CHAPTER XIV
AFTER SERVICE
"They are good children," said Vashti, as she and the Commandant sat at breakfast together next morning, which was Sunday.
The Commandant did not answer for a moment. He was stirring his tea, in a brown study, nor did he note that Vashti's eyes were resting on him with an amused smile. She supposed these fits of abstraction to be habitual with him, due to living and taking his meals alone; but in fact his thoughts were wrestling with two or three very urgent problems. To begin with, he had plunged yet deeper in debt to Mr. Tregaskis. The total, to be sure, amounted to something under twenty-five shillings; but to a man with just one penny in his pocket this left no choice but between recklessness and panic, and the Commandant's spirits swung from one to the other like a pendulum. Panic asserted itself in the small hours, when he awoke in his bed and wondered what would happen when pay-day came, should it bring no pay with it ... and to a man lying sleepless in the small hours, the worst seems not only possible but likely. Then, as daylight waxed and he awoke again from a short doze, to his surprise he found himself absolutely reckless. As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb! The ordeal lay three days off, and in three days anything might happen; but meanwhile this was certainly happening—a woman accomplished and beautiful had stepped into his life and was changing all the colour of it. He guessed the danger, put purposely averted his thoughts from it and from the certainty of scandal. Archelaus, Treacher, Mrs. Treacher—all three had been sworn to secrecy, and all three could be trusted. These folks read no harm, nothing beyond an amusing mystery, in Vashti's sojourn, and in particular she had made Mrs. Treacher her obedient slave. Yet the secret must come out, and in spite of Archelaus, who had brought his master's boat round and moored her cunningly under the lee of the rocks overhung by the Keg of Butter Battery. There, while the weather held, the Commandant and his guest could slip away without fear of prying eyes and sail off among the islands—as they had sailed off yesterday, Vashti sitting low and covering herself with a spare-sail, until beyond sight of St. Lide's quay and the houses on the slope. To be sure they had to reckon with Mr. Rogers' telescope, or rather to leave it out of account. If Mr. Rogers' telescope should prove indiscreet, Mr. Rogers must be let into the secret, and might be relied on to join the conspiracy.
The Commandant, however, was in no hurry to share his happiness. Since his youth he had made few friends, and in all his life had never known comradeship with a woman. Suddenly, and as a well-spring in the desert, Vashti had come into the dull round of his duty—his purposeless, monotonous duty—to refresh it; nor perhaps were the waters less sweet for the feeling that they were stolen. So he lived in the day, and put off thinking of the inevitable end.
One thing only troubled his happiness. He foresaw that the end, when it came, would mean for him something more serious than parting. He could not have told why, but from the moment when Vashti had turned on him and asked, "For what work do they pay you?" he had known that henceforward his conscience would not sleep until he had made a clean breast to the War Office and resigned his commission. It was not that her question told him anything new; only that he saw himself judged in her eyes, and in their light discovered that his conscience had been tolerating what was really intolerable. Her departure, then, would mean the end of all things; for on the very next day he would send in his papers and face the world alone—the very next day, and not until then. So much respite he gave himself; and this respite, and not the prospect of parting, cast the only shade upon his happiness. For he felt that he held her friendship on a false pretence; that if she knew the truth, she would despise him. That is why the Commandant sat in a brown study.
"They are good children," repeated Vashti, "but like all other children they know nothing of their elders' troubles. I remember that I was nine or ten before ever it occurred to me that my father could have any troubles.... Now from the top of the hill where those three youngsters sat talking their fairy-tales, I looked over Cromwell's Sound and saw their father, Eli Tregarthen, pulling across from Inniscaw. By the very stoop of his shoulders over the paddles I seemed to read that the world had gone wrong with the man, and when he beached his boat and walked up the hill towards Saaron Farm, I felt sure of it. Of course you may laugh and set it down to fancy, for the man was a good three-quarters of a mile away."
The Commandant, however, did not laugh. "I think, very likely, you are right," said he; "and the man had been over to Inniscaw to make a last appeal to the Lord Proprietor."
"I wonder," mused Vashti, "if he is the sort of man to tell his wife?"