Whether Lewis Gordon spoke truth or not regarding the part he had to
play, there could be no doubt that Dan found his anything but sorry. A
subdued sort of radiance softened yet brightened the man as he came out
to ask Rose for the loan of her _dandy_, Mrs. Boynton being anxious to
get home as soon as possible. There seemed no need for words; the
situation explained itself, and even Lewis, looking at his rival's
eager face, could not help acknowledging that Dan was more likely to
give Gwen the support she evidently needed than he was. Besides, the
sudden change for the future seemed lost sight of in that, which the
opportune arrival of the Ayodhya pot had on the present, and on
Chandni's impudent claim. It was of course clear evidence against the
truth of the story so far as Gwen was concerned, but whether it would
prevent the woman raking up the true facts of George Keene's death, out
of sheer wanton malice, was another thing. Lewis felt himself rather
helpless before the phenomenon of such a nature as hers, and confessed
as much when Dan came racing back, breathless and excited after seeing
Mrs. Boynton safely home, for a council of war. He brought a quick
decision and intuition with him. The sluice had been opened by
treachery of course, and now that he was free to speak of his
engagement, Dan told the story of the open locket, which to him seemed
proof-positive that George had voluntarily taken the blame on himself
when thrown off his balance by the discovery that the happiness of the
man and the woman he loved best in the world depended on Dan's getting
his promotion. How the sluice had been opened was another matter.
Chandni had always said by means of a key made after an impression sent
from Simla; but this was manifestly impossible unless some servant had
done it. Indeed he had never paid much attention to this assertion, for
the woman in making it had contradicted herself more than once, and
evidently had no definite story as to how the impression had been
secured. In his own mind he had decided that the key itself had been
stolen from the boy while he slept so heavily, and that the knowledge
that this was so had had the lion's share in bringing about his
self-sacrifice. So that even if the real facts came out, nothing beyond
carelessness could be laid to George's charge, now that the potter was
there to prove that Azizan had had the Ayodhya pot all the time, and
that they were there to prove that the pearls had remained in the pot.
So much for Chandni and the only possible cause of further action--a
woman's wanton cruelty. For the rest, the old Diwan was dead, Khush-hal
seemed to be out of it, and Dalel had everything to lose and nothing to
gain by a scandal. Finally, these intrigues were always as a house of
cards; remove one support and the whole structure disappeared.
'Nevertheless,' said Dan, looking across the table with a grim smile,
'I'm not going to take you down as a witness to my interview with that
she-devil this afternoon. You are too fine for the work, and that's the
fact.'
'Can I lend you anything peculiarly barbaric in the way of a knife?'
asked Lewis. 'I've a Malay crease in my room which fills most people
with terror, though personally I should funk a woorali dart more than
anything.'
'Ah! you may jeer; but 'tis true. Sure! our fineness is at the bottom
of half our mistakes in this country. Even in our kindness we treat
these people as we would like to be treated ourselves--a poor
philanthropy compared to treating them as they would like to be
treated. And when we come to mere justice! Why, we might as well give a
child who has disobeyed his mother the right to appeal against her in
court. What chance would the child have to begin with, and then what
good would it do? and what good is our complicated system of procedure
save to put power into the hands of the educated few who naturally
clamour for more? But there! This has nothing to do with Chandni. She
wouldn't care a tinker's dam for what you'd say to her, because you
would be regulating yourself by codes and sections instead of by the
way she is made. I won't. I don't mind stooping to her level to get my
will. So let me go with the old mad potter and his eyes, and see if
between us we can't make a settlement. And then, please God, we will
have done with the whole bad dream from beginning to end. So if you
have three thousand rupees you can spare on a loan, I'll just have them
handy in my pocket as a salve to her wounded feelings when I've got my
own way.'
What really happened at the interview Dan resolutely refused to say. On
his return from the bazaar he asked for a whisky and soda and a hot
bath to take the taste of it out of soul and body. Yet he returned
triumphantly with a written declaration signed by Chandni, stating that
she herself had stolen the key from George while he slept.
'It isn't true, of course,' said Dan with a rueful look at Lewis, 'but
upon my soul, no one could tell if it is, or not. My mind seemed a vast
cobweb with lines going everyway into the outside world, but all
beginning in that woman, and the only way was to smash through it. She
has done worse things--that's one comfort. Maybe the pearls should have
gone back to Hodinuggur direct, but she will make her bargain there,
never fear, and by God they deserve----'
He broke out then with curses into the tale of Azizan's birth, which it
seemed had been his strong card--that and the potter's eyes. He had
played the one against the other till he wormed the story out of his
enemy, while the old man waited below, ready, if Dan failed to be told
the truth, to bring his evil glance to bear on the question. That fear
had really settled the matter; she had acknowledged the part Azizan had
played in bringing her plans to naught, and confessed the wisdom of
dancing to a different tune in the future.
'We parted on the best of terms. She offered me cinnamon tea and
fritters, and I took some as a sign of peace,' said Dan with a shudder.
'And now I must be off and tell poor Gwen 'tis all settled for ever.'
He lingered a moment as he rose, to add with a half shy, half happy
smile, 'Were you very much surprised, old man?'
'Very,' replied Lewis with dignity. But Dan still lingered.
'I wonder what on earth the Colonel will say?' he remarked
apprehensively after a pause.
Then Lewis laughed; he could not help it. And actually the idea of
playing second fiddle to Colonel Tweedie's disappointment in the eyes
of the world, helped him materially in the interview which he had with
his cousin next morning. Even without this, however, he would have
felt it difficult to be severe, for he found her full of remorse and
self-abasement; rather vague, perhaps, but still real. She would never
forgive herself, she said, not so much for her indecision about Dan,
for she had always loved him, and Lewis was well quit of her selfish
regard. No! it was about poor George! She had sided with Simla in
turning the boy's head, she had made too much of him and behaved most
unwisely--really Lewis must let her say what she knew to be true--she
had been over friendly, over confidential, and had asked him to do too
much for her. All this and his foolish fancy about being the keeper of
Dan's conscience, of which the latter had told her, had been too much
for the dear, dear, lad's kind, sensitive heart. Then the terrible
home-coming after all the pleasure and spoiling! Was not that enough,
more than enough, to upset the balance? She was so insistent on this
point that Lewis had to confess his assent to it, and finally went away
feeling that she had more heart than he had given her credit for in the
past, and that he might even be in a measure responsible for not having
appealed to this better nature while he had the chance. Dan seemed to
have done it successfully, for she had evidently given up all thoughts
of a mercenary marriage. He understood her, she said plaintively, he
knew her faults and yet he loved her; while Lewis--he must excuse her
for saying so--had always treated her as if she had no heart, no
sentiment; had always committed the unpardonable mistake of making her
remember that she did not love him. Of course she had behaved
abominably to everybody--far worse than they would allow, for they were
all too good for her--but in the future she would have Dan, who was a
tower of strength to her.
In fact, like many another woman of her type--many a man also--Gwen
Boynton had taken refuge from the greater remorse in the lesser one--if
indeed there was a greater one?--if indeed the real limit of her
sinning had not been that over-confidence to which she had confessed.
Not in detail truly; still she _had_ confessed it with tears to Dan,
and he had forgiven her _en masse_; as, no doubt, he would forgive in
detail if she had thought it right to tell him what she had told
George. But what right had she to put this pain into another man's
life, or speak of that vague fear which even Chandni's confession of
having stolen the key would not smother utterly? It would be worse than
foolish! it would be wicked; and this dreadful doubt was her cross, her
punishment, which she thoroughly deserved for doing as she had done.
And when she had got thus far, remorse was once more in a clear open
channel where it could spread itself out and lose its chill under the
sunshine of Dan's kind consolations.
Thus it really turned out that, after all, the person most upset by the
unexpected _denouement_ of affairs was Colonel Tweedie.
'Engaged for years,' he said angrily, in reply to his daughter's
information. 'Well! I am surprised. A most extraordinary proceeding
which er--er--complicates--the--er--If you had said "of late," I
might have seen some sense in it, for during the last week or so even
Gordon, who is generally to be relied upon, has been absent over his
work--er--not to say--er--somewhat negligent. And of course being his
cousin--the--er--interest----'
Rose hastened to confess that the engagement had only, as it were, been
a definite one during--here she hesitated a little--the last few days.
Which tribute to his perspicacity soothed the Colonel's dignity, and
encouraged him to further ventures in the seer's path by a suggestion
that no doubt his daughter's improved appetite and appearance, which he
had observed during the same period, was due to the proverbial interest
which women took in the matrimonial affairs of their neighbours. Though
for his part he must say that the friendly admiration he had had for
Mrs. Boynton had been very considerably impaired by--er--the lack of
judgment she had displayed in engaging herself to an assistant
engineer, a man whose promotion, he believed, could not possibly come
before the following July--if then. He went off to consult the
departmental lists with portentous gloom, leaving his daughter
defenceless before the truth. Certainly she had been much happier since
Lewis had known her feeling for him, and what is more, Mrs. Boynton's
decision in favour of Dan was a great relief in one way, though in
another it was disturbing--confusing; for despite her theories Rose
felt that the fact of his freedom to make other ties did make a
difference in her relations with Lewis Gordon. It ought not to do so,
of course; she was angry with herself for admitting the fact, but she
was totally unable to juggle with realities, or escape, crablike, from
a difficulty sideways. No thought of marriage or what she was pleased
to call sentimental rubbish had marred the self-forgetfulness of that
unpremeditated appeal she had made to her belief in him. No such
thought existed even now, and that the fear of it should creep in was
intolerable, absurd. No! she must feign the virtue of unconsciousness,
even if she had it not, and by an increase of friendly confidence,
combined with a strict attention to prose, prevent the awkwardness of
the position from falling on innocent Lewis, and show him clearly that
the altered situation had made no change in her, yet was not expected
to make any change in him. Only by these means could she show him, what
was really the truth, that her past avowal of interest was not mere
sentiment.
Lewis, for his part, also tackled the position with a boldness which he
had denied to himself while he was still engaged to his cousin, still
smarting under the curiously mixed sensations which the knowledge of
the girl's real feelings had aroused. Then he had felt bound to
conventional modes of thought, and, to tell truth, had been more or
less afraid lest on inquiry a sentimental love for Rose might pop up
somewhere like a Jack-in-the-box. For her confession had affected him
in a perfectly incomprehensible way, and the only other explanation of
it he had been loth to admit, since it ran counter to all his pet
theories. What feeling could there be between a man and a woman save
the one feeling? This warmth at his heart when he thought of her
praise, this pain at the thought of her blame, could only be the old,
old story; and yet he had been in love before, and this was not the
same experience. Well, it might be milk-food suited to babes and women,
but it was not strong meat for strong men; withal it was strangely
satisfying, strangely final, so that when a return to commonplace diet
became possible, he found himself in two minds about taking to it. She
evidently had but one; she evidently had given him all she intended to
give, and the only return he could make was by showing her that he did
understand this, and that he did not think it necessary to salve over
her wounded modesty by making love to her. Wounded modesty! The very
thought seemed an insult. He could not agree with her theories
altogether, but he could at least respect them.
So for the next month, while Gwen was slowly recovering her shock, and
all Simla was divided into factions over the surprise of her engagement
to penniless Dan Fitzgerald, a very pretty little comedy was being
enacted in the big house where Rose, as hostess, treated Lewis Gordon
as a friend, and he returned the compliment in kind. There was
absolutely no humbug, no effort about it at all. They were not in love
with each other, they were not restless or moody or excited, but
absolutely content and happy with things as they were. A state of
affairs accentuated by the relief from anxiety, the improving weather
and the charming gaiety and _verve_ of the society in which they lived.
Thus it happened that Rose Tweedie had her chance of being wooed in the
only possible way in which girls of her type can be wooed. One sees
dozens of them nowadays in society; one will see more and more year by
year, as the unnatural disproportion in the number of the sexes tends
to intensify the present seclusion of the nicest girls from the men. It
is not the fault of the latter. In a bevy of several hundred young
ladies, the fortunate possessor of the handkerchief naturally throws it
at some of those who press forward into individuality, or at some fair
face which even a crush cannot hide. So the choice for a wife falls on
beauty or brass. The latter may be too hard a term, yet the girls who
are likely to make the most faithful wives, the most devoted mothers,
are not those who are the readiest to attract and assent. On the
contrary they do not fall in love, and men have no time to give them
friendship. Friendship! They are engaged--nay, married--before the mere
thought of such a thing crops up.
So the younger generation of women is rapidly dividing itself into the
girls who dress and the girls who don't dress. In other words, those
willing to attract men by one certain if seamy side of their natures,
and those who are not willing. Who does not know the opposite extremes
of these two factions? The girl who forces you instinctively to think
of a looking-glass, and the girl who makes you wonder if there be such
a thing in her room. The girl with not a hair out of place, and the
girl with a hiatus between her soul and her body, as the feminine
phrase runs. Rose belonged outwardly to neither factions, yet in her
heart she strenuously resented the old-fashioned theory that marriage
was the larger half of a man's life and the whole of a woman's.
Truthfully, though she was three-and-twenty, she had never felt the
slightest desire to marry anybody, not even Lewis, and she felt in
consequence proportionally grateful to him for behaving, at any rate,
as if he believed the fact.
Yet, even so, they sometimes found each other out, as for instance one
day when he came back from his cousin's full of unexpected news. Dan
Fitzgerald had sent in his resignation to the Department, and accepted
an offer of employment from Australia.
'I'm as glad,' said Lewis heartily, 'as if I had had the chance myself;
partly because I couldn't make anything of it! Brown--that is the man
who has wired for him--was out here contracting one of the big railway
bridges. A bloated mechanic; began life as a riveter sort of fellow,
but with a knack of making money and a keen eye beyond belief. I
remembered his telling me that Dan was too good for us, and that if
ever he came across a job in which he wanted help, he would try and
steal him. This is some huge irrigation scheme--private--down South. If
Dan succeeds, and he will if any one can, there will be millions in
it.'
'I suppose your cousin is delighted?' said Rose.
'Gwen? Never saw a woman more relieved in my life. For, mind you,
though she is awfully fond of Dan--fonder than I personally should have
thought she could have been of any one--the idea of the poverty was
telling on her. You know it is absurd to think of her as an assistant
engineer's wife. It is really not an environment in which she was
likely to shine, and when all is said and done on the romantic side
people ought to consider surroundings in making a settlement for life.
Besides, I am sure she is relieved to get away from us all and make a
fresh start. She feels it more than I should have expected.'
'Mr. Gordon,' said Rose suddenly, 'I'm very sorry I judged her so
harshly that--that time. I've wanted to say so often; but _then_ it
seemed foolish. As if it could have mattered what I said or thought.'
'I don't think it did really matter,' he replied frankly. 'Rather the
other way round, I expect. Yet I doubt if you did judge her as harshly
as she judges herself now; so it is far better she should leave all
these associations behind. If he and she had had to go inspecting at
Hodinuggur, or even if she had to meet Dalel Beg and his wife--did I
tell you I saw her at the vice-regal squash yesterday, a perfect child
in the most awful get-up?--why, then, it would revive the old affair.
And if, by chance'--he paused a moment--'One never knows what mayn't
crop up, and Dan is a queer chap in some ways. He works by instincts,
as it were, and hitherto they have led him right. If they didn't, and
he found it out, I don't know what mightn't happen. He is not what I
call a very safe man unless he is successful. So they are both lucky to
get out of the uncongenial atmosphere which Government service is to
him and poverty is to her. They start in smooth water, and I must buy
my wedding-present, for they are to be married next month.
'So soon?'
'He has to leave at once. The wedding is to be at Rajpore after we all
go down. No bridesmaids, and I'm best man. If you want to know the
wedding dress, ask Gwen; she is sure to have settled it long ago. Women
always do.'
'I haven't,' protested Rose hastily. 'I shall be married in my
every-day things.'
She tried hard to be grave while Lewis roared with laughter, but in the
end she joined in the joke against herself. For they never quarrelled
now. What was there to quarrel about?
It was on another of these pleasant peaceful days, that he came to
lunch, with the news that Dalel Beg was even now detaining her father
by abject apologies for past old-style misdemeanours at Hodinuggur, and
profuse promises that in future it would be the abode of all the
civilised virtues. Khush-hal Beg it appeared had died of apoplexy,
brought on no doubt by the unrestrained orgies with which the fat man
had celebrated his accession, and in consequence Dalel was king.
'I don't quite understand it all,' he said thoughtfully. 'He is a fool,
and yet he is playing his cards well. Do you know, I shouldn't be at
all surprised to hear that Chandni was back again as chief adviser. She
is a very clever woman. It seems that there is a scheme on foot for
establishing stud farms or grazing paddocks for Government remounts. It
is supposed to be cheaper and better in the end to buy them as
yearlings and let them run loose, instead of being tethered heels,
heads, and tails, in native fashion. And as the water supply is to be
constant at Hodinuggur now, Dalel proposes that Government should
utilise some of his waste land there, and put him in charge, or partly
in charge. Of course it would bring him in a steady income if he gets
his finger in the pie.'
'He ought to get nothing,' interrupted Rose hastily; 'I believe he was
at the bottom of all that intrigue. We shall never know what went on
exactly, but there was intrigue, and that sort of thing should be
punished.'
'Undoubtedly; but as I said before, Dalel is a fool--except about a
horse. It was the old man and Chandni; they belonged to that age. This
man tries to break the Ten Commandments in two languages, and misses
the idiom in both. But he does know the points of a horse, and as
Government must keep up these old families and try to civilise them, it
is as well to get some work out of them.'
'Hodinuggur civilised! I can't imagine it,' echoed Rose. 'When I think
of the old potter, and that mirrored room on the roof--of Azizan and
the Ayodhya pot--it seems like some old dream of life into which we
nineteenth century folk strayed by mistake.'
'With disastrous results,' put in Lewis thoughtfully. 'Well! with half
the _dramatis personae_ of the play dead, and the other half married, it
ought to have come to an end now like a decently behaved melodrama. Not
a very moral one, I'm afraid, Miss Tweedie, and virtue must be its own
reward.'
'What do you mean?' she asked.
'You and I have been left out of the prizes altogether; but then, as
the potter said, we didn't belong to his world.'
'I wish you had not reminded me of that scene,' she interrupted
hastily. 'I cannot help thinking of how Mr. Fitzgerald sat smiling at
me while the old man measured him; just as George did when he measured
himself, and he is dead.'
'What a woman you are when all is said and done!' he replied, smiling
at her. 'Still I do think that poetic justice has not been meted out
all round. Gwen, for instance, has everything she wants, and I am out
in the cold.'
'Do you feel out in the cold?' asked Rose aggressively.
He hastened to assure her that on the contrary he was quite warm and
comfortable, but in spite of this the conversation languished till
Colonel Tweedie came in, full of his intention of recommending Dalel
Beg's plan strongly to the authorities.
To call it Dalel Beg's was, however, as Lewis Gordon had suspected, to
credit that gentleman with too much sense. It was Chandni's. When Dan
Fitzgerald had left her after partaking in friendly fashion of cinnamon
tea, she had put the pearls away in a safe place, and set herself, as
she had been doing ever since she came to Simla, to amuse herself. She
had looked after Dan as he rode away without the least malice, saying
that there was a man indeed; one of the old sort like the Diwans. If he
had had her in the old days, say at Hodinuggur, there would just have
been one order, and then silence. She nodded her head and smiled over
the thought. But now she had three thousand rupees and the pearls. She
could not sell them of course, could not at present let any one know
she had them. They were too well known, these Hodinuggur pearls, for
Chandni to traffic in them without fear of being accused of theft. By
and by, perhaps, she might trade them off on Dalel; but nothing of that
sort was safe as long as Khush-hal was alive. So long too, as they
thought the mem had them they would not dare to move in the matter, now
that there was all this talk of a permanent water-supply; for Chandni,
in the wooden-balconied house at Simla, heard all the latest talk, and
had quite a bevy of respectable native gentlemen who drank sherbets at
her expense. She heard also from a friend at court of this taking up of
waste land, and as she listened to all the stir of intrigue after this
thing and that thing, felt a pang of regret for that vanished dream of
some day being a motive power in Hodinuggur. This court-life was as
the breath of her nostrils, and if she had been in the place of that
half-caste girl down in the house with the dahlias, she would not have
been half starved and beaten; for if bazaar rumour said sooth, Dalel
Beg had carried his occidental estimate of the marriage-tie to this
almost incredible length.
Then one day, after a rich Hindu contractor had roused her wrath by
claiming her more or less as his special property, by reason of the
money he had chosen to lavish on her, came the news of Khush-hal Beg's
death in the odour of court sanctity. She could imagine it all down in
the ruined palace out in the desert--the old ways, the old etiquette;
poverty-stricken may be, yet still courtly. And why, in these pushing
days when fat pigs like that Hindu made money, should they remain
poverty-stricken? yet even so, it was better in a way to be Chandni of
Hodinuggur, than Chandni of a bazaar, especially as one grew older.
That same afternoon a patchwork-covered dhooli went jolting down to the
house with the dahlias, which was a miserable spot now; deserted,
forlorn. A miserable room also, whence the indignant Parsees had reft
the French clocks and the _bric-a-brac_. A most miserable pair of women
too, reduced to cooking their own food at the drawing-room fire, lest
their over-looking neighbours might see them in the degradation of the
cook-room--since the deepest degradation of all in Eurasian eyes is to
be servantless.
'Don't be a fool,' said Chandni to Mrs. D'Eremao's shrill abuse, as the
former walked in upon them unceremoniously, and, squatting down, went
on calmly chewing betel. 'You have nothing to do with the business.
But, if she is wise, she will listen.' Beatrice Elflida Norma looked at
her shrewdly and said, 'Be quiet, mamma, there is no harm in hearing
what she has to say.'
It was not much, but to the point. No doubt, if they appealed to
English justice, they could force the Diwan to support his wife. But
how? At Hodinuggur under lock and key. It would not be nice, and
Chandni had tales to tell which made Mrs. D'Eremao's hair stand on her
head even while she protested that _she_ was a freeborn British
subject. Doubtless; but then they must give up all hopes of the
position for which the girl had married such an atrocity. (Here
Beatrice Elflida dissolved into tears.) Besides, that was not the way
to treat a Mohammedan gentleman, an offshoot of the great Moghuls; but
_she_ knew how to treat him, and for a consideration, was quite willing
to use her influence with Dalel to set things straight. She did not
want him, and had flouted his proposals of peace a dozen times, but she
was quite ready, _for this consideration_, to make herself useful.
Briefly, that consideration was a free hand if she could get it, no
cabals against her position, and an assignment, in case of Dalel's
death, of a good slice of that state pension, which, in such case,
would be given to the wife. If there were children, so much the better,
since the pension would be larger. In addition, they had to remember
that refusal would not amend the position, since Dalel would no doubt
bribe her back in some other way.
So a week after this, her Highness Beatrice Elflida Norma of
Hodinuggur's name appeared on the list of donors to a certain Fund,
opposite no less a sum than one thousand rupees, and she herself
appeared at the next viceregal squash in full native costume, with her
hair quite straight, and many shades darker in colour. She sat and
talked affably to a stout English matron about her husband's great
desire to assimilate the lives of Indian women more closely to those of
their European sisters; so that, on her return home, the stout English
matron mentioned to her stout English husband, who happened to be a
Commissioner, that the Hodinuggur creature seemed to have ideas and
should be encouraged.
And that evening, Dalel said to Chandni, ere he left the little
balconied room where so many grave and reverend gossip-mongers sat
drinking sherbet, 'Thou wilt return to Hodinuggur as thou hast
promised.'
'I will return; but not as before. I am free to come and go. And see
that thou pay me back that thousand rupees out of the first batch of
horses. Else Chandni goes, never to come again.'