In the Berkshire and Hampshire estates woodlands required thinning, cattle wanted new blood and better breeding. The lobster fishery at Sporran Bay should certainly be developed. A proportion of the deer in Scotland and at Engledene might with advantage be sold. The farmer tenants generally wanted shaking up. Some of them could well afford to pay twice their present rent and let him out of the increased rent-roll rebuild their houses, barns, granaries, pigsties and cow-sheds. Why, the dairy business alone might be trebled in value with this proximity of a milk-hungry London. Farmer Josling, a right-down superior man with much self-given education, should help him in this. Incidentally, with Sibyl's consent, he had given his father-in-law a life-lease of his farm as some acknowledgment of his excellent use of it, and his progressive influence on the other farmers.
The bracing outdoor life and constant riding, the hunting and shooting did his health a world of good. He had never looked so well, so set up and robust as he did at the age of thirty-two, as Sibyl's factotum. The worst of this was that he seemed more desirable than ever in Sibyl's eyes, as she admitted with her disarming frankness. "What a pity it is, Roger, the silly laws of this sanctimonious country will not permit polygamy. We are just in the prime of life, you and I. I am much better looking than I was ten years ago--I shudder at my old photographs--I wore a fringe then and a bustle, and a lot of hair down my back, and a terrible simper when I faced the camera. It's a crime against Nature that we can't marry. We should have the handsomest children and we could easily arrange matters with Lucy. She's not exacting."
Roger laughed at these speeches, but they made him a little uncomfortable. Had Sibyl been a complete stranger to him he might have succumbed long before to her wiles; few men of his build, his time, his complexion were Josephs. But the slight relationship between them acted as a barrier to concupiscence. It permitted a familiarity in speech and address which made any closer intimacy repellent to his sense of decency....
Sibyl it must be admitted, was shameless when they were together. She would study his features attentively; admire the curl of his eyelashes, the outline of his profile, even the not quite classical prominence of the cheek bones, the virile twist upwards of his moustache, the firm chin and strong white teeth, the well-set ear and close-cropped hair at the back of his head: the while she pretended, pen in hand, to be considering his propositions. Thought-transference told him what this scrutiny meant, and he would colour a little in shame and become abrupt in manner--even say to himself, "This _can't_ go on--I wish she'd think of something else...."
He was conscientiously attentive to Lucy at this time and she was really happy during this phase in Roger's life. In the spring she took up her residence in the Lodge at Englefield and made a comfortable home for her devoted husband, who seemed resolved to show her how happy he was in his marriage. Maud, from Farleigh, was a constant visitor, stayed weeks together with Lucy and Roger and served as a _trait d'union_ with Sibyl, who allowed Maud to chaff her and scold her as she would no one else. Sibyl was quite civil to Lucy, did not bother her, left her alone except for an occasional greeting and the showing of some curiosity as to little John. "You may call him _John_ as much as you like, but he's certainly Roger's child."
Clithy and his nurse were often sent down to the Lodge to be with Lucy; Sibyl deigning to say that her influence over children was a good one and Clithy was never fretful with _her_. In her mocking moods she called her little son "The Prince with the Nose" and declared he was under an enchantment. He had for a child of three a preternaturally large nose, and as she said to Roger, there could be no doubt as to his paternity. "How pleased Francis would have been! He was always so proud of the Mallard nose. Said it could be traced back in pictures to Charles I's reign--Anne of Denmark, who was rather larky after she had been married ten years, had a side-slip--you know what a _tipsy_ court they were!--and bore a daughter to the Lord Chamberlain, who was particularly active in the revels. James overlooked her breach of good manners and ultimately gave the large-nosed little girl in marriage with Silchester Manor to a favourite, who founded the House of Mallard. Francis was going to have put this into his Memoirs, but he died, poor dear, leaving them three-quarters finished. I think _I_ shall finish them for a lark. Will you help me?"
One reason why Lucy was dreamily happy at Englefield Lodge was that she seemed there to link up with the life of her girlhood. She had so often strolled round the precincts of Engledene with John Tilehurst, she dared not revisit for fear of meeting Mrs. Barnes. But she would sometimes walk over the same path she had traced with John on that Sunday in June, 1886. She would sit on the seat at _The View_ and go over once more in memory, and with a sad little smile her naive and petulant questions and answers on that Sunday walk. How she had told John her desire to encounter lions, and yet when a lion had visited their camp, what abject terror she had shown! Hangodi! That name was first uttered to her in Engledene Park and she remembered John saying it meant "The Place of Firewood."
One day Roger brought over to see her in the dog-cart old Mr. Baines--as he was beginning to be called. They both shed a few tears, but he told her with more sincerity than he usually put into his husky voice that he exonerated her from all blame in the catastrophe which had overtaken his son (Lucy herself was not so sure). "Mother's taken it awfully bad, Lucy. She's goin' out of her mind, I'm fearin'. First she was writin' an' writin' to Lord Wiltshire, him as is Prime Minister, don't you know, to give your husband the sack as bein' the real cause of John's death. Then next she'd bother our member, wantin' 'im to ask questions in the 'Ouse of Commons, till at last they give up answerin' them. Then she set to and slanged that Missionary Society that John belonged to, sayin' they wasn't 'alf careful enough about 'is precious life. Now this spring, blessed if she ain't cut our Connexion! She won't go to Salem Chapel; goes to Church instead ... St. Michael's. Shouldn't wonder if she ended up a papist! ... S'pose you know _Ann's_ in England? They're makin' a lot of fuss about 'er in Reading and London. Call her a Heroine. She's bin down with 'er 'usband--rather a half-baked feller--to see us; but 'er talk with Mother ain't done Mother much good, partly 'cos Ann wouldn't join 'er in abusin' you. She says to Mother: 'I just told you the plain truth in that letter. I'm not goin' to add nor subtract one word, an' you've gone and put into it much more than I ever said. Just leave Lucy alone to God's judgment. At any rate, John loved her and died believin' her true; and I dessay she was. Africa's a funny country and you must put down a lot to the climate.' ... Ann's going back to Africa next autumn, with three more recruits and a lot of money to spend on the Mission School. Old Mrs. Doland sent for 'er and give 'er five hundred pounds. I tell 'er she ought to come and see you before she goes. P'raps she will, p'raps she won't. I told 'er you called your baby 'John,' and the tears reg'lar came into 'er eyes...."
Roger owned to Maud he felt a bit restless in the spring and early summer of 1890. He couldn't get Africa out of his mind, somehow. There was first the fuss about Stanley and the return of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition--surely one of the most wasted feats of heroism and brave endeavour in the history of Africa. Then came the 1890 Agreement with Germany. This left the Happy Valley pretty much where it had lain--unmarked as yet--on the map, but by approximate latitude and longitude entirely German, as Roger knew. But the discussion of frontiers in Africa caused him to feel fretful and resentful at being "out of it." Sir Mulberry Hawk, who had negotiated the treaty, might surely have turned to him for enlightenment on this point and that? Even though he had left the African Service, there were his reports of 1884-5 and -6, and of 1887-9. He felt impelled to go and see Broadmead, always accessible to men of worth. Broadmead said it was a beastly shame--spite perhaps on the part of Molyneux--but every one now was thinking of the Recess.... London was becoming awfully stale.... He and Roger should meet in the early autumn. Broadmead would perhaps come down to Engledene and shoot Sibyl's pheasants, and talk over Africa.... If Roger was still hankering after East Africa, why didn't he suck up to "Wully MacNaughten?" He had a show place somewhere up in the Highlands, not an immeasurable distance from Glen Sporran.
"Who was Wully? Didn't Brentham know? Why, he had begun life as a small grocer in some Scotch town, and bankrupted through giving credit to the crofters. Not to be bested by Fate, he went out to China as a clerk and in twenty years had made quite a respectable fortune. Friends said out of tea, enemies out of opium, smuggled into India; probable cause, the great coolie traffic between China and the rest of the world, which prompted him to found a navy of tramp steamers to carry the coolies, many of them over to Africa. Then he nibbled at East Africa; began with missionary stations, sort of atonement, don't you know, for anything naughty he'd done--Chaps in China used to call him 'MacNaughty-naughty'--s'posed to have had a half-caste family. Not a word of truth in it. However, there it was, and he couldn't go on refreshing Brentham's memory. Brentham had been in East Africa and must know all about MacNaughten there?..."