Chapter IX: Part 9

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.)

Well: when the wedding is over, I propose breaking to him the F.O. instructions to return and give an account of himself. I must give him just enough time to go over to the mainland and try to settle things at his Consulate there. The Spencer Bazzards--who have a down on him--report that an utter muddle followed his departure for the interior last September, and accuse his Indian clerk of embezzling Consular funds, and, worse still, of selling the office cipher code to the Germans. This, if true, is a confounded nuisance, as it will oblige us to make changes all round. Fortunately it is only Cipher Q.

I suppose you know Captain Wissmann has arrived at Medina at the head of a force of over a thousand picked men to fight the Arabs to a finish? Other German officers have met him there with further contingents--Zulus and Makua. Wissmann's people are mainly Sudanese. I suppose we have done right in enabling him to raise this force on what is practically British territory--British or Portuguese? I like Wissmann personally. After all--as Brentham says--if we hadn't the pluck to take all East Africa for ourselves at the time we were first challenged by Bismarck, it is better that the German share should be properly controlled and not fall back into a state of anarchy and slave-raiding. But, of course, what ties our hands in all these matters is the intense desire of France to raise the Egyptian question to our disadvantage.--Therefore, don't think I am girding at the Office for irresolution. The French here make my life a burden to me with their intrigues....

* * * * *

Yours sincerely,
GODFREY DEWBURN.

_From Lucy Brentham to Mrs. Albert Josling, Church
Farm, Aldermaston._

Mbweni,
Unguja,
_April_ 2, 1889.

DARLING MOTHER,--

I expect you got my letter written early in January after I had got back to Unguja. The news must have come to you as an awful shock. And what it has been to Mrs. Baines I dare not _think_. I expect I shall get some sort of answer from you in a day or two when the mail comes in. But as there is a steamer going to-morrow I dash off this letter to give you other news: _good_ news this time, dearest.

I was married on March 31st last to Captain Roger Brentham, the Consul for the Mainland. You know all about him from my letters. It is true it is only a little more than six months since poor John died, and some people will think it much too soon afterwards to marry again, but you and Father will understand. Roger is shortly going home.--_Think_ of it, darling mother! We are going--or should one say, "we are coming"?--HOME. I put it in capitals. He has wanted to marry me ever since we knew of John's death. We both feel sure John would think it the wisest thing to do, even Ann Jamblin does. Well, Roger being called back by the Foreign Office, he could hardly leave me behind here and if he hadn't asked me to marry him I couldn't have stopped here all by myself, unless I had joined some missionary society. And that I didn't feel inclined to do. I don't think I'm suited for the work. But don't think I want _to run down_ the Missionaries. Far from it, after all I've seen. Mission work quite changed John. It made him so _good_ and _unselfish_. And although I've many reasons for feeling sore and angry about Ann Jamblin that was.--She isn't dead, but she's married in a sort of a way to that Ebenezer Anderson of our Mission.--Well, even Ann is twice the woman she was in old days at Tilehurst. They call her here--at least, the local paper does--It's run by an Eurasian--I'll tell you some day what Eurasian means ... they call her "The Heroine of Hangodi." I believe somebody is going to write about her in the English papers; and the German commander on the mainland, Captain Wissmann--has sent her his compliments, and said he can always admire a brave woman no matter what her nationality. Isn't it all funny when we think of what she was like at school and how greedy she used to be at the prayer-meetings? There is a missionary couple here--I've mentioned them in my other letters, Mr. and Mrs. Stott. You can't _think_ how good they've been to me. I've got lots and lots and lots to tell you when we meet. But I must be quick and finish this letter.

Well: I was married to my darling Roger last Wednesday, and if it wasn't every now and then that I think about poor John I should be the happiest woman alive. Mother, I've _always_ loved him since that first morning we met on the steamer and he pointed out the Isle of Wight, and then took such care of me all through the voyage. And he says he fell in love with me the same time. Isn't that _wonderful_ when you think of all the great ladies he has seen, many of them I'm sure in love with him. When I asked him why, he just kissed me and said it was my violet eyes and my look of utter helplessness. But I feel it is _too sacred_ to talk or write about. I was always a true wife to poor John. People may think and say what they like. There is a horrid old cat here on the Mainland, who also travelled out with me. I'm sure she says and writes horrid things about me. It's only jealousy. But even now, Mother, I haven't told you almost the most wonderful thing of all! I did just say in my last letter how I'd gone to stay with the wife of the Consul-General. It happened this way. When we first landed here from one of those dreadful Arab sailing-boats that are full of what you _will_ call B flats but what I think--and so does Roger--it is much more sensible to call "bugs" straight out--when we landed Roger said, "You'd better go to Mr. Callaway and stay there first till I can find out what it's best to do for you." So there I went, and I was just _miserable_. I didn't like to tell you how much at the time for fear of its upsetting you. I really felt almost like committing suicide, only I should never do anything so wicked. But there I lay, inside my mosquito curtain in a room like a Turkish bath, crying, _crying_ to myself about poor John and thinking I should never see Roger again, and what Mrs. Baines would say when I came back all alone; when in walked Lady Dewburn, the wife of the Consul-General--"my boss"--as Roger calls him. She would have it that I was to go away with her then and there. Mother, I'd hardly any clothes after that dreadful journey; that was one reason I felt ashamed to go out. Well, she put me in a lovely cool bedroom at the top of her house.--It has a flat roof and I used so to enjoy walking out of my room and looking at the sea and the natives down below and the ships and palms. She had my meals sent up to me and often came up herself to inquire, and for a week she got Indian tailors to cut out and sew clothes for me to wear. When they were ready I had got quite well again, and then she brought me down and introduced me to her husband, who is the great man of this place. _He_ used rather to make fun of me, tease me you know, but he was kind under it all. Mother, if I'd been _their own daughter_ they couldn't have treated me kinder. She wouldn't let me thank her, said I was a distressed British subject and it was her duty. And after I'd been staying with them about six weeks and was beginning to say I ought to earn my living or else go home, she said, wouldn't you as an alternative like to marry Roger Brentham? And I said, He'd never ask me and if he did I should only spoil his career. And she said, _Nonsense_. And the next day, when they had both gone out driving, Roger came to the room where I was working with Halima (who, strange to say, has married his cook!) and asked me to be his wife. How could I say anything but "yes"? I know now I should have died of consumption or something if he hadn't. But of course I said--"It can't be till poor John has been dead a year." Then that evening when I told Lady Dewburn, she said, "Nonsense! I can see no reason why it shouldn't be at the end of March. Then if Captain Brentham has to go home you can return with him." So, of course, I gave in.

I'm afraid it'll make lots of people angry, especially Mrs. Baines. How can we break it to her?

There are a _thousand_ other things I can tell you, but if I don't finish this letter now I shan't be in time to put it in the Agency mail-bag, which I always think is so much safer than the ordinary post, and I don't have to stamp it.

So in a few more weeks darling mother you will meet again

Your own
LUCY.

P.S. Love to father and the dear girls. _Do_ see what you can do with Mrs. Baines. I feel _so_ sorry for her, and I should so like to tell her about John. Things might have been so different if only my little baby had lived, John felt it _dreadfully_.

Private and Confidential.
H.M. Agency and Consulate-General,
Unguja,
_April_ 2.

DEAR BAZZARD,--

I take advantage of a British steamer which is crossing to-day to Medina to send you this hurried note.

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.

Mr. Molyneux's room at the Foreign Office.

"Ah, Brentham! Thought you'd soon be turning up. Dewburn's been writing to me about you.... Have a cigar? There are the matches. Well. Horrid thing to say, when a man's only just arrived, but you've stirred up a reg'lar hornet's nest among the unco' guid. This confounded Nonconformist Conscience that Stead's invented or created. There's an obvious reference to you in the last _Review of Reviews_ and Labby's put a very caustic article in last week's _Truth_, trying to get at the Government's East African policy through you. All this has mightily upset the Old Man----"

Roger endeavours to give a lucid and not too lengthy account of the whole sequence of events which led up to his marriage at Unguja; expresses the most justly-felt wrath against the mosquitoes of the Press; offers to horsewhip them or have them up before a court of law....

_Molyneux_: "My _dear_ fellow, what _are_ you talking about? You'd simply do for yourself and have to quit the career. First place, horsewhipping's out of date--dam' low, in any case--in the second, there's nothing _libellous_ in what they've written--only general application, don't you know. If you took any action on it you'd just dot the _i_'s and cross the _t_'s and get laughed at. And as to what they say in Parliament, can't call them into court over _that_. No. Best leave it alone. _Most_ unfortunate. Dare say not a _bit_ your fault. Still I think you might have been a trifle more prudent, not--so to speak--have run your head into the noose. _Quite_ agree with Dewburn you've done the _right_ thing in marrying her....

"Well: so much for that. Now how about this missing cipher? Not sure _that_ don't upset us a bit more than your carryings-on with missionary ladies...."

Roger: "But I _didn't_ carry on--I--I--really must protest against these assumptions----"

_Molyneux_: "_All_ right. Keep your hair on.... Don't get into a wax.... I'm only talkin' for your own good.... But tell us about this cipher."

_Roger_ (still with an angry flush): "What _can I_ tell? I arrive at Medina and am told all in a hurry to re-organize the Consulate there. There was no one but an Indian clerk in charge. I simply take him over. I put my cipher in the safe, but I had to leave the key with the clerk when at very short notice I started for up-country to warn these confounded missionaries.... Wish to _God_ I'd paid no heed to your instructions" ("I _say_, old chap, draw it mild ... and mind what you're doin' with that cigar-ash." Roger strides to the fireplace and throws away the cigar into it.) "I wish to God," he continues, "I'd left 'em alone to stand the racket if the Arabs _did_ come. However, what I mean to say is, I only set out to do what I was told to do and couldn't foresee how long it would take. I didn't get back to my Consulate till last April. _How_ can I tell what happened to the clerk or the cipher or the money? I paid up the deficit.... How do I know what those Bazzards were up to? Mrs. Bazzard----"

_Molyneux_ (his manner has insensibly become stiffer and more ceremonious): "I think we'll leave the Bazzards out of it. At any rate they aren't here to defend themselves. We must refer the whole matter to Dewburn for inquiry. Meantime here you are on leave and I dare say badly wanting a rest. My advice is: go down to the country.... Your father lives in the country, doesn't he?" (Roger nods.) "Well, go down and rusticate a bit and take Mrs. Brentham with you. In a week or two the newspapers and the Nonconformist Conscience will be in full cry after something else. As to whether you should go back, we must leave that to the Old Man. He may think a change of scene advisable. Any use asking you to a bachelor dinner? My wife's out of town just now."

Roger (_very_ unwisely, scenting in this a reluctance to ask Lucy too): "No, thank you. I think I'll take your advice and go off to the country. Ungrateful sort of country--I mean the nation--mine is! Here I've made most important discoveries I've had no time to report on, I've ... I've ..." (Feelings too much for him. Takes his hat and stick, bows to Molyneux and leaves his room.) In all this he has acted most foolishly. If he'd gone to Molyneux's--to "Good old Spavins's"--as the clerks called him in the room opposite--bachelor dinner, had told a few good stories and hunting adventures, Molyneux, who really had his kindly side like most men, would have forgotten the old grudge about his intrusive appointment, have taken a much more charitable view about the lost cipher and the hasty marriage and have written a memo for Lord Wiltshire's eye which would have suggested a year's employment at home and a fresh start in East Africa. Mrs. Molyneux would have called on Mrs. Brentham at Hankey's and Mrs. Brentham would have been pronounced by Molyneux "a dam' good-lookin' wench--don't wonder she turned his head a bit--there can't have been much to look at in East Africa"--and Brentham's difficulties were over; and the whole fate of East Africa might have been a little different. As it was, he wrote some such memo as this for the information of the Under-Secretary of State: "Saw Brentham to-day--from Zangia Consulate, East Africa. Looks rather fagged. Evidently had a rough time. But very angry when asked to explain the awkward circumstances of his very protracted journey through the interior with the lady who is now his wife. He protested with much heat against the attacks of the Press and the attitude of the Missionary Societies. I dare say he is a maligned man, but I should also say he is what we call in diplomacy 'un mauvais coucheur.' Difficult to get on with, quarrelsome with colleagues. He could throw no light on the loss of his cipher. Did not seem to realize what trouble and expense it has caused. He has six months' leave of absence due. Suggest when that is coming to an end he be offered some Consular post in Norway or Algeria."

Roger called at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, but was told by the man-servant opening the door that Lady Silchester and the little Lord Silchester were still in the country, at Engledene, and that it was improbable her Ladyship would be in town again until the autumn, being in deep mourning. Roger scribbled on his card (which would be sent on with other cards of calling and polite inquiries):

"So much want to see you. Starting to-morrow for Church Farm, Aldermaston.--ROGER."

Roger delivered his blushing wife, rather overdressed (for he had insisted on a fashionable outfit), to her parents at Aldermaston; he shook hands heartily with his father-in-law to whom he took an immediate liking, kissed his mother-in-law (to her confusion) and his sisters-in-law, and then let his father-in-law drive him over to the nearest station from which he could get a train to Basingstoke (for Farleigh), promising to return in four days after he had seen his father, sister, and brothers, one of them at Portsmouth. When he did get back to Church Farm, Lucy was in bed, ill, and his father and mother-in-law were looking grave and preoccupied. They were also--as country people are--a little tiresomely reticent. _What had happened_? _This_, as he afterwards pieced it together.

When Mrs. Baines had received Ann Anderson's letter--written, as you will remember, about November 30, but not posted from Unguja till early in January--she had a knock-down blow. It is true the Mission on the receipt of a telegram from Callaway had warned her to expect serious news from Hangodi, but she had not paid much attention, so convinced was she that God must avert all harm from a son of hers. But the letter--from Ann, too, whom she would have welcomed as a daughter-in-law--was convincing, and for the first few hours after she had read it twice through, she locked herself into their joint bedroom to Mr. Baines's great discomfiture--he might wash and sleep where he liked. She had shouted at him through the keyhole, in a hoarse, strangled voice he hardly recognized as hers, that his son John was dead, killed by the "A-rabs," no doubt with that slut of a Lucy's full approval; and left to digest this dreadful news as best he might. Eliza, touched to great pity and a sympathetic sobbing over the fate of Master John, made him up a sort of a shakedown bedroom arrangement in the "libery," where he did his accounts....

Mrs. Baines did not emerge from her fastness for a day and a half. When she did come out she was composed, but with such an awful look in her eyes that no one dared offer sympathy or proffer advice. She gave her orders in as few words as possible. She set to work to confection the deepest mourning and pulled the blinds down, and down they had to remain a full week. During that week by the aid of candle-light she wrote a good many letters--for her. Eliza, who had to post them, for Mrs. Baines shrank from encountering friends or acquaintances till the week was up, noticed that some of them bore quite grand addresses: the member for Reading, the Marquis of Wiltshire, the Editor of the _Review of Reviews_....

How did Mrs. Baines know so soon that Lucy and Roger had returned to England and come down to see the Joslings at Church Farm? Why, because the miller of Aldermaston saw the Brenthams arrive at Aldermaston station and witnessed the greeting of Farmer Josling--such a fine upstanding man--and his son-in-law--just such another, only rather sallow-like and thin; and the miller told old Mrs. Bunsby of the general shop at Theale; and Mrs. Bunsby, wanting badly a supply of ginger beer, for the weather was getting warm and Oxford undergraduates sometimes pushed their walking tours as far as the Kennet Valley--Mrs. Bunsby walked over to _John Baines & Co._ that very afternoon to give an order for four dozen and mentioned the fact of "pore Master John's widow" having come back to her home "with a noo 'usband."

The assistant who registered the order for delivery in their next round, after Mrs. Bunsby left slipped into Mr. Baines's "libery," and half-whispered the news of Lucy's return. When, soon afterwards, Mrs. Baines came into the dining-room to preside over the tea table, he--(he looked very aged--my astral body floating over the scene felt a twinge of pity for him; in his own dull way he had been fond and proud of his only son and worked to provide him with a competency--some day)--he, with some preparatory clearing of the throat, said: "Er ... Hrhm.... Er ... Lucy's back, I hear...."

"Indeed?" replied his wife swiftly. "Where? Bridewell? That's where she _ought_ to be...."

"I dare say, my dear, but she's at Church Farm, her parents', you know.... P'raps she could tell you something about John?..."

"P'raps she could. But I won't have her name mentioned in _this_ house. _Do you understand_?"

Mr. Baines did, and took this intimation as final.

The next day was Sunday. Mrs. Baines spent much of the day (as she had decided she could not go to chapel) communing in prayer with her Maker in the bedroom fastness. Some of the prayers heard by the frightened Eliza through the keyhole sounded more like objurgations, and the Scripture readings were the minatory passage directed by the Minor Prophets against harlots and light women.

After two days of Aldermaston Lucy had quite recovered her spirits--she had felt rather depressed at Hankey's Mansions and not at all lightened at heart by her week of shopping under Aunt Pardew's furtive guidance and rather checked congratulations. On the Monday morning she was standing with her parents and Clara in front of the beautiful old farm house, inhaling the scents of May, revelling with the eye over the landscape beauty she had so often recalled to herself in Africa. Farmer Josling had repeatedly given expression to the pleasure he had derived from the looks, manner, and hand-grip of his son-in-law, and Mrs. Josling still blushed and laughed at the remembrance of his having kissed her cheek. They could not help the gratification of feeling that their daughter's second marriage was into a social stratum worthy of her looks, her superior education and their hopes for her....

Clara, walking away to glance at the bee-hives, called back to the group, "Here's Mrs. Baines coming up from the road."

Instinctively the parents withdrew into the porch of the house, leaving their daughter to meet Mrs. Baines for the first few minutes alone, with no other listeners to the sad story she had to tell. Lucy, like the bird fascinated by the snake, remained where she was, her fingers playing with a pansy she had just picked. Mrs. Baines, all in black, with black plumes to a large bonnet and black gloves, walked slowly and consideringly up to the spell-bound Lucy. When she was close to her she said: "_What ... have ... you done ... with ... my ... son?..._"

"Oh! I ... I ... haven't you heard?" stammered Lucy.

"I _have_ heard ... and I've guessed much _more_ than I've heard.... _You ... you harlot--you adulteress--you--you strumpet!_" roared Mrs. Baines, who had been cooking her vengeance and rehearsing this scene with a dictionary, during the last twenty-four hours. And forthwith before Lucy could reply or any one intervene she had dealt her two terrific boxes on the ears, first on one side and then on the other.

Lucy fell on to the pansy bed, temporarily stunned. Mr. Josling, scarcely able at first to believe ears and eyes, rushed out with a roar like a bull, picked up Mrs. Baines round her iron stays, as though she weighed no more than a wisp, ran round to the other side of the house where there was a great horse trough full of water, and soused in this the head and huge plumed bonnet of the angry woman. And again, giving her time to catch her breath, he plunged her head and bonnet beneath the water. Then, standing her on her feet, he said, "_There! that'll_ cool your hot blood. That is some return for your half-killing my daughter--you _blasted she-tiger, you_ ... Be _off_! Or I'll set the dogs on you.... I'll..."

"Father, _dear_," said Clara, crying for pity and rage over the hapless Lucy, yet careful of appearances: "Father _dear, don't_ shout so! For goodness' sake, let the old witch go, and don't attract everybody's attention. What ever _will_ the neighbours think! Here!" she said, thrusting on Mrs. Baines the umbrella she had brought and dropped on the garden path at the moment of the assault, "be off with you, you wicked old woman. It's a mercy father ain't killed you, he's that strong. And if you've done any real harm to my sister, we'll soon let you know and have you up before the courts, you _wicked old snivelling psalm-singin' Methody_!"

Mrs. Baines said nothing to this counter-attack. She drained the water from her plumes with her fingers, put her flopping bonnet as straight as was possible, pressed the water from her shoulders, and made some attempt to wipe her face with a handkerchief; and then, summoning all her strength and resolution (for in reality she was much shaken and near collapse), she walked firmly past them, uttering never a word, walked slowly down the garden path, turned to the right and contrived not to halt on her way back to the station till she was well out of their sight. They were a little over-awed by her dignity.

It was decided--and Lucy when she could speak implored them to adopt this negative course--not to write to Roger, and as far as possible not to talk of this painful scene to any neighbour. But to keep it from country gossip was an impossibility. This, that, or the other farm servant had seen it, from the rafters of a barn in repair, from the stables, from the dairy window; and so the treatment old Mrs. Baines had served out to her former daughter-in-law became noised abroad, penetrated from the kitchen and still-room of Engledene House to its mistress's dressing-room. A vague rumour of it even reached the African Department of the Foreign Office and Molyneux publicly shrugged his shoulders in Sir Mulberry Hawk's room. The Carnarvons at Highclere heard a perversion of it--rather a humorous one--from one of their farmer tenants, and reconsidered their idea of asking Brentham and Mrs. Brentham over to a week-end party to relate some of their extraordinary experiences. The Vicar of Farleigh Wallop realized that something of the kind had occurred to interrupt his musings on the arrangements of the streets in Calleva Atrebatum, and when he drove over with Maud to make the acquaintance of his daughter-in-law--now convalescent and thankful to find the drum of the worst smacked ear had not been split--he was merely coldly polite and expressed very little interest in missionary questions. Indeed he took no interest in Christian Missions after 700 A.D. Up to that time he reckoned--more or less--they had been spreading the ideas of Imperial Rome, of Roman civilization.

Roger, however, though he commented little on the episode of the assault, and felt in every way the least said, soonest mended, borrowed his father-in-law's riding-horse and rode early one morning over to Tilehurst. He entered the factory, of design, just as Mr. Baines was about to take his seat in the office and run his eyes over the day's orders. "Oh, don't be alarmed!" he said to Mr. Baines, who was instinctively about to withdraw, guessing his visitor's identity. "I'm not a violent heathen like your wife. Sit down and let us talk this over like sensible men."

He then put the matter very plainly before Mr. Baines.

Mrs. Baines, summoned by half-fearful, half-exultant Eliza, had "locked herself in her bedroom, she 'ave an' ast me to go for the police!"

"Then you, too," said Roger to the startled Eliza, "remain and hear what I have to say. Since your termagant of a mistress refuses to come, you shall repeat my words to her. You are, from what my wife tells me, an old and trusted servant of the family" (Eliza bridled and pleated the hem of her apron). "When she returns to sanity, you may get a chance of saying a word to your mistress in season, even if her husband has not the courage to do so. Tell her then, if she ever annoys or slanders or upsets my wife in any way I will leave no stone unturned to punish her. And if she appears at Church Farm or anywhere else again with the intention of assaulting my wife I will knock her on the head like the mad dog she is. Now you can leave us. But I trust also to you as an honourable woman and one who was sincerely fond of poor John Baines, who ought never to be connected with these hateful sayings and doings, not to chatter about this business outside this house."

And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station, John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy. Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just when she wanted to be busy at house-work.

Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and "went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs. Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere. Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his children, his selfish absorption in his archaeological work, his unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be given his conge and the Vicar--still able-bodied--carry out his own Church duties: _or_ she would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask Lucy to stay--with Roger, of course--for at least a month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed. He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his income--about five hundred a year--from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to squander his children's money--as it really was--on a work of excavation which the County or the Nation should finance.

A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic--(besides, Roman Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little Pompeian and Pagan)--he agreed at any rate to look into the matter. The letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health. She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long needed. All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up and the circumstances of her life in Africa.

Roger rather ruefully consented. Maud would gradually cure her of her nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl. Sibyl had taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for a _few_ minutes if he would _promise_ to move gently and speak in a level voice, as _the least thing_ upset her. Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see him--and him only--at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.

He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light. She was dressed in black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows' weeds, still less some diaphanous, filmy _coiffe_, some ghost of a widow's cap. Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in order. If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then where would your social and political influence be?

"Wheel up, or better still _lift_ up--I can't bear the _slightest_ jar, just now--that small armchair, Roger--the purple velvet one--and put it near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but not _too_ near, because I notice you have a very powerful aura. I've only just learnt about auras, and I realize now _what_ a difference they make!..."

"All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what's an aura? Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having had a bath this morning?"

"Don't be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You never _used_ to be coarse, whatever you were--I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer's daughter; but for the matter of that, what am _I_? My poor dear dad is trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army. I didn't mean anything much about your 'aura,' except, I suppose, that as I'm only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a little frigid. But I'm simply talking nonsense to gain time, to remember what I wanted to say to you." (A pause.) ... "Roger! Your _dreadful_ letter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor Francis's death, _knocked me over_. The doctors put it all down to Francis, of course ... I don't deny that his death _did_ upset me.... But I'd been expecting _that_ any time within the last six months.... The doctors told me _definitely_ last winter his heart was very unsound and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or argued with.... _That_ was why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House Terrace--which is dingy beyond belief. I shall do it now.... It's too early for tea ... won't you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there's everything on that little table.... No. Not those ones; they've got the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to do _something_ for my nerves.... Well, now, about your Gouging letter.... I mean about your marriage.... My _dear_ Roger! _What_ a _gaffe_! I mean, how _could_ you?"

"Could I what?"

"_Ruin_ your hopes and mine?"

"Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the knot was tied.... Ever since her husband's death. So _my_ hopes were fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S. So where the ruin comes in, I can't see."

"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "_why_ beat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis--and anything _might_ well have done so--after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case you _must_ have known I _counted_ on you ... I mean, on our being happy _at last_.... Don't interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I really _was perfectly sweet_ to him and did my duty to him _in every way_. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don't be silly ... and don't joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I mean _Francis_ re-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, sole _everything_; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of L10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend to _keep_ let till he comes of age, the moors in Scotland _and_ the shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights of _everything_ after my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries....

"Just _think_ what I could have done for you, out of all this--if you'd _waited_! If _only_ you'd waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sevres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)