Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She goes out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her husband stood at the doorway.

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

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

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