DOUBT
Probably Coventry was happier just now than he had yet been during his
lifetime. He had always known, he assured himself, that, once the first
excitement of her new existence had subsided, Trixie would settle down;
that it could only be a matter of time for her to realise the
responsibilities of a married woman's life; which self-assurance was not
exactly genuine. But when doubt has safely turned to confidence, many of
us are apt to forget that doubt has ever troubled us at all. However, at
last Trixie seemed to have entered upon a stage of domesticity, just as
whole-heartedly as she had thrown herself at first into gaieties and
social distractions. She became wildly enthusiastic over her
housekeeping, and tried her own and her husband's digestions severely by
her daring experiments in cookery. She started a farmyard, and was
triumphant concerning eggs and poultry, while George was driven silently
distracted by the piercing and persistent clack of guinea-fowls. She
spent contented hours at her piano and over her home mail, which, until
lately, she had rather neglected. And she did not complain of the
increasing heat, nor of the compulsory imprisonment indoors during the
long days. She had plenty of resources within herself, and her high
spirits never flagged. Any idea of going to the hills apparently had not
occurred to her, and Coventry, whose theory was that as long as she kept
her health a wife's place was with her husband, prudently did not
suggest it. Not that he would have actually distrusted her away from
him, but his peace of mind must have suffered acutely, knowing that she
was making friendships and joining in amusements that he could not
supervise; for undoubtedly Trixie would enjoy herself without reflection
wherever she might be, and then there was always the fear of people
talking, which held a kind of nightmare niche in his imagination.
It was just at this peaceful period that an invitation came for him to
join the camp of a well-known sportsman on a tiger-shooting expedition,
an opportunity that no man, however uxorious a husband--and especially a
man like Coventry, with whom sport had always been a passion--could
easily resist without regret. And yet he hesitated. He could not
honestly feel that he did not want to go, and yet he could have wished
that Markham had not remembered him, had not thought of giving him this
tempting chance, or that the letter had miscarried on the way and never
reached him.
When he opened the letter he and Trixie were seated at their early
breakfast in the veranda, attended by a greedy and devoted gathering of
pets. Two well-disciplined fox terriers watched in quivering impatience
for scraps of toast, obediently oblivious of a pair of Persian kittens
that clawed and mewed and sprang in unmannerly fashion; a noisy green
parrot in a dome-shaped cage; a monkey that jumped and jabbered on the
back of the memsahib's chair; a tame squirrel that darted to and fro
with bead-like eyes and feathery tail, even a greater trial to the dogs
than the Persian kittens. Trixie worshipped animals and children;
indeed, she had one day scandalised the general's wife by declaring,
most immodestly as that lady considered, that she intended to have
twenty babies, but, meanwhile, she could content herself with dogs and
cats and monkeys.
Coventry threw the letter across the table to his wife; he half hoped
she would read it with dismay, and show reluctance that he should accept
the invitation. This, he felt, would give him just the excuse he wanted
to refuse it, would put a definite obstacle in the way of acceptance
instead of his being left at the mercy of conflicting inclinations. He
watched her read the letter, but her expression did not cloud; on the
contrary, it brightened.
"Oh, George!" she cried, looking up at him with shining eyes, "how
lovely for you, and how I wish I could come too! I'd give anything to
ride an elephant all day, and see tigers charge, and hear them roar, and
then wear a necklace of their claws!"
"Markham won't have women on his shoots. He says it degrades the sport
to the level of garden party games!" said Coventry.
"Oh, what a pig he must be!"
"Anyway, it would be far too rough for you, and the heat would be awful
in tents. I'm not at all sure that I like the idea of it myself."
"You surely can't mean that you are dreaming of refusing?" cried Trixie,
in amazed reproach. "Of course, you must go. He asks you to wire, so you
must answer at once. Shall I get a telegraph form?"
"I'm not particularly keen on going," he said, with affected
carelessness.
"I don't believe it! I am sure you are aching to wire and say you are
coming. If you are pretending that you don't want to go because you
think I shall be lonely, you can put that out of your head at once. I
shan't miss you a bit."
She in her turn was acting the hypocrite. In reality her heart had sunk
a little as she read the letter. She knew she should miss George very
much, that she would feel lonely, dull, and rather helpless without him,
and she suddenly recognised that she leaned on him mentally a good deal
more than she had been aware of hitherto. Also that his interest in and
sympathy with all her little schemes and undertakings had meant much to
her. Secretly she had been surprised at her own acceptance of the daily
monotony and lack of excitements, and wondered vaguely why she was not
bored; and now the knowledge came to her with almost startling effect
that it was because of George's constant presence. She looked at him
with new attention--he was in uniform, for he had just returned from
early parade--and a little glow of pride in his appearance kindled in
her heart. Certainly she had a very handsome husband, and, moreover, he
was kind and good and faithful, even if his ideas of propriety were
somewhat tedious and old-maidish, and he was inclined to be jealous and
over-particular. After all, he knew the world; his experience had been
long and wide, and he had no great reason to trust either men or women.
Trixie seldom thought of the first Mrs. Coventry. The old story had not
troubled her; hardly had she regarded it as real. The whole of George's
past life was more or less unreal to her, for the reason, perhaps, that
he had never spoken of more than casual happenings, or small
reminiscences connected with his mother, now dead, and his sister, who
had taken up missionary work in the slums of London.
In addition, Trixie was a person who contemplated the present and the
immediate future to the exclusion of retrospection, partly because she
was so young and had all her life before her, and again because it was
her nature. She neither looked back nor far forward. Yet now a
glimmering of what her husband might have suffered in the past disturbed
her self-engrossment, and caused her to feel inadequate and humble,
possessed with a helpless regret that drove her to an unselfish desire
to conceal her own feelings over this question of his absence. Her
apparent anxiety that he should accept Mr. Markham's invitation was
construed by Coventry to mean that she was more or less unaffected by
the prospect of his absence, and, half hurt and half resentful, he said
a little captiously:
"Well, if you want to get rid of me, of course I'll go."
"You know very well you are dying to go," answered Trixie, with good
humour; "and it will do you good. All these years at home you've only
been able to shoot pheasants and rabbits and little birds; and what are
they compared with tigers?"
"It's much more difficult to shoot a snipe than a tiger," argued
Coventry perversely.
"All the better. You'll be able to bring me back several dozen skins,
and heaps of claws, and plenty of those funny little bones that make
into brooches and are supposed to bring such good luck."
"How did you know about the bones?" he asked, rather to delay the making
of a decision at the moment than because he wished to hear.
"Mother has one--not that it ever brought her any luck, poor dear,
unless it was getting me married; and I suppose Gommie, at any rate,
would call that good luck! Guy Greaves told me about the bones, too, and
he's going to give me one when he shoots his first tiger. He was to have
come back yesterday, wasn't he? Was he on parade this morning?"
"Yes," said Coventry.
The sudden mention at this juncture of young Greaves made Coventry's
heart contract with a spasm of jealous apprehension.
"I hope," he said, with injudicious haste, "that, if I do go on this
shoot, you won't let that boy hang round the bungalow and follow you
about all over the place while I am away."
Trixie flushed. "So that is why you hesitated about going?" she asked
him ominously. "Perhaps you would like me to say 'Not at home' to
visitors and refuse every invitation while you are not here?"
"Trixie, don't be foolish!" He regretted having voiced his feelings. It
had put him in a false position. Now he must either accept the
invitation, or refuse it and remain under the suspicion that he would
not leave his wife because he feared he could not trust her to behave
becomingly. "Of course, I know you would not do anything really wrong,
but you are so careless about appearances, and people don't take
circumstances into consideration. Why should they? They wouldn't know or
remember that you have known Greaves nearly all your life. They would
only say that he was in love with you, and that you were encouraging
him. You can't be too careful in India, where we all know each other,
and live, so to speak, on the house-tops."
"Then you wouldn't mind how much I went about with Guy so long as nobody
was any the wiser?"
"Yes, of course I should; but I naturally should not put the same
construction on it that people would who did not know you."
"Perhaps you had better not go, then," said Trixie sweetly; and she
began to play with the monkey and pet the kittens, and throw scraps to
the dogs. Then she rose, flourishing a bunch of keys. "I must go and
fight with the cook," she announced. "His bill for charcoal is
preposterous. The other women tell me we use four times what we
ought--or pay for it, at any rate--and, of course, that won't do, will
it, George?"
He ignored the appeal, and with ostentatious indifference she strolled
into the house, jingling her keys. The dogs followed her, and Coventry
sat in moody perplexity, remorseful, heavy hearted. The kittens began to
clamber all over the table, the monkey helped himself from the
sugar-basin, and the parrot rent the air with jealous abuse in
Hindustani. Oblivious to it all, Coventry lit a cigarette and stared out
at the dry compound. He was reflecting that he ought not to have married
again at his age and with his temperament--or that at least he should
have chosen a sedate and serious spinster, if not some gentle widow, who
would have caused him no anxiety, no heart disturbance, as did
Trixie--one whom he could have left without a qualm for any call of
pleasure or of duty. And Trixie was to be pitied. She might have been
far happier with a young husband as gay and heedless, and as
irresponsible, as herself. They would have gained their experiences,
have "worried through" together, come out none the worse for ups and
downs and disagreements, having the same outlook on life, and with youth
and tastes in common. He wondered if she repented her marriage, if he
bored her, if perchance she really preferred the company, say, of young
Greaves, to his own? The thought tortured him. He felt he could not go
away and leave her. He would only be miserable, unable to enjoy himself,
thinking of her all the time, picturing her riding, driving, laughing
with that idiotic boy, while the station smiled and whispered, amused,
yet commiserating the absent husband.
Markham's letter had fallen from the table and lay open at his feet. He
picked it up and read it through again, and the call of the jungle
stirred his blood with unwelcome temptation. It was such years since he
had heard the whisper of an Indian forest and the hot, dry crackle of
tall grass, since he had swayed on the back of an elephant, alert and
ready for the sight of a great striped beast, and known the fierce
excitement of "sitting up" over a "kill," waiting breathless,
motionless, for the first faint sound of a stealthy tread.
Trixie came back. She slapped the kittens and scolded the monkey, and
then looked over George's shoulder.
"Well," she said cheerfully, "have you made up your mind? If you're
going, you ought to overhaul your guns and rifles without any delay.
You'd have to start in a day or two. You see, he says the 15th at the
latest." She pointed with a pink, tapering finger to a paragraph in the
letter.
He moved restlessly. "I must think it over," he said, with some
irritation.
"All right. But you can't keep Mr. Markham waiting indefinitely for your
answer. There are hundreds of men who would give their eyes and ears and
noses for the invitation. I only wish I could dress up as a man, and
stick on a moustache, and go instead of you."
Anger seized him, engendered by his mingled feelings of reluctance and
desire to take advantage of the chance.
"Hang!" he exclaimed, rising to his feet. "I'll go, and take the
consequences."
"What consequences?" asked Trixie. "George, you weren't really serious
when you talked about Guy Greaves just now? You don't really think you
couldn't leave me for a fortnight in case I should get into mischief,
and do something that would make you and me seem ridiculous?"
"You don't understand," he argued hotly.
"Then will you explain?"
"I have tried to, but you can't see my point of view. It isn't that I
don't trust you, Trixie; I know you don't mean any harm; but if you make
yourself conspicuous with other men you can't expect people not to talk
and think the worst, and I can't bear that you should be a subject for
scandal."
"But why should you imagine I am going to give anybody cause to talk
directly your back is turned? I should do nothing while you are away
that I wouldn't do while you are here."
"That's just it!" he said, with some excitement. "If you ride and drive
all over the place with young Greaves, and let him come and sit here for
hours, as you did before he went on leave, there is bound to be gossip."
"But _you_ know that there's nothing in it," she argued plaintively.
"You have said so. Isn't that enough?"
Then her heart smote her. She knew she was teasing him, making it more
difficult for him to go away with a light heart to enjoy the shoot; and
while she considered his attitude absurd, she made up her mind she would
humour his scruples and sink her own opinion in favour of the
circumstances. Poor dear old George! He was such a prude, so
dog-in-the-mangerish, so prone to make a silly fuss about nothing. Yet,
if it really worried him to think that she and Guy might lead people to
imagine they were lovers, she would give in to him and promise anything
he liked. She wanted him to have some pleasure; she was conscious that
her notions of enjoyment were not his, and she felt it would be more
than "beastly"--to use her own term--not to help him now to get off on
this tiger shoot with a mind at ease.
She came round the table and perched herself on his knee, winding a soft
arm about his neck.
"Will it make you happy, old George, if I promise not to go out with Guy
while you are away, and not to let him come here when I am alone?"
He pressed her to him in fond compunction, overwhelmed with tender
feeling for her, recognising gladly the generous impulse that had
prompted her concession.
"Darling, I don't ask you to promise anything. I only want you to
remember that you are a married woman, and to guard your name and
reputation as something sacred. You have only to think a little, and not
expect other people to be as charitable and unsuspicious of evil as you
are yourself."
She kissed him lightly on the forehead. "I will think and remember the
whole time," she reassured him. "You needn't feel one bit afraid. I
shall have heaps to do without bothering about men. I'm going to hem
dozens of dusters, and the Padre's wife has promised to teach me no end
of cooking, so I shall keep her to her word. You'll be back before I can
turn round."
"How can I leave you?" he said, with passionate reluctance.
She laid on the breakfast-table a piece of paper she had brought from
the bungalow.
"Here's a telegraph form," she announced cheerily, "and my fountain-pen.
I'm going to write out the wire for you. What shall I say?" She shifted
her position and began to trace the words: "'Accept with many thanks
starting soon as possible.' How's that?"
"Well," he said grudgingly, "I suppose I'd better go."
"You _are_ going," Trixie told him; "and when you are there you will
bless your wife for making you go." She referred to Markham's letter and
added the address. Then she rose and summoned with a call a lurking
orderly, and gave him the form, with some money hitherto secreted in the
palm of her hand. "Take that to the post office," she commanded him in
halting Hindustani.
In silence they watched the man leave the compound with alert, important
progress, and Coventry gave a sigh of resignation.
"You young bully!" he said in mock reproach.
"You old idiot!" she retorted, laughing, and bustled back to grapple
with her housekeeping.