Part 20 (1/2)

'About five hundred thousand dollars, I believe. Left him by a cousin.

Then you didn't know?'

'That must have been Gordon Prendergast--the engineer!' Mrs. Innes said, with excitement. 'Fancy that! Leaving money to a relation in Sing Sing!

Hadn't altered his will, I suppose. Who could possibly,' and her face fell visibly, 'have foreseen such a thing?'

'No one, I think,' said Madeline, through a little edged smile. 'On that point you will hardly be criticized.'

Mrs. Innes, with clasped hands, was sunk in thought. She raised her eyes with a conviction in them which she evidently felt to be pathetic.

'After all,' she said, 'there is something in what the padres say about our reaping the reward of our misdeeds in this world--some of us, anyway. If I had stayed in New York--'

'Yes?' said Madeline. 'I shall wake up presently,' she reflected, 'and find that I have been dreaming melodrama.' But that was a fantastic underscoring of her experience. She knew very well she was making it.

Mrs. Innes, again wrapped in astonished contemplation, did not reply.

Then she jumped to her feet with a gesture that cast fortunes back into the lap of fate.

'One thing is certain,' she said; 'I can't do anything NOW, can I?'

Madeline laid hold of silence and made armour with it. At all events, she must have time to think.

'I decline to advise you,' she said, and she spoke with a barely perceptive movement of her lips only. The rest of her face was stone.

'How unkind and unforgiving you are! Must people would think the loss of a hundred thousand pounds about punishment enough for what I have done.

You don't seem to see it. But on top of that you won't refuse to promise not to tell Horace?'

'I will not bind myself in any way whatever.'

'Not even when you know that the moment I hear of the--death I intend to--to--'

'Make an honest man of him? Not even when I know that.'

'Do you want me to go down on my knees to you?'

Madeline glanced at the flowered fabric involved and said, 'I wouldn't, I think.'

'And this is to hang over me the whole season? I shall enjoy nothing--absolutely NOTHING.' The blue eyes were suddenly eclipsed by angry tears, which the advent of a servant with cards checked as suddenly.

'Goodbye, then, dear,' cried Mrs. Innes, as if in response to the advancing rustle of skirts in the veranda. 'So glad to have found you at home. Dear me, has Trilby made her way up--and I gave such particular orders! Oh, you NAUGHTY dog!'

Chapter 3.VII.

From the complication that surged round Miss Anderson's waking hours one point emerged, and gave her a perch for congratulation. That was the determination she had shown in refusing to let Frederick Prendergast leave her his money, or any part of it.

It has been said that he had outlived her tenderness, if not her care, and this fact, which she never found it necessary to communicate to poor Frederick himself, naturally made his desire in the matter sharply distasteful. She was even unaware of the disposition he had made of his ironical fortune, a reflection which brought her thankfulness that there was something she did not know. 'If I had let him do it,' she thought, 'I should have felt compelled to tell her everything, instantly. And think of discussing it with her!' This was quite a fortnight later, and Mrs. Innes still occupied her remarkable position only in her own mind and Madeline's, still knowing herself the wife of 1596 and of 1596 only, and still unaware that 1596 was in his grave. Simla had gone on with its dances and dinners and gymkhanas quite as if no crucial experience were hanging over the heads of three of the people one met 'everywhere,' and the three people continued to be met everywhere, although only one of them was unconscious. The women tried to avoid each other without accenting it, exchanging light words only as occasion demanded, but they were not clever enough for Mrs. Gammidge and Mrs. Mickie, who went about saying that Mrs. Innes's treatment of Madeline Anderson was as ridiculous as it was inexplicable. 'Did you ever know her to be jealous of anybody before?' demanded Mrs. Mickie, to which Mrs. Gammidge responded, with her customary humour, that the Colonel had never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, been known to give her occasion.

'Well,' declared Mrs. Mickie, 'if friends.h.i.+ps--UNSENTIMENTAL friends.h.i.+ps--between men and women are not understood in Simla, I'd like to be told what is understood.'

Between them they gave Madeline a n.o.ble support, for which--although she did not particularly require it, and they did not venture to offer it in so many words--she was grateful. A breath of public criticism from any point of view would have blown over the toppling structure she was defending against her conscience. The siege was severe and obstinate, with an undermining conviction ever at work that in the end she would yield; in the end she would go away, at least as far as Bombay or Calcutta, and from there send to Mrs. Innes the news of her liberation.

It would not be necessary, after all, or even excusable, to tell Horace.

His wife would do that quickly enough--at least, she had said she would. If she didn't--well, if she didn't, nothing would be possible but another letter, giving HIM the simple facts, she, Madeline, carefully out of the way of his path of duty--at all events, at Calcutta or Bombay. But there was no danger that Mrs. Innes would lose the advantage of confession, of throwing herself on his generosity--and at this point Madeline usually felt her defenses against her better nature considerably strengthened, and the date of her sacrifice grow vague again.