Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING

A ROMANCE

SIR HARRY JOHNSTON

Mew York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1921.

*NOVELS BY THE SAME AUTHOR*

THE GAY-DOMBEYS MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER

The central idea of this book came into my mind a great many years ago, out in Africa, and was based to some extent on what actually happened at Unguja and elsewhere. Yet, though there is more realism than might be supposed in my descriptions and incidents and the imagined personalities that appear in these pages, I have endeavoured so to disturb and re-present the facets of my truths that they shall not wound the feelings of any one living or of the surviving friends and relations of the good and bad people I have known in East Africa, or of those in my own land who were entangled in East African affairs.

But although I have pondered long over telling such a story, this Romance of East Africa was mainly projected, created and put down on paper when my wife and I stayed in the summer-autumn of last year at the Swiss home, in the mountains, of a dear friend. There we amused ourselves, as we swung in hammocks slung under pine-trees and gazed over the panorama of the Southern Alps, by arguing and discussing as to what the creations of my imagination would say to one another, how they would act under given circumstances within the four corners ruled by Common Sense and Probability: two guides who will, I hope, always guard my faltering steps in fiction-writing.

Therefore, though dedications have lost their novelty and freshness, and are now incitements to preciosity or payments in verbiage, I, to satisfy my own sentiments of gratitude for a most delightful holiday of rest and refreshment, dedicate this Romance to my hostess of the Chalet Soleil, who founded this new Abbaye de Theleme for the recuperation of tired minds and bodies, and enforced within its walls and walks and woods but one precept:

*FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS.*

H. H. JOHNSTON.

POLING, March, 1921.

*CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

I The Baineses II John and Lucy III Sibyl at Silchester IV Lucy Hesitates V Roger's Dismissal VI The Voyage Out VII Unguja--and Up-country VIII Letters To and Fro IX Mission Life X Roger Arrives XI The Happy Valley XII The Attack on the Station XIII The Return to Unguja XIV Lucy's Second Marriage XV In England XVI Sibyl as Siren XVII Back to the Happy Valley XVIII Five Years Later XIX Trouble with Stolzenberg XX The Boer War XXI The Morals of the Happy Valley XXII Eight Years Have Passed By XXIII The End of Sibyl XXIV All Ends in the Happy Valley

*THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING*

*CHAPTER I*

*THE BAINESES*

It was in the last week of June, 1886, and there really were warm and early summers in the nineteenth century.

The little chapel had been so close and hot during the morning service that in spite of the interest Lucy Josling felt in the occasion--it was the first appearance of her betrothed, John Baines, as a preacher in his native place, and the delivery of his farewell sermon before starting for Africa--she could not repress a sigh of relief as she detached herself from the perspiring throng of worshippers and stood for a few moments in the bright sunlight, inhaling the perfume of distant hayfields.

"You look a trifle pale, Lucy," said Mr. Baines, senior, a stumpy red-faced man with light sandy hair and a long upper lip. "It's precious warm. I s'pose you'n John'll want to walk back together? Well, don't keep dinner waiting, 'cos that always puts me out. Now then, Sarah, come along: it's too hot to stand gossiping about. Let's get home as quick as we can."

Mrs. Baines, a gaunt, thin woman with a long parchment-coloured face and cold grey eyes, looked indignantly at her husband when he talked of gossiping, but said nothing, took his arm and walked away.

Lucy put up her parasol and leant against the ugly iron railings which interposed between the dusty chapel windows and the pavement. The congregation had not all dispersed. Two or three awkward-looking young men were standing in a group in the roadway, and, while pretending to carry on a jesting conversation amongst themselves, were casting sheepish looks at Lucy, who was deemed a beauty for ten miles round. They evidently alluded to her in the witticisms they exchanged, so that she had to restrict her angle of vision in case her eyes met theirs when she wished to ignore their offensive existence. Mrs. Garrett, the grocer's wife, who had been inquiring from Miss Simons, the little lame dressmaker--why were village dressmakers of that period, in life and in fiction, nearly always lame?--how her married sister progressed after a confinement, walked up to Lucy and said:

"Well, Miss Josling, and how d'you like the idea of parting with your young man? Ain't cher afraid of his goin' off so far, and all among savages and wild beasts too, same as 'e was tellin' on? It's all right and proper as how he should carry the news of the Gospel to them pore naked blacks, but as I says to Garrett, I says, ''E don't ought to go and engage 'isself before'and to a girl as 'e mayn't never come back to marry, and as 'll spend the best years of 'er life a-waitin' an' a-waitin' and cryin' 'er eyes put to no use.' However, 't ain't any business of mine, an' I s'pose you've set your heart upon 'im now, and won't thank me for bein' so outspoken....?