Part 8

They wished to preach nothing but "Christ crucified" and the new life which black men and white men should lead after "accepting of" this sacrifice, this atonement for the presumed sinfulness of poor, martyred humanity. But despite this broad, if illogical, basis of their propaganda, they were afflicted with a bitter dislike of Science, which they concentrated on the theory of Evolution, or on any Biblical criticism which would weaken their faith in a very manlike God who apparently turned his back on his own universe to concern himself solely and very fussily, very ineffectively with one of its grains of dust, a tiny planet circling round a fifth-rate star among a billion other stars. For the rest, they had infinite courage, infinite love and charity, immense powers of work, but no sense of humour.

Consul after Consul warned them as to the risks they ran in plunging--Father, Mother and Babies--into unexplored Africa of the worst reputation. They smilingly ignored warnings and protests, ... wild beasts, wild peoples, wild climates, wild scenery--all seemed against them. Mr. Stott was once tossed by a rhinoceros into a river; but the water broke his fall and he emerged before the crocodiles woke up, and staggered back to camp, only slightly wounded. Shortly afterwards, hundreds of Masai warriors charged their camp, and their coast porters fled into the bush. The naked, fat-and-ochre-anointed warriors with their six-foot spears found Mrs. Stott sipping tea at her camp-table and sewing clothes for her baby, while Mr. Stott with bound-up wounds was lying on a camp-bed. Mrs. Stott, convinced that the Almighty was somewhere in the offing, smiled on the warriors and shared her plum cake among the foremost. They returned the smile, enlarging it into a roar of laughter. After executing a war dance they withdrew, and later on sent her a large gourd of fresh milk.

After some floundering, owing to the uncertain indications of the Divine will and purpose, they had settled on the old explorer and missionary route to the Victoria Nyanza, due west of Unguja in what was called the Ugogo country, partly because the Wa-gogo were thought to be quite recalcitrant to Christianity.

Lucy Josling, who had had much of this summary poured into her half-attentive hearing by her betrothed, as they walked through the narrow lanes between the tall stone houses of Unguja--she much more interested by the handsomely dressed Arabs, the veiled women, the wandering bulls and their owners, salaaming Indians--entered at last the Arab house rented by Mr. Callaway for his Agency.

Passing through a dark entry and corridor they emerged into a courtyard with an immense fig-tree in the middle. Round this square space there was a broad and shady verandah. Mrs. Stott rose from her sewing-machine and greeted Lucy with that simple cordiality which made her so many friends among the converted and the unconvertible.

"You must feel quite dazed being on shore after so many weeks at sea. You'd like to go to your room, I know, and perhaps be quiet there till our midday meal. We've done the best we could for you--at short notice--for your young man and I have only been at Unguja since Saturday. We travelled down together, he to get married, of course, and I to see to a large consignment of goods that has arrived for us here. I also expected a recruit for our Mission, but he does not seem to have caught this steamer."

Mrs. Stott then led the way to Lucy's room, and John departed to the Customs House to clear her baggage and get it stored: a matter which would occupy him for the rest of the daylight.

Although the upstairs bedroom that Lucy was to occupy smelt, like all the rest of the premises, of copra, aniseed, cockroaches, dried fish, shark's liver oil, curry-powder, rats' and bats' manure, in one badly mingled essence, with this and that ingredient sometimes prevailing, it seemed clean and airy, and there was some grace and refinement in the clean bed linen, white mosquito curtain, and bunch of Frangipani flowers in a Persian pottery vase. Instinctively she turned to Mrs. Stott with tears in her eyes. "This is _your_ doing, I am sure! Somehow you remind me of mother."

"Well," said Mrs. Stott, "that's just what I should like to do; though I suppose I'm not older than an elder sister; only this African life ages one very quickly."

The heat during the rest of the day seemed to Lucy in this low-ceilinged room, in a low-lying part of the town, almost unbearable. She spent much of the afternoon lying on her bed in _deshabille_, a constant prey to home-sickness. She tried at one time playing with the little Stott child on the landing, but it was much more interested in the large red-black cockroaches which it caught with surprising swiftness of aim and without any of Lucy's shuddering horror. It would hold these insects with their little flat heads, twirling antennae, scratchy legs and fat yellow bellies quite firmly (yet not unkindly) in its plump fingers for grave consideration; then let them go to run over the planks. Mrs. Stott was away to the Customs House; a pale, perspiring, half-clothed Indian clerk was passing in and out of the house on Mr. Callaway's business, too fever-stricken and listless to care one grain of damaged rice about this young woman fresh from England. The fleas on the ground-floor verandah and business premises were too numerous for any novice to endure. Lucy's only resource was to return to her room, rid herself of these persecutors by undressing and await with patience the after-sunset cooler air. A visit from Mrs. Stott at half-past six notified that the evening meal would be served at seven and that John Baines had seen to all Lucy's luggage. Such as she wanted for the next few days was ready to be brought up for her use; the rest would be put in the go-down to await the departure in the "dau"[#] that would convey them to the mainland. Lucy therefore had to rise and dress, come down and force herself to show some affection for her betrothed and some interest in her mass of luggage--all the while preoccupied by the mosquitoes which bit her ankles, the fleas that attacked her with renewed voracity, the cockroaches which scurried about her feet, and the smells which made her sick. She enjoyed the chicken broth flavoured with hot red chillies and the coco-nut milk served round for drinks at the evening meal; and picked a bit of fish, fresh and flaky. Also she appreciated the dessert of pineapples, mangoes and oranges. Instead of coffee afterwards they had tea, with goat's milk. This was thirst-quenching and helped to diminish the racking headache which had been steadily reaching a climax during the evening.

[#] Decked Arab sailing-ship.

At nine o'clock all vestiges of a meal were cleared away and John, Mr. Callaway and even Mrs. Stott assumed an air of portentousness as about twenty-four able-bodied Negroes filed in and the two or three Negro servants of the Stotts set out a number of hymn-books and a large Bible. John then read prayers and a portion of scripture in Swahili while the Christianized negroes dutifully knelt, sat, and stood to sing hymns in unison with their white employers. The hymns being likewise in the Swahili language, the whole ceremony--occupying about half an hour--was without meaning to Lucy, who was driven nearly frantic by the fleas and mosquitoes. At last, bed-time came; John unwillingly took his leave, promising to call round for Lucy at eight in the morning to take her on a round of visits. Lucy, in very low spirits, retired to her bedroom, but Mrs. Stott followed. Without being asked for any explanation she was allowed to cry for five minutes on Mrs. Stott's neck. Then the latter undressed her, rubbed the bites with some cooling lotion, administered five grains of quinine and put her to bed.

What with the squeaking and chattering of the fruit-bats eating the figs outside, the rats running over the floor of her room, and a tornado of thunder, lightning and drumming rain, the night was not a pleasant one. But when Mrs. Stott woke her with a cup of tea and she ventured outside her mosquito-curtain, things took a brighter aspect. She had from her window a glimpse of the sparkling blue bay in the level rays of the just-risen sun, a fringe of coco-nut palms, their fronds still wet with the rain, a tangle of brown shipping--Arab "daus" and Indian "baghalas"--hauled up for repairs; and the atmosphere was cleared and fresh after the tornado. She was almost cheerful by the time she had dressed and come downstairs. Mrs. Stott had advised her to put on high boots to save her ankles from mosquito bites, and to dust herself freely with Insecticide powder to discourage the fleas. As a special indulgence to a tired visitor she was let off morning prayers and only heard the nasal singing whilst completing her toilet in her room after a pleasant little breakfast in bed, over a book. John duly came with a carriage borrowed from the Sultan's stables, and Lucy--almost gay once more--set out with him to be introduced to Archdeacon Gravening--who in the absence of the Bishop (on tour) was to perform the religious marriage ceremony at the Cathedral.

Gravening was an austere-looking man but of kindly disposition. He made her feel at home, and as he knew the Reading district in old Oxford days of walking tours and reading-parties he could talk about that home-country which, as it receded in time from her contemplation, seemed a Paradise she had recklessly quitted.

The ladies of the Anglican Mission--a celibate Mission when at work in Africa, its members being supposed to leave its ranks when they married--received Lucy with some detachment of manner. They were good creatures, indeed, but they came from a social stratum one or even two degrees higher than hers, and inwardly they were less tolerant of Nonconformists, than were their men fellow-workers. Lucy, they had ascertained, was a "Church person," but she was about to marry into a Methodist Mission. However, her rather plaintive prettiness and the home-sick melancholy in her eyes enlisted their womanly sympathy. Two of them offered themselves in a bride's maid capacity, and the Sisterhood in general proposed that the honeymoon should be spent at their little country retreat of Mbweni. But John explained as to this, that he could not prolong his absence from the up-country station more than was just necessary for the prescribed residence at Unguja; and that their honeymoon must be spent on the return journey. He dilated, for Lucy's encouragement, on the picnic charms of the "Safari."[#]

[#] The accepted meaning of "Safari" is a journey with tents, and porters to carry the baggage.

* * * * *

During the ten days of her pre-nuptial stay at Unguja Lucy had no talk with Brentham. Presumably he was too busy over political and Consular matters. Once indeed when walking with John through the winding streets of the African-Oriental city she had seen him out riding with Bazzard, the Vice-Consul. John had accomplished all the preliminary formalities, and on her marriage morning--early on account of the heat--Lucy went in one of the Sultan's carriages, attended by Mrs. Stott and the two ladies of the Anglican Mission, to the British Agency. John met them at the entrance; they walked slowly up the stone steps to the office for the transaction of Consular business. Bazzard, with Mrs. Bazzard--the latter assuming the airs of a Vice-reine--met them there and ranged the wedding party in order. Brentham then entered, bowed to them both, but avoided meeting Lucy's eyes. He put to them in a level business-like voice the necessary interrogatory and declared them duly married. The party then passed into one of the Agency's drawing-rooms. Champagne--and lemonade for the teetotalers--was served, together with mixed biscuits and sweetmeats. The Acting Consul-General proposed the health of the Bride, and for the first time looked Lucy full in the face. He next withdrew on to a verandah and talked for some time with the bridegroom about his mission station and the journey thither and spoke earnestly on the subject of Lucy and her welfare, instancing his interest in her home-country as well as his position as "their" Consul to explain his anxiety as to her future. Then returning to the general company he handed Lucy a small case which he said contained a trifling wedding present and wished her all possible happiness, promising "some day or other" to visit her in her new home. He grasped her hand with a brief pressure and--pleading urgent business as an excuse for not following the party to the Cathedral--withdrew to his office. Mrs. Bazzard introduced her husband and bestowed a condescending patronage on Lucy and on the Mission ladies, who, never having met her before, found themselves almost audibly wondering who on earth she was, and where--with that slightly cockney accent--she had come from.

The religious ceremony at the Cathedral was one of considerable ecclesiastical pomp, secretly enjoyed by John Baines; who, however, thought on what mother would say when he told her he had nearly been married by a Bishop and quite so by an Archdeacon, and still more how she would have appreciated the black acolytes in their scarlet cassocks and white dalmatics, the incense-smell in the building, and the vestments of the clergy.

After they left the Cathedral they repaired to the Arab house of stone and rich Persian and Kurdish carpets in which Archdeacon Gravening lived. Here an unpretentious luncheon was given as a wedding breakfast. Gravening hardly ever spoke about religion, which was why Mrs. Stott despaired of his being saved, though she admitted he was compact of quiet kindness. His one enthusiasm was language study. He was deeply versed in the Bantu languages and translated for the Anglican Mission most of the works they required to use in their schools and churches. He had corresponded with John Baines, and the latter had written down for him samples of vocabularies of the different languages heard in his district.

Some insight into the conflict going on in the dazed mind of Lucy--who throughout these ceremonies looked as though she were a wound-up automaton--inspired Mrs. Stott to suggest to John that as they were due to start in the Arab dau early the next morning in order to reach the mainland port of Lingani before nightfall, Lucy should spend the rest of her marriage-day and night with Mrs. Stott, and their honeymoon should not commence till they reached the Mission house at Lingani. This they would have to themselves for three or four days whilst their caravan for up-country was being got ready. Accordingly poor John, when the wedding luncheon was over and the guests had dispersed, surrendered Lucy to Mrs. Stott and spent the rest of the day rather disconsolately making his preparations for departure. Lucy got through much of that hot afternoon in her nightdress--for coolness--inside the mosquito curtains of her bed, weeping at times hysterically; tortured with homesickness one minute and at another seized with a mad longing to call on Brentham at the Agency and see him once more. Sometimes she felt an actual dislike for John; at others a great pity for him, yet a shuddering at the idea of his embraces, of any physical contact with him.

Mrs. Stott prayed for her, apart in her own bedroom but the Divine direction of her thoughts seemed to take the line that the least said was the soonest mended, and that the young couple had better be left to their own society at Lingani to come to an understanding.

The next morning, however, it was a composed though rather silent Lucy who was punctually ready to go away with John when he came to fetch her to embark in the dau. Mrs. Stott had risen early to make coffee for them and give them a send-off of embraces, and provisions for a nice cold lunch on board. "My dear," she said to Lucy, "you'll have a _delightful_ water picnic. There's going to be just wind enough to blow you across. I wish I were coming with you, but I shan't get away for another fortnight. However, we shall meet in the interior, I dare say, before very long."

John had made for his bride a little nest among cushions and clean brightly-coloured grass mats in the deck cabin of the dau (a mere palm-thatch shelter), and for an hour or so a smile came back to Lucy's sad face as she appreciated the pleasant freshness of the morning breeze, the picturesqueness of the boat and the vivid blue or emerald green of the water according as it was deep or shallow. She had quite an appetite for the early lunch which Mrs. Stott had thoughtfully provided. But presently an anxious look came into her face and a restlessness of manner. "John! Can I be coming out in a rash? I feel an intolerable itching round my neck and wrists--Oh! Horror! What is this?" And she pointed to some flat, dark brown disks which were scurrying out of sight up her arms and into the folds of her linen bodice....

"_Bugs!_" said John, shocked and apologetic, "they are sometimes found in these Arab vessels.... I am so sorry.... Yet there was no other way of crossing to Lingani...."

Lucy went white with disgust. From the palm mid-ribs which arched over the cabin roof of thatch there came dropping hundreds of bugs on to the unhappy young woman, ignoring or avoiding him who would have willingly offered himself as sacrifice and substitute. Lucy in her dismay, knowing she could not undress before the boatmen and porters and yet not knowing how she could endure hours of this maddening irritation from half-venomous bites, broke out into weeping. "What _was_ to be done?" questioned the poor distraught bridegroom. The gentle breeze had died away ... an intense heat prevailed; the dau scarcely moved across a glassy sea ... the Nakhodha or bwahih captain of the dau was standing up over the rudder and signalling with his sinewy hand, crying out in a melodious cadence: "Njoo! Kusi-Kusi, Njoo, Kusi-Kusi!"[#] afraid his vessel might be becalmed and prevented from reaching port in daylight. The boat-men and porters were looking at one another with round eyes as they heard the Bibi[#] crying convulsively in the deck cabin. John in his desperation had a bright idea. He knew that the ordinary, vaunted insecticides had no terror for, no deterrent effect on, either bugs or their unrelated mimics, the poisonous ticks of Central Africa; but that both alike fled before the smell of petroleum. There were tins of that mineral oil on board provision for his lamps up-country. Opening one of these cautiously, for petroleum was very precious, he filled an enamelled iron cup and then stoppered the tin. From his medicine chest he obtained cotton-wool. Then with wads of this, and with his handkerchief, he dabbed the swollen wrists and the weals on Lucy's neck and advised her to thrust the saturated wads and linen inside her clothing.

[#] "Come south wind, come!"

[#] Lady.

The strong odour of the oil in a few minutes caused the blood-sucking insects to withdraw and return to their lairs in the thatch and boards. The south wind came at last in puffs, which lessened the heat, but there set in a swell which caused the dau to roll. This movement disturbed the bilge water below the decks, and from this was disengaged a sulphuretted-hydrogen stench almost bad enough to drive the bugs from Lucy's mind. But the wind grew steadier and at last blew the rotten dau to the landing-place at the mouth of a river where they were to disembark.

Lingani was a smaller edition of Unguja Town: flat-roofed Arab houses of white-washed coral rock, thatched wattle-and-daub huts, groves of coco-nut palms, a few Casuarina trees and Frangipani shrubs, pariah dogs, wandering zebu cattle, and dwarf goats. The Mission Rest-house was a substantial stone building in the Arab style of East Africa. It was maintained jointly by four missionary societies for use by their members in transit. There was a Swahili couple in charge of it, husband and wife. The bed linen, table-cloths, napkins and cutlery were kept in cupboards fastened with cunning padlocks, which only opened when you set the letters of the lock to correspond with the word "open." This to thwart inquisitive natives, with a smattering of education, was written up for reminder in Greek letters. With this ruse John was fully acquainted, so that he lost no time in opening the cupboards and releasing the wherewithal for making up two beds and laying the table for an evening meal. The black housekeepers, proffering greetings and assurance of welcome while they worked, busied themselves in heating water for baths, in making the beds, laying the table, and killing chickens for soup and roast. John's activities were multifold. He had to see the dau unloaded and its precious cargo safely stowed away in the store below the Rest-house.

Lucy at first sat limply in the divan or main reception-room, sore all over, eyes blistered by the glare of sun on water, and with a headache which for crippling agony exceeded anything she had known. But she conquered her sullenness and made feeble attempts to help. John, however, seeing that bath and bath water were ready and that sheets, pillows and blankets had been placed on her Arab bedstead (a wooden frame with a lattice-work across it of ox-hide strips), advised her to undress, soothe her bites with spongings and ointment, and rest between the sheets. Her back ached unbearably; her head seemed half-severed at the neck, and she was seized with violent shiverings. The mosquitoes had given her a sharp attack of malarial fever.

Once in bed, she felt less acutely ill, but of all the nice meal that John and the Swahili man-cook had prepared she could only swallow a cup of tea. Her temperature was found to be up to 102 deg., so the first and the six succeeding nights of the honeymoon were spent in dire illness and dreary convalescence. But at the end of that time she seemed well enough to start on their up-country journey. John had obtained two Masai donkeys and had bought at Unguja a second-hand side-saddle. Lucy cheered up at the prospect of donkey-riding and above all at leaving this terribly hot coast town for the cooler nights of the interior. Though still deeply depressed and disheartened, she was sufficiently reasonable and well-disposed to be deeply touched by her husband's care of her, his forethought for her comfort and distress at the inconveniences of semi-savage Africa. Some measure of health came back to her, and even cheerfulness, during the first easy days of camp life, before they left the semi-civilized coast-belt, with its shady mango-trees for the midday halt, its unfailing water supply for the thirsty porters and the white man's meals; its comparative safety at night from wild beasts and wild natives.

But between the mountain ranges of the interior--whither they were bound--and this settled country of cultivation and villages more or less governed by the Sultan of Unguja, there lay a desert tract almost devoid of water and ravaged in recent times by a clan of the raiding Masai known to the Bantu natives as "Wahumba." They had recently carried out a ruthless foray across the plains. The native wells had fallen in or their location had been forgotten since the destruction of the villages. Lucy then knew for the first time what it was to suffer from thirst, and to have no water for washing in the morning or evening; and when a little water was obtained from nearly dried up rock-pools or the bed of a run-dry stream, to be hardly able to endure the sight of it, much less taste it when it looked like strong tea, or coffee-and-milk, when it smelt of stable manure or was alive with grubs or wriggling worms. It could only be drunk in the form of tea after it had been strained, boiled, and skimmed.