[#] Vide the columns of the contemporary Morning Post.
But Brentham, though he had distinguished himself in the fight with the Boers for the overlordship of South Africa, had disapproved of the policy of the Raid and had said so, and written caustically on the subject. His views in some other directions, especially on Free Trade with Africa, were diametrically opposed to those of the Idol of the Midlands; so that Sibyl's attempt to bring them together at her board in the hope that the Colonial Office might give scope to her cousin's abilities, was frustrated at the very start. Chocho said very little to Roger, and Roger, being anything but a self-pusher, said very little to Chocho.
During these eight years Lucy's father, approaching and passing the age of seventy, continued to farm at Aldermaston with vigour and geniality and less and less conservatism. Lucy's mother was hale and hearty, with apple-red cheeks, and placidly thankful to the Lord who had arranged all the affairs of her family so well—never mind what happened to other families: perhaps it was their fault. Lucy's sister Clara, who had married Marden the Cricketer, was amassing year by year an enormous family of alternate boys and girls, and, as Sibyl said, it would be interesting to encourage her to go on till she had passed the normal, and then exhibit her with her progeny at a County Show. Her husband proved an assistant Agent for the Silchester estate of progressively increasing worth, and let cricket go to the wall—or to Australia. His boss, the Head Agent, Maurice Brentham, lived much in London and in Staffordshire, supervising the affairs of the estate in those directions; and managing them so well that when young Silchester came of age he would be among the wealthiest of our peers and able to write and produce mystic operas—if he so willed—or subsidize a whole Russian ballet—without feeling the cost. Maurice had never married. His excuse was the prolificness of Mr. and Mrs. Marden, the sufficiency of Roger's family, and the seven children (already) of his brother Captain Geoffrey Brentham, R.N. Geoffrey was a great begetter: almost like some hero of the Greek classics. He apparently only spent one month at home in every fifteen; yet his wife did little more—especially during these eight years—than lie-in, nurse, short-coat and wean one child; conceive, lie-in, nurse and short-coat another. Meantime her husband took enormous pains over naval marksmanship, and agitated himself over the quarrels of the Admirals. Mrs. Geoffrey was the daughter of a Naval Chaplain with very pronounced views on family prayer and the uncriticizable nature of the Bible; and on quite illusory grounds she decided that Roger and his missionary wife, Maud, Sibyl—who, she was sure, was the real cause of Maurice not marrying—were all rather wicked and not worth knowing: so, fortunately, she absolves me from any concern in her affairs.
Similarly I can dispose of Sibyl's father by saying that he died from a wandering clot in 1905, and that Sibyl only showed perfunctory regret: he had become a bore of the first water, obsessed by the belief that if only he had had capital behind him, his ideas about farming would have revolutionized British agriculture. Sibyl's mother, unwavering in her attachment to her spouse, whom she only remembered as the handsome young captain fresh from gallant service in suppressing the Indian Mutiny, who had won her affections in 1859, died also, soon after her husband, probably from some form of cancer. Aunt Christabel—the Honble. Mrs. Jenkyns in private life—also died within this period, somewhere in lodgings—Bath? Both deaths occurred at awkward junctures when big political parties had to be put off at a moment's notice; and therefore wrung from Sibyl not only a few tears of sorrow and remorse—Had she been quite kind to either? Would she, too, live to be old, boring, unlovely, and consequently unloved?—but also exclamations of annoyance at people who chose the supreme moments of the season, when Royalty was once again showing an interest in you, to take to their beds and die.
Old Mr. Baines, the proprietor of the Aerated Beverages Manufactory at Tilehurst, died of diabetes in 1906. He left his money—a few thousand pounds—on trust to John, the eldest son of Captain and Mrs. Roger Brentham, subject to a life interest for Mrs. Baines. His spouse had led him a life, as he expressed it, since her son's death in 1888. She had passed from the most narrow-minded piety to a raging disbelief in all churches, sects, and creeds. The "raging" was chiefly inward or expressed through her pen in "open" letters to clergymen, philanthropists, or scandalized county journals. Otherwise she maintained a Trappist silence, neglected the house-keeping, injured the business by scaring away customers. At length in 1901 she took to denying in a loud voice at Reading markets and other assemblages of crowds (as in her letters to the Berks Observer and the Newbury Times), the very existence of a God; and then public opinion obliged her husband to have her put away into an asylum.
Curiously enough she offered little opposition to this measure. She asked for, and was allowed, a large quantity of books, and became with the aid of new spectacles an omnivorous reader. She gave little trouble. Her husband made a liberal payment to the asylum, but as this ceased at his death, and the Trustees showed a mean desire for economy, it occurred to the medical man in charge—not without a conscience—to re-examine Mrs. Baines and see if she really was mad. As a result he pronounced her restored to sanity. She made no comment on her release, faithful to her vow of silence, but with the help of her trustees she purchased a small cottage on the Bath Road near Theale. The sight of the enormous motor traffic and the bicycle accidents seemed to amuse her. Roger, during his 1906-7 holiday in England, at Lucy's wish went to see her, to be satisfied she was properly cared for. She received him in grim silence, offered a Windsor chair, and listened taciturnly to his stammering, apologetic inquiries. When he stopped speaking she drew blotter, pen, and ink towards her, and wrote in a bold hand on a sheet of notepaper: "The British people are not the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; more fools they, if they were. I agree with you about Religion. I forgive Lucy. I am glad little John is to have my money when I die, but I shall live as long as I can to find out the Truth. Don't come any more."
She then conducted him to the door—it was in the shocking summer of 1907—pointed to the grey sky of a cold, dripping July and to the ruined hay crops in an adjacent field, to the green corn beaten to the earth and to a collision between a motor cyclist and a push-bike on the Bath Road. Then her long, furrowed lips curved into an awful smile—a smile perhaps her dead son had never seen—her angry eyes and her crooked, uplifted finger expressed a derisive query as to the existence of any Providential concern for the welfare of Man.
Therewith she returned to her books and the studies she had taken up so late in life. Possibly she is living still at eighty-two.
During these eight years, Lucy's health, after some fluctuations, had decidedly improved; and when her husband was preparing to return in the autumn of 1907 for his final round-up of the Happy Valley Concession, she insisted on accompanying him. It would be for less than two years; Maud was coming too; and the children would be most of their time at school. Rather with misgivings Roger agreed. Provided she kept her health, it would indeed be a delightful conclusion to the great adventure of their lives. They would revel for the last time in the beauty of Iraku and the Happy Valley, their Crowned cranes and pea-fowl, their tame gazelles and duikers, their quaint menagerie of monkeys; their wonderful flower garden—Iraku grew everything: orchids and mignonette, roses and lilies, petunias and pelargoniums, Strelitsia reginae and Disa uniflora.... He would wind up his financial connexion with the Concession and retire from it a rich man, perhaps retaining a sleeping partnership in its concerns: for it was entangled with his heart-strings.
Then, all clear for Europe, after a cycle of Cathay. They would motor from Iraku to the nearest railway station on one or other of the lines that now penetrated the interior, secure the best cabins on the luxurious steamers of the D.O.A. line, and thus retrace the route of their first voyage, when love was incipient, but when their future seemed dark and uncertain. They would be lovers again on this voyage, but this time open and unashamed, and Maud should pretend to play the part of a green-eyed Mrs. Bazzard.