“What I can’t make out is what it’s all about,” said Mr. Coleman in an aggrieved voice.
Emmott shrugged his shoulders but didn’t answer.
I had a rather enlightening conversation with Miss Johnson. I liked her very much. She was capable, practical and intelligent. She had, it was quite obvious, a distinct hero worship for Dr. Leidner.
On this occasion she told me the story of his life since his young days. She knew every site he had dug, and the results of the dig. I would almost dare swear she could quote from every lecture he had ever delivered. She considered him, she told me, quite the finest field archaeologist living.
“And he’s so simple. So completely unworldly. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word conceit. Only a really great man could be so simple.”
“That’s true enough,” I said. “Big people don’t need to throw their weight about.”
“And he’s
so light-hearted too, I can’t tell you what fun we used to have—he and Richard Carey and I—the first years we were out here. We were such a happy party. Richard Carey worked with him in Palestine, of course. Theirs is a friendship of ten years or so. Oh, well, I’ve known him for seven.”
“What a handsome man Mr. Carey is,” I said.
“Yes—I suppose he is.”
She said it rather curtly.
“But he’s just a little bit quiet, don’t you think?”
“He usedn’t to be like that,” said Miss Johnson quickly. “It’s only since—”
She stopped abruptly.
“Only since—?” I prompted.
“Oh, well.” Miss Johnson gave a characteristic motion of her shoulders. “A good many things are changed nowadays.”
I didn’t answer. I hoped she would go on—and she did—prefacing her remarks with a little laugh as though to detract from their importance.
“I’m afraid I’m rather a conservative old fogy. I sometimes think that if an archaeologist’s wife isn’t really interested, it would be wiser for her not to accompany the expedition. It often leads to friction.”
“Mrs. Mercado—” I suggested.
“Oh, her!” Miss Johnson brushed the suggestion aside. “I was really thinking of Mrs. Leidner. She’s a very charming woman—and one can quite understand why Dr. Leidner ‘fell for her’—to use a slang term. But I can’t help feeling she’s out of place here. She—it unsettles things.”
So Miss Johnson agreed with Mrs. Kelsey that it was Mrs. Leidner who was responsible for the strained atmosphere. But then where did Mrs. Leidner’s own nervous fears come in?
“It unsettles him,” said Miss Johnson earnestly. “Of course I’m—well, I’m like a faithful but jealous old dog. I don’t like to see him so worn out and worried. His whole mind ought to be on the work—not taken up with his wife and her silly fears! If she’s nervous of coming to out-of-the-way places, she ought to have stayed in America. I’ve no patience with people who come to a place and then do nothing but grouse about it!”
And then, a little fearful of having said more than she meant to say, she went on: “Of course I admire her very much. She’s a lovely woman and she’s got great charm of manner when she chooses.”
And there the subject dropped.
I thought to myself that it was always the same way—wherever women are cooped up together, there’s bound to be jealousy. Miss Johnson clearly didn’t like her chief ’s wife (that was perhaps natural) and unless I was much mistaken Mrs. Mercado fairly hated her.
Another person who didn’t like Mrs. Leidner was Sheila Reilly. She came out once or twice to the dig, once in a car and twice with some young man on a horse—on two horses I mean, of course. It was at the back of my mind that she had a weakness for the silent young American, Emmott. When he was on duty at the dig she used to stay talking to him, and I thought, too, that he admired her.
One day, rather injudiciously, I thought, Mrs. Leidner commented upon it at lunch.
“The Reilly girl is still hunting David down,” she said with a little laugh. “Poor David, she chases you up on the dig even! How foolish girls are!”
Mr. Emmott didn’t answer, but under his tan his face got rather red. He raised his eyes and looked right into hers with a very curious expression—a straight, steady glance with something of a challenge in it.
She smiled very faintly and looked away.