PART IV
"This bitter love is sorrow in all lands,
Draining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands,
Sighing of hearts and filling up of graves."
CHAPTER XX
ON a January night in 1898, Charles Bramham was smoking and writing in the dining-room of Sea House.
All the doors and windows were open: his coat was off: his white silk shirt gaped at the neck and the sleeves were turned up. Mosquitoes in vicious clouds proclaimed with shrill, treble voices their intention to make a dash for his throat and hands as soon as they could find a way through the tobacco smoke.
It had been a pitiless day—the sun a ball of brass, and the thermometer at eighty-five degrees—but the evening sea-breeze had reduced the temperature by five degrees. Flying ants and gnats of every description were flinging themselves at the electric lights, and a bat circled monotonously round the ceiling. But Bramham wrote and smoked placidly on. A little stack of a dozen or more finished letters stood at his elbow, and he was busy on his last now—one to his brother in England.
"Read the Field for December 16th. There are two letters about American cartridges for shot-guns—they've impressed me very much, and for long shots at grouse, and driven partridge, I am certain they'll be better than anything we've had yet."
As he made his period voices and steps advanced upon him, and he blew an opening through the smoke to get a view of the doorway. Entered Carson and Luce Abinger with scowls upon their brows.