IN THE TENT AT CHITIPTUR
The marquee was large and high. It had a thick lining of a dull red
colour and a carpet covered the floor; cushioned basket chairs and a few
small tables stood here and there; against one wall rose an open
escritoire with a box of cheroots upon it; the two passages to the
sleeping-tents and the kitchen were hidden by grass-screens and between
them stood a great Chesterfield sofa. It was, in a word, the tent of
people who were accustomed to make their home in it for weeks at a time.
Even the latest books were to be seen. But it was dark.
A single lamp swinging above the round dinner-table from the cross-pole
of the roof burnt in the very centre of the tent; and that was all. The
corners were shadowy; the lining merely absorbed the rays and gave none
back. The round pool of light which spread out beneath the lamp was
behind Ballantyne when he turned to the doorway, so Thresk for a moment
was only aware of him as a big heavily-built man in a smoking-jacket and
a starched white shirt; and it was to that starched white shirt that he
spoke, making his apologies. He was glad too to delay for a second or
two the moment when he must speak to Stella. In her presence this eight
long years of effort and work had become a very little space.
"I had to come as I was, Captain Ballantyne," he said, "for I have only
with me what I want for the night in the train."
"Of course. That's all right," Ballantyne replied with a great
cordiality. He turned towards Stella. "Mr. Thresk, this is my wife."
Now she had to turn. She held out her right hand but she still covered
her throat with her left. She gave no sign of recognition and she did not
look at her visitor.
"How do you do, Mr. Thresk?" she said, and went on quickly, allowing him
no time for a reply. "We are in camp, you see. You must just take us as
we are. Stephen did not tell me till a minute ago that he expected a
visitor. You have not too much time. I will see that dinner is served at
once." She went quickly to one of the grass-screens and lifting it
vanished from his view. It seemed to Thresk that she had just seized upon
an excuse to get away. Why? he asked himself. She was nervous and
distressed, and in her distress she had accepted without surprise
Thresk's introduction to her as a stranger. To that relationship then he
and she were bound for the rest of his stay in the Resident's camp.
Mrs. Repton had been wrong when she had attributed Thresk's request for
a formal introduction to Ballantyne to a plan already matured in his
mind. He had no plan, although he formed one before that dinner was at an
end. He had asked for the letter because he wished faithfully to follow
her advice and see for himself. If he called upon Stella he would find
her alone; the mere sending in of his name would put her on her guard; he
would see nothing. She would take care of that. He had no wish to make
Ballantyne's acquaintance as Mrs. Ballantyne's friend. He could claim
that friendship afterwards. Now however Stella herself in her confusion
had made the claim impossible. She had fled--there was no other word
which could truthfully describe her swift movement to the screen.
Ballantyne however had clearly not been surprised by it.
"It was a piece of luck for me that I camped here yesterday and
telegraphed for my letters," he said. "You mentioned in your note that
you had only twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur, didn't you? So I was
sure that you would be upon this train."
He spoke with a slow precision in a voice which he was careful--or so it
struck Thresk--to keep suave and low; and as he spoke he moved towards
the dinner-table and came within the round pool of light. Thresk had a
clear view of him. He was a man of a gross and powerful face, with a
blue heavy chin and thick eyelids over bloodshot eyes.
"Will you have a cocktail?" he asked, and he called aloud, going to the
second passage from the tent: "Quai hai! Baram Singh, cocktails!"
The servant who had met Thresk at the door came in upon the instant with
a couple of cocktails on a tray.
"Ah, you have them," he said. "Good!"
But he refused the glass when the tray was held out to him, refused it
after a long look and with a certain violence.
"For me? Certainly not! Never in this world." He looked up at Thresk
with a laugh. "Cocktails are all very well for you, Mr. Thresk, who are
here during a cold weather, but we who make our homes here--we have to
be careful."
"Yes, so I suppose," said Thresk. But just behind Ballantyne, on a
sideboard against the wall of the tent opposite to that wall where the
writing-table stood, he noticed a syphon of soda, a decanter of whisky
and a long glass which was not quite empty. He looked at Ballantyne
curiously and as he looked he saw him start and stare with wide-opened
eyes into the dim corners of the tent. Ballantyne had forgotten Thresk's
presence. He stood there, his body rigid, his mouth half-open and fear
looking out from his eyes and every line in his face--stark paralysing
fear. Then he saw Thresk staring at him, but he was too sunk in terror
to resent the stare.
"Did you hear anything?" he said in a whisper.
"No."
"I did," and he leaned his head on one side. For a moment the two men
stood holding their breath; and then Thresk did hear something. It was
the rustle of a dress in the corridor beyond the mat-screen.
"It's Mrs. Ballantyne," he said, and she lifted the screen and came in.
Thresk just noticed a sharp movement of revulsion in Ballantyne, but he
paid no heed to him. His eyes were riveted on Stella Ballantyne. She was
wearing about her throat now a turquoise necklace. It was a heavy
necklace of Indian make, rather barbaric and not at all beautiful, but it
had many rows of stones and it hid her throat--just as surely as her hand
had hidden it when she first saw Thresk. It was to hide her throat that
she had fled. He saw Ballantyne go up to his wife, he heard his voice and
noticed that her face grew grave and hard.
"So you have come to your senses," he said in a low tone. Stella passed
him and did not answer. It was, then, upon the question of that necklace
that their voices had been raised when he reached the camp. He had heard
Ballantyne's, loud and dominant, the voice of a bully. He had been
ordering her to cover her throat. Stella, on the other hand, had been
quiet but defiant. She had refused. Now she had changed her mind.
Baram Singh brought in the soup-tureen a second afterwards and Ballantyne
raised his hands in a simulation of the profoundest astonishment.
"Why, dinner's actually punctual! What a miracle! Upon my word, Stella, I
shan't know what to expect next if you spoil me in this way."
"It's usually punctual, Stephen," Stella replied with a smile of anxiety
and appeal.
"Is it, my dear? I hadn't noticed it. Let us sit down at once."
Upon this tone of banter the dinner began; and no doubt in another man's
mouth it might have sounded good-humoured enough. There was certainly no
word as yet which, it could be definitely said, was meant to wound, but
underneath the raillery Thresk was conscious of a rasp, a bitterness just
held in check through the presence of a stranger. Not that Thresk was
spared his share of it. At the very outset he, the guest whom it was such
a rare piece of good fortune for Ballantyne to meet, came in for a taste
of the whip.
"So you could actually give four-and-twenty hours to Chitipur, Mr.
Thresk. That was most kind and considerate of you. Chitipur is grateful.
Let us drink to it! By the way what will you drink? Our cellar is rather
limited in camp. There's some claret and some whisky-and-soda."
"Whisky-and-soda for me, please," said Thresk.
"And for me too. You take claret, don't you, Stella dear?" and he
lingered upon the "dear" as though he anticipated getting a great deal of
amusement out of her later on. And so she understood him, for there came
a look of trouble into her face and she made a little gesture of
helplessness. Thresk watched and said nothing.
"The decanter's in front of you, Stella," continued Ballantyne. He turned
his attention to his own tumbler, into which Baram Singh had already
poured the whisky; and at once he exclaimed indignantly:
"There's much too much here for me! Good heavens, what next!" and in
Hindustani he ordered Baram Singh to add to the soda-water. Then he
turned again to Thresk. "But I've no doubt you exhausted Chitipur in your
twenty-four hours, didn't you? Of course you are going to write a book."
"Write a book!" cried Thresk. He was surprised into a laugh. "Not I."
Ballantyne leaned forward with a most serious and puzzled face.
"You're not writing a book about India? God bless my soul! D'you hear
that, Stella? He's actually twenty-four hours in Chitipur and he's not
going to write a book about it."
"Six weeks from door to door: or how I made an ass of myself in India,"
said Thresk. "No thank you!"
Ballantyne laughed, took a gulp of his whisky-and-soda and put the glass
down again with a wry face.
"This is too strong for me," he said, and he rose from his chair and
crossed over to the tantalus upon the sideboard. He gave a cautious look
towards the table, but Thresk had bent forward towards Stella. She was
saying in a low voice:
"You don't mind a little chaff, do you?" and with an appeal so wistful
that it touched Thresk to the heart.
"Of course not," he answered, and he looked up towards Ballantyne. Stella
noticed a change come over his face. It was not surprise so much which
showed there as interest and a confirmation of some suspicion which he
already had. He saw that Ballantyne was secretly pouring into his glass
not soda-water at all but whisky from the tantalus. He came back with the
tumbler charged to the brim and drank deeply from it with relish.
"That's better," he said, and with a grin he turned his attention to his
wife, fixing her with his eyes, gloating over her like some great snake
over a bird trembling on the floor of its cage. The courses followed one
upon the other and while he ate he baited her for his amusement. She took
refuge in silence but he forced her to talk and then shivered with
ridicule everything she said. Stella was cowed by him. If she answered it
was probably some small commonplace which with an exaggerated politeness
he would nag at her to repeat. In the end, with her cheeks on fire, she
would repeat it and bend her head under the brutal sarcasm with which it
was torn to rags. Once or twice Thresk was on the point of springing up
in her defence, but she looked at him with so much terror in her eyes
that he did not interfere. He sat and watched and meanwhile his plan
began to take shape in his mind.
There came an interval of silence during which Ballantyne leaned back in
his chair in a sort of stupor; and in the midst of that silence Stella
suddenly exclaimed with a world of longing in her voice:
"And you'll be in England in thirteen days! To think of it!" She glanced
round the tent. It seemed incredible that any one could be so fortunate.
"You go straight from Jarwhal Junction here at our tent door to Bombay.
To-morrow you go on board your ship and in twelve days afterwards you'll
be in England."
Thresk leaned forward across the table.
"When did you go home last?" he asked.
"I have never been home since I married."
"Never!" exclaimed Thresk.
Stella shook her head.
"Never."
She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she
finished she raised her head.
"Yes, I have been eight years in India," she added, and Thresk saw the
tears suddenly glisten in her eyes. He had come up to Chitipur
reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so
distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself
that it seemed to belong to an earlier life. But his reproaches became
doubly poignant now. She had been eight years in India, tied to this
brute! But Stella Ballantyne mastered herself with a laugh.
"However I am not alone in that," she said lightly. "And how's London?"
It was unfortunate that just at this moment Captain Ballantyne woke up.
"Eh what!" he exclaimed in a mock surprise. "You were talking, Stella,
were you? It must have been something extraordinarily interesting that
you were saying. Do let me hear it."
At once Stella shrank. Her spirit was so cowed that she almost had the
look of a stupid person; she became stupid in sheer terror of her
husband's railleries.
"It wasn't of any importance."
"Oh, my dear," said Ballantyne with a sneer, "you do yourself an
injustice," and then his voice grew harsh, his face brutal. "What was
it?" he demanded.
Stella looked this way and that, like an animal in a trap. Then she
caught sight of Thresk's face over against her. Her eyes appealed to him
for silence; she turned quickly to her husband.
"I only said how's London?"
A smile spread over Ballantyne's face.
"Now did you say that? How's London! Now why did you ask how London was?
How should London be? What sort of an answer did you expect?"
"I didn't expect any answer," replied Stella. "Of course the question
sounds stupid if you drag it out and worry it."
Ballantyne snorted contemptuously.
"How's London? Try again, Stella!"
Thresk had come to the limit of his patience. In spite of Stella's appeal
he interrupted and interrupted sharply.
"It doesn't seem to me an unnatural question for any woman to ask who has
not seen London for eight years. After all, say what you like, for women
India means exile--real exile."
Ballantyne turned upon his visitor with some rejoinder on his tongue.
But he thought better of it. He looked away and contented himself
with a laugh.
"Yes," said Stella, "we need next-door neighbours."
The restraint which Ballantyne showed towards Thresk only served to
inflame him against his wife.
"So that you may pull their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters,"
he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down
to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be
jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings--alone
with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a
veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited them and then
sank again.
"How's London!" he growled, harping scornfully on the unfortunate phrase.
Ballantyne had had luck that night. He had chanced upon two of the
banalities of ordinary talk which give an easy occasion for the bully.
Thresk's twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur provided the best opening.
Only Thresk was a guest--not that that in Ballantyne's present mood would
have mattered a great deal, but he was a guest whom Ballantyne had it in
his mind to use. All the more keenly therefore he pounced upon Stella.
But in pouncing he gave Thresk a glimpse into the real man that he was, a
glimpse which the barrister was quick to appreciate.
"How's London? A lot of London we shall be able to afford! God! what a
life there's in store for us! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, dinner,
breakfast, lunch--all among the next-door neighbours." And upon that he
flung himself back in his chair and reached out his arms.
"Give me Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his
utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself
here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out
hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr.
Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the table with his hand.
"I like getting away into camp for two months, three months at a
time--on the plain, in the jungle, alone. That's the point--alone. You've
got it all then. You're a king without a Press. No one to spy on you--no
one to carry tales--no next-door neighbours. How's London?" and with a
sneer he turned back to his wife. "Oh, I know it doesn't suit Stella.
Stella's so sociable. Stella wants parties. Stella likes frocks. Stella
loves to hang herself about with beads, don't you, my darling?"
But Ballantyne had overtried her to-night. Her face suddenly flushed and
with a swift and violent gesture she tore at the necklace round her
throat. The clasp broke, the beads fell with a clatter upon her plate,
leaving her throat bare. For a moment Ballantyne stared at her, unable to
believe his eyes. So many times he had made her the butt of his savage
humour and she had offered no reply. Now she actually dared him!
"Why did you do that?" he asked, pushing his face close to hers. But he
could not stare her down. She looked him in the face steadily. Even her
lips did not tremble.
"You told me to wear them. I wore them. You jeer at me for wearing them.
I take them off."
And as she sat there with her head erect Thresk knew why he had bidden
her to wear them. There were bruises upon her throat--upon each side of
her throat--the sort of bruises which would be made by the grip of a
man's fingers. "Good God!" he cried, and before he could speak another
word Stella's moment of defiance passed. She suddenly covered her face
with her hands and burst into tears.
Ballantyne pushed back his chair sulkily. Thresk sprang to his feet. But
Stella held him off with a gesture of her hand.
"It's nothing," she said between her sobs. "I am foolish. These last few
days have been hot, haven't they?" She smiled wanly, checking her tears.
"There's no reason at all," and she got up from her chair. "I think I'll
leave you for a little while. My head aches and--and--I've no doubt I
have got a red nose now."
She took a step or two towards the passage into her private tent
but stopped.
"I _can_ leave you to get along together alone, can't I?" she said with
her eyes on Thresk. "You know what women are, don't you? Stephen will
tell you interesting things about Rajputana if you can get him to talk.
I shall see you before you go," and she lifted the screen and went out
of the room. In the darkness of the passage she stood silent for a
moment to steady herself and while she stood there, in spite of her
efforts, her tears burst forth again uncontrollably. She clasped her
hands tightly over her mouth so that the sound of her sobbing might not
reach to the table in the centre of the big marquee; and with her lips
whispering in all sincerity the vain wish that she were dead she
stumbled along the corridor.
But the sound had reached into the big marquee and coming after the
silence it wrung Thresk's heart. He knew this of her at all events--that
she did not easily cry. Ballantyne touched him on the arm.
"You blame me for this."
"I don't know that I do," answered Thresk slowly. He was wondering how
much share in the blame he had himself, he who had ridden with her on the
Downs eight years ago and had let her speak and had not answered. He sat
in this tent to-night with shame burning at his heart. "It wasn't as if I
had no confidence in myself," he argued, unable quite to cast back to the
Thresk of those early days. "I had--heaps of it."
Ballantyne lifted himself out of his chair and lurched over to the
sideboard. Thresk, watching him, fell to wondering why in the world
Stella had married him or he her. He knew that a blind man may see such
mysteries on any day and that a wise one will not try to explain them.
Still he wondered. Had the man's reputation dazzled her?--for undoubtedly
he had one; or was it that intellect which suffered an eclipse when
Ballantyne went into camp with nobody to carry tales?
He was still pondering on that problem when Ballantyne swung back to the
table and set himself to prove, drunk though he was, that his reputation
was not ill-founded.
"I am afraid Stella's not very well," he said, sitting heavily down.
"But she asked me to tell you things, didn't she? Well, her wishes are my
law. So here goes."
His manner altogether changed now that they were alone. He became
confidential, intimate, friendly. He was drunk. He was a coarse
heavy-featured man with bloodshot eyes; he interrupted his conversation
with uneasy glances into the corners of the tent, such glances as Thresk
had noticed when he was alone with him before they sat down to dinner;
but he managed none the less to talk of Rajputana with a knowledge which
amazed Thresk now and would have enthralled him at another time. A
visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may
admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches
of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that
strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years
fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne
knew--very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And
groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now
that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment
wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another
before Thresk's eyes--his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But
before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in
the dark corridor beyond the grass-screen whispering with wild lips her
wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing.
Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana.
Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm.
"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good
things--things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them--the
swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?"
And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess.
"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne
continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright
slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that
when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And
even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a
dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side
to the other that he might see the better.
"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked.
"No one."
Ballantyne nodded as he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.
"They make these tents too large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot
of light in the middle and all around in the corners--shadows. We sit
here in the blot of light--a fair mark. But what's going on in the
shadows, Mr.--What's your name? Eh? What's going on in the shadows?"
Thresk had no doubt that Ballantyne's fear was genuine. He was not
putting forward merely an excuse for the scene which his guest had
witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was
really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected
silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen,
as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk
accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of
the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong
however, for Ballantyne sprang to his feet.
"You are going away to-night. You can do me a service."
"Can I?" asked Thresk.
He understood at last why Ballantyne had been at such pains to interest
and amuse him.
"Yes. And in return," cried Ballantyne, "I'll give you another glimpse
into the India you don't know."
He walked up to the door of the tent and drew it aside. "Look!"
Thresk, leaning forward in his chair, looked out through the opening. He
saw the moonlit plain in a soft haze, in the middle of it the green lamp
of a railway signal and beyond the distant ridge, on which straggled the
ruins of old Chitipur.
"Look!" cried Ballantyne. "There's tourist India all in one: a desert, a
railway and a deserted city, hovels and temples, deep sacred pools and
forgotten palaces--the whole bag of tricks crumbling slowly to ruin
through centuries on the top of a hill. That's what the good people come
out for to see in the cold weather--Jarwhal Junction and old Chitipur."
He dropped the curtain contemptuously and it swung back, shutting out the
desert. He took a step or two back into the tent and flung out his arms
wide on each side of him.
"But bless your soul," he cried vigorously, "here's the real India."
Thresk looked about the tent and understood.
"I see," he answered--"a place very badly lit, a great blot of light in
the centre and all around it dark corners and grim shadows."
Ballantyne nodded his head with a grim smile upon his lips.
"Oh, you have learnt that! Well, you shall do me a service and in return
you shall look into the shadows. But we will have the table cleared
first." And he called aloud for Baram Singh.