Part 7

Nor had Brentham any but the most honourable intentions. He felt tenderly and pitifully towards Lucy, carrying her country prettiness and innocency into savage Africa, embarking on a life of unexpected frightfulness, unspeakable weariness, of monotony, varied by shocks of terror, by sights of bloodshed and obscenity that might thrill or titillate a strong man, but must inevitably take the bloom off a woman's mind. He even thought, once or twice, of dissuading her from completing the contract, yet shrank from the upset this would entail. Perhaps she really liked this missionary chap? From the description she gave he didn't seem so bad--he was tall and strong and seemingly a man of his hands, with a turn for carpentry, and was the Agent of a very practical Mission. If she recoiled from this marriage, what was she going to do? It was impossible to think of her remaining at Unguja "on her own," and if he sent her back to England at his own expense her parents might resent very strongly his interference. There was his own career to be thought of ... and Sibyl.... To a woman like Lucy a marriage with most men of her class, or below it, or immediately above it, would come with rather a shock. She was so marriageable, so marked out as a man's prey that she was bound to go through it some day. Then, when she was married, she would live more or less in his Consular district, and he could keep an eye on her without being unduly attentive. Perhaps Mrs. Ewart Stott was still settled in the Zigula country of the German sphere ... _she_ might help her. Very likely she would be able to stick her three years of residence which the Mission generally stipulated for and then return to England.--What a lark if they both went home together and compared experiences?

He might have revolutionized East African affairs in that space of time...

He was quite unconscious that in the two-to-three weeks of their close association on board he had won Lucy's love to such an extent that she was growing slowly to look upon the end of the voyage and the meeting with John as a point of blackness, the entrance to a dark tunnel....

Meantime, without assuming a forwardness of demeanour which her upbringing discountenanced and the watchfulness of Mrs. Bazzard forbade, she accepted all he gave her voluntarily of his society. The Red Sea was kind to them at the end of April: clear cobalt skies, purple waves, a cool breeze against them, no steamy mist in the atmosphere, and occasional views of gaunt mountains or bird-whitened rocks and islands. They sat in their chairs and talked: talked of everything that came into Lucy's mind. She put to his superior wisdom a hundred enigmas to answer, which her mind was now able to formulate with an aroused imagination.

"You say you approve of missionaries, yet you seem to dislike religion; you tried to get out of attending the Sunday service in the Saloon, and you looked very angry when the Captain asked you to read the Lessons. Don't you believe in _anything_ then?"

"You'll find, Lucy"--Brentham would reply--"that the word 'believe' is very much abused. You may 'think' of such and such a thing as probable, as possible, as desirable--often, indeed, the wish is father to the thought. But to imagine it, is not to believe in it; in the same way in which we are compelled by irresistible conviction to believe in some fact or consequence or event, whether we like it or not. We can only 'believe' what can be tested by the evidence of our senses, by some incontestable piling up of evidence or record of historical facts.... Beyond that there are probabilities and possibilities and suppositions. I can believe the fire would burn my finger if I put it in the flame; or that the earth goes round the sun and that the moon is more or less 240,000 miles away from the earth: because my senses or my reason convince me of the truth of these facts. I can believe that you're a very dear little girl seated next me in a deck-chair on a steamer going out to East Africa: because I can put such a belief to some conclusive test of the senses. But I can't in the same way 'believe' in most of what are called 'religious truths,' because they are only suppositions, guesses, tentative explanations which have lost their value ... indeed, have lost their interest. I can't therefore waste my time on such----"

"But," Lucy stammered, "the Bible?"

"Just so: the Bible. How many of you stop to think what the Bible is? A collection of comparatively ancient writings in Hebrew and in Greek, very beautifully translated into Shakespeare's English, with lots of gaps filled up by suggested words and even--as we now think--lots of words and phrases wrongly translated. The Hebrew books may have first been written down at any time between six hundred and one hundred years B.C.; and the New Testament between fifty and a hundred-and-fifty years after Christ--at any rate in the form in which we know them. The original texts were uttered or written by men who only knew a small part of the Mediterranean world, who thought the earth was flat and the rest of the Universe only an arched dome over the earth. Job may have had grander conceptions, but the early Christian writers were ignorance embodied. They were ready to believe anything and everything to be a miracle, and to invent the most preposterous fairy stories to account for commonplace facts. At the same time they often overlooked the beauty and simplicity and practical value of Christ's teaching and also the fact that a good many of his..."

"_What_ an abstruse conversation," said Mrs. Bazzard, breaking in out of the star-lit darkness on Roger's disquisitions. She hung about them in the Red Sea, especially after dark, and had a tiresome way of suddenly making her presence known. Perhaps, however, it was just as well, and, indeed, though Roger was annoyed at the moment at having his eloquent thinking aloud interrupted--because in such monologues we are generally trying to convince ourselves as well as our auditory--he also felt some relief at the excuse for dropping the argument. _Why on earth_ should he undermine Lucy's stereotyped beliefs? What could he give her--in the life she was going to lead, too--in place of them?

But the discussion was revived ever and again by Lucy's persistent questions. She elicited from him in general that although he approved of the material results of missionary work and the ethics generally of Christianity, he mocked at creeds, thought prayer futile--especially the fossilized prayers of Judaism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, because they were inapposite to our present age, bore little relation to our complicated sorrows and needs, our new crimes, difficulties, agonies, and temptations. He found the Psalms, all but two or three, utterly wearisome in their tedious woes and waitings, aches and pains probably due to too carnivorous a dietary; untempting in their ideals--"more bullocks for the altar ... and the fat of rams...." Then our hymns--all but three or four--were gross or childish in their imagery, abject in their attitude to a Caesar or a Sultan of a God, who all the time watched inflexibly the Martyrdom of Man and the ruthless processes of Nature without lifting a finger to stay the cyclone or the epidemic ... and so on.... His views were very much modelled on those of Winwood Reade and on Burton's gibes at "Provvy" (Lucy shuddered at the irreverence and expected a meteor to cleave the ship in two), and he had brought out with him from England Cotter Morrison's "_Service of Man_."

Lucy sometimes felt so shocked at his negations that she resolved to speak with him no more, but to apply herself to the study of the Swahili Grammar he had lent her. Then at the sight of him and at his morning greeting and the kindly companionship at meals, she could not remain aloof. At any rate, he had said that you ought to act as a Christian even if you could not swallow Christian theology. That was a great admission. And he seemed to have numerous friends among the missionaries at Unguja and in the interior, which would hardly be the case if he were a bad man.... Besides, his father was a clergyman.

Aden came as a welcome surcease to these discussions. It was concrete and indisputable, and of remarkable interest when interpreted by a Brentham.... Steamer Point with its crowds of Indian and British soldiers, Jews with ringlets and tall caps selling ostrich plumes, Somalis like Greek gods in ebony offering strange skins, skulls, and horns for sale, and ostrich eggs; the drive--in a jingling carriage over sandy roads, past red-black crags on one side, with an intensely ultramarine sea on the other--to the Arab town; the vast cisterns, the rich vegetation at the cisterns; and then, after an interval of absolutely sterile rock-gorges (vaguely suggestive of the approach to Aladdin's cave in the _Arabian Nights_), a sea-side ravine with an unexpected flora of aloes, euphorbias, mesembryanths, and acacias.... Even Mrs. Bazzard, with her Bayswater mind, was momentarily impressed by Brentham's pleasantly imparted knowledge of all these things. You never noticed how extraordinary they were until he pointed it out. She was for the time being conciliated by his having invited her to accompany Lucy on the day's excursion and by the generous way in which he stood treat and presented her, as well as Lucy, with ostrich feather fans and amusing gewgaws made from sea-shells.

After Aden the sky clouded; metaphorically, with the coming end of this wonderful episode in Lucy's life, materially with some tiresome manifestations of the monsoon. I forget whether it blew behind and left the _Jeddah_ wallowing in the trough of great indigo waves and rolling drearily; or blew against her progress, causing her to progress like a rocking-horse. But it imparted a storminess, a sense of exasperated emotion to this pair of lovers--as they were, unadmittedly. Fortunately, it also made the footing of Mrs. Bazzard's high-heeled Bayswater shoes uncertain on the unstable deck, so she relaxed her watchful spying on their conversations. Lucy was alternately silent and wistful and almost noisily vivacious, with hands that shook as they passed a tea-cup. She had begun to realize that in five or six more days the voyage would end in her meeting John as an ardent bridegroom; that she would never belong to Roger, she would pass out of his life as swiftly as she had entered it, be at most a pleasant and amusing memory of a half-ignorant little person with whom he had spent good-naturedly much of his time on a long sea voyage.

Roger on his part, in smoking-room reflections would feel he had gone much too far--compromised her, perhaps played a rather foolish part himself, for a man with high ambitions. There was that bitch of a woman, that quintessence of a Bayswater boarding-house, Mrs. Bazzard, wife of a--rotter, probably--whose nose he had put out of joint. She was capable--and and to conciliate her and win her over would be degrading--of putting any construction on his flirtation. How, at such times, before turning in, or even while playing whist in the Captain's cabin and thinking of anything but the game, he would _curse_ these long steamer voyages and these episodes of love! There was that voyage out in 1880--he had narrowly missed a breach of promise action then, and he would be hanged if he'd set out to be more than sociable. And the last time he had returned to England ... Mrs. Traquhair, the wife of the chief electrician at Unguja.... Only the fact that in the Mediterranean she had developed one of those Rose Boils which were a legacy of Unguja's mosquitoes, and which confined her to her cabin till the Bay of Biscay (when they were all sea-sick), had prevented the irrevocable. And all the time he believed himself engaged to Sibyl! And afterwards, when he had met Mrs. Traquhair and her sister--_and_ the sister! Oh my God,--in London and had dined them at the "Cri." and taken them to see Arthur Roberts from a box, and had scanned Mrs. T.'s profile as he had never done before and watched her laugh at the comedian, showing all the gold in her teeth ... he asked himself _how on earth_ he could have kissed her so passionately as they were passing through the Suez Canal. Yet she couldn't have been a bad sort because she had never attempted to bother him or follow it up.... But he couldn't class Lucy with Mrs. Traquhair or the siren of the 1880 voyage. She was utterly good and innocent of schemes to entrap him. A sweet little thing...

As they passed into the Indian Ocean between Guardafui and Sokotra, there was a temporary lull in the wind. It was a moonlight night; they were sitting side by side under the open sky, for the deck-awning had been removed on account of the monsoon. A sudden fierce longing--there was no one on deck that he could see--seized him to take her in his arms and kiss her. And there came a telepathic message that she was aching to be so taken and kissed. But he resisted the impetus, with clenched hands on the arms of his chair. Silence had set in between them. A catch of Lucy's breath was faintly audible, and--dare I say it? A snivel, a tiny snivel.

"_Lucy_? _Crying_? My _dear_ child! Why ... cheer up. We shall soon be there.. You're not cold?"

"You don't understand.... I ... I ... don't _want_ to get there.... I don't want to marry him; I _hate_ the very idea...."

"Oh, but this will never do.... This is foolishness, believe me. Lucy! Pull yourself together."

Lucy now sobbed frantically.

Mrs. Bazzard was heard saying from quite close by, "Which is Gyuardifwee and which is what-you-may-call-'em--Ras Hafoon? I mean, the cape where some of the steamers run ashore in the mist, and then you have to walk through Somaliland and get sunstroke?"

Brentham exclaimed under his breath: "_Damn_ that woman!" and audibly, even a little insolently replied: "I'm _blessed_ if I know. You'd better ask the Captain. He's on the bridge and dying for a gossip, and he'll probably give you a cup of cocoa."

Mrs. Bazzard walked away--or pretended to do so.

"Lucy dear. I want to speak to you while that cat has gone out of ear-shot. Calm yourself and listen, because I must speak in a low tone. If you feel you would sooner die than go through with this marriage, you shan't be forced into it. I will speak to Archdeacon Gravening ... or the Bishop ... and they will know of some nice women of the Anglican Mission who would take you in for a few weeks ... till there is a return steamer.... Then on the plea of 'health' you can go back to England. I could easily advance the money for the steamer passage ... some day your parents could repay me. But even if they didn't, it doesn't matter. I do so want you to be _happy_.... I blame myself awfully for the silly things I've said to you ... about religion ... it may have made you dislike mission work...."

But Lucy sobbed out "It hadn't ... that she was a little fool and he mustn't take any notice ... she'd never, _never_ behave like this again ... after his extraordinary kindness too, which she would always be grateful for. He mustn't think any more about it or ever refer to it again...."

And before he could say anything more, or that cat, Mrs. Bazzard, return, she slipped down to her cabin, where fortunately she was alone and could cry her fill without attracting attention. But as she lay on the bunk, she set her teeth and resolved, come what may, she would _not_ put thousands of miles between her and ... "Roger" ... she mentally uttered the name. Better to live within a few hundred miles of where he was and sometimes see and hear him. Why ... _Why_ ... did he not ask her to marry him? Yes, and ruin his career. What would they all say at Unguja ... and _John_? ... Poor John! what a shock it would be to him. There was the note he had sent to greet her at Aden, to the address of the steamer agent. She had opened it, but not read it through, so infatuated was she with Brentham just then.... The next morning Lucy breakfasted in the Ladies' Saloon, pleading sea-sickness. Later on, she went to the upper-deck, but armed herself with the Swahili Grammar, a defence against a Brentham who purposely stayed away, talking with the Captain, and none against Mrs. Bazzard, who pestered her with inquiries as to her "headache," expressing the quotation marks in her tone.

Relations however became more normal all round the day after that. In two more days they had anchored off Lamu. Lucy saw two low islands, with hazy forest country on the distant mainland. Lamu island had low sandhills projecting into the sea, and on one of them was an obelisk or pillar which Captain Brentham said was an important historical monument erected by the Portuguese nearly four hundred years before. The two women were eager to land and see East Africa for the first time. They went ashore with him in the Vice-Consul's boat; for there was a Vice-Consul here who had been expecting Brentham's visit and was delighted to find two English ladies invading his solitude. They saw, when they landed, masses of vague masonry, the remains of Portuguese or Arab forts, and a litter of human skulls and bones on the beach at which they both shrieked in simulated horror. These might have been the results of the last Somali raid, or of slaves who had died on the shore unshipped, owing to the vigilance of British cruisers, or even have dated back to the expulsion of the Portuguese by the Arabs two hundred years before. The town of Lamu was a two miles' walk along the sandy shore from the point, where they had landed, but the sight of the extraordinary coloured, blue, red, and green crabs that scuttled and yet threatened with uplifted claws, and of the natives who accompanied them in a laughing rabble, some clothed to the heels, others practically naked, relieved the tedium of the journey. The smells from the precincts and the heart of Lamu town were so awful as to be interesting. The strongest--from rancid shark's liver oil--was said to be quite wholesome, but that from the sewage and the refuse on the shore-mud caused them to hold handkerchiefs to noses. However, the town was very picturesque with its Arab and Persian houses of white stone, its Saracenic doorways, in the angles of which Persian pottery was embedded, and its heavy doors of carved wood. The Consulate stood a little beyond the town, in a walled garden of palms, fig trees, and trees of gorgeous scarlet blossoms. Here they had a cup of tea, and the Consular boat, which had been following them along the shore, took them back to the _Jeddah_, thankful in the blazing sunshine for their pith helmets and white umbrellas.

This excursion somehow, with its introduction to the realities and romance of tropical Africa, braced up Lucy for the next day but one, when in the very early morning the _Jeddah_ anchored in the roadstead of Unguja. She was dressed by eight o'clock and sat awaiting in the stuffy Ladies' Saloon the arrival of John, or whoever was coming to meet her. Sat with trembling, perspiring hands in open-work cotton gloves, wishing the suspense over. There were sounds of loud voices on deck.... Mrs. Bazzard, exploding in connubial raptures over her husband; Bazzard, in between her embraces, striving to assume a partly respectful, partly comrade-like attitude with Captain Brentham, to combine a recognition that he was greeting his official superior for the moment with the assured standing of one who had had longer experience of official cares. She heard him saying: "Your boat is waiting for you, Sir. I will arrange to send a lighter for your baggage as soon as it is up out of the hold...."

Then blundering steps down some stairway and along the passage, and John stood before her, sun-helmet in hand, eyes blazing with hungry love, saying, stammering rather--"My _Lucy_! C--Come at last! _Oh_, how I've looked forward.... How..." But he crushed her to him in a rough embrace, unmindful of her delicate cotton dress and of the fact that his red face was covered with perspiration.... But there was something so appealing and yet so masterful in his love, and also something so reminiscent of the park seat at Englefield and that Sunday walk, that Lucy in yielding to his embrace said within herself, "How _could_ I have thought of throwing him over?"

Together they went on shore. Brentham had not even stayed to say good-bye. Somebody saw after her luggage. She had so lost interest in it that she did not care if anything was missing.... Then John said: "I hope you've brought out the Harmonium that your uncle gave us," and she replied a little listlessly: "Oh yes! it was _such_ a bother getting it across London, but I think it's on board."

"I am taking you," said John, inconsequently, in the boat, devouring her with his eyes all the time, "to stay with Mrs. Ewart Stott until we're married."

*CHAPTER VII*

*UNGUJA--AND UP-COUNTRY*

Every two or three years in those days you met either Mr. _or_ Mrs. Ewart Stott at Unguja, usually at the ramshackle residence and place of business of Mr. Callaway, the Commercial Agent of the East African Mission. And when Mrs. Ewart Stott was there she took command, so that you instinctively greeted her as hostess. Mr. Callaway was quite willing it should be so, because she accomplished wonders in setting his untidy house in order; she gingered up his servants and routed the cockroaches, chased away some of the smells, and generally cured a feverish attack by quinine, chicken broth, and motherly care.

The Ewart Stotts as missionaries were independent because Mrs. Ewart Stott had begun as Church of England and Mr. E. S. as a Presbyterian, yet they could not quite agree with the discipline or the ideals of the different churches or sects and preferred evangelizing East Africa on a plan of their own. They had private means--at any rate at first; until they had run through them in founding mission stations, whereafter they were supported by anonymous benefactors. And as their tenets and _modus operandi_ were nearest to those of the Methodists' East African Mission, they worked alongside them and made use of their Agent and depot at Unguja.

Both were of Ulster parentage, with some admixture of a more genial stock; yet both were born in Australia. She as a Miss Ewart and he originally a Mr. Stott. At the same moment, so to speak, they had "found Christ," and it really seemed a logical sequel that Providence should bring them together at some Australian religious merry-making. They instantly fell in love, quickly married and fused their surnames. She was twenty, he twenty-two. She was distinctly personable and he quite good-looking. They had probably been born, both of them, perfectly good, unconsciously sinless, so that the getting of religion did not make them better or more likeable but only afflicted them with a mania for quoting hymns, psalms, and Bible texts _a tout propos_ and seeing the Lord's hand, His Divine interference in every incident, every accident, any change for better or worse which affected themselves. They were constantly in receipt of Divine intimations generally after communing in prayer. And these they obeyed as promptly as possible.

For instance, only six months after they were married, and when their eldest child was already on its way, they were inspired to evangelize East Africa. Forthwith they sold up their home in South Australia, took ship with an immense outfit to Aden, and thence transferred themselves to Unguja and the Zangian mainland.