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