CHAPTER V
“Man is fire, and Woman is tow,
And the Devil comes and begins to blow!”
—Old Saw.
It is not exactly good for any man to be a condensed force in his own person. An administrator represents a governor, who in his turn represents the Imperial Government and takes precedence of any stray royalty who may drift into his kingdom—provided he is not the [figgerhead] itself. A representative power is very demoralising, because the reins of government are too concentrated—in spite of the Legislative Council. Six or seven thousand miles away is Westminster, and somebody who is called the Colonial Secretary, and who can write letters with censure in them; but on the spot, in such rat-traps as Key Island, for instance, is an administrator, and this unit is for the nonce a king in his own country if he has the confidence of the men over him. The effect of this is seen when such transitory monarchs go home, and walk into the Colonial Office to demand an extra six months’ leave. Then they learn their real importance, which is so great that they cannot be spared, and are sent back to their tiny kingdoms not at all appreciative of the compliment that has been paid them. A small corner of the British Empire is the very worst school in which to learn a sense of proportion; but Evelyn Gregory had been put in power in many of such corners, and had learned to see things from a proper distance even while he lived in the midst of them. It was the more surprising, therefore, that he always impregnated himself with his kingdom of the moment, and that particular spot (whether it were many thousand square miles in the centre of Africa or Northern India, or only the limited area of Key Island) was the problem which absorbed all his faculties until he had made himself its master. The raging energies of the man demanded an object on which to expend themselves in such a way, and had been his quality of success throughout his turbulent career. It was a little hard on Alaric Lewin, who was cast in another mould, that he should have been appointed under a man who was a glutton for work, and suffer as an ineffectual tool. But the Colonial Office is no respecter of individualities.
There was a meeting of the Executive Council on the morning of the Arthur Whites’ dinner; it was a small body, consisting of the Attorney-General himself, Bute Churton as officer in command of the forces, and the Colonial Treasurer, besides the Administrator. Gregory mounted his pony and rode down into town thinking of his plans and the future of Key Island, rather than of any social function, though he was to be one of the guests at the Harrac. He was not a dreamer, but his restless brains built fortresses where other men’s built castles in the air, and he projected schemes for the Empire in place of personal ambitions. The little streets opened out before him and revealed the ring of the bay and the two great rocks guarding the harbour entrance, and the Administrator’s keen sleepless eyes stared out through them as a lion’s through the bars of his cage. With the smell of the sunshine and the tropic life in his nostrils he jogged easily along, mechanically raising his hand to his helmet if any one saluted him, but seeing more of the sandbox and eucalyptus trees in the little central square where the band played, than of the people he passed.
If France developed the resources of Madagascar now, as this new interest in the Hovas seemed to indicate, that meant a spur in her trade, and more traffic with Africa. Nothing would have pleased Evelyn Gregory more than the least excuse for a quarrel if only he could have laid greedy hands on a portion of his huge neighbour. He knew Madagascar and her capabilities,—he held theories about the ore that he chafed to see neglected,—and he coveted her for his Government, who already found Key Island more trouble than she was worth. To turn his guns on the French ships as they came up the Channel, and be the base of British operations with the safe harbour and huge coaling stations, would have fed his fighting instincts and ambitions alike. He glanced at Tsofotra, the left gate and the more accessible of the two, where the guns could be dragged up somehow in case of hard necessity; and he felt a secret attraction towards those great sentinels, rising bare and grim to over two thousand feet above his harbour.
... A woman passed him, riding up towards Government House, the way he had come. He forgot the Lewins’ bungalow for the minute, and half-wondered where she was going. She bowed, and he saluted, before he remembered that she was Mrs. Lewin, the pretty wife of his incapable A.D.C., who had better have been the boy than the girl. But her face only brought a memory of her husband to his mind, and made his harsh features a trifle less ingratiating than usual.
Why on earth had they sent him such a show article as Lewin for the work he had before him! He wanted brains and energies, not muscles and trained animal courage—a man, not only a soldier. Gregory knew that as yet he had not his administration in the iron grip in which he would hold it by-and-by, and before casting a loving eye round the Channel,—Madagascar on one side, and Mozambique on the other,—he must make Key Island his own. The natives were cowed with the presence of the troops, but the root of the mischief was there still, and he had not yet probed down to it. He wanted certain things done, too, by the Home Government—the factories encouraged and enlarged, for he knew the value of sweating the devil out of his people, and minor industries, such as timber growing, given a helping hand; there were memoranda to make, reports to send back to England, a mass of clerical work to get through before Halton was recalled,—and Captain Lewin was the best polo player that the club could get on to their faulty ground, and in constant demand for tennis and gymkana. Truly the fates were unpropitious for both men.
Chum had ridden on in the sunshine, thinking as hard as Gregory. He would be at the Arthur Whites’ to-night, and he would talk of tennis and cricket matches to the best of his ability to the woman assigned him for dinner party, probably playing the part of courteous listener, if only she would do the talking—Mrs. Lewin was beginning to know his methods; and then, once the ladies had gone, he would draw nearer to the man who could really interest him, and talk of the island and the life there that woke him to more than surface attention,—but that man would not be Ally! No schooling would push Ally into the place she wanted him to take after her back was turned, and she herself was helpless. With feminine philosophy she dressed carefully that night, not for the Administrator, but because Chum never despised the advantage of facing the world fortified by being perfectly turned out. She was more successful than usual over her unruly hair, and the pretty ripples lay round her flat ears—not over them, for Ally’s warning!—and were massed down into the nape of her neck as if they loved her, and were glad to frame her beauty. She looked at the slope of her neck and the warm, white round of her shoulder, and because she was respectful of her Creator’s work, she fastened a big, black velvet rose to the shoulder-strap, where its artificial duskiness kissed the reality of her own seductive dimples. More than one man found himself vaguely conscious of that false flower before the dinner was over, and thought stealthily of Captain Lewin’s domestic bliss. Leoline was not exactly a woman whose influence was towards goodness, whatever she might be in herself. For though she had no vice of her own, she suggested all of them in turn to coarser and more masculine minds.