CHAPTER VIIITHE PICNIC
Theruthless destruction of Mrs. Dawson's dresses supplied a subject for conversation, not merely in the station, but also in the "Burra Bazaar," where the most private concerns of the sahibs, and mem-sahibs, are openly debated and discussed.
Speculation was active, but neither the station nor the bazaar could hazard the vaguest conjecture, or trace even the ghost of a clue.
The devil theory was dismissed with the contempt which it deserved; the monkey suggestion was equally scorned, since the defamed ape was dead, having departed this life two days previous to the outrage, and thereby established an unimpeachablealibi. If not the monkey, who then? And echo cried, Who? all over the arid, torpid cantonment. There was no reply, and the destruction of Mrs. Dawson's Europe frocks, like one of the historical crimes that have baffled humanity, remains undiscovered until the present day.
The next sensation was a moonlight picnic, given by the bachelors of Ramghur; the rendezvous was the Chinglepat road five miles out, on a low mound between the highway and the river. On the occasion the lady moon appeared unusually large and brilliant, as if aware that she was responsible for the feast; the night was still and breathless, but the hockwas still iced. Like most bachelor entertainments, the picnic was a success; around and across the cloth flew corks, crackers, jokes, and chaff; the poor hot-weather folk were eating, drinking, and making merry just as if the thermometer did not stand at 98, and the merriest and most animated member of the company was Mrs. Wilkinson. She wore a charming white toilette, in which she totally eclipsed her rival, and was not unconscious of the fact; but she was also aware at the back of all her smiles that she herself was present entirely without her doctor's knowledge, and felt like an escaped prisoner, who was bound to be captured some day. But then she wanted so much to wear her new dress. It was modelled from Mrs. Rattray's vivid description of one of Mrs. Dawson's celebrated costumes, and was so exceedingly novel and becoming that she felt it no more or less than her duty to exhibit this ghost of a Paris toilette to her many admirers. To Mrs. Dawson it was indeed a phantom frock.
All the world knew that Mrs. Wilkinson was amazingly clever, but how could she reproduce a garment which she had never seen? Here was yet another mystery. Angela, who by all domestic laws should have been in bed and asleep, had been permitted to join the company as Mr. Gascoigne's guest, and was supremely happy. She wore her new hat, lavishly trimmed with roses, and her best and simplest manners. Her host had brought her in his cart; indeed, he now drove her out daily, as he believed that it did the wan little creature good to get fresh air, such as it was, and it afforded one means of removing her from her stepfather's orbit.
During these drives her cousin occasionally endeavoured in an awkward, clumsy fashion to improve the young mind, which was at present "wax to receive, and marble to retain;" his teaching was more adapted to a boy than a girl. His lessons—a mere sentence—brief, but pithy, showed her his abhorrence of lying, cowardice, and all mean actions. (Poor Angel listened with a tingling face, for she lived in an atmosphere of falsehood, and was conscious of certain small acts that were not creditable, chiefly connected with jam, hair ribbons, and beads; but in her heart Angel knew that she was no coward.) These seeds, casually cast by the wayside, and as casually received, were planted, and subsequently bore fruit, in the child's somewhat rocky little heart.
To return to the moonlight picnic. Colonel Wilkinson was present in a grey dirzee-made flannel suit rather tight for his rounded proportions; his moustache was waxed to exaggeration; he wore a new pink washing tie, and he made himself conspicuous in ushering guests to their places, arranging the viands, concocting the salad, and distributing the iced hock—for he was always exceedingly hospitable in other people's houses. At present the company were assembled under the vault of heaven, but the stout little officer presided at the end of the tablecloth, with his fat legs crossed Buddha-wise, carved the cold Guinea fowl and ham, and pressed delicacies on his neighbours so assiduously, that a casual arrival would have supposed that in him he beheld the host. No one could be more genial or convivial athis neighbour's board than Richard Wilkinson, Lieutenant-Colonel.
Angel shared a rug with her mother, and now and then stole her hand into hers and squeezed it gently, sure token of her absolute content; the pair were seated exactly opposite to Mrs. Dawson, who looked depressed and commonplace in an old-fashioned brown tussore garment. The child contemplated her gravely, with a mysteriously complacent expression in her large eyes; her stare exasperated the lady to such a pitch that more than once she was on the point of addressing her; the hot weather has a knack of warping people's tempers and reducing their nerves to fiddle-strings, and the combination of Angel's curious gaze and her mother's "model gown" was almost too much for Mrs. Dawson's equanimity.
After dinner there were songs and games, and some wandered away in twos and threes down to the river. This was a tributary of Mother Gunga, a holy river, now much shrunken; its waters moved along with a deliberate solemnity befitting a sacred stream. The farther bank was clothed with tall reeds, and was the well-known haunt of alligators. Mrs. Wilkinson and Mr. Shafto were looking for one in company, and as they gazed up and down the banks more than one grey log of wood had misled them. Had Mrs. Wilkinson's doctor been of the party, he would have assured her that in those thin shoes and transparent dress, as she stood breathing malaria on the brink of the sluggish stream, she was boldly courting death.
"There are generally three or four big fellows at the bend," said Shafto. "I've seen them when Icome to that jheel to shoot snipe;" and he stooped to pick up a stone.
"Oh, Mr. Shafto," gasped an agonised voice, "did you see it?"
"The alligator?" flinging a stone as he spoke. "Yes; there he goes. Mark over. Watch him scuttling into the river."
"No, no, no," stammered Mrs. Wilkinson. "The face—the face of a woman—floating past. It was just under the water."
"Why, I declare, you are quite upset!" exclaimed her companion. "I'm most frightfully sorry you've seen—anything. Of course, you know that the natives bring all their dead to the river?"
"Yes, yes," she assented, with a shiver. "I've not lived in Ramghur for four years for nothing; but it gave me a shock. It looked like the face of—a white woman."
"That was simply the effect of the moonlight," he responded. "Come along; the river is making you morbid, and it's not a sound thing to loiter near it after sundown—you know they say it's full of malaria. Let me turn your thoughts inland. Now, there is something worth looking at," and he pointed to the northern horizon, on which glimmered the long line of snows.
"Ah, yes," she ejaculated. "How I love the Himalayas! my happiest days have been spent there, and my saddest. I wonder if I shall ever see them nearer than I do now?" and she sighed profoundly.
"Why, of course you will," rejoined Shafto promptly. "We shall all be there next season, please goodness, and have a ripping time; and, I say, Mrs.Wilkinson, at our first ball up there let me here and now engage you for the first waltz."
"Very well," she agreed, with a forced laugh; "it's rather a long way ahead, is it not?"
"Nothing like taking time by the forelock—a year soon runs round. Here comes the Colonel," as the little squat figure bore down on them.
"I say, you good people," he bawled, "what about refreshments? Does anyone want some iced coffee? Lena, I can recommend the brew of iced milk punch."
His wife waved a negative, and then exclaimed, "Why, I see they are beginning to go; the Gordons and the Rattrays are off."
"What a shame!" protested her host. Yes, two carriages had just driven away—people who are obliged to rise at four o'clock cannot afford to keep late hours, and by half-past ten the scene of recent revelry was utterly deserted. A family of jackals supped right royally on the remains of the cold viands, and an inquisitive alligator gulped down an empty soda-water bottle.
Angel, who was half-asleep, accompanied her mother in the victoria, and Colonel Wilkinson accepted a seat in Mr. Gascoigne's dogcart. He was by no means as stout-hearted as his figure would suggest, but held on convulsively with one hand as they dashed up the bridge, and halted in the middle of a sentence which he did not conclude until they were a quarter of a mile away on the other side.
He had been discoursing of his own health, andthen of his wife's health, and imparting his fears to his Jehu.
"Lena was so delicate now, and so subject to fever," he declared. "She has a weak heart, too, and must go to the hills next season; in fact, they all wanted a change."
"Indeed they do," assented Gascoigne, with considerable warmth, "especially Angela. She is too old to be in India."
"Then I wish I saw my way to sending her out of it," rejoined her stepfather, "and the chance of never seeing her again."
To this aspiration Gascoigne made no reply.
"I suppose you think I'm a brute, now, don't you?" inquired his companion.
"Since you will have it, I think you are a stepfather—that's all."
"But like a fellow in a story-book, eh? Come, now. Well, I'm an honest, plain man"—the latter fact was sufficiently manifest—"and I'll tell you the truth. I could have liked the child—not the same way as my own, of course—but still well enough; and the only girl too. But I cannot stand her; she is a double-faced, dangerous imp and extraordinarily daring. When you think she is quiet and on her good behaviour she is certain to be hatching something awful; she has a talent for bringing off the most unexpected things. Ah, you laugh, but I warn you, Gascoigne——"
Here he paused, for the sensitive mare had taken fright at a hideous hog, who, with his great bristles all erect, went grunting across the road, and broke into a wild gallop.
"Now, I say, young fellow," he shouted in agonised alarm, "no foolery—no larking—don't let her get away, for God's sake! Remember, I've a family depending on me," and as he spoke he clutched Gascoigne's arm with the grip of the drowning.
"Oh, you'll be all right," answered the driver, angrily shaking off the grasp; "there's no fear." He was disgusted with his guest, for whose cowardice and meanness he had the most supreme contempt. He did not permit Sally to "get away," but he suffered her to go at a pace that brought his companion's heart into his mouth, and, as a natural result, the remainder of the drive was silence.