The Potter's Thumb Part 14

His friendliness beguiled her into playfulness.

'Crows indeed! then I've a better opinion of you than you have of me. I thought we were meant for the pigeons.'

'To bill and coo?'

If she could have boxed his ears, it would have relieved her feelings.

As it was, she raced upstairs, in a fury, without vouchsafing one word of resentment, and paced up and down her tiny room with flaming cheeks.

Could a girl be expected, for ever and aye, to be on the outlook for such openings? Of course Gwen Boynton would have laughed easily--would not have minded, perhaps; but then Gwen was charming--everything apparently that a woman ought to be!

Rose looked at herself in her dusty habit. She would have to go down to dinner in it, and challenge comparisons with Gwen in her silks and tinsel. Why should she? No one would care, no one would have a right to care if she did stay in her room with a headache. The next instant she was ashamed of the impulse. What did it matter?--they were welcome to their opinion. As for her, she would adopt no feminine excuse; she would leave those little devices to men's women. So she brushed her habit, and went out, with a heightened colour, to join the others.

CHAPTER IX

Rose Tweedie's sneer against men's women lacked point, since it so happened that Mrs. Boynton, in the opposite corner-room of the pavilion, was, at the very moment, setting aside the temptation of pleading a headache as an excuse for not appearing at dinner. And she had more reason to seek quiet than the girl, though a new dress lay ready on the bed; for Gwen loved to dazzle her world, and had spent some of her leisure in instructing a native tailor how to run up a web of coa.r.s.e native muslin bought in the bazaar into a very decent semblance of a fashionable garment. But the pleasure of the trick had gone out of it. Something had happened. Something incredible, yet, given the surroundings, natural enough. Something about which she must make up her mind. It seemed scarcely a minute ago since she had pa.s.sed in swiftly to the solitude of her room in order to think. She, Gwen Boynton, in native dress, with a white scared face and something in her hand. Now she had to pa.s.s out of that room again as an Englishwoman, and the transition left her oddly undecided. Indeed, as she paused for a moment ere taking the plunge, with one hand on the embroidered draperies doing duty as a door, it seemed almost as if she were awaiting some command, some voice which would relieve her of responsibility. Then she smiled and pa.s.sed on to meet the surprised admiration of her little world; for she had never looked better in her life, and she knew it. The creamy muslin suited her in its careless folds, her excitement showed itself becomingly in flushed cheeks and bright eyes, and the chorus of wonder at her cleverness made her gracious beyond compare. They had been away so long, she said, airily, that she had had to amuse herself somehow, and were there not miles of muslin to be bought in every bazaar, and many men to put st.i.tches into it? Any one could have done it. Rose, listening with a certain contempt in her look, told herself that Gwen said truth; any one could have done it who thought it worth while to take so much trouble for the sake of personal effect; yet a regret rankled somewhere, mingling with the resentment which came as Gwen called attention, somewhat garishly, to more of her good works. Did they not admire the room? When Colonel Tweedie had gone off to the Diwan she had consoled herself by pulling about the furniture; and did not the Ayodhya pot look sweet on the corner-stand she had improvised out of three bamboos, a bra.s.s platter, and a yellow silk scarf?

'You should have packed it away in your box at once,' remarked Lewis coolly. 'Keene may repent his good-nature, or some of us may steal it.

The colour is admirable.' As he spoke he walked over to the stand as if for closer examination.

'Don't touch it, please,' cried Mrs. Boynton hastily. 'You--you will spoil my draperies.'

'A thousand pities, when they are so artistic,' put in Colonel Tweedie, glad of the opportunity. 'That is dinner, Mrs. Boynton. I've had it laid in the small pavilion so as to keep this as your drawing-room.'

'Thanks! but everything is delightful; simply fascinating! In spite of what Mr. Keene said this morning, I begin to wish I were a native.'

'For the sake of the satin?' asked Lewis, who was following close behind with Rose. Gwen flashed back a brilliant look at him.

'No! not the satin. That game would not be worth the candle.'

Apart from the question of satin, Mrs. Boynton had excuse for admiring the _mise en scene_. The violet sky, spangled with stars, seemed made apparently but for one end--to hap and hold that terraced roof which was clearly outlined against it by the light streaming from the pavilions on to the fretted white marble bal.u.s.trades. At the corners were shadowy cupolas, and there in the arched summer-house at the farther end, close upon the velvet darkness, was a table set with silver and gla.s.s, fruits and flowers. At one side, so as to divide the ladies equally, was Rose, in her habit, doing the duty of hostess with a little air of gravity and preoccupation; at the other, Gwen, in her soft clouds of muslin, keeping the men in a state of admiring gratification through their eyes and their ears. They gathered round her too, when, dinner being over, they adjourned to the balconies for coffee and cigars. It was deliciously cool; a faint breeze stirred Rose's hair as she sat a little apart from the others watching the twinkling lights go up and down the stair which formed the only tie between that world on the roof and that world in the courtyard below.

'We ought to go to bed early,' said Lewis, Coming to stand before her.

'You are half-asleep--no wonder, after last night!--and Gwen is what superst.i.tious Scotch folk call "fey." Then, if we have to join that detestable hawking-party to-morrow morning, we shall have to get up at five.'

'You needn't go unless you like,' she replied curtly. 'Mrs. Boynton has cried off.'

'I am not Mrs. Boynton's personal a.s.sistant, Miss Tweedie; I happen to be your father's--so duty calls.' As he spoke he seated himself on the bal.u.s.trade and leant forward, his elbows on his knees, to watch the group on the other side of the arcade.

'If I didn't know that Gwen despises that sort of thing,' he went on in dissatisfied tones, 'I should say she had rouged this evening. Her way of showing fatigue, I presume; though, of course, neither of you have the common-sense to confess you are tired. Women are all ascetics at heart; at least they believe in the virtue of martyrdom. They have different ways of showing it, that's all. Gwen spends her fatigue in dress-making and conversation to please, and you, I'll go bail, haven't even a proper bandage on that scorched arm----'

'Mr. Gordon!'

'Yes! I saw you imagined I was blind--suppose we say like to imagine it; but I really had my eye-gla.s.s, Miss Tweedie. Besides, it doesn't require microscopic sight to see some things.'

'What a profound remark!' interrupted Rose, to hide her pleased surprise at his unusual consideration. At the same moment Gwen's gay laugh rang out, soft yet clear. Either the sound or the speech annoyed the hearer on the bal.u.s.trade, for he frowned as he slipped his dangling feet to the floor.

'As profound as I can make it this evening, for I'm not ashamed to confess myself dog-tired. Couldn't tell a crow from a pigeon; so I shall be off. Good-night, Miss Tweedie, I wish you would persuade Gwen to go to bed. It is easier to give good advice than to take it.'

Rose remained looking at the twinkling lights, and wondering if Lewis were really jealous of his cousin, till seeing the others go back to the central summer-house she followed suit.

'Tired!' echoed Gwen sharply, in reply to her information that Lewis Gordon had stolen away. 'Are we not all tired? I feel as if I had been up since the beginning of time seeking for something I could not find.

My bed, perhaps. Good-night, Rose.'

They were an odd couple, as they bent to kiss each other in that mirrored room, where the oddness was reflected again and again in the myriad sc.r.a.ps of looking-gla.s.s on the walls. Each curved fragment giving and taking an eternity of Gwen's and Rose's bending to kiss each other.

'I am tired of it all, I will go to sleep; When morning comes I will seek for something, _Over hill and dale, through night and day, I must seek for something_.'

The remembrance evoked by Gwen's chance words sent a little shiver through the girl; and with it came a sudden pulse of sympathy for the woman who, now that she saw her close, did indeed look haggard and worn.

'No wonder you are tired,' she said gently. 'Even I feel as if I could sleep for days.'

'But you are coming to hawk surely,' broke in George. 'Do, please! it won't be any fun without you.'

'Not a bit,' a.s.sented Dan. 'Gordon ordered your horse, I know, and told them to take you your tea at five punctually.'

'You must go, Rose,' put in Gwen with a shrug of her white shoulders.

'Diana _Cha.s.seresse_ mustn't disappoint her votaries. I'm glad my habit was burnt.'

She did not look it, and Rose, as she went off to her corner room wondered if Gwen could be jealous of her. The idea was absurd, but pleasing; and she fell asleep placidly over variations of the possibility.

But just over the way with that dark mirrored room between them, Gwen lay awake, with one hand thrust under the pillow where she could feel a tiny paper parcel. Should she keep it, or should she not? Should she say anything of the scene burnt in on her memory, or should she not?

She seemed to see it as a spectator, not as the only actor in it. To see a woman in native dress in that room set round with eyes; the Ayodhya pot in her hand, and in her tinsel-edged veil the jewels which had fallen from its false bottom. Jewels which if sold would buy her freedom, perhaps save her, and Dan too, from a great mistake. It was a chance. A chance most likely unknown to any one in the wide world save herself, for who would have knowingly sold a pot containing three huge pearls and an emerald for ten rupees? Nor was she bound to give more to the seller. Land was bought so, but if the mines were found afterwards, that was the buyer's good luck, even if he had guessed. Facts like these, accepted apparently by the honest and honourable, go far to give such as Gwen immoral support. No one could possibly know; she herself would not have known save for that chance slip, and the eyes made keen and eager through fear of some slight injury to the treasure.

It was a chance of escape from the danger which had come home to her sharply in the past twenty-four hours. The danger of yielding to her own weakness about Dan made clear by his actions; the new danger, suggested by his words, of her losing her hold on Lewis. Could the latter really be attracted by Rose? The events of the evening gave colour to the possibility. If so, there was no time to be lost. She must be free; free to do as she chose. No one would know. n.o.body would dream of bribing one so powerless as she. And if the jewels had been put there knowingly, it was only her risk. No one else was responsible--Lewis had said so----

So she argued, coming round always to the same thought, till the first glint of dawn brought sleep, as it so often does to weary eyes. Perhaps in the thought that the sun will rise, the world go on, no matter what we do, or think, or say.

She slept so soundly that all the bustle of the hawking party failed to disturb her; and when that was over the long stretch of terraced roof lay empty of all sound or sign of life, save for the green parrots shrieking and swooping about the carven work. A pair of them had built in a loophole, whence the young ones kept up a simmering, bubbling noise, like a boiling tea-kettle; a comfortable homely sound out of keeping with the bare beauty of stone, and sunlight, and hard blue sky.

Down in the courtyard below, two badge wearers in scarlet and gold lounged on the stairs, barring the roof from intrusion, chatting to the pa.s.sers-by, and discussing the news which had just been brought in by the camel which was crouching beside a pile of fodder in the centre of the yard, while its owner stretched his limbs, cramped with riding all night across the desert, in front of the cook-room. Halfway up the stairs on the landing leading to the state-rooms, Mrs. Boynton's ayah squatted, combining business with pleasure, by being within reach of a call and her forbidden hookah, at one and the same time. A bundle of letters lay beside her, intended as a peace-offering against the possible smell of smoke.

The sun climbed up silently, shifting the shadows on the silent roof.

That was the only movement, until suddenly a figure in a white domino peered through the _grille_ which barred the flight of steps leading to the Diwan's tower. Then came the grate of a rusty key in a lock, and the figure flitted, silently as the shadows, to the summer-house, and paused in the mirror-room. Perhaps the transformation which Western taste and Mrs. Boynton's clever fingers had wrought in its adornment, was pleasing, perhaps the reverse. The _burka_, however, is of all disguises the most complete, since it blots out form, colour, expression, even movement. The figure showed indeed like a white extinguisher in the centre of the room, until, with a swaying of ample folds it glided over to the corner stand where the Ayodhya pot stood out from Gwen's artistic drapery. Then something slid out, still shrouded in white folds, from the extinguisher, raised the vase, shook it slightly, replaced it, and slid back again in a horrible invertebrate protoplasmic sort of movement, calculated to send a shiver through a spectator. But there was none. The thing had the whole roof to itself save for that fair-haired sleeper in the corner room who lay with one hand clasping a little packet hidden under her pillow. Her face was turned to the doorway in full view of those latticed eye-holes belonging to the _burka_, which after a time came to look in on her from the half-raised curtain, and let in with a shaft of sunshine, a vista of blue skies and marble bal.u.s.trades with two red and green parrots pecking at each other. It may have been the light, more probably the disturbing effect the dim consciousness of other eyes fixed on our own has upon most people, which roused Gwen Boynton. But she opened hers suddenly and started up in bed, her heart throbbing violently, though the curtain had fallen and not a sound was to be heard.

'Comin', mem sahiba, comin',' came in immediate answer to her imperative call as the ayah, thrusting her hookah aside, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the letters, and shook what smoke she could from her voluminous garments. A trifling delay, but enough to allow the thing up-stairs to flit round the summerhouse again; even to pause a second at the _grille_.

'It makes too much noise. I will leave it open,' it muttered as it disappeared up the steps with the rusty key held in its formless clasp.

'Where were you?' asked Gwen, her heart still throbbing. 'And who was that who looked in on me from the door? There was some one: I'm sure there was some one.'

'Me, mem sahiba,' grinned the woman readily. 'Me, ayah. Look in several time. Mem always neendi par; sota! sota! like baba.[2] Ayah waitin'

close to bring dak. Many letters for mem sahiba.'

Mrs. Boynton looked at her doubtfully. It was not the ayah whom she had seen; of that she felt certain. On the other hand, if the woman really had been sitting outside it was more than probable the whole thing was a dream. No harm had come of it, anyhow; so five minutes after she was dividing her attention between early tea and a long epistle from an absent admirer. Gwen's victims were always excellent correspondents, perhaps because of that gracious indifference in which lay her great charm, since a letter had quite as good a chance as a man of whiling away her kindly, sympathetic leisure.