第68章

There was a grave reticence in his talk about her which amused me in the beginning.Mrs.Harbottle had been for ten years important enough to us all, but her serious significance, the light and the beauty in her, had plainly been reserved for the discovery of this sensitive and intelligent person not very long from Sandhurst and exactly twenty-six.I was barely allowed a familiar reference, and anything approaching a flippancy was met with penetrating silence.

I was almost rebuked for lightly suggesting that she must occasionally find herself bored in Peshawur.

'I think not anywhere,' said Mr.Chichele; 'Mrs.Harbottle is one of the few people who sound the privilege of living.'

This to me, who had counted Mrs.Harbottle's yawns on so many occasions! It became presently necessary to be careful, tactful, in one's implications about Mrs.Harbottle, and to recognize a certain distinction in the fact that one was the only person with whom Mr.

Chichele discussed her at all.

The day came when we talked of Robert; it was bound to come in the progress of any understanding and affectionate colloquy which had his wife for inspiration.I was familiar, of course, with Somers's opinion that the Colonel was an awfully good sort; that had been among the preliminaries and become understood as the base of all references.And I liked Robert Harbottle very well myself.When his adjutant called him a born leader of men, however, I felt compelled to look at the statement consideringly.

'In a tight place,' I said--dear me, what expressions had the freedom of our little frontier drawing-rooms!--'I would as soon depend on him as on anybody.But as for leadership--'

'He is such a good fellow that nobody here does justice to his soldierly qualities,' said Mr.Chichele, 'except Mrs.Harbottle.'

'Has she been telling you about them?' I inquired.

'Well,' he hesitated, 'she told me about the Mulla Nulla affair.

She is rather proud of that.Any woman would be.'

'Poor dear Judy!' I mused.

Somers said nothing, but looked at me, removing his cigarette, as if my words would be the better of explanation.

'She has taken refuge in them--in Bob Harbottle's soldierly qualities--ever since she married him,' I continued.

'Taken refuge,' he repeated, coldly, but at my uncompromising glance his eyes fell.

'Well?' I said.

'You mean--'

'Oh, I mean what I say,' I laughed.'Your cigarette has gone out--have another.'

'I think her devotion to him splendid.'

'Quite splendid.Have you seen the things he brought her from the Simla Art Exhibition? He said they were nice bits of colour, and she has hung them in the drawing-room, where she will have to look at them every day.Let us admire her--dear Judy.'

'Oh,' he said, with a fine air of detachment, 'do you think they are so necessary, those agreements?'

'Well,' I replied, 'we see that they are not indispensable.More sugar? I have only given you one lump.And we know, at all events,' I added, unguardedly, 'that she could never have had an illusion about him.'

The young man looked up quickly.'Is that story true?' he asked.

'There was a story, but most of us have forgotten it.Who told you?'

'The doctor.'

'The Surgeon-Major,' I said, 'has an accurate memory and a sense of proportion.As I suppose you were bound to get it from somebody, Iam glad you got it from him.'

I was not prepared to go on, and saw with some relief that Somers was not either.His silence, as he smoked, seemed to me deliberate;and I had oddly enough at this moment for the first time the impression that he was a man and not a boy.Then the Harbottles themselves joined us, very cheery after a gallop from the Wazir-Bagh.We talked of old times, old friendships, good swords that were broken, names that had carried far, and Somers effaced himself in the perfect manner of the British subaltern.It was a long, pleasant gossip, and I thought Judy seemed rather glad to let her husband dictate its level, which, of course, he did.I noticed when the three rode away together that the Colonel was beginning to sit down rather solidly on his big New Zealander; and I watched the dusk come over from the foothills for a long time thinking more kindly than I had spoken of Robert Harbottle.

I have often wondered how far happiness is contributed to a temperament like Judy Harbottle's, and how far it creates its own;but I doubt whether, on either count, she found as much in any other winter of her life except perhaps the remote ones by the Seine.

Those ardent hours of hers, when everything she said was touched with the flame of her individuality, came oftener; she suddenly cleaned up her palate and began to translate in one study after another the language of the frontier country, that spoke only in stones and in shadows under the stones and in sunlight over them.

There is nothing in the Academy of this year, at all events, that Iwould exchange for the one she gave me.She lived her physical life at a pace which carried us all along with her; she hunted and drove and danced and dined with such sincere intention as convinced us all that in hunting and driving and dancing and dining there were satisfactions that had been somehow overlooked.The Surgeon-Major's wife said it was delightful to meet Mrs.Harbottle, she seemed to enjoy everything so thoroughly; the Surgeon-Major looked at her critically and asked her if she were quite sure she hadn't a night temperature.He was a Scotchman.One night Colonel Harbottle, hearing her give away the last extra, charged her with renewing her youth.

'No, Bob,' she said, 'only imitating it.'

Ah, that question of her youth.It was so near her--still, she told me once, she heard the beat of its flying, and the pulse in her veins answered the false signal.That was afterward, when she told the truth.She was not so happy when she indulged herself otherwise.As when she asked one to remember that she was a middle-aged woman, with middle-aged thoughts and satisfactions.