The telephone service in St. Hubert was the clumsiest feature of the island. There was no telephone at Penrith Lodge—the port-doctor had cheerfully been wont to get his calls through a neighbor. The central was now demoralized by the plague, and when for two hours Martin had tried to have Leora summoned, he gave up.
But he had triumphed. In three or four days he would drive to Penrith Lodge. Twyford had blankly assented to his suggestion that Leora be invited hither, and if she and Joyce Lanyon should become such friends that Joyce would never again turn to him in loneliness, he was willing, he was eager—he was almost eager.
When Martin left her at the Lodge, in the leafy gloom high on the Penrith Hills, Leora felt his absence. They had been so little apart since he had first come on her, scrubbing a hospital room in Zenith.
The afternoon was unending; each time she heard a creaking she roused with the hope that it was his step, and realized that he would not be coming, all the blank evening, the terrifying night; would not be here anywhere, not his voice nor the touch of his hand.
Dinner was mournful. Often enough she had dined alone when Martin was at the Institute, but then he had been returning to her some time before dawn—probably—and she had reflectively munched a snack on the corner of the kitchen table, looking at the funnies in the evening paper. To-night she had to live up to the butler, who served her as though she were a dinner-party of twenty.
She sat on the porch, staring at the shadowy roofs of Blackwater below, sure that she felt a "miasm" writhing up through the hot darkness.
She knew the direction of St. Swithin's Parish—beyond that delicate glimmer of lights from palm huts coiling up the hills. She concentrated on it, wondering if by some magic she might not have a signal from him, but she could get no feeling of his looking toward her. She sat long and quiet. . . . She had nothing to do.
