On the Face of the Waters Part 31

Perhaps, had the English officers seen her, they might have advised her return, even though there was as yet no antic.i.p.ation of danger; had there been one, the first thought would have been to clear the neighboring bungalows. But they were in the main-guard, and she set down the stare of the natives to the fact that nine o'clock was unusually late for an English lady to be braving the May sun. The road beyond was also unusually deserted, but she was too busy searching for the winged words, barbed well, yet not too swift or sharp to wound beyond possibility of compromise, which she meant to use ere long, to pay any attention to her surroundings. She did not even catch the glimpse of Sonny, still playing with the c.o.c.katoo, as she sped past the Seymours' house, and she scarcely noticed the groom's "_Hut! teri, hut!_" (Out of the way! you there!) to a figure in a green turban, over which she nearly ran, as it came sneaking round a corner as if looking for something or someone; a figure which paused to look after her half doubtfully.

Yet these same words, which came so readily to her imaginings, failed her, as set words will, before the commonplace matter-of-fact reality.

If she could have jumped from the dog-cart and dashed into them without preamble, she would have been eloquent enough; but the necessary inquiry if Mrs. Gissing could see her, the ushering in as for an ordinary visit, the brief waiting, the perfunctory hand-shake with the little figure in familiar white-and-blue were so far from the high-strung appeal in her thoughts that they left her silent, almost shy.

"Find a comfy chair, do," came the high, hard voice. "Isn't it dreadfully hot? My old Mai will have it something is going to happen.

She has been dikking me about it all the morning. An earthquake, I suppose; it feels like it, rather. Don't you think so?"

Kate felt as if one had come already, as, quite automatically, she satisfied Alice Gissing's choice of "a really--really comfy chair."

How dizzily unreal it seemed! And yet not more so, in fact, than the life they had been leading for months past; knowing the truth about each other absolutely; pretending to know nothing. Well! the sooner that sort of thing came to an end, the better!

"I have had a letter from my husband," she began, but had to pause to steady her voice.

"So I supposed when I saw you," replied Alice Gissing, without a quiver in hers. But she rose, crossed over to Kate, and stood before her, like a naughty child, her hands behind her back. She looked strangely young, strangely innocent in the dim light of the sunshaded room. So young, so small, so slight among the endless frills and laces of a loose morning wrapper. And she spoke like a child also, querulously, petulantly.

"I like you the better for coming, too, though I don't see what possible good it can do. He said in his letter to me he would tell you all about it, and if he has, I don't see what else there is to say, do you?"

Kate rose also, as if to come nearer to her adversary, and so the two women stood looking boldly enough into each other's eyes. But the keenness, the pa.s.sion, the pity of the scene had somehow gone out of it for Kate Erlton. Her tongue seemed tied by the tameness; she felt that they might have been discussing a trivial detail in some trivial future. Yet she fought against the feeling.

"I think there is a great deal to say; that is why I have come to say it," she replied, after a pause. "But I can say it quickly. You don't love my husband, Alice Gissing, let him go. Don't ruin his life."

Bald and crude as this was in comparison with her imagined appeal, it gave the gist of it, and Kate watched her hearer's face anxiously to see the effect. Was that by chance a faint smile? or was it only the barred light from the jalousies. .h.i.tting the wide blue eyes?

"Love!" echoed Alice Gissing. "I don't know anything about love. I never pretended to. But I can make him happy; you never did."

There was not a trace of malice in the high voice. It simply stated a fact; but a fact so true that Kate's lip quivered.

"I know that as well as you do. But I think I could--now. I want you to give me the chance."

She had not meant to put it so humbly; but, being once more the gist of what she had intended to say, it must pa.s.s. There was no doubt about the smile now. It was almost a laugh, that hateful, inconsequent laugh; but, as if to soften its effect, a little jeweled hand hovered out as if it sought a resting-place on Kate's arm.

"You can't, my dear. It _is_ so funny that you can't see that, when I, who know nothing about--about all that--can see it quite plainly. You are the sort of woman, Mrs. Erlton, who falls in love--who must fall in love--who--don't be angry!--likes being in love, and is unhappy if she isn't. Now I don't care a rap for people to be thinking, and thinking, and thinking of me, nothing but me! I like them to be pleasant and pleased. And I make them so, somehow----" She shrugged her shoulders whimsically as if to dismiss the puzzle, and went on gravely, "And you can't make people happy if you aren't happy yourself, you know, so there is no use in thinking you could."

It was bitter truth, but Kate was too honest to deny it. There had always been the sense of grievance in the past, and the sense of self-sacrifice, at least, would remain in the future.

"But there are other considerations," she began slowly. "A man does not set such store by--by love and marriage as a woman. It is only a bit----"

"A very small bit," put in Mrs. Gissing, with a whimsical face.

"A very small bit of his life," continued Kate stolidly, "and if my husband gives up his profession----"

Mrs. Gissing interrupted her again; this time petulantly. "I told him it was a pity--I offered to go away anywhere. I did, indeed! And I couldn't do more, could I? But when a man gets a notion of honor into his head----"

"Honor!" interrupted Kate in her turn, "the less said about honor the better, surely, between you and me!"

The wide blue eyes looked at her doubtfully.

"I never can understand women like you," said their owner. "You pretend not to care, and then you make so much fuss over so little."

"So little!" retorted Kate, her temper rising. "Is it little that my boy should have to know this about his father--about me? You have no children, Mrs. Gissing! If you had you would understand the shame better. Oh! I know about the baby and the flowers--who doesn't? But that is nothing. It was so long ago, it died so young, you have forgotten----"

She broke off before the expression on the face before her--that face with the shadowless eyes, but with deep shadows beneath the eyes and a nameless look of physical strain and stress upon it--and a sudden pallor came to her own cheek.

"So he hasn't told you," came the high voice half-fretfully, half-pitifully. "That was very mean of him; but I thought, somehow, he couldn't by your coming here. Well! I suppose I must. Mrs. Erlton----"

Kate stepped back from her defiantly, angrily. "He has told me all I need, all I care to know about this miserable business. Yes! he has!

You can see the letter if you like--there it is! I am not ashamed of it. It is a good letter, better than I thought he could write--better than you deserve. For he says he will marry you if I will let him! And he says he is sorry it can't be helped. But I deny that. It can, it must, it shall be helped! And then he says it's a pity for the boy's sake; but that it does not matter so much as if it was a girl----"

It was the queerest sound which broke in on those pa.s.sionate reproaches. The queerest sound. Neither a laugh nor a sob, nor a cry; but something compounded of all three, infinitely soft, infinitely tender.

"_And the other may be_," said Alice Gissing in a voice of smiles and tears, as she pointed to the end of the sentence in the letter Kate had thrust upon her. "Poor dear! What a way to put it! How like a man to think you could understand; and I wonder what the old Mai _would_ say to its being----"

What did she say? What were the frantic words which broke from the frantic figure, its spa.r.s.e gray hair showing, its shriveled bosom heaving unveiled, which burst into the room and flung its arms round that little be-frilled white one as if to protect and shield it?

Kate Erlton gave a half-choked, half-sobbing cry. Even this seemed a relief from the incredible horror of what had dawned upon her, frightening her by the wild insensate jealousy it roused--the jealousy of motherhood.

"What is it? What does she say?" she cried pa.s.sionately, "I have a right to know!"

Alice Gissing looked at her with a faint wonder. "It is nothing about _that_," she said, and her face, though it had whitened, showed no fear. "It's something more important. There has been a row in the city--the Commissioner and some other Englishmen have been killed and she says we are not safe. I don't quite understand. Oh! don't be a fool, Mai!" she went on in Hindustani, "I won't excite myself. I never do. Don't be a fool, I say!" Her foot came down almost savagely and she turned to Kate. "If you will wait here for a second, Mrs. Erlton, I'll go outside with the Mai and have a look round, and bring my husband's pistol from the other room. You had better stay, really. I shall be back in a moment. And I dare say it's all the old Mai's nonsense--she is such a fool about me--nowadays." Her white face; smiling over its own certainty of coming trouble, was gone, and the door closed, almost before Kate could say a word. Not that she had any to say. She was too dazed to think of danger to the little figure, which pa.s.sed out into the shady back veranda perched on the city wall, looking out into the peaceful country beyond. She was too absorbed in what she had just realized to think of anything else. So this was what he had meant!--and this woman with her facile nature, ready to please and be pleased with anyone--this woman content to take the lowest place--had the highest of all claims upon him. This woman who had no right to motherhood, who did not know----

G.o.d in Heaven! What was that through the stillness and the peace? A child's pitiful scream.

She was at the closed windows in an instant, peering through the slits of the jalousies; but there was nothing to be seen save a blare and blaze of sunlight on sun-scorched gra.s.s and sun-withered beds of flowers. Nothing!--stay!--Christ help us! What was that? A vision of white, and gold, and blue. White garments and white wings, golden curls and flaming golden crest, fierce gray-blue beak and claws among the fluttering blue ribbons. Sonny! His little feet flying and failing fast among the flower-beds. Sonny! still holding his favorite's chain in the unconscious grip of terror, while half-dragged, half-flying, the wide white wings fluttered over the child's head.

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

That was from the bird, terrified, yet still gentle.

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

That was from the old man who followed fast on the child with long lance in rest like a pig-sticker's. An old man in a faded green turban with a spiritual, relentless face.

Kate's fingers were at the bolts of the high French window--her only chance of speedy exit from that closed room. Ah! would they never yield?--and the lance was gaining on those poor little flying feet.

Every atom of motherhood in her--fierce, instinctive, animal, fought with those unyielding bolts....

What was that? Another vision of white, and gold, and blue, dashing into the sunlight with something in a little clenched right hand.

Childish itself in frills, and laces, and ribbons, but with a face as relentless as the old man's, as spiritual. And a clear confident voice rang above those discordant cries.

"All right, Sonny! All right, dear!"

On, swift and straight in the sunlight; and then a pause to level the clenched right hand over the left arm coolly, and fire. The lance wavered. It was two feet further from that soft flesh and blood when Alice Gissing caught the child up, turned and ran; ran for dear life to shelter.

"_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_"

The cry came after the woman and child, and over them, released by Sonny's wild clutch at sheltering arms, the bird fluttered, echoing the cry.

But one bolt was down at last, the next yielding--Ah! who was that dressed like a native, riding like an Englishman, who leaped the high garden fence and was over among the flower-beds where Sonny was being chased. Was he friend or foe? No matter! Since under her vehement hands the bolt had fallen, and Kate was out in the veranda. Too late!

The flying sunlit vision of white, and gold, and blue had tripped and fallen. No! not too late. The report of a revolver rang out, and the Cry of Faith came only from the bird, for the fierce relentless face was hidden among the laces, and frills, and ribbons that hid the withered flowers.