第64章

'She will have her chance,' she said to herself, on her way to the post office to order her tonga.And with a little nauseated shudder at the thought of the letter in her pocket, she added, 'It is amazing.I should have thought her too good a woman of business!'

After which she concentrated her whole attention upon the necessities of departure.Her single immediate apprehension was that Horace Innes might, by some magic of circumstances, be transported back into Simla before she could get out of it.That such a contingency was physically impossible made no difference to her nerves, and to the last Brookes was the hurrying victim of unnecessary promptings.

The little rambling hotel of Kalka, where the railway spreads out over the plains, raises its white-washed shelter under the very walls of the Himalayas.Madeline, just arrived, lay back in a long wicker chair on the veranda, and looked up at them as they mounted green and grey and silent under the beating of the first of the rains.Everywhere was a luxury of silence, the place was steeped in it, drowned in it.A feeding cow flicked an automatic tail under a tree.Near the low mud wall that strolled irresolutely between the house and the hills leaned a bush with a few single pink roses;their petals were floating down under the battering drops.Adraggled bee tried to climb to a dry place on a pillar of the veranda.Above all, the hills, immediate, towering, all grey and green, solidly ideal, with phantasies of mist.Everything drippingly soft and silent.Suddenly the venetian blind that hung before the door of a bedroom farther on swayed out before a hand variously ringed to emit a lady in a pink lawn dress with apt embroideries.Madeline's half-closed eyes opened very wide, and for an instant she and the lady, to whom I must once more refer as Mrs.

Innes, confronted each other.Then Mrs.Innes's countenance expanded, and she took three or four light steps forward.

'Oh, you dear thing!' she exclaimed.'I thought you were in Simla!

Imagine you being here! Do you know you have SAVED me!'

Madeline regarded her in silence, while a pallor spread over her face and lips, and her features grew sharp with a presage of pain.

'Have I?' she stammered.She could not think.

'Indeed you have.I don't know how to be grateful enough to you.

Your telegram of yesterday reached me at Solon.We had just sat down to tiffin.Nothing will ever shake my faith in providence again! My dear, THINK of it--after all I've been through, my darling Val--and one hundred thousand pounds!'

'Well?'

'Well--I stayed behind there last night, and Val came on here and made the necessary arrangement, and--'

'Yes?'

'And we were married this morning.Good heavens! What's the matter with you! Here--oh, Brookes! Water, salts--anything!'

Brookes, I know, would think that I should dwell at greater length upon Miss Anderson's attack of faintness in Kalka, and the various measures which were resorted to for her succour, but perhaps the feelings and expedients of any really capable lady's-maid under the circumstances may be taken for granted.I feel more seriously called upon to explain that Colonel Horace Innes, shortly after these last events, took two years' furlough to England, during which he made a very interesting tour in the United States with the lady with now bears his name by inalienable right.Captain and Mrs.

Valentine Drake are getting the most that is to be had out of Frederick Prendergast's fortune with courage in London and the European capitals, where Mrs.Drake is sometimes mentioned as a lady with a romantic past.They have not returned to Simla, where the situation has never been properly understood.People always supposed that Mrs.Drake ran away that June morning with her present husband, who must have been tremendously fond of her to have married her 'after the divorce.' She is also occasionally mentioned in undertones as 'the first Mrs.Innes.' All of which we know to be quite erroneous, like most scandal.

Mrs.Mickie and Mrs.Gammidge, in retirement, are superintending the education of their children in Bedford, where it is cheap and practical.They converse when they meet about the iniquitous prices of dressmakers and the degeneracy of the kind of cook obtainable in England at eighteen pounds a year.Mrs.Gammidge has grown rather portly and very ritualistic.They seldom speak of Simla, and when they do, if too reminiscent a spark appears in Mrs.Mickie's eye, Mrs.Gammidge changes the subject.Kitty Vesey still fills her dance cards at Viceregal functions, though people do not quote her as they used to, and subalterns imagine themselves vastly witty about her colour, which is unimpaired.People often commend her, however, for her good nature to debutantes, and it is admitted that she may still ride with credit in 'affinity stakes'--and occasionally win them.