The Potter's Thumb Part 38

'If you had come to me first, Lewis,' she interrupted with a vibration of real anger in her voice, 'I would have warned you not to waste your time in playing Don Quixote at Rose Tweedie's bidding. The woman is an impostor, and should be treated as such. I would have sent the police after her yesterday, had I thought it wise to take even so much notice of her lies. And now you have been to see her! It is too foolish--too annoying! And all because Rose went crying to you, I suppose, about her lover. Her lover, indeed! You are very soft-hearted, Lewis! Perhaps some day your desire to console will lead you into taking his place.

He stared at her; that sort of thing being so unlike Gwen's usual sweetness; but his surprise did not equal his confusion, while his common-sense showed him her possible wisdom.

'Miss Tweedie did not cry over her lover, I a.s.sure you, he began, feeling in very truth that the young lady in question had meted out more blame than sympathy; 'and I did not choose to allow such tales of you to pa.s.s unnoticed.'

'So you listened to them again?' retorted Gwen in rising anger, which she wilfully exaggerated. 'Listened to what a common woman in the bazaar had to say of me! Really, I am obliged to you, Lewis! And she, I suppose, told you that I had stolen the pearls and the pot, and then taken it and a fresh bribe from poor George? 'Well, since you have come to me at last for the truth, I tell you, as I told Rose--who, perhaps, did not repeat it--that I have never seen the thing since the night of the storm at Hodinuggur. So I have less to do with it than she, since she confesses it was sent to her, and that she sent it back on the sly.

Did she tell you that? and have you been asking her for the truth also?

Or am I the only one who has to be questioned like that creature in the bazaar.'

Gwen had never looked better than she did at that moment, with the unwonted fire of real indignation lighting up her face, and Lewis Gordon felt vexed that it awoke no thrill in him. Was he really allowing Rose Tweedie's open mistrust to bias him? The idea made his reply more gentle than it might otherwise have been.

'Perhaps you are right to be angry with me,' he said quietly. 'I beg your pardon, if I have hurt you; but, indeed, it seemed best to me at the time. Perhaps, as you say, it would have been better to wait a while; until, for instance, I can consult with Fitzgerald. I wired him today to come up on three days' urgent private business. He knows a lot.'

Gwen gave an odd sort of laugh, not unlike a sob, and her face softened.

'I'm glad he is coming,' she cried pa.s.sionately; 'very glad. He always understands, and he knows.' Yes! he knew and trusted her--he would stand by her even if he knew that one fatal mistake. Whereas Lewis would treat her as a Magdalen; as if she, Gwen Boynton, were a fit subject for a penitentiary!

'Yes,' she repeated slowly, 'I am glad he is coming. You did the right thing there, Lewis, at any rate.'

So, with this small consolation, he had to make his way back to give in his report to the girl who had told him that she loved him. Another delicate task, and he felt himself detestably awkward over it, the more so because Rose herself met him as if nothing unusual had occurred.

'Well,' she said eagerly, 'what news?'

He told her briefly that there was none. He had had three versions of truth--her own, Chandni's, and Mrs. Boynton's--and there seemed nothing to be done save wait for Dan's arrival. He might be able to throw some light on the subject--he was the last person, at any rate, who was likely to do so.

'You forget the girl--the girl of the portrait, I mean,' suggested Rose quickly. Lewis frowned.

'She disappeared, they say, just before we reached Hodinuggur. I should like, by the way, to see the picture, if you don't mind.'

He stood looking at it in silence for some time.

'And that, you say, was the face of your dream?' he asked at last.

'The face, the dress, the pot clasped so to her breast. I seem to grow more sure of it every hour. And I am certain now it was she who said, "I am Azizan."'

'That sort of certainty grows upon one unconsciously,' he replied, after another pause. 'I confess it is odd; but you can hardly believe it really was the potter's daughter! She has been dead these sixteen years. You think it was her ghost, perhaps; but did George paint the ghost?'

Rose stood silent, her hands clasped tightly.

'Who knows?' she said slowly. 'One knows so little. When I think of it all--of that strange old man with his refrain, "We come and go--we come and go," I seem to feel that odd, uncanny sense of helplessness which one has during a storm at sea, when you realise that the waves are not moving on at all, but rise and fall, rise and fall for ever in the same place. It is the ship which drifts within their power, giving them their wrecker's chance once more. And now--you will say that I am superst.i.tious; but I almost regret that you should bring Mr. Fitzgerald into this business at all. You remember the potter's measure? Think of it, and how poor George himself----'

She paused, her eyes full of tears.

Lewis, watching her, told himself he would never understand women-folk.

Here was a girl, overflowing with fanciful sentiment in some ways, who yet apparently had none to spare for the one subject round which sentiment was supposed to cling--love and marriage. In addition, here were two women, both of whom he desired to help, and yet they were at daggers-drawing about the best method of giving that aid. If he pleased one, he displeased the other; and anyhow, he got no comfort out of either.

CHAPTER XXIV

'Nay! thou hast given me enough, oh Mizra sahib. More than a free woman cares to have,' said Chandni, with a shrug of her ma.s.sive shoulders.

'Thou hadst thy chance to pay me fair.'

Dalel Beg, clad in his European clothes, and perched in all the isolation of an esteemed visitor in the cane-bottomed chair of state, felt he would like to be on a level with those jeering lips as he used to be at Hodinuggur. Not for the sake of desire only, or for the sake of revenge, but for a mixture of both. As usual, the very audacity of her wickedness fascinated him, yet, now that wickedness was directed against himself he could have strangled her for it.

'Pay thee! How can I pay thee,' he whimpered, 'when those low-caste white swindlers with whom I betted will not pay what I have won? When those white devils of women turn the place into a museum until every Pa.r.s.ee in the bazaar threatens to summon me to court?'

It was not much more than a week since he had defied Chandni in the presence of the said white devils; but the interval had not been pleasant. Beatrice Elflida Norma's mamma knew all about Chandni's long years of hold on the Mizra Sahib, and he was totally unaccustomed to the nagging of wifely jealousy. Besides, something had happened which had opened his eyes to the danger of allowing the courtesan to have a free hand. A proposal had been made by the Ca.n.a.l Department to allow water to run permanently along the sluice-cut; the Rajah who owned the land to the south, having spent a whole season at Simla in order to work the oracle, and the flood having come opportunely as a warning to the experts that it might be wise to provide a more satisfactory outlet for the surplus water. Now, in this case, Hodinuggur, which, being for the most part barren desert, would benefit but little by the plan, might by judicious application of the screw make the Rajah pay for its consent, as a considerable portion of its best land would have to be taken up for various works. This sort of secret intrigue, these almost endless ramifications of rights and dues, underlie the simplest transactions in India, and are recognised by its people as an integral part of administration. Besides, Hodinuggur itself, in lieu of compensation for damage done--which for various reasons it had not yet claimed, one being a delay on the part of the Rajah in paying the promised fee for the opening of the sluice--might manage by the same judicious diplomacy to secure some trifling hold on the water-supply; something, in short, which might be used as a screw for the extortion of a perpetual, if small revenue. But for this, silence as to the past was necessary. Such considerations, to European ears, may seem almost too fine-drawn to be worth notice; but to Dalel Beg and Chandni they were quite the reverse, for he came from a long line of courtiers born and bred in such intrigues; men whose trade had pa.s.sed with the corrupt courts of other days, while the memory of it survived in their t.i.tle.

Diwans of Hodinuggur; not Nawabs or Nizams, but Diwans, that is, in other words, prime minister. And she? Every atom of her blood came from the veins of those who for centuries had woven a still finer net of women's wit around the intrigues of their protectors. It is this extraordinary strength of heredity which, in India, makes the cheap tinkering of Western folk, who are compounded of butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers, so exasperating to those who have eyes to see. If English philanthropists would spend their motley benevolence on the poor, the diseased, and the drunken of their own country, it would be better both for it and for India, where the death-rate is no higher, drunkenness is practically unknown, and poverty is neither unhappy nor discontented.

Thus Chandni and Dalel were well matched as she lolled back in her cushions with a laugh.

'So she spends money! Lo! since thou hast married a "_vilayeti_" wife thou canst advertise, as the sahibs do, in the papers, that thou art not responsible for her debts. There is no sense in stopping half way as thou hast done. Thou shouldst have gone to a "mission" and been baptized instead of making that half-caste girl repeat the "Kulma" on promise that thou wouldst not in future claim the right of the faithful to other women. Yea! yea! I know the trick.'

'If I have,' muttered Dalel, vexed yet pleased at her boldness, her shrewdness, 'such promises are easily broken. Divorce is easy.'

'If thou hast money to pay the dower to her people--not when thou hast none! Lo! 'tis a mistake to try new ways of wickedness instead of keeping to the old ones.'

So she dismissed him, feeling on the whole contemptuous over her adversaries so far; the Miss Sahiba's arms had been strong, for sure, but the men were worth nothing! nothing at all.

Dan Fitzgerald, dangling his long legs disconsolately from Lewis Gordon's office-table two days after, said as much himself. 'The fact is, I ought to have killed her; only I didn't feel up to it to-day, after my journey. Oh, you may smile, Gordon!' he went on more eagerly, his face losing some of its dejection in his love of the extravagant, 'but it's true. That sort of woman doesn't belong to our civilised age; and we are absolutely at a disadvantage before her. There was I, as the mad old potter said, with a hero's measure round the chest, driven to words and threats of a policeman. I couldn't, even at the time, but think of that old sinner Zubr-ul-Zaman and what her chance would have been with him--just an order, a cry, and then silence. Sure, one feels helpless at times when one stands face to face with that old world.

What's the use of strength--what's even the use of brains nowadays except to make money? There was I, with that woman, I give you my word, at the end of her tether, but 'twas the hangman's rope to me if I went a step closer, and so I didn't.'

'If _you_ didn't,' remarked Lewis grimly, 'there isn't a civilised man who will; so we had better try something else. Still, unless that woman is silenced, we must face an inquiry, and then the facts of poor Keene's death must come out. By the way, Miss Tweedie knows them, but we have agreed to keep them, if possible, from my cousin. There seemed no use----'

'I'm glad of that,' interrupted Dan, with a sudden quiver of his mouth.

'I should be sorry to have that memory spoilt.'

He was pacing up and down the room now, his hands in his pockets, the brightness of his face absorbed as it were by a frown.

'Gordon!' he said abruptly. 'I'd give everything I possess if I could lay my hands on that cursed pot. Not that it would satisfy the horse-leech's daughter unless it contained the pearls--which isn't likely, for I believe the whole story to be a myth. But the thought that it is somewhere visible, palpable to the meanest fool on G.o.d's earth, is maddening. Or even if we could say to that she-devil, "do your worst." Oh! why didn't you send that wire sooner, and save poor George from his needless death?'

'Why didn't you tell the truth about it at first? you might as well ask that. It would have been better, as it turns out, if you had; but who can tell? As it is, I'm quite ready, as I told you before, to burke everything I can, in conscience; but, so far as I can see, it will do no good. If that woman breaks silence, the main facts must come to light.'

'I wish I had killed her,' said Dan regretfully.

'And I wish she were dead,' replied Lewis cynically, 'that is the difference between us. You are active, I'm pa.s.sive, but we don't either of us seem to be of much use.'

That was the honest truth, and they had to confess as much to Gwen Boynton that afternoon. She looked a little haggard as she listened even while she protested bravely that in her opinion the vile creature would never dare to put her lies to the proof. So they sat and played at cross purposes; for she could not tell them of the papers she held in absolute disproof of what would be the first accusation, and they wished if possible to save her from the knowledge of George Keene's suicide. Perhaps if they had set their own feelings aside and told her the truth, she might even then have confessed her lion's share in the blame. But only perhaps; for she was a clever woman, capable of seeing that her confession could do no good now, and that she had, as it were, lost her right to save poor George from suspicion. Besides, she had brought herself to believe in the duty of denial; for, like many another woman, she required a really virtuous motive before she could do a really wrong thing; in sober fact--even in her worst aberrations from the truth--never losing hold of a fixed desire to be amiable and estimable. To this self-deception, as was natural, Lewis Gordon's half-hearted belief was gall and wormwood, while Dan's wholesale confidence was balm indeed. She could not refrain from telling him so when the former, pleading stress of work, left the latter alone with her beside the cosy little tea-table glittering in the firelight; for Gwen was one of those people who will never have been more comfortable in body and soul than they are on their death-beds.

'Now, don't spoil it all, dear, by wanting me to marry you to-morrow,'

she said half-laughing, half-crying. 'We are all too busy for such talk, and too sad--at least I am. He was so good to me--you don't know how good. I shall break my heart if this vile creature succeeds in sullying his memory.'

'It will not be your fault, dear, if she does; that is one comfort.'

A chance shot may hit the quarry truer than the best aim, and Gwen turned quickly towards him with a little cry.