CHAPTER II
“A woman and a cherry are painted to their own harm.”—English Proverb.
“A woman and a cherry are painted to their own harm.”—English Proverb.
To understand the overwhelming military flavour in the society of Key Island, it must be remembered that Port Victoria is girdled with the garrison, and that the garrison is stationary, whereas the cruisers only put in to coal, and at the best stay three weeks on one excuse or another. The naval flavour, therefore, is general, but indistinct; whereas one cannot get away from the smell of khaki, go where one will. On the right, as one enters the harbour, is Teraka, the Gate of Sunrise, and behind this, though unconnected with it, rises Maitso Hill with its solid quarters for troops; on the left Tsofotra, or the Sunset Gate, is flanked in the same way by the lower slopes of Mitsinjovy. When the Lewins arrived in Key Island Maitso was occupied by the Wessex, and the Gunners were in hurricane huts at Mitsinjovy, pending the completion of their barracks, which were to accommodate yet more batteries as soon as finished; add to this the usual percentage of A.S.C., R.A.M.C., and A.P.D., and the result is that from nine to twelve, when the men go out of uniform, Port Victoria is nothing but a parade ground, and every man at afternoon tennis looks as if he missed a stripe down his trousers. There are civilians, of course (Leoline Lewin counted three that she knew after a residence of as many weeks), but they are not enough to leaven the lump, and so the social world remains Official and Military, and the aristocracy of the place are always those who are most ferociously Army. Mrs. Lewin had two great advantages, when she was introduced to the station, over most of the young married women who fought a mental battle for their rights before they established themselves in the uppermost seats of the synagogue—Captain Lewin belonged to a very much smarter regiment than either the Wessex or the Artillery then at Port Victoria; and also, he was not attached to the garrison. Therefore Chum started with an insured position that could not be torn from her, and yet rivalled no other lady’s. Incidentally, she was also much better looking than any other woman in the island, and she knew how to put on her clothes, which is a gift quite apart from possessing the garments themselves, or even the taste to choose them. When they had talked her over at the club, from the ripples of her pretty hair to her openwork stockings and American shoes, the married men did a shrewd thing, and waited for their wives to mention her first, while the unmarried went to call without waiting for Sunday—which is a great compliment, because by the law of Port Victoria Sunday is the day set aside for visiting, it not being etiquette to play polo or dance.
The Alaric Lewins took their married life as a huge joke, a point of view which speedily communicated itself to Key Island, who proceeded to laugh with them over the situation. They had been brought up together, Mrs. Lewin’s father having been Alaric’s guardian, and an admiration of Ally had been amongst the rudiments of Chum’s education. At intervals Alaric had disappeared out of her life to Harrow, and Sandhurst, and India, always to reappear a good deal handsomer and better mannered and more travelled. His view of life was necessarily larger than her own by forced experience; but the girl, left at home, knew more deeply by theory than the man by practice. At twenty-six a woman who thinks is in a very dangerous position if she has had no actual experience to reduce her ideas of life to the level of reality. But Leoline looked innocent enough of anything out of the common, when seen against the background of her home. Captain Lewin was much influenced by surroundings; he saw a solid position in the county, irreproachable frocks, popularity with men and women alike, and a coveted possession by others of his kind, while the unimportant item of a girl’s individuality, which was the centrepiece of all this, he took for granted. Leoline, the victim of her own theories, found the relations between them hardly altered after the clergyman of the parish, who had hitherto behaved like a gentleman, said very rude things to her from the altar rails, for which he had scriptural authority. She congratulated herself that she was still Ally’s “Chum,” and made their interests one with a touch of comradeship in the wifehood. Her knowledge of the man she had married consisted in the fact that he was nearly six feet in height and well built, that he had a well-shaped dark head, and a handsome face, that he had always had good manners and appearance, and that they were excellent companions. Marriage, to Chum, meant a certain amount of mutual toleration and avoidance of friction, whereby she called it a success. It seemed to her that she and Ally had done the same thing from their nursery days; they must certainly have learned all of each other that there was to learn by now. But in an indefinite future she believed that he was to do great things, because she could not imagine herself the wife of a man who was a failure.
A week in Key Island revealed the inner workings of its life, as Halton had said it would, but the Lewins still knew different sides of it. Alaric’s duties tied him to Government House as he had predicted, but he escaped to play tennis and to ride and bathe after the manner of his kind. There was an heroic effort at a polo ground too, but things being on an eternal slant in the island, the game had to be played on a gentle slope. Gentlemen of the home clubs, who swear at a daisy tuft, think of the pathos of this, and see how exiled brothers can follow the sport abroad! Leoline, by the grace of Hafez and Abdallah, was free early in the day, but squandered her liberty in reducing her house to order. She did not care to ride out to tennis much before the hour when her husband could arrive there also, and it even sometimes happened that she would for preference go for a gallop through the cocoanuts up and down Mitsinjovy Straight, so that he had got home and changed, and was at their mutual destination before her. This happened one day about a week after their arrival; Mrs. Lewin had ordered her pony for four o’clock, but the day clouded over, and the sky over Maitso was so threatening that she gave up her gallop and half hesitated about going to the further garrison. As, however, tennis was on at Mrs. Churton’s this afternoon, and as Ally liked Mrs. Churton, she decided to ride up to Maitso, anyhow, and cantered soberly away, past the gates of Government House, and, leaving Port Victoria to the right, began to climb the hill.
It was a steep climb, and the pony sobered at once to a walk. No Key’land pony can trot—either he walks or he canters, and even that he does in a manner peculiarly his own, using three of his legs to the distinct saving of the fourth. As Liscarton dug his toes into the dust and hitched his lean quarters upwards, Mrs. Lewin turned in the saddle and looked down at the view, which was gaining an indefinite fascination for her—the town, the harbour, and the gates. The two cone-shaped rocks had a threatening appearance to-day, with the low loose clouds nearly touching their crests, and there was a sullen light upon everything. Even the sun-soaked green of the hills cuddled round Port Victoria were draped with passing veils of rain that were being blown over them and down towards the town. It was not as yet wet at Maitso, though it had been threatening all day, and the Lewins’ bungalow, being on a level with Government House, had also escaped with an angry shower.
“Shall we have a storm, boy?” said Chum, as she rode into the Churtons’ yard and delivered her pony to a loafing servant. The groom nodded, and murmured an assent in Arabic or Malagasy—she had not yet learned to know which—but with so obvious a disbelief in the weather that she hastened her steps into the house in consequence. He was right, for the first large drops splashed on to the roof of the stoep, even as the butler bowed her into the drawing-room through one of its many doors; and the clouds darkened the day so that the carefully shaded room was really dusky after the outside world.
Mrs. Churton happened to be crossing the room, and greeted Mrs. Lewin on the way. She was of a type that wears the regimental badge as a waist-buckle, and seems proud of a weather-beaten skin as proof that she has followed the drum through many climates. Chum glanced at the hair that Ally had said was “All right,” and saw that Diana Churton had tightened a coiffeur in theQueeninto a form entirely unbecoming to her face. Her instinct could not approve, but her judgment meekly followed Ally’s.
There were many people crowded into the little room who would have spread themselves out comfortably upon the tennis courts, but thus condensed seemed to Chum too complicated to be greeted in detail. So she remained where she had drifted, near an open window, and watched the storm. It had begun to rain, as it always does there, with half-a-dozen great drops, like the first tears of a breaking grief, and then as if a window opened in heaven and an angry God threatened to drown the earth a second time. For some minutes it was impossible to hear anything but the shouting of the rain as it drove past; but after a few minutes it softened to a steady hissing whisper, and the conversation in the room behind her caught Mrs. Lewin’s idle attention. She wondered what was absorbing the party, and turned to hear. Mrs. Churton had had a large volume in her hands when she spoke to her latest guest, which she promptly deposited upon Ally’s knee—Chum had recognised his flat shoulders and oval dark head, though his back was towards her—and a minute later she gained the key to the mystery.
“My husband always takes about two hundred pounds worth with him for exchange,” Mrs. Churton was saying. “There’s the variation, Captain Lewin—see the difference between DIE I and II?”
“Oh, I’ve got this,” Ally’s voice chimed in. “DIE II has a clean engraved cut under the eye, hasn’t it? But you’ve beaten me in shades.”
“I can get ten pounds for that one penny on five shilling dull rose Barbadoes of mine!” broke in another voice.
“You’re a specialist, aren’t you, Mr. Lysle?”
“Yes, I only take the Portuguese colonies. A collector really has no time for more than one corner of the world, if he does it seriously.”
Mrs. Churton laughed rather loudly. “I’m not serious enough to confine myself to one country. I take anything that comes in my way—the more valuable the better. Bute says he wouldn’t trust me with his own common duplicates.”
“Stamps!” said Chum blankly, under her breath. It was so long since she had helped to arrange those little coloured squares of paper in a fancy album with Ally, that she had not realised that the usual boy’s hobby had grown up into Philately—a fearsome disease that ravages both Services all the world over. Not being a “collector” herself, she stood by in amazed amusement while the jargon of the cult rang across the room, until she became aware that Mr. Halton had appeared at her side, without her having known him to be in the room.
“Disgusting weather, isn’t it?” he said, as they shook hands. “For those who want to play tennis. I am afraid the crops want water so badly that, as a government official, I must rejoice, however.”
“Is rain wanted?” said Mrs. Lewin, with interest. “What for? The cane? I wish you would talk about Key Island a little, Mr. Halton!”
“Why?”
“Because it interests me. I have been trying to pump my husband for information all the week, but he is an unsatisfactory person, and won’t explain things to me. When one understands a thing oneself, it is difficult to realise the ignorance of other people.”
The Commissioner looked at her beneath his drooping eyelids, and there was some speculation in his glance.
“Perhaps he is like most Key’landers, and feels no interest in the island himself?” he remarked drily. “Most of the victims whom Government has chained here for three years think of nothing those three years but getting away!”
“Yes, I know they do; but it seems rather silly, don’t you think? Why should people always live in the future, or the past, when it is really the present that matters? As I am in Key Island, I have a deep interest in Key Island—I belong to her, and every move of the Government makes me long to know their plans still more!”
“You should talk to the Administrator,” said Halton, laughing. “He is the only man likely to encourage you. I must confess I have some sympathy with the people who hate this place, though I can’t share Gregory’s enthusiasms.”
“Ah, but you are only a passing compliment from the Colonial Office, are you not? and we cannot expect to keep you! Major Churton told me yesterday that they would hardly spare you from more important places much longer. But why do you hate Key’land?”
Halton looked out of the window at the clearing sky. The rain had ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and overhead was the pure deep blue that Mrs. Lewin was beginning to associate with the place.
“It’s a rat-trap!” said the Commissioner, glancing up into the hollow heavens. “One of the rat-traps that connect all the British Empire. And already the rats are beginning to run round and round and find no way of escape.”
But the words held no present meaning for Chum’s ears. She was listening half-idly to the scraps of conversation in the room behind her.
“I have got the Provincial issue for St. Thomas when they surcharged the two cents on three cent stamps until the mail could get in with more of the current issue!”
“By Jove! that’s ten shillings in the catalogue at least.”
“Yes, old man, but it isn’t in the market, as there’s no price quoted for it!”
Then Ally laughed, and Chum smiled in sympathy. Ally’s sense of humour was easily tickled, and his laugh was infectious. Mrs. Churton’s metallic voice rang above the babel.
“Well, anyhow he had Zanzibar complete, and they say it’s worth a thousand!”
“No, he hadn’t—he couldn’t get the one rupee unused slate, small second, after all.”
“The only things to go for now-a-days are new issues—all the old ones are too rare.”
“What’s that Turk’s Island twopence halfpenny on penny dull red, that Mrs. Ritchie Stern had from Captain Tullock?”
“Oh, a beauty! I offered her an old Pacific Steam Navigation stamp for it, but she wouldn’t exchange.”
“Nonsense! It’ll be as common as Black English in a little while.”
“Isn’t that a lovely set—those Venezuelans! And do you notice that the over-print is different in just one out of the whole sheet? I wrote to the paper about it, and they took no notice. I’m positive there’s a variation.”
Five heads were eagerly bent over a square half inch of printed paper, while a chorus of indistinguishable argument arose that made Mrs. Lewin laugh out loud.
“I never yet met any one closely connected with the Navy or Army who did not possess a collection of stamps worth at least a thousand pounds!” remarked Halton drily, following her glance.
“And did they ever realise the thousand pounds?”
“Oh no, not personally. You heard their ingenuous remarks about catalogues and market prices! But then they never want to sell—personally. They know some one, however, who did so. It is generally Browne who had theTaradiddleon the El Dorado Station, unless it is Smyth of the 1,000!”
“I know so many men in that regiment!” said Chum sweetly, “and they are all such nice fellows, too! The Duke of Humbug’s Own, isn’t it?”
“Yes; and the regimental motto is, ‘When you tell a lie, tell a good one!’—the badge, a chimera seen in a mirage!”
They had no time to laugh, because Mrs. Churton’s voice was heard across the room, earnestly expostulating with Ally.
“The colours on the red Brazilian unpaid letter-stamp won’t stand steaming. You had better try wet blotting-paper.”
“Oh, come outside!” said Halton impatiently, pushing open the shuttered window-frame, and holding out his hand to help his companion over the step. Mrs. Lewin followed him down the stoep and into a narrow path lightly flanked by logwood. Three ravenala palms stood sentinel outside the quarters of the O.C.T., their split fans looking like raised hands to her imagination. The ravenala is the “Traveller’s Tree,” and is tapped for water by enterprising tourists; but it is too common in Key’land to excite the inhabitants, who look upon it as any other palm. To Mrs. Lewin it had become somehow symbolic of the place, and she liked its solemn hands outspread above her head, and regretted that there did not happen to be a single specimen at the bungalow. Besides the ravenalas and the logwood, the Churtons’ quarters were singularly treeless, but they owned one of the three tennis courts in Port Victoria. Maitso and Mitsinjovy are not remarkable for flat spaces of ground, and the Churtons were esteemed fortunate. All the houses on Maitso Hill had been apportioned to married officers when the troops were first quartered there, and as the paths zigzagged up and down the steep incline, each sharp curve would reveal a small bungalow, until the long line of actual barracks crowned the crest. From a distance it looked as if one house were hung above another, tier on tier in the green, but a nearer acquaintance proved the garrison more rugged than picturesque. At Mitsinjovy the officers’ quarters, being new and specially built for them, were of a more regular type, and proportionately hideous; but Maitso had been a favourite residence to the old planters, and when given over to the Wessex, they counted themselves luckier than the Gunners. Halton and Mrs. Lewin sauntered as far as the tennis courts, and there paused, looking down on the best view of Port Victoria and the bay that Key Island affords, while they talked in desultory fashion.
“So you are interested in Key’land!” said the Commissioner meditatively. “Have you seen anything of the island yet?”
“Nothing but Port Victoria—and the docks!” said Mrs. Lewin, with a laughing glance at the forests of masts far off in the bay.
“I am glad you give the Government hobby its chance—but you should have said the Docks, the Harbour, the Coaling Wharves, and—Port Victoria! That is the correct order. We are merely here on sufferance, as Government House bears witness! Would you like me to take you out to China Town, I wonder?”
“I am sure I should—if I knew anything about it. Where is China Town?”
“It is on the other side of that hill,”—he pointed up the valley to an undiscovered inland. “It is the headquarters of the Chinese here, and we suspect at the root of the mischief. They have got some place where they brew this abominable form of hashish which sends the ordinary native mad, and makes him get up riots and kill white people—you see? But as yet we have not absolutely spotted John Chinaman brewing in any large quantities, and we cannot condemn on isolated instances. You are really interested, Mrs. Lewin!”
Chum laughed a little, conscious that her wide eyes were alight with the absorption of the moment, and Mr. Halton laughed too. It was one of his chief attractions to her that he never paid her a compliment, or made a personal remark; and yet his quiet admiration was as patent to her as the noisy homage of duller men.
“I am extremely interested! Is that your theory as to the cause of the rioting?”
“The real cause, certainly. The oppression and low wage that was offered as an excuse is nothing to a logical mind dealing with these people. There are the innocent hemp-crops, and there are the wily yellow man and the fools of blacks. But as yet we have not the connecting link. They complained ofcorvée(forced labour), it is always the plea—but we complain of ganja with much more reason!”
“And do these people profess to cultivate hemp for export?”
“A Chinaman, dear lady, will profess anything—save the truth. It is allpidgeonto use his own universal expression. But if you will get up very early to-morrow—say be in the saddle by seven—I will take a day off and expound the ethics of China Town to you, with spectacular views as illustrations. Will you come?”
“With pleasure. But can’t you tell me—Ah! what a pity!”
The compliment contained in the genuine exclamation was perfect because impromptu. It was caused by the arrival on the scene of Captain Nugent, Mrs. Churton, and Ally, no longer talking of stamps but of tennis.
“Is it too wet to play, d’you think?” Diana Churton said to the Commissioner and Mrs. Lewin long before she reached them. “That’s the worst of grass—I wish we had gravel courts like that stuck-up Mrs. Bertie used to tell us they had in the Cape. D’you remember her, Brissy? My husband used to call her pea-hen!”
“Was she stuck-up? I thought she made herself rather friendly,”—Captain Nugent’s voice was equally strident to Mrs. Lewin’s ears. “She was telling some story about theStatetheatricals very first time I met her, and Jordan coming on the stage dead drunk! Rather good tale she made of it too.”
Chum began to see that she would have to like Brissy in spite of herself, if it were to be done at all. A sudden impatience of the chatter round her seized her with the tantalising glimpse of more exciting things to hear of from Halton. Five seconds later she changed her mental attitude, and condemned herself for her own lack of adaptability. It was one of her theories that the immediate thing was the one to grasp and develop as best might be, which mental schooling resulted in her becoming involved in a game of cat’s-cradle with Captain Nugent, who was playing with a piece of string which had been tied round the stamps album. Brissy had no conception of mental flirtations undermining even a discussion on hemp-growing round China Town; but he knew that if he got “fish-in-the-pond” his large hands would very likely touch Mrs. Lewin’s in the manipulation of the string. Ally had gone to find their ponies for the return home, and by the time he reappeared the Commissioner had also extricated himself after his quiet fashion and started with them.
“Then you will come for a ride to-morrow?” he said to Chum carelessly. “I am going to show your wife China Town, Lewin—she displays such a flattering interest, that Government cannot afford to allow it to die for lack of cultivation. You were there yesterday, eh?”
“I was!” said Ally significantly. “The most beastly hot ride I ever had. You had better be careful what time of day you go, Chum.”
“Mr. Halton says sevenA. M.”
“I wish the Administrator had said sevenA. M.!” said Ally, laughing good-humouredly. “Instead of that he said twelve—at a minute’s notice.”
“He does not spare himself!” said Halton, with a shrug of his shoulders. “And he sees no reason to spare other people. Our paths divide here, I am sorry to say. Yours is the shorter cut, Mrs. Lewin.”
“Good-bye till to-morrow, then.”
She turned in her saddle, her face framed in by the Panama hat she wore for riding, her eyes in the shadow, a new shade in which the Commissioner had not yet surprised them. He reined his own pony’s head round into the winding path that made a carriage-drive to Government House, while the Lewins rode straight on. Their bungalow lay only a few hundred yards further down the direct road, with a short cut through their own plantation to Government House. It was by this private path that Ally went to his work every morning and returned—the click of the rough gate dividing the grounds being Chum’s signal for the first luncheon bell; but visitors, or the residents of Government House themselves, had a half-mile of winding path and tangled green before they emerged opposite the long straight building where the Union Jack flew above lines of blank window-frames and the straight pillars of the stoep. There were two stories to Government House; it could accommodate some thirty people independently of servants, and the Administrator and Commissioner, alone in their glory, called it a useful barn.
As Halton rode slowly along under the palms he was hardly thinking of the ethics of China Town, being too busy in breaking the tenth commandment. He was a man who had always hankered after the unattainable, and been afraid to risk what he had for what he desired. He had seen many pretty women, whom he thought of regretfully as possible wives—after they had been married by other men. The old process was beginning again in his mind, but the outcome of it was merely a half-irritated remark to the Administrator across thetête-à-têtedinner-table.
“What on earth made you send Lewin out to China Town in the heat of the day? It’s enough to kill a man!”
“There was no one else to send,” said Gregory simply, looking up in momentary surprise from helping himself to fried banana. “I had a message for Burton.He’sa good man if you like.”
“And not to be wasted. It wouldn’t matter if Lewin were used up, eh?”
Gregory shrugged his shoulders. “What on earth did Government mean by sending me a Mediterranean Station man?” he said in his repressed tones. “Who am I to depend on when you go?”
“He may wake up.”
“He’ll play tennis.”
“I have an idea his wife may push him through,” said the Commissioner slowly, poking a hard-back beetle with his forefinger as he spoke. He was looking at the insect as he spoke, and not at hisvis-à-vis. Gregory’s lidless eyes were fixed on him, however, in their usual direct fashion. “She is by way of being an ambitious woman.”
“Is she? I have no impression of her beyond the fact that she was talking rather intelligently to Churton, on one occasion.”
“When was that?” Halton raised his eyes and spoke more quickly, still mechanically keeping the beetle struggling on his back.
“Two days ago, at Mrs. White’s. I didn’t speak to Mrs. Lewin, but I heard her talk.” He was unaware of the fact that Mrs. Lewin had been conscious of him as an audience what time she quietly drained the O.C.T. for information.
“I think she has brains. She is more attracted by Key Island than its meagre diversions.”
“Pity the girl isn’t the boy, then!” said the Administrator cynically. “This thing that sweats through a morning as my private secretary, and then with a sigh of relief scrambles into his flannels, is cursed with the curse of Reuben.”
“Your pet aversion. I think you might be worse off, myself. Lewin is at least a gentleman—and his duties include an A.D.C.’s, as well as a secretary’s.”
“Lewin has a pretty wife!” said Gregory bluntly. “That’s all about it, Halton. I hope the lady will be so shrewd as to see which side her husband’s bread is buttered, that’s all. I may get the report into some form if she makes him work.” He rose in his usual irrelevant fashion, pushing aside the last course offered him by the butler, and tossed over some papers on a side table. “Ambroise had no news,” he remarked.
“So you need hardly have slipped off to Port Albert!” retorted Halton. “I’ve an engagement to-morrow morning, by the way—I shan’t be on hand to save friction between you and Lewin.”
The Administrator opened his lips as if to say something; but the under-breathed words did not come. His hard eyes searched Halton’s reticent face for a moment with intent, and in his mind he bore another grudge against his Secretary for having a wife who could make a fool of a Commissioner. Taff Halton was a clever man, too. They had worked together in Central Africa. The devil take all women!
“Mrs. Lewin,” drawled Halton, “was wearing a blouse, this afternoon, of a peculiar shade of grey-lavender, which seemed like a reflection of her eyes. It’s a pity you don’t study colour effects, Gregory. You lose so much pleasure.” He knew just where to plant his sting, for if there was one thing that Evelyn Gregory loathed it was dilettantism. Halton’s sleepy eyes saw the curbed impatience in Gregory’s face, and he dropped back in his chair so happy that other relaxation was forgotten; and the hard-back beetle, no longer kept helplessly clawing the air, crawled away, and immediately married a lady he discovered in the shade of a dessert dish. All grades of life are elementary in Key Island.