For a fraction of time which seemed immeasurable the two men smoked in silence. But in a moment the general gave a poke at the coal, and looked up at his guest.
“Mrs. Lyeth tells me that you have done us the honor to ask for my daughter’s hand.”
Tancred glanced at the point of his cigar, and discovered that it was out.
“May I trouble you?” he murmured.
The general shoved the brasier toward him, and watched the relighting with evident solicitude.
“It’s the dampness,” he announced. “H’m. Am I correctly informed?”
Tancred gave a puff or two, and then, withdrawing the weed, he held it contemplatively between forefinger and thumb; but he answered not a word.
The general knocked the ashes from his own cigar and eyed the burning coal.
“H’m, let me ask you, did you write to my daughter this morning?”
And Tancred, with that long-drawn breath we take when we prepare for the worst, answered shortly:
“I did.”
To this avowal the general nodded encouragingly. Tancred, however, seemed averse to further confidences; he kept looking at his cigar as though it were some strange and uncanny thing.
“H’m, well—er—did you, did you begin the letter with a term of endearment?”
“Yes, general.”
Tancred had tossed his cigar—a cigar that ranked nearly with a Havanese—into the finger-bowl. He straightened himself and looked his host in the face.
“Yes, general, and I am sorry for it. I have no excuse, not one. It was a piece of unpardonable ill-breeding. I had no right to send the note; I had no encouragement to write it. The only amend in my power is an apology. I make one now to you; let me beg that you will convey another to your daughter.”
The general half rose from his seat and hit the table with his fist. His face was convulsed. He was hideous.
“But, bandit that you are,” he cried, “she loves you.”
“No, general, you are wrong.”
“Ah, I am wrong, am I? Not an hour ago she told me so of her own accord.”
“General, it was a jest.”
“A jest! You call it a jest to surprise a girl in the dark”—
“To what?” gasped Tancred. “To what?”
“There, you know well enough what I mean. I refer to the other evening.”
“Merciful heaven!” groaned Tancred, “it was she then that I kissed.”
“It is a jest to do a thing like that, to write impassioned letters, and to win a heart. Is it a jest you call it, sir, or did I misunderstand your words?”
“No general, not that. What I meant was that it was impossible for Miss Van Lier to have confessed to any love for me—”
The lattice at the window was thrust aside. For a second the girl’s sidereal eyes blazed into the room.
“He is right, father: I do not love; I hate.”
The lattice fell again. She had gone.
During the moment that followed you could have heard a lizard move. Tancred fumbled at his collar, and General Van Lier sank back in his chair.
“Mr. Ennever,” he said, at last, “you are my guest.”
The tone in which he spoke was low and self-restrained, but in it there was an accent that was tantamount to a slap in the face.
Tancred was on his feet at once.
“If you permit me, I will leave today.”
General Van Lier moved to the door.
“There is a boat from Siak at five,” he answered.
“General,” Tancred hesitated; he was humiliated as he had never been, and rightly humiliated, he knew. He was trying to say something that would express his sense of abasement, and a fitting speech was on the end of his tongue.
“General—”
“After you, sir.” The general was pointing to the door.
“General—”
“Nay, sir, after you. I insist.”
Tancred bowed and passed out. A moment later he was in his room.
In a corner was a trunk. In another a shirt-box. Tancred gathered his traps together, and tossed some into the one, some into the other, a proceeding at which Zut yelped and fawned with delight. Evidently on him at least the attractions of the bungalow had begun to pall.
“Yes, Zut, we are going.”
And at this the dog yelped again and curveted sheer across the room.
“But you must be quiet,” Tancred added. “There, be still.”
He was thinking of Mrs. Lyeth, and wondering whether he should see her before he went. If he could exchange but one word with her, surely, he told himself, she would understand. He lounged to the window and leaned on the sill.
It was one of those afternoons, brutal and terrible in beauty, which only the equator provides. The sky was like the curtain of an alcove, the sun a vomiter of living glare. Beyond was a riot of color such as Delacroix never dreamed, a combination more insolent than the Quetzal possesses, all the primaries interstriated, a rainbow of insolent hues. And there, in white, a parasol over her head, a basket dangling from her wrist, Liance appeared, emerging, as her father had, from the coppice beyond.
Instinctively he drew back: he had no wish to see her eyes charged with hate again. She was not one to forgive, he knew; the beauty of the equator was in her, and its pitilessness as well. And yet, he reflected, if I could but tell her not alone how she and I have erred, but how sorry I am for it all. But no; manifestly an explanation was impossible. Did he attempt one it might inculpate another. He was not alone solely to blame, he was blockaded in his own disgrace. He told himself this; he repeated it even in varying keys; but beneath it all he felt that some redress should be. The idea that the house he had entered as an honored guest would see him depart in shame had already brought the blood to his cheeks. And that blood now was leaving a stain that years would not efface. “I must write,” he decided; “I must write some word.” And he was about to seat
