That evening the wind fell absolutely. The Snowflake would undoubtedly be delayed. The air was hot and still, and over the pool in the garden there hung a steamy vapour. All living things in the island were strangely silent. The night before the flying-foxes had screamed and squabbled round the house. But to-night everything was silent, as if waiting peacefully for some event.
When they all came out on the verandah after dinner, the silence seemed to oppress them so that they spoke in lower tones than usual. The King, as if to break the spell, ordered Tiva and Ioia to make music, but their song had a wild sorrow in it.
“What music is that, Tiva?” asked Hilda, who sat deep in the shadow.
Tiva answered abstractedly in her native tongue. The King translated, a little impatiently: “She says that it is the music of this night. She talks much nonsense.”
There were a few moments of silence and then Lechworthy took his briar pipe from his mouth and fired a calm point-blank question.
“Doctor, what was it like, living with all those bad men at the club?”
“With some of them,” said Pryce, meditatively, “one forgot that they were bad men at all. Some were weak rotters, but I’ve found men just as weak against whom, thanks to their circumstances, the law had never a word to say. I suppose the fact is that the bad are not always bad and the good are not always good; and for the sake of society the law has to make a distinction which sometimes has no basis in fact.”
“You do not surprise me,” said Lechworthy. “You rediscover an old truth, that we are all sinners—God forgive us.” He sucked diligently at his pipe for a few seconds, and resumed: “It’s struck me sometimes that, even from the point of view of society, a man with habitual bad temper, or a man who drinks hard, or a man who won’t work, or a man who gambles with money that his family needs, may, though the law lets him go free, do more harm than some who have robbed or even murdered.”
Pryce, who had gone to bed earlier than usual that night, had been asleep for an hour when he was awakened by a touch on the shoulder.