'Left a minute ago,' replied Foster, 'went towards Lavater's house by the back way. He stood and watched these blighters for ten minutes. Looked as sick as mud. You'd think it was his wife instead of Tungati's,' added the irreverent youth.
When I had closed my fruitless circle, Archie was already installed on the verandah of the D.C.'s house and Mrs. Lavater was making tea. As I walked up, I saw his illness had not been exaggerated. But while I shook hands, I wondered if health alone explained the sunken cheeks, the skin grey in spite of the sun, the dead eyes. He seemed stricken yet defiant: burnt out, but the ashes were hot.
Mrs. Lavater was pressing him to stay to dinner; but Norah, he said, was alone in camp ten miles out of the township ... yes, they had come off the lake that morning ... no, they hadn't come on the Mimi ... no, canoes ... yes, it had been hot ... yes, the rains hadn't helped....
I took no part in the cross-examination. If Archie was more than usually taciturn, there was something, no doubt, which he did not want to discuss. The same reasoning urged the ladies to fresh efforts. But their bag was meagre. Like the poet, they failed to elicit whence he had come, or whither going. At last a reply that roused Mrs. Lavater's hospitable instincts checked the hunt. Leaving us together, she went to see that milk and butter from the Boma herd, vegetables from her garden and eggs from her yard were sent off at once to Norah. The doctor's wife went with her.
To break the silence that followed their withdrawal, 'Lavater's expected back to-morrow,' I remarked.
My very ordinary words seemed to send a wave of emotion across Archie's face. Relief at first he seemed to feel, satisfaction almost. Then the slight smile faded, and a barely perceptible frown of anxiety or defiance settled on his features.
'So soon,' he said quietly.
His mood puzzled me. I had always liked Archie. There was something extremely lovable in his almost truculent sincerity. He was so straight; you knew where you were with him. But to-day a shadow stood between us. I didn't know in the least where I was.
He plainly did not want to talk and I suggested that he must be anxious to open the mail he held under his arm.
He glanced at the handwriting on the envelopes and pushed them into his pocket. Then he ripped off the wrapper of a newspaper. Indifferently he turned the leaves, till he seemed to come to something that interested him. In the silence that followed, I tried to analyse the strangeness of Archie's manner.