The Trader's Wife

For some minutes the two mates smoked on in silence, then Diaz made a backward gesture towards the bungalow on the hills: “Are you going there to-night?”

Lester nodded. “I think so. He asked me, you see.”

The Chileno remained silent for a minute or so, then said, “She is the most beautiful fair woman I have ever seen.”

Again Lester nodded, but made no remark. He was well aware that Pedro Diaz shared his dislike for the captain’s wife, though he had never openly said so. The Chileno, morose and grim as he was, was intensely devoted to Brabant, who had twice saved his life—once under a heavy rifle fire in the Solomon Islands, when Diaz and his boat’s crew were all but cut off and massacred by the natives, and Brabant came out of the fray with a broken arm and a bullet through his shoulder; and once at sea, when he was knocked overboard by the parting of a boom guy, and his captain sprang overboard after him, though the night was as dark as pitch, and the Maritana was like to have been smothered by the heavy, lumping seas which fell upon her decks when she was brought to.

“He is a doomed man,” resumed the second mate presently, with a sullen yet emphatic tone; “that woman will be his doom. She is beautiful, and as false as she is beautiful. I can see it in her eyes; he cannot see. But were I in his place I should not leave her alone. She is not to be trusted.”

Lester thought the same, but said nothing, and he and Diaz rose and went on the main deck to welcome Bruce, whose cutter was now coming alongside.

“How are you, Jim? How are you, Mr. Diaz?” said the doctor, a big, bronzed-faced Scotsman with kindly blue eyes, as he sprang over the side and shook hands with them. “I saw the Maritana early this morning in tow of the boats, so I started off in the cutter at once. Brabant gone ashore?”

“Yes, about an hour ago,” replied the chief mate. “Almost a newly-married man, you see,” he added, with a laugh.

Dr. Bruce gave his friend a quick, penetrating glance, but there was no answering smile on his lips. He knew Brabant well, and knew of Mrs. Brabant more than did her husband.

The three men sat down under the awning for nearly an hour, smoking and drinking their whiskey-and-soda, and talking freely together. Bruce—much the oldest man of the three—was aware that both his companions were devoted to Brabant, and knew him far better than himself, and so, being a straightforward, purposeful man, he said what he had to say about Mrs. Brabant in very plain language.

“You, Jim, can and ought to give him a hint. I can’t. If I did he would most likely haul off and knock me down. But he ought to stay ashore this time. She may be only a brainless little fool of a flirt, but there’s a lot’ of talk about her, especially since that young sweep of a Danvers came here.”

“Who is he?” asked Lester.

Dr. Bruce leant back in his seat, and flicked the ash off his cigar. “He’s the manager of the new Land and Trading Company here—a little, pretty-faced fellow, with a yellow moustache, curly hair, and as much principle in him as a damned rat. He has the command of any amount of money, and the women here think no end of him. Was in the army—Rifles, I think—but believe, though I can’t be sure of it, was kicked out. Thorough beast, but just the kind of man to get along too well with women who don’t know him. Now I’ll take another whiskey-and-soda after thus traducing Mr. Danvers, who I’m perfectly willing to boot along Levuka beach from one end to the other if he gives me a chance to do it on my own account. And, by Jove, I’ll give him a chance to-night.”

“Where?” asked Pedro Diaz, with a gleam of sombre light in his dark eyes. 189

The Trader’s Wife

“At Manton’s. He’s sure to come in there about eleven to-night. Goodbye for the present. I’ll meet you there about eight.”

As the doctor went over the side again the Chilian turned to Lester.

“What did I tell you?” he said gloomily.

CHAPTER II

AT five o’clock in the afternoon, as Dr. Bruce was seated on the wide verandah of Manton’s Hotel, smoking his pipe, and wondering in a lazy sort of a way whether Brabant would hear any of the current scandal about his wife and Danvers, the voice of the latter person broke in upon his musings.

“Hallo, Bruce, how are you?” he exclaimed genially as he sprang up the steps, and extended his hand to the doctor; “I see that Brabant is back.”

Bruce answered him curtly enough. “Yes; but you don’t know him, do you?”

Danvers clasped his hands over one knee and leant back in his chair. “No; but I see Mrs. Brabant a good deal, and naturally should like to meet her husband. You know him pretty well, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do—have known him for nearly ten years.” Then he moved his chair slightly so that he might face Danvers. He was not an impulsive man, but as he looked into Danvers’s smiling, handsome face the dislike he had always felt towards him, and his keen regard for Brabant, urged him to speak on the subject that was uppermost in his mind, there and then.

“I’m glad I have met you, Captain Danvers,” he said quietly, “as I particularly wished to speak to you about a certain matter, and, as you know, I am not often in town.”

“Certainly, my dear fellow. What is it?”

“Your question to me just now saves me a lot of explanation. You asked me if I knew Brabant, and I told you that I have known him for ten years. And I must tell you further that he is a man for whom I have the deepest regard and respect. Therefore,” and he emphasised the ‘therefore,’ “you can of course guess the nature of the matter upon which I wish to speak with you.”

“‘Pon my soul, I can’t,” and Danvers elevated his eyebrows in pretended astonishment, though his face flushed as he met the doctor’s steady, unnerving glance.

Still keeping his eyes on Danvers’s face, Bruce went on: “Brabant is a valued friend of mine. He is as unsuspecting and confiding a man as ever lived, but he is a dangerous man to be trifled with. Do you understand me?”

“I’m hanged if I do,” replied Danvers, though the angry flash of his clear blue eyes belied his words; “what are you driving at? Just say in plain words what you have to say, and be done with it.”

“Right. Plain words. And as few as possible. You have paid Mrs. Brabant such attention that her husband is like to hear of it. Isn’t that enough?”

Danvers laughed insolently. “Enough to show me that you are meddling with affairs which do not concern you, Dr. Bruce. I rather imagine that the lady’s husband would be the proper person to resent any undue attention being paid by me to his wife—which I deny—than you. Did he commission you to speak to me? I’ve heard that the Brabant family have always had a strain of insanity running through it.”

Bruce started. He knew that what Danvers had said was perfectly true, but had thought that he himself was the one man in Fiji who did know. Brabant had himself told him that several of his family on the father’s side had “gone a bit wrong,” as he put it.

The contemptuous tone of Danvers stung him to the quick.

“That’s a beastly thing to say of a man whose house you visit almost daily—and visit when you have never even met him. You must have been brought up in a blackguardly school.”

Danvers sprang to his feet with blazing eyes. “You want to pick a quarrel with me. Very good. I’m your man.”

“That’s where you are wrong. I don’t want to quarrel with you. I wish to warn you. And I tell you again that John Brabant is a dangerous man.”

“Are you his deputy? What right have you to interfere in my private affairs?”

“I’m not his deputy; and my interference, if you like to so call it, will certainly save you from a well-deserved kicking. Don’t, don’t, don’t! No heroics with me, my boy. You haven’t a clean record, and I know why you left the army. Now listen to me. Just put a stop to this business. If you don’t, I’ll tell both Mrs. Brabant and her husband in your presence that you are not altogether the right sort of man to be accepted as a friend—especially by a young and utterly unsuspicious woman.”

Danvers sank back into his seat, white with passion, as Bruce went on relentlessly.

“And I’ll tell what I do know of you to every planter and decent white man in the group. I’ll make Fiji too hot for you, and your business will go to the deuce. Now, let us have an understanding. Will you put an end to this dallying about after another man’s wife? You can do the thing properly, pay a call or two at the house whilst Brabant is at home, and accept general invitations if you like; but–”

“But what?” Danvers’s voice was hoarse with suppressed fury.

“Stop visiting Mrs. Brabant whilst her husband is away. No gentleman would act as you have acted. You know what a place this is for scandal. And I believe you have as much of the fool as the roué in your mental composition.”

“And if I decline to entertain your infernal–”

“Steady. No language, please. If you decline to make me that promise here on the spot, I shall do what I have said—tell husband and wife that you’re not the kind of man to receive as a friend.”

“And by Heavens, I’ll shoot you like a rat.”

The doctor rose to his feet, and the two men faced each other—the one outwardly calm and collected, the other shaking with passion.

“What is it to be, Captain Danvers?”

“This, you sneaking Scotch sawbones!” and raising his cane Danvers struck the elder man a savage blow across the face.

In another moment Bruce had closed with him, wrenched the cane from his hand, and drawing back struck him between the eyes with such force that he was sent flying backwards off the verandah, to fall heavily upon the shrubs of the garden beneath, where he lay huddled up in a heap.

A score of people—white and coloured—rushed to the spot. Bruce, carefully standing the cane against the side of the lounge on which he had been reclining, walked down the steps and pushed his way into the little crowd surrounding the fallen man.