THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING (continued 3)

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.