'Nay! thou hast given me enough, oh Mizra sahib. More than a free woman
cares to have,' said Chandni, with a shrug of her massive shoulders.
'Thou hadst thy chance to pay me fair.'
Dalel Beg, clad in his European clothes, and perched in all the
isolation of an esteemed visitor in the cane-bottomed chair of state,
felt he would like to be on a level with those jeering lips as he used
to be at Hodinuggur. Not for the sake of desire only, or for the sake
of revenge, but for a mixture of both. As usual, the very audacity of
her wickedness fascinated him, yet, now that wickedness was directed
against himself he could have strangled her for it.
'Pay thee! How can I pay thee,' he whimpered, 'when those low-caste
white swindlers with whom I betted will not pay what I have won? When
those white devils of women turn the place into a museum until every
Parsee in the bazaar threatens to summon me to court?'
It was not much more than a week since he had defied Chandni in the
presence of the said white devils; but the interval had not been
pleasant. Beatrice Elflida Norma's mamma knew all about Chandni's long
years of hold on the Mizra Sahib, and he was totally unaccustomed to
the nagging of wifely jealousy. Besides, something had happened which
had opened his eyes to the danger of allowing the courtesan to have a
free hand. A proposal had been made by the Canal Department to allow
water to run permanently along the sluice-cut; the Rajah who owned the
land to the south, having spent a whole season at Simla in order to
work the oracle, and the flood having come opportunely as a warning to
the experts that it might be wise to provide a more satisfactory outlet
for the surplus water. Now, in this case, Hodinuggur, which, being for
the most part barren desert, would benefit but little by the plan,
might by judicious application of the screw make the Rajah pay for its
consent, as a considerable portion of its best land would have to be
taken up for various works. This sort of secret intrigue, these almost
endless ramifications of rights and dues, underlie the simplest
transactions in India, and are recognised by its people as an integral
part of administration. Besides, Hodinuggur itself, in lieu of
compensation for damage done--which for various reasons it had not yet
claimed, one being a delay on the part of the Rajah in paying the
promised fee for the opening of the sluice--might manage by the same
judicious diplomacy to secure some trifling hold on the water-supply;
something, in short, which might be used as a screw for the extortion
of a perpetual, if small revenue. But for this, silence as to the past
was necessary. Such considerations, to European ears, may seem almost
too fine-drawn to be worth notice; but to Dalel Beg and Chandni they
were quite the reverse, for he came from a long line of courtiers born
and bred in such intrigues; men whose trade had passed with the corrupt
courts of other days, while the memory of it survived in their title.
Diwans of Hodinuggur; not Nawabs or Nizams, but Diwans, that is, in
other words, prime minister. And she? Every atom of her blood came from
the veins of those who for centuries had woven a still finer net of
women's wit around the intrigues of their protectors. It is this
extraordinary strength of heredity which, in India, makes the cheap
tinkering of Western folk, who are compounded of butchers, bakers, and
candlestick makers, so exasperating to those who have eyes to see. If
English philanthropists would spend their motley benevolence on the
poor, the diseased, and the drunken of their own country, it would be
better both for it and for India, where the death-rate is no higher,
drunkenness is practically unknown, and poverty is neither unhappy nor
discontented.
Thus Chandni and Dalel were well matched as she lolled back in her
cushions with a laugh.
'So she spends money! Lo! since thou hast married a "_vilayeti_" wife
thou canst advertise, as the sahibs do, in the papers, that thou art
not responsible for her debts. There is no sense in stopping half way
as thou hast done. Thou shouldst have gone to a "mission" and been
baptized instead of making that half-caste girl repeat the "Kulma" on
promise that thou wouldst not in future claim the right of the faithful
to other women. Yea! yea! I know the trick.'
'If I have,' muttered Dalel, vexed yet pleased at her boldness, her
shrewdness, 'such promises are easily broken. Divorce is easy.'
'If thou hast money to pay the dower to her people--not when thou hast
none! Lo! 'tis a mistake to try new ways of wickedness instead of
keeping to the old ones.'
So she dismissed him, feeling on the whole contemptuous over her
adversaries so far; the Miss Sahiba's arms had been strong, for sure,
but the men were worth nothing! nothing at all.
Dan Fitzgerald, dangling his long legs disconsolately from Lewis
Gordon's office-table two days after, said as much himself. 'The fact
is, I ought to have killed her; only I didn't feel up to it to-day,
after my journey. Oh, you may smile, Gordon!' he went on more eagerly,
his face losing some of its dejection in his love of the extravagant,
'but it's true. That sort of woman doesn't belong to our civilised age;
and we are absolutely at a disadvantage before her. There was I, as the
mad old potter said, with a hero's measure round the chest, driven to
words and threats of a policeman. I couldn't, even at the time, but
think of that old sinner Zubr-ul-Zaman and what her chance would have
been with him--just an order, a cry, and then silence. Sure, one feels
helpless at times when one stands face to face with that old world.
What's the use of strength--what's even the use of brains nowadays
except to make money? There was I, with that woman, I give you my word,
at the end of her tether, but 'twas the hangman's rope to me if I went
a step closer, and so I didn't.'
'If _you_ didn't,' remarked Lewis grimly, 'there isn't a civilised man
who will; so we had better try something else. Still, unless that woman
is silenced, we must face an inquiry, and then the facts of poor
Keene's death must come out. By the way, Miss Tweedie knows them, but
we have agreed to keep them, if possible, from my cousin. There seemed
no use----'
'I'm glad of that,' interrupted Dan, with a sudden quiver of his mouth.
'I should be sorry to have that memory spoilt.'
He was pacing up and down the room now, his hands in his pockets, the
brightness of his face absorbed as it were by a frown.
'Gordon!' he said abruptly. 'I'd give everything I possess if I could
lay my hands on that cursed pot. Not that it would satisfy the
horse-leech's daughter unless it contained the pearls--which isn't
likely, for I believe the whole story to be a myth. But the thought
that it is somewhere visible, palpable to the meanest fool on God's
earth, is maddening. Or even if we could say to that she-devil, "do
your worst." Oh! why didn't you send that wire sooner, and save poor
George from his needless death?'
'Why didn't you tell the truth about it at first? you might as well ask
that. It would have been better, as it turns out, if you had; but who
can tell? As it is, I'm quite ready, as I told you before, to burke
everything I can, in conscience; but, so far as I can see, it will do
no good. If that woman breaks silence, the main facts must come to
light.'
'I wish I had killed her,' said Dan regretfully.
'And I wish she were dead,' replied Lewis cynically, 'that is the
difference between us. You are active, I'm passive, but we don't either
of us seem to be of much use.'
That was the honest truth, and they had to confess as much to Gwen
Boynton that afternoon. She looked a little haggard as she listened
even while she protested bravely that in her opinion the vile creature
would never dare to put her lies to the proof. So they sat and played
at cross purposes; for she could not tell them of the papers she held
in absolute disproof of what would be the first accusation, and they
wished if possible to save her from the knowledge of George Keene's
suicide. Perhaps if they had set their own feelings aside and told her
the truth, she might even then have confessed her lion's share in the
blame. But only perhaps; for she was a clever woman, capable of seeing
that her confession could do no good now, and that she had, as it were,
lost her right to save poor George from suspicion. Besides, she had
brought herself to believe in the duty of denial; for, like many
another woman, she required a really virtuous motive before she could
do a really wrong thing; in sober fact--even in her worst aberrations
from the truth--never losing hold of a fixed desire to be amiable and
estimable. To this self-deception, as was natural, Lewis Gordon's
half-hearted belief was gall and wormwood, while Dan's wholesale
confidence was balm indeed. She could not refrain from telling him so
when the former, pleading stress of work, left the latter alone with
her beside the cosy little tea-table glittering in the firelight; for
Gwen was one of those people who will never have been more comfortable
in body and soul than they are on their death-beds.
'Now, don't spoil it all, dear, by wanting me to marry you to-morrow,'
she said half-laughing, half-crying. 'We are all too busy for such
talk, and too sad--at least I am. He was so good to me--you don't know
how good. I shall break my heart if this vile creature succeeds in
sullying his memory.'
'It will not be your fault, dear, if she does; that is one comfort.'
A chance shot may hit the quarry truer than the best aim, and Gwen
turned quickly towards him with a little cry.
'Dan! you will prevent it, won't you? You are so clever, and, really,
it is for my sake as well as for his. For my sake you will, won't you?'
'I do everything for your sake--you know that,' he answered simply.
Gwen stared at him as if she had seen a ghost. Perhaps she did; the
ghost of a dead boy who had said those very words to her in that very
room not a month ago.
'Gwen! what is it?' came Dan's voice sharply, anxiously. 'What is the
matter?--tell me.'
Yes! The past was repeating itself. _He_ had begged her to tell him
also, and in her selfishness, her fear, she had yielded, and put a
needless pain into his life at its close. She would not yield again; in
denial lay her duty.
'Nothing is the matter,' she echoed, 'save this--that you say we can do
nothing. I do not believe it. God will never let these lies prevail--He
will never let my poor lad's memory suffer--never, never!'
If her mind could have been taken to pieces and strictly analysed as
she gave utterance to this burst of real feeling, it would have
afforded fruitful study to a whole college of psychologists. Yet the
mental condition described as 'sitting in a clothes-basket and lifting
yourself up by the handles' is quite common to humanity of both sexes,
though women are as a rule the greater adepts in the art. Mrs. Boynton
was really a firm believer in a Providence which was bound by many
promises to help the virtuous, and George, therefore, had a claim to
its assistance. The fact that Providence might possibly have appointed
her as its instrument was a totally different affair, and did not
interfere with the confused good faith and good feeling which made her
voice thrill as she went on fervently, in answer to Dan's doubtful yet
admiring face.
'Oh, you mayn't think so--you perhaps don't believe as I do, Dan, in a
Providence "which shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may"--you
don't----'
'Don't I?' he asked, catching fire, as it were, more from his own
thoughts than her words. 'Oh, Gwen! my dear, it's little you know of
me, then, if you think that. Don't I see it?--who but the blind do
not--in everything? Isn't it that which makes me content to go on as
I'm doing? Gwen! it's because I know that it is bound to come--that
sooner or later you will take my hands in yours as I take yours just
now. Yes, Gwen! it's Fate--but when will it be, my dear? When will it
be?'
She was never proof against this mood in the man, this tone in his
voice.
'Oh, Dan!' she cried, in a petulance that was all feigned, 'didn't I
say you would be asking me to marry you to-morrow if I was so rash as
to tell you that you were a comfort to me? As if that had anything to
do with it.'
'Sure it has everything to do with it!' replied her lover fondly. The
future, in truth, gave him few fears: it was the present, with the
chance of annoyance if that venomous woman remain unscotched in the
bazaar, which caused him anxiety. On the other hand, it was the future
over which Lewis Gordon frowned, as he sat trying to make up his mind
about his own feelings, for though the present was palpably unpleasant,
it seemed clear that the future would be worse, since they must face
the possibility of a scandal boldly in the hopes that Chandni's
story would break down; except perhaps as regarded George, and he,
poor lad, had brought it on himself. And then, when all this was over,
he--Lewis--was going to marry Mrs. Boynton. No doubt about it; for it
was too late now to judge her for that other fault--far too late. He
had condoned it with full knowledge of what he was doing, and the fact
that Rose Tweedie's subsequent scorn had awakened a tardy blame did not
alter the past. At the same time, he had an insane desire that Rose
should be brought to see this as clearly as he saw it. In fact, the
idea of talking over the matter with her, and perhaps taking her advice
upon it, had an attraction for him; and though he heaped contumely on
himself for the mere thought, it lingered insistently. It was partly
that which made him pause to knock at her sitting-room door on his way
to the drawing-room before dinner. She would be glad to have the last
news of the miserable affair, he told himself, but in his heart he knew
that was not the real reason--that he himself scarcely knew what the
reason was. Reason? there was none! Only a foolish curiosity to
understand better what this icicle of a girl meant by love. It did not
seem to hurt her, at any rate. But as he entered to see her sitting by
the fire, the reading-lamp on the table lighting up her dress, but
leaving her face in shadow, he seemed to forget all these thoughts in
the friendly confidence of her greeting.
'I'm so glad you have come. I was wondering if you would. What news?'
He shook his head. 'None. We have all had our chance, and failed.'
'Not all,' she answered quickly, pointing to Azizan's portrait, which
showed dimly above the mantelpiece against which he leant. 'You forget
the girl--she has not said her say.'
The unreality, the strangeness of it all, struck him sharply, not for
the first time, as he replied after a pause--
'And never will. She is dead. Fitzgerald managed to get that out of the
woman to-day. She must have been hidden away--as a punishment, most
likely--in some dungeon of the old tower, for her dead body was found
among the ruins--by--by the old potter. Yes! I know what you are
thinking of; but that is impossible. He was always searching about, you
see, and so he was more likely than others to find anything that was to
be found. It is a coincidence, I admit; but the fact of the death seems
undoubted. The woman let it out in her anger--Fitzgerald is not a nice
cross-examiner, I expect--and tried to gloze it over afterwards.
Perhaps it is as well. That story may be best unknown.'
'I don't agree with you,' said Rose quickly. 'I have been counting on
her help--perhaps more than I realised--and now that her chance has
gone----' The girl's eyes filled with tears, and her voice failed for a
moment, 'it seems as if we could do nothing more to save him.'
'I'm afraid not. You see, once we begin to question outsiders we show
our hand. There is no alternative between the silence and defiance
which Gwen advocates so strongly, and a bold and open inquiry. In my
opinion it is time for the latter. You see, my cousin is not quite a
fair judge. She does not know that Fitzgerald and I have so far
concealed George Keene's suicide, and that from purely personal motives
we, or at least I, cannot have this scandal sprung by an outsider. He
would take the risk, he says; but I, in my position, conceive that it
is not my duty to do so. He, however, has suggested that we four shall
meet and talk it over finally before I take any action, so I took the
liberty of asking Gwen to come over tomorrow morning. It is
Fitzgerald's last day, and something must be done before he goes down.
I don't see the use of this meeting myself--we have all, as I said, had
our chance--but it can do no harm, and it may satisfy Gwen--and you.'
'I am satisfied already,' she replied gently. 'You could have done no
more than you have done; I see that now.'
'I am glad,' he began, and then stopped, realising that he was not in
the least glad of the evident finality in her meaning. Was she
contented that things should end as they had begun? Had her passionate
interest in him died down with his obedience to her orders? A sorry
reward, surely! A most perplexing result of his repentance!
'I _shall_ be glad,' he corrected himself, almost angrily, 'when we can
get out of this muddle. Of course I have heard before of such
intrigues, but I never came in personal contact with that sort of thing
before. It is maddening. I scarcely seem to know whether we are in the
nineteenth century or the ninth. Ever since we went to Hodinuggur we
seem to have got mixed up in some antique dream; the whole thing is
absurd--scarcely credible.'
As he spoke the dinner-bell rang, and he held the door open for her to
pass from the consideration of these things to the well-appointed table
worthy of a house in Belgravia, where the dark-skinned, white-robed
servants handed sherry with the soup, and vinegar with the salmon quite
as naturally as Jeames or John in their plush liveries. But heredity
was here also; Jeames or John's father may have been a day labourer or
a gentleman at large, but not one of these could not have answered
truthfully--'Huzoor, my father was servant to so-and-so or so-and-so in
the great mutiny time, and his father served such and such a sahib in
the Sutlej campaign, or in Cabul, or somewhere else.' Faithfulness or
unfaithfulness to salt being, of course, a different question; though
that also might possibly be one of heredity. Such thoughts strike one
sometimes after years of complacent blindness, and on this evening they
increased the sense of unreality which had already taken possession of
Lewis Gordon. Nor did a remark of Colonel Tweedie's on his daughter's
improved looks during the past few days amend matters. He felt that he
might be living in that twenty-ninth century, when humanity may
reasonably be supposed to have educated itself out of some frailties
as, in the necessary glance at the young lady's face required by
decorous assent, he met a perfectly unconscious, happy smile, so full
of friendly confidence, that a positive gladness glowed at his heart
that she should be content with him.
Nevertheless he made one more effort to get back finally to the
every-day world by riding over to the Club after dinner and listening
to the gossip of the day. But there was nothing wrong with the world;
it was going on, he found, as usual. He played a game or two of pool,
talked gravely with Major Davenant over some new rules intended to
prevent such another fiasco as the last race-meeting, heard the latest
official canards, and listened more patiently than usual to some
boys--who had to go down from leave next day--bemoaning the general
beastliness of the country as a residence for an English gentleman. It
was only, so the verdict ran, fit for niggers.
Yet even this demonstration that life in the main was commonplace as
usual, did not restore Lewis Gordon's general indifference. And the
knowledge that this was so made him more than ever determined to carry
his point when next morning the four met in Rose Tweedie's room, to
settle the course of events.
The rain after a downpour during the night had ceased, or, perhaps, had
become too light to make its way through the thick white mist which had
settled down like cotton-wool upon everything, blotting out the world.
There was not a breath of air, not a sound save occasionally a soft
pit-pat, as the vapour condensing on the roof dropped into the hearts
of the rain lilies which fringed the verandah with their upturned
orange cups. Yet it was neither dark nor dull as on a cloudy day. The
whiteness of the mist was almost luminous, and through the wide-set
windows sent a faint glow, like that from newly-fallen snow, on the
faces of poor George Keene's four friends, and showed still more
clearly on the even surface of Azizan's portrait as it stood upon the
mantel-shelf. Rose stood beside it, looking beyond everything in the
room, beyond the row of orange lilies, into the cotton-wool mist which
seemed bent on suffocating the house and its inhabitants. There was
silence in the room--the silence which comes to a discussion when the
last objection has palpably fallen through, and a conclusion absolutely
satisfactory to no one seems inevitable. Gwen, a flush of excitement on
her cheek, lay back among the cushions of her easy-chair, nervously
turning and twisting the rings upon her fingers. Dan Fitzgerald, who
was seated close beside her, had evidently been the last to speak, and
was now leaning towards her, his eyes fixed with kindly encouragement
and sympathy on her face. Lewis Gordon, apart from the others,
his elbows resting on the table, looked half regretful, half
resentful,--the look of a man who knows he must take the initiative in
a singularly disagreeable duty.
At last through the silence came Rose Tweedie's voice reluctantly, yet
with a sort of challenge in it: 'I suppose that is settled, and that we
can none of us suggest any other reason why we should delay longer?'
'I have told you before,' broke in Mrs. Boynton, 'that I have every
reason to believe that no action will be taken by the woman; that she
will never court inquiry.'
'I did not mean that,' replied Rose, still with the same note in her
voice. 'I meant that if none of us have any further knowledge beyond
what we have already discussed, then Mr. Gordon's plan for a private
yet open inquiry with my father's knowledge seems best. I, for one,
have none. I know nothing, absolutely nothing, in favour of delay.
Nothing that would prevent the possible danger to George Keene's
memory.'
Lewis Gordon followed fast on her words in swift, vexed comprehension
of her challenge.
'I fancy we are all able to say the same, Miss Tweedie. If we agree, I
may have to speak of something I should not otherwise mention, but it
is no reason for delay. On the contrary, it is a reason why open
inquiry will be the safest, even for George Keene's memory. I know
nothing better;--I wish I did.'
'Nor I,' said Dan Fitzgerald, then paused, and rising from his chair
crossed to the open door, whence he looked out, as Rose had done,
beyond the rain lilies to the mist. 'I know better than any of you what
poor George was; I know better than any of you what he did. If this is
settled, I, too, will have to tell something to his credit; something
that will make inquiry the better for him. Yet I'd give all I possess
to save the necessity for it. But I'm lost,'--he stretched his hands
out impulsively into the mist--'lost, as one might be out yonder--lost,
as the lad's own explanation is lost in the mystery of death. It's hard
to say so, George, but I can't help it.'
He spoke as if to some one out of sight, and Gwen Boynton sate up
suddenly, nervously, with a scared look in her eyes.
'I think you are all wrong,' she said querulously. 'The woman must know
that proof is against her story; but you will not believe it, and so I
cannot help it. I cannot, indeed.'
Her voice died away to a sort of sigh, and she sank back again,
clasping her hands tightly together. Rose let hers fall from its grip
on the mantel-shelf. Dan's tall figure leant more loosely against the
lintel, and Lewis Gordon mechanically turned the pages of a book lying
beside him on the table. The tension was over, and the relief of
decision, even of helpless decision, held them silent in the silence
for the moment. They had done their best. They had played their part in
the strange play.
Then suddenly out of the mist came a quavering, chanting voice--
'It was a woman seeking something
Through day and night----'
'Listen!' cried Dan, his face ablaze. Rose's hand went up again to the
picture hurriedly, and Lewis started to his feet; only Gwen looked from
one to the other bewildered:
'O'er hill and dale seeking for something.'
The voice grew clearer as if the singer was toiling up the unseen path
below the lilies.
'Foul play! foul play!--look down and decide.'
'The mad potter!' cried Dan, with wonder in his tone.
'Azizan! it is her turn at last,' cried Rose, with a hush in hers,
which sent a thrill through Lewis Gordon--though he only said
prosaically--
'I'll go and see who it is.'
But Dan had forestalled the thought, and, vaulting the railings, had
disappeared into the mist, whence they could hear him hallooing down
the path to the unseen singer as they stood waiting by the lilies. Then
came a quick greeting, a low reply, and so, clearer and clearer--though
they could see nothing--every syllable of eager questioning and slow
answer until, as if from behind a veil, the strange couple stepped into
sight--Dan, eager, excited, towering above the bent, deprecating figure
of the old potter.
They had heard so much, those three in the verandah, that Rose without
a pause could step forward and strike at the very root of the matter
with the question, 'What is it? What is it that you want of me?'
The shifty, light eyes settled on her face with a look of relief before
the old man bent to touch her feet.
'Madr-mihrban,' he said. 'Madr-mihrban--that is well!'
He was still breathless from his swift climb beside Dan's long stride,
and, as he straightened himself again, his long supple fingers, busied
already about a knotted corner in the cotton shawl folded round him,
trembled visibly.
'Lo, I sent it before,' he went on in low excuse; 'but it returned, as
all things return at Hodinuggur. Then she was vexed and could not rest.
"Send it back! send it back," she cried all night long. Pity of God!
what a fever; but now she sleeps sound----' He paused, to fumble closer
at the knot.
'You mean Azizan, your daughter?' suggested Rose softly, while the
others stood silent, listening and looking, the whole world seeming to
hold nothing for them save this tall girl with her bright, eager face,
and that bent old man trying to undo a knot.
'Huzoor--Azizan!' came the quavering voice. 'I looked for her so often
till the Madr-mihrban came. Then I found her with the pot clasped to
her breast, but the bad dreams would not let her sleep. "It is not
mine; it is hers." It kept her awake always. So when I found her
again, lying asleep by the river with it still in her bosom, I said to
myself, "I will not set a writing on it, and put it in the box with a
slit as I did last time, trusting it to God knows who, after the new
fashion. I will take it myself in the old fashion and give it to the
Madr-mihrban's own hands, and pray her hold it fast so it return not to
wake the child; for she sleeps sound at last in the dust of her
father's."'
The knot was undone. The shaking fingers held the Ayodhya pot for a
second, the white glare of the mist shining in a broad blaze of light
upon its intense glowing blue. The next it had slipped from the
potter's hand and lay in fragments on the ground!
Still fragments of sapphire colour--moving fragments of milky white,
rolling hither and thither like drops of dew on a leaf seeking a
resting-place for their round lustre.
Pearls!--the Hodinuggur pearls!
And Gwen's voice, with a triumphant ring in it, became articulate above
the old man's cry of distress and the low exclamations of the others.
'So Azizan stole them, after all!'
Rose turned on her sharply. 'Who knows. This much is certain, she has
brought them back, and saved George when we could not.'
'Yes! she has saved him,' assented Dan; 'we have that she-devil on the
hip now!'
Lewis Gordon stood silent a moment; he had grown very pale. 'You are
both right, I expect,' he said quietly. 'It settles--everything.'
Gwen drew a long breath of relief, but Rose seemed lost in thought.
'No! not everything,' she said absently, half to herself. 'It does not
tell us why George shot himself.'
She scarcely knew she spoke aloud; she had forgotten everything but the
dead boy.
'_Shot himself!_, The words came back to her in a sort of cry. '_Shot
himself!_ What do you mean? What does she mean?'
Gwen stood as if petrified before those regretful faces. Then, as the
truth struck at her, beating down her shield of self-deception, she
turned at last, forgetful of all else, to the shelter of Dan's kind
arms. 'Dan! Dan! it isn't true--it can't be true! say it isn't true.'
He drew her closer to him, looking down into her agonised face with a
perfect passion of tenderness and kissed it; forgetful in his turn, of
everything save that she had come to him at last.
'It is true, my darling; he did it to save me and you. Gwen! Gwen! it
wasn't your fault--My God! she has fainted!'
'I'm sorry,' began Rose, feeling paralysed by surprise, but Dan's kind
smile was ready even in his distress.
'Don't worry. It's best over, for I must have told her. You see we have
been engaged for years, and George knew it. If I carry her to your
room, Miss Rose, she will be better there. 'Tis the shock, and she was
so fond of him, dear heart.'
Lewis Gordon, left alone in the verandah while another man before his
very eyes carried off the woman to whom he supposed himself to be
engaged, felt that the world had broken loose from its foundations
altogether. So that was the explanation! And then a low murmur of
moaning from the potter arrested his attention, which, as is so often
the case after a shock, had lost its airt and become vagrant.
The old man, still crouched beside the fragments of the Ayodhya pot,
was rocking himself backwards and forwards, and muttering to himself,
'She will be angry; the Madr-mihrban will be angry, and then Azizan
will not sleep.'
Lewis walked up to him and laid his hand reassuringly on the thin, bent
shoulders. 'I don't think the Madr-mihrban will be angry. I'm almost
sure she won't.' His own words made him smile, until, as he looked at
the old man's shifty, bright eyes raised to his doubtfully, he
remembered the young sad face which George had painted. 'And Azizan is
asleep,' he said gently; 'she will not wake again.'
As he stooped to gather up the jewels his eyes were dim with unwonted
tears--why, he scarcely knew.
When Rose came back ten minutes after, leaving Gwen to Dan's kind
consolations, she found Lewis leaning over the railings looking at the
rain lilies through his eyeglass as if it had been a microscope. He
turned to her with the air of a man who has made up his mind.
'You thought I was engaged to my cousin, Miss Tweedie,' he said. 'So
did I. Apparently I was mistaken. So let us set that aside, once and
for all, and think over more important matters. There is no lack of
other surprises, thank Heaven.'
The semi-cynicism of his words did not sit ill on him, and Rose
recognised that he had certainly chosen the most dignified way out of
the difficulty. At the same time it left her free, unexpectedly free,
to consider the position as an outsider, and all involuntarily, yet
naturally enough, her first thought expressed itself in words:
'I wonder what father will say?'
This was too much both for temper and dignity, fortunately, also for
humour. He gave her one indignant look, then relaxed into a smile.
'Really, Miss Tweedie, in this Comedy of Errors I am only responsible
for my part; and that, believe me, is rather a sorry one.'