The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance

this more northern, purer breed. So there was a ruffle of angry words as each realized the other as whilom foes. But the leader who had been sitting close to Lucy rose to his feet and spoke with a carrying voice--rather than shouted--a command and once more his warriors sat down. He then took Lucy's hand, but quite gently. His own hand had well-trimmed nails and was clean except for the red dust. He turned back her sleeve a little (she trembled, but tried to smile). Having satisfied himself that the arm was even whiter than the hand, he threw back his head and laughed a full-throated laugh, while his eyes sparkled with the wonderment of it all. Seeing her smile he looked at her with such a friendly glance that she felt completely reassured. Then he sat down again, took snuff, and was framing other questions when Roger strode up. "It is all well, master," said the headman hurriedly in Swahili. "Why, you're holding quite a court, Lucy," said Roger, inwardly immensely relieved. "Ye-es. But I shall be _rather_ glad when they all go." The Masai leader rose to his feet and held out his hand to Brentham. The latter took it and White man and Red man looked for a moment into each other's eyes. Roger, knowing something of Masai customs--was he not indeed but three or four marches from scenes of earlier exploration?--did not shrink away when the Masai captain spat on his clothing and on Lucy's dress. He knew it was intended for the friendliest of greetings, a seal on their good relations. After that, all was boisterous good-fellowship, though the Wanyamwezi porters were careful to keep together and half carelessly to reclaim their rifles. The three hundred Masai agreed to overlook the fact that Roger's guides had belonged to a once hostile clan. And when they learnt from these men what a hunter he was and what an unerring shot, they pressed their friendship and their red presence on him. They visited his tent--they were throughout strictly honest--they sat on his bed, and he had afterwards to do without sheet and pillow case, for besides leaving red dust wherever they sat they distributed a flavour of tallow from their favourite unguent, mutton fat. They insisted on blood-brotherhood and declared they would escort the white chieftain and his lady to the coast. As a matter of prosaic fact, they took him no farther than the base of Meru. There the rainy season began to break with vehemence. So there they left him and went off to the drier steppe country and the War in the south with its possibilities of loot. Roger longed at this time to ascend Meru and explore its hidden wonders; and Lucy gazed with awe at the now fully displayed majesty of Kilimanjaro, rising above the watery plain of Kahe, with its dome of snow and ice, and its lesser peak of Kimawenzi. But being short of stores they made straight for a newly-founded Evangelical Mission station, at an altitude of four thousand feet, where it was hoped Lucy might find shelter for a few days from the torrential rains, and he himself gather news about the happenings on the coast, and dispatch carriers to Mvita with messages which might be telegraphed to Unguja. After all their adventures this seemed rather a prosaic phase in the journey, and Lucy found herself actually depressed at being once more with fellow-countrymen. There were three missionaries--a married couple and an assistant bachelor propagandist--at the station of the Evangelical Mission, but they did not seem over surprised at this arrival of a white man and woman from the unknown interior. They received Lucy's halting explanations civilly but coldly, and though they gave her a room to herself and nicely cooked meals, they seemed--to her fancy--to have purposely adopted an almost penitentiary surfeit of services and prayers. Captain Brentham preferred to camp out at the Chief's village, two miles away. He had known this genial, old, one-eyed ruffian three years before, when he was exploring the approaches to the great Snow Mountain, and making tentative treaties to forestall the Germans. He rather ground his teeth over the changing scene. Since his first journey, missionaries, big-game sportsmen, concession hunters, had thronged into this wonderful country, and had not the slightest respect for its earliest pioneers. Already there was a large and flourishing mission station on the site of his first camp; and when on installing Lucy there he had drawn the missionaries' attention to this fact, and to his having made the site ready for them, purchased it in fact, the present occupants merely said with pursed lips, "Indeed?"; and Mrs. Missionary added primly: "Yes: we _heard_ from the Chief you had stayed here, three years ago; but we prefer _never_ to listen to _gossip_ about white people. It is so _often ill-natured_." And so onwards to the Taita Hills and the coast. A sense of flatness, a leaking-out of all romance in their adventure. They were no longer alone. Lucy went to see Mr. Thomas at the East African Mission station in Taita. He startled her by asking cheery questions about John, his old college-mate, and supposing John was with her on this _safari_. He had heard nothing about the disaster and made rather stupid and inquisitive inquiries as to the motives of her journey. Farther on, they had the misery of crossing the red Maungu desert, with its stretch of forty miles between water and water; but there was no "adventure" about this; and midway they met the caravan of a very rich Englishman with two companions, wearing single eye-glasses, who offered them champagne and soda-water at midday to relieve their thirst, and told Lucy he wasn't surprised at her travelling about with a stray Consul, as he always contended that missionaries out in Africa had a jolly good time and did themselves uncommonly well, and for his part he didn't blame her. "Gather ye roses, don't you know--while you can--or was it while you're young? And now I suppose you're on your way back to Hubby?" The old Arab port of Mvita was not much altered since Roger had seen it last; though there was the beginning of a stir, for a British Chartered Company was preparing to make this their head-quarters. Meantime, the centre of rank and fashion, so to speak, was the British Consulate. Roger made his way here, with Lucy and Halima, while he left the bulk of his caravan encamped across the water. His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of shooting, varied with agreeable _safaris_ at the expense of the Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to get his own back:-- "_Hullo_, old chap! _Who'd_ have thought it. Where have you sprung from? We'd all given you up for lost--thought you'd gone 'Fanti,' eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an empire on your own...." "I've brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "_Mrs. John Baines_" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah of the Consulate)--"_Mrs. John Baines_, whose husband has been killed, I fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for me..." "_Aw*fully sorry old chap. *Of course_, I can make room for _you_ ... give you _some_ sort of a shakedown.... You're a fellow _man_ and you'll understand.... But the fact is I'm--I'm not--quite prepared--er--to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you know.... _You_ twig? ... Dare say you're fixed up just the same at--where is it? at Medina, What?" Roger turned away angrily. "Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!" "Yes, Captain Brentham." "I'll get a boat and we'll go over to the Mission station across the Bay. I expect they'll have room--indeed they must _make_ room--for you there till our dau is ready to sail...." Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first. My Camp is at Kisolutini. You can send on any letters that come for me there...." "Well, but I say..." Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an angry face, flushed under the tan. No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja. And a few days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for the island port of Unguja. This time--December 27, 1888--Lucy was too anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch. Meantime, unfriendly forces were at work to Roger's detriment. Here is a letter which Mrs. Spencer Bazzard probably wrote to Mr. Bennet Molyneux, of the Foreign Office. (Like most of the letters appearing in this book, it is based on my deductions as to the kind of letter that would have been written under the circumstances, rather than on textual evidence):-- H.B.M. Consulate for Zangia, Medinat-al-Barkah, _December_ 23, 1888. DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,-- I hope you don't resent my letters. You don't answer them, but then I told you not to. I shouldn't like to be a bore to you, or for you to feel--amid your piles of work--that you had an extra letter to write to an importunate little person in far-off East Africa. I said once I should go on writing every now and again, unless you ordered me to stop. As you haven't--Well! Here is another budget of East African news. We have had alarums and excursions, as Shakespeare says. You will see by this address that I am on the mainland with my husband. When Captain B. disappeared last September into the _ewigkeit_ the Agency at Unguja began receiving disquieting stories as to what was taking place in his absence. He had only left an Indian clerk in charge, and complaints arose from Indian merchants and English missionaries that no one could attend to their business. So Sir G. D. thought it best to send Spence over here to take charge, and, of course, I came with him to help him to interpret. We found everything (a month ago) in a terrible muddle. The consulate is filthily dirty, the archives are just anyhow, and Spence fears a considerable sum is missing from the Consular receipts, or else that the clerk is muddled in his accounts. But all this you will hear officially. Meantime, we are all uneasy about Captain B.'s disappearance. He left here last August with some idea of letting the missionaries know there was danger of ah Arab attack on all white people independent of their nationality, German or English. He seems to have translated Sir G.'s brief instructions into a permission to make a vast tour of the interior--a delightful thing to do, no doubt, but not when you have a Consulate to look after. He greatly alarmed all the missionaries, and, as it appears, somewhat needlessly. Those who have their stations in Usagara and farther south are very angry with him. He arrived at their stations early in September and ordered them to retire on the coast--or