"Oh, but this will never do.... This is foolishness, believe me. Lucy! Pull yourself together."
Lucy now sobbed frantically.
Mrs. Bazzard was heard saying from quite close by, "Which is Gyuardifwee and which is what-you-may-call-'em--Ras Hafoon? I mean, the cape where some of the steamers run ashore in the mist, and then you have to walk through Somaliland and get sunstroke?"
Brentham exclaimed under his breath: "_Damn_ that woman!" and audibly, even a little insolently replied: "I'm _blessed_ if I know. You'd better ask the Captain. He's on the bridge and dying for a gossip, and he'll probably give you a cup of cocoa."
Mrs. Bazzard walked away--or pretended to do so.
"Lucy dear. I want to speak to you while that cat has gone out of ear-shot. Calm yourself and listen, because I must speak in a low tone. If you feel you would sooner die than go through with this marriage, you shan't be forced into it. I will speak to Archdeacon Gravening ... or the Bishop ... and they will know of some nice women of the Anglican Mission who would take you in for a few weeks ... till there is a return steamer.... Then on the plea of 'health' you can go back to England. I could easily advance the money for the steamer passage ... some day your parents could repay me. But even if they didn't, it doesn't matter. I do so want you to be _happy_.... I blame myself awfully for the silly things I've said to you ... about religion ... it may have made you dislike mission work...."
But Lucy sobbed out "It hadn't ... that she was a little fool and he mustn't take any notice ... she'd never, _never_ behave like this again ... after his extraordinary kindness too, which she would always be grateful for. He mustn't think any more about it or ever refer to it again...."
And before he could say anything more, or that cat, Mrs. Bazzard, return, she slipped down to her cabin, where fortunately she was alone and could cry her fill without attracting attention. But as she lay on the bunk, she set her teeth and resolved, come what may, she would _not_ put thousands of miles between her and ... "Roger" ... she mentally uttered the name. Better to live within a few hundred miles of where he was and sometimes see and hear him. Why ... _Why_ ... did he not ask her to marry him? Yes, and ruin his career. What would they all say at Unguja ... and _John_? ... Poor John! what a shock it would be to him. There was the note he had sent to greet her at Aden, to the address of the steamer agent. She had opened it, but not read it through, so infatuated was she with Brentham just then.... The next morning Lucy breakfasted in the Ladies' Saloon, pleading sea-sickness. Later on, she went to the upper-deck, but armed herself with the Swahili Grammar, a defence against a Brentham who purposely stayed away, talking with the Captain, and none against Mrs. Bazzard, who pestered her with inquiries as to her "headache," expressing the quotation marks in her tone.
Relations however became more normal all round the day after that. In two more days they had anchored off Lamu. Lucy saw two low islands, with hazy forest country on the distant mainland. Lamu island had low sandhills projecting into the sea, and on one of them was an obelisk or pillar which Captain Brentham said was an important historical monument erected by the Portuguese nearly four hundred years before. The two women were eager to land and see East Africa for the first time. They went ashore with him in the Vice-Consul's boat; for there was a Vice-Consul here who had been expecting Brentham's visit and was delighted to find two English ladies invading his solitude. They saw, when they landed, masses of vague masonry, the remains of Portuguese or Arab forts, and a litter of human skulls and bones on the beach at which they both shrieked in simulated horror. These might have been the results of the last Somali raid, or of slaves who had died on the shore unshipped, owing to the vigilance of British cruisers, or even have dated back to the expulsion of the Portuguese by the Arabs two hundred years before. The town of Lamu was a two miles' walk along the sandy shore from the point, where they had landed, but the sight of the extraordinary coloured, blue, red, and green crabs that scuttled and yet threatened with uplifted claws, and of the natives who accompanied them in a laughing rabble, some clothed to the heels, others practically naked, relieved the tedium of the journey. The smells from the precincts and the heart of Lamu town were so awful as to be interesting. The strongest--from rancid shark's liver oil--was said to be quite wholesome, but that from the sewage and the refuse on the shore-mud caused them to hold handkerchiefs to noses. However, the town was very picturesque with its Arab and Persian houses of white stone, its Saracenic doorways, in the angles of which Persian pottery was embedded, and its heavy doors of carved wood. The Consulate stood a little beyond the town, in a walled garden of palms, fig trees, and trees of gorgeous scarlet blossoms. Here they had a cup of tea, and the Consular boat, which had been following them along the shore, took them back to the _Jeddah_, thankful in the blazing sunshine for their pith helmets and white umbrellas.
This excursion somehow, with its introduction to the realities and romance of tropical Africa, braced up Lucy for the next day but one, when in the very early morning the _Jeddah_ anchored in the roadstead of Unguja. She was dressed by eight o'clock and sat awaiting in the stuffy Ladies' Saloon the arrival of John, or whoever was coming to meet her. Sat with trembling, perspiring hands in open-work cotton gloves, wishing the suspense over. There were sounds of loud voices on deck.... Mrs. Bazzard, exploding in connubial raptures over her husband; Bazzard, in between her embraces, striving to assume a partly respectful, partly comrade-like attitude with Captain Brentham, to combine a recognition that he was greeting his official superior for the moment with the assured standing of one who had had longer experience of official cares. She heard him saying: "Your boat is waiting for you, Sir. I will arrange to send a lighter for your baggage as soon as it is up out of the hold...."
Then blundering steps down some stairway and along the passage, and John stood before her, sun-helmet in hand, eyes blazing with hungry love, saying, stammering rather--"My _Lucy_! C--Come at last! _Oh_, how I've looked forward.... How..." But he crushed her to him in a rough embrace, unmindful of her delicate cotton dress and of the fact that his red face was covered with perspiration.... But there was something so appealing and yet so masterful in his love, and also something so reminiscent of the park seat at Englefield and that Sunday walk, that Lucy in yielding to his embrace said within herself, "How _could_ I have thought of throwing him over?"
Together they went on shore. Brentham had not even stayed to say good-bye. Somebody saw after her luggage. She had so lost interest in it that she did not care if anything was missing.... Then John said: "I hope you've brought out the Harmonium that your uncle gave us," and she replied a little listlessly: "Oh yes! it was _such_ a bother getting it across London, but I think it's on board."
"I am taking you," said John, inconsequently, in the boat, devouring her with his eyes all the time, "to stay with Mrs. Ewart Stott until we're married."
*CHAPTER VII*
*UNGUJA--AND UP-COUNTRY*
Every two or three years in those days you met either Mr. _or_ Mrs. Ewart Stott at Unguja, usually at the ramshackle residence and place of business of Mr. Callaway, the Commercial Agent of the East African Mission. And when Mrs. Ewart Stott was there she took command, so that you instinctively greeted her as hostess. Mr. Callaway was quite willing it should be so, because she accomplished wonders in setting his untidy house in order; she gingered up his servants and routed the cockroaches, chased away some of the smells, and generally cured a feverish attack by quinine, chicken broth, and motherly care.
The Ewart Stotts as missionaries were independent because Mrs. Ewart Stott had begun as Church of England and Mr. E. S. as a Presbyterian, yet they could not quite agree with the discipline or the ideals of the different churches or sects and preferred evangelizing East Africa on a plan of their own. They had private means--at any rate at first; until they had run through them in founding mission stations, whereafter they were supported by anonymous benefactors. And as their tenets and _modus operandi_ were nearest to those of the Methodists' East African Mission, they worked alongside them and made use of their Agent and depot at Unguja.
Both were of Ulster parentage, with some admixture of a more genial stock; yet both were born in Australia. She as a Miss Ewart and he originally a Mr. Stott. At the same moment, so to speak, they had "found Christ," and it really seemed a logical sequel that Providence should bring them together at some Australian religious merry-making. They instantly fell in love, quickly married and fused their surnames. She was twenty, he twenty-two. She was distinctly personable and he quite good-looking. They had probably been born, both of them, perfectly good, unconsciously sinless, so that the getting of religion did not make them better or more likeable but only afflicted them with a mania for quoting hymns, psalms, and Bible texts _a tout propos_ and seeing the Lord's hand, His Divine interference in every incident, every accident, any change for better or worse which affected themselves. They were constantly in receipt of Divine intimations generally after communing in prayer. And these they obeyed as promptly as possible.