CHAPTER XXII.
Calcutta, when the Doyles came down from Darjiling, chased by the earlyrains, was prepared to find the marriage ridiculous. Calcutta counted onits fingers the years that lay between Mr. and Mrs. Doyle, andmentioned, as a condoning fact, that Philip Doyle’s chances for the nextHigh Court Judgeship were very good indeed. Following up this line offancy, Calcutta pictured a matron growing younger and younger and adignitary of the Bench growing older and older, added the usualaccessories of jewels and balls and Hill captains and the private_entrée_, and figured out the net result, which was regrettably vulgarand even more regrettably common. It is perhaps due to Calcutta ratherthan to the Doyles to say that six weeks after their arrival theseprophecies had been forgotten and people went about calling it an idealmatch. One or two ladies went so far as to declare that Rhoda Daye hadbecome a great deal more tolerable since her marriage; her husband wasso much cleverer than she was, and that was what she needed, you know.In which statement might occasionally be discerned a gleam ofsatisfaction.
It shortly became an item of gossip that very few engagements werepermitted to interfere with Mrs. Philip Doyle’s habit of driving to herhusband’s office to pick him up at five o’clock in the afternoon, andthat very few clients were permitted to keep him there after she hadarrived. People smiled in indulgent comment on it, as the slender,light, tasteful figure in the cabriolet drove among the throngingcarriages in the Red Road towards Old Post-Office Street, and lookedagain, with that paramount interest in individuals which is almost theonly one where Britons congregate in exile. Mrs. Doyle, in thepicturesque exercise of the domestic virtues, was generally conceded tobe even more piquant than Miss Daye in the temporary possession of aChief Secretary.
I have no doubt that on one special Wednesday afternoon she was noted tolook absent and a trifle grave, as the Waler made his own pace to bringhis master. There was no reason for this in particular, except that HisHonour the Lieutenant-Governor was leaving for England by the mail trainfor Bombay that evening. Perhaps this in itself would hardly havesufficed to make Mrs. Doyle meditative, but there had been a greatclamour of inquiry and suggestion as to why Sir Lewis Ancram wasstraining a point to obtain three months’ leave under no apparentemergency: people said he had never looked better—and Mrs. Doylebelieved she knew precisely why. The little cloud of her secretknowledge was before her eyes as the crows pecked hoarsely at the streetoffal under the Waler’s deliberate feet, and she was somewhat impatientat being burdened with any acquaintance with Sir Lewis Ancram’s privateintentions. Also she remembered her liking for the woman he was goinghome to marry; and, measuring in fancy Judith Church’s capacity forhappiness, she came to the belief that it was likely to be meagrelyfilled. It was the overflowing measure of her own, perhaps, that gaveits liveliness to her very real pang of regret. She knew Lewis Ancram somuch better than Mrs. Church did, she assured herself; was it not proofenough, that the other woman loved him while she (Rhoda) bowed to him?As at that moment, when he passed her on horseback, looking young andvigorous and elate. Rhoda fancied a certain significance in his smile;it spoke of good-fellowship and the prospect of an equality of bliss andthe general expediency of things as they were rather than as they mighthave been. She coloured hotly under it, and gathered up the reins andastonished the Waler with the whip.
As she turned into Old Post-Office Street, a flanking battalion of therains—riding up dark and thunderous behind the red-brick turrets of theHigh Court—whipped down upon the Maidan, and drove her, glad of arefuge, up the dingy stairs to her husband’s office. Her custom was tosit in the cabriolet and despatch the syce with a message. The sycewould deliver it in his own tongue—“The memsahib sends a salutation”—andDoyle would presently appear. But to-day it was raining and there was noalternative.
A little flutter of consideration greeted her entrance. Two or threenative clerks shuffled to their feet and salaamed, and one ran to openthe door into Doyle’s private room for her. Her husband sat writingagainst time at a large desk littered thick with papers. At anothertable a native youth in white cotton draperies sat making quill pens,with absorbed precision. The punkah swung a slow discoloured petticoatabove them both. The tall wide windows were open. Through them littledamp gusts came in and lifted the papers about the room; and beyond themthe grey rain slanted down, and sobered the vivid green of everything,and turned the tilted palms into the likeness of draggled plumes wavingagainst the sky.
“You have just escaped the shower,” said Doyle, looking up with quickpleasure at her step. “I’ll be another twenty minutes, I’m afraid. And Ihave nothing for you to play with,” he added, glancing round the dustyroom—“not even a novel. You must just sit down and be good.”
“Mail letters?” asked Rhoda, with her hand on his shoulder.
The clerk was looking another way, and she dropped a foolish, quicklittle kiss on the top of his head.
“Yes. It’s this business of the memorial to Church. I’ve got thenewspaper reports of the unveiling together, and the Committee havedrafted a formal letter to Mrs. Church, and there’s a good deal ofprivate correspondence—letters from big natives sending subscriptions,and all that—that I thought she would like to see. As Secretary to theCommittee, it of course devolves upon me to forward everything. And atthis moment,” Doyle went on, glancing ruefully at the page under hishand, “I am trying to write to her privately, poor thing.”
Rhoda glanced down at the letter. “I know you will be glad to have thesetestimonials, which are as sincere as they are spontaneous, to theunique position Church held in the regard of many distinguished people,”she read deliberately, aloud.
“Do you think that is the right kind of thing to say? It strikes me asrather formal. But one is so terribly afraid of hurting her by somestupidity.”
“Oh, I don’t think so at all, Philip. I mean—it is quite the properthing, I think. After all, it’s—it’s more than a year ago, you know.”
“The wives of men like Church remember them longer than that, I fancy.But if you will be pleased to sit down, Mrs. Doyle, I’ll finish it insome sort of decency and get it off.”
Rhoda sat down and crossed her feet and looked into dusty vacancy. Therecollection of Ancram’s expression as he passed her in the road cameback to her, and as she reflected that the ship which carried him toJudith Church would also take her the balm respectfully prepared by theCommittee, her sense of humour curved her lips in an ironical smile. Thegrotesqueness of the thing made it seem less serious, and she foundquite five minutes’ interested occupation in considering it. Then sheregarded the baboo making pens, and picked up a “Digest” and put it downagain, and turned over the leaves of a tome on the “Hindu Law ofInheritance,” and yawned, and looked out of the window, and observedthat it had stopped raining.
“Philip, aren’t you nearly done? Remember me affectionately to Mrs.Church—no, perhaps you’d better not, either.”
Doyle was knitting his brows over a final sentiment, and did not reply.
“Philip, is that one of your old coats hanging on the nail? Is it oldenough to give away? I want an old coat for the syce to sleep in: he hadfever yesterday.”
Mrs. Doyle went over to the object of her inquiries, took it down, anddaintily shook it.
“_Philip!_ Pay some attention to me. May I have this coat? There’snothing in the pockets—nothing but an old letter and a newspaper. Oh!”
Her husband looked up at last, noting a change in the tone of herexclamation. She stood looking in an embarrassed way at the address onthe envelope she held. It was in Ancram’s handwriting.
“What letter?” he asked.
She handed it to him, and at the sight of it he frowned a little.
“Is the newspaper the _Bengal Free Press_?”
“Yes,” she said, glancing at it. “And it’s marked in one or two placeswith red pencil.”
“Then read them both,” Doyle replied. “They don’t tell a very prettystory, but it may amus
e you. I thought I had destroyed them long ago. Ican’t have worn that coat since I left Florence.”
Rhoda sat down, with a beating curiosity, and applied herself tounderstand the story that was not very pretty. It sometimes annoyed herthat she could not resist her interest in things that concerned Ancram,especially things that exemplified him. She brought her acutestintelligence to bear upon the exposition of the letter and thenewspaper; but it was very plain and simple, especially where it wasunderscored in red pencil, and she comprehended it at once.
She sat thinking of it, with bright eyes, fitting it into relation withwhat she had known and guessed before, perhaps unconsciously plumingherself a little upon her penetration, and, it must be confessed,feeling a keen thrill of unregretting amusement at Ancram’s conviction.Then suddenly, with a kind of mental gasp, she remembered Judith Church.
“Ah!” she said to herself, and her lips almost moved. “What acomplication!” And then darted up from some depth of her moralconsciousness the thought, “She ought to know, and I ought to tell her.”
She tried to look calmly at the situation, and analyse the character ofher responsibility. She sought for its _pros_ and _cons_; she made aneffort to range them and to balance them. But, in spite of herself, hermind rejected everything save the memory of the words she had overheardone soft spring night on the verandah at Government House:
“_You ask me if I am not to you what I ought to be to my husband, who isa good man, and who loves me and trusts you._”
“And trusts you! and trusts you!” Remembering the way her own bloodquickened when she heard Judith Church say that, Rhoda made a spiritualbound towards the conviction that she could not shirk opening suchdeplorably blind eyes and respect herself in future. Then her memoryinsisted again, and she heard Judith say, with an inflection thatprecluded all mistake, all self-delusion, all change:
“_But you ask me if I have come to love you, and perhaps in a way youhave a right to know; and the truth is better, as you say. And I answeryou that I have. I answer you, Yes, it is true; and I know it willalways be true._”
Did that make no difference? And was there not infinitely too muchinvolved for any such casual, rough-handed interference as hers wouldbe?
At that moment she saw that her husband was putting on his hat. Hisletter to Mrs. Church lay addressed upon the desk, the papers that wereto accompany scattered about it, and Doyle was directing the clerk withregard to them.
“You will put all these in a strong cover, Luteef,” said he, “andaddress it as I have addressed that letter. I would like you to takethem to the General Post Office yourself, and see that they don’t gounder-stamped.”
“Yessir. All thee papers, sir? And I am to send by letter-post, sir?”
“Yes, certainly. Well, Rhoda? That was a clever bit of trickery, wasn’tit? I heard afterwards that the article was quoted in the House, and didChurch a lot of damage.”
Doyle spoke with the boldness of embarrassment. These two were not inthe habit of discussing Ancram; they tolerated him occasionally as anobject, but never as a subject. Already he regretted the impulse thatput her in possession of these facts. It seemed to his sensitivenesslike taking an unfair advantage of a man when he was down, which,considering to what Lewis Ancram had risen, was a foolish and baselessscruple. Rhoda looked at her husband, and hesitated. For an instant sheplayed with the temptation to tell him all she knew, deciding, at theend of the instant, that it would entail too much. Even a reference tothat time had come to cost her a good deal.
“I am somehow not surprised,” she said, looking down at the letter andpaper in her hand. “But—I think it’s a pity Mrs. Church doesn’t know.”
“Poor dear lady! why should she? I am glad she is spared thatunnecessary pang. We should all be allowed to think as well of the worldas we can, my wife. Come; in twenty minutes it will be dark.”
“Do you think so?” his wife asked doubtfully. But she threw the letterand the newspaper upon the desk. She would shirk it; as a duty it wasnot plain enough.
“Then you ought to burn those, Philip,” she said, as they wentdownstairs together. “They wouldn’t make creditable additions to therecords of the India Office.”
“I will,” replied her husband. “I don’t know why I didn’t long ago. Howdeliciously fresh it is after the rain!”