A remark, dreadful yet tantalizing in the vistas it opened up, was overheard by the Rev. Needham as he was coming out on to the screened porch. It was a remark which set on foot an increasingly turbulent desire to know, unequivocally and without expurgation, just what had been the nature of his sister-in-law's life on the distracting island of Tahulamaji.
Mrs. Needham had retired to the kitchen for a final fling with Eliza about breakfast, leaving the minister alone in the living room with his daughter. Miss Whitcom and Mr. Barry had passed out on to the porch, and Louise had dropped down in a nice shadowy corner with a book—just as young ladies naturally and invariably do after dinner, when the light is beginning to fail, and their lover is waiting for them outside.
The Rev. Needham, whose suspicions had already been rather alarmingly roused, now felt sure not all was well. Why should Louise behave like this if all were well? And even Barry—Barry wasn't, of course, one of those romantic fellows who would always be sighing and rolling their eyes; but there were subtler manifestations.... They had gone[Pg 240] walking together in the afternoon—thank God! There was that much to cling to. Yes, thank heaven they had done that much anyway!
But the Rev. Needham was so full of perplexity that he hardly knew what to do next. He told himself, in desperation, that everything must, in reality, be all right—rather much as his daughter had assured herself on the train that all must work out for the best: her best. He knew, as a matter of fact, that this was not quite honest persuasion. But it helped. Oh, it was a very present help. To tell the truth, it sufficed to carry him quickly out of his daughter's presence. In his heart, the minister knew that the issue ought to be faced at once. Yes, he ought to call Louise over on to his knee, just as in the old days, before any of the unhappy love troubles began, and ask her to tell him what had gone wrong. But he didn't call her over. Instead he began humming in a perfectly unconcerned manner, and strolled outside.
It was just as he reached the door that the Rev. Needham overheard the all but blood-curdling remark.
"You must realize," Miss Whitcom was saying to his daughter's fiancé, "that it's much too hot there to wear any clothes!"
It being patently too late to turn back, the clergyman came on; somehow reached a chair. He sat down quickly and began rocking. He rocked helplessly, yet withal in a faintly ominous way—perhaps,[Pg 241] deeper still, with a movement of guilty curiosity: for after all he was but human, poor man.
The sun had just dipped, and the sky and the sea were alive with the fire of this august departure. A wraith-like distribution of cloud still received direct beams and glowed like a bit of magic dream-stuff; but the lower world had to rest content now with reflected glory—a sheen of softening brightness which would grow steadily thicker and thicker, like quandary in the clergyman's breast, till at length the light was all gone and darkness had settled across the sea and the sand. Ah, peaceful eventide! Good-bye, sweet day! But the heart of the minister was all full of horrid little quick jerks and a settling mugginess.
The conversation his appearance had served to interrupt did not continue as it had evidently begun. Yet even at its worst it appeared to have constituted merely a laughing digression from the major theme, which had to do with the perfectly proper topic of dry-farming. No one would think of calling the topic of dry-farming improper. But the tenor of the talk which succeeded the minister's arrival in their midst did not, for all its unimpeachable correctness, serve to diminish the poignancy of that awful phrase: too hot to wear any clothes!
"Mr. Barry," she explained to her brother-in-law, "has been telling me a lot of interesting things about the sorghums."
Alfred Needham cleared his throat—just as he[Pg 242] always did, for instance, before ascending the pulpit on Sunday—and nodded. But he was not thinking about the sorghums—just as sometimes, it is to be feared, in the very act of coming out of the vestry, and with the eyes of the congregation upon him, he failed to keep his mind entirely on the sermon he was about to deliver.
"It seems they've made enormous strides since my day," she went on. "Mr. Barry, how many varieties did you say are now possible?"
"Well," he replied solemnly, his eyes large with helpless unhappiness, "the sorghums now include common or sweet sorghum, milo maize, Kaffir corn—and of course broom corn. These have become standard crops, and we're introducing them more and more into the southern district." He rocked a trifle self-consciously. All three rocked a moment in silence.
"There's considerably less rainfall down there," commented the Rev. Needham.
The statement had been carefully equipped with earmarks of the interrogative, so that, should it happen to prove incorrect, refutation would take the form of a simple answer to an ingenuous and perfectly natural question. The Rev. Needham found it urgent to keep his inflections always slightly interrogative. There was even a sly, sneaking hint of the useful question mark throughout the reverend man's theology. Ghastly as the thing must sound spoken right out, it is really doubtful whether the Rev. Needham would be caught altogether napping were the[Pg 243] entire Bible suddenly to be proved spurious! Of course when Barry admitted that there was less rainfall in the southern part, then the minister rocked with subtly renewed purpose, slapping the arms of his chair exactly as an acknowledged authority on rainfall might be expected to do. But of course it was all ever so much subtler than this makes it appear. It was infinitely more delicate than any mere I-told-you-so attitude.
"You know," continued Barry, who felt an unpleasant thickness in his............