The Pool in the Desert

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She found out quickly enough, however, that she did not mean to
discard it. She threw herself, therefore--her fine shoulders and
arms, her pretty clothes, her hilarity, her complexion, her
eyelashes, and all that appertained to her--into the critical task
of making other men believe, at Captain Drake's expense, that they
were quite as fond of her as he was. Mrs. Vesey took opposite
measures, and the Club laid bets on the result.

The Club was not prepossessed by Captain Drake. He said too little
and he implied too much. He had magnificent shoulders, which he
bent a great deal over secluded sofas, and a very languid interest
in matters over which ordinary men were enthusiastic. He seemed to
believe that if he smiled all the way across his face, he would
damage a conventionality. His clothes were unexceptionable, and he
always did the right thing, though bored by the necessity. He was
good-looking in an ugly way, which gave him an air of restrained
capacity for melodrama, and made women think him interesting.
Somebody with a knack of disparagement said that he was too much
expressed. It rather added to his unpopularity that he was a man
whom women usually took with preposterous seriousness--all but Kitty
Vesey, who charmed and held him by her outrageous liberties. When
Mrs. Vesey chaffed him, he felt picturesque. He was also aware of
inspiring entertainment for the lookers-on, with the feeling at such
times that he, too, was an amused spectator. This was, of course,
their public attitude. In private there was sentiment, and they
talked about the tyranny of society, or delivered themselves of
ideas suggested by works of fiction which everybody simply HAD to
read.

For a week Mrs. Innes looked on, apparently indifferent, rather
apparently not observing; and an Assistant Secretary in the Home
Department began to fancy that his patience in teaching the three
dachshund puppies tricks was really appreciated. He was an on-
coming Assistant Secretary, with other conspicuous parts, and
hitherto his time had been too valuable to spend upon ladies'
dachshunds. Mrs. Innes had selected him well. There came an
evening when, at a dance at the Lieutenant-Governor's, Mrs. Innes
was so absorbed in what the Assistant Secretary was saying to her,
as she passed on his arm, that she did not see Captain Drake in the
corridor at all, although he had carefully broken an engagement to
walk with Kitty Vesey that very afternoon, as the beginning of
gradual and painless reform in her direction. His unrewarded virtue
rose up and surprised him with the distinctness of its resentment;
and while his expression was successfully amused, his shoulders and
the back of his neck, as well as the hand on his moustache, spoke of
discipline which promised to be efficient. Reflection assured him
that discipline was after all deserved, and a quarter of an hour
later found him wagging his tail, so to speak, over Mrs. Innes's
programme in a corner pleasantly isolated. The other chair was
occupied by the Assistant Secretary. Captain Drake represented an
interruption, and was obliged to take a step towards the nearest
lamp to read the card. Three dances were rather ostentatiously
left, and Drake initialled them all. He brought back the card with
a bow, which spoke of dignity under bitter usage, together with the
inflexible intention of courteous self-control, and turned away.

'Oh, if you please, Captain Drake--let me see what you've done. All
those? But--'

'Isn't it after eleven, Mrs. Innes?' asked the Assistant Secretary,
with a timid smile. He was enjoying himself, but he had a respect
for vested interests, and those of Captain Drake were so well known
that he felt a little like a buccaneer.

'Dear me, so it is!' Mrs. Innes glanced at one of her bracelets.
'Then, Captain Drake, I'm sorry'--she carefully crossed out the
three 'V.D.'s'--'I promised all the dances I had left after ten to
Mr. Holmcroft. Most of the others I gave away at the gymkhana--
really. Why weren't you there? That Persian tutor again! I'm
afraid you are working too hard. And what did the Rani do, Mr.
Holmcroft? It's like the Arabian Nights, only with real jewels--'

'Oh, I say, Holmcroft, this is too much luck, you know. Regular
sweepstakes, by Jove!' And Captain Drake lingered on the fringe of
the situation.

'Perhaps I have been greedy,' said the Assistant Secretary,
deprecatingly. 'I'll--'

'Not in the very least! That is,' exclaimed Mrs. Violet, pouting,
'if I'M to be considered. We'll sit out all but the waltzes, and
you shall tell me official secrets about the Rani. She put us up
once, she's a delicious old thing. Gave us string beds to sleep on
and gold plate to eat from, and swore about every other word. She
had been investing in Government paper, and it had dropped three
points. "Just my damn luck!" she said. Wasn't it exquisite?
Captain Drake--'

'Mrs. Innes--'

'I don't want to be rude, but you're a dreadful embarrassment. Mr.
Holmcroft won't tell you official secrets!'

'If she would only behave!' thought Madeline, looking on, 'I would
tell her--indeed I would--at once.'

Colonel Innes detached himself from a group of men in mess dress as
she appeared with the Worsleys, and let himself drift with the tide
that brought them always together.

'You are looking tired--ill,' she said, seriously, as they sought
the unconfessed solace of each other's eyes. 'Last night it was the
Commander-in-Chief's, and the night before the dance at Peliti's.
And again tonight. And you are not like those of us who can rest
next morning--you have always your heavy office work!' She spoke
with indignant, tender reproach, and he gave himself up to hearing
it. 'You will have to take leave and go away,' she insisted,
foolishly.

'Leave! Good heavens, no! I wish all our fellows were as fit as I
am. And--'

'Yes?' she said.

'Don't pity me, dear friend. I don't think it's good for me. The
world really uses me very well.'

'Then it's all right, I suppose,' Madeline said, with sudden
depression.

'Of course it is. You are dining with us on the eighth?'

'I'm afraid not, I'm engaged.'

'Engaged again? Don't you WANT to break bread in my house, Miss
Anderson?' She was silent, and he insisted, 'Tell me,' he said.

She gave him instead a kind, mysterious smile.

'I will explain to you what I feel about that some day,' she said;
'some day soon. I can't accept Mrs. Innes's invitation for the
eighth, but--Brookes and I are going to take tea with the fakir's
monkeys on the top of Jakko tomorrow afternoon.'

'Anybody else, or only Brookes?'

'Only Brookes.' And she thought she had abandoned coquetry!

'Then may I come?'

'Indeed you may.'

'I really don't know,' reflected Madeline, as she caught another
glimpse of Mrs. Innes vigorously dancing the reel opposite little
Lord Billy in his Highland uniform, with her hands on her flowered-
satin hips, 'that I am behaving very well myself.'

Chapter 3.VIII.

Horace Innes looked round his wife's drawing-room as if he were
making an inventory of it, carefully giving each article its value,
which happened, however, to have nothing to do with rupees.
Madeline Anderson had been saying something the day before about the
intimacy and accuracy with which people's walls expressed them, and
though the commonplace was not new to him, this was the first time
it had ever led him to scan his wife's. What he saw may be
imagined, but his only distinct reflection was that he had no idea
that she had been photographed so variously or had so many friends
who wore resplendent Staff uniforms. The relation of cheapness in
porcelain ornaments to the lady's individuality was beyond him, and
he could not analyze his feelings of sitting in the midst of her
poverty of spirit. Indeed, thinking of his ordinary
unsusceptibility to such things, he told himself sharply that he was
adding an affectation of discomfort to the others that he had to
bear; and that if Madeline had not given him the idea it would never
have entered his mind. The less, he mused, that one had to do with
finicking feelings in this world the better. They were well enough
for people who were tolerably conditioned in essentials--he
preferred this vagueness, even with himself, in connection with his
marriage--otherwise they added pricks. Besides he had that other
matter to think of.

He thought of the other matter with such obvious irritation that the
butler coming in to say that the 'English water' was finished, and
how many dozen should he order, put a chair in its place instead,
closed the door softly again, and went away. It was not good for
the dignity of butlers to ask questions of any sort with a look of
that kind under the eyebrows of the sahib. The matter was not
serious, Colonel Innes told himself, but he would prefer by
comparison to deal with matters that were serious. He knew Simla
well enough to attach no overwhelming importance to things said
about women at the Club, where the broadest charity prevailed
underneath, and the idle comment of the moment had an intrinsic
value as a distraction rather than a reflective one as a criticism.
This consideration, however, was more philosophical in connection
with other men's wives. He found very little in it to palliate what
he had overheard, submerged in the 'Times of India', that afternoon.
And to put an edge on it, the thing had been said by one of his own
juniors. Luckily the boy had left the room without discovering who
was behind the 'Times of India'. Innes felt that he should be
grateful for having been spared the exigency of defending his wife
against a flippant word to which she had very probably laid herself
open. He was very angry, and it is perhaps not surprising that he
did not pause to consider how far his anger was due to the
humiliating necessity of speaking to her about it. She was coming
at last though; she was in the hall. He would get it over quickly.

'Goodbye!' said Mrs. Innes at the door. 'No, I can't possibly let
you come in to tea. I don't know how you have the conscience after
drinking three cups at Mrs. Mickie's, where I had no business to
take you! Tomorrow? Oh, all right if you want to VERY badly. But
I won't promise you strawberries--they're nearly all gone.'

There was the sound of a departing pony's trot, and Mrs. Innes came
into the drawing-room.

'Good heavens, Horace! what are you sitting there for like a--like a
ghost? Why didn't you make a noise or something, and why aren't you
at office? I can't tell you how you startled me.'

'It is early,' Colonel Innes said. 'We are neither of us in the
house, as a rule, at this hour.'

'Coincidence!' Violet turned a cool, searching glance on her
husband, and held herself ready. 'I came home early because I want
to alter the lace on my yellow bodice for tonight. It's too
disgusting as it is. But I was rather glad to get away from Mrs.
Mickie's lot. So rowdy!'

'And I came because I had a special reason for wanting to speak to
you.'

Mrs. Violet's lips parted, and her breath, in spite of herself, came
a little faster.

'As we are dining out tonight, I thought that if I didn't catch you
now I might not have another opportunity--till tomorrow morning.'

'And it's always a pity to spoil one's breakfast. I can tell from
your manner, mon ami, it's something disagreeable. What have I been
and gone and done?'

She was dancing, poor thing, in her little vulgar way, on hot iron.
But her eyes kept their inconsistent coolness.

'I heard something today which you are not in the way of hearing.
You have--probably--no conception that it could be said.'

'Then she has been telling other people. ABSOLUTELY the worst thing
she could do!' Mrs. Innes exclaimed privately, sitting unmoved, her
face a little too expectant.

'You won't be prepared for it--you may be shocked and hurt by it.
Indeed, I think there is no need to repeat it to you. But I must
put you on your guard. Men are coarser, you know, than women; they
are apt to put their own interpretation--'

'What is it?'

There was a physical gasp, a sharpness in her voice that brought
Innes's eyes from the floor to her face.

'I am sorry,' he said, 'but--don't overestimate it, don't let it
worry you. It was simply a very impertinent--a very disagreeable
reference to you and Mr. Holmcroft, I think, in connection with the
Dovedell's picnic. It was a particularly silly thing as well, and I
am sure no one would attach any importance to it, but it was said
openly at the Club, and--'

'Who said it?' Mrs. Innes demanded.

A flood of colour rushed over her face. Horace marked that she
blushed.

'I don't know whether I ought to tell you, Violet. It certainly was
not meant for your ears.'

'If I'm not to know who said it, I don't see why I should pay any
attention to it. Mere idle rumour--'

Innes bit his lip.

'Captain Gordon said it,' he replied.

'Bobby Gordon! DO tell me what he said! I'm dying to know. Was he
very disagreeable? I DID give his dance away on Thursday night.'

Innes looked at her with the curious distrust which she often
inspired in him. He had a feeling that he would like to put her out
of the room into a place by herself, and keep her there.

'I won't repeat what he said.' Colonel Innes took up the 'Saturday
Review'.

'Oh, do, Horace! I particularly want to know.'

Innes said nothing.

'Horace! Was it--was it anything about Mr. Holmcroft being my
Secretariat baa-lamb?'

'If you adorn your guess with a little profanity,' said Innes,
acidly, 'you won't be far wrong.'

Mrs. Violet burst into a peal of laughter.

'Why, you old goose!' she articulated, behind her handkerchief; 'he
said that to ME.'

Innes laid down the 'Saturday Review'.

'To you!' he repeated; 'Gordon said it to you!'

'Rather!' Mrs. Violet was still mirthful. 'I'm not sure that he
didn't call poor little Homie something worse than that. It's the
purest jealousy on his part--nothing to make a fuss about.'

The fourth skin which enables so many of us to be callous to all but
the relative meaning of careless phrases had not been given to
Innes, and her words fell upon his bare sense of propriety.

'Jealous,' he said, 'of a married woman? I find that difficult to
understand.'

Violet's face straightened out.

'Don't be absurd, Horace. These boys are always jealous of somebody
or other--it's the occupation of their lives! I really don't see
how one can prevent it.'

'It seems to me that a self-respecting woman should see how. Your
point of view in these matters is incomprehensible.'

'Perhaps,' Violet was driven by righteous anger to say, 'you find
Miss Anderson's easier to understand.'

Colonel Innes's face took its regimental disciplinary look, and,
though his eyes were aroused, his words were quiet with repression.

'I see no reason to discuss Miss Anderson with you,' he said. 'She
has nothing to do with what we are talking about.'

'Oh, don't you, really! Hasn't she, indeed! I take it you are
trying to make me believe that compromising things are said about
Mr. Holmcroft and me at the Club. Well, I advise you to keep your
ears open a little more, and listen to the things said about you and
Madeline Anderson there. But I don't suppose you would be in such a
hurry to repeat them to HER.'

Innes turned very white, and the rigidity of his face gave place to
heavy dismay. His look was that of a man upon whom misfortune had
fallen out of a clear sky. For an instant he stared at his wife.
When he spoke his voice was altered.

'For God's sake!' he said, 'let us have done with this pitiful
wrangling. I dare say you can take care of yourself; at all events,
I only meant to warn you. But now you must tell me exactly what you
mean by this that you have said--this--about--'

'The fat's in the fire,' was Mrs. Innes's reflection.

'Certainly, I'll tell you--'

'Don't shout, please!'

'I mean simply that all Simla is talking about your affair with Miss
Anderson. You may imagine that because you are fifteen years older
than she is things won't be thought of, but they are, and I hear
it's been spoken about at Viceregal Lodge. I KNOW Lady Bloomfield
has noticed it, for she herself mentioned it to me. I told her I
hadn't the slightest objection, and neither have I, but there's an
old proverb about people in glass houses. What are you going to
do?'

Colonel Innes's expression was certainly alarming, and he had made a
step toward her that had menace in it.

'I am going out,' he said, and turned and left her to her triumph.

Chapter 3.IX.

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.
It was the bleak side of Jakko; even tonight there was a fresh
springing coldness in it blowing over from the hidden snows behind
the rims of the nearer hills. Madeline held up her face to it, and
gave herself a moment of its grateful discipline.

'I have been as foolish as possible,' she said, 'as foolish as
possible. I have distressed you. Well, I couldn't help it--that is
all there is to be said. Now if you will tell me--what is in your
mind--what you spoke of writing--I will mount again and go home. It
doesn't matter--I know you didn't mean to be unkind.' Her lip was
trembling again, and he knew it, and dared not look at it.

'How can you ask me to tell you--miserable things!' he exclaimed.
'How can I find the words? And I have only just been told--I can
hardly myself conceive it--'

'I am not a child in her teens that my ears should be guarded from
miserable things. I have come of age, I have entered into my
inheritance of the world's bitterness with the rest. I can listen,'
Madeline said. 'Why not?'

He looked to her with grave tenderness. 'You think yourself very
old, and very wise about the world,' he said; 'but you are a woman,
and you will be hurt. And when I think that a little ordinary
forethought on my part would have protected you, I feel like the
criminal I am.'

'Don't make too much of it,' she said, simply. 'I have a
presentiment--'

'I'll tell you,' Innes said, slowly; 'I won't niggle about it. The
people of this place--idiots!--are unable to believe that a man and
a woman can be to each other what we are.'

'Yes?' said Madeline. She paused beside the parapet and looked down
at the indistinct little fields below, and the blurred masses of
white wild roses waving midway against the precipice.

'They can not understand that there can be any higher plane of
intercourse between us than the one they know. They won't see--they
can't see--that the satisfaction we find in being together is of a
different nature.'

'I see,' said Madeline. She had raised her eyes, and they sought
the solemn lines of the horizon. She looked as if she saw something
infinitely lifted above the pettiness he retailed to her.

'So they say--good God, why should I tell you what they say!' It
suddenly flashed upon him that the embodiment of it in words would
be at once, from him, sacrilegious and ludicrous. It flashed upon
him that her natural anger would bring him pain, and that if she
laughed--it was so hard to tell when she would laugh--it would be as
if she struck him. He cast about him dumb and helpless while she
kept her invincibly quiet gaze upon the farther hills. She was
thinking that this breath of gossip, now that it had blown, was a
very slight affair compared with Horace Innes's misery--which he did
not seem to understand. Then her soul rose up in her, brushing
everything aside, and forgetting, alas! the vow it had once made to
her.

'I think I know,' she said. 'They are indeed foolish. They say
that we--love each other. Is not that what they say?'

He looked in amazement into her tender eyes and caught at the little
mocking smile about her lips. Suddenly the world grew light about
him, the shadows fled away. Somewhere down in the valley, he
remembered afterward, a hill-flute made music. When he spoke it was
almost in a whisper, lest he should disturb some newly perceived
lovely thing that had wings, and might leave him. 'Oh, Madeline,'
he said, 'is it true?' She only smiled on in gladness that took no
heed of any apprehension, any fear or scruple, and he himself
keeping his eyes upon her face, said, 'It is true.'

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