“He’s very good-natured,” said Chum adroitly. She made no reference to the probable influence of her own wishes upon Captain Nugent.
“Well—I’ll see.” Ally rose and stretched himself, walking off to his dressing-room with shoulders square, while Chum admired him as usual. He came out later immaculate in white breeches and linen coat, and seriously considered the problem as to whether he should wear a Panama hat or a white helmet, until his wife decided in favour of the Panama.
“I don’t like helmets out of uniform,” she said, looking over his shoulder at his good looks reflected in a hanging glass, with kindly pride. “And you are just as smart in the straw. Don’t titivate any more, old fellow, or I shall think it is for Di Churton, and have to make a dead set for the Major to balance things.”
Ally laughed a little self-consciously. There was more in Chum’s speech than she knew—more than had been said at present. When the male animal is being flattered with attentions from the female, he may not glance at her with half an eye; but he begins to plume himself. Alaric glanced appreciatively at his wife’s figure as Liscarton carried her to church by his side, and thought vaguely that she was a heap better looking than any other woman out there, and that they made rather a handsome couple. Then he thought that Chum reflected credit on his own taste, and then he remembered with some very private satisfaction that Di Churton had made a determined show of preference for him from the first. He did not really admire Mrs. Churton, save that he could recognize the swing of her own self-assertion in her position; he never thought of comparing her with Leoline in a single detail. But Alaric Lewin was as easily flattered as a child, and singularly manageable for a really handsome man.
The English church at Port Victoria stands a little above the town, towards Maitso. It is singularly like an enormous caravan, with six stumpy legs in place of wheels, and worshippers go up a flight of wooden steps to reach its barn-like interior. Most buildings in Key Island are raised above the ground for fear of snakes, but the church and the native huts have wooden props rather than a solid foundation. There being no church at Maitso, or as yet at Mitsinjovy, the men were marched down to service by aggrieved and sweating subalterns, or a senior officer, and given as much room as could be spared from the civilians. Truth to tell, the military force had to take it in turns to be religious, service being held in barracks, by the chaplain, for the Wessex, when the Gunners came down to Port Victoria, and vice versâ. On this particular Sunday Captain Nugent and Mr. Gurney were bucketing their men into the pews when the Lewins rode up to the churchyard. Their sais had preceded them and took the ponies, hitching them up to the railings in the shade with native indifference, and dropping lazily on the grass to slumber away service time. Chum walked up the steps and into church in the wake of the soldiers, and sat down in her seat, drawing her habit round her and feeling the whole thing horribly unreal. Through the wide flung shutters she could see palm-trees waving tuftily in a splash of blue sky, and a gorgeous hibiscus had thrust a flame of blossom in at one aperture which was seldom closed. There was nothing to prevent the flowers coming to church, or the wild green things outside either, for the only glass in the place was the East window—a horrid picture of the Ascension, so quaintly designed that the figure of the Christ was cut off at the waist, the feet in red slippers hanging down into the picture, the rest of the body out of sight. Chum was always fascinated by that window, for she hated it, and the astonished faces of the kneeling apostles made her want to laugh. No wonder they looked as if they wondered where the rest of the centre figure was gone to—and yet she had an educated horror of irreverence. Service, with the thermometer at 90° in the shade, however, was not at best a success. The soldiers fidgeted, and stared out of window at the palms, and Brissy Nugent pulled fretfully at his black moustache to keep himself awake. When the mumbling old rector concluded his sermon and the final hymn was given out, every one rose with relief, and high above the defective choir rose the voice of Hamilton Gurney, who was senior sub. of the Wessex, but was more remarkable for a tenor voice of unusual compass and power.
“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him, all creatures here below,”
droned the organ; but Gurney’s voice, rising into the hot rafters of the church, seemed the only real religion of the whole ceremony.
“I wish I could have gone to sleep, as you did, Ally,” said Mrs. Lewin, with frank regret, as they came out into the sunshine again. “I should have felt that it had done me so much more good if I had.”
“Great Scot! the difficulty is not to go to sleep, when that old boy is meandering round about the Chronicles! It would be as much as Lysle’s head was worth if he preached more than ten minutes. But he’s a jolly good sort.”