The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance

THE MAN WHO DID THE RIGHT THING A ROMANCE BY 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....? "I'm sure 'e's come back from London _quite_ the gentleman; and lor'! 'Ow proud 'is mother _did_ look while 'e was a-preachin'. An' 'e _can_ preach, too! 'Alf the words 'e used was Greek to me.... S'pose they _was_ Greek, if it comes to that"--she laughed fatly--"Though why th' Almighty should like Greek and Latin better'n plain English, or even 'Ebrew, is what I never could understand.... "And to think as I remember 'im, as it on'y seems the other day, comin' in on the sly to buy a 'aporth of sugar-candy at our shop. 'Is mother never liked 'is eatin' between meals an' 'e always 'ad to keep 'is bit o' candy 'idden away in 'is pocket till 'e was out of 'er sight.... I'm sure for my part I wonder _'ow_ she can bring 'erself to part with 'im, 'e bein' 'er on'y son, and she so fond of 'im too. But then she always set 'er 'eart on 'is bein' a gentleman, and give 'im a good eddication.... 'Ow's father and mother?..." "Oh quite well, thank you," replied Lucy, wondering why John was stopping so long and exposing her to this tiresome garrulity and the hatefulness of having her private affairs discussed in a loud tone for the benefit of the Sunday strollers of Tilehurst. "They would have come over from Aldermaston to hear John preach, but father cannot bear to take his eyes off the hay till it's all carried, and mother's alone now because my sisters are away.... I just came by myself to the Baineses' for the day.... "And, Mrs. Garrett," continued Lucy, a slight flush rising to her cheek, "I don't think you quite understand about my engagement to John Baines. I--I--am not at all to be pitied. You rather ought to congratulate me. First, because I am very--er--fond of him and proud of his dedicating his life to such a work, and, secondly, because there is no question of my waiting years and years before I get married. John goes out this month and I shall follow six or seven months afterwards--just to give him time to get our home ready. We shall be married out there, at a place called Unguja, where there is a Consulate...." Lucy stopped short. She was going on to give other good reasons for her engagement when a slight feeling of pride forbade her further to excuse herself to Mrs. Garrett--a grocer's wife! And she herself a National school-teacher! There could be no community between them. She therefore fell silent and gazed away from Mrs. Garrett's red face and blue bonnet across the white sandy road blazing with midday sunshine to the house fronts of the opposite side, with their small shops closed, the blinds drawn down and everything denoting the respectable lifelessness of the Sabbath.... At this awkward pause John Baines issued from the vestry door of the chapel, Mrs. Garrett nodded good-naturedly, and went her way. John was about four-and-twenty--Lucy's age. He was a little over the average height but ungainly, with rather sloping shoulders, long arms, large hands and feet; a face with not well-formed features; nose coarse, fleshy, blunt-tipped; mouth wide, with his father's long upper lip, on which were the beginnings of a flaxen moustache, with tame ends curling down to meet the upward growth of the young beard. He had an under lip that was merely a band of pink skin round the mouth, without an inward curve to break its union with the broad chin. His teeth were strong and white but irregular in setting, the canines being thrust out of position. His eyes were blue-grey, and not without a pleasant twinkle. The hair was too long for tidiness, not long enough for eccentric saintliness. It was a yellow brown and was continued down the cheeks in a silken beard from ear to ear, the tangled, unclipped, uncared-for beard of a young man who has never shaved. His fresh pink-and-white complexion was marred here and there with the pimples and blotches of adolescence. Lucy, however, thought him good to look at; he only wanted a little smartening up, which she promised herself to impart to him when they were married. He looked what he was: a good-hearted, simple-minded, unintellectual Englishman, an Anglo-Saxon, with a hearty appetite for plain food, a love of cricket, who would with little difficulty remain in all things chaste and sober; slow to wrath, but, if really pushed against the wall, able to show berserker rage. Having taken up a religious career he had acquired a certain pomposity of manner which sat ill on his boyishness; he had to remember in intervals of games or country dances or flirtations that he had been set apart for the Lord's work. But he would make an excellent husband. His class has furnished quite the best type of colonist abroad. John gave his arm silently to Lucy, who took it with a gesture of affection, and patted it once or twice with her kid-gloved hand, which lover-like demonstrations John accepted rather solemnly. As they walked up the sunny main street there was little conversation between them, but when they turned down an old shady road running between red brick walls overgrown with ivy and Oxford weed, behind which rose the spire of St. Michael's and the tall trees of its churchyard, their good behaviour relaxed and John looking down, and seeing Lucy's fresh, pretty face looking up, and observing in a hasty glance around that nobody was in sight, bent down and kissed her: after which he looked rather silly and hurried on with great strides. "Don't walk so fast, John dear; you quite drag me along. We need not be in such a hurry. Tell me, how did you spend your last days in London?" "Why, Wednesday I went to the outfitters to superintend the packing of