第44章

The lady guests at Peliti's--Mrs.Jack Owen and the rest--were giving a tea in the hotel pavilion.They had the band, the wife of the Commander-in-Chief, the governess from Viceregal Lodge and one little Viceregal girl, three A.D.C.'s, one member of council, and the Archdeacon.These were the main features, moving among a hundred or so of people more miscellaneous, who, like the ladies at Peliti's, had come up out of the seething Plains to the Paradise of the summer capital.The Pavilion overhung the Mall; looking down one could see the coming and going of leisurely Government peons in scarlet and gold, Cashmiri vendors of great bales of embroideries and skins, big-turbaned Pahari horse-dealers, chaffering in groups, and here and there a mounted Secretary-sahib trotting to the Club.

Beyond, the hills dipped blue and bluer to the plains, and against them hung a single waving yellow laburnum, a note of imagination.

Madeline Anderson was looking at it when Mrs.Mickie and Mrs.

Gammidge came up with an affectionate observation upon the cut of her skirt, after which Mrs.Mickie harked back to what they had been talking about before.

'She's straight enough now, I suppose,' this lady said.

'She goes down.But she gives people a good deal of latitude for speculation.'

'Who is this?' asked Madeline.'I ask for information, to keep out of her way.I find I am developing the most shocking curiosity.Imust be in a position to check it.'

The ladies exchanged hardly perceptible glances.Then Mrs.Gammidge said, 'Mrs.Innes,' and looked as if, for the moment, at any rate, she would withhold further judgment.

'But you mustn't avoid the poor lady,' put in Mrs.Mickie, 'simply because of her past.It wouldn't be fair.Besides--'

'Her past?' Madeline made one little effort to look indifferent, and then let the question leap up in her.

'My dear,' said Mrs.Gammidge, with brief impatience, 'he married her in Cairo, and she was--dancing there.Case of chivalry, Ibelieve, though there are different versions.Awful row in the regiment--he had to take a year's leave.Then he succeeded to the command, and the Twenty-third were ordered out here.She came with him to Lucknow--and made slaves of every one of them.They'll swear to you now that she was staying at Shepheard's with an invalid mother when he met her.And now she's accepted like everybody else;and that's all there is about it.'

'There's nothing in that,' said Madeline, determinedly, 'to prove that she wasn't--respectable.'

'N--no.Of course not,' and again the eye of Mrs.Gammidge met that of Mrs.Mickie.

'Though, you see love,' added the latter lady, 'it would have been nicer for his people--they've never spoken to him since--if she had been making her living otherwise in Cairo.'

'As a barmaid, for instance,' said Madeline, sarcastically.

'As a barmaid, for instance,' repeated Mrs.Gammidge, calmly.

'But Simla isn't related to him--Simla doesn't care!' Mrs.Mickie exclaimed.'Everybody will be as polite as possible when she turns up.You'll see.You knew, didn't you, that she was coming out in the Caledonia?'

'No,' said Madeline.She looked carefully where she was going to put her coffee-cup, and then she glanced out again at the laburnum hanging over the plains.'I--I am glad to hear it.These separations you take so lightly out here are miserable, tragic.'

The other ladies did not exchange glances this time.Miss Anderson's change of tone was too marked for comment which she might have detected.

'Colonel Innes got the telegram this morning.She wired from Brindisi,' Mrs.Gammidge said.

'Does he seem pleased?' asked Mrs.Mickie, demurely.

'He said he was afraid she would find it very hot coming up here from Bombay.And, of course, he is worried about a house.When a man has been living for months at the Club--'

'Of course, poor fellow! I do love that dear old Colonel Innes, though I can't say I know him a bit.He won't take the trouble to be nice to me, but I am perfectly certain he must be the dearest old thing inside of him.Worth any dozen of these little bow-wows that run round after rickshaws,' said Mrs.Mickie, with candour.

'I think he's a ridiculous old glacier,' Mrs.Gammidge remarked, and Mrs.Mickie looked at Madeline and said, 'Slap her!'

'What for?' asked Miss Anderson, with composure.'I dare say he is--occasionally.It isn't a bad thing to be, I should think, in Indian temperatures.'

'I guess you got it that time, dear lady,' said Mrs.Mickie to Mrs.

Gammidge, as Madeline slipped toward the door.

'Meant to be cross, did she? How silly of her! If she gives her little heart away like that often, people will begin to make remarks.'

'The worst of that girl is,' Mrs.Mickie continued, 'that you never can depend upon her.For days together she'll be just as giddy and jolly as anybody and then suddenly she'll give you a nasty superior bit of ice down the back of your neck like that.I've got her coming to tea tomorrow afternoon,' Mrs.Mickie added, with sudden gloom, 'and little Lord Billy and all that set are coming.They'll throw buns at each other--I know they will.What, in heaven's name, made me ask her?'

'Oh, she'll have recovered by then.You must make allowance for the shock we gave her, poor dear.Consider how you would feel if Lady Worsley suddenly appeared upon the scene, and demanded devotion from Sir Frank.'

'She wouldn't get it,' Mrs.Mickie dimpled candidly.'Frank always loses his heart and his conscience at the same time.But you don't suppose there's anything serious in this affair? Pure pretty platonics, I should call it.'