“Il n’y a que le premier pas qui coute.”--_French Proverb._
The Commissioner, in company with Mrs. Arthur White and the Colonial
Treasurer, was booked for England in the next steamer that called
at Key Island. The mail came in once a month, but occasionally
an alteration of route would bring lesser boats to the great
coaling-station as well as the cruisers, and Mr. Halton plainly said
that he would go in a tin kettle of a tramp rather than wait longer
than was necessary. His work being finished, the Commissioner found no
reason for lingering. There was indeed a sting in Mr. Halton’s secret
consciousness that made Key Island the more distasteful. His rides
and walks and dilettante attendances on Mrs. Lewin were no more, for
he was superseded by a stronger personality and writhed to face the
failure of his life in a new form. Something of the feline nature that
Diana Churton had bluffly discerned was uppermost in him also, and
he waited for a mental pounce since he was no longer purring under a
soft hand. A small man is infinitely more dangerous to irritate than
his brother of a larger nature, because he deals with details, and the
trivialities that go to make up tragedies are his province. Halton was
waiting, though not consciously, to avenge himself for the fact that he
had allowed the Administrator to displace him with Mrs. Lewin, and act
cavalier in an uncouth method of his own; and there was no weak spot
in their armour that could have escaped him. But Chum, having nothing
to conceal, was not a remunerative study, and the Commissioner fretted
in vain until the rains came down and blotted out Port Victoria for a
space during which he lost even the contemplation of his annoyance, for
when the Heavens open the social life is paralysed.
September brought back the sunshine, and the Gilderoys gave a picnic.
Being the herald of renewed amusement, it had an air of festivity
that most like entertainments lacked in their deadly monotony. Every
one went, from Maitso out to Mitsinjovy, and Mrs. Lewin put on her
last new muslin gown and looked at herself in the glass with mingled
satisfaction and regret. She had ridden and danced and picnicked
through the remainder of her big trunks in the last six months, for
muslin is perishable and silk goes rotten in those latitudes; and Key
Island knew the very pattern of her laces save this last white wonder
with its unutterable frills and the grace of fancy sleeves. Leoline
was a woman whose figure gave one the idea of one lovely line swept
off harmoniously from throat to heel. She might wear muslins made
on anybody’s pattern, but they became her own muslins by immediate
association, and followed the fall of her lissome body as though they
loved her.
“Just come and choose my hat, Ally,” she called through the
dressing-room door, and Alaric’s broad shoulders and smooth head
followed her summons dutifully. There was no outward difference
between husband and wife; the same easy relations existed between them
that made Mrs. Lewin’s nickname of “Chum” typical, the same surface
confidence that caused Ally to staunchly assert to Mrs. Churton that
his married life was entirely satisfactory, and he himself a beast. The
qualification marked the advance of their intimacy. But in her heart
Mrs. Lewin knew that she was altering; some new strong development was
taking place in the very fibres of her nature, and the transformation
was a painful process to herself at any rate. It was even a different
face that she saw in the glass as Ally looked over her shoulder and
condemned her choice.
“Not that chiffon thing, Chum, surely. Aren’t you going to wear a
habit?”
“It’s too hot. Besides, I wish to leave a good impression on Mr.
Halton’s mind, and this is his last festivity. He leaves next week, and
takes the memory of my muslin with him. Isn’t it pretty?”
“Damfino! as the _Pink’un_ used to say--or was it the _Referee_? It’s
new too, isn’t it?”
“My last. Why don’t you like that hat? Will my Panama do?”
“That’s better. Who will ride with you, Chum? Halton?”
“Major Churton, I think. With a possible reversion to Brissy.”
“Why not Gregory’s Powder? Think of my interests!”
“He is not coming with us, but will turn up at our destination. He
has business that will keep him down at the office until later,” said
Mrs. Lewin without hesitation over the Administrator’s plans, for she
knew them, and knew also deeper reasons for them, which she did not
tell Ally--reasons that fed the activity of her mind, and to which she
listened with the faithfulness of a tried friend. For when Gregory laid
the heavy weight of his confidence gradually upon her, he bound her
with a chain whose iron links she hardly felt more than silken as yet.
Ally accepted her information as more infallible than an official
telegram. “The O.C.T. has his innings first then,” he added. “Hurry,
Chum! I told them to saddle up.”
Mrs. Lewin thrust a last fierce hatpin into her Panama, and put up her
hand to settle the hairpins at her neck. It was four o’clock, and they
were due at the rendezvous at half-past, for this was a late picnic
which began in the afternoon and ran on into nightfall. Such excursions
can be planned for two periods of the day--early morning, or when the
sun is losing its power, but between those hours lies the Miroro, when
no white man may work or play. A morning picnic sets out before seven,
breakfasts up on the hills, and buries itself in the heart of the woods
during the day’s heat, emerging again at four for the return to dinner
and iced drinks; but it means a long strain on the endurance of the
guests’ attraction for each other, and the Gilderoys were wise in their
generation and chose the shorter method.
At the foot of Maitso the Lewins fell in with Halton on his way from
Government House, and Brissy Nugent hot from a canter from Mitsinjovy,
where he had been lunching. The four ponies turned sturdily to the
ascent, and Mrs. Lewin looked at the streaked flanks of Ally’s mount,
and thanked Heaven for the blanket under her saddle, for Liscarton’s
wet sides did not agree with her frills. There had been, to her secret
amusement, a brief struggle between Halton and Nugent as to who should
ride beside her, and the soldier’s more brazen tactics had won the
coveted place. Brissy was not thin-skinned, and that Halton shrugged
his shoulders mentally, and classified him as still an unlicked cub,
did not trouble him so much as it would have done to be proved the
weaker man.
Mrs. Lewin laughed silently, and as usual found reason for enjoyment in
her immediate present. Afterwards it seemed as if every detail of that
day were cruelly impressed on her memory, and she never could forget
one. Even the garrison jokes that Brissy told her in doubtful taste,
and at which she had learned the futility of frowning, remained in
her mind long after things she would fain have kept had drifted from
her. She could remember the very smell from the vegetation which had
overgrown the road during the recent rain, and turning in her saddle to
look down and see the satin blue bay and the roofs of the crazy little
town, whose zinc shone like a glare of silver in the sunshine. Beyond
Mitsinjovy the Left Gate stood out like a vast sentinel, shutting out
the sea and the horizon, but from Maitso Hill they could only see the
cone of the Right Gate rising over their own position. Below them in
the harbour the great walls of coal looked nothing but toy-mounds and
black lines, and the mass of shipping was but a detail in the picture.
Often as she had seen that view Mrs. Lewin was vaguely conscious
of seeing it afresh that day, and the row of ravenalas outside the
Churtons’ quarters, too, struck her as they never had before, while
there seemed a new suggestion that she could not grasp in the two
mounted figures themselves, waiting motionless in the logwood shade.
Diana was at her best in the saddle, but the Major, who could have
ridden down any man present, looked too large for a Key Island pony.
Even at the moment Leoline Lewin wondered that she noticed these
things, and seemed possessed of a novel alertness, a keener sense of
observation than ever before, as though her mental life had quickened.
She always thought of the Gilderoys’ picnic as the last occasion on
which she wore muslin appropriately. She liked to be in sympathy with
her gowns, and she never again felt the adequate frivolity for the
dainty frills she laid aside that night. Life seemed to have gone too
deep for muslins from that time forth--a foolish fancy, but one that
made the successful little frock something of a relic.
“How are you, Chum? The Gilderoys are waiting at the top of the hill,”
Diana called out strongly. “Half the Station is up there already. Wait
a minute--here comes the Denver girl and Gurney.”
Mrs. Lewin looked at Major Churton, and sat still.
“An invitation with R. S. V. P. in the corner,” said the Major
succinctly to himself, and went straight to his goal in characteristic
fashion. “Do I ride with you, Mrs. Lewin?”
“I will trust you to go first!” said Chum gaily. “There will be no
riding with any one if I know the path we are taking. The ponies slide
down on their tails the other side of Maitso, for I am sure we are
going over the Pass and towards Rano.”
“The Gilderoys are fools if they do,” he said, as they fell into the
procession side by side. “Do you know what Rano means, by the way?”
“I am not quite ignorant, Major! It means water in Malagasy, and is
given to that range of hills because of the many springs there--have I
learned my geography lesson rightly? How lovely the Rano Falls are, by
the way! We rode out there just before the rains.”
“Yes, and they will be rather more than lovely just now! Does the name
suggest nothing to your mind?”
“You think the floods will be up?” Mrs. Lewin asked startled.
“I think the Rano District will probably be impassable just now, but
we will see.” His keen eyes fell on the couple in front of them, who
were Mr. Gurney and Miss Denver, and he laughed. “That young lady is a
puzzle to the garrison,” he said. “The women cannot decide if she is a
bad lot or only a little fool.”
“It is her people’s fault. They let her ride about with the boys
stationed here up to twelve at night, and she spends half her time at
Mitsinjovy with Mrs. Clayton. What can you expect? Of course people
talk. But I think she is quite capable of taking care of herself.”
“I don’t know. This affair with Gurney outshines her former little
peccadilloes. She has the worried air of a girl who has been kissed!”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for knowing such things!” retorted
Chum quickly. “Perhaps they are engaged. I know nothing of Mr. Gurney
beyond his voice. He may be all right.”
“Or she may be all wrong! I would solve the mystery in three
minutes--if I were a bachelor. As things are I do not feel inclined to
help to satisfy public curiosity.”
“I don’t like you nearly so well when you talk scandal,” said Mrs.
Lewin frankly. “And you so very seldom do it that it jars the more.
The girl is not able to defend herself either. Don’t let us attack her
without cause.”
There had been ample cause, in so far as a foundation for gossip
went, and she knew it in her own mind, even while she defended a
fellow-woman. It flashed across her, with a sense of absolute wonder,
that she could not imagine such a position as Miss Denver’s--a girl
accepted in the social world of the place, asked to people’s houses,
and spoken of by men as Major Churton had spoken! Leoline Lewin could
not quite realise the tone of mind in Beatrix Denver, if she could
allow herself to be handled, not by one man only, but by many, if
report spoke truly. She herself had never been kissed by any man until
her engagement, and felt that she would have a certain shyness in the
admission after other women’s avowed experience. It seemed rather
immature, somehow. And yet the mere thought of familiarity, even in
her present assured position, appeared an impossibility to her sense
of self-valuation. Of course she could not soil her own self-respect
by such a thing, though she kept her charity for those who were less
particular. Last week, for instance, Di Churton had told her that the
very Mrs. Clayton, who was Miss Denver’s chief ally at the Mitsinjovy
Garrison, had got the new boy from Natal in tow. He was rather a nice
youth named Rennie, as Mrs. Lewin knew him, with little harm as yet in
his twenty-one years; but his education had begun in earnest.
“He runs after Mrs. Clayton everywhere,” Diana declared. “She takes him
home after the dances, and he unlaces her gowns for her. Brissy Nugent
told me so.”
“What a pity he didn’t stay with the first battalion in Natal,”
was all Mrs. Lewin had said. But in her own mind she drew a line
of demarcation between herself and Mrs. Clayton as unconsciously
pharisaical as though they were of different castes. She was thinking
of this now, as she rode over to Maitso, in the wake of Mr. Gurney
and Miss Denver, and her mood was tolerant because she was too
clear-brained to take a narrower position. These people did not really
matter in hers and Ally’s lives; their vulgarity need not affect her,
though she lived in touch with them for a period. By-and-by they would
drop out of her existence, and she would pass on to something cleaner,
unsmutched.
On the crest of the hill they joined the rest of the party, which had
become gradually augmented, so that between twenty and thirty ponies
turned off to the right in single file, and followed a precipitous path
into the hills. A rough cart, borrowed from the garrison, and drawn by
six stamping, vicious mules, had gone on ahead with the provisions, by
a longer but less dangerous route. As Mrs. Lewin had predicted, the
ponies had to slide when they could not walk, and the descent into the
next valley was like a winding stair. To the right the steep precipice
fell sheer down to a flat green bottom overgrown with logwood and
guava--what the Planters called “dirty land,” because it had not been
“cleaned” for sugar-cane or banana. The path was so slight a track that
Major Churton, riding in front of Chum, had often to push a way for
her through the eager vegetation. Above the cleft hills and the valley
smiled the blue sky, washed clean by the rains, and from all sides rose
the breath of the still moist earth.
“This is like riding in a vapour bath,” said Mrs. Lewin, gasping a
little, as the cavalcade emerged from the trees for a moment and met
the freer air of the hillside. “Major Churton, you were right--the
streams are in flood!”
Her exclamation was echoed by a cry of dismay from the vanguard of the
party, for the curve of the hill had revealed the impassable volume
of water to them. A regular cascade, which in dry weather was nothing
but a shallow stream, was tearing down the hill at a lower level, and
cutting off the valley land from their advance. The string of ponies
stopped, and there ensued an argument which was, of course, shouted
up and down the hill as to a change of route. Here and there a pony
fretted on the bit, and brought his hind legs dangerously near the
edge of the track; once a woman shrieked--it was Miss Denver’s voice,
pitched to an hysterical tone that made Mrs. Lewin’s pulses leap with
sudden dread for her--and an occasional “Woa, boy!” “Steady, mare!”
showed that somebody’s mount resented the delay. It struck Mrs. Lewin
how strange the string of ponies must look from below, dotted along
the hillside, and she laughed--she remembered that, too, afterwards as
something uncanny. There are days on which we seem to have been too
prodigal of laughter, and to have squandered it for little reason.
“Well, we must ride on and get somewhere,” said Mrs. Gilderoy’s
exasperated voice at last. “There’s a way round; we must take that, and
follow the cart.”
“But I told Mr. Gregory the short cut!” protested her husband blankly.
“He will be sure to come this way. Will he think of the other road?”
“He must, unless he is an arrant fool,” said Mrs. Gilderoy, with
refreshing candour, and no respect for the representative of the
British Government. “No one can cross that stream without getting wet
to the waist. We must ride on. You don’t want to wait until he turns
up, I suppose?”
Some echo of the altercation passed down the line of riders and
troubled the air around Mrs. Lewin. She said nothing, but a new
silence seemed to have fallen upon her as Liscarton at last pricked
his ears and followed his leader with obvious satisfaction. There was
no fear that any one who knew the country as Gregory did would attempt
impossible feats; the probability was that he might grasp the situation
much sooner than they had done, and, not knowing what they had decided,
turn round and go home. Mrs. Lewin’s mind felt a sudden blank; she
was looking forward to meeting him to-day, after an absence of nearly
a week, to catch some hint of his plans that would not yet be public
property. It was still a matter of some scornful marvel to Leoline
Lewin that every one round her openly lamented their lot in being
bound to Key Island, for she did not realise that her own vitality was
being kept up by a vivid interest. She was living much more actively
in a mental fashion than she had ever done in her life before, and
the island itself, that she thought the object round which her forces
gathered, was in reality only a background. But as yet she felt no hint
of danger.
The party camped out at last on the bank of the very stream which had
hindered their progress, and which had given them an extra half-hour’s
ride. The cart was awaiting them, and the men tethered the ponies and
helped outspan, while the women laid the cloth. There was no kettle to
boil, or tea to make, as in a cooler climate; but the ice had stood
the journey well, and the soda-water and mangoes came on as cold as if
served at Government House. Mrs. Lewin seated herself on a fallen tree
with Major Churton’s handkerchief spread over it as a safeguard for her
frills, and fell to swizzling tinned butter with milk in the interests
of the company. At her feet Brissy, in an attitude as condensed as a
monkey’s, was slicing salad with dangerous activity. The group was
gathered on open ground beyond the absolute tangle of wood which
clothed the hillside, and which was still reeking from the rains.
“Pass the spiders, please!” said Chum absently, her eyes on the back
of Captain Nugent’s flat head, where the black hair curled crisply. He
looked up with a laugh in the young eyes that had seen too much of this
marvellous universe, and his white teeth flashed under his moustache.
“You’re dreaming, Mrs. Lewin!”
For once Chum’s control of her blood failed her, and she flushed a
little, conscious that he told the truth. Her thoughts were with
Gregory and his probable prudence in turning back.
“It was appropriate, anyhow!” she retorted, shaking a huge specimen off
her skirts. “That’s not a tarantula, is it?”
“No; common or garden bug, I think. Let’s put it on Miss Denver’s
shoulder and hear her scream!”
“No, Captain Nugent! Stop!” A sharp memory of the hysterical quality of
Miss Denver’s cry on the hillside made Chum the more imperious. Even
in her own mind she did not form the fear that a very little would
upset the girl’s balance to make men suspicious of she knew not what;
all she felt was that Miss Denver was not in a state of nerves for the
endurance of spiders. There might be nothing in it, but she remembered
with faint disgust Major Churton’s broad comment, “She has the worried
look of a girl who has been kissed.” Mrs. Lewin dropped the subject,
and the spider together, with distaste. Her mental attitude grew a
little contemptuous.
The next instant she had risen silently to her feet with a nearer and
more bitter interest. Some one had said, “Have a cého, Ally?”--and she
threaded her way through the chattering crowd round the table-cloth to
the three men standing apart by the tethered ponies, without haste, and
with a complete appearance of her errand being her own need.
“Ally, do get me some soda-water!” said her voice behind her husband,
as he vacillated on the brink of consent. “I can’t wait for our meal to
be ready, I’m so thirsty. And don’t put anything but ice into it; it’s
too hot.”
Her candid eyes met his without a shadow of reproach; yet he coloured
ever so slightly, and shook his head at the man who had suggested cého.
As he halved the soda-water between them, Chum felt the old humiliation
sweep back over her with fresh force. Who was she to think herself
and Ally above these neighbours of theirs? With this ugly possibility
always dodging her steps, she was a woman who dared not leave her
husband to judge for himself, but was forced to risk an interference
that might be rightly interpreted at any moment! She stood there in
dispirited silence, beautiful in her summer gown, but with earnest
eyes that seemed out of place above the dainty muslin; and for one mad
moment she could have cursed the weakness of the man beside her which
had spoiled her ideal.
And it was just as she turned from him to save suspicion of her errand,
that a sound of welcome arose from the group round the table-cloth.
“When did you turn up?”--“How wet you are? You must have swum the
stream!”--“There’s a compliment for you, Mrs. Gilderoy--nothing
would keep him away!”--“Well, you always were a man who surmounted
difficulties!”
It was Gregory, and his high riding boots were dripping with water; but
he laughed at the idea of cold. The pony took the stream at a point he
knew of, he said; there was no danger--only a ducking, to which he was
used. He had been riding all through the rains, and forded worse floods.
He was standing as Mrs. Lewin came back to the group, and remained
so until she had sat down; then he took a seat near her, but rather
behind her back, so that they could hardly be called companions. It
would have been difficult to talk to her indeed, and she directed her
conversation rather to Halton, who was facing her at a little distance.
His brown eyes were very constantly on her face, and she parried
their sentimentality with vague distrust. His departure was lending a
new meaning to their old intimacy, and she had no room for it in her
present life. Her fear for Ally, and her desire to hear if Gregory
had any news, kept her mind at sufficient stretch. She enjoyed the
mental activity in some strange fashion, in spite of the thread of pain
running through it; but her increasing appetite for power was not fed
by the sentimental half-tones of her relations with Halton.
As the conversation grew more general she was conscious of listening
for a whisper behind her. Miss Denver’s laugh was loud above the rest.
Some one challenged Hamilton Gurney to sing, and he affectedly refused
for the sake of being pressed, but the voice he wanted did not join in
the appeal. Mrs. Lewin was not conscious that they were urging him to
anything in fact, for through the babel the Administrator had leaned
forward and asked her for more bread and butter. She passed it back to
him, and as he took it his voice breathed a whisper in her ear--
“I have heard from Capetown.”
She dared not turn her head, but her nerves seemed strung as if by a
strong stimulant. He folded the bread and butter deliberately, while
she still held the plate, and his voice went on rapidly--
“They have given me _carte blanche_ to do as I please.”
Mr. Gurney had given up the hope of any persuasion coming from Mrs.
Lewin, and as he really wanted to sing, he screwed up the melancholy
banjo which he had sent on in the cart, and twanged an accompaniment.
The first notes fell on deaf ears as far as Leoline was concerned, for
her mind buzzed with possibilities. She had never dreamed that the
Capetown Government would put such power into a man’s hands which the
Home Authorities had carefully tied. But she forgot how small a dot
Key Island appeared to the larger State, already worried with its own
affairs. _Carte blanche_ meant that Gregory might get to the root of
the hashish trouble by burning the crops, or any other drastic measure,
and this would be followed by probable consequences for which she knew
some of his plans. He was nearer to the grip of his tiny kingdom, at
which he aimed, than he had been two months ago. Mrs. Lewin drew her
breath as if something had almost taken it away. She was excited and
roused, and her blood was on fire....
Then Gurney’s voice stole in on her attention, loosening the restraint
of her will-power still more in its subtle sweetness. Between the rush
of two unusual emotions she felt bewildered, and clutched blindly after
her usual self-control. Her eyes threatened to fill with ridiculous
tears, and half-a-dozen men and women would see and misinterpret them.
She flung herself a little into the shadow of a tree, leaning back with
her hand on the ground behind her to support herself. It enabled her to
turn her face so that she hoped it was partly masked.
“All ye who seek for pleasure,
Here find it without measure--
No one to say
A body nay,
And naught but love and leisure!”
Something hotter than tears seemed to flash across Leoline Lewin’s
eyeball; the universe stood still, soundless and sightless, then rushed
on with clangor, and drowned every sound save the little trivial song
which still tinkled so loudly in her stunned soul, ... for Evelyn
Gregory had leaned back also, and laid his hand heavily over hers as it
rested on the ground, out of sight of every one in the group. During
the shock of the first five seconds she thought that he had done so
unconsciously, and that the movement had been as natural as her own.
She dared not move for fear of making him conscious, and waited for
him to remove the heavy pressure that she might slide her own away,
and never refer to it.... The seconds went on and on, each that passed
accentuating a new beautiful terror and conviction in her mind. He
did not move. Human flesh cannot press human flesh and be unconscious
for so long. Her blood leapt to the revelation that they were man and
woman, and felt, too, the humiliation of knowing that they were not
sexless as friends.
“All ye whose hearts are aching
For somebody forsaking,
We’ll hold you dear
And heal you here,
And send you home love-making!”
Gregory removed his hand and sat up, as self-controlled as though he
had never moved. An echo down the valley faintly took up the last pure
notes and repeated them afar off--
“Love-making!”
Chum drew her knees up and clasped her hands round them as though she
would gather her forces together; but as she did so her eyes fell on
the back of her hand, where a faint red flush marred the white skin.
It told tales of the rough pressure she had endured to her maddened
mind, and she dropped it again to the ground--but this time out of
reach--beside her. She glanced round the ring of faces and found no
answering consciousness there. They were all trying the echo--shouting
nonsense up the valley on the quiet evening air. She looked at Halton,
and saw that he was looking down, apparently the most abstracted person
present. But with a pang of fear she wondered if she would have read
knowledge in the eyes veiled by his drooped lids. She was frightened,
not only for herself, but for that other behind her, her woman’s
intuition recognising the danger that lay under Halton’s quiet, and
with characteristic courage she walked straight up to her danger to
look it in the face.
“Are you going to ride home with me, Mr. Halton?” she contrived to say,
as the ponies were saddled up for the return.
“If you have made no other arrangement?” he said tentatively. There was
nothing to take hold of in the words, because Major Churton had ridden
with her before, and might claim the privilege again. But she caught a
covert insinuation and scored up an unpaid grudge against him.
“I am not using you to escape an unwelcome cavalier!” she said, as if
accepting his own idea.
“What an unpleasant suggestion! I shall be wondering all the way which
man is thirsting for my blood.”
“It would be a better compliment if you took it for granted that they
were all envious. You are out of practice, Mr. Halton.”
“I have had none of late.”
“Never mind; use the present opportunity on my gown!”
“It is charming, of course!” he said, as he arranged the blanket over
Liscarton’s streaked shoulders, and pulled the girth tight. “And no
other lady would have dared to risk it on a hot pony, would they?”
“I told my husband that I wished to leave a good impression on your
mind!”
“Really? But why struggle for the inevitable? I am all the more
flattered though, of course. It is not every day that a lady makes
herself smart for my especial benefit.”
“Oh, please don’t!” said Chum, as she lifted herself easily into the
saddle. “Smart is now a word sacred to the middle classes, to whom it
means inferior silks and strings of imitation beads!”
“So bad as that?”
“Yes, really. And the same degree of cheapness is expressed in the word
‘clever’--its mental equivalent. Perhaps on the whole it is best summed
up in the draper’s ideal of one and elevenpence halfpenny!”
“I am so glad you did not say three farthings!”
“We never have such things now,” sighed Mrs. Lewin. “There _is_ a
farthing, of course--but they are rapidly becoming relics. You get a
packet of very bad pins, or a pencil that you particularly don’t want,
for the odd number.”
His laugh sounded like the earlier terms of their acquaintance, and
she congratulated herself on her stroke of policy in reannexing him
for this occasion. Never once had her eyes met Gregory’s since that
revelation during Gurney’s song, and she had not spoken to him. As
they rode back through the falling dusk she fenced with Halton as of
old, retreating and advancing like the figure of a mental quadrille,
and was surprised to find it tedious. Had the stronger personality
that was even now shadowing her made the other man seem slight, or was
Halton only attractive to a certain point, after which he could only
repeat himself? It seemed to her that realities had superseded the
dilettantism of their brain flirtations, and made them a tiresome waste
of time.
As they rode through Port Victoria, and turned off on the Government
House road, she missed Ally and learned that he had ridden home with
his chief, and would come on to the bungalow afterwards, doubtless.
“I saw them turn up the avenue; they were in front of us,” Halton said
quietly. “Did you not see them?”
She thought he looked at her.
“I don’t always see my husband!” said Mrs. Lewin adroitly. “Life would
be so fatiguing if one could not sometimes close one’s eyes, wouldn’t
it?”
“Or substitute another object?” said Halton, as they drew rein. “The
mail comes in to-morrow, and I expect to leave in her the day after,
Mrs. Lewin. But I hope this is not good-bye?”
“I am coming to see you off, of course! I will bring you one of Ally’s
pocket handkerchiefs.”
“To wave, or to weep in?”
“Whichever you prefer. Personally, I want to murder people who weep
over me; but if you like it, I will imitate the late rains.”
“I would not cost you a tear!” he said, with a sudden note of feeling
in his voice that vaguely surprised her. “If your future were in _my_
hands, there would be very little fear for it.”
He rode away into the darkness without any further farewell, while
Mrs. Lewin pondered his words with a fresh misgiving. When Ally came in
half-an-hour later, he told her--as he usually did when it was so--that
Halton had been speaking of her.
“I hope he was admiring me!” said Chum brightly. “But he could hardly
do less--to you.”
“He said you were very clever!” said Ally doubtfully. Who likes his
wife to be called clever?
“One and elevenpence halfpenny!” murmured Chum absently. “I did hope I
was worth two shillings, anyway.”
“And sma----”
“Ally, if you say smart _too_, I shall have Mr. Halton up for libel!”
said Mrs. Lewin indignantly.
Ally laughed. “Gregory’s Powder didn’t say anything,” he remarked. “I
don’t think you’ve made much impression there, in spite of your earnest
efforts, you know, Chum.”
Mrs. Lewin looked down absently at the back of her hand, almost as if
she expected to see something there; but her real answer came later, as
she kissed her husband and said good-night.
“Ally,” she said slowly, turning back at the door, “do you mind? It’s
so hot to-night! And you are restless, and have kept me awake lately!”
Alaric finished his whiskey and soda rather soberly. “Oh!” he said.
“All right. I’ll sleep in the dressing-room----”
He heard Leoline enter her own room and turn the key in the lock,
and he wondered in his stupid handsome head that she should so insist
on privacy. Then he cheered up, had another whiskey, and supposed
she had a headache. A man may distrust his mistress if she locks him
out, and knows how to translate his own inclination to sleep in the
dressing-room. But the _tertium quid_ of his wife’s case is always a
headache.