The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeannette Duncan (ebook reader browser txt) 📖

instantly turned her back as soon as she was perceived, Mrs. Innes gave no sign even of preoccupation. If she had bad half-hours, they occurred between the teas and tennises, the picnics, riding-parties, luncheons, and other entertainments, at which you could always count upon meeting her; and in that case they must have been short. She looked extremely well, and her admirable frocks gave an accent even to 'Birthday' functions at Viceregal Lodge, which were quite hopelessly general. If any one could have compelled a revelation of her mind, I think it would have transpired that her anxieties about Capt. Valentine Drake and Mrs. Vesey gave her no leisure for lesser ones. These for a few days had been keen and indignant--Captain Drake had so far forgotten himself as to ride with Mrs. Vesey twice since Mrs. Innes's arrival--and any display of poverty of spirit was naturally impossible under the circumstances. The moment was a critical one; Captain Drake seemed inclined to place her in the category of old, unexacting friends--ladies who looked on and smiled, content to give him tea on rainy days, and call him by his Christian name, with perhaps the privilege of a tapping finger on his shoulder, and an occasional order about a rickshaw. Mrs. Violet was not an introspective person, or she might have discovered here that the most stable part of her self-respect was her EXIGENCE with Captain Drake.

She found out quickly enough, however, that she did not mean to discard it. She threw herself, therefore--her fine shoulders and arms, her pretty clothes, her hilarity, her complexion, her eyelashes, and all that appertained to her--into the critical task of making other men believe, at Captain Drake's expense, that they were quite as fond of her as he was. Mrs. Vesey took opposite measures, and the Club laid bets on the result.

The Club was not prepossessed by Captain Drake. He said too little and he implied too much. He had magnificent shoulders, which he bent a great deal over secluded sofas, and a very languid interest in matters over which ordinary men were enthusiastic. He seemed to believe that if he smiled all the way across his face, he would damage a conventionality. His clothes were unexceptionable, and he always did the right thing, though bored by the necessity. He was good-looking in an ugly way, which gave him an air of restrained capacity for melodrama, and made women think him interesting. Somebody with a knack of disparagement said that he was too much expressed. It rather added to his unpopularity that he was a man whom women usually took with preposterous seriousness--all but Kitty Vesey, who charmed and held him by her outrageous liberties. When Mrs. Vesey chaffed him, he felt picturesque. He was also aware of inspiring entertainment for the lookers-on, with the feeling at such times that he, too, was an amused spectator. This was, of course, their public attitude. In private there was sentiment, and they talked about the tyranny of society, or delivered themselves of ideas suggested by works of fiction which everybody simply HAD to read.

For a week Mrs. Innes looked on, apparently indifferent, rather apparently not observing; and an Assistant Secretary in the Home Department began to fancy that his patience in teaching the three dachshund puppies tricks was really appreciated. He was an on-coming Assistant Secretary, with other conspicuous parts, and hitherto his time had been too valuable to spend upon ladies' dachshunds. Mrs. Innes had selected him well. There came an evening when, at a dance at the Lieutenant-Governor's, Mrs. Innes was so absorbed in what the Assistant Secretary was saying to her, as she passed on his arm, that she did not see Captain Drake in the corridor at all, although he had carefully broken an engagement to walk with Kitty Vesey that very afternoon, as the beginning of gradual and painless reform in her direction. His unrewarded virtue rose up and surprised him with the distinctness of its resentment; and while his expression was successfully amused, his shoulders and the back of his neck, as well as the hand on his moustache, spoke of discipline which promised to be efficient. Reflection assured him that discipline was after all deserved, and a quarter of an hour later found him wagging his tail, so to speak, over Mrs. Innes's programme in a corner pleasantly isolated. The other chair was occupied by the Assistant Secretary. Captain Drake represented an interruption, and was obliged to take a step towards the nearest lamp to read the card. Three dances were rather ostentatiously left, and Drake initialled them all. He brought back the card with a bow, which spoke of dignity under bitter usage, together with the inflexible intention of courteous self-control, and turned away.

'Oh, if you please, Captain Drake--let me see what you've done. All those? But--'

'Isn't it after eleven, Mrs. Innes?' asked the Assistant Secretary, with a timid smile. He was enjoying himself, but he had a respect for vested interests, and those of Captain Drake were so well known that he felt a little like a buccaneer.

'Dear me, so it is!' Mrs. Innes glanced at one of her bracelets. 'Then, Captain Drake, I'm sorry'--she carefully crossed out the three 'V.D.'s'--'I promised all the dances I had left after ten to Mr. Holmcroft. Most of the others I gave away at the gymkhana--really. Why weren't you there? That Persian tutor again! I'm afraid you are working too hard. And what did the Rani do, Mr. Holmcroft? It's like the Arabian Nights, only with real jewels--'

'Oh, I say, Holmcroft, this is too much luck, you know. Regular sweepstakes, by Jove!' And Captain Drake lingered on the fringe of the situation.

'Perhaps I have been greedy,' said the Assistant Secretary, deprecatingly. 'I'll--'

'Not in the very least! That is,' exclaimed Mrs. Violet, pouting, 'if I'M to be considered. We'll sit out all but the waltzes, and you shall tell me official secrets about the Rani. She put us up once, she's a delicious old thing. Gave us string beds to sleep on and gold plate to eat from, and swore about every other word. She had been investing in Government paper, and it had dropped three points. "Just my damn luck!" she said. Wasn't it exquisite? Captain Drake--'

'Mrs. Innes--'

'I don't want to be rude, but you're a dreadful embarrassment. Mr. Holmcroft won't tell you official secrets!'

'If she would only behave!' thought Madeline, looking on, 'I would tell her--indeed I would--at once.'

Colonel Innes detached himself from a group of men in mess dress as she appeared with the Worsleys, and let himself drift with the tide that brought them always together.

'You are looking tired--ill,' she said, seriously, as they sought the unconfessed solace of each other's eyes. 'Last night it was the Commander-in-Chief's, and the night before the dance at Peliti's. And again tonight. And you are not like those of us who can rest next morning--you have always your heavy office work!' She spoke with indignant, tender reproach, and he gave himself up to hearing it. 'You will have to take leave and go away,' she insisted, foolishly.

'Leave! Good heavens, no! I wish all our fellows were as fit as I am. And--'

'Yes?' she said.

'Don't pity me, dear friend. I don't think it's good for me. The world really uses me very well.'

'Then it's all right, I suppose,' Madeline said, with sudden depression.

'Of course it is. You are dining with us on the eighth?'

'I'm afraid not, I'm engaged.'

'Engaged again? Don't you WANT to break bread in my house, Miss Anderson?' She was silent, and he insisted, 'Tell me,' he said.

She gave him instead a kind, mysterious smile.

'I will explain to you what I feel about that some day,' she said; 'some day soon. I can't accept Mrs. Innes's invitation for the eighth, but--Brookes and I are going to take tea with the fakir's monkeys on the top of Jakko tomorrow afternoon.'

'Anybody else, or only Brookes?'

'Only Brookes.' And she thought she had abandoned coquetry!

'Then may I come?'

'Indeed you may.'

'I really don't know,' reflected Madeline, as she caught another glimpse of Mrs. Innes vigorously dancing the reel opposite little Lord Billy in his Highland uniform, with her hands on her flowered-satin hips, 'that I am behaving very well myself.'


Chapter 3.VIII.

Horace Innes looked round his wife's drawing-room as if he were making an inventory of it, carefully giving each article its value, which happened, however, to have nothing to do with rupees. Madeline Anderson had been saying something the day before about the intimacy and accuracy with which people's walls expressed them, and though the commonplace was not new to him, this was the first time it had ever led him to scan his wife's. What he saw may be imagined, but his only distinct reflection was that he had no idea that she had been photographed so variously or had so many friends who wore resplendent Staff uniforms. The relation of cheapness in porcelain ornaments to the lady's individuality was beyond him, and he could not analyze his feelings of sitting in the midst of her poverty of spirit. Indeed, thinking of his ordinary unsusceptibility to such things, he told himself sharply that he was adding an affectation of discomfort to the others that he had to bear; and that if Madeline had not given him the idea it would never have entered his mind. The less, he mused, that one had to do with finicking feelings in this world the better. They were well enough for people who were tolerably conditioned in essentials--he preferred this vagueness, even with himself, in connection with his marriage--otherwise they added pricks. Besides he had that other matter to think of.

He thought of the other matter with such obvious irritation that the butler coming in to say that the 'English water' was finished, and how many dozen should he order, put a chair in its place instead, closed the door softly again, and went away. It was not good for the dignity of butlers to ask questions of any sort with a look of that kind under the eyebrows of the sahib. The matter was not serious, Colonel Innes told himself, but he would prefer by comparison to deal with matters that were serious. He knew Simla well enough to attach no overwhelming importance to things said about women at the Club, where the broadest charity prevailed underneath, and the idle comment of the moment had an intrinsic value as a distraction rather than a reflective one as a criticism. This consideration, however, was more philosophical in connection with other men's wives. He found very little in it to palliate what he had overheard, submerged in the 'Times of India', that afternoon. And to put an edge on it, the thing had been said by one of his own juniors. Luckily the boy had left the room without discovering who was behind the 'Times of India'. Innes felt that he should be grateful for having been spared the exigency of defending his wife against a flippant word to which she had very probably laid herself open. He was very angry, and it is perhaps not surprising that he did not pause to consider how far his anger was due to the humiliating necessity of speaking to her about it. She was coming at last though; she was in the hall. He would get it over quickly.

'Goodbye!' said Mrs. Innes at the door. 'No, I can't possibly let you come in to tea. I don't know how you have the conscience after drinking three cups at Mrs. Mickie's, where I had no business