“He who will not have peace, God sends him war.”--_English
Proverb._
The Administrator stepped out of the writing-room quickly, through the
ever-open window, tripped, and nearly fell headlong on the stoep. He
looked down, as he caught the vine-clad pillar, to see what had nearly
wrought his destruction. A man, a half-caste, lay huddled at his feet,
in an attitude so like death that a stranger would have been deceived.
Evelyn Gregory had seen that death-sleep before; he bent down closely,
pushed the man over with his foot, and sniffed the heavy breath that
came every thirty seconds or so through the open mouth. Then he stood
up again, erect, at his full six feet three inches, and looked across
the gardens of Government House, that seemed to drift away into glades
of fainter and fainter colour, until it was only a green glow. His
active eyes may have seen the vegetation, but they certainly saw
something else--a picture inside his head rather than outside. After a
second he raised his voice and called.
Two Arabs answered the Administrator’s summons, on the principle that
Saadat el basha (his Excellency) usually demanded strenuous tasks too
heavy for one man. Gregory looked with steady, lidless eyes from them
to the apparently lifeless body, and pointed to it with a curt gesture.
“Take that away,” he said in his horribly under-breathed voice, “and
lay him somewhere to recover. He is not dead--he has been smoking
ganja.” He paused, looked down at the helpless body, and added three
words whose bestial insult they could understand--“_Ya ibn kelb!_”
(This is not even Malagasy--it is Arabic, and it conveys that your
parentage was not all it might be with advantage to yourself.)
The Arabs lifted the half-caste native, and carried him away out of
range of Gregory’s savage eyes. He was a sais in their phrase--a
Zanzalaky or pony-boy in Key Island, and attached to the Government
House stables. Why he had crawled on to the stoep in the state he was
when he had fallen asleep they did not ask. It was a disaster sent
by Allah, and would bring him the kourbash, which was their name for
Gregory’s shambok.
The Administrator continued his interrupted way, walked off the stoep,
and was half across the grass when he spied a pony trotting up the
drive, and turned aside to speak to the rider. No man trotted in such
heat save one in Key Island, and that was the O.C.T. Gregory turned
back with him to the house.
“Just the man I wanted!” he said. “I was coming down to the club to
look for you. Come in here.”
Churton threw his leg over his pony’s neck, polo fashion, and dropped
off, a groom appearing as if by magic to take the animal. There were so
many servants always waiting on noiseless bare feet at Government House
that it was rarely necessary to shout as Gregory had done.
“I’ve just had a warning,” said the Administrator, leading the way back
into the room he had left. “Sit down--whiskey or cého?”
“Whiskey, thanks.”
“A man was lying in a drunken sleep just outside that window,” said
the Administrator, with a backward nod, as he opened the soda-water for
his guest himself, and poured in the spirit. “He must have been there a
very short time--he will lie like that for three days now.”
Churton raised the glass.
“Here’s to you!” he said significantly. “What was it? Hemp?”
“Yes--ganja. They have given up brewing it because we were watching for
the still, but they’ve got some of the crop, and they are teaching the
natives to smoke it like opium. It means a fresh raid.”
“And more slaughter! Well, I shall be glad of a little diversion.” An
ugly, dark look flitted over the soldier’s face, and wrinkled his broad
forehead. There seemed more grey in his thick dark hair of late, and a
line of pain round the firm lips. “Any notion where the trouble rises?”
he said.
“I have an idea that it’s beyond China Town, in that valley between the
Tableland and Hashish.”
“But, my dear fellow, there’s no way through--it’s all ‘dirty,’ and as
full of scrub as it can be. I came down that way from shooting on the
Tableland and found it nearly impassable. No room for crops.”
“There’s room for storage. I don’t mean in the valley itself, but
nearer the Little Zambesi. Anyhow I shall raid Sand Bay. There are
caves there.”
Churton sat thoughtfully for a minute, the tumbler in his strong brown
hand. He felt desperately that he would be glad of a scrimmage, if only
the beggars would show fight. But when was a coloured man game enough?
“They’ve been quiet for this last month or so,” he said regretfully.
“Ever since that little demonstration in your garden here.”
“That was a flash in the pan--it meant nothing.”
“It only frightened Mrs. Lewin. Have you heard anything of her, by the
way?”
“She is still at Vohitra.”
“I know. My wife talks of going out there when Mrs. Gilderoy returns.
She can’t stand her in the same house.”
“I have not seen Mrs. Lewin for some weeks--not since she went out, in
fact,” said Gregory deliberately. He looked at the man before him as if
measuring him, almost stealthily, and licked his lips to moisten them
in the tigerish fashion peculiar to him before some inhuman effort.
Churton was not looking at him; he leaned forward, his elbows on his
knees, one hand still holding the half-empty tumbler, the other hanging
loosely against his puttee. The massive lines of his head and neck were
thrown into prominence by the forward thrust of his shoulders.
“Strong man to strong man!” said Gregory rapidly to his own heart. “And
I like him ... but some one must go under. He has to be the sacrifice.”
“Mrs. Lewin declines to see me,” he said slowly, choosing his words
with care. “She not unnaturally connects me with her husband’s death,
as I was the unfortunate cause of his going to East Africa. Not being
very logical she forgets her own anxiety that Captain Lewin should have
a chance to show what stuff he was made of. Well, he showed it--but as
I gave him the chance, his wife gives me the blame!”
Churton nodded without speaking. His attitude was sympathetic so far.
Then Gregory did one of those things that had made men follow his order
into death itself, and die silent, having bought him life, and--what he
valued more--success. A touch of human weakness in his almost inhuman
strength had been his great coup on occasions which had never been
recorded, for something in his personality attracted men and women
alike of an infinitely higher type than himself, and when he used that
magnetism it had never failed him.
He laid his hand on Churton’s shoulder, and his quick panting voice was
a broken whisper.
“Churton, I’m desperate! She is everything to me--but her husband,
dead, is a stronger barrier even than living. She is making a shrine of
his memory, and thinks she must be faithful to it.”
The real secret of Gregory’s influence was that his appeal was genuine,
though made with a further end in view. He did not lay bare his secrets
for a light reason. He could feel his own earnestness touching Bute
Churton in spite of self-interest and the reserve of training and
tradition. He looked up with a haggard face that would have shaken any
resolution less ruthless than Gregory’s.
“Is that how it is?” he said quietly. “Well, you have my best wishes.
And you can tell her that she owes no allegiance to her husband’s
memory, I--knew him more intimately than she. Men do know each other
so--see? He was not faithful to her, even after six months.” He paused,
set the empty tumbler on the table as if in complete control of his
nerves, and added in the same level tone: “You had better make her
understand that Lewin was no ideal for her to cherish. Otherwise--she
is a good woman--she might not listen to you.”
Gregory drew a breath of relief that caught itself in his throat. The
thing he had suspected was confirmed--at least he had tacit consent
from Churton to use his suspicion. The sacrifice of the man before
him in extracting such a bitter confession was, as always, a second
consideration to his own gain. He held an advantage now to use in his
own behalf with Leoline Lewin, and if it had been necessary to drag
Churton through the mire of mentioning his wife’s very name he would
not have stopped at doing so, nor did he doubt his own success. He was
quick to reckon chances, and the vulnerable points of those with whom
he had to deal--such insight had been a necessity to him. He knew that
the more generous nature had been touched by the unlocking of his own
secret; nothing less would have worked on him to admit as much as he
had. He took his hand off Churton’s shoulder, and said, “Thank you,
old fellow!” as simply as a school-boy, and Churton thought himself
rewarded.
There was truth, too, in his saying that he was desperate. A kind of
hunger for the woman he loved possessed him, and he had not seen her
to speak to since the night when he betrayed himself by a too-great
anxiety to bind her to him. She had withdrawn herself beyond reach of
his immediate influence, and he dared not force her to an encounter.
Twice he had been at Port Albert, and had found Vohitra closed to
him--by Mrs. Lewin’s own request he paid her no visit of condolence.
He could not realise that the tie between them was not endangered
by absence, or that material things had no influence upon Leoline’s
feelings for him. A man loves with his five senses; but a woman with
all her instincts and a few over. It does not really matter to her
if he is ill-favoured, or has given her a badly-cooked dinner, or a
world divides them, or he talks about himself, or some one has burnt
the fat and the smell is pervading the house--so long as he is her
chosen to her she can go on love-making, in fancy if need be, without
distraction. But you must satisfy the eyes, and the palate, and the
longing touch, and the egotistical ear, and the sensitive nose,
before a man is well pleased and thinks tenderly of the opposite sex.
Long before Leoline Lewin was ripe for seeing him again, Gregory was
fretting because he thought his influence slackened by distance. He
wanted to bring the power of his personality to bear again before he
could feel sure of his ultimate success.
At first, as the days lengthened into weeks, he had been patient to
let her recover from the shock of her husband’s death, to go away
and mourn for him if need be, for decency’s sake. But he had meant
to see her under the cloak of a conventional sympathy, and when he
found himself denied her presence he chafed, and then, risking Mrs.
Gilderoy’s eyes, he wrote to her. It had been difficult to answer,
in the face of her own renewed desire, but she had quietly demanded
time. She was going home next mail; she would see him to say good-bye,
and they might meet again in England. Her date of meeting had a
far-off sound, and he realised that conventional widowhood meant at
least a year’s probation. To the man of immediate action, a man like
Gregory, such flimsy delays were irritating; and yet he recognised the
importance of social standing, and the slur of a hurried marriage. At
least he must force a definite promise before the mail arrived and she
slipped beyond his grasp, and even to do this meant a violation of her
husband’s memory. It was then that Gregory thought of certain hints he
had heard of his A.D.C. and the women of the station, for Halton had
carried adder’s poison under his tongue to justify his own devotion in
the earlier days of his intimacy with Mrs. Lewin. Absorbed in weightier
matters, and contemptuous of gossip, Gregory had not interested himself
in such slight things as Alaric Lewin’s infidelities, and when his
need came, he could remember nothing but an outline. He did not know,
however, whither his incompetent _aide_ had always been lured away
from duty, and his own savage strictures on tennis and Maitso recurred
to him. The inference was natural, and with a broad master-stroke
of policy, he drained Diana’s husband for information--the man most
unlikely to know on the surface of things, the man most likely to know
in Gregory’s sardonic experience of such situations. These things
always leaked out, and worked to silent tragedies between husband and
wife. Churton would know--and for his own ends Evelyn Gregory could
make use even of a dead man’s gallantries.
Up in the silence of Vohitra a runner brought a letter to Leoline
Lewin a day or so after Churton had spoken with the Administrator. At
the sight of the handwriting her heart stood still again, and she did
not think to look at the messenger, who, according to the date of the
missive, should have been there before. There was a restless excitement
about the man, half fear, half exultation, for he brought other news
than that in the letter--but Mrs. Lewin found her own sufficient for
the moment, and read and re-read the small characteristic writing as if
fascinated.
Gregory was never merciful. He tore the last of her illusions from
her, and laid bare a grisly truth--though he did it in decent
words--without compunction. Certain sentences in that letter seemed to
buzz in her ears without keeping the connection. They meant nothing,
and yet they meant so much.
“If you are refusing to see me from a feeling of loyalty to Captain
Lewin your sacrifice is thrown away, for he was not loyal to you....”
No? Not even the faith in her married life left to her? Married one
short year, and she could not keep her husband’s fidelity--she felt
the humiliation of the bald statement in Gregory’s words. It had been
another of her theories that a woman like herself could keep any man.
It seemed that all her virtues and attractions had not prevented Alaric
from straying. And where had he strayed? With innocent conceit she had
seen herself the fairest, best-gowned, quickest-witted woman, at all
events in the little shoddy Station. But it appeared that she was less
invincible than she thought. Other sentences in that letter followed to
enlighten her.
“I am not speaking on my own authority. Other men--Major Churton
principally--confirm my assertion that your husband was no pattern of
fidelity. You can guess for whom he left you--we need not attack his
memory for a thing that is over and done with. But to vow to be true
to one who could hardly demand it as due to him is making the position
ridiculous....
“I am only supposing that this is what has closed your heart to me. But
am I not at least as worthy of allegiance as Lewin? Understand that it
was not merely a venial sin, such as you may call your own during his
absence--I have Churton’s testimony, poor fellow....”
Then it was as if a blaze of pain blotted out the words of the letter
for a moment. She saw and recognised many things in that sacrifice of
Bute Churton’s name. Di ... and Ally! The horrible vulgarity of it,
the degradation of even her slight friendship with the woman, made her
revolt. She could have forgiven it better had he done such a thing
with half a world between them, even though his partner in guilt had
professed to like her; but in the narrow confines of Port Victoria it
seemed abominable. Her last ideal was torn from her, and the worst of
it was that in the light of Ally’s backsliding she saw what her own had
nearly been. In her thoughts, her desires, perhaps, she had been worse,
since his passions, like his whole nature, were slighter than her own.
She rose to her feet in that intolerable revelation, the letter crushed
in her hand ... and for the first time she saw, consciously, the native
runner who had brought it.
He had been waiting with hideous eagerness to catch her attention. The
minute he saw that she was looking at him with expectation he babbled
with speech, his head nodding vaguely towards the way he had come,
childish eagerness and horrid enjoyment in his face.
“I heap big trouble to come through, Missus. The land is up--they dance
the Cannab dance in Po’ Victoria.”
She caught her breath, and her wide blazing eyes held his like a
snake’s.
“What is that you say? Tell me more. What has happened?”
“You hear nothing hyar? No--the ra not reach you. The Panjaka-Baas----”
“Mr. Gregory--the Administrator--yes?” She knew that queer native
jumble of a title for him, for panjaka means king or head lord, and the
South African baas or master had drifted into Key Island with the white
man’s authority.
“First he burn the Cannab--but the Chiney man he keep back some.
Then the Panjaka-Baas he guess there is some still, for the nigger
still get drunk.” He rubbed his hands and grinned as if in delighted
reminiscence. “They make a raid at Sand Bay and find the Cannab
cane--lots an’ lots hidden there! And _then_ the land is up and they
dance!”
Leoline, without turning her eyes away, as though afraid he might
escape if she did, called, “Mrs. Gilderoy!” Her friend answered her
from the house, and a minute later came out on to the stoep, with a
sharp glance of surprise at the runner.
“He brought me a letter,” Mrs. Lewin explained briefly. “He comes from
Port Victoria. Tell this lady what you have told me!” she commanded.
The native did so, laughing inanely through the narrative, and helped
on by Leoline’s prompting. “Ra!” (blood) said the native. “Heaps ra!”
The two women looked at each other with ashen faces.
“Is it true, do you think?” Mrs. Lewin said.
“I don’t know--but I must go to my husband,” said Mrs. Gilderoy
decidedly.
“I thought you might wish.”
“I shall get down to Port Albert to-night, and take to-morrow’s boat. I
can telephone through from there too. If only we had one here!”
“No telephone. Wires cut!” jabbered the runner.
“Oh, good heavens!... Will you come too, or remain here?” said Mrs.
Gilderoy, controlling herself and turning to Mrs. Lewin.
“I shall stay here--at present. There is nothing I could do there, and
I should only be in the way with no man to look after me. In a few days
I may come round, the mail is nearly due.”
“But, my dear, the land is up--that means that the natives have risen
all over the island, I expect.”
“I am not afraid.”
“Well, I am!” said Mrs. Gilderoy honestly. “Afraid for my husband, if
not for myself. Can’t we get more news out of this creature? Make him
speak, Chum, for goodness sake, or I shall kill him with kourbash! My
riding-crop is heavy!”
“Tell us more,” said Mrs. Lewin briefly to the native. “Are any matz
(dead) of this ra?” (blood). She mixed up Malagasy and English in her
desperation.
“Many, Missus, the soldiers charge, and the people fall. But they kill
one baas--yes, an officer!”
“Who? Who was it? What was his name?” Mrs. Gilderoy, like a leaping
fury, had seized him by the shoulder and shook him in a frenzy of fear,
so that he could only chatter and jabber at her incoherently. She was
suddenly transformed to a mad woman in her anxiety. Beneath all her
worldly wisdom and ironical remarks on the married state, she loved one
man, and that was Wray Gilderoy. It was strange how this bitter-tongued
couple had kept the sweetness of their union beneath all their jeering
at other people’s matrimony. Leoline felt it a real and consequently
a precious thing, while she gently disengaged the native from Mrs.
Gilderoy’s clutch.
“You are only frightening him--he cannot speak to tell you,” she said.
“Now think, Zanzalaky--what is the name of the officer who is--who
is--killed?”
“’Milton Gourney, Missus!”
“Gourney--Gurney! Hamilton Gurney! Oh, poor young fellow!”
She remembered the one thing that people always did distinguish in
Gurney’s vapid individuality--his voice. All the soul of the man seemed
to lie in that good gift, and a lump rose in her throat at the memory
of the songs that were hushed for ever. It seemed as wicked to have
shot him as to shoot a nightingale.
But Mrs. Gilderoy had dropped into the nearest chair, and was
moaning hysterically in her relief. The women she had laughed at for
a too-demonstrative attachment to their husbands could have taken an
ample revenge could they have seen her then. But Mrs. Lewin felt only
the deeper side of it, and saw no bathos in the rocking, undignified
figure, tortured with being a woman and impotent while the man she
cared for was exposed to danger in the proper course of things. They
seemed to her to have left self-consciousness behind them and the
shame that dogs an exhibition of real feeling, so that Vohitra always
appeared in Leoline’s memory as a little stage and scenic effects to
the intensity of two or three figures--her own and Mrs. Gilderoy’s at
the present moment.
She had no time to think of herself and her private anxiety during the
next few hours, through which it seemed to her she felt neither heat
nor tire, but pushed the frightened useless black servants aside and
packed her friend’s belongings for her with capable hands. It was only
when Mrs. Gilderoy had stumbled away down the hillside, hardly guiding
her pony for the first time on record, that she had the leisure to
face her own intolerable dread. Her cheek was wet where Mrs. Gilderoy
had kissed her, but not with her own tears. She had no open right to
cry, but she looked at the letter which had seemed only a new dismay a
few hours ago, and thought that it might be the last she should ever
receive in that handwriting....
For if there were any concerted attack, and organised hate in the
brain maddened by hashish and ganja, it would all be directed against
the Administrator. Gregory was the man to fall, by treachery or open
warfare, and she recognised the maddening position she was in by being
cut off from news. Even if she went down to Port Albert the telephone
wires were cut, and they were dependent for information on the little
coasting steamers which at best were irregular. When Mrs. Gilderoy had
asked if she would stay at Vohitra or come back with her, Leoline had
answered with the unselfish impulse of her love, seeing in a flash of
comprehension that her presence would only hamper Gregory, and paralyse
his action with a private anxiety. She had not thought of herself at
all in that moment, nor did she regret her decision now by the light
of reason; but her heart cried out in its distress that her place was
with him, and that not to know of his safety was unbearable, with a
desire as great as Mrs. Gilderoy’s. She had no right to act the weak
woman, and please herself at the expense of the man she loved--no
right justified, like Mrs. Gilderoy’s, by years of open marriage.
Gregory would believe her safe at Vohitra, and be freer to use the
brain and nerve, in which she took some comfort, remembering the night
when he had cleared the stoep, alone, with no weapon but a shambok.
But she realised, during the next few days, that she had set herself
the hardest task that a woman can--to wait and endure the anxiety in
silence, that a man may feel her a helpmate, and not a burden.
Life went on the same in the Tsara Valley in spite of the panic that
threatened the whole island. The coloured people were cutting the
cane, driven by the dogged wills of a few strong white men, whose grim
determination triumphantly proved them once more the dominant race.
The planters saved their crops as if nothing had happened to upset the
usual routine of harvest, and though labour was scarce, they quietly
forced the natives who had not been drawn to the centre of trouble to
work as usual. There had been a meeting at Port Albert, and a concerted
plan of action agreed upon amongst those men most experienced in the
island, the result being that the rioting in the other districts hardly
affected the little seaport, and the sugar harvest was not ruined.
Gradually the influence of these few men made itself felt amongst
the dangerous numbers of mixed races; and Mrs. Lewin, from the stoep
at Vohitra, saw the dark forms bending in the furrows, the mellowing
blades falling, and, leaving the ground shorn of its gold-green glory,
the trucks pass up and down the whole sweep of the valley, while the
factory smoked through the long, hot days. Once the town warden rode
out to pay her a hurried visit, and give her what news he could; but
he was a busy man--Gregory’s representative, and the despot of the
town--and could spare but little time. He left some of his own servants
at Vohitra whom he could trust, and asked Mrs. Lewin quietly if she
could charge and fire a revolver.
“Yes,” she said briefly, remembering that Gregory had asked her the
same question once before, at the last threatened rising.
“I have brought you one of mine--you had better keep it by you,”
Ambroise said cheerfully. “I don’t think there will be the least
necessity for it, but it is as well that the people about you should
know you are armed.”
“Have you any news?”
“The island is quieting down, and I do not think anyhow it would spread
out this way. But there has been real fighting at Port Victoria, and
the troops were called out. One poor fellow was killed in the first
skirmish--Hamilton Gurney. Did you know him?”
“Yes. I used to admire his voice so much. Poor fellow! How was it?”
“There was a rush in the Square, and they got him up against the
Market buildings. You know those steps? He was trying to get through
the mob with some girl, and they stabbed him with a razor they had
looted from a private house. No one knows who did it, of course.”
“Where were the troops?”
“They arrived on the scene three minutes later. It was very
sudden--those risings always are--and Gurney had no warning. He was not
in uniform at all, or with his men--he had been in town, and was going
to ride out to Maitso, but he had not had any orders even.”
“And the girl?”
“Oh, the girl is all right, except that she had hysterics. Two or
three white people were wounded, and about a hundred niggers have been
killed--I wish it had been a thousand!” said Ambroise savagely. “But I
think they have had a lesson.”
“Port Victoria is quiet, then? I wonder if I might go round? The mail
is almost due,” she added with an instinct of caution to veil her real
reason.
“Well, it is getting that way, but I think you are better off here at
present. It was the most sensible thing you could do to stop here. The
place will be lamb-like when you do see it again. As far as Key’land
goes such a rising was just what was wanted.”
“But the loss of life!” she exclaimed with a shudder.
“You can’t help that, and you can only teach the natives respect for
the British Empire by a military lesson delivered some time or other.
Last time, you see, they got off with a warning, and we all felt that
once the troops were here they ought to be punished. Most places catch
it that have Gregory as Administrator, and are chastened afterwards. He
is the right man in the right place--I’d rather work under him than any
man who comes out with a theory of ‘It’s all done by kindness.’”
She tried to keep her face from tingling, and smiled faintly. “You are
almost as drastic in your views as the Administrator. Has he--has he
come out of the fray unscathed?”
“Oh, he’s all right--so far.” Ambroise laughed, unknowing that his
words frightened her. “He has given them a dose of Gregory’s Powder,
and they are making wry faces over it. But he is a man who always
carries his life in his hand, Mrs. Lewin--he always will, wherever he
is.”
She turned away, sick at heart. In her ignorance of the fate that
pressed her rapidly, she pictured herself far off from Gregory, in
England, thinking of those words that his admiring lieutenant had
said. Wherever he might go he would carry his life in his hand, from
his savage unofficialism that never got into the papers, and she for
a year at least would be as helpless and uncognisant of his movements
and fate as she was now. She had no premonition that those whose lives
were interwoven with Gregory’s were whirled into quick action with his
overmastering vitality, and hurried out of the usual course of events.
Life always went quickly with him. He did not lose time through being
handicapped by red tape of any description, as his Service was grimly
aware. But these things were hid in secret drawers at the Colonial
Office, and filed for censure about once in every appointment that
Evelyn Gregory had ever had.
Mrs. Gilderoy had been gone but three or four days when in the evening
of that following Ambroise’s visit one of the servants brought Leoline
a note from her, saying that it had come by a messenger who was
waiting. Mrs. Lewin had been sitting at the improvised writing-table
in her own bedroom--one of those passion-haunted rooms from whose
suggested associations she could never get away after Mrs. Gilderoy
had put the fancy into her head. With the note in her hand she rose at
once and went across the passage and out on to the stoep, because the
natives usually waited there. Her long black gown swished across the
bare boards as she went, where other women’s had whispered in the same
feminine tongue during long-dead summers.
“--except poor Gurney, who paid the forfeit of his life for running
after Trixie Denver anyhow. How matters stood between them one doesn’t
know, but the girl is behaving as if she were his _fiancée_ at
least--if not his widow! She goes about in deep mourning----”
Leoline put the letter on one side to read presently, raised her eyes
as she came out on to the stoep, and saw Evelyn Gregory.
The sun was setting behind Vohitra, but the house faced north-east,
and the late long beams still struck that side of the stoep where they
met. Their faces were in the shadow, the dusty light only bathing them
warmly to the waist, and she saw that there was some strong purpose
in his seeking her here even as she met his eyes. For a minute she
seemed to wait between one life and another before he spoke--the old
theoretical life of her untried girlhood, dear with the bright things
of the world, that even her wifehood had left unaltered; and the deeper
painful realities of existence that he had called into being for her.
She knew, before he spoke, that a decision awaited her now, as to
whether she should pass definitely from one to the other, and it seemed
to her that she hardly faltered.
“I have come to you to put a choice before you,” he said, even as
he took her hand and held it in his strong grip. He gave her no
conventional greeting, though so much had happened since they had said
good-bye in the bungalow ... the night before she got Ally’s letter. “I
have very little time to spare--I must go back in an hour at most. The
town is under my authority at present, and I am responsible.”
His word told her enough. “You have been recalled!” she said quietly.
“Yes; Halton has reached England,” he said significantly. “But apart
from any private pulling of the strings, I expected this--perhaps.
There was just a chance I might wire through, but it was unlikely. They
are sending out another man.”
“From England?”
“Ultimately. From Capetown at present.”
“And you go home?”
“As things now stand--officially. But I have private information that I
am to go to Central Africa again.”
“Is this”--she moistened her dry lips--“because of Port Cecil?”
“Partly, I suppose. It was touch-and-go there after Lewin’s death.”
(Did he ever shrink before a name? She could not have spoken so.) “But
Melton Hanney pulled the Empire out of a war. He should get something
for that!” He smiled grimly.
“You have heard from Capetown?”
“I have.” He spoke more grimly still. Into his hard eyes flashed the
passing soreness of a spoiled ambition. And he had meant to do so much
with that insignificant tool, Key Island!--to make it so much the very
centre of warring destinies that no one in after years could speak of
it without an historical significance. He knew, as even she could not
understand, the result of the thing he had dared to do, and he saw
his future, perhaps, as another man did, “behind him!” For one cannot
stake Empires and not lose something, even though one win a private
and personal gain. Something was left him out of the wreck on which to
begin to build anew--a fresh incentive to rise in the fair woman before
him, whom he had coveted to the height of tossing lives aside for her,
and committing tacit murder. He stretched out his hands and took hers
gently.
“Will you come into the wilderness with me?” he said, with a curious
little smile. “Dare you be my wife and share my fortunes--now?”
For a second she half drew back, not at the thing he suggested, but the
hurry it implied. “At once--so soon?” breathed her training.
“At once--so soon!” he echoed, not one line of concession in his face
or voice. “That wherever I go I may take you with me. I am not offering
you an easy position, or an establishment in life, I assure you! I am
a man who wants his wife beside him, wherever it is possible. I shall
very likely want you where most men would say it was not possible. If
you are afraid for your children, it may mean parting from them, or if
we can make a home where other men give up all hope of family ties, I
shall ask you to risk it.”
“I am not _afraid_!” she said proudly, but rather breathlessly.
“Except for the weight of public opinion against a hurried marriage?
I meant to spare you that. But things are worse with me than I hoped
they might be, and the stroke fell more swiftly.” He set his teeth
and thought of Halton. “I have not much to offer you!” he said, and
his voice had suddenly hoarsened. “But I think you love me--I know
I love you. There is trouble for us in the future, but I have still
the fighting powers that have made me what I am. I can give you love,
and strength to win you back the position that I have imperilled for
you.” His voice sharpened still more with sudden fear, and his hands
tightened on hers. Even she did not realise how great the dread of
losing her had been, but it drove him almost to an appeal. “Leo, in
common humanity you will not turn from me now?”
How much we mean by that word humanity! It contains all the virtues
with which we do not credit God. Perhaps Leoline felt that a little
more was being asked of her than the simply human side would have
acceded, but the diviner spark burned up to meet the demand upon it.
She looked into his compelling eyes, and in that moment of her love,
perfected, she cast out fear for ever.
“I will come with you!” was all she said; and it was her arms as well
as his that drew them together.
“God bless you!” she heard him say with the old under-breathed voice
she knew, and that had thrilled her out of all theories into the
pain and glory of womanhood. “God keep you safely, and bless you, my
darling!” It is when a strong man loves something better than himself
that he feels his impotence, and hastens to charge it on the Deity
he affects to do well without, himself. The most irreligious men are
always ready to pray above the heads nearest and dearest to them.
Gregory, who would have snapped any commandment left undefended by law,
called on the Unknown God to do the one thing of which he felt himself
incapable. With the woman he had loved in his arms he fell back on an
instinct which is greater even than habit--
“God bless you, because you are my darling!”
The sun had reached the hill crest, and his last level glow touched
their faces at last with unnatural fire. For a minute Leoline was
dazzled, but through the haze she looked out over the half-reaped
valley, and it was as if she saw Key Island in symbol, the strange
little place to which she had come so light-heartedly to find fate and
tragedy there. His glance followed hers, but he saw nothing of the
peaceful harvest or rest at evening time. To his steady gaze the red
light was War and his future wrapped in smoke. He did not fear, and
he did not repent, because he had long since counted the cost, and
reckoned it as gain; but he knew, as that old-time counterpart of his
sin had known, that there was no peace for him or his--and that because
he had despised the unwritten law, War should be his portion for ever,
as clearly as if the prophet had said to him also, “Now therefore the
sword shall never depart from thine house!”
And the woman for whom he had sinned knew also that there was a shadow
on their lives for ever, cast by the man they had sacrificed, and that
she could never dare to look her love bravely in the face without that
dark reservation that she thrust out of sight. She did not repent
either--with her hand in that of the man she loved she was ready to go
with him into the wilderness as he had said, and let him lead her where
he would, the stony places were gentle so long as it was his path also.
But her eyes, as they looked over the golden transfigured valley, held
all the pain of the love that is earth-marred, and she knew that the
tragedy of her life lay in that sealing of their destinies.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cého means simply “call”--the sarcastic inference in the native
mind being that an Englishman’s most universal call is for strong
drink. There being no bells in Key Island a shout brings the
servant--usually with the ingredients for a Cého, which order he takes
for granted.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
The word “figger-itself” on page 74 of the original has been corrected
to “figgerhead itself”.
Italics are represented thus, _italic_.