CHAPTER X
NEWS FROM CHITIPUR
A long silence followed upon his words. Jane Repton turned to themantelshelf and moved an ornament here and another one there. She hadcontemplated this very consequence of Thresk's journey to Chitipur. Shehad actually worked for it herself. She was frank enough to acknowledgethat. None the less his announcement, quietly as he had made it, was ashock to her. She did not, however, go back upon her work; and when shespoke it was rather to make sure that he was not going to act upon anunconsidered impulse.
"It will damage your career," she said. "Of course you havethought of that."
"It will alter it," he answered, "if she comes to me. I shall go out ofParliament, of course."
"And your practice?"
"That will suffer too for a while no doubt. But even if I lost italtogether I should not be a poor man."
"You have saved money?"
"No. There has not been much time for that, but for a good many years nowI have collected silver and miniatures. I know something about them andthe collection is of value."
"I see."
Mrs. Repton looked at him now. Oh, yes, he had thought his proposal outduring the night journey to Bombay--not a doubt of it.
"Stella, too, will suffer," she said.
"Worse than she does now?" asked Thresk.
"No. But her position will be difficult for awhile at least," and shecame towards Thresk and pleaded.
"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play herfalse--how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him.
"I don't think that you need fear that."
But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to wantheroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind.And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face withdoubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it.
"She will need--love," said Mrs. Repton. "There--that's the word. Can yougive it her?"
"If she comes to me--yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and thensuddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasmof pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon thetable. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave herthere--miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him byforce if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would havebarred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay,to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slipout and travel here she will find me waiting."
Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear hadentered into her.
"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed.
"Yes?"
"Captain Ballantyne is not generous. He is just the sort of man not todivorce his wife."
Thresk raised his head. Clearly that possibility had no more occurred tohim than it had to Jane Repton. He thought it over now.
"Just the sort of man," he agreed. "But we must take that risk--ifshe comes."
"The letter's not yet written," Mrs. Repton suggested.
"But it will be," he replied, and then he stood and confronted her. "Doyou wish me not to write it?"
She avoided his eyes, she looked upon the floor, she began more than onesentence of evasion; but in the end she took both his hands in hers andsaid stoutly:
"No, I don't! Write! Write!"
"Thank you!"
He went to the door, and when he had reached it she called to him in alow voice.
"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated ifshe comes?"
Thresk came slowly back into the room.
"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why sheshould put no faith in me."
He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more thanthat, and she let him go. He went back to the great hotel on the ApolloBund and sent off a number of cablegrams to London saying that he hadmissed his steamer and that the work waiting for him must go to otherhands. The letter to Stella Ballantyne he kept to the last. It could notreach her immediately in any case since she was in camp. For all he knewit might be weeks before she read it; and he had need to go warily in thewriting of it. Certain words she had used to him were an encouragement;but there were others which made him doubt whether she would have anyfaith in him. Every now and then there had been a savour of bitterness.Once she had been shamed because of him, on Bignor Hill where StaneStreet runs to Chichester, and a second time in front of him in the tentat Chitipur. No, it was not an easy letter which he had to write, and hetook the night and the greater part of the next day to decide upon itswording. It could not in any case go until the night-mail. He hadfinished it and directed it by six o'clock in the evening and he wentdown with the letter in his hand into the big lounge to post it in thebox there. But it never was posted.
Close to the foot of the staircase stood a tape machine, and as Threskdescended he heard the clicking of the instrument and saw the usual smallgroup of visitors about it. They were mostly Americans, and they werereading out to one another the latest prices of the stock-markets. Someof the chatter reached to Thresk's inattentive ears, and when he was onlytwo steps from the floor one carelessly-spoken phrase interjected betweenthe values of two securities brought him to a stop. The speaker was ayoung man with a squarish face and thick hair parted accurately in themiddle. He was dressed in a thin grey suit and he was passing the tapebetween his fingers as it ran out. The picture of him was impressedduring that instant upon Thresk's mind, so that he could never afterwardsforget it.
"Copper's up one point," he was saying, "that's fine. Who's CaptainBallantyne, I wonder? United Steel has dropped seven-eighths. Well, thatdoesn't affect me," and so he ran on.
Thresk heard no more of what he said. He stood wondering what news couldhave come up on the tape of Captain Ballantyne who was out in camp in thestate of Chitipur, or if there was another Captain Ballantyne. He joinedthe little group in front of the machine, and picking up the ribbon fromthe floor ran his eyes backwards along it until he came to "UnitedSteel." The sentence in front of that ran as follows:
"Captain Ballantyne was found dead early yesterday morning outside histent close to Jarwhal Junction."
Thresk read the sentence twice and then walked away. The news might befalse, of course, but if it were true here was a revolution in his life.There was no need for this letter which he held in his hand. The way wassmoothed out for Stella, for him. Not for a moment could he pretend to doanything but welcome the news, to wish with all his heart that it wastrue. And it seemed probable news. There was the matter of thatphotograph. Thresk had carried it out to the Governor's house on MalabarPoint on the very morning of his arrival in Bombay. He had driven on toMrs. Repton's house after he had left it there. But he had taken it awayfrom Chitipur at too late a day to save Ballantyne. Ballantyne had, afterall, had good cause to be afraid while he possessed it, and the news hadnot yet got to Salak's friends that it had left his possession. Thus hemade out the history of Captain Ballantyne's death.
The tape machine, however, might have ticked out a mere rumour with notruth in it at all. He went to the office and obtained a copy of _TheAdvocate of India_,--the evening newspaper of the city. He looked at thestop-press telegrams. There was no mention of Ballantyne's death. Nor onglancing down the columns could he find in any paragraph a statement thatany mishap had befallen him. But on the other hand he read that hehimself, Henry Thresk, having brought his case to a successfulconclusion, had left India yesterday by the mail-steamer Madras, boundfor Marseilles. He threw down the paper and went to the telephone-box. Ifthe news were true the one person likely to know of it was Mrs. Repton.Thresk rang up the house on the Khamballa Hill and asked to speak to her.An answer was returned to him at once that Mrs. Repton had given ordersthat she was not to be disturbed. Thresk however insisted:
"Will you please give my name to her--Henry Thresk," and he waited withhis ear to the receiver for a centur
y. At last a voice spoke to him, butit was again the voice of the servant.
"The Memsahib very sorry, sir, but cannot speak to any one just now;" andhe heard the jar of the instrument as the receiver at the other end wassharply hung up and the connection broken.
Thresk came out from the telephone-box with a face puzzled and verygrave. Mrs. Repton refused to speak to him!
It was a fact, an inexplicable fact, and it alarmed him. It wasimpossible to believe that mere reflection during the last twenty-fourhours had brought about so complete a revolution in her feelings. He towhom she had passionately cried "Write! Write!" only yesterday couldhardly be barred out from mere speech with her to-day for any fault ofhis. He had done nothing, had seen no one. Thresk was certain now thatthe news upon the tape was true. But it could not be all the truth. Therewas something behind it--something rather grim and terrible.
Thresk walked to the door of the hotel and called up a motor-car. "Tellhim to drive to the Khamballa Hill," he said to the porter. "I'll let himknow when to stop."
The porter translated the order and Thresk stopped him at Mrs.Repton's door.
"The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day," said the butler.
"I know," replied Thresk. He scribbled on a card and sent it in. Therewas a long delay. Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the opendoor. Night had come. There were lights upon the roadway, lights a longway below at the water's edge on Breach Candy, and there was a lighttwinkling far out on the Arabian Sea. But in the house behind him all wasdark. He had come to an abode of desolation and mourning; and his heartsank and he was attacked with forebodings. At last in the passage behindhim there was a shuffling of feet and a gleam of white. The Memsahibwould receive him.
Thresk was shown into the drawing-room. That room too was unlit. But theblinds had not been lowered and light from a street lamp outside turnedthe darkness into twilight. No one came forward to greet him, but theroom was not empty. He saw Repton and his wife huddled close together ona sofa in a recess by the fireplace.
"I thought that I had better come up from Bombay," said Thresk, as hestood in the middle of the room. No answer was returned to him for a fewmoments and then it was Repton himself who spoke.
"Yes, yes," he said, and he got up from the sofa. "I think we had betterhave some light," he added in a strange indifferent voice. He turned thelight on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room inshadow, like--the parallel forced its way into Thresk's mind--like thetent in Chitipur. Then very methodically he pulled down the blinds. Hedid not look at Thresk and Jane Repton on the couch never stirred.Thresk's forebodings became a dreadful certainty. Some evil thing hadhappened. He might have been in a house of death. He knew that he wasnot wanted there, that husband and wife wished to be alone and silentlyresented his presence. But he could not go without more knowledge than hehad.
"A message came up on the tape half an hour ago," he said in a low voice."It reported that Ballantyne was dead."
"Yes," replied Repton. He was leaning forward over a table and looking upto the chandelier as if he fancied that its light burnt more dimly thanwas usual.
"That's true," and he spoke in the same strange mechanical voice he hadused before.
"That he was found dead outside his tent," Thresk added.
"It's quite true," Repton agreed. "We are very sorry."
"Sorry!"
The exclamation burst from Thresk's lips.
"Yes."
Repton moved away from the chandelier. He had not looked at Thresk oncesince he had entered the room; nor did he look towards his wife. His facewas very pale and he was busy now setting a chair in place, moving aphotograph, doing any one of the little unnecessary things peoplerestlessly do when there is an importunate visitor in the room who willnot go.
"You see, there's terribly bad news," he added.
"What news?"
"He was shot, you know. That wasn't in the telegram on the tape, ofcourse. Yes, he was shot--on the same night you dined there--after youhad gone."
"Shot!"
Thresk's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Yes," and the dull quiet voice went on, speaking apparently of sometrivial affair in which none of them could have any interest. "He wasshot by a bullet from a little rook-rifle which belonged to Stella, andwhich she was in the habit of using."
Thresk's heart stood still. A picture flashed before his eyes. Hesaw the inside of that dimly lit tent with its red lining and Stellastanding by the table. He could hear her voice: "This is my littlerook-rifle. I was seeing that it was clean for to-morrow." She had spokenso carelessly, so indifferently that it wasn't conceivable that what wasin all their minds could be true. Yet she had spoken, after all, no moreindifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stressof grief. Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chainof presumption.
"But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little noteof triumph. But it had no echo in Repton's reply.
"I know. That makes everything so much worse."
"What do you mean?"
"Ballantyne was found in the morning outside the tent stone-cold. Butno one had heard the shot, and there were sentries on the edge of theencampment. He had been dragged outside after he was dead or when hewas dying."
A low cry broke from Thresk. The weak point became of a sudden the mostdeadly, the most terrible element in the whole case. He could hear theprosecuting counsel making play with it. He stood for a moment lost inhorror. Repton had no further word to say to him. Mrs. Repton had neveronce spoken. They wanted him away, out of the room, out of the house.Some insight let him into the meaning of her silence. In the presence ofthis tragedy remorse had gripped her. She was looking upon herself as onewho had plotted harm for Stella. She would never forgive Thresk for hisshare in the plot.
Thresk went out of the room without a word more to either Repton or hiswife. Whatever he did now he must do by himself. He would not be admittedinto that house again. He closed the door of the room behind him, andhardly had he closed it when he heard the snap of a switch and the lineof light under the door vanished. Once more there was darkness in thedrawing-room. Repton no doubt had returned to his wife's side and theywere huddled again side by side on the sofa. Thresk walked down the hillwith a horrible feeling of isolation and loneliness. But he shook it offas he neared the lights of Bombay.