THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING (continued 6)

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

Roger: "Look here, Sibyl. You're altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in '86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn't have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You were quite right: you could never have stood the strain of Africa. I'll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."

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

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

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

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

Roger: "I've heard no good of him...."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to "Rosie's" desk. Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had been pasted.

"My mineral specimens ... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East Africa! Then you never sent them on?"

"My dear chap! Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail bags—two of them—arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a letter with them or any directions. Also two skulls which, as you see, decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in silver at Snarley's expense for our Departmental Dinner. Meantime, I have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner's objections...."

Brentham: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray. I asked you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the Natural History Museum. However, I'll take them all away presently in a cab."

"But not the skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass...."

"Yes, the skulls, too. They're most important——"

"But so are we," said Parsons.

Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at. He accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on them, at his leisure. After that, Professor Flower and the skulls; which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy Valley. He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away. They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous type.

CHAPTER XVI

SIBYL AS SIREN

In August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to have a child.

"But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl's place in Scotland. You can't be going to have a baby till—till well on in the winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up. Of course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house party—just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits and stags. I don't suppose there will be any women there except her aunt and you." Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.

She was living once more with her parents, while Roger's plans were so unsettled. The rooms at Hankey's had been given up, and on his frequent journeys to London—mainly on Sibyl's business—he slept at Aunt Pardew's Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very comfortable. He had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July—once he had left her there a whole afternoon, tête-à-tête with the still languid young widow. On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to Tilehurst to see Mr. Baines with more news—sent on by Callaway from Unguja—about Ann Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and what the Mission proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone. It tickled his sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with John's father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits there not only cheered the Aerated Waters' manufacturer, but they enraged Mrs. Baines.

She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this caused Eliza to get out of hand.

But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either. Sibyl, not wishing to fall out with Roger, declared she tried to like Lucy. Yet when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger's wife.

The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations. Lucy in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes. She had no idea that a stay in the Highlands—even in 1889—involved a special wardrobe: short, kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day's adventures—going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous. Trailing skirts and wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress. Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of Aunt Christabel; who wasn't at all inclined to spare Lucy.

What had that good-looking Roger with such a career before him had in his mind that he should throw himself away on this village schoolmistress? She did not care, either, for Sibyl's new infatuation for Roger; would have liked to keep them well apart. The distant cousinship was not through her or her sister, Mrs. Grayburn, but through Roger's mother and Colonel Grayburn. Sibyl, when her year of mourning was up, had much better marry again into the peerage; and if she wanted a smart man as Agent—for land-agents of the middle-class-bailiff type were "passés de mode" on all big estates ... well, there was Willowby, Willowby Patterne (a nephew-in-law of Aunt Christabel), who really might very well do for the post. Willowby had been very wild, had run through much of his own money and his unsuitable wife's—they were never asked out together. But he was a first-class shot, had been to Canada with the Duke of Ulster, knew a lot about blood-stock, had tried farming and ranching and would be quite all there helping Sibyl entertain her house parties and giving an eye to the manly education of James—Aunt Christabel did not countenance Sibyl's silly freak of imposing the name of "Clitheroe" on the little Lord Silchester.

Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger from any unnecessary expenditure. She remembered that she had come to him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain. So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together. She had only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of them a plain black silk. After they had become familiar to the eye, Sibyl had offered to lend some of her gowns, but had done it in such a way that Lucy's pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat. Sibyl then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.

All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby's father was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby's case there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one—already a subaltern in the Guards—with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat to death with two bull-terriers—and laughing frenziedly the while—put an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had betrayed quite a number of trusting women—including his wife; but nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But that women did run after him, there was no denying; though at this time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.

Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of Willowby was a little tempered by the latter's unwilling admiration of his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction. Moreover Willowby tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.

But when the day's sport was done and they had bathed and changed and laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation. Her little naïvetés of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby Patterne. Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.

Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some one else's expense. But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a pyramid of flawless chastity). She wore a single eyeglass through which everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be returning to Africa. She had friends who were casting in their lots with Cecil Rhodes's ventures. To her mental vision, Africa was about the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the dear Queen is getting so interested in him" ... "was there gold by the bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?" But when she learnt that Sibyl's cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl's secretary but Roger's wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or interest again.

Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream. Mr. Bream even in those distant days was not—and did not behave like—the conventional clergyman. He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or Cambridge. Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the slightest dread of a hereafter. He came forward to marry, when re-marriage was legal but not savoury—sooner than that the poor dears should live in sin. He dealt—I dare say very kindly and considerately—with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the first to pardon you. He always went where Society did in order to be able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident. He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a gun—quite skilfully—and was very fond of games of chance in the evening if the stakes were not too high.

Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream—who as much as any cleric might, stood in lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester—called Lucy once or twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.

So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl had summed up her makeshift costume—for a day's yachting—in one short phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late tea which followed their return. "R—Ro—ger, oh dear Roger, let me go home! I'm only in every one's way here. I never felt so stupid in my life before. I can't think what's the matter with me—it's the feeling they all despise me—and—and—pity you for having made a fool of yourself. Let me go home to mother—and Maud!..."

Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.

Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to the Earldom of Pitchingham and précis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland. H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of Baranquilla.

"I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington. "A little bit near the North Pole—or is it North Cape? I always mix the two. But it's in Norway, very bracing climate, awfully good sea-fishing, and £350 a year. Or if you prefer heat, there's Baranquilla, northern South America, not a good climate, but the last man stood it for two years before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it's £550 a year and two years count for three in service. Which is it to be? Make up your mind soon, 'cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list—snap at either."

Tarrington's tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final. Roger seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its tones having sombred with twenty years' fog and smoke into shades of yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia. But a married man and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself the luxury of ill-temper. So he replied civilly that he would think if over and let Lord Tarrington know.

As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer Bazzard.

Brentham went down that evening—pretending he didn't care in the least for this definite set-back—to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.

Lady Silchester's plans had long been ready, though she seemed to develop them as she spoke. "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of old Parkins. He's an out-of-date duffer. I'll either pension him off, or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property. He's let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents. I'll give you £700 a year, and there'll be all sorts of legitimate pickings as well. You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I'll do it up for you. Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the next ten years. I'm sure I don't want to ask her to dinner or to anything else, if she doesn't want to come. She needn't curtsy to me if we meet, if it's that she dislikes....

"But you've great abilities, Roger. You've been shamefully treated by Lord W.... He's always tried to snub me ... I don't know why ... I'll tell you what. I'll run you. After all, I am a rich woman ... now. You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as that seems to be going to become the fashion. What ... what ... WHAT a pity you married like that, all in a hurry! And you see it's done you no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at the F.O. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk. I'll make a career for you!" And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her palpable secret....

"This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look. "But do you think it is fair on others? Why not put in your father——? Or one of your brothers?"

"Rubbish! Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester estates—only on a far bigger scale—as he is doing over his three hundred acres at Aldermaston. I think we'll send him up to care-take at Glen Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place. Helping him with loans is like pouring money into—what do you pour it into when it runs away? A sieve? And the two boys have both got jobs and are none too bright, at that. Besides, it's no fun working with brothers, and I'm going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the Estate. It'll be ... it'll be ... what's two and a third from twenty-one? Well, at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy comes of age. In that time we'll have raised the annual value of the property to twice what it is now, and incidentally we'll have a glorious time, influencing people, don't you know, getting up a new opposition in Parliament, and making ourselves felt...."

"Well, in any case, it's awfully good of you ... awfully ... somehow I don't deserve it...."

"You don't, after the way you threw me over. But stick to me now, through thick and thin, and"—she was going to have added impulsively, "Oh, Roger, I do love you, I can't help it," and perhaps have flung herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely, "And we'll make a great success of our partnership. And now we must go and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she will come poking her nose in here to see what we're up to. How tiresome the old are! It's only on account of what the Queen would say that I keep her on here. She thinks you're 'dangerous' to my peace of mind, Roger. But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring, and father can't bear to be separated from her, and the two of them would be unthinkable."

Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl's scheme would never work, without damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her Circe influence already. He accepted her offer—at any rate for one year. At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the arrangement. He decided for the present to lodge with his wife's parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses—Mrs. Parkins, at any rate—should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able to set up house there. He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much regret" his commission for Zangia.

About this time he received two letters which gave him much to think about, but which he put at the back of his mind. I will give the shortest first:—

To Captain Brentham, F.R.G.S., H.B.M. Consul for Zangia.

School of Mines,

Jermyn Street, S.W. October 5, 1889.

DEAR SIR,—

You will remember calling here in last July, just before I took my holiday.

You left with me for examination a series of rock specimens and some sediment of lake water from East Africa.

Of the rock specimens, at least six give indications of great interest. Those two labelled "Iraku I" and "Iraku II" are so rich in gold that their importance must have been apparent to yourself—unless you mistook the gold for iron pyrites, an inverse of the customary deception, which is generally the other way about. The specimen labelled "Marasha" is simply coal—rather shaley coal, probably a surface fragment. There are two specimens, unfortunately with their labels missing or indecipherable, which are a hard bluish green serpentine rock, obviously related to the "blue ground" of South Africa and probably diamondiferous. A fifth specimen yields evidence of wolframite, and in three other samples there is much mica. The lake sediment is being further examined by a colleague of mine. He believes it to be an indication of the formation of phosphates in the lake bed or shores which should be of great importance to agriculture as a constituent of chemical manure. These phosphates might be derived from birds' dung in great quantities, from guano in fact.

I assume you have duly registered the exact geographical localities of these specimens? Otherwise, they are very tantalizing, for they evidently indicate—if they come from one region and not from a wide area of travel—one of the wealthiest of African territories.

Pursuant to your wish, however, I shall treat the matter as confidential. But if you can at any time supply me with the exact geographical information I require I shall be pleased to write a report on the collection for the Petrographical Society or for the confidential information of the Government: whichever you prefer.

Yours faithfully,

DANIEL RUTTER.

Unguja,

August 26, 1889.

DEAR CAPTAIN BRENTHAM,—

Mrs. Stott and I, we thank you very heartily for your kind remembrances of us. The generous present of tea you sent us as soon as you got back to England reached our good friend Callaway a little while ago and I found it here waiting for us when I arrived from the interior.

Captain Wissmann has had a wonderful series of victories over the Arabs and Wangwana, which in the good providence of God have cleared the way between Ugogo and the coast. I heard something of this in the Happy Valley last April; so, as we were running terribly short of supplies and as we felt "seed time was come" and that the Lord desired us to reopen our Burungi Station, and establish his tabernacle strongly in this glorious place—Manyara—"ripe unto harvest"—I felt my way cautiously up the Valley and through the Irangi country to Burungi. The place was not any worse treated than when you left it—you made a great impression on the Wagogo—so, as their elders begged me to rebuild the station I left some of our trained workers to do so. Besides that, Captain Wissmann, whom we met near-by, has lent us two German sergeants—biddable men and clever with their hands. They'd been sick, and wounded in the legs and he said it would do them good to have a spell of quiet sedentary life. He also put under their orders a guard of five Sudanese soldiers to guard the station whilst it is being rebuilt. So here I am at the coast, chopping yarns with Mr. Callaway, and laying in great supplies which I have been able to buy out of the price of that ivory you shot for us.

Captain Brentham, you don't know what a mine of wealth the Happy Valley is, and the cliffs and mountains on the western side (Iraku and Ilamba). I am an Australian, and before I found Christ I had a course of instruction as a mining engineer. The rocks in and about the Happy Valley tell me at first sight more than they would an ordinary Englishman. I suppose some one will have to find out this, sooner or later. I'd much sooner it were you. You may yet get it taken over by Great Britain. At any rate, if you came out here and prospected you would see what I mean. What did you do with the specimens you took away with you for analysis? Did you lose them on your way to the coast? Maybe if the Happy Valley is to come under the Germans they would give you a concession. This Captain Wissmann seems to like you, and he said it was far from his Government's intention to drive away English missionaries or English capital. He likes the English very much and speaks English very well.

I only write this because they say here you are not coming back as Consul. I am sorry. Why not then come out on your own? I've opened your letter to Mrs. Stott, which came with the tea, and right glad I was to hear—and so will she be—that you'd married poor Lucy Baines. Right glad. Bring her out here with you, and Mrs. Stott shall look after her whilst you go round prospecting and staking out your claims. We may not see eye to eye over the Lord's work. The Lord hasn't revealed himself to you yet as He has to us. He will in His own good time. But you've got the root of the matter in you. I never yet met an unbeliever who was so reverent and so tender of other people's beliefs.... You're a good man, if you'll forgive my saying so. You wouldn't ever interfere with our work here, I know. It's getting on grand. We baptized the Chief of the Wambugwe and fifty of his men in the Lake at Manyara just before you left, and please God, we've saved the whole valley from Islam.

Mrs. Stott had always a first-class opinion of you, though you weren't of our way of thinking in religion. She is sure you'll always stand up for the natives and protect their rights. I hope I haven't been taking a liberty, writing this letter. If you don't like to come out yourself, any one you sent we should trust to do the right thing and would show him round. Otherwise, we have been careful to say nothing about the Happy Valley, and so far no Arabs and no Germans have troubled us.

May God's blessing rest on you and on your sorely tried wife. I feel sure there are happier days in store for her.

Your sincere friend—if you'll allow me to say so.

JAMES EWART STOTT.

In regard to the School of Mines Report, Roger for acquitment of conscience and because he always liked to do the right thing, sent a résumé of Professor Rutter's analysis to the F.O., stating that the specimens referred to had been picked up by him on his recent tour through the interior of German East Africa.

In reply, the Under Secretary of State Was directed to thank Captain Brentham for this valuable information.

In reality it was decided to pigeon-hole the report, certainly to give it no publicity. Let the Germans find out for themselves the value of their territories. If they discovered they had bitten off more than they could chew, why ... then....

In January, 1890, Lucy was delivered of a son. Roger was hugely delighted. When he asked Lucy a week after the birth if she had any preference for a name—her father's, his father's, his own—she said in a faint voice but with some finality in the accent: "Let him be called 'John'!" Then, as he did not reply, she added, "John loved me and I wasn't worthy of his love...."

"Well, and don't I love you?" answered Roger with a tinge of compunction.

"She's a bit wandery in her mind, sir," said the nurse. "Don't pay any attention to what she's a saying. She's mistook your name. Several times since the baby was born she's seemed to be talking with a John, but it was you she was a thinkin' about, I'll be bound. She wants keeping very quiet...."

Once Captain Brentham took up the affairs of the Silchester estates—which he did definitely in October, 1889, he went very thoroughly into their condition and their possibilities of development. He was not, of course, a trained, professional land agent, which was why his shrewd and original ideas of enhancing the value and productivity of land made the Institute of Land Agents so angry. But he knew something of surveying, and had been accustomed to value countries by the eye, to judge of soils, espy defects in farming, by his boyish life at Farleigh and his experiences in India and Africa.

Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field, though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the service of man. He liked great spaces without a sign of man's habitation to mar the poem. Roger, though he had a strongly developed sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of the landless. Another charm can be contributed to landscapes by the handiwork of man, provided the cottage is tastefully and soundly built, the manufactory—even the brick-kilns and chimneys—are of the right material for the neighbourhood, of harmonious colour and appropriate design.

In the Berkshire and Hampshire estates woodlands required thinning, cattle wanted new blood and better breeding. The lobster fishery at Sporran Bay should certainly be developed. A proportion of the deer in Scotland and at Engledene might with advantage be sold. The farmer tenants generally wanted shaking up. Some of them could well afford to pay twice their present rent and let him out of the increased rent-roll rebuild their houses, barns, granaries, pigsties and cow-sheds. Why, the dairy business alone might be trebled in value with this proximity of a milk-hungry London. Farmer Josling, a right-down superior man with much self-given education, should help him in this. Incidentally, with Sibyl's consent, he had given his father-in-law a life-lease of his farm as some acknowledgment of his excellent use of it, and his progressive influence on the other farmers.

The bracing outdoor life and constant riding, the hunting and shooting did his health a world of good. He had never looked so well, so set up and robust as he did at the age of thirty-two, as Sibyl's factotum. The worst of this was that he seemed more desirable than ever in Sibyl's eyes, as she admitted with her disarming frankness. "What a pity it is, Roger, the silly laws of this sanctimonious country will not permit polygamy. We are just in the prime of life, you and I. I am much better looking than I was ten years ago—I shudder at my old photographs—I wore a fringe then and a bustle, and a lot of hair down my back, and a terrible simper when I faced the camera. It's a crime against Nature that we can't marry. We should have the handsomest children and we could easily arrange matters with Lucy. She's not exacting."

Roger laughed at these speeches, but they made him a little uncomfortable. Had Sibyl been a complete stranger to him he might have succumbed long before to her wiles; few men of his build, his time, his complexion were Josephs. But the slight relationship between them acted as a barrier to concupiscence. It permitted a familiarity in speech and address which made any closer intimacy repellent to his sense of decency....

Sibyl it must be admitted, was shameless when they were together. She would study his features attentively; admire the curl of his eyelashes, the outline of his profile, even the not quite classical prominence of the cheek bones, the virile twist upwards of his moustache, the firm chin and strong white teeth, the well-set ear and close-cropped hair at the back of his head: the while she pretended, pen in hand, to be considering his propositions. Thought-transference told him what this scrutiny meant, and he would colour a little in shame and become abrupt in manner—even say to himself, "This can't go on—I wish she'd think of something else...."

He was conscientiously attentive to Lucy at this time and she was really happy during this phase in Roger's life. In the spring she took up her residence in the Lodge at Englefield and made a comfortable home for her devoted husband, who seemed resolved to show her how happy he was in his marriage. Maud, from Farleigh, was a constant visitor, stayed weeks together with Lucy and Roger and served as a trait d'union with Sibyl, who allowed Maud to chaff her and scold her as she would no one else. Sibyl was quite civil to Lucy, did not bother her, left her alone except for an occasional greeting and the showing of some curiosity as to little John. "You may call him John as much as you like, but he's certainly Roger's child."

Clithy and his nurse were often sent down to the Lodge to be with Lucy; Sibyl deigning to say that her influence over children was a good one and Clithy was never fretful with her. In her mocking moods she called her little son "The Prince with the Nose" and declared he was under an enchantment. He had for a child of three a preternaturally large nose, and as she said to Roger, there could be no doubt as to his paternity. "How pleased Francis would have been! He was always so proud of the Mallard nose. Said it could be traced back in pictures to Charles I's reign—Anne of Denmark, who was rather larky after she had been married ten years, had a side-slip—you know what a tipsy court they were!—and bore a daughter to the Lord Chamberlain, who was particularly active in the revels. James overlooked her breach of good manners and ultimately gave the large-nosed little girl in marriage with Silchester Manor to a favourite, who founded the House of Mallard. Francis was going to have put this into his Memoirs, but he died, poor dear, leaving them three-quarters finished. I think I shall finish them for a lark. Will you help me?"

One reason why Lucy was dreamily happy at Englefield Lodge was that she seemed there to link up with the life of her girlhood. She had so often strolled round the precincts of Engledene with John Tilehurst, she dared not revisit for fear of meeting Mrs. Barnes. But she would sometimes walk over the same path she had traced with John on that Sunday in June, 1886. She would sit on the seat at The View and go over once more in memory, and with a sad little smile her naïve and petulant questions and answers on that Sunday walk. How she had told John her desire to encounter lions, and yet when a lion had visited their camp, what abject terror she had shown! Hangodi! That name was first uttered to her in Engledene Park and she remembered John saying it meant "The Place of Firewood."

One day Roger brought over to see her in the dog-cart old Mr. Baines—as he was beginning to be called. They both shed a few tears, but he told her with more sincerity than he usually put into his husky voice that he exonerated her from all blame in the catastrophe which had overtaken his son (Lucy herself was not so sure). "Mother's taken it awfully bad, Lucy. She's goin' out of her mind, I'm fearin'. First she was writin' an' writin' to Lord Wiltshire, him as is Prime Minister, don't you know, to give your husband the sack as bein' the real cause of John's death. Then next she'd bother our member, wantin' 'im to ask questions in the 'Ouse of Commons, till at last they give up answerin' them. Then she set to and slanged that Missionary Society that John belonged to, sayin' they wasn't 'alf careful enough about 'is precious life. Now this spring, blessed if she ain't cut our Connexion! She won't go to Salem Chapel; goes to Church instead ... St. Michael's. Shouldn't wonder if she ended up a papist! ... S'pose you know Ann's in England? They're makin' a lot of fuss about 'er in Reading and London. Call her a Heroine. She's bin down with 'er 'usband—rather a half-baked feller—to see us; but 'er talk with Mother ain't done Mother much good, partly 'cos Ann wouldn't join 'er in abusin' you. She says to Mother: 'I just told you the plain truth in that letter. I'm not goin' to add nor subtract one word, an' you've gone and put into it much more than I ever said. Just leave Lucy alone to God's judgment. At any rate, John loved her and died believin' her true; and I dessay she was. Africa's a funny country and you must put down a lot to the climate.' ... Ann's going back to Africa next autumn, with three more recruits and a lot of money to spend on the Mission School. Old Mrs. Doland sent for 'er and give 'er five hundred pounds. I tell 'er she ought to come and see you before she goes. P'raps she will, p'raps she won't. I told 'er you called your baby 'John,' and the tears reg'lar came into 'er eyes...."

Roger owned to Maud he felt a bit restless in the spring and early summer of 1890. He couldn't get Africa out of his mind, somehow. There was first the fuss about Stanley and the return of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition—surely one of the most wasted feats of heroism and brave endeavour in the history of Africa. Then came the 1890 Agreement with Germany. This left the Happy Valley pretty much where it had lain—unmarked as yet—on the map, but by approximate latitude and longitude entirely German, as Roger knew. But the discussion of frontiers in Africa caused him to feel fretful and resentful at being "out of it." Sir Mulberry Hawk, who had negotiated the treaty, might surely have turned to him for enlightenment on this point and that? Even though he had left the African Service, there were his reports of 1884-5 and -6, and of 1887-9. He felt impelled to go and see Broadmead, always accessible to men of worth. Broadmead said it was a beastly shame—spite perhaps on the part of Molyneux—but every one now was thinking of the Recess.... London was becoming awfully stale.... He and Roger should meet in the early autumn. Broadmead would perhaps come down to Engledene and shoot Sibyl's pheasants, and talk over Africa.... If Roger was still hankering after East Africa, why didn't he suck up to "Wully MacNaughten?" He had a show place somewhere up in the Highlands, not an immeasurable distance from Glen Sporran.

"Who was Wully? Didn't Brentham know? Why, he had begun life as a small grocer in some Scotch town, and bankrupted through giving credit to the crofters. Not to be bested by Fate, he went out to China as a clerk and in twenty years had made quite a respectable fortune. Friends said out of tea, enemies out of opium, smuggled into India; probable cause, the great coolie traffic between China and the rest of the world, which prompted him to found a navy of tramp steamers to carry the coolies, many of them over to Africa. Then he nibbled at East Africa; began with missionary stations, sort of atonement, don't you know, for anything naughty he'd done—Chaps in China used to call him 'MacNaughty-naughty'—s'posed to have had a half-caste family. Not a word of truth in it. However, there it was, and he couldn't go on refreshing Brentham's memory. Brentham had been in East Africa and must know all about MacNaughten there?..."

"Why, yes, I know, of course, he's the Chairman of the Chartered Company of Ibea—Mvita, you know."

"Well, they are going to extend their operations inland to the Victoria Nyanza and they want a go-ahead man as Governor. The chap at present out there is—— However, nothing can be done now. See you later on, give you a letter to him.... Tata."

If Roger was restless with unavowed hankerings after his first mistress, Africa, Sibyl, unconscious that he ever dreamed of release from her Circe toils, was radiant in the spring and summer of that particularly radiant year, 1890. Her prescribed mourning was over, so that the "horrid old Queen" could have no ground of objection to her entertaining like any other opulent peeress.

Roger had worked wonders with the estates, and before long the revenues, over which she would have control till her son's majority, would be increased by at least one-third. Her choice of him from a business point of view was amply justified. Her pulse quickened and her eyes grew brighter than their ordinary at the thought he might some day be her lover. If only that tiresome Lucy died in one of her confinements, he might even be her husband. Of course, she would most carefully avoid any foolishness which might give the least ground for scandal. If she did that, she could take life as pleasantly as Lady Ramsgate (the ridiculous one, called "Popsy"), or Lady Ann Vizor. Every one knew that Popsy Ramsgate had had a child by her farm bailiff and kept it at the farm, and no one thought the worse of her. Ramsgate was dead. Lady Ann's stockbroker was obviously her lover, but he was very gentlemanly and no one would have guessed unless they had been specially told.

Even if Roger were free, she was not sure she wanted exactly to marry him. She would then lose her title or, at any rate, her social rights as a peeress. And Roger as husband might be too masterful. She wanted to "queen it" as a rich woman with intelligence and taste might do in those days. Now her mourning was over she would commence at once to give parties at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, which should put those of Suzanne Feenix quite in the shade. She would create a salon, to which should be attracted the younger bloods, the rebels of the Conservative Party. She would revivify Lord Randolph, join hands with Mary March, who had a wonderful flair for inveigling millionaires. She and a few other clever women—the Tennants, perhaps—should create a young and intellectual Conservative Party—or Unionist Party, if you liked. They would get hold of Choselwhit—perhaps Rhodes, if he came to England.

Lord Wiltshire should rue the day that he had snubbed her at a Chapelmead week-end—the last time poor Francis went out anywhere—and cut her at two Foreign Office receptions. The Brinsleys should be shown their reign was over.

Her initiates—she really founded the half-legendary "Souls"—should include the smartest writers and the most daring painters, the weirdest poets of the day. They would have their own press, if it wasn't too expensive, but Mary March's millionaires might manage that ... hadn't she been introduced at one of Mary's theatre parties to an enormously rich and humble person called Tooley? Lady Tarrington had asked him if he owned Tooley Street and the stupid creature had said: "Beg pardon, me lady?" Well, Tooley should be ensorcelled—perhaps an invitation up to Glen Sporran—and buy their newspaper for them.

And then she had an idea of starting a monthly Review which she would edit herself and which should tell the naked truth. No squeamishness.... Praed, the architect, should send them one or two of his queer storiettes....

As to mother and father, they would spoil any circles with their banalities and old-fashioned ideas ... and father's stories would never be followed to their finish by the modern young man or woman. They would devastate her circle. No. They must stop in the country. Mother seemed to be developing some internal complaint—probably indigestion or something which could be cured at Aix or Homburg—and she was becoming very strait-laced and anxious-eyed. Sibyl would take Roger's advice: buy up father's three hundred acres; it could be made a most profitable milk farm. Father should stay on as tenant at a nominal rent, with a bailiff to manage—perhaps that young Harden, the cricketer, who had married Lucy's sister.

Sibyl resolved to send mother to Aix at her expense and have Aunt Christabel to stay with her indefinitely as long as she wanted a chaperon.

As to her sisters: thank goodness, they were off her hands. They had married and gone away with their husbands to those blessed colonies, Clara to New Zealand and Juliet to British Columbia. Long might they remain there! Relations—unless very distant—were like reproaches or bad replicas of one's self. They sapped all one's originality....

These were some of the musings of Sibyl when having her hair brushed by Sophie, or when undergoing Swedish massage under the firm but soothing hands of a blonde giantess; when breakfasting in bed; or undergoing a long train journey in a first-class compartment with a defective lamp.

There was no question in this year of Lucy's accompanying her husband to Glen Sporran. She was starting another baby and was firm about not wishing to go. Sibyl took this decision most amiably; said Lucy was quite wise, and further proposed that she should have Maud with her and care-take for Sibyl at Engledene House. Clitheroe was likewise to be left behind. His life in the Highlands was one long succession of dangerous colds and there wasn't enough accommodation for his retinue of nurses; especially as every one you asked nowadays must have with them a maid or a valet. Clithy had grown so absurdly fond of Lucy that Sibyl suggested jocosely they should change babies. She thought little John a perfect darling—so like Roger—why hadn't Lucy chosen her as god-mother instead of Maud? No doubt Clithy would grow up more like a normal boy when the rest of his features balanced Anne of Denmark's nose.... Meantime, it was very fortunate things were as they were. And Lucy would oblige her enormously by looking after her boy while she was entertaining all those horrid people in the North.

Not that the house-party was to be a large one. It ran away with so much money, and people were never grateful. There would just be Stacy Bream; the Honble. Victoria Masham, the Maid of Honour—old Vicky Long-i'-the-tooth, Sibyl called her behind her back, and never imagined the nickname could be repeated and counteract the expense of a month's hospitality. Must have Vicky to keep in touch, you know, with what the old Queen was saying and doing—and an acolyte of Stacy's named Reggie, something in the Colonial Office—he could flirt with Vicky—and p'raps Arthur Broadmead. Then—for a day or two—that insufferable cad, Elijah Tooley—"but he's so frightfully, frightfully rich and might be useful." Aunt Christabel, of course, would come, to keep order, and Aggie Freebooter and Gertie Wentworth would make up the house-party. Aggie Freebooter was that tiresome Lady Towcester's daughter—"one of six girls, my dear"—but when she was away from her mother's eye she was deliciously larky and awfully plucky, and didn't mind what you played at; while Gertie Wentworth—or the Honble. Gertrude—thirty-five, lots of money, dresses like a man, whisky and cigars, takes the bank at Roulette and loses everything but her temper.

"Well, at any rate," said Maud, "I'm glad Willowby Patterne is not in the party, this time...."

"My dear!..." said Sibyl with a scream. "I've absolutely dropped him, after that row in the City and that extraordinary case in the courts which was compromised and hushed up. He's gone out to East Africa. Haven't you heard?"

Maud had not heard and cared very little what had happened to the spendthrift baronet. But Roger had, and was a little uneasy as to his cherished Happy Valley. Willowby Patterne, mixed up once more with a very shady Company to take over and boom a new mineral water—some proposition of Bax Strangeways—and a matter of slander and a club-steps whipping, settled out of court ... and pending proceedings of his wife's for a separation; had decided abruptly to make "peau neuve" in East Africa. He had depicted the thrills of big-game shooting to one of his dupes just come of age and into possession of a pot of money. This young man would stand the racket of the expense—£5,000—and Willowby would put him up to all the dodges. And perhaps they might find minerals and get a concession....

Whilst he was up in Scotland Roger did manage, with the aid of Arthur Broadmead, to obtain an interview with Sir William MacNaughten on the subject of East African developments and the Company's future administration. But Sir William seemed vague, and much more interested and definite in regard to another question: King Solomon's Temple. Had Captain Brentham, as an Orientalist, ever given his mind to that problem, the shape and structure of the Temple, its adornment, and the hidden meaning of the Divine ordinances? No, Captain Brentham had not ... but ... er ... no doubt it was very interesting and full of meaning ... only ... East Africa?...

"Oh, East Africa—our Charter—Oh, yes! Well, come and see me about that when I'm back in London. You know my address there? Westminster Palace Hotel?"

The Glen Sporran party broke up with the rain and chill winds of the equinox; but Roger stayed on there with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel: nominally to examine the affairs of the estate and the installation of the lobster fishery; in reality because his resolves had all dissolved before her insistence, her tears, her threats to make a scene. Circe triumphed; preened herself; became once more gay and debonnaire. But her wretched lover felt indeed a pig. Aunt Christabel, the very servants seemed to guess what Sibyl thought was kept wholly secret from the rest of the world.

A month's absence in Staffordshire and London, and a shamefaced visit to Engledene Lodge did something to restore his self-respect. He called on Sir William at his hotel, resolved to broach the subject of the East Africa Governorship, but found him out. Nevertheless, to his delight there came a note to Pardew's Hotel from Sir William with these words in it: "Come to breakfast to-morrow morning at nine. I have something very interesting to discuss with you, and should value your opinion."

He arrived punctually. Lady MacNaughten was there—rather vinegary and with pursed lips. She dispensed the tea and coffee with a very strong Glasgow accent. The materials of the breakfast were—Roger thought—rather meagre for such wealthy people, who could afford to retain by the year this large suite of rooms. As no mention of East Africa was made during breakfast it was clearly more tactful to wait till the subject was introduced. Perhaps Sir William preferred not to discuss business in his wife's presence. At last, however, he finished his second cup of coffee, wiped his lips, said a grace of thanks for "our bounteous meal" in which Lady MacNaughten joined; and then asked Roger to accompany him to his sitting-room.

The folding doors were opened and shut behind them by an officious waiter; the window of the sitting-room looking out on incipient Victoria Street was also closed because the west wind was chilly. And Sir William then turned and said with great heartiness, pointing to a cardboard and papier-mâché contraption under a glass case:

"There! That's what I wanted to discuss with you, who know the East so well: a Model of King Solomon's Temple, made to my own design!"

* * * * *

The Governorship of the Mombasa Concession was shortly after conferred on Lady MacNaughten's nephew.

CHAPTER XVII

BACK TO THE HAPPY VALLEY

Roger, ever since he returned from Scotland, resolved that a break with Sibyl should come as soon as he could see before him the re-opening of an African career. Only fortified with such a resolve could he face his wife's candid eyes and her unquestioning trust in him—or Maud's more quizzical gaze and occasional sardonic remarks.... "That old fox, MacNaughten," he said to himself, "had determined all along to evade the well-meant suggestions of candidates from the Foreign, Colonial, and India Offices, and as soon as he got his Baronetcy (which came with the New Year's honours) to take a line of his own."

However, Fate for once hastened the dénouement by causing Roger's father to catch cold over the excavation of the Basilica at Silchester, to neglect his cold, and to die of double pneumonia in the week preceding Christmas, 1890. Roger could not help being profoundly grateful to his archæological parent for dying before rather than after Christmas, because this decease, with the conventions in force, and Queen Victoria behind the conventions, absolutely freed him from the obligation to attend the elaborate Christmas and New Year festivities ordained by Sibyl at Engledene. She had set aside a suite of rooms—bedroom, sitting-room and office—at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, and would no longer hear of his staying at Pardew's Hotel when in London to transact business with her. There were times when he seriously considered shooting himself—and strange to say, all through this period of episodical infidelity he had never loved Lucy better, or found her smiling silence or unimportant, unexacting conversation more soothing.

Her approaching confinement and his father's death together constituted a barrier of reserve that even Sibyl was bound to respect. He therefore utilized this respite to work assiduously at his plans for flight from the enchantress. He was most anxious after he was gone that no one should say with justification that he had let Lady Silchester down, had treated her badly, got things into a muddle, and then bolted.

As far back as the preceding October he had brought his younger brother, Maurice, the barrister into the Estate Office to be his assistant. Sibyl could suggest no one else and told him he could make what arrangements he liked—if only—if—only he would not be cruel to her, not talk of going at the end of the trial year. As he had not complete confidence in Maurice becoming efficient for the head post, he had entered into a provisional arrangement for a first-class man to put over Maurice, selecting him at the Institute of Land Agents' recommendation...

So much therefore had been done to safeguard h employer's interests.

Then as to his own. The administration of his father's estate would eventually secure a total sum of £4,300 to each of the four children of the Rev. Ambrose Brentham, including the amount they had recently received by deed of gift. This with other odds and ends of savings, gave Roger a capital of £5,000 to draw on.

As soon as Lucy was well over her accouchement in January (1891), he had several long and confidential conversations with Arthur Broadmead, that friend in need to so many men who had fallen into holes of their own digging, and who sought rectification by extending the bounds of empire and making two blades of grass to grow where but one had grown before. Several great Anglo-German financiers were seen in the City. The specimens and the School of Mines' report thereon were left in their hands: with the result that a small and select Anglo-German Syndicate was formed to prospect in the northern part of German East Africa. Into this pool Captain Brentham put £2,000 and was constituted for three years head of the enterprise with a good salary and very large discretion as to means and methods of developing the Happy Valley.

To Maud he next imparted his plans, and to his surprise they were received with cordial approval.

"You're quite right, Roger, I'm sure you've taken the road that will most probably lead to happiness and fortune. Lucy is certain to fall in with your scheme. She can stay on in England till her baby's weaned—it was sweet of you both to call it after me—I was so certain you were going to name it 'Sibyl'! Then she can place both the children with their grandparents at Aldermaston and come out and join you. And what is more, I will come too! I should love to!"

There now remained—he could not say "only remained," it was too portentous a crisis—the final scene with Sibyl. He thought it over many a night when he could not sleep, many a morning when he was going through estate business with her and she was leaning unnecessarily over his shoulder or furtively pinching the lobe of his ear. A written good-bye, and then immediate departure, would be cruel, and Sibyl might afterwards revenge herself on Lucy, left behind defenceless; or on Maurice. There were, besides, points of business he must discuss with her before leaving; at any rate give her the chance of asking questions and receiving answers.

So he summoned up courage one morning and telegraphed he wished to see her that afternoon in London. She was up for the "little season" which follows Christmas.

He was shown into her library at 6A, Carlton House Terrace. She had come in from skating at Princes, had changed into a wonderful tea-gown and was lying on a long couch over which a magnificent tiger skin had been thrown. A small inlaid Moorish table held a tea-tray.

Sibyl: "Have some tea? Tell him before he goes out" (referring to the retreating footman).

Roger: "Thanks very much, no. I have had tea and I've got a lot to tell you. So I don't want to lose time." (The door clicks to.)

Sibyl: "Well. You're very solemn. Draw up a chair. Come to give me a month's warning? But to do that you ought to stand...."

Roger: "That's exactly what I have come for...."

Sibyl: "Roger! Don't make horrid jokes. You wouldn't be so base—so—ungrateful—as that...."

Roger: "It isn't an act of baseness, that's certain; and as to ingratitude, I think by going away I am doing the best thing altogether, so far as you are concerned. No!" (she is rising and pushing the tea-table out of her way as a preparation for drama). "You must let me explain myself—and do let us discuss this quietly, not as though we were acting a scene on the stage. Sibyl! Really the least said, soonest mended. We are in an impossible position.... I blame myself more than you...." (Sibyl: "Thank you!") "I am a cad ... an utter cad. I loathe myself sometimes so much I can't look at my face in the glass or meet my wife's eyes. I am going back to Africa ... going out of your life.... You must forget all about me ... and marry some decent man." (His voice sounds strangled and he turns away to recover himself.)

Sibyl: "It seems to me it is you that are becoming stagey. What does all this mean? Has Lucy found out we've been lovers and made a fuss? ... Or is it money? Have you got into debt? Do be explicit!"

Roger: "It's none of these things. I only mean I have out-stayed my year with you, my trial year, and now I claim my liberty. I am going once more to try for a career in Africa ... and..."

Sibyl (white with anger): "Well, go to Africa! I never wish to see you again! Go! Go! Go!" (She half rises as if to expel him with her hands, but he saves her the trouble, takes up his hat, gloves and stick, walks out, closes the door of the library gently and lets himself out of the house.)

The next day he leaves at the door a tin despatch box and a letter containing its key. The box has amongst its contents the bunch of keys he has used on the Estate, a great bundle of accounts, notes, and suggestions for the immediate future. In the letter which accompanies this box he tells Sibyl all about the arrangement he has made in her Estate Office, advises her to keep on his brother Maurice who shows signs of uncommon ability, but for some time yet to retain as Head Agent Mr. Flower, provisionally engaged for a year, who is highly recommended by the Institute of Land Agents. Both alike are now well acquainted with the affairs of the Silchester Estate.... He asks her to be kind to Lucy who will remove as soon as she is strong enough to Aldermaston and meantime remains at the Lodge under Maud's care. Later on, when her child is old enough to be left in the grand-parents' keeping, Lucy and Maud will join him in East Africa. His address in London till he leaves for Marseilles on February 28 will be Pardew's Hotel....

He will never forget her kindness ... never ... at a critical time in his life. And will not say "good-bye," because when he has "made good" in Africa he will come back on a holiday and hope to find the Estate flourishing and Silchester grown into a sturdy boy.

From what I knew of Sibyl I should say she at first took the breaking off of their relations very hardly.... "Agony, rage, despair" ... much pacing up and down the library.... Passionate letters half-written, then torn up into small fragments and thrown into the fire. Then—for she was a slave to her large household and magnificent mode of life—her maid Sophie enters the library and reminds My Lady that she is due that night to dine at the Italian Embassy. So Sibyl has to submit to be coiffed, dressed, jewelled, and driven off in a brougham—a little late, and that intrudes on her mind, because she has heard you should never be late to an Ambassador's invitation, it is a sort of lèse-majesté. But to cope with the demands made on her, she has to force her heart-break to the back of her mind and sustain her reputation for gay beauty, daring expression, and alert wit—in French as well as English. There was a Royalty there to whom she had to curtsey and with whom she had to sustain a raillery, shot with malice, which required considerable brain-concentration; for though the retorts must call forth further bursts of laughter from the chorus that watched the duel, they must be free from the slightest impertinence.

Roger's abrupt leave-taking only remained like a dull ache behind her vivid consciousness of triumph, of celebrated men, bestarred with orders, swathed with ribbons; of women sparkling with jewels and rippling in silks; of a Prince who might "make" you with a smile or "mar" you with a frown; of many enemies concealed as friends; of wonderful music and exquisite food, for which she had no appetite. It was not until she had re-entered her dressing-room to be unrobed that she had once more the mind-space to reconsider Roger's farewell and what life would mean to her without his constant companionship. Then, foreseeing otherwise a ghastly night of turning things over and over in her thoughts, she told Sophie she had bad neuralgia; and opening a tiny little casquet with a tiny little gold key on her bangle she took from it the materials for a sleeping draught, compounded them cautiously—she was the last person in the world to commit suicide, even by mistake—swallowed the dose and half an hour afterwards slipped into oblivion.

The next morning she awoke with the inevitable headache, and the heartache returned. But there was the breakfast tray to distract her thoughts, and there were the morning letters. Among these was an invitation to meet an Oriental Potentate in very select company—an opportunity for display which she had coveted—and an invitation to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson, which she had sought for, as she wanted to allure the young Bensons into her circle of "souls."

She then reflected, while having her hair brushed, that it might be just as well that the breach with Roger had come before she had been in any way tarnished by the breath of scandal. People had already chaffed her about her handsome Land Agent. She would act so as to throw dust in their eyes, and certainly not play the part of la maîtresse délaissée. Later on in the morning, therefore, she wrote to Lucy saying she had accepted Roger's resignation with the deepest regret, but would not stand between him and his beloved Africa. Yet she hoped Lucy would not think of leaving the Lodge until she was perfectly strong. She also told Roger's successor, Mr. Flower, she had confirmed the arrangement Captain Brentham had outlined and requested him to call on her in the following week.

In the afternoon of that day she issued the instruction "Not at home," intending to retire to her bedroom and have a good cry. But the full indulgence in this luxury was baulked by the announcement of her cousin Maud Brentham. Maud's name some while ago had been put on the short list of people to whom "Not at home" did not apply.

Maud had really been asked to call by the timorous Roger to see how Sibyl was "taking it." So Sibyl, divining this, received her affectionately; and only complained of the excessive brilliance of the ambassadorial party of the night before and the dead set made at her by the Prince having reduced her this following afternoon to the condition of a doll with the sawdust escaping from every seam. She talked quite calmly of Roger's approaching departure and the arrangement of Lucy's affairs after he had gone. "Why can't you and she transfer yourselves from the Lodge to the House at Engledene and stay there indefinitely, till you take ship for Africa and golden joys? Lucy's a god-send with poor nervous, peevish little Clithy. I must leave the child there a good deal at present. He looks very peeky if he comes to London. And at Easter I shall shut up this house and go off to travel for a long time...."

"But not to East Africa, I trust...?" said Maud with some anxiety.

"Maud! You're a toad!"

When two very sad women came to Victoria on an appallingly cold and foggy morning to take leave of Roger—who was departing for Paris-Marseille to join his steamer—they were joined by a third, accompanied by an aloof footman carrying wraps; and books for Roger's solace on the journey. Sibyl put her arm round Lucy's waist, as they were saying farewell; and Roger having kissed his wife—most tenderly—and his sister—hesitated for one second, and then kissed Sibyl too.

* * * * *

From Roger Brentham to his Wife.

H.B.M. Agency,

Unguja, March 29, 1891.

[Very near the second anniversary of our happy marriage. Barely two years married and already two children. I wonder how baby Maud is getting on?]

DEAREST LUCE,—

I sent you a cable from Port Said saying "All right thus far." I hope you got it? I arrived here by the French steamer yesterday.

I enjoyed the journey to Paris and Marseilles. But after we had left that port for a very stormy Mediterranean I went through a beastly time. I would have given everything I possessed—except you—to find myself back at Engledene and with all these African plans undone. I have led such a full life within the last two years, have had the very best of England; and the flatness of existence on an old-fashioned steamer came home to me crushingly during the nine days' voyage between Marseilles and Port Said. Such a hush after the noisy whirlpool of life in London in Sibyl's circle; or even the gay doings at Engledene when we had got over the first of our mourning for the poor old Pater. There were no newspapers and no news—nine days completely out of the world. No one on board I knew and no one who had ever heard of me. It brought home to me my utter insignificance! I felt a bit better when we passed through the Suez Canal. The sound of Arabic always stimulates me to adventure. The cold weather left us in the Red Sea. I passed most of my time mugging up Swahili again and trying to revive my Arabic with some Syrians who were on board. Aden cheered me up considerably. There were the jolly laughing Somalis once again, and I engaged four bright boys to go with me as servants and gun-carriers out hunting. You could light up a dark passage with their flashing teeth! When we reached Unguja I admit I felt some uncomfortableness. It is so awkward returning as a person of no status to a place where one has been an official. But as you know, I had taken the precaution, a month before I started, of writing confidentially to Sir Godfrey Dewburn about my plans and intentions. The Dewburns could not have been kinder. He sent the Agency boat to meet me with one of the new Vice-Consuls in it, and here I am at the Agency, installed as their guest till I can assemble my safari and get away up-country. Lady Dewburn plies me with questions about you and our children....

The Dewburns are expecting promotion to a diplomatic post—possibly Persia. They feel their work here is done, now that the Anglo-German Treaty is ratified and Unguja is a British protectorate. The treaty has had the best effect on Anglo-German relations here and incidentally on my prospects of co-operation. I am to see Wissmann as soon as I land at Medinat-al-Barkah. Eugene Schräder, who is all-powerful in Anglo-German finance, has written out to him. I have little doubt we shall get a Concession over the Happy Valley for our syndicate.

Landing at Medina will be a little out of the direct route to Irangi, but I shall travel across the Nguru country, now quite pacified and safe, and try to take Hangodi on the way to Ugogo. What associations the sight of it will revive if I do! That halting-place below the great rise, where we had tea together in the shade when I met you in your machila with Halima, and you were so taken aback that you called me "darling"—I haven't forgotten! And talking of Halima, reminds me to say that she sends you her many salaams. Andrade is cook with the Dewburns and Halima has some function as housemaid. I have arranged when the Dewburns go that Andrade is to join me; so when you come out, my darling, Halima shall be there to wait on you and on Maud.

It'll be rather horrid meeting the Bazzards again at Medina. They returned recently from a long holiday in England—an East Coast watering-place chiefly, where Bazzard, who doesn't know a yacht from a barge, got elected to the local Yachting Club. I hear that Mrs. B. looks forward confidently to her husband succeeding Dewburn when the latter is promoted; but I think there is not the slightest chance of it.

The Stotts must have got my letter by now telling them I was on my way. Of course there has been no time for a reply. But Callaway tells me the last news of them was good. I have already picked up quite a third of my Wanyamwezi "faithfuls" who were hanging about Unguja since Willowby Patterne's safari was paid off. That man is a scoundrel! He came out here and made free use of my name, pretending even he had letters from me which he never produced. He therefore got favours and concessions and secured my original hundred men—or what was left of them. His tour through the Mvita hinterland was one long sickening path of slaughter: he and his companion—a poor youth who was often down with dysentery and whom Patterne treated brutally—must have killed about three times the amount of game they could use for food or trophies. His ravages even shocked his carnivorous porters and annoyed the natives. Do you know, I think he must have had just a glimmering about the existence of the Happy Valley—he was always following me about at Glen Sporran and cocking an eye at my correspondence. Because though ostensibly only big-game slaughtering they made straight for the south side of Kilimanjaro (instead of keeping to the British Sphere); and when the safari reached Arusha ya Juu he tried to get guides for "Manyara"—the porters swear he used the word. He cross-questioned some of them as to where they had been with you and me. However, fortunately he had an odd trick of getting himself hated by all the native tribes he met, as well as by his own porters, whom he used to flog atrociously. (They tell disgusting stories about these floggings which I cannot put down on paper.) When his caravan got past the slopes of Meru it fell in with "our Masai," as I call them. And then it was like one of the old fairy stories of the bad girl who tried to follow the good girl down the well into fairyland, and couldn't remember the countersign. Instead of hitting it off with the Masai he vexed them in some way and at last they turned on him and forced his safari to go back to Kilimanjaro. At least the Wanyamwezi porters refused to continue the journey, which comes to the same thing. He has left for England—I am glad to say—or I might have fallen foul of him. The two of them killed enough ivory to pay the costs of the whole outfit. So he swears he is coming back again and will then take a large body of armed men with him and wipe out the Masai.

Now I must bring this long letter to a close. Much love to dear old Maud, and my most respectful greetings to my cousin and late employer. I found her fame for beauty, wit, and dominance over Society had reached even to Unguja.... In fact I rather winced at turning over three-months-old illustrated papers here and seeing pictures of her in wonderful costumes or—in the magazines—as a type of English beauty.... How far away it all seems!...

Your loving

RODGE.

From the same to the same.

German Headquarters,

Medinat-al-Barka, April 30, 1891.

DEAREST,—

You will be rather surprised that a month has gone by and I have got no nearer my goal than this! But firstly I went down with a bad go of fever—all right now—and secondly I could not hustle von Wissmann, who is Imperial Commissioner here and who has been very kind—and thirdly the rains are so appalling just now that overland travelling is well-nigh impossible till the country dries up a little. But I am not losing my time otherwise. I am getting everything fixed up with the Germans, and next shall only have to arrive at an understanding with the natives. The boundaries of our Concession (which will include the Stotts) cover the Happy Valley from the water-parting between the Bubu and the Kwou on the south to the escarpment at the north end of the lake, and on east and west include all the water-shed of Lake Manyara, Iraku and Fiome. So they have dealt with us generously.

Wissmann I like immensely. He is a great man and has the interests of the real natives thoroughly at heart. Our old friends the Stotts have impressed him favourably and they are to be woven into my schemes of development. Wissmann from the first asked me to put up at his headquarters and treated me like a colleague in the opening up of Africa. So I was saved the disagreeableness of staying at my former Consulate with the Bazzards.

Mrs. Bazzard has been sickly in her protestations of friendship, utterly insincere as you know. I fancy she is turning her pen now on Sir Godfrey, in the hope she may oust him. Considering how kind the Dewburns were to them it is odious to note how she tries to disparage him....

There is not much news from the interior. I hear that Ali-bin-Ferhani got rewarded by the Germans for saving Hangodi Station, and that Mbogo is still chief there in name, the real chief of the district being Ann Anderson, or Mgozimke—"The man-woman," as the natives call her.

In haste to catch the mail....

Your loving

ROGER.

From the same to the same.

Mwada,

The Happy Valley, July 28, 1891.

MY OWN DEAR WIFE,—

I reached the shores of the lake—which I now find is called Lawa ya mweri—and the end of the Happy Valley on—as near as I can reckon—June 20. (The Stotts have no almanacs and are quite indifferent to dates, times, seasons; they live under some enchantment, they tell me, since they came here, like the legends of people carried off to Fairyland.) I met Mr. Stott at Burungi, which now looks a flourishing station. The Wagogo seem to me quite recalcitrant to Christianity, but the Stotts have to keep this up as a depôt for their traffic with the coast, and they are helped in this by the German Government.... Stott and I journeyed together through the Irangi country almost in state. The Stotts have become enormously popular as "medicine men." They have stopped epidemics of small-pox by vaccinating the people, have shown them how to stay the ravages of the burrowing fleas, and they are making a dead set against infanticide, having found one or two leading chiefs sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the importance of a large population. Formerly, as you may remember, there was such a prejudice against female babies that they were often exposed to the hyenas outside the tembe, and all children who came into the world by an irregular presentation, or with a tooth already through the gum, likewise all twins, were either thrown into the lake or abandoned to the carnivorous ants or prowling carnivores. (There is a curious legend here—Stott says—that sometimes these unhappy infants were picked up by female baboons of the Chakma type and nursed by them with their own offspring.)

Well: you can imagine, having lived already in these parts, what the infant death-rate amounted to. But the local chiefs having had the whole theory exposed to them have sanctioned a crusade against infanticide for any reason. The Wa-rangi have further been persuaded to abandon the custom of burning alive women suspected of adultery. I did not like to tell you at the time, but as we passed through the Irangi country in November, '88, they were actually killing unfortunate women in this manner. They believe that if a man goes out hunting and makes a bad miss in throwing his spear or assegai at an elephant it is because his wife is untrue to him at home! So when he returns from the chase his wretched spouse is trussed up and bound to the top of a great pile of brushwood.

Consequently, at several of the Irangi villages on our way up the Bubu valley the women who were the wives of sporting duffers came out in deputations to dance round the worthy Stott till they quite embarrassed him; especially as the dances were of an indelicate nature.

The Stotts have now quite a nice-looking station to the south-east of the main lake, on a grassy rise with the Mburu river on the south and a much smaller salt lake on the east. This looks like sparkling ice under the sun and is nearly solid—? salt—? soda. Its borders seem to be a kind of salt lick for the game which is once more swarming and singularly tame. There are no rhinos, fortunately, and the tricky tempered elephants and buffaloes prefer the wooded regions farther north and west. The lions, leopards and chitas are so glutted with food that they leave the domestic cattle and human beings alone; and the myriad zebras, antelopes, elands, bushbuck, giraffes, wart-hogs and ostriches are quite willing to live at peace with mankind. Secretary birds and saddle-billed storks are numerous and keep the snakes down; marabou storks and vultures devour all the carrion and even the filth round the native villages—so the country seems healthy. Enormous flocks of crowned cranes and bustards look after the locusts and grasshoppers. The flamingoes by the lake shore are as numerous as they were in our time....

The Stotts' station is built after the fashion of the native houses of the district: long, continuous, one-storied "tembes" forming a hollow square, inside which the cattle and sheep are kept at night....

But what I am longing to describe is the country of Iraku. I went there with Stott, you may remember, whilst we stayed waiting for news of poor John Barnes. I was immensely taken with it then. But now I have seen it more in detail I am enthusiastic. It resembles—I can't help saying—a little Abyssinia—from all I have heard and read of Abyssinia, though it is not at such great altitudes. Its natives are actually related in speech and type to those of Southern Abyssinia. I should estimate the average height at five thousand feet, with ridges, peaks and craters touching seven or eight thousand; so that the temperature is almost perfect—nights always cool, not to say cold. It is a fertile, fruitful land of ups and downs, richly forested valleys, plenty of streams, grassy uplands like the Berkshire downs: indeed a very English-looking country. Somewhere here, not far from the escarpment and the Happy Valley, we will have our home, dearest, and here you and Maud shall join me as soon as ever you can come out. How I long for that coming. There are times when, in spite of the Stotts and their cheeriness, I feel sick with melancholy and loneliness. The change from that English life has been too abrupt. As soon as ever little Maud is weaned and able to be left with your mother you must pack up and come. My Agents in the City, Messrs. Troubridge, who pay you (I hope) your allowance quarterly, have all my instructions as to your passage, and Maud's, your outfit, etc. Once I can get you two out here I shall settle down contentedly enough and make a fortune—I doubt not—on which, some day, we can retire and live happily ever afterwards.

Meantime as I have written very fully, only show this letter to Maud and say as little as possible about it to Sibyl, lest she repeat my account of the Happy Valley to that scoundrel, Patterne. She says she never sees him now, and she certainly ought not to after the reputation he has left behind in East Africa; but as likely as not she will resume the acquaintance, and he is the last sort of person I wish to meet in these parts.... Mrs. Stott of course sends love to you and the kindest greetings. Her enthusiasm for her Creator is unabated, because they have so far had wonderful good fortune since they blundered into this haven of rest and beauty in October, 1888. If one or other of them did not have once in a way to go down to the coast they would enjoy—she says—perfect health....