A Hard Man and Bitter
It was the next morning, and Nina's _ayah_ sat on a chair in the
passage, guarding the door of her mistress's room. To all comers she
gave the same answer--her _mem-sahib_ was sleeping after a night of
wakefulness and must not be disturbed.
She gave it to Colonel Darling no less than three times--once before
breakfast, once after, and again before he rode away for parade, his
eyes bloodshot and his hands all a-tremble.
And all the while the room behind the door was as empty of life as a
hatched egg-shell. For in the darkest hour of a gray dawn, closely
veiled, Nina had stolen away with her _ayah_ escorting, and had taken
refuge with the Ramsays, who had a small bungalow within the hotel
compound--the same hotel, be it added, which sheltered "Mr. Henry
Scripps, Bombay."
Of course she told the Ramsays her story--or, which is closer to fact,
_a_ story. Some of it was truth, but it was neither all the truth nor
nothing but the truth. She believed dissemblance necessary, and so she
had no hesitation in dissembling.
Her main purpose was to escape for a while from Darling and his
unanswerable questions, and in the meantime to obtain at all hazards an
interview with Kneedrock. She hadn't the faintest idea what the
viscount purposed doing, but whatever it was she must stop him.
She knew from what young Andrews had told her that he was masquerading
under the name of Scripps. So as Scripps she spoke of him in relating
her tale of embarrassment to her American friend, Sibylla Ramsay, while
Sibylla's daughter, who should have been fast asleep, sat by and
listened with apparently adult understanding.
She implied without actually saying so that she had once had a more or
less violent flirtation with Mr. Scripps; that her husband knew of it,
and that she feared the consequences of his present presence in Umballa.
Therefore it was imperative that she see him and urge his departure at
the very earliest possible moment.
She couldn't receive him in her own home, but she'd like to receive him
in theirs; and she did hope they would not regard it as an imposition on
their friendship and good nature.
"Well, I should say not," returned Sibylla. "I think it's just the
loveliest thing. I'm mad over romance, Nina, you know. And this is _so_
romantic."
"Do you mind if I peep at him, dear Mrs. Darling?" asked Jane, nervously
gathering her kimono more closely about her slim limbs. "I know he's
handsome from his name. It isn't beautiful. Men with beautiful names are
always so disappointing."
"You may peep all you care to, my dear," said Nina, "but you mustn't
listen. Otherwise I'd suggest that you hide behind the piano or under
the sofa. May I write him a note, Sibylla, and bribe your maid to
deliver it?"
"You may serenade him from my front veranda if you care to, dear, and
I'll beckon him when he comes to his window. But if you think the note
idea more discreet, adopt it by all means."
So Nina wrote the note and then sat in a fever of impatience until the
dawn grew brighter and the hands of the watch on her wrist circled to a
more reasonable morning hour.
She had recovered some measure of poise, but the experience of the night
had left its marks upon her, and the uncertainty as to whether Kneedrock
would come or refuse to do so, coupled with the prospect of the meeting,
which she both longed for and feared, filled the waiting period with a
nervous tension that fretted and rasped.
She had begged him to send her an answer, if only verbal. But the maid
returned without so much as a syllable. And so her waiting in
uncertainty was prolonged. Meanwhile she drank the black coffee with
which Sibylla plied her with the assurance that its sustaining power was
superior to her habitual tea.
At ten minutes to nine, by the watch on her wrist, just as the fourth
cup had been placed in her somewhat steadied hand, the maid who had
carried the note brought proof of its delivery by announcing that Mr.
Scripps awaited Mrs. Darling's pleasure in the bungalow drawing-room.
Sibylla and Jane were both wonderfully pleased and excited, and Nina,
who had expected this moment, if it ever came, quite to overcome her
with emotional agitation, surprised herself with a calmly self-contained
placidity which she naturally attributed to the stimulation of the
caffein.
Even the shock of Kneedrock's changed appearance--for he was almost
unrecognizably changed in the nine years since their parting--failed to
disturb her inner tranquillity. Only her voice betrayed her. It quavered
just the least bit as she spoke the old name.
"Hal!" No one but she had ever called him that.
For his part he husbanded his words. He had taken a place with his back
to the mantel and stood there in unmoving silence with his hands clasped
behind him--the one still bandaged, but the sling discarded--and his
brow drawn with a half frown.
Nina put out a hand tentatively and drew it back when he continued
motionless.
"Perhaps you did not wish to see me," she said, nettled.
"You might have thought of that before sending me your extraordinary
message." Those were the first words he spoke.
"It would have made no difference," she returned, pausing by the piano
and steadying herself by resting a hand on its top. "I had to see you,
whether you wished it or not. If you had not come here I should have
gone into the hotel."
"I can't for the life of me see what is to be gained by it," he
protested.
"There may be nothing gained unless you will believe me."
It was scarcely possible that he could miss the pathos of the words,
even if he missed the pathos in the tone. Yet his only answer was a
cynical smile.
"I want you to know that the shot which hurt you was not intended for
you."
Then he laughed cruelly. "No?" he questioned with feigned surprise.
"Still, you must admit that your lover's habit of firing at random
through drawing-room windows isn't a perfectly safe amusement at best.
He's liable to pot some one, you know."
Her face was crimson. "He's not my lover," she denied indignantly.
"Pardon me. I judged only from what I saw. It was quite evident he was
not your husband. I am curious, seeing that he is not your lover, or one
of them, what privileges you reserve for them."
"I have no lover or lovers," she protested.
"Dear me!" he said with mock astonishment. "How dreary your poor life
must be! I had fancied quite the contrary."
"It was I who told him to shoot," she confessed. "He shot at a bronze
cobra in the corner."
"Then he's a worse shot than I thought."
"Oh, he hit the cobra, nevertheless. The bullet glanced."
"Yes," he agreed. "I know. It glanced at me and caught my hand. I
suppose the possibility of such a thing didn't occur to either of you."
"I didn't want him to kiss me," she defended at some sacrifice of truth.
"In another second he would have, and I told him there was a cobra in
the corner to distract him. Besides I meant to frighten our
_khitmatgar_. I thought it was he who was spying. And it happened to be
you."
"Yes," he admitted calmly. "I came all the way from Melanesia to spy.
But I'm rather a novice at it, and got winged the first time. Too bad, I
say."
"Then I'm not sorry. You deserved it."
"At all events," he told her, "I saw enough to send me back. I'm not
fitted for civilization. I prefer the real savage to the counterfeit. I
infinitely prefer the original tigress with her stripes to the
reincarnated creature with her soft hands and her rose-leaf cheeks."
She didn't hear the last. It was quite lost upon her.
"You--you are going back?" she questioned, her breath short.
"To-night," he told her. "I've had enough. I'll get the boat at Calcutta
that brought me."
She tried to realize the situation, but she couldn't in the least. It
was all most extraordinary--she knew that. Nine years ago she had been
tumultuously in love with this hulking cousin of hers.
Then, on sheer impulse, instigated by the devil within her, yet without
the faintest thought of disloyalty, she had flirted riotously with the
new curate, and Nibbetts had gone away to war in South Africa in a pet,
without so much as a word of farewell.
In an incredibly short time had come the tidings of his death, and what
with her crushing sense of irreparable loss and her ravening conscience
all the world changed its colors from gay to dun.
Now the nine years of intervening space had rolled themselves into a
pellet and dropped out of the actual. There was nothing real in time or
place but this--he was there across the little room, alive, whole; and
she was here, and they were talking as if yesterday had dated their
parting. It was most extraordinary.
He was going so soon, too, and she had so much, so very much, to say.
"But you mustn't," she said simply.
In his answering look was amused amazement. "Oh, I mustn't, eh? And why
mustn't I?"
"Do I have to tell you?" But her eyes were turned away.
"Yes, if you wish me to understand."
"Have--have you forgotten--everything?" And still she did not face him.
He turned sidewise and laid his left arm along the mantel-shelf to rest
his injured hand.
"Most things," he answered, "thank God!" And when she did not speak he
added: "You set me so fine an example in expeditious forgetting,
remember, I had to profit by it."
"I never forgot," was her denial.
"For one who never forgot, you managed to mess things up a great deal,
it seems to me."
"I think I was mad," she admitted, her eyes on the floor.
"I doubt if you were ever anything else," he told her bluntly. "And a
man's a fool to trust a mad woman."
"Oh, I'm sane now," Nina told him. "Quite, quite sane. And I was
hoping--" She paused, uncertain of her phrasing.
"Yes," he encouraged dubiously.
"That you might help me to put things straight," she finished.
He was not altogether sure of her meaning, but he chose to put upon it
the worst possible construction.
"Why not let your friend of last night assist?" he asked coolly. "He
seems rather expert with firearms. Mistakes are so easy, you know. He
could shoot at the bronze cobra again, for instance, and aim a little
high."
And at that she faced him.
"You never used to be so bitter," she said. "You can't think what you're
saying."
"I've fed on bitterness. I always think the worst, and I'm usually
justified. I can't see any way to undo your tangle except by murder!"
Nina shivered, and Kneedrock saw it; but she said nothing.
"I'm glad you didn't pretend to be shocked," he told her. "Only as a
rule you're not very keen on quick deaths. You prefer the cat-and-mouse
process. You like to play with your victim before adding the final
finishing stroke."
"Who's catty now?" she asked simply.
But he made no answer. He moved over to the sofa where lay his hat and
walking-stick and took them up.
"Better wait until I'm out of India," he went on cynically. "I might be
brought back to testify, and that would be awkward."
"You're going now?" she asked distressfully.
"Only to the hotel. I can't sail until the twenty-seventh. Would you
mind waiting until after the first?"
"But you haven't told me a thing," she deplored, ignoring his cruel
implication. "Where have you been all the years? What have you been
doing? Why have you hidden yourself? There is so much I want to know."
"There is so much you'll never know," he returned. "Why bother with any
of it? The title dies with me. I'm not robbing any one, remember."
"You're robbing me," she said desperately, and took a step toward him.
"Oh, Hal, if you only knew!"
He retreated a pace, smiling grimly.
"I'll have to ask you to stop that sort of thing, Nina," he said
gravely. "You may as well know at once that I won't listen to it."
She sank down upon the sofa where his hat and stick had been, a red lip
held by white teeth to check its quivering.
Kneedrock moved toward the door.
Abruptly, swept by a wave of impetuosity, she sprang up and ran to him.
"Hal! Hal! Take me with you. I won't--I can't let you go from me again!"
Already he had swung the door ajar and stood now in the opening.
"I'm afraid you'll have to," he said, his tone cold and hard as steel.
"Still I'm glad you asked me. It has paid me for coming half-way round
the world."
The door swung sharply shut with Kneedrock on the outside.
At the same moment the door at the opposite end of the room opened, and
Jane Ramsay stood on the threshold.
"I was peeping," she cried. "He's homelier even than his name. And--and
I hate him!"
"So do I," cried Nina, bracing herself. But she didn't in the least; and
Jane Ramsay knew she didn't.
When Colonel Darling returned from parade the _ayah_ was gone from the
passage-way outside his wife's room. He entered to find Nina up and
dressed. And he found her quite ready to answer his questions.
She told him truthfully what Kneedrock saw through the window, and she
told him with equal truth why Andrews fired the shot.
More than that, she told him that his false identification of Kneedrock
at Spion Kop had wrecked three lives, and that it was a dear price to
pay for one man's carelessness or stupidity.
And that night there was a tragedy in the Darling bungalow.