Gravening was an austere-looking man but of kindly disposition. He made her feel at home, and as he knew the Reading district in old Oxford days of walking tours and reading-parties he could talk about that home-country which, as it receded in time from her contemplation, seemed a Paradise she had recklessly quitted.
The ladies of the Anglican Mission--a celibate Mission when at work in Africa, its members being supposed to leave its ranks when they married--received Lucy with some detachment of manner. They were good creatures, indeed, but they came from a social stratum one or even two degrees higher than hers, and inwardly they were less tolerant of Nonconformists, than were their men fellow-workers. Lucy, they had ascertained, was a "Church person," but she was about to marry into a Methodist Mission. However, her rather plaintive prettiness and the home-sick melancholy in her eyes enlisted their womanly sympathy. Two of them offered themselves in a bride's maid capacity, and the Sisterhood in general proposed that the honeymoon should be spent at their little country retreat of Mbweni. But John explained as to this, that he could not prolong his absence from the up-country station more than was just necessary for the prescribed residence at Unguja; and that their honeymoon must be spent on the return journey. He dilated, for Lucy's encouragement, on the picnic charms of the "Safari."[#]
[#] The accepted meaning of "Safari" is a journey with tents, and porters to carry the baggage.
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During the ten days of her pre-nuptial stay at Unguja Lucy had no talk with Brentham. Presumably he was too busy over political and Consular matters. Once indeed when walking with John through the winding streets of the African-Oriental city she had seen him out riding with Bazzard, the Vice-Consul. John had accomplished all the preliminary formalities, and on her marriage morning--early on account of the heat--Lucy went in one of the Sultan's carriages, attended by Mrs. Stott and the two ladies of the Anglican Mission, to the British Agency. John met them at the entrance; they walked slowly up the stone steps to the office for the transaction of Consular business. Bazzard, with Mrs. Bazzard--the latter assuming the airs of a Vice-reine--met them there and ranged the wedding party in order. Brentham then entered, bowed to them both, but avoided meeting Lucy's eyes. He put to them in a level business-like voice the necessary interrogatory and declared them duly married. The party then passed into one of the Agency's drawing-rooms. Champagne--and lemonade for the teetotalers--was served, together with mixed biscuits and sweetmeats. The Acting Consul-General proposed the health of the Bride, and for the first time looked Lucy full in the face. He next withdrew on to a verandah and talked for some time with the bridegroom about his mission station and the journey thither and spoke earnestly on the subject of Lucy and her welfare, instancing his interest in her home-country as well as his position as "their" Consul to explain his anxiety as to her future. Then returning to the general company he handed Lucy a small case which he said contained a trifling wedding present and wished her all possible happiness, promising "some day or other" to visit her in her new home. He grasped her hand with a brief pressure and--pleading urgent business as an excuse for not following the party to the Cathedral--withdrew to his office. Mrs. Bazzard introduced her husband and bestowed a condescending patronage on Lucy and on the Mission ladies, who, never having met her before, found themselves almost audibly wondering who on earth she was, and where--with that slightly cockney accent--she had come from.
The religious ceremony at the Cathedral was one of considerable ecclesiastical pomp, secretly enjoyed by John Baines; who, however, thought on what mother would say when he told her he had nearly been married by a Bishop and quite so by an Archdeacon, and still more how she would have appreciated the black acolytes in their scarlet cassocks and white dalmatics, the incense-smell in the building, and the vestments of the clergy.
After they left the Cathedral they repaired to the Arab house of stone and rich Persian and Kurdish carpets in which Archdeacon Gravening lived. Here an unpretentious luncheon was given as a wedding breakfast. Gravening hardly ever spoke about religion, which was why Mrs. Stott despaired of his being saved, though she admitted he was compact of quiet kindness. His one enthusiasm was language study. He was deeply versed in the Bantu languages and translated for the Anglican Mission most of the works they required to use in their schools and churches. He had corresponded with John Baines, and the latter had written down for him samples of vocabularies of the different languages heard in his district.
Some insight into the conflict going on in the dazed mind of Lucy--who throughout these ceremonies looked as though she were a wound-up automaton--inspired Mrs. Stott to suggest to John that as they were due to start in the Arab dau early the next morning in order to reach the mainland port of Lingani before nightfall, Lucy should spend the rest of her marriage-day and night with Mrs. Stott, and their honeymoon should not commence till they reached the Mission house at Lingani. This they would have to themselves for three or four days whilst their caravan for up-country was being got ready. Accordingly poor John, when the wedding luncheon was over and the guests had dispersed, surrendered Lucy to Mrs. Stott and spent the rest of the day rather disconsolately making his preparations for departure. Lucy got through much of that hot afternoon in her nightdress--for coolness--inside the mosquito curtains of her bed, weeping at times hysterically; tortured with homesickness one minute and at another seized with a mad longing to call on Brentham at the Agency and see him once more. Sometimes she felt an actual dislike for John; at others a great pity for him, yet a shuddering at the idea of his embraces, of any physical contact with him.
Mrs. Stott prayed for her, apart in her own bedroom but the Divine direction of her thoughts seemed to take the line that the least said was the soonest mended, and that the young couple had better be left to their own society at Lingani to come to an understanding.
The next morning, however, it was a composed though rather silent Lucy who was punctually ready to go away with John when he came to fetch her to embark in the dau. Mrs. Stott had risen early to make coffee for them and give them a send-off of embraces, and provisions for a nice cold lunch on board. "My dear," she said to Lucy, "you'll have a _delightful_ water picnic. There's going to be just wind enough to blow you across. I wish I were coming with you, but I shan't get away for another fortnight. However, we shall meet in the interior, I dare say, before very long."
John had made for his bride a little nest among cushions and clean brightly-coloured grass mats in the deck cabin of the dau (a mere palm-thatch shelter), and for an hour or so a smile came back to Lucy's sad face as she appreciated the pleasant freshness of the morning breeze, the picturesqueness of the boat and the vivid blue or emerald green of the water according as it was deep or shallow. She had quite an appetite for the early lunch which Mrs. Stott had thoughtfully provided. But presently an anxious look came into her face and a restlessness of manner. "John! Can I be coming out in a rash? I feel an intolerable itching round my neck and wrists--Oh! Horror! What is this?" And she pointed to some flat, dark brown disks which were scurrying out of sight up her arms and into the folds of her linen bodice....
"_Bugs!_" said John, shocked and apologetic, "they are sometimes found in these Arab vessels.... I am so sorry.... Yet there was no other way of crossing to Lingani...."
Lucy went white with disgust. From the palm mid-ribs which arched over the cabin roof of thatch there came dropping hundreds of bugs on to the unhappy young woman, ignoring or avoiding him who would have willingly offered himself as sacrifice and substitute. Lucy in her dismay, knowing she could not undress before the boatmen and porters and yet not knowing how she could endure hours of this maddening irritation from half-venomous bites, broke out into weeping. "What _was_ to be done?" questioned the poor distraught bridegroom. The gentle breeze had died away ... an intense heat prevailed; the dau scarcely moved across a glassy sea ... the Nakhodha or bwahih captain of the dau was standing up over the rudder and signalling with his sinewy hand, crying out in a melodious cadence: "Njoo! Kusi-Kusi, Njoo, Kusi-Kusi!"[#] afraid his vessel might be becalmed and prevented from reaching port in daylight. The boat-men and porters were looking at one another with round eyes as they heard the Bibi[#] crying convulsively in the deck cabin. John in his desperation had a bright idea. He knew that the ordinary, vaunted insecticides had no terror for, no deterrent effect on, either bugs or their unrelated mimics, the poisonous ticks of Central Africa; but that both alike fled before the smell of petroleum. There were tins of that mineral oil on board provision for his lamps up-country. Opening one of these cautiously, for petroleum was very precious, he filled an enamelled iron cup and then stoppered the tin. From his medicine chest he obtained cotton-wool. Then with wads of this, and with his handkerchief, he dabbed the swollen wrists and the weals on Lucy's neck and advised her to thrust the saturated wads and linen inside her clothing.