies’ Saloon, in which there
were, as far as she could reckon, five or six other occupants, including
the stewardess, who passed her time alternately snoring on a mattress in
a coign off the main entrance and waiting on such of the ladies as were
sea-sick.

The _Jeddah_ was rolling about in a choppy sea oft the Downs.  Lucy felt
a horrible sensation of nausea creep over her at times, and she clenched
her teeth to repress her inclination to vomit; for she was too shy to
call upon the much-occupied stewardess for assistance. The back of her
head throbbed with pain, her eyes were burning hot with unshed tears,
and her poor throat ached with suppressed sobs.  Far worse than the
physical discomfort of sea-sickness was the intensity of her mental
agony, the bitterness of her unavailing regrets.  She lay motionless in
her narrow bunk, gazing up at the ceiling which seemed almost to rest on
her face, and turned over in her memory ceaselessly and with minute
detail the events of the last three days: her farewell to home and
"darling" Aldermaston; her parting with mother on the platform at
Reading ... and father ... the flying journey to London, when she had
almost forgotten her grief in the excitement of seeing the metropolis;
her two days stay with Aunt Pardew, who with her husband kept Pardew’s
Family Hotel in Great Ormond Street. Then: the sight-seeing, the
shopping, the visit to the offices of the East African Mission.  Here
she had received her saloon passage ticket in the _Jeddah_, and twenty
pounds in bright sovereigns for her out-of-pocket expenses by the way.
The Secretary had spoken to her so kindly and earnestly that she had
felt ashamed of her indifference to the real work of converting black
people.

The Secretary, however, had said one thing that somehow perturbed her.
He had mentioned that a sweet-natured young woman from her
neighbourhood—Sister Jamblin—might also be going to their Mission in
East Africa—by the next boat.  He thought this would cheer Lucy up;
instead of which it annoyed her greatly....  Then came the early rising
on what seemed like her execution morning; the hasty breakfast,
interrupted with trickling tears and nose-blowing on Aunt Pardew’s—Aunt
Ellen’s—part, as well as hers....  Aunt Ellen was so like darling
mother—and yet—it wasn’t mother—...

And the long rattle through dirty and dirtier streets in a four-wheel
cab with the rest of her luggage on top. The arrival on board the
steamer in the docks, where everything was noisy, hurried, and confused
with preparations for departure....  Only this morning! Only some twelve
hours since she had taken leave with despairing hugs of Aunt Ellen!
Why, it seemed at least a month ago.  And only three days since she had
seen her mother!...

When she mentally uttered the word "mother," she lost control over
herself and gave vent to a convulsive choking sob..

"Would you oblige me," exclaimed a peevish voice from the berth below,
"by calling for the stewardess to bring you a basin if you have any
inclination to be sick? It would be much better than trying to keep it
back and making those disagreeable clicking noises in your throat.
Excuse me for remarking it, but it is really most distressing, and it
fidgets me so I can hardly get to sleep.  You really suffer _much_ more
by endeavouring to repress sea-sickness than by giving way _at once_ and
having it over...."  This the speaker added because she had just given
way herself—eruptively—and was now resting from her labours.  Lucy was
so startled and overawed by this unexpected interruption to her thoughts
that she made no answer; but lay quite silent with flushing cheeks and
beating heart.  "It must be the tall, thin lady," she thought to
herself, "I didn’t remember she was so close."

Then her thoughts turned to her fellow-passengers. As far as she had
ascertained, there were only nine besides herself: five ladies, two
Roman Catholic priests or missionaries, and two men, one of whom was a
Captain Brentham going out to Unguja, where he was to be Consul.

So, at least, she had heard the pink-cheeked lady say, rather tossing
her head when she said it.  Her aunt had timidly accosted two of the
ladies before leaving the steamer.  She had asked them with a redundancy
of polite phrases to take Lucy under their protection as far as they
might be travelling together.  One of them was tall and thin, with a
large bony face and cold grey eyes—a little suggestive of Mrs. Baines
(Lucy thought); the other was pretty, though the expression of her face,
even when she smiled and showed all her white teeth, was somehow rather
insincere.  But she had the most lovely complexion Lucy had ever seen.
It was perfect: very pink in the middle of the cheeks and the palest
blush tint over the rest of the face and neck.  Her eyes were a dark
blueish grey, with very black rims; and her hair a rich golden brown.
Lucy was so much fascinated by her appearance and stared at her with
such unconscious persistence while her aunt was talking, that at last
the pink-cheeked lady encountered her steady gaze with a look of haughty
surprise which caused Lucy to lower her eyes.

Neither lady responded very cordially to Mrs. Pardew’s deferential
request.  The tall thin one had said she was only going as far as
Algiers, but asked if Lucy was "a Church person" because the East
African Mission, she had heard, was run by Methodists.  The pretty lady,
whose attire Lucy was again scanning with attention, because it was in
the latest fashion, had looked at her with rather more interest and
said: "Going out to marry a missionary?  Well, I can’t say I envy your
experiences.  It must be a wretched life up-country, from all I hear.
We shall travel together as far as Unguja, but I can’t offer to act as
your chaperon.  It is very likely my husband may marry you when you get
there.  I mean—" (seeing Lucy’s look of dismay)—"he is the ’marriage’
officer there at present, unless Captain Brentham is to deprive him of
_that_ privilege, also"—(here she had given a bitter laugh)....  "If you
feel lonely at any time on the voyage you may come and chat with me ...
occasionally; though I can’t tell you very much about Africa as I have
never been there before."


Slowly the night wore away.  Lucy as she lay awake stifled her regrets
by vowing that when the steamer called at Plymouth she would instantly
leave it and return home to her parents, and write to John telling him
she was not fitted to be a missionary’s wife.  He would soon get over
his disappointment as Ann Jamblin was going out by the next steamer.
_She_ would marry him like a shot....

In the small hours of the morning the sea calmed down and the ship
rolled less.  The passenger who had suffered most from sea-sickness—a
poor tired-looking woman, mother of too many children—ceased to retch
and groan and sank into exhausted repose.  Even Lucy at last wove her
troubled thoughts into dreams, but just as she had dreamt that _this_
was only a dream and that in reality she was embracing her mother in a
transport of happiness, she awoke with tears wet on her face and saw the
cabin lit up with garish daylight streaming through the now open
skylight.  A fresh, exhilarating breeze was sweeping through the stuffy
saloon and chasing the nasty odour of sea-sickness. She sat up in her
bunk and gazed blankly round, trying to realize the difference between
dreamland and reality.

"Would ye like a bath, Miss?" said the stewardess, a coarse-looking but
kind-hearted Irishwoman, never quite free from a suspicion of spirit
drinking: "Would ye like a bath?  Becase if so, ye’d betther follow Mrs.
Bazzard."

"I—I—don’t know ... well, yes, I think I will," replied Lucy, wondering
who Mrs. Bazzard was ... didn’t the name come into John’s letters?  Just
then the door leading out of the saloon towards the bathroom opened and
presumably Mrs. Bazzard entered the Ladies’ quarters, carrying towels
and robed in a white lace-trimmed _peignoir_, and with her hair roughly
piled on the top of her head and a lank fringe parted to either side.
"Why, it must be the lady with the beautiful complexion," Lucy was
saying to herself, when she saw on nearer approach that the rosy cheeks
and blush tints had disappeared, and that the incomer, though otherwise
resembling her acquaintance of yesterday, yet had a pale face,
colourless and sad.  "Poor thing!" thought Lucy, "_how_ she must have
suffered last night."  And so great was her compassion that it overcame
her shyness, and she was about to condole with the lady, when Mrs.
Bazzard swept by her abruptly without recognition.

When her toilet was finished, she felt ill-at-ease among the uncongenial
inmates of the Ladies’ Saloon, and they directed towards her at times a
look of hatred as at one who was prying into the mysteries of their
clothing and bedizenment; so acting on the advice of the stewardess "to
get up a bit of appetite," she staggered along the corridor and climbed
the slippery brass-bound stairway till she reached the upper-deck. Here
she sank on to the nearest seat and derived her first pleasurable
sensation on board the steamer from inhaling the sea-scented breeze in
the sunshine of April.  It was indeed a fine morning, one of the first
emphatic days of spring.  The sky was a pale azure in the zenith and
along the northern horizon a thin film of pinkish mist veiled the
distant line of coast.  A man cleaning the brasswork told Lucy they were
passing the Isle of Wight; yonder was Bournemouth and presently she
would see Portland Bill looming up.

A tall man, smoking a cheroot, was gazing in the direction of Portland
Bill.  Presently he turned round in Lucy’s direction, looked at her
rather hard then began pacing the deck.  "That," she reflected, "must be
Captain Brentham, who lectured at Reading on that snow mountain....
_How_ extraordinary!  And he must be the man Mrs. ... Mrs. ... Bazzard
said was to marry me to John when I arrived."  She raised her eyes and
they met his.  On his next turn in walking the deck he paused
irresolute, then raising his cap said: "Are you the young lady from my
part of the country who is going out to Unguja to be married?  The
Captain told me about you—unless I have made some mistake and ought to
be addressing another lady."

"I think it must be me," said Lucy.  "I ... I’ve heard you lecture once
at Reading.  You’re a friend of Lord Silchester’s, aren’t you?  My
father is one of his tenants.  We live at Aldermaston."  Her voice
trembled a little in pronouncing the name of the place she now loved—too
late—beyond any other.

"Aldermaston—_of course_ I know it, known it from boyhood.  I rode over
there several times last year to see my cousins, the Grayburns.  One of
them married Lord Silchester last July, and that’s why I stayed at
Englefield and gave the Reading lecture....  So you came and heard it?"

"I did; because, as I was going out to marry a missionary, I thought I
ought to learn something about East Africa.  Your ... your lecture made
me want to go—awfully....  That wonderful mountain, those clumps of
palms, the river and the hippopotami—or was it a lake?"

"Well, you’ll see lots of such things if you are going up-country.  Whom
are you going to marry and where is he stationed?"

"Mr. John Baines, the East African Mission, Ulunga...."

"Oh" (rather depreciatively), "Nonconformist, Plymouth Brethren, or
something of the kind.  Now I think of it I went to a big meeting of
theirs last year soon as I came back.  Yes, _I_ remember.  They’re a
trading and industrial mission some distance inland, in the British as
well as the German sphere ... good sort of folk, though their mouths are
full of texts ... but they took me in once when I was half dead with
fever and nursed me back to health.  And I liked the way they set to
work to make the best of the country and the people....  But it will be
awfully rough for you; you don’t look cut out for what they have to go
through.  I should have thought the Anglican Mission more your style,
if, indeed, you went out as a Missionary at all."

He wished to add, "You’re much too pretty," but restrained himself.
Just then the breakfast gong sounded and they went down to the Dining
Saloon. Brentham rather masterfully strode to near the top of the long
table as though knowing he was the most important person on board, and
placed himself next but one to the Captain’s seat and Lucy on his right,
with a wink at the same time to the Chief Steward as though to say "Fix
this arrangement."

A moment after another lady with gold hair and a dazzling complexion
glided up and nimbly took the seat on Brentham’s left hand.  The Captain
was absent and intimated that they needn’t expect him till the _Jeddah_
was away from Plymouth and out of the Channel.  The other lady
passengers were breakfasting in the Ladies’ Saloon.  As soon as they
were seated and porridge was being offered, the lady on Brentham’s left
introduced herself as the wife of a colleague: "My husband is Spencer
Bazzard, the Vice-Consul at Unguja—I dare say you’ve heard about him at
the F.O.?  He’s a friend of that dear Bennet Molyneux’s, to whom we’re
both _devoted_.... _Such_ a grasp of African affairs, don’t you think
so?  My husband already knows Unguja through and through.  I’m sure
he’ll be glad to put you up to the ropes.  I’ve never been there before.
Spencer thought he ought to go out first and make a home for me, so I’ve
been a forlorn grass widow for over a year. However, we shall soon be
reunited.  And I understand we’re to look on you as our chief till the
Consul-General returns.  Spencer’s been Sir James’s right-hand man.
Thank you.  Toast, please.  No, I won’t take butter: it looks so odd.
Like honey!  Ugh!"

After breakfast, Brentham escorted Lucy to the upper-deck, got her a
folding chair and secured it in a sheltered corner, made her
comfortable, lent her a novel and a rug, and then resumed his pacing of
the deck or occasional study of a language book—he was trying, he told
Lucy, to master Swahili by doing Steere’s exercises in that harmonious
tongue. Mrs. Bazzard commandeered a steward and a deck-chair and
established herself close to Lucy with a piece of showy embroidery,
bought at Liberty’s with half the embroidery done.  In a condescending
manner she set herself to pump Lucy about Brentham....  Did she know him
well?  Didn’t she think him good-looking? Mrs. Bazzard thought of the
two her husband was the finer-looking man.  He had longer moustaches and
they were a golden brown, like Mrs. Bazzard’s hair; he wasn’t perhaps
_quite_ so tall; but _how_ she was looking forward to reunion with him.
He was a paragon of husbands, one of the Norfolk Bazzards.  His elder
brother, a person of great legal acumen, had from time to time tendered
advice of signal value to Mr. Bennet Molyneux....  It was thus they had
got "in" with the Foreign Office, and if Mrs. Bazzard were not pledged
to inviolable secrecy (because of Spencer’s career) there were things
she knew and things she could tell about Lord Wiltshire’s intentions
regarding Africa—and Spencer....  However....  Did Miss—she begged
pardon—she had not caught Lucy’s name....  Josselin?  any connexion of
Sir Martin Josselin?  Oh, _Josling_....  Did Miss Josling come from
Captain Brentham’s part of the country?  Not a relation?  No, of course
not....  Well, did she think him clever?  Some—in the Foreign
Office—regarded him as _superficial_.  It was his good looks that had
got him on, and the friendship of a great lady ... but then _what_
scandal-mongers _men_ were!  And _how_ jealous of one another!  Mrs.
Bazzard’s husband had got _his_ commission through sheer, outstanding
ability, yet at the time people said the most _horrid_ things, both of
him and her....  But Lord Wiltshire had remained unshaken, knowing
Spencer’s value; and undoubtedly held him in view for a very important
post in Africa as soon as he should have inducted Captain Brentham into
his duties.

Lunch came in due course and was eaten in better appetite by most of the
passengers.  It was served with coarse plenty, on a lower-middle-class
standard of selection and cuisine.

It was a sunny afternoon when the _Jeddah_ anchored in Plymouth harbour.
The passengers were informed they might spend four hours on shore, so
Captain Brentham proposed to Lucy and to Mrs. Bazzard that he should
take them under his escort and give them their last chance of eating a
decent dinner at an English hotel.  Mrs. Bazzard accepted with a gush of
thanks and a determination to commence a discreet flirtation with the
acting Consul-General, who was undoubtedly a handsome man.  Lucy
assented simply to the proposition. She was still a little dazed in the
dawn of her new life.  But as she went off with the others in the tug
she put aside as an unreasonable absurdity any idea of flight to the
railway station and a return home. It was a great stay to her
home-sickness that there should be on board some one she knew who almost
shared her home country, who had actually met people she had met, and
who would carry this home knowledge out with him to the same region in
Africa as that she was going to.  This removed the sting of her regret
and remedied her sense of utter friendlessness in the wilds.  Was he not
actually to be _her_ Consul?

These reflections caused her to sit down in the Hotel Writing Room,
whilst dinner was being got ready, and Mrs. Bazzard was titivating, and
dash off a hasty letter to "dearest mother" informing her of the
brighter outlook.  Her mother, overjoyed at this silver lining to the
cloud of bereavement, spread the news; and so it reached Englefield,
where Lord Silchester was spending the Easter recess.  He retailed it to
Sibyl ... who stamped her foot on the library carpet and said: "_There_!
_Didn’t_ I predict it?  I _said_ he’d fall in love with a
missionaryess!"

"And why not, my love?" replied Lord Silchester. "What if he does?"

A little tossing on the Bay of Biscay sent Mrs. Bazzard to her cabin,
and made more scanty the public attendance at meals.  But Lucy proved as
good a sailor as Brentham, and a great solace to him.  For he had his
unacknowledged home-sickness too.  You could not spend nine months in
the best of English country life and the most interesting aspects of
London without a revulsion of feeling when you found yourself cut off
from all communication with those scenes of beauty, splendour and
absolute comfort, and before high ambition had been once more aroused,
and the unexplored wilderness had again beckoned her future ravisher.
Lucy might be merely a farmer’s daughter, a little better educated than
such usually were at that period, still an unsophisticated country chit
(as Mrs. Bazzard had already summed her up to the tall thin lady); yet
she could talk with some slight knowledge about the Silchesters—her
mother had been maid to Lord Silchester’s mother, and her father was
Lord Silchester’s tenant.  Colonel Grayburn was—or tried to be—a
gentleman farmer within a mile of Lucy’s home; she had seen Sibyl
occasionally during the three years in which the Grayburns had lived in
Aldermaston parish.  Lucy had never been so far afield as Farleigh
Wallop, but she knew Reading, Mortimer, Silchester, Tadley, and even
Basingstoke. Merely to mention names like these consoled them both as
the steamer ploughed her twelve knots an hour through the "roaring
forties."

And when the _Jeddah_ turned into the Mediterranean, with a passing view
of the Rock of Gibraltar, and entered upon calm seas, blue and dazzling,
their _camaraderie_ increased under Mrs. Bazzard’s baleful gaze and
interchange of eyebrow-raisings with the thin bony-nosed lady of Lucy’s
cabin.

The _Jeddah_ anchored off Algiers.  The thin lady, who here passes out
of the story—-I think she was the wife of a British Chaplain—had invited
Mrs. Bazzard to lunch with her on shore.  Mrs. Bazzard had hastened to
accept the invitation, the more willingly since Captain Brentham seemed
to have forgotten her existence; except at meal times, when he was
obliged to pass the mustard and the sugar.  Brentham and Lucy went off
together into the picturesque white city, rising high into the
half-circle of the hills.  They lunched at the Café des Anglais and
dined at an hotel near the quay.  They climbed the ladder-like streets
of the Arab quarter, bought useless trifles, and had a drive out into
the country which was gay with genista in full bloom, with red-purple
irises and roses, and dignified by its hoary olives, sombre cypresses
and rigid palms.

If Lucy had never been so miserable as she was nine days previously, she
had probably never felt so happy as now.  Certainly she had never looked
so pretty. Her violet eyes had a depth of colour new to them; her brown
hair a lustre and a tendency to curl in the little strands and wisps
that escaped control about her forehead.  Her cheeks, ordinarily pale,
and her milk-white complexion generally were suffused with a wild rose
flush and a warmth of tint caused by the quickened circulation.  The sea
air and the sunshine chased away the languor that had accompanied a
sedentary life.  She had not been unobservant, and had taken several
hints in costume from Mrs. Bazzard’s dress. She had tightened this,
expanded that, cut short skirts that might have flopped, diminished a
bustle, inserted a frill, and adapted herself to the warmth of the
tropics without losing grace of outline or donning headgear of repellent
aspect.

At Port Said he already called her "Lucy," and she saw nothing in it
that she mightn’t accept, a permissible brotherliness due to country
associations and the position of guardian, protector that he had
assumed. He showed her those sights of Port Said that need not shock a
modest girl.  They sat side by side to enjoy the thrill with which the
unsophisticated then passed through the Suez Canal.  One woman passenger
had left the ship at Port Said; another at Suez.  There only remained
the third one—the mother of many babies—changing at Aden into a Bombay
boat—besides Mrs. Bazzard and herself in the Ladies’ Saloon. The two
missionary priests told their breviaries, gave at times a pleasant smile
to her pretty face, and concerned themselves no more with her affairs
than if she had been an uncriticizable member of the crew. They were
Belgians going out for a life’s work to Tanganyika, and to them the
Protestant English and their ways were unaccountable by ordinary human
standards.  The captain of the ship had known Captain Brentham in the
Persian Gulf and had the utmost confidence in his uprightness.  What
more reasonable to suppose than that this girl had been placed under his
charge, inasmuch as it was he who would be the official to register her
marriage when she met her missionary betrothed at Unguja?

Nor had Brentham any but the most honourable intentions.  He felt
tenderly and pitifully towards Lucy, carrying her country prettiness and
innocency into savage Africa, embarking on a life of unexpected
frightfulness, unspeakable weariness, of monotony, varied by shocks of
terror, by sights of bloodshed and obscenity that might thrill or
titillate a strong man, but must inevitably take the bloom off a woman’s
mind. He even thought, once or twice, of dissuading her from completing
the contract, yet shrank from the upset this would entail.  Perhaps she
really liked this missionary chap?  From the description she gave he
didn’t seem so bad—he was tall and strong and seemingly a man of his
hands, with a turn for carpentry, and was the Agent of a very practical
Mission.  If she recoiled from this marriage, what was she going to do?
It was impossible to think of her remaining at Unguja "on her own," and
if he sent her back to England at his own expense her parents might
resent very strongly his interference.  There was his own career to be
thought of ... and Sibyl....  To a woman like Lucy a marriage with most
men of her class, or below it, or immediately above it, would come with
rather a shock.  She was so marriageable, so marked out as a man’s prey
that she was bound to go through it some day.  Then, when she was
married, she would live more or less in his Consular district, and he
could keep an eye on her without being unduly attentive.  Perhaps Mrs.
Ewart Stott was still settled in the Zigula country of the German sphere
... _she_ might help her.  Very likely she would be able to stick her
three years of residence which the Mission generally stipulated for and
then return to England.—What a lark if they both went home together and
compared experiences?

He might have revolutionized East African affairs in that space of
time...

He was quite unconscious that in the two-to-three weeks of their close
association on board he had won Lucy’s love to such an extent that she
was growing slowly to look upon the end of the voyage and the meeting
with John as a point of blackness, the entrance to a dark tunnel....

Meantime, without assuming a forwardness of demeanour which her
upbringing discountenanced and the watchfulness of Mrs. Bazzard forbade,
she accepted all he gave her voluntarily of his society.  The Red Sea
was kind to them at the end of April: clear cobalt skies, purple waves,
a cool breeze against them, no steamy mist in the atmosphere, and
occasional views of gaunt mountains or bird-whitened rocks and islands.
They sat in their chairs and talked: talked of everything that came into
Lucy’s mind.  She put to his superior wisdom a hundred enigmas to
answer, which her mind was now able to formulate with an aroused
imagination.

"You say you approve of missionaries, yet you seem to dislike religion;
you tried to get out of attending the Sunday service in the Saloon, and
you looked very angry when the Captain asked you to read the Lessons.
Don’t you believe in _anything_ then?"

"You’ll find, Lucy"—Brentham would reply—"that the word ’believe’ is
very much abused.  You may ’think’ of such and such a thing as probable,
as possible, as desirable—often, indeed, the wish is father to the
thought.  But to imagine it, is not to believe in it; in the same way in
which we are compelled by irresistible conviction to believe in some
fact or consequence or event, whether we like it or not.  We can only
’believe’ what can be tested by the evidence of our senses, by some
incontestable piling up of evidence or record of historical facts....
Beyond that there are probabilities and possibilities and suppositions.
I can believe the fire would burn my finger if I put it in the flame; or
that the earth goes round the sun and that the moon is more or less
240,000 miles away from the earth: because my senses or my reason
convince me of the truth of these facts.  I can believe that you’re a
very dear little girl seated next me in a deck-chair on a steamer going
out to East Africa: because I can put such a belief to some conclusive
test of the senses.  But I can’t in the same way ’believe’ in most of
what are called ’religious truths,’ because they are only suppositions,
guesses, tentative explanations which have lost their value ... indeed,
have lost their interest.  I can’t therefore waste my time on such——"

"But," Lucy stammered, "the Bible?"

"Just so: the Bible.  How many of you stop to think what the Bible is?
A collection of comparatively ancient writings in Hebrew and in Greek,
very beautifully translated into Shakespeare’s English, with lots of
gaps filled up by suggested words and even—as we now think—lots of words
and phrases wrongly translated.  The Hebrew books may have first been
written down at any time between six hundred and one hundred years B.C.;
and the New Testament between fifty and a hundred-and-fifty years after
Christ—at any rate in the form in which we know them. The original texts
were uttered or written by men who only knew a small part of the
Mediterranean world, who thought the earth was flat and the rest of the
Universe only an arched dome over the earth.  Job may have had grander
conceptions, but the early Christian writers were ignorance embodied.
They were ready to believe anything and everything to be a miracle, and
to invent the most preposterous fairy stories to account for commonplace
facts.  At the same time they often overlooked the beauty and simplicity
and practical value of Christ’s teaching and also the fact that a good
many of his..."

"_What_ an abstruse conversation," said Mrs. Bazzard, breaking in out of
the star-lit darkness on Roger’s disquisitions.  She hung about them in
the Red Sea, especially after dark, and had a tiresome way of suddenly
making her presence known.  Perhaps, however, it was just as well, and,
indeed, though Roger was annoyed at the moment at having his eloquent
thinking aloud interrupted—because in such monologues we are generally
trying to convince ourselves as well as our auditory—he also felt some
relief at the excuse for dropping the argument.  _Why on earth_ should
he undermine Lucy’s stereotyped beliefs?  What could he give her—in the
life she was going to lead, too—in place of them?

But the discussion was revived ever and again by Lucy’s persistent
questions.  She elicited from him in general that although he approved
of the material results of missionary work and the ethics generally of
Christianity, he mocked at creeds, thought prayer futile—especially the
fossilized prayers of Judaism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity,
because they were inapposite to our present age, bore little relation to
our complicated sorrows and needs, our new crimes, difficulties,
agonies, and temptations.  He found the Psalms, all but two or three,
utterly wearisome in their tedious woes and waitings, aches and pains
probably due to too carnivorous a dietary; untempting in their
ideals—"more bullocks for the altar ... and the fat of rams...."  Then
our hymns—all but three or four—were gross or childish in their imagery,
abject in their attitude to a Cæsar or a Sultan of a God, who all the
time watched inflexibly the Martyrdom of Man and the ruthless processes
of Nature without lifting a finger to stay the cyclone or the epidemic
... and so on....  His views were very much modelled on those of Winwood
Reade and on Burton’s gibes at "Provvy" (Lucy shuddered at the
irreverence and expected a meteor to cleave the ship in two), and he had
brought out with him from England Cotter Morrison’s "_Service of Man_."

Lucy sometimes felt so shocked at his negations that she resolved to
speak with him no more, but to apply herself to the study of the Swahili
Grammar he had lent her.  Then at the sight of him and at his morning
greeting and the kindly companionship at meals, she could not remain
aloof.  At any rate, he had said that you ought to act as a Christian
even if you could not swallow Christian theology.  That was a great
admission.  And he seemed to have numerous friends among the
missionaries at Unguja and in the interior, which would hardly be the
case if he were a bad man.... Besides, his father was a clergyman.

Aden came as a welcome surcease to these discussions. It was concrete
and indisputable, and of remarkable interest when interpreted by a
Brentham.... Steamer Point with its crowds of Indian and British
soldiers, Jews with ringlets and tall caps selling ostrich plumes,
Somalis like Greek gods in ebony offering strange skins, skulls, and
horns for sale, and ostrich eggs; the drive—in a jingling carriage over
sandy roads, past red-black crags on one side, with an intensely
ultramarine sea on the other—to the Arab town; the vast cisterns, the
rich vegetation at the cisterns; and then, after an interval of
absolutely sterile rock-gorges (vaguely suggestive of the approach to
Aladdin’s cave in the _Arabian Nights_), a sea-side ravine with an
unexpected flora of aloes, euphorbias, mesembryanths, and acacias....
Even Mrs. Bazzard, with her Bayswater mind, was momentarily impressed by
Brentham’s pleasantly imparted knowledge of all these things.  You never
noticed how extraordinary they were until he pointed it out.  She was
for the time being conciliated by his having invited her to accompany
Lucy on the day’s excursion and by the generous way in which he stood
treat and presented her, as well as Lucy, with ostrich feather fans and
amusing gewgaws made from sea-shells.

After Aden the sky clouded; metaphorically, with the coming end of this
wonderful episode in Lucy’s life, materially with some tiresome
manifestations of the monsoon.  I forget whether it blew behind and left
the _Jeddah_ wallowing in the trough of great indigo waves and rolling
drearily; or blew against her progress, causing her to progress like a
rocking-horse.  But it imparted a storminess, a sense of exasperated
emotion to this pair of lovers—as they were, unadmittedly. Fortunately,
it also made the footing of Mrs. Bazzard’s high-heeled Bayswater shoes
uncertain on the unstable deck, so she relaxed her watchful spying on
their conversations.  Lucy was alternately silent and wistful and almost
noisily vivacious, with hands that shook as they passed a tea-cup.  She
had begun to realize that in five or six more days the voyage would end
in her meeting John as an ardent bridegroom; that she would never belong
to Roger, she would pass out of his life as swiftly as she had entered
it, be at most a pleasant and amusing memory of a half-ignorant little
person with whom he had spent good-naturedly much of his time on a long
sea voyage.

Roger on his part, in smoking-room reflections would feel he had gone
much too far—compromised her, perhaps played a rather foolish part
himself, for a man with high ambitions.  There was that bitch of a
woman, that quintessence of a Bayswater boarding-house, Mrs. Bazzard,
wife of a—rotter, probably—whose nose he had put out of joint.  She was
capable—and and to conciliate her and win her over would be degrading—of
putting any construction on his flirtation. How, at such times, before
turning in, or even while playing whist in the Captain’s cabin and
thinking of anything but the game, he would _curse_ these long steamer
voyages and these episodes of love!  There was that voyage out in
1880—he had narrowly missed a breach of promise action then, and he
would be hanged if he’d set out to be more than sociable.  And the last
time he had returned to England ... Mrs. Traquhair, the wife of the
chief electrician at Unguja.... Only the fact that in the Mediterranean
she had developed one of those Rose Boils which were a legacy of
Unguja’s mosquitoes, and which confined her to her cabin till the Bay of
Biscay (when they were all sea-sick), had prevented the irrevocable.
And all the time he believed himself engaged to Sibyl!  And afterwards,
when he had met Mrs. Traquhair and her sister—_and_ the sister!  Oh my
God,—in London and had dined them at the "Cri." and taken them to see
Arthur Roberts from a box, and had scanned Mrs. T.’s profile as he had
never done before and watched her laugh at the comedian, showing all the
gold in her teeth ... he asked himself _how on earth_ he could have
kissed her so passionately as they were passing through the Suez Canal.
Yet she couldn’t have been a bad sort because she had never attempted to
bother him or follow it up....  But he couldn’t class Lucy with Mrs.
Traquhair or the siren of the 1880 voyage. She was utterly good and
innocent of schemes to entrap him.  A sweet little thing...

As they passed into the Indian Ocean between Guardafui and Sokotra,
there was a temporary lull in the wind.  It was a moonlight night; they
were sitting side by side under the open sky, for the deck-awning had
been removed on account of the monsoon. A sudden fierce longing—there
was no one on deck that he could see—seized him to take her in his arms
and kiss her.  And there came a telepathic message that she was aching
to be so taken and kissed.  But he resisted the impetus, with clenched
hands on the arms of his chair.  Silence had set in between them. A
catch of Lucy’s breath was faintly audible, and—dare I say it?  A
snivel, a tiny snivel.

"_Lucy_?  _Crying_?  My _dear_ child!  Why ... cheer up.  We shall soon
be there..  You’re not cold?"

"You don’t understand....  I ... I ... don’t _want_ to get there....  I
don’t want to marry him; I _hate_ the very idea...."

"Oh, but this will never do....  This is foolishness, believe me.  Lucy!
Pull yourself together."

Lucy now sobbed frantically.

Mrs. Bazzard was heard saying from quite close by, "Which is Gyuardifwee
and which is what-you-may-call-’em—Ras Hafoon?  I mean, the cape where
some of the steamers run ashore in the mist, and then you have to walk
through Somaliland and get sunstroke?"

Brentham exclaimed under his breath: "_Damn_ that woman!" and audibly,
even a little insolently replied: "I’m _blessed_ if I know.  You’d
better ask the Captain. He’s on the bridge and dying for a gossip, and
he’ll probably give you a cup of cocoa."

Mrs. Bazzard walked away—or pretended to do so.

"Lucy dear.  I want to speak to you while that cat has gone out of
ear-shot.  Calm yourself and listen, because I must speak in a low tone.
If you feel you would sooner die than go through with this marriage, you
shan’t be forced into it.  I will speak to Archdeacon Gravening ... or
the Bishop ... and they will know of some nice women of the Anglican
Mission who would take you in for a few weeks ... till there is a return
steamer....  Then on the plea of ’health’ you can go back to England.  I
could easily advance the money for the steamer passage ... some day your
parents could repay me.  But even if they didn’t, it doesn’t matter.  I
do so want you to be _happy_....  I blame myself awfully for the silly
things I’ve said to you ... about religion ... it may have made you
dislike mission work...."

But Lucy sobbed out "It hadn’t ... that she was a little fool and he
mustn’t take any notice ... she’d never, _never_ behave like this again
... after his extraordinary kindness too, which she would always be
grateful for.  He mustn’t think any more about it or ever refer to it
again...."

And before he could say anything more, or that cat, Mrs. Bazzard,
return, she slipped down to her cabin, where fortunately she was alone
and could cry her fill without attracting attention.  But as she lay on
the bunk, she set her teeth and resolved, come what may, she would _not_
put thousands of miles between her and ... "Roger" ... she mentally
uttered the name.  Better to live within a few hundred miles of where he
was and sometimes see and hear him.  Why ... _Why_ ... did he not ask
her to marry him? Yes, and ruin his career.  What would they all say at
Unguja ... and _John_? ... Poor John!  what a shock it would be to him.
There was the note he had sent to greet her at Aden, to the address of
the steamer agent.  She had opened it, but not read it through, so
infatuated was she with Brentham just then.... The next morning Lucy
breakfasted in the Ladies’ Saloon, pleading sea-sickness.  Later on, she
went to the upper-deck, but armed herself with the Swahili Grammar, a
defence against a Brentham who purposely stayed away, talking with the
Captain, and none against Mrs. Bazzard, who pestered her with inquiries
as to her "headache," expressing the quotation marks in her tone.

Relations however became more normal all round the day after that.  In
two more days they had anchored off Lamu.  Lucy saw two low islands,
with hazy forest country on the distant mainland.  Lamu island had low
sandhills projecting into the sea, and on one of them was an obelisk or
pillar which Captain Brentham said was an important historical monument
erected by the Portuguese nearly four hundred years before.  The two
women were eager to land and see East Africa for the first time.  They
went ashore with him in the Vice-Consul’s boat; for there was a
Vice-Consul here who had been expecting Brentham’s visit and was
delighted to find two English ladies invading his solitude.  They saw,
when they landed, masses of vague masonry, the remains of Portuguese or
Arab forts, and a litter of human skulls and bones on the beach at which
they both shrieked in simulated horror. These might have been the
results of the last Somali raid, or of slaves who had died on the shore
unshipped, owing to the vigilance of British cruisers, or even have
dated back to the expulsion of the Portuguese by the Arabs two hundred
years before.  The town of Lamu was a two miles’ walk along the sandy
shore from the point, where they had landed, but the sight of the
extraordinary coloured, blue, red, and green crabs that scuttled and yet
threatened with uplifted claws, and of the natives who accompanied them
in a laughing rabble, some clothed to the heels, others practically
naked, relieved the tedium of the journey.  The smells from the
precincts and the heart of Lamu town were so awful as to be interesting.
The strongest—from rancid shark’s liver oil—was said to be quite
wholesome, but that from the sewage and the refuse on the shore-mud
caused them to hold handkerchiefs to noses. However, the town was very
picturesque with its Arab and Persian houses of white stone, its
Saracenic doorways, in the angles of which Persian pottery was embedded,
and its heavy doors of carved wood.  The Consulate stood a little beyond
the town, in a walled garden of palms, fig trees, and trees of gorgeous
scarlet blossoms.  Here they had a cup of tea, and the Consular boat,
which had been following them along the shore, took them back to the
_Jeddah_, thankful in the blazing sunshine for their pith helmets and
white umbrellas.

This excursion somehow, with its introduction to the realities and
romance of tropical Africa, braced up Lucy for the next day but one,
when in the very early morning the _Jeddah_ anchored in the roadstead of
Unguja.  She was dressed by eight o’clock and sat awaiting in the stuffy
Ladies’ Saloon the arrival of John, or whoever was coming to meet her.
Sat with trembling, perspiring hands in open-work cotton gloves, wishing
the suspense over.  There were sounds of loud voices on deck....  Mrs.
Bazzard, exploding in connubial raptures over her husband; Bazzard, in
between her embraces, striving to assume a partly respectful, partly
comrade-like attitude with Captain Brentham, to combine a recognition
that he was greeting his official superior for the moment with the
assured standing of one who had had longer experience of official cares.
She heard him saying: "Your boat is waiting for you, Sir.  I will
arrange to send a lighter for your baggage as soon as it is up out of
the hold...."

Then blundering steps down some stairway and along the passage, and John
stood before her, sun-helmet in hand, eyes blazing with hungry love,
saying, stammering rather—"My _Lucy_!  C—Come at last!  _Oh_, how I’ve
looked forward....  How..."  But he crushed her to him in a rough
embrace, unmindful of her delicate cotton dress and of the fact that his
red face was covered with perspiration....  But there was something so
appealing and yet so masterful in his love, and also something so
reminiscent of the park seat at Englefield and that Sunday walk, that
Lucy in yielding to his embrace said within herself, "How _could_ I have
thought of throwing him over?"

Together they went on shore.  Brentham had not even stayed to say
good-bye.  Somebody saw after her luggage.  She had so lost interest in
it that she did not care if anything was missing....  Then John said: "I
hope you’ve brought out the Harmonium that your uncle gave us," and she
replied a little listlessly: "Oh yes! it was _such_ a bother getting it
across London, but I think it’s on board."

"I am taking you," said John, inconsequently, in the boat, devouring her
with his eyes all the time, "to stay with Mrs. Ewart Stott until we’re
married."




                             *CHAPTER VII*

                        *UNGUJA—AND UP-COUNTRY*


Every two or three years in those days you met either Mr. _or_ Mrs.
Ewart Stott at Unguja, usually at the ramshackle residence and place of
business of Mr. Callaway, the Commercial Agent of the East African
Mission.  And when Mrs. Ewart Stott was there she took command, so that
you instinctively greeted her as hostess.  Mr. Callaway was quite
willing it should be so, because she accomplished wonders in setting his
untidy house in order; she gingered up his servants and routed the
cockroaches, chased away some of the smells, and generally cured a
feverish attack by quinine, chicken broth, and motherly care.

The Ewart Stotts as missionaries were independent because Mrs. Ewart
Stott had begun as Church of England and Mr. E. S. as a Presbyterian,
yet they could not quite agree with the discipline or the ideals of the
different churches or sects and preferred evangelizing East Africa on a
plan of their own.  They had private means—at any rate at first; until
they had run through them in founding mission stations, whereafter they
were supported by anonymous benefactors.  And as their tenets and _modus
operandi_ were nearest to those of the Methodists’ East African Mission,
they worked alongside them and made use of their Agent and depôt at
Unguja.

Both were of Ulster parentage, with some admixture of a more genial
stock; yet both were born in Australia. She as a Miss Ewart and he
originally a Mr. Stott. At the same moment, so to speak, they had "found
Christ," and it really seemed a logical sequel that Providence should
bring them together at some Australian religious merry-making.  They
instantly fell in love, quickly married and fused their surnames.  She
was twenty, he twenty-two.  She was distinctly personable and he quite
good-looking.  They had probably been born, both of them, perfectly
good, unconsciously sinless, so that the getting of religion did not
make them better or more likeable but only afflicted them with a mania
for quoting hymns, psalms, and Bible texts _à tout propos_ and seeing
the Lord’s hand, His Divine interference in every incident, every
accident, any change for better or worse which affected themselves.
They were constantly in receipt of Divine intimations generally after
communing in prayer. And these they obeyed as promptly as possible.

For instance, only six months after they were married, and when their
eldest child was already on its way, they were inspired to evangelize
East Africa. Forthwith they sold up their home in South Australia, took
ship with an immense outfit to Aden, and thence transferred themselves
to Unguja and the Zangian mainland.

They wished to preach nothing but "Christ crucified" and the new life
which black men and white men should lead after "accepting of" this
sacrifice, this atonement for the presumed sinfulness of poor, martyred
humanity.  But despite this broad, if illogical, basis of their
propaganda, they were afflicted with a bitter dislike of Science, which
they concentrated on the theory of Evolution, or on any Biblical
criticism which would weaken their faith in a very manlike God who
apparently turned his back on his own universe to concern himself solely
and very fussily, very ineffectively with one of its grains of dust, a
tiny planet circling round a fifth-rate star among a billion other
stars.  For the rest, they had infinite courage, infinite love and
charity, immense powers of work, but no sense of humour.

Consul after Consul warned them as to the risks they ran in
plunging—Father, Mother and Babies—into unexplored Africa of the worst
reputation.  They smilingly ignored warnings and protests, ... wild
beasts, wild peoples, wild climates, wild scenery—all seemed against
them.  Mr. Stott was once tossed by a rhinoceros into a river; but the
water broke his fall and he emerged before the crocodiles woke up, and
staggered back to camp, only slightly wounded. Shortly afterwards,
hundreds of Masai warriors charged their camp, and their coast porters
fled into the bush.  The naked, fat-and-ochre-anointed warriors with
their six-foot spears found Mrs. Stott sipping tea at her camp-table and
sewing clothes for her baby, while Mr. Stott with bound-up wounds was
lying on a camp-bed.  Mrs. Stott, convinced that the Almighty was
somewhere in the offing, smiled on the warriors and shared her plum cake
among the foremost.  They returned the smile, enlarging it into a roar
of laughter.  After executing a war dance they withdrew, and later on
sent her a large gourd of fresh milk.

After some floundering, owing to the uncertain indications of the Divine
will and purpose, they had settled on the old explorer and missionary
route to the Victoria Nyanza, due west of Unguja in what was called the
Ugogo country, partly because the Wa-gogo were thought to be quite
recalcitrant to Christianity.

Lucy Josling, who had had much of this summary poured into her
half-attentive hearing by her betrothed, as they walked through the
narrow lanes between the tall stone houses of Unguja—she much more
interested by the handsomely dressed Arabs, the veiled women, the
wandering bulls and their owners, salaaming Indians—entered at last the
Arab house rented by Mr. Callaway for his Agency.

Passing through a dark entry and corridor they emerged into a courtyard
with an immense fig-tree in the middle.  Round this square space there
was a broad and shady verandah.  Mrs. Stott rose from her sewing-machine
and greeted Lucy with that simple cordiality which made her so many
friends among the converted and the unconvertible.

"You must feel quite dazed being on shore after so many weeks at sea.
You’d like to go to your room, I know, and perhaps be quiet there till
our midday meal.  We’ve done the best we could for you—at short
notice—for your young man and I have only been at Unguja since Saturday.
We travelled down together, he to get married, of course, and I to see
to a large consignment of goods that has arrived for us here.  I also
expected a recruit for our Mission, but he does not seem to have caught
this steamer."

Mrs. Stott then led the way to Lucy’s room, and John departed to the
Customs House to clear her baggage and get it stored: a matter which
would occupy him for the rest of the daylight.

Although the upstairs bedroom that Lucy was to occupy smelt, like all
the rest of the premises, of copra, aniseed, cockroaches, dried fish,
shark’s liver oil, curry-powder, rats’ and bats’ manure, in one badly
mingled essence, with this and that ingredient sometimes prevailing, it
seemed clean and airy, and there was some grace and refinement in the
clean bed linen, white mosquito curtain, and bunch of Frangipani flowers
in a Persian pottery vase.  Instinctively she turned to Mrs. Stott with
tears in her eyes.  "This is _your_ doing, I am sure!  Somehow you
remind me of mother."

"Well," said Mrs. Stott, "that’s just what I should like to do; though I
suppose I’m not older than an elder sister; only this African life ages
one very quickly."

The heat during the rest of the day seemed to Lucy in this low-ceilinged
room, in a low-lying part of the town, almost unbearable.  She spent
much of the afternoon lying on her bed in _déshabille_, a constant prey
to home-sickness.  She tried at one time playing with the little Stott
child on the landing, but it was much more interested in the large
red-black cockroaches which it caught with surprising swiftness of aim
and without any of Lucy’s shuddering horror. It would hold these insects
with their little flat heads, twirling antennae, scratchy legs and fat
yellow bellies quite firmly (yet not unkindly) in its plump fingers for
grave consideration; then let them go to run over the planks.  Mrs.
Stott was away to the Customs House; a pale, perspiring, half-clothed
Indian clerk was passing in and out of the house on Mr. Callaway’s
business, too fever-stricken and listless to care one grain of damaged
rice about this young woman fresh from England.  The fleas on the
ground-floor verandah and business premises were too numerous for any
novice to endure.  Lucy’s only resource was to return to her room, rid
herself of these persecutors by undressing and await with patience the
after-sunset cooler air.  A visit from Mrs. Stott at half-past six
notified that the evening meal would be served at seven and that John
Baines had seen to all Lucy’s luggage.  Such as she wanted for the next
few days was ready to be brought up for her use; the rest would be put
in the go-down to await the departure in the "dau"[#] that would convey
them to the mainland.  Lucy therefore had to rise and dress, come down
and force herself to show some affection for her betrothed and some
interest in her mass of luggage—all the while preoccupied by the
mosquitoes which bit her ankles, the fleas that attacked her with
renewed voracity, the cockroaches which scurried about her feet, and the
smells which made her sick.  She enjoyed the chicken broth flavoured
with hot red chillies and the coco-nut milk served round for drinks at
the evening meal; and picked a bit of fish, fresh and flaky.  Also she
appreciated the dessert of pineapples, mangoes and oranges.  Instead of
coffee afterwards they had tea, with goat’s milk.  This was
thirst-quenching and helped to diminish the racking headache which had
been steadily reaching a climax during the evening.


[#] Decked Arab sailing-ship.


At nine o’clock all vestiges of a meal were cleared away and John, Mr.
Callaway and even Mrs. Stott assumed an air of portentousness as about
twenty-four able-bodied Negroes filed in and the two or three Negro
servants of the Stotts set out a number of hymn-books and a large Bible.
John then read prayers and a portion of scripture in Swahili while the
Christianized negroes dutifully knelt, sat, and stood to sing hymns in
unison with their white employers.  The hymns being likewise in the
Swahili language, the whole ceremony—occupying about half an hour—was
without meaning to Lucy, who was driven nearly frantic by the fleas and
mosquitoes.  At last, bed-time came; John unwillingly took his leave,
promising to call round for Lucy at eight in the morning to take her on
a round of visits.  Lucy, in very low spirits, retired to her bedroom,
but Mrs. Stott followed.  Without being asked for any explanation she
was allowed to cry for five minutes on Mrs. Stott’s neck.  Then the
latter undressed her, rubbed the bites with some cooling lotion,
administered five grains of quinine and put her to bed.

What with the squeaking and chattering of the fruit-bats eating the figs
outside, the rats running over the floor of her room, and a tornado of
thunder, lightning and drumming rain, the night was not a pleasant one.
But when Mrs. Stott woke her with a cup of tea and she ventured outside
her mosquito-curtain, things took a brighter aspect.  She had from her
window a glimpse of the sparkling blue bay in the level rays of the
just-risen sun, a fringe of coco-nut palms, their fronds still wet with
the rain, a tangle of brown shipping—Arab "daus" and Indian
"baghalas"—hauled up for repairs; and the atmosphere was cleared and
fresh after the tornado.  She was almost cheerful by the time she had
dressed and come downstairs.  Mrs. Stott had advised her to put on high
boots to save her ankles from mosquito bites, and to dust herself freely
with Insecticide powder to discourage the fleas.  As a special
indulgence to a tired visitor she was let off morning prayers and only
heard the nasal singing whilst completing her toilet in her room after a
pleasant little breakfast in bed, over a book.  John duly came with a
carriage borrowed from the Sultan’s stables, and Lucy—almost gay once
more—set out with him to be introduced to Archdeacon Gravening—who in
the absence of the Bishop (on tour) was to perform the religious
marriage ceremony at the Cathedral.

Gravening was an austere-looking man but of kindly disposition.  He made
her feel at home, and as he knew the Reading district in old Oxford days
of walking tours and reading-parties he could talk about that
home-country which, as it receded in time from her contemplation, seemed
a Paradise she had recklessly quitted.

The ladies of the Anglican Mission—a celibate Mission when at work in
Africa, its members being supposed to leave its ranks when they
married—received Lucy with some detachment of manner.  They were good
creatures, indeed, but they came from a social stratum one or even two
degrees higher than hers, and inwardly they were less tolerant of
Nonconformists, than were their men fellow-workers.  Lucy, they had
ascertained, was a "Church person," but she was about to marry into a
Methodist Mission.  However, her rather plaintive prettiness and the
home-sick melancholy in her eyes enlisted their womanly sympathy. Two of
them offered themselves in a bride’s maid capacity, and the Sisterhood
in general proposed that the honeymoon should be spent at their little
country retreat of Mbweni.  But John explained as to this, that he could
not prolong his absence from the up-country station more than was just
necessary for the prescribed residence at Unguja; and that their
honeymoon must be spent on the return journey.  He dilated, for Lucy’s
encouragement, on the picnic charms of the "Safari."[#]


[#] The accepted meaning of "Safari" is a journey with tents, and
porters to carry the baggage.


                     *      *      *      *      *

During the ten days of her pre-nuptial stay at Unguja Lucy had no talk
with Brentham.  Presumably he was too busy over political and Consular
matters.  Once indeed when walking with John through the winding streets
of the African-Oriental city she had seen him out riding with Bazzard,
the Vice-Consul. John had accomplished all the preliminary formalities,
and on her marriage morning—early on account of the heat—Lucy went in
one of the Sultan’s carriages, attended by Mrs. Stott and the two ladies
of the Anglican Mission, to the British Agency.  John met them at the
entrance; they walked slowly up the stone steps to the office for the
transaction of Consular business.  Bazzard, with Mrs. Bazzard—the latter
assuming the airs of a Vice-reine—met them there and ranged the wedding
party in order.  Brentham then entered, bowed to them both, but avoided
meeting Lucy’s eyes.  He put to them in a level business-like voice the
necessary interrogatory and declared them duly married.  The party then
passed into one of the Agency’s drawing-rooms.  Champagne—and lemonade
for the teetotalers—was served, together with mixed biscuits and
sweetmeats.  The Acting Consul-General proposed the health of the Bride,
and for the first time looked Lucy full in the face.  He next withdrew
on to a verandah and talked for some time with the bridegroom about his
mission station and the journey thither and spoke earnestly on the
subject of Lucy and her welfare, instancing his interest in her
home-country as well as his position as "their" Consul to explain his
anxiety as to her future.  Then returning to the general company he
handed Lucy a small case which he said contained a trifling wedding
present and wished her all possible happiness, promising "some day or
other" to visit her in her new home.  He grasped her hand with a brief
pressure and—pleading urgent business as an excuse for not following the
party to the Cathedral—withdrew to his office. Mrs. Bazzard introduced
her husband and bestowed a condescending patronage on Lucy and on the
Mission ladies, who, never having met her before, found themselves
almost audibly wondering who on earth she was, and where—with that
slightly cockney accent—she had come from.

The religious ceremony at the Cathedral was one of considerable
ecclesiastical pomp, secretly enjoyed by John Baines; who, however,
thought on what mother would say when he told her he had nearly been
married by a Bishop and quite so by an Archdeacon, and still more how
she would have appreciated the black acolytes in their scarlet cassocks
and white dalmatics, the incense-smell in the building, and the
vestments of the clergy.

After they left the Cathedral they repaired to the Arab house of stone
and rich Persian and Kurdish carpets in which Archdeacon Gravening
lived.  Here an unpretentious luncheon was given as a wedding breakfast.
Gravening hardly ever spoke about religion, which was why Mrs. Stott
despaired of his being saved, though she admitted he was compact of
quiet kindness.  His one enthusiasm was language study. He was deeply
versed in the Bantu languages and translated for the Anglican Mission
most of the works they required to use in their schools and churches.
He had corresponded with John Baines, and the latter had written down
for him samples of vocabularies of the different languages heard in his
district.


Some insight into the conflict going on in the dazed mind of Lucy—who
throughout these ceremonies looked as though she were a wound-up
automaton—inspired Mrs. Stott to suggest to John that as they were due
to start in the Arab dau early the next morning in order to reach the
mainland port of Lingani before nightfall, Lucy should spend the rest of
her marriage-day and night with Mrs. Stott, and their honeymoon should
not commence till they reached the Mission house at Lingani.  This they
would have to themselves for three or four days whilst their caravan for
up-country was being got ready.  Accordingly poor John, when the wedding
luncheon was over and the guests had dispersed, surrendered Lucy to Mrs.
Stott and spent the rest of the day rather disconsolately making his
preparations for departure.  Lucy got through much of that hot afternoon
in her nightdress—for coolness—inside the mosquito curtains of her bed,
weeping at times hysterically; tortured with homesickness one minute and
at another seized with a mad longing to call on Brentham at the Agency
and see him once more.  Sometimes she felt an actual dislike for John;
at others a great pity for him, yet a shuddering at the idea of his
embraces, of any physical contact with him.

Mrs. Stott prayed for her, apart in her own bedroom but the Divine
direction of her thoughts seemed to take the line that the least said
was the soonest mended, and that the young couple had better be left to
their own society at Lingani to come to an understanding.

The next morning, however, it was a composed though rather silent Lucy
who was punctually ready to go away with John when he came to fetch her
to embark in the dau.  Mrs. Stott had risen early to make coffee for
them and give them a send-off of embraces, and provisions for a nice
cold lunch on board. "My dear," she said to Lucy, "you’ll have a
_delightful_ water picnic.  There’s going to be just wind enough to blow
you across.  I wish I were coming with you, but I shan’t get away for
another fortnight.  However, we shall meet in the interior, I dare say,
before very long."

John had made for his bride a little nest among cushions and clean
brightly-coloured grass mats in the deck cabin of the dau (a mere
palm-thatch shelter), and for an hour or so a smile came back to Lucy’s
sad face as she appreciated the pleasant freshness of the morning
breeze, the picturesqueness of the boat and the vivid blue or emerald
green of the water according as it was deep or shallow.  She had quite
an appetite for the early lunch which Mrs. Stott had thoughtfully
provided.  But presently an anxious look came into her face and a
restlessness of manner.  "John!  Can I be coming out in a rash?  I feel
an intolerable itching round my neck and wrists—Oh!  Horror! What is
this?"  And she pointed to some flat, dark brown disks which were
scurrying out of sight up her arms and into the folds of her linen
bodice....

"_Bugs!_" said John, shocked and apologetic, "they are sometimes found
in these Arab vessels....  I am so sorry....  Yet there was no other way
of crossing to Lingani...."

Lucy went white with disgust.  From the palm mid-ribs which arched over
the cabin roof of thatch there came dropping hundreds of bugs on to the
unhappy young woman, ignoring or avoiding him who would have willingly
offered himself as sacrifice and substitute.  Lucy in her dismay,
knowing she could not undress before the boatmen and porters and yet not
knowing how she could endure hours of this maddening irritation from
half-venomous bites, broke out into weeping.  "What _was_ to be done?"
questioned the poor distraught bridegroom.  The gentle breeze had died
away ... an intense heat prevailed; the dau scarcely moved across a
glassy sea ... the Nakhodha or bwahih captain of the dau was standing up
over the rudder and signalling with his sinewy hand, crying out in a
melodious cadence: "Njôô!  Kusi-Kusi, Njôô, Kusi-Kusi!"[#] afraid his
vessel might be becalmed and prevented from reaching port in daylight.
The boat-men and porters were looking at one another with round eyes as
they heard the Bibi[#] crying convulsively in the deck cabin.  John in
his desperation had a bright idea.  He knew that the ordinary, vaunted
insecticides had no terror for, no deterrent effect on, either bugs or
their unrelated mimics, the poisonous ticks of Central Africa; but that
both alike fled before the smell of petroleum.  There were tins of that
mineral oil on board provision for his lamps up-country.  Opening one of
these cautiously, for petroleum was very precious, he filled an
enamelled iron cup and then stoppered the tin.  From his medicine chest
he obtained cotton-wool.  Then with wads of this, and with his
handkerchief, he dabbed the swollen wrists and the weals on Lucy’s neck
and advised her to thrust the saturated wads and linen inside her
clothing.


[#] "Come south wind, come!"

[#] Lady.


The strong odour of the oil in a few minutes caused the blood-sucking
insects to withdraw and return to their lairs in the thatch and boards.
The south wind came at last in puffs, which lessened the heat, but there
set in a swell which caused the dau to roll.  This movement disturbed
the bilge water below the decks, and from this was disengaged a
sulphuretted-hydrogen stench almost bad enough to drive the bugs from
Lucy’s mind.  But the wind grew steadier and at last blew the rotten dau
to the landing-place at the mouth of a river where they were to
disembark.

Lingani was a smaller edition of Unguja Town: flat-roofed Arab houses of
white-washed coral rock, thatched wattle-and-daub huts, groves of
coco-nut palms, a few Casuarina trees and Frangipani shrubs, pariah
dogs, wandering zebu cattle, and dwarf goats. The Mission Rest-house was
a substantial stone building in the Arab style of East Africa.  It was
maintained jointly by four missionary societies for use by their members
in transit.  There was a Swahili couple in charge of it, husband and
wife.  The bed linen, table-cloths, napkins and cutlery were kept in
cupboards fastened with cunning padlocks, which only opened when you set
the letters of the lock to correspond with the word "open."  This to
thwart inquisitive natives, with a smattering of education, was written
up for reminder in Greek letters.  With this ruse John was fully
acquainted, so that he lost no time in opening the cupboards and
releasing the wherewithal for making up two beds and laying the table
for an evening meal.  The black housekeepers, proffering greetings and
assurance of welcome while they worked, busied themselves in heating
water for baths, in making the beds, laying the table, and killing
chickens for soup and roast.  John’s activities were multifold.  He had
to see the dau unloaded and its precious cargo safely stowed away in the
store below the Rest-house.

Lucy at first sat limply in the divan or main reception-room, sore all
over, eyes blistered by the glare of sun on water, and with a headache
which for crippling agony exceeded anything she had known.  But she
conquered her sullenness and made feeble attempts to help.  John,
however, seeing that bath and bath water were ready and that sheets,
pillows and blankets had been placed on her Arab bedstead (a wooden
frame with a lattice-work across it of ox-hide strips), advised her to
undress, soothe her bites with spongings and ointment, and rest between
the sheets.  Her back ached unbearably; her head seemed half-severed at
the neck, and she was seized with violent shiverings.  The mosquitoes
had given her a sharp attack of malarial fever.

Once in bed, she felt less acutely ill, but of all the nice meal that
John and the Swahili man-cook had prepared she could only swallow a cup
of tea.  Her temperature was found to be up to 102°, so the first and
the six succeeding nights of the honeymoon were spent in dire illness
and dreary convalescence.  But at the end of that time she seemed well
enough to start on their up-country journey.  John had obtained two
Masai donkeys and had bought at Unguja a second-hand side-saddle.  Lucy
cheered up at the prospect of donkey-riding and above all at leaving
this terribly hot coast town for the cooler nights of the interior.
Though still deeply depressed and disheartened, she was sufficiently
reasonable and well-disposed to be deeply touched by her husband’s care
of her, his forethought for her comfort and distress at the
inconveniences of semi-savage Africa.  Some measure of health came back
to her, and even cheerfulness, during the first easy days of camp life,
before they left the semi-civilized coast-belt, with its shady
mango-trees for the midday halt, its unfailing water supply for the
thirsty porters and the white man’s meals; its comparative safety at
night from wild beasts and wild natives.

But between the mountain ranges of the interior—whither they were
bound—and this settled country of cultivation and villages more or less
governed by the Sultan of Unguja, there lay a desert tract almost devoid
of water and ravaged in recent times by a clan of the raiding Masai
known to the Bantu natives as "Wahumba."  They had recently carried out
a ruthless foray across the plains.  The native wells had fallen in or
their location had been forgotten since the destruction of the villages.
Lucy then knew for the first time what it was to suffer from thirst, and
to have no water for washing in the morning or evening; and when a
little water was obtained from nearly dried up rock-pools or the bed of
a run-dry stream, to be hardly able to endure the sight of it, much less
taste it when it looked like strong tea, or coffee-and-milk, when it
smelt of stable manure or was alive with grubs or wriggling worms.  It
could only be drunk in the form of tea after it had been strained,
boiled, and skimmed.

John had prepared for some such contingency in crossing this desert
strip by bringing several dozen coco-nuts and a case of his father’s
cider—at the mention of which Lucy’s mouth watered.  But his porters in
their own mad thirst had disposed of the coco-nuts and their milk, and
the carrier who bore the case of champagne cider on his head had, of
course, slipped on a slimy boulder, crossing a dry stream down had come
his precious load, and at least half the bottles had cracked and poured
forth their sparkling contents over the sand or into the porter’s
protruded mouth.  Still, the other six bottles were retrieved by an
indignant John who, in his rage, doffed the gentle long-suffering
missionary—which, strange to say, he had become in these few
months—witness his unselfish and patient care of his rather peevish
wife—and kicked the careless, sticky, half-drunk porter with all the
vehemence of an unregenerate Englishman.  The porter took his
chastisement philosophically.  He had tasted nectar. John and Lucy drank
the remainder of the cider during the second half of that day, without
care for the morrow’s drought, for fear lest they be robbed of it by
some other accident....

At last they reached a running stream at the base of the foothills which
marked the beginning of a slow ascent of three thousand feet.  The
verdure, and the shade this created, seemed by contrast a Paradise. They
pitched their camp under fine umbrageous trees, near the site of a
ruined village which a few months previously had been a populous centre.
Around the mounds of clay and sticks and burnt thatch were luxuriant
banana plantations with occasional bunches of ripening bananas—though
the monkeys of the adjacent thicket had not left many fit for eating.
When Lucy had quenched her thirst exuberantly from the rivulet, drinking
from cups of folded banana fronds made for her by the repentant porter
of the broken cider bottles, her sense of relief and contentment at
their surroundings was a little marred by the consciousness of an
unpleasant odour which came to them fitfully in puffs of the afternoon
breeze.  She started out to explore on her own account—she wore high
boots and had a tucked-in, constricted skirt.  Presently she came to an
extensive clearing where banana trunks, brown and rotten, had been
felled and lay prone in all directions, half covered with the clay
tunnels and galleries of white ants.  Amongst these crumbling cylinders
lay twenty or thirty skeletons, some of them still retaining strips of
leathery flesh and patches of Negro wool on the whitened skulls.  The
ground at the rustle of her approach began to swarm with a myriad of
black, biting ants, disturbed in their daily meal off this immense
supply of carrion.  Lucy paid little heed to them for the moment as she
stood horror-struck at the sight of hissing snakes, gliding into the
rank weeds, probably more concerned over the swarming of the ants than
at the approach of a solitary human being.  She also noted a group of
large, grey-brown vultures with lean whitish necks, which hopped heavily
before her until they obtained enough impetus to rise above the ground
and settle on the branches of a baobab-tree.  Lucy, horrified by this
unsavoury Golgotha and the slithering snakes, was uttering several
squeaks of dismay, when as the terrible "siafu" ants began to nip the
skin of her limbs and body, her cries changed to shrieks of terror.
Half-blindly she floundered over disgusting obstacles back towards the
camp.

John, looking very tired and very dirty, came rushing to meet her and
upbraid her for imprudence in wandering off alone where there was danger
at every turn; but, realizing she was being mercilessly bitten by the
"siafu," he hurried her into the tent, let down the flaps of the
entrance and assisted her to undress. She had to be reduced to absolute
nudity before the ants could be removed.  They had fixed their mandibles
so firmly in the skin that in pulling them off the head and jaws
remained behind, and for weeks afterwards this unhappy young woman went
about with a sore and inflamed body.

But this seeming outrage on her modesty greatly eased their intercourse.
They had been for several days husband and wife, but there was still a
certain stiffness and reserve in their relations.  This disappeared
after Lucy was obliged in broad daylight to submit her tortured body to
his ministrations.  In this new camaraderie she was soon laughing over
her misadventure; whilst John acted clumsily as lady’s maid.

Two days afterwards they were further drawn together by a thrill of
terror.  The region having been temporarily depopulated by Masai raids,
wild beasts—lions, leopards, hyenas—had been emboldened in their
attacks.  John’s camping places were encircled each evening by a hedge
of thorns, and the porters kept up—or were supposed to keep up—blazing
fires.  But one night in the small hours the tired sentries fell asleep,
the fire in front of the tent died down, a lion sprang the hedge,
crunched the sentry’s skull, and tore at their tent doorway with his
claws—attracted by the smell of the donkeys tethered behind.  His
horrible snarls and growls and the outcry of the awakened men roused
John and Lucy.  In their movements they knocked over camp washstand and
table and could not find the matches or the lantern.  John was uncertain
where to fire even when he had found his loaded rifle. He dared not
shoot into the midst of the growls, lest the bullet should kill the
plunging donkeys or strike one of his men.  They in their
desperation—and, to do them justice, in their desire to save the white
man and his wife—were tackling the lion with firebrands, yet feared to
shoot his huge body—tangled up with tent ropes and tent flaps—lest they
should shoot master or mistress.  Lucy swooned across the bed with
terror when she felt the lion’s body pressed against the thin canvas of
the tent wall....  The tent, even, seemed in danger of collapsing under
the lion’s pressure, as he backed on to it to face the men.  At last,
fear of the fire dislodged him.  He stood or rather crouched against a
pile of boxes for a few minutes; then realizing that the way to the exit
was clear, he bounded towards it over the dead body of the slain porter.
But before he quitted the premises he seized adroitly one of Lucy’s two
milch goats and, breaking its neck, trailed it over his shoulders and
plunged down a ravine.  The men followed him with a fusillade of shots
from their Snider rifles, but probably in the darkness all went wide.
The lion remained in the ravine alternately crunching and growling—but
_such_ growling!—the English verb is feeble to express the
blood-curdling sound.

Day broke at last.  John roused himself, detached gently the
hysterically-clutching hands of his wife, who alternately implored him
not to expose himself to any more danger and not to leave her to die by
herself in the wilderness, but to turn back with her that very day and
seek for some safer Mission post at the Coast or in Unguja itself.  He
put his clothes into better order, knelt and prayed for a few minutes:
then tidied the tent space a little and overhauled his rifle.  Next,
rummaging for ammunition and putting it handy in his side pockets, he
issued from the tent, carefully fastening the door flaps after him.  He
questioned the men in broken Swahili as to the lion’s whereabouts.
"Chini, Bwana, hapa karibu, ndani ya bondee ... Below, master, near
here, within the ravine," they answered; and the lion, hearing the
raised voices, gave a confirmatory growl which reached to the ears of
the shaking Lucy in the tent.  She arose, her teeth chattering with
terror, and looked out through a slit in the tent door.  She saw and
heard John call for the headman and guessed that he was marshalling
eight of his most courageous porters, the "gunmen" of the expedition, to
sally out with him and attack the lion. This beast, having nearly
finished the goat, had no intention of leaving the neighbourhood of the
camp. He intended to have next, one by one, the two donkeys; and after
he had eaten them, the humans.  The ravine seemed a convenient place in
which to repose till he was hungry again....

The porters read the lion’s mind correctly: "He will wait there, master,
till we are breaking camp and then attack the donkeys, and perhaps the
one with Bibi on his back.  We shall never get him in such a favourable
position again.  See!  He is down there below, looking up at us.  He can
scarcely rush up this side of the ravine...."  John Baines grasped the
situation; he quickly placed himself in the middle of the eight braves,
who knelt on one knee in between the tree stems on the edge of the steep
descent.  All at the word "Fire!" sent a converging volley (which
deafened Lucy in the tent) at the great head with its wide-open yellow
eyes ... and as the smoke cleared away the head was a shapeless mass of
blood and brains and the lion was utterly dead.

A shout of triumph arose from the elated men, and the whole force of the
caravan—thirty-two men without the poor wretch who had been killed in
the night—went tumbling down the ravine to disembowel the lion and cut
off its skin for "Bwana" who had shown himself such a man of spirit.

John betook himself to Lucy’s tent, exultant.  He had killed a lion!  He
almost forgot to kneel down and send up a thanksgiving for the Divine
protection accorded to them.  Lucy dried her eyes and at last made an
effort to dress and swallow a little breakfast. As her nerves were
shattered by the "close call" they had had in the night, and as a burial
service must be held over the dead porter and the loads be readjusted,
John announced there would be no march that day.

But the next morning Lucy could hardly sit her donkey.  And by ill-luck
the caravan had only just started and was passing through more ruined
banana plantations—another charnel house of the last Masai raid—when it
was abruptly halted by a shout of "Nyoka!"  Owing to the obstacles of
the felled banana stems it was difficult to diverge from the narrow
track; and, barring the men’s way, in the middle of that track an
unusually large "spitting" cobra had erected itself on the stiffened
tail-third of its length and was balancing its flattened, expanded body
to and fro, threatening the advance of the caravan.  It should have been
a comparatively easy matter to fell it with a well-flung banana stem,
but meanwhile the file of porters halted, and John, impatient to find
out the cause of the halt, urged on his donkey to flounder through the
vegetation along the track and reach the head of the caravan.  Lucy’s
donkey was so devoted to her sister ass that she could never bear to be
separated from her; so, unchecked by Lucy’s limp clutch on the reins,
she hurried forward.  But when she saw the swaying cobra she bolted off
to the left into the banana tangle, and the abrupt action flung her
rider off amongst skulls and bones and rotting vegetation.

The headman, with a tent-pole, hurled adroitly at the aggressive snake,
broke its back, the exasperated porters rushed forward and whacked it to
pulp and then threw the remains far from the path, took up their loads
and marched forward, hastening to leave so ill-omened a place.  The cook
and the personal attendant hurried to raise the unconscious, slightly
stunned Lucy from her horrible surroundings and caught the donkey. The
caravan, however, had to be halted afresh.  Lucy was far too ill to
ride.  Yet a further stay could hardly be made in these surroundings.
After a conference with the headman it was decided to rig up a "machila"
or travelling hammock out of blankets, and a long pole, and to march on
a mile or so to a better site for a camping place, and there await the
lady’s recovery....

Poor John!  It required, indeed, patience and resignation to the fitful
ways of Providence to keep up heart against this succession of
disasters.  The loads were readjusted so as to release four men to carry
the invalid; and the caravan moved on silently, in low spirits and
without the accustomed song, till they reached a spot which satisfied
their requirements of defensibility against lions, access to good water;
shade; and no likelihood of biting ants or snakes.  Such a place was
found in an hour or two, and the overburdened porters gladly heard the
decision to remain till the Bibi was well enough to travel.

Lucy when put to bed was alternately hysterical and delirious.  She was
suffering more from nervous shocks than from bodily injuries, though
several of the ant-bites were inclined to fester, and her left cheek,
arm, and side were badly bruised from the fall amongst the bones.  John,
as he sat and watched her on the camp bed, thought what cursed luck had
followed him since his marriage.  He had twice made this journey between
Hangodi and the coast, and although neither traversing of the
hundred-and-fifty miles had been precisely an agreeable picnic, there
had not occurred any really tragical incidents that he remembered.
Going first to Hangodi, nine months ago, the Masai raids had not taken
place; and on his coastward journey a month previously his guide must
have taken him along a different path.  Thus they had avoided these
ruined villages with their rotting remains of massacres.  He had often
heard lions roar and seen snakes gliding from the path, and had crossed
with a hop and a jump swarms of the dreaded "siafu."  It was common
knowledge that some Arab daus were infested with bugs.  But none of
these terrors had been obvious on his previous journeys, nor had there
been such a scarcity of drinking water.  It really seemed as though
Divine Providence for some mysterious ends was to crowd all the dangers
and disagreeables of an African _safari_ into Lucy’s wedding tour.

A talk with the headman helped to clear things up and settle plans.
They were, at this new camp—by contrast with the others a very pleasant
and salubrious place—about sixty miles from Hangodi and about fifty from
the Evangelical Missionary Society’s station or Mpwapwa.  Here there
lived a famous medical missionary.  If a message were sent to him by
fast runners he might reach them in four or five days with advice and
medicines.

Two of the swiftest porters of the _safari_ were chosen to run through
the tolerably safe Usagara country with a letter, with calico bound
round them for food purchase and a bag of rice tied to each man’s
girdle. John’s revolver was lent to the more experienced of the two as
some protection against wild beasts or lawless men.  They were promised
a present if they did the journey in two days.

                     *      *      *      *      *

There was nothing for it then but to keep Lucy well-nourished with broth
made from tinned foods and beef-extract.  The porter who had let drop
the case of cider and had conceived an attachment for his mistress out
of pity and remorse, set a snare one day and caught a guinea-fowl.  This
made an excellent nourishing soup. Another porter found a clutch of
guinea-fowl’s eggs. There was one remaining milch goat which yielded
about a pint of milk daily.

With such resources as these John strove to prepare an invalid diet
which could be administered by spoonfuls to a patient with no appetite
and poor vitality. He had a small medicine-case of drugs, but knew not
what to prescribe for nervous exhaustion.  He scarcely left the vicinity
of the tent during the day-time, and slept fully-dressed at night in a
deck-chair close to Lucy’s camp bedstead.

At the end of the fifth day the medical missionary arrived on a riding
donkey with John’s messengers, and six porters of his own carrying a
comfortable travelling hammock.  He diagnosed the case and took a
cheerful view of it, but advised their setting out next day with him and
attempting by forced marches to reach his station—fifty miles away—in
two days. At Mpwapwa Lucy would be nursed back to health by his wife,
and when she was fit for more African travel she should be sent on to
Hangodi.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Six weeks afterwards she reached her husband’s station in Ulunga,
completely restored to health.  The cool dry season had set in; the
country she traversed was elevated, much wooded, picturesque
hill-and-dale threaded with numerous small streams, and her travelling
escort, the medical missionary, was an interesting man with a
well-stored mind who could explain much that she wanted to know.

On her arrival at Hangodi she found Ann Jamblin installed as a potent
force in several departments of the station economy, the real mistress
of the community.  She had come up from the coast in the _safari_ of
Mrs. Ewart Stott.  The marches had been well regulated the camping
places well chosen, the wild beasts had not annoyed them, and they had
avoided the waterless tract.  Ann was prompt to infer that Lucy had made
far too much fuss over the petty discomforts of African travel, and Lucy
began to take refuge in a proud silence—which one’s persecutors call
"sulks"—under Ann’s gibes and obliquely slighting remarks.




                             *CHAPTER VIII*

                          *LETTERS TO AND FRO*


              _From Lady Silchester to Captain Brentham._


Englefield House,
       _July_ 12, 1887.

DEAR ROGER,—

The great event took place three weeks ago and I am just allowed to
leave my bed and lie on a couch for a few hours every day—in my boudoir.
Here I can wile away the time by writing letters.

It is a boy, so Francis ought to be in the seventh heaven of happiness
as he now has a direct heir for the succession.  Ought to be, but
somehow isn’t. Since I began to get better and take notice he does not
seem as exuberant as I expected.  He isn’t _well_.  I have a sort of
idea he had a fainting fit in the House of Lords just when my crisis was
coming on and that they kept it back from me.  But I saw an allusion to
it in an old _Times_ which had somehow found its way into my
sitting-room.

The infant is to be named James Francis Addington for ancestral reasons.
I do not feel energetic enough to contest.  I should have preferred
_one_ Christian name _only_—a multitude of names is so démodé and must
be so confusing to the recording angels who don’t recognize surnames.  I
wanted something a little baffling and out of the common such as
Clitheroe or Passavant.  Clitheroe is not the name of any relation, but
I liked its sound—like the wind in the reeds, don’t you think?—and it
would have been a new departure.

Little Clithy looks rather wizen as he lies asleep in his bassinette,
but at his age most infants seem incredibly old and cynical, as though
they were just finishing some life cycle and were peevish at beginning
another.

Of course, Clitheroe’s coming has _quite_ ruled me out of the Jubilee
festivities.  Suzanne Feenix has been doing all the running, and quietly
pushing her husband whilst I have been unable to secure any advancement
for mine, who now seems quite lacking in ambition.  Suzanne, by the bye,
_l’on dit très toquée_ of another good-looking African explorer, a rival
of yours from West Africa.  A pity you did not make her acquaintance—as
I advised you to do—before you left.  She has any amount of influence
with Lord W.

How is the missionaryess?  I am glad she was safely married to her
missionary and withdrew herself into the interior.  I feared otherwise
there was going to be _another_ entanglement: for I don’t believe _in
the least_ you were a Galahad and faithful only to my memory in the days
when we played at being engaged.  I don’t see why I should be specially
interested in this young woman because she came from Aldermaston and her
father is one of our tenants.... However, when I can once more ride I’ll
go over and look her people up and report on them.  But I only hope you
won’t turn her head by taking all this interest in her affairs.  So like
you!  And to think you once reproached me for inconstancy!

All the same, dear Roger, I do miss you—_dreadfully_. Francis _will_
keep up the grand manner and won’t tell me any cabinet secrets.  My
brothers and sisters don’t interest me, mother is too anxious about
father’s affairs to leave him for long, and when she is here I am
nervous about discussing them for fear they may want to borrow money
from Francis.

I have sent Maud an invitation because she reminds me faintly of you....

SIBYL.



                _From Mrs. Josling to Mrs. John Baines._


Church Farm
       Aldermaston
              July 30 (1887)

My darling girl

Father and me were so releaved at getting your letter ten days ago
saying you had reached Unguja safe and sound and had just been married
to John Baines by the Consul and at the Cathedral.  It sounded quite
grand being married twice, and I only hope youll be happy.

I went over to see Mrs. Baines at Tilehurst taking your letter with me
but was receaved [underscored: none too graciously].  It seems John had
not written to his parents to say he was married [strikeout: or even
that he] but I suppose he hadent time before being so busy over his
preperations for starting up country.

Well my darling we both wishes you every happiness. Your letter dident
tell us much but I suppose you were too busy having to start away on a
ship the next morning.  We both send our humble thanks to Captain
Brentham for looking after you on the voyage. Lady Silchester has had
her baby—in the middle of last June.  Father and me drove over last week
to pay our respecs and make inquiries.  His lordship himself came out to
see and was nice as he always is. He’s very like his poor mother and she
was always the lady and spoke as nice to her servants as to her titled
friends.  Well Lord Silchester rang for the nurse and baby so as we
might see it.  It looked to me a poor little antique thing but of course
I dident say so.  It’s been christened James after his Lordship’s father
but they say as her Ladyship wanted some other name more romantic like.
She came in from the garden as we were leaving and gave herself such
airs I thought but Father says she’s a rare piece for good looks and we
all ought to be grateful to her for giving an heir to the estate to keep
out the Australian cousin who might have [strikeout: revvle]
revolutionary ideas about farming.  She ast after you a bit sarcastic
like I thought. She says I hear your daughter flirted dredfully with my
cousin Captain Brentham on the way out.  I couldent help saying I dident
believe it.  My daughter I said would never be a flirt it wasnt in your
nature.  I felt so put out but his Lordship tried to make it come right
by saying Her Ladyship musnt judge others by herself and that he quite
believed me.  Weve had a good hay crop and the wheat and root crops
promises well.  So Father’s in rare good humour and says after harvest
he’s going to take us all to the sea-side Bournemouth or Southsea.
Clara and Mary’s both well.  They never ail as you kno.  Young Marden of
Overeaston is paying Clara some attention. Leastways he drops in to
Sunday supper pretty often.

We all send our love and I hope with all my hart you will be happy and
continu well.  I shall go on being anxious about you till you come back.
Praps the Primitives will give John a call after he’s done his bit of
missionary work and youll be able to live in England close to us.  I
shant be happy till this comes to pass.

Your loving mother
       Clara Josling



                  _From Mrs. Baines to her son John._

Tilehurst,
       _October_ 14, 1887.

MY DEAR SON,—

I suppose a mother must expect to come off _second_ best when her son
marries and I ought to think myself lucky to hear from you once a year.
But I confess I was put out in the summer only to get news of you
through Lucy’s mother.  However, your letter written August 3, after
Lucy had joined you at Hangodi, came to hand a few days ago.  You must
have had a terrible time getting her up-country.  She seems so feckless
and born to trouble.  As though wild beasts and accidents sought her
out.

I’ve just had a line from Ann Jamblin.  _She’s_ got her head screwed on
the right way.  She left a month after Lucy and yet reached your station
nearly as soon as you did.  She didn’t need to hang about that place—I
can’t spell its name—where you got married, and, she travelled
up-country, she says, in record time with a missionary lady, a Mrs.
Stott.  She didn’t fall off her donkey or have a lion in her tent or get
ant all over her or turn sick every few weeks.  Nor yet have herself
looked after by free-thinking captains on the voyage out.  But there.
You’ve made your bed as the saying is and you must lie on it.  It’s far
from my wish to come between husband and wife, and I’m glad Ann’s gone
to your station.  She’ll have a steadying influence on Lucy and be a
great comfort to you and your companions.  I suppose by now she’s
married to your friend Anderson.  If so he’ll have got a good wife and
her bit of money will be a help.

Father’s as well as he’s ever likely to be.  He suffers from brash, a
sure sign of overeating.

Sister Simpson is going to marry Brother Wilkins the sidesman of our
Reading Chapel.  At present she’s suffering from boils, but hopes to be
well enough for the marriage next month.  The Bellinghams at Cross
Corner, Reading, Bakers and Fancy Confectioners, are in a bad way—going
bankrupt they say.  There’s been a sad scandal about Pastor Brown at
Bewdly wanting to marry his deceased wife’s sister.  It’s forbidden I
know in Holy Writ, though at time of writing I can’t remember where, but
see Leviticus xviii. and xx.  Emily Langhorn has gone to London to learn
dressmaking.  Time she did and good behaviour likewise. I never listen
to scandal, otherwise I should say it was all on account of her goings
on with young Gilchrist.  She took it very hard when he suddenly married
Priscilla Lamb of Lamb’s Boot Emporium, Abbey Road, Reading.  I’m very
glad I wouldn’t have her here to the Dorcas meetings.  She’d got her eye
on you, I’m pretty sure.  Sam Gildersleeves and Polly Scatcherd’s got
married, just in time it seems, to save her good name.  People was
beginning to cut her. Clara Josling, your wife’s sister, is engaged to
young Harden, a good-for-nothing cricketer.  Plays with his brother and
friends on Sunday afternoons.  But I suppose you won’t think the worse
of him for that, now you’ve come under Lucy’s influence.  But oh what
wickedness is coming on the world.  Well, it can’t last much longer.
The vials of the Almighty’s wrath are about to be opened and the Last
Day is at hand—I feel and hope.  I’ve advised your father to spend no
more money on repairs at the Manufactory—It will last our time.

Meanwhile may God have you in his holy keeping. Father sends love.  He’s
taken up with this new drink Zoedone and expects to make a lot of money
out of it. Money, money, money and eat, eat, eat is all he thinks about.
Still, that’s better than breaking the Sabbath and running after strange
women, which is what most of his neighbours is doing.  And as to the
women, it’s dress, dress, dress and play acting.  Mrs. Garrett’s bustle
was right down shocking last Sunday.  I couldn’t keep my eyes off it
during Chapel.  They’ve been making so much money lately out of sanding
the sugar and selling dried tea-leaves for Best Family Blend Afternoon
tea that they don’t know how to spend it, so Mrs. G. has begun to dress
fashionable—at _her_ age too—and Mr. G. goes to St. Michael’s instead of
coming to Salem chapel where his parents worshipped before him.  And as
to this play acting, its one of the signs of the times.  They’ve opened
a theatre at Reading and have afternoon performances.—Several of our
Tilehurst folk have been seen there and Pastor Mullins spoke about it in
last Sunday’s sermon.

Your loving mother,
       SARAH BAINES.



           _From Mrs. Spencer Bazzard to Mr. Bennet Molyneux,
                            Foreign Office._

H.B.M. Vice-Consulate,
       Unguja,
              _Novr._ 1, 1887.

DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,—

When am I to address you as "Sir Bennet"?—as it ought to be, if I dare
express my thoughts.  We look in each Honours’ list expecting it.
Spencer is quite bitter on the subject, but I tell him "comparisons are
odious."  At any rate I won’t repeat his indiscretions.

We are all wondering here when Sir James Eccles is returning.  I have
not yet had the privilege of seeing him and can only take Spencer’s
opinions for guide. In Spencer’s mind he is well-nigh irreplaceable.
Spencer feels it would be little less than disastrous to place the
control of Ungujan affairs in the hands of any younger or less
experienced man.  With Sir James Eccles the Germans will try no
nonsense.  They might even renounce their protectorate in despair if he
were to return and had the influence of his Government behind him.
Whereas with a weaker man, or even with one of no authority, merely an
"acting" Consul-General, they may go to _any_ lengths.  I am foolish
enough about my Husband to think—if there _must_ be a stop-gap—that he
would be better than—well, than the present Acting Consul-General.
Spencer thoroughly distrusts the Germans and refuses even to learn their
ugly language; whereas C-p-n B. is much too friendly with them and has
gone to the length of saying we must not play the dog in the manger over
Africa.  It seems there have been great German African explorers as well
as English, and Spencer’s colleague thinks it rather hard they should
not have colonies as well as we.  Not knowing your own views I hesitate
to express mine.  And I should not be so presumptuous as to ask for any
guidance or any answer even to this letter.  I dare say if you think
Spencer is to have more responsibility and initiative in the future you
will privately instruct him as to the policy of your department.

That will not help _me_ much, for Spencer, where official correspondence
is concerned, is as close as—I can’t think of a parallel!  I mean, he
won’t tell me _anything_.  Not that I am inquisitive.  But I _do_ want
to be a help to him, and I also believe in the education of women.  I
should like to know _all_ about Africa! But I also know your
views—though they shock me. If I may judge from our conversations on
that never-to-be-forgotten Saturday till Monday—last Easter—when Mrs.
Molyneux was good enough to ask me down to Spilsbury——  You think Woman
should confine herself to superintending the household and her husband’s
comfort, to dressing well, and should not concern herself with politics.
You may be right. And yet there are moments in which I rebel against
these prescriptions.  It may have been my bringing-up. My dear father,
an officer in the Navy, died when I was very young, and darling mother
brought me up with perhaps too much modern liberality.  She entertained
considerably—in a modest way, of course—at our house in North
Kensington, and I was accustomed therefore from girlhood to meet with
many different types of men and women—some of them widely travelled—and
to hear a great variety of opinions.

Here, however, when I have attended to the affairs of our household—a
small one, since we no longer live in the big Consulate—and have paid an
occasional visit to some other Consul’s wife or the nicer among the
missionary women, I give myself up to the study of Swahili, the local
language.  Spencer, who is strong in fifty things where I am weak or
totally wanting, is not absolutely of the first quality as a linguist,
while I seem to have rather a gift that way. I am much complimented on
my French, and although I dislike German I force myself to speak it.  I
can now make myself understood in what Spence calls the "dam" lingo of
the natives.  And if I told you I was also grappling with Hindustani I
am afraid you would class me unfavourably with your pet aversion, a
"blue stocking"!

But I will defy your bad opinion.  I am _determined_ to fit myself for
Spencer’s promotion which must surely come in time, especially as we can
both stand the climate fairly well.  I have only been down once with
fever since I came out, and Spence sets malaria at defiance with
cocktails and an occasional stiff whisky peg.  Between us before long we
ought to know all that is worth knowing at Unguja.  And Spence is _so_
popular with the natives.  They instinctively look up to a strong man.

As to the missionaries they simply swarm on the island and the mainland.
Some of the Church of England ones are quite nice and are really
gentlemen and ladies.  And there are one or two adorable old priests in
the French Mission who pay me pretty compliments on my French and
declare I must have learnt it in Paris.  But there are also some awful
cranks.  There is a Mrs. Stott who puts in an appearance once in a way
from some very wild part of the interior and asks me with great
cheerfulness if I am saved, or if I love the Lord.  It is wonderful how
she keeps her appearance, as she goes about without a sunshade and has
been tossed several times by rhinoceroses.  Her voracity for hymn
singing is _extraordinary_.  Perhaps it acts on her constitution like
these new Swedish gymnastics.

Quite another type of recruit for the Nonconformist Missions came out
with me from England last spring.  A National School mistress, I
believe, originally.  She was the daughter of a farmer in Lord
Silchester’s country.  Some thought her pretty, but it was that
prettiness which soon evaporates under a tropical sun.  She seemed to me
thoroughly insipid and had not even that faith in mission work which at
least excuses the strange proceedings of her companions.  As soon as the
ship started she put herself under the wing of our Acting Consul-General
who was not slow to reciprocate.  They carried on a flirtation during
the voyage which—but I am afraid I am not very modern—was _not_ the best
preparation for marrying a Methodist missionary—a dreadful
_gauche_-looking creature who came to claim her at Unguja. However a
woman should always stand by women, so I did the best I could for her
when they were married by the Acting Consul-General.

That important personage—Is he a friend of yours? If so, I will promise
to see nothing but good in him—prefers to live all alone in Sir James
Eccles’ house, where Spencer had transferred himself after Sir James’s
departure.  We had proposed joining households with him, and I was
_quite_ ready to have made a home for him during his brief tenure of the
post. But apparently he preferred my room to my company, so of course I
did not press my offer.  He entertains very little on the plea that he
is too much occupied with work and study.

Well!  If I write much more you will dismiss me as a bore.  So I must
sign myself,

Yours gratefully,
       EMILIA BAZZARD.

P.S. I expect no answer.  But if you do not order me to the contrary I
shall post you from time to time a budget of gossip from Unguja in the
hope that it may prove amusing.

There is no news at all of Stanley.  Emin, they say, is still holding
out.  Each steamer brings more and more Germans, to Spencer’s great
disgust.  E.B.



              _From Captain Brentham to his sister Maud._


H.B.M. Agency,
       Unguja,
              _Decr._ 1, 1887.

DEAR OLD MAUD,—

You _are_ a good sort, and I am awfully grateful to you.  Your letters
never fail me each month as the mail comes in, and you send me just the
papers and books I like to see in my isolation.

I have been here over six months and am getting rather weary of the
office work.  I don’t suppose there is much chance of my being promoted
to the principal post if Sir James Eccles does not come back.  It would
be too rapid a promotion and excite frightful jealousy—though I really
think I should do as well as any one else, and better than some.  My
Arabic and Persian are both useful to me here, and I have worked up
Hindustani and mastered Swahili and get along very well with the Arabs
and the big colony of British Indians.  But I don’t feel confident about
F.O. approval. All these affairs pass through Bennet Molyneux’s hands,
and he does not like me for some reason, probably because he’s an
obstinate ass and hates being set right.  I hoped Lord Silchester would
have pushed me more, but according to Sibyl’s letters he seems really
ailing and to care about little besides his own health. Your account of
your visit to Englefield last summer amused me very much.  Sibyl has a
good deal of the cat about her, but I quite understand from the very
oppositeness of your dispositions you might get on very well—your
straightforwardness and her guile. At any rate though I am a little sore
still about her throwing me over for Silchester, I am ready to forgive
her if she is nice to my one dear sister.

As to _you_, I never properly appreciated you till I came to live out
here.  If I could only get a settled position I think I should ask you
to come and keep house for me.  I daresay I shall never marry—the women
I have felt drawn to have always married somebody else.  It would do
father good if he had to engage a housekeeper and a curate.  He throws
away far too much of the money he ought to leave some day to you on
excavations at Silchester.

Well, as I say, I am getting rather tired of the office work I have to
plough through day after day.  There is endless litigation between the
Hindu merchants and the Arabs.  There are Slave cases every week and
frequent squabbles with the French Consulate over slaving ships flying
the French flag.  And although I have a "legal" vice-consul to help me,
his decisions are sometimes awfully rotten and have to be revised.

I wasn’t cut out for office work.  If I were really Agent and
Consul-General it would be different; I might take more interest in the
storms of this Unguja tea-cup.  And I should of course be properly in
control of the mainland Vice-Consuls who at present seem to me to waste
all their time big game shooting or ill in bed with fever due to too
much whisky.  But as I am only a warming pan for Eccles or some new man
it is a very boring life.  I have not been away from this little island
once since I came out in May.  I am therefore impatient to go over to my
proper consular district on the mainland, and thoroughly explore it. It
reaches to the three great lakes of the interior!

This Vice-Consul at Unguja is a queer sort of person.  He was called to
the bar a few years ago—unless he is personating another man!  But his
knowledge of Indian law is nil and he seems to have no intuition or
perception of where the truth lies between scores of perjured witnesses.
He is unable to learn languages, so he is quite at the mercy of the
court interpreters.  He drinks too much whisky, has an unpleasant
mottled complexion, a shaking hand, and an uneasy manner with me,
varying from deferential to what the French call "rogue."  His wife who
travelled out with me is _by no means_ stupid.  She is somewhat the
golden-haired adventuress—her hair, at least, is an impossible gold
except near the roots—her complexion is obviously, though very
skilfully, made up, and generally she has a sort of false good looks
just as she exhibits a false good nature.  Every now and then one
catches a glimpse of the tigress fighting for her own hand (which means
in her case, her husband).  She has probably been a governess at one
time, and rumour makes her the daughter of a navy paymaster’s widow who
kept a boarding house in Bayswater, which at one time sheltered Spencer
Bazzard when he was down on his luck.  He married her—I should guess—to
pay his bill for board and lodging.  She then took up his affairs with
vigour and actually got him appointed Legal Vice-Consul here. She writes
letters to Bennet Molyneux—sealed with lavender wax and a dove and
serpent seal—I see them in the Mail bag—flatters him up I expect, and I
dare say deals me every now and then a stab in the back.  Her first idea
when we came out was to fascinate me and take up the position of lady of
the house at the Agency.  I dare say she would have run it far better
than I do and have made a very competent hostess.  But the inevitable
corollary of having her detestable, blotchy-faced husband as my
commensal and letting her boss the show generally was too much for me,
and I had to ask them to live in the Vice-Consulate hard by and let me
dwell in solitude and peace in the many-roomed Agency.  My
maitre-d’hotel is Sir James’s admirable Swahili butler, my cook is a
Goanese—and first rate—and I have one or two excellent Arab servants.
Of course I make a point of having the Bazzards frequently to dine or
lunch, and I ask her to receive the ladies of the European colony at any
party or entertainment.  Nevertheless I have made an enemy.  Yet she
would be intolerable as a friend....

The poor little missionary lady you ask about has, I guess, been having
a pretty rough time of it up country.  She has not written to say so: I
only gather the impression from the "on dits" which circulate here. I do
not like to show too much interest in her concerns because such interest
in this land of feverish scandal might be so easily and malevolently
misconstrued. Before she departed from Unguja for the interior I
gathered that her chief anxiety was lest her mother should think her
unhappy, and mistaken in her career as a missionary.  Farleigh is not so
very far from Aldermaston (the address is "Mrs. Josling, Church Farm").
Perhaps one day you might find your way there and have a friendly talk
with Lucy Baines’s mother and father, and intimate that I am—as a
Consul—keeping an eye on the welfare and safety of their daughter and
son-in-law.  He—Baines—seems a good-hearted fellow, but quite incapable
of appreciating her real charm, even if he does not think it wrong for a
missionary’s wife to _have_ charm.  She is really a half-educated
country girl, with a fragile prettiness which will soon disappear under
the heat and malarial fever, with the mind of an unconscious poetess,
the pathetic naïveté of a wild flower which wilts under
transplantation....

I mostly like the missionaries I meet out here; so you need not mind an
occasional collection of Farleigh coppers and sixpennies being taken up
on their account to the tune of From Greenland’s Icy Mountains, etc. Our
religious beliefs do not tally; but I do admire their self-sacrifice,
their energy, and devotion.  They are generally specialists in some one
direction—native languages, folk-lore, botany, entomology, photography,
or even, as in Mrs. Stott’s case, the making of plum cakes.  A very
admirable solace to the soul, or—where the natives are concerned—means
of conversion!

                     *      *      *      *      *

Your loving brother,
       ROGER.




                              *CHAPTER IX*

                             *MISSION LIFE*


Lucy had reached her husband’s station in the Ulunga country in July,
1887, at the height of the winter season, south of the Equator.  The
climate then of the Ulunga Hills was delightful; dry, sparkling,
sunshiny and crisply cold at nights.  Her health mended fast, nor did
she begin to flag again till the hot weather returned in October and the
height of the wet season, of the southern summer, made itself felt in
December and January by torrential rains, frightful thunderstorms,
blazing sunshine and the atmosphere of a Turkish bath.  For several
months after her arrival she made renewed and spasmodic efforts to play
the part of a missionary’s wife, to share her husband’s enthusiasm, and
to earn her living—so to speak—by her contribution of effort.  If she
had _only_ never met Brentham and if _only_ Ann Jamblin had stopped at
home!  She could not but admit the change in John was remarkable.  He
was less and less like either of his parents, less and less inclined to
dogmatize; he had become as unselfish as such a self-absorbed,
unobservant man could be.  Intensely fond of work, especially manual
work—carpentering, building, gardening, cutting timber, and contriving
ingenious devices to secure comfort and orderliness—this backwoods life
suited him to perfection.  He was the head of the station, the principal
teacher of the boys and men, the leader of the services in the chapel.
He was responsible for the finances and general policy of the Mission.

Each of the stations of this Society in East Africa was a little
self-governing republic.  Once a year delegates from each East African
station met at Mvita or Lingani, or some other convenient place, and
conferred, agreed perhaps on some common policy, some general line of
conduct.  But there was much individual freedom of action.  John, for
example, was taking up a strong line against the Slave Trade.  Since the
dissolution of the Sultan’s vague rule which followed the German
invasion, the Arab slave traders had revived their slave and ivory
caravans between Tanganyika and the Zangian coast owing to the great
demand for labour in Madagascar and in the Persian Gulf.  John had
obtained such influence over the head chief of Ulunga that he had
forbidden the Arabs transit through his lands, and instead of selling
his superfluous young people or his criminals to the slave traders he
sent them to the Mission to be trained in rough carpentry, reading and
writing, husbandry and so forth.  The very flourishing trade that
Anderson carried on at the store made the Mission prosperous enough
occasionally to subsidize the chiefs and reward them for sending their
boys and girls to school and to be ostensibly converted to Christianity.
Some black Muslims who had started teaching boys the Koran and elements
of Muhammadanism in two of the villages were expelled, and a resolute
war was made by John on the witch doctors of the tribe, who for a time
were routed before the competition of Cockles’ Pills and the other
invaluable patent medicines which were just beginning to appear in
tabloid form.

Brother Bayley’s department was more especially the study of the native
language.  He translated simple prayers and hymns and passages of
Scripture into the Kagulu dialect of Ulunga and rendered more
educational literature into the wider-spread Swahili.  He had a small
printing-press with which he was labouring to put his translations into
permanent form; and besides this took a prominent part in the boys’
education.

His personal hobby was butterfly and beetle catching. He devoted his
small amount of leisure to collecting these insects and transmitting
them to an agent in London to sell on his behalf.  In this way he made a
fluctuating fifty pounds a year, which was a pleasant addition to his
meagre salary.  It provided him with a few small luxuries and enabled
him to send a present every now and then to his mother.

Then there was Ann Jamblin, of Tilehurst, a school-fellow of Lucy, a
sturdy, plump young woman of about twenty-seven, with a dead-white
complexion, a thick skin, black hair, black eyebrows and hard eyes of
pebble brown.  She had actually arrived at Hangodi before Lucy herself,
though she started out from home a month later, being of that
exasperating type to whom nothing happens in the same _ratio_ as to
other people. She could never be run over, never be drowned at sea—Lucy
thought—never slip on a piece of orange peel, never be assaulted in a
railway carriage.  Ann had been sent out by the Mission Board to be a
bride for Brother Anderson (on a discreet suggestion of John’s, who
thought Anderson a little inclined to look amorously on comely
negresses).  But she had declined to fulfil the bargain when she
arrived, denied indeed all knowledge of such an engagement, said she
didn’t want to marry any one: only to do the Lord’s work and help all
round.  Her refusal had been taken philosophically by the person most
concerned, on account of her unattractive appearance; and was further
softened by her practical usefulness as an independent member of the
Mission.  She house-kept for the little community, attended to the
poultry, goats and sheep, did much of the cooking, made the bread, the
cakes, the puddings; darned the socks, mended the linen, and taught the
native girls the simple arts of British domestic life.  She dressed with
little regard to embellishment of the person, but with much attention to
neatness and mosquito bites.  Her humour was rough and her tongue lashed
every one in turn.  She had that unassailable independence of manner
which is imparted by the possession of a private income of one hundred
pounds a year and the knowledge that her martyrdom was voluntary and
self-sought.  Hardly ever ill herself, she nursed every one that was
with almost professional ability.

Lucy secretly detested her, for she was always gibing at John’s wife for
being moony and unpractical, for her "æsthetic tastes," such as liking
flowers on the table at meals; for succumbing quickly to headaches and
megrims generally, and especially for the ease with which she was
humbugged by the big girls of her school classes.  Ann would also gird
at her for lack of religious zeal.  Ann herself took an aggressively
hearty part in prayers and hymn-singing, and mastered the harmonium
which had proved unplayable by Lucy.  Ann even tried making her own
translations of her favourite canticles into the native language and was
not deterred or discouraged because in her first attempts and through
the malice of her girl interpreters she had been misled into rendering
the most sacred phrases and symbolism by gross obscenities.  The delight
of shouting out these improprieties in chapel before the blandly
unconscious missionaries, when Brother Bayley was laid aside by fever,
attracted large congregations.

If John Baines were seriously ill with a malarial attack, Ann would
brush Lucy aside as unceremoniously as she ejected her from the
harmonium stool. She would take complete charge of the sick man, reduce
the fever, and make the broths and potions which were to sustain
convalescence.  When Lucy herself was ill, Ann would either diagnose the
attack as "fancy" or "hysteria," or a touch of biliousness, and cure it
so drastically that Lucy made haste to get well in order to withdraw
from her treatment.

This was an average day in Lucy’s life at Hangodi in the first year of
her stay there——

6 a.m.  Lucy is already awake; John still sleeping heavily.  Lucy had
been dreaming she was back at Aldermaston or else voyaging down the Red
Sea with Brentham, and is still under the shock of disappointment as she
lies gazing up at the dingy cone of mosquito net suspended over their
bed from the rat-haunted roof.  The bedstead is a broad structure—the
Arab "angareb"—an oblong wooden frame with interlaced strips of ox-hide.
On this foundation has been laid a lumpy cork mattress with well-marked
undulations. On that again a couple of musty blankets and a sheet.  For
covering there is another sheet and a coverlet.

Lucy, hearing the awakening bell being tolled, nudges John, who is still
snoring.

_Lucy_: "_John_!  The first bell has gone!"

_John_: "Wha’?" (Gurgle, gurgle, snore cut short, lips smacked, heavy
sighs.)——"Wha’?  Time to ger-up?  Or-right."

He tumbles out of bed in his disarranged night-gown—pajamas were not
introduced into the East Africa Mission till 1890.  In doing so he tears
the mosquito curtain with his toe-nails.

A native servant is heard filling two tin baths in the adjoining
roomlet.  They then proceed to take their baths in what—to Lucy—is
disgusting promiscuity. The rest of the toilet is summarily proceeded
with. (As John is fully hirsute there is no shaving to be done.)  Then
to avoid remonstrance from her husband Lucy kneels with him in prayers
on a dusty mat, in fear all the time some scorpion may sting her ankles.
One did, once.

At half-past six another bell goes—how the converts love
bell-ringing!—and they hurry out to the Chapel where the other members
of the Mission staff and a posse of native boys and girls meet them.
More prayers, a psalm, and a hymn sung lustily but disharmoniously.

Then the whites adjourn to the house or large hut where the meals of the
community are served.  The dining-table is of rough-hewn planks of
native timber, and on either side of it there are similarly rough forms
to sit on, with a native stool at either end of the table. The breakfast
consists of porridge and milk, the porridge being made of native cereals
and often a little bitter.  There is coarse brown bread with a sour
taste as it is made with fermented palm wine.  There are butter from a
tin—rather rancid—potted salmon, and bantams’ eggs from the native
poultry, so under-boiled that they run out over the plate when opened.

John asks a blessing on the meal.  They then proceed to eat it, while
the males drink with some noisiness the tea that Ann pours out.  "You
don’t seem to have much appetite this morning, Lucy," says Ann of malice
prepense: "Porridge burnt again?  What is it?"

"Thank you.  There is nothing wrong with the porridge, so far as I know.
I am simply not hungry."

"Ah!  Been at those bananas again.  They’re very sustaining.  But you’ll
never be well if you eat between meals."

"_I_ eat _at_ meals and _between_ ’em," says Brother Anderson, "and I’m
glad to say loss of appetite don’t never trouble _me_.  This is a rare
climate to make and keep you hungry."

Anderson is voracious and somewhat lacking in table manners, defects
atoned for by his being an unremitting worker and well contented with
his lot—Eupeptic, as we learnt to say at a later date.  But he keeps his
spoon in his cup and holds it steady with a black-rimmed thumb when he
drinks.  He also helps himself to butter with his own knife, talks with
his mouth full, and never masticates behind closed lips but displays the
process without self-consciousness.  Lucy, who is squeamish about such
things, glances at him occasionally with scarcely concealed disgust.
Brother Bayley eats more sparingly and divides his attention between his
food and a printed vocabulary of Kisagara. He has a strong predilection
for reading at meals, which ever and again comes under the lash of Ann’s
tongue.  She does not consider it good manners.

John himself makes a hearty breakfast, but glances occasionally at
Lucy’s silent abstemiousness.  At last Ann, the housekeeper, rises after
Brothers Bayley and Anderson have left the table for their work, and
says to Lucy: "Don’t sit too long over your food because I want
Priscilla and Florence to clear away, wash up and then come to me...."

She goes out.

"Not well, Lucy, this morning?" says John, who is beginning to despair
about her fitting in to mission life.  The conviction which he often
repels takes him now with an ache.  He loves the work himself, not only
the converting these savages to a better mode of life, but the
unrealized colonization about the whole business, the planting of fruit
trees, the increase of flocks and herds, the freedom from civilization’s
shackles and class distinctions....

"Oh yes!  I’m quite well ... I suppose.  Simply not hungry.  I daresay I
shall make up for it at dinner ... provided Ann leaves me alone and
doesn’t nag about eating.  I think it’s _such_ bad manners, observing
what people do at meal times.  I don’t comment on her big appetite or on
Anderson’s disgusting way of eating...."

"She means very well," replies John, wishing to be fair....

"I daresay she does.  She’d have made you a much better wife than I.  If
I die in my next attack of fever, you ought to marry her ... _I_
shouldn’t mind...."

"Now, Lucy, don’t say such dreadful things.  You can’t think _how_ they
hurt me...."

At this moment Priscilla and Florence—pronouncing their imposed
baptismal names as "Pilisilla," and "Filórency" in a loud stage
conversation they are holding together to conceal the fact that they
have rapidly escheated a half-basin-full of sugar—come in to clear away,
and John leads Lucy with an arm round her waist back to their own
quarters.

"Cheer up, old girl!  You haven’t had fever now for three months and
you’re getting your good looks back.  And making splendid progress with
your teaching.... You’re beginning to master the language...."

It is eleven o’clock in the morning and the Girls School at Hangodi,
with its mud walls of wattle and daub and its thatch of grass and palm
mid-ribs, is hot to the extent of eighty degrees Fahrenheit.  Despite
the open door (for the small glass-paned windows are not made to open)
the atmosphere is close and redolent of perspiring Negroes.  Lucy raises
her eyes from her desk and looks about her as though realizing the scene
from a new point of view, without illusion or kindly allowance.  At the
end of the School-house, opposite to the teacher’s platform and desk, is
the entrance-door of heavy planks adzed from native timber. Through the
wide-open doorway can be seen a square of sun-baked red clay which
refracts a dazzling flame-white effulgence.

When the eye got used to this brilliancy of sunlight on a surface
polished by the pattering of naked feet, it could distinguish rows of
Eucalyptus saplings, and here and there the rich green of a native
shade-tree, together with part of a red brick chapel roofed with
corrugated iron and several thatched houses of white-washed clay.

On the walls of the School were hung a map of the World on Mercator’s
projection and a map of Africa; a large scroll with elementary
illustrations of Natural History—typical beasts, birds, reptiles, fish
and insects, of sizes as disproportionate as the inhabitants of a Noah’s
Ark.  There were also placards with arithmetical figures, letters of the
alphabet and single syllable combinations: _M a, ma; b a, ba; l e, le_,
etc. Over the wall, behind the teacher’s desk and above the black-board,
was a long strip of white paper, printed in big black capitals: MWAACHE
WATOTO WANIKARIBU ("Suffer little children to come unto Me").  The words
were in the widely understood Swahili language, the medium through which
Lucy endeavoured with many difficulties and misunderstandings to impart
her knowledge to her semi-savage pupils.

A lull after her two hours’ teaching had begun.  A Negro woman of some
intelligence, a freed slave from Unguja and the wife of "Josaia
Birigizi" (Josiah Briggs) the interpreter, was talking in a low
sing-song voice with the little girls, practising them in the alphabet
and the syllables formed by consonant and vowel. The class, ranged upon
rows of rough forms in front of the teacher’s desk, consisted of black
girls of all sizes, from little children to young, nubile women; but
they were separated by an aisle down the middle of the room and were
assorted according to height into two categories, "A-_big_-geru" and
"A-_lig_-geru," these phrases being Bantu corruptions of "Big girls,"
and "Little girls."

Although nearly if not quite naked when at home, here on the Mission
premises they were dressed in short-sleeved smocks of white calico,
loose from the neck downwards, most of them soiled and in need of
washing.  The girls consequently had a frowsy look, somewhat belied by
their glossy faces and arms, their brilliant eyes, and dazzling white
teeth.  The smaller children were pretty little things that any teacher
might have petted, but most of the bigger girls had an impudent look and
an ill-concealed expression of over-fed idleness tending towards
imaginings of sensuality.  A critic of missionary policy in those days
would have felt inclined to put these bigger girls to good, hard, manual
labour in the mornings which should by the afternoon have taken the
sauciness out of them; and have reserved their mental education for the
afternoon, when they had returned from brick-making or field hoeing.

No sooner did Lucy relapse into silence and show signs of reverie than
they set to work to whisper of their love affairs, to push and pull one
another about with giggles and peevish complaints; or else to let slates
fall with a clatter whilst they watched with interest the flitting of
rats about the rafters.

Lucy raised her eyes likewise to the roof.  Its framework was
constructed of the smooth, shiny mid-ribs of palm-fronds, descending
from a central ridge-pole below the mud walls and supporting outside a
shade over the verandah.  Across the palm rafters were laid transverse
rows of more or less straight branches or sticks, and to these were
attached the round bunches of coarse grass which formed the thatch. From
rafters and beams there fell every now and again little wafts of
yellowish powder, due to the industrious drilling of the wood by
burrowing beetles. But the thatch was alive with larger things than
insects, especially where it came in contact with the top of the clay
walls.  Here an occasional lizard darted in and out the rafters like a
whip, and rats poked out their long faces with quizzical, beady eyes,
watching the proceedings below with rat-like impudence.

Teaching had begun at nine, and would go on till lunch-time—twelve.  But
already by eleven the teacher was weary and could not concentrate her
thoughts on the drudgery of getting elementary ideas about reading,
spelling and counting into these Palæolithic brains.  She fell silent.
Her eyes first ranged over the School-house, taking in all its details
in a mood of scornful hostility.  She had never so completely realized
the hatefulness of her present existence and its bitter contrast with
her home life in England.  She was sick of John’s simple piety, of
Brother Anderson’s sanctimoniousness and disagreeably affectionate
manner to herself ... and his way of eating, his behaviour at table, his
unctuous prayers.  Mr. Bayley, whose quiet manners and politeness
appealed to her, was, nevertheless, fanatical about the letter of
Scripture—a bigot, Captain Brentham would have called him.  It would not
be loyal to her husband—John, at least, was sincere and worked very
hard; otherwise what _satirical_ letters she could write about it
all!...

But the one she most disliked among her associates was Ann Jamblin.  Ann
came between her and John, just as they might have hit it off, have come
to some agreement about religion or her own share in Mission work.  If
Ann had never come out, things might have been more bearable....  Ann
had come here on a false pretence.  She was in love with John, _that_
was certain, though John was too much of a goose to see it.

Certainly she had made herself useful, _odiously_ useful....  The men
liked her because she made them so comfortable....  That talent, of
course, was inherited from the ham and beef shop at home!  She shared
Lucy’s teaching work and taught the women and girls in the
afternoon—taught them sensible things—cooking, plain sewing, washing,
ironing, leaving to Lucy—as she pretended—the "fine lady" part of the
work, the instruction of their minds.

Lucy’s eyes flashed in her day-dream when she realized how she had grown
to loathe the morning and evening prayers....  Brother Anderson’s
contribution to the uplifting of the spirit, especially.  _How_ weary
was the Sunday with its two "native" services, both conducted by John in
English, broken Swahili, and Kagulu, with the long-drawn-out
interpretation of Josiah Briggs.

She had had good health since she reached Hangodi, after that ghastly
nightmare journey from the coast. That was fortunate, because the
nearest medical help was fifty miles away.  But _oh!_ the monotony of
the life!  How much longer could she stand it?  It was not so bad for
the men.  Every Saturday they took a whole holiday and went down to the
lower country and shot game and guinea-fowl for the food of the station.
Sometimes they "itinerated" and she and Ann were left alone.  John
always asserted it was not safe for white women to travel, except to and
from the coast. With much camp life he believed they became
unwomanly....

There had only been three mails since she had arrived last July.
Captain Brentham sent her books and newspapers, but Ann tossed her head
over these attentions and John once or twice confiscated the books as
being of dangerous tendencies; subversive of a simple faith.  The
station itself was provided with little else to read except the Bible, a
few goody-goody books and magazines, grammars and dictionaries of native
languages.

In England she had imagined she was going to sketch and botanize,
collect butterflies, and keep all sorts of wonderful pets, besides
beholding superb scenery and meeting every now and then celebrated
explorers.  That dream had soon passed away.  She had no time for
sketching in the week, and it was considered wrong to do it on a Sunday.
And even if she outraged the sentiment of the community and sat down
with her sketch-block and water colours before a flowering tree or a
striking view, ants came up and bit her, midges attacked her face till
it was puffed out, or the sun was too hot or the wind too boisterous.
As to botanizing, there was certainly splendid forest—with tree-ferns
and orchids—higher up the Ulunga mountains, but it was pronounced unsafe
to botanize there except in a party.  There were snakes, or leopards, or
lurking warriors of unfriendly tribes....

Her thoughts then turned to the homeland.... Presently she was back in
the scenes she had left nearly a year ago....  She saw herself walking
slowly from Aldermaston village up the road to Mortimer, her father’s
farmhouse just left behind.  She stopped to greet old Miss Fanning, who
inhabited the rather monastic-looking school-teacher’s house by a
special concession, as Lucy—her successor—lived with her parents hard
by.  The children of the village were playing games with the pupil
teacher in the large grassy yard. She could see quite distinctly the
rustic shed which surrounded two sides of the playground—like the
verandah of an African house.  In her day-dream the children, blue-eyed,
flaxen-haired, seemed to greet her. They were so fond of her—How _could_
she have left them?  ... Then in imagination she was farther along the
Mortimer road, past the high brick wall of Aldermaston Park.  Lordly
blue-green cedars topped the wall of mellow brick.  Then when the wall
turned off to the right it was succeeded by a high bank and hedge as the
road mounted and rose above the river valley. She could see, oh! with
such detail, the soft green fern-fronds of the bank.  Above the male
ferns grew a row of hart’s-tongue.  Above that, here and there a
foxglove, tufts of bell heather and where the hedge lowered and you
could see into spaces of the oak wood, there were brakes of French
willow herb in pink blossom....

What a series of pictures now passed before her mental vision as
instinctively she closed her eyes to Africa, to her silent, observant
class, who thought that she was dozing!  White ducks on a wayside pond,
set in a crescent of duckweed; clipped and shaven yews in front of an
old brick-and-timber cottage with a steep thatched roof; an upland
hayfield, sturdy, wholesome men with frank blue eyes and brawny arms of
beefy red; long-horned cattle with a make-believe fierceness which had
never imposed on her, standing in the shade of elms and whisking flies
from off their red flanks and cream bellies; her mother’s garden, gay
with phlox, sweet peas and pansies, and scented with dark red roses....
Oh, _why_ had she ever left her mother, left her pleasant tranquil work
at the National school to join John out in East Africa?  It was vanity,
partly; wishing to get married; wishing to travel.... For the
evangelizing of Africa she had ceased to care since her talks with
Captain Brentham—"Roger," she called him to herself—and still more since
she had come to know Africa....  But "Roger"—Well, if she hadn’t come
out to Africa she would certainly never have had the opportunity to know
_him_ ... on that steamer voyage!

Lucy’s thoughts were abruptly brought back to Eastern Africa and
discipline in her school class; for a too venturesome rat, darting up a
rafter, had lost his footing and fallen plop amongst the girls—the
"Big-geru," and they, upsetting forms and throwing away slates, had
flung themselves in a struggling heap on the spot where the rat had
landed.  From out of the mêlée one triumphant young woman rose up, with
her smock torn from top to bottom, but holding up a damaged, dying rat
by its broken tail.  A loud clamour of voices disputing the fairness of
the capture and the answering shrieks of the capturer, secure in the
possession of her prize (which she would shortly eat broiled over the
ashes as a relish to her sorghum porridge), roused Lucy to a show of
anger which stilled the tumult and turned the girls’ attention to their
teacher.  She, standing up and trying to stammer out in Swahili words of
adequate reproof, realized still more vividly the dreariness of her
present lot, and bursting into an agony of tears, buried her head in her
arms over the desk.

The little children gazed at her grief, awe-struck. Could rich, god-like
white people have any sorrow, when they might wear cloth to any extent
and had white salt in bottles and delicious foods in tins? Propelled by
Josiah’s wife they stole away wondering; and the "Big-geru" left the
school gracelessly, with loud laughs and free comments in Kagulu on the
white woman’s show of emotion.  The schoolroom clock ticked on, the
rats, emboldened, rushed about the thatch and dropped without mishap on
the floor, whence they scuttled out on to the verandah, then up the
posts and so into the roof again.  The flame-white sunlight grew fiercer
in the square, the shadows of the trees shorter and more purple.  At
last a loud bell clanged, and presently Ann Jamblin looked in and said
with a shade of insolence as she passed on: "The luncheon bell, Lucy."

Lucy affected not to hear her, but hurriedly dabbed her tear-stained
face with a handkerchief, shook her white dress tidy, smoothed her hair
with a hand-touch here and there, and took down a book from a shelf as
if to study....

Her husband stood at the doorway.

"Luncheon’s ready, dear....  Have the girls been unruly this morning?"

"Thank you, I’m not hungry.  Don’t wait lunch for me.  I dare say I
shan’t want anything till tea-time.... The girls?  Oh!  Not worse than
usual.  I have no influence with them....  It’s my fault, of course. I
was never cut out for this work.  Please, _please_ don’t wait....  I
suppose it isn’t part of one’s Christian duty to eat when you aren’t
hungry?..."

John Baines looked downcast ... and went out to the lunch of roast kid
or roast guinea-fowl, sweet potatoes, boiled plantains, and banana
fritters in syrup of sugar-cane, with less appetite than usual.

Lucy meantime tries to pretend she is interested in a book.  It is far
too hot to walk out and botanize. And then, what is the use of pressing
these plants? The colour of the gorgeous petals soon fades to brown,
fungi and minute insects attack them and they crumble into dust; and the
Mission objects to all the blotting-paper being used up in this way....

Presently John returns; with a native servant carrying a tray on which
are tea things, slices of guinea-fowl breast, some boiled sweet
potatoes, and banana fritters. To obtain this rather tempting little
meal he has had to face the scornful opposition of Ann Jamblin, but for
once he has turned on her (to the silent dismay of Bros. Bayley and
Anderson).  "Ann," he has said, "you must learn to keep your tongue and
temper under control.  It is you who drive Lucy away from our meals by
your constant fault-finding.  We are not all made alike; some of us are
more sensitive than others."  Ann, strange to say, is silenced by his
sharp tone and makes no retort.

"Come, Lucy," he said, after the little meal has been placed on the
table by her desk; "you will only make yourself ill by this refusal to
eat.  I am sorry Ann has been so teasing.  I have spoken to her.  Now
try to eat this little lunch whilst we are quiet in here."

Lucy looks at it and at him.  In the middle of the tray is an enamelled
iron tumbler containing a small bunch of mallow flowers with large
lemon-tinted petals and a vivid mauve centre.  This, from John, means so
much, as a concession to her tastes.  She bursts into tears—at this
period she was very soppy!

"Oh, John!  You _are_ good to me.  I really _don’t_ deserve such
kindness.  I have been a _dreadful_ disappointment to you."

"Well; eat up the lunch and you’ll make me happy," says poor John.  "Why
shouldn’t we _all_ be happy here, Lucy?" he goes on.  "The Lord has
singularly blessed our work; the climate—for Africa—is not at all bad;
you can’t say the scenery is ugly, there are beautiful flowers all
around—and—and ferns. We’re getting on well with the people, much better
than I ever expected.  Why, your schoolroom is already too small for the
numbers and Bayley has to teach his classes out of doors in the
’baraza.’  Look at our plantations—how the lemon trees and oranges are
growing—and the coffee.  It’s true we get our mails rather seldom.
There seems to be something queer going on at the coast.  The carriers
can’t get through....  The Germans, I suspect.  But we’re safe and snug
enough here.  As for me, I don’t want to hear from home.  Mother’s
letters are not precisely cheering.  I only ask to go on with the Lord’s
work without interruption.  _Do_ try to be cheerful, darling ... do you
think you—Do you think there is—er—any hope of—your——?"

"I _will_ try once more, John.  But couldn’t we live more by ourselves?
Ann gets on my nerves, do what I will.  Couldn’t we do our own
housekeeping?" continues Lucy, clasping her hands and looking at him
pleadingly.

"Well," said John, a little ruefully, "you know you _did_ try for a
month after you first came, but it was such a failure that you gave it
up.  You couldn’t stand the heat of the cookhouse, or manage the cook,
or do the accounts in calico for the things you bought. And—you don’t
know much about cooking.  Why should you?  You’re a first-class teacher.
And then, you know, you were so set at first on studying—studying
botany—and painting pictures.  I thought, even, you might write for the
Mission Magazine, like Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Baxter...."

_Lucy_: "But they always want you to write goody goody and bring in the
Lord at every turn and make out the black people to be quite different
from what they are—Somehow I couldn’t fall in with their style, it’s so
humbugging——"

_John_: "Well, then, write for other magazines, worldly ones if you
like.  I’m sure you could write well—you used to make up beautiful
poetry before we were married, and you’ve had thrilling enough
experiences on the way up.  It isn’t every missionary’s wife who’s had a
lion trying to get into her tent——"

_Lucy_: "The thought of _that_ journey _still_ makes me sick.  And yet I
used to think I should adore African travel—"  (An ungrateful thought
flashed through her mind: "so I should, with—with—some people").
"Besides, if I told the true story—bugs, ants, snakes, rotting corpses,
and all—it might stop other missionary women from coming out.  No. I
can’t write anything.  I _do_ make collections of flowers, but you won’t
let me go far from the Station to botanize and you’re always too busy to
come with me.  As to painting, it’s either too wet, or too hot, or too
something.  And then you hinted once I shouldn’t take a half-holiday
every day but help some one else in their work, so I give up some of my
time to Mr. Bayley.... No, I won’t call him ’Brother Bayley,’ it’s so
silly, all this brother and sister business"—(a short pause and a sudden
impulse).  "John!  Couldn’t you take me home next dry season—and get
them to give you work at home—?  Or" (noting his look of dismay) "send
me home to Mother and join me there later on, when your leave is
due?..."

_John_: "It would just _break my heart_ either to part with you or to
throw up my missionary career...."

_Lucy_: "Well, then, could I go on an itinerary—as you call it—with you?
Not be cooped up here with that intolerable Ann when you three men go
off on a round of preaching.  I’d promise not to mind anything—snakes,
ants, lions, or even the Masai. Perhaps I might get to enjoy Africa that
way without all this intolerable religion...."

_John_: "_Lucy!_..."

_Lucy_: "I didn’t mean to shock you again, but I couldn’t help it.  I
don’t know what’s come over me, but I’ve grown to _hate_ religion, and
still more pretending to be religious.  I’m sick of the Bible ... at
least I mean of the Old Testament.  It always makes me think of some
wearisome old grandmother who says the same thing over and over
again....  Who wrote it?  That’s what _I_ want to know.  How do we know
the old Jews didn’t make it up and pretend it was inspired?"  (John
ejaculates a "_Lucy!_" of protest at intervals, but she is so carried
away by a desire to express her revolt that she pays no heed.)  "You
know I’ve been trying to help Mr. Bayley in his translations by reading
slowly bits of the Bible—just now we’re in Exodus.  He _would_ begin at
Genesis, even though I said all the people wanted was the Gospels—I
don’t think I ever studied the Bible much at home and it all comes fresh
to me as though I had never thought about it before....  Well,
Exodus.... Have you ever read those chapters where Moses fasted—or said
he fasted—for forty days and nights _without food or even water_ whilst
he was writing down God’s sayings? ... How silly some of them sound....
How particular the Almighty seemed about the colours of the tabernacle
curtains—blue, purple, and scarlet—and about the snuffers and the
snuff-dishes being made of pure gold.  And about the ’knops.’ ... What
is a ’knop’?  Poor Mr. Bayley can’t find the word in any dictionary.
What can be the good of translating all this into Kagulu?  It only
puzzles the natives, Josiah told me.  Mr. Bayley’s always losing his
temper with Josiah because he can’t find the right Gulu or even Swahili
word for some of these things in Exodus.  Surely all you want to teach
them is simple Christianity and how to live less like pigs and more like
decent human beings...."

_John_ (interposing at last, after he has cast his counter argument into
words): "How can you teach them about Christ without first explaining
what led up to Christ, the Fall and the Redemption?  We want to give
them the whole Bible, even if we don’t understand every passage
ourselves.  Every word of the Bible is inspired."  (Lucy makes a mute
protest.) "But oh! my Lucy ... what I feared and foretold has come to
pass.  This coquetting with Science has cost you your faith.  Kneel
down."  (She knelt with him unwillingly on the little platform.)

"Oh Lord," prayed John, most earnestly, "visit Thine handmaid in her
sore need for Thy help! Dispel her doubts with the sunshine of—of—thy
grace. Convince her of Thine Almighty Power and Wisdom and consecrate
her to Thy service in this Heathen Land."

They rose to their feet constrainedly.  John covertly flicked the dust
from his trousers, blew his nose, and wiped eyes suffused with emotion.
Lucy impatiently shook her white skirt.  How she hated these impromptu
genuflections which always shortened the wearing life of the skirt and
sent it prematurely to the wash.  And much washing made it shrink so.

Still, her passion was spent and she felt very, very sorry for her
husband, and a little guilty in her discontent.  If she had come out
straight to him from England under no other influence, would she not
have been a fairer critic, have taken more kindly to mission work?  And
was not John really cut out for a missionary, with every reason to be
proud of his station’s success?

These silent musings, while John awkwardly hummed a hymn tune, were
broken in upon by the strident voice and bustling presence of Ann
Jamblin. "Well, then, young people" (being three years older than they
were she sometimes assumed a maternal air), "if you’ve finished
honeymooning, I’ll take the tray away and get the school ready for my
sewing class."  (To one without: "Pilisilla!  Ring the bell three
times.")

They left the School-house without answering her, hand in hand.  Lucy
felt so sorry for John that she resolved once more to try to be a
missionary’s wife and helpmeet.  The intense heat of the forenoon was
breeding a thunderstorm, and already the sky was overcast, and a few
puffs of cool air were blowing up from the plains.  Presently these grew
into an alarming dust-storm, a hurricane which blew Bayley’s proofs and
manuscript to right and left; and when Lucy rushed in to pick them up
she was blinded for a minute by the glare of lightning.  Then the wind
dropped before a deluge—a grey, sweeping deluge of rain. In trying to
save this and that, Lucy and Ann were drenched to the skin and had to
change their soaking garments.  The change to dry clothes, the rub down
somehow cheered them, and made them more friendly. Lucy then returned to
Bayley’s study and once more helped him in the returning daylight with
his translations.  But he was now well into Leviticus, and some passages
proved so embarrassing to both Lucy and Josiah that the former broke off
with the exclamation, "It’s teatime."

And sure enough there sounded the one pleasant summons in the
twenty-four hours: the tea bell.

The rain had ceased, the darkness had lifted for a while and left the
western sky a sweet lemon yellow, out of which a tempered sunlight
twinkled.  The air had become fresh and uplifting in a dying breeze.
The little party met round the tea-table in a mood to jest and to be
friendly.  Ann, more good-humoured than usual, described her sousing.
She also told Lucy she had had two of Lucy’s skirts mended at her sewing
lesson, to save her the trouble.  Oh, it was all right; they had served
as a pattern.

A couple of armed porters arrived during teatime, their calico clothing
still adhering to their brown bodies from the rain storm through which
they had stolidly walked.  They had not brought the regular "Europe"
mail from Unguja, but some parcels from Mr. Callaway and local letters.
These read aloud over the tea table spoke of the restlessness of the
coast population caused by the administration of the German Company, of
Arab gossip at Unguja, of the sombre news from Nyasaland where a
Scottish trading Company was at open war with the Arabs, in trying to
defend the population from Arab slave raids.  Tiputipu was away on the
Congo looking for Stanley and had withdrawn his restraining influence
from the Tanganyika Arabs. Was a concerted Arab attack on the
interfering white man about to begin?  The missionaries looked from one
to the other a little anxiously.  A growing feeling of _camaraderie_
linked them.  They felt themselves to be an outpost of Christianity in a
world threatened by the Moslem.  They congratulated John in that he had
so completely won over the Ulunga chief, Mbogo, that the latter had
expelled the Arab traders from his hill country and made common cause
with the White man....

At dinner—or as they better styled it, supper—they were quite cheerful.
There was even a special zest in the evening service, point and _vim_ in
the shortened prayers.  Ann was congratulated by Lucy on her ground-nut
soup and "pepperpot"; and the treacle pudding which followed was
declared a masterpiece.

John that night kissed his wife tenderly in mute recognition of her more
sympathetic attitude....  She did not shrink as usual from his caresses.




                              *CHAPTER X*

                            *ROGER ARRIVES*


Sir James Eccles, it was decided, was not to return to Unguja to guide
once more the destinies of East Africa.  Prince Bismarck would not hear
of it.  After considerable hesitation Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., was
appointed to succeed him in the spring of 1888 and arrived at Unguja to
take up his position as Agent and Consul-General when Roger Brentham had
about completed a year’s tenure of the post in an "acting" capacity.

Sir Godfrey Dewburn was a fortunate Irish soldier, who—because he had a
capacity for getting on well with everybody—had held a high
administrative position in India, though outside the ranks of the Indian
Civil Service.  He did well over the Prince of Wales’s visit in
organizing successful durbars, nautch dances and perfect shooting
picnics, in which record tigers were bagged.  He did better still in an
aftermath of the Imperial visit, when the Duke of Ulster and the
Hereditary Prince of Baden came out to shoot in Dewburn’s new province.
He had also married, with very wise prevision, a daughter of the
Choselwhit who was legal adviser to the Circumlocution Office.  When it
was felt that Sir James Eccles must be thrown over to avoid a breach
with Germany, which threatened a Franco-Germano-Russian alliance against
us, somebody—perhaps the Duke of Ulster, who still remembered Dewburn’s
champagne cup, cooled with the snows of the Himalaya and tendered just
at the psychological moment when the most splendid of the tigers had
fallen to the Royal rifle—suggested Dewburn for the post. And as he was
backed up by the India Office, who wanted to weed their Civil Service of
outsiders, and by Molyneux who thought Dewburn’s dinners at the "Rag"
quite the best in London, Lord Wiltshire, tired and preoccupied over the
Parnell letters, gave way and appointed Dewburn.  Lord Silchester’s
suggestion of Brentham was deemed "indelicate," emphasized as it was by
Sibyl, to whom Lord Wiltshire had taken a whimsical dislike.

Dewburn, when he came out, posed as a jolly good fellow who praised
every one all round and enchanted Mrs. Bazzard by his manners and easy
cordiality.  But after a bit, Brentham’s efficiency got on his nerves.
It was irritating to hear his subordinate—so much better fitted than he
for the post, some might have said—prattling and swearing in Swahili and
Unguja Arabic, and rather markedly doing without an interpreter.
Dewburn spoke French well and a little bad Hindustani, but there his
linguistics ended; and his brain sutures being closed would admit no
knowledge of an African tongue.

Then there was Spencer Bazzard always at hand, serviceable unto
servility, ready to jot inspirations and judgments down on a writing-pad
with some prehistoric form of the fountain-pen or indelible pencil, and
reproduce these utterances afterwards, conveniently elaborated.
Brentham, on the other hand, preferred putting in a draft of his own,
which took quite an independent line and might have led H.M. Government
to do something, make up their minds to some definite course....

Then again, Brentham’s real destination was the German mainland....  The
situation there was strained.

Mrs. Bazzard somehow amused and intrigued Sir Godfrey (Lady Dewburn had
not yet arrived).  He guessed her as somewhat of a demi-rep, but to him,
as to me, such a person is more interesting to study than the simple
village maiden, or the clergyman’s daughter with her smooth hair parted
in the middle....


Who precisely were the Bazzards?  May I, with a novelist’s omniscience,
clear up the mystery?

There was a celebrated firm of solicitors in Staple Inn known as
Grewgious and Bazzard.  It had originated in a Mr. Hiram Grewgious, who
had a valuable Norfolk connexion and had figured with some distinction
and celebrity in a famous Kentish murder trial in the early ’sixties.
The junior partner, Mr. Bazzard, took over the business from Mr.
Grewgious, and when the latter died in 1878 still preserved the honoured
style of the firm.  This Mr. Bazzard led a double life, in that he was
not only a particularly astute solicitor, but also a playwright of
ability who produced at least two stirring melodramas under a _nom de
plume_.

As solicitor he had lifted Mr. Bennet Molyneux once out of a
considerable difficulty and delicate dilemma ... he had ascertained that
the lady was travelling under an assumed name and ... in short, he had
settled the affair without any fuss, and Molyneux was thoroughly
grateful and asked him to dine at the Travellers, giving, of course, due
notice, so that the guest-room, in those distant days with its settees
thick with dust, might be got ready, and a fire be lit to take off the
chill.

Over walnuts and port, Mr. Bazzard had mentioned the existence of a
much-younger brother—fifteen years younger, in point of fact—rather at a
loose end since he was called to the Bar—clever chap withal, steady,
married now to a deuced pretty woman, but in his youth the very devil
with the sex.  ("Just so," would nod Mr. Molyneux comprehendingly, who,
except for the most pardonable slip with Mrs. —— at Lucerne, was a
blameless husband and father.)  Well, then, there he was—had tried
ranching in the States and buying horses in the Argentine, got done in
the eye by that scoundrel, Bax Strangeways—knew a lot about the
tropics—stand any climate—take on any job.  In short, did Mr. Molyneux
know of an opening anywhere in Africa, C.O. or F.O., for a sporting chap
with a knowledge of Law?

And Bennet had put down his name for a vacancy in the East African
Consular service.  And having thus taken him under his wing, was
prepared to stand by him through thick and thin ... even deluded himself
into thinking he was a damned good sort, and his golden-haired wife—"bit
of the devil in her, no doubt"—a fit person for Mrs. Molyneux to know—in
the country, at any rate.

Perhaps she was.  Why should one sneer at a woman for trying to improve
her position and looks and wriggle into a less sordid sphere than that
in which she was brought up?  Emilia Standish—christened Emily, of
course, but wrote her name "Emilia" from the time she was seventeen—was,
as Captain Brentham ill-naturedly guessed, the daughter of a Bayswater
widow who kept a Bayswater boarding-house (few districts of London have
such a power for moulding human beings to its guise).  Emilia
Standish—or was it Stapleton?—I really forget—had tried life as a
governess with ill success.  She confided to her mother, and her mother
only, that she might have succeeded here or there had not her pupil’s
father made improper advances from which she had to flee. She had
studied for the stage, but like her predestined fate, Spencer Bazzard,
she, at thirty-two, was somewhat at a loose end and living at home when
Spencer came to lodge at her mother’s boarding-house.  He was down on
his luck, almost in hiding, nearly cast off by his highly respectable,
much older brother.  He fell ill.  Emilia took pity on him, nursed him,
and defied her mother over the financial question.  Out of gratitude he
proposed.  She accepted him and took stock of the situation, called on
the elder brother in Staple Inn, secured his advocacy for a "colonial"
appointment—and—you know the rest.

Spencer can’t have been wholly bad, because though they had many a
private tiff and unheard wrangle, this woman stuck by him and made a
career for him. Brentham, in writing to his sister, gave too unfair a
description of Spencer.  He omitted to notice that though his knowledge
of law was so imperfect as to throw doubt on the efficacy of the
examinations which then admitted to the Bar, he had at any rate acquired
some knowledge of shorthand, and certain of the qualities necessary to
playing private secretary to an important personage.  So that Sir
Godfrey preferred greatly the retention of Bazzard as his lieutenant at
Unguja, rather than the slightly gloomy and excessively well-informed
Brentham.

There came at this time rumour after rumour that the Arabs of the
Zangian coast were preparing to rise in force not only against the
Germans but against all white men.  They were concerting measures in
common with the Arabs of Mombasa, of Tanganyika, Nyasa and the Upper
Congo to expel all white men from East Africa and found a great
Slave-holding empire which might link up with the victoriously
anti-European Mahdi of the Sudan.  Sir Godfrey Dewburn did not clothe
his Memorandum of instructions to Brentham in exactly these
comprehensive and grandiloquent terms, derived from a contemporaneous
essay of my own, but he said:

"Look here, dear old chap.  You know you are a bit of the fifth wheel to
the coach here, on this potty little island.  You’ve put me up to all
the ropes, I’m well in the saddle.  Now suppose you cut along to your
own show?  The mainland, hey?  Go and round up those blasted Germans,
don’t you know?  Of course, steer clear of quarrels—that’d never do.  Be
coldly polite, but see what they’re up to and report to me—fully.
Strikes me it’s blowing up for a storm...."

So Brentham shipped himself and his indispensable retinue of Goanese
cook, Swahili butler, and a nucleus of fifteen always dependable
gunmen-porters of the stalwart Unyamwezi breed over to
Medinat-al-barkah—the "Town of Blessings," on the Zangian coast:
formerly the chief shipping port of slaves and now the head-quarters of
the German Chartered Company which had succeeded to the authority of the
Sultan of Unguja.

A few months afterwards, when he had organized a Consulate and an Indian
clerical staff in an adapted, cleansed, and tidied Arab house, he
received an urgent and confidential communication from Sir Godfrey:

"The F.O. is much perturbed by the reports of Arab risings against the
German Company.  Mvita seems to be quiet under Mackenzie.  The various
missionary societies are clamouring for information and some indication
that H.M.G. realizes the seriousness of the situation.  I have been
instructed semi-officially by H. and M. that you should at once proceed
inland with a sufficiently strong caravan and visit the missionary
stations within a radius of—say—three hundred miles of Medina, assisting
the white people to repair to safe positions on the coast, especial care
being taken to bring away their women and children.  You know far better
what to do than I, who am a new comer to East Africa.  So, _carte
blanche_.  Do your best. Good luck and chin-chin.

"Lady Dewburn, who has just come out, is dying to put her feet on a
maned lion skin when she gets out of bed.  So if you’ve any luck
shooting, ’Then you’ll remember me!’

"Yours,
       "GODFREY DEWBURN."


In consequence of these instructions you can picture such events as
these occurring at the end of September, 1888.

Lucy Baines, attended by Josiah Briggs’s wife Halima, was taking the air
on the outskirts of Hangodi. She had had a baby in the previous July,
and was still weak and anaemic.  The confinement had been a difficult
one, as it was a little premature, owing to Lucy having been frightened
by a hyena.  A medical missionary had been in hurried attendance, and
kind Mrs. Stott had come fifty miles to act as an amateur midwife.  But
the child died soon after its birth, and Lucy, for the first fortnight,
had been delirious.  If her child had lived her whole outlook might have
changed and brightened.  As it was——

John had rigged up a kind of machila—I can’t explain a second time what
a machila is—a compromise between a palanquin and a hammock—and this
could be taken out on short journeys by two strong porters. With this
and her pupil-teacher, Halima, in attendance, Lucy was wont to make
little afternoon pilgrimages along the red paths on the outskirts of the
Hangodi plateau.

At this and that shady spot she would leave her machila languidly, sit
on a camp stool and pick flowers and examine them: or she would practise
her Swahili and Kagulu with Halima and question this woman—greatly
devoted to her—on native manners and customs, or native legends.  The
two porters would squat at a respectful distance, or if told they would
not be wanted for half an hour, would stroll off to the nearest native
village.

On this particular day in September they came running back in great
excitement to say a white man’s _safari_ was approaching.  It could be
seen in the plain below ... quite a small army of black men headed by
one white man, coming in single file over the burnt grass.

Rumour had flown ahead of it ... as it did in Africa, in pre-telegraph
days.  The white man was a great English consul coming to make a treaty
with Ulunga, or coming to fight the Arabs, or to turn the Wa-dachi out
of the country and to place Nguru under the Woman chief of the English.
Mbogo the chief had already run up his English flag....

Lucy’s heart stood still and she sat on her camp stool too much overcome
to remain standing.  Could it ... be ... Roger?

Halima fumbled in her basket and produced a restorative. Presently Lucy
rose to her feet and said in a decisive tone:

"Take me to meet the white man...."

They met about three miles from the Mission Station.  Seeing the machila
approaching, heralded by the boastful singing of its carriers, anxious
to do their mistress honour, Brentham had got off his riding donkey and
handed it to a follower carrying his sporting rifle..  He walked to meet
the unknown person swaying in the jaunty advance of the delighted
porters. The machila stopped.  Lucy emerged from it, then overcome with
dizziness sank down by the wayside. Quickly he had raised her,
unthinkingly and instinctively their arms were round each other....  "My
dearest girl!  You are safe then?  Your station has not been attacked?"

"My darling _Roger_! you have come for me ... take, oh, _take_ me away!"

Thus they spoke instinctively in continuation of thoughts long
sanctioned by their inner consciousness, but never outwardly expressed.
There were no listeners who could understand what the avowals meant.
Nevertheless they hastened to resume a correct parlance as between old
acquaintances and nothing more.

"I think," said Lucy, "you had better send one or two spare men on ahead
with a brief note to my husband saying you will be arriving at our
station in about an hour, that you met me on the road and will bring me
on with you.  This will give our people time to—to—plan where to put you
all.  There won’t be room for everybody inside the stockade.  Then when
you’ve sent off the note we can rest for half an hour or so in that
piece of shade, where there are the euphorbias and the fig trees, and I
shan’t feel quite so shaky.  I’ve been rather ill—I’ll tell you all
about it when you’ve sent off the note."

Roger scribbled the message on a leaf out of his road-book.

"There is our station," said Lucy, "about two miles off, on that great
spur that comes out from the mountain.  You can see the white houses and
the red brick chapel and the glint of the corrugated iron.  And away to
the—well, I s’pose it’s the south—is the chief Mbogo’s principal
village—all those little brown huts...."

The two impatient messengers scarcely waited for this information but
bounded off to deliver their message and find some resting-place for the
caravan, extenuated as it was with the long, hot march.

Lucy took Roger’s arm—how it thrilled her, how like an impossible dream
come true!—and followed by Halima and the machila reached the patch of
blue shade made by a group of candelabra euphorbias and fig trees with
thick glossy leaves and pendent branches. The ground underneath was
absolutely clear of any cover for snakes and was whitish with the ashes
of many a cooking fire, lit here by caravans arriving at evening and
preferring to postpone their interviews with Chief Mbogo—sometimes a
rapacious gentleman over his dues—till the morning light.

Whilst Brentham’s cook was preparing a cup of tea, Lucy poured forth
tumultuously her story of the chief happenings of the past six months.
Brentham said in reply that she must have gone through a beastly time;
but she might now take heart.  He had come with definite instructions to
take her away to the coast and her husband too, if the men-folk agreed.
"Any other English woman at the station?" he inquired.

Lucy told him there was Ann Jamblin, but did not think the present
moment the right one in which to expatiate on the irritating side of
Ann’s disposition. Moreover now that she was going back to England, why
run down Ann?  If Ann stayed behind, as she was convinced she would do,
she might be a great comfort to John.  "Don’t think it odd of me,"
finished Lucy, "if when we reach the station I go straight to my house
and to bed.  I feel really too much shaken to take part in any
discussion.  I would much sooner you settled everything with John.  I’m
sure he won’t oppose my going."

When Brentham reached Hangodi he was introduced to Ann, who listened to
his polite phrases rather impatiently and seemed a little incredulous
about any danger from Arab attacks.  What exercised her mind, she said
frankly, was how to keep the hundred men of his caravan from too close
contact with her twenty or thirty maidens who lived in—what it was hoped
was—"maiden meditation, fancy free," within the stockaded boundaries of
the Mission Station.  The local young manhood of the near-by Ulunga
villages was supposed to stand too much in awe of Ann and to obey too
strictly their chief’s prohibition of interference with the young women
of the Mission to annoy them with any amorous advances; but already Ann
thought she had seen bold glances cast at her pupils—whom she was
training to be Christian wives of Christian husbands—by the
love-famished stalwarts of the caravan; and a coy recognition of this
admiration on the part of the plump "Big-geru."  To ease her
apprehensions the men were soon all drafted off to billets in the native
villages a mile away.  To Brentham and his personal servants were
alotted the Boys’ School and the Chapel for their accommodation, the
Consul being told that under all the circumstances of his visit there
could be no thought of sacrilege in his using the House of God as a
dwelling-place.

Brentham had told them as soon as he arrived that he was charged with
instructions to escort all the white _personnel_ of Hangodi to some safe
place on the coast whilst this war between Arabs and Germans was going
on.  He had started from Medinat-al-barkah and had with great difficulty
and by making the utmost use of the British flag and of the presence of
British war vessels off the coast, pushed his way past the insurgent
Arabs and Waswahili that were attacking the German strongholds.

By forced marches he had reached the mission stations of Uluguru and
Usagara, and had advised the retreat of the older men and all the white
women towards the Kilwa coast, not at present in revolt.  He left them
still undecided whether or not to take his advice, but he had furnished
them with a reinforcement of porters and arms.

There was no time to lose, so he was now hurrying on to Ulunga and Ugogo
to put the same proposition before the members of the East African
Mission, except that the safest route to the coast must now be a great
detour towards Kilimanjaro.

Whatever the men decided to do, the women should at any rate come away
with him.  He would proceed westward and try to pick up the Stotts; then
with his stout-hearted Wanyamwezi soldier-porters they would all find a
way round the routes and villages dominated by the Arabs and Wangwana[#]
and reach the coast at Mvita, where there was a British Consulate and
where British gunboats were lying off the Arab town.  But time was
precious.  Already he had heard that bands of plundering Wangwana and
Ruga-ruga[#] were approaching Ugogo from the west.


[#] Wangwana was the general term in the East African interior by which
the "Black Arabs," the Muhammadan Arabized negroes, were known.

[#] Ruga-ruga was the name given to war-like negroes—not necessarily
Muhammadans, armed by the Arabs with flint-lock guns and sent to raid
and ravish those tribes which rebelled against the slave-traders.


"How long can you give us?" said the anguished John, torn between his
sense of duty regarding his wife and his extreme reluctance to abandon
his Mission Station to certain destruction.

"Well, not more than forty-eight hours."

"Brethren," said John, "we must meet in conference and decide this.
Sister Lucy has retired to bed—I advised her to do so.  She has left it
to me to settle what she had better do.  But for the rest of us, let us
meet after supper in the mess house and talk it over.  You, sir," he
said, to the worn and weary-looking Brentham—who, whatever he might
appear in Lucy’s eyes as paladin and parfit gentill knight, was streaked
with black and brown after having ridden and walked through the charred
herbage of the burnt plains still smoking with their dry-season bush
fires—"You, sir, would like a rest and a wash and a meal.  Shall I show
you your quarters?..."

When the little party met in conclave, how unreal the threat of war and
violence seemed!  The open square of the station was bathed in silver
moonlight from a moon three-quarters full; there was the distant
twanging of a native guitar played by some musical porter; a village dog
sent up a complacent howl or two; a goat-sucker churred; a laugh came
from the Big-geru’s quarters.

John, not without a hope the Consul might be exaggerating their danger,
said: "Brethren and Sister Jamblin, each of you shall speak in turn, but
as I am regarded as your leader I will give my opinion first.  I have
decided that my wife shall leave with the Consul for the coast, perhaps
even for England, unless she recovers her health and things quiet down.
Cruelly hard as it is for me to part with her, I feel it is the right
thing to do.  As for me, it is also the right thing that I should stop
here till all danger is over and my place can be taken by some one else.
Sister Jamblin must go with Lucy." (Ann murmured she would do nothing of
the kind.) "Yes, Ann; I must insist. Lucy could not possibly travel
alone—it is not to be thought of...."

_Ann_: "Why, she can take Halima——"

"I say," continued John, wiping the perspiration from his heated face,
"it is not to be thought of.  As an unmarried woman, Ann, you could not
remain here with us men——" (Ann: "Pooh, nonsense!") "Supposing we were
really attacked by the Arabs and we men were killed, I dare not think
what might be your fate!  Brother Bayley, what do you say?"

_Bayley_: "Why, that I’ll stay with you."

_Anderson_: "And I say the same.  You’ve both spoken like jolly good
Englishmen.  And—er—let’s trust in the Lord, brethren.  _He’ll_ see us
through, He won’t leave His servants in the lurch.  To think of all the
work we’ve put into this place and all the money what’s been spent on
it!  What are we going to do with our trade goods if we cut and run?
The Consul can’t load himself up with them—and our ivory and gum
copal..."

_Brentham_: "I might mention here I can only spare about twenty-five
porters for the whole five of you. We must travel as lightly as
possible, especially if the Stotts want help.  They have young children,
I believe."

_Anderson_: "Then I vote we stop.  Let the women go.  It wouldn’t be
right to expose them to the risk.... Ann, what do you say?"

_Ann_: "I say this.  Let Sister Baines go to the coast.  She’s always
ailing and would only be a drag on us if we were hard-pressed.  But for
my part I stay with the men, at any rate till things have calmed down.
_I’m_ not afraid.  I’ll soon learn to handle a rifle, and I’m pretty
good at dressing wounds.  And there’s my class of girls.  It’d pretty
nigh break my heart if I went away and they came to grief after all that
training I’ve given them—to make them good wives some day."

_John_ (shortly and decidedly): "You can’t remain. I’ve already told you
why.  In this matter you must bow to my authority.  Lucy in any case is
too ill to stay here—under these circumstances—and it is common humanity
that you should not let her travel alone to the coast.  When our anxiety
is over, you and she can come back...." (Ann: "Thank you for nothing!")
"Well, sir, you shall know our definite decision in the morning.
Meantime you must be tired, very tired indeed.  We thank you heartily
for coming to our assistance.  I’m sure you’d like now to retire."
(Brentham withdraws.) "Brethren, before we separate let us put our case
before God, that He may guide us aright...."

The next morning the decisive answer tendered to the Consul was that the
men would remain and defend their station.  Sisters Baines and Jamblin
should return to the coast with Consul Brentham.

Lucy forgot all about her anæmia and weak back and tendency to dizziness
in an excited packing up of necessaries for the journey.  She would not
have to take with her more than her clothes and a few invalid’s
provisions and appliances.  She felt terribly elated, wildly happy at
times.  No thought of danger entered her head—how could it, with Roger
as escort?  At the same time, the sight of poor John’s silent grief—too
deep for words—smote her with reproachfulness; and Ann’s scornful
observation of her moments of sparkling gaiety seemed sinister.

The situation was eased by Brentham taking John away for three hours to
confer with Chief Mbogo and his counsellors.  Mbogo was sure he could
drive off any number of Arabs or Wangwana if they came to attack his
villages or the Mission Station.  He would send out word to the Masai.
The Masai were now his friends through the peace-making of the
missionaries: they hated the Arabs and the "coast people," and said they
would side with the Whites.  At the same time he accepted gratefully
Brentham’s present of ten Snider rifles and two loads of ammunition.
Another ten rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition were added to the
armoury of the Mission Station, as well as two revolvers, one of which
Ann took over, for her own defence on the road or that of her
"Big-geru."

Brentham also tendered some expert advice to the Chief on the subject of
entrenchments round his stronghold.  The Mission Station already
possessed a pretty strong stockade and a moat outside it.  A few years
previously attacks from any quarter might be expected—Muhammadan
slave-traders, impulsive Masai, thievish Wagogo.  If the first rush
could be checked the attack was seldom persisted in.


The Consul’s _safari_ as it passed down the western slopes of the Ulunga
Hills[#] must have looked quite imposing to the natives who watched its
departure behind their dracæna and euphorbia hedges.  First marched
Brentham himself with a stout staff and with his gun-carrier at his
heels.  Then came the caravan headman and guide, the Mwinyi-mpara or
Kiongozi, as he was styled.  He carried a small British ensign and was
followed by twenty-five armed porters with Brentham’s personal loads,
each, however, with a Snider rifle and a neat uniform of cotton vest and
breeches.  Next followed Ann Jamblin, riding astride the Consul’s Maskat
donkey, every now and then glancing back on her fifteen Amazon porters,
the pick of her Big-geru class who carried their mistress’s effects in
bundles on their woolly heads.  Behind them was Lucy in her machila, its
long pole borne on the shoulders of two strapping Walunga, with a relief
crew behind of four other men of fine musculature.  After that followed
about fifty porters poising on their heads the heavier baggage—bundles
of tents, bedding, water-tight tin boxes, bags of rice, bales of cloth,
boxes of beads, cases of ammunition, cooking implements. Trotting by the
side of this long file of men were two milch goats, bleating and baaing,
but thoroughly enjoying the journey; they were intended to provide milk
for the ladies’ tea.  One of the two was a special pet of Lucy’s.  To
look after the goats was a little naked Mgogo boy—a released slave—who
ran and frolicked with them, and kept the porters amused by his impudent
mimicry of the white people.  Lastly in the rear of the caravan was a
guard of ten gunmen without loads to embarrass their quick movements.


[#] Ulunga was the southern portion of a country called "Ngulu" or
"Nguru."


Brentham and his charges were bound for the Stotts’ station of Burungi,
three or four days’ journey—say, fifty miles—to the west.  Lucy felt
already many degrees better in health, though she thought it only decent
to conceal her returning vigour and new-found animation.  The picnic
meals by the road side stimulated her appetite; her eye took pleasure in
the changes of scenery, the new panoramas of plain and wilderness that
unfolded themselves as she was swayingly borne along.  Ann seemed sombre
and preoccupied, as though noting land-marks for after recognition.
Occasionally she pointed to this and that feature in the landscape and
asked her Big-geru for its native name.

The very hot weather which closes the dry season made itself felt, so
that the start from Hangodi had been begun in the early morning
twilight, and each succeeding morning they took to the road at 5.30.
They jogged along, with an occasional five minutes’, rest, till
half-past ten or until about that time they had found a stream valley or
a water hole which contained water not too bad for cooking purposes.
Then the caravan halted for the day in such shade as might be found, and
the march was not resumed till 5 p.m.

Owing to the brilliancy of the moonlight it might be continued well into
the night.  During the long mid-day halt, the Goanese cook, aided by
Halima and several porters and Brentham’s Swahili butler, would prepare
really very creditable little meals, and after eating the travellers
would lie on unfolded deck chairs in some piece of shade where the hard
ground had been swept clear of snakes, insects or scorpions.  Brentham,
if the heat were not too scorching, might wander with a shot-gun near by
to try for the chance of a guinea-fowl or francolin or tiny antelope.

At four o’clock they had tea with goat’s milk; and at five resumed their
journey.  The tents were pitched by moonlight and the beds made by the
light of a candle lantern.  Toilet processes were very summary; there
was all too little water to wash in and the travellers must just sleep
in their clothes and put any ideas of effective ablutions out of their
heads till they reached the water supply at the Stotts’ station.  The
night camp was hastily surrounded by a thorn hedge cut from the acacia
trees, and big fires were lighted to keep off lions and hyenas.  Blacks
and whites had to sleep in close proximity and the treasured goats and
donkey in the middle of the circle of loads.

The country they marched over—a northward extension of the "Mkunda
mkali" or "Bitter waste"—was at first steppe-like, then rocky and rising
in a series of escarpments.  Almost its only trees seemed to be
flat-topped acacias, without leafage at this season, glistening in the
blazing sun and studded with long white thorns.  The thin grass was
mostly burnt; nevertheless it was frequented by much game, and the land
was apparently devoid of human inhabitants.  Brentham, always obsessed
by the fear of food scarcity, but hardly liking to absent himself from
the line of march and his following caravan, started each morning a few
minutes ahead of the rest and walked in advance as a pioneer, with his
gun-carrier at his elbow.  In this way he sometimes brought down, close
to the path, an inquisitive Grant’s gazelle or hartebeest; or a zebra
out of the many herds which closed up to espy the distant concourse of
men and then dissolved into a cloud of dust at the report of the gun.
Even at this lean season of the year the male zebras were in good
condition.  Their yellow fat and juicy, sickly-sweet flesh delighted the
hungry porters.

On the early morning of the fourth day, the expedition passed a few
parched native plantations and one or two burnt huts and, as the sun
rose, marched into the irregular circle of the Stott station, across a
half-dry water-course, and found no human being to greet it.  Silence
and partially burnt buildings of clay and thatch, torn paper, vultures
on the scorched trees, broken crockery, scraps of cloth, one or two
pools of dried blood, empty cartridge-cases, and the torn sacking and
splintered boards of packing-cases.


"This is pretty ghastly, Miss Jamblin," said Brentham, returning to the
hastily-cleaned camp amid the ruins of the Mission Station.

Lucy, feeling she could do nothing to help and had better not look at
the caked patches of dried blood which the porters were removing, had
withdrawn herself to a folding chair placed by Halima under the thin
shade of a fire-scorched tree.  Ann was examining the vestiges of the
Stott property which the looters had left behind: school books and
primers in the Swahili language, empty ink-pots, broken slates,
enamelled iron plates and some substantial tables of native timber, too
heavy for either the fugitives or their enemies to carry away.  Ann’s
white solar "topi" and white dress were already smudged and sooted from
the burnt wood and thatch.

"Ghastly, isn’t it!" he went on.  "I’ve just returned from a
reconnaissance in which we rounded up three Masai youths—not warriors
but the hulking boys that attend on the spearmen.  Two men in my
_safari_ understand Masai and they are now trying to make out the story
these boys tell.  They evidently deny emphatically that the Stotts were
killed.  They keep pointing to the north-west as the direction in which
they have gone, and say every now and then ’Irangi.’  My interpreters
infer that this place was attacked about a week ago by a party of
Ruga-ruga coming from the Nyaturu country and travelling towards the
coast.  They besieged the station, and killed some of the Mission boys,
but the Stotts apparently were not hurt.  They defended themselves for
some time, till a party of Masai came to their relief, and then the
Ruga-ruga and ’black’ Arabs were beaten off.  Nevertheless the Stotts
left the station afterwards and went away to the north-west with the
Masai escorting them....  I want to see if I get on their tracks or if I
can find any real natives who saw the attack.... You seem to have a head
on your shoulders ... and an influence over the natives.  I’ll leave all
but five of the men here under your orders.  Already they’re at work
reconstructing the ’boma.’  I propose skirmishing around and finding out
also if the Arabs and Ruga-ruga are still in the neighbourhood.  I’ll be
back before dark...."

_Ann_: "You’d much better give up such a wild-goose chase as looking for
the Stotts.  Make for Kilimanjaro and the Mvita coast with Lucy.  We’ve
got mission stations in Taita and at Jomvu, near Mvita, where you could
place her in comparative safety.  I’d much rather return to Hangodi
instead of floundering about in the wilderness, mad with thirst and
unable to wash.  I’m only a drag on you with my women porters whom your
men can’t leave alone—I daren’t take my eyes off them.  Lucy’ll soon be
well enough to ride your donkey—which I’m at present using.  If the
Arabs haven’t plundered the Wagogo or if there are Masai bands in the
neighbourhood you could easily buy a few donkeys—Masai breed, you know.
They’re quickly broken in to riding, especially with your Maskat donkey
to show ’em how.  And then you could travel much quicker.  I don’t think
you’ll have trouble with the Arabs farther north.  It’s a Masai country,
and the Masai and the Muhammadans are at daggers drawn...."

_Brentham_ (hesitating): "No.  I don’t think I ought to let you go ... I
..." (His thoughts were saying: "_Let_ her go.  She’s a tiresome
termagant, she, with her fifteen women porters who’ll cause the
deuce-and-all of a lot of trouble before we’ve gone far. It would be
lovely to have a long journey back to the coast with Lucy.  _Of course_
I’d respect her.  I should simply treat her as a sister" ... and his
pulses quickened)....

_Ann_: "_Let_ me go?  I’m my own mistress and not going to be ordered
about by anybody.  If I choose to go back, I’ll go, even if I have to
walk all the way. But there!  I don’t want to be tiresome.  You go off
on your prospecting and leave Lucy in my charge.  I’ll promise not to do
a bolt till you return—and whenever I promise, I keep my promise."

(Lucy came up at this juncture and was told rather impatiently by Ann
the dilemma in which the three of them were placed.)  Captain Brentham
turned away, called up his headman, gave him instructions, and finally
went off with five gunmen and the three Masai youths.  These were put in
a good humour by being crammed with broiled meat and rice, the latter a
food they had never tasted before, but accepted without demur at the
hands of the godlike white man.

Ann, thus placed in authority, set to work to carry out her plans.  She
had the interior of the station circle cleaned as much as possible of
half-burnt house material, and gathered together what remained in the
ruins of books, clothes, trade goods.  The looting had evidently been
very hurried, and no doubt the Stotts had conveyed some things with them
on their retreat. Lucy, sharply ordered by Ann not to over-exert
herself, sat in the shade in a deck chair, very apprehensive as to the
future and worried that Roger should have gone away.

The news that white people were back at Burungi—as this station was
called—penetrated quickly through this seemingly deserted region.  So
often in Africa there occurs this wireless telegraphy, really due
perhaps to the lurking here and there in the brush and herbage of
invisible natives, observing what goes on and bounding away noiselessly
to carry the news to other prowlers.  In the afternoon when Ann within
the thorn enclosure had made things a little more tidy and presentable
there appeared in the middle distance numbers of Wagogo warriors gazing
at the new arrivals with kindly neutrality, occasionally calling out
friendly, deprecatory greetings.  Encouraged by Ann’s answering shouts
in Kagulu they approached the "boma," and even ventured within the camp
enclosure, squatting then on their heels to exchange information. Their
confidence was sealed by little gifts of tobacco. The attack on the
Mission Station was described.  The white people had been taken by
surprise, but had held their own till the Wagogo and Masai came to their
assistance.  The Ruga-ruga shot fire-arrows in among the thatched roofs
and set fire to some of the houses. They even broke in through one part
of the "boma," but three of them were killed by the white man’s people.

The fight had lasted half-a-day and one day.  Then the Wangwana had
drawn off—to the south.  Two days more and the white people had
gone—there were the white man—"Sitoto," they called him—and the white
woman chief—she was a great "doctor"—and three white children ... they
had all gone off with a party of the Masai—to the north somewhere.  The
Masai had sold them donkeys to ride.  Some Wagogo had gone with them.
It was perhaps four days since they went away.  No! the Wagogo had _not_
plundered the white man’s place.  They were frightened to come there
because of the white man’s "medicine." ...

"Then how did you get that?" said Ann, pointing to a soiled white
petticoat which an elderly man wore over one shoulder and across his
chest.

"That?  That had been given him by the white woman herself for running
to summon the Masai." ...

"See here," said Ann, in fragmentary Kagulu. "You’ve got donkeys—Masai
donkeys—among you. The Ruga-ruga have not raided _you_.  You bring me
here _three good strong donkeys_ and I will buy them for a good price:
white cloth, brass rings, iron wire, red cloth and gunpowder."

They conferred among themselves and thought they might produce three
donkeys—for a price.

"Well, then fetch them—_at once_.  Otherwise the big white man, the
great chief of all the white men on the coast, the Balozi, will believe
you helped to plunder this station and make you give up the property
you’ve stolen." ...

Roger returned late that evening in brilliant moonlight to find that Ann
had purchased with his trade goods three good stout grey asses with
broad shoulder stripes.  One she reserved for herself, the other two she
transferred to Brentham.  They would serve for him to ride and also
provide his Goanese cook with a mount.  [This Portuguese-Indian was a
very poor marcher and much inclined to fever; yet in some ways the
second most important person of the caravan, decent cooking being such
an enormous help to good health in Africa.]  Lucy, who had grown much
stronger for this change and excitement, could ride the Maskat donkey
and her hammock men could return to Hangodi with some of Ann’s loads.

Ann would further borrow five of Brentham’s gun-men to escort her and
her fifteen women-porters—her Big-geru—back to Hangodi.  She had also
engaged at extravagant pay a dozen of the Wagogo, fleet of foot and
brave hunters.  These, armed with their long-bladed spears, would guide
and precede her little party, scaring away the wild beasts by their
cries.  Lions and rhinoceroses were distinctly a danger to be reckoned
with....  By forced marching, especially at night, Ann would be back at
Hangodi in two days. It was therefore unwise to miss a single moonlight
night as the moon would soon be on the wane.  The Ruga-ruga and Wangwana
never attacked at night, and if they were anywhere in the
neighbourhood—which the Wagogo scouts would soon find out—the party
would hide in the daylight hours.

Meantime Brentham and Lucy could remain encamped at Burungi awaiting the
return of Ann’s escort. If the message was "All’s well," they could
start off for the coast by the roundabout northern route....

"You seem to be a very capable woman," said Brentham, "as well as being
an obstinate one.  I agree to your plan, though I have a presentiment I
may regret it.  If you change your mind and come back I shan’t reproach
you for being fickle.  And besides, you may bring us later news.  I must
in any case stay here for a few days to prepare for the big march. I
must shoot game and have a lot of ’biltong’[#] made for the men...."


[#] Strips of lean meat dried in the sun and thus preserved for a
considerable time in dry weather.


"I’m glad you agree," said Ann.  "I know I shall be in the right place
at Hangodi—for many reasons. As it is, I’ve already had an idea.  The
Stotts seem to have been saved by the Masai.  The Masai that our Walunga
people call ’Wahumba’ are on good terms with us.  We brought about peace
between them and Mbogo.  They come to our station to trade and we have
cured several of their wounded men from bad lion bites.  We will send
messengers to the Humba Masai asking for a large war party of spearmen
to await down below in the plains any attack by the Arabs.  I think the
mere knowledge the Masai are there will keep the Arabs from coming near
Ulunga."

So the next morning Ann rode off at five o’clock astride her Masai
donkey, on which some makeshift arrangement of padded cloths had been
tied by way of saddle.  Her buxom Big-geru hoisted their light loads and
struck up a Moody and Sankey hymn translated by Ann into Kagulu.  The
grinning Wanyamwezi gunmen brought up the rear, and the wild, unclothed
Wagogo with fantastic ostrich feather or zebra-mane head-dresses dashed
on ahead, whooping and leaping and shouting their determination to scare
away the beasts of the field from the white woman-chief who talked like
a man.




                              *CHAPTER XI*

                           *THE HAPPY VALLEY*


Roger, left alone with Lucy, resolved he would "do the right thing,"
clenched his teeth so to speak on the vow.  He was the more fiercely
determined to act honourably because he felt himself to be fighting
against her own weakness of fibre, against her overpowering inclination
as well as his own.  Her attractiveness for him had greatly increased
since the renewal of their comradeship.  In the early days of the
acquaintance, though her prettiness and virginal charm were appealing,
she had the naïveté and insipidity of an inexperienced girl which soon
weary a man of the world who tires of the relation between master and
pupil.  Now she was a married woman; tempered, rendered more subtle by
suffering and experience of mankind, who was readier to express her
feelings through her eyes and her reticence than by direct speech.  She
talked less unreflectingly, and the things she said were more due to her
own observation and reasoning than second-hand opinions picked up from
other people.

Ann, in the week in which he had seen the two women together, had been
just the right foil to throw up Lucy’s charming femininity, her
refinement in dress and appearance and in the tones of her voice.  Ann
by contrast was an impudent self-assertive virago with the worth at best
of a good drudge.  After a year and a half’s absence from Europe he made
this rediscovery of Lucy, set against a background of Savage
Africa—coarse landscapes, jagged rocks, unwieldy trees, bush
conflagrations, naked men, wild beasts just kept at bay. (On moonlight
nights they could actually descry the grey-white forms of lions and
hyenas padding noiselessly round the precincts of their boma.)  These
violent incongruities made her seem to him a being of exquisite
refinement and yet of physical charm. Returning health, intense
happiness, the dawning hope of a bright future were dispelling the
anæmia and giving back to her face and neck the tinted white of a
healthy skin, warmed in tone by a good circulation. There was a sparkle
of animation in her violet eyes and a new lustre in her brown gold hair.

It would be a good thing for both, he felt, if he found the Stotts as
soon as possible and induced them to join company in a march to the
coast.  His career—Yes, he must remember that.  His career above all
things.  He must not be turned aside from his great ambitions by any
woman.  Yet he had missed fire over the Unguja appointment and wanted
consolation elsewhere.  It was rather weary _always_ to be at work, in
an office, or in the field: never to settle down to a honeymoon and the
joys of domesticity.  Perhaps he should have taken another line—the
Colonial Office and administrative work, not the Foreign Office and
adventurous diplomacy in Savage Africa....  He wanted to explore,
create, and then administer a great African Empire, tasks infinitely
above the mean capacity of a Godfrey Dewburn or a Spencer Bazzard. Why
could he not now—straight away—plunge into the vast unknown which lay
before him to the north, to the north-west?  Where had Stanley
disappeared to?  What had become of Emin?  What was happening in Uganda
since the death of Mutesa?  What unsolved mysteries lay west of the
Victoria Nyanza, north of Tanganyika, south of the Bahr-al-ghazal?
Should he take Lucy to his heart, throw conventions and commissions to
the winds, and start away with her on a wonderful journey of discovery,
leaving the world and the Rev. John Baines to say what they liked, and
covering his private treachery by his amazing discoveries?

Nonsense!  Why, Queen Victoria would never overlook this act of
adultery.  He might discover twenty lakes and name them all after
princes of her family or annex gold mines and pipes of diamonds and she
would refuse the accolade, and Society at her bidding would close its
ranks against the dishonoured missionary’s wife.  Besides, he had barely
enough trade goods with which to pay his way back to the coast,
especially by a round-about route.  The African soon looks coldly on the
god-like white man if he has no more beads, cloth, copper wire, knives,
and gun-caps with which to pay road dues, "customs" or good-will
presents.

And his armed porters?  They were only engaged for a six-months’
_safari_.  They must be fed and paid or they would desert....  He must
put all this nonsense out of his head—take a few pills, a little
bromide—tire himself out every day big game shooting or scouting till
the men sent with Ann Jamblin returned with their news.

If he took all this exercise, he would not lie awake at night in his hot
tent, under his mosquito curtain longing, aching to go to Lucy’s
quarters and say, "I love you: let us fight against it no longer.  We
may all be dead a month hence."

To guard against such impulses he had insisted on Halima’s sleeping on
an Unguja mat in her mistress’s tent, and had surrounded the tent with a
square of reed fence which gave her a greater degree of privacy than the
wretched tent afforded.  Within this there was space for a bathroom and
a "sitting-room," a shaded retreat to which she could retire for a
siesta or a confabulation with Halima who was still giving instruction
in Swahili.  Outside this "harim"—as his men who constructed it
certainly took it to be—there was a "baraza" common to them both: a
thatched shelter open all round.  Here the camp table was placed for
meals.

Roger determined to shut Lucy out of his thoughts as much as possible,
to think only for the day, for the dangers by which they were
surrounded, the hundred risks which attended their ever getting back to
civilization....  As soon as they could reach the coast he would send
Lucy to England and return to his Consulate at Medinat-al-barkah....  Of
course, should John Baines die of fever—missionaries often did—or—if—he
were killed? ... Suppose his station really was attacked...?  But then,
again, such thoughts as these were of the order of David’s when he
hankered after Bathsheba....

And then Lucy, again, Lucy might die of fever—she scarcely seemed cut
out for an African life, which is why he had begun pitying her.....


"I’ve had perfectly splendid sport to-day," said Roger, standing before
Lucy’s "baraza" where the camp table was laid for tea.  "I’ve shot a
rhino—they’re cutting it up now—two hartebeests, and two impala.
That’ll give us all the ’biltong’ we can carry. I’m filthily dirty, as
you can see—ash and charcoal from the burnt bush, and sweat—God!  It
_has_ been sweltering!—and the run after that—and _from_ that—rhino!
No.  I’m not wounded—there’s no need for emotion—but the rhino as he
charged—and _I_ doubled—squirted blood over me from his nostrils—I must
look like a fighting chimney sweep—I’ll go and have a bath and then you
shall give me tea."

"Don’t be long," said Lucy.  "There’s _such_ lots to talk about.  Your
men have come back from Hangodi with a note to me from John!  He says so
far ’all’s well.’  And two Masai, Halima says, are waiting to see you.
They keep saying ’Sitoto,’ which means, I suppose, some news about the
Stotts’ whereabouts. _How_ exciting it’s all getting.  I _am_ enjoying
it!"

"Halima" (to her maid): "Waambia watu wa mpishi tunataka chai, _marra_
moja!"


Four days afterwards, everything being ready for the fresh venture into
the unknown, loads lightened and tightened, and the biltong sufficiently
dry to be tied on top of the loads (imparting a disagreeable smell of a
butcher’s shop to the caravan as it passed in single file), they set out
with Masai guides to find the Stotts. They travelled over the
water-parting from the rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean to those that
ended in vague marshes and bitter lakes.  They climbed great escarpments
and descended into broad valleys between high cliffs and found
themselves amongst strange peoples, chiefly pastoral, keepers of great
herds of sleek, humped cattle, of dwarf African goats and fat-tailed
sheep.

The first of these, the Warangi, were fortunately allied in speech to
the Wagogo—so could be communicated with.  They were a truculent lot,
inclined to make trouble with strangers.  They seemed on this occasion,
however, too much excited over affairs of their own to be much
interested in the arrival of white folk, whom they had probably never
seen before except in the form of pale-faced Arabs.  They replied
briefly that a white man and woman and their children had preceded
Brentham’s party by a few days—when the moon was still at the full.
They were accompanied by a band of Masai with whom the Warangi were
friends....

"Are there any Arabs here?" asked Brentham through his interpreter.
"Waalabu?"  No!  They came sometimes to buy ivory, but on their last
visit they had tried to carry off some Rangi people as slaves, and if
they showed their faces again in Burangi, they would be driven away.

"Then what are you all so excited about?"

They replied it was an affair of their clan, of the people who lived in
these villages.  Their young married men had gone out this dry season to
kill elephants as was their custom, but had returned after three months
with no luck at all: hardly a tusk worth looking at, very little meat,
and two men killed by the elephants. There could be but one explanation
for this.  Their wives had been unfaithful to them as soon as their
backs were turned.  It was well known that if a wife and husband were
separated and the wife was unfaithful, a misfortune at once fell on the
husband.  Consequently the custom of their tribe in such cases was to
burn the guilty women on large pyres of brushwood. These pyres were now
finished—the white man could see them there along the bank of the
river.... Presently the adulterous ladies whose husbands had returned
from the luckless elephant-shoot would be led out, tied to the brushwood
bundles, and set on fire. He might stay and witness the imposing
spectacle if he chose.  They learnt that he too was accompanied by a
wife—a white woman.  It might be a moral lesson to her—if white women
were ever unfaithful....


Roger begged the Warangi to spare the women this time.  By and bye he
would come back to them and explain the whole mystery of luck in sport
and the ensuring of an accurate aim, perhaps give them a "medicine," to
produce the result they wanted.  But meantime he assured them that if
they burnt so much as one woman’s little finger a terrible curse would
fall on the land.

Lucy asked what all this talk was about, and he replied: "Oh, nothing
very important—big game shooting."  She was preoccupied with pleasanter
subjects, the greater coolness of the air now that they had ascended to
a higher level, the new green grass of the coming spring, and her own
greatly improved health....

"If all goes well," said Roger, "we ought to reach the place where the
Stotts are in two long days’ march."

"Shall we?  I’m rather sorry, as though something was going to break our
delicious dream.  I should like to go on and on like this for a
year...."

"And what about my official duties?  I, too, am enjoying this to the
full, but I am worried about whether I have done the right thing....
With a desire to please every one all round I sometimes fancy I have
embarked on a perilous adventure....  However we must hope for the best.
Of course all this is absolutely new ground.  I ought to be earning a
Geographical medal; instead of which I shall only get an official
rebuke....  Did you notice that we seem to have entered a new
watershed?"

_Lucy_: "Although I taught Geography at school, I never really
understood what a ’watershed’ was. What is it?"

_Roger_: "I suppose it means the area in which all the waters flow to
the same receptacle—a sea, a lake, a marsh.  We’ve just left a river
which was flowing steadily to the south, to some unknown end.  We rode
up a small rise, and now, see, the gathering streams are all flowing
northwards.  The Masai say these brooks unite farther on to form a river
which ends in a lake. Think of _that_, Lucy!  We shall discover a new
lake! It ought to be called ’Lake Lucy.’..."

_Lucy_ (blushing): "Oh no, indeed, I should feel quite uncomfortable if
I were made so prominent.... But the country seems to get lovelier and
lovelier...."

The new streams to which Roger referred irrigated a broad and even
expanse of fertile plain sloping gently to the north, and seeming to
terminate at the base of gigantic cliffs or lofty mountains which
surrounded this valley on three sides.  They could only make out dimly
the forms of the highest mountains because of the dry-season haze, but
they seemed like the craters of volcanoes.  Riding to the top of an
isolated hillock Roger obtained confirmation of the guides’ story.  The
valley ended in a lake of respectable size.

The grassy flats between the converging rivulets swarmed with big game
which showed comparatively little fear of man and might be seen grazing
with herds of the natives’ cattle.  A succession of exclamations, half
wonderment, half fear, came from Lucy.

"Oh! ... I ... _say_! ... I thought those were great tree trunks till
they moved, but ... they’re..."

"They’re _giraffes_, by Jove!  I wonder whether I ought to bring one
down?  Better not ... might delay us ... and I don’t know how the
natives ’ud take it...."

A herd of six or seven stately giraffes suspended their browsing on the
upper branches of an acacia tree, and gazed at them with their liquid
eyes, flicking their satiny bodies with tails that terminated in large
black tassels.

"O-oh!’" came from Lucy, as she reined in her donkey.  "_Look_ at those
things over there!  Like houses or great rocks, but they’re moving too!"

She pointed with her riding whip to some grey bulks in the middle
distance which, as they swished through the herbage, showed here and
there a gleam of polished tusks.

"Shoot!  Master, shoot!" exclaimed the Wanyamwezi.... "Elephants,
Master!"  But Roger called for silence and held his hand.  Supposing the
elephants charged down on Lucy?  And then he did not know how the sounds
of guns would be received in this new country, what the unknown natives
might think, and lastly, perhaps there was beginning to dawn on him an
appreciation of what this spectacle meant: a piece of absolutely
unspoiled Africa, not yet ravaged by the white man or the native hunter,
armed with the white man’s weapons.  His caravan had plenty of dried
meat. They should not break the charm of the Happy Valley—the phrase
came suddenly into his mind, some dim remembrance of Dr. Samuel
Johnson’s ponderous romance.

As they advanced northwards the scenes grew more idyllic.  Herds of
gnus, hartebeests, elands, and zebras, intermingled with reed buck and
impala, alternately stared in immobility, then dashed off in clouds of
yellow dust, and once more stood at gaze.  Gazelles with glossy black,
annulated horns and bodies brilliant in colour—golden-red, black-banded,
and snowy-white below—cropped the turf a few yards from the faintly
marked track which the caravan was following; and though the bucks
lifted their heads to observe this advancing file of human beings they
scarcely moved away more than a few yards.

The Valley was not entirely given up to wild life, though it seemed
likely that it was only used by man as a pasture ground, and that he
preferred the higher country, the hillocks on either side of the plain,
for his habitations, out of the way of floods and swamps.  But large
herds of cattle browsed among antelopes and zebra and were watched over
by herdsmen who displayed singularly little curiosity over this first
invasion of the Happy Valley by the white man.  The Stotts who had
preceded Roger and Lucy seemed to have satisfied their curiosity, once
and for all.  These cattle-tenders were different in physical type to
the ordinary Bantu Negro.  They were tall; gracefully, slenderly built;
and reminded Brentham of Somalis, though their head-hair was
close-cropped.  Such women as were met showed no sign of fear.  They
were clad in ample garments of dressed leather.  But the men had all the
gallant nakedness of the Masai—a skin cape over the shoulders, otherwise
only ivory arm-rings and metal-chain necklaces.

The Masai guides occasionally plucked handfuls of grass and exhibited
them to the groups of herdsmen as a testimony to the peaceful intentions
of the white man’s caravan.  This voucher was further confirmed by the
returning band of Masai who had escorted the Stotts to this Arcadia and
were now returning to northern Nguru.  They exchanged musical
salutations with Roger’s guides and told them the "Sitoto" were camped
in a village one day’s further journey to the north, near the shores of
the lake.

"That’s all right," said Roger, his mind greatly relieved.  "Then let’s
give our _safari_ a half-holiday and take things easy.  We’ll pitch our
camp on that knoll.  How delightful is this short green turf after the
miles and miles of burnt grass we’ve passed through.  The spring has
begun here a month earlier than in the lower-lying country.  I expect
the high mountains to the north have attracted the rains, though it’s
only October.  Have you noticed, also, since we entered this valley
we’ve had no mosquitoes?  I wonder why?  Something p’raps they don’t
like in the water, or not enough long grass?..."

As soon as the camp was finished, the pastoral people brought them rich,
sweet milk for sale, in tightly-woven grass receptacles, in calabashes,
or clay pots. Sometimes this milk had a smoky taste from the rough
methods by which the milk pots were cleansed.  But it was as sweet as a
nut and seemed to Lucy, who had long been deprived of milk, except doled
out in small quantities for tea, incomparably delicious as a
thirst-quencher. And these Egyptian-like people—so often showing a
Pharaonic profile and speaking a language which Roger afterwards
declared not very far removed from Gala—also traded in honey, honey
flavoured with the scent of the acacia blossoms, appearing now as golden
fluff on the awakening trees.

The next day, the seventh since they left Burungi, Brentham’s caravan
came into full view of the lake, its shores lined with dense ranks of
pinkish-white flamingoes.  To the south-east was a native village of
long, continuous "tembe" houses, arranged more or less in
parallelograms, or hollow squares, enclosing for each family or group a
turfy space where the cattle passed the night and family life was
carried on in the open air and in security.

One of these enclosures had evidently been given over to the Stotts for
a temporary home.  And from out of it Mr. and Mrs. Stott might be
descried, hurrying to meet the caravan.  Before they could arrive, Roger
halted his men and surveyed the whole scene before him from a grassy
mound where he thought to pitch his camp.  Projecting mountain
buttresses shut in the valley and the lake, west, north and east.  West
and north these mountains almost overhung the flat lake shores in an
abrupt escarpment, blue, without details, in the afternoon shadow.  To
the east of the lake, though there were great heights and in the
north-east a hint of giant summits capped with snow, the rise was not so
abrupt, more broken, and the rocks more arid, but vivid and variegated
in colour—-red, yellow, greenish grey, purple black and creamy white.
The mountains on the west were diversified with combes and glens, were
carved, moulded, seamed with watercourses; embroidered and mantled with
dark green forests.  Where the lake was deep its waters were a pure
cobalt, but its shallows were whitish-green with salt or soda, and the
level shores from which the waters had retreated were greyish white,
probably with the guano of the countless flamingoes, who had their
nesting-stools some distance back from the water’s edge. Herds of cattle
browsed peacefully on the green water-meadows of the river-delta; nearer
at hand flocks of black and white sheep mingled with half-shy gazelles
of golden brown.  Great Secretary birds—grey, black, and white—stalked
through the herbage looking for snakes and lizards, knowing no fear of
man in their honourable calling.  Blue whorls of smoke arose from the
fishermen’s fires on the lake shore, where fish was being smoked on
wooden frames.  All this was irradiated by the yellow light of the
westering sun. Before, the Stotts could reach them and break their
silence of contentment, Roger turned to Lucy and said: "This _is_ the
Happy Valley!"

The Stotts were of course full of questions and wonderment.  Mr. Stott
was a middle-aged man of strong build, honest hazel eyes, clipped beard,
tanned face and generally pleasing appearance.  He had never before met
either Lucy or Brentham, so Mrs. Stott had to make the introductions.

After these surprised and joyous greetings, an adjournment took place to
the Stotts’ quarters. Although they had only been about a week
established here, in a portion of the village of Mwada lent them by the
native chief, the practical and never defeated Stotts—-the born
colonists, the realized Swiss Family Robinson—had already made
themselves a new home in the wilderness.  They had swept out and cleaned
the "tembes," the continuous huts of wattle and daub, divided into many
compartments, which enclosed the turfy square; and in the centre of
their "compound" had erected a circular building of stout palm poles and
grass that covered a swept space of ground.  In the middle of this they
had fashioned a table of reed-bundles fastened to upright posts and had
manufactured rough forms and stools of hyphaene palm trunks. This was
their "baraza" or reception-room, their eating-house, and shaded
playground for their hardy children.  Within the enclosed ground they
kept their milch goats, sheep, and riding donkeys.  Of these they had
quite a troop, purchased from the Masai.  These asses had proved most
useful as beasts of burden for the transport of their loads, so that
they almost managed without human porterage.  Mr. Stott had constructed
very practical pack saddles.

"Come along to our baraza," said genial Mrs. Stott. "Let us try and make
you up some kind of a meal before we begin talking."

Roger gave a few directions about his own camping, a quarter of a mile
distant, and then joined Lucy and the Stotts, who were walking to "our
new mission station," as Mrs. Stott called it.

"You know we are _never_ down-hearted; we _know_ God orders everything
for the best!  I am sure He thought we were settling down too
comfortably among the Wagogo, and so gave us a hint to press farther
into the interior.  _Of course_, when things quiet down: for either the
Germans or the English _must_ conquer East Africa: it would be sickening
to leave the Arabs and Ruga-ruga in control—we shall build up again our
Burungi station and put capable people in charge of it, people who’ll
get on well with the Wagogo....  They want a bit of managing.  You see
how well it would suit as a halt on the way to this wonderful
country—What do you call it?  ’The Happy Valley’?  Yes, _that_ shall be
its name.  _How_ the Lord’s ways are _past_ finding out!  I felt _so_
sick at heart when we were leaving Burungi....  I’ll tell you how it all
happened. Our Masai friends had beaten off the Ruga-ruga, but the Wagogo
thought they intended to return, probably with real Arabs in command.
My husband is obliged to shoot game; otherwise we couldn’t live, much
less feed our people.  They raided us chiefly for arms and
ammunition....  We beat them off, but the Wagogo thought they would be
sure to return—much stronger next time.  So after thinking it over and
putting our case before God in prayer we decided that night after the
attack ceased, to spend the hours of darkness packing.  The next morning
we bought ten more donkeys from the Masai, besides the ten we had
already, loaded them up and then said to our Masai friends—my husband
speaks Masai pretty well: ’Now, can you guide us to some country where
we can be safe from the Lajomba—their name for the Arabs—for a time?’
And they led us here ... let us say, rather, they were God’s agents in
leading us here.  Isn’t this a _wonderful_ country?  We have never seen
the like. Somehow we feel so _safe_ here.  You can’t think of any enemy
coming over those high mountains—one of them has snow on the summit—or
over the cliffs. They can only come up the river valley.  And to do that
they must fight their way through the Rangi and Fiome peoples.  The
Rangi people speak a language like Chi-gogo, and so—oddly enough—do the
fisher folk round this extraordinary lake.  But the others don’t look
like ordinary Negroes.  They are more like Somalis.  And I can’t make
anything out of their language.  But although they’re different to the
Masai they seem to have some kind of alliance with them, and they
received us here as friends, because the Masai brought us.  _What_ a
field for the Lord’s work!  And to think I almost _doubted_ God when He
let the Ruga-ruga attack Burungi!...

"But here we are, at our temporary home, and I must go to the cook-house
and see about your meal. You won’t mind native stuff, will you?  You see
we’ve lost most of our tinned provisions, and indeed we had been living
on the country long before the Ruga-ruga attacked us.  Like all the
other missionaries of late we’ve had very few caravans from the coast."

Mr. Stott led the way to the "baraza" with its rough table of
reed-bundles on a framework of sticks and its palm trunks to sit on.

The Stott children were playing on the dusty turf of the cleared ground
in front of the baraza.

"I’m afraid you’ll think our little ’uns rather uncared for," said Mr.
Stott apologetically; "but my poor wife’s had too much to do in our
hurried flight and after we got here to spend much time on their
clothing or even getting them clean!"  The eldest of the three was a
pretty boy with light flaxen hair and blue eyes, very tanned of skin,
very grubby of face and hands.  He wore a tattered smock and short
breeches, vestiges of a "sailor suit."  On his feet were cleverly made
native sandals, as on those of his younger brother and little sister,
whose legs and feet were otherwise naked, and the two smaller children
had little on but a yard or two of calico wound round the waist.  Lucy
recognized in the youngest the solemn baby she had seen at Unguja
playing with the large cockroaches; and said so.

"Yes," replied Mr. Stott.  "Afraid of nothing, poor little mite.  When
the Ruga-ruga came I hurriedly built up a sort of zariba of boxes and
stones, and put a tarpaulin over it and told the little ’uns to keep
quiet; and there they were, all through the fighting.  Mother and I
would go and give ’em food every now and again, and Edgar here"—pointing
to the boy—"’ud say, ’How’s the fight going, Daddy?’  And Edgar’s bin a
rare good boy since we came here, helping to tie these bundles of reeds
and making himself useful.  Our eldest’s at home in Ireland with her
grandmother—for her education.  The next one we buried years ago in the
Nguru country, and the very youngest—bless her—died of infantile
diarrhoea last March at Burungi.  That accounts for the six of ’em; and
I’ll lay there aren’t many British children have had such an adventurous
bringing-up, ’cept the young Livingstones and Moffats."

Mrs. Stott was now spreading a wrinkled, grey-white cloth over the reed
table-top.  And the children were up on their feet helping her and a
native servant bring the meal from the cook-house to the baraza.

"We’re giving you just the native _ugali_—porridge, you know," said Mrs.
Stott, "but there’s a lovely pot of fresh milk from the natives’ cattle.
Here’s some honey in a calabash.  Here are the rest of the scones we had
for breakfast.  I’ve made you some tea—rather weak, but it is so
precious.  And whilst you’re tackling _that_ I’m going to fry some fish
we got from the lake this morning—bony, but very sweet."

During their meal Roger and Lucy tried to give in instalments a
description of the extraordinary circumstances which had brought them
here in company. Mrs. Stott, who had fetched her sewing so that she
might not be wasting time (Mr. Stott had excused himself, having urgent
work to do till the evening), looked a little puzzled and not quite
acquiescent over Brentham’s explanations.

"Here, children!  You go now and help Brahimu and Kagavezi.  Don’t get
into mischief.  Keep out of the sun, don’t pick up scorpions, and don’t
go outside the boma....  I’m an outspoken woman, you know, Lucy.  I
can’t help saying I think you ought to have stuck by your husband."

"But I was so _ill_, Mrs. Stott, and John _insisted_ on my going.
Didn’t he ... Captain Brentham?"

"He did really, Mrs. Stott.  I had instructions to advise all the
missionaries to leave their stations and return to the coast—indeed, I
come here to you with that message, but I suppose you won’t obey it?"

"Indeed I won’t, Captain Brentham, though I thank you for your efforts
to find us and help us.  I do indeed.  But wherever my husband is, there
will I be too, unless he absolutely ordered me to go away....  And I saw
it was the will of God that I should go."

"Well: that was what John did to me—absolutely _ordered_ me to go," said
Lucy, beginning to cry.  "He ordered Ann to go with me.  It isn’t my
fault—our fault—that Ann has gone back, in spite of John’s _positive
commands_.  Ann never obeys any one.  Oh dear, oh dear! _what_ should I
do ... I feel if I go back to that place I shall simply die ... and yet
I shall lose your good opinion ... if I go to the coast with Captain
Brentham...."

"Oh, I don’t say that.  I’m not one for passing judgments on my fellow
creatures.  It’s between them and God.  But look here, Captain Brentham:
I don’t want to keep you idle.  I’ll be bound there’s a hundred things
you want to see to in your camp.  I’ll keep Lucy with me.  She and I are
old friends, as you know.  If you’d send over her loads and her native
woman—let’s see, what was her name?  I remember how she nursed you when
your poor baby came—and went—Halima?  Yes.  Well, send over everything
that belongs to Lucy and her tent shall be pitched inside our boma
whilst she stays here.  She and I will talk things over a bit and then,
maybe, we’ll call you into consultation. I’m sure you want to do what’s
best for us all. What a _strange_ place to meet in!  The last time we
spoke together was in your grand Arab house at Unguja and I was more
than a bit afraid of you."

Mrs. Stott rose up from her sewing, walked with Brentham to the exit
from the compound, and gazed across the outer greensward to the very
blue lake, with its whitish rim of scum or salt.  In the distance the
blush-tint flamingoes flew with wings of black and scarlet in V
formations, against an azure background of colossal mountains rising
tier above tier; or, their glistening plumage showed up more effectively
against the violet shadows of the western cliffs and wooded gorges
bordering the lake, and still more strikingly when contrasted with the
cobalt surface of the lake itself.  Other flamingoes waded into the
lake, filtering through their laminated beaks the minute organisms
evidently abundant in its water.  Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of
these birds stood in serried ranks along the curving, diverging shores.
The rear ranks were composed of immature birds of dirty-white plumage
streaked with brown; but these were masked by the front rows of adults,
affectedly conscious of their beauty of plumage and outline.  They
exhibited a hundred mannerisms in their poses: lowered their kinky necks
to dabble in the ooze, or raised them perpendicularly and "honked" to
let the humans know they were on their guard (though never a man in
these parts thought of harming them).  Or they cleaned their backs with
rosy coils of neck, stood on one vermilion leg and bent the other limb
beneath the belly feathers. Or they fenced at each other with decurved
bills of purple and red in make-believe petulance, and because
life-conditions were so perfect that they had nothing whatever to
grumble at....  Some Wambugwe canoes were approaching the lake shore
with fish to sell to the white men.  A considerable section of the
flamingoes rose into the sky with a display of roseate tints against the
blue ... then landed and folded their wings in assurance of safety.

"Yes," continued Mrs. Stott, "I little thought we should meet under
circumstances like these.  Aren’t those flamingoes _wonderful_?  Like a
revelation of God—almost.  I shall stay here if only to look after them.
_They_ shall be the roses in my garden.  I shan’t want any others.  You
see they’re not afraid of man and they don’t get in man’s way.  They
aren’t good to eat—much too fishy.  And, as far as I can see, they don’t
eat fish; only mud, seemingly—shrimps, p’raps...."

"Well, Consul: come again at supper-time; and if I’m too stingy over my
precious tea, at any rate I’ll give you hot milk and pancakes and
honey."

Left with Lucy, Mrs. Stott first took her to the washing hut and
provided the means for a good bath and next lent her some garment of the
dressing-gown order with which to clothe herself till her luggage and
her attendant arrived.

"I’ll tell you what I am going to advise Captain Brentham to do, Lucy,"
said Mrs. Stott.  "Come what may, you’ll be none the worse for a good
rest here. This place is evidently far healthier than the lower country.
The Consul shall bargain with your Masai guides to go as fast as they
can back to Ulunga and find out what has happened at Hangodi.  If things
are still quiet there, the probability is they are going to remain
quiet.  In that case—if your husband does not absolutely forbid it,
Captain Brentham ought to take you back to Hangodi and leave you there.
He can then find his own way _somehow_ to the place he lives at—Medina.
If the messengers come back with _bad_ news about the Arabs, or if John
Baines positively vetoes your returning, _then_ all you can do is to put
yourself under the Consul’s care and travel with him to Mvita ... unless
you like to stop with me and live on country produce.  I think we
can—whilst you’re waiting here—get in touch with the Masai beyond the
mountains and by giving them a present induce them to guide you to the
Kilimanjaro country, to one of the mission stations there—Evangelical or
Methodist, don’t matter which.  After that all would be plain sailing,
for I don’t believe the Arabs of the British sphere are going to rise."

When in the evening of that day, by the light of a camp fire—they had
practically no artificial light—Mrs. Stott put this plan before Roger,
he promptly agreed.  It would show he had done the right thing. It would
go far to save Lucy’s good name, especially among Mission folk.  And it
would give him nearly a month to stay and explore the Happy Valley.  He
had spent much of the day with James Stott helping him in his work on
the embryo station, and Stott had told him of wonderful things he had
seen or had gleaned from native information.  There was the new lake to
survey roughly; there was a paradise of big game to shoot in.  Here Mrs.
Stott intervened: "I hope you and my husband will go slow as regards
shooting.  I know we must have the meat and we’re so nearly bankrupt at
the coast that a few tusks of ivory would come in handy.  But somehow I
should like to think of this Happy Valley as a sort of preserved
zoological gardens where all these innocent creatures of God’s
handiwork——"

"I shouldn’t call a rhinoceros innocent, Mrs. Stott," said Roger,
smoking his pipe with such contentment as he had not known for months—"I
have rather a tender conscience about antelopes and zebras, but rhinos
attack you absolutely unprovoked...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Only because men began humbugging them first of all, long
ago, I expect.  However, if ever I lived to see our mission stations
self-supporting and growing all the food they needed, I’d never let
James fire another shot at the game."

The next morning the two Masai guides, well rewarded, started off with a
package.  It contained letters home from the Stotts, telling of their
wonderful deliverance; a brief despatch from Captain Brentnam to H.M.
Agent at Unguja, and letters to John Baines and Ann Jamblin.  John was
asked how things were going, and whether on second thoughts he would
prefer Lucy to return to Hangodi, and if he could take the next
opportunity of having the accompanying letters sent to the coast; and
Ann was given—curtly—information as to Lucy’s reaching the temporary
station of the Stotts.  However expansive the Stotts might be, within
the compass of one sheet of paper, they said very little about the
situation of the Happy Valley; and Brentham was still more reticent.
Both no doubt for the same reason, that the Happy Valley was too good a
proposition to be given away lightly to a greedy world.  Mrs. Stott
still hoped, despite concluded boundary conventions, it might be brought
within the British sphere; Brentham did not want any other fellow to
have a go at its big game or an examination of its alluring secrets till
he had had a chance to return.

Whilst these letters were being carried to their destination by two
lithe, naked men of red-brown skin, with hair done up in periwigs of
twine soaped with mutton fat and the same red-ochre as coloured their
sleek bodies, men who carried knobkerries in their waistcords and
long-bladed spears in the right hand, great oval shields on the left
arm, and who ran on sandalled feet a steady six miles an hour when they
were on the road: Lucy and Roger disposed themselves to await patiently
the news which—they felt—was to determine their fate.

Twenty days went by in the Happy Valley in blissful sameness.  Lucy had
her very limited wardrobe washed in the lake waters which had some oddly
cleansing, blanching effect—something chemical which both Roger and Mr.
Stott would discuss in muttered phrases. Lucy and Mrs. Stott together,
with many a laugh at blunder or foiled hopes of success, at length
succeeded in ironing the skirts and bodices and petticoats and linen
with a parody of a flat-iron, made for them by a naked Elkonono
blacksmith in a native forge.

Brentham and his Wanyamwezi porters helped Mr. Stott complete his new
station.  Or they organized great shooting parties which enriched Mr.
Stott with ivory that he might some day sell, as against trade goods and
tea; or they accumulated biltong for Roger’s expedition, besides finding
meat for the day-by-day food of these hungry Wanyamwezi.  To meet Mrs.
Stott’s scruples and objections they had themselves paddled in Wambugwe
canoes farther up the lake and shot elephants, zebras, buffaloes,
antelopes, on the flats twenty miles to the north of the Stotts’
station.  Or they rode donkeys and travelled twenty miles southwards,
back along the road they had come (and got faint, far-off rumours of men
fighting, leagues and leagues away, which made them anxious).

Or they laid out plantations in the rich alluvial soil behind the
station and fenced them in.  There Mr. Stott could plant his poor
remnant of English vegetable seeds, or with greater hope the maize,
pumpkins, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, beans, and manioc of the
agricultural and fishing Bantu population.

Then, on the twenty-first day of this busy three weeks, the Masai
messengers once more squatted before the Stotts’ baraza.  Silently one
of them tendered to Mrs. Stott a little package of dried banana leaves,
tied with some native fibre.  Inside a fold of old newspaper and a
makeshift envelope made out of a copy-book cover, on one half-sheet of
dirty copy-book paper, Ann sent Lucy this message:


Mbogo’s Village,
       NOVEMBER SOMETHING OR OTHER, 1888.

DEAR LUCY,—

Your messengers arrived yesterday, but I had to keep them waiting for an
answer and now they are impatient to go.  The station has been
attacked—I think it began at the end of October, but I am muddled about
dates.  John and Mr. Bayley were killed on the second day.  Anderson and
I are only wounded; we are recovering, though my headaches are awful.
Josiah is dead, tell Halima.  Help has come at last. But don’t come back
this way.  The Ruga-ruga are all over Ugogo and there is fierce fighting
in Nguru.  The Masai fought splendidly on our side.  Go on to the coast
quick as you can, northern route.  Can’t write more now, but will send
through more news to Unguja if I get the chance.  Good-bye.  John talked
of nothing but you when he was dying.  It’s about broken my heart.

ANN JAMBLIN.


Lucy and Mrs. Stott looked at one another in horror and consternation as
this note—written by a pencil that had been frequently
moistened—fluttered to the ground from Lucy’s nerveless fingers.  She
felt it was the only tribute to her husband’s memory, to her real horror
and remorse to assume a faintness she did not feel while Mrs. Stott led
her dry-eyed to her tent and couch.




                             *CHAPTER XII*

                      *THE ATTACK ON THE STATION*


             _From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mr. Callaway,
                Agent of East African Mission, Unguja._

Mbogo’s Village,
       Ulunga, Nguru,
              _Novr._ 30, 1888.

DEAR MR. CALLAWAY,—

You may have heard some rumour of what has happened to us here.  You
will find much of it described in the letter I have written to Mr. John
Baines’s mother.  You can read this letter.  Read it and then take
notes.  You have several clerks and none of them with a broken head like
mine, I’ll be bound, and plenty of good pens, ink and stationery. All
I’ve got to write on is some old ruled exercise books and no envelopes.
Well, make up some sort of a letter out of what I’ve written to Mrs.
Baines senior, and then send it to the headquarters of the Mission in
London; and post the letter to her, Mrs. Baines, Tilehurst, Reading.
Tell them I’m recovering and I’m going to stay here till I am relieved
and even perhaps afterwards, supposing I and my husband get quite well.
You may be surprised at my change of surname, having known me as Miss
Jamblin.  Just before the attack on our station (Hangodi) occurred I
went through a religious form of marriage with Mr. Ebenezer Anderson.
Mrs. John Baines had gone away—her husband sent her off to the coast in
the charge of Consul Brentham—and I did not think it right to stay at
the Mission with three men and me unmarried; so I accepted Mr.
Anderson’s proposal.  Mr. Baines married us, but as I supposed it
wouldn’t be legal without we were married again before the Consul at
Unguja, we haven’t lived together as man and wife, and won’t till
everything can be made right and proper.  I only mention this in case
either of us died.

You can also tell the big man at Unguja—Sir Godfrey Something—what has
happened in case he cares to know.  I don’t suppose he does care.  Those
big pots always sneer at Nonconformist Missionaries. But I want him to
know this.  We should have all been killed and perhaps tortured and our
station might have been utterly destroyed and our people carried off
into slavery if it hadn’t been first for the Masai, and most of all for
an old Arab, Ali bin Ferhan—I think he spells his name.  He’s written it
in Arabic on the piece of paper I enclose.  He lives at Momoro, near the
Lingani River.  Well, for reasons too long to give he no sooner heard we
were going to be attacked by the Ruga-ruga and the black Arabs (they
were led by that limb of the Devil, Ayub bin Majidi, whom they nickname
Mnazi-moja) than he came to our assistance. Mbogo and his people deserve
a gold medal—not that any one will give it—they’re only "Wa-shenzi" and
we’re only Nonconformists; they fought splendidly; but they were just
giving way when this old Arab—just like a picture of Abraham he is—came
up with a lot of his people armed with guns and carrying flags. And he
called off the fighting.  After that the Ruga-ruga and their leaders
simply disappeared with all the plunder they could carry and we have
been at peace ever since, with Ali bin Ferhani camped here and keeping
guard over Ulunga.  Ali doesn’t like the Germans. He always wanted his
beloved "Ekkels"—I suppose he means Sir James Eccles—to take the country
for the English Queen.  But he thinks bad will come if any white people
are killed.  He is so afraid the Germans will think he joined with the
other Arabs that I now tell you all this, though every day I have a
splitting headache.  I really began this letter a week ago.  I write a
little every day, and now I think Ali will be able to get it sent
through to the coast, to Mvita, perhaps.

The other letter—an exercise book tied up—is for Mrs. John Baines.  I
don’t think any one ought to see it but herself.  So please put it into
an envelope and address it to her "To await arrival at Unguja."  She
started off for the Mvita coast with Captain Brentham a month ago.
What’s happened to her I don’t know. I sent messengers to tell her her
husband was dead.

I saw Mrs. Stott here last July when Mrs. John Baines had her premature
confinement.  Since then I only know that their station at Burungi was
destroyed, but they got away safely somewhere else, where the Consul and
Mrs. Baines afterwards found them.

Yours in the love of Jesus,
       ANN ANDERSON.

P.S.  I ought perhaps to be more business-like, in spite of feeling so
ill, in case there is any trouble about wills and say that their names
were _Thomas Aldrich Bayley_ and _John Baines_ and that they died as
near as I can reckon on October 29th, 1888.  I haven’t found any wills,
but I am trying to get their effects together, though of course there is
great confusion after the looting.  I’ve also written a note for old
Mrs. Bayley.



           _From Mrs. Anderson, E.A.M., to Mrs. John Baines,
             c/o Mr. Callaway, Agent, East African Mission,
                                Unguja._

Mbogo’s Village,
       Ulunga,
              _November_, 1888.

DEAR LUCY,—

I am beginning to write this as near as I can guess November 15, but
I’ve got out in my dates and no wonder.  I’ve also got a broken head—I
expect a touch of concussion besides a scalp wound—and it is simple
agony to write for long.  My eyes hurt so.  I must however try to tell
you—and John’s mother—what has happened, so I shall write a little every
day if I am fit to and send these letters to the coast by the first
chance.  Ali bin Ferhani thinks he can manage a messenger later on who
would cross into the British "sphere."  I expect you got my first
message sent by the Masai?  In case you didn’t or in case something
happens to me and I can’t finish a long letter, I’ll tell you the plain
facts first: _John’s dead, Bayley’s dead, Josiah’s dead_.  Anderson and
I are wounded.  I’m nearly well.  The station is only partially
destroyed. Now you know the worst.


When I returned here from Burungi it was about the tenth of October, so
far as we could keep count.  John was very angry with me at first, for
leaving you and for coming to live with three men and I a single woman.
I well-nigh lost patience with him.  But I said, Well if _that’s_ all
I’ll marry one of you, I’ll marry Ebenezer if he’ll have me.  Ebenezer
Anderson didn’t look overjoyed, but John said: That’s all right; you
came out to marry him, so the Mission expected, and you’re only now
fulfilling the contract.  All right, I said, you’re a minister of the
Gospel, you could marry us at home, so you can do it here, only it won’t
be legal till we’re re-married at the Consulate.  But it’ll be a
marriage in God’s eyes, which is the great thing.  I felt reckless about
it somehow.  Of course I’m not going to live with Eb until all this
trouble’s over and everything is legal.  Well, after that was done with,
the country round seemed to be getting jumpy and Mbogo sent to say the
Ruga-ruga under that Devil, Ayub, were coming to attack us, coming with
lots of men and guns. So we sent out word to the Masai, and they turned
up well.  About three hundred spears.  But after a bit they got tired of
waiting, so went off somewhere else to do some raiding on their own
account.


Towards the end of October—perhaps it was the 28th—no sooner was our
first bell rung for dressing—half-past five—than we heard the most
unearthly yelling and a tremendous firing of guns.  I just got my
clothes and boots on anyhow and the men turned out in shirts and
trousers and with their boots unlaced.  The bullets were flying like
hail above the stockade, first of all too high.  We dared not go to peep
through for fear of being shot.  Well, John didn’t lose his head one
bit.  He gave out the Sniders to all our Walunga who could use them, and
he and Bayley and Anderson took up the posts they had settled
beforehand.

Then the Ruga-ruga made a rush almost up to the ditch which they seemed
not to expect, and John and the men let them have it.  Five or six were
killed. After that Mbogo’s Walunga came up and took them on the flank
with guns and spears, and they didn’t like it at all and withdrew for a
spell.  But I can’t tell you everything—Perhaps some day I will if you
ever care to hear it—I’ve got to write to John’s mother as well as you.

The fighting in the afternoon was chiefly between the Ruga-ruga and
Mbogo’s villages.  I suppose they thought they’d better finish _them_
off before they came again to us.  They drove Mbogo’s people out of all
their villages except the big one near us, where Mbogo lives.  This was
higher up, and Mbogo and John had worked at its fortification on Captain
Brentham’s plan—it turned out to be much more easily defended than our
place.  Fortunately also the Ruga-ruga and the Arabs don’t like fighting
at night—Oh my headache, I must leave off for a bit....

Well, during that night we worked like Trojans—Who were the Trojans and
why did they work hard? You ought to know with your superior education.
We dug out a square pit in the middle of the station and lined it with
dry grass.  In it we arranged chairs and mattresses so that we could
rest and sleep here out of reach of the bullets.  We also turned the
Chapel into a living-house and store, because its brick walls and iron
roof made it secure against fire and fairly safe from bullets.

On the second day the Ruga-ruga, led on by Ayub, attacked us on the west
side, where our stockade was weakest and where we were overlooked a
little by that mound we used to call the Snakes’s Hill.  Brother Bayley
was standing talking to me about some dressings he wanted for Josiah
Briggs who had been shot in the foot, when suddenly he uttered a shriek,
whirled round and fell at my feet.  He died a few minutes afterwards.
John was so infuriated at his death that in spite of my shouts to be
careful, he climbed up to a look-out post and fired his double-barrelled
sporting rifle at a group of Ruga-ruga on Snakes’s Hill. Whilst he was
stooping to reload a poisoned arrow struck him on the chest and
penetrated his lung.  A good many of the Ruga-ruga were Manyema savages,
slaves of the Arabs, and they fought with bows and poisoned arrows.
John scrambled down somehow on to the ground.  Ebenezer Anderson helped
me to carry him into the pit shelter and there we undressed him. He was
streaming with blood and coughing up blood and fast losing
consciousness.  Somehow or other—oh, what a time it was!—we got the
arrow-head out of the wound.  I don’t know even now how, for we were
both of us bunglers and it had got partly wedged in the ribs.  And we
had to cut the poor dear about. Fortunately we had Bayley’s instruments
down with us in this pit.  But I can’t go into all these details.  Shall
I ever get this letter finished?

Whilst we were attending to John we heard a tremendous shouting.  It was
the Humba war song—the Masai, you know.  They had come at last to our
assistance and taken the Ruga-ruga rather by surprise. But just before
they made their rush up the hill, the Ruga-ruga had contrived to shoot
arrows with flaming cotton soaked in oil on to our thatched roofs.  Fire
was spreading from building to building except the Chapel and the store.
My Big-geru had lost their heads.  Up to that time they had been so
good.  Our Walunga were trying to open the doors of the stockade and
dash out into the open country.  Then the Ruga-ruga would have broken in
and all would have been up with us.  Fortunately the charge of the Masai
came at that very moment, when I was beginning to doubt if God had not
forgotten us.  They killed lots of the Ruga-ruga and would hack off
their heads and throw them back into our stockade.

Then the Ruga-ruga seemed to get reinforcements from the Ugogo
direction—quite a large body of men, they say, led by two Arabs—the two
Arabs whom John had got expelled a year ago by Mbogo for trading in
slaves.  They had got a small cannon and its noise and the landing of a
stone cannon ball in the middle of a party of Masai gave them a fright,
so that all of the Masai drew off from near our station and ran round to
the high ground behind Mbogo’s town.  Once more it seemed as though
nothing could save us.  The Ruga-ruga fired stone balls at our stockade
and seemed making up their minds to a rush.

Ebenezer was just splendid at this time.  I’m not sorry now I agreed to
marry him, though the poor dear is still pretty bad and hardly right in
his mind yet. But just at this critical moment he and Josiah and five of
our men who knew how to handle guns kept up such a fire with the rifles
that they shot down several of the big men among the enemy.  Then poor
Josiah was shot in the stomach and died an hour or two afterwards.
Ebenezer got a splinter of wood in his eye—through a cannon ball
striking a post near him, and he was put out of action for a bit.
Meantime nothing more happened.  There was a lull.  The Ruga-ruga drew
off out of sight.

I could think of nothing but John all this time, though I had a feeling
of being stunned and hurt myself.  He recovered consciousness and talked
of no one but you.  I think he thought you were with him all the time,
and I confess _that_ hurt me.  It was Lucy my darling, my own true
wife—and I wondered whether you _were_—and Lucy you’ve come back and now
we’ll go home together....  He didn’t mention my name _once_, and I
can’t remember that he said a word about God.  Perhaps he didn’t know he
was dying.  Towards the last his body swelled dreadfully and he sank
into a stupor.  He must have died just about sunset.  When he was going
I seemed to be going too.  I suppose I fainted, for when one of my
Big-geru came down into the pit with some broth she’d made she set up a
howling and a yelling saying we were both dead, that Bwana Fulata, as
they called John, had taken me with him.

My girls undressed me and found then that I had been wounded all the
time.  A slug or a rusty nail fired out of one of the guns had ripped
across my shoulders and the back of my head and I’d never noticed it.
It must have been when Eb and I were helping John down into the pit—I
thought some one then had given me a push.  And while I sat beside John
the blood had soaked all the back of my bodice and caked quite hard.
It’s left a kind of blood-poisoning, but I’m getting over it.  Only it
causes these awful headaches.  And poor Eb before the fighting finished
got hit in the arm, and then from our clumsy attempts to extract the
iron filings which had struck him he got blood-poisoning too, much worse
than me.  I can’t say what his temperature went up to because I can’t
find any of our clinical thermometers, but to judge from his ravings it
must have been pretty high.

In the night following that second day, Mbogo came with a lot of his
headmen and took us three away and all our Big-geru to inside his own
village and put us in his women’s quarters.  _He’s_ a white man if you
like, under his skin.  He was afraid we might all be burnt to death by
the fire spreading inside our station.  So we should have done.  I lost
my senses that night from weakness or shock or something.  When I came
to again I could hardly move my head for pain.  But my girls bathed me
and gave me wonderful potions of their own making and I was able to sit
up.  Mbogo came in, but spoke behind the door for modesty. What do you
think of that in a black savage?  A "Mshenzi"!  Because he thought I
might be undressed.  But he said in Swahili: "Fear no more. Your friends
are coming."

The next morning I heard that Ali bin Ferhani, who’d been a friend of
John’s—you remember?—had come with a big party of his followers, and
hearing he was on his way the Ruga-ruga had bolted because they all
respect him as a "Sheikh."  He says he is going to stop here with his
men till peace comes, or at any rate till white people take command
here.

Your Masai messengers came two days after Ali bin Ferhani had arrived,
and I wrote with great difficulty the message I sent you and got the
Big-geru to do it up for me.  Some of them write quite nicely themselves
now, but only in Kagulu.

There’s lots and lots more I could tell you if we ever meet again or I
ever have time and plenty of paper. After the Ruga-ruga were gone and
the fires were beaten out my Big-geru searched in the Chapel and the
ruins of the school houses and found three copy-books and a stone bottle
of ink and some pens.  I’ve used nearly a copy-book each for you and
John’s mother and a bit of a one writing to Mr. Callaway and a short
note to Mr. Bayley’s mother.  I haven’t made a proper search yet, but I
can’t find any will left by John.  I don’t suppose he had much to leave
you.


You’d better go now and marry your Captain.  It’s the least he can do
after compromising you, whether it was his fault or not.  You never
loved John as he deserved to be loved and you did wrong to become
engaged to him, as his mother always said.  If you hadn’t been there
he’d have married me.  And we should have been happy as happy because
I’d have slaved for him.  I loved him from the time we first met,
because he was kind and polite to me even though I was not well
favoured.  He never laughed at my hymns as you used to do.  They may
have been rubbish, but I meant well.  In those days I was that religious
it had to come out somehow.  I said I loved the Lord and I did—I
thought.  I ain’t so sure about it now.  His ways are truly _past
finding out_ and I’ve given up trying, though I shall stick to Mission
work for John’s sake.  John would have said the coming of Ali bin
Ferhani was providential, but why couldn’t Providence have acted a bit
sooner and saved John and Brother Bayley?  I suppose we shall know some
day....

Well, good-bye, Lucy.  Let me have a line to say you got this packet.
I’ve no envelope to put it in.

I was going to finish up with Yours in the love of Jesus, but I really
don’t know....

ANN ANDERSON.

P.S.  If you ever get to England and back Reading way, give my love to
the Miss Calthorps and go in and see my Uncle at the shop and say I’m
trying to do my duty out here and he isn’t to bother.  I think perhaps
you’d better not go near Mrs. Baines—John’s mother. You never know how
she’ll take things.  She was that _set_ on John.


_December_ 1.

Ali bin Ferhani’s pretty sure to-day he can get these letters through,
so off this goes.  I forgot to say that we’re going to bury John and Mr.
Bayley side by side in the pit we dug in the middle of the station.  Eb
is not in a fit state to be consulted, though his temperature seems
going down.  But I’ve decided for him. As soon as I can get about
without too much aches and pains I shall see it done.  If you get home
you might communicate with the East African Mission and arrange for a
Stone to be sent out to be put up over the grave.  Somehow it seems to
me John wants to be buried there.  It may bring good luck to Hangodi.

ANN.




                             *CHAPTER XIII*

                         *THE RETURN TO UNGUJA*


Up the scarcely-discernible path they climbed, leaving the Happy Valley
behind them; over the foothills and under cliff at the base of the
northern escarpment, where the gaily flowering bushes in their early
spring display gave way to tall forest trees, hung with lianas.  The
black Colobus monkeys with their white-plumed tails chattered and showed
their teeth and flopped from branch to branch in the leafy canopy, not
used to this tumultuous invasion of their solitudes. Then suddenly the
escarpment rose like the wall of a Babel towering into Heaven.  How
could any way for human beings walking on two legs be found up these
precipices?  But despite its savagery there is scarcely one of Africa’s
fastnesses that has not been trodden by man, and although the practised
route into the Happy Valley was from the south, and though its
encompassing walls of cliff on either side and at the northern end of
its lake seemed impassable, there were ways up and over them known to
the Masai and Hamitic and Nilotic peoples of this sequestered rift
valley.

Up some such _Via mala_ the Masai guides were now leading Brentham’s
caravan, with little concern for the trepidation it caused.  The white
man and woman and the silently suffering Goanese cook had been obliged
to descend from their donkeys and trudge with the porters.  The donkeys,
in fact, were sent to the rear of the procession, and Brentham walked in
front with the guides and a few disencumbered porters to help Lucy over
an ascent which would have been thought rough climbing in the Alps, and
here had to be made without any paraphernalia of ropes and irons.

Lucy sometimes had to shut her eyes and hold her body rigidly pressed
against the wall of rock that she might recover from vertigo and
continue with shaking legs her ascent of a twisting path, sometimes only
fifteen inches broad where it overhung an abyss.  Roger was beside
himself with anxiety.  He cast about in his mind for safeguards—Ropes?
But they had none. Lengths of cotton cloth?  But how get at them and
apply them, when any extra movement might turn Lucy giddy and
precipitate her into the tree-tops far below?  Their taciturn Masai
guides, pledged only to show them the way to Kilimanjaro, had given them
no warning of what the path was like from the lake shore, between three
and four thousand feet above sea level, to the top of the escarpment at
seven thousand feet.

Once committed to the ascent the caravan had to continue, as there was
no room in which to turn the donkeys round and descend again to the
valley.  All Roger could do was to insist on great deliberation in the
climb and frequent halts, though this policy was not endorsed by the
impatient asses behind.  When the white people in front paused to
negotiate some more than usually dangerous section of the path, the rest
of the caravan had to pause too, the porters with their loads poised on
their heads and their sinewy legs trembling with the strain, while the
donkeys pranced with impatience to pass them, and nearly pushed some of
them and their loads over into the gulf below.

"It’s no good," Roger would say to his companion, "you can’t get round
this, walking upright; you must go on hands and knees and _crawl_ over
it.  Never mind your dress or your knees.  If your skirt is torn I’ll
make you one out of buck-skin; if your knees are cut it’s better than
breaking your neck."

He had never lived through such a nightmare as this climb, and ran down
in sweat for sheer apprehension of an irretrievable disaster.  However
it came to an end at last, and towards that end its difficulties were
tempered by the path’s entry into gorges where there were merciful bays
of level ground, places to rest in and stretch oneself, to put down the
loads and regain one’s breath and ease one’s palsied legs.  From the
jagged rocks grew out horizontally fleshy-leaved aloes with zebra
markings of green and white, and long stalks of blood-red or
orange-yellow, tubular flowers, haunted by large yellow-velvet bees with
probing tongues. Huge blue-black ravens with arched bills and white
collars perched on pinnacles of rock above the path, or set out to sail
in circles over the gorge below, hoping no doubt some beast or human
would fall and die and provide sightless eyeballs and protruding
entrails for the ravens’ feast.

Lucy thought of this in these silent halts—all were too exhausted to
speak—and shuddered.  Yet for a white woman of that period, unsuitably
costumed as she was, she gave no more trouble to her male companion than
she could help, uttered no futile complaints or queries.  They had
exchanged but little conversation during the two days which had elapsed
since they received Ann Jamblin’s message.  John Baines’s ghost, like a
Banquo, came between them.  Lucy was—and looked as though she was—in
perfect health.  Deep down within her heart she was quietly content,
convinced now that somehow, some day, she would marry Roger.  Equally
certain was she that none of the ordinary dangers of African travel
would prevent her from reaching the coast under his escort; so that he
had in her a more cheerful and far less sulky or doleful companion than
had accompanied the unfortunate John on his wedding tour.

After the ascent of the escarpment they camped two nights in succession
in a strange region suggestive of the Moon’s surface as revealed by a
powerful telescope. There were the crumbling sides of craters, the cones
of extinct volcanoes—extinct, perhaps; but sometimes a strange and
ominous-looking white smoke or gassy vapour issued from cracks in the
ground and through veins in the obsidian rocks.  Vegetation was very
scanty—a few yellow stalks of bamboo in the hollows; and water was
scarce enough to cause anxiety and limit washing to a minimum.  Yet if
they could cross this dry belt of naked rock and barren mountain and the
possibly waterless plain that lay in front of them, to the east there
was a promise of better things.  Far away, a blue pyramid seen against
the morning sun, was Mount Meru, one of the great, unmistakable
landmarks of East Africa.  It towered fifteen thousand feet into the sky
and when the sun turned to the zenith and the west they could see the
peak of the pyramid was white with snow.  And behind Meru in the early
morning or in the early evening there came into view something at first
unbelievable, a floating island in the sky, a Laputa: the great snowy
dome of Kibô....

A few days of rough, silent travel—seeing no natives and very few birds
and beasts—and they were in the Kisongo plains.  Here it was less arid,
and beneath the burnt stems of the old grass the fresh green grass was
springing.  The occasional scrubby trees and bushes were putting forth
fresh leaves, sometimes quite red in colour, or even purplish black.
Big game swarmed round them unafraid of man, inclined even to be
insolent.  Rhinoceroses charged the caravan and both Lucy and Roger had
narrow escapes of being tossed on their horns, while Lucy was twice
flung from her donkey when it bolted with terror at a tangent from the
unexpected rush of the squealing monster. A Nyamwezi porter was gored
and trampled, his load smashed and the caravan disorganized.  Roger laid
low one rhinoceros; and then, water being near, they spent all the rest
of that day and the next cutting up its flesh, smoking it, drying it in
the sun, and making of it a food provision greatly wanted by the
porters.

This much-needed rest however brought another danger on them.  The sound
of rifle firing, the assemblage of vultures, the noise of the porters’
excited voices attracted the attention of a large war party of Masai,
trailing southward to see what was up in this rumoured war between the
Arabs—or, as they called them, the "coast" people—and the White men ...
troubled waters in which they might fish to advantage. Lucy was sitting
in camp in as much placid enjoyment as she could feel, with the
remembrance of John’s death in the background.  She forgot, at any rate
for the moment, her remorse and her anxieties "as to what people would
say."  It was very pleasant to rest here and to know that she would not
have to rise at five the next morning and ride nearly all day, and
perhaps have another close shave from a charging rhinoceros....

Gradually there stole on her ear a sound like distant thunder.  The sky
was clear ... surely it couldn’t be a whole _herd_ of rhinos, or a
distant earthquake—earthquakes not being unknown in this region?
Presently the Wanyamwezi looked up anxiously from their camp employments
or their parcelling out of the rhinoceros meat.  Roger was away,
shooting more game.... There went up the fear-inspiring word: "Masai!"

Then appeared on the north a cloud of red dust and out of this emerged a
small army of red-coloured men trailing their shields by lanyards, with
a rumbling noise, waving long-bladed white-flashing spears, and uttering
a growling chant, a war-song of bloodthirsty purport, though its words
were not understood by the people in the undefended camp.

The Swahili Kiongozi fortunately was on the spot, and then and at other
times never lost his head.  He stood quietly beside Lucy, who was seated
in her deckchair with her white umbrella to shade her from the sun.
"Starehe, Bibi," he said; "usiogope; Muungu anatulinda.  Hawa ndio
Masai, kweli; walakini tutawashinda na akili."[#]


[#] "Be tranquil, Lady.  Do not fear.  God is guarding us. These indeed
are Masai truly, but we shall overcome them with intelligence."


The porters just stayed where they were.  To have started to run
would—they knew—have been fatal. They just stood about, silent, while
the advancing army—perhaps three hundred in number—suddenly halted and
lay down behind their large, gaily-painted shields. The two men of the
expedition who knew the Masai language drew up to the
Kiongozi—unfortunately the Masai guides were away, out hunting with
Roger.  A hundred yards distant there stood out one superb Masai
warrior, the leader of the party; a naked figure of perfect manhood, red
in colour, with a naturally brown skin, raddled with ochre and powdered
with the dust of the red ground.  The vertical sun seemed to make a red
halo round the outline of his beautiful body. He held a tuft of grass in
his hand and shouted in an authoritative voice: "Tôtŏna!" (Sit down!)

At once the men of Brentham’s caravan obeyed him. All sat down and
plucked tufts of fresh green grass. Then the Masai spokesman advanced
slowly ... wonderingly ... peeringly towards the white woman, reclining
on the deck-chair.  "What is _this_?" he asked the headman and the two
interpreters.  "This," they replied, glad to get a chance of making an
impression, "_this_ is a WHITE WOMAN of the great race of the
Wa-ingrezi.  Her husband is the great chief, the Balozi of the
Wa-ingrezi on the coast.  We come now from the Manyara country, guided
by your own people, the Masai.  There is war to the south, in Nguru and
Ugogo, war between the Lajomba and the White men. Our Balozi is taking
his wife to the coast to put her with his own people; then he will
return and finish the Lajomba."

"Good," said the Masai war-captain.  "We heard of this war and we are
going there to see if we can join in.  We hate the Lajomba."

At this moment there was a stir among the three hundred warriors sitting
apart.  It was caused by the approach of Brentham, filled with
apprehension and anxiety as to Lucy.  Unfortunately his own Masai guides
belonged to a southern clan of the Masai, not on very good terms with
this more northern, purer breed. So there was a ruffle of angry words as
each realized the other as whilom foes.  But the leader who had been
sitting close to Lucy rose to his feet and spoke with a carrying
voice—rather than shouted—a command and once more his warriors sat down.
He then took Lucy’s hand, but quite gently.  His own hand had
well-trimmed nails and was clean except for the red dust.  He turned
back her sleeve a little (she trembled, but tried to smile).  Having
satisfied himself that the arm was even whiter than the hand, he threw
back his head and laughed a full-throated laugh, while his eyes sparkled
with the wonderment of it all.  Seeing her smile he looked at her with
such a friendly glance that she felt completely reassured.  Then he sat
down again, took snuff, and was framing other questions when Roger
strode up.  "It is all well, master," said the headman hurriedly in
Swahili.

"Why, you’re holding quite a court, Lucy," said Roger, inwardly
immensely relieved.

"Ye-es.  But I shall be _rather_ glad when they all go."

The Masai leader rose to his feet and held out his hand to Brentham.
The latter took it and White man and Red man looked for a moment into
each other’s eyes.  Roger, knowing something of Masai customs—was he not
indeed but three or four marches from scenes of earlier exploration?—did
not shrink away when the Masai captain spat on his clothing and on
Lucy’s dress.  He knew it was intended for the friendliest of greetings,
a seal on their good relations.

After that, all was boisterous good-fellowship, though the Wanyamwezi
porters were careful to keep together and half carelessly to reclaim
their rifles.  The three hundred Masai agreed to overlook the fact that
Roger’s guides had belonged to a once hostile clan.  And when they
learnt from these men what a hunter he was and what an unerring shot,
they pressed their friendship and their red presence on him.  They
visited his tent—they were throughout strictly honest—they sat on his
bed, and he had afterwards to do without sheet and pillow case, for
besides leaving red dust wherever they sat they distributed a flavour of
tallow from their favourite unguent, mutton fat.  They insisted on
blood-brotherhood and declared they would escort the white chieftain and
his lady to the coast.

As a matter of prosaic fact, they took him no farther than the base of
Meru.  There the rainy season began to break with vehemence.  So there
they left him and went off to the drier steppe country and the War in
the south with its possibilities of loot.

Roger longed at this time to ascend Meru and explore its hidden wonders;
and Lucy gazed with awe at the now fully displayed majesty of
Kilimanjaro, rising above the watery plain of Kahe, with its dome of
snow and ice, and its lesser peak of Kimawenzi.

But being short of stores they made straight for a newly-founded
Evangelical Mission station, at an altitude of four thousand feet, where
it was hoped Lucy might find shelter for a few days from the torrential
rains, and he himself gather news about the happenings on the coast, and
dispatch carriers to Mvita with messages which might be telegraphed to
Unguja.

After all their adventures this seemed rather a prosaic phase in the
journey, and Lucy found herself actually depressed at being once more
with fellow-countrymen.  There were three missionaries—a married couple
and an assistant bachelor propagandist—at the station of the Evangelical
Mission, but they did not seem over surprised at this arrival of a white
man and woman from the unknown interior.  They received Lucy’s halting
explanations civilly but coldly, and though they gave her a room to
herself and nicely cooked meals, they seemed—to her fancy—to have
purposely adopted an almost penitentiary surfeit of services and
prayers.

Captain Brentham preferred to camp out at the Chief’s village, two miles
away.  He had known this genial, old, one-eyed ruffian three years
before, when he was exploring the approaches to the great Snow Mountain,
and making tentative treaties to forestall the Germans.  He rather
ground his teeth over the changing scene.  Since his first journey,
missionaries, big-game sportsmen, concession hunters, had thronged into
this wonderful country, and had not the slightest respect for its
earliest pioneers.  Already there was a large and flourishing mission
station on the site of his first camp; and when on installing Lucy there
he had drawn the missionaries’ attention to this fact, and to his having
made the site ready for them, purchased it in fact, the present
occupants merely said with pursed lips, "Indeed?"; and Mrs. Missionary
added primly: "Yes: we _heard_ from the Chief you had stayed here, three
years ago; but we prefer _never_ to listen to _gossip_ about white
people.  It is so _often ill-natured_."

And so onwards to the Taita Hills and the coast.  A sense of flatness, a
leaking-out of all romance in their adventure.  They were no longer
alone.  Lucy went to see Mr. Thomas at the East African Mission station
in Taita.  He startled her by asking cheery questions about John, his
old college-mate, and supposing John was with her on this _safari_.  He
had heard nothing about the disaster and made rather stupid and
inquisitive inquiries as to the motives of her journey. Farther on, they
had the misery of crossing the red Maungu desert, with its stretch of
forty miles between water and water; but there was no "adventure" about
this; and midway they met the caravan of a very rich Englishman with two
companions, wearing single eye-glasses, who offered them champagne and
soda-water at midday to relieve their thirst, and told Lucy he wasn’t
surprised at her travelling about with a stray Consul, as he always
contended that missionaries out in Africa had a jolly good time and did
themselves uncommonly well, and for his part he didn’t blame her.
"Gather ye roses, don’t you know—while you can—or was it while you’re
young?  And now I suppose you’re on your way back to Hubby?"

The old Arab port of Mvita was not much altered since Roger had seen it
last; though there was the beginning of a stir, for a British Chartered
Company was preparing to make this their head-quarters.  Meantime, the
centre of rank and fashion, so to speak, was the British Consulate.
Roger made his way here, with Lucy and Halima, while he left the bulk of
his caravan encamped across the water.

His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given
up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the
idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of
shooting, varied with agreeable _safaris_ at the expense of the
Government.  This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply
called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by
Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to
get his own back:—

"_Hullo_, old chap!  _Who’d_ have thought it.  Where have you sprung
from?  We’d all given you up for lost—thought you’d gone ’Fanti,’ eloped
with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on
your own...."

"I’ve brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "_Mrs. John
Baines_" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah
of the Consulate)—"_Mrs. John Baines_, whose husband has been killed, I
fear, in the Ulunga country.  I should be much obliged if you could put
her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja....  As for
me..."

"_Aw*fully sorry old chap.  *Of course_, I can make room for _you_ ...
give you _some_ sort of a shakedown....  You’re a fellow _man_ and
you’ll understand....  But the fact is I’m—I’m not—quite prepared—er—to
entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know....  _You_
twig? ... Dare say you’re fixed up just the same at—where is it? at
Medina, What?"

Roger turned away angrily.

"Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!"

"Yes, Captain Brentham."

"I’ll get a boat and we’ll go over to the Mission station across the
Bay.  I expect they’ll have room—indeed they must _make_ room—for you
there till our dau is ready to sail...."

Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram
to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia
arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from
Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can
charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first.  My Camp is at
Kisolutini.  You can send on any letters that come for me there...."

"Well, but I say..."

Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had
taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an
angry face, flushed under the tan.

No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja.  And a few
days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed
to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected
collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for
the island port of Unguja.  This time—December 27, 1888—Lucy was too
anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not
in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch.

Meantime, unfriendly forces were at work to Roger’s detriment.  Here is
a letter which Mrs. Spencer Bazzard probably wrote to Mr. Bennet
Molyneux, of the Foreign Office.  (Like most of the letters appearing in
this book, it is based on my deductions as to the kind of letter that
would have been written under the circumstances, rather than on textual
evidence):—


H.B.M. Consulate for Zangia,
       Medinat-al-Barkah,
              _December_ 23, 1888.

DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,—

I hope you don’t resent my letters.  You don’t answer them, but then I
told you not to.  I shouldn’t like to be a bore to you, or for you to
feel—amid your piles of work—that you had an extra letter to write to an
importunate little person in far-off East Africa.  I said once I should
go on writing every now and again, unless you ordered me to stop.  As
you haven’t—Well!  Here is another budget of East African news.

We have had alarums and excursions, as Shakespeare says.  You will see
by this address that I am on the mainland with my husband.  When Captain
B. disappeared last September into the _ewigkeit_ the Agency at Unguja
began receiving disquieting stories as to what was taking place in his
absence.  He had only left an Indian clerk in charge, and complaints
arose from Indian merchants and English missionaries that no one could
attend to their business.  So Sir G. D. thought it best to send Spence
over here to take charge, and, of course, I came with him to help him to
interpret.

We found everything (a month ago) in a terrible muddle.  The consulate
is filthily dirty, the archives are just anyhow, and Spence fears a
considerable sum is missing from the Consular receipts, or else that the
clerk is muddled in his accounts.  But all this you will hear
officially.

Meantime, we are all uneasy about Captain B.’s disappearance.  He left
here last August with some idea of letting the missionaries know there
was danger of ah Arab attack on all white people independent of their
nationality, German or English.  He seems to have translated Sir G.’s
brief instructions into a permission to make a vast tour of the
interior—a delightful thing to do, no doubt, but not when you have a
Consulate to look after.  He greatly alarmed all the missionaries, and,
as it appears, somewhat needlessly.  Those who have their stations in
Usagara and farther south are very angry with him.  He arrived at their
stations early in September and ordered them to retire on the coast—or
at any rate send their wives and children there, as the Arabs might
attack at once.  And after they had obeyed him the attacks never came
off!  One of the missionary ladies was in a certain condition, it
appears, and the hurried journey so upset her that—how shall I phrase
it?—her hopes were disappointed.

He next appeared at a place called Hangodi—according to native
report—and was so anxious about the safety of a fair lady there (the
missionary young woman who travelled out with him and me a year and a
half ago)—that he took her away with him and has seemingly gone waltzing
off to the unknown with this fair charge.  Quite romantic, isn’t it?  In
this case his warning as to an impending attack seems to have been only
too well founded, if what has been reported to the Germans is true.
Soon after he left this place—Hangodi—it was apparently attacked and
destroyed and the missionaries all killed—except, of course, the lady
who left with him.  Ill-natured people will naturally ask why he did not
stay and defend the station.

It is only two days off Christmas, and I can picture to myself the happy
preparations going on at Spilsbury—the carols the village children are
practising for Christmas Day, and the Christmas-tree which I am sure
Mrs. Molyneux and your daughter are preparing for their reward.

These ridiculous sentimental Germans are, of course, getting up
Christmas-trees, too, and are practising Carols to be sung round them,
though the town is still more or less besieged on the landward side.
_Who_ and _what_ was Good King Wenceslaus, and why should we sing about
him at Christmastide?  There is no library here, except the one they
have at the French Mission, and that mentions nothing about Germany.

We are told here that a certain Captain Wissmann will soon arrive with a
large force of Sudanese soldiers to take command and finish the Arabs.

Still no news of Stanley, except it be the wildest, most improbable
rumours.  If he really emerges from the heart of Africa it will only
be—I fear—to fall into some ambush laid by the Arabs.

With our united kindest regards and best wishes for 1889,

Believe me, dear Mr. Molyneux,
       Yours sincerely,
              EMILIA BAZZARD.


Roger and Lucy reached Unguja in their Arab dau at the end of December,
when the Europeans therefore were recovering from the surfeit of
Christmas junketings and preparing for another round of New Year
festivities, but a little bit peevish and liverish in the interval.  The
arrival of the British Consul for Zangia was not unexpected, because
telegraphic news of his emergence from the interior had already reached
the British Agency.  In the afternoon of December 29th he walked into
the office of the Agency and reported himself to Sir Godfrey Dewburn....

"Ah! my _dear_ Brentham, _how_ are you?  _What_ a time you must have
had, to be sure!  We all gave you up for lost, or thought you had gone
in search of Stanley or Emin, or were off to attack the Mahdi. Well: and
how is the fair companion of your travels, Mrs.—Mrs. ... er ..."

_Brentham_: "Mrs. John Baines?  She is, I believe, at Mr. Callaway’s at
the present moment.  I advised her to go there as he is Agent here for
their Mission, and would probably have definite news about—about—the
attack on her husband’s station ... and the results.  Have you heard
anything, Sir?"

_Sir Godfrey_: "Nothing more than the rumour that after you left it was
attacked, and, I think, all the Whites were killed ..."

At this moment a clerk comes in and says: "This is a note with an
enclosure, Sir Godfrey, from Mr. Callaway."  Sir Godfrey asks Brentham
to be seated and hastily runs his eye over a very long communication.
Five minutes elapse.  Then whilst he is still reading, another door
leading to the residential part of the Agency opens and there appears a
handsome woman of middle age, with the stamp of elegance and fashion
upon her, dressed in some agreeable adaptation of an Englishwoman’s
dress for the tropics.  She says, "Godfrey, my dear, tea’s ready and as
you don’t like it drawn or cold I thought if I came myself—but I see you
have a visitor...."

"Oh!  Ah! ... Yes....  To be sure....  Er.... Brentham, this is Lady
Dewburn—" (They shake hands.  Lady Dewburn looks him over approvingly.)
"You’d better come in and have tea with us and then we can talk over
this extraordinary communication of Callaway’s.  It couldn’t have come
more appropriately.  Evidently it must have been brought by your dau.
It’s been sent down by some Arab and it is all about the attack on the
station where these missionary friends of yours were living.  It seems
they were not all killed, two of ’em at any rate ... though I think the
husband of your lady friend _was_....  But come along and we’ll have a
confab all about it.  The Bazzards are over at your Consulate on the
mainland, so whilst you’re here you’d better take possession of their
quarters.  The golden-haired Emily says she left it in apple-pie order
when she departed for Medina.... This way ... would you like to wash
your hands first?  You look quite the Wild Man of Borneo, and I don’t
wonder....  _Must_ have had a beastly time....  I should suggest a
whisky and soda first and tea afterwards...."

Lucy meantime was reading Ann Anderson’s letter, given in a previous
chapter.  She had been placed once more in the bedroom she had occupied
in Mr. Callaway’s house before her marriage, and shuddered at the
memories it enshrined.  Dear, kind Mrs. Stott was far away in the Happy
Valley ... and she could never again hear John’s voice calling to her
from the courtyard under the great fig-trees that the Sultan’s carriage
was waiting hard-by to take them for a drive; or making some other
proposition which she probably snubbed in fretfulness.

She was consumed with remorse.  Ann’s statement that in his last
agonies, dying with poisoned blood, he had only thought and spoken of
_her_, made her heart ache, almost literally—the aching of unshed tears
over the irrevocable.  She had not been unfaithful to him in body; but
in mind, in desire, _yes_: from the day of the marriage onwards, and
never more so than from the day of her departure from Hangodi.  She knew
she had hoped then that somehow this departure, this desertion of John
when danger was approaching—might be the beginning of her severance from
him, and lead to her union with Roger.  To _him_ at any time during the
long _safari_ she would have surrendered herself....

Yet though her upper consciousness—the "speaking to one’s self" (which
we almost do sometimes aloud, as if to an audience that may register our
words and resolves)—asserted that the _only_ reparation she _could_ make
was _never_ to see Roger again—(what a mercy he had behaved better than
she had done!)—her innermost intention was to stay on in Unguja on some
pretext or other, in the faint hope he might ... _might_ ... "do the
right thing," as Ann had put it ... might marry her.  If he would _only_
do that her whole remaining life should be _one long atonement_ to John.
She would _never_ forget him and his unselfish love of a shallow,
ungrateful woman.

Mr. Callaway had hinted she might like to take the next steamer home:
there was one going in a week—back to England.  But how could she go
back ... and face Mrs. Baines ... and live on her parents? John had
probably no money to leave her; the Mission, after so short a term of
married life, would certainly give her no pension ... why should it?
The post of National school-teacher at Aldermaston was long ago filled
up.  And could she even resume her life there? At no great distance was
Engledene, with Lord and Lady Silchester.  Lady Silchester she vaguely
dreaded as a person who might mock at her.—She must have heard something
about her from Captain Brentham. What—what—_what_ was she to do?  Insist
on remaining out in Africa and rejoin the Mission?  And work under Ann?
The thought of the altered circumstances repelled her.  Who would care
_now_ if she were ill?  She had had several illnesses and many fits of
malaise—and tears of self-pity now ran down her cheeks.  And how _good_
and _uncomplaining_——here choking sobs, hiccups, almost a loud wailing
intervened—dear John had been.  The cups of broth he had brought to her
bedside, the little meals to tempt her appetite....  And Roger? ... The
equal solicitude—the interest _he_ had shown, even in her whims!

                     *      *      *      *      *

The realization of her bereavement kept Callaway from intruding on her
solitude, even by a message through Halima.  This was a mercy, she
thought—at first—because however well-meaning, he struck her
fastidiousness as "common," not very attractive in appearance, with a
harsh voice, and effluent piety, and bad table manners....  But need
Halima have been quite so neglectful?  Halima latterly was so wrapped up
in the project of marrying the Goanese cook that she unhesitatingly
neglected her mistress and avowed her complete readiness to enter the
Roman Church if that act could remove Antonio da Silva e Andrade’s last
scruple of reluctance to wed with a Negress.  She spent much of her time
oiling and combing her fuzzy hair into a European coiffure, and did not
hesitate to "borrow" details of Lucy’s scanty wardrobe for her own
adornment.  When she came with Lucy’s meals into the hot ... _hot_ ...
_hot_ bedroom, with its dreadful insect swarms, from which the iron
bedstead, with its lowered mosquito curtain, was almost the only refuge,
she—Halima—bore a sulky face.  She would evidently _not_ stay with Lucy
in misfortune....

One way and another, Lucy was fretting and worrying herself into a state
of illness; afraid to go out or to show herself; loathing life in this
low-ceilinged, vermin-infested bedroom, hot by day, stifling at night,
as she lay inside the mosquito netting in the blackest darkness,
shuddering at the possibilities beyond the bed.  Rats romped and
squeaked and occasionally fell from the rafters into the sagging
mosquito net; scorpions, no doubt, were lurking in the crevices of the
floor-boards to sting her toes if she stepped out of the insufferably
hot bed.  Cockroaches alternated their love-flights from the window with
frantic and wily attempts to get under the curtain.  Mosquitoes, all the
night through, kept up a sonorous diapason of unbroken humming,
indignant at being denied access to her body.  And the loneliness!
Halima was supposed to sleep on the landing outside; a polite
supposition which Lucy was unwilling to test, lest inquiry should lead
to a defiant withdrawal from her service.... Her service!  Where were
Halima’s wages to come from?

                     *      *      *      *      *

It was ten a.m.—more or less.  Lucy had risen, washed hurriedly, and
hurriedly put on the only clean cotton dress left to her.  (She really
must go out one day and buy some things for the voyage—only where was
the money?)  The door was thrown open by an excited, more amiable
Halima, who shouted "_Yupo Bibi Balosi_!  Anakuita!"

A pleasant, high-bred voice explained:

"I am looking for Mrs. Baines.  Is she in here?"

Lucy scrambled off the bed from under the mosquito curtain and stood
before Lady Dewburn, the Consul-General’s wife....

Broken apologies ... explanations—"Bed only place where you could be
tolerably free from mosquitoes...."

Lady Dewburn is a handsome shrewd-looking woman of middle age.  She
wears a single eyeglass at times, for greater precision of sight, and
because she is the daughter of a permanent official.  But though she
inspires a certain awe, she is in reality a kind creature, irresistibly
impelled to interfere—she hopes for the best—in other people’s affairs,
especially out here. Her children are either out in the world or at
school in England, and she is exceedingly bored on this feverishly
tropical, gloriously squalid island.  The day before she had heard all
about Lucy from Captain Brentham....

_Lady Dewburn_: "My _poor_ child!  _Please_ overlook all formalities and
come away with me, _just as you are_.  Your woman here—if you can trust
her—shall pack up what you have—you can’t have _much_, I should think,
after that _appalling_ journey to the coast....  Come away with me....
Why, you must have hardly _any_ clothes to wear!  I don’t _wonder_ you
stop in bed!  We’ve got lots of spare rooms—as a matter of fact, Sir
Godfrey and I are alone just now.  Come and stay with us till you can
look round and make your plans.  It seems to me as though I ought to put
you to bed for a week to begin with...."

Lucy’s acceptance of this Fairy Godmother proposal dissolved from words
into gulping sobs and convulsive eye-dabbings and nose-blowing.  But she
was practical enough to find her sola topi and white umbrella, to make
her cotton dress look a little tidier, and gasp a few directions in
Swahili to the over-awed Halima. Halima was wearing Lucy’s evening
"fichu" all the time and was uneasily conscious of having blundered into
felony through ill-timed contempt for her lady.

Lucy observed none of this, but followed Lady Dewburn’s fastidious steps
down the stairs of palm planks out into the yard, where Mr.
Callaway—really a very decent sort, who after all had done his best for
Lucy—was awaiting them.  He was personally gratified and relieved in his
mind that the first lady in Unguja should have taken his forlorn little
client under her wing.  After picking their way with skirts lifted high
through narrow unsavoury lanes between high blank houses, they at last
reached Unguja’s one broad highway.  Here was a handsomely appointed
carriage, and in it they rolled away to the Agency.




                             *CHAPTER XIV*

                        *LUCY’S SECOND MARRIAGE*


           _From Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., to Mr. Bennet
             Molyneux, African Department, Foreign Office._


H.M. Agency and Consulate-General,
       Unguja,
              _March_ 15, 1889.

DEAR MOLYNEUX,—

In the matter of Brentham, I think a private letter to you might meet
the case better than an exchange of cables or an official dispatch.

I quite understand your Department is annoyed at the questions put in
Parliament last month after the news about the deaths at the Mission
station at Hangodi.  But I cannot help thinking the Department is
disposed to be too hard on Brentham, as though it were prejudiced from
some other quarter than me.  I admit when I first came out here I jibbed
a little at his cocksureness, his assumption that no one knew anything
about Ungujan affairs to compare with his own knowledge; and it seemed
to me he made rather a parade about the number of languages he had
acquired, which contrasted unfavourably with my acquaintance—then—with
only three (I have tried since to learn Swahili).  And so on and so on.
I moved easier and got my bearings better when I had sent him over to
his proper sphere, the mainland.  I also thought his contempt for the
Bazzards a little too marked, though I must admit subsequently my wife
and I have found that a little of Mrs. B. goes a long way.  But I hate
writing disagreeable things about anybody—a climate like this excuses
hair-dye, face-powder, irritability and even a moderate degree of
illicit love (don’t treat this as official!) ... But about Brentham: if
his mission to the missionaries—telling them to clear out before the
Arab danger—_was_ a failure, in that in most places there was no danger,
_your_ apprehensions and _my_ instructions were to blame for starting
Brentham off on his wild-goose chase.  The missionaries in Usagara seem
to cut up rough because they weren’t attacked, were "quittes pour la
peur."  But that was hardly Brentham’s fault.

The Hangodi business is a different matter.  There is little doubt in my
mind that B. was a little spoony on Mrs. Baines—They had travelled out
together, and it seems she comes from near his part of the world in
Berkshire-Hampshire—Jolly district, near the Carnarvons and the
Silchesters.—Ever go there to shoot?  But Mrs. Baines had been ill from
one of these confinements that Missionary ladies—married, of course—have
so regularly, and her husband seems really to have wished his wife to go
away with Brentham.  To make it all right and proper he packed off at
the same time the other woman at their station, a strong-minded female
named Jamblin.  (She figures very much in the dispatches I sent home
last mail.)  Well: according to Brentham, this Jamblin woman, when they
had done a few marches and stopped at another Mission station, insisted,
positively _insisted_ on going back to Hangodi, and equally insisted on
_his_ taking Mrs. Baines to the coast.  He oughtn’t to have agreed.
That’s where he was weak.  He ought to have returned to Hangodi and
helped to beat off the attack—if it came, as it did—and then have
refused to take the ladies away unless the men came too. Instead of
that, Brentham, having found some missionaries of whom he was in search,
hung about their place until the news of the attack on Hangodi and the
death of Mrs. Baines’s husband reached him.  After that he made for the
coast by the northern route, the only one open to him at that time
without fighting.  Even on this route they had some most extraordinary
adventures and spent a devil of a time before they got back to
civilization—as we call ourselves by contrast.

The general opinion among the missionaries, I know, is unfavourable to
Mrs. Baines, and in consequence to Brentham.  But Brentham swears to me
on his honour—_and I believe him_—there was nothing "wrong" between
them.  Jennie—my wife—says he’s as straight as a die; though never
having seen a "die," I can’t say.  At any rate, Jennie, on whose
judgment I always rely, has taken a great liking to Brentham.  So she
has also to the young party with whom he has become involved, this Mrs.
John Baines.  The poor girl—she doesn’t look her age—26—was stranded
here at their Mission Depôt, and Jennie, after hearing about her, went
over in her impulsive way and brought her to the Agency.  This has put a
stopper on local gossip, which has thus been deprived of a rare morsel
that would otherwise have acted as a real tonic on a fever-stricken
community.  Now Jennie says that although there’s never been anything
between them but what was right and proper, they ought to marry as soon
as six months is up from the death of the first husband—which we presume
took place on October 29th, from the accounts of that masterful person
who now calls herself Ann Anderson.  Jennie had but to make the
suggestion and they both consented, so the civil marriage—the only legal
one here—is fixed for March 31.  Whether Archdeacon Gravening will
consent to marry them at the Cathedral in addition, I cannot say.  He is
thinking it over.  The matter has been speeded up by your intimation
that the F.O. intends to recall Brentham.  If he went back and didn’t
marry her, things would go hardly with Mrs. Baines.  (I really have
taken a liking to her, and I could imagine when she gets to a good
climate she might be quite pretty.  She is very quiet, and in a quiet
way is rather entertaining in her accounts of what they went through in
their wild journey to the coast.)

Well: when the wedding is over, I propose breaking to him the F.O.
instructions to return and give an account of himself.  I must give him
just enough time to go over to the mainland and try to settle things at
his Consulate there.  The Spencer Bazzards—who have a down on him—report
that an utter muddle followed his departure for the interior last
September, and accuse his Indian clerk of embezzling Consular funds,
and, worse still, of selling the office cipher code to the Germans.
This, if true, is a confounded nuisance, as it will oblige us to make
changes all round. Fortunately it is only Cipher Q.

I suppose you know Captain Wissmann has arrived at Medina at the head of
a force of over a thousand picked men to fight the Arabs to a finish?
Other German officers have met him there with further contingents—Zulus
and Makua.  Wissmann’s people are mainly Sudanese.  I suppose we have
done right in enabling him to raise this force on what is practically
British territory—British or Portuguese?  I like Wissmann personally.
After all—as Brentham says—if we hadn’t the pluck to take all East
Africa for ourselves at the time we were first challenged by Bismarck,
it is better that the German share should be properly controlled and not
fall back into a state of anarchy and slave-raiding.  But, of course,
what ties our hands in all these matters is the intense desire of France
to raise the Egyptian question to our disadvantage.—Therefore, don’t
think I am girding at the Office for irresolution.  The French here make
my life a burden to me with their intrigues....

                     *      *      *      *      *

Yours sincerely,
       GODFREY DEWBURN.



           _From Lucy Brentham to Mrs. Albert Josling, Church
                          Farm, Aldermaston._

Mbweni,
       Unguja,
              _April_ 2, 1889.

DARLING MOTHER,—

I expect you got my letter written early in January after I had got back
to Unguja.  The news must have come to you as an awful shock.  And what
it has been to Mrs. Baines I dare not _think_.  I expect I shall get
some sort of answer from you in a day or two when the mail comes in.
But as there is a steamer going to-morrow I dash off this letter to give
you other news: _good_ news this time, dearest.

I was married on March 31st last to Captain Roger Brentham, the Consul
for the Mainland.  You know all about him from my letters.  It is true
it is only a little more than six months since poor John died, and some
people will think it much too soon afterwards to marry again, but you
and Father will understand. Roger is shortly going home.—_Think_ of it,
darling mother!  We are going—or should one say, "we are coming"?—HOME.
I put it in capitals.  He has wanted to marry me ever since we knew of
John’s death.  We both feel sure John would think it the wisest thing to
do, even Ann Jamblin does.  Well, Roger being called back by the Foreign
Office, he could hardly leave me behind here and if he hadn’t asked me
to marry him I couldn’t have stopped here all by myself, unless I had
joined some missionary society.  And that I didn’t feel inclined to do.
I don’t think I’m suited for the work.  But don’t think I want _to run
down_ the Missionaries.  Far from it, after all I’ve seen.  Mission work
quite changed John.  It made him so _good_ and _unselfish_.  And
although I’ve many reasons for feeling sore and angry about Ann Jamblin
that was.—She isn’t dead, but she’s married in a sort of a way to that
Ebenezer Anderson of our Mission.—Well, even Ann is twice the woman she
was in old days at Tilehurst.  They call her here—at least, the local
paper does—It’s run by an Eurasian—I’ll tell you some day what Eurasian
means ... they call her "The Heroine of Hangodi."  I believe somebody is
going to write about her in the English papers; and the German commander
on the mainland, Captain Wissmann—has sent her his compliments, and said
he can always admire a brave woman no matter what her nationality.
Isn’t it all funny when we think of what she was like at school and how
greedy she used to be at the prayer-meetings?  There is a missionary
couple here—I’ve mentioned them in my other letters, Mr. and Mrs. Stott.
You can’t _think_ how good they’ve been to me.  I’ve got lots and lots
and lots to tell you when we meet.  But I must be quick and finish this
letter.

Well: I was married to my darling Roger last Wednesday, and if it wasn’t
every now and then that I think about poor John I should be the happiest
woman alive.  Mother, I’ve _always_ loved him since that first morning
we met on the steamer and he pointed out the Isle of Wight, and then
took such care of me all through the voyage.  And he says he fell in
love with me the same time.  Isn’t that _wonderful_ when you think of
all the great ladies he has seen, many of them I’m sure in love with
him.  When I asked him why, he just kissed me and said it was my violet
eyes and my look of utter helplessness.  But I feel it is _too sacred_
to talk or write about.  I was always a true wife to poor John.  People
may think and say what they like.  There is a horrid old cat here on the
Mainland, who also travelled out with me.  I’m sure she says and writes
horrid things about me.  It’s only jealousy. But even now, Mother, I
haven’t told you almost the most wonderful thing of all!  I did just say
in my last letter how I’d gone to stay with the wife of the
Consul-General.  It happened this way.  When we first landed here from
one of those dreadful Arab sailing-boats that are full of what you
_will_ call B flats but what I think—and so does Roger—it is much more
sensible to call "bugs" straight out—when we landed Roger said, "You’d
better go to Mr. Callaway and stay there first till I can find out what
it’s best to do for you."  So there I went, and I was just _miserable_.
I didn’t like to tell you how much at the time for fear of its upsetting
you.  I really felt almost like committing suicide, only I should never
do anything so wicked.  But there I lay, inside my mosquito curtain in a
room like a Turkish bath, crying, _crying_ to myself about poor John and
thinking I should never see Roger again, and what Mrs. Baines would say
when I came back all alone; when in walked Lady Dewburn, the wife of the
Consul-General—"my boss"—as Roger calls him.  She would have it that I
was to go away with her then and there.  Mother, I’d hardly any clothes
after that dreadful journey; that was one reason I felt ashamed to go
out.  Well, she put me in a lovely cool bedroom at the top of her
house.—It has a flat roof and I used so to enjoy walking out of my room
and looking at the sea and the natives down below and the ships and
palms.  She had my meals sent up to me and often came up herself to
inquire, and for a week she got Indian tailors to cut out and sew
clothes for me to wear.  When they were ready I had got quite well
again, and then she brought me down and introduced me to her husband,
who is the great man of this place. _He_ used rather to make fun of me,
tease me you know, but he was kind under it all.  Mother, if I’d been
_their own daughter_ they couldn’t have treated me kinder. She wouldn’t
let me thank her, said I was a distressed British subject and it was her
duty.  And after I’d been staying with them about six weeks and was
beginning to say I ought to earn my living or else go home, she said,
wouldn’t you as an alternative like to marry Roger Brentham?  And I
said, He’d never ask me and if he did I should only spoil his career.
And she said, _Nonsense_.  And the next day, when they had both gone out
driving, Roger came to the room where I was working with Halima (who,
strange to say, has married his cook!) and asked me to be his wife.  How
could I say anything but "yes"?  I know now I should have died of
consumption or something if he hadn’t.  But of course I said—"It can’t
be till poor John has been dead a year."  Then that evening when I told
Lady Dewburn, she said, "Nonsense!  I can see no reason why it shouldn’t
be at the end of March. Then if Captain Brentham has to go home you can
return with him."  So, of course, I gave in.

I’m afraid it’ll make lots of people angry, especially Mrs. Baines.  How
can we break it to her?

There are a _thousand_ other things I can tell you, but if I don’t
finish this letter now I shan’t be in time to put it in the Agency
mail-bag, which I always think is so much safer than the ordinary post,
and I don’t have to stamp it.

So in a few more weeks darling mother you will meet again

Your own
       LUCY.

P.S.  Love to father and the dear girls.  _Do_ see what you can do with
Mrs. Baines.  I feel _so_ sorry for her, and I should so like to tell
her about John. Things might have been so different if only my little
baby had lived, John felt it _dreadfully_.



Private and Confidential.
       H.M. Agency and Consulate-General,
              Unguja,
                     _April_ 2.

DEAR BAZZARD,—

I take advantage of a British steamer which is crossing to-day to Medina
to send you this hurried note.

Your colleague, Captain Brentham, was married on March 31 to Mrs. John
Baines, the widow of the poor fellow who was killed at Hangodi.
Brentham will probably be returning to England very shortly on leave of
absence (I understood from you you were willing to postpone your leave
for a few months). Before he goes I have asked him to co-operate with
you in getting affairs at the Medina Consulate settled up
satisfactorily, so that you may formally take over from him and be
Acting Consul there till there are further developments.  I am very
grateful to you and Mrs. Bazzard for stepping into the breach caused by
these confounded disturbances which have not only occurred in the German
hinterland but are now beginning in ours—so we mustn’t boast too soon!

Brentham had to leave, as you know, very hurriedly last September, and
if the Arabs had succeeded in taking the town matters would have been
ever so much worse than they are.  He says if there turns out really to
be any deficit in the cash due to the embezzlement of the Indian
clerk—if he did embezzle—but _what_ has become of him?  Was he
killed?—he is willing to make it good out of his own pocket.  (Rather
hard on him as he could not help leaving this man in charge; but I may
come in like a benevolent arbiter if the affair is serious.)  The loss
or disappearance of the office cipher is a serious business—very—.  I
don’t see what good it would be retrieving it from the Germans, as, if
they _have_ had it at all in their possession, they have probably
derived from it all the information they want!

Whilst Brentham is over at Medina I want him to have an interview with
the German commandant, Captain Wissmann, as he can convey to him a
message from me.

I hope Mrs. Bazzard continues well?  She has certainly shown she can
stand the climate.  But we mustn’t try her _too_ far.

Sincerely yours ...
       GODFREY DEWBURN.


When this letter reached Spencer Bazzard he took it promptly to his
wife, who was seated before her dressing-table rubbing a little of the
"hair-restorer" into the very roots of her hair, which had an
exasperating way of not starting gold from the skin-level.  She said,
keeping her eyes fixed on the glass, "Read it aloud."  He did so.
"Hooray," she exclaimed, with ordered joy so as not to interfere with
the delicate operation—they were going out to dine that night with a
German functionary—"Hooray!  That means he’s scuppered.  He’s going
home, you bet, rather off colour.  They’ve made him marry her to placate
the missionaries.  But he’ll never bother us again out here. Well, we’ll
be civil to him in the clearing up."



           _From Captain Roger Brentham to Lady Silchester._

Mbweni, Unguja,
       _April_ 2, 1889.

DEAR SIBYL,—

I don’t think you have any realization of what I’ve been through lately
or you’d have written to inquire, or condole, or encourage.  I’ve had a
regular "gaffe"—tell you more about it by and bye.  And a wonderful
journey in the interior worthy of a Royal Geographical Society’s
medal—tell you more about _that_ too some day—and—don’t start—I’ve got
married!

You always predicted I should marry a "missionaryess."  Well: I’ve done
so.  Yes, you were right, true Sibyl that you are.  I’ve married the
dear little girl—for so she seems to me—whom I escorted out to Unguja
three years ago and whom I married myself to her young missionary
husband, who was going to a station in the interior called Hangodi.
There followed a tragic time.  I dare say the newspapers will have told
you all about it.  She and I got locked up, so to speak, in the far
interior and I never thought she, at any rate, would get to the coast
alive.

Well: I felt after all we’d gone through together there was only one
thing—the right thing—to do, being also very much in love with her.
Lady Dewburn (you know whom I mean) thought precisely the same; and Lady
Dewburn, let me say, is about the _best_ woman I know.  I shall _never_
forget what she did for my poor Lucy.  Dewburn performed the civil
ceremony for us and gave a small and quiet wedding breakfast after the
"small and quiet" wedding at the Cathedral.  My old friend Gravening
("the Venble. Archdeacon") was awfully nice about the whole thing ...
fully approved of my marrying Lucy, under all the sad circumstances, and
said he’d fix up the religious part.  Because you know what women are.
They never think they’ve been properly married unless it’s in a Church
or if they do, their mothers don’t.

I know I’ve got some rough places to get over before I can settle down
to work and go full steam ahead, but I look to you and other true
friends, real pals—to pull me through.  The F.O. seems to have a down on
me and a proportion of the Mission World likewise.  But when they hear
the whole story they will see I was simply dogged with misfortune and
did all I could possibly have done.  Unfortunately while I was away in
the interior everything went to pieces at my Consulate, and two awful
bounders—the Bazzards, more about them when we meet—are exploiting it to
the utmost.

I am going back to the mainland after a week’s holiday to get things put
right at the Consulate.  Hope I shan’t take Bazzard by the throat, or
lose my temper with his Bayswater wife.  I simply _mustn’t_.  Well: when
I have done all that and left the Bazzards properly installed I take the
next steamer back with Lucy. Two years, nearly, have I been out here,
and six months’ leave on full pay is due to me.  I am going home
nominally to report.  Wonder whether they will send me back?  In any
case I look to you, dear Cousin and friend, to give me a helping
hand—not so much about Consular matters—I feel there if common justice
is dealt out I can stand on my own—but as regards little Lucy.  Her
father’s status and that of my father are not very different, when you
come to look at it, except that Josling is probably a much more useful
member of the community.  But she may want a helping hand when we come
home, if we are asked out and about.  Of course, with her extraordinary
African experience behind her she will be quite as interesting to meet
as a Lady Baker, a Miss Gordon Cumming, or Isabella Bird——

I’ve written a short note to good old Maud and a still shorter one to
the Pater.  Rather rough on a man after only two days of honeymoon to
have to sit down and compose all these epistles, even though it is in a
tropical paradise like Mbweni—but with the thermometer at ninety
something in the shade.  I am sure Maud will take to Lucy; not so sure
about you.  You have become so grand.  As to the Pater, he’ll hardly pay
much attention to us unless we could consent to be buried at Silchester
and excavated by him!  Maud wrote some time ago to say his neglect of
his Church work for excavation of Roman sites was becoming such a
scandal that they’d had to engage a curate for Farleigh.

And that the curate hadn’t been there two months before he had proposed
to her, been refused, and then settled down to a "filial" manner.

How is Silchester?  It’s getting on for a year since I had a letter from
you; but I saw in a recent newspaper he’d been down with influenza but
was "making good progress."  That always reads ominously.

Look out for me sometime in May.  I hope I shall be as welcome as the
flowers of that same.  I’m bringing you home some leopard skins and an
African rattle for Clitheroe.  So long!

ROGER.


A week after these letters were put in the Consular mail-bag, Roger had
packed up and was waiting for a gun-boat to convey him across to the
mainland—where he was to have an important interview with Captain
Wissmann, fresh from a great victory over the Arabs.  Sir Godfrey,
taking leave of him, said: "Looked at the Reuters this morning?"

_Roger_: "No!  What’s up?"

_Sir Godfrey_: "Your friend Lord Silchester is dead."

"Phew!" said Roger, or as near as he could get to that conventional
exclamation of surprise and speculation as to what might have been....




                              *CHAPTER XV*

                              *IN ENGLAND*


Captain and Mrs. Brentham arrived in London from East Africa at the end
of May, 1889.  You must picture Brentham with a reserve of savings of
about five hundred pounds lying to his credit at Cocks’s, and a salary
at the rate of seven hundred a year which will go on till some time in
October.  After much consideration and discussion during the voyage they
have taken a furnished flat on the eighth floor of Hankey’s Mansions,
St. James’s Park, as having a better address—"being close to the
Government offices and the clubs, don’t you know, and of course if you
have the lift going night and day it don’t matter whether you’re on the
first or the eighth floor, to say nothing of the view."  Lucy had
timidly suggested Pardew’s Family Hotel in Great Ormond Street as being
very cheap for relations of Aunt Ellen, but Roger with that wistful
snobbishness of his class decided it would be rather a come-down to hail
from the West Central part of London when you were wishing to impress
the Foreign Office favourably; so Hankey’s it was, with lots of
sunlight, superb views over the Park and the barrack ground with its
military challenges and cries.

Mr. Molyneux’s room at the Foreign Office.

"Ah, Brentham!  Thought you’d soon be turning up.  Dewburn’s been
writing to me about you.... Have a cigar?  There are the matches.  Well.
Horrid thing to say, when a man’s only just arrived, but you’ve stirred
up a reg’lar hornet’s nest among the unco’ guid.  This confounded
Nonconformist Conscience that Stead’s invented or created.  There’s an
obvious reference to you in the last _Review of Reviews_ and Labby’s put
a very caustic article in last week’s _Truth_, trying to get at the
Government’s East African policy through you.  All this has mightily
upset the Old Man——"

Roger endeavours to give a lucid and not too lengthy account of the
whole sequence of events which led up to his marriage at Unguja;
expresses the most justly-felt wrath against the mosquitoes of the
Press; offers to horsewhip them or have them up before a court of
law....

_Molyneux_: "My _dear_ fellow, what _are_ you talking about?  You’d
simply do for yourself and have to quit the career.  First place,
horsewhipping’s out of date—dam’ low, in any case—in the second, there’s
nothing _libellous_ in what they’ve written—only general application,
don’t you know.  If you took any action on it you’d just dot the _i_’s
and cross the _t_’s and get laughed at.  And as to what they say in
Parliament, can’t call them into court over _that_.  No.  Best leave it
alone.  _Most_ unfortunate.  Dare say not a _bit_ your fault.  Still I
think you might have been a trifle more prudent, not—so to speak—have
run your head into the noose.  _Quite_ agree with Dewburn you’ve done
the _right_ thing in marrying her....

"Well: so much for that.  Now how about this missing cipher?  Not sure
_that_ don’t upset us a bit more than your carryings-on with missionary
ladies...."

Roger: "But I _didn’t_ carry on—I—I—really must protest against these
assumptions——"

_Molyneux_: "_All_ right.  Keep your hair on.... Don’t get into a
wax....  I’m only talkin’ for your own good....  But tell us about this
cipher."

_Roger_ (still with an angry flush): "What _can I_ tell?  I arrive at
Medina and am told all in a hurry to re-organize the Consulate there.
There was no one but an Indian clerk in charge.  I simply take him over.
I put my cipher in the safe, but I had to leave the key with the clerk
when at very short notice I started for up-country to warn these
confounded missionaries.... Wish to _God_ I’d paid no heed to your
instructions" ("I _say_, old chap, draw it mild ... and mind what you’re
doin’ with that cigar-ash."  Roger strides to the fireplace and throws
away the cigar into it.) "I wish to God," he continues, "I’d left ’em
alone to stand the racket if the Arabs _did_ come.  However, what I mean
to say is, I only set out to do what I was told to do and couldn’t
foresee how long it would take. I didn’t get back to my Consulate till
last April.  _How_ can I tell what happened to the clerk or the cipher
or the money?  I paid up the deficit....  How do I know what those
Bazzards were up to?  Mrs. Bazzard——"

_Molyneux_ (his manner has insensibly become stiffer and more
ceremonious): "I think we’ll leave the Bazzards out of it.  At any rate
they aren’t here to defend themselves.  We must refer the whole matter
to Dewburn for inquiry.  Meantime here you are on leave and I dare say
badly wanting a rest.  My advice is: go down to the country....  Your
father lives in the country, doesn’t he?"  (Roger nods.)  "Well, go down
and rusticate a bit and take Mrs. Brentham with you.  In a week or two
the newspapers and the Nonconformist Conscience will be in full cry
after something else.  As to whether you should go back, we must leave
that to the Old Man.  He may think a change of scene advisable.  Any use
asking you to a bachelor dinner?  My wife’s out of town just now."

Roger (_very_ unwisely, scenting in this a reluctance to ask Lucy too):
"No, thank you.  I think I’ll take your advice and go off to the
country.  Ungrateful sort of country—I mean the nation—mine is!  Here
I’ve made most important discoveries I’ve had no time to report on, I’ve
... I’ve ..."  (Feelings too much for him.  Takes his hat and stick,
bows to Molyneux and leaves his room.)  In all this he has acted most
foolishly.  If he’d gone to Molyneux’s—to "Good old Spavins’s"—as the
clerks called him in the room opposite—bachelor dinner, had told a few
good stories and hunting adventures, Molyneux, who really had his kindly
side like most men, would have forgotten the old grudge about his
intrusive appointment, have taken a much more charitable view about the
lost cipher and the hasty marriage and have written a memo for Lord
Wiltshire’s eye which would have suggested a year’s employment at home
and a fresh start in East Africa.  Mrs. Molyneux would have called on
Mrs. Brentham at Hankey’s and Mrs. Brentham would have been pronounced
by Molyneux "a dam’ good-lookin’ wench—don’t wonder she turned his head
a bit—there can’t have been much to look at in East Africa"—and
Brentham’s difficulties were over; and the whole fate of East Africa
might have been a little different. As it was, he wrote some such memo
as this for the information of the Under-Secretary of State: "Saw
Brentham to-day—from Zangia Consulate, East Africa.  Looks rather
fagged.  Evidently had a rough time.  But very angry when asked to
explain the awkward circumstances of his very protracted journey through
the interior with the lady who is now his wife. He protested with much
heat against the attacks of the Press and the attitude of the Missionary
Societies.  I dare say he is a maligned man, but I should also say he is
what we call in diplomacy ’un mauvais coucheur.’  Difficult to get on
with, quarrelsome with colleagues. He could throw no light on the loss
of his cipher.  Did not seem to realize what trouble and expense it has
caused.  He has six months’ leave of absence due. Suggest when that is
coming to an end he be offered some Consular post in Norway or Algeria."

Roger called at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, but was told by the
man-servant opening the door that Lady Silchester and the little Lord
Silchester were still in the country, at Engledene, and that it was
improbable her Ladyship would be in town again until the autumn, being
in deep mourning.  Roger scribbled on his card (which would be sent on
with other cards of calling and polite inquiries):

"So much want to see you.  Starting to-morrow for Church Farm,
Aldermaston.—ROGER."

Roger delivered his blushing wife, rather overdressed (for he had
insisted on a fashionable outfit), to her parents at Aldermaston; he
shook hands heartily with his father-in-law to whom he took an immediate
liking, kissed his mother-in-law (to her confusion) and his
sisters-in-law, and then let his father-in-law drive him over to the
nearest station from which he could get a train to Basingstoke (for
Farleigh), promising to return in four days after he had seen his
father, sister, and brothers, one of them at Portsmouth.  When he did
get back to Church Farm, Lucy was in bed, ill, and his father and
mother-in-law were looking grave and preoccupied.  They were also—as
country people are—a little tiresomely reticent.  _What had happened_?
_This_, as he afterwards pieced it together.

When Mrs. Baines had received Ann Anderson’s letter—written, as you will
remember, about November 30, but not posted from Unguja till early in
January—she had a knock-down blow.  It is true the Mission on the
receipt of a telegram from Callaway had warned her to expect serious
news from Hangodi, but she had not paid much attention, so convinced was
she that God must avert all harm from a son of hers.  But the
letter—from Ann, too, whom she would have welcomed as a
daughter-in-law—was convincing, and for the first few hours after she
had read it twice through, she locked herself into their joint bedroom
to Mr. Baines’s great discomfiture—he might wash and sleep where he
liked.  She had shouted at him through the keyhole, in a hoarse,
strangled voice he hardly recognized as hers, that his son John was
dead, killed by the "A-rabs," no doubt with that slut of a Lucy’s full
approval; and left to digest this dreadful news as best he might.
Eliza, touched to great pity and a sympathetic sobbing over the fate of
Master John, made him up a sort of a shakedown bedroom arrangement in
the "libery," where he did his accounts....

Mrs. Baines did not emerge from her fastness for a day and a half.  When
she did come out she was composed, but with such an awful look in her
eyes that no one dared offer sympathy or proffer advice.  She gave her
orders in as few words as possible.  She set to work to confection the
deepest mourning and pulled the blinds down, and down they had to remain
a full week.  During that week by the aid of candle-light she wrote a
good many letters—for her.  Eliza, who had to post them, for Mrs. Baines
shrank from encountering friends or acquaintances till the week was up,
noticed that some of them bore quite grand addresses: the member for
Reading, the Marquis of Wiltshire, the Editor of the _Review of
Reviews_....

How did Mrs. Baines know so soon that Lucy and Roger had returned to
England and come down to see the Joslings at Church Farm?  Why, because
the miller of Aldermaston saw the Brenthams arrive at Aldermaston
station and witnessed the greeting of Farmer Josling—such a fine
upstanding man—and his son-in-law—just such another, only rather
sallow-like and thin; and the miller told old Mrs. Bunsby of the general
shop at Theale; and Mrs. Bunsby, wanting badly a supply of ginger beer,
for the weather was getting warm and Oxford undergraduates sometimes
pushed their walking tours as far as the Kennet Valley—Mrs. Bunsby
walked over to _John Baines & Co._ that very afternoon to give an order
for four dozen and mentioned the fact of "pore Master John’s widow"
having come back to her home "with a noo ’usband."

The assistant who registered the order for delivery in their next round,
after Mrs. Bunsby left slipped into Mr. Baines’s "libery," and
half-whispered the news of Lucy’s return.  When, soon afterwards, Mrs.
Baines came into the dining-room to preside over the tea table, he—(he
looked very aged—my astral body floating over the scene felt a twinge of
pity for him; in his own dull way he had been fond and proud of his only
son and worked to provide him with a competency—some day)—he, with some
preparatory clearing of the throat, said: "Er ... Hrhm....  Er ...
Lucy’s back, I hear...."

"Indeed?" replied his wife swiftly.  "Where? Bridewell?  That’s where
she _ought_ to be...."

"I dare say, my dear, but she’s at Church Farm, her parents’, you
know....  P’raps she could tell you something about John?..."

"P’raps she could.  But I won’t have her name mentioned in _this_ house.
_Do you understand_?"

Mr. Baines did, and took this intimation as final.

The next day was Sunday.  Mrs. Baines spent much of the day (as she had
decided she could not go to chapel) communing in prayer with her Maker
in the bedroom fastness.  Some of the prayers heard by the frightened
Eliza through the keyhole sounded more like objurgations, and the
Scripture readings were the minatory passage directed by the Minor
Prophets against harlots and light women.

After two days of Aldermaston Lucy had quite recovered her spirits—she
had felt rather depressed at Hankey’s Mansions and not at all lightened
at heart by her week of shopping under Aunt Pardew’s furtive guidance
and rather checked congratulations.  On the Monday morning she was
standing with her parents and Clara in front of the beautiful old farm
house, inhaling the scents of May, revelling with the eye over the
landscape beauty she had so often recalled to herself in Africa.  Farmer
Josling had repeatedly given expression to the pleasure he had derived
from the looks, manner, and hand-grip of his son-in-law, and Mrs.
Josling still blushed and laughed at the remembrance of his having
kissed her cheek.  They could not help the gratification of feeling that
their daughter’s second marriage was into a social stratum worthy of her
looks, her superior education and their hopes for her....

Clara, walking away to glance at the bee-hives, called back to the
group, "Here’s Mrs. Baines coming up from the road."

Instinctively the parents withdrew into the porch of the house, leaving
their daughter to meet Mrs. Baines for the first few minutes alone, with
no other listeners to the sad story she had to tell.  Lucy, like the
bird fascinated by the snake, remained where she was, her fingers
playing with a pansy she had just picked. Mrs. Baines, all in black,
with black plumes to a large bonnet and black gloves, walked slowly and
consideringly up to the spell-bound Lucy.  When she was close to her she
said: "_What ... have ... you done ... with ... my ... son?..._"

"Oh!  I ... I ... haven’t you heard?" stammered Lucy.

"I _have_ heard ... and I’ve guessed much _more_ than I’ve heard....
_You ... you harlot—you adulteress—you—you strumpet!_" roared Mrs.
Baines, who had been cooking her vengeance and rehearsing this scene
with a dictionary, during the last twenty-four hours.  And forthwith
before Lucy could reply or any one intervene she had dealt her two
terrific boxes on the ears, first on one side and then on the other.

Lucy fell on to the pansy bed, temporarily stunned. Mr. Josling,
scarcely able at first to believe ears and eyes, rushed out with a roar
like a bull, picked up Mrs. Baines round her iron stays, as though she
weighed no more than a wisp, ran round to the other side of the house
where there was a great horse trough full of water, and soused in this
the head and huge plumed bonnet of the angry woman.  And again, giving
her time to catch her breath, he plunged her head and bonnet beneath the
water.  Then, standing her on her feet, he said, "_There! that’ll_ cool
your hot blood. That is some return for your half-killing my
daughter—you _blasted she-tiger, you_ ... Be _off_!  Or I’ll set the
dogs on you....  I’ll..."

"Father, _dear_," said Clara, crying for pity and rage over the hapless
Lucy, yet careful of appearances: "Father _dear, don’t_ shout so!  For
goodness’ sake, let the old witch go, and don’t attract everybody’s
attention.  What ever _will_ the neighbours think!  Here!" she said,
thrusting on Mrs. Baines the umbrella she had brought and dropped on the
garden path at the moment of the assault, "be off with you, you wicked
old woman.  It’s a mercy father ain’t killed you, he’s that strong.  And
if you’ve done any real harm to my sister, we’ll soon let you know and
have you up before the courts, you _wicked old snivelling psalm-singin’
Methody_!"

Mrs. Baines said nothing to this counter-attack. She drained the water
from her plumes with her fingers, put her flopping bonnet as straight as
was possible, pressed the water from her shoulders, and made some
attempt to wipe her face with a handkerchief; and then, summoning all
her strength and resolution (for in reality she was much shaken and near
collapse), she walked firmly past them, uttering never a word, walked
slowly down the garden path, turned to the right and contrived not to
halt on her way back to the station till she was well out of their
sight.  They were a little over-awed by her dignity.

It was decided—and Lucy when she could speak implored them to adopt this
negative course—not to write to Roger, and as far as possible not to
talk of this painful scene to any neighbour.  But to keep it from
country gossip was an impossibility.  This, that, or the other farm
servant had seen it, from the rafters of a barn in repair, from the
stables, from the dairy window; and so the treatment old Mrs. Baines had
served out to her former daughter-in-law became noised abroad,
penetrated from the kitchen and still-room of Engledene House to its
mistress’s dressing-room.  A vague rumour of it even reached the African
Department of the Foreign Office and Molyneux publicly shrugged his
shoulders in Sir Mulberry Hawk’s room. The Carnarvons at Highclere heard
a perversion of it—rather a humorous one—from one of their farmer
tenants, and reconsidered their idea of asking Brentham and Mrs.
Brentham over to a week-end party to relate some of their extraordinary
experiences.  The Vicar of Farleigh Wallop realized that something of
the kind had occurred to interrupt his musings on the arrangements of
the streets in Calleva Atrebatum, and when he drove over with Maud to
make the acquaintance of his daughter-in-law—now convalescent and
thankful to find the drum of the worst smacked ear had not been split—he
was merely coldly polite and expressed very little interest in
missionary questions. Indeed he took no interest in Christian Missions
after 700 A.D.  Up to that time he reckoned—more or less—they had been
spreading the ideas of Imperial Rome, of Roman civilization.


Roger, however, though he commented little on the episode of the
assault, and felt in every way the least said, soonest mended, borrowed
his father-in-law’s riding-horse and rode early one morning over to
Tilehurst.  He entered the factory, of design, just as Mr. Baines was
about to take his seat in the office and run his eyes over the day’s
orders.  "Oh, don’t be alarmed!" he said to Mr. Baines, who was
instinctively about to withdraw, guessing his visitor’s identity. "I’m
not a violent heathen like your wife.  Sit down and let us talk this
over like sensible men."

He then put the matter very plainly before Mr. Baines.

Mrs. Baines, summoned by half-fearful, half-exultant Eliza, had "locked
herself in her bedroom, she ’ave an’ ast me to go for the police!"

"Then you, too," said Roger to the startled Eliza, "remain and hear what
I have to say.  Since your termagant of a mistress refuses to come, you
shall repeat my words to her.  You are, from what my wife tells me, an
old and trusted servant of the family" (Eliza bridled and pleated the
hem of her apron). "When she returns to sanity, you may get a chance of
saying a word to your mistress in season, even if her husband has not
the courage to do so.  Tell her then, if she ever annoys or slanders or
upsets my wife in any way I will leave no stone unturned to punish her.
And if she appears at Church Farm or anywhere else again with the
intention of assaulting my wife I will knock her on the head like the
mad dog she is. Now you can leave us.  But I trust also to you as an
honourable woman and one who was sincerely fond of poor John Baines, who
ought never to be connected with these hateful sayings and doings, not
to chatter about this business outside this house."

And Eliza did not.  She was much impressed by Brentham’s appeal.  The
interview with John’s father even ended in a kind of reconciliation.  He
heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was
known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station,
John’s death, and Lucy’s journey to the coast; of how her baby had died
and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin’s obstinacy.
Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable
father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just
when she wanted to be busy at house-work.

Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and
"went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs.
Baines, if she did harm to Lucy’s good name and gave her nervous system
a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions.  A disturbance of
the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere.
Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest
son’s wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his
children, his selfish absorption in his archæological work, his
unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their
patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the
Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be
given his congé and the Vicar—still able-bodied—carry out his own Church
duties: _or_ she would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or
something or other.  And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask
Lucy to stay—with Roger, of course—for at least a month.  He gave in.
Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath.  Roger was in
difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed.  He had resigned from
the Indian Army.  He might at any time have to forge a new career for
himself and would want a little capital to start with.  She reckoned
that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother
having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least
twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them.  If that
left her father almost entirely dependent on his income—about five
hundred a year—from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that
would serve him right.  He had no business to squander his children’s
money—as it really was—on a work of excavation which the County or the
Nation should finance.

A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic—(besides, Roman
Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little
Pompeian and Pagan)—he agreed at any rate to look into the matter.  The
letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health.
She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long
needed.  All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her
at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by
requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on
the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up
and the circumstances of her life in Africa.

Roger rather ruefully consented.  Maud would gradually cure her of her
nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl.  Sibyl had
taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards
had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a
swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for a _few_ minutes if he
would _promise_ to move gently and speak in a level voice, as _the least
thing_ upset her.  Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see
him—and him only—at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three
o’clock.


He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated
lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light.  She was dressed in
black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows’ weeds, still
less some diaphanous, filmy _coiffe_, some ghost of a widow’s cap.
Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in
order.  If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then
where would your social and political influence be?

"Wheel up, or better still _lift_ up—I can’t bear the _slightest_ jar,
just now—that small armchair, Roger—the purple velvet one—and put it
near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but not _too_ near,
because I notice you have a very powerful aura.  I’ve only just learnt
about auras, and I realize now _what_ a difference they make!..."

"All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what’s an
aura?  Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having
had a bath this morning?"

"Don’t be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You never _used_ to be
coarse, whatever you were—I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer’s
daughter; but for the matter of that, what am _I_?  My poor dear dad is
trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army.  I
didn’t mean anything much about your ’aura,’ except, I suppose, that as
I’m only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a
little frigid.  But I’m simply talking nonsense to gain time, to
remember what I wanted to say to you."  (A pause.) ... "Roger!  Your
_dreadful_ letter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor
Francis’s death, _knocked me over_.  The doctors put it all down to
Francis, of course ... I don’t deny that his death _did_ upset me....
But I’d been expecting _that_ any time within the last six months....
The doctors told me _definitely_ last winter his heart was very unsound
and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or
argued with....  _That_ was why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and
general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House
Terrace—which is dingy beyond belief.  I shall do it now....  It’s too
early for tea ... won’t you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there’s
everything on that little table....  No.  Not those ones; they’ve got
the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to do _something_ for my
nerves....  Well, now, about your Gouging letter....  I mean about your
marriage....  My _dear_ Roger!  _What_ a _gaffe_! I mean, how _could_
you?"

"Could I what?"

"_Ruin_ your hopes and mine?"

"Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the
knot was tied....  Ever since her husband’s death.  So _my_ hopes were
fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S.
So where the ruin comes in, I can’t see."

"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "_why_ beat about the bush? You must have known that
I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis—and anything _might_
well have done so—after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or
break our necks out hunting.  In such case you _must_ have known I
_counted_ on you ... I mean, on our being happy _at last_....  Don’t
interrupt! ... And just think!  Francis loved me awfully.  I really _was
perfectly sweet_ to him and did my duty to him _in every way_.  His
gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was
born he made his will! ... Don’t be silly ... and don’t joke about
things I regard almost as sacred....  I mean _Francis_ re-made his will;
and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, sole
_everything_; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till
Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of £10,000 a year to keep them up.
Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend to
_keep_ let till he comes of age, the moors in Scotland _and_ the
shooting lodge.  Of course he has the reversionary rights of
_everything_ after my death.  And equally of course he has fifteen
thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he
marries....

"Just _think_ what I could have done for you, out of all this—if you’d
_waited_!  If _only_ you’d waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve
silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to).  (Roger fidgets on his
chair. An exquisite little purple Sèvres clock on the white mantelpiece
ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)

_Roger_: "Look here, Sibyl.  You’re altogether on the wrong tack,
believe me.  You might have married me in ’86.  I was quite ready then
and fancied myself in love with you.  But if you had we mightn’t have
got on.  My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you
surroundings like this...."  (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in
white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture,
its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of
mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on
the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the
silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side,
and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink
fingers.)  "You were _quite_ right: you could _never_ have stood the
strain of Africa.  I’ll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and
I went through."  (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little
black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.)  "I
know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after
you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were
free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead.  But what decent man would
have taken you at your word?  Why, Silchester might well be alive now.
He did not die of old age...."

_Sibyl_ (in a muffled voice): "N-no; he ... he ... didn’t.  He—overrated
his strength.  He—he—oh, _how_ can I tell you?  He was so anxious to
play a great part in public affairs ... but he had lost all his
energy...."  (Sitting up with flushed cheeks—damnably good-looking,
Roger feels.)  "_Well_! What can I do for you?  You’ve failed _me_.  But
I suppose you’ve come here to ask me to help you in some way.  Men don’t
generally waste their time on afternoon calls without a motive.  What is
it?  I’ve got no influence anywhere since Francis died" (a sob). "So
it’s no good asking _me_ to write to Lord Wiltshire or to Spavins.  I
hear you are out of favour at the F.O.  It’s not _my_ fault, is it?
It’s all due to your gallivanting after missionaries’ wives...."  (Roger
looks sullen.) ... "Heigh ho!  I expect with all this crying and
tousling among cushions, to hide I _was_ crying from your cynical eyes,
I’d better go into my room and bathe my face before the butler brings in
the tea....  _There!_ you can pull up two of the blinds—when I am
gone—my eyes are so red—and you can look at some of my new books till I
come in to make the tea.  You mustn’t _dream_ of going before we’ve had
tea and finished our talk."


"I suppose," said Sibyl a quarter of an hour later when they were
discussing tea and tea-cake and pâté-de-foie sandwiches and assorted
cakelets, "what you really came to ask was would I present this
Lucy-pucy of yours at Court.  But, my _dear_, I shall be in mourning for
a year, and the Queen——"

"_Lord_ no!  Such a thing never entered my head. It would scare Lucy
into fits.  I hope before next season comes round I shall be back in
Africa—or somewhere.  So far as I connected Lucy with this visit I might
have intended to ask you to let me bring her here one day, and for you
to be kind to her ... not frighten her, as you very well could do,
pretending all the time to be her best friend...."

_Sibyl_: "Well: I’ll tell you what you shall do. You must remember I’m
in mourning, of course.... We always have to think of what the servants
will say.... And—ah!  Did I tell you?  Aunt Christabel is here.  I sent
her out the longest drive I could think of, so that we might have our
afternoon alone; still, she’s staying here till I emerge from the
deepest of my mourning....  By the bye she’s _horrified_ at your
marriage, just as she used to be horrified at the idea of your marrying
_me_....  Well, bring your Lucy over one day at the end of July and I’ll
just have a look at her.  And then, in the autumn—say October—you and
she, and of course if you like to have them, Maurice and Geoffrey too,
could come here for the shooting. _Of course_ I shan’t have a regular
party; but somebody must come and shoot the pheasants.  The Queen
couldn’t object to that.  I’ve asked a man—I did before Francis’s
death—to come.  You might like to meet him: a Sir Willowby Patterne....
Dare say you’ve heard of him?"

_Roger_: "I’ve heard no _good_ of him...."

"Oh, what tittle-tattlers and scandal-mongers you men are!  I think he’s
so amusing, and every one says he’s a splendid shot....  However, we
will make up just a _tiny_ party and you and Lucy shall entertain for
me.  I shall purposely be very little seen and shall give out my cousins
have come over to help me with my guests....  And, _Roger_!  If I am to
help you you must help _me_.  The doctor says I positively _must_ take
up my riding again unless I am to drift into being an invalid.  Couldn’t
you—sometimes—whilst you’re down in this part of the world—come over and
ride with me?  I can ’mount’ you.  You could ride poor Francis’s cob ...
not showy but very steady."

"I will, when I come back from town," said Roger, and took his
departure, not at all dissatisfied with his afternoon.

Two days afterwards he thought it might be prudent to see how things
were going at the Foreign Office. So he went up to town, changed into
town togs at Hankey’s (where their flat was becoming a white elephant,
owing to Lucy’s dislike to London, so he arranged to give it up), and
betook himself to Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Bennet Molyneux.
"Mr. Bennet Molyneux," he was presently told, "is very sorry, sir, but
he is much engaged this morning; would you go into the Department and
see one of the young gentlemen there?"

The Department was a large, long room with a cubby-hole at its further
end for the accommodation of the senior clerk, a sort of school prefect
who had to keep order among the high-spirited juniors and therefore
required to work a little apart from them.  When Brentham entered the
main room, announced by the office messenger, he recognized two friends
of yore and several new, ingenuous faces.  There also emerged from the
cubby hole a man whom he had known as a junior three years previously:
an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because
of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known
as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend."  Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and
Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely
served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys.
They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.)
"Rosie" Walrond was a young man—older than he looked—with wavy flaxen
hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an
exceedingly kind heart.

_Walrond_: "Hullo!  Here’s _Brentham_, the rescuer of beleaguered
Gospellers.  We’ve got a grudge against you.  You came here months ago
and were closeted with Spavins and never gave us a look-in. And we were
dying to hear all about the elopement and its sequel.  We were prepared
to subscribe to a wedding present for a teller of good stories...."

Then he added: "D’you admire my grotto?"

Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to
"Rosie’s" desk.  Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock
specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had
been pasted.

"_My mineral specimens_ ... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East
Africa!  Then you _never_ sent them on?"

"My _dear_ chap!  Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail
bags—two of them—arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a
letter with them or any directions.  Also two skulls which, as you see,
decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in
silver at Snarley’s expense for our Departmental Dinner.  Meantime, I
have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner’s
objections...."

_Brentham_: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray.  I asked
you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the
Natural History Museum. However, I’ll take them all away presently in a
cab."

"But _not_ the skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil
worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass...."

"Yes, the skulls, too.  They’re most important——"

"But so are _we_," said Parsons.

Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain
of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask
outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at.  He
accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire
Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in
Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on
them, at his leisure.  After that, Professor Flower and the skulls;
which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy
Valley.  He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and
had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away.
They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous
type.




                             *CHAPTER XVI*

                            *SIBYL AS SIREN*


In August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to
have a child.

"But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl’s place
in Scotland.  You can’t be going to have a baby till—till well on in the
winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up.  Of
course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house
party—just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits and
stags.  I don’t suppose there will be any women there except her aunt
and you."  Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.

She was living once more with her parents, while Roger’s plans were so
unsettled.  The rooms at Hankey’s had been given up, and on his frequent
journeys to London—mainly on Sibyl’s business—he slept at Aunt Pardew’s
Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very comfortable.  He
had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July—once he had left her
there a whole afternoon, _tête-à-tête_ with the still languid young
widow.  On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to Tilehurst to
see Mr. Baines with more news—sent on by Callaway from Unguja—about Ann
Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and what the Mission
proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone.  It tickled his
sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with John’s
father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits there
not only cheered the Aerated Waters’ manufacturer, but they enraged Mrs.
Baines.

She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this
caused Eliza to get out of hand.

But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his
one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either.  Sibyl, not
wishing to fall out with Roger, declared she _tried_ to like Lucy.  Yet
when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and
simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was
evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger’s wife.

The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations.  Lucy
in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but
she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes.  She had no idea that a
stay in the Highlands—even in 1889—involved a special wardrobe: short,
kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day’s
adventures—going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics
when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good
deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous.  Trailing skirts and
wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress.
Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading
novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of
Aunt Christabel; who wasn’t at all inclined to spare Lucy.

What had that good-looking Roger with _such_ a career before him had in
his mind that he should throw himself away on this village
schoolmistress?  She did not care, either, for Sibyl’s new infatuation
for Roger; would have liked to keep them well apart.  The distant
cousinship was not through her or her sister, Mrs. Grayburn, but through
Roger’s mother and Colonel Grayburn.  Sibyl, when her year of mourning
was up, had much better marry again into the peerage; and if she wanted
a smart man as Agent—for land-agents of the middle-class-bailiff type
were "passés de mode" on all _big_ estates ... well, there was Willowby,
Willowby Patterne (a nephew-in-law of Aunt Christabel), who really might
very well do for the post.  Willowby had been very wild, had run through
much of his own money and his unsuitable wife’s—they were never asked
out together.  But he was a first-class shot, had been to Canada with
the Duke of Ulster, knew a lot about blood-stock, had tried farming and
ranching and would be quite all there helping Sibyl entertain her house
parties and giving an eye to the manly education of James—Aunt
Christabel did not countenance Sibyl’s silly freak of imposing the name
of "Clitheroe" on the little Lord Silchester.

Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger
from any unnecessary expenditure.  She remembered that she had come to
him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain.
So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the
Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together.  She had
only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of
them a plain black silk.  After they had become familiar to the eye,
Sibyl had offered to lend some of _her_ gowns, but had done it in such a
way that Lucy’s pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted
sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat.  Sibyl
then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised
Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.

All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir
Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than
Roger and Lucy.  He must then have been about thirty.  As you surmise
from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century
baronet.  His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the
Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I
think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of
cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby’s father
was slaked by the contemporary British field sports.  This father died
from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby’s case
there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one—already a
subaltern in the Guards—with quite a respectable fortune to "blue."  He
had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew
older.  One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of
killing.  He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his
brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in
skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in
executions and floggings.  Owing to family influence he was for a very
brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the
garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat
to death with two bull-terriers—and laughing frenziedly the while—put an
end to that appointment.  He had had some success on the turf and in
steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had
betrayed quite a number of trusting women—including his wife; but
nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society
of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal.  What
there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to
attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was
thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness
of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline
nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness.  But
that women _did_ run after him, there was no denying; though at this
time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any
rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.

Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of
Willowby was a little tempered by the latter’s unwilling admiration of
his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for
salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure
Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second
nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction.  Moreover Willowby
tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to
big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to
the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.

But when the day’s sport was done and they had bathed and changed and
laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and
sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at
others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation.  Her
little naïvetés of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing
and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at
Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here
withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored
incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby
Patterne.  Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured
her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.

Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court
and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house
party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off
duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some
one else’s expense.  But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a
pyramid of flawless chastity).  She wore a single eyeglass through which
everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be
very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be
returning to Africa.  She had friends who were casting in their lots
with Cecil Rhodes’s ventures.  To her mental vision, Africa was about
the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment
to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the
dear Queen is getting _so_ interested in him" ... "was there gold by the
bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?"  But when she learnt that
Sibyl’s cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this
very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl’s secretary but Roger’s
wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up
as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or
interest again.

Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream.  Mr. Bream even
in those distant days was not—and did not behave like—the conventional
clergyman.  He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy
somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one
who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a
princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or
Cambridge.  Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged
boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his
confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage
when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began
to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the
slightest dread of a hereafter.  He came forward to marry, when
re-marriage was legal but not savoury—sooner than that the poor dears
should live in sin.  He dealt—I dare say very kindly and
considerately—with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else
would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so
nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him
at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the
first to pardon you.  He always went where Society did in order to be
able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident.
He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a
gun—quite skilfully—and was very fond of games of chance in the evening
if the stakes were not too high.

Bridge had not then reached Great Britain.  Where they would have played
Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or
Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over
cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap
Snorum.  The Rev. Stacy Bream—who as much as any cleric might, stood in
lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester—called Lucy once or
twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and
inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.

So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and
shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways
of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals.  When the
others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would
read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had
done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist
nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought
other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition.  And
then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room
for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an
excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping.  Sibyl
had summed up her makeshift costume—for a day’s yachting—in one short
phrase....  This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at
yesterday’s picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late
tea which followed their return.  "R—Ro—ger, oh dear Roger, _let_ me go
home!  I’m only in _every one’s_ way here.  I never felt so stupid in my
life before.  _I can’t_ think what’s the matter with me—it’s the feeling
they all _despise me_—and—and—pity you for having made a fool of
yourself.  Let me go home to mother—and Maud!..."

Roger consented at once.  He felt full of remorse and pity, promised
soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and
arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to
Aldermaston.  The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen
much to his explanation with its discreet allusion.  She was a bore and
a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy
themselves.  Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore
black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going
about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the
estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.


Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to
the Earldom of Pitchingham and précis-writer to Lord Wiltshire).  He was
told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case.  His Lordship
thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting
Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better
he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland.
H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an
officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to
consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of
Baranquilla.

"I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington.  "A little
bit near the North Pole—or is it North Cape?  I always mix the two.  But
it’s in _Norway, very_ bracing climate, _awfully_ good sea-fishing, and
£350 a year.  Or if you prefer heat, there’s Baranquilla, northern South
America, _not_ a good climate, but the last man stood it for two years
before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it’s £550 a year and two
years count for three in service.  Which is it to be?  Make up your mind
soon, ’cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list—snap at either."

Tarrington’s tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final.  Roger
seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its
tones having sombred with twenty years’ fog and smoke into shades of
yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse
haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia.  But a married man
and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself
the luxury of ill-temper.  So he replied civilly that he would think if
over and let Lord Tarrington know.

As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the
august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle
to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set
eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been
hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth
listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in
his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven
hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer
Bazzard.

Brentham went down that evening—pretending he didn’t care in the least
for this definite set-back—to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out
to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel
was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.

Lady Silchester’s plans had long been ready, though she seemed to
develop them as she spoke.  "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of
old Parkins.  He’s an out-of-date duffer.  I’ll either pension him off,
or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property.  He’s
let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents.
I’ll give you £700 a year, and there’ll be all sorts of legitimate
pickings as well.  You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I’ll
do it up for you.  Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the
next ten years.  I’m sure _I_ don’t want to ask her to dinner or to
anything else, if she doesn’t want to come.  She needn’t curtsy to me if
we meet, if it’s _that_ she dislikes....

"But you’ve _great_ abilities, Roger.  You’ve been _shamefully_ treated
by Lord W....  He’s always tried to snub _me_ ... _I_ don’t know why ...
I’ll tell you _what_.  I’ll _run_ you.  After all, I am a rich woman ...
now.  You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as
that seems to be going to become the fashion.  What ... _what_ ... WHAT
a pity you married like that, all in a hurry!  And you see it’s done you
no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at
the F.O. However, it’s no good crying over spilt milk.  _I’ll_ make a
career for you!"  And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her
palpable secret....

"This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look.
"But do you think it is fair on others?  Why not put in your father——?
Or one of your brothers?"

"_Rubbish_!  Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester
estates—only on a far bigger scale—as he is doing over his three hundred
acres at Aldermaston. I think we’ll send him up to care-take at Glen
Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place.  Helping him with
loans is like pouring money into—what do you pour it into when it runs
away? A sieve?  And the two boys have both got jobs and are none too
bright, at that.  Besides, it’s no fun working with brothers, and I’m
going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the Estate.
It’ll be ... it’ll be ... what’s two and a third from twenty-one?  Well,
at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy comes of age.  In
that time we’ll have raised the annual value of the property to twice
what it is now, and incidentally we’ll have a glorious time, influencing
people, don’t you know, getting up a new opposition in Parliament, and
making ourselves felt...."

"Well, in any case, it’s awfully good of you ... _awfully_ ... somehow I
don’t deserve it...."

"You don’t, after the way you threw me over.  But stick to me now,
through thick and thin, and"—she was going to have added impulsively,
"Oh, _Roger_, I _do_ love you, I can’t help it," and perhaps have flung
herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his
scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely,
"And we’ll make a great success of our partnership.  And now we must go
and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she
will come poking her nose in here to see what we’re up to.  How tiresome
the old are!  It’s only on account of what the Queen would say that I
keep her on here.  She thinks you’re ’dangerous’ to my peace of mind,
Roger.  But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring,
and father can’t bear to be separated from her, and the two of them
would be _unthinkable_."

Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl’s scheme would never work, without
damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her
Circe influence already.  He accepted her offer—at any rate for one
year.  At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the
arrangement.  He decided for the present to lodge with his wife’s
parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At
the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses—Mrs.
Parkins, at any rate—should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able
to set up house there.  He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington
declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much
regret" his commission for Zangia.

About this time he received two letters which gave him much to think
about, but which he put at the back of his mind.  I will give the
shortest first:—


                    _To Captain Brentham, F.R.G.S.,
                       H.B.M. Consul for Zangia._

School of Mines,
       Jermyn Street, S.W.
              _October_ 5, 1889.

DEAR SIR,—

You will remember calling here in last July, just before I took my
holiday.

You left with me for examination a series of rock specimens and some
sediment of lake water from East Africa.

Of the rock specimens, at least six give indications of great interest.
Those two labelled "Iraku I" and "Iraku II" are so rich in gold that
their importance must have been apparent to yourself—unless you mistook
the gold for iron pyrites, an inverse of the customary deception, which
is generally the other way about.  The specimen labelled "Marasha" is
simply coal—rather shaley coal, probably a surface fragment. There are
two specimens, unfortunately with their labels missing or
indecipherable, which are a hard bluish green serpentine rock, obviously
related to the "blue ground" of South Africa and probably
diamondiferous.  A fifth specimen yields evidence of wolframite, and in
three other samples there is much mica.  The lake sediment is being
further examined by a colleague of mine.  He believes it to be an
indication of the formation of phosphates in the lake bed or shores
which should be of great importance to agriculture as a constituent of
chemical manure.  These phosphates might be derived from birds’ dung in
great quantities, from guano in fact.

I assume you have duly registered the exact geographical localities of
these specimens?  Otherwise, they are very tantalizing, for they
evidently indicate—if they come from one region and not from a wide area
of travel—one of the wealthiest of African territories.

Pursuant to your wish, however, I shall treat the matter as
confidential.  But if you can at any time supply me with the exact
geographical information I require I shall be pleased to write a report
on the collection for the Petrographical Society or for the confidential
information of the Government: whichever you prefer.

Yours faithfully,
       DANIEL RUTTER.



Unguja,
       _August_ 26, 1889.

DEAR CAPTAIN BRENTHAM,—

Mrs. Stott and I, we thank you very heartily for your kind remembrances
of us.  The generous present of tea you sent us as soon as you got back
to England reached our good friend Callaway a little while ago and I
found it here waiting for us when I arrived from the interior.

Captain Wissmann has had a wonderful series of victories over the Arabs
and Wangwana, which in the good providence of God have cleared the way
between Ugogo and the coast.  I heard something of this in the Happy
Valley last April; so, as we were running terribly short of supplies and
as we felt "seed time was come" and that the Lord desired us to reopen
our Burungi Station, and establish his tabernacle strongly in this
glorious place—Manyara—"ripe unto harvest"—I felt my way cautiously up
the Valley and through the Irangi country to Burungi.  The place was not
any worse treated than when you left it—you made a great impression on
the Wagogo—so, as their elders begged me to rebuild the station I left
some of our trained workers to do so.  Besides that, Captain Wissmann,
whom we met near-by, has lent us two German sergeants—biddable men and
clever with their hands.  They’d been sick, and wounded in the legs and
he said it would do them good to have a spell of quiet sedentary life.
He also put under their orders a guard of five Sudanese soldiers to
guard the station whilst it is being rebuilt.  So here I am at the
coast, chopping yarns with Mr. Callaway, and laying in great supplies
which I have been able to buy out of the price of that ivory you shot
for us.

Captain Brentham, you don’t know what a mine of wealth the Happy Valley
is, and the cliffs and mountains on the western side (Iraku and Ilamba).
I am an Australian, and before I found Christ I had a course of
instruction as a mining engineer.  The rocks in and about the Happy
Valley tell me at first sight more than they would an ordinary
Englishman.  I suppose some one will have to find out this, sooner or
later. I’d much sooner it were _you_.  You may yet get it taken over by
Great Britain.  At any rate, if you came out here and prospected you
would see what I mean. What did you do with the specimens you took away
with you for analysis?  Did you lose them on your way to the coast?
Maybe if the Happy Valley is to come under the Germans they would give
you a concession. This Captain Wissmann seems to like you, and he said
it was far from his Government’s intention to drive away English
missionaries or English capital. He likes the English very much and
speaks English very well.

I only write this because they say here you are not coming back as
Consul.  I am sorry.  Why not then come out on your own?  I’ve opened
your letter to Mrs. Stott, which came with the tea, and _right glad_ I
was to hear—and so will she be—that you’d married poor Lucy Baines.
_Right glad_.  Bring her out here with you, and Mrs. Stott shall look
after her whilst you go round prospecting and staking out your claims.
We may not see eye to eye over the Lord’s work. The Lord hasn’t revealed
himself to you yet as He has to us.  He will in His own good time.  But
you’ve got the root of the matter in you.  I never yet met an unbeliever
who was so reverent and so tender of other people’s beliefs....  You’re
a good man, if you’ll forgive my saying so.  You wouldn’t ever interfere
with our work here, I know.  It’s getting on _grand_.  We baptized the
Chief of the Wambugwe and fifty of his men in the Lake at Manyara just
before you left, and please God, we’ve saved the whole valley from
Islam.

Mrs. Stott had always a first-class opinion of you, though you weren’t
of our way of thinking in religion. She is sure you’ll always stand up
for the natives and protect their rights.  I hope I haven’t been taking
a liberty, writing this letter.  If you don’t like to come out yourself,
any one you sent we should trust to do the right thing and would show
him round.  Otherwise, we have been careful to say _nothing_ about the
Happy Valley, and so far no Arabs and no Germans have troubled us.

May God’s blessing rest on you and on your sorely tried wife.  I feel
sure there are happier days in store for her.

Your sincere friend—if you’ll allow me to say so.

JAMES EWART STOTT.


In regard to the School of Mines Report, Roger for acquitment of
conscience and because he always liked to do the right thing, sent a
résumé of Professor Rutter’s analysis to the F.O., stating that the
specimens referred to had been picked up by him on his recent tour
through the interior of German East Africa.

In reply, the Under Secretary of State Was directed to thank Captain
Brentham for this valuable information.

In reality it was decided to pigeon-hole the report, certainly to give
it no publicity.  Let the Germans find out for themselves the value of
their territories. If they discovered they had bitten off more than they
could chew, why ... then....


In January, 1890, Lucy was delivered of a son. Roger was hugely
delighted.  When he asked Lucy a week after the birth if she had any
preference for a name—_her_ father’s, _his_ father’s, his own—she said
in a faint voice but with some finality in the accent: "Let him be
called ’John’!"  Then, as he did not reply, she added, "John loved me
and I wasn’t worthy of his love...."

"Well, and don’t _I_ love you?" answered Roger with a tinge of
compunction.

"She’s a bit wandery in her mind, sir," said the nurse.  "Don’t pay any
attention to what she’s a saying.  She’s mistook your name.  Several
times since the baby was born she’s seemed to be talking with a John,
but it was you she was a thinkin’ about, _I’ll_ be bound.  She wants
keeping very quiet...."


Once Captain Brentham took up the affairs of the Silchester
estates—which he did definitely in October, 1889, he went very
thoroughly into their condition and their possibilities of development.
He was not, of course, a trained, professional land agent, which was why
his shrewd and original ideas of enhancing the value and productivity of
land made the Institute of Land Agents so angry.  But he knew something
of surveying, and had been accustomed to value countries by the eye, to
judge of soils, espy defects in farming, by his boyish life at Farleigh
and his experiences in India and Africa.

Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a
lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field,
though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the
service of man.  He liked great spaces without a sign of man’s
habitation to mar the poem.  Roger, though he had a strongly developed
sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization
that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in
Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of
the landless.  Another charm can be contributed to landscapes by the
handiwork of man, provided the cottage is tastefully and soundly built,
the manufactory—even the brick-kilns and chimneys—are of the right
material for the neighbourhood, of harmonious colour and appropriate
design.

In the Berkshire and Hampshire estates woodlands required thinning,
cattle wanted new blood and better breeding.  The lobster fishery at
Sporran Bay should certainly be developed.  A proportion of the deer in
Scotland and at Engledene might with advantage be sold.  The farmer
tenants generally wanted shaking up.  Some of them could well afford to
pay twice their present rent and let him out of the increased rent-roll
rebuild their houses, barns, granaries, pigsties and cow-sheds.  Why,
the dairy business alone might be trebled in value with this proximity
of a milk-hungry London.  Farmer Josling, a right-down superior man with
much self-given education, should help him in this.  Incidentally, with
Sibyl’s consent, he had given his father-in-law a life-lease of his farm
as some acknowledgment of his excellent use of it, and his progressive
influence on the other farmers.

The bracing outdoor life and constant riding, the hunting and shooting
did his health a world of good. He had never looked so well, so set up
and robust as he did at the age of thirty-two, as Sibyl’s factotum.  The
worst of this was that he seemed more desirable than ever in Sibyl’s
eyes, as she admitted with her disarming frankness.  "What a pity it is,
Roger, the silly laws of this sanctimonious country will not permit
polygamy.  We are just in the prime of life, you and I.  I am much
better looking than I was ten years ago—I shudder at my old
photographs—I wore a fringe then and a bustle, and a lot of hair down my
back, and a terrible simper when I faced the camera. It’s a crime
against Nature that we can’t marry.  We should have the handsomest
children and we could easily arrange matters with Lucy.  She’s not
exacting."

Roger laughed at these speeches, but they made him a little
uncomfortable.  Had Sibyl been a complete stranger to him he might have
succumbed long before to her wiles; few men of his build, his time, his
complexion were Josephs.  But the slight relationship between them acted
as a barrier to concupiscence.  It permitted a familiarity in speech and
address which made any closer intimacy repellent to his sense of
decency....

Sibyl it must be admitted, was shameless when they were together.  She
would study his features attentively; admire the curl of his eyelashes,
the outline of his profile, even the not quite classical prominence of
the cheek bones, the virile twist upwards of his moustache, the firm
chin and strong white teeth, the well-set ear and close-cropped hair at
the back of his head: the while she pretended, pen in hand, to be
considering his propositions.  Thought-transference told him what this
scrutiny meant, and he would colour a little in shame and become abrupt
in manner—even say to himself, "This _can’t_ go on—I wish she’d think of
something else...."

He was conscientiously attentive to Lucy at this time and she was really
happy during this phase in Roger’s life.  In the spring she took up her
residence in the Lodge at Englefield and made a comfortable home for her
devoted husband, who seemed resolved to show her how happy he was in his
marriage. Maud, from Farleigh, was a constant visitor, stayed weeks
together with Lucy and Roger and served as a _trait d’union_ with Sibyl,
who allowed Maud to chaff her and scold her as she would no one else.
Sibyl was quite civil to Lucy, did not bother her, left her alone except
for an occasional greeting and the showing of some curiosity as to
little John.  "You may call him _John_ as much as you like, but he’s
certainly Roger’s child."

Clithy and his nurse were often sent down to the Lodge to be with Lucy;
Sibyl deigning to say that her influence over children was a good one
and Clithy was never fretful with _her_.  In her mocking moods she
called her little son "The Prince with the Nose" and declared he was
under an enchantment.  He had for a child of three a preternaturally
large nose, and as she said to Roger, there could be no doubt as to his
paternity.  "How pleased Francis would have been! He was always so proud
of the Mallard nose.  Said it could be traced back in pictures to
Charles I’s reign—Anne of Denmark, who was rather larky after she had
been married ten years, had a side-slip—you know what a _tipsy_ court
they were!—and bore a daughter to the Lord Chamberlain, who was
particularly active in the revels.  James overlooked her breach of good
manners and ultimately gave the large-nosed little girl in marriage with
Silchester Manor to a favourite, who founded the House of Mallard.
Francis was going to have put this into his Memoirs, but he died, poor
dear, leaving them three-quarters finished.  I think _I_ shall finish
them for a lark.  Will you help me?"


One reason why Lucy was dreamily happy at Englefield Lodge was that she
seemed there to link up with the life of her girlhood.  She had so often
strolled round the precincts of Engledene with John Tilehurst, she dared
not revisit for fear of meeting Mrs. Barnes. But she would sometimes
walk over the same path she had traced with John on that Sunday in June,
1886.  She would sit on the seat at _The View_ and go over once more in
memory, and with a sad little smile her naïve and petulant questions and
answers on that Sunday walk.  How she had told John her desire to
encounter lions, and yet when a lion had visited their camp, what abject
terror she had shown!  Hangodi! That name was first uttered to her in
Engledene Park and she remembered John saying it meant "The Place of
Firewood."

One day Roger brought over to see her in the dog-cart old Mr. Baines—as
he was beginning to be called. They both shed a few tears, but he told
her with more sincerity than he usually put into his husky voice that he
exonerated her from all blame in the catastrophe which had overtaken his
son (Lucy herself was not so sure).  "Mother’s taken it awfully bad,
Lucy.  She’s goin’ out of her mind, I’m fearin’.  First she was writin’
an’ writin’ to Lord Wiltshire, him as is Prime Minister, don’t you know,
to give your husband the sack as bein’ the real cause of John’s death.
Then next she’d bother our member, wantin’ ’im to ask questions in the
’Ouse of Commons, till at last they give up answerin’ them.  Then she
set to and slanged that Missionary Society that John belonged to, sayin’
they wasn’t ’alf careful enough about ’is precious life. Now this
spring, blessed if she ain’t cut our Connexion!  She won’t go to Salem
Chapel; goes to Church instead ... St. Michael’s.  Shouldn’t wonder if
she ended up a papist! ... S’pose you know _Ann’s_ in England?  They’re
makin’ a lot of fuss about ’er in Reading and London.  Call her a
Heroine. She’s bin down with ’er ’usband—rather a half-baked feller—to
see us; but ’er talk with Mother ain’t done Mother much good, partly
’cos Ann wouldn’t join ’er in abusin’ you.  She says to Mother: ’I just
told you the plain truth in that letter.  I’m not goin’ to add nor
subtract one word, an’ you’ve gone and put into it much more than I ever
said.  Just leave Lucy alone to God’s judgment.  At any rate, John loved
her and died believin’ her true; and I dessay she was.  Africa’s a funny
country and you must put down a lot to the climate.’ ... Ann’s going
back to Africa next autumn, with three more recruits and a lot of money
to spend on the Mission School.  Old Mrs. Doland sent for ’er and give
’er five hundred pounds.  I tell ’er she ought to come and see you
before she goes.  P’raps she will, p’raps she won’t.  I told ’er you
called your baby ’John,’ and the tears reg’lar came into ’er eyes...."

Roger owned to Maud he felt a bit restless in the spring and early
summer of 1890.  He couldn’t get Africa out of his mind, somehow.  There
was first the fuss about Stanley and the return of the Emin Pasha Relief
Expedition—surely one of the most wasted feats of heroism and brave
endeavour in the history of Africa.  Then came the 1890 Agreement with
Germany.  This left the Happy Valley pretty much where it had
lain—unmarked as yet—on the map, but by approximate latitude and
longitude entirely German, as Roger knew.  But the discussion of
frontiers in Africa caused him to feel fretful and resentful at being
"out of it."  Sir Mulberry Hawk, who had negotiated the treaty, might
surely have turned to him for enlightenment on this point and that?
Even though he had left the African Service, there were his reports of
1884-5 and -6, and of 1887-9.  He felt impelled to go and see Broadmead,
always accessible to men of worth.  Broadmead said it was a beastly
shame—spite perhaps on the part of Molyneux—but every one now was
thinking of the Recess....  London was becoming awfully stale....  He
and Roger should meet in the early autumn.  Broadmead would perhaps come
down to Engledene and shoot Sibyl’s pheasants, and talk over Africa....
If Roger was still hankering after East Africa, why didn’t he suck up to
"Wully MacNaughten?"  He had a show place somewhere up in the Highlands,
not an immeasurable distance from Glen Sporran.

"Who was Wully?  Didn’t Brentham know? Why, he had begun life as a small
grocer in some Scotch town, and bankrupted through giving credit to the
crofters.  Not to be bested by Fate, he went out to China as a clerk and
in twenty years had made quite a respectable fortune.  Friends said out
of tea, enemies out of opium, smuggled into India; probable cause, the
great coolie traffic between China and the rest of the world, which
prompted him to found a navy of tramp steamers to carry the coolies,
many of them over to Africa.  Then he nibbled at East Africa; began with
missionary stations, sort of atonement, don’t you know, for anything
naughty he’d done—Chaps in China used to call him
’MacNaughty-naughty’—s’posed to have had a half-caste family. Not a word
of truth in it.  However, there it was, and he couldn’t go on refreshing
Brentham’s memory. Brentham had been in East Africa and must know all
about MacNaughten there?..."

"Why, yes, I know, of course, he’s the Chairman of the Chartered Company
of Ibea—Mvita, you know."

"Well, they are going to extend their operations inland to the Victoria
Nyanza and they want a go-ahead man as Governor.  The chap at present
out there is——  However, nothing can be done now. See you later on, give
you a letter to him.... Tata."

If Roger was restless with unavowed hankerings after his first mistress,
Africa, Sibyl, unconscious that he ever dreamed of release from her
Circe toils, was radiant in the spring and summer of that particularly
radiant year, 1890.  Her prescribed mourning was over, so that the
"horrid old Queen" could have no ground of objection to her entertaining
like any other opulent peeress.

Roger had worked wonders with the estates, and before long the revenues,
over which she would have control till her son’s majority, would be
increased by at least one-third.  Her choice of him from a business
point of view was amply justified.  Her pulse quickened and her eyes
grew brighter than their ordinary at the thought he might some day be
her lover.  If only that tiresome Lucy died in one of her confinements,
he might even be her husband.  Of course, she would most carefully avoid
any foolishness which might give the least ground for scandal.  If she
did that, she could take life as pleasantly as Lady Ramsgate (the
ridiculous one, called "Popsy"), or Lady Ann Vizor.  Every one knew that
Popsy Ramsgate had had a child by her farm bailiff and kept it at the
farm, and no one thought the worse of her.  Ramsgate was dead.  Lady
Ann’s stockbroker was obviously her lover, but he was very gentlemanly
and no one would have guessed unless they had been specially told.

Even if Roger were free, she was not sure she wanted exactly to marry
him.  She would then lose her title or, at any rate, her social rights
as a peeress. And Roger as husband might be too masterful.  She wanted
to "queen it" as a rich woman with intelligence and taste might do in
those days.  Now her mourning was over she would commence at once to
give parties at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, which should put those of
Suzanne Feenix quite in the shade. She would create a salon, to which
should be attracted the younger bloods, the rebels of the Conservative
Party.  She would revivify Lord Randolph, join hands with Mary March,
who had a wonderful _flair_ for inveigling millionaires.  She and a few
other clever women—the Tennants, perhaps—should create a young and
intellectual Conservative Party—or Unionist Party, if you liked.  They
would get hold of Choselwhit—perhaps Rhodes, if he came to England.

Lord Wiltshire should rue the day that he had snubbed her at a
Chapelmead week-end—the last time poor Francis went out anywhere—and cut
her at two Foreign Office receptions.  The Brinsleys should be shown
their reign was over.

Her initiates—she really founded the half-legendary "Souls"—should
include the smartest writers and the most daring painters, the weirdest
poets of the day.  They would have their own press, if it wasn’t too
expensive, but Mary March’s millionaires might manage that ... hadn’t
she been introduced at one of Mary’s theatre parties to an enormously
rich and humble person called Tooley?  Lady Tarrington had asked him if
he owned Tooley Street and the stupid creature had said: "Beg pardon, me
lady?"  Well, Tooley should be ensorcelled—perhaps an invitation up to
Glen Sporran—and buy their newspaper for them.

And then she had an idea of starting a monthly Review which she would
edit herself and which should tell the naked truth.  No
squeamishness....  Praed, the architect, should send them one or two of
his queer storiettes....

As to mother and father, they would spoil any circles with their
banalities and old-fashioned ideas ... and father’s stories would never
be followed to their finish by the modern young man or woman.  They
would devastate her circle.  No.  They must stop in the country.  Mother
seemed to be developing some internal complaint—probably indigestion or
something which could be cured at Aix or Homburg—and she was becoming
very strait-laced and anxious-eyed. Sibyl would take Roger’s advice: buy
up father’s three hundred acres; it could be made a most profitable milk
farm.  Father should stay on as tenant at a nominal rent, with a bailiff
to manage—perhaps that young Harden, the cricketer, who had married
Lucy’s sister.

Sibyl resolved to send mother to Aix at her expense and have Aunt
Christabel to stay with her indefinitely as long as she wanted a
chaperon.

As to her sisters: thank goodness, _they_ were off her hands.  They had
married and gone away with their husbands to those blessed colonies,
Clara to New Zealand and Juliet to British Columbia.  Long might they
remain there!  Relations—unless very distant—were like reproaches or bad
replicas of one’s self. They sapped all one’s originality....

These were some of the musings of Sibyl when having her hair brushed by
Sophie, or when undergoing Swedish massage under the firm but soothing
hands of a blonde giantess; when breakfasting in bed; or undergoing a
long train journey in a first-class compartment with a defective lamp.

There was no question in this year of Lucy’s accompanying her husband to
Glen Sporran.  She was starting another baby and was firm about not
wishing to go.  Sibyl took this decision most amiably; said Lucy was
quite wise, and further proposed that she should have Maud with her and
care-take for Sibyl at Engledene House.  Clitheroe was likewise to be
left behind. His life in the Highlands was one long succession of
dangerous colds and there wasn’t enough accommodation for his retinue of
nurses; especially as every one you asked nowadays must have with them a
maid or a valet.  Clithy had grown so absurdly fond of Lucy that Sibyl
suggested jocosely they should change babies.  She thought little John a
perfect darling—so like Roger—why hadn’t Lucy chosen her as god-mother
instead of Maud?  No doubt Clithy would grow up more like a normal boy
when the rest of his features balanced Anne of Denmark’s nose....
Meantime, it was very fortunate things were as they were.  And Lucy
would oblige her enormously by looking after her boy while she was
entertaining all those horrid people in the North.

Not that the house-party was to be a large one.  It ran away with so
much money, and people were never grateful.  There would just be Stacy
Bream; the Honble. Victoria Masham, the Maid of Honour—old Vicky
Long-i’-the-tooth, Sibyl called her behind her back, and never imagined
the nickname could be repeated and counteract the expense of a month’s
hospitality.  _Must_ have Vicky to keep in touch, you know, with what
the old Queen was saying and doing—and an acolyte of Stacy’s named
Reggie, something in the Colonial Office—he could flirt with Vicky—and
p’raps Arthur Broadmead.  Then—for a day or two—that insufferable cad,
Elijah Tooley—"but he’s so frightfully, frightfully rich and _might_ be
useful."  Aunt Christabel, of course, would come, to keep order, and
Aggie Freebooter and Gertie Wentworth would make up the house-party.
Aggie Freebooter was that tiresome Lady Towcester’s daughter—"one of six
girls, my dear"—but when she was away from her mother’s eye she was
deliciously larky and awfully plucky, and didn’t mind what you played
at; while Gertie Wentworth—or the Honble. Gertrude—thirty-five, lots of
money, dresses like a man, whisky and cigars, takes the bank at Roulette
and loses everything but her temper.

"Well, at any rate," said Maud, "I’m glad Willowby Patterne is not in
the party, _this_ time...."

"My dear!..." said Sibyl with a scream.  "I’ve absolutely dropped him,
after that row in the City and that extraordinary case in the courts
which was compromised and hushed up.  He’s gone out to East Africa.
Haven’t you heard?"

Maud had not heard and cared very little what had happened to the
spendthrift baronet.  But Roger had, and was a little uneasy as to his
cherished Happy Valley.  Willowby Patterne, mixed up once more with a
very shady Company to take over and boom a new mineral water—some
proposition of Bax Strangeways—and a matter of slander and a club-steps
whipping, settled out of court ... and pending proceedings of his wife’s
for a separation; had decided abruptly to make "peau neuve" in East
Africa.  He had depicted the thrills of big-game shooting to one of his
dupes just come of age and into possession of a pot of money.  This
young man would stand the racket of the expense—£5,000—and Willowby
would put him up to all the dodges.  And perhaps they might find
minerals and get a concession....


Whilst he was up in Scotland Roger did manage, with the aid of Arthur
Broadmead, to obtain an interview with Sir William MacNaughten on the
subject of East African developments and the Company’s future
administration.  But Sir William seemed vague, and much more interested
and definite in regard to another question: King Solomon’s Temple.  Had
Captain Brentham, as an Orientalist, ever given his mind to that
problem, the shape and structure of the Temple, its adornment, and the
hidden meaning of the Divine ordinances?  No, Captain Brentham had not
... but ... er ... no doubt it was very interesting and full of meaning
... only ... East Africa?...

"Oh, East Africa—our Charter—Oh, yes! Well, come and see me about that
when I’m back in London.  You know my address there?  Westminster Palace
Hotel?"

The Glen Sporran party broke up with the rain and chill winds of the
equinox; but Roger stayed on there with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel:
nominally to examine the affairs of the estate and the installation of
the lobster fishery; in reality because his resolves had all dissolved
before her insistence, her tears, her threats to make a scene.  Circe
triumphed; preened herself; became once more gay and debonnaire.  But
her wretched lover felt indeed a pig.  Aunt Christabel, the very
servants seemed to guess what Sibyl thought was kept wholly secret from
the rest of the world.

A month’s absence in Staffordshire and London, and a shamefaced visit to
Engledene Lodge did something to restore his self-respect.  He called on
Sir William at his hotel, resolved to broach the subject of the East
Africa Governorship, but found him out.  Nevertheless, to his delight
there came a note to Pardew’s Hotel from Sir William with these words in
it: "Come to breakfast to-morrow morning at nine.  I have something very
interesting to discuss with you, and should value your opinion."

He arrived punctually.  Lady MacNaughten was there—rather vinegary and
with pursed lips.  She dispensed the tea and coffee with a very strong
Glasgow accent.  The materials of the breakfast were—Roger
thought—rather meagre for such wealthy people, who could afford to
retain by the year this large suite of rooms.  As no mention of East
Africa was made during breakfast it was clearly more tactful to wait
till the subject was introduced.  Perhaps Sir William preferred not to
discuss business in his wife’s presence.  At last, however, he finished
his second cup of coffee, wiped his lips, said a grace of thanks for
"our bounteous meal" in which Lady MacNaughten joined; and then asked
Roger to accompany him to his sitting-room.

The folding doors were opened and shut behind them by an officious
waiter; the window of the sitting-room looking out on incipient Victoria
Street was also closed because the west wind was chilly.  And Sir
William then turned and said with great heartiness, pointing to a
cardboard and _papier-mâché_ contraption under a glass case:

"There!  _That’s_ what I wanted to discuss with you, who know the East
so well: a Model of King Solomon’s Temple, made to my own design!"

                     *      *      *      *      *

The Governorship of the Mombasa Concession was shortly after conferred
on Lady MacNaughten’s nephew.




                             *CHAPTER XVII*

                       *BACK TO THE HAPPY VALLEY*


Roger, ever since he returned from Scotland, resolved that a break with
Sibyl should come as soon as he could see before him the re-opening of
an African career.  Only fortified with such a resolve could he face his
wife’s candid eyes and her unquestioning trust in him—or Maud’s more
quizzical gaze and occasional sardonic remarks....  "That old fox,
MacNaughten," he said to himself, "had determined all along to evade the
well-meant suggestions of candidates from the Foreign, Colonial, and
India Offices, and as soon as he got his Baronetcy (which came with the
New Year’s honours) to take a line of his own."

However, Fate for once hastened the dénouement by causing Roger’s father
to catch cold over the excavation of the Basilica at Silchester, to
neglect his cold, and to die of double pneumonia in the week preceding
Christmas, 1890.  Roger could not help being profoundly grateful to his
archæological parent for dying _before_ rather than after Christmas,
because this decease, with the conventions in force, and Queen Victoria
behind the conventions, absolutely freed him from the obligation to
attend the elaborate Christmas and New Year festivities ordained by
Sibyl at Engledene. She had set aside a suite of rooms—bedroom,
sitting-room and office—at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, and would no
longer hear of his staying at Pardew’s Hotel when in London to transact
business with her. There were times when he seriously considered
shooting himself—and strange to say, all through this period of
episodical infidelity he had never loved Lucy better, or found her
smiling silence or unimportant, unexacting conversation more soothing.

Her approaching confinement and his father’s death together constituted
a barrier of reserve that even Sibyl was bound to respect.  He therefore
utilized this respite to work assiduously at his plans for flight from
the enchantress.  He was most anxious after he was gone that no one
should say with justification that he had let Lady Silchester down, had
treated her badly, got things into a muddle, and then bolted.

As far back as the preceding October he had brought his younger brother,
Maurice, the barrister into the Estate Office to be his assistant.
Sibyl could suggest no one else and told him he could make what
arrangements he liked—if _only_—if—_only_ he would not be _cruel_ to
her, not talk of going at the end of the trial year.  As he had not
complete confidence in Maurice becoming efficient for the head post, he
had entered into a provisional arrangement for a first-class man to put
over Maurice, selecting him at the Institute of Land Agents’
recommendation...

So much therefore had been done to safeguard h employer’s interests.

Then as to his own.  The administration of his father’s estate would
eventually secure a total sum of £4,300 to each of the four children of
the Rev. Ambrose Brentham, including the amount they had recently
received by deed of gift.  This with other odds and ends of savings,
gave Roger a capital of £5,000 to draw on.

As soon as Lucy was well over her accouchement in January (1891), he had
several long and confidential conversations with Arthur Broadmead, that
friend in need to so many men who had fallen into holes of their own
digging, and who sought rectification by extending the bounds of empire
and making two blades of grass to grow where but one had grown before.
Several great Anglo-German financiers were seen in the City.  The
specimens and the School of Mines’ report thereon were left in their
hands: with the result that a small and select Anglo-German Syndicate
was formed to prospect in the northern part of German East Africa. Into
this pool Captain Brentham put £2,000 and was constituted for three
years head of the enterprise with a good salary and very large
discretion as to means and methods of developing the Happy Valley.

To Maud he next imparted his plans, and to his surprise they were
received with cordial approval.

"You’re _quite_ right, Roger, I’m sure you’ve taken the road that will
most probably lead to happiness and fortune.  Lucy is certain to fall in
with your scheme. She can stay on in England till her baby’s weaned—it
was sweet of you both to call it after me—I was so certain you were
going to name it ’Sibyl’!  Then she can place both the children with
their grandparents at Aldermaston and come out and join you.  And what
is more, _I_ will come too!  I should _love_ to!"

There now remained—he could not say "only remained," it was too
portentous a crisis—the final scene with Sibyl.  He thought it over many
a night when he could not sleep, many a morning when he was going
through estate business with her and she was leaning unnecessarily over
his shoulder or furtively pinching the lobe of his ear.  A written
good-bye, and then immediate departure, would be cruel, and Sibyl might
afterwards revenge herself on Lucy, left behind defenceless; or on
Maurice.  There were, besides, points of business he must discuss with
her before leaving; at any rate give her the chance of asking questions
and receiving answers.

So he summoned up courage one morning and telegraphed he wished to see
her that afternoon in London. She was up for the "little season" which
follows Christmas.

He was shown into her library at 6A, Carlton House Terrace.  She had
come in from skating at Princes, had changed into a wonderful tea-gown
and was lying on a long couch over which a magnificent tiger skin had
been thrown.  A small inlaid Moorish table held a tea-tray.

_Sibyl_: "Have some tea?  Tell him before he goes out" (referring to the
retreating footman).

_Roger_: "Thanks very much, no.  I have had tea and I’ve got a lot to
tell you.  So I don’t want to lose time."  (The door clicks to.)

_Sibyl_: "Well.  You’re very solemn.  Draw up a chair.  Come to give me
a month’s warning?  But to do that you ought to stand...."

_Roger_: "That’s exactly what I _have_ come for...."

_Sibyl_: "Roger!  _Don’t_ make horrid jokes.  You wouldn’t be so
base—so—ungrateful—as that...."

_Roger_: "It isn’t an act of baseness, that’s certain; and as to
ingratitude, I think by going away I am doing the best thing altogether,
so far as _you_ are concerned.  No!" (she is rising and pushing the
tea-table out of her way as a preparation for drama).  "You must let me
explain myself—and _do_ let us discuss this _quietly_, not as though we
were acting a scene on the stage.  Sibyl!  Really the least said,
soonest mended. We are in an _impossible_ position....  I blame myself
more than you...."  (Sibyl: "Thank you!")  "I am a cad ... an _utter_
cad.  I loathe myself sometimes so much I can’t look at my face in the
glass or meet my wife’s eyes.  I am going back to Africa ... going out
of your life....  You must forget all about me ... and marry some decent
man."  (His voice sounds strangled and he turns away to recover
himself.)

_Sibyl_: "It seems to me it is you that are becoming stagey.  What does
all this mean?  Has Lucy found out we’ve been lovers and made a fuss?
... Or is it money?  Have you got into debt?  _Do_ be explicit!"

_Roger_: "It’s none of these things.  I only mean I have out-stayed my
year with you, my trial year, and now I claim my liberty.  I am going
once more to try for a career in Africa ... and..."

_Sibyl_ (white with anger): "Well, _go_ to Africa! I never wish to see
you again!  _Go_!  _Go_!  _Go_!"  (She half rises as if to expel him
with her hands, but he saves her the trouble, takes up his hat, gloves
and stick, walks out, closes the door of the library gently and lets
himself out of the house.)

The next day he leaves at the door a tin despatch box and a letter
containing its key.  The box has amongst its contents the bunch of keys
he has used on the Estate, a great bundle of accounts, notes, and
suggestions for the immediate future.  In the letter which accompanies
this box he tells Sibyl all about the arrangement he has made in her
Estate Office, advises her to keep on his brother Maurice who shows
signs of uncommon ability, but for some time yet to retain as Head Agent
Mr. Flower, provisionally engaged for a year, who is highly recommended
by the Institute of Land Agents.  Both alike are now well acquainted
with the affairs of the Silchester Estate....  He asks her to be kind to
Lucy who will remove as soon as she is strong enough to Aldermaston and
meantime remains at the Lodge under Maud’s care.  Later on, when her
child is old enough to be left in the grand-parents’ keeping, Lucy and
Maud will join him in East Africa.  His address in London till he leaves
for Marseilles on February 28 will be Pardew’s Hotel....

He will never forget her kindness ... _never_ ... at a critical time in
his life.  And will not say "good-bye," because when he has "made good"
in Africa he will come back on a holiday and hope to find the Estate
flourishing and Silchester grown into a sturdy boy.


From what I knew of Sibyl I should say she at first took the breaking
off of their relations very hardly.... "Agony, rage, despair" ... much
pacing up and down the library....  Passionate letters half-written,
then torn up into small fragments and thrown into the fire.  Then—for
she was a slave to her large household and magnificent mode of life—her
maid Sophie enters the library and reminds My Lady that she is due that
night to dine at the Italian Embassy. So Sibyl has to submit to be
coiffed, dressed, jewelled, and driven off in a brougham—a little late,
and that intrudes on her mind, because she has heard you should never be
late to an Ambassador’s invitation, it is a sort of _lèse-majesté_.  But
to cope with the demands made on her, she has to force her heart-break
to the back of her mind and sustain her reputation for gay beauty,
daring expression, and alert wit—in French as well as English.  There
was a Royalty there to whom she had to curtsey and with whom she had to
sustain a raillery, shot with malice, which required considerable
brain-concentration; for though the retorts must call forth further
bursts of laughter from the chorus that watched the duel, they must be
free from the slightest impertinence.

Roger’s abrupt leave-taking only remained like a dull ache behind her
vivid consciousness of triumph, of celebrated men, bestarred with
orders, swathed with ribbons; of women sparkling with jewels and
rippling in silks; of a Prince who might "make" you with a smile or
"mar" you with a frown; of many enemies concealed as friends; of
wonderful music and exquisite food, for which she had no appetite.  It
was not until she had re-entered her dressing-room to be unrobed that
she had once more the mind-space to reconsider Roger’s farewell and what
life would mean to her without his constant companionship.  Then,
foreseeing otherwise a ghastly night of turning things over and over in
her thoughts, she told Sophie she had bad neuralgia; and opening a tiny
little casquet with a tiny little gold key on her bangle she took from
it the materials for a sleeping draught, compounded them cautiously—she
was the last person in the world to commit suicide, even by
mistake—swallowed the dose and half an hour afterwards slipped into
oblivion.

The next morning she awoke with the inevitable headache, and the
heartache returned.  But there was the breakfast tray to distract her
thoughts, and there were the morning letters.  Among these was an
invitation to meet an Oriental Potentate in very select company—an
opportunity for display which she had coveted—and an invitation to dine
with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson, which she had sought
for, as she wanted to allure the young Bensons into her circle of
"souls."

She then reflected, while having her hair brushed, that it might be just
as well that the breach with Roger had come before she had been in any
way tarnished by the breath of scandal.  People had already chaffed her
about her handsome Land Agent.  She would act so as to throw dust in
their eyes, and certainly not play the part of _la maîtresse délaissée_.
Later on in the morning, therefore, she wrote to Lucy saying she had
accepted Roger’s resignation with the _deepest_ regret, but would not
stand between him and his beloved Africa.  Yet she hoped Lucy would not
_think_ of leaving the Lodge until she was perfectly strong.  She also
told Roger’s successor, Mr. Flower, she had confirmed the arrangement
Captain Brentham had outlined and requested him to call on her in the
following week.

In the afternoon of that day she issued the instruction "Not at home,"
intending to retire to her bedroom and have a good cry.  But the full
indulgence in this luxury was baulked by the announcement of her cousin
Maud Brentham.  Maud’s name some while ago had been put on the short
list of people to whom "Not at home" did not apply.

Maud had really been asked to call by the timorous Roger to see how
Sibyl was "taking it."  So Sibyl, divining this, received her
affectionately; and only complained of the excessive brilliance of the
ambassadorial party of the night before and the dead set made at her by
the Prince having reduced her this following afternoon to the condition
of a doll with the sawdust escaping from every seam.  She talked quite
calmly of Roger’s approaching departure and the arrangement of Lucy’s
affairs after he had gone.  "Why can’t you and she transfer yourselves
from the Lodge to the House at Engledene and stay there indefinitely,
till you take ship for Africa and golden joys?  Lucy’s a god-send with
poor nervous, peevish little Clithy.  I _must_ leave the child there a
good deal at present.  He looks very peeky if he comes to London.  And
at Easter I shall shut up this house and go off to travel for a long
time...."

"But not to East Africa, I trust...?" said Maud with some anxiety.

"Maud!  You’re a _toad_!"

When two very sad women came to Victoria on an appallingly cold and
foggy morning to take leave of Roger—who was departing for
Paris-Marseille to join his steamer—they were joined by a third,
accompanied by an aloof footman carrying wraps; and books for Roger’s
solace on the journey.  Sibyl put her arm round Lucy’s waist, as they
were saying farewell; and Roger having kissed his wife—most tenderly—and
his sister—hesitated for one second, and then kissed Sibyl too.

                     *      *      *      *      *



                   _From Roger Brentham to his Wife._

H.B.M. Agency,
       Unguja,
              _March_ 29, 1891.

[Very near the second anniversary of our happy marriage.  Barely two
years married and already two children.  I wonder how baby Maud is
getting on?]

DEAREST LUCE,—

I sent you a cable from Port Said saying "All right thus far."  I hope
you got it?  I arrived here by the French steamer yesterday.

I enjoyed the journey to Paris and Marseilles.  But after we had left
that port for a very stormy Mediterranean I went through a beastly time.
I would have given everything I possessed—except you—to find myself back
at Engledene and with all these African plans undone.  I have led such a
full life within the last two years, have had the very best of England;
and the flatness of existence on an old-fashioned steamer came home to
me crushingly during the nine days’ voyage between Marseilles and Port
Said.  Such a hush after the noisy whirlpool of life in London in
Sibyl’s circle; or even the gay doings at Engledene when we had got over
the first of our mourning for the poor old Pater.  There were no
newspapers and no news—nine days completely out of the world.  No one on
board I knew and no one who had ever heard of me.  It brought home to me
my utter insignificance! I felt a bit better when we passed through the
Suez Canal.  The sound of Arabic always stimulates me to adventure.  The
cold weather left us in the Red Sea. I passed most of my time mugging up
Swahili again and trying to revive my Arabic with some Syrians who were
on board.  Aden cheered me up considerably. There were the jolly
laughing Somalis once again, and I engaged four bright boys to go with
me as servants and gun-carriers out hunting.  You could light up a dark
passage with their flashing teeth!  When we reached Unguja I admit I
felt some uncomfortableness. It is so awkward returning as a person of
no status to a place where one has been an official.  But as you know, I
had taken the precaution, a month before I started, of writing
confidentially to Sir Godfrey Dewburn about my plans and intentions.
The Dewburns _could not have been kinder_.  He sent the Agency boat to
meet me with one of the new Vice-Consuls in it, and here I am at the
Agency, installed as their guest till I can assemble my _safari_ and get
away up-country.  Lady Dewburn plies me with questions about you and our
children....

The Dewburns are expecting promotion to a diplomatic post—possibly
Persia.  They feel their work here is done, now that the Anglo-German
Treaty is ratified and Unguja is a British protectorate.  The treaty has
had the best effect on Anglo-German relations here and incidentally on
my prospects of co-operation.  I am to see Wissmann as soon as I land at
Medinat-al-Barkah.  Eugene Schräder, who is all-powerful in Anglo-German
finance, has written out to him.  I have little doubt we shall get a
Concession over the Happy Valley for our syndicate.

Landing at Medina will be a little out of the direct route to Irangi,
but I shall travel across the Nguru country, now quite pacified and
safe, and try to take Hangodi on the way to Ugogo.  What associations
the sight of it will revive if I do!  That halting-place below the great
rise, where we had tea together in the shade when I met you in your
machila with Halima, and you were so taken aback that you called me
"darling"—_I_ haven’t forgotten!  And talking of Halima, reminds me to
say that she sends you her many salaams. Andrade is cook with the
Dewburns and Halima has some function as housemaid.  I have arranged
when the Dewburns go that Andrade is to join me; so when you come out,
my darling, Halima shall be there to wait on you and on Maud.

It’ll be rather horrid meeting the Bazzards again at Medina.  They
returned recently from a long holiday in England—an East Coast
watering-place chiefly, where Bazzard, who doesn’t know a yacht from a
barge, got elected to the local Yachting Club.  I hear that Mrs. B.
looks forward confidently to her husband succeeding Dewburn when the
latter is promoted; but I think there is not the slightest chance of it.

The Stotts must have got my letter by now telling them I was on my way.
Of course there has been no time for a reply.  But Callaway tells me the
last news of them was good.  I have already picked up quite a third of
my Wanyamwezi "faithfuls" who were hanging about Unguja since Willowby
Patterne’s _safari_ was paid off.  That man is a _scoundrel_!  He came
out here and made free use of my name, pretending even he had letters
from me which he never produced.  He therefore got favours and
concessions and secured my original hundred men—or what was left of
them.  His tour through the Mvita hinterland was one long sickening path
of slaughter: he and his companion—a poor youth who was often down with
dysentery and whom Patterne treated brutally—must have killed about
three times the amount of game they could use for food or trophies.  His
ravages even shocked his carnivorous porters and annoyed the natives.
Do you know, I think he must have had just a glimmering about the
existence of the Happy Valley—he was always following me about at Glen
Sporran and cocking an eye at my correspondence.  Because though
ostensibly only big-game slaughtering they made straight for the _south_
side of Kilimanjaro (instead of keeping to the British Sphere); and when
the _safari_ reached Arusha ya Juu he tried to get guides for
"Manyara"—the porters swear he used the word. He cross-questioned some
of them as to where they had been with you and me.  However, fortunately
he had an odd trick of getting himself hated by all the native tribes he
met, as well as by his own porters, whom he used to flog atrociously.
(They tell disgusting stories about these floggings which I cannot put
down on paper.)  When his caravan got past the slopes of Meru it fell in
with "our Masai," as I call them.  And then it was like one of the old
fairy stories of the bad girl who tried to follow the good girl down the
well into fairyland, and couldn’t remember the countersign.  Instead of
hitting it off with the Masai he vexed them in some way and at last they
turned on him and forced his _safari_ to go back to Kilimanjaro. At
least the Wanyamwezi porters refused to continue the journey, which
comes to the same thing.  He has left for England—I am glad to say—or I
might have fallen foul of him.  The two of them killed enough ivory to
pay the costs of the whole outfit.  So he swears he is coming back again
and will then take a large body of armed men with him and wipe out the
Masai.

Now I must bring this long letter to a close.  Much love to dear old
Maud, and my most respectful greetings to my cousin and late employer.
I found her fame for beauty, wit, and dominance over Society had reached
even to Unguja....  In fact I rather winced at turning over
three-months-old illustrated papers here and seeing pictures of her in
wonderful costumes or—in the magazines—as a type of English beauty....
How far away it all seems!...

Your loving
       RODGE.



                      _From the same to the same._


German Headquarters,
       Medinat-al-Barka,
              _April_ 30, 1891.

DEAREST,—

You will be rather surprised that a month has gone by and I have got no
nearer my goal than this!  But firstly I went down with a bad go of
fever—all right now—and secondly I could not hustle von Wissmann, who is
Imperial Commissioner here and who has been very kind—and thirdly the
rains are so appalling just now that overland travelling is well-nigh
impossible till the country dries up a little.  But I am not losing my
time otherwise.  I am getting everything fixed up with the Germans, and
next shall only have to arrive at an understanding with the natives.
The boundaries of our Concession (which will include the Stotts) cover
the Happy Valley from the water-parting between the Bubu and the Kwou on
the south to the escarpment at the north end of the lake, and on east
and west include all the water-shed of Lake Manyara, Iraku and Fiome.
So they have dealt with us generously.

Wissmann I like immensely.  He is a great man and has the interests of
the real natives thoroughly at heart.  Our old friends the Stotts have
impressed him favourably and they are to be woven into my schemes of
development.  Wissmann from the first asked me to put up at his
headquarters and treated me like a colleague in the opening up of
Africa.  So I was saved the disagreeableness of staying at my former
Consulate with the Bazzards.

Mrs. Bazzard has been sickly in her protestations of friendship, utterly
insincere as you know.  I fancy she is turning her pen now on Sir
Godfrey, in the hope she may oust _him_.  Considering how kind the
Dewburns were to them it is odious to note how she tries to disparage
him....

There is not much news from the interior.  I hear that Ali-bin-Ferhani
got rewarded by the Germans for saving Hangodi Station, and that Mbogo
is still chief there in name, the real chief of the district being Ann
Anderson, or Mgozimke—"The man-woman," as the natives call her.

In haste to catch the mail....

Your loving
       ROGER.



                      _From the same to the same._


Mwada, The Happy Valley,
              _July_ 28, 1891.

MY OWN DEAR WIFE,—

I reached the shores of the lake—which I now find is called Lawa ya
mweri—and the end of the Happy Valley on—as near as I can reckon—June
20.  (The Stotts have no almanacs and are quite indifferent to dates,
times, seasons; they live under some enchantment, they tell me, since
they came here, like the legends of people carried off to Fairyland.)  I
met Mr. Stott at Burungi, which now looks a flourishing station.  The
Wagogo seem to me quite recalcitrant to Christianity, but the Stotts
have to keep this up as a depôt for their traffic with the coast, and
they are helped in this by the German Government....  Stott and I
journeyed together through the Irangi country almost in state.  The
Stotts have become enormously popular as "medicine men."  They have
stopped epidemics of small-pox by vaccinating the people, have shown
them how to stay the ravages of the burrowing fleas, and they are making
a dead set against infanticide, having found one or two leading chiefs
sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the importance of a large
population.  Formerly, as you may remember, there was such a prejudice
against female babies that they were often exposed to the hyenas outside
the tembe, and all children who came into the world by an irregular
presentation, or with a tooth already through the gum, likewise all
twins, were either thrown into the lake or abandoned to the carnivorous
ants or prowling carnivores.  (There is a curious legend here—Stott
says—that sometimes these unhappy infants were picked up by female
baboons of the Chakma type and nursed by them with their own offspring.)

Well: you can imagine, having lived already in these parts, what the
infant death-rate amounted to.  But the local chiefs having had the
whole theory exposed to them have sanctioned a crusade against
infanticide for any reason.  The Wa-rangi have further been persuaded to
abandon the custom of burning alive women suspected of adultery.  I did
not like to tell you at the time, but as we passed through the Irangi
country in November, ’88, they were actually killing unfortunate women
in this manner.  They believe that if a man goes out hunting and makes a
bad miss in throwing his spear or assegai at an elephant it is because
his wife is untrue to him at home!  So when he returns from the chase
his wretched spouse is trussed up and bound to the top of a great pile
of brushwood.

Consequently, at several of the Irangi villages on our way up the Bubu
valley the women who were the wives of sporting duffers came out in
deputations to dance round the worthy Stott till they quite embarrassed
him; especially as the dances were of an indelicate nature.

The Stotts have now quite a nice-looking station to the south-east of
the main lake, on a grassy rise with the Mburu river on the south and a
much smaller salt lake on the east.  This looks like sparkling ice under
the sun and is nearly solid—? salt—? soda. Its borders seem to be a kind
of salt lick for the game which is once more swarming and singularly
tame. There are no rhinos, fortunately, and the tricky tempered
elephants and buffaloes prefer the wooded regions farther north and
west.  The lions, leopards and chitas are so glutted with food that they
leave the domestic cattle and human beings alone; and the myriad zebras,
antelopes, elands, bushbuck, giraffes, wart-hogs and ostriches are quite
willing to live at peace with mankind.  Secretary birds and
saddle-billed storks are numerous and keep the snakes down; marabou
storks and vultures devour all the carrion and even the filth round the
native villages—so the country seems healthy.  Enormous flocks of
crowned cranes and bustards look after the locusts and grasshoppers.
The flamingoes by the lake shore are as numerous as they were in our
time....

The Stotts’ station is built after the fashion of the native houses of
the district: long, continuous, one-storied "tembes" forming a hollow
square, inside which the cattle and sheep are kept at night....

But what I am longing to describe is the country of Iraku.  I went there
with Stott, you may remember, whilst we stayed waiting for news of poor
John Barnes. I was immensely taken with it then.  But now I have seen it
more in detail I am enthusiastic.  It resembles—I can’t help saying—a
little Abyssinia—from all I have heard and read of Abyssinia, though it
is not at such great altitudes.  Its natives are actually related in
speech and type to those of Southern Abyssinia.  I should estimate the
average height at five thousand feet, with ridges, peaks and craters
touching seven or eight thousand; so that the temperature is almost
perfect—nights always cool, not to say cold. It is a fertile, fruitful
land of ups and downs, richly forested valleys, plenty of streams,
grassy uplands like the Berkshire downs: indeed a very English-looking
country.  Somewhere here, not far from the escarpment and the Happy
Valley, we will have our home, dearest, and here you and Maud shall join
me as soon as ever you can come out.  How I _long_ for that coming.
There are times when, in spite of the Stotts and their cheeriness, I
feel sick with melancholy and loneliness.  The change from that English
life has been too abrupt.  As soon as ever little Maud is weaned and
able to be left with your mother you must pack up and come.  My Agents
in the City, Messrs. Troubridge, who pay you (I hope) your allowance
quarterly, have all my instructions as to your passage, and Maud’s, your
outfit, etc.  Once I can get you two out here I shall settle down
contentedly enough and make a fortune—I doubt not—on which, some day, we
can retire and live happily ever afterwards.

Meantime as I have written very fully, only show this letter to Maud and
say as little as possible about it to Sibyl, lest she repeat my account
of the Happy Valley to that scoundrel, Patterne.  She says she never
sees him now, and she certainly ought not to after the reputation he has
left behind in East Africa; but as likely as not she will resume the
acquaintance, and he is the last sort of person I wish to meet in these
parts....  Mrs. Stott of course sends love to you and the kindest
greetings.  Her enthusiasm for her Creator is unabated, because they
have so far had wonderful good fortune since they blundered into this
haven of rest and beauty in October, 1888.  If one or other of them did
not have once in a way to go down to the coast they would enjoy—she
says—perfect health....

Your loving
       ROGER.




                            *CHAPTER XVIII*

                           *FIVE YEARS LATER*


Roger Brentham has now lived consecutively for five years in the Happy
Valley; or, to be accurate, at Magara, in a natural fortress looking
down on it from the Iraku escarpment.  Much of his work, however, lies
in the plains below, and he has a comfortable rest-house near the
Stotts’ station—but not too near, for Kaya la Balalo[#]—as they have
named it—is now the centre of a considerable native village, a little
too noisy, dusty, and smelly for fastidious nerves and noses.


[#] "The City of God."


In these five years a great transformation has taken place in and around
the Happy Valley.  A land settlement has been come to with the natives
and is duly laid down in a rough survey and in signed documents drawn up
in German and Swahili.  The native villages, plantations, pasture ground
and reserves are clearly defined so that they may be placed outside the
scope of white encroachment; but in coming to this agreement, some
common-sense regard has been had for highly mineralized land not already
inhabited and suitable for profitable exploitation (with a share of the
profits going to the native community) and for the location of European
settlements, farms, mission stations, laboratories and experimental
plantations.  In short, both parties are satisfied.  There is sufficient
security for the investment of much white capital in this region of
undeveloped wealth; and the Negroes are reassured regarding their homes
and future prospects of expansion.  They have been shrewd bargainers and
have had the Stotts as their advocates.  The news of their fair and even
generous treatment has attracted considerable native immigration,
especially from the Nyamwezi countries; Brentham’s Wa-nyamwezi porters
have been useful recruiting agents, and the district is well off for
labour.  The native chiefs administer rough justice as between native
and native.  Brentham and three of his German colleagues, as well as Mr.
Ewart Stott, hold commissions from the German Government as justices of
the peace, and there is a German commandant at a central post in the
Irangi country who presides over a Court of Appeal from their decisions.
But as a rule, these Concessionaires having originally inspired
confidence in von Wissmann’s mind during his great pacification of
German East Africa are left pretty free to administer the area of their
large Concession and to keep order within its limits.  This, with the
cordial co-operation of the native chiefs they find comparatively easy,
and in this the friendship between Roger and the outlying Masai tribes,
who have not forgotten the blood-brotherhood of 1888 has been very
useful.  The Happy Valley has nothing to fear from Masai raids and has
at present no outside enemies.

Lucy and Maud joined Roger in the spring of 1892 and after four years’
happy life in this curiously secluded region—so cut off as it was from
African troubles, from wars between Arabs and Europeans raids of tribe
upon tribe, risings against the Germans, squabbles with British
pioneers—are now preparing to return to England.  Lucy has had two more
children one born in 1893 and the other in 1895.  She is anxious to take
them both home and place them in safety there; at the same time she
hungers for a sight of the older two whom she has not seen for over four
years. She is in fact a prey to that divided allegiance which has so
often marred the happiness of the wives of men engaged in Indian or
African work: a desire to be with their husbands, and yet an anxiety
about the health and bringing-up of their children in a barbaric
environment.  The Stotts consider they have solved this question by
parting with their oldest child and letting their other children run the
African risks and grow up—if they survive—with only an African outlook.
They are true colonists in intention.  But settlers like the Brenthams
always envisage an eventual retreat to the home country and an English
education for their children.

They are assembled on the open ground beyond the garden of their house
in Iraku, to take leave of their German associates in the Concession:
Herr Treuherz Hildebrandt (whose sentimental fore-name is usually
disguised under the initial T) and Dr. Wolfgang Wiese.  Hildebrandt is
the mining engineer who is ascertaining the mineral wealth of the
mountain region bordering on the Happy Valley; Dr. Wiese, besides being
in case of need the physician and surgeon of the little European
community, is a very clever analytical chemist, botanist, zoologist and
horticulturist, one of those all-round men that Germany so often
produced before the war and so often contributed in still earlier days
to the opening up of the British Empire.  He has arrived in haste from
his dwelling a mile distant to bid farewell to the gracious Mrs.
Brentham.  Wiese is spectacled and bearded, a little shy in manner with
strangers, and inclined to melancholy when his thoughts turn to the
young wife who accompanied him to Africa about the time that Lucy and
Maud came out to join husband and brother.  Less fortunate than they,
she had died from an attack of coast fever.  Thereafter he had found
some mitigation of his loneliness in the pleasant home created by Lucy
and Maud, so that he regards them with affection and thinks they must be
the very best type of British women.  As, however, he has work in
progress at his laboratory of crucial importance, his farewells are
prompt and soon concluded.

But his colleague, the mining engineer Hildebrandt, stays longer, being
very loath to part with Maud Brentham.  He is tall, passably handsome,
soldierly, well-knit, a lint-white blond with violet-grey eyes like
Lucy’s.  Though he comes from Saxony he is more of the Friesland type,
in the contrast between his straw-yellow hair (mostly shaved to stubble,
it is true) and his dark-grey eyes.  He has the further attraction to
which many women would succumb in being very musical (out of business
hours).  In those days before gramophones he was a welcome guest for the
music which welled up in his brain and poured from his fingers.  Roger
had managed with infinite difficulty to import and carry up on an
ox-cart a cottage piano of German make, and on this instrument
Hildebrandt would waft his listeners to other scenes—of far away and
long ago—with his waltzes, sonatas, minuets, marches, and songs without
words, sometimes playing by ear with that wonderful musician’s memory;
sometimes, when he took things seriously, from the enormous supply of
printed music which a sympathetic company had allowed him to carry
up-country.

A year after their first meeting he had proposed to Maud, and had
renewed this offer of marriage on two other occasions.  But she had been
firm in her refusal, though she appreciated his good looks and frank
manliness, and almost loved him for his music.  But she declared the
difference in their ages—twelve years—was an insuperable objection;
secondly she did not wish to marry, so that she might always live with
Roger and Lucy and their children.  If they failed her she would make a
career of her own—become a New Woman and agitate for women’s rights.
"On top of all that, nothing would induce me to live in Germany, though
I’ve no doubt you are in the right, and it’s the finest country in the
world.  But I’m so interested in watching English developments.  When we
have finished with Africa and made our pile we’re going to settle at
home and improve our own country."

"Well then, if you’ll marry me, I’ll go and live in England with
you...."

But Maud has remained obdurate.  In spite of this they have settled down
in course of time, and in battling together against the anxieties,
difficulties, and dangers of African colonization, into very good
comrades.  Maud and Roger and even Lucy all speak German to some extent,
and the Germans of the Concession have an even greater facility in
English. Conversation is often a medley of both languages and much
laughter at each other’s mistakes.  Lucy contributes to the common stock
of entertainment very little in the way of talent.  She is naturally
fond of music: sweet melodies, deep harmonies bring the tears into her
eyes; gay tunes make her want to dance; but she is no musician and no
dancer.  Maud has a pleasant contralto voice and is a good accompanist.
Lucy’s water-colour painting has long since been given up as a futility
in this age of universal talent.  But she makes botanical collections
now with some deftness and ability under the instruction of Dr. Wiese,
whom in this direction she really helps.  Yet considering she has borne
four healthy children in six years of marriage no one can ask much from
her in the way of accomplishment in the arts; and by the time she has
attended to her offspring’s needs with the perfunctory help of
Halima—herself saddled with two brown hybrids, bearing extravagant
Portuguese names—mended their clothes and her husband’s, and her own,
and generally directed the housekeeping, it is felt she has done her
duty to the little community.  Nevertheless though she is not
particularly witty, original, or wise, and has no great physical
attraction for any one but her husband, and is prone at times to be
silent with a gentle melancholy, she has an inherent gift for making
people feel at home. She has a capacity for listening unweariedly to the
longest stories, and is a sympathetic confidant to any one in trouble.

So Bergwerksingenieur Hildebrandt said good-bye to her with nearly as
much sentiment as infused his voice and his hand-grip when he took leave
of his liebste Kamerad, "Meess Mowd" (Maud always said that his
pronunciation of her name robbed his courtship of all romance).  He
looks indeed so sad at parting from these two dear Englishwomen that
Maud is nearly tempted to kiss him; only that he might have misconstrued
her motherliness.


The two children in the early morning—it is just after sunrise—are
laughing and crowing with the excitement of the forming _safari_ and the
coming start. The three-year-old boy, Ambrose, is named after his
grandfather; the baby girl has been called Sibyl at her mother’s
request.  In all probability Lucy had never even so much as suspected
that there was more than cousinly affection between her husband and Lady
Silchester: it would have taken something like ocular evidence to make
her doubt Roger’s fidelity.  At first Sibyl had frightened and humbled
her, but during the last year of their association, at Engledene, she
had been coolly kind and had shown something like gratitude for Lucy’s
care of her ugly fretful little boy. Before Lucy had left to rejoin her
husband in East Africa, Sibyl had said: "I expect you’ll have a lot more
children.  If you have another girl, call it by my name.  I should like
to be associated with a child of Roger’s.  Promise?  Very well then: in
return I’ll give an eye to little John and fat Maud whilst you are in
Africa.  Indeed I cannot see why they shouldn’t move over here from
Aldermaston, when your own people get tired of them; and share Clithy’s
nursery.... At any rate come here on visits, and if they quarrel it will
do Clithy a world of good.  His nurses give him too much sense of his
own importance."

So there was at least this pleasant thing for them to look forward to,
even though Lucy’s eyes were wet with tears at leaving Iraku.  Engledene
Lodge as well as Church Farm would be open to them.  Sibyl, more
ambitious than ever of cutting a dash, playing a part in modern history,
rivalling Lady Feenix, revenging herself for snubs by the Brinsley clan,
lived much in London and gave up Engledene to the quiet bringing-up of
her only child.  When she went down there it was to rest and repair her
beauty, to transact humdrum estate business with Maurice Brentham.
Except for the autumn shooting parties she entertained very little at
Engledene.  It was in Scotland and above all in London that she played
the lavish hostess and sought to undermine Cabinets and bring a new
recruit to the Opposition.

She was now thirty-four, and when animated only looked twenty-six.
Rumour had assigned her several love affairs, which out of England—on
the Riviera, at Paris, at Rome—were said to have been carried to the
borders of indiscretion.  It had even been announced that "a marriage
had been arranged and would shortly take place," etc., between Lady
Silchester and Sir Elijah Tooley—but the announcement had been promptly
contradicted, and a month after occurred the first resounding crack in
the Tooley edifice....

It was curious how her personality projected itself across five thousand
miles of land and sea into Equatorial Africa; so that Lucy and perhaps
Roger should both have been thinking about her as they were preparing to
leave their home in this secluded region. Lucy thought of Sibyl
pleasantly as of one she no longer feared because she never desired to
cross her path as a rival, or contest her superiority.  Sibyl would
offer her a temporary home in her home country where her children could
be riotously happy, and where Roger—even—might be tempted to join her
for a few months before resuming his strenuous life as a conqueror of
the wilderness.  Roger had held out this hope to alleviate the sadness
of their approaching separation.

He was to accompany his wife and sister as far as Burungi; after which
he must return to the Iraku Hills to take full advantage of the
dry-season months for great projected developments of the planting and
mining industries.  From Burungi, now quite an important centre of
traffic, whence well-made roads proceed coastwards, with rest-houses
every twenty miles, Lucy and Maud and the precious children would be
escorted to the coast port of their embarkation by the two German
sergeants, whose service Brentham has taken over from the Stotts.  Their
journey might be broken by a few days’ rest at Hangodi in the Nguru
country. Maud would like to see the scene of the tragedy and of Lucy’s
induction into African life.  Lucy would like to pay a visit of
sentiment to John Baines’s grave and to live over again in a sense of
contrite reminiscence her brief experiences as a missionary’s wife. She
wants to put herself back in time to where the outlook seemed hopeless,
and realize the wide horizon of happiness which now seems open before
her.

So—an hour late, with all these last thoughts, musing reflections and
leave-takings—Halima is howling with grief because she must remain
behind—the caravan starts on its first day’s march.  Lucy from delicacy
of constitution is unable to ride much, so she travels in a machila with
her baby.  Maud bestrides a Maskat donkey and hopes when she returns
they will by that time have got horses safely through the tsetse belt,
into interior transport ... "you have so little initiative on a donkey,
it will never do anything unconventional."  Ambrose being thought too
young to ride a donkey is handed over to his special guardian and chum,
a tall Manyamwezi porter who hoists him on to his broad shoulders.  From
this elevation of six feet he surveys the landscape as the _safari_
swings along. Some German friend had given him the previous Christmas a
tin trumpet, and with blasts of this and shouts of glee he hails the
sight of game standing at gaze in the distance.

This would have annoyed any sportsman of the caravan had they been bent
on killing for the pot or the trophy; but his father lets him do this
unrebuked.  He is not intending to transgress his own by-laws about game
preservation, and the caravan in these bountiful days has its food
supply ensured from station to station.  Still Roger reflects musingly
as he rides up hill and down hill through the breadth of the Happy
Valley and up to the low ridge and water-partings which mark its limit
and the commencement of the long descent through Irangi, that in one
respect the glamour of the Happy Valley has already withered under the
practical need for developing its resources.  Though there has been no
deliberate big-game slaughter in hecatombs as on the British side of the
frontier, the Grant’s gazelles, the hartebeests and tsesebes, the
elands, zebra, and impala are never to be seen now grazing near the
road.  They are retreating every year farther into the unprofitable
wastes away from the well-beaten tracks, noisy with the coming and going
of carriers, soldiers, native traders, or ivory hunters. These last,
under some degree of control, are even being encouraged to pursue the
elephants into the recesses of the hills and forests of the north; not
only to bring down as much ivory as possible, to sell, but because the
elephant has met civilization too abruptly.  He has contemptuously
knocked down the laboriously erected telegraph posts, and has snapped
and tangled-up the copper wire.  This in its derelict condition is too
sore a temptation to the native accustomed to regard copper wire as a
decorative article of the highest value ... so many cubits of copper
wire would buy a wife.  So an edict has gone forth which Roger himself
could not protest against, that between Burungi and Kondoa any one,
native or European, may kill as many elephants as he pleases.  The
native herdsmen, again, whom they pass on the road lazily minding the
cattle, sheep and goats, are no longer in the state of Paradisiac nudity
that characterized them on that first journey of Roger and Lucy down the
Happy Valley.  No one has remonstrated with them on their nakedness: a
hint from Dame Fashion has been enough.  The white men and the white
men’s black followers have been clothed, so they too must wear old
uniforms, old coats, old trousers, something in the way of frowsy
coverings of their bronze bodies.

The vulgarization of Africa has begun.  Never again will there be seen
in this region a condition of unspoilt Nature as it first showed itself
to the Brenthams.  But as a set-off Roger draws Lucy’s attention to the
telegraph line in course of re-erection, after the rude elephantine
protests.  It is proceeding to a great German military post, but a
branch will presently be carried to Iraku—almost as soon as she is back
in Berkshire—and _then_ he and she will be in close touch. It will be
possible, at a cost of a few pounds, to telegraph to one another and
receive the answer in a day—two days at most.

It is four years since the Brenthams saw Burungi, for Roger’s journeys,
meantime, have ranged farther and farther afield towards the
mysterious—still mysterious—region between the Happy Valley and the
shores of the Victoria Nyanza.  Even then, when Roger rode there to meet
his wife and Maud on their journey inland—Maud’s first introduction to
Real Africa—the desolate Burungi of 1888 was no longer recognizable,
with its wilderness of thorn bushes and baobabs on which gorged vultures
were perching, its lurking lions and hyenas, as the evening darkened,
its flitting, furtive, thievish Wagogo, the ruined station of the
Stotts, and no other visible sign of habitation. Even four years ago,
though the vultures were still there, it was to feed on the offal of a
well-supplied market-place, the thorn bushes had been burnt for firewood
or cut up for fences, and a corrugated iron hut on the Stotts’ site,
though villainously hot in sunshine, provided shelter and security for
stores.  Now there were brick houses and a number of grass huts on the
Mission enclosure near the river.  There were half-finished Government
buildings in course of erection and many tents for the accommodation of
a staff of military officials and constantly saluting white civilians. A
number of clothed Wagogo, looking singularly mean in their
garments—though without them they were lithe and graceful savages—were,
under the raucous directions of a white engineer-sergeant, laying down a
light Decauville railway.

All these activities had not for the time being made Burungi less ugly,
and Roger hated the sight of the place.  After a long conference with
the two civil-spoken German sergeants, who a year previously had been
truly thankful to exchange the military career for employment under his
Company, he went through the agony of good-bye—an agony he would not
protract by spending the night in this noisy, discomfortable place.  He
compressed his embraces of wife and children—the latter mystified and
yowling with the dim realization of bereavement—his wringing of Maud’s
hands, his directions to telegraph at every opportunity till they got on
board, and hang the cost—into two hours; after which, though only two
more hours of daylight remained, he rode away, back to their camp of the
previous night: knowing that further lingering might end in his deciding
to accompany these two dear women and prattling babes all the way to the
coast and perhaps all the way to England.

And it was essential to their future welfare that he should stay where
he was and not claim a holiday till certain results had been achieved
and certain proofs of easily exploited wealth had been obtained.

But it was a melancholy Roger who, six days afterwards, rode back into
the lovely amphitheatre in the Iraku hills where he had made his home.
His Maskat donkey showed signs of having being hard ridden; his carriers
averred that Master, ordinarily so considerate of their fatigue, so
jolly on the line of march, had spurred them on remorselessly, had
seemed to pass wakeful nights and had eaten his camp meals with poor
appetite.  Roger himself felt a few more partings like this would make
his earthly life unbearable.  Oh that there _were_ some truth in the
silly hymn chorus that the Stotts delighted in making their pupils sing:
"Here we meet to _part no more_, _part_ no more, _part_ no more!"  He
should have been firm with Lucy and bade her stay till he himself was
ready to go.  And yet when _would_ he be ready to go, with Phantom
Fortune always beckoning yet never disclosing the final hoard?

There was something in Lucy’s face which restrained him from insisting
that she should stay.  Dr. Wiese had hinted at a growing anæmia which
should be checked.  Her dominating feeling was a fear that she might
lose the precious children born to her here in the wilderness and be
forgotten by those she had left behind.  He must not take the thing too
tragically.  If Hildebrandt continued to get these satisfactory assays
and could trace the gold-bearing reef a sufficient distance towards the
western limit of the Concession; or if on the other hand he could find
the matrix of the diamonds, and not merely these minute brilliants in
the gravel of the mountain streams, their main doubts and difficulties
would be relieved and he could depart for a holiday at home.

The return to his house was some alleviation of his bereavement.  It was
so associated with the presence of wife and sister and of his babies.
The afternoon sun was behind him; it would soon drop below the blue
mountain wall which was a rampart of protection to the site he had
chosen for his European settlement. How often he and Lucy had stood here
in blue shadow and looked towards the sun-flooded east beyond the shade
of the escarpment, towards the Happy Valley! This was just such a close
to the day as they had loved to witness three hundred days out of the
three hundred and sixty-five of the year.  To the north stretched the
lake of cobalt blue, with its irregular blush-tinted rim of flamingo
hosts.  South-east of the lake beyond lush swamps and green plantations,
were the Umbugwe villages and the Stotts’ large station—little points,
clusters, and pencils of brown and white.  The whitest speck was the
Stotts’ new Chapel.  He had been present at its opening ceremony a month
ago—to gratify Mrs. Stott.  Beyond lake and villages were the gathering
masses of mighty mountains, ending north-eastwards in the snow-tipped
pyramid of Meru—on this clear evening—in the supernatural snowy dome of
Kibô.  What a prospect!  And yet he would willingly exchange for it the
view over southern Berkshire from the down of Farleigh Wallop.

He entered his house.  The presence of Lucy and Maud seemed as if it
must be material, no: merely spiritual.  He looked into their rooms.
They had been considerately tidied before they left, and showed little
sign of packing up and departure.  Lucy was a good house-wife, he
reflected, and she probably judged that in her absence he might want to
entertain guests, colleagues come on business, Government officials.  So
that her room and his sister’s were ready prepared for occupation.  The
nursery was a little more desolate. The toys had been given away to
Halima’s children. If ever Ambrose and Sibyl came back—and how unlikely
that they would!—they would have grown far beyond the love of toys.
Maud had left most of her songs on the top of the piano.  She could get
newer ones in England.  The vases were filled with fresh flowers from
bush and garden.  Halima had put them there, faithful to her mistress’s
directions.

Halima now called him to his tea, on the verandah. The table was laid
with all the care that Lucy was wont to bestow on it.  Andrade the cook
had baked a nice cake and even attempted something resembling a muffin—a
kind of compromise between a muffin and a tea cake, due to a confounding
of Maud’s instructions. Roger’s eyes filled with tears.  Halima,
departing with a brass tray, answered with two loud sobs in her facile
grief.  Yet a few years before she had been ready to abandon her
mistress in distress when she was stranded in Mr. Callaway’s unsavoury
depôt at Unguja.  His eyes followed her portly form magnificently
swathed in red Indian cottons, with tolerant good will.  There was a
good deal of the humbug about all these black people, but it was kindly
humbug.  He was grateful for this comprehension of his sorrow, for this
effort to carry out his wife’s instructions that the comforts and little
elegancies of their home should be continued after her absence.

Then the tame Crowned cranes came below the verandah to be fed with
bread and cake as Maud had encouraged them to do.  His black-and-tan
English terrier, confined for safety in the cook’s quarters during his
absence, had been released and now came tearing up the steps and rushing
along the verandah till it was in contact with his lowered hand,
volleying forth a long succession of eager barks of joy and whimpers of
hysterical distress and relief at Master’s absence and return....

In the evening after dinner Wiese, Hildebrandt and Riemer (Plantation
Manager) came up to pay their respects to the Herr Direktor and give him
an informal report of all that had occurred during his absence. They
tactfully said little about his bereavement, though Hildebrandt heaved
some theatrical sighs at the sight of Maud’s music on the piano.  But
they had much to say in German and English that was interesting and
encouraging.  So they sat up late into the night talking and discussing.
Andrade sent them up an impromptu supper, wine and beer were drunk in
the moderation imposed by their then rarity—owing to transport
difficulties—and when they finally departed at one in the morning, under
the firmament of blazing stars, with lemon-yellow lanterns to light
their path back to their respective quarters, the grass-widower betook
himself to his couch in a more resigned frame of mind.  There would be
great doings, great strokes to hew out fortunes for all of them, within
the next few months.

A fortnight afterwards, by swift runner from Kondoa, came a telegraphic
message despatched from Saadani:


Arrived here safely.  Leave for Unguja to-morrow. God bless you.—LUCY
MAUD.


Thereafter followed long day-rides of inspection, an occasional week’s
absence from home studying possibilities in remote parts of the
Concession, holding conferences with the Stotts, laying cases and
possibilities of special difficulty before the German officer commanding
at Kondoa.  His talks with the Stotts were directed to several ends:
urging the Stotts to get into the confidence of all the native
tribes—Bantu, Hamitic, Nilotic—of the Concession’s area and find out how
far their interests might be subserved by the full exploitation of the
animal, vegetable and mineral wealth of this patch of East Africa.
"Unless we carry the natives with us," he would say, "this enterprise
must eventually fail, wither up; because, boast of the climate as we
may, the hard manual labour cannot be performed by white men: we must
fall back on the native.  Now half the men-natives in these parts are
picturesque to look at, graceful figure and all that; but they shirk
hard work.  They prefer to loll about in the sun or to run after women.
Can’t you put some ambition into ’em?  Teach them something besides
these rotten hymns and prayers that are meaningless to them?"

"But we do," said Mrs. Stott.  "You haven’t looked over our school for
two years, I believe.  You seem to have got hymn-singing on the brain.
Our hymns translated by us are not rubbish and the natives enjoy singing
them...."

"I don’t doubt they do, though I don’t see what use it is.  Neither they
nor the prayers prevent the Almighty from sending the flights of
locusts....  Or rather these appeals and this excessive praise do not
stimulate the Divine power to do _something_ to abate Africa’s myriad
plagues.  It is always poor Man—and most of all, poor _White_ man—who
has to work his brain and body to exhaustion to set right what Nature
perversely sets wrong.  Here am I, trying to abate the grasshopper
plague in our tobacco plantations by encouraging the domestication of
the Crowned crane.  Yet the natives won’t take any interest in this
idea, though the Crowned cranes feed themselves and have charming
manners.  Can’t you push this matter in your schools?  Couldn’t you
preach a sermon on the uses of the Crowned crane?"

On another occasion he put a further difficulty before the Ewart Stotts.
"Look here!  I’m going to take you again into my confidence.  I want you
to find me an assistant, some one of your own kin in Australia who would
come out here at short notice on an agreement for three years—I even
want two men, one of them versed in shorthand and typewriting who could
be my secretary.  I don’t know any one in England who isn’t either a
rotter or a potential rotter, or hasn’t got a job already.  There’s my
brother Geoffrey, but he’s a Commander now in the Navy, getting on fine,
and simply wouldn’t think of chucking the service to come here.  My
other brother is well suited as a land-agent.  I want something
Australian, some one as like you two as possible.  I don’t mind a
moderate amount of religion, as long as it doesn’t waste their time on
week-days, and they can’t be too teetotal for my liking. No
Whisky-drinker need apply."

"Why, I believe we know of the very two, at any rate of the principal
one," said Mrs. Stott: "My nephew Phil Ewart.  I haven’t seen him since
he was a baby, but my brother’s wife writes to me now and again and says
he’s doing very well on a big sheep run in Queensland...."

"Well then, look here: let’s draft a cablegram that I can send off from
the coast.  I’ll guarantee him a year’s salary and, if he turns out
satisfactory, a three years’ agreement—£500 a year.  He can choose any
likely young fellow ... good character ... abstainer ... serve as clerk
... £200 a year commence ... take steamer Australia-Durban, and German
steamer Durban-Saadani, and so on, up-country. If I get ’em here by
November I can give em three months’ trial before I set out for home....
_Must_ take a holiday next year and bring my wife out afterwards.  Don’t
like to leave this business without a Britisher in it to watch my
interests, don’t you know, and advise me how things are going while I am
away."

So they arranged the matter between them.  Then Mrs. Stott said: "I’ve a
funny proposition to make. A week ago I received a letter from Ann
Jamblin that was ... at Hangodi....  Ann Anderson she is now. She saw
Lucy there five weeks ago and was much touched at her calling on them.
Says she took a special fancy to your dear, sweet, pretty children.  Her
own little girl is very ailing.  Well, now she goes on to say old Mrs.
Doland, who was a great supporter of their Mission, has died and only
left the East African Mission £5,000.  For this and other reasons the
Mission thinks of giving up Hangodi, as it is quite an isolated station
now, and all their others are in the British Sphere....  Well, to put it
quite plain, as you’re impatient to be gone—oh, _I_ know by the way
you’re tapping your gaiters—how would it be if your Concession or you or
some one advanced our Mission £150 for out-of-pocket expenses—so as to
move quickly, don’t you know?  And we sent word to Ann and her husband
to join us as soon as they had definite authority to evacuate Hangodi.
The German Government, I believe, are going to buy the station.  If we
got Ann and her husband up here the couple of them would strengthen our
hands mightily and then we could give some of that worldly instruction
you’re so anxious about.  Or make it up in some way of help. Strengthen
the British element here.  For although I don’t hold with your views
about Providence one little bit, and believe the World was made in six
days and am surprised every now and again that you aren’t struck down
for your audacity, not to say blasphemy, yet something tells me you and
we are really working for the same Divine ends...."

Roger said the matter should certainly have his attention.  (Before he
left for England the following Spring Ann and Eb were members of the
Stott Mission, and the Stotts were able to open another station and
school in the Iraku country.)

The months flew by through autumn, winter and spring.  Roger established
a stud farm in the Happy Valley where he could locate a captured dozen
of zebra and interbreed with Maska donkeys ... perhaps a manageable,
large-bodied zebra-mule might solve some of their transport difficulties
in the regions of the tse-tse fly.  He introduced shorthorn cattle from
South Africa to mingle with the native oxen and improve the milk supply.
He imported from Natal six Basuto ponies, two stallions and four mares.
He ordered three safety bicycles—the great new invention or combination
of inventions.  He and his German engineers, reinforced by a clever
Swiss sent out by the German directorate, gave special consideration to
the waterfalls of Iraku, to harness them to turbines and produce
electric light.  This power would feed electric dynamos when the
progress of the railway construction enabled such heavy things to reach
the Happy Valley. They laid out great coffee plantations and
experimented in tea and quinine.  It was hoped the natives might take up
all these cultures in time, on their own account, as they had done that
of cacao on the Gold Coast and in the German Cameroons.

The day for his departure in the early spring came ever nearer and
nearer.  The two Australians arrived, went down with fever, recovered
and eventually proved the right stuff, especially young Philip Ewart.
Mrs. Stott said she would see he did not get into mischief while the
Director was absent in England.  She would also give an eye to the
Brenthams’ house and the doings of Andrade and Halima as caretakers.

There was therefore little cause for anxiety on Roger’s part as he made
his preparations for a six-months’ absence, save the rumoured doings of
a certain Stolzenberg, a mysterious German hunter who, coming from the
British Sphere, had established himself near the north-west escarpment
of Lake Manyara, apparently on the border of the Happy Valley Concession
(Glücklichesthals Konzession).




                             *CHAPTER XIX*

                       *TROUBLE WITH STOLZENBERG*


In those days—to parody a line of Holy Writ—it might be said, "To every
man, a crater or two"; if you were referring to the wilderness which lay
between Kilimanjaro and the southern Rift Valleys, and to the strange
adventurers who in the ’nineties ranged up and down the East African
interior between Baringo on the north and the Happy Valley on the south,
over a region of elevated steppe land, isolated mountains of immense
height, and extinct volcanoes.  Some of these lawless men were
accumulating considerable wealth in ivory, sheep and cattle.  They
wanted fortresses in which to live and store their plunder, or the spoil
of their chase, the elephant tusks, the rhino horns, the lion and
leopard skins, the black and white mantles of the long-haired colobus
monkeys, the ostrich plumes; even the roughly-cured skins of the rosy
flamingoes which were becoming an article of great demand in the plumage
trade.  For this purpose the large and small craters of presumably
extinct volcanoes were ready to hand; as though Nature had anticipated
their wants. Most of these were surrounded on the inside by the nearly
continuous, circular wall of the crater, only broken down at one point
where the lava or nowadays a stream of water (the overflow of a little
crater lake) issued from the crater floor.  Here with piled stones it
was easy to restrict the gap and hold the entrance against any savage
enemy without artillery.  These defences were, of course, prepared
against the Masai and not with any idea of defying a White Government,
whose advent at that time seemed very problematical: at any rate a White
Government that would interfere to protect the natives, to obstruct
elephant killing, or regulate the movements of cattle between a
disease-infected area and one that still possessed uninfected flocks and
herds.

It was to one of these craters—very red in colour—that Roger Brentham
rode up at the end of March, 1897, after three days’ difficult journey
from the south. He halted his little _safari_ of armed porters and his
four Somali gun-men on a level tableland in front of the gap in the
crater walls; a gap cleverly closed by a huge door of yew planks and a
bridge of yew trunks thrown over the issuing brook, with stones piled on
top to a height of twenty feet.  There were obvious indications that the
walls and woodwork were loopholed for gun-fire.  He called several times
loudly in Swahili and German to arouse an answer and rapped on the
cumbrous door.

Presently a smaller door within the great one opened and there emerged a
sullen-looking negro giant, probably a Makua from the south.  [Such
offer themselves for service in Unguja.]  "Unatakáje?" he asked in
Swahili.  "I want to see your Bwana—I do not know his ’native’ name,"
said Brentham, "but just take this ’karata’ to him and he will read my
name; and say I wish to see him.  Meantime I will make a camp here."

The Makua doorkeeper or watchman returned within, and possibly an hour
passed before anything further happened, during which Brentham had his
tent erected, and arranged for his men—they were travelling very
light—to make their sleeping-places around it.

The small door was again reopened and there stepped out a
remarkable-looking man of over six feet, with enormous recurved
moustaches, a sombrero hat, jackboots and a general swashbuckling air
and a visible revolver in the broad belt that held up his breeches.  He
walked slowly towards Roger who advanced to meet him.

"Did you come to see me?" he asked in English.

"I did," said Roger; "that is, if your name is Stolzenberg?"

"It is ... for to-day—at any rate.  Well: here I am.  You come to tell
me ’it is Easter Sunday, and Christ Is Risen,’ like the Russians do?"

"Why, is it Easter Sunday?  Dear me!  I had no idea.  If so, I might
have chosen another time.  Still, as I _am_ here and as you _are_
here—and I fancy you are often absent?—I should be obliged if we could
have a talk, come to an understanding, don’t you know?"  (There was no
answering friendliness in the fierce face that looked into his, the face
of a perfectly ruthless man, eyes with bloodshot whites, wide mouth with
pale flaccid lips, showing strong tobacco-stained teeth, prominent cheek
bones, lowering brows, a massive jaw, and here and there an old duelling
scar.)

"An unnerstanding?" he said sneeringly.  "What about?  _I_ unnerstand
you.  I know who you are, now I see your card.  You are Captain
Brentham.  Once you were Consul ... at ... Unguja.  Then you run away
with missionary’s wife—and—you are ... no more Consul.  You do somesing
shocking, _nicht wahr_?  It is so easy to shock your Gover’ment—and now
von Wissmann—that Morphinsäufer—he gif you a Concession.  An’ I suppose
you come now to say I trespass on your Concession?  Very well then, I
_do_, an’ I don’ care a damn for you or for any Gover’ment you like to
name.  I make this my home six, seven years ago and no one come to turn
me out now, unless they fight me first.

"I haven’t come to turn you out," said Roger. Stolzenberg laughs noisily
and contemptuously.... "It’s not my business to do so.  I have come with
a very small following to make your acquaintance, to find out for myself
what you were like and to see whether it was possible to deal with
you..."  (As he is talking he sees that through the open doorway of the
stronghold there are issuing a large number of armed black men, dressed
like the coast people—perhaps a hundred), "to deal with you as one white
man might deal with another.  But before I can even put our case—our
Concession’s case—before you, you commence by insulting me and making a
lying statement about my wife—and you probably now intend threatening me
by an attack with your Askari[#]—who I see are gathering up behind you."


[#] Soldiers.


"These men," said Stolzenberg, glancing round at them and shouting an
order to them to be seated, "are only there to make sure.  You
Britishers are always up to some trick.  I thought just to show you I
stand no nonsense.  As to what I say ... a-bout Meeses ... Brentham, I
... only ... say ... what your ... own country-men say on coast.  But
let that pass. What is this unnerstanding you propose to me—a
Partnership?  Well, I am open to a bargain.  What is it to be?  What
terms do you offer?"

"I haven’t come here to discuss any such thing.  I came to say this.  As
you ask the question, this extraordinary place—I suppose it is the
crater of a volcano?—does not lie within our limits.  You are not
trespassing on our property.  But for the past nine months or so we have
had many complaints about you or about your men.  You raid the natives,
you take the Masai cattle and apparently drive them into this
stronghold.  You even kidnap the Iraku women...."

"I do _not_ kidnap....  They come here of their own pleasure ... they
are free to go if they like. But they like my men much better than their
own husbands who cannot gif them closs or beads...."

"And finally," continued Roger, almost choking with the effort to speak
in a level voice and not send a fist smashing into the large face that
bends over his so threateningly, "finally, you drove away by force two
of our prospecting parties at the north end of the Lake and..."

"Those men," shouted Stolzenberg ... "they ... they come just to spy out
my defences ... but look here.  You and I are big fools—p’raps I am
bigger fool than you....  I lose my temper first, I say things a-bout a
la-dy which perhaps are not true.... I apologize....  Nutting they say
on the coast is true!  Look at the lies they tell about me!" (a
boisterous laugh).  "They say at Mombasa I am biggest blaggard unhung.
That is—what you say? ex-agger-a-ted? And look at the lies Bri-tish
missionaries tell about my friend, Doctor Peters.  It is that make me so
angry just now.  German Gover’ment belief these lies and send my good
friend away.  And then there is a fine Englishman I know, a nobleman in
your country, a Sir—Sir Wil-low-by Pat-terne.  You would hardly belief
the things they say a-bout him—always be-hind his back...."

"So you know Willowby Patterne," said Roger (greatly interested).

"I haf seen him once or twice," replied Stolzenberg, becoming
suspicious.  "But you do not come here, I sup-pose, to talk about him?
You come to make my acquaintance.  Well: you haf made it.  Now you leaf
me alone and I will leaf you alone.  I ... what you say?  I ’will not
return your call’?  My quarrel with the Masai is not _your_ business.  I
haf—what do we say?  I haf ’vendetta’ against the Masai.  When I first
come out to East Africa on my own business I fit out a _safari_ and
travel to Kenya to buy ivory.  I do no harm to Masai, but they attack my
camp, they kill a young German man with me, my _very great_ friend; they
kill most of my men—and see!  They try to kill me" (pulls up shirt and
shows long scar over ribs on left side), "and they kill my dogs.  Only
when they see Kikuyu coming down in large war party do they leaf off
stabbing and go away with most of my trade goods.  The Kikuyu carry me
up to their village and save my life—I haf always been good friend to
Kikuyu since.—You ask them!  Well now, I get my own back.  Whenever I
see Masai now, I shoot.  I put fear of death into them...."

"This is an interesting bit of biography," said Brentham, "but I thought
those lawless days were gone by.  I haven’t heard the Masai version of
your story.  Perhaps they had some excuse.  At any rate, they were not
the same clan as the Masai round here, friends of mine for years; and
you’ve no right to make war on them.  Outside our concession, that’s not
_my_ affair.  Your Government——"

"Do not say _my_ Gover’ment," roared Stolzenberg. "It is not mine.  I do
not ask for it!  I am my own gover’ment.  I was in these countries
before ever came any German or any British Gover’ment."

"Well then, the Government of this region, the Government that has got
the most right to govern ... I say—No! you _must_ hear me out before I
go—what you may do outside our concession is between you and them.  But
if after this warning you interfere with our people, the people inside
this Concession I am managing, and in which I’m a magistrate, you’ll run
up against _me_, and I shall shoot you at sight like you do the
Masai...."

"All right!  Haf a drink before you go?"

"No, I won’t," said Roger.  And wheeling round on his listening men, he
shouted: "Pigeni kambi. Maneno yamekwisha.  Twende zetu."  Then, so that
his leave-taking might lose none of its abruptness, he strode to where
his Maskat donkey was tethered, released it, jumped into the saddle, and
rode slowly away till he was out of sight, below the space of level
ground. There he waited till his men had rejoined him with their light
loads.  The first to arrive were the four Somali gun-men.  They had long
since learnt to speak Swahili and they said, laughing, in relief that
the palaver had ended without recourse to firearms: "Ulimshinda na
maneno, Bwana mkubwa, ulimshinda, yule Mdachi.  Walakini, ukiondoka,
akasema watu wake. ’Simchuki, yule Mwingrezi.  Mwanaume.’"[#]


[#] "You conquered him with words, Great Master, you defeated him, that
German.  But when you left he said to his people: ’I don’t hate him,
that Englishman.  He is a man.’"


Roger rode away musing from this encounter, or rather rode and walked
over an exceedingly rough country with scarcely a native path or sign of
habitation, a country depopulated doubtless by former wars and raids of
tribe on tribe: for it was well watered.

The tall clumps of Euphorbias gave the red landscape a sinister look,
for their articulated branches looked like a conjunction of gigantic
scorpions, bodies meeting together and stinging tails erected in the
air; the fleshy-leaved aloes of deep bottle-green sent up blood-red
stalks of blood-red tubular flowers; on the higher ground there were
many rust-red or red-lead-coloured "red-hot pokers"—what the initiated
call Kniphofias.  The country somehow suggested blood and iron; for the
old and faded Euphorbias might have been cut out of rusty metal, and
iron ore was so obviously permeating the rocks.

He mused on the violence to which Africa always seemed a prey.  The
reign of law in East Africa in both the British and German spheres
seemed to be preceded by the reign of the outlaws.  He knew enough as a
traveller and an ex-official, and as a resident in the lands bordering
on the British sphere, to be aware that just then the British hinterland
was a prey to German and British, Austrian, American, South African and
even Goanese-Indian buccaneers, who obeyed no laws or injunctions of the
feeble Chartered Company or of the weak young Protectorate Government
which followed.

Some of these outlaws had come to East Africa with a voluble Austrian
crank and two Russian anarchists who tried to found an impossible Utopia
in South Galaland, the Colony of Freiheit—the main principle of which
was that the oppressed white people of Central and Eastern Europe were
to be free to do as they liked here and take all they wanted, while the
natives of East Africa were to be their serfs.  The natives of that part
of East Africa—the proud Galas—who did not even know a _good_ white man
when they saw him, or allow him to live—soon settled the hash of the
Freiheiters, many of whom (there were three hundred in all) died of
malarial fever.  The remnant that escaped across the Tana became a
scourge of inner East Africa; and a faint flavour of their
unscrupulousness still remains.  At the time of Roger’s musing ride back
from Stolzenberg’s red Crater-fortress to his home at Magara on the
Iraku escarpment there were about a dozen of these pioneers of
civilization still remaining in activity.  A few had made moderate
competencies and had returned to Central Europe to abandon Communism in
favour of State and Church, and to make respectable marriages with
high-born damsels.  The greater devils, the altogether
branded-with-the-brand-of-Cain that remained would one by one either
enter some company’s service, not too scrupulous as to antecedents, or
die bloody and terrible deaths.  Meantime, they shot enormous numbers of
elephants, made themselves chiefs of nomad tribes, started harems of
twenty or thirty bought or snatched damsels (who thought the whole
episode rather a lark), accumulated great herds of cattle, sheep, goats
and Masai donkeys.  Later, as things became more defined, frontiers more
precise, laws more clearly formulated and regulations—my own for
example—more vexatious, they turned themselves into smugglers and
professional lawbreakers. They conveyed out of British into German
territory forbidden ivory of female elephants; they brought from the
German sphere cattle that might be affected with some germ disease and
were therefore forbidden to enter British territory; they disposed of
rhinoceros horns that were in excess of the miserly allowance granted to
big-game slaughterers; they carried on a brisk slave trade by enrolling
hundreds of labourers in German East Africa and conveying them hundred
of miles into British East Africa and disposing of them at a premium to
the many associations and enterprises requiring the black man’s strong
arm and patient labour; and they redressed the balance by raiding
unnoticed districts under the British flag and transporting the
inhabitants to German East Africa to be enrolled as labourers under
military discipline.

A few of them were unmitigated scoundrels, two or three had a maniac’s
blood-lust for killing beautiful creatures of little use when killed; or
delighted in inflicting cruelties on the natives "to show their power."
Many a blameless Government or Company’s official proceeding up-country
has been surprised at the hatred which flamed out at his approach, he
guiltless of any unkindness or injustice.  One or other of these
masterless men were the cause of the treacherous attack on his caravan,
or the loss of his life in an ambush which had to be expensively avenged
by a military expedition.

Yet if there was the left wing of his Legion of the Damned which drew up
at the foot of the gallows, there was the right wing, headed by Sir
Willowby Patterne, which remained in touch with good society and even
dined, coming and going, at the Administrator’s table or with Sir Bennet
Molyneux at home.  Nothing to their actual discredit was proved against
them.  And East Africa was five thousand miles from Mayfair.

Patterne, whose first shooting expedition of 1890-91 had resulted in
quite a nice little profit from the ivory it obtained, took up
definitely an East African career. He had at first tried to get himself
commissioned for the interior of the Chartered Company’s territory. But
its directors were well-intentioned, shrewd men and his home reputation
barred the way.  Yet he could not very well—being a Baronet of
far-reaching connexions—be denied access to this loosely governed
region, whither he came every two or three years. After his first
journey and the court cases it aroused at Unguja, he was not such a fool
as to continue his savage treatment of his carriers and servants or he
would soon have been unable to recruit a caravan.  On the contrary he
paid well and gave a liberal food allowance, and within limits his
enforcement of a rather Prussian discipline exacted the respect of the
Negro, who appreciates arbitrary power if it is not accompanied by
meanness in money matters.  His reckless slaughter of game made him even
popular with his expeditions because it gave the men a surfeit of meat,
and trophies to turn into amulets.

Patterne at last became tolerated as an inevitable concomitant of the
march of civilization, and acquired citizenship in British East Africa
by staking out a vague "concession" near the north-west corner of the
Kilimanjaro slopes on the edge of the German frontier. It was in this
way and in this neighbourhood that he got to know Adolf Stolzenberg,
whom he helped in his raids against the Masai; less by direct
participation than by furnishing him with arms and ammunition and by
disposing of his captured cattle.

"What do you know about this curious personage, Stolzenberg?" asked
Roger of his two friends, Hildebrandt and Wiese, when he had returned to
Magara from his visit to the Red Crater.

"Only what we hear people say," replied Hildebrandt. "Some say he is
just a Sous African German who do some bad sing in Sous Africa and com
up here ten, twelf year ago to join the Denhardts.  Ozzers say he com
from Germany long before, wiz Dr. Fischer, and zat he was natural son of
our old Emperor Wilhelm One.  First, Emperor put him in army, and
several times pay his debts, and zen when he kill anozzer officer in
duel he pack him off to Africa and say, ’Never let me see your face
again.’  But p’raps zat is only story invented by ze man himself.
Somtimes I sink our Government use him in som way.  I dare say your
Government do ze same by zis ozzer man you hate so, Vill-o-bee Patterne.
What a fonny name! Your English names are somtimes more fonny zan ours!"


The German Commandant, consulted by Roger (who in April, 1897, was on
his way to the coast after having made everything safe behind him), was
rather noncommittal about Stolzenberg.  The conversation was in German,
punctuated with phrases of Swahili on the part of the Commandant, who
was proud of having acquired a smattering of this African tongue.  He
was rather non-committal about the denizen of the Red Crater.  He was a
"derben Kerl" ... "Simba yule, kabisa," the terror of the Masai.  He
kept the Masai occupied in that quarter while the Germans tackled the
Wa-hehe on the south.  He must be given some latitude ... the Commandant
would see he did not impinge on the Concession ... perhaps he might be
persuaded to take command of a large irregular force against the
Wa-hehe....

"’_Divide et impera_,’ sehen Sie?  Em glas Rheinwein, nicht so?  Und
Soda?  Ein lang-trinken in der Englische phrase...."


It seemed incongruous that this scene—the rather stiff German major, in
strict, white, military uniform and an encumbering sword, a black
sentry, not far away, walking with a plap, plap, plap of his bare feet
up and down the prescribed number of paces; a plainly furnished,
white-washed room in a square fort with pretentious crenellations along
its high white walls; the oleograph portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II; the
camp table, the Rhine wine in long-necked bottles, the enamelled iron
tumblers and the soda siphons; and the click of a typewriter in the next
apartment—should come up before his mental vision as he sat with Lucy
and Maud and the Schräder partners on a balcony in the Strand, waiting
for Queen Victoria to pass to her Jubilee thanksgiving at St. Paul’s!
Why should he think of Adolf Stolzenberg then?

He was but part of the African nightmare which he would fain roll up and
forget.  A few weeks of England had put Africa’s nose out of joint.  To
work for the redemption of a tiny portion of German Africa when such
gigantic developments of British Africa were dawning in the imagination
of far-seeing men, or when an evolution still more important was taking
place in his own land, in the Far East, in America....

What was it that brought back the Red Crater to his mind, the sinister
face and powerful figure of Stolzenberg; or the German Commandant in the
fort at Kondoa?  Whose was the thin, aquiline, insolent face with its
riotous smile that held his gaze across the narrow Strand, the face of a
tall man in ultra-fashionable cut of clothes, standing up amid a bower
of Gaiety girls with four or five extra-smart young City
men—stock-brokers, no doubt, Company promoters, or the solicitors of
Company promoters—?  It was Willowby Patterne he had been staring at for
several minutes; and Sir Willowby was flicking a greeting to him with
the manicured hand which had drawn the trigger on so many lovely beasts,
or had lifted the Kiboko with such a cunning twist to lay its lash on
the naked skin of some defaulting native porter....

He had to concentrate his thoughts before he replied to the greeting
with a grave bow—had to remember that he had once played semi-host to
this man at a Scotch shooting lodge; hated him mostly on hearsay
unproved evidence, and chiefly on apprehension as to future maleficence,
rather than on positive wrongs to himself.

Then he gave his consideration once more to the passing pageant.

Thrum ... thrum ... thrum ... thrum ... in between the bursts of
military music went the steady marching of the Imperial troops.  There
was the pick of the regiments of the British line; there were samples of
Indian infantry—bearded Sikhs, grinning Gurkhas, handsome
Panjabis—Surely that was young Pearsall-Smith at the head of one of
these detachments?  He had heard of his distinguishing himself in the
Nyasaland wars against the Arabs—and he winced to think he had no part
in this ceremonial, he could point of late to no service to the Crown
and Empire—was it his fault?  If he had gone to Norway or to South
America, could he have achieved anything that might have brought him
into the procession of to-day? What splendid Indian cavalry.  That
Indian prince leading them had once given him some tiger shooting when
he was a young A.D.C. to Sir Griffith Gaunt. Ah!  Here was Africa in the
procession—Hausas from Nigeria, Sudanese from Egypt; these bronzed,
well-seated, rather insolent-looking white men were mounted police from
the Cape, from Bechuanaland, from Natal.

These gaudy zouave uniforms and Christy minstrels’ faces were a
contingent from the West Indian regiments that had figured in so many
West African wars. And now came well-set-up Turkish police from Cyprus,
well-drilled Chinese police from Hong Kong; even solemn-looking Dyaks
from Borneo, who were believed to have given up head-hunting in favour
of constabulary work at the Bornean ports.

And carriages containing permanent officials—he thought he recognized
Sir Bennet Molyneux in one, possibly attached to the person of some
foreign prince, some German or Russian Grand Duke.  And Ministers of
State saluted by the happy crowd with good-humoured cheers and a few
serio-comic groans.  That one who aroused such an outburst of cheering
was the great Choselwhit, Josiah Choselwhit, Secretary of State for the
Colonies, in Windsor uniform with the customary eyeglass.  His hosts,
the Schräders, joined lustily in the hurrahs, as did the City men
opposite; Choselwhit was supposed to have brought grist to the City
mills and to be the mainstay of the British Empire in which Germans as
well as British made such millions of money....

And ... and ... and ... At last, after many preliminary princes and
princesses, Queen Victoria herself; a little figure swathed in much
black clothing but with filmy white around the rosy face and
yellow-white hair....  She progressed very slowly—so it seemed to
Roger—past their windows.  The Schräder brothers positively brayed their
international loyalty, so that their voices were even heard by her above
the deafening clamour.  She turned her somewhat haughty profile and
clear blue eyes towards their balcony with its flamboyant draperies and
symbols, as if she searched for some face she knew to whom she might
address a smile of acknowledgment; but finding none, turned her gaze to
the Gaiety girls and the shouting young men who had invited Patterne as
their guest.  To these pretty actresses, showing real emotion, she did
address a royal smile, which caused one of them to give way to real
tears.  Then Roger found himself gazing at the back of her bonnet with
its white ostrich plume, illogically disappointed that there had been no
smile for him, he who would have served her so gladly had her ministers
let him.


The Queen-ant of an unusually large ant-hill on this little ball of rock
and water having gone on her way to thank the Master Spirit of the
Universe for a few additional years of life and power to do good—-the
while no doubt that Master Spirit, despite Its Unlimited Intelligence,
was vexed and preoccupied at the way things were going in the
constellation of Orion—a million times larger than the whole solar
system; or at the accelerated currents of star-dust in the Milky Way, or
the slow progress towards forming a cluster of sixty giant worlds made
by the Nebula of Andromeda: the Schräder partners were dispensing very
elegant hospitality in the room behind the two windows they had taken at
an Illustrated Newspaper Office in the Strand. They were essentially
practical men, being German, with a Jewish quarter-strain and a French
education. They could have entertained Roger and his wife and sister; a
great Singer—who could not "place" Roger and therefore was cold to him;
a great Actress rather past her prime; a great Essayist whose mental
scope was limited by Oxford and the Athenæum; and various other guests
of intellectuality and distinction: they could have entertained their
friends and acquaintance in the Piccadilly house of one of them and the
Grosvenor Gardens house of another; or they could have thrown open their
splendid City offices for the same purpose; but the view of the whole
procession and especially of the Queen would not have been so near, so
concentrated, as from windows on the first floor of the Strand at its
narrowest.  So in fixing up their plans two months beforehand it was
here they were playing the lavish host.

The collation was of the most exquisite; the wines of the finest quality
imparting the most insidious intoxication, so that you thought you were
only being your natural self, though you put your elbows on the table
and wondered that you had never hitherto been ranked as a great wit.
The celebrated singer began to forget her secret grievance that she was
not being entertained by Royalty and had not ridden in one of those
carriages.  She consoled herself by the assurance she would be at the
Naval Review and the Garden Party and probably most of her fellow-guests
would not.  And then after all, if you did stoop to City entertainers,
you could not do much better than the Schräders, unless it were the
Rothschilds.  Baron Schräder was the head of the family, and he had been
made a Baron by Napoleon III, which was much more chic than a German
title given by a petty German court.  The Schräders for several
generations had been dilettanti, outside business; musicians of a
certain talent; shrewd judges of cinque-cento art; abstruse
ornithologists; members of the Zoological Society’s Council; of a Jockey
Club here and of a Cercle d’Escrime there.  But to sustain this life of
many facets they required unlimited money; and Roger Brentham just now
was promising to become one of their most remarkable money-spinners.
Mr. Eugene Schräder was therefore, after one or two elegant fillings and
sippings over Royal names, proposing ever so informally his good health,
and that of his charming and devoted wife, and ... and ... he stammered
a little over the characterization of Maud, who was the least genial
member of the party and had shown herself a little blunt with the
actress past her prime, who was now descending to whispered confidences
of marital ill-treatment.  "But our friend, Captain Brentham ... may I
without indiscretion say he should, if he had all that was due to him,
have been in the procession to-day as an actor rather than a spectator?
Though our party would have lost one of its most interesting guests...."
(The Essayist, whose nose has gone very red with the champagne and the
Château Yquem, here looks at Roger for the first time with focussed
eyes: is it possible that he could have done anything worth notice,
outside Oxford and the Athenæum?)  "Our friend, Captain Brentham, first
led the way of Imperial expansion in East Africa; he is now endeavouring
to show us Germans how the wealth of our East African possessions should
be developed and brought into the world’s markets.  Germany was not too
proud to enlist the services of any man—or woman" (he bowed to the
Actress and Singer) of ability.  To be a German was in some ways to be a
world-citizen.  If they searched the glorious records of the British
Empire they would find them studded with German names....  The British
Empire of to-day stood grandly open to German enterprise; they would
find in return that the German Empire overseas was ready to afford every
opportunity to British colonizing and administrative genius.  So there
would be in German circles no grudging to Captain Brentham of a full
meed of praise—from his firm, at any rate—for the truly remarkable
discoveries he had made....

"You mustn’t forget the credit due to Hildebrandt and Wiese and several
other fellows," interpolated Brentham, desirous of doing the right
thing—

"Just so—of your German colleagues: that is as it should be.  But that
brings me to the climax I was leading up to, rather wordily I fear.
Dear friends (his voice a little tremulous with honest emotion) let us
drink a final toast: _To Anglo-German Co-operation_; to the great
Alliance of our two Nations founded on affinity of race and language, a
common love of truth, a common devotion to Science, and I might add
almost—a common dynasty" ... (rest lost in clapping).

The toast, however, was drunk somewhat sparingly and absent-mindedly.
The Singer, Madame Violante (her married name was Violet Mackintosh),
felt dangerously near hiccups (it was the plovers’ eggs, she told
herself) and she might have to sing to-night! How could she have been so
mad?  The Actress felt she had said rather too much about her husband to
a total stranger, a middle-aged woman who now looked a mere parson’s
wife.

The Essayist had grown rather sulky because his hosts in this wholly
unnecessary speechifying had made no reference to his own contribution
to Anglo-German friendship, his _Place of Heine among Modern Poets_ and
his _Synthesis of Lessing’s Dramas_.

Then the party broke up, and the kindly Schräders suggested, as any form
of conveyance was totally unprocurable, they should have the hardihood
(the gentlemen protecting the ladies) to walk back through the common
People—whom the Police had described as uncommon good-natured and just a
bit merry—to the Green Park and witness the dear Queen’s return to
Buckingham Palace.


But when the Jubilee fiss-fass-fuss had abated and before they went to
Homburg and Aix, the partners sent for Roger and spoke to him with
business-like generosity.  He and his staff had made discoveries of
value that might be almost called astounding.  The capital of the
Company would possibly be increased ten-fold—large subscriptions in
Germany—exciting immense interest among the best people on this side.
His original syndicate shares had become equivalent to 50,000 shares in
the enlarged Company, and as they stood at a pound, why he would be
worth, if he realized, £50,000.  But, of course, he would not do such a
thing till promises had been turned into performances—Meantime, they
were prepared to raise his salary to £3,000 a year—he would probably
have to entertain German officials considerably—and conclude an
agreement for ten years....  "But if I have to entertain largely?" he
queried, not above making as good a bargain as possible....  "My dear
Captain Brentham!  Don’t let _that_ stand between us....  There shall be
an entertainment allowance of five hundred a year.  And we hope that
that will induce you to take your charming lady back with you, and your
sister, Miss Brentham.  I assure you the encomiums passed on those
ladies by our German friends out there have contributed not a little
to...."

"All this is very kind of you.  But I don’t want to think I alone am
being rewarded for discoveries which in some cases were entirely due
to...."

"You will find when you go back your German colleagues have not been
forgotten in the all-round increase of salaries....  And now; go and
take a _good_ holiday and get well braced up before your return in the
autumn...."


Roger took them at their word.  He and Lucy, after revelling in the joys
of parenthood in Berkshire, went off to spend a month with Sibyl at Glen
Sporran. Lucy had long since grown used to Sibyl, so the prospect of the
visit caused her no perturbation.  She followed Maud’s advice as to
suitability of outfit and the number of evening frocks and tea-gowns.
She was the only member of the party who did not bicycle or play bridge.
Sibyl boasted of doing sixty miles a day without turning a hair; but the
Rev. Stacy Bream nearly killed himself trying to emulate her feats of
coasting downhill and pedalling uphill.

The Honble. Vicky Masham was there as of yore—a little longer in the
tooth (she had got used to Sibyl’s nickname by this time, and had
forgiven it as Sibyl had helped her to pay her bridge debts)—.  She hurt
her ankle badly in a bicycle accident and had to lie up. Lucy, the only
one at home, sat with her, did fancy work and burbled gently about her
African experiences. The Honble. Victoria grew quite interested,
regretted that Mrs. Brentham, born as she had been born, without the
purple, and her husband not having pursued a British career, could not
be brought to the dear Queen’s notice....  The Queen took the _greatest
interest_ in Africa....

Lucy, of course, after a few lessons abandoned any attempt to play
bridge (people in 1897 debated whether bicycling, bridge, the Bible, or
herbaceous borders had brought the greatest happiness to Britain: we, in
after life, see it was the bicycle).  She was scared by the subterranean
forces it aroused and lit up in the angry eyes around her, the fortunes
that were involved in the plunge of No Trumps, the awful penalties
attendant on a revoke, the fate that hung on a finesse.  So she wisely
declined to play and talked—or rather listened—to the one who cut out;
or if several tables were made up, she dispensed drinks and sweets and a
sandwich supper.  The Rev. Stacy Bream, vaguely nettled by her rival
Christianity, glanced at her once, remembered years ago she had been
Sibyl’s butt, and inquired of Sibyl "who her people were, what her
father was?"

"One of the best farmers in Berkshire," said Sibyl. "Mine is—or was—for
I had to buy him up—one of the worst....  What was _your_ father, by the
bye? It never occurred to me to ask you before...."

The Rev. Stacy’s father had really been a very pushing Agent for a firm
of Decorators and Wall-paper designers: so he replied with a sigh: "A
great, _great_ traveller, dear lady; a man who loved Colour and Design
better than his immortal soul, I fear....  It’s to you to cut...."

But Sibyl had not confined her Highland house-party to these worn-out
fribbles.  Bream had his uses. He would be there to assoil a guest who
might get shot in the shooting, and so perhaps save the unpleasantness
of an inquest; and his stories of people on the fringe of Society were
the equivalent and the accompaniment in midnight chat—just before you
took your bedroom candle—of pâté-de-foie sandwiches and cherry brandy.
Vicky Masham kept you right with Queen Victoria; Lucy was a reminder to
her not to make a fool of herself with Roger ... perhaps also there was
a little gratitude in her hard nature for the good a year of Lucy’s
society had wrought in her little son’s health and disposition.  But she
wanted—more than ever at thirty-six—to be a political woman, to make a
difference in the world, hand her name down in history, change or shape
history in fact.  It had occurred to her, as it did to fifty other
mature, handsome, well-placed women of ambition, to marry Cecil Rhodes;
but the Jacobzoon Raid and still more the eager rivalry of other ladies,
perfectly shameless in their frontal attacks on the Colossus, soon
thwarted any such idea ... reduced it indeed, to such a ridiculous
impossibility that it was only confided to her locked diary.  She had
fortunately withdrawn her half-promise from Sir Elijah Tooley at the
very first hint that there was a crack in his reservoir of wealth.
Otherwise—with a couple of millions of his money ... and he could have
had his own suite of apartments, and she would have stopped him waxing
his moustaches ... she might have over-turned her world....  Then there
was Count Balanoff, the Russian Ambassador, a widower....

"You know," she said to Roger in one of her many smoking-room
tête-à-tête confidences—"he is ’richissime,’ and really rather decent,
though he does dye his hair....  Gold mines in Siberia, turquoise mines
in the Caucasus....  He seemed quite to _want_ to marry me, at one
time....  Vicky Masham thinks it was the Queen who interposed.  If he’d
asked me and I’d accepted I should have made myself in no time the most
talked-about woman in Europe.  I’d have negotiated an alliance with
Russia—always an idea of mine—and have paid the Kaiser out for his
Kruger telegram—Why is it, Roger, there isn’t a _rush_ to marry me? I’ve
ten thousand a year for life; I’m only thirty-six, which nowadays is
equivalent to twenty-six; I’ve a splendid constitution, my hair’s my own
and so are my teeth, my figure is perfect....  I might be an artist’s
model for the ’tout ensemble.’ ... And yet ... (a pause for smoking).

"And it isn’t as though the re-marriage of titled women was ’mal vu’ at
Court any longer.... There’s Lady Landolphia Birchall.  She’s going to
be married again in the autumn; this time to a ’booky’—for he really is
nothing more, though he takes bets with the Prince.  And she’s turned
fifty.  But the Queen doesn’t seem to mind...."


But to return to the theme from which this digression started.  Sibyl
had asked four great Imperialists down to Glen Sporran to make Roger’s
acquaintance: the Honble. Darcy Freebooter, Percy Bracket—Editor of the
_Sentinel_—the Right Honble. J. Applebody Bland, and Albert Greystock,
grandson of old Lord Bewdly.  She would have liked to have captured Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, but he had perversely gone to the United States, a
region which lay outside Sibyl’s calculations, since we could neither
annex it nor protect it. She had even tried to include the great
Choselwhit in the company, the mysterious idol before whom and whose
non-committal eyeglass so much imperialistic incense was then burnt.
But he had answered coldly, in an undistinguished handwriting, that he
regretted a previous engagement.

"I don’t mind admitting, it’s _rather_ a snub," she said to her quite
indifferent cousin, "and it _vexes_ me because he is the coming man.  It
is _he_ we must look to, to lead the Unionist, the Imperial Party; not
those effete Brinsleys with their antiquated love of Free Trade and the
Church of England....  I’m very much ’in’ just now with Laura Sawbridge
... you know, that clever woman-writer and traveller.  She says she can
turn Chocho _round her little finger_.  It was _he_ who sent her out to
... (rest whispered). Well, you see what _that_ means?  Chocho is lying
low, but he means to get even with old Kruger and paint the Transvaal
red...."


Whether anything much, except distrust and disgust, resulted from
bringing Roger Brentham within the same four walls, into the same
shooting parties, bridge contests and bicycling excursions as these
distinguished Imperialists, it is hardly worth inquiring.  Imperialism
is dead, and I, as an old Imperialist, am moribund, and most of the
people mentioned are no longer of this world.  Probably Roger thought
Darcy Freebooter what all collateral younger sons of his stock had been
for three centuries: it was described by his surname. Percy Bracket, he
defined mentally as quite ignorant of the Empire he unceasingly boomed
(not without a practical purpose, for he expected most company promoters
to give him a block of paid-up shares or "let him in on the ground floor
").  The Rt. Honble. Applebody Bland reminded Roger of Mr. Quale in
_Bleak House_, whose mission it was to be enthusiastic about everybody
else’s mission ... and recalled to Lucy, by the jets of saliva which
accompanied his easily provoked eloquence, her special African horror,
the Spitting Cobra.  And Albert Greystock was too good for this world.
He believed any one who advocated enlarging the British Empire was a
pure-souled missionary of civilization, incapable of a base greed for
gain or other interested motive.  He also believed that once a backward
or savage country had been painted red on the map there was nothing more
to be done or said. There it was: saved, happy, and gratefully
contented.

These people all said in turn "it was _monstrous_"—a man who could in
six years accomplish such encouraging results in a part of Africa
unfortunately for the time being under Germany _must_ be brought back to
British Administration.  _Choselwhit_ must be seen, _Wiltshire_
button-holed, the _Rothschilds_ nudged, and _Rhodes_ got round....

Roger, however, was not going to risk the substance for the shadow or be
disloyal in the slightest degree to the generous Schräders.  He would
buckle-to, make his pile, bank it; and _then_, perhaps, weigh in,
scatter the chaff and garner the grains of Imperialism.  And of one
thing he was jolly well sure—thinking back on his faithful Somalis, his
cheery Wanyamwezi, on the well-mannered, manly Masai, the graceful
Iraku, and the obedient Wambugwe: he would see that the Black men and
Brown men reaped full advantage for the White man’s intrusion into their
domain.  They should receive compensation for disturbance and be brought
into partnership, not only of labour and effort, but of profit.




                              *CHAPTER XX*

                             *THE BOER WAR*


     _From Lady Silchester to her cousin, Captain Roger Brentham._


Stellenbosch,
       Cape Colony,
              _March_ 25, 1900.

DEAR ROGER—

Your letter from Magara of last December reached me in London just as I
was leaving with Landolphia Birchall (she kept her former name when she
married the Booky ... and _quite right, too_—you _never_ know how a
second or third marriage is going to turn out, and at any moment may
want your old name back).  We came out here to see something of the war
at close quarters and to set up a hospital and a convalescent home for
the sick and wounded officers and men.

I cannot tell you how _proud_ and _pleased_ I was you had _done the
right thing_.  People—especially that horror, Willowby Patterne ... my
dear, he is going _bald as an egg_, with a _terribly_ pink neck, all due
to some mistake in a hair-restorer, he says, but I say it is a vicious
life—people were saying odious things about you the last year or two for
developing German East Africa instead of one of our own colonies.  But I
knew—and always said—your heart was in the right place and that _once_
you saw old England was in a tight place you would come to her
assistance.  There is nothing like one’s own country, after all, is
there?—"_My_ country, right or wrong!"—one of the few ex-cabinet
ministers who is running straight said last December at a meeting I got
up at Reading.  Some rude man in the audience called out, "But why don’t
you set it _right_?  _Then_ we should know where we are."  But you must
expect such retorts from people who know nothing of foreign policy.

I wonder how you got away?  Lucy and Maud, I suppose, you have left
behind.  The Kaiser seems rather friendly to us, they all say, and is
going to be pacified with Samoa and more pieces of West Africa. So I
suppose your concession will be all right, whilst you are away, and the
Germans won’t do anything unkind to poor Lucy and Maud.  Or have they
returned to England?  It is France who is showing her teeth, not
Germany!  Chocho has very rightly told her "to mend her manners."  She
is a _pig_ ... she can’t forgive our taking Egypt and turning back
Marchand at Fashoda.

Even Spain has seized the opportunity to get her own back.  It seems
Lord Wiltshire called her a decaying nation during the war with the
United States, and she has been saying through her press after each
British defeat: "Who’s the decaying nation _now_?"  I must say she had
some cause!  Never were we more bitterly disappointed in our
Generals—before Lord Roberts came out: They started off—some of the dear
old trots, with Crimean whiskers, if you’ll believe me—as pleased as
Punch; and their silly young A.D.C.’s got the porters at Waterloo
station to stick labels on their luggage "To Pretoria," "To
Bloomfontain" (Is that how it’s spelt?).  And, of course, the only
result of this boastfulness was that as soon as the old footlers got out
there they fell into ambushes and lost their way and their men, and were
deceived by guides, and the soldiers quite lost heart and got taken
prisoners.

England in December!  I shall _never_ forget it!  I couldn’t sleep for
_nights_ and _nights_, and Vicky Masham told me the Queen’s health
received such a shock that she will never be quite the same again....

Of course, now we can breathe once more.  As you are on the spot and I
dare say in the thick of it all, I need not tell you how things have
gone since Bobs and K. of K. came out.

Well, of course, with all this going on in South Africa you couldn’t
expect any loyal Englishwoman who wasn’t positively tied down by home
duties to remain at home.  So I sent Clithy to Eton—he’s nearly thirteen
now—and kept on his governess to mother him when he comes from school,
and also confided him to the general care of Maurice, whom he likes.  By
the bye, I’ve pensioned off old Flower now, or at least got rid of him
with a premium, and Maurice is full Agent, and I’ve advised Maurice to
take on as an assistant Harden, the County cricketer, your wife’s
brother-in-law!  Well.  Having done all this and girded up my loins, so
to speak, I made interest with old General de Gobyns at the War
Office—such an old darling—he served with Wellington, I believe—and came
out here with Landolphia Birchall, to supervise hospitals and give a
general eye to the sick and wounded, read to them, write letters home
for them, change their bandages, if it isn’t too complicated—and so on.
It was partly the thought that you were out here that decided me to
come.  Don’t forget if you are wounded or ill to let me know and I will
try to come to you or get you put into one of my hospitals.  That
_would_ be jolly!

Landolphia is a funny old party!  She must be quite fifty.  She was so
ill crossing the Bay of Biscay. Owing to the disgraceful amount of room
the staff officers took up on the steamer she and I were jammed together
into one cabin.  Where our maids were put, _I_ don’t know—in the
stoke-hole I think.  But we scarcely saw them all the voyage and when we
landed Sophie gave me notice at once, only she can’t get a passage home
so she has had to let it stand over till I choose to return.  Of course,
under the circumstances, Landolphia could keep nothing back from me—she
was _so_ sea-sick; as she said, that she felt herself naked, face to
face with her Maker.  So everything had to be explained—her secrets of
make-up, her sachets of peau d’espagne, her dress improvers and peculiar
stays and adjusted shoes.  I suppose (though I laughed inwardly till I
_ached_, she looked so droll when she was taken to pieces) I must have
been good to her in her dire affliction, for she’s clung to me ever
since, and says we are sisters without a secret between us.  After all,
with all these infirmities and "adjustments" she was a plucky old thing
ever to come out.  Now she thinks it an awful lark—

By the bye, she protests with tears in her eyes that her third husband
is _not_ a booky, he’s a _trainer_, which, it appears, is a vastly
superior calling.  She also says she oughtn’t to be judged so harshly
over her marriages.  The second husband, Captain Birchall, only lived
with her for three months and then broke his neck in a point-to-point
steeplechase.  She lived twenty years with Augustus Gellibrand, and she
really only married her present old man—Dawkins—because she got into
such a tangle over her racing debts and he put them straight....

                     *      *      *      *      *

Do let me know if and when this gigantic letter reaches you!

Your devoted
       SIBYL.


As will be seen later, this frank outpouring did not come into Roger’s
hands for five or six months. Fortunately Sibyl had also sent him
several picture postcards with photos of herself and Lady Landolphia
dressed in nurses’ costume, or a kind of hybrid costume between a nurse
and a nun.  These reached him at his Agents’ in Durban.  So he wrote to
her from that place and was rather pleased to think she was in the same
sub-continent as himself.  It diminished slightly the acute form of
home-sickness from which he suffered after first landing in Natal.

Once more he asked himself if he had done the right thing in
volunteering for the South African War. His Agents at Durban, being
German and Dutch, were at most coldly polite and there seemed to be no
rush on the part of the authorities to enlist his services.  In order to
have two trusty servants who would take care of his baggage and perhaps
follow him in campaigning—they would make most admirable scouts—he had
brought with him to Durban two of his Somali gun-carriers.  After
landing with them at Durban and reporting himself to the military
head-quarters as a former captain in the Indian Army, he had the
deuce-and-all of a bother to get food and lodging for these wretched
Somalis, who were at once classed by we ignorant Natalians as "just
ordinary niggers" ... though why "just ordinary niggers" should be so
ill-treated, he could not understand.  No hotel would lodge or feed them
except in a kind of pigsty with hog-wash for food, where the kitchen
Kafirs abode. They might not go into a shop and buy food, or rather they
might go in but no one would serve them.  After dark they must have a
"pass."  They very narrowly escaped jail and the whip and disappearance
for ever from his ken by defending themselves with all a Muslim’s pride
when cuffed and pushed and flouted.

Roger very nearly—for that reason and for the mosquito-preserves of
Durban then called "hotels"—turned tail and re-embarked for German East
Africa; but fortunately there came along a Colonel who had not served
under Wellington or even seen the Crimea, but was no older than
Roger—42—and had known him in London.

"You’re just the type of man we want, with your knowledge of the bush
and of niggers...."

"No, don’t call them that; it—it—riles me after the years I have worked
with them...."

"Well, Negroes, the bonny Bantu, the blameless Ethiopians, if you
will....  And you ought to be a master-hand at bush-fighting.  We’re
going to get up a sort of mounted infantry, don’t you know.  You’re just
the man to be given a small command.  You need not tell me you can’t
ride, can’t get every ounce out of your mount, ’cos I know better; or
that you can’t manage horses so that those entrusted to your men don’t
die in three weeks.  Didn’t you once tell me you bred Basuto ponies in
G.E.A.?  Well, I’m here, there, and elsewhere, buying Basuto ponies.
Just stay here and get your uniform and equipment—here, give this card
to our Supply department—and then report to General Buller.  I’m writing
him fully about you.... Oh yes....  And as to your nigs.  I mean your
two high-bred Fuzzie-wuzzies.  Of course, we don’t employ Negro soldiers
... ’gainst the rules.  But we engage thousands as batmen,
transport-riders, grooms, and everything else.  I’ll fix it up somehow
that you take your two darkies with you.  They seem to know what I’m
sayin’.  What jolly teeth.  They look hefty men and a dam’ sight
handsomer than some of the Johnnies you’ll see on the Rand, when we’ve
got Oom Paul on the run..."


So in course of time, Roger, first brevet-Major for gallantry in action,
then a full Major—if there is such a simple rank no longer qualified
with adjectives (but I know after his campaigns in the Transvaal he was
always styled "Major" Brentham, till he was made a Colonel)—found his
way (always attended by Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, his Somali batmen) into
the eastern Transvaal at the period when President Kruger and the other
members of his Government were leaving Pretoria for the Portuguese
frontier.

In the month of August he took part in a concentration of British forces
against two Boer commandos in the north-east Transvaal.  This resulted
in a technical victory for the British, but whilst the tide of battle
rolled away northwards to seize Pietersburg, the Boers were left in
possession of the site of the first skirmish.  And in a sudden hush
after great clamour Roger realized that he was lying in the shade of
some bushes near a little _spruit_ of water, shot through the thigh and
quite incapable of sitting up.  The bullet or bullets had gone clean
through the fleshy part of the right thigh and grazed the knee of the
left leg. Happily they had not broken the thigh bone or cut the great
artery.  The Somalis, who had a magical faculty of turning up when most
wanted, had come in handy as renderers of first aid, had stopped the
hæmorrhage. They now squatted on the ground beside their fainting
master, fanned his sweating face, gave him water to drink and
occasionally sprinkled his chest and forehead with water to ward off the
deadly faintness....

A Boer Colonel came riding by, scanning closely the scene of the
struggle.  He claimed the unconscious Roger as his prisoner—out of
pity—and whistled up carriers and a stretcher to bear him to the nearest
dressing-station.

Here he was attended to by one of the numerous German doctors who had
volunteered for service with the Boer armies.



        _From Major Roger Brentham, D.S.O., to Lady Silchester._


British Hospital,
       Unguja,
              _Novr._ 27, 1900.

DEAREST SIBYL,—

A steamer coming from the south to-day brought me your letter of last
March!  I had got several of your postcards showing yourself and Lady
Landolphia in nurses’ uniform and with dreadful smiles of glittering
teeth, and knew of course—heard, I mean—what you were doing for our men
out in South Africa. The letter was sent on by my Agents; I expect it
got hung up in the military censorship, and I must say I don’t blame
them!  Your unconscious criticisms of our generalship were pretty
pungent.  I wonder I got it at all.  But better late than never!  After
I have read it a third time I shall burn it because there is one
classical tag I never forget: _Littera scripta manet_.

I see by the London papers of September you are not only back in
England—or rather Scotland—but entertaining as of yore at Glen Sporran.
And playing with the same old toys!  How indefatigable you are in your
pursuit of power!  How unwearied by the social routine, which would
drive me into exile or into murder.  I should end by killing the poor
old _fantoches_—Vicky Long-i’-the-Tooth, Stacy Bream, and the others—I
forget their names—the Right Honble. gentleman who spat like a
cobra—only it was very kindly saliva, not at all venomous—and that moral
enthusiast over the Empire—Albert Something.  I see by the same paper he
is now Lord Bewdly and has been uttering some beautiful sentiments over
the results expected from the Boer War....  You were Stellenbosched, and
with reason, because your hospitals and convalescent homes were there (I
see, by the bye, that Willowby Patterne, who came an awful cropper at
Driefontein and generally misconducted himself, was also Stellenbosched
by K. of K.  I hope you did not foregather with him?) ... Well, as I was
saying, you were Stellenbosched and saw little of the horrors of War.
But I did, and I used often to wish that Albert person could have been
with me and seen the burning of the homesteads, the cutting down of the
fruit-trees, the fugitive women and little children, the Boer boys of
eleven and twelve dressed up for war like their fathers and elder
brothers and fighting for their homes. I saw one of these boys—tousled
yellow hair, nice grey eyes—in a buckskin suit much too big for him,
laid out to die by the road-side, just after we had burnt his father’s
home.  I don’t suppose one of our chaps really set out to kill him.  But
there it was; he had been shot through the lungs and was gasping out his
life, blood pouring out of his mouth at each gasp. And yet he tried to
smile and said something in Dutch about his father being away....  Upon
my word I should have liked to get the Kaiser, old Kruger, —— and ——[#]
all strung up together on the site of that farm.  For they are the four
men who together made this most unnecessary war.  I know what lots of
our Tommies said when they heard Kimberley was relieved!


[#] I shrink from perpetuating all Roger’s indiscretions and impulsive
statements.—H.H.J.


As for me, I was laid out soon after with two bullets through my thigh.
But for Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, my two Somalis; and equally but for a
humane Boer (Colonel van Rensselaer), I should certainly have died. As
it was, the hæmorrhage was stopped and a German doctor at the field
hospital nursed me through a bad attack of blood-poisoning.  I shall
never, of course, be quite the same man again; but I still feel as
though there were a lot of push in me.  Soon after my admission to the
hospital at Lydenburg, the Boers evacuated the place and in course of
time I was transported to Durban and invalided out of the army with the
rank of Major.  I had already got a D.S.O., so _I_ can’t complain.  I
would fight any day for England against England’s enemies, but—however,
no more grousing. Let’s hope a new order of things is going to set in.
I certainly should like to cut my D.S.O. into three and give two equal
bits to Ali and Anshuro.  You’ve no idea what those Somali boys were in
the matter of devotion, cheerfulness, astuteness!  And yet they only
served me for the ordinary coast wages; though of course I’m going to
give them both a handsome donation when their time is up.

Well: here I am at a hospital once more.  I must rest here and get my
leg quite sound before I start for up-country.  I have been here for a
month, in telegraphic communication with Lucy and Maud, imploring them
not to come down to the coast to meet me. Lucy, I fear, is far from
strong; and Maud is simply indispensable to the carrying on of the work
up there. She has shown herself as good as a man.  The two Australians I
put there have done their best, but they don’t get on at all well with
the Germans.  Their education has been very poor—I mean in
book-learning—they are rattling good in settlers’ lore—and, of course,
they utterly refuse to understand German and openly gibe at it.  Their
chief recommendation is that they are absolutely honest....

I lie here chafing and intensely anxious for my worst wound to heal.  I
am told I ought to be thankful to have made such a wonderful recovery.
But I feel a month of Lucy’s care for me and the bracing air of Iraku
would set me up altogether; and my mere presence at Magara put an end to
all these misunderstandings and bitternesses.

The Schräders were rather aghast at my bolt for South Africa last year;
but stood it on the whole very well.  Of course, I insisted on being
reduced to a third of my pay whilst I was absent.  I retained just
enough salary to keep Lucy and Maud going, and maintain the
household....

The whole German attitude over this war has been a curious one, and so
have been its refractions on their attitude towards me.  I hear that
after my departure for the war a strong move was got up to oust me from
the Managership.  Now that I have returned wounded and a Major and a
D.S.O. (that was given me the other day, for capturing Colonel Boshaert
and three hundred men and a thousand cattle near Lydenburg—tell you all
about it one day) they can’t say enough in my favour.  I am almost
threatened with a triumphal procession home....  Engine from Tanga
wreathed with palm fronds, etc.  Fortunately the train will take me half
the way back, and for the rest I can be carried in a Machila.

But there is little doubt that the mass of the Germans out here thought
we were going to be gravelled by the Boers and that Germania would step
into the shoes of Britannia.  Undoubtedly the Kaiser for the past six
years has been fishing in troubled waters, trying to connect up German
South-West Africa with Boer territory, and planning to make Germany the
dominant power in South Africa; or, at any rate, the honest broker
between Boer and Briton....

Why the Dutch and the British should be as oil and water in South Africa
and elsewhere, I _can’t_ think. But they are.  The Dutchman in Africa
and Europe is just a rather finer built, better-looking Englishman or
Scotchman; but in language, mentality and above all in a curiously hard
attitude towards the Negro, he is Teutonic.  The whole set of South
Africa is towards Germany....  That is why Rhodes lost his head....

Your affectionate
       ROGER.

P.S.  See you next year or year after, as soon as ever I have got
everything going here as it was before the war, and it is safe to come
away.  I must go on with this until I can retire with a competency.




                             *CHAPTER XXI*

                    *THE MORALS OF THE HAPPY VALLEY*


"I am so glad, so _truly_ glad you are almost your old self again," said
Mrs. Stott, one brilliant morning in the spring of 1901, to Major
Brentham, who had been four months back at his home in Iraku. He did
indeed look as if he had in a measure recovered his good looks and
energy, though the right leg was still stiff and much riding or walking
brought on pain.

"It emboldens me to embark on a very disagreeable subject which I have
been saving up to discuss with you.  We cannot evade it much longer;
so—if you have the patience—?"

"I am always patient with you, Mrs. Stott.  There are few people I
respect more...."

"Thank you.  Then I shall take up an hour or more of your time, if you
are not very busy.  But how is Lucy?"

"Lucy is not well; anæmic, Dr. Wiese says.  I should send her home, only
she refuses to go without me and I can’t leave till next year.  Dr.
Wiese does not insist on her going before then.  He is trying a new
tonic which seems to be blood-making; it ought to be, because—though I
do not tell Lucy—it is made of blood—one of these new German inventions.
Wiese says if we would only do like the Masai and the Iraku: tap the
veins of our cattle and drink the hot blood—"

"Ugh! don’t let’s talk about it; it makes me sick. I’m almost a
vegetarian, you know.  Couldn’t we go into your study?  It is delicious
here on the verandah, but I don’t want to be overheard."

"Certainly: come this way."

"What _wonderful_ petunias, yours are!  I never saw such glowing
colours.  Your whole garden is a joy to the eye and a credit to the
Concession...."

"You’re _right_.  But the credit lies with Riemer, the plantation
manager; he gives it an eye.  The Germans are wonderful horticulturists.
I don’t think we sufficiently appreciate that fact at home.  They are as
good as the Dutch.  Now then, here we are in my sanctum—rather untidy, I
fear....  Take this chair..."

"No, it is too reclining.  I _do_ like an upright straight-backed chair
when I want to speak out.  My daughters say I’m like a character in one
of Dickens’s books, who could never loll.  They’re wonderful readers and
remember everything they’ve read...."

"Well now, what’s the trouble?"

"It’s—it’s—this—horrid—_sexual_ question I’ve come about.  You know what
Ann Anderson is—I prefer to call her Ann Jamblin—I don’t like the two
’An’s’ together.  Ann has a wonderful power for good, an energy in
righteousness, and is as nearly sinless as any woman can be.  But she’s
also got _such_ an insight into other people’s sinfulness that she
spends much of her time denouncing their wrong-doing—too much, I think.
I tell her she’s out here to convert the blacks, and for the time being
had better leave the whites alone.  But she pays no heed to me—says her
mission is to all men.  She simply won’t let the Germans alone.  We had
terrible rows sometimes when you were away, though your sister did what
she could to smooth things over.  I admit some of them are utterly
wicked.  There is that monster Stolzenberg—whom the Masai call ’The
Terror’—_Olduria_—. After he came to the Lake with his Ruga-ruga last
October and shot all the flamingoes...."

"WHAT?" roared Roger, leaping to his feet, and then wincing...  "I never
heard this before...!"

"No?  Well: sit down.  You ought to rest your leg.  Lucy didn’t want you
to know.  She thought it would upset you so—And indeed, it was a
shocking pity....  But you’d soon have noticed how few there are
left—even from here on a clear day....  I understand Stolzenberg sent a
huge consignment of their plumage to a firm he trades with in
Marseilles.  And he has been going about to other lakes doing the same.
But I must stick to the point....  Where was I? Oh, yes! ... Ann, who
lives in our old station at Mwada, was awfully upset because she had
become so fond of these birds, besides being infuriated at Stolzenberg’s
Ruga-ruga occasionally carrying off women. So she wrote him a letter
saying that if he showed himself in the Concession again she would take
a gun to him herself.  She solemnly cursed him and called down Divine
punishment on his head.  Unfortunately—for I think the whole thing was
_most_ unwise—she paid a Masai who came along to trade to deliver the
letter at Stolz’s boma.  The watchman at the gate made him come in and
give the letter himself, and Stolz having read it had the man’s left
hand chopped off, tied it to his right, and said that was the answer to
the English Missionaries and that was how he’d treat any other
messengers sent to him....  The poor wretch arrived at Mwada a week
afterwards nearly dead with loss of blood....  Of course, the Masai have
again sworn vengeance against this monster: but what can they do? But
that is not our worst trouble.  Before you went, and whilst you were
away, Ann took up the sex question.  You know how set she was on the
elevation of the native women?  You used to laugh about her corps of
Amazons, her ’Big-geru.’  She hadn’t been long with us before she began
to interest herself in the young women of Iraku....  Those of the
Wambugwe are, I must confess, _hopeless_ at present; I mean as regards
chastity.  Poor things!  They are corrupted and degraded from childhood.
But there is something superior—something of another race in the Iraku
and Fiome.  You said once they were partly descended from some Gala
immigration of long ago?...

"Well, Ann, who is untirable, started a class of these Iraku young women
before she had been six months in the Happy Valley.  The chiefs—I dare
say you remember speaking to some of them? ... _quite_ approved and sent
their young daughters.  She taught them cooking and laundry work, plain
sewing, reading and writing.  And now she finds, after they have been a
year or two at our schools, they go off and live with white men....!"

_Roger_: "I dare say they do, and have a much better time with them than
with their own men.  But what white men?  German, I suppose?..."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Ah, _there_ you touch my greatest sorrow.  Yes.  Every
German I know on this concession keeps a native woman, mostly from our
classes.  But I fear—I fear—my nephew Phil and the clerk Stallibrass as
well—my two Australian boys—are not much more moral.  Their relations
with the native women won’t bear investigation.  That is not all ... and
I have no right to be here as an accuser when I can’t answer for my own
son, Edgar....  You remember you offered in 1897 to take him home with
you, and have him sent to an English school or college for a year or
two?  I wish ... I wish ... we had consented.  It was so good of you.
But we thought at the time that if children can grow up into God-fearing
men and women in Australia without leaving the back-blocks or the bush,
why not here, where the climate is good?  Then there was the question of
the cost...."

_Roger_: "I suppose he has got all his education from you and his
father?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "Yes, indeed.  The main thing, besides religion, was to
teach our children to read and write and do simple accounts.  All they
wanted besides was to read the books we ordered out....  I’m sure you
can’t say we have been indifferent to literature?"

_Roger_: "No—not of a certain kind ... but all of it, from what I have
seen, is rather old-fashioned and goody-goody...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "I don’t agree.  However, I won’t stop to argue about it.
It matters little, since Edgar from the age of twelve or thirteen has
cared very little for reading.  His passion is _sport_.  And to think
how I ran down big-game shooting, when it was not vitally necessary for
our supplies!  Of course, James is a good shot and a clever hunter, and
Edgar, after he was twelve, used to go out with him.  He killed an
elephant to his own gun when he was only fifteen, and the tusks fetched
as much as £60!  He _was_ proud.  Now his one idea is to be away
shooting ... and trifling with these Iraku women.  Oh!" (crying a
little). "_Can’t_ you see how it _silences_ me?  Ann talks about cutting
off a member that offends and says I should expel my own son from the
Mission for loose living.... I can’t do that, and besides there’s
nothing proved.... But I can’t very well join her in her crusade against
... she _will_ use such plain words ... against fornication and unclean
living.  I suppose we shall have to send Edgar away ... back to
Australia ... And then I fear much for his future.  Thank goodness! He’s
a total abstainer, so far....  Ought we to invite some young woman to
come out here for the mission, in the hope that he might marry her and
settle down?"

_Roger_: "Wouldn’t be a bad idea, if you could insure her taking his
fancy.  I haven’t seen Master Edgar for months or taken much notice of
him since he came to man’s estate.  Struck me, he was growing up a
nice-looking lad...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Indeed he is!  It’s his good looks that are his snare....
The native women run after him so...."

_Roger_: "Does he work for us or for the Mission?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "He is his father’s assistant in the Carpentering school;
but he’s too much given to larking with the boys, who look upon him as a
kind of hero. Of course, he speaks their language almost as if it came
natural to him.  His real bent is for Natural History ... that’s the
only excuse for his sport.  We sell the collections he makes to the
Germans.  One of your mining engineers has taught him photography. He
takes wonderful pictures of wild life.  We posted some home to the
_Graphic_, and with the money they paid, Edgar sent to Unguja and bought
himself a snap-shot camera....  Am I keeping you from your work?"

_Roger_: "You are: but we don’t often meet nowadays for a talk.  Let’s
thrash this matter out. Well?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "Well, I was going on to say, with all this Edgar’s mind
is turning away from religion.  We have hard work to get him to attend
our services... He even shocked his father the other day by saying he
was sick of the Bible....  I say, ’even,’ because ever since my dear
James has been getting up these industrial schools you were so keen on,
he has become less and less spiritually minded, more and more interested
in the material things of this world.  He only _pretends_ to care for
the Second Coming of Christ ... just to please me.  He is much more
interested in his new turning lathe" ... (dabs her eyes and blows her
nose).  "His prayers have become very trite.  If it wasn’t for my
daughters...."

_Roger_: "Let me see: you have two daughters out here—Pretty girls....
They must be growing up...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "Yes.  Carrie’s nearly nineteen; and Lulu is sixteen.  We
called her ’Luisa,’ not from the English name, but because ’Luisa’ means
’darkness’ in Kagulu, and when she was born she had dark hair and dark
eyes ... she’s fairer now....  And the way, then, seemed dark before
us....  I was very ill at the time...."

_Roger_: "And then the eldest of all is at home, I mean in England....?"

Mrs. Stott: "Yes.  Rosamund, named after me. She’s a school teacher in
Ireland, and practically a stranger to us.  That’s one of the sorrows of
our life out here.  Not that we haven’t many blessings to
counter-balance it—I’m sure the way we’ve kept our health in the Happy
Valley—But we have either to send our children away to England or
Australia, or bring them up here, with many disadvantages, it would be a
pity to bring Rosamund away from a career where she is doing very
well...."

_Roger_: "Quite so.  Well then, we have only to deal with Carrie as a
possible wife to one of our young men...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "As a matter of fact, Riemer proposed to her a few months
ago.  But Carrie is very particular; and besides, she wouldn’t marry a
German...."

_Roger_: "What nonsense!  In what way are they inferior to Englishmen or
Australians?  I’m sure Riemer..."

_Mrs. Stott_ (tightening her lips): "Not to be thought of.  Riemer is an
avowed atheist..."

_Roger_: "Oh, of course, if religion is to come in the way...."

_Mrs. Stott_: "It isn’t only religion, there are other things.  No.
Don’t let my daughters come under discussion.  Why couldn’t the Germans
here send home for nice German girls to come out and marry them, or get
married when they next went on leave...?"

_Roger_: "Why not, indeed?  I’ll talk to them. Much better they should
do so.  But then, what’ll happen by and by is what _you_ don’t want to
happen. The Germans will marry white women, have large families and
gradually push out the Negroes and turn this into a White Man’s
country—unless the climate and the germ diseases forbid....  I’m not
sure myself that I don’t favour a mixture of races and that the
Americans for example are not better suited to America because of their
strong underlying element of Indian blood—I suppose you would not like
it if the Germans married their concubines?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "As an Australian I am prejudiced against the mixture of
the races..."

_Roger_: "Well, but Dame Nature isn’t, in her inconsequent way.  First
she prompts the original human ancestors—your Adam and Eve—to segregate
and separate and differentiate into sub-species, almost. Then she seems
sorry for it, and does all she can to bring them together again, prompts
the White man to travel all over the world and mix his blood freely with
that of the other races.  She has been redeeming the Negro from his
original blackness and apishness by sending white immigrants into Africa
for thousands of years—Egyptians, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs,
Indians; Portuguese, Dutch, French, English; to say nothing of all the
Mediterranean peoples who pressed into Africa in prehistoric days.  They
have all mingled with the Negro in their time and rehumanized him.  You
own to a _penchant_ for the Iraku people.  Why?  Even for the Masai.
Why do you really prefer them to the out-and-out Negro type, like the
Kindiga and Wambugwe?  Because they have a strain of ancient white blood
in their veins.  Same thing with the Swahili.  We like them because of
the Arab intermixture.  And yet we talk and write a lot of rubbish about
disliking the half-caste between a European and a Negro—By the bye,
since we are talking on this subject, did I or did I not see a
half-caste child in the compound of Schnitzler, that mining engineer who
is such a friend of Edgar’s?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "You did, at least Schnitzler’s native woman has had a
child by him—two years ago.  And if you looked all through the
settlement you could find three other half-caste infants....  They make
no secret of it...."

_Roger_: "Why _should_ they?  If they must form these unions, it is
better they should be sanctified by the production of children.  I must
say it redeems the whole thing in my eyes; the Germans don’t ignore
their half-caste children, but have them properly brought up. It is
better than what you call ’sinning in secret’ and blushing at—or
repudiating the consequences.... This _maddening_ question of sexual
irregularities, which now seems to clog the progress of all European
Colonies, and to fill up the press of the United States and of
England—are they always writing about it in Australia?"

_Mrs. Stott_: "Strange to say, we never get any Australian papers.  I
don’t know whether Phil does either....  I seem to belong so very much
more to England or to north Ireland, where all my relations live...."

_Roger_: "... I often wish the Almighty or Nature or Chance—or whatever
it was that developed us out of lifeless matter—had not tried this
clever trick of the two sexes—I suppose it began a hundred million years
ago, in the union of two entirely different microbes.  I wish we had
been allowed to go on increasing by fissure, by budding.  Certainly
among the world-problems of to-day it is the most difficult to solve.  I
sometimes feel irritated against Christianity for the fuss it makes
about Chastity.  But I imagine it arose from the tremendous revulsion
that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago
against an excessive sexual licence: just in those very countries where
the purest doctrines of self-restraint were afterwards preached.  The
Christian ideal certainly seems the most likely to promote a good type
of human being, but it is very hard to live up to.... Yet what texts you
could find—in favour of Chastity—you missionaries—_if_ you only realized
the history of the Negro and did not go merely to the Old and New
Testament for your pegs to hang a sermon on. The Negro is in his present
inferior position because he has weakened his mental energy by
extravagant sexual indulgence—and limited his numbers.  Do you find the
Happy Valley any less depraved than Nguru or Ugogo?"

Mrs. Stott: "I should _think not_.  A little worse, if possible!  I
assure you, Major Brentham, when we first arrived from Australia I had
_no conception_ there could _exist_ such _depravity, such_ vices.  They
were referred to here and there in the Bible.  But I did not know what
the references meant...."

_Roger_: "Well: there you are.  _That_ is a justification for your being
here, as in other parts of Africa.... If you and we can only give the
Negro _something else to think of_.  He is like our labouring class at
home.  It is the only pleasure he knows of.  Give him education,
ambition, sports, remunerative work, an interest, even, in better food,
in better houses, pictures, music, theatres..."  (Mrs. Stott shudders.)
"Well: there you are, making a face at the theatre.  You won’t distract
the Negro—or the European—from indulging sexual desires by prayers and
hymns and the reading of ancient scriptures: _that’s_ certain.  I know
we differ there, and you must be already worn out with this lengthy
conversation.  As you’ve stayed so long, stay a little longer and have
lunch with us?  Lucy was only saying this morning she never sees you
nowadays. You can go and have a talk to her, while I glance through
these reports.  See, by the bye, they give your donkey a feed, and put
it safely in the stable.  The other day one of ours disappeared.  Of
course, they said it was a leopard——"


At luncheon.  The dining-room at Magara House is a fair-sized apartment,
with walls of well-smoothed cement surface of pinkish tone, due to red
ochre being mixed with the cement.  On the walls are hung a few clever
pastel studies done by a talented German horticulturist who has an eye
for colour and design; there are trophies of shields and spears; there
is a dado of native matting; and a smooth floor surface of red _chunam_
plaster, made by Indian masons from the coast. In a pleasant bay which
looks on to the front verandah a magnificent lion’s skin lies between
the window-seats....

A Swahili butler and footman clothed in long white _kansus_, with white
"open-work" skull-caps, and black, gold-embroidered _visibao_,[#] are
serving the luncheon, cooked admirably by the still surviving husband of
Halima, the Goanese Andrade.  The meal consists of chicken broth,
flavoured with grated coco-nut and red chillies; curried prawns (out of
tins); kid cutlets and chip potatoes; Mango "fool"; and a _macédoine de
fruits_—fresh pineapple, bananas, sliced papaw, and oranges.  [A little
Rhine wine flavoured the fruit-salad and was served at table with
Seltzer water.]  Then, in the alcove with the lion skin [the door-window
opens on to the verandah with the petunia beds below in carmine and
purple blaze] the servants place Turkish coffee and cigarettes.  Mrs.
Stott only drinks Seltzer water and declines a cigarette; but thoroughly
enjoys her lunch and congratulates Lucy on the flower-decorations of the
table....


[#] Sleeveless waistcoats.


"It’s Hamisi, our butler, that deserves your praise. I get so easily
tired in these days that I seldom do the flowers as I used.  I make up
for it by doing all the mending that Maud will let me have and writing
all the letters home.  John and Maudie expect a full account of our
doings every month....  And dear sister Maud that is here, is always
busy over our accounts and Roger’s business correspondence and her
poultry farming.  You know whilst Roger was in South Africa she almost
took his place!"

"Oh, as to that," says Maud, who has a strong sense of justice, "you
must all admit Hildebrandt and Dr. Wiese both played up.  I shall
_never_ forget how loyal they were to Roger ... they might have been
Englishmen ... and that, too, at a time when other Germans out here were
looking askance at us, and that horrible Stolzenberg was threatening to
raid the Concession and seize the mines..."

"By the bye," says Roger, "you never told me, either of you, about the
Flamingo outrage.  There are many things I could forgive, but not that.
It was one of my great pleasures out here, going to see the Stotts and
watching the flamingoes on the lake shore.  If I’d been here at the time
I should certainly have followed up the brute and shot him..."

"We didn’t tell you because we wanted you to get well, and feared you
might do something violent before your leg was healed."

"Well, now that I know, I shall certainly lodge a strong complaint with
the German Commandant at Kondoa...."

"Ann Anderson has solemnly cursed him for his cruelty," said Mrs. Stott.
"She said so in the letter she sent him by the poor Masai whose hand he
chopped off.  I think that, by the bye, is better worth taking up with
the authorities than the flamingo massacre. I’m afraid you won’t find
many of the Germans sympathize with you there, though I must admit they
are a great loss to the scenery.  But Ann said in the letter: ’If man
doesn’t punish you, God will.’"

"Of course," said Roger, "it is a scandal the way the Germans tolerate
this monster, just because, like Patterne—I suppose _he_ hasn’t turned
up again?..."

"Don’t know."

"... Just because he lives on the outskirts of civilization in no man’s
land.  I shall try a ride on one of the Basuto ponies next week, go
first of all and see your old station of Mwada, interview Ann, remind
her of the parable of the Mote and the Beam, ask her to go slow ... with
these denunciations of moral frailty; and get some idea of the damage
done to the flamingoes.  I expect my complaints may draw down on me
counter remonstrances from the Germans.  I heard a growl the other day
from a Herr Inspektor of Native schools that you taught no German"
(addressing Mrs. Stott), "only Swahili and a little English.  What could
you do in that respect?  I should not like them to have any excuse for
interference with you...."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Stott, her face paling at the very thought, "after all
the _time, labour, money_—much of it _your_ money—that we’ve put into
Mission work in the Happy Valley.  Oh, _why_ wasn’t it taken over by the
English?  ... I think it would _break my heart_ to leave it and begin
our work over again.  We’ve got so fond of the people ..."

"Don’t be down-hearted," said Roger, "I shall always stand up for them
as long as I’m here, and I have no intention of going—except for a
holiday—for ever so long....  _What a strange noise_...?!..."

A prolonged, distant rumble, like the sound a big avalanche makes in the
Alps: and before they could speculate on its meaning, the ground
trembled under their feet, the two-storied house seemed to sway this way
and that, and then settle itself with a jarring thud. Fine dust fell
from the ceiling; trophies of shields and spears came clattering down,
the glass and china on the table tinkled, the finger-bowls giving forth
a prolonged musical note.  Outside, after a moment’s hush, cocks crowed,
hens whooped, geese raised grating screams, peacocks honked and yelled,
turkeys gobbled and crowned cranes threw back their golden-crested heads
and uttered their resounding call.

"An earth tremor," said Roger in an even voice, for Lucy looked like
fainting.  "A _very small_ earthquake; _nothing_ to be alarmed at,
though it turns one a bit sick inside.  They don’t often happen.  This
is only the second I’ve experienced in ten years.  You see, we live on
the border of a volcanic region.  Here, _Lucy_! Pull yourself together.
Have a nip of brandy?...

"Better?  Let’s get out into the air, on the verandah, and see if any
damage has been done....  I hope it won’t affect our mining
galleries...."


But no reports of damage from the earthquake came to hand.  The natives
said that these shocks were sometimes followed by outbursts of gases,
smoke, steam from one or other of the craters in the north.


A week after Mrs. Stott’s visit, Roger, accompanied by Maud to look
after him and see he did not overstrain himself, rode down into the
Happy Valley to Mwada station.  Here they interviewed the redoubtable
Ann, now a square-built grey-haired matron of middle age and practically
no sexual charm.  She had black eyes, glowering under black eyebrows, a
sallow complexion, and a thin-lipped mouth, with down-turned corners,
like the mouth of Queen Victoria when she was displeased.  Ann listened
in grim silence to Major Brentham’s hesitating remonstrances.  When he
had finished she replied that it was more than flesh and blood could
stand that she should be spending her time and the Mission money
training up native girls to be Christian wives for Christian natives,
and as soon as they had learnt some civilization they were sought out
and snapped up by Germans, inside and outside the Concession.  It wasn’t
for that she had come out to Africa....

"I _do_ feel for you and will see what can be done," said Brentham; "but
at the same time we must remember we are not on British territory, where
they stand a good deal from the missionaries, but in _German_ Africa.
The Germans have made a handsome acknowledgment of what Mr. Stott has
done in the way of industrial teaching.  Don’t go and spoil it all by
being too ready to denounce these—these—irregularities! Things may right
themselves in time.  It would be such a dreadful blow to the Stotts if
they were told to go, to leave the work of so many years...."

Ann would promise nothing, however.  She would speak as the Spirit bade
her....  For the present her time was taken up with mission work among
the Wambugwe, who were _quite_ the worst heathens she had met with.
"Not only terribly depraved—they eat the corpses of their dead!!!—but
the dirtiest Negroes I have ever seen, and _wholly_ lacking in
spirituality."

"Well then," said Roger, "_there_ you’ve got your work cut out, for
several years.  Meantime I will talk to our German friends...."

"_Friends_, indeed?" said Ann.  "They’re _no friends_ of _mine_!"


In spite of her fierceness of denunciation, she made both Roger and Maud
as comfortable as she could at her rather Spartan station, and became so
happy, friendly and even tearful during the evening with Maud, talking
over the little world of Reading and Basingstoke, Aldermaston and
Englefield, that evening prayers for once were intermitted.  Her husband
sat mostly silent, listening respectfully.  It was evident that he
worked very hard at material things during the day, that he stood much
in awe of his wife, and had completely lost his gift of extempore
prayer.  Their one daughter was a thin, sickly, wistful little girl of
ten, very shy, and fonder of her father than of her mother.  But
according to Ann she was already a good needlewoman, and helped in the
sewing classes.  Kind Maud proposed she should be fetched one day and
taken to Magara for a week’s stay.  The air was so good there.  Ann
consented a little reluctantly.

They rode their Basuto ponies to see if there were traces of
Stolzenberg’s slaughter of the flamingoes. But the bodies had evidently
been carried away from the lake to be skinned and because the bones were
valuable; and the sole visible result of the raid was the absence of
adult birds in pink plumage.  There only remained of the former serried
ranks a thin broken line of ugly immature flamingoes, dirty-white in
plumage, streaked with brown.  They were dibbling timidly in the thick
waters of the lake; and this had also lost much of its former
beauty—though Stolzenberg was not responsible for the slow desiccation
of East Africa.  The lake just now was no longer a uniform sheet of
cobalt, bordered with a grey-white fringe of salt and guano mixed; it
was reduced to two large areas of deep water with grey mud in between.
How different from what Roger had seen in the glamour of 1888!

Away from the lake shore, in a detour through the foot-hills, they met a
few wandering Masai on their way to trade at the Mission station.  They
greeted Roger with acclamations of friendship and much spitting.
Without an interpreter he could not understand them, but they kept
pointing to the north-west and evidently referring to the wicked
Stolzenberg under their name of _Oleduria_ ("The Terror"); and at the
same time to "God"—_Engai_.  They talked with the satisfied tone of a
thing now settled, and went on their way to interview the Woman-chief
who was their medical adviser, and would-be converter.

"They may have heard of Ann’s letter," said Roger, "and believe her
curse is coming off.  Do you see where they were pointing? ... That
curious cloud that seems to be rising high in the air, rising and
falling, as though one of the craters were showing signs of activity?"


As soon as he returned to Magara, Roger drew up a formal complaint
against Stolzenberg, addressed to the officer commanding in Irangi.  He
set forth the long tale of misdeeds on the part of "The Terror" during
the past ten years and urged the German authority for the good name of
the Empire to arrest and try this bandit.  If this were not done, he
would be compelled to place all the facts before the German directors of
the Concessionaire Company whose employés’ people and property suffered
so much from Stolzenberg’s raids and violence.  The maiming of the Masai
messenger was a concrete case, whatever might be thought of the offence
in slaughtering the flamingoes, birds whose guano was one of the
Concession’s assets.

A fortnight later a military force of one hundred Askari and two
twelve-pounder mountain guns arrived at Wilhelmshöhe—as the entire
scattered settlement of the Concession in the Iraku Hills was called (at
the request of the Schräders: the Stotts never got nearer the
pronunciation than "Williamshoe").  The force was commanded by two
smart-looking German lieutenants and a white Feldwebel.  The
lieutenants, who saluted Brentham as Herr Major, said they were to act
under his orders.  He was commissioned as a magistrate to proceed to the
Red Crater and arrest Adolf Stolzenberg, but not supposed to take any
part in the fighting, if force was to be used.  That was _their_
business.  The Herr Oberst who had sent them remembered that Major
Brentham had been wounded in the South African War, and hoped he would
take care of himself; if his health was not equal to the journey, then
the nearest German district commissioner would go instead.  But Roger,
in spite of his wife’s pleadings and Maud’s warnings, was keen to see
the thing through.  Besides, he could serve as guide.  So in course of
time the expedition found itself drawn up on the grassy plateau and
facing the heavy wooden door and stone wall.  A summons to open in the
name of the law was shouted by the Feldwebel, who had an immense voice.
There was no response.  Then the guns, put into position, came into play
and shattered the door to fragments.  One of the lieutenants and half
the force marched in....  Half an hour elapsed.... Then the lieutenant
reappeared with rather a scared face.

"We can only suppose either that Stolzenberg fled some time ago, or that
his settlement has simply been engulfed by some appalling volcanic
action.  Come in and see!"

Roger and the rest of the force followed.  Inside the Red Crater, which
enclosed a space about a mile in diameter, very little could at first be
seen but clouds of sulphurous vapours, which when wafted in their
direction nearly stifled them; and clouds of steam where the little
stream from the hidden pool at the further end of the crater fell into
some gulf of heat——

They advanced cautiously; the wind took a different turn, and at last
the rashest pioneers among them discerned the ground falling away
abruptly over a sharp-cut edge into Hell—as a Dante might have deemed
it. The sulphurous fumes drove them back.  The inevitable
conclusion—confirmed in time—was that the crater had reopened
immediately beneath Stolzenberg’s settlement.  Houses, people, cattle
had all been plunged into the bowels of the earth, hundreds of feet
below to a fiery furnace.  Those humans and cattle who were nearer the
crater walls at the time had possibly been choked and killed by the
gases.  Indeed, on their way out, they saw here and there, at the bases
of the red walls, dead cattle lying stiff, all four legs in the air.
Evidently, inquisitive Masai, after the earthquake, had climbed the
crater-rim from the outside and seen enough to guess that the white
Woman-chief’s curse had come home, and the great enemy of the Masai and
his murderous band of raiders had gone suddenly to an awful doom.




                             *CHAPTER XXII*

                      *EIGHT YEARS HAVE PASSED BY*


Eight years have passed since Roger Brentham staggered, half stupefied
with sulphur fumes, from the Red Crater; satisfied with a great sense of
relief and no pity, that Stolzenberg and his raiding Ruga-ruga had come
to a deserved end.

"The Terror" having been wiped out in a way which brought an enormous
accession of prestige to Mrs. Anderson of the Ewart-Stott Industrial
Mission, the Happy Valley Concession was relieved for a time of any
active enemy.  Willowby Patterne, who had again taken up his abode on
his Namanga property (after having once more passed through the Divorce
Court—this time at the instance of a deluded but determined American
wife), may have been disposed to fish in waters of his own troubling,
have itched to share in the immense wealth now pouring out from the
region where Roger had forestalled him.  But meantime he had been a
little sobered by Stolzenberg’s tragic end.  So he devoted himself for
these eight years to shooting enormous quantities of big-game on the
scarcely inhabited tracts of northern German East Africa.  The Germans
remonstrated with him at times for his breaches of their perfunctory
Game Regulations; but an equal disregard for these attempts to save the
fauna was shown by German hunters.  Willowby imported and exported most
of his goods and supplies, all his hides and ivory by German railway
routes, sent them to be sold in German markets, and took care to be on
good terms with German frontier officials.  So his baleful activities
were not materially interfered with. On the British side of the frontier
he was also regarded with lenience for reasons not specified.  He was
popular among the East African planters because he kept the native in
his proper place and evaded the "silly" restrictions on unlimited
"sport."  Apart from his matrimonial affairs, which were a source of
recurrent, rather piquant scandal, he was not without a certain prestige
in England.  He had made his ranching property pay considerable profits
out of the chase and cattle-breeding, and had thus pacified his most
pressing creditors.  He earned other large sums by acting, for three
months in the dry season, as guide and arranger of big-game "shoots" to
excessively rich Americans who wanted the thrill of firing into the
brown of dense herds of antelope and zebra, getting perchance a maned
lion without too much danger, or similarly bringing down an elephant of
medium size (they would buy tusks "to go with it" from Patterne’s
store), or a record rhino (Patterne supplied the "record" horn; the poor
specimen killed by the millionaire was given to the Andorobo trackers to
eat).

Having accidentally brought to light several new varieties or
sub-species of antelope among the thousands he shot for their hides and
horns, he was deemed a great "naturalist" in the Cromwell Road Museum;
and Roger’s anger whenever his name was mentioned—calling up as it did
many a mental picture of lifeless wastes of prairie strewn with
bone-heaps where once rioted a wonderful and harmless Zoological
gardens—was put down to jealousy of Patterne’s marksmanship.

Twice in these eight years Roger had been to England.  In 1902 he had
escorted his wife and sister home, and stayed there six months to make
his children’s acquaintance.  In 1906 he and Maud, who kept house for
him at Magara in Lucy’s absence, again returned for a long holiday; and
in the following year brought Lucy back with them for a last stay in the
Happy Valley—a last stay, because Roger calculated on retiring from the
management of the Concession in 1909.  He would then sell out his
shares, and on the proceeds would be wealthy enough to leave Africa to
younger men and devote himself to home politics.  No more, after 1909,
would Lucy be torn in two in her affections, longing to be by her
husband, pining in fact without him; yet miserable at the idea of her
children growing up outside her care and supervision.

John, as it was, showed himself devoted to the splendiferous and
dazzling "Aunt Sibyl"; and even Fat Maud (no longer a dumpling, but
still distinguished by this adjective from the other Maud, thirty-five
years older, and spare of build) ... even Fat Maud preferred Englefield
as a home to the humbler Church Farm at Aldermaston; and adopted a
rather patronizing tone towards the quiet, pale-faced, languid, timid
mother who had rusticated so many years in the wilds of Africa that she
was ignorant of free-wheel bicycles, motor-cars, gramophones, two-step
dances, ping-pong, hockey, and diabolo.


During these eight years Mrs. Bazzard’s persistent letters to Sir Bennet
Molyneux had their reward.  Her Spencer was removed from malarial,
out-of-the-world East Africa and made Consul-General at Halicarnassus,
to preside with judicial functions over a Consular Court in Asia Minor,
on £900 a year and allowances. Mrs. Bazzard foresaw for herself a
glorious early autumn to her life, as a leading lady in the Levant, with
an occasional dress from Paris, a prominence in Levantine Society, a
possible visit of the Royal yacht to this old-world Turkish harbour
where Herodotos once lived and wrote; and inevitably a knighthood on
retirement for the re-animated doll, the Spencer into whom she had
really infused new stuffing. "Oh, that _dearest_ Mother might live"—in
Bayswater, it would not do to have her at Halicarnassus—"to refer to her
daughter as ’Lady Bazzard’!"

She has long ceased to take much interest in the Brenthams, once Roger
Brentham—with whom she believes herself to have had a serious and
compromising flirtation in 1887, and sometimes hints as much to her
Spencer when his interest in her flags—no longer has his name in lists
of officials likely to get between Spencer and a Mediterranean post.
She is, however, a little annoyed from time to time to see he is not
socially dead ... that highly placed officials actually notice him.  For
instance, the Bazzards when at home in 1902 could not obtain, try they
ever so hard, a place in the Abbey to see King Edward crowned.  But
Roger saw the ceremony from a modest nook inside the nave; saw Sibyl in
ermine and crimson velvet and ostrich plumes, nodding right and left to
acquaintances and wreathed in smiles, pass before him with other peers
and peeresses to her appointed place; and probably owed his seat to the
intervention of the African Department of the Foreign Office, or to a
request from the President of the Royal Geographical Society, as the
recognition due to a distinguished explorer.

He had forgotten by now any rancour he might have retained for the
Foreign Office, and would drop in at the African Department from time to
time for a chat with "Rosy" Walrond—who was proposing to go to Unguja to
tighten things up, and intended to come and stay with him in the Happy
Valley and see with his own incredulous eyes the Red Crater and its
bottomless pit, and the lovely maidens of Iraku who were the cause of
Mrs. Anderson’s heartbreak.  Or with Ted Parsons—about to be named
Consul-General at Naples; or kind old Snarley Yow, who said he wished
now he had done like Roger: chucked the F.O. and a possible pension of
£700 a year and gone in for an African Concession like the Happy
Valley—suit him down to the ground.

The remarkable success of the Happy Valley—the one bright spot in
"German East," where there was never a native rising and whence came a
regular output of minerals, precious metals, precious stones; coffee,
fibre, rubber, cotton, tanning-bark, hides, poultry and potatoes; the
steady standing of its pound shares at forty marks on the German
exchanges, and the purring approval of the Schräders: caused Roger to be
increasingly consulted in British Colonial circles outside the Colonial
Office.  Diplomatists took an interest in him, and adjusted their
monocles at parties to see him better.  The Foreign Office published as
a White Paper a Report drawn up at their request on the Big Game of East
Africa and its international importance.  Was he to be a means of
solving the nascent Anglo-German rivalry by suggesting a combination of
effort in Colonization?  The Schräders hoped so.

Mrs. Bazzard was really vexed to see one day in the weekly edition of
the _Times_ that on March 25, 1903, Major Roger Brentham, D.S.O.,
together with other guests whose names meant nothing to her, dined with
Lady Silchester to meet the Right Honble. Josiah Choselwhit, etc., etc.

Sibyl at this time still believed Chocho to be the coming man, the
Premier who would set the British Empire right, bring about an Imperial
Customs Union and a Federation directed from London, and calm defiance
to the rest of the world.  She was one of the earliest of the
B.M.G.’s.[#]  Roger was of the opposite school, a school which at best
achieves a cool popularity amongst thinkers.  He wanted to bring about a
moral union, so to speak, between the British Empire, Germany and the
United States, a pooling of their resources; and Universal peace: to
ensure which France should be retroceded a portion of Alsace-Lorraine,
and Germany allowed to grow into a great African Power. There were many
faults in the German conception of how Negro Africa should be
administered; but the same faults were to be seen in British Africa; the
same reforms would apply to both régimes.


[#] _Vide_ the columns of the contemporary _Morning Post_.


But Brentham, though he had distinguished himself in the fight with the
Boers for the overlordship of South Africa, had disapproved of the
policy of the Raid and had said so, and written caustically on the
subject.  His views in some other directions, especially on Free Trade
with Africa, were diametrically opposed to those of the Idol of the
Midlands; so that Sibyl’s attempt to bring them together at her board in
the hope that the Colonial Office might give scope to her cousin’s
abilities, was frustrated at the very start. Chocho said very little to
Roger, and Roger, being anything but a self-pusher, said very little to
Chocho.

During these eight years Lucy’s father, approaching and passing the age
of seventy, continued to farm at Aldermaston with vigour and geniality
and less and less conservatism.  Lucy’s mother was hale and hearty, with
apple-red cheeks, and placidly thankful to the Lord who had arranged all
the affairs of her family so well—never mind what happened to _other_
families: perhaps it was their fault.  Lucy’s sister Clara, who had
married Marden the Cricketer, was amassing year by year an enormous
family of alternate boys and girls, and, as Sibyl said, it would be
interesting to encourage her to go on till she had passed the normal,
and then exhibit her with her progeny at a County Show.  Her husband
proved an assistant Agent for the Silchester estate of progressively
increasing worth, and let cricket go to the wall—or to Australia.  His
boss, the Head Agent, Maurice Brentham, lived much in London and in
Staffordshire, supervising the affairs of the estate in those
directions; and managing them so well that when young Silchester came of
age he would be among the wealthiest of our peers and able to write and
produce mystic operas—if he so willed—or subsidize a whole Russian
ballet—without feeling the cost.  Maurice had never married.  His excuse
was the prolificness of Mr. and Mrs. Marden, the sufficiency of Roger’s
family, and the seven children (already) of his brother Captain Geoffrey
Brentham, R.N. Geoffrey was a great begetter: almost like some hero of
the Greek classics.  He apparently only spent one month at home in every
fifteen; yet his wife did little more—especially during these eight
years—than lie-in, nurse, short-coat and wean one child; conceive,
lie-in, nurse and short-coat another.  Meantime her husband took
enormous pains over naval marksmanship, and agitated himself over the
quarrels of the Admirals.  Mrs. Geoffrey was the daughter of a Naval
Chaplain with very pronounced views on family prayer and the
uncriticizable nature of the Bible; and on quite illusory grounds she
decided that Roger and his missionary wife, Maud, Sibyl—who, she was
sure, was the real cause of Maurice not marrying—were all rather wicked
and not worth knowing: so, fortunately, she absolves me from any concern
in her affairs.

Similarly I can dispose of Sibyl’s father by saying that he died from a
wandering clot in 1905, and that Sibyl only showed perfunctory regret:
he had become a bore of the first water, obsessed by the belief that if
only he had had capital behind him, his ideas about farming would have
revolutionized British agriculture. Sibyl’s mother, unwavering in her
attachment to her spouse, whom she only remembered as the handsome young
captain fresh from gallant service in suppressing the Indian Mutiny, who
had won her affections in 1859, died also, soon after her husband,
probably from some form of cancer.  Aunt Christabel—the Honble. Mrs.
Jenkyns in private life—also died within this period, somewhere in
lodgings—Bath?  Both deaths occurred at awkward junctures when big
political parties had to be put off at a moment’s notice; and therefore
wrung from Sibyl not only a few tears of sorrow and remorse—_Had_ she
been quite kind to either?  Would she, too, live to be old, boring,
unlovely, and consequently unloved?—but also exclamations of annoyance
at people who chose the supreme moments of the season, when Royalty was
once again showing an interest in you, to take to their beds and die.

Old Mr. Baines, the proprietor of the Aerated Beverages Manufactory at
Tilehurst, died of diabetes in 1906.  He left his money—a few thousand
pounds—on trust to John, the eldest son of Captain and Mrs. Roger
Brentham, subject to a life interest for Mrs. Baines.  His spouse had
led him a life, as he expressed it, since her son’s death in 1888.  She
had passed from the most narrow-minded piety to a raging disbelief in
all churches, sects, and creeds.  The "raging" was chiefly inward or
expressed through her pen in "open" letters to clergymen,
philanthropists, or scandalized county journals.  Otherwise she
maintained a Trappist silence, neglected the house-keeping, injured the
business by scaring away customers.  At length in 1901 she took to
denying in a loud voice at Reading markets and other assemblages of
crowds (as in her letters to the _Berks Observer_ and the _Newbury
Times_), the very existence of a God; and then public opinion obliged
her husband to have her put away into an asylum.

Curiously enough she offered little opposition to this measure.  She
asked for, and was allowed, a large quantity of books, and became with
the aid of new spectacles an omnivorous reader.  She gave little
trouble. Her husband made a liberal payment to the asylum, but as this
ceased at his death, and the Trustees showed a mean desire for economy,
it occurred to the medical man in charge—not without a conscience—to
re-examine Mrs. Baines and see if she really was mad. As a result he
pronounced her restored to sanity.  She made no comment on her release,
faithful to her vow of silence, but with the help of her trustees she
purchased a small cottage on the Bath Road near Theale. The sight of the
enormous motor traffic and the bicycle accidents seemed to amuse her.
Roger, during his 1906-7 holiday in England, at Lucy’s wish went to see
her, to be satisfied she was properly cared for.  She received him in
grim silence, offered a Windsor chair, and listened taciturnly to his
stammering, apologetic inquiries.  When he stopped speaking she drew
blotter, pen, and ink towards her, and wrote in a bold hand on a sheet
of notepaper: "The British people are _not_ the Ten Lost Tribes of
Israel; more fools they, if they were.  I agree with you about Religion.
I forgive Lucy.  I am glad little John is to have my money when I die,
but I shall live as long as I can to find out the Truth.  Don’t come any
more."

She then conducted him to the door—it was in the shocking summer of
1907—pointed to the grey sky of a cold, dripping July and to the ruined
hay crops in an adjacent field, to the green corn beaten to the earth
and to a collision between a motor cyclist and a push-bike on the Bath
Road.  Then her long, furrowed lips curved into an awful smile—a smile
perhaps her dead son had never seen—her angry eyes and her crooked,
uplifted finger expressed a derisive query as to the existence of any
Providential concern for the welfare of Man.

Therewith she returned to her books and the studies she had taken up so
late in life.  Possibly she is living still at eighty-two.

During these eight years, Lucy’s health, after some fluctuations, had
decidedly improved; and when her husband was preparing to return in the
autumn of 1907 for his final round-up of the Happy Valley Concession,
she insisted on accompanying him.  It would be for less than two years;
Maud was coming too; and the children would be most of their time at
school. Rather with misgivings Roger agreed.  Provided she kept her
health, it would indeed be a delightful conclusion to the great
adventure of their lives.  They would revel for the last time in the
beauty of Iraku and the Happy Valley, their Crowned cranes and pea-fowl,
their tame gazelles and duikers, their quaint menagerie of monkeys;
their wonderful flower garden—Iraku grew everything: orchids and
mignonette, roses and lilies, petunias and pelargoniums, _Strelitsia
reginae_ and _Disa uniflora_....  He would wind up his financial
connexion with the Concession and retire from it a rich man, perhaps
retaining a sleeping partnership in its concerns: for it was entangled
with his heart-strings.

Then, all clear for Europe, after a cycle of Cathay. They would motor
from Iraku to the nearest railway station on one or other of the lines
that now penetrated the interior, secure the best cabins on the
luxurious steamers of the D.O.A. line, and thus retrace the route of
their first voyage, when love was incipient, but when their future
seemed dark and uncertain.  They would be lovers again on this voyage,
but this time open and unashamed, and Maud should pretend to play the
part of a green-eyed Mrs. Bazzard.

The first portion of this pleasant programme was fulfilled.  For a year
Roger rode from factory to mine, from coffee plantation to the fields
and sheds where pineapples were grown, cut, and canned.  He made good
suggestions about their cattle, about war, unceasing war on the tse-tse
fly, which—it was feared—was entering the Valley.  He viewed with
satisfaction his success over the crossing of Maskat donkey and Basuto
pony mares with zebra stallions, and considered it proved that the
resulting mules might become a valuable factor in East African
transport.  He inspected the new ostrich farms, the new smelting works
and the primitive ceramics where native women turned out excellent
pottery for home use.  He decided that further explorations for gold
should be undertaken in Ilamba, and that a fresh reef should be opened
up in western Iraku.  They would waste no more money looking for the
matrix of the diamonds—diamonds might go hang, there were plenty of them
in German South-West Africa.

But this wolframite with its product tungsten: _that_ was worth
following up with persistence.  It was more and more needed for the
application of electricity and for the latest developments of
metallurgy, and would alone make the Concession of great monetary value.

At the beginning of 1909 a cloud came over their happiness, contentment,
and sense of security in the future.  In the first place the Austrian
annexation of Bosnia and its accompanying defiance of Russia by the
shining-armoured Kaiser had inspired British statesmen with
hand-in-the-breast-of-the-frock-coat speeches of the Pecksniffian brand;
the harder to bear since we were engaged about that time in pushing
Turkey out of Arabia and manipulating the partition of Persia. This,
once again, soured the relations between Englishmen and Germans.  Then,
the value of the Happy Valley Concession, insisted on by Roger in his
despatches to the Directorate in Leipzig, had reached the comprehension
of the All-Highest and of the Imperial Cabinet. To these august
personages it seemed incongruous and detrimental to German
all-self-sufficiency that such an important portion of Germany’s most
important colony should be managed by an Englishman, and that an English
Industrial Mission should contain a female of such measureless audacity
as a certain "Ann Anderson" who had dared to write a letter to the
All-Highest, complaining of sexual licence on the part of Germans in
East Africa.  Let there be an end of this!  The Englishman must go, the
Industrial Mission must be replaced by some subservient Roman Catholic
teaching fraternity from the Rhineland, which would attend to its
prescribed functions of instructing the Negroes how to use their hands
and in a limited degree their brains, and call nothing German in
question, least of all the policy approved by the Kaiser’s
Kolonialminister.  As to the Schräders: they meant well: they had tried
to ride the German and the English horses abreast: a clever circus
trick, but one that no longer consorted with Imperial aims.  They were
worthy financiers, but they had become too international, with their
offices in Paris, London, and Johannesburg, as well as in Leipzig and
Berlin....

These august decisions had to be conveyed to Roger by the greatly
disappointed Schräders, who had sought so perseveringly to co-ordinate
the enterprise of the British Empire with that of Germany and
France—internationalists before the proper time.  They knew, of course,
that Major Brentham purposed resigning his local Direction of the
Concession in 1909, but they had half hoped he might have continued in
Europe much the same function as a member of the Board. As it was, they
had to ask him to go, instead of acquiescing reluctantly in his
departure.  And quite decidedly they had to request that all relations
between the Concession and the Stott Mission be severed.

From the Imperial authority in East Africa the Ewart Stotts received the
curt order to wind up the affairs of their mission and hand over their
buildings and plantations to the Brotherhood of the Heliger Jesu of
Bingen-am-Rhein.  They would be paid compensation for the actual outlay
of their own moneys, and their teachers and subordinates would be
granted the equivalent of a year’s salary, at existing rates.

This not-to-be-appealed-against edict caused the Stotts the acutest
sorrow and dismay; and Ann Anderson the most unbridled anger.  Roger,
however, counselled resignation and moderation of utterance. Let them
take the compensation, get all they could out of the Imperial
authorities, and migrate to neighbouring British territories, if they
were still keen on Mission work.

"After all," he said, "I am going too, and you must feel, even if
Hildebrandt is to succeed me, it would be difficult for you to remain
here without my backing. Hildebrandt—and you all say you like his wife
and that she is in sympathy with you—promises me that if he does succeed
as Manager, he will do all he can for the natives and endeavour to get
your policy continued by the Catholic teachers....  Go home and have a
good rest.  Go to England and take stock of what people are saying and
doing.  Get Ann to take lodgings for you somewhere in Berkshire ... see
the _best_ of England....  _Then_, if you decide to come back to East
Africa you could start another Industrial Mission on British territory
among the Masai and the Nandi who would seem much the same as the people
you are now leaving...."

Ann, however, made her departure sensational. After handing over the
keys of Mwada Station to the Catholic Mission she marched out to the
centre of the market-place, on a hillock overlooking the lake; and in
the presence of a large crowd of Masai and Wambugwe she solemnly cursed
the Kaiser in Masai, Kimbugwe and English.  It took more than nine years
for the curse in full measure to take effect; but then the Kaiser was a
much more important personage in the history of Africa than the occupant
of the Red Crater, and the Devil no doubt fought far harder to save him.


In the spring of 1909 Lucy was again attacked by pernicious anæmia, and
Dr. Wiese’s remedies failed this time to arrest its encroachments.
"There is only one thing," he said, melancholy with foreboding at the
departure of his English friends—"only one thing to save Mrs. Brentham
from dying, and that is to send her quickly out of Africa on to a
home-going steamer. The sea air may stimulate the recovery of the blood
and help her to regain strength."

Roger therefore hurried through his preparations for handing over his
work to Hildebrandt.  It was thought better that with them should go the
two Australians, so that the staff might be entirely German. Maud
superintended the packing of their personal effects.  Roger decided,
partly out of liking for the Hildebrandts, partly from a horror he had
of stripping the home where he and Lucy and Maud had been so happy, to
present the Hildebrandts with its furniture and garnishings, and to take
away as little luggage as possible.  He did this almost with a kind of
foreseeing that he might some day return.  Maud felt very much parting
with the Crowned cranes.  Together with pea-fowl they are the most
intelligent, inquisitive, well-mannered pets that the bird-world can
produce.

The journey to the coast port where the steamer would call was
accomplished in a motor ride of three days.  Even to the dying and
little-regarding Lucy this was in striking contrast to the three-weeks
to four-weeks’ journey up-country in her novitiate; with its crushing
fatigues, discomforts and frequent dangers. No more skulls and skeletons
of recent raids, no more intrusive lions, no need to fall among soldier
ants, no water famines and atrocious smells; no tedious waiting in hot
sun or drenching rain, while an unstable tent was being fumblingly put
up and a camp bed put together.  When the motor halted for the night
Lucy was transferred by kind hands, as in a dream to a clean, sweet,
cool couch in a decent bedroom.  When it was morning, after a breakfast
she scarcely seemed to taste, she was placed in a flying-bed—as the
motor seemed—and so the dream journey went on till she was aware of
being in a boat and then hoisted up into the air in a bed, and finally
put to rest in a cool cabin. Dream figures would pass through this
half-real environment.  John Baines seemed sometimes to stand by her bed
or help her into the motor; Maud became confused with Ann, but surely a
much gentler Ann? There was Brother Bayley, looking for her to read
slowly through the Book of Exodus, so that he might translate it, phrase
after phrase, into Kagulu....

Once on the great steamer of the Deutsch Ostafrikansche Linie there
seemed a ray of hope.  They had deck cabins allotted to them.  Two
German Staff officers pretended they were _just_ as comfortable on the
tier below, and it would be a _pleasure_ to help in Mrs. Brentham’s
recovery.  She was quite a personage in the history of East Africa....
The steamer’s captain, himself a married man, was kindness embodied. He
broke through any regulations there might be to the contrary and had a
section of the deck screened off opposite their cabins, so that no other
passengers might pass through this open-air, shaded parlour in which the
sick woman lay on a couch in a half-dream, even in a happy dream.  Her
day-bed or couch was screwed to the deck so that it would not be jarred
or dislodged by movements of the vessel.  Here she could lie all day or
all night; her husband and her sister-in-law—such a formal term should
not have been applied to Maud, she said; "sister in very truth"—could
take their meal alongside where she lay.

At Unguja there came on board the new British Agent, Sir Edward Walrond,
of the Foreign Office, to take farewell of Brentham since the latter
could not leave his wife.  He seemed to pass in and out of Lucy’s
dream—-a pleasantly cynical person who only expressed sympathy with
Roger by a hand-grip and laughed away the idea of Mrs. Brentham not
being able to land at Naples and see the sights there, "with Ted Parsons
to take you round—he is becoming _very_ Pompeian in manner, I’m told."
... Walrond sends on board all the fruit and delicacies he can think of,
which might tempt Mrs. Brentham’s appetite.

Archdeacon Gravening, who married her to John and then to Roger, comes
off to see her.  He is quite the old man now, the veteran of the
Anglican Mission always there whatever Missionary Bishops come and go,
always writing down Bantu languages, always trying to kill some secret
sorrow of his own.  He is alone with Lucy, kneels down for a few minutes
by her day-bed, takes her hand, prays silently, says aloud: "My poor,
poor child: I pray with all my heart you may surmount this weakness and
live to be loved by your children.  Think sometimes, when you are well
and happy in England, of the lonely old man who married you to your good
husband.  I always said Brentham had done the right thing."

Then he lays some flowers between her hands that the Anglican Sisters
have sent her.  Lucy in her dream thinks they are marrying her again to
Roger, and laughs at the absurdity of their not knowing she has been his
faithful wife for—for—it is all so confusing—oh, ever so many years....

Out in the open sea, the fresh boisterous air of he monsoon gives a
flickering stimulation to the enfeebled brain and body, even causes a
certain irritability and impatience, rare to her gentleness.  "Roger!
_Can’t_ they take me _quickly_ home?  Can’t they make the ship go
faster?..."

"My darling, she is going at a splendid rate; we shall be at Aden in
four days.  Aden!  You remember Aden?  Where we took Emilia Bazzard with
us to spend that day, and saw the cisterns?  I want you to get _ever_ so
much better in those four days, because I must leave you then...."
Hastens to add, as her hold on his hand tightens: "Oh, only for a couple
of hours whilst Maud takes my place, because I want to pay off our four
Somalis on shore.  If I gave them all their money on the ship they might
gamble it away or have it stolen.  You remember the Somalis?  Our old
faithfuls—been with us for—what is it?  Eighteen years.  Wonderful!
They travelled down with us from Magara—often carried you out of the
motor or into the boat.  Every day they come for your news."

But she is not listening....  "Roger!"

"Yes, dear?"

"I don’t want to get off at Naples, and I don’t want you or Maud to
leave me at Naples: I want to go _on_ and on in this steamer till we
reach England.... And, Roger!  If I die before we get there, _don’t_
throw me into the sea as they generally do with people who die on ...
board ... ship ... take me on with you to England ... take me home,
won’t you? Then I shan’t mind dying.  We’ve all got to die some day ...
that’s what makes it all so sad....  I can’t believe there can come an
end to love, not love like mine for you; but it’s horrible to think of
lying at the bottom of the sea, and you perhaps in a grave on shore...."

"You mustn’t talk like this or you’ll break my heart ... but if it eases
your mind, I promise you that you shall be taken home."

Then comes Maud—with the ship’s doctor—and a hospital nurse, always
carried on board for such cases.  There is going to be transfusion of
blood, and Roger bares his arm....

A pause afterwards and she sleeps, sleeps and wakes, dreams she is with
her children and they only call her "Aunt Sibyl," dreams she is once
more at Mr. Callaway’s, waiting to know if Roger is going to marry
her....  Mr. Callaway?  Didn’t she overhear Roger asking after him from
some one who came on board, and didn’t they reply "Died of blackwater
fever, years ago"?  We must all die sooner or later, but oh, why might
it not be later in her case?  So much to live for!

She is awake again, looking at the brilliant sunlight on the dancing
waves and the flying fish that rise in mechanical parabolas of flight
that become monotonous. Some form is presently standing between her and
this effulgence of sun on water....  It is the ship’s captain, a big
burly man with a close-clipped, russet beard and kind blue eyes.
"_Zô_," he says, with a mixture of gravity and lightness, "that is
bet-ter, _moch_ bet-ter.  A ... leetle ... colour ... now ... in ... the
... cheeks...."  But his well-meant encouragement trails away into
pitiful silence before her ethereal beauty and other-worldliness.  Tired
middle age has passed from her face with this infusion of Roger’s blood.
"What a pretty woman she must have been at one time!" he says to
himself.  His blue eyes fill with tears, and he turns away thanking his
German God that his own Frau is not in the least likely to die of
anæmia....

The heat and airlessness of the Red Sea bring back a lowering of
vitality....  The poor sick brain, insufficiently supplied with red
blood, even inspires a peevish tone in the dying woman.  "Oh, Roger!
I’ve spoilt your life!  You only married me ’to do the right thing’!  I
ought to have refused....  I broke your career," she wailed.

"_Lucy_!  How can you say such cruel things. Here, drink this.  This’ll
put life and sense into you. Haven’t I told you, _over and over
again_—Aren’t your children a testimony to our love?  But there!  It’s
cruel to argue with an invalid.  I shall send Maud to talk sense to
you."

"No, stay with me.  I want to be with you every minute of the life that
remains to me."

They pass through the Suez Canal, but she is insensible mostly now to
changes of scenery or to noises, or to anything but the absence of Roger
from her side. The fresh breezes of the Mediterranean cause a revival of
mentality.  "My poor Roger," she says one day when the snow peaks of
Crete give hope of an approaching Europe, "_how_ grey you have grown!  I
never noticed it before.  Greyer than you ought to be at your age."  And
she caresses his hair with an emaciated hand....

"Tell Maud—I never see her now, _you_ are with me always, but tell Maud
I love her better than any one in the world, except you.  Better than my
children. _They_ won’t miss me.  Africa has always come between us.
Still, all the same I send my thanks to Sibyl ... and poor mother....
And tell Mrs. Baines I thought kindly of her ... I was to blame....  But
something tells me John has long since understood and forgiven....

"And, Roger?  Are you there?" ...

"Always here, darling." ...

"Do something for the Miss Calthorps—you know—where I was at school.
Some one told me they were in poor circumstances.  They must be quite
old now."

"They shall be seen to."

The ship passed through the Straits of Messina. Etna behind them on the
south-west, with its coronet of snow.  Far away to the north-west was
the chain of the Lipari Islands, blue pyramids with spectacular columns
of yellow-purple smoke issuing from their craters against the
approaching sunset.  The Tyrrhenian Sea was incarnadine under the level
rays of the sinking sun.  To the east rose the green and furrowed
heights of Aspromonte, green-gold and violet in the light of the sunset,
dotted, especially along the sea-base, with pink-white houses and
churches with their campanili-like pink fingers pointing upwards.
Lucy’s eyes gazed their last on this splendid spectacle of earthly
beauty. Roger, still holding her hand, lay half across her bed, more
haggard than she, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, emaciated with futile
blood-letting, worn out with want of sleep and no appetite for eating,
and the long vigil over his dying wife.  He slept now, soundly.  Her
eyes gazed at his closed eyelids for one moment; then motion and life
passed from them.

                     *      *      *      *      *

It was always Maud’s function in this sad world to attend to the plain
matters of business whilst others gave way to a grief that knew no
solace, or a joy that spurned formalities.  So it was she who left the
ship at Naples, called on Roger’s old friend, Ted Parsons, the
Consul-General, sent telegrams in all the necessary directions, and
fulfilled all necessary forms and ceremonies.  Whether it was an unusual
concession or not, it was at once agreed that the body of Mrs. Brentham,
enclosed in a "shell"—they obtained what was necessary from
Naples—should be carried on with her grief-distraught husband and her
husband’s sister to Southampton.  There all three of them were landed,
and thence they proceeded in a very humdrum way by South-Western and
Great-Western railways to Reading, where the two live ones put up at an
hotel so commonplace and out of date that it momentarily wiped up
sentiment and froze the tears in their tear-glands; while poor Lucy’s
remains were temporarily lodged in a kind of _Chapelle ardente_ used by
the chief undertaker, who did things in style.  No sign of life from
Sibyl.  Evidently there was no one at home at Engledene.  Lucy’s parents
and Lucy’s children were communicated with, and in due course the
funeral took place at Aldermaston.  Roger even sent word of
it—remembering Lucy’s message—to Mrs. Baines at Theale; and to the
intense surprise of every one in the neighbourhood Mrs. Baines stalked
into the church and churchyard, attended the burial, and then strode
away to the station, and so back to Theale, refusing hospitality at
Church Farm by a simple shake of the gaunt grey head, down the cheeks of
which, however, a tear or two had trickled.

Lucy came to rest at last in the churchyard of Aldermaston, under the
boughs of one of those superb blue cedars of the Park which lean out
over the walls of mellow brick.  She had so admired these cedars in her
dawning sense of beauty when she taught in the neighbouring school; and
when she was wont to pace up and down the Mortimer Road considering
whether or not she should go out to Africa to marry John Baines.




                            *CHAPTER XXIII*

                           *THE END OF SIBYL*


For three weeks after Lucy’s burial, Roger scarcely knew what he did or
whom he saw.  His boys and girls went back to school and college; Maud
busied herself in reconnoitring for a home, some place not too expensive
to keep up, where the children might come in school holidays, where
Roger might find rest, isolation, the healing power of country life when
he was wearied with towns and travel.  She designed to acquire for him
and her the old Vicarage at Farleigh Wallop.  The Vicar who had
succeeded their father, instead of being an archæologist, to whom
present-day life was a wearisome fact that must obtrude itself as little
as possible on his studies, liked to reside where the population was
thickest.  Of the two villages, therefore, within his cure of souls he
chose Cliddesden for his residence as being the more populous, and let
the vicarage at Farleigh whenever he could find a tenant. This of course
was the old home of the Brenthams and the place where Maud had lived up
to the time of her father’s death.  She had no inquiries to make as to
drainage or water.  She knew its charms and its weaknesses; and finding
it untenanted she soon concluded an agreement with the Vicar to take it
on a reasonable rent and with some security of tenure.  To live there
once more would be for her and Roger—and for Maurice too, and Geoffrey
when he chose to come and see them—a pleasant linking-up of past with
present.

Meantime, Roger returned from three weeks of aimless wanderings on a
bicycle or in a motor, and from visits to bankers, tailors, and the
Foreign Office in London, to spend a few days with Maurice at Englefield
Lodge.

The first question he put to his brother was, "Where _on earth_ is
Sibyl?"

_Maurice_: "I didn’t like to tell you before, Sibyl is rather under the
weather, as Geoffrey would say. Silchester—Clithy, as she always will
call him—came of age last year, as you know.  Sibyl seemed a bit off
colour then, and began really to look somewhere near her age—at last.
But she carried off things well. Gave fêtes on all the different
properties and attended most of them....  Gave political dinner parties
in London to introduce her son to such great pots as she could get to
come to them, before he took his seat in the House of Lords.  She was
present at the Trustees’ meetings to give an account of her stewardship.
They congratulated her—and me—and you, in retrospect—on the way in which
the Estate had been managed during the long minority; and told Master
Clithy he was remarkably lucky to have such a mother and such Agents.
He took it all with a certain amount of pompous acquiescence....  He has
grown into an awful prig, you will find, and thinks a tremendous lot of
himself.  Whether I shall stay on with him I hardly know.  I’ve saved a
bit, haven’t spent any of my share in Dad’s money, and I could always go
back to the Bar.  P’raps if you returned to Africa I’d go with you if
you’d let me?  I’m rather fed up with England and office work....

"However, about Sib....  She came down here last summer and _didn’t_
have a house party.  Lived quite alone with your kids.  They’ve come to
look upon Engledene as quite their home.  Of course, when she couldn’t
put ’em up I had them here.  Well, as I say, she seemed ’under the
weather.’  Once or twice when I rather bounced in on Estate business, I
thought she’d been crying.  Wasn’t my business to ask what for. She
wasn’t an easy person to question and could lay you out with her tongue
if you seemed to be meddling with what didn’t concern you.  Then all at
once last October I had a note from her to say that she had gone into a
nursing home to have an operation, that I wasn’t to fuss about it or
come to inquire, that if she was away at Christmas time your children
were to come here from school just the same and I was to represent her
as host...."

_Roger_: "What was the operation for?  All this is news to me."

_Maurice_: "So I guessed.  She made me promise not to write and tell you
or Lucy ... said it would be all over, long before you were back, and
turn out to be a fuss about nothing.  As to what it _was_, why I suppose
she had reached a certain stage in life when most women have
complications and ten per cent. of ’em are operated on—glands, cysts,
tumours....

"The operation took place—she was jolly careful to keep it out of the
papers—I doubt if even Clithy knew anything till it was well over.  He
was travelling in Russia to study the Russian theatres and their
arrangements about scenery....  After she recovered the doctors sent her
to Aix and then to St. Tropez on the Riviera....  Clithy joined her
there.  I sent her the telegram about ... about ... Lucy’s death.  I
dare say you noticed the perfectly magnificent wreaths they both sent
for the funeral.  Clithy’s came down from some place in Regent Street
and had a card on it ’To my dear Aunt Lucy.’ ... Only human touch about
him ... awfully fond of your wife ... always said he liked her much more
than his mother.... But he needn’t have said it so often, though Sibyl
only used to laugh.  Her wreath was made here from the very best things
we had got in the hot-houses ... only because Sibyl wrote that Lucy so
loved to walk in these houses and fancy she was back in Africa....
However, I had a letter from her three days ago...." (Takes it out and
reads: "Tell Roger not to dream of coming out here, because I am just
going away.  I am writing him in a few days.") "There!  Now she’ll soon
tell you everything about herself...."

"What about _you_?  Have you made any plans as yet?"

_Roger_: "Lucy’s death has cut my life in two; I shall have to alter all
the programme we used, to plan out together, she and I and Maud.  Of
course there are the children to think about....  Where are the matches?
I’ll light a pipe and tell you my ideas...." (A silence ... puffs ...)
... "I’ve not done badly out of this Happy Valley Concession.  I’ve sold
my shares in it—all but five hundred, kept _them_ just to retain an
interest, don’t you know, get the Company’s reports from time to
time—I’ve sold my shares at two pounds a share to the Schräders’ group.
That brings me in close upon £75,000.  I haven’t saved much besides ...
purposely lived well out there and entertained a good deal, and gave ...
Lucy ... and Maud all they wanted, and had to pay for the little ’uns’
schooling at home.  However, there I am at this moment with about
£75,000 at my bank on deposit and twelve hundred or so outstanding to my
current account....  I’m going first of all to give ten thousand pounds
_down_ to Maud.  I consider she has _earned_ it.

"And then I must make a new will ... and I want to ask you, old chap, to
be one of the executors.  Will you?  And p’raps Geoff the other.  After
all, it isn’t Geoff we dislike, it’s that confounded, pious doe-rabbit
of a wife of his.  However....

"Well then, about my plans.  I suppose I ought to stay at home at
Farleigh—I shall look out for a decent flat in London—and get to know my
children. Somehow it’s _that_ I can’t take to.  They have grown up so
outside all my thoughts and schemes and interests. They don’t care a
hang about Africa.  John has been making a young fool of himself at
Sandhurst ... been betting and borrowing and getting into debt.  I’m
glad his mother didn’t know....  Well, I shall square up all that, but I
shall insist on his going in for the Indian Army—Staff Corps—same as I
did....  A man if he’s got ability couldn’t have a better education....
He’s a good-looking boy, John—I expect he thinks me an old fogey from
the backwoods.... India’s the school for him.  And as to Ambrose, he
must go to Cambridge, when he leaves Harrow, and I shall try and get him
a nomination for the Consular Service....  That’s the other good school
for a British citizen.  You’ll think me jolly conceited, just because
those are the two careers _I’ve_ followed. But..." (smokes and puffs).

"Well then, there are the two girls.  Fat Maud—she was furious because I
revived the old name—says long ago ’Aunt Sibyl’ agreed it should be
compromised by her being called Fatima....  Fatima, I gather, is
eighteen, and young Sibyl is fourteen.... For the present Maud will look
after them, and I shall have ’em up to London every now and then for a
few weeks.  In course of time I suppose they’ll want to be presented.
Dare say old Sibyl will do that, or if she’s away, Lady Dewburn.  By the
bye, _she_ wrote me an awfully sweet letter about Lucy..." (ponders and
smokes).

"In due time the girls’ll marry, and if they pick up the right kind of
husband I shall give ’em each a portion of my ill-gotten wealth.  There!
That’s what I’ve planned out, and I dare say it ’ud ha’ been quite
different if my darling Luce had lived.  I should have been reconciled
then to settling down at home.  As it is—I shall travel a bit—Go to
Germany and try to find out what the Germans are up to....  Go back to
Africa p’raps ... _I_ don’t know...."


A few days after this conversation, Roger received a letter from Sibyl:


Villa les Pins,
       Grimaud, près St. Tropez,
              Var,   June 12, 1909.

DEAR ROGER,—

Maurice will have given you all the news there is about me, except what
I am going to add in this letter.

I am not going to attempt any sympathy at present over your loss.
Maud’s telegram from Naples was forwarded on to me here and it gave me a
horrid turn. I often used to tease Lucy: I am cat-scratchy to every one,
I fear.  Why?  _I_ don’t know: something to do with my internal organs,
I dare say.  But I became sincerely fond of her, after being perfectly
horrid to her when we first met.  She seemed to grow on one. I should
have liked her always to stay at Englefield.

Heigh ho!  I am very much inclined to whimper about myself.  I have,
been through a _ghastly_ time.... Some day, if I live, I will tell you.
Meantime, though I am _aching_ to see you I am going to postpone that
happiness, and instead am going round the world with Vicky Masham.

The doctors seem to think—I dare say it is only because they have
nothing else to suggest—that if I went on a long sea voyage for about a
year—I mean, kept constantly travelling on the sea—I should get quite
strong again.  Perhaps I shall.  I want to give myself every chance—it
seems _so stupid_ to die before you’re seventy.  Also it occurred to me
the other day that for a woman to have raved for twenty years about the
British Empire and yet never to have seen any part of it outside Great
Britain, except Cape Town and Stellenbosch, and once when we went to
Jersey from Dinant—was rather silly.  So Vicky and I are starting from
Marseilles next Sunday in a P. and O., bound for Ceylon, and after that
Japan.  Not that Japan is British—I believe—but of course we aren’t
going to be pedantic.  Then I suppose we shall "do" Australia and New
Zealand—only I’m afraid New Zealand is rather muttony, isn’t it?
Excessively worthy and all that, but lives chiefly on mutton and stewed
tea. However, there are geysers and pink terraces, if you look for them.
Then there will be a lovely cruise across the Pacific, and beach-combers
and impossibly large oysters that would dine a family of six, and brown
people with no morals and beautiful sinuous forms, and finally San
Francisco and California.  After that—however, sufficient for the day is
the evil thereof. Vicky or I will bombard you with picture post-cards
recording our progress, and when—and when I’m _quite_ well and look less
like a doomed woman—I will let you know, and, dearest Roger, we will
pass the rest of our lives together, or at least not far away from one
another.  Your children shall be the children of my old age....

Clithy is here, but as soon as I leave for Marseilles he is off again to
Russia.  He has promised me to look you up when he returns.  You will
find him now definitely fixed as to appearance.  People of his stamp are
like that.  Between nineteen and twenty-one, they quite quickly assume
the figure, face, style by which they are ever after going to be known.
He will remind you most of Lord R——, though I assure you there is no
innuendo in this.  I dare say the L——’s are distant cousins of the
Mallards.  But Clithy is essentially the aristocratic young peer who may
be a fount of wisdom or a hollow fraud with nothing inside an
irreproachable exterior.  He is a mystery to me.  And I am of little
interest to him.  The only woman I ever heard him mention with anything
like a kind look in his eyes was Lucy.  The Anne of Denmark nose is
still there, undulating and with a bump in the middle; but the rest of
the face has grown up more and his hair is a nice dark chestnut
brown.—Well, you will see him later, so why waste time in describing
him?

As to Vicky Masham....  Of course you want to know why, etc.

Well: Vicky, at the death of her patron saint, Victoria the Good, was
left with little more than her pension of £500 a year.  She ought to
have had ten thousand pounds of her own, but—I dare say you saw the
scandal in the papers?  She and her sisters gave up much of their means
to save their shockingly bad brother from going to prison over some
swindle that ... Again why waste words?  Maurice could tell you all
about it.  Well, when I came to the South of France after Aix, last
December, I was _dreadfully_ hipped, fighting a certain Terror—a much
_worse_ terror than the one you used to write to me about who lived in a
Red Crater (rather a distinguished address: "The Red Crater, Iraku"),
and who went to Hell by the direct route.  I came to Monte Carlo amongst
other places and thought if I kept on a veil and wore blue glasses no
one would recognize me.  In the Rooms I saw Victoria Masham, looking
very melancholy—and oh, so old—and quite alone.  My heart was touched, I
spoke to her and we went to sit on the terrace.  I told her my troubles
and she told me hers.  Result: I struck a bargain.  She is to live with
me till we have our first quarrel; I am to board her, lodge her, wash
her, pay all possible expenses, and give her a little pocket money, over
and above.  And d’you know, I think it’s going to be quite a success!
We haven’t had a quarrel yet!  I’ve had her teeth beautifully done by an
American dentist at Cannes, so my nickname only applies a little—he was
too clever not to give the new set a soupçon of horsiness.  And I’ve
made her buy a quite wonderful "transformation"—chez
Nicole—reddish-brown, streaked with grey.—You’d never guess.  She has
plumped out a good deal, for although I’ve a wretched appetite myself I
keep a good table, and upon my word when we get to the Colonies I
shouldn’t wonder if she had shoals of proposals.  She never talks about
anything but Queen Victoria, but I find that—somehow—awfully
soothing—takes me back to the happy old time when I was a care-free
girl, proud of my secret engagement to you.

                     *      *      *      *      *

_Dear_ Roger.  I have lost _all_ my good looks.  That’s why I don’t want
you to see me till I recover them—a little.  Meantime, dearest of
friends and cousins, if you believe in _Anything_ with a power to
save—alas! _I_ don’t—pray to it to save me from this terror that hangs
over me—especially in the silent watches of the night—and bring me back
safe from my world-tour, with at least another ten years of life before
me.

Whilst I am away, remember Engledene is entirely at your children’s
disposal.  I have written to the head gardener to see that fresh flowers
are sent every now and again to Lucy’s grave.  You will tell him when?
Lucy was a _real good sort_ and I think she came to understand me and
forgive....

Ever yours,
       SIBYL.


Roger spent the remainder of 1909 as he had planned: looking after his
boys and girls to some extent, trying to get interested in his children.
The girls bored him with their chatter of surface things: school
quarrels and rivalries, school friendships, school mistresses; their
individual tastes in chocolate creams and caramels; their school sports;
the actors whom they adored—at a distance—and whose photographs they
collected; their disdain for those silly asses the Suffragettes—_they_
themselves would _never_ want a vote! The two boys were not much less
shallow with their Sandhurst and school-boy slang—"top-hole, sir,"
"ripping," "ruddy," "rotters," "we rotted ’em a bit"—their school-boy
games of such vast importance; their dislike of anything sincere,
original, warm-hearted; their rash criticisms of great writers, frantic
admiration for great sportsmen, religious reverence for cut and colour,
style and form; enthusiasm in general for things that did not matter and
contempt for things that did.

Was he like that at their age?  Had Sibyl the elder at sixteen been such
a goose as Sibyl the younger? Was it the hollow falsity of a classical
education, the dreary sham of School Christianity which had made his
boys so cynical, so coarse in their tastes?  His children were good to
look at, handsome, healthy, physically well-bred.  But weren’t
they—weren’t their contemporaries a bit heartless?  These in particular
had forgotten their mother completely.  Yet surely they might have
remembered Lucy’s unceasing tenderness and the many sacrifices of health
and convenience she had made for them?

In the press of that day and in the books and plays most in vogue you
were supposed to make everything give way to the pleasures, needs,
caprices, expectations of the young, of the coming generation.  But why
had no author the courage to point out the lack of interest which youth
under twenty-one possessed for most persons of matured mind?  Girls of
eighteen wrote novels entirely without experience and direct observation
of life, merely based on their wishy-washy recollections of books
written by "grown-ups"; boys of eighteen published sardonic poems and
green-cheese essays for which they ought to have been birched, not
boomed. How infinitely preferable to Roger, when he put his secret
thoughts into words, was the society of middle-aged friends and
relations of his own period in life, who really had brain convolutions
moulded by sad and joyous, sharp and unusual experience.

Aunt Maud said there was something evidently very wrong with his liver,
and his sons and daughters in an interchange of eye-glances gave a tacit
assent.  They had felt (though they had never dared to say so in his
hearing) a tiny bit ashamed of their ineffective mother. Wasn’t it
rather _infra dig._ to have been a school-teacher and a missionary?  But
of their father they all stood in awe, because he was considered in his
time a handsome man, was now of distinguished appearance, and was
respected in the best circles as an explorer, a big-game shot, a
naturalist, and a man who had made some part of Africa pay.  But if he
stooped to their level and attempted to justify this eminence by talking
technically on African subjects or on home problems they soon showed
they thought him a bore.

Aunt Sibyl they spoke of warmly, and wailed over the illness which kept
her absent from their circle.  She was their ideal of a modern great
lady.  Her cynical speeches appealed to their own lack of convictions;
there was nothing "soppy" about Aunt Sibyl.

So Roger escaped whenever he could from his home circle and travelled in
Germany, France, Holland, Italy, in order to study the game of foreign
politics, find out why in most people’s light-hearted opinion a great
war was "inevitable" as a solution of conflicting ambitions, and whether
it might not be possible to avert it completely if only Britain,
Germany, the United States and France could form a League for the
maintenance of peace.

The Schräders made much of him in Germany. Rather timidly they stood up
against Potsdam, tried to create an opinion in the South German
States—their Alsatian origin carried them in that direction—favourable
to a Naval and Colonial understanding with Britain.  At their
instigation Roger gave a series of addresses in western and southern
Germany in 1910 which were deemed a great success, though they were
rather frowned on in Berlin.  He promised to renew his visit and his
lectures in the autumn of 1911.

Meanwhile, Sibyl had returned to London in the early autumn of 1910.  It
was of course the dead season, but it gradually dawned on Society that
she intended to entertain no more.  She was probably going to write a
book about the British Empire; she had turned quite serious, others
said, and was going in for religion.  She had evidently lost her health
and—no doubt—her appearance.

Roger had hastened to greet her in the much shut-up house in Carlton
House Terrace.  Here she sat, generally with her back to the light.  He
was prepared to find her greatly altered.  What struck him most was the
pathetic thinness of face and hands, and the shapelessness of the
figure.  The new fashions in dress—straight up and down, no waist, one
of the greatest revolutions of our age—helped her here, but at the
expense of womanly charm.  For Roger had the old-fashioned man-mind
which has for some twenty thousand years—did it not begin in Aurignacian
times?—admired the incurve below the well-furnished female bust and the
outcurve from waist to hip.

"I’m glad you came so promptly," said Sibyl, "because I’m turning out of
this gloomy mansion and surrendering it to Clithy.  I simply can’t
afford to keep it up _and_ Engledene too, and although he says of course
he will pay for everything and I can have my own suite of rooms, I
somehow fancy a cosy little flat which I could share with Maud, or Vicky
Masham when she comes back from the States....  Yes, I left her at
Washington, going to stay at the White House. I came back alone from
there, but I had sulky Sophie to look after me.  One thing that makes me
think, Roger, that I am _really_ ill, really doomed, is that Sophie no
longer gives me notice whenever any whim of mine displeases her.  I am
sure she is saying to herself now, ’The poor old gal won’t be with us
much longer: better hang on with her and then she may leave me
something.’  But about Vicky, for it really is a good story....  Only
first I’m going to—or you might—ring for tea.  Of course you’ll stay?
You couldn’t in decency refuse.—Do you know, we haven’t set eyes on one
another for ... for ... _three years_? We are both swallowing pungent
things we might say about one another’s appearance, and both resolving
to bite our tongues off rather than say them." ... (To servant: "Tea
please; and ask Miss Mills to make the sandwiches, _my_ sandwiches, I
mean.") ... "I have to take these frame-foods in the form of sandwiches,
and Sophie has learnt the art of making them so seductive that I get
them down without any difficulty....

"About Vicky.—Do draw up your chair; you needn’t be so frigid with a
moribund friend.  Directly it became known in California that Vicky had
been a maid of honour to the late Queen Victoria, my dear, the Americans
nearly killed us with kindness!  Our roles were reversed.  _She_ was the
lady of distinction and _I_ was her travelling companion.  You know the
Americans, especially in the west and east, have a _culte_ for Queen
Victoria, and Vicky’s stories of her home life held them spell-bound.
She felt in her position it wouldn’t be right to _lecture publicly_ on
her late mistress, but the difficulty was got over.—D’you still drink
tea without sugar?  I’m told I _ought_ to take it—got over by
drawing-room meetings, tickets subscribed for, and no charge at the
door, a sumptuous tea—supposed to be modelled on the kind of tea the
Queen took at Osborne—served in the middle of Vicky’s talk. She refused
to take any direct payment, so they sent her _thumping_ cheques for her
travelling expenses. And now she’s going to put her talks on Queen
Victoria as Mother, Wife and Queen into a book.—One way and another,
she’ll make five or six thousand pounds out of the whole business.  And
I’m _jolly_ glad. It’ll be some provision for her real old age, after
I’m gone—for I shan’t have much to leave, and most of that I must give
to my sisters in the Colonies and to your Sibyl, and some of my
servants....

"Now: you’ve got _endless_ things to tell _me_. Indeed I really can’t
see why we should be separated, now, except when we are put to bed.  You
must be a mental wreck, and I am a physical one....  I got frightfully
tired in the States—it spoilt much of the good I derived from the long
steamer voyages.... We are simply two imprisoned souls in very battered
cages.  All the gilding is off mine."


Roger saw as much of Lady Silchester as he could during the last months
of 1910.  He and Maud assisted her to find just the right sort of flat,
where she would have no household worries, where, in fact, she need only
keep Sophie to look after her.  They all spent a reasonably merry
Christmas at Engledene, where Lord Silchester joined them, and where
Fatima—Maud junior—expressed and perhaps felt such an intense interest
in his Keltic operas and reforms in stage scenery that a glint of the
match-maker’s eagerness came into Sibyl’s tired eyes; she pressed
Roger’s hand and murmured, "_Wouldn’t_ it be _too_ delightful...?"

During the first half of 1911 the Intelligence Division of the War
Office discovered Major Brentham as a really great authority on African
geography and African campaigns, and he worked there over maps, and gave
them in addition much other information.  As some return he was gazetted
Colonel, and again there was talk of utilizing such an administrative
capacity in our own dominions.

In June, 1911, Sibyl’s physician and surgeon were not altogether
satisfied as to her progress towards recovery, and suggested she might
derive great benefit from the waters of Villette, a thermal station in
the east of France near the Vosges.  So she said to Roger: "_You look_
quite as ill as I _feel_.  It’s malaria.  You never quite got rid of
that blackwater fever.  Come to Villette later on.  Maud and the girls
and Clithy could join us too.  I’ll have a month first of all, alone
except for Vicky.  I’ll give the closest attention to the cure, and then
perhaps when you arrive I may be able to sit up and take notice and even
do a little motoring...."


Accordingly the scene of this dwindling story changes in
Villette-ès-Vosges, a _Ville d’eaux_ in eastern France, in the month of
August and September, 1911. Germany has spoilt the summer for all
statesmen, soldiers and sailors by challenging the French protectorate
of Morocco at Agadir.  It is supposed by the middle of August, after Mr.
Lloyd George’s speech in the City, and after a succession of "kraches"
in German banking firms, that the Kaiser’s Government is hesitating to
go the full length of War: but Germany is growling horribly because she
is realizing that her financial arrangements for a war of great
dimensions are imperfect, and that she is unprepared with aircraft to
cope with the French aeroplanes.

So she is consenting to _pourparlers_ for the purpose of ascertaining
the terms on which she may be bought off, persuaded to leave Agadir, and
withdraw a portion of the army she is crowding into Alsace-Lorraine.

Villette-ès-Vosges is well suited for the work of the old diplomacy.  It
is, to begin with, a _Ville d’eaux_; and in the eighteenth, nineteenth,
and early twentieth centuries, statesmen who were negotiating treaties
and alliances or resolving problems which threatened war, usually met at
some gay place near their frontiers where they could, under the guise of
"taking the waters," carry on their conversations with one another and
draft protocols of conspiracy or of agreement. Consequently, in late
August and early September, 1911, Villette was unusually thronged: not
only by its accustomed clientèle of middle-aged invalids trying to
combat all manner of diseases for which its springs were efficacious,
but also by their _demoiselles-à-marier_, their gawky boys and
bread-and-butter, pigtailed girls, playing tennis, croquet, and crowding
into the cinemas while their parents sip and bathe and undergo _massage
sous l’eau_; by wicked gamblers, obvious adventurers, demure cocottes
(needing a month’s repose and a reduction of their figures); and by
European statesmen trying to look like tourists.  The German
diplomatists have dressed and hatted themselves to resemble the
Frenchman of caricature; the French ministers and ex-ministers are
out-doing the average English gentleman in bluff "sports" costumes; and
there are Russians and Austrians too quaint for words, _à pouffer de
rire_, as Sibyl says; with such weeping whiskers, such forked beards,
such frock-coats in the early morning and such tall hats as you never
saw, except in pictures of Society in Paris under the Second Empire.

These diplomatists foregather in the theatrically beautiful park with
its swan-pools, its canalized river, its groves and bosquets, pavilions,
tea-houses, summer-houses, chalets, kiosques of newspapers and salacious
novels, open-air orchestras, croquet-lawns, and tennis-courts.  Or if
the problem is very grave, and excited speech should not be audible nor
gesticulations visible to prowling journalists, they stroll away to the
race-course, to the golf links.

It is the glorious summer of 1911, when there was little rain between
the beginning of June and the end of September.  Nevertheless, if you
should weary of the heat or if there should be a sudden shower you have
a long cool arcade of tempting shops, a Grand Guignol, and the necessary
retreats—on a large scale—for those who are summarily affected by the
cathartic action of the waters, especially that very potent _Source
Salée_, which is never mentioned without respect, except where it is the
foundation of Rabelaisian stories.  The medicinal springs are housed in
temples of great architectural beauty.  The town of pleasure, with its
eight or nine hotels, rises in terraces that survey the park—not long
ago a forest in which wolves roamed in winter time.  New Villette
contains a theatre, a _Club des Étrangers_ with gambling rooms, a _Salle
de lecture_, a Concert Hall, an _Église Anglicane_, and a Catholic
church, a post-office, doctors’ houses and laboratories, and the
necessary _usines_ and _garages_.  A mile away is the real Villette, a
common-place Lorraine town of purely agricultural interests, turning its
back, so to speak, on the adjoining health resort which has made its
name famous.

In the arcade is a large black notice-board, whereon besides local
notices are pinned the _Havas_ telegrams. Hither, during one critical
week, comes a throng of anxious readers.  _Is it to be peace or War_?
Will Germany be satisfied with French Congo and give up Morocco?  Should
we pack to-night and leave before Mother has completed her cure, _in
case_ mobilization upsets the trains?  Will my husband be called up?
_What_ will happen to my boy?

Sibyl, lying on her comfortably-sloped invalid chair in the verandah of
the Pavilion des Déjeuners, opines the Germans must be _perfect beasts_
to upset every one like this, and all over some place on the Sahara
coast where there are just a few verminous Moors.  She is not in favour
of anarchism, but she really _does_ wish some one would assassinate the
Kaiser....

Roger looks grave and essays the hopeless task of defending Germany.
"It is all this mania for ’Empires across the Seas.’  Germany gets mad
when our Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire each year get
bigger, while she is prevented everywhere from expanding——, etc., etc."

_Victoria Masham_ hazards the conjecture: "_If only_ the dear Queen were
alive!  She would soon...."

_Sibyl_ interrupts: "My dear Vicky, you must look facts in the face.
Queen Victoria would now be 92. She would not be of much use at that age
... See! There is obviously our Foreign Minister ... disguised with
smoked glasses, but you can’t mistake his nose.  I think he’s _so_
good-looking....  And there is young Hawk of the F.O.  He’s just been
sent to Brussels.  I hear the Villierses are expected to-morrow.  That
man in the straw hat and the cricketing flannels is Monsieur Viviani,
and the handsome old lion with the grey mane is Léon Bourgeois.  The
tight-trousered man you’d take for a ’booky’ is Count Palastro—and
there’s no mistaking that stuffed figure of the last century, in a
stove-pipe hat, a buttoned-up frock-coat, and pointed whiskers: that’s
Polánoff of the Russian Foreign Office.  We saw him when we were in
Japan....  ’Whithersoever the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered
together.’"

_Roger_: "I suppose the carcass is the unhappy peoples of Europe?"

_Sibyl_: "I suppose so.  Vicky, dear.  Go and have breakfast at the
hotel this morning.  D’you mind? Maud has taken off the two girls to
some violent sports’ competition, and Clithy has motored over to
Domrémy." (To Roger): "He is studying local colour for the libretto of
an opera on Joan of Arc.  His great _clou_—if he can only bring it
off—is the last scene.  Joan of Arc, while bound to the stake and
encircled with flames, sings a scena of the fireworks kind. Clithy says
it would be natural under the circumstances. He thinks if they can
devise some kind of asbestos shift for the prima donna and the usual
chemical flames that don’t burn much it could be arranged...." (To
Vicky): "I want Roger all to myself this morning. We are going to have
our breakfast together, here, in case events call him to sterner
duties...." (Vicky acquiesces with a good grace—in her new
transformation to which a _little_ more grey has been added, she looks
surprisingly well, and younger than Sibyl, though she is ten years
older).

A pause.  The waiter lays the table between them for Roger’s déjeuner à
la fourchette.  He is accustomed to preparing Sibyl’s special dietary
and arranges for that also.  He is a pleasant-faced man, deeply
deploring "le peu de progrès que fait M’ame la Baronne...."

_Sibyl_: "What a scene for a dying woman to be looking at!"

_Roger_: "Sibyl!  _Don’t_ be so lugubrious...."

_Sibyl_: "Why?  Do you suppose I don’t pretty well know my own
condition?  I am dying slowly of cancer, what the doctors call ’un lent
dépérissement.’  I expect this is what Mother died of later in life.
The doctors would be ready enough to operate again if there was any
chance....  As it is, they know it is more merciful to let me linger out
my few remaining weeks or months than submit me to the shock of an
operation which might kill me at once.  I _may_ live to October, Dr.
Périgord thinks.  Or he puts it more pleasantly: ’Vers le mois d’Octobre
nous saurons oui ou non, si la guérison de M’ame la Baronne
s’effectuera. Les eaux de Villette opèrent parfois des miracles:
espérons toujours.’ ... And so on....  I don’t suffer much pain—as yet.
When it comes on they’ll put me under morphia.  I shall stay here till
this political crisis is over or the fine weather begins to break. Then
Clithy will motor me to Calais and from Dover to Engledene.  Engledene
will be the best place to die at.  And, of course, _remember_, I want to
be buried at Aldermaston, near Lucy—and near where you’ll be laid some
day—unless you marry again, which I should hardly think you’ll do.  I
shall have a perfect right to occupy a small space in Aldermaston
churchyard, because I’m a parishioner.  I bought the farm that father so
ridiculously mismanaged and that you made so prosperous.  I’ve left it
in my will to my brother Gerry, as some compensation for having taken no
notice of him since I got married....  But, as I said before, _what_ a
scene!  Not even your beloved Happy Valley could better those flowers in
the urns and vases and borders and parterres—those scarlet geraniums,
scarlet cannas, scarlet salvias, and scarlety-crimson Lobelia
cardinalis.  We grow them at Engledene, but they’re nothing like these.
_And_ the heliotrope, and ageratum ... and those blue salvias and orange
calceolarias.  I know it’s rather vulgar, but the whole effect is
superbly staged; don’t you think so?....

"And the women’s dresses.  Many of them, of course, are mannequins, just
showing off for the Paris shops.  And then to see pass by all the
celebrated if over-rated people you’ve heard so much about, just as
though they were well-made-up supers on the stage. And the music of
those alternate orchestras... and such African sunlight ... and ...
_you_ next to me...."

_Roger_: "Look here, if you talk so much I shan’t wonder you get weaker
instead of stronger.  Eat up your breakfast and drink your milk."

_Sibyl_: "I will.  But I _must_ talk to you.  I shall soon be silenced
for ever...."

_Roger_: "So shall _I_, when my time comes.  So will every one.  You
don’t give yourself a chance, talking in this morbid way.  The doctors
are often wrong. Remember the case of Lady Waterford?"

_Sibyl_: "Blanchie?"

_Roger_: "Yes....  A good soaking in Villette water may get rid of all
your trouble and some day you may be weeping over me as I lie dying of
Bright’s disease."

_Sibyl_ (not paying much attention): "Roger!  Do you think there is
going to be War?"

_Roger_: "Not this time.  Look there!  D’you see those _gardes
champêtres_ in that green uniform?"

_Sibyl_: "That nice-looking man, with the blond moustaches?"

_Roger_: "Yes, and that ugly-looking fellow with the red nose.  Well: a
week ago they mysteriously vanished, and I asked what had become of
them.  I was told they had joined up ... the Reserve, you know.  Now
they’re back again.  _That_ shows the Germans and French have come to
terms.  The War is _partie remise_—this year—but it’s certain to come,
unless Germany can be squared.  Remains to be seen what she wants and
what we can afford to give...."

A pause.  Sibyl eats a little food and sips her milk. Roger finishes his
breakfast and lights a cigarette.

_Sibyl_: "Do you think there can be _any_ survival after death?"

_Roger_: "How can _I_ tell?  Who knows _anything_ about it?  Not even
Edison or Marconi.  And they come nearest..."

_Sibyl_: "I mean, of course, our minds, our intelligence, our love.  Our
poor diseased bodies simply dissolve and are redistributed and worked up
again.  But the _personality_ we have created in our brains?"... (takes
a cigarette from Roger and smokes it). "Talking of personality, isn’t it
_extraordinary_ how _that_ can be affected through our stomachs;
chemically, so to speak?  You saw that woman in the dark green dress,
who waved to me just now?  Recognize her?"  (Roger shakes his head)...
"_That_ is Cecilia Bosworth, the Marchioness of Bosworth, quite the
proudest woman in the Three kingdoms—enough in herself to provoke a
middle-class revolution.  Her husband’s remote ancestor was a by-blow of
the Plantagenets, a natural son of ’false fleeting Clarence.’  He went
over to that usurper—I’ve always spoken up for Richard the Third—that
_usurper_, Henry the Seventh, at the battle of Bosworth, and so was
created Earl of Bosworth, and afterwards Elizabeth made his grandson a
marquis.  Well, even you, as an African hermit, _must_ have heard of
that woman’s insolence in Society?  She even mocked at the Royal Family
and said her husband—a perfect oaf—was more Plantadge than they were and
the rightful king....  She wanted Prince Eddy to marry her daughter and
make things come right."  (A pause ... smokes)...

"Well, when she came here six weeks ago, nobody was good enough to mix
with her; she went round blighting us all.  My doctor said it was all
due to liver and he’d soon cure her.  He put her on to _La Source
Salée_—and a slice of melon afterwards. And, _my dear_, she went through
_agonies_, I believe.  I used to hear her _shrieking_ as she passed
along the corridor....

"But it’s cured her.  See what a pleasant nod she gave me just now?  And
there she is, talking to those very pretty girls—and their father’s only
a Leeds manufacturer.

"Well, how do you work _that_ problem out?"

_Roger_: "Give it up! ... But by the look in your eyes, I should say
_you’ve_ got the beginning of a temperature.  Let me wheel you back to
the Hotel and call for Sophie.  Then if you are good and obedient and
get an after-breakfast nap, I will come at three and take you and Vicky
out for a very gentle motor drive...."

Sibyl submits.  The waiter assists with the chair till it is out of the
intricacies of the approach to the Breakfast Pavilion.  Roger draws it
through the gay throng. The church bells of all denominations are
clanging in carillons, either because it is Sunday or because Peace—this
time—has been definitely assured by an exchange of signatures.  A few
people raise their hats or wave hands to Sibyl, though she is
semi-disguised in smoked glasses and a diaphanous veil; and numerous men
nod to Colonel Brentham: who, panting, draws the wheeled chair up to the
perron of the hotel.

Here there is a pause while Sophie is sent for.  Then the
disentanglement of the sick woman from the chair and from shawls, and
her slow walk, supported by Roger and her maid, to the ground floor
rooms where a white-capped nurse receives her.


Roger went to Germany at the end of September, when Sibyl was being
taken back to England by her son.  He spent six weeks lecturing the
Germans on the advisability of joining Britain and France in a
world-wide understanding.  His lectures were politely forbidden on
Prussian territory, which made South Germany all the more eager to hear
him.  And when he left for England at the beginning of November, it was
with the assurance that a German representative deputation would come to
England in the spring of 1912 to promote an Anglo-German understanding.

On reaching London, however, he learnt that Sibyl had died two days
previously, at Engledene.  In the last weeks of her agony she had been
much under morphia.  Before she reached that stage she had insisted with
Maud and Vicky that Roger was _not_ to be bothered by bad reports of her
condition, as he was engaged in doing what he believed to be the right
thing.




                             *CHAPTER XXIV*

                     *ALL ENDS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY*


Colonel Brentham’s anticipations of the Millennium to be achieved by the
adjustment of colonial ambitions were not to be realized.  On the 28th
of June, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated
in the Bosnian capital. Maurice Brentham, meeting his brother the same
day outside the Travellers’ Club, asked what he thought of this bolt
from the blue........

"I think very badly of it," Roger replied. "Whether or not the plot was
engineered in Servia, it is clear from the sayings and antics of the
Russian minister in Belgrade that Russia is egging on Servia against
Austria and using her as a mask under which Russia may place herself
athwart German-Austrian ambitions in the Balkan peninsula, and bar the
way to Constantinople.  She is, in fact, challenging directly the
substantial results of our agreements....

"Well and if she does, what will happen then?"

"The Great War we have been striving to avert."


When War was declared on August 4th, Brentham found himself in the
dilemma of many of his able-bodied, disengaged fellow-countrymen: what
service could he render to the British Empire at this crisis of its
fate?  Like most of us he had a strong predilection as to the kind of
service he might best render.  In his case it was to proceed as quickly
as possible to East Africa and watch over the fortunes of the Happy
Valley.  John was already in India with his regiment; Ambrose had best
remain at Cambridge unless there was anything like Universal service;
Maud would take up hospital work and her nieces could help her.

He therefore proceeded to offer his services to the Secretary of State
for the Colonies.  If Africa could not be kept out of the War area—as he
had at first hoped—then, if we did not occupy German East Africa, the
Germans would soon proceed to invade our adjacent possessions: in short,
a terrible struggle was about to take place for supremacy in the Dark
Continent between Britain, France, and Belgium on the one side and
Germany on the other.  In such a struggle, surely his qualities as
geographer, linguist, and a person of great local influence ought to be
of value in the East African campaign?

The Colonial Office replied coldly that it had handed over the whole
question of attack and defence in East Africa to the War Office.  To the
War Office he therefore repaired one very warm day at the end of August.
With the greatest difficulty he obtained access to the Secretary of
State for War, then the most powerful person in the kingdom.  He faced
those "desert eyes" like the optics of a harpy eagle, and made a
stammering, voluble proffer of his services, which gradually slackened
under the stare and the silence.  When he paused to invite a reply, the
great man interjected: "How old are you?"

"Fifty-six, Sir."

"_Much_ too old....  Couldn’t stand ... strain of campaign....  Besides
... all arranged with Indian War Department....  They mightn’t like
their Intelligence Division ... interfered with.... No doubt contingency
long foreseen ... plan of campaign cut-and-dried....  Sorry....  We must
make use of you elsewhere....  Send you America ... or recruiting,
p’raps....  Scotland, Ireland, Canada.  Let you know later....  Good
morning...."

Roger, fearful of being caught in the machine as some little wheel or
cog of no importance, lay low, considered, inquired and made his plans,
thinking of nothing but how to reach and save the Happy Valley.
Passports and visas were still matters of trifling importance.  The
direct route to East Africa was closed to him; fighting had already
begun, rather disastrously for the British.  But the Belgians were
preparing for a great war-effort against German East Africa.  Roger
made, his way to Antwerp ... saw the Belgian Minister for the Congo, saw
the grave and courteous young King ... was given permission to accompany
the Belgian forces assembling on Tanganyika....

Then: picture him having reached the mouth of the Congo, late on in 1914
... a little rusty for this adventure in Equatorial Africa.  No one with
him as assistant, servant, valet.  His son John had been as far back as
the preceding July marked down for service with the first Indian
contingent which would in case of war be dispatched across the Indian
Ocean to take part in the mismanaged attack on Tanga.  Can you picture
Brentham in those dreary weeks of waiting at Boma, the Congo
capital—hothouse heat, mosquitoes, sand, dense forest, rancid smell of
palm oil—unutterably lonely, asking himself torturingly "whether he had
done the right thing"?  Ought he not to have stayed at home, fought in
Flanders?  Looked after Ambrose, waited for orders from Lord Kitchener?
Was he absolutely single-minded in his attachment to the Happy Valley?
Had he chosen the right way to get there quickest?

At last they were off up-river to take the train to Stanley Pool.  The
Belgian officers with whom he travelled were one and all nice fellows,
_bons compagnons_, intelligent, respectful of this grave English
colonel’s knowledge of Africa; but a little puzzled _quand même_ at his
Quixotry, a little reserved.  "Il parait qu’il a vécu longtemps avec les
Boches," he overheard one of them saying in the mess, as he was
sauntering in.  It seemed to convey a doubt as to his good faith....  At
Leopoldville, he encountered a stately-looking Negro in a familiar
costume—long white _kanzu_, small white open-work skull-cap—speaking in
Swahili.  With what joy he recognized that once familiar tongue can only
be appreciated by those who have known the nostalgia of East Africa.  He
addressed the man in Kiswahili and was greeted with respect and
interest.  A bargain was struck with his employer, and the man, Omari
bin Brahimu, originally a boy recruit for Stanley, entered Brentham’s
service, to accompany him to East Africa.  Half the misery of the
adventure was now over.  Here was a potential nurse in sickness, an
efficient valet, a packer, steward, if-need-be cook, gun-bearer,
counsellor, interpreter, and ever present help in trouble....

Colonel Brentham soon showed the Belgians he was not there as an
encumbrance, as a tiresome elderly guest.  His knowledge of Bantu
tongues enabled him to pick up a smattering of Bangala, the _lingua
franca_ of the Congolese soldiery.  He worked in his shirtsleeves and in
football shorts at every emergency, knew something about steamer
engines, shot for the pot, drilled recruits, and evidently knew the
Germans’ position and resources thoroughly.  By the time the swelling
contingent of reinforcements had reached Stanley Falls he, was voted the
nicest Englishman—_point de morgue, simple et instruit, ban garçon
jusqu’au bout des angles_—they had ever met.  Between Stanley Falls and
Tanganyika he was very ill and nearly died of black-water fever; but
pulled through, thanks to Omari’s nursing, and reached Ujiji a yellow
spectre, after the Belgians had in several actions on the lake and on
shore gained possession of Tanganyika.  They had been marvellously
helped by a naval contingent sent out by the British Admiralty through
Nyasaland. It was a joy which conduced to Brentham’s recovery to meet
the brave, jolly, resourceful British naval officers and picked seamen.
In some way it righted his own position.  He felt less a lonely Don
Quixote, a solitary specimen of the British allies of Belgium.

The year 1915 had been the nadir of his life.  Cut off from all news—he
was not to know for another year that his sons were both dead, John,
shot through the head in a maize plantation outside Tanga, and Ambrose,
who had enlisted a month after his father’s departure, blown to pieces
by a shell at Ypres; not to know how his sister and his daughters were
faring; whether the British Empire still stood firm, and what people
said or thought about his own disappearance. He was often sick, tired,
lonely, with little to read, and his thoughts a torture to him; for they
dwelt on the remembering of happier things.  He wished at times he might
have in humdrum daily life the delusions that came to him in dreams or
in attacks of fever; that Lucy was once more by his side, that Sibyl had
sat by him, that Maud or Maurice or Mrs. Stott had come into his
wretched palm-leaf hut.


From Ujiji to Tabora he fought alongside the Belgian Negro army, feeling
every step he took eastward more and more at home.  He nearly cried with
joy at finding himself once more among the Wanyamwezi and actually
recognizing among those who came forward to offer their services against
the Germans a few of the men who had been his soldier-porters in bygone
days.

At Tabora he heard disquieting news about the Happy Valley.  It was
reported that the British-Boer army under General Smuts, which had
already taken the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro from the Germans, was
about to start—had started, in fact—on a bold diversion.  Led by one or
two English sportsmen, they were evidently making for Lake Manyara and
the Happy Valley, with the intention of cutting the Tanganyika railway
in Ugogo and outflanking the German forces in the coast-belt.  It was a
bold scheme that only a great general would have thought of.  The story,
he thought, must be true.  The stroke was imposed on our strategy by the
geography of the country.....

After days and nights of meditation and many discussions with Wanyamwezi
headmen, guides, and disarmed Askari (who had transferred their
allegiance from the Germans to the Allies with the greatest
willingness), Brentham sought the general commanding the Belgian forces
at Tabora and expounded his plan and the reasons for his plan.

Sanction was obtained.  Duly furnished with papers establishing his
identity and his position as an intelligence officer serving with the
Belgian forces, Roger started at the head of a hundred picked
Wanyamwezi, with as little baggage as possible.  He felt now primed for
any hardship, any privation, when a certain number of days’ marching
would bring him back "home," as he instinctively framed it in his mind.
Nevertheless, in case strength should give out he purchased two donkeys
for himself and Omari, who now chiefly filled the role of cook, and
therefore must not be walked off his legs.

Then they plunged into the untracked wilderness, the least known part of
German East Africa, between northern Unyamwezi and the crater region at
the head of Lake Manyara, where the British forces would probably
impinge on the Happy Valley.  Oh, that he might arrive there in time to
prevent the accidental or needless destruction of priceless experimental
machinery, and the outcome of researches undertaken in the general
interests of the world; and intervene possibly between the harmless,
bewildered natives and a soldiery which might not understand them!  At
first his caravan travelled thirty miles a day in a swinging stride
through a cultivated country, a country of good roads, rest-houses and
ordered prosperity.  Thence it passed north-east and east into a
trackless, little-populated region, a no-man’s land, illimitable plains
and tablelands of thin grass, dotted at rare intervals with granite
boulders, blocks and upright _menhirs_ of naked stone, as yet the
undeciphered hieroglyphics of a chapter in African geology.  The dry
watercourses sheltered clumps of ragged, lank, thin-stemmed Hyphame
palms, and strange-looking euphorbias.  The open country swarmed with
game—countless zebras, herds of yellow hartebeest, red-brown impala,
black-belted, golden-yellow, white-bellied Grant’s gazelle, family
parties of twenty or thirty black-and-white and grey ostriches,
blue-grey, black-maned gnus (almost as numerous as the zebras), and
troops of blotched giraffes like run-away telegraph poles as they fled
with uniform trot before his expedition.  Rhinoceroses, larger than any
Roger had ever beheld, charged his caravan, but more as an idle sport
than with malign intent....  "What a pity," thought Roger, after
successful evasions of these snorting bulks, "we could not domesticate
these monsters and turn their strength to account in warfare? A rhino
cavalry regiment would carry away all the enemy’s wire entanglements and
prove as useful as armoured cars."

Only stopping an hour here and an hour there to secure meat for his
caravan or incidentally to give some too persistent rhino its quietus,
he pressed on til his expedition entered country covered by his
recollections—the basin of a former vast sheet of water, ancillary,
perhaps, to the Victoria Nyanza, now reduced to the furrowed courses of
half-dry rivers and a long salt lake, its shores and portions of its
surface sparkling with salt crystals in the sunshine, and its surcharged
waters of salts and sodas in solution, a milky blue. There were people
in this wilderness of broad valleys and abrupt escarpments, tribes
already known to Roger, primitive Bushman-like folk, speaking languages
full of clicks, going stark naked, without domestic animals or
agriculture, nomad hunters with bows and arrows, straying from the
culture of fifty thousand years ago into awakened Africa: where white
nations were fighting for predominance with gas and steel, aeroplane and
armoured car.

At last he sighted familiar ridges and entered remembered ravines and
noble forests, and followed streams of fresh, cold water.  There were
now visible many signs of the handiwork, the energy of civilized man. At
the same time they encountered the first fugitives fleeing from Iraku
before the coming of a war so terrible that there was nothing like it in
the black man’s legends or imagination: flying rafts in the air hurling
bombs, the bursting of shells, the leaden hail of machine-gunfire.

Brentham’s arrival on the scene coincided with some suspension of
hostilities; at any rate, as he hurried forward through the bungalows,
factories, and gardens of Wilhelmshöhe, he heard no artillery; nothing
more war-like than the occasional popping of a rifle and a few shouts.
The roads, however, were thronged with fugitives making for the woods,
some of whom greeted him rapturously as the _Bwana-mkubwa_ returning to
his kingdom, a god emerging from a machine who would set everything
right.  Many of these stopped in their flight, turned back and followed
his men.  They even ran alongside his peevish donkey, regardless of its
kicks, strove to kiss a disengaged hand, called him by his native names.
The pace of the irritated ass became a trot, a canter, now they were on
well-made roads.  Roger glanced from side to side, saw old buildings he
remembered, and new bungalows and factories he had never seen before.
Several were burning.  Negro soldiers in British khaki uniforms were
either attempting to stay the flames or were frankly pillaging the
houses.  Several glanced up at him, irresolute.  He seemed a British
officer of high rank, but not of their regiment; a few saluted; a
question put here and there elicited the fact that they understood
Swahili.

From them he gathered that a very large British force had reached Lake
Manyara from the north-east, from the big snow mountains, guided by
several Englishmen, one of whom was called the "Little Terror" (Kicho
kidogo), who had a small army of his own, very fierce men, not in
uniform, "washenzi wabaya."[#]  That the German men of the Happy Valley
had fled before the English to some great German stronghold in the
south; but that the "Little Terror" had been told off to search and
occupy the country west of the line of march, and he was now engaged in
giving the "washenzi" punishment.


[#] Wicked savages.


Roger, scarcely halting more than a minute here or a minute there to
glean this information, rode eastward as rapidly as his tired donkey
could be urged to go. The absolutely familiar scenery was not much
altered for the lapse of seven years.  The roads were even smoother and
neater, the hedges of dracæna and scarlet-flowered Erythrina more
luxuriant.  There were brilliant flower-gardens round the bungalows.
There was the Stotts’ former Mission station and school. Beside it was a
new chapel of florid Gothic architecture.

Dr. Wiese’s house and laboratory.  He paused, got off the donkey, and
entered the front garden.  There, to greet him, was Dr. Wiese himself,
lying on his back on a bed of scarlet geraniums, dead, in a pool of
congealing blood, with a swarm of flies buzzing about his shattered
face.  He could see a smashed door, a broken verandah post, and strewn
papers, glass bottles, odds and ends of things remaining over from a
looting of the house.  This was too serious an episode to be passed by
without investigation.  Omari had by this time come up.  And not far
behind him were the returning refugees and his caravan of
soldier-porters. He strode up to the dead man.  Yes, it was Wiese, the
physician-friend of many years, who had striven so hard to save Lucy
from an insidious disease.... Shocking ... to see him like this after
seven years! If _only_ he had arrived yesterday it might not have
happened.  He took the shortest cut over flower-beds, past broken-into
aviaries, trampled botanic gardens with an infinitude of labels, to the
laboratory, whence came a shouting and quarrelling.

In this building there were a few Nyasaland soldiers in khaki and a
number of sinister-looking Ruga-ruga, like those who had once been in
Stolzenberg’s employ. Bottles were being smashed in the search for
brandy, strange fumes filled the air, irrevocable damage was doubtless
being done.  Here and there, thrown on one side whilst they searched for
treasure, were heaps of slaughtered turkeys, peafowl, Crowned cranes and
guinea-fowl, which the looting soldiery had obtained from the poultry
yards and aviaries round about.

Roger, possessed with a fury which transformed him at this stupid
destruction, shouted military commands to the men in khaki and in rags.
Mechanically they dropped their booty and were silent.  Some of the
Ruga-ruga recognized him as the _Bwana-mkubwa_ who had once reigned
here, and had joined the "Wadachi"[#] in investigating the "Terror’s"
death and disappearance.  Cowed by his presence, they obeyed an order to
march out of the building and assemble with the soldiers in the public
square of Magara there to await further orders.  Revolver in hand, and
well backed by his determined-looking Wanyamwezi, he said: "I will shoot
any man among you whom I catch looting or destroying."  Sullenly they
slunk away.


[#] Germans.


Another mile’s ride and here he was before his former home, his mouth
and throat dry with apprehension.  The formal garden in front of the
house was beautifully neat, gay with flowers in better order even than
in his days.  Up the pebbled path which led to the verandah and the
stone steps he walked with a beating heart.  Oh, that he should be
seeing it all again; and oh, that Lucy might come out through the French
windows with her graceful, rather languid walk, to throw her arms around
his neck and say: "Dearest; dear, _dear_ Roger; back at last!"  Or that
even trusty sister, Maud—  How was Maud faring? He had heard nothing of
her since a letter reached him at Stanley Pool, nearly two years ago ...
those terrible years of silence whilst he traversed Central Africa....

But at the rumour of his approach it was neither his living sister nor
the wraith of his dead wife that emerged from the open doorway: it was
the sinister figure of Willowby Patterne: like himself in khaki:
thinner, yellower, greyer, wickeder-looking than he had seen him ten or
twelve years ago.

"Had a presentiment we should meet here," said Patterne, trying with a
hand that shook to fix an insolent eyeglass in a bloodshot eye.  "Though
no one knew what had become of you since you bolted from England when
the war started.  No! ..." (as Roger makes to advance) "... Stay where
you are or I shall have you arrested at once you ... you ... German ...
_spy_!"  (Roger takes his revolver out of its leather case and sees that
it is loaded and ready.)

"Oh?  I’ve got a revolver, too.  If you make the slightest movement till
I tell you to go, and where to go, I shall shoot."

At this threat, the general purport of which he understands, Omari bin
Brahimu steps in front of his master and produces _his_ revolver.
Seeing this, Willowby Patterne calls in a rather quavering voice,
"Njoôni, watu wangu, upesi; yupo adui!  Upesi!"[#]  Two men come from
the back premises, look from the white devil pacing up and down on the
verandah to the figures of Roger and Omari; and then, with a shout of
joy, fling themselves on Roger—not to arrest him as Willowby first
supposes, and so hesitates to shoot, but to kiss his hand, kneel at his
feet, utter incoherent cries of joy, the while Omari keeps his pistol
steadily aimed at the "Little Terror."  They are two of Brentham’s
Somali gun-bearers of seven years back, Yusuf Ali and Ashuro.


[#] "Come, my men, quick!  Here is the enemy, quick!"


Willowby, longing to shoot and kill, yet letting I dare not wait upon I
would, disquieted that none of his Ruga-ruga obey his frantic whistling,
decides to make a bolt of it and rally them and the Nyasaland soldiers,
and so make a prompt end of Roger and the Somali traitors.  (These men
had arrived at his station in Namanga, hangers-on of the large and
heterogeneous British force which was seeking a way across the
little-known region between Meru and the Happy Valley.  They told
Patterne they had once been employed in Iraku on the Concession and
offered to help him to show the way.  Believing they might be useful for
his own purposes in laying hands on the things he sought for, he had
taken them on; and here they were, saluting his rival and enemy like a
demi-god ... If he only got a chance to get hold of them!  _He’d_ cut
the life out of them with a kiboko!....)

Whilst he hesitated whether to walk down the steps in a dignified way or
jump from the rails of the verandah into the flower-beds, his indecision
was terminated abruptly.  Behind him a woman shrieked, and he felt
himself propelled by a vigorous push of stout arms down the stone steps
and almost on to the group of Roger, Omari and the two Somalis.  These
might have laid hold of him, but a German lady, Frau Hildebrandt,
impeded their action.  She unceremoniously pushed Patterne into a
parterre of petunias, whilst she too clasped Roger’s hands in a frenzied
appeal, a rapturous greeting.  "It is Herr Brentham!  Ach lieber Gott!
Er wird verstehen.  He will be our salvation.  Ach mein Mann!  Ach meine
kinder!  Hilf!  Hilf!"

Patterne rose to his feet, ran over flower-beds, through or over dracæna
hedges (since Roger’s men blocked the garden gate), out of a tangle of
gardens and outhouses, across the green, to the public square and
market-place.  Here he found groups of bewildered, sulky King’s African
Rifles, and his own Ruga-ruga. He had been given an escort of fifty
Negro riflemen when, three days before, he had been detailed—at his own
request, having finished his job as guide—to "clear up" Iraku and the
European settlement of Wilhelmshöhe, professing to know every inch of
the ground.  He had been told, of course, that unless resistance was
offered there was to be no looting; that any German women or children
were to be allowed to remain in their homes until they could be
officially dealt with, and all German men surrendering to be treated
humanely as prisoners of war, and marched under escort to the nearest
British camp.  These instructions he had chosen to interpret in his own
way by killing Dr. Wiese and terrorizing Frau Hildebrandt into finding
him the information of which he was in search. He intended, of course,
to make himself master of the Concession, in the hope that he might be
recognized as owner after the War.  There would certainly be several
years of confusion in which he might rule here and perhaps acquire all
the wealth he wanted.....

But the arrival—the resurrection almost—of Roger Brentham had so queered
his plans that he saw red.  He would assemble all the men he could get
hold of and make a sudden rush on Magara House, and shoot, shoot, shoot
before Roger’s party could put themselves in a position of defence.  He
would declare Roger to be a traitor and a German Spy.  Provided he
killed him, the _fait accompli_ would not be followed with much of an
inquiry at this very critical time....

But his Ruga-ruga were slow to respond, having recognized Roger as a
redoubtable warrior.  And the Nyasaland regulars flatly refused to march
to the attack.  Patterne was not one of their regular officers, and they
insisted that an English Colonel having taken possession of this country
they should all rejoin the main army and lay the case before their
commanding officer.  So Patterne, gathered his loads together, awoke his
weary porters (who had taken advantage of the halt to gorge themselves
with food after their severe privations) and departed down the Valley in
the direction of the rapidly advancing armies.  He felt he could not
halt or eat or sleep till he had taken vengeance on the man who had so
persistently baulked him; he would denounce him as a spy, as a traitor
... perhaps—oh joy!—get him court-martialled and shot; at any rate,
collared and marched out of East Africa.

But he never even reached the head-quarters of the army now entering
Irangi.  Roger, anticipating his intentions, had rapidly written an
account of his actions in turning Patterne out of Magara House, had
explained who he was, the route he had followed, and his intention to
remain in charge of the Concession till he was ordered to leave it by
the proper authority.  The Somalis travelling twice as quickly as
Patterne’s _safari_, and travelling with as much secrecy as speed,
delivered the letter to the nearest British officer in high command.
Some say that on the return journey they took a pot shot at Patterne as
he was halting to whip some of his laggard porters; others that Patterne
was speared in Ufiome by Masai camp-followers of the main army, who had
suffered by some of his raids in the past, or who transferred to the
"Little Terror" the vendetta they had carried on with his ally, the Big
Terror of the Red Crater.  In any case, "he perished miserably," as they
used to write in pre-Wells histories.  He never was heard of again,
after he left the Happy Valley. His escort of Nyasaland soldiers quietly
rejoined their regiment, then in the thick of fighting at Kondoa-Irangi;
and no one cared enough about Sir Willowby Patterne to put any
questions.  His Ruga-ruga dispersed as plunderers on their own account,
till they were rounded up sharply and a few of them shot for looting.
The "Little Terror" ceased all at once to terrify, and the baronetcy,
after a year’s delay and presumption of death, passed to a distant
relative, who was the reverend headmaster of a public school.


Roger, meantime, gradually restored the Happy Valley to something of its
former peace and quietness. He harboured the Catholic missionaries and
the German women and children there till provision could be made for
their withdrawal.  His proceedings were approved and sanctioned by a
Boer General commanding a wing of the British invading army, who by one
of those coincidences so common in this incredible war, not only played
a great part in conquering German East Africa for the Empire he himself
had steadily fought against for three years, but turned out to be the
very identical van Rensselaer who had picked up Roger as a prisoner and
saved his life in 1900.

As soon as the Happy Valley was brought into telegraphic communication
with the coast and with England, Roger cabled to his sister his
whereabouts and his intentions to remain in the Happy Valley till its
political fate was decided.  In return he learnt of the death of his two
sons, and the fact that his two daughters had felt impelled to
marry—Maud ("Fatima"), Lord Silchester, and Sibyl ("Goosey") a wounded
officer—without waiting to hear from a father presumably lost in Central
Africa.


So Colonel Roger Brentham at the end of the war decided that the England
of the Armistice and the Peace and the Reconstruction period was no
country for him to live in, with its coal strikes, railway strikes,
engineer strikes, police strikes, taxi-drivers’ strikes, dockers’
strikes, bakers’ strikes, stage-hands’ strikes and electricians’
strikes; its Irish atrocities and reprisals; its futurist art; its
paper-strewn highways and byways and beauty-spots; its bottle-throwing
chars-à-bancs; man-slaughtering motors; Albert Hall Victory Balls; jazz
dances; betting scandals; high prices; and low standards of political
morality.  Preferable, far, was the Happy Valley, where relations
between black, white, and brown were well adjusted, where great wealth
was being quietly produced to the proportionate profit of all concerned
in the production; where protection was not only accorded to all human
beings, but also to all beasts and birds not directly harmful to human
interests.

So, after regularizing his position with the Colonial Office and the
"enemy" shareholders, he asked his sister Maud to join him, and replaced
the Stotts and Ann Anderson in their industrial mission stations.

And in the Happy Valley he may remain another ten years yet, till he
becomes a walking compendium of information on the past and present of
East Africa.

When he is 72 and Maud is 74—a wonder as regards resistance to African
germ diseases—-it is just possible they may not wish to leave their
bones in an African grave.  They may take passages in an Aerobus to
Hendon and thence slip down to Aldermaston by motor and up to Farleigh;
and after glancing round at a rejuvenated England and a pacified
Ireland, after appraising the intelligence and beauty of Roger’s
grand-children—especially the son and heir of Lord Silchester—may
finally retire in some season of abnormal cold and unconquerable
influenza to cedar-shaded Aldermaston churchyard, where the vestiges of
Lucy and Sibyl await them.



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