There was a much larger gathering to see Mrs. Ritchie off than there had been for the Greville. The Gilderoys, Captain Nugent, the Arthur Whites, Miss Denver, Mrs. Clayton with the gunner’s boy in tow,—Mrs. Lewin counted them over with wearied eyes and found none missing save the Churtons. They were not there and Captain Gilderoy amicably suggested that Diana had got a headache from too many céhos, and the Major was forced to stay away to cover her indisposition.
“But does she drink, Captain Gilderoy?” Mrs. Clayton asked eagerly, her pretty vulgar face thrust up to his. She had experienced the roughness of Diana’s manner when there was no need to be ingratiating, and sought for the joints in her armour.
“I didn’t say that, Mrs. Clayton!” Captain Gilderoy raised his cynical eyebrows, and smiled as a dog snarled, on one side of his mouth. His “smiling acquaintance” with Mrs. Clayton had developed, with no desire on his part, to a more conventional one, and a further knowledge of her had intensified his sentiments with regard to her rather than otherwise. He disliked Mrs. Clayton every bit as much as he did Mrs. Churton, and his comments on her freedom from social restrictions were at least as withering as on Diana, but that Eva Clayton had not the capacity to guess. “I did not say she drank,” he said in his most pleasant manner, “but she has the advantage of a strong head! She can take two drinks to my one; I have seen her get through two tumblers of whiskey and soda when I stopped prudently at the second.”
“You don’t say so!” Mrs. Clayton’s loud, vacant laugh jarred after Gilderoy’s polished words—he spoke charmingly, and his voice was deep and rather sweet,—and she caught her gunner by the arm.
“Mr. Rennie, listen! Captain Gilderoy says that Mrs. Churton drinks—that’s why she isn’t here to-day. She can toss off five whiskeys faster than the men. Disgusting, isn’t it!”
Young Rennie was a fresh-faced boy, with eyes which still danced carelessly with youth. All Mrs. Clayton’s tuition had not yet left its impress on his smooth, flushed face, but it was tainting his tongue.
“By Jove!” he said. “What fun! I’ll have a drinking match with her one night—get her well on and stake glass for glass.”
“Yes, do,” Mrs. Clayton said eagerly. “It would be so amusing!” and Miss Denver turned round and laughed too, but without spite. She was a very tall girl, whose clothes were always a bad copy of the last garrison lady’s who had come to the Station, and there was a certain exuberance about her that made women—nice women—say that she had something maternal even in her generous girlhood. Men, being coarser or more practical, called her a finely-built girl, and thought of the children she might bear them.
Leoline Lewin heard the comments on Di and the laughter, and moved by instinct a little nearer Mrs. Stern. Perhaps she was out of tune with her world to-day, but it seemed to her as if the whole of her surroundings were shoddy,—the very tone of the people was like the little native huts with their lack of stability and general uncleanness. When Brissy Nugent appeared at her side, as if her husband’s absence constituted him her cavalier, she turned away almost like a pettish child with a feeling of aversion to his familiar burnt face and immaculate riding dress. She felt as if she knew exactly what he was going to say, too, before he said it; but all Brissy’s conversation appeared the inevitable.
“Old Ally Sloper must be somewhere about lat. 20 by now, I suppose,” he said, as they stood at the liner’s stern, waiting with melancholy patience to say good-bye to Mrs. Ritchie.