“Are they at By-Jovey? Another night then.”
“Thanks.”
No hope of rescue there! They all seemed to be engaged, those who had useful wives, and the unattached men she would not ask, with the pattern of Mrs. Clayton and Miss Denver before her eyes; for, as Mrs. Clayton passed her with Mr. Rennie, Leoline heard the latter say, “I’ve got the hump with that boat going—haven’t you? Let’s go up to the Denvers’ and make a noise!” Mrs. Lewin’s lips curled a little. She would not make her house into a recreation ground for the idle men of the Station, even though of better manners and more intellectual tastes than this fresh-faced boy, who after all, was harmless enough in his ill-breeding. “Let’s go up to the Denvers’ and make a noise” was no worse than “Let us drop in on Mrs. Lewin because her husband is away.” No, such help as that would not do. She must face it alone.
The shadow of Tsofotra, the Sunset Gate, stretched far across the sea as she gathered up her reins and rode home by herself, with so little attention to the way she went that Liscarton took advantage to snatch a hasty supper from the low bushes and tall grass, munching as he went, and expectant of a call to order that did not come. Mrs. Lewin had other thoughts to fill her mind, and as she sat at her solitary dinner, she faced the new problems of her existence with saddened eyes. It seemed to her as if her life “were all read backward,” and her intentions twisted by providence to a horrible issue. She had been honest in her desire to spur her husband on to success, and her first efforts to attract Gregory had been actually on his behalf; but where had she gone astray? For the original strategy of arousing his interest for Ally’s sake, coupled with a little innocent enjoyment of her own power no doubt, had gradually altered its quality to a personal pleasure in the companionship of a stronger nature, and so she had drifted to this dangerous brink of a new relation between them. Looking back, it seemed to her as if all the mischief had sprung from that night when she left her husband in a drunken sleep to cover his incapacity as best she might with the Administrator. And yet that night at least she had hardly realised that Gregory existed as a man: he was nothing but a power to be feared. She could not see the natural development of the situation from the affinity of such natures as Gregory’s with her own, which was its feminine complement. All that her mind could grasp was the plain fact that bound in duty and honour to a man to whom she had submitted the most sacred rights of her womanhood, her very nature yearned treacherously away from him to another who stood for ever beyond the pale. Alaric had shown himself a weak man, and represented the failure of her life; but it was her instinct to hide her failures, and to make the best of her own action in marrying him, rather than to ask the world’s sympathy and justify herself in infidelity. Where neither teaching nor principles would triumph over Nature, her dear self-respect stands like a guardian angel to such a woman as Leoline Lewin, and becomes a giant virtue.
She took some work and moved into the further room when her dinner was over, a very gracious feminine figure with the atmosphere of civilisation about her dainty gown and chic head, contrasting strangely with the lawless tropical world outside the open windows. All the danger of the sensuous Earth seemed to be threatening her out of the night and its insinuating scents,—all the safety of convention to be inside the pretty room with its electric light where she sat. As the monotonous needle passed through and through the silk, she was schooling herself to fearlessness, and soothing her own nerves by the occupation, until she ceased to start at a rustle on the garden paths, and was no longer haunted by that mad fear of one man’s approach. So composed had she grown at last, that she missed the very step that she had expected along the stoep, and the opening of the door by the butler. The first intimation she had that her fate was hard upon her was Abdallah’s voice announcing the Administrator almost as he withdrew to his own quarters again.
She put aside the work on her lap carefully, running the needle in and out the silk that she might not lose it, and rose without hurry, every precious second gained helping her to recover her breath, which seemed to have been swept away by the sound of his name. As she came forward to meet her guest there was not a tremor about her, nothing but the composed grace of a well-bred woman in her own house.
Gregory had stood still under the electric lamps; the light was strong in spite of the soft red shades, and it seemed to show them to each other in merciless revelation. He held out his hand to take hers in conventional greeting, and let it go again after the legitimate few seconds during which palm rests in palm. They had not really spoken to each other, save in broken disturbed sentences, since the Deputation interrupted his avowal of his reason for sending Lewin away alone. It seemed to her that they must take it up just there, as if nothing had intervened, and she sought desperately for something to avert it. The hours that lay between his whispering voice, saying that he could not part from her, and the present moment rolled back into nothingness. They were not, and this sentence to be answered still seemed to hang in the air.
“I saw Captain Lewin off this morning,” she said baldly, as if proving that what he had said was true. He could not part from her—well, he had not. In another sense, the sentence was a warning that questioned his right to be there. “I saw Captain Lewin off this morning—I am alone!” added the significant pause.
“I know.” He did not deny the accusation of his having paid her a visit at this late hour, if she intended to insinuate it. He accepted it rather, and a clock struck nine in the further room as if to punctuate and affirm his acceptance.
Then there was one of those strange pauses which seem like the visible boundary between one phase of existence and another—the possible crossing the rubicon, the possible drawing back and remaining in safety. It comes before many a declaration, while Mr. Brown and Miss Smith are still conscious of their former titles, though the next instant may convert them into John and Jane to each other.