A faintly sour smell of parched things, oppressing the night without breath or motion, was like an interminable presence, irritating, poisonous. The punkah, too, flapped incessant, and only made the lamp gutter. Broad leaves outside shone in mockery of snow; and like snow the stifled river lay in the moonlight, where the wet muzzles of buffaloes glistened, floating like knots on sunken logs, or the snouts of crocodiles. Birds fluttered, sleepless and wretched. Coolies, flung asleep on the burnt gra.s.s, might have been corpses, but for the sound of their troubled breathing.

"If I could believe," he groaned, sitting with hands thrust through his hair. "If I believe in her--But I came too late."

The lamp was an added torment. He sprang up from it, wiped the drops off his forehead, and paced again. He came too late. All alone. The collar of his tunic strangled him. He stuffed his fingers underneath, and wrenched; then as he came and went, catching sight in a mirror, was shocked to see that, in Biblical fashion, he had rent his garments.

"This is bad," he thought, staring. "It is the heat. I must not stay alone."

He shouted, clapped his hands for a servant, and at last, s.n.a.t.c.hing a coat from his unruffled boy, hurried away through stillness and moonlight to the detested club. On the stairs a song greeted him,--a fragment with more breath than melody, in a raw ba.s.s:--

"Jolly boating weather, And a hay harvest breeze!"

"Shut up!" snarled another voice. "Good G.o.d, man!"

The loft was like a cave heated by subterranean fires. Two long punkahs flapped languidly in the darkness, with a whine of pulleys. Under a swinging lamp, in a pool of light and heat, four men sat playing cards, their tousled heads, bare arms, and cinglets torn open across the chest, giving them the air of desperadoes.

"Jolly boating weather," wheezed the fat Sturgeon. He stood apart in shadow, swaying on his feet. "What would you give," he propounded thickly, "for a hay harvest breeze?"

He climbed, or rolled, upon the billiard-table, turned head toward punkah, and suddenly lay still,--a gross white figure, collapsed and sprawling.

"How much does he think a man can stand?" snapped Nesbit, his lean c.o.c.kney face pulled in savage lines. "Beast of a song! He'll die to-night, drinking."

"Die yourself," mumbled the singer, "'m goin' sleep. More 'n you can do."

A groan from the players, and the vicious flip of a card, acknowledged the hit. Rudolph joined them, ungreeting and ungreeted. The game went on grimly, with now and then the tinkle of ice, or the popping of soda bottles. Sharp cords and flaccid folds in Wutzler's neck, Chantel's brown cheeks, the point of Heywood's resolute chin, shone wet and polished in the lamplight. All four men scowled pugnaciously, even the pale Nesbit, who was winning. Bad temper filled the air, as palpable as the heat and stink of the burning oil.

Only Heywood maintained a febrile gayety, interrupting the game perversely, stirring old Wutzler to incoherent speech.

"What's that about Rome?" he asked. "You were saying?"

"Rome is safed!" cried the outcast, with sudden enthusiasm. "In your paper _t.i.t-bit_, I read. How dey climb der walls op, yes, but Rome is safed by a flook of geeze. Gracious me, der History iss great sopjeck!

I lern moch.--But iss Rome yet a fortify town?"

Chantel rapped out a Parisian oath.

"Do we play cards," he cried sourly, "or listen to the chatter of senility?"

Heywood held to the previous question.

"No, Wutz, that town's no longer fortified," he answered slowly. "Geese live there, still, as in--many other places."

Dr. Chantel examined his finger-tips as though for some defect; then, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the cards, shuffled and dealt with intense precision. The game went on as before.

"I read alzo," stammered Wutzler, like a timid scholar encouraged to lecture, "I read zo how your Englishman, Rawf Ralli, he spreadt der fine clock for your Queen, and lern your Queen smoking, no?" He mopped his lean throat with the back of his hand. "In Bengal are dere Rallis. Dey handle jute."

"Yes?" Heywood smiled a weary indulgence. Next instant he whirled on Rudolph in fury.--"Is this a game, or Idiot's Joy?"

"I'm playing my best," explained Rudolph, sulkily.

"Then your best is the worst I ever saw! Better learn, before sitting in!"

Chantel laughed, without merriment; Rudolph flung down his cards, stalked to the window, and stood looking out, in lonely, impotent rage.

A long time pa.s.sed, marked by alarming snores from the billiard-table.

The half-naked watchers played on, in ferocious silence. The night wore along without relief.

Hours might have lapsed, when Dr. Chantel broke out as though the talk had but paused a moment.

"So it goes!" he sneered. "Fools will always sit in, when they do not know. They rush into the water, also, and play the hero!"

Again his laughter was brief but malignant. Heywood had left his cards, risen, and crossing the room, stood looking over Rudolph's shoulder into the snowy moonlight. On the shoulder his hand rested, as by accident.

"It's the heat, old chap," he said wearily. "Don't mind what we say to-night."

Rudolph made no sign, except to move from under his hand, so that, with their quarrel between them, the two men stared out across the blanched roofs and drooping trees, where long black shadows at last crept toward the dawn.

"These heroes!" continued the mocker. "What is danger? Pouf--nothing!

They make it for the rest of us, so easily! Do you know," his voice rose and quickened, "do you know, the other end of town is in an uproar? We murder children, it appears, for medicine!"

Rudolph started, turned, but now sat quiet under Heywood's grasp.

Chantel, in the lamplight, watched the punkahs with a hateful smile.

"The Gascons are not all dead," he murmured. "They plunge us all into a turmoil, for the sake of a woman." He made a sudden startling gesture, like a man who has lost control. "For the sake," he cried angrily, "of a person we all know! Oh! we all know her! She is nothing more--"

There was a light scuffle at the window.

"Dr. Chantel," began Heywood, with a sharp and dangerous courtesy, "we are all unlike ourselves to-night. I am hardly the person to remind you, but this club is hardly the place--"

"Oh, la la!" The other snapped his fingers, and reverting to his native tongue, finished his sentence wildly.

"You cad!" Heywood advanced in long strides deliberately, as if gathering momentum for a collision. Before his blow could fall, he was sent spinning. Rudolph, his cheeks on fire, darted past and dealt, full force, a clumsy backhand sweep of the arm. Light and quick as a leopard, Chantel was on foot, erect, and even while his chair crashed on the floor, had whipped out a handkerchief.

"You are right, Mr. Heywood," he said, stanching his lips, in icy composure. His eyes held an odd gleam of satisfaction. "You are right.

We are not like ourselves, at present. I will better ask Mr. Sturgeon to see your friend to-morrow morning. This morning, rather."

Not without dignity, he turned, stepped quickly to the stairs, saluted gravely, and went down.

"No, no!" panted Nesbit, wrestling with Rudolph. "Easy on, now! Let you go? No fear!"

Heywood wrenched the captive loose, but only to shake him violently, and thrust him into a chair.

"Be quiet, you little a.s.s!" he scolded. "I've a great mind, myself, to run after the bounder and kick him. But that sort of thing--you did enough. Who'd have thought? You young spitfire! Chantel took you on, exactly as he wanted."

The fat sleeper continued to snore. Wutzler came slinking back from his refuge in the shadows.

"It iss zo badt!" he whined, gulping nervously. "It iss zo badt!"

"Right you are," said Heywood. With arms folded, he eyed them sternly.