Merle smiled her one-sided smile, and looked at him through her long lashes. She knew it had been the dream of his life to beat that half-brother of his in fair fight. And now!
“And what came of it?” she asked, with a seeming careless glance at the lamp.
Peer flung away his cigarette. “First an expedition up the Nile, then a caravan journey, camels and mules and assistants and provisions and instruments and tents and quinine—heaps of quinine. Have you any idea, I wonder, what a job like that means? The line was to run through forests and tunnels, over swamps and torrents and chasms, and everything had to be planned and estimated at top speed—material, labour, time, cost and all. It was all very well to provide for the proper spans and girders for a viaduct, and estimate for thoroughly sound work in casting and erecting—but even then it would be no good if the Germans could come along and say their bridge looked handsomer than ours. It was a job that would take a good man eight months, and I had to get it done in four. There are just twelve hours in a day, it’s true—but then there are twelve more hours in the night. Fever? Well, yes. And sunstroke—yes, both men and beasts went down with that. Maps got washed out by the rain. I lost my best assistant by snakebite. But such things didn’t count as hindrances, they couldn’t be allowed to delay the work. If I lost a man, it simply meant so much more work for me. After a couple of months a blacksmith’s hammer started thumping in the back of my head, and when I closed my eyes for a couple of hours at night, little fiery snakes went wriggling about in my brain. Tired out? When I looked in the glass, my eyes were just two red balls in my head. But when the four months were up, I was back in the Chief’s office.”
“And—and Ferdinand Holm?”
“Had got in the day before.”
Merle shifted a little in her seat. “And so—he won?”
Peer lit another cigarette. “No,” he said—the cigarette seemed to draw rather badly—“I won. And that’s how I came to be building railways in Abyssinia.”
“Here’s the champagne,” said Merle. And as the wine foamed in the glasses, she rose and drank to him. She said nothing, only looked at him with eyes half veiled, and smiled. But a wave of fire went through him from head to foot.
“I feel like playing to-night,” she said.
It was rarely that she played, though he had often begged her to. Since they had been married she had seemed loth to touch her violin, feeling perhaps some vague fear that it would disturb her peace and awaken old longings.