Alaric Lewin shuddered a little as he stumbled over to the door with some idea of closing it if it were open, and getting himself washed and dressed into the morning guise of a gentleman. He had known men with “Drawn threads,” and wondered how soon the symptoms really showed themselves. But he need not have feared for his splendid young constitution, as yet, and a minute later he forgot the creepy thought in a new wonder.
The door of his dressing-room was bolted. So was the door into his wife’s room, the latter on the inner side, for he tried it gently. Some one had seen him come in last night then, and had done their best for him, but he had no idea as to whether it were Chum or one of the servants. He hoped from the bottom of his soul that it was the latter, for the reaction from last night’s excess was having a chastening effect. He was bitterly ashamed, and as he caught sight of his own face in the glass, a dark flush swept over his unwholesome pallor for an instant.
“Great Scot! I am a sickly beast,” said Ally fervently, and with a rush of distaste for himself in his present condition he began to strip hastily, throwing the clothes aside after his usual careless fashion. His bath had been placed for him the night before, and he got into it with a feverish desire for cleanliness and coolness, but it seemed to him that the water hissed off his skin, and that even after a hard rub down there was a burning heat upon him. He was sick and sorry too, and he knew enough of the climate to recognise that this would not do. He had no compunction in rousing his household, but he devoutly hoped that Chum might not hear him when he opened his door and called, for it is a peculiarity of Key Island, that though there is electric light there, there are no bells; every one shouts, and for this reason the servants get into a loafing habit of keeping round about the open doors, their possible summons being an excellent excuse for doing no work meanwhile.
By the time Mrs. Lewin came down to breakfast her husband was already in the room, as smart as usual, save for the drawn face above the spotless white linen. The heat seemed to get up as early as the residents in Key Island, and by eight o’clock the sun is as strong as at noon on an English June day. Leoline seemed to feel it oppressive, for she gasped a little as she came over to the table, and Ally turned sharply at the slur of her gown over the bare floor. The holland did not rustle, but she had a way of moving which was as regal as the action of a racehorse, and it created a certain stir of atmosphere about her. It struck Alaric at that moment that his wife was chic even in her nightdress, which is a costume resolving most women back into the original elements of their natures.
For a second they stood on either side the dainty table, and the embarrassment of the unconfessed lay deep between them. Then Alaric said “Good-morning, Chum,” and moved into his place without raising his eyes. As a rule they kissed each other as heartily as when they were school-children.
Mrs. Lewin sat down opposite him and began to pour out the tea. The breaking of the ice rested with her, but she took it quite naturally; her new sense of responsibility seemed to make it an expected thing that she must always from henceforth take the lead, not as she had hitherto taken it, with the screen of Ally’s personality around her, but without disguise.
She looked at the honeycomb on the table, and observed that Abdallah had not remembered the butter-knife, an omission to be corrected for the seventeenth time. Then she pushed the dish of iced mangoes towards Ally mechanically, and then she caught her breath again, and spoke—
“You were very late down from the Churtons’, Ally.”
“Yes.” He had had a whiskey and soda before breakfast, a “Hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-him” cure that enabled him to eat; but the food tasted badly in his mouth at that moment. “Did you hear me come in?” he said.
“Yes.”