Part 17

He tumbles out of bed in his disarranged night-gown--pajamas were not introduced into the East Africa Mission till 1890. In doing so he tears the mosquito curtain with his toe-nails.

A native servant is heard filling two tin baths in the adjoining roomlet. They then proceed to take their baths in what--to Lucy--is disgusting promiscuity. The rest of the toilet is summarily proceeded with. (As John is fully hirsute there is no shaving to be done.) Then to avoid remonstrance from her husband Lucy kneels with him in prayers on a dusty mat, in fear all the time some scorpion may sting her ankles. One did, once.

At half-past six another bell goes--how the converts love bell-ringing!--and they hurry out to the Chapel where the other members of the Mission staff and a posse of native boys and girls meet them. More prayers, a psalm, and a hymn sung lustily but disharmoniously.

Then the whites adjourn to the house or large hut where the meals of the community are served. The dining-table is of rough-hewn planks of native timber, and on either side of it there are similarly rough forms to sit on, with a native stool at either end of the table. The breakfast consists of porridge and milk, the porridge being made of native cereals and often a little bitter. There is coarse brown bread with a sour taste as it is made with fermented palm wine. There are butter from a tin--rather rancid--potted salmon, and bantams' eggs from the native poultry, so under-boiled that they run out over the plate when opened.

John asks a blessing on the meal. They then proceed to eat it, while the males drink with some noisiness the tea that Ann pours out. "You don't seem to have much appetite this morning, Lucy," says Ann of malice prepense: "Porridge burnt again? What is it?"

"Thank you. There is nothing wrong with the porridge, so far as I know. I am simply not hungry."

"Ah! Been at those bananas again. They're very sustaining. But you'll never be well if you eat between meals."

"I eat at meals and between 'em," says Brother Anderson, "and I'm glad to say loss of appetite don't never trouble me. This is a rare climate to make and keep you hungry."

Anderson is voracious and somewhat lacking in table manners, defects atoned for by his being an unremitting worker and well contented with his lot--Eupeptic, as we learnt to say at a later date. But he keeps his spoon in his cup and holds it steady with a black-rimmed thumb when he drinks. He also helps himself to butter with his own knife, talks with his mouth full, and never masticates behind closed lips but displays the process without self-consciousness. Lucy, who is squeamish about such things, glances at him occasionally with scarcely concealed disgust. Brother Bayley eats more sparingly and divides his attention between his food and a printed vocabulary of Kisagara. He has a strong predilection for reading at meals, which ever and again comes under the lash of Ann's tongue. She does not consider it good manners.

John himself makes a hearty breakfast, but glances occasionally at Lucy's silent abstemiousness. At last Ann, the housekeeper, rises after Brothers Bayley and Anderson have left the table for their work, and says to Lucy: "Don't sit too long over your food because I want Priscilla and Florence to clear away, wash up and then come to me...."

She goes out.

"Not well, Lucy, this morning?" says John, who is beginning to despair about her fitting in to mission life. The conviction which he often repels takes him now with an ache. He loves the work himself, not only the converting these savages to a better mode of life, but the unrealized colonization about the whole business, the planting of fruit trees, the increase of flocks and herds, the freedom from civilization's shackles and class distinctions....

"Oh yes! I'm quite well ... I suppose. Simply not hungry. I daresay I shall make up for it at dinner ... provided Ann leaves me alone and doesn't nag about eating. I think it's such bad manners, observing what people do at meal times. I don't comment on her big appetite or on Anderson's disgusting way of eating...."

"She means very well," replies John, wishing to be fair....

"I daresay she does. She'd have made you a much better wife than I. If I die in my next attack of fever, you ought to marry her ... I shouldn't mind...."

"Now, Lucy, don't say such dreadful things. You can't think how they hurt me...."

At this moment Priscilla and Florence--pronouncing their imposed baptismal names as "Pilisilla," and "Filorency" in a loud stage conversation they are holding together to conceal the fact that they have rapidly escheated a half-basin-full of sugar--come in to clear away, and John leads Lucy with an arm round her waist back to their own quarters.

"Cheer up, old girl! You haven't had fever now for three months and you're getting your good looks back. And making splendid progress with your teaching.... You're beginning to master the language...."

It is eleven o'clock in the morning and the Girls School at Hangodi, with its mud walls of wattle and daub and its thatch of grass and palm mid-ribs, is hot to the extent of eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Despite the open door (for the small glass-paned windows are not made to open) the atmosphere is close and redolent of perspiring Negroes. Lucy raises her eyes from her desk and looks about her as though realizing the scene from a new point of view, without illusion or kindly allowance. At the end of the School-house, opposite to the teacher's platform and desk, is the entrance-door of heavy planks adzed from native timber. Through the wide-open doorway can be seen a square of sun-baked red clay which refracts a dazzling flame-white effulgence.

When the eye got used to this brilliancy of sunlight on a surface polished by the pattering of naked feet, it could distinguish rows of Eucalyptus saplings, and here and there the rich green of a native shade-tree, together with part of a red brick chapel roofed with corrugated iron and several thatched houses of white-washed clay.

On the walls of the School were hung a map of the World on Mercator's projection and a map of Africa; a large scroll with elementary illustrations of Natural History--typical beasts, birds, reptiles, fish and insects, of sizes as disproportionate as the inhabitants of a Noah's Ark. There were also placards with arithmetical figures, letters of the alphabet and single syllable combinations: M a, ma; b a, ba; l e, le, etc. Over the wall, behind the teacher's desk and above the black-board, was a long strip of white paper, printed in big black capitals: MWAACHE WATOTO WANIKARIBU ("Suffer little children to come unto Me"). The words were in the widely understood Swahili language, the medium through which Lucy endeavoured with many difficulties and misunderstandings to impart her knowledge to her semi-savage pupils.

A lull after her two hours' teaching had begun. A Negro woman of some intelligence, a freed slave from Unguja and the wife of "Josaia Birigizi" (Josiah Briggs) the interpreter, was talking in a low sing-song voice with the little girls, practising them in the alphabet and the syllables formed by consonant and vowel. The class, ranged upon rows of rough forms in front of the teacher's desk, consisted of black girls of all sizes, from little children to young, nubile women; but they were separated by an aisle down the middle of the room and were assorted according to height into two categories, "A-big-geru" and "A-lig-geru," these phrases being Bantu corruptions of "Big girls," and "Little girls."

Although nearly if not quite naked when at home, here on the Mission premises they were dressed in short-sleeved smocks of white calico, loose from the neck downwards, most of them soiled and in need of washing. The girls consequently had a frowsy look, somewhat belied by their glossy faces and arms, their brilliant eyes, and dazzling white teeth. The smaller children were pretty little things that any teacher might have petted, but most of the bigger girls had an impudent look and an ill-concealed expression of over-fed idleness tending towards imaginings of sensuality. A critic of missionary policy in those days would have felt inclined to put these bigger girls to good, hard, manual labour in the mornings which should by the afternoon have taken the sauciness out of them; and have reserved their mental education for the afternoon, when they had returned from brick-making or field hoeing.

No sooner did Lucy relapse into silence and show signs of reverie than they set to work to whisper of their love affairs, to push and pull one another about with giggles and peevish complaints; or else to let slates fall with a clatter whilst they watched with interest the flitting of rats about the rafters.

Lucy raised her eyes likewise to the roof. Its framework was constructed of the smooth, shiny mid-ribs of palm-fronds, descending from a central ridge-pole below the mud walls and supporting outside a shade over the verandah. Across the palm rafters were laid transverse rows of more or less straight branches or sticks, and to these were attached the round bunches of coarse grass which formed the thatch. From rafters and beams there fell every now and again little wafts of yellowish powder, due to the industrious drilling of the wood by burrowing beetles. But the thatch was alive with larger things than insects, especially where it came in contact with the top of the clay walls. Here an occasional lizard darted in and out the rafters like a whip, and rats poked out their long faces with quizzical, beady eyes, watching the proceedings below with rat-like impudence.

Teaching had begun at nine, and would go on till lunch-time--twelve. But already by eleven the teacher was weary and could not concentrate her thoughts on the drudgery of getting elementary ideas about reading, spelling and counting into these Palaeolithic brains. She fell silent. Her eyes first ranged over the School-house, taking in all its details in a mood of scornful hostility. She had never so completely realized the hatefulness of her present existence and its bitter contrast with her home life in England. She was sick of John's simple piety, of Brother Anderson's sanctimoniousness and disagreeably affectionate manner to herself ... and his way of eating, his behaviour at table, his unctuous prayers. Mr. Bayley, whose quiet manners and politeness appealed to her, was, nevertheless, fanatical about the letter of Scripture--a bigot, Captain Brentham would have called him. It would not be loyal to her husband--John, at least, was sincere and worked very hard; otherwise what satirical letters she could write about it all!...

But the one she most disliked among her associates was Ann Jamblin. Ann came between her and John, just as they might have hit it off, have come to some agreement about religion or her own share in Mission work. If Ann had never come out, things might have been more bearable.... Ann had come here on a false pretence. She was in love with John, that was certain, though John was too much of a goose to see it.

Certainly she had made herself useful, odiously useful.... The men liked her because she made them so comfortable.... That talent, of course, was inherited from the ham and beef shop at home! She shared Lucy's teaching work and taught the women and girls in the afternoon--taught them sensible things--cooking, plain sewing, washing, ironing, leaving to Lucy--as she pretended--the "fine lady" part of the work, the instruction of their minds.