Part 22 (1/2)

”Oh, but he told me he was so happy with you, Mr. Worsley. I think it made me feel a little jealous, as I was his only friend here at first.”

”That's where we stand, is it? All the more reason we should make it up, Mrs. Rayner. Nothing is more conducive to driving away evil spirits of all kinds than a walk on the sea-sh.o.r.e.”

Mr. Worsley smilingly offered his hand to Hester to help her to alight.

”Cheveril, we're off for a stroll,” he said, looking back at the young man, who still stood by the side of Mrs. Fellowes' carriage; and he now suggested that she should imitate the example of her friend. She acquiesced, and they were soon following the other pair of walkers.

”I always know from the pose of my chief's head whether he is happy with his companion or not. Unfortunately he too often shows that he is not so,” said Mark.

”You seem entirely satisfied with the result in this instance, Mr.

Cheveril,” returned Mrs. Fellowes, with a frank smile. ”But who could be otherwise? She is so dear and sweet.”

”Well, the fact is there is triumph to me as well as satisfaction. I didn't exactly have a bet with Mrs. Rayner, but I prophesied that when she met Mr. Worsley she would come under his spell; while she evidently thought the reverse would happen. I feel quite easy in my mind now. I can see the spell is mutual.”

”I expect Mr. Worsley is not a man who always does himself justice by any means. The Colonel sometimes deplores that he gives so much more encouragement to the Mahomedans than to the Hindus at Puranapore. The Campbells are friends of ours, so perhaps we hear most on the other side.”

”Yes, that's a vexed question,” replied Mark gravely. ”But the Collector is getting his eyes opened to some things that were hidden from him for a time. Events are marching. You see he is so often away on tour. The town of Puranapore is but a very small corner of his dominion. His District is immense, and he takes as much interest in it as an English squire does in his acres--very much the same kind of interest too. His pride in land reclaimed and made to blossom is delightful to see. He has often made me ride miles out of the way with him to show me such a tract with its changed face. He would have made an ideal Forest Officer if he had not been Collector of the Revenue. Lately when we were camping, he pointed to a once fever-haunted jungle he had redeemed by draining the dreaded area. He smiled and said, 'I was just thinking last night as I read Tennyson's ”Northern Farmer,” that I could point to this bit of land made wholesome as my only good deed, like the old farmer who pinned his hope of salvation to his ”stubbing of Thornaby waste!”'”

”You speak of his reading Tennyson, Mr. Cheveril? I thought one of his peculiarities was that he never read--that there wasn't a book to be picked up in his house? I've heard his bungalow at Puranapore described as the most dismal of abodes.”

”Oh, yes, the Collector does read at times, and he does what is better, he thinks. He has a more original mind than most people, I a.s.sure you,”

argued Mark, not willing to admit the truth of the a.s.sertion concerning the absence of anything like a library from the Collector's shelves.

”Pity he doesn't hit it off with his wife, isn't it?” remarked Mrs.

Fellowes, who, Mark could see, was one of those who had imbibed a prejudice against the man he had come to love. ”Perhaps you didn't know he was married, Mr. Cheveril, but he is! His wife lives in Belgravia and he here. It is said he didn't even go to see her the last time he was at home, and yet they are not legally separated, and I believe, he sends her heaps of money!”

”Well, you see, I don't know the Honourable Mrs. Worsley,” said Mark shortly. In one of his rare moments of self-revelation the elder man had laid bare to the younger the history of an ill-a.s.sorted marriage and its consequences, which, Mark decided, more by inference than from details, was the source of much that had warped a life, which Felix Worsley himself described as like ”a blasted jungle tree”; though Mark thought he could still trace in it the n.o.blest characteristics of the English oak.

”Well, I must say the Collector of Puranapore has a warm partisan in you, Mr. Cheveril,” returned Mrs. Fellowes warmly, ”and I like you for it!”

The pair in front had now turned their steps and came towards them.

”I'm reminding Mrs. Rayner that if I walk her off her feet she won't be able to dance so lightly with you to-night as I desire to see, Cheveril,” said Mr. Worsley, with a smile which his a.s.sistant had learnt to love.

On being introduced to Mrs. Fellowes he seemed to find that he had various links with her and they paired off together, leaving the two old friends in company.

”Oh, Mark, how delightful he is,” exclaimed Hester, her face all aglow.

”I haven't seen anybody so nice since I parted with my father!”

”Ah, then you have capitulated, just as I hoped. But I'm not going to be hard on you for your former state of siege. I knew the victory was sure, and it has come partly because he took to you at once, I could see. My chief is sometimes rather bearish, I admit. I tremble for the offences he may give at the gathering to-night. He's a grand bit of marble, Hester--to take up our simile of St. Thomas's Mount!”

”But has the chipping process begun, Mark? Though he was so nice to me I confess he talked very hopelessly, very cynically, about some things.”

”Oh, yes, the process is going on! But we must not forget in that process one day is as a thousand years with the Great Sculptor,” said Mark softly, as he glanced up at the dark blue vault where the great moon was already rising, silvering the vast expanse of waters.

”But, Mark,” said Hester, suddenly preparing to plunge into the topic which he fain would have avoided, ”how can you meet me like this--how can you ever speak to me again after what happened that morning? Oh, the shame, the misery of it,” she added, her voice faltering. ”And I was so anxious that poor Alfred should come under your influence! You remember I was pleading for that on our ride home, little thinking that all was going to end as it did--that things were going to happen so soon that would make a great gulf between you. Will you try to believe that really he was not himself that morning? Something at Palaveram must have upset him dreadfully or he could never have spoken so to you. Can you ever forgive him?”