The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

40
THE FOOT OF TIME
The baronet left her with firm, rapid, long
strides, unfaltering. He went out into the night to
"attend to matters"—there were a good many that
needed his attention just then—went out of her
room, out of her life, but not out of her heart.
Locked in her bedroom, Clare threw herself upon
her bed. Her pent-up emotion found solace in
bitter weeping. She cried her eyes out—cried herself
to sleep. It was as well; a safety valve, not
vouchsafed to her husband!
Out on the Estate Sir Bruce did all a man could
to straighten out the tragedy. He also took steps
to prevent any possibility of a recurrence. Arrived
back at the bungalow, instructions were given that
the Mem-Sahib's wishes were to be carried out in
all things. When awake, everything was to be done
for her as usual. Another servant was specially
detailed to wait on her.
For the remainder of the night he sat quietly
smoking. No drink passed his lips. Arbuthnot
could fight it out with himself unaided. At six in
the morning he resumed his work after the regular
hot bath. The morning tub is taken hot in the East.
It is more refreshing. Like hot tea, it has a tendency
to open the pores of the skin, and that is more
cooling than the nerve tonic of the cold dip. The
East is not the West. It is far, far more different
to the West, than Westerners, if untravelled, realise.
No one looking at the Burra-Sahib could have told
what he was enduring. His will and constitution
were of iron.
CHAPTER VI.
THE YOUNG AUSTRALIAN.
THE news of the approaching divorce of Sir
Bruce Arbuthnot furnished London with its
proverbial nine days' wonder. The period
might have been extended but for the facts that
the baronet was never at home, and that he
had married a girl out of his own class. The class
to which she had belonged society considered lower
than that of her husband in view of Clare having
typed in a London office while her husband carried
a title about with him. To Bruce, however, she
came of a higher class, because he loved her, looked
up to her, knew her to be a better woman—as
standards are reckoned—than he was a man, and
because she preferred work to leisure. Clare's father
was a country solicitor whose direct taxation was
conspicuously low. The man's life and banking
account tended to totally disprove the opinion that
lawyers overcharge. So Clare sought her bread and
butter up in town, which proved the beginning of
the end for Sir Bruce. And now she had rejected
him as a thing soiled beyond her power of cleansing
and sued instantly for a divorce.
"She doesn't know which side her bread is buttered,"
said some, but that was before they heard
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