NEWS FROM CHITIPUR
A long silence followed upon his words. Jane Repton turned to the
mantelshelf and moved an ornament here and another one there. She had
contemplated this very consequence of Thresk's journey to Chitipur. She
had actually worked for it herself. She was frank enough to acknowledge
that. None the less his announcement, quietly as he had made it, was a
shock to her. She did not, however, go back upon her work; and when she
spoke it was rather to make sure that he was not going to act upon an
unconsidered impulse.
"It will damage your career," she said. "Of course you have
thought of that."
"It will alter it," he answered, "if she comes to me. I shall go out of
Parliament, of course."
"And your practice?"
"That will suffer too for a while no doubt. But even if I lost it
altogether I should not be a poor man."
"You have saved money?"
"No. There has not been much time for that, but for a good many years now
I have collected silver and miniatures. I know something about them and
the collection is of value."
"I see."
Mrs. Repton looked at him now. Oh, yes, he had thought his proposal out
during the night journey to Bombay--not a doubt of it.
"Stella, too, will suffer," she said.
"Worse than she does now?" asked Thresk.
"No. But her position will be difficult for awhile at least," and she
came towards Thresk and pleaded.
"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play her
false--how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him.
"I don't think that you need fear that."
But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to want
heroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind.
And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face with
doubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it.
"She will need--love," said Mrs. Repton. "There--that's the word. Can you
give it her?"
"If she comes to me--yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and then
suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasm
of pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon the
table. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her
there--miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him by
force if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would have
barred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay,
to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip
out and travel here she will find me waiting."
Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear had
entered into her.
"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed.
"Yes?"
"Captain Ballantyne is not generous. He is just the sort of man not to
divorce his wife."
Thresk raised his head. Clearly that possibility had no more occurred to
him than it had to Jane Repton. He thought it over now.
"Just the sort of man," he agreed. "But we must take that risk--if
she comes."
"The letter's not yet written," Mrs. Repton suggested.
"But it will be," he replied, and then he stood and confronted her. "Do
you wish me not to write it?"
She avoided his eyes, she looked upon the floor, she began more than one
sentence of evasion; but in the end she took both his hands in hers and
said stoutly:
"No, I don't! Write! Write!"
"Thank you!"
He went to the door, and when he had reached it she called to him in a
low voice.
"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated if
she comes?"
Thresk came slowly back into the room.
"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why she
should put no faith in me."
He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more than
that, and she let him go. He went back to the great hotel on the Apollo
Bund and sent off a number of cablegrams to London saying that he had
missed his steamer and that the work waiting for him must go to other
hands. The letter to Stella Ballantyne he kept to the last. It could not
reach her immediately in any case since she was in camp. For all he knew
it might be weeks before she read it; and he had need to go warily in the
writing of it. Certain words she had used to him were an encouragement;
but there were others which made him doubt whether she would have any
faith in him. Every now and then there had been a savour of bitterness.
Once she had been shamed because of him, on Bignor Hill where Stane
Street runs to Chichester, and a second time in front of him in the tent
at Chitipur. No, it was not an easy letter which he had to write, and he
took the night and the greater part of the next day to decide upon its
wording. It could not in any case go until the night-mail. He had
finished it and directed it by six o'clock in the evening and he went
down with the letter in his hand into the big lounge to post it in the
box there. But it never was posted.
Close to the foot of the staircase stood a tape machine, and as Thresk
descended he heard the clicking of the instrument and saw the usual small
group of visitors about it. They were mostly Americans, and they were
reading out to one another the latest prices of the stock-markets. Some
of the chatter reached to Thresk's inattentive ears, and when he was only
two steps from the floor one carelessly-spoken phrase interjected between
the values of two securities brought him to a stop. The speaker was a
young man with a squarish face and thick hair parted accurately in the
middle. He was dressed in a thin grey suit and he was passing the tape
between his fingers as it ran out. The picture of him was impressed
during that instant upon Thresk's mind, so that he could never afterwards
forget it.
"Copper's up one point," he was saying, "that's fine. Who's Captain
Ballantyne, I wonder? United Steel has dropped seven-eighths. Well, that
doesn't affect me," and so he ran on.
Thresk heard no more of what he said. He stood wondering what news could
have come up on the tape of Captain Ballantyne who was out in camp in the
state of Chitipur, or if there was another Captain Ballantyne. He joined
the little group in front of the machine, and picking up the ribbon from
the floor ran his eyes backwards along it until he came to "United
Steel." The sentence in front of that ran as follows:
"Captain Ballantyne was found dead early yesterday morning outside his
tent close to Jarwhal Junction."
Thresk read the sentence twice and then walked away. The news might be
false, of course, but if it were true here was a revolution in his life.
There was no need for this letter which he held in his hand. The way was
smoothed out for Stella, for him. Not for a moment could he pretend to do
anything but welcome the news, to wish with all his heart that it was
true. And it seemed probable news. There was the matter of that
photograph. Thresk had carried it out to the Governor's house on Malabar
Point on the very morning of his arrival in Bombay. He had driven on to
Mrs. Repton's house after he had left it there. But he had taken it away
from Chitipur at too late a day to save Ballantyne. Ballantyne had, after
all, had good cause to be afraid while he possessed it, and the news had
not yet got to Salak's friends that it had left his possession. Thus he
made out the history of Captain Ballantyne's death.
The tape machine, however, might have ticked out a mere rumour with no
truth in it at all. He went to the office and obtained a copy of _The
Advocate of India_,--the evening newspaper of the city. He looked at the
stop-press telegrams. There was no mention of Ballantyne's death. Nor on
glancing down the columns could he find in any paragraph a statement that
any mishap had befallen him. But on the other hand he read that he
himself, Henry Thresk, having brought his case to a successful
conclusion, had left India yesterday by the mail-steamer Madras, bound
for Marseilles. He threw down the paper and went to the telephone-box. If
the news were true the one person likely to know of it was Mrs. Repton.
Thresk rang up the house on the Khamballa Hill and asked to speak to her.
An answer was returned to him at once that Mrs. Repton had given orders
that she was not to be disturbed. Thresk however insisted:
"Will you please give my name to her--Henry Thresk," and he waited with
his ear to the receiver for a century. At last a voice spoke to him, but
it was again the voice of the servant.
"The Memsahib very sorry, sir, but cannot speak to any one just now;" and
he heard the jar of the instrument as the receiver at the other end was
sharply hung up and the connection broken.
Thresk came out from the telephone-box with a face puzzled and very
grave. Mrs. Repton refused to speak to him!
It was a fact, an inexplicable fact, and it alarmed him. It was
impossible to believe that mere reflection during the last twenty-four
hours had brought about so complete a revolution in her feelings. He to
whom she had passionately cried "Write! Write!" only yesterday could
hardly be barred out from mere speech with her to-day for any fault of
his. He had done nothing, had seen no one. Thresk was certain now that
the news upon the tape was true. But it could not be all the truth. There
was something behind it--something rather grim and terrible.
Thresk walked to the door of the hotel and called up a motor-car. "Tell
him to drive to the Khamballa Hill," he said to the porter. "I'll let him
know when to stop."
The porter translated the order and Thresk stopped him at Mrs.
Repton's door.
"The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day," said the butler.
"I know," replied Thresk. He scribbled on a card and sent it in. There
was a long delay. Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the open
door. Night had come. There were lights upon the roadway, lights a long
way below at the water's edge on Breach Candy, and there was a light
twinkling far out on the Arabian Sea. But in the house behind him all was
dark. He had come to an abode of desolation and mourning; and his heart
sank and he was attacked with forebodings. At last in the passage behind
him there was a shuffling of feet and a gleam of white. The Memsahib
would receive him.
Thresk was shown into the drawing-room. That room too was unlit. But the
blinds had not been lowered and light from a street lamp outside turned
the darkness into twilight. No one came forward to greet him, but the
room was not empty. He saw Repton and his wife huddled close together on
a sofa in a recess by the fireplace.
"I thought that I had better come up from Bombay," said Thresk, as he
stood in the middle of the room. No answer was returned to him for a few
moments and then it was Repton himself who spoke.
"Yes, yes," he said, and he got up from the sofa. "I think we had better
have some light," he added in a strange indifferent voice. He turned the
light on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room in
shadow, like--the parallel forced its way into Thresk's mind--like the
tent in Chitipur. Then very methodically he pulled down the blinds. He
did not look at Thresk and Jane Repton on the couch never stirred.
Thresk's forebodings became a dreadful certainty. Some evil thing had
happened. He might have been in a house of death. He knew that he was
not wanted there, that husband and wife wished to be alone and silently
resented his presence. But he could not go without more knowledge than he
had.
"A message came up on the tape half an hour ago," he said in a low voice.
"It reported that Ballantyne was dead."
"Yes," replied Repton. He was leaning forward over a table and looking up
to the chandelier as if he fancied that its light burnt more dimly than
was usual.
"That's true," and he spoke in the same strange mechanical voice he had
used before.
"That he was found dead outside his tent," Thresk added.
"It's quite true," Repton agreed. "We are very sorry."
"Sorry!"
The exclamation burst from Thresk's lips.
"Yes."
Repton moved away from the chandelier. He had not looked at Thresk once
since he had entered the room; nor did he look towards his wife. His face
was very pale and he was busy now setting a chair in place, moving a
photograph, doing any one of the little unnecessary things people
restlessly do when there is an importunate visitor in the room who will
not go.
"You see, there's terribly bad news," he added.
"What news?"
"He was shot, you know. That wasn't in the telegram on the tape, of
course. Yes, he was shot--on the same night you dined there--after you
had gone."
"Shot!"
Thresk's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Yes," and the dull quiet voice went on, speaking apparently of some
trivial affair in which none of them could have any interest. "He was
shot by a bullet from a little rook-rifle which belonged to Stella, and
which she was in the habit of using."
Thresk's heart stood still. A picture flashed before his eyes. He
saw the inside of that dimly lit tent with its red lining and Stella
standing by the table. He could hear her voice: "This is my little
rook-rifle. I was seeing that it was clean for to-morrow." She had spoken
so carelessly, so indifferently that it wasn't conceivable that what was
in all their minds could be true. Yet she had spoken, after all, no more
indifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stress
of grief. Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chain
of presumption.
"But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little note
of triumph. But it had no echo in Repton's reply.
"I know. That makes everything so much worse."
"What do you mean?"
"Ballantyne was found in the morning outside the tent stone-cold. But
no one had heard the shot, and there were sentries on the edge of the
encampment. He had been dragged outside after he was dead or when he
was dying."
A low cry broke from Thresk. The weak point became of a sudden the most
deadly, the most terrible element in the whole case. He could hear the
prosecuting counsel making play with it. He stood for a moment lost in
horror. Repton had no further word to say to him. Mrs. Repton had never
once spoken. They wanted him away, out of the room, out of the house.
Some insight let him into the meaning of her silence. In the presence of
this tragedy remorse had gripped her. She was looking upon herself as one
who had plotted harm for Stella. She would never forgive Thresk for his
share in the plot.
Thresk went out of the room without a word more to either Repton or his
wife. Whatever he did now he must do by himself. He would not be admitted
into that house again. He closed the door of the room behind him, and
hardly had he closed it when he heard the snap of a switch and the line
of light under the door vanished. Once more there was darkness in the
drawing-room. Repton no doubt had returned to his wife's side and they
were huddled again side by side on the sofa. Thresk walked down the hill
with a horrible feeling of isolation and loneliness. But he shook it off
as he neared the lights of Bombay.