“Is that how it is?” he said quietly. “Well, you have my best wishes. And you can tell her that she owes no allegiance to her husband’s memory, I—knew him more intimately than she. Men do know each other so—see? He was not faithful to her, even after six months.” He paused, set the empty tumbler on the table as if in complete control of his nerves, and added in the same level tone: “You had better make her understand that Lewin was no ideal for her to cherish. Otherwise—she is a good woman—she might not listen to you.”
Gregory drew a breath of relief that caught itself in his throat. The thing he had suspected was confirmed—at least he had tacit consent from Churton to use his suspicion. The sacrifice of the man before him in extracting such a bitter confession was, as always, a second consideration to his own gain. He held an advantage now to use in his own behalf with Leoline Lewin, and if it had been necessary to drag Churton through the mire of mentioning his wife’s very name he would not have stopped at doing so, nor did he doubt his own success. He was quick to reckon chances, and the vulnerable points of those with whom he had to deal—such insight had been a necessity to him. He knew that the more generous nature had been touched by the unlocking of his own secret; nothing less would have worked on him to admit as much as he had. He took his hand off Churton’s shoulder, and said, “Thank you, old fellow!” as simply as a school-boy, and Churton thought himself rewarded.
There was truth, too, in his saying that he was desperate. A kind of hunger for the woman he loved possessed him, and he had not seen her to speak to since the night when he betrayed himself by a too-great anxiety to bind her to him. She had withdrawn herself beyond reach of his immediate influence, and he dared not force her to an encounter. Twice he had been at Port Albert, and had found Vohitra closed to him—by Mrs. Lewin’s own request he paid her no visit of condolence. He could not realise that the tie between them was not endangered by absence, or that material things had no influence upon Leoline’s feelings for him. A man loves with his five senses; but a woman with all her instincts and a few over. It does not really matter to her if he is ill-favoured, or has given her a badly-cooked dinner, or a world divides them, or he talks about himself, or some one has burnt the fat and the smell is pervading the house—so long as he is her chosen to her she can go on love-making, in fancy if need be, without distraction. But you must satisfy the eyes, and the palate, and the longing touch, and the egotistical ear, and the sensitive nose, before a man is well pleased and thinks tenderly of the opposite sex. Long before Leoline Lewin was ripe for seeing him again, Gregory was fretting because he thought his influence slackened by distance. He wanted to bring the power of his personality to bear again before he could feel sure of his ultimate success.
At first, as the days lengthened into weeks, he had been patient to let her recover from the shock of her husband’s death, to go away and mourn for him if need be, for decency’s sake. But he had meant to see her under the cloak of a conventional sympathy, and when he found himself denied her presence he chafed, and then, risking Mrs. Gilderoy’s eyes, he wrote to her. It had been difficult to answer, in the face of her own renewed desire, but she had quietly demanded time. She was going home next mail; she would see him to say good-bye, and they might meet again in England. Her date of meeting had a far-off sound, and he realised that conventional widowhood meant at least a year’s probation. To the man of immediate action, a man like Gregory, such flimsy delays were irritating; and yet he recognised the importance of social standing, and the slur of a hurried marriage. At least he must force a definite promise before the mail arrived and she slipped beyond his grasp, and even to do this meant a violation of her husband’s memory. It was then that Gregory thought of certain hints he had heard of his A.D.C. and the women of the station, for Halton had carried adder’s poison under his tongue to justify his own devotion in the earlier days of his intimacy with Mrs. Lewin. Absorbed in weightier matters, and contemptuous of gossip, Gregory had not interested himself in such slight things as Alaric Lewin’s infidelities, and when his need came, he could remember nothing but an outline. He did not know, however, whither his incompetent aide had always been lured away from duty, and his own savage strictures on tennis and Maitso recurred to him. The inference was natural, and with a broad master-stroke of policy, he drained Diana’s husband for information—the man most unlikely to know on the surface of things, the man most likely to know in Gregory’s sardonic experience of such situations. These things always leaked out, and worked to silent tragedies between husband and wife. Churton would know—and for his own ends Evelyn Gregory could make use even of a dead man’s gallantries.
Up in the silence of Vohitra a runner brought a letter to Leoline Lewin a day or so after Churton had spoken with the Administrator. At the sight of the handwriting her heart stood still again, and she did not think to look at the messenger, who, according to the date of the missive, should have been there before. There was a restless excitement about the man, half fear, half exultation, for he brought other news than that in the letter—but Mrs. Lewin found her own sufficient for the moment, and read and re-read the small characteristic writing as if fascinated.
Gregory was never merciful. He tore the last of her illusions from her, and laid bare a grisly truth—though he did it in decent words—without compunction. Certain sentences in that letter seemed to buzz in her ears without keeping the connection. They meant nothing, and yet they meant so much.
“If you are refusing to see me from a feeling of loyalty to Captain Lewin your sacrifice is thrown away, for he was not loyal to you....”
No? Not even the faith in her married life left to her? Married one short year, and she could not keep her husband’s fidelity—she felt the humiliation of the bald statement in Gregory’s words. It had been another of her theories that a woman like herself could keep any man. It seemed that all her virtues and attractions had not prevented Alaric from straying. And where had he strayed? With innocent conceit she had seen herself the fairest, best-gowned, quickest-witted woman, at all events in the little shoddy Station. But it appeared that she was less invincible than she thought. Other sentences in that letter followed to enlighten her.
“I am not speaking on my own authority. Other men—Major Churton principally—confirm my assertion that your husband was no pattern of fidelity. You can guess for whom he left you—we need not attack his memory for a thing that is over and done with. But to vow to be true to one who could hardly demand it as due to him is making the position ridiculous....
“I am only supposing that this is what has closed your heart to me. But am I not at least as worthy of allegiance as Lewin? Understand that it was not merely a venial sin, such as you may call your own during his absence—I have Churton’s testimony, poor fellow....”