THE LEADING LADY
Meanwhile, Joyce at the Bara Koti, partially regained her confidence in
life, and tried to make the best of her surroundings.
The house stood imposingly in extensive grounds which had been
artistically laid out by successive officials, in lawns, flower-bed,
ornamental shrubberies, and a kitchen garden, all of which were
maintained by four _malis_ and a regiment of coolies. A dense hedge of
cactus separated the grounds from the roadway, with graceful bamboo
clumps at intervals for shade; and a rustic gate led to the carriage
drive, an avenue bordered by goldmohur trees.
The building, which was one-storeyed, was of solid masonry, the floor
being well raised upon arches. Wide pillared verandahs ran on every
side, and the roof was of concrete supported by iron joists. The rooms
were lofty and spacious, with high doors and many windows, furnished
with glass shutters and Venetian blinds; and were designed to fulfil the
requirements of married officials of important position in the
Government, who were expected to maintain a dignified state and
entertain in a style to correspond. In a word, it was Government House
on a minor scale, with a lordly status to keep up in the Station and
District.
For his wife's sake, Meredith had endeavoured to make his home as
attractive as possible so as to save inevitable comparisons between her
present and past circumstances.
However, there were drawbacks which even he could not avoid: the lack of
the most ordinary conveniences of daily life, such as electric lights
and fans, water pipes, telephones, and English shops; and of them all,
it was to be feared that the last might yet prove the most to be
deplored.
The bathrooms, which were numerous, had no hot and cold water laid on;
nor were there any but kerosene lamps to give light; and in lieu of
electric fans, _punkhas_ with gathered frills were worked by means of a
rope through a hole in the wall. Kurta, Moja, Juti, and Paji, were the
four Hindu coolies employed in summer to keep the frill perpetually
waving in whichever room it pleased the sahibs to sit; and the patient
creatures sat cross-legged on the verandah floor, nodding over the rope
till galvanised into activity by a shout from within.
For baths, kettles of boiling water were fetched from the kitchen, fifty
yards or so distant, and cans of cold water from a tank beyond the
vegetable garden, by a semi-nude servant whose duty it was to do this
and nothing else. It took Joyce many months to realise which of the
numerous servants in her pay could be required to perform a particular
task, so complicated were the differentiations created by caste.
Muktiarbad was very much behind the times as to modern comforts and
conveniences, but was entirely up-to-date in the fashions which the
weekly journals depicted for the advantage of the gentler sex, and which
the latest arrivals from "home" expressed. Moreover, Calcutta was only a
few hundred miles away--a trifle in India--and contained first-rate
shops and dressmakers. A week-end visit to the Metropolis for a round of
shopping was a common habit of the ladies of Muktiarbad, with its handy
train service; and if it added considerably to the cost of living, what
would you, when the bazaar sold only Manchester goods in bales, and
_saris_ for feminine apparel?
Old Khodar Bux, who was available for eight annas per day, was a
treasure to bachelor servants, as the only tailor to be had in the
District.
In all other matters, the Station was content, for officials were birds
of passage, and what had sufficed the residents for years, was good
enough for today. Private enterprise was sluggish, and the cost of
transporting plant and material for the installation of electricity,
prohibitive; so the sahibs continued to use kerosene oil; were fanned by
coolies, and were dependent on wells and tanks for their water supply,
leaving it to the larger towns and great centres to revel in all the
luxuries of modern times.
The possession of a large Daimler by the Collector, and of a two-seater
Rolls-Royce by the doctor, filled the other English residents with envy;
but they were anathema to the natives of the bazaars and villages. Rich
Indians followed suit with cars of various sorts, but, generally, the
machines were looked upon by the ignorant as ruthless inventions of the
devil, and to be feared accordingly.
Joyce lived an idle life at Muktiarbad, served hand and foot by a host
of servants, and treated as a little queen by her neighbours. She did
not even try to "keep house" after the approved method in the East, a
bunch of keys jingling in her pocket, and everything that was of value
locked safely away; a cook to stand behind her chair, once a day, to
render the bazaar accounts; visits of inspection to the kitchen, an
eagle eye kept on the dusting and sweeping, and the laundry-man's weekly
wash duly checked; for Meredith's head _bearer_, who had assumed
responsibilities in his master's bachelor days and was too valuable to
be deprived of his office, continued to keep accounts and run the
establishment on oiled wheels. Joyce held him in secret awe and respect.
Her ayah instructed her in Indian ways and customs, and caste
susceptibilities; and it was no little tax to remember how not to
offend. The _bearer_ was not to be asked to carry trays of food, or the
_khansaman_ to trim the lamps; the _masalchi_ had no responsibility with
regard to the boots, or the sweeper with scullery concerns; and so on,
and so forth. It was all very bewildering and made her nervous. She
cared too little for India to take much trouble to improve her knowledge
of the country or of the people, and was content to remain as an
honoured guest in her own house, with her precious babe to worship and
cherish with jealous devotion.
On her return from camp, visitors dropped in to see her, foremost among
them, Mrs. Barrington Fox, the wife of a railway official of some
importance in the District; a lady young enough to have retained a
belief in her power to charm. She had been very handsome at her _debut_,
ten years ago, but the ravages of the climate had not spared her
complexion which was delicately assisted by art to retain its bloom. She
had the air of being languidly bored with the monotony of her life, and
seemed disposed to patronise the "leading lady" who never led, save when
the laws of precedence obliged her to occupy the seat of honour at
dinner parties in the Station. It was a temptation to Mrs. Fox to advise
her in the way she should go, and she tactfully managed to hint at it.
"India is naturally strange to you, yet you do wonderfully!--I am sure
you are very clever," she would begin, and then make some suggestion
which Joyce was very glad to follow. For instance--"I hear the Padre
from headquarters wishes to hold service here next Sunday. He ought
really to put up with you, but the Brights have had him lately and
unless you write and invite him he is likely to go straight to them.
What do you think?" she asked lighting a cigarette.
Joyce had been in the hills on the few occasions when the Reverend John
Pugh had visited Muktiarbad from Hazrigunge and conducted Divine service
in the reading-room of the Club.
"Do you think I should?" she asked, anxious to do the correct thing.
"I was thinking that the Brights take too much upon themselves. Mrs.
Bright is only the wife of the Superintendent of Police after all, and
your husband is the Collector."
"But Mrs. Bright is a perfect dear."
"Still she should not encroach on your rights. The District Chaplain
usually stays with the Collector unless he has special friends in the
Station with whom he divides his time. But do just as you like. I
thought perhaps he would think you did not want him."
"I should like to have him very much," Joyce said eagerly. "My husband
will be here and it will be quite a pleasure to us both." So Joyce
promised to write her letter of invitation.
On the whole, she was never at her ease with Mrs. Fox, who had rarely a
good word for her neighbours and voiced strangely radical sentiments
concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling,
particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband
never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the
laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies
were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of
the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The fear was on
his wife's account, lest she should be contaminated. "I have no use for
a woman of her type," he would say. "She has made a mess of her own life
and is a poisonous influence to young women."
"But it seems she has a perfect brute of a husband, who leaves her to
herself while he runs up and down the line amusing himself with other
women."
"It's a lie," said Meredith sternly. "Fox is not a bad sort. Men rather
like him, and he is a jolly good Traffic Superintendent. The Railway
staff think a lot of him. I should not be surprised if he is fed up with
her selfishness and the way she carries on with his assistants. No
decent man tolerates that sort of thing."
"If you talked to her for an hour, you'd think she was the injured
party," said Joyce.
"Then I'd rather you never talked to her."
But that was ridiculous in a small station where everyone met everyone
else every day, Joyce explained.
So when Mrs. Barrington Fox called, full of gossip and friendliness, she
was received politely. After the matter of the Padre was settled, she
demanded to see the child and a quarter of an hour was spent in
baby-worship.
"He's certainly not looking so well as when you brought him from
Darjeeling. Weaker, I should say, poor little chappie! I don't believe
the place agrees with him--or with you, for that matter. You look a good
deal paler. How do you feel?"
"I am quite all right now, only a bit shaken," Joyce said doubtfully.
Possibly she was not conscious how bad she actually was? Mrs. Fox was
not comforting.
"You mustn't run down, you know. The surest safeguard against epidemics
and illnesses peculiar to this miserable climate is never to allow
yourself to run below par."
"But what is one to do? One doesn't deliberately do it."
"No, but you should eat heaps of nourishing things. Drink plenty of
milk, for instance. But never fail to boil it, and never leave it
exposed to the air. Milk is the most dangerous thing you can take, on
account of its susceptibility to germs of every kind; especially enteric
and cholera. It simply asks for germs!"
"And if you keep it covered, it goes bad!" cried Joyce alarmed since it
formed the sole diet of her beloved infant.
"It wouldn't be a bad plan to keep it in the refrigerator in bottles. I
did that all the winter, last year, when I was on milk diet."
"It will turn me grey to keep in mind the many things I must not do out
here!" sighed Joyce.
Mrs. Fox condoled with her out of fellow-feeling and congratulated her
for having given up camping. "If it doesn't suit you or the kid, I don't
see why you should be obliged to do it. Men have to learn not to be
selfish."
Joyce fired up. "Ray is anything but selfish. Sometimes I think it is I
who am selfish; but if it were only myself, I would never say a word. We
have to do our duty by the child."
"Exactly so. I quite see the point of view. Here you have the doctor at
hand. I am told he nursed you like a mother."
Joyce wondered how Mrs. Fox had come to hear of it as, since her return
to the Station, she had seen no callers. "How _ever_ did you know?" she
asked ingenuously.
"Oh, one hears things!" Mrs. Fox blew smoke through her nostrils and
smiled knowingly. "And how do you like him on closer acquaintance?"
Joyce thought he improved on acquaintance. Mrs. Fox annoyed her by that
smile.
"He is an enigma to most, but if I know his type, he is not a little
dangerous. He can be exceedingly rude. I passed him on my way here and
common politeness should have made him pull up for a word or two. But he
rushed by in a cloud of dust with two fingers just touching the brim of
his hat!--considering I was on foot, you can imagine my feelings. I have
never been treated so by a man in my life--unless it is by my own
husband; but then, there's no love lost," Mrs. Fox remarked.
"Perhaps Captain Dalton was in a hurry," Joyce suggested.
"Don't excuse him. He can be very nice when he likes. Yesterday there
was Honor Bright hanging over her fence to talk to him, and though it
was his busiest time, he was there quite a long while,--you know their
gardens join. I saw them through Mrs. Bray's field-glasses. The Brays'
verandah, as you know, looks on the Brights' grounds from beyond a
paddock."
"He thinks a lot of Honor," said Joyce remembering their conversation in
camp.
"Any one can see she is making up to him. But Mrs. Bright had better
take care. No one knows anything of Captain Dalton's affairs. He might
be married for all one knows. Honor Bright may be very popular in the
District, but she'll get herself talked about and end all her chances of
marrying well. Naturally it is the ambition of her parents to see her
well settled, but she's far too unconventional. Did you hear of her
escapade while you were in camp?"
Joyce had not heard, but was eager to know all about it. She knew Honor
was careless of conventions out of a contempt for small minds and a love
of independence. All who knew her allowed that she was as "straight as
you make 'em," and admired her open nature and clear eye.
"Didn't she write and tell you?"
"We seldom write to each other."
"I thought you were bosom friends!--well, she was out alone looking for
early snipe--someone had seen one in the fields beyond the bazaar--and
while out, she was supposed to have been bitten by a snake----"
"--Why do you say 'supposed'?" Joyce interrupted ready to spring to arms
for her friend.
"We'll say she was bitten, if you like; only, people bitten by snakes
generally die, and she didn't. She tied a ligature and was limping home
when she met Captain Dalton in his car on his way to a dispensary
somewhere in the District. He took her up and home to his house where
she stayed half the day alone with him. Her mother was week-ending in
Calcutta, and Honor was in charge of her father's comforts and the home;
but her father happened to have run out to Panipara for a rioting case
which he and the police were bothered with; so Miss Honor stayed with
the doctor till she thought fit to come home."
"Bitten by a snake!" gasped Joyce in consternation. "Poor Honor!--how
terrified she must have been!"
"That's best known to herself and him. Since then, you'll observe that
there is a sort of understanding between them."
"How do you mean?"
"They seem to be on far better terms than he is with any one else in the
Station, and Honor is falling in love with him. I am anything but blind
to the symptoms!" and Mrs. Fox struck a match and lighted another
cigarette.
"I suppose they grew friendly over the treatment of her wound," said
Joyce beginning to understand how it was that the doctor had learned to
appreciate Honor Bright. Yet he was "not seeking to marry her."
"I must get Honor to tell me all about it when I see her. Perhaps she
does not know I am back?"
"She knows right enough, for, as I have said, the doctor was with her
yesterday, talking across the garden fence."
Mrs. Fox smoked her second and third cigarette, drank tea with Joyce,
and, when every topic of interest was exhausted, wended her way
homeward, deploring the fact that her husband was too selfish to give
her a motor-car. "He doesn't care for one, so I have to do without; and
with only one riding-horse and that one lame, I am obliged to tramp the
dusty lanes on foot."
"I am also without a conveyance while my husband is in camp," said
Joyce, "but it does not matter as I like walking."
"I don't. My frocks are not suited to pedestrian exercise and cost too
much--" which suggested the idea to Joyce that Mrs. Fox's expensive
clothes accounted for her husband's economy in other directions. She
watched her swaying languidly down the drive, a tall and graceful
figure, stylishly dressed and pretty in a faded way, in spite of the
delicate pink of her oval cheek and the brightness of her thin lips.
What a pity it was that she had never a good word for any one, and made
herself so ridiculous with the men, thought Joyce; it lowered her in
their estimation and laid her open to impudence. Though she was
attractive to many, she never succeeded in holding the attention of her
admirers very long; which was humiliating to say the least of it. Joyce
looked upon her as an example of a true flirt, and feared her
accordingly--not on her husband's account, for Ray gave her a wide
berth--but as a criminal at large. Women had whispered tales which she
found impossible to credit; the world was so censorious! But on the
theory that there was never any smoke without fire, she decided that
Mrs. Fox was unscrupulous, and deplored the fact that the Station was
obliged to put up with her. Apparently, so long as a husband
countenanced his wife, no one else had any right to object to whatever
she might do! It was a strange world!
The trend of her thoughts reminded her of the doctor's estimate of
herself, which he had subsequently withdrawn. But then, he could only
have been teasing, for Joyce knew herself, and flirting was very far
from her intentions at any time, or under any circumstance. For
instance, she was very sure she would never allow any man but her
husband to kiss her!--the bare idea was appalling!
After the tennis hour at the Club, Honor Bright cycled up to the steps
of the Bara Koti, and ran in to embrace Mrs. Meredith and welcome her
home. "I am sorry not to have been able to come earlier, there was so
much to do, and a tennis match in the afternoons," she said in her full,
deep voice which Joyce thought so musical. Yet she never sang. God had
given her a larynx, but the wicked fairies had robbed her of ear, so,
though she loved music passionately, she could never produce a tune. "I
must be fit only for 'treasons, stratagems, and spoils,'" she was once
heard to say, "for it seems I was not born musical."
However, it was pointed out to her that she was not just to herself; she
had plenty of "music in her soul" to satisfy even Shakespeare; it was
only her inability to use the divine instrument in her throat. "You put
me in mind of 'Trilby.' Perhaps you will sing if you are hypnotised!"
Joyce had told her.
"Captain Dalton mentioned that you and Baby had both been ill. However I
am glad to see _you_ so well. How is Squawk?"
"How can you call him such a horrid name!" said Joyce reproachfully.
Honor laughed heartily. "Tommy is responsible; you must scold him."
"I shall, indeed. He's a bad boy!"
"Not at all!--he's a Deare!" at which they both laughed, for Mr.
Bright's assistant, like the Assistant Magistrate, had a name of
infinite possibilities. A comic fate had thrown him and Jack Darling
together in the same Station, and they were provocative of fun in more
senses than the coincidence of their names afforded.
The guest was carried off to see the son-and-heir in his crib and admire
his indefinite features that were prophetic of beauty, and his limbs
that were a miracle of elasticity.
By and by, they settled down to talk and Honor was told of the Padre's
approaching visit. "Mrs. Fox thinks we should ask him to put up with us
this time, or he might be offended," she explained. "Will your mother
mind?"
"Mind? she'll be only too glad, for in private life the old man is a
terrible bore! he tells the same joke over and over again, and Mother
says she is determined not to laugh the next time. There ought to be
some way of choking off stale jokes, don't you think, without offending
the poor dear?"
"Tell him one of his own. I am sure it will make such an impression that
he'll never forget it."
"He's so polite, that he'll laugh heartily as though he'd never heard it
in his life!"
"What a hopeless person! However, I shall be glad to save your mother
from nervous prostration," said Joyce.
"Mrs. Fox always gets news in advance of everyone else," said Honor. "I
wonder how she does it?"
"She says she hears a lot--Ray says, servants carry news about the
District as fast as telegrams."
"I hate to think that she takes the liberty of dropping in upon you
whenever she likes. She's not a safe person, so I hope you are careful
of what you tell her."
"Generally, it is she who does the telling, and I the listening."
"It won't do you any good, what she has to say!"
"It won't do me harm. I heard from her today, that you had been bitten
by a snake while I was in camp. How too terrible!--oh, Honey, how
frightened you must have been!" In emotional moments, Joyce called her
friend by her family pet-name.
"I was dreadfully frightened--afterwards," said Honor, shuddering
violently.
"And you never told me!"
"I could not write about it," said the girl with a sudden gravity that
ennobled her face. "I don't like talking about it; it was a bad shock."
"Tell me this once, and we shan't speak of it again," Joyce pleaded.
She thought Honor's a beautiful face, though it had no actual claim to
beauty apart from the brown eyes that were so frank and steadfast, and
her regular teeth. The eyes were arresting in their depth of shade and
power of expression, with dark lashes of unusual thickness; but for the
rest, her complexion was tanned by reckless exposure to the sun, her
nose had a saucy tendency, and her mouth, though shapely, was not by any
means a rosebud; indeed, she had a wide smile which was readily excused
for the charm of it, and because of her splendid teeth. Soulless men
admired Honor for her eyes, her teeth, and her figure which was truly
classical; others, for her honesty and directness, and the womanly
sympathy which never failed. Tommy Deare was among the latter, and he
had known her for the greater part of his life.
Asked to talk of the episode of the snake, Honor's expression changed
and she was strongly moved.