“What a pity he didn’t stay with the first battalion in Natal,” was all Mrs. Lewin had said. But in her own mind she drew a line of demarcation between herself and Mrs. Clayton as unconsciously pharisaical as though they were of different castes. She was thinking of this now, as she rode over to Maitso, in the wake of Mr. Gurney and Miss Denver, and her mood was tolerant because she was too clear-brained to take a narrower position. These people did not really matter in hers and Ally’s lives; their vulgarity need not affect her, though she lived in touch with them for a period. By-and-by they would drop out of her existence, and she would pass on to something cleaner, unsmutched.
On the crest of the hill they joined the rest of the party, which had become gradually augmented, so that between twenty and thirty ponies turned off to the right in single file, and followed a precipitous path into the hills. A rough cart, borrowed from the garrison, and drawn by six stamping, vicious mules, had gone on ahead with the provisions, by a longer but less dangerous route. As Mrs. Lewin had predicted, the ponies had to slide when they could not walk, and the descent into the next valley was like a winding stair. To the right the steep precipice fell sheer down to a flat green bottom overgrown with logwood and guava—what the Planters called “dirty land,” because it had not been “cleaned” for sugar-cane or banana. The path was so slight a track that Major Churton, riding in front of Chum, had often to push a way for her through the eager vegetation. Above the cleft hills and the valley smiled the blue sky, washed clean by the rains, and from all sides rose the breath of the still moist earth.
“This is like riding in a vapour bath,” said Mrs. Lewin, gasping a little, as the cavalcade emerged from the trees for a moment and met the freer air of the hillside. “Major Churton, you were right—the streams are in flood!”
Her exclamation was echoed by a cry of dismay from the vanguard of the party, for the curve of the hill had revealed the impassable volume of water to them. A regular cascade, which in dry weather was nothing but a shallow stream, was tearing down the hill at a lower level, and cutting off the valley land from their advance. The string of ponies stopped, and there ensued an argument which was, of course, shouted up and down the hill as to a change of route. Here and there a pony fretted on the bit, and brought his hind legs dangerously near the edge of the track; once a woman shrieked—it was Miss Denver’s voice, pitched to an hysterical tone that made Mrs. Lewin’s pulses leap with sudden dread for her—and an occasional “Woa, boy!” “Steady, mare!” showed that somebody’s mount resented the delay. It struck Mrs. Lewin how strange the string of ponies must look from below, dotted along the hillside, and she laughed—she remembered that, too, afterwards as something uncanny. There are days on which we seem to have been too prodigal of laughter, and to have squandered it for little reason.
“Well, we must ride on and get somewhere,” said Mrs. Gilderoy’s exasperated voice at last. “There’s a way round; we must take that, and follow the cart.”
“But I told Mr. Gregory the short cut!” protested her husband blankly. “He will be sure to come this way. Will he think of the other road?”
“He must, unless he is an arrant fool,” said Mrs. Gilderoy, with refreshing candour, and no respect for the representative of the British Government. “No one can cross that stream without getting wet to the waist. We must ride on. You don’t want to wait until he turns up, I suppose?”
Some echo of the altercation passed down the line of riders and troubled the air around Mrs. Lewin. She said nothing, but a new silence seemed to have fallen upon her as Liscarton at last pricked his ears and followed his leader with obvious satisfaction. There was no fear that any one who knew the country as Gregory did would attempt impossible feats; the probability was that he might grasp the situation much sooner than they had done, and, not knowing what they had decided, turn round and go home. Mrs. Lewin’s mind felt a sudden blank; she was looking forward to meeting him to-day, after an absence of nearly a week, to catch some hint of his plans that would not yet be public property. It was still a matter of some scornful marvel to Leoline Lewin that every one round her openly lamented their lot in being bound to Key Island, for she did not realise that her own vitality was being kept up by a vivid interest. She was living much more actively in a mental fashion than she had ever done in her life before, and the island itself, that she thought the object round which her forces gathered, was in reality only a background. But as yet she felt no hint of danger.
The party camped out at last on the bank of the very stream which had hindered their progress, and which had given them an extra half-hour’s ride. The cart was awaiting them, and the men tethered the ponies and helped outspan, while the women laid the cloth. There was no kettle to boil, or tea to make, as in a cooler climate; but the ice had stood the journey well, and the soda-water and mangoes came on as cold as if served at Government House. Mrs. Lewin seated herself on a fallen tree with Major Churton’s handkerchief spread over it as a safeguard for her frills, and fell to swizzling tinned butter with milk in the interests of the company. At her feet Brissy, in an attitude as condensed as a monkey’s, was slicing salad with dangerous activity. The group was gathered on open ground beyond the absolute tangle of wood which clothed the hillside, and which was still reeking from the rains.
“Pass the spiders, please!” said Chum absently, her eyes on the back of Captain Nugent’s flat head, where the black hair curled crisply. He looked up with a laugh in the young eyes that had seen too much of this marvellous universe, and his white teeth flashed under his moustache.