第59章

She--Violet--had unspeakably vulgarized it, but it must be true--it must be, to some extent, true.She may even have lied about it, but the truth was there, fundamentally, in the mere fact that it had been suggested to her imagination.Madeline's name, which had come to be for him an epitome of what was finest and most valuable, most to be lived for, was dropping from men's lips into a kind of an abyss of dishonourable suggestion.There was no way out of it or around it.It was a cloud which encompassed them, suddenly blackening down.

There was nothing that he could do--nothing.Except, yes, of course--that was obvious, as obvious as any other plain duty.

Through his selfishness it had a beginning; in spite of his selfishness it should have an end.That went without saying.No more walks or rides.In a conventional way, perhaps--but nothing deliberate, designed--and never alone together.Gossip about flippant married women was bad enough, but that it should concern itself with an unprotected creature like Madeline was monstrous, incredible.He strode fiercely into the road round Jakko, and no little harmless snake, if it had crawled across his path, would have failed to suffer a quick fate under the guidance of his imagination.

But there was nothing for him to kill, and he turned upon himself.

The sun went down into the Punjab and left great blue-and-purple hill worlds barring the passage behind him.The deodars sank waist deep into filmy shadow, and the yellow afterlight lay silently among the branches.A pink-haunched monkey lopading across the road with a great show of prudence seemed to have strayed into an unfamiliar country, and the rustling twigs behind him made an episode of sound.

The road in perpetual curve between its little stone parapet and the broad flank of the hill rose and fell under the deodars; Innes took its slopes and its steepnesses with even, unslackened stride, aware of no difference, aware of little indeed except the physical necessity of movement, spurred on by a futile instinct that the end of his walk would be the end of his trouble--his amazing, black, menacing trouble.A pony's trot behind him struck through the silence like percussion-caps; all Jakko seemed to echo with it; and it came nearer--insistent, purposeful--but he was hardly aware of it until the creature pulled up beside him, and Madeline, slipping quickly off, said--'I'm coming too.'

He took off his hat and stared at her.She seemed to represent a climax.

'I'm coming too,' she said.'I'm tired of picking flies off the Turk, and he's really unbearable about them tonight.Here, syce.'

She threw the reins to the man and turned to Innes with a smile of relief.'I would much rather do a walk.Why--you want me to come too, don't you?'

His face was all one negative, and under the unexpectedness of it and the amazement of it her questioning eyes slowly filled with sudden, uncontrollable tears, so that she had to lower them, and look steadily at the hoof-marks in the road while she waited for his answer.

'You know how I feel about seeing you--how glad I always am,' he stammered.'But there are reasons--'

'Reasons?' she repeated, half audibly.

'I don't know how to tell you.I will write.But let me put you up again--'

'I will not,' Madeline said, with a sob, 'I won't be sent home like a child.I am going to walk, but--but I can quite well go alone.'

She started forward, and her foot caught in her habit so that she made an awkward stumble and came down on her knee.In rising she stumbled again, and his quick arm was necessary.Looking down at her, he saw that she was crying bitterly.The tension had lasted long, and the snap had come when she least expected it.

'Stop,' Innes said, firmly, hardly daring to turn his head and ascertain the blessed fact that they were still alone.'Stop instantly.You shall not go by yourself.' He flicked the dust off her habit with his pocket-handkerchief.'Come, please; we will go on together.' Her distress seemed to make things simple again.It was as if the cloud that hung over them had melted as she wept, and lifted, and drifted a little further on.For the moment, naturally, nothing mattered except that she should be comforted.As she walked by his side shaken with her effort at self-control, he had to resist the impulse to touch her.His hand tingled to do its part in soothing her, his arm ached to protect her, while he vaguely felt an element of right, of justice, in her tears; they were in a manner his own.What he did was to turn and ask the syce following if he had loosened the Turk's saddle-girths.

'I shall be better--in a moment,' Madeline said, and he answered, 'Of course'; but they walked on and said nothing more until the road ran out from under the last deodar and round the first bare boulder that marked the beginning of the Ladies' Mile.It lay rolled out before them, the Ladies' Mile, sinuous and grey and empty, along the face of the cliff; they could see from one end of it to the other.