* * * * *
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 affairs, especially out here. Her children are either out in the world or at school in England, and she is exceedingly bored on this feverishly tropical, gloriously squalid island. The day before she had heard all about Lucy from Captain Brentham....
_Lady Dewburn_: "My _poor_ child! _Please_ overlook all formalities and come away with me, _just as you are_. Your woman here--if you can trust her--shall pack up what you have--you can't have _much_, I should think, after that _appalling_ journey to the coast.... Come away with me.... Why, you must have hardly _any_ clothes to wear! I don't _wonder_ you stop in bed! We've got lots of spare rooms--as a matter of fact, Sir Godfrey and I are alone just now. Come and stay with us till you can look round and make your plans. It seems to me as though I ought to put you to bed for a week to begin with...."
Lucy's acceptance of this Fairy Godmother proposal dissolved from words into gulping sobs and convulsive eye-dabbings and nose-blowing. But she was practical enough to find her sola topi and white umbrella, to make her cotton dress look a little tidier, and gasp a few directions in Swahili to the over-awed Halima. Halima was wearing Lucy's evening "fichu" all the time and was uneasily conscious of having blundered into felony through ill-timed contempt for her lady.
Lucy observed none of this, but followed Lady Dewburn's fastidious steps down the stairs of palm planks out into the yard, where Mr. Callaway--really a very decent sort, who after all had done his best for Lucy--was awaiting them. He was personally gratified and relieved in his mind that the first lady in Unguja should have taken his forlorn little client under her wing. After picking their way with skirts lifted high through narrow unsavoury lanes between high blank houses, they at last reached Unguja's one broad highway. Here was a handsomely appointed carriage, and in it they rolled away to the Agency.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*LUCY'S SECOND MARRIAGE*
_From Sir Godfrey Dewburn, K.C.I.E., to Mr. Bennet Molyneux, African Department, Foreign Office._
H.M. Agency and Consulate-General, Unguja, _March_ 15, 1889.
DEAR MOLYNEUX,--
In the matter of Brentham, I think a private letter to you might meet the case better than an exchange of cables or an official dispatch.
I quite understand your Department is annoyed at the questions put in Parliament last month after the news about the deaths at the Mission station at Hangodi. But I cannot help thinking the Department is disposed to be too hard on Brentham, as though it were prejudiced from some other quarter than me. I admit when I first came out here I jibbed a little at his cocksureness, his assumption that no one knew anything about Ungujan affairs to compare with his own knowledge; and it seemed to me he made rather a parade about the number of languages he had acquired, which contrasted unfavourably with my acquaintance--then--with only three (I have tried since to learn Swahili). And so on and so on. I moved easier and got my bearings better when I had sent him over to his proper sphere, the mainland. I also thought his contempt for the Bazzards a little too marked, though I must admit subsequently my wife and I have found that a little of Mrs. B. goes a long way. But I hate writing disagreeable things about anybody--a climate like this excuses hair-dye, face-powder, irritability and even a moderate degree of illicit love (don't treat this as official!) ... But about Brentham: if his mission to the missionaries--telling them to clear out before the Arab danger--_was_ a failure, in that in most places there was no danger, _your_ apprehensions and _my_ instructions were to blame for starting Brentham off on his wild-goose chase. The missionaries in Usagara seem to cut up rough because they weren't attacked, were "quittes pour la peur." But that was hardly Brentham's fault.
The Hangodi business is a different matter. There is little doubt in my mind that B. was a little spoony on Mrs. Baines--They had travelled out together, and it seems she comes from near his part of the world in Berkshire-Hampshire--Jolly district, near the Carnarvons and the Silchesters.--Ever go there to shoot? But Mrs. Baines had been ill from one of these confinements that Missionary ladies--married, of course--have so regularly, and her husband seems really to have wished his wife to go away with Brentham. To make it all right and proper he packed off at the same time the other woman at their station, a strong-minded female named Jamblin. (She figures very much in the dispatches I sent home last mail.) Well: according to Brentham, this Jamblin woman, when they had done a few marches and stopped at another Mission station, insisted, positively _insisted_ on going back to Hangodi, and equally insisted on _his_ taking Mrs. Baines to the coast. He oughtn't to have agreed. That's where he was weak. He ought to have returned to Hangodi and helped to beat off the attack--if it came, as it did--and then have refused to take the ladies away unless the men came too. Instead of that, Brentham, having found some missionaries of whom he was in search, hung about their place until the news of the attack on Hangodi and the death of Mrs. Baines's husband reached him. After that he made for the coast by the northern route, the only one open to him at that time without fighting. Even on this route they had some most extraordinary adventures and spent a devil of a time before they got back to civilization--as we call ourselves by contrast.
The general opinion among the missionaries, I know, is unfavourable to Mrs. Baines, and in consequence to Brentham. But Brentham swears to me on his honour--_and I believe him_--there was nothing "wrong" between them. Jennie--my wife--says he's as straight as a die; though never having seen a "die," I can't say. At any rate, Jennie, on whose judgment I always rely, has taken a great liking to Brentham. So she has also to the young party with whom he has become involved, this Mrs. John Baines. The poor girl--she doesn't look her age--26--was stranded here at their Mission Depot, and Jennie, after hearing about her, went over in her impulsive way and brought her to the Agency. This has put a stopper on local gossip, which has thus been deprived of a rare morsel that would otherwise have acted as a real tonic on a fever-stricken community. Now Jennie says that although there's never been anything between them but what was right and proper, they ought to marry as soon as six months is up from the death of the first husband--which we presume took place on October 29th, from the accounts of that masterful person who now calls herself Ann Anderson. Jennie had but to make the suggestion and they both consented, so the civil marriage--the only legal one here--is fixed for March 31. Whether Archdeacon Gravening will consent to marry them at the Cathedral in addition, I cannot say. He is thinking it over. The matter has been speeded up by your intimation that the F.O. intends to recall Brentham. If he went back and didn't marry her, things would go hardly with Mrs. Baines. (I really have taken a liking to her, and I could imagine when she gets to a good climate she might be quite pretty. She is very quiet, and in a quiet way is rather entertaining in her accounts of what they went through in their wild journey to the coast.)