THE RÂM RUCKI
Jack Raymond's admission, '_C'est la peste, mademoiselle_,' had been
made under compulsion. Lesley, he had recognised, was not one to be put
off by evasion; and yet his first impulse had been to keep his
discovery to himself. For the sense of authority to deal with men and
things, which he had had in the past, was apt to return to him when he
found himself in a tight place. Therefore, the necessity for avoiding a
scare had seemed to him paramount, and he had followed up his low-toned
admission by a rapid request that Lesley should take Jerry home to bed,
and say nothing to anybody of the adventure.
But by the time the green sleeves had disappeared, obediently, over the
dim lawns that were just becoming visible in the dawn, his sense of
responsibility had passed.
He told himself it was none of his business and that once he had handed
over the case to the police, the matter would be ended so far as he was
concerned. So far, also, as every one was concerned, if the authorities
had any sense; since Lesley would hold her tongue, Jerry's ghost could
be laid and laughed at, Budlu bribed, and Jân-Ali-shân----
He looked round, wondering if the latter had gone or not, but could see
nothing. An elaborately conscientious hawking and spitting, however,
from the shadow of a distant bush, told him not only that John Ellison
was there, but that he had grasped the situation.
''Ave a quid o' bitter yerbs, sir,' came the loafer's voice resignedly.
'It's a camphor bush, sir, an' there ain't no good in givin' in to
plague an' pestilence without a
"Good Lord deliver us."
Is there, sir?'
The question had an almost pathetic apprehension in it.
'Not a bit,' assented Jack Raymond. 'Have a cigar instead, Ellison.
I'll light one for you and chuck it over.' He knew his man; knew that
without being a coward he was for the moment desperately afraid. Two
very different things; since time cures one, and the other is
persistent.
So for a minute or two there was silence. Then from the shadow of the
camphor bush came a more confident cough.
'If you did 'appen to 'ave a drop o' brandy,' began the voice
tentatively, 'though if you 'aven't, sir, it's "Thy will be done!" An'
that bein' so, there's nothin' left but w'ot the nation you an' me's
got to do next? 'Ow many corpses is there, sir?'
Jack Raymond smiled, feeling he had judged his man rightly.
'There is only the poor devil we chased left alive,' he answered; 'the
two children, the woman, and a servant are dead. They have been there
nearly a week. Refugees from down country who managed to slip past
quarantine. He is a Nushapore man by birth, and, just as they were
coming to the journey's end, one child fell sick. So, to escape
inspection, he alighted at the last roadside station and walked in at
night. He had to pass the Garden Mound, of course, and it struck him it
would be safer to find out first if his people would take him in. So
he, knowing the ropes, hid his family here for the day. Then his people
were alarmed, another child sickened, _et cetera_. So he stopped on
here, getting to and from the bazaar for what he wanted at night,
dressed in an old white uniform----'
A low whistle came from the camphor bush, and a murmur, 'No, you don't,
sonny! No, you don't!'
'Yes! it was rather a 'cute dodge, but he's an educated man. Well! the
last child died yesterday, and he went off to get medicine for his
wife, hoping to sneak back as usual. But the garden was full up with
Chinese lanterns and bands; and they were dancing----'
'Deary dear!' interrupted the distant voice sympathetically, 'so 'e 'ad
to lounge around, awaitin' for "Gord save our gracious Queen" to let
'im see if 'is lawful wife 'ad chucked it! Well, sir, black or white,
it do seem cruel 'ard'--there was a pause, another ostentatious
clearing of the throat--'but 'e knows the worst now, sir,' went on
Jân-Ali-shân, 'so why not 'ave the pore soul out
"where the breezes blow,"
on 'is parallel, as the sayin' is? It 'ud be more 'olesome, special if
'e's got to be took in 'and. As it say in 'Oly Writ,
"Separate ye the livin' from the dead an' the plague was stayed."
Beg pardin', sir, but 'avin' bin seven year in a surplus chore, it come
natural-like.'
Jack Raymond thought that it did; thought, as he sat waiting, that the
loafer, given a free hand, would probably settle the business as well
as any one else. His suggestion was sound, anyhow. So, after a bit,
there were three shadowy figures planted out on the lawns at respectful
distances from each other. The last one, a dejected heap, huddled up on
the grass, whimpering softly.
'If you 'ad another o' them hanti-microbber-tail-twisters about you,
sir,' came the suggestive voice between vehement puffings at a cigar,
'it 'ud tickle 'im up, like as it done me. An' bein' a Bombay duck,
as the sayin' is, 'e 'd smoke 'is grandmother's curl-papers! I know
them down-country _baboos_. "Week in, week out, you can 'ear their
bellows blow." An' "Gord save our gracious Queen" 'as bin cruel 'ard
on 'em, sir--to say nothin' o' its bein' a sight safer to pizen 'is
bla'ck-sill'ys.'
Jack Raymond smiled. Jân-Ali-shân was wisdom itself. So the further
shadow was supplied with a cigar, while a comparatively reckless voice
hummed cheerfully--
'Tobacco is an Indian weed,
Grows green at morn, cut down at eve;
Thus we decay, we are but clay,
Think of this when you smoke tobacco!'
'Seems to me, sir,' it broke off at last to say, 'that there's only us
three to take count on, so to speak. Them pore things in there 'as
sum-totalled up their little bills. An', as the minister's man said
when they come worryin' round for a grave, an' 'e busy plantin'
sprouts--"Corpses'll keep an' kebbiges won't!" so why not leave 'em
comfortable for to-night? We don't want no crowd comin' round to see
the place where we laid 'em, do we, sir? An' Madam Toosaw's ain't
nothin' to bazaar folk for the chamber o' 'orrers if they get the
chanst. Then as for 'im, pore devil, 'e _must_ go to quarantine camp as
a suspect anyhow, so it wouldn't make any odds to 'im, would it, sir?
An' we could tell 'im to 'old 'is tongue or worse befall, couldn't we,
sir? An' that 'ud tone down the colour a bit, as the sayin' is, more
nor lettin' the police send round the town-crier.'
'How about Budlu?' asked Jack Raymond tentatively; but Jân-Ali-shân was
ready for him.
'Give 'im in charge 'isself, as 'e ought ter be, for disreliction o'
duty in allowin' ghosts. That 'ud stop 'is mouth, sir; special as 'e
don't know nothin'.'
The simplicity of the plan was obvious. It would even, Jack Raymond
felt, take the responsibility of informing the police off his
shoulders. He need only give the stowaway in charge, then go round to
the civil surgeon, tell him the truth, and leave him to decide whether
or not to hush up the matter absolutely--as he could easily do by the
aid of quicklime and a few stones.
'In that case,' he said, after a pause for deliberation, 'the sooner we
move off from this particular place----'
'Just so, sir!' interrupted Jân-Ali-shân. 'Dro'r the enemy's fire h'off
the weak spot. So, if you'll take 'im over to the general's 'ouse, an'
settle 'is an' Budlu's 'ash when the perlice come, I'll 'ang round
about them pore things inside, an' warble 'ymns an' psalms an'
spiritooal songs till you've done the job. It won't 'urt 'em, sir,' he
added apologetically, 'an' it'll kinder keep up my sperits.'
It appeared to do so, for when, a quarter of an hour afterwards Jack
Raymond, after finishing his task, returned to that part of the garden
on his way to the civil surgeon, he heard quite a cheerful version of
'Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket' coming from the camphor bush. And
when, just as the sky was primrose with the first sunbeams, he returned
once more to release Jân-Ali-shân from his voluntary lyke-wake, he
found him seated on the plinth of the mutiny memorial going
methodically through 'John Brown's body,' as sung by convivial parties,
with the elision of a word at each verse.
It was near its end, so that only 'John' had to be vocalised when Jack
Raymond came up; but the beating of the silent tune went on vigorously
while he told Jân-Ali-shân that the civil surgeon had expressed his
entire approval of the plan, which he characterised as a stroke of
administrative genius!
'"But 'is soul goes marchin' on!"' burst out Jân-Ali-shân, finishing
his song at the proper beat. Then he rose, pulled his sleeves over his
cuffs, and nodded his head gravely. 'That's 'ow it is, sir. 'Is soul
goes marchin' on. That sort o' strokes come to a feller, they do, in
the Garding Mound, an' will do, please God, as long as there's a white
face among the black.'
So, singing 'Silver threads among the gold,' he sloped off through the
cemetery, then over the wall to his work citywards, feeling that, so
far as he was concerned, the incident was over.
But to Jack Raymond, as he went back to the club, came the remembrance
that Lesley Drummond must be told that her question and his answer were
to remain a secret between them. The idea annoyed him, all the more so
because of the remembrance of Grace Arbuthnot's guilty face when Lesley
had let the cat out of the bag concerning the origin of the green
sleeves! Nevertheless, it was inevitable, so he sat down in an
ill-humour, wrote a stiff explanatory note suggesting that Jerry's
midnight chase should be treated as a nightmare due to turkey and ham,
and sent it over to Government House. Yet, before doing so, he
fumigated it carefully with tobacco, feeling the while a trifle ashamed
of his own smile at the remembrance of those green sleeves.
But the wearer of them, restored to the dignity of a tailor-made coat
and skirt, receiving the note while the tell-tale odour was still fresh
on it--for she had found sleep impossible--frowned at the recollection
of the figure in the political uniform which had refused even to touch
those green sleeves. Frowned, not from displeasure, but from impatience
at her own sense of pleasure in his thoughtfulness; for it was
unfamiliar to her, that sense of rest in another person's care.
Treat it as a nightmare! Of course! How else could one treat that wild
medley of green sleeves, political uniforms, ghosts, boys, _valses à
deux temps_, Jân-Ali-shâns!
Only, no sane person would ever dream of dreaming such nonsense!
And yet, what was this unfamiliar tingle to her finger-tips, this
curious elation, this sense of personal gain, as if she had found
something new and precious--as if a child, idly unfolding a flower-bud,
had found a fairy at its heart?
She turned from this fancy still more impatiently, resolving to set the
whole incident aside. But this, she soon found, was quite impossible.
That secret between her and Jack Raymond was inexorable in its claims.
For instance, though the chance of any consequence to him was, she
knew, small, she could not avoid watching for his figure to show in its
usual haunts, listening if his name came up in conversation. Neither
could she avoid relief at the certainty that nothing evil had befallen
him. That, of course, was only natural; but it was intolerable that the
relief should make her blush! Most intolerable of all when he noticed
it and said, with a smile--
'No such luck for my friends, Miss Drummond!'
This happened at a tea-picnic which Lady Arbuthnot gave a day or two
after the ball. More than one person had remarked to her on Jack
Raymond's failure to put in an appearance. It was growing late. She was
conscious of her own anxiety. And then, in a sudden surge, the blood
flew to her face at the sight of him, close beside her, shaking hands
with his hostess.
'What is the joke, Lesley?' asked Grace Arbuthnot quickly, looking from
one to the other.
Once again Jack Raymond answered for her; answered audaciously.
'A dead secret, even from Lady Arbuthnot, is it not, Miss Drummond?'
'I would rather it was not,' she replied, turning away resentfully to
wander off by herself into the garden where the tea-picnic was being
given; a garden which had been the '_Petit Trianon_' of the dead
dynasty.
It was a quaint place, tucked away between two angles of the city wall
for greater convenience in secret comings and goings to secret
pleasures; and it was all the quainter now because of the Englishwomen
sipping tea on the steps of the gilded summer-house, the Englishmen
calling tennis scores in what had been the rose-water tank, in which
kings' favourites had bathed, and on which they had floated in silver
barges. The feeling of mutual incredibility, which in India comes so
often to all but the unimaginative, came to Lesley, as she thought of
the city so close behind the fringe of tall blossoming trees, yet so
absolutely hidden by it.
Within half a mile of her lay the courtyard where Auntie Khôjee was
starving herself in the effort to get money wherewith to buy the
essence of happiness; within half a mile of her Lateefa's kite,
overlooked in the tornado of wrath which had followed on the
disappearance of the ring, still tilted to leeward under the burden of
sovereignty. But of all this--of the romance, the squalor, the humanity
of the lives lived in the city--she knew nothing, except her own
ignorance of those lives. That, and that only, was with her in the
beauty of the garden; the beauty which was, as it were, the only thing
that she and the unseen city had in common.
And it _was_ beautiful, bosomed in those blossoming trees that shut out
the world, shut in the scent of the flowers. It appealed instantly to
something deep down in her woman's nature; for this had been a woman's
garden!
The remembrance made her recoil spiritually. Partly from the thought of
what the garden must have seen in the past, partly from the mere
suggestion that it could appeal to anything in her. She walked on
quickly, recoiling bodily, as she did so, from an overgrown rose-shoot
which usurped the path. In so doing she displayed frills and flounces,
a pair of dainty open-worked stockings and high-heeled shoes. But she
did not recoil from the sight of these. Despite her views, despite her
modern girl's theoretical contempt for chiffons, and disdain for women
whose lives are bounded by the becoming, she was not one whit more
logical on such points than her grandmothers had been. She had not
thought out the real meaning of her frills and furbelows, or confessed
to herself that such feminine footgear belongs inevitably to the path
which leads to the '_Petit Trianon_' of life.
Above all, she had not seen, as women must see before they become a
power in the world, that the one point on which all races meet, no
matter what their religion, no matter what their ideals, no matter what
their standard of morality, is that which makes '_Petit Trianon_'
possible. In other words, the woman's attitude towards the man; an
attitude so strangely at variance with the sex-laws of nature.
Yet of the beauty of this garden who could doubt? Within that fringe of
blossoming trees, a wide aqueduct-like a shining cross-lay, edged by
mosaicked marble causeways, that were raised above and in their turn
edged by a perfect wilderness of flowers. And this wider cross,
composed of flowers, mosaic, water, was set in dense thickets of
oranges and pomegranates. In this late afternoon all the sunshine
seemed concentrated in the cross. Great shafts of yellow light streamed
down its limbs, seeming to darken all the rest. In the centre where the
limbs met, a group of fountains sent fine feathers into the air, and
through their sparkle the gold and marble of the summer-house gleamed
amid its sentinels of cypress, at the far end of the garden. There was
a cloying sweetness in the air. A flight of jewelled parrots flew
screaming from one screen of flowering trees to the other, as if even
they--winged creatures as they were--could not escape the thraldom of
those high walls, hidden by leaf and blossom.
That sense of prisonment--the prisonment of pleasure--lay heavy on
Lesley as she paused, half-unconsciously, before a tiny latticed
retreat--the daintiest little retreat in the world--which, just at the
opposite end of the shining cross from the gilt summer-house, rose out
of the water. Made of marble fretwork, with a domed top, it looked like
a lace veil moulded into the form of a singing-bird's cage; and its
latticed seclusion was only connected with the causeway on either side
of it, by a foot-wide ledge of mosaic.
Lesley, having been in the garden before, knew the purpose this retreat
had served in the past, and her involuntary pause beside it prolonged
itself in half-disdainful wonder. For this had been the sanctuary. Here
had been refuge even from the pleasures of the garden, and hither, if
any woman, high or low, chose to appeal for redress, majesty itself had
been bound to come and listen, leaving majesty and manhood behind it.
That, at least, was the idea. The retreat itself was more suggestive of
beauty gaining in power by seclusion; and Lesley's lip curled with more
disdain as she looked at the finnikin filagree cage.
Her expression, however, changed to curiosity as she realised that some
one was sitting inside it. She crossed the ledge of mosaic swiftly,
and, stooping under the laced edge of a low arch, went in.
It was not beauty that she found. It was a wrinkled anxious-faced old
woman, who rose in a _salaam_, then literally prostrated herself at the
girl's feet. Lesley had been long enough in India, now, to judge
rightly of the poverty shown in the dress. The blue-striped trousers,
tight to the knee and full above, the short whity-brown cotton veil
were to be seen--more or less dirty, more or less ragged--in every poor
Mohammedan quarter. Yet there was something refined in the worn face,
blurred with recent tears, which looked into hers apprehensively, as
the owner rose to _salaam_ again, leaving a small roll of paper bound
with coloured silks upon the marble floor.
Lesley was puzzled for an instant; then it flashed upon her that this
must be some belated petitioner for justice in the old style, who had
heard, probably, that the Lord-_sahib_ was in the garden. Such rolls of
paper--without the silken tie, however--were often thrust into the
carriage when Sir George was in it.
So she hunted round her sparse vocabulary, but finally fell back on the
first phrase most newcomers to India learn, namely, '_Kya mankta?_'
(what do you want?)
It is an admirable beginning, though, unfortunately, the sympathetic
curiosity of it seldom becomes impersonal to the speaker! It produced
another _salaam_, and such a flood of polished speech that Lesley
retired to English incontinently. 'Is it for the Lord-_sahib_?' she
asked hurriedly, picking up the roll and pointing with it to the
distant summer-house.
The title produced a fourth _salaam_, and Lesley, with some relief,
stooped under the fretted arch again, and began to retrace her steps
towards the others.
Sir George, she knew, had been doubtful if business would allow him to
put in an appearance at the entertainment at all; but some one would be
sure to know what message ought to be sent back to the petitioner, who,
as Lesley left the bird-cage, settled herself down in it again to wait,
with great precision.
'Read it, some one, please!' said Lady Arbuthnot, after she had undone
the quaint little tasselled silk cord which was fastened with a loop
and button round the roll of paper.
But the order was no such easy matter to obey. So far as the
conventional '_Arz fidwe yih hai_' (This is the request of your
petitioner) went, the little group of administrators who responded to
her request were fluent enough. After that came complaints of the
character, and more than one suggestion that only a regular native
reader could be expected to decipher such writing, and that it would be
best to hand the document over to the office, which would be sure to
make something of it,--a remark which made Lesley, who was listening,
wonder whether the accuracy of that something was to be considered at
all!
Grace Arbuthnot, however, listening also, let a curious smile come to
her face; a smile that gave it an unusual tenderness. 'Where is Mr.
Raymond?' she said suddenly. 'Going, did you say? Will some one call
him back, please!'
He appeared, ready for his drive home in rather a violent blazer, and
once more there was that unfailing challenge in his polite--'They tell
me I am wanted, Lady Arbuthnot?'
'Yes! to read this,' she replied, holding out the hieroglyphic.
In all her life of beauty and grace she had possibly never looked more
beautiful, more graceful, and Jack Raymond realised it; realised also
that, so far as that beauty, that grace were concerned, he had not
forgotten--that he would never forget! And the certainty roused all his
antagonism. For a moment he stood like a naughty child refusing to say
its lesson; then he took the paper from her, and ran his eye down it.
'Persian,' he said. 'I had better give you the gist of it. The writer
is one Khôjeeya Khânum, a pensioner. The Nawâb Jehân Aziz is her
representative; he seems to have been taking toll, as they always
do--it is madness paying pensions in the lump, as we do. She is
starving, I suppose; they generally are! No'--a faint interest
dispersed some of the contempt in his face--'it seems she wants money
for a specific purpose--to buy the "essence of happiness." That word is
_itr-i-khush_, isn't it, sir?'
The commissioner, thus appealed to--a man who was seldom in fault in
speaking the vernaculars--frowned over the symbol.
'_Itr-i-khush_, 'm, it may be. But it doesn't matter, since it is money
she wants? I've had one or two complaints about that sweep Jehân Aziz's
pensioners already, Lady Arbuthnot, and we are going to inquire. So
I'll put this one's name down too, if I may. Khôjeeya Khânum--thanks.
Well, good-night, Lady Arbuthnot! I've a reader with a file yards high
waiting me--most important papers. Good-night, Raymond; you haven't
forgotten the trick, I see. You are still as good a _moonshi_ as ever,
isn't he, Lady Arbuthnot?'
'Except in regard to the "Essence of Happiness,"' she replied coolly,
making Jack Raymond stare at her, and Lesley once more become
impatient.
'But the old woman is waiting,' she interrupted, 'she is waiting for an
answer in the bird-cage; surely some one ought to go and tell her
something!'
Several of the guests had taken advantage of the commissioner's
departure to say their farewells also, so that those three were left in
a group by themselves.
'I will go,' said Grace suddenly, 'if Mr. Raymond can spare time from
his whist----'
'To find happiness,' he put in quickly, 'by all means!'
The mosaic causeway was narrow, so Lesley fell behind. The shining limb
of the water-cross lay to one side of her, the edge of massed flowers
to the other. The sky was deepening in its blue overhead, the creeping
shadows below had gripped the lace bird-cage in the distance, making it
look cold and grey. But the sun which caught the tops of the blossoming
trees and made the painted kites that floated above them from the city
look like jewels, seemed to linger mysteriously in the soft pink of
Grace Arbuthnot's dress, the gay orange and yellow of Jack Raymond's
blazer, and claim them as part of its brightness.
In the hush of evening, the insistent
'Do-you-love-too--do-you-love-too' of one small cinnamon dove hidden in
a rosebush, seemed to fill the garden. Until from beyond it came some
gay voices discussing the 'Essence of Happiness' as the departing
guests got into their carriages.
'Take your choice of the four W's!' said one; 'wisdom, wine, wealth,
women!'
'I choose a whisky-and-soda,' retorted another. 'I give you in the
rest, especially after tennis. By Jove! that was a splendid game.'
'Four W's!' put in a higher key. 'You've forgotten Worth--oh! I don't
mean that worth, of course. The dressmaker man----'
'Ye don't need his art, me dear lady----'
Lesley, walking behind those two, paused suddenly; for Jack Raymond had
lingered to hold back that trailing rose-shoot from her frills and
flounces also. And the cinnamon dove, startled by the pause, fled from
the rose-bush to silence and deeper shade. Its flight made her start
also.
'Frightened at a dove! said Jack Raymond in a low tone, 'and you
weren't a bit frightened at the plague.'
He was smiling at her, his face all soft and kind. She had never seen
it like that before. But as he stepped back to Grace Arbuthnot's side,
Lesley realised that _she_ had.
The certainty that these two had been lovers once came to her then, and
brought a curious sense of loneliness. The certainly that, in a way,
they would be lovers always, brought her a pang before which she stood
aghast. For there was no mistaking it; it was unreasonable, elemental
jealousy.
She felt inclined, then and there, to turn back and leave them to do
their task alone. They did not want her. What was she, Lesley Drummond,
doing there in that garden whose suggestiveness seemed to stifle her?
Yes! to stifle her, because she could not escape from it! She, Lesley
Drummond, who---- In her mind's eye she saw a vision of herself
alighting from an omnibus at the corner of Bond Street on a wet day,
picking her way over the greasy blister-marks of many feet on the
pavement, heedless of the infinite suggestions in the shop windows, to
have tea at a ladies'-club with an intimate friend, and solve the
problems of life by hard and fast individualism tempered by a sloppy
socialism.
Solve! As if it were possible to solve anything in those conditions.
Above all, to solve the greatest problem in the world for women,
as you drank your tea on a table littered with the literature of
_chiffon_-culture, whose every page proclaimed that woman's aim was to
remain temptress, her goal a garden such as this!
They were close to the sanctuary now. The others had entered it, and
Lesley paused to look contemptuously at its filagree pretence of
protection ere she, too, stooped under its low arch.
'I think you have it, haven't you, Lesley?' asked Grace Arbuthnot, as
she entered to find a puzzled look on all three faces. In the old
woman's it was mixed with a half-indignant apprehension.
'Have what?' she asked coldly.
'The silk cord that was round the roll; I gave it to you to hold, I
think. She won't speak without it; it seems it is a bracelet--an
amulet.'
'The bracelet of brotherhood without which a woman cannot speak to a
strange man,' explained Jack Raymond. 'Ah! you are wearing it.'
She was. Quite idly she had fastened it by its loop and button round
her wrist, in order to keep it safe. She took it off now, and handed it
to him without a word. He passed it to Auntie Khôjee, whose withered
face settled into self-satisfaction as she leant forward, detaining his
hand till the bracelet was safely looped on his brown wrist.
Then the words came fast. Floods of them; and Jack Raymond listened
patiently.
Fine though the filagree of marble was that shut them off from the
garden, it interrupted the light, so that their figures showed dimly to
each other. But the scent of the garden drifted in unchecked, and mixed
with the faint scent of heliotrope from Grace Arbuthnot's dress. There
was something breathless, disturbing to the senses, Lesley felt, in
that uncomprehending effort to understand. It was a relief when silence
fell suddenly, and there was a pause.
'Is that all?' whispered Grace; she was next to Jack Raymond, her dress
touching him.
'I believe I ought to give her a bracelet in return,' he began. She had
one of her gold bangles off in a moment, and was thrusting it into his
hand--'Take that, please do--you might let me do so much, surely----'
Lesley turned and stepped outside. She felt the need of fresh air.
'There was no use my stopping,' she explained when, after an interval,
the two rejoined her. 'I could not understand.'
'Not understand!' echoed Grace Arbuthnot reproachfully. 'I couldn't
understand the words either. But I thought the idea perfectly charming.
I wouldn't have missed the little scene for worlds. And she was so
delighted with the gold bangle.'
'It is really not uncommon, Lady Arbuthnot,' protested Jack Raymond,
who was beginning to feel a trifle restive again. 'And in the old days,
the _râm rucki_ was constantly sent by distressed----'
'I know,' interrupted Lesley captiously. 'You read of it in Meadows
Taylor's books. But why did she give it to you?'
He paused; a quick annoyance showed on his face; he turned to Lady
Arbuthnot vexedly.
'I must apologise,' he said; 'I never realised till this moment that
she must have taken me----'
'For Sir George,' put in Grace quietly. 'Didn't you? Now I was thinking
all the time how much better you played the part than he would have
done. He is like Lesley. He loathes sentiment. No, Mr. Raymond, I won't
take it!' she added, as he tried to unfasten the _râm rucki_. 'Give it
to Sir George himself, if you like--there he is, coming to meet us.
Or,' she continued, with an elusive, almost mischievous smile, as she
went forward to greet her husband, leaving those two on the path
together, 'give it back to Miss Drummond! She gave it you first!'
Jack Raymond looked after her quite angrily; then laughed, drew out
his pocket-book and laid the _râm rucki_ between the folds of some
bank-notes.
'I shall end by doing my duty some day, if this goes on, Miss
Drummond,' he said resignedly. 'It is really very kind of you all to
take so much interest in my spiritual and bodily welfare.'
As a rule Lesley would have been ready with a sharp retort. Now she was
silent. She was thinking that it was true. She had given the bracelet
of brotherhood to him first. And then once more a vast impatience
seized her. How unreal, how fantastic it was? How far removed from the
security of the commonplace?