Part 20 (1/2)
Hilda looked at him with sudden critical interest, missing an emanation from him. It was his enthusiasm. A cheerfulness had come upon him instead. Also what he said had something categorical in it, something crisp and arranged. He himself received benefit from the consideration of it, and she was aware that if this result followed, her own ”conversion” was of very secondary importance.
”So!” she said meditatively, as they walked.
”After it happens, when it is an accomplished fact, it will be so plainly right that n.o.body will think twice about it,” Duff went on in an encouraged voice. ”It's odd how one's ideas materialise. I want her drawing-room to be white and gold, with big yellow silk cus.h.i.+ons.”
”When its it to happen?”
”Beginning of next cold weather--in not quite a year.”
”Ah! then there will be time. Time to get the white and gold furniture.
It wouldn't be my taste quite. Is it Alicia's?”
”It's our own at present, Laura's and mine. We have talked it over together. And I don't think she would ask Miss Livingstone. In matters of taste women are rather rivals, aren't they?”
”Oh, Lord!” Hilda exclaimed, and bit her lip. ”Where is Miss Filbert now?”
”At No. 10, Middleton street.”
”With the Livingstones?”
”Is it so astonis.h.i.+ng? Miss Livingstone has been most practical in her kindness. I have gone back, of course, to my perch at the club, and Laura is to stay with them until she sails.”
”She sails?”
”In the _Sutlej_, next Wednesday. She's got three months' leave. She really hasn't been well, and her superior officer is an accommodating old sort. She resigns at home, and I'm sending her to some dear old friends of mine. She hasn't any particular people of her own. She's got a notion of taking lessons of some kind--perfectly unnecessary, but if it amuses her--during the summer. And of course she will have to get her outfit together.”
”And in December,” said Hilda, ”she comes out and marries you.”
”Not a Calcutta wedding. I meet her in Madras and we come up together.”
”Ideal,” said Hilda; ”and is Calcutta much scandalised?”
”Calcutta doesn't know. If I had had my way in the beginning I fancy I would have trumpeted it. But now I suppose it's wiser--why should one offer her up at their dinner-tables?”
”Especially when they would make so little of her,” said Hilda absently.
The coolie-track had led them into the widest part of the Maidan, where it slopes to the south, and the huts of Bowanipore. There was nothing about them but a spreading mellowness and the baked turf under-foot. The cloudy yellow twilight disclosed that a man little way off was a man and not a horse but did hardly more. ”I'm tired,” Hilda said suddenly, ”let us sit down,” and sank comfortably on the fragrant gra.s.s. Lindsay dropped beside her and they sat for a moment in silence. A cricket chirped noisily a few inches from them. Hilda put out her hand in that direction and it ceased. Sounds wandered across from the encircling city, evening sounds, softened in their vagrancy, and lights came out, topaz points in the level glow.
”She is making a tremendous sacrifice,” Lindsay went on; ”I seem to see its proportions more clearly now.”
Hilda glanced at him with infinite kindness. ”You are an awfully good sort, Duff,” she said, ”I wish you were out of Asia.”
”Oh, a magnificent sort.” The irony was contemplative, as if he examined himself to see.
”You can make her life delightful to her. The sacrifice will not endure, you know.”
”One can try. It will be worth doing.” He said it as if it were a maxim, and Hilda, perceiving this, had no answer ready. As they sat without speaking, the heart of the after-glow drew away across the river and left something chill and empty in the s.p.a.ces about them. Things grew hard of outline, the Maidan became an unlimited expanse of commonplace, grey and unyielding; the lines of gas-lamps on the roads came very near.
”What a difference it makes!” Lindsay exclaimed, looking after the vanished light, ”and how suddenly it goes!”
Hilda turned concerned eyes upon him, and then looked with keen sadness far into the changed landscape. ”Ah, well, my dear,” she said with apparent irrelevance, ”we must take hold of life with both hands.” She made a movement to rise, and he, jumping to his feet, helped her. As if the moment had some special significance, something to be underlined, he kept her hand while he said, ”You will always represent something in mine. I can depend upon you--I shall know that you are there.”
”Yes,” she said, sincerely, ”Yes, indeed;” and it seemed to her that he looked thin and intense as he stood beside her--unless it was only another effect of atmosphere. ”After all,” she said, as they turned to walk back again across the withered gra.s.s, ”your fever has taken a good deal out of you.”