“Then you will come for a ride to-morrow?” he said to Chum carelessly. “I am going to show your wife China Town, Lewin—she displays such a flattering interest, that Government cannot afford to allow it to die for lack of cultivation. You were there yesterday, eh?”
“I was!” said Ally significantly. “The most beastly hot ride I ever had. You had better be careful what time of day you go, Chum.”
“Mr. Halton says seven A. M.”
“I wish the Administrator had said seven A. M.!” said Ally, laughing good-humouredly. “Instead of that he said twelve—at a minute’s notice.”
“He does not spare himself!” said Halton, with a shrug of his shoulders. “And he sees no reason to spare other people. Our paths divide here, I am sorry to say. Yours is the shorter cut, Mrs. Lewin.”
“Good-bye till to-morrow, then.”
She turned in her saddle, her face framed in by the Panama hat she wore for riding, her eyes in the shadow, a new shade in which the Commissioner had not yet surprised them. He reined his own pony’s head round into the winding path that made a carriage-drive to Government House, while the Lewins rode straight on. Their bungalow lay only a few hundred yards further down the direct road, with a short cut through their own plantation to Government House. It was by this private path that Ally went to his work every morning and returned—the click of the rough gate dividing the grounds being Chum’s signal for the first luncheon bell; but visitors, or the residents of Government House themselves, had a half-mile of winding path and tangled green before they emerged opposite the long straight building where the Union Jack flew above lines of blank window-frames and the straight pillars of the stoep. There were two stories to Government House; it could accommodate some thirty people independently of servants, and the Administrator and Commissioner, alone in their glory, called it a useful barn.
As Halton rode slowly along under the palms he was hardly thinking of the ethics of China Town, being too busy in breaking the tenth commandment. He was a man who had always hankered after the unattainable, and been afraid to risk what he had for what he desired. He had seen many pretty women, whom he thought of regretfully as possible wives—after they had been married by other men. The old process was beginning again in his mind, but the outcome of it was merely a half-irritated remark to the Administrator across the tête-à-tête dinner-table.
“What on earth made you send Lewin out to China Town in the heat of the day? It’s enough to kill a man!”
“There was no one else to send,” said Gregory simply, looking up in momentary surprise from helping himself to fried banana. “I had a message for Burton. He’s a good man if you like.”