Still, her passion was spent and she felt very, very sorry for her husband, and a little guilty in her discontent. If she had come out straight to him from England under no other influence, would she not have been a fairer critic, have taken more kindly to mission work? And was not John really cut out for a missionary, with every reason to be proud of his station's success?
These silent musings, while John awkwardly hummed a hymn tune, were broken in upon by the strident voice and bustling presence of Ann Jamblin. "Well, then, young people" (being three years older than they were she sometimes assumed a maternal air), "if you've finished honeymooning, I'll take the tray away and get the school ready for my sewing class." (To one without: "Pilisilla! Ring the bell three times.")
They left the School-house without answering her, hand in hand. Lucy felt so sorry for John that she resolved once more to try to be a missionary's wife and helpmeet. The intense heat of the forenoon was breeding a thunderstorm, and already the sky was overcast, and a few puffs of cool air were blowing up from the plains. Presently these grew into an alarming dust-storm, a hurricane which blew Bayley's proofs and manuscript to right and left; and when Lucy rushed in to pick them up she was blinded for a minute by the glare of lightning. Then the wind dropped before a deluge--a grey, sweeping deluge of rain. In trying to save this and that, Lucy and Ann were drenched to the skin and had to change their soaking garments. The change to dry clothes, the rub down somehow cheered them, and made them more friendly. Lucy then returned to Bayley's study and once more helped him in the returning daylight with his translations. But he was now well into Leviticus, and some passages proved so embarrassing to both Lucy and Josiah that the former broke off with the exclamation, "It's teatime."
And sure enough there sounded the one pleasant summons in the twenty-four hours: the tea bell.
The rain had ceased, the darkness had lifted for a while and left the western sky a sweet lemon yellow, out of which a tempered sunlight twinkled. The air had become fresh and uplifting in a dying breeze. The little party met round the tea-table in a mood to jest and to be friendly. Ann, more good-humoured than usual, described her sousing. She also told Lucy she had had two of Lucy's skirts mended at her sewing lesson, to save her the trouble. Oh, it was all right; they had served as a pattern.
A couple of armed porters arrived during teatime, their calico clothing still adhering to their brown bodies from the rain storm through which they had stolidly walked. They had not brought the regular "Europe" mail from Unguja, but some parcels from Mr. Callaway and local letters. These read aloud over the tea table spoke of the restlessness of the coast population caused by the administration of the German Company, of Arab gossip at Unguja, of the sombre news from Nyasaland where a Scottish trading Company was at open war with the Arabs, in trying to defend the population from Arab slave raids. Tiputipu was away on the Congo looking for Stanley and had withdrawn his restraining influence from the Tanganyika Arabs. Was a concerted Arab attack on the interfering white man about to begin? The missionaries looked from one to the other a little anxiously. A growing feeling of _camaraderie_ linked them. They felt themselves to be an outpost of Christianity in a world threatened by the Moslem. They congratulated John in that he had so completely won over the Ulunga chief, Mbogo, that the latter had expelled the Arab traders from his hill country and made common cause with the White man....
At dinner--or as they better styled it, supper--they were quite cheerful. There was even a special zest in the evening service, point and _vim_ in the shortened prayers. Ann was congratulated by Lucy on her ground-nut soup and "pepperpot"; and the treacle pudding which followed was declared a masterpiece.
John that night kissed his wife tenderly in mute recognition of her more sympathetic attitude.... She did not shrink as usual from his caresses.
*CHAPTER X*
*ROGER ARRIVES*
Sir James Eccles, it was decided, was not to return to Unguja to guide once more the destinies of East Africa. Prince Bismarck would not hear of it. After considerable hesitation Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., was appointed to succeed him in the spring of 1888 and arrived at Unguja to take up his position as Agent and Consul-General when Roger Brentham had about completed a year's tenure of the post in an "acting" capacity.
Sir Godfrey Dewburn was a fortunate Irish soldier, who--because he had a capacity for getting on well with everybody--had held a high administrative position in India, though outside the ranks of the Indian Civil Service. He did well over the Prince of Wales's visit in organizing successful durbars, nautch dances and perfect shooting picnics, in which record tigers were bagged. He did better still in an aftermath of the Imperial visit, when the Duke of Ulster and the Hereditary Prince of Baden came out to shoot in Dewburn's new province. He had also married, with very wise prevision, a daughter of the Choselwhit who was legal adviser to the Circumlocution Office. When it was felt that Sir James Eccles must be thrown over to avoid a breach with Germany, which threatened a Franco-Germano-Russian alliance against us, somebody--perhaps the Duke of Ulster, who still remembered Dewburn's champagne cup, cooled with the snows of the Himalaya and tendered just at the psychological moment when the most splendid of the tigers had fallen to the Royal rifle--suggested Dewburn for the post. And as he was backed up by the India Office, who wanted to weed their Civil Service of outsiders, and by Molyneux who thought Dewburn's dinners at the "Rag" quite the best in London, Lord Wiltshire, tired and preoccupied over the Parnell letters, gave way and appointed Dewburn. Lord Silchester's suggestion of Brentham was deemed "indelicate," emphasized as it was by Sibyl, to whom Lord Wiltshire had taken a whimsical dislike.
Dewburn, when he came out, posed as a jolly good fellow who praised every one all round and enchanted Mrs. Bazzard by his manners and easy cordiality. But after a bit, Brentham's efficiency got on his nerves. It was irritating to hear his subordinate--so much better fitted than he for the post, some might have said--prattling and swearing in Swahili and Unguja Arabic, and rather markedly doing without an interpreter. Dewburn spoke French well and a little bad Hindustani, but there his linguistics ended; and his brain sutures being closed would admit no knowledge of an African tongue.
Then there was Spencer Bazzard always at hand, serviceable unto servility, ready to jot inspirations and judgments down on a writing-pad with some prehistoric form of the fountain-pen or indelible pencil, and reproduce these utterances afterwards, conveniently elaborated. Brentham, on the other hand, preferred putting in a draft of his own, which took quite an independent line and might have led H.M. Government to do something, make up their minds to some definite course....
Then again, Brentham's real destination was the German mainland.... The situation there was strained.
Mrs. Bazzard somehow amused and intrigued Sir Godfrey (Lady Dewburn had not yet arrived). He guessed her as somewhat of a demi-rep, but to him, as to me, such a person is more interesting to study than the simple village maiden, or the clergyman's daughter with her smooth hair parted in the middle....
Who precisely were the Bazzards? May I, with a novelist's omniscience, clear up the mystery?
There was a celebrated firm of solicitors in Staple Inn known as Grewgious and Bazzard. It had originated in a Mr. Hiram Grewgious, who had a valuable Norfolk connexion and had figured with some distinction and celebrity in a famous Kentish murder trial in the early 'sixties. The junior partner, Mr. Bazzard, took over the business from Mr. Grewgious, and when the latter died in 1878 still preserved the honoured style of the firm. This Mr. Bazzard led a double life, in that he was not only a particularly astute solicitor, but also a playwright of ability who produced at least two stirring melodramas under a _nom de plume_.
As solicitor he had lifted Mr. Bennet Molyneux once out of a considerable difficulty and delicate dilemma ... he had ascertained that the lady was travelling under an assumed name and ... in short, he had settled the affair without any fuss, and Molyneux was thoroughly grateful and asked him to dine at the Travellers, giving, of course, due notice, so that the guest-room, in those distant days with its settees thick with dust, might be got ready, and a fire be lit to take off the chill.
Over walnuts and port, Mr. Bazzard had mentioned the existence of a much-younger brother--fifteen years younger, in point of fact--rather at a loose end since he was called to the Bar--clever chap withal, steady, married now to a deuced pretty woman, but in his youth the very devil with the sex. ("Just so," would nod Mr. Molyneux comprehendingly, who, except for the most pardonable slip with Mrs. ---- at Lucerne, was a blameless husband and father.) Well, then, there he was--had tried ranching in the States and buying horses in the Argentine, got done in the eye by that scoundrel, Bax Strangeways--knew a lot about the tropics--stand any climate--take on any job. In short, did Mr. Molyneux know of an opening anywhere in Africa, C.O. or F.O., for a sporting chap with a knowledge of Law?