For three months Hamilton and Saidie lived in the white bungalow in
the palms, and drank of the wine of life together, and were happy
in the overwhelming intoxication it gives.
For three months Saidie lived there, never going beyond the
precincts of the house and the palace of flowers that was the
compound.
Why should she leave them? What had she to gain by going out into
the dusty way? What had she to seek? Her garden of Eden, her
Paradise, was here. She was too wise to go beyond its limits.
Pedlars and merchants of all sorts brought their best and richest
wares to her, and Hamilton sat by her in the verandah, commanding
her to buy all that pleased her, though she protested she needed
nothing.
Jewels for her neck, and gold anklets and bracelets, and robes and
sweetmeats were laid out before her. Only the best of the bazaar
was brought, and of this again only the best was chosen. And when
Hamilton was not there she walked from room to room singing,
clothed in purple silken gauze, with his jewels blazing on her
breast, his kisses still burning on her lips. Then she would take
her rabab and play to the listening flowers, or practise her
dancing, the source of his pleasure, or lie in the noonday heat on
the edge of the bubbling spring that rose up in the moss under the
boughain-villia and look towards the East and dream of his
home-coming. What did she want more?
Hamilton now lived the enchanted life of one who is wholly absorbed
in a secret passion. He was wise--more wise than men generally
are--and made no effort to parade his treasure. This wonderful
exotic, this flower of happiness, that bloomed so vividly in the
dark, secluded recesses of his heart, how did he know that the
destructive heat and light of publicity might not fade and sear
its marvellous petals? He told no one of his life; took no one out
into the desert with him, to the bungalow among the palms.
He was away a great deal. His work and certain social duties
claimed a large part of his day, and during all that time he had to
leave her alone with her flowers, but this gave him no anxiety. It
was not a dangerous experiment, as it always is to leave a European
woman alone. He knew that Saidie, the Oriental, would spend the
whole time dreaming of him, longing for him, singing to the flowers
of him, talking to her women-attendants of him, filling the whole
garden and house with his image till the longed-for moment of his
return.
And to Hamilton, full of unspoiled life and vigour, this security,
this certainty of her complete fidelity was a wondrous charm.
Unlike a man of jaded passions, who requires his love to be
constantly stimulated by the fear of imminent loss, Hamilton, full
of unused strength, and thirsty after the joy of life, now that the
cup was offered him, drank of it naturally and with ecstasy,
needing no salt and bitter olives of jealousy between the
draughts.
For years he had longed for love and happiness: at last he had
found both, and with simple, uncavilling thankfulness he clasped
them to his breast and held them there, content.
Saturday and Sunday were their great days. Hamilton left the office
at two on Saturday afternoon, and was back at the bungalow by five.
They went to bed early that night, and rose on the Sunday morning
with the first glimmer of dawn. Everything would be prepared
overnight for a day's excursion and picnic in the desert, which
Saidie particularly delighted in.
The great brown camel, fat and sleek like all Hamilton's animals,
and with an enormous weight of rich hair on his supple neck, would
be kneeling waiting for them below in the dewy compound, while the
early tender light stole softly through the palms; and they would
mount and go swinging out through the great open spaces of the
desert, full of delicate white light, towards the sister-oasis of
Dirampir, where masses of cocoanut palms grew round a set of
springs, and waved their branches joyfully as they drew in the salt
nourishment of the air from the amethystine sea not fifty miles
distant.
Into the shelter of these palms they would come as the first great
golden wave of light from the climbing sun broke over the desert,
and, descending from the camel, walk about in the groves by the
spring, and select a place for boiling their kettle and having
their breakfast. The long ride in the keen air of the morning gave
them great appetites, and they enjoyed it in the whole joyous
beauty of the scene round them. The palm branches over them grew
gold against the laughing blue of the sky, a thousand shafts of
sunlight pierced through the fan-like tracery, the golden orioles
at play darted, chasing each other from bough to bough, the spring
bubbled its cool musical notes beside them, and the sense of the
blighting heat of the ravening desert round them seemed to
accentuate the beauty of the peace and shade in the oasis.
Saidie enjoyed these days beyond everything, and would sit singing
at the foot of a palm, weaving a garland of white clematis for
Hamilton's handsome head as it rested on her lap.
No English people ever came to the oasis; as a matter of fact, the
English generally do avoid the best and most beautiful spots in or
near an Indian station; but the place was greatly beloved by the
natives who came there to doze and dream, play, sing, and weave
garlands in the usual harmless manner in which a native takes his
pleasure. Looking at them standing or sitting in their harmonious
groups against a background of golden light and delicate shade,
Hamilton often thought how well this scene compared with that of
the Britisher taking a holiday--Hampstead Heath, for instance, with
its noisy drunkenness, its spirit of hateful spite, its ill-used
animals, its loathsome language. The Oriental endeavours to enjoy
himself, and his method is generally peaceful and poetic: the
singing of songs, the weaving of garlands, and the letting alone of
others. The Briton's idea of enjoying himself is extremely simple;
it consists solely in annoying his neighbours.
To see a handsome English Sahib here was to the habitual
frequenters of the oasis something rather remarkable, but these
people are early taught the custody of the eyes and to mind their
own business. Therefore Hamilton and Saidie were not troubled by
offensive stares, or in any other way. All there were free,
gathered to enjoy themselves, each man in his own way; and the
natives in their gay colours added to the beauty, without
disturbing the peace of the scene, much as the bright-plumaged
birds that flitted from tree to tree absorbed in their own affairs.
How Hamilton enjoyed those long, calm, golden hours--the golden
hours of Asia, so full of the enchantment of rich light and colour,
soft beauty before the eyes, sweet scent of the jessamine in the
nostrils, the warbling of birds, and Saidie's love songs in his
ears!
Not till the glorious rose of the sunset diffused itself softly in
the luminous sky, and all the desert round them grew pink, and the
shadows of the palms long in the oasis, and the great planets above
them burst blazing into view into the still rose-hued sky, did they
rise from the side of the spring and begin to think of their
homeward ride. And what a delight it was that night ride home
through the majestic silence of the desert, where their own hearts'
beating and the soft footfall of the camel were the only sounds!
the wild flash of planet and star, and sometimes the soft glimmer
of the rising moon, their only light! Eros, the god of passion,
seated with them on the camel, their only companion!
To Saidie, cradled in his arms, looking upwards to his face above
her, its beauty distinct in the soft light, feeling his heart
beating against her side, it seemed as if her happiness was too
great for the human frame to bear, as if it must dissolve, melt
into nothingness, against his breast, and her spirit pass into the
great desert solitudes, dispersed, almost annihilated, in the agony
and ecstasy of love.
Week after week passed lightly by in their brilliant setting, the
hours on their winged feet danced by, and these two lived
independent of all the world, wrapped up in their own intimate joy.
One morning, just as he was about to leave the bungalow, he heard
Saidie's voice calling him back. He turned and saw her smiling
face hanging over the stair-rail above him. He remounted the
stairs, and she drew him into their room. Her face was radiant, her
eyes blazed with light as she looked at him.
"I have something to tell you, Sahib! I could not let you go
without saying it. Only think! is not Allah good to me? I am to be
the mother of the Sahib's child," and she fell on her knees,
kissing his hands in a passion of joy. Hamilton stood for the
moment silent. He was startled, unprepared for her words, unused to
the wild joy with which the Oriental woman hails a coming life.
Her message carried a certain shock to him: it augured change; and
his happiness had been so perfect, so absolute, what would change,
any change, even if wrought by the divine Hand itself, mean to him
but loss?
Saidie, terrified at his silence, looked up at him wildly.
"What have I done? Is not my lord pleased?" Her accent was one of
the acutest fear.
Hamilton bent down and raised her to his breast.
"Dearest one, light of my soul, how could I not be pleased?" and
he kissed her many times on the lips, and on the soft upper arm
that pressed his throat, and on her neck, till even she was
satisfied.
"Come and sit with me for a moment that I may tell you all," she
said. Hamilton sat beside her on the bed, and she told him many
things that an Englishwoman would never say, nor would it enter
into her mind to conceive them.
Hamilton was greatly moved as he sat listening. The wonderful
imagery, the vivid language in which she clothed her pure joyous
thoughts appealed to his own poetic, artistic habit of mind.
On his way across the desert to the city, Hamilton pondered deeply
over the news and the girl's unaffected joy. Since all those
whispered confidences poured into his ear while they sat side by
side on the bed, the throb of jealousy he had first felt at her
words had passed away. Saidie had made it so clear to him that her
joy was not so great at being the mother of a child as that she was
to be the mother of _his_ child, and similarly Hamilton felt in
all his being a curious thrill at the thought that his child was
hers, that this new life was created in and of her life that had
become so infinitely dear to him.
He was glad now that his wife had refused to have a child. The
bitter pain he had felt then, those years ago, how little he had
thought it was to be the parent of this present joy. Now the woman
he loved as he had loved no other would be the one to bear his
child. Still the thought of the suffering the mother would go
through depressed his sensitive mind, and the idea of the risk to
her life that came suddenly into his brain made him turn white to
the lips as he rode in the hot sunlight. Such intense happiness as
he had known for the last three months can turn a brave man into a
coward. For a moment he faced the horrid thought that had come to
him--Saidie dead! And the whole brilliant plain, laughing sky, and
dancing sunlight and waving palms became black to him. To go back
to that dreary existence of nothingness of his former life, after
once having known the delight that this bright, eager, ardent
love, these delicate little clinging hands had made for him, would
be impossible.
"No," he murmured to himself, "if she goes, then it's a snuff out
for me too. I have never cared for life except as she has made it
for me."
And the cloud rolled off him a little as he met the idea of his own
death. Besides, Saidie had declared so positively that she could
come to no harm, that it would all be pure delight, that pain and
suffering could not exist for her in such a matter since she would
be all joy in making him this gift, that gradually he grew calmer
as he thought over her words.
"But I didn't want any change," he burst out a little later,
talking to the still golden air round him. "Confound it! I was
perfectly happy. How impossible it is to keep anything as it is in
this world! All our actions drag in upon us their consequences so
fast! There is no getting away from this horrible change, no
enjoying one's happiness peacefully when one has obtained it."
When he arrived at his office in the city he found that a far
heavier cloud had arisen on his horizon than that created by
Saidie's words. The English mail was in, and a long thin envelope,
impressed with a much-hated handwriting, faced him on the top of
the pile of his correspondence as he entered.
He picked it up and opened it.
"DEAR FRANK,--You often used to invite me to come to India,
and I have really at last made up my mind to. I am coming out
by next month's boat to stay with you for a time. I have been
very much run down in health lately, and my doctor says a
sea-voyage and six months in India will be first-rate for me.
I hope you have a nice comfortable house and good servants.
--Yours affectionately, JANE."
Hamilton stared at the letter savagely as he put it down before him
on the table, a sort of grim smile breaking slowly over his face.
He felt convinced that in some way his wife had learned of his
new-found happiness, and that had given birth to her sudden desire
to visit India after twenty years of persistent refusal to do so.
He sat motionless for a long time, then stretched out his hand for
an English telegraph form and wrote on it--
"Regret unable to receive you now. Defer visit. FRANK."
He did not for one moment think that his wife would obey his
injunction, or that his wire would have the least effect on her;
but he wished to have a good ground to stand on when she arrived,
and he declined to receive her. His teeth set for a moment as he
thought of the interview.
"This is a sort of wind-up day of my happiness," he muttered, as he
took his place at the office table. "Well, I suppose no one could
expect such pleasure as I have had these last three months to
continue; but, whatever happens, Saidie and I will stick together."
He sat musing for a moment, staring with unseeing eyes at the pile
of work in front of him.
"Saidie, my Saidie! I shall never part from her; therefore I can
never part from my happiness." He smiled a little at the play on
the words, and then commenced his day's labours.
That evening, when he returned, Saidie noticed at once the
depression in his usually gay, bright manner. When they were alone
at dinner she laid her hand on his.
"What has darkened the light of my lord's countenance?" she asked
softly.
Hamilton drew from his pocket his wife's letter, and laid it beside
her plate.
"Can you read that, Saidie? If so, you will know all about it."
The girl leaned one elbow on the table and bent over the letter,
studying it. She had been trying hard to improve herself in the
language, of which she knew already something, and with Oriental
quickness, had acquired much in the past three months. She made out
the sense now easily enough.
"This lady is a wife of yours?" she said quickly, with a swift
upward glance at him, when she had finished reading the letter.
Hamilton laughed a little.
"She was my wife till I saw you, Saidie. No one is my wife now, nor
ever will be, but you."
A soft glow of supreme pleasure and pride lighted up Saidie's great
lustrous eyes. She bent her head and put her soft lips to his
hand.
"Have you forbidden this wife to come to you?" she asked after a
minute.
"Yes, I have; but she will come all the same. English wives think
it foolish to obey their husbands."
He laughed sardonically, and Saidie looked bewildered and
horrified.
* * * * *
A month later, a long, lean woman sat in a deck chair on board an
Indian liner as it crossed the enchanted waters of the Indian
Ocean. Enchanted, for surely it is some magician's touch that makes
these waters such a rich and glorious blue! How they roll so
gently, full of majestic beauty, crested with sunlight, under the
ships they carry so lightly! How the gold light leaps over them,
how the azure sky above laughs down to their tranquil mirror! how
the gleaming flying-fish rise in their glinting cloud, whirl over
them, and then softly disappear into their mysterious embrace!
The long, lean woman saw none of the magic round her. Her dull,
boiled-looking eyes gazed through the soft sunlight without seeing
it. In her lap lay a thin foreign letter and a telegram, together
with a copy of "Anna Lombard" that she was reading with the
strongest disapproval. She picked up the letter and glanced through
it again, though she knew it nearly by heart, especially one
passage:
"Your husband is leading such a life here! He has built a
wonderful white marble palace in the desert for an Egyptian
dancing-girl. They say it's a sort of Antony and Cleopatra
over again, and she goes about loaded with jewels and golden
chains. I don't know if you are getting your allowance
regularly, but I should think your husband is pretty well
ruining himself. I never saw a man so changed. He used to be
so melancholy, but now he is as bright as possible, and looks
so well and handsome. I hear the woman is expecting a child,
and they are both as pleased as they can be. I hear all about
it, as our cook's cousin is sister to the ayah your husband
hired for the woman, and my ayah gets it all from our cook. I
really should, my dear, come out and look into the matter, as
after a time he will probably want to stop sending home his
pay."
The thin sheet fell into the woman's lap again, and she seemed to
ponder deeply. Then she read Hamilton telegram again--
"Regret unable to receive you now. Defer visit," and a disagreeable
laugh broke from her thick, colourless lips.
"I will go out and see her first," she thought, smoothing down with
a large, bony hand the folds of her rather prim white cambric
dress. She was a very stupid woman, and not a passionate one;
therefore the agony of pain of a loving, jealous wife was quite
unknown to her. But she was malignant, as such people usually are.
She loved making other people uncomfortable in a general way, and
taking away from them anything she could that they valued. She also
felt a peculiar curiosity such as those who cannot feel passion
themselves have usually about the intense happiness it gives to
others. The picture of this other woman, who had found joy
apparently in the arms she herself years ago had thrust aside,
interested her profoundly. She told herself that this Egyptian
loved Hamilton's money, but some instinct within her held her back
from believing this.
The little bit about the child went deeply into her mind. It
rested there like an arrow-head, and her thoughts grew round it.
When the ship came into port a week or two later, Mrs. Hamilton
was one of the first passengers to land, and after careful
enquiries and well-bestowed tips she was expeditiously conveyed
by ticker-gharry[1] and sedan chair across the desert to the
bungalow at Deira. She was considerably pleased on seeing that
the white marble palace resolved itself into an ordinary white
bungalow, but the garden, was unutterably lovely, and, as she saw
in a moment, represented something quite unusual in cost and
care.
[Footnote 1: Hired carriage.]
It was just high noon when she arrived, and she thankfully escaped
from the suffocating heat and glare of the desert into the cool
shaded hall, and gave her card with a throb of spiteful elation to
the butler.
The Oriental servant read the name, and hurried with the card to
his mistress's room. On hearing of the arrival of the Mem-Sahib,
Saidie descended from the upper room, where she had been lying in
the noonday heat, and, pushing aside the great golden chick that
swung before the drawing-room entrance, went in.
Her dress was of the most exquisite Indian muslin that Hamilton
could obtain, heavily and wonderfully embroidered in gold, and
peacocks' eyes of vivid deep blue and green; her feet were bare,
for Hamilton, in his revolt from English ways, had kept up Oriental
traditions as far as possible in the clothing of his new mistress,
and weighty anklets of solid gold gleamed beneath the border of her
skirt. Round the perfect column of her neck, full and stately as
the red deer's, were twisted great strings of pearls, throwing
their pale irridescent greenish hue onto the velvet skin. Above the
splendour of her dress rose the regal and lovely face, its delicate
carving and the marvel of its dark, flashing, enquiring eyes
vividly striking in the clear mellow light of the room.
Mrs. Hamilton, dressed in a plain, grey alpaca dress, rather hot
and dusty after her long drive, sat on one of the low divans
awaiting her. As Saidie entered, the glory of her youth and beauty
struck upon the seated woman like a heavy blow, under which she
started to her feet and stood for a second, involuntarily
shrinking.
"Salaam, be seated," murmured Saidie, indicating a fauteuil near
the one on which she sank herself.
Mrs. Hamilton came forward, her hands closing and unclosing
spasmodically in their grey silk gloves, and sat down again, her
eyes riveted on the other's face.
"Do you know who I am?" she said at last in a stifled voice.
Saidie smiled faintly; one of those liquid, lingering smiles that
made Hamilton's heaven.
"Yes, I know; you are Mem Sahib Hamilton, the first, the old
wife.".
Saidie, according to her own Eastern ideas, was in the position of
a superior receiving an unfortunate inferior. She was the latest
acquired--the darling, the reigning queen--confronted with the poor
cast-off, old, unattractive first wife; and being of a nature
equally noble as the type of her beauty, she felt it incumbent on
her, in such a situation, to treat the unfortunate with every
consideration, gentleness, and tenderness.
The British matron's views of the relative positions of first and
subsequent wives differs, however, from Saidie's, and Mrs.
Hamilton's face grew purple as she heard Saidie's answer, and some
faint comprehension of Saidie's view was borne in upon her.
"Where is my husband?" she demanded fiercely.
"The Sahib is in the city to-day," returned Saidie calmly. How
odious they were, these Englishwomen, with their short skirts and
big boots, and red, hot faces, with great black straw houses over
them, and their curt manners, and the impertinent way they spoke of
their lords!
"When will he be back?" pursued the other, sharply.
Saidie glanced towards the clock.
"In a few hours; perhaps more. He returns at sunset."
"And what do you do all day, shut up by yourself?" questioned her
visitor, with a sort of contemptuous surprise.
"I think of him," returned Saidie, quite simply, with a sort of
proud pleasure that made the Englishwoman stare incredulously.
"Silly little fool!" she ejaculated, with a harsh, disdainful
laugh.
"Does he give you all those things, and dress you up like that?"
she added, staring at the pearls on Saidie's neck.
"He has given me everything I have," she replied, seriously.
That Hamilton was wasting his substance on another went home far
more keenly to his lawful wife than that he was wasting his love on
the same. She got up, and went close to the girl, with a face of
fury.
"They are all mine! I should like to drag them off you! Do you
understand that an Englishman's money belongs to his wife, and _I_
am his wife? You! What are you? He belongs to me, and, whatever you
may think, I can take him from you. By our laws he must come back
to me."
Saidie rose and faced the angry woman unmoved.
"No law on earth can make a man stay with a woman he does not
love," she said calmly, "nor take him from one he does. You must
know little, or you would know that love is stronger than all law.
I give you leave to withdraw. Salaam."
And she herself moved slowly backwards towards the hanging chick,
passed through it, and was gone, leaving the Englishwoman alone in
the room.
* * * * *
Three hours later Hamilton, sitting in his own private office,
surrounded with papers, started suddenly as he heard a well-known
and hated voice say, outside the door.
"Thanks, I'll go in myself."
The next minute the door had opened and his wife stood before him.
He sat in silence, regarding her.
"Well, Frank, I suppose you were expecting me? You saw the boat
came in, doubtless. You don't look particularly pleased to see me!"
There was only one chair in the room, and Hamilton remained seated.
His wife stood in front of him.
"I do not know of any reason why I should be pleased, do you?" he
said calmly, gazing at her with eyes full of concentrated
hostility.
"No, considering you've got that black woman up at your house, I
don't suppose you do want your wife back very badly; but I've come
to stay, my dear fellow, some time, so you've got to make the best
of it."
"You will not stay with me," returned Hamilton quietly. His face
was very white, his eyes had become black as they looked at her.
One hand played idly with a paper-knife on his table.
"And a nice scandal there'll be when I go to stay at the hotel
here, and it's known I'm your wife, and you are living out in the
desert with a woman from the bazaar!"
"The fear of scandal has long since ceased to regulate my life,"
answered Hamilton calmly. "Be good enough to make your interview
short; I have a great deal of work to-day."
"You are a devil!" replied the woman, white, too, now with impotent
rage, "to desert your own wife for that filthy native woman. I--"
But Hamilton had sprung to his feet; his face was blazing; he
seized his wife's wrists in both hands.
"Be quiet," he said, in a low tone of such fury that she cowered
beneath it. "One word more and I shall _kill_ you; do you
understand?"
Then he raised one hand and brought it down on his gong. Instantly
two stalwart, bronze giants, his chuprassis, entered the room and
stood by the door.
"Take this woman out, and keep her out," he said to them. "Never
let her in again. She annoys me."
The chuprassis put their hands to their foreheads, and then
impassively approached the Englishwoman. She looked at her husband
wildly as they took her arms.
"Frank! you will not surely--" she expostulated. "Your own wife!"
and she struggled to release her arms.
Hamilton waved his hand, and the natives forced her to the door.
For a moment she seemed inclined to scream and struggle. Then her
face changed. A look of intense malevolence came over it. She
walked between the men quietly to the door. As she passed through
it, she looked back.
"You and she shall regret this," she said. Then the door shut, and
Hamilton was alone.
He sat down, collapsed in his chair. Oh, how could he free himself
from this millstone at his neck? What relief could he gain
anywhere? To what power appeal? He could keep her out of his house,
out of his office, but not out of his life. She had come here with
the deliberate intention of wrecking that, and she would succeed
probably, for she would have the blind, hideous force of
conventional morality on her side. She would destroy his life--that
life till lately so valueless to him; that dreary stretch made
barren so many years by her hateful influence, but which, in spite
of it, at Saidie's touch, had now bloomed into a garden of flowers.
The thought of Saidie strengthened him. It was true that his wife
would probably succeed in breaking up his life here from the
conventional and social point of view, and he would be obliged most
likely to give up his appointment; but he had a small independent
income, and on that he and Saidie could still live together. They
would go to Ceylon or to Malabar. Perhaps also he could make money
otherwise than officially. Wherever he went his wife would probably
pursue him, intent on making his life a misery. Still, Fortune
might favour him; he and Saidie might in time reach some corner of
the world where their remorseless tracker would lose trace of them.
Perhaps to go to England at once and obtain a legal separation
would be the best plan, but then it was winter in England now, and
he could not with advantage take Saidie to England in winter, for
fear his exotic Eastern flower would fade in the northern winds.
His thoughts wandered from point to point, and the minutes passed
unheeded. His papers lay untouched, scattered on the floor. The
chuprassi brought in from time to time a note, laid it on the table
and withdrew. Hamilton noticed nothing; he sat still, thinking.
Meanwhile Mrs. Hamilton had been driven to the hotel, where she
engaged very modest quarters and ordered luncheon. While waiting
for this she went out into the balcony before her windows, and
looked with gloomy eyes into the sunny, laughing splendour of the
Eastern afternoon. At the side of the hotel was a luxuriant garden,
and the palms and sycamores growing there threw a light shade into
the sunny street just below her window; the sky overhead stretched
its eternal Eastern blue, and the pigeons wheeled joyfully in and
out the eaves in the clear sparkling air, or descended to the pools
in the garden to bathe, with incessant cooing. Up and down the
road passed the white bullocks with their laden carts, and the
gaily-dressed Turkish sweet-meat sellers went by crooning out songs
descriptive of their wares, pausing under the shade of the garden
to look up at the English Mem-Sahib in the balcony. She leant her
arms on the rail, and looked out on the gay scene with unseeing
eyes. "Beast!" she muttered at intervals, and her hard-lined face
crimsoned and paled by turns.
When her luncheon came in she returned to the room, took off her
hat and looked in the glass. The narrow, selfish, petty emotions of
twenty years were written all over her face in deep, hideous lines.
The mass of yellow hair, newly-dyed, looked glaringly youthful and
incongruous above it.
Burning with a sense of malevolent discontent and misery, she
turned from the glass and hurried through her luncheon, then
ordered it to be cleared away and writing materials to be brought
in, and set herself with grim feverishness to the concoction of a
long letter to the Commissioner. In it Hamilton's twenty years of
patient fidelity, through which time he had regularly transmitted
to her half his pay year by year were naturally not mentioned; her
own refusal to live with him, her incessant demands for more money,
her extravagance, her long, whining letters to him, her debts, her
own life in town were, of course, also suppressed. In the letter
she figured as the ardent, tender, anxious wife, arriving to find
her abandoned husband wasting his substance on a black mistress.
The visit to the cruel tyrant in his office was long dwelt on, and
the whole closed with a pathetic appeal to the Commissioner to use
his influence to restore her dearest boy to her arms. It was not a
bad letter from the artist's and the liar's standpoint, and she
read it through with a glow of satisfaction, sealed it up with a
baleful smile of triumph, and then sounded the gong.
"Take this at once to the Commissioner Sahib," she said, handing
the note to the servant, "and let me have some tea; also you can
order me a carriage. I shall want to drive afterwards."
When the tea came, she thoroughly enjoyed it after her virtuous
labours, and in the cool of the evening drove out to see the city.
* * * * *
That evening at dinner, seated at their table, laden with flowers,
with the light from the heavy Burmese silver lamps falling on her
lovely glowing face, and round bangle-laden arms, Saidie told
Hamilton of the visit of the white Mem-Sahib. His face darkened and
his lips set.
"So she came here, did she? Did she frighten you? attempt to hurt
you?"
"Oh, no," returned Saidie; "not at all. Naturally she is very hurt,
very sorry; no wonder she longs after the Sahib, and wishes to be
taken back to his harem. I was very sorry for her. It is quite
natural she should be jealous, of course," and Saidie rested one
soft, silken skinned elbow on the table and leaned across the
flowers, and her half-filled wine-glass, looking with tender liquid
eyes earnestly at the face of her lord.
"The Sahib is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far above other men,"
she murmured, gazing upon him. "It is no wonder she is unhappy."
Hamilton smiled a little, looking back at her. He had indeed a
singularly handsome face, with its straight, noble features and
warm colour, and as he smiled the breast of the Eastern girl
heaved; her heart seemed to rush out to him.
"Ah, Saidie! you do not understand English wives," he said gently,
with a curious melancholy in his voice. "Love and worship such as
you give me they think shameful and shocking. To love a man for
himself, for his face, for his body is degrading. They are so pure,
they love him only for his purse. They tell him to take his passion
to dancing-girls like you. They hate to bear him children. They
like to live in his house, be clothed at his expense, ride in his
carriage, but they care little to sleep in his arms."
Saidie regarded him steadfastly, with eyes ever growing wider as
she listened.
"I do not understand ..." she murmured at last, clasping both soft,
supple hands across her breast, as if trying to mould herself into
this new belief; "it is so hard to comprehend.... Surely it must
be right to love one's lord, to bear him sons, to please him, to
make him happy every hour, every minute of the day and night."
"Right?" returned Hamilton passionately, getting up from his seat
and coming over to her. "Of course it is right! love such as yours
is a divine gift to man, straight from the hands of God." He leaned
his burning hands heavily on the delicately-moulded shoulders,
looking down into her upturned face. How exquisite it was! its fine
straight nose, its marvellously-carved mouth and short upper lip,
its round, full chin, and midnight eyes beneath their great
arching, sweeping brows!
"That woman is a fiend, one of the unnatural creatures our wretched
European civilisation has made only to destroy the lives of men.
Don't let us speak of her! never let us think of her! She is
nothing to me. You are my world, my all. If she drives us away from
here, there are other parts of the world for us. Separate us she
never shall. Come! why should we waste our time even mentioning her
name. Come with me into our garden. Darling! darling!"
He stooped over her, and on her lips pressed those kisses so long
refused, uncared for by one woman, so priceless to this one, and
almost lifted Saidie from the chair. She laughed the sweet low
laughter of the Oriental woman, and went with him eagerly towards
the verandah, and out into the compound where the roses slept in
the warm silver light.
* * * * *
For two days nothing happened. Hamilton went as usual to his office
for the day. At four he left, and, mounting his camel, went into
the desert to the oasis in the palms.
On the third day he received a summons from the Commissioner, and
went up to his house in the afternoon. His heart seethed with rage
within him, but except for an unusual pallor in the clear warm
skin, his face showed nothing as he entered the large, imposing
drawing-room.
The Commissioner was a short, pompous little man, rather
overshadowed by his grim raw-boned wife, and had under her strict
guidance and training developed a stern admiration for conventional
virtue, particularly in regard to conjugal relations. He rose and
bowed as Hamilton entered, but did not offer to shake hands.
Hamilton waited, erect, silent.
"Sit down, Mr. Hamilton." Hamilton sat down. "Er--I--ah--have
received what I may term a painful--yes, a very painful
communication, and er--I may say at once it refers to you and your
concerns in a most distressing manner--most distressing."
The Commissioner coughed and waited. Hamilton remained silent. The
Commissioner fidgeted, crossed his knees, uncrossed them again,
then turned on him suddenly. The Indian climate is trying to the
temper; it means many pegs, and small control of the passions.
"Damn you, sir!" he broke out fiercely. "What the devil do you mean
by keeping a black woman in your house, and sending your wife to
the hotel here?"
He was purple and furious; in his hand he crushed Mrs. Hamilton's
beautiful composition.
"She tells me you called in natives to throw her out of your
office: it's disgraceful! Upon my word it is; it's scandalous! And
you sent her to the hotel! I never heard of such a thing!"
"Mrs. Hamilton came out uninvited, in defiance of my express
wishes, and on her arrival I told her she could not stay with me,"
returned Hamilton quietly. "Whether she went to the hotel or not, I
don't know."
"But your wife, damn it all, your wife, has a right to stay with
you if she chooses; naturally she would come to you, and you can't
turn her out in this way."
"She has long ago forfeited all rights as my wife," replied
Hamilton calmly, in a low tone, with so much weight in it that the
Commissioner looked at him keenly.
"Why don't you get a divorce or a separation then?" he asked
abruptly. "Do the thing decently--not have her out like this, and
make a scandal all over the station."
"I know of no grounds for a divorce," returned Hamilton. "There are
many ways of breaking the marriage vows other than infidelity. I
married Mrs. Hamilton twenty years ago, and for those twenty years
she has practically refused to live with me. For twenty years I
have remitted half my income to her every year. During that time I
have many times asked her to join me here, sought a reconciliation
always to be refused. Recently I found another interest; the moment
my wife discovered this, she came out with the sole purpose of
annoying me. I have come to the conclusion that twenty years'
fidelity to a woman without reward is enough. I shall not alter my
life now to suit Mrs. Hamilton."
The Commissioner was silent. He was quite sure Hamilton was
speaking the truth, and in reality, in the absence of Mrs.
Commissioner, he felt all his sympathies go with him. But his
wife's careful training and his official position put other words
than his mind dictated into his mouth.
"Well, well," he said at last, "we can't go into all that. You and
your wife must arrange your matters somehow between you. But there
can't be a scandal like this going on. You, a married man, living
with a native woman, and your wife out here at the hotel! Something
must be done to make things look all right--must be done," and he
knitted his brows, looking crossly at Hamilton from under them.
Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.
"You'd better give up this native woman," snapped the
Commissioner.
Hamilton smiled. His was such an expressive face, it told more
clearly the feelings than most impassive English faces, and there
was that in the smile that held the Commissioner's gaze; and the
two men sat staring at each other in silence.
After some moments the Commissioner spoke again but his tone was
different.
"Hamilton, you know we all have to make sacrifices to our official
position, to public opinion, to social usage. Ah! what a Moloch
that is that we've created, it devours our best. Yes ... a Moloch!"
he muttered half to himself, gazing on the floor.
"Still, it's there, and we all suffer equally in turn. I know what
it is myself. I have been through it all." He stopped, gazing
fixedly at the beautiful crimson roses in the pattern of his Wilton
carpet. What visions swept before him of gleaming eyes and sweeping
brows, ruthlessly blotted out by a large, raw-boned figure and face
of aggressive chastity. "I am sorry for you, but there it is;
whatever the rights of the case, you can't make a scandal like
this."
"I am ready to resign my post if necessary," returned Hamilton; "I
have enough to live on without my pay."
The Commissioner started, and looked at him.
"Is she so handsome as that?" he asked in a low tone, leaning a
little forward. Mrs. Commissioner was not there, and he was
forgetting officialdom.
Hamilton hesitated a moment. Then he drew from his pocket a
photograph, taken by himself, of Saidie standing amongst her
flowers.
The beautiful Eastern face, the lovely, youthful, sinuous figure,
veiled in its slight, transparent drapery, taken by an artist and a
lover in the clear, actinic Indian light, made an exquisite work of
art. It lay in the hand of the Commissioner, and he gazed on it,
remembering his long-past youth.
After a long time Hamilton broke the silence.
"Now, you know," he said at last, "why I am ready to resign my post
rather than resign _that_; and it is not only her beauty that
charms me, it is her devotion, her love.... Do you know, white or
black, superior or inferior, these two women are not to be
mentioned in one breath. The one you see there is a woman, the
other is a fiend."
The Commissioner tried to look shocked, but failed; the smooth card
still lay in his hand, the lovely image impressed on it smiled up
at him.
"I don't know but what you are right," he muttered savagely as he
handed it back to Hamilton. "These wives, damn 'em, seem to have no
other mission but to make a man uncomfortable."
He got up and began to pace the room. He seemed to have forgotten
Hamilton and the official _rôle_ he himself had started to play. He
seemed absorbed in his own thoughts--perhaps memories. Hamilton sat
still, gazing at the card.
Half-an-hour later the interview came to an end. Hamilton went away
to his office with a light heart, and a smile on his lips. The
Commissioner had given him some of his own reminiscences, and
Hamilton had sympathised. The two men had drifted insensibly onto
common ground, and the Commissioner finally had promised to help
Hamilton as far as he could. Hamilton was pleased. That he had
merely been twisting a piece of straw, that would be bent into
quite another shape when Mrs. Commissioner took it in hand, did not
for the moment occur to him. That night Saidie danced for him in
the moonlight, and afterwards ran from him swiftly, playing at
hide-and-seek amongst the roses laughing, inviting his pursuit. In
and out behind the great clumps of boughain-villia gleamed the
lovely form, with hair unbound falling like a mantle to the waist.
Through the pomegranate bushes the laughing face looked out at him,
then swiftly vanished as he approached, and next a laugh and a
flash of warm skin drew him to the bed of lilies where he overtook
her, and they fell laughing on the mossy bank together. Wearied
with dancing and running and laughter, she sank into his arms
gladly, as Eve in the garden of Eden.
"Let us sleep here," she murmured, looking up to the palm branches
over them defined against the lustrous sky.
"See how the lilies sleep round us!"
And that night they slept out in the moonlight.