第34章

In their most reputable hotel 'Le Coeur d'Or,' long since remodelled and renamed, Mrs.Ercott lay in her brass-bound bed looking by starlight at the Colonel in his brass-bound bed.Her ears were carefully freed from the pressure of her pillow, for she thought she heard a mosquito.Companion for thirty years to one whose life had been feverishly punctuated by the attentions of those little beasts, she had no love for them.It was the one subject on which perhaps her imagination was stronger than her common sense.For in fact there was not, and could not be, a mosquito, since the first thing the Colonel did, on arriving at any place farther South than Parallel 46 of latitude, was to open the windows very wide, and nail with many tiny tacks a piece of mosquito netting across that refreshing space, while she held him firmly by the coat-tails.The fact that other people did not so secure their windows did not at all trouble the Colonel, a true Englishman, who loved to act in his own way, and to think in the ways of other people.After that they would wait till night came, then burn a peculiar little lamp with a peculiar little smell, and, in the full glare of the gaslight, stand about on chairs, with slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or imaginary beasts.Then would fall little slaps, making little messes, and little joyous or doleful cries would arise: "I've got that one!" "Oh, John, Imissed him!" And in the middle of the room, the Colonel, in pyjamas, and spectacles (only worn in very solemn moments, low down on his nose), would revolve slowly, turning his eyes, with that look in them of out-facing death which he had so long acquired, on every inch of wall and ceiling, till at last he would say: "Well, Dolly, that's the lot!" At which she would say: "Give me a kiss, dear!" and he would kiss her, and get into his bed.

There was, then, no mosquito, save that general ghost of him which lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband.Spying out his profile, for he was lying on his back, she refrained from saying:

"John, are you awake?" A whiffling sound was coming from a nose, to which--originally straight--attention to military duties had given a slight crook, half an inch below the level of grizzled eyebrows raised a little, as though surprised at the sounds beneath.She could hardly see him, but she thought: "How good he looks!" And, in fact, he did.It was the face of a man incapable of evil, having in its sleep the candour of one at heart a child--that simple candour of those who have never known how to seek adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of the body.Then somehow she did say:

"John! Are you asleep?"

The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack, answered:

"Yes."

"That poor young man!"

"Which?"

"Mark Lennan.Haven't you seen?"

"What?"

"My dear, it was under your nose.But you never do see these things!"The Colonel slowly turned his head.His wife was an imaginative woman! She had always been so.Dimly he perceived that something romantic was about to come from her.But with that almost professional gentleness of a man who has cut the heads and arms off people in his time, he answered:

"What things?"

"He picked up her handkerchief."

"Whose?"

"Olive's.He put it in his pocket.I distinctly saw him."There was silence; then Mrs.Ercott's voice rose again, impersonal, far away.

"What always astonishes me about young people is the way they think they're not seen--poor dears!"Still there was silence.

"John! Are you thinking?"

For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling now, was coming from the Colonel--to his wife a sure sign.

And indeed he WAS thinking.Dolly was an imaginative woman, but something told him that in this case she might not be riding past the hounds.

Mrs.Ercott raised herself.He looked more good than ever; a little perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got caught in the wrinkles across his forehead.

"I'm very fond of Olive," he said.

Mrs.Ercott fell back on her pillows.In her heart there was just that little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband has a niece.

"No doubt," she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out his hand.In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered another hand, which squeezed it rather hard.

He said: "Look here, old girl!" and there was silence.