The Pointing Man | Page 4

craft was moored alongside and overtime work still continued. Little sampans glided in and out like whispers, and small boats with crossed oars, rowed by one man, ferried to and fro, but it was late, and, gradually, all commercial traffic ceased.
It was quite late now, an hour when European life had withdrawn to the Cantonment. It was not an hour for Sahibs on foot to be about, and yet it seemed that there was one who found the night air of July 29th hot and close, and desired to go towards the river for the sake of the breeze and the fresh air. He, too, like all the others, passed along Paradise Street, passing quickly, as the others had passed, his head bent and his eyes averted from the faces that looked up at him from easy chairs, from crowded doorsteps, or that leaned over balconies. He, also, whoever he was, had not Mhtoon Pah's leisure to regard the street, and he went on with a steady, quick walk which took him out on to the wharf, and from the wharf along a waste place where the tram lines ceased, and away from there towards a cluster of lights in a house close over the dark river itself.
The stars came out overhead, and the Southern Cross leaned down; seen from the river over the twin towers of the cathedral, seen from the cathedral brooding over the native quarter, seen in Paradise Street not at all, and not in any way missed by the inhabitants, whose eyes were not upon the stars; seen again in the Cantonment, over the massed trees of the park, and seen remarkably well from the wide veranda of Mrs. Wilder's bungalow, where the guests sat after a long dinner, remarking upon the heat and oppressiveness of the tropic night. The fire-flies danced over the trees like iridescent sparks hung on invisible gauze, and even came into the lighted drawing-room, to sparkle with less radiance against the plain white walls. Fans whirred round and round like large tee-totums set near the ceiling, and even the electric light appeared to give out heat; no breeze stirred from the far-away river, no coolness came with the dark, no relief from the brooding, sultry heat. It was no hotter than many nights in any break in the rains, but the guests invited by Mrs. Wilder felt the languor of the air, and felt it more profoundly because their hostess herself was affected by it.
Mrs. Wilder was a dark, handsome woman of thirty-five, usually full of life and animation, and her dinners were known to be entertainments in the real sense of the word. Draycott Wilder was no mate for her in appearance or manner, but Draycott Wilder was marked by the Powers as a successful man. He took very little part in the social side of their married life, and sat in the shadow near the lighted door, listening while his guests talked. The party was in no way different to many others, and it would have ended and been forgotten by all concerned if it had not been for the fact that an unusual occurrence broke it up in dismay. Mrs. Wilder complained of the heat during dinner, and she had been pale, looking doubly so in her vivid green dress; her usual animation had vanished, and she talked with evident effort and seemed glad of the darkness of the veranda.
Suddenly one of those strange silences fell over everyone, silences that may be of a few seconds' duration, but that appear like hours. What they are connected with, no one can guess. The silence lasted for a second, and it was broken with sudden violence.
"My God," said the voice of Hartley, the Head of the Police, speaking in tones of alarm. "Mrs. Wilder has fainted!" She had fallen forward in her chair, and he had caught her as she fell.
Very soon the guests dispersed and the bungalow was still for the night. One or two waited to hear what the doctor had to say, and went away satisfied in the knowledge that the heat had been too much for Mrs. Wilder, and, but for that event, the dinner-party would have been forgotten after two days. Hartley was the last to leave, and the sound of trotting hoofs grew faint along the road.
By an hour after midnight nearly the whole white population can be presumed to be asleep; day wakes early in the East, and there are few who keep all-night hours, because morning calls men from their beds to their work, and even this hot, sultry night people lay on their beds and tried to sleep; but in the small bungalow where the Rev. Francis Heath lived with a solitary Sapper officer, the bed that he slept in was