第65章

I knew Anna Chichele and Judy Harbottle so well, and they figured so vividly at one time against the rather empty landscape of life in a frontier station, that my affection for one of them used to seem little more, or less, than a variant upon my affection for the other.That recollection, however, bears examination badly; Judy was much the better sort, and it is Judy's part in it that draws me into telling the story.Conveying Judy is what I tremble at: her part was simple.Looking back--and not so very far--her part has the relief of high comedy with the proximity of tears; but looking closely, I find that it is mostly Judy, and what she did is entirely second, in my untarnished picture, to what she was.Still I do not think I can dissuade myself from putting it down.

They would, of course, inevitably have found each other sooner or later, Mrs.Harbottle and Mrs.Chichele, but it was I who actually introduced them; my palmy veranda in Rawul Pindi; where the teacups used to assemble, was the scene of it.I presided behind my samovar over the early formalities that were almost at once to drop from their friendship, like the sheath of some bursting flower.Ideliberately brought them together, so the birth was not accidental, and my interest in it quite legitimately maternal.We always had tea in the veranda in Rawul Pindi, the drawing-room was painted blue, blue for thirty feet up to the whitewashed cotton ceiling;nothing of any value in the way of a human relation, I am sure, could have originated there.The veranda was spacious and open, their mutual observation had room and freedom; I watched it to and fro.I had not long to wait for my reward; the beautiful candour Iexpected between them was not ten minutes in coming.For the sake of it I had taken some trouble, but when I perceived it revealing Iwent and sat down beside Judy's husband, Robert Harbottle, and talked about Pharaoh's split hoof.It was only fair; and when next day I got their impressions of one another, I felt single-minded and deserving.

I knew it would be a satisfactory sort of thing to do, but perhaps it was rather more for Judy's sake than for Anna's that I did it.

Mrs.Harbottle was only twenty-seven then and Robert a major, but he had brought her to India out of an episode too colour-flushed to tone with English hedges; their marriage had come, in short, of his divorce, and as too natural a consequence.In India it is well known that the eye becomes accustomed to primitive pigments and high lights; the aesthetic consideration, if nothing else, demanded Robert's exchange.He was lucky to get a Piffer regiment, and the Twelfth were lucky to get him; we were all lucky, I thought, to get Judy.It was an opinion, of course, a good deal challenged, even in Rawul Pindi, where it was thought, especially in the beginning, that acquiescence was the most the Harbottles could hope for.That is not enough in India; cordiality is the common right.I could not have Judy preserving her atmosphere at our tea-parties and gymkhanas.Not that there were two minds among us about 'the case';it was a preposterous case, sentimentally undignified, from some points of view deplorable.I chose to reserve my point of view, from which I saw it, on Judy's behalf, merely quixotic, preferring on Robert's just to close my eyes.There is no doubt that his first wife was odious to a degree which it is simply pleasanter not to recount, but her malignity must almost have amounted to a sense of humour.Her detestation of her cousin Judy Thynne dated much further back than Robert's attachment.That began in Paris, where Judy, a young widow, was developing a real vein at Julian's.I am entirely convinced that there was nothing, as people say, 'in it,'

Judy had not a thought at that time that was not based on Chinese white and permeated with good-fellowship; but there was a good deal of it, and no doubt the turgid imagination of the first Mrs.

Harbottle dealt with it honestly enough.At all events, she saw her opportunity, and the depths of her indifference to Robert bubbled up venomously into the suit.That it was undefended was the senseless mystery; decency ordained that he and Judy should have made a fight, even in the hope that it would be a losing one.The reason it had to be a losing one--the reason so immensely criticized--was that the petitioning lady obstinately refused to bring her action against any other set of circumstances than those to which, I have no doubt, Judy contributed every indiscretion.It is hard to imagine Robert Harbottle refusing her any sort of justification that the law demands short of beating her, but her malice would accept nothing of which the account did not go for final settlement to Judy Thynne.

If her husband wanted his liberty, he should have it, she declared, at that price and no other.Major Harbottle did indeed deeply long for his liberty, and his interesting friend, Mrs.Thynne, had, one can only say, the most vivid commiseration for his bondage.

Whatever chance they had of winning, to win would be, for the end they had at heart, to lose, so they simply abstained, as it were, from comment upon the detestable procedure which terminated in the rule absolute.I have often wondered whether the whole business would not have been more defensible if there had been on Judy's part any emotional spring for the leap they made.I offer my conviction that there was none, that she was only extravagantly affected by the ideals of the Quarter--it is a transporting atmosphere--and held a view of comradeship which permitted the reversal of the modern situation filled by a blameless correspondent.Robert, of course, was tremendously in love with her; but my theory is that she married him as the logical outcome of her sacrifice and by no means the smallest part of it.