“Pleasant!” Adela’s voice was distinctly cross.
“You didn’t, then?”
“My dear Richard—such dreadful people! Following one about! Interrupting one’s conversations! You and Helen may have been amused, but I’m sure I hadn’t a chance, stuck between Colonel Crowther and that stiff Major Marsh at dinner, and then interminable ages of that dreadful woman, who kept explaining to me that it would be quite absurd for me to go in to dinner before she did.”
“Oho, I hadn’t thought of that! Lord, what a joke! Of course you do.”
“Do what? I never can understand what you mean.”
“Why, go in to dinner before our Lady Crowther. Mustn’t she be wild? Was that why she looked at you so affectionately when you said good-night?”
“I don’t know which is worse, she or her husband,” said Adela.
“What did he enliven the dinner-hour with? He has only two subjects of conversation, you know—temperance and his own health—sometimes he blends the two.”
“He was perfectly disgusting,” said Adela, with a toss of her head.
“Oh, then you had the action of alcohol upon the human stomach. That’s a great favourite; he loves talking about alcohol, and always starts when Mrs. C. is safely out of hearing. She will have wine on state occasions, but it is so bad that it really does more to advance the cause of temperance than all old Crowther’s dissertations. He can’t call his soul his own, so she gets her own way, and he bears testimony on the sly, when she isn’t listening.”
“He was dreadful,” said Adela, quite shocked.
Richard laughed, and touched the pony with the whip.
“You should have heard him after dinner,” he said. “First he talked to Darcy, until Darcy went to sleep. Then he came over to me, and told me all about his malaria, and how he felt when he had a cold fit, and what Darcy said when he had a hot fit, and all about his liver.”
“Richard!”
“Well, he did, and finished up by asking me to feel his pulse.”
“I don’t think this is at all a nice conversation,” said Adela with decision.
“Quite right, my dear; we’ll talk about something else. How did you get on with Blake, Helen?”
Miss Wilmot turned from the moonlit landscape. There was a queer little smile on her face.
“Oh, I liked him,” she said.
“He’s a very good fellow. Not a lady’s man, of course.”
“I liked him very much. All of a sudden, you know, the queer way one does, sometimes. At least I do. One minute you don’t care in the least, and the next you like the person so much, that you feel as if you had known him for years.”
“My dear Helen, are you trying to break it to us that you have suddenly formed an unrequited attachment?”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Helen, laughing. “Suddenly you know, in the middle of the pudding course, I felt as if he were quite an old friend. I wondered so much what he would do if I were to murmur: ‘A sudden thought strikes me, let us swear an eternal friendship!’”
“Really, Helen!” protested Adela.
“He’d probably have been delighted. You try him, and if he doesn’t respond, I’ll call him out. Under that shy manner of his, he’s the soul of romance.”
“What would he be likely to do?” inquired Miss Wilmot.
“Well, he might seize the nearest menu card, and suggest that you should immediately subscribe the most tremendous vows, with a pen dipped in your mutual gore, or he might drop his eyeglass into the finger bowl, and fly, taking the earliest opportunity of hinting to me that he feared you were not—not quite, er—right— in the—er—head—you know, Dick”; and Captain Morton imitated the shy, hesitating drawl which was Captain Blake’s medium when embarrassed.
“Well, I think you are both mad,” said Adela.
“What, poor George too? Well, you can tell him so, for he’s coming on to have a talk and a smoke.”
“To-night?”
“Yes, to-night. I’ve not seen him—to speak to—since he got back. So if you want to tell him he is mad, and if Helen wants him to swear eternal friendship, now’s your chance.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Wilmot; “I can wait.”
The trap drew up, and Adela spoke in a vexed tone as her husband helped her down.
“You are going to sit up and smoke?”
“We are. Imam Bux,” to the sleepy bearer who stumbled to his feet as they came up the verandah steps, “Blake Sahib is coming. Bring pegs.”
“That horrid tobacco! The house will be full of it next day.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do. Really, Richard, if I had only thought of it, I would have made you promise to give up smoking before I married you.”
“Would you?” said Richard, lifting the split bamboo screen for the ladies to pass into the house,
Helen went silently to her own door, but Adela hung back. “You would have done it to please me then,” she said. She was pouting a little, and inclined to flirt with her husband, since there was no one else available.
“I don’t think so, my dear.”
“You would. You were in love with me then, Dick—”
Captain Morton raised his eyebrows, and looked round to discover that they were alone.
“My dear Adela, suppose you follow Helen to bed.”
“You were—madly. You would have done anything that I asked.”
“I might have reflected that a woman who could make so unreasonable a request—” Richard Morton paused, and turned to the table. He took up the heavy cut-glass decanter which stood there, and measured out a peg.
“You would have done anything” repeated Adela.
Richard looked at her, half absently. Perhaps he was trying to recall the memory of those hot days of passion. Perhaps he was trying to forget them. A proud man, whose feelings are at once deep and sensitive, may well shrink from recalling a passion which has humiliated him, and has failed to satisfy a single one of the cravings of his nature. Things were settling down now. Helen Wilmot was a comfortable third person in the household. Her presence made for safety and domesticity. Her influence with Adela was decidedly a success. Richard Morton valued peace in the domestic circle. Since his wife’s cousin had been an inmate of his house, there had been no more scenes.
Adela spent a good deal of money on clothes, but she was not always riding with some infatuated young man. She no longer passed whole mornings gossiping with Mrs. Carruthers, a person to whom Richard had the greatest objection.
He traced all these improvements to Helen Wilmot, and was duly grateful. But, whilst anxious for peace, he was very far from desiring to renew the old service of adoration. Of late he had thought that Adela resented this attitude. His temper stirred as he suspected a desire to employ some otherwise idle moments in bringing him once again under the yoke. He did not look at Adela now, and there was a little frown between his eyes as he crossed to the fireplace, reached for his pipe, and said rather shortly:
“Blake will be here in a moment. You had better go to bed, Adela.”
She went as far as the door and came back again.
“You are cross,” she said, “and you’ve never said a word about my new dress. I don’t believe you even noticed it. And it is so pretty. I designed it, and Helen stood over the dirzee whilst he made it. I am sure it looks just as if I had had it out from home. Don’t you think so? Don’t you like it?”
“Yes, it is very pretty.”
“And becoming, too, don’t you think? That pale mauve is a very trying colour, you know, but Helen said she was sure I could stand it, and it goes so well with my amethyst necklace. Do you remember when you gave it to me?”
Yes, he remembered. It was when the world seemed too little to give. Eighteen months ago in Murree, and she had just told him about the child. He could
see the blue hills now, and the blue mist across the plains. Intimate memories which had been hushed away into silence woke a little, and whispered in him. There was only one lamp in the room, and it threw a hazy golden light over Adela in her soft white dress.
“Dick, don’t you ever remember?”
Adela was quite close now, her hand on the mantelpiece beside his arm, her bare arm brushing his shoulder. If he were to turn his head, and bend it ever so little more, he might kiss the dimpled hollow beneath her upraised chin.
Yes, he remembered—and with remembrance came a sharp stab of anger. That she should be capable of stirring such a memory for the sake of furthering an idle flirtation, would have served, had it been necessary, to divest Richard Morton of his last illusion with regard to his wife. But it was not necessary. During the two and a half years of their married life he had come to realise, at first dimly and with great pain, but later on with a certain hard clarity of vision, that Adela neither responded, nor desired to respond, to anything but admiration. For this she lived. For this she had an appetite so insatiable, that deprived of it she pined, and could be driven to seek it even from the husband whose prodigality in this respect had once awakened the tyrant in her. But any answer of the heart, any response of the intelligence, any home affection, Adela had not to give. That her beauty still had power to move him was a fact of which Richard Morton was aware—a fact for which he despised himself.
He had no desire that Adela should share either the knowledge or the contempt. He had given of his best, and it had not been received. He would not offer his worst upon the altar once held sacred. She had been the mother of his child—his son.
That bitter disappointment ached in him still.
“Dick, you might—look—at me,” said Adela’s soft voice, very softly.
Through the open doorway came the sound of wheels. Richard Morton straightened himself, with a breath of relief.
“There’s Blake,” he said; and as Adela turned pettishly away he moved to the table, and took a long drink before going to meet his friend.
CHAPTER VII
HOW CAPTAIN MORTON TALKED ABOUT CHUPATTIS
Borrow of Life as you please,
What has it got to lend?
What that is better than these —
A sword, and a horse, and a friend?
Love is but dangerous stuff,
Heavy at heart in the end.
These three things are enough —
A sword, and a horse, and a friend.
“Come along into the office, George,” said Richard Morton, leading the way.
“Imam Bux, give the Sahib a peg, a large peg, and the chair that doesn’t break when you sit on it. Son of owls, that is the broken chair. Take it away and have it burnt. Do you wish to kill Blake Sahib?”
“Blake Sahib is my father and my mother,” said Imam Bux with much gravity. He set a lamp upon the office table as he spoke and the light struck upwards, and gave his long grey beard a golden tinge.
“Much obliged to you, I’m sure, Imam Bux,” said Captain Blake. “You look very well. You didn’t get jour throat cut in Peshawur after all, you see. Last time I saw you, you were quite sure that a wild Pathan was going to slit that villainous old gizzard of yours, eh?”
“By the favour of the Sahib I am returned alive,” said Imam Bux. “Peshawur is a bad place. All those who are not thieves there, are murderers.”
He salaamed and waddled ponderously to the verandah door, where he disappeared into the darkness. After a moment or two a sound of muffled snoring announced the resumption of his slumbers.
“Light up, George,” said Captain Morton.
“Sure it’s allowed?”
Richard gave a short laugh.
“You are a heathen, George. You don’t know your prayer-book. It is the lady who says ‘obey’ in the marriage service, not the man.”
“Saying isn’t doing,” observed Captain Blake, with some wisdom. “Same old service five-and-twenty years ago, I take it, so the Crowther must have said she’d obey the poor old Colonel. Nobody has ever noticed her doing it, but perhaps the Colonel got muddled up and said her bits by mistake. If he was the same five-and-twenty years ago as he is now, it’s more than likely.”
“You’ve hit on an isolated case.”
“I’ve hit on an awful warning,” said Captain
Blake solemnly. All the time he was talking, his eyes were upon his friend’s face, with the gentle absent expression which was one of his characteristics. His voice was very slow and inexpressive. He wasn’t quite sure about the solitariness of that awful warning. Dick looked as if he had had some pretty bad times since they had met. There was a deep vertical line between his eyes that used not to show like that. H’m, marriage was certainly the deuce, and Captain Blake thanked fate and his own caution that he was a lonely bachelor.
“How are you settling down, Dick?” he inquired, after a moment or two. “Adamson left you something to do, didn’t he? I hope to goodness it’s true that he doesn’t mean coming back. He was the laziest man in Oude when he hadn’t got fever, and the limpest rag in Asia when he had.”
“I should think he was about as much good at his job as Imam Bux would be. Young Jelland seems a nice boy, but inclined to take things easy. Fatehshah Khan seems to have done more work than the other two, but, Lord, George, fancy leaving land cases to be settled by a native extra Assistant Commissioner! Talk of muddles. It’s a year since we annexed Oude. Goodness knows things must have been mixed up enough to start with, but Adamson seems to have managed to give’ em just that extra amount of tangling that makes it perfectly certain they’ll never come straight. I wish I had come here at once, when we took things over. One wouldn’t have been bound by the muddles of the Oude Government, but Adamson’s muddles are a different story.”
“Oh, you’ll get it straight in time.”
“A combination of Solomon, Manu, and Socrates couldn’t get it straight,” said Captain Morton with emphasis. “As far as I can make out, no matter in whose favour a suit is settled, there will always be at least two other claimants, quite as likely to be in the right. And that’s what we call pacifying the country districts. It’s this blessed chuckladaree system that’s the very devil and all.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever grasped it,” said Blake.
“Happy George! You haven’t had to. I’ve been struggling for a fortnight, and as far as I’ve got, it’s like this. Oude was split into twenty-two chuckladarees or districts under the late King. Each chuckladaree had its own chuckladar, who paid a fixed sum to the Government, and then collected as much more as he could from his unfortunate district. The more he could squeeze out, the better for him, of course. Then we get the zemindars. There are any amount of them round here—large landowners—and a lot of them have done the same thing on a small scale as the King of Oude has done on a big one. They were too grand or too lazy to collect their own rents, so they set up agents who paid them a fixed amount, and made what they could on the transaction. Son would succeed father as agent, and things would go on very comfortably for every one, except the wretched peasant, until the King’s chuckladar appeared on the scenes, and demanded more than the zemindar would pay. The chuckladar would back up his demand with troops—who were also on the lookout for a chance of making money—and discretion being the better part of valour the zemindar would either pay or run away. In the latter case, the muddle becomes most complicated, for in many cases the agent seems to have taken the opportunity of making a bid for the possession of the land. If the chuckladar thought he could make money out of a change of ownership he was quite willing, and after a hundred years of this sort of thing, I ask you how is a wretched Deputy Commissioner to discover which of all the gentlemen who are swearing by their fathers’ beards, and their children’s heads, and Mother Ganges, and all the rest of it—which of ’em, I say, is the least deeply di
pped in perjury?”
“Why ask me?” murmured Blake.
“I don’t. Fatehshah Khan would like me to ask him, but I don’t do that either. Now there was a queer thing happened yesterday. A case came up—it had been dragging on from Adamson’s time—just the sort of thing I have been describing. Every one swearing themselves black in the face. Adamson, guided by Fatehshah Khan, had apparently more or less committed himself to a gentleman called Madho Missa, who had a whole pile of documents which at any rate proved conclusively that he had always collected the revenue. Jelland informed me that the betting in the bazaar was upon Madho Missa. Jelland apparently has sporting tastes. Then Aunut Singh, the rival claimant, came along and declared with oaths and tears that Madho Missa’s family were only agents of his family. He wept profusely. When he stopped, I had a good look at him. He was a plump person with only one eye, and a very crooked front tooth that showed every time he opened his mouth. George, my friend, I recognised him.”
“You what?”
“Recognised him. It is—it is my long-lost uncle, and all the rest of it. What it is to have a good memory! Ages ago, in the prehistoric past, my old governor raised a regiment for the King of Oude, and Aunut Singh’s brother was one of the native officers. Aunut Singh came to visit him, and I remember him very well. I was eight, and his crooked tooth and rolling eye remained fixed in my memory.”
“What did you do? Fall on his neck?”
“No, I restrained my ardent feelings, but I directed a few questions to Mr. Madho Missa that brought what novels call ‘tears of sensibility’ to his eyes. You see I had had the advantage of hearing the matter threshed out in detail between Aunut Singh and his brothers, and at eight years old one takes a passionate interest in other people’s affairs. I am now trying to get hold of an impartial witness or two, if there is one to be had, and I shouldn’t wonder if Aunut Singh went to his grave calling down blessings on my head.”
“I don’t see how you remembered.”
“I don’t see how, but I did. D’ ye know, George, we were camped here for a time, and every now and then when I am out riding the queerest recollections come over me. A bridge, a temple, or a turn of the road is as familiar as can be. For perhaps a dozen yards or so I could go blindfold, and when I look over my shoulder I expect to see my father on his great black horse that the natives called ‘Shaitan’ because he killed a man who attacked him when he was riding home in the dark one night.”
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