So Di Churton dropped the remnants of her girlhood into the void of her husband’s silence, and life went on as before—always the indefinite man who rode with her and danced with her, always the hard tongues of the Station and the keeping just on the safe side, always the restless, feverish desire to get something out of life and the sense of disillusion. She never lost her husband’s confidence, for she was a wise woman; but she learned a mutual accommodation when “Bute was thick with Mrs. So-and-so.” Diana was attracted by men rather than her own sex; she was in few senses a nice woman, and unless she had an object in cultivating them, the other ladies in the garrison found her frankly rude.
At Port Victoria she was fairly intimate with Mrs. Gilderoy until the arrival of the Lewins, whereupon she transferred her preference to Leoline, not only on account of Alaric, but because Chum was obviously successful socially, and Bute was conveniently attracted. It would have suited Mrs. Churton very well to have the Lewins nearer, for the distance up to Maitso from their bungalow was a frequent reason for Mrs. Lewin to slip out of an invitation there. It happened one morning, for instance, that on a day when Diana had planned to have her company Chum rode into town late, and gave herself a headache with the heat and the exhaustion of the air. The smell of Port Victoria is peculiarly its own, and seems to be compounded of all the mixed races that inhabit it, not excepting the white, for the hot khaki certainly lends its own peculiar flavour. The humid streets do not smell of the packed stores, or of the decaying vegetation, or even of the need for drainage, though they might do so, and it is a surprise to those who know the place that they do not; but the juices of warm Chinaman and Negro and Arab and Malagasy, seem to merge and produce an effect that is numbing to the uninitiated. After six months or so in the town people declare that they hardly notice it, but Mrs. Lewin had not reached that stage. She turned Liscarton’s head towards the hillside, and felt thankful that if her homeward way was to be overscented it would be with too much sweetness rather than otherwise. For it was a characteristic of Port Victoria that its rank nastiness should be succeeded by enervating odours of flowers the minute one gets out of the streets and into the blossoming tangle of hills round about.
The town seemed unusually glaring, and clattered with khaki. The rattling by of an officer’s pony, and the salute flashed into her dazzled eyes, made Chum’s head swim, until she was faintly conscious of something else that distracted her attention from herself. It was the hour of the Miroro—the noonday sleep—and the coloured people had lounged out of store and wharf and were sitting in the gutters and on the steps of the houses, eating fessikh and dozing and playing native games. But above it and through it all rang a sing-song snarl of patois, like the complaining note of a caged beast. Liscarton almost stopped for the instinctive pressure on his rein, and Mrs. Lewin turned in her saddle to look back at the streets she was leaving. She remembered Gregory’s warning as to the signs of trouble; this sounded like it, this strange note of dissatisfaction in the general hum.
“I will speak to Ally, and ask him if there is anything fresh—any measure of the Government that is unpopular,” she thought, beginning to canter up-hill mechanically. A Key Island pony will always canter his hills, unless really tired, upon the principle that it is better to get over a difficulty quickly and breathe yourself afterwards. He is bound to be hot with the climb, and the impetus of a quicker motion carries him over the rough ground with greater ease.
As Chum entered the delicious coolness of their own bungalow, the telephone rang, and she went to answer it. Her husband’s voice spoke to her, faintly muffled.
“Who’s there?... Oh, is it you, Chum? I’m at the club, and it’s too late to come out. Brissy’s lunching with me.”
“Don’t drink too many céhos!” said Chum resignedly from her end of the communication tube. “And tell Captain Nugent I expect him to dinner to-morrow—he can bring the banjo.”
“All right. Well, look here, Chum, I’m dining with the Churtons unfortunately—they want to know if you can ride out too?”
“My head is too bad. I’m only just out from town, and the heat made it ache a good deal. I’m afraid I should be the skeleton at the feast if I attempted to get up to Maitso. It’s nothing—don’t be a silly boy! I shall have to make the effort and come to the Churtons if you bother.”
“No don’t, if you feel seedy. I’ll ride out and see how you are after lunch.”