It is our fate as a nation, head and heart of a world empire, that much of our manhood must pursue its career far away from home. And it is our strength that these English sons of ours have taught themselves to make it home wherever they find their work.
The fervid land of India had become home to Raymond Bethune for so many years that it would have been difficult for him to picture his life elsewhere. The glamour of the East, of the East that is England's, had entered into his blood, without, however, altering its cool northern deliberate course; that it can be thus with our children, therein also lies the strength of England.
Raymond Bethune, Major of Guides, loved the fierce lads to whom he was at once father and despot, as perhaps he could have loved no troop of honest thick-skulled English soldiers. He was content with the comradeship of his brother officers, men who thought like himself and fought like himself; content to spend the best years of existence hanging between heaven and earth on the arid flanks of a Kashmir mountain range, in forts the walls of which had been cemented by centuries of blood; looked forward, without blenching, to the probability of laying down his life in some obscure frontier skirmish, unmourned and unnoticed. His duty sufficed him. He found happiness in it that it was his duty. Such men as he are the very stones of our Empire's foundation.
Yet though he was thus intimately satisfied with his life and his life's task, Bethune was conscious of a strange emotion, almost a contraction of the heart, as he followed the kitmutgar to Lady Gerardine's drawing-room in the palace of the Lieutenant-Governor, this October day.
The town below hung like a great rose jewel, scintillating, palpitating, in a heat unusual for the autumn of Northern India. Out of the glare, the colour, the movement, the noise; out of the throng of smells—spice, scent, garlic, the indescribable breath of the East—into the dim cool room; it was like stepping from India into England! And by the tug at his heart-strings he might have analysed (had he been of those that analyse) that, after all, the old home was nearest and dearest still; might have realised that his content beneath the scorching suns, amid the blinding snows of his adopted country, arose after all but of his deep filial love of, and pride in, the distant English isle.
He put down his bat and looked round: not a hint of tropical colour, not a touch of exotic fancy, of luxuriant oriental art anywhere; but the green and white and rosebud of chintz, the spindle-legged elegance of Chippendale, the soft note of Chelsea china, the cool greys and whites of Wedgwood. From the very flower-bowl a fastidious hand had excluded all but those delicate blossoms our paler sunshine nourishes. Some such room, dignified with the consciousness of a rigid selection, reticent to primness in its simple yet distinguished art, fragrant with the potpourri of English gardens, fragrant too with memories of generations of wholesome English gentlefolks, you may meet with any day in some old manor-house of the shires. To transport the complete illusion to the heart of India, Bethune knew well must have cost more labour and money than if the neighbouring palaces had been ransacked for their treasures. It was obvious, too, that the fancy here reigning supreme was that of one who looked upon her sojourn under these splendid skies with the eyes of an unresigned exile.
The wife of the Lieutenant-Governor can evidently gratify every whim, he said to himself, bitterly enough, the while he still inhaled the fragrance of home with an unconscious yearning.
In the distance the tinkle of a piano seemed to add a last touch to the illusion. In India one so seldom hears a piano touched during the hot hours. And scales, too—it was fantastic!
Suddenly the music ceased, if music it could be called. There was a flying step without. The door was thrown open. Raymond Bethune turned quickly, a certain hardness gathering in his eyes. Their expression changed, however, when he beheld the newcomer. A young, very young girl, hardly eighteen perhaps, of the plump type of immaturity; something indeed of a cherubic babyhood still lurking in the round face, in the buxom little figure, and in the rebellious aureole of bronze hair rising from a very pink forehead. It was evidently the energetic musician.
She came in, examining one finger of her right hand; and, without looking at him, began to speak with severity:
I told you, Mr. Simpson, I could not possibly see anybody in my practising hours! How am I ever to keep up my poor music in this beastly country? Then she added, in a pettish undertone: "I have broken my nail now!" And glancing up, accusingly, to behold a stranger: "Oh!" she exclaimed.
Major Bethune smiled. The sight of this creature, so unmistakably fresh from the salt brisk English shores, was as pleasant as it was unexpected.
Oh, it's not Mr. Simpson! she cried, with a quaint air of discovery.
The officer bowed. Life had taught him not to waste his energy on a superfluous word.
Oh! she said again. She looked down at her nail once more, and then sucked it childishly. Over her finger she shot a look at him. She had very bright hazel eyes, under wide full brows. "Perhaps," she said, "you want to see the Runkle? I mean," she interrupted herself, with a little giggle—"I menu, my uncle, Sir Arthur."
I called to see Lady Gerardine, he answered imperturbably. "I wrote to her yesterday. She expects me."
Oh!
Every time this ejaculation shot from the girl's lips it was with a new lively note of surprise and a comical rounding of small mouth and big eyes. Then she remembered her manners; and, plunging down on a chair herself:
Won't you take a seat? she cried, with an engaging schoolgirl familiarity.
Bowing again, he obeyed.
Do you think Lady Gerardine will see me?
She glanced at the clock on the cabinet beside her.
My aunt will be here, she replied, "in just ten minutes. She is always down at the hour, though nobody comes till half-past." She flung a look of some reproach at the visitor's inscrutable face, and passed her handkerchief over her own hot cheeks. "I think Aunt Rosamond is wonderful," she went on, preparing herself, with a small sigh, to the task of entertaining. "The Runkle—I mean my uncle—is always after her. But I am sure there is not another Lieutenant-Governor's wife in India that does her duty half so well." Here she yawned, as suddenly as a puppy. The visitor still maintaining silence, she paused, evidently revolving subjects of conversation in her mind, and then started briskly upon her choice:
Of course, you don't know who I am. Two deep dimples appeared in the plump cheeks. "I am Aspasia Cuningham, and I have come to live with my uncle and aunt in India. I wish I had not; I hate it. What is your name?"
Raymond Bethune.
Civil? inquired Miss Aspasia, running her eye over his light-grey suit.
No, military. Guides. Major, he corrected.
She nodded.
I see—turbans and things, commented she.
Bethune gave a dry chuckle which hardly reflected itself on his countenance. Another silence fell; and, still scrubbing her cheeks with an energy calculated to make even the onlooker feel hot, the girl took a good look at him. A somewhat lantern-jawed, very thin face had he, tanned almost to copper; brown hair, cropped close, a slight fair moustache; and steady pale eyes beneath overhanging brows. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh about the long lean figure. No mistake (thought Aspasia sagely) about his Scottish origin. She cocked her head on one side. "He would have looked well in a kilt," she told herself.
Presently the silence began to oppress her. He did not seem in the least disposed to break it. His attitude was one of patient waiting; but, second by second, the lines of his countenance grew set into deeper sternness. Miss Cuningham coughed. She played a scale upon her knee, stretched out all her fingers one after another, waggled them backwards and forwards, and finally, with a pout and a frown, dashed into exasperated speech:
Could not I take a message?
The man brought his attention to bear upon her, with an effort, as if from some distant thought.
I beg your pardon?
Do you not think you could give me a message fur Aunt Rosamond?
I am afraid not.
Do you want her to get the Runkle—Sir Arthur, I mean—to do anything for you?
No.
Do you know Aunt Rosamond—Lady Gerardine?
He hesitated. Then he said: "No," and "No" again, with a cold incisiveness.
Oh!
Miss Cuningham was nonplussed; yet was she interested, in spite of herself. "What a rude pig!" she thought angrily, in her downright schoolgirl vernacular. But the next moment his saturnine face softened.
Do not let me keep you, he said. "You want to return to your music. You were practising very hard. I have never heard any one play scales with such energy over here before. It quite brought me back to the schoolroom in the old place at home."
His expression softened still more as he spoke.
Aspasia was delighted to find him so human all at once; and, being herself the most gregarious little soul alive, hastened to take advantage of the opportunity.
Oh, it does not matter now, she said. "Thank you. It is rather hot. I will finish my exercises later on. You see, I must keep up my technique." She stretched her fingers again, with an important air. "But, when he's at home, it annoys the Runkle—there it is again! I cannot help it, really. I only began it for fun, to tease him; now it's irresistible, nervous I think. You remember, I told you my name is Aspasia. A stupid sort of name. You cannot even shorten it into anything decent. You could not call me Aspy, or Pashy, or Asia, could you? So people have got into the way of calling me Baby. I do not mind. It's better than Aspasia. But uncle won't. He is my godfather, you see, and thinks it's a lovely name. There's a stupid old cousin of ours, Lady Aspasia Something-or-other, whom he thinks the world of. So he always will say: 'My dear Raspasia ... my dear Raspasia!' So I got into the way of calling him: 'My dear Runkle Rarthur!' Rather silly, but I began it in sheer self-defence. And now—it's really quite wicked—everybody calls him the Runkle, all the secretaries and things—behind his back, of course. And there's one of them, a silly sort of creature, Mr. Simpson—I thought it was him, just now—he's not got used to it yet, and he always goes purple and explodes. And the Runkle gets mad. He has to pretend he has not noticed anything, to save his dignity!"
Her frank young laugh rang out, one might have thought infectiously enough. But the visitor's eyes had wandered from her. And as now (perceiving suddenly that he had not been listening to her) she fell into an affronted silence, she noticed how they became fixed in the direction of the door with a curious intensity of gaze, like that of a hawk sighting his quarry.
One of the native servants, who kept squatting watch in the passage without, had noiselessly pushed the door-hangings aside; a soft murmur of muslin skirts against matting grew into the silence. Lady Gerardine came into the room. She was looking at a card in her hand.
Major Bethune? she said questioningly, as she approached.
My name must be familiar to you, he replied gravely.
She paused a second, slightly contracting her brows; then shook her head, with a smile.
I am afraid—I have such a bad memory. But I am very glad to see you.
She put out her hand graciously. He barely touched it with his fingers.
Pray sit down, she said, and took her own chair.
One felt the accomplished woman of the world. No awkwardness could exist where Lady Gerardine had the direction of affairs. Sweet, cool, aloof, the most exquisite courtesy marked her every gesture. Had the new comer been shy he must promptly have felt reassured; for a long-looked-for guest could not have been more easily welcomed.
You will like some tea, said she. "Baby, why did not you order tea? Dear child, how hot you are!"
A faint ripple of laughter broke the composure of her countenance. Miss Cuningham ran to the door clapping her hands.
Tea, Abdul, she cried. And, like the genie of the Persian fairy tale, the servant instantly stood salaaming on the threshold.
Oh, Aunt Rosamond, may he not have a lemon-squash? Major Bethune, I am sure you would prefer a lemon-squash!
Bethune sat stonily staring at his hostess from under his heavy brows.
* * * * *
So that was she—Rose of the World! Not so beautiful as he had fancied. And yet, yes—grudgingly he had to admit it—beautiful and more. With every instant that passed, the extraordinary quality of her personality made itself felt upon him; and his heart hardened. This grace more beautiful than beauty; those deep strange eyes startling with their unexpected colour, green-hazel, in the pallor of the face under a crown of hair, fiery gold; those long lissom limbs; the head with its wealth, dropping a little on the long throat. Oh, aye, that was she! Even so had she been described to him: the "flower among women!"—even so, by lips, eloquent with the fulness of the heart (alas! what arid mountain wind might not now be playing with the dust of what was once instinct with such generous life!)—even so, had Harry English described her to his only friend. Save, indeed, that by his own telling Harry English's bride had been rosy as a Dorset apple-blossom, as the monthly roses that hung over the wicket-gate of the garden at home; and the wife of Sir Arthur Gerardine had no more tint of colour in her cheeks than the waxen petals of the white daturas that marked the Governor's terraces with their giant chalices.
Raymond remembered. But she—she had such a bad memory!
* * * * *
Have you been long here?
She seemed to take his visit quite as a matter of course.
I arrived yesterday. I am on leave.
Indeed. And what regiment?
He told her. A change, scarcely perceptible, passed over her face. She compressed her lips and drew a breath, a trifle longer than normal, through dilated nostrils.
Just then a procession of soft-footed, white-clad servants entered upon them, and the tension, if tension there had been, was dispelled.
Will you have tea, Major Bethune, or this child's prescription?
The ice tinkled melodiously in the fragrant yellow brew. "Baby" was already sucking through a straw; she rolled her eyes, expressive of rapture, towards the visitor. But he was not to be diverted.
I will have nothing, thank you.
He had not thought himself so sentimental. Why should he bear so deep a grudge against this woman? How could her forgetfulness, her indifference, now harm the dead? It was fantastic, unreasonable, and yet he could not bring himself to break bread with her to-day. He clasped his lean brown fingers tightly across his knees.
I am afraid, he said briefly, "that my presence must seem an intrusion. But I trust you will forgive me when you understand upon what errand I come."
She disclaimed his apology by a wave of her hand. The emeralds upon it shot green fire at him.
The fact is, he went on, doggedly making for his point, "I have been asked to write a life of—your husband."
He was interrupted by a commotion among the ice and bubbles of Miss Aspasia's long tumbler.
Gracious, she sputtered; "but the Runkle is not dead yet!" She choked down, just in time, the comment: "Worse luck!" which had almost escaped her terribly frank tongue.
Lady Gerardine was smiling again in her detached manner.
A great many people, distinguished people, Baby, have their lives written before they die. And they have then the advantage of correcting the proof-sheets. I dare say your uncle will not object.
Major Bethune allowed a pause to fall before continuing his speech. Then he said, with almost cruel deliberation:
I beg your pardon, Lady Gerardine. I should have said your late husband. I refer to Harry English.
For the life of her Baby could not have said why, but she felt as if something had been broken by these last words—broken with a great crash. She put down her glass and turned and stared from her aunt to Major Bethune and back again. Lady Gerardine's eyes were cast down, her hands were moving among the tea-things: it would have been hard to divine if she had even heard. The man was leaning forward, devouring her face with unsparing gaze—a gaze that seemed to be looking for something with brutal intensity.
After a silence, so oppressive that Aspasia could have screamed, Lady Gerardine spoke:
Is it necessary to ask for my permission? she said, without lifting her eyelids. "I did not know that people were so particular nowadays." She paused. And then, with a perceptible effort: "Did you know Captain English?" she asked.
Did I know him? Raymond Bethune laughed out loud, unmirthfully. "You seem to have forgotten that he and I went through that siege together. I was with him from the day I first joined, practically till the hour of his death."
Rosamond Gerardine gave a faint gasp, as if breath had suddenly failed her; then she looked up sharply and veiled her glance again.
Ah, she said slowly. "Through the siege—till—I had not known. I beg your pardon."
Once more there was the heavy silence. With round eyes Baby stared: things were passing here to the meaning of which she had no clue, but she felt, as it were, the stress of a tragedy in the air.
Suddenly Lady Gerardine rose.
I am glad to have met you, said she. He rose too, and she stretched out her hand to him. "Write his life," she went on. "I am sure no one could do it better."
As upon their first greeting, the man bowed ceremoniously, barely touching the fingers proffered. She sighed, sank into her chair again, then turned and smiled determinedly upon her niece with the air of one dismissing the subject. Bethune felt well enough that he too was being dismissed; but he took a step forward and stood looking down upon her.
I do not think you quite understand, he said. "I cannot do this work without your help, Lady Gerardine."
My help!
I am exceedingly sorry to be so tiresome—his manner betrayed a curious mixture of patience and irritation—"but you see, that without the papers in your possession my task would be futile. I could not possibly do the work justice."
The papers in my possession! She echoed the words as helplessly as before.
The papers in your possession, he repeated. "His letters to you, the journal he wrote during the siege, his notes, his whole correspondence—I brought them all back and sent them to you myself—afterwards. And you, you did receive them? You were too ill to see me, I was told, but your friends undertook that you should have them."
She was gazing at him, now, with wide eyes growing darker and deeper every moment. The colour rushed up to her face, then faded away, leaving it paler even than before. Her stricken look made him feel like a brute; yet the sheer perversity of her attitude exasperated him. At last:
You want me to give you these papers? she exclaimed, with a cry.
He sat down on the chair next her; and, like one endeavouring to make a fractious child hear reason, began to explain his meaning to her.
I should not presume, he said, "to suggest that you should confide to me writings which can concern only yourself and him. He was a reserved man, and, though he was the best friend, the only friend I ever had, and I perhaps his closest, I should not dream of intruding upon his private life, now—now that he is dead. God forbid! But I want you to help, I want you to give me every necessary extract which concerns his soldier's life—that life which was such an example to all Englishmen—which I feel it should be given to England to know, as freely as it was laid down for her. Why, there is not even a cairn of stones to mark his grave! Mark his grave? Why, even that grave has been denied to us! But we can yet raise a monument to him that our country may know her dead."
His cold somewhat grating voice deepened into a note of such tenderness that Baby wondered in her childish mind. She did not know that a man could so love and mourn a friend. Lady Gerardine had leant back in her chair, her hands clasping the arms. Bethune saw her revolving the question in her mind with such pallid suffering upon her features that he felt torn between anger and a sort of unwilling pity. Her lips moved:
It is impossible.
He thought he could not have heard aright.
I beg your pardon?
It is impossible.
Lady Gerardine...!
You do not know what you are asking. I cannot!
I think it is you who do not understand. The matter is so simple; those letters, that journal——
No—no.
You refuse? he exclaimed. Indignation was even stronger than surprise.
You do not know what you are asking! she repeated. And the cry of passion in her voice again startled both him and Aspasia.
Bethune rose, took up his hat in silence; stood awhile, his steel-pale eyes flaming upon the woman whom his friend had, from all the world, chosen to make his wife.
I trust you will think it over, said he at length, as soon as he could control himself sufficiently to speak.
He paused again; but Lady Gerardine made no reply. She was still fixing him with that inexplicable gaze that seemed one of terror.
I shall call again, said he, well-nigh in the tone of a menace; then bowed and turned away. At the door he halted. "But perhaps you did not keep those papers?" he said, upon a sudden scornful thought.
Still she held her peace, and in his heart he knew that this random shaft of his had fallen wide of the mark; that, whatever might be the explanation of her attitude, it was not indifference.
Thoroughly dissatisfied with the result of his interview, with himself, and the whole situation, he strode down the long corridors into the cool echoing hall, where many pillars showed with faint barbaric tints between aisles of gloom.
At the very threshold of the colour and sunshine without, some one overtook him with patter of flying feet, some one nipped him by the sleeve with determined fingers. He looked, and it was Miss Aspasia. Her hazel eyes were rounder than ever; so was her button of a mouth. Her hair seemed to stand out, an aureole of amazement, from her baby face.
Don't be angry with Aunt Rosamond. Perhaps she will change her mind.
He wheeled round.
Have you any idea, he asked, "of the reason for her refusal?"
Aspasia shook her head so violently that the halo danced again. She pursed her lips with a long drawn-out:
No. You see, she added quickly, arresting him, as with head bent in thought he was once more proceeding on his way, "you see, we never speak of Aunt's first husband here. At least she never does. There is no picture of him about, not a sign of anything that has ever belonged to him. As far as she is concerned, it is just as if he had never been."
Raymond Bethune, of the Guides, jerked his head upwards in melancholy and bitter confirmation. In the midst of his own preoccupation and disappointment he could not, however, help being struck with the engaging quality of the face thrust so confidingly close to his. Those yellow hazel eyes had depths of almost infantile candour.
At least there is a soul that can afford to be transparent, he said to himself. Then aloud, following his first perplexed train of thought: "Perhaps it is because of your uncle, of Sir Arthur?" he suggested. "Lady Gerardine may be afraid of annoying him. Some men are jealous of their wives' first husbands." He smiled, half derisively to himself, half genially upon her.
The Runkle! cried Aspasia, with a giggle. "Jealous? Oh no; I don't think so! Why, he is the only creature who ever does speak of Captain English in this place. Poor Runkle, he's so awfully pleased with himself, you know, that I don't think he could be jealous of anything or anybody."
Why then—— Bethune's brow darkened at this confident removal of the only hypothesis that could put Lady Gerardine's behaviour in a favourable light. "Do you think," he said, regarding the girl reflectively, "that you could use your influence in this matter?"
Again Aspasia's head flew from side to side in violent negation.
Oh, I could not! Aunt Rosamond, she's a darling, she is more than good to me; I love her, but—it would seem such horrible impertinence. I cannot explain, Major Bethune, but I never feel as if I knew her really, nor as if she wanted me to know her. She always seems to me to be all outside, somehow.
He reflected a moment; then he suddenly held out his hand to her, with that softening of the countenance she had already noted—and noted to approve.
Will you? I want you to try and help me, said he. It was worded as a request; it was voiced, somehow, as a command.
She was preparing to twirl her curly mop, when she looked up and met his eyes. Then—she never knew how it happened—she said quite the opposite to what she had intended:
I will try.
And this was a promise. There was no mistake about it. He held her hand for a second in a firm grasp; neither of them wotted, or cared, for the white-clad, dusky-faced retinue that stood like so many statues awaiting the moment to proffer their services. If a liquid eye rolled curiously, however, it was an exception; your Hindoo has a dignified discretion of his own.
* * * * *
Play me something, Baby.
Lady Gerardine was still lying back in her chair, almost as if she had not moved. Her face had perhaps a whiter pallor than before, but there was no other trace of emotion to be seen. Instead of obeying, Aspasia, with her promise heavy on her heart and all the indiscreet impulsiveness of her years, rushed over and flung herself at her aunt's feet, rubbing a coaxing head against her knees.
Rosamond laid her hand upon the curls. This Baby seized and kissed; then she looked up. Lady Gerardine smiled; it was a smile indulgent but of infinite detachment.
It is perfectly absurd that I should call you Aunt, began the girl. True child as she was, she could think of no better scheme of attack than this wheedling. "You look as young as I do."
Young? echoed the Governor's wife, wearily.
Baby was counting on her fingers: "I was, let me see, just twelve when you married the Runkle, six years ago. So," triumphantly, "you are twenty-seven now. And that is, oh, quite ridiculously young for an aunt!"
Lady Gerardine sighed.
Dear Aunt Rosamond, said Aspasia, suddenly, turning round to kneel and place her elbows on her aunt's knees while she looked earnestly into her face, "why won't you?"
Why won't I what, Baby?
You know. Let that poor man have those papers. Dear Aunt Rosamond, I don't think it's quite fair.
The girl was trembling at her own temerity. But now the elder woman showed neither anger nor distress; only a marble stillness seemed to come over the living flesh. After a pause she placed her hand gently across Aspasia's mouth.
Baby, never speak of that again, she said. And there was the most absolute finality in her voice. Then she leaned forward and kissed her niece. The touch of her lips struck Aspasia as deathly cold. "Now play me something."
Aspasia rose, baffled, not without a feeling akin to the irritation that Major Bethune had displayed a little while before. It was like being brought up by a smooth blank wall.
She marched to the piano, opened it, and plunged into a prelude of Bach's, glad to be able to work off some of her pent-up feelings. As she played she set her pointed chin; and, while her fingers flew, her thought wove in and out with the intricate music to a settled resolution:
I don't care. Other people can be determined too. It is not fair of Aunt Rosamond. And I'll not give it up.
She finished her "Bach" with a triumphant chord.
Thank you, said Lady Gerardine, "I like your music, Baby. It is so intellectual."
Sir Arthur Gerardine was stretched in a bamboo chair on the white terrace overlooking the garden, taking his ease luxuriously. He had had his shampoo after his ride, he had had tea, and had started his second cheroot. It was growing delightfully cool. He had the conviction of leaving a well-spent day behind him; and now, an immaculately conscienced, immaculately attired English gentleman of importance, felt himself entitled to his virtuous relaxation.
He was perilously near the sixties, but young-looking for his age in spite of his oriental experience; handsome still, with a smile that, upon first acquaintance, was found irresistibly fascinating; a genial easy manner—a way with him, in fact, that seemed to promise the utmost good-fellowship. It was only after experience that people felt the steel behind the velvet glove.
Uncle Arthur, Aspasia one day averred in an irrepressible burst of frankness, "is the sort of man the more you know him, the less you like him."
No one would have been more surprised than Sir Arthur himself had he been told that he was a tyrant. Yet very soon those who were brought into contact with him discovered what a domineering spirit dwelt behind that sweet smile; how, without ever departing from a form of speech and manner that, with his own family was almost always caressing, with the rest of the world affable, no human being had ever been able to move him from the prosecution of his own purpose. Such a character, combined with a mighty intellect, would have been an enormous power for good. Unfortunately, it was upon the slightest premises and with limited reasoning faculties that Sir Arthur formed his unalterable views of life.
One of the problems that had most puzzled Aspasia, since unexpected family misfortunes had driven her to seek a home with the Lieutenant-Governor (her uncle and guardian), was whether her beautiful new aunt did not really hate Sir Arthur; and, "if she didn't," as the child phrased it, "how she could?" But not even Baby's shrewd young eyes could discover a flaw in the serenity with which Lady Gerardine listened to her husband's theories, or the grace with which she lent herself to the fulfilment of his wishes.
She now sat beside him with a half smile, her hands busied with some delicate work: a lovely picture of cool placidity.
Sir Arthur turned and gazed upon her with such an eye of condescending and complacent affection as that with which the Grand Turk may regard his last favourite.
Well, dear, he pursued, "I have finally rejected the Rajah's request."
Indeed?
She shot a look at him as if she would have added something; but upon the second thought dropped her long lids and resumed her embroidery, while Aspasia, in her usual pose at her aunt's feet, broke into shrill protest:
You never did? Why, Runkle, and everybody said the poor man was quite right! Only last night I heard General Staveley tell Aunt Rosamond that it was a mere case of justice, not to say one of expediency.
The Lieutenant-Governor's self-satisfaction waxed visibly to swelling point.
Ha! I dare say, he commented. "Indeed, I flatter myself, my dear Aspasia, that there is not another man in India that would have dared to take the responsibility. Aha, Rosamond, firmness! I was firm. Very firm. Discontented, disloyal set! I won't give them an inch more than the measure."
Oh Lor! ejaculated Baby.
Lady Gerardine's eyelashes flickered a second.
Quiet! she said, giving her niece a tap upon the shoulder.
Baby subsided, growling to herself like a tiger cub:
That nice prince...! If Runkle does not start a new mutiny——!
Sir Arthur surveyed his womankind a second with that singularly sweet smile of his. They were his womankind, part of his personal belongings; and therefore it never even dawned upon him that they could be anything but superlative of their degree; much less that they could form an independent opinion really unfavourable to himself. His niece's petulance affected him not otherwise than as an agreeable émoustillage in moments of relaxation such as these, as well as an opportunity for the display of his own indulgent wit and wisdom. He had a pride in her smart tongue as well as in her pretty looks; and Aspasia's most earnest attempts produced no more effect upon her distinguished relative than would the gambols of a kitten. Thus he now beamed upon her. In his early years of London society and successes, he had been noted for that beautiful smile. "The ass with the seraphic smile," a light-hearted St. James's comrade had dubbed him, little guessing that his country would, in the future, consider so well of "the ass" as to confide some of the gravest interests of the Empire to his charge. In spite of which (all unknown to its distinguished wearer) the nickname stuck.
I have given orders, my love, said the great man, once more addressing his wife, "for the cutting down of the group of banyan trees at the end of the garden. I know you and Aspasia rather liked that little jungle, but it was really a nasty bit. Now I propose to have the place concreted and a summer-house erected—something in a pretty artistic style, say Early English—or a Norwegian hut, perhaps, where you can sit without fear of snakes."
Again Baby felt a warning hand pressed upon her shoulder, and was fain, with crimson cheeks of wrath, to compress her lips in silence, while Lady Gerardine drew a strand of silk through her needle and made a pretty little speech of thanks to her husband for his thoughtfulness.
Why don't you carry the concrete down the garden walks, observed Miss Cuningham presently, with withering sarcasm, "and set up a rockery, with shells and things?"
Sir Arthur ignored the sally.
You will be glad to hear, Rosamond, he proceeded presently, "that I have been successful in a matter to which I attach great importance. I have found, I think, the exact person I have wanted so long: the native secretary, you know. All these young Civil Service fellows, with their translations, are no use to me. And my work was positively at a standstill."
Irrepressible Aspasia sniffed. A faint look of weariness crossed Lady Gerardine's well-trained countenance: this book of Sir Arthur's—a history of the Provinces confided to his charge, beginning from the earliest possible date and to be carried down to the triumphant conclusion of his own rule—this great work which was (as he was fond of saying) to be the monument of his career in India, was a subject which the Lieutenant-Governor's circle had learned to dread.
Monument, indeed; it will be all our monuments! had cried Aspasia one day, and Lady Gerardine had not rebuked.
The quaintest part about the matter, perhaps, was that, while Sir Arthur employed some half-dozen experts in obtaining material for him, and spent a fair part of his time in discussion of the matter provided, not one line of the folios which already filled his nest of drawers, some of which had been actually passed for press, had been either conceived or penned by the official author. And the guileless phrase, which often dropped from his lips: "I must really go; Macdonald (or it might be Gray, or Captain Smith) is waiting to read out to me the last chapter of my book," had ceased even to provoke a smile.
It has always been my aim to get at the spirit of the people, said Sir Arthur, "to draw water from the source that springs in the soil of the land itself." He looked sideways for a second, reflecting. "Ah, not a bad phrase that; I must suggest it to Macdonald."
And what's the name of the particular native spring? inquired the pert Miss Cuningham.
His name—Sir Arthur drew a letter from his pocket—"is Muhammed Saif-u-din, if it makes you much the wiser, my dear Aspasia. It seems he's quite a remarkable individual. Curiously enough, a Pathan. Pathans, a real fighting lot, don't as a rule take to the pen. Yes, quite a remarkable individual. The son of a Subadar—who thought it fine to let his son have an English education. Thought it no doubt a form of loyalty that would pay. However it may have been, the fellow's as poor as a rat in spite of his learning—proud as Lucifer, of course. drop of princely blood in him, it appears." The Lieutenant-Governor smiled pityingly. "They generally have, if you believe them—ha! Read his letter, my dear," he went on, drawing a sheet from his pocket-book and tossing it in her lap; "it may amuse you to note the grandiloquence of the native style."
Lady Gerardine turned over the sheet with a languid finger. It was scored with beautifully regular copperplate writing, which presented certainly no difficulty to the decipherer. Baby, whose young interest was more easily aroused, craned her neck to see also, and read aloud the opening phrase in a mock declamatory style:
Huzur,—By your Honour's Gracious Permission, your devoted servant Muhammed Saif-u-din. Will your Magnificence so condescend to my nothingness as to permit your Heaven-illumined eyes to rest upon this unworthy document....
Oh, Runkle, that's even finer than your phrase. Hadn't you better pass it on to Macdonald? You must let him have a finger in your pie—your Monumental Pie!
Sir Arthur smiled with his benevolent air.
He drew a second letter from his pocket.
Another agreeable piece of news, said he; "Lady Aspasia is quite ready to give us ten days or a fortnight after her visit to Calcutta."
Lady Aspasia! cried Baby; "do you mean the horrid woman that went and had a name like that to make me a laughing-stock all my life?"
Lady Aspasia, your own cousin, and the most agreeable woman I have ever met, rebuked Sir Arthur. "With one exception, of course," added the gallant gentleman, bowing towards his wife. "You ought to be very proud, dear child," he went on, addressing his recalcitrant niece, "not only of your connection with a noble house, but also to bear a name which is perhaps unique. Had we had a daughter, Rosamond, my love, I could not have allowed her to be christened otherwise. Dear me," he went on, now throwing his remarks into space and inflating his chest with the breath of sentimental reminiscence, "dear Aspasia, what a fine creature she was; and how much in love with her I used to be in my salad days. You're not jealous, dear," he cried suddenly, struck by his wife's abstraction.
Jealous? she echoed with a start. Her gaze was really pathetic, as she raised it to his face; and Sir Arthur, satisfied that she had undoubtedly felt a little hurt by his reminiscence, smiled sympathetically and once more considerately selected another topic.
By the way, he said, knocking the ash off his cheroot with a squat nail pared and polished to the last possible point of symmetry, "I met quite an interesting fellow just now. He tells me he has already called on you. Bethune his name is—Major Bethune, of the Guides. I asked him to dine to-night. I knew you would like me to show him some attention. You must know all about him, my love; he went through all that unfortunate business with your poor husband. I knew," repeated the Lieutenant-Governor, with a most intimate smile of self-approbation, "I knew that you would like me to show him some attention."
Baby, leaning against her aunt's pliant form, felt it suddenly stiffen into rigidity. But the needle poised in Lady Gerardine's fingers did not tremble; it hovered for a hardly perceptible moment, then resumed its languid course. Sir Arthur, after waiting for the expected tribute, threw down the stump of his cigar and looked round in surprise.
I always wish to do the right thing about any friend of poor English, he insisted. "And Bethune was flattered, of course, immensely flattered at my asking him. I knew it would please you, my dear Rosamond."
Lady Gerardine finished the lilac petal, cut her silk, folded her work, and, then only, raised her eyes.
Thank you, she said gently; "you are always kindness itself."
Those eyes of hers were so dark and encircled in her pale face that the affectionate husband was solicitously moved.
You look tired, my love, he said, hoisting himself out of his lounge to approach her. "I trust you have not got a chill; I think we had better all adjourn. You must lie down an hour before dinner."
Lady Gerardine rose and stood, looking out across the still garden falling in terraces to the river edge, beyond the flaming masses of poinsettia, the heavy-headed babul, and the starred wide-flung hibiscus, towards the far-off hills, mauve and amethyst hued against a sky of translucent sapphire.
I must go and say good-bye to my banyan trees, she said, almost as if speaking to herself.
Sir Arthur was horrified at the mere suggestion. Down into the lower garden, at the moment when the mists were rising! He would not hear of such a thing. And she was not looking well. He took her face by the chin and turned it to the sunset light. Even in that warm glow it showed wan; and the lids she dropped between her eyes and his gaze were bruised and shadowed, faintly purple like the petals of wood violets.
I'll have to ask Saunders to look at you, said the Governor. "I hope and trust that you have not been so foolish as to throw off your vests again!" He slipped two fingers under the lace of her diaphanous blouse to satisfy himself. "I cannot afford to have you ill, dear," he wound up caressingly. "Now, I'll just tell Jani to measure you a couple of grains of quinine before you lie down."
Benevolent, consequential, he hurried indoors. Rosamond stood yet a moment, looking at the sky. Baby, a thousand shades of exasperation and scorn upon her expressive countenance, now melted all into tenderness.
If ever there was a woman killed by kindness, she exclaimed, "it is you, poor Aunt Rosamond!" And flinging her arms round the still figure: "Oh, darling," she whispered, with the wail of an ever-renewed complaint, "why do you always, always give in?"
Lady Gerardine gently disengaged herself, bringing her eyes back from the distant loveliness with a perceptible effort.
Oh, Baby, she said, in a tone of melancholy mockery, "when you have lived as long as I have, you will see how much simpler it is."
She trailed away, obediently, to seek quinine and couch. Aspasia kicked over the work-basket as a relief, summoning a couple of supple Hindoos to repair the damage; and, feeling that the balance of things was slightly re-established, she took her way also into the palace to select her attire for the evening.
In spite of her ruffled sensations, she was smiling to herself as she went, and the dimples were very deep in the pink cheeks. Something was singing in her heart—a soft, pleasant little song: that it was good not to have lived long yet, and to have everything still before one; and that she was glad that the man with the light eyes and brown face was not going to drift out of her life. She hoped he would not be angry with her for not having succeeded yet.
The chief guest of the Lieutenant-Governor this evening was one Dr. Chatelard, a French savant of world-wide reputation, author of "La Psychologie Féminine des Races." Scientist—he had begun his career as a doctor, had specialised in nervous complaints, narrowed his circle again to les néuroses des femmes; and, after establishing a school of his own, had gradually (though scarcely past the middle life) retired from active practice and confined himself to studying, teaching, and writing. The first volume of his "Psychologie"—under the distinctive heading "La femme Latine"—had created a sensation not only in the scientific world, where the author's really valuable contributions to observation and treatment could not fail to be recognised, but also among that self-same irresponsible yet charming class which formed the subject-matter of his investigation. Here, indeed, the physician's light turn of wit, the palpitating examples he cited, with a discreet use of asterisks, set up a great flutter. Madame la Marquise was charmed when she recognised, or believed to recognise, cette chère Comtesse in a singularly eccentric case. Friends hunted for each other eagerly through the delicately veiled pages. Now and again a fair whilom patient would plume herself upon the belief that no other identity but her own could fit that of Madame D——, cette exquise sensitive. (M. Chatelard clung to style while he revolutionised science.) It is no wonder, perhaps, that the book should have had a greater vogue than the last scandalous novel. A second volume, "L'Orientale," was in course of conception. Indeed, it was the occasion of that tour in the East which brought M. Chatelard to India and, incidentally, under Sir Arthur Gerardine's roof.
Sir Arthur was in his element. To condescend, to demonstrate, to instruct, was to the Governor as the breath of his nostrils; he prided himself upon the Attic character of his French; he was justly conscious that, judged even by the Parisian standard, the urbanity of his manners was beyond criticism. And to have the opportunity of displaying to the intelligent foreigner the splendours of a quasi-regal position, filled to the utmost capacity; the working of a superior mind (not unleavened by sparks of English wit that again need, certes, fear no comparison with French esprit); a cosmopolitan savoir-faire; the nicest sense of official dignity; the brilliant jargon of a brother writer; and last, but not least perhaps, a young wife of quite extraordinary beauty ... it would have been difficult to contrive a situation fraught with more satisfaction! The presence of a minor personality, such as that of Major Bethune, was no disturbing factor. Apart from the circumstance that Sir Arthur was large-minded enough to appreciate the admiration even of the humblest, there was a subtle thread of pleasure in the thought that "poor English's" friend should see and marvel at the good fortune that had fallen to the lot of "poor English's" widow; while the little halo of pathos and romance surrounding the memory of the fallen hero cast a reflected light upon his distinguished successor, which any temperament so sympathetic as that of the gifted Dr. Chatelard might easily be made to feel. A few well-chosen whispered words of sentiment, over the second glass of claret at dessert—and there would be a pretty paragraph for the Frenchman's next letter to the Figaro. For it was well known that the series of brilliant weekly articles appearing in that paper, under the title "Les Impressions d'un Globe-trotteur," emanated from the traveller's facile pen.
Matters had progressed according to programme. M. Chatelard, a pleasant tubby man with a bald head, a cropped pointed beard drawing upon greyness, a twinkling observant eye, a sparkling readiness of repartee, and an appreciative palate, fell duly under the charm of the genial Lieutenant-Governor. The latter figured, indeed, that same night in his manuscript as the most amiable representative of John Bull abroad that the globe-trotteur had yet had the good fortune to meet.
Almost French, wrote the sagacious correspondent, "in charm of manner, in quickness of insight—thorough Anglo-Saxon, however, in the deepness of his policy, the solidity of his judgment, the unflinching decision with which he watches over the true interests of his Old England in this land of her ever-rebellious adopted sons. Bien Anglo-Saxon, too, in his ceaseless devotion to duty and stern acceptance of danger and responsibility. But he has received his recompense. These provinces of his are a model for all other colonies, and from one end to the other the name of Sir Gerardine is enough to make, etc., etc."
In very deed Sir Arthur had never been more brilliant, more convincing.
* * * * *
Coffee was served upon the terrace. Even the Governor could find no objection to this al-fresco adjournment upon such a night. A purple-blue sky throbbed with stars. Upon the one side the lights of the town gleamed, red and orange, far below, and its myriad night clamour seemed to emphasise the apartness of the uplifted palace; upon the other stretched the great flat, fertile, empty lands, still half-flooded, gleaming in the moonlight, widely still save for the occasional far-off cry of some prowling savage animal.
étrange situation! (wrote M. Chatelard, in his well-known assertive rhetoric). Nous étions là, élevés au-dessus de la plaine, dans cet antique palais converti en résidence moderne, mais tout imprégné des souvenirs de l'Orientalisme le plus prononcé. A nos pieds grouillait la ville Indoue, intouchable, inchangeable, telle qu'elle avait été avant que le pied du ma?tre étranger y eut pénétré. Appuyé centre la balustrade, de la terrasse je laissais plonger mon regard à travers les ténèbres jusque dans la vallée où luisaient, mystérieuses, innombrables, les lumières de la cité et me disais en moi-même: Nous voici donc, petit comité de la race conquérante qui n'a pourtant pas conquis; de la civilisation Européenne la plus éclairée qui n'a rien su changer dans le fonds des choses là-bas! Oui, là-bas, l'Orient va toujours son chemin sinistre et secret, inviolable par l'étranger; et toujours il en sera ainsi; toujours ces deux races, destinées à être conjointes sans être unies, traverseront les siècles comme deux courants puissants qui cheminent c?te à c?te sans jamais mélanger leurs ondes!
While Sir Arthur and his guest exchanged the treasures of their minds with mutual satisfaction, Bethune sought to isolate Miss Cuningham, under the pretext of showing her from a particular corner of the terrace the tents of a new Engineer camp. Baby was nothing loth. Her innocent cherub face looked confidingly forth upon him. Her light hair was spangled by the moon rays.
Well? said he, as soon as they were out of earshot.
The spangled mop began to fly.
No use!
He drew his brows together: "Did you try?"
Did I try! Of course, at once—yesterday. Did I not promise? The girl was reproachful. "She forbade me ever to speak of it again."
Raymond Bethune folded his arms, leaned them upon the balustrade, and turned a set profile towards the low hanging moon.
Then I must try again, he said, after a pause.
Aspasia wished him to succeed; but something relentless in his looks filled her with a sort of fear of him, of pity for her aunt. He seemed as indifferent to human emotion, as immutable, she thought, as one of the stone gods that, cross-legged and long-eyed, in unfathomable inner self-satisfaction, had gazed forth from their niches in the temple walls below for unknown centuries upon the passing mortal throng.
Suddenly he turned and left her. Sir Arthur was now pacing the terrace with the globe-trotter, lucidly laying down the law of India, as interpreted by his own sagacity, his smouldering cigar making ruby circles in the night with every wave of an authoritative hand.
The second secretary, Mr. Simpson to wit, was sitting by Lady Gerardine's side, effusively receiving each indifferent phrase that dropped from her lips. As Major Bethune advanced towards them the young civilian rose and drew away, with a crab-like movement, in the direction of the abandoned Baby.
Lady Gerardine clasped her hands together on her knees; the contraction of her heart, at this man's approach, painted her face ashen even in the pallid light. He took a seat—not Mr. Simpson's lowly stool, but one that placed him on a level with her; and then there came a little pause between them like the tension of the elements before the break of the storm. She had successfully avoided him the whole evening; but now she felt that further evasion was useless; and she waited, collecting her forces for the final resistance.
He went straight to the point:
I hope you have reconsidered yesterday's decision. Perhaps you do not understand that this is a question of duty with me, of conscience.
He was trying to speak gently.
You have no responsibility in the matter, she answered.
I cannot accept that point of view, he said, flashing into icy anger.
She did not reply in words, but rose with a swift haughty movement, unmistakably showing her resolve of closing the discussion once and for ever. But in an instant he was before her, barring her way.
Major Bethune, she exclaimed, "this is persecution!"
The blood rushed to her cheeks, her eyes flashed. For an instant she was roused to superlative beauty. Stronger became his conviction that here must be more than mere heartless caprice. Something of her emotion gained him.
If you would only give me a reason! he cried.
It is impossible, she answered quickly. "Is it a thing to be asked for so easily, this raking up of the past? The past! is it not dead? My God—it is dead! What if I for one will keep it so?"
That is no reason, he said cuttingly; "it is hardly an excuse."
She passed by him with long swift steps and a rush of silken draperies. And thus, once more baffled, Baby found him, stonily reflecting. She stopped, promptly discarding her meek admirer.
No success?
No success.
You had better give it up, said Aspasia.
I was never more determined not to give it up.
Baby looked exceedingly sympathetic, fluffy, and engaging: something like a sweet little night-owl, with her round wide eyes and her pursed-up mouth. He suddenly caught one of her hands and held its soft palm closely between his own lean ones:
Miss Cuningham, he said in an urgent whisper, "I know you can help me."
She stared at him. It would almost seem as if this strange being could read her vacillating thought. He saw her hesitate and bent to look into her eyes, while the pressure of his hand grew closer.
And if you can help me, you must. Remember your promise.
Well, then, the girl became suddenly breathless, as if she had been running. She looked round over her shoulder: "I know it's beastly mean of me, but, there—you have only to make Uncle Arthur take it up...."
Ah! The teeth shone out in his dark face. "I understand. Thank you."
But Baby was already gone. With crimson cheeks and a deep sense of guilt, she was running hastily away from the starry terrace and the great mysterious, jewelled Indian night, into the lighted drawing-room. Here Lady Gerardine was quietly seated alone by a green-shaded lamp, reading her favourite Thoreau. She looked up and smiled at Aspasia's flurried entrance, marked the quivering, flushed face.
My dear, she exclaimed, with a vague amused laugh, "what has happened? Don't tell me that you have had to box George Murray's ears again!"
George Murray was Sir Arthur's first secretary, a young gentleman with a weakness for the fair sex, whose manners and morals had (in spite of M. Chatelard's theories of Western immunity) been considerably affected by the lax atmosphere of India. Aspasia had found it necessary, more than once, to put him in his place; and on the last occasion had confided to her aunt, with a noisy sigh, that if the Leschetizky method was to fail in the glorious musical results for which she had once fondly hoped, it had at least had the advantage of singularly strengthening the muscles of her arm.
She now stretched out her fingers, and, half unconsciously sketched a buffet in the air; then she shook her head:
Oh, no, indeed! He has not looked the same side of the room as me since Saturday.
Poor man, I am not surprised!
Serve him right! said Aspasia, indefinite but vindictive.
It is not Mr. Simpson, surely?
Simpson? echoed the girl, with supreme contempt, "that little worm!"
Who is it, then? For something, or some one, has upset you.
Oh, I don't know! It's Major Bethune, I think. I don't believe he's canny. He has got such queer eyes.
Then, thinking she saw her aunt shudder, she gave her a remorseful hug and flew to the piano to plunge into melodious fireworks.
With a sigh as of one oppressed, Lady Gerardine took up her book again and endeavoured to absorb herself. For years she had successfully cultivated the faculty of leading her mind into peaceful places; but to-night there was no wandering forth with Thoreau's pure ghost into the whispering green woods he loved. Stormy echoes from the past were in her ears; relentless hands were forcing her back into the arid spaces where dwelt the abomination of desolation. Everything seemed to conspire against her, even Aspasia's music.
The girl's fingers had slid into a prelude of Chopin, and the familiar notes which she had been wont to reel off with the most perfect and heartless technique were now sighing—nay, wailing—under her touch.
Stop! exclaimed Lady Gerardine, suddenly springing to her feet. "Oh, Baby, even you! What has come into your music to-night? You have betrayed me!" she said, and bursting into tears, hurried from the room.
The girl's hands dropped in consternation from the keys. Never had she heard before to-day that ring in her aunt's voice, that cry of the soul. She did not dare follow the flying figure. "You have betrayed me!" ... Little, indeed, could the poor soul guess how completely she had been betrayed.
Dr. Chatelard expressed his desire to accompany the officer of Guides upon his homeward walk. It was part of his programme to study the lesser as well as the great. And, having to his satisfaction completed his psychological analysis of a ruler in chief, he told himself that half a page or so consecrated to one of the pawns in the great chess game of empire would not be without entertainment to his readers—especially as in the lean taciturn Scotsman he believed to have lighted on the type le plus net of the "Anglo-Saxon" soldier.
With this idea in view he had watched his subject with the keenness of the collector already some time before his departure, and had been interested in a little scene between host and guest. With a purposeful yet respectful stride, Bethune had approached the Governor and addressed him in an undertone. Sir Arthur had listened and responded with urbanity and condescension. Whereupon the officer had bowed in what seemed grateful acknowledgment; and, as he had turned away, the astute Frenchman had thought to read upon his countenance, saturnine as it was, a certain unmistakable satisfaction.
Therefore, when they started on their way down to the town, the traveller could think of no better topic for opening the conversation with his dissimilar companion than praise of the official who had evidently just granted him some important request.
A charming personality, our host, is he not?
No doubt.
Bethune's tone was discouraging—but these diables d'Anglo-Saxons (as M. Chatelard knew) wanted drawing out. So, undauntedly genial, he pursued:
And one of your great politicians, hein? The square man in the square place, as you say.
This being a mere statement, Bethune did not feel called upon to reply; and M. Chatelard, amazed at a silence which he, with subtlety, interpreted as hostile, was fain to exclaim:
Is it possible you do not think so?
I do not feel myself competent to judge, said Raymond Bethune.
My faith, thought the other, "we do not make great progress at this rate. Let us try something more intimate. At least, my young friend," he went on aloud, "you have, I trust, yourself no cause to be dissatisfied with his Excellency. Some little demand you made of him to-night, did you not? Some matter concerning career, advancement?"
My career, my advancement, are quite independent of Sir Arthur Gerardine's influence.
M. Chatelard pondered; was there not certainly something more than British reserve in the almost resentful tone—some deep-lying grudge that it would be piquant to find out?
Why, then, he cried, with much artful artlessness of candour. "Why, see how one can deceive one's self! Just now I would have sworn, from your attitude, despite your national phlegm, that you had solicited and been granted some personal favour."
A personal favour, yes. Nothing connected with my service.
A personal favour, hein?
If indeed you would reckon it a favour—a mere act of justice I regard it.
Indeed, my dear sir, an act of justice?
The whole affair is one that could not interest you, M. Chatelard.
My dear young man, all interests me. It is my trade to be interested—always.
They had reached the end of the palace grounds; and, by the lights of the flaring booths that were plastered against the walls, Bethune halted a second to survey the shrewd, kindly, expressive countenance, quivering with eager curiosity, at his shoulder.
His own features relaxed with that twinkle of the eyes which was his usual approach to a display of amusement. After all, why should he not gratify this note-taking traveller with his tale? There was no mystery about it; and a plain statement of the situation might serve to put in order his own ideas which had been troubled by Lady Gerardine's unreasonable and unexpected attitude.
My business with Sir Arthur to-night is soon told—— He broke off abruptly. "You are, I understand, a sedulous observer: did you happen to take any note of her Excellency the Governor's wife?"
Did I take any note of—— the sentence escaped M. Chatelard in a breathless way—as if the words had been knocked out of him—and ended in a little squeak. He drew back one step and contemplated the younger man in silence for a perceptible moment. "Did I notice her Excellency?" he repeated then, in elaborately natural tones. "Why, my dear fellow, it would mean having no eyes not to notice her—one of the most beautiful women it has ever been my good fortune to see! In fact, to-night, still under the influence of the look in her eyes, I should say, my friend, the most beautiful! Lucky dog (as you say) your Governor!"
Bethune threw away the match with which he had been lighting his cigar and blew a contemptuous puff.
Before she married Sir Arthur, said he, "she was the wife of a comrade of mine. It is my desire, it is my intention, to write the life of that comrade. I require the co-operation of Lady Gerardine. She refused it to me. I went to Sir Arthur."
You went to Sir Arthur, repeated the Frenchman, in tones of one almost stunned with amazement.
Yes, answered the officer, gravely. "To make her accede to my request."
And he——
Oh, he has promised to see that she does so at once.
For a while M. Chatelard was fain to proceed in silence, words failing him before so extraordinary a situation. As he went he regarded the Englishman with ever-increasing respect, admiration, not to say enthusiasm.
Voilà qui est raide ... voilà qui est fort! he was saying to himself. "Was I not right to tell myself that there was something truly remarkable about this young man? What a drama! What could not our Balzac have made of it! The well-conserved—but elderly, yes, elderly husband; the young, lovely, bored wife—ah, but she bores herself, the young wife! And then this young, handsome, sinister officer who has known her before, loved her it is clear from the first—the wife of his comrade! He comes to her with a plan ... a plan of an astuteness to deceive an angel. But the woman who loves is never deceived. Because she loves him, she reads his heart. Virtuous, she refuses.... They are both young, she knows her weakness. She bores herself, yes, she bores herself, but she refuses. And he, what does he do, the young, silent, determined adorer? My faith, it is the simplicity of genius: he goes to the old husband, that the old husband may order her to yield to his scheme. And the husband—and this is the strangest part of it all—what does he say? Oh, it is simple, simple in the extreme. He promises to do so at once. What a story! And my friend here, under the starlight, qualifies it in three words: 'No favour—justice.' It is of a cynicism! Yet yonder he stands, as grave and cold as a judge. Poor Sir Gerardine. But here is a young man who will make his way—and, for the psychologist, what a study!"
My faith, said he aloud, "but you have courage, sir."
Courage?
Ah, you thought I did not notice Lady Gerardine! I will tell you something—as one man to another—she is one who will not make her lover's task easy to him, nor amusing, hey! With her it will be all or nothing: the grand passion. Ah, my gallant friend, believe the word of one who has had experience in these matters! Avoid the grand passion, for it's what makes cinders of our manhood.
It was Bethune's turn to halt amazed.
I beg your pardon, he exclaimed. "But are you warning me against falling in love with Lady Gerardine?" Then, overcome with the humour of the idea, he threw back his head and gave vent to his short laugh.
In this laugh, however, M. Chatelard's acumen was pleased to discover a concentrated bitterness; in the touch upon his arm, a menace to the interferer.
Nay, heaven forfend! he cried, dropping the personal tone with a hasty return to natural good-breeding. "It only struck me, sir, that your programme was a little dangerous. And for one like myself, who has made a study of women, Lady Gerardine is a type—a type rare, fortunately, perhaps, for the peace of the world, but, heavens, of what palpitating allurement when one does come across it!"
A type of a very selfish woman, said Bethune, shortly. And this time the physician was not far wrong in noting bitterness in his tone. "As cold as a stone, I should say, and as self-centred as a cat."
Self-centred, I grant you. But cold? screamed the Frenchman.
As cold at heart as she is white in face, said Harry English's comrade.
White? so is the flame at its intensest! Cold? With that glow in her hair? With that look in the eyes—those lips? Touch that coldness and you will burn to the bone. Ah, it is not the old husband that will feel that fire! But the fire is there, all the fiercer for being concentrated. Ah, when she lets herself go, her Excellency, it will be terrible—it will be grand! There are conflagrations which make the very skies grow red.
My way branches off here, interrupted Bethune, drily, "and yonder are the lights of your hotel. Good night."
He shook hands loosely, and was gone before the globe-trotter, interrupted in full eloquence, had had time to lay hold of his formal French manner for the farewell ceremony.
I have pressed him a little too closely, he thought, as he stood watching the soldierly figure swing away from light to darkness, down the narrow street dotted with gaudy booths. "He is already on the fatal slope.... I must not let the end of this drama escape me."
Raymond Bethune, as he strode along, laughed to himself at "the French Johnny's" nonsense. Nevertheless a phrase or two seemed to circle in his mind round the baffling image of his friend's widow like a flight of birds round the head of a sphinx: "White? so is the flame at its intensest. Cold? Touch that coldness and be burned to the bone...."
The walls of Lady Gerardine's room glowed like the page of an old missal, with carmine and cobalt blue, with beetle-wing purples and greens. It was a columned and arched apartment in the wing of the modernised palace which yet remained as the last dusky prince had left it. Here Sir Arthur's improving hand had been so far stayed.
Lady Gerardine sat in silence while the ayah brushed her hair. Though no word had passed between them, the woman, inarticulately, as a dog may, felt that her mistress's heart was troubled. And, while her dark fingers moved among the gleaming strands, they trembled a little with a vague anxiety. Jani had been Rosamond's first and only nurse. It was to the faithful breast that had practically given her life that the young widow had clung in the hour of bereavement. This creature, who could not reason but only feel, had been then the sole presence she could endure. To the house of altered fortunes, from comparative poverty into the almost queenly state of Lady Gerardine, the woman had accompanied her mistress, rejoicing; bringing with her the same atmosphere of unreasoning, almost animal devotion.
How much did she understand, this secret, dark-minded, dark-faced old Hindoo? More, perhaps, about her white child than Rosamond knew herself! But her theories of what was good for her mistress had not changed since the days when she had ministered to her with gaudy toys, scraps of gilt paper, and luscious Indian sweets.
* * * * *
Sir Arthur's step, the resonant step of the master, rang on the marble without. The ayah imperturbably continued to wield her brush. The faint tension that came over Lady Gerardine's figure was familiar to her, but evoked no sympathy; children and women know not what is their real good, in the Hindoo's opinion; the Lieutenant-Governor was a great and good lord, and her Ladyship's jewels were even nobler than the Ranee's.
Tired, Rosamond? cried Sir Arthur, breezily. "I was sorry, my dear, that you could not wait to bid good night to our guests. But I made it all right; I made it all right. Another time, love, you will consult me, before retiring. Governor's wife, you know ... noblesse oblige, eh? Well, well, let it pass! My dear child, the garden window open upon you, at this hour! We shall have you down with fever as sure as fate." He clucked disapprovingly. "Will you never learn sense?"
Rosamond stood up.
Pull the blinds, Jani.
She came forward into the centre of the room, so strange a presence, with the long yellow tresses, the white skin, the tall proportions of her northern womanhood, in this haunt of oriental splendour, still peopled, one would think, with the small ghosts of bygone brown beauties.
Through the door left open by Sir Arthur the sound of the fountain playing in the great inner baths fell soothingly on the ear. A breeze gently swayed the scented matting blinds to and fro and brought in gusts of Eastern airs to their nostrils, spiced, heavy, dreamy. From below, where lay the town, rose rumours of revel—the poignant twang of the ghitern, the plaint of the reed, the dry sob of the tom-tom. The whole atmosphere within and without was an appeal to the emotions, to the senses; the very touch of the night wind a velvet-soft caress. A night, surely, when but to be alive was in itself a boon; when to be young and beautiful should mean joy. The appeal of it clamoured to Rosamond Gerardine's dormant soul, troubled this day to the core of its self-imposed slumber by the insistent voices of the past. She turned cold with a stony prescience of evil. If she might not sleep through life, then must she wish herself dead.
I am very tired, she said to her husband, with a note of unconscious pleading in her voice. "I am going to bed; excuse me to all our guests."
Oh, every one has gone! said the Lieutenant-Governor.
He threw himself luxuriously upon the settee and stretched his arms over the piled cushions with the gesture of the man at home in his wife's room.
Sit here, dear.
She took place beside him. He lifted a coil of her hair and played with it admiringly. The ayah drew back into the arched recess of the window and stood immobile, the silver brush gleaming in her dark hand.
Bethune tells me, Rosamond, said Sir Arthur, rolling the soft hair round his finger, "that he wants you to help him with a life of poor English." Rosamond looked at her husband, the light of pleading in her eyes died down into dull misery. "I understand, dear, that you have made some objection; but, as I have said to him, it is our duty, my dear Rosamond, our duty, to see that the memory of the poor fellow should get proper recognition. A very distinguished young soldier," said Sir Arthur, with benevolence, "it would certainly ill-become me to put any difficulty in the way. So I have promised——"
She started away from him with an involuntary movement; the twist of hair in Sir Arthur's fingers plucked her back. She gave a cry:
Oh, you have hurt me!
He was full of solicitous apology; kissed her hand, patted her head. But she, still drawing from him, gazed at him with the eyes of a woman in fever.
You have hurt me, she repeated, in a whisper.
Of course, proceeded her lord and master, with fresh gusto, "I can quite understand, dear, that you should shrink a little from the business. It would naturally be a slightly painful one. Your social duties occupy you a good deal, and——" he tenderly pulled her ear, "you have not much inclination for literary labour, have you? Therefore, my love, overworked as I am, I have resolved to take the matter into my own hands. In fact, I have actually promised Major Bethune that I will be responsible for the task."
You!
Her pale lips laughed silently.
Yes, I myself. He rubbed his hands and nodded. "I shall make the time, my love."
You? she repeated, and rose stiffly to her feet. "No."
My dear Rosamond!
It had come upon her, after all. Here would no refusal serve her any more, no strength of determination, no piteousness of pleading. Before this smiling self-confidence of will what resistance could avail? It is the relentless trickle that wears the stone.
No hands but mine, at least. No eyes but mine!
My dear child!
One would have thought that my wishes would be paramount in the matter; but you drive me, all of you. Have your way.
You amaze me—this is childish, unreasonable!
She stared vacantly before her.
Kismet! she said. "It is fate—I will do it."
I have never heard such nonsense in my life.
But at least, her eyes shot flame upon him, "let no one talk of laying a hand upon these things. Good God, they, at least, are mine!"
Sir Arthur rose also, too bewildered still to be able to grasp the full measure of the offence.
You are certainly very strange to-night, Rosamond, he exclaimed with testy anxiousness. "Not yourself at all. I feel convinced you have a touch of fever."
He stretched out his fingers for her pulse. Quickly she evaded his touch.
Write to that man, she said, enunciating her words with painful distinctness, "tell him that he has gained his point."
Ignoring the unbecoming and extraordinary situation of having a command issued to himself in such imperious tones from his wife's lips, Sir Arthur moved in high dudgeon towards the door.
I insist upon your taking an effervescing draught at once. And to-morrow I shall certainly call in Saunders to see you. Jani, your mistress must go to bed.
The door fell back. Rosamond sank down once more on the settee and sat, with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her clasped hands, staring at the marble floor, long, long into the night, while Jani waited and never even moved a finger.
If sleep came at all to Rosamond that night, it came with no refreshment of forgetfulness, but rather with an increase of inner struggle. Hour merged into hour until even the noisy Indian town fell into some kind of silence; but the voices in her troubled soul ceased not their clamour.
Why should she be made to do this thing, she who had asked so little of life; who had, indeed, deliberately fashioned life for herself so that it should give her but one boon—quietude? Her pulses throbbed as if with that fever which the solicitous husband had prognosticated. How dared they?
Then, reason took the cold grey eye, the cold reproachful tone of Major Bethune, to ask her, Had she the right to refuse? And fate seemed to assume the kindly handsome smiling countenance of Sir Arthur, to assure her that it must be. Who knew as well as she that it was vain to struggle against any fiat of his? And then, once more, every fibre of her being, every energy of her soul, started in revolt.
The tom-tom beat below in the town a mocking refrain to her anguish. And, without the walls, the pariah dogs howled and fought, snarling, and wrangled, growling. She slid into snatches of horrid slumber, in which the contending elements in her soul seemed to take tangible form. But with the dawn a change came upon her. She awoke from one of these interludes in which she had after all glided to unconsciousness; the tension had become relaxed; there was one clear purpose in her mind:
She would not do it!
Reason now no longer appeared under an enemy's shape, but came like a friend to her pillow and whispered words of soothing. They had no right to ask it of her. No power on earth could force her to it. All that the world had the claim to know about Harry English, his comrades, his friend, those that had been beside him in his glorious fight against destiny, could give to it. What concerned the man, apart from the soldier; what concerned that inner life, had been hers alone. What sense of justice could there be in the demand that she should break through the deliberate seal of years, stultify the intention of a whole existence, at the bidding of an overbearing young man, of a pragmatic old one? Once, for a little while, life had held for her mysterious possibilities—sweet, but no more unfolded than the bud in the narrow sheath. Was she now to tear apart these reserves, close-folded, leaf upon leaf, dissect the "might-have-been" till her heart's blood ran? No, a hundred times! And then, upon the strength of this decision, the habitual long-cultivated calmness came floating back to her. She lay and gazed at the shafts of light as they filtered in through the blinds and fell in crosses and bars upon the marble floor. From their first inroad, when they had seemed but the laying of shadow upon shadow, to the awakening of colour in and under them, she watched them with wide-open yet dreamy eyes.
All the night she had battled with the nightmare horror. Now, with the dawn, came peace: not the peace of acceptance, but cessation of feeling. She mused and pleasured her mind on the mere feast of sight, as, bit by bit, in the familiar places, the tints of her wonderful missal-page room returned to existence for her eye; here the turquoise-blue inlay, with its cool stripe of black and white, there a lance of rose-crimson on the tesselated wall, glowing like the dawn itself amid the surrounding gloom. Across the light shafts of the garden window, there was a dance of flickering leaf shadows. And this greenness set her mind wandering, not in the over-luxuriant, untranquil, full-blossomed Indian garden, but into cool dim English spaces—into some home wood where harebells grew sparsely and the dew glittered grey on bramble-brake and hollow; where last year's leaves lay thick and all the air was full of the scent of the honest, clean, wholesome soil of England.
And as she dreamed her placid waking dream, morning life in the Governor's palace began to stir about her. Already from the town below the too brief hour of stillness had been some time broken. But these outlandish sounds: the cry of the water-carriers and camel-drivers, the jingle of cow-bells, the blast of the shepherd's horn, the brazen gong of the temple, had not really broken in upon her thoughts: they had formed rather a background, vague and distant, haunting the sweetness of her far wanderings.
Now, however, as the house itself became awake, creepingly, with slinking feet, she called upon sleep again for fear once more of what the day would bring her.
* * * * *
One came and bent over her, holding his breath. And she feigned unconsciousness. And then she heard him withdraw on exaggerated tiptoe. And next entered the ayah with her tea—Jani, the ayah, who flung wide the windows on the garden side.
Early as it was the lilies were throwing up incense to the rising sun-god; it gushed into the room as upon the swing of a censer. And, turning her languid eyes, Rosamond saw how, in the fresh little breeze, the great green banana-leaves waved to and fro across her window against a sky of quivering silver.
When Jani returned to the bed, Rosamond handed her the empty cup with a smile. But as Jani took it she looked at her mistress keenly; and, after a second or two, stretched out a stealthy hand and touched the forehead under the masses of golden hair, still heavy, from the night-sweat. The fair brow was cool enough —there was no trace of the ever-dreaded fever in the encircled eyes or on the smooth white face; only the weariness of a long night-watch. But Jani shook her head to herself as she withdrew with her tray; and, meeting Miss Aspasia at the door, she was all for forbidding her entrance. But that young lady was not of those who are turned from their path.
Don't be a goose, Jani! cried she, briskly. "If you can see Aunt Rosamond, why should not I?" She ducked nimbly under the white-draped forbidding arm, as she spoke. "And she is not a bit asleep; her eyes are as wide awake as anything."
Too strainedly awake, one more versed in the reading of the human countenance might well have deemed. But the last thing Aspasia sought in life was its subtlety. Rosy and fresh from her bath, her crisp hair crinkled into tighter curls than ever and still beaded here and there with the spray of her energetic ablutions, as she stood in the square of green light, wrapping her pink cambric dressing-gown tightly round her pretty figure, she was as pleasant to look upon as an English daisy. Lady Gerardine smiled more brightly.
It's a glorious morning, Aunt Rosamond. Are not you going to ride?
Not this morning.
Aren't you well? Aspasia sat down on the side of the bed and took her aunt's hands into her firm grasp. There was a conscience-stricken anxiety in the girl's eyes.
Quite well; but I slept badly.
Baby felt the beat of a slow pulse under her fingers. Relieved but still weighted with a sense of guilt, she bent to kiss the face on the pillow. Lady Gerardine turned her cheek with that tolerant submission to caress that she was wont to display. Then she drew her hands away and gently pushed Aspasia from her.
Go and dress, you will be late. And tell your uncle that I am trying to sleep.
Still Aspasia hesitated. She would have liked to confess her last night's treachery and be forgiven. But Lady Gerardine, who was never a very approachable person, seemed this morning more distant than ever. And catching sight of the dancing leaves outside, the girl felt the joy of the young day suddenly seize her spirit. She shuffled gaily across the room in her heel-less slippers.
I'll tell Runkle you're sound asleep and he must not disturb you, she announced with cheerful mendacity, "otherwise you'll have him prowling in and thrusting that thermometer down your throat."
Lady Gerardine laughed a little, but made no protest.—That thermometer!
Then she turned her head and fell to watching the garden window again, glad when across the open spaces she heard at last the crisp repeated rhythm of the horses' feet draw close and ring sharp, as the cavalcade moved up the road by the garden walls, and drop away in the distance.
* * * * *
When Aspasia returned from her ride she found her aunt seemingly in the same attitude; the long white hands folded, she could have sworn, exactly as she had last seen them; the deep-dreaming eyes still gazing out of the window.
I declare, cried the girl, "you lazy thing!" but there was still a shade of uneasiness in her voice and in her glance. "Are not you ashamed of yourself?"
Not at all, said Rosamond, "I've had a very happy time. And you?"
Hot, hot, said Aspasia, flinging her Panama hat across the room and rubbing her forehead. Her cheeks had grown pale and there were moist dark rings round her eyes.
I have had the better part, I think, said Lady Gerardine.
Not you, said Baby, as she dumped her solid weight on her favourite corner of the bed. "It's been delightful, delicious. I've never enjoyed a ride so much." Her bright hazel gaze misted over in remembrance. "Oh dear," said she, "how can you lie there! You're quite young, Aunt Rosamond, but I think your idea of happiness is like a cat's. You just like to sit still and blink and think. And even the cats romp about—at night," she added, parenthetically.
Oh, I don't even think, or care to think much, said the other in that indulgent half-playful manner which she reserved for her niece, to whom she talked more as if she were five years old than eighteen. "While you were out I let my soul swing on that great green leaf over there by the window. Do you see it, Baby? It is beginning to catch a ray of sunlight now and shines like a golden emerald."
Gracious! cried the girl.
I think it is partly, said Rosamond, pursuing her own thoughts, "because of this vivid passionate land, where every one lives so intensely. No wonder, poor things, their ideal of complete happiness over here is Nirwana! I am glad, Baby, that we shall soon be in our placid England again, where people go from the cradle to the grave, quietly as along a grey road green-hedged, from a cottage gate to a sleeping churchyard."
I am glad, too, we are going to England, cried Aspasia, catching up one phrase of her aunt's speech and neglecting the main idea. "I met Major Bethune, this morning," she said, half-bashful, half-defiant, "and he's going home on leave, too."
Lady Gerardine's eyelids drooped, just enough to veil her glance. She lay quite still, without even a contraction of the fingers that rested upon the sheet. Baby peeped at her in a sidelong, bird-like way, and felt inexplicably uncomfortable. She babbled on, stumbling over her words:
He was riding such a brute of a horse, and sat it like a centaur—or whatever you call the thing. You never saw such an eye as the creature had; one of those raw chestnuts, you know, with a neck that goes up in the air and seems to hang loose. And he sat, just with the grip of his knees, you know. He is as thin as—as—— Simile was not Aspasia's strong point; she broke off. "You are not listening to a word I am saying." She swung her legs pettishly, in the short linen habit.
I heard, said Rosamond, without lifting her eyes. "I heard very well."
I'll go and take a bath, said Aspasia, sliding off the bed, and pausing for the expected protest. Aspasia's habit of plunging into water four or five times a day was a matter of perpetual household objurgation.
Yes—I'm simply made of dust! She moved towards the door. Still her aunt lay, fair and white and still. It seemed to the girl, scarcely even breathing.
Do you know, Runkle's new secretary has come. The famous new Indian secretary—the pure native spring, you know, she cried, with a childish effort at dispelling that uncanny supineness. "He gave me an awful fright."
The long drooped lids flickered with a swift upward look of unseeing pupils.
Fright! Why?
Oh! I don't know. It was fearfully silly of me. As I was coming along your passage, just now, I saw a hand hold back the curtain for me. I thought it was that Simpson. And as I bounced through I nearly fell into his arms—and found it was a black man—ugh! The famous new secretary, in fact. He stood like a stock, and I squeaked in my usual way. And then he smiled. I don't like Indians much, but that's a fine handsome fellow. Looks like a Sikh—I'm boring you. I'm off. Lord, here's Runkle! Runkle, I'm going to have a bath.
She turned with gusto to fling her little glove of defiance afresh in the new-comer's face—and this time was not disappointed of the effect.
My dear Aspasia!
Only number two!
It's not that you've not been warned....
The wrangle of words rose in the air, to end in the inevitable mutual iterations: "Don't say you've not been warned, my dear Aspasia," and "Don't care, Runkle, I'm going to have a bath."
I am afraid Aunt Rosamond's not well, was Aspasia's somewhat spiteful parting shot, as she slipped out behind the door hangings.
Not well!
With his short quick step Sir Arthur came to the bedside.
Would you mind, said his wife, "getting Jani to pull the blinds again; the light is growing too strong!"
She wanted the shadows about her, for the struggle was coming, and she felt in her heart that she was doomed to lose. Sir Arthur attended to the detail himself, then hurried back.
Fever? No. Even he could scarcely insist upon this with his stubby finger upon that pulse, the pulse of a life that found itself just now an infinite fatigue. "Below par! I wish, dear, you would for once pay some attention to what I say. It is not that I have any desire to find fault with you, my love, but how many times must I represent to you that it is important to get the early freshness of the day in this climate, and take your rest later?'
Yes, said Rosamond.
She lay waiting for the dreaded blow to fall. It was not long delayed.
It is high time, indeed, that we should all have a change, pursued the Lieutenant-Governor.
He still held her hand in his and looked down complacently to see how white it lay, in the shaded room, upon his broad palm: how slight a thing, how delicately shaped, with taper fingers and filbert nails. The great man had chosen her in the zenith of his life and success because of her beauty. She had little birth to boast of, and no fortune. But it pleased him at every turn to trace in her those points which are popularly supposed to belong only to the patrician.
It is high time, said Sir Arthur, turning the passive hand to gaze at a palm no deeper tinted than is the pale blush of mother-of-pearl, "that we should get back to England for a while. And, by the way, that young man, Bethune of the Guides, poor English's friend—you know, my love—has dear Aspasia told you? We met him this morning; he is also going to travel home very shortly."
So Aspasia told me.
I have advised him to wait for our boat. A good plan, don't you think? We could be talking over that biography together—pour passer le temps—eh, my dear?
Pour passer le temps.
Yes. I informed Major—ah—Bethune, that you had some idea about preferring to do this little matter yourself. As I said to Bethune: 'I am willing to undertake it for her; but in this, she must be free—quite free.' He paused upon the generous concession. Her lips moved.
What did you say? he asked.
She had but repeated, in the former mechanical manner: "Quite free." Now, however, she altered her phrase. Through all the clamour of the inner storm there had pierced the consciousness of his irritable self-esteem on the verge of offence.
Thank you, said she.
I am particularly anxious, resumed Sir Arthur, squaring his fine shoulders and inflating his deep chest, "that there should be no hitch in this affair. It would ill become me, as I said to Bethune, me of all men, to place any difficulty in the way of a memorial to poor English. I am sure you understand me in this, my love!"
He bent his handsome grey head and kissed her hand with a conscious old-world grace. The sentiment he was delicately endeavouring to convey was truly a little difficult to put into definite language; and Sir Arthur had too much tact to attempt it. It might be transcribed thus: "If that excellent young man, your first husband, had not so obligingly left the world, I should not be standing in this present satisfactory position with regard to yourself." And if he were grateful to Captain English, how much more so ought she—Lady Gerardine—to be on the same account? He was a little shocked that she should not have shown more alacrity to do justice to the worthy fellow's memory.
Well, my dear, said Sir Arthur, jocosely, after a pause, "I must not waste much more time in this flirtation. I have a busy morning before me. A very busy morning." He drew a long breath, to end up with a satisfied sigh. "And, by the way, my new secretary has come. A capable fellow he seems! Quite extraordinarily well educated. Speaks English perfectly. Caste business will be a bit of a nuisance, of course. Will have to feed apart, and all that nonsense. Strange creatures, are not they? But he's worth it. Well, we shall see you at tiffin."
The observation was an order, and Rosamond assented to it as such. Short of actual illness, when the precautions surrounding her would have been of the most minute, not to say wearisome nature, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor was expected to fulfil the duties of her state of life to the last detail.
And it's quite settled, added Sir Arthur, lightly, "that you intend to supply the material Bethune requires yourself."
She sat up in bed, with a sudden fierce movement. And, catching her head in her hands, turned a white desperate face upon him.
Yes, yes, she cried, "Oh God, yes!"
Sir Arthur was amazed. So much so, indeed, that even as last night, amazement superseded his very natural vexation.
Why, Rosamond! Really, my love. I am afraid, my love, that Aspasia is right, that you are not well. This is the second time in twenty-four hours that you have answered me in this—in really, what I may call—quite with temper, in fact. I'm afraid, dear, that you cannot be well. I shall certainly request Saunders to look in this evening.
Lady Gerardine fell back upon her pillow, and then, lifting the heavy mass of her hair, swept it across her face like a sheltering wing, as if, even in the dim room, she could not endure the gaze of human eyes upon her. Sir Arthur, for all his science of life, could not but own to himself that he was nonplussed. He shrugged his shoulders. Fortunately, sensible men were not expected to understand the whims of the charming but irresponsible sex. Rosamond was evidently not the thing, and therefore was to be indulgently excused. In spite of which philosophic conclusion his attitude towards his secretaries and other subordinates that morning was marked with unwonted asperity.
Something's turned our seraphic old ass a trifle sour, Mr. George Murray remarked to his junior, with a grin.
* * * * *
Under the veil of her hair Rosamond would have called, if she could, on all the shades of the world to come and cover her; would have gladly sunk under them, away from the light of life and the pain of living, somewhere where all would be dark and all quiet, where she might be forgotten—and allowed to forget.
Jani, said her mistress, "bring me Captain English's box!"
The ayah stared as if she could not have heard aright. There followed a strange oppressive silence, in which the lapping of the waters in the inner marble spaces seemed to take whispering voices of amazement. Then Lady Gerardine, standing straight and impassive by her dressing-table, her head just turned aside from the reflection of her own beauty, repeated her order in the same hard, uninflected tone.
Captain English's box; bring it to me.
Jani looked sharply up at the speaker's face and clapped her hands together with the wail of the children of her race when sudden trouble comes upon them.
Ai, ai!
Go, said Lady Gerardine.
Grudgingly Jani turned to obey. She went, muttering to herself, groping in her soul for the reason of this strange and most unexpected order—an order so out of keeping with the whole tenor of her mistress's life, that it rang in her ears like a menace of calamity.
* * * * *
It was a small thing enough, a common battered tin box, to rank with such importance. But it held tragedy: more than tragedy, a woman's murdered youth. Well did Jani remember the day it had come back to the little home, up in the hills—all that was left to them of their handsome young lord. They could not carry Rosamond back her dead; what soldier's widow can hope for that last tragic comfort? But the few tangible traces he had left behind him; these were hers by right, and to her they were brought, with scarcely less reverence than if they had been his honoured remains—the journal he had kept for her during yonder endless months of siege; the letters he had written her, never to post; his notes; sundry trifling belongings, marked with that poignant personal touch which seems to inflict the hardest pain of all.
One can kneel in uplifted resignation beside the awful grandeur of the soul-abandoned clay. But the old pipe, burned down on one side, the worn glove ... over these trivial relics the heart breaks. Rosamond English, in her nausea of misery, her rebellion against the unaccepted unrealisable sorrow, could not look at them, could not touch the poor memorials. She thrust them back into the battered box away from her sight, and with them all the garnered treasures of her brief girlhood and of her briefer wifehood: the simple keepsake, the dried flowers—sprig from her wedding bouquet, bridal wreath—the letters to the betrothed, the first letters to the wife. Things of no worth, yet full of hideous potentialities of grief: symbols of what had been, what might have been. "Away, away with them!" cried her sick heart, "out of my sight for ever!"
And now she was to break open the coffin to look upon the horror of the murdered thing that was her youth; she who had nailed it down so fast, buried it so deep!
Jani laid the box at her mistress's feet and loosened the cords slowly and with protest.
Go, leave me now, said Rosamond, "and let no one disturb me. Leave me!" she ordered sharply, as once more the ayah hesitated. And Jani slunk away, dragging noiseless feet, her dim mind filled with inarticulate foreboding.
Rosamond drew a long breath as the hangings fell. Surely, surely, if there be anything to which one has a right, in this grinding world, it is to be alone with one's dead!
* * * * *
She took the key from where she had herself placed it ready to her hand on the table: a black rusty thing amid all the jewels and costly trinkets which it was Sir Arthur Gerardine's pleasure to provide for the adornment of the most beautiful of all his attributes—his wife. She knelt down and inserted it in the lock; and then she paused, passing her hand across her damp forehead.
Inexorable fate! She for years had walked in the company of some creature of horror, the face of which had been mercifully veiled; she had carried a mortal anguish cunningly lulled to sleep. Now her hand must lift the veil.... Now no opiate would further serve her: she must face the pain.
For a moment yet she hesitated: the last recoil of the flesh. Then the courage which despair or resignation lends—that rise of the spirit to meet the inevitable which seldom fails even the lowest human being at the end—brought back strength sufficient. She turned the key, drew out the rusty hasp, and opened the casket of her dead past.
* * * * *
The breath that rushed at her from the gaping box seized her by the throat. The unfading scent of the faded orange blossom; the very atmosphere of the lost presence, of the tobacco he had been wont to use, of the Russian-leather pocket-books she had given him; a faint, faint whisper of the English lavender her hands had been so careful to set for him, since he loved it. And, over all, through all, some odour of the siege: of strife, fever, bloodshed, and death—eastern, indescribable, terrible! Her soul sickened away.
No, the past was not dead! It had but lain in wait for her all these years. It had but gathered force to spring upon her in the fated hour. None can escape destiny. Here was the cup she had refused to drain; here were the tears of which she had cheated her heart; here, even, was the intensity of her lost youth, that she might mourn the husband of her girlhood as it had been written she must mourn.
She rose to her feet. A cry rang in her ears like the cry of an animal hurt; and she never knew that it had come from her own lips. Through gathering mists she saw Jani reappear and run towards her; and, summoning all her failing energies in one supreme effort, she called out in distinct tones:
Close the box and let no one touch it.
Then she fell like a mown lily, straight and long, beside it.
For thirty-six hours the unconsciousness for which she had longed cradled Rosamond, and when she came to herself it was slowly and with dimness. Three times, indeed, did day and night slip by her in her darkened and silent room before she even began to wonder how it was she should be left in such peace. But upon the fourth dawn, as the sun set to work to paint once more the jewel glories of her walls, memory came back upon her like a torrent.
She sat up, wildly crying:
Jani, the box! What have they done with the box?
The ayah's arms were round her in a second. Jani whispered and soothed her mistress as, long ago, she had soothed her nursling. Safe was the mem sahib's box; no one should lay finger on it but herself. But the mem sahib must be good and sleep, for Jani was by her. And Rosamond let her head rest gratefully upon the wasted bosom that once had held such loving bounties for her, and from thence slid back upon her pillows into forgetfulness again. She was weary still, with a great and blessed weariness.
* * * * *
Dr. Saunders paid brief daily visits. In Sir Arthur's opinion he was inclined to make culpably light of the whole affair—to allow those unimportant fever cases in the compound to weigh against the indisposition of the Lieutenant-Governor's wife.
It is a notable fact that the medical man treats the feminine syncope as not calling for much notice. And though the excellent Scot conceded that there might be some shock caused by the fall, to account for the prolonged unconsciousness, he declined to admit to Sir Arthur there was ground for anxiety or to recommend any treatment but quiet—absolute quiet. The preliminary symptom of irritability towards himself which Sir Arthur commented upon as extraordinary and alarming, Dr. Saunders in so many words declined, as a waste of time, even to discuss.
Nevertheless, as days succeeded each other and the patient's languor, not to say apathy, continued unabated, Dr. Saunders abruptly changed his tactics and informed his Excellency that he had better lose no time in sending his wife home.
Pack her off, he said brusquely.
Pack her off! The choice of words was as unfitting as the idea they embodied was distasteful.
I thought, said Sir Arthur, loftily, "that you were aware, Dr. Saunders, of my intention of progressing homewards next month."
Well, I should pack off Lady Gerardine by the next boat, said the doctor, no whit abashed. "There's a good deal of sickness about, and I should not like to take the responsibility of keeping her on here in this condition. She's in a queer low state—damn queer low state, Sir Arthur."
Sir Arthur puffed an angry breath down his nostrils and fixed a withering gaze on the other's dry, impassive countenance.
What sort of a physician was this who, having charge of the precious health of such a distinguished household, could allow one of its most important members to get into a damn queer low state and then brazenly announce the fact? Sir Arthur, a spot of red anger burning upon each cheekbone, gave Dr. Saunders clearly to understand how grossly he had failed in his post of trust, and announced his own intention of procuring higher opinion without delay. Whereat the doctor shrugged his shoulders and drove off in his little trap at break-neck speed, as philosophically as ever.
The higher medical opinion was procured. And though it was enveloped in phraseology better suited to the patient's distinguished station, it was substantially the same as the first—with the single difference that it seemed to take a more serious view of the case. Lady Gerardine was once more ordered home with the least possible delay, this time under penalties so obscurely hinted at as to seem far more alarming than the most explicit statement.
Sir Arthur's irritable anxiety caught fire again. He hastened the departure with as much energy as he had hitherto displayed in repudiating the idea. Truth to tell, no prescription could have well been less pleasing to him. Precluded himself by public business from leaving before his allotted time, not only would his stately "progress" home be sorely shorn of its chief adornment, but the visit of his distinguished relative, Lady Aspasia Melbury, would have to be unceremoniously postponed. Moreover, it was never part of his views of the marital state to allow his beautiful wife to remove herself more than a day's journey from his personal influence. Scornfully as he would have repudiated any suggestion of jealousy (and indeed, as Aspasia had asserted, he was perhaps too vain a man to entertain so unflattering a guest in the complacency of his thoughts), he had, whether from long residence in the East or natural disposition, an almost oriental manner of regarding the wife as an appanage to the man's estate—a satellite, pleasing and brilliant enough, but yet a mere satellite in the greater luminary's orbit of glory. And therefore, while feverishly speeding the necessary preparations, he could not but let it be seen that he was disappointed, not to say hurt, that there should be any necessity for them.
Lady Gerardine showed herself as gently indifferent to reproach as she had been to solicitude. But the physician's wisdom was so far justified that, from the moment she was told of his decision, she roused herself and began to take some interest in life again.
Home, she said, "England! Oh, I am glad!"
And, by-and-by, when she was alone with Aspasia, she began, to the girl's delight, to discuss plans with quite an eagerness in her weak voice.
They were in a long cool room, one of the bygone zenana apartments preserved practically untouched, which opened upon the one side into the garden through the arches of a colonnade, and was secluded even from that quiet spot by marvellous stone lacework screens, each different down to the smallest detail of design, yet all in harmony. However the small dusky Eastern beauties may have rebelled in their day against these exquisite prison walls; the present Northern mistress of the whilom palace found pleasure in their very seclusion, their apartness; and, according to her wont, she feasted her soul lazily on their artistic perfections.
She was stretched on a highly painted Indian couch which had been converted into a sofa, and let her eyes wander from the carving of the window screens themselves to their even lovelier reflections, cut in grey shadow on the white marble of the pavement. From the inner rooms the waters of the baths played murmurous accompaniment to her thought and her interrupted speech. Aspasia, squatting on the rug at the foot of the couch, listened, commented, and suggested.
The latter had not yet quite overcome her horrified sense of guilt in connection with Lady Gerardine's singular breakdown. Without being able to piece together any reasonable explanation of late events, she felt instinctively that here was more than met the eye; that there was in the web of her aunt's life, so to speak, an under-warp of unknown colour and unexpected strength; that behind the placid surface there lay secret depths; and that her own trifling treachery had unwittingly set forces in motion with incalculable possibilities. She had gone about, these days, with a solemn look—a living presentment of childish anxiety. The scared shadow was still on her pretty face as she now sat in attendance.
Home in six weeks... said Rosamond, dreamily. "We shall still find violets amid the dark-green leaves, Baby, and brown and yellow chrysanthemums on the top of their frost-bitten stalks."
And is it not jolly, said Aspasia, hugging her knees, "to think that we can go and paddle about in the wet as much as ever we like, without any one after us! And isn't it delightful to be going off just our two selves. Oh! Aunt Rosamond, you gave me an awful fright, you know; but really it was rather well done of you, to faint off like that. You see, the doctor says, whatever they do, now, they're not to contradict you. If ever I get an illness I hope it will be that sort. It is worth anything to be leaving Runkle behind."
Rosamond did not answer, unless a small secret smile in her pillows could be called an answer.
I don't suppose, proceeded Baby, emboldened, "that you have ever been free from the dear Runkle for more than three days at a time since you married him."
The phrase being a mere statement of fact, it was again left without response.
And really, pursued Aspasia, warming to her subject, "the way he pounced upon us last summer up in the hills was enough to ruin the nerves of a camel. No sooner gone than he was back. Positively one would rather have had him at home the whole time!"
Force of comparison evidently could no further go. Lady Gerardine gave one of her rare laughs. Baby's face was all wrathful gravity.
Poor Sir Arthur! Disciplinarian as he was, he failed to inspire his immediate circle with anything like average respect. It was a study in morals to watch the rapidity with which the first awe of some newly joined member of his English staff, the flattered reverential fascination produced by early intercourse with the great man, gave way to the snigger, the jeer, the grudging submission. But, serene in his own consciousness of power and his own heaven-born gift of applying it, Sir Arthur laid down the law smilingly and inflexibly; and the native world about him, at least, bowed to his rule with impassive face and supple back. And, if there were any symptoms of that mutiny which his niece declared a long continuance of his rule must inevitably foster, it is quite certain that he would have refused to believe in it until the rebel's knife was actually at his throat.
Ah, cried he, coming in upon them at the sound of his wife's laugh, "that's better! I thought we should soon have you on the right road when Sir James took you in hand."
Sir James's harmless ammonia mixture, orange-scented, differed as little from Dr. Saunders' sedative drops as the pith of his flowery advice from the latter's blunt statement. But Dr. Saunders was in deep disgrace, and would probably remain so until the Governor's next colic.
Lady Gerardine's face had instantly fallen back to its usual expression of indifference.
I hope you weren't listening, cried Aspasia, pertly, "we were just saying what a bore you are."
Sir Arthur laughed again, very guilelessly, and stooped to pinch her little pink ear.
I have wired to Sir James to have his opinion upon the best resort for you in England, until my arrival, dear. His answer has just come.
He spread out the flimsy sheet and ran his short trim finger along the lines: "'Decidedly Brighton, Margate, or Eastbourne.' It is evident he thinks you require bracing."
I have quite decided where I am going, answered Lady Gerardine, turning her head on her cushion to look at him.
Eh? cried Sir Arthur, scarce able to believe his ears.
I have been unable to talk business, hitherto, proceeded his wife, gently. "But I wanted to tell you I have decided: I go to Saltwoods."
To Saltwoods? His eyes were fixed, protruding, in displeased amazement.
To Saltwoods, that paltry little Dorsetshire manor-house which, by the recent demise of Captain English's mother, had devolved upon his young widow! The Old Ancient House, as it was invariably called throughout the countryside, set in such preposterous isolation that the letting of it on any terms had ever remained an impossibility—the legacy was by no means acceptable to Sir Arthur. The various sums that he had already had to disburse for its upkeep and repairs had been a very just grievance with him; and one of the many matters of business he had resolved to accomplish on his return to England was the sale, at any loss, of this inconvenient estate.
I mean to go there, said Lady Gerardine in the same tone of delicate deliberation, but sitting up among her cushions and pushing the hair from her forehead with the gesture that he had already learned to regard with some dismay as indicative of "her nervous moments." "Old Mary, the housekeeper, can easily get in a couple of country girls, and that will do for me and Aspasia very well."
Preposterous! Now that's what I call perfectly idiotic! I don't want to find fault with you, my dear girl, and of course you've been ill and all that. But it's quite evident you are not yet in a state to see things in their right light. 'A case of sudden neurasthenia upon a highly sensitive organisation,' as Sir James says.
This was certainly a more suitable definition of her ladyship's malady than the "damn queer low state" of Dr. Saunders; and Sir Arthur rolled it with some complacency upon his tongue.
There, there, we won't discuss the matter any more just now. Rely upon me to arrange all that is necessary in the most suitable and satisfactory manner. He drew a carved stool to the head of the couch, and possessed himself of her hand in his affectionate way. "There, there, she must not be worried!"
Across the fatigue of Lady Gerardine's countenance came an expression that was almost a faint amusement, tempered with pity. Aspasia watching, very demure, mouse-still, from her lowly post, found the situation one of interest.
You are always kind, said Rosamond then; "but I shall be better at Saltwoods than anywhere. You forget that I have work to do."
Work? echoed Sir Arthur. He drew back to contemplate her uneasily; positively this sounded like wandering.
It was your wish, she continued (could there lurk in that soft voice an undertone of resentment?), "that I should ... look over"—she hesitated as if she could not pronounce her dead husband's name and remodelled her phrase—"that I should assist Major Bethune with his book."
Ah!
Sir Arthur remembered. But the proposition was none the less absurd. That Lady Gerardine, too delicate to be able to remain with him—with him, Sir Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor, at a moment when a hostess was eminently needed at Government House—should be taking into her calculations the claims of so unimportant a personality as that of poor dead and gone English, was, for all his consciously punctilious chivalry towards his predecessor's shade, a piece of irritating feminine perversity that positively stank in Sir Arthur's nostrils. He snorted. For a moment, indeed, he was really angry. And the sharpness of his first exclamation brought the blood racing to Aspasia's cheeks. She hesitated on the point of interference. But the invalid's unruffled demeanour made no demand upon assistance. Suddenly realising himself the unfitness of his tone towards a neurasthenic patient of highly sensitive organisation, Sir Arthur dropped from loud indignation to his usual indulgent pitch:
See, my love, how perverse you are. First, when it seemed a mere matter of justice to poor English's memory and could have been accomplished with a very trifling expenditure of trouble, you were opposed to the matter. And now, when, as Sir James says, it is so important for you to have absolute rest, to put even your ordinary correspondence on one side, you tell me, childishly, that it is my wish you should work! I hope, I hope, said Sir Arthur, appealing to space, "that I am not an unreasonable man."
I was wrong, said Lady Gerardine; "I do not intend to do it because it was your wish, but because it is now mine."
Once again Sir Arthur paused for want of the phrase that would lit his sense of the extraordinary attitude of his wife and yet not induce any recurrence of the dreaded symptoms. Then a brilliant solution of the difficulty flashed across his mind.
I will write and inform Major Bethune of the necessary postponement of the whole affair. And now, not a word more.
Lady Gerardine smiled, but it was with lips that were growing pale.
I have myself written to Major Bethune, said she. "It is all settled. He will be travelling by our boat and will come to me at Saltwoods as soon as I am ready for him."
She sank a fraction deeper among her cushions as she spoke, and a blue shade gathered about her mouth and nostrils. Aspasia scrambled to her feet in time to arrest the storm that was threatening in clouds upon her uncle's brow.
For Heaven's sake, she cried, "hold your tongue and go away, Runkle. You'll kill her!" She dived for the smelling-salts and shrieked for Jani. "Good gracious," she rated him, holding the bottle with pink, shaky fingers to the waxen nostrils, "after all the doctors said, and everything!"
Sir Arthur retired, remarkably crestfallen, to his study. How was a man to exercise the proper marital control upon the marble-white obstinacy of a fainting woman?
Neurasthenic shock was a very fine diagnosis. But it was a question, after all—he lit his cheroot—whether a "damn queer state" did not more aptly picture the actual condition of affairs.
* * * * *
The receipt of a letter from Lady Aspasia Melbury was the first drop of balm in his Excellency's unwontedly distasteful cup. She pooh-poohed his old-fashioned suggestion that the hostess's enforced absence necessitated a postponement of her visit—announced her arrival at the prescribed time, and her conviction that she and her cousin would get on "like a house on fire." Such being the great lady's opinion, the great man was delighted; and, before many further hours had gone by, the younger and less important Aspasia, with hardly suppressed giggles, heard him hold forth at the dinner table to the following effect:
What my wife requires really is absolute country quiet. I have arranged that she should pass her first weeks in England at her own little place in Dorsetshire, a charming old manor-house. She naturally does not wish to see much society till my return; and, anyhow, there is a small piece of work which she is undertaking at my suggestion. Here he whispered audibly to the General—his guest of the evening: "Poor English, you know—a little biography we are getting up about him. He was killed, you remember, in that Baroghil expedition."
Umph, yes; I remember, Inziri Pass—seven years ago, nasty business, grumbled the General, as he guzzled his soup; and Aspasia's eyes danced and her cheeks grew pink with suppressed laughter. Young Simpson thought she was laughing at him, and became abjectly wretched for the evening.
* * * * *
Having re-established his supremacy to his own satisfaction, Sir Arthur took an enormous interest in the protocol of his wife's departure. As he himself intended to accompany her to Bombay—he was to meet Lady Aspasia at an intermediate town on her May north—all the pomp and circumstance in which his soul delighted was to grace the occasion: the escorts, the salutes, the special trains, and so forth. Finding that Major Bethune was bound by the same boat, he annexed him to his "progress," with a condescension peculiarly his own. "He is engaged in some literary work, at my request. A very good kind of fellow; very intelligent, too," he explained.
And so Raymond Bethune found himself one of the Lieutenant-Governor's brilliant retinue that autumn evening of the departure. "A silent, unemotional man," Sir Arthur might have added to his description, had he, in his own sublime content, ever thought of examining the impressions of others.
Yet, under his impassive exterior, Raymond Bethune was conscious of a keener interest than he had felt these many years. But it was not in the smartness of the Lieutenant-Governor's escort, in the gorgeousness of his equipages or the general splendour of the magnate himself that he found food for speculation; it was in the personality of Sir Arthur's wife—a repellent yet fascinating enigma. His thoughts perpetually worked round it without being able to solve it.
In another manner, a sweet, vague stirring of his being—totally new experience this!—the girlish presence of Aspasia filled his mind also to an unacknowledged degree. He felt as if his life had been caught up out of its own vastly different course and suddenly intertwined with that of these two women; the one whose every action, every word, was mysterious to him; and the other, clear to the eye as running water, child-heart, child-soul, impulse elemental, nature itself from her spontaneous laugh to her frank impertinence.
Do you know, whispered Aspasia to him, as they stood side by side under the great colonnade waiting for their turn to descend to the carriage, "I have been hating myself ever since I was such a beast about poor Aunt Rosamond. I think it has half killed her, this business. Even the Runkle wants her to give it up while she's so ill."
The man's eyes had been lost in a musing contemplation of the rosy pointed face surrounded by diaphanous folds of grey gauze. A dainty figure was Aspasia in her soft greys—the sort of travelling companion a man might gladly take with him through the arid and dusty journey of life. But at these words his singular light gaze kindled.
Surely, said he, "you do not connect Lady Gerardine's illness with anything that you or I have done? That would be absurd, in the circumstances"—he threw a scornful glance about him—"too absurd a proposition to be entertained for a moment." ("This sensibility in a woman who has consoled herself so quickly and to such good purpose!" he added to himself.)
Oh, said Aspasia back, in a brisk angry whisper, "you don't understand, and neither do I. But I feel, and you don't ... and I think you are perfectly hateful!"
She had caught his look, followed his thought, and was indignant.
* * * * *
And now out into the divine Indian evening they set. The travellers, with their crowd of attendants, moved of necessity slowly, for Lady Gerardine went upon her husband's arm, in the languor of the semi-invalid. Through the frowning gateway, down the stairway they passed, to halt again before the last flight of steps, Rosamond drew herself away from Sir Arthur's support, leaned up against the rough stone slabs of the wall, and laid a slender gloved hand absently in one of five prints that mark it.
Do you see those? cried Baby turning, all her ill-humour forgotten in her desire to impart a thrilling piece of information to Major Bethune as he walked behind her. "Do you see those funny marks? Those are supposed to be made by the hands of the queens, when they came down to be burned. Ugh! I say, Aunt Rosamond, are not you rather glad you are not an ancient Indian princess, and that Runkle is not an old rajah, and that you've not got to look forward to frizzle on his pyre?"
You forget, came Rosamond's dreamy voice in reply, "I should not have been alive to grace Sir Arthur's pyre. My ashes would have mingled with other ashes long, long before.... Oh, I'm not so sure," she went on, again fitting a delicate hand into the sinister prints, "I am not sure that it was not a kind law in the end."
Gracious! cried the irrepressible Aspasia, with a shriek and a laugh. And then she whispered, all bubbling mischief, into Bethune's ear: "The poor Runkle, he is not as bad as all that, after all!"
Then, at sight of his face, she suddenly fell grave; and the two stood looking at each other. Bethune had first been startled by Lady Gerardine's look and accents even more than by the words themselves. The next moment, however, he mentally shrugged the shoulder of contempt.
Whom did she think to take in by her affectation of sensibility, this languid, self-centred creature in the midst of her chosen luxury?
Thus, when his eyes met Aspasia's, they were sad with the scorn of things, sad for the sordid trickeries of the soul of her on whom the love of his dead friend had been lavished.
Sir Arthur, with touching unconsciousness of the interlude, was once again affectionately sustaining his wife. Then, as the procession moved on once more, Baby, troubled and discomfited—she could have hardly explained why—moved childishly close to Raymond Bethune, and shivered a little.
I am glad to be getting away from this haunted place and this uncanny country, she whispered again. "I feel sure I should have ended by making one of these dreadful natives stick a knife into me. I am always plunging in upon their feelings and offending their castes, and all the rest of it. Just look at Saif-u-din's face—Runkle's new secretary—I never saw such a glare as he threw upon us all just now. I suppose he thought we were making fun of their precious suttee!" Aspasia's idea of native distinctions was still of the vaguest.
Bethune turned the keen gaze of the conscious dominator upon the man that Aspasia had indicated with her little indiscreet finger. The red-turbaned, artistically draped figure, with the noble dusky head and the fan-shaped raven beard, was striding in their wake with a serene dignity that looked as if nothing could ever ruffle it. Had he been ruffled? Had the glare existed merely in Aspasia's imagination? While recognising a Pathan (whose contempt for the Hindoo probably exceeded Baby's own), Bethune knew that it was quite possible the irritable pride of the mountain man had taken fire at some real or fancied slight; but the betrayal could have been no more than a flash.
The Major of Guides smiled to himself. He knew his native: the man who will never give you more than an accidental peep of the bared blade in the velvet sheath—no, not till he means to strike! About this fellow, a splendid specimen of the noblest race, a creature cut out of steel and bronze, there was, he thought, a more than usual sinister hint of the wild nature under all the exquisite manner and the perfect self-restraint; and he found himself regarding him with the complacent eye of the connoisseur. The artistic lion-tamer likes his lions savage.
As he looked he wondered once and again how one so evidently a son of the warlike Pathans could have sought the pacific calling of secretary.
Sir Arthur was taking his new toy down to Bombay with him, where there were, he had been informed, certain documents which might be of value to the "monumental work." And so it came to pass that Bethune and Muhammed Saif-u-din, destined to share one of the subordinate vehicles, found themselves presently standing side by side at the foot of the steps.
Whether because of the interest he must have seen he had inspired in the officer, or whether he was simply drawn towards him by his racial military instincts, Raymond could not determine, but, as they halted, well-nigh shoulder to shoulder, the Pathan suddenly wheeled round, looked him full in the face in his turn, then smiled. It was a frank smile, showing a flash of splendid teeth; and it lit up the fierce, proud features in a way that was at once bright and sad.
It would be curious, reflected Bethune, "to know what sort of a soul dwells in that envelope, which might become the greatest gentleman on earth. I'll warrant the fellow has many a bloody page in his story that a man might scarce look upon, and yet he has got a smile to stir you like a woman's."
The first horses of the escort began to move with much crisp action, for Sir Arthur was at last installed in his state chariot. Through the great glass windows he might be seen and admired of all beholders, feeling his wife's pulse with an air of profound concern; while she, submissive, her patient smile upon her lips, was gazing up into his face with gentle abstracted eyes.
A model couple! sneered Bethune to himself. And, turning impatiently aside to devote his attention to the more pleasing subject of the oriental, he found the latter just in the act of dropping his glance from the same spectacle, and thought to notice a flicker as of kindred scorn pass across the statuesque composure of the dark face.
For ever will the East and the West be as poles apart, cogitated the soldier, even as M. Chatelard had done; "upon no point do they in their heart more despise us than in our subserviency to our women. I am not sure," he pursued to himself, cynically, as the splendid presence of Saif-u-din settled itself with dignity upon the seat beside him; "I am not sure but that the orientals knew what they were about when they made their laws concerning the false and mischievous sex."
Loud and deep rang the great guns of the salute: their Excellencies had started. Rosamond Gerardine was bound for England. In a waggon, at the tail of all the other equipages, sat Jani, withered and sad-faced, wrapt in her thoughts as closely as in her dusky chuddah. She would not talk with the bearers or even lament her coming exile. She held on tightly with one thin brown hand to a much-battered military tin case, which she herself had laid on the seat beside her. No one else would she permit to touch it. The other servants mocked her about it, vowing it was full of her hoardings and that they would rob her of it. At that she would menace them fiercely with her monkey paw. Strange, sad, inscrutable little Parca keeping guard on the fate of lives!
Bombay, a very dream-city, was fading—ever more dreamlike, enwrapped in pale-tinted sunset mists—into the distance.
The salt breeze was in their faces; in their ears was the rushing of the waters from the sides of the ship as she cut her way through. Already the something of England that the sea must always bring her children, the surroundings of an English ship especially, was about them! They seemed to have come from the land of languor and secret doings into open life, into simple action, into a busy, wholesome stir.
Beneath them pulsed the great heart of the ship, white foam pointing her way as she forged ahead. Behind her stretched the furrow of her course, two long lines, ever wider divergent till they lost themselves to the eye. And now, by some fantastic mirage effect, the great oriental port, with its glimmering minarets and cupolas, showed as if caught up into the sky itself. Let but this iron heart labour on a little while longer, let but this eager prow cut its way a little deeper towards the sunset, and the East would have vanished altogether.... The travellers would not even see the first glimmer of her evening lights hung a jewel necklace on the horizon, so swiftly had the sea laid hold of them.
Homeward bound! The step from pier to steamer had already severed the link of their strange affinity with the East. Its mystery had fallen from them. Already this was England. Rosamond Gerardine and Aspasia, side by side, watched the shores retreat, fade, sink, and vanish.
Good-bye, India! said Aspasia, her head sentimentally inclined, dropping at last the little handkerchief with which she had been frantically signalling long after there was any possibility of the vessel being descried from the land otherwise than as a black spot; "Good-bye, India, and hey for home!"
Lady Gerardine fixed the fading vision with wide, abstracted eyes.
God grant, she said, under her breath, more to herself than to the girl beside her, "that I may never see those shores again!"
Amen! said Aspasia, cheerfully.
Rosamond laid her hand upon Aspasia's wrist as they leaned against the railings and pressed it with a grasp that almost hurt.
An accursed land! she went on, this time in a low, intense voice. It was as if she flung anathema to the retreating shores. "Cruel, cruel, treacherous! Oh, God, what has it not already cost us English! Is there a home among us that has not paid its blood tribute to that relentless monster? Listen, child. I was as young as you when I last beheld its shores—thus—from the sea. It was in the dawn (it is fit it should now be dusk), and we stood together as I stand beside you to-day. And I saw it grow out of the sky, even with the dawn, a city of rose, of pearl, beyond words beautiful—unimaginable, it seemed to me, in promise! He said to me: 'Look, there is the first love of my life; is she not fair? And I am bringing to her my other love ... and you two are all that I will have of life.' And then he laughed and said: 'It would be strange if I wanted more, with two such loves.' And, again: 'Not even for you could I be false to her.'"
Aspasia, mystified, turned her bright gaze full upon her aunt's face. In the pupils of Rosamond's eyes there was enkindled a sullen fire.
He came back to her, she went on; "and she—that land—lay smiling in the sunrise to receive him. Oh, how she can smile and look beautiful, and smell fragrant, and caress, with the dagger hidden under the velvet, the snake in the rose, and the sudden grave yawning! I've never been home since," she said, with a sudden change of tone, bringing her glance back from the misty horizon, to fix it upon Aspasia with so piteous and haggard a look that the girl lost her composure. "And now I am coming home alone, and he remains there." She made an outward sweep with her left hand towards the north. "I am coming home alone. The other has kept him. She has kept him. I am alone: he is left behind."
Who? cried the bewildered Baby, who had utterly failed to seize the thread of her aunt's strange discourse. And, upon her usual impulsiveness springing to a conclusion of mingled amazement and derision: "Who—Runkle?" she exclaimed.
No sooner had the foolish cry escaped her lips than she could have bitten out her tongue for vexation.
A change came over Lady Gerardine's face, colder and greyer than even the rapid tropic evening that was closing upon the scene. The light went out in her eyes, to be replaced by a distant contempt. The features that had quivered with passion became set into their wonted mask of repose; it was as if a veil had dropped between them, as if a cold wind drove them apart.
I was not speaking of your uncle, said Rosamond, at length, very gently. Then she suggested that as it was growing late they should take possession of their cabin.
And Aspasia, as she meekly acquiesced, trembled upon tears at the thought of her blundering. For one moment this jealously centred heart had been about to open itself to her; for one moment this distant enfolded being had turned to her as woman to woman; impelled by God knows what sudden necessity of complaint, of another's sympathy, of another's understanding, the lonely soul had called upon hers. And she, Aspasia—Baby, well did they name her so—had not been able to seize the precious moment! The sound of her own foolish laugh still rang in her ears, while the unconscious contempt in Rosamond's gaze scorched her cheeks.
* * * * *
From the very first day, fate, in the shape of an imperiously intimate Aspasia, drew Raymond Bethune, the saturnine lonely man, into the narrow circle of Lady Gerardine's 'board-ship existence. In her double quality of great lady and semi-invalid, the Lieutenant-Governor's wife was to be withdrawn from the familiar intercourse which life on a liner imposes on most travellers. It had been Sir Arthur's care to see that she was provided with an almost royal accommodation, which, as everything in this world is comparative, chiefly consisted in the possession of a small sitting-room over and above the usual sleeping-cabin.
Into these sacred precincts Miss Cuningham hustled Bethune unceremoniously, as the first dusk closed round their travelling home on the waste of waters.
Steward! ... Oh, isn't it too bad, Major Bethune! I've been ringing like mad, and poor old Jani's bewildered out of her wits; and Gibbons—that's our English fool of a maid—she's taken to groaning already. There's not a creature to do anything for us, and that idiot there says he's nothing to say to the cabins!
Her arms full of flowers, she stood close to him; and the fragrance of the roses and carnations came to him in little gushes with her panting breath. Her rosy face, in the uncertain light, had taken to itself an ethereal charm very different from its usual clear and positive outline. Hardly had this realisation of her personality come to him than, under the hands of the ship's servant she had so contemptuously indicated, the flood of the electric light leaped upon them. And behold, she appeared to him yet fairer—youth triumphant, defying even that cruel glare to find a blemish in bloom or contour.
What do you want? he asked, with the softening of his hard face which so few were ever privileged to see.
A vase for our flowers—a big bowl. I hate messy little dabs; and I don't want them to die an hour before they can help it. Oh, a really big bowl, at once!
Her residence in an Indian governor's palace had been short, but sufficient to give Miss Aspasia the habit of command.
Raymond Bethune gave his dry chuckle as he set to work to fulfil her behest.
I've captured a salad bowl, cried he, almost jovially, when he returned; "and the head steward is in despair!"
Tell him to steal the cook's pudding-basins, said Aspasia, and swept him back with her to the minute sitting-room.
Here sat Lady Gerardine, still wrapped in her cloak but bareheaded, under the shaded light. Leaning back among her cushions, her feet crossed on a footstool, she seemed to have taken full possession of her quarters. The narrow commonplace surroundings had already received her special personal imprint. The flowers, the cushions, a few books, a great cut-glass scent bottle—the very disorder even of a litter of rich trifles that had not yet found their place, removed the trivial impression of steamer upholstery. She received him without surprise, if without any mark of welcome; and Aspasia chattered, ordered, laughed, kept him employed and amused. Now and again Lady Gerardine smiled vaguely at her niece's outbursts. Bethune could not feel himself an intruder. And certainly it was better than his fourth share of a bachelor's cabin, better than the crowded saloon and smoking-rooms, with their pervading glare and odour of high polish.
Through the open port-hole came the sound of the rushing, swirling waters, punctuated by the slap of some sudden wave against the flank of the ship. A wind had arisen, and now and again gusts, cold and briny, rushed in upon the warm inner atmosphere of flowers.
Lady Gerardine held a large bouquet of Niphetos roses, and her pale long fingers were busy unrolling the bonds that braced them in artificial deportment. Their petals, thought the man, were no whiter than her cheeks.
Presently Aspasia plunged her healthy pink hands down among the languid blossoms and began pulling out the wires.
I shouldn't, if I were you, said Rosamond; and then she held up a spray. "See, the poor flower, all stained, all fallen apart, all broken. Never draw away the secret supports, Baby. It is better to hold one's head up, even with the iron in one's heart, and pretend it is not there."
Bethune looked at her, a little startled. In some scarcely tangible way the words seemed aimed at him; but he saw that for her, at that moment, he did not exist.
For the first time a pang of real misgiving shot through him. He seemed to behold her with new eyes. She struck him as very frail. Could it be true, or did he but imagine it, that that lovely head, once so defiantly uplifted against him, now drooped?
Feeling the fixity of his gaze upon her, she glanced up and then smiled. Strange being! Was he, then, so easily forgiven? His heart gave a sudden leap.
The memory of this first evening was one which haunted him all his life with a curious intimate sweetness.
* * * * *
Time passed as time will pass on board ship; vague hours resembling each other, dropping to dreamy length of days; days that yet lapse quickly and moreover work a sure but subtle change. No traveller that lands after a long sea journey is the same as he who started. Sometimes, indeed, he will look back upon his former self as upon another, with surprise.
So it was with Raymond Bethune; and if he came to view himself with surprise, still more inexplicable to him was the new Lady Gerardine as he learned to regard her. According to his presentiment, these two women—she to whose puzzling personality he had vowed antipathy, and she whose fresh young presence made dangerously strong demands upon his sympathy—soon began to absorb all the energies of his thoughts. To a man who had hitherto known no other emotion, outside a very ordinary type of home affection, than friendship for another man; whose life, with the exception of one brief period of glamorous hero-worship, had been devoted to duty in its sternest, most virile form, this mental pre-occupation over two women, both comparative strangers, was at first a matter for self-mockery. It was afterwards one of self-conflict. Whoso, however, has reached the point of actually combating an idea is already and obviously its victim, and the final stage of abandonment to the obsession cannot be very distant.
Looking back upon his memories, in later days, it was singular to him how completely the girl and the woman divided his most vivid impressions of that journey. If the vision of Aspasia, fresh as the spray, rosy as the dawn, coming to meet him of a morning, brisk and free, across the deck, her young figure outlined against sparkling sea and translucent sky, was a memory all pleasant and all sweet, the picture of that other, slow moving and pallid, so enwrapped in inexplicable mourning, so immeasurably indifferent to himself, was bitten into the tablets of his mind as with burning acid, fixed in lines of pain.
It is never flattering for a man to realise that he is of no consequence to a woman with whom he is brought into daily intercourse. And to feel that, though his acts have had a distinct influence upon her life, his personality has failed to make the smallest impression, is a situation certain to pique the most unassuming. In the end Bethune began to wish that Lady Gerardine had retained even her original attitude of resentment. Now and again, indeed, he would find her eye fixed upon him, but at the same time would know unmistakably that her thought was not with him. Sometimes her attitude of inexplicable sorrow seemed harder to bear than her first evidences of heartlessness.
One day Aspasia had suddenly attacked her aunt upon the subject of her black garb, crying, with her noted heedlessness:
I declare, any one would think you were in mourning.
Lady Gerardine shifted her distant gaze from the far horizon to Aspasia's countenance, and her lips moved but made no sound. In her heart she was saying:
How else should I clothe myself, when I am travelling with my dead?
Almost as if he read her thought, Bethune sneered as he looked at her, and with difficulty restrained the taunt that rose to his tongue. "Lady Gerardine wears belated weeds!"
Her attitude of hopeless melancholy, her raiment of mourning, irritated him bitterly. Yet, while he looked at her in harshness, he marked the admirable white throat, rising like a flower stem from the dense black of her dress, and found himself wondering whether any shimmer of colour would have become her half so well.
Towards the end of their journey together he was once summoned to speak with her alone. It was about the forthcoming book. Nothing could be more brief, more businesslike than her words, more unemotional than her manner. She asked for his instructions; she discussed, criticised, concurred. It was obvious that, when she chose, her brain could act with quite remarkable clearness. It was also obvious that she had completely capitulated to his wishes; and yet never was victory more savourless.
At the conclusion of this conversation she settled with him that, when she had accomplished her part of the task, she would send for him. And as he withdrew, he felt himself dismissed from her thoughts, except as a mere instrument in what now seemed more her undertaking than his own. At heart he found it increasingly difficult to accept the position with good grace.
After this, during the few days of ship life together left to them, Lady Gerardine seldom admitted him to her company; and thus Raymond was the more thrown with Aspasia. The girl, unconventional by temperament and somewhat set apart by her position of "Governor's niece," unhesitatingly profited by a situation which afforded her unmixed amusement. She was not in love as yet with the Major of Guides. Indeed, she had other and higher ambitions. Aspasia's dream-pictures of herself were ever of a wonderful artist of world-wide celebrity, surrounded by a sea of clapping hands, graciously curtseying her thanks from the side of a Steinway grand.... But Bethune interested her, and there was something piquantly pleasant in being able to awaken that gleam in his cold, light eye, in noticing that the lines of his impassive face relaxed into softness for her alone.
One afternoon, as they sat on deck—the great ship cutting the blue waters of the Adriatic, between the fading of a glorious red and orange sunset and the rising of a thin sickle moon, Aspasia wrapped against the chilly salt airs in some of her aunt's sables, out of which richness the hardy, wild-flower prettiness of her face rose in emphatic contrast—she told him the story of her short life.
She spoke of her musical career, of the bright student days at Vienna; the hard work of them, the anguish, the struggle, the joy. Then of the death of her mother, and the falling of all her high hopes under the crushing will of Sir Arthur, her appointed guardian.
When mother went, said Aspasia, "everything went." As she spoke two tears leaped out of her eyes, and hung poised on the short, thick eyelashes. "The Runkle thinks it's a disgrace for a lady to do anything in life. 'And, besides,' he says, 'she can't, and she'd better not attempt it.' But wait till I'm twenty-one," cried the girl, vindictively, "and I'll show him what his 'dear Raspasia's' got in her!"
She smiled in her young consciousness of power, and the big tears, detaching themselves, ran into her dimples. Raymond, looking at her with all the experience of his hard life behind him, and all the disillusion of his five-and-thirty years, felt so sudden a movement at once of pity and tenderness that he had to stiffen himself in his seat not to catch her in his arms and kiss her on those wet dimples as he would have kissed a child.
Oh, you'll do great things, said he, in the tone in which one praises the little one's sand castle on the beach, or tin soldier strategy. "And may I come with a great big laurel crown, tied with gold ribbons, when you give your first concert in the Albert Hall?"
Albert Hall, mocked she, "the very place for a piano recital!" Then she let her eyes roam out across the heaving space. Once more she saw herself the centre of an applauding multitude; but, in the foremost rank, there was the lean, brown face, and it was moved to enthusiasm, too. And, somehow, from that evening forth, the dream-visions of her future glory were never to be quite complete without it.
* * * * *
A mist-enwrapped, rain-swept shore, parting the dim grey sea and sky in twain, was their first glimpse of England after years of exile.
Ugh, said Aspasia, shivering, "isn't it just like England to go and be damp and horrid for us!"
Lady Gerardine, looking out with eager straining gaze towards the weeping land, turned with one of her sudden, unexpected movements of passion upon the girl.
I'm glad it's raining, she said. "I'm glad it's cold, and bleak, and grey. I'm glad to feel the raindrops beating on nay face. I'm sick of hard blue skies and fierce sunshine.... And the trees at Saltwoods will be all bent one way by the blowing of the wet sea wind. It's England, it's home; and, oh, I'm glad to be home!"