Worst of all was life in the isolated lonely house on his coffee and rubber plantation, where for months on end she would never see a white face but his, and for weeks on end, when he was away on his mysterious affairs, no white face at all. . . . And at the bottom of his compound were bandas, grass huts, in an enclosure, wherein dwelt native women. . . .

One night, in the year 1914, she sat alone in the silent lonely house, thinking of her daughter Eva at Cheltenham, of her happy, if hapless, girlhood in her father’s house, of her brief married life with an honourable English gentleman (oh, the contrast!), and wondering how much longer she could bear her punishment. . . Suddenly and noiselessly appeared in the verandah her husband’s chief factotum, head house-boy, and familiar, one Murad, an Arab-Swahili, whom she feared and detested.

“Bwana coming,” said he shortly, and as noiselessly disappeared.

Going out on to the verandah, she saw her husband and a few “boys” (gun-bearers, porters, and servants) coming through the garden. It was seven weeks since she had seen or heard anything of him.

“Pack,” was his greeting, “at once. You start on safari to the railway as soon as possible, or sooner. You are going to Mombasa. I have cabled to Eva to come out by the next boat. . . . P. and O. to Aden, and thence to Mombasa. . . . She should be here in three weeks or so . . .” and he went off to bath and change. At dinner he informed her that she was to settle at Mombasa with Eva, make as many new friends as possible, entertain, and generally be the most English of English matrons with the most English of English daughters—the latter fresh from boarding-school in England. . . . Dear old Charlie Stayne-Brooker, it was to be known, had gone to Bukoba, to the wonderful sleeping-sickness hospital, for diagnosis of an illness. Nothing serious, really, of course—but one couldn’t be too careful when one had trouble with the glands of the neck, and certain other symptoms, after spending some time in that beastly tsetse-fly country. . . . She was to give the impression that he had made light of it, and quite “taken her in”—wouldn’t dream of allowing his wife and daughter to go up there. People were to form the opinion that poor old Charlie might be in a worse way than his wife imagined.

And if such a thing as war broke out; if such a thing came to pass, mark you; her house in Mombasa was to be a perfect Home-from-Home for the officers of the British Expeditionary Force which would undoubtedly be dispatched from India. It would almost certainly be the Nth Division from Bombay—so she need not anticipate the pleasure of receiving her late husband and his friends. . . . Further instructions she would receive in the event of war, but meanwhile, and all the time, her business was to demonstrate the utter Englishness of the Stayne-Brooker family, and to keep her eyes and ears open. What General or Staff-Officer will not “talk” to a beautiful woman—of the right sort? Eh? Ha-Ha! That was her business in Mombasa now—and ten times more so if war broke out—to be a beautiful woman—of the right sort, tremendously popular with the people who know things and do things. Moreover, Eva, her daughter, was to be trained right sedulously to be a beautiful woman—of the right sort. . . . Staff-officers in her pocket. Eh? Ha-Ha! . . . And, sick at heart, loving her daughter, loathing her husband, and loathing the unspeakable rôle he would force upon her, Mrs. Stayne-Brooker travelled to Mombasa, met her daughter with mingled joy and terror, happiness and apprehensive misery, and endeavoured to serve two masters—her conscience and her husband.

CHAPTER VI
Mombasa

“If you’d like to go ashore and have a look at Mombasa after tiffin, Mr. Greene,” said the fourth officer of the Elymas to Bertram, the next morning, as he leant against the rail and gazed at the wonderful palm-forest of the African shore, “some of us are going for a row—to stretch our muscles. We could drop you at the Kilindini bunder.”

“Many thanks,” replied Bertram. “I shall be very much obliged,” and he smiled his very attractive and pleasant smile.

This was a welcome offer, for, privately, he hated being taken ashore from a ship by natives of the harbour in which the ship lay. One never knew exactly what to pay the wretches. If one asked what the fare was, they always named some absurd amount, and if one used one’s common sense and gave them what seemed a reasonable sum they were inevitably hurt, shocked, disappointed in one, indignantly broken-hearted, and invariably waxed clamorous, protestful, demanding more. It had been the same at Malta, Port Said and Aden on his way out to India. In Bombay harbour he had once gone for a morning sail in a bunderboat, and on their return, the captain of the crew of three had demanded fifteen rupees for a two-hour sail. A pound for two hours in a cranky sailing-boat!—and the scoundrels had followed him up the steps clamouring vociferously, until a native policeman had fallen upon them with blows and curses. . . . How he wished he was of those men who can give such people their due in such a manner that they receive it in respectful silence, with apparent contentment, if not gratitude. Something in the eye and the set of the jaw, evidently—and so was glad of the fourth officer’s kind suggestion.