Cupid in Africa

  CHAPTER V_Mrs. Stayne-Brooker_

  And on those same palm-clad shores that arose from out the azure sea, anunhappy woman had been expiating, by long years of bitter suffering, intears and shame and humiliation, the madness of a moment. . . .

  Mrs. Stayne-Brooker’s life in German East Africa was, if possible lesshappy than her life in the British colony. The men she met in Nairobi,Mombasa, Zanzibar, Witu or Lamu, though by no means all gentlemen, alltreated her as a gentlewoman; while the men she met in Dar-es-Salaam,Tanga, Tabora, Lindi or Bukoba, whether “gentlemen” or otherwise, didnot. In British East Africa her husband was treated by planters,Government officials, sportsmen, and Army men, as the popular and cheeryold Charlie Stayne-Brooker—a good man in the club-bar, card-room andbilliard-room, on the racecourse, at the tent club, and on shootingtrips. With several Assistant District Commissioners and officers of theKing’s African Rifles he was very intimate. In German East Africa he wastreated differently—in a way difficult to define. It was as though hewere a person of importance, but _déclassé_ and contemptible, and thisimpression she gained in spite of her knowing no German (a condition ofignorance upon which her husband insisted). The average German officialand officer, whether of the exiled Junker class, or of plebeian origin,she loathed—partly because they seemed to consider her “fair game,” andmade love to her, in more or less broken English, without shame orcessation. Nor did it make life easier for the poor lady that herhusband appeared to take delight in the fact. She wondered whether thiswas due to pride in seeing a possession of his coveted by his“high-well-born,” and other, compatriots, or to a desire to keep everbefore her eyes a realisation of what her fate would be if he cast heroff, or she ran away from him.

  Worst of all was life in the isolated lonely house on his coffee andrubber plantation, where for months on end she would never see a whiteface but his, and for weeks on end, when he was away on his mysteriousaffairs, no white face at all. . . . And at the bottom of his compoundwere _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 anhonourable English gentleman (oh, the contrast!), and wondering how muchlonger she could bear her punishment. . . Suddenly and noiselesslyappeared 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 wasseven weeks since she had seen or heard anything of him.

  “Pack,” was his greeting, “at once. You start on _safari_ to the railwayas soon as possible, or sooner. You are going to Mombasa. I have cabledto Eva to come out by the next boat. . . . P. and O. to Aden, and thenceto Mombasa. . . . She should be here in three weeks or so . . .” and hewent off to bath and change. At dinner he informed her that she was tosettle at Mombasa with Eva, make as many new friends as possible,entertain, and generally be the most English of English matrons with themost English of English daughters—the latter fresh from boarding-schoolin England. . . . Dear old Charlie Stayne-Brooker, it was to be known,had gone to Bukoba, to the wonderful sleeping-sickness hospital, fordiagnosis of an illness. Nothing serious, really, of course—but onecouldn’t be too careful when one had trouble with the glands of the neck,and certain other symptoms, after spending some time in that beastlytsetse-fly country. . . . She was to give the impression that he hadmade light of it, and quite “taken her in”—wouldn’t dream of allowing hiswife and daughter to go up there. People were to form the opinion thatpoor 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 theofficers of the British Expeditionary Force which would undoubtedly bedispatched from India. It would almost certainly be the Nth Divisionfrom Bombay—so she need not anticipate the pleasure of receiving her latehusband and his friends. . . . Further instructions she would receive inthe event of war, but meanwhile, and all the time, her business was todemonstrate the utter Englishness of the Stayne-Brooker family, and tokeep 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 herbusiness in Mombasa now—_and ten times more so if war broke out_—to be abeautiful woman—of the right sort, tremendously popular with the peoplewho know things and do things. Moreover, Eva, her daughter, was to betrained 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 unspeakablerôle he would force upon her, Mrs. Stayne-Brooker travelled to Mombasa,met her daughter with mingled joy and terror, happiness and apprehensivemisery, and endeavoured to serve two masters—her conscience and herhusband.