"What an abstruse conversation," said Mrs. Bazzard, breaking in out of the star-lit darkness on Roger's disquisitions. She hung about them in the Red Sea, especially after dark, and had a tiresome way of suddenly making her presence known. Perhaps, however, it was just as well, and, indeed, though Roger was annoyed at the moment at having his eloquent thinking aloud interrupted—because in such monologues we are generally trying to convince ourselves as well as our auditory—he also felt some relief at the excuse for dropping the argument. Why on earth should he undermine Lucy's stereotyped beliefs? What could he give her—in the life she was going to lead, too—in place of them?
But the discussion was revived ever and again by Lucy's persistent questions. She elicited from him in general that although he approved of the material results of missionary work and the ethics generally of Christianity, he mocked at creeds, thought prayer futile—especially the fossilized prayers of Judaism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, because they were inapposite to our present age, bore little relation to our complicated sorrows and needs, our new crimes, difficulties, agonies, and temptations. He found the Psalms, all but two or three, utterly wearisome in their tedious woes and waitings, aches and pains probably due to too carnivorous a dietary; untempting in their ideals—"more bullocks for the altar ... and the fat of rams...." Then our hymns—all but three or four—were gross or childish in their imagery, abject in their attitude to a Cæsar or a Sultan of a God, who all the time watched inflexibly the Martyrdom of Man and the ruthless processes of Nature without lifting a finger to stay the cyclone or the epidemic ... and so on.... His views were very much modelled on those of Winwood Reade and on Burton's gibes at "Provvy" (Lucy shuddered at the irreverence and expected a meteor to cleave the ship in two), and he had brought out with him from England Cotter Morrison's "Service of Man."
Lucy sometimes felt so shocked at his negations that she resolved to speak with him no more, but to apply herself to the study of the Swahili Grammar he had lent her. Then at the sight of him and at his morning greeting and the kindly companionship at meals, she could not remain aloof. At any rate, he had said that you ought to act as a Christian even if you could not swallow Christian theology. That was a great admission. And he seemed to have numerous friends among the missionaries at Unguja and in the interior, which would hardly be the case if he were a bad man.... Besides, his father was a clergyman.
Aden came as a welcome surcease to these discussions. It was concrete and indisputable, and of remarkable interest when interpreted by a Brentham.... Steamer Point with its crowds of Indian and British soldiers, Jews with ringlets and tall caps selling ostrich plumes, Somalis like Greek gods in ebony offering strange skins, skulls, and horns for sale, and ostrich eggs; the drive—in a jingling carriage over sandy roads, past red-black crags on one side, with an intensely ultramarine sea on the other—to the Arab town; the vast cisterns, the rich vegetation at the cisterns; and then, after an interval of absolutely sterile rock-gorges (vaguely suggestive of the approach to Aladdin's cave in the Arabian Nights), a sea-side ravine with an unexpected flora of aloes, euphorbias, mesembryanths, and acacias.... Even Mrs. Bazzard, with her Bayswater mind, was momentarily impressed by Brentham's pleasantly imparted knowledge of all these things. You never noticed how extraordinary they were until he pointed it out. She was for the time being conciliated by his having invited her to accompany Lucy on the day's excursion and by the generous way in which he stood treat and presented her, as well as Lucy, with ostrich feather fans and amusing gewgaws made from sea-shells.
After Aden the sky clouded; metaphorically, with the coming end of this wonderful episode in Lucy's life, materially with some tiresome manifestations of the monsoon. I forget whether it blew behind and left the Jeddah wallowing in the trough of great indigo waves and rolling drearily; or blew against her progress, causing her to progress like a rocking-horse. But it imparted a storminess, a sense of exasperated emotion to this pair of lovers—as they were, unadmittedly. Fortunately, it also made the footing of Mrs. Bazzard's high-heeled Bayswater shoes uncertain on the unstable deck, so she relaxed her watchful spying on their conversations. Lucy was alternately silent and wistful and almost noisily vivacious, with hands that shook as they passed a tea-cup. She had begun to realize that in five or six more days the voyage would end in her meeting John as an ardent bridegroom; that she would never belong to Roger, she would pass out of his life as swiftly as she had entered it, be at most a pleasant and amusing memory of a half-ignorant little person with whom he had spent good-naturedly much of his time on a long sea voyage.
Roger on his part, in smoking-room reflections would feel he had gone much too far—compromised her, perhaps played a rather foolish part himself, for a man with high ambitions. There was that bitch of a woman, that quintessence of a Bayswater boarding-house, Mrs. Bazzard, wife of a—rotter, probably—whose nose he had put out of joint. She was capable—and and to conciliate her and win her over would be degrading—of putting any construction on his flirtation. How, at such times, before turning in, or even while playing whist in the Captain's cabin and thinking of anything but the game, he would curse these long steamer voyages and these episodes of love! There was that voyage out in 1880—he had narrowly missed a breach of promise action then, and he would be hanged if he'd set out to be more than sociable. And the last time he had returned to England ... Mrs. Traquhair, the wife of the chief electrician at Unguja.... Only the fact that in the Mediterranean she had developed one of those Rose Boils which were a legacy of Unguja's mosquitoes, and which confined her to her cabin till the Bay of Biscay (when they were all sea-sick), had prevented the irrevocable. And all the time he believed himself engaged to Sibyl! And afterwards, when he had met Mrs. Traquhair and her sister—and the sister! Oh my God,—in London and had dined them at the "Cri." and taken them to see Arthur Roberts from a box, and had scanned Mrs. T.'s profile as he had never done before and watched her laugh at the comedian, showing all the gold in her teeth ... he asked himself how on earth he could have kissed her so passionately as they were passing through the Suez Canal. Yet she couldn't have been a bad sort because she had never attempted to bother him or follow it up.... But he couldn't class Lucy with Mrs. Traquhair or the siren of the 1880 voyage. She was utterly good and innocent of schemes to entrap him. A sweet little thing...
As they passed into the Indian Ocean between Guardafui and Sokotra, there was a temporary lull in the wind. It was a moonlight night; they were sitting side by side under the open sky, for the deck-awning had been removed on account of the monsoon. A sudden fierce longing—there was no one on deck that he could see—seized him to take her in his arms and kiss her. And there came a telepathic message that she was aching to be so taken and kissed. But he resisted the impetus, with clenched hands on the arms of his chair. Silence had set in between them. A catch of Lucy's breath was faintly audible, and—dare I say it? A snivel, a tiny snivel.
"Lucy? Crying? My dear child! Why ... cheer up. We shall soon be there.. You're not cold?"
"You don't understand.... I ... I ... don't want to get there.... I don't want to marry him; I hate the very idea...."
"Oh, but this will never do.... This is foolishness, believe me. Lucy! Pull yourself together."