The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
year. At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the
arrangement. He decided for the present to lodge with his wife's
parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At
the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses--Mrs.
Parkins, at any rate--should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able
to set up house there. He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington
declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much
regret" his commission for Zangia.
About this time he received two letters which gave him much to think
about, but which he put at the back of his mind. I will give the
shortest first:--
_To Captain Brentham, F.R.G.S.,
H.B.M. Consul for Zangia._
School of Mines,
Jermyn Street, S.W.
_October_ 5, 1889.
DEAR SIR,--
You will remember calling here in last July, just before I took my
holiday.
You left with me for examination a series of rock specimens and some
sediment of lake water from East Africa.
Of the rock specimens, at least six give indications of great interest.
Those two labelled "Iraku I" and "Iraku II" are so rich in gold that
their importance must have been apparent to yourself--unless you mistook
the gold for iron pyrites, an inverse of the customary deception, which
is generally the other way about. The specimen labelled "Marasha" is
simply coal--rather shaley coal, probably a surface fragment. There are
two specimens, unfortunately with their labels missing or
indecipherable, which are a hard bluish green serpentine rock, obviously
related to the "blue ground" of South Africa and probably
diamondiferous. A fifth specimen yields evidence of wolframite, and in
three other samples there is much mica. The lake sediment is being
further examined by a colleague of mine. He believes it to be an
indication of the formation of phosphates in the lake bed or shores
which should be of great importance to agriculture as a constituent of
chemical manure. These phosphates might be derived from birds' dung in
great quantities, from guano in fact.
I assume you have duly registered the exact geographical localities of
these specimens? Otherwise, they are very tantalizing, for they
evidently indicate--if they come from one region and not from a wide
area of travel--one of the wealthiest of African territories.
Pursuant to your wish, however, I shall treat the matter as
confidential. But if you can at any time supply me with the exact
geographical information I require I shall be pleased to write a report
on the collection for the Petrographical Society or for the confidential
information of the Government: whichever you prefer.
Yours faithfully,
DANIEL RUTTER.
Unguja,
_August_ 26, 1889.
DEAR CAPTAIN BRENTHAM,--
Mrs. Stott and I, we thank you very heartily for your kind remembrances
of us. The generous present of tea you sent us as soon as you got back
to England reached our good friend Callaway a little while ago and I
found it here waiting for us when I arrived from the interior.
Captain Wissmann has had a wonderful series of victories over the Arabs
and Wangwana, which in the good providence of God have cleared the way
between Ugogo and the coast. I heard something of this in the Happy
Valley last April; so, as we were running terribly short of supplies and
as we felt "seed time was come" and that the Lord desired us to reopen
our Burungi Station, and establish his tabernacle strongly in this
glorious place--Manyara--"ripe unto harvest"--I felt my way cautiously
up the Valley and through the Irangi country to Burungi. The place was
not any worse treated than when you left it--you made a great impression
on the Wagogo--so, as their elders begged me to rebuild the station I
left some of our trained workers to do so. Besides that, Captain
Wissmann, whom we met near-by, has lent us two German
sergeants--biddable men and clever with their hands. They'd been sick,
and wounded in the legs and he said it would do them good to have a
spell of quiet sedentary life. He also put under their orders a guard
of five Sudanese soldiers to guard the station whilst it is being
rebuilt. So here I am at the coast, chopping yarns with Mr. Callaway,
and laying in great supplies which I have been able to buy out of the
price of that ivory you shot for us.
Captain Brentham, you don't know what a mine of wealth the Happy Valley
is, and the cliffs and mountains on the western side (Iraku and Ilamba).
I am an Australian, and before I found Christ I had a course of
instruction as a mining engineer. The rocks in and about the Happy
Valley tell me at first sight more than they would an ordinary
Englishman. I suppose some one will have to find out this, sooner or
later. I'd much sooner it were _you_. You may yet get it taken over by
Great Britain. At any rate, if you came out here and prospected you
would see what I mean. What did you do with the specimens you took away
with you for analysis? Did you lose them on your way to the coast?
Maybe if the Happy Valley is to come under the Germans they would give
you a concession. This Captain Wissmann seems to like you, and he said
it was far from his Government's intention to drive away English
missionaries or English capital. He likes the English very much and
speaks English very well.
I only write this because they say here you are not coming back as
Consul. I am sorry. Why not then come out on your own? I've opened
your letter to Mrs. Stott, which came with the tea, and _right glad_ I
was to hear--and so will she be--that you'd married poor Lucy Baines.
_Right glad_. Bring her out here with you, and Mrs. Stott shall look
after her whilst you go round prospecting and staking out your claims.
We may not see eye to eye over the Lord's work. The Lord hasn't revealed
himself to you yet as He has to us. He will in His own good time. But
you've got the root of the matter in you. I never yet met an unbeliever
who was so reverent and so tender of other people's beliefs.... You're
a good man, if you'll forgive my saying so. You wouldn't ever interfere
with our work here, I know. It's getting on _grand_. We baptized the
Chief of the Wambugwe and fifty of his men in the Lake at Manyara just
before you left, and please God, we've saved the whole valley from
Islam.
Mrs. Stott had always a first-class opinion of you, though you weren't
of our way of thinking in religion. She is sure you'll always stand up
for the natives and protect their rights. I hope I haven't been taking
a liberty, writing this letter. If you don't like to come out yourself,
any one you sent we should trust to do the right thing and would show
him round. Otherwise, we have been careful to say _nothing_ about the
Happy Valley, and so far no Arabs and no Germans have troubled us.
May God's blessing rest on you and on your sorely tried wife. I feel
sure there are happier days in store for her.
Your sincere friend--if you'll allow me to say so.
JAMES EWART STOTT.
In regard to the School of Mines Report, Roger for acquitment of
conscience and because he always liked to do the right thing, sent a
resume of Professor Rutter's analysis to the F.O., stating that the
specimens referred to had been picked up by him on his recent tour
through the interior of German East Africa.
In reply, the Under Secretary of State Was directed to thank Captain
Brentham for this valuable information.
In reality it was decided to pigeon-hole the report, certainly to give
it no publicity. Let the Germans find out for themselves the value of
their territories. If they discovered they had bitten off more than they
could chew, why ... then....
In January, 1890, Lucy was delivered of a son. Roger was hugely
delighted. When he asked Lucy a week after the birth if she had any
preference for a name--_her_ father's, _his_ father's, his own--she said
in a faint voice but with some finality in the accent: "Let him be
called 'John'!" Then, as he did not reply, she added, "John loved me
and I wasn't worthy of his love...."
"Well, and don't _I_ love you?" answered Roger with a tinge of
compunction.
"She's a bit wandery in her mind, sir," said the nurse. "Don't pay any
attention to what she's a saying. She's mistook your name. Several
times since the baby was born she's seemed to be talking with a John,
but it was you she was a thinkin' about, _I'll_ be bound. She wants
keeping very quiet...."
Once Captain Brentham took up the affairs of the Silchester
estates--which he did definitely in October, 1889, he went very
thoroughly into their condition and their possibilities of development.
He was not, of course, a trained, professional land agent, which was why
his shrewd and original ideas of enhancing the value and productivity of
land made the Institute of Land Agents so angry. But he knew something
of surveying, and had been accustomed to value countries by the eye, to
judge of soils, espy defects in farming, by his boyish life at Farleigh
and his experiences in India and Africa.
Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a
lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field,
though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the
service of man. He liked great spaces without a sign of man's
habitation to mar the poem. Roger, though he had a strongly developed
sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization
that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in
Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of
the landless. Another charm can be contributed to landscapes by the
handiwork of man, provided the cottage is tastefully and soundly built,
the manufactory--even the brick-kilns and chimneys--are of the right
material for the neighbourhood, of harmonious colour and appropriate
design.
In the Berkshire and Hampshire estates woodlands required thinning,
cattle wanted new blood and better breeding. The lobster fishery at
Sporran Bay should certainly be developed. A proportion of the deer in
Scotland and at Engledene might with advantage be sold. The farmer
tenants generally wanted shaking up. Some of them could well afford to
pay twice their present rent and let him out of the increased rent-roll
rebuild their houses, barns, granaries, pigsties and cow-sheds. Why,
the dairy business alone might be trebled in value with this proximity
of a milk-hungry London. Farmer Josling, a right-down superior man with
much self-given education, should help him in this. Incidentally, with
Sibyl's consent, he had given his father-in-law a life-lease of his farm
as some acknowledgment of his excellent use of it, and his progressive
influence on the other farmers.
The bracing outdoor life and constant riding, the hunting and shooting
did his health a world of good. He had never looked so well, so set up
and robust as he did at the age of thirty-two, as Sibyl's factotum. The
worst of this was that he seemed more desirable than ever in Sibyl's
eyes, as she admitted with her disarming frankness. "What a pity it is,
Roger, the silly laws of this sanctimonious country will not permit
polygamy. We are just in the prime of life, you and I. I am much
better looking than I was ten years ago--I shudder at my old
photographs--I wore a fringe then and a bustle, and a lot of hair down
my back, and a terrible simper when I faced the camera. It's a crime
against Nature that we can't marry. We should have the handsomest
children and we could easily arrange matters with Lucy. She's not
exacting."
Roger laughed at these speeches, but they made him a little