The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance

school gracelessly, with loud laughs and free comments in Kagulu on the white woman's show of emotion. The schoolroom clock ticked on, the rats, emboldened, rushed about the thatch and dropped without mishap on the floor, whence they scuttled out on to the verandah, then up the posts and so into the roof again. The flame-white sunlight grew fiercer in the square, the shadows of the trees shorter and more purple. At last a loud bell clanged, and presently Ann Jamblin looked in and said with a shade of insolence as she passed on: "The luncheon bell, Lucy." Lucy affected not to hear her, but hurriedly dabbed her tear-stained face with a handkerchief, shook her white dress tidy, smoothed her hair with a hand-touch here and there, and took down a book from a shelf as if to study.... Her husband stood at the doorway. "Luncheon's ready, dear.... Have the girls been unruly this morning?" "Thank you, I'm not hungry. Don't wait lunch for me. I dare say I shan't want anything till tea-time.... The girls? Oh! Not worse than usual. I have no influence with them.... It's my fault, of course. I was never cut out for this work. Please, _please_ don't wait.... I suppose it isn't part of one's Christian duty to eat when you aren't hungry?..." John Baines looked downcast ... and went out to the lunch of roast kid or roast guinea-fowl, sweet potatoes, boiled plantains, and banana fritters in syrup of sugar-cane, with less appetite than usual. Lucy meantime tries to pretend she is interested in a book. It is far too hot to walk out and botanize. And then, what is the use of pressing these plants? The colour of the gorgeous petals soon fades to brown, fungi and minute insects attack them and they crumble into dust; and the Mission objects to all the blotting-paper being used up in this way.... Presently John returns; with a native servant carrying a tray on which are tea things, slices of guinea-fowl breast, some boiled sweet potatoes, and banana fritters. To obtain this rather tempting little meal he has had to face the scornful opposition of Ann Jamblin, but for once he has turned on her (to the silent dismay of Bros. Bayley and Anderson). "Ann," he has said, "you must learn to keep your tongue and temper under control. It is you who drive Lucy away from our meals by your constant fault-finding. We are not all made alike; some of us are more sensitive than others." Ann, strange to say, is silenced by his sharp tone and makes no retort. "Come, Lucy," he said, after the little meal has been placed on the table by her desk; "you will only make yourself ill by this refusal to eat. I am sorry Ann has been so teasing. I have spoken to her. Now try to eat this little lunch whilst we are quiet in here." Lucy looks at it and at him. In the middle of the tray is an enamelled iron tumbler containing a small bunch of mallow flowers with large lemon-tinted petals and a vivid mauve centre. This, from John, means so much, as a concession to her tastes. She bursts into tears--at this period she was very soppy! "Oh, John! You _are_ good to me. I really _don't_ deserve such kindness. I have been a _dreadful_ disappointment to you." "Well; eat up the lunch and you'll make me happy," says poor John. "Why shouldn't we _all_ be happy here, Lucy?" he goes on. "The Lord has singularly blessed our work; the climate--for Africa--is not at all bad; you can't say the scenery is ugly, there are beautiful flowers all around--and--and ferns. We're getting on well with the people, much better than I ever expected. Why, your schoolroom is already too small for the numbers and Bayley has to teach his classes out of doors in the 'baraza.' Look at our plantations--how the lemon trees and oranges are growing--and the coffee. It's true we get our mails rather seldom. There seems to be something queer going on at the coast. The carriers can't get through.... The Germans, I suspect. But we're safe and snug enough here. As for me, I don't want to hear from home. Mother's letters are not precisely cheering. I only ask to go on with the Lord's work without interruption. _Do_ try to be cheerful, darling ... do you think you--Do you think there is--er--any hope of--your----?" "I _will_ try once more, John. But couldn't we live more by ourselves? Ann gets on my nerves, do what I will. Couldn't we do our own housekeeping?" continues Lucy, clasping her hands and looking at him pleadingly. "Well," said John, a little ruefully, "you know you _did_ try for a month after you first came, but it was such a failure that you gave it up. You couldn't stand the heat of the cookhouse, or manage the cook, or do the accounts in calico for the things you bought. And--you don't know much about cooking. Why should you? You're a first-class teacher. And then, you know, you were so set at first on studying--studying botany--and painting pictures. I thought, even, you might write for the Mission Magazine, like Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Baxter...." _Lucy_: "But they always want you to write goody goody and bring in the Lord at every turn and make out the black people to be quite different from what they are--Somehow I couldn't fall in with their style, it's so humbugging----" _John_: "Well, then, write for other magazines, worldly ones if you like. I'm sure you could write well--you used to make up beautiful poetry before we were married, and you've had thrilling enough experiences on the way up. It isn't every missionary's wife who's had a lion trying to get into her tent----" _Lucy_: "The thought of _that_ journey _still_ makes me sick. And yet I used to think I should adore African travel--" (An ungrateful thought flashed through her mind: "so I should, with--with--some people"). "Besides, if I told the true story--bugs, ants, snakes, rotting corpses, and all--it might stop other missionary women from coming out. No. I can't write anything. I _do_ make collections of flowers, but you won't let me go far from the Station to botanize and you're always too busy to come with me. As to painting, it's either too wet, or too hot, or too something. And then you hinted once I shouldn't take a half-holiday every day but help some one else in their work, so I give up some of my time to Mr. Bayley.... No, I won't call him 'Brother Bayley,' it's so silly, all this brother and sister business"--(a short pause and a sudden impulse). "John! Couldn't you take me home next dry season--and get them to give you work at home--? Or" (noting his look of dismay) "send me home to Mother and join me there later on, when your leave is due?..." _John_: "It would just _break my heart_ either to part with you or to throw up my missionary career...." _Lucy_: "Well, then, could I go on an itinerary--as you call it--with you? Not be cooped up here with that intolerable Ann when you three men go off on a round of preaching. I'd promise not to mind anything--snakes, ants, lions, or even the Masai. Perhaps I might get to enjoy Africa that way without all this intolerable religion...." _John_: "_Lucy!_..." _Lucy_: "I didn't mean to shock you again, but I couldn't help it. I don't know what's come over me, but I've grown to _hate_ religion, and still more pretending to be religious. I'm sick of the Bible ... at least I mean of the Old Testament. It always makes me think of some wearisome old grandmother who says the same thing over and over again.... Who wrote it? That's what _I_ want to know. How do we know the old Jews didn't make it up and pretend it was inspired?" (John ejaculates a "_Lucy!_" of protest at intervals, but she is so carried away by a desire to express her revolt that she pays no heed.) "You know I've been trying to help Mr. Bayley in his translations by reading slowly bits of the Bible--just now we're in Exodus. He _would_ begin at Genesis, even though I said all the people wanted was the Gospels--I don't think I ever studied the Bible much at home and it all comes fresh to me as though I had never thought about it before.... Well, Exodus.... Have you ever read those chapters where Moses fasted--or said he fasted--for forty days and nights _without food or even water_ whilst he was writing down God's sayings? ... How silly some of them sound.... How particular the Almighty seemed about the colours of the tabernacle curtains--blue, purple, and scarlet--and about the snuffers and the snuff-dishes being made of pure gold. And about the 'knops.' ... What is a 'knop'? Poor Mr. Bayley can't find the word in any dictionary. What can be the good of translating all this into Kagulu? It only puzzles the natives, Josiah told me. Mr. Bayley's always losing his temper with Josiah because he can't find the right Gulu or even Swahili word for some of these things in Exodus. Surely all you want to teach them is simple Christianity and how to live less like pigs and more like decent human beings...." _John_ (interposing at last, after he has cast his counter argument into words): "How can you teach them about Christ without first explaining what led up to Christ, the Fall and the Redemption? We want to give them the whole Bible, even if we don't understand every passage ourselves. Every word of the Bible is inspired." (Lucy makes a mute protest.) "But oh! my Lucy ... what I feared and foretold has come to pass. This coquetting with Science has cost you your faith. Kneel down." (She knelt with him unwillingly on the little platform.) "Oh Lord," prayed John, most earnestly, "visit Thine handmaid in her sore need for Thy help! Dispel her doubts with the sunshine of--of--thy grace. Convince her of Thine Almighty Power and Wisdom and consecrate her to Thy service in this Heathen Land." They rose to their feet constrainedly. John covertly flicked the dust from his trousers, blew his nose, and wiped eyes suffused with emotion. Lucy impatiently shook her white skirt. How she hated these impromptu genuflections which always shortened the wearing life of the skirt and sent it prematurely to the wash. And much washing made it shrink so. Still, her passion was spent and she felt very, very sorry for her husband, and a little guilty in her discontent. If she had come out straight to him from England under no other influence, would she not have been a fairer critic, have taken more kindly to mission work? And was not John really cut out for a missionary, with every reason to be proud of his station's success? These silent musings, while John awkwardly hummed a hymn tune, were broken in upon by the strident voice and bustling presence of Ann Jamblin. "Well, then, young people" (being three years older than they were she sometimes assumed a maternal air), "if you've finished honeymooning, I'll take the tray away and get the school ready for my sewing class." (To one without: "Pilisilla! Ring the bell three times.") They left the School-house without answering her, hand in hand. Lucy felt so sorry for John that she resolved once more to try to be a missionary's wife and helpmeet. The intense heat of the forenoon was breeding a thunderstorm, and already the sky was overcast, and a few puffs of cool air were blowing up from the plains. Presently these grew into an alarming dust-storm, a hurricane which blew Bayley's proofs and manuscript to right and left; and when Lucy rushed in to pick them up she was blinded for a minute by the glare of lightning. Then the wind dropped before a deluge--a grey, sweeping deluge of rain. In trying to save this and that, Lucy and Ann were drenched to the skin and had to change their soaking garments. The change to dry clothes, the rub down somehow cheered them, and made them more friendly. Lucy then returned to