The Pool in the Desert Part 20

'About five hundred thousand dollars, I believe. Left him by a cousin.

Then you didn't know?'

'That must have been Gordon Prendergast--the engineer!' Mrs. Innes said, with excitement. 'Fancy that! Leaving money to a relation in Sing Sing!

Hadn't altered his will, I suppose. Who could possibly,' and her face fell visibly, 'have foreseen such a thing?'

'No one, I think,' said Madeline, through a little edged smile. 'On that point you will hardly be criticized.'

Mrs. Innes, with clasped hands, was sunk in thought. She raised her eyes with a conviction in them which she evidently felt to be pathetic.

'After all,' she said, 'there is something in what the padres say about our reaping the reward of our misdeeds in this world--some of us, anyway. If I had stayed in New York--'

'Yes?' said Madeline. 'I shall wake up presently,' she reflected, 'and find that I have been dreaming melodrama.' But that was a fantastic underscoring of her experience. She knew very well she was making it.

Mrs. Innes, again wrapped in astonished contemplation, did not reply.

Then she jumped to her feet with a gesture that cast fortunes back into the lap of fate.

'One thing is certain,' she said; 'I can't do anything NOW, can I?'

Madeline laid hold of silence and made armour with it. At all events, she must have time to think.

'I decline to advise you,' she said, and she spoke with a barely perceptive movement of her lips only. The rest of her face was stone.

'How unkind and unforgiving you are! Must people would think the loss of a hundred thousand pounds about punishment enough for what I have done.

You don't seem to see it. But on top of that you won't refuse to promise not to tell Horace?'

'I will not bind myself in any way whatever.'

'Not even when you know that the moment I hear of the--death I intend to--to--'

'Make an honest man of him? Not even when I know that.'

'Do you want me to go down on my knees to you?'

Madeline glanced at the flowered fabric involved and said, 'I wouldn't, I think.'

'And this is to hang over me the whole season? I shall enjoy nothing--absolutely NOTHING.' The blue eyes were suddenly eclipsed by angry tears, which the advent of a servant with cards checked as suddenly.

'Goodbye, then, dear,' cried Mrs. Innes, as if in response to the advancing rustle of skirts in the veranda. 'So glad to have found you at home. Dear me, has Trilby made her way up--and I gave such particular orders! Oh, you NAUGHTY dog!'

Chapter 3.VII.

From the complication that surged round Miss Anderson's waking hours one point emerged, and gave her a perch for congratulation. That was the determination she had shown in refusing to let Frederick Prendergast leave her his money, or any part of it.

It has been said that he had outlived her tenderness, if not her care, and this fact, which she never found it necessary to communicate to poor Frederick himself, naturally made his desire in the matter sharply distasteful. She was even unaware of the disposition he had made of his ironical fortune, a reflection which brought her thankfulness that there was something she did not know. 'If I had let him do it,' she thought, 'I should have felt compelled to tell her everything, instantly. And think of discussing it with her!' This was quite a fortnight later, and Mrs. Innes still occupied her remarkable position only in her own mind and Madeline's, still knowing herself the wife of 1596 and of 1596 only, and still unaware that 1596 was in his grave. Simla had gone on with its dances and dinners and gymkhanas quite as if no crucial experience were hanging over the heads of three of the people one met 'everywhere,' and the three people continued to be met everywhere, although only one of them was unconscious. The women tried to avoid each other without accenting it, exchanging light words only as occasion demanded, but they were not clever enough for Mrs. Gammidge and Mrs. Mickie, who went about saying that Mrs. Innes's treatment of Madeline Anderson was as ridiculous as it was inexplicable. 'Did you ever know her to be jealous of anybody before?' demanded Mrs. Mickie, to which Mrs. Gammidge responded, with her customary humour, that the Colonel had never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, been known to give her occasion.

'Well,' declared Mrs. Mickie, 'if friendships--UNSENTIMENTAL friendships--between men and women are not understood in Simla, I'd like to be told what is understood.'

Between them they gave Madeline a n.o.ble support, for which--although she did not particularly require it, and they did not venture to offer it in so many words--she was grateful. A breath of public criticism from any point of view would have blown over the toppling structure she was defending against her conscience. The siege was severe and obstinate, with an undermining conviction ever at work that in the end she would yield; in the end she would go away, at least as far as Bombay or Calcutta, and from there send to Mrs. Innes the news of her liberation.

It would not be necessary, after all, or even excusable, to tell Horace.

His wife would do that quickly enough--at least, she had said she would. If she didn't--well, if she didn't, nothing would be possible but another letter, giving HIM the simple facts, she, Madeline, carefully out of the way of his path of duty--at all events, at Calcutta or Bombay. But there was no danger that Mrs. Innes would lose the advantage of confession, of throwing herself on his generosity--and at this point Madeline usually felt her defenses against her better nature considerably strengthened, and the date of her sacrifice grow vague again.

Meanwhile, she was astonished to observe that, in spite of her threat to the contrary, Mrs. Innes appeared to be enjoying herself particularly well. Madeline had frequent occasion for private comment on the advantages of a temperament that could find satisfaction in dancing through whole programmes at the very door, so to speak, of the criminal courts; and it can not be denied that this capacity of Mrs. Innes's went far to increase the vacillation with which Miss Anderson considered her duty towards that lady. If she had shown traces of a single hour of genuine suffering, there would have been an end to Madeline's hesitation. But beyond an occasional watchful glance at conversations in which she might be figuring dramatically, and upon which she instantly turned her back as soon as she was perceived, Mrs. Innes gave no sign even of preoccupation. If she had bad half-hours, they occurred between the teas and tennises, the picnics, riding-parties, luncheons, and other entertainments, at which you could always count upon meeting her; and in that case they must have been short. She looked extremely well, and her admirable frocks gave an accent even to 'Birthday' functions at Viceregal Lodge, which were quite hopelessly general. If any one could have compelled a revelation of her mind, I think it would have transpired that her anxieties about Capt. Valentine Drake and Mrs. Vesey gave her no leisure for lesser ones. These for a few days had been keen and indignant--Captain Drake had so far forgotten himself as to ride with Mrs. Vesey twice since Mrs. Innes's arrival--and any display of poverty of spirit was naturally impossible under the circ.u.mstances. The moment was a critical one; Captain Drake seemed inclined to place her in the category of old, unexacting friends--ladies who looked on and smiled, content to give him tea on rainy days, and call him by his Christian name, with perhaps the privilege of a tapping finger on his shoulder, and an occasional order about a rickshaw. Mrs. Violet was not an introspective person, or she might have discovered here that the most stable part of her self-respect was her EXIGENCE with Captain Drake.

She found out quickly enough, however, that she did not mean to discard it. She threw herself, therefore--her fine shoulders and arms, her pretty clothes, her hilarity, her complexion, her eyelashes, and all that appertained to her--into the critical task of making other men believe, at Captain Drake's expense, that they were quite as fond of her as he was. Mrs. Vesey took opposite measures, and the Club laid bets on the result.

The Club was not prepossessed by Captain Drake. He said too little and he implied too much. He had magnificent shoulders, which he bent a great deal over secluded sofas, and a very languid interest in matters over which ordinary men were enthusiastic. He seemed to believe that if he smiled all the way across his face, he would damage a conventionality.

His clothes were unexceptionable, and he always did the right thing, though bored by the necessity. He was good-looking in an ugly way, which gave him an air of restrained capacity for melodrama, and made women think him interesting. Somebody with a knack of disparagement said that he was too much expressed. It rather added to his unpopularity that he was a man whom women usually took with preposterous seriousness--all but Kitty Vesey, who charmed and held him by her outrageous liberties.

When Mrs. Vesey chaffed him, he felt picturesque. He was also aware of inspiring entertainment for the lookers-on, with the feeling at such times that he, too, was an amused spectator. This was, of course, their public att.i.tude. In private there was sentiment, and they talked about the tyranny of society, or delivered themselves of ideas suggested by works of fiction which everybody simply HAD to read.

For a week Mrs. Innes looked on, apparently indifferent, rather apparently not observing; and an a.s.sistant Secretary in the Home Department began to fancy that his patience in teaching the three dachshund puppies tricks was really appreciated. He was an on-coming a.s.sistant Secretary, with other conspicuous parts, and hitherto his time had been too valuable to spend upon ladies' dachshunds. Mrs. Innes had selected him well. There came an evening when, at a dance at the Lieutenant-Governor's, Mrs. Innes was so absorbed in what the a.s.sistant Secretary was saying to her, as she pa.s.sed on his arm, that she did not see Captain Drake in the corridor at all, although he had carefully broken an engagement to walk with Kitty Vesey that very afternoon, as the beginning of gradual and painless reform in her direction. His unrewarded virtue rose up and surprised him with the distinctness of its resentment; and while his expression was successfully amused, his shoulders and the back of his neck, as well as the hand on his moustache, spoke of discipline which promised to be efficient.

Reflection a.s.sured him that discipline was after all deserved, and a quarter of an hour later found him wagging his tail, so to speak, over Mrs. Innes's programme in a corner pleasantly isolated. The other chair was occupied by the a.s.sistant Secretary. Captain Drake represented an interruption, and was obliged to take a step towards the nearest lamp to read the card. Three dances were rather ostentatiously left, and Drake initialled them all. He brought back the card with a bow, which spoke of dignity under bitter usage, together with the inflexible intention of courteous self-control, and turned away.

'Oh, if you please, Captain Drake--let me see what you've done. All those? But--'

'Isn't it after eleven, Mrs. Innes?' asked the a.s.sistant Secretary, with a timid smile. He was enjoying himself, but he had a respect for vested interests, and those of Captain Drake were so well known that he felt a little like a buccaneer.

'Dear me, so it is!' Mrs. Innes glanced at one of her bracelets.

'Then, Captain Drake, I'm sorry'--she carefully crossed out the three 'V.D.'s'--'I promised all the dances I had left after ten to Mr.

Holmcroft. Most of the others I gave away at the gymkhana--really. Why weren't you there? That Persian tutor again! I'm afraid you are working too hard. And what did the Rani do, Mr. Holmcroft? It's like the Arabian Nights, only with real jewels--'

'Oh, I say, Holmcroft, this is too much luck, you know. Regular sweepstakes, by Jove!' And Captain Drake lingered on the fringe of the situation.

'Perhaps I have been greedy,' said the a.s.sistant Secretary, deprecatingly. 'I'll--'

'Not in the very least! That is,' exclaimed Mrs. Violet, pouting, 'if I'M to be considered. We'll sit out all but the waltzes, and you shall tell me official secrets about the Rani. She put us up once, she's a delicious old thing. Gave us string beds to sleep on and gold plate to eat from, and swore about every other word. She had been investing in Government paper, and it had dropped three points. "Just my d.a.m.n luck!"

she said. Wasn't it exquisite? Captain Drake--'

'Mrs. Innes--'

'I don't want to be rude, but you're a dreadful embarra.s.sment. Mr.

Holmcroft won't tell you official secrets!'

'If she would only behave!' thought Madeline, looking on, 'I would tell her--indeed I would--at once.'

Colonel Innes detached himself from a group of men in mess dress as she appeared with the Worsleys, and let himself drift with the tide that brought them always together.

'You are looking tired--ill,' she said, seriously, as they sought the unconfessed solace of each other's eyes. 'Last night it was the Commander-in-Chief's, and the night before the dance at Peliti's.

And again tonight. And you are not like those of us who can rest next morning--you have always your heavy office work!' She spoke with indignant, tender reproach, and he gave himself up to hearing it. 'You will have to take leave and go away,' she insisted, foolishly.

'Leave! Good heavens, no! I wish all our fellows were as fit as I am.

And--'

'Yes?' she said.

'Don't pity me, dear friend. I don't think it's good for me. The world really uses me very well.'