A Bottle in the Smoke Part 31

"Believe you are right, La'yer Rayner. I will say a word to one or two of the Faithful and try to get them up to the scratch, as you say."

"A regular dressing down is what they need. And it will give Worsley and that puppy, his sub., a scare into the bargain," said Rayner with a malicious smile. He had been surprised that the rash granting of the site for the mosque had not caused more acute trouble to the Collector of Puranapore, and his malice now prompted him to wish that he should be reprimanded or made to suffer in some way. There were possible ugly aspects in the agreeing to that site which might be used to Mr.

Worsley's disadvantage, he thought with a gratified smile, though he did not share these conclusions with his companion. A breaking of the peace would do excellently well as a first move in the game.

On their arrival at Waller's, Zynool was so fascinated by the smart mail-phaeton that he at once proposed taking it over there and then as part payment of Rayner's debt to him. As his financial embarra.s.sments were pressing, Rayner decided to part with his once much-prized possession, though he made it the occasion to ask the usurer for another loan. To this the Mahomedan willingly agreed, though he demanded higher interest. A cheque was transferred to Rayner's pocket which he went forthwith to cash at the bank; while Zynool, with childish glee, made arrangements with Waller for the sending of his latest possession to his stables at Puranapore.

Hester seemed more disturbed by her husband's news regarding the sale of his mail-phaeton than he expected.

"Surely it was too hurried a step to part with it like that," she faltered, her home ideas being against such raw haste in an important matter.

"How do you know I did it without premeditation? You women always jump to such hasty conclusions! Let me tell you, Hester, it has been at least four days simmering in my mind," returned her husband; then he stopped and bit his lip. To be sure, he thought, he must tell his wife sooner or later some tale about his quarrel with Truelove Brothers. That they were cheating him out of his rights--that was how he would put it--but he would not spoil the first day of his return by such communications. It would surely impress her favourably, for the time being, that he had in this self-sacrificing manner begun by abandoning one of his chief luxuries.

Perceiving that she seemed to regret his self-denial, he set about to make light of it, a.s.suring her that with such a sweet wife he could afford to dispense with bachelor delights. The load of misery which had weighed him down so heavily these last days seemed already to be rolling away as he sat by Hester's side in the drawing-room shut in from the raging wind, and listened to her beautifully modulated tones as she read aloud to him.

Though he laughingly declared he was not an invalid, and did not require to be coddled when she placed her softest cushions under his head, her quick eyes discerned that from whatever cause her husband's holiday had been no gain to his health, but very much the reverse. His cheeks looked hollow and his eyes l.u.s.treless, and his step had an uncertain tread which she had never observed before.

Dinner was over, and they had again taken refuge in their sheltered retreat, for as the wind still raged the verandah was impossible. Mr.

Rayner began to pace up and down the room as he listened to Hester's playing, which he seemed to appreciate as he had seldom done. In his walk he was suddenly attracted by the ivory box which lay on his wife's writing table.

"Hallo, Hester, where came you by this treasure? What a beauty! This one is real ivory and no mistake. My poor bone fellow must hide its head for ever now. Why this is a genuine work of art! What splendid carving! Did Mrs. Fellowes present this as a supreme proof of her admiration of my wife? Or did you dip deep into your own purse? I shouldn't have thought these things were in the market nowadays. Where did you pick it up?"

"Well, Alfred, I'll tell you," answered Hester slowly, as she wheeled round on the piano-stool to face her husband. "It ought to seem a peace-offering to you, for you once behaved so badly to the dear old man. Mr. Morpeth actually gave it to me the other day when Mrs. Fellowes and I paid him a visit in his most interesting house."

"You got it from _him_? You paid _him_ a visit? You actually dared to enter that man's house?" panted her husband, growing deadly pale, his eyes flashing, and his lips quivering in uncontrolled pa.s.sion. "You shall not--you shall not keep it."

As he spoke he lifted the box high above his head and dashed it on the floor, where it lay dismembered. Then with a savage gesture he stamped on the fragments, crushing them to atoms with his foot.

Hester sat staring at him as if spell-bound. She gazed alternately at her husband's face and at the ruins of her priceless box. Ignorant as she was as to the source of his wild emotion, she realised that there was something quite exceptional in his att.i.tude. It seemed nothing less than frenzy. She rose, appalled and trembling from head to foot, her courage for once deserting her. She made a movement to cross the room and escape by the gla.s.s door to seek refuge under the dark blue heavens.

Then she sank down on her seat again and, covering her face with her trembling hands, bursted into a torrent of tears.

At length she raised her eyes to her husband, who still stood with folded arms and ghastly pale, looking silently down on her. She rose from the music stool and quietly picked up, one by one, the broken fragments of the ivory box which had been so precious to her. Gathering them in the folds of her muslin gown as a child might guard its treasure, she hurried away and went up-stairs, leaving her husband standing motionless and silent.

When she reached her room she sank down under the light of the lamp as if she meant to examine the broken fragments. Instead of doing so she sat holding them covered up in her lap, for there was a greater tragedy gripping her heart than the ruin of the box. Her thoughts were involuntarily following the same train as Mr. Worsley's when in his pity for the young wife he had remarked to her friend, "What a vista of misery lies before her!"

Yes, it was some glimmering of this vista which Hester was seeing now more clearly than she had ever done before. Was it to be in a succession of such scenes that she was to pa.s.s all her earthly years till death released her? They might be many, for she was young and strong of body.

What would it matter now if to-morrow her husband were to greet her gaily and seemingly forgetful of the wounds which he had inflicted on her heart, or even if he expressed himself penitent and desirous to atone for his fit of demoniac fury? Could he efface by a light word, a manufactured smile--as he flattered himself he was able to do--the recollection of his blighting words and deeds?

Love for him was dead, but Pity was now knocking gently at the door of her tender heart. A true compa.s.sion for that disordered soul came creeping in. Surely this desperate pa.s.s made a stronger claim for her to put forth every effort to help her husband. She might perhaps, when he was calmer, be able to show him the misery which he was inflicting on both their lives by these ungoverned outbursts. She must be more brave and firm for the right than she had been in the past. Other disordered lives had been won over by patience; and was not the great patient Love of One the source of all hope and trust? To that never-failing Love she carried her burden now and found there the promised peace.

Unfolding her muslin dress, she drew forth the pitiful fragments of the shattered thing of beauty, and opening her _almirah_, brought out an old box which had been one of the treasures of her childish days. Into it she reverently laid the relics, wrapping them in a fold of paper on which she wrote the words: "The True," and the date of the tragedy. She stowed the box safely away, fearing lest even her ayah should discover it and marvel at the fate of the much-prized treasure.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

Joy and bustle reigned supreme in the corner house of Salamander Street, Vepery. Even its shabby exterior, with patches of chunam peeling off, disclosing its flimsy walls of lath and mud, was sharing in the dawn of coming prosperity. For had not its tenant, Mrs. Baltus, received a letter from Mrs. Matilda Rouat, her well-to-do widowed sister-in-law in Calcutta, announcing that she was desirous of paying her a lengthened visit as a paying guest? The impulse which prompted the decision was an unselfish one in the main. Rumours had lately reached Mrs. Rouat that her sister-in-law was in straitened circ.u.mstances. Being a shrewd and not unkindly soul, she decided that she might lighten the domestic burden and at the same time break the monotony of her days in Chandrychoke, the Eurasian quarter of the city where she had lived all her life.

Mrs. Rouat had even been thoughtful enough to forward "an advance"--without which important adjunct it is well nigh impossible to set the wheels of labour moving among Eastern artizans. A basket-work mender squatted in the verandah splicing the dilapidated bamboo chairs which formed the princ.i.p.al furniture of the bungalow rooms. Another was deftly patching the rattan-matting on the floors in case Aunt Tilly's ponderous form should be laid p.r.o.ne by reason of its many dangerous slits. The butler, a newly enlisted functionary--having been dismissed from higher service owing to the discovery of clumsy pilfering--was flying about in a crumpled tunic, a relic of better days, his turban all awry, trying to impress "missus" with his zeal in her service. On the little gravel sweep with its border of burnt-up gra.s.s, stood a miscellaneous collection of furniture, almirahs, cots, washstands, all receiving, at the hands of a scantily clad coolie, a coat of liquid which he called "Frenchee polishee," but which was really a cheap decoction that, in spite of the strong sun-rays, would retain its stickiness till it proved the object of much vituperation to all whose fingers came in contact with it. Mrs. Baltus, however, was charmed with its rejuvenating effect on her ancient furniture, and stepped about briskly trying to get her money's worth out of the various workers, while her daughter Leila sat darning rents in the muslin curtains, and pondering as to what were her most pressing needs and desires when she got Aunt Tilly to open her purse at the drapery counter of Messrs. Oakes & Co.

Mrs. Rouat was a great contrast to her lean, brown-skinned sister-in-law. She was almost blonde in colouring, her cheeks were ruddy, and her suffused watery eyes distinctly blue; while her treble chin, stout figure, and condition of well-to-do preservation suggested that she belonged to one of the lower orders of the British race rather than to one who had any admixture of Oriental blood. Being considerably upset by her three days at sea, Mrs. Rouat at first was quite satisfied to recline in a long bamboo chair while she listened to her sister-in-law's narrations concerning the hard times they had undergone, or was entertained by her niece playing a jingling tune on the wheezy old piano.

Presently, however, Aunt Tilly got tired of the four chunam walls of the sitting-room, though they had been washed gleaming white for her benefit. She decided that she might even forego in some measure the benefit of the punkah which was swung from the centre of the high ceiling, and shift her quarters to the window where she could entertain herself by watching the pa.s.sers-by, which she perceived was the chief recreation of her niece.

Being installed there one afternoon she happened to catch sight of one with whose appearance she had once been familiar. In spite of the flight of years which had whitened his head and bent his shoulders, she at once recognised him.

"Well now, Leila, if thatt ain't David Morpeth--him as used to live in the best Eurasian quarter in Calcutta in my back days!"

"Oh, he's no rare sight," returned Leila contemptuously. "You can see him pa.s.sing any day of the week. He goes in for meetings and clubs--for the good of us Vepery folk, if you please! I give him, and the likes of him, a wide berth."

"And for whatt do you do thatt?" asked Aunt Tilly, in a disapproving voice.

"Oh, they'd like to catch me and tie me to a mission stool. But I'm a match for the likes of them!"

"Well now, Leila, it strikes me you're standin' in your own light as regards thatt one, any way. He was always a good sort, was David Morpeth. I might say one of the best, for his papa and mamma were well set folk in Daramtalla, and David had a grand post in Truelove Brothers.

They say he was the first Eurasian they ever made a partner. But whatt did he do but spoil himself with his marriage to a flibberty-gibbet, Rosina Castro, and never had a day's happiness till she died when their boy was born. Flo, her sister, took the boy away to England with her--as if his native land wasn't good enough for him! I don't know whatt became of them. I lost sight of the whole lot. But, Leila, since you say thatt David lives near and often pa.s.ses, I've a mind to waylay him and have a chat about old times. No, I'll do better than thatt. I'll just make bold and give him a call--and take you with me. Suppose we hire thatt littlee bandy you were speaking of? We can go first to Morpeth's place and then take a drive to the fashionable beach. Yes, thatt will do veree nicely.

I'd like to go drivin' up in prettee style to Morpeth's place," she wound up, patting her cinnamon-tinted curls with an air of satisfaction.

"Verree well, Aunt Tilly," replied Leila, delighted to hear that her suggestion of a drive to the beach was responded to, and deciding not to oppose the proposed-visit to Mr. Morpeth, though the project was by no means to her liking. "As like as not his boy will say 'Master can't see,'" she said to herself, "but if he does let us in and he begins coaxin' me about thatt Girls' Club, I'll stand firm. Never will I set foot within thatt door again to be patronised by the like of her"; and Miss Baltus bent over her work with an angry heart.

The hired bandy, its syce arrayed in an out-at-the-elbows blue tunic and turban, arrived duly one afternoon at the door of the house in Salamander Street. The carriage had to wait some time till Mrs. Rouat and her niece had given the finishing touches to their gay visiting toilettes. At length the older lady sank down with a sigh of satisfaction on the cushions provided by her sister-in-law as a needful addition to the springless seats of the country vehicle.

"What a grand bungalow and what a prettee garden!" she exclaimed as the carriage drew up at Mr. Morpeth's house. "It's easy to see he's a man of substance, Leila!"

She inquired in anxious tones if she could have a sight of the master.

Mootoo at once showed the visitors into the long library, which was untenanted. The pair remained in a standing posture, Mrs. Rouat's eyes wandering over the room with keen curiosity, while even her niece could not restrain her interest in the interior of the abode with whose exterior she had been familiar all her life.

"Whatt an expense all these prettee books must have been to ship over the black water!" remarked Mrs. Rouat, glancing with awe at the well-filled shelves. "I wonder now if he reads them," she added, recalling with a sigh how long it took her to toil through a single page of print. Leila, who devoured many second-hand yellow backs, smiled with secret scorn at her aunt's remark.

A step was heard approaching, and the master of the house appeared in the doorway. His face wore a puzzled expression as he could not recall that rotund figure with the flabby face framed by cinnamon-hued curls, who rose to meet him with a broad smile and outstretched hands. Leila he knew by sight, and from Mrs. Fellowes' description was able to identify her as the girl who had obtruded herself mysteriously into the verandah at Clive's Road. He decided that the visit must have some connection with her--perhaps she had repented of her resentful att.i.tude and was wishing to connect herself with the Girls' Club.

With this thought pa.s.sing rapidly through his mind he begged his visitors to be seated; but Mrs. Rouat did not long leave him in doubt as to the reason of her call.

"You don't recognise an old acquaintance, Mr. Morpeth?" she asked, setting her head on one side and looking up into his face. "Leastways, an acquaintance of your late wife, Rosina. Ah, she was a prettee creature!" she added, with a heavy manufactured sigh.

Mr. Morpeth still looked mystified, so she continued in a higher key:

"So you don't mind Tilly b.u.t.tons as used to live next door to your Rosina in Chandrychoke? But I've got one of the best houses in the quarter now, though I'm onlee a poor widow. I was well endowed by the late Mr. Rouat. Ah, he was a good husband."

Recollection was dawning on Mr. Morpeth.

"Yes, I remember your name," he said slowly. "And you are a widow now.

Time brings changes!"

He glanced now at Leila, who sat with a constrained air, averting her eyes.

"Ah, Mr. Morpeth," said Mrs. Rouat, mopping her face with her damp handkerchief. "It is true whatt you say! How beautifulee you put it.