CHAPTER VIII
“Le temps, l’innocence, la confiance, la foi, l’estime—perdez les—vous ne les recouvrerez plus.”—French Proverb.
“Le temps, l’innocence, la confiance, la foi, l’estime—perdez les—vous ne les recouvrerez plus.”—French Proverb.
A cého head is the best incentive to temporary canonisation that can well be experienced, and when, according to the old couplet, “The Devil was sick,” and “A saint would be,” he had probably been indulging on the preceding night in Key Island, whose temperature suggests that it is nearer to his dominion than the rest of the globe. Captain Lewin woke up on his improvised bed about half-past four next morning, and wondered if the swelled weight on the pillow were really his head or a leaden imitation fastened to his shoulders. To sleep in evening dress, too, in Key Island is hardly a profitable experiment, and what with the sheet spread over him and the liqueur he had swallowed, Ally’s state was one of satisfactory discomfort.
He kicked off the sheet, and arose cursing. Then events began to come back to him, and as he staggered into an upright position—for he was very shaky—he looked at the mattress on the floor, and wondered who had mercifully arranged it for him last night. His memory declined to serve him beyond an uneasy recollection of a dark corner of the stoep at the Churtons’ quarters, and Diana’s stirrup cup. How he had got home he could not tell, but the state of his mouth informed him ruefully that he had been very drunk indeed. Cého has a singular effect upon the glands of the throat, if taken in large quantities, so that a regular drinker gets a strange and unclassified disease after many years’ tippling, which the doctors call “Drawn threads” for lack of a better name.
Alaric Lewin shuddered a little as he stumbled over to the door with some idea of closing it if it were open, and getting himself washed and dressed into the morning guise of a gentleman. He had known men with “Drawn threads,” and wondered how soon the symptoms really showed themselves. But he need not have feared for his splendid young constitution, as yet, and a minute later he forgot the creepy thought in a new wonder.
The door of his dressing-room was bolted. So was the door into his wife’s room, the latter on the inner side, for he tried it gently. Some one had seen him come in last night then, and had done their best for him, but he had no idea as to whether it were Chum or one of the servants. He hoped from the bottom of his soul that it was the latter, for the reaction from last night’s excess was having a chastening effect. He was bitterly ashamed, and as he caught sight of his own face in the glass, a dark flush swept over his unwholesome pallor for an instant.
“Great Scot! I am a sickly beast,” said Ally fervently, and with a rush of distaste for himself in his present condition he began to strip hastily, throwing the clothes aside after his usual careless fashion. His bath had been placed for him the night before, and he got into it with a feverish desire for cleanliness and coolness, but it seemed to him that the water hissed off his skin, and that even after a hard rub down there was a burning heat upon him. He was sick and sorry too, and he knew enough of the climate to recognise that this would not do. He had no compunction in rousing his household, but he devoutly hoped that Chum might not hear him when he opened his door and called, for it is a peculiarity of Key Island, that though there is electric light there, there are no bells; every one shouts, and for this reason the servants get into a loafing habit of keeping round about the open doors, their possible summons being an excellent excuse for doing no work meanwhile.
By the time Mrs. Lewin came down to breakfast her husband was already in the room, as smart as usual, save for the drawn face above the spotless white linen. The heat seemed to get up as early as the residents in Key Island, and by eight o’clock the sun is as strong as at noon on an English June day. Leoline seemed to feel it oppressive, for she gasped a little as she came over to the table, and Ally turned sharply at the slur of her gown over the bare floor. The holland did not rustle, but she had a way of moving which was as regal as the action of a racehorse, and it created a certain stir of atmosphere about her. It struck Alaric at that moment that his wife was chic even in her nightdress, which is a costume resolving most women back into the original elements of their natures.
For a second they stood on either side the dainty table, and the embarrassment of the unconfessed lay deep between them. Then Alaric said “Good-morning, Chum,” and moved into his place without raising his eyes. As a rule they kissed each other as heartily as when they were school-children.
Mrs. Lewin sat down opposite him and began to pour out the tea. The breaking of the ice rested with her, but she took it quite naturally; her new sense of responsibility seemed to make it an expected thing that she must always from henceforth take the lead, not as she had hitherto taken it, with the screen of Ally’s personality around her, but without disguise.
She looked at the honeycomb on the table, and observed that Abdallah had not remembered the butter-knife, an omission to be corrected for the seventeenth time. Then she pushed the dish of iced mangoes towards Ally mechanically, and then she caught her breath again, and spoke—
“You were very late down from the Churtons’, Ally.”
“Yes.” He had had a whiskey and soda before breakfast, a “Hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-him” cure that enabled him to eat; but the food tasted badly in his mouth at that moment. “Did you hear me come in?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You bolted the door, and got the mattress on to the floor, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause, and it seemed as if the words would never come.
“I am awfully sorry, Chum.”
“How was it?” she said, half under her breath. The troubled eyes of husband and wife met across the gay little table, glittering with their wedding silver and glass, and rich with strange tropical fruit and flowers. Ally and Chum had always revelled in the Key’land breakfast and their foreign dishes and luxuries,—somehow the sight of it between them now made what they had to say seem more tragic by contrast.
“It was so awfully hot!” Ally said lamely. “On my honour, it’s a solitary instance. I haven’t been squiffy like that except once or twice before in my life.”
An uncomfortable memory of the Churtons’ stoep was making him wretched, and the flavour of that episode tasted worse in his mouth than stale cého. He fidgeted with the fruit, while Chum on her side of the table was absorbed by the worse revelation that she had to make.
“Did you hear anything in town yesterday about the people being discontented?” she said, feeling the difficulty like a stone wall before her. “I asked you through the telephone, but you said no, then,—perhaps you knew of it later.”
“No, I heard nothing. Is there anything fresh?” Ally was relieved at the change of subject.
“There was the threatening of a rising——”
“By Jove! was there? Come, that’s exciting. Anything is welcome to break the monotony of this dead-alive hole! I shouldn’t have made an ass of myself last night if it hadn’t been for that,” he said ruefully, drifting back to his own uneasy sense of shortcoming.
“I don’t know whether anything happened. The Administrator thought——”
“Where did you see Gregory?” he asked, startled. “I got off early because he was going round to Port Albert until Friday. His yacht was waiting at the quay; I saw it as I rode through town.”
“Then he must have heard something that made him change his mind, for he did not go. He came here last night, or rather in the early morning between one and two.”
“Chum!”
He laid down his knife and fork and looked at her across the table, his face whitening. But it was the pity in her eyes, rather than a real understanding of what had happened, that frightened him.
“Did he want me?”
“Yes.”
“He asked for me? What did you say?”
“I said you were ill—overtired—that I could not rouse you.”
“And he took that, and went?”
A sense of marvel possessed his wife at the easy relief of his tone. He thought his difficulty so easily overcome that it seemed to her childish. Could he really think that a nature like Evelyn Gregory’s would be so set aside, brushed off by a light excuse.
“Yes, he went—but——” She hesitated, and then it seemed that plain speaking was best. “He guessed what was wrong, Ally. He kept urging me to rouse you, and of course I could not. Then he said he would rouse you himself, and I had to stop him. He was very good—he spoke quite kindly, and told me not to worry—he would go to Maitso himself. But—I do not think he will forget, though things may seem as usual between you.”
Down the length of the table, between the tall silver vases of stephanotis and honeysuckle, she saw his handsome, despondent face, the dark head leaning on his hand, the passing gravity which made him seem noble clouding out his usual laughter. Gravity and a touch of pensive regret suited Alaric as even his debonair self-assurance did not do. He had never looked handsomer than just then.
“I am very sorry. I have made a fool of myself.” He spoke humbly, and yet somehow seemed more of a man than she had thought him since last night. “You are disappointed, Chum!”
“It’s not my loss, Ally, it’s yours. And it doesn’t matter being disappointed if we can go on all right now. I think we can pull straight again, old fellow.” She was pitifully anxious to help him, and to get that look off his face that made her heart ache. He must be encouraged like a child, as well as chidden. She hated to see him carry his head without the usual insolence of his own good looks. As she poured out a second cup of tea for him—the “drawn threads” of his throat burnt like thirst—she rose and carried it round to him herself, with a kind young hand laid on his shoulder. The little extra attention, when he knew she might have reproached him, touched Alaric the more, because he looked on his wife as an undemonstrative woman. He turned swiftly from the table and laid his head against her breast with a boyish gesture. In truth, he wanted comforting, for he was face to face with his own responsible mistake, and fortune had petted and spoiled him hitherto rather than met him with the grim face she wore to-day. There was a little silence while Leoline stroked the dark hair, and held him tenderly against her. But her eyes looked out over his head with the expression of one who has gazed in the face of Medusa. She had that new protective feeling for something weaker than herself, but it was no longer the theoretical Ally she had married and set on a hymeneal pedestal.
“Don’t, dear!” she said at last, and her voice was a whisper. “It is not a hanging matter—we won’t let it be. I will help you—may I?”
“You’re the best of Chums!” he whispered back with a rather uncertain smile. “But you shan’t have to pull me up for boozing. I don’t know how it happened last night—we were all playing Poker, and their quarters are so hot, and we kept on with whiskey after whiskey. I must have come down that hill like a madman!”
She gave a dismayed exclamation. “Did any one hear you?”
“Half the town I should think, and all our servants. It’s no use not facing it, you know, and fellows have got drunk before.”
“We must live it down anyhow, Ally. If only it had not been last night! And the Churtons know.” She spoke in short, pausing sentences, thinking it out. “We don’t know the real extent of the mischief until we hear whether the rising were anything serious.”
A sudden passing gloom darkened his face again. “Gregory never forgives that kind of thing. Dear, this means ruin to any career for me!”
He rose impatiently, and began to stroll up and down the room, as though he could not sit still. After a minute she followed him, and put her arms round him, bringing him to a standstill. The warm, motherly look of love that had been in her eyes last night was there again as she lifted her head and looked at him.
“I don’t care, darling, as long as we are side by side, and can help each other!” she said. “Only let us stand or fall together!”
The silent, golden day was unbroken by any whisper, but the two kissed each other gently for promise, and looked into each other’s faces with a gravity too gentle for passion. While the best side of our nature is uppermost a vow seems almost superfluous. If reason will not bind us, a futile fear of our own oath is a poor alternative. Unfortunately, the best side of our nature so seldom remains in the ascendant, but has a disheartening tendency to give way before the baser instincts of the clay.
Alaric set off for Government House in a state of mind more angelic than comfortable. He felt as if the backbone had gone out of him with the wickedness, and his good resolutions were less easy to carry than his usual self-satisfaction. Nevertheless it was a beautiful mood, and as genuine as any other while it lasted. He found that the Administrator had slept out at China Town at the house of the Town Warden. This was disturbing, and the impenetrable reserve of Mr. Halton’s manner when they encountered each other for a few moments did not tend to soothe matters. Ally felt that to await he knew not what, and try to work, tended towards temporary insanity. At half-past eleven he ordered his pony, and rode down into Port Victoria.
There was no sign of disturbance there, but he felt that he could better have faced the town in ruins, and the coloured population howling and dancing the “Cannab Hari-kari,” which is a dance of death, than the solitary figure of Evelyn Gregory which haunted his imagination. Why had the Administrator slept out at China Town? What was going on?
He lounged into the club, the fret of his nerves making the click of the billiard balls a torture. Two men were listlessly playing in the ugly bare room, where the sun beat past the stoep and through the glassless window slits. Ally watched the game for a few minutes, and then his restlessness drove him across the landing into the reading-room where no one ever read. Last month’s papers still lay on the table, and a solitary member was writing at one of the neglected tables. Ally almost beat a retreat at sight of the square shoulders and dark head shot over with grey. No other man in Key Island wore and kept his collars as high and clean as the officer in command of the troops. With the temperature at 90° in the shade Major Churton was as coolly immaculate in glossy linen as if he were in Bond Street, and where lesser men succumbed to turned-down collars and porous shirts, his were triumphantly starched.
“Hulloa, Major!” Ally said, with an inward flinching from the encounter.
“Hulloa, Lewin!” The O.C.T. turned his hard brown face, and there was a twinkle in his bold eyes. “Got home all right last night, eh?”
A reaction of relief met the twinkle, in Ally’s facile nature. “By Jove! I was drunk!” he said, laughing, as he dropped into a chair by the Major’s side. “My mouth feels like a sponge to-day. Did I gas much? I owe Mrs. Churton an apology for such an exhibition in her house.”
“You were a bit on. Nothing to hurt—unless your pony suffered! You went down that hill like greased lightning. I had no idea the brute had it in him—Polo knocks their feet about as a rule.”
“Snapshot took me home—I certainly didn’t take him. By the way, have you heard anything of any native trouble?”
“Yes, there was a scare, I believe. Gregory sent up a message that we must be ready to turn out, in the middle of the night, and rode to China Town afterwards. Nothing came of it, I presume—at least we have heard nothing more.”
“My wife got wind of it. I haven’t seen the Administrator.” Ally’s eyes were still troubled for all the easy assurance of the Major’s tone.
“Of course there may be a row brewing at China Town,” he said. “Even going on. We shan’t hear till it’s over, according to Mr. Gregory’s usual methods. I think myself it was a false alarm.”
“There’s a telephone from the barracks to Burton’s house, isn’t there?” said Ally. “They may have heard something up at Maitso.”
“All right, I’ll ask Di.” The Major rung up and curtly demanded to be connected with his house. After the usual trying delay Ally heard him say, “Oh, that you, Di?” and waited breathlessly.
“No,” he remarked after a few brief questions and imaginable answers. “No news,—Di,” his mouth was again at the tube—“Lewin is here. All the better for last night’s temperance meeting! What?—Oh, Di wants you to come and lunch.”
Now was Ally’s good angel to fail him. He thought of the limp feeling that self-abasement gave him, and of how it would certainly season his luncheon with Chum’s uncomplaining face opposite. He thought also, with a sense of injury, that she took his one excess very seriously, and that Churton himself made light of it. If he went to Maitso Diana would by no means have a chastening and depressing influence. Hang it! he had eaten humble pie enough for one morning, and been wretched into the bargain. No doubt he should have another bad quarter of an hour with Gregory; he would not be miserable from choice.
“All right—please say I shall be very pleased, if she is so charitable as to forgive last night.”
“Oh, she will look on that with indulgence I have no doubt!” said Churton with some cynicism. “We are none of us total abstainers that we can accuse each other. Have a whiskey on the strength of that confession, Lewin!”
When Alaric rode up through the logwood screen, and pulled rein before the O.C.T.’s quarters, Mrs. Churton came forth to meet him with a friendly handshake, and no reference to the advance of last night. She was a skilful woman. The Major had come up before, so Diana had already heard of the supposed alarm, and guessed a good deal of Ally’s part in it. She drew the rest of the story from him, new-coloured with the self-defence that had been growing on him all day, and was loud in her scorn of Gregory’s eccentricities.
“He would like to turn the troops out now and then on a false scent, to prove their smartness,” she declared. “The men will mutiny next, if he sends any more such orders to Maitso, and then he will revel in a new row. He’s like that—Bute was stationed with him once before. There’s literally nothing in it but his usual fuss, and love of worrying a situation to rags. Gregory’s a Prairie dog, and Halton’s a cat—you can’t trust what either of them says or does.”
“It was unfortunate that he took a fit of it last night,” Ally admitted, but he felt comforted, and Mrs. Churton’s mental touch upon his nerves was more soothing, for the moment at any rate, than his wife’s. He lingered on and on through the afternoon, and though he shunned actual stimulant he took many mental whiskies and sodas to keep himself up. By the time he rode home again to dinner his repentance of the morning had changed into a state of injury that the Administrator should raise false alarms, and upset a peaceful community. No more was known of Mr. Gregory’s movements, save that he had returned to Government House, and still Port Victoria was quiet. It was obviously a false alarm and a fad of the man in power, and with a peculiar transposition of mind Captain Lewin no longer felt that he was the injurer in failing his chief at a crucial moment, but rather the injured party in that Mr. Gregory had chosen the one evening when he was—er—not up to the mark, to make demands upon him. The elasticity of his conscience was only equal to his capacity for avoiding unpleasant truth.
Poor Chum! she was writing her new creed on sand, and when she saw her teaching briefly reflected on the surface of his mind, she thought that it was permanent, and did not realise her own disaster.