JAN'S MAIL
_Bombay, December 13th._
My Dear Jan,
It was a great relief to get your cable saying definitely
that you were sailing by the _Carnduff_. Misfortunes seem
to have come upon us in such numbers of late that I dreaded
lest your departure might be unavoidably delayed or
prevented. I will not now enter into the painful question
of my shameful treatment by Government, but you can well
understand that I shall leave no stone unturned to reverse
their most unfair and unjust decision, and to bring my
traducers to book. Important business having reference to
these matters calls me away at once, as I feel it is most
essential not to lose a moment, my reputation and my whole
future being at stake. I shall therefore, to my great
regret, be unable to meet you on your arrival in Bombay,
and, as my movements for the next few months will be rather
uncertain, I may find it difficult to let you have regular
news of me. I would therefore advise you to take Fay and
the children home as soon as all is safely over and she is
able to travel, and I will join you in England if and when
I find I can get away. I know, dear Jan, that you will not
mind financing Fay to this extent at present; as, owing to
these wholly unexpected departmental complications, I am
uncommonly hard up. I will, of course, repay you at the
earliest possible opportunity.
Poor Fay is not at all well; all these worries have been
very bad for her, and I have been distracted by anxiety on
her behalf, as well as about my own most distressing
position, and a severe attack of fever has left me weak and
ailing. I thought it better to bring Fay down to Bombay,
where she can get the best medical advice, and her being
there will save you the long, tiresome journey to
Dariawarpur. It is also most convenient for going home. She
is installed in a most comfortable flat, and we brought our
own servants, so I hope you will feel that I have done my
best for her.
Fay will explain the whole miserable business to you, and
although appearances may be against me, I trust that you
will realise how misleading these may be. I cannot thank
you enough for responding so promptly to our ardently
expressed desire for your presence at this difficult time.
It will make all the difference in the world to Fay; and,
on her account, to me also.
Believe me, always yours affectionately,
HUGO TANCRED.
_Bombay, Friday._
Jan my dear, my dear, are you really on your way? And shall
I see your face and hear your kind voice, and be able to
cry against your shoulder?
I can't meet you, my precious, because I don't go out. I'm
afraid. Afraid lest I should see anyone who knew us at
Dariawarpur. India is so large and so small, and people
from everywhere are always in Bombay, and I couldn't bear
it.
Do you know, Jan, that when the very worst has happened,
you get kind of numbed. You can't suffer any more. You
can't be sorry or angry or shocked or indignant, or
anything but just broken, and that's what I am.
After all, I've one good friend here who knew us at
Dariawarpur. He's got a job at the secretariat, and he
tries to help me all he can. I don't mind him somehow. He
understands. He will meet you and bring you to the
bungalow, so look out for him when the boat gets in. He's
tall and thin and clean-shaven and yellow, with a grave,
stern face and beautiful kind eyes. Peter is an angel, so
be nice to him, Jan dear. It has been awful; it will go on
being awful; but it will be a little more bearable when you
come--for me, I mean--for you it will be horrid. All of us
on your hands, and no money, and me such a crock, and
presently a new baby. The children are well. It's so queer
to think you haven't seen "little Fay." Come soon, Jan,
come soon, to your miserable FAY.
Jan sat on her bunk under the open porthole. One after the other she
held the letters open in her hand and stared at them, but she did not
read. The sentences were burnt into her brain already.
Hugo Tancred's letter was dated. Fay's was not, and neither letter bore
any address in Bombay. Now, Jan knew that Bombay is a large town; and
that people like the Tancreds, who, if not actually in hiding, certainly
did not seek to draw attention to their movements, would be hard to
find. Fay had wholly omitted to mention the surname of the tall, thin,
yellow man with the "grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes." Even in
the midst of her poignant anxiety Jan found herself smiling at this. It
was so like Fay--so like her to give no address. And should the tall,
thin gentleman fail to appear, what was Jan to do? She could hardly go
about the ship asking if one "Peter" had come to fetch her.
How would she find Fay?
Would they allow her to wait at the landing-place till someone came, or
were there stringent regulations compelling passengers to leave the
docks with the utmost speed, as most of them would assuredly desire to
do?
She knitted her brows and worried a good deal about this; then suddenly
put the question from her as too trivial when there were such infinitely
greater problems to solve.
Only one thing was clear. One central fact shone out, a beacon amidst
the gloom of the "departmental complications" enshrouding the conduct of
Hugo Tancred, the certainty that he had, for the present anyway, shifted
the responsibility of his family from his own shoulders to hers. As she
sat square and upright under the porthole, with the cool air from an
inserted "wind-sail" ruffling her hair, she looked as though she braced
herself to the burden.
She wished she knew exactly what had happened, what Hugo Tancred had
actually done. For some years she had known that he was by no means
scrupulous in money matters, and that very evening Sir Langham had made
it clear to her that this crookedness had not stopped short at his
official work. There had been a scandal, so far-reaching a scandal that
it had got into the home papers.
This struck Jan as rather extraordinary, for Hugo Tancred was by no
means a stupid man.
It is one thing to be pleasantly oblivious of private debts, to omit
cheques in repayment of various necessaries got at the Stores by an
obliging sister-in-law. One thing to muddle away in wild-cat
speculations a wife's money that, but for the procrastination of an
easy-going father, would have been tightly tied up--quite another to
bring himself so nearly within the clutches of the law as to make it
possible for the Government of India to dismiss him.
And what was he to do? What did the future hold for him?
Who would give employment to however able a man with such a career
behind him?
Jan's imagination refused to take such flights. Resolutely she put the
subject from her and began to consider what her own best course would be
with Fay, her nephew and niece, and, very shortly, a new baby on her
hands.
Jan was not a young woman to let things drift. She had kept house for a
whimsical, happy-go-lucky father since she was fourteen; mothered her
beautiful young sister; and, at her father's death, two years before,
had with quiet decision arranged her own life, wholly avoiding the
discussion and the friction which generally are the lot of an unmarried
woman of five-and-twenty left without natural guardians and with a large
circle of friends and relations.
It was nearly two o'clock when she undressed and went to bed, and before
that she had drafted two cablegrams--one to a house-agent, the other to
her bankers.