“Good God, Chum!” he exclaimed in a sudden squall of irritation, “you are ridiculous! What do you mean? You are always worrying me over getting on, and having a career, and now that I have got an opening, you seem to want me to back out! Don’t you see that I can’t? Gregory isn’t the man to give me a second chance. He is offering me a tremendous lift in putting me in such a position.”
Only one sentence in his angry speech found room for itself in her mind, for she saw that it was true. He could not back out. Evelyn Gregory had him fast in his iron grip, and if he chose to send him to his ruin he was helpless. She laid her hand on the back of a chair and held it cruelly tight as if to help herself to think. Why had he done this? Why? She kept asking herself the question again and again, and found no answer. It was so plausible on the face of it, this threatened rising over the hemp-crops, and Halton’s presence as an immediate necessity, that she felt that it was not true. To the outside world the appointment of an emissary sent to Port Cecil to “enquire” might come within Alaric’s sphere, particularly under the stress of circumstances in Key Island, but not to her. She had a giant fear of Gregory born of her greater knowledge of him that no one in the Island could share. As she stood there looking with unseeing eyes at Alaric’s handsome, annoyed face, she saw only the shadowy strength of the man whom she had learned to know—unscrupulous, tyrannical, successful because he allowed nothing to stand in his way. Now that she and hers were to be swept aside after his method, she began to realise for the first time the atmosphere of terror that had seemed to hang round him in the minds of those who first spoke of him to her. Hitherto she had been but a spectator, and he had interested her as a danger of which one only reads. To find oneself threatened by the same thing in reality makes the difference.
“Well!” said Alaric at last, with the half-offended air of a spoilt child, “I’m sorry you are not better pleased, Chum! I thought you would be as proud as I felt when he told me. Of course I’m sorry to leave you behind, old girl, but perhaps we shall get something good out of this later.” He spoke half apologetically, but the old easy optimism was coming back to him. Fortune had always given Alaric what he wanted; he took her gifts for granted.
“Who will have Malta? Brissy?” said his wife quietly.
“Yes, he’s off next mail—not by this. Of course he’ll have to be officially appointed; but Gregory has answered Sir Geoffrey’s letter privately, as he was asked. I shall have to go to-morrow, or next day at latest, Chum. I’m sorry!” he added simply, as a tribute to parting with her.
But she felt suddenly that he was glad to go—glad even of this chance of action. He did not mind leaving her behind if only he were free of the monotony of Key Island, which also held more uncomfortable memories for him than his wife guessed. Things were getting complicated round Ally, and what had been a pleasant indulgence and flattering to his vanity, was growing to be a tie exacted from him by a jealous woman. He could not have told, if he had honestly tried to do so, how he had drifted so far with Diana Churton; such men as Alaric Lewin are as incapable of accounting for the crisis of their lives as they are of managing them. He trusted to fortune again. Events had generally shaped themselves comfortably for him; and, as in the present case, when there was a tight corner the natural march of circumstances had forced him out of it without any responsibility on his part.
Circumstances were marching him out now, and he was really glad. Captain Stern and the Greville would carry him safely away from Key Island to-morrow, and Diana’s last note which he had found at the club would go unanswered through no fault of his. He couldn’t go to Maitso to-night, it was out of the question. For the look of the thing he must spend what might be his last evening with Chum—and of course he wanted to, he added mentally to the back of her head, as she bent over his portmanteau. His Malagasan man was busy over the shirt case, and he himself ramming the surplus of his property into the kit-bag, but Chum had become her old self again, and risen to the occasion of his packing, once the stupefaction of his news had passed off. He was sure it was only the surprise which had made her unlike herself; she was getting on more with the portmanteau, in spite of the heat, than either Longa or himself with their share.
“Ally,” said Mrs. Lewin quietly, as she tucked a pair of socks into an empty corner, “will you go over to the Churtons to-night to say good-bye?”
“N—no!” He stammered a little, in the discomfort of his own knowledge. “It’s my last evening most likely, Chum!—at least we may go to-morrow.”
“Yes, of course. (Mind the gun-case, Longa!) I didn’t mean you to be out all the time. But I think you might ride over and just say good-bye—you would be back in an hour. They will be so awfully hurt if you don’t.”