Your colleague, Captain Brentham, was married on March 31 to Mrs. John Baines, the widow of the poor fellow who was killed at Hangodi. Brentham will probably be returning to England very shortly on leave of absence (I understood from you you were willing to postpone your leave for a few months). Before he goes I have asked him to co-operate with you in getting affairs at the Medina Consulate settled up satisfactorily, so that you may formally take over from him and be Acting Consul there till there are further developments. I am very grateful to you and Mrs. Bazzard for stepping into the breach caused by these confounded disturbances which have not only occurred in the German hinterland but are now beginning in ours--so we mustn't boast too soon!
Brentham had to leave, as you know, very hurriedly last September, and if the Arabs had succeeded in taking the town matters would have been ever so much worse than they are. He says if there turns out really to be any deficit in the cash due to the embezzlement of the Indian clerk--if he did embezzle--but _what_ has become of him? Was he killed?--he is willing to make it good out of his own pocket. (Rather hard on him as he could not help leaving this man in charge; but I may come in like a benevolent arbiter if the affair is serious.) The loss or disappearance of the office cipher is a serious business--very--. I don't see what good it would be retrieving it from the Germans, as, if they _have_ had it at all in their possession, they have probably derived from it all the information they want!
Whilst Brentham is over at Medina I want him to have an interview with the German commandant, Captain Wissmann, as he can convey to him a message from me.
I hope Mrs. Bazzard continues well? She has certainly shown she can stand the climate. But we mustn't try her _too_ far.
Sincerely yours ... GODFREY DEWBURN.
When this letter reached Spencer Bazzard he took it promptly to his wife, who was seated before her dressing-table rubbing a little of the "hair-restorer" into the very roots of her hair, which had an exasperating way of not starting gold from the skin-level. She said, keeping her eyes fixed on the glass, "Read it aloud." He did so. "Hooray," she exclaimed, with ordered joy so as not to interfere with the delicate operation--they were going out to dine that night with a German functionary--"Hooray! That means he's scuppered. He's going home, you bet, rather off colour. They've made him marry her to placate the missionaries. But he'll never bother us again out here. Well, we'll be civil to him in the clearing up."
_From Captain Roger Brentham to Lady Silchester._
Mbweni, Unguja, _April_ 2, 1889.
DEAR SIBYL,--
I don't think you have any realization of what I've been through lately or you'd have written to inquire, or condole, or encourage. I've had a regular "gaffe"--tell you more about it by and bye. And a wonderful journey in the interior worthy of a Royal Geographical Society's medal--tell you more about _that_ too some day--and--don't start--I've got married!
You always predicted I should marry a "missionaryess." Well: I've done so. Yes, you were right, true Sibyl that you are. I've married the dear little girl--for so she seems to me--whom I escorted out to Unguja three years ago and whom I married myself to her young missionary husband, who was going to a station in the interior called Hangodi. There followed a tragic time. I dare say the newspapers will have told you all about it. She and I got locked up, so to speak, in the far interior and I never thought she, at any rate, would get to the coast alive.
Well: I felt after all we'd gone through together there was only one thing--the right thing--to do, being also very much in love with her. Lady Dewburn (you know whom I mean) thought precisely the same; and Lady Dewburn, let me say, is about the _best_ woman I know. I shall _never_ forget what she did for my poor Lucy. Dewburn performed the civil ceremony for us and gave a small and quiet wedding breakfast after the "small and quiet" wedding at the Cathedral. My old friend Gravening ("the Venble. Archdeacon") was awfully nice about the whole thing ... fully approved of my marrying Lucy, under all the sad circumstances, and said he'd fix up the religious part. Because you know what women are. They never think they've been properly married unless it's in a Church or if they do, their mothers don't.
I know I've got some rough places to get over before I can settle down to work and go full steam ahead, but I look to you and other true friends, real pals--to pull me through. The F.O. seems to have a down on me and a proportion of the Mission World likewise. But when they hear the whole story they will see I was simply dogged with misfortune and did all I could possibly have done. Unfortunately while I was away in the interior everything went to pieces at my Consulate, and two awful bounders--the Bazzards, more about them when we meet--are exploiting it to the utmost.
I am going back to the mainland after a week's holiday to get things put right at the Consulate. Hope I shan't take Bazzard by the throat, or lose my temper with his Bayswater wife. I simply _mustn't_. Well: when I have done all that and left the Bazzards properly installed I take the next steamer back with Lucy. Two years, nearly, have I been out here, and six months' leave on full pay is due to me. I am going home nominally to report. Wonder whether they will send me back? In any case I look to you, dear Cousin and friend, to give me a helping hand--not so much about Consular matters--I feel there if common justice is dealt out I can stand on my own--but as regards little Lucy. Her father's status and that of my father are not very different, when you come to look at it, except that Josling is probably a much more useful member of the community. But she may want a helping hand when we come home, if we are asked out and about. Of course, with her extraordinary African experience behind her she will be quite as interesting to meet as a Lady Baker, a Miss Gordon Cumming, or Isabella Bird----
I've written a short note to good old Maud and a still shorter one to the Pater. Rather rough on a man after only two days of honeymoon to have to sit down and compose all these epistles, even though it is in a tropical paradise like Mbweni--but with the thermometer at ninety something in the shade. I am sure Maud will take to Lucy; not so sure about you. You have become so grand. As to the Pater, he'll hardly pay much attention to us unless we could consent to be buried at Silchester and excavated by him! Maud wrote some time ago to say his neglect of his Church work for excavation of Roman sites was becoming such a scandal that they'd had to engage a curate for Farleigh.
And that the curate hadn't been there two months before he had proposed to her, been refused, and then settled down to a "filial" manner.
How is Silchester? It's getting on for a year since I had a letter from you; but I saw in a recent newspaper he'd been down with influenza but was "making good progress." That always reads ominously.
Look out for me sometime in May. I hope I shall be as welcome as the flowers of that same. I'm bringing you home some leopard skins and an African rattle for Clitheroe. So long!
ROGER.
A week after these letters were put in the Consular mail-bag, Roger had packed up and was waiting for a gun-boat to convey him across to the mainland--where he was to have an important interview with Captain Wissmann, fresh from a great victory over the Arabs. Sir Godfrey, taking leave of him, said: "Looked at the Reuters this morning?"
_Roger_: "No! What's up?"
_Sir Godfrey_: "Your friend Lord Silchester is dead."
"Phew!" said Roger, or as near as he could get to that conventional exclamation of surprise and speculation as to what might have been....
*CHAPTER XV*
*IN ENGLAND*
Captain and Mrs. Brentham arrived in London from East Africa at the end of May, 1889. You must picture Brentham with a reserve of savings of about five hundred pounds lying to his credit at Cocks's, and a salary at the rate of seven hundred a year which will go on till some time in October. After much consideration and discussion during the voyage they have taken a furnished flat on the eighth floor of Hankey's Mansions, St. James's Park, as having a better address--"being close to the Government offices and the clubs, don't you know, and of course if you have the lift going night and day it don't matter whether you're on the first or the eighth floor, to say nothing of the view." Lucy had timidly suggested Pardew's Family Hotel in Great Ormond Street as being very cheap for relations of Aunt Ellen, but Roger with that wistful snobbishness of his class decided it would be rather a come-down to hail from the West Central part of London when you were wishing to impress the Foreign Office favourably; so Hankey's it was, with lots of sunlight, superb views over the Park and the barrack ground with its military challenges and cries.