The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
at any rate send their wives and children there, as the Arabs might
attack at once. And after they had obeyed him the attacks never came
off! One of the missionary ladies was in a certain condition, it
appears, and the hurried journey so upset her that--how shall I phrase
it?--her hopes were disappointed.
He next appeared at a place called Hangodi--according to native
report--and was so anxious about the safety of a fair lady there (the
missionary young woman who travelled out with him and me a year and a
half ago)--that he took her away with him and has seemingly gone
waltzing off to the unknown with this fair charge. Quite romantic,
isn't it? In this case his warning as to an impending attack seems to
have been only too well founded, if what has been reported to the
Germans is true. Soon after he left this place--Hangodi--it was
apparently attacked and destroyed and the missionaries all
killed--except, of course, the lady who left with him. Ill-natured
people will naturally ask why he did not stay and defend the station.
It is only two days off Christmas, and I can picture to myself the happy
preparations going on at Spilsbury--the carols the village children are
practising for Christmas Day, and the Christmas-tree which I am sure
Mrs. Molyneux and your daughter are preparing for their reward.
These ridiculous sentimental Germans are, of course, getting up
Christmas-trees, too, and are practising Carols to be sung round them,
though the town is still more or less besieged on the landward side.
_Who_ and _what_ was Good King Wenceslaus, and why should we sing about
him at Christmastide? There is no library here, except the one they
have at the French Mission, and that mentions nothing about Germany.
We are told here that a certain Captain Wissmann will soon arrive with a
large force of Sudanese soldiers to take command and finish the Arabs.
Still no news of Stanley, except it be the wildest, most improbable
rumours. If he really emerges from the heart of Africa it will only
be--I fear--to fall into some ambush laid by the Arabs.
With our united kindest regards and best wishes for 1889,
Believe me, dear Mr. Molyneux,
Yours sincerely,
EMILIA BAZZARD.
Roger and Lucy reached Unguja in their Arab dau at the end of December,
when the Europeans therefore were recovering from the surfeit of
Christmas junketings and preparing for another round of New Year
festivities, but a little bit peevish and liverish in the interval. The
arrival of the British Consul for Zangia was not unexpected, because
telegraphic news of his emergence from the interior had already reached
the British Agency. In the afternoon of December 29th he walked into
the office of the Agency and reported himself to Sir Godfrey Dewburn....
"Ah! my _dear_ Brentham, _how_ are you? _What_ a time you must have
had, to be sure! We all gave you up for lost, or thought you had gone
in search of Stanley or Emin, or were off to attack the Mahdi. Well: and
how is the fair companion of your travels, Mrs.--Mrs. ... er ..."
_Brentham_: "Mrs. John Baines? She is, I believe, at Mr. Callaway's at
the present moment. I advised her to go there as he is Agent here for
their Mission, and would probably have definite news about--about--the
attack on her husband's station ... and the results. Have you heard
anything, Sir?"
_Sir Godfrey_: "Nothing more than the rumour that after you left it was
attacked, and, I think, all the Whites were killed ..."
At this moment a clerk comes in and says: "This is a note with an
enclosure, Sir Godfrey, from Mr. Callaway." Sir Godfrey asks Brentham
to be seated and hastily runs his eye over a very long communication.
Five minutes elapse. Then whilst he is still reading, another door
leading to the residential part of the Agency opens and there appears a
handsome woman of middle age, with the stamp of elegance and fashion
upon her, dressed in some agreeable adaptation of an Englishwoman's
dress for the tropics. She says, "Godfrey, my dear, tea's ready and as
you don't like it drawn or cold I thought if I came myself--but I see
you have a visitor...."
"Oh! Ah! ... Yes.... To be sure.... Er.... Brentham, this is Lady
Dewburn--" (They shake hands. Lady Dewburn looks him over approvingly.)
"You'd better come in and have tea with us and then we can talk over
this extraordinary communication of Callaway's. It couldn't have come
more appropriately. Evidently it must have been brought by your dau.
It's been sent down by some Arab and it is all about the attack on the
station where these missionary friends of yours were living. It seems
they were not all killed, two of 'em at any rate ... though I think the
husband of your lady friend _was_.... But come along and we'll have a
confab all about it. The Bazzards are over at your Consulate on the
mainland, so whilst you're here you'd better take possession of their
quarters. The golden-haired Emily says she left it in apple-pie order
when she departed for Medina.... This way ... would you like to wash
your hands first? You look quite the Wild Man of Borneo, and I don't
wonder.... _Must_ have had a beastly time.... I should suggest a
whisky and soda first and tea afterwards...."
Lucy meantime was reading Ann Anderson's letter, given in a previous
chapter. She had been placed once more in the bedroom she had occupied
in Mr. Callaway's house before her marriage, and shuddered at the
memories it enshrined. Dear, kind Mrs. Stott was far away in the Happy
Valley ... and she could never again hear John's voice calling to her
from the courtyard under the great fig-trees that the Sultan's carriage
was waiting hard-by to take them for a drive; or making some other
proposition which she probably snubbed in fretfulness.
She was consumed with remorse. Ann's statement that in his last
agonies, dying with poisoned blood, he had only thought and spoken of
_her_, made her heart ache, almost literally--the aching of unshed tears
over the irrevocable. She had not been unfaithful to him in body; but
in mind, in desire, _yes_: from the day of the marriage onwards, and
never more so than from the day of her departure from Hangodi. She knew
she had hoped then that somehow this departure, this desertion of John
when danger was approaching--might be the beginning of her severance
from him, and lead to her union with Roger. To _him_ at any time during
the long _safari_ she would have surrendered herself....
Yet though her upper consciousness--the "speaking to one's self" (which
we almost do sometimes aloud, as if to an audience that may register our
words and resolves)--asserted that the _only_ reparation she _could_
make was _never_ to see Roger again--(what a mercy he had behaved better
than she had done!)--her innermost intention was to stay on in Unguja on
some pretext or other, in the faint hope he might ... _might_ ... "do
the right thing," as Ann had put it ... might marry her. If he would
_only_ do that her whole remaining life should be _one long atonement_
to John. She would _never_ forget him and his unselfish love of a
shallow, ungrateful woman.
Mr. Callaway had hinted she might like to take the next steamer home:
there was one going in a week--back to England. But how could she go
back ... and face Mrs. Baines ... and live on her parents? John had
probably no money to leave her; the Mission, after so short a term of
married life, would certainly give her no pension ... why should it?
The post of National school-teacher at Aldermaston was long ago filled
up. And could she even resume her life there? At no great distance was
Engledene, with Lord and Lady Silchester. Lady Silchester she vaguely
dreaded as a person who might mock at her.--She must have heard
something about her from Captain Brentham. What--what--_what_ was she to
do? Insist on remaining out in Africa and rejoin the Mission? And work
under Ann? The thought of the altered circumstances repelled her. Who
would care _now_ if she were ill? She had had several illnesses and
many fits of malaise--and tears of self-pity now ran down her cheeks.
And how _good_ and _uncomplaining_----here choking sobs, hiccups, almost
a loud wailing intervened--dear John had been. The cups of broth he had
brought to her bedside, the little meals to tempt her appetite.... And
Roger? ... The equal solicitude--the interest _he_ had shown, even in
her whims!
* * * * *
The realization of her bereavement kept Callaway from intruding on her
solitude, even by a message through Halima. This was a mercy, she
thought--at first--because however well-meaning, he struck her
fastidiousness as "common," not very attractive in appearance, with a
harsh voice, and effluent piety, and bad table manners.... But need
Halima have been quite so neglectful? Halima latterly was so wrapped up
in the project of marrying the Goanese cook that she unhesitatingly
neglected her mistress and avowed her complete readiness to enter the
Roman Church if that act could remove Antonio da Silva e Andrade's last
scruple of reluctance to wed with a Negress. She spent much of her time
oiling and combing her fuzzy hair into a European coiffure, and did not
hesitate to "borrow" details of Lucy's scanty wardrobe for her own
adornment. When she came with Lucy's meals into the hot ... _hot_ ...
_hot_ bedroom, with its dreadful insect swarms, from which the iron
bedstead, with its lowered mosquito curtain, was almost the only refuge,
she--Halima--bore a sulky face. She would evidently _not_ stay with
Lucy in misfortune....
One way and another, Lucy was fretting and worrying herself into a state
of illness; afraid to go out or to show herself; loathing life in this
low-ceilinged, vermin-infested bedroom, hot by day, stifling at night,
as she lay inside the mosquito netting in the blackest darkness,
shuddering at the possibilities beyond the bed. Rats romped and
squeaked and occasionally fell from the rafters into the sagging
mosquito net; scorpions, no doubt, were lurking in the crevices of the
floor-boards to sting her toes if she stepped out of the insufferably
hot bed. Cockroaches alternated their love-flights from the window with
frantic and wily attempts to get under the curtain. Mosquitoes, all the
night through, kept up a sonorous diapason of unbroken humming,
indignant at being denied access to her body. And the loneliness!
Halima was supposed to sleep on the landing outside; a polite
supposition which Lucy was unwilling to test, lest inquiry should lead
to a defiant withdrawal from her service.... Her service! Where were
Halima's wages to come from?
* * * * *
It was ten a.m.--more or less. Lucy had risen, washed hurriedly, and
hurriedly put on the only clean cotton dress left to her. (She really
must go out one day and buy some things for the voyage--only where was
the money?) The door was thrown open by an excited, more amiable
Halima, who shouted "_Yupo Bibi Balosi_! Anakuita!"
A pleasant, high-bred voice explained:
"I am looking for Mrs. Baines. Is she in here?"
Lucy scrambled off the bed from under the mosquito curtain and stood
before Lady Dewburn, the Consul-General's wife....
Broken apologies ... explanations--"Bed only place where you could be
tolerably free from mosquitoes...."
Lady Dewburn is a handsome shrewd-looking woman of middle age. She
wears a single eyeglass at times, for greater precision of sight, and
because she is the daughter of a permanent official. But though she
inspires a certain awe, she is in reality a kind creature, irresistibly
impelled to interfere--she hopes for the best--in other people's