第62章

Ram Singh, all unaware, kept his horses at their steady clanking downward gallop, and Simla, clinging to the hilltops, was brushed by the first rays of the sun.

It came a gloriously clear morning; early riders round Jakko saw the real India lying beyond the outer ranges, flat and blue and pictured with forests and rivers like a map.The plains were pretty and interesting in this aspect, but nobody found them attractive.

Sensitive people liked it better when the heat mist veiled them and it was possible to look abroad without a sudden painful thought of contrasting temperatures.We may suppose that the inhabitants of Paradise sometimes grieve over their luck.Even Madeline Anderson, whose heart knew no constriction at the remembrance of brother or husband at some cruel point in the blue expanse, had come to turn her head more willingly the other way, towards the hills rolling up to the snows, being a woman who suffered by proxy, and by observation, and by Rudyard Kipling.

On this particular morning, however, she had not elected to do either.She slept late instead, and was glad to sleep.I might as well say at once that on the night before she had made up her mind, had brought herself to the point, and had written to Mrs.Innes, at 'Two Gables', all the facts, in so far as she was acquainted with them, connected with Frederick Prendergast's death.She was very much ashamed of herself, poor girl; she was aware that, through her postponement, Horace Innes would now see his problem in all its bitterness, make his choice with his eyes wide open.If it had only happened before he knew--anything about her!

She charged herself with having deliberately waited, and then spent an exhausting hour trying to believe that she had drifted unconsciously to the point of their mutual confession.Whatever the truth was, she did not hesitate to recognize a new voice in her private counsels from that hour, urging her in one way or another to bring matters to an end.It was a strong instinct; looking at the facts, she saw it was the gambler's.When she tried to think of the ethical considerations involved she saw only the chances.The air seemed to throb with them all night; she had to count them finally to get rid of them.

Brookes was up betimes, however, and sent off the letter.It went duly, by Surnoo, to Mrs.Innes at 'Two Gables'.Madeline woke at seven with a start, and asked if it had gone, then slept again contentedly.So far as she was concerned the thing was finished.

The breakfast gong had sounded, and the English mail had arrived before she opened her eyes again upon the day's issues; she gave it her somewhat desultory attention while Brookes did her hair.There was only one scrap of news.Adele mentioned in a postscript that poor Mr.Prendergast's money was likely to go to a distant relative, it having transpired that he died without leaving a will.

'She is sure, absolutely sure,' Madeline mused, 'to answer my letter in person.She will be here within an hour.I shall have this to tell her, too.How pleased she will be! She will come into it all, I suppose--if she is allowed.Though she won't be allowed, that is if--' But there speculation began, and Madeline had forbidden herself speculation, if not once and for all, at least many times and for fifteen minutes.

No reasonable purpose would be served by Mrs.Innes's visit, Madeline reflected, as she sat waiting in the little room opening on the veranda; but she would come, of course she would come.She would require the satisfaction of the verbal assurance; she would hope to extract more details; she would want the objectionable gratification of talking if over.

In spite of any assurance, she would believe that Madeline had not told her before in order to make her miserable a little longer than she need be; but, after all, her impression about that did not particularly matter.It couldn't possibly be a pleasant interview, yet Madeline found herself impatient for it.

'Surnoo,' she said of her messenger, 'must be idling on his way back in the bazaar.I must try to remember to fine him two pice.Surnoo is incorrigible.'

She forgot, however, to fine Surnoo.The pad of his bare feet sounded along the veranda almost immediately, and the look in his Pahari eyes was that of expected reproach, and ability to defend himself against it.

He held out two letters at arm's-length, for as he was expected to bring only one there was a fault in this; and all his domestic traditions told him that he might be chastened.One was addressed to Madeline in Mrs.Innes's handwriting; the other, she saw with astonishment, was her own communication to that lady, her own letter returned.Surnoo explained volubly all the way along the veranda, and in the flood of his unknown tongue Madeline caught a sentence or two.

'The memsahib was not,' said Surnoo.Clearly he could not deliver a letter to a memsahib who was not.'Therefore,' Surnoo continued, 'Ihave brought back your honour's letter, and the other I had from the hand of the memsahib's runner, the runner with one eye, who was on the road to bring it here.More I do not know, but it appears that the memsahib has gone to her father and mother in Belaat, being very sorrowful because the Colonel-sahib has left her to shoot.'

'The letter will tell me,' said Madeline to herself, fingering it.

'Enough, Surnoo.'

The man went away, and Madeline closed and locked the door of her sitting-room.The letter would tell her--what? She glanced about her with dissatisfaction, and sought the greater privacy of her bedroom, where also she locked the door and drew the muslin curtain across the window.She laid the letter on the dressing-table and kept her eyes upon it while she unfastened, with trembling hands, the brooch at her neck and the belt at her waist.She did one or two other meaningless things, as if she wanted to gain time, to fortify her nerves even against an exhibition before herself.