THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING (continued 8)

[#] I shrink from perpetuating all Roger's indiscretions and impulsive statements.—H.H.J.

As for me, I was laid out soon after with two bullets through my thigh. But for Yusuf Ali and Anshuro, my two Somalis; and equally but for a humane Boer (Colonel van Rensselaer), I should certainly have died. As it was, the hæmorrhage was stopped and a German doctor at the field hospital nursed me through a bad attack of blood-poisoning. I shall never, of course, be quite the same man again; but I still feel as though there were a lot of push in me. Soon after my admission to the hospital at Lydenburg, the Boers evacuated the place and in course of time I was transported to Durban and invalided out of the army with the rank of Major. I had already got a D.S.O., so I can't complain. I would fight any day for England against England's enemies, but—however, no more grousing. Let's hope a new order of things is going to set in. I certainly should like to cut my D.S.O. into three and give two equal bits to Ali and Anshuro. You've no idea what those Somali boys were in the matter of devotion, cheerfulness, astuteness! And yet they only served me for the ordinary coast wages; though of course I'm going to give them both a handsome donation when their time is up.

Well: here I am at a hospital once more. I must rest here and get my leg quite sound before I start for up-country. I have been here for a month, in telegraphic communication with Lucy and Maud, imploring them not to come down to the coast to meet me. Lucy, I fear, is far from strong; and Maud is simply indispensable to the carrying on of the work up there. She has shown herself as good as a man. The two Australians I put there have done their best, but they don't get on at all well with the Germans. Their education has been very poor—I mean in book-learning—they are rattling good in settlers' lore—and, of course, they utterly refuse to understand German and openly gibe at it. Their chief recommendation is that they are absolutely honest....

I lie here chafing and intensely anxious for my worst wound to heal. I am told I ought to be thankful to have made such a wonderful recovery. But I feel a month of Lucy's care for me and the bracing air of Iraku would set me up altogether; and my mere presence at Magara put an end to all these misunderstandings and bitternesses.

The Schräders were rather aghast at my bolt for South Africa last year; but stood it on the whole very well. Of course, I insisted on being reduced to a third of my pay whilst I was absent. I retained just enough salary to keep Lucy and Maud going, and maintain the household....

The whole German attitude over this war has been a curious one, and so have been its refractions on their attitude towards me. I hear that after my departure for the war a strong move was got up to oust me from the Managership. Now that I have returned wounded and a Major and a D.S.O. (that was given me the other day, for capturing Colonel Boshaert and three hundred men and a thousand cattle near Lydenburg—tell you all about it one day) they can't say enough in my favour. I am almost threatened with a triumphal procession home.... Engine from Tanga wreathed with palm fronds, etc. Fortunately the train will take me half the way back, and for the rest I can be carried in a Machila.

But there is little doubt that the mass of the Germans out here thought we were going to be gravelled by the Boers and that Germania would step into the shoes of Britannia. Undoubtedly the Kaiser for the past six years has been fishing in troubled waters, trying to connect up German South-West Africa with Boer territory, and planning to make Germany the dominant power in South Africa; or, at any rate, the honest broker between Boer and Briton....

Why the Dutch and the British should be as oil and water in South Africa and elsewhere, I can't think. But they are. The Dutchman in Africa and Europe is just a rather finer built, better-looking Englishman or Scotchman; but in language, mentality and above all in a curiously hard attitude towards the Negro, he is Teutonic. The whole set of South Africa is towards Germany.... That is why Rhodes lost his head....

Your affectionate

ROGER.

P.S. See you next year or year after, as soon as ever I have got everything going here as it was before the war, and it is safe to come away. I must go on with this until I can retire with a competency.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MORALS OF THE HAPPY VALLEY

"I am so glad, so truly glad you are almost your old self again," said Mrs. Stott, one brilliant morning in the spring of 1901, to Major Brentham, who had been four months back at his home in Iraku. He did indeed look as if he had in a measure recovered his good looks and energy, though the right leg was still stiff and much riding or walking brought on pain.

"It emboldens me to embark on a very disagreeable subject which I have been saving up to discuss with you. We cannot evade it much longer; so—if you have the patience—?"

"I am always patient with you, Mrs. Stott. There are few people I respect more...."

"Thank you. Then I shall take up an hour or more of your time, if you are not very busy. But how is Lucy?"

"Lucy is not well; anæmic, Dr. Wiese says. I should send her home, only she refuses to go without me and I can't leave till next year. Dr. Wiese does not insist on her going before then. He is trying a new tonic which seems to be blood-making; it ought to be, because—though I do not tell Lucy—it is made of blood—one of these new German inventions. Wiese says if we would only do like the Masai and the Iraku: tap the veins of our cattle and drink the hot blood—"

"Ugh! don't let's talk about it; it makes me sick. I'm almost a vegetarian, you know. Couldn't we go into your study? It is delicious here on the verandah, but I don't want to be overheard."

"Certainly: come this way."

"What wonderful petunias, yours are! I never saw such glowing colours. Your whole garden is a joy to the eye and a credit to the Concession...."

"You're right. But the credit lies with Riemer, the plantation manager; he gives it an eye. The Germans are wonderful horticulturists. I don't think we sufficiently appreciate that fact at home. They are as good as the Dutch. Now then, here we are in my sanctum—rather untidy, I fear.... Take this chair..."

"No, it is too reclining. I do like an upright straight-backed chair when I want to speak out. My daughters say I'm like a character in one of Dickens's books, who could never loll. They're wonderful readers and remember everything they've read...."

"Well now, what's the trouble?"

"It's—it's—this—horrid—sexual question I've come about. You know what Ann Anderson is—I prefer to call her Ann Jamblin—I don't like the two 'An's' together. Ann has a wonderful power for good, an energy in righteousness, and is as nearly sinless as any woman can be. But she's also got such an insight into other people's sinfulness that she spends much of her time denouncing their wrong-doing—too much, I think. I tell her she's out here to convert the blacks, and for the time being had better leave the whites alone. But she pays no heed to me—says her mission is to all men. She simply won't let the Germans alone. We had terrible rows sometimes when you were away, though your sister did what she could to smooth things over. I admit some of them are utterly wicked. There is that monster Stolzenberg—whom the Masai call 'The Terror'—Olduria—. After he came to the Lake with his Ruga-ruga last October and shot all the flamingoes...."

"WHAT?" roared Roger, leaping to his feet, and then wincing... "I never heard this before...!"

"No? Well: sit down. You ought to rest your leg. Lucy didn't want you to know. She thought it would upset you so—And indeed, it was a shocking pity.... But you'd soon have noticed how few there are left—even from here on a clear day.... I understand Stolzenberg sent a huge consignment of their plumage to a firm he trades with in Marseilles. And he has been going about to other lakes doing the same. But I must stick to the point.... Where was I? Oh, yes! ... Ann, who lives in our old station at Mwada, was awfully upset because she had become so fond of these birds, besides being infuriated at Stolzenberg's Ruga-ruga occasionally carrying off women. So she wrote him a letter saying that if he showed himself in the Concession again she would take a gun to him herself. She solemnly cursed him and called down Divine punishment on his head. Unfortunately—for I think the whole thing was most unwise—she paid a Masai who came along to trade to deliver the letter at Stolz's boma. The watchman at the gate made him come in and give the letter himself, and Stolz having read it had the man's left hand chopped off, tied it to his right, and said that was the answer to the English Missionaries and that was how he'd treat any other messengers sent to him.... The poor wretch arrived at Mwada a week afterwards nearly dead with loss of blood.... Of course, the Masai have again sworn vengeance against this monster: but what can they do? But that is not our worst trouble. Before you went, and whilst you were away, Ann took up the sex question. You know how set she was on the elevation of the native women? You used to laugh about her corps of Amazons, her 'Big-geru.' She hadn't been long with us before she began to interest herself in the young women of Iraku.... Those of the Wambugwe are, I must confess, hopeless at present; I mean as regards chastity. Poor things! They are corrupted and degraded from childhood. But there is something superior—something of another race in the Iraku and Fiome. You said once they were partly descended from some Gala immigration of long ago?...

"Well, Ann, who is untirable, started a class of these Iraku young women before she had been six months in the Happy Valley. The chiefs—I dare say you remember speaking to some of them? ... quite approved and sent their young daughters. She taught them cooking and laundry work, plain sewing, reading and writing. And now she finds, after they have been a year or two at our schools, they go off and live with white men....!"

Roger: "I dare say they do, and have a much better time with them than with their own men. But what white men? German, I suppose?..."

Mrs. Stott: "Ah, there you touch my greatest sorrow. Yes. Every German I know on this concession keeps a native woman, mostly from our classes. But I fear—I fear—my nephew Phil and the clerk Stallibrass as well—my two Australian boys—are not much more moral. Their relations with the native women won't bear investigation. That is not all ... and I have no right to be here as an accuser when I can't answer for my own son, Edgar.... You remember you offered in 1897 to take him home with you, and have him sent to an English school or college for a year or two? I wish ... I wish ... we had consented. It was so good of you. But we thought at the time that if children can grow up into God-fearing men and women in Australia without leaving the back-blocks or the bush, why not here, where the climate is good? Then there was the question of the cost...."

Roger: "I suppose he has got all his education from you and his father?"

Mrs. Stott: "Yes, indeed. The main thing, besides religion, was to teach our children to read and write and do simple accounts. All they wanted besides was to read the books we ordered out.... I'm sure you can't say we have been indifferent to literature?"

Roger: "No—not of a certain kind ... but all of it, from what I have seen, is rather old-fashioned and goody-goody...."

Mrs. Stott: "I don't agree. However, I won't stop to argue about it. It matters little, since Edgar from the age of twelve or thirteen has cared very little for reading. His passion is sport. And to think how I ran down big-game shooting, when it was not vitally necessary for our supplies! Of course, James is a good shot and a clever hunter, and Edgar, after he was twelve, used to go out with him. He killed an elephant to his own gun when he was only fifteen, and the tusks fetched as much as £60! He was proud. Now his one idea is to be away shooting ... and trifling with these Iraku women. Oh!" (crying a little). "Can't you see how it silences me? Ann talks about cutting off a member that offends and says I should expel my own son from the Mission for loose living.... I can't do that, and besides there's nothing proved.... But I can't very well join her in her crusade against ... she will use such plain words ... against fornication and unclean living. I suppose we shall have to send Edgar away ... back to Australia ... And then I fear much for his future. Thank goodness! He's a total abstainer, so far.... Ought we to invite some young woman to come out here for the mission, in the hope that he might marry her and settle down?"

Roger: "Wouldn't be a bad idea, if you could insure her taking his fancy. I haven't seen Master Edgar for months or taken much notice of him since he came to man's estate. Struck me, he was growing up a nice-looking lad...."

Mrs. Stott: "Indeed he is! It's his good looks that are his snare.... The native women run after him so...."

Roger: "Does he work for us or for the Mission?"

Mrs. Stott: "He is his father's assistant in the Carpentering school; but he's too much given to larking with the boys, who look upon him as a kind of hero. Of course, he speaks their language almost as if it came natural to him. His real bent is for Natural History ... that's the only excuse for his sport. We sell the collections he makes to the Germans. One of your mining engineers has taught him photography. He takes wonderful pictures of wild life. We posted some home to the Graphic, and with the money they paid, Edgar sent to Unguja and bought himself a snap-shot camera.... Am I keeping you from your work?"

Roger: "You are: but we don't often meet nowadays for a talk. Let's thrash this matter out. Well?"

Mrs. Stott: "Well, I was going on to say, with all this Edgar's mind is turning away from religion. We have hard work to get him to attend our services... He even shocked his father the other day by saying he was sick of the Bible.... I say, 'even,' because ever since my dear James has been getting up these industrial schools you were so keen on, he has become less and less spiritually minded, more and more interested in the material things of this world. He only pretends to care for the Second Coming of Christ ... just to please me. He is much more interested in his new turning lathe" ... (dabs her eyes and blows her nose). "His prayers have become very trite. If it wasn't for my daughters...."

Roger: "Let me see: you have two daughters out here—Pretty girls.... They must be growing up...."

Mrs. Stott: "Yes. Carrie's nearly nineteen; and Lulu is sixteen. We called her 'Luisa,' not from the English name, but because 'Luisa' means 'darkness' in Kagulu, and when she was born she had dark hair and dark eyes ... she's fairer now.... And the way, then, seemed dark before us.... I was very ill at the time...."

Roger: "And then the eldest of all is at home, I mean in England....?"

Mrs. Stott: "Yes. Rosamund, named after me. She's a school teacher in Ireland, and practically a stranger to us. That's one of the sorrows of our life out here. Not that we haven't many blessings to counter-balance it—I'm sure the way we've kept our health in the Happy Valley—But we have either to send our children away to England or Australia, or bring them up here, with many disadvantages, it would be a pity to bring Rosamund away from a career where she is doing very well...."

Roger: "Quite so. Well then, we have only to deal with Carrie as a possible wife to one of our young men...."

Mrs. Stott: "As a matter of fact, Riemer proposed to her a few months ago. But Carrie is very particular; and besides, she wouldn't marry a German...."

Roger: "What nonsense! In what way are they inferior to Englishmen or Australians? I'm sure Riemer..."

Mrs. Stott (tightening her lips): "Not to be thought of. Riemer is an avowed atheist..."

Roger: "Oh, of course, if religion is to come in the way...."

Mrs. Stott: "It isn't only religion, there are other things. No. Don't let my daughters come under discussion. Why couldn't the Germans here send home for nice German girls to come out and marry them, or get married when they next went on leave...?"

Roger: "Why not, indeed? I'll talk to them. Much better they should do so. But then, what'll happen by and by is what you don't want to happen. The Germans will marry white women, have large families and gradually push out the Negroes and turn this into a White Man's country—unless the climate and the germ diseases forbid.... I'm not sure myself that I don't favour a mixture of races and that the Americans for example are not better suited to America because of their strong underlying element of Indian blood—I suppose you would not like it if the Germans married their concubines?"

Mrs. Stott: "As an Australian I am prejudiced against the mixture of the races..."

Roger: "Well, but Dame Nature isn't, in her inconsequent way. First she prompts the original human ancestors—your Adam and Eve—to segregate and separate and differentiate into sub-species, almost. Then she seems sorry for it, and does all she can to bring them together again, prompts the White man to travel all over the world and mix his blood freely with that of the other races. She has been redeeming the Negro from his original blackness and apishness by sending white immigrants into Africa for thousands of years—Egyptians, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Indians; Portuguese, Dutch, French, English; to say nothing of all the Mediterranean peoples who pressed into Africa in prehistoric days. They have all mingled with the Negro in their time and rehumanized him. You own to a penchant for the Iraku people. Why? Even for the Masai. Why do you really prefer them to the out-and-out Negro type, like the Kindiga and Wambugwe? Because they have a strain of ancient white blood in their veins. Same thing with the Swahili. We like them because of the Arab intermixture. And yet we talk and write a lot of rubbish about disliking the half-caste between a European and a Negro—By the bye, since we are talking on this subject, did I or did I not see a half-caste child in the compound of Schnitzler, that mining engineer who is such a friend of Edgar's?"

Mrs. Stott: "You did, at least Schnitzler's native woman has had a child by him—two years ago. And if you looked all through the settlement you could find three other half-caste infants.... They make no secret of it...."

Roger: "Why should they? If they must form these unions, it is better they should be sanctified by the production of children. I must say it redeems the whole thing in my eyes; the Germans don't ignore their half-caste children, but have them properly brought up. It is better than what you call 'sinning in secret' and blushing at—or repudiating the consequences.... This maddening question of sexual irregularities, which now seems to clog the progress of all European Colonies, and to fill up the press of the United States and of England—are they always writing about it in Australia?"

Mrs. Stott: "Strange to say, we never get any Australian papers. I don't know whether Phil does either.... I seem to belong so very much more to England or to north Ireland, where all my relations live...."

Roger: "... I often wish the Almighty or Nature or Chance—or whatever it was that developed us out of lifeless matter—had not tried this clever trick of the two sexes—I suppose it began a hundred million years ago, in the union of two entirely different microbes. I wish we had been allowed to go on increasing by fissure, by budding. Certainly among the world-problems of to-day it is the most difficult to solve. I sometimes feel irritated against Christianity for the fuss it makes about Chastity. But I imagine it arose from the tremendous revulsion that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago against an excessive sexual licence: just in those very countries where the purest doctrines of self-restraint were afterwards preached. The Christian ideal certainly seems the most likely to promote a good type of human being, but it is very hard to live up to.... Yet what texts you could find—in favour of Chastity—you missionaries—if you only realized the history of the Negro and did not go merely to the Old and New Testament for your pegs to hang a sermon on. The Negro is in his present inferior position because he has weakened his mental energy by extravagant sexual indulgence—and limited his numbers. Do you find the Happy Valley any less depraved than Nguru or Ugogo?"

Mrs. Stott: "I should think not. A little worse, if possible! I assure you, Major Brentham, when we first arrived from Australia I had no conception there could exist such depravity, such vices. They were referred to here and there in the Bible. But I did not know what the references meant...."

Roger: "Well: there you are. That is a justification for your being here, as in other parts of Africa.... If you and we can only give the Negro something else to think of. He is like our labouring class at home. It is the only pleasure he knows of. Give him education, ambition, sports, remunerative work, an interest, even, in better food, in better houses, pictures, music, theatres..." (Mrs. Stott shudders.) "Well: there you are, making a face at the theatre. You won't distract the Negro—or the European—from indulging sexual desires by prayers and hymns and the reading of ancient scriptures: that's certain. I know we differ there, and you must be already worn out with this lengthy conversation. As you've stayed so long, stay a little longer and have lunch with us? Lucy was only saying this morning she never sees you nowadays. You can go and have a talk to her, while I glance through these reports. See, by the bye, they give your donkey a feed, and put it safely in the stable. The other day one of ours disappeared. Of course, they said it was a leopard——"

At luncheon. The dining-room at Magara House is a fair-sized apartment, with walls of well-smoothed cement surface of pinkish tone, due to red ochre being mixed with the cement. On the walls are hung a few clever pastel studies done by a talented German horticulturist who has an eye for colour and design; there are trophies of shields and spears; there is a dado of native matting; and a smooth floor surface of red chunam plaster, made by Indian masons from the coast. In a pleasant bay which looks on to the front verandah a magnificent lion's skin lies between the window-seats....

A Swahili butler and footman clothed in long white kansus, with white "open-work" skull-caps, and black, gold-embroidered visibao,[#] are serving the luncheon, cooked admirably by the still surviving husband of Halima, the Goanese Andrade. The meal consists of chicken broth, flavoured with grated coco-nut and red chillies; curried prawns (out of tins); kid cutlets and chip potatoes; Mango "fool"; and a macédoine de fruits—fresh pineapple, bananas, sliced papaw, and oranges. [A little Rhine wine flavoured the fruit-salad and was served at table with Seltzer water.] Then, in the alcove with the lion skin [the door-window opens on to the verandah with the petunia beds below in carmine and purple blaze] the servants place Turkish coffee and cigarettes. Mrs. Stott only drinks Seltzer water and declines a cigarette; but thoroughly enjoys her lunch and congratulates Lucy on the flower-decorations of the table....

[#] Sleeveless waistcoats.

"It's Hamisi, our butler, that deserves your praise. I get so easily tired in these days that I seldom do the flowers as I used. I make up for it by doing all the mending that Maud will let me have and writing all the letters home. John and Maudie expect a full account of our doings every month.... And dear sister Maud that is here, is always busy over our accounts and Roger's business correspondence and her poultry farming. You know whilst Roger was in South Africa she almost took his place!"

"Oh, as to that," says Maud, who has a strong sense of justice, "you must all admit Hildebrandt and Dr. Wiese both played up. I shall never forget how loyal they were to Roger ... they might have been Englishmen ... and that, too, at a time when other Germans out here were looking askance at us, and that horrible Stolzenberg was threatening to raid the Concession and seize the mines..."

"By the bye," says Roger, "you never told me, either of you, about the Flamingo outrage. There are many things I could forgive, but not that. It was one of my great pleasures out here, going to see the Stotts and watching the flamingoes on the lake shore. If I'd been here at the time I should certainly have followed up the brute and shot him..."

"We didn't tell you because we wanted you to get well, and feared you might do something violent before your leg was healed."

"Well, now that I know, I shall certainly lodge a strong complaint with the German Commandant at Kondoa...."

"Ann Anderson has solemnly cursed him for his cruelty," said Mrs. Stott. "She said so in the letter she sent him by the poor Masai whose hand he chopped off. I think that, by the bye, is better worth taking up with the authorities than the flamingo massacre. I'm afraid you won't find many of the Germans sympathize with you there, though I must admit they are a great loss to the scenery. But Ann said in the letter: 'If man doesn't punish you, God will.'"

"Of course," said Roger, "it is a scandal the way the Germans tolerate this monster, just because, like Patterne—I suppose he hasn't turned up again?..."

"Don't know."

"... Just because he lives on the outskirts of civilization in no man's land. I shall try a ride on one of the Basuto ponies next week, go first of all and see your old station of Mwada, interview Ann, remind her of the parable of the Mote and the Beam, ask her to go slow ... with these denunciations of moral frailty; and get some idea of the damage done to the flamingoes. I expect my complaints may draw down on me counter remonstrances from the Germans. I heard a growl the other day from a Herr Inspektor of Native schools that you taught no German" (addressing Mrs. Stott), "only Swahili and a little English. What could you do in that respect? I should not like them to have any excuse for interference with you...."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Stott, her face paling at the very thought, "after all the time, labour, money—much of it your money—that we've put into Mission work in the Happy Valley. Oh, why wasn't it taken over by the English? ... I think it would break my heart to leave it and begin our work over again. We've got so fond of the people ..."

"Don't be down-hearted," said Roger, "I shall always stand up for them as long as I'm here, and I have no intention of going—except for a holiday—for ever so long.... What a strange noise...?!..."

A prolonged, distant rumble, like the sound a big avalanche makes in the Alps: and before they could speculate on its meaning, the ground trembled under their feet, the two-storied house seemed to sway this way and that, and then settle itself with a jarring thud. Fine dust fell from the ceiling; trophies of shields and spears came clattering down, the glass and china on the table tinkled, the finger-bowls giving forth a prolonged musical note. Outside, after a moment's hush, cocks crowed, hens whooped, geese raised grating screams, peacocks honked and yelled, turkeys gobbled and crowned cranes threw back their golden-crested heads and uttered their resounding call.

"An earth tremor," said Roger in an even voice, for Lucy looked like fainting. "A very small earthquake; nothing to be alarmed at, though it turns one a bit sick inside. They don't often happen. This is only the second I've experienced in ten years. You see, we live on the border of a volcanic region. Here, Lucy! Pull yourself together. Have a nip of brandy?...

"Better? Let's get out into the air, on the verandah, and see if any damage has been done.... I hope it won't affect our mining galleries...."

But no reports of damage from the earthquake came to hand. The natives said that these shocks were sometimes followed by outbursts of gases, smoke, steam from one or other of the craters in the north.

A week after Mrs. Stott's visit, Roger, accompanied by Maud to look after him and see he did not overstrain himself, rode down into the Happy Valley to Mwada station. Here they interviewed the redoubtable Ann, now a square-built grey-haired matron of middle age and practically no sexual charm. She had black eyes, glowering under black eyebrows, a sallow complexion, and a thin-lipped mouth, with down-turned corners, like the mouth of Queen Victoria when she was displeased. Ann listened in grim silence to Major Brentham's hesitating remonstrances. When he had finished she replied that it was more than flesh and blood could stand that she should be spending her time and the Mission money training up native girls to be Christian wives for Christian natives, and as soon as they had learnt some civilization they were sought out and snapped up by Germans, inside and outside the Concession. It wasn't for that she had come out to Africa....

"I do feel for you and will see what can be done," said Brentham; "but at the same time we must remember we are not on British territory, where they stand a good deal from the missionaries, but in German Africa. The Germans have made a handsome acknowledgment of what Mr. Stott has done in the way of industrial teaching. Don't go and spoil it all by being too ready to denounce these—these—irregularities! Things may right themselves in time. It would be such a dreadful blow to the Stotts if they were told to go, to leave the work of so many years...."

Ann would promise nothing, however. She would speak as the Spirit bade her.... For the present her time was taken up with mission work among the Wambugwe, who were quite the worst heathens she had met with. "Not only terribly depraved—they eat the corpses of their dead!!!—but the dirtiest Negroes I have ever seen, and wholly lacking in spirituality."

"Well then," said Roger, "there you've got your work cut out, for several years. Meantime I will talk to our German friends...."

"Friends, indeed?" said Ann. "They're no friends of mine!"

In spite of her fierceness of denunciation, she made both Roger and Maud as comfortable as she could at her rather Spartan station, and became so happy, friendly and even tearful during the evening with Maud, talking over the little world of Reading and Basingstoke, Aldermaston and Englefield, that evening prayers for once were intermitted. Her husband sat mostly silent, listening respectfully. It was evident that he worked very hard at material things during the day, that he stood much in awe of his wife, and had completely lost his gift of extempore prayer. Their one daughter was a thin, sickly, wistful little girl of ten, very shy, and fonder of her father than of her mother. But according to Ann she was already a good needlewoman, and helped in the sewing classes. Kind Maud proposed she should be fetched one day and taken to Magara for a week's stay. The air was so good there. Ann consented a little reluctantly.

They rode their Basuto ponies to see if there were traces of Stolzenberg's slaughter of the flamingoes. But the bodies had evidently been carried away from the lake to be skinned and because the bones were valuable; and the sole visible result of the raid was the absence of adult birds in pink plumage. There only remained of the former serried ranks a thin broken line of ugly immature flamingoes, dirty-white in plumage, streaked with brown. They were dibbling timidly in the thick waters of the lake; and this had also lost much of its former beauty—though Stolzenberg was not responsible for the slow desiccation of East Africa. The lake just now was no longer a uniform sheet of cobalt, bordered with a grey-white fringe of salt and guano mixed; it was reduced to two large areas of deep water with grey mud in between. How different from what Roger had seen in the glamour of 1888!

Away from the lake shore, in a detour through the foot-hills, they met a few wandering Masai on their way to trade at the Mission station. They greeted Roger with acclamations of friendship and much spitting. Without an interpreter he could not understand them, but they kept pointing to the north-west and evidently referring to the wicked Stolzenberg under their name of Oleduria ("The Terror"); and at the same time to "God"—Engai. They talked with the satisfied tone of a thing now settled, and went on their way to interview the Woman-chief who was their medical adviser, and would-be converter.

"They may have heard of Ann's letter," said Roger, "and believe her curse is coming off. Do you see where they were pointing? ... That curious cloud that seems to be rising high in the air, rising and falling, as though one of the craters were showing signs of activity?"

As soon as he returned to Magara, Roger drew up a formal complaint against Stolzenberg, addressed to the officer commanding in Irangi. He set forth the long tale of misdeeds on the part of "The Terror" during the past ten years and urged the German authority for the good name of the Empire to arrest and try this bandit. If this were not done, he would be compelled to place all the facts before the German directors of the Concessionaire Company whose employés' people and property suffered so much from Stolzenberg's raids and violence. The maiming of the Masai messenger was a concrete case, whatever might be thought of the offence in slaughtering the flamingoes, birds whose guano was one of the Concession's assets.

A fortnight later a military force of one hundred Askari and two twelve-pounder mountain guns arrived at Wilhelmshöhe—as the entire scattered settlement of the Concession in the Iraku Hills was called (at the request of the Schräders: the Stotts never got nearer the pronunciation than "Williamshoe"). The force was commanded by two smart-looking German lieutenants and a white Feldwebel. The lieutenants, who saluted Brentham as Herr Major, said they were to act under his orders. He was commissioned as a magistrate to proceed to the Red Crater and arrest Adolf Stolzenberg, but not supposed to take any part in the fighting, if force was to be used. That was their business. The Herr Oberst who had sent them remembered that Major Brentham had been wounded in the South African War, and hoped he would take care of himself; if his health was not equal to the journey, then the nearest German district commissioner would go instead. But Roger, in spite of his wife's pleadings and Maud's warnings, was keen to see the thing through. Besides, he could serve as guide. So in course of time the expedition found itself drawn up on the grassy plateau and facing the heavy wooden door and stone wall. A summons to open in the name of the law was shouted by the Feldwebel, who had an immense voice. There was no response. Then the guns, put into position, came into play and shattered the door to fragments. One of the lieutenants and half the force marched in.... Half an hour elapsed.... Then the lieutenant reappeared with rather a scared face.

"We can only suppose either that Stolzenberg fled some time ago, or that his settlement has simply been engulfed by some appalling volcanic action. Come in and see!"

Roger and the rest of the force followed. Inside the Red Crater, which enclosed a space about a mile in diameter, very little could at first be seen but clouds of sulphurous vapours, which when wafted in their direction nearly stifled them; and clouds of steam where the little stream from the hidden pool at the further end of the crater fell into some gulf of heat——

They advanced cautiously; the wind took a different turn, and at last the rashest pioneers among them discerned the ground falling away abruptly over a sharp-cut edge into Hell—as a Dante might have deemed it. The sulphurous fumes drove them back. The inevitable conclusion—confirmed in time—was that the crater had reopened immediately beneath Stolzenberg's settlement. Houses, people, cattle had all been plunged into the bowels of the earth, hundreds of feet below to a fiery furnace. Those humans and cattle who were nearer the crater walls at the time had possibly been choked and killed by the gases. Indeed, on their way out, they saw here and there, at the bases of the red walls, dead cattle lying stiff, all four legs in the air. Evidently, inquisitive Masai, after the earthquake, had climbed the crater-rim from the outside and seen enough to guess that the white Woman-chief's curse had come home, and the great enemy of the Masai and his murderous band of raiders had gone suddenly to an awful doom.

CHAPTER XXII

EIGHT YEARS HAVE PASSED BY

Eight years have passed since Roger Brentham staggered, half stupefied with sulphur fumes, from the Red Crater; satisfied with a great sense of relief and no pity, that Stolzenberg and his raiding Ruga-ruga had come to a deserved end.

"The Terror" having been wiped out in a way which brought an enormous accession of prestige to Mrs. Anderson of the Ewart-Stott Industrial Mission, the Happy Valley Concession was relieved for a time of any active enemy. Willowby Patterne, who had again taken up his abode on his Namanga property (after having once more passed through the Divorce Court—this time at the instance of a deluded but determined American wife), may have been disposed to fish in waters of his own troubling, have itched to share in the immense wealth now pouring out from the region where Roger had forestalled him. But meantime he had been a little sobered by Stolzenberg's tragic end. So he devoted himself for these eight years to shooting enormous quantities of big-game on the scarcely inhabited tracts of northern German East Africa. The Germans remonstrated with him at times for his breaches of their perfunctory Game Regulations; but an equal disregard for these attempts to save the fauna was shown by German hunters. Willowby imported and exported most of his goods and supplies, all his hides and ivory by German railway routes, sent them to be sold in German markets, and took care to be on good terms with German frontier officials. So his baleful activities were not materially interfered with. On the British side of the frontier he was also regarded with lenience for reasons not specified. He was popular among the East African planters because he kept the native in his proper place and evaded the "silly" restrictions on unlimited "sport." Apart from his matrimonial affairs, which were a source of recurrent, rather piquant scandal, he was not without a certain prestige in England. He had made his ranching property pay considerable profits out of the chase and cattle-breeding, and had thus pacified his most pressing creditors. He earned other large sums by acting, for three months in the dry season, as guide and arranger of big-game "shoots" to excessively rich Americans who wanted the thrill of firing into the brown of dense herds of antelope and zebra, getting perchance a maned lion without too much danger, or similarly bringing down an elephant of medium size (they would buy tusks "to go with it" from Patterne's store), or a record rhino (Patterne supplied the "record" horn; the poor specimen killed by the millionaire was given to the Andorobo trackers to eat).

Having accidentally brought to light several new varieties or sub-species of antelope among the thousands he shot for their hides and horns, he was deemed a great "naturalist" in the Cromwell Road Museum; and Roger's anger whenever his name was mentioned—calling up as it did many a mental picture of lifeless wastes of prairie strewn with bone-heaps where once rioted a wonderful and harmless Zoological gardens—was put down to jealousy of Patterne's marksmanship.

Twice in these eight years Roger had been to England. In 1902 he had escorted his wife and sister home, and stayed there six months to make his children's acquaintance. In 1906 he and Maud, who kept house for him at Magara in Lucy's absence, again returned for a long holiday; and in the following year brought Lucy back with them for a last stay in the Happy Valley—a last stay, because Roger calculated on retiring from the management of the Concession in 1909. He would then sell out his shares, and on the proceeds would be wealthy enough to leave Africa to younger men and devote himself to home politics. No more, after 1909, would Lucy be torn in two in her affections, longing to be by her husband, pining in fact without him; yet miserable at the idea of her children growing up outside her care and supervision.

John, as it was, showed himself devoted to the splendiferous and dazzling "Aunt Sibyl"; and even Fat Maud (no longer a dumpling, but still distinguished by this adjective from the other Maud, thirty-five years older, and spare of build) ... even Fat Maud preferred Englefield as a home to the humbler Church Farm at Aldermaston; and adopted a rather patronizing tone towards the quiet, pale-faced, languid, timid mother who had rusticated so many years in the wilds of Africa that she was ignorant of free-wheel bicycles, motor-cars, gramophones, two-step dances, ping-pong, hockey, and diabolo.

During these eight years Mrs. Bazzard's persistent letters to Sir Bennet Molyneux had their reward. Her Spencer was removed from malarial, out-of-the-world East Africa and made Consul-General at Halicarnassus, to preside with judicial functions over a Consular Court in Asia Minor, on £900 a year and allowances. Mrs. Bazzard foresaw for herself a glorious early autumn to her life, as a leading lady in the Levant, with an occasional dress from Paris, a prominence in Levantine Society, a possible visit of the Royal yacht to this old-world Turkish harbour where Herodotos once lived and wrote; and inevitably a knighthood on retirement for the re-animated doll, the Spencer into whom she had really infused new stuffing. "Oh, that dearest Mother might live"—in Bayswater, it would not do to have her at Halicarnassus—"to refer to her daughter as 'Lady Bazzard'!"

She has long ceased to take much interest in the Brenthams, once Roger Brentham—with whom she believes herself to have had a serious and compromising flirtation in 1887, and sometimes hints as much to her Spencer when his interest in her flags—no longer has his name in lists of officials likely to get between Spencer and a Mediterranean post. She is, however, a little annoyed from time to time to see he is not socially dead ... that highly placed officials actually notice him. For instance, the Bazzards when at home in 1902 could not obtain, try they ever so hard, a place in the Abbey to see King Edward crowned. But Roger saw the ceremony from a modest nook inside the nave; saw Sibyl in ermine and crimson velvet and ostrich plumes, nodding right and left to acquaintances and wreathed in smiles, pass before him with other peers and peeresses to her appointed place; and probably owed his seat to the intervention of the African Department of the Foreign Office, or to a request from the President of the Royal Geographical Society, as the recognition due to a distinguished explorer.

He had forgotten by now any rancour he might have retained for the Foreign Office, and would drop in at the African Department from time to time for a chat with "Rosy" Walrond—who was proposing to go to Unguja to tighten things up, and intended to come and stay with him in the Happy Valley and see with his own incredulous eyes the Red Crater and its bottomless pit, and the lovely maidens of Iraku who were the cause of Mrs. Anderson's heartbreak. Or with Ted Parsons—about to be named Consul-General at Naples; or kind old Snarley Yow, who said he wished now he had done like Roger: chucked the F.O. and a possible pension of £700 a year and gone in for an African Concession like the Happy Valley—suit him down to the ground.

The remarkable success of the Happy Valley—the one bright spot in "German East," where there was never a native rising and whence came a regular output of minerals, precious metals, precious stones; coffee, fibre, rubber, cotton, tanning-bark, hides, poultry and potatoes; the steady standing of its pound shares at forty marks on the German exchanges, and the purring approval of the Schräders: caused Roger to be increasingly consulted in British Colonial circles outside the Colonial Office. Diplomatists took an interest in him, and adjusted their monocles at parties to see him better. The Foreign Office published as a White Paper a Report drawn up at their request on the Big Game of East Africa and its international importance. Was he to be a means of solving the nascent Anglo-German rivalry by suggesting a combination of effort in Colonization? The Schräders hoped so.

Mrs. Bazzard was really vexed to see one day in the weekly edition of the Times that on March 25, 1903, Major Roger Brentham, D.S.O., together with other guests whose names meant nothing to her, dined with Lady Silchester to meet the Right Honble. Josiah Choselwhit, etc., etc.

Sibyl at this time still believed Chocho to be the coming man, the Premier who would set the British Empire right, bring about an Imperial Customs Union and a Federation directed from London, and calm defiance to the rest of the world. She was one of the earliest of the B.M.G.'s.[#] Roger was of the opposite school, a school which at best achieves a cool popularity amongst thinkers. He wanted to bring about a moral union, so to speak, between the British Empire, Germany and the United States, a pooling of their resources; and Universal peace: to ensure which France should be retroceded a portion of Alsace-Lorraine, and Germany allowed to grow into a great African Power. There were many faults in the German conception of how Negro Africa should be administered; but the same faults were to be seen in British Africa; the same reforms would apply to both régimes.

[#] Vide the columns of the contemporary Morning Post.

But Brentham, though he had distinguished himself in the fight with the Boers for the overlordship of South Africa, had disapproved of the policy of the Raid and had said so, and written caustically on the subject. His views in some other directions, especially on Free Trade with Africa, were diametrically opposed to those of the Idol of the Midlands; so that Sibyl's attempt to bring them together at her board in the hope that the Colonial Office might give scope to her cousin's abilities, was frustrated at the very start. Chocho said very little to Roger, and Roger, being anything but a self-pusher, said very little to Chocho.

During these eight years Lucy's father, approaching and passing the age of seventy, continued to farm at Aldermaston with vigour and geniality and less and less conservatism. Lucy's mother was hale and hearty, with apple-red cheeks, and placidly thankful to the Lord who had arranged all the affairs of her family so well—never mind what happened to other families: perhaps it was their fault. Lucy's sister Clara, who had married Marden the Cricketer, was amassing year by year an enormous family of alternate boys and girls, and, as Sibyl said, it would be interesting to encourage her to go on till she had passed the normal, and then exhibit her with her progeny at a County Show. Her husband proved an assistant Agent for the Silchester estate of progressively increasing worth, and let cricket go to the wall—or to Australia. His boss, the Head Agent, Maurice Brentham, lived much in London and in Staffordshire, supervising the affairs of the estate in those directions; and managing them so well that when young Silchester came of age he would be among the wealthiest of our peers and able to write and produce mystic operas—if he so willed—or subsidize a whole Russian ballet—without feeling the cost. Maurice had never married. His excuse was the prolificness of Mr. and Mrs. Marden, the sufficiency of Roger's family, and the seven children (already) of his brother Captain Geoffrey Brentham, R.N. Geoffrey was a great begetter: almost like some hero of the Greek classics. He apparently only spent one month at home in every fifteen; yet his wife did little more—especially during these eight years—than lie-in, nurse, short-coat and wean one child; conceive, lie-in, nurse and short-coat another. Meantime her husband took enormous pains over naval marksmanship, and agitated himself over the quarrels of the Admirals. Mrs. Geoffrey was the daughter of a Naval Chaplain with very pronounced views on family prayer and the uncriticizable nature of the Bible; and on quite illusory grounds she decided that Roger and his missionary wife, Maud, Sibyl—who, she was sure, was the real cause of Maurice not marrying—were all rather wicked and not worth knowing: so, fortunately, she absolves me from any concern in her affairs.

Similarly I can dispose of Sibyl's father by saying that he died from a wandering clot in 1905, and that Sibyl only showed perfunctory regret: he had become a bore of the first water, obsessed by the belief that if only he had had capital behind him, his ideas about farming would have revolutionized British agriculture. Sibyl's mother, unwavering in her attachment to her spouse, whom she only remembered as the handsome young captain fresh from gallant service in suppressing the Indian Mutiny, who had won her affections in 1859, died also, soon after her husband, probably from some form of cancer. Aunt Christabel—the Honble. Mrs. Jenkyns in private life—also died within this period, somewhere in lodgings—Bath? Both deaths occurred at awkward junctures when big political parties had to be put off at a moment's notice; and therefore wrung from Sibyl not only a few tears of sorrow and remorse—Had she been quite kind to either? Would she, too, live to be old, boring, unlovely, and consequently unloved?—but also exclamations of annoyance at people who chose the supreme moments of the season, when Royalty was once again showing an interest in you, to take to their beds and die.

Old Mr. Baines, the proprietor of the Aerated Beverages Manufactory at Tilehurst, died of diabetes in 1906. He left his money—a few thousand pounds—on trust to John, the eldest son of Captain and Mrs. Roger Brentham, subject to a life interest for Mrs. Baines. His spouse had led him a life, as he expressed it, since her son's death in 1888. She had passed from the most narrow-minded piety to a raging disbelief in all churches, sects, and creeds. The "raging" was chiefly inward or expressed through her pen in "open" letters to clergymen, philanthropists, or scandalized county journals. Otherwise she maintained a Trappist silence, neglected the house-keeping, injured the business by scaring away customers. At length in 1901 she took to denying in a loud voice at Reading markets and other assemblages of crowds (as in her letters to the Berks Observer and the Newbury Times), the very existence of a God; and then public opinion obliged her husband to have her put away into an asylum.

Curiously enough she offered little opposition to this measure. She asked for, and was allowed, a large quantity of books, and became with the aid of new spectacles an omnivorous reader. She gave little trouble. Her husband made a liberal payment to the asylum, but as this ceased at his death, and the Trustees showed a mean desire for economy, it occurred to the medical man in charge—not without a conscience—to re-examine Mrs. Baines and see if she really was mad. As a result he pronounced her restored to sanity. She made no comment on her release, faithful to her vow of silence, but with the help of her trustees she purchased a small cottage on the Bath Road near Theale. The sight of the enormous motor traffic and the bicycle accidents seemed to amuse her. Roger, during his 1906-7 holiday in England, at Lucy's wish went to see her, to be satisfied she was properly cared for. She received him in grim silence, offered a Windsor chair, and listened taciturnly to his stammering, apologetic inquiries. When he stopped speaking she drew blotter, pen, and ink towards her, and wrote in a bold hand on a sheet of notepaper: "The British people are not the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; more fools they, if they were. I agree with you about Religion. I forgive Lucy. I am glad little John is to have my money when I die, but I shall live as long as I can to find out the Truth. Don't come any more."

She then conducted him to the door—it was in the shocking summer of 1907—pointed to the grey sky of a cold, dripping July and to the ruined hay crops in an adjacent field, to the green corn beaten to the earth and to a collision between a motor cyclist and a push-bike on the Bath Road. Then her long, furrowed lips curved into an awful smile—a smile perhaps her dead son had never seen—her angry eyes and her crooked, uplifted finger expressed a derisive query as to the existence of any Providential concern for the welfare of Man.

Therewith she returned to her books and the studies she had taken up so late in life. Possibly she is living still at eighty-two.

During these eight years, Lucy's health, after some fluctuations, had decidedly improved; and when her husband was preparing to return in the autumn of 1907 for his final round-up of the Happy Valley Concession, she insisted on accompanying him. It would be for less than two years; Maud was coming too; and the children would be most of their time at school. Rather with misgivings Roger agreed. Provided she kept her health, it would indeed be a delightful conclusion to the great adventure of their lives. They would revel for the last time in the beauty of Iraku and the Happy Valley, their Crowned cranes and pea-fowl, their tame gazelles and duikers, their quaint menagerie of monkeys; their wonderful flower garden—Iraku grew everything: orchids and mignonette, roses and lilies, petunias and pelargoniums, Strelitsia reginae and Disa uniflora.... He would wind up his financial connexion with the Concession and retire from it a rich man, perhaps retaining a sleeping partnership in its concerns: for it was entangled with his heart-strings.

Then, all clear for Europe, after a cycle of Cathay. They would motor from Iraku to the nearest railway station on one or other of the lines that now penetrated the interior, secure the best cabins on the luxurious steamers of the D.O.A. line, and thus retrace the route of their first voyage, when love was incipient, but when their future seemed dark and uncertain. They would be lovers again on this voyage, but this time open and unashamed, and Maud should pretend to play the part of a green-eyed Mrs. Bazzard.

The first portion of this pleasant programme was fulfilled. For a year Roger rode from factory to mine, from coffee plantation to the fields and sheds where pineapples were grown, cut, and canned. He made good suggestions about their cattle, about war, unceasing war on the tse-tse fly, which—it was feared—was entering the Valley. He viewed with satisfaction his success over the crossing of Maskat donkey and Basuto pony mares with zebra stallions, and considered it proved that the resulting mules might become a valuable factor in East African transport. He inspected the new ostrich farms, the new smelting works and the primitive ceramics where native women turned out excellent pottery for home use. He decided that further explorations for gold should be undertaken in Ilamba, and that a fresh reef should be opened up in western Iraku. They would waste no more money looking for the matrix of the diamonds—diamonds might go hang, there were plenty of them in German South-West Africa.

But this wolframite with its product tungsten: that was worth following up with persistence. It was more and more needed for the application of electricity and for the latest developments of metallurgy, and would alone make the Concession of great monetary value.

At the beginning of 1909 a cloud came over their happiness, contentment, and sense of security in the future. In the first place the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and its accompanying defiance of Russia by the shining-armoured Kaiser had inspired British statesmen with hand-in-the-breast-of-the-frock-coat speeches of the Pecksniffian brand; the harder to bear since we were engaged about that time in pushing Turkey out of Arabia and manipulating the partition of Persia. This, once again, soured the relations between Englishmen and Germans. Then, the value of the Happy Valley Concession, insisted on by Roger in his despatches to the Directorate in Leipzig, had reached the comprehension of the All-Highest and of the Imperial Cabinet. To these august personages it seemed incongruous and detrimental to German all-self-sufficiency that such an important portion of Germany's most important colony should be managed by an Englishman, and that an English Industrial Mission should contain a female of such measureless audacity as a certain "Ann Anderson" who had dared to write a letter to the All-Highest, complaining of sexual licence on the part of Germans in East Africa. Let there be an end of this! The Englishman must go, the Industrial Mission must be replaced by some subservient Roman Catholic teaching fraternity from the Rhineland, which would attend to its prescribed functions of instructing the Negroes how to use their hands and in a limited degree their brains, and call nothing German in question, least of all the policy approved by the Kaiser's Kolonialminister. As to the Schräders: they meant well: they had tried to ride the German and the English horses abreast: a clever circus trick, but one that no longer consorted with Imperial aims. They were worthy financiers, but they had become too international, with their offices in Paris, London, and Johannesburg, as well as in Leipzig and Berlin....

These august decisions had to be conveyed to Roger by the greatly disappointed Schräders, who had sought so perseveringly to co-ordinate the enterprise of the British Empire with that of Germany and France—internationalists before the proper time. They knew, of course, that Major Brentham purposed resigning his local Direction of the Concession in 1909, but they had half hoped he might have continued in Europe much the same function as a member of the Board. As it was, they had to ask him to go, instead of acquiescing reluctantly in his departure. And quite decidedly they had to request that all relations between the Concession and the Stott Mission be severed.

From the Imperial authority in East Africa the Ewart Stotts received the curt order to wind up the affairs of their mission and hand over their buildings and plantations to the Brotherhood of the Heliger Jesu of Bingen-am-Rhein. They would be paid compensation for the actual outlay of their own moneys, and their teachers and subordinates would be granted the equivalent of a year's salary, at existing rates.

This not-to-be-appealed-against edict caused the Stotts the acutest sorrow and dismay; and Ann Anderson the most unbridled anger. Roger, however, counselled resignation and moderation of utterance. Let them take the compensation, get all they could out of the Imperial authorities, and migrate to neighbouring British territories, if they were still keen on Mission work.

"After all," he said, "I am going too, and you must feel, even if Hildebrandt is to succeed me, it would be difficult for you to remain here without my backing. Hildebrandt—and you all say you like his wife and that she is in sympathy with you—promises me that if he does succeed as Manager, he will do all he can for the natives and endeavour to get your policy continued by the Catholic teachers.... Go home and have a good rest. Go to England and take stock of what people are saying and doing. Get Ann to take lodgings for you somewhere in Berkshire ... see the best of England.... Then, if you decide to come back to East Africa you could start another Industrial Mission on British territory among the Masai and the Nandi who would seem much the same as the people you are now leaving...."

Ann, however, made her departure sensational. After handing over the keys of Mwada Station to the Catholic Mission she marched out to the centre of the market-place, on a hillock overlooking the lake; and in the presence of a large crowd of Masai and Wambugwe she solemnly cursed the Kaiser in Masai, Kimbugwe and English. It took more than nine years for the curse in full measure to take effect; but then the Kaiser was a much more important personage in the history of Africa than the occupant of the Red Crater, and the Devil no doubt fought far harder to save him.

In the spring of 1909 Lucy was again attacked by pernicious anæmia, and Dr. Wiese's remedies failed this time to arrest its encroachments. "There is only one thing," he said, melancholy with foreboding at the departure of his English friends—"only one thing to save Mrs. Brentham from dying, and that is to send her quickly out of Africa on to a home-going steamer. The sea air may stimulate the recovery of the blood and help her to regain strength."

Roger therefore hurried through his preparations for handing over his work to Hildebrandt. It was thought better that with them should go the two Australians, so that the staff might be entirely German. Maud superintended the packing of their personal effects. Roger decided, partly out of liking for the Hildebrandts, partly from a horror he had of stripping the home where he and Lucy and Maud had been so happy, to present the Hildebrandts with its furniture and garnishings, and to take away as little luggage as possible. He did this almost with a kind of foreseeing that he might some day return. Maud felt very much parting with the Crowned cranes. Together with pea-fowl they are the most intelligent, inquisitive, well-mannered pets that the bird-world can produce.

The journey to the coast port where the steamer would call was accomplished in a motor ride of three days. Even to the dying and little-regarding Lucy this was in striking contrast to the three-weeks to four-weeks' journey up-country in her novitiate; with its crushing fatigues, discomforts and frequent dangers. No more skulls and skeletons of recent raids, no more intrusive lions, no need to fall among soldier ants, no water famines and atrocious smells; no tedious waiting in hot sun or drenching rain, while an unstable tent was being fumblingly put up and a camp bed put together. When the motor halted for the night Lucy was transferred by kind hands, as in a dream to a clean, sweet, cool couch in a decent bedroom. When it was morning, after a breakfast she scarcely seemed to taste, she was placed in a flying-bed—as the motor seemed—and so the dream journey went on till she was aware of being in a boat and then hoisted up into the air in a bed, and finally put to rest in a cool cabin. Dream figures would pass through this half-real environment. John Baines seemed sometimes to stand by her bed or help her into the motor; Maud became confused with Ann, but surely a much gentler Ann? There was Brother Bayley, looking for her to read slowly through the Book of Exodus, so that he might translate it, phrase after phrase, into Kagulu....

Once on the great steamer of the Deutsch Ostafrikansche Linie there seemed a ray of hope. They had deck cabins allotted to them. Two German Staff officers pretended they were just as comfortable on the tier below, and it would be a pleasure to help in Mrs. Brentham's recovery. She was quite a personage in the history of East Africa.... The steamer's captain, himself a married man, was kindness embodied. He broke through any regulations there might be to the contrary and had a section of the deck screened off opposite their cabins, so that no other passengers might pass through this open-air, shaded parlour in which the sick woman lay on a couch in a half-dream, even in a happy dream. Her day-bed or couch was screwed to the deck so that it would not be jarred or dislodged by movements of the vessel. Here she could lie all day or all night; her husband and her sister-in-law—such a formal term should not have been applied to Maud, she said; "sister in very truth"—could take their meal alongside where she lay.

At Unguja there came on board the new British Agent, Sir Edward Walrond, of the Foreign Office, to take farewell of Brentham since the latter could not leave his wife. He seemed to pass in and out of Lucy's dream—-a pleasantly cynical person who only expressed sympathy with Roger by a hand-grip and laughed away the idea of Mrs. Brentham not being able to land at Naples and see the sights there, "with Ted Parsons to take you round—he is becoming very Pompeian in manner, I'm told." ... Walrond sends on board all the fruit and delicacies he can think of, which might tempt Mrs. Brentham's appetite.

Archdeacon Gravening, who married her to John and then to Roger, comes off to see her. He is quite the old man now, the veteran of the Anglican Mission always there whatever Missionary Bishops come and go, always writing down Bantu languages, always trying to kill some secret sorrow of his own. He is alone with Lucy, kneels down for a few minutes by her day-bed, takes her hand, prays silently, says aloud: "My poor, poor child: I pray with all my heart you may surmount this weakness and live to be loved by your children. Think sometimes, when you are well and happy in England, of the lonely old man who married you to your good husband. I always said Brentham had done the right thing."

Then he lays some flowers between her hands that the Anglican Sisters have sent her. Lucy in her dream thinks they are marrying her again to Roger, and laughs at the absurdity of their not knowing she has been his faithful wife for—for—it is all so confusing—oh, ever so many years....

Out in the open sea, the fresh boisterous air of he monsoon gives a flickering stimulation to the enfeebled brain and body, even causes a certain irritability and impatience, rare to her gentleness. "Roger! Can't they take me quickly home? Can't they make the ship go faster?..."

"My darling, she is going at a splendid rate; we shall be at Aden in four days. Aden! You remember Aden? Where we took Emilia Bazzard with us to spend that day, and saw the cisterns? I want you to get ever so much better in those four days, because I must leave you then...." Hastens to add, as her hold on his hand tightens: "Oh, only for a couple of hours whilst Maud takes my place, because I want to pay off our four Somalis on shore. If I gave them all their money on the ship they might gamble it away or have it stolen. You remember the Somalis? Our old faithfuls—been with us for—what is it? Eighteen years. Wonderful! They travelled down with us from Magara—often carried you out of the motor or into the boat. Every day they come for your news."

But she is not listening.... "Roger!"

"Yes, dear?"

"I don't want to get off at Naples, and I don't want you or Maud to leave me at Naples: I want to go on and on in this steamer till we reach England.... And, Roger! If I die before we get there, don't throw me into the sea as they generally do with people who die on ... board ... ship ... take me on with you to England ... take me home, won't you? Then I shan't mind dying. We've all got to die some day ... that's what makes it all so sad.... I can't believe there can come an end to love, not love like mine for you; but it's horrible to think of lying at the bottom of the sea, and you perhaps in a grave on shore...."

"You mustn't talk like this or you'll break my heart ... but if it eases your mind, I promise you that you shall be taken home."

Then comes Maud—with the ship's doctor—and a hospital nurse, always carried on board for such cases. There is going to be transfusion of blood, and Roger bares his arm....

A pause afterwards and she sleeps, sleeps and wakes, dreams she is with her children and they only call her "Aunt Sibyl," dreams she is once more at Mr. Callaway's, waiting to know if Roger is going to marry her.... Mr. Callaway? Didn't she overhear Roger asking after him from some one who came on board, and didn't they reply "Died of blackwater fever, years ago"? We must all die sooner or later, but oh, why might it not be later in her case? So much to live for!

She is awake again, looking at the brilliant sunlight on the dancing waves and the flying fish that rise in mechanical parabolas of flight that become monotonous. Some form is presently standing between her and this effulgence of sun on water.... It is the ship's captain, a big burly man with a close-clipped, russet beard and kind blue eyes. "Zô," he says, with a mixture of gravity and lightness, "that is bet-ter, moch bet-ter. A ... leetle ... colour ... now ... in ... the ... cheeks...." But his well-meant encouragement trails away into pitiful silence before her ethereal beauty and other-worldliness. Tired middle age has passed from her face with this infusion of Roger's blood. "What a pretty woman she must have been at one time!" he says to himself. His blue eyes fill with tears, and he turns away thanking his German God that his own Frau is not in the least likely to die of anæmia....

The heat and airlessness of the Red Sea bring back a lowering of vitality.... The poor sick brain, insufficiently supplied with red blood, even inspires a peevish tone in the dying woman. "Oh, Roger! I've spoilt your life! You only married me 'to do the right thing'! I ought to have refused.... I broke your career," she wailed.

"Lucy! How can you say such cruel things. Here, drink this. This'll put life and sense into you. Haven't I told you, over and over again—Aren't your children a testimony to our love? But there! It's cruel to argue with an invalid. I shall send Maud to talk sense to you."

"No, stay with me. I want to be with you every minute of the life that remains to me."

They pass through the Suez Canal, but she is insensible mostly now to changes of scenery or to noises, or to anything but the absence of Roger from her side. The fresh breezes of the Mediterranean cause a revival of mentality. "My poor Roger," she says one day when the snow peaks of Crete give hope of an approaching Europe, "how grey you have grown! I never noticed it before. Greyer than you ought to be at your age." And she caresses his hair with an emaciated hand....

"Tell Maud—I never see her now, you are with me always, but tell Maud I love her better than any one in the world, except you. Better than my children. They won't miss me. Africa has always come between us. Still, all the same I send my thanks to Sibyl ... and poor mother.... And tell Mrs. Baines I thought kindly of her ... I was to blame.... But something tells me John has long since understood and forgiven....

"And, Roger? Are you there?" ...

"Always here, darling." ...

"Do something for the Miss Calthorps—you know—where I was at school. Some one told me they were in poor circumstances. They must be quite old now."

"They shall be seen to."

The ship passed through the Straits of Messina. Etna behind them on the south-west, with its coronet of snow. Far away to the north-west was the chain of the Lipari Islands, blue pyramids with spectacular columns of yellow-purple smoke issuing from their craters against the approaching sunset. The Tyrrhenian Sea was incarnadine under the level rays of the sinking sun. To the east rose the green and furrowed heights of Aspromonte, green-gold and violet in the light of the sunset, dotted, especially along the sea-base, with pink-white houses and churches with their campanili-like pink fingers pointing upwards. Lucy's eyes gazed their last on this splendid spectacle of earthly beauty. Roger, still holding her hand, lay half across her bed, more haggard than she, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, emaciated with futile blood-letting, worn out with want of sleep and no appetite for eating, and the long vigil over his dying wife. He slept now, soundly. Her eyes gazed at his closed eyelids for one moment; then motion and life passed from them.

* * * * *

It was always Maud's function in this sad world to attend to the plain matters of business whilst others gave way to a grief that knew no solace, or a joy that spurned formalities. So it was she who left the ship at Naples, called on Roger's old friend, Ted Parsons, the Consul-General, sent telegrams in all the necessary directions, and fulfilled all necessary forms and ceremonies. Whether it was an unusual concession or not, it was at once agreed that the body of Mrs. Brentham, enclosed in a "shell"—they obtained what was necessary from Naples—should be carried on with her grief-distraught husband and her husband's sister to Southampton. There all three of them were landed, and thence they proceeded in a very humdrum way by South-Western and Great-Western railways to Reading, where the two live ones put up at an hotel so commonplace and out of date that it momentarily wiped up sentiment and froze the tears in their tear-glands; while poor Lucy's remains were temporarily lodged in a kind of Chapelle ardente used by the chief undertaker, who did things in style. No sign of life from Sibyl. Evidently there was no one at home at Engledene. Lucy's parents and Lucy's children were communicated with, and in due course the funeral took place at Aldermaston. Roger even sent word of it—remembering Lucy's message—to Mrs. Baines at Theale; and to the intense surprise of every one in the neighbourhood Mrs. Baines stalked into the church and churchyard, attended the burial, and then strode away to the station, and so back to Theale, refusing hospitality at Church Farm by a simple shake of the gaunt grey head, down the cheeks of which, however, a tear or two had trickled.

Lucy came to rest at last in the churchyard of Aldermaston, under the boughs of one of those superb blue cedars of the Park which lean out over the walls of mellow brick. She had so admired these cedars in her dawning sense of beauty when she taught in the neighbouring school; and when she was wont to pace up and down the Mortimer Road considering whether or not she should go out to Africa to marry John Baines.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE END OF SIBYL

For three weeks after Lucy's burial, Roger scarcely knew what he did or whom he saw. His boys and girls went back to school and college; Maud busied herself in reconnoitring for a home, some place not too expensive to keep up, where the children might come in school holidays, where Roger might find rest, isolation, the healing power of country life when he was wearied with towns and travel. She designed to acquire for him and her the old Vicarage at Farleigh Wallop. The Vicar who had succeeded their father, instead of being an archæologist, to whom present-day life was a wearisome fact that must obtrude itself as little as possible on his studies, liked to reside where the population was thickest. Of the two villages, therefore, within his cure of souls he chose Cliddesden for his residence as being the more populous, and let the vicarage at Farleigh whenever he could find a tenant. This of course was the old home of the Brenthams and the place where Maud had lived up to the time of her father's death. She had no inquiries to make as to drainage or water. She knew its charms and its weaknesses; and finding it untenanted she soon concluded an agreement with the Vicar to take it on a reasonable rent and with some security of tenure. To live there once more would be for her and Roger—and for Maurice too, and Geoffrey when he chose to come and see them—a pleasant linking-up of past with present.

Meantime, Roger returned from three weeks of aimless wanderings on a bicycle or in a motor, and from visits to bankers, tailors, and the Foreign Office in London, to spend a few days with Maurice at Englefield Lodge.

The first question he put to his brother was, "Where on earth is Sibyl?"

Maurice: "I didn't like to tell you before, Sibyl is rather under the weather, as Geoffrey would say. Silchester—Clithy, as she always will call him—came of age last year, as you know. Sibyl seemed a bit off colour then, and began really to look somewhere near her age—at last. But she carried off things well. Gave fêtes on all the different properties and attended most of them.... Gave political dinner parties in London to introduce her son to such great pots as she could get to come to them, before he took his seat in the House of Lords. She was present at the Trustees' meetings to give an account of her stewardship. They congratulated her—and me—and you, in retrospect—on the way in which the Estate had been managed during the long minority; and told Master Clithy he was remarkably lucky to have such a mother and such Agents. He took it all with a certain amount of pompous acquiescence.... He has grown into an awful prig, you will find, and thinks a tremendous lot of himself. Whether I shall stay on with him I hardly know. I've saved a bit, haven't spent any of my share in Dad's money, and I could always go back to the Bar. P'raps if you returned to Africa I'd go with you if you'd let me? I'm rather fed up with England and office work....

"However, about Sib.... She came down here last summer and didn't have a house party. Lived quite alone with your kids. They've come to look upon Engledene as quite their home. Of course, when she couldn't put 'em up I had them here. Well, as I say, she seemed 'under the weather.' Once or twice when I rather bounced in on Estate business, I thought she'd been crying. Wasn't my business to ask what for. She wasn't an easy person to question and could lay you out with her tongue if you seemed to be meddling with what didn't concern you. Then all at once last October I had a note from her to say that she had gone into a nursing home to have an operation, that I wasn't to fuss about it or come to inquire, that if she was away at Christmas time your children were to come here from school just the same and I was to represent her as host...."

Roger: "What was the operation for? All this is news to me."

Maurice: "So I guessed. She made me promise not to write and tell you or Lucy ... said it would be all over, long before you were back, and turn out to be a fuss about nothing. As to what it was, why I suppose she had reached a certain stage in life when most women have complications and ten per cent. of 'em are operated on—glands, cysts, tumours....

"The operation took place—she was jolly careful to keep it out of the papers—I doubt if even Clithy knew anything till it was well over. He was travelling in Russia to study the Russian theatres and their arrangements about scenery.... After she recovered the doctors sent her to Aix and then to St. Tropez on the Riviera.... Clithy joined her there. I sent her the telegram about ... about ... Lucy's death. I dare say you noticed the perfectly magnificent wreaths they both sent for the funeral. Clithy's came down from some place in Regent Street and had a card on it 'To my dear Aunt Lucy.' ... Only human touch about him ... awfully fond of your wife ... always said he liked her much more than his mother.... But he needn't have said it so often, though Sibyl only used to laugh. Her wreath was made here from the very best things we had got in the hot-houses ... only because Sibyl wrote that Lucy so loved to walk in these houses and fancy she was back in Africa.... However, I had a letter from her three days ago...." (Takes it out and reads: "Tell Roger not to dream of coming out here, because I am just going away. I am writing him in a few days.") "There! Now she'll soon tell you everything about herself...."

"What about you? Have you made any plans as yet?"

Roger: "Lucy's death has cut my life in two; I shall have to alter all the programme we used, to plan out together, she and I and Maud. Of course there are the children to think about.... Where are the matches? I'll light a pipe and tell you my ideas...." (A silence ... puffs ...) ... "I've not done badly out of this Happy Valley Concession. I've sold my shares in it—all but five hundred, kept them just to retain an interest, don't you know, get the Company's reports from time to time—I've sold my shares at two pounds a share to the Schräders' group. That brings me in close upon £75,000. I haven't saved much besides ... purposely lived well out there and entertained a good deal, and gave ... Lucy ... and Maud all they wanted, and had to pay for the little 'uns' schooling at home. However, there I am at this moment with about £75,000 at my bank on deposit and twelve hundred or so outstanding to my current account.... I'm going first of all to give ten thousand pounds down to Maud. I consider she has earned it.

"And then I must make a new will ... and I want to ask you, old chap, to be one of the executors. Will you? And p'raps Geoff the other. After all, it isn't Geoff we dislike, it's that confounded, pious doe-rabbit of a wife of his. However....

"Well then, about my plans. I suppose I ought to stay at home at Farleigh—I shall look out for a decent flat in London—and get to know my children. Somehow it's that I can't take to. They have grown up so outside all my thoughts and schemes and interests. They don't care a hang about Africa. John has been making a young fool of himself at Sandhurst ... been betting and borrowing and getting into debt. I'm glad his mother didn't know.... Well, I shall square up all that, but I shall insist on his going in for the Indian Army—Staff Corps—same as I did.... A man if he's got ability couldn't have a better education.... He's a good-looking boy, John—I expect he thinks me an old fogey from the backwoods.... India's the school for him. And as to Ambrose, he must go to Cambridge, when he leaves Harrow, and I shall try and get him a nomination for the Consular Service.... That's the other good school for a British citizen. You'll think me jolly conceited, just because those are the two careers I've followed. But..." (smokes and puffs).

"Well then, there are the two girls. Fat Maud—she was furious because I revived the old name—says long ago 'Aunt Sibyl' agreed it should be compromised by her being called Fatima.... Fatima, I gather, is eighteen, and young Sibyl is fourteen.... For the present Maud will look after them, and I shall have 'em up to London every now and then for a few weeks. In course of time I suppose they'll want to be presented. Dare say old Sibyl will do that, or if she's away, Lady Dewburn. By the bye, she wrote me an awfully sweet letter about Lucy..." (ponders and smokes).

"In due time the girls'll marry, and if they pick up the right kind of husband I shall give 'em each a portion of my ill-gotten wealth. There! That's what I've planned out, and I dare say it 'ud ha' been quite different if my darling Luce had lived. I should have been reconciled then to settling down at home. As it is—I shall travel a bit—Go to Germany and try to find out what the Germans are up to.... Go back to Africa p'raps ... I don't know...."

A few days after this conversation, Roger received a letter from Sibyl:

Villa les Pins,

Grimaud, près St. Tropez, Var, June 12, 1909.

DEAR ROGER,—

Maurice will have given you all the news there is about me, except what I am going to add in this letter.

I am not going to attempt any sympathy at present over your loss. Maud's telegram from Naples was forwarded on to me here and it gave me a horrid turn. I often used to tease Lucy: I am cat-scratchy to every one, I fear. Why? I don't know: something to do with my internal organs, I dare say. But I became sincerely fond of her, after being perfectly horrid to her when we first met. She seemed to grow on one. I should have liked her always to stay at Englefield.

Heigh ho! I am very much inclined to whimper about myself. I have, been through a ghastly time.... Some day, if I live, I will tell you. Meantime, though I am aching to see you I am going to postpone that happiness, and instead am going round the world with Vicky Masham.

The doctors seem to think—I dare say it is only because they have nothing else to suggest—that if I went on a long sea voyage for about a year—I mean, kept constantly travelling on the sea—I should get quite strong again. Perhaps I shall. I want to give myself every chance—it seems so stupid to die before you're seventy. Also it occurred to me the other day that for a woman to have raved for twenty years about the British Empire and yet never to have seen any part of it outside Great Britain, except Cape Town and Stellenbosch, and once when we went to Jersey from Dinant—was rather silly. So Vicky and I are starting from Marseilles next Sunday in a P. and O., bound for Ceylon, and after that Japan. Not that Japan is British—I believe—but of course we aren't going to be pedantic. Then I suppose we shall "do" Australia and New Zealand—only I'm afraid New Zealand is rather muttony, isn't it? Excessively worthy and all that, but lives chiefly on mutton and stewed tea. However, there are geysers and pink terraces, if you look for them. Then there will be a lovely cruise across the Pacific, and beach-combers and impossibly large oysters that would dine a family of six, and brown people with no morals and beautiful sinuous forms, and finally San Francisco and California. After that—however, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Vicky or I will bombard you with picture post-cards recording our progress, and when—and when I'm quite well and look less like a doomed woman—I will let you know, and, dearest Roger, we will pass the rest of our lives together, or at least not far away from one another. Your children shall be the children of my old age....

Clithy is here, but as soon as I leave for Marseilles he is off again to Russia. He has promised me to look you up when he returns. You will find him now definitely fixed as to appearance. People of his stamp are like that. Between nineteen and twenty-one, they quite quickly assume the figure, face, style by which they are ever after going to be known. He will remind you most of Lord R——, though I assure you there is no innuendo in this. I dare say the L——'s are distant cousins of the Mallards. But Clithy is essentially the aristocratic young peer who may be a fount of wisdom or a hollow fraud with nothing inside an irreproachable exterior. He is a mystery to me. And I am of little interest to him. The only woman I ever heard him mention with anything like a kind look in his eyes was Lucy. The Anne of Denmark nose is still there, undulating and with a bump in the middle; but the rest of the face has grown up more and his hair is a nice dark chestnut brown.—Well, you will see him later, so why waste time in describing him?

As to Vicky Masham.... Of course you want to know why, etc.

Well: Vicky, at the death of her patron saint, Victoria the Good, was left with little more than her pension of £500 a year. She ought to have had ten thousand pounds of her own, but—I dare say you saw the scandal in the papers? She and her sisters gave up much of their means to save their shockingly bad brother from going to prison over some swindle that ... Again why waste words? Maurice could tell you all about it. Well, when I came to the South of France after Aix, last December, I was dreadfully hipped, fighting a certain Terror—a much worse terror than the one you used to write to me about who lived in a Red Crater (rather a distinguished address: "The Red Crater, Iraku"), and who went to Hell by the direct route. I came to Monte Carlo amongst other places and thought if I kept on a veil and wore blue glasses no one would recognize me. In the Rooms I saw Victoria Masham, looking very melancholy—and oh, so old—and quite alone. My heart was touched, I spoke to her and we went to sit on the terrace. I told her my troubles and she told me hers. Result: I struck a bargain. She is to live with me till we have our first quarrel; I am to board her, lodge her, wash her, pay all possible expenses, and give her a little pocket money, over and above. And d'you know, I think it's going to be quite a success! We haven't had a quarrel yet! I've had her teeth beautifully done by an American dentist at Cannes, so my nickname only applies a little—he was too clever not to give the new set a soupçon of horsiness. And I've made her buy a quite wonderful "transformation"—chez Nicole—reddish-brown, streaked with grey.—You'd never guess. She has plumped out a good deal, for although I've a wretched appetite myself I keep a good table, and upon my word when we get to the Colonies I shouldn't wonder if she had shoals of proposals. She never talks about anything but Queen Victoria, but I find that—somehow—awfully soothing—takes me back to the happy old time when I was a care-free girl, proud of my secret engagement to you.

* * * * *

Dear Roger. I have lost all my good looks. That's why I don't want you to see me till I recover them—a little. Meantime, dearest of friends and cousins, if you believe in Anything with a power to save—alas! I don't—pray to it to save me from this terror that hangs over me—especially in the silent watches of the night—and bring me back safe from my world-tour, with at least another ten years of life before me.

Whilst I am away, remember Engledene is entirely at your children's disposal. I have written to the head gardener to see that fresh flowers are sent every now and again to Lucy's grave. You will tell him when? Lucy was a real good sort and I think she came to understand me and forgive....

Ever yours,

SIBYL.

Roger spent the remainder of 1909 as he had planned: looking after his boys and girls to some extent, trying to get interested in his children. The girls bored him with their chatter of surface things: school quarrels and rivalries, school friendships, school mistresses; their individual tastes in chocolate creams and caramels; their school sports; the actors whom they adored—at a distance—and whose photographs they collected; their disdain for those silly asses the Suffragettes—they themselves would never want a vote! The two boys were not much less shallow with their Sandhurst and school-boy slang—"top-hole, sir," "ripping," "ruddy," "rotters," "we rotted 'em a bit"—their school-boy games of such vast importance; their dislike of anything sincere, original, warm-hearted; their rash criticisms of great writers, frantic admiration for great sportsmen, religious reverence for cut and colour, style and form; enthusiasm in general for things that did not matter and contempt for things that did.