Part 12

Lucy meantime tries to pretend she is interested in a book. It is far too hot to walk out and botanize. And then, what is the use of pressing these plants? The colour of the gorgeous petals soon fades to brown, fungi and minute insects attack them and they crumble into dust; and the Mission objects to all the blotting-paper being used up in this way....

Presently John returns; with a native servant carrying a tray on which are tea things, slices of guinea-fowl breast, some boiled sweet potatoes, and banana fritters. To obtain this rather tempting little meal he has had to face the scornful opposition of Ann Jamblin, but for once he has turned on her (to the silent dismay of Bros. Bayley and Anderson). "Ann," he has said, "you must learn to keep your tongue and temper under control. It is you who drive Lucy away from our meals by your constant fault-finding. We are not all made alike; some of us are more sensitive than others." Ann, strange to say, is silenced by his sharp tone and makes no retort.

"Come, Lucy," he said, after the little meal has been placed on the table by her desk; "you will only make yourself ill by this refusal to eat. I am sorry Ann has been so teasing. I have spoken to her. Now try to eat this little lunch whilst we are quiet in here."

Lucy looks at it and at him. In the middle of the tray is an enamelled iron tumbler containing a small bunch of mallow flowers with large lemon-tinted petals and a vivid mauve centre. This, from John, means so much, as a concession to her tastes. She bursts into tears--at this period she was very soppy!

"Oh, John! You _are_ good to me. I really _don't_ deserve such kindness. I have been a _dreadful_ disappointment to you."

"Well; eat up the lunch and you'll make me happy," says poor John. "Why shouldn't we _all_ be happy here, Lucy?" he goes on. "The Lord has singularly blessed our work; the climate--for Africa--is not at all bad; you can't say the scenery is ugly, there are beautiful flowers all around--and--and ferns. We're getting on well with the people, much better than I ever expected. Why, your schoolroom is already too small for the numbers and Bayley has to teach his classes out of doors in the 'baraza.' Look at our plantations--how the lemon trees and oranges are growing--and the coffee. It's true we get our mails rather seldom. There seems to be something queer going on at the coast. The carriers can't get through.... The Germans, I suspect. But we're safe and snug enough here. As for me, I don't want to hear from home. Mother's letters are not precisely cheering. I only ask to go on with the Lord's work without interruption. _Do_ try to be cheerful, darling ... do you think you--Do you think there is--er--any hope of--your----?"

"I _will_ try once more, John. But couldn't we live more by ourselves? Ann gets on my nerves, do what I will. Couldn't we do our own housekeeping?" continues Lucy, clasping her hands and looking at him pleadingly.

"Well," said John, a little ruefully, "you know you _did_ try for a month after you first came, but it was such a failure that you gave it up. You couldn't stand the heat of the cookhouse, or manage the cook, or do the accounts in calico for the things you bought. And--you don't know much about cooking. Why should you? You're a first-class teacher. And then, you know, you were so set at first on studying--studying botany--and painting pictures. I thought, even, you might write for the Mission Magazine, like Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Baxter...."

_Lucy_: "But they always want you to write goody goody and bring in the Lord at every turn and make out the black people to be quite different from what they are--Somehow I couldn't fall in with their style, it's so humbugging----"

_John_: "Well, then, write for other magazines, worldly ones if you like. I'm sure you could write well--you used to make up beautiful poetry before we were married, and you've had thrilling enough experiences on the way up. It isn't every missionary's wife who's had a lion trying to get into her tent----"

_Lucy_: "The thought of _that_ journey _still_ makes me sick. And yet I used to think I should adore African travel--" (An ungrateful thought flashed through her mind: "so I should, with--with--some people"). "Besides, if I told the true story--bugs, ants, snakes, rotting corpses, and all--it might stop other missionary women from coming out. No. I can't write anything. I _do_ make collections of flowers, but you won't let me go far from the Station to botanize and you're always too busy to come with me. As to painting, it's either too wet, or too hot, or too something. And then you hinted once I shouldn't take a half-holiday every day but help some one else in their work, so I give up some of my time to Mr. Bayley.... No, I won't call him 'Brother Bayley,' it's so silly, all this brother and sister business"--(a short pause and a sudden impulse). "John! Couldn't you take me home next dry season--and get them to give you work at home--? Or" (noting his look of dismay) "send me home to Mother and join me there later on, when your leave is due?..."

_John_: "It would just _break my heart_ either to part with you or to throw up my missionary career...."

_Lucy_: "Well, then, could I go on an itinerary--as you call it--with you? Not be cooped up here with that intolerable Ann when you three men go off on a round of preaching. I'd promise not to mind anything--snakes, ants, lions, or even the Masai. Perhaps I might get to enjoy Africa that way without all this intolerable religion...."

_John_: "_Lucy!_..."

_Lucy_: "I didn't mean to shock you again, but I couldn't help it. I don't know what's come over me, but I've grown to _hate_ religion, and still more pretending to be religious. I'm sick of the Bible ... at least I mean of the Old Testament. It always makes me think of some wearisome old grandmother who says the same thing over and over again.... Who wrote it? That's what _I_ want to know. How do we know the old Jews didn't make it up and pretend it was inspired?" (John ejaculates a "_Lucy!_" of protest at intervals, but she is so carried away by a desire to express her revolt that she pays no heed.) "You know I've been trying to help Mr. Bayley in his translations by reading slowly bits of the Bible--just now we're in Exodus. He _would_ begin at Genesis, even though I said all the people wanted was the Gospels--I don't think I ever studied the Bible much at home and it all comes fresh to me as though I had never thought about it before.... Well, Exodus.... Have you ever read those chapters where Moses fasted--or said he fasted--for forty days and nights _without food or even water_ whilst he was writing down God's sayings? ... How silly some of them sound.... How particular the Almighty seemed about the colours of the tabernacle curtains--blue, purple, and scarlet--and about the snuffers and the snuff-dishes being made of pure gold. And about the 'knops.' ... What is a 'knop'? Poor Mr. Bayley can't find the word in any dictionary. What can be the good of translating all this into Kagulu? It only puzzles the natives, Josiah told me. Mr. Bayley's always losing his temper with Josiah because he can't find the right Gulu or even Swahili word for some of these things in Exodus. Surely all you want to teach them is simple Christianity and how to live less like pigs and more like decent human beings...."

_John_ (interposing at last, after he has cast his counter argument into words): "How can you teach them about Christ without first explaining what led up to Christ, the Fall and the Redemption? We want to give them the whole Bible, even if we don't understand every passage ourselves. Every word of the Bible is inspired." (Lucy makes a mute protest.) "But oh! my Lucy ... what I feared and foretold has come to pass. This coquetting with Science has cost you your faith. Kneel down." (She knelt with him unwillingly on the little platform.)

"Oh Lord," prayed John, most earnestly, "visit Thine handmaid in her sore need for Thy help! Dispel her doubts with the sunshine of--of--thy grace. Convince her of Thine Almighty Power and Wisdom and consecrate her to Thy service in this Heathen Land."

They rose to their feet constrainedly. John covertly flicked the dust from his trousers, blew his nose, and wiped eyes suffused with emotion. Lucy impatiently shook her white skirt. How she hated these impromptu genuflections which always shortened the wearing life of the skirt and sent it prematurely to the wash. And much washing made it shrink so.

Still, her passion was spent and she felt very, very sorry for her husband, and a little guilty in her discontent. If she had come out straight to him from England under no other influence, would she not have been a fairer critic, have taken more kindly to mission work? And was not John really cut out for a missionary, with every reason to be proud of his station's success?

These silent musings, while John awkwardly hummed a hymn tune, were broken in upon by the strident voice and bustling presence of Ann Jamblin. "Well, then, young people" (being three years older than they were she sometimes assumed a maternal air), "if you've finished honeymooning, I'll take the tray away and get the school ready for my sewing class." (To one without: "Pilisilla! Ring the bell three times.")

They left the School-house without answering her, hand in hand. Lucy felt so sorry for John that she resolved once more to try to be a missionary's wife and helpmeet. The intense heat of the forenoon was breeding a thunderstorm, and already the sky was overcast, and a few puffs of cool air were blowing up from the plains. Presently these grew into an alarming dust-storm, a hurricane which blew Bayley's proofs and manuscript to right and left; and when Lucy rushed in to pick them up she was blinded for a minute by the glare of lightning. Then the wind dropped before a deluge--a grey, sweeping deluge of rain. In trying to save this and that, Lucy and Ann were drenched to the skin and had to change their soaking garments. The change to dry clothes, the rub down somehow cheered them, and made them more friendly. Lucy then returned to Bayley's study and once more helped him in the returning daylight with his translations. But he was now well into Leviticus, and some passages proved so embarrassing to both Lucy and Josiah that the former broke off with the exclamation, "It's teatime."

And sure enough there sounded the one pleasant summons in the twenty-four hours: the tea bell.

The rain had ceased, the darkness had lifted for a while and left the western sky a sweet lemon yellow, out of which a tempered sunlight twinkled. The air had become fresh and uplifting in a dying breeze. The little party met round the tea-table in a mood to jest and to be friendly. Ann, more good-humoured than usual, described her sousing. She also told Lucy she had had two of Lucy's skirts mended at her sewing lesson, to save her the trouble. Oh, it was all right; they had served as a pattern.

A couple of armed porters arrived during teatime, their calico clothing still adhering to their brown bodies from the rain storm through which they had stolidly walked. They had not brought the regular "Europe" mail from Unguja, but some parcels from Mr. Callaway and local letters. These read aloud over the tea table spoke of the restlessness of the coast population caused by the administration of the German Company, of Arab gossip at Unguja, of the sombre news from Nyasaland where a Scottish trading Company was at open war with the Arabs, in trying to defend the population from Arab slave raids. Tiputipu was away on the Congo looking for Stanley and had withdrawn his restraining influence from the Tanganyika Arabs. Was a concerted Arab attack on the interfering white man about to begin? The missionaries looked from one to the other a little anxiously. A growing feeling of _camaraderie_ linked them. They felt themselves to be an outpost of Christianity in a world threatened by the Moslem. They congratulated John in that he had so completely won over the Ulunga chief, Mbogo, that the latter had expelled the Arab traders from his hill country and made common cause with the White man....

At dinner--or as they better styled it, supper--they were quite cheerful. There was even a special zest in the evening service, point and _vim_ in the shortened prayers. Ann was congratulated by Lucy on her ground-nut soup and "pepperpot"; and the treacle pudding which followed was declared a masterpiece.

John that night kissed his wife tenderly in mute recognition of her more sympathetic attitude.... She did not shrink as usual from his caresses.

*CHAPTER X*

*ROGER ARRIVES*

Sir James Eccles, it was decided, was not to return to Unguja to guide once more the destinies of East Africa. Prince Bismarck would not hear of it. After considerable hesitation Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., was appointed to succeed him in the spring of 1888 and arrived at Unguja to take up his position as Agent and Consul-General when Roger Brentham had about completed a year's tenure of the post in an "acting" capacity.

Sir Godfrey Dewburn was a fortunate Irish soldier, who--because he had a capacity for getting on well with everybody--had held a high administrative position in India, though outside the ranks of the Indian Civil Service. He did well over the Prince of Wales's visit in organizing successful durbars, nautch dances and perfect shooting picnics, in which record tigers were bagged. He did better still in an aftermath of the Imperial visit, when the Duke of Ulster and the Hereditary Prince of Baden came out to shoot in Dewburn's new province. He had also married, with very wise prevision, a daughter of the Choselwhit who was legal adviser to the Circumlocution Office. When it was felt that Sir James Eccles must be thrown over to avoid a breach with Germany, which threatened a Franco-Germano-Russian alliance against us, somebody--perhaps the Duke of Ulster, who still remembered Dewburn's champagne cup, cooled with the snows of the Himalaya and tendered just at the psychological moment when the most splendid of the tigers had fallen to the Royal rifle--suggested Dewburn for the post. And as he was backed up by the India Office, who wanted to weed their Civil Service of outsiders, and by Molyneux who thought Dewburn's dinners at the "Rag" quite the best in London, Lord Wiltshire, tired and preoccupied over the Parnell letters, gave way and appointed Dewburn. Lord Silchester's suggestion of Brentham was deemed "indelicate," emphasized as it was by Sibyl, to whom Lord Wiltshire had taken a whimsical dislike.

Dewburn, when he came out, posed as a jolly good fellow who praised every one all round and enchanted Mrs. Bazzard by his manners and easy cordiality. But after a bit, Brentham's efficiency got on his nerves. It was irritating to hear his subordinate--so much better fitted than he for the post, some might have said--prattling and swearing in Swahili and Unguja Arabic, and rather markedly doing without an interpreter. Dewburn spoke French well and a little bad Hindustani, but there his linguistics ended; and his brain sutures being closed would admit no knowledge of an African tongue.

Then there was Spencer Bazzard always at hand, serviceable unto servility, ready to jot inspirations and judgments down on a writing-pad with some prehistoric form of the fountain-pen or indelible pencil, and reproduce these utterances afterwards, conveniently elaborated. Brentham, on the other hand, preferred putting in a draft of his own, which took quite an independent line and might have led H.M. Government to do something, make up their minds to some definite course....

Then again, Brentham's real destination was the German mainland.... The situation there was strained.

Mrs. Bazzard somehow amused and intrigued Sir Godfrey (Lady Dewburn had not yet arrived). He guessed her as somewhat of a demi-rep, but to him, as to me, such a person is more interesting to study than the simple village maiden, or the clergyman's daughter with her smooth hair parted in the middle....

Who precisely were the Bazzards? May I, with a novelist's omniscience, clear up the mystery?

There was a celebrated firm of solicitors in Staple Inn known as Grewgious and Bazzard. It had originated in a Mr. Hiram Grewgious, who had a valuable Norfolk connexion and had figured with some distinction and celebrity in a famous Kentish murder trial in the early 'sixties. The junior partner, Mr. Bazzard, took over the business from Mr. Grewgious, and when the latter died in 1878 still preserved the honoured style of the firm. This Mr. Bazzard led a double life, in that he was not only a particularly astute solicitor, but also a playwright of ability who produced at least two stirring melodramas under a _nom de plume_.

As solicitor he had lifted Mr. Bennet Molyneux once out of a considerable difficulty and delicate dilemma ... he had ascertained that the lady was travelling under an assumed name and ... in short, he had settled the affair without any fuss, and Molyneux was thoroughly grateful and asked him to dine at the Travellers, giving, of course, due notice, so that the guest-room, in those distant days with its settees thick with dust, might be got ready, and a fire be lit to take off the chill.

Over walnuts and port, Mr. Bazzard had mentioned the existence of a much-younger brother--fifteen years younger, in point of fact--rather at a loose end since he was called to the Bar--clever chap withal, steady, married now to a deuced pretty woman, but in his youth the very devil with the sex. ("Just so," would nod Mr. Molyneux comprehendingly, who, except for the most pardonable slip with Mrs. ---- at Lucerne, was a blameless husband and father.) Well, then, there he was--had tried ranching in the States and buying horses in the Argentine, got done in the eye by that scoundrel, Bax Strangeways--knew a lot about the tropics--stand any climate--take on any job. In short, did Mr. Molyneux know of an opening anywhere in Africa, C.O. or F.O., for a sporting chap with a knowledge of Law?

And Bennet had put down his name for a vacancy in the East African Consular service. And having thus taken him under his wing, was prepared to stand by him through thick and thin ... even deluded himself into thinking he was a damned good sort, and his golden-haired wife--"bit of the devil in her, no doubt"--a fit person for Mrs. Molyneux to know--in the country, at any rate.

Perhaps she was. Why should one sneer at a woman for trying to improve her position and looks and wriggle into a less sordid sphere than that in which she was brought up? Emilia Standish--christened Emily, of course, but wrote her name "Emilia" from the time she was seventeen--was, as Captain Brentham ill-naturedly guessed, the daughter of a Bayswater widow who kept a Bayswater boarding-house (few districts of London have such a power for moulding human beings to its guise). Emilia Standish--or was it Stapleton?--I really forget--had tried life as a governess with ill success. She confided to her mother, and her mother only, that she might have succeeded here or there had not her pupil's father made improper advances from which she had to flee. She had studied for the stage, but like her predestined fate, Spencer Bazzard, she, at thirty-two, was somewhat at a loose end and living at home when Spencer came to lodge at her mother's boarding-house. He was down on his luck, almost in hiding, nearly cast off by his highly respectable, much older brother. He fell ill. Emilia took pity on him, nursed him, and defied her mother over the financial question. Out of gratitude he proposed. She accepted him and took stock of the situation, called on the elder brother in Staple Inn, secured his advocacy for a "colonial" appointment--and--you know the rest.

Spencer can't have been wholly bad, because though they had many a private tiff and unheard wrangle, this woman stuck by him and made a career for him. Brentham, in writing to his sister, gave too unfair a description of Spencer. He omitted to notice that though his knowledge of law was so imperfect as to throw doubt on the efficacy of the examinations which then admitted to the Bar, he had at any rate acquired some knowledge of shorthand, and certain of the qualities necessary to playing private secretary to an important personage. So that Sir Godfrey preferred greatly the retention of Bazzard as his lieutenant at Unguja, rather than the slightly gloomy and excessively well-informed Brentham.

There came at this time rumour after rumour that the Arabs of the Zangian coast were preparing to rise in force not only against the Germans but against all white men. They were concerting measures in common with the Arabs of Mombasa, of Tanganyika, Nyasa and the Upper Congo to expel all white men from East Africa and found a great Slave-holding empire which might link up with the victoriously anti-European Mahdi of the Sudan. Sir Godfrey Dewburn did not clothe his Memorandum of instructions to Brentham in exactly these comprehensive and grandiloquent terms, derived from a contemporaneous essay of my own, but he said:

"Look here, dear old chap. You know you are a bit of the fifth wheel to the coach here, on this potty little island. You've put me up to all the ropes, I'm well in the saddle. Now suppose you cut along to your own show? The mainland, hey? Go and round up those blasted Germans, don't you know? Of course, steer clear of quarrels--that'd never do. Be coldly polite, but see what they're up to and report to me--fully. Strikes me it's blowing up for a storm...."

So Brentham shipped himself and his indispensable retinue of Goanese cook, Swahili butler, and a nucleus of fifteen always dependable gunmen-porters of the stalwart Unyamwezi breed over to Medinat-al-barkah--the "Town of Blessings," on the Zangian coast: formerly the chief shipping port of slaves and now the head-quarters of the German Chartered Company which had succeeded to the authority of the Sultan of Unguja.

A few months afterwards, when he had organized a Consulate and an Indian clerical staff in an adapted, cleansed, and tidied Arab house, he received an urgent and confidential communication from Sir Godfrey:

"The F.O. is much perturbed by the reports of Arab risings against the German Company. Mvita seems to be quiet under Mackenzie. The various missionary societies are clamouring for information and some indication that H.M.G. realizes the seriousness of the situation. I have been instructed semi-officially by H. and M. that you should at once proceed inland with a sufficiently strong caravan and visit the missionary stations within a radius of--say--three hundred miles of Medina, assisting the white people to repair to safe positions on the coast, especial care being taken to bring away their women and children. You know far better what to do than I, who am a new comer to East Africa. So, _carte blanche_. Do your best. Good luck and chin-chin.

"Lady Dewburn, who has just come out, is dying to put her feet on a maned lion skin when she gets out of bed. So if you've any luck shooting, 'Then you'll remember me!'

"Yours, "GODFREY DEWBURN."

In consequence of these instructions you can picture such events as these occurring at the end of September, 1888.