Voices in the Night Part 63

'Sir George!' echoed Lesley in her turn, shaking her head. 'No! he is not one of those who ought to know that you know, either. He may have to know, perhaps, but it should not be through you. Look! how he _will_ give the credit to Mr. Kenyon; and if he knew it was Mr. Raymond, he would insist still more on giving it to him. You know he would, Lady Arbuthnot--there would be a fuss, and every one would talk, and he would hate it--almost worse than Mr. Raymond. Why not leave it alone--if we can--what harm does it do?'

'You have grown very wise, Lesley,' said the elder woman after a pause.

'Love, they say, has eyes----'

'Love!' Lesley flashed round on her like a whirlwind. 'Ah! I wish there was no such thing in the world. Then we women would have a chance of being sensible. Love! No, Lady Arbuthnot, love has nothing to do with it---nothing.'

They stood facing each other, those two, and then a smile--distinctly a pleased smile--came to the older face. 'But, my dear child, you don't mean to tell _me_ that you are not in love with Mr. Raymond!'

The flush up to the eyes was Lesley's now; but she stood her ground bravely. 'It does not matter if I am or not; I am not going to talk of it. And I promised him----'

Grace broke in with a little peal of laughter, tender, amused, pathetic, yet acquiescent laughter. 'Has it got so far as that? Ah!

Lesley dear! I'm so glad.'

The girl looked at her with a faint wonder, a great admiration, then shook her head.

'I believe you are made different from me,' she said soberly. 'I can only understand one thing about it all--how it was that _he_ never forgot--well, never quite forgot. For there is nothing to be glad of, I can a.s.sure you--nothing at all.'

She did not, in truth, look as if there was; but Grace, as she took Sir George his tea, as she always did, had her eyes full of that mysterious gladness which any sentiment, even sorrow, brings to some women's faces. It suited hers, and so her husband's had quite a lover-like diffidence in it as he watched her fingering the thin gold chain with pink topazes hanging from it, which he took from a drawer.

'It was in that casket the police found,' he explained, 'and I told them, if no owner turned up for it, to send it for you to see, and then if you liked it----'

She looked up, smiling. 'It is too young for me. Yes! it is true, George, I am getting old--ever so old! But I'll tell you what we will do! If we can buy it, we will give it to Lesley as a wedding-present when she marries Mr. Raymond.'

Sir George sat back in his chair--perhaps she had meant that he should.

'My dear girl!' he said feebly, 'this is the first I have heard of it.

Mr. Raymond! And I thought----'

'Never mind what you thought,' she put in decidedly: 'it isn't quite settled yet; but it is going to be. Oh yes! it is going to be!'

'Well!' said Sir George--recovering himself for the usual formula,--'he is a very lucky fellow! But it is--er--all the more likely to be so, because, curiously enough, I have been told to offer Mr. Raymond the trusteeship of the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote's affairs. In fact, the old man refused pointblank to have any one else, and as we want him to retrench and adopt an heir properly----'

'My dear George!' exclaimed Lady Arbuthnot, 'how perfectly delightful!--it--it will settle everything!'

'Yes; I--I suppose it will,' replied Sir George dubiously, and then his sober common sense came to the front--'not, my dear, that I exactly see what had to--to--er--be settled.'

'No! perhaps not,' said Grace thoughtfully, 'but it will, all the same.'

With which mysterious remark she went off to set springes for that Love with a big L, which _was_ to settle all things.

She was an expert in the art, as women of her type always are, and yet the days pa.s.sed without bringing her success. For something, of which she knew nothing, stood between those two.

Put briefly, it was a _ram-rucki_. And so when they met--which was inevitably often, under Lady Arbuthnot's skilful hands--they talked of everything under the sun--of their adventure together, of the extraordinary way in which Fate had favoured them, of Chris Davenant and Jan-Ali-shan's mysterious disappearances, of the pearls, and the signet of royalty that was not to be found anywhere. They even talked of the Thakoor of Dhurmkote, and the almost endless interest and power of such a life as that now offered to Jack Raymond--they even quarrelled over his hesitancy in accepting it; but they never talked of what Lesley had asked him to forget--what she had stigmatised scornfully as the 'rest of it.'

Grace became almost tearful over the fact. It seemed to her at last as if, even here, hers was not to be the hand to wile Jack Raymond back either to duty or pleasure.

And it was not. That task was reserved for a simpler hand; a hand that had neither clutched nor refused, the hand of a woman to whom 'the rest of it' was neither to be despised nor overestimated, and who had neither scorned it nor sought for it.

It was Auntie Khojee's when, one day, Jack Raymond and Lesley found themselves deftly man[oe]uvred by Grace Arbuthnot into the _tete-a-tete_ of a visit to the old lady; not in the least against their wills, for he was quite content with, and she vastly superior to, such palpable ruses; besides, she really wanted to see the originator of the _ram-rucki_, who was now decently established on the top of an offshoot of the city, which jutted out into that very pleasure-garden to which the old lady had come with her pet.i.tion to the bracelet-brother.

So, one morning, Lesley drove down to the Garden. Jack Raymond met her, riding, at the gate, and together they strolled along that wide cross of water and marble and flowers, and climbed the dark stair which led to the little square of roof and the little slip of room that were only just large enough for Auntie Khojee and the helplessness for which she cared; for Khojee, helpless as she was, had always stood between some one still more helpless and the buffets of fate, and would have felt lost without the occupation.

And there was no reason why she should be without it, when Lateefa, paralysed from the waist beyond all hope of ever getting about again, lacked a caretaker.

And so he sat, busy as ever, with slips of bamboo and sheets of tissue-paper on the little square of roof, just as he had sat in the wide courtyard where the royal peac.o.c.ks now spread their broken plaster tails over plague patients--those plague patients which the vast stability of the Oriental had by this time accepted as inevitable; which it had taken, as it were, into its immemorial custom.

Lateefa had been once more asking for paste, and Khojee had brought him some--without lumps!--in a leaf cup; for she laid it aside to receive Jack Raymond with a '_Bismillah!_' of pleasure, and the strange Miss with a ceremonious _salaam_. Lateefa had the latter for both visitors, but there was a bold questioning in his black eyes for the _Huzoor_, who gave back the look with a valiant attempt at unconsciousness.

There was a curious peace up there on the roof, Lesley felt, with only one or two of Lateefa's kites between you and the sky, and the even flow of Lateefa's Persian quotations in your ears; for Auntie Khojee--after disposing her guests on two rush stools--had hurried into the slip of a room for cardamoms, since they belong to congratulations as well as to consolations.

And, nowadays, what with her pension and Lateefa's earnings, there were always cardamoms, real cardamoms, on the roof, and many another comfort besides.

Lateefa, making polite conversation, admitted this openly, while Jack Raymond looked uneasily at Lesley, wondering--if her knowledge of the vernacular had not been mercifully limited--what she would have said to the pointed allusions to the benefit every man derived from a.s.sociating himself with a truly virtuous woman, and the desirableness of settling down in time; not as he--Lateefa--had done, too late for hope of leaving aught behind him but the flimsy children of naught above him! A sorry legacy to the world; though in their day they had done strange things! But the _Huzoor_ was wiser! He----

Here Aunt Khojee--who with the most innocent of vanities had spent part of her absence in putting on a very stiff new pink net veil, which during the rest of the visit refused to stop on her head, and to the old lady's intense discomfiture left her spa.r.s.e grey hairs indecently exposed at crucial moments--reappeared with the cardamoms, to Jack Raymond's great relief; though he soon discovered that the real horror of the situation was only just beginning.

For, seated decorously apart, yet with her half-averted face alight with smiles and interest, she began on a series of questions which made his heart sink within him, since he knew Lesley of old.

And sure enough it was not long before the latter said, aggrievedly, 'You might translate what she is saying. After all, I did come to visit her, you know!'

He left the path of truth, then, desperately, with the result that Lesley commissioned him to make the proper reply to such Oriental periphrasis--something, _he was to be sure_, that would please the dear old thing.

Then he realised that he was hopelessly emmeshed, for, of course, Auntie Khojee wanted a reply to her question; and it was not what she had desired, at all.

'She doesn't look a bit pleased,' remarked Lesley, _de haut en bas_.

'Dear me! I wish I could speak. I know I could do better than that! And I hate being dependent.'

'I wish you could,' said Jack Raymond grimly. 'I don't want to be a go-between!'

His evident ill-temper mollified her. 'Well! at any rate, you might try again, and say something else.'

So he did; and he and Aunt Khojee had quite an animated pa.s.sage, while Lateefa from his kites listened, and looked knowing.

'Well!' remarked Lesley at last, quite angrily. 'I don't see what was the use in my coming at all! You might at least give me a hint of what you are talking about! It is very rude.'

His temper went then altogether. 'If you want to know,' he said, still more grimly, 'she was asking when we are going to be married.'

Lesley gasped. 'Married!'--she echoed indignantly, yet conscious of a curious desire to smile and feel happy which must be squashed firmly--'well! if she does, Mr. Raymond, you can tell her--_never!_'

Her dignity was tremendous.

'I have told her so three times,' replied Jack Raymond gravely, 'but she won't believe it; she says----'

'I don't care what she says,' retorted Lesley quickly. 'She must be _made_ to believe it. Tell her--tell her about the _ram-rucki_, and all that. She will understand then.'

'She may,' a.s.sented Jack dubiously; 'but it is a little--ahem--mixed up----isn't it?'

A suspicion that the situation was beginning to amuse him made her say--

'Not at all! Of course she will understand. She gave you a _ram-rucki_, and why--why shouldn't I?'