Dolf Wyllarde

“ Gilderoy climbed the hill on her pony, bringing a breath of the stale life of Port Victoria with her, Mrs. Lewin could listen and pay a courteous attention without moral dislocation. Mrs. Gilderoy was both kind and shrewd; but the habit of many years will not be held in check by dormant good qualities, and she had used her quick wits on the social world around her until a smart saying became her second nature. It was irresistible to her to score off people, however much she might like them, and sometimes the talent even surprised her into a lie. ”

“ Gradually the influence of these few men made itself felt amongst the dangerous numbers of mixed races; and Mrs. Lewin, from the stoep at Vohitra, saw the dark forms bending in the furrows, the mellowing blades falling, and, leaving the ground shorn of its gold-green glory, the trucks pass up and down the whole sweep of the valley, while the factory smoked through the long, hot days. Once the town warden rode out to pay her a hurried visit, and give her what news he could; but he was a busy man—Gregory’s representative, and the despot of the town—and could spare but little time. ”

“ Every yearning instinct of her, brain, body, and soul, seemed drawn out, beyond her power to will to restrain it, to a man who was not her husband, and who had not even such attractions as might excuse a physical passion. She thought of Ally’s handsome face, and easy, comfortable personality, contrasted with Evelyn Gregory’s harsh features and difficult nature. There would be nothing comfortable in a life with Gregory, unless indeed a woman were so at one with him as for their two personalities to harmonise without a discordant note. ”

“ They parted there on the quay, unconscious of the bitterness in each other’s hearts, Diana to go back to the house that held a grim tragedy for her in her husband’s face—Leoline to take ship and flee from herself, if such a miracle had been permitted. She could not get away, any more than Bute Churton and his wife could get away from the degradation of that every-day life in which he had always a memory to shame him, she one that had driven the iron into her soul. ”

“ As it was, in spite of Blanche Stern’s presence throughout the day, there was a horribly lonely feeling about the bungalow, and after the rush of her departure had died away, the empty rooms seemed as if they listened for a step. The fear of being alone and of listening also made Leoline Lewin insist on riding down to the harbour again to see her off, and for the second time in twenty-four hours she found herself loitering about on the wharf among the walls of coal, waiting with that horrible sense of departure for the boat to start. ”

“ Diana was at her best in the saddle, but the Major, who could have ridden down any man present, looked too large for a Key Island pony. Even at the moment Leoline Lewin wondered that she noticed these things, and seemed possessed of a novel alertness, a keener sense of observation than ever before, as though her mental life had quickened. She always thought of the Gilderoys’ picnic as the last occasion on which she wore muslin appropriately. She liked to be in sympathy with her gowns, and she never again felt the adequate frivolity for the dainty frills she laid aside that night. ”

“ She had counted the cost to Alaric Lewin and to herself; perhaps passion weighed down the scale in which she placed her own risk, but she knew that her decision had been tacitly in favour of such a step as Gregory prognosticated to her mind by speaking of her as his wife. There was just one terrible difference in their point of view that she could not realise; his words simply meant to her the horrible publicity and degradation of the Divorce Court—but in his mind was that olden letter of which his own seemed a reflex—
“Set Uriah in the forefront of the battle ... that he may die....” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It flashed across her, with a sense of absolute wonder, that she could not imagine such a position as Miss Denver’s—a girl accepted in the social world of the place, asked to people’s houses, and spoken of by men as Major Churton had spoken! Leoline Lewin could not quite realise the tone of mind in Beatrix Denver, if she could allow herself to be handled, not by one man only, but by many, if report spoke truly. She herself had never been kissed by any man until her engagement, and felt that she would have a certain shyness in the admission after other women’s avowed experience. ”

“ Alaric had shown himself a weak man, and represented the failure of her life; but it was her instinct to hide her failures, and to make the best of her own action in marrying him, rather than to ask the world’s sympathy and justify herself in infidelity. Where neither teaching nor principles would triumph over Nature, her dear self-respect stands like a guardian angel to such a woman as Leoline Lewin, and becomes a giant virtue. ”

“ She rose and dressed, insisting on a bath at an hour which confirmed the Arabs’ impression of British insanity, and went out into the blue day. There were clouds over Maitso, but the gracious morning was very hushed and calm. Chum threaded the garden, and invaded the brushwood beyond, where the blue-gum and eucalyptus trees marked the boundary of her own territory, and the dew lay heavy on her white skirts. A meerkat jumped across her feet, as she pushed out into the fields of cane, and then the slope of the mountain rose before her, pure green with sugar, a delight to look upon. ”

“ Her own nature she thought she could fight and conquer, but she saw with sudden panic that the one before her was beyond her yes or no—she might influence, but she could not dominate it as she had her husband’s. If he had chosen to take her savagely in his arms, she could have protested, but she could not have averted the embrace by the power of her will. Hitherto Leoline Lewin had drawn an invisible line of demarcation between herself and mankind, and had known that none would dare to overstep it. ”

“ She must begin and love all over again, if she were to love so low at all. This degraded Ally, helpless on her mercy, was no longer the stalwart husband round whom she had built up her theoretical married life. A dozen little things that had been but pinpricks of annoyance started up in her mind suddenly, to intensify the final blow, and she saw him as a weak man, without the strenuous love of fighting and winning which she had tried to coax into him, self-contented, the mere tool of her own ambition whenever he had been forced into action. ”

“ She ate her breakfast in sight of the cane, which was beginning to assert its old influence upon her. There are two crops in Key Island; the one she had seen cut and crushed in Mr. Denver’s factory was the lesser yield, but the Tsara Valley was now in its full glory. Her eyes strayed down the hillside to the rich harvest in the valley again and again, with a kind of fascination. It soothed her in some strange fashion to see the clear colour that always suggested spring and new life, and hope, even though the season was really autumn. ”

“ Life would be a little humiliating were it not for its power of secrecy. As Bute Churton’s big figure disappeared along the narrow street to the town, Leoline looked after him and guessed nothing of the irony of their relations with each other, for he was thinking that worthless fellows like Lewin were blessed with wives like this, while she shrank from a consciousness of thoughts disloyal to her husband. ”

“ The Churtons joined them in the church porch, Diana in a holland habit and white helmet, as near to khaki as might be. She annexed Ally with the boldness of a woman accustomed to stalk her game in the open, and Mrs. Lewin turned to the Major to mount her, in no wise disturbed. They sat on their ponies for a minute to allow the men to pass, before turning to the bridle path that made a short cut to Maitso, and as the Wessex swung past her, Chum looked along the road taken by the moving helmets, and saw a solitary horseman stopped in like manner to themselves. ”

“ She had no right to act the weak woman, and please herself at the expense of the man she loved—no right justified, like Mrs. Gilderoy’s, by years of open marriage. Gregory would believe her safe at Vohitra, and be freer to use the brain and nerve, in which she took some comfort, remembering the night when he had cleared the stoep, alone, with no weapon but a shambok. But she realised, during the next few days, that she had set herself the hardest task that a woman can—to wait and endure the anxiety in silence, that a man may feel her a helpmate, and not a burden. ”

“ There was a shadow of vague yearning in her eyes as she turned away and went out on to the stoep. Marriage had touched her lightly, but this was one of the rare moments when she felt a craving after something more satisfying—something that might even be welcome pain if it were only less ephemeral.
The morning air was brisk compared to the general laxity of Key Island. Mrs. Lewin mounted the pony which the sais held for her, and rode away through the listening day, with her senses equally alert. ”

“ James Denver, the father of the young lady whose name was connected in every Key Island mouth with Hamilton Gurney’s, and the ugly chimneys of his factory rose half-way up the hill, above the long, grey sugar works. The men had gone to their labour half-an-hour since, and Mrs. Lewin pushed her way boldly in between the ridges where the cane grew, and sauntered along, feeling that life was very good, and that Earth smelt like Heaven, as indeed it did if Heaven is a combination of hothouse and conservatory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lewin was hardly thinking as the long hours wore to morning, and the flutter of moths’ wings gave way to that of humming-birds, who had built their nests below the stoep,—she was simply suffering. It seemed to her that her mind was one blind pain and a bewildering humiliation. For it was not the thing in itself that horrified her—a man’s hand laid over hers for some sixty seconds seemed a trivial thing enough—but what it meant. She who had unconsciously put herself on a pedestal, found that she had fallen, not by the unimportant act but by the revelation it had brought of her own emotions. ”

“ So Di Churton dropped the remnants of her girlhood into the void of her husband’s silence, and life went on as before—always the indefinite man who rode with her and danced with her, always the hard tongues of the Station and the keeping just on the safe side, always the restless, feverish desire to get something out of life and the sense of disillusion. She never lost her husband’s confidence, for she was a wise woman ”

“ Churton scornfully. “If they are good servants, keep them. What on earth does it matter what they do? All the coloured people are alike—only animals.”
She did not see that her broad judgment might apply to white races also, though later she went back to the stoep and her contemplation of Alaric Lewin. There was a certain grave dark beauty in Ally’s face which was deceptive, because at the moment he was merely rather sleepy; but when the Lewins mounted their ponies again for the ride home in the short twilight, Mrs. Churton strolled over to Ally and laid her hand on the neck of his mount. ”

“ Chum had ridden on in the sunshine, thinking as hard as Gregory. He would be at the Arthur Whites’ to-night, and he would talk of tennis and cricket matches to the best of his ability to the woman assigned him for dinner party, probably playing the part of courteous listener, if only she would do the talking—Mrs. Lewin was beginning to know his methods; and then, once the ladies had gone, he would draw nearer to the man who could really interest him, and talk of the island and the life there that woke him to more than surface attention,—but that man would not be Ally! ”

“ She sat easily in her saddle, her right hand resting on the pony’s flank, her body turned that she might look down on China Town with those musing eyes that were green and dusk and lavender-grey by turns. And Alfred Halton watched her with fastidious appreciation, while by an irony of fate she thought definitely of the Administrator and his plans, and the ominous strength that was his attribute. A man to have as a friend—a power to reach to high places—yes, decidedly an influence to have for you rather than against you! ”

“ It seems a pity that, since we have accepted the decalogue, nature must always be immoral; but looked at in one sense even the marriage service is only sanctifying a breach of divine commandment. Leoline Lewin was traditional enough to feel her modesty damaged by her own unruly pulses. There was an accusation in every memory of Gregory’s clasp, and yet she could not conscientiously confess herself repentant, or say in truth that she would undo one moment of that too-keen pleasure. ”