The Pool in the Desert
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Sara Jeanette Duncan >> The Pool in the Desert
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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'.
Chapter 3.V.
'My wife,' said Colonel Innes, 'is looking extremely well.'
'She seems so, indeed,' Madeline replied.
'She is delighted with "Two Gables". Likes it better, she says,
than any other house we could have got.'
'What a good thing!'
'It was a record trip for the Caledonia, thirteen days from Brindisi
to Bombay. Was she telling you about the voyage?'
'No,' said Madeline impatiently, 'she didn't mention it. How shall
I tell the men to put down the hood, please? A rickshaw is
detestable with the hood up--stifling! Thanks. I beg your pardon.
The Caledonia made a good run?'
'Thirteen days. Wonderful weather, of course, which was luck for
Violet. She is an atrocious sailor.'
Madeline fancied she heard repose and reassurance in his voice. Her
thought cried, 'It is not so bad as he expected!' We can not be
surprised that she failed to see in herself the alleviation of that
first evening.
'She has brought quantities of things for the house with her,' Innes
went on, 'as well as three dachshund puppies,' and he laughed.
'Wouldn't you like one? What can we do with three--and the terrier,
and Brutus?'
'Oh, thank you, no.'
How could he laugh? How could he speak pleasantly of these intimate
details of his bondage? How could he conceive that she would
accept--
'Already she has arranged four dinner-parties! It will be a relief
not to have to think of that sort of thing--to be able to leave it
to her.'
'Mrs. Innes must have great energy. To drive all the way up from
Kalka by noon and appear at a dinner-party at night--wonderful!'
'Oh, great energy,' Horace said.
'She will take you everywhere--to all the functions. She will
insist on your duty to society.'
Madeline felt that she must get him somehow back into his slough of
despond. His freedom paralyzed her. And he returned with a
pathetic change of tone.
'I suppose there is no alternative. Violet is very good about being
willing to go alone, or with somebody else; but I never think it
quite fair on one's wife to impose on her the necessity of going
about with other men.'
'Mrs. Worsley introduced us after dinner,' said Madeline.
She kept disparagement out of her mind, but he could not help
perceiving aloofness.
'Yes?'
The monosyllable told her sensitive ear that while he admitted her
consideration in going on with the subject, he was willing to
recognize that there was no more to say, and have done with it. She
gathered up her scruples and repugnances in a firm grasp. She would
not let him throw his own shadow, as an effectual obstacle, between
himself and liberty.
'I am going to ask you something,' she said; it might come naturally
enough from another man with whom your friendship was as candid as
it is with me; but there is an awkwardness in it from a woman. You
must believe I have a good reason. Will you tell me about your
first meeting with Mrs. Innes, when--when you became engaged?'
She knew she was daring a good deal; but when a man's prison is to
be brought down about his ears, one might as well begin, she
thought, at the foundation.
For a moment Innes did not speak, and then his words came slowly.
I find it difficult,' he said, 'to answer you. How can it matter--
it is impossible. I suppose you have heard some story, and it is
like you to want to be in a position to negative it. Ignore it
instead. She has very successfully championed herself. Believe
nothing to her disadvantage that may be said about that--that time.
I was pleased to marry her, and she was pleased to marry me. But
for God's sake don't let us talk about it!'
As he spoke Madeline saw the vivid clearness of the situation grow
blurred and confused. It was as if her point of view had suddenly
changed and her eyes failed her. Her eager impulse had beat less
and less strongly from the Worsley's door; now it seemed to shrink
away in fetters. Her eyes filled with vaguely resentful tears,
which sprang, if she could have traced them, from the fact that the
man she loved was loyal to his own mistake, and the formless
premonition that he might continue to be. She contorted her lip to
keep her emotion back, and deliberately turned away from a matter in
which she was not mistress, and which contained ugly possibilities
of buffeting. She would wait a little, and though consideration for
Violet Prendergast had nothing to do with it, she would not tell him
tonight.
'I am sorry,' she said; and, after a moment, 'Did I tell you that I
have changed my plans?'
'You are not going so soon?' she took all the comfort there was in
his eagerness.
'I am not going at all for the present. I have abandoned my
intentions and my dates. I mean to drift for a little while. I
have been too--too conscientious.'
'Are you quite serious--do you mean it?'
'Indeed I do.'
'And in less than a fortnight you will not go out of one's life.
You will stay on--you summer day! It's hard to believe in luck like
that. I sent a poor devil of a sepoy a reprieve last week--one
knows now how he must have felt about it.'
'Does it make all that difference?' Madeline asked, softly.
'It makes a difference,' he answered, controlling his words, 'that I
am glad you can not conceive, since that would mean that your life
has been as barren as mine.' He seemed to refrain from saying more,
and then he added, 'You must be careful when you plant your
friendship that you mean it to stay, and blossom. It will not come
easily up by the roots, and it will leave an ugly hole.'
He was helping her out of her rickshaw, and as they followed the
servant who carried her wraps the few yards to the door, she left
her hand lightly on his arm. It was the seal, he thought, of her
unwritten bond that there should be no uprooting of the single
flower he cherished; and he went back almost buoyantly because of it
to the woman who had been sitting in the sackcloth and ashes of
misfortune, turning over the expedients for which his step might
make occasion.
By the time the monkeys began to scramble about the roof in the
early creeping of the dawn among the deodars, Madeline had groped
her way to a tolerably clear conception of what might happen. The
impeding circumstance everywhere, it must be acknowledged, was
Frederick Prendergast's coffin. The case, had convict No. 1596 been
still alive and working out his debt to society, would have been
transcendentally simple, she told herself. Even a convict has a
right--a prospective right--to his wife, and no honest man should be
compelled to retain a criminal's property. This was an odd
reflection, perhaps, to be made by Madeline Anderson, but the
situation as a whole might be described as curious. And there was
no doubt about the coffin.
Chapter 3.VI.
The veranda of which Miss Anderson's little sitting-room claimed its
section hung over the road, and it seemed to her that she heard the
sound of Mrs. Innes's arrival about ten minutes after breakfast.
On the contrary, she had spent two whole hours contemplating, with
very fixed attention, first the domestic circumstances of Colonel
Horace Innes and their possible development, and then, with a pang
of profoundest acknowledgment, the moral qualities which he would
bring to bear upon them. She was further from knowing what course
she personally intended to pursue than ever, when she heard the
wheels roll up underneath; and she had worked herself into a state
of sufficient detachment from the whole problem to reflect upon the
absurdity of a bigamist rattling forth to discuss her probable ruin
in the fanciful gaiety of a rickshaw. The circumstances had its
value though; it lightened all responsibility for the lady
concerned. As Madeline heard her jump out and give pronounced
orders for the securing of an accompanying dachshund, it did not
seem to matter so particularly what became of Violet Prendergast.
Mrs. Innes's footsteps came briskly along the veranda. Madeline
noted that there was no lagging. 'Number seven,' she said aloud; as
she passed other doors, 'Number eight--number nine! Ah! there you
are.' The door was open. 'I wouldn't let them bring up my card for
fear of some mistake. How do you do? Now please don't get up--you
look so comfortable with your book. What is it? Oh, yes, of
course, THAT. People were talking about it a good deal when I left
London, but I haven't read it. Is it good?'
'I like it,' said Madeline. She half rose as Mrs. Innes entered;
but as the lady did not seem to miss the ceremony of greeting, she
was glad to sink back in her chair.
'And how do you like Simla? Charming in many ways, isn't it? A
little too flippant, I always say--rather TOO much champagne and
silliness. But awfully bracing.'
'The Snows are magnificent,' Madeline said, 'when you can see them.
And there's a lot of good work done here.'
'Aren't they divine? I did nothing, absolutely nothing, my first
season but paint them. And the shops--they're not bad, are they,
for the size of the place? Though today, upon my soul, there
doesn't seem to be a yard of white spotted veiling among them.'
'That is annoying,' said Madeline, 'if you want spotted veiling.'
'Isn't it? Well'--Mrs. Innes take a deep breath--'you DIDN'T tell
him last night?'
'N--no,' said Madeline, with deliberation.
'I WAS grateful. I knew I could rely upon you not to. It would
have been too cruel when we have only just been reunited--dear
Horace would have had to sleep in the--'
'Pray--'
'Well, Horace is the soul of honour. Is your ayah in there?' Mrs.
Innes nodded towards the bedroom door. 'You can not imagine what
long ears she has.'
'I have no ayah. There is only Brookes;' and as that excellent
woman passed through the room with a towel over her arm, Madeline
said, 'You can go now, Brookes, and see about that alpaca. Take the
rickshaw; it looks very threatening.'
'Maid! You ARE a swell! There are only four genuine maids in Simla
that I know of--the rest are really nurse-girls. What a comfort she
must be! THE luxury of all others that I long for; but alas! army
pay, you know. I did once bring a dear thing out with me from Nice-
-you should have seen Horace's face.'
'I couldn't very well go about quite alone; it would be
uncomfortable.'
'Except that you Americans are so perfectly independent.'
'On the contrary. If I could order about a servant the way an
Englishwoman does--'
'Say you are not going to tell him! I've got such a lot of other
calls to make,' exclaimed Mrs. Innes. 'Dear Lady Bloomfield won't
understand it if I don't call today, especially after the baby.
What people in that position want with more babies I can not
comprehend. Of course you haven't noticed it, but a baby is such a
shock to Simla.'
'Don't let me keep you,' Madeline said, rising.
'But you haven't promised. Do promise, Miss Anderson. You gain
nothing by telling him, except your revenge; and I should think by
this time you would have forgiven me for taking Frederick away from
you. He didn't turn out so well! You can't still bear me malice
over that convict in Sing Sing.'
'For his sake, poor fellow, I might.'
'Coming along I said to myself, "She CAN score off me badly, but
surely she doesn't want to so much as all that." Besides, I really
only took your leavings, you know. You threw poor Fred Prendergast
over.'
'I am not prepared to discuss that,' Madeline said, at no pains to
smooth the curve out of her lip.
'Then I thought, "Perhaps--you never can tell with people--she will
think it her DUTY to make a fuss."'
'That is a possible point of view.'
'I know. You think I'm an imposter on society and I ought to be
exposed, and I suppose you could shut every door in Simla against me
if you liked. But you are a friend of my husband's, Miss Anderson.
You would not turn his whole married life into a scandal and ruin
his career?'
'Ruin his career?'
'Of course. Government is awfully particular. It mayn't be his
fault in the least, but no man is likely to get any big position
with a cloud over his domestic affairs. Horace would resign,
naturally.'
'Or take long leave,' Mrs. Innes added to herself, but she did not
give Madeline this alternative. A line or two of nervous irritation
marked themselves about her eyes, and her colour had faded. Her hat
was less becoming than it had been, and she had pulled a button off
her glove.
'Besides,' she went on quickly, 'it isn't as if you could do any
good, you know. The harm was done once for all when I let him think
he'd married me. I thought then--well, I had to take it or leave it-
-and every week I expected to hear of Frederick's death. Then I
meant to tell Horace myself, and have the ceremony over again. He
couldn't refuse. And all these years it's been like living on a
volcano, in the fear of meeting New York people. Out here there
never are any, but in England I dye my hair, and alter my
complexion.'
'Why did you change your mind,' Madeline asked, 'about telling
Colonel Innes?'
'I haven't! Why should I change my mind? For my own protection, I
mean to get things put straight instantly--when the time comes.'
'When the time comes,' Madeline repeated; and her eyes, as she fixed
them on Mrs. Innes, were suddenly so lightened with a new idea that
she dropped the lids over them as she waited for the answer.
'When poor Frederick does pass away,' Mrs. Innes said, with an air
of observing the proprieties. 'When they put him in prison it was a
matter of months, the doctors said. That was one reason why I went
abroad. I couldn't bear to stay there and see him dying by inches,
poor fellow.'
'Couldn't you?'
'Oh, I couldn't. And the idea of the hard labour made me SICK. But
it seems to have improved his health, and now--there is no telling!
I sometimes believe he will live out his sentence. Should you think
that possible in the case of a man with half a lung?'
'I have no knowledge of pulmonary disease,' Madeline said. She
forced the words from her lips and carefully looked away, taking
this second key to the situation mechanically, and for a moment
groping with it.
'What arrangement did you make to be informed about--about him?' she
asked, and instantly regretted having gone so perilously near
provoking a direct question.
'I subscribe to the "New York World". I used to see lots of things
in it--about the shock the news of my death gave him--'
A flash of hysterical amusement shot into Mrs. Innes's eyes, and she
questioned Madeline's face to see whether it responded to her
humour. Then she put her own features straight behind her
handkerchief and went on.
'And about his failing health, and then about his being so much
better. But nothing now for ages.'
'Did the "World" tell you,' asked Miss Anderson, with sudden
interest, 'that Mr. Prendergast came into a considerable fortune
before--about two years ago?'
Mrs. Innes's face turned suddenly blank. 'How much?' she exclaimed.
'About five hundred thousand dollars, I believe. Left him by a
cousin. Then you didn't know?'
'That must have been Gordon Prendergast--the engineer!' Mrs. Innes
said, with excitement. 'Fancy that! Leaving money to a relation in
Sing Sing! Hadn't altered his will, I suppose. Who could
possibly,' and her face fell visibly, 'have foreseen such a thing?'
'No one, I think,' said Madeline, through a little edged smile. 'On
that point you will hardly be criticized.'
Mrs. Innes, with clasped hands, was sunk in thought. She raised her
eyes with a conviction in them which she evidently felt to be
pathetic.
'After all,' she said, 'there is something in what the padres say
about our reaping the reward of our misdeeds in this world--some of
us, anyway. If I had stayed in New York--'
'Yes?' said Madeline. 'I shall wake up presently,' she reflected,
'and find that I have been dreaming melodrama.' But that was a
fantastic underscoring of her experience. She knew very well she
was making it.
Mrs. Innes, again wrapped in astonished contemplation, did not
reply. Then she jumped to her feet with a gesture that cast
fortunes back into the lap of fate.
'One thing is certain,' she said; 'I can't do anything NOW, can I?'
Madeline laid hold of silence and made armour with it. At all
events, she must have time to think.
'I decline to advise you,' she said, and she spoke with a barely
perceptive movement of her lips only. The rest of her face was
stone.
'How unkind and unforgiving you are! Must people would think the
loss of a hundred thousand pounds about punishment enough for what I
have done. You don't seem to see it. But on top of that you won't
refuse to promise not to tell Horace?'
'I will not bind myself in any way whatever.'
'Not even when you know that the moment I hear of the--death I
intend to--to--'
'Make an honest man of him? Not even when I know that.'
'Do you want me to go down on my knees to you?'
Madeline glanced at the flowered fabric involved and said, 'I
wouldn't, I think.'
'And this is to hang over me the whole season? I shall enjoy
nothing--absolutely NOTHING.' The blue eyes were suddenly eclipsed
by angry tears, which the advent of a servant with cards checked as
suddenly.
'Goodbye, then, dear,' cried Mrs. Innes, as if in response to the
advancing rustle of skirts in the veranda. 'So glad to have found
you at home. Dear me, has Trilby made her way up--and I gave such
particular orders! Oh, you NAUGHTY dog!'
Chapter 3.VII.
>From the complication that surged round Miss Anderson's waking hours
one point emerged, and gave her a perch for congratulation. That
was the determination she had shown in refusing to let Frederick
Prendergast leave her his money, or any part of it.
It has been said that he had outlived her tenderness, if not her
care, and this fact, which she never found it necessary to
communicate to poor Frederick himself, naturally made his desire in
the matter sharply distasteful. She was even unaware of the
disposition he had made of his ironical fortune, a reflection which
brought her thankfulness that there was something she did not know.
'If I had let him do it,' she thought, 'I should have felt compelled
to tell her everything, instantly. And think of discussing it with
her!' This was quite a fortnight later, and Mrs. Innes still
occupied her remarkable position only in her own mind and
Madeline's, still knowing herself the wife of 1596 and of 1596 only,
and still unaware that 1596 was in his grave. Simla had gone on
with its dances and dinners and gymkhanas quite as if no crucial
experience were hanging over the heads of three of the people one
met 'everywhere,' and the three people continued to be met
everywhere, although only one of them was unconscious. The women
tried to avoid each other without accenting it, exchanging light
words only as occasion demanded, but they were not clever enough for
Mrs. Gammidge and Mrs. Mickie, who went about saying that Mrs.
Innes's treatment of Madeline Anderson was as ridiculous as it was
inexplicable. 'Did you ever know her to be jealous of anybody
before?' demanded Mrs. Mickie, to which Mrs. Gammidge responded,
with her customary humour, that the Colonel had never, in the memory
of the oldest inhabitant, been known to give her occasion.
'Well,' declared Mrs. Mickie, 'if friendships--UNSENTIMENTAL
friendships--between men and women are not understood in Simla, I'd
like to be told what is understood.'
Between them they gave Madeline a noble support, for which--although
she did not particularly require it, and they did not venture to
offer it in so many words--she was grateful. A breath of public
criticism from any point of view would have blown over the toppling
structure she was defending against her conscience. The siege was
severe and obstinate, with an undermining conviction ever at work
that in the end she would yield; in the end she would go away, at
least as far as Bombay or Calcutta, and from there send to Mrs.
Innes the news of her liberation. It would not be necessary, after
all, or even excusable, to tell Horace. His wife would do that
quickly enough--at least, she had said she would. If she didn't--
well, if she didn't, nothing would be possible but another letter,
giving HIM the simple facts, she, Madeline, carefully out of the way
of his path of duty--at all events, at Calcutta or Bombay. But
there was no danger that Mrs. Innes would lose the advantage of
confession, of throwing herself on his generosity--and at this point
Madeline usually felt her defenses against her better nature
considerably strengthened, and the date of her sacrifice grow vague
again.
Meanwhile, she was astonished to observe that, in spite of her
threat to the contrary, Mrs. Innes appeared to be enjoying herself
particularly well. Madeline had frequent occasion for private
comment on the advantages of a temperament that could find
satisfaction in dancing through whole programmes at the very door,
so to speak, of the criminal courts; and it can not be denied that
this capacity of Mrs. Innes's went far to increase the vacillation
with which Miss Anderson considered her duty towards that lady. If
she had shown traces of a single hour of genuine suffering, there
would have been an end to Madeline's hesitation. But beyond an
occasional watchful glance at conversations in which she might be
figuring dramatically, and upon which she instantly turned her back
as soon as she was perceived, Mrs. Innes gave no sign even of
preoccupation. If she had bad half-hours, they occurred between the
teas and tennises, the picnics, riding-parties, luncheons, and other
entertainments, at which you could always count upon meeting her;
and in that case they must have been short. She looked extremely
well, and her admirable frocks gave an accent even to 'Birthday'
functions at Viceregal Lodge, which were quite hopelessly general.
If any one could have compelled a revelation of her mind, I think it
would have transpired that her anxieties about Capt. Valentine Drake
and Mrs. Vesey gave her no leisure for lesser ones. These for a few
days had been keen and indignant--Captain Drake had so far forgotten
himself as to ride with Mrs. Vesey twice since Mrs. Innes's arrival-
-and any display of poverty of spirit was naturally impossible under
the circumstances. The moment was a critical one; Captain Drake
seemed inclined to place her in the category of old, unexacting
friends--ladies who looked on and smiled, content to give him tea on
rainy days, and call him by his Christian name, with perhaps the
privilege of a tapping finger on his shoulder, and an occasional
order about a rickshaw. Mrs. Violet was not an introspective
person, or she might have discovered here that the most stable part
of her self-respect was her EXIGENCE with Captain Drake.
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