“‘Lachye noogh?’ as Botha said to his slave.”--_Boer Proverb._
“It is a little unfortunate all round,” said the Commissioner. “Or
perhaps inconvenient is the better word.”
“As far as it affects you, you are better off than if you were going to
Port Cecil. This may not be anything--we may cool down and tide over,
and you will catch this mail. She does not leave until Thursday.”
The Administrator was sitting at his own writing-table, with his
back to Halton, who had also been at work, as the scattered papers
testified. The room was one of many in Government House that had no
especial use, and had been given up to the work of the enquiry. The
third chair and littered writing-table was at the moment unoccupied,
and belonged to Captain Lewin. Over Halton’s head ranged a portly array
of shelves on which the old papers and accounts of the British African
Island Co., Ltd., were dustily stored, and attracted the mosquitoes, as
well as a water-tank, for though he cannot breed in them the mosquito
loves a book-shelf that is not often disturbed, and creeps along the
volumes’ edges and hides behind their bulk.
“Hardly!” said the Commissioner, with a slight shrug. “She has nearly
finished discharging her cargo already, and will not take two days to
coal.” He reached up over his head, and took down one of the dusty
volumes a little curiously, as if he had not observed it before. There
were some books of reference among the old ledgers, and this, to judge
from its appearance, was one, rather than an account book.
“You will get the next boat, then,” said Gregory, off-handedly. His
back being towards his coadjutator as he thus dismissed the subject of
his convenience, he did not see Halton’s eyes as he slowly raised them
from the old book and looked at him. It seemed he had found the passage
he wanted, for he kept his finger on a yellowed leaf while he spoke.
“I see of course the expediency of remaining here at the moment, as you
have decided on the necessity of such a stringent measure as burning
the hemp-crop.” His voice was formal, and so perfectly controlled
that it contained neither anger nor disapprobation nor argument. The
Administrator’s busy pen stopped. He lifted his head slightly as though
listening, and came within the radius of the shaded electric light. But
the shorn reddish hair betrayed nothing unless it were the fact that
he was growing very grey towards the temples. His overhanging brow and
secretive mouth were not visible to the Commissioner, whose level voice
ran on quietly.
“Before closing this matter, however, I should like for principle’s
sake to enter a protest, though it is merely a matter of form. I do
not consider Captain Lewin a fit man to send to East Africa on this
business. I believe him to be absolutely incapable of the anxious work
before him, and if he does not make a hash of the whole business it
will be a miracle. The power of course lies in your hands; the decision
is with you. I am not here to advise you in this, but, unofficially, I
should be doing an unfriendly thing if I did not warn you of my opinion
as to his incompetence.”
For a minute there was silence, while the last words hung in the air
like a menace. They meant more than the private counsel of one man
to another--they might also be translated as warning Gregory that
his ally’s opinion of Lewin’s incapacity would find voice in high
places. It was perhaps a gauge thrown down, and if so it was taken up
very quietly in the next few words, that the Administrator uttered as
naturally as if it were the inevitable reply to Halton’s argument.
“I am writing to Melton Hanney to do his best to give Captain Lewin
every assistance in his power. He knows Port Cecil well. Had the
Government been advised by me they would have put the matter in his
hands, instead of which they have insisted on my sending some one from
here. There is only my A.D.C. to send.”
“I see.” Halton’s hand was still on the noted passage. His eyes
followed the slight shrug of Gregory’s mighty shoulders, while he felt
with savage impotence that one might turn a tiger from its prey, sooner
than this man from his purpose. Halton would not have dared to do the
thing that he saw as plainly as its perpetrator; and because he knew
he dared not, he hated the man who could and would with a hate born of
self-knowledge.
“Melton Hanney is an old friend of yours, is he? You know him as a good
man?” he said.
“I have known him for about sixteen years,” said Gregory grimly. “And
watched successive Governments pass him over for good work done.” This
was the man of whom Leoline had spoken to Blanche Stern.
“I have no doubt he is the right person to consult on such a
situation. Knowledge on the spot is beyond value,” said Halton, rising
from his chair, and laying the book still open on his table. “I am
going down to see White, Gregory. As yet I am not a marked man; but if
you take my advice you will not ride alone through Port Victoria at
present. The niggers are fit to dance the _Cannab Dance_ for you!”
“The curs--I wish they had spirit enough! No, there might be the
makings of a fight at China Town, but our mixed breeds will hardly show
their teeth here. If you are going to see White, Halton, I wish you
would ask him to come up early to-morrow, unless he would prefer to
meet me at the office at eleven. I have business to discuss with him.”
“I shall recommend his coming here,” said Halton, with a slightly
strained smile. “In spite of your contempt for them I should not be
surprised to find a deputation of these ‘mixed breeds’ waiting on
you--with razors. If I were in your position, I tell you frankly I
should ask the O.C.T. for a picket.”
“There’s a shambok on the wall there,” said Gregory with quiet
significance. “It would answer the same purpose--and is quite handy.”
He did not turn his head as Halton’s retreating steps died away
from the room, but he noticed with more interest the sound of a
little silver clock striking eight. He often worked up to ten o’clock
at night, and had come back to write his letters direct from the
dinner-table. The one to Melton Hanney was too long for an official
document, and more private than he had indicated to Halton. He intended
giving it to Alaric Lewin to deliver direct, and had cabled in cypher
to Hanney to inform him of his advent. As he directed and sealed the
envelope it struck him that the room was hot, and he rose and opened
the long window-doors on to the stoep, passing Halton’s table as he did
so. The book lay open where the Commissioner had left it, and with a
passing wonder as to what he had been reading, Gregory’s eyes fell upon
it and discovered that it was an old Bible, probably kept there for
purposes of oath-making.
The Administrator took the book up deliberately in his strong hands,
and looked to see what had engrossed Alfred Halton so deeply. He
remembered how the flicker of the thin pages carefully turned, behind
him, had worried his ear while he tried to concentrate all his thought
and care upon the letter to Hanney, for it had been a dangerous letter
to write, and every word had been weighed. Even then he had found it
necessary to seal it, and would have to apologise to Lewin when asking
him to deliver it. Halton had been looking for something, or he would
not have turned those pages with such intent. Evelyn Gregory held up
the faded print to the light.
It was the story of Uriah.
“And it came to pass in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab,
and sent it by the hand of Uriah.
“And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of
the battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.
“And it came to pass, when Joab observed the city, that he assigned
Uriah unto a place whence he knew that valiant men were.
“And the men of the city went out, and fought with Joab; and there fell
some of the people of the servants of David; and Uriah the Hittite died
also.”
Certain passages in his own letter rose in Gregory’s mind as
distinctly and slowly as the note of the little silver clock when
it had chimed out the hour. “I am forced to send a fool, because
Government have cabled ... but I can only rely on you to do your best
to save his mistakes, and get us out of the mess if he hashes it....
Do you remember Barotse, and the night you said you owed me more than
a life? Well, if you want to pay, back me up now.... Lewin is one of
those favoured animals with Friends. I am always being urged to make
a show for him. Don’t take his place, but follow him up and cover his
tracks. If the fool has anything in him it must show up now. Give him
a free hand--it is the consequences I want you to manage. I know I am
asking a hard thing of you, all the work and no pay; but then I could
trust no one else, if that’s _Salama_ to you.... _Above all, keep Lewin
in the front of things._”
He put down the Bible with a steady hand, and his iron jaws closed
slowly, hardening his face into its ugliest lines. Yet for a moment he
stood by the table thinking, and facing his own letter unflinchingly,
as he saw it in his mind, side by side with one written dusty centuries
ago by another strong man to his captain.
“Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the battle----”
“Above all, keep Lewin in the front of things.”
He was roused by the door being opened, because no attention had
rewarded the servant’s patient tapping, but he looked at his master
apologetically.
“A lady wishes to see you, sir!” he breathed rather than spoke, as if
his own extraordinary message confused him.
“A lady!” Gregory glanced involuntarily at the little silver clock; it
pointed to half-past eight.
“It is Mrs. Lewin, sir, she said she must see you for a minute.”
“Ask her to come in here,” said Gregory, turning his back suddenly
upon the man. He looked at the open window half as if he would
have closed it, and at the shaded light half as if he would have
extinguished it, for his face was out of control. Even when he turned
round to meet his visitor, he offered her his hand in silence, and she
was vaguely surprised that he seemed to have suddenly gone bloodless.
The big veins swelled on his temples though, and his eyes looked sunken
and cavernous. She heard the door shut slowly, and fancied that the
servant who had admitted her shared her curiosity and would fain have
lingered. All personal feeling and sense of embarrassment had been
swept from her mind by the events which had overwhelmed her in the last
few hours, and she did not remember that she had not really met the man
standing before her since his hand had rested on hers at the picnic.
She was not an impulsive woman, and yet it had been impulse that had
made her send Ally to Maitso, impulse that had made her wait feverishly
for the moment of his departure, that had hurried her feet along the
familiar garden and through the grounds of Government House the instant
his pony’s hoofs died away down the hill. She was devoured by a desire
to know why Gregory had done her this ill turn, and was sending her
husband to certain failure, for he knew Alaric’s incapacity as well as
she. It was impulse now that drove her forward a step towards him, and
made her voice low and hurried as she spoke straight to him without any
more formal greeting.
“Why have you done this? Are you mad? What has made you send him to
Port Cecil instead of to Sir Geoffrey?”
He was looking at her with his long, hard stare, taking in every line
of her white figure in its feminine softness and beauty. Her hair was
waved back from her forehead more than usual, as if she had pushed it
there in her impatient thought, and beneath her delicate drawn brows
her velvet eyes were alight as if with pain. He felt stupid with
passion, and remembered with a curious thrill the occasion on which he
had seen her in her nightdress, her hair thrown back from her forehead
with much the same effect, and the same strained look in her eyes--it
seemed that her husband was always the cause of her looking so.
She had taken a step forward. He took one also, and they stood close
together, with nothing to hinder their direct gaze into each other’s
faces. His whispering voice was horribly audible, and yet suppressed as
he answered her.
“Mrs. Lewin, you have asked me to do my best for your husband, and give
him a chance if Government referred to me to recommend him. I am giving
him a chance. What reason have you to complain?”
She threw out her hands with a little movement of desperation, almost
as if she would have seized his arm and shaken him. “Oh, don’t lie,
now!” she exclaimed. “Tell me the truth--the truth! You know he may
ruin himself if he goes without me. Why did you not send us to this
other appointment that was put in your hands? If you had mentioned his
name, instead of Captain Nugent’s, to Sir Geoffrey Vaughan, we should
have been moved from here together. Why did you not do it?”
He did not ask her how she had known of his private letter from the
old general. He stood and looked at her still, and moistened his lips
as if he could hardly speak. She saw his tongue touch them like a
wicked snake before the words would come. He bent a little more towards
her, and his lidless eyes probed hers mercilessly.
“Because I could not part from you!” he said distinctly, and yet he
seemed to speak without a real note in his voice.
She fell back in exactly the same mechanical way that she had gone
forward, and her eyes blinked before his as if before too strong a
light. Very slowly she lifted her pretty hands and laid them over her
breast as if with an unconscious effort to quiet the throbbing of the
pulses there. He had not moved; but her voice was almost as toneless as
his, when she spoke, from utter terror.
“Do you realise what you are doing? That it is not only his own career
that Ally may risk, but--but the whole situation in East Africa. If he
bungles it you will be held responsible!”
He bent his head so slightly that it seemed he hardly moved.
“Yes, I know it.”
“And you----?”
Their eyes still met. She drew a sharp breath as if she stood suddenly
in too strong an air. It seemed to her as if the personality of the man
buffeted her, and she could not stand against it. She was afraid of
any one who could gamble with Government like this, and stake empires
for his own hazard. It was sweeping her off her feet, and leaving her
helpless in a vortex of feeling she was not able to control. Her own
nature she thought she could fight and conquer, but she saw with sudden
panic that the one before her was beyond her yes or no--she might
influence, but she could not dominate it as she had her husband’s.
If he had chosen to take her savagely in his arms, she could have
protested, but she could not have averted the embrace by the power
of her will. Hitherto Leoline Lewin had drawn an invisible line of
demarcation between herself and mankind, and had known that none would
dare to overstep it. But this man would not be conscious of the line.
Nothing but his own restraint could save her from the peril of touch at
least.
The windows still stood wide open to the windless night. She was
waiting for she knew not what, when Gregory suddenly turned his
head, listened, and faced round from her towards the apertures. The
stars struggled against the electric light to make the stoep a grey
vagueness, and it stretched, empty and silent, beyond the house itself.
For a minute there was nothing but the whirring of the crickets, and
the shrill wearisome cry of a tree frog that pierced the hearing. Then
through all the natural clamour of tropical darkness came the rustle of
human presence, the tread of feet, and the sound of many voices rising
from the gardens. Something white rushed on to the stoep, and at the
same moment Gregory had made a stride for the light and turned it off.
His own figure and Mrs. Lewin’s must have been sharply visible a second
before from the garden outside, as they stood in the strong light of
the room, objects for missiles or bullets; but as he walked forward to
the intruder he alone was in view.
“What is it, Ahmed?” he said.
The man was one of his own servants, an Arab, and with more than an
Arab’s craven fear of danger in his quivering body at the present
moment. He stood shaking and sweating, his words broken with fright as
he tried to speak.
“They have passed the gate! They are coming up here! Quick,
Effendi!--get to the stables and ride for the barracks! The soldiers
will fight for us!”
Mrs. Lewin, standing in the dusk of the room behind him, saw Gregory
take the man by his linen tunic, swing him over like an inconsiderable
bundle, and roll him along the stoep out of his way. Then he stepped
quickly to the wall and took something in his hand. She caught the long
quiver of a shambok as he spoke to her briefly over his shoulder.
“There is going to be a noise, I expect, but it won’t be much. It is
only a lot of niggers come up to call me out and protest about the
crops. Can you load a revolver?”
“Yes!”
“Well, do so, and shoot as many blacks as you like. The more the
better. There is a revolver in the second drawer of that table, and
cartridges.”
“Won’t you have it?”
“No; this will do for me. I should like to flay half-a-dozen, and
teach them how the Kaffirs die under this thing!” The shambok quivered
ominously, and the roused blood in his veins was evidently finding an
outlet in the hope of savage assault. She shuddered a little as his
large gaunt figure vanished through the window on to the stoep.
The “deputation” that Halton had foretold was a motley crowd, and by
sheer force of numbers rather than belligerence, had pushed the sentry
aside and swarmed up to the house in an unorganised attack. Amongst
the half-drunken niggers who were dancing amicably amongst themselves
instead of forming up with the semblance of an opposing force, the
little blue figures of the Chinese were visible, and all the anger of
the assembly seemed to be concentrated in them. As Gregory stalked on
to the stoep the clamour rose, the half-hysterical ribaldry of the
blacks clearing to threats and words, and the Chinamen jabbering like
monkeys. Through it all the cry of the Malagasy “Ra!” (blood) cut the
tumult like a clear bass note.
The Administrator leaned over the rail, gripping it with his lean
hands, and looking down at the upturned faces with his hard stare. The
insolence of his attitude seemed to half rouse, half tame the crowd.
They wavered, but the sing-song snarl which Mrs. Lewin had heard in
the hour of the Miroro, went on like an accompaniment to the crickets.
Words were indistinguishable, but some one on the outskirts of the
throng flung a cocoanut which hit the zinc roofing of the stoep, and,
as if it were a signal, half-a-dozen blue figures swarmed over the
railing and made a rush for Gregory. Leoline had moved by instinct
nearer the window, with the loaded revolver in her hand. She remembered
that Halton had said that Gregory loved a row, for she heard him laugh
shortly, as if in enjoyment of his own excitement, while he stepped
back and awaited them. No other missile was flung as she expected it
would be, but she wondered if the crowd were armed with razors as the
rioters had been before. Then she saw a curious sight, for the first
of the Chinamen to approach too near was caught by the swing of the
supple shambok and fell on his back with the breath knocked out of
him, and Gregory advanced on the others, literally sweeping the stoep
clear again by the force of his swinging blows. The hide whickered
viciously as it cut the still air, and once a shriek answered its awful
“Whir-r-r-r-r-h!” telling how the blow had caught its victim. The
absolute and savage contempt with which he whipped them off the stoep,
like curs, gave the woman watching him a revelation of the abhorrence
in which the Englishman really holds the alien, and especially after
many years spent amongst coloured races. She had met with something
of it in her husband, and learned more from Captain Gilderoy’s frank
brutality in speaking of them; but now she saw and realised. Gregory
kicked the last man into the garden and came back to her laughing
horribly. The curious part to her was that they did not resist, and he
did not even wait to see the humming crowd melt away into the darkness
as it was fast doing.
“If there were any organisation among them they might be worth
killing,” he said, taking the revolver from her. “As it is I would
have made an example of one of those Chinamen--shamboked him so that
he would brew no hashish!--if you had not been there. But it’s not a
pretty sight.”
“Are they gone?” she asked with stiff lips. The march of events seemed
to have stunned her. She had a sick feeling that she could bear no
more, and that she had lived through crisis after crisis in a few
hours, which would in an ordinary way be spread over as many years.
“They will be in a few minutes, but if you will excuse me I will just
go and give orders to see that the grounds are quite clear before you
walk back.”
She was thankful that the sudden incursion of natives seemed to have
deferred any further scene between them. He was alert and full of fire,
but it was not directly for her, though he took elaborate care for her
escort back to the bungalow, and accompanied her as far as the garden
gate himself.
“Tell your own servants to keep a look out,” he said. “But I expect
Captain Lewin will hear that there was a threatened row and come
up in hot haste to look after you.” He dismissed the Arabs who
had accompanied them, with a nod, and held out his hand to her.
“Good-night!” he said in a gentler tone, that made her nerves shoot
with fearful anticipation. “You were very good and brave. I hope you
were not much frightened.”
“I do not think I realised it all at the moment--you were so cool over
it.”
“Because there really was no immediate danger. That was not an
organised attack--it was a foretaste of what might happen. That is why
I am obliged to detain the Commissioner--to confirm my action should
a real riot break out.” He looked at her straight, and she saw that
he feared no real danger, and that this was the assertion he meant
to fling in the face of the world as his excuse for keeping Halton
and sending her husband away--she saw it, but it fell on stunned
senses. No one who had seen him to-night would believe that he could
fear an attack, however organised, or see any necessity to detain the
Commissioner. But she had borne all she could bear at present. She
wished him good-night, and turned towards the lights of her own house,
like one walking in her sleep.
“Good-night!” he said again, and looked round him, from the dusky
garden to the gate which her hand had closed between them, and along
the dark pathway to Government House. “When there was a threatened riot
before, and I roused you up, I came by the road, for I was riding. But
this is the best path on foot. I have never been this way--before.”