CHAPTER I
“Beware of fire, of water, of savage dogs, and of the man who talks under his breath.”—English Proverb.
“Beware of fire, of water, of savage dogs, and of the man who talks under his breath.”—English Proverb.
The troop-ship was twenty-four hours before her time in arriving, which put the authorities out, for they like to take their leisure in Key Island and as the thermometer rarely stands below 88° in the shade they have some reason for their objection to hurry. The bungalow which Government had thoughtfully apportioned to the private secretary and A.D.C. to the Administrator was not ready, and word came down to the ship that he must please to spend the night at the hotel, whereat Captain Alaric Lewin swore in fluent English (he could have done the same in five different languages) and wanted to know why the several dashes Government had parted him from his regiment and sent him to an asterisk hole like Key Island, if they did not mean to provide him with a blank shelter when he got there. It was all very well for his predecessor, who had been a bachelor; but Captain Lewin was a married man, and a six-months-old husband to boot. He objected to taking his wife to dubious Colonial “hotels”—so-called.
Out in the sunshine of the deck Mrs. Lewin was sitting among her baggage (while she waited for her lord and master to have arranged matters before taking her ashore), because she knew no better, the atmospheric conditions and effects of Key Island being as yet a sealed book to her. She was watching the men formed up and marched off the gangway, and formed up again on the wharf, and finally departing in a cloud of dust and sunshine to the barracks on the Maitso Hill. Now and then an officer saluted her in passing, and she nodded back and smiled, for the five days out from Cape Town had been worth an intimacy of three weeks on shore. There was idle speculation in her gaze as it rested on this small corner of the British Empire, in which her present lot was cast; but in this present moment of coming close to it Key Island was no more than a flat picture on her mind of an absurd little white town tufted with palms, and completely overweighted by that harbour and the wharves which the Government were converting into a great coaling-station, the whole shut in by the exquisite hills, loaded with timber and softly drawn against a sky of pure deep blue. There is no bluer sky than that which hangs above Key Island, and reflects itself in the Mozambique Channel all round it on a clear day, but Mrs. Lewin saw no more than the outward semblance of the place. It takes characters in a landscape to endue it with vitality either to present sense or bitter memory. All she saw on this occasion was the green slopes of Maitso and Mitsinjovy, forming each side of the bay, and beyond them the principal feature of the harbour,—two great conical rocks, rising sheer from the sea to the height of two thousand feet, which the English call the Gates, but the native population, who have caught strange words from Madagascar, name Teraka and Tsofotra, Sunrise and Sunset. There is a half-mile of blue water between the base of the right and left Gate, and between them the troop-ship had but lately passed, giving Mrs. Lewin a profile view of their frowning sides. It was practically impossible not to see the Gates, because they were as giants in the landscape; but the significance of their name and position, shutting in the little tropical island at which she had but just arrived, was as yet an unknown tongue to her. She had not heard them close softly behind her, and bar the way to the outer world, as residents grow to fancy that they have after a while.
“Port Victoria!” said Mrs. Lewin musingly, her thoughts reverting to the tumbled houses and the windy palms. “I wonder if it will ever grow up to its name? At present it might be called Little Vic.”
Her thoughts were distracted by the white figure of her husband coming along the deck, and distinct against the other units in khaki as a white sheep amongst a flock of brown. He was immaculate, but cross, and one end of his moustache was caught between his teeth, and his handsome face looked darker than usual because he did not appear upon the edge of a smile, which was his normal expression.
“We must go to the hotel, Chum,” he said. “No help for it. Come out of the sun. What made you sit there?”
“I don’t feel it very hot. Don’t bother about me, Ally, I expect the hotel will be bearable—you wouldn’t mind it for yourself.” The habit of a lifetime, rather than the relationship of six months, had taught Leoline Lewin to classify every shade on her husband’s face with sub-conscious accuracy. She had no least intention of knowing Ally’s mind for him, but she did it all the same.
“There is no help for it, anyway,” Captain Lewin said. “I’ve got a buggy—our luggage will come up behind us.”
Mrs. Lewin followed him off the boat and across the dusty road to the Customs House, and so through the farce of having their luggage examined, to the ramshackle conveyance drawn by a broken-kneed pony, which was bunched up forlornly in the shade of the Customs House.
“Couldn’t we go up by tram, Ally?” she said, a little comically. “This is so musty—and the trams look quite clean and airy!”
“Oh, they are only intended for the niggers, going up and down from the coaling, or for people connected with the wharves!” remarked Captain Lewin with unusual irony. “Everything exists here simply to be a convenience to the wharves and the coaling, you will find. Mere human beings don’t count in the new Government scheme!” He helped her into the buggy, and flung his own big dissatisfied self into the seat beside her, which creaked beneath his weight, for Captain Lewin rode twelve stone for his five feet eleven inches. The buggy rumbled along, pitching like a ship, and gave Mrs. Lewin a glimpse of open stores and motley groups of coloured people, an undrained street, and now and then a large, hard building, obviously new and solid, and as out of keeping with the older houses as the town with the harbour. The whole place had an unfinished appearance, as of a production begun by one workman and put down as hopeless, and then taken up by another who had not yet matured his plan for improvement.
The buggy came to a stop before one of the older houses, a long rough bungalow with a wide stoep, and empty doorways like open mouths, in and out of which a small white Chinaman passed now and then, monotonously bent on business. These were the waiters and servants of the Hotel Natale, who bore the badge of the place on their grass-cloth liveries, and the caps on their heads, which, by the way, they only wore until it should be time to shave themselves, according to the laws of Confucius. They swarmed out of the place like the white ants on the wooden railing to the stoep, spread themselves on the luggage in the hinder cart, and carried Captain and Mrs. Lewin into the hotel in a whirlwind of their own property.
“Get us two rooms—and be quick about it!” Alaric said shortly. “I’m very sorry, Chum—but at all events it’s a place to rest and clean up in.”
His wife had passed him and walked into the cool shadows beyond the stoep with some interest and curiosity in her face. She was a tall girl, and had an enquiring way of carrying her chin, but her interest was really unfeigned, for beyond England her experiences had been limited to the Continent, and there was nothing Continental in the Hotel Natale. Before Mrs. Lewin stretched a long carpetless passage, some seventeen feet high, and lighted by one large whitewashed window at the further end. It was the only real window, with glass panes, in Port Victoria, as she afterwards found, and its proprietor was proud of it. All the rest consisted of frames filled with wooden blinds, or shutters that would shift up and down, to let in the air or shut out the light. The windows in Mrs. Lewin’s bedroom were on this plan, as she found when the Chinese scurried before her and piled her boxes in the middle of the huge bare room. There was neither light nor bell in the hotel, but they brought her one candle, and Ally’s dressing-room was next door, so she managed as best she might. By-and-by she wandered in to him to see how he fared, and found his apartment the counterpart of her own, as to furnishing—a narrow bed, with a dirty mosquito curtain over it, a chest of drawers, without paint or key, a basket-work chair, a washstand, and a looking-glass. Captain Lewin in his shirt-sleeves appeared the most valuable thing in the room. A good-looking man is never more good-looking than in that severely simple costume, and despite the fact that he was red from wrestling with his shirt case, and swearing at the hotel and all its resources all over again, he seemed to his wife a goodly possession.
“Whatareyou doing, Ally?” Mrs. Lewin said, coming to the rescue, and taking the keys out of his hand with cool, soft fingers. “Here, you helpless boy, I’ll valet you to-night. I suppose the Chinese are not reliable?”
“Don’t suppose they know the use of a stud, except to loot it. It’s awfully good of you, Chum. Got it open, already? I’ll engage a man before I’m many hours older. But look here, if you’ll unpack the things I shall want, I’ll go and get you some tea!”
She laughed at the wheedling tone, and accepted the bribe. Even at five o’clock in the day it was hot, with the clinging, muscle-sapping heat of the tropics, but Chum had the vitality and sting of an English winter still in her veins, and did not suffer as yet. She did some unpacking—her own as well as Ally’s—and drank the tea he ordered in lieu of his own whiskey and soda; and then she dressed for dinner, coming into his room again to have her blouse fastened, for it hooked at the back. Ally was in a better temper; he manipulated the complicated fastening wonderfully with his large hands, and stooped to kiss his wife’s pretty neck.
“You’re too good to be wasted on this damned hole—beg pardon, Chum!” he said, “I wish I’d got you out to Malta, or some other decent station.”
“What does it matter, old boy? The blouse is just as pretty for you to look at on Key Island, and you can’t hope for Malta at your age without unprecedented luck. Let’s make the best of our step up—private secretary and A.D.C. is something, anyway.”
“I expect it will be too, with this man. I was told at Cape Town he was a Tartar.”
“Know anything of him?”
“Nothing. He’s been somewhere on the Indian frontier, quelling rebellions without much ceremony, and a good deal of unofficial slaughter. The Government always sends him out when there’s trouble to squash, and then censures him when he’s done it. He’s here now to expiate his sins, his measures having been a little too drastic to be winked at any longer.”
“Oh!” said Chum thoughtfully, “he must be one of our few strong men. And they are worth having behind you, Ally. Let us annex the Administrator, you and I, and make him the good geni of our fortunes!”
“It would be the first time that Gregory was any one’s good geni!” said Ally dryly. “They say he works his men to death, and when he can get no more out of ’em, he throws ’em aside like a spent cartridge-case. Come on, Chum—that fiendish row on a gong means some sort of a meal, I suppose.”
“Is my hair all right?” said Mrs. Lewin carelessly, as she tucked her hand into his arm.
He looked down at her somewhat critically, for he set much store by appearance, and nodded. From his point of view it was unfortunate that Leoline was cast in too individual a mould to be turned out quite like the well-groomed, clean young Englishwoman whom the Mother Country breeds in serviceable batches as wives for sensible men. But common-sense had done much for Mrs. Alaric Lewin, and had made her as near her husband’s ideal as Nature would go. It was really only her hair which gave Chum much anxiety now, for its splendid weight and ripples did not lend themselves very well to the mode of the moment, but she laboured with it earnestly, and by the aid of a hair-net gave it something the sameness of other women’s. She had no desire to be conspicuous.
“It’s all right—but don’t wear it over your ears, whatever you do!” Ally advised, as they went down the empty, echoing passage arm in arm. “We can stand anything but that.”
“But, Ally, it’s the fashion—which doesn’t matter; and a pretty one—which does!”
“Can’t help it. Men always hate it. When we see a woman with her hair dressed so, we always say she hasn’t washed her ears this morning!”
“Pigs!” said Chum, laughing. “It’s your own unclean minds. Ally, isn’t the waiter the image of Ah Sin!”
“Yes, says his name’s Chun Low, or some such variation—but it doesn’t matter. Have some chicken, Chum—I’m afraid it’s not up to much.”
“I never quarrel with my food,” said Chum contentedly, attacking the tough fowl.
The coffee-room at the Natale was like a parochial hall, or an arcade at some exhibition, both on account of its size and its bareness. It was an immense place, built out from the rest of the bungalow as if to allow of more room, though evidently in no hope of custom, for there were but five small tables in all its desert space. These were spread with coarse cloths and such table cutlery as should suffice to take away a diner’s appetite. Mrs. Lewin made a face at her dingy pewter, and amused herself with looking round the walls for distraction. There was nothing to be seen but some dilapidated fans and a square of coloured muslin on a stick which bore some far-off resemblance to a flag. Outside the three or four long doors the day was still lingering among the creepers and shrubs on the stoep, for green things seemed to flourish there in tubs, and three dirty basket-chairs converted the place into a popular lounge. It was infinitely forlorn. Chum looked away again, towards the waiter this time, and observed that he was trying to attract Ally’s attention, which was just then riveted upon the fowl’s iron joints.
“Ally,” she said, “I think Ah Sin wants to tell you something—he’s either going to have a fit, or it’s Anglo-Saxon attitudes!”
Lewin turned round quickly, to find that the Chinese waiter had come to his elbow, evidently with some more important news than the next course of a bad dinner. The guests at his table were lunatics to the mind of the Chinaman, who could not use his name of Chung Low, but must needs call him by some one else’s. Furthermore they joked and laughed like children, and made comments on their surroundings and on himself which were nonsense, and which should not alter a line of his outward imperturbability.
“What is it?” said Lewin impatiently.
“One piecey man he come see you!” said Chung Low without a crease of expression in his yellow face.
The corners of Chum’s mouth lifted deliciously. Ally dared not meet her eyes across the table.
“Which piece of him, Ah Sin?” she said, leaning her chin in her hands and looking gravely at the Chinaman.
“Chum!” said Ally warningly, under his breath. Indeed he was choked with laughter. “Er—you can show him in, boy!” he added, with a rather larger manner than usual to impress the Celestial, and Ally was never very condensed. “I expect it’s one of the fellows from barracks come down to see if he can do anything,” he added vaguely to his wife. “People are generally so deuced friendly in a station like this that it becomes a bore. Might have left us to our dinner, anyhow, such as it is. Still we can’t say no—can we?”
“Of course not. Besides, I want to see if he is whole!” said the irrepressible Chum. “Here comes Ah Sin—bowing before a young man who looks all teeth!” (Chum could see the advance along the stoep of the hotel, to which Ally had his back.) “Now he is making Anglo-Saxon attitudes before him. Oh, Ally, do get up and meet him first—I know I’m going to laugh!...Well!”
The last exclamation was due to the fact that Ally had risen at her desire, but no sooner did he see his visitor than he made a stride forward to meet him, and the visitor being equally impetuous the next few seconds presented a confused babel of greeting to Mrs. Lewin’s amazed eyes and ears.
“Hulloa,Bristles!”
“Why, it’s old Ally Sloper!”
“What luck blew you here? You’re not with the regiment—the Wessex?”
“Yes I am. Changed from the Rutlandshire after the African show. Not seen you but once since Sandhurst, Ally—are you our new A. D. C. to Gregory’s Powder?”
“Yes, worse luck! This is a nice beginning—no quarters, and obliged to bring my wife to this sort of shanty! Oh, Chum—this is an old pal who was at Sandhurst with me. Captain Nugent—Mrs. Lewin.”
One of Ally’s most salient characteristics was that he could use slang and remain a gentleman. As she shook hands with his friend Mrs. Lewin inwardly commented upon the fact that the same indulgence would convert Captain Nugent into a coster. He stared at her with eyes which were burnt by much foreign service, and seemed to approve of the survey.
“I heard that a Captain Lewin was coming, but never thought it was you,” he explained. “Fact is, I came down to see if you were too tired to come to the Gunnery, to-night—there’s a scratch dance on, and, of course, as we didn’t expect you till to-morrow, we couldn’t send you an invitation.”
“What’s the show?” said Ally lazily, as he lit a cigarette. “You fellows?”
“No, the town cricket team. We had a match this week, and they got up this hop as a finish. It’s only a small thing, so you might waive ceremony and come!” He looked at Mrs. Lewin’s promising young figure as a man might a horse he means to back.
“Are you too tired, Chum?” Ally said doubtfully.
“I am never too tired to dance,” said Mrs. Lewin with refreshing cordiality. “Wait till I get into something less dinnery. I was afraid to before, because it wouldn’t get dark and let us have candles. There is nothing so disreputable as dining by daylight—it makes one feeldécolletéein the highest gown.”
Both men laughed as she vanished through one of the endless doorways. Then there was a silence of some seconds while the cigarette smoke rose in meditative threads. The man who thinks while he smokes draws slowly, but if he is actively employed he produces little woolly clouds.
“You’re married too, aren’t you?” said Ally, looking across the table.
“Yes; left the missus at home. She isn’t strong enough for this place.” Captain Nugent’s burnt young eyes looked away from his friend as he spoke.
“Any family?”
“One,” said Nugent, knocking the ash on to the bare boards of the floor to the inconvenience of the ants who lived there. “It’s a tom!” he added thoughtfully.
Another pause.
“D’you remember, we both vowed we’d marry widows rather than a raw girl?” said Ally in reminiscence. “By Jove! How I wished I had.”
“It’s cornery at first. My wife told me what struck her most was that I came in to speak to her in my shirt-sleeves, and without thinking took up one of her brushes and brushed my hair. She thought, ‘What cheek!’”
“Well, there’s one thing that stumps me now,” said Ally.
“I know what you’re going to say—she buttons her gowns from right to left.”
“You’ve seen it too? Why the devil do they? All our clothes go from left to right. I believe it’s that that makes women always look at a thing hind-side before—their very point of view grows topsy-turvy.”
“Ally!” came Mrs. Lewin’s voice from the doorway. “Come and change your coat—you can’t dance in a jacket. Captain Nugent, how are we to get there?”
Both men rose rather guiltily. “I am afraid you’ll have to ride, Mrs. Lewin,” Nugent said. “Ponies, y’know. Every one does here. Can you turn up your skirt? I’d get you a buggy, but there are only three in Port Victoria, and they are all hired for to-night.”
“Elementary, but exciting,” said Chum calmly. “Go and get me a pony, that’s all, and I’ll show you.”
She was as good as her word when the ponies came round; they were rats of things, and the new lady’s saddle which Mrs. Lewin had brought out looked astonishingly big on the animal assigned her. But she tucked up her silk skirts as if to the manner born, and the procession clattered off from the front of the hotel, audienced by half-a-dozen Chinese, loafers of three dusky races—for Key Island has a mixed population—and some lean hens. The darkness had come at last, but out of the irregular wooden houses shone the electric light with the bizarre effect it always produces in such elementary places. The ponies shambled along at a miniature canter, and Leoline gripped the pommel by habit with a dreamy remembrance that some time since she had set a thoroughbred across the finest hunting country in England. Such things seemed to belong to another life, with the smell of eucalyptus and moonflowers coming into her nostrils on a warm, wet breeze, and the glimpses of Port Victoria by electric flashes. They rocked down the main street, and for an instant the quay was on their left before they turned up-hill to their destination; again she saw the grouped ravenala palms, the huge wharves, the bay, and the grim Gates at the harbour mouth, black sentinels against the darkening sky. Then Captain Nugent steered to the left, along a bad road where anything but a Key’land pony would have stumbled, and suddenly they emerged into the most wonderful avenue of cocoanut palms, with soft sand underfoot, and as if by common consent the up-hill canter changed to a hard gallop.
“Look out!” Nugent called, pulling in beside Mrs. Lewin. “This is Mitsinjovy Straight, the only bit of flat land round about. They always gallop here; mind!”
It was difficult to talk going at that pace, the wind buffeting them with such violence. Mrs. Lewin looked along the aisle of straight stems, each with its crown-tuft far overhead, and said, “I like it!” It seemed to her the most characteristic spot in all the island, from first to last—that wonderful avenue of cocoanuts where the ponies were so glad to gallop!—and she was half regretful when they pulled up before an old sugar factory beyond the palms, a white, hoary-looking building, evidently converted from the sugar industry to other uses now-a-days.
“This is the Gunnery,” Captain Nugent explained. “It’s the Gunners’ mess until their quarters are finished. The men will take your pony, Mrs. Lewin.”
Chum found the dressing-room full of women, lingering to gossip with the assurance of already filled programmes. Powder-puffs were going vigorously, and the place was stuffy with wraps. She tossed her cloak to an attendant, and rejoined her escort, who awaited her at the ballroom door. Nothing of the old sugar works remained, only the shell of the barn-like building served now as a shelter in which the gentlemen of the Royal Artillery could dine.
It was as Nugent had said, a scratch dance, and the Gunnery had not even been decorated, but the floor was unexpectedly good, and the Wessex had arranged a band of a sort on a rough staging. Below this impromptu daïs stood several people at whom Mrs. Lewin looked at once, with an instinct for those of mark. There was a tall man with thick silver hair, and a stout woman in black, a jovial-looking parson, and another man with his back to her, of whom she could not judge. Nugent’s eyes followed hers.
“Those are the Seats of the Mighty there,” he said. “The parson is Archie Lysle, our chaplain (best fellow goin’!); the lady’s Mrs. White, and the grey-haired Johnnie is her husband—he’s Attorney-General.”
“Who’s the other man?” Ally asked.
“Halton, the Commissioner. Gregory’s Powder half promised to turn up, but he went off to the Tsara Valley yesterday morning, and I don’t expect he is back. Halton is probably representing Government House.”
“I can’t understand this place,” said Chum, knitting her brows. “When the Government took over Key Island from the British African Island Company——”
“Limited!” Ally put in significantly.
“Limited,—why did they send out an Administratoranda Commissioner to enquire into the riots? Surely the man who takes the responsibility should be the one to find out what is wrong?”
“Well, you see, Halton’s the drag on the wheel, and Gregory’s the wheel itself. Gregory’s a man who is always sent into a tight place, but unless they brigade him with a drag, he’d make it an absolute monarchy—he’s a born slave ruler. So they put Halton in to enquire, and Gregory to act on the enquiry. See?”
“Oh!” Chum’s whole thought was concentrated into the word. “And does that succeed?”
“Don’t much know—and it don’t matter either in such a beastly little corner as this. Can’t think why we bother about the place at all. Let France have it.”
“But we want it for a coaling-station, don’t we; and it’s the key of the Mozambique Channel!”
“You’re thinking of the name—but Key’land takes its name as much from its shape as anything, or so they say. Besides, who cares about the Mozambique Channel? I don’t know what Government is up to, of course—don’t mind either, so long as I get out of this pretty quick. We’ve been here six months, and we’re all dead nuts on getting away. May I have some dances, Mrs. Lewin?” His tone had brightened.
Chum looked at him curiously as he wrote his name on her programme, and in her own mind contrasted him with Ally, and found him vastly inferior. He could not even take an intelligent interest in his surroundings, and she attributed it to a certain curious formation in the back of his head. It was flattened on the top, but curved out from the neck too much to Mrs. Lewin’s critical inspection. Ally, with a superior skull, would of course be more intelligent; but she did not realise that she intended him to be so by her own motive power.
“Would you like to know Halton? He’s a very decent chap,” Bristow Nugent said simply. “This is quite an unofficial affair, y’know. No need for ceremony. I’ll bring him over.”
He swung in and out of the thickening crowd towards the band, but the dancing had begun, and Mrs. Lewin’s programme had filled with the men she had known on the troop-ship, and others who followed in their wake. The evening was half over before Captain Nugent fulfilled his promise and brought the Commissioner up to her.
He was a very quiet man in appearance, with that instinctive colouring which in an Englishman is always called fair, but his eyes were a dark-brown, rather opaque, and had a trick of half closing while he talked. He looked about forty, and the lines of his clean-shaven face appealed to Chum as suggesting humour.
“I suppose you have not had time to report yourselves yet,” he said quizzically; “and as a fact you are not due until to-morrow, so to-night’s appearance must be regarded as a kind of provision of good things.”
“There is no one to report oneself to, is there? I hear that the Administrator is not in Port Victoria.”
“He is standing behind you—not a dozen yards away,” said Halton quietly. “If you turn round as though suddenly struck by the attractiveness of the band, you will be able to look at him at your leisure.”
Their eyes met, and they both laughed, while Mrs. Lewin did as suggested. There was no mistaking the Administrator, because he happened to be the only man near, and was walking towards them with Mrs. White, the Attorney-General’s wife. Evelyn Gregory was peculiar rather than attractive, but more emphatic than either. He was considerably taller than most men present, and was of that spare build which made his dress suit look as if it hung over a clothes-horse.
“He seems as if he were only on a bowing acquaintance with his clothes, and was afraid of taking liberties with them!” was Mrs. Lewin’s comment to herself. “Evening dress appears more inappropriate to him than to any man I ever saw. Not that he is awkward either—but he looks too tremendous for it!”
The Administrator was still advancing, and revealed a long hatchet-shaped face, with an unusual overhanging width at the temples. His hair was reddish and cropped closely, and his features were cast in a rather savage mould, the mouth hidden by a huge moustache. His eyes were his most distinguishing feature, being nearly lidless and seeming to fill the whole socket, the effect being that of extreme far sight and almost cruel keenness. Mrs. Lewin was the more struck by their expression in contrast to the Commissioner’s, but she could not see their colour, for he was looking straight before him, and speaking in what she at first thought was an intentional undertone to Mrs. White.
“I don’t think you know Mrs. Lewin?” said that lady, who had been talking to Chum earlier in the evening, and now paused near her. “Mr. Gregory!”
As Chum bowed she was conscious that the Administrator looked at her, classified her in his own mind, and dropped the very thought of her. He lingered for a minute, expressing his regret that they should have been forced to go to the hotel, but he hoped their bungalow would be at their disposal to-morrow, and Mrs. Lewin discovered that it was his custom to speak in a rapid undertone like a forceful whisper. The curiously concentrated effect of this was uncanny. His words came below his breath, but not one of them was lost. When he had passed on, she turned to Mr. Halton with relief, to find him regarding her in his turn.
“I cannot think how you do it!” he said promptly.
“Do what?” said Chum, as they ensconced themselves on two chairs in a corner, as if by tacit consent. She made a furtive snatch at her mental attitude as she spoke, for, to tell the truth, she had been making use of that good gift of nature, her eyes. Even in this brief few minutes she had found Mr. Halton responsive.
“You come here,” said the Commissioner thoughtfully, “in a perfectly fresh and smiling gown. Yet you arrived this afternoon, and must have untrunked it, as you could not have worn it for landing.” He glanced at her so daintily as to be free of offence; the pretty white shoulders were innocent of sleeve, and the shoulder-strap was generous, and hardly marred them. “I usually know the packed look of a new arrival, but you have upset my calculations.”
“I am sitting on the creases,” said Mrs. Lewin amicably. “They are all in my tail! By the way, Mr. Halton, are all the servants here Chinamen?”
“No; only at the hotel, and one or two houses which believe in them. They are not very good servants, though they compare favourably with most of the ruffians who inhabit Key Island. The fact is that no good Chinaman leaves China—the best will hardly go out of their own districts.”
“What am I to do for servants, then?”
“I should advise your having Arabs. You begin to think that this is a tower of Babel, I see; but the fact is, we get Arabs from the Comoros, as well as Chinese labour, like the Mauritius, and unless you can pick and choose, they are easier to manage. You can have a choice of evils, of course. There is the African negro, who is deceitful and desperately wicked, Creole and half-caste (but they won’t work), and even some Malagasy. Would you like a brace of Arabs to begin with?”
“Thank you,” laughed Chum. “I suppose we shall begin housekeeping to-morrow, and I tremble when I think of my husband’s sufferings during my novitiate.”
“Turn him over to the club if he dares to grumble; that will sober him. I will send you Abdallah and Hafez, if I may. You will find them two very average idiots. Make Hafez your cook and Abdallah your butler, and they will find you the rest of your household.”
“You are much better than a registry office! But I feel I’m taking liberties with the Government.”
“We are terribly unofficial in Key’land!” said the Commissioner, with a little grimace. “But a week here will tell you more of the place than any secrets I could give away. The fact is that the Home Authorities are spring cleaning, and we are living on the stairs and in the passages meanwhile, after the manner of householders in such circumstances.”
Mrs. Lewin had absorbed a fair amount of information even when she returned to the hotel that night with her husband. It was their custom to become confidential after a tour among strangers, and to exchange experiences; but they took different standpoints.
“I saw you talking to a red-haired woman,” said Chum. “What was she like?”
“Oh, rather nice. She knows the Tavistocks—Indian people, you know. I was at the Pindi with them.” Ally’s interest in people was usually founded on mutual acquaintances.
“I thought she looked Army, herself. Who is she?”
“A Mrs. Churton. Her husband is senior Major of the Wessex and O.C.T. here. She is rather a smart woman, I thought.” This was Ally’s praise.
“But does she put all her goods in the shop windows, so to speak? There are people like that.”
“Well, her hair was all right, wasn’t it? And she knows every one here.”
“Ah!” said Chum thoughtfully, letting down the masses of her own irreclaimable hair, which objected to being smart either in colour or fashion. “Then I hope she will come to call soon.”
“How did you get on? And what did you think of Bristles?”
“I don’t think of Bristles. But on the whole I didn’t do badly. I was offered ten ponies to ride, three men are coming to call on me with their wives (not only sending their wives to call—it’s a broader compliment), and the Commissioner is selecting all the rogues and vagabonds in the island for my servants!”
“The Commissioner! I thought it was the Administrator you were going to annex.”
“I am feeling round at present. If I see that he is the right man to advance our fortunes, Ally, nothing can save him!”
“I am afraid you had better keep to Halton. I heard all round that Gregory’s Powder is a stiff dose. Lysle—that chaplain fellow—tells me that every woman out here has had a shot at him, and never made more than a fleeting impression.”
“If he sets up as a woman-hater, he is a foregone conclusion,” said Chum scornfully. “He seemed on excellent terms with that stout woman, Mrs. White, though.”
“He is on excellent terms with them all, and with no one in particular. He is absorbed in his work wherever it is, they say, and the worst of it is he’s a slave driver. I’m going to have a lovely time of it!”
He looked so really rueful and impressed that Chum opened her charming eyes with a little laugh.
“Why, Ally,” she said, “you are all making a little tin god of him,—and I can’t think why!”
“He is the Administrator of Key Island, and a hard nut to crack. Perhaps that is why.”
“My dear fellow, he is—only a man!”