Part 29

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.

The Hangodi business is a different matter. There is little doubt in my mind that B. was a little spoony on Mrs. Baines--They had travelled out together, and it seems she comes from near his part of the world in Berkshire-Hampshire--Jolly district, near the Carnarvons and the Silchesters.--Ever go there to shoot? But Mrs. Baines had been ill from one of these confinements that Missionary ladies--married, of course--have so regularly, and her husband seems really to have wished his wife to go away with Brentham. To make it all right and proper he packed off at the same time the other woman at their station, a strong-minded female named Jamblin. (She figures very much in the dispatches I sent home last mail.) Well: according to Brentham, this Jamblin woman, when they had done a few marches and stopped at another Mission station, insisted, positively insisted on going back to Hangodi, and equally insisted on his taking Mrs. Baines to the coast. He oughtn't to have agreed. That's where he was weak. He ought to have returned to Hangodi and helped to beat off the attack--if it came, as it did--and then have refused to take the ladies away unless the men came too. Instead of that, Brentham, having found some missionaries of whom he was in search, hung about their place until the news of the attack on Hangodi and the death of Mrs. Baines's husband reached him. After that he made for the coast by the northern route, the only one open to him at that time without fighting. Even on this route they had some most extraordinary adventures and spent a devil of a time before they got back to civilization--as we call ourselves by contrast.

The general opinion among the missionaries, I know, is unfavourable to Mrs. Baines, and in consequence to Brentham. But Brentham swears to me on his honour--and I believe him--there was nothing "wrong" between them. Jennie--my wife--says he's as straight as a die; though never having seen a "die," I can't say. At any rate, Jennie, on whose judgment I always rely, has taken a great liking to Brentham. So she has also to the young party with whom he has become involved, this Mrs. John Baines. The poor girl--she doesn't look her age--26--was stranded here at their Mission Depot, and Jennie, after hearing about her, went over in her impulsive way and brought her to the Agency. This has put a stopper on local gossip, which has thus been deprived of a rare morsel that would otherwise have acted as a real tonic on a fever-stricken community. Now Jennie says that although there's never been anything between them but what was right and proper, they ought to marry as soon as six months is up from the death of the first husband--which we presume took place on October 29th, from the accounts of that masterful person who now calls herself Ann Anderson. Jennie had but to make the suggestion and they both consented, so the civil marriage--the only legal one here--is fixed for March 31. Whether Archdeacon Gravening will consent to marry them at the Cathedral in addition, I cannot say. He is thinking it over. The matter has been speeded up by your intimation that the F.O. intends to recall Brentham. If he went back and didn't marry her, things would go hardly with Mrs. Baines. (I really have taken a liking to her, and I could imagine when she gets to a good climate she might be quite pretty. She is very quiet, and in a quiet way is rather entertaining in her accounts of what they went through in their wild journey to the coast.)