THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING (continued 5)

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....