CHAPTER XIV.
Gentlemen native to Bengal are not usually invited to balls atGovernment House. It is unnecessary to speak of the ladies: they arenon-existent to the social eye, even if it belongs to a Viceroy. Thereason is popularly supposed to be the inability of gentlemen native toBengal to understand the waltz, except by Aryan analysis. It is thoughtwell to circumscribe their opportunities of explaining it thus, and theyare asked instead to evening parties which offer nothing morestimulating to the imagination than conversation and champagne—ofneither of which they partake. On this occasion however, at the entreatyof the visiting royalty, the rule was relaxed to admit perhaps fifty;and when Lewis Ancram arrived—rather late—the first personality herecognised as in any way significant was that of Mohendra LalChuckerbutty, who leaned against a pillar, with his hands clasped behindhim, raptly contemplating a polka. Mohendra, too, had an appreciation ofpersonalities, and of his respectful duty to them. He bore down inAncram’s direction unswervingly through the throng, his eye humid withhappiness, his hand held out in an impulse of affection. When he thoughthe had arrived at the Chief Secretary’s elbow he looked about him insome astonishment. A couple of subalterns in red jackets disputed withmock violence over the dance-card of a little girl in white, and a muchlarger lady was waiting with imposing patience until he should bepleased to get off her train. At the same moment an extremely correctblack back glanced through the palms into the verandah.
The verandah was very broad and high, and softly lighted in a way thatmade vague glooms visible and yet gave a gentle radiance to the sweep ofpale-tinted drapery that here and there suggested a lady sunk in thedepths of a roomy arm-chair, playing with her fan and talking inundertones. It was a place of delicious mystery, in spite of the strainsof the orchestra that throbbed out from the ball-room, in spite of thesecluded fans opening and closing in some commonplace of Calcuttaflirtation. The mystery came in from without, where the stars crowdeddown thick and luminous behind the palms, and a grey mist hung low inthe garden beneath, turning it into a fantasy of shadowed forms andfilmy backgrounds and new significances. Out there, in the wide spacesbeyond the tall verandah pillars, the spirit of the spring wasabroad—the troubled, throbbing, solicitous Indian spring, perfumed andtender. The air was warm and sweet and clinging; it made life apathetic, enjoyable necessity, and love a luxury of much refinement.
Ancram folded his arms and stood in the doorway and permitted himself tofeel these things. If he was not actually looking for Judith Church, itwas because he was always, so to speak, anticipating her; in a state ofreadiness to receive the impression of her face, the music of her voice.Mrs. Church was the reason of the occasion, the reason of every occasionin so far as it concerned him. She seemed simply the corollary of hisperception of the exquisite night when he discovered her presently, onone of the more conspicuous sofas, talking to Sir Peter Bloomsbury. Shewas waiting for him to find her, with a little flickering smile thatcame in the pauses between Sir Peter’s remarks; and when Ancramapproached he noticed, with as keen a pleasure as he was capable offeeling, that her replies to this dignitary were made somewhat atrandom.
Their conversation changed when Sir Peter went away only to take itsnote of intimacy and its privilege of pauses. They continued to speak oftrivial matters, and to talk in tones and in things they left unsaid.His eyes lingered in the soft depths of hers to ascertain whether theroses were doing well this year at Belvedere, and there was a conscioushappiness in the words with which she told him that they were quitebeyond her expectations not wholly explicable even by so idyllic a fact.The content of their neigbourhood surrounded them like an atmosphere,beyond which people moved about irrationally and a string band playedunmeaning selections much too loud. She was lovelier than he had everseen her, more his possession than he had ever felt her—the incarnation,as she bent her graceful head towards him, of the eloquent tropicalnight and the dreaming tropical spring. He told himself afterwards thathe felt at this moment an actual pang of longing, and rejoiced that hecould still experience an undergraduate’s sensation after so many yearsof pleasures that were but aridly intellectual at their best. Certainly,as he sat there in his irreproachable clothes and attitude, he knew thathis blood was beating warm to his finger-tips with a delicious impulseto force the sweet secret of the situation between them. The south windsuggested to him, through the scent of breaking buds, that prudence wasentirely a relative thing, and not even relative to a night like thisand a woman like that. As he looked at a tendril of her hair, blownagainst the warm whiteness of her neck, it occurred to the HonourableMr. Ancram that he might go a little further. He felt divinely rash; buthis intention was to go only a little further. Hitherto he had gone nodistance at all.
The south wind drove them along together. Judith felt it on her neck andarms, and in little, cool, soft touches about her face. She did notpause to question the happiness it brought her: there were other timesfor pauses and questions; her eyes were ringed with them, under thepowder. She abandoned herself to her woman’s divine sense of ministry;and the man she loved observed that she did it with a certain inimitablepoise, born of her confidence in him, which was as new as it wasentrancing.
People began to flock downstairs to supper in the wake of the Viceroyand the visiting royalty; the verandah emptied itself. Presently theybecame aware that they were alone.
“You have dropped your fan,” Ancram said, and picked it up. He looked atits device for a moment, and then restored it. Judith’s hands were lyingin her lap, and he slipped the fan into one of them, letting his ownrest for a perceptible instant in the warm palm of the other. Thereensued a tumultuous silence. He had only underscored a glance of hers;yet it seemed that he had created something—something as formidable aslovely, as embarrassing as divine. As he gently withdrew his hand shelifted her eyes to his with mute entreaty, and he saw that they werefull of tears. He told himself afterwards that he had been profoundlymoved; but this did not interfere with his realisation that it was anexquisite moment.
Ancram regarded her gravely, with a smile of much consideration. He gaveher a moment of time, and then, as she did not look up again, he leanedforward, and said, quite naturally and evenly, as if the propositionwere entirely legitimate: “The relation between us is too tacit. Tell methat you love me, dear.”
For an instant he repented, since it seemed that she would be carriedalong on the sweet tide of his words to the brink of an indiscretion.Once more she looked up, softly seeking his eyes; and in hers he saw solovely a light of self-surrender that he involuntarily thanked Heaventhat there was no one else to recognise it. In her face was nothing butthe thought of him; and, seeing this, he had a swift desire to take herin his arms and experience at its fullest and sweetest the sense thatshe and her little empire were gladly lost there. In the pause of hermute confession he felt the strongest exultation he had known. Herglance reached him like a cry from an unexplored country; the revelationof her love filled him with the knowledge that she was infinitely moreadorable and more desirable than he had thought her. From that momentshe realised to him a supreme good, and he never afterwards thought ofhis other ambitions without a smile of contempt which was almostgenuine. But she said nothing: she seemed removed from any necessity ofspeech, lifted up on a wave of absolute joy, and isolated from all thatlay either behind or before. He controlled his impatience for words fromher—for he was very sure of one thing; that when they came they would bekind—and chose his own with taste.
“Don’t you think that it would be better if we had the courage and thecandour to accept things as they are? Don’t you think we would bestronger for all that we must face if we acknowledged—only to eachother—the pain and the sweetness of it?”
“I have never been blind,” she said softly.
“All I ask is that you will not even pretend to be. Is that too much?”
“How can it be a question of that?” Her voice trembled a little. Thenshe hurried illogically on: “But there can
be no change—there must be nochange. These are things I hoped you would never say.”
“The alternative is too wretched: to go on living a lie—and a stupid,unnecessary lie. Why, in Heaven’s name, should there be the figment ofhypocrisy between us? I know that I must be content with very little,but I am afraid there is no way of telling you how much I want thatlittle.”
She had grown very pale, and she put up her hand and smoothed her hairwith a helpless, mechanical gesture.
“No, no,” she said—“stop. Let us make an end of it quickly. I was verywell content to go on with the lie. I think I should always have beencontent. But now there is no lie: there is nothing to stand upon anylonger. You must get leave, or something, and go away—or I will. I amnot—really—very well.”
She looked at him miserably, with twitching lips, and he laid a soothinghand—there was still no one to see—upon her arm.
“Judith, don’t talk of impossibilities. How could we two live in oneworld—and apart! Those are the heroics of a dear little schoolgirl. Youand I are older, and braver.”
She put his hand away with a touch that was a caress, but only saidirrelevantly, “And Rhoda Daye might have loved you honestly!”
“Ah, that threadbare old story!” He felt as if she had struck him, andthe feeling impelled him to ask her why she thought he deservedpunishment. “Not that it hurts,” Mr. Ancram added, almost resentfully.
She gave him a look of vague surprise, and then lapsed, refusing to makethe effort to understand, into the troubled depths of her own thought.
“Be a little kind, Judith. I only want a word.”
The south wind brought them a sound out of the darkness—the high, faint,long-drawn sound of a cheer from the Maidan. She lifted her head andlistened intently, with apprehensive eyes. Then she rose unsteadily fromher seat, and, as he gave her his arm in silence, she stood for a momentgathering up her strength, and waiting, it seemed, for the sound to comeagain. Nothing reached them but the wilder, nearer wail of the jackalsin the streets.
“I must go home,” she said, in a voice that was quite steady; “I mustfind my husband and go home.”
He would have held her back, but she walked resolutely, if somewhatpurposelessly, round the long curve of the verandah, and stood still,looking at the light that streamed out of the ballroom and glistened onthe leaves of a range of palms and crotons in pots that made a seclusionthere.
“Then,” said Ancram, “I am to go on with the forlorn comfort of a guess.I ought to be thankful, I suppose, that you can’t take that from me.Perhaps you would,” he added bitterly, “if you could know how preciousit is.”
His words seemed to fix her in a half-formed resolve. Her hand slippedout of his arm, and she took a step away from him toward the crotons.Against their dark green leaves he saw, with some alarm, how white herface was.
“Listen,” she said: “I think you do not realise it, but I know you arehard and cruel. You ask me if I am not to you what I ought to be to myhusband, who is a good man, and who loves me, and trusts you. And, whatis worse, this has come up between us at a time when he is threatenedand troubled: on the very night when I meant—when I meant”—she stoppedto conquer the sob in her throat—“to have asked you to think ofsomething that might be done to help him. Well, but you ask me if I havecome to love you, and perhaps in a way you have a right to know; and thetruth is better, as you say. And I answer you that I have. I answer youyes, it is true, and I know it will always be true. But from to-nightyou will remember that every time I look into your face and touch yourhand I hurt my own honour and my husband’s, and—and you will not let mesee you often.”
As Ancram opened his lips to speak, the cheer from the Maidan smote theair again, and this time it seemed nearer. Judith took his armnervously.
“What can they be doing out there?” she exclaimed. “Let us go—I mustfind my husband—let us go!”
They crossed the threshold into the ballroom, where John Church joinedthem almost immediately, his black brows lightened by an unusuallycheerful expression.
“I’ve been having a long talk with His Excellency,” he said to themjointly. “An uncommonly capable fellow, Scansleigh. He tells me he haswritten a strong private letter to the Secretary of State about thisNotification of mine. That’s bound to have weight, you know, in casethey make an attempt to get hold of Parliament at home.”
As Mrs. Church and Mr. Lewis Ancram left the verandah a chair wassuddenly pushed back behind the crotons. Miss Rhoda Daye had beensitting in the chair, alone too, with the south wind and the stars. Shehad no warning of what she was about to overhear—no sound had reachedher, either of their talk or their approach—and in a somewhat agitatedcolloquy with herself she decided that nothing could be so terrible asher personal interruption of what Mrs. Church was saying. That lady’swords, though low and rapid, were very distinct, and Rhoda heard themout involuntarily, with a strong disposition to applaud her and to loveher. Then she turned a key upon her emotions and Judith Church’s secret,and slipped quietly out to look for her mother, who asked her, betweenher acceptance of an ice from the Home Secretary and a _petit four_ fromthe General Commanding the Division, why on earth she looked sodepressed.
“What do I know about the speech!”]
Ancram, turning away from the Churches, almost ran into the arms ofMohendra Lal Chuckerbutty, with whom he shook hands. His mannerexpressed, combined with all the good will in the world, a slightembarrassment that he could not remember Mohendra’s name, which is sooften to be noticed when European officials have occasion to greetnatives of distinction—natives of distinction are so very numerous andso very similar.
“I hope you are well!” beamed the editor of the _Bengal Free Press_. “Itis a very select party.” Then Mohendra dropped his voice confidentially:“We have sent to England, by to-day’s mail, every word of the isspeechof Dr. MacInnes——”
“Damn you!” Ancram said, with a respectful, considering air: “what do Iknow about the speech of Dr. MacInnes! _Jehannum jao!_”[C]
-----
Footnote C:
“Go to Hades!”
-----
Mohendra laughed in happy acquiescence as the Chief Secretary bowed andleft him. “Certainlie! certainlie!” he said; “it is a very selectparty!”
The evening had one more incident. Mr. and Mrs. Church made theirretreat early: Judith’s face offered an excuse of fatigue which wasbetter than her words. Their carriage turned out of Circular Road with athickening crowd of natives talking noisily and walking in the samedirection. They caught up with a glare and the smell and smoke ofburning pitch. Judith said uneasily that there seemed to be a bonfire inthe middle of the road. They drew a little nearer, and the crowd massedaround them before and behind, on the bridge leading to Belvedere out ofthe city. Then John Church perceived that the light streamed from aburning figure which flamed and danced grotesquely, wired to a poleattached to a bullock cart and pulled along by coolies. The absorbedcrowd that walked behind, watching and enjoying like excited children ata show, chattered defective English, and the light from the burningthing on the pole streamed upon faces already to some extent illuminedby the higher culture of the University Colleges. But it was not untilthey recognised his carriage and outriders, and tried to hurry and toscatter on the narrow bridge, that the Acting Lieutenant-Governor ofBengal fully realised that he had been for some distance swelling aprocession which was entertaining itself with much gusto at the expenseof his own effigy.