Part 19 (1/2)
The even creak of the rocker ended at last, and she rose, as he had risen, calmly, and faced him.
”I quite understand now what you meant, Dr. Dillon,” she said freezingly, ”and why you did not care to explain. I shall, of course, never be able to forgive you for daring to dream such a thing possible, but--”
”But,” he interrupted, without a quiver, ”you will take that half whiskey-and-soda. Here! _qui-hi! Whiskey sharab belatee pani la'o juldi; mem-sahiba jata hai_. (Bring whiskey-and-soda; the _mem_ is going.)”
Perhaps the command of that a.s.sertion helped her to a decision. At any rate she did not countermand it, but spent the rather awkward pause which inevitably ensued in a perfect field-day of her hat-pins among her curls and veil. Whereat George Dillon, despite a certain bruised feeling, smiled, telling himself she was a true woman.
Nevertheless when, as she was stepping into the dogcart, his friendly help came necessarily to the fore again, she reverted to her dignified resentment. ”I ought,” she said stiffly, ”to have thanked you for--for your good opinion of me, and your evident desire to be kind. I do so now. But I fear it will be quite impossible for me to forget or forgive the delusion.”
”That is quite a minor matter,” he put in, gleefully. ”Now, cheer up, Bacilla, you brute, or we shall be late,” Bacilla being his term of abuse for a pony which required a little stick.
They were only just in time, no more. Five minutes after they had joined the company gathered on the red-brick masonry of the ca.n.a.l head, under a canopy of waving garlands and gay bunting, with that inevitable British flag as the centre of all, the small man with the big star on his breast took a step forward, raised a handle, and, as the first drops of water trickled through a sluice, declared, in a violent Scotch accent, ”that the Victoria-Kaiser-i-Hind” ca.n.a.l was open. So, keeping time as it were, slowly, majestically, to those (also inevitable) strains of ”G.o.d save the Queen,” the outer floodgates swung back, allowing the river to have permanent possession during good behaviour, of the walled basin between them and the inner ones. Thus, slowly, with a gurgling of water seeking its level, the surface rose till the half-open sluices in the second gates were reached, and a thin curve tipped over to fall with a splash, and send a tiny scout of a stream to find out what this new straight road might mean. Only a tiny scout, since the earthworks beyond had to be accustomed by degrees to their new tenant.
Still the new way was open, and the current of the river hesitated in the old one.
”Bravo, Smith!” cried George Dillon, coming round, when the cheering and general congratulations were over, to slap his colleague on the back, metaphorically and actually. ”We've done that; and now perhaps, old man, you'll have time for other things.”
”Yes,” a.s.sented the tall, gaunt man, dreamily; ”now I shall have time to settle that point about the searchlight.”
”The what?”
”Search-light. There's been a correspondence in the _Engineer_ about it; and as I've all the electric plant here, lying useless, now the show's over,--until it's wanted for something else, of course,--I am going to see if I can't overcome their difficulty in concentrating all the power on a sufficiently narrow area. I believe I know how to do it.”
George Dillon looked at him with fierce, humorous exasperation.
”Believe!” he echoed. ”I know you can! You are the most intolerably circ.u.mscribed, self-concentrated, narrow-minded machine of a man I ever came across. Heaven help you!”
As he drove Mrs. Smith home again, it was his turn to sit mumchance until, womanlike, she relented faintly, and, exaggerating her own powers, trusted she had not been, _etc_., though of course, _etc_.--
”Not in the least, thank you,” he replied. ”I was only meditating if I should tell you that I think Eugene has softening of the brain.”
”Softening of the brain!” she echoed, horrified. ”Oh, doctor, do you think it's that?”
”Well, it isn't softening of the heart, anyhow,” he said grimly. ”But I'm not joking. If someone doesn't get a hold on some portion of that man--I don't care what it is--heart, brain, stomach, anything--and prevent him from killing himself with work, India will lose her best engineer. What he wants is someone to--to give him a nervous headache!”
”We will leave that subject alone, please,” she said loftily; but when her husband joined them in the verandah, she went over ostentatiously to him and pinned a carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole, hoping he would like it better than the rose she gave him the day before, which--this was in a louder tone for the doctor's benefit--he had forgotten to put in!
”Did I, my dear?” replied her spouse. ”Oh, yes! I remember you put it in my minim gla.s.s because I was working in my s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. Then I wanted the gla.s.s. So it got withered and the head snapped off.”
Dr. Dillon laughed--his usual dry laugh. ”That is one of the many tragedies which come from the delusion all women have that flowers can't be out of place.”
CHAPTER XII
THE CHURCH MILITANT
When Roshan Khan had joined those two great stabilities, Faith and Love, into one pa.s.sionate desire for Vincent Dering's d.a.m.nation, he had meant to follow the English etiquette on such occasions, and keep his aspiration to himself.
But it had been impossible for him instantly to rejoin the society in which he found himself; that is, a society which shared that fundamental crime--which more even than any definite jealousy had roused his anger against Captain Dering--of being alien to his creed, his customs, his code of conduct towards women. So he had wandered off into the garden again, shadowed by old Akbar's incredulity, curiosity, and sympathy; until, partly from sheer impatience, but mostly from sheer inherited habit of employing such as Akbar Khan in anything approaching an intrigue, he had made a clean breast of the situation.
Even the latter, however, had, as it were, s.h.i.+ed at the extreme novelty of the idea when it was first mooted; but, by degrees, its vast possibilities of advantage to faithful old retainers overpowered his abject terror at the bare idea of Father Narayan suspecting such a thing. The old master, he told himself, was old, indeed! G.o.d only knew if he would last a year or a day; therefore it would be well to ensure the favour of the new mistress. And there could be no harm in sounding her as to what course that favour would follow. One could never tell with a woman; and his wicked, experienced old eyes had caught many a hint of Anari Begum in Laila's childhood. Perhaps she had changed since she went to Calcutta. He could but try.
So when, on the morning after the ball, Laila, in obedience to her pious resolve to do nothing really wrong, had bidden him--with threats of vengeance if he betrayed the fact of their having come at all--remove and return certain trays of clothes and jewels which had been smuggled by someone into her room, he had fallen at her feet, confessed falsely that he was the offender, and besought her not to impose so unmerited a disgrace on his employer, who had been actuated by the ordinary rules of native etiquette which prescribed some recognition of his cousin, the head of his family.