A sort of terror seized her, a feeling that she must get away from the dangerous monotony of it all. She could face and wrestle with the situation threatening her at the moment, while her senses were still alert with the shock of her awakening; but how would it be as the months rolled on, and time inevitably lessened her sense of danger and dulled her watchfulness! She began to realise that Ally had not been all to blame for his weakness, and that Miss Denver had no other distraction for her idle days; they might both be of feebler natures than her own, but at least there were extenuating circumstances. She could think that with broader possibilities they might have made a better fight for it.
“We are in a rat-trap!”
She looked round her slowly, at the familiar figures in the flaccid sunlight, and wished that she did not know every face turned to her. The very smile that came inevitably as their eyes met seemed a weary proof of having them before her yesterday, and to-day, and to-morrow. There was Mrs. Gilderoy, in an old riding skirt that smacked forlornly of Bond Street long ago, and a limp white shirt; there was her husband, equally inevitable, in a grey flannel suit, with a Madras helmet hiding his face down to the ragged tawny moustache. As if by common consent they made straight for Leoline, who was seized with a wild impulse to pull Liscarton round and ride out of the sameness of the scene. She even thought she knew the very words they said before they uttered them.
“How are you, my dear?” Mrs. Gilderoy spoke first. “Anything left of you from yesterday? I shall take a month to recover. I always wonder, after we have exerted ourselves like that to bore our friends, why we did it. So does Wray; he thinks he lost several pounds from that ride down to the valley.”
“I felt it dripping away,” said Captain Gilderoy in his pleasant voice. “I have lost something like three stone since I came to this abominable hole.”
“It was a terribly hot night,” said Chum, striving for her usual manner by instinct. “I think the heat increases.”
“It does not vary much in the tropics,” said Mrs. Gilderoy, shrugging her shoulders. “I have not been dry for eighteen months, but I am growing used to it. Oh, how I envy the Commissioner! Think of going Home, and the East winds, and sitting on deck to wait for the first shiver!”
“A jacket would be quite an excitement, wouldn’t it? And I believe it would be a new experience to catch cold. Do you notice that no one catches cold here? We go down with influenza, and chills, and fever, and horrid things like that, but sneezing is a lost art!”
“You have been out nine months, haven’t you, Chum, and you are beginning to feel it? You did not take that view on your arrival, did you? At first sight the Station strikes you as a merry little place, where we all wear white clothes and pretend that we like each other.”
“And by-and-by we realise the coal-dust,” said Mrs. Lewin, with veiled bitterness. “You are quite right—one easily gets to feel soiled in Port Victoria!”