Part 51 (1/2)

'Why? I will tell you the truth, Lady Arbuthnot, though you may not like it--though I acknowledge it is humiliating--for all of us! Because I have had to yield to him before. Because he hasn't forgotten, and I haven't forgotten, and you haven't forgotten--not quite, have you? It is nothing to be ashamed of; it is only natural--one of the limitations of life--but there it is, isn't it?'

He took a step nearer in the silence.

'Isn't it?' he repeated. 'Tell the truth, Grace, and shame--don't let us say the devil--but fate. There, put your hand in mine, and face our own--forgetfulness!'

She faced it boldly, even though he felt her hand tremble in his--'Did I ever deny it?' she said softly, with tears in her voice; 'I do not, I _cannot_ forget quite. It is pitiful, of course; but why----?'

'Don't!' he interrupted quickly. 'Don't, my dear lady! You will only make me remember more; that is the truth. As you say, it is pitiful; but there it is.'

She stood looking at him with a world of regret, some anger, and a little, a very little scorn.

'And you will let this interfere with--with everything.'

'Not with everything, but with this, certainly,' he pointed to the letter which he had laid on the console below the poinsettias. 'And that is all the easier to do, because I don't believe in it--quite. But if I were you, I should tell Sir George the truth and let him decide.

As for the other matter about which I came to speak, he may be right, and I wrong. Time will show.'

'It may, disastrously, to many--to India--even to Empire!'--the scorn came uppermost now.

'Surely,' he replied, reverting to his usual manner, 'the Empire can take care of itself. If not, Lady Arbuthnot, I am afraid it must do without my help--in Nushapore. Good-bye.'

The qualification held all his previous arguments in it, and re-aroused his own bitterness at his own memories, so that as he walked on down the long vista of rooms, he felt each well-remembered bit of it to be a fresh injury; and his impatience, his obstinacy grew at each step. Why had not Grace the sense to believe, once for all, as he had told her at the very first, that hers was not the hand to wile his back to the plough?

Her hand! Ye G.o.ds! And he could feel its touch now on his. That woman's touch so full of possibilities, so full of power.

'Mr. Waymond! Oh, Mr. Waymond! Do please don't go away!' came Jerry's voice from a side-room used as a schoolroom which opened out from the hall. 'Oh, please do come and help me wif this. I'm 'fwaid I don't know somefing I ought to know.'

It never needed much of Jerry's voice to cajole any one; so the next moment, temper or no temper, Jack Raymond was bending over the little figure which, perched on a high chair at the table, was busy over a map of India.

'Hullo, young man!' he said. 'Lessons?'

Jerry looked at him in shocked surprise. 'Why, it's Sunday! And I've learned my hymn--'bout babes an' sucklings an' such is the kingdom of heaven, don't you know. An' I'm not 'llowed to go to church 'cos mum says I'm not normal yet; don't you fink, Mr. Waymond, it's just orful dull of people always twying to be just the same? I like it when mum says I'm feverish. I dweam dweams. Las' night I dweamt there was a weal wow, an' dad made me his galloper, an' I had secwet dispatches. Oh! it was just wippin', I tell you. I think secwet dispatches is--is the loveliest game! 'Cos it's--it's all your own, you know, and n.o.body, n.o.body else mustn't have them, or know, not even mum. And you keep 'em quite, quite secwet, an' you don't even know what's inside, yourself; do you? Not if you play it ever, ever so long as I do. And I _did_ it once too, you know, weally; at least I fink I did, though they say I didn't.'

The child's eyes were still over bright, his cheeks flushed with the last touches of the sun fever which comes and goes so easily with English children in India; and Jack Raymond smiled softly at the little lad who reminded him so much of his own boyhood, even though the remembrance, at that particular moment, brought a fresh bitterness towards the woman he had just left--the woman who would have liked, as it were, to eat her cake and have it.

'And what are you up to now?' he asked, seating himself on the table and looking down at what lay on it--the outspread map, a paint-box, and a crimson-stained tumbler of water--'spoiling the map of India; eh?'

'I ain't _spoiling_ it,' retorted Jerry indignantly, 'I'm only paintin'

it wedder. Mum said I might.'

'I'll tell you what, though, young man! You'll spoil yourself if you suck your paint-brush.'

It came out of Jerry's mouth with the usual crimson flag of contrition all over his cheeks. 'It's orful hard to wemember when one is finking-finking of nothin' but the wed, and yet twyin' to play fair.'

'Play fair?' echoed Jack Raymond. 'What game are you playing now, Jerry?'

'Oh! it isn't a game; it's weal. Only, I mean the tiddly little bits'--Jerry, his tongue in his cheek, was laboriously at work again on Rajputana with a brush so surcharged with carmine that it left perfect bloodstains on the general tint of pale yellow--'I don't want, in course, to take more 'n belongs to the Queen, but they mustn't have the teeniest bit of what belongs to us, must they, Mr. Waymond?'

'I see,' replied the man slowly. 'You are painting the town red for Her Majesty--I mean the map.--Isn't it red enough as it is, Jerry?'