Part 20 (1/2)

For those of the camp who were bound to follow the Viceroy's whim of riding by the old road--the pilgrims' road--while the big camp went round by the longer, easier route, had promised to look in on the palace on their way past it, for a cup of tea, a good-by. Since already, the functions over, the dream-city had begun to melt away; the Hosts of the Lord-_sahib_ were pa.s.sing on.

”Glory be!” said the Commissioner with heart-felt grat.i.tude, ”we've done our worst and leave you to take the consequences. That's sound policy. Anyhow, we are ahead of everybody on the road to heaven, and the pilgrims will have to swallow the dust of our feet! I wonder how they'll like it.” He was in wild spirits, like a schoolboy escaped from school; yet as he paused to shake hands with Dr. Dillon, he said aside, ”Any more cases?”

”Two,” said the doctor, laconically, ”both dead. It is a bad type.”

His hearer's face was unmovable as he turned to Mrs. Smith, who stood close by. ”Good-by, my dear lady,” he said cheerfully, ”remember me house is yours if you, or the child, want it. Doctor, couldn't you conscientiously recommend change of air to the hills? Couldn't ye swear the close proximity to an open ca.n.a.l and a gaol is unwholesome? If ye could, you'd oblige a gra.s.s-widower, whose wife is at Baden-Baden--or is it Marienbad?--living prodigally, while he has to fill himself with husks which no self-respecting swine would eat. Faith, me dear madam, I'd bless you if you'd come and kill the cook. It's a woman's work; not a man's.”

Dr. Dillon, with a quick look, backed him up instantly. ”Certainly. I told Mrs. Smith a long time ago that she and Gladys had had enough of Eshwara. Indeed, as her doctor, she would be doing me a personal favour if--”

Muriel Smith swept round on him sharply. She was looking her very best, in her very best gown; white, mystic, wonderful, with a faint gleam of silver embroidery about waist and hem. And she had been obtrusively, unnecessarily friendly with Vincent Dering all the afternoon; even now she was standing with him attached to her ap.r.o.n-strings.

”I don't think nervous headaches are dangerous,” she said, eying Dr.

Dillon coolly. ”But thanks all the same. I should love to kill somebody; even a cook. Perhaps I may, by and by, when _all_ the nice people leave. I'm so sorry _you're_ going, but we are still to be quite gay, aren't we, Captain Dering? And that reminds me we have to settle when that riding party is to come off. Good-by--good-by!” She waved her hand to the departing Commissioner, and carried Vincent Dering off, with a defiant look at the doctor.

He, knowing her, smiled indulgently; but Father Ninian, who had come down to see his guest off, looked after her with a wistful pain in his kind old face.

”That is a mistake,” he said briefly; then the wistfulness grew into a puzzled look, and he added, half to himself, ”It need not be, surely; there is something wrong. I can't understand--”

Dr. Dillon, catching the end of the remark, gave a cynical laugh and turned on his heel. ”No one does,” he said as he went off. He would not discuss her even with dear old Pidar Narayan. For the rest, though he was keen to get back to his jail, he would wait till she tired of her game, and then drive her home himself to her idiot of a husband, who was too busy over his blessed search-light to see things that were going on under his very eyes.

Captain Dering, however, was already impatient. It was growing dusk; the shadows were claiming the garden bit by bit, and as the glint left the varnished leaves of the orange trees, the white flowers stood out like little stars against the gloom and sent a bewildering perfume into the darkening air. He could see no hint of Laila anywhere; Laila in that detestable white muslin garment which made him long vainly to get rid of the surroundings which suited her so ill, drive all that civilized crew from the garden, and claim it as his own--and hers! She must have gone to the balcony already. She must be waiting for him. And yet a soft-heartedness for this other woman with whom he had been friends, whom for a few days he had imagined he loved (it had come to _this_ now) forbade him from leaving her cavalierly. So it was long past dusk, and the short Indian twilight was hovering on the edge of night, ere he made his escape; and, full of anxiety lest Laila should have lost patience or hope, hurried down to the wide archway, and so, by the turn riverwards, to the right, into the balcony. Most girls, he told himself, would by this time have taken offence; but she was there.

As he entered, her figure showed dimly against the light beyond.

”I'm afraid I am awfully late,” he began, then paused; for, as she turned, there was a faint clash of silver, a faint gleam of it too. His heart gave a great throb of glad recognition. It was Laila! Laila indeed! the Laila of that dream last night. And she had risked _this_ to please him!

”Are you?” she said. ”I thought _I_ was late; for _this_ took time; but I wanted to be the same--always the same to you, always--always!”

She stretched her hands to him, but he set them aside, took her in his arms, and kissed her pa.s.sionately.

”Yes! Laila! always Laila--my Laila!”

She gave him back his kisses joyfully. ”I knew you would come,” she said. ”Love comes to love, you know.”

He called her Juliet then, and many another lover's name. She took them all, and gave them back again without reserve, until, as they stood there, someone pa.s.sing outward from the arched pa.s.sage to the garden, paused to listen at the half-heard sound of voices. For Father Ninian--who had come down to his own rooms for a pair of foils wherewith to give Lance Carlyon a lesson in the ”_Addio del Marito_,”

until Captain Dering should choose to come out of the recesses of the garden and allow of their going back to the Fort together--knew of none likely to use, or even to be aware of, the balcony. So he turned thither curiously, then stood arrested, so that the clash of the foils on the stone, as he purposely lowered their points, came as a warning to those two that they were observed. Laila, with a catlike noiselessness, withdrew in a second. She, a yard or two away, in deepest shadow, stood leaning in a careless, easy att.i.tude over the bal.u.s.trade. Her only possibility of escape lay, she felt instinctively, in showing no desire to do so. Vincent, for his part, turned to face the old priest, prepared to brazen it out; for his blood was running like wild-fire in his veins. Yet scarcely so fast as the heart's blood had once leapt, and was even now leaping, in the old man who came forward, facing him also. Came forward slowly, shortsightedly, a foil in each hand. If he had held out one, bade him take the b.u.t.ton off and fight for his life, Vincent Dering would scarcely have been surprised, would almost have been pleased. It would have raised him in his own self-esteem. For he knew perfectly well he had no right to be there; that, as yet, he was not sure of his own footing.

But Pidar Narayan did not. He paused, as he generally did, a few paces away, a slender, straight shadow in black, girt about with that pale sash, on which, and on his pale face, such light as there was fell softly. For there was no anger in the latter; only an almost pa.s.sionate regret and pity. Even so, his words startled the young man, who stood prepared for defiance.

”Oh! Captain Dering!” he said courteously, ”it is you, is it? You have found a pleasant place, indeed! But scarcely a very safe one for your companion--” he turned to that faint gleam of white and silver in the arched shadow.--”The air grows chill, madam, so close to the river,” he continued, his voice taking a tone almost of command, ”and you are lightly clad. Will you not be wise, and leave us?”

Vincent's surprise had pa.s.sed by this time into a rush of vexation, almost indignation, for he had grasped the old man's mistake. For an instant he felt bound to undeceive him, then the impossibility of doing so held him silent, feeling a coward indeed; so, desperately, he could only join his voice to Father Ninian's. It seemed the only way out of the _impa.s.se_.

”Perhaps you had better go--”

Laila did not need more. Already, under cover of the shadow, she had dexterously slipped off her silver jingles, lest they should betray what really seemed to her her worst, nay! her only offence;--the taking and wearing of Roshan Khan's present. And now, wrapping her veil about her like a cloak, gathering her trailing skirts to orthodox length with an appalling presence of mind, she was off with just the little uneasy laugh which might well befit the situation.

She left her companion bewildered, yet still facing the old man recklessly. Since he could not explain, he did not mean to be hectored.