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.

Dear Sir,—

You will remember calling here in last July, just before I took my holiday.

You left with me for examination a series of rock specimens and some sediment of lake water from East Africa.

Of the rock specimens, at least six give indications of great interest. Those two labelled “Iraku I” and “Iraku II” are so rich in gold that their importance must have been apparent to yourself—unless you mistook the gold for iron pyrites, an inverse of the customary deception, which is generally the other way about. The specimen labelled “Marasha” is simply coal—rather shaley coal, probably a surface fragment. There are two specimens, unfortunately with their labels missing or indecipherable, which are a hard bluish green serpentine rock, obviously related to the “blue ground” of South Africa and probably diamondiferous. A fifth specimen yields evidence of wolframite, and in three other samples there is much mica. The lake sediment is being further examined by a colleague of mine. He believes it to be an indication of the formation of phosphates in the lake bed or shores which should be of great importance to agriculture as a constituent of chemical manure. These phosphates might be derived from birds’ dung in great quantities, from guano in fact.

I assume you have duly registered the exact geographical localities of these specimens? Otherwise, they are very tantalizing, for they evidently indicate—if they come from one region and not from a wide area of travel—one of the wealthiest of African territories.

Pursuant to your wish, however, I shall treat the matter as confidential. But if you can at any time supply me with the exact geographical information I require I shall be pleased to write a report on the collection for the Petrographical Society or for the confidential information of the Government: whichever you prefer.

Unguja, August 26, 1889.

Dear Captain Brentham,—

Mrs. Stott and I, we thank you very heartily for your kind remembrances of us. The generous present of tea you sent us as soon as you got back to England reached our good friend Callaway a little while ago and I found it here waiting for us when I arrived from the interior.

Captain Wissmann has had a wonderful series of victories over the Arabs and Wangwana, which in the good providence of God have cleared the way between Ugogo and the coast. I heard something of this in the Happy Valley last April; so, as we were running terribly short of supplies and as we felt “seed time was come” and that the Lord desired us to reopen our Burungi Station, and establish his tabernacle strongly in this glorious place—Manyara—“ripe unto harvest”—I felt my way cautiously up the Valley and through the Irangi country to Burungi. The place was not any worse treated than when you left it—you made a great impression on the Wagogo—so, as their elders begged me to rebuild the station I left some of our trained workers to do so. Besides that, Captain Wissmann, whom we met near-by, has lent us two German sergeants—biddable men and clever with their hands. They’d been sick, and wounded in the legs and he said it would do them good to have a spell of quiet sedentary life. He also put under their orders a guard of five Sudanese soldiers to guard the station whilst it is being rebuilt. So here I am at the coast, chopping yarns with Mr. Callaway, and laying in great supplies which I have been able to buy out of the price of that ivory you shot for us.

Captain Brentham, you don’t know what a mine of wealth the Happy Valley is, and the cliffs and mountains on the western side (Iraku and Ilamba). I am an Australian, and before I found Christ I had a course of instruction as a mining engineer. The rocks in and about the Happy Valley tell me at first sight more than they would an ordinary Englishman. I suppose some one will have to find out this, sooner or later. I’d much sooner it were you. You may yet get it taken over by Great Britain. At any rate, if you came out here and prospected you would see what I mean. What did you do with the specimens you took away with you for analysis? Did you lose them on your way to the coast? Maybe if the Happy Valley is to come under the Germans they would give you a concession. This Captain Wissmann seems to like you, and he said it was far from his Government’s intention to drive away English missionaries or English capital. He likes the English very much and speaks English very well.

I only write this because they say here you are not coming back as Consul. I am sorry. Why not then come out on your own? I’ve opened your letter to Mrs. Stott, which came with the tea, and right glad I was to hear—and so will she be—that you’d married poor Lucy Baines. Right glad. Bring her out here with you, and Mrs. Stott shall look after her whilst you go round prospecting and staking out your claims. We may not see eye to eye over the Lord’s work. The Lord hasn’t revealed himself to you yet as He has to us. He will in His own good time. But you’ve got the root of the matter in you. I never yet met an unbeliever who was so reverent and so tender of other people’s beliefs… You’re a good man, if you’ll forgive my saying so. You wouldn’t ever interfere with our work here, I know. It’s getting on grand. We baptized the Chief of the Wambugwe and fifty of his men in the Lake at Manyara just before you left, and please God, we’ve saved the whole valley from Islam.

Mrs. Stott had always a first-class opinion of you, though you weren’t of our way of thinking in religion. She is sure you’ll always stand up for the natives and protect their rights. I hope I haven’t been taking a liberty, writing this letter. If you don’t like to come out yourself, any one you sent we should trust to do the right thing and would show him round. Otherwise, we have been careful to say nothing about the Happy Valley, and so far no Arabs and no Germans have troubled us.

May God’s blessing rest on you and on your sorely tried wife. I feel sure there are happier days in store for her.

Your sincere friend—if you’ll allow me to say so.

James Ewart Stott

In regard to the School of Mines Report, Roger for acquitment of conscience and because he always liked to do the right thing, sent a resume of Professor Rutter’s analysis to the F.O., stating that the specimens referred to had been picked up by him on his recent tour through the interior of German East Africa.

In reply, the Under Secretary of State Was directed to thank Captain Brentham for this valuable information.

In reality it was decided to pigeon-hole the report, certainly to give it no publicity. Let the Germans find out for themselves the value of their territories. If they discovered they had bitten off more than they could chew, why … then…

In January, 1890, Lucy was delivered of a son. Roger was hugely delighted. When he asked Lucy a week after the birth if she had any preference for a name—her father’s, his father’s, his own—she said in a faint voice but with some finality in the accent: “Let him be called ‘John’!” Then, as he did not reply, she added, “John loved me and I wasn’t worthy of his love…”

“Well, and don’t I love you?” answered Roger with a tinge of compunction.

“She’s a bit wandery in her mind, sir,” said the nurse. “Don’t pay any attention to what she’s a saying. She’s mistook your name. Several times since the baby was born she’s seemed to be talking with a John, but it was you she was a thinkin’ about, I’ll be bound. She wants keeping very quiet…”

Once Captain Brentham took up the affairs of the Silchester estates—which he did definitely in October, 1889, he went very thoroughly into their condition and their possibilities of development. He was not, of course, a trained, professional land agent, which was why his shrewd and original ideas of enhancing the value and productivity of land made the Institute of Land Agents so angry. But he knew something of surveying, and had been accustomed to value countries by the eye, to judge of soils, espy defects in farming, by his boyish life at Farleigh and his experiences in India and Africa.

Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field, though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the service of man. He liked great spaces without a sign of man’s habitation to mar the poem. Roger, though he had a strongly developed sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of the landless. Another charm can be contributed to landscapes by the handiwork of man, provided the cottage is tastefully and soundly built, the manufactory—even the brick-kilns and chimneys—are of the right material for the neighbourhood, of harmonious colour and appropriate design.

In the Berkshire and Hampshire estates woodlands required thinning, cattle wanted new blood and better breeding. The lobster fishery at Sporran Bay should certainly be developed. A proportion of the deer in Scotland and at Engledene might with advantage be sold. The farmer tenants generally wanted shaking up. Some of them could well afford to pay twice their present rent and let him out of the increased rent-roll rebuild their houses, barns, granaries, pigsties and cow-sheds. Why, the dairy business alone might be trebled in value with this proximity of a milk-hungry London. Farmer Josling, a right-down superior man with much self-given education, should help him in this. Incidentally, with Sibyl’s consent, he had given his father-in-law a life-lease of his farm as some acknowledgment of his excellent use of it, and his progressive influence on the other farmers.

The bracing outdoor life and constant riding, the hunting and shooting did his health a world of good. He had never looked so well, so set up and robust as he did at the age of thirty-two, as Sibyl’s factotum. The worst of this was that he seemed more desirable than ever in Sibyl’s eyes, as she admitted with her disarming frankness. “What a pity it is, Roger, the silly laws of this sanctimonious country will not permit polygamy. We are just in the prime of life, you and I. I am much better looking than I was ten years ago—I shudder at my old photographs—I wore a fringe then and a bustle, and a lot of hair down my back, and a terrible simper when I faced the camera. It’s a crime against Nature that we can’t marry. We should have the handsomest children and we could easily arrange matters with Lucy. She’s not exacting.”

Roger laughed at these speeches, but they made him a little uncomfortable. Had Sibyl been a complete stranger to him he might have succumbed long before to her wiles; few men of his build, his time, his complexion were Josephs. But the slight relationship between them acted as a barrier to concupiscence. It permitted a familiarity in speech and address which made any closer intimacy repellent to his sense of decency…

Sibyl it must be admitted, was shameless when they were together. She would study his features attentively; admire the curl of his eyelashes, the outline of his profile, even the not quite classical prominence of the cheek bones, the virile twist upwards of his moustache, the firm chin and strong white teeth, the well-set ear and close-cropped hair at the back of his head: the while she pretended, pen in hand, to be considering his propositions. Thought-transference told him what this scrutiny meant, and he would colour a little in shame and become abrupt in manner—even say to himself, “This can’t go on—I wish she’d think of something else…”

He was conscientiously attentive to Lucy at this time and she was really happy during this phase in Roger’s life. In the spring she took up her residence in the Lodge at Englefield and made a comfortable home for her devoted husband, who seemed resolved to show her how happy he was in his marriage. Maud, from Farleigh, was a constant visitor, stayed weeks together with Lucy and Roger and served as a trait d’union with Sibyl, who allowed Maud to chaff her and scold her as she would no one else. Sibyl was quite civil to Lucy, did not bother her, left her alone except for an occasional greeting and the showing of some curiosity as to little John. “You may call him John as much as you like, but he’s certainly Roger’s child.”

Clithy and his nurse were often sent down to the Lodge to be with Lucy; Sibyl deigning to say that her influence over children was a good one and Clithy was never fretful with her. In her mocking moods she called her little son “The Prince with the Nose” and declared he was under an enchantment. He had for a child of three a preternaturally large nose, and as she said to Roger, there could be no doubt as to his paternity. “How pleased Francis would have been! He was always so proud of the Mallard nose. Said it could be traced back in pictures to Charles I’s reign—Anne of Denmark, who was rather larky after she had been married ten years, had a side-slip—you know what a tipsy court they were!—and bore a daughter to the Lord Chamberlain, who was particularly active in the revels. James overlooked her breach of good manners and ultimately gave the large-nosed little girl in marriage with Silchester Manor to a favourite, who founded the House of Mallard. Francis was going to have put this into his Memoirs, but he died, poor dear, leaving them three-quarters finished. I think I shall finish them for a lark. Will you help me?”

One reason why Lucy was dreamily happy at Englefield Lodge was that she seemed there to link up with the life of her girlhood. She had so often strolled round the precincts of Engledene with John Tilehurst, she dared not revisit for fear of meeting Mrs. Barnes. But she would sometimes walk over the same path she had traced with John on that Sunday in June, 1886. She would sit on the seat at The View and go over once more in memory, and with a sad little smile her naive and petulant questions and answers on that Sunday walk. How she had told John her desire to encounter lions, and yet when a lion had visited their camp, what abject terror she had shown! Hangodi! That name was first uttered to her in Engledene Park and she remembered John saying it meant “The Place of Firewood.”

One day Roger brought over to see her in the dog-cart old Mr. Baines—as he was beginning to be called. They both shed a few tears, but he told her with more sincerity than he usually put into his husky voice that he exonerated her from all blame in the catastrophe which had overtaken his son (Lucy herself was not so sure). “Mother’s taken it awfully bad, Lucy. She’s goin’ out of her mind, I’m fearin’. First she was writin’ an’ writin’ to Lord Wiltshire, him as is Prime Minister, don’t you know, to give your husband the sack as bein’ the real cause of John’s death. Then next she’d bother our member, wantin’ ‘im to ask questions in the ‘Ouse of Commons, till at last they give up answerin’ them. Then she set to and slanged that Missionary Society that John belonged to, sayin’ they wasn’t ‘alf careful enough about ‘is precious life. Now this spring, blessed if she ain’t cut our Connexion! She won’t go to Salem Chapel; goes to Church instead … St. Michael’s. Shouldn’t wonder if she ended up a papist! … S’pose you know Ann’s in England? They’re makin’ a lot of fuss about ‘er in Reading and London. Call her a Heroine. She’s bin down with ‘er ‘usband—rather a half-baked feller—to see us; but ‘er talk with Mother ain’t done Mother much good, partly ‘cos Ann wouldn’t join ‘er in abusin’ you. She says to Mother: ‘I just told you the plain truth in that letter. I’m not goin’ to add nor subtract one word, an’ you’ve gone and put into it much more than I ever said. Just leave Lucy alone to God’s judgment. At any rate, John loved her and died believin’ her true; and I dessay she was. Africa’s a funny country and you must put down a lot to the climate.’ … Ann’s going back to Africa next autumn, with three more recruits and a lot of money to spend on the Mission School. Old Mrs. Doland sent for ‘er and give ‘er five hundred pounds. I tell ‘er she ought to come and see you before she goes. P’raps she will, p’raps she won’t. I told ‘er you called your baby ‘John,’ and the tears reg’lar came into ‘er eyes…”

Roger owned to Maud he felt a bit restless in the spring and early summer of 1890. He couldn’t get Africa out of his mind, somehow. There was first the fuss about Stanley and the return of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition—surely one of the most wasted feats of heroism and brave endeavour in the history of Africa. Then came the 1890 Agreement with Germany. This left the Happy Valley pretty much where it had lain—unmarked as yet—on the map, but by approximate latitude and longitude entirely German, as Roger knew. But the discussion of frontiers in Africa caused him to feel fretful and resentful at being “out of it.” Sir Mulberry Hawk, who had negotiated the treaty, might surely have turned to him for enlightenment on this point and that? Even though he had left the African Service, there were his reports of 1884–5 and -6, and of 1887–9. He felt impelled to go and see Broadmead, always accessible to men of worth. Broadmead said it was a beastly shame—spite perhaps on the part of Molyneux—but every one now was thinking of the Recess… London was becoming awfully stale… He and Roger should meet in the early autumn. Broadmead would perhaps come down to Engledene and shoot Sibyl’s pheasants, and talk over Africa… If Roger was still hankering after East Africa, why didn’t he suck up to “Wully MacNaughten?” He had a show place somewhere up in the Highlands, not an immeasurable distance from Glen Sporran.

“Who was Wully? Didn’t Brentham know? Why, he had begun life as a small grocer in some Scotch town, and bankrupted through giving credit to the crofters. Not to be bested by Fate, he went out to China as a clerk and in twenty years had made quite a respectable fortune. Friends said out of tea, enemies out of opium, smuggled into India; probable cause, the great coolie traffic between China and the rest of the world, which prompted him to found a navy of tramp steamers to carry the coolies, many of them over to Africa. Then he nibbled at East Africa; began with missionary stations, sort of atonement, don’t you know, for anything naughty he’d done—Chaps in China used to call him ‘MacNaughty-naughty’—s’posed to have had a half-caste family. Not a word of truth in it. However, there it was, and he couldn’t go on refreshing Brentham’s memory. Brentham had been in East Africa and must know all about MacNaughten there?…”

“Why, yes, I know, of course, he’s the Chairman of the Chartered Company of Ibea—Mvita, you know.”

“Well, they are going to extend their operations inland to the Victoria Nyanza and they want a go-ahead man as Governor. The chap at present out there is—However, nothing can be done now. See you later on, give you a letter to him… Tata.”

If Roger was restless with unavowed hankerings after his first mistress, Africa, Sibyl, unconscious that he ever dreamed of release from her Circe toils, was radiant in the spring and summer of that particularly radiant year, 1890. Her prescribed mourning was over, so that the “horrid old Queen” could have no ground of objection to her entertaining like any other opulent peeress.

Roger had worked wonders with the estates, and before long the revenues, over which she would have control till her son’s majority, would be increased by at least one-third. Her choice of him from a business point of view was amply justified. Her pulse quickened and her eyes grew brighter than their ordinary at the thought he might some day be her lover. If only that tiresome Lucy died in one of her confinements, he might even be her husband. Of course, she would most carefully avoid any foolishness which might give the least ground for scandal. If she did that, she could take life as pleasantly as Lady Ramsgate (the ridiculous one, called “Popsy”), or Lady Ann Vizor. Every one knew that Popsy Ramsgate had had a child by her farm bailiff and kept it at the farm, and no one thought the worse of her. Ramsgate was dead. Lady Ann’s stockbroker was obviously her lover, but he was very gentlemanly and no one would have guessed unless they had been specially told.

Even if Roger were free, she was not sure she wanted exactly to marry him. She would then lose her title or, at any rate, her social rights as a peeress. And Roger as husband might be too masterful. She wanted to “queen it” as a rich woman with intelligence and taste might do in those days. Now her mourning was over she would commence at once to give parties at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, which should put those of Suzanne Feenix quite in the shade. She would create a salon, to which should be attracted the younger bloods, the rebels of the Conservative Party. She would revivify Lord Randolph, join hands with Mary March, who had a wonderful flair for inveigling millionaires. She and a few other clever women—the Tennants, perhaps—should create a young and intellectual Conservative Party—or Unionist Party, if you liked. They would get hold of Choselwhit—perhaps Rhodes, if he came to England.

Lord Wiltshire should rue the day that he had snubbed her at a Chapelmead week-end—the last time poor Francis went out anywhere—and cut her at two Foreign Office receptions. The Brinsleys should be shown their reign was over.

Her initiates—she really founded the half-legendary “Souls”—should include the smartest writers and the most daring painters, the weirdest poets of the day. They would have their own press, if it wasn’t too expensive, but Mary March’s millionaires might manage that … hadn’t she been introduced at one of Mary’s theatre parties to an enormously rich and humble person called Tooley? Lady Tarrington had asked him if he owned Tooley Street and the stupid creature had said: “Beg pardon, me lady?” Well, Tooley should be ensorcelled—perhaps an invitation up to Glen Sporran—and buy their newspaper for them.

And then she had an idea of starting a monthly Review which she would edit herself and which should tell the naked truth. No squeamishness… Praed, the architect, should send them one or two of his queer storiettes…

As to mother and father, they would spoil any circles with their banalities and old-fashioned ideas … and father’s stories would never be followed to their finish by the modern young man or woman. They would devastate her circle. No. They must stop in the country. Mother seemed to be developing some internal complaint—probably indigestion or something which could be cured at Aix or Homburg—and she was becoming very strait-laced and anxious-eyed. Sibyl would take Roger’s advice: buy up father’s three hundred acres; it could be made a most profitable milk farm. Father should stay on as tenant at a nominal rent, with a bailiff to manage—perhaps that young Harden, the cricketer, who had married Lucy’s sister.

Sibyl resolved to send mother to Aix at her expense and have Aunt Christabel to stay with her indefinitely as long as she wanted a chaperon.

As to her sisters: thank goodness, they were off her hands. They had married and gone away with their husbands to those blessed colonies, Clara to New Zealand and Juliet to British Columbia. Long might they remain there! Relations—unless very distant—were like reproaches or bad replicas of one’s self. They sapped all one’s originality…

These were some of the musings of Sibyl when having her hair brushed by Sophie, or when undergoing Swedish massage under the firm but soothing hands of a blonde giantess; when breakfasting in bed; or undergoing a long train journey in a first-class compartment with a defective lamp.

There was no question in this year of Lucy’s accompanying her husband to Glen Sporran. She was starting another baby and was firm about not wishing to go. Sibyl took this decision most amiably; said Lucy was quite wise, and further proposed that she should have Maud with her and care-take for Sibyl at Engledene House. Clitheroe was likewise to be left behind. His life in the Highlands was one long succession of dangerous colds and there wasn’t enough accommodation for his retinue of nurses; especially as every one you asked nowadays must have with them a maid or a valet. Clithy had grown so absurdly fond of Lucy that Sibyl suggested jocosely they should change babies. She thought little John a perfect darling—so like Roger—why hadn’t Lucy chosen her as god-mother instead of Maud? No doubt Clithy would grow up more like a normal boy when the rest of his features balanced Anne of Denmark’s nose… Meantime, it was very fortunate things were as they were. And Lucy would oblige her enormously by looking after her boy while she was entertaining all those horrid people in the North.

Not that the house-party was to be a large one. It ran away with so much money, and people were never grateful. There would just be Stacy Bream; the Honble. Victoria Masham, the Maid of Honour—old Vicky Long-i’-the-tooth, Sibyl called her behind her back, and never imagined the nickname could be repeated and counteract the expense of a month’s hospitality. Must have Vicky to keep in touch, you know, with what the old Queen was saying and doing—and an acolyte of Stacy’s named Reggie, something in the Colonial Office—he could flirt with Vicky—and p’raps Arthur Broadmead. Then—for a day or two—that insufferable cad, Elijah Tooley—“but he’s so frightfully, frightfully rich and might be useful.” Aunt Christabel, of course, would come, to keep order, and Aggie Freebooter and Gertie Wentworth would make up the house-party. Aggie Freebooter was that tiresome Lady Towcester’s daughter—“one of six girls, my dear”—but when she was away from her mother’s eye she was deliciously larky and awfully plucky, and didn’t mind what you played at; while Gertie Wentworth—or the Honble. Gertrude—thirty-five, lots of money, dresses like a man, whisky and cigars, takes the bank at Roulette and loses everything but her temper.

“Well, at any rate,” said Maud, “I’m glad Willowby Patterne is not in the party, this time…”

“My dear!…” said Sibyl with a scream. “I’ve absolutely dropped him, after that row in the City and that extraordinary case in the courts which was compromised and hushed up. He’s gone out to East Africa. Haven’t you heard?”

Maud had not heard and cared very little what had happened to the spendthrift baronet. But Roger had, and was a little uneasy as to his cherished Happy Valley. Willowby Patterne, mixed up once more with a very shady Company to take over and boom a new mineral water—some proposition of Bax Strangeways—and a matter of slander and a club-steps whipping, settled out of court … and pending proceedings of his wife’s for a separation; had decided abruptly to make “peau neuve” in East Africa. He had depicted the thrills of big-game shooting to one of his dupes just come of age and into possession of a pot of money. This young man would stand the racket of the expense—L5,000—and Willowby would put him up to all the dodges. And perhaps they might find minerals and get a concession…

Whilst he was up in Scotland Roger did manage, with the aid of Arthur Broadmead, to obtain an interview with Sir William MacNaughten on the subject of East African developments and the Company’s future administration. But Sir William seemed vague, and much more interested and definite in regard to another question: King Solomon’s Temple. Had Captain Brentham, as an Orientalist, ever given his mind to that problem, the shape and structure of the Temple, its adornment, and the hidden meaning of the Divine ordinances? No, Captain Brentham had not … but … er … no doubt it was very interesting and full of meaning … only … East Africa?…

“Oh, East Africa—our Charter—Oh, yes! Well, come and see me about that when I’m back in London. You know my address there? Westminster Palace Hotel?”

The Glen Sporran party broke up with the rain and chill winds of the equinox; but Roger stayed on there with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel: nominally to examine the affairs of the estate and the installation of the lobster fishery; in reality because his resolves had all dissolved before her insistence, her tears, her threats to make a scene. Circe triumphed; preened herself; became once more gay and debonnaire. But her wretched lover felt indeed a pig. Aunt Christabel, the very servants seemed to guess what Sibyl thought was kept wholly secret from the rest of the world.

A month’s absence in Staffordshire and London, and a shamefaced visit to Engledene Lodge did something to restore his self-respect. He called on Sir William at his hotel, resolved to broach the subject of the East Africa Governorship, but found him out. Nevertheless, to his delight there came a note to Pardew’s Hotel from Sir William with these words in it: “Come to breakfast to-morrow morning at nine. I have something very interesting to discuss with you, and should value your opinion.”

He arrived punctually. Lady MacNaughten was there—rather vinegary and with pursed lips. She dispensed the tea and coffee with a very strong Glasgow accent. The materials of the breakfast were—Roger thought—rather meagre for such wealthy people, who could afford to retain by the year this large suite of rooms. As no mention of East Africa was made during breakfast it was clearly more tactful to wait till the subject was introduced. Perhaps Sir William preferred not to discuss business in his wife’s presence. At last, however, he finished his second cup of coffee, wiped his lips, said a grace of thanks for “our bounteous meal” in which Lady MacNaughten joined; and then asked Roger to accompany him to his sitting-room.

The folding doors were opened and shut behind them by an officious waiter; the window of the sitting-room looking out on incipient Victoria Street was also closed because the west wind was chilly. And Sir William then turned and said with great heartiness, pointing to a cardboard and papier-mache contraption under a glass case:

“There! That’s what I wanted to discuss with you, who know the East so well: a Model of King Solomon’s Temple, made to my own design!”

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The Governorship of the Mombasa Concession was shortly after conferred on Lady MacNaughten’s nephew.