Part 20

His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of shooting, varied with agreeable safaris at the expense of the Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to get his own back:—

"Hullo, old chap! Who'd have thought it. Where have you sprung from? We'd all given you up for lost—thought you'd gone 'Fanti,' eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on your own...."

"I've brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "Mrs. John Baines" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah of the Consulate)—"Mrs. John Baines, whose husband has been killed, I fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for me..."

"Aw fully sorry old chap. Of course, I can make room for you ... give you some sort of a shakedown.... You're a fellow man and you'll understand.... But the fact is I'm—I'm not—quite prepared—er—to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know.... You twig? ... Dare say you're fixed up just the same at—where is it? at Medina, What?"

Roger turned away angrily.

"Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!"

"Yes, Captain Brentham."

"I'll get a boat and we'll go over to the Mission station across the Bay. I expect they'll have room—indeed they must make room—for you there till our dau is ready to sail...."

Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first. My Camp is at Kisolutini. You can send on any letters that come for me there...."

"Well, but I say..."

Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an angry face, flushed under the tan.

No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja. And a few days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for the island port of Unguja. This time—December 27, 1888—Lucy was too anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch.

Meantime, unfriendly forces were at work to Roger's detriment. Here is a letter which Mrs. Spencer Bazzard probably wrote to Mr. Bennet Molyneux, of the Foreign Office. (Like most of the letters appearing in this book, it is based on my deductions as to the kind of letter that would have been written under the circumstances, rather than on textual evidence):—

H.B.M. Consulate for Zangia, Medinat-al-Barkah, December 23, 1888.

DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,—

I hope you don't resent my letters. You don't answer them, but then I told you not to. I shouldn't like to be a bore to you, or for you to feel—amid your piles of work—that you had an extra letter to write to an importunate little person in far-off East Africa. I said once I should go on writing every now and again, unless you ordered me to stop. As you haven't—Well! Here is another budget of East African news.

We have had alarums and excursions, as Shakespeare says. You will see by this address that I am on the mainland with my husband. When Captain B. disappeared last September into the ewigkeit the Agency at Unguja began receiving disquieting stories as to what was taking place in his absence. He had only left an Indian clerk in charge, and complaints arose from Indian merchants and English missionaries that no one could attend to their business. So Sir G. D. thought it best to send Spence over here to take charge, and, of course, I came with him to help him to interpret.

We found everything (a month ago) in a terrible muddle. The consulate is filthily dirty, the archives are just anyhow, and Spence fears a considerable sum is missing from the Consular receipts, or else that the clerk is muddled in his accounts. But all this you will hear officially.

Meantime, we are all uneasy about Captain B.'s disappearance. He left here last August with some idea of letting the missionaries know there was danger of ah Arab attack on all white people independent of their nationality, German or English. He seems to have translated Sir G.'s brief instructions into a permission to make a vast tour of the interior—a delightful thing to do, no doubt, but not when you have a Consulate to look after. He greatly alarmed all the missionaries, and, as it appears, somewhat needlessly. Those who have their stations in Usagara and farther south are very angry with him. He arrived at their stations early in September and ordered them to retire on the coast—or at any rate send their wives and children there, as the Arabs might attack at once. And after they had obeyed him the attacks never came off! One of the missionary ladies was in a certain condition, it appears, and the hurried journey so upset her that—how shall I phrase it?—her hopes were disappointed.

He next appeared at a place called Hangodi—according to native report—and was so anxious about the safety of a fair lady there (the missionary young woman who travelled out with him and me a year and a half ago)—that he took her away with him and has seemingly gone waltzing off to the unknown with this fair charge. Quite romantic, isn't it? In this case his warning as to an impending attack seems to have been only too well founded, if what has been reported to the Germans is true. Soon after he left this place—Hangodi—it was apparently attacked and destroyed and the missionaries all killed—except, of course, the lady who left with him. Ill-natured people will naturally ask why he did not stay and defend the station.

It is only two days off Christmas, and I can picture to myself the happy preparations going on at Spilsbury—the carols the village children are practising for Christmas Day, and the Christmas-tree which I am sure Mrs. Molyneux and your daughter are preparing for their reward.

These ridiculous sentimental Germans are, of course, getting up Christmas-trees, too, and are practising Carols to be sung round them, though the town is still more or less besieged on the landward side. Who and what was Good King Wenceslaus, and why should we sing about him at Christmastide? There is no library here, except the one they have at the French Mission, and that mentions nothing about Germany.

We are told here that a certain Captain Wissmann will soon arrive with a large force of Sudanese soldiers to take command and finish the Arabs.

Still no news of Stanley, except it be the wildest, most improbable rumours. If he really emerges from the heart of Africa it will only be—I fear—to fall into some ambush laid by the Arabs.

With our united kindest regards and best wishes for 1889,

Believe me, dear Mr. Molyneux, Yours sincerely, EMILIA BAZZARD.

Roger and Lucy reached Unguja in their Arab dau at the end of December, when the Europeans therefore were recovering from the surfeit of Christmas junketings and preparing for another round of New Year festivities, but a little bit peevish and liverish in the interval. The arrival of the British Consul for Zangia was not unexpected, because telegraphic news of his emergence from the interior had already reached the British Agency. In the afternoon of December 29th he walked into the office of the Agency and reported himself to Sir Godfrey Dewburn....

"Ah! my dear Brentham, how are you? What a time you must have had, to be sure! We all gave you up for lost, or thought you had gone in search of Stanley or Emin, or were off to attack the Mahdi. Well: and how is the fair companion of your travels, Mrs.—Mrs. ... er ..."

Brentham: "Mrs. John Baines? She is, I believe, at Mr. Callaway's at the present moment. I advised her to go there as he is Agent here for their Mission, and would probably have definite news about—about—the attack on her husband's station ... and the results. Have you heard anything, Sir?"

Sir Godfrey: "Nothing more than the rumour that after you left it was attacked, and, I think, all the Whites were killed ..."

At this moment a clerk comes in and says: "This is a note with an enclosure, Sir Godfrey, from Mr. Callaway." Sir Godfrey asks Brentham to be seated and hastily runs his eye over a very long communication. Five minutes elapse. Then whilst he is still reading, another door leading to the residential part of the Agency opens and there appears a handsome woman of middle age, with the stamp of elegance and fashion upon her, dressed in some agreeable adaptation of an Englishwoman's dress for the tropics. She says, "Godfrey, my dear, tea's ready and as you don't like it drawn or cold I thought if I came myself—but I see you have a visitor...."

"Oh! Ah! ... Yes.... To be sure.... Er.... Brentham, this is Lady Dewburn—" (They shake hands. Lady Dewburn looks him over approvingly.) "You'd better come in and have tea with us and then we can talk over this extraordinary communication of Callaway's. It couldn't have come more appropriately. Evidently it must have been brought by your dau. It's been sent down by some Arab and it is all about the attack on the station where these missionary friends of yours were living. It seems they were not all killed, two of 'em at any rate ... though I think the husband of your lady friend was.... But come along and we'll have a confab all about it. The Bazzards are over at your Consulate on the mainland, so whilst you're here you'd better take possession of their quarters. The golden-haired Emily says she left it in apple-pie order when she departed for Medina.... This way ... would you like to wash your hands first? You look quite the Wild Man of Borneo, and I don't wonder.... Must have had a beastly time.... I should suggest a whisky and soda first and tea afterwards...."

Lucy meantime was reading Ann Anderson's letter, given in a previous chapter. She had been placed once more in the bedroom she had occupied in Mr. Callaway's house before her marriage, and shuddered at the memories it enshrined. Dear, kind Mrs. Stott was far away in the Happy Valley ... and she could never again hear John's voice calling to her from the courtyard under the great fig-trees that the Sultan's carriage was waiting hard-by to take them for a drive; or making some other proposition which she probably snubbed in fretfulness.

She was consumed with remorse. Ann's statement that in his last agonies, dying with poisoned blood, he had only thought and spoken of her, made her heart ache, almost literally—the aching of unshed tears over the irrevocable. She had not been unfaithful to him in body; but in mind, in desire, yes: from the day of the marriage onwards, and never more so than from the day of her departure from Hangodi. She knew she had hoped then that somehow this departure, this desertion of John when danger was approaching—might be the beginning of her severance from him, and lead to her union with Roger. To him at any time during the long safari she would have surrendered herself....

Yet though her upper consciousness—the "speaking to one's self" (which we almost do sometimes aloud, as if to an audience that may register our words and resolves)—asserted that the only reparation she could make was never to see Roger again—(what a mercy he had behaved better than she had done!)—her innermost intention was to stay on in Unguja on some pretext or other, in the faint hope he might ... might ... "do the right thing," as Ann had put it ... might marry her. If he would only do that her whole remaining life should be one long atonement to John. She would never forget him and his unselfish love of a shallow, ungrateful woman.

Mr. Callaway had hinted she might like to take the next steamer home: there was one going in a week—back to England. But how could she go back ... and face Mrs. Baines ... and live on her parents? John had probably no money to leave her; the Mission, after so short a term of married life, would certainly give her no pension ... why should it? The post of National school-teacher at Aldermaston was long ago filled up. And could she even resume her life there? At no great distance was Engledene, with Lord and Lady Silchester. Lady Silchester she vaguely dreaded as a person who might mock at her.—She must have heard something about her from Captain Brentham. What—what—what was she to do? Insist on remaining out in Africa and rejoin the Mission? And work under Ann? The thought of the altered circumstances repelled her. Who would care now if she were ill? She had had several illnesses and many fits of malaise—and tears of self-pity now ran down her cheeks. And how good and uncomplaining—here choking sobs, hiccups, almost a loud wailing intervened—dear John had been. The cups of broth he had brought to her bedside, the little meals to tempt her appetite.... And Roger? ... The equal solicitude—the interest he had shown, even in her whims!

The realization of her bereavement kept Callaway from intruding on her solitude, even by a message through Halima. This was a mercy, she thought—at first—because however well-meaning, he struck her fastidiousness as "common," not very attractive in appearance, with a harsh voice, and effluent piety, and bad table manners.... But need Halima have been quite so neglectful? Halima latterly was so wrapped up in the project of marrying the Goanese cook that she unhesitatingly neglected her mistress and avowed her complete readiness to enter the Roman Church if that act could remove Antonio da Silva e Andrade's last scruple of reluctance to wed with a Negress. She spent much of her time oiling and combing her fuzzy hair into a European coiffure, and did not hesitate to "borrow" details of Lucy's scanty wardrobe for her own adornment. When she came with Lucy's meals into the hot ... hot ... hot bedroom, with its dreadful insect swarms, from which the iron bedstead, with its lowered mosquito curtain, was almost the only refuge, she—Halima—bore a sulky face. She would evidently not stay with Lucy in misfortune....

One way and another, Lucy was fretting and worrying herself into a state of illness; afraid to go out or to show herself; loathing life in this low-ceilinged, vermin-infested bedroom, hot by day, stifling at night, as she lay inside the mosquito netting in the blackest darkness, shuddering at the possibilities beyond the bed. Rats romped and squeaked and occasionally fell from the rafters into the sagging mosquito net; scorpions, no doubt, were lurking in the crevices of the floor-boards to sting her toes if she stepped out of the insufferably hot bed. Cockroaches alternated their love-flights from the window with frantic and wily attempts to get under the curtain. Mosquitoes, all the night through, kept up a sonorous diapason of unbroken humming, indignant at being denied access to her body. And the loneliness! Halima was supposed to sleep on the landing outside; a polite supposition which Lucy was unwilling to test, lest inquiry should lead to a defiant withdrawal from her service.... Her service! Where were Halima's wages to come from?

It was ten a.m.—more or less. Lucy had risen, washed hurriedly, and hurriedly put on the only clean cotton dress left to her. (She really must go out one day and buy some things for the voyage—only where was the money?) The door was thrown open by an excited, more amiable Halima, who shouted "Yupo Bibi Balosi! Anakuita!"

A pleasant, high-bred voice explained:

"I am looking for Mrs. Baines. Is she in here?"

Lucy scrambled off the bed from under the mosquito curtain and stood before Lady Dewburn, the Consul-General's wife....

Broken apologies ... explanations—"Bed only place where you could be tolerably free from mosquitoes...."

Lady Dewburn is a handsome shrewd-looking woman of middle age. She wears a single eyeglass at times, for greater precision of sight, and because she is the daughter of a permanent official. But though she inspires a certain awe, she is in reality a kind creature, irresistibly impelled to interfere—she hopes for the best—in other people's affairs, especially out here. Her children are either out in the world or at school in England, and she is exceedingly bored on this feverishly tropical, gloriously squalid island. The day before she had heard all about Lucy from Captain Brentham....

Lady Dewburn: "My poor child! Please overlook all formalities and come away with me, just as you are. Your woman here—if you can trust her—shall pack up what you have—you can't have much, I should think, after that appalling journey to the coast.... Come away with me.... Why, you must have hardly any clothes to wear! I don't wonder you stop in bed! We've got lots of spare rooms—as a matter of fact, Sir Godfrey and I are alone just now. Come and stay with us till you can look round and make your plans. It seems to me as though I ought to put you to bed for a week to begin with...."

Lucy's acceptance of this Fairy Godmother proposal dissolved from words into gulping sobs and convulsive eye-dabbings and nose-blowing. But she was practical enough to find her sola topi and white umbrella, to make her cotton dress look a little tidier, and gasp a few directions in Swahili to the over-awed Halima. Halima was wearing Lucy's evening "fichu" all the time and was uneasily conscious of having blundered into felony through ill-timed contempt for her lady.

Lucy observed none of this, but followed Lady Dewburn's fastidious steps down the stairs of palm planks out into the yard, where Mr. Callaway—really a very decent sort, who after all had done his best for Lucy—was awaiting them. He was personally gratified and relieved in his mind that the first lady in Unguja should have taken his forlorn little client under her wing. After picking their way with skirts lifted high through narrow unsavoury lanes between high blank houses, they at last reached Unguja's one broad highway. Here was a handsomely appointed carriage, and in it they rolled away to the Agency.

CHAPTER XIV

LUCY'S SECOND MARRIAGE

From Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., to Mr. Bennet Molyneux, African Department, Foreign Office.

H.M. Agency and Consulate-General, Unguja, March 15, 1889.

DEAR MOLYNEUX,—

In the matter of Brentham, I think a private letter to you might meet the case better than an exchange of cables or an official dispatch.

I quite understand your Department is annoyed at the questions put in Parliament last month after the news about the deaths at the Mission station at Hangodi. But I cannot help thinking the Department is disposed to be too hard on Brentham, as though it were prejudiced from some other quarter than me. I admit when I first came out here I jibbed a little at his cocksureness, his assumption that no one knew anything about Ungujan affairs to compare with his own knowledge; and it seemed to me he made rather a parade about the number of languages he had acquired, which contrasted unfavourably with my acquaintance—then—with only three (I have tried since to learn Swahili). And so on and so on. I moved easier and got my bearings better when I had sent him over to his proper sphere, the mainland. I also thought his contempt for the Bazzards a little too marked, though I must admit subsequently my wife and I have found that a little of Mrs. B. goes a long way. But I hate writing disagreeable things about anybody—a climate like this excuses hair-dye, face-powder, irritability and even a moderate degree of illicit love (don't treat this as official!) ... But about Brentham: if his mission to the missionaries—telling them to clear out before the Arab danger—was a failure, in that in most places there was no danger, your apprehensions and my instructions were to blame for starting Brentham off on his wild-goose chase. The missionaries in Usagara seem to cut up rough because they weren't attacked, were "quittes pour la peur." But that was hardly Brentham's fault.