Witness for the Defence Part 7

The restraint which Ballantyne showed towards Thresk only served to inflame him against his wife.

"So that you may pull their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters,"

he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings--alone with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited them and then sank again.

"How's London!" he growled, harping scornfully on the unfortunate phrase.

Ballantyne had had luck that night. He had chanced upon two of the ba.n.a.lities of ordinary talk which give an easy occasion for the bully.

Thresk's twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur provided the best opening.

Only Thresk was a guest--not that that in Ballantyne's present mood would have mattered a great deal, but he was a guest whom Ballantyne had it in his mind to use. All the more keenly therefore he pounced upon Stella.

But in pouncing he gave Thresk a glimpse into the real man that he was, a glimpse which the barrister was quick to appreciate.

"How's London? A lot of London we shall be able to afford! G.o.d! what a life there's in store for us! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, dinner, breakfast, lunch--all among the next-door neighbours." And upon that he flung himself back in his chair and reached out his arms.

"Give me Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr.

Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the table with his hand.

"I like getting away into camp for two months, three months at a time--on the plain, in the jungle, alone. That's the point--alone. You've got it all then. You're a king without a Press. No one to spy on you--no one to carry tales--no next-door neighbours. How's London?" and with a sneer he turned back to his wife. "Oh, I know it doesn't suit Stella.

Stella's so sociable. Stella wants parties. Stella likes frocks. Stella loves to hang herself about with beads, don't you, my darling?"

But Ballantyne had overtried her to-night. Her face suddenly flushed and with a swift and violent gesture she tore at the necklace round her throat. The clasp broke, the beads fell with a clatter upon her plate, leaving her throat bare. For a moment Ballantyne stared at her, unable to believe his eyes. So many times he had made her the b.u.t.t of his savage humour and she had offered no reply. Now she actually dared him!

"Why did you do that?" he asked, pus.h.i.+ng his face close to hers. But he could not stare her down. She looked him in the face steadily. Even her lips did not tremble.

"You told me to wear them. I wore them. You jeer at me for wearing them.

I take them off."

And as she sat there with her head erect Thresk knew why he had bidden her to wear them. There were bruises upon her throat--upon each side of her throat--the sort of bruises which would be made by the grip of a man's fingers. "Good G.o.d!" he cried, and before he could speak another word Stella's moment of defiance pa.s.sed. She suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

Ballantyne pushed back his chair sulkily. Thresk sprang to his feet. But Stella held him off with a gesture of her hand.

"It's nothing," she said between her sobs. "I am foolish. These last few days have been hot, haven't they?" She smiled wanly, checking her tears.

"There's no reason at all," and she got up from her chair. "I think I'll leave you for a little while. My head aches and--and--I've no doubt I have got a red nose now."

She took a step or two towards the pa.s.sage into her private tent but stopped.

"I _can_ leave you to get along together alone, can't I?" she said with her eyes on Thresk. "You know what women are, don't you? Stephen will tell you interesting things about Rajputana if you can get him to talk.

I shall see you before you go," and she lifted the screen and went out of the room. In the darkness of the pa.s.sage she stood silent for a moment to steady herself and while she stood there, in spite of her efforts, her tears burst forth again uncontrollably. She clasped her hands tightly over her mouth so that the sound of her sobbing might not reach to the table in the centre of the big marquee; and with her lips whispering in all sincerity the vain wish that she were dead she stumbled along the corridor.

But the sound had reached into the big marquee and coming after the silence it wrung Thresk's heart. He knew this of her at all events--that she did not easily cry. Ballantyne touched him on the arm.

"You blame me for this."

"I don't know that I do," answered Thresk slowly. He was wondering how much share in the blame he had himself, he who had ridden with her on the Downs eight years ago and had let her speak and had not answered. He sat in this tent to-night with shame burning at his heart. "It wasn't as if I had no confidence in myself," he argued, unable quite to cast back to the Thresk of those early days. "I had--heaps of it."

Ballantyne lifted himself out of his chair and lurched over to the sideboard. Thresk, watching him, fell to wondering why in the world Stella had married him or he her. He knew that a blind man may see such mysteries on any day and that a wise one will not try to explain them.

Still he wondered. Had the man's reputation dazzled her?--for undoubtedly he had one; or was it that intellect which suffered an eclipse when Ballantyne went into camp with n.o.body to carry tales?

He was still pondering on that problem when Ballantyne swung back to the table and set himself to prove, drunk though he was, that his reputation was not ill-founded.

"I am afraid Stella's not very well," he said, sitting heavily down.

"But she asked me to tell you things, didn't she? Well, her wishes are my law. So here goes."

His manner altogether changed now that they were alone. He became confidential, intimate, friendly. He was drunk. He was a coa.r.s.e heavy-featured man with bloodshot eyes; he interrupted his conversation with uneasy glances into the corners of the tent, such glances as Thresk had noticed when he was alone with him before they sat down to dinner; but he managed none the less to talk of Rajputana with a knowledge which amazed Thresk now and would have enthralled him at another time. A visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne knew--very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another before Thresk's eyes--his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in the dark corridor beyond the gra.s.s-screen whispering with wild lips her wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing.

Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana.

Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm.

"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good things--things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them--the swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?"

And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess.

"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side to the other that he might see the better.

"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked.

"No one."

Ballantyne nodded as he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"They make these tents too large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot of light in the middle and all around in the corners--shadows. We sit here in the blot of light--a fair mark. But what's going on in the shadows, Mr.--What's your name? Eh? What's going on in the shadows?"

Thresk had no doubt that Ballantyne's fear was genuine. He was not putting forward merely an excuse for the scene which his guest had witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen, as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong however, for Ballantyne sprang to his feet.

"You are going away to-night. You can do me a service."

"Can I?" asked Thresk.

He understood at last why Ballantyne had been at such pains to interest and amuse him.

"Yes. And in return," cried Ballantyne, "I'll give you another glimpse into the India you don't know."

He walked up to the door of the tent and drew it aside. "Look!"

Thresk, leaning forward in his chair, looked out through the opening. He saw the moonlit plain in a soft haze, in the middle of it the green lamp of a railway signal and beyond the distant ridge, on which straggled the ruins of old Chitipur.

"Look!" cried Ballantyne. "There's tourist India all in one: a desert, a railway and a deserted city, hovels and temples, deep sacred pools and forgotten palaces--the whole bag of tricks crumbling slowly to ruin through centuries on the top of a hill. That's what the good people come out for to see in the cold weather--Jarwhal Junction and old Chitipur."

He dropped the curtain contemptuously and it swung back, shutting out the desert. He took a step or two back into the tent and flung out his arms wide on each side of him.

"But bless your soul," he cried vigorously, "here's the real India."

Thresk looked about the tent and understood.

"I see," he answered--"a place very badly lit, a great blot of light in the centre and all around it dark corners and grim shadows."

Ballantyne nodded his head with a grim smile upon his lips.

"Oh, you have learnt that! Well, you shall do me a service and in return you shall look into the shadows. But we will have the table cleared first." And he called aloud for Baram Singh.