The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
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.
Lucy's eyes flashed in her day-dream when she realized how she had grown
to loathe the morning and evening prayers.... Brother Anderson's
contribution to the uplifting of the spirit, especially. _How_ weary
was the Sunday with its two "native" services, both conducted by John in
English, broken Swahili, and Kagulu, with the long-drawn-out
interpretation of Josiah Briggs.
She had had good health since she reached Hangodi, after that ghastly
nightmare journey from the coast. That was fortunate, because the
nearest medical help was fifty miles away. But _oh!_ the monotony of
the life! How much longer could she stand it? It was not so bad for
the men. Every Saturday they took a whole holiday and went down to the
lower country and shot game and guinea-fowl for the food of the station.
Sometimes they "itinerated" and she and Ann were left alone. John
always asserted it was not safe for white women to travel, except to and
from the coast. With much camp life he believed they became
unwomanly....
There had only been three mails since she had arrived last July.
Captain Brentham sent her books and newspapers, but Ann tossed her head
over these attentions and John once or twice confiscated the books as
being of dangerous tendencies; subversive of a simple faith. The
station itself was provided with little else to read except the Bible, a
few goody-goody books and magazines, grammars and dictionaries of native
languages.
In England she had imagined she was going to sketch and botanize,
collect butterflies, and keep all sorts of wonderful pets, besides
beholding superb scenery and meeting every now and then celebrated
explorers. That dream had soon passed away. She had no time for
sketching in the week, and it was considered wrong to do it on a Sunday.
And even if she outraged the sentiment of the community and sat down
with her sketch-block and water colours before a flowering tree or a
striking view, ants came up and bit her, midges attacked her face till
it was puffed out, or the sun was too hot or the wind too boisterous.
As to botanizing, there was certainly splendid forest--with tree-ferns
and orchids--higher up the Ulunga mountains, but it was pronounced
unsafe to botanize there except in a party. There were snakes, or
leopards, or lurking warriors of unfriendly tribes....
Her thoughts then turned to the homeland.... Presently she was back in
the scenes she had left nearly a year ago.... She saw herself walking
slowly from Aldermaston village up the road to Mortimer, her father's
farmhouse just left behind. She stopped to greet old Miss Fanning, who
inhabited the rather monastic-looking school-teacher's house by a
special concession, as Lucy--her successor--lived with her parents hard
by. The children of the village were playing games with the pupil
teacher in the large grassy yard. She could see quite distinctly the
rustic shed which surrounded two sides of the playground--like the
verandah of an African house. In her day-dream the children, blue-eyed,
flaxen-haired, seemed to greet her. They were so fond of her--How
_could_ she have left them? ... Then in imagination she was farther
along the Mortimer road, past the high brick wall of Aldermaston Park.
Lordly blue-green cedars topped the wall of mellow brick. Then when the
wall turned off to the right it was succeeded by a high bank and hedge
as the road mounted and rose above the river valley. She could see, oh!
with such detail, the soft green fern-fronds of the bank. Above the
male ferns grew a row of hart's-tongue. Above that, here and there a
foxglove, tufts of bell heather and where the hedge lowered and you
could see into spaces of the oak wood, there were brakes of French
willow herb in pink blossom....
What a series of pictures now passed before her mental vision as
instinctively she closed her eyes to Africa, to her silent, observant
class, who thought that she was dozing! White ducks on a wayside pond,
set in a crescent of duckweed; clipped and shaven yews in front of an
old brick-and-timber cottage with a steep thatched roof; an upland
hayfield, sturdy, wholesome men with frank blue eyes and brawny arms of
beefy red; long-horned cattle with a make-believe fierceness which had
never imposed on her, standing in the shade of elms and whisking flies
from off their red flanks and cream bellies; her mother's garden, gay
with phlox, sweet peas and pansies, and scented with dark red roses....
Oh, _why_ had she ever left her mother, left her pleasant tranquil work
at the National school to join John out in East Africa? It was vanity,
partly; wishing to get married; wishing to travel.... For the
evangelizing of Africa she had ceased to care since her talks with
Captain Brentham--"Roger," she called him to herself--and still more
since she had come to know Africa.... But "Roger"--Well, if she hadn't
come out to Africa she would certainly never have had the opportunity to
know _him_ ... on that steamer voyage!
Lucy's thoughts were abruptly brought back to Eastern Africa and
discipline in her school class; for a too venturesome rat, darting up a
rafter, had lost his footing and fallen plop amongst the girls--the
"Big-geru," and they, upsetting forms and throwing away slates, had
flung themselves in a struggling heap on the spot where the rat had
landed. From out of the melee one triumphant young woman rose up, with
her smock torn from top to bottom, but holding up a damaged, dying rat
by its broken tail. A loud clamour of voices disputing the fairness of
the capture and the answering shrieks of the capturer, secure in the
possession of her prize (which she would shortly eat broiled over the
ashes as a relish to her sorghum porridge), roused Lucy to a show of
anger which stilled the tumult and turned the girls' attention to their
teacher. She, standing up and trying to stammer out in Swahili words of
adequate reproof, realized still more vividly the dreariness of her
present lot, and bursting into an agony of tears, buried her head in her
arms over the desk.
The little children gazed at her grief, awe-struck. Could rich, god-like
white people have any sorrow, when they might wear cloth to any extent
and had white salt in bottles and delicious foods in tins? Propelled by
Josiah's wife they stole away wondering; and the "Big-geru" left the