Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to
"Rosie's" desk. Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock
specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had
been pasted.
"_My mineral specimens_ ... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East
Africa! Then you _never_ sent them on?"
"My _dear_ chap! Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail
bags--two of them--arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a
letter with them or any directions. Also two skulls which, as you see,
decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in
silver at Snarley's expense for our Departmental Dinner. Meantime, I
have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner's
objections...."
_Brentham_: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray. I asked
you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the
Natural History Museum. However, I'll take them all away presently in a
cab."
"But _not_ the skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil
worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass...."
"Yes, the skulls, too. They're most important----"
"But so are _we_," said Parsons.
Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain
of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask
outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at. He
accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire
Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in
Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on
them, at his leisure. After that, Professor Flower and the skulls;
which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy
Valley. He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and
had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away.
They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous
type.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*SIBYL AS SIREN*
In August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to
have a child.
"But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl's place
in Scotland. You can't be going to have a baby till--till well on in
the winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up. Of
course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house
party--just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits
and stags. I don't suppose there will be any women there except her
aunt and you." Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.
She was living once more with her parents, while Roger's plans were so
unsettled. The rooms at Hankey's had been given up, and on his frequent
journeys to London--mainly on Sibyl's business--he slept at Aunt
Pardew's Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very
comfortable. He had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July--once he
had left her there a whole afternoon, _tete-a-tete_ with the still
languid young widow. On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to
Tilehurst to see Mr. Baines with more news--sent on by Callaway from
Unguja--about Ann Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and
what the Mission proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone. It
tickled his sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with
John's father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits
there not only cheered the Aerated Waters' manufacturer, but they
enraged Mrs. Baines.
She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this
caused Eliza to get out of hand.
But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his
one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either. Sibyl, not
wishing to fall out with Roger, declared she _tried_ to like Lucy. Yet
when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and
simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was
evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger's wife.
The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations. Lucy
in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but
she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes. She had no idea that a
stay in the Highlands--even in 1889--involved a special wardrobe: short,
kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day's
adventures--going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics
when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good
deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous. Trailing skirts and
wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress.
Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading
novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of
Aunt Christabel; who wasn't at all inclined to spare Lucy.
What had that good-looking Roger with _such_ a career before him had in
his mind that he should throw himself away on this village
schoolmistress? She did not care, either, for Sibyl's new infatuation
for Roger; would have liked to keep them well apart. The distant
cousinship was not through her or her sister, Mrs. Grayburn, but through
Roger's mother and Colonel Grayburn. Sibyl, when her year of mourning
was up, had much better marry again into the peerage; and if she wanted
a smart man as Agent--for land-agents of the middle-class-bailiff type
were "passes de mode" on all _big_ estates ... well, there was Willowby,
Willowby Patterne (a nephew-in-law of Aunt Christabel), who really might
very well do for the post. Willowby had been very wild, had run through
much of his own money and his unsuitable wife's--they were never asked
out together. But he was a first-class shot, had been to Canada with
the Duke of Ulster, knew a lot about blood-stock, had tried farming and
ranching and would be quite all there helping Sibyl entertain her house
parties and giving an eye to the manly education of James--Aunt
Christabel did not countenance Sibyl's silly freak of imposing the name
of "Clitheroe" on the little Lord Silchester.
Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger
from any unnecessary expenditure. She remembered that she had come to
him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain.
So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the
Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together. She had
only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of
them a plain black silk. After they had become familiar to the eye,
Sibyl had offered to lend some of _her_ gowns, but had done it in such a
way that Lucy's pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted
sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat. Sibyl
then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised
Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.
All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir
Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than
Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise
from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century
baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the
Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I
think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of
cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby's father
was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died
from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby's case
there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one--already a
subaltern in the Guards--with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He
had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew
older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of
killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his
brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in
skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in
executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very
brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the
garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat
to death with two bull-terriers--and laughing frenziedly the while--put
an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in
steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had
betrayed quite a number of trusting women--including his wife; but
nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society
of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What
there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to
attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was
thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness
of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline
nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But
that women _did_ run after him, there was no denying; though at this
time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any
rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.
Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of
Willowby was a little tempered by the latter's unwilling admiration of
his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for
salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure
Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second
nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction. Moreover Willowby
tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to
big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to
the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.
But when the day's sport was done and they had bathed and changed and
laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and
sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at
others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation. Her
little naivetes of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing
and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at
Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here
withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored
incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby
Patterne. Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured
her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.
Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court
and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house
party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off
duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some
one else's expense. But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a
pyramid of flawless chastity). She wore a single eyeglass through which
everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be
very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be
returning to Africa. She had friends who were casting in their lots
with Cecil Rhodes's ventures. To her mental vision, Africa was about
the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment
to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the
dear Queen is getting _so_ interested in him" ... "was there gold by the
bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?" But when she learnt that
Sibyl's cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this
very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl's secretary but Roger's
wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up
as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or
interest again.
Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream. Mr. Bream even
in those distant days was not--and did not behave like--the conventional
clergyman. He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy
somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one
who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a
princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or
Cambridge. Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged
boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his
confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage
when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began
to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the
slightest dread of a hereafter. He came forward to marry, when
re-marriage was legal but not savoury--sooner than that the poor dears
should live in sin. He dealt--I dare say very kindly and
considerately--with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else
would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so
nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him
at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the
first to pardon you. He always went where Society did in order to be
able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident.
He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a
gun--quite skilfully--and was very fond of games of chance in the
evening if the stakes were not too high.
Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played
Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or
Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over
cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap
Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream--who as much as any cleric might, stood in
lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester--called Lucy once or
twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and
inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.
So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and
shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways
of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the
others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would
read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had
done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist
nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought
other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And
then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room
for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an
excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl
had summed up her makeshift costume--for a day's yachting--in one short
phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at
yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late
tea which followed their return. "R--Ro--ger, oh dear Roger, _let_ me
go home! I'm only in _every one's_ way here. I never felt so stupid in
my life before. _I can't_ think what's the matter with me--it's the
feeling they all _despise me_--and--and--pity you for having made a fool
of yourself. Let me go home to mother--and Maud!..."
Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised
soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and
arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to
Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen
much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and
a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy
themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore
black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going
about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the
estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.
Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to
the Earldom of Pitchingham and precis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was
told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship
thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting
Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better
he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland.
H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an
officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to
consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of
Baranquilla.
"I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington. "A little
bit near the North Pole--or is it North Cape? I always mix the two.
But it's in _Norway, very_ bracing climate, _awfully_ good sea-fishing,
and L350 a year. Or if you prefer heat, there's Baranquilla, northern
South America, _not_ a good climate, but the last man stood it for two
years before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it's L550 a year and
two years count for three in service. Which is it to be? Make up your
mind soon, 'cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list--snap at
either."
Tarrington's tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final. Roger
seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its
tones having sombred with twenty years' fog and smoke into shades of
yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse
haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia. But a married man
and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself
the luxury of ill-temper. So he replied civilly that he would think if
over and let Lord Tarrington know.
As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the
august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle
to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set
eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been
hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth
listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in
his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven
hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer
Bazzard.
Brentham went down that evening--pretending he didn't care in the least
for this definite set-back--to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out
to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel
was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.
Lady Silchester's plans had long been ready, though she seemed to
develop them as she spoke. "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of
old Parkins. He's an out-of-date duffer. I'll either pension him off,
or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property. He's
let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents.
I'll give you L700 a year, and there'll be all sorts of legitimate
pickings as well. You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I'll
do it up for you. Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the
next ten years. I'm sure _I_ don't want to ask her to dinner or to
anything else, if she doesn't want to come. She needn't curtsy to me if
we meet, if it's _that_ she dislikes....
"But you've _great_ abilities, Roger. You've been _shamefully_ treated
by Lord W.... He's always tried to snub _me_ ... _I_ don't know why ...
I'll tell you _what_. I'll _run_ you. After all, I am a rich woman ...
now. You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as
that seems to be going to become the fashion. What ... _what_ ... WHAT
a pity you married like that, all in a hurry! And you see it's done you
no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at
the F.O. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk. _I'll_ make a
career for you!" And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her
palpable secret....
"This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look.
"But do you think it is fair on others? Why not put in your father----?
Or one of your brothers?"
"_Rubbish_! Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester
estates--only on a far bigger scale--as he is doing over his three
hundred acres at Aldermaston. I think we'll send him up to care-take at
Glen Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place. Helping him
with loans is like pouring money into--what do you pour it into when it
runs away? A sieve? And the two boys have both got jobs and are none
too bright, at that. Besides, it's no fun working with brothers, and
I'm going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the
Estate. It'll be ... it'll be ... what's two and a third from
twenty-one? Well, at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy
comes of age. In that time we'll have raised the annual value of the
property to twice what it is now, and incidentally we'll have a glorious
time, influencing people, don't you know, getting up a new opposition in
Parliament, and making ourselves felt...."
"Well, in any case, it's awfully good of you ... _awfully_ ... somehow I
don't deserve it...."
"You don't, after the way you threw me over. But stick to me now,
through thick and thin, and"--she was going to have added impulsively,
"Oh, _Roger_, I _do_ love you, I can't help it," and perhaps have flung
herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his
scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely,
"And we'll make a great success of our partnership. And now we must go
and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she
will come poking her nose in here to see what we're up to. How tiresome
the old are! It's only on account of what the Queen would say that I
keep her on here. She thinks you're 'dangerous' to my peace of mind,
Roger. But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring,
and father can't bear to be separated from her, and the two of them
would be _unthinkable_."
Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl's scheme would never work, without
damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her
Circe influence already. He accepted her offer--at any rate for one
year. At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the
arrangement. He decided for the present to lodge with his wife's
parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At
the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses--Mrs.
Parkins, at any rate--should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able
to set up house there. He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington
declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much
regret" his commission for Zangia.
About this time he received two letters which gave him much to think
about, but which he put at the back of his mind. I will give the
shortest first:--
_To Captain Brentham, F.R.G.S.,
H.B.M. Consul for Zangia._
School of Mines,
Jermyn Street, S.W.
_October_ 5, 1889.