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