"Allee masters dlinkee peg--peg him keep off fever. Dlinkee peg and go sleep," and Ah-Geelong almost lit up the room with the shining row of teeth he displayed. It was impossible to be angry, but Jackson told the man to go, and he went, wondering, perhaps, wherein he had done wrong.
Peregrine rose from his seat and went to his study. But over the file before him flirted the outlines of the face he had seen. "Ruys," he murmured to himself, repeating the name by which he had heard her called, and it almost seemed to him that she replied, and that he heard the melody of her voice again. The far-off shadows of the room gathered to themselves form and substance, and as he leaned back idly there rose before him the vision of the dimly lighted school hall and that golden head bending slightly over the music. He had never been in love, and he gave himself up for the moment to the fascination of dreaming over the face he had seen. This was what inspired the knights of old. He stretched out his strong right arm and almost felt that he held a lance in rest. What would he not give to know that this peerless woman was his own? How he would work and labour! But a few short hours ago he was bowing at the shrine of a lofty ideal that was to carry him through life, at that invisible glory which strengthened his shrinking heart and nerved him to the highest for duty's sake. And all this was gone. The old god was dethroned in a moment, and the soft notes of a woman's voice, the touch of her hand, a glance from her eyes, and the past was rolled up like a scroll.
"My God," he said, "can this be love?" It never struck him that he had unconsciously appealed to that Godhead in whom he thought he had no belief. He was not able to think of that then--of how in a moment of trial the doubting soul turns instinctively to cling for support to that ethereal essence we call the Creator, and endows it with a living faculty to hear and to answer. Surely this spontaneous appealing to a higher power is something more than the mere force of habit. It springs from the heart pure as the snows of Everest, genuine and true. And this is the instinct which is not taken into account in the mathematical reasoning of the atheist; the touch of fire that would enlighten him out of his darkness is wanting. He will allow the instinct which tells an animal of his danger, which signals to him a friend; but to man, the highest of all animals, will he deny the instinct of the soul which shouts aloud to him the existence of God.
And the answer to Peregrine's question came unspoken, but he felt it ringing within him. Yes, and a hot flush of shame went over him as he thought of another man's wife. "It will not be! it shall not be!" he said, and he fought with himself as a strong man can fight. He fought with the devil that tempted until he saw the light of the morning star pale in the east and a pink flush steal into the sky; and then, being utterly wearied, he lay down and slept a dreamful sleep. It seemed to him that he was standing beside his own body and watching a dark stream trickle slowly, slowly from his heart. Around him were misty figures whom he could not recognise, and he lay there very still and silent. Suddenly there was a flash of golden hair, and a woman robed in white stooped and kissed him on the forehead, and as she rose he knew the glorious beauty of her face, and then he awoke.
CHAPTER VI.
[ANTHONY POZENDINE SPEAKS UP.]
Hark unto me! Myself will weave the plot
Close as the spider's web, with threads as fine.
Old Play.
Anthony Pozendine, the half-caste head clerk of the district office of Pazobin, had evidently something on his mind. He sat at his desk amid a heap of files, over which his head just appeared, and every now and again his squeaky voice rose in petulant complaint or censure of one of his subordinates.
"Here, Mr. Pillay, can't you add, eh? You make out four hundred cases tried last quarter, and seven hundred convictions! Sshoo!" And he flung a file across the room at the unfortunate Mr. Pillay, who stooped and, picking it up humbly, went on with his work.