CHAPTER XIV
Certain inevitable consequences followed after Ferlie had once put in a public appearance.
It was hardly to be supposed that, in a land where women were scarce and men plentiful, her sovereign-coloured hair was to be allowed to glow unseen by the male contingent, nor her rather absent-minded aloofness to pass unchallenged by the solid phalanx of self-contented wives.
She could not be described as a general favourite. Her thoughts were elsewhere; she was obliged to act a part which failed to interest her whenever she descended the hill to mix with her own kind.
The men, slow-witted as to any point of feminine psychology that did not exactly jump to the eyes, were not aware of any concealing veil, and summed her up as quite a little bit of All-Right and decidedly a "Beaut," but women are not so easily deceived in one another. They were quick to suspect that this Ishmaelitish woman, too obviously pretty to need the support of her own sex, and round whose chair the men showed signs of clustering (of course!) had not put all her cards on the table.
They attempted to dismiss her nervily distracted attitude, her laggardly recognition of individuals to whom she had once been introduced, and her complete detachment from all rules of official status, as affectation.
The words would not quite fit because her manner was, if anything, unnaturally natural, and she was inclined to think startling things out loud when over-excited. They began to discuss her rather a lot in her absence so that new-comers became rather prejudiced before meeting her and convinced that here was a to-be-discouraged specimen of their sex, seeking notoriety. And notoriety with women in a circle on the "Ladies'" side of the Club means "Men"; while "Men" may mean anything.
Ferlie was to blame, in that she made no effort to conciliate. She had not, it must be remembered, known initiation as a débutante into the ritual pertaining unto the Mammon of Precedence. All women were alike to her, from the Leading Lady to the Most Junior Bride whom everybody had voted, "of the Country, my dear." Not all men, because, very shortly, they showed signs of desiring, one by one, to make an individual impression. They began to discuss Themselves with her, preparatory to fathoming that complex of laughter and jarringly grave philosophy which was Herself. And here, her youth affected matters. Her past tragedy had separated her, for some while, from her fellows: her knowledge of character necessarily rested upon her own experience. She was, as Cyprian had warned her, over-pitiful to confidences she should have checked, and tendered tolerant sympathy where a hurt, deliberately inflicted, would have proved the only curative physic.
This, since, ultra-sensitive to pain herself, she could not believe in the thickness of some folk's skins. Her encouragement therefore, of some unbalanced youth, whose voiced cravings for the Good, the True and the Beautiful, were rooted in a most natural desire to hold a pretty girl's hand, lacked wisdom, to say the least of it.
Some time passed before Cyprian began to speculate on her habit of drifting into corners accompanied by this pair of Shooting Boots or that, while a restrained current of Christian hostility, founded on the useful direction to be angry and sin not, oozed insinuatingly from the Women's Fellowship. He knew them for Nice Women, and was sorry; likewise puzzled. In his opinion, Ferlie should have taken all hearts by storm. By which he betrayed nearly as deep a simplicity of soul as Ferlie herself.
However, the Club, representing as it did the unimportant world outside their fairy gates, occupied too small a proportion of their days for him to put his misgivings into words, and not until Digby Maur came to the Station did a certain incident drive him to her with protest-framing lips.
Digby Maur was not his real name. Everybody knew that. But whether his mother had called him Maung Man, or whether his father was truly a connection of a certain Digby St. Maur, who had retired from the country with a string of exciting letters after his name, was never, so to speak, put on paper. People said things and people winked or maintained a priggish silence. Anyhow, Somebody had manipulated the wires of State to make a Government Servant of the man who called himself Digby Maur; who had received most of his education in a type of school connected with the Missions, and whose brain, if not his character, was inherited from one who did not come forward to share the resultant fruits of it.
In appearance Digby Maur was unexpected. Tall, supple, small-boned, his skin weakly tea-coloured and with hair so black and shiny that it might have been enamelled on to his head, his eyes were fine and slanted very little under their dark brows; his mouth was weak and romantically bitter.
He was a man with a grievance, and a passionate aptitude for slashing canvas with the warm bright hues of the Eastern land to which one of his parents belonged. His talent for drawing had smoothed the way for those who had placed him in a profession where it could be exercised in moderation. The Turneresque fruits of his recreation did not concern them.
But they did concern Ferlie, to whom he showed them, and enthralled her. For her he unbandaged his secret wounds. He understood that the world in general considered his nebulous father had done the decent thing by him. What was his grouse? What more could the fellow expect? All unknown to them, and him, his paternal grandfather had achieved a great reputation as an artist before he died. As things were, his own canvases told Digby much.
"If I'd only had the chance!" he said to Ferlie. "The power is within me. I feel it. And I know that I could make my mark; perhaps found an entirely new school of painting! Japan has, long ago, evolved her own style. It has outstripped primitive India and Burma. Say you believe in me! The faith of even one human soul would be an inspiration."
"Take it," Ferlie's admiring gaze told him, fixed upon a sure, swift, impressionistic splashing of Gul Mohur trees against a faintly emerald sky. The pictures spoke to her in some subtly intimate manner; she, the unswerving huntress after all elusive beauty.
She and Digby began to hold long colour-struck conversations and, under fire of her encouragement, he neglected his office table for his easel.
To a few discerning eyes, in the modern Art Schools of England, his latent genius might have been apparent, but to the handful of earth-bound treasure-seekers in the out-stations to which Digby was ever sent, the paintings remained somewhat incomprehensible efforts at self-expression.
Ferlie glimpsed the tragedy behind them; wondered complicated things about little Thu Daw and finally submitted to sit for an impression of herself, full-length against a background of those same fiery branches of blossom.
"The trees in my garden are now in full bloom," he told her. "My bungalow fronts the river and we shall be in perfect seclusion. Think of the sunlight flung back from those flower-flames to become entangled in your hair! A scattered splendour of strewn petals at your feet, shadowed to scarlet where the light falls low on the grass.
"I shall call the picture 'Imprisoned Flames,' and shall give it to you."
"I shall give it to Cyprian," said Ferlie, smiling.
"To your brother? Would he appreciate it? Could he? He doesn't"—with a laugh—"appreciate me."
Ferlie felt that to be true.
Cyprian and she had seemed, almost by tacit consent, to avoid discussion of Digby Maur. But then, they seldom discussed anybody, happy egoists that they were.
In this case Cyprian had definite reasons for his dislike though they were not reasons he would be likely to confide in Ferlie. His respect for Womanhood in the abstract was stringently old-fashioned for days when the modern débutante has been known to discuss the works of Havelock Ellis with her partner, between dances, at the latest fashionable night-club. Sometimes, in odd corners of the bar, men raised their eyebrows and shrugged at the mention of Digby's name. He was not boycotted by any means, but he was not exploited before their women-folk.
"What can you expect? This mania for 'enlightening' education which develops the vices of both Races and the—well, one can't but believe in the truth of the saying. Left to itself, the bazaar element triumphs, and why not?—so that it flourishes in the bazaar. Oil and water will never mix. And even under this broad-minded administration one must draw the line somewhere."
Cyprian heard, marked, learnt and inwardly digested.
Came a day when he overheard.
He had taken a hand at bridge, where the table stood close to the half-open door of the bar, and he sat nearest the voices which occasionally floated through into the card-room.
"What gets my goat is, that her brother should allow it."
"Do you think he knows?"
"She has had no use for anybody but—That—lately."
"It was a case of mutual attraction at first sight."
"Well, either someone ought to tackle him or he ought to tackle her."
"You don't be a damn fool! It ain't anybody's business to tackle a grown man about the doings of a married woman in his house. My wife says——"
Low murmurings.
"It can't be true!"
"Fact, I assure you. Cecily saw her actually going through his garden-gates."
"I must say I can't see the fascination these fellows seem to exercise."
"And you'd think a girl like that——"
"My dear fellow, do remember she is a married woman. Probably Sterne could do nothing, even if he wanted to, with that hair! What I say is, there can't be smoke without fire."
When Cyprian revoked, Dummy got up and, muttering of thirst, ordered drinks all round before closing the glass doors.
The bridge-players avoided Cyprian's eyes in saying good night.
He walked home slowly, his head buzzing.
What in the name of all that was impossible did they think and mean? What had Ferlie been doing, and—here the sting!—what had she been concealing from him?
She had, in fact, decided that the picture was to be a birthday surprise. She was still young enough to attach a joyous importance to anniversaries which he was beginning to regard as intervals of mourning, best celebrated by a black tie.
It would not have proved difficult to extract her simple secret had he not been too inwardly disturbed to approach her with an unprejudiced mind.
As it was, he began by applying an unflatteringly descriptive adjective to Digby Maur's name, which brought the championing colour to her cheek, before he demanded if it were true that she had visited him at his house.
Her chilled affirmative produced an equally chilled request for explanation. And now Cyprian, himself, might have remembered her much-discussed hair, the legacy of an Irish grandmother famed for a quick tongue and a plucky elopement. It made her granddaughter say the sort of thing easier said than forgotten.
"Narrow, narrow, narrow! You who ought to be so merciful to your fellow-creatures."
"No one in his senses attempts to show mercy to a poisonous reptile."
"That's simply melodrama. Digby Maur is a man whose position, you, at least, should hesitate to criticize."
"Thanks for the timely reminder. I had, of course, forgotten a good deal that you must constantly recollect. All the same, I will not have you visiting this pseudo-artist on the transparent pretence of arraigning his pictures."
"Did you say 'pretence,' Cyprian?"
He wanted to hurt her though in his heart he was ashamed. He twitched his shoulders impatiently.
"Very well," and her calm was heavy-laden. "To leave you no excuse for using the word again, understand that, in future, I will go where I please, when I please, and without pretence."
"Do you mean that exactly, Ferlie?"
"You have no right to prevent me."
For him that ended the discussion.
"I suppose not," he answered, and walked out of the room.
She made a quick movement as if to follow.
What she counted a sense of justice prevented her. It would not be fair to Digby Maur—poor boy!—to leave him with his picture uncompleted, merely on account of Cyprian's unprovoked animosity.
When Cyprian understood he would be sorry. But for his accusatory attitude she might have been quite willing to tell him the truth. She was a little eager to punish him and terribly miserable because she had left her pride no choice but to do so.
Meanwhile, he was asking himself what on earth she could see in Maur. The answer, as he supplied it, gave him furiously to think. Perhaps ... Youth.
An impossibly unsuitable comparison struck him. Worshipping whole-heartedly at Ferlie's shrine, what had he seen in Hla Byu? No wonder Ferlie refused to admit his right to protect her. He had forfeited it by his failure to protect himself from the insidious fascination of slant-eyed laughter and Youth's intense happiness.
Was Ferlie really attracted to——? But at this point Cyprian flung himself, with drawn brows, into his work.
They lived through three days of such Purgatory as only the great Lovers of this earth can inflict periodically upon themselves.
Then Ferlie, becoming desperate, betrayed her impatience to Digby, wildly immersed in his burnt siennas, chrome yellows and Venetian reds.
"You see, I dare say, Cyprian may be common-sensically right about my not coming here," she suggested with some hesitation.
"You stood up to his prejudices for my sake? You defied him for me?"
"I did nothing of the sort," contradicted Ferlie, hotly aware that that was exactly what she had done, and wondering why. If Digby took a day longer over his wretched picture she felt that, in the course of it, she should heave a stone at it and him.
She was angry with Cyprian for having upset her pleasure in it, angry with herself for not having explained accurately what was happening during the afternoons she spent in Digby Maur's garden. But—poor Digby again!—she all but laughed at the pathetic figure he cut with the splotches of brilliant paint on his forehead where he had run his fingers through his sleek hair in despairing moments connected with hers.
Her expression, as she regarded him in his neglected and, to the Club folk, unrecognizable state, reconsidering the ill-mated stock from which he sprang, became maternally tender.
He drew his brush with a last sweep across the canvas background and flung it down joyfully.
"Finished."
She smiled back, sensing with her uncanny insight all the delight of achievement tingling in his weary limbs.
That he should mis-read her sympathy was inevitable. The time was ripe for a climax of some sort on his side.
... His hot kisses scorched her throat and her disgustedly closed eyes. His arms imprisoning her were hungry.
It was a long while before she had hurt him sufficiently to make him understand....
Cyprian, savagely covering sheets of office paper with close paragraphs he constantly re-read and re-wrote, heard her hurried step along the drive and dully noticed that she had not stopped to sneck the gate and, therefore, the waterman's white cow would get at the lilies again. He supposed Maur had been talking more Art drivel. Why could he not find courage to check this nonsensical friendship once and for all? She did not really consider that he had no right to object.
His pen went flying as she flung herself against his chair. She curled up on his knees, hiding her face in his shoulder and breathing quickly as if she had been running. He glanced abstractedly at a running rivulet of ink down a confidential report. His relief to find her within reach again, and to know the cold mutual politeness of the last three days ended, was so great that all anxiety and doubt went out in thankful amusement at the unexpectedness of her. He wondered if she had blown up the whole Station with an experimental bomb, or whether she had merely been cut by the Leading Lady. At any rate, he was there to fill the post of Whipping Boy, and—Heavens—how willingly!
"Ferlie," he said, half-stifled by those dear slender arms, "What have you been doing?"
"Oh, Cyprian, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Just go on forgiving me hard. You have proved yourself so ghastlily in the right. Some men exist who are not ready for toleration of their weaknesses and sympathy in their sorrows. Sooner or later, they misunderstand what you offer them and turn into Circe's beasts—and blame your attitude for the change.... I suppose he had some reason to say I'd asked for it; but I didn't know...."
He took her flushed face between his palms and turned it round.
"Did he say that?"
"Yes. And more. Much more. But it was what he did that matters.
"Go on."
"He caught hold of me and held me against him and kissed me ... all over ... I thought I had done with that brand of kisses for ever. And he wouldn't let me move. And at last I got a chance to b-bite ... and, oh, Cyprian, it was all so hopelessly vulgar! I'm bruised with the smirch of it. I'll never leave the house again till I die, unless you are with me to tell me whom I can safely speak to. I'll never trust my wits, henceforth, beyond the front gate. I—what are you laughing at? Don't laugh! Why are you finding it funny, when I only want you to wash me and—and comfort me?"
"It's all very well, but I am glad this has happened, my dear."
"Glad!"
"You needed some such"—he was about to say "lesson" and veered away from the priggishness of the word—"experience, to keep you in my despised conventional way. Now, tell me. Are Maur's intentions strictly—er—honourable?"
"Honourable! What are you talking about, and will you stop smiling?"
Her head tucked itself out of sight again under his chin and he rested his lips an instant on it before explaining.
"I mean, is he wanting to marry you?"
"I am sure I don't know. I should think it hardly likely now. If so, he can't have considered that my reception of his advances augured matrimonial bliss. But you were all out to put him in a lethal chamber before and now you seem to be excusing him."
"To him, I am your somewhat elderly brother; you are a widow, and of age, who lives with me pending the next suitor on the scene. No one could imagine, who does not know the truth, that there will not be several others, and, amongst them, someone to whom you might reasonably be expected to listen. I have my own small sense of Justice, you see," Cyprian finished dryly. "And I, of all men, should have learnt to be merciful."
"Touché," admitted Ferlie. "It is my turn to tell you to go on. But what do you expect me to do about his lunatic scheming and dreaming?"
"I expect you, just for this once, to do as you are told. What I am going to do is what I should have done in the first place: forbid him to speak to my—sister. So much is simple. But I am looking ahead, and I think you should, in the circumstances, cultivate women-friends more and men less!"
She made a little face before she said meekly.
"They don't seem so anxious to cultivate me, you see, as the men."
He chuckled. "I'd noticed that."
"You have no right to start being unexpected, Cyprian, at this stage of things. It's so humiliating when I have been browsing contentedly on the belief that I can foresee all that you are likely to foresee and notice."
"It is not the first time, is it, that I have made an effort to exceed my rights?"
"Please resist the temptation to go on driving it home. According to the Book you should be striding the room muttering dire threats through your clenched teeth."
"Concerning your behaviour or his?"
Then, as she wriggled her annoyance, the laughter in the heart of him materialized.
"My dear, I am incapable, at the moment, of taking anything seriously except the fact that you have come back to me. Which is a matter rather for rejoicing than for imprecations. If I seem to pass off this occurrence as unimportant, it is only because it is so over-shadowed by the importance of the realization that I exist again for you."
"I have never imagined you existed for anyone else," she protested indignantly. "Another time you'll know that when it looks as if I were thinking of someone else it's really that I am concentrating extra hard on something connected with your happiness."
"I'll remember," Cyprian promised, slightly catching his breath.
* * * * * *
They had dismissed Digby Maur and his picture too airily. His suffering was intense enough to cause his hatred of Cyprian to reflect again on Ferlie.
Everybody in the Club could see that he and Mrs. Clifford no longer held sweet converse together nor walked in that House of Rimmon as friends. Its numerous unmystical members openly rejoiced that Sterne had, at last, put his foot down.
The iron entered into Digby Maur's soul. His was not the nature to forgo visions of public revenge. Ferlie was involved in them because, although he had unjustifiably presumed upon her frank comradeship to the extent of insulting her, his desire, outweighing the elements of purer passion which she had primarily awakened in him, was an emotion more likely to breed wounded resentment than humble submission, on the well-deserved withdrawal of its star.
Ferlie, though secretly confessing herself blame-worthy, realized too thoroughly by now that dynamite, in proximity with a match-box however innocently decorated, is not a reliable combination, and, having once capitulated to Cyprian's judgment, could be safely trusted to abide by it.
Hence, even an armed truce was out of the question. She welcomed with relief the news that Digby had taken casual leave and gone to Rangoon.
"It shows he has accepted the position and means to be sensible," she told Cyprian. "When he returns we can meet as club-acquaintances and it will be forgotten that we ever appeared to be anything more."
"Burma does not forget," he said cloudily, and she understood that he had learnt that lesson bitterly enough.
She might have been less sanguine of a happy ending to her own affair if she had connected with Maur's departure a detailed announcement in the Rangoon papers of a forthcoming Art Exhibition, on a large scale, and for which contributions were invited in the form of original sketches, paintings, leather-work, pottery and all the usual articles universally acknowledged, on such occasions, a joy for ever.
Shrewdly positive that he possessed a work of Art worth exhibiting, and a golden opportunity of advertising his hitherto unexploited talent, Digby Maur had well-timed his leave. All individuals occupying the local seats of the Mighty would be present; besides, at this height of the Season, many outside visitors.
There must follow comment and inquiries as to the identity of the artist who had produced "Imprisoned Flames."
He was right. There were visitors, and, among them, a millionaire on a private steam-yacht and his personal physician; a young man with an inquisitive expression, reddish hair and a loud happy voice which he dogmatically raised upon matters which the Elderly and Unenterprising had long elected to approach with caution.
In due course the new-comers found themselves conducted by the residents, to the Art Show, where the chief item was already admitted to be a unique painting which most people only remembered as the Girl and the Gul Mohurs, though the artist had baptized it more erotically.
Said Peter to his neighbour, after a cursory glance, "Why, that's my sister!"
Several people turned, and, amongst them, a hovering Anglo-Burman, referred to in hushed tones as the artist.
Colonel Maddock put up his eye-glass with an astounded, "Bless my soul! It is Ferlie. Where on earth did the little minx have it done?"
"It's damned good," said Peter. "Probably it is Cyprian's. I'd like to have a copy. When we run them to earth we will ask them why they never told us it was here."
The Colonel and Peter never discussed the fugitives.
Aunt B., mistrusting the frailty of human flesh, had not mentioned the relationship under which they were masquerading. They might have already dropped it in anticipation of the divorce to which in common sense they must finally succumb. Better, she thought, to let Ferlie tell her own tale to Peter. She had not foreseen that Ferlie would delay too long in replying to Peter's letter, on the basis that least said on paper soonest mended.
So Peter and the Colonel only knew that the two were together and that Ferlie's name was Mrs. Clifford to stave off the world's curiosity.
Digby Maur was already lionized, and, being Digby Maur, his head already felt a little light.
He longed for Ferlie and Cyprian to hear of his triumph at first hand, and appreciated, with a tinge of malice, that the daily papers would afford Cyprian a resentful shock over the publicity bestowed upon the painting of Ferlie.
He decided to find means of introducing himself to explain that the picture was not for sale.
The opportunity occurred sooner than he expected, by way of a lady who had once known the man reputed to be Digby Maur's father, and who felt sorry for the quasi-European son, and glad of his success. She had met the Colonel, and, aware of the respect in which the Banks held him, thought to put the young artist in touch with a possible order for Burmese sketches. Finding herself near Peter she manœuvred the two opposite one another and was about to explain that Digby was the artist of "that red painting," when a friend jostled against her in the crowd and engaged her in conversation. Peter and Digby, barely introduced, were left face to face.
"I must say you have not even a family resemblance to your brother," hazarded Digby.
"Which is not surprising," and Peter eyed him with interest, "seeing that I have no brother."
Maur recalled the Club conclusion of Cyprian's relationship to Ferlie.
"I should have said your half-brother, Mr. Sterne."
"Oh, you've met old Cyprian? No, he is not even my half-brother, though people used to take him for an uncle. He is just an old family friend. But if you have met him you may know my kiddie-sister. She is staying with him in Burma at present."
A sudden unhealthy pallor left his companion's face putty-coloured.
"I didn't catch your name," Peter was saying when Digby recovered his breath. "Mine's Carmichael. My sister is a Mrs. Clifford."
He slightly over-emphasized the unfamiliar title.
The eyes scrutinizing him narrowed.
"I have had the honour of painting Mrs. Clifford."
"By Jove! Then it was you——" Peter studied him afresh and stopped, faintly uneasy. This man must know Ferlie quite well. What on earth had made him suppose Cyprian his brother—or hers? Better not inquire, lest he should put his foot on some unexplained situation. He drifted into enthusiastic comment on the portrait and escaped to warn Colonel Maddock of the artist's identity. He had been prepared for an equivocal attitude from the narrow-minded, who might criticize Ferlie's staying with a friend of Cyprian's calibre. Odd of Cyprian to rush her off like that to Burma. The uncle part could be overdone. Aunt B. had said they were living in the wilds and seeing no one, so it had appeared not to matter. He had assumed them lost to both hemispheres till Ferlie should become stronger after her troubles and able to make some satisfactory arrangement with Clifford.
She should have confided in her mother, or her only brother long ago. Of course he saw that she could not be left to the care of a chap who, from Aunt B.'s hints, was little better than a maniac on one point, however sane he might be on all others. Like the Vane woman, he would probably end in a Home, unless—and Peter eagerly recalled certain experiments he had been requested to make in Ruth Levine's flat and on the efficacy of which he was now awaiting her final verdict. He was so "keen" on insanity and if his ideas consolidated into success there seemed no limit to his horizon.
His gaze into space grew abstracted and he dismissed Maur's inquiry with a shrug. People always took for granted that old Cyprian was some sort of a relation: this fellow had obviously noticed that Ferlie did not use the prefix "Uncle," and had assumed the rest.
Rum chap, Cyprian. A queer friend for her to have stuck to all these years. He really must hint to her, though, that she could not, in any country, pay an indefinite visit to a man friend, however elderly, without asking for the acidulated comments of catty women and coarse-minded men.
By the time he found the Colonel that gentleman had already been presented to Maur; who had made hay to some purpose; having decided to try another tack and assume Cyprian something different from a brother, this time.
"Yes, I have had the great privilege of painting Mrs. Clifford, sir. Do you happen to be acquainted with her husband?"
The Colonel was grateful for the lead. He thought Peter had suggested that Ferlie was posing as a widow. Much better to have admitted separation, since, at this distance, awkward questions could not be answered anyway.
"I have met him and have no desire to meet him again. You can take it from me, Mr. Maur, that she was altogether wise in insisting that they should live their lives apart. As for your picture of her I should have much pleasure..." etc., etc.
He certainly thought he must have done Ferlie a good turn if this man should be a talker. The chances were now people would get to know the husband was impossible. He blandly concentrated on the picture.
"This one is not for sale," Digby assured him. "But if I can persuade Mrs. Clifford to sit again—and I think that will be possible—I should be happy to execute you a fresh order, though I never reproduce. I wonder if a bank of our red lilies and the hint of a gold pagoda-roof in the middle distance, reflected in water—you have visited the lakes?"
Maddock eventually gave the order for another portrait, subject to Ferlie's acquiescence.
"We shall be hoping to arrange a meeting soon. Must run up to Mandalay first."
However, after an interview with Peter, they both came to the conclusion that Ferlie should not have left her nearest friends so much in the dark as to her tactics.
"Aunt B. declared that she was calling herself a widow," said Peter, "hence the 'Mrs. Clifford.' It was easier to avoid publicity and the interest of the folk who covet their neighbour's peace of mind. The 'brother' mistake is fishy preceding his attitude to you. We must pick our way if we don't want to get Ferlie's name handed round with the ice-cream at every official show going. When we see her I shall put it to her straight."
Digby Maur's leave at an end, Government House had shaken him warmly by the hand. He had gained for himself a reputation, and the power to shatter one.