Part 6 (1/2)
”Tell me, how do you come to be _here_ of all impossible places on earth?”
His voice was harder than he knew, and a slight shadow pa.s.sed across her face.
”Is it really necessary to explain?” she asked, coldly.
He relinquished her bridle at that.
”As you please, of course. Only--it is a little awkward our being here together; and it might be as well to come to some sort of understanding before we separate. Are you up here for the season?”
”Yes, we have been up all the winter, Michael and I, except for two months at Lah.o.r.e. When the snow melted we moved to the highest cottage on Bakrota. It is beautiful up there. We came out here eighteen months ago,” she went on a trifle hurriedly, grateful, now that the ice was broken, for the relief of commonplace speech. ”I had heard a good deal about India, you know. I wanted to see it for myself, and if possible put a little of it on canvas.”
”And you are not disappointed?”
”No, indeed. It is wonderful beyond words.”
They had themselves well in hand now. Each had given the other a false impression at the start, and when two people are living at cross-purposes it is easier to move mountains than to remove that most intangible of all barriers, a false impression.
”And are you--up for the season?” Quita added, after a pause, with a natural touch of hesitancy.
”No. Two months' leave. I am free, therefore, to go elsewhere, if my presence here is in the least degree . . . annoying to you.”
”Oh, but that would be a pity. You must have had a special reason for choosing Dalhousie.”
”Some friends of mine were coming up, and asked me to come too. But they will quite understand if I say I should prefer to go shooting beyond Chumba.”
”Don't say it, though, please. I would really rather you did not put yourself out in the smallest degree on _my_ account. Besides,” she added, achieving a rather uncertain smile, ”we need not meet often, and no one--except Michael--will have any notion of . . . the truth.”
”Of course not,” he agreed, with glacial dignity. ”I was forgetting that you had--discarded my name.”
Again the blood flew to her cheeks.
”It seemed the simplest way to avoid possible complications, or unnecessary lies.”
”And you flung away--my ring also?”
The question came out in spite of himself, for he had noted her ungloved left hand.
”No. Only I could not very well wear it--under the circ.u.mstances.”
He stood aside now to let her pa.s.s. He himself then mounted, and followed her along the narrow path, raging against the irony of circ.u.mstance, as a man bites upon a sore tooth.
On reaching the s.p.a.ciousness of Bakrota Mall, he had no choice but to ride abreast of his companion. He did so without remark, and since Quita lacked courage to spur her pony to a canter, they continued to ride thus for a time; each, under an admirable mask of composure, painfully aware of the other's presence.
Speech seemed only likely to widen the gulf between them, and at all times Lenox had a large capacity for silence.
Not so Quita. The last ten minutes had been overcrowded with conflicting emotions; her husband's mute proximity got upon her nerves, and a setting of pine and mountain put a finis.h.i.+ng touch to an already intolerable situation. She turned upon him at length, with a small gesture of defiance,--a well-remembered tilt of her chin that pierced him like a sword-thrust.
”Don't feel bound to escort me, please. I am constantly out alone.
You may have a long way to go; and we need hardly play at polite conventionalities--you and I.”