第49章

She sat down under it in a corner, hoping to be left alone, with a white face and shining eyes.Power and opportunity and purpose--righteous purpose!

The circumstances had come to her in a flash; she brought them up again steadily and scrutinized them.The case was absolutely clear.

Frank Prendergast had been dead just seven months.Colonel Innes imagined himself married four years.Violet Prendergast was a bigamist, and Horace Innes had no wife.

That was the marvellous transcendent fact; that was what lifted her and carried her on great pulsing waves that rolled beyond the walls of the little fripperied drawing-room and its collection of low-necked women, out into her life, which had not these boundaries.

She lived again in a possible world.There was no stone wall between herself and joy.

The old Mussulman butler who offered her coffee looked at her with aroused curiosity--here was certainly a memsahib under the favour of God--and as she stirred it, the shadow that Violet Prendergast had thrown upon her life faded out of her mind in the light that was there.Then she looked up and met that lady's vivid blue eyes.

Mrs.Innes's colour had not returned, but there was a recklessness in the lines of her mouth.In the way she held her chin, expressing that she had been reflecting on old scores, and anticipated the worst.Meeting this vigilance Miss Anderson experienced a slight recoil.Her happiness, she realized, had been brought to her in the hands of ugly circumstance.

'And so melodramatic,' she told herself.'It is really almost vulgar.In a story I should have no patience with it.' But she went on stirring her coffee with a little uncontrollable smile.

A moment later she had to contemplate the circumstance that her hostess was addressing her.Mrs.Innes wished to be introduced.

Mrs.Innes, incarnate, conscious sensation, was smiling at her, saying that she must know so great a friend of her husband's.He made so few friends, and she was so grateful to anybody who was good to him.Eyes and voice tolerably in rein, aware of the situation at every point, she had a meretricious daring; and it occurred to Madeline, looking at her, that she was after all a fairly competent second-class adventuress.She would not refuse the cue.It would make so little difference.

'On the contrary, I am tremendously indebted to Colonel Innes.He has been so very kind about ponies and jhampanies and things.Simla is full of pitfalls for a stranger, don't you think?' And Miss Anderson, unclosing her fan, turned her reposeful head a little in the direction of three married schoolgirls voluble on her left.

'Not when you get to know the language.You must learn the language; it's indispensable.But of course it depends on how long you mean to stay.'

'I think I will learn the language,' said Madeline.

'But General Worsley told me you were leaving Simla in a fortnight.'

'Oh no.My plans are very indefinite; but I shall stay much longer than that.'

'It is Miss Anderson, isn't it?--Miss Madeline Anderson, of New York--no, Brooklyn?'

Madeline looked at her.'Did not the General say so?' she asked.

'Yes, he did.But one looks to make quite sure.'

'I can understand that.'

Mrs.Innes leaned forward with one elbow on her knee.

It was not a graceful attitude, but it gave the casual air to the conversation which was desirable.

'What are you going to do?' she said.

'My plans are as indefinite as possible, really,' Madeline returned.

'I may spend the cold weather in Calcutta, or go into camp with the Dovedells--I should like that.'

'Mrs.Innes,' cried the nearest schoolgirl, 'we are coming tomorrow to see all the lovely things in your boxes, may we?'

'Do, duckies.But mind, no copying of them by durzies in the veranda.They're all Paris things--Coulter's--and you know he doesn't copy well, does he? Oh, dear! here are the men--they always come too soon, don't they? So glad to have had even a little chat, Miss Anderson.I'll come and see you tomorrow.You know newcomers in India always make the first calls.I shall find you at home, sha'n't I?'

'By all means,' Madeline said.

Mrs.Innes crossed the room, crying out that the heat was perfectly absurd for Simla, it must be cooler outside; and as Captain Valentine Drake followed her into the semi-darkness of the veranda, the three married schoolgirls looked at each other and smiled.

'Don't be naughty,' said Captain Gordon, leaning over the sofa from behind.'They're very dear friends, and they've been separated for two years.'

Madeline heard this as plainly as they did.She noted disdainfully how it all fell in.

'How absent you are tonight!' Horace Innes exclaimed, when Miss Anderson had asked him a trivial question for the third time.

'Hush!' she said.'Mrs.Scallepa is going to sing;' and as Mrs.

Scallepa sang she let her eyes play over him with a light in them so tender, that once catching it the felt a sudden answering throb, and looked again; but after that her eyes were on the floor.

'We are staying here,' he said a quarter of an hour later, as he saw her into her rickshaw; 'and I think I must see you to your quarters.

It's very dark, and there is an ugly little slip half-way between this and the Mall.

He ran upstairs to get his coat and stick, and a white face like an apparition suddenly hung itself on the edge of Madeline's rickshaw-hood.

'Don't tell him tonight,' it said, hoarsely.

'Are you ready, Colonel Innes? Then good night, everybody,' cried Madeline.

She was not at all sure that she would not tell Horace Innes 'tonight'.