Читать книгу The Man Who Did the Right Thing - Harry Johnston - Страница 5

During all this time Lucy saw little of the Baines family. But a few days after she had read this letter from Hangodi, Mr. Baines called on Lucy at the school—it was at the beginning of February—and put into her hands a copy of Light to Them that Sit in Darkness. "There's a letter in here of John's which they've printed," said Mr. Baines with considerable exultation, "and mother thought you might like to read it. Mind you return the magazine to her when you've done so. Good-bye. S'pose you are starting in a couple of months?"

Lucy found a column scored at the side with pencil, where the following matter appeared:

BLESSED NEWS FROM EAST AFRICA

We have received the following intelligence from Brother John Baines, who has recently joined the East African Mission:

HANGODI, NGURU,

November 20, 1886.

MY DEAR MR. THOMPSON—

We arrived here about a month ago after a pleasant stay with the brethren at Unguja. We reached Hangodi in about two weeks of travel from the port of Lingani, accompanied by Broth's Anderson and Bayley, and were greeted most warmly on arrival by Brothers Boley and Batworth—the "busy B.'s," as they are called—who feared from the rumours afloat that we should be stopped by native disturbances on the road. We brought with us from Unguja Josiah Briggs, a convert who was originally a freed slave from this very district of Hangodi. He has lived for five years at our depôt in Unguja or at the Presbyterian Mission station at Dombasi. He will be able to assist me materially as interpreter among the Wa-lunga as Kagulu is his native tongue.

The journey from Lingani to Hangodi was rather a fatiguing one as the donkeys we took with us to ride either fell sick poisoned by some herb, or strayed and were eaten by lions. So we ended by having to walk. Our Unguja porters ran away before we had got far inland, scared by rumours of Wahumba raids or stories of the famine raging in the interior; but a kindly Arab, who is supposed to have known Dr. Livingstone, came to our assistance and sent a large number of his people to convey us and our loads to Ulunga, as this district is called (the root—lunga—means the "good" or the "beautiful" country, as indeed it will be, when it has received the Blessed Gospel).

Mr. Goulburn, who is pioneering and is "spying out the land" to the north, travelled with us as far as Gonja and then quitted us, after we had prayed together in my tent. We turned south and continued our journey to the Ulunga mountains with the Arab's porters and guided by Josiah Briggs.

The country became very hilly, and as it was the beginning of the rainy season we had occasional violent thunder-storms and the streams were difficult to cross. Fortunately, however, the early arrival of the rains kept us from attacks on the part of the terrible roving tribes of Masai or "Wahumba," who only seem to exist to raid and ravage their agricultural neighbours, but who don't like doing so in wet weather. Moreover, they appreciate the springing up of the new green grass after the drought and prefer taking their cattle—whom they worship—out to graze. This new grass attracts to the district incredible herds of antelopes and zebras and gives the lions and leopards such abundance of food and occupation that they never deemed it worth their while to attack our caravan, though during the dry season—the Arabs told us—you could hardly get through the plains without losing a proportion of your carriers from lions, leopards or hyenas. This early breaking of the rainy season therefore seemed to us an act of special intervention on the part of Divine Providence to ensure our safe arrival at our destination. When we reached Hangodi we were hospitably received by the Chief Mbogo, to whom Brother Batworth introduced us. Mbogo rules over the district of Ulunga. He rejoiced greatly that we had come to teach the Gospel and asked me many questions about the Christian faith. An earnest spirit of inquiry prevails amongst all his people, who are flocking to see us and who listen with rapt attention to my simple exhortations delivered through the medium of Josiah. The Arab traders at this place are very annoyed that an English missionary should settle here and expose their wicked traffic in slaves, but I hope to be able to frustrate their intrigues and induce the Chief to expel them. For that reason I am working hard at the language with Josiah and with the vocabularies I have obtained from Mr. Goulburn and Mr. Boley.

Many of the women in this place are eager to hear the blessed tidings and bring their little ones with them while they listen spell-bound to our teaching. I trust soon to have beside me one whose sweet duty it will be to lead these poor sinful creatures into the way of Truth and Life. …

The building of the houses, school and chapel was commenced, as you know, two years ago by Brothers Boley and Batworth, whom we relieved, and who are going to Taita to perform similar work for Mr. Goulburn. In completing the station we shall be our own architects, but Mr. Callaway has sent us up two Swahili masons and a Goanese carpenter from Unguja. Anderson is already doing a brisk business at our improvised store.

And now, dear Mr. Thompson, I remain in all Christian love,

Yours sincerely,

JOHN BAINES.

CHAPTER V

ROGER'S DISMISSAL

"So it is really settled, Roger, that you are to go out to that African place with the violent name—something about 'gouging' I know," said Lady Silchester, one evening in the winter-spring of 1887.

She believed she was enceinte and treated herself—and was being treated—with the utmost consideration. Lord Silchester was transfused with delight at the possibility of having a direct heir and promised himself the delicious revenge of taunting those officious friends and advisers who had taxed him with folly in marrying a woman thirty years younger than himself. So she was lying on a couch in the magnificent drawing-room of 6a Carlton House Terrace, clad in some anticipation of the tea-gown. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and Roger Brentham had been summoned to dine alone with her and her husband and talk over his personal affairs. Lord Silchester would presently leave for the House of Lords; meantime he was half listening to their conversation, half absorbed in a volume of Cascionovo's Neapolitan Society in the Eighteenth Century in its French edition.

Roger, with one eye and one ear on Lord Silchester, replied "Yes. Lord Wiltshire has definitely offered me the appointment—through Tarrington, of course—his Private Secretary; and equally definitely I've accepted it. But technically it's not Unguja, nothing so big. Unguja is an Agency and Consulate-General and is still held by Sir James Eccles, who is only at home on leave of absence. My post is a Consulate for the mainland, for the part the German company is taking over. It is styled 'for the mainland of Zangia with residence at the port of Medina.' It is supposed the Germans are going to style their new protectorate 'Zangia,' the old classical name of the Persians for that part of East Africa."

Sibyl Silchester yawned slightly and concealed the yawn with her fan of Somali ostrich plumes which Roger had given her. Lord Silchester put down his book and turned suddenly towards Roger.

"How do you get on at the F.O.?"

"Oh, pretty well, sir," replied Roger, who still kept up his military manners with older men in higher positions than his own. "Pretty well. I've been working in the African Department all the autumn and I think I've got the hang of things; I mean, how to conduct a Consulate and the sort of policy we are to observe in East Africa. I've been down in Kent, also, staying with Sir James Eccles and being indoctrinated by him with the aims and ambitions he has been pursuing ever since 1866. He's a grand man! I hope they send him back. I should be proud to serve under him. Of course, I saw something of him at Unguja in '85-'86 … "

"H'm, well, I've no business to express an opinion, but I much doubt whether Wiltshire will send him back—Wiltshire sets much value on good terms with Germany, and Eccles is hated by the Germans. … "

Roger: "I know. … They've told me I must try to maintain friendly relations with our Teutonic friends, especially as I am to be, when the Consul-General returns, 'on my own,' so to speak, in the German sphere of influence. Meantime I am to live at Unguja and 'act' for the Consul-General till he or some one else comes out. Awfully good of you, sir, to get this chance for me … it's rare good luck to be going out to act straight away for a man like Eccles. … I'll try my utmost to do you credit."

Silchester: "I don't doubt you will. But don't rely too much on my personal influence. I'm only Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster … a minister without portfolio, so to speak. Cultivate the friendship of the permanent officials. Once you're in—I mean once a Secretary of State has given you the appointment, they are the people who count. I remember when I was in diplomacy there was rather an uppish young fellow from the 11th Hussars who'd been somebody's A.D.C. in the Abyssinian War. Dizzy, to oblige 'somebody,' shoved him into the Slave Trade Commission. He took himself and his duties seriously and really did go for the American slave-traders. An Under Secretary hauled him over the coals for trop de zèle. Lord Knowsley supported him. The Under Secretary sent for him afterwards and said, 'Remember this, Bellamy; Lord Knowsley is not always here. WE ARE.' And sure enough after Knowsley left they found out something against him and 'outed' him from the service. Moral: always keep in with the permanent officials and you'll never fall out with the Secretary of State. Do you get on all right with 'Lamps'?"

Roger: "Sir Mulberry? I scarcely ever see him. He's much too big a pot to take an interest in me. Besides, he's keenest about the Niger just now. No, I have mostly to do with Bennet Molyneux, who is head of the Department; and I'm afraid I don't care overmuch for him. I like awfully the clerks in the Department except that they don't take Africa very seriously, think it all a joke, a joke bordering rather on boredom. Still, they're some of the jolliest fellows I know. It's Molyneux I can't hit it off with, and they say in the Department it's because I've come in between some poor relation, some cousin of his he wants to push on out there. He got him appointed a Vice-Consul a year or two back and thought he was going to be asked to act for Eccles whilst he was on leave. And now that Lord Wiltshire has said I am to—I don't doubt at your suggestion, sir—Molyneux has turned quite acid. Especially when he had to draft my instructions! I think also he didn't like my setting him right when I first came to work in the office. He wrote some minutes about the Slave Trade and about the Germans which were the uttermost rubbish you ever read, and he never forgave me for not backing him up at a departmental committee they held—Sir Mulberry presided. And the mere fact that Thrumball and Landsdell have been awfully kind to me and had me to dine with them seems to have soured him. And when one day Lord Wiltshire sent for me to answer some questions—Well, I thought afterwards Molyneux would have burst with spleen. He threw official reserve to the winds and walked up and down in his big room raving—'I've been in this office since 1869,' he said, 'and I don't believe Lord Wiltshire knows me by sight. Yet he's ready to send for the veriest outsider if he thinks he can get any information out of him. The Office is going to the dogs—and so on. … '"

Lord Silchester: "Molyneux, Bennet Molyneux. I know him. Not a bad fellow in some respects, but a bad enemy to make. He is a kind of cousin of Feenix's—Colonial Office, you know. Well, your fate is in your own hands … you must walk warily … " (at this a servant enters and informs his lordship that the carriage is waiting) "I must be off. Sibyl! you won't stay up late? Roger, don't talk to her for more than an hour. Good-bye. Of course, you'll come and see us before you actually sail? … " (goes out).

A pause.

Sibyl: "You may smoke now; but only a cigarette, not a cigar." (Roger lights a cigarette.)

Sibyl: "What dear old Francis said was very good advice. Mind you follow it. Get on the right side of these old permanencies. Whenever Francis begins his instances and illustrations I feel what a perfect book of reminiscences he will some day write. But, of course, it wouldn't do till he's reached an age when he can no longer serve in the Government. … I want him some day to be at the Foreign Office or at least the India Office. I do so love the pomp of those positions, the great parties in the season, the entertaining of delightful creatures from the East with jewelled turbans. … "

Roger (a little abruptly): "Are you happy. … ?"

Sibyl (turning her head and looking at him intently): "Happy? Why, of course. Perfectly happy. Everything has gone splendidly. And now that I'm going to have a child. … I do hope it'll be a boy. Francis would be so happy. You quite realize if he has no heir the peerage and all the entailed estates go away to some perfectly horrid second cousin out in Australia. … "

Roger: "In view of that possibility I wonder he did not marry years ago, when he was a young man. … "

Sibyl: "My dear! How could he? He was a younger son and in the diplomatic service with barely enough to live on, respectably. And then he got tangled up with another man's wife. He thinks I know nothing about that side of him, but as a matter of fact I know everything. His elder brother, the fifth Lord Silchester, was an awfully bad lot—treated his wife very badly—they were separated and their only son was brought up by his mother to be dreadfully goody-goody. Francis's elder brother died in Paris—I daresay you have heard or read where and how. It was one of the closing scandals of the Second Empire. But then the goody-goody son married after he succeeded—married a sister of Lord Towcester. She was killed in the hunting field and her rather limp husband died of grief afterwards, or of consumption, and Francis came into the title rather unexpectedly five years ago. Then he was embarrassed by his Darby and Joan attachment to Mrs. Bolsover.—However, then she died—and so—at last he felt free to marry. …

"I met him first at a croquet party at Aldermaston Park. I saw at once he was struck with me. … However, we won't go over the old argument again which we talked out that day at Silchester. … D'you remember? My ankles were so bitten by harvest-bugs after sitting on those mounds, I shan't forget! … " (meditates). … "I'm much happier than if I had married you. … My dear, that would never have done. … But that need not prevent our being the best of friends, the most attached of cousins. … It's a bore having a confinement in the Jubilee year. … I'd meant to rival Suzanne Feenix in my entertainments. … But if I give Silchester a boy, he will refuse me nothing. … And I mean, as soon as I'm up and about again, to push him on. He's rich—those Staffordshire mines and potteries. He's got lots of ability, but he's too fond of leisure and isn't quite ambitious enough. Complains of being tired. … He's only 57 … but he much prefers spending the evening at home and reading history and memoirs. Still, if Lord Wiltshire gets overworked at the Foreign Office, Francis simply must succeed him. He knows everything about foreign policy from A to Z, after serving so many years in Vienna and Rome. … Well, dear old boy, this is really good-bye. Make good out there, and don't make a fool of yourself with some grass widow going out, or some fair missionaryess. … I suppose some of them are fit to look at? … Play up to the permanencies, and try to write some dispatch that'll interest Lord Wiltshire. Then Silchester may get a chance of putting his oar in and have you shifted to a better post and a more healthy one. After that I'll take a hand and marry you to some nice girl with a little money. … I wonder whether you'll feel lonely out there? But men never are, so long as they can move about and get some shooting … which reminds me I want a lot more leopard skins. Don't mount them: I like to choose my own colours——"

(Enter Lady Silchester's maid.)

Maid: "My lady, before his lordship went out he said I was to remind your ladyship about going to bed early, so I ventured … "

"Quite right, Sophie. … I'll come up in one minute." (Exit maid.) "By the bye, Roger, I ought to ask after the other cousins. How's Maud?" (Roger intimates that good old Maud's all right.) "Maud is an excellent creature; I've always said so, though in a sort of tight-lipped way she's never approved of me. Because she's lost her own complexion in field sports and parish work Maud suspects all other young women of powdering and painting. And Geoffrey?"

"Geoffrey's ship is coming back in May and then he ought to get some leave; and to save your time, I might mention that Maurice will probably be called to the bar in the autumn if he satisfies the Benchers; and as to father, he's more gone over to Rome than ever. … "

"You mean Silchester?"

"Yes. The vicar there is as frantic a 'Romanist' as he is, and together they've had a rare old quarrel with the farmer who grows corn where you got the harvest-bug bites, and objects to excavations. I think father forgets at times he's a nineteenth century Christian. … He is awfully annoyed at the general opinion that Silchester only dates from Christian times in Britain and that the Temple to Venus is really a Christian church. That's what comes from a Classical education. … Now I shall get into a row with your spouse for keeping you up. Besides. You don't really care for the others. … "

Sibyl: "To be frank, I don't. You were the only one that interested me. … I … well, then, Roger, this is the last good-bye but one … " (extends her hand on which he imprints a kiss). "That's quite enough show of affection; Sophie might come back at any moment and forget we are cousins. By the bye, it might be wise if you got some one—I dare say Francis would—to introduce you to the Feenixes before you go. They might serve to mitigate the hostility of Bennet Molyneux. Only don't fall in love with Suzanne and desert me! She's got the Colonies, it's true, but I'm going to have the Foreign Office before you're back. … You mark my words! Ta-ta! Coming, Sophie."

CHAPTER VI

THE VOYAGE OUT

Lucy said to herself she had never felt so miserable in her life as she did during the first night on board the Jeddah, the British India Co.'s steamer that was taking her to East Africa. She occupied one of the upper berths in the cabins off the Ladies' Saloon, in which there were, as far as she could reckon, five or six other occupants, including the stewardess, who passed her time alternately snoring on a mattress in a coign off the main entrance and waiting on such of the ladies as were sea-sick.

The Jeddah was rolling about in a choppy sea oft the Downs. Lucy felt a horrible sensation of nausea creep over her at times, and she clenched her teeth to repress her inclination to vomit; for she was too shy to call upon the much-occupied stewardess for assistance. The back of her head throbbed with pain, her eyes were burning hot with unshed tears, and her poor throat ached with suppressed sobs. Far worse than the physical discomfort of sea-sickness was the intensity of her mental agony, the bitterness of her unavailing regrets. She lay motionless in her narrow bunk, gazing up at the ceiling which seemed almost to rest on her face, and turned over in her memory ceaselessly and with minute detail the events of the last three days: her farewell to home and "darling" Aldermaston; her parting with mother on the platform at Reading … and father … the flying journey to London, when she had almost forgotten her grief in the excitement of seeing the metropolis; her two days stay with Aunt Pardew, who with her husband kept Pardew's Family Hotel in Great Ormond Street. Then: the sight-seeing, the shopping, the visit to the offices of the East African Mission. Here she had received her saloon passage ticket in the Jeddah, and twenty pounds in bright sovereigns for her out-of-pocket expenses by the way. The Secretary had spoken to her so kindly and earnestly that she had felt ashamed of her indifference to the real work of converting black people.

The Secretary, however, had said one thing that somehow perturbed her. He had mentioned that a sweet-natured young woman from her neighbourhood—Sister Jamblin—might also be going to their Mission in East Africa—by the next boat. He thought this would cheer Lucy up; instead of which it annoyed her greatly. … Then came the early rising on what seemed like her execution morning; the hasty breakfast, interrupted with trickling tears and nose-blowing on Aunt Pardew's—Aunt Ellen's—part, as well as hers. … Aunt Ellen was so like darling mother—and yet—it wasn't mother— …

And the long rattle through dirty and dirtier streets in a four-wheel cab with the rest of her luggage on top. The arrival on board the steamer in the docks, where everything was noisy, hurried, and confused with preparations for departure. … Only this morning! Only some twelve hours since she had taken leave with despairing hugs of Aunt Ellen! Why, it seemed at least a month ago. And only three days since she had seen her mother! …

When she mentally uttered the word "mother," she lost control over herself and gave vent to a convulsive choking sob..

"Would you oblige me," exclaimed a peevish voice from the berth below, "by calling for the stewardess to bring you a basin if you have any inclination to be sick? It would be much better than trying to keep it back and making those disagreeable clicking noises in your throat. Excuse me for remarking it, but it is really most distressing, and it fidgets me so I can hardly get to sleep. You really suffer much more by endeavouring to repress sea-sickness than by giving way at once and having it over. … " This the speaker added because she had just given way herself—eruptively—and was now resting from her labours. Lucy was so startled and overawed by this unexpected interruption to her thoughts that she made no answer; but lay quite silent with flushing cheeks and beating heart. "It must be the tall, thin lady," she thought to herself, "I didn't remember she was so close."

Then her thoughts turned to her fellow-passengers. As far as she had ascertained, there were only nine besides herself: five ladies, two Roman Catholic priests or missionaries, and two men, one of whom was a Captain Brentham going out to Unguja, where he was to be Consul.

So, at least, she had heard the pink-cheeked lady say, rather tossing her head when she said it. Her aunt had timidly accosted two of the ladies before leaving the steamer. She had asked them with a redundancy of polite phrases to take Lucy under their protection as far as they might be travelling together. One of them was tall and thin, with a large bony face and cold grey eyes—a little suggestive of Mrs. Baines (Lucy thought); the other was pretty, though the expression of her face, even when she smiled and showed all her white teeth, was somehow rather insincere. But she had the most lovely complexion Lucy had ever seen. It was perfect: very pink in the middle of the cheeks and the palest blush tint over the rest of the face and neck. Her eyes were a dark blueish grey, with very black rims; and her hair a rich golden brown. Lucy was so much fascinated by her appearance and stared at her with such unconscious persistence while her aunt was talking, that at last the pink-cheeked lady encountered her steady gaze with a look of haughty surprise which caused Lucy to lower her eyes.

Neither lady responded very cordially to Mrs. Pardew's deferential request. The tall thin one had said she was only going as far as Algiers, but asked if Lucy was "a Church person" because the East African Mission, she had heard, was run by Methodists. The pretty lady, whose attire Lucy was again scanning with attention, because it was in the latest fashion, had looked at her with rather more interest and said: "Going out to marry a missionary? Well, I can't say I envy your experiences. It must be a wretched life up-country, from all I hear. We shall travel together as far as Unguja, but I can't offer to act as your chaperon. It is very likely my husband may marry you when you get there. I mean—" (seeing Lucy's look of dismay)—"he is the 'marriage' officer there at present, unless Captain Brentham is to deprive him of that privilege, also"—(here she had given a bitter laugh). … "If you feel lonely at any time on the voyage you may come and chat with me … occasionally; though I can't tell you very much about Africa as I have never been there before."

Slowly the night wore away. Lucy as she lay awake stifled her regrets by vowing that when the steamer called at Plymouth she would instantly leave it and return home to her parents, and write to John telling him she was not fitted to be a missionary's wife. He would soon get over his disappointment as Ann Jamblin was going out by the next steamer. She would marry him like a shot. …

In the small hours of the morning the sea calmed down and the ship rolled less. The passenger who had suffered most from sea-sickness—a poor tired-looking woman, mother of too many children—ceased to retch and groan and sank into exhausted repose. Even Lucy at last wove her troubled thoughts into dreams, but just as she had dreamt that this was only a dream and that in reality she was embracing her mother in a transport of happiness, she awoke with tears wet on her face and saw the cabin lit up with garish daylight streaming through the now open skylight. A fresh, exhilarating breeze was sweeping through the stuffy saloon and chasing the nasty odour of sea-sickness. She sat up in her bunk and gazed blankly round, trying to realize the difference between dreamland and reality.

"Would ye like a bath, Miss?" said the stewardess, a coarse-looking but kind-hearted Irishwoman, never quite free from a suspicion of spirit drinking: "Would ye like a bath? Becase if so, ye'd betther follow Mrs. Bazzard."

"I—I—don't know … well, yes, I think I will," replied Lucy, wondering who Mrs. Bazzard was … didn't the name come into John's letters? Just then the door leading out of the saloon towards the bathroom opened and presumably Mrs. Bazzard entered the Ladies' quarters, carrying towels and robed in a white lace-trimmed peignoir, and with her hair roughly piled on the top of her head and a lank fringe parted to either side. "Why, it must be the lady with the beautiful complexion," Lucy was saying to herself, when she saw on nearer approach that the rosy cheeks and blush tints had disappeared, and that the incomer, though otherwise resembling her acquaintance of yesterday, yet had a pale face, colourless and sad. "Poor thing!" thought Lucy, "how she must have suffered last night." And so great was her compassion that it overcame her shyness, and she was about to condole with the lady, when Mrs. Bazzard swept by her abruptly without recognition.

When her toilet was finished, she felt ill-at-ease among the uncongenial inmates of the Ladies' Saloon, and they directed towards her at times a look of hatred as at one who was prying into the mysteries of their clothing and bedizenment; so acting on the advice of the stewardess "to get up a bit of appetite," she staggered along the corridor and climbed the slippery brass-bound stairway till she reached the upper-deck. Here she sank on to the nearest seat and derived her first pleasurable sensation on board the steamer from inhaling the sea-scented breeze in the sunshine of April. It was indeed a fine morning, one of the first emphatic days of spring. The sky was a pale azure in the zenith and along the northern horizon a thin film of pinkish mist veiled the distant line of coast. A man cleaning the brasswork told Lucy they were passing the Isle of Wight; yonder was Bournemouth and presently she would see Portland Bill looming up.

A tall man, smoking a cheroot, was gazing in the direction of Portland Bill. Presently he turned round in Lucy's direction, looked at her rather hard then began pacing the deck. "That," she reflected, "must be Captain Brentham, who lectured at Reading on that snow mountain. …How extraordinary! And he must be the man Mrs. … Mrs. … Bazzard said was to marry me to John when I arrived." She raised her eyes and they met his. On his next turn in walking the deck he paused irresolute, then raising his cap said: "Are you the young lady from my part of the country who is going out to Unguja to be married? The Captain told me about you—unless I have made some mistake and ought to be addressing another lady."

"I think it must be me," said Lucy. "I … I've heard you lecture once at Reading. You're a friend of Lord Silchester's, aren't you? My father is one of his tenants. We live at Aldermaston." Her voice trembled a little in pronouncing the name of the place she now loved—too late—beyond any other.

"Aldermaston—of course I know it, known it from boyhood. I rode over there several times last year to see my cousins, the Grayburns. One of them married Lord Silchester last July, and that's why I stayed at Englefield and gave the Reading lecture. … So you came and heard it?"

"I did; because, as I was going out to marry a missionary, I thought I ought to learn something about East Africa. Your … your lecture made me want to go—awfully. … That wonderful mountain, those clumps of palms, the river and the hippopotami—or was it a lake?"

"Well, you'll see lots of such things if you are going up-country. Whom are you going to marry and where is he stationed?"

"Mr. John Baines, the East African Mission, Ulunga. … "

"Oh" (rather depreciatively), "Nonconformist, Plymouth Brethren, or something of the kind. Now I think of it I went to a big meeting of theirs last year soon as I came back. Yes, I remember. They're a trading and industrial mission some distance inland, in the British as well as the German sphere … good sort of folk, though their mouths are full of texts … but they took me in once when I was half dead with fever and nursed me back to health. And I liked the way they set to work to make the best of the country and the people. … But it will be awfully rough for you; you don't look cut out for what they have to go through. I should have thought the Anglican Mission more your style, if, indeed, you went out as a Missionary at all."

He wished to add, "You're much too pretty," but restrained himself. Just then the breakfast gong sounded and they went down to the Dining Saloon. Brentham rather masterfully strode to near the top of the long table as though knowing he was the most important person on board, and placed himself next but one to the Captain's seat and Lucy on his right, with a wink at the same time to the Chief Steward as though to say "Fix this arrangement."

A moment after another lady with gold hair and a dazzling complexion glided up and nimbly took the seat on Brentham's left hand. The Captain was absent and intimated that they needn't expect him till the Jeddah was away from Plymouth and out of the Channel. The other lady passengers were breakfasting in the Ladies' Saloon. As soon as they were seated and porridge was being offered, the lady on Brentham's left introduced herself as the wife of a colleague: "My husband is Spencer Bazzard, the Vice-Consul at Unguja—I dare say you've heard about him at the F.O.? He's a friend of that dear Bennet Molyneux's, to whom we're both devoted. …Such a grasp of African affairs, don't you think so? My husband already knows Unguja through and through. I'm sure he'll be glad to put you up to the ropes. I've never been there before. Spencer thought he ought to go out first and make a home for me, so I've been a forlorn grass widow for over a year. However, we shall soon be reunited. And I understand we're to look on you as our chief till the Consul-General returns. Spencer's been Sir James's right-hand man. Thank you. Toast, please. No, I won't take butter: it looks so odd. Like honey! Ugh!"

After breakfast, Brentham escorted Lucy to the upper-deck, got her a folding chair and secured it in a sheltered corner, made her comfortable, lent her a novel and a rug, and then resumed his pacing of the deck or occasional study of a language book—he was trying, he told Lucy, to master Swahili by doing Steere's exercises in that harmonious tongue. Mrs. Bazzard commandeered a steward and a deck-chair and established herself close to Lucy with a piece of showy embroidery, bought at Liberty's with half the embroidery done. In a condescending manner she set herself to pump Lucy about Brentham. … Did she know him well? Didn't she think him good-looking? Mrs. Bazzard thought of the two her husband was the finer-looking man. He had longer moustaches and they were a golden brown, like Mrs. Bazzard's hair; he wasn't perhaps quite so tall; but how she was looking forward to reunion with him. He was a paragon of husbands, one of the Norfolk Bazzards. His elder brother, a person of great legal acumen, had from time to time tendered advice of signal value to Mr. Bennet Molyneux. … It was thus they had got "in" with the Foreign Office, and if Mrs. Bazzard were not pledged to inviolable secrecy (because of Spencer's career) there were things she knew and things she could tell about Lord Wiltshire's intentions regarding Africa—and Spencer. … However. … Did Miss—she begged pardon—she had not caught Lucy's name. … Josselin? any connexion of Sir Martin Josselin? Oh, Josling. … Did Miss Josling come from Captain Brentham's part of the country? Not a relation? No, of course not. … Well, did she think him clever? Some—in the Foreign Office—regarded him as superficial. It was his good looks that had got him on, and the friendship of a great lady … but then what scandal-mongers men were! And how jealous of one another! Mrs. Bazzard's husband had got his commission through sheer, outstanding ability, yet at the time people said the most horrid things, both of him and her. … But Lord Wiltshire had remained unshaken, knowing Spencer's value; and undoubtedly held him in view for a very important post in Africa as soon as he should have inducted Captain Brentham into his duties.

Lunch came in due course and was eaten in better appetite by most of the passengers. It was served with coarse plenty, on a lower-middle-class standard of selection and cuisine.

It was a sunny afternoon when the Jeddah anchored in Plymouth harbour. The passengers were informed they might spend four hours on shore, so Captain Brentham proposed to Lucy and to Mrs. Bazzard that he should take them under his escort and give them their last chance of eating a decent dinner at an English hotel. Mrs. Bazzard accepted with a gush of thanks and a determination to commence a discreet flirtation with the acting Consul-General, who was undoubtedly a handsome man. Lucy assented simply to the proposition. She was still a little dazed in the dawn of her new life. But as she went off with the others in the tug she put aside as an unreasonable absurdity any idea of flight to the railway station and a return home. It was a great stay to her home-sickness that there should be on board some one she knew who almost shared her home country, who had actually met people she had met, and who would carry this home knowledge out with him to the same region in Africa as that she was going to. This removed the sting of her regret and remedied her sense of utter friendlessness in the wilds. Was he not actually to be her Consul?

These reflections caused her to sit down in the Hotel Writing Room, whilst dinner was being got ready, and Mrs. Bazzard was titivating, and dash off a hasty letter to "dearest mother" informing her of the brighter outlook. Her mother, overjoyed at this silver lining to the cloud of bereavement, spread the news; and so it reached Englefield, where Lord Silchester was spending the Easter recess. He retailed it to Sibyl … who stamped her foot on the library carpet and said: "There! Didn't I predict it? I said he'd fall in love with a missionaryess!"

"And why not, my love?" replied Lord Silchester. "What if he does?"

A little tossing on the Bay of Biscay sent Mrs. Bazzard to her cabin, and made more scanty the public attendance at meals. But Lucy proved as good a sailor as Brentham, and a great solace to him. For he had his unacknowledged home-sickness too. You could not spend nine months in the best of English country life and the most interesting aspects of London without a revulsion of feeling when you found yourself cut off from all communication with those scenes of beauty, splendour and absolute comfort, and before high ambition had been once more aroused, and the unexplored wilderness had again beckoned her future ravisher. Lucy might be merely a farmer's daughter, a little better educated than such usually were at that period, still an unsophisticated country chit (as Mrs. Bazzard had already summed her up to the tall thin lady); yet she could talk with some slight knowledge about the Silchesters—her mother had been maid to Lord Silchester's mother, and her father was Lord Silchester's tenant. Colonel Grayburn was—or tried to be—a gentleman farmer within a mile of Lucy's home; she had seen Sibyl occasionally during the three years in which the Grayburns had lived in Aldermaston parish. Lucy had never been so far afield as Farleigh Wallop, but she knew Reading, Mortimer, Silchester, Tadley, and even Basingstoke. Merely to mention names like these consoled them both as the steamer ploughed her twelve knots an hour through the "roaring forties."

And when the Jeddah turned into the Mediterranean, with a passing view of the Rock of Gibraltar, and entered upon calm seas, blue and dazzling, their camaraderie increased under Mrs. Bazzard's baleful gaze and interchange of eyebrow-raisings with the thin bony-nosed lady of Lucy's cabin.

The Jeddah anchored off Algiers. The thin lady, who here passes out of the story—I think she was the wife of a British Chaplain—had invited Mrs. Bazzard to lunch with her on shore. Mrs. Bazzard had hastened to accept the invitation, the more willingly since Captain Brentham seemed to have forgotten her existence; except at meal times, when he was obliged to pass the mustard and the sugar. Brentham and Lucy went off together into the picturesque white city, rising high into the half-circle of the hills. They lunched at the Café des Anglais and dined at an hotel near the quay. They climbed the ladder-like streets of the Arab quarter, bought useless trifles, and had a drive out into the country which was gay with genista in full bloom, with red-purple irises and roses, and dignified by its hoary olives, sombre cypresses and rigid palms.

If Lucy had never been so miserable as she was nine days previously, she had probably never felt so happy as now. Certainly she had never looked so pretty. Her violet eyes had a depth of colour new to them; her brown hair a lustre and a tendency to curl in the little strands and wisps that escaped control about her forehead. Her cheeks, ordinarily pale, and her milk-white complexion generally were suffused with a wild rose flush and a warmth of tint caused by the quickened circulation. The sea air and the sunshine chased away the languor that had accompanied a sedentary life. She had not been unobservant, and had taken several hints in costume from Mrs. Bazzard's dress. She had tightened this, expanded that, cut short skirts that might have flopped, diminished a bustle, inserted a frill, and adapted herself to the warmth of the tropics without losing grace of outline or donning headgear of repellent aspect.

At Port Said he already called her "Lucy," and she saw nothing in it that she mightn't accept, a permissible brotherliness due to country associations and the position of guardian, protector that he had assumed. He showed her those sights of Port Said that need not shock a modest girl. They sat side by side to enjoy the thrill with which the unsophisticated then passed through the Suez Canal. One woman passenger had left the ship at Port Said; another at Suez. There only remained the third one—the mother of many babies—changing at Aden into a Bombay boat—besides Mrs. Bazzard and herself in the Ladies' Saloon. The two missionary priests told their breviaries, gave at times a pleasant smile to her pretty face, and concerned themselves no more with her affairs than if she had been an uncriticizable member of the crew. They were Belgians going out for a life's work to Tanganyika, and to them the Protestant English and their ways were unaccountable by ordinary human standards. The captain of the ship had known Captain Brentham in the Persian Gulf and had the utmost confidence in his uprightness. What more reasonable to suppose than that this girl had been placed under his charge, inasmuch as it was he who would be the official to register her marriage when she met her missionary betrothed at Unguja?

Nor had Brentham any but the most honourable intentions. He felt tenderly and pitifully towards Lucy, carrying her country prettiness and innocency into savage Africa, embarking on a life of unexpected frightfulness, unspeakable weariness, of monotony, varied by shocks of terror, by sights of bloodshed and obscenity that might thrill or titillate a strong man, but must inevitably take the bloom off a woman's mind. He even thought, once or twice, of dissuading her from completing the contract, yet shrank from the upset this would entail. Perhaps she really liked this missionary chap? From the description she gave he didn't seem so bad—he was tall and strong and seemingly a man of his hands, with a turn for carpentry, and was the Agent of a very practical Mission. If she recoiled from this marriage, what was she going to do? It was impossible to think of her remaining at Unguja "on her own," and if he sent her back to England at his own expense her parents might resent very strongly his interference. There was his own career to be thought of … and Sibyl. … To a woman like Lucy a marriage with most men of her class, or below it, or immediately above it, would come with rather a shock. She was so marriageable, so marked out as a man's prey that she was bound to go through it some day. Then, when she was married, she would live more or less in his Consular district, and he could keep an eye on her without being unduly attentive. Perhaps Mrs. Ewart Stott was still settled in the Zigula country of the German sphere …she might help her. Very likely she would be able to stick her three years of residence which the Mission generally stipulated for and then return to England.—What a lark if they both went home together and compared experiences?

He might have revolutionized East African affairs in that space of time …

He was quite unconscious that in the two-to-three weeks of their close association on board he had won Lucy's love to such an extent that she was growing slowly to look upon the end of the voyage and the meeting with John as a point of blackness, the entrance to a dark tunnel. …

Meantime, without assuming a forwardness of demeanour which her upbringing discountenanced and the watchfulness of Mrs. Bazzard forbade, she accepted all he gave her voluntarily of his society. The Red Sea was kind to them at the end of April: clear cobalt skies, purple waves, a cool breeze against them, no steamy mist in the atmosphere, and occasional views of gaunt mountains or bird-whitened rocks and islands. They sat in their chairs and talked: talked of everything that came into Lucy's mind. She put to his superior wisdom a hundred enigmas to answer, which her mind was now able to formulate with an aroused imagination.

"You say you approve of missionaries, yet you seem to dislike religion; you tried to get out of attending the Sunday service in the Saloon, and you looked very angry when the Captain asked you to read the Lessons. Don't you believe in anything then?"

"You'll find, Lucy"—Brentham would reply—"that the word 'believe' is very much abused. You may 'think' of such and such a thing as probable, as possible, as desirable—often, indeed, the wish is father to the thought. But to imagine it, is not to believe in it; in the same way in which we are compelled by irresistible conviction to believe in some fact or consequence or event, whether we like it or not. We can only 'believe' what can be tested by the evidence of our senses, by some incontestable piling up of evidence or record of historical facts. … Beyond that there are probabilities and possibilities and suppositions. I can believe the fire would burn my finger if I put it in the flame; or that the earth goes round the sun and that the moon is more or less 240,000 miles away from the earth: because my senses or my reason convince me of the truth of these facts. I can believe that you're a very dear little girl seated next me in a deck-chair on a steamer going out to East Africa: because I can put such a belief to some conclusive test of the senses. But I can't in the same way 'believe' in most of what are called 'religious truths,' because they are only suppositions, guesses, tentative explanations which have lost their value … indeed, have lost their interest. I can't therefore waste my time on such——"

"But," Lucy stammered, "the Bible?"

"Just so: the Bible. How many of you stop to think what the Bible is? A collection of comparatively ancient writings in Hebrew and in Greek, very beautifully translated into Shakespeare's English, with lots of gaps filled up by suggested words and even—as we now think—lots of words and phrases wrongly translated. The Hebrew books may have first been written down at any time between six hundred and one hundred years B.C.; and the New Testament between fifty and a hundred-and-fifty years after Christ—at any rate in the form in which we know them. The original texts were uttered or written by men who only knew a small part of the Mediterranean world, who thought the earth was flat and the rest of the Universe only an arched dome over the earth. Job may have had grander conceptions, but the early Christian writers were ignorance embodied. They were ready to believe anything and everything to be a miracle, and to invent the most preposterous fairy stories to account for commonplace facts. At the same time they often overlooked the beauty and simplicity and practical value of Christ's teaching and also the fact that a good many of his … "

"What an abstruse conversation," said Mrs. Bazzard, breaking in out of the star-lit darkness on Roger's disquisitions. She hung about them in the Red Sea, especially after dark, and had a tiresome way of suddenly making her presence known. Perhaps, however, it was just as well, and, indeed, though Roger was annoyed at the moment at having his eloquent thinking aloud interrupted—because in such monologues we are generally trying to convince ourselves as well as our auditory—he also felt some relief at the excuse for dropping the argument. Why on earth should he undermine Lucy's stereotyped beliefs? What could he give her—in the life she was going to lead, too—in place of them?

But the discussion was revived ever and again by Lucy's persistent questions. She elicited from him in general that although he approved of the material results of missionary work and the ethics generally of Christianity, he mocked at creeds, thought prayer futile—especially the fossilized prayers of Judaism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, because they were inapposite to our present age, bore little relation to our complicated sorrows and needs, our new crimes, difficulties, agonies, and temptations. He found the Psalms, all but two or three, utterly wearisome in their tedious woes and waitings, aches and pains probably due to too carnivorous a dietary; untempting in their ideals—"more bullocks for the altar … and the fat of rams. … " Then our hymns—all but three or four—were gross or childish in their imagery, abject in their attitude to a Cæsar or a Sultan of a God, who all the time watched inflexibly the Martyrdom of Man and the ruthless processes of Nature without lifting a finger to stay the cyclone or the epidemic … and so on. … His views were very much modelled on those of Winwood Reade and on Burton's gibes at "Provvy" (Lucy shuddered at the irreverence and expected a meteor to cleave the ship in two), and he had brought out with him from England Cotter Morrison's "Service of Man."

Lucy sometimes felt so shocked at his negations that she resolved to speak with him no more, but to apply herself to the study of the Swahili Grammar he had lent her. Then at the sight of him and at his morning greeting and the kindly companionship at meals, she could not remain aloof. At any rate, he had said that you ought to act as a Christian even if you could not swallow Christian theology. That was a great admission. And he seemed to have numerous friends among the missionaries at Unguja and in the interior, which would hardly be the case if he were a bad man. … Besides, his father was a clergyman.

Aden came as a welcome surcease to these discussions. It was concrete and indisputable, and of remarkable interest when interpreted by a Brentham. … Steamer Point with its crowds of Indian and British soldiers, Jews with ringlets and tall caps selling ostrich plumes, Somalis like Greek gods in ebony offering strange skins, skulls, and horns for sale, and ostrich eggs; the drive—in a jingling carriage over sandy roads, past red-black crags on one side, with an intensely ultramarine sea on the other—to the Arab town; the vast cisterns, the rich vegetation at the cisterns; and then, after an interval of absolutely sterile rock-gorges (vaguely suggestive of the approach to Aladdin's cave in the Arabian Nights), a sea-side ravine with an unexpected flora of aloes, euphorbias, mesembryanths, and acacias. … Even Mrs. Bazzard, with her Bayswater mind, was momentarily impressed by Brentham's pleasantly imparted knowledge of all these things. You never noticed how extraordinary they were until he pointed it out. She was for the time being conciliated by his having invited her to accompany Lucy on the day's excursion and by the generous way in which he stood treat and presented her, as well as Lucy, with ostrich feather fans and amusing gewgaws made from sea-shells.

After Aden the sky clouded; metaphorically, with the coming end of this wonderful episode in Lucy's life, materially with some tiresome manifestations of the monsoon. I forget whether it blew behind and left the Jeddah wallowing in the trough of great indigo waves and rolling drearily; or blew against her progress, causing her to progress like a rocking-horse. But it imparted a storminess, a sense of exasperated emotion to this pair of lovers—as they were, unadmittedly. Fortunately, it also made the footing of Mrs. Bazzard's high-heeled Bayswater shoes uncertain on the unstable deck, so she relaxed her watchful spying on their conversations. Lucy was alternately silent and wistful and almost noisily vivacious, with hands that shook as they passed a tea-cup. She had begun to realize that in five or six more days the voyage would end in her meeting John as an ardent bridegroom; that she would never belong to Roger, she would pass out of his life as swiftly as she had entered it, be at most a pleasant and amusing memory of a half-ignorant little person with whom he had spent good-naturedly much of his time on a long sea voyage.

Roger on his part, in smoking-room reflections would feel he had gone much too far—compromised her, perhaps played a rather foolish part himself, for a man with high ambitions. There was that bitch of a woman, that quintessence of a Bayswater boarding-house, Mrs. Bazzard, wife of a—rotter, probably—whose nose he had put out of joint. She was capable—and and to conciliate her and win her over would be degrading—of putting any construction on his flirtation. How, at such times, before turning in, or even while playing whist in the Captain's cabin and thinking of anything but the game, he would curse these long steamer voyages and these episodes of love! There was that voyage out in 1880—he had narrowly missed a breach of promise action then, and he would be hanged if he'd set out to be more than sociable. And the last time he had returned to England … Mrs. Traquhair, the wife of the chief electrician at Unguja. … Only the fact that in the Mediterranean she had developed one of those Rose Boils which were a legacy of Unguja's mosquitoes, and which confined her to her cabin till the Bay of Biscay (when they were all sea-sick), had prevented the irrevocable. And all the time he believed himself engaged to Sibyl! And afterwards, when he had met Mrs. Traquhair and her sister—and the sister! Oh my God—in London and had dined them at the "Cri." and taken them to see Arthur Roberts from a box, and had scanned Mrs. T.'s profile as he had never done before and watched her laugh at the comedian, showing all the gold in her teeth … he asked himself how on earth he could have kissed her so passionately as they were passing through the Suez Canal. Yet she couldn't have been a bad sort because she had never attempted to bother him or follow it up. … But he couldn't class Lucy with Mrs. Traquhair or the siren of the 1880 voyage. She was utterly good and innocent of schemes to entrap him. A sweet little thing …

As they passed into the Indian Ocean between Guardafui and Sokotra, there was a temporary lull in the wind. It was a moonlight night; they were sitting side by side under the open sky, for the deck-awning had been removed on account of the monsoon. A sudden fierce longing—there was no one on deck that he could see—seized him to take her in his arms and kiss her. And there came a telepathic message that she was aching to be so taken and kissed. But he resisted the impetus, with clenched hands on the arms of his chair. Silence had set in between them. A catch of Lucy's breath was faintly audible, and—dare I say it? A snivel, a tiny snivel.

"Lucy? Crying? My dear child! Why … cheer up. We shall soon be there.. You're not cold?"

"You don't understand. … I … I … don't want to get there. … I don't want to marry him; I hate the very idea. … "

"Oh, but this will never do. … This is foolishness, believe me. Lucy! Pull yourself together."

Lucy now sobbed frantically.

Mrs. Bazzard was heard saying from quite close by, "Which is Gyuardifwee and which is what-you-may-call-'em—Ras Hafoon? I mean, the cape where some of the steamers run ashore in the mist, and then you have to walk through Somaliland and get sunstroke?"

Brentham exclaimed under his breath: "Damn that woman!" and audibly, even a little insolently replied: "I'm blessed if I know. You'd better ask the Captain. He's on the bridge and dying for a gossip, and he'll probably give you a cup of cocoa."

Mrs. Bazzard walked away—or pretended to do so.

"Lucy dear. I want to speak to you while that cat has gone out of ear-shot. Calm yourself and listen, because I must speak in a low tone. If you feel you would sooner die than go through with this marriage, you shan't be forced into it. I will speak to Archdeacon Gravening … or the Bishop … and they will know of some nice women of the Anglican Mission who would take you in for a few weeks … till there is a return steamer. … Then on the plea of 'health' you can go back to England. I could easily advance the money for the steamer passage … some day your parents could repay me. But even if they didn't, it doesn't matter. I do so want you to be happy. … I blame myself awfully for the silly things I've said to you … about religion … it may have made you dislike mission work. … "

But Lucy sobbed out "It hadn't … that she was a little fool and he mustn't take any notice … she'd never, never behave like this again … after his extraordinary kindness too, which she would always be grateful for. He mustn't think any more about it or ever refer to it again. … "

And before he could say anything more, or that cat, Mrs. Bazzard, return, she slipped down to her cabin, where fortunately she was alone and could cry her fill without attracting attention. But as she lay on the bunk, she set her teeth and resolved, come what may, she would not put thousands of miles between her and … "Roger" … she mentally uttered the name. Better to live within a few hundred miles of where he was and sometimes see and hear him. Why …Why… did he not ask her to marry him? Yes, and ruin his career. What would they all say at Unguja … and John? … Poor John! what a shock it would be to him. There was the note he had sent to greet her at Aden, to the address of the steamer agent. She had opened it, but not read it through, so infatuated was she with Brentham just then. … The next morning Lucy breakfasted in the Ladies' Saloon, pleading sea-sickness. Later on, she went to the upper-deck, but armed herself with the Swahili Grammar, a defence against a Brentham who purposely stayed away, talking with the Captain, and none against Mrs. Bazzard, who pestered her with inquiries as to her "headache," expressing the quotation marks in her tone.

Relations however became more normal all round the day after that. In two more days they had anchored off Lamu. Lucy saw two low islands, with hazy forest country on the distant mainland. Lamu island had low sandhills projecting into the sea, and on one of them was an obelisk or pillar which Captain Brentham said was an important historical monument erected by the Portuguese nearly four hundred years before. The two women were eager to land and see East Africa for the first time. They went ashore with him in the Vice-Consul's boat; for there was a Vice-Consul here who had been expecting Brentham's visit and was delighted to find two English ladies invading his solitude. They saw, when they landed, masses of vague masonry, the remains of Portuguese or Arab forts, and a litter of human skulls and bones on the beach at which they both shrieked in simulated horror. These might have been the results of the last Somali raid, or of slaves who had died on the shore unshipped, owing to the vigilance of British cruisers, or even have dated back to the expulsion of the Portuguese by the Arabs two hundred years before. The town of Lamu was a two miles' walk along the sandy shore from the point, where they had landed, but the sight of the extraordinary coloured, blue, red, and green crabs that scuttled and yet threatened with uplifted claws, and of the natives who accompanied them in a laughing rabble, some clothed to the heels, others practically naked, relieved the tedium of the journey. The smells from the precincts and the heart of Lamu town were so awful as to be interesting. The strongest—from rancid shark's liver oil—was said to be quite wholesome, but that from the sewage and the refuse on the shore-mud caused them to hold handkerchiefs to noses. However, the town was very picturesque with its Arab and Persian houses of white stone, its Saracenic doorways, in the angles of which Persian pottery was embedded, and its heavy doors of carved wood. The Consulate stood a little beyond the town, in a walled garden of palms, fig trees, and trees of gorgeous scarlet blossoms. Here they had a cup of tea, and the Consular boat, which had been following them along the shore, took them back to the Jeddah, thankful in the blazing sunshine for their pith helmets and white umbrellas.

This excursion somehow, with its introduction to the realities and romance of tropical Africa, braced up Lucy for the next day but one, when in the very early morning the Jeddah anchored in the roadstead of Unguja. She was dressed by eight o'clock and sat awaiting in the stuffy Ladies' Saloon the arrival of John, or whoever was coming to meet her. Sat with trembling, perspiring hands in open-work cotton gloves, wishing the suspense over. There were sounds of loud voices on deck. … Mrs. Bazzard, exploding in connubial raptures over her husband; Bazzard, in between her embraces, striving to assume a partly respectful, partly comrade-like attitude with Captain Brentham, to combine a recognition that he was greeting his official superior for the moment with the assured standing of one who had had longer experience of official cares. She heard him saying: "Your boat is waiting for you, Sir. I will arrange to send a lighter for your baggage as soon as it is up out of the hold. … "

Then blundering steps down some stairway and along the passage, and John stood before her, sun-helmet in hand, eyes blazing with hungry love, saying, stammering rather—"My Lucy! C—Come at last! Oh, how I've looked forward. … How … " But he crushed her to him in a rough embrace, unmindful of her delicate cotton dress and of the fact that his red face was covered with perspiration. … But there was something so appealing and yet so masterful in his love, and also something so reminiscent of the park seat at Englefield and that Sunday walk, that Lucy in yielding to his embrace said within herself, "How could I have thought of throwing him over?"

Together they went on shore. Brentham had not even stayed to say good-bye. Somebody saw after her luggage. She had so lost interest in it that she did not care if anything was missing. … Then John said: "I hope you've brought out the Harmonium that your uncle gave us," and she replied a little listlessly: "Oh yes! it was such a bother getting it across London, but I think it's on board."

"I am taking you," said John, inconsequently, in the boat, devouring her with his eyes all the time, "to stay with Mrs. Ewart Stott until we're married."