Note:—The scenes on the West Coast of India portrayed in this book are composite pictures but represent no actual place: the characters and events are entirely fictitious.
At a point on the south-west coast of India—north of Calicut, but south of Goa—the River Ghoomri, flowing westwards from the Ghats, enters the Arabian Sea. Short in length but enormous in volume, Ghoomri has the essential attributes of a god and is rightly regarded as a god by the majority of those who dwell along his banks. He is vast and incomprehensible, bountiful and murderous, certain, contemptuous, remote, perpetual; his movements are those, slight but terrific, of a deity stirring in sleep. Whether in the kinder months of the West Coast year—the clear half-cold of December to February, the sticky oppression of March to May, the sweet re-birth and second spring of the Kerala October; or whether in the terrible remainder—the black south-west monsoon that rears out of the sea to dash itself in thunder on the Ghats; at all times and at all seasons Ghoomri, gracious or malignant, remains a god.
A mile above his mouth Ghoomri is spanned—as he has been spanned these twenty years—by a bridge of black girders. By this bridge the slowly advancing Carnatic Railway, moving by hesitating steps from Podanur to Beypore, from Beypore to Calicut, crept at last one day into the town of Sikkal. Sikkal stands on the right or north bank of Ghoomri and the first buildings the railway encounters on the Sikkal shore are the house and the tile-factory called Torteval; the northern abutment of the bridge rests indeed on the very laterite hillock which is crowned by the Torteval summer-house. Now Sikkal is a Canarese word and Torteval is the name of a parish in the island of Guernsey and there seems no reason why they should be found in juxtaposition in this improbable place. There is no reason; it has just so happened.
From the middle of the railway bridge it is possible to look westwards to the sea or eastwards to the hills. Seawards a bare half-mile, Ghoomri drives against a vast spit of sand apparently designed to debar him for ever from his goal and in actual fact confining his egress to a narrow channel or mouth; from the bridge this mouth is invisible and there can be seen only the long shimmering wall of sand, the masts of a hundred pattimars and the concrete chimneys of another tile-works—the San Salvatore factory of the Italian Catholic Mission. In fact, westwards, seawards, there is little enough to look at. But eastwards, landwards, it is a different story—especially at that hour of evening when the sun, falling into the sea, floodlights five miles of river placid and spacious as a lake, and the little green kadre islands and the boats going up and down and the frame of bare laterite hills. Unnaturally green in the red sunset lie plantain and sugar-cane gardens, areca and cocoanut plantations, grass hills and the remote, dark-hued Ghat-foot forests—all the rich hinterland of Sikkal. And to close all as with a frame, there stand up, lit and carven and supreme, the Ghats themselves and the immense slopes of Simbri culminating in his thousand-foot citadel of castellated crags as if some demigod had set down on the summits of rolling mountains a great square box of rock.
One would say—and with a catch of the breath—a very fine country, a very fine country indeed.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
On the 6th of December, 1858, a bleak wintry night in the bleak wintry town of Dundee in Scotland, the janitor of the Moir Orphanage picked up in the sheltered doorway of his lodge a bundle of shawls, which when unwrapped proved to contain a flourishing male infant. The child was charmingly nude save for a ticket hung round his neck bearing the scrawled words “Rosslyn Cowal.” The janitor knew nobody in Dundee answering to either of these odd names; nor did subsequent enquiry discover any in Scotland who could conceivably be connected with the abandoned infant. But the Moir Orphanage, not without experience in such matters, called the child by the names he brought with him, prefixing for convenience’ sake the more manageable “David.” So David Rosslyn Cowal grew up to manhood, developed a talent for machinery, was made a Marine Engineer and left the Moir Orphanage for the seven seas. And in due course and by what seemed at the time a succession of natural processes, he came to manufacture tiles at Torteval.
There seems no obvious connection between a foundling at the Moir Orphanage in Dundee and the town of Sikkal on the north bank of the River Ghoomri—any more than between a steepled church in Guernsey and a tile-works in the same outlandish place. There is in fact very little connection; just that connection, commonly observed in affairs, which some call divine purpose and others call chance.
Clashing bullock-bells, the groan of wooden axles in their hubs, the yells of native drivers and the whack of sticks on shafts; it was a rough orchestra that played Ross Cowal into his kingdom of Sikkal. The carts, crawling in a string for company, travelled mostly at night and for the first night the bells kept Ross awake; he passed most of it lying on his stomach in the soft rug-covered straw in the bottom of the cart, his chin propped on his hands, staring past the shoulder of the cartman and over the nodding horns of the bullocks, staring into the stars. But the second night his head fell forward and he slept from sheer fatigue, and thereafter he had the knack of it and slept well on his back, his head pillowed on his bundle, while the great double-bullock bandy rolled and lurched and rumbled along the Kerala Coast.
The carts travelled like a caravan perhaps twenty strong. Some of them had been in company all the way north from the rail-end at Beypore; others joined the string after an evening halt, clung for a day or so and vanished in the night at some up-country turning. The caravan journeyed with a majestic slowness, ponderous and indifferent as the bulls themselves with their speculative eyes and their lunging, brass-tipped horns; time and appointment became things of no account. The road reeled out endlessly before and behind—section after section all in the same pattern; stretch of sand, stretch of laterite, bazaar, coffee-shop, toddy-shop, river. The caravan had no method, no time-table, no sense; it would press on for an hour or two at a half-trot and then subside at some unexpected point as if it abandoned for ever the idea of further progress. Question was useless, eliciting merely routine answers or an expression of hope disguised as statement. They will start in an hour; they will start after the evening meal; they will start at midnight; they will start at dawn. Never were these prophecies correct. The cartmen started as they had stopped—by a process of instinct; and almost immediately they would arrive at yet another unbridged river and settle down again for hours amid a litter of straw and cattle-dung and the stench of jack fruit and dried fish. There the tide would be unsuitable, or the ferry jangad would be broken, or the men who worked it would have gone away for their meals; and when at last the jangad came—a ponderous wooden platform lashed between two dug-outs—there was still the endless business of getting the laden carts on to it, one by one or two by two at best, of the ferrying over, of the snarling arguments about pice, of recommencing the arrested march on the farther side. Yet somehow, laboriously and tenaciously, without ever seeming to know what they were doing or what would follow next, somehow they made the northward miles.
At first Ross Cowal chafed; he thought, “We’ll never see Kotagal at this rate.” But presently the slow soothing progress, the empty evenings and mornings, resigned him to his fate. “It makes no odds,” he thought, “I’ve paid for this; I may as well like it.” The cart contractor had demanded forty rupees for the journey from Calicut to Kotagal and had extracted an advance of twenty-five; Ross had less than a hundred rupees left in his pocket—in the world. “Even if I get to Kotagal there may be nothing to do but come back. And how am I to get back? God knows.” He laughed to himself with a thrill of exultation. “Well, never meet trouble. Anyway, I’ve got away. Anyway, it’s better than the Falls o’ Tarf. No more of that damned engine-room; no more of that old runt MacMann. No more seafaring. I’m dead,” he thought, “for all anybody knows; I can stay dead. To hell with it all!”
The Falls o’ Tarf! That disastrous first voyage as a marine engineer which had taught him that, however clever he might be with engines, he was fool enough to be unable to endure discipline. Captain MacMann, bald and fat, cursing and nagging; Campbell, the Chief Engineer—“Whaur’s that bluidy Thirr-rd noo?”; Jeans, the Second; his fight with Jeans, the mess he had made of Jeans; all the subsequent trouble in the cramped little steamer. He had made up his mind to desert at Calicut, and at Calicut he had drawn an advance of pay grudgingly paid out by MacMann and—he had deserted. The Agents—Neill Brothers—had smelt a rat.
“You don’t seem to be very happy in your ship, Mr. Cowal?”
“I didn’t ship to be insulted.” A hard Scots voice, a hard Scots face, but—a fine figure of a man.
“Maybe you didn’t ship to work either.”
“I’ll wor-rk. I’ll no be bullied.”
They had shown no sympathy. “Who’s bullying you? You can obey orders like anybody else.” That, the great sumph, was just what he couldn’t do. But one of the firm’s juniors, attracted maybe by the dark scowling face of the young giant before him, had been kind; he had taken Ross round to a shoddy little Parsee-run hotel and stood drinks. Under the influence of the kindness rather than the alcohol, Ross had blurted out his secret.
“I’m going to skip.”
“Skip? Where to?”
“Up-country. It’s a grand countryside here.” He sniffed like a stag. “I like it. Fine.”
“It’s a darned difficult countryside for a white man to get work in. There’s nothing here.”
“There must be places.”
“You might try north—up the coast. Kotagal, maybe.”
“Kotagal? Where’s that?” He was told, and stood biting a hardened thumb. A hundred miles north and no railway? A breeze, calling to adventure, rustled the coco-palms in the hotel yard; Ross sniffed it like a stag again. “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll try it.”
Neill’s assistant set down his glass rather ashamedly and looked at his watch. “Go back to your ship and don’t be a fool. They’ll come after you.”
“They’ll not find me. I’m away. I’ll disappear; I’ll just vanish.”
“But—but——” the assistant cursed himself; silly how a drink or two carried one away. “Your people; your people at home?”
The dark scowl before him broke into an equally savage grin.
“I’ve none. I’m what they call a foundling. I was picked up three-and-twenty years ago on a doorstep in the Hawkhill. D’ye know where that is?”
“Dundee, isn’t it?”
“Dundee. And have ye heard of the Moir Orphanage? Well, that was my people. Don’t fret, my mannie, nobody’ll fash about me.”
The young agent’s enthusiasm was dying out; he was tired of Ross Cowal, wishing he had avoided those drinks.
“Well, you can try it. Try Kotagal. Then Hemmansur. Then Karwar. Go on north if necessary till you hit Goa.”
The savage grin came and went again.
“Get out o’ here, in fact, anywhere. Well—I will.”
So Ross had made his hard bargain with the cart contractor and now here he was lying on his belly in the cart, progressing slowly and exasperatingly—whither? It made no odds. Yet for the first twenty-four hours he lived in illogical fury. The senseless dawdling, the helplessness of the professional cartmen, the endless difficulty over getting anything fit to eat, the almost greater difficulty of keeping oneself decently clean; all these were maddening brakes on even the vaguest ambitions. He itched to beat some vigour into the cartmen sitting over their rice-pots and their fires in interminable whining conversations, to goad the great sleepy bullocks till they moved as directed and not as pleased themselves, to instil some kind of order and organisation into the whole rambling witless incompetent crew. . . . And then on the third day the country suddenly took hold of him and his trouble passed. The sweet sunshine of the days, the pleasant pictured countryside—green paddy-fields, red laterite hillocks, thatched smoky villages; a mysterious temple among great trees, a flamboyant Christian church upon a hill; the loveliness of great shallow dusky rivers with palm-trees crowding on their banks; the tranced nights of tropic moon and stars; all worked together to his comforting. He relaxed; he cared no longer what happened—halt or progress, stupidity or skill. “It makes no odds.”
On the fourth day out he was surprised to hear himself addressed in English. Hitherto it had been sign-talk and difficult at that—for of course he had only a bare half-dozen words of the language; he could say these but could understand nothing. Now suddenly an Indian stranger addressed him in sounds that had some meaning. This stranger’s cart had joined them at the last halting-place and he had spent some hours subjecting Ross to a minute scrutiny; before they had been an hour on the road together he knew the little about Ross that the caravan could tell him. Now he came forward in the chill of an early morning start, smoking a rank beedi. He was a little man with a wizened, grinning face; he wore a small yellow turban and wrapped himself in a scarlet blanket as if the pleasant December sunshine of Kerala were the blasts of winter.
“Where you are going?”
Ross was taken by surprise. “You know English, eh?”
“O-oh, yes. I am Hebbale Somappa. I know many English. I know to speak. You are English, isn’t it?”
“No; Scot.”
“So-o! You are Scottish man. I know many Scottish mans. And where you are going?”
“I don’t know.”
The stranger was amused. “Ha, ha; that is good. You don’ know, eh? No-oh!”
“Well, maybe Kotagal.”
“Kotagal, eh?” His quick expressive hands made a gesture of disgust. “Why you want to go to Kotagal? Kotagal is rot-ten place. Hohp-less. Why not you come to my place—Sikkal?”
“Never heard of it. Where is it?”
“Soon we will come there. That is good place. You will see. Plenty business in Sikkal, plenty rupees.”
“Any jobs?” said Ross. But the stranger had apparently reached his limit meantime, for he muttered something in the vernacular, laughed nervously, and wandered away.
Ross saw no more of him for twenty-four hours and was beginning to think he had branched off at some cross-roads as so many others had done; when one evening, suddenly, there was the red blanket again. Unknown to Ross, the inquisitive Somappa had seized the opportunity at that morning’s halt, when Ross was trying to wash in the river, to go through the pockets of the jacket he had left in his cart. He found there two pipes and a tobacco pouch, a leather cheroot-case, no money at all and an envelope addressed to “David Rosslyn Cowal, Esq., S.S. Falls o’ Tarf, care Messrs. Neill Bros., Calicut.” He put all carefully back.
“I think you are sheep’s people, eh?”
“Sheep’s people?”
“Boat. Steamer.”
Ross understood. “No. I was once. Not now.”
“You don’ go back there, eh?”
“Never.”
“You don’ like?”
“I’ve had enough.”
“Me too—I don’ like the sea. Sea is bad place.” His hand slipped under his blanket and he produced a small square bottle. “You like to drink?”
Ross drew the cork rather gingerly. The stuff smelt vile.
“What is it?”
“Cashew arrack. We make from cashew-fruits. Nice drink. I am Billava, you see.”
“Billava?”
“Ye-es—billava caste, toddy-tapper. I don’ drink toddy. Arrack sometimes I drink a little. Gangasara.”
It was Greek to Ross; however, a drink was a drink.
“I’ll taste it,” he said. “Here’s luck.”
The stuff was raw, fiery, pungent, but less foul than its smell. He coughed and handed back the bottle.
“Strong, that.”
“Very nice drink.” His heartening grin broke out. “But il-leec-it. Government don’ know.” He wandered away again, saying as he went, “To-morrow we come to Sikkal. Sikkal is my-native-place. Very good town. You will see.”
On the next afternoon, after a grinding pull over a steeper laterite ridge than usual and a bumping descent with the scotches groaning under the wheels, they reached by far the biggest river of the journey. Immensely wide, a spacious thing magnified by the levelling afternoon sunshine, it spread out with its green islands and its frame of yellow hills as an artist spreads his picture on a canvas. Majestic and serene, it displayed itself before them, saying, “Well, this is myself at last; what do you think?”
Ross tried his halting Canarese; he had fortified himself with half-a-dozen phrases of this language before leaving Calicut and had been annoyed to find too late that it should have been Tulu. He pointed.
“Hesar enu?”
The cartman looked at him in pathetic surprise.
“Ghoomri.”
Far in the golden haze of the farther bank white buildings shone among trees; what looked like the tops of two factory chimneys rose over the shoulder of a little hill. Ross pointed again.
“Ale enna yur?”
“Sik-kal.”
Ross lowered himself from the cart and stretched his aching limbs. “So that’s Sikkal,” he thought, and looked round for something to do. As usual there was no jangad waiting; one could be discerned far away towards the other bank of the river, but whether approaching or receding it was hard to say. There was every prospect of another long wait; the cartmen were taking out the bullocks; the day halted, the afternoon settled back into its warm slumber as the dust of the carts settled back into the road. Ross thought, “I’ll bathe.”
He walked a little distance up-stream, found an inviting beach, stripped bare and waded in. His skin had lost the tan of the sea voyage and was white and fine; the black hair on his head and body seemed ebony by contrast. Nobody had scared him about crocodiles and for a delightful half-hour he swam this way and that, up-stream and down and outwards, grounding now and then on shallow banks of sand. The river, hardly moving, caressed him; he splashed like a child, sending up jewelled showers of water. But presently he saw the jangad slowly approaching, and realising that he must get his own cart on board it first or be abandoned there till dark, he reluctantly left the water. Lacking either towel or change of raiment, he sat naked on a hot black rock to dry. And suddenly as he sat there, the place took hold of him. Placidly, reassuringly and somehow with a suggestion of promise, the landscape gathered round him; the distances beckoned, carrying the eye away and away to the great skyline mountains; little green valleys opened laterally, saying “Explore”; the high ridges, yellow with sun-dried grass, nodded in the heat-haze, “Come.” Sedately, rippling rather than flowing, Ghoomri moved to the sea. He stared into it, wide-eyed.
“I could like this place,” he thought. “It’s a good place. I could do well here. Kotagal? Why?”
He looked up and saw to his embarrassment that Somappa, the Billava, was squatting on a neighbouring rock eyeing him fixedly; his scarlet blanket blazed in the sunshine, turning the smoke from his beedi to ultramarine. Ross stood up.
“Hullo!” he said. “You seem interested.”
Somappa was indeed interested. He had been watching Ross for the last half-hour, squatting there motionless on his rock, and his thought had been, “I must get that dorai to work for me.” Now as Ross stood up and he saw the muscles run over six feet of well-balanced body, the strong back and arms, the crisp black hair, the firm hard clean-shaven face, Somappa pursed his lips. “I must get that man,” he thought. “He is a very strong man; he will protect me and destroy all my enemies. All the coolies will fear him and none of the clerks and contractors will dare to cheat.” He came sidling down from his rock, apparently oblivious to Ross’s complete nakedness, and held out his hand with the square bottle.
“It is dangerous to take bath in the river. We get fever. Better you take some drink.”
Ross took the bottle and swilled a good mouthful. He handed it back coughing and wiping his eyes.
“This is Ghoomri, eh?”
“Yes. Ghoomri.”
“It’s a grand river!” The Scots “r”s birled in his enthusiasm. “Grand. Man, it’s fine country here!”
Somappa struck quickly. “Then why not you stay here? Why you want to go to Kotagal? Rot-ten place. You stay here and manage my works.”
Ross stared at him. “You’ve got a works, eh? These your chimneys?”
The Billava looked slightly uncomfortable. “No, not mine. These are Lafauce works—Torteval. But I too have a tile-works. Plenty business I am doing.”
“A tile-works, is it?”
“Ye-es. Every year I send out half a lakh. Bi-ig profit now I am getting. And plenty other business I do too.”
“But I don’t know anything about tile-making.”
“Soon you can learn. You stop my coolies and my clerks cheating. You are manager, I am proprietor, isn’t it?”
Ross ran an eye over the landscape; strongly it said to him, “Stay.” In silence he slipped on his shirt and trousers; pulling his belt, he said suddenly:
“How much?”
“I give you fifty a month.”
It was as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him.
“Fifty? Fifty rupees a month? Don’t be a fool.”
“Well, sixty.”
“Bosh!”
He turned and strode away towards the carts, huddled under a huge tamarind; and by the keenness of his disappointment he knew how vitally this place, never seen before, attracted and claimed him. But—sixty rupees a month! It was a job, no doubt, and Kotagal might offer nothing at all; but that remained to be seen. Sixty a month and working for a native owner—good God, no!
Two carts were on the jangad—his own and Somappa’s; his bundle was there and his tin box. Manifestly this was by arrangement, but asking no questions he scrambled aboard; Somappa, squatting by his own possessions, said nothing. The slow, slow progress across the river commenced. Ross took the sea side of the vessel and leaning against one of the carts looked due west. The sun was dropping quickly and the water was a blinding sheet of gold; dimly as through a veil one saw the sand-spits at the mouth of the river and there was a faint rosy mist shot with gold lights where the breakers leapt and danced upon the bar. Seaward of that was merely a blinding dazzle. He swung round and for a moment his eyes could see nothing; then slowly the up-river scene crept out of his blindness—a green island of sugar-cane, a lateen-sailed passenger-boat, the illuminated laterite ridges one behind another, the bend in the river, the Ghats; it took shape, clarified, focused into acute beauty. He stared at it, his mouth a little open. Somappa’s eyes upon his back never shifted.
“It’s a good place,” Ross thought, “a good, good place. I like it fine.”
The jangad grounded on the Sikkal bank. Somappa came forward with hand outstretched.
“I give you a hundred a month.”
For a moment Ross’s brain whirled; then suddenly he said:
“All right; I’ll take it.”
He found himself holding Somappa’s hand, and it was hand-in-hand that they stepped off the jangad on to the Sikkal shore.
The sunset that blazoned Ross Cowal’s progress into Sikkal touched only the tip of the Lafauce house which lay behind and to the north of the little laterite hill above the ferry. Coming from the south you saw nothing of Torteval except the factory chimneys—or the halves of them that lifted above the hillock. To the north of this hillock, in the valley below the Torteval house, ran the deep creek, a second mouth of the river, that had been—with other things—the undoing of Lafauce. For Lafauce had reckoned without Ghoomri’s strange habit of shifting his mouth so that his actual point of outflow into the sea was never completely stationary but wandered slowly north and south within a range of a couple of miles. While it moved north there was deep water in the Torteval creek and the North Creek was the easiest and most convenient route to the sea roads where the bigger ships—the Gulf baggalahs, the Ratnagiri khotiyas and dhows—were forced to lie. But when it moved south the North Creek silted and dried. Twelve years before, in 1869, when Trevelyan Lafauce had come East from the Channel Islands and founded his factory, the outflow had been at its northernmost point; pattimars, the odd-looking native craft with their tilted sterns and sloping disconsolate masts, could come right up to his jetty. Two years later nature reasserted her cycle; the southern mouth burst open in a heavy flood and Lafauce learned—what old residents had already told him—that he had built his factory in the wrong place. Now, in 1881, the year of Ross’s arrival, only the small odas, the river boats, could get through the Creek and it was a case of load, unload, reload for every tile that went out to Bombay. Lafauce made a wry jest of it to his friends.
“This devil of a country. The very rivers cheat you.”
But everything cheated Lafauce. In the phrase of a later generation, he asked for it.
At the moment when Ross and Somappa stepped hand-in-hand off the jangad, Lafauce in a blue serge jacket and white flannel trousers was arranging his table for a dinner-party. A widower for many years, he always attended to this domestic detail for himself, although his daughter Gloriette could have done it, as presently she would preside at one end of the table and lead the ladies away at the appropriate moment. But he clung to the little occupation; it passed the time. His handsome, slightly vacant face studied the lay-out of the shining rosewood table; the room was growing dark already and he shivered slightly for he was thin of blood now and slept every night with a blanket even in the damp heat of Sikkal. Himself would sit at the point of the table farthest from the verandah doors; the Collector’s wife on his right, the Judge’s wife on his left. Then, from left to right, the Collector, Mrs. Knight, Gloriette, Colonel Knight, the Judge. The thing arranged itself easily—too easily; it didn’t pass enough time. He took eight blank visiting-cards and carefully wrote out the names in his copperplate hand.
“My God,” he thought, “what a terrible party; why do I do it?” There was no reason—except that he had been doing it for twelve long years. There was not a soul in Sikkal now who had been at his first party or for the matter of that at any party more than three years back: even his own daughter Glory had joined him in India only two cold weathers ago. “Plus ça change,” he thought, “plus je suis—moi—la même chose—and oh Lord, I’m sick of it!” These Collectors and Judges and I.M.S. Colonels, they escaped, the lucky devils, they got away somewhere else; but here he, Lafauce, stuck, tied down to this infernal tile-works. Arranging his cards on the table, he thought of the present Collector, of the present Judge, of Colonel Knight, I.M.S. A frightful collection of bores—perhaps the worst ensemble in the long history of the station. Lafauce when the time came would be charming to his guests, would persuade them that they charmed him in turn; meantime, singly and collectively, he damned their eyes.
“Two tables of whist,” he thought. “Fearful! It’s hard on Glory too. But I’m hanged if I ask young Sealing.”
Yawning slightly he wandered out into the wide verandah. It was a charming house, standing high on a stepped plinth; a vast verandah ran round three sides of it. Upstairs there was a single huge room with paired dressing and bathrooms—the old-fashioned Indian bungalow design. The pillars of his verandah and the walls of his dining-room and drawing-room were finished like porcelain with the old egg-shell chunam, an art doomed to perish with all the easy affluence and lavish ways of its time; his own tiles, polished and rosy, made the floors; there was some good carved woodwork, bought extravagantly from ancient native country-houses. “Pleasant,” he thought for the thousandth time, “But I built it in the wrong place and I’m sick of it anyway.” Below him his brilliant garden fell away to the creek that ran here between green tended banks. The factory lay to the left, down the creek and round a corner; it was tactfully invisible, but in the southwest monsoon the house was poisoned by the foul smell from its kilns. Beyond the creek was another stretch of garden, the high wall of his domain, a welter of palm-trees and plantain gardens, the next laterite ridge uprising. Pleasant; but it should all have been on the other, on the south side of the hill. The wrong place again and, anyway, a bore!
Torteval! Guernsey men carry their Island with them and he had called his venture by a Guernsey name. He thought of the real Torteval, the bare church hard by a coast of magnificent rocks; the run of beautiful bays—Petit Port, Saints, Petit Bot, the Gouffre; round the corner Rocquaine, Perelle, the sweeping sands of Vazon. Guernsey, the comfortable, kindly island! Why had he ever left it? But he knew the answer to that well enough; it had been the premature unbearable loss of the one thing he had ever loved better than himself. Caroline; ten years his wife; seven years Gloriette’s mother; now sixteen years dead. . . . He half-closed his eyes; the Creek widened to a sea; in it stood the pleasaunce of Herm; farther away the long crest of Sark. On a fine day, with a really good telescope, you could see the railing at the Coupée. . . .
He thought, “Why didn’t I stay there? . . . If only Caroline had lived. . . . Why can’t I go back?”
On the summit of the laterite hill, reached by a red zigzag path, stood the little summer-house one could see from far across the river; in it Glory was sitting with Boy Sealing. Boy Sealing was a planter from above the Ghats; he managed his own small estate—Sleepy Valley it was called—but he neglected it to sit with Gloriette Lafauce. He did no more than that—no more than sit and gaze into her face, her face that was like her father’s—beautiful but slightly cold, slightly vacant, slightly tired. She had a small mouth, greenish-grey eyes, a suggestion of freckles that were just not visible and curious goldish-red hair that in greater abundance might have been magnificent. She was twenty-three, but looked younger; and since the day when he had first seen her at a cricket match on the maidan she had been the pivot of Boy Sealing’s life, the breath of his body. He was not really a very young man now, but the name Boy clung to him—or perhaps he to it—from its very appropriateness. Sealing had paused at adolescence, failed to become adult; he was diffident, gauche, immature, eager; he was “Boy.” Completely impecunious and a planter of no talents, he disgusted Lafauce as a suitor for Glory; Lafauce thought Boy a clumsy lout, not even handsome with his thick blubbery lips and his slanted clown’s eyebrows; he tolerated him, however, on account of his skill in cricket, for cricket was Lafauce’s consolation in life.
For the hundredth time, as the sun went down into the sea—so red, so smooth that you waited to hear the hiss—Glory said:
“It isn’t any good, Boy; Father would never let us.”
His eyes ran over her dotingly; from the small white shoes that peeped under her long dress of white muslin, up by the narrow waist and the fluffed shoulders to that crown of gold-red hair the critics found just not adequate. But Boy was no critic of Glory.
“Let me kiss you anyway, Glo.”
She drew away from him. “No!” Yet she wanted that kiss, wanted to feel for a moment those thick heavy lips pressing on hers.
For the hundredth time he accepted the rebuff and sat drawing patterns with the point of his cane.
“I’ll make money, Glo.”
“Well, go and make it. It’s no good just talking.”
“ Will you wait?”
“Oh, wait!” Her voice ran up a couple of semi-tones. “I’ll wait all right; I expect I’ll wait here twenty years. I’ll wait till I’m old and ugly——”
He interrupted eagerly, his pathetic eyes alight under his curious, bushy diagonal eyebrows. “You’ll never, never be that. . . . Oh, Glo, do let me kiss you. Just once.”
“No!” But she thought, “Oh, if only he would do it—-just once—instead of always asking!” Then, horrified at her own thoughts, she got up, smoothing down her dress.
“I must go in. When are you going back to Sleepy Valley?”
He said gloomily, “Monday.”
“It’s crop time. You ought to be there now. You ought to go back to-morrow. You talk about making money——”
“I’ve got to play cricket.”
“Oh, cricket!” This endless capering with balls that all these men delighted in—Boy, her father, the Collector, the Judge. So childish!
“Well, if it hadn’t been for cricket we’d never have met. I suppose you don’t care if we never had. . . . Glo, say you’ll marry me.”
“I can’t. I couldn’t. I don’t want to.”
“Yes you do. You’re fond of me.”
“I’m fond of you. But how could we ever marry? Father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Then run away with me.”
“Boy! You’re crazy.” (But for the moment a thrill, hideously delicious, had run through her. To run away! Up the long dark creepy Ghat road, faster and faster, safe at last in Boy’s little house, in Boy’s arms. Oh-h!) “That’s just nonsense. No; no; no.”
She led him firmly down the zigzag path.
Lafauce, lying in his long-chair with a weak brandy and a cheroot, heard Boy’s bullock-jutka jingle away. He was still seeing blue rock-strewn seas; cliffs and sand, trees and water-lanes. “Thank God he’s gone,” he thought half-consciously, sipping his brandy. “Oh God, if I could only go too—and never come back!” But—the business; he couldn’t get rid of it. It was a good business, but it was going down and he couldn’t collect himself sufficiently to arrest its collapse. Too difficult, too much trouble. . . . The Johnnies were cheating him too, but it was too much fag to go into that; anyway, what could you do in a country where the very rivers deceived you? And then there was Glory; she didn’t marry, she couldn’t marry, who was going to marry her? Nobody here but old civilians married already, and henpecked into the bargain; creatures like Boy Sealing—no good and never could be any; an impecunious debt-ridden Policeman tied to this hellish country for the next twenty years. “If I could dispose of the works; if I could marry off Glory. . . .” He sighed and knocked the ash from his cigar. All too difficult.
He heard his daughter’s step, clack-clack on the tiles, thump-thump on the wooden drawing-room floor.
“O-oh, Glory. Was that young Sealing?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“He hadn’t forgotten the cricket to-morrow, I hope?”
“No, he remembered.”
“You all right, Glory?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Then run and have your bath, darling; we’ve all these beastly people coming.”
“Yes, Dad.”
She went away to her bedroom, full—too full—of beautiful rosewood furniture; a huge couch, two long mirrors. Her ayah knelt and slipping off white shoes, garters, stockings, rubbed her slim legs with citronella oil so that the mosquitoes should not get at them even for an instant. She sat down in front of a vast dressing-table laden with accoutrements. And in the presence of all these tokens of her father’s kindness she thought, “Am I a wicked girl or is Father really impossible? He just lies there and does nothing. He hates the place, but he won’t get up and leave it. We must have plenty of money. But here we sit, and here we will sit for ever and ever and ever.”
She pushed the ayah aside and went away to her bathroom. . . . A quick rush up the dark Ghat roads, gloomy with forest trees, terrible with overhanging rocks; frightening, dreadful. Then at last, at last, the lights of a little house. . . . Darling Boy; she was fond of him, perhaps she almost loved him. . . . But Boy was no good either; he couldn’t do anything; he never would.
Colonel Knight. Two tables of whist. “Why ever did you lead a heart, Glory?” Cricket. “Well hit, sir; well run, sir.” Oh, dear!
Somappa’s business proved reminiscent of that extraordinary voyage in the carts; the first week of it drove Ross to flaming madness; a second week of it sobered him down. At first it was a violent and bitter disappointment, an aggravation, a cheat, a fraud; from this it passed to a sourly humorous joke; and finally, after a fortnight of it, Ross found himself beginning to wonder if nothing could be done. Once wondering, he was held, interested chained.
Somappa’s tile-works consisted of three primitive country kilns in a row on the river bank, a drying-shed of sorts, a large mortar in which the clay was mushed up by coolie women, and a single hand-press. He turned out at most two hundred tiles a day, and of these nearly twenty per cent, incompletely dried and irregularly burnt, broke to pieces in the sorter’s hand as soon as they came out of the kiln. In addition to the tile-works Somappa ran, with a kind of lucky incompetence, an amazing mixed business; he dealt in bamboos which were floated in great faggots down the Ghoomri and lay rotting while Somappa haggled with the Moplah boatmen; in inferior tobacco which he bought to make into snuff; in mangoes, areca-nut, cinnamon buds, plantains, cashew-nuts, pepper, nux vomica. In fact, there was not a single product of that incredibly fertile hinterland not handled—or mishandled—by Somappa. Out of it all, in some astonishing manner, he contrived to make what must be, Ross thought, an exceedingly narrow profit. It was not till he discovered that the Billava rented the four principal toddy-shops round Sikkal—out of which he made in a day as much as he made on the rest in a month—that Ross felt at all secure about his manager’s salary. Drink always paid.
Somappa took no pleasure in the toddy business; a Billava by caste, it was his natural occupation to tap palm-trees and sell toddy; he did it as he ate, slept and performed other ordained functions without pride and with only the minimum of attention. But on the tile-works he doted and on this subject Ross, bursting with Scots conscience, tried to help him. He liked Somappa; there was something engaging about his cheerful incompetence, and Ross set out to earn his hundred rupees. He recalled that not so long ago he had been a competent engineer.
“These kilns,” he said; “they’re rotten.”
Somappa smiled his open, disarming grin, but said nothing.
“Every time ye bake a set ye have to let the whole thing cool down before ye can get the tiles out. Man, don’t ye see ye’re losing all your firing? It’s ruinous. And wood firing’s sinfully wasteful. Can we not get coal? There’s steamers.”
“We cannot use coal. You cannot use coal for baking tiles. Hoh-pless.”
Ross did not know enough to contradict him.
“Well, anyway, there must be a better kind of kiln. And these old hens grinding away with that mortar; they can’t be mixing the clay properly. They’re not. The tiles are full of stones; that’s why they split.”
“Some tiles we must lose. Everybody loses.”
“I don’t believe it. Not twenty-five per cent anyway. And that old hand-press. I must take a look round Lafauce’s place.”
The Billava’s grin came back.
“Lafauce is no good. Always he is losing. How he can help it up on that back channel? He should not have built there. I told him; every day I was telling. . . . He has an overseer—Lobo; very bad man—Christian. Always that Lobo is cheating poor Mr. Lafauce. His business is going down, down. Then he must go away.”
Ross stood kicking at a broken tile; suddenly a curtain lifted in his mind. “Soon Lafauce must go away?” he thought; “well, who takes his place? Why not Somappa—or if Somappa won’t rise to it, why not me?” If Lafauce failed and departed—why, then anything might happen; Sikkal might hold a fortune after all. Lafauce was most probably a fool—the country seemed alive with them; if he cleared out and left Torteval—— Doors opened behind that lifting curtain; amazing futures flashed; Ross saw far, far away. Well—how soon? He said suddenly:
“Why doesn’t he go now?”
“He has one daughter. She does not get married.” Ross thought like a flash, “Why shouldn’t she?” Meeting Somappa’s searching eyes, he felt himself flush. Turning away, he thought, “I’ll have a look at Torteval. I’ll see this Lobo.”
Early in the second week of his career as manager, Ross realised that six phrases of Canarese were an inadequate equipment among workpeople who spoke practically nothing but Tulu. He had picked up in Sikkal a rapscallion servant, old but knowledgeable, who called himself Charlie. To Charlie he said:
“I’ll need to learn Tulu.”
Charlie gave him a sidelong look.
“Then Master getting one girl.”
Ross flared up at him. “Ye dirty old man! What do I want with native women? Not me!”
Charlie was unperturbed. “Then I getting master one munshi.”
Ross growled, “Ye’d better.” But in the evening, walking round to Torteval, he asked himself, “Master getting one girl: why not?” He saw the women streaming home from their work, laughing, chattering; they were tidy little things, most of them, round, neat, gaily dressed with great wads of flowers in hair intensely black and sleeked with coconut oil. Near the crossroads he saw a young Brahmin woman, pale-coloured, shapely, almost perfectly featured. He thought, “If I could get a girl like that——” The creature was pretty—bonnier than many and many a girl at home; she was spotlessly neat, finished to her finger-tips. Ross felt his heart begin to beat and gave himself a wry smile. “You and your language lessons!”
At the entrance to the Torteval works he met a short, thick-set man in neat European dress; slanting eyes looked at Ross under an old-fashioned topi, thin lips wrinkled into a curious sour smile. “He has one overseer; very bad man—Christian.” This would be Lobo. He heard himself jauntily addressed.
“Mr. Co-wal, isn’t it?”
Ross admitted it. “And I take it you’re Mr. Lobo. How did ye know me?”
Lobo smiled his twisted smile. “No new person can come here without making a sensation. And when a European gentleman comes and takes employment with poor old Somappa——”
Ross bridled. “Why poor old Somappa?”
“You have been with him ten days; you must be able to answer that for yourself.” He spoke excellent English with hardly a trace of accent. “Well, what can we do for you?”
Ross had the Scots hatred of asking favours—more especially of asking them from a man to whom he took an instinctive dislike. He murmured something about looking round. “Ye won’t grudge me that. Ye know we can’t compete.”
Lobo was briskly acquiescent. “I know that all right. Come in. You can see anything you like here.”
“Anything you like, you mean,” thought Ross. He followed his guide down the long tiled sheds, darkening already with evening. Lobo stopped and proffered a cheroot-case; then a match.
“My fool of a boss ought to have built on the other side of the hill. It’s dark here after four-thirty. In the monsoon you can’t see at all.”
“Why didn’t he?”
Lobo explained about Ghoomri’s curious precession north and south, while they walked through the dim succession of sheds. Ross’s quick eyes were alert and he was astonished to see that though the works were greatly more pretentious than Somappa’s, they were scarcely more modern in equipment and fittings. Instead of the “old hens’” mortar they had a thing like a country oil mill, worked by bullocks; but their presses were hand-worked and even the kilns, though bigger than Somappa’s, were not much superior in design. Torteval had an infinitely better system of drying, but that was its sole real achievement. Professing to admire, professing to be instructed, Ross thought, “A child could teach these folk. I know nothing about this business, but I could improve this factory fifty per cent. There’s money in this.” Lobo, yawning, began to abuse Lafauce.
“He doesn’t care. He sits there with the Collector and the Judge and all the nobs. ‘Have anothah glass, my deah fellah.’ ‘Boy, bring some more champayne.’ And if I ask him for a rise in pay, it’s ‘My deah Lobo, on the last balance sheet, I cawn’t rahly.’ Last balance sheet; I bet he never read it. All he does is to play cricket and lie in a long chair with a drink. Hard-working chaps do his work for him. And his daughter with five hundred chips on her back every time she goes out.”
Ross asked with assumed indifference, “Pretty?”
“No. Washed-out. And half-dead. And much too grand for the likes of you and me. Talk about Ranis! Drives round in the evening with her nose a mile in the air, God damn and blast the pair of them——”
He seemed to realise suddenly that he was saying too much.
“If it didn’t suit me for certain reasons, I wouldn’t stay here. I could get a job anywhere. My brother has his own works at Goa. But I’m a kind of partner here, you see.”
He maundered on, recalling himself from his outburst. Ross thought, “You’re a first-class liar anyway. Those eyes. That mouth. I wouldn’t trust you a yard.”
They came out into twilight; the sun was in the sea and the light fading in waves. Hesitating, Ross broached the subject that was lying on his mind.
“There’s one thing. I’m bothered about the language. Is there any book on Tulu I could get?”
Lobo squinted at him with his ugly eyes. “There’s no book. Tulu isn’t written. There’s no book—except a sleeping dictionary.”
Ross flushed; the same advice again. He said:
“I’m not going to start having native women.”
“You don’t need to have native women. But what’s wrong with keeping a nice girl for your own, eh? Sew on your buttons, keep you nice and warm these cold nights and teach you Tulu all the time.”
Ross felt uncomfortable; with the canny secrecy of his race he felt that though certain things might be done they should not be discussed. He knew his cheeks were hot and was glad it was dark. But he said at last:
“How could I get one?”
Lobo threw away his cheroot. “I’ll look out one for you if you like. I’ll get a Christian. None of these damned Hindus—you’re never upsides with them. And the Christian girls work like elephants.”
The Scot rose in Ross. “How much is it going to cost me? I haven’t much.”
“I bet you haven’t. But don’t worry—it’ll only cost you her keep. Fifteen a month maybe. And you’ll have to give her a sari and some bazaar jewellery; that won’t cost you anything. She’ll save you a lot—you’d wonder. I’ll find you a nice girl. Leave it to me.”
He changed the subject suddenly.
“You’ll have to play cricket.”
“I hate cricket.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can play it. It’ll get you in with old God-Almighty here; he’ll sell his soul—if he’s got one—for a game of cricket. Give you plen-ty exercise. You want that in this dam’ place. It’ll fill in your evenings.”
He prepared to shake off Ross. “Yes, Mr. Co-wal, you come and play cricket in the evenings and then you go home to your nice girl and play Tulu. Well, so long.”
Ross thought, “And you might just as well have added, ‘And don’t come hanging round here any more.’ You made that clear enough.”
He walked home—he was living in a loft above one of Somappa’s sheds—through a cool evening, lucid with stars, with a young moon and with the shimmer that still radiated from the sun’s meeting-place with the sea. He thought, “That’s a nasty customer. Clever—dangerous; a real bad one. I’ll bet Lafauce is being swindled all sides at once.”
He thought momentarily and with a shade of pity of Lafauce’s daughter; and from that he turned with sudden eagerness to wondering what Lobo would show him. “A nice girl for your own?” Nothing much wrong with that, after all. None of your promiscuity. Why not?
Lobo went straight home, took off the European suit and with it his shirt, collar and tie, wrapped a check Moplah mundu round his loins and sat down with a bottle of bazaar brandy to tell his wife how clever he had been all day. In due course he came to his evening visitor and his account of him would have surprised Ross considerably.
“Poking round to see what he could see. He didn’t see much. . . . And ‘Pretty? ‘ he says, just casually. ‘Pretty, eh?’ like Polly puttin’ her head on one side for sugar. I saw the game.” He wiped the drops from his heavy black moustache. “Yes, I saw the idea. Thinks he’ll get in there, does he, and go to bed with Missy, and have a nice little wedding and get the business and all. No fear. I’ll fix him with little Machu or Milian or one of them; she’ll keep him quiet. Tulu!”
His fat wife, who for some reason admired him, made approving noises.
“And a lot you’ve understood of that,” said Mr. Lobo. “Get me my food, you old cow, and here’s damn to Mister Co-wal.”
On the evenings when heaven was merciful Lafauce had cricket—if not a match, then at least a practice. On the other evenings there was nothing to do except that which was done by everybody—climb into the bullock-coach and drive up to that long laterite ridge above the Ghoomri called variously Mount Pisgah or Scandal Hill. The second name was dying out—nobody knew now what the Scandal had been, but it was said to have happened in the remote and glorious ’sixties when there was a Regiment at Sikkal. There was no regiment in Sikkal now—and no scandal. The Judge walked with the Judge’s wife, the Collector with Mrs. Collector, Lafauce with Gloriette; they exchanged decorously genial salutations in passing. “Good evening, Simmons.” “Good evening, Michael.” “Good evening, Trevelyan.” “Good evening, Mr. Lafauce; lovely here, isn’t it?”
It was lovely enough. The ridge was a bare plateau perhaps two miles by one; in the rains when the muli grass was fresh it was a sheet of vividly beautiful green; now it was yellow over black; the laterite, red when newly cut, turned black as the iron in it was long exposed to the air. Northward this plateau stretched for miles—too hard and rough, alas, for cricket or even golf, but on the south it fell almost sheer into the Ghoomri. It dropped in a sloping wall into a belt of coconut gardens that merged into a thinner belt of paddy and sugar-cane; followed immediately the river—a vast, dappled pavement of light processing slowly to the sea. Walking eastward with your back to the sun, you had a cool breeze and a radiant prospect. At the far end of the ridge there was a devil-shrine, lurking in a low-walled enclosure behind gigantic trees; haunted, they said, a bad place; it made a turning-point for the regulation evening walk but was otherwise unnoticed.
In the sunset of Christmas Eve Lafauce walked there with Gloriette. He had a grievance; there should have been cricket, but the Hindu school team who were to have been the “Station’s” opponents had cried off. “Just like these fellows”: Lafauce was cheated again. His bitterness was enhanced by the knowledge that the “Station” must dine that evening with the Judge and the next, Christmas Day, with the Collector; two turkeys (if the servants hadn’t poisoned them), two plum puddings, two evenings of forced hilarity, of solid English fun. Glory, thinking idly of what she would wear—not that it mattered, for there would be hardly a man there alive enough to notice if she came in her stays—heard her father sigh; she slipped a hand into his arm.
“Tired, Daddy?”
He had left his hat in the bullock-coach; his handsome vacant face under his beautiful silky hair slewed round to her.
“Tired, Glory? Hardly tired—just sick, sick, sick of it.”
Glory thought, “Guernsey again.” She had never revisited the Island since her mother died—at which time she had been seven—and she remembered little of the ancestral house at Les Salures. She had lived in the interval with Lafauce relatives at Hastings, had gone to school there, grown up, come out to her father. It seemed a long time—and little at the end of it.
“Well, Daddy, why don’t we go home?”
He stroked her arm. “If I could sell the business, Glory, I’d go to-morrow. But I can’t. I’ve put too much money into this place; I can’t let it drop.”
“But if you’re so unhappy?”
He said nobly, “It doesn’t much matter about me; I’m an old fellow—I’ve had my whack. I don’t mind if only you could get some fun.”
She looked away over the bright panorama of the Ghoomri—the little white-sailed boats flitting up and down, the rich islands carpeted with sugar-canes that looked like forests of giant grass. Her thought was, “He thinks he means it, so perhaps he really does.” She said:
“I don’t get very much fun here.”
Lafauce lit a cheroot. “I know you don’t, darling. It’s not my fault—I can’t create people where they don’t exist. Once upon a time there was life in this place. Now it’s gone flat and dead like everything else in the country. Every fellow they send here is more of a stick than the last. Simmons—Chalk—Knight——” He linked arms and strolled on again.
“You see, darling, when I brought you out, I hoped you’d marry. There were a few bright people in Sikkal even then——”
She remembered some of them: an Oxford Assistant Collector with a gift for rudeness that amounted to genius; a penniless young man in a Bank; a boy in the Forests who had turned out to be secretly and astonishingly married to a Spaniard. What a selection! . . . She said suddenly:
“I could get married now.”
He was momentarily startled. “Who?”
“Boy Sealing. He’s always asking me.”
“Oh, Boy Sealing!” He gestured impatiently. “Impossible. You don’t want to marry him anyway.”
She said dutifully, “No.” But did she or didn’t she? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. What would Boy—or any man—expect of his wife? What did married people do? Babies of course—but how?
Lafauce was pursuing his own thoughts: rather unfortunately he voiced them aloud. “I couldn’t leave you married to Boy Sealing. I should have to stay and look after you. No, no. Never do. Never.”
Suddenly, as clear as the light on Ghoomri, Glory saw into her father’s heart, and was terrified at what she saw. “He doesn’t want to go home with me,” she saw, “he wants to get rid of me. To ‘leave me married’—that’s what he wants: to marry me off nicely to somebody out here and then away to Guernsey and sit and mope there by himself. That’s what it is; I amn’t wanted any longer, I amn’t any pleasure to him or any use; he just wants to get rid of me and go.”
She looked down over the shining Ghoomri and for a moment her eyes blurred. Poor little Glory, she thought. Then they cleared with resolve. Boy, Boy—there lay salvation. She would run away with Boy next time he asked her; if he didn’t ask her she would make him. Up the Ghats, faster, faster in terror of pursuit, in terror lest the rocks should, fall; then at last a little house on a coffee-garden. Lamps, a fire, a cosy room. “Come, darling “ . . . She shook herself awake.
“Cheer up, Daddy—something may happen.”
“Nothing’ll happen. The country’s ruined. Natives everywhere. These new Acts they talk about—Municipalities and what not. That fellow Ripon’s crazy.” He suffered himself to be led back to the bullock-coach dilating on the ruin of India.
Glory hardly heard him. Flight up the Ghats, flight to Boy? Yes, but then, what next? What did people do when they were married? Nobody told and the books were useless and eager-eyed women talking together said, “S-sh! Here comes Miss Lafauce.” The Bible was simply exasperating. “Adam knew Eve his wife”: knew her? How? Why? Hadn’t he known her all along? If only one could find out—without of course actually experiencing . . . even with actually experiencing. “I’ll try,” she thought. “I must marry; if not Boy, then somebody else. He shall get rid of me. . . .”
Ross Cowal spent that evening at a strange house. In the late afternoon Lobo had appeared at Somappa’s jetty, jauntily dressed and flourishing a rattan, the complete bounder with his black moustache and his shifting eyes and his flash diamond.
“I got that girl for you, Mister. You better come and see.”
Disliking him more than ever, Ross said, “Where?”
“Old Piedade Sequeira’s daughter.”
“Who’s he?”
Lobo spat, clearing his throat noisily. “He’s nobody. He was a clerk in the Collectorate. Now he just boozes.”
“I see.” Ross reached for his coat. “Well, come on. Had I better take some money with me?”
“No; bring a bottle of brandy.” Lobo laughed unpleasantly. “If old Piedade isn’t drunk already we’ll make him so-o drunk he won’t know himself.”
Ross sent a boy for the brandy and excused himself from further conversation on the plea of work. “You’re a bad chap,” he thought—“rotten. Once I take on the girl—if I take on the girl—I’ll have no more to do with you.” Lobo, smoking and smiling, watched him with a steady stare.
The boy returned with the brandy and Lobo led the way through by-streets to a small house standing in a patch of vegetables somewhere below Mount Pisgah. His assault on the rickety door drew forth a blear-eyed unshaven wreck of a man in a shirt and dhoti who licked his lips and fawned on Lobo. Lobo looked as if he would kick him.
“Now then, Piedade, we didn’t come to see your pretty face. Where’s the girl?”
Sequeira, cringing horribly, called some words into the house and immediately a girl came out and stood before them. Uncomfortable and hating the whole affair, Ross was suddenly reminded of a picture that hung in the Moir Orphanage’s dining-hall—grim-looking men bargaining over one or other of the Old Testament unfortunates. There they stood, Lobo and himself, gloating and appraising while Sequeira writhed in the background. But the girl, he saw, was fine; eighteen—perhaps less; tall for an Indian and fair; erect and shapely; she looked kind, sensible, decent. She wore a white blouse and a short dark-blue skirt; her legs were bare and her small feet were encased in little black slippers with turned-up toes, Mohammedan-fashion. The blouse made a ring at the base of her really beautiful throat; under her short sleeves were round soft capable arms. Her black hair was tied with a ribbon at the back—where a Hindu girl would have worn a bunch of flowers; her face was an oval, her features regular. Out of it immense eyes fastened on Ross anxiously rather than greedily—huge eyes dark as they were deep, intelligent eyes, living. They shamed him suddenly and he looked away, detesting the transaction more and more; a girl like this—she wasn’t just a plaything, just a convenience. Unlike most Indian women in the presence of a European, she stared up at Ross frankly, expectantly. Her eyes waited his decision with a steady attentive patience.
Lobo broke in. “Go on. She knows to speak a little English. Say something. Don’t stand looking her.”
Ross found his lips dry; under the resignation of those watchful eyes it was difficult to find speech. He said:
“What is your name?”
“Coaces.” She pronounced it in the Portuguese manner—almost exactly like “possess” with a slightly lengthened “o.”
“Will ye come with me, Coaces?”
She said nothing. Lobo broke in again. “No good asking her that. She’s been told she’s got to.”
The girl said something to Lobo in Tulu. Lobo replied and burst into his ugly laugh.
“What was that?” Ross was annoyed.
“She says will you give her a sari. I said wait till—something’s happened.” He spoke again to the girl roughly. “I’m telling her you may not take her at all.”
“Well, I don’t know if I will.” There was something about those wistful eyes, something frightening, something that transformed the whole thing from a business transaction, a careless adventure, into a rape, a sacrilege. This virgin creature with her eyes! Why couldn’t Lobo have found something more sophisticated, more experienced?
“Well, we’ll go and come,” said Lobo. “Give the old chap his brandy.”
A trembling hand reached out for the bottle with its label of staring gold-and-blue. Ross said, “Goodbye, Coaces.” Her eyes still watching him, waiting for him, she said, in two words, “Good; bye.”
Outside in the lane Ross shook off Lobo and tramped away up Mount Pisgah. Half-way up, he met a bullock-coach descending and moved to one side to give it passage. Looking up suddenly, he looked into a girl’s face, sunlit, framed to perfection in the bullock-coach window, pale under an aureole of gloriously coloured hair; it looked back at him as if he were dirt in the street—cold, vacant, disdainful. He stared at the girl, he stared into her, giving her the full battery of his dark eyes; she moved not an eyelash, but stared at him unseeing, expressionless, as if he did not exist—say rather as if he were something which existed but she would rather not see, as if—as if he were a native squatting at the roadside the way they did. In the dusk Ross felt hot blood—partly excitement, partly anger—mount into his face; the bullock-coach rattled and jangled by. Willy-nilly, he stood looking after it.
“That was Lafauce,” he thought. “And that was the daughter. . . . And ye don’t look at me like that, Miss Gloriette, and don’t ye think it!” Absurdly moved, absurdly angry, he stood shaking in the road. “Little princess, eh? Maybe I’ll show ye!”
From the coach Lafauce had seen the bold eyes under the jaunty Terai hat, the tall, well-set-up figure standing politely aside. He said, “Who was that fellow?”
Glory was uninterested. “How should I know, Daddy? Some planter, I suppose.” And she thought again of Boy and the little house.
Lafauce yawned. “He’s a good-looking chap anyway. I must find out.” But almost at once he forgot all about it.
The night came down on Sikkal with a dying breeze, with stars and the echo of bazaar music. Ross, in his loft at Somappa’s, lay awake staring at two faces—the one dark and oval with attentive watchful imploring eyes; the other a lovely fair thing that looked at him as if he were something it saw only because it must and until such time as it could look away. Tossing and turning, hot and sleepless, he lay and considered the two faces. “I can get the dark one,” he thought; “I want the other. By God, I want her; I’d like to take her and break her; I’ll teach her to look at me like that.” As the night advanced desire—the fire lit by Glory, not by Coaces—became an intolerable oppression; he tossed in miserable discomfort. Halfway to morning he made up his mind. “I’ll take that girl of Lobo’s on. I can’t go on like this. I must get what I can: I’ll have her.” He got up, soused his head with cold water and at last slept.
In the same night Coaces knelt under her crude coloured picture of the Sacred Heart and prayed. When Ross had turned away undecided and saying “Good-bye, Coaces,” she had been desperate; she could have run after him screaming; only centuries of inbred tradition prevented her. Now, her hair loosed, her great eyes gazing at her foolish picture, she prayed and prayed.
“Oh Jesus, oh kind Jesus, let him take me. Oh, St. Joseph, let him take me. Oh, blessed Saint Antony, let me have that lovely man!”
And in the same night Glory wept into her scented lace-edged pillow because her father wanted to get rid of her; because nobody loved her but Boy Sealing; because she loved Boy and she didn’t love him; because the Judge’s party had been awful. . . .
But Piedade Sequeira snored in his verandah in unlovely semi-nudity, the empty brandy-bottle by his side. The moonlight, peeping through the lattice, rested on his destroyed face, his open black-lipped mouth. There he lay, remotely undesirous of either man or woman. Whoever was satisfied or dissatisfied, he at least had his price and he had it in a place where nobody could take it away from him.
Lobo had been right about the exercise. Ross knew himself a man of great physical strength and was proud of it; but this possession had its drawbacks as well. It demanded constant activity, constant withdrawal of the force, constant “taking it out of himself.” Otherwise black tempers or sleepless tormented nights ensued. Every morning in Somappa’s loft Ross went through a schedule of exercises, every evening he walked his hardest, twice a week or so he went to see Coaces in the little house where he had installed her. But all this was not enough; he was driven, early in the New Year, to the cricket. There, partly by inevitable chance and partly by intention, he met Lafauce.
He met him under fortunate circumstances—a Pongal Holiday match with a team from Hemmansur, where Ross, on Lobo’s recommendation, was pressed into the “Station” team to fill a last-moment defection. Caring little or nothing how he acquitted himself, he proved unwontedly successful. He held a good catch in the deep field and made a slogging thirty-seven that did much to ensure the “Station’s” victory. At the close of the game Lafauce came up to him absurdly elated. The “Station” won eight out of every ten matches it played—principally owing to his own fine batting and bowling, which were in a class of their own—but every victory was to Lafauce like the fresh discovery of treasure. He shook hands warmly.
“How is it we haven’t seen you before?”
“I’ve not been here very long.”
“Well, I hope you will be here much longer. Who are you with—Neill Brothers?”
“No. Somappa.”
“Somappa!” Lafauce was clearly staggered, but his good breeding came to his rescue. “Indeed; indeed. How very interesting. . . . Come and be introduced to my daughter.”
Ross, immense and sable in his white shirt and ducks, followed him to the shade of a tent where Glory in pale green muslin sat alone on an uncomfortable chair. “Glory darling, this is Mr.—Mr.—er——”
“Cowal.”
“Mr. Cowal. Someone new to the station at last.”
She bowed and said “How-do-you-do?” Looking again into the face that had so troubled his nights Ross saw that much of what he had taken for disdain was merely weariness. The girl was tired, bored, only half-alive. “We’ll alter all that,” he thought.
Lafauce had bustled away. No conversationalist, Ross could only say:
“Do you like cricket, Miss Lafauce?”
“I hate it.”
Ross smiled. “Me too.”
“But you at least play. I only sit and watch.”
The subject seemed slain. He tried again.
“Have ye been long in Sikkal?”
“Centuries.”
The unpromising conversation perished; Lafauce came back. “Glory darling, we must be going. I asked Knight to come round at six. . . . Look here”—he turned to Ross—“come in and take pot-luck with us to-night. We’re alone.”
Ross was surprised and not a little gratified by the invitation. He did not know his Lafauce; had a leper in the infectious stages scored thirty-seven for the “Station,” Lafauce would have bidden him to dinner, asking no questions. Ready to accept—but a little grudgingly if possible—Ross was perversely anxious to be invited by Glory as well. As she made no move he said:
“Maybe Miss Lafauce is tired.”
She said primly and with complete uninterest, “Of course not. We shall be very pleased to see you.”
Still he hesitated. “Will it be evening dress?”
“Hasn’t got any,” thought Lafauce. “I’m afraid he’s a cad.” Aloud he waved the objection away. “Not to-night. We shan’t be dressing ourselves tonight.” Ross knew it for a lie—Lafauce, according to Lobo, who made a grievance of it, dressed meticulously every night of the year—but there was no more to be said. He accepted.
At dinner Lafauce was garrulous as usual and charming; Glory sat mostly in silence and in thought. On their return from the cricket she had found Boy Sealing in the drawing-room and had endured half-an-hour of his “Let me, Glo, please let me.” Always asking, never attempting, he bored her to vexation. He said nothing to-night about her running away with him and, not altogether to her surprise, she found her new resolve to make him say it suddenly flat and listless. The conversation had followed the lines of a dozen—a score—of its predecessors: “Please, Glo, please”; “No, Boy, no.” He had jangled away in his coach depressed and pensive and she had gone to her bath, tired out with everything, seeking only something new. Now, in the touch of this stranger’s hand when he came in, in his dark eyes across the bowl of floating temple-flowers in the middle of the table, in his watchful, arresting presence she began to find it. They had nothing in common; his talk showed him underbred, ill-read, ignorant; she disliked his hard Scots voice, his forthright literal talk; but he was vital, vital. The touch of his hand had given her a little thrill; the mere sight of him eating his way through the Torteval dinner put amazing thoughts in her head. She found him handsome, splendid. She thought, he must be frightfully strong. She thought, suppose he took hold of one——
Lafauce asked him how he had come to ally himself with Somappa. Ross laughed.
“I think it was because he saw me having a bathe.” He told the story amusingly, making fun of his own embarrassment. “He liked the look of me, I suppose. I liked him. Anyway, there was nothing else to do.”
“He’s a muddler,” said Lafauce.
“He’s a muddler right enough. But he’s kind. He’s a decent wee soul. I like him fine.”
“Loyal,” Glory thought, “I like that.” And instantly came the appalling thought, “I wish I could have seen him like Somappa did; he must have looked like a god. I wish I could see him like that now.” Dismayed, she hastily got up; the dessert was on the table. “I’ll go now, Dad.”
Ross was on his feet instantly. “We’ll be seeing you later on?”
“I don’t think so; I’m tired; if you will excuse me——”
In her room she undressed slowly; she stood a long time in front of one of her long glasses in her chemise and her long white drawers. She had an extraordinary temptation to strip these too and gaze at herself as she really was; then, terrified again, she hastily slipped the chemise from her shoulders, threw her nightgown over her head and jumped into bed. But she lay a long time with her heart beating, saying to herself, “What has become of me? Whatever am I doing?”
Masking his disappointment, Ross sat long with Lafauce. Lafauce was hospitable in the extreme, disguising skilfully his appalled miscomprehension of a man who could call a native “decent.”
“Try this Madeira; you’ll find it good. Madeira’s the only wine, you know, that improves with a sea voyage.”
“Thank ye. Could I take a whiskey instead?”
“By all means, by all means.” He called back the boy. Ross said apologetically, “I know where I am with whiskey.” “Quite right,” said Lafauce. “Quite right.” But he thought Ross a barbarian, he was—unreasonably, he admitted—disappointed in him. With the dessert and the coffee Lafauce liked to talk books, but Ross knew no books and wanted to talk about the tile trade. Lafauce detested shop at mealtimes; the Collector and the Judge indulged in it habitually and interminably, and as for Colonel Knight, he simply spread the entrails of the District about your dinner-table. Now tiles, tiles, tiles; as if we didn’t have enough of tiles six days a week and eight hours in the day. . . . Still, his advice was being asked; he felt flattered; and the young man was keen, keen as mustard, and able—if he mistook not—more than able. But the conversation flagged; there was a silence; Lafauce caught himself in the frightful solecism of a yawn. Hastily he asked:
“What are you thinking of?”
“That thing.” Ross pointed upwards at the huge whitewashed ceiling-cloth that lay above their heads the length and breadth of the room, pressing down upon them like a great white cloud. Lafauce affected interest, wondering privately if his guest were becoming a little drunk.
“Oh, the ceiling-cloth. Horrid, aren’t they? But we must have them.”
“Why?”
Patiently the bored host explained. Roof-tiles were not sufficient to keep out the sun and sometimes even the rain; an inner lining of bamboo matting or wood was essential; in the space between this lining and the roof-tiles rats, bats, birds, all manner of creatures took up their abodes; all manner of substances were therefore liable to fall on those below. Hence the ceiling-cloth—unpleasant but necessary. Of course it was disagreeable to think of the accumulated dirt behind the ceiling-cloth, but then wasn’t so much in India like that? Better a ceiling-cloth and appearances maintained than the crudities the East dealt out so blandly. Out of the ceiling-cloth, its use and functions, Lafauce made a neat little dissertation on the advantages of self-deceit.
Ross missed it; he was thinking—necessary evil? they’re not necessary at all. You could have a thin kind of under-tile—a ceiling-tile—where the wood or matting is, that wouldn’t let any dirt through and beasts couldn’t eat it. Think of the extra light and air—and think of the number of ceiling-tiles you would sell.
From the dinner-table, to Lafauce’s relief, he took his leave. Lafauce shook him warmly by the hand and asked him to come again; then he sought a long chair, a brandy-and-soda and a book. But the book fell from his hand and he lay smoking and thinking about his queer guest. “Young savage,” he thought, “but I’m impressed by him; he’s deadly dull, but he’s in earnest, he’s got stuff in him. He means to get on. He means to get on; I mean to get out. . . .” He lay idly in his chair, playing with ideas.
In Ross too ideas surged as he walked down the hill. The unaccustomed whiskey had warmed him, set his mind racing; he was wide awake, his thoughts ran rolling on. Ceiling-cloths; ceiling-tiles. Money in that. And the extraordinary thing Lafauce had said—Lafauce, having met him for the first time only that afternoon. He had said—there was no doubt about it—he had said in bidding him good-bye, “I wish I had you working for me.” Maybe he meant it, maybe not: either way vistas opened out of it indeed.
Half-way down the hill his steps flagged; he turned left, right, then left again into a well-known lane. Kotru, the little servant-girl he had engaged, was snoring, on the pial, completely enveloped in a blanket; he shook her awake. “Get up and tell mistress; get up, lazy girl.” He could say all that now in Tulu. But Coaces had heard; her soft rich voice came to him out of the darkness, saying in Tulu, “Come, beloved lord; come, golden one; come!” He pushed into the little room, bending nearly double to avoid the low door; it smelt of musk, marigold and incense; in the dim light of a wick lamp burning in a recess he saw his girl. Ceiling-cloths, ceiling-tiles fled out of his mind; he forgot Lafauce, Glory, work, prospects, ambition. Warm arms, a girl you could get when you needed her; who wanted more?
Very early in the morning he awoke and got up and left the house. The house had been his own idea; to Lobo’s sneering “What you want with a house; you can get the girl any time at Piedade’s?” he had replied, “That’s my business.” Determined to put Coaces in a house of her own, he had got rid of Lobo and found the house—quite easily—through Somappa. Somappa was completely comprehending; his suave approval seemed almost to rationalise the affair. “So you have taken one girl, eh? That is very nice. All big gentlemans taking one nice girl.” He was deeply, indeed embarrassingly interested; he demanded the ultimate anatomical detail about Coaces. But he arranged the house at a rent staggeringly low even for that miserable little place.
Outside it Ross now stood in the windless dusk before dawn. A mere hut it was, with two rooms—a living-room in front and a tiny bathing-room behind; a hovel of a place, yet there had been happiness in it; if not quite love, then something amazingly and unexpectedly near it. Sighing, he looked round him and listened. An old moon was lumbering homewards in the west, spent and dissolute, caught like a toper by the advancing day; there was a pandemonium of cocks and dogs; from above, the crashing rattle of a string of carts trundling downhill into the town. It was cold and still with a strange blue-grey light where the east might be. Restless still with energy, Ross took the steep path up the side of Pisgah; almost as soon as he had started, it seemed he stood on the summit. There the immensity and the stillness were frightening; the moon was macabre; the constellations were all wrong; they stood on their heads, they were contorted into sinister malformations. But there was red now in the east. He walked to the edge, and seating himself on a laterite block looked down on Ghoomri. At first he looked into a well of darkness; then the river began to shine, first silver, then grey, then steely blue. Then suddenly crowding from all sides, the details of the landscape began to gather; they rushed into their places like an army forming on parade. The east reddened, reddened, burst into flame as the sun suddenly swung himself over the distant crests of Simbri. The sinister constellations vanished, the macabre moon became a ghost; the sun came striding into his own.
“That’s my sun rising,” thought Ross. “That’s me.”
It was on the 15th of March, 1883, that Ross Cowal formally asked Lafauce for permission to pay court to his daughter, and in the interval things had moved to such an extent that Lafauce gave it willingly. As was his habit, he added something insincerely pleasant for the sake of saying it.
“If she’s as pleased with you as I am she won’t keep you waiting. Good luck, my boy!”
Ross’s mouth hardened into a line. “I don’t suppose she’ll keep me waiting.”
By this time he had been working in the Torteval factory over eight months. It was the ceiling-tiles, after all, that had done it; the idea (over which Somappa had merely grinned and spat betel) had fired Lafauce like the discovery of a jewel. He had put an arm round Ross’s shoulders and said, “Come in, my boy, and make them; come in and show us how.” Ross, despising him a little, had said, “I must ask Somappa”; and to Lafauce’s lifting eyebrows—for who in his senses would bother one way or another about a stupid old Billava?—“He’s been decent to me. I’ll not fail him.” But Somappa had borne no malice, had received the announcement with Oriental impassivity; perhaps he was already regretting that impetuous offer of a hundred a month. He said only, “Now you will be big Club gentleman, eh?” and added in Tulu with genuine sadness, “Now you will forget Hebbale Somappa.” Ross had answered, “Never! Never that,” and in fact he had gone to see Somappa once a week ever since. There they sat in Somappa’s yard among the stacked bamboos and stinking gunny-bags of Somappa’s miscellaneous trade, smoking strong beedis and talking Tulu; and Ross never knew whether Somappa regretted his manager or not.
Lafauce had trebled Ross’s pay, but the Torteval works had proved almost as disappointing as poor Somappa’s. Again one saw so clearly the obvious reforms, again one pointed them out and again one was gently brushed aside. Eight months making ceiling-tiles at Torteval revealed his employer to Ross and through him his daughter. Lafauce yearned, pined, perished to get away; he was coming to the stage when he would care nothing for the fate of his nearest and dearest so long as he was able to make a decent retreat with the flag of appearances flying. Glory sought less even than that; she wanted nothing at all, would acquiesce in anything. “She’ll do what she’s told,” Ross thought, realising thus early that he would have no use for a wife who would not obey. “Maybe that’s as well.” Glory had faded a little in the past year; she was more listless, more openly discontented, more bitterly bored with the endless unresulting importunities of Boy. Boy was futile; this new man perhaps wasn’t; either way she seemed caught in a trap. Lafauce, forgetting her a good deal, drifted deeper into a swamp of cynical apathy; everything’s gone to the devil, but why worry, why strive? . . . But the ceiling-tiles were a success from the first; they sold and sold; if Lafauce had had the wit to patent them they would have made him a fortune.
At Torteval Ross contrived one or two minor improvements, but, as he constantly told Lafauce, there was no use in tinkering with the place as it stood; the situation was hopelessly bad and the only cure was to scrap the entire factory and rebuild on the proper side of the hill. The North Creek was silting and narrowing with every season; quite small boats found difficulty now in getting up it—and that after a monsoon prolific in rainfall, making up for its predecessor’s drought. Worse still, the sheds stood a hundred feet above the creek; the pitch of the ground made a trolley-line impossible, and every tile must needs be carried down by coolie headload. Large-scale improvements on such premises would be a waste of money—and without large-scale improvements there was no money in the business. Ross harped on it again and again, hammering at Lafauce’s cynical smile; the profit on tile-making was sound and certain, but it was small—say, fifteen rupees on an average thousand tiles; and what use was Torteval with its output of two or three thousand a day? With ten times that output one might begin to talk. Patiently Ross laboured his theme; but Lafauce, lying in a long chair and capering with his eyebrows, would only answer:
“My dear young Ross!”
Ross would struggle with him. “Well, make a start. Have a try. Get a steam-engine. Put in proper pug-mills. We can always shift them when—if—we move.”
“My dear young Ross!”
“Let’s try coal-firing. We’ll get an evener bake that way. We’ll——”
“My dear young Ross!”
“Let’s do something to stop all this swindling and cheating that’s going on all round. We’re paying for ten boatloads of clay where we’re getting eight. The firewood contractor’s doing us. Every other coolie in the place is taking a tile or two every day. I know. Somappa told me. How does he know? Because he’s buying them, of course.” Sometimes he would be almost frantic; but Lafauce would shrug elegantly and say:
“What can I do? It’s the country.”
“It isn’t. It’s Lobo. You can sack Lobo.”
“My dear young Ross!”
No, Lobo was far too good a cricketer to be sacked. And Lobo knew it and made life as unpleasant for Ross Cowal as he could.
But as he said to his fat wife, admiring him at his second brandy, “It’s the girl that’ll beat us. It’s there we’ll stick. I can’t marry Missy, can I?”
Lafauce and Gloriette walked together on Scandal Hill; they walked from the coach turning-place almost as far as the devil’s temple. There Lafauce, inclining his handsome face towards her while the wind played in his fine hair, said:
“Glory darling, how much do you like young Ross?”
Glory felt her heart begin to beat; what was she to reply? She didn’t know. Part of her would have replied—“Not at all, not the least; I dislike him; I’ve nothing in common with him; he’s rough, hard, unkind, underbred, untrained; he’s a boor. I don’t know him, I never should.” And part would have said, if it had dared to speak—“Dreadfully; that’s the only word for it—dreadfully; there are times when I see his face in profile when I feel almost desperate; there are times when he touches me that I thrill through and through; there are times when I’d bow down and be his slave.” Obliged now to make some reasonable reply, she fell back on the useless non-committal:
“I like him.”
(“Fool!” she thought, “whatever you do, you don’t like him.”)
Lafauce said, “I’m glad.” They walked another fifty yards and he said, “Do you know why, darling?”
She didn’t know why.
“Because he’s just told me he wants to ask you to marry him. And—now, listen, Glory, dear——”
He launched into a lengthy exegesis which he had obviously been preparing for some time. She was to tell him the absolute truth . . . she was to be in no sort of hurry . . . to think entirely for herself . . . never to think of him . . . her own happiness, her own future. Interrupting him in the midst of it, she said flatly, looking away out over the blue and gold of the Ghoomri:
“I’ll marry him if he asks me.”
Lafauce was taken aback. The words were all he could have wished, but the tone was more than disquieting. She said it as if she didn’t care one way or another, as if it were no great matter. He wondered for an instant, “Does she know what she’s taking on? Does she know what marriage implies? Could I ask her?” He decided instantly that he couldn’t. Too difficult again.
He said instead, “Then you’ve thought about it?”
“Sometimes. I can see he—likes me.” That idiot word again! Yes, when those dark eyes looked down into hers, when he leant towards her till something in her almost swooned with expectation, then she could see that he—certainly did not “like” her.
“You—you could go and live with him, Glory?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Always?”
That was a little more difficult; if only one knew. But she supposed that if you could live with a man at all you could live with him always. Wives apparently did; Mrs. Simmons had been married fifteen years, Mrs. Chalk twelve, Mrs. Knight eight. . . . But then what did it mean? They said “So-and-so slept with So-and-so “; but it couldn’t be just sleeping. . . . She said brightly:
“Oh, yes.”
They walked a hundred yards without speech. Lafauce was puzzled; there should have been blushes, pretty maiden confusions—or furious resistance; anything rather than this calm sunny acquiescence. If he had asked her, “Will you sew a button on my trousers?” her answer might have been in words and tone identical. “Oh, yes.” “I ought to probe this,” he thought, but—oh, Lord! Cowardice, indolence, apathy laid hold of him. You’ve got what you wanted, they said; you’ve had your answer; take it at face value; girls are queer creatures these days; you never knew this one very well, you’ll get nothing out of her now. Lafauce gave it up. With the pleasant gesture that always came so easily to him, he put his arm round her shoulder and kissed her cheek.
“Dear little Glory, you’re a good girl. You’ve made me very happy about you.”
“Yes,” she thought—“I’ve done that. Torteval will be all right; I’ll be all right; now for Guernsey.” She mustered a smile to hide her dislike of him.
“Mr. Cowal hasn’t asked me yet.”
He kissed her again. “There’s not much doubt about that.”
Walking back in another silence, Lafauce reflected guiltily that he had spoken those last words with unnatural heartiness; he ought to have said something conventional about a father’s regret, about missing her. But then he felt no regrets; and in solemn truth, he wouldn’t really miss her very much. Toying with this phrase and with that, he gave it up again and uttered none of them. It was unsatisfactory; but—let it go. By the time they had regained the bullock-coach he had forgotten all about it and was talking of his plan to lay out a golf-course on Mount Pisgah.
“And the third, you see, Glory, would be on the top of that little rise, rather a difficult brown to get on to——”
She said, “Yes, Dad,” and with exactly the same flat polite intonation: but he did not notice it, because this time he was really interested himself.
At Torteval, to make things no easier, they found Boy Sealing. Lafauce gave him a hearty greeting and fled, as usual, leaving Glory to cope with him. Boy’s gambits were unaltered.
“Glo, I must talk to you. Come up to the summer-house.”
“No. We can talk here.”
“Please, Glo.”
“No.”
He paced about the room.
“Glo, I heard something in the bazaar. They say—they say you’re going to marry that fellow Cowal.”
They’re pretty quick, she thought; but they always were in the bazaar; telepathy or astrology or magic—they had ways of knowing things in advance. She shifted the cushions to make herself more comfortable.
“Well, perhaps I am.”
He was stricken. “Glo, you can’t.”
“Yes, I can. Quite likely I will.”
“Oh, please, Glo, don’t. Oh, Glo, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake——”
“You needn’t swear at me——”
“I can’t help it. I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s not swearing, the way I say it.” Pulling himself up, he said very solemnly, “Glo, if you do, I’ll die.”
“No you won’t, Boy. You’ll forget all about me.” She began to whimper.
“Don’t do it, Glo; please, please don’t.”
In the midst of her misery she was shot through with fury; at that moment she almost hated him. “You stand there,” she thought, “saying ‘don’t, don’t’; why don’t you say ‘do’ for a change? Why don’t you pick me up and carry me away with you where he can’t get me? Because you can’t, you’re useless like everybody else. And I’m so fond of you, so fond——”
“Glo, you love me really. You do.”
“Yes, Boy, yes.” She wept outright; at that moment she was sure of it.
“Then why—why——”
“Oh, I can’t tell you; I don’t know; it’s no good; you wouldn’t understand.”
He threw himself on his knees beside her, flung his arms about her where she sat; his hand rested at long last on her breast. But the touch meant nothing to her; it was no more than when her father put his arm round her or when she sat interlaced with another girl. He had no power, no magic. If it had been Ross——
“Glo, darling Glo, say it again. Say again you love me.”
“I do, Boy; I do. But it’s no good.”
He kissed her cheek—or she thought he did; there was nothing in it; only kindness.
“Then it’s all right. Then you can’t marry that other fellow.”
Weeping, she shook her head, leaving him to make what he could of it. Somehow, sometime, he went away.
While the room darkened she sat and thought. Once her father called through from the library, and she called back, “All right, Dad; Boy’s gone.” Squirrels leapt from the chicks and ran about the verandah squeaking shrilly; encouraged by the dusk and silence they scampered with a queer noise over the wooden drawing-room floor. It grew darker and darker. She thought, “I love Boy—or I think I do; I want to be kind to him; I’d give him anything he wanted. But he’s a broken reed, he’s no use.” They were saying in the bazaars—where they always knew—that his debts were mounting, his tote was going from bad to worse; he was feckless, incompetent, they even said he was starting to drink—and if he once started that it would have him. Drink was a devil too big for Boys to play with. Yet she felt fond of him; if he said, come and live in my house, she could do it. And then suddenly she thought of Ross’s dark skin—dark and tanned on his face and hands; white, so white, where the sun had not touched it; she thought of the grim set of his mouth, his heavy commanding eyes; of the crisp black hair above and in front of his ears.
She felt fond of Boy, kind to him; she would give him anything he wanted. She disliked Ross, he was her enemy; but she would give him what he wanted too. “And if I gave to Boy,” she thought, “it would be just giving; but if I gave to Ross I would get in return—oh, what would I get?”
She thought once more, “If I only knew about these things. If anybody had ever told me. If there were anybody I could ask. What will he want of me? I don’t know anything.”
In the darkened room she sat crying, disconsolate, helpless.
Ross made his proposal of marriage with calm deliberation, and was accepted in the same spirit; it was less a love-scene than a business deal. Having made it and heard himself accepted, he said to Gloriette:
“How soon will you be ready?”
“Any time.”
“Then we’ll not need to wait. What say ye to a month?”
“Yes; I could do that.”
It was like two people arranging delivery of a consignment of tiles. Yet at the end, her kiss was more eager than his; her lips opened a little, clung a little, were loath to go.
But a week later Ross came home at dusk from a long walk to find the girl Kotru crouching on his doorstep. He lived now in a little ramshackle bungalow in the European quarter not very far from the Collector’s own; he still retained Charlie, but had augmented his staff with a cook and a waterman.
“What’s the matter, Kotru?”
“It is the mistress. She does not eat. She does not get up. She lies on her bed all day. I am afraid.”
Ross said, “I come.” Kotru—her name was the native contraction for Catherine—slipped into the shadows and vanished. Groaning inwardly, Ross took his hat and stick and set out for Bethelkuppam.
In the larger room (or the less minute) in the little house a wick light burned dimly; on the bed Coaces lay on her face, quite naked. Her arms were crossed, her face buried in them, her fine black hair lay over her back. Kotru, whispering in the background, said:
“Like this. All to-day. All yesterday.”
He spoke to her in English.
“Coce! What is it? I’m here.”
A sob shook her small frame, but she made no reply. He sat down on the cot, motioned Kotru away and began to pet her. Without ever acquiring life-and-death importance Coaces, so easily assumed, had come to mean a great deal to him; there was a tenderness between them he had never imagined as a product of sexual love; he relied on her in curious ways; she could soothe and comfort him when all other resources failed. She was obedient, solicitous, understanding. Ever since he had taken her from her sozzled old parent she had been as good as gold; she had never cost him a penny more than he had bargained for—indeed, her running expenses had always been under estimate. She had had her sari and her necklace, her bangles and ear-buttons as she would have had them from her husband on marriage; a veil; a pair of Mohammedan-style slippers in purple velvet for great occasions. In return she had made him shirts, socks, stockings; cooked sudden, delicious meals for him, wrapping the tough fresh bazaar meat in papaw-leaves till it came out tender and edible; taught him the language till now he spoke it well; kept her little house spotless; never, never looked at or thought of another man even when he did not come near her for weeks. In some strange way that was neither wholly passion nor wholly friendship he loved her. Petting her, he said in the soft Tula:
“What is it, little one? What is it, flower? Little dove, what is it?”
She spoke at last. “You will marry. You will marry that doraisani, that Missy.”
So that was it—and not unexpected.
He said, “Yes, Coaces.”
“Why?”
“I must. I want to.”
Two very sound reasons; she did not question them; the tone of his voice was final and she knew it. She turned over suddenly on to her back, took his hand and laid it on her bare breast; her great liquid patiently waiting eyes looked up into his face.
“Always I knew it would come like this. Now no more Coaces.”
He petted the soft warm thing under his hand. “It will make no difference to you. The house is yours. Always.”
“I do not want the house. Not unless you come to see me in it sometimes. Will you ever come?”
Ross considered. Sikkal, a long hundred miles from the railway, isolated in the monsoon for months at a time, retained in some ways the civilisation of a previous era. In Sikkal men still had wives and—women, and either it was done in secret or it was known and connived at by a conspiracy of silence. Lafauce had a woman—a Tiyyan from Malabar, extraordinarily good-looking—who came regularly to the Torteval house; and Glory knew nothing of it. The married Policeman kept a Tulu girl in the Bazaar; they said even Simmons the Judge, that grey old stick who pretended to be so henpecked; they said all planters did it. The iniquitous practice had passed away in most of South India twenty—thirty—years before along with the conditions that gave it a semblance of excuse; in the backwater of Sikkal it persisted. If it was not expressly tolerated, that was only because it was not discussed at all. How much did the white women—the wives—know of it? Some said, nothing at all; some that they knew all about it and acquiesced tacitly so long as it was not too blatantly done. “If I kept on Coaces,” Ross thought, “and came to her sometimes—when Glory was away, when Glory was having babies—I wouldn’t be the only one.”
Stroking the smooth olive skin of her sides, he said: “And if I can’t come, Coaces?”
“Then I die. I drink poison. What else?”
What else? “She’ll do it, too,” he thought, looking into those tragic eyes; “ what am I to say? What can I say but the one thing?”
Coaces read his mind. Staring up at him, laying her hand on him, she said again:
“You will come?”
He said slowly, “Perhaps. Once in a way.” He thought, “I’d be a blackguard to Glory”; but he looked down into Coaces’ dark face and was rent. How avoid being a blackguard to at least one of them?
She said, “It is a promise. You swear it?”
“What need of swearing?”
“Then stay with me to-night.”
“No. I cannot.”
“Then you are lying.” She turned over again in the old attitude; her long smooth back, fair almost as a Spaniard’s, was shaken with sobs.
Sweat stood on Ross’s forehead. A blackguard? One was made a blackguard either way. He cursed himself for coming; he should have written, worked this business through an agent—Somappa, say; a coward’s way, but—cowardice was better than murder. These sobs, that heaving little back, so pretty, so anxious for the feel of his hands, were more than he could endure. “My God,” he thought, “I’ve taken on something here I didn’t bargain for.” “Master getting one girl.” “Sleeping dictionary.” So easily done, so airily. Little Coce! . . . He could bear it no more.
“Stop weeping, flower. I will stay.”
He stayed till midnight; and hardly had the door closed behind him when Coaces was calling wildly for Kotru.
“Kotru! Kotru! Wake! Go and get the snakeman. I will do the snake-puja. Quick!”
Kotru wailed in fear. “Oh, no; oh, blessed Saint Joseph, no!”
“Yes, fool. Go now running. Get the snake-man and a half-measure of milk. A half-measure of good milk. And ghee. I will get the flowers. Oh, footless woman, run!”
While Kotru fluttered through the dark bazaars, Coaces dressed herself, throwing guilty side-glances at the coloured pictures of the saints upon the walls. They did not frown; perhaps they even approved; who knew? And whether they approved or not was no matter; the thing was to be done. Her teeth chattering a little, she thought, “I will do the snake-puja. There is a child made in me this night. I will do the snake-puja and it will be a son. Then I hold him, then he can never leave me.” Unaided she struggled with difficulty into the dark-blue sari that had replaced her girlhood’s skirt and blouse. The saints watched her; but Saint Joseph seemed sheepish, Saint Antony simply looked a fool. What could they do? Nothing.
The snake-man was found; half-awake, still a little drunk from an overnight orgy, he came; old, toothless, doting, he hardly knew what he said.
“A son. Oh, yes, you shall have a son. A strong son. The Nagas will be good to us. The snake will come. You will see. Bring milk, bring flowers; I will sing my song and the snake-god himself will come to us and you shall have a son. A son. Many sons. Many strong sons.” He maundered on.
“How much?” Even in her extremity Coaces was not going to be cheated. The money was Ross’s money; not to be flung to any swindling pujari.
“Give ten rupees.”
“Ten rupees! What thief language is that? Three rupees.”
“Then I go home. Eight rupees or I go home now.”
“Never. Five rupees; three now and the rest if all goes well.”
But in the end it was settled, and in the starlight of four in the morning the strange little procession set out—the snake-man leading, Coaces next with the flowers, Kotru shivering and muttering in the rear but clutching the bottle of milk. The snake-man jabbered and mouthed the gibberish of his trade, jingling the stick-and-bells he carried; now and then he tapped his mellow little gong. Coaces walked upright, silent, with a set face; it was wickedness, it was heathenish, the good Father would be angry, but—it should be done.
Half-way up the steep side of Pisgah, they came to a huge peepal-tree round whose base the snake-stones stood up dimly like graves in a churchyard. Kotru was crossing herself and muttering fervent prayers in the background; but Coaces took the saucer and poured the milk with a steady hand. Far away an early cock crew; the flying foxes stirred and flapped in the tree above them; there was a suspicion of radiance in the east, a sense of day.
The old man, muttering and singing and occasionally hiccuping, settled down at last to his business. He rang his bells, he tapped his gong and it gave out its note, strangely powerful, strangely sweet. He walked round the tree; he crawled round it extended at full length on his hands and toes, beating his forehead at intervals on the ground. He took substances from his cloth and made yellow and purple daubs on either side of the cavity between two great roots; he poured some milk over the deserted white-ants’ nest that guarded them, daubed it also, hung it with flowers, scattered blossoms in front of it. Ever so faintly the light waxed; the white milk in the saucer shone like silver where the old man had placed it deep amongst the roots. He lay now flat on his face, his clasped hands thrust forward towards the tree; he muttered into the ground. Kotru shivered from head to foot; but Coaces sat still as marble. Faintly, faintly the light improved.
In the deep greyness of the roots something paler moved; fainter, far fainter than the stir of the flying foxes arose the sound of hissing. The old man stiffened into silence and rigidity; even Kotru stopped shivering. In the dead, dead silence that greyness within the grey moved forward with a curious looping dancing motion; it hovered; it vanished; it was clearer again; it rose; it sank towards the saucer of milk. The hissing became imperceptible altogether; Coaces, shuddering for the first time, saw a pair of hard bright little eyes. Then in the dead, dead silence the cobra was drinking the milk.
A son! A son!
Glory Lafauce had afterwards but faint recollections of her wedding and her wedding night. She and Ross were married early in the day because they had to face a long cart-journey to a seaside bungalow some ten miles up the coast and at the mouth of yet another river. Lafauce had obtained the Collector’s permission for this bungalow; it was reserved for them for three days, and this was considered a great official concession. But the Collector had been charming about it. “Anything for you, Trevelyan, old boy.” “Good of you, Michael, good of you.” Lobo could have mimicked them without altering a word.
The long unaccustomed journey tired Glory almost to despair. It was April and the sun blazed, and though the breeze was cool off the sea, the matting covers of the carts shut it all away. They had separate carts on the journey and accomplished it with hardly a word exchanged; though most of the way Ross walked just behind her cart, looking at her, she thought, curiously. She dozed a little, whimpered a little. It was dark when they got to the bungalow, but there she had a reviving bath, miraculously hot; the light given by the borrowed lamp was indifferent, but she was thankful for that, undressing for the first time with a man in—or almost in—the room. But the bath in the end made her drowsy; she remembered as in a dream sitting in chairs on the terrace above the whispering sea, eating some kind of lamplit meal, sipping the claret Lafauce had insisted on sending, sitting on the terrace again. Through it all ran the now familiar feelings; the acute physical thrill, the disconcerting mental distaste. Passion, dislike; could one live long years on a blend of these?
But clearly she remembered herself at the last, half undressed again in the lamplit room, throwing herself suddenly upon Ross and wailing out:
“I don’t know anything. I’ve never been told anything. You’ll have to help me. You’ll have to tell me.”
And Ross, rather to her surprise—for was she not being very tiresome to him and very silly?—putting his arm round her bare shoulders and saying, tender to her, kind to her:
“It’s all right, lambie, all right. Take your time. I’ll help ye.”
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
And Trevelyan Lafauce lay in a long chair on the terraced part of the Torteval roof and smoked and drank weak brandy-and-water. Sometimes he thought of that bungalow up the coast and what was being done there; but more often he thought of himself—lying as now in a comfortable chair with a smoke and a drink, but this time on board the P. & O. steamer. His passage was taken; he was installing Ross as manager with full powers; he was getting away at last. He had given Glory Torteval and he was quit of it. After fifteen years of the country he was getting away at last, getting away at last. His heart missed a beat; he thought, “Something will happen at the last moment; there’ll be an accident; something will stop me.” He mixed himself another mild brandy.
Glory would be all right; if Ross failed her she had her own property now—and it was her own too; there was that Married Woman’s Property Act they had just passed, that made all the difference. Ross couldn’t play ducks and drakes with Torteval now. A good fellow, strong as a horse, but a bit of a damned Radical; wanted to move too fast. You had to move slowly in the East, by Gad you had; that was what that Viceroy fellow, What’sisname, couldn’t see. Municipalities! A sudden doubt struck him: did the Married Woman’s Property Act apply in India? God knew. He would have to look it up—get one of those Sikkal vakils on to it. But even as he recorded the intention he knew he was far too indolent, far too tired, ever to carry it out. But Glory would be all right, all right. For a moment he wondered again how they were getting on; then thought back to his P. & O.
A blue sea jagged with rocks; sand beaches under a cliff; the shade and murmur of water-lanes. Herm standing up boldly in the waves; distant Jersey; the crests of Sark. On a really clear day, with a really first-class telescope, you could even see the railing at the Coupée. . . .
His brief honeymoon over and Lafauce packed off to Bombay on the Coast steamer, Ross characteristically put them both out of his mind. There were two things now to be tackled—major things. The first was the shift of the works to the south side of the hill; or rather the erection of complete new works on the flats by the Ghoomri. Lafauce had been warned that this was to be done; he had said several times, “My dear young Ross!” and had then found himself too supine either to oppose or to sanction the plans. On their honeymoon, at the little seaside bungalow, Ross had laid them before Glory, explaining patiently that it would be necessary, in order to find money for the new works, to raise a mortgage on the Torteval property. It was her property, her works, he explained time and again. But he thought he knew where he could get favourable terms (and he did in the end get them, through Somappa). Glory, loving him at that moment as much as she was ever to love him, acquiesced; so much for the Married Woman’s Property Act! Ross repeated his explanations that the property was hers; she could refuse to raise an anna on it. But Glory, listening, was carried away by his enthusiasm; she strove to follow his calculations, intrigued yet puzzled by this hard bright companionative man who took her into his confidence like a business partner. In all the years they had lived together her father had never once spoken to her about the works except to complain that they were killing him—which they manifestly weren’t. Now she began to understand a little of the reason for her father’s unsuccess.
“We’v* been paying one and the same price for good clay, middling clay, rotten clay. We’ve been done over firewood right and left. Every clerk and every maistri’s been taking his little bit somewhere. That’s all got to stop.”
Its stoppage led up to the second of the major items to be tackled—namely, the war with Lobo. Sooner or later that must open; and Ross knew that if he held back long enough, Lobo would fire the first shot. He was anxious to keep Lobo if at all possible; the man knew every contractor, great and small, every Moplah boatman, every agent. The thick-set athletic swaggering brute was immensely admired by the factory labour—almost entirely Billavas. He umpired genially over their queer games of cards and marbles; every Sunday he looked in at the cock-fights of which they were crazily fond. And he was linked with them in a deeper and more sinister business than cock-fighting—he knew all about their devils, the bhutams; he knew about Kalkuti and about Koti Baidya and Chennayya Baidya, the Billava heroes who turned into demons. He knew about Mundattaya and the jungle devils, the Hakkerlu. He could talk to them about these dark matters, he knew the ritual of the sword and the gong and the kepula flowers. He had a strong hold. But he abused it, he treated them brutally, striking, kicking; there was no affection for him—only fear and a physical admiration for his strength and prowess. His fall, if not welcomed, would be at least accepted: it would launch no revolution.
Ross’s policy was justified by the event: Lobo opened the battle by bringing a contract for re-roofing the main office building. Ross threw it back to him.
“No use taking up that now. I’m going to shift round the hill.”
“What! Shift the works? That’s going to cost money, Mister.”
“That’s my business.”
“You can’t build that side. The ground’s too soft. Anything you build, it’ll fall into the Ghoomri.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, that roof’ll have to last out meantime.”
Lobo retired, the poorer by the pickings on at least one contract. But he struck again promptly. He condemned four boatloads of clay from an up-river village; the contractor came whining to Ross. Before his temper cooled, Ross went after Lobo in a fury.
“Don’t you dare to do that again without my orders.”
Lobo said sullenly, “It was bad clay.”
“That’s for me to say.”
“You!” Lobo laughed his ugly laugh. “You couldn’t sort a hundred tiles without getting half of them wrong.”
“Maybe not; but I pay a man who can. And I don’t pay people to give me lip. See?”
Lobo went off grumbling; next time, thought Ross, it’ll come to a head. It did. In the tile-factory the only really expert workers were the sorters; they took the tiles one by one as they came from the kilns, tapped them with a short iron instrument like a skewer and by their degree of resonance sorted them with incredible rapidity into five classes. At the same time they tested the tiles for flaws, chips, bad colouring. It was comparatively responsible work and they were a better class of man, better paid. One of them, a Billava, complained to Ross that Lobo was misbehaving with his wife. Every day the woman brought his meal, always at a time when he was busy sorting; and Lobo, he said, took her behind the firewood stacks. He couldn’t prove it, but he was sure it was happening. Ross knew the native well enough to realise that the story might be a complete lie; but he bided his time, acted on an agreed signal from the sorter, slipped round behind the firewood stacks and—there were Lobo and a woman in dark-blue sari. He shouted; the woman fled like a wraith; Lobo turned at bay.
“What the hell’s this, Lobo?”
“Well, what is it?”
“You don’t do these games here, you dirty hog.”
“Don’t I?”
“No. Any more of this and you go.”
Lobo flamed up.
“I’m a dirty hog, am I? What about you, Mister? What about you and your lady-wife up at Torteval and the little girl down in Bethelkuppam? Think I don’t remember taking you round to old Piedade’s with——” He descended into brutal coarse ness. “Think I don’t know it’s still going on? By God, Mister, suppose I drop a hint up at Torteval——”
Ross sprang on him; they closed. Ross felt the great strength of him; then realised in one glorious second that his own strength was greater. He wrenched himself free and struck Lobo heavily on the face; he felt the thick black moustaches harsh against his knuckles like hitting a coir mat. Lobo fell back; came again. Ross struck out again twice, was struck once in return; then he took Lobo round the waist and with an effort pitched him over the jetty into the dirty waters of the creek. It was over. Lobo, a lion on land, was a terrified rat in the water. He began to squeal horribly.
“I can’t swim. I can’t swim.”
“Drown then, damn you!” said Ross, and turned back to the works. He knew Lobo would not drown; the creek was deep enough, but there were a couple of boats within arm’s length, besides ropes and mooring-poles. Even as he turned away he saw a Moplah boy on one of the boats thrusting an oar towards Lobo, who gripped it. The scurry of feet retreating round the firewood stacks told him there had been many spectators. He Finis!
He right; the war was over. Lobo threatened a criminal case which he never filed; wrote a long abusive letter which Ross tore up unread; and took himself off to Goa, to that brother who had a “nice” business of his own and who was perhaps—or perhaps not—glad to see him.
But Lobo wrote another letter. He wrote it to Glory, and Glory held it in her hand, looking at it as if it were a knife she had just drawn out of a wound in her own body.
For all that he had written its every word, it bore no resemblance to Lobo’s neat script and variegated language. It was a scrawled thing, illiterate, dirty. It opened without heading or preamble.
“Now I am writing Big Mrs. Cowal. Big Mrs. Cowal better go see Little Mrs. Cowal. Little Mrs. Cowal living Bethelkuppam third house after beedi shop.” It was signed in stratchy capitals “GOOD FREIND.”
Glory sat and looked at it, puzzling over her first anonymous letter. She knew quite well what it meant and she had the conviction—whence gathered she could hardly say—that it was true. It meant that somewhere or other in the town—in Bethelkuppam, in fact, just below Pisgah, not so far from their own house—Ross was keeping a native woman. The writer of this horrible letter had known it; and if he or she knew it, so did others.
Well, men had wives—and women. . . . Or their wives thought they did—sometimes almost knew it—and said nothing. Far more knowledgeable than a girl of her years and time would have been in England, Glory was also far vaguer on the ethics of this particular question; she was not outraged; she thought of it with a possibility of tolerance, surviving from an age when such tolerance had been almost the normal. Wives got ill, the climate drove them away for months at a stretch, they had babies; at such times men must do something; thus the easy creed. Since her marriage Glory understood this iniquitous doctrine better—for Ross had been an exacting husband; she believed vaguely as she had been told, that “everybody did it.” In Sikkal anyway and places like Sikkal. Only once had she heard the question discussed; sitting now in the Torteval drawing-room with Lobo’s vile letter in her hand, she remembered a dreary monsoon afternoon of lashing rain, a poky planter’s bungalow and three women talking in undertones round the reeking fire. One of them had said with bitter distinctness, “So long as he doesn’t bring her about the house; so long as I don’t have to see her.” Then there had been nudgings and whisperings and pointings at Glory reading Miss Braddon on the sofa, and “Sh-sh! Gloriette!” And then they had all burst simultaneously into a loud bright talk about tennis.
“So long as he doesn’t bring her about the house. So long as I don’t have to see her.” Well, he didn’t do that; she didn’t have to see Little Mrs. Cowal. . . . Yes, she had. This was a thing that must be faced, investigated, known. “Because if other wives tolerate—that,” thought Glory, “I don’t!”
Ross was nearly always away now from dawn till dusk, working crazily at the lay-out of the new factory, except when he came in to eat a huge hurried midday meal. The early forenoon was her own; no time like the present. She put on her sun-hat and green veil and ordered round the bullock-coach. (Did Ranga, the driver, know? He must—they always did. Well, she could take him down to Ibramjee’s shop, send him away for something and walk from there; it couldn’t be very far.) Oh, Ross! how could you! Yet as she moved down the long easy steps of Torteval, she knew that, whatever it was, she would forgive him. She could do nothing else, whatever it was, for she knew now that she carried within her that which made their union an unbreakable reality. It was the steps that made her think of it—and with a sudden triumph. She was Ross Cowal’s wife and—she was going to be the mother of Ross Cowal’s son. She had known it for some time; lately her mirror told her that others must very soon know it too. Ross had been pleased, more than pleased. With these vast things impending, Little Mrs. Cowal must be a small matter; a small matter to Ross, a small matter to herself. She went down the long steps carefully, proudly.
“Third house after the beedi shop.” She knew Bethelkuppam well enough; a dirty bazaar with its Moplah and Konkani shops; a vast stucco church of Saint Teresa, all frontage and plaster angels; then a succession of little secluded huts standing in the gardens of flowers or vegetables their industrious Christian owners had made. It would be one of these. There was a beedi shop sure enough and an old one-eyed man sitting cross-legged on a trestle in it, almost naked and crooning to himself. One house, two houses, the third house; and a woman working in the neat little garden, a woman in a blue sari, handsome. . . . Coaces saw her coming.
For a moment they eyed one another strangely in the bright sunshine—Glory with a gloved hand trembling on the wicker gate of the garden. Each thought, “This is his other woman; this is the other one.” Glory thought, “She is good-looking.” Coaces thought, “She is pale.” Then Coaces moved forward. She walked well in her little slippers with their turned-up toes—far better than Glory on her heels.
“What do you want?” “Who are you?” The questions were almost simultaneous.
“I am called Coaces Sequeira.” Ross had taught Coaces her English and she rolled her “r”s in the manner of the Scot. Glory heard it, and the tiny detail, so full of significance, turned her suddenly weak. She faltered, “Do you know me?”
“Of course I know. You are Mrs. Cowal. You live Torteval. Often I see.”
Shaking, Glory said, “You know my husband.”
Coaces’ enormous, patient eyes regarded her with solemn attention.
“Yes, memsahib.”
“You must tell me—does he come here?”
Coaces thought, “Must? Must? There is no must.” For a strong moment she was tempted to lie; to say, “Yes! Yes! Daily. Nightly. Always.” Then, looking into Glory’s pale face beneath the unbecoming green veil, she shivered slightly. She would have to tell the truth. If she didn’t he would be angry; and the truth, the bitter truth, was best anyway.
“No. Once he did. Now never.”
Glory’s hand on the gate shook with the strain; inside her, her heart shook with happiness. She told herself she had known it; forgetting in that instant of relief those suspicions that had amounted almost to certainties. How wise she had been to come!
“You are sure of that?”
“Of course. It is true.”
“You swear it?”
Coaces’ firm lips closed, she seemed to grow taller.
“What need to swear? You can ask the dorai.”
“Still, swear.”
“Very well. I swear it by the holy saints Antony and Joseph. I swear it on the Sacred Heart. Now are you pleased?”
Now was she pleased! Not pleased—exalted, beatified. She murmured, “Thank you; I am sorry. Good-bye.” She was turning away when Coaces said suddenly, “Stop!”
Glory halted in her tracks. There she stood in the bright glaring sunlight while those great dark eyes ran over her, into her, through her. She felt naked, worse than naked.
“You will have a baby?”
The pale face under the green veil flamed scarlet; Glory cried, “Oh-h!” and clenching and unclenching her hands she walked away rapidly down the road. The red dust rose about her trailing skirt, her high heels tap-tapped bravely. But Coaces had seen. Doubly now the victory was Glory’s. For on a day of a month now many days back Coaces had known that the snake-puja had failed and she would have no son meantime, no child at all.
As Glory walked away down the road, Coaces ran desperately into the house, the first great tears welling up in her eyes. From her arm she tore off a glass amulet, broke it savagely, threw the pieces on the floor and stamped them almost to powder. She dragged down her magnificent black hair and threw herself face downwards on the bed. There she lay, wailing into the pillow:
“Oh, God, let her baby die. Oh, God, let it die. Oh, blessed Jesus, let me have one too.”
The coloured saints looked down on her, St. Joseph sheepish, St. Antony merely a fool.
Ross Cowal’s eldest son was born on a fine February forenoon of 1884. It was all over very quickly, a matter of an hour or so’s effort; indeed, Ross had little more than time to come up from his work on the new site when he heard that shrill shrieking wail that announces a new being in the world. Knight, still D.M.O. and of course in attendance, was delighted with himself and everybody.
“She’s made for child-bearing. She could have a dozen.”
Ross was pouring out whiskey. “Well, maybe she will. Why not?”
“I’m just telling you there’s no reason. Here’s the boy’s very excellent health.”
“Sons,” said Ross, as if musing aloud, “I could do with a lot of sons. They’d be useful out here. I’m not wanting girls.”
“Girls be damned,” said Knight. He was so pleased with Glory for letting him home in time for tiffin that he would have agreed to anything. “You’ve a splendid wife, Cowal,” he kept saying as he drank. “A splendid wife.”
“I knew that,” said Ross, “when I married her.” “A son,” he was thinking, “and the business—all in a couple of years or so. I haven’t done badly; I’ll do better yet.”
They called the boy David Trevelyan. Ross was indifferent till Glory proposed “Rosslyn Trevelyan,” when he objected that it was too much of a mouthful. They tried it both ways; “Rosslyn Trevelyan Cowal,” “Trevelyan Rosslyn Cowall.” “No,” Ross said. “Let him have my other name; make it David Trevelyan.”
Glory, lying pale in bed with Trevelyan Rosslyn at a swollen breast, demurred. “I never think of you as David. It isn’t your name hardly.”
“It was once. I used to get ‘Davie’ once.”
She laughed till she began coughing. “Davie! That’s silly. You’re Ross.” But she accepted David Trevelyan for the child, and from that moment she began to think of him as Davie. “It’s a soft little name,” she thought. “‘Ross’ is like himself—hard, sharp, strong, commanding. This is my Davie.”
But in his miserable coffee garden up at Sleepy Valley Boy Sealing sat that day with his friend Ranken. Ranken was not sober, but Boy was drunk—with the hard, hunting intoxication of the third day. He raved on to his companion who sat in a chair and impassively smoked. They were friends of long, long standing; they had no secrets from one another.
“You see, Dick, she loved him after all. I never thought she did. Anyway, she let him. I never thought she would. She must have been a bitch to do that. Mustn’t she, Dick?”
Ranken said stolidly that all women were bitches.
“She let him, Dick. She said she loved me, but she let him do it. She let him.”
Ranken puffed on; short of parthenogenesis, she must undoubtedly have let him. All bitches.
“I never thought she would. I never thought it. She maybe had to marry him, but I never thought she’d do that with him. It’s finished me, Dick, old chap—I can’t stand it, I’m going to clear out.”
Ranken sat up at last. “Where to?”
“Anywhere. I’ll go to sea. I’ll go to Bombay.”
“Oh, go to hell! Have another drink and don’t be a bee ass.”
But the next day Boy, shaky and red-eyed, packed a little bundle; and by pony and bullock-coach and on foot he made the long journey down to Sikkal. He had been drinking for days; he knew himself only half-sober yet; sometimes he almost slept; at other times he critically watched himself going along. As at the conclusion of a fixed purpose he found himself, an hour after dark, in the summer-house above Torteval; he had been aiming at this since early morning, striving for it all these hours, but once there his purpose suddenly evaporated and he asked himself miserably why he had come. He didn’t know. Wearily, still only half-conscious of what he was doing, he slipped off his shoes and crept down the side of the house; from the raised garden he looked into Glory’s dressing-room; the curtains stood wide and there was a bright lamp in the room, but it was empty, empty. For a moment he thought of creeping in and abstracting some little personal thing to carry with him on his wanderings—a handkerchief, a glove; then he drew back in a reaction of fright. It wouldn’t do! Too dangerous. Noiselessly he crept along the side of the house and looked sideways down the long perspective of the dining- and drawing-rooms; the dining-room was in darkness, but the drawing-room was lit. Far away, as in a picture or as if one looked down the wrong end of a telescope, he saw Ross and Glory sitting together in the bright light; there was something on the floor beside them—it might be a cradle, it might not. Tears, the tears of hysteria and exhaustion, burst up into Boy’s eyes; a dog began to bark in the servants’ lines; he slithered away down the front garden towards the creek. But he had been noisy; Ross came out on to the verandah; remote, victorious, possessive, he stood high above Boy and shouted “Who’s there? . . . Get to hell out of that.” Blubbering feebly, Boy sat by the creek side and dragged on his shoes. “You hell-hound,” he muttered. “You big black devil. You forced her; I know it now; you forced my Glo. She would never have done it. She loved me, you swine, I tell you.” He stood up in the darkness, shaking his fist like an idiot. “She still loves me, you great black beast. She’ll never love you—never. I’ll be even with you some day!” He moved away along the creek; first doubled up and creeping, then erect, tramping forward with renewed aimless resolution.
The dog stopped barking. Ross went in.
At the beginning of the hot weather of 1886, on the third anniversary of their wedding, Ross sent Glory for her first trip to the Hills. It was a kind act on his part and beyond question Glory needed and deserved a holiday; but kindness and Glory’s needs were not Ross’s primary reasons. He sent her because she had disgraced herself, because she had functioned amiss, because she had betrayed his hopes. She had committed the fearful solecism of producing, as successors to David, first one miserable girl and then another.
The two girls had appeared at what Single, the current Collector, called “the minimum statutory intervals”—in January, 1885, and in January, 1886. Ross had disliked the first and almost hated the second; the poor little wretches had been hustled into the world, met with an exclamation of disappointment and then, for the most part, huddled out of Ross’s way. There they lay, however, squalling and crowing, going on determinedly with their lives, Ross or no Ross. To the question, “What shall we call her?” Ross had replied in either case, “Anything.” Once satisfied that they were indubitably female, he had no further interest in them. Glory, ready and willing to love the little creatures, was damped by Ross’s disinterest; fight against it as she liked, she was forced into secret agreement with his openly proclaimed attitude that they were shameful, didn’t matter. Call them anything. “Anything,” said Glory, “except Gloriette; I don’t think that’s a very lucky name.” Ross had glowered at her. “You’ve got all ye can want—I don’t see where it’s unlucky.” And with very few examples for comparison, Glory supposed she was as well off as most women who married; the world as envisaged from Torteval seemed to hold few treats for females. Worst of all, the little girls were manifestly destined to be plain; for some unknown reason they did not participate in her father’s handsome Lafauce features or her own pastel prettiness or her husband’s swarthy strength; they had unaccountably missed all three, they were a throwback to some hard-featured forbear—perhaps the unknown “Rosslyn” or the unguessed-at “Cowal.” Altogether they were a disheartening pair; and they were christened—the one Susan, the other Jane—casually, hurriedly and almost with shame.
Ross’s despair was genuine. He required sons—three or four sons—to carry on his house, to carry on the immense business he meant to develop; here were two invaluable irrecoverable years wasted on a brace of useless daughters. He could try again of course, and would; but suppose this procession of females went on? The thought set him tossing in fever at nights, biting his hard lips by day. He had heard it said that where the female parent was the stronger in sex daughters resulted, where the male sons; was it like that with Glory and himself? If so, was it permanently so? If so, what could one do about it? Then one day Somappa, Ross’s regular confidant, said, “Why not you sent the wife away for a time? That is our custom.” Skate, I.M.S., who had succeeded Knight, I.M.S. as District Medical Officer, thought in his idle way there might be something in this idea; he supported it with obscure biological details. Ross decided to try it.
“I’m going to send ye to the Nilgiris,” he told Glory, “for a whole six months.”
Afterwards she remembered with a wry smile the leap of joy her heart had given; but she had said only—what was no more than the truth—“I’m quite happy here.”
He patted her shoulder with one of the rare tender caresses no one knew better how to bestow.
“Ye want a change. We both do, but ye can have it and I can’t.” His face hardened. “Ye’ll go.”
Glory hated her holiday. The exhausting journey by boat and bullock-coach and rail and tonga was a merciless fatigue; and once in Ootacamund she found herself completely out of key with the idle holiday people of the Hills. A nursing mother with a child of two-and-a-half, a second infant and two ayahs tacked on to her could have little fun. “Come to tea, Mrs. Cowal?” No, thank you—the babies. “Come to dinner?” Impossible—I’m nursing Jane. “Come to dance, picnic, play?” Out of the question. Presently invitations ceased and she sat alone in the house Ross had taken which became increasingly too small and reeked of eucalyptus smoke and drying napkins and the smell of nursery. In it she sat while the rare bright Nilgiri May gave place to the mists and glooms of a monsoon hardly lighter than Sikkal’s, missing all the picnics to Umbrella Tree, all the open-air dancing at Fairlawns Bridge, all the Government House parties, the amateur theatricals at the Rooms. Alone she sat, listening to the whistle of monsoon winds, the whine of ayahs, the wails of one child or another, insistent, demanding.
Sitting there through the long days, the interminable evenings, Glory began to think—for the first time in months—of Boy Sealing. “Suppose,” she thought, “I had married Boy? Whatever might have happened it wouldn’t have been this—because I would never have allowed Boy to bring me to this. Why have I allowed Ross? I don’t know.” Relationship with Boy might have meant poverty, discomfort, all the vexations of a wife with an incompetent man; but it would have contained an element of charm, romance, idyll—things she would never know with Ross. In Ross’s house she obeyed; in Boy’s she would have given orders; which did a woman want to do? And her spirit—her poor little spirit that still fluttered its wings and clamoured to be heard sometimes—could have walked with Boy’s; Ross slew it at sight. Ross commanded her physically, and physically she gave to him with delight; but he sat at meals with her or walked abroad with her—a stranger. They had nothing in common; he was lost in his factory; he rarely thought of her; he took her for granted. Boy, kept at arm’s length, would have tended her; Boy, made to beg for her possession, would have worshipped her as lovely—daily, hourly he would have worshipped; she would have praised and petted him and he her. “Now,” she thought, “I’m a slave; do I like it or not? I don’t even know.”
One night she cried for an hour, her head on her arms in the seat of an armchair that smelt of monsoon damp and was made damper by her streaming tears; cried because of Boy and what might have been with Boy; and because soon she must go back to bed with Ross and have more children and more and more and more.
Yet when the day came when she must set her face again towards Sikkal, she was so tired of Ooty that she was almost glad to go. With the fatal Lafauce acceptance she headed back to her cage; it can’t be helped, there it is, fate, kismet. Going down-ghat in the alarming tonga, she thought once, “It wouldn’t have been like this with Boy”; but presently the appalling rigours of the journey drove everything out of her mind except a wild desire to get home—or die. From Calicut she went by the coast steamer; the monsoon was far from over; she was sick in her berth, the ayahs were sick on the floor, the children were sick on themselves and each other. Unspeakable nightmare; never, never again; better anything, better a dozen pregnancies, better death! Yet as death withheld she reached home at last; and the Torteval steps towered up in front of her tall as Jacob’s ladder. Ross stood at the top of them, but he did not come down to help her tottering feet; he watched her, pale and lifeless, climbing the steps to his side; he was wondering, Will it work? Will it work? And before he kissed her, before he said a single word, he looked into her drained face with an intense speculative look she was never to forget. “Now!” it seemed to say. “Now?”
During the day he let her sleep and by dinner-time she felt revived. Drinking a little white wine, she was feeling almost cheerful, when suddenly he looked at her across the candles and said:
“Did ye hear about Sealing?”
Instantly she knew the question was timed, rehearsed; she steeled herself to answer it.
“Boy? No. Is he back?”
His look, holding her, never wavered. “He’ll not come back, Glory.”
Despite herself she cried out. “He’s—he’s dead?”
He nodded. “It’s a queer story. There was a chap Grieve—so-called—drowned himself off a Shire boat in the monsoon off Calicut. They couldn’t make out who he was. Then our Policeman thought it might just be Boy Sealing.” His eyes pinned her. “Well, it just was Boy Sealing. He’d shipped on one of these boats when he left his tote. Great gowk! He called himself Grieve. But—ye mind those queer eyebrows of his, Glory——”
She was staring at him across the candles; she had missed all the last part of his speech.
“You said—you said, drowned himself?”
“It wasn’t certain; that’s what they thought. He’d been on shore in Calicut and came off pretty drunk—his usual state seemingly. Within an hour of their sailing he went overboard somehow. Maybe he fell; maybe he went. Anyway——”
He leaned forward across the table.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“N-no, Ross.” But her lips were white.
“No. . . . Well, tell us about Ooty.”
Stammering, she told him of this and that. But after dinner his eyes fixed on her once more with that odd speculative look. “Now it must come,” she thought desperately; “and after that about Boy—how can I, how can I? Yet I must.” She got up unsteadily.
“I—I’ll go to bed, Ross.”
He nodded. “I’ll be after ye.”
She went slowly into her room, dimly lit by an oil lamp turned low; and at the threshold she fell suddenly on her knees, only not shrieking because all power was struck out of her. For there, by the window, stood Boy Sealing, yet it was not Boy as she had known him; it was a man in rough sea-clothes, bareheaded; and in his white drowned face black eyebrows slanted like sword-cuts; and he was soaked and sodden and the water dripped from him upon her bedroom floor. There he stood motionless, staring at her accusingly with immense eyes like pools; and in the pallor of his face his thick swollen lips were black. . . . But when, after what might have been a minute, she cried out—there was no one there; and when, falling forward, she touched the place where he had stood, the floor was dry.
Glory pulled herself up by the window-curtains and clung to them. She felt her breast bunched in her hand, her heart leaping and hammering under it. For one moment she felt so cold that she thought, “I am dead too.” And then in the next moment her blood came racing back in a torrent of frightful heat; for she heard Ross putting out the lights in the drawing-room, heard his slow measured tread coming across the boards. Dementedly she looked round the unhelpful room; dementedly she wrung her hands. “How can I let him in here? How can I be here with him? Not after that, not after that. . . . Yet how can I refuse him?—I don’t know how; nobody ever told me. . . . Oh, God, I can’t. . . . Oh, God, I must.”
He was at the door now; she ran to him.
“Ross! Not—not to-night.”
Without a word he put his great hand on her breast and pushed her backwards into the room.
“Not to-night, Ross. Please. I—I don’t want it to-night.”
He said grimly, “It’s not what ye want in this world, my girl—it’s what ye get.” And then, more kindly, “Come on, Glory, off with your clothes.”
Desperate, demented, hating him, she began to fumble with fastenings. . . . “Oh, God, I can’t. . . . Oh, God, I must. . . .”
That cold weather Ross finished the new Torteval works.
The shift had proved a more difficult business than had at first been realised; without digging back at prohibitive expense into the rock-hard laterite hill, the available ground proved only the narrowest strip along the very margin of Ghoomri. The awkwardness of the site was enhanced by Ross’s ambitions which soared with every brick he laid; the alluring phrase “while I’m at it” came and went on his tongue; in the end he found that all the strictly suitable ground was occupied by the works proper and he had no place left for his office except one very low-lying plot at the extreme up-river end. Yet an office he must have and there was literally no other place for it. Ross had never intended to use this piece of land—his idea had been to reclaim it gradually with broken tiles and other debris from the works; being now forced by the magnificence of his own ideas to include it, he was the more stubborn against contrary advice. His clay contractors and his boat contractors, Somappa, everyone, told him it was so low-lying as to be in no way safe from floods. But the years had been years of light downfall, Ghoomri had been docile, and Ross took it upon himself to contradict. He insisted that the floods could never come so high; told they had done it before, he insisted they would never do it again. “If we had to plan for records and possibles in this country, there’d never be a bridge or a harbour built.” Even in the unusual rains of 1882 the river had just lapped the place where his new office doorway would lie. Somappa hinted at worse floods in the past; asked to say exactly when, he became characteristically vague. One old boatman said, thirty years ago. Ross laughed at him and went ahead.
Unquestionably the new works were very fine—by far the best Sikkal had ever known. Ross had installed machine-presses, pug-mills, trolleys running on an endless belt—all worked by a second-hand steam-engine he had picked up for a song from a bankrupt Malabar sawmill. Understanding stationary engines, he had made the clumsy thing as good as new; it worked with steady efficiency. Ross saw himself turning out ten thousand tiles a day—perhaps fifteen. The demand for them never seemed to flag; as fast as he could mould and dry them the hulking ugly pattimars came sidling up-river to his jetty and snapped them away. There was no cheating now; the tiles were a thirty per cent better product; they were finding their way into new markets; everyone wanted them. The business was splendid, prospects radiant; it was only Glory who would go on having girls.
But the new child that was coming—for within six weeks of her return Glory had been able to tell him what he wanted to hear—would change all that. The new child would be a boy, a grand boy; it must be. If God had any respect for patience and perseverance, if God rewarded abstinence—abstinence from Glory, abstinence from Coaces, abstinence from everything—a boy the new child must be. About May it—he—would arrive; a bad month, but Glory was as strong as a horse. “You’ve a splendid wife, Cowal. She could have a dozen.” Good old Knight! Well, maybe she would. Sons, sons, sons.
With his works built and his engine running, Ross was a sound man again, his loans covered. It had cost a mint of money, but money had been forthcoming. The mortgage on the Torteval property—Glory’s property—had turned out better than expectation; there was talk of the railway coming north—it had actually crept as far as Calicut—and land values in Sikkal, Kalyandrug, Mekkili, all the Coast towns, were going up. The mortgage itself, handsome as it was, had not raised enough to meet the corresponding rise in Ross’s ambitions; but Somappa had produced a Bunt landowner anxious to lend a large sum on unusually reasonable terms. Ross, after a moment’s hesitation, had snapped up enough to complete the works and at the same time to set his own personal house in order; in a moment of inspiration he bought Sleepy Valley, which had come definitely into the market on the established news of Boy Sealing’s death. The neglected place was in poor condition and he bought it, like the engine, for a song. His idea had been partly to have a shot at coffee, where—contrary to most of his business friends—he shrewdly suspected big possibilities; but principally to get Coaces out of Sikkal. Under terms, he gave Coaces Sleepy Valley; and was the more chagrined when she positively refused to leave the little house where he had first put her. She faced him with unusual sulkiness, deaf to his arguments.
“I do not come here now, Coaces.”
“One day you will come.”
“I will not come. I cannot come. You know it.”
“Then leave me here. Once you came here. It is my place.”
Furious he had to give in—and buy her the Bethelkuppam house as well; on these terms only would she condescend as much as to visit Sleepy Valley. When he said to her, “It is yours,” she replied:
“I do not want it. But as it is yours I will go and look at it. Will you come there?”
“No.”
She went without further argument.
Ross fondly imagined these transactions to have been carried out in secret, but Glory heard of them and burst out to herself in sudden and unusual anger.
“The beast! To buy Boy’s tote and give it to that—thing! The beast!”
But she could not take open umbrage because openly she knew nothing of Coaces’ existence; and presently, thinking it over, she calmed down. After all, his intention in buying the coffee-garden for Coaces could only have been to move her as far from Sikkal as possible—which was all to the good; and he had pitched on Sleepy Valley not because it had been Boy’s—who was drowned and dead—but because it was in the market and cheap. And having kept the girl, he had to make provision for her somehow, hadn’t he? Better that than going to see her still. Or did he go to see her still? She thought not, she was almost certain not; again with her father’s easy indolent acquiescence, she made the best of it.
But looking in the mirror at her figure again fast disappearing, she thought ruefully, “Who am I to keep a husband—or any man? Always ill, always ugly, always having babies. And if this one is another girl, what will I do?—oh, what will I do? But it won’t be, it can’t. It was forced upon me, this one, I had nothing to do with it, it must be all his, as male as himself.” And shivering a little she glanced again at that window corner where that terrible drowned man had stood and dripped down on to a floor that the next minute was dry as bone.
Caring nothing about his despised and rejected daughters, Ross was wrapped up in his son; the little time he could spare from the works he gave to David; at most other times the boy went toddling there with him. Glory had protested—“He’ll hurt himself, he’ll fall into the engine.” Ross had replied blackly, “I’ll see that he doesn’t”; and in point of fact nothing more serious than bumps and bruises had so far resulted. On little David’s third birthday Ross was in great good-humour; he told his son that in a few months he would have a grander present than any he now saw before him—“a wee brother, Davie, a wee brother. How would ye like that, eh?” The child said solemnly—one of his few words—“Fine!” Glory watched with bitterness. “All very well,” she thought, “but you’re not sick with it, you’re not ugly with it, it’s not going to tear you in two before you set eyes on it.” And with the bitterness mingled panic fear lest it be yet another girl. “If it is,” she thought again, “I don’t know what I’ll do; Ross’ll destroy me! Yet how can I help it?” Other wives in the station suggested this and that; the ayah brought a wise woman and Glory actually went a little way with her absurd prescriptions; but she knew herself ridiculous—do as you liked, you could not predetermine sex. Inside her now there was a little boy or a little girl, and a little boy or a little girl it would in due course emerge. In three months the child would be born now; it would be in the hot weather, it would be awful, it would be a girl. But whatever it was, it would just have to be endured—like everything else. . . . Life had caught her somehow and trapped her in this cage of Sikkal; she could never get out of it, she was doomed. By some process she could hardly recapitulate it had become her destiny to live in Sikkal and entertain the Sikkal ladies and gentlemen and play games with them—if she was well enough; and to go on giving Ross Cowal children whether she was well enough or not. And there wasn’t any escape.
Trapped; doomed; tiles; babies; so it went on; for ever and ever and ever.
Inexorably the hot weather came on, sticky, suffocating, not with the high North Indian temperatures, but humid and crushing. At the Torteval works it was a time of great activity; in a week or two now the river-bar would become impassable even for the pattimars, and then would follow the long black months of the monsoon when not a tile could be shipped away. All those months the factory would work at half-strength, making tiles and storing them against the reopening of the sea trade; meantime there was a rush to complete orders while there were still ships to take them away. Ross, seeing himself five per cent above his not very conservative estimate of profits, spent all his time at the works; Glory, shapeless now and in daily increasing discomfort, lay about the Torteval house on sofas and long chairs, endlessly sewing till her fingers grew damp and smudged the cloth. She seemed to be for ever changing her clothes and sponging herself with cold water; and the new clothes were damp with sweat almost as soon as they were on. Stitch, stitch, stitch; and in the verandah a darzi whirred proudly on his newly arrived sewing-machine—the first ever seen in Sikkal—making linen suits for David and the first tiny underclothes for Susan. Glory thought, “I am useless, a drudge, hideous, no man could want to look at me; I wonder if he is going to that girl?” But the girl was not in Sikkal; unless informants lied, she was at Sleepy Valley, and whether that had been Boy Sealing’s or not, it was at any rate well out of the way.
Coaces was indeed at Sleepy Valley; there she sat uncomfortably on Boy’s well-worn chairs or walked about with the writer, trying to understand—and picking up with her native quickness—the art and practice of coffee-planting. She had her people’s passion for hard work, especially of an agricultural nature, and their quick grasp of an economic problem—a gift inherited no doubt from remote thrifty Portuguese ancestresses. Walking round and round Sleepy Valley, checking coolie rolls, paying out wages, Coaces felt the bitterness of years die out in her. Almost she began to forget Ross Cowal and the little house in Bethelkuppam; she tried to think, “If I never see him again I will not care.”
Ross was overworked, cross, irritable, worried with expectancy. If this proved to be another girl——
Colonel Knight’s successor, the easy-going Irishman Skate, was little help to him.
“How can I tell ye? I can’t see into her. Certain things make me think it’s a boy, but there’s no knowing. If anyone says there is, he’s a liar. Anyway, we’ll see for ourselves in a day or two.”
“A day or two?”
“Forty-eight hours, I’d think. But she may dally a bit. On the other hand, she may start it sooner.”
“Havering fool,” thought Ross; “do these doctors know anything at all?”
Next day he had a surprise visit from Somappa, wrapped as usual in his blanket, hot weather or no hot weather. Somappa was ageing, shrinking and shrivelling till his face was like a monkey’s and his limbs were sticks; he announced now that he was having a nenia at his house—a big private devil-dancing festival. There was a dispute in his family which could not be settled; they were going to refer it to the bhutams, the devils themselves, for answer. The bhutam had come already from its bhutastanam and was living at Somappa’s house with its priest and the sword and the gong and the kepula flowers and all. For several nights there had been devil-dancing and there would be for several more; but to-morrow was the great night, to-morrow they would put the questions to the devil which would decide the family dispute. Somappa grumbled that the whole thing would cost him six or seven hundred rupees. He said in Tulu:
“All my friends are coming; you too must come.” Ross was tempted. He had always remained friendly with Somappa, admiring the miracle by which his assorted business continued year after year to flourish on the verge of failure. He genuinely liked the old Billava, he owed him much in general and in particular for his good offices with the Bunt, whose loan on easy terms had made the new works resplendent. He rubbed his blue chin, replying in Tulu:
“There are difficulties. To-morrow night? Tomorrow night there may be an event in my own house. You know of it.”
Somappa spread out his expressive hands. “What matter? What have you to do with that? You should be out of the house at such times. You can do no good. Come for a little while and go.”
In the end Ross agreed.
The evening of the nema closed with a red smoky sunset, windless, choking; even Ross, unaccustomed to project his sympathies, thought, “Poor girl; it’s hard on her.” Glory had been taken with pains early in the afternoon and had gone to bed; but they had passed off again. Skate had come and gone, noncommittal as usual. “It should be to-night; but then again it mightn’t.” Damn the shilly-shallying fool! Ross ate an early dinner alone and in gloom; for some reason Susan and Jane had both chosen to be naughty, their squalls of ill-temper resounded through the house. “My God,” thought Ross, “if this is another of these, I can’t endure it. It must be a boy; it shall. Everything is going well, I’m making a fortune, the business will become enormous, what is the use of all that if I’ve only a houseful of girls to work it with? This must be a boy; then there will be two of them with four years between them—too much of an interval, but it can’t be helped now. When the younger one’s twenty the elder will be twenty-four; I’ll be fifty; not too bad. And there should be a younger one still coming on—say eighteen. The four of us could keep the whole thing in our hands then, however big it became. I’d send the youngest one home—College maybe and the Continent; they’ll want high education in business by those days. . . He helped himself to a slab of treacly jaggery pudding with white coconut sauce, revolted at it and pushed it away. Lighting a cheroot he went out to Somappa’s. On the steps he stood an instant listening; Susan and Jane had quietened down; there was no sound from Glory’s room. Asleep? Suppose it was a boy—and they lost it? Suppose He shook himself together and stepped out.
At Somappa’s bamboo torches set in barrels blazed all round a cleared square in the yard; the company squatted about impassively chewing betel or smoking; nothing at all was going on. Somappa came and gave him namaskaram and wandered away; someone brought him a chair and he sat down on it and stared about him, cursing for the thousandth time the haphazard ways of the East. The ceremony should have started at nine and it was half-past nine now, but still the guests sat patiently waiting, talking a little, hawking, spitting red splashes of betel, apparently inexpectant. The torches blazed, died, were replenished. Nothing happened. Ross began to look at his watch. Ten; ten-thirty; still nothing. “At eleven,” he thought, “I’ll go whatever happens.” But as the thought died in his mind, the pujari of the bhutastanam appeared suddenly from nowhere and began whirling about with tremendous energy as if to make up for lost time; he waved a great sword about him, rattled his bell, leapt this way, that way, postured, shouted. The guests watched him apathetically, knowing he was only the second string; it was not he who would be possessed, not he into whom the devil would enter; that was reserved for the Pombada priest—a person of much lower caste and status. The pujari capered and ranted for perhaps half-an-hour; then withdrew as suddenly as he had come.
In his place an amazing figure emerged into the renewed blaze of light—coming head down as if ashamed; he moved with a curious gait, slow yet full of activity with complicated stampings of his feet; he made the moaning noises of a beast. His lean body was naked save for a waist-band, his drugged eyes rolled and stared in a face hideously yellowed with ochre, and he wore on his head a great arch of coconut leaves. From all round the yard tom-toms burst into sudden pandemonium; as if inspired the devil-dancer began to spin and leap, quicker, quicker, more wildly. The tom-toms roared now; the spectators took up a strange monotonous howling that shook and trembled as the torch-flames flickered and waved. Ross forgot all about Glory, all about his three essential sons, all about Torteval and the works; he leaned forward in his chair, staring, his heart beating, an ancient incommunicable terror stirring in his mind. All nonsense, of course, all mumbo-jumbo—but he knew himself thrilled, shaken, a little frightened. The tom-toms crashed in crescendo, the torches reeked and flared, the Pombada leapt and postured in astonishing contortions, out into the night went that horrible wailing cry. Ross looked into the hideous yellow face, the dead drugged eyes under the grotesque and somehow horrible head-dress, the open red mouth shouting unintelligible words; he saw the sweat pouring down the man’s chest, the daubs of paint running with it: he found himself shivering. It was going too far; the man was possessed; he had the devil in him now. . . . Suddenly, as if by some prearranged signal, the devil-dancer stopped dead, the tom-toms crashed into silence, the howling of the spectators ceased. In a voice like no voice of man the Pombada began to speak.
Somappa had come up behind Ross’s chair; he was whispering in his ear. “Now he must address all present according to rank. . . . Now he is speaking to me.” Flat, droning, inhuman, the idiot voice went on; Ross found himself again looking into that ghastly ochre-tinted face; the eyes were closed now and it was the face of a corpse; the lips were closed too and did not move, but without lips the voice that was no voice continued. It went beyond what was human; this was a dead man stood upright and a devil speaking through him. Somappa nudged his elbow. “Now he is speaking to you.”
Ross said, “I can’t understand; what is it?” The discomfort of that corpse face and mouthless voice turned him cross and savage. “I don’t believe he’s saying anything; it’s just gibberish.”
“Oh, yes, he is saying. I can understand. Shall I tell you? He says Cowal dorai is a very clever man and is going to make much fortune. Now all know his name here; soon all in South India will know it.”
“I could have told him that,” said Ross gruffly; but he was pleased. It was true! The voice went on, but Somappa did not translate.
“What’s he saying now?” Ross looked up quickly enough to catch an odd look on Somappa’s face. “Tell me; what’s he saying?”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes; of course.” “Seven years in the country,” he thought angrily, “and I can’t understand a brute of a devil-dancer. Or is it all just capers and is Somappa making it up?” But Somappa spoke angrily, he was put out, he wasn’t making it up.
“He should not say these things here. It is not proper.”
“What things?”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes!”
“He says you are a very strong man; you will beget sons.”
“Sons?”
“Sons. But—but they will be of no use to you. He says it.”
“How many sons?”
“He does not say. He only says ‘sons.’ I cannot ask him now. He says it does not matter; you are so strong you will be able to get on by yourself. He says you are strong like Parasurama, who drew all Kerala out of the sea. You will make a new land for yourself. . . . He says you will have grandchildren; they will give you pleasure but not your children. Your children will fight with you, but you are so strong, he says, you will overcome them all.” His voice broke sharply into peevishness. . . . “He should not say these things here; it is wrong; it is not the custom. Pretending to praise, he is saying unpleasant things. . . .” He was quite evidently annoyed. “Now he is going on to talk about my uncle; it is as well.”
“What does it matter what he says?” said Ross; but he shivered a little as if the hot-house night had turned suddenly chill. He shook himself together again: frightened by mumbo-jumbo like an old wife at a fair or a servant-girl with a fortune-teller! Him; David Rosslyn Cowal! But—that corpse face and the voice speaking in a mouth without lips. Without saying good-bye to Somappa he got up and went away; looking at his watch in the glare of the outermost torches he was amazed to see that it was half-past three in the morning. He had been sitting in that chair for six hours. Much good it had done him!
He had walked to Somappa’s, and now he walked slowly home, his head lowered, thinking, boasting to himself, yet still just a little cowed. He sweated freely and wiped his face with a handkerchief. In the still night some flower smelt rankly; it was windless, thick, rather dull; but there was a suspicion of radiance where the east might be. “By to-night,” he told himself, “by to-night anyway, I’ll have my second son.”
At Torteval the first thing he saw was Skate sitting in the verandah drinking whiskey; Skate was evidently pleased with himself.
“You’re a nice father an’ all—comin’ in with the milk while your wife’s havin’ a baby for ye.”
Ross moistened dry lips; his heart pounded.
“What—what is it? A son?”
“Oh, it’s a son all right. I told ye it would be.”
In his transport of relief Ross passed over this barefaced assertion. “I’ll have a look at him.” He paused as if remembering something he ought to say. “My wife?”
“Fine. Sleepin’.” Skate had been generous to himself with Ross’s whiskey, thinking no doubt he deserved it; the spirit had brought out all the vulgarity in his nature. “She’s a finely made woman; she’ll give ye a dozen yet.”
Queer, thought Ross, how they all say that; again he remembered Knight four years ago at the time of David’s birth. “She could have a dozen.”
“Well,” he said, “I’ll see him anyway.” He slipped off his boots and in his socks followed Skate to the big upstairs room. The Indian nurse, dark, silent, a little furtive, came carrying a bundle; Ross looked down upon his second son. Another of those little scraps of flesh and bone and blood, so red, so inhuman, so ugly; but of his flesh and bone and blood; and the right kind of one this time, by God, the right kind of one this time.
He put out a finger and poked the bundle gingerly. And at that the child seemed to look at him, and in that moment it contorted its tiny self as if in blind fury, its face wrinkled as if in rage, it gave vent to a thin miserable wail—one would have said—of impotent hate.
“Doesn’t like his daddy, eh?” said Skate. But his jocularity was ill-timed; for a second, instead of the infant before him, Ross saw that dreadful death-mask of yellow ochre, the painted lids closed over its drugged and lifeless eyes. He said sharply:
“We’ll go down again.”
Skate followed obediently; he hoped for yet another drink, but his host made no offer. Yawning, he prepared to go.
“Well, I’ll be round in the mornin’. What are ye goin’ to call the little lad?”
Ross knew the answer to that. The boy should have at long last the name that had been ready at the time of Susan’s coming and Jane’s; the name of the man Ross admired more than any man living; the name of the greatest man, he thought, of the day. He said firmly:
“Gladstone.”
Gladstone Cowal, like his sisters and his brother before him, throve without ailment: he was two, he was three, he was four. And when he was five and David was eight, there were six children in the Torteval house. There were, of course, David and Susan and Jane; and there were Gladstone and Rosslyn and Dufferin. The last three were intended to be a splendid sequence of sons; and from their names alone this might have been the case; but—Rosslyn was another girl.
Rosslyn had begun a year after Gladstone’s birth, thus slackening a little that rapid process which Single described as the “minimum statutory intervals.” Gladstone’s arrival had removed all Ross’s doubts and apprehensions; he was convinced now that he was set for sons and sons only, and he had his own name of Rosslyn ready for Gladstone’s immediate successor. His black bitterness when they told him of yet another girl frightened poor Glory, weakened and frail after these incessant confinements, into a breakdown. Nursing the newly arrived atom, she wept almost continuously, so that the child Rosslyn may be said to have drawn in a mixed sustenance of milk and tears. Ross was so bleakly disappointed that when Glory said timidly, “Rosslyn can be a girl’s name, can’t it?” he made no reply other than a scowl, and when the hour of the child’s christening arrived, he allowed her to be actually so named out of sheer inertia. If the station Chaplain had not alternately coaxed, bullied and threatened him he would not have attended the christening at all.
At least, however, Rosslyn had broken the Susan-Jane tradition of plain looks; she might, Glory thought, become almost lovely. Gladstone had been all his father; their almost exact physical resemblance accentuated the odd spiritual antagonism that did seem to exist between them. Rosslyn as faithfully repeated her mother; she would have Glory’s subfusc tints and vague outlines of feature, the same weak readily lovable prettiness, the same faint alluring vacancy of expression. On this decided attractiveness of externals Glory based hopes for Ross’s reconciliation; but Lynna’s potential charms made no appeal.
“She’ll be a pretty girl, Ross.”
“And a pretty nuisance to me. The prettier she is, the more trouble she’ll give.”
Glory, torn and spent by the most troublesome of her confinements so far, terrified out of her wits by Ross’s black disgust, made a slow recovery; for some time there was no possibility of another son for Torteval. And even when the possibility was renewed, no definite promise would come. Ross began to grow alarmed. “Good God,” he thought, “am I to be left with three daughters and only two sons?” But the manufacture of millions of tiles from the same mills and moulds had made him a firm believer in the ability of fixed processes to achieve fixed results; the treatment which had worked in the case of Gladstone should, he thought, work again. So in 1891 Glory had another holiday in the Nilgiris, cumbered this time with one more child and an extra ayah. Seven-year-old David was furious at being parted from his beloved factory and he clung weeping to his father; but the rest were unfeignedly glad to go. Susan and Jane twittered together in happy secrecy; dark Gladstone in his first linen suit scowled on his father and the blubbering David. Looking at the group, Glory thought in a moment of panic, “Oh, what’ll happen? Where will they all end?”
But the fixed process was successful; the wheel spun; history repeated itself. After three miserable months in strange surroundings and with augmented difficulties, Glory was ready once more to return to her cage. Experience was renewed down to the last detail—the old horrible voyage, the old sickness, the old arrival half-dead at the foot of that Jacob’s ladder of steps, the old possessive calculating look from Ross. Once more it worked—almost immediately she could tell him that a child was on the way. To the very last it worked; for the child was a son—the sixth Cowal child, the third Cowal son. This time Ross had no doubts about his name; he should be Dufferin after a Viceroy whose acquisitive tendencies and general power of domineering had won Ross’s approval. Glory, growing weaker and sillier with every year, said feebly, “It’s a terribly grand name, Ross,” and Ross frowning replied:
“It’s no grander than Gladstone. It’s a good name.”
Dufferin the child was.
So now in the middle of 1892 there were these six, three of each sex. David was a clever boy, well ahead of his eight years, good-looking, promising, not entirely unpriggish, far from wholly unspoilt. Susan and Jane remained placid, docile creatures; but they went on with their own lives with quiet determination as they had done from the start; they were aware that nobody thought very much of them and clung the more tightly together. They had no aspirations and were happy. Dufferin being as yet an infant, it was difficult to say more of him than that he seemed to be rather a jolly child, contented, eupeptic, easygoing and very fond of his food. He had little bright twinkling eyes and a roguish smile, where all the others were solemn as if laughter were a thing slightly shameful. The first of the family to give Glory a really hard confinement, he seemed also the first whose universe was salted with any grain of humour. Rosslyn at three was pretty—prettier, Glory feared, than she would be later; she came on too fast. She was a queer blend of courage and timidity; she would embark on ambitious adventures—daring climbs or explorations—and then fly from them terrified and crying. She was pitiably afraid of her father and hid if she saw him coming.
But the outstanding member of the family at this stage was Gladstone. Now four years old, he was a dark little boy, very sturdy and armed with a pair of aggressive eyes; as he grew he became more and more a finished replica of his father, and for this Ross would have loved him. But the boy would not love Ross. From the first there existed between them an extraordinary antagonism; just as—by what could only have been an odd coincidence—he had contorted his face and writhed his little body when shown his father for the first time, so now Gladstone fought against every order, struggled at every punishment, rejected every advance. He was fearless; he disobeyed. Punished, he disobeyed again. Punished more severely—beaten even—he disobeyed for the third time. He was the congenital rebel—the last class of child Ross Cowal was likely to endure.
More and more, therefore, Ross doted on David, who at eight went to the works with him regularly in charge of a chokra. Whether or not he had time to love the boy, he was satisfied with him, took pleasure in him, found him a credit. He spoiled David in consequence. David, Susan and Jane shared a Eurasian governess, whose life David made miserable. Miss d’Castries thought David shockingly spoilt—as indeed he was; and Susan and Jane shockingly neglected—which again was true enough. She liked the two plain little girls—having been a plain little girl herself and black to boot—and petted them as much as she dared. Locked in their secret unity, they appreciated but did not return her affection. Ross infuriated her by coming in after or during lessons and asking questions to show how well David could answer them, whereas the girls could never answer them at all. For the fact that Susan was one year and Jane two years David’s junior he made no allowance.
“Now, Susie, what’s five sevens?”
Susan would redden in uneasy silence. Miss d’Castries stood in the background, showing “three five,” “three five” with her fingers, but the child was too stupid to see it.
“Doesn’t know. Well, Janie?”
Janie smiled toothlessly and bit her thumb.
“Never heard tell of it. Davie knows.”
“Thirty-five, Dad.”
“And six nines, Davie?”
“Fifty-four, Dad.”
“Ye see that!” The vials of his contempt poured silently over his unfortunate daughters who sat grinning and blushing idiotically. David’s Lafauce features looked on with aristocratic scorn.
With David in isolated magnificence at one end and Dufferin in isolated infancy at the other, the rest of the family fell naturally into groups. Susan and Jane maintained their secret communion, delicious in itself and a bulwark against all comers. And between the remaining pair, between Gladstone and Rosslyn, there grew and developed an intense sympathy that had in it something of sexual love and something of twinship and yet a third something that transcended both.
Over the problem of Ross and his second son Glory wept many futile and secret tears. There seemed no gainsaying that the child had been born his father’s enemy; and Glory thought, “It is my fault, it is because I was feeling as I did—that night.” They said the mother’s feelings at conception came out in the child; “and it’s true,” Glory thought, “for at that moment I was hating Ross, yes, hating him.” And again her heart dropped in her breast; and again she saw that drowned, dead man with the black-and-white face standing dripping by her window. “He came to tell me,” she thought, clutching her clothes in her hands, “he came to reproach me; and the very next thing I did!” How could Gladstone like his father? . . . Ross teased the boy, spoke sharply, spoke kindly, brought him presents; but fatally he could never leave him alone, and cuffs or kindness brought him the same response—sullenness and smouldering dislike looking back at him out of his own dark challenging eyes. Against gibing or scolding the child stood provocatively silent; against violence—which resulted all too often—he fought like a little fiend; Glory’s appeals, Glory’s tears, made no difference; it was war, war, war.
Most frequently and savagely they quarrelled over Rosslyn. Commonly Ross took no notice of his daughters and in the case of Susan and Jane Glory resigned herself to nothing better. They were not very attractive children; she herself found their secret catchwords and their common defensive silences more than a little tiresome; but Rosslyn was pretty, vivacious, sweet. There was a children’s party at the newly formed English Club; Rosslyn went as an Early Victorian lady and looked such a darling that in a foolish moment Glory took her to see Ross.
“Show Daddy; he will be surprised.”
Trembling, terrified, the child went into the drawing-room. Ross, in a bad temper, laid down his book.
“Well, miss, ye’re a nice-like sight.” He turned on Glory. “What do ye want making a fool of the bairn like that? Ye coddle her enough in the house; is’t necessary to make her a public antic?”
Poor little Rosslyn, understanding only that she was intensely unadmired, burst into tears and was taken away; but not before Gladstone, who had followed her unbidden into the lion’s den, thought fit to improve the occasion. Sturdy and four-square, he said body:
“She’s not. She’s pwetty. You don’t know.”
The cuff that followed sent him flying out of the room. There he put his arms round his weeping sister and kissed her.
“It’s not true, Lynny, it’s not true. You’re lovely, lovely. Father doesn’t know anything about it.”
Rosslyn wept weakly on. Gladstone’s little face darkened.
“I hate Father!”
Dufferin had come into being in the late hot weather, just as the last pattimar was carrying the last load of tiles out over an ominously roughening bar. His roguish infant’s eyes beheld the sun for a week or two at most; then the black monsoon came down. It seemed to Glory, lying weak and ill at Torteval after this time a truly terrible confinement, that it was blacker, solider, more relentless than usual; nor was she wrong. It burst heavily that year with a businesslike day of five inches on the heels of an unnatural calm, and the rain fell continuously for a week. With it the wind drove in resolutely from the sea; the scudding clouds flew over like endless charging cavalry; roaring downpours, lasting an hour or two, came crashing down; it eased a little; darkened and soaked again. The wind blew steadily, never with very great violence, yet never with remission. In the third week of June men grumbled to one another in the Club, “We’re in for a hell of a monsoon.” But Ross—now one of Sikkal’s oldest and most experienced inhabitants—said, “Quick come, quick over.” He insisted that the July rains would fizzle out. “You’ll see; an early splash and then it’ll dry up. It’ll be a bad season—untimely. Like 1882.” He scored there; few of the members of the English Club could remember Sikkal in 1882.
But it was not like 1882. The monsoon lightened a trifle in the last days of June and the first days of July and for a moment it looked as if Ross’s confident prophesying would be justified. Then the wind fell, rose again, vast clouds swept in from the sea and the rain came down as if they had carried the sea itself with them. Ghoomri, a great seep of coffee-coloured water, rose and rose; it lapped the door-stone of Ross’s new office building; but as if commanded by a second and more powerful Canute it stayed there. “That’s the limit,” said Ross to his maistri; “it was before; it will be again.” He seemed to be right; the downfall eased once more, the river fell, leaving a glair of yellow-brown mud and slime. But the office building was in none too good a case.
This building was an ugly misshapen thing, put up at the last with the inadequate remnant of the mortgage and the loan after the works had been designed and re-designed; after five new presses and a new pug-mill had been added; after Sleepy Valley had been bought and Coaces’ little house. Like the runt of a litter it stood there, a perpetual accusation to its author. Ross had meant it to be a double-storeyed building throughout, but the funds ran short and even his determined optimism had further been forced to admit that the ground at the extreme western or up-river end would not carry the weight. As a result the office, on a level several feet lower than the other factory buildings, rose to a noble two storeys on a narrow front and then tailed off up-river in a long, single-storey barn-like structure with high gables and a sharply pitched roof. In this the clerks worked—and for a week in that eventual July before Canute conquered they worked with an inch of water on the floor. When the flood subsided Ross, going round with his maistris and contractor, found a long vertical crack in the east-end gable; they pasted slips of tissue-paper across it and in forty-eight hours two of these burst asunder. It was evident that with a little more persuasion the east gable would come down; the sodden ground of its foundation—made earth mostly—was slipping and foundering. Ross said triumphantly, “It’s a good thing that rain stopped when it did.”
Somappa, who for some reason was present, displayed the characteristic Job’s-comforter attitude of his kind. He said in Tulu:
“Big floods this year.”
Ross glowered at him. “Yes, but they’re finished. ’Eighty-two over again.” Somappa said nothing.
On a night in mid-July Glory, sleeping badly these days, was wakened by a wind which even on that sheltered side of the hill seemed shaking the house. The night was loud with the almost unbelievable din of torrential rain; the zinc spouts on the roof were shooting solid rivers into the compound; a dozen new streams were audible on the other side of the Creek. She lay awake, listening and terrified, till a dark-grey dawn filtered into the room. Dufferin slept placidly beside her; elsewhere in the house the other children rested; through the partition-wall Ross was sound asleep. There was nobody to comfort her, nobody to tell her that her sense of foreboding was absurd, nobody to succour her weakness and misery. As at all her lowest moments, she thought and thought again of Boy Sealing; if Boy had been there she could have called out to him and he would have crept in beside her, comforted her, warmed her, taken the bleak chill out of this ill-favoured dawn. She could not call to Ross. She dozed a little, dreamt horribly and woke to a day scarce brighter than the dawn itself; the rain fell in sheets, blowing in diagonal waves across the hill from the south-west; the clouds sat almost on the house; Torteval and its inmates existed not so much on land as at the bottom of a thin river. Looking out across the Creek she saw that a number of mud huts in the valley had collapsed in the night; the opposite hill was a sheet of falling water; there had been a landslide above the road. She could stand it no longer; she called, “Ross! Ross! Come to me.” But he had gone to the works, as she might have known. From somewhere little Rosslyn came stumbling in her nightgown, wailing with unspecified terror; but the infant Dufferin looked up and smiled. She gathered him up hysterically and set herself to comfort her weeping daughter. Comfortless herself, it was a relief to answer the call of someone weaker still. “Hush, Lynna, hush; it’s nothing, darling—-just a little rain.”
At the office Ghoomri met Ross once again on his doorstep; but things seemed no worse; the temporary wooden shorings they had set against the east gable appeared to be doing their work. But the river was ugly indeed. Grey, rain-lashed, like a sea, it stretched out into an obscurity of moving water; the whole world was nothing but a drifting twilight and the noise of rain. And the water rippled on the sill of the office doorway; it moved with a new swirling, sucking motion; it moved steadily, as if with purpose. That meant a rising flood; that meant that if the rain had been colossal at the coast it must have been still worse on the Ghats; that meant—anything. For a brief moment Ross knew the sensation of fear.
He spent the morning in the two-storey part of the building, sorting papers. The flood would stop; it must stop; God and nature set a limit to these things; in a little while it would scour into the silted North Creek and clear itself away. So he told himself; yet he worked at his papers—just in case. It was an arduous task; Ross was no office precisian and the papers presented the jumbled accumulation of years. This was missing and that and must be searched for all over the building. It was so dark behind his small windows that at times he could hardly read; he was obliged to carry papers to the light to identify them; and every time he looked out into the same grey waste—sheets of driving rain that lashed the river, a world of water that faded into the universal monotone a hundred yards from the bank. Slowly, slowly, all through the forenoon the flood rose. But the props and the shores stood fast; if they could live so long, they should live it through. In the end he went back to tiffin with his papers only half sorted but his worst fears reassured.
Half-way through tiffin his Eurasian head-clerk Fonseca burst unceremoniously into the dining-room; his dripping figure darkened further the already twilit room.
“The river’s rising, sir.”
Ross laid down the spoon with which he had been eating a substantial curry; in the dark room his face was darker.
“Ye great gowk! It’s been rising these twenty-four hours.”
“But it’s rising very quick now, sir. It’s into the office. There’s four inches, sir.” The whites of his eyes showed suddenly like flashes. “The place is shaking, sir; it’s coming down.”
Ross glared at him with savage contempt that translated itself into the rough Scots of his most emotional moments. “Ye muckle bairn! Well—I’ll come. Bid the poor wee clerks run home to their beds. Run you after them. I’ll see to this.”
From the opposite side of the table the voice of David—recently promoted to grown-up company at meals—piped up.
“Me too, Dad.”
Ross was pleased, diverted. “That’s the stuff, Davie. You and me’ll see to it, eh?”
Glory sprang up in her place. “No, Ross, no! You can’t take the child down there. You—mustn’t. You——” Under his bleak stare her protest died away; she sat down again.
“Why not? Child? He’s not a child; he’s a grown boy.”
She said almost inaudibly:
“Don’t take him, Ross . . . Ross, I’m frightened.”
“Frightened! What are ye frightened for? There’s the great man, Gladstone, left to protect ye and all the girlies round about. Frightened! Davie’s not frightened. Are ye, Davie?”
But David had rushed off to call his chokra. Ross turned on his wife in triumph.
“Ye see that! He’s got some gumption. It’ll be fun for him. Better than sitting here with a lot of fushionless females.” He went out.
But once out into that bitter day, even Ross was forced to admit that it was by no means fun. They fought their way round the corner of the hill in the teeth of a wind against which it was difficult to stand, much less advance; a wind laden with solid whipping rain that seemed to drive into one’s bones. David, a little struggling figure in oil-skins, clung breathless to his father’s coat; the chokra lagged behind, his teeth chattering, his breath coming in sobs. On the steep path down to the office they slipped and slithered and fell; at the foot of it Ross picked up his son and carried him through six inches of moving floodwater. It had risen—amazingly; it was swifter too, more grimly purposeful. Casting a quick glance at the east gable he saw one of the main props slanting drunkenly; he broke into a trot, the rain bursting on his face and chest like waves. He made the office building, dashed into the deserted single-storey part and set David down on a clerk’s table. The staff, taking him at his word, had fled, Fonseca leading; the place was empty, silent, a little frightening. Shouting to the chokra to stay with David, Ross went leaping up the stairs to his private room. As he went, he seemed to stumble against the wall; by God, the place was shaking. No time to lose.
Feverishly he began wrenching keys in locks, dragging out drawers, flinging their contents this way and that. It might be a matter of minutes; concentrating desperately, he strove to remember all the papers that must be got out. The mortgage deeds, the loan papers; he had them. The Torteval title-deeds; after a search he had these too. As he crammed them into an inner pocket the building shook again; a shower of dust and dirt came down from the ceiling and scattered over his office table. At the sight of that ominous downfall he redoubled his energies; the Sleepy Valley papers—where were they? The whole building suddenly and distinctly rocked as in an earthquake; a second and heavier shower of debris fell from the ceiling; pausing a moment, he heard the whisper of water at the foot of the stairway drowned instantly in a fresh roar of rain. In the same instant he heard David calling and from the back window he saw the chokra—dirty little deserter!—half-running, half-scrambling away up the hill-side. He shouted, “Sit still, Davie mannie. I’ll be down in one minute,” and felt another shake, gentle but persuasive, like the tug at a loosening tooth. In sudden panic he snatched up the last bundle of papers in one hand, grabbed the black cash-box in the other by its iron handle and started for the stairs. “Davie,” he called, “Davie, I’m coming.” And in that instant the outer wall of the stair that towered in a sharp gable above the single-storey building burst asunder before his eyes and fell away from him. For an endless moment he stood on the stairs looking through a great hideous widening gap; then there was a thunder of cascading tiles and falling brickwork and the sucking splash of a house settling down into water. There he stood on the naked stairs that still clung to the main wall of the double-storey building, his papers in one hand, his cash-box in the other, and looked out over foundered ruin—over a welter of tiles and rafters and brickwork and brown flood-water, where the single-storey building had been; where David had been. . . .
That year, that black year, it was late October before the long-banished sun came creeping back; but then the bar opened; the pattimars came up the river like a flood of ungainly birds, December shone as if clouds had never been. The wheeling year took no count or notice of man; as the black monsoon leapt and struck regardless of human hopes, so now the sunshine blazed in brilliant mockery of human sorrow. The great river, blue and sparkling, swept serenely down its main channel, the laterite uplands passed from green to a yellow that would soon be white. In the bright garden of Torteval Susan and Jane played their secret games with a company of obscurely named dolls; they were happier now because Miss d’Castries had dropped all pretence of teaching them and because their father never, never came now to superintend their lessons. In another corner of the garden Gladstone played devotedly with a Rosslyn prettier than ever; Gladstone was increasingly sturdy, increasingly self-reliant, for he was now the man of the family. He was sorry about David; but not very sorry. In his basket Dufferin rolled his roguish eyes and smiled his sweet attractive smile. The year wheeled, the world went on, they went on with it.
Into the warm bright December sunshine Glory crept forth like an animal that has lain long sick in some desolate lair; weak and acutely miserable, she sat in the sunlit garden. “I’ve failed him,” she thought, her mind on Ross; “I’ve failed him entirely. I wronged him by marrying him, I should never have done it; I didn’t love him, I was more in love with Boy. He wanted sons, I’ve given him girls; now one of his sons is dead, and I’ve failed him there too. I couldn’t comfort, couldn’t help—useless, a failure.” David alive had been all his father’s, taught to despise his mother in common with all women; David dead had been his father’s still. Once only she had tried timidly to join Ross in his sorrow, to invade the black silence in which he wrapped himself during those merciless terrifying monsoon weeks. He had given her an unforgettable look.
“Don’t ever speak to me of that again.” And then, as if ashamed of himself, he had laid a hand on her shoulder. “Ye mean well, Glory, but never do it.” His hand had fallen away and he had retreated away from her into his silence.
So there she sat, useless, unwanted, unhelpful. “I’m getting older,” she thought, “I’m not young; my life’s passing—it’s past. I wish I could die.”
In the following December Ross, whipping himself to action, started digging into the laterite hill to build his new office, the office he should have built from the first. Then, as if his memories overcame him, he left the work to his contractors and went suddenly away to the Ghats, to Sleepy Valley. He said something to his wife about the coffee crop; but he announced his going, he did not offer excuse. Glory was supposed to know, as she did know, that he now owned Sleepy Valley; she was not supposed to know—as she did know—that Coaces lived there. “Now,” she thought, “to crown all he is going to that girl: and can I blame him? She’ll give him something that I can’t—the sort of comfort an animal gives, a dog. I give him nothing. He’s had my body and he’s broken it; but it hasn’t been enough.” With a curious blend of jealousy and the craving to be wanted, she said:
“Couldn’t I come too?”
He stared at her. “You come? How could ye? What about the children?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest Miss d’Castries, then in a sudden revulsion she let it go.
“Oh, well——”
Sitting dreamily at Torteval, watching the five children go on with their lives, she found the days long and long. She did not care to go out; her long period first of pregnancy, then of illness, then of mourning, had left her completely out of touch with the quickly changing trivialities of the station life. The drifting personnel of the Club changed and changed again; she saw the women she had known go away and she felt too tired to pick up with their successors. Tired, tired, tired; but she must accomplish her fate, revive to her duty. More sons for Ross; he would never rest with things as they were. David was gone and he would never get anything out of Gladstone—they would clash and fight till one of them was buried. Dufferin by himself would never content or suffice. Glory dreamt away the bright days listless, stupid, wondering, “How did I ever get into this? How did it all happen?” At the Club they spoke of her unkindly. “Mrs. Cowal never does anything”; “she doesn’t pull her weight in the boat”; “she’s getting a bit queer.” She knew herself difficile and tiresome in her home; shy, tongue-tied or snappish outside it. There she lay.
“I’ve never been the same,” she thought, “since that night I saw—him; I never will be the same again.” To see dead people—dead drowned people—standing before you in your room; to see the lips and eyebrows making great black wounds in a wax-white face; wasn’t that enough to frighten anybody? Terrified, she would gaze expectantly into corners or call for another lamp; and as she did so, she would feel her damaged heart leap and stammer and miss.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
On his fourteenth night at Sleepy Valley Ross lay awake in the little room, in the very bed that had once been Boy’s. He had gone to bed about ten, tired out with tramping the hills; but about two in the morning he woke up keen and alert, conscious that he had slept enough. He lay on his elbow looking out through the little open window at the moonlight glistening on the dark coffee-bushes that almost brushed the bungalow wall. “I’ve slept enough,” he thought, “and I’ve rested enough; I’m better; I’ll get back to work.”
That fortnight above the Ghats had, he now knew, restored him; it had soothed him, brought back his faculties, renewed his abilities. For the first time he felt able to look forward and plan; for the first time he felt able to take up the thread of his life—for the first time since that world-ending moment when he had stood on the suddenly naked stairway of his office and watched his ill-constructed building fall in upon his son. Since then life had seemed as crushed and finished as had been the little drenched distorted body they had carried up to Torteval hours afterwards; as dead, as divorced from hope and future. He had suffered alone and in silence—and not the less cruelly perhaps for that. Now at last he felt he could begin again. He lay staring into the kindly moonlight, thinking forward.
Somewhere in the bungalow Coaces lay sleeping—she who, along with the bright cold days and the hills and the forests and the presence of beauty, had worked towards his restoration. She had soothed him magically, comforted him, re-made him—how, he did not quite know; without word spoken she had reminded him that she was his slave, his possession; her devotion and her service were his—and were worth having. They had tramped round and round the small estate, rich now with the crop the coolies were just beginning to pick. Coaces had sent away the manager with whom Ross had saddled her and depended only on a writer; on the first day of his visit she brought Ross a book—a Canarese school primer.
“Now I can read. I have learnt. Try me.”
Half-joking, he tested her; to his surprise she read easily—if slowly—and well. She swelled with pride under his praise.
“English letters too I know. Soon I will read English books also.”
He patted her shoulder. “Good girl! You don’t want any manager now.”
“Why I should want a manager? I am strong. I am young still. I can do all the work. Why I should lose the profit?”
It was true, as he saw for himself; hard-working, capable and a born financier, she was making a success of the unpromising little place such as Boy and Boy’s predecessors had never imagined. Profit? he thought, there must be a pretty good profit too. He told Coaces she must be growing rich.
“Ri-ich? Wha-at is ri-ich?” But in her tone there was the pride of solid money put away and banked at interest.
Her companionship soothed him, and his half-amused pleasure in her progress. But walking round the coffee he began to think of her again in another way—in the old way. “She belongs to me,” he thought; “I’ve only to say the word; shall I say it or not?” Watching her covertly, he marked her bold magnificent carriage, her long straight back, her hips swinging smoothly, the firm muscles on her flanks that made mock of corsets, her breasts high and round under her sari. The great patient eyes watched him, biding their time; and their time came, for on his third night at Sleepy Valley, she drew him away somehow—he hardly knew how—into herself. With the old Tulu words of love and endearment she drew him into her bosom, caressing and soothing till he fell asleep comforted almost into happiness. The next day he had been ashamed, but his shame was short-lived. Fidelity to the one was cruelty to the other; honesty was blackguardism; the old vicious circle repeated itself. And of late Glory had been so weak, so ill, so fretful, so endlessly difficult; not exacting so much as simply tiresome and failing; unable, as someone had said of her at the Club, “to pull her weight in the boat.” Hardly able to get herself along, she had nothing to give to others. “I must draw strength,” Ross thought, “where I can.” Walking the estate with Coaces by day, comforted by her arms at night, he came back to himself. . . . Now, looking out into the gentle night, he knew himself ready to go back.
Sleeping no more, he rose very early and took a cold bath—cold indeed at that height and at that early hour. In her room he found Coaces awake and ready to receive him; you never, he reflected, caught Coaces unprepared or awkward or ungraceful, half-dressed or not dressed—as you so often caught Glory. Looking at her he saw that she divined his purpose.
“You will go back to your house?”
“What else, flower?”
The patient eyes searched him, summing him up. At all costs, she knew, she must not trouble him, must not importune; so, he would come back; otherwise, not. Rather leave it to the pale doraisani to pester and fret and to make herself a nuisance till he tired of her. Impassive, she said:
“Then go and come. I shall be here.”
He bent and kissed her cheek; then, suddenly fired, took her again in his arms.
Parting, he said, “You’re a good girl, Coaces.”
She drew him down to her. “Not girl. Woman. One day, maybe, mother.”
The words followed him as he rode down the ghat through the mist-haunted forests loud with the crying of jungle-fowl. Suppose that happened? Awkward; but it had happened to men before and—arrangements had been made. Coaces would like it and she deserved something—she deserved a lot, if only for remaking himself now. Sons; one wanted sons; but not that sort of son. Now he had two sons, but one of them was an infant and the other had been born his enemy. Why was that? What had he ever done to Gladstone? Yet unquestionably the boy fought him in everything, just as he had thrawed at him that first morning of Somappa’s nema when he was but a few hours old. Well, he would get no good of Gladstone—they would never pull together; and the infant was an infant and God alone knew what it might grow into. If Davie had lived, if Davie had lived! Why, why had that splendid little boy been slain? Well—he must just start again; perhaps now he could. Must start again. Three sons—four sons even, if one of them was Gladstone—would be few enough for the business that was coming; the business that must grow and grow. The Torteval tiles, the Parrot Brand tiles, must go everywhere. His horse stumbled and with the jerk his thoughts turned aside. Coffee; a coming market, a market so far mishandled almost as grievously as Lafauce and Somappa had mishandled the trade of tiles. Coaces was making money out of her coffee; but there were too many middlemen, too many processes, each with a profit-taker attached to it. If you could get all the coffee-producing processes under one roof, cure your own coffee——
His thoughts swerved again. Suppose Coaces had a son—a half-caste it would be, a bastard. A pretty kettle of fish that for everyone!
And yet—why not?
In the following May, Glory, enveloped as usual in a cloud of children, their ayahs, their toys, their pets and their manifold equipment, returned to the Hills—this time for no other reason than that her health required it. Cracken, whom the revolving years had brought to Sikkal as D.M.O. in the shoes of Knight (retired) and Skate (given over to drink), had made this plain. Cracken was a man of a different type from his easy-going predecessors; a man with high standards of efficiency; a devil-driving man—they said he would be Surgeon-General. Called in to examine Glory in circumstances now familiar, he had turned on Ross with a scowl on his grey ugly face.
“Yes, it’s pregnancy. And the plain fact is, your wife’s having too many.”
Ross had answered scowl with scowl. “Others haven’t said so. I’ve been assured she’s very strong. One of you said she was made for it.”
“No civilised woman’s made for seven pregnancies in ten years. I understand she had a troublesome confinement last time—only last year. She’s anaemic, there’s nothing of her. If she gets through this one all right you’ll have to go easy.”
Ross had scowled at him again, disliking him but a little afraid. Now, surveying his tribe departing for the steamer, he was more jocular than usual.
“One, two, three, four, five. And they’re all growing.”
Glory said wearily, “They’re too many for me. I wish you were coming, Ross.” And in a way she actually did; he was strong, capable; the prospect of the long difficult journey appalled her.
He grinned. “There’ll be another one with you when you come back.”
“I suppose so.”
“No supposing about it. Another boy.”
She smiled wanly and kissed him good-bye. The new baby was to be called “Connemara” after the recent Governor of Madras whom Ross had met with a deputation of West Coast merchants and by whom he had been for some reason impressed. Hearing this announcement, Glory had thought quickly, “Well, if it’s a girl again, the name will pass.” But it must not—must not—be a girl; this world was no place for females.
In the warm bright mornings, the drenching thundery afternoons of Ootacamund in May, she struggled about feeling anxious and weak. The new baby was to be born in the Hills and Ross had taken for the season a pleasant—indeed a magnificent—house, very different from the poky hovel of 1886. This new house was called Lebanon because of two huge cedars on its lawn; in the vastness of its verandahs and grounds the tribe seemed to diminish in number. Susan and Jane, the queer little pair, could and did hide themselves in a hundred places; they appeared at meals and bedtime, punctual and prim; at other times they were not. What went on in their secretive little minds? Glory didn’t know and felt too ill to care. Gladstone and Rosslyn wandered afield, came back filthy or drenched or damaged, requiring attention; the ayahs wailed and complained. Gladstone, as if living up to his great name, was full of high ideals; he was chivalrous, protective, anxious to help. He was obsessed with soldiers and soldiering, and announced his intention of joining the Army as soon as practicable; to amuse him indefinitely it was only necessary to send him down to see the troops drilling at Wellington Barracks. Dufferin toddled, and struggled with the beginnings of speech; at times he was overcome by gales of infantile laughter at some recondite jest. “Gladdie’s sweet,” Glory thought, “but he’s an Ishmael, he’ll have trouble. Lynna’s lovely—she’ll have trouble too. The baby’s a cheerful darling. The girls I don’t know at all. What will the new one be like?”
At Sikkal the bar was closed to shipping, the Torteval works went on half-time, making and storing tiles against the return of the sun and the easterly winds. The interminably repeated process went on; the boats came down the river with the clay, the old deposited river-silt that lay under the superficial sandy stuff; it was dumped in great heaps in the jetty sheds; the coolies ran to and fro with their baskets on their heads. Watered and sodden, it went through the pug-mills, coming out in buttery slices which the women smoothed and carried to the press. Slap! it went into the mould. The expert worker slid the mould into the press; the screw-wheel spun; down press, out mould, away tile along a slide where small boys oiled it with a mixture of coconut and kerosene. Two men stood above each press to spin the screw-wheels; looking along the dim sheds it was as if one watched some orgy wherein men danced frantically on tables. Away went the tiles to the drying-lofts; five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand.
Wandering the long sheds, Ross cast his accounts and was satisfied. In the three years of their existence the new works had made him secure, prosperous, rich. Tiles and tiles and tiles, and always as quickly as he could turn them out the greedy pattimars came creeping and cadging for more. His tiles were known now; his brand of the Parrot was respected and sought in Bombay, in Trichinopoly and Madura, in the East Coast towns; it was demanded, it was cutting other tiles out of the market. He got the best clay, he had the best workmen—because he looked after these things himself. Poor Lafauce, swindled over inferior clay, cheated out of firewood, working with old-fashioned kilns, spoiling half his tiles through sending them to the kilns improperly dried—all because he wouldn’t work. Yet even he had made a livelihood out of it—a good livelihood. Livelihood! Ross thought contemptuously, “I’ll make a fortune.” His was still the first steam plant on the coast; even at Feroke they still worked their pug-mills by bullocks going round and round in a ring like a country oil-mill. The ceiling-tiles he had been the first to think of were now in universal use; Lafauce’s slackness had allowed others to pick up the idea, but for quite a time Torteval had held the monopoly and a very good thing it had been . . . and there were a hundred things he could do yet.
But everywhere—in the dim sheds, in the sun-blaze of the jetty, in the hot lofts above the kilns—he saw David. If David had lived . . . Well, there must be other Davids . . . There was one coming now.
Yes, but—there were two.
Ross had made no opposition to Cracken’s insistence that Glory should go to the Hills; on the contrary, he had welcomed it. For the awkward thing, the difficult thing had happened; Coaces had been prophetic. “One day I will be mother.” One day she just would; one day now it would be so; and that on a day before the monsoon clouds were gone. It was as well—and more than as well—that Glory should be away. For Coaces was adamant again; she would not stay at Sleepy Valley; she would not go to Bombay; she would not go to the Hills. She would have her baby in the little old house in Bethelkuppam where Ross had first put her; and in no other place.
He had used argument, speaking always in the soft confiding Tulu. “Go away, flower. Go to the mountains. Go to the Nilgiris—Coorg. Not in this hot place. Go wherever you desire.”
Her great eyes reproached him.
“If I go away I will die. You want me to die.”
“You know it is not so. I want you to be well and wise.”
“I am wise to stay here. He will be born here. After he is born I will go away. Not now.”
Adamant, immovable, she settled into her wretched little house and waited.
It was known everywhere. Though nobody spoke of it to Ross, all the Bazaar knew. The Club knew. Somappa knew. He met Ross one pouring day of August and said in Tulu:
“Soon you will have another son.”
Ross grasped his nettle. “Perhaps two.”
Somappa nodded gravely. “I had heard. The Christian girl. It has been long coming.”
“It should not have come at all.”
“Oh, no. Sons are always good.” Somappa was far too well-mannered to admit the possibility of a female child. “When a man has one son for dharma, then he can have as many others as he likes. These are kanya sons; they are not the same thing, but still they are good. You can have many more. Why not?”
Divided between rage and laughter, Ross said:
“You must help me, Somappa. I do not know the mamuls, the customs in these things. It must all be properly done.”
Somappa’s grin lit up his shrivelled face.
“Surely; surely I will help. You are my brother. Come to me for what you want.”
Ross’s heart went out to him.
The monsoon dragged on, black, sodden, discouraging. But it was a weak thing this year, slack and without force; the winds were futile, the rains, plashing heavily at intervals, came to nothing serious. Ghoomri, sleek and laden, slid inscrutably to the sea, never coming within many yards of the new office building or even of that flat bare unhallowed space where the old one had stood. The mills turned, the presses rose and fell; tiles and money came out of them. And Ross, feeling like a man in some strange story, sat alone in the old Torteval house, waiting for news. A telegram from Ooty; Kotru hot-foot from Bethelkuppam; which would be first? Who would win?
On a dreary September evening, thick and grey with a mixture of rain and mist that floated above the coffee-coloured river, Kotru came with news. The strange race was over. Coaces had a son.
Ross felt in his pocket, drew out five rupees and gave them to the excited girl, dripping under her shawl. Coaces had a son? Then the other would be a girl; and it should have been the other way round. Listening to the rupees clinking into Kotru’s hand he said:
“Is—she—well?”
Coaces was well, proud, happy; the words tumbled out of Kotru’s eager mouth. The child was a godling; beautiful; well-formed; a prince; a master of men. Ross stopped the flood of enthusiasm.
“Be quiet, girl; you say too much. You will bring mischief. Presently I will come.”
Kotru withdrew in a huff, enclosed in her virtuous Christianity. What people! First her mistress with her snake-puja—not that anything had come of these or could have come; now this dorai, this white master, pretending to fear the evil eye. Heathen stuff; she would tell the good Father.
With the fall of dark Ross got into his bullock-coach and drove to Bethelkuppam, a prey to mixed feelings. Here was a man-child born into the world with a man’s desires, ambitions, talents, but without a man’s rights; what was to become of him? A son; yet again a son who would be no use to his father. Four sons; one dead, one born his enemy, one an infant, one—a bastard. The ugly word rang in his head; if it rang for a century it could not ring itself away. Well, Coaces would be pleased—and she deserved it; to the devil with law and religion. Coaces had been a good girl and she had got her desire; why not? “I must try,” he thought, “to say and do the right things: Coce’ll set store by that.” Bumping and jangling along in the bullock-coach, he tried to remember Somappa’s promptings.
Ross had meant to insist on a doctor—at least on one of the official midwives Cracken was beginning to train in his Hospital; but Coaces would have none of them and Somappa had supported her. From some dark lane, therefore, Kotru had procured a Christian vaigini, the traditional hereditary Bazaar midwife, dirty and deadly ignorant of her trade. Yet she brought babies into the world—she had brought many scores of babies into the world—and the babies had in most cases lived and the mothers had apparently been little the worse. Her name was Sepu—a contraction, of all things, for Seraphina. Ross had been forbidden to see her; grumbling, he was told that this must be so. To his question, “What shall I give her?” Somappa had replied by pulling a square bottle from under his inevitable blanket.
“Give her this.”
“That? What is it?”
“Cashew-arrack. What else? You must give. She will like it.”
He explained. The vaigini was entitled to so many drams of arrack from the house; the longer the confinement, the more drams of arrack. It was obligatory; mamul; the law. Ross revolted.
“She’ll be drunk.”
Somappa relapsed into his increasingly rare and increasingly imperfect English.
“Naht so-o drunk.”
Furious, Ross thought, “What have I got into? It’s like savages, it’s like the African bush.” As if reading his thought Somappa proceeded to tell him that he must not attempt to see Coaces for days after the birth. She was polluted, polluting.
“But she’s a Christian; she’s not a Hindu.”
That, it seemed, made no difference; birth and death, the coming of the soul and its departure, polluted with all the force of Hinduism in this strange distortion of Christ’s teaching. Coaces couldn’t be seen.
“And I suppose I can’t see my own child either?” He could see it, it appeared, but no more. He mustn’t touch it; only the midwife, the vaigini, could do that—and that only in a certain way. Ross flung off in a fury.
“It’s all damned nonsense. I’ll have the Assistant Surgeon.”
But he had known in his heart that he dared do nothing of the kind. In the end matters had been left to Sepu; and now, in the hour itself, Sepu seemed to have brought it off.
The little house in Bethelkuppam was dimly lit and shrouded in mist and drizzle; walking up the path between Coaces’ flourishing vegetables, Ross floundered in heavy mud. Nerving himself, he pushed open the door and went in. The front room where he had expected to see Coaces lying was completely bare and empty, but Kotru had polished the floor with a compost of cowdung and lamp-black till it shone with the rich depth of marble. It was slippery, his boots made a noise and there was instantly some audible commotion in the little bathing-room at the back. It was in there, then, that things had been done, in a room ten feet by ten—and in this stifling climate; if Coaces lived it would be a wonder. Yet so she must have been born herself—and her mother before her. He called out and instantly there was silence in the back room; in the silence he heard the faint mewing wail of the infant, but the door remained closed and no one appeared. “Curse these women,” he thought, and remained standing there motionless and feeling very foolish in the middle of that empty black-floored room. Suddenly the door of the back room opened and shut swiftly; he had an instant’s glimpse of a dimly lamplit interior, in which bazaar pictures of the Madonna and St. Joseph shone with the unearthly brilliance of their crude colouring; then he saw the vaigini advancing towards him. She was a woman of past middle age, but was dressed in a sari of startling check with a scarlet jacket held together by a knot at the pit of her expansive stomach; she was more than ugly and a waft of arrack preceded her—for it had been a long confinement; she walked with the slow precision of the half-drunk. In her arms she held a vast areca-leaf, withered and dried white; in it there lay the little scrap of dark-brown baby that was to be Sylvius. Quite silent, hardly breathing, Ross stared down at this new and embarrassing son. But the vaigini had no intention of being silent; Somappa’s cashew-nut arrack had overcome her terror of a white face. Reeling slightly, she held out the child.
“See! See! It is the most beautiful child ever born into this world. See! It has the face of the blessed Saint Joseph. See! it has the hands of Saint Antony. Oh, it is lovely; oh, it is splendid. It will be a strong man, a ruler, a king. . . . Give it two rupees, three rupees. It must have.”
Drawing them from his trouser pockets, Ross threw five silver rupees into the areca-nut leaf. The midwife’s beady eyes glistened among their wrinkles. “Poor devil,” he thought, “she seems to have managed all right; I mustn’t be hard on her.” Her fee for the confinement was the large sum of three rupees; thereafter she would get half a rupee or a rupee a day till the twelfth day—till all this crazy “pollution” was over. It wasn’t much when all was said and done. He found a sixth rupee in his pocket and threw it into the leaf. The child stirred and made faint noises; a well-formed little boy, prettily brown in colour, darker than Coaces. “That’s no girl,” he thought. He said aloud:
“Sylvius!” Coaces had chosen the name—why, he never knew; some priest’s, perhaps, or perhaps she merely fancied the sound of it. “Sylvius!”
He turned to go, for the child must be taken back behind that closed door where he could not follow. Perhaps that was as well; ten feet by ten; Sikkal in September; lamps and candles; the atmosphere must be lethal. Yet if air intruded into the birth-room the woman died—so Somappa had said; and so Sepu had evidently believed. No, better be gone.
But the midwife, intoxicated by Somappa’s good liquor and the sight of six solid rupees, burst into narrative. Her shrill voice followed him to the door, complaining of her difficulties, boasting of her skill.
“I rubbed the belly; hard, hard. Then I gave red pepper to bring the sneeze. Four times she has sneezed; then the head came. But for my labours, but for my skill, we should never have seen it. Then afterwards I gave brandy . . . But the musk was not good; it is bazaar stuff—a mixture. This is a rich house; there should have been true musk. The brandy was good, but the musk——”
Enraged at last, he said in English, “For God’s sake, woman, shut up!” and the unaccustomed, meaningless sounds cowed her to instant silence like a spell. Muttering a little, she moved back towards that closed door. Her renewed gabble droned after him into the wet, sticky night; but the last sound he heard was a second wail from the child.
At Torteval the expected telegram waited.
“Daughter born this afternoon. Child flourishing mother fairly well.” It was signed by the nurse.
Daughter! So Connemara was a girl and flourished. And Sylvius was his son; and the law would not know him.
He sent a written message to Coaces and left for Ooty long before the lifting of pollution could allow him to see her. In Ooty was Glory, lying very weak and exhausted and, it seemed, a little strange in her head. They told him she had had a terrible time and they told him that this must be her last, her very last, baby. It was almost impossible in the natural order of things that she could start another; if she did it must be taken away at the outset, for anything else would be fatal.
Moved and miserable, he sat by her bedside and stroked her hand. She said again and again:
“It’s a girl, Ross. But she’ll be a good girl this time. A good, good girl. I promise you.”
Nodding moodily he said, time after time, “Yes, yes; I’m sure of it.” Why shouldn’t the child be good? Wasn’t that the least it could do?
By her mother’s side or in a snow-white cot of lace and ribbons Conna lay solemnly in grandeur, staring upwards. She was unquestionably Lafauce; one day she might have her grandfather’s large-moulded, almost over-perfect features. She did not particularly resemble either of her parents; not Ross as did Gladstone, not her mother as did Rosslyn; she had nothing on earth in common with Susan or Jane. She was a composite Lafauce, handsome, but without special distinction. There she lay, complacent, a trifle contemptuous, while Glory kept saying with foolish reiteration, “She’ll be a good girl, Ross, a good, good girl.”
And in Sikkal, while that weak monsoon beat itself out in squandering drizzles, Sylvius lay otherwise. He lay, brown and beady-eyed, in an open shallow basket with only a wooden plank between him and that shining black floor of cow-dung and charcoal. Naked he lay there, staring and whimpering, a bit of liquorice-root tied to his hand with some bright cotton threads. By his side a lamp with five wicks burned day and night in blind Christian perpetuation of a Hindu custom; for on the sixth day comes Brahma and writes the fortune on the forehead; and even Brahma with his several faces cannot write in the dark.
On Rosslyn Cowal’s eighteenth birthday her brother Gladstone gave her a watch. It was a beautiful watch with a little bow of gold to imitate a bow of ribbon, and in the middle of the back of the case there shone a minute blue sapphire. It had cost Gladdy most of his savings for a long time past, and to make sure that the presentation would be made in circumstances worthy of the gift, he was hiding in the Torteval garden a full hour before breakfast time. The garden was pleasant at that hour, cool and scented and lit by the sun which had topped Pisgah and was shining down the now almost dry and wholly deserted North Creek. Gladdy knew that his sister would come before breakfast to cut the flowers; Susan always insisted on that. Susan was twenty-two, clumsy and plain and spectacled, yet static in unassailable good-nature; she continued to ignore the universe so long as she had Jane for company. She had managed the Torteval house for five years now—since Glory’s death. “Poor mother,” Gladdy thought, staring aimlessly at the blazing garden; “poor mother!” It was the adjective by which they all remembered her; she had been almost an invalid latterly, sometimes a little queer. Ross had been heard to say that Susan ran the house much better. . . .
Presently he saw Lynna coming. She was a slight creature stepping airily along the red path, a basket swinging in her hand. She wore an ankle-length frock of some patterned material, heliotrope on white; in her hair there stood a great ribbon bow. Her hair was her mother’s—that indeterminate red-gold which burst under certain lights into flame: it lacked the ultimate perfection of Glory’s colouring but made up for this by its superior abundance. It was almost too abundant; sometimes she seemed to be all hair and no face. She wore it badly and without sophistication, bunched in great rolls on either side of her forehead. “But how pretty she is,” thought Gladdy, “how pretty! Yet she doesn’t look well, she’s been having too much malaria, she ought to get away.” Watching her, his hard, dark, strong-featured face—still the complete replica of his father’s—softened into a smile; his rigidly aggressive poise weakened. No other girl ever made him feel like this—that catch in the breath, that upward surge of something in his breast, that warm flooding tenderness that clamoured to be of service. He cared about no other girl: Lynna was his girl. He stepped swiftly from behind his bush.
“Happy returns, Lynna!”
Her hand flew to her heart, she almost dropped her basket, delighting him; you could always depend on Lynna for timidity, caprice, irresolution, the feminine.
“Oh, Gladdy, what a fright you gave me!”
“I’ll give you something better than a fright. Here’s a present for you. Look, Lynna.” He pinned the watch above her heart, stepped back to admire it, then threw his arms round her and kissed both her cheeks one after the other. “It’s nice, isn’t it? You like it, darling, don’t you?”
She was prettily enraptured. “Gladdy! You darling brother!” She kissed him back.
But as she kissed him he saw something that turned the morning suddenly cold and sunless. On her left arm he saw a bangle, a bangle of thick shining gold with little rubies in the clasp. He caught the white arm as she drew it away and held it.
“Who gave you that?”
She was horribly taken aback. “Oh, Gladdy, I didn’t mean you to see. I didn’t mean to wear it.”
“Well, I have seen. You are wearing it. Whose is it?”
“Mine, silly.”
“But who gave you it?”
“Well—Frost.”
“Frost! That cad?”
She fired up at that. “He’s not. He’s not. Gladdy, you’re not to say that. You know I—I like him.” And as her mother once long before, she thought, “Like? What a silly word!”
Gladstone ground the red gravel with his heel.
“He shouldn’t give you presents like that. That cost a lot.”
“Why not, Master?”
“He’s a dago. He’s not white. He’s Eurasian.”
“He is not!” She was really furious this time. “How dare you say so! Even you, Gladdy. He’s English and you know it.” She recovered herself. “He’s not so dark as you are, you Black Boy. If he’s a Eurasian, you’re a nigger. He’s white—every way. And I like him.”
Sullen-faced, he said, “I don’t. And you’d better not let father catch you with that thing on your arm.”
“Of course I won’t. Father won’t be back for nearly a week, anyway. I—I just thought I’d wear it for once. How was I to know you’d be hiding out here? I just meant to let it see the garden and then take it off and hide it.”
He stood biting his lip, his morning all spoilt.
“You’ll have to hide it pretty tight. Susan’s always poking about—or Jane. If they find it they’ll split.”
“I know, but they won’t find it. I’ll keep it in a very safe place.” She put out a hand and timidly touched his arm. “Oh, Gladdy, do like Frost a little.”
He said, very slowly, “I’ll try to like him, Lynna, if you do. But—it’s going to be difficult. He’s not a nice chap; I can’t think so. He’s—he’s slimy.” He stopped her indignant protest. “Lynna, you’re a big girl; you’re eighteen to-day. Tell me something. Are you—do you think you’re in love with him?”
She flushed violently. With Lynna a flush began at the base of her throat, sweeping upwards like a flame till it merged in the blaze of her hair. When it was over she looked white, drained, exhausted—very like their mother as Gladstone remembered her. She looked so like her mother at this moment that she frightened him. She couldn’t be fit to look like that: that malaria had taken it out of her. He saw that she had tiny, tiny beads of sweat along her upper lip; that, he thought, made her prettier than ever. No wonder this oily cad up at Sleepy Valley wanted her.
She said at last, “I don’t know, Gladdy.”
“Then you are, I suppose.” He kicked moodily at a stone. “Then I suppose it won’t be you and me any more. It’ll be you and him, now.”
She flung her basket from her and hugged him.
“It’ll always be you and me, Gladdy. Even if I married a hundred Frosts. Always.”
But the word “married” sounded in his ears like a death-knell. It connoted black sleepless nights, the darkest thoughts of miserable monsoon days. One day Lynna’ll marry; one day Lynna’ll go away. That had been always the terror by night, the cloud by day. Death, ruin, suffering—these were by comparison trifles. One day Lynna’ll marry. . . . He relapsed into boyishness.
“I shan’t ever like any girl except you. I couldn’t. . . . I’ll try to like—him. But I hate him really.”
“Oh, Gladdy, darling, try not to.” She was so sweet, so pleading, that he thought he would try. But Frost! Short, dark, oily; a kind of good looks, plenty of chat, but you couldn’t trust the fellow. If he wasn’t a Dago—and perhaps he really wasn’t—he certainly looked one. And his Christian name was Ambrose, a rum name that made one think of stage villains; might as well have been Jasper—or even Gideon. And besides all that, he lived at the bad place, the evil, hostile, shameful place: what good could come from there? He said:
“I wish he’d never come to Sleepy Valley. Blast the beastly tote!”
“But, Gladdy, someone had to run Sleepy Valley when—She—went.”
He knew well who She was—the dark thing, the shame, that hung over their family—that black woman their father lived with and wouldn’t marry, that woman he had lived with even while their mother was alive, even—some said—while he was courting their mother. Oh, beastly, beastly! Sleepy Valley—the bad place: She. Neither of them had ever heard of Boy Sealing; yet he said:
“There’s something uncanny about that tote. It’s against us. I don’t believe any good can come out of it. Ever.”
She stroked his arm. “Perhaps she won’t ever come back.”
“Oh, yes, she will. She’s only gone to England for a year.” His eyes blazed with sudden fury. “She wanted to see England; She gets to England. I want to see England; but does anybody send me to England? No. Damn father!”
“Oh, Gladdy——”
“Yes, damn him. Duffy gets sent home to Eton; that old black beast gets sent to London and father pays her bills there. I’m kicked into these stinking works and don’t get anywhere. Why wouldn’t he let me join the Army? You go and sweat blood there for me, you little devil.’ That’s what I get, that’s good enough for me. Tiles. Filthy, beastly, rotten old tiles!” Vented, his anger passed away; he showed his dark little smile. “She’ll come back all right. She’d never have gone if—our brother—hadn’t had to go to that school in Bangalore. He’ll bring her back all right, little darling.”
Lynna was chewing the end of a grass; long experience had told her that it was best to let Gladdy have these tirades out. But to talk of Sylvius with Gladdy always gave her a delicious thrill: officially nobody ever spoke of him, he was utterly taboo. She said, spitting out bits of grass:
“Gladdy, I’d love to see him.”
“I wouldn’t. I’d kick his behind. I expect he’s awful.”
“Conna saw him the other day, when Dad was taking her to Ooty to school. They went through Bangalore. Dad didn’t mean her to see him, but he came to the hotel when Dad was out. She said he was rather sweet.”
“And Conna kissed him and slobbered over him, no doubt. Conna! She’s not like us; she’s different; she’s got no pride.”
“Oh, Gladdy, she has! She’s full of herself.”
“She’s got no pride about us—about Torteval. She thinks we’re a rotten lot. So we are—in a way.”
Lynna sighed; her mind went back to where her heart was.
“Oh, Gladdy, I wish you liked Frost better.”
He stood staring at her miserably. “I like you, Lynna. I like you so much I can’t like anybody else. As for Frost——”
From the house came Susan’s voice, even, powerful, commanding:
“Lyn-na! Flow-ers.”
Rosslyn turned swiftly on her brother. “Gladdy, do something for me.”
He brightened immediately. “Rather!”
“Help me to dodge Susan to-night. After dark. Before dinner.”
“Yes. But why?”
“Because—oh, can’t you guess?”
“Is it something to do with Frost?”
“Yes, he’s coming to see me.” Suddenly he saw that she was white, trembling. “And I must see him, Gladdy, I simply absolutely must.”
He said coldly, “What does he want here?”
“There’s something I must tell him about.”
“Well—what?”
“I can’t tell you, Gladdy—not even you. . . . Oh, Gladdy, help me, help me. But I know you will.”
She was turning swiftly away, when he called to her: “The bangle, silly. Susan’s on the steps.”
“Oh, what’ll I do, what’ll I do?” She wrung her hands, the helpless, delightful feminine.
“Give it to me, you goat.”
She slipped it from her arm and, putting it in his pocket, he turned away. He wanted no breakfast—couldn’t eat it. In the little hill-top summer-house where in another life Boy had importuned and Glory rejected, he sat staring out at the old bright implacable river. His heart felt broken because his sister had said, “I can’t tell you, Gladdy—not even you.” That was a new thing in life—new and utterly horrible. What Lynna knew Gladdy knew, what Gladdy thought and felt and wondered Lynna was told; that had been the rule that had sweetened nineteen Ishmael years. Now it was broken; she had a secret he couldn’t know—and with Frost, that Dago, that sham gentleman, that swindle. What did she see in him? He took out the bangle and looked at it; the smooth sleek thing was like a snake with little ruby eyes. “If I could chuck as far,” he thought, “I’d bung it in the Ghoomri. She can’t like it; but she does; she likes it better than my watch.” He sat staring out at a world as flat and empty as the river, as relentlessly progressing to an end that seemed scarcely worth reaching after all. . . . Sleepy Valley, the bad place; the dark thing poised there above the Ghats like a bird of prey that might come swooping down upon them all. . . .
The factory siren blew suddenly like a giant’s laughter.
Ross was at Bangalore. His journey had been made easy by the new railway that, creeping, creeping, had justified the prophets and come at last to Sikkal. Now the Ghoomri was spanned by an enormous bridge of clamorous girders; the train, shrieking occasionally at the pedestrians who wandered in its path despite all warnings, whisked its patrons across at a pace that made light of Ghoomri’s magnitude. Strange indeed to think now of the old jangad and the men singing at their poles and the bullocks lying down chewing their cud. After a quarter of a century—no less—it was difficult to be sure, but Ross almost thought the southern abutment of the bridge rested on that very rock on which he had sat naked and drying himself on the fateful day when he had taken Somappa’s fancy. Somappa!—gone to the burning-ground these seven years; and Lafauce buried in his Guernsey churchyard these ten; and Glory, and Glory . . . But still, if you looked north from the southern bank of Ghoomri, the first thing that caught your eye and the thing that continued to bulk largest in it were the Torteval chimneys. Torteval went on.
Ross had gone to Bangalore in the hope of tripping up his local agents, whom he suspected of what a later decade was to call double-crossing; and at the end of his interview he came away dissatisfied. Either the long weary journey had been a fool’s errand or his agents were cleverer men than he had thought. He had ended by renewing their contract; in India change in the staff rarely produced any good—you only got somebody worse. Change your servants, your maistris, your contractors, your agents, and you went from the devil to the deep sea; you got no better and lost the queer kind of fidelity these people did develop with a long passage of years. The Bangalore agents for the Torteval Tiles, Registered Parrot Brand, were a firm of Mohammedan Saits, a bearded patriarchal father of the old school and an ultramodern son with a red fez, a blue suit and gold-rimmed glasses.
“It is not our fault, sir,” said the old man. “Please excuse.” And the son said uppishly, “We’re selling your tiles. We push them all we can. But people are liking these Salvatores. What to do?”
“These damned Eye-talianos, eh?”
Father and son nodded, spreading out their hands like Jews. Ross lit a cheroot and idly turned the pages of the ledger before him. The ledger was kept for Income Tax purposes and meant nothing; but—these Italianos? The Italianos were the Catholic Mission of Saint Salvator and more particularly the San Salvatore Tileworks—Bandicoot Brand—of Sikkal; they hailed from the old Etruscan country north of Rome; little competent pushing men with swarthy faces and incongruous light grey eyes. They had crept north with the creeping railway, giving the old- established factories a hard knock at Calicut, at Ferok, Kalyandrug, Mekkili. They bought out or absorbed the small native firms, competed vigorously with the Europeans. Neill Brothers had sold the tile part of their business in disgust. And for the last three years the Italianos had been at Sikkal, working at first in old ramshackle buildings down near the sea but gradually extending, gradually modernising. They were still ten years, twenty years, behind Torteval, but—they grew. . . . Ross rubbed his chin, flicking over the ledger pages.
“Got their latest price-list? Let me see it.”
He turned the thing over—cheap and tawdry like all the Italianos’ stuff; on ugly yellow paper, ill-printed, full of slovenly printers’ errors. Presently he looked up.
“These must be rotten tiles.”
The son swung his glasses. “They are good tiles. Very good. People are liking.”
“Then they must be running at a devil of a loss.”
The old man would have agreed politely; but the son said:
“No; they are subsidised. They get money from their Mission. Ve-ry large sums. It is all releegious propaganda. They don’t care what they spend.”
Ross banged the ledger. “Well, we’ve got to keep on beating them. See you to that.”
He drove back to his hotel, had his hair cut and changed his suit. Before going out again he looked at himself in the long mirror. “I don’t alter much,” he thought. The same upright muscular figure stood there—no fat, no sagging, no stooping. The dark strong-featured face was intact; hardly a line or wrinkle; eyes clear. “Next year I’ll be fifty,” he thought; “I don’t look it.” He went swiftly downstairs and called his gharri.
“St. Theresa’s.”
Outside the school he stood a minute in contemplation of the drab yellow buildings, the bare beaten playground, the Eurasian boys playing listlessly with cheap hockey-sticks. In his pocket was a letter from Duffy—from Duffy at Eton. . . . That didn’t seem altogether fair. Yet who could send a Sylvius to Eton—even if they would have him? St. Theresa’s was a good school—they said so all over India. Many men wouldn’t have done so much for their—no use blinking the word—bastard. St. Theresa’s was Catholic, of course, and therefore mixed; but that was Coaces; Coaces would have nothing to do with Protestants. His mind passing idly to Coaces halted to wonder what she was doing. She had changed a good deal in the last few years; she had developed her reading, gone in for educating herself. Queer, the fancy she had taken to visit England; she was there now. Coaces at forty-two, in her Indian clothes, wandering in London; she didn’t lack courage! What was she doing; how did she pass her time; what friends had she made? He couldn’t imagine.
“I’ll have trouble with her one of these days,” he thought, “when Sylvius grows up.” For though Coaces had said little he knew her bitterly jealous of the difference between her son and the children of Glory. All this self-educating had been mainly on account of Sylvius—that Sylvius shouldn’t despise his mother. Well—she had her right to be jealous; but after all, God help us, a kept woman was a kept woman and there was an end of it. Many a man would not have done half so much. And if you came to that, Gladstone—thrawn little devil—had never been sent home, nor Rosslyn. Conna might go, might not. She was a handsome thing and—progressive. Duffy had gone to Eton as a matter of business; you wanted education in business on the Coast these days—“public-school men,” whatever these might be. He had done what he thought best for them all. . . .
Sylvius came to him suddenly, a rather under-sized figure, not very advantageously dressed in his school clothes. He wore glasses—for his sight was bad—under an unbecoming topi. He raised the topi as he approached.
“How do you do, sir.”
“Hallo, laddie,” said Ross. “Going strong?”
“I am quite well, sir, thank you.”
“Well, jump in and we’ll go round the Lal Bagh.” In the shady gardens they got out and walked a little, Ross trying hard, but unavailingly, to draw Sylvius into natural speech. The boy was constrained with him, monosyllabic or talking like the young man’s book of etiquette. Ross blamed the good Fathers; they were probably harping eternally on the great debt the boy owed Ross, the duty of gratitude, and so on. Naturally the child—he was little more—was ill at ease in the presence of this godlike dispenser of benefits. Lighting a fresh cheroot, Ross said:
“I’m going back to-morrow, Sylvius: I’ll maybe not see ye for a while. Have ye thought yet what ye’d like to be?”
“Could I be a priest, sir?”
“M-m, well. Maybe. But that’s a poor life, surely?”
“I think a priest’s is a fine life, sir. It must be good to be always serving God, isn’t it?”
Ross disliked him. Little prig! But he thought, “Coaces will settle all this in due course. Catch Coaces letting him become a priest.” He said:
“We’ll see. But it’s not only the priests and the ministers that serve God. Maybe God likes folks to stay in the world and work.”
“Then could I be a lay-brother, sir, like Brother Ernst or Brother Aloysius?”
Ross told him he could. But driving back to his hotel, he felt depressed. This sanctimonious little prig was a stranger—nothing of the old block in this chip, anyway. He thought, “I suppose it can’t be helped, it was to be expected. Everybody gets religion for a while; Coaces will manage him.” And from lay-brothers his thoughts passed back by easy transit to the “Eyetalianos,” their undercutting methods, the floods of good cheap tiles they were throwing on the market. Provided they could show converts, these fellows, they didn’t care what wages they paid or what loss they made on their product; they had inexhaustible funds, inexhaustible energy, an endless procession of recruits. Religion—queer thing; Sylvius full of it, he himself never feeling its touch. A dangerous thing, too, when it came down into the arena and competed with ordinary life. Devilish dangerous; but in all probability the Italianos wouldn’t last; they couldn’t keep it up. Or was the tile business perhaps played out: had it seen its best days? Should a wise man make a change?
In the little hill-top summer-house—whither, if ghosts exist and have the power of volition, the drowned ghost of Boy Sealing must surely sometimes have come—Lynna sat with her lover. It was dark in the summer-house but there was a young moon outside; and somewhere in its glassy radiance Gladdy waited, gazing at the sheen on the river and thinking his long unpleasant thoughts. He and she were supposed to be taking a walk after dinner; thus Susan had been deceived—“Though what on earth on a night like this——” Susan had said, drawing a handkerchief across her broad forehead. It was stiflingly hot in the summer-house, a dead airless night at the tail-end of the hot weather, thick, suffocating, given over to howling dogs and the clamour of native bands. Lynna and Frost sat perspiring and uncomfortable; romance seemed distant as the scornful moon.
Over and again Frost said, “But are you sure, Lynna, are you certain?”
She said distractedly, “How can I be sure? I don’t know enough. But if what they say is true——”
He stood biting his nails, a vague shape against the doorway. He was small and neat, the least thing shorter than herself; she persuaded herself that she could see the silhouette of his fine features, the sleek black hair, the little black moustache she loved so to feel on her lips. Oh, she loved him frantically!
But what was to become of them? Weeping, she said:
“How could you make me do it? How could you?”
He said, “You knew well enough what you were doing. You must have known.” At the ugly speech she felt—not altogether for the first time—a cold chill of mistrust; she thought, “He shouldn’t have said that; a good thing Gladdy didn’t hear him say that.”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t. Nobody ever told me anything. I only know what you’ve told me.”
He moved into the darkness and put an arm round her shoulder.
“It wasn’t our fault. We couldn’t help it.”
“No.” Leaning against him blissfully, she thought, “Surely God meant us to? Surely it was much too lovely to be wrong?” She straightened and kissed his cheek. “Darling, darling, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. But—what are we to do now?”
He was silent for a minute; then he seemed to call himself together, his arm tightened round her.
“Little Lynna!” Oh, when he called her that, she felt she would do anything for him, anything. “Little Lynna. Don’t you worry. I’ll stand by you. I’ll see you through.”
She threw herself against him. “Oh, I know you will, I know you will. . . . But if—if it’s that, if it’s what we think—you’ll have to marry me, you know.”
He petted her. “Well—of course.”
“But you’ll have to take me away from here, quick. I couldn’t tell father. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell Gladdy.”
He stroked her gently; the dark moustache brushed her cheek.
“There’s no need to tell anybody just yet. Nobody could possibly guess yet. And anyway you may be all wrong.”
“I’m not. I feel it. I feel it’s happened.”
“Well, just hold on a little. It’ll be all right.”
“I’ll hold on a little. But only a little. Darling, don’t make it too long. I couldn’t bear it. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“It won’t be long. I’ll go right back to the tote now and start the arrangements. They won’t take more than a week or so. Then you’ll have to tell your father——”
She almost shrieked. “No, no—not that. I simply couldn’t. Not possibly.”
“Silly, you’d only need to tell him you were coming away to marry me. You needn’t say anything about—what we think.”
“I couldn’t even do that.”
“Well, then, you’ll have to sneak away. I’ll fix it all up.”
She was infinitely relieved. “Oh, yes, let’s do it like that.” In the stifling little shed an old dream, dreamt there in other days, presented itself. Up the Ghats, faster, faster, up through the dreadful forests and the grim black rocks that pressed forward to fall upon you; up, up, flying from pursuit; then at last the lights of a little house. . . .
Frost stood back, mopping his brow. “This place is like death just now. We’ll have the monsoon on us in a week or two. We’ll have to get it all fixed before that.”
Panic seized her again; she had forgotten the monsoon, the black raging thing that might bar her road to the Ghats. “Oh, but you’ll be ready before that. Oh, darling, promise me you will. Promise me.”
He petted and soothed her; his arm dropped to her waist. “Of course, of course. I’ll write just the moment I’m ready. Why, the next time you see me may be at Sleepy Valley!”
“When will it be? This day week?”
“Maybe not just that. But not much after. I promise you I won’t delay. Good God, Lynna, why should I? You might trust me.”
She told him she trusted him absolutely; she repeated it; absolutely. But she thought wildly, “Do I? Can any girl trust any man? He’s had all he wanted. Or has he? I don’t know.”
Presently he kissed her passionately and went. And immediately she thought, standing alone in the deserted summer-house, “He never said he wanted me. He never asked me to come. Not once.”
At the agreed place, after whistling a signal or two, she found Gladstone and together they walked home. He was taciturn and hurt. He said, “I suppose you’re not going to tell me; all right.” She said, “I’ll tell you soon, Gladdy, I promise.” He replied sullenly, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter now.” Walking to the house, they hardly spoke.
Upstairs she re-read the letter from Conna that had come by that day’s post. Conna was delighted with her school at Ooty, the school Lynna herself had left only two years ago. They remembered Rosslyn Cowal, it seemed, and asked kindly for her. “Miss Jervis says you were always such a good girl. Were you, Lynna? I hope you were, and I hope you’ll stay good because one of the pretty ones in the family ought to be good and I don’t feel like growing up good at all.”
Lynna put down the letter thinking, “You don’t know what you say.” Lucky Conna to be there in that good place with all the girls and knowing nothing. “A good girl!” If Miss Jervis, dear, ugly, grey-haired Miss Jervis, could come into this room now and see everything and know everything. “Oh,” thought Lynna, “I would just fly out into the garden and hide. . . . And yet it wasn’t wrong; it couldn’t have been. It wasn’t, it wasn’t. And anyway, he’ll make it all right now. All right now; very soon.”
She got into her hot little bed and tried to believe it.
Ross returned to Torteval as usual in a grim temper. He could never sleep in trains; he hated the things, with their din and their dirt and the long halts in blazing sun and the ugly faces gaping in at the window. It had been a weary journey—and little learned from it except what he knew before. His train arrived in the early morning and after a bath he breakfasted under the ministrations of Susan, who fluttered round him, wholly impervious to his biting comments. They rebounded off her squarish, chesty little figure without effect; it was her father’s way, it was the way of all men; men were of no importance and Jane would be back in three days from a dutiful round of visits, every hour of which she had hated. After breakfast Ross went over the works with Gladstone, the sire grim and glowering, the son taciturn and defensive.
“Ye don’t seem to have done much when I was away.”
“I did all I’m allowed to. You’ll be getting Duffy out soon. He’ll do better, no doubt.”
“That’ll be a while yet.”
Gladdy looked up sharply: there had been talk of further privileges for Duffy, further procrastinations therefore of the date when he must return east and take up his responsibilities and, with luck, release others. He put his fear into words.
“He’s going on to Cambridge, then?”
“That’s my intention. Any objections?”
“Yes.”
“Oh? And what might they be?”
“It’ll be the longer before I can get out of this. . . . Seriously, dad, can’t I clear out and do something else?”
“What, for instance?”
“Oh—anything.” But he thought to himself, “I’d join the Army of course—as a Tommy, if necessary: I’d get in somehow.”
“Oh—anything.” His father’s voice, hard with scorn, mocked him. “And what would ye live on?—just anything. And what allowance would I have to give ye? Oh, just as much as ye could draw. No thanks, my mannie, I haven’t trained ye all these years for that.”
“But you admit I do no good.”
Ross softened; the frowning boy on the other side of the office table was so like, so very like himself; what a son he could be—if only he would.
“I said that when I was cross. Ye needn’t heed everything I say. Ye take life too hard, Gladdy, indeed ye do.”
“I haven’t found it much of a picnic.”
“It’s your own thrawn fault. . . . Look here, Gladdy, can you and me not quit fighting and get along a bit better together?”
A little dazed by this unprecedented handsomeness, Gladstone still shook his head.
“It’s no good. My fault. I don’t seem able to take orders.”
Ross had forgotten the Falls o’ Tarf and a Third Engineer who suffered from the same disability; he stared uncomprehending. “Ye took orders all right at school.”
“That was different somehow. It’s like this, Dad—I can’t take orders from you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s something deep inside both of us. You—you’ve got to make people do what you want. And when I see that, I just feel somehow, ‘I’m damned if I do.’ I’m sorry, dad, but it seems to be like that.”
Ross sighed and picked up his letters; it did seem to be like that. “Well, we’ll see.”
That evening, in the moonlit garden, Rosslyn told Gladdy her secret. It was more than ten days since Frost had kissed her that passionate good-bye, and every day she had run to meet the post peon and never had there been a letter. Not a line, not even a scrawl to say he had got back safely to Sleepy Valley and was starting arrangements and with love and kisses he was her devoted lover; and a marked place on the paper to be kissed where he had kissed it. Not even that. As to her own condition she was increasingly certain; she had felt terribly sick at breakfast that very morning; only by a terrific effort of will had she sat out the meal. And there were other symptoms; time was passing. Her malaria, coming on regularly with the twilight, depressed her. She took huge doses of quinine and sank lower still. Tonight, at her wits’ end, she still did not intend to tell her brother; but after dinner she was wandering disconsolately in the garden and so was he. Meeting him suddenly down near the Creek, she blurted out the whole story.
Gladstone’s first reaction was a disgusted fury.
“You little beast! You awful little beast! How could you!”
She wept loudly in utter despair; if Gladdy turned against her, all was over.
“I didn’t know. Nobody ever told me. I didn’t know what he was doing.”
“You must have known, you little liar. You’ve been at school.”
“I didn’t, I tell you. I didn’t. Oh, Gladdy, do, do help me.”
He softened a little. “I don’t understand about girls,” he thought; “God knows what they know and what they don’t.” But—if Lynna had been innocent, then Frost had “taken advantage of her,” as they said—the cad! He broke out again:
“The dirty Eurasian cheat!”
“He’s not a Eurasian, Gladdy. He’s English. I know he is. He showed me things.”
“Then he shouldn’t look so like one. Anyway, I’ll break his neck. I’ll beat him.”
But that did not please either. She cried out in fresh terror.
“No, no, Gladdy. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was my fault as much as his. I—I didn’t stop him. Oh, Gladdy, don’t be hard on him. I do love him so.”
Suddenly Gladstone softened completely. “You poor little shrimp,” he thought; “what a mess you’ve got yourself into. I’ll have to get you out of it.”
“But he promised he would write, Gladdy. And—and he hasn’t.”
Instantly Gladstone apprehended that this was the most difficult part of the whole confession—perhaps the cause of it; the rest might have been shame and pride mixed; this was shame pure and simple. The dirty Dago had let her down and she had to tell it. Frost—and a good name for him, too! Ambrose!
“He hasn’t, eh? Well, he darned soon will.”
“It might have got lost in the post.”
He agreed gravely that it might; if she liked to save her face that way, then it was his business to concur. Suddenly a flood of compassion broke down all his anger, all his reserves. It was Lynna after all— his little sister; he felt the waves of warm tenderness come surging over him. Frost was a side issue; here was Lynna in terrible trouble, in terrible shame, and she wasn’t even well; she must be helped. Whatever Frost was—Dago, swindler, seducer, sham—they must be brought together now. He threw his arms round her.
“It’s all right, Lynna, darling; don’t worry. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen. I’ll fix it all up for you.”
She collapsed into his arms; her frail little body was torn by great rending sobs; she clung to him so that he felt her fingers digging into his flesh. Sob after sob as if they would rend her in two. He stood stroking her hair and saying foolishly, “I’ll fix it all up, I’ll fix it all up.”
She said at last between those terrible sobs:
“Fix what up, Gladdy?”
“I’ll take you up to him, of course. We’ll have to look sharp. We’ll have the monsoon on us any minute. Not that that matters.”
“Doesn’t it?” She gazed up at this splendid brother in admiration; Frost had seemed to think the monsoon fatal; she had so regarded it. “Doesn’t it, Gladdy?”
“Of course not. What’s a drop of rain? Roads’ll be heavy, that’s all. . . . I’ll send him a telegram; there’s a telegraph-office up somewhere near that godforsaken place. I’ll wire him to meet us.” Strong, protective, his arms closed round her. “Don’t worry, Lynna; you’ll be there before you know.”
“Oh, Gladdy—when?” Up the Ghats, the dark fearful Ghats, up in the pouring rain, under the hanging rocks, through dripping trees, in the sound of roaring water, howling wind; and then, at last, at last, the lights of a little house. . . . Happy ever after. . . . Oh, when?
He smiled at her eagerness. “Why not to-morrow? Well, no—make it the day after. Give me time for the telegrams. Then we’ll start.”
“Oh, Gladdy! You and me. Oh, darling, darling Gladdy!”
Still weeping, still with his arm round her, she was led away to her room.
Gladstone went ahead at once: in the drawing-room he found his father, moodily smoking and staring into vacancy; the punkah swung over his head and a boy was splashing chilled water upon the kuss-kuss tatties at the doors. Susan had gone off to her room and was writing her last daily letter to Jane; the house was quiet—no time like the present.
“Dad.”
“Well, Gladdy?”
“I’ve got to be away for a day or two. May I go?”
Ross glowered at him. His ill-temper was raging, the temper that in that house of memories always rode him hardest. Gladdy had chosen a bad hour and the luck was against him; the books that day had shown Ross another sharp drop in profits.
“Ye would. With the monsoon breaking on us any day now and the works full of orders. Man——”
“It won’t break for a week. Can’t the orders wait a day or two?”
“They just can not.” These Italianos never took days off; that was another reason why they were dangerous.
“So I can’t go?”
“No.”
There was a silence; Gladstone felt his own temper struggling up to fight Ross’s; forcing it down, he said:
“Dad, I must—I really must.”
“And why?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then ye can’t go.”
“But I must, Dad.”
“In that case ye can give me a reason.”
“It’s—it’s a sort of secret. It’s private business.”
“Private business! Ye’ll put my business first.”
Gladstone clenched the hands in his pockets. “I can’t. Not this time. This one time.”
“So ye’ll go whatever way?”
“Yes.”
There was a second silence; destinies hung in the balance, a truce still open. Then their complex took hold of them. Ross must be obeyed; his son could not obey him. Suddenly the antagonisms, the aversions, the hates of years climaxed; in a moment they fled to preposterous extremes. Ross said with a face of stone and in the rough Scots of his deepest emotions:
“Then dinna come back. If ye go, bide.”
He looked away from his son, from the face that hardened into the very lines and facets of his own. As from a distance he heard Gladstone say:
“All right. I will.”
The boy went out. The silence grew monotonous, broken only by a faint recurring squeak from one of the punkah-ropes and the swish of water on the kuss- kuss. Half of Ross said, “Get up and run after him” and the other half, “Sit still; at all costs sit still.” And lying there in his chair he thought, “That’s done it; that’s final; there’s my second son gone.” He tried to tell himself, “He’ll think better of it; he’ll never go; if he does, he’ll come back”: but clearer than any picture of a repentant Gladdy, a returning Gladdy, he saw again the devil-nema at Somappa’s, and he heard a corpse face, ochre and hideous, saying terrible things about his sons.
The monsoon caught them after all.
Frost dealt with unpleasant or difficult correspondence by the simple expedient of silence; he ignored letters and to a reply-paid telegram risked by Gladdy in desperation he furnished only an evasive answer. In the end, a letter of the “If-I-don’t-get-a-reply-by-Tuesday-I’m-coming-up-to-see-you” variety brought him, in Gladdy’s phrase, to the scratch. He wrote, when he did write, amiably and plausibly enough, agreeing to meet them at the ghat-head rest-house of Kambe and to have some married woman to stay at Sleepy Valley for a day or two till he and Lynna could be united. Gladdy was content; he saw no other course than for Lynna to go to her Ambrose and marry him as soon as might be. Lynna was in love with him—desperately; he must be in love with her. Who wouldn’t be? To Gladdy, honest as the day if not quite so brilliant, it all seemed simple.
But Frost’s delays brought the monsoon creeping in: first dull bronzy oppressive days, then mist, then racing clouds and quick spattering showers. Gladdy, watching the darkening weather, damned Frost body and soul for the thousandth time. There was nothing fatal about the monsoon, but it spoilt the fun; the journey would be a penance instead of a pleasure, and a ghat-head rest-house in the first blast of a monsoon was a sufficiently cheerless place. But after all Lynna and her Ambrose could light a fire and be happy together; weather wouldn’t matter to them. “It’ll be worse,” Gladdy thought wistfully, “for me; I’d have liked a bit of sun when the moment comes to say good-bye to Lynna.” Good-bye to Lynna—unthinkable. . . . Well, he could find a sun somewhere; and sufficient unto the day——
But when the evening came when he could put his arm round Lynna and say, “To-morrow, darling, to-morrow!” she disappointed him. Instead of being eager, blushing, a—a bride, she was flat, listless, frightened. She said only:
“You’ll get into an awful row with Dad.”
He laughed at that. “Oh, no; I won’t.” “And that’s the truth,” he thought, “there’ll be no row with Dad. No more Torteval, no more father—Lord! life’s going to change. But then—no more Lynna either.”
“You will when you come back.”
“Oh—when I come back. Let’s get there first.” But he could not inspire her. She said gloomily: “You shouldn’t come, Gladdy.”
He kissed her. “What’s ‘shouldn’t’? I’m coming, anyway.”
The actual escape and departure was astonishingly easy; timed for a quiet hour in the forenoon, it could hardly fail. It was only the preliminary skirmish at breakfast that took some managing. At breakfast Gladstone said, “I’ll be off work to-day, Dad”—and was conscious of Lynna’s eyes admiring him because he could say with such nonchalance so daring a thing. Little she knew what he had said.
Ross looked up and nodded but made no spoken reply. He wanted to say, “Ye know what I told ye”; he wanted to say, “Think again, man Gladdy”; but the words would not come. And Gladstone, watching him, thought, “He never really meant it; one of us ought to speak.” There the two sat, at opposite ends of the big polished table, miserably unable to make a move. There they sat looking at their plates till opportunity passed and Susan innocently slaughtered all hopes of a re-opening by sudden importunities to both to take some more fish.
About ten o’clock, while Susan pottered happily in the store-room and kitchen, they slipped away at last. Gladdy carried his sister’s suit-case and a small bag of his own; Lynna clung to a leather hat-box. She didn’t look well; she was white, puffy, her eyes had no life in them. “But,” Gladdy thought, “she’ll soon cheer up when she sees Frost.” The racing cloud-wrack and the herald mists had gone charging on eastward; there was a good steady soaking rain; little wind; a solid monsoon day—three inches in Sikkal, five or maybe six on the ghats. At the gate Gladdy looked back; the house was already veiled in rain; dimly he saw Susan trotting from the firewood godown to the bungalow, her skirts held high over her short plump legs, a sodden coolie running by her side with a vast umbrella. He thought with certainty, “That’s the last I shall see of any of them.” A hundred yards along the road, his masterpiece was waiting—the Sait’s new motor-car, a gigantic Napier saloon, an unheard-of prodigy for Sikkal. The Sait was inordinately proud of it; he had lent it effusively. Holding open the door for his sister, Gladstone waited for her outburst of astonished delight; he had prided himself on this wonderful surprise. But she got into it as if it had been the family bullock-coach without a word; she was pale, terribly subdued, he saw her lips trembling.
The car started off, splashing along the already softening laterite road. Gladdy took his sister’s hand.
“Fun, Lynna? Cheer up.”
She said nothing, but shivered a little; he looked at her sharply.
“You feeling all right?”
She mustered a smile. “Not too good, Gladdy. Let me sit quiet.”
“Fever?”
“I think so. A bit.” But she knew she had fever—and much more than a bit.
Respecting her wish, he huddled back into the opposite corner. They were out now into the paddy flats to the east of the town, bumping and splashing appallingly; this part of the road was always atrocious. The sheets of rain swung steadily across the landscape—thicker, lighter, thicker, lighter; a solid monsoon day and getting worse. Gladdy felt his spirits sink to zero; he had counted on making a gay adventure of the elopement, had counted on a laughing, eager, excited Lynna—not this white-faced, shivering girl who sat dumb in her corner gazing at the drab landscape as if she would burst into tears. At the Hommanangadi toll-gate they stopped for water—and he asked her again if she felt all right.
“I don’t feel up to much, Gladdy.”
“What’s the matter, Lynna? What’s it like?”
“I don’t know; I’ve never felt like this before. Just let me sit still.”
“My God,” thought Gladdy, “she’s in for a go of malaria; it’s going to be cheerful.”
In the foothills the rain was heavier; spouting cataracts of coffee-coloured water shot at them from every gully in the laterite ground. The car groaned up one incline, down another; the stream at Hirikal was immense with flood water, its roar daunting. Gladdy thought of the long night at the Kulya rest-house that lay before them; the next day’s wearisome climb of the ghat in the mail tonga. The Sait, obliging beyond hope up to a point, had drawn the line at sending his car beyond the ghat-foot river at Kulya. But the night at Kulya had appealed to Gladdy as a potential lark; he had pictured them drying their clothes by a good fire, eating a cheery dinner with a half-bottle of wine—he had it all ready—and laughing and joking a good deal. It was not going to be like that, he now saw, at all.
Going down the clay slope into Kulya the car skidded violently and all but crashed into the laterite bank. Lynna screamed, threw herself into her brother’s arms and broke into torrents of weeping. Gladdy began to feel really anxious, began for the first time to question the wisdom of the whole crazy journey. The figure of Ambrose, waiting at the ghat-head, grew sinister.
At the Kulya rest-house, however, he did manage to make her fairly comfortable and was rewarded by the first smile of the day. He tipped the Sait’s driver lavishly and the gawky Mahommedan youth drove impassively away. If white people did these idiot things, undertook these insane voyages, it was nothing to him; sniffing, he headed west into the rain wishing himself back in Sikkal. For the moment Gladdy, standing in the drenching downpour, wholeheartedly echoed his wish. And at the tonga office, where the water shot from the thatch in a steady cataract and the leaks plashed on the floor, he wished it even more fervently; for there he learned that the mail tonga had broken down near Hirikal; the bags had been brought by runners; there would be no tonga up the ghat to-morrow. Nothing for it but a double bullock-cart; that could be got. The ascent would take about ten hours—with luck. Given plenty of straw and blankets—the tonga agent was a relation of one of the Torteval clay contractors and was prepared to lend unlimited blankets—it might not be too bad.
Back at the rest-house, Gladdy tried to make a joke of it. “See what happens when you run away to get married. One day a Napier; the next a good old bullock-bandy. What a life!”
She said sleepily, “It doesn’t matter.”
“It’ll be fun, Lynna, won’t it? What a lark. You and me in the old bandy.”
But his Lynna would not smile to him; she was listless, petrified. She felt ill, hopeless, frightened.
“I’ve taken phenacetin, Gladdy. Let me keep quiet.”
Outside the forerunner of the real deluges suddenly crashed roaring out of the sky; as suddenly Gladdy heard trees battering in wind. The real rough weather was coming up. “My God,” he thought again, “to-morrow will be a day.”
Busily he began setting out his jolly little dinner, his half-bottle of wine.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
At Sleepy Valley Frost sat and stared blankly at the advance monsoon drift billowing round him; it drove through the dark coffee like a mist, now clear of the shade-trees, now enveloping their trunks. Everything dripped; coolies went about with their sad-coloured blankets over their heads, breathing a mixture of air and water. It was late afternoon, half-dark already. All day Frost had found his thoughts running on two notes like a chime, a high note and a low. “They won’t come in this,” high note. “Yes they will,” low. “She won’t face it; no woman would.” “But he will. He’ll make her, blast him.” Then in the middle of the afternoon had come the telegram at which he had been staring ever since. “Confirm meet you Kambe bungalow to-morrow afternoon.” It had been despatched from Hommanangadi; so they had started, weather or no weather. Barring miracles, he would have Lynna with him in twenty-four hours. And he wasn’t ready—not nearly, not at all. In plain fact he had done nothing. How was he to meet her, how receive her as she should be received—with joy, with warmth, with a welcome?
It became almost dark; with the approach of night a gust tore through the trees; a heavier crash of rain came down. Going indoors at last, he called for a lamp and by its poor light looked distastefully round his living-room. It was a shabby place, untouched since the ’eighties; an ill-polished table, four chairs with cane seats, a leather arm-chair and a sofa both much the worse for wear. Small wonder; for in that chair Ranken had sat twenty-odd years ago, telling Boy Sealing that all women were bitches—a sentiment with which the present occupier in his present mood would have agreed. The wood fire smoked, the ill-trimmed lamp gave out a glozed orange light; there was not a speck of colour in the murky place except a row of fantastic china ornaments Coaces had set on the mantel and a hideously tinted bazaar reproduction of the Rafael Madonna she had hung on the wall. Wandering round, filling yet another pipe, Frost thought, “Why in God’s name did I take on this job? Why didn’t I stay in Mysore? Why didn’t somebody warn me?” He thought, “I suppose Lynna was right about herself? Or is it all hysteria? I’m fond of her, I’m very fond of her; she’s a darling, she’s lovely and all that. But I didn’t bargain for this. Marriage! Good God!”
He poured himself out a stiff whiskey, pausing bottle in hand to listen to the rising sweep of the rain. “They can’t come in this. But they’re coming!—they’ve started.” Panicking, he gulped his drink. He knew he had made no arrangements; he had nothing ready at all; he had nothing beyond a spare bed and bedding of sorts and this rotting furniture and the walls and the roof. He had no money to get anything better; and when the old black girl came back he would most probably be out of a job. There it was—no use blinking it. He made himself another drink—stronger; how the hell did fellows face things without whiskey? Damn them, they might have given him time to turn round instead of rushing him like this; that blasted brother forcing the pace on him; he might have had some sense. Suddenly the figure of Lynna, warm, appealing, stood before him: “I’m fond of her,” he thought, “very, very fond; it’ll be lovely to have her here, but—but—oh God for a little time to turn round in! And a baby and all to make things worse. . . .” How did one start getting married? He didn’t know. In a place like this, a godforsaken place like this; and in circumstances, hellish circumstances, like these? He ought to have done something these last few days, but—what to do? Not a soul to help him, not a soul to go to for advice. Alone in this godforsaken, tumbling-down bungalow and the monsoon bursting on the ghats. Darling Lynna, pretty Lynna; but—what to do? He didn’t want to get married. And they were coming, coming, on the way and they couldn’t go back. . . . In a fog of sentiment and incompetence he almost blubbered.
Damn that brother, rushing things so!
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
At Kulya Lynna, racked with her malaria, half-slept, half-woke. Wrapped in rugs and dazed with diaphoretic medicines, she sweated through her flimsy clothes; yet still her temperature went up and up. “I must be a hundred and three,” she thought, “maybe a hundred and four.” How high could your temperature rise without killing you? To her semi-delirium the night appeared an enormous interlude in some no-man’s-land of a place—noisy, acutely uncomfortable and fantastic with a blend of reality and dream. The rain falling unremittingly from dark to dawn, became the obbligato to nightmare; sometimes, listening, she would think it lighter; once, waking suddenly, she thought, “It’s stopped,” but in truth it fell constantly, steadily and without much variance. It was hot and stuffy in the bungalow; yet at one time, despite everything, she had been chilled, and the empty half-bottle of wine had come in useful, for Gladdy, the kind creature, had put a kettle on and made of it an improvised hot-water bottle. At some stage, centuries later, she had put it out cold on the floor. The interminable night, vocal with the rain, went on and on; she dozed, woke in panic, dozed again. All night the place was made unreal by the dancing light of the fire Gladdy had lit in the next room—to dry his clothes, poor boy, for he was soaked; was made fantastic by the sight of Gladdy’s bare feet, cocked up on the arms of the long chair in the verandah, for the bungalow boasted but a single travesty of a bed and Lynna occupied it. She could see no more of him than those two feet, which seemed to jig and dance merrily in the dancing firelight. “Oh, he has been good to me,” she thought, “he’s been an angel; where should I have been without him? I ought to be glad, and grateful; I ought to feel happy; I must try to be more cheerful for his sake—for he’ll get into awful trouble with father when he goes back. . . .” But in addition to her fever the unfamiliar malaise of the day pressed down upon her again, a killing thing; she could feel only terror and despair.
In the grey morning when Gladdy woke her, the darling boy, with hot—or nearly hot—coffee, she pulled on her damp unpleasant clothes anyhow, caring nothing how she looked. Climbing into the great double-bullock bandy, she was almost sick. Her brother looked at her anxiously.
“Cheer up, Lynna! Last lap.”
Mustering some kind of a smile, she said with chattering teeth, “Yes, Gladdy.” But she was thinking, “I’ve been wicked, I’ve sinned dreadfully and God has taken me away into this dreadful place to kill me. This isn’t a bandy I’m getting into, it’s a coffin. It serves me right. Yet I didn’t know; it couldn’t have been wrong. . . As in the days of her childhood her courage which had carried her so far now deserted her altogether; as in those old days, she would have run screaming to her mother, completely defeated. But there was no mother. . . . Gladdy, in shining, dripping waterproof, climbed in beside her.
“Buck up, old girl. Soon over now.”
“I’ll try, Gladdy, I’ll try.”
They took the road.
Interminable as the monstrous night, the day dragged on. Creaking and groaning, lurching and rolling over the bad bits of road, crawling on the long twenty-mile ascent, the cart progressed with the slowness of time itself. They passed a furlong stone; after an aeon the next furlong stone appeared; a mile stretched to the length of half a district; an hour was a day. At the river there was difficulty with the jangad; at one time Lynna could have sought refuge in terror; now she lay with closed eyes, far beyond fear of the swollen river, the rickety ferry-boat, the terrifying angle at which the cart canted down the bank. She felt infinitely worse; she suffered from pains now sharp now dull but always formidable; she felt acutely nauseated yet she could not be sick. The rain roared, gusts of cold wind swirled into the bandy, plashing cascades from the hillside spattered and soaked it. The smell of the driver’s wet blanket, the damp beedi he was trying to smoke, poor wretch, were foul. Slowly, slowly, they ascended. Gladdy, looking anxiously at his watch and timing the weary miles, saw that they must be very late at Kambe; instead of gaining, they had a long, sodden, heart-chilling halt at the Kiskudi toll-gate while the bullocks rested and the driver ate. Thereafter it was clear that they could not possibly reach Kambe before dark.
In point of fact, when they did at last reach it, they were both asleep. Gladdy, wakened suddenly by the stoppage of the cart, sprang out to find his worst fears realised. It was on the verge of night, a cold gale lashing sheets of solid rain into the tossing trees; and there stood the wretched thatched roadside bungalow—completely deserted. Not a light, not a soul; neither Frost nor Frost’s jatka nor Frost’s servant. He struck a match in the shelter of the covered cart and looked at Lynna; she was lying on her back, heavily asleep, her mouth slightly open, her face discoloured with sweat. A frightful text came suddenly into his mind: “The wages of sin is death.” “My God,” he thought, “what’s going to happen?” The cartman, seated on his shaft-ends, gazed at him apathetically and waited for the next command; the bullocks, their sides heaving, blew heavily through their noses. Death! There was death in this appalling place rather than life.
Pulling himself together, Gladdy sent the driver ahead to the miserable cluster of huts that called itself Kambe village with instructions to bring back the bungalow watcher alive or dead. The bungalow was padlocked but a couple of well-directed kicks burst open the crazy door; in the light of another match the dismal interior, fusty from disuse, gaped at him blankly. There was a miserable bed of sorts, a wooden thing, far from clean—but this was no time for niceties. He lugged their bedding-roll from the cart and spread it on the unsavoury object, and as he did so he heard Lynna calling in terror from outside. He hurried back and found her standing in the road. She said:
“I’ve been sick, Gladdy; I’m feeling awful. I must lie down.”
With an arm round her he helped her inside and she tumbled in a heap on the bed he had made. She said:
“What’s this place? Where’s Frost?” but turned away on her side before he could answer. Outside he saw the cartman returning with the bungalow watcher, a pair of miserable blanketed figures locked together, battling their way through the blast. In a few minutes it would be completely dark; but mercifully the watcher was carrying a smoky hurricane lamp. They opened the outhouses; in the wretched kitchen these two wonderful creatures made some sort of fire. Gladdy got the kettle, filled it, set it to boil; and at that moment he heard Lynna calling again, almost in a scream. He ran to her terrified.
“I’m ill, Gladdy, I’m ill. I’ve never felt like this before.” She shrieked suddenly, “It hurts, it hurts. Oh, Gladdy, am I going to die?”
He said, “Rot, old girl; I’ll give you some tea in a minute.” But he felt his lips dry, his teeth chattered, the words would not form themselves properly. “The wages of sin is death.” His heart gave a horrible downward drop, and at that moment he heard the jangle of bullock-bells on the road and to his unspeakable relief saw Frost coming in at the gate. He rushed at him.
“You hound! Where the hell have you been? Why weren’t you here?”
Frost took no offence; he said miserably:
“I couldn’t do better. The tote road’s all to hell. We’ve had slips. I don’t know how I’m going to get her home.”
“You can’t get her home. She’s ill. I don’t know what it is. But she can’t go on.”
Frost said helplessly, “Christ!” Gladdy, giving way to fury and terror, shook him by the shoulder.
“What’s the good of saying ‘Christ’? You’ve got to do something. She’s ill, I tell you.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“I don’t know.” Faintly he heard Lynna moaning on her bed. “She’s in pain. Perhaps it’s the baby. Anyway, I’m no good; you’re no good. There must be some woman somewhere.”
Frost stood shivering on the verandah.
“There’s the Strongs on Kednibetta. I think Mrs. Strong’s there.”
Gladdy shook him again.
“You think! You miserable swine, what have you been doing——”
Frost fired at last. “Go easy, Cowal.”
“Go to hell!” The insanity of terror blazed in Gladstone’s eyes. “I tell you, Frost, if any harm comes to her through this, I’ll—I’ll——” Recollecting himself, he thought suddenly, “But where will I be? What can I do?” Lamely he ended, “You’d better go and fetch that woman quick.”
Frost was clearly dismayed. “Fetch her? Mrs. Strong? I can’t.”
It was the last straw; Gladdy leapt forward and took his future brother-in-law by the throat.
“You bloody well will. And now. Ek dum. If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
Frost spluttered and choked. “All right, all right, I’ll go.” He struck feebly at Gladdy and stood back rubbing his throat. “I think you’re mad, Cowal——”
“Are you going?”
“Yes. But it’s five miles.”
Grumbling, incompetent, he started off, and another vast interval of nothingness descended. Inside, on the rough bed, Lynna lay and moaned; she had made up her mind that she was dying—in that dreadful storm, in this frightful place; she didn’t even know where it was. Gladstone had forgotten about his tea; stupefied, he sat on the sill of the door staring into the rain-lashed verandah; he rested his head against the door-post and tried to remember prayers. Oh, God, don’t let Lynna die; oh, God, don’t let Lynna die. An hour passed—two. Had Frost bolted, gone back to Sleepy Valley? Very likely. In that case Lynna would die and he would kill Frost and that would be a splendid end of everything. Ambrose! Peering round the corner of the door he saw Lynna lying huddled on the bed; she lay on her side, quite silent now. Terrified, he held his breath and saw that the rug he had thrown over her moved up and down; she breathed at any rate; perhaps she slept. Tiptoeing forward, he said huskily:
“Lynna.”
She half-raised an unrecognisable face.
“H-heemorrhage, Gladdy. I’m bleeding terribly. . . . Gladdy, I’m going to die.”
Her head fell back.
Distraught with horror, he rushed into the verandah, striking his temples with his fists. And at the same moment lights shone through the rain and the jangle of bullock-bells was heard once more. Frost came in dripping and at his heels the ugliest woman Gladdy had ever seen. She was dressed in khaki; under her short skirt you saw white stockings and heavy boots; a fuzz of tow-coloured hair stuck out round a featureless face under a man’s cloth cap. But she looked not unkind and at all events she was a woman who could cope perhaps with these fearful things. She said at once, “Where is she? you’d better let me see her. . . . Clear out of this, Jacky—and you, too.”
“Jacky?” thought Gladstone vacantly; “his name’s Ambrose; oh, Jack Frost, of course; that’s probably what they call him here.” With his future brother-in-law he stood silent in the verandah; and presently the ugly woman—was she Mrs. Strong?—came out, breathing hard. She turned on Frost.
“I say, Jacky, you might have told me. I didn’t know what you were letting me in for. I don’t know what Bill will say about it. Who is she?”
Gladdy stepped forward. “I’m Gladstone Cowal. She’s my sister Lynna.” His voice stuck in his throat. “You—you won’t leave her?”
She stared at him with light-coloured eyes in a freckled face.
“How can I? No woman could. But it’s a bit of a business.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
The stare continued, contemptuous but straightforward.
“Mean to say you don’t know? Your sister’s having a miss, young man.”
“A miss?”
“Yes, a miss—miscarriage. . . . Now don’t stand there like a pair of fools. Have you any brandy?”
Gladdy had a little brandy; Frost had more. Gladdy said:
“She’s got high fever; ought you to give her brandy?”
“Fever, you fool!” She glared at him in her savage ugliness. “She’s subnormal. She’s as cold as a stone. She’s going, man, your sister’s going, unless I do something. Give me the brandy and get out.”
The second interminable night began, a monstrous night grotesque with howling elements and the face of the ugly woman which grew stranger and stranger as the hours progressed. Once she came and said, “Get some kerosene oil; this lamp’s dying on me.” The cartman, still there, had kerosene oil in a tin. Hours—or perhaps only minutes—later, she reappeared, saying, “Make tea—basins of it. I don’t care how weak it is, it’s liquid I want.” Gladdy made tea, boiling kettle after kettle. By now, poor boy, he was shocked into a state of trance; life had become incredible; it was impossible to believe that this figure of fantasy was battling for Lynna’s life in the Kambe bungalow in the black heart of a monsoon night, while he himself and Frost shared the rain-soaked verandah. Frost had whiskey in a half-bottle in his rain-coat pocket; from time to time he drank, offering it to Gladdy without speech; without speech Gladdy drank and returned it. Without speech they cowered together, crushed by terror and physical wretchedness. . . . Dawn came, wild and haggard, revealing the leaping trees, the grey-white welter of beating rain; in its bleak light the woman, looking now altogether extraordinary, came out into the verandah. Gladdy said:
“Is she better?”
“A bit. The bleeding’s stopped. She’s warmer. The brandy——” She looked at them in disgust. “You precious pair!”
Frost began sullenly, “It wasn’t my doing; I would never have brought her into this,” but stopped at sight of Gladdy’s face. The woman shook him by the shoulder.
“You ought to have been drowned at birth. . . . Well, we must get along. She shouldn’t be moved yet, of course, but I can’t help that. I’m not staying here any longer. Fill anything you can get with hot water and pack that cart. Then you can carry her down.”
Frost said, “We’ll never make Sleepy Valley. The road must be hopeless by now. We’ll have to go to yours.”
The woman said, “Well, naturally. If you were born a fool, Jacky, there’s no need to be a blasted fool. Now carry her down to the bandy. Quick but careful.”
But Gladdy stepped forward. “I’ll carry her. That’s my job.” Frost, looking green and hideous in the dawn, did not dispute it.
Lynna in his arms seemed impossibly light and fragile; she said sleepily, “What’s this place?” and, “Don’t go, Gladdy.” He said, “I won’t, Lynna darling, I won’t.” But he saw, as he had been seeing for the last hour, that go he must. The moment—the black miserable moment was come.
At the bullock-bandy the ugly woman settled it; wheeling round, she said to him:
“And what are you going to do?”
Under the cold stare of her pale eyes he saw himself the complete fool, the perfect nuisance—nothing better.
“Oh—I’ll get along.”
“I can’t take you to mine. That”—she jerked a thumb in the direction of Frost—” that’ll have to come. I can’t have any more joy. I don’t know what my Bill will say as it is.”
He said, “It’s quite all right, thanks. You’ve been sufficiently kind already.”
“You could go to Sleepy Valley.”
He shook his head. Sleepy Valley—the evil place, the shameful lurking place that had struck at last and destroyed—he couldn’t go there. And he never wished to see Frost again unless to take him by the throat once more and make a job of it this time.
“Well, what will you do?” “He’s a nice-looking boy,” she was thinking, “a sight better than Jacky.”
“I’ll walk to Emandarra. I can get the mail tonga from there, I suppose.”
“Where to?”
He shrugged. “Mysore side.”
“You can. But Emandarra’s seven miles. You don’t look——”
“I’m all right.” If only Lynna would wake up and say something; if only he knew how she really was; but she lay there inert, packed in all the warmth and heat they could devise. Perhaps she was asleep.
“Well—we can’t stay here all day.” The hard capable voice interrupted his agonies, slashing through time and partings like a knife. “I’ll look after your sister for you. I suppose we’ll see you again soon?”
He said with firm mendacity, “I suppose so.” Oh, Lynna, wake just one moment and say goodbye! But she lay inert; you could not say if she were alive or dead. Never again——
“Well—till then!” The driver yelped suddenly, shrilly; the bandy lurched forward with a splash and jangle. Frost’s jatka plunged after it as if in haste to escape. They were taking away Lynna; he wouldn’t see her again. Suddenly he remembered that they were carrying away also his own hand-case; so he had nothing—nothing but the clothes he stood in and his boots and the money in his pocket. Not a tooth-brush, not a razor, nothing. Deserted and as it were naked, he stood in this wild grey place he had never even seen before—alone, alone, alone.
They were taking away Lynna; they were taking away Lynna. . . .
Lynna woke up in a bed—a hard bed that smelt of soap—in an untidy room. A woman, ugly and infinitely more untidy than the room, was looking at her. She had no idea where she was or what was happening; then memory presented a cardinal fact. She said:
“O-oh; I’m going to have a baby.”
The woman looked at her, Lynna thought, with cold contempt.
“Oh no, my dear, you’re not. No baby now.” She laid a rough hand on the pillow by Lynna’s face; it smelt of the same soap as the sheet; a very solid, very much scratched wedding-ring was bedded in a coarse finger. “No baby now, my dear. But you’re going to be married. It’s all right. You’ll see.”
Lynna thought, “She means to be kind; but I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that; and I wish she wasn’t so ugly. I wonder who she is; I suppose it would be rude to ask.” Aloud she said:
“Where’s Gladdy? I want Gladdy.”
The woman smiled primly. “He’s coming tomorrow; coming to take you away as soon as you’re married.” “I wonder,” she thought, “why she calls him Gladdy when his name’s Ambrose.”
Lynna said, “That’s nice,” and went to sleep again.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
In Bangalore the monsoon that had ravaged Kambe was no more than a greyed sky and a refreshing coolness. Tramping along South Parade, Gladstone passed a procession of schoolboys—a drab, shuffling lot dressed in ill-tailored khaki. One boy, who wore glasses under an unsightly pig-sticker topi, gave Gladdy a hard stare and twisted his neck to look after him when he had passed. But Gladdy was too tired, too intent on his end, to notice.
At the cross-roads he stopped a Corporal of the Suffolks.
“I want to enlist in the Army. Where do I go?”
On that early morning in November of 1912 when Dufferin Cowal was due to arrive from England, his sister Conna sat in the little summer-house on the Torteval hillock and looked out over Ghoomri. The summer-house, repository of so many loves, so many old stories, had undergone a transformation. Jane had taken to what she called “sketching” and sat for hours here making innumerable water-colours of the river each more unsatisfactory than the last; under her vigorously artistic direction the original summer-house had been practically exterminated; nothing remained of it but the tiled floor—prehistoric Lafauce tiles long since worn into ridges and grooves; the rest had blossomed into a sort of rococo log hut that smelt pungently of melting varnish. It had glass windows that ran up and down, and above these were swing ventilators of coloured glass—red, green, yellow, purple; the sun coming up above Pisgah splashed the floor now with a dementing mosaic. What Jane had done to the summer-house the years, the prosperous years, had done to all Torteval, conferring upon it smartness at the expense of character; regular and immaculate, it had the red-white-and-blues of a Metroland advertisement; Lafauce would hardly have recognised his old rambling homestead of the ’sixties. Ten years after he had built it, the place had looked mellow; now, after half-a-century, it was raw.
But Ghoomri ran unchanged—save for the striding girders of the black railway bridge, now so established a feature of the landscape that one never noticed or thought of it. Dwindling now after the monsoon, the great river swirled sleepily among islands still tufted with sugar-cane like a growth of monstrous grass; still with the old processional dignity he marched to that hardly worth-while destination among the shining, noisy breakers. In the early morning sunlight the small unchanging river-boats sailed this way and that; beyond, as when Ross Cowal—as when Lafauce—had first seen them, were the fringe of coco-palm and bamboo, the thick green of plantain valleys, the laterite uplands yellowing now in the first cold-weather suns.
Conna sat, her hands in her lap, gazing idly in front of her. She was twenty, or would be next year, a big girl, handsome, with an admirable figure—perhaps a little too admirable. She had the magnanimous Lafauce features, spoilt as in all the Lafauces by that shrinking expression of distaste that might spring from weariness or mere vacancy; her hair was brown, however, rather than red—no glint of gold at all, and the minor curves of her face were drawn with too broad a pen. The extremes of her eyelids, the curve of her nostrils were almost gross, the Cupid’s-bow of her lips too perfect for human flesh and blood. Under this traditional Lafauce exterior, however, Ross, her sire, reproduced himself in her thrustingly energetic character. With that face she should have carried the Lafauce talent for indolence, for letting well—or for that matter ill—alone. On the contrary, she was determined, eager, a reformer. It was all Susan—now twenty-eight, unquestionably stout and unimaginably capable—could do to keep her in her place.
Conna hardly saw the placid familiar landscape in front of her; she was thinking intensely of Duffy. Susan-Jane, Gladstone-Lynna, Conna-Duffy; these had been the family partnerships since the beginning—and though the third had never possessed one quarter of the vitality of the others, still Conna-Duffy it was and must remain. What then would Duffy be like to-day? The last time she had seen him had been at Lord’s, on that great day of the year when he recalled his youth and shouted “E-e-e-ton” with the rest. That had been last year—eighteen months ago. Duffy, the complete Cantab, had been resplendent in a marvellously cut morning-coat that moulded his already full figure; she herself had worn a lovely dress, white with tiny specks and stipples of black, a huge hat with a flying black and white ribbon, a light-blue favour pinned on her breast. It had been a wonderful day, Duffy the perfect host, all men charming, all girls just a little less good-looking than herself. Jack Gaynor had been there, who had supplanted Laurie Littlestone, who had succeeded X or Y or Z in the long procession of Conna’s admirers. Lord’s! Champagne; lobster mayonnaise; strawberries; cream; what a difference from Sikkal! Nineteen-eleven; glorious year, her last at school; why, oh why, had she been in such a hurry to end it? And for—this. Complete isolation in a wilderness; never a dance, never a note of music, never a flirtation; no Jack Gaynor, no Laurie Littlestone; nothing but Susan making milk punch and chutneys from ancient recipes, and Jane making daubs from recipes more ancient still; nothing, nothing, nothing to do from morning till night but walk on Pisgah with her father and listen to his Jeremiads about India, and stare and stare and stare at that interminable, gliding, smiling river. . . .
Well, there was Raleigh Beverell. It was with Raleigh Beverell that Duffy must help her. . . .
She ran over words in her mind once more. “You see, Duffy, it’s you and me. We’ve got to do something, don’t you see? I mean, the others—— Look at Lynna. And Susan’s a dear in many ways, I know, and of course, so’s Jane; but really, Duffy—they’re decaying, that’s what it is, they’re going down. They’re all going down, Duffy, and it’s you and me. We must pull them up. For their own sakes.” “Yes,” she thought, “and for ours, too—or down we go with them.” Her mouth tightened; Cupid drew his bow. “If I can’t get out of this somehow! Well—Raleigh Beverell.”
Raleigh Beverell was in the Indian Civil Service, in those days almost at its zenith and little dreaming that its débâcle was so near. He was Sub-Collector at Kalyandrug and he had arrived in the district exactly at the same time as Conna; in fact they had travelled down by the same train. On the journey she had liked him; he might have stepped out of that wonderful party at Lord’s; he was Cambridge; had seen Duffy several times—or said he had. Quite manifestly he had more than liked her. At Sikkal subordinates had been waiting for him with garlands; he had said, smiling and embarrassed, “These ought to be for you,” and had taken them and put them over her head; he had made a mess of her hair, but who cared? Her father, come to meet her, had stared at him as at a lunatic. She had said, “This is my father,” and he had replied with capable promptitude, “How do you do, sir; may I come and call some day soon?” And he had come and called many days—many more days than he would have been allowed if the Collector had been any other than sleepy old Prent who hoped to end his official days in Sikkal and cared about nothing but butterflies. . . . “Or if there had been a Mrs. Prent,” thought Conna bitterly: “a Mrs. Prent would have warned Raleigh against Torteval. . . . And quite right, too.”
Raleigh. She wanted Raleigh; wanted him for himself, for the escape he offered from Sikkal, for the wide interesting life she could share with him, for a dozen reasons. And it was with Raleigh that Duffy must help; for having come so far, Raleigh was coming no further. Quite unmistakably he had checked.
And could you blame him? “Heavens,” she thought, looking out on the gleaming river, the pastel colours of early morning, “could you blame him? We’re not only dull,” she thought, “we’re downright disreputable. What a family to marry into! Shropshire Beverells; Sikkal Cowals; ye gods!” Disreputable, downright disreputable. Ross himself, the head of the house, was just a morose, dour, rather opinionated Scot who had no ancestors and hadn’t been out of India for thirty years; people envied him his money, eulogised his magnificent business capacity, but did they never laugh at him behind his back, at his old-fashioned ways, his obsolete dogmata? She had seen Raleigh round-eyed at some of his pronouncements about India, kept silent only by the restraint of a guest in his host’s presence; what did Raleigh say about him outside, what sort of jokes did he make? . . . Susan and Jane were all right, of course, estimable to the nth degree; but such frumps, such dowds, they had never been anywhere or seen anything and they didn’t care—wouldn’t try. They giggled, they nudged one another; they even whispered together when ladies came to tea in the drawing-room. Dears but rather comic dears—and that would not do; Torteval could not afford to be comic. . . . Then, then,—Conna’s lips tightened further, the bright landscape blurred before her eyes—we went from bad to worse. Look at Lynna; living in some hovel on a Mysore coffee-garden with a man who looked like a Eurasian if he wasn’t one altogether, who drank and quite likely beat her and was always hard up and never gave her any clothes. Mercifully she had no children—mercifully indeed, if you knew the story of her first one, the one she didn’t have. Few people knew that story, however; few people ever had known it; that probably Raleigh had been spared. . . . Then came Gladstone—vanished completely. Lynna was supposed to hear from him at intervals and to know his whereabouts, but she kept it a dead secret and probably the less known the better. Lynna had been crazy about her Gladdy and if he had done anything at all she would have trumpeted it all over the place; inference, therefore, he hadn’t. Vaguely he was “in the Army”: common Tommy? Probably—or we’d have heard. . . . And then—and then—there was the worst thing of all, the thing that Raleigh certainly must know, because everyone knew it, native and European alike: that dreadful black woman up at Sleepy Valley. Her father went there—often; sometimes the woman came to Sikkal and drove about the bazaar; Conna had caught a glimpse of her once—a big handsome creature in a sari—she must be older than she looked. Oh! the black shame of it, the unspeakable shame! It wasn’t fair; and everybody knew—simply everybody. . . . And the glorious catalogue closed with that Eurasian boy in the Telegraphs, the—the bastard. He came to Sikkal sometimes, too; everybody saw him. Just her own age almost to a day—a sort of twin. Conna shuddered and wrung her hands in her lap. They said he was desperately religious, that he stood up at street corners or on the beach and collected audiences and shouted at them about Christ. . . . Oh, disreputable, disreputable, disreputable!
How could Raleigh Beverell marry into such a family? How could he? “This is Conna, mother; I want you to love her. And this is her—er—half-brother Sylvius Sequeira.” (The—er—bastard did have the decency not to call himself “Cowal.”) “And this is my father-in-law’s kept woman.” Oh, impossible! And she wanted Raleigh, wanted him. She got up and stood in a tragic attitude, the bright squares of colour from the ventilator falling all over her like wounds. “Duffy. It’s you and me. We must pull them up somehow.”
Far away below the hill she heard the blast of a motor-horn; so the train was in, he was coming. Running to the other side of the summer-house she saw the car, the fine new Torteval car, sweep up to the door, an immense Delage, dark blue with dove-grey cushion-covers. A hand pressed to her heart, she watched her brother get out. He was a little stouter but fortunately not much; he was wearing a beautiful silk suit and a nice brown tie; he carried a grey Curzon topi in his hand. He stood a moment at the foot of the steps looking around him and smiling quizzically. She thought, “Musical Comedy—there ought to be a band, the Beauty Chorus ought to be all up and down these steps, squalling and throwing flowers.” He put on his topi, nodded to the uniformed Indian driver and began slowly to ascend the steps.
Conna thought, “Duffy; Eton and Cambridge; here comes Hope!”
Conna, biding her time and watching the symptoms she had learned to know, caught Ross in a comparatively mellow mood. The only one of his remaining daughters he ever allowed to touch him—or who ever tried—she came and knelt by his chair and laid her arms on his knee.
“Father, could we have a small dinner-party on Tuesday?”
Ross hated dinner-parties as much as Lafauce had loved them; when he gave one at all it was a “Station Dinner”—a dreadful affair but satisfactory to Ross because he got his penance over at one sitting.
“What for? And why Tuesday?”
“Because it’s the District Board meeting. Raleigh Beverell will be in for it. He was so disappointed, poor boy, to miss the last one. And I do so want him to meet Duffy.”
The mention of Duffy left Ross undeceived; he gazed at his daughter out of his dark face under the hair that still remained black and plentiful; the last six years had aged him hardly at all. He admired Conna—and was just a little afraid of her. She was a fine girl—twice the girl Lynna had ever been; beside those female eunuchs, Susan and Jane, she carried sex enough for a dozen. And if she were setting her cap at this Beverell, if Conna were aiming at an I.C.S. marriage—why shouldn’t she? The I.C.S.? Ross had coined his values in the ’eighties and ’nineties, that golden age of the bureaucracy when the Indian Civil Service had seemed only nominally below the gods, when they could be as rude as they liked, as domineering as they liked, and only extort the more worship thereby. That was a while ago now; already their stock was going down; Collectors and Judges were no longer the uncrowned kings the Chalks and Simmonses of his youth had been; the Indians were out to supplant them and the I.C.S.’s were putting up a poor fight and in time the Indians would unquestionably succeed. But still, the I.C.S.—it remained the best there was. Ross looked at his daughter again; cold, handsome face; fine figure; the carriage of a duchess and twice any duchess’s insolence. The I.C.S.?—why shouldn’t she? That Beverell would find nobody better.
Conna, watching in silence, saw that her cause prospered; she stroked his knee gently.
“Just a wee party, Father?”
The Scots word pleased him as she had intended. He said:
“Ask Susan.”
“Ask Susan?” thought Conna; “I’ll tell Susan.”
On the night of the dinner Raleigh was the first to arrive; watching from the dark passage Conna saw him standing in the drawing-room gazing intently at an ancient pink-and-gold oil portrait of Gloriette Lafauce. The drawing-room was a queer mixture now, a blend of Conna, Susan-Jane and immemorial Torteval-Lafauce; Raleigh’s modern figure in his dinner-jacket seemed to emphasise its antique aspects, its Lafauce aspects, its better aspects. There he stood looking at the portrait, leaning slightly forward; she saw his open, boyish, freckled face, the crisp curly hair that grew short and thick above his forehead, a young face, taking, well-bred, a face that would never look old or grim. He was staring at the portrait hard, his head a little on one side. “He’s looking for me in it,” she thought. She went quickly in.
“Hallo, Raleigh.”
He started. “Oh—Conna. Am I frightfully early?”
“Of course not. Haven’t they given you a short drink? Have one now. I’m afraid it won’t be fearfully exciting for you to-night. You’ll have to take in Susan.”
His face fell; he said with his charming directness, “Oh, but Conna, I wanted to sit beside you.”
“I’m afraid you can’t. . . . Your tie’s crooked.”
He sighed. “You always seem to see something wrong.”
“I can’t bear you not to look smart. I’ll do it for you. . . . There.” She relented. “You look very nice now. Never mind.”
“I don’t want to sit beside Susan.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to. And Jane. You can talk to Jane about her pictures.”
He grinned suddenly. “I know a better picture than any of Jane’s.”
Duffy came in suddenly, sleek, stoutish, his fair hair beautifully brushed; Conna introduced them.
“You two ought to know each other; both Cambridge. Perhaps you’ve met there.”
They eyed each other with the instinctive suspicion of two men confronted suddenly with a joint past: each thought, “What has he heard about me?” Raleigh said, “I think I’ve seen you once or twice.” Conna left them by the table with the gins-and-bitters. The Bank people arrived; she led them carefully to another corner; Susan bustled in. “Oh dear, oh dear, am I late again? My dress just wouldn’t fasten——”
She spoke with a marked Scots accent, rolling her “r”s, the only descendant of Ross and Glory who did.
The dinner proceeded. Sitting as far away from him as was possible in that small company, Conna watched Raleigh throughout the long meal. Susan, bred in the old tradition, had no conception of a dinner containing less than six courses; you must have a “side-dish,” you must have asparagus; except that curry was not considered a genteel dinner dish nowadays and was barred from the menu, the dinner did not greatly differ from those which Trevelyan Lafauce had set forth on this very table for Chalk, Simmons, Colonel Knight and their amiable ladies. A typical Torteval dinner. “Oh Lord!” thought Conna, feeling slightly sick, “how many of them have been stodged in this room!” A fearful procession filed past her; an army of olives bonne bouche (that is with a chilly in them), fish with tomato-rice, little rounds of mutton sitting on slices of orange, turkey with ham and sausage and bread-sauce, toffee-basket pudding (the crowning glory of successive Torteval cooks), devils-on-horseback, drunk prunes. Susan and Jane beamed and guzzled; no wonder they didn’t keep their figures, no wonder their dresses wouldn’t fasten. And no wonder they beamed, for Raleigh was being charming to them, he was behaving awfully well. Jane’s perky little face was split with laughter, Susan’s eyes behind her glasses were dancing. They would say afterwards, “Such fun, Mr. Beverell is; and such a Sahib!” Well, all to the good; she wanted him to be liked. And if he wasn’t altogether as amusing as Jane and Susan thought him, he was indeed—good old expression, you couldn’t beat it—“such a Sahib.” Perfectly trustable, perfectly reliable; kind, loyal, true. He was bound to go far; and she could make him go further. . . . With difficulty she accorded polite laughter to MacFermal of the Bank who was being gallantly facetious on her right.
The guests, most of whom had perforce eaten to discomfort, went early and Conna—who had scarcely had a dozen words with Raleigh—cornered Duffy moodily drinking whiskey. He said:
“Good God, what an evening!”
Conna sat down on the arm of his chair. “You’ll have to get used to them, old boy. That’s what passes for life in this place. Life with a big L.”
“Or ’ell with a little life,” murmured Duffy; his joke pleased him. “They can’t happen often.”
“Oftener than you’d think. . . . How did you like Raleigh Beverell?”
“Oh, not bad. All Jesus men are pretty weird, you know. And he’s a bit I.S.Essy.”
“Duffy! He’s not.”
“Isn’t he? I expect it’s just my low outlook. He’s young. If he doesn’t get his head turned he’ll grow all right.”
Conna could not keep the disappointment out of her voice. “Then you didn’t like him.”
“Oh, I liked him all right.” He turned on her the full battery of his blue jesting eyes. “Do you?”
“That would be telling.” She seized her opportunity. “For any sake, Duffy, don’t get an inferiority complex.”
He gaped at her in amazement. “Inferiority complex? Me?”
“Well, you might. We—we aren’t much of a family to write home about, are we?”
He swelled in his chair; clearly—disconcertingly—he disagreed.
“Well, think it over.” She began her thesis. Disreputable, disreputable. Where’s Gladdy? You don’t know, I don’t know; nowhere very much anyway. And look at Lynna, look how she let us all down.
He knocked the ash from his pipe. “I can’t look at Lynna; I can just about remember her, that’s all. Remember I went away when I was a kid of fourteen and I haven’t seen any of the family in the interval except you. It’s seven years ago, after all. Lynna used to be dam’ pretty. I remember her kissing me when I went away and crying a bit. You never cried.”
“I wasn’t there; I was in Ooty. But, Duffy, you can’t seriously defend those two——”
“What two?”
“Lynna and Gladdy.”
Duffy slowly filled himself another pipe. “I don’t know, Conna. You’ve got to judge these shows as individual cases. You’ve been Home; I’ve been Home. Lynna never was; neither was Gladdy. I don’t feel quite right about it. They didn’t have fair do’s.”
She was dismayed, furious. “Oh, if you’re going to be judicial——” She swung herself off his chair.
He said:
“Come and have a stroll in the garden. This house is about as full of dinner as—I am.”
She nodded. “Awful. Six solid courses. You can’t teach Susan. That’s another thing.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Susan does one damned well. The friends lapped it up all right. If you drink enough it all goes down.”
“Oh, I daresay. But I don’t want to talk about that.” In the moonlit garden she slipped her arm into his. “Duffy, there’s one thing I just can’t bear. It’s that—that woman.”
“What woman?”
“Oh, you know well enough.”
“Sleepy Valley?”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a minute. “I heard from Susan that was still going strong.”
“And it is too. Oh, Duffy, it’s so horrible. And everybody knows of it. How can we hold up our heads with a thing like that——”
“It doesn’t seem to interfere with business. Do you know how much the old man has made in the last ten years?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. It interferes with me all right.”
He was quicker in the uptake than she had thought. “Oh, it does, does it? So Master Beverell has the Nonconformist conscience?”
“You needn’t sneer. He’s perfectly right. It’s all so beastly, so low, so disreputable. How can he——”
She checked herself.
“How can he what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She began quite suddenly and unexpectedly to cry. “Oh, Duffy, I want you to help me with them all. I did so hope you would help me.”
He was concerned at last; he put an arm round her shoulder.
“You little ass, Conna! Of course I’ll help you. But I don’t quite see what we can do. If rumour says true, he knew this—er—lady before he knew our mother. He’s stuck to her for thirty years. I don’t quite see how you could ask him to give her up now. I don’t know that I’d like him to.”
Hurt pride, baffled ambition, burst out of Conna in rending sobs.
“I don’t want him to give her up. He never would—not if we all went on our knees. Susan and Jane cried for a month trying to make him take back Gladdy and Lynna. He wouldn’t. You know what Father is.”
“What then?”
“Well, Duffy, couldn’t he marry her? Even now?” Her brother gave a long whistle of amazement.
“My good child! That would be a tall order. Talk about magazine stories. Talk about Third Act slop.”
She began to laugh through her tears; it was out, her dreadful tormenting idea, and she felt relieved.
“I want a magazine story for myself, Duffy. I want some Third Act slop.”
Duffy drew hard on his pipe. “We can try. We can always try. But I should say it was a hundred to one against. You wouldn’t back a horse at that price.”
“They win sometimes—at that price. Oh, Duffy,”—she hugged his arm more closely—“I have so counted on your coming. I do so want you to help me. We’re going down; I don’t want us to go down. It’s you and me, Duffy——” She picked up the lost thread of her proposed exposition. To and fro they paced in the moonlit garden, Conna wheedling and arguing, her brother smoking in silence. “We must pull them up. You said we’d had advantages . . . it’s up to us. . . . That dreadful half-caste boy. If they married he wouldn’t be—illegitimate—any longer.”
“Yes, he would.”
“Well, not so illegitimate. . . . I’ll be frank, Duffy. I’ll be shameless. I’ll tell you things. I want Raleigh. I want him to ask me to marry him. And how can he? How can he?”
She began to cry again. Touched and uneasy, he patted her shoulder. “I’ll help you, Conna. I’ll do what I can. There’s a lot in what you say. And I do admit it’s us two or nobody.” Their walk had brought them back opposite the front door; she saw her impression made; lightly she kissed him on the cheek. “I hope that’s as nice as Lynna’s. It must have been a nice one if you remembered it seven years. Poor Lynna. . . . Well, I’ll go in now.” She kissed him again more warmly. “Dear Duffy. I am glad you’ve come back.”
He laughed rather sheepishly.
“I’m not so sure that I am.”
Duffy, viewing the world with Etonian detachment and condescension, had designed at Cambridge various structures for his future, none of which included Sikkal. At one time he was allured by the Home Civil Service, but its spell was broken by the bluntness of his tutor, who told him he had no hope of passing the examination at a sufficiently high level. . . . Duffy, who had imagined himself living in a comfortable London flat reading all the best books and hearing all the best music—he was fond of both—and doing only the minimum of gentlemanly work, had reluctantly abandoned the idea. But there were attractive alternatives. He had taken the relatively unpopular line of classics and had found himself unexpectedly intrigued by ancient history—the result of a chance purchase of Rollin in seven volumes on a second-hand bookstall. This predilection had developed and there came a stage when he had virtually decided to devote himself to excavations in Assyria, had even gone to the length of suggesting this alternative in a letter to Ross. Ross’s red-hot reply scotched this proposal promptly; Duffy showed it rather ruefully to his tutor.
“Afraid I’ve got to make tiles, sir, not dig ’em up.”
The tutor read—both the lines and the matter between them—and pursed his lips. He said—he stammered slightly:
“Your f-father seems a very d-determined man. A p-pity.”
“Well,” said Duffy, his sense of justice awake, “he’s put up the money for all this. I suppose he’s a right to say what he wants me to do.”
Now, at Torteval, he wondered if his judicial sense had not led him astray, if he had not thrown away substance for shadow. It had been a strange experience—amusing in a way—to come back to Sikkal, roaring across Ghoomri on an iron bridge; he remembered so well leaving it in the coast steamer and being sick—as Glory and all her children had always been sick—crossing the bar. The place had tugged curiously at his heart-strings, the sight of the Torteval chimneys across Ghoomri in the early morning light had given him a queer twinge. For a moment the prospect had gleamed and dazzled; then it had disappointed. Sikkal seemed smaller and shabbier in some ways, larger and more pretentious in others; but in all ways slightly below anticipation. For Duffy this whole environment—India, Sikkal, Torteval, the tile-sheds and jetties—were simply so much material, so much matter to be used, so many places to make money in and get out of. But his father, that queer silent stranger who once in a moment of now unimaginable passion must have begotten him, who in hours of now incredible tenderness must have kissed and cuddled him as an infant, did not seem to feel it so. Duffy said to Ross one day as they stood in the drying-loft gazing absently at the thousands of tiles on their frames:
“Don’t you ever want to get out of this, sir?”
Ross gave him his full, calculating stare.
“Where would I go?”
“Oh, anywhere. It’s a big world.”
“Maybe. But most of it’s empty. My work’s here. What would I do leaving it?”
“I just thought, sir. You must get fed-up at times.”
“Well, then, I don’t. And mercy me, Duffy, there’s no need to keep calling me ‘sir.’ I’m your father. How many times am I to tell ye?”
Duffy smiled. “I’m sorry. It’s a habit I’ve got into. I’ll try to remember.”
What Duffy had felt like saying—the words had sprung to his lips, but something in his father’s iron face had stopped them there—was, “If you would only go away for a bit—for ever—I could get a chance to do something.” For, whatever Sikkal might or might not hold, he had been grievously disappointed by his reception in the Torteval factory. As a final polish upon studies so far somewhat ill-directed, Duffy had taken a course in the Potteries; quickly acquisitive and full of sound sense, he had picked up the latest modern devices and methods as they were understood in the year of grace 1912. He was eager now to use that knowledge—and completely baulked. If his father could have heard a voice from the past drawling “My dear young Ross!” he might have understood his son better; but he failed to hear it after so long an interval and presented to all suggestions for improvement a front as obdurate as Lafauce himself had ever worn. Rapidly and plainly it was borne in upon Duffy that his reforms and his science were not required; innovations were barred; he had been brought out—definitely if illogically—to carry on the work in the old established tradition. Their five-minute interview over the aged second-hand steam-engine (which still, by some miracle of management, faultlessly drove the entire plant) was at once symbolic and final. Duffy had said:
“We’ll have to scrap that, sir.”
Ross had given him a sour look. “Oh? And why?”
“Well, steam’s a bit out of date, isn’t it? We might as well chuck coal and go back to wood firing.”
“O-oh. And what would ye have here?”
“Electricity, of course, really. We want a power plant. But if we can’t get that just yet—well, then, oil anyway. Surely.”
Ross, in a few sentences, had pointed out to him just why they would do nothing of the kind. Even more violent were their disagreements as to the “Labour” and its treatment; on this Duffy had imbibed at Cambridge some sketchily progressive theories which Ross described by a different and more forceful adjective. Striving to be of use somewhere, Duffy was driven from eagerness to anger, from anger to dismay, and from dismay to the shrugging, fatalistic, Lafauce acceptance which had been, after all, the main factor in bringing him back to Sikkal.
And Ross in turn looked askance on this queer son who was so bland and polished, so versed in the ways of society, so mannered; who spoke as if he had never seen or heard of Scotland; who insisted on calling his own father “sir.” He was a little afraid of him—as of his cool, handsome, equally finished and confident sister Conna. Had it been after all a mistake to send these two home for their education? Yet consider Gladdy and Lynna, who had not been sent home; certes, no success there. Once or twice in his very darkest hours, looking at Duffy and Conna under his eyelids, he remembered Coaces and wondered, “What do these two think of that?” They must know of his second establishment at Sleepy Valley; how did they regard it? He feared he could answer only too surely—they regarded it simply as vile; and despite all his fortitude the thought cowed him a little.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
On a Sunday afternoon in early February Raleigh Beverell’s motor-cycle chug-chugged up the immaculate Torteval drive. Ascending the steps and asking absently for “Miss Cowal,” he was naturally confronted in the space of a few minutes by Susan, by Susan goggling through her glasses, by Susan in a puce silk blouse over challenging corsets. Wondering for the hundredth time how this could possibly be from the same womb as Conna, he said:
“Oh—er——”
Susan understood; she assumed an archness which her glasses and corsets rendered trebly terrifying.
“Well, Mr. Beverell, I see there’s been a mistake. This isn’t the Miss Cowal you were seeking.”
He said charmingly, “It’s a Miss Cowal I always like to see.” And it was true—he did like her, the plain kindly thing.
She laughed delightedly; she would tell Jane afterwards he was “such a Sahib.” She told him to sit down. “I know who you want to see; I’ll send her to you.” She came closer to put a cushion in his chair and suddenly her voice changed. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
He said quickly, “Of course not. Why should there be?”
“I thought you looked a wee thing worried, that was all. Sit you there.” She stumped away. But he did not sit him there; he got up and stood in the middle of the room, his hands behind his back, staring at Gloriette Lafauce, very pink and old-gold in a shouldered and waisted dress of 1880. “Worried,” he thought. “By God I am worried. Worried isn’t the word for it.”
Conna was lying down with a headache; she was flushed with sleep and none too pleased at being disturbed. She said ungraciously:
“Oh, Su, why must he come to-day?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“Must I see him, do you think?”
Susan laid a hand on her forehead.
“You’re hot, lambie. I hope you haven’t any fever. . . . Yes, I think you’d better try to see him. He looks wisht.”
“He looks what? I do wish you’d talk English, Su.”
“Well, wrung, then.”
“Wrung?”
“Worried-like, distracted. I think he’s something on his mind. He was quite white. But maybe it’s just the sun.”
Conna sat up in bed and looked at herself ruefully.
“Well, I can’t see him in my combinations. I’ll have to dress. Amuse him for a bit till I’m ready.”
“He’ll amuse himself all right,” said Susan placidly, “thinking about you.” She waddled away on some household business.
When Conna came into the drawing-room about ten minutes later, having achieved an amazingly complete toilet, Raleigh was still standing, his hands behind his back, gazing at that portrait he had long ceased to see. She had slipped on rubber-soled shoes and came in very quietly, so that he was not aware of her till she said:
“Oh, Raleigh. Sorry I wasn’t ready. Why don’t you sit down?”
He wheeled sharply and she saw that his face, usually so boyish and cheerful, was white and drawn. He was in trouble, then. Next moment he said so.
“I’m worried, Conna. A rather rotten thing—I thought I’d come and tell you about it.”
“What is it, Raleigh?”
“Well, there’s a rumour—it’s just a rumour so far, but you know what rumours are in this country—there’s a rumour that I’m to be transferred.”
She turned away from him, drawing her underlip between her teeth. Transferred! She thought, “I wish I was feeling better, I wish I was looking better, I wish I’d done my hair properly. Why couldn’t I know this was coming?” She said:
“Where to?”
“Kondacole.” He was staring at the floor; he didn’t look at her. “It’s only the other side of India.” He allowed his sarcasm a bitter little laugh.
She heard herself say pleasantly, “Will you like that?” and he replied at once in a low voice:
“No. I don’t want to go away from Kalyandrug. I like it here.”
Her heart began to beat; she thought, “Why has he come here to tell me this? Is he going to ask me to go with him? Would I go if he did? Wouldn’t I! But it isn’t that, somehow I know it isn’t.” A second Conna under intense control managed to speak through all this turmoil.
“But if it’s only a rumour? The bazaar’s full of rumours. You can’t believe half of them.”
“No, but you can believe the other half. This may be part of that.”
“Oh, stuff! What does Prent say?”
“Nothing. Makes jokes.”
“Damn him.”
“Yes, damn him. But I don’t think he knows anything really. He said he’d heard nothing. But they’re all like that—they don’t tell you.”
The sub-Conna spoke again, reasonably, wonderfully.
“I shouldn’t worry, if I were you. Probably nothing’ll happen.” (“Why has he come to tell me this? Why has he?”)
He spoke as if he had heard her thoughts rather than her speech.
“I just thought I’d come and tell you.”
Silence fell; it lengthened. Conna thought, “I’ll shriek in a minute; somebody will come in; why doesn’t he say something or go away? Oh, God, here’s Jane.” But it wasn’t Jane, or if it was she effaced herself instantly. Conna could think of nothing to say; neither apparently could Raleigh, for he repeated himself.
“I thought I’d let you know.”
She turned towards him at last moistening her lips; the question shot out of her. “Why?”
He should have been taken aback; he wasn’t. Instead he lifted to her the most miserable little-boy’s face, white and pitiful and distorted with puzzledom and doubt. At the sight she wanted above everything on earth to throw her arms round him and say, “Don’t look like that, darling, don’t; I’ll make it all right.” But that would never do; that would finish it.
He did not answer her question. He said in the same low spiritless voice:
“I hate going. I wanted to say good-bye. Just in case I don’t get another chance. Prent says, sometimes they yank you out with a telegram and you haven’t time to say good-bye to anyone or pack anything—-just go.”
The repeated word “good-bye” steadied Conna like a douche; suddenly she was able to take herself in hand. Under her clothes she felt herself sweating, she knew her temples under her bunched hair were damp; yet at the same time she had never felt more serene.
“I think you’re being rather a silly. What’s the good of meeting trouble half-way? They haven’t transferred you; it’s probably all a bazaar lie. Sit down and I’ll get you some tea.”
He said quickly:
“Oh, no thanks, no thanks.” (“Like that, is it?” she thought; “must get away at all costs.”) “I ought—I ought to get back to Kalyandrug. Prent——”
“Oh, bother Prent. Ten minutes can’t make much difference anyway. Tea must be ready somewhere.”
But the urge to flight was upon him; he picked up his topi. “No, thanks. No, thanks, really. I really must——”
But he stopped as if spellbound, staring again at the portrait of Gloriette; suddenly she saw how the conversation must go.
“You like that picture, don’t you?”
“It’s—it’s like you.”
“Not very. I’m like my grandfather.” She took a sudden determined resolution. “If you’d been married to that girl, would you have taken up with a black woman?”
He was frightfully shocked; he stepped back, his hand flew up to his mouth.
“What on earth do you mean?”
She said calmly, “My father did. He keeps her still. He’s kept her for years. You must have heard that. Everybody knows it.” Between her breasts she felt a cold trickle of sweat running down. She thought, “I’ve done it!”
He said, “Oh, really—I didn’t—I never——”
Then quite suddenly and in a single instant he became a man again; his voice changed completely. “Yes, Conna, I did hear that. I didn’t know if it was true. . . . I’m awfully sorry.”
“It can’t be helped.”
“Can’t it?” Did grave issues hang on the question, or was it merely conversational?
“I don’t think so. It might be. Nobody’s tried very much, not even Mother. It isn’t easy to do anything with Father——”
Arrested, he stood in silence fiddling with his topi. “It’s out,” Conna thought, “and I was right to bring it out—oh, how right I was! Now he’s looking at it, and it isn’t so bad as he thought, after all. Not now we’ve spoken of it. Dare I go a step further? Not to-day; I’ll leave it.” She mustered a laugh that emerged harshly gay.
“Oh, well, bother family skeletons. Let’s forget them. Come back and tell me when you find it’s all a lie about the transfer.”
He looked at her again with the little boy’s face, childish, puzzled, yearning for he knew not what of comfort and succour. He began to say something, stopped it, moved away, turned back, changed his mind for the last time and walked away down the steps. Presently she heard his engine roar.
Jane came tripping across the room, her heels tapping on the wooden floor. She carried a sketching-block and paint-box and wore a garden-hat; she was evidently making for the summer-house. She said in her prim way:
“I thought I’d never get through. What did he come for?”
Conna, holding on to a cretonne curtain for support, heard herself say gaspingly:
“I don’t know. I don’t think he knew himself.”
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
On the flat road to Kalyandrug Raleigh’s engine bellowed; he drove it hard, staring straight in front of him. “Have I done right or have I done wrong? Have I done anything at all? I went to say goodbye: have I said it? Ought I to have said it; did I want to say it? Should I not rather have said, ‘Conna, I love you most terribly and I can’t bear the idea of losing you. That’s why I came to tell you I might be transferred; and anyway if I am transferred, will you come to the new place with me and stay with me always?’ Was that really what I meant to say all the time? Why didn’t I say it? Oh, why didn’t I?”
On the jangad at Malattur, he sat staring into the sunset lights on the river in sombre misery. “I want her. I don’t care what her family are. I don’t care what her father’s done. Prent’s an old fool; he’s an evil-minded old fool at that. I don’t care. I want her, I want her, I want her. And I’ve probably lost her for ever. I wish I was dead.”
At Torteval Susan was making milk punch, Ross was reading The Times, Duffy was changing after tennis, Jane was happily struggling in the summer-house with the colours of that same sunset. And Conna sat in front of her mirror, gazing at her white face and saying to herself, “It’s now or never. He must marry me. Duffy must help me. It’s now or never, now—or never.”
Having no other experience of Sub-Collectors’ bungalows, Raleigh Beverell did not realise his good fortune at Kalyandrug; the place was renowned throughout the Presidency and several Sub-Collectors with wives and small children were incensed at the characteristic obtuseness of Government which wasted this Paradise on a junior with four years’ service and hardly as much as two chairs and a table besides. The bungalow, built by some forgotten European in the spacious days when such feats were possible, stood on a laterite bluff that projected into the sea; from its high plinth it looked over its left shoulder into the sunset. Below, in the shelter of the bluff, there was a little bathing beach of sand. Raleigh told himself Conna would adore this remote and solitary house reviewing a sea that was never the same from one hour to another. Duffy, knowing and remembering a London version of Conna—Lord’s, Daly’s, Jack Gaynor, Laurie Littlestone—might have raised his eyebrows at this belief; but Raleigh remained content, cherishing the common illusion that whatsoever we love must needs be loved equally by those who love us.
In his wonderful bungalow Raleigh was writing to his mother. Conna had suspected a mother and quick wits sharpened by love had not led her astray; there was a mother with a vengeance. Raleigh at five-and-twenty was one of those young men, fortunate or otherwise, for whom “mother” represents and includes “woman.” He had been desperately fond of his mother all his life; there had existed between them a companionship which, up to the hour of his leaving England, no intruder had possessed the power to break. Now and again a girl had aroused curiosities; once or twice he had felt the puzzled intimation of quite a different relationship. But until Conna, that sweet safe intimacy had remained untroubled. Now—and this hurt him dreadfully—it was troubled indeed.
“Dearest,” he wrote haltingly, “would you be awfully surprised if I told you I was thinking of getting married? You wouldn’t be if you could see Conna, for she is so lovely that I am certain you would fall in love with her at once like I did. As a matter of fact I haven’t asked her yet and it’s quite on the cards that she wouldn’t have me at all, yet I don’t think so somehow; and the fact is, dearest, I won’t be really happy till she does.” He read over to this point and took time to refill his fountain-pen from the ink-bottle by his side; it didn’t seem adequate, it was like the letter of a child, yet what could one say? Moreover, it was going to hurt, yet what could one do? He plunged on. “Conna’s other name is Cowal and she is——” Rushing into a description of Conna he made better headway, the words ran more quickly from the pen; he was surprised to find himself at the bottom of the page. He re-read again and was better pleased; there was some go in that anyway—it was more like a man’s letter and less like a Third Form boy’s. If she could read between the lines—and she could, she always could, she could read even without lines at all—it would be all right. He smoothed out the new page in front of him.
“Of course you’ll want to know who she is.” Now came the bit, now came the question—how much to tell and how much to leave untold? How draw a truthful picture of the Torteval household that would screen—what he wanted to screen? Prent, who had the feminine vice of scandal-mongering, had summed up the Cowals to his assistant at some length at the time of Raleigh’s arrival two years before—“They’re white—that’s about all you can say for them. Cowal turned up here more or less as an adventurer and married the daughter of the old chap who owned Torteval in those days. He married her for the sake of the factory, I don’t doubt, and then he knocked a string of brats out of her and she died.” Raleigh could see Prent laying it all down, his sharp nose peeking out under his glasses, his thin lips compressed on the mouthpiece of his pipe. Prent playing Nestor and loving himself in the part. “Susan and Jane are the quaintest things on God’s earth; we call them the Ghoomri Sisters. They’re said to be sexless. There’s another sister married to some tuppenny-ha’penny planter up in Mysore; I believe she was rather a little bitch. There was a son who ran away—don’t blame him. And there’s some old story about another son who was drowned in a flood—Cowal let him get drowned while he was collecting his IOU’s from the safe. There’s a son at Trinity. And there’s this Conna who arrived along with you—she looks a bit of stuff.” Thus Prent on Torteval—nasty, tattling, ungenerous old beast!
Or was he? For it was, Raleigh realised, on the basis of a carefully edited Prent that he must now describe to his mother his sweetheart’s family. “Facts are facts,” he thought, “but of course a lot depends on how you put them.” Dashing at it, he wrote rapidly, “Conna’s father is a Scotsman who came out ever so long ago to make his fortune—and he’s certainly made it. He fell in love with Conna’s mother—don’t blame him, if she was anything like Conna—and married her. Her father had the factory here”—no need to say what kind of factory; it didn’t matter and “the factory” had a fine John Company sound about it. “His name was Lafauce—an old Jersey family I think; perhaps you may have come across them. There are other brothers and sisters, some in Sikkal, some away.” (Pretty far away, some of them!) “One brother who has just come out”—now for the trump card—“was at Cambridge with me.” In point of fact this was not strictly correct, for it had been ascertained that Raleigh had left Cambridge in 1908, whereas Duffy had not gone up till 1909; still it was near enough. But honest as ever, he added, “I didn’t know him there; he was at Trinity. They have the most lovely house in Sikkal”—a few sentences about Torteval, easy because photographically true. “You see, dearest, they’re a kind of ‘county’ family hereabouts; everyone thinks a lot of them because they’ve been here so long.” . . . Well, did everyone? And “county” family or “country”? Damn Prent! He rambled on for another page and a half, then sprinted to a rather abrupt conclusion. “Anyway, dearest, whatever happens—and I don’t know what’ll happen myself yet—it won’t make any difference to us.”
Underlining the “us” a second time to reassure himself, he lit a cigarette and read it all through. Unsatisfactory; and why? Because it wasn’t frank; it concealed truths. Suddenly his face was twisted with pain; that kept woman! He hadn’t said a word about her. He had heard about her very soon after his arrival in Sikkal; had taken pains later to sift the exact and incontestable truth; there was no doubt about her at all. And if he told his mother about that, what would she say? He couldn’t tell her a thing like that; it was impossible, it wouldn’t go into words. But if he did—and he ought to—what would she say? She would say, “Darling, I don’t think you ought to marry that girl.” Prent would say the same. And if extremes like Prent and his mother agreed? There was nothing at all wrong with Conna; she was lovely, she was cultured, she was all that was excellent. But——
His face twisted again. He picked up his finished letter as if he would tear it across. Then he thought better of it; quickly, almost shamefacedly, he locked it away in a box. He sat down to another letter that flowed, this time, freely from his pen.
“Dear Conna, I don’t think there can have been any truth in the transfer story because I see in to-day’s Mail that Darrell has been posted to Kondacole. But they never tell you anything, so I don’t really know. I hope to be here for the next District Board meeting day, and if I don’t get in to Sikkal before that, may I come and see you then? P.S.—I was writing to my mother to-day and telling her about you.”
Conna read that postscript seven times—happily, because Raleigh had omitted to mention that the letter to his mother had never been posted.
Ross Cowal and Coaces Sequeira were married on the 22nd of March, 1913. They were married according to the rites of Rome, because Coaces would have no other. They were married in the Torteval drawing-room because Ross refused to go to church. It was a strange scene—certainly the most amazing the old room had ever witnessed.
Duffy had fired the first shot in the battle—Duffy, inspired by a wide-eyed, frantic Conna wringing her hands and repeating incoherent variations on the word “must.” Duffy prided himself on diplomacy—and in general not without reason; he fancied also that he had securely established himself on a man-to-man relationship with his father. They had both seen life; if Ross had seen it longer, Duffy had seen it more quickly; and the visible sum-total of life was limited. Once seen, whether rapidly or slowly, experience was equalised and the barriers between age and youth levelled. This at least was the impression Duffy had sought to create—and believed himself to have created. He snatched therefore at a God-sent opportunity when one evening, as he was strolling over the maidan with his father, an open horse-gharri passed them, affording full view of its occupant, a slim, spectacled young man, very neatly dressed, not ill-looking. The young man took no notice of them nor they of him, but Duffy said, very much man-to-man:
“Wasn’t that—er—that fellow?”
Ross emitted a growling noise without significance, and continued to walk on looking straight in front of him. Duffy pursued his attack.
“I’m rather sorry for that poor devil.”
The sound his father made could hardly be called an interrogative, but Duffy was emboldened to treat it as such.
“Because he hasn’t altogether had fair do’s. I mean, here am I—been Home and all that, Varsity and so on. He hasn’t had anything.”
Ross walked a little faster. Now for it, thought Duffy. He said:
“You never thought of doing something for him, sir?”
A black look swung round on him at last.
“Such as?”
“Well, couldn’t anything be done to sort of—er—straighten him out?”
“Straighten him out? What in God’s name do ye mean? He’s not crooked.”
“In for a penny,” thought Duffy, “in for a pound; I’ve gone so far now I may as well go on with it.” He burst suddenly into more natural speech.
“We all feel it a bit, sir. Conna does. I do. I expect Susan and Jane, though of course they never say anything. It’s awfully awkward for us. It isn’t as if the whole place didn’t know all about it. Fellows at the Club and all. They make jokes behind our backs; I’ll bet they do.”
Slackening his stride, Ross gave him a really baleful stare.
“Would ye have the goodness to indicate what in God’s name ye’re talking about?”
Nettled, Duffy thought, “you know perfectly well; if you want it straight, you shall have it.” He said—and annoyed himself by saying it with an apologetic half-laugh:
“Well, sir, Sleepy Valley.”
It was out—and nothing happened. His father tramped on with averted face, saying not a word; in another minute they would be off the maidan, into the noisy streets; conversation would become impossible, all the work wasted, Ross would escape. Well, he shouldn’t.
“We think, sir—I don’t want to hurt you or anything—but we think you might—er—marry——”
“Ye do, do ye?” Speech at last—hard Scots speech; there was a blast coming. “And who all thinks that?”
“I do, sir.” Duffy stuck to his guns. “Conna certainly does. And I’m pretty sure all your friends——”
“I s-see.” The “s” hissed a little. “Well, I’ll thank ye all in future to mind your own damned business. . . . We’ll not speak of thiss again.”
They emerged into the Railway Road with its clatter and roar; without undignified bawling there was nothing more to be said. There was nothing more to be said in any case. Duffy relapsed into gloomy silence; failure, complete failure. He glanced at his father’s profile; flint, rock, iron, adamant, anything on which you could make no impression. Lost it!
But the impression, too faint to show on that impregnable surface, was none the less made. Over his last whiskey and cigar Ross’s mind went back to that brief conversation, to Duffy’s smooth sensible face, especially his blue humorous eye. In his dark hours he had sometimes thought, “What do they think of—that?” Well, now he knew; the boy had told him frankly and it was a good thing to have done and he liked him for it; and was he just an impudent young devil or was he a—friend? Watching the blue smoke spirals he reflected that his household had changed radically in the last year; the whole tone of it had changed. It had changed with Duffy and Conna—with Duffy’s adopted standards, with Conna’s soaring ambition. There had never been people like these two in the house before; they laid down minima and demanded them; and—rightly, said the business man in Ross—they pitched their minima high. They stood for an advance on the Lafauce tradition—the best Torteval had so far been allowed to know. “They’re a new element,” thought Ross; “do I like it or not?” Susan and Jane had been ciphers from birth; Lynna and Gladstone had headed not so much a revolt as a flight; but these two meant—revolution. They arose, this confident pair; Conna aloof, Duffy quizzical, both of them—he had to admit it—a little above him. He thought again uncomfortably of the twinkle in Duffy’s eye—a more deadly weapon than tears or scolding. Conna thought of marrying into the I.C.S., and she deserved to. Was he standing in her way; if so, was it fair? He felt the old touch of awe, the immediately succeeding irritation. The I.C.S.—who the devil were they after all? They were only as great as people like himself, people with money and a stake in the country, made them. Going down at that, heading for a slump. Still—they were the I.C.S., the best there was left in a slumping country, and they didn’t marry into doubtful families. Was the house of Cowal a doubtful family? Almost for the first time in his life he thought lucidly of his relations with Coaces. He had slipped into them and he had shelved them. He had bought her an estate as easily as he had bought herself when she was a shrinking, brown-skinned, open-eyed girl. He could see the blue and gold label on that brandy-bottle now—and old Piedade’s shaky paw reaching out for it. He made her a good allowance; he had educated the boy well; got him a job in the Telegraphs; fixed a second—and a generous—allowance upon him. Still, all that didn’t suffice. “Visiting the sins of the fathers”; gifts and allowances cleared one’s own account, perhaps, but there were others—others for whom one was responsible—whose account was not cleared thereby. What about them?
“Things came easy,” he thought, “and I’ve taken them easy: am I making a fool of myself?” That twinkling blue eye: that look of Conna’s down her long nose. “Damn their impudence, but they’re right; I’ve a duty to do and I’m not doing it, a position to uphold and I haven’t upheld it. I’ve let things slip; we’ve gone down. It won’t do.” . . . But—marrying Coaces! He took another cigar. Of course it would make no great difference to actuals; Coaces would live on in Sleepy Valley, himself in Torteval; he couldn’t have her coming down here and nobody would suggest it—least of all herself. Once married, he could increase her allowance and cut her out altogether. He hardly ever went to Sleepy Valley now; since his fiftieth birthday the physical side of these things troubled him very little; it was dying down, that ardour that had sent him hot-foot with Lobo to Piedade Sequeira’s house; it was becoming little more than a heap of cinders. If you blew on them they glowed; well, don’t blow on them. . . . It wouldn’t make any real difference. . . . Anyway, Coaces would never agree to it. Never. Grinding out the butt of his cigar he went off to bed.
Conna bided her time; Duffy had ruefully told her of his failure and had been asked what he expected. “Rushing things like that; I thought you had more sense.” He went off in a huff, bidding her do better. Conna thought she might. She went about designedly pale and silent; biding her time, she was rewarded. Ross, who never ailed himself, liked all round him to be as Susan—robust, unaltering, constantly cheerful. Slow to notice any drooping or moping, he came down upon it with fury when at last it attracted his attention. He noticed it at last in Conna. The chances were even; Conna might have been sent out of the room with a flea in her ear; but it so happened that Ross was in one of his rare moods of geniality. A speculation had turned up unexpected trumps; ten thousand rupees he thought never to see again had come back suddenly with another ten thousand attached to them. Ten thousand rupees softens the worst—and the best—of us. He said unguardedly:
“What ails ye, Conna?”
Conna gave a fashionable shrug.
“I expect I’m a bad loser, Dad.”
“Bad loser? What have ye lost?”
“Can’t you see?”
“Not unless it’s your wits.” The hard riposte pleased him; he chuckled to himself. “What is it, then?”
She sat down on the floor beside his chair; she felt herself trembling slightly but more with eagerness than fear; now for it!
“I thought you’d have noticed. When was Raleigh here last?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. It wasn’t long back.”
“It was. I don’t blame him.” She lit a cigarette. “We’re a disreputable lot, Dad.”
He was stung, startled. “Disreputable! Us! Have ye taken leave of your senses?”
She laid her hand on his thigh; it was hard and muscular. She thought despairingly, “He’s tough, frightfully tough; he can defeat the lot of us, see us all out.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dad. You know quite well what I mean.”
“Now,” she thought, “it’s done, I’ve shot my bolt. Will he admit it or not? If he won’t, I’m done.”
There was a long silence; at last he said very slowly and with caution:
“Have you been talking to Duffy?”
Her heart leaped. “Yes. And Duffy to me.”
“M’m.” There was another long silence; she wondered if he felt her hand trembling on his knee; well, let him.
“Ye—ye’re taken up with this Beverell, Conna?”
“I want him, Dad.” It broke out like a wail.
“Ay, but does he want you?”
“Yes—I suppose so. He likes me, I know. He’s never said anything. Dad”—she looked up at him with her clear eyes under those white heavily curved lids—“how can he say anything?”
“He’s a tongue in his head.”
“Oh, Dad, don’t be tiresome. If that’s all you can say—— It doesn’t matter. I daresay I’ll get over it.”
“I don’t doubt it.” But after a silence he said, “Are ye trying to tell me that the great sumph’s in love with ye and won’t speak because of—because of——”
“Because of that. What Duffy said to you. Yes, I’m trying to tell you just that.” She put her other hand on top of the first. “Oh, Dad, couldn’t you do something about it?”
“What am I to do, then?”
“Dad, couldn’t you marry her?”
But she had gone too far; he shook her hands roughly from his knee; he reached out and snatched up a book; he said furiously, “Tscha!”
So—failure again. She burst suddenly and naturally into most ineffective weeping. He said in a snarl and in the broadest Scots, “Greet awa’!” But she saw that the book in his hand was shaking and she saw with sudden hope that it was upside down.
She had not failed. For that night Ross made his resolve and the next day he went to Sleepy Valley. It was an easy journey now in the swift Delage; the great thing took in a stride that cruel ghat up which Gladstone and Lynna had laboured for an interminable day. The road flew by, Ross thought, too quickly; there was no time to savour anticipation, always so much better than achievement; and there was no time to make plans. Coaces received him placidly; she stood before him, handsome, almost statuesque, very much better poised and controlled since her visit to England. Looking at her he thought, “Good God, she’s close on fifty; I’ve been living with her off and on for thirty years; it can’t make any difference now.” He took his time over his announcement; talked coffee, prices; walked round the estate with her. Only in the dusk, when he was sitting in the shabby lamp-lit room with his first drink, did he feel ready to begin. He opened in English, but slipped almost immediately into the Tulu. He had never said anything of importance to her in English; much of great importance in Tulu. “Sleeping dictionary”; “master taking one girl”; thirty years; good Lord! He said:
“I think, Coaces, we should be married; it will be better so.”
He had thought out vast speeches; in the end he put it into these dozen words. She sat a long time in silence, her ringed hand moving slowly up and down the bright sari over her knee. Then she said at last:
“Do you say this because you wish it or because you think it is your duty?”
He said, “I say it because I wish it; what else?”
“Then if it is your wish it must be done. I am here to do your wishes always.”
He was staggered; it was all over in four sentences; he had expected argument, ridicule, battle, and had prepared counter-argument, counter-ridicule to meet them. This calm acquiescence left him speechless but admiring. What a woman she was: what sense she always showed!
In the night he visited her for a time, but went back to sleep in his own bed in the other room. She received him calmly, kindly, soothingly as ever. But he did not see, after he had gone, the wild weeping into her pillow; he did not see her sitting up in bed, her arms thrown heavenwards; he did not hear her calling under her breath the names of saint after saint. For twenty years—ever since Sylvius had lain in his basket in the little house in Bethelkuppam—she had concealed her heart from Ross; he had never seen the black jealousies for Sylvius, the black hatred of Glory’s children that had been for her night and day, season and time. So, now, he should not see her joy that Sylvius, her son Sylvius, had at last come into his own. “For now,” she thought in her ecstasy, “my Sylvius will be as good as them: oh, blessed saints, my Sylvius is made whole!”
In the drawing-room at Torteval on her wedding-day—the first occasion on which she had ever set foot within house or precincts—Coaces stood placid, looking almost stupidly round her, taking more interest, to all appearance, in the trappings of the room than in what should have been a critical ceremony. Susan and Jane, Conna and Duffy were present; no others; Sylvius, given a long invitation, neither replied nor came. But two days after the ceremony a letter arrived from some township in the Bombay Presidency correctly and punctiliously “regretting his inability”; a Eurasian trick, Duffy called it—perhaps with justice. The three girls and Duffy sat quietly in corners, looking at their shoes. Ross stood very upright and tall by the side of Coaces; they carried their years well; they would have passed for a pair in the early forties. Duffy thought gloomily, “I shan’t be as fit as that when I’m fifty-five—too stout.” Conna thought, “She’s handsome but so stodgy—how could he?” Susan and Jane held hands and thought nothing. A Catholic Father, whom only Coaces had ever seen before, fumbled and gabbled. They had cleared the room except for a little table, covered with a red cloth, which did duty for an altar; it was shabby, a makeshift, almost indecent, but the priest took it all in the day’s work. The ceremony pattered through. “Will you take this man——” “Will you take this woman——” “Yes.” “Yes.” The priest, holding up the plain gold ring, blessed it fluently; Ross put it on Coaces’ finger. Ross and Coaces were married.
Ross had been staring into the opposite wall, hardly conscious of what was going on. Nothing done that day could make any difference to him; the things that mattered had been done in this house and round it thirty years ago. He thought with a sigh of the old easy-going India, when Lafauce lived here; and Glory—and Glory; when Lafauce lay about in long chairs and said, “My dear young Ross!” and was cheated right and left; when Glory was beautiful and knew nothing and strove after nothing. Nowadays—he glanced at Conna—girls knew the whole encyclopaedia and their ambitions scourged them with whips. Ah, the old days of the ’eighties and ’nineties when a white man was a white man and Chalk was a god and Simmons was another, and there was no railway and no Municipal Council, when life ambled and day ran gently into day! The old easy-going India, lax but comfortable, rough but rewarding—why did they ever let it go? And what had they put in its place? Motor-cars, over-education, uppish natives, far too much politics, “Local Self Government,” trouble already and worse trouble to come. A pity, a pity; but then nothing could remain stationary and change was always for the worse. . . . Emerging suddenly from his reverie, he saw Coaces looking up at him with her great eyes; they were married, then? Moved by a sudden queer impulse, he bent and kissed her cheek.
Conna, sitting in her corner, thought, “Of all the flat, disappointing shows! Never mind, it’s done. And to-morrow’s the District Board meeting. And Raleigh’s coming. Coming! Raleigh!”
Susan and Jane whispered to each other and giggled. Duffy, sighing in deep depression, went to open a bottle of champagne.
So Ross and Coaces were married on the 22nd of March, 1913, and Raleigh and Conna were married on the 5th of June, just two and a half months later. They were married in Ootacamund and from Lebanon, the house in which Conna had been born. On this Conna had set her heart. Ross, uncomprehendingly materialistic as ever, had said, “What in God’s name would ye want that for?” Smiling, her fine lips parted, Cupid’s bow at its full, she had coaxed him as she knew how.
“You couldn’t get it, Dad?”
“I could get it well enough.” He swelled a little. “There’s not so many these days can pay the rent they’re asking.”
“Then do, Dad; just to please me.”
Grumbling he took the great place for the season, and sent Conna there in advance with Susan as duenna and Jane as sketching partner. He himself went up with Duffy only a week before the wedding—and found he had forgotten the place almost entirely. After twenty years of dissociation few ghosts persist, and ghosts are after all in the eye of the beholder. Ross had no vision of a sturdy little Gladstone in a sailor suit chasing round the flower-beds a Lynna who was mostly hair and frilly calico drawers; nor of a Susan-Jane cabal, a shade more imbecile and baffling than now, solemnly presiding over a doll’s shop in the summer-house. Susan poured him out tea as she had poured it for the dolls, chattering, as she had chattered then to Jane.
“It’s going to be a lovely wedding. Everybody’s called. Everybody’s coming.”
Ross grunted unamiably. Still, if the business must be done, it was right that it should be done well and in the immediate presence of the best. Drinking his tea, he said:
“How many?”
“We’ll have about two hundred at the reception.”
“Here?”
“Of course, Father.”
“Good God!”
“You needn’t see them all, Father. You needn’t see them at all. You can hide in your room; I’ll bring you a little of the cake.”
Ross snorted again. What a fool the girl was; who wanted to hide? He was pleased really; it was right that these people should crowd to do honour to his daughter. And he saw now how right she had been; it wouldn’t have done to have them saying, “That’s her father; he keeps a native woman, you know.”
Duffy, munching buttered toast, said, “Free drinks, sir. They’ll come a long way for that. And the I.C.S. are a clannish lot. They’ll Raleigh round Raleigh.”
He laughed—less at his joke than at his perception that none of his audience had seen it.
Conna had never loved Raleigh so much as at her wedding in St. Stephen’s Church. “Up to now,” she thought, “I’ve never really loved him at all; now I begin.” He was in a beautiful grey morning suit with a grey top-hat—and the only other person who had one was Claud Finch, the Private Secretary. He had brought a best man with him, a fellow I.C.S., almost as youthful, almost as sweet as himself. Kneeling beside Raleigh in front of the altar, she thought her heart must burst with love and delight. She enjoyed every instant of her wedding. Girls had told her of their experiences, how they went through the ceremony in sheer quaking terror or in a state of semi-coma, realising nothing except the belief that they were going to be sick every time they made a response. Conna felt none of that. She had refused a glass of champagne before starting (Duffy’s suggestion) or a milk punch (Susan’s) because, as she said, she must keep her mind perfectly clear. She wanted to receive and hold all possible impressions; I must remember this, I must remember that; all through the long ceremony she was storing them up. Kneeling at last with Raleigh at her side, she felt with almost intolerable clearness the emanation from the vast concourse at her back; little movements, sighs, scrapings, a waft of mixed perfume, some child’s shrill babble instantly stilled; the pressure, the crushing monstrous pressure, of eyes on her back became suddenly unendurable. She had a nightmare moment; “my dress has split!”; it was all she could do to prevent herself from putting a hand behind to feel. She began to tremble, she thought she must fall forward at the clergyman’s feet. . . . And then, as suddenly, it was all over, and somebody—the first of many—was grinning and saying, “Mrs. Beverell.”
With the reception at Lebanon she found her impressions beginning to blur; perhaps one could not keep one’s perceptions up to the recording pitch for more than a limited period. And then people swam round one so, there was never a moment to think. Duffy made a humorous speech—really clever; everyone laughed; what a creditable person Duffy was to go about with! Ross said little or nothing but looked splendid; he was easily the handsomest of the older generation present. He looked his part—the intrepid pioneer, the founder of a house, the maker of a fortune, the progenitor; he looked as if nothing could shake him, as if he would endure for ever. Coaces, tactfully, had stayed away and had kept away Sylvius who, no doubt, Conna and Duffy agreed, would have loved to come and spoil things. All Ooty was there—all the nice people they had met during the season; one Member of Council (the other was on tour), all the Secretaries and Under-Secretaries, a sprinkling of military, the “best” of the residents—oh, it was brilliant, brilliant! And there, a little outré amongst this distinguished crowd, were Lynna and her Frost. Conna had begged that they should be invited: “They’ll never come,” she had assured everybody, “we can’t leave them out.” On the understanding that they wouldn’t come, they had been asked. But they had come; there they were, keeping together, speaking very little, taking no part—like a little blot—no, not a blot, a flaw in a jewel. . . .
Neither Duffy nor Conna had seen their sister except on chance occasions for seven or eight years; she came rarely to Sikkal, never to Torteval; it was understood that their father had forgiven her to the extent of asking to be told if she were ever in serious trouble, but he would not receive her, he did not want to see her at all. He had given in over this invitation because, having swallowed so many camels for Conna’s sake, it was pointless to choke on this particular gnat; but he avoided his daughter and his son-in-law, leaving them to the beaming kindness of Susan (who alone of the family was really pleased to see them there), and the inquisitive perkiness of Jane. Staring covertly at Lynna, Duffy and Conna were struck simultaneously and separately by the same dreadful thought, “She looks country.” She was badly dressed, her unfashionable stack of hair was not only ill-arranged, it was definitely coming down. “I’ll have to get her away to my room for a minute,” Conna thought, “before it collapses altogether. Susan’ll never notice it.” Frost stood by the long table, drinking and staring; he was swarthy and coarse; his skin gave you the impression that it was half-an-inch thick and had oil in it; he did look a thorough Dago—though apparently it was true that he came from Kent and of unquestionably English parents; Lynna was said to have sent his birth-certificate to Ross to prove the fact: Susan had seen it. Duffy thought, Etonianly, “A horrible-lookin’ fella.” Someone, not knowing to whom he spoke, had said to Duffy, “Jacky Frost’ll come any distance for a free drink”; certainly he was lapping it up. His eyes roved up and down the women in front of him; he never spoke to his wife and nobody spoke to him; he wore a frock-coat that did not fit him—borrowed probably. A pity they came.
But at the last minute, on an impulse, Conna moved quickly across to her sister.
“Come and help me to change, Lynna; I can’t stand any more Jane.” In her room, she said, “Your hair’s coming down.”
Lynna said dully, “Is it? Have I time to do it up?” She snatched off her hat, bunched her hair together somehow with hair-pins and slammed the hat on again. Conna, struggling with stockings, held out a hand and touched her arm.
“Lynna, don’t give up.”
Her sister stared at her, evidently uncomprehending. She said, “You look nice, Conna. That’s a pretty dress. . . . Father’s never spoken a word to me all day.”
“He will some day soon, Lynna. He’s forgiven you, really.”
“I don’t know. Jacky’ll be cross about it when we get home. . . . And what’s worse, neither has Miss Jervis.”
“Miss Jervis?” For a moment Conna had to struggle for recollection of her old schoolmistress. “Goodness, I never even realised she was here.”
“Oh, Conna, and she spoke so sweetly to you—and you spoke back to her. I saw you. Anyway, she didn’t speak to me. I wish we hadn’t come. I didn’t want to; but it was Jacky—— He’ll be cross now.”
Conna stood up. “I suppose I’m ready.” She clung suddenly to her sister. “Oh, Lynna!”
Lynna kissed her. “It’s all right, darling. You’re all right, anyway.”
Conna clutched her, biting back her tears. “Oh, Lynna, we must meet again soon. You must come and stay with us. . . . Lynna, where’s Gladdy?”
Her sister paled suddenly. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Well, anyway, I can’t tell you.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes, he’s all right.”
“Oh, Lynna, I wish you were all right.”
“I’m right enough. It’s not bad really. If only I had a baby——”
Conna began to feel herself growing hysterical. “You’ll have one some day, I’m sure you will.” (But Frost—ugh!) “Come on, we must go; they’ll be wondering; we’ll have Jane here——”
“You go,” said Lynna; “I’ll follow in a minute.”
The big honeymoon car; Raleigh looking perfect; faces; laughter; confetti; Ross solid, dark and unmoved; Duffy half laughing, half not; Susan blubbering (she would!); Jane perking under an appalling hat; gone! Married; all over; gone!
She said, “Raleigh! At last!”
In Lebanon things began to grow hilarious. Duffy, doing himself and everybody else en prince, was pressing the champagne; the hired band began to tune up for dancing. Ross, dark-faced and immovable, slipped away through the house. They would caper on now till dinner-time; let them, let them! One thing led to another; the Falls o’ Tarf; the bullock-cart; Somappa; Sikkal; now this fashionable rout at Lebanon. He looked into Conna’s room; empty except for a pair of stockings thrown across the bed and a spill of pink powder on the dressing-table. He looked into Susan’s—confusion and disorder; into Duffy’s—a stink of Turkish cigarettes and a worse disorder still. And wandering along the corridor, he came to a room that none of them used, and there he met a ghost at last—the ghost of Glory, pale and tired and exhausted as he had exhausted her; Glory, lying there on a bed and saying over and over again till she seemed almost silly, “She’ll be a good girl, Ross, a good, good girl.”
Well—she had been.
The War years.
To the firm of Cowal & Son—so called since the autumn of 1913 when Ross, making his second and perhaps greater concession that year, took Duffy into partnership—the War meant an inevitable onrush of prosperity. A spate of Government building—new barracks, new quarters—and a demand from Railway and Port authorities called for an immediate output of tiles on the scale of lakhs. Boat-load after boatload of clay came down the river to Torteval, square after square of it was carried into the moistening-shed; the pug-mills churned, the wheels of the presses spun giddily, the kilns roared. For the first two months of the War the sea bar was impassable, but tiles went out by rail regardless of freight charges; and when at last the monsoon lifted, the pattimars swooped down in hungry droves racing each other for places. It was impossible not to make money. Duffy, secretly believing that at least half this prosperity was due to his own personal impetus, said, swelling:
“See what it is to have a ‘Son’ in the show.”
Ross shrugged. “It won’t last.”
“It’ll be a long war, sir.”
“Six months.”
Duffy’s elevation to partnership had followed hard on Conna’s marriage. Ross, still in the giving mood and bewildering himself not a little by these repeated surrenders, had effected it after a long morning during which he had done little but watch his son at work. He didn’t understand this young man, he never would; what was worse, he mistrusted his enthusiasm and fundamentally doubted his judgment. “He’ll take a leap,” he thought, “at the worst moment and ca’ canny when he ought to play bold.” The fact remained, however, that he had wanted sons in the business—three sons or four, and here was all the son he would ever have in it now; why abandon the plan of a lifetime, the hope of five-and-twenty years, simply because the material supplied by Fate fell short of the ideal? Shrugging his shoulders, half-whimsically, Ross told his son of his decision; and was rather nonplussed by Duffy’s calm reception of the news. Duffy took the partnership for granted; what concerned him was the opportunity it afforded for developing his own ideas.
“I hope now you’ll let me have a bit more of a free hand, sir.”
“Free hand? What way?”
“Well, you might give me control of a department or two.”
“Such as?”
Duffy reflected; he knew himself as yet no expert on clay, no judge of tiles; he could not—as Ross could—walk round the works with a small cane and prod some worker who was incompetent, idle or careless. Or rather, he could and did; but his prods were haphazard. He knew nothing about machinery and never would. There remained, however, the management of the labour, on which he held those progressively interesting theories. Ross worked his factory by the time-honoured methods of the East—an early start, a quarter of an hour’s rest after every three hours’ work, a dawdling afternoon, a late finish; Duffy, full of conventions and theories, was all for a shorter day of quicker, harder work. If only the old man would let him introduce these methods. He said:
“You might give me the labour supervision and the office, sir.”
Ross smiled grimly—he cared little about either. “So be it. But none of your antics. Ye come to me over anything big.”
Duffy foresaw possible quibbles on the meaning of the word “big” but decided to let well alone. “And what about some new machinery, sir?”
“Show me the figures. But stop calling me ‘sir.’ It was aye silly and now it’s nonsense.”
“I’ll show you the figures all right.”
Ross glowered at him; cocky young idiot, coming there to teach his father. Yet if they weren’t to take advantage of his new tricks, why Eton and Cambridge at all? A vague, very faded voice from his memories said, “My dear young Ross——”
In the meantime Ross found some interesting figures for himself. Copra—the coconut kernel—was in demand for explosives—or would be; in the course of a quick tour round the coast and littoral villages Ross bought all he could find of it—cheap; he sold presently, at a very handsome profit. All over the low ground of the district grew the nux vomica tree with its pulpy, hard-kernelled fruit; cattle were fed on the pulp and in the dry weather when grass was scarce there was often a bitter taste in the milk because the cows ate the leaves of the coppiced trees. But that bitter taste was due to the strychnine in the kernel of the fruit—and the sources of the strychnine supply were limited; if the war went on for any length of time there would be a sudden and acute demand for strychnine for the armies from any possible source whatever. Belying his faith in the war’s early termination, Ross made a nux vomica tour of the villages personally and by agent, buying, buying, advancing. The stuff was a jungle product, it was gathered here and there by villagers and sold by them to petty retail dealers; there was hardly a wholesale dealer in the market; you could pick it up at pleasure. Buying at various prices—sometimes as low as fifteen rupees a candy, sometimes as high as twenty-five, Ross gradually and inconspicuously made his corner. The anticipated demand came as suddenly and furiously as a blast of wind; the prices ran up and up to fabulous figures—a hundred rupees a candy, a hundred and fifty, two hundred. Again, with a little ordinary foresight, it had been impossible not to make money.
Presently—as Ross had anticipated—the Government stepped in and declared a monopoly. But on his copra and nux vomica deals there was already a sufficient profit to enable him to initiate at last a long-cherished project. He put up a coffee-curing plant. Planters above the ghats grumbled that they could not get their coffee decently cured nearer than Calicut; the useful port of Sikkal was wasted for want of a curer. Ross called a meeting, extorted guarantees and built his plant. It was a first-class plant, magnificently and disconcertingly costly; but in the first year Ross cured six thousand tons of coffee. In the second year he cured eight. In the third year came an offer of amalgamation from Neill Brothers, the commercial kings of the West Coast. Ross refused it; and cured, that year, ten thousand tons.
Duffy, watching these transactions with interest, saw his own future opening out golden before him: “If only,” he thought, “the Gov’nor will drift away into these miscellaneous products, I’ll get the tiles to myself.” The tiles—his tiles—were going great guns already; with a free hand he would make them go Big Berthas altogether! Genial and garrulous, he told his friends at the Club that if only the old man would clear out he could make the business hum—an announcement which presently and by a roundabout route came to his father’s ears. Ross was annoyed for one moment, hurt for another, but met it finally with a wry smile. Tiles were getting played out, after all; competition—especially the ever-strengthening Eye-talianos—was cut-throat and deadly; the sources of clay, though still almost endless, were receding farther and farther up the river. Lafauce had been able to dig first-class stuff almost under his factory windows; now it was coming from villages ten or twelve miles away. It would be long before the exhausted beds would re-establish themselves. Duffy, as usual, had the wrong end of the stick; he mistook the transitory for the permanent; he thought the tile trade must necessarily soar if only there were a bright young man from Eton and Cambridge to boost it. But on the contrary, Ross thought, the tile trade was almost certainly on the way to a slump; coffee, on the other hand, he shrewdly suspected to be heading for a tremendous boom.
Then the War caught Duffy. For some time Ross slew all arguments on the subject of Duffy’s joining up by the dogmatic assertion that another three months would see all fighting finished; presently came the stalemate of the trenches and it was obvious—though Ross never indeed admitted it—that thrice three months would be a sad under-estimate. Duffy, chafing and uncomfortable for some months past, felt inaction no longer endurable. He had known few military families in his years at home and like many others was slow to believe that the professional soldiers could not cope adequately with this war as with all wars before it; no Englishman in Sikkal had so far enlisted; the question had remained academic rather than actual. In India itself there were only the Volunteers—a few good corps, one or two very good, but for the most part discredited and inefficient. Now suddenly came the I.D.F., the Indian Defence Force, with its apparent promise to substitute something real and earnest for the knocking knees and the paper strengths of the old volunteer battalions. Its trumpets roused Duffy; he said one evening after dinner:
“I’ll have to join this thing, sir.”
“What thing?”
“This Defence Force. I don’t see how I can keep out of it.”
Ross lit a cheroot. “What are ye going to defend? And who’s attacking us?”
“That’s not quite the idea, sir. We establish a force for garrison duties in India; then the Regular wallahs get off to the front.”
“And are ye going to garrison India with a pack of Eurasians?”
“Like Sylvius,” thought Duffy suddenly. Well, why not? There was a lot of good stuff in Eurasia.
“If we can get the best of the volunteers and train ’em, they should be very good. Lots of ’em joined the Volunteers for the boots and the shirt; that needn’t go on. Anyway, I think fellows like me must lend a hand.”
Ross surveyed his son through the blue smoke of his cheroot, puzzled again at his own feeling of indifference. Fellows like me! He felt no contact with this son of his, could hardly believe he had begotten him in that very house in the next room but two. And looking back, he could hardly recognise in himself the lion-like sire of that begetting: reviewing the past year with its string of surrenders and concessions and retirals, he realised himself radically changed. He thought, “I’m cooling off all round; I don’t want to fight now, I don’t even want my own way. Why was I so hard with Gladdy; why don’t I feel hard now? Gladstone used to say what Duffy has just said and I downed it before he could get out the words. I cared so much in those days.” Blowing out a long streamer of smoke, he said:
“Ye can do what ye like.”
But the I.D.F. did not suffice for long. A Recruiting Officer came round, a Regular, a very charming fellow; he said little but hinted a great deal. He stayed a night at Torteval and left Duffy discomfited to the point of a fury which burst out again that night after dinner.
“Look here, sir, this can’t go on. I’ll have to join up.”
Ross remained calm. “I thought ye had joined up.”
“Oh, that, the Defence Force, yes. But that’s not good enough. That’s for fellows who can’t leave their jobs out here. I can.”
Ross sat up.
“Can ye? If I say ye can’t?”
The rasping voice chilled Duffy like a douche. He thought suddenly of Gladstone and his fate; the old man had done it once, he would do it again. The old man could put him to the door without an anna; and he would, too, as soon as look at him.
“But you wouldn’t say that, sir.”
“I would. And I do. And stop all this ‘sir’-ing.” They compromised, after a brief struggle, on the Indian Army Reserve of Officers which seemed to have come into being as a God-sent compromise for both sides. Duffy became a Recruiting Officer and wandered at large over South India, addressing meetings, holding parades, measuring chests. Being an acceptable young man, he was received hospitably in the many districts he visited and on the whole enjoyed himself very much. At first Ross countered his somewhat self-congratulatory reports with the assertion that the war would be over before any of his recruits could get into uniform; gradually, as the years went dragging on, he gave this up. He was indeed changing; he had cooled off so much that he did not even care to contradict.
But immediately, and as if Duffy’s departure had been a signal, the tile trade began its slump. Contracts slackened, diminished, were cancelled; prices, which had soared to amazing levels and held them, fell and fell. Duffy, returning to Sikkal in pursuit of recruits and in all the glory of a Captain’s uniform, went through the firm’s books and was dismayed. Quite naturally, he thought it a matter of cause and effect. At the Club, making sure that Ross was out of earshot, he even said so.
“It’s hard to see a first-class business going to hell. But what can I do? If this gory war——”
Someone would say mechanically, “Rough luck.”
“It isn’t even as if we had the tiles to ourselves. These Eye-talians are the devil. Subsidised, damn them—and they’re Allies, so we can’t say a word. I wish to God they’d been Huns.”
“Rough luck!” again.
“The old man says tiles are played out. Bosh! He’s played out, that’s what it is.”
His hearers yawned; they were not vitally interested and preferred to talk about themselves.
But the price of coffee was rising, rising. And in the last year of the war, Ross, improving his plant at some further expense, cured nearly twelve thousand tons. And when Duffy wrote him a long letter imploring him to keep watch on the Italians at St. Salvators, suggesting a protest to Government against the iniquity of Mission subsidies, Allies or no Allies, Ross tore it up half-read.
To Lynna the War was never more than a background. It was going on, it went on interminably in a hundred places. Somewhere Gladdy was in it; some planters “went”; Frost talked at least of “going”; that much was personal. But as a war it was no more real than the back-cloth of a stage, because such important things were happening all the while to herself.
In the very first months of the war something began of which she had long given up all hope; she began to have a baby. At first she would not let herself believe that all her abandoned hopes were to come true, but at Christmas she visited Mysore with Frost and slipping away from him one day she went to a lady-doctor. The lady-doctor laughed at her.
“I don’t see how you could ever have supposed anything else.”
Lynna, looking pale and tired in a green linen dress, stood adjusting her hat.
“Perhaps I didn’t really. I’d better tell my husband.”
“I should—certainly. Won’t he be pleased!”
“He’ll be pleased. . . . We’ve been married over seven years.”
The lady-doctor laughed her pleasant laugh. “Better late than never.”
But Lynna did not believe that Frost would be pleased. He was managing Hannagal now, an estate in the Kadur district of Mysore, a small place owned by a grasping old planter’s widow who paid as little as she could and made the maximum deductions. A child cost money, later if not at first. All the way back, all through the long drive in the rickety rattling Ford, she was thinking, “Last time! Last time!” Gladdy and the Sait’s Napier and the Kambe bungalow and that extraordinarily ugly woman who had been kind to her; but especially Gladdy. At Hannagal that evening she told Frost; as she had expected, he was dismayed rather than pleased.
“It’s a bit awkward just at this moment, Lynna. To tell you the truth I was thinking of joining up pretty soon. I’m sick of starving here.”
“And you’re sick of me,” she thought. Aloud she said calmly, “Why shouldn’t you? I can go somewhere. They can’t pay you less than you get here. You can send me money.”
He was nettled at her coolness. “Money’s all you ever think of. You wouldn’t care a damn if I went away and got killed.”
She said as if she had never heard him, “We’ll call the baby Rosslyn. I hope it’ll be a girl.”
“Rosslyn’s not a girl’s name.”
“It’s done me all right. You can call her Lynna like me. Or Rosie.”
“It’ll be a hell of a business having a baby in the house.”
“If you join up that won’t worry you.”
“Well, I damn well will join up. You don’t care. You want me away.”
She hummed the song they had heard in Mysore. “‘I don’t want to lose you but I think you ought to go.’ If you join up, Jacky, I’ll think more of you. And I won’t have to pay for whiskey out of the house money.”
He looked his blackest. “That’s enough.”
But the months passed on and Frost did not join up, though he continued to consider the question over an interminable series of whiskeys-and-sodas for which there always seemed to be money to spare. They made him alternately maudlin, sentimental, patriotic and merely ill-natured. In her intense interest in herself and the precious burden she carried, Lynna almost forgot his existence.
Rosslyn Frost—a girl—came into the world on a monsoon day but a very much milder specimen than that through whose blasting downpours Gladstone had brought her mother to Kambe. Frost, off-putting and undecided as usual, had meant to go for the doctor first thing in the morning; then he waited till after breakfast; then his Ford stuck in the bogged plantation roads; in the end the doctor did not reach Hannagal till after two o’clock. Lynna lay in anguish, concentrating the whole of her being on the baby’s welfare. “If it lives,” she thought, “I’ll never let him come near me again. If it doesn’t live, I’ll kill him.” The doctor—an underpaid, overworked practitioner subsisting on the subscriptions of the local planters—arrived cold, drenched, and in a bad temper; he said he should have been sent for long before. Things went badly all through the long half-lit afternoon while Frost drank whiskey and the monsoon billowed over the whistling silver oaks. At one time there was talk of an operation which would save the mother but would certainly kill the child; Frost, half-maudlin, could only weep imbecile tears; cursing all planters and himself for coming among them, the doctor battled on. Just about sunset Rosslyn—the third Cowal of that name and the second girl to bear it—made her shrill wailing entrance. Sweating, the doctor went to tell Frost and found him asleep. Lynna, drugged and senseless, knew nothing about it.
That was the first of the three great events that made up Lynna’s War; the second took place about six months later. After endless vacillations Frost at last made up his mind to “go”; and to send Lynna and her daughter to live with his aunt in Bangalore. Frost thought this an excellent arrangement; if he were himself unable to remit anything at all (a contingency he thought quite probable) his aunt could not let Lynna starve; if he never came back—again not an impossibility even if he succeeded in dodging the enemy bullets—the aunt could have her for good. He was, he told himself, pretty tired of Lynna; and his final exodus from Hannagal was prompted less perhaps by patriotic impulse than by the appalling discomfort which prevailed in his house. The cramped untidy place seemed choked with bottles, napkins and other accoutrements; Lynna, completely preoccupied with her child, was in addition far from well in health; the weak Lafauce heart Glory had given her had been badly strained in the course of her terrible struggle to bring forth Rosslyn alive; it beat irregularly; once or twice she fainted. She was useless to Frost as a companion, she refused herself as a wife, and the child dominated the house. Frost found it intolerable; decided at last and after a strong final session with the whiskey, he started for the Taluk headquarter town to settle his affairs. What happened was never exactly known for no witness could ever be found; but a fellow-planter coming in the opposite direction found the Ford upside-down in the bed of the Kalatirtham River with Frost dead beneath it. He had apparently skidded at the corkscrew entry to the bridge and gone partly through, partly over the low parapet wall. At all events he was unquestionably dead; “Jacky” would participate in no more free drinks; never again would “Ambrose” trouble Torteval.
In her dyed black dress Lynna sat at Hannagal and wondered what she was to do. The ready generosity of the planting community had made her a dozen offers; Frost’s aunt pressed her to go on with the arrangement already made until something better appeared. But Lynna saw herself faced with a more bitter alternative than the acceptance of the planters’ whip or the aunt’s hospitality. The latter could only be temporary, and if she accepted the planters’ kindness and went “Home” what was she to do? “Home,” their “Home,” was nothing to her. She had not heard from Gladdy for months and did not know where his Regiment might be; if she did know, it would not help her. There was but one thing for it. She kissed little Rosslyn and took a sheet of notepaper.
“Dear Father, My husband has been killed in a motor accident. I have a young baby. Will you take me back?”
The letter reached Torteval at breakfast; Ross opened it, read it with an unchanging face and passed it to Susan. Susan, reading, burst into a howl of weeping.
“Oh, Father, what will we do?”
Ross gave her his sourest look; useless, blubbering lump!
“Do? What would ye do? Get a room ready and send up the car.”
It was his sole word on the final culmination of his daughter’s tragedy.
The third thing happened to Lynna six months after she had come again to Torteval. She was sitting one bright December morning in that drawing-room of many tastes and periods, thinking as her mother had thought there before her, “How did all this ever happen?” when the butler brought her a letter from France. She read it and rose with a hand on her heart and with a queer little noise she dropped to the floor in a faint. She carried a table of brass ornaments down with her and at the crash Susan came running. There was some dashing this way and that, some calling for brandy, a good deal of useless clamour and activity; and presently Lynna, white as death, sat up.
“My letter,” she said, “my letter.”
Susan found it half underneath the sofa. “Here it is, dearie.”
Lynna snatched it. “You haven’t read it? You haven’t seen it?”
“No, lambie, no.”
She thrust it away into the bosom of her dress and smiled weakly. “That’s all right. . . . I’m all right now, Su. Don’t fuss.”
But Susan was anxious. “What was it, dearie? Tell us what it was.” Lynna shook her head.
“Was it bad news, ducky? Tell Su.”
Through blue lips Lynna said, “No; it wasn’t bad news. It was—it was—good news really.”
But her face went ashen-grey and she fainted again into Susan’s kind arms.
Coaces lived on at Sleepy Valley; for her the importance of the War years consisted in the fact that coffee crops were good, prices high and higher. Coaces at fifty was still handsome, her hair black, her face unlined; but she was more than ever statuesque, she was becoming a trifle formidable. Indefatigably hard-working, she dragooned her labour, alternately bullying her writer and making him split his sides over some salacious jest. Her rich full voice rang over the little estate, commanding, abusing, joking; she knew every maistri and every gang coolie with an intimacy that enabled her to exchange domestic badinage in doubtful taste but eminently conducive to smooth relations. Work ran evenly; the seasons favoured; Sleepy Valley was one of the most successful totes north of Simbri. For the third and fourth year of the War Coaces sent down bumper crops to Ross’s new curing plant at Sikkal.
Ross came rarely now to Sleepy Valley; when he did he was often tired, silent and cross. She expected nothing else. Men did not last for ever as passionate animals any more than did women; she was just as well pleased when he went away down the ghat having asked her for nothing. She had forgotten the tormented girl who had prayed, “Oh, St. Joseph, oh, blessed St. Antony, let me have that lovely man.” She had forgotten the iniquities of the snake puja. Nobody remembered these things now; Kotru was married and dead; the snake pujari must have joined his fathers ages since; nobody was now interested in those past follies and delights unless it were St. Joseph himself, and as to that, who knew? Fatalistically Coaces accepted the fact that she was growing old—cooling down, beginning just a little to die. She thanked God morning and evening at her prayers for a good life; she had lived irregularly but on the whole comfortably and well. And she thanked God always, whenever she had a moment to spare, for her son Sylvius. Without him life might have been indeed a little empty, a little cold, a little terrifying. With him it was still a glory of hope and interest.
So Coaces lived at Sleepy Valley while the War years went by—working with the strength of three men by day and of an evening sitting stately by her fireside in her best sari, reading books. She had improved her reading greatly during that long-past visit to England and she had acquired somewhere and somehow a passion for the later Victorian lady-novelists. She had bought herself the complete works of Miss Braddon and Mrs. Henry Wood and read and re-read them steadily and in rotation. She read very slowly, often with only half comprehension; a volume lasted her a month. But she was proud of herself, pleased with herself and happy.
In the first year of the War, before he joined the I.D.F. and was mobilised, Sylvius came often to Sleepy Valley. He did not approve of his mother’s serenity, of her patience, her fatalism, her almost Lafauce acceptance of the ordained thing. He argued with her volubly in his clipped English—they never spoke Canarese or Tulu—that at times in its cadence and accent was not far from chi-chi. He retained neat regular features; when he took off his big disfiguring glasses he was a smart-looking, well-favoured boy. But he was a small creature, undersized; he had to look up even to Duffy.
“Mother, why don’t you go and live at Torteval?”
“Why I am to live at Torteval? My work is here. If I live at Torteval who will look after my tote?”
“You are Mrs. Cowal, isn’t it? You have the right to live at Torteval.”
“Wha-at if? If I don’ want to go there?”
“I like to turn them all out of that place and take you there to live. One day maybe I will.”
She laughed indulgently. “Wha-at stories!”
His eyes flashed. “You will see. I hate them all. I hate them.”
“Wha-at good is hating? You are all right, Sylvius. You got your work; you got your pay. You can find some nice girl and marry her and have some nice babies.” She chuckled richly.
“I don’ like girls; I don’ want to marry any girl. . . . Why will they never ask me to their house?”
Her tone changed at once; secretly it infuriated her that he was never asked to Torteval; she made light of it to him only that he might take it lightly.
“Why you want to go that house, Sylvius?”
He stood twisting his long fingers, biting his lips.
“It is my right to go.”
“Right? Wha-at is right? Noth-thing. You would not like going there. It is noth-thing, mann, noth-thing.”
“I hate them all. I hate them. If I could hurt them I would. One day perhaps——”
Pained at his pain, she pulled him to her side and petted him; looked out coconut toffee and fed him with it; told him the old childish Kerala stories about tigers and hares, Brahmins and Chettis; at last made him laugh. . . .
It was pleasant, more than pleasant, when Sylvius came to while away the time at Sleepy Valley, which was sometimes—in spite of Miss Braddon and Mrs. Henry Wood—passing dreary and slow for Mrs. Cowal. But in the beginning of 1916 Sylvius joined the I.D.F. and because he was an expert telegraphist he was mobilised and given high and special pay first at one remote Depot Headquarters and then at another. There were no more leaves to spend at Sleepy Valley. Sylvius hated the I.D.F., hated—and envied—the jollity of his fellows who were making hay while this unexpected sun shone; more and more he turned to religion, turned into himself or to that Friend who, the Fathers told him, understood and made allowance for all. Sometimes he thought of that “nice girl” his mother spoke of, but he could not make himself a success with the giggling, “oh-my!” girls he met. He was obsessed and tiresome; he could not giggle with them; he felt old and tragic; he sat in their company ill at ease and constrained, charged with terrible secret knowledge. Because, of course, he had been born a bastard; and although his father and mother were now married, he was, it seemed, a bastard still. The thought suffocated and quenched him; in the office, at “socials,” he longed to burst out, “I am illegitimate!”; the suppression of this awful truth bound him into tense nail-biting silences till the “nice girls” left him in disgust. Once with a particularly nice girl he let it go and it forced itself out of him in a strangled whisper; but the results of that were worse—far worse—than silence. Brooding, he thought, “They have everything—I have nothing; I can’t even marry.”
So for the latter years of the war Coaces, past fifty, sat mostly alone at Sleepy Valley and looked back upon her life. And Sylvius, in his twenties, looked forward into his and thought what he could do to injure and ruin Torteval.
In 1917 Conna was minded to go “Home” and found herself unable to do so on account of the submarines. The prohibition set the seal on what had been, for some time now, an intensifying discontent with life.
Conna pined to visit England for two reasons. In the first place she still regarded herself as the saviour and uplifter of the depreciated house of Cowal and she was becoming increasingly alarmed at the sessile characteristics of the rest of the family. It did not seem likely that Ross the patriarch would ever go “Home” again—why should he?—and if anything “happened” to Ross, Susan and Jane would almost certainly continue their mystic companionship if not in Sikkal then somewhere else in South India for the rest of their lives. Lynna, being mercifully rid of her disastrous Ambrose, had failed to take the great chance of going “Home”—though what that chance really amounted to Conna did not stop to examine—and had relapsed weakly upon Torteval. Worst of all, Duffy—that hope, that Mercury—was deserting her; he talked alternately of starting immediately for the Front and of “having a run Home in ten years or so—if the War’s over by then,” but in point of fact he did nothing and was clearly content. Manifestly they were all at heart ready to cleave to India, but unless the family was to become “Country”—Conna’s nightmare—altogether, someone must keep touch with the West. That someone could only be herself. And now these submarines. . . .
Her second reason was that she wanted to show the Lafauce relatives her babies, the more so as they were, to her credit, pukka Lafauce babies with very little Beverell about them. Conna had lived with these Lafauce relatives during her school holidays in England—as her mother had lived before her; some of them were “smart” (that mysterious quality that was shortly to vanish with the War), all of them were comfortable gentlefolk with a nice tradition of cultured conduct. It would have been desirable to take them these little dressed-up bundles, and say, “Here are two more of us.” But these wretched submarines. . . . One might take a risk for oneself, one would have taken it; but for the babies—no.
The babies were both girls; like poor Glory herself, both her married daughters seemed bent upon this mode of self-expression. The first had been born almost on the day War was declared, thus recalling the “minimum statutory intervals” of the long-departed Single; Duffy had suggested the name Bella as obviously indicated, but the child had been christened, by long previous agreement, Grace. It was the name of Conna’s only serious rival on earth—Raleigh’s mother. Raleigh’s mother had decided on a visit to India in the cold weather of 1914-15, but the War had scuppered that; Conna, rather piqued by the magnitude and honesty of Raleigh’s disappointment, reflected upon the advantages of ill winds. The second girl had been meant to be a boy and her arrival was shadowed by a tiny cloud of disappointment. Conna, reviving, had said:
“Well, anyway, we can make it all square with mothers. We’ll call her after my mother. But not Gloriette. That’s too Channel Islandy and French. We’ll call her Gloria.”
Raleigh demurred. “No; Connemara. Like you.” But his wife had shown her usual determination.
“For heaven’s sake let’s put a period to father’s dreadful names. That idiot Lynna’s already gone on with Rosslyn. Let’s have no more Gladstones and Dufferins and Connemaras. Too absurd.”
Raleigh had said rather pathetically, “As you wish. But I like Conna.” He went out into the garden of the Nursing Home and smoked a pipe, wondering why he always gave in. The old answer faced him—“because I’m fonder of her than she is of me.” They said it was always like that in love affairs—one loved, the other was loved. Gazing at a bed of brilliant delphiniums, he thought, “She’s got me absolutely; I haven’t got her at all. It isn’t fair.”
So in 1917 Conna lived in a little house in the Nilgiris and the two babies with her. She would risk a third if she could be certain of a boy—but there was no such certainty and the idea of three girls gave one pause. Yet there was nothing but satisfaction in the existing two; so far as they could be judged at present they were true to type—Grace the handsome Lafauce like Conna herself, like the now mythical Trevelyan; Glory the pretty Lafauce, egg-shell and pastel—like Gloriette, like Lynna. There they were—and quite enough meantime. Sometimes she wondered, “Can I be getting a little tired of Raleigh?” Once when he made his occasional flying visits to the Hills, the whole face of the world had changed, places and people dissolved in a rosy dream, nothing mattered in the least but the wonderful prospect of that coming union. Now there was a thrill, the contact was still warm and satisfying but—it was not quite the same. Well, honeymoons could not last for ever or they would not be honeymoons; after four years of marriage—getting on for five—one had to become “sensible” and being “sensible” seemed to imply a certain degree of coldness, a measure of discontent. Conna could remember her mother only as a downtrodden creature mercilessly bullied by Ross and completely in his power; very early she had determined never to be like that and the inhibition formed in the mists of childhood possessed her now. One must assert oneself; one must keep one’s personal freedom even at the cost of showing coldness and discontent; one must become no man’s slave; one must keep one’s husband begging.
There were other disappointments—among them life as the wife of an Indian Civilian. At Torteval in the dreaming days before her marriage she had imagined herself sharing Raleigh’s responsibilities, deep in his counsels, governing with him in whatever his important duties might be. But it hadn’t worked out like that; if his duties were important they did not seem so, and at best they were duties in which she could not profitably intervene. He tried petty criminal cases; he inspected subordinate offices; he wandered about in camp looking at crops; he presided over meetings of his Taluk Board which never seemed to have anything of interest to decide. Whatever he did was subject to a series of appeals; when it came to any question involving other than trumpery values he was obliged to “submit” it to some superior for orders. The enticing “secret” papers of her dreams boiled down to the recorded opinions of himself and his predecessors on a horde of subordinates who appeared to Conna identical. Once in a blue moon he got a cipher telegram she could help him translate; the rest was minutiae and specialised routine. The most willing wife, the most brilliant wife, could do little to distinguish herself in circumstances such as these. They had a minor quarrel about it.
“You don’t want me to help.”
“Oh, Conna, I do. But there’s nothing for you.”
“You don’t tell me things. There must be more in it than this.”
“There isn’t. There really isn’t. I’m frightfully junior yet, you know; later on it’ll be more exciting.”
“When it is, you won’t tell me. . . .”
Then one had pictured bright entertainments; tea-and-tennis parties, little brilliant dinners with quick, witty, well-directed conversation. But in actual fact there had never been anybody to entertain except an Assistant Superintendent of Police who was always in camp and when met could talk only of Sub-Inspectors and shikar. Once a member of the Board of Revenue had come for a night and—had fallen asleep in his chair immediately after dinner. Waking after thirty-five minutes he had said, “Well, well, what about bed, eh?” and had sought his without further remark. For practical purposes life in the District was complete seclusion; and the worst of it was that Raleigh was delighted with this and asked for nothing better. If it was sometimes thinkable in depressed moments that she was becoming a little tired of him, he was certainly never, never in the least degree tired of her. He wanted an everlasting honeymoon; no coldness, no sensibleness there. One—one couldn’t keep it up.
In the very earliest stages they had been unlucky. Conna had set her heart on the lovely house at Kalyandrug, had made it the centre of entrancing anticipations. “We’ll dine out on the bastion. . . . We’ll have moonlight bathes; just the two of us; we won’t wear anything—not anything at all. . . . Oh, Raleigh!” In the middle of the honeymoon came a telegram from Government transferring Raleigh to Goriyur. This pleasaunce—on whose name successive Sub-Collectors had made the obvious joke—was on the verge of the Deccan, in slag-heap and builder’s-rubbish country where a tree was a curiosity and a stream of running water a legend. A new type-design bungalow, staring white, shadeless and set in an expanse of hot laterite and dead grass awaited them as residence. The people were savage and backward, living on the verge of famine and believing not unjustifiably in the dominance of devils; supplies had to come a long way by rail. There was very little to occupy a man of Raleigh’s intelligence; nothing at all to occupy Conna. A disheartening place, stultifying; and yet—this was the worst of it—the ideal setting for the perpetual isolated honeymoon of Raleigh’s desires.
Pouting, petulant and lashing herself into fresh discontents over these intolerable submarines, Conna sat in her little Nilgiri house and looked back on a married life in which the Hills seemed to have been the permanence and the husband only a series of recurring incidents. It had not been her fault; if the insane, blundering, beastly Government had thought fit to keep Raleigh at Kalyandrug it would have been different. But what girl, newly married and with a baby coming and all and uncomfortable and a little frightened—what girl could have faced up to Goriyur? She had come away to the Nilgiris very early in the hot weather of 1914; she had wept and clung to Raleigh in their dreadful bungalow, but the train was not well past the red rocks of Kassadam when she was breathing little sighs of relief. . . . Then Grace had been born and the war had begun and there had been this complication and that, so that she had spent only a fraction of the cold weather of 1914-15 in the white type-design bungalow among the treeless slag-heaps. Next year she had meant to be good; she had gone down early—too early for Grace who had developed dreadful prickly heat. But then Gloria had started, and right at Christmas Government had brought off another masterpiece, transferring Raleigh to the long-threatened Kondacole—a horrible great place in the East where there was no habitable bungalow at all because Government had allowed the Bank to buy the only existing specimen and the Sub-Collector must needs cohabit with its Agent. So it had been Nilgiris again, and here Gloria had been born and here somehow Conna had stayed. . . . And here—these vile submarines!—she must stay a while longer.
At Kondacole, sharing with the Bank Agent—a charming fellow fortunately though addicted to gramophones—Raleigh sat ruefully at his office table. He had his own discontents. It wasn’t really very much of a life, but there was no chance of getting to the war, no chance even of leave till the war ended, and not early leave even then. . . . And his Conna was changing, she was hardening, she was receding from him. It wasn’t a natural life; he never saw her; when he did see her, perforce he pestered her too much. But he was so terribly, so finally, in love with her. Was she in love with him? Of course she was—and there were the two baby girls to prove it. But to the same extent—as terribly, as finally? Ah, now you were asking. She eluded him, he couldn’t get hold of her; from the first day of their marriage she had kept him at arm’s-length. Nobody could be warmer, sweeter, more ardent than Conna when she liked, but—it was when she liked, always. She didn’t care as he did—there it was in six words—she didn’t care as he did. The old story—one loves, one is loved; active and passive. An incident in the second week of their honeymoon had been typical of many that followed; they had planned a moonlight picnic to a little waterfall they knew; and at the last moment some interfering idiot of a woman had invited them to a Club Dance. Conna had been in raptures. “Oh, how lovely; she is kind!” He had said, “But what about our picnic, Conna?” And she had replied, as if she had forgotten it, “Oh—that. We can have a picnic any day.” And a dream, a lovely thing he had looked forward to and counted on, had died. They had had moonlight picnics since; never that one.
Moodily Raleigh stabbed at the blotting-pad with his office knife. Conna was cold; Conna wouldn’t realise about money; she was extravagant; she was discontented; she had been more friendly with some of the men in the Hills—bounders, too, most of them—than he had liked. .. . If only his mother had been able to come out! She would have put everything right, she was so clever. And Conna must have adored her. Who wouldn’t?
Honest, puzzled, love-ridden, Raleigh turned sighing to his files.
Gladdy’s War was a straightforward affair; it was after all his business. It involved much marching and counter-marching, the lifting and shifting of innumerable heavy burdens, bone-breaking fatigue, the struggle to sleep, the struggle not to sleep; singsongs; football; thousands of “memos,” thousands of lists; fun, boredom, misery, terror, pain. It involved blood and dirt and stench; grim sights; annihilating din. . . . And then one day in the midst of an advance that was just like all other advances, there was a sound—or a blow. Or perhaps not even that.
But his officer found time to write to his next-of-kin as shown in his papers—to a Mrs. A. Frost at an outlandish Indian address. And Lynna got the letter one morning when she sat in the Torteval drawing-room wondering, as her mother had wondered in that room before her, “How did all this ever happen?”
On the last day of 1918 there occurred at Torteval an event which Duffy, with some memory of the Scottish Season, facetiously called the “Cowal Gathering.” It was a reunion of all possible Cowals—“possible” being substituted for “surviving” because Lynna had kept her letter secret and no other Cowal knew whether Gladdy survived or not. The gathering was designed to commemorate (a) Christmas, (b) the end of the War and (c) Ross’s hypothetical sixtieth birthday; as all these dates were widely different and no single occasion could be made to cover all three of them, the function was held on yet a fourth festival, the Scots Hogmanay, the last day of the year. The obligatory part of the programme consisted of a strictly family dinner; thereafter those who would—or after a ceremonial Torteval dinner could—were free to go on to the New Year’s Eve dance at the Sikkal Club. The ceremony further performed the functions of welcoming Duffy back from his military duties and bidding an advance farewell to Raleigh and Conna, who were at last going “Home” in February on a year’s leave.
Susan and Jane, on whom fell the onus of this notable occasion, were tremendously excited and particularly so by the presence in the house of the three little girls. They went about saying, “Three grandchildren in the house; think of it.” Susan beamed; Jane, growing more and more like some small sharp bird, actively hopped and pecked. The little girls on the whole behaved themselves reasonably well. The younger Beverell, Gloria, who was little more than two, was having some trouble with her teeth and was inclined to be peevish; but her sister had already cultivated the true Lafauce repose, embodying that aristocratic, contemptuous—or was it merely slightly vacant?—stare. She said, “No, thank you” primly and frequently and was very careful of her new clothes. She was intensely snubbing to her aunts, the “Ghoomri Sisters,” who naturally revelled in this treatment to which they had been accustomed all their lives. She was slightly snubbing to Duffy—who enjoyed it less; Lafauce himself could not have bettered the polite deprecation with which she greeted his references to the “Gee-Gees,” his facetious name for her sister and herself. To Ross and Lynna she was coldly correct. Some apprehension had been felt as to how little Rossy, Lynna’s daughter, now the regular child of the house, would accept this invasion; on the whole she was thought to have taken it very well. After a prolonged calculating stare she had dragged Grace into the garden and made her as dirty as that model child would allow; and while she nearly choked Gloria with a piece of toffee it was agreed that her intentions at least had been good. “Rossy’s a terror!” said the delighted Susan, rolling her “r”s. Conna agreed coldly that so it seemed. She did not approve of terrors who interrupted adult conversations and smeared jam on the seats of chairs.
Looking round his Cowal Gathering dinner-table, softly lit with candles under punkah-proof shades and bright with silver and glass, Ross had the comfortable feeling that he was wearing much better than the next generation. Susan and Jane confessed quite a bunch of grey hairs between them, for all that the elder “Ghoomri Sister” was still but five-and-thirty; Lynna looked older than either of them instead of younger—though of course there was the excuse in her case that her weakened heart made her half an invalid; Duffy was getting distinctly stout—nothing so ageing as fat. Ross drew together his own spare muscular body under his dress-shirt and leant round the candle to get a glimpse in the mirror of his own black head—hardly flecked with grey, at any rate not in this light: in doing so he encountered Raleigh’s face, which quite startled him—so much had it lost at that moment its boyish look, so careworn did it seem. Not a stayer among them. Only Conna in the becoming light from the red shades looked the magnificently vital young woman she ought to be and was. She was talking a great deal, he noticed, in her loud, clear, but musical voice, exchanging jokes and stories with Duffy while the Ghoomri Sisters kept up a cackling undertone. Raleigh said little and Lynna less; quite right—one came to table to eat not to chatter. Ross went on with his dinner.
With the port Duffy made his inevitable speech; he had a flair for this sort of thing; he proposed his toast now wittily and neatly and sat down pleased with himself. “If a chap can get a laugh out of his own family at a show like this——” he thought. He was so satisfied that he took another glass of port and under its influence he sprang up again. “Now I’ll give you another one. Damnation to the Eye-talianos.” Ross cocked an eye at him; if he was beginning to funk St. Salvator—which was what his toast really meant—he shouldn’t shout about it. Susan and Jane, delighted to hear themselves swearing, responded loudly if uncomprehendingly, Lynna and Raleigh with bored acquiescence, Ross not at all. And Conna, twirling the stem of her wine-glass in her white fingers, said thoughtfully, “I’ll add a bit to that. ‘And all enemies!’”
Ross cocked his eye again. “And all enemies.” What enemies? Apart from the Italianos who had already been dealt with, he knew of none. But they were drinking the toast—“The Eye-talianos and all enemies. Damnation!” Well, you never knew; Ross tossed off his glass; damn them all, anyway.
The dessert-dishes went round again—cashew-nuts boiled and fried, a jar of special ginger—but as if Duffy’s volubility had exhausted the company, a silence fell. Susan, who abhorred silences and habitually devastated her tea-parties with the inept remark which causes them, felt impelled to break it. Beaming, she said:
“Everybody’s here. Everybody.”
It was at least the tenth time she had said it that day and it had come to be no more a remark than a cough or a sneeze; ordinarily it would have attracted no attention. But Jane had that gift for the occasional supreme gaffe which waylays the abnormally cautious; fear of the silence and a constitutional craving for exactitude fired her to add earnestly:
“Except Gladdy.”
Instantly the silence became deadly. Poor Jane had already put her hand to her mouth as a child does who has blurted out a bad word; Ross was raising a grim face from the contemplation of his plate, when Duffy, still pleased with himself, said:
“That’s no great loss.”
He had done it. From the opposite side of the table Lynna rose in her place, shaking, a little blue about the lips.
“How dare you say that! How dare you!”
Conna made a propitiatory gesture. “Lynna, darling——” But Lynna refused to be a darling.
“Gladdy was worth the whole lot of you put together. Gladdy was a king among men.” She wheeled on Duffy. “You called yourself a soldier——”
Duffy raised a protesting hand. “I didn’t, I didn’t.”
“You only played at being a soldier. Gladdy was one. If you’re ever half the man Gladdy was——”
Her chair crashed over backwards; she went rather unsteadily out of the room.
Duffy lit a cigarette. “And that’s what comes of family parties. Peace on earth——”
Another chair rasped on the floor; Ross got up and went out.
Conna smote the table with her fan. “Oh, damn Lynna! It’s too silly. Jane, you idiot——”
Raleigh intervened mildly. “What about this Club Dance? It’s a quarter past ten. And if you girls take as long as usual——”
Conna picked up the cue; her disreputable family again; hideous pasts and they couldn’t even leave them alone.
“Yes, come on, you two. Ten minutes.”
They broke up from the table. But on the way to their room Susan, ever less of a fool than she looked, said to Jane:
“She said ‘was,’ Jay. Do you think, do you suppose——”
But Jane was in hopeless tears. “I can’t think anything. I don’t suppose anything. Oh, Su, what made me say it?”
Raleigh, a non-dancer like most of his Service, was to come to the club at a quarter to twelve in time for the ritual singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” He detested “Auld Lang Syne” but deferred as usual to Conna who loved it. When the car had rolled away with Duffy, Conna and the Ghoomri Sisters, he went moodily into the garden. There, on a seat overlooking the tennis-court, he unexpectedly discovered Lynna, who said, almost before he saw her:
“I’m sorry, Raleigh.”
Raleigh liked Lynna—he hardly knew why. He said:
“Sorry? What for?”
“For making such a scene. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought it was rather fine of you.”
“You did really?”
“Yes. . . . Look here, you’re shivering. Are you cold?”
“No, no—it’s nothing; just excitement or silliness or something.”
He took her arm. “Let’s walk up and down a bit, anyway.”
They walked to the end of the path in silence and gradually he felt her arm warming in his, her shaking died down.
“You see, Gladdy and I were rather pals——”
He nodded. “I know. Naturally.”
“And when they run him down I can’t bear it. They don’t often say anything about him at all, but if ever they do it’s something nasty. It’s Conna and Duffy; they’ve been beasts. Oh, beasts. Especially her. I’m sorry, Raleigh, when she’s your wife and all——”
“Never mind about that. . . . So Gladdy was in the war?”
“Yes. He was killed there.”
His grip on her arm tightened. “Good God! And they don’t know?”
“They don’t. I never told them. Why should I?”
“Not even his father? How long have you known?”
“About two years. Ever since I came to Torteval nearly.”
He was more than a little shocked.
“My dear, don’t you think you’ve been—unwise?”
She faced him obstinately. “No, I don’t. Gladdy didn’t want them to know. Only me. Father turned him out because he was good to me. He doesn’t care. It’s Gladdy’s business, Gladdy’s secret. . . . Look here——”
She suddenly slipped her evening dress from her left shoulder, and from deep in her bosom she drew out a letter that crackled. She put it in his hand.
“Read that some time and give it back to me. But you’re to tell nobody. Nobody. Promise.”
“Of course; if you wish it. But I still think you’re unwise.”
“Oh, unwise! If it wasn’t unwise it wouldn’t be me. If I hadn’t been unwise I wouldn’t have had to get married at eighteen.”
“What!” The sudden grip on her arm told her of his consternation. She said wonderingly:
“Didn’t you know? Didn’t Conna ever tell you?”
“Never.”
“Oh, well, then, I’m sorry I spoke. I seem to be dropping bricks all round to-night. But—well, this happened. . . .”
Walking slowly up and down the path she told him the story of that terrible flight up the ghats, of her brother’s goodness—his more than goodness. “Now I’m older I don’t believe the man would have ever married me at all if Gladdy hadn’t made him. He wasn’t much of a husband, but anyway it was better than the other thing.” She reached the climax at the Kambe bungalow—storm and agony and terror. “I was so ill I didn’t know a thing that was happening. And I swear, Raleigh, I didn’t know Gladdy was going to run away. Don’t think that of me.” She burst into tears. “I never dreamt he was going to sacrifice himself for me, and of course he never told me. I just thought he’d go back and get into a dreadful row with Father and that would be all. How could I know he was going away like that and I’d never—I’d never see him again. . . . Lend me your handkerchief.”
She dried her eyes slowly. “But I made sure Conna would have told you—what I did. Conna thinks we’re a disreputable lot. So far as I’m concerned, we are. I wonder you can stay here talking to me. You must pretty well despise me.”
He said gently, “Why on earth should I despise you? I think you’ve been rather fine.”
“I wasn’t fine. Gladdy was. I’m glad I’ve told you to-night because now anyway you know about him. Wasn’t he fine, Raleigh?”
Raleigh squeezed her arm. “He must have been a grand brother to have.” (“At nineteen,” he thought, “going through a show like that! Poor devil.” Yet “poor” was a silly word, inappropriate to one who had done fine things finely, who had won his match with fate.) “He must have been a splendid chap.”
“Oh, God, he was! And more.” She put a hand on the lapel of his coat. “Raleigh?”
“Yes?”
“Be good to Rossy if you ever get a chance. Be what Gladdy would have been. . . . I won’t last long.”
“Oh, yes, you will.”
“Oh, no, I won’t. My heart’s hopeless. I very nearly didn’t get out of that room to-night. . . . Conna’ll do her down if she can. She’s bound to. Help Rossy a little sometimes.”
“But—of course.”
“There’s no of course about it. Conna won’t let you if she can help it. . . . Rossy’s rather a dear little thing. And she can’t really get in your girls’ way—ever. Though Conna’ll tell you she will. . . .”
At the Club Raleigh found vast hilarity but not, he thought, much real enjoyment. Most of the noise proceeded from a few of the younger planters and the jeunesse dorée of the Coast firms—Neill Brothers, Kettlebridge and the rest; and a good deal of it—he could not blind himself—was proceeding from Conna who seemed to be in one of her most expansive and friendly moods. He thought, “These chaps are half tight; I wish Conna wouldn’t.” Instinctively his second thought came to Conna’s defence: “She’s doing no harm; it’s just that she’s good-natured and they like her.” . . . He saw the Ghoomri Sisters sitting in a corner; they had been subjected to a good deal of badinage from Duffy before and during dinner on the subject of a certain Craigfoot, an elderly planter who was alleged to be in pursuit of Susan and/or Jane when he could distinguish one from the other. Now Craigfoot was absent after all, and the Ghoomri Sisters’ relief shone in their faces. . . . Duffy was dancing with a tall fair stranger in white; dance after dance. Interested at last, Raleigh stopped one of the younger ornaments of the Club.
“Who’s that?”
“You don’t mean Dufferin Cowal?”
“No, the girl.”
“She’s a Miss Claye; Elthpeth—sorry, I mean Elspeth—Claye. Just arrived. Oh, you beautiful doll! Our Duffy’s fallen for her.”
“Has he?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it? But Duffy’s a wary bird; he’ll watch his step all right.”
Raleigh was nettled; this young bounder should treat Conna’s brother with more respect. He said coldly:
“Do you think so?”
The young man said, “I do, brother. Ever played bridge with him?” and vanished.
As twelve o’clock approached Raleigh began to seek eagerly for his wife; if Auld Lang Syne had to be endured he desired to endure it in her company, to take her outside after it and give her a kiss and wish her a very, very good New Year. It ought indeed to be a better New Year for them both; they would get home out of this discontenting country with its endless separations; his mother had found them a house of dreams (or it sounded so) near Sidmouth and they would just live and laze in it. “I’ll see Mother,” he thought. “I’ll love seeing her. . . .” Meantime, however, he could not see Conna—though he went through the hot rooms one after another. Determinedly the company lined up for Auld Lang Syne. The newly arrived Miss Claye seduced him with a warm smile and an outstretched hand; on the other side he saw a less attractive female acquaintance bearing down; he fled to the deserted tennis-courts. They had rigged up a Kitson light there and it was as brilliant as day; he sat down on the low wall and thought, “I wish I knew where Conna is.” Putting his hand into his pocket for his cigarette-case he touched Lynna’s letter; he pulled it out and read it a second time . . . “extraordinarily fine fellow. . . . I can’t tell you what a comfort it was to feel he was with the Company. . . . I don’t know how often he’s pulled us through . . . whatever happens, always remember he was the best.” The thin field-service paper crackled as he put it back. Apparently Gladdy had been this officer fellow’s Sergeant-Major and the officer fellow, whoever he was, would not have written like that unless he had meant it. A comforting thing for Lynna to get; but fancy her carrying it about like that over her heart. He began to think about Lynna; Lynna and Gladdy; the sweetness and beauty that go with tragedy; loyalty, the rare virtue. . . . . Inside, Auld Lang Syne burst into violent uproar; and in the distance he saw Conna coming with some man from the garden across the road. There it was again; himself eager and searching, Conna simply not thinking. That was all—she just didn’t think. But why didn’t she think? Because she didn’t care.
It was half-past two before they were back in their bedroom at Torteval and Conna was brushing out her hair in front of the dressing-table glass. She took an interminable time to undress on these occasions and was always excited and talkative where Raleigh was bored and sleepy. To-night, however, he had a question to ask her.
“I say, Conna, what did you mean by that bit at dinner?”
She laid down her brush. “What bit?”
“When Duffy said Damnation to the Eye-talianos and you added that bit about all our enemies.”
“Oh, that. I meant to tell you. . . . I saw Sylvius to-day.”
“Sylvius?”
“Yes—your brother-in-law. My twin.”
The hard sneer in her tone always annoyed Raleigh. The never-mention-it attitude was silly; but this almost glorying proclamation was as bad.
“We-ell, Sylvius, anyway. Did he speak to you?”
“No, but I spoke to him.”
“Wise?”
“As it turned out, far from it. . . . He came into the station when I was down seeing if the things had come from Madras. I hadn’t seen him in years. But I knew him at once. He’s rather a nice face but the most frightful glasses. I thought it was too silly to stand there pretending when the very clerk behind the counter must have known. So I said, ‘Aren’t you Sylvius?’ He said, ‘Yes, Mrs. Beverell, I am Sylvius Sequeira.’ A bit chi-chi but not so very.”
“Well?”
“I said, ‘You still call yourself Sequeira, then?’ And he said, ‘Thatt iss mei name.’ Well, not so chi-chi as that, not nearly, but a bit chi-chi all the same. And then, and then, Raleigh, dear, I bought it.”
“As how?”
“I said—I was a fool, an utter fool, and I can’t think what possessed me—I said, ‘I’ve always thought it was jolly decent of you not to call yourself Cowal,’ and he turned round on me and said, ‘Co-wal’—you know the way they say it in two syllables—‘Co-wal! I would die rather than be called Co-wal.’ And oh, Raleigh, if you’d seen the hate and the fury in his face; I was so frightened I simply went out of the office without another word. And the clerk listening there and all.”
Raleigh smiled into the glass. “Well, darling, I think as you said yourself—you bought it.”
She sighed. “I suppose I did. . . . Raleigh, can he really do anything to us? Because he would if he could.”
“Nothing whatever. But I can’t think that’s the way to look at it, poor chap. We ought to be decent to him—help him a bit.”
“He’ll help himself, don’t you worry. If you’d seen his face. Anyway, I can’t feel anything but—horrible about him. He lets us all down. And talking of lets-down, what price Lynna?”
He started. “Lynna?”
“Yes. Look at the way she behaved at dinner. What a scene to make. Thank God, it was only ourselves.”
He said, “She must have been wildly fond of Gladdy. . . . . He must have been rather a fine chap.”
“If running away and leaving father in the lurch and joining up as a Tommy is being a fine chap. And encouraging Lynna to——” Just in time she remembered that even Raleigh had not been told and must never be told the full extent of Lynna’s early degradation. She picked up her brush again. “Lynna!”
He said doggedly, “I thought she was rather fine. I like loyalty.”
“Yes, darling, but not scenes.” She looked up at him archly under the heavy white lids she had just touched with blue. “You falling in love with Lynna? She’s quite attractive still.”
He laughed and stooping kissed her shoulders. “No, but——”
“Poor Lynna. She does her best. But she’s never been out of India, you know.”
Somehow that jarred as Conna’s hardness did so often. He said quickly:
“Little Rossy’s sweet.”
“You think so? In what way?”
Evidently this time he had said the really wrong thing.
“Oh, well—how are kids sweet? She’s pretty.”
“Pretty? I call her downright plain. I think she looks like a little monkey. Of course she can’t but be spoiled with those idiots Su and Jay and with Duffy and Lynna and all, but even making allowances. . . . No, I think she’s horrid.”
“But only three, Conna.”
“If she goes on like this she’ll be a nice minx when she’s three-and-twenty.” Her hair finished, she laid down her hand-mirror and gave him her really beautiful smile. “Bother Lynna and her nasty brat. Let’s talk about ourselves. I’m afraid you didn’t enjoy the dance much, darling?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t see you at all.”
“Well, you see me now. All of me.”
He took her into his arms. “Conna, you do really care for me, don’t you?”
“Raleigh!” She stopped his words with her lips. “You must have been having a rotten evening.” Her arms came warmly round him. “Never mind, I’ll make up for it all now. Won’t I?”
Wouldn’t she!
There was another dance in Sikkal that New Year’s Eve, which considered itself a much more important affair than the entertainment at the English Club. It could boast a band against the Club’s gramophone, ten couples on the floor for every two of the Club’s. It was at the Railway Institute and it was attended, amongst others—very much in the background and very much against his intention—by Sylvius. Sylvius had come to spend Christmas with Coaces, but he had reached Sleepy Valley in a mood of religious misery that had first alarmed and then exasperated his mother. He sat in the old leather armchair and stared into the fire and groaned; asked what was the matter, he strove to explain but lapsed into incoherence. There was a beauty alive and on the wing somewhere that was cheating him; there was a gross down-dragging unworthiness in himself of which he could not be rid; trying vainly to put these obsessions into words, he produced only an effect of confused and meaningless despair. He wanted to be a better man, he wanted to be a worse; he didn’t know what he wanted. In the end Coaces, half-frightened, half-annoyed, packed him off down to Sikkal by the newly opened bus service.
“You go to that Dance, Sylvius.” (Someone—a girl, Coaces hoped—had sent him an invitation to the Railway Institute.) “You go to that nice Dance. You go and see John Albuquerque and the Rosario boys and you-all go to the Dance together. You want a cheer-up. You can dance with some nice girls “
“I don’ dance, mother, you know I don’ dance. It’s wicked.”
“Wha-at is wicked? Anyway, you go and talk to some young folks and come back and tell old Coaces all about it.”
He had stared at her sullenly, ungratefully. “I don’ like to go there. . . . They don’ know the kind I am; if they did, they wouldn’t have me. . . . And I don’ like girls——”
“You don’ know what you like. You don’ know any girls.” Domineering, she had driven him off, bought him his bus ticket, seen him aboard. Now he stood in a corner of the Railway Institute and watched the Lancers in horrible misery.
He had chosen the “bottom” of the room, an obscure corner suitable for bastards and therefore furthest from where the mothers and aunts and other family guardians sat in Continental solemnity. Up there they danced very staidly, counting each step; down at this end it was wild and noisy. The men swung the girls, who shrieked with delight; their flimsy skirts flew up, their legs stuck straight out, one saw all sorts of things. Bright garters and little strips of brown skin above their stockings, green knickers and blue and pink. If it wasn’t definitely wicked it was certainly not proper; Sylvius thought, “If they could see themselves from behind they wouldn’t do it”; yet he waited, fascinated, to see a little more. Those maddening little strips of brown skin between the colours! . . . Tearing his eyes away, he stared round him; pale mauve dresses, pale yellow, white; dark-skinned girls with pretty hair and round enchanting eyes. Wicked! It must be wicked because he felt so excited, so envious. He moved away from that dangerous corner.
And then suddenly the Lancers ended and across the width of the stilled and sobered room he saw a face looking at him. It was a white woman’s face, a face standing out strangely among all the Eurasian and Indian girls, and it was looking at him as the brunette Madonnas looked from his favourite pictures. A pale face under black hair braided and drawn back severely over the head; blue eyes, a pale blue yet deep; and a smile that had just begun and had stopped and was frozen into permanence—and yet, was it frozen so hard that it might not thaw and widen at any moment? If it did, what a lovely thing it would be! Staring and stared at in return, Sylvius felt his heart turn over; he had the most extraordinary sensations; the room spun. He took a step forward and thrust out his arms in welcome; or he thought he did, he was not quite sure. The smile stood there frozen; but the eyes, he thought, lit with interest.
The M.C., a jocular young Eurasian with a damp collar, came fussing along. “Take your partners for thee waltz, please.” Sylvius stopped him. “Who is that lady?” The M.C. told him—Signora Crispi; Sylvius knew now who she was, she must be the wife of the Italian expert the Salvator Mission had recently brought out to manage their tile works. Crispi—he was said to be going to do great things, but some people had grumbled because he was not in orders—not even a lay brother. So that was Signora Crispi! The M.C. said, “Shall I introduce?” but Sylvius shrank back. “No, thanks; I only like to know her name.” The M.C. passed, wiping his face and repeating, “Take your partners for thee waltz.”
Dry-mouthed, Sylvius felt the need of a drink. At the long white-clothed table in the side-room he found John Albuquerque talking to a thick-set very dark young man; John, who had brought Sylvius to the Dance and had lost him there as promptly as possible, offered him a lemonade. He was excited and garrulous. He said ceremoniously, “Meet my friend, Mr. Lobo,” and to Lobo, “Mr. Sequeira.” Mr. Lobo said, “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Sequeira,” and bowed very properly. Albuquerque explained that Mr. Lobo had a job in the Salvator tile works and instantly, instead of expressing a polite interest, Sylvius heard himself say, “Do you know Signora Crispi?” Lobo, staring slightly, said, “Of course I know. She is the boss’s wife. We all know Signora. Do you want to know her?” Shrinking again, Sylvius said, “No, no!” and Albuquerque explained with laboured pleasantry that Sylvius did not like girls. “Wha-at girl!” said Lobo. “She-e is no girl.” Albuquerque demurred and they wrangled hotly, John contending that the Signora was not more than twenty-five, Lobo that she was nearly thirty. But Crispi, they agreed, was fifty, if a day, and a sick man at that. Slipping away from them, Sylvius thought, “I am twenty-six and I am quite well; but then I am illegitimate.” Suddenly he saw the face again, looking at him. The eyes were wide, questioning; the smile was just on the point of breaking into beauty. He stared, but the smile made no advance and she turned away. Hot, sweating, almost physically upset, Sylvius went outside. “Oh, God,” he said half aloud. “Oh, Jesus! Oh, St. Joseph!”
Presently he came back to the ballroom, but instead of the face he was looking for he saw in front of him the face of the young man Lobo. The face was grinning and he saw that Lobo had very strong teeth with gold in them here and there. He thought, “What are you grinning at me for?” and then Lobo spoke. He said:
“You’re not Sylvius Sequeira, mann?”
Disliking him, Sylvius said, “Yes.”
“Then my father knew your father.”
With the old pain at his heart, Sylvius started to explain; it was the order of Christ and all the saints that you should tell the truth; the more difficult the telling, the greater the merit. He began laboriously, “I call myself Sequeira but——”. But Lobo stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “I know all about thatt, mann. I know who your father was. So does my dad. He hates your father all right. You come here and see.” As in a dream Sylvius found himself led into the bar—a noisy den sloppy with spilt drinks—and planted in front of a stocky, dark-skinned, elderly man with cropped grey hair. “Here’s Mr. Sequeira, Dad.”
“Mr. Sequeira be sugared.” The elder Lobo stared at Sylvius breathing heavily; he was manifestly half drunk. “Christ help us, so you’re the result?”
His son intervened. “Now, Dad, now; I did not bring this gentleman to be insulted.”
“Gentleman, eh?” He took Sylvius’s hand solemnly and held it. “So you’re little Coaces’s brat, eh? Well, I’m damned. How d’ye like your father?”
Sylvius’ face tightened. “You knew my father?”
“Knew him? Knew Ross Cowal? I knew Ross Cowal all right, blast him. An’ look here, young fellow, I’ll tell you something.” He lurched forward.
Sylvius had the teetotaller’s fear of drunken men—fear mixed with physical abhorrence; he stood waiting, slightly sick. Red-brown eyes, the whites streaked horribly with blood, stared into his, primed with old hatreds.
“I was supervisor at Torteval. That Ross Cowal put me out. And do you know this? My bum knows more about tiles than he and his fat son know between them. And look here, Mr. Sylvius, me and my son here and the Salvators are bloody well goin’ to get all that back. See?”
Sylvius backed away from him in terror. “I—I don’t understand.”
“Then you bloody soon will. You in Torteval?”
Sylvius drew himself up with dignity; how could he be in Torteval? “I am in the Telegraph Service.”
Lobo grunted; his red eyes glared under the heavy brows. “Like all bastards. Well, you keep clear of Torteval if you don’ want trouble. Torteval’s comin’ down with a bump. Drink?”
“I don’ drink.”
“Well, get t’hell out o’ this. And tell Coaces I don’t think much of her baby.”
The younger Lobo led Sylvius away; a decent fellow, he seemed highly mortified by his father’s behaviour. “Dad isn’t like thatt. But your father treated him verree badly and he gets angry when he thinks of those old days.”
Sylvius said politely, “Don’ mention it.” Suddenly he put his hand on Lobo’s arm, stemming his renewed apologies. “What he said about Torteval coming down. Is that true?”
Lobo showed his white-and-gold teeth. “You’ll see.”
The Lobos, however, were but an interlude in the night, a meaningless scratch upon its surface—as sometimes in a wildly beautiful dream there are monstrous items. Almost before he had shaken the younger Lobo off and had crept stealthily back to his corner of the ballroom Sylvius had forgotten all about Torteval and its ancient wrongs, his heart was beating in a throat as dry as if he had never moistened it and he was looking again for that face with the arrested smile under the braided black hair. A second Lancers was in progress, the same rough set was in his corner, the girls’ legs were flying in the air showing this and that, but Sylvius peered no more. He was staring through the turmoil of the dance to where his Madonna had sat. And she sat there still. Dry-throated he crossed the room heedless of the dancers he disturbed; speechless, he stood before her. The smile advanced infinitesimally, the blue eyes looked up at him from their depths. Annunciata had noticed him already, had marked him with approval in this distasteful rout of fifth-rate people; he looked an improvement on anybody there; he was better dressed, he had an air of culture, he was nice-looking. She would have liked to be introduced to him instead of to all these sweating chi-chi folk; she saw now with pleasure that he was minded to introduce himself. It was wrong and improper; her husband would not approve—nobody would approve; but her husband ought to have come with her instead of leaving her to the wife of the Railway Inspector; and the wife of the Railway Inspector had danced every dance herself, but introduced only the most impossible people to Annunciata; and—she was only twenty-seven. Che vuole? Looking up at Sylvius, she said in her broken English:
“You laike to dance?”
He said gloomily, “I don’ dance. It’s wicked.”
Annunciata was taken aback; then what did he want? A little bewildered she said:
“In my country it is naice to dance. Not wicked.”
He said, “I want to talk to you.” Infinitesimally again the smile advanced; she pointed to the empty chair beside her.
“Don’ you sit down, then?”
He sat, his hands between his knees, his eyes on her face. His hands were moist, his lips dry as bamboo leaves in April. Like bamboo leaves they rustled when he tried to speak. Yet somehow he said or thought he said:
“I want to know you.”
She laughed pleasantly, musically.
“That is easy. Vi prego. I am Signora Crispi. Now you know me, yes?”
He said, “I am Sylvius Sequeira. I want you to be my friend.”
Saying it, he laid his hand on hers, and with that his sensations disintegrated into delirium; the orchestra was like thunder, the many-coloured dancers like the sea. He spoke; she answered; he did not know what he had said and what he had not. Minutes passed—or hours; he stared and stared at her. Beautiful, beautiful; a new god had shot an arrow, a shattering arrow, into the world. The music sounded, stopped, sounded; the bright-coloured dancers moved, halted, moved again; it made no difference. The world was dissolved round him; broken pieces of it flew in all directions. He stared and stared; and the smile stood there, arrested, beginning. . . . At last someone came and asked her to dance; she went away. Had he kissed her fingers or had he not? He didn’t know.
He stumbled outside into the cool night and instantly under the blank accusation of the stars he knew himself damned.
Another man’s wife; he was in love with another man’s wife; almost—perhaps altogether—he had told her so. What had he said? He couldn’t remember; but whatever he had said, she had allowed it; she would allow more—much more; how much? Anything—or almost anything; he knew it. Evil, evil; hell waited for such people. To-morrow he would fly again up the ghats. Too late, too late; it was done, it had happened. What was done in a moment could not be undone in years. Oh, Jesus! Oh, Saint Joseph!
And in front of him, against the coloured Christmas lamps, against all the stars, against the diminishing sound of music, he saw that arrested smile, that had begun and had stopped but might at any moment re-commence its flowering.
1919 was a slow year, jogging along shamefacedly as if it knew itself a fraud and had no heart to keep up the deception. Very early it declared itself a year of anticlimax and disappointment; very early, even in Sikkal, men realised that the sudden burning blaze of the Armistice had been no new dawn, but rather one of those “breaks” so common in monsoon weather—a bright gleam for an hour or two giving place presently to the old wrack and rain and drifting dullness. At Torteval the tile business slumped horribly; prices fell to minima, the markets were heartless and miserable, and nothing Duffy could do would improve them. Driving to the Club one evening, he spoke of it to Ross in despair; but his father was unsympathetic.
“I told ye it wouldn’t last. Ye’ll just have to go easy for a bit and wait till things take a turn for the better.”
“Your coffee’s doing very well, anyway, sir.” It had become by this time an unspoken but more or less settled understanding that the tiles were Duffy’s, the coffee his father’s. Not that Duffy had a free hand with the tiles—far from it; on the contrary, as he told the Sikkal Club, the old man stood in his way at every turn. “If I could only get him out——” Meantime coffee boomed.
“Your coffee’s doing well, anyway, sir.”
“Middling. That’ll not last either. Nothing lasts in this world, laddie.”
“Except the Eye-talianos.” Duffy grinned. “They don’t seem to worry. I thought they’d have been beaten out of it years ago.”
His tone changed as he spoke; there crept into it a note of genuine apprehension. Ross looked at him shrewdly.
“Ye’ll beat them out when ye beat out the Pope. And that’ll be a whilie yet.”
Duffy grumbled on; the Eye-talianos didn’t play fair, they undercut more and more hideously; now they had brought out a new manager, this fellow Crispi, no half-trained monk running tiles as a side-line to souls, but a flesh-and-blood business expert. Ross shrugged.
“I don’t see much sign of extension.”
“They don’t expand, but they don’t die either. They just keep on keeping on.” He hummed under his breath, “Eye-talianos never die and they don’t even fa-ade away.”
Near the Club a man in the street, a thick-set Eurasian-looking fellow in a Homburg hat and European clothes, shouted something as the car went past. Duffy craned his neck.
“Was that chap shouting at us?”
Ross shook his head. “Not him. He’s had a dram too many, that’s all.”
Duffy sighed. “Lucky devil!”
For Lynna the year was as other years. She read the Gladdy letter sometimes but showed it to nobody, told nobody her secret. Conna came on a flying visit, radiant at the prospect of going “Home” at last, but—where, Lynna thought, was “Home”? Lynna dressed and undressed Rossy, decorated and re-decorated her, turning her about and wondering always, “Will she be pretty or will she just miss it?” The child had nothing whatever of Frost about her; she was entirely a second edition of Lynna, less exquisite, a palpable copy. “But I was pretty,” Lynna would think, staring into her glass, her small breasts cupped in her hands. “Really pretty; she needn’t be as pretty as all that—in fact, better not. It didn’t do me much good, did it?” Rossy drew from the secondary Lafauce type—the pastel-and-eggshell; but she had an alert vitality which no Lafauce, male or female, had ever possessed; as this quality could not possibly derive from Frost, it must be Ross the indomitable thrusting forth again in his grandchild. Rossy was never still; she inherited Lynna’s experimental boldness but pursued doggedly at the point where the child Lynna had retreated in fugitive tears. As beauty her best asset was her skin, which came to her partly from Glory but as much really from Ross; it was a textured skin, smooth, white and without blemish save for a single brown mole in a rather adorable place—where, certainly, nobody was ever likely to see it except those in the best mood to admire. Lynna showed the child off to Conna, who was coldly critical.
“You give her too much of her own way. She won’t thank you one day, you know.”
“Oh, Conna, she’s only a baby. You can’t appoint babies.”
“You ought to. It’s good for them.”
Susan and Jane made protesting noises; Lynna shook her head.
“I know something about disappointments, Conna—a lot more than you do. They’re not good for anybody. They’re bad, bad, bad.”
But when Conna had left she went back to uneasy wondering about Rossy’s future. “My heart’ll go one of these days; it very nearly stopped when Gladdy’s letter came; one day it will stop altogether. Then what’ll happen to Rossy?” Susan and Jane would turn any child into a freak; Duffy was too selfish and too cautious—almost more of an old maid than the Ghoomri Sisters themselves. Ross seemed to like the little girl increasingly, showing her an unprecedented softness that was part of his changing self; but Ross—though he didn’t look it—was sixty-one; he, too, might desert her soon enough. Conna’s household with the “Gee-Gees,” Grace and Gloria, was the obvious, the ideal place for a motherless Rossy, but—Conna might easily prove the cruel stepmother of the fairy-tales. Raleigh would love Rossy—if Conna would let him; but would she? She didn’t like Rossy—she had made that sufficiently clear; and she had Raleigh just there. Once Lynna, marvelling at this control, had asked how she managed it; her sister had laughed rather harshly.
“I never give him anything he wants when he wants it. Then I make him want it again suddenly and give it to him as nicely as I know how.”
“A queer kind of way of living.”
“It’s not like Father and Mother if that’s what you mean.” Conna had flushed darkly. “None of that for me.”
No, Raleigh couldn’t call his house his own, and Conna’s house would be rough shelter for Rossy.
Often Lynna lay awake at nights and felt her heart beating hard with a grinding pain; and despite herself she would be frightened. Death was such a big thing and so completely unexplored. But in the bright day she did not fear it. She would think, “If what they say is true, I’ll see Gladdy again; and if it isn’t, it’ll just be—nothing.” She went on with her days, hoping for the best. Once Susan hinted at a possible re-marriage, (“You’re young yet, ducky, you’re pretty yet”) but she had said, “My dear Su, it’s out of the question. I’m only bits and pieces. I can’t have another baby—ever. I wouldn’t let any man do it.”
But if Lynna’s 1919 was eventless, Susan and Jane were thrilled—at least in the opening months—with excitement. They were excited about Duffy and the tall fair newcomer Elspeth Claye. Duffy had been unquestionably smitten at that New Year’s Eve Dance; and he had been manifestly intrigued ever since. He wormed himself into Miss Claye’s sets at tennis; he arranged games of golf; he developed a sudden passion for moonlight picnics and bathing-parties. On the picnics Susan and Jane shed warm approval, but the bathing parties they discouraged. For one thing they were aware that they themselves, especially Susan, looked preposterous in the modern type of bathing-dress; but that alone would have troubled them relatively little; what was much worse was the consciousness—which they secretly shared—of Elspeth’s doubtful sidelong glance at their brother’s silhouette. Duffy had not yet arrived at that dreadful morning when he would realise suddenly—probably in his bath—that he was fat; and he took in very bad part Susan’s solitary hint that a dinner-jacket was more becoming attire for him than a swimming-suit. He liked the bathing parties because his goddess stripped herself—and with advantage—to the minimum the taste of 1919 permitted; but after the bathes, they noticed, he would become silent and reflective, almost morose, sitting apart from the merry crowd who had assembled to drink his cherry brandy and eat his cheese straws and curry biscuits. The Ghoomri Sisters puzzled a good deal as to his thoughts on these occasions; which were simply—“She’s lovely, she’s maddening; but—should I? She’s a wonderful creature; but—marriage?” At all events his Fabian methods and his hot-and-cold swithering kept Susan and Jane in a delicious ferment. Undressing slowly together—they had shared a bedroom and even a bathroom from infancy and nothing would induce them to adopt any other arrangement—they would discuss by the hour the minutiae of Duffy’s tardy courtship. Completely without sex so far as their personal feelings were concerned, they were still strongly imbued with that procuress instinct which goads all good women; though they would not have admitted it in so many words they were desperately anxious to put Duffy and Elspeth to lawful bed together. And at times it seemed only necessary to look out the sheets and pillows; at others the whole project became an indecent illusion.
In the first week of April the crisis arrived in the form of what Duffy called a “kick-up” at the Club; this was to be an affair of drinks and dancing in order to bid farewell to Miss Claye and a couple of young wives whose delicate constitutions could stand Sikkal not a day longer. All three were departing for the Hills, and as they must leave by a forenoon train next day their night’s rest must not suffer; the entertainment was therefore to be held before dinner. Susan and Jane, disliking drinks and knowing that nobody would ask them to dance, wisely elected to remain at home; but they despatched Duffy, very elegant in a silk suit, just as dusk fell. He was silent and rather grumpy, but from this the Ghoomri Sisters argued the best. Susan said:
“It’s now or never.” And Jane, snapping her lips, replied in her hard, pecking way, “He’ll come back engaged, Su; it’s inevitable.”
Susan timidly voiced the oft-repeated fear.
“She couldn’t—she couldn’t refuse him, Jay?” To which her sister replied in short sharp monosyllables, “Her? Him? Bosh!”
Duffy and the Ghoomri Sisters were to dine late but Lynna gave Ross his dinner at the usual time, sitting thoughtfully through a silent meal. She was taking Rossy to the Hills in a fortnight—and rather envying Susan and Jane, who never left Torteval if they could possibly avoid it, hot weather or wet. At the arrival of the joint, Ross, breaking the silence, said:
“Where is our wandering boy to-night? Where’s Master Duffy?”
She told him he had gone to the Club. “There’s a sort of farewell show to Miss Claye and Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Lind.”
He gave her his quick shrewd look across the table.
“Is Duffy chasing that young woman?”
She stammered, “I don’t know, Father.” Conscience-stricken, she realised that she really didn’t know—because she had never had sufficient interest to investigate; Duffy took little notice of her or she of him; he was Conna’s—like Raleigh, more so even than Raleigh. She said, “You’d better ask Susan.” But her father only made the contemptuous noise he always made when Susan—or Jane—was mentioned.
In the drawing-room Susan and Jane waited with the air of conspirators; it seemed almost wrong to have illumination, and Susan actually turned the standard lamp in the corner down a little. They fidgeted in silence or started remarks and left them hanging unfinished in mid-air. Nine struck; half-past: they moved on to the sofa and sat there holding one another’s hands. At last with its grating sweep the car came up the drive; Duffy slowly ascended the steps and entered the room. They saw immediately that his face was oppressed with care (that was natural) and beaded with sweat (natural, too, after dancing in April), but next instant his face was forgotten in an outcry from Susan.
“Oh, Duffy, your shoes!”
He looked down at them; they were red with a thick coating of laterite dust.
“Well, what’s about a little dust?”
“But—but where have you been?”
“Been? I’ve been walking round Pisgah.”
“But—but then you didn’t go to the Club, ducky?” He sat down heavily in a chair.
“Who the devil would go to the Club on a stifling night like this. . . . And for God’s sake don’t call me ‘ducky.’ I’ve told you fifty times.”
Susan looked at Jane, Jane at Susan.
“Well, dear, you’ll have dinner, anyway?”
“For God’s sake let me wash. . . . You start. . . . I’ll join you in a minute.”
Obediently they filed into the dining-room, where they gazed at each other over the wreckage of that empty bridal bed. And Duffy, sitting in his chair and solacing himself with a cold whiskey-and-soda, gazed at it, too, but told himself he was a wise man. He had started for the Club, but half-way there his heart had failed him and he had shouted to the driver, “Go up to Pisgah.” To Pisgah he had gone, and there he had walked and walked while sunset turned to aftermath and aftermath to darkness. “And a good thing, too,” he told himself; “if I’d gone to the Club this evening I’d have asked her. Better not. If I’d gone to the Club this evening I’d have come back engaged. Better not; wiser not.” As the whiskey went gratefully down, he began to believe it. Better not; wiser not; take no chances; play safe; better not. Let expediency prevail; better not.
And yet she had been tall and graceful; a lovely thing to sit opposite at table; a desirable thing to take into one’s arms at night. . . . Better not? Was it? He set down his glass suddenly and hard; to the devil with expediency: “I’ll do it yet; there’s still time.” But there wasn’t; the Club show must be long since over; too late, too late, ye cannot enter now. . . . Instead, in about ten minutes, he came into the dining-room spruce and composed and sat down beside Susan and talked of the news from Amritsar. They noted with relief that he made a very good dinner off some of his favourite dishes.
In the forenoon train south next morning a tall fair girl sat and scowled at the lovely gliding panorama of the Coast. A fat little man—yes, fat; and his Eton and Cambridge airs and all; and his endless suffocating talk about himself; she couldn’t have married him, she couldn’t. A voice within her said, “But, darling, he never asked you”; and she got up and flung from the window a large bunch of Torteval lilies.
Mrs. Morton, languishing in cushions on the opposite berth, said:
“Oh, Elspeth, Mr. Cowal’s lovely flowers.”
Miss Claye said, “Beastly things! They stink up the whole compartment. . . . Oh, Lord, this endless journey. . . .”
Mrs. Morton looked at Mrs. Lind.
Sylvius, far away—as far as his duties could be made to take him—from Sikkal, spent that year in the penance of Purgatory. “I am accursed,” he thought, “I am vile; I can’t go to church any more; I can’t any longer seek souls for Christ; Christ cannot want mine. I have sinned, sinned, sinned.” To his very great horror, he found he could not speak of it even in the confessional; he tried to say, “Father, I have fallen in love with another man’s wife; I have allowed my thoughts to play about her beauty; I have enjoyed her in lewd imaginings; I have wanted her and desired her; and I do all these things still.” But the words would not come though he sat sweating and shivering in the little box; all he could confess was the trivial nonsensical error of every day. And always before him there rose that face; white under the plaited black hair; the serene forehead, the questioning blue eyes, pale yet deep; and the smile, the smile, that some day must come to fruition and irradiate the world. In the daytime his mind wandered; in the night sleep left him and he drifted amongst fancies, intolerably evil, intolerably alluring. He became very thin, could eat little, made gross mistakes in his work. He went to holy places, to renowned “miracle “ shrines; he met eminent Fathers of his Church; but all to no avail. He put relics under his pillow and tokens under his shirt; he prayed and prayed, but the Sacred Heart itself could not help him. The face that was the face of his favourite Madonnas and yet of no Madonna stood always in the way, saying, “Sylvius, come back; Sylvius, come back.”
In his sane moments he would reflect that he had spoken to her for perhaps twenty minutes—it could hardly have been more—in a crowded ballroom amid uproar. He could have said nothing fatal, nothing conclusive, nothing to any real purpose at all; he did not, in fact, now remember a word of that conversation except that she had asked him to sit down and he had said he wished her to be his friend. What was there in that? Savagely he told himself that she must have completely forgotten his existence, that she could never have thought him other than an idiot, a half-contemptuous laugh was as much of her attention as he could possibly expect. And then, more savagely still, he would cry, “Liar, liar! you know she could love you, you know she will!” He lectured himself, ridiculed himself, lashed himself with contumely and criticism. To no avail. “Sylvius, come back; Sylvius, come back.” Sin, beautiful as ever, leaned from her sweet house, beckoning, beckoning.
One night in late October he made up his mind to go to Confession and this time not to shirk; instead he sat in his dark lodgings till the hour for Confessional was long over and then, surrendering at last, he wrote to Lobo the younger—he of the white-and-gold teeth—asking if he could get him a clerical post with the St. Salvator Mission. Lobo, like a good son, took the message to his father.
“What to say to this, Dad?”
The ugly, squat, dangerous old man read the letter with his reddened eyes.
“We’ll have him. I bet he don’t love Torteval. He’ll be useful yet. I’ll speak to Crispi. You speak, too. . . . Anyway, we’ll make so as Mister fat Duffy Cowal sees him every day of his life and all his friends, too. That flash I.C.S. sister—she’ll see her pretty twin when she comes. All Sikkal can see him. You write and tell him to pack quick and come running.”
So at Christmas Sylvius came again to stay with his mother. But he came guiltily and with naughtiness in his face, and before he had been ten minutes at Sleepy Valley she was at him.
“What is it then, Sylvius? Better you tell Coaces.”
He stood shuffling in front of her, twisting his cheap Homburg hat in his hands.
“I—I chucked the Telegraphs, Mother. I wasn’t pulling on there. I—I got a job with Salvators in Sik-kal.”
He had expected anger—a torrent of that hot rough abuse with which she could on occasion make splendidly free. Instead she got up and kissed him. Surprised, he said:
“Mother, you’re glad?”
She kissed him again. “Why I should not be glad? A-all these telegraphs are very far away. Never I have seen you. Now I can see you often. Old I am getting; maybe I will die soon. Maybe I will get sick; then you can come easy and look to me.”
“They won’t give me much pay, Mother—not so much as I was getting.”
She pushed him into a chair and patted his head.
“Wha-at if? I have ple-nty money. Every year now bi-ig crops, fi-ine prices. I will give you money. Then I can look after you. You don’ look well. You are all pulled-down. You want your mother. Don’ you worry, Sylvius.”
“Sin,” he thought—“sin, sin, sin.” And for a wild moment he thought of telling her, thought of blurting out, “It’s all a lie; I have come only to see Annunciata Crispi and because I cannot live without seeing her sometimes. And I am in love with her although she is another man’s wife and I am wicked, wicked. Oh, Mother, I am damned into hell!” But he fought the temptation into silence. Suppress it, fetter it, prison it, keep it from everybody, never mention it, never never say one word of it to a soul—“do these things, Sylvius, and you may yet conquer, you may yet save yourself from hell. To this end you shall see her sometimes—once a fortnight, once a month; always in the distance, never near—oh no, never that; never to speak to; just near enough to identify, far enough to worship. So that you can say to yourself, that is she, and now, thou unclean thing that is within me, be thou still.”
That night in the silence of Sleepy Valley he prayed long, calling to his saints, calling to his Saviour. He arose refreshed; he felt, “Now I can fight, now I can go on; now I can conquer my devils. Oh, God, oh, Lord Jesus, I thank Thee that Thou hast given me this battle to fight so that I may show Thee what I can do and prove worthy of Thy trust and Thy favour always.”
And suddenly he thought—and so obsessed had been his mind that it was actually for the first time—he thought, “Torteval! Torteval! I am at Salvators now and they are at Torteval, and I hate them and it shall be war—war—war!”
Discontent, the keynote of the preceding lustre, climaxed in India in 1921. The galling disappointment of the post-war years was here more acutely felt inasmuch as the mind of India, being essentially childish, was more buoyantly expectant, more bitterly let down. The Government of India Act of 1919 had seemed a sorry translation of the Proclamation of 1917—which a great many Indians, rightly or wrongly, had taken as virtually a Proclamation of Independence. The Non-Co-operation movement was raging in full blast; Gandhi—a man imbued with the dangerous futility of the megalomaniac—was god; hate and unrest seethed everywhere. The wild days of 1919 and 1920 were still in vivid memory—Amritsar and the Jallianwallabagh; the names of Dyer and O’Dwyer were bandied round to a conflicting accompaniment of “Hero-villain” and “saviour-assassin.” Everywhere were meetings, arrests, prohibitory orders, more meetings, more orders. And Dufferin Cowal was thirty and one of the most discontented men in a discontented country.
In the winter of 1920-1 Duffy had gone home on a visit to England; the Ghoomri Sisters, whispering hand-in-hand together, had decided that he would come back with a bride. The attractive Elspeth, whose name Susan could never pronounce without a lisp, had never returned to Sikkal; that journey whose unending length she had deplored to Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Lind had been but the initial stage in one much longer. In the Hills she had met an officer on leave from northern India, had impulsively married him and had departed with him to Peshawar. Duffy, reading this news in the Mail, became visibly depressed, and throughout the monsoon he descended into a lethargy from which the Ghoomri Sisters were unable to rouse him. Anxious and concerned, they watched the failure of all his favourite dishes to make any impression upon his increasing gloom and when at last, after a good deal of vacillation, he took the plunge and sailed for England they congratulated themselves and him. Admiring him intensely—his polish, his wit, his business abilities—they were convinced that he had but to indicate his choice among the maidens of Britain; and they were convinced—with more truth—that Duffy required a maiden badly. They were the more surprised and alarmed when Duffy returned, more sparkling, more brilliantly polished, but alone.
Duffy had gone home with a need and a grievance; he came back with an ultimatum. He put the ultimatum to his father in the Torteval office within a fortnight of his return.
“You know, sir, I can’t go on with this.”
Ross surveyed him—still, after all these years, without comprehension and as he might have surveyed some strange animal in a zoo. There he went! Ram-stam, slap-dash, all generalities, no detail. And he thought himself a man of business.
“Can’t go on with what?”
Duffy selected a cigarette from a gold case and lit it; “I mustn’t let the old man rile me,” he thought, “and I mustn’t let him bully me.”
“Well, sir, it’s like this. I came out here in the end of ’twelve. That’s nine years ago. I’m doing now just as much as I did then—and no more.”
“Ye do what I tell ye.”
“Exactly. And I’ve done it for nine years. And I don’t feel I can go on doing it any longer.”
Ross made an unaccommodating noise.
“It’s like this. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to vex you, and if I thought I was any help to you I’d sit tight and say nothing at all. But the fact is I don’t help you one inch.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You would—if you were telling the truth. Let’s be honest—I’m useless.”
“M-m?”
“And I’m useless because you won’t let me be anything else. The plain truth is”—he flicked the ash from his cigarette; now for it—“there isn’t room for both of us in the business. There never has been. We don’t see eye to eye at all. So——”
“So ye’re to cut adrift.”
“We-ell”—Duffy laid down his cigarette and met his father’s level gaze—“it’s one or other of us.”
There was a silence; then suddenly Ross threw up his head with a harsh laugh that Duffy had never heard before.
“By God, I see how it is. One or other of us. And ye mean it to be me.”
Duffy sat back in his chair. “I said one or other of us.”
“I see, I see.” The hard voice suddenly faltered. “Ye’re the crown prince and I’m to abdicate.”
A softer opponent would have melted at the sudden wistfulness in Ross’s tone; but Duffy had his own share of fortitude. Half-frightened, half-intoxicated by his success so far, he stuck to his guns.
“Well, sir, you’ve had forty years of it. I’ve been a good boy for nine years. I’ve stood a lot, if you’ll do me the justice to remember. Don’t you think you might?”
“Might what?”
“Retire. Just that.”
There was another silence; it seemed to Duffy, not without bowels of compassion, that his father drooped, shrank a little. “A hateful business,” he thought, “rotten for both of us. But I must go through with it; things can’t go on as they are; no shilly-shallying.” But moved despite himself, he said slowly:
“You might give me a chance. Isn’t it about my turn?”
Ross stared at him dourly. “Give him a chance”; “my turn”; as if they were playing a game. All at once he felt hot and angry; he said:
“And suppose I tell ye to go and be damned?”
Duffy smiled. “Why, of course, I’ll go. I said it would have to be one of us.”
“And where to might ye go?”
Duffy never bluffed: he had his answer ready.
“I went to see Dain’s people in Hanbridge when I was at home. I knew young Dain at Trinity. They’re doing pretty well. They’ll take me in. They’d want me to put down a couple of thousand or so. I’d ask you for that—in advance.”
“And ye think ye would get it?”
“Yes. I don’t think you’d want to have it both ways.” “In fact,” he thought, “you couldn’t have it. Two thousand or no two thousand, I’d go to Dain’s and you know it.”
In the long silence Ross lit a cheroot: the flame showed his face turning stony and dark. For one bitter moment he thought of Gladstone.
“So ye want the old man away?”
“I want to take over the business. I think it’s time I did.”
“And then it’ll boom, no doubt?”
Duffy smiled: that was a weak shot; if the old man could do no better than cheap sarcasm——
“I don’t say that. I only say—” he drew himself together with a certain dignity—“I only say I’m not prepared to go on playing second fiddle here any more. I don’t love this country as you do——”
“Ye don’t know it as I do.”
“Admitted. But, anyway, I’m not prepared to stay in it with things as they are.” He softened again. “After all, I’m only asking you either to let me take over here or to let me go somewhere else.”
Ross sat a long time in silence. The office was very still, the multitudinous noises of the factory came crowding in. A clerk pushed open the half-doors, peered in, went doubtfully away. Ross said at last:
“The tiles only?”
Duffy jumped.
“Of course. Torteval.”
“Not the coffee?”
“Certainly not; I know nothing about that.”
“And ye know nothing about the tiles either,” thought Ross. Suddenly he felt himself shaking. He said in the broad Scots he used to cover overmastering emotion:
“I’m gettin’ auld.” He reached out and drew some papers towards him. “Well—I’ll think about it. . . . Ye’ve made an old man of me this morning, Duffy.”
Conscience-stricken, but triumphant, Duffy went out.
Walking with her father that evening on Pisgah—a ritual performance now except during the thickest monsoon—Lynna found him more silent even than usual. They trod the path, once rough but now gravelled and neatly bordered, that ran along the crest of the scarp; they looked down on Ghoomri, tranquil and unchanging, reddening now with yet another sunset. Walking slowly and with his hands clasped behind his back, Ross saw ghosts about him; saw Trevelyan Lafauce marching along beside a young girl with cold eyes and warm red-gold hair; saw the stately forms of Chalk and Simmons with their rattan canes and their cheroots and their queer high-collared white jackets; saw their dames by their side in trailing frocks whose tight contours and long fashionable stripes set off the opulent curves the taste of the day demanded. All of them dead now, all of them dead; and himself walking here still with poor tragic Lynna. He saw a young man, immensely cocksure and confident, come springing up Pisgah to greet a sun that leapt the Ghats to meet him; heard him challenge it, “That’s my sun rising; that’s me!” And now—sunset, that glow in the west whither so many had preceded him. Who all had been in his thoughts that far-back morning of hope? Gloriette; Coaces; Lobo; and that queer half-lover of Glory’s, that half-baked chap what was his name—Sealing. Coaces lived still—and was Mrs. Cowal; Lobo lived and was back hanging about the place with a son in the Eye-talianos: but Glory was dead so long ago that she might never have been; and her half-baked Sealing longer ago still. He had a moment’s queer thought—“I wonder if they’ve met? . . .” In the interval he had begotten his sons, established his house, made his fortune; risen; fallen? Sons! A son dead, a son lost, a son rebelling; what more could sons do to hurt their sires? “I’m old,” he thought, “I’m old at last and I belong among the dead; Duffy’s a fool but he’s right. But no half-measures; if I cut anything, I’ll cut the lot—tiles, coffee, house, garden, Sikkal, Torteval—the whole boiling. Why shouldn’t I?” He said suddenly:
“Lynna, if I was to buy Lebanon, would ye keep house for me?”
Lynna started. Her thoughts had been at an immense distance, she hardly knew where: she had a moment’s struggle to recall Lebanon, the great house at Ooty; Conna’s wedding-day; Miss Jervis not looking at her; how cross Jacky had been.
“Lebanon, Father? But why?”
“Never heed why. Would ye do it?”
In a flash of intuition Lynna saw what had happened; Duffy had fired his mine at last and there stood Ross struck and shattered by the explosion. And suddenly she saw him not as a tyrant and a bully, the assassin of her mother’s happiness, the assassin of Gladdy, but merely as an old man, lonely, against whom his own last son had rebelled. She thought sadly, “Duffy needn’t have done it—oh, he needn’t; it would have come of itself.” Impatience—fatal fault, her own once. She laid a hand on Ross’s arm.
“Of course, Dad, I’ll do anything you ask me. But I’m not very strong, you know. And I never was much of a housekeeper. You’d be better with Susan.”
“Susan’s rooted here; let her bide.”
“But Susan’s so capable——”
“Damn Susan.”
They walked to the end of the road where the bhutastanam still crouched under its battered tree; wheeled; came slowly back against the sun to the car-park where little Rossy was playing contentedly with her ayah. Lynna said suddenly:
“Rossy would come to Lebanon, Dad?”
He came back from a long reverie. Sons, sons; he had walked that road demanding sons of Fate; and now the last son left to him had bidden him begone! Like Lynna with Lebanon, he had to think for a moment who Rossy was. “Eh? Rossy? Ye can do what ye like with her.”
She persisted. “But you’d have her at Lebanon?”
“Lebanon? We’re not there yet. But so long as ye didn’t make her into a nuisance——”
“She’s not a nuisance here. You like her, Dad, you know you do.”
“She’s a divert.”
But as the child came running towards them she looked into his eyes and thankfully she saw there something that was more than mere diversion.
That night after dinner Ross wrote two letters. The first was to the solicitors in Ooty who had charge of Lebanon, offering a price ten thousand rupees below anything so far mentioned. The second was to Neill Brothers. “Adverting to your offer for the purchase of my coffee-curing business at Sikkal, I am instructing my solicitors that I am prepared to reconsider the matter. . . .” He stalked into the drawing-room where Duffy was sprawling in an armchair with a novel from the Club Library.
“Read that, my mannie.”
Duffy read and understood and was, to do him justice, overwhelmed. He tried to speak.
“It’s good of you, sir. It’s more than good of you. It’s great, it’s——”
Ross scowled at him.
“Tell me that ten years hence!”
The discontent of the year touched Conna, scorched her, came near to destroying her altogether.
1921 found her still in those inevitable Nilgiris from which it seemed that her life was unable to escape. The Home leave in 1919 from which poor Raleigh had expected so much had proved a curate’s egg of a leave, its good parts chequered with unforeseen annoyances; Conna’s old friends, for instance, had shown a maddening tendency to find her unexpectedly aged—remaining apparently wholly unaware that they had aged out of all knowing themselves. Men meeting her for the first time adopted the honest but disconcerting attitude that she was a married woman with children and so of no further sexual interest to anybody but her husband. Men she had known in the old days and who had married in the interval showed no disposition to introduce her to their wives; men she had known and who had not married in the interval simply fled. She was Conna Cowal who had been away a long time—a very long time—in India, a queer colonial place where she had married and given birth to babies and become domesticated. Quite unreasonably this annoyed Conna very much.
Then Raleigh’s mother had been a constant difficulty, or rather a factor which, if not constantly handled with skill and tact, might develop into a difficulty of the first magnitude. She had turned out to be a young-looking woman, svelte and petite where Conna herself was large and generous, and she displayed a genius for getting them into situations where a small woman appeared at an advantage. Or so it seemed to Conna. She had open eyes of a clear blue, a twisted deliberately rueful smile, unassailable humour, endless patience and a basic quality that could only be described as goodness. Never ceasing to dilate on Conna’s merits, she succeeded merely in listing her blemishes for inspection. Or so it seemed to Conna. And it was early made evident that there existed—as there always had existed—a Raleigh-Mother combine into which no Conna could possibly intrude, an alliance all the more impregnable because it was never openly proclaimed. Or so it seemed to Conna.
With the Lafauce relatives, a casual, debonair company, Mrs. Beverell senior had not mixed at all well; they were inclined to make fun of her in which it was terribly difficult not to join. There was an everlasting avoidance of a split into camps, a tedious business of holding balances. Even the children became involved; Grace remained coldly Lafauce; but for a period at least Gloria was devotedly and noisily Raleigh’s Mother. And Raleigh’s Mother, having early realised that she retained nine-tenths of her power over her son, had been throughout so charming and kind and—confound her!—forgiving to Conna, so tactful. . . .
The children in time had been the cause of the worst scene of the leave and the most violent quarrel that had ever taken place between Conna and her husband. Raleigh wished to leave the children behind with his mother; they were now respectively six and four; you couldn’t separate them; by the time Raleigh could get leave again Grace would be eleven—too old for India; his mother’s house near Dawlish was absolutely ideal—and so on and so on. There was much sense in the proposal, but from the outset Conna set herself violently against it. From original bickerings, argument and re-statings of the case the scene developed; Conna lost her temper, Raleigh lost his, Mrs. Beverell alone remained serenely and maddeningly angelic. In the end Conna turned on her mother-in-law.
“It’s not fair. You’ve too much influence. He thinks more of what you say than of what I say.”
“But, dear Conna, I’m so much older than you are. I’m just a little old woman. You must let me be some use.”
Conna had stamped away to her room. As if age made one know things! You knew what was right because you were you, you knew it instinctively, you knew it because you were Conna. She had taught Raleigh to believe that all these years; now he would never quite believe it again. And “just a little old woman”; if anybody else said that to her! She wasn’t much of a little old woman the day they went up to Town and she was prinking herself for about half-an-hour in the Ladies’ Cloakroom at the Savoy. . . .
Raleigh, coming to tell her she had been disgustingly rude to his mother, met a reception that surprised him.
In the end, of course, Conna won and the children had journeyed East again; and no sooner were they out of the train at Madras Central than she had begun to regret it. For there was a block in promotion, it seemed, in the Service; there was no District for Raleigh, he was still a Sub-Collector, and with a culminating stroke of genius the Government re-posted him to Kondacole—the place where the Bank had bought the only bungalow and you shared with the Agent. Conna in a royal temper said he must get out of it—but it seemed he couldn’t; so Raleigh departed for Kondacole and Conna and the children for the Hills. For the next year it had been difficult to say where Raleigh was; he stood at an awkward stage of service, highest in one grade, lowest in the next; he would go to act as Collector of some district for a few weeks, then revert somewhere else as Sub-Collector. He shot about the Presidency like a spinning-top on a tray, cannoning this way and that. To drag about a wife and family under these conditions was manifestly impossible; so Conna took a house in Ootacamund on a year’s lease and lived there.
And in Ootacamund in 1921, Conna’s discontent deepened, soured, became dangerous. “I’m tired of Raleigh,” she thought, “I really am tired of him; he lets himself be put upon by Government; all this kicking about can’t be necessary; a man wouldn’t stand it. It’s all imbecile, it’s not governing; no wonder the Non-Co-operation people score, no wonder anyone with brains turns seditionist. But Raleigh’s soft; that’s one reason why I’m tired of him; he’s soft and kind and stupid. I’m a pig to him, he ought to beat me really; but instead he just comes and wants me. I can’t go on with it. I’m fed-up.”
In 1921 the glory and gaiety of the war years had largely departed from Ooty; still, in the season there were always men and the men were always ready for Conna and ready—unlike those dolts at Home—to forget the existence of a husband and babies. Conna began to amuse herself; once or twice she went beyond amusement; once far beyond it. That night—the night of the far progress—she sat a long time gazing into her glass and recalling slowly just what had happened and how. “I’m a fool,” she told herself, “I’m a fool; I know I’m risking the substance for the shadow. But I can’t help that; I’m sick, tired, fed-up.”
When Raleigh proposed a visit she wrote and discouraged him; when he came in the end she was cold to him, sent him down again bitterly unhappy. Gazing into her glass after he had gone, she hated herself for doing it. “I’m possessed of a devil,” she thought; “I can’t be nice to him any more.” Then her mood hardened; she saw her mother going trembling and anxious in the presence of Ross yet for all her care offending him time after time and then being helplessly sorry. “None of that for me,” she thought, “I’ll live my life, I’ll do what I like.” . . . “But you don’t like it,” said her image in the glass. Oh damn! Fed-up, fed-up, tired, disappointed; life was a fraud and a cheat.
And Raleigh, scribbling on files which seemed daily to grow more pointless and battling with the myriad problems of post-war India, thought, “Why can I never get hold of her, why can’t I catch her, why should I always want so much and she so little? Why?”
In Sikkal Sylvius worked out his penance; at times it was hell, at times he enjoyed it. From the first he was extraordinarily successful at St. Salvator’s; he had Coaces’s quick, practical acquisitiveness, her endless untiring industry fired with a flash or two of Ross’s far-sighted acumen. The Italian Fathers of the Mission began with him in a spirit of kindly toleration; a friend of Mr. Lobo’s who had lost his job?—too bad, too bad, never mind, they would take him in. Rapidly they changed their tune. They started him as a clerk, but in less than a year he was a head clerk in his section; then one day he had a long talk with Crispi about sales and the next he found himself promoted to be a travelling agent. In this capacity he succeeded beyond their wildest dreams—or his. He was persuasive, adaptable, a born salesman; the old proselytising zeal which had impelled him to thrust the gospel of Christ upon the heathen now impelled him to thrust the Bandicoot tiles of St. Salvator upon the purchasers of other brands. And especially upon the purchasers of the Parrot Brand from Torteval: every Bandicoot sold was a stone hurled at that proud place which would not know him. Running round the country here and there, booking orders for tiles, then returning like a wanderer from the wilderness or a lamb from the mountainside to the warm religious atmosphere of his Catholic God, Sylvius found himself unexpectedly happy—and doing unexpectedly well.
When he made the further discovery that he had wrestled with his devil and conquered it, his happiness swelled almost to a delirium of delight. He could go into St. Philomene’s Church, with its tinsel and stucco and its cobalt-blue Virgins behind glass panels, no longer accursed and damned but a soldier of God who had been tried in the battle and had won. He had won beyond shadow of doubt; for he could talk to Annunciata now and an evil thought would never cross his mind. If one did creep timidly forth he stamped on it and it was crushed immediately and died without fight.
This victory had not been accomplished all at once. For the first three months he went cold whenever he saw the Signora in the distance, he shivered, he felt a little sick. From any chance of meeting her at close quarters he ignominiously fled. But he wrestled and wrestled and—as it had been promised to those who would wrestle earnestly—he won. The day came when he could pass her and raise his hat; the day came when he could say cleverly, Buon giorno, Signora Crispi,” the day came when he could walk by her side and discourse commonplaces. The day came when she persuaded him she had never recognised him as the extremely eccentric young man she had met at the dance—though in point of fact she had recognised him perfectly well from the first and had wished he would rediscover something of that lost diverting eccentricity. That day was a day of rejoicing for Sylvius; it gave him a fresh start; he took it as a sign that his sins and his follies were forgiven him. Thereafter—perhaps as Annunciata had designed and hoped—he opened out more freely; soon he was able to tell her his story—all about Ross and Coaces and the fact that he was illegitimate and how hard it all was. He found her an angel of sympathy. She hated the Torteval people, on his account, almost as bitterly as he did himself. Presently she repaid him in kind by telling him her own troubles; all about the fanciulla in the little Tuscan village married in her teens to a man seventeen years older than herself, a good Catholic and kind and well-doing, but—but——“But what, Signora?” (Triumphant Sylvius could even ask her that.) But a sickly man always, weak and in ill-health; they had never had any babies but—she laughed brightly—her husband was himself the bambino, for she had spent so much of her life nursing him, giving him of her strength. It was on account of her husband’s delicate constitution that they had come to the East; life in a tropical climate had been recommended and the good Father at home had made representations to the Mission of St. Salvator and eccolo! But Sikkal was a dull place, it was hot and it tired her; sometimes she wished they had never come. . . . All this Sylvius could hear unmoved—or as nearly so as made no matter; and all the time the smile stood stationary under the braided hair, neither advancing nor receding but always there. And Annunciata thought, “What does he want, the great booby? If he loves me—and apparently he loves me—why doesn’t he say so?”
Crispi was doing well at the works but not so well as they had hoped, not so well as had at first seemed likely. His obscure disease tormented him, sapped his energy, left him of an evening white and wrung, lying helplessly in a long chair in front of his hideous little house. He stared towards Tuscany into the sunsets with his great round eyes, black where Annunciata’s were blue, and his long white fingers played in his beard or wandered up and down his wife’s bare arm when she sat beside him. There she sat by the hour with the arrested smile that might at any moment break into glory and light, saying little or nothing, sustaining him to live on into another night, another day. But one day she wept to Sylvius.
“To-day Crispi is too ill. One day he will die. Then what will become of me?”
Staring through his unsightly glasses, Sylvius said, “I will look after you, Annunciata.” And then he reeled as if he had been struck. For he had said that; and he had called her “Annunciata” and not “Signora.” But she sat without speech or remonstrance, looking at him with her dull blue eyes and he looked back at her through his glasses; and there they sat staring at each other in the silence of complete comprehension. . . .
Ross bought Lebanon in the end for a price five thousand rupees lower than anything so far mentioned—except of course his own original offer. Contemplating the great place with its mock-pillared facade and its long run of verandahed rooms in the old style of Sullivan and the founders of Ooty, he cursed himself for a fool. “Why on earth did I buy it?” he thought. “I’ll never see my money again, the War prices can’t come back and if this Non-Co-operation rant goes on all kinds of property in this country will fall and fall. What did I want it for? To die in: and I could have died in something much smaller.” Presently, however, in the bright Nilgiri sunshine, his spirits revived. “I’m a long, long way from death yet,” he thought, “and we’ll have some fun in the interval. I’ve had precious little time for fun so far.” He took little Rossy by the hand and went round the property with her on a tour of inspection, telling her stories of the house’s past. “Your Auntie Conna was born in here.” “Your mother fell into this pond one day and your Uncle fished her out.” She said, “What Uncle; Uncle Duffy?” and he said quickly, “Yes, I suppose so.” But of course it wasn’t—it was Gladstone of whom probably she had never heard. Pausing in his round he wondered, “Why was I so hard on that laddie? I wouldn’t be now. I’m past all that. I’m getting soft: look at me now with this bairn—the kind old grannie to the life. Imagine if any son of mine had asked me to clear out of Torteval in those days! Tchah!”
The house possessed one convenient appendage—a little secluded cottage at the end of a long path, completely self-contained with two rooms and two bathrooms and a minute glazed verandah. Ross had thought particularly of that cottage when he bought the house. Now Rossy said :
“Can I live in that wee house?”
“‘Wee house!’” He mocked her delightedly. Rossy charmed him by her production of an occasional Scotticism picked up from himself or Susan; Conna’s brats were flawlessly English like their mother and father. Forty years in India had left Ross with an unreasonable but defined antipathy to the English and an intensified Scottish nationalism. “’Wee house ‘ eh? That’s not for you. That’s for Grannie to live in when she comes.”
The child stared at it solemnly. “When’s Grannie coming?”
“I don’t know. . . . Ye like Grannie, don’t ye?”
“O-oh yes. She tells nice stories.”
“She does that,” said Ross, but a shade uncomfortably; he wondered with what stories Coaces had regaled the child. The “Grannie” was an invention of the sentimental fool Susan; he hadn’t liked it; but Susan had started it, the child had picked it up, and there it was. To alter it now would involve complicated explanations that could only make bad worse.
Beyond question Ross was changing; beyond expectation he enjoyed his quiet days at Lebanon—wandering about with Rossy, talking to Lynna as he had never talked to her before, smoking, thinking, riding the quiet horse he had bought. People were kind, seeming actually to want his company; they regarded him with a flattering mixture of awe and good-fellowship. “I’m going to be somebody here,” he thought with foolish pleasure. Against his intention he found himself joining the Nilgiri Club, going out once or twice to dinner, having people in. Daily he altered, softened, humanised.
But there was a cloud in the sky. It was obviously absurd for Conna to keep on a separate house in Ooty with this barrack of a place half-empty and so she was to move in with her “Gee-Gees” just before Christmas. Ross, by no means delighted at this prospect, saw no way out of it. He was still a little afraid of Conna—the only person on earth who had ever compelled him; and he disliked the Gee-Gees, smug little Sassenachs. He grumbled to Lynna:
“Why can’t she go and live with her husband?” Lynna, looking white and tired, said:
“He’s in some dreadful place. And there’s the children.”
“It’s the cold weather. It wouldn’t hurt them. It never hurt any of you.”
“Maybe we were tougher. We’d have needed to be.” But she looked anything but tough now, Ross thought; everything in her had gone into Rossy who had the spunk of a dozen.
When the move-in actually took place there were early indications that his forebodings were likely to be realised. Rossy, wildly excited, breathlessly affairée, took charge of the situation.
“Come and I’ll show you my house.”
Grace Beverell treated her to a Lafauce stare on which her Grandmother Gloriette could not have improved.
“It isn’t your house.”
“Yes it is.”
“It isn’t.”
Conna said mildly, “Children, children, don’t quarrel”; but her daughter knew by subtle instinct that she was in support.
“It’s mine as much as yours.”
“It isn’t.”
“Yes it is. And I’m older than you.”
“But I’m stronger than you.”
“Oh, you’re not.”
“I am. I’ll show you.” Without further ado Rossy stepped forward and dealt her cousin a resounding open-hander on the cheek. For a moment Grace was completely taken aback at this unprecedented outrage; then she dissolved into loud weeping and fell back upon her mother. Conna was furious.
“Lynna, your child’s a perfect little savage. It’s unendurable. Come, darling, come with me. . . .” The Lafauce battalion retreated in good order.
Lynna said sadly, “Oh, Rossy, that was naughty of you,” and instantly Rossy burst into a roar which eclipsed Grace’s genteel outcry as the cyclone eclipses the sailing breeze. Rushing to her room, she seized her best doll and fled with it along the passage. But she found the door barred, admission refused.
“Go away, you little beast.”
“But I want to give her my dolly. I want to give her my dolly. I’m sorry, Auntie Conna. I want to give her my dolly.”
“She doesn’t want your dolly. Go away and be sorry somewhere else.”
Weeping bitterly, Rossy retired and sat on the doorstep, the rejected doll sprawling in her lap. Here Ross, who had learned of the events from Lynna, presently found her.
“What’s this? Would they not take the dolly?”
Rossy roared afresh. “They wouldn’t even let me in.”
Ross’s grim face darkened. “They wouldn’t, would they? Well, let them bide where they are. Come you a tata with me.”
At tea Grace was sweetly forgiving but Gloria, little turn-coat, goggled at Rossy in an admiring silence which annoyed Conna not a little. Conna had doubts about Gloria, secret but none the less disturbing. She called her “my podgy baby,” though she was furious if anybody else dared to mention the word “fat”; in her heart she feared that Gloria would develop Susan’s figure—wherever that came from. There was something too in Gloria’s face that was not Lafauce and must therefore—though Raleigh and Raleigh’s Mother denied it—be Beverell; a rather nasty look—almost, one would have said, sly. Even thus early she had been caught out in several blatant and rather disgusting lies. Serenely proud of her impeccable Grace, Conna watched her younger daughter a shade uneasily.
Christmas came and the male members of the tribe ascended to Lebanon—Duffy from Sikkal, looking very assured and confident; Raleigh from his godforsaken district, looking quite the reverse. Lebanon suffered from discomforts and unrests which Torteval had never known; Lynna was no Susan and was quite incapable of the calm sequence of domestic events, the procession of ordered and satisfying meals which her elder sister achieved without apparent effort. Conna grumbled, Duffy was superior; if Raleigh put in a word in Lynna’s defence it only made things worse. The three little girls quarrelled a good deal though they never again actually came to blows; Rossy and Grace were of course the protagonists and Gloria, silent and a trifle furtive, sided now with one, now with the other. When united the two sisters indulged in a chant, “Rossy-Frossy, Rossy-Frossy,” which for some reason had great power to annoy. Ross was uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable, was grim and ill-tempered. He was bored by Duffy’s enthusiasms about his business and shrewdly suspected these to be deliberately overdone. Duffy said, “The Eye-talianos are conking out; that chap Crispi’s a dying man,” to which Ross rejoined, “I wish ye joy of it,” and refused to discuss tiles in any shape or form. He even refrained—though with difficulty—from telling Duffy the almost incredible price he had got from Neill Brothers for the coffee-curing business. “I’m retired,” was his line, “I’m out of business now; I wish ye joy of it.” Playing golf with Raleigh round the bare and sun-scorched links, Duffy predicted a row in the near future: “It’s these women—they won’t be happy till they get it.” “Which women?” said Raleigh, “the little ones or the big ones?” “Both,” said Duffy. “With five females in one house what the hell can you expect?” Puffing a little—he was getting no slimmer—he wandered after his ball.
Duffy’s forecast proved correct. The row broke out on the very last day of the Christmas holidays; Raleigh was leaving next day; Duffy had already gone. The three little girls were playing in the nursery when Rossy, firing the train in all innocence, said:
“Next week Grannie’s coming.”
Grace stared. “Who’s Grannie?”
Rossy at once became important. “Don’t you know Grannie? Black Grannie?” She had only used this expression once in her life and that to Lynna, who had reproved her with unusual sternness, but the sound of it pleased her with its reminiscence of Black Quimbo, Black Mingo and other favourites. She liked the sound of it now.
“Black Grannie?” said Grace, and Gloria repeated fatly, “Black Grannie, Black Grannie,” and fell into a fit of rich giggles. Grace said, “Whose Grannie is she?”
“Your Grannie. My Grannie.”
“But she can’t be.”
“Yes, she is.”
“But you said black.”
“Well, she is black.”
“Then she can’t be our Grannie.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Oh, nonsense, Rossy-Frossy. White girls can’t have black Grannies.”
“Why not?”
Grace was not very sure herself; she had the injured feeling of one called upon to prove an axiom. She took refuge in superiority.
“They just can’t. You’ve got it all wrong somehow. You’re too young. You don’t understand what people say.”
Gloria said ineptly but insultingly, “Rossy-Frossy; Rossy-Frossy.”
Rossy considered. The lady was Grannie, the lady was black, therefore she was Black Grannie. Yet on reflection she could remember no other little girls like themselves who had Black Grannies. Perhaps there was a catch somewhere. Undefeated, she took refuge in a fine flight of feminine logic.
“She is Black Grannie. I know because I’ll show you her house.”
Grace felt the lure of some ill-understood indecency; like all her sex she fell for it.
“Where?”
“Here; in the garden. Come on.”
Conna, half-asleep in a deck-chair in the roasting Hill sunlight, was roused by the procession of three. Rossy led with determination; Grace followed her with an air of being ready to draw back instantly at the sight of the unmentionable just as soon as she had quite certainly seen it; Gloria, who had lost interest, was hopping in the rear. “Pretty little things,” thought Conna; she said indulgently:
“Where are you chicks off to?”
Rossy, who had her misgivings, would have pushed on in silence, but Grace had been taught to answer questions. She said in all innocence:
“Black Grannie’s house.”
“What?” Conna still thought it some game.
“Black Grannie’s house. It’s here—in the garden.”
In a flash the truth burst upon Conna; never a word had she breathed to her daughters about Coaces, never a word did she intend to breathe; the Dark Thing would for ever be kept from them, they would never be contaminated by it. Now this little wretch Rossy—— She started up in her chair.
“You will not. You will do nothing of the kind.” She sprang up with an ungainly effort; the books and papers went flying from her lap on to the grass. “Grace! Gloria! Go straight to your rooms.” She wheeled upon Rossy. “As for you, you little horror——”
White and panting, she snatched a hand of each of her offspring and dragged them away, Grace now silent and shaking, Gloria loudly in tears. Alone on the lawn, Rossy gazed about her in bewilderment: what was it all about? A row clearly and a big row but—why? Her puzzlement would have deepened had she seen Conna, her charges flung into the nursery, burst furiously into the drawing-room where Lynna and Ross were reading.
“Lynna! Father! That disgusting child——”
Words failed her for a moment. “She—she’s told my babies about that—that woman.”
Ross laid down his paper; his face set suddenly into its most dangerous mask.
“What woman?”
Under his murderous gaze Conna faltered. “That—that—your—your——”
“Are ye speaking about your stepmother?”
Stepmother! Black Grannie! One had never thought of Coaces under such terms; but the former at least was legally correct. She said boldly:
“Yes. Coaces.”
“I see.” Ross rose slowly to his full height; his face lowered under the greying hair; his head thrust forward. “Lynna, get away out of this. . . . Now, Miss, you and me are going to have some plain talk. It’s been keeping some time.”
“I’m not going to have my babies——”
“To hell with your babies! And they’re not babies either. They’re well-grown girlies and if ye’ve kept them in lies and ignorance it was ill-done of ye. Or wasn’t it? Or wasn’t it, Miss; answer me.”
His glare was so menacing that Conna reeled back; she had forgotten this kind of father.
“How could I tell them these disgraceful stories?”
“Truth’s better than lies, young or old. But never heed that. I’ve something to say to you, Miss Conna, and it’s this. I’m just about tired of you and your grand ways. It’s been the same story since ye landed back from England, you and our precious Master Duffy. We haven’t been good enough. I’m told ye’ve called us disreputable in public. Is’t so?”
Conna held on to the table, thinking, “I won’t be bullied. I won’t be like mother.” Oh, but he was frightening, frightening.
“It is disreputable. It was, anyway—till you married her.”
“But I did marry her—and a damned fool I was to listen to you. I did that in order that you might marry your I.C.S. masher and ye have married him—and what’s been my thanks? Ye come here and ye sneer and ye sniff and ye look down your nose at us all——”
He moved forward with a gesture so menacing that she threw up her hand and said, “Don’t strike me.”
“I’ll not strike ye. I don’t strike women. But I’ll tell ye this, Miss, fair, straight and without favour. I’m sick tired of your airs and graces and your setting up to be better than your sister that’s as good as you are and your setting up your children to be better than her child that has twice the guts and twice the wits of the pair of them put together——”
Rage drove fear out of Conna entirely; her breast flew up and down, the colour drained out of her face leaving it like marble. She said thickly:
“You say that! You say that! That ill-trained, ill-bred little monkey——”
He was not the least daunted.
“I say that. Monkey or no monkey, I say it. Maybe I like monkeys. And I’ll say something more and that’s this. If ye don’t find this house good enough for ye the door’s open and ye can walk out of it and go back to your husband and be some use to the poor devil that’s keeping ye. . . . And now will ye go to your room and let’s have peace.” He picked up his paper and sat down.
She stood a moment, her throat bursting, the words surging hot within her.
“I’ll go to my room. But I won’t stay. Not after this.”
Only the crackling of the paper answered her. She stamped her foot and went out.
Raleigh, coming in from his afternoon round of golf, found her lying face downwards on the bed, very scantily dressed and weeping into the pillow. He ran to her in alarm.
“Conna, darling! What’s the matter? Whatever’s happened?”
She rolled over on to her side; the lace of the coverlet had made a deep pattern on her white breast and her face was blotched and disfigured with tears. Yet somehow he knew himself nearer to her in that moment than for years past.
“Go away. I’m a sight.”
“I won’t go away. And if you are a sight it’s only me. Why have you been crying?”
She began to sob again. “It was father. He—he frightened me. We had the most frightful row. I—I tried to stand up to him. But he frightened me.” She shrank from the memory of that terrible face, the head thrust forward, the iron voice; no wonder mother had given in, grovelled before him. He was terrible, terrible. Never again. “I can’t stay here; I can’t.”
“But, darling, what happened; what was it all about?”
Sitting up and pulling her clothes over her, she gave him an outline of the afternoon’s disaster. “You know how careful I’ve always been. And to have it all undone in a moment!”
“But it wasn’t undone; you stopped it in time. They can’t have taken in anything.”
“Perhaps not; but now it’ll be question, question, question. You don’t know what children are. Black Grannie, indeed!” Her voice became suddenly savage. “As for that little beast, that nasty underbred little horror——”
He sat down on the bed beside her and stroked her arm. “Oh, come, Conna; poor little Rossy. She’s hardly six—she’s hardly older than our Gloria. You can’t blame her.”
She said, “Oh, God, Raleigh, I wish you wouldn’t always be so judicial when I hate people. But perhaps you’re right. Lynna and a Dago—what could anybody expect? It’s me that’s to blame for bringing our darlings into contact with her at all.”
Raleigh, uncomfortably recollectful of a moonlit garden at Torteval and a promise—a half-promise anyway—to Lynna, was trying to find fresh apologia for Rossy when Conna suddenly threw her arms round his neck.
“Oh, Raleigh, take me back with you out of this. Do, do, do.”
“Take you back, darling?”
“Yes, take me away with you wherever you go. I’ll be better, Raleigh, darling, I promise you I will. I’ve been a beast to you for a long time but that’s all over. I’ll be good to you, Raleigh; I will; I swear it.”
“But, Conna——”
“Oh, no ‘buts’ for God’s sake. Let’s go.”
He kissed her and sat away from her; suddenly, as of old, his face became a happy boy’s.
“I’m glad you said that, Conna, before I told you. Because I’m not going back.”
She stared at him. “Not going back?”
“No; I got a telegram this morning. I’m to be Deputy Secretary in Finance.”
“Oh, Raleigh! It’ll mean no more districts?”
“Not for three years, anyway. It’ll be six months Ooty, six months Madras.” His eyes shone at her. “Not too bad. See what you get for being a good girl.”
“But I haven’t been a good girl. I’ve been horrid to you. But I won’t be any more. . . . Oh, Raleigh, I do congratulate you; it means now you’ll go on and on and on.”
He nodded, smiling. “It’s a good step, anyway.”
“And we’ll be together. And I won’t stay here another day. Not one.”
“You can come away with me to-morrow. But you’ll have to stay here another night, anyway.” His eyes shone again. “Let’s make it a good night, Conna.”
She pushed him away. “Raleigh, you devil!”
But he put his arms round her and kissed her again and again. Oh, hurrah, hurrah, he had her back again. By some miracle he had her back again. Three cheers for that!
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
But Lynna had no good night. Sleepless and in pain, she tried first one side then the other, but the ache remained, and every now and then that queer sick feeling of dropping in a lift. The day had over-excited her, the long business of comforting the bewildered Rossy, of explaining to her the inexplicable. Her heart pounded and thumped; it had never recovered, it never would recover that long, long monsoon day when by sheer determination she had brought Rossy alive into the world. Doctors told her she should leave Ooty at once; she had no right to attempt to live at that altitude at all. She thought in miserable cycles, “But where can I go? Where could Rossy go? And it’s good for Rossy to be here. . . . But then if anything happens to me?”
If anything happens to me. . . . Conna was Rossy’s enemy now and in earnest; by no power on earth could she be made to forget the events of that afternoon; her fury with the child, her humiliating encounter with Ross. And Ross himself? Manifestly he was fond of Rossy, very fond, fonder than he had ever been of any of his descendants—since David, anyway; but could she trust him? would he keep it up, would he love Rossy if—when—she herself was gone? Turning wearily over again on her right side, Lynna prayed a little breathlessly:
“Oh, God, make father kind to Rossy. Oh, God, look after Rossy.”
On a March morning of 1926 Ross Cowal sat in a South Indian train on his way back from Sikkal to Ootacamund, a man who had just gone through the experience of burying his second wife. Coaces had suffered from no illness—or they had heard of none; strong and vigorous, she had worked hard—too hard perhaps—all through the coffee-crop season; then suddenly she had ailed. Nobody seemed to know quite what was the matter with her; she took to bed; she got up again; she was better; she was not so well. Up and down it went for a week or two; then quite suddenly she died—so suddenly that Ross, starting on receipt of a wire, was nearly a day late for the death and only just in time for the funeral.
From this he was now returning, a little bewildered and much more deeply affected than he could have believed possible. Since their marriage, curiously enough, he had seen much less of Coaces than for long before it, and latterly he had hardly seen her at all. They had their separate spheres and interests which did not overlap; he had Lebanon, she Sleepy Valley; she Sylvius, he Rossy. Yet the fact remained that with her his oldest landmark had fallen, a landmark contemporary with Glory herself; and her death frightened him, touched him, more than any death since David’s.
Glory had been buried, where she had died, at Sikkal; Coaces in the little cemetery—tenanted mainly by planters and their families—at Emandarra. In that gentle place, brightly sunlit and ablaze with flowers, Ross and Sylvius faced one another across the open grave. Duffy was absent; he had written a long letter confusing a leaven of perfunctory sympathy with much hearty braggadocio about the Torteval business. Duffy saw a big boom just starting in pepper; Duffy was proposing to corner that commodity as Ross had once cornered nux vomica—but on a far grander scale. He added a postscript—“The Eye-talianos are going down; Crispi’s dying—they say he won’t last out the monsoon.” Ross read with pursing lips; Duffy had time for this long-winded screed, but no time, it appeared, to drive up to Sleepy Valley and help to bury the woman who was after all—by his own doing and Conna’s—his stepmother. So Ross and Sylvius alone and together laid Coaces away; alone and together went back to Sleepy Valley and read her will. Naturally she had left everything—the estate and her savings—to Sylvius; and even Ross was surprised at the sum to which these savings had accumulated. He said:
“Ye’ll be independent now—and more. Ye can do what ye like. . . . Why did ye leave the Telegraphs?”
At the graveside Sylvius had wept and Ross had stared at the sight of a man of thirty-three shedding the tears of childhood; he had wondered, “When in God’s name did I do that last?” Now Sylvius sat stiff and sulky, blinking behind his glasses.
“I wasn’t pulling on there.”
“Then I expect it was your own fault. But what took ye back to Sikkal? Sikkal of all places?”
Sylvius’ face set in a mask. “You shan’t know that,” he thought, “you shan’t ever know that unless and until—unless and until”; in spite of his grief a lark sang in his heart. Crispi was dying; he himself was a free man now, with money; he could ask Annunciata; Annunciata would say yes. And his war with Torteval would go on and on. In reply to his father’s question he said stolidly:
“Sikkal is my place.”
“Just the very reason I’d have thought ye’d avoid it. However, it’s your own business. What are ye going to do now?”
“I will just go on as I am.”
“And the tote?”
“I will sell it away.”
Ross nodded. “Best thing ye could do. The boom’s over, but ye’ll still get double what I paid for it. Ay, treble.”
“Do you ask that back?”
Ross stared at him. “Tuts, man, don’t be so touchy. It’s yours. What would I want with it?”
At parting, Ross tried for a moment to soften this hostile, sullen-looking fellow who was after all his son.
“Is there anything I can do for ye?”
“Nothing, thank you. I am all right.” (“How much all right,” he thought, “you don’t know.”)
“Well, if there’s ever anything, remember——”
But Sylvius made no reply and Ross, disgruntled, turned away without a handshake. “Ill-mannered young devil,” he thought angrily; “I’ve done all I can for him; I’ll do no more.”
Avoiding Sikkal, he caught his train at a southern station, and ghosts rode with him in the rattling stuffy carriage. At first there was a flaming sunset that recalled a jangad creeping across Ghoomri and Somappa squatting by the bullocks and watching him with calculating eyes. Then the sunset died into a blue night of stars, of a soft sea-wind gradually diminishing, a west-coast night like thousands of other west-coast nights he had known. The years assembled in it and the people of the years; forgetful to switch on the lights, forgetful of the books he had brought to read, he lay gazing out at the darkened country slipping past. Five-and-forty years since the Falls o’ Tarf had cast anchor in that now waveless sea; five-and-forty years since he had crawled up that coast in his hired bullock-cart; five-and-forty years since Ghoomri had caught his fancy and he had seen the Torteval chimneys lifting over the wrong side of their little hill. Glory; Coaces; children; grandchildren; five-and-forty years. “In two years,” he thought, “I’ll be seventy; three-score and ten, the allotted sum; man can go on longer, but not indefinitely longer; ten years maybe?” What happened after that? Both his wives now knew the answer—Glory and Coaces; half his own children had learned it before him. But was there anything to know—anything other than oblivion, wash-out, finish? Probably, he thought, not. Every theory they invented, every story they told was more wildly improbable than the last; no sane or reasonable being could credit such balderdash. At the Moir Orphanage—now itself remoter far than death—they had havered about a country of harps and thrones on the one hand and a lake of burning brimstone on the other; complete bosh as they were, these conceptions were as credible—and a deal less cruel—than the stuff these spiritualist fellows put up nowadays. Just havers—old wives’ havers. Well, one would find out all in good time; meanwhile one had ten, fifteen, a possible twenty years in hand. Sighing a little, he switched on the lights, and began to think about his dinner.
But in the bright morning, still in the same carriage jolting along from Coimbatore to Mettupalayam, the sense of a solitude among ghosts still possessed him. At Mettupalayam his car would be waiting—an American car now, a huge Packard, an awkward thing really on these hills and most uneconomical, but he liked its grandeur. It would swing him quickly up the Ghat Road through Coonoor and Wellington and Keti and there at the end would be the great house of Lebanon—four-fifths empty. Why in the name of all follies had he ever bought it? That which was to be the meeting-place and communal house of the Clan Cowal was tenanted now by an old man near seventy and a little girl of eleven. Duffy came there very little, it didn’t amuse him; Susan and Jane never left Torteval, hot weather, cold weather, wet weather. Conna was in England with Raleigh enjoying another long leave after that Deputy Secretary’s post which he had managed to spin out by an extra six months on special duty; Grace and Gloria had long since been sent Home to school. And Lynna—there was no Lynna now.
For one day Lynna had come in at lunch-time after walking up the long hill to Lebanon and she had sat on the edge of her bed talking to Rossy and taking off her walking shoes, one foot over the other knee. And suddenly she had gone white and said, “Oh, Rossy, I feel awful. Oh, Rossy, I’m frightened.” And her foot had fallen to the floor with a thump and her knees dropped apart and her arms sank at her sides and she said, “Where’s Gladdy? I want Gladdy,” exactly as she had said it (though nobody knew that) in the ugly woman’s bungalow all those years ago. And then she had begun to slip to the floor and Rossy had run screaming; but by the time Ross could reach the room Lynna was dead.
Afterwards, going through her things, Ross had come upon that letter written on crackling field-service paper from which the crackle had now gone, folded and re-folded till it almost fell to pieces, Lynna’s letter about Gladdy. “Whatever happens, always remember he was the best.” So? . . . Ross had put the letter in the library fire at Lebanon and it had taken an oddly long time to burn. In the end it had shot suddenly up the wide chimney in two pieces and the queer thought had come—like the two of them maybe, Lynna and Gladdy, shooting off somewhere now together. Maybe. Maybe. But not likely. . . .
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
The train, shrieking hideously, began to roll down the last decline into Mettupalayam; Ross gathered himself together to quit the compartment in which he seemed to have lived for days. Thrusting his head from the window he looked ahead and suddenly the day brightened, for on the platform there stood waiting a diminutive figure in a short blue overall and an immense white topi. He drew in his head almost chuckling, suddenly years younger.
“The little wretch! And I told her not to come. She’s played skip from the Convent. And I told her not to.”
Grabbing his worn suit-case, he got out and immediately a whirlwind threw itself into his encumbered arms; a kiss, redolent of dentifrice and chocolate, was plastered on his cheek.
“Oh, Granny, I thought you were never coming; you’re hours late.”
“And who told you to be here, Miss, tell me that?”
She hung delightedly on his arm and he thought, “None of my own children ever did this, not even Davie”—forgetting that he had ever presented to his own children a very different front. She said, “You’re not really angry; you’re not really sorry I came. Say you’re not, Granny, say you’re not.”
He smiled grimly. “Just this once as it happens I’m not. But ye’ll have to make up the work on Sunday, that’s all.”
She skipped and hugged him; Sunday was a long way off. Half-pulling, half-carried on his arm, she led him along to the car. Relaxing, he settled back into his corner, glad to listen to her incessant chatter. The vivid eager little thing—whence did she draw her vitality? Not from the Lafauces certainly; not from the Dago; not from himself. He looked at her covertly; she wasn’t exactly pretty, though she was authentically in the line of Glory, the line of Lynna; but she was gorgeously alive as neither her mother nor her grandmother had ever been. She was alive and—she was growing. He thought guiltily, “She’s eleven; am I keeping her out here too long; it’s a hell of a country.” There had been battles with Conna on that subject. First when Lynna had died—four years ago now—and Raleigh had still been Deputy Secretary and Conna, eschewing Lebanon since the “Black Grannie” row, had her house in Ooty by the year; Conna had stormed and persuaded and wheedled and stamped but—he had not been overcome. “Of course she ought to be with her cousins, Father; you must see it.” But as he lay awake in the dark night thinking and worrying and trying to see it, the door of his room had opened and a small voice, tearful, had said, “Granny, don’t send me to Auntie Conna; please don’t.” And he had said suddenly, “Well, I won’t then; I’m damned if I will!” And Rossy had said, “Let me get into your bed beside you and then I’ll be sure.” And in she had got—a long time since anything feminine had lain in his bed!—and had slept till morning while he stared at the ceiling and wondered what he would do with her. But he hadn’t gone back on his word; no! . . . And again when Grace and Glory were going home to their appropriate English school—“full charge undertaken if desired”—there had been a second battle, and Conna, defeated again and disliking it, had said:
“You’re simply selfish, Father, downright selfish, that’s all.” And he had replied:
“By your way of it I’ve never been anything else.” And she had said, “God knows you haven’t!” and had stamped out of the room. But he had kept his Rossy, and if he had been selfish (which maybe he had), anyway, here she sat now slowly bringing back sunshine into that life which dead Coaces and sullen-faced Sylvius and casual indifferent Duffy had made for a little time so daunting, had brought so near to death.
The car swooped and whistled up the long thirty-mile ghat, making nothing of the inclines; it rushed over the final switchbacks into Ooty, flew up Church Hill; in far less than two hours there was the long façade of Lebanon, brilliantly sunlit, and the green pleasaunce of lawns and the two immemorial cedars and the background of sixty-year-old blue-gums behind. Getting out of his car, Ross’s heart thrilled to it; a fine place, a gracious place; one thing led to another and last of all to this. And Rossy, her hair—Glory’s authentic hair—tumbling about her shoulders, was jumping about and crying:
“Oh, Granny, it’s lovely to have you back. I am glad you’re back!”
He thought, “By God, it’s queer—I don’t believe any of my children ever said such a thing in their lives.”
At Sikkal it was the eve of Easter—the Thursday before Good Friday—and the great church of St. Philomene was a riot of amazing decoration. But Victor Crispi would not see the Easter Mass or the elevation of the Host on Easter Sunday. He was dying now in earnest, slipping away quickly to solve for himself the riddle that puzzled Ross and all mankind. He lay drained and lifeless in the hot little house and Annunciata sat beside him and now and again drew a damp cloth over his brow. Once or twice he tried to say—as he had said many times in the last few weeks—“What will become of you when I am gone?”—and on these occasions, knowing he could not hear her if she spoke, she gave him the beatitude of her smile. Sylvius had not seen that yet, but he would see it soon now. She sat and thought of Sylvius and rewards. “I have been good,” she thought, “I have withstood temptation and I have remained faithful to this sick man to whom they married me; now God will be good to me in turn. Sylvius, too, has been good; he, too, will have his reward. I will make it as nice as possible.” “What will become of you when I am gone?” An easy question that to answer: “I will marry Sylvius.” But one could not say that to the dying man even if he could have understood it; so Annunciata gave him her smile.
On the morning of Good Friday Sylvius called at the house to ask if there were anything he could do. Standing in the doorway Annunciata shook her head; but he was aware that she was looking at him curiously, searchingly, looking him up and down. He said, “Why do you look at me like that?” but she made no reply. He said, “I am going away for a little,” and she nodded but still without speech. Then Sylvius reached out and touched her hand and at the touch an immediate thrill went racing through his whole body and he knew instantly that all his questions were answered, all his hopes confirmed. What she is to me, I am to her; he knew it at last with complete certainty. Content, he stood back.
“I am going, then.”
She said, “You will come back, Sylvio.” It was hardly a question, but he said, “Yes, I will come,” and turned quickly away.
Near the Municipal Market a bus was starting for Kalyandrug; he bought himself a ticket at the little booth and taking his seat waited patiently for it to start. The street traffic of Sikkal went past him in a mist, the confused noises of the town resolved themselves into a triumphal symphony. He had no idea why he had got upon this particular bus—or for that matter on any bus; except perhaps that he had a desire for escape. He wanted to travel away with himself to some uncrowded place where he could think of his happiness and perhaps praise God who had upheld His principles and promises and had in His time rewarded goodness. He would like to walk about the open laterite uplands spinning out the last lagging hours of the bad time and revelling in this idea—that God was great and merciful and rewarded those who, striving, conquered themselves. An interval of further patience would still be required, but not a very long one—and now that he was persuaded of the certain justice of God he could endure almost indefinitely. At last, at last Annunciata and Sylvius would be married. They had known this secretly and between themselves for a long time now with never a word spoken; soon they would tell each other.
The bus started suddenly and worked its way out of the town with devilish uproar; it crept through foul lanes, turned impossible corners, evaded monstrous obstacles. Then, grinding and roaring on its lowest gear it climbed the high laterite ridge of Pisgah, crawling at its last gasp to the summit. Up there a blinding brightness spread over the face of the down-like country; a European would have called it unpleasantly hot but to the Indian blood in Sylvius it appeared only a pleasantly sunny day. He was blissfully happy; sitting upright in his seat he looked round him over the tableland with its white burnt-up grass, its chequer of red-and-black laterite. He thought, “One day Annunciata and I will come here; for that, as for other things, I can wait.” He thought how well he was getting on at St. Salvator’s, of how rich he was now with all the money that Coaces had left him; and with that a black thought crossed the sun. Torteval; that fat sneering fellow who drove about in his motor-car and threw the dust of the city over Sylvius and never by word or deed recognised or admitted his existence; Torteval—it had not fallen yet. But it would; that hour, too, was coming, was nearly come. When Crispi died St. Salvator’s were going to create a new office for Sylvius—that of Travelling Manager; and then we would see. Let Co-wal make his tiles; tens and thousands and millions of wonderful first-class tiles; we would see how he sold them. Oh, yes! the Travelling Manager of St. Salvator’s would see to that. Patience a little, and oh, praise God for his rewards!
It was evening when they reached Kalyandrug, nestling behind the high seaward bluff on which stood the bungalow that had once been Raleigh’s; already the lights were lit and the little town was a clamorous chorus of church bells. On its outskirts the bus stopped to let down a passenger and to his left on a high ridge Sylvius saw the lights of a great church. On an impulse he slipped from his place in the bus, walked up a road bordered with sighing casuarina trees and entered.
The Good Friday service was just beginning. The far end of the aisle, by the altar, was closed by a huge curtain of black velvet or some other heavily hanging stuff, on which stood out a white cross. As Sylvius came in and found a place for himself and knelt, this curtain was drawn aside to reveal the Immortal Figure. Against a second background stood up a tall black cross on which hung, bleeding and ghastly against the darkness, a life-size figure of the Christ; the wax of which it was made shone with a peculiar pallor against which the painted blood stood out starkly crimson. On the dark background were shown the sun, moon and stars in gold tissue and at the foot of the cross was a jungle of green bushes to represent Gethsemane. Sylvius, gasping, heard others gasp and cry out around him; he felt himself carried away; falling forward he broke out into incoherent exclamations. Oh, the goodness of God and His Son! An invisible preacher began a droning exposition; he was interrupted by explosions, by the flash and roar of country gunpowder; amidst wailing and din the sun moon and stars were darkened by black veils drawn across the curtain. At the same instant a procession entered from the rear of the church; men pushed past Sylvius carrying lights and ladders; swaying in the reek of incense a white litter advanced festooned with yellowish lace; the heavy depressing scent of jasmine and tuberoses drooped on the exhausted air. The ladders were carried to the cross, men ascended them and drew the nails; in long linen bandages the body was gently lowered till it reclined in the litter. Sylvius thought with the intensity of speech—indeed he did perhaps cry it aloud—“The Agony is over. The bad time is at an end. It was so with Him—it is so with me. Allelujah! Allelujah! Amen!”
Facing about, the procession moved out of the church; slowly, with singing and chanting, in the constant uproar of bombs and crackers, it headed for the illuminated Catholic streets of the town. Round these, in a mixed reek of saltpetre and incense, in a blended uproar of hymns and bells and country fireworks, it would circulate lazily till dawn. But Sylvius did not follow it. Instead he knelt in his place, completely overcome; all the accumulated emotion of the day, all its hysterical content climaxing in the spectacle he had just witnessed, burst within him and dissolved into tears. There he knelt, weeping and weeping into his folded hands—he knew not why except that he was in the Presence and he was undone. An Indian priest, wandering round, came and touched him on the shoulder and spoke to him, but he paid no heed, and the priest went away, extinguishing lights as he went. The great church grew dim; only a few candles burned; in their light the crude stucco decorations assumed fantastic forms; they gestured and danced, the tall black cross swayed backwards and forwards like the bending coconut palms on the Malattur river. Sometimes Sylvius saw these things, sometimes he did not; sometimes he stared into the dark chancel, inexpressibly happy and comforted; again he wept, his head in his hands, he knew not why. The priest came circling back again, stood looking at him, considered and went away for good. A few other people sat in the darkened church or knelt—or haply slept. From far away came the intermittent din of the procession perambulating in the Christian part of the town; and nearer at hand there was a muted uneasy singing of night-winds in the hollow roof.
How and when Sylvius got up and left the church he did not know; but suddenly he found himself walking across a rough laterite upland towards an east that was fierily red with dawn. He was tired now and the ecstasy within him had died down to a wearied contentment; he stumbled as he walked across the rough ground and once or twice he yawned. Then suddenly full in his face the east was shot with gold, a dozen flaming swords rent the red veil, there was a moment of intolerable brilliance, the white light of steel pouring from a crucible, as the sun of a new day lifted over a saddle in the ghats. And Sylvius, caught up in the culminating ecstasy of all, ran wildly towards it waving his arms and uttering unintelligible cries. . . .
And then, as suddenly, came reaction. He realised that a commonplace Bunt cultivator, carrying a plough over his shoulder, was standing in his path and regarding him strangely. He realised that the Travelling Manager of St. Salvator’s Mission was behaving like a madman; that he had had no sleep and no food; that he had mislaid his topi; that he was empty within and unkempt without. Glaring through his glasses at the impassive Bunt, he wheeled in his tracks; staggeringly and with gigantic jaw-breaking yawns he went reeling down the hill into Kalyandrug. He no longer sought to praise God or to revel in His rewards and mercies; he wanted a barber and a coffee-shop and a place—any place—where he could sleep and sleep and sleep.
Duffy at forty was by heredity, by presence and by—apparent at least—prosperity the king of Sikkal. He was king to an extent uncompassed by Ross himself, an achievement due partly to his own merits and partly to the increased weakness of the opposition. Ross even in his more settled days retained something of the bandit, of the brigand, the Hun conqueror swooping on civilisation and fitting into it none too neatly; Duffy, suave, polished, man of any world, moved as by right at the head of a court. Moreover, the Chalks and Simmonses of his father’s early days and also their more immediate official successors had been opponents of mettle; they passed long years in the District, they knew it intimately, they could contradict with authority. Now, under the present methods of administration, a ceaseless stream of officials rushed through the place; transfers were incessant—why, nobody could say, but there it was; they arrived, unpacked, packed again and departed before they could become of any consequence. Financially broken by their repeated transfers, insecure of tenure, doubtful of their future in the country—doubtful indeed if they had any, they could hold no candle to Duffy. He reigned.
And only Duffy, preserving a smooth exterior, preserving the outward seeming of assured wealth and comfort, only Duffy knew how terribly bad things were at Torteval. Only Duffy knew of those nightmare hours in the darkness when he heard the Cutcherry and the Jail gongs—never exactly together—strike first two and then three, when he lay wondering, “How long can it go on? When does the crash come?”
On the last night of 1931—a bleak year for his business—he gave his customary Station Dinner at Torteval. It was an occasion surpassing in magnificence all its predecessors; Duffy, drafting menus and conning over lists of champagnes, had thought grimly, “Swan Song? Then let’s sing it in style.” And at that stage of the dinner when both his ladies on the right and on the left were occupied with their alternate partners, Duffy sat sipping his champagne and gazing in front of him. Presently he would be expected to make his usual witty speech—and he would make it and it would be witty; but—would he ever make another? He had asked himself the same question at the corresponding function of 1930 and had answered himself, “Maybe.” Well, his resource had kept him going; he had staved off disaster for another twelvemonth. But this year, surveying his polished table, his fine glass and silver, his pleasant and amusing guests all the better for his champagne, he felt inclined to answer abruptly, No!
At the opposite end of the table sat Susan, square, flushed, beaming; except that her hair had gone very grey she had altered little, she carried her six-and-forty years lightly enough. Half-way down the table was Jane; Jane’s hair was dark still but she had shrivelled, she was becoming malicious; bird-like still, she pecked—but pecked to hurt. A precious pair of boobies they were, thought Duffy; yet they had kept him very comfortable, very comfortable; and if you had comfort in this world you had the one thing needful—yes, you had. And it was soothing to reflect that if the worst came to the worst, they could keep him comfortable still, for now and until their deaths they owned the Torteval house. Three years ago, on his seventieth birthday, Ross, the unageing, had made settlements upon his surviving descendants. Conna had got her share; Duffy had got his—and spent it; as the principal part of theirs the Ghoomri Sisters had got the house, Lafauce’s Torteval house. “So if I do go broke,” Duffy thought, “I can always cadge a roof over my head; pleasant prospect!—and none so remote either.” Better at any rate than throwing oneself upon Ross at Lebanon, where he lived in aloof seclusion now that Rossy had joined the “Gee-Gees” at school in England. Better too than seeing that snake Sylvius in Torteval. Sylvius—what had Sylvius got? Nobody knew; but Conna, grumbling, had been full of suspicions.
“There must be lots more. There must be a residue, Duffy. What about the residue?”
Duffy had said slowly, “You don’t think Sylvius——”
But Conna was horrified at that.
“Oh, no. Not against his own children, surely. Well, you know what I mean. Oh, no! . . . But I do think that little beast Rossy——”
And Duffy had thought, “Curious how we both suspect the person we hate most; Rossy is Conna’s Sylvius.”
Now in the pause of his Hogmanay dinner his mind went back to that first “Cowal Gathering” that had jointly celebrated Ross’s sixtieth birthday and the end of the war. What a scene Lynna, poor Lynna, had made about Gladdy—and Gladdy dead and buried somewhere all the time if they had only known it. And they had gone on to the Club afterwards and there they had encountered a tall girl in white—beautiful, exciting. Elspeth—whom Susan could never call anything but “Elthpeth.” And at Elspeth his memory halted because of an extraordinary thing, a shattering thing that had been said to him just half-an-hour ago by Mrs. Lind—still in Sikkal for her sins and drinking one of Duffy’s cocktails before dinner; and at the thought of the dementing thing Mrs. Lind had said his eyes grew round, and flying from it as from a ghost, he turned violently to the current Collector’s wife on his right, interrupting her, dragging back her attention, seizing her as a man seizes a lifebuoy. . . .
Presently Duffy made his witty speech. He enjoyed this and knew that he looked very well. Years ago he had shown a tendency to something more than stoutness but he had taken that in hand with exercises and diet; now he could be accused of nothing more than a comfortable fortyish figure. He was forty, anyway; why not look it? He was erect; his fair hair was still thick and glossy, his bland face clean-shaven and smooth; for the last few years he had sported an eyeglass on a black ribbon. “The glass of fashion and the mould of form.” He held up his port which he had taken to drinking instead of Madeira. “And I give you once again the toast of the New Year.” And he thought (and very nearly said), “And drink it up, for most likely I’ll never give you another!”
As they drank—an attractive pleasant company in the light of his electric candlesticks—he thought again of that old Gathering on the last night of 1918 and his toast, “Damnation to the Eye-talianos,” and Conna’s queer rider, “and to all enemies.” He wouldn’t give such a toast to-night even in the privacy of the family; because the Eye-talianos had become far too serious for damnation toasts, and as for the Enemy, he was winning. Was winning? Had won. The Dark Thing that had lived so long, horrible but supine, up at Sleepy Valley had leant down again and struck.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Not very far away—in a presentable house at the Pisgah end of Bethelkuppam—Sylvius and Annunciata were starting for the midnight Mass. Sylvius was wrapping a lace scarf round his wife’s throat because she was in an interesting condition of health again and nothing would persuade Sylvius that the December nights of Sikkal were not dangerously cold.
She said softly, her smile just breaking, “You are good to me, Sylvio.”
He shook his head, making excuse to keep his fingers still touching her throat; after more than five years of passionate marriage it was still a marvel and a privilege, still an adventure and a burning excitement to feel her soft ivory skin. Never would he forget the first time he had touched it; never the singing rapture of those first married months. People had looked askance at that union; they had whispered “illegitimate.” And Sylvius had said, “I am illegitimate no longer,” and indeed so he had believed at the time, for in the very year of his marriage God had made the English people pass an Act of Parliament which legitimised the children of sinners who had married since. But they had shown him that even under the Legitimacy Act of 1926 he was still a bastard because in his case one of the sinners had been married to a third person at the epoch of the sin. For a time he was despondent; but his Annunciata had come to him, her smile wide open at last—and oh what a wonderful thing it was!—and had said, “I do not care; you are Sylvio”; and with that all contention and misery and all dispeace had gone from the world for ever. And in the house in Bethelkuppam there were now two children sleeping—a little girl and a little boy; and Nuncia carried a third within her; and there would be more. And they throve and there was plenty of money and God had at last forgiven and was kind and visited no more the sins of the father upon the children.
Suddenly he left off fiddling with the scarf and as suddenly bent and kissed the back of her neck where the short black hair she kept so carefully divided in a V. He took a long kiss, drawing her all in. She said, “Oh, oh, Sylvio, and it is to Mass we are going!” But she laughed and he laughed and he put his arm round her and together they went away down the road.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Duffy took his party to the Club Dance; there, his duty done, he left them and drove quickly home to Torteval—so quickly that, as he had intended, he found Susan still pottering about. She beamed on him and said, “You didn’t stay, ducky?”
He said mechanically and for the ten-thousandth time, “Don’t call me ‘ducky,’” and added, “Nothing to stay for. They ought to chuck these shows nowadays—nobody to go to them. Home Rule for India! We’re finished. They ought to close the Club.”
She stared at him with motherly interest, hearing nothing of what he said.
“You look wearied. Would you like some Horlick’s?”
“Horlick’s! Good God, no. . . . Did you hear what Mrs. Lind said before dinner?”
Susan said vaguely, “There were so many of them talking——”
“Well——” He threw himself into a chair. “Sit down, Su, for God’s sake. Don’t—don’t flutter so. . . . D’you remember a girl, a Miss Claye——”
Susan’s face showed all too plainly that she remembered; watching remembrance widen the eyes and mouth in it, he went on hurriedly, “She got married after she left here——”
Susan remembered that, too.
“Yes; just after. It was the year father bought Lebanon. And her husband was killed just about the time—just about the time Lynna died.”
He nodded. “Yes. . . . Well, it seems she’s out again.”
Susan goggled. “Not—not in Sikkal?”
“Of course not.” What an ass Su was really! “But what Mrs. Lind said was that she’d been seen in Madras. She’s a Mrs. Leyland-Wood.”
Susan scratched her nose. “Yes; that was the name. A queer kind of a name. They said he had a mint of money.” But under her calm exterior excitement was swelling. The old procuress instinct was waking; could Duffy even yet—— She thought of that long-past night when she had waited with Jane in this very room almost crazy with anticipation; and when Duffy had come in disastrously, his shoes all red from wandering about on Pisgah. What a dream had been shattered then! Might it revive?
Duffy was staring gloomily at his patent-leather slippers, as if he too saw on them again that fatal laterite dust. “Of course I’m not likely to see her——”
“Oh, Duffy, why not?”
“Well—she’s not likely to come to a hole like this. And I can’t get away just now.”
“Why shouldn’t she come here?”
He snapped his fingers. “Oh, Su, have some sense; what in God’s name would she come here for?”
“To see you,” Susan wanted to say, but she put a hand over her mouth to keep it in. Instead she said vaguely, “She just might,” and began to wonder how quickly she could get away to tell Jane. Duffy, still staring at his feet, said:
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“Nothing; nobody said a word.” She could endure no longer: clumsily she got up. “Will you excuse me, ducky——”
Piqued, he said snappishly, “Oh, go and make your Horlick’s or whatever it is.” She fluttered undecidedly for a minute and then headed off for Jane’s room, almost running in her excitement; Duffy sat wondering why he had ever told her. Because, he supposed, he had to talk of this calamitous thing to someone. Why, if it came to that, had it been necessary for Mrs. Lind to bring the news at all; what earthly—or heavenly—end could it serve? For if it had been possible to dally with the idea of marriage in 1919—to dally with it fearfully, with a kind of fascinated horror but still to dally with it—it was out of the question now. There was another possibility now, equally colossal, equally daunting—bankruptcy.
Kicking his chair, he went out into the garden to smoke a cigarette and to review once more the intolerable turns of his fortune. Everything had gone wrong—every last thing; but why? He had modelled himself upon Ross, he had done just what his father had done, played the very same game.
But the games that had won Ross fortunes had landed Duffy in ruin. Ross had made that clever corner in nux vomica: Duffy had tried to repeat it on a multiple scale in pepper. But whereas the old man had been able to sell out at a profit, the appallingly sudden pepper slump in 1930 had caught Duffy laden to the gunwale with heavy contracts. In the warm night he shivered to think what that had cost him. . . . Then again, Ross had taken up coffee-curing and had scored over it beyond computation; wasn’t it reasonable in his son to look round for a similar sideline; wasn’t it reasonable in all the circumstances to pitch on—soap? Wasn’t that reasonable when (a) soaps made from animal fat were revolting to the Hindu population; (b) the dhupa tree, growing everywhere all along the road avenues, carried a nut from which a fine vegetable soap could be made with sidelines in varnish and rheumatism-oil; and (c) that fellow Leighley had turned up in Sikkal posing as an expert—a God-sent expert—in soap manufacture? Wasn’t it reasonable; wouldn’t anybody have backed it? Who was to tell that after the plant had been put up and the whole thing launched on a colossal scale (there was a mistake maybe—they should have experimented first), Leighley would turn out an insolent fraud; that they would lose thousands hunting for a process which would make the soap decently; and that when at last they found one, these very pigheaded idiots who cried out against the animal soap wouldn’t buy Duffy’s? Who would have foreseen that? Would Ross? . . . He wouldn’t.
Duffy pitched away the end of his cigarette with unnecessary violence. Leighley had been sacked long since, but that hadn’t saved the business, hadn’t brought back the thousands Duffy had sunk in his plant and factory, hadn’t paid back the loans, the stupendous loans—let’s face it—Duffy had borrowed. Lakhs thrown into the sea; and tons of soap—tons of it—useless, rotting.
He had walked to the extreme end of the garden; a slant of wind brought him a warm pungent whiff from the Torteval kilns. And how long would they burn? How long could he keep the basic Torteval factory running at a loss, at a heavy loss, when the Parrot Brand tiles were undercut and outsold in every Indian market? Those damned Eye-talianos; that new fellow they had brought out in place of Crispi; that hell-blasted Dago, Sylvius, who had married Crispi’s widow and wormed himself into the show and was playing every dirty trick the combined mind of two races could devise. The Eye-talianos; they had him; they had him cold.
He lit another cigarette and turned back. If the old man, if the Governor wouldn’t come to the rescue—well, he’d given his last Hogmanay dinner.
But marriage; my God, he had done well to keep out of that!
Ross the perennial spent that Christmas and New Year in Madras at the pleasant Adyar bungalow of his son-in-law Raleigh Beverell and his daughter Conna. He had accepted the invitation rather suddenly and capriciously, sickening for once of his great empty Lebanon where he missed Rossy every hour of the day. Normally his fine garden and his fine standard of comfort there contented him; now even he began to discern ghosts in the place. He was curious, too, to see Conna en grande dame in Madras; he thought cynically, it ought to suit her—nothing disreputable there! Raleigh was now established in his Service, a success; he had just become for the second time a Secretary to Government; there was no doubt that he would rise still further, if—a considerable “if”—the coming Reforms left him anything whereto to ascend. But Ross looked at his son-in-law almost with disgust; the lad aged so; he had no last, no stamina. Much of Raleigh’s crisp curly hair had vanished; it remained thick only round the sides of his head, giving him something of the appearance of a tonsured monk; the network of small wrinkles that had fashioned that boyish, almost elfin, expression of bright puzzlement had now racked his face into deep heavy lines. He was pale, stooped a little; he made a grim contrast to Ross himself, erect still and muscular, with his dark smooth-skinned face under his thick grey-white hair.
As Raleigh himself said, “Every day your father seems to grow twelve hours younger and I get forty-eight hours older.”
Conna kissed and flattered him, but she was herself a little disappointed by his manifest physical decline. He worked too hard, too conscientiously—you got no thanks for that—and those horrible stations of his early years were showing their effect now. Still, he must get on and on; and it was no hour for mediocrity. The proposed Indian Reforms had made Service prospects increasingly black; it was abundantly clear now that the Civil Service—all the Services—were to be thrown to the wolves without a tremor; only the very highest posts would remain worth holding; Raleigh, therefore, must hold them. Caressing, dragooning, mothering, she hounded him ahead.
But however Raleigh might have aged in appearance—and after all, a Secretary to Government could look as he liked—at any rate her father was a very personable guest to present. Another decade had run over Ross leaving him physically almost untouched; tall, ramrod-straight, with that fine bold powerful face fascinatingly gloomy now under his whitened hair, he was by far the handsomest man to be seen on the banks of Adyar. But if he had changed little in looks during that decade he had changed vitally in spirit; the humanising processes of Lebanon had in time altered him to a figure Lynna and Gladdy, Glory and Coaces, would have met without recognition. In Ooty as the years passed he had become a social light; he attended—without even much pretence of grumbling—the principal Government House functions; he had joined the Hunt—if he never more than “hill-topped” himself; he had been induced to purchase and run one or two race-horses; he was well on the way to Grand Old Manship. Realising the change himself, he was openly cynical but secretly pleased. Looking back now upon the Torteval of 1900, he saw it as little superior to the Somappa’s of 1881; “disreputable” he would not admit, but “backward “—yes, if you liked.
At tea with his daughter on the day of his arrival, Ross enquired punctiliously for “the girls.” Of Rossy he knew, for he received weekly and infallibly a thick letter which delighted him with vivid description and shrewd comment; it amused him the more to hear Conna’s barely reconcilable versions of identical events. How she still hated Lynna’s daughter! . . . He enquired for the Gee-Gees.
Instantly Conna gushed. “Grace is simply splendid; she just adores her school now. She’s so happy. She’s a prefect, you know.”
“What’s a prefect?”
Conna glanced at him crossly. Irritating old man; as if he didn’t know perfectly well. She explained. “She is going to be musical too; she’ll sing beautifully. And pretty.” . . . And Gloria, it seemed, was excelling at games—golf, tennis, hockey, cricket. At the mention of cricket Ross pursed his lips.
“That’s not a girls’ game.”
“Oh, Father—nowadays, surely——” But Ross was seeing a cricket-pitch remote in time and space and a girl in a long, long white dress with flounces and a parasol, a girl who could hardly stoop for her stays, who could not have run a yard for petticoats. He chuckled. “I wonder what your mother would have said if we’d asked her to take a bat. She’d have had to kilt her coats and no mistake.”
Conna looked at him disapprovingly, as she always did when he spoke of Glory. She launched into fresh eulogisms of Grace and Gloria.
“Ye’ll be wearying to see them.”
Quite genuine tears stood in Conna’s eyes.
“I can hardly bear to wait. But next year anyway I’ll have them out. . . . I’ll go home in April and bring them out in October. Oh, won’t it be just lovely to have my Grace and Gloria here!”
He said maliciously, “And Rossy.”
She coloured. “You still want me to bring her? With the others?”
He said, taking a cake from the stand, “From what I mind of Rossy she’s fit enough to get out by herself. But I think ye’d better.”
Swallowing her tea too hot, Conna knew with exasperation that she must—not so much because of Ross and the “residue” as because of her husband. For Raleigh—ever mindful of that long-past talk with Lynna in the moonlit garden of Torteval which had assumed gradually the proportions of a sacred trust—championed Rossy on all possible occasions; and whatever happened the “little beast” must not be made a martyr. No chance must be given to the astute Rossy to cast herself as Cinderella, for in that case Grace and Gloria could only be cast as—— Oh never!
On the last afternoon of his stay in Madras Conna bore her father to an afternoon tea-dance at the Adyar. She liked to exhibit him there, to hear her friends say “Your father? How old is he? Se-ven-ty-three! My dear, not possible”; to see him walking erect and balanced along the terrace, his black walking-stick tapping the worn tiles. Whatever wickednesses he had done, whatever brutalities he had imposed upon their mother, whatever black furies and cold rages he had dealt out to his children, he was certainly a figure to be proud of now. Conna, knowing herself among the four handsomest and best-dressed matrons of Madras society, delighted in possessing and parading by far the finest specimen of the older generation. But this afternoon Ross eluded her; he slipped away from the terrace and down to the river, past the Boat Club and along the quiet banks of Adyar towards the Elphinstone Bridge. For 1932 was ten days old and he had Duffy’s New Year resolution in his pocket.
Gazing at the dull smooth creek-like river, Ross conned over Duffy’s phrases, now and then with a contemptuous snort. The fellow couldn’t even write a convincing letter, he couldn’t even write in one key; one moment he was boasting, the next cringing. “Here’s my plant all ready . . . we’re just on the point of perfecting the processes . . . another manager in view,” (and another swindler, no doubt) “only want a fresh infusion of capital. . . . A loan. . . . Or you could take it out afterwards in shares when I get the company floated.” Shares! When he got the company floated! Ross, who should have known best, had no opinion whatever of Duffy as a man of business. It was the old story—no judgment; jumping when he should have stepped and hanging back when he should have run. He should have made a fortune out of those deals in pepper; why didn’t he? Because he lacked the decision, the guts, to sell quickly enough. He held back, in fact, when he should have jumped. The soap business crashed because Duffy could not recognise a charlatan when he saw one, and because—wrong as ever—he had splarged wildly on insufficient data—jumping this time when he should have waited. Well, Duffy had had his share of the family settlement—and a generous one; no doubt he’d lost that too, every penny of it. Now he wrote this boasting-whining, confident-despairing letter. “And this is the fellow who asked me,” thought Ross bitterly, “me, to get out of Torteval!”
Near the Elphinstone Bridge he saw some workmen building a brick-and-tile shed. They had chosen a bad site—soggy ground too near the water—and the river-side wall of the shed was already foundering; coolies were attempting with leisurely incompetence to shore it up. Ross, gazing gloomily, found an apt parable to hand. No use shoring up falling houses—they fell in the end whatever you did. No kindness to their owners or inmates—only putting off the evil day. That shed was coming down sooner or later; no use capering with bits of wood. Falling houses were better on the ground once and for all. . . . And so was Duffy.
Crossing to where the men were working, he turned over one of the red new tiles with the end of his stick; a crudely moulded bandicoot stared up at him. With one of his grim smiles Ross put his eyeglass—his only concession to age—in his eye; just so—“St. Salvator’s Works, Sikkal.” Just so. If a Sikkal tile came so far as this it should be a Torteval, not an Eye-taliano—a Parrot, not a Bandicoot. He called one of the coolies, saying in Tamil:
“Who supplies these tiles?”
The man, gaping blankly, had no idea. But between that falling shed and that tell-tale bandicoot Ross turned back to the Adyar Club with his mind made up.
On the way home he asked permission to stop at the Telegraph Office, and entering he wrote quickly on a form. He pushed it across to the clerk.
“Can ye read it?”
The clerk read slowly, “Co-wal, Torte-val, Sik-kal. Nothing doing. Cut your losses and don’t do it again.”
“Just that,” said Ross, and went back to the car, where Conna regaled him with the Gee-Gees’ latest achievements. He sat back in his corner very silent; he was thinking, “I’m hard, but I have to be.” Gladdy, Duffy—in different ways and for different causes they both demanded hard handling. Flash-like came the old, old thought, “If Davie had lived . . .” Ah, then! . . . Conna’s loud voice babbled on: “So happy; so pleased with her.” Ross thought wearily, “Queer that all my children should be such fools; if she’d the sense of a bat she’d say something nice about Rossy. . . . I wish Rossy was back.”
Early in the year Duffy came to the conclusion that he was not only being undercut and undersold in every possible market, he was in addition being made the victim of a common and organised swindle. The Association to which he—and the Eye-talianos—nominally belonged in theory fixed the sale price of tiles within defined limits; but it had been evident for years past that the St. Salvator’s Works paid no attention to this. Smoothing his sleek hair, Duffy had often thought, “It’s hard; in the middle of the worst trade slump in history I’m made to compete with folk who apparently don’t care what they lose; the Gov’nor himself couldn’t do it—but he won’t help me. ‘Cut your losses and don’t do it again’; if I cut my losses, blast him, I’ll have nothing left to do it again with—or anything else either; if I cut my losses, I live on Jane and Suey for the rest of my days. And dammit, I’m only forty after all! . . .” But recently things had definitely worsened; the Italian Mission was generously subsidised, but latterly there had been another fund involved—and involved in mysterious underhand dealings to which, to do them justice, the Eye-talianos would never have stooped. Shrewdly—and in point of fact correctly—Duffy saw the rupees of Coaces in the hand of Sylvius, and seeing so much, saw also that it would be a war of no quarter. Question therefore, how much had that old black devil possessed? Nobody knew; but Sleepy Valley had sold for a big sum and she had been laying by savings, year after prosperous year. Now Sylvius had it all, and manifestly he was not minded to fest till he had spent it all to the undoing of Torteval. Could Torteval hold out?
Scrupulous himself, Duffy hated the contact of dishonesty; grumbling and much against his inclinations, he set out on a tour of his principal up-country agents. In the south he encountered only intangible hints and suspicions, but in Bangalore his tenacity was at last rewarded. Snouting round the premises of one of his principal customers—as shown on his agent’s books—he discovered in a side-shed a vast stack of Bandicoot tiles. There they were—new, fresh tiles, a recent consignment clearly; and there was the ugly misshapen bandicoot, crudely moulded and abominably offensive, leering up at him.
Furious, Duffy went to the proprietor; a certain Srinivasa Mudaliar. “Where did you get these damned things?”
The proprietor’s face collapsed into the hideous unmistakable smirk of the guilty Oriental; but with reasonable glibness he gave a name—Oomer Sait—which was not that of Duffy’s agent.
“And where did he get them, eh?”
The proprietor smirked and ingratiated; how should he know?
“Well, I’m going to find out,” said Duffy, and drove to his agent’s. The same Mohammedan firm still did the Torteval business; the old man was dead, the uppish son had himself become decently middle-aged but had incorporated a son of his own more uppish still; so it was as though the firm of Ross’s day had survived unchanging. Walking straight into the dingy office, Duffy charged them forthrightly.
“You’ve been selling Mission tiles to Srinivasa Mudaliar. You’ve been selling my rival’s tiles. What d’you mean by it?”
The elder man was blandly soothing; the son watched Duffy with an infant sneer at the corners of his ugly mouth.
“We have sold no Mission tiles, sir.”
“Then you’re being cut out by this Oomer Sait. I don’t employ him. Who is he anyway?”
The son stroked his chin; the father peered through his glasses. “We do not know any firm of that name.” But the son’s thick lips twitched.
“It’s a lie,” roared Duffy, thumping his fist on the counter. “You know quite well who he is. And I know quite well who he is. He’s you!” For a moment he literally saw red as if his eyes had filled with blood; he felt his head swimming. He gasped out, “You can consider our contract terminated; I’ll send you notice.” With difficulty he got out of the shop without striking them.
For he saw it all now. As the hired car swung him back to his hotel he saw all too clearly just where he stood. Sylvius—the Eye-talianos’ precious Travelling Sales Manager—Sylvius, that dirty Dago, had gone even further underground, sunk to even lower devices, than he had imagined. Systematically, Master Sylvius had been “getting at” Duffy’s agents; systematically going round and round men who did the Torteval business, offering them high and higher commissions—that was where the Sleepy Valley money was going—corrupting them (never a difficult task in this cursed country), buying them over. No wonder there was “no demand” for the Torteval tiles when the Torteval agents themselves were loading these damned Bandicoots on to the Torteval customers. How? Simplicity itself; they simply worked what was called a benami transaction—they sold the Mission tiles under a relative’s name, or a confederate’s or a faked name altogether. Oomer Sait for instance. Business integrity; gosh! Duffy wiped his damp forehead. And how far had it gone; who was corrupt and who wasn’t?
“I’ll sack every agent we’ve got,” he said angrily and half aloud. And as if the figure of Ross stood before him, grimly smiling, he heard that hard voice say, “And where would ye get better?” Where indeed? There were other agents in the trade—plenty of them; but Torteval had always chosen the soundest, the most trustworthy, the most honest—so far as that word had any real meaning. If these failed, if these became corrupt, what hope from others?
“Sylvius!” he thought; “if ever I see Sikkal again I’ll beat him up with my own two hands.”
Duffy walked into his hotel with a head still surging with blood and heat, revolving with mixed passions and a desire for murder. He thought of a cooling drink and went down the long loggia to get one. There suddenly he halted. For at one of the small tables there sat a woman whom Duffy seemed to know, then didn’t know, then certainly did. At first she was a waft of Narcisse Noir and a tinkle of trinkets as he passed; then suddenly her handbag clashed to the floor. He stooped, picked it up, began some conventional murmur and then stood frankly staring. Holding out the bag in his hands and staring down at her he said:
“You’re Elspeth!”
She looked at him puzzled. “A minute——” Then smiling, she said, “Sikkal! Torteval! You’re Duffy.”
He said flatly, “Yes; I’m Duffy.”
She took her bag from his outstretched hand and said, “Thank you; won’t you sit down?” He sat down, and, conscious of rudeness, he stared and stared. For she was Elspeth and she was not Elspeth; she had put on a great deal of weight and almost the first thought that flashed through his mind was, “Well, anyway, you can’t rag me about stoutness now.” He still shrank from the terrible word “fat,” but unquestionably she had coarsened, thickened; she was stiff with flesh all over; it was indecent now to think of her in a bathing-dress. She was a finished and decorated Elspeth, over-dressed and much made up, especially about the eyes and lips; but twelve accusing years confronted Duffy in every line of her. Had her hair changed colour? Yet instantly he felt surging over him that wave of mixed terror and attraction, that blend of allure and funk, that the name Elspeth had always summoned. Frightened, he blurted out:
“Nineteen-nineteen!”
She made an artificial gesture; again those concealed trinkets rattled somewhere.
“Well, really! Need you begin like that? . . . What are you doing here?”
Recollecting himself, he stopped a servant and ordered drinks—a pink gin for himself, a gimlet for Elspeth. He said:
“Business. And you?”
She stretched herself, making him think instantly but enticingly of foundation-garments. “Oh, pleasure—if any. . . . You haven’t changed much. You’re a bit stouter.”
Biting his lip over that injustice, he said manfully, “You’ve hardly changed at all,” and was rewarded by the mechanical smile of the woman who knows she has changed beyond recognition. He thought, “We’ll have these drinks and then I’ll get out”; but as ever he dallied, playing fearfully with the fire at his elbow.
“You’re Mrs. Leyland-Wood now.”
She nodded. “I’m a widow. You knew that? . . . I came back. I had to somehow. . . . I’m a rich woman now, Duffy.”
He thought, “Why the devil do you tell me that? What’s it got to do with me?” And already inside him a secret voice said mockingly, “Quite a lot, quite a lot.” But she was going on to tell him about her husband’s death. “He was shot up North on the Frontier; murdered. They came into the bungalow one night when he was asleep. The servants let them in. I was away. . . .”
He murmured, “My dear!” What else could one say?
“And we were just going home. In six months. Cully was just going to retire. Hard, wasn’t it?” Her big, rather predatory eyes fastened upon him. He murmured further banalities. Suddenly she said, “Thank God we’d no children.” And again he thought, “Why tell me that?”
The drinks came, they sipped them, talking inconsequences. She said, “You’re not married?” and he replied, “No, I never married”—and for the life of him, as it seemed, he could not avoid saying it with meaning. She smiled at him over her glass. In terror Duffy finished his pink gin. “Now,” he thought, “I’ll make a bolt for it.” But she insisted on reciprocity over the drinks; what could one do? But she was attractive, he now saw; not the old Elspeth, of course, but a finely made woman, well put on, personable. She asked how long he was staying in Bangalore and he told her, rather abruptly, that he was returning to Sikkal the next day. She said, “Oh, must you—just when we’ve met again? That poisonous place.” Flushing, he said, “It’s not a poisonous place! Anyway it’s my place.” She said musingly—so musingly that you couldn’t possibly say it was a lead, “I’d like to see it again.” Saving him the necessity of a reply, she repeated that affected gesture.
“I come and go. . . . I’m just a wandering creature now. . . . It’s been rather a let-down coming back to this country. In a way I wish I hadn’t. People——” She left it at that.
Duffy said, “Mrs. Lind is still in Sikkal.” And she replied, “Mrs. Who? Oh—that.” Evidently she had outgrown Mrs. Lind.
Duffy stood one more drink. “Now,” he thought, “I’ll go.” He rose with firm intention. But in a moment that old overmastering sensation came over him like the flesh-crisping paralysis of dreams—a terror, an impulse to instant flight, but an overwhelming urge to tempt fate just an inch further, to play just a minute longer with this monstrous, frightening, fascinating danger. He stood looking down on her and she was staring pensively at the rings on her fingers—the magnificent rings on her fingers. He moistened his lips; he said unsteadily, a little thickly, and quite in contradiction of all he intended to say,
“Er—old times and all that. Hadn’t we better tiffin together?”
A letter from Grace to Conna; headed from Millingbourne, Dorset—a Lafauce stronghold; dated the 4th September, 1932
“Most darling Mums,—
. . . We are going on to Grannie Beverell’s at the beginning of the week. We didn’t mean to go for another fortnight yet, but Gloria is out of the golf tournament and so I decided that as Mrs. Beverell’s invitation was always open we had better go now. It’ll be very quiet and it won’t be nearly so much fun in a way as it is here and yet I’m not really sorry to be going. Of course Mrs. Lafauce has been splendidly kind, but we don’t just seem to get on somehow. I’m not saying anything nasty, but Rossy shows off so here and they do seem to prefer her. I think it would have been better in a way if Gloria and I had come by ourselves. Rossy has been very Rossyish, and they all seem to like it except us. So I thought we’d move on, Gloria and I. It’ll be lovely to see Mrs. Beverell again; she is the most absolute darling . . .
. . . There was a dance . . . I wore my gold dress with . . . Rossy had a bad cold and she would wear her red frock. I’m afraid she didn’t get many partners. . . .
. . . Gloria had to scratch in the golf tournament. It was hard luck after getting into the semi-finals, wasn’t it? She is very sick about it so that’s another reason why I want to get away from here.
. . . Heavenly to think you’ll be coming home next year to take us out, and there won’t be any more of all this. Even if we have to have Rossy with us. .. .”
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Conna read, not too contentedly; this was the laboured justification of a flight—a flight and a failure. Too much Rossy and Rossy too ascendant; for a moment she felt acutely cross with her daughter for cutting short the visit, uncomfortable or no, and leaving the “little beast” in possession of the field. Raleigh’s Mother was all that Grace said, but she was getting very old and Biblically good—they wouldn’t learn anything there or see anybody. Why hadn’t Grace the gumption to stick it out? And this golf tournament—why had Gloria scratched? Not just temper again, surely, the silly pettish child. Perhaps she had caught Rossy’s cold—some physiological reason no doubt. . . . Very annoying altogether.
But it was worse than that if Conna could have known—much worse. Grace’s letter read awkwardly not only because Grace herself was feeling awkward and miserable but because she was suppressing truth, a process to her little short of agonising.
On the evening after Gloria had slogged her way into the golf semi-finals Grace was sitting in front of her mirror at Millingbourne leisurely dressing and thinking she looked rather pretty and hoping Kit Lafauce would think so, too. On these pleasant meditations intruded Rossy, still in golf kit, tousled and purposeful. Grace, considerably annoyed but sweet as ever, invited her to sit down.
But Rossy’s face under her authentic Gloriette hair was truculent.
“I’m not going to sit down. I’m going to make a row.”
Grace paled; violence always alarmed her—in Rossy especially.
“Oh, Rossy; what about?”
“Gloria.”
“Gloria?”
“Yes. She’s got to scratch from the golf.”
“Scratch from the golf? . . . Why?”
“Because she cheated in her match to-day. I saw her.”
Grace sprang up white-faced, knocking her manicure-set all over the floor.
“Rossy! You’re—you’re wicked. She never did. She couldn’t have. Gloria!”
But her breast went up and down, her eyes stared in terror. Because she knew that at games—and sometimes at other things—Gloria did cheat.
Mercilessly Rossy echoed her thoughts. “She does cheat; you know she does. Anyway, she cheated to-day. That’s why she’s got to scratch.”
Grace gave herself away. “Did—did anybody else see?”
“No—thank goodness. The Leybourne girl didn’t, anyway.” The Leybourne girl had been Gloria’s opponent—beaten two down. “There wasn’t anybody else. But that doesn’t matter.”
Grace wanted to cry out, “It does, it does,” realised the impossibility of any such line and listened horror-struck to Rossy’s statement of facts. Gloria had been one down at the fifteenth; driving to the sixteenth she had sliced her drive. It might have been just out of bounds in the spinney or just on the fairway; from the tee you couldn’t see where the ball actually finished; but Rossy had been sitting in the spinney and saw the shot come well and truly in, thudding into thick grass at the roots of an elm. “And if you want to know, Grace, I’ve got the ball now.” The Leybourne girl indulged in a colossal pull and went wandering after it. There were no caddies owing to a strike; both girls were carrying their own clubs. Gloria came up, looked round for her ball, saw neither ball nor Rossy and quite calmly took another ball from her pocket and dropped it on the edge of the fairway. She shouted across to her opponent—in difficulties far on the other side of the course, “What luck; I’m lying clear” and, undisturbed by conscience, hit a perfect second to the green. She won the hole; and was all square; and won the next two—and the match.
Grace gasped, “Well, then, it didn’t make any difference to the game——” and under the cold greenish stare of her cousin instantly regretted it.
“What does that matter? She cheated. That’s why I say she’s got to scratch.”
“But—but Rossy——”
“There isn’t any but about it. Will you tell her or shall I? Or do you want me to tell the committee?”
Grace almost screamed. “But, Rossy, Rossy, you wouldn’t, you couldn’t——”
“I jolly well will. I’d hate to, but I’d do it.”
“But——”
“You know I’d do it. I couldn’t do anything else.”
For a full minute their eyes met; Grace shuddered; yes, she would. Rossy softened a little.
“I’m sorry, Grace. But she can sprain her wrist or something——”
Grace was staring at the floor, still white as a sheet. “You—you’re sure nobody else saw?”
“Dead sure. So was Gloria. She had a good look round. You know the sixteenth. Nobody could see. Ethel Leybourne was miles away. There weren’t any caddies.”
Grace began slowly to pick up her scattered manicure set; Rossy, adamantine figure of justice, stood firmly by the bed. “I’m glad they’ve always been hasty to me,” she was thinking, “it makes it easier. I’d have had to do this, anyway, but they’ve made it easier.” The silence lengthened; Grace began to fit the files and pads into their box.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Grace bit her lip. “Oh!” she thought, “I hate Rossy, I hate her, I hate her. She’s right, but how I hate her!” She looked up.
“What can I do? I’ll speak to Gloria.”
In silence Rossy went out . . . And Gloria scratched.
Back in Sikkal—and none too sure what exactly had happened in Bangalore, what had been actually said to Elspeth, what implied or understood—Duffy lost no time in sending his card in to Sylvius. He presented himself one forenoon at the St. Salvator’s office and said:
“Is Sequeira here?”
The clerk replied with what seemed to Duffy deliberate insolence, “Alister Sequeira is here.”
“Lord Sequeira, then,” said Duffy, making a fool of himself, but unable to restrain it.
They showed him in upon Sylvius sitting very self-consciously behind a cheap office table in a room by himself, and Duffy’s first idea was that he was looking at Sylvius’s younger brother, so smooth, so boyish, so unaltered was the dark face before him. “These damned Dagos,” he thought, “they don’t age up to a point; then they collapse: but he won’t collapse for years yet.” Sylvius in turn was shaken; chagrined, he found himself inclined to cower before this great bull-like white—yes, white—gentleman, this Eton-and-Cambridge exquisite. His tremors expressed themselves in a recrudescence of that chi-chi accent of which he had nearly cured himself. Duffy said:
“I’ve a bone to pick with you.”
Sylvius said, “Oh, yes?”—and very nearly said, “Oah, yess.”
“You’ve been tampering with my up-country agents.”
Sylvius looked at him through his distorting glasses. With a gesture that might have been Coaces herself he said, as she might have said it:
“Wha-at is tampering?”
“You know damned well. You’ve been suborning my agents to sell your stuff instead of mine.”
“Suborning?”
“Bribing, then, if you like it better.”
The nasty word stung Sylvius; he abandoned his pose and sat up in his chair.
“I have never bribed. I am in business; you are in business. I have to sell our tiles and you have to sell yours, isn’t it?”
“I see. So that’s your idea of honest fairly conducted business?”
Sylvius tried to meet the cold blue Etonian eye; abashed, he found he couldn’t. He began to play with a paper-cutter.
“What is it you say I have done?”
“I’ll tell you what you’ve done. You’ve gone round and round to all my agents and you’ve said, ‘Look here, what commission is Torteval giving you?’ And when they told you, you said, ‘All right; I’ll give you five per cent. more. Push my stuff on their customers and tell Torteval you can’t sell theirs.’ Eh? What you think you’re doing it for and why you’re chucking good money into the sea I don’t profess to know, but that’s what you are doing, anyway. Or isn’t it?”
Sylvius, knowing this to be substantially true, made another attempt to meet his enemy’s eyes; again ten generations of Coaces’ ancestors prevented him. Furious at his weakness he gulped out rudely and in the pure speech of the bazaar:
“Well, mister; whatt if?”
Duffy’s lips curled; the beastly little Dago! He said:
“That’s just what I’ve come to tell you.” He leaned forward, solid and threatening. “Either you give up these tactics ek dum or else I’ll consider prosecution.”
To various natures various reactions. The threat of prosecution would have left Duffy mildly amused, considerably strengthened in his purpose—as it leaves most people who have been bred to regard the law as an ally and not an enemy. In Sylvius it produced the effect of a blow in the face. He sprang up in his chair almost shrieking.
“Prah-secute! You say you will prah-secute me, eh?” His voice leapt up another shrill semitone. “And what you will charge me with, eh? You cannot prah-secute without charge, mister. I have done no offence. No, no, Mister Co-wal, better you don’t speak me like that.” He swallowed hard; the Adam’s apple in his lean throat jumped up and down. “Otherwise perhaps I prah-secute you.”
Duffy looked at the jerking hands, the evasive eyes, the bottle shoulders, the whole make-up that—poor as it was—had power to do him so much damage; his indignation and contempt burst savagely out of him.
“You dirty little half-caste. You little Dago!”
Sylvius stiffened like a ramrod; for a moment Duffy thought he would leap the table and come to blows. But the insult had, in fact, steadied him; when he spoke again his voice had dropped dangerously.
“Very well, Mister Co-wal. Very well, Mister Torteval Co-wal. I am glad you come here to-day. It is true I am an Anglo-Indian——”
“I said half-caste. I said Dago.”
“I do not care what you say, I do not care what you call me.” His voice shrilled again suddenly, then sank. “Anyway, you know who my father was. How if I call you cousin, eh, Mister Torteval——”
Foolishly Duffy said, “Shut up.”
“O-oh! Shut up, is it? You call me Dago, half-caste, but it is shut up when I call you cousin.” His eyes flashed. “I do not call you cousin; I call you dirt. And verree soon I swee-eep you out with the other dirt, Mister Torteval Co-wal—out—out—out!”
For a moment, seeing infectious hate through the ugly distorting spectacles, Duffy had the impulse to strike Sylvius down with his stick; then more sensibly he picked up his topi.
“I don’t think this interview will serve much further purpose. I’ve said what I came to say . . . I’ve given you warning.”
Sylvius burst into a shrill horrible laugh.
“O-oh! Warning! I think it is I who give you the warning, Mister Duffy Torteval Co-wal.” Control suddenly left him altogether; he began to gibber shockingly like an idiot. “O-oh, how I hate you, oh, how I will punish you. Oh, how glad I will be when I see you going out—out—out——”
Foolishly Duffy was tempted to a final gibe. “Call yourself a Christian, too, don’t you?”
Sylvius came creeping to his side; almost he seemed to fawn upon Duffy.
“And I am a Christian; I love and follow Christ. If I do not curse you now, if I do not spit upon you—spit upon you—it is because——”
“Because you’re afraid to,” said Duffy, and thrust him aside. But as the rickety door swung behind him, he heard Sylvius spit.
Downstairs and outside, he walked up the narrow lane breathing deep breaths and swinging his stick. “A lot of good that’s done,” he thought wearily; “I wanted to give him a fright and I did, but are we any further forward? He called my bluff about prosecution quickly enough. And, my God, he does hate us, doesn’t he!” With a shudder he thought of that creeping fawning figure that had accompanied him across the room stricken with monstrous hate; there had been something sub- or super-human, something bestial or hellish about that. He tried to square his shoulders, tried to laugh, but gave up both attempts; such hatred was daunting. His footfalls echoed in the narrow lane; “out,” they seemed to say, “out—out—out——”
Dressing for dinner that night Duffy touched profundity. The soap factory was done for—so much useless brick and mortar and iron to be sold for what little it would fetch as materials and scrap. Loans were falling due; he must pay them—and beggar himself in the process. Ross, importuned once more in desperation, had remained adamant, had written back some rubbish about shoring up falling houses; not one anna of help to be raised there. No, the soap factory was a wreck, hull and cargo. And what was worse, unless some fresh and fruitful source of money could be discovered Torteval, too, would have to close down. Sylvius had done his work; at the cost of a small fortune to himself he had ruined Duffy’s markets; these tactics couldn’t go on indefinitely, no doubt, but they could go on long enough—had already gone on long enough—to put Torteval out of business. And Cousin Sylvius was perfectly right in his boasted security—the law couldn’t touch him. There was nothing illegal in offering fantastic commissions, nothing illegal in weaning away another man’s agents, another fellow’s customers, by the offer of extravagantly better terms. Business integrity, ordinary sense, normally restrained such methods within definite limits; but however far extended they did not constitute an offence. If a fellow was unscrupulous and insane with hate, if a fellow was prepared to ruin himself to spite you, well—he beat you and the law as well. No law could stop a murderer who was prepared to be hanged. . . . Wearily Duffy pulled on his spotless trousers of white jean, wearily tied his neat black bow. “Out—out—out.” By God, it would be!
Jane was indisposed and in bed; although she felt the hot weather more and more with every year, nothing would induce her to leave Torteval. But Susan, who never, so far as man could judge, felt anything, sat opposite Duffy at dinner and was glad to see that although silent he ate well of such tried favourites as pomfret with tamarind sauce and mutton tournedos with pineapple. After dinner they took coffee to the drawing-room—a chamber which Duffy, on the pretence of wiring it for the electric light, had completely revolutionised. Its Victorianisms had vanished; its plush and lustres had gone off wholesale to the bazaar. Now it recalled a west coast temple with its austere profusion of dark carven woods and Hindu brasses. But the portrait of Gloriette Lafauce still stood prominently on its easel; poor Glory in that rather overwhelming rose-and-gold dress of 1880, poor pretty Glory, whose progeny had fared on the whole so ill. Her face had faded a little; but the rose-and-gold dress not at all.
Duffy gulped his coffee, selected his Manila and lit it; he blew out a long streamer of blue smoke.
“Su?”
“Yes, ducky?”
“(Don’t call me ducky.) Su, do you think, when the cold weather comes round, do you think we might ask—er—Elspeth here for a bit?”
“Elthpeth!” cried Susan; and flamed scarlet with delight from collar-bone to brow.
In March of 1933 Conna—not without misgiving—set out for England to bring back her two daughters and her niece. She went sulkily, determined in advance that Rossy was going to spoil everything but unable to see any means by which her inclusion in the return party could be avoided. There was no sense in antagonising the Patriarch at this stage—Ross still, Conna believed, had vast unaccounted-for sums in which Grace and Gloria must if possible participate; moreover, there was Raleigh. “If you won’t do it,” Raleigh had said, displaying that aggressive firmness he reserved for the defence of Rossy, “I must do it myself and that means giving up this Secretariat job and you won’t like that either.” Unable to move him, she flounced off for England with a bad grace.
Before starting she received one of those unaccountable periodical impulses to visit Torteval which formed perhaps her sole concession to sentiment. She disliked Torteval—and a little feared it; it stood for “disreputableness,” for that bias in the Cowal family towards degeneration, above all for that dread tendency to “go country.” Yet once in a way Conna felt an illogical urge to revisit the place, to rattle up the coast through the clanging laterite cuttings and see once again the placid large-scale sweep of Ghoomri. She had no feeling now for the Ghoomri Sisters—she thought Susan a stupid and Jane a spiteful bore; she had only a mild interest left for Duffy. Still, now and then, she went.
On this present occasion she was more practically impelled—whether pleasurably or otherwise she was far from sure—by the news of Duffy’s engagement. For no very coherent reason she wanted to see how he looked. The engagement had been announced in January, first in a long excited epithalamion from Susan and then more formally in the Mail . . . “been arranged between Dufferin Cowal . . . Elspeth Leyland-Wood, widow of the late Major . . .” Conna had read both announcements with a measure of disgust; there was something indecent in an Elspeth romantically rising from the dead, something Silenus-like in Duffy the belated conqueror. Two people arranging to go to bed together who ought to have done it fourteen years ago; it gave one—again for no very coherent reason—a chill in the bones, a sinking in the stomach. And one could not help the thought—“if Elspeth had still been poor?” . . . Conna did not feel acutely about it one way or the other, but sitting down to write congratulations, her thought was, “Too late!”
At Torteval she was shaken promptly out of her indifference. She found a silent Jane, bird-like still but a bird drooping in winter frosts, an indomitably placid but obviously disturbed Susan and a Duffy who lay about the drawing-room after breakfast reading the home papers. She said wonderingly, “Aren’t you going to the works?” and in response received one of the severest shocks of her fife. For her brother, looking at her with resolute calm over his illustrated paper, said:
“There aren’t any works.”
Conna felt herself reeling; she contrived some noise of interrogation. “No works! What do you mean?”
“We closed down last week. Torteval’s finished. You always thought it rather low of us to make tiles, didn’t you? Well, don’t worry. We don’t make tiles any more.”
He returned solemnly to his Tatler, but she snatched it out of his hand.
“Duffy! Are you serious? . . . For God’s sake put down that silly paper. . . . Tell me what’s happened.”
He suffered her to take it away and reached out for a cigarette with a fine assumption of boredom.
“What I say. You remember the Eye-talianos? Well, they won—that’s all.”
“The Eye-talianos! Not that beastly Sylvius?”
“That beastly Sylvius. Your twin, Conna, dear.”
“Oh, shut up! . . . It’s incredible. Tell me how——”
Patiently he told her his version—everything against him, not a soul to help, Ross refusing and refusing and refusing. The pepper contracts crash—“and nobody could have foreseen it, Conna, nobody”—the ruinous failure of the dhupa soap factory. He looked up at that with a flash of his old blue-eyed humour. “I was the man who put the ‘dupe’ in ‘dhupa’.” Then the Eye-talianos and their cut, cut, cutting of prices; Sylvius’s pursuing hate; money against him and more money; swindling, trickery, every low game. There it all was.
She said slowly, “But, Duffy, was it only a question of money?”
He nodded. “Money and time. If I could have undercut the Eye-talianos for six months more I’d have beaten them. But I just couldn’t. I was cleaned, and the Gov’nor wouldn’t put down an anna—don’t suppose I could expect it.”
“I don’t know that you could—you drove him out after all.” Concern made Conna careless; she blurted out, “But couldn’t—couldn’t Elspeth help?” Whatever Elspeth might lack as the bride of romance, everyone agreed that her Leyland-Wood wealth was fabulous.
Duffy’s pretence of nonchalance left him; he became charged with heavy disappointment.
“She wouldn’t.”
His sister looked at him sharply; so Elspeth had begun their engagement by letting him down. Well, the woman had sense in a way, but Conna saw at once that her refusal had been a far heavier blow to Duffy than the crash itself.
“Why wouldn’t she? Did you ask her?”
“Naturally I asked. She said she was putting no money into anything Indian these days. I daresay she’s right—most brokers would tell her so. Anyway, she said no. . . . You—er—needn’t go round announcing all this, Conna; I’m not too proud of it. It was pretty rotten having to ask the girl you’re going to marry——”
She sat down on the arm of his long-chair. “Poor old Duffy!” Stroking his sleek hair, she had a memory of that long-past morning—getting on for twenty years ago now—when she had watched him arrive from England and advance god-like upon the Torteval steps. Well, they had pulled the family out of its slough between them; it didn’t matter much what happened now; Sleepy Valley was sold to strangers—she didn’t even know their names; Torteval might go the same way when the Ghoomri Sisters were done with it. Those roots were well and truly up, and in their raising Duffy had hacked and howked nobly. She stroked his hair with unwonted tenderness.
“Can’t you make a fresh start?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m beaten and I’ll quit. Elspeth—Elspeth wants us to get married next month and then go home round the world. Honeymoon in Japan, and so on.”
Thinking, “Elspeth wants, Elspeth wants—Elspeth’s dictator already,” she asked him:
“And then?”
“South of France, I suppose. Italy maybe. I—I used to be interested in archaeology—wish to God I’d stuck to it—I might take it up again.” But his voice was so flat, his mien so downcast, that she said sharply:
“Duffy!”
He looked up. “Yes?”
“You’re happy, aren’t you?”
He shook himself into raptures. “Happy? Of course I’m happy—so far as Elspeth goes. Good God, Conna, can’t you recollect, can’t you imagine—— It isn’t everyone who gets a chance to put back the clock.”
She bent down with an unexpected impulse and kissed his forehead. “My dear old boy, I’m so glad.” But as she went out of the room her thought was, “It isn’t anyone. You can’t put back clocks. Poor dear Duffy!”
Left to himself, Duffy sat on in his chair gazing out into the sunlit garden with rare pessimism. “Put back the clock, eh? Am I really doing that? I’m happy, I’m happy; but not so happy as I would have been fourteen years ago. Fourteen years; my God, it’s a long time; we won’t get them back. If I was going to marry Elspeth, why didn’t I do it then? Money? Blast money. Am I putting back the clock or am I trying to raise the dead? . . .” Mechanically he took another cigarette and sat staring into the border of brilliant cannas. His thought was, “I don’t like having nothing to do; I won’t like it.”
Conna had meant to leave Torteval at the end of the week, but Elspeth was coming and Susan was distressed at the idea of Conna’s departure. “It would look so droll, dearie, Elspeth would be put out.” Apart from any question of manners, Conna decided that she was curious to see Elspeth again if only to learn which of them had the better withstood the ravages of time. Elspeth’s arrival settled that question in ten seconds—and settled it so conclusively that Conna could not even feel relief. Elspeth arrived in a billowy white frock, Paris-made but years too young for her; she had precious little underneath it, Conna saw, and she had “done” her face last thing before leaving her railway-carriage; but no make-up on earth, nor “the most artistic of “foundations,” could cope with the damp, crumpling, tousling heat that besets the over-weighted in a hot climate. Conna, greeting her, involuntarily drew in her own matronly but restrained figure; if Elspeth didn’t flop, she was clearly only living till she decently could; if she didn’t bulge it was only because she was held in the grip of invincible materials. A lump, oh, Lord, a lump! . . . And there was Duffy affectionately in attendance, fawning about, telling himself he had put back the clock.
Conna kissed Elspeth and fled to her own room, still holding herself together. Was it the money after all? If so, was it worth it?” Cauld kail het again” had been Ross’s laconic if obvious comment on the engagement; Conna ran a swift hand over her bust and hips; kail indeed! Well, Elspeth would hold Duffy because she could give him comfort for life and comfort was Duffy’s god; but wouldn’t there be moments of leisure—Duffy would have plenty of leisure—when he would go questing back over those fourteen years, hunting the romance that had cooled, the goddess who had aged, the girl Elspeth who had become Mrs. Leyland-Wood, Mrs. Dufferin Cowal? Gone, all gone, and they wouldn’t come back. And in his heart of hearts wouldn’t Duffy ask himself—“Oh, why hadn’t I the guts to go for it all then?”
And the only answer Conna could think of was, “Well, Duffy, dear, you just hadn’t.”
On a hot May afternoon of that year Ross’s racehorse, Ben-y-Gloe, won him the Nilgiri Cup at Ootacamund; and that same evening, getting out of his great car, Ross suddenly fell prone on the Lebanon steps. He had paused for an instant to look round the sunset glory of his garden, lifting his head to savour the manifold scent of it; and suddenly he felt a sort of stutter in his body, a grip as if some monster held him in its hand and squeezed. He imagined that he got to his feet and walked indoors, but in point of fact Karim Khan his driver and two scared servants carried him, looking in terror at his darkened, suffused face. In the same way he imagined that he woke in bed later that evening and found the current I.M.S. Colonel bending over him; but in point of fact it was the evening after.
Ross said a little thickly, and in very broad Scots, “Yon was a queer dwawm,” adding in more ordinary speech, “What was it?”
The I.M.S. Colonel did not believe in bogeys, especially with a man of seventy-four. He said smiling, “You had a vertigo, a sort of faint.” But he knew well enough it was more than a faint; it was the nearest thing on earth to a stroke.
The “dwawm” kept Ross in bed for a week and would have kept him longer if the I.M.S. Colonel could have managed it. But as the effects of the seizure had passed away and Ross was apparently as well as he felt, he was obliged to let him up. Grumbling, he wished Ross had some relative at hand more nearly concerned than Raleigh Beverell, to whom, however, he said, “It’s all right this time. But it was a slight stroke, so look out. He’ll have another some day; it may be weeks, it may be years, but look out.”
Raleigh said, “Shouldn’t we tell him?” and the Colonel replied, “No good. It would worry him and he wouldn’t do one damned thing we asked. You know that as well as I do.” Smiling ruefully Raleigh admitted that this was true.
To Ross himself the Colonel said only, “Take it easy, take it easy”; and Ross replied, “Man, I never do anything else.” But his “dwawm” had frightened him more than he cared to admit and for a time he did “take it easy,” cutting most of his engagements, riding only a little and that near home. Going lonely about the Hills, he found that his “dwawm” had left him oddly introspective, oddly detached so that he saw as on a sheet spread before him his own long life and all the sub-lives that had been begotten out of it. As the undifferentiated days succeeded one another—long morning rides, afternoons clouded with sleep, immense evenings of fire-gazing—he saw his affairs set out into a calculation whose total was—or would be in the fullness of time—plus and minus naught. He saw history repeat itself with a curious effect of cancellation; where X rose Y fell: for A’s suffering or ill-usage, B, engaging in his turn, took roundabout but effective vengeance. Almost it induced one to believe in a God, an arithmetically minded, rather precise God, whose ideal scheme of life was a string of cancellations ending in ultimate zero.
He thought, “Is there any sense in it at all and where will it end?” Little sense, it seemed; and of course it would end never—for already they were into the third generation and that was but a step to the thirtieth. War was the great maker of history, and already the third generation was at war within itself. Rossy versus the Gee-Gees; there should be some spirited rounds in that contest yet! And he thought with widened vision and with less bitterness than usual of the Conna-Duffy revolt against “disreputable” Torteval. He had never forgiven Conna for that word, but he saw the revolt now in its proper dimensions and shape—as a mere step in the sum, just a single plus or minus as the case might be. Following the principle of repetitions and cancelling, would Rossy—Rossy representing himself, Torteval, the “old disreputables”—yet level some day and in some unforeseen manner the proud anti-Torteval banners of Beverell?
Chuckling to himself, Ross would think, “By God, I wouldna wonder!”
Rossy! Riding his slow horse or smoking his pipe by his fireside of pungent eucalyptus logs, Ross missed her and missed her. And staring at the sunlit picture of the Downs or at the grey ash on his hearth, panic would seize him with the terrible question—“Will she like me when she comes back? Will she want to stay with me? Or will I just be too old altogether?”
“For,” he thought, “I’m getting old at last; all this howking back into the past—it’s an old man’s game. Old, really old; soon be seventy-five now. ‘Take it easy?’—I can’t, I daren’t, lest I cease altogether. No, no—keep going; and the past—to hell with it!”
But howking back he went; and there were moments when he seemed to be lying face-downwards in a cart looking out at processional stars; or talking his new-learned Tulu (“Master taking one girl”) with old Somappa himself. He could hear the whisper of sand under the cart-wheels, he could smell the jack-fruit and snuff in Somappa’s yard.
On a thin grey day of that monsoon Sylvius stood on the spur of Pisgah that backed Bethelkuppam, one of the few points from which the Torteval works could be seen. There they lay, shrouded in the drifting wet, soundless, dead; no smoke came from their kilns, no stench of baking tiles; the tall chimneys stood up with that peculiar lifelessness which pertains to chimneys in which no fire burns or has burnt for a long time or will in all probability burn ever again. Completely desolate with the awful desolation of that which has once been abundantly active, the place lay rotting in the rain; his work, his work. But Sylvius was not satisfied; he stood there brooding in his waterproof and sou’-wester and his eyes behind his ugly glasses were dark with discontent. For his enemy, his defeated enemy, had escaped him after all. At the last moment, just when he had him there, his enemy had wriggled and kicked and got away.
Sylvius cleared his throat, spat in the direction of Torteval and trudged away up the sodden path. It wasn’t fair. Biting his thin lips he thought, “I wanted him done for, I wanted him dead; he’s dodged me after all. I’d have liked him driven to killing himself over in that grand house of his; that’s what should have happened.” A dose of poison; a revolver-shot ringing in the night; dreadful discovery in the morning; all Sikkal alive with the story; all Sikkal with a half-frightened, half-admiring look in its eye coming to tell it to Sylvius. Sylvius forgot he was a Christian. “I wanted that,” he thought, sliding on the rough track; “I wanted that and I deserved it. And just when I had him down, just when it looked as if I might drive him to it, he had that stroke of luck and—now he’s gone.”
For Duffy was gone indeed; but gone in a burst of glory after a grand Cathedral wedding in Madras to which the Mail had given a couple of columns. He was gone—not feet first to a suicide’s grave in the Sikkal clay, but alive and kicking on a fine tour round the world. For the rest of his life he was going to inhabit hotels and mansions, to drive about in motorcars and to take his ease with that fine big woman—so Sylvius thought of Elspeth—whom the devil had sent suddenly to marry him. Sylvius had no inkling of any lost romance; he would never hear Duffy ask himself that frantic question—“Why not fourteen years ago?”; all he knew was that Duffy had married a rich wife, had won himself a life of ease and idleness, of good eating, soft beds and sustained comfort for the rest of his days; and Sylvius felt cheated, baulked. He had his Annunciata, their babies, his little house, his assured position in Sikkal; he had respect, affluence, status—all things he had never thought to possess; but as he trudged up the rain-lashed slant of Pisgah he was bitter because something had gone unfinished out of his life, because—just as in Coaces’ old stories—a bad fairy, a malign angel had at the last moment snatched away his revenge.
Conna’s gloomy forebodings on account of her outward voyage were amply fulfilled. At the outset indeed it looked to be otherwise; Fate, mocking, handed out delusive triumphs. Grace was seasick and Gloria was worse, and so was Conna herself (no true descendant of Gloriette Lafauce could face anything rougher than a ripple); but then Rossy was super-sick, and made an exhibition of it. She insisted on facing the dining-saloon on the first night out when Gloria had already taken to her cabin and Grace and her mother were toying with cups of soup in a sheltered corner of the deck; she was forced to fly before the fish was on the table and—she just failed to reach the companion before the nemesis that waits for the over-confident seized her disastrously. A stewardess rescued her and thereafter she went from bad to worse. She was astonishingly seasick; long after the Gee-Gees were playing deck games and dancing she lay in her berth hopelessly ill. Conna, at first maliciously content, saw presently that things were going too far; Rossy’s superlative sea-sickness was making her a celebrity. The ship’s tattlers went about telling one another, “There’s a Miss Frost who’s been terribly seasick—simply terribly—ever since we sailed.” . . . “That poor Miss Frost—you know, the one who’s been so seasick.” . . . “The Doctor’s giving her strychnine injections.” . . . “They’ll have to put her ashore at Port Said. . . .” And so on and so on and so on. Long before her second public appearance Rossy was a famous character; and when in the still waters of the Canal she emerged at last, it was, Conna thought, almost like the entry of the Heroine suitably deferred. There lay Rossy in her deck-chair, bleached to a paleness that made her hair a flame and every freckle a becoming attraction; and just at the moment when people were getting tired of each other and were ready—nay yearning—for something new.
And the first to defect, the most conspicuous traitor, was Grace’s man.
“Grace’s man” was a Mr. Stephen Gilroy, a leading member of one of the principal Madras firms; and Conna had been very pleased to find his name on the passenger-list. He was one of those douce unassuming Scots, almost too perfectly mannered, whose intensive thoughtfulness makes the casual courtesy of the English gentleman seem almost brusque. Not particularly clever, he had amassed, just after the war, a comfortable little fortune by the process of least resistance; unlike some others, he had been content therewith and had known when to withdraw. For what seemed untold years Conna had known him as a member of the Madras and Adyar Clubs—very spruce and neat, punctilious about asking one to dance, about fetching one refreshments, about offering one lifts, endlessly thoughtful and never in the least tiresome. As a dinner guest he had proved himself thoroughly reliable, instinctively and without pressure singling out and comforting the plain and the unattended woman, the tedious and the difficult girl. Rude men called Stephen a “Jessie”; Conna called him charming.
And on the third day of this vexatious voyage Stephen had become manifestly attracted by her daughter Grace. “And mightn’t it,” Conna asked herself, “be a very good thing?” Dear, sober Grace, so dependable; dear, sober Stephen, so dependable, too. He was twenty years older than Grace, of course—probably more; but—mightn’t it be a very good thing?
Grace was evidently taken; she was such a handsome creature, Conna thought dotingly, swinging round the wind-swept decks with Stephen, so upright, so fastidious, so fancy-free. And Conna, surveying her daughter again in the cabin as they dressed for dinner, was even more pleased. Grace undressed to advantage; but she was a modest creature even with her own mother; rather an adorable child for anybody to marry. . . . Conna said:
“I see you’ve made friends with Mr. Gilroy.”
Grace, on the edge of her berth in the act of anchoring a stocking, looked up rather timidly.
“Y-yes.”
“He’s rather a dear. I’ve always liked him.”
The stocking was fixed; Grace said, reaching out for its fellow:
“I think he’s more than a dear. I mean, if you say a person’s rather a dear, well—it’s nice, but in a way it’s sort of patronising, isn’t it? Mr. Gilroy knows a tremendous lot.”
Conna, salving her lips before the glass, made a noncommittal murmur.
“He was telling me a lot about Hinduism, about what it means and all that. You know, Mums, I’d no idea—I thought it was just heatheny and dirty. But Mr. Gilroy——”
Conna thought, “Hinduism! As well begin on that as anything else.” During that long-past railway journey to Sikkal Raleigh had talked about the Mysore Wars. He had obviously just been reading a book on the subject; so perhaps had Stephen with his Hinduism. What matter? You had to start with some thing.
In the next cabin Gloria was dressing with her usual slapdash methods. She shared this cabin with Rossy to their mutual disgust, which only Gloria, however, was foolish enough to show. The Gee-Gees had pled earnestly to be together but Conna had been adamant. “No. There are only the two double-berth cabins, and I could not dress and undress with that child in the room. You can toss which of you comes in with me, but it’s not to be Rossy.” Now, in view of Rossy’s pitiable condition, she felt a little contrite—not on Rossy’s account but on Gloria’s. Still somebody had to go through with it. “Better Gloria,” she thought, “than me. And she’s younger than Grace, tougher; and—I don’t love her so much.”
Gloria, hurling clothes about the untidy cabin, said: “Aren’t you ever going to get up, Rossy-Frossy?” Rossy said wearily, “I don’t think so.”
“There’s dancing to-night.”
“I don’t care. . . . You’ll tear that dress if you tug at it like that.” Conna’s fears that Susan’s figure would reappear in Gloria had been to some extent realised; the junior Gee-Gee was short and a little square; the sight of her with a dress over her head and shoulders and the rest of her outstanding in green silk knickers made Rossy giggle.
“Well, it isn’t your dress, is it? . . . Why don’t you have some guts, Rossy, and get up.”
“I haven’t got any guts left.”
“Do you think you’re going to die?”
“Hope so.”
“Oh, Rossy, do you really? . . . Is it true he gave you injections?”
“Yes—two. The places hurt like hell.”
“Let me see them.”
“No! . . . Aren’t you nearly dressed yet?”
“Just about. . . . Well, I’ll tell Mums you aren’t getting up to-night either.”
“Tell her I’m never getting up again.”
But Rossy did get up again; and there in the sunlight of Egypt she lay in her long cane chair, pathetically pale, her hair blazing and each faint isolated freckle an allurement. And the first deserter from the camp was Stephen. Conna had been writing letters—letters which should have been ready at Port Said and must be ready to go back from Suez; she had been unaware of the passage of time; hurrying to her cabin at the luncheon bugle, she ran into “Grace’s man.” Stephen said:
“Oh, Mrs. Beverell, I’ve just been talking to your niece.”
Conna smiled the radiant smile of the intolerably provoked. “Oh, yes—Rossy. She’s a quaint little thing, isn’t she?” But for once honesty in Stephen outplayed deference. Quaint little thing?—that hadn’t been his impression. He said stiffly yet rather charmingly:
“I thought her very attractive. I’d never seen her before.”
Conna said with studied absence, “Hadn’t you? I suppose not. She was mostly with her grandfather as a child.” Subtly she contrived to imply that nobody could have wanted to see Rossy then or thenceforward.
But Stephen went back to Rossy—and bored her terribly. And many other people, including the captain of the ship, came and talked to Rossy—and also bored her terribly. It was as if, thought Conna angrily, the chit held a levee; and all because she had Lynna’s incompetent stomach and—well, yes—Lynna’s hair and Lynna’s eyes and Lynna’s skin. She hadn’t a tenth of Grace’s genuine half-beauty; she hadn’t even the consistent chubby prettiness of Gloria—she was either hideous or pretty, and just at that moment she was pretty. As many seemed to think. And the chit had the impudence to be bored with it all, too—to be bored with Stephen while Grace walked round the deck by herself. “Thank God,” thought Conna, for the hundredth time, “it won’t be a long voyage.”
One young man came and talked to Rossy, however, who did not bore her—Peter Nicholls of Neill Brothers. Peter knew Sikkal—had even been there, knew all the west coast, had heard of Duffy, revered the name of Ross as the Israelites revered Abraham’s. He was an exceedingly pleasant young man, round-faced, bright-eyed, dark, post-war. Rossy begged him to sit beside her as often as he could—“to save me from all these frumps.”
Peter grinned. “You’re ungrateful. You don’t realise how important you are.”
“Well, I’ve been marvellously sick. I’ve sicked just wonderfully, I know. Couldn’t we forget about it now?”
He grinned again. “I can forget about it all right. You don’t look a bit sick now, Miss Frost. . . . Look here, can I call you Rosslyn?”
“No. But you can call me Rossy. That’s what I’m called.”
“Right. Call me Ginger.”
“But you’re not Ginger. You’re dark.”
“That’s why I’m called Ginger. Also—well, don’t you feel I’m ginger?”
Rossy wrinkled her nose. “You look more like a brinjal. A nice shiny brinjal.”
He laughed good-humouredly. “Oh, I say, Rossy!”
“Well, Brinjer, you do.”
“Brinjer?”
“Brinjal-ginger. That’s your name now.”
He was her sort and she liked him; but he was much taken up with shipboard affairs. Torn between duty and desire, he made attractive shambling apologies.
“It’s these beastly games. You see, I’m on the committee. I got stuck with it—I always do. I wish I hadn’t—I wouldn’t have if I’d known “
“Oh, Brinjer, what a liar you are!”
“Well, anyway, I’ve got to play now. I’m playing with your cousin.”
“What, Grace?”
“No—the other one. We’re playing in the deck tennis. However”—he brightened—“I expect we’ll be out of it pretty quick. She’s never played before, and even though they’ve given her full handicap——”
Rossy suddenly sat up in her chair. “What did you say?”
Peter looked surprised but repeated patiently: “She’s never played the beastly game before “
“Did she say that?”
“Of course she did; how else could I know?”
“Oh, did she?”
“What d’you mean, ‘Oh did she?’” He gazed at her blankly while Rossy’s nose wrinkled again. “D’you mean to say she has played it?”
Rossy’s lips tightened; at it again, was she? She remembered long afternoons at Millingbourne where one of the regular occupations was a game called Tenniquoit, which Gloria had not only played daily but at which she had—in practised company—excelled. Little liar, little cheat!
“Deck tennis, maybe not; that is, on board ship. But she played Tenniquoit all the summer at home and she was dashed good at it.”
Peter was staggered. “But she doesn’t know the rules—I mean about throwing overhand and all that.”
“Did she say so?”
“Yes. In so many words.”
Rossy made a little moue.
“She knows the rules all right, Brinjer.”
He stood up, flushed, angry, outraged.
“Well, I can’t play with her, that’s all.”
“Oh, yes, play with her now you’re in for it. You can play rottenly and you’ll lose. She’s not so wonderful good as all that.”
“But—I can’t.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You see we gave her the maximum handicap on the strength of it. If she can play at all—— Good God! You—you swear this, Rossy?” Gossip of the ship came into his mind; these cousins hated each other; Mrs. Beverell and her daughters had a down on Miss Frost. Could he trust her?
Rossy gave him a level look with eyes that suddenly narrowed. “I don’t swear, little man. I’m not usually asked to.”
“No—no, I’m sorry. I beg your pardon. But—but——” He wheeled distractedly. “I’ll go now and put it off.”
To Gloria, half asleep with a book, he appeared suddenly, red in the face and awkward. She thought uncharitably, “He’s got tight; now we won’t win.” But he said, “I’m awfully sorry, Miss Beverell, I can’t play in our game.”
She dropped her book. “Oh, why?”
“I—I’ve mucked things up. I’ve made the most awful muddle. I’ve engaged myself to play in two different things at the same time.”
“Well, cut out the other one.”
“I can’t. I fixed it first.”
Gloria’s temper flared. “Well, I do think you’re stupid. What about me?”
“I’m most awfully sorry. I really deserve anything you say. Call me anything you like—I’m it.” Muttering apologies he backed away from her. Instantly he forgot her, hurrying along the deck to see if Rossy was still where he had left her. She was: and at three-five—the game should have been at three—he was looking into Rossy’s wide eyes and telling her how well he had managed it.
And at three-five Gloria saw them.
Almost weeping with fury she burst into the cabin where her mother and Grace were lying down; presently, as her recital waxed, she did weep altogether; she stamped her foot on the floor.
“I won’t be treated like this. Mums, you must——”
Conna, holding her head in her hands, damned for the hundredth time Lynna, Rossy, the voyage, Raleigh, Ross. But unexpected relief came from Grace who raised a rather wan face from her pillow.
“You needn’t make such a song about it. He’s only a silly, ill-mannered boy.”
“He’s not,” shrieked Gloria, “he’s not. . . . If you like old fogies——”
“I don’t like old fogies!” Grace began to shiver—a sure prelude to disaster. Conna raised an aching head.
“For goodness’ sake go and fight in the other cabin. I must get some sleep.”
“We can’t,” said Grace, still shaking. “Rossy’ll be there.”
But Gloria knew better. “Oh no! Oh no! Rossy won’t be there. Rossy’s better employed.”
They trailed out together, leaving poor Gonna thinking, “In the name of God, why both of their miserable men? Why both?”
The voyage dragged on its weary course—Jebel-Zukr, Perim, Aden, the endless exasperating blue of the Indian Ocean. Stephen, choked off by his false goddess’s indifference, came back to his allegiance and walked round the deck with his sober reliable Grace; round and round they went, but returned literally and metaphorically to the point from which they started. At Hinduism—or its equivalent—they stayed. Conna, in some ways a little disappointed, was yet content; beyond question her daughter had made a profound, probably a lasting impression; and with a girl of nineteen where was the hurry? She was less pleased about Gloria to whom, for reasons naturally beyond Conna’s fathoming, her young men did not return. And yet Gloria was so amusing, so ready to take part, so more than good at games. Puzzled, Conna watched her younger daughter’s disconsolate progress to Bombay.
Rossy and her absurd Brinjer entered for various events together, lost cheerfully, entered for others. Gradually Rossy’s initial cluster of young men dropped off, leaving them conspicuously together. When matrons commented on this to Conna, she laughed pleasantly and said, “Just children, just babies. Let them enjoy themselves while they can. It’ll end with the voyage. That Nicholls boy hasn’t a penny and never will have. But I like to see Rossy having a little fun; she’ll have a dull time of it at home.” And she proceeded to draw luridly gloomy accounts of Rossy’s prospective life with her savage grandfather—cooped up alone in the great empty lonely house; never a young creature to play with—which would have driven Rossy to the pitch of homicide had she heard them. And the matrons told one another it was really rather nice of Mrs. Beverell, considering her own girls had not been very much sought after—but then they were all very young yet.
Rossy and Brinjer cemented their alliance by winning the needle-and-thread race at the Gymkhana sports; and the last night of the voyage found them inevitably together somewhere in the bows of the ship. Grace was asleep in her cabin with Conna; Stephen was probably reading a book on Hinduism; but Gloria lay awake, watching with restless anger the empty berth opposite. And Peter Nicholls was saying to Rossy, with a certain amount of bravado:
“Well, I suppose I shan’t ever see you again.”
Rossy said, “Oh, nonsense, Brinjer. If you’re on the west coast and I’m in Ooty we’re pretty well bound to meet sometimes. That is if you want to.”
But Peter was determined on fin-de-voyage melancholy. “I’ll want to all right. But what about you? Will you want to?”
She thought, “He’s a nice boy, he’s a baby, I like him awfully.” Aloud she said:
“I don’t care frightfully one way or another.”
He sighed,and then recovering himself,said promptly, “What a lie! . . . Anyway, Rossy, I’m going to kiss you.”
She backed away from him in sudden terror.
“Oh, no! Oh, please, Peter. Please, no.”
“Never been kissed before, eh?”
“Not—not——” What she wanted to say was, “Not when I wanted to be, not like you’re going to,” but how could one say such things? He was laughing at her, mocking her.
“‘Not—not——’ Not what? Not often? Not properly? Well, you’re for it now.”
“No, Peter. Oh, please, Brinjer——” But the hard iron of the bulwarks pressed into her back. “I can’t run away,” she thought, “any further.” And his arms came round her and his lips came down on her and triumphantly he kissed her. “There,” he said. “Now you’ll not forget me.”
Rossy found herself breathing quickly and hard. “I’m being idiotic,” she thought, “I’m being a fool, I’m being a Miss.” But suddenly her arms went round Peter’s neck; she heard herself speaking. “Oh, Peter, perhaps I’ll never see you again. Oh, Peter, do it again—-just once.” And Peter, taking her up into his arms, kissed her again quite, quite differently. And sobbing a little Rossy ran to her cabin.
“You’ve been spooning, Rossy-Frossy,” said Gloria; and to her surprise, drew no retort.
Ross had his question answered in forthright fashion. He had wondered of Rossy, will she want to see me; or will I be too old altogether? Apparently, at any rate her one idea was to reach him. Conna, imbued by a strong sense of duty and feeling perhaps that she might as well anticipate Raleigh and gain kudos for the invitation, pressed Rossy to stay for a few weeks with her cousins at Adyar and participate in the delights of the Madras “season” now well under way. But Rossy shook her head.
“It’s sweet of you, Aunt Conna, But I must get to Lebanon.”
“But there’s nobody there, my dear.”
“There’s Granny. And when I’m there, there’ll be Granny and me.”
Puzzled, Conna looked at her trim figure, her alert, vivacious—not very pretty this morning—face. Evidently she genuinely liked her grandfather and presumably he genuinely liked her in return. Well——
Ross stood on the steps of Lebanon—that sweep of easy steps dating from the old spacious days and rivalling even the noble flight at Torteval—and waited for the car that was to bring his grand-daughter from Mettupalayam. He hadn’t gone down there because, he told himself, it was a hot, stinking place and the long drive tired him a little these days and he wanted to meet Rossy at his briskest and best; but really, as he knew in his heart, because he was in mortal fear. Standing there on the steps in the mild Nilgiri sunshine, he was irritably conscious that he had taken special pains with himself; that he was holding himself super-erect; that he had shaved with accuracy, brushed and re-brushed his hair; that he was wearing a suit which he solemnly believed became him. And all for a brat of a girl—a brat born of that Lynna whom he had damned and despised, to whom he had even refused shelter till fortunate misfortune drove her back to his house. Tschah!
Sharp on time—Karim Khan was a dependable driver—the big Packard came sweeping up the drive. Ross stiffened to rigidity, just conscious that he made rather a fine figure; and Rossy jumped out—a grownup Rossy in a coat and skirt and a Terai, her hair different, her face different—no, it wasn’t! She raced up the steps.
“Granny!”
He began his prepared phrases. “Well, here’s a fine young lady to come back to a poor old man!” But her arms, her strong young arms, flew round his neck, and whether he actually uttered the words or not he never knew. Her eyes, he was astonished to see, were full of great tears. “Oh, Granny, I am glad to be back.” The tears suddenly transferred themselves; Ross thought, “God Almighty! In another second I’ll be greetin’!” Turning, he cursed Karim Khan for dropping a suitcase. But—oh, the relief!
It was some time before he could get her sat down to the wonderful lunch he had prepared for her; even then she kept springing up and running backwards and forwards. Sitting or standing or flitting about, his eyes followed her. “She’s back,” he thought, “she’s back!” Suddenly she said, through a mouthful of chocolate pudding:
“Granny, it’s not true that Torteval’s gone?”
He started. “Torteval? To the best of my belief the house is still standing.” He looked closely into her face and dropped his banter. “But it’s true the works are closed down.”
She flushed suddenly. “So Aunt Conna said. Oh, Granny, how could Uncle Duffy do it? Our Torteval!”
Ross stared at her. So that was how she felt about it. “Our Torteval.” Little enough she had ever seen of it; unkind enough it had been to her mother and to the brother that mother had loved; yet the creature had tradition. “Our Torteval.” If Duffy could have said that, by God! he might be working the place yet. . . . Our Torteval! He came out of his reverie.
“Folks must do as things’ll do with them. He just couldn’t manage it.”
“He just couldn’t have tried. I’d never have given up. And to be beaten by—them!”
Her grandfather reached out and patted her hand. “There’s a kind of a justice in all these things. If ye’ll take the trouble to remember just who—they—were——”
She flushed scarlet. “Oh, Granny, I’m sorry!”
“It’s no matter. But just think it over to yourself some time and ye’ll see how it all works out.”
With the coffee he found courage at last to put the question—the absurd, absurdly portentous question—that had trembled on his lips all day.
“And ye don’t think me too old altogether?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Well, I’m not going to say all I do think. You know, anyway. Oh, Granny, you old silly, you do know. But just man to man, you look five years younger than I ever expected. You look splendid. And I’d have loved you however you looked. There!”
“Well——” He began a sentence and choked on it; suddenly they both laughed. It didn’t matter, it was all right, no need for words. He said, to mask his ridiculous satisfaction, “And where’s the young man?”
She took him up at once. “In his place.”
“He would be.” He chuckled with delight. “He would be that, Rossy. But—was there no young birkie at home?”
She shook her head.
“No bright young spark on the boat coming out?” Her tell-tale flush gave her away and he saw it. “Eh? Eh?”
She looked at him squarely across the coffee-cups. “À la guerre comme à la guerre. That’s French for ‘On the boat’s just on the boat.’ There won’t be any young men now, Granny. I—don’t—want—them.”
Lazing back in his chair he doted on her across the table—the little flushed resolute face that paled the hair, now so carefully dressed, above it; tilted chin, firm mouth, straightforward eyes. Under her frock she had the clear beginnings of a figure; her arms were prettily moulded—her legs, too, no doubt, if you saw them, that used to be so long and flat and full of knees. He said aloud:
“Well, well, we’ll see.” And to himself he thought, “The bonny wee thing! And the joke is that she believes it!”
To the end of her life Rossy was to remember that cold weather of 1933-4 as an idyll, a retreat, a time out of time. The winter months marched patiently over, the seasons changing with the same slow subtlety as the stars in the sky. Day after day the crisp sunshine of the Nilgiris baked and warmed the enchanted hills; followed cold clear nights of stars and owls and the scent of eucalyptus wood burning. Yesterday was fine and to-day; beyond question to-morrow would be fine again and the day after that. One took no thought; day succeeded day with sunshine and mists and dews and the cloud shadows racing on the Downs and the song of birds in every shola. Dreaming, dozing, half-asleep in a trance of complete happiness, Rossy went through the months.
And for Ross, too, the world stood still. For perhaps the first time in his life he gave up thought of the future; gave up, too, those senile wanderings into the inaccessible past. Somappa, Torteval, Sleepy Valley, became as things read in a half-forgotten book, things that had no connection with himself. And no longer, he felt, was it necessary to lash himself into energy; he almost forgot his pride in being “young for his age.” He gave up his riding; sold his riding-horses; and laughed at his doctor’s approval of the act.
“I’m too old for it, eh?”
The I.M.S. Colonel smiled at him. “Well, you’re—seventy-five.”
“Just because I had that bit of a turn last year.”
“You don’t want another.” But he thought sadly—“He will have another and if that doesn’t finish him, the third will. Still, it may be a long way off meantime; I’ll say nothing.”
Ross told everyone he had never been so well; they replied—and truly—that he had never looked it. Daily Karim Khan drove him somewhere with Rossy, round the lovely unfrequented roads and byroads of Ooty. They drove mostly in silence, Ross with his hands on his stick staring into the beautiful world, taking it all in; Rossy with her hands in her lap or under her chin, dreaming, dreaming—about nothing.
The outside world intruded scarcely at all, but in early February came a letter from Duffy announcing news that to himself at least was of vital importance. Elspeth had spoilt her own round-the-world honeymoon by getting in the family way. They were in Japan at the time, but Elspeth thought she wouldn’t like to have a baby in Japan; so they were crossing the Pacific to California; they would take a house there and there they would cast anchor till the baby was born and perhaps thereafter. Duffy’s letter was restrained, almost deprecatory; but between the lines one read fatuous delight.
Rossy said, “Another grandchild for you, darling. I wonder if it’ll be a boy this time.”
But Ross said, drily yet a shade wistfully, “Boy or girl, I doubt he’s left it ower-long.”
Peter Nicholls wrote twice to Rossy; receiving neither reply nor acknowledgment, he wrote no more. Shying from what he would himself have called “slop,” he developed a vein of epistolary humour that came at times perilously near facetiousness; but Rossy liked his letters—as a tribute and for themselves. All the same she had no intention of answering them; and the most ardent love-letter would have fallen equally flat at Lebanon. “Silly great baby,” Rossy thought, “I like him awfully; but I’m not going on with him now.” There were to be no young men just now—no men at all except Granny. Queerly she felt, “Until certain days, certain destinies, are accomplished, I’m not ready for them, I don’t want them, I just won’t have them.”
And then, gradually, the sun became fiercer; the Downs burned brown and black, the streams dried, March hardened into April and the Ooty “season” began. With it, as if to spoil everything, came Raleigh and Conna and their daughters.
Raleigh looked tired, but Conna—the least thing stouter—was exuberant and the Gee-Gees—conspicuous successes of their Madras “season”—were intimately assured. Grace had shed that air of faintly eager hesitation which had been her particular charm; Gloria had lost her colour and acquired a tendency to shriek. She had built up a reputation for devil-may-care courage; she had taken lessons at the Madras Flying Club and had done a solo flight—some said two. She was going to hunt at Ooty; Grace wasn’t. Grace was becoming regarded as the particular property of Stephen Gilroy who was proceeding, however, with deadly caution; Gloria had a number of swains but there was a young Under-Secretary to whom she had shown kindness. . . . They were very grand people altogether.
All this Rossy heard in gossip before she went to see them at Nithsdale, the house they had taken for the season. (Conna, whose memories of the Black Grannie Row remained bright and terrible after thirteen years, still fought utterly shy of Lebanon.) And it was on her way to this visit, curiously enough, that Rossy met Stephen. She would have passed him with a dutiful smile but he crossed the road and stopped her.
“Rossy! Why haven’t we seen you in Madras?”
“Because I haven’t been there.”
“But why not?”
“Because I know a better place to be.”
“You must have been pretty dull up here all by yourself.”
Dull! Those lovely months, that idyll, dull; but then they would have been dull to him. She looked into his face and suddenly liked it—smooth, thoughtful, with kind eyes, looking at her as if he really cared whether she were dull or not. She thought, “I won’t snub him too hard.” She quizzed him instead.
“Now you’ve come it’ll brighten up.”
Quite seriously he explained that he was making merely a flying visit; he had come for the Races: “I’ve got a horse running.”
“It’ll win, of course.”
“Well, I hope so. But why of course?”
“It’s got to. Successful men’s horses have got to be winners.”
He laughed. “So you think I’m a successful man.”
“Of course you are.” And she added mischievously, “How’s Grace?”
The smile died but he stood the fire calmly. “She’s very well, I believe.”
“You believe; haven’t you been to see her?”
“I was just going.”
“Well, just don’t go for an hour or so because I’m on my way. I thought of it first. And I’d better get on. . . . I suppose I’m to back your horse?”
Complacently he said, “You might do worse.”
“Well, I won’t; I’ll back Granny’s.”
His face became suddenly quite serious. “Oh, no, Rossy, I wouldn’t——”
Laughing, she left him and made her way to Nithsdale. The Misses Beverell were at home and received her with cold composure. As a matter of fact Gloria, looking from the window, had said, “Oh, God, here’s Rossy,” and Grace had replied, “Well, let’s get her over; we’ll have to some time.” They talked Madras, carefully exposing Rossy’s Boeotian ignorance of its current scandals, promotions, engagements and other intimacies. To bring them down to earth she said suddenly:
“I’ve just had a long talk with Stephen.”
Gloria frowned; Grace gave herself away by asking sharply, “Where?”
“On the road. Below the Club. Perfectly proper. . . . Are you engaged yet, Grace?”
Grace flushed; she was always on the look-out for leg-pulling which she hated. “No, of course not; how could we be?”
“I don’t know. Everybody seems to expect it. And I told him he was a successful man and he didn’t deny it.”
Grace took it seriously. “You shouldn’t have done anything of the kind. And as for people—they’re pigs!”
“So there’s nothing between you?”
Baited and realising herself baited, Grace took refuge in silence; Gloria said rudely:
“It’s no business of yours, anyway, Rossy-Frossy.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I like Stephen.”
Gloria threw away a cigarette-end and relapsed clumsily into a chair. “You don’t know Stephen. Just because he was civil to you on the boat——”
Flushing a little despite herself, Rossy realised that a Madras season had made Gloria now the more dangerous Gee-Gee.
The interview hung and drooped; imps of dislike began to dance in the room; Rossy thought, “I’d better go.” Rising, she said, for lack of anything better:
“I suppose Gloria’s going to play in the Golf Championship?”
Grace nodded and was beginning to speak; but Gloria, her face suddenly ugly with hate, wheeled on her way to the door.
“And I suppose you’re going to hide in a bush and watch every shot I play.”
Rossy felt herself paling; it had been all very well to make fun of the Gee-Gees, to rag Grace about her lover; but this was serious hate—a bad way to begin the season. She thought, “What a brick to drop! and I was only trying to be conversational.” Aloud she retorted with characteristic vigour:
“Oh, you’re not going to be a baby and cheat now surely.”
Gloria stared at her. “I never cheated and you know it.”
“Oh, well, then, you didn’t.” But looking at Grace’s expressionless face, Rossy wondered, “What does she believe? Does she think I made it all up? If so, why?—Jealousy, I suppose.” Uncomfortably she said:
“Well, I’ll get along.”
Gloria yawned and lounged away but Grace unexpectedly got up and accompanied Rossy down the drive; on the impulse of the moment Rossy put her question into words.
“Grace, you didn’t think that was all a lie? About Gloria and the golf, I mean.”
Grace, sober and rather beautiful, considered.
“No, I didn’t think it was a lie.”
“You—knew it wasn’t.”
“I didn’t know anything about it.” But suddenly Grace’s calm deserted her. “Oh, Rossy, you musn’t ever tell a soul but I’m frightened about Gloria.”
“Frightened? Oh, Grace! But how?”
“The things she does; the things she’d like to do. She hasn’t—she doesn’t seem to have any morals. Not about—about sex, I mean”—Grace in 1934 could still blush and did—“but other things.”
“Like cheating?”
“Well, yes.”
Rossy looked at her cousin, desperately sorry. Grace, with her high ideals of honour, her sheer passion for fairness—to have a sister who cheated, who liked cheating. She said:
“Does Aunt Conna know?”
“No. And I daren’t tell her. She thinks Gloria’s just a child—young and innocent and all that. I don’t know what she’d say.”
“Grace! What has Gloria done? I mean, what sort of things?” But Grace had recovered and was regretting her outburst. She gave Rossy a genuine Lafauce freezer.
“Oh, I couldn’t really tell you. I expect I’ve imagined a lot of it——”
Rossy, who had no patience with people who went half-way and then resiled, said crossly, “Don’t then.” But looking at her cousin, she saw that Grace was really and genuinely frightened about Gloria; what fearful things could Gloria have done? Or wanted to do? And suddenly, instinct gave her a deeper vision and she saw the terrible fear that lurked in Grace’s heart, the fear that said, “Suppose Stephen got to know about them?” Poor Grace! it must be torture. In a moment of warm impulse she said:
“Grace, are you awfully in love with Stephen?” Grace flushed with vexation. “Oh, Rossy, the questions you ask. Really at times you’re impossible.” She became suddenly peevish. “I don’t think you need have spoken to Stephen to-day. Just because he was nice to you on that horrible boat “
Rossy felt herself turning from sympathy to furious anger. “He spoke to me first. I couldn’t get rid of him.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t then,” said Rossy for the second time, and went off with her head in the air. Really, they were an insufferable pair. “Just because he was civil, just because he was nice on the boat—+” The impudence of them! Half-way down the long hill she met Stephen toiling upwards; composing her face, she said:
“Coast’s clear.”
He stopped and drew a handkerchief across his brow. “These mountains——”
She said, “Walk down with me as far as the church. I haven’t seen you for years.”
He said hastily and, she thought, with a touch of panic, “I can’t. Good gracious, I’ve got to get to Nithsdale. I’m late already.”
But she smiled on him and he turned and walked with her as far as the church—and even a little beyond; mountains or no mountains.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
At the Races Conna and Gloria and Grace were all in the Chief Minister’s lunch party; Raleigh seemed to have absconded—he worked, they said, harder than ever, he had prospects of a C.I.E., he was Government’s good boy. Mrs. Beverell and the Misses Beverell were very grand indeed, far too grand to do more than smile distantly at Rossy. During the afternoon Conna would almost certainly be taken to talk to His Excellency; Grace’s man was going to saddle the winner of the Zamindars’ Cup. Or was he? thought Rossy with sudden hostility. He mustn’t; the enemy—for now she felt quite openly that they were the enemy—must be balked of that triumph. Torteval—our Torteval—must beat them.
Hanging over the paddock rail as the horses went round before the big race, Rossy looked at her card. “Mr. S. Gilroy’s Crucible, 8 st. 13 lbs.” “Mr. D. R. Cowal’s Ben-y-Gloe, 8 st. 11 lbs.” Nothing in that. Camps rode Crucible; Whimsey rode Ben-y-Gloe. Nothing in that either. Ross’s big chestnut horse, lounging past, looked vacantly into her face, as if saying, “Run? Run? Who ever heard of a horse running?” She felt her eyes fill suddenly with tears. “Oh, Ben, you must, you must. Don’t let him win it.” Torteval!
She sought out her grandfather where he sat in a corner of the stand, erect and handsome. She said:
“Grannie, the Ben’s got to win.”
He shook his head, smiling.
“He can’t win, dearie. He’s old—like me. Gilroy’s horse’ll win.”
She stamped. “He mustn’t, he mustn’t.”
He looked at her in surprise. “What ails ye at poor Stephen? I thought he was a friend of yours.”
“I don’t want him to beat—us. . . . Granny, I’m going to back the Ben. I believe he can do it.”
He shook his head again. “Back Crucible. If ye’ve a down on Stephen, why not make a little out of him? Isn’t that more sensible like?”
“It isn’t Stephen. But I don’t want—them—to win.”
“Them?”
She pointed to a resplendent group on the lower steps of the stand.
“Oh, I see—your cousins.” He began to twinkle; inwardly he was thinking, “Declaration of war; by God, they haven’t wasted much time.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Better wait for another chance.”
But Rossy’s little mouth hardened and descending, she backed Ben-y-Gloe as heavily as she dared. This was more than a mere horse-race now, its implications had widened, it was a battle, an issue, a test of fate. She had fifty rupees at five to one and five “win” tickets on the Tote. And as she reached the stand again the bell rang. Off! She wheeled to watch.
It was a small field and they ran close together—a little cloud of horses and colours. For three-quarters of the distance that tight little cloud came rolling unbroken, shifting infinitesimally only within itself; it was impossible to say what was happening; all round Rossy a fidgeting uneasy hush, full of small sounds, prevailed. Then suddenly an unknown voice behind her, harsh and metallic, said sharply, “Crucible!” For a moment Rossy saw the black-and-silver that had become suddenly so dear—Ross’s colours, Torteval’s colours—well forward on the outside; then from out the heart of the confusion a great dark horse came masterfully striding. The harsh voice said again, more confidently, “Crucible!” The rough name sounded like an oath; but there was rising delight in the voice; and away came the big dark horse under Camps in silks of a loathsome red-and-yellow—striding away, winning, winning by lengths and lengths, winning all by his horrible self. In the ruck somewhere the black-and-silver flashed past, Whimsey pulling up.
Slowly Rossy re-climbed the stand, mechanically tearing up her tickets. Ross turning to twit her, saw to his amazement that her eyes were blurred. She said:
“Mind if I go home now, Granny?”
He jumped up. “I’ll come with ye. Nothing to wait for here.” In the car he saw that she was white and sniffing ominously. Rent for her disappointment he said awkwardly and in that broad Scots which came from his very heart:
“Dinna greet, Rossy.”
She said gaspingly, “I didn’t want them to win. I wanted us to.”
He thought warmly, “So it’s ‘them’; and it’s ‘us.’ Declaration of war!” He put an arm round her shoulders.
“Never heed, lambie, never heed; we’ll beat them another day.”
But she turned her head and wept bitterly into his coat.
Gloria succeeded in qualifying for the play-off in the Ladies’ Golf Championship; succeeded, without grave difficulty, in playing herself into the final. In the final—to the general surprise and to her own acute fury—she was beaten by a dark horse, a Jewess from Bombay called Risca. Sympathies were with Gloria in her disappointment. Mrs. Risca was making her first visit to Ooty and Ooty distrusted and was inclined to dislike this sparkling exotic, so highly coloured and so lavishly jewelled. The male Risca (who did not appear) was said to be fabulously wealthy and was seen to have invested at least one small fortune in the adornment of his wife. It was thought bad form. As someone said to Rossy:
“Fancy wearing diamonds and emeralds to the Golf Club. And leaving them in the Ladies’ Room, too. One day she’ll lose them.”
Rossy yawned, uninterested.
“Who would take them?”
“The boys. The sweepers.”
“Rot. They couldn’t get away with diamonds and emeralds. It’s loathsome swank of her, I agree, but it’s safe enough.”
In herself Mrs. Risca was handsome and agreeable, a little puzzled that people would not like her better; her golf was genuinely too good for Gloria. Gloria was increasingly rude to her throughout the round, but Mrs. Risca, suavely good-tempered, smiled her way to the finish. Offering tea, she was repulsed with unnecessary brusqueness; she smiled herself away but with a gleam like a stiletto in her eye.
Rossy had not intended to witness the final, feeling that the temptation to pray for Gloria’s defeat would be too strong; but some trifle took her out to the Golf Club and there unexpectedly she encountered Stephen Gilroy. She said:
“Hullo, I thought you were only up for the Races?” He gave her his dog-like look. “I went down and came back again.”
“Of course there’s an attraction; I forgot. Do you still believe she’s very well?”
He let that pass, saying merely, “Walk round with me; I want to see the game.”
“I don’t.”
“I walked with you the other day when you asked me.”
“Yes, but you wanted to.”
He smiled. “Come on, Rossy; I hate doing things by myself.”
“Well, where’s Grace?”
“I don’t know; I think she must be out with the match.”
Rossy hesitated. “Oh, well, anything for a quiet life. If we see Grace I’ll fade away.”
He looked at her with sudden boldness. “Why should you?”
Rossy, rather embarrassed, muttered about two being company. But when they caught up with Gloria’s match, Grace was not in view; they followed the game for several holes, saw Gloria’s downfall and then in some unaccountable manner set off for a long walk on the Downs. It was a pleasant walk; afternoon thunder had cleared the air to a crystalline luminance and it seemed that some spiritual thunder had similarly cleared the relationship between Stephen and Rossy. They talked intimately on a dozen subjects, discovered a dozen unexpected agreements, liked one another more and more; and it was only when they were walking up the eighteenth hole towards the Golf Club under the gaze of the massed youth and fashion on the terrace that Rossy realised they had been away together quite a considerable time. She said:
“I see Grace. And Gloria. You’re for it.”
Stephen was doggishly unrepentant. “Well, I’ve had a nice walk.”
“When are you two going to get engaged?”
He coloured painfully. “I don’t think you ought to ask me that, Rossy; really I don’t.”
She surveyed him; his jaw was unexpectedly firm and set; perhaps he had some spunk in him after all.
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t. But your friends are all anxious.”
“It takes two to make an engagement.”
She said staringly, “You know as well as I do that Grace is very fond of you.” And staring back at her, he replied:
“Well, that’s only one.”
They were at the Golf Club steps; there was no more to be said; just at its most entertaining moment the conversation must end. For if Stephen’s last words had any meaning at all they meant that he had not made up his mind, that Grace was by no means sure of him after all. And that was really rather an entrancing idea. Who, Rossy wondered, was the rival?
Before she could speak, however, he had said good-bye and turned away to where Grace and Gloria were sitting—Gloria obviously in thunderous sulks and Grace staring into the sunset with a fixed expression.
“He’s got courage, anyway,” Rossy thought half-ruefully; “these two’ll tear his hair out. What’s left of it.”
She forgot Stephen in an hour’s time, but as she was dressing that evening her ayah brought her a note addressed in Gloria’s handwriting; the envelope held a single sheet of notepaper—not the embossed Nithsdale paper but cheap blue stuff from the bazaar such as the servants used. The note had clearly been scrawled in a hurry and under strong emotion; it ran:
“Dear Rossy-Frossy, I suppose you are glad I got beaten by that Daygo woman. I saw you snooping round watching to see if I would cheat. Or were you too much occupied gazing into Steven’s eyes? Thank you so much for coming and putting me off my game.—G. B.”
Rossy read the note twice and then threw it down with a little shiver. There was something uncanny, something really frightening in hate of this calibre. Say that Gloria was a spoilt child, say she was a bad loser, say that she wrote in the heat and injustice of a bitter disappointment; say what you liked, you made no excuse for this venomous fury expressed in this housemaid style. The note was a splash of vitriol in the face, a stab, a shot, a murder-intentioned thing. So Gloria had sat at the Golf Club sulking and thinking this out and had gone home and dashed it straight off and sent it round. You could see where the pencil, frantically driven, had bitten into the rough paper. And the insult of it! Stephen’s eyes, indeed. Rossy began to tremble with anger; how dared she write like that, the little beast! And she couldn’t even spell: “Daygo” and “Steven” with a “v” instead of a “ph.”
The ayah was hovering at the door. “Missy please sending any answer?” Rossy said “No” and shook herself and went on with her dressing. She looked round for somewhere to put the note; in the warm May night the bedroom fire had not been lit; if she threw it there some servant might find and read it. In the end she pushed it into her dressing-case, snapping the locks viciously. Insulting little beast! Thank goodness the “Daygo” woman did beat her, anyway.
Stephen’s eyes forsooth!
Next morning Rossy had another letter—much more pleasant but in its way almost equally worrying—from Peter Nicholls. Peter wrote this time, poor fellow, without any facetiousness; he had been down with fever; he had wangled a week in the Hills out of it; if she would let him see her sometimes he would come to Ooty, if not he would go somewhere else. Instantly, reading it, that queer inhibition rose in Rossy—“I don’t want to see him yet. I will want to see him some day but not just now.”
She took the letter out with her and spent the long forenoon sitting in the scented eucalyptus woods above Lebanon gazing at the Kundahs with a writing-pad on her knees; but her resolution would not change. It was no use calling herself a silly, a fool, a Miss, a muff, a Sally Hesitation; inexorable came the reply—not yet, not yet. Queerly she felt, “I’ll need him one day: wait till then.” She began to compose a reply to Peter; by the time the twelve o’clock gun startled her with its echoes she had it nearly perfect. Hastily she scribbled, “Dear Brinjer,” (he stuck to that idiotic name as if he liked it) “Thank you for your nice letter. I’m sorry about the fever. About Ooty, will you be a dear and understand? I feel somehow I don’t want to see you yet. I can’t tell you why; I don’t know myself. I feel if I see you now something—I don’t know what—will be spoilt. Do try to understand. I’ll tell you the minute I feel different.” She signed it “ Rossy.” And she added a foolish postscript—“I think I will want to see you one day.” Wandering down the hill to Lebanon she wished she had said “I’m sure” in the postscript instead of “I think”; it would have pleased Peter and it was practically true. At Lebanon, however, all thoughts of Peter were instantly evicted: Ross, with the blackest look she had seen on his face that year, summoned her into what he still called his office and to her hurried enquiry if anything was wrong answered:
“Gilroy’s been here.”
“Stephen!” She jumped. “What on earth did he want?”
“He wasn’t very sure himself. He wanted a lot of things. But he left this. I had to swear not to show ye before he would part with it; but ye’re a grown girl and ye ought to see it. . . . Have ye any sort of notion who wrote it?”
He threw a sheet of notepaper across the table to her and even as she picked it up Rossy knew something deadly familiar in the rough yet rotten feel, the washy blue, of the cheap bazaar paper. She read it slowly and again. It was scrawled in block capitals and ran—”Mister Steven Gilroy.
You like Rossy Frost don’t you? You wouldn’t if you knew. She isn’t your sort. Her father was a Daygo. She had a black grannie. You ask her if she hadn’t.” It was unsigned.
Rossy, gaping stupidly at the horrible thing, started a third reading and as she did so her heart turned over within her. Who wrote it? She knew perfectly well who wrote it. There was no “y” in “dago” and Stephen spelt his name with a “ph” not with a “v.” And “black grannie”—she lifted her eyes for a moment and there was “Black Grannie’s cottage” smiling in the sunshine at the end of that demure little path poor Coaces had trod so seldom. From the mists of childhood arose that queer day in this very house of Lebanon—that day of bewildering uproar, of ill-understood scolding; in fact, the celebrated “Black Grannie Row.” . . . Who wrote this? Rossy knew beyond question who wrote it and the knowledge made her suddenly sick. For the fellow of this odious thing lay in her dressing-case upstairs waiting to be burnt; written on the same sort of paper and with the identical spelling mistakes in “Stephen” and “dago.” .. . Who wrote it? Gloria wrote it.
Revolted sickness gave place in Rossy to blazing fury and that in turn to cold disgust; then, as these subsided, came the realisation that she held in her hand a weapon which would destroy Them, the Gee-Gees, Anti-Torteval, finally and for ever and—she couldn’t use it, couldn’t ever use it, couldn’t possibly mention it or admit its existence. Not to Ross, not to Raleigh, not to Conna, not to Grace. It was far too vile ever to be used; and—it was far too powerful; loose it and you would raise a storm that would blow them all out of Ooty. . . . Gloria! the little cad, the little horror. She went through the letter yet again, taking it all in and seeing, this time, that the first part of it was far worse than the second. So Stephen had read that about her and Gloria had written it. . . . She heard her voice say:
“Oh—filthy!”
Ross growled, “It’s all that”—and thought with grim humour, “Dago, eh? How many times have I called yon Frost a Dago myself—and the poor chap a good Englishman all the time.” He said, his eyes on Rossy’s, “It’s filthy enough. But can ye give us any help as to the writer?”
Rossy had to think quickly; she knew she must not hesitate for he was as sharp as a needle for all his seventy-five years. She said promptly:
“How could I, Granny? It’s some beast in the Bazaar. Other girls have these things—only much worse.”
He nodded, half-convinced. There had been epidemics of anonymous letters in Ooty—letters usually traced to some half-witted Eurasian or Indian. But these had been just aimless dirt—the pornography of sexual aberration; this was quite a different story and seemed moreover to show some specialised family knowledge. Who, then, possessed the rare combination of a sufficient knowledge of current Cowal affairs and a mind foul enough to write this letter? Ross could think of no one. He stretched out his hand.
“Well, give it back to me. We’ll see what the Police say.”
But Rossy clung to the letter; she was thinking rapidly, “She’s my own cousin, she’s my own cousin; it’s Gloria; there’s Grace to think of, there’s Stephen; we can’t let anyone know, we simply can’t. If Granny finds out, nothing will stop him; he’ll go to law, we’ll have courts, scenes, newspapers—oh, impossible!” She said:
“No, Granny dear, let me try first. I know a girl who got one of these things a while ago. Let me compare the writing and all that.” And suddenly she thought, with an insane impulse to laughter, “I do know just such a girl—I do indeed.”
Rather unexpectedly, he pressed it no further; somehow she got out of the room. Upstairs she snatched the other letter from her dressing-case; yes, the same paper, rough and cheap and washy and furry; and she could almost discern resemblance in certain capitals. Hastily she took both letters into her bathroom and bolted the doors. She made a little pile of torn paper in a corner and set a match to it, watching it burn till the last ash was black and scattered. Then in a sudden passion of fury she stamped on the horror, ground her heel into it, scraped it into the floor.
Sitting with Ross through a belated and unusually silent lunch, she was made no happier by seeing that the vile thing had hit her Granny harder than he would admit. They spoke no more of the subject, but he ate very little, and when she sent him to lie down immediately after tiffin, he fell asleep at once and slept on and on very deeply and with stertorous breathing. She went once or twice to peep at him where he lay, and she thought there was a charged, suffused look about his dark, carven face. So that all the long afternoon she sat in her room frightened, frightened.
Between tea and dinner she stole out and posted her letter to Brinjer. For though she was still quite clear that she didn’t want Brinjer—not yet—it was comfort to think that in a world where such horrors lurked and sprang, there was someone somewhere——
On the 7th of June, just before the burst of the monsoon, Government House gave a dance; and on the afternoon of that day Stephen and Rossy had their second long walk together. Stephen, taking no chances, had written to propose this a full week in advance, couching his letter in fin-de-saison melancholy: “It’s my last day in the Hills, I’m going down on the 8th. Do give me another decent walk before I go.” Rossy, searching for some pretext on which to refuse him, could find none; he had cunningly inveigled her into an advance admission that she had no engagement for that afternoon; it was useless to say, “Why not Grace?” because Grace, tireless at tennis and indefatigable as a dancer, walked only under strict compulsion, and in any case if he had wanted Grace he could have asked her. Presently, turning things over, she saw she did not really want to refuse him at all. The idea of walking with Stephen had in all the circumstances a horrible attraction; it would be like a book with one of those complicated plots. They would walk with that anonymous letter between them; he knew about it and she knew about it, but she knew that he knew whereas he didn’t know that she knew. Moreover, she knew what he must never know—namely, who wrote it. It would be a rather ghastly kind of fun. As regards the letter itself nothing more had transpired; Ross had asked about it once and she had said hastily, “I haven’t had a proper chance to see Sylvia yet”—inventing “Sylvia” ad hoc. He had seemed satisfied and had, she hoped, forgotten it. She had met Gloria half-a-dozen times—had even managed to speak to her as if nothing had happened. Gloria had been civil—barely. So it would be fun of a kind to walk with Stephen and to make him talk more about Grace and to think all the time, “If you knew what I know——”
So on the afternoon of the Government House dance Stephen and Rossy drove out in Stephen’s car to Briar and walked up the long easy shoulder of Staircase. It was a still day, solidly clouded, veiled in the torpor that immediately precedes the monsoon; the landscape waited, cowering a little, for the blast that must presently come. They sat on some rocks near the summit and presently, after a silence, Stephen began to talk about going down next day. She took him up mischievously.
“And it isn’t fixed up yet?”
“It?”
“You know fine what I mean. Are you engaged or aren’t you?”
He dug in the turf with his walking-stick. “That’s just it. That’s just what I want to talk about.”
Rossy thought, “Oh!” but she said nothing.
“You see, Rossy, I’ll tell you just how it is.” He went on poking at the turf, looking deliberately away from her. “I want to get married. I want children. It’s time. I’ve got to that age.”
“You’ve got forty-year-panic, Stephen.”
He said with his delicious seriousness, “I’m not quite forty yet. What’s forty-year-panic?”
“It’s a thing men get—bachelors, I mean. Up to forty they’re rather cocky. They say, ‘Ha, ha, how clever I’ve been. Look at all these poor mutts who’ve married. Not me!’ And then suddenly they wake up one morning and think, ‘Oh, God, I’m missing something big; there’s something in it after all.’ And they panic and they run round looking for someone to marry them and they grab the first girl who says yes.”
He was piqued. “I don’t think I’ve done anything like that. Yet in a way—in a way you’re right. It does sort of come over one. Well, anyway, panic or no panic, I’m quite clear that I want to get married.”
“Well, why don’t you ask her?”
“Ask who?”
“Grace, of course, silly.”
He stabbed the turf more viciously. “I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing in Grace; it makes things so difficult for me. Because you see, the first thing I want to ask before I go any further is—would I have any earthly chance with you?”
Completely staggered, Rossy sat up as if shot; two thoughts flew into her mind—“My God! it’s a proposal!” and “Grace!” Somewhere in the intense silence she heard her grandfather saying, “We’ll beat them another time.” Torteval! Well, the time was here and now. But was it a proposal? She thought, “Brass tacks; I must have this clear.”
“Stephen, do you mean—— Are you asking me to marry you?”
He nodded. “Just that. Now listen, Rossy”—his voice rose to eagerness—“I don’t expect an answer here and now. I know you couldn’t give it. I know you’re a very young girl still and all that. All I want’s an answer to my question—the question I’ve just asked you.”
“Say it again, Stephen. I didn’t quite get it.”
“I said—would I ever have any chance with you?”
Rossy looked at him helplessly. “I’m going to laugh,” she thought, “I’m going to cry; both.” Suddenly she sobered; Stephen must have his answer. How to tell him that he was infinitely kind, infinitely sweet but as dead as the stones of Staircase; that from her point of view he was old, old; that the idea of settling down with anyone so elderly, so canny, so—so Stephenish was utterly unthinkable. Unsolicited there came a photographic vision of Peter Nicholls—daft, selfish, unreliable, haphazard but young, contemporary. “I don’t want Peter—yet; but oh I don’t want Stephen—ever. I couldn’t; never. But how to tell him?”
Well, the quickest way and the shortest way was best. Sitting very erect, shrinking from him despite herself, she said:
“No.”
He jab-jabbed at the ground, still looking away from her.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. It’s no, no, no.”
He sighed. “I rather expected as much. Well—thank you, Rossy; you’ve been frank, anyway. That clears the air.”
Her sympathy veered to anger. “You don’t seem broken-hearted; you’re pretty businesslike about it.”
He sat up, not at all offended. “I am businesslike. Why not? It is a business. It’s the most important business in my life, anyway—in any man’s life. If only fellows would take it like that instead of going slapdash You see, Rossy, if you could have given me any encouragement at all, I’d have been just completely content. As it is——”
“As it is,” snapped Rossy, “you’ll try the second string.” “But it is the second string,” she thought, “and the second string’s Grace. Oh, Torteval, Torteval, triumph of Torteval—even if it’s one more thing nobody—least of all Grace—can ever hear about. Grace-the-next-best-thing! ‘We’ll beat them another time.’ Also ran——” She felt suddenly outraged by Stephen, sitting there so douce and complacent, reviewing in his mind the list of girls he would try and try till one of them threw herself into his arms. Well, one of them would—not a doubt about that; probably the very next one he asked. She said, “When you propose to Grace——”
“Who said I was going to propose to Grace?”
“I’ll bet you do. When you do, for goodness’ sake don’t do it like this.”
He smiled and got up, saying nothing. But walking down the hill she began to feel contrite; after all, he had been good to her, offered her his biggest possession; he must be disappointed in his heart though he had a strange way of showing—or rather not showing—it. There he walked, so smug and unshaken. “I wonder,” she thought, “if he’s really alive. I’d like to stick a pin into him; I’d like to startle him; I’ll try.” She laid a hand on his sleeve.
“Stephen.”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad of one thing.”
“What’s that, Rossy?”
“You’ve shown me you didn’t believe that letter. . . . That letter you got about me.”
His face changed suddenly altogether. “My God! Your grandfather never let you see that?”
“Of course he did. It was my business. I might have been able to guess who wrote it.” (“And I was, too,” she thought thrillingly.)
But Stephen’s face was stricken, he was infinitely upset.
“What does it matter who wrote it? It was abominable. You should never have seen it. Never. I can’t think——”
“Anyway, you didn’t believe it.”
“Believe it! Oh, Rossy, Rossy, you sweet child——”
She thought, “What have I done? I have wakened him up. Oh, Lord!” She said soothingly, “Well, never mind; it’s burnt; let’s forget it.”
But Stephen was unable to forget it; on the drive back to Lebanon he sat with his chin in his hands staring out of the window in silence. Rossy thought and thought—if he knew! At Lebanon, climbing out of the car, she patted his shoulder.
“Now buck up, Stephen. You’ve a lot before you to-night. Pull yourself together.”
He said, “You’ll be at the dance?” and she replied, “Oh, yes, I’ll be there.” He drove away.
“But he asked me first,” thought Rossy, standing on the steps, “he asked me first; nothing on earth can ever alter that. I’ll never, never be able to tell Grace, but I’ll never, never be able to alter it either. . . .”
Grace dressed for the dance that evening slowly and methodically as was her wont but for once a shade absent-mindedly. Two worries stood between her and her mirror, two major worries. The first was Gloria. Passionate devotion to her younger sister was and always had been one canon of Grace’s life, just as a complete honesty, an almost morbid cleanness of instinct, had been another. And the two clashed; and what could she do about it? Desperately anxious to see Gloria succeed, Grace was insanely proud when this happened; and was cast into correspondingly dismal depths when Gloria by some stupidity or worse—or very much worse—wrecked the whole triumph. Spoilt child; bad loser; these were not nice terms to have applied to one’s adored sister; but people did apply them and Grace’s flawless honesty had to admit that they applied them often with justice. At school, at Home, on that hateful boat, all through the Madras season, Gloria had made good impressions and straightway cancelled them by making very bad ones. And now, in Ooty, after an excellent start she had gone off the rails once more. She had ridden fearlessly and well in what little hunting there had so far been; people admired her and spoke of her getting a mount in the Ladies’ Point to Point in September. So far, so good. But over this wretched golf final she had behaved suicidally. She had been rude and unsporting to her opponent at the time and afterwards had worked off her rage by writing silly letters—one of abuse to Rossy which Grace had not seen but could imagine, and one of irrelevant complaint to the Golf Committee which she had read. This last was preferable, no doubt, to its only alternative—a libellous effusion to Mrs. Risca herself; but it had done Gloria no manner of good. Sighing, Grace brushed and re-brushed her Lafauce hair. Gloria was a problem, so satisfactory at times, so much the reverse at others. And it was worse than that. There were things Gloria had done in the past—really awful things—of which nobody must ever know; any time she might do them again. And what could one do? Only go watchful and ready, but frightened, frightened. Grace set down her brush and looked at a troubled face in her mirror; and there she saw her second worry.
The second worry was Stephen. Stephen was going down the next day; if he was ever to “speak,” as the housemaids put it, it must be this night. And if he didn’t “speak” she would go mad. There were disappointments one couldn’t bear. She had fallen in love with Stephen on the boat, she had loved him desperately all through the Madras season—hoping, hoping, always hoping, always disappointed. Now if there were another disappointment it would be final and she couldn’t bear it. If that happened she must ask her mother to take her back to England, away out of this cruel country of false promise. “Don’t worry—it may never happen!” But then, equally, it might. And it mustn’t, it mustn’t. Vigorously she brushed on.
The door of her room opened; Gloria lounged in fully dressed and smoking a cigarette. The Nilgiri suns had restored her complexion; she looked sulkily attractive. Grace ran a doting eye over her.
“You look sweet, darling.”
“I’ve done my best. . . . If I were you I’d rouge a bit. You’re white. . . . Has Stephen booked any dances?”
Grace nodded for the moment happily. “Yes; two, seven, second supper.”
Gloria blew a cloud of smoke and picked some fragments of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. “Then you’ll have time to ask him what he was doing with Rossy this afternoon.”
Grace’s brush fell crashing into a porcelain tray.
“With Rossy? Where?”
“How do I know? I only know they passed the Golf Club in Stephen’s car going Pykara way as I was starting out. I’d been round and was having tea outside when they passed back. So two hours and a quarter, anyway.”
Grace sat stricken. Doubts, hopes, fear, suspicions leapt on her from every side. Rossy had done it once before on the boat; again? Had it ever been undone? Swallowing hard, she picked up her brush.
“There’s no reason why they shouldn’t.”
Her sister shrugged. “None whatever.”
“Well, then, darling “ Grace mustered a gallant smile; even Gloria must not see this ultimate terror that sprang on her, this suffocating consciousness of betrayal. “Well, then, darling, what does it matter?”
Gloria was deceived for once—or perhaps she was merely uninterested. Yawning, she threw her cigarette into the fire.
“You watch that little snake, Grace. She queered my golf in the final”—Gloria had come to believe this quite solemnly—”and she’ll queer you, too, if you’re not careful. She hates us. And I hate her, and I don’t care how soon she knows it. . . . Buck up and don’t let her have Stephen.”
She lounged out again and left Grace looking helplessly at her trembling hands.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Laughable are the minutiae which alter destinies; in Grace’s case—and Stephen’s—it was a piece of elastic. In the middle of the third dance at Government House a sensation of discomfort informed Rossy that something beneath her dress was coming down; with a hasty apology to her partner she fled to the cloakroom for repairs. There, for the first time that evening, she saw Grace, quite alone and gazing into the mirror.
Rossy, dashing hurriedly in, said, “My damned knicker-elastic’s gone. Where’s the ayah? . . . Hullo, Grace, not dancing?”
Grace was sitting on the arm of a chair smoking a cigarette. She said slowly, “I’m cutting this one . . . Rossy!”
Rossy turned at the hissing “s”s, the sudden thickness in Grace’s voice. She saw her cousin’s face, colourless and blank, looking at her through blue smoke.
“What’s up?” The ayah, appearing, took the offending garment and retired with it into the background.
“Where were you with Stephen all this afternoon?”
Rossy, feeling frivolous, paused on the edge of a flippant reply; looked once more into Grace’s face and decided against.
“Well, really, Grace! . . . As a matter of fact we went up Staircase.”
Grace flicked her ash.
“Don’t you think you might leave him alone?”
Rossy’s good-humour began to chill, her voice hardened. “As I told you before, it’s Stephen who won’t leave me alone. I can’t help that, can I?”
“You can. And you don’t. You run after him.”
“I? Run after Stephen?”
“Rossy, you know you do.” Bitterness lashed poor Grace with its stinging whips, the barbed goad of jealousy turned in her flesh; her heart began to shudder, her tongue to run away with her. “And you know why you do. I don’t believe you care for him one bit——”
“I don’t. God knows I don’t——”
“But you know—you think——”—she corrected herself quickly—“you think I do and you want to hurt me. You’re out to hurt both me and Gloria, you know you are, though I don’t know why—we’ve always been as nice as we could to you.” Her pace hurried. “You did your best, and a very good best it was, to spoil Gloria’s chances in the golf——”
“Grace! It’s not true; I never did anything of the kind.”
“Yes, you did. And now you’re trying to hurt me through Stephen. You flirted with him abominably on the boat——”
The pulse in Rossy’s temple began to beat.
“That’s a lie.”
“My dear—ask anybody who was there. Ask mother. And you’ve made a set at him since he came here. Of course”—Grace’s face tightened, her cigarette fell to the floor, she stood up handsomely—“I know he doesn’t care tuppence for you really, but he’s kind-hearted, he’s soft, he can’t say No——”
Rossy’s temper snapped as sharply as the fatal elastic; she saw Grace through a red mist. There they stood at last—Torteval and anti-Torteval face to face—naked and hating and hated; the spites and ill-wills of years rushed into place behind them like armies. Torteval; anti-Torteval. Us; them. Breathing through her nose, Rossy said:
“Can’t say no, can’t he? But I can.”
“Well, say it, then.”
“I have. I did. This afternoon.”
Grace was staring now. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say. You—you beast, Grace—how dare you say such things to me! I run after that old silly. It’s he runs after me. I can’t help that, can I? I can’t help him liking me better than you.” The room swam round her scarlet as blood. “I can’t help him asking me first.”
For a full moment Grace seemed to have no face at all; it was swept away in a blur; then it refocussed—a white thing, mostly eyes. Instantly Rossy knew she had struck fatally; instantly she wished it back. Her fury fell from her, leaving nothing but a frightful pity for her cousin. Grace! She had struck her mortally, she had killed her. Impulsively she stepped forward, throwing out her arms.
“Oh, Grace, I didn’t mean it.”
Grace stopped her with a hand. “Say what you said again.”
“I don’t know what I said. It wasn’t anything. I didn’t mean it.”
“You said you couldn’t help his asking you first. You did mean it. Rossy, if I never ask you anything again you must tell me the truth. Did Stephen ask you to marry him?”
Desperate, Rossy babbled. “In a kind of way, in a sort of way——” But there was no kind of a way about it; she had been at pains to make him explicit. “Just that,” he had said unmistakably, “just that.”
“What did he say? You must know. You must tell me.”
“I—I don’t know. I—I can’t remember. Oh, Grace, I never said it. Let it be that I never said it——”
Grace looked at her with a face from which all life and being had been struck. She said very slowly:
“Yes. I see. He did.”
She turned away, picked up her handbag, lit herself a cigarette and without another word or another look at Rossy went out of the room.
The aged ayah came peering. “Missy knicker. I done mend.” Mechanically Rossy took the piece of coloured silk, and taking it suddenly gave way. “Missy knicker.” On the top of all that! She dropped into the chair where poor Grace had sat and burst into hysterical laughter. The ayah, imagining some obscure joke connected with ladies’ underclothing, cackled in sympathy. . . .
At the second supper Stephen came to Grace to claim his dance; he came purposeful but a little piqued.
“You cut number seven, Grace.”
“I’m sorry, Stephen.” Her voice, he thought, was curiously listless. “There’s such a squash; I couldn’t find you.”
“I was where I always am. . . . Well, never mind that. Do you want any supper now?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go and sit somewhere, shall we? You’re looking tired.”
“Yes,” she thought, “let’s go and sit somewhere—according to programme. Let’s go through the scene—according to programme. Let’s say all the words in the book. Let’s say ‘I love you,’ ‘I want you,’ ‘Will you?’ ‘Yes.’ . . . And to think that it might all have been real; that I might have been happy, I might have been in heaven. As it is, what am I going to say, what am I going to say? He’s Rossy’s leavings; what am I going to say? . . . Oh, God, my head’ll split.”
With his expert chivalry Stephen piloted her to the place he had already marked out. They sat down; Grace felt her hand clench on her bag, crumpling the soft stuff together. He offered her a cigarette; she shook her head; punctiliously taking permission, he lit his own. He said:
“Grace. . . . Look here, Grace, I want you to see how it is with me. . . . I want to get married. . . .”
She had a sudden intuition—this is how he began to Rossy; and at that she knew instantly what she was going to say. She laid her hand on his sleeve and through the thick dress-coat he felt the points of her fingers biting into his arm.
“Stephen!”
“Grace, my dear?”
“Are you—are you going to ask me to marry you?”
He was taken aback; moments flew past before he could rally; through them he felt her fingers gripping, gripping till they hurt.
“Well—yes—I was going—I am going——”
“Then don’t!” She drew away from him, sprang to her feet. “Don’t, Stephen. Because I can’t—can’t—can’t.”
She burst into blinding tears and fled down the dim corridors of Government House. . . .
And at Lebanon Rossy, who had abandoned the balance of her programme, was crouched by her bedroom fire in her green silk pyjamas, her arms on the leather fender-seat, her eyes, big with horror, staring at the burning logs. Torteval, Torteval, triumphant Torteval! But oh, Grace, poor Grace, poor Grace! . . . Burying her face in her soft arms, Rossy triumphant wept and wept and wept.
The monsoon duly broke and a great wash of rainwater and roaring wind came pelting over the plateau. Black clouds massed and piled over Ooty; deluges thundered down the gorged drainage channels; old eucalyptus and melanoxylon trees, beaten at last by the gale, fell crashing on the electric wires, plunging the town, the clubs, the bungalows into temporary darkness. Ross sat in his “office” listening to it and thinking over old monsoons on the Coast—of that fatal flood of ’92, of the 1907 monsoon through which Gladdy and Lynna fled to Sleepy Valley, of the 1915 monsoon when Lynna had destroyed herself to give living birth to a daughter. And in the next room that daughter sprawled by the fire and read endless novels; black weather, rain and darkness seemed to her an appropriate accompaniment without to her own dismal depression and remorse within. “Horrible things have often happened,” Rossy thought, and “I’ve hated them at the time; but of all horrible things nothing has ever been so hateful as this—victory.”
She had gone to see Grace, knowing well that Grace could never come to see her; and Grace had been decent. Grace had said:
“It doesn’t matter. Forget it, Rossy. If I can forget it, you can.”
“I don’t want to forget it; I want to make up for it.”
“Well, you can’t. . . . Anyway he’s gone now.” “Yes, he’s gone now,” whimpered Rossy, and they had cried a little together. Driving home to Lebanon, Rossy, steadied by the tears, had thought, “It wasn’t altogether my fault; she did ask for it. But, anyway, thank goodness I kept it in about Gloria’s letter to Stephen. That would have killed Grace. . . . What a hen Stephen was!”
Then came the June day which Rossy was never to forget.
It began promisingly with a break in the monsoon that tempted her out to the Golf Club after lunch. She parked her car at the Club and walked a little on the rain-silvered Downs thinking of Stephen and the hen he had been; thinking, too, of Brinjer and how strange it was that even yet, in all this depression and misery, she still felt no desire to see him. The idea of Brinjer—the idea of any man—attracted and repelled her; sobered by the grey day, she began to contemplate a lifetime of virginity. There were virgin prototypes in the family; Aunts Susan and Jane, the Ghoomri Sisters, were said to have been born without sex; they had the organs, no doubt, and the externals, but they didn’t feel anything. Would she be like that? Perhaps. . . . Perhaps not.
At the end of her walk she went into the Club-house to powder her nose and was met by a girl who said:
“I always knew it would happen and now it has.”
Rossy asked, “What has?”
“Haven’t you heard? Mrs. Risca’s rings were taken from the ladies’ room. This afternoon. While she was playing. Isn’t it awful?”
Rossy sniffed. “Diamonds and emeralds, I suppose.”
“Well, one was diamonds and emeralds. But the other was diamonds and rubies.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s very awful. Her husband’s got lakhs and stacks. He can get her other ones.”
“Oh, but for us, Rossy. It’s awful for us.”
“How? She’s been warned hundreds of times. If she likes to go on being silly “
“But don’t you see we’ve always all agreed that none of the boys or sweepers would take them.”
“Neither they would.”
“Well, then, that leaves—us. The members.”
Rossy yawned. “Oh, bosh. She must have dropped them down the place.”
“How could she without knowing?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Rossy was uninterested in Mrs. Risca, who made her think of Gloria and her “Daygoes”; turning away she saw Grace looking rather tired and bedraggled and shrunk and miserable. Grace said:
“I think it’s simply dreadful about the rings. Fancy someone thieving them—someone like ourselves. . . . Rossy, could you possibly give us a lift back to Nithsdale. Our car’s failed somehow and I promised mother I’d be back for the Ladies’ Club meeting.”
Rossy agreed at once; the only pleasure in life now lay in service to Grace. “Of course. I’m just going. Where’s Gloria?”
“Oh, titivating,” said Grace wearily; “she spends half her life in there.” But on the word Gloria appeared in a leather golf-coat and a short green skirt. She said something sulkily polite to Rossy who answered shortly; Gloria was not included in the amnesty. They went out to the car and after the argument usual to such occasions Rossy pushed both her cousins into the back seats. She drove herself, sitting alone in front, because when she had left Lebanon Karim Khan had not yet returned from his “meals”—a circumstance for which she was presently devoutly thankful.
For at Nithsdale the near door of the saloon stuck, as was its way; Gloria, who was nearest it, pushed and banged unavailingly and as no peon or servant came forward Rossy got down to help. She tugged hard, the door flew open with a jerk and Gloria’s little leather handbag, which had been lying against it, shot out on to the Nithsdale steps. Bouncing, the half-fastened flimsy thing flew open and with the neatness of some diabolical conjuror’s trick there rolled out of it on to the lower step a couple of rings. One was of diamonds and rubies, the other of diamonds and emeralds. There lay Mrs. Risca’s rings on the steps of Nithsdale and there stood Rossy and Grace and Gloria looking down at them.
It was Grace who came to her senses first. She pushed past Gloria in the car and in one movement, as it seemed, swept up bag and rings and ran up the steps. At the top she put her hand to her throat and said in a strangled voice that Rossy had never heard from her;
“Come in, come in both of you. We can’t stand here.”
Gloria struggled out of the car without speech and they followed Grace’s sailing figure into the drawing-room. In front of the fireplace Grace turned, her hand tight-clenched on those terrible rings, and said, still in that strange voice like someone talking in sleep:
“Mother’s resting. We’ve got to do something. What? Quick!”
It had all passed so rapidly that Rossy was still bewildered. She said, “But what’s happened? I don’t understand.”
Grace said, flat and toneless:
“Gloria took them. . . . Oh, Glory, and you promised me last time——”
Completely shocked, Rossy burst out, “Last time? Then it’s happened before?”
As usual Rossy’s intrusion steadied Grace; she said with cold despair:
“She took something from a shop once. We burnt it and she promised then. . . . Oh, Glory, how could you!”
Gloria had seated herself sulkily on the end of the sofa.
“Well, it was her fault, the silly old sheeny. I found them in my shoes. They’d fallen there.”
Rossy said harshly, “I don’t believe it.” From scorn her mind leapt swiftly to fear; this was a hanging matter socially, and it was a police matter, too, a crime, worse than a hundred anonymous letters—and outside the family this time. And Mrs. Risca of all people, whom Gloria had been at pains to infuriate! “She’ll find out,” thought Rossy, “she’ll prosecute; it’s certain.” Her teeth chattered.
Gloria scowled. “Who cares what you believe? I did, anyway.” And Grace, flushing, said, “Maybe she did.” Rossy stamped.
“What does it matter? Who cares where she found them? She took them all right. And they’re here now and we’ve got to get them back. . . . When were they missed?”
Grace said miserably, “Oh, hours ago. Long before you came in. . . . Oh, Glory, why did you?”
Gloria said, still sulkily:
“I wanted to teach her a lesson. Careless beast with her old rings. I couldn’t have wanted to wear them; you must see that.”
Rossy’s nose wrinkled. “I suppose you wanted to pay her out for beating you at golf. Though why you waited all this time I don’t know. Oh, Gloria, you are the limit!”
Grace, loyal to the last, fired up in defence of her sister.
“What’s the use of telling her that? She can’t help it.”
“Can’t help it? D’you mean she’s done it often?”
Grace bit her lip. “Once or twice. Not for a long time. I thought—I hoped——” That hunted look came suddenly into her face; Rossy thought, “I don’t wonder.” Kleptomania was it they called it? Shop-lifting? Poor, poor Grace! Under her cold stare Gloria fidgeted and rose suddenly from her place.
“I don’t see why I should sit here and be talked at. I’m going to change.” She lounged out, leaving Grace and Rossy staring at one another; helplessly they said together, “What’s to be done?”
The clock ticked loudly in the silence, a log fell in the fireplace, a heavier squall splashed outside. Then Rossy said, “We must get them back somehow. I’ll take them down and dump them somewhere in the Golf Club dressing-room.”
“It’s too late.”
“No, it isn’t. Anyway, what else can we do?”
“We could send them to Mrs. Risca by registered post.”
“No. We’d be spotted. You have to put your name on the envelope. No; let’s try the other thing first. If I just fly in the car——”
“But the police may be there.”
“They can’t keep police in the ladies’ dressing-room. If they’re there, I’ll say I want to change and they must go out.”
“But where’ll you put the things?”
“I can’t tell till I get there. I forget exactly what the place is like. I’ll hide them somewhere. If the worst comes to the worst I’ll put them down the W.C. But it won’t come to that. Come on—give me them. No use standing here.”
“I’ll come with you, Rossy.”
“No you won’t; I don’t want you.”
“Do let me.”
“No.”
Grace clasped and unclasped her hands: she lifted a face that had grown old in an hour.
“It’s good of you, Rossy. Gloria hasn’t been nice to you, I know.”
“I don’t care a damn about Gloria. But the point is she’ll be found out. And we can’t have that, can we?”
Grace began to shiver. “Oh no, Rossy, oh no. Oh no, we couldn’t have that. Think of father and mother——”
“Think of you,” thought Rossy; there were moments now when she almost loved Grace and this was one of them. And what a heaven-sent chance to expiate that mortal injury! Feeling a little fey she said briskly:
“Well, that’s what’ll happen if I don’t get a move on.” She took the rings from Grace’s unwilling hand. “Come on; I’m off.”
Grace followed her doubtfully to the steps. “Well, come back at once and tell me what happens.”
Rossy said something encouraging and slammed the front door. Grace turned to meet Conna coming through the passage. Near thing!
Rossy, completely above herself, drove the huge car down the Nithsdale hill like a flying shell. She had remembered now where she must put the rings; there was a crack between the floor-boards and the window—she had once dropped a gold pin into it and recovered it only with difficulty. Supposing an earthquake and a tornado to have passed through the ladies’ dressing-room it was just conceivable that rings left on the dressing-table might have been shaken into that crack; anyway, they would be found there and explanations could be devised by those interested. The main thing was to get back to the Golf Club before the lateness of her arrival made her conspicuous. Free-wheeling, Rossy whizzed down to the church; hand out; constable signalling all clear; hard round to the right, a sharp skid but away. Five minutes would do it.
But just because Rossy was above herself and because the roads were wet with monsoon rain, and because the moment was critical—it happened. A car nosed suddenly out of a hidden drive; Rossy, whose mind and eyes were far away in the Golf Club, braked hard and too late; unwarned by that first skid she went into another impossibly worse. In fractions of a second Rossy thought, “I’m out of control, I can’t do anything,” “Triplex glass” and “electric standard.” Then there was a jarring crash, a sound along one side of the car like a boy rattling a stick along railings, the door beside her tore away and in a moment of complete confusion made brilliant by the explosion of a bursting tyre Rossy found herself in the gutter, her arm doubled under her against the stone kerb. For a moment there was nothing, nothing at all; then a man appeared wearing a mackintosh.
“I say,” he said, evidently bent on self-justification, “you were going some pace, you know.”
Rossy said with dignity, “I’m hurt, you fool. Help me.” Remembering suddenly, she slipped her left hand under her jumper to the safe place where she had put the rings; they were there all right, hard and sharp. Getting somehow to her feet she found she could make her right arm do nothing at all. A woman joined the man and said, “Why, it’s Rossy Frost!” Rossy thought she knew their faces but could not remember their names; she said so with fresh dignity, but this seemed to be ridiculous for they both laughed.
The man said, “You’ll remember in a minute. . . . Better take her home.”
Without apparent interval she was in the back seat of their car leaning against the woman who was kind and soft and very strongly scented. There were exchanges of words, “Lebanon . . . Hospital . . . Lebanon.” Rossy said in sudden panic, “I was going to the Golf Club; I must go to the Golf Club.” The woman said, “Yes, yes, dear, it’s all right.” Rossy began to feel sick; and there were pains that would soon be agonies in her right side and arm. Fighting for control, she said thickly, “Don’t take me to the hospital. Lebanon; but the Golf Club first; I must go to the Golf Club.” Maddeningly they paid no attention but went on making plans: “Let’s take her home,” the man said, “then you can stay and I’ll come back here. It’s not far.” “Golf Club,” said Rossy, and was sick. “Oh—your nice car!” The woman petted her: “It’s all right; don’t worry about anything.” “I can’t,” thought Rossy; “I can’t really.” And then she saw they were in motion and were turning off the Golf Club road. She half screamed: “Oh, take me to the Golf Club, please; oh, don’t be cads about this!” and for a few earthquake minutes she thought they had obeyed her; then she saw that on the contrary she was lying on her bed in Lebanon and the ayah, blubbering like an old fool, had taken off her shoes and was fumbling with her suspenders. She felt surreptitiously under her jumper with her left hand; still there, those important things—but why were they important? She couldn’t quite remember—maddening to be so silly. The ayah’s hands were at her waist: “Missy please allow.” Someone said, “We’ll have to cut that sleeve.” With sudden recollection Rossy struggled upright: “I won’t, I won’t be undressed!”
The kind woman came forward; now Rossy saw she was good-looking, attractively dressed and—familiar: she knew her quite well—but who was she? The woman said, “Let me help, dear; I won’t hurt you, I promise.” But Rossy screamed at her, “Go away. I won’t be undressed.” Suddenly into her mind came solution. Granny! She said, more calmly, “Get Granny. Get Granny at once. I won’t be undressed till Granny comes.” He came, it seemed, almost on the word, smiling his dark smile and saying, “Well, well, this is a nice ploy.” She said, “Get all these people out of the room,” and he replied, “There’s nobody here, Rossy, but me.” She thrust his hand under her jumper and put the rings into it; “Put these in your pocket. Tell nobody. Explain later.” And then, at last, she collapsed.
A fractured arm and a damaged rib, a terribly bruised hip—Rossy was out of action for weeks to come; nor, between pain and morphia and a rising temperature, could she have given Ross that promised explanation for a critical forty-eight hours. But Grace, hearing of the accident before seven that evening, broke down; weeping and hysterical she threw herself into Conna’s arms and poured out an amazing medley of Golf Finals, Stephen Gilroy, Gloria and stolen rings. Out of it all Conna, cross-questioning with a white face, made out that Gloria had taken Mrs. Risca’s rings and that Rossy at the time of the accident had been trying to put them back.
She said sharply, “And where are they now?” But Grace had no idea. Clearly they might be almost anywhere—in the wrecked car, in the gutter, in Rossy’s clothes, in Rossy’s bed. Conna, dazed and shattered, called in Raleigh and Raleigh, assimilating the horrible facts with difficulty, thought he had best go round to Lebanon. Within half-an-hour he was shown in upon Ross, sitting smoking his after-dinner cigar in the library.
“Well, sir, I expect you know what I’ve come about. But first of all, how’s Rossy?”
Ross warmed to him; he lacked the remotest inkling of what had happened but Raleigh’s drawn face and drooping mouth were the signs of a man laden with his own troubles; whatever these might be, it was good of him to think of Rossy first.
“Moderate. She’s sorely hurt, poor lamb. . . . As to what ye’ve come about, the good God only knows, but from the look of ye ye don’t seem to like it.” He pushed the decanter. “Take a dram, man, take a dram.”
Raleigh refused the dram. “Not just yet. . . . Then I suppose I’d better tell you. It’s not a tale I like telling but—you’re the head of the family; you’d have to hear it, anyway.” He plunged into it after a moment’s hesitation, beginning from far back. . . . “Gloria; a bit spoilt perhaps, but we never thought . . . Gloria; Grace says she’s known it for years—poor girl seems to have lived in terror. . . . Kleptomania; at least I don’t know yet if it’s kleptomania or sheer criminality . . .”
Ross interrupted. “To hell with the long words. Let’s have the facts.”
“Well, these rings . . . Mrs. Risca, God damn the woman . . . Golf Final. . . . Anyway, motive or no motive, Gloria took the cursed things . . . Rossy very decently if a bit impetuously . . . and . . . and so, where are they now?”
“In my pocket,” said Ross dramatically, and showed them.
Raleigh drew a long breath of relief. “Thank God!”
“Ay—for small mercies.”
“Meaning, sir?”
“Meaning we know where they are—they’re to hand. But what’s to be done with them now?”
“We must give them back.”
“Must we?” Ross gave him a hard look. “Just hover a blink. So far it’s between you, me, Conna, I suppose, and the three girls. There it’s like to remain. The woman’s rolling in money; the rings were insured, ye can bet your life on that. A Jewess. . . . I’m telling ye, Raleigh, if it was me, I’d drop the damned things in the Marlimund Lake and no more said.”
Raleigh struggled with it for a full minute while Ross watched him curiously through the clouds from his cigar. “I feel like Satan,” he thought, “tempting the poor lad.” But he was in no way surprised when Raleigh, lifting his head at last, said:
“No; we couldn’t do that.” He strengthened. “Oh no, sir, we really couldn’t. We’ll have to give them back and—and apologise and all that.”
Ross said “H’m!” and drew hard on his cigar. “This Mrs. Risca—I never set eyes on her, but is she not the creature that beat Gloria in the golf? “
Raleigh nodded. “Of course. I’ve just been telling you so.”
“A nice friendly match, I believe.”
“I don’t know much about that. I wasn’t there.”
“Rossy was, though. I’m given to understand that Gloria did just about everything to the poor woman short of spitting in her eye. . . . That isn’t going to help matters, ye know. . . . A Jewess, as I said.”
Raleigh sat staring in silent misery; Ross had an acute pang of regret for the boy with the bright puzzled eager face who used to come about Torteval, courting Conna; for the face was puzzled enough now in all conscience, but it was neither bright nor eager. The I.C.S.; splendid fellows, but they didn’t last; splendid career, but it sapped them. They didn’t last, didn’t last—no fight in them, no kick. He said impishly:
“Marlimund Lake?”
Raleigh came out of his black reverie. “No. We can’t do that. . . . There’s such a thing as expiation.”
“There’s such a thing as the Police Court.”
“My God, sir, she wouldn’t! You don’t mean to say——”
“She’s a Jewess—once more. Read your Bible.”
Raleigh’s answer was to groan and put his head in his hands. “Poor little Gloria! It’s too hellish,” he thought, “too hellish altogether.” Ross, disliking this weakness, said sharply:
“Well, what’s to be done? Take a cigar. Come on, man, it isn’t a funeral.”
Raleigh shook his head. “No thanks. . . . There’s only one thing to be done. Somebody’ll have to go and see Mrs. Risca, that’s all.”
“And what’s the somebody to say?”
“Oh, just the facts—and throw ourselves on her mercy. What else can we do? If we do the straight thing, the honest thing, she can hardly take proceedings.”
“She can. Maybe she won’t. Whether or no, she’ll put the story all over Ooty from end to end.”
“She might not.”
Ross thumped the table. “She might not, she might not! Havers! Even if she doesn’t publish it of malice aforethought, she’ll tell Mary in confidence and Mary’ll tell Annie and Annie’ll tell Katie. In three weeks every soul in the place’ll know it. Tuts, man, ye surely haven’t been married for twenty years without learning how far a woman can hold her tongue. Ye’ll never get away with this: don’t try.”
Raleigh said sadly, “I’m afraid you’re right.” His mind ran on; he spoke his thoughts aloud: “ Conna will have to take Gloria home in any case. So that doesn’t so much matter.” He thought for a minute of Grace; Grace was going to suffer, dear, sober, honest, scrupulous Grace. Hard, damned hard. . . . “This God-damned woman holds the cards; we can only put ours down and hope for the best. If it comes to that, we must just face up to the scandal; I suppose we’re getting off fairly cheaply at that. We’re done for, anyway.”
Ross threw the butt of his cigar into the fire. “Ye see that, do ye?” he thought savagely; “and who’s disreputable now?” Yet he was admiring Raleigh perhaps for the first time in his life: stamina or no, he did face things squarely. “Scandal?” he said. “Scandal’s nothing.”
He drew Raleigh’s first smile of the evening. “You ought to know, sir.”
“I do know. If she lets ye off with scandal—— But I’m none so sure that she will.”
“Oh, surely?” Raleigh ran a hand through his thin hair. “If it’s put to her properly——”
“It’ll take some putting. . . . And who’s to be the ambassador? Not Conna, if ye’ll be advised.”
Raleigh’s face twitched. “I hadn’t thought Conna. She wouldn’t be——”
“She wouldn’t. Then, yourself?”
“I’m not good at that sort of thing. I’d put my foot in it.” He shifted uneasily. “As the head of the family, do you think possibly you——”
Ross grinned at the fire. “We’re getting at the point at last,” he thought, “and I’m hearing a lot about the head of the family this night. Disreputable we used to be. But it’s the god’s truth they’ll make a botch of it if it’s left to them. Rossy’s in it. Maybe——” He said suddenly:
“Well, I will. I’ll go to-morrow afternoon. . . . On one condition. On condition that ye ask Conna when ye get home, who’s disreputable now?”
Raleigh got up looking surprised. “Must I really ask her that?”
“In so many words.” Ross gave him his implacable glare. “Yes!”
Shown into Mrs. Risca’s drawing-room the next afternoon, Ross wrinkled his nose in disgust. The small room, darkened by the soaking monsoon day outside, was overloaded with furniture, trappings, trash; a subtle perfume, good perhaps but intense, prevailed to suffocation. “A harlotish place,” Ross thought—better for a blast of monsoon through it. Still, the bright fire on the hearth was comforting, for it was a dismal day and Ross was in a dismal frame of mind. Rossy was in acute suffering; the Packard would be in the repair-shops for weeks; and he had come on a fool’s errand. Women were vindictive bitches and Gloria, by all accounts, had insulted this one—Jewess, too—to the limit of endurance. It was a case where only the whole truth would serve; to clear Rossy Gloria must be accused, and when Mrs. Risca heard the name of Gloria—God help us all. Fool’s errand; and a fool on it.
He stood in the centre of the drawing-room leaning firmly on his stick, conscious that he had taken great pains again with his appearance and that his appearance rewarded him. And when his hostess entered he told himself not without surprise that appearances were going to count—her own as well as his. For some reason he had anticipated something lanky and sallow, all nose and teeth; instead there stood before him a neat little creature, smiling, sparkling, handsome as paint. One could deal with this sort of person, one could indeed. She was scented, she was painted, she was a Jewess, but—she was a fine little woman. She came forward, holding out her hand.
“Mr. Cowal, how good of you to come on this dreadful day. How is Miss Frost?”
“She’s sore hurt, poor lamb,” he began; then looking at her in the better light by the window he said sharply:
“Have I not seen ye before?”
Her expression of bright welcome gave way to puzzlement. “But—of course. It was I who brought Miss Frost home last night. I was with Major Martin in his car when the smash took place. I left Lebanon just as you came in, I passed you in the hall. I—I thought that was why you had come.”
Ross said, “Well, I’m damned!”
Her puzzlement deepened; then she broke into a smile that showed brilliantly beautiful teeth. “Let’s sit down, anyway.” They sat on identical chairs at opposite ends of the hearthrug. “There’s a mystery here. I love mysteries.”
Ross’s mind was working hard; how to take advantage of this extraordinary turn of fortune? He said, “Ye’ll excuse me just a minute while I think. . . . Ay, well, the quickest way’s the shortest. Try to believe, mem, that I’m not daft. . . . Now, open your hand and shut your eyes and see what the king’ll give ye.”
She stretched out her hand instantly and prized her eyes tight shut like a child. Ross was pleased with her; she might well have taken him for a lunatic and rung for a servant to show him out He put the rings into her hand and closed it lightly over them. “Now look.”
She looked; but she had already felt. “Oh-h-h-h! My rings!”
He said, “Jist that,” and sat back in his chair Now for it!
“But where on earth——”
Ross sat up again; here came the unanswerable question. He said:
“Mrs. Risca, ye seem to be a nice sort of woman.”
Smiling, she said, “I’ve always hoped so.”
“I’m an old man and can say so. Now, I’m going to ask ye, as a nice woman, not to press that question.” Her face began to darken and he held up his hand. “Hear me a minute. Ye’re entitled to ask it; ye’re entitled to know the answer, and if ye go about it in the right way ye’re morally bound to find out. Now I’m asking ye this. If I tell ye where I got these things and how they came into my possession, will ye leave it at that? . . . Eh?”
She caressed her cheek with long fingers, laden, he saw, with other rings. The sight angered him. Rolling with money, plastered with it, dropping it about; damn the careless idiot! Because of her criminal carelessness Rossy lay now in pain, his fine Packard car was smashed.
“I don’t know about that. . . . It wouldn’t be fair to others.”
“As fair to others as leaving valuable rings on a Club dressing-table.”
She flushed. “Well. . . . Go on.”
Ross stared at the fire. “Well, I got these rings from my grand-daughter, Rossy Frost, who at the time was doing her level best to put them back where you had left them.”
He had startled her at last. “Rossy Frost! The accident! . . . Then that was why she was so desperate to be taken to the Golf Club.”
“Did she ask to be taken to the Golf Club?”
“Repeatedly.”
“Then that was why.”
“I . . . see.”
Ross looked up darkly, with the glower that had frightened three generations. “So now ye’re thinking, ‘So Rossy Frost took my rings.’”
To his surprise she sprang erect in her chair. “Mr. Cowal! I think such a thing? I would never dream of it. You—you don’t know me, but I’ve met Miss Frost a good deal and—and I’d as soon believe such a thing of myself. Nonsense!”
Ross smiled again. “Well, that clears the air.”
“Clears the air! I don’t pretend to understand what happened but—that—did not. Ridiculous!”
He said outright, “Mrs. Risca, I like ye fine!”
She laughed a little awkwardly, rather taken aback.
“Then don’t talk any more nonsense. . . . Tell me instead, where did Miss Frost find them?”
Ross placed the tips of his fingers together.
“That’s just the precise particular question I don’t want ye to ask. Not now. Not ever. Just let it lie.”
“But——”
“Just a minute till I tell ye. Rossy came across these rings by chance within a couple of hours of their being—we’ll say, lost. She came across them in circumstances I’m not going to describe but which I’ll ask ye to believe were difficult and fearful.”
“Then somebody had taken them.”
“Rings don’t fly.”
“And it was a member——”
“It wasn’t the Archangel Gabriel.”
Cross for a moment, she recovered and smiled. “I see that’s one of the things I’m not to ask. . . . Well, go on. Difficult and fearful circumstances. In other words Miss Frost found that some Club member had taken the rings—perhaps someone she happened to care about——”
He smiled in return. “Use your imagination. It might have been that, it might not. . . . Anyway, Rossy set out to get them back. Now, mark ye, she might as easily have left the whole thing alone; or she might just as easily have thrown the rings down the first drain she came to——”
“She wouldn’t. Not Rossy. Not as I know her.”
“Well, ye do know her. Her idea was to get the rings back to the Golf Club and she was hurrying her hardest to do it when——”
“When she ran right into myself.” Her fingers began to tap upon a silk-clad knee. “Upon my word, Mr. Cowal, it’s like a magazine story. Or if you like it better, it’s the hand of God.”
“It is. It’s all that.” Ross paused a moment to contemplate the Almighty at work; and saw a possible point. “Well, now, take it to be the hand of God and leave it at that. If the Almighty took pains to work this queer can trip, isn’t it a sign He meant that to be the end of it?”
She said rather doubtfully, “So I’m to ask no more questions?”
Ross lay back in his chair, suddenly exhausted. “She’s not satisfied,” he thought. “She’s out after the thief, and if once I have to name Gloria we’re dished; the Marlimund Lake—that’s what we should have done.” He made a final effort.
“I’ll just put it to ye like this. Here’s my Rossy going hell-for-leather to keep the secret—whatever it was—risking her life for it. So ye see it was important, anyway. Crash! She still tries to make the Golf Club; even when she was knocked so silly that she didn’t know you and Major Martin she’s seen a hundred times, she still kept that in her mind. Well, she failed to manage it because she was helpless in your hands, and naturally you took no heed of her. I’ve no notion what she would have done if ye’d undressed her, but mercifully she thought of me. She had these two rings of yours in the little bit slip she ties round her breast and she’d not let a soul lay hand on her till I came. I was at the Club. She lay for a quarter of an hour in agony with the clothes sticking into her wee body till I won down. Ye know that for yourself for ye were there. She stuck it out and she got the rings handit over to me and then she faintit.” As ever, in moments of emotion or excitement, Ross went back to the elemental Scots. “Now, tell me this, Mrs. Risca, do ye no’ think she deserves t’get away wi’ it; do ye no think she deserves t’keep the secret she wrestled for so hard? . . . An’ it rests wi’ you.”
Mrs. Risca got up and stood with one foot on the fender, looking down into the fire. “Handsome wee thing,” thought Ross, “but have I done it or have I not?”
“So that was why she drove me out of her room and wouldn’t let me help. I felt a little hurt at the time.”
“That was it.”
“She was keeping my rings to give you? She didn’t want anyone to see?”
“Just that.”
“And I standing within six feet of her the whole time. And she not knowing me from Adam.” She tossed up her head with a sudden laugh. “Oh, Mr. Cowal, the hand of God, the hand of God. I’ll leave it at that.”
Ross said with a deep, deep breath, “Fine!”
“I’ll give out that the rings have been returned through the post by someone who took them to make me more careful—that was a theory, you know. And I’ll ask no more questions. Mind you”—her dark eyes looked sharply into his—“I know that wasn’t why they were taken and I had my suspicions. I never imagined myself leaving it like this. But—but——” She faltered, broke down into helpless laughter. “Oh, well, put it down to your own personal charm, Mr. Cowal. You’re rather a dear, you know.”
“The hand o’ God,” Ross said solemnly. “We’ll leave it there.”
She rang the bell. “Anyway, you’ll have tea with me?”
“I will indeed!” said Ross.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
He was very tired and over-excited when at last he returned to Lebanon where Conna and Raleigh were waiting drearily for news. Conna said:
“You’ve been a most awful time. . . . Well, what’s happened?”
Pouring himself whiskey Ross said slowly:
“She’s got back her rings, and she’ll ask no questions.”
Raleigh looked at him admiringly. “However, did you manage it, sir? I should have mucked it.”
“Ay,” thought Ross, “ye would—I.C.S. and all.” Aloud he said:
“Oh, she’s a nice wee woman.”
Conna sniffed and said, “I daresay.” It was a fatal error. Her father turned on her bleak and baleful.
“Ye do, do ye? Did ye get my message last night?”
Raleigh said quickly, “No, I didn’t give it.”
“Ye didn’t, eh? Then I’ll have the pleasure of giving it myself. Who’s disreputable now? There was an afternoon in this same house, madam, when ye had something to say about ill-bred and ill-trained monkeys. Whose——”
Raleigh interposed. “Steady, sir, steady. No use kicking us when we’re down.”
Conna rose wearily and said with some dignity, “It doesn’t matter. What’s the use of having a slanging-match here? What’s more to the point—will that woman keep her undertakings? Because I don’t believe she will. She’ll never rest till she’s ferreted out who took her beastly rings. I wouldn’t myself.”
Ross was still rather under the influence of his bright-eyed Jewess. He said, “I’ll trust her.” And Raleigh added more practically, “It’ll take some ferreting, Con. And she’s going down soon.”
Conna shrugged. “Anyway it makes no odds. What’s happened’s happened. We know. . . . When does Government go down, Raleigh?”
“Eighteenth of July.”
“Then we’ll all come down with you. I’ll have to take the girls home as soon as the monsoon’s over. Gloria, of course, and Grace, too; she’s all knocked to bits. Stephen’s mixed up in it with her.” She smiled wanly. “It’s a nice mess, isn’t it?”
Raleigh nodded; Ross finishing his whiskey stared into the fire. But when they had gone and when he had learned that Rossy was doped and asleep, he sat long in his chair thinking, “That’s what comes of not sticking together, that’s what comes of being too grand for your place. Pride, pride—it goeth before a fall and a something heart before destruction. Disreputable, eh? Ill-bred and ill-trained? The boot’s on the other foot now. A daughter who steals rings out of a Club; and but for myself—and Rossy mark you, and Rossy—all Ooty would have known of it.” For that matter they might yet. That made no odds, as Conna said; the crash of the house of Beverell was complete, anyway; down ‘They’ had come. A malicious smile crept over his grim face. Disreputable, eh? Torteval, “our Torteval.” . . . He must go down and see the place again. . . . But with Rossy, with Rossy, always with Rossy.
He fell heavily asleep in his chair.
Conna was back in Lebanon sooner than she intended, for in the small hours Ross had his second seizure and for a time things looked grave. Then, indomitably, he rallied again. His I.M.S. Colonel, having pulled him round, said:
“You’ve been overdoing it again. What did you do to-day?”
Ross, gasping, said, “I just had tea with a lady.”
“Then don’t have tea with any more ladies. You can’t stand it. You’re all right this time, but you mustn’t have another of these. Must—not. Understand?”
He said to Conna, who was yawning her head off in the drawing-room:
“He’s a marvel. He’s pulled through again. But——”
“But?”
“Well—I’m afraid of next time.”
“When?”
“Couldn’t say—maybe years, maybe in a week or two. But it will come one day. And then——”
Conna nodded. “We’re going down practically at once. Then I’ll be going to England.” She evaded his raised eyebrows; plausible explanations had yet to be thought out. “I’m afraid my niece isn’t much use. Oughtn’t he to have a nurse?”
The Colonel laughed. “I’d be sorry for the nurse. No, he’s just one of those everlasting people who’ll go on till they crack. And Rossy does better than you think. He likes her, you see.”
“Yes,” Conna thought, “and I believe she’s the only person he ever did like; or who ever liked him. Except maybe Davie. . . . On the whole Davie was rather lucky—for our family. . . .”
Ross called his doctor back before he went; he said huskily:
“Does Rossy know?”
The Colonel shook his head. “No; she’s been asleep all the time.”
“Then ye’re not to tell her. D’ye hear me, ye’re not to tell her.”
“All right. I won’t tell her. Now you have a snooze.”
Lying still, half snoozing, half not, Ross enjoyed his new dream—himself at Torteval with Rossy. Ross and Rossy’s Torteval. Ross and Rossy Cowal; no, Ross Cowal but Rossy Frost. But Ross and Rossy’s Torteval, anyway. . . .
He snoozed in earnest.
Ross’s dream of Torteval lingered in the realm of dreams for months. Fretting after it, he twice tried to get up too soon, twice suffered a vertigo that nearly threw him to the floor and twice retired to bed again worsted and grumbling. His I.M.S. Colonel came and went saying, “Take it easy; take it easy”—as if one had still a lifetime left in which to lie about in bed. Then Rossy proved a far slower convalescent than had been hoped; the arm healed and the bruises, but that broken rib had done damage. She was X-rayed and X-rayed; slowly, slowly the place healed up. But the weeks and the months ran on; the bleak dreary monsoon, the halcyon return of October, the shining cold-weather days. In the end Ross was up and about—after a fashion—before his grand-daughter.
In the interval the universe revolved without incident except that one wet September day there came a letter for Ross with an American stamp and Duffy’s fastidious handwriting on the envelope. Ross read it with a grim smile—the usual trumpet-solo covering, if he mistook not, the usual depression. California was marvellous, Elspeth was marvellous, Duffy had a son, the son was marvellous, Duffy was marvellous. By the same post arrived an air-mail letter from Conna, housed temporarily in one of the Dorsetshire Lafauce strongholds; Conna had apparently been favoured with a cable and had known of the happy event some ten days earlier.
“He’s calling the boy Trevelyan,” wrote Conna. “I am so glad. I do think he’s so wise to keep on the good old name.”
Ross pursed his lips. “Good old name, eh? If he’d kept on the good old works it might have been wiser still.” He took the letter to Rossy where she lay in bed. “Here’s a new cousin come for ye.”
She read quickly, watching him with a corner of her eye; he was, she saw, chagrined by the news, perhaps a little jealous. Sharply she said:
“I wish it had been a girl.”
He chuckled. “Do ye, Rossy? And why’s that?”
“Oh, just that it would have been a bit of a takedown. He’s a bit above himself, that’s all. Sort of, I press the button and God does the rest.”
“He was aye some like that. Only sometimes I doubt it stopped at his pressing the button.”
“And he doesn’t deserve much—after running away from Torteval.”
Delighted, he stroked her hair; his dear Rossy!
But the Torteval pilgrimage, discussed incessantly, was put off again and again. First they would go when the monsoon stopped, then at the time of the Cauvery Jatre, then on Armistice Day, on Ross’s hypothetical birthday, Christmas, Hogmanay. But in fact the New Year of 1935 was a month old before one day they started at last in the Packard.
Rossy left Lebanon in tremendous spirits. “Oh, Granny, it’s like getting out of prison. I never thought to feel about leaving Ooty like this.”
Ross, sitting in his characteristic attitude with his hands on the knob of his stick, said, “Ooty’s fine; it’s the folk who come there.”
Rossy nodded, wondering for a moment how it was with Grace and Gloria, now dividing their time between the hosts of Lafauce and that monument of excellence, Raleigh’s Mother; or with Mrs. Risca, restored to Bombay and not, they said, so charmed with her season in Ooty that she was ever likely to come back. All departed, carrying their secrets and their scandals with them. She drew a long breath and slipped her hand into her grandfather’s.
“I’m glad they’ve all gone. They spoilt things. Let’s forget them.”
Brilliant, warm, coloured and lit, the country and the day slipped past. Almost before they knew it, the bulk of Chamundi was heaving above them and the Packard was rolling into Mysore City.
But the second day was a much heavier stage, for Sikkal must be made by evening. The roads were worse, the sun—at the lower altitude—hotter. Ross came to this endurance test tired and grey-looking; he had slept very little in a hotel that seemed, after Lebanon, noisy and stuffy as a railway terminus. Vexed by memories, he had sat a full hour in the middle of the night, gazing from his verandah at the climbing electric lights on Chamundi; dozing at last, he awoke shivering and knew that his face had fallen; faintly inside himself he felt that queer stutter as if the engine of his body misfired. He switched on his light and looked at himself in his glass, lifting his cheeks with his thumbs and thinking himself old. He felt a weary way from Lebanon, from Torteval, from anywhere. . . .
It proved a long day, a long, long drive; on the slow roads they fell behind schedule time and Ross grew very silent, sitting rather limp in his corner. In the early afternoon they swept through Emandarra and he said at last, “Sleepy Valley’s over yonder; but they don’t call it Sleepy Valley now.” But Rossy had little interest in Sleepy Valley; its tragedies and intrusions dated from before her time. It had never been for her the lurking abomination, the shameful house, the terror, the threat. She said, “Where’s Hannagal, where I was born?” But that was far, far away to the north-east. Ross sat wondering, “Who has Sleepy Valley now?” Sylvius had sold it and sold it very well, but even that was long ago—nearly nine years, and planters changed rapidly in these days. He recalled Boy Sealing suddenly for the first time for a dozen years—saw him quite plainly with his uncouth mouth and his queer slanting eyebrows. Went and drowned himself, eh? Ay, well, it didn’t matter. Queer how places evoked memory; when they left Ooty he could not have described a half-mile of the road from Sleepy Valley to the coast; now it returned to him yard by yard; he knew what was coming round the next bend. . . . Humming in the afternoon sunshine the car swept on; Ross and Rossy in their corners sank into a sun-steeped drowse. . . . They stopped for tea at a little ghat-head bungalow and Rossy asked its name, but Ross had forgotten. But in the middle of tea he said suddenly, “I remember it now—it’s Kambe.” There it lay, stark and brilliant; as if it completely disowned the racking hurricane, the blasting rain with which it had welcomed Gladdy and Lynna so bleakly so long ago; as if it knew no more than did those passing travellers of that fearful evening and night, that grey desolate dawn when they took away Lynna. . . .
Looking from the crest of the ghats Ross thought they should see Sikkal; but they gazed into the mist of the westering sun; the plains were no more than a golden fog that might be land, might be sea. But sliding downwards they came at last to a girder bridge—where Lynna and Gladdy had once struggled with a terrifying ferry—and Ross sat up suddenly.
“This is Kulya. The river’s Ghoomri, lambie.”
Rossy was disappointed. “Ghoomri? This? But it’s so small.”
“Bide a wee. There’s half-a-dozen Ghoomris up here; they all run together lower down. Ye’ll not call it small then, I assure ye.”
“I wish we could see Torteval.”
“So do I,” said Ross; but he said it not, as she did, from eagerness but because he was feeling deadly tired, just a little sick. For the first time he told himself dismally, “Maybe I’m past it; maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
On and on; round the last hairpin-bend; through the jungle belt; through the laterite hills; past the Hommanangadi toll-house, now disused; into the paddy-flats. Ross said, after another long silence, “It was sunset the first time ever I saw Sikkal.” Sunset and a jangad crawling over Ghoomri and Somappa suddenly offering a hundred a month. “Master taking one girl.” “My dear young Ross!” Voices, voices. Half asleep he said, “Yon’s Pisgah. We used to go for walks there when you were a wee thing. Scandal Hill they called it once—God knows why.” Scandal, eh? Well, below that long flat tableland was Bethelkuppam and a little house with two rooms; who lived there now? Did anybody; did it all ever happen? Coaces, Glory, Chalk, Simmons, Lobo; infinitely defunct now, they were yet more real and significant than Raleigh Beverell or Stephen Gilroy or that I.M.S. Colonel with his “Take it easy, take it easy.” He thought of Skate, Knight—the Colonels of the past; all telling him how many fine children he could have. Well, he had had them and—there was Rossy left sitting beside him in the car. . . . “Merciful God,” he thought, aching, “will we ever get home?”
Suddenly, there were the Torteval steps, that famous flight, and at the top of them, sure as death, the Ghoomri Sisters; Susan stocky and grey-haired and beaming widely; Jane—shrivelled Jane—perking behind. Ross climbed the steps as wearily as ever had Glory returning from the Hills to her cage and her duty: at the top Susan fell upon him effusively. He said, ungraciously, “Oh, Lord, can I not come here without all this steer? Here, Jane—ye’ve some sense; get me a dram.”
Susan, habitually paying no attention, enthused unchecked on the “nice”-ness of the occasion. She followed Rossy into her room, fussing and fussing, asking questions and giving no time for answers.
“Do ye mind this room, Rossy? Ye once had it, you and your mammy. Poor Lynna, poor lamb! . . . Do ye mind us at all, Rossy? Do ye mind me? But ye couldn’t hardly; it’s long, long since ye were here. Are ye all right? Would ye like some tea?”
“I’d like a bath, auntie.”
“Surely, surely. He’s just putting the water in. Have ye soap and brushes and all?” She fussed and fussed. Rossy wished she would go away and leave her to undress and have her bath; but as Susan showed no signs of withdrawing she began to pull her things off in her presence. She wanted to have a bath and get quickly up to that famous summer-house—it still stood; she had caught a glimpse of it—and have a long look over Ghoomri before the sun fell into the sea altogether; but it must be alone, alone; and would dear old Susan ever leave her alone? Susan said suddenly:
“And there’s a young man here, Rossy, was asking for you.”
Rossy, half-naked, wheeled suddenly. “A young man? Oh, auntie, there couldn’t have been.” But her heart sank.
“But there was. A Mister Nicholls. He’s in Neill Brothers here. Very nice.”
Rossy thought, “I knew it; they’re going to spoil my Torteval; I want it to myself, myself, myself, and they won’t let me.” She said crossly:
“Tell him I don’t want to see him.”
Susan beamed. “Oh no, Rossy, we won’t tell him that.”
“Yes, we will; I will if you don’t.” Reduced to her last inadequate garment she paused irresolutely; would Aunt Su follow her into the bathroom, too? They said the Ghoomri Sisters had bathed and done even more intimate things together all their lives since they were children; would she come in now and sit and watch? And talk about Brinjer—bother him? But Susan’s sociableness had limits. She said:
“Ye’ve your mother’s skin, Rossy. Poor Lynna, poor lamb! . . . Ah, well, I see ye’re ready. Run you and have your bath and get dressed and then we’ll have a nice talk. I’ve ever so many things to show ye.”
Rossy said, “It’ll be lovely.” But she lay so long in hiding in her bath—which was fearfully hot—that the sun was into the sea by the time she was dressed and the summer-house just an angle of roofs against steel-blue and orange and the evening star.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
In the night Ross woke suddenly, thinking he had called “Glory!” He had in fact done nothing of the kind, but for a time he lay in terror lest Susan should have heard and should appear. She had fussed over him till he thought she would actually come and tuck him into his bed; nothing you said made a damn of difference to that girl—she just went on, as ever, imperturbably unheeding. . . . Girl? She was fifty—or near it; his eldest since—Davie. Fifty years of age and not a man had ever touched her or Jane either. Half-listening to her banalities he had wondered whether he would wish Rossy to grow up like that or to know, like her own mother, the tearing tempests of passion? A monsoon of a thing was passion—all floods and blasts; like the monsoon it tore and destroyed, but then like the monsoon it fertilised, it bore fruit. Better suffering than—sterility.
Now in the dark night he lay furiously awake, thinking he had just called for his wife. Once she would have been in the next room, once she would have heard and obediently, poor girl, she would have come; was something of her—a reflection, an image—still in there listening just as her picture in that old, old dress still stood staring in the drawing-room? What did happen to you when you died? Where were all these dead people who had become in the last twenty-four hours so astoundingly alive and close? He began the now familiar shiver, that stutter in his body. “They’re gathering round me,” he thought in a sudden panic; “I don’t want them, I don’t want to go and be with them. Rossy!” This time he had called it aloud but in little more than a whisper; nobody could have heard. But the name and the thought of bright pretty Rossy steadied and calmed him; stretching out his hand he took one of the I.M.S. Colonel’s tablets. “Take it easy, take it easy.” “Damn the fool!” he thought, “I haven’t time to take it easy. Not now.”
In the morning Rossy went out before breakfast and climbed the steep path to the top of the little laterite hill of Torteval. There at last was Ghoomri, smiling, placid, going his sunlit and radiant way; but in the summer-house there also was Jane painting him for the hundredth time. Jane said:
“Do you know about pictures, Rossy?”
Rossy said kindly, “I think it’s lovely, auntie.” But Jane was not appeased.
“I just get worse every time I try. Worse and worse and worse. . . . Do you know who’s here this morning?”
Rossy had a moment’s horrible dread that it might be Peter Nicholls; she felt that wherever she could or could not bear to see Peter again it must not be under the procuress gaze of those two sexless aunts. But fortunately Jane went on without waiting for a reply.
“It’s Sequeira.”
“Sequeira? . . . Oh, you mean Sylvius.”
“Sylvius!” Jane dabbed viciously at her canvas, not improving it. “What a name to go to the kirk with, as they say. Still—She—did call him that. You know who I mean, my dear?”
“Oh, yes,” said Rossy, “I know all about it.” “More,” she thought, “than you do, because I can imagine and you can’t.” “She”; “Black Grannie”—those endless evasions; all she could remember of Coaces was dark eyes, wonderful saris and a rich voice telling unique stories. She asked where Sylvius was.
“Hanging about the garden somewhere. I think he wants father. If you see him just take no notice.” But Rossy thought, “How silly!” and presently she was at pains to meet Sylvius face to face where he was pretending to admire Jane’s antigonum. She saw that he was wearing a very nice grey suit—which he filled tightly, for slim Sylvius was at last becoming stout; his face, his bearing, expressed contented assurance. Rossy thought, with a leap of hereditary dislike, “He’s smug; how dare he be smug here!” He saw her and took off his hat.
“You are my cousin, Miss Frost, isn’t it?”
Rossy studied him. “I’m Rossy Frost; but I don’t know if I’m your cousin.”
“Your mother was my cousin.” But before Rossy’s direct gaze his eyes fell—as they had fallen of yore before Duffy’s; he shuffled a little and added lamely, “In a way.”
Rossy felt sorry for him; politely she hoped that Mrs. Sequeira was well.
“Oh, yes, thank you, she is well. Now she is carrying.”
Rossy bit her lip; it was such an odd expression. “And how many will that be?”
“Now I have five. So this will be number six.”
“And you’re awfully happy?”
He said unctuously, rolling his eyes, “I must thank God for all His goodness to me.” Disliking him again she said a little maliciously:
“God helps those who help themselves.”
He regarded her without umbrage. “Yess. But we must serve His ends, isn’t it? . . . How is my father this morning?”
“Your? Oh, Granny. I think he’s pretty well. Do you want to see him?”
“When it is quite convenient.” Looking at him, she saw he was smug again. “You should have said ‘if,’” she thought, “not ‘when’; and a fat lot you care whether it’s convenient or not.” The gong that had announced so many of Lafauce’s dinners sounded suddenly from the house. She said:
“That’s breakfast.”
He said placidly, “I will wait. It is pleasing here.” And again unreasonably disliking him, she went into the house.
But the thought of him hanging about spoilt her breakfast, and as soon as it was over she said:
“Sylvius is out there.”
The Ghoomri Sisters looked at one another; Ross said, “Him? Let him be.” But his face was so shrunken and he looked so old that she went round the table to his side.
“Don’t see him, Granny, if he bothers you. Don’t.”
Her grandfather replied with the gruffness which Torteval seemed to have restored to him, “Bother me? Him? What way would he bother me?” Then putting his arm round her shoulders he said more mildly, “Come on, Rossy—we’ll interview him together.”
Sylvius, who seemed to have indefinite leisure, was still aimlessly prowling the garden; they found him near a little set of Singapore chairs and tables under one of Jane’s artistic garden parasols. Ross said, “Well, Sylvius?” and Sylvius took off his hat and replied very properly, “Good morning, sir.” Ross dropped into a chair.
“Sit down, man; why stand?”
Sylvius sat down rather self-consciously and for a minute there was silence. Rossy leant over the back of a Singapore chair watching them. Her grandfather’s face was dark—almost as dark as the other; he was thinking, “Sons, sons—four sons I wanted for the business; four sons I’ve had, and this is the one that’s left to me.” Lifting his head he said with sudden savagery:
“Well, man, what the hell do ye want?”
“I came to pay my respects. It is long since you are here.”
“Ye showed a very proper spirit. But now ye’ve seen me what is it ye want?”
Sylvius moistened his lips. “What should I want? I do not want anything.”
“Ye do. Out with it.”
Sylvius hesitated; funk made him, Rossy thought, a little shifty; he didn’t do himself justice.
“Well—is Mr. Duffy coming back?”
“No.”
“Oh. . . . Thank you. . . . He will not be working here again?”
“No. What’s that to do with you?”
Sylvius moistened his lips. “The thing is thiss. If Mr. Duffy is never coming back, my firm would like to make an offer to buy the Torteval works.”
Ross lit a cheroot. “They would, eh? Well, tell them to take it to hell with them. And they can start any day.”
“You would not sell to us?”
“No.” “Wonderful Granny,” thought Rossy; “his ‘no’s’ are like cannon-shot.” Sylvius looked at his feet.
“It is pity to see the good place going to ruin.”
“Not such a pity as it would be to see you working it.”
“But I don’t know why——”
“But I do.” His manner softened a little. “No, no, Sylvius, my lad, ye’ll not get into Torteval. Not now nor ever. Stick you to the Italians. Ye’ve got all ye’re going to get now—and ’deed, man, ye needn’t be ill-pleased.”
“But what will you do with the works?”
“Time’ll see to them. They’ll make a bonny ruin. No, Sylvius, no.”
“But if there are no more Co-wals coming——”
Ross threw his cheroot suddenly into the bushes. “Who said there were no more Cowals coming?”
“I understood——”
“Ye understood wrong. Ye asked if Mr. Duffy was coming back and I said, No. And so far as it went, that was true. But only so far. Mr. Duffy mayn’t be coming back. But Mr. Trevelyan may.”
Rossy thought, “Oh gosh! Granny’s a great man.” Sylvius, goggling through his glasses, could only say feebly:
“Mr.—Trevelyan?”
“Mr. Trevelyan. Mr. Duffy has a son now, my mannie, and yon’s his name.”
Sylvius twiddled his hat. “I had not heard.” And perhaps he thought to himself, “Again, again; I am cheated of it again.”
“I daresay not. Why should ye? It was no affair of yours. All the same, my lad, Mr. Trevelyan’s there and Torteval’s here and maybe one day they’ll be together. When he’s through with Torteval maybe we’ll give you a chance.”
There was a silence in which Rossy thought, “And he’s furious about ‘Mr. Trevelyan’ really. And he knows ‘Mr. Trevelyan’ will never come here. Wonderful Granny.” In the silence Sylvius picked up his hat. He said flatly and without expression:
“Oh, then. . . . Thank you. . . . Then I will go.” “Oriental creature,” thought Rossy, “you can’t tell if he’s disappointed or not; but he must be—bitterly.” For a moment she was sorry for him; then her feelings veered again as he said with a sting in his voice:
“So now you have a puk-ka grandson, is it?” And then as Ross sat pursing his lips and saying nothing, he lost nerve and got up. “Well, I will say good-bye.” He walked away jauntily and the back view of him filled the nice grey suit very tight.
Ross sat silent for a moment; then he said as much to the air as to Rossy, “Grandson, eh? My grandsons’ll be as much good to me as my sons were.” Glancing up, he saw Rossy and his mood changed. “Come on, Rossy, you and me’ll have a look round the old works. Get you the keys from Susan!”
Susan had the keys and produced them after some unheeded expostulations. Slowly Ross and Rossy went over the ridge and down the rough track, grass-grown and neglected, to the side of Ghoomri. Ross said, pointing, “That’s the office, Rossy; I built that in ’ninety-three.” But in front of the office there was still a curious piece of ground, dead level, grassless; she saw him staring at it and shivering a little. “And that’s where the old office was before the big flood.” He shivered again and his jaw dropped and she put a hand quickly through his arm.
“Oh, Granny, is that where it——”
“That’s where it happened. And ye know, Rossy, I never had the same heart for anything since.”
She caressed his arm. “Never mind, Granny, you’ve got me.”
Surprisingly, he bent down and kissed her.
The old works, opened with some difficulty, were gloomy; they exuded a peculiar fishy decay mingled with the faint reek of long-extinguished fires. A great deal of the machinery had been sold by Duffy; but a row of presses still stood on their tables with a couple of derelict pug-mills, and in its shed reposed the remains of the oil engine Duffy had installed with such pride. In the drying-rooms a few tiles still mouldered in the racks; the kilns were full of ancient ash. The whole place stank with an indistinct mixture of stale smoke, congealed oil, clay, bats and River Ghoomri. It stank like a grave; it was a grave. Ross picked up a tile and crumbled it in his fingers.
“Torteval Works. Parrot Brand. . . . I doubt it should have been a peacock. Or maybe just a cuddy. . . . And he put me out of the business.” He flung the tile smashing on the floor. “Mr. Trevelyan. . . . Tschah!”
On the way back he found the hill very steep; he became dark in the face and breathless and distressed. Slowly, slowly they won up it, reached the summer-house and sat down. Ross, looking round and breathing heavily, said, “Jane makes this place a fair piggery.” Recovering his breath he made a gallant try at vigour. “And what’ll we do this evening, Rossy?”
She said quickly, “I want to walk along Pisgah. And, oh, Granny, you won’t think me a beast if I want to go alone?”
To her surprise he made no objection; perhaps he understood her feeling, perhaps he was thankful to be spared an exertion that was clearly beyond him.
“Do you that, then, Rossy. . . . I’ll just come up here and have a think.”
She threw her arms impetuously round his neck. “Granny, dear Granny, you’re not miserable because we came here? You’re not disappointed?”
He shook his head, smiling. “I knew what I was coming to. I’ve all I wanted.”
“And you’re feeling all right, Granny? All right in yourself, I mean?”
“I’m fine, Rossy; fine.”
In the evening of that flat and disappointing day—Torteval seemed so tremendously Jane and Susan’s, so minutely Ross and Rossy’s—in the evening, Rossy walked up to Pisgah and found she had forgotten that too. She tramped from the car turning-place to the bhutastanam and back; and then, unsatisfied, repeated the entire course. At the old coach turning-place, widened now for cars, two little girls were playing while their ayahs droned interminable Tulu talk—“like I used to,” Rossy thought; but she could recall no memory. The hill was a pleasant hill, but it had nothing to do with herself; the view over Ghoomri was magnificent but without any personal appeal. She thought, “I expected such wonders—why did I?”
Walking rapidly along in the strong evening sunlight, she thought, why indeed? What did she know after all about this place or the old people who had lived here. Little enough. Grandmother Gloriette Lafauce had once a rose-gold dress and wasn’t happy. Mother had been a child here: much later she had lived at Hannagal; but what happened in between? Uncle Duffy one knew; but there had been another uncle—quite entirely different from Uncle Duffy. Aunt Conna looked down her nose at him, Mother had said he was a king and a hero; which was right? His name was Gladdy and he was killed in the war, but what else? And Davie—how exactly had Davie died? Had Granny been to blame for that or not? Aunt Susan said, “No”; Aunt Conna said, “Yes”; Mother had said, “I don’t know, darling, I was just a baby at the time.” On the basis of these ancient, hazy, problematical figures, what could anyone build? How make Torteval—our Torteval—live?
“I can’t,” she thought miserably; “I’ve lost it, I’ve left it too long. I wish I’d been Aunt Susan and lived here all my days.” Lucky Aunt Susan with fifty years of Torteval, fifty years of watching Ghoomri flow down to his sea and events flow down to their endings. “Lucky Aunt Susan; I wish I’d been her.”
Yes, and there was another way in which Aunt Susan was lucky; she had never hounded herself along Pisgah, worry, worry, worrying about a man. For Aunt Susan men had been their mending and the dishes they liked to eat; she had never been kissed by a man, never felt her heart jump under a man’s hand, never thought about a man in that queer desperate way for which there were no words, never worried about a man at all. As her niece, Rossy, was worrying now. About Brinjer.
Brinjer was in Sikkal; Neill Brothers, bother them, had sent him there, or maybe he had wangled it for sentiment’s sake, the silly great baby. Anyway, there he was and the hour could not be far off when he would come to see Rossy. Perhaps he was on his way even now, perhaps she would find him sitting at Torteval when she got back. If so, then—trouble. Head in air, walking briskly along, Rossy thought, “I want to be free, I don’t want to be tied up, tangled up with any man yet. I want Brinjer when I want him; not now, not always.” Marriage! It was a daunting thing, so irrevocable, so everlasting. Imagine having a man who could always come into your bedroom, into your bathroom, any time he liked; who could always see you, however you were looking, whatever you were doing; who was always there at every meal; with whom you always went about. For twenty years, perhaps twenty-five—thirty; could there be any man in the wide world you could really and truly want so consistently? “Happy ever after?” but wasn’t everlasting happiness just a contradiction in terms? Tied up, tangled up, freedom gone, privacy gone, self gone: no! . . . But gazing down at Ghoomri, she thought, “In a sense I am tied up with Peter even now; for I can’t get away from him. Since Susan mentioned his name he’s been with me every minute; he’s with me now. . . . Tied, tied, and I do so want to stay free.” Discontented, she tramped on.
It was almost dusk when she turned for the second time at the bhutastanam; the sunset had become a belt of dead crimson and fading diagonal rays. Behind the shattered old tree the devil’s shrine lurked squat and evil; its bells jangled, its array of rusty spears leaned forward towards her as if with sinister intent. Rossy shuddered—at the gathering night, at the gathering future. And with the thought she began to reproach herself and to hurry homewards; she ought never to have left her Granny so long by himself while she mooned about on Pisgah; he too could feel the night gathering round him, and maybe he liked it no better than she did. She shouldn’t have left him. Mooning about Brinjer. Damn Brinjer!
She broke into a run.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Ross went to lie down after lunch, feeling—as he admitted to himself with something approaching terror—utterly and completely done. The long drive the day before, the scramble down to the works and back, the sight of old places, the assault of old memories—all these had taken far more out of him than he should have dared to allow. Half undressing, he drank some of “Take-it-easy’s” tonic and fell almost immediately into a very heavy sleep. He woke with a gasp at five-thirty to find a pot of tea chilling and a plate of buttered toast congealing by his bedside; and the sun was slanting across the Torteval garden.
He sat up with a painful jerk. He felt better yet uneasy, rested yet dazed. He pushed away the neglected tea and toast with disgust—no time for that now, anyway. He was going up to the summer-house to have a think—so he had told Rossy and so he meant to do; and he must get there before the sun sank too low. He desired above all things the rich pageant of evening on Ghoomri as he had seen it first, that brief hour when there was light without glare, when the whole landscape was flood-illuminated in a hundred hues. He must reach the summer-house in time to see that; there might not be so many more chances. Already he had had almost enough of Torteval; it racked him with its memories, and it was given over to people like Sylvius and Susan who intruded or fussed. He would restart for Lebanon in a day or two; and once back there, in serenity and comfort, he would have to think twice before he left it again. That blethering Colonel fellow was right after all. “I’m done,” he thought with more resignation than bitterness, “I’m done.”
He dragged on his jacket, tottered giddily for a moment and then stepped out breathlessly into the garden. He could feel his heart beating, could feel that stutter in his body. But he made the summer-house, it seemed, almost at one stride; and sitting down on its broad wooden seat he crossed his hands on his stick and stared out in front of him.
Sitting there he thought of all that had happened since that useless fellow Sealing had courted Glory there a half-century and more ago. And again, as he reviewed it, history took on the appearance of a sum with pluses and minuses that eventually cancelled out; a sum, he saw, manipulated by that seething spirit of discontent and revolt which rose and was downed and rose again and was again crushed—just as Ghoomri out there rose in floods, sometimes high, sometimes very high, but always retracting to a normal. Item, his own advent, his ambitions that soared to triumphs and were now as dead as those cold kilns and silent engines over the brow of the hill. Item, Conna and Duffy, their sophisticated disapproval, their crescendo programmes, their campaign against “disreputable” Torteval. Well, who was disreputable now? Now Torteval had its turn again in Rossy, his dear Rossy; and presently, no doubt, some product of the temporarily submerged line—“Mr. Trevelyan” maybe—would arise and taking up the unending battle would spin the wheel into reverse. Up and down, plus and minus; wash-out; zero. The whole thing evened out, the whole process came to nothing, the whole of a man’s life—if you looked at it—didn’t amount to a damn.
Ross sighed, staring at the bright river. Seventy-five years and the total of them came to nothing. And yet, of course, that was absurdly wrong; on the contrary the sum advanced and expanded in an infinite progress far beyond one’s range of vision. Nothing, nothing on earth, could undo the effect of his, Ross Cowal’s, life; nothing could make it as if he had never been. For there was Rossy going on; and Grace and Gloria; and this new little Duffy-Elspeth product, the only one that would carry the name of Cowal; and all the brood of prolific Sylvius and his overworked Annunciata. Here they unquestionably were, six or eight of them, widely different, fated no doubt to very varying destinies, but all the same in one thing—that but for Ross Cowal they would never have been at all. Nothing? Nothing? On the contrary one was God. One had created; and nothing but a fellow God could arrest one’s creations now.
At the thought of God he looked down at Ghoomri, the nearest likeness to a god he knew on earth. Seventy-five years; fifty since Ross Cowal and the Ghoomri River had come together; and Ross had changed unto decay and ending but Ghoomri had not changed at all. Take away that railway bridge with its clattering girders; take away the houses at Nuli, where the wealthy Indians of Sikkal were building a new-fangled suburb; and the scene was the scene he had looked upon from the jangad when Somappa had said suddenly, “A hundred rupees a month.” . . . He started; for he thought someone had just spoken those words aloud; suddenly he felt that stutter, that misfire in his body, and moved uneasily in his seat. . . . Well, there ran mighty Ghoomri, more like a lake than a river; and if you looked at him on a map he was more like a tree than a river, like a family tree, like the family tree of Cowal. Down here he was Ross Cowal, the thick trunk, the founder; but a little way up he split into great branches, and these again split and re-split and went far, far away, climbing into the hills, into places remotely different from Sikkal. “As these creatures of mine will go,” he thought, “wandering and wandering, climbing and separating till one day, some hundreds of years hence, they will differ from Ross Cowal as wildly as any little brook that comes trickling down Simbri differs from this vast, flat, moving plain of water. . . .”
The stutter came again, a dropping feeling, a nausea. . . . Suddenly, with a start, he saw Somappa sitting in the summer-house, red blanket and all. . . . No, he wasn’t; of course he wasn’t. Sleeping again! Was he going to sleep away the rest of his life? No time for that now. But Somappa’s blanket had been too red, it hurt him, it became a pain within himself that stabbed him again and again. How could that be? yet it was. . . . There were voices in the summer-house, or were they outside? Glory, perhaps, and that fellow Sealing. He was no use—a loser, born to it. . . . They were having a cricket match to-day on the maidan. . . . “I wish I had you working for me.” . . . Ceiling-cloths. . . . Sunrise on Pisgah. . . . No!
Starting, he shook himself back to reality. But he could not shake away that pain, the pain Somappa’s blanket had caused, a pain scarlet as its hue, pungent as its involved scents. Cloudily he looked again at sunlit Ghoomri, a mosaic pavement now of splintered colours. How nice it would be to sit in a boat and sail through those colours, picking them up one after another. Well, life was a very easy thing really; you had only to wish hard enough and your wish happened; for suddenly sure enough he was in a boat and sailing, sailing down the river. Easy as anything; you just had to wish. Yet it was a queer boat, for it swelled and shrank, swelled and shrank; at first it was a big bargeing thing the size of a pattimar and full of people who for some reason had no faces—or faces that dilated and contracted like the boat itself, that changed their colours like the mosaic of the river. But at last it was quite a tiny boat, almost a canoe, and he was now quite alone in it and it was carrying him with tremendous rapidity through the narrowing south outlet towards the bar. He thought, “This is a very important journey upon which I am going; but—where?” There was a rich sound of singing, but soon that was drowned by the thunder and roar of the great surf. In a moment, he saw, the boat, going faster and faster, would hit the breakers; and then in a moment it did hit the breakers, and the breakers, that now held the red sun in their midst, burst all round him into radiant cascades of unspeakably brilliant light. . . .
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Rossy came hurrying up the Torteval drive; she saw Susan sitting in the lit verandah, her hands folded in her lap, doing nothing and perfectly content. She called out:
“Where’s Granny?”
Equable as ever, undreaming of anything but the normal, Susan replied that he was in the summer-house. “He’s been there all the evening.”
“But it’s dark.”
“He likes the dark, dearie; he always did.”
But Rossy was not so sure. Bitterly self-accusing, she picked up an electric torch from the verandah table and went up the path calling, “Granny, Granny.” There was no reply. She thought, her heart beating wildly, “He’s asleep again; I’m frightened.” But she went on, tiptoeing the last few yards, and flashed her torch into the summer-house. . . . Then she came hurriedly down again.
At the corner of the house she ran full tilt into a young man coming round from the front. Tremendously to his surprise she clung to him, gasping almost incoherently:
“Oh, Brinjer! Oh, Peter! My Granny’s dead. He’s just died. In the summer-house. Oh, Peter, I’m so frightened. Help me!”
The boy fell from Peter Nicholls like a cloak. He thrust out a steadying arm, put it round her, held her a moment. He said:
“It’s all right, Rossy. I’ll see to this. Give me the torch. You run inside.”
Like a child Rossy obeyed him; dry-eyed still she went through the house into that drawing-room of bright brass and carven wood and sat down on the sofa in the dark. It seemed to her that she sat there a long, long time; but in reality it was only a few minutes when Susan’s heavy step sounded on the wooden floor and Susan’s comfortable voice said, “Rossy? All in the dark?” and Susan’s hand switched on the electric light. . . . And looking up suddenly Rossy saw Gloriette Lafauce in the rose-gold 1880 dress smiling kindly down at her. . . .
Outside the summer-house Peter stood a minute to collect himself, running his hand over his hair. He had switched on his torch to look, and then he had switched it off again, and now for a minute he stood in blinding darkness wondering what best to do. And as he stood and wondered, the blackness round him cleared slowly and objects came back to their stations; and he saw over the sea the last dark crimson of sunset and above that the evening star, and then below him the grey-silver sheen of Ghoomri marching, marching to make that fated destination which seemed hardly worth reaching after all. . . .