The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance

of Muhammadanism in two of the villages were expelled, and a resolute war was made by John on the witch doctors of the tribe, who for a time were routed before the competition of Cockles' Pills and the other invaluable patent medicines which were just beginning to appear in tabloid form. Brother Bayley's department was more especially the study of the native language. He translated simple prayers and hymns and passages of Scripture into the Kagulu dialect of Ulunga and rendered more educational literature into the wider-spread Swahili. He had a small printing-press with which he was labouring to put his translations into permanent form; and besides this took a prominent part in the boys' education. His personal hobby was butterfly and beetle catching. He devoted his small amount of leisure to collecting these insects and transmitting them to an agent in London to sell on his behalf. In this way he made a fluctuating fifty pounds a year, which was a pleasant addition to his meagre salary. It provided him with a few small luxuries and enabled him to send a present every now and then to his mother. Then there was Ann Jamblin, of Tilehurst, a school-fellow of Lucy, a sturdy, plump young woman of about twenty-seven, with a dead-white complexion, a thick skin, black hair, black eyebrows and hard eyes of pebble brown. She had actually arrived at Hangodi before Lucy herself, though she started out from home a month later, being of that exasperating type to whom nothing happens in the same _ratio_ as to other people. She could never be run over, never be drowned at sea--Lucy thought--never slip on a piece of orange peel, never be assaulted in a railway carriage. Ann had been sent out by the Mission Board to be a bride for Brother Anderson (on a discreet suggestion of John's, who thought Anderson a little inclined to look amorously on comely negresses). But she had declined to fulfil the bargain when she arrived, denied indeed all knowledge of such an engagement, said she didn't want to marry any one: only to do the Lord's work and help all round. Her refusal had been taken philosophically by the person most concerned, on account of her unattractive appearance; and was further softened by her practical usefulness as an independent member of the Mission. She house-kept for the little community, attended to the poultry, goats and sheep, did much of the cooking, made the bread, the cakes, the puddings; darned the socks, mended the linen, and taught the native girls the simple arts of British domestic life. She dressed with little regard to embellishment of the person, but with much attention to neatness and mosquito bites. Her humour was rough and her tongue lashed every one in turn. She had that unassailable independence of manner which is imparted by the possession of a private income of one hundred pounds a year and the knowledge that her martyrdom was voluntary and self-sought. Hardly ever ill herself, she nursed every one that was with almost professional ability. Lucy secretly detested her, for she was always gibing at John's wife for being moony and unpractical, for her "aesthetic tastes," such as liking flowers on the table at meals; for succumbing quickly to headaches and megrims generally, and especially for the ease with which she was humbugged by the big girls of her school classes. Ann would also gird at her for lack of religious zeal. Ann herself took an aggressively hearty part in prayers and hymn-singing, and mastered the harmonium which had proved unplayable by Lucy. Ann even tried making her own translations of her favourite canticles into the native language and was not deterred or discouraged because in her first attempts and through the malice of her girl interpreters she had been misled into rendering the most sacred phrases and symbolism by gross obscenities. The delight of shouting out these improprieties in chapel before the blandly unconscious missionaries, when Brother Bayley was laid aside by fever, attracted large congregations. If John Baines were seriously ill with a malarial attack, Ann would brush Lucy aside as unceremoniously as she ejected her from the harmonium stool. She would take complete charge of the sick man, reduce the fever, and make the broths and potions which were to sustain convalescence. When Lucy herself was ill, Ann would either diagnose the attack as "fancy" or "hysteria," or a touch of biliousness, and cure it so drastically that Lucy made haste to get well in order to withdraw from her treatment. This was an average day in Lucy's life at Hangodi in the first year of her stay there---- 6 a.m. Lucy is already awake; John still sleeping heavily. Lucy had been dreaming she was back at Aldermaston or else voyaging down the Red Sea with Brentham, and is still under the shock of disappointment as she lies gazing up at the dingy cone of mosquito net suspended over their bed from the rat-haunted roof. The bedstead is a broad structure--the Arab "angareb"--an oblong wooden frame with interlaced strips of ox-hide. On this foundation has been laid a lumpy cork mattress with well-marked undulations. On that again a couple of musty blankets and a sheet. For covering there is another sheet and a coverlet. Lucy, hearing the awakening bell being tolled, nudges John, who is still snoring. _Lucy_: "_John_! The first bell has gone!" _John_: "Wha'?" (Gurgle, gurgle, snore cut short, lips smacked, heavy sighs.)----"Wha'? Time to ger-up? Or-right." 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