The Potter's Thumb Part 9

And Rose did smile. Her contempt always seemed to pa.s.s by the man himself, and rest on his opinions. Even there, much as she loathed them, she was forced to confess that they did not seem to affect his actions; that it was impossible to conceive of his behaving to any woman, save as a gentleman should behave. Yet this thought aggravated the offence of his manner by enhancing its malice aforethought, and made her frown again.

'Come! there is light enough for a single yet, Mr. Keene,' she said imperiously, and George, with one regretful glance at Mrs. Boynton, obeyed. Lewis Gordon looked after them, shrugged his shoulders, and strolled off to the messroom-tent.

'It really is shameful of Lewis to tease Miss Tweedie as he does,'

began Gwen, who, finding herself unavoidably paired with Dan, instantly started what she thought a safe topic of conversation. He looked at her with absent eyes.

'A shame, is it? but when a man likes a girl he is very apt----'

She broke in with a petulant laugh. 'Are you asleep, Dan? What could induce you to think that?'

'What? Why, love of course! Set a thief to catch a thief. A man can't be in love himself without----'

He certainly was not asleep! but she managed to double back to safer ground. Yet his words recurred to her that evening during the half hour _tete-a-tete_ which she accorded with the utmost regularity to Colonel Tweedie in his capacity of host; Rose meanwhile singing songs to the younger men who gathered round the piano, leaving those two decorously to the sofa.

'There is a little song I want Mrs. Boynton to hear,' called the Colonel during a pause. 'I forget its name--you haven't sung it for a long time, and I used to be so fond of it. A little Jacobite song--really a charming air, Mrs. Boynton.' Rose flushed visibly--at least to the feminine eyes in the party--and shook her head.

'But you must remember it, my dear,' persisted her father; 'do try.'

'Oh yes! please do try! I should so like to hear it,' echoed Gwen curiously, her eyes full on the blush. Rose, conscious of it, felt herself a fool, and looked still more uncomfortable.

'Talking of Jacobite songs,' remarked an indifferent voice beside her, 'I wonder, Miss Tweedie, if you know a great favourite of mine, called "Lewie Gordon"--don't laugh, you boys, it's rude. If so, please sing it. I haven't heard it for years; people are always afraid of making me vain.'

She gave him a quick, grateful look, as, with a nod, she broke into the song.

'O send Lewie Gordon hame, And the lad I daurna name, Tho' his back be to the wa', Here's to him that's far awa'.'

She sang with greater spirit than before, a sort of glad recognition of his kindly tact leading up to the decision of the climax:

'That's the lad that I'll gang wi'.'

Yet after all, amid the chorus of thanks, she heard him say in his worst manner, '"The lad I daurna name!" how like a woman!' And he added to the offence; for, when the little under-secretary remarked diffidently that he had always understood that the song referred to Charles Edward, though whether to the old or the young Pretender he could not say, Lewis, as he dawdled away to his nightly task of breaking up the _tete-a-tete_, murmured that at any rate it referred to a _pretendu_. But Rose had caught Gwen's appealing look from the sofa also, and rising, closed the piano with a bang and suggested a round game. If her intention was to punish the offender, who hated that form of amus.e.m.e.nt, she failed ignominiously; for he sat on the 'Stool of Repentance' with perfect nonchalance, and, when it came to her turn, paid her such double-edged, charmingly caustic little compliments, that she had to join in the laugh they raised. It was, in fact, past midnight ere the Colonel, with many allusions to the delight of such company, said they really must go to bed, and they trooped in a body out of the big tent to seek their several quarters.

'I'm glad not to make a casual of you to-night,' said Mrs. Boynton softly to George.

'Almost wish you were,' he replied, giving a rueful look towards the red brick prison on the farther side of the ca.n.a.l. 'This is home; that is exile.'

Dan nodded his head sympathetically. 'I know that feeling. It comes from jungle stations. And the bungalow does look cheerless in comparison. Odd; for one naturally a.s.sociates a camp with wars and tumults, battles, murders, and sudden death; all the evils of a transitory world, in fact. But you must have noticed, Mrs. Boynton, the extraordinary air of peace, security, almost of permanence which tents have in the moonlight. Look! might they not be solid blocks of marble fastened by silver cords?'

'I noticed it last night when I was watching them being put up,' began George unguardedly. Mrs. Boynton looked up quickly. Rose, who was leaning against a rope by the door of her tent which stood next the mess, glanced along the line of the camp.

'Silver cords and marble blocks,' she echoed. 'Yes! but it sounds like the New Jerusalem.'

'I always thought,' remarked Lewis Gordon argumentatively, 'that it was the tents of Midian. I'm sure some one told me so when I learnt hymns.

Or was it hosts of Midian and tents of Ishmael? Anyhow, they had nothing to do with Paradise, and I for one have been prowling round long enough. So good-night, Gwen; don't grow wings in the night, please; it would be so disconcerting. Good-night, Miss Tweedie.'

Being close beside her he held out his hand.

'Good-night; I hope you are not very stiff.'

'I almost wish I were, for then you would sympathise with misfortune--like a woman,' he replied in a low voice, and as he pa.s.sed to his own tent next hers, she heard him quote the lines--

'Tho his back be to the wa', Here's to him that's far awa'.'

She looked after him, her face showing soft in the moonlight, then, with a good-night to the others, disappeared in her turn.

George lingered, giving still more rueful glances at the bungalow. 'I suppose I must be off too. Oh! by the way! it's all right about the Ayodhya pot. Dalel Beg tells me his women know the owner, so you will have it to-morrow. Good-night, Fitzgerald.'

Dan, thus left alone to walk two tents-length with Gwen, felt that fate was on his side at last; more probably _she_ was, since her fine tact told her it was never wise to ignore his pa.s.sion entirely. Besides, something in her shrank from treating him always as a mere outsider.

'I've been longing for this chance all day,' he began at once in a tone that was in itself a caress.

'Do you think I am quite blind?' she interrupted, a trifle petulantly; 'the only wonder is that every one in the camp didn't see it also. You are so reckless, Dan! Of course you wanted to tell me how you felt when I was lost, and all that; as if I couldn't imagine it!' she gave in to a smile that was almost tender as she spoke--'Why, Dan! I can see you!

with a face yards long, and the whole camp, Chief and all, under orders in half a minute. Fire-escapes, life-preservers, first aid to the wounded, everything mortal man could devise to avert disaster, ready before the rest had time to think! Do you suppose I don't know what you are, Dan?' The odd, composite ring in her voice sank as she added, in a lower tone, 'sometimes I almost wish I didn't.'

They had reached the place where their ways separated; hers to the last tent forward, his to the second row, and she held out her hand with a smile to say good-night. His heart beat hard at her half-reluctant admission of praise; besides, Gwen Boynton was not the sort of woman who could smile thus, and yet expect to end the interview then and there; perhaps, again, she did not wish it so to end. In her relations with this man, she often found it difficult to know what she did, or did not, desire.

'Gwen,' he said eagerly, standing close, with his warm nervous hands clasping hers, 'did you think of me--then?--when you knew you were lost, I mean--did you, Gwen?--I don't often ask anything of you, my darling--you might tell me--It isn't much to ask--Did you, Gwen?'

She gave something between a laugh and a sob. 'Did I? Oh! Dan, you know I did. There, that is enough--you said that was all you wanted.

Good-night, Dan.'

He went over to his quarters happy as a king. As for Gwen, the personal influence his immediate presence had over her pa.s.sed away quickly, and that which his real absence from her life invariably produced did not come to soften the curious dread with which she recognised, that in her trouble of the day before, her first thought had indeed been for him.

How foolish she had been in letting him re-enter her life at all! but he had come back in her first loneliness when the future had seemed very black. Now it was different, now it was once more that choice between poverty and comfort which she had made in her girlhood. With what pain, none--save Dan, who, alas! always understood--would believe.

And if the choice was necessary then, what was it now with her acquired habits, her knowledge of the world? They would both be miserable if they married without money. Then the thought of the bills came, as it always did to remind her of the tie they imposed. Even if Lewis, whom she liked and respected, were to make up his mind to marry, she could not accept him without dismissing Dan. Yet how could she dismiss him, even for his food, until that money was repaid? Poor Dan! he loved her dearly, and in a way she cared for him as she had never cared for any of her other lovers. Yet the decision which had turned out so comfortably ten years before was still the right decision. Many of those lovers had been as devoted to her; and yet they had recovered from their rejection. Then the remembrance of George Keene's admission that he had been out watching the stars made her smile. He was a nice boy, who already deemed her an angel; but Lewis objected to wings, and of the two that was the most convenient view for the woman.

While she was coming to this conclusion George had been looking after her interests, for on his return to the bungalow he had been startled by the sudden uprisal of a veiled female from a shadowy corner of his verandah.

'I am Azizan's mother,' said a m.u.f.fled voice. 'The Mirza sent me. I have been waiting the Huzoor's return. There is the pot if the Huzoor will give ten rupees for it. It is much, yet the pot brings luck.'

'Ten!' echoed George in delight, taking it from her. 'Yes! you shall have that; then I owe Azizan also. Shall I pay you?'

'My daughter is as myself,' replied the voice. 'It is ten for the picture, and ten for the pot.'

George fetched the money and counted it carefully into the shrouded hand.

'That is all, I think?' he asked.

'Huzoor, that is all. May the blessing of the widow and the fatherless go with the merciful Protector of the Poor.'

But while he was thinking, as he undressed, how pleased Mrs. Boynton would be, the veiled figure was pausing in the moonlight to speak to the factotum.

'You have seen nothing, you are to say nothing. And the Diwan sends these to the servant-people.' Then came twenty careful c.h.i.n.ks, this time into a clutching hand, and Chandni, hurrying back to the city, laughed silently to herself. The idea of bribing the little sahib's servants with his own rupees would please Dalel, and put him into a good temper again; so if this plan matured, her future would ripen with it. As she pa.s.sed the sleeping camp she paused, wondering in which tent lay the mem who had succeeded so easily where she had failed. The lights were out in all save two, and the double row of glistening white roofs struck even her insensibility with a savage recognition of undeserved peace and security. They were no better than she; no better than those shadowy crouching figures of the village bad-characters set out here and there to keep watch and ward, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief; a plan which at least secures a deserving criminal should thefts occur. For it was in the East that the strange hybrid between altruism and egotism which we call a scape-goat was invented by mankind.