Stella shook her head.
"Never."
She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she finished she raised her head.
"Yes, I have been eight years in India," she added, and Thresk saw the tears suddenly glisten in her eyes. He had come up to Chitipur reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself that it seemed to belong to an earlier life. But his reproaches became doubly poignant now. She had been eight years in India, tied to this brute! But Stella Ballantyne mastered herself with a laugh.
"However I am not alone in that," she said lightly. "And how's London?"
It was unfortunate that just at this moment Captain Ballantyne woke up.
"Eh what!" he exclaimed in a mock surprise. "You were talking, Stella, were you? It must have been something extraordinarily interesting that you were saying. Do let me hear it."
At once Stella shrank. Her spirit was so cowed that she almost had the look of a stupid person; she became stupid in sheer terror of her husband's railleries.
"It wasn't of any importance."
"Oh, my dear," said Ballantyne with a sneer, "you do yourself an injustice," and then his voice grew harsh, his face brutal. "What was it?" he demanded.
Stella looked this way and that, like an animal in a trap. Then she caught sight of Thresk's face over against her. Her eyes appealed to him for silence; she turned quickly to her husband.
"I only said how's London?"
A smile spread over Ballantyne's face.
"Now did you say that? How's London! Now why did you ask how London was?How should London be? What sort of an answer did you expect?"
"I didn't expect any answer," replied Stella. "Of course the question sounds stupid if you drag it out and worry it."
Ballantyne snorted contemptuously.
"How's London? Try again, Stella!"
Thresk had come to the limit of his patience. In spite of Stella's appeal he interrupted and interrupted sharply.
"It doesn't seem to me an unnatural question for any woman to ask who has not seen London for eight years. After all, say what you like, for women India means exile—real exile."
Ballantyne turned upon his visitor with some rejoinder on his tongue. But he thought better of it. He looked away and contented himself with a laugh.
"Yes," said Stella, "we need next-door neighbours."
The restraint which Ballantyne showed towards Thresk only served to inflame him against his wife.
"So that you may pull their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters," he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings—alone with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited them and then sank again.
"How's London!" he growled, harping scornfully on the unfortunate phrase. Ballantyne had had luck that night. He had chanced upon two of the banalities of ordinary talk which give an easy occasion for the bully. Thresk's twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur provided the best opening. Only Thresk was a guest—not that that in Ballantyne's present mood would have mattered a great deal, but he was a guest whom Ballantyne had it in his mind to use. All the more keenly therefore he pounced upon Stella. But in pouncing he gave Thresk a glimpse into the real man that he was, a glimpse which the barrister was quick to appreciate.
"How's London? A lot of London we shall be able to afford! God! what a life there's in store for us! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, dinner, breakfast, lunch—all among the next-door neighbours." And upon that he flung himself back in his chair and reached out his arms.
"Give me Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr. Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the table with his hand.
"I like getting away into camp for two months, three months at a time—on the plain, in the jungle, alone. That's the point—alone. You've got it all then. You're a king without a Press. No one to spy on you—no one to carry tales—no next-door neighbours. How's London?" and with a sneer he turned back to his wife. "Oh, I know it doesn't suit Stella. Stella's so sociable. Stella wants parties. Stella likes frocks. Stella loves to hang herself about with beads, don't you, my darling?"
But Ballantyne had overtried her to-night. Her face suddenly flushed and with a swift and violent gesture she tore at the necklace round her throat. The clasp broke, the beads fell with a clatter upon her plate, leaving her throat bare. For a moment Ballantyne stared at her, unable to believe his eyes. So many times he had made her the butt of his savage humour and she had offered no reply. Now she actually dared him!
"Why did you do that?" he asked, pushing his face close to hers. But he could not stare her down. She looked him in the face steadily. Even her lips did not tremble.
"You told me to wear them. I wore them. You jeer at me for wearing them.I take them off."
And as she sat there with her head erect Thresk knew why he had bidden her to wear them. There were bruises upon her throat—upon each side of her throat—the sort of bruises which would be made by the grip of a man's fingers. "Good God!" he cried, and before he could speak another word Stella's moment of defiance passed. She suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
Ballantyne pushed back his chair sulkily. Thresk sprang to his feet. ButStella held him off with a gesture of her hand.
"It's nothing," she said between her sobs. "I am foolish. These last few days have been hot, haven't they?" She smiled wanly, checking her tears. "There's no reason at all," and she got up from her chair. "I think I'll leave you for a little while. My head aches and—and—I've no doubt I have got a red nose now."
She took a step or two towards the passage into her private tent but stopped.
"Icanleave you to get along together alone, can't I?" she said with her eyes on Thresk. "You know what women are, don't you? Stephen will tell you interesting things about Rajputana if you can get him to talk. I shall see you before you go," and she lifted the screen and went out of the room. In the darkness of the passage she stood silent for a moment to steady herself and while she stood there, in spite of her efforts, her tears burst forth again uncontrollably. She clasped her hands tightly over her mouth so that the sound of her sobbing might not reach to the table in the centre of the big marquee; and with her lips whispering in all sincerity the vain wish that she were dead she stumbled along the corridor.
But the sound had reached into the big marquee and coming after the silence it wrung Thresk's heart. He knew this of her at all events—that she did not easily cry. Ballantyne touched him on the arm.
"You blame me for this."
"I don't know that I do," answered Thresk slowly. He was wondering how much share in the blame he had himself, he who had ridden with her on the Downs eight years ago and had let her speak and had not answered. He sat in this tent to-night with shame burning at his heart. "It wasn't as if I had no confidence in myself," he argued, unable quite to cast back to the Thresk of those early days. "I had—heaps of it."
Ballantyne lifted himself out of his chair and lurched over to the sideboard. Thresk, watching him, fell to wondering why in the world Stella had married him or he her. He knew that a blind man may see such mysteries on any day and that a wise one will not try to explain them. Still he wondered. Had the man's reputation dazzled her?—for undoubtedly he had one; or was it that intellect which suffered an eclipse when Ballantyne went into camp with nobody to carry tales?
He was still pondering on that problem when Ballantyne swung back to the table and set himself to prove, drunk though he was, that his reputation was not ill-founded.
"I am afraid Stella's not very well," he said, sitting heavily down. "But she asked me to tell you things, didn't she? Well, her wishes are my law. So here goes."
His manner altogether changed now that they were alone. He became confidential, intimate, friendly. He was drunk. He was a coarse heavy-featured man with bloodshot eyes; he interrupted his conversation with uneasy glances into the corners of the tent, such glances as Thresk had noticed when he was alone with him before they sat down to dinner; but he managed none the less to talk of Rajputana with a knowledge which amazed Thresk now and would have enthralled him at another time. A visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne knew—very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another before Thresk's eyes—his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in the dark corridor beyond the grass-screen whispering with wild lips her wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing. Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana.
Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm.
"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good things—things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them—the swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?" And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess.
"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side to the other that he might see the better.
"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked.
"No one."
Ballantyne nodded as he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.
"They make these tents too large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot of light in the middle and all around in the corners—shadows. We sit here in the blot of light—a fair mark. But what's going on in the shadows, Mr.—What's your name? Eh? What's going on in the shadows?"
Thresk had no doubt that Ballantyne's fear was genuine. He was not putting forward merely an excuse for the scene which his guest had witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen, as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong however, for Ballantyne sprang to his feet.
"You are going away to-night. You can do me a service."
"Can I?" asked Thresk.
He understood at last why Ballantyne had been at such pains to interest and amuse him.
"Yes. And in return," cried Ballantyne, "I'll give you another glimpse into the India you don't know."
He walked up to the door of the tent and drew it aside. "Look!"
Thresk, leaning forward in his chair, looked out through the opening. He saw the moonlit plain in a soft haze, in the middle of it the green lamp of a railway signal and beyond the distant ridge, on which straggled the ruins of old Chitipur.
"Look!" cried Ballantyne. "There's tourist India all in one: a desert, a railway and a deserted city, hovels and temples, deep sacred pools and forgotten palaces—the whole bag of tricks crumbling slowly to ruin through centuries on the top of a hill. That's what the good people come out for to see in the cold weather—Jarwhal Junction and old Chitipur."
He dropped the curtain contemptuously and it swung back, shutting out the desert. He took a step or two back into the tent and flung out his arms wide on each side of him.
"But bless your soul," he cried vigorously, "here's the real India."
Thresk looked about the tent and understood.
"I see," he answered—"a place very badly lit, a great blot of light in the centre and all around it dark corners and grim shadows."
Ballantyne nodded his head with a grim smile upon his lips.
"Oh, you have learnt that! Well, you shall do me a service and in return you shall look into the shadows. But we will have the table cleared first." And he called aloud for Baram Singh.
While Baram Singh was clearing the table Ballantyne lifted the box of cheroots from the top of the bureau and held it out to Thresk.
"Will you smoke?"
Thresk, however, though he smoked had not during his stay in India acquired the taste for the cheroot; and it interested him in later times to reflect how largely he owed his entanglement in the tragic events which were to follow to that accidental distaste. For conscious of it he had brought his pipe with him, and he now fetched it out of his pocket.
"This, if I may," he said.
"Of course."
Thresk filled his pipe and lighted it, Ballantyne for his part lit a cheroot and replaced the box upon the top, close to a heavy riding-crop with a bone handle, which Thresk happened now to notice for the first time.
"Be quick!" he cried impatiently to Baram Singh, and seated himself in the swing-chair in front of the bureau, turning it so as not to have his back to Thresk at the table. Baram Singh hurriedly finished his work and left the marquee by the passage leading to the kitchen. Ballantyne waited with his eyes upon that passage until the grass-mat screen had ceased to move. Then taking a bunch of keys from his pocket he stooped under the open writing-flap of the bureau and unlocked the lowest of the three drawers. From this drawer he lifted a scarlet despatch-box, and was just going to bring it to the table when Baram Singh silently appeared once more. At once Ballantyne dropped the box on the floor, covering it as well as he could with his legs.
"What the devil do you want?" he cried, speaking of course in Hindustani, and with a violence which seemed to be half made up of anger and half of fear. Baram Singh replied that he had brought an ash-tray for the Sahib, and he placed it on the round table by Thresk's side.
"Well, get out and don't come back until you are called," cried Ballantyne roughly, and in evident relief as Baram Singh once more retired he took a long draught from a fresh tumbler of whisky-and-soda which stood on the flap of the bureau beside him. He then stooped once more to lift the red despatch-box from the floor, but to Thresk's amazement in the very act of stooping he stopped. He remained with his hands open to seize the box and his body bent over his knees, quite motionless. His mouth was open, his eyes staring, and upon his face such a look of sheer terror was stamped as Thresk could never find words to describe. For the first moment he imagined that the man had had a stroke. His habits, his heavy build all pointed that way. The act of stooping would quite naturally be the breaking pressure upon that overcharged brain. But before Thresk had risen to make sure Ballantyne moved an arm. He moved it upwards without changing his attitude in any other way, or even the direction of his eyes, and he groped along the flap of the bureau very cautiously and secretly and up again to the top ledge. All the while his eyes were staring intently, but with the intentness of extreme fear, not at the despatch-box but at the space of carpet—a couple of feet at the most—between the despatch-box and the tent-wall. His fingers felt along the ledge of the bureau and closed with a silent grip upon the handle of the riding-crop. Thresk jumped to the natural conclusion: a snake had crept in under the tent-wall and Ballantyne dared not move lest the snake should strike. Neither did he dare to move himself. Ballantyne was clearly within reach of its fangs. But he looked and—there was nothing. The light was not good certainly, and down by the tent-wall there close to the floor it was shadowy and dim. But Thresk's eyes were keen. The space between the despatch-box and the wall was empty. Nothing crawled there, nothing was coiled.
Thresk looked at Ballantyne with amazement; and as he looked Ballantyne sprang from his chair with a scream of terror—the scream of a panic-stricken child. He sprang with an agility which Thresk would never have believed possible in a man of so gross a build. He leapt into the air and with his crop he struck savagely once, twice and thrice at the floor between the wall and the box. Then he turned to Thresk with every muscle working in his face.
"Did you see?" he cried. "Did you see?"
"What? There was nothing to see!"
"Nothing!" screamed Ballantyne. He picked up the box and placed it on the table, thrusting it under Thresk's hand. "Hold that! Don't let go! Stay here and don't let go," he said, and running up the tent raised his voice to a shout.
"Baram Singh!" and lifting the tent-door he called to others of his servants by name. Without waiting for them he ran out himself and in a second Thresk heard him cursing thickly and calling in panic-stricken tones just close to that point of the wall against which the bureau stood. The camp woke to clamour.
Thresk stood by the table gripping the handle of the despatch-box as he had been bidden to do. The tent-door was left open. He could see lights flashing, he heard Ballantyne shouting orders, and his voice dwindled and grew loud as he moved from spot to spot in the encampment. And in the midst of the noise the white frightened face of Stella Ballantyne appeared at the opening of her corridor.
"What has happened?" she asked in a whisper. "Oh, I was afraid that you and he had quarrelled," and she stood with her hand pressed over her heart.
"No, no indeed," Thresk replied, and Captain Ballantyne stumbled back into the tent. His face was livid, and yet the sweat stood upon his forehead. Stella Ballantyne drew back, but Ballantyne saw her as she moved and drove her to her own quarters.
"I have a private message for Mr. Thresk's ears," he said, and when she had gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
"Now you must help me," he said in a low voice. But his voice shook and his eyes strayed again to the ground by the wall of the tent.
"It was just there the arm came through," he said. "Yes, just there," and he pointed a trembling finger.
"Arm?" cried Thresk. "What are you talking about?"
Ballantyne looked away from the wall to Thresk, his eyes incredulous.
"But you saw!" he insisted, leaning forward over the table.
"What?"
"An arm, a hand thrust in under the tent there, along the ground reaching out for my box."
"No. There was nothing to see."
"A lean brown arm, I tell you, a hand thin and delicate as a woman's."
"No. You are dreaming," exclaimed Thresk; but dreaming was a euphemism for the word he meant.
"Dreaming!" repeated Ballantyne with a harsh laugh. "Good God! I wish I was. Come. Sit down here! We have not too much time." He seated himself opposite to Thresk and drew the despatch-box towards him. He had regained enough mastery over himself now to be able to speak in a level voice. No doubt too his fright had sobered him. But it had him still in its grip, for when he opened the despatch-box his hand so shook that he could hardly insert the key in the lock. It was done at last however, and feeling beneath the loose papers on the surface he drew out from the very bottom a large sealed envelope. He examined the seals to make sure they had not been tampered with. Then he tore open the envelope and took out a photograph, somewhat larger than cabinet size.
"You have heard of Bahadur Salak?" he said.
Thresk started.
"The affair at Umballa, the riots at Benares, the murder in Madras?"
"Exactly."
Ballantyne pushed the photograph into Thresk's hand.
"That's the fellow—the middle one of the group."
Thresk held up the photograph to the light. It represented a group of nine Hindus seated upon chairs in a garden and arranged in a row facing the camera. Thresk looked at, the central figure with a keen and professional interest. Salak was a notorious figure in the Indian politics of the day—the politics of the subterranean kind. For some years he had preached and practised sedition with so much subtlety and skill that though all men were aware that his hand worked the strings of disorder there was never any convicting evidence against him. In all the three cases which Thresk had quoted and in many others less well-known those responsible for order were sure that he had devised the crime, chosen the moment for its commission and given the order. But up till a month ago he had slipped through the meshes. A month ago, however, he had made his mistake.
"Yes. It's a clever face," said Thresk.
Ballantyne nodded his head.
"He's a Mahratta Brahmin from Poona. They are the fellows for brains, andSalak's about the cleverest of them."
Thresk looked again at the photograph.
"I see the picture was taken at Poona."
"Yes, and isn't it an extraordinary thing!" cried Ballantyne, his face flashing suddenly into interest and enjoyment. The enthusiasm of the administrator in his work got the better of his fear now, just as a little earlier it had got the better of his drunkenness. Thresk was looking now into the face of a quite different man, the man of the intimate knowledge and the high ability for whom fine rewards were prophesied in Bombay. "The very cleverest of them can't resist the temptation of being photographed in group. Crime after crime has been brought home to the Indian criminal both here and in London because they will sit in garden-chairs and let a man take their portraits. Nothing will stop them. They won't learn. They are like the ladies of the light opera stage. Well, let 'em go on I say. Here's an instance."
"Is it?" asked Thresk. "Surely that photograph was taken a long time ago."
"Nine years. But he was at the same game. You have got the proof in your hands. There's a group of nine men—Salak and his eight friends. Well, of his eight friends every man jack is now doing time for burglary, in some cases with violence—that second ruffian, for instance, he's in for life—in some cases without, but in each case the crime was burglary. And why? Because Salak in the centre there set them on to it. Because Salak nine years ago wasn't the big swell he is now. Because Salak wanted money to start his intrigues. That's the way he got it—burglaries all round Bombay."
"I see," said Thresk. "Salak's in prison now?"
"He's in prison in Calcutta, yes. But he's awaiting his trial. He's not convicted yet."
"Exactly," Thresk answered. "This photograph is a valuable thing to have just now."
Ballantyne threw up his arms in despair at the obtuseness of his companion.
"Valuable!" he cried in derision. "Valuable!" and he leaned forward on his elbows and began to talk to Thresk with an ironic gentleness as if he were a child.
"You don't quite understand me, do you? But a little effort and all will be plain."
He got no farther however upon this line of attack, for Thresk interrupted him sharply.
"Here! Say what you have got to say if you want me to help you. Oh, you needn't scowl! You are not going to bait me for your amusement. I am not your wife." And Ballantyne after a vain effort to stare Thresk down changed to a more cordial tone.
"Well, you say it's a valuable thing to have just now. I say it's an infernally dangerous thing. On the one side there's Salak the great national leader, Salak the deliverer, Salak professing from his prison in Calcutta that he has never used any but the most legitimate constitutional means to forward his propaganda. And here on the other is Salak in his garden-chair amongst the burglars. Not a good thing to possess—this photograph, Mr. Thresk. Especially because it's the only one in existence and the negative has been destroyed. So Salak's friends are naturally anxious to get it back."
"Do they know you have it?" Thresk asked.
"Of course they do. You had proof that they knew five minutes ago when that brown arm wriggled in under the tent-wall."
Ballantyne's fear returned upon him as he spoke. He sat shivering; his eyes wandered furtively from corner to corner of the great tent and came always back as though drawn by a serpent to the floor by the wall of the tent. Thresk shrugged his shoulders. To dispute with Ballantyne once more upon his delusion would be the merest waste of time. He took up the photograph again.
"How do you come to possess it?" he asked. If he was to serve his host in the way he suspected he would be asked to, he must know its history.
"I was agent in a state not far from Poona before I came here."
Thresk agreed.
"I know. Bakuta."
"Oh?" said Ballantyne with a sharp look. "How did you know that?"
He was always in alarm lest somewhere in the world gossip was whispering his secret.
"A Mrs. Carruthers at Bombay."
"Did she tell you anything else?"
"Yes. She told me that you were a great man."
Ballantyne grinned suddenly.
"Isn't she a fool?" Then the grin left his face. "But how did you come to discuss me with her at all?"
That was a question which Thresk had not the slightest intention to answer. He evaded it altogether.
"Wasn't it natural since I was going to Chitipur?" he asked, andBallantyne was appeased.
"Well, the Rajah of Bakutu had that photograph and he gave it to me when I left the State. He came down to the station to see me off. He was too near Poona to be comfortable with that in his pocket. He gave it to me on the platform in full view, the damned coward. He wanted to show that he had given it to me. He said that I should be safe with it in Chitipur."
"Chitipur's a long way from Poona," Thresk agreed.
"But don't you see, this trial that's coming along in Calcutta makes all the difference. It's known I have got it. It's not safe here now and no more am I so long as I've got it."
One question had been puzzling Thresk ever since he had seen the look of terror reappear in Ballantyne's face. It was clear that he lived in a very real fear. He believed that he was watched, and he believed that he was in danger; and very probably he actually was. There had, to be sure, been no attempt that night to rob him of it as he imagined. But none the less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it? Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer. For it presented to him in the most unexpected manner another and a new side of the strange and complex character of Stephen Ballantyne.
"Yes, why don't I destroy it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast it upon the table as he had done many a time before and cried in a voice of violence:
"No, I can't. That's to own these fellows my masters and I won't. By God I won't! I may be every kind of brute, but I have been bred up in this service. For twenty years I have lived in it and by it. And the service is too strong for me. No, I can't destroy that photograph. There's the truth. I should hate myself to my dying day if I did."
He rose abruptly as if half ashamed of his outburst and crossing to his bureau lighted another cheroot.
"Then what do you want me to do with it?" asked Thresk.
"I want you to take it away."
Ballantyne was taking a casuistical way of satisfying his conscience, and he was aware of it. He would not destroy the portrait—no! But he wouldn't keep it either. "You are going straight back to England," he said. "Take it with you. When you get home you can hand it to one of the big-wigs at the India Office, and he'll put it in a pigeon-hole, and some day an old charwoman cleaning the office will find it, and she'll take it home to her grandchildren to play with and one of them'll drop it on the fire, and there'll be an end of it."
"Yes," replied Thresk slowly. "But if I do that, it won't be useful atCalcutta, will it?"
"Oh," said Ballantyne with a sneer. "You've got a conscience too, eh?Well, I'll tell you. I don't think that photograph will be needed atCalcutta."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes. Salak's friends don't know it, but I do."
Thresk sat still in doubt. Was Ballantyne speaking the truth or did he speak in fear? He was still standing by the bureau looking down upon Thresk and behind him, so that Thresk had not the expression of his face to help him to decide. But he did not turn in his chair to look. For as he sat there it dawned upon him that the photograph was the very thing which he himself needed. The scheme which had been growing in his mind all through this evening, which had begun to grow from the very moment when he had entered the tent, was now complete in every detail except one. He wanted an excuse, a good excuse which should explain why he missed his boat, and here it was on the table in front of him. Almost he had refused it! Now it seemed to him a Godsend.
"I'll take it," he cried, and Baram Singh silently appeared at the outer doorway of the tent.
"Huzoor," he said. "Railgharri hai."
Ballantyne turned to Thresk.
"Your train is signalled," and as Thresk started up he reassured him. "There's no hurry. I have sent word that it is not to start without you." And while Baram Singh still stood waiting for orders in the doorway of the tent Ballantyne walked round the table, took up the portrait very deliberately and handed it to Thresk.
"Thank you," he said. "Button it in your coat pocket."
He waited while Thresk obeyed.
"Thus," said Thresk with a laugh, "did the Rajah of Bakutu," andBallantyne replied with a grin.
"Thank you for mentioning that name." He turned to Baram Singh. "The camel, quick!"
Baram Singh went out to the enclosure within the little village of tents and Thresk asked curiously:
"Do you distrust him?"
Ballantyne looked steadily at his visitor and said:
"I don't answer such questions. But I'll tell you something. If that man were dying he would ask for leave. And if he would ask for leave because he would not die with my scarlet livery on his back. Are you answered?"
"Yes," said Thresk.
"Very well." And with a brisk change of tone Ballantyne added: "I'll see that your camel is ready." He called aloud to his wife: "Stella! Stella! Mr. Thresk is going," and he went out through the doorway into the moonlight.
Thresk, alone in the tent, looked impatiently towards the grass-screen. He wanted half-a-dozen words with Stella alone. Here was the opportunity, the unhoped-for opportunity, and it was slipping away. Through the open doorway of the tent he saw Ballantyne standing by a big fire and men moving quickly in obedience to his voice. Then he heard the rustle of a dress in the corridor, and she was in the room. He moved quickly towards her, but she held up her hand and stopped him.
"Oh, why did you come?" she said, and the pallor of her face reproached him no less than the regret in her voice.
"I heard of you in Bombay," he replied. "I am glad that I did come."
"And I am sorry."
"Why?"
She looked about the tent as though he might find his answer there. Thresk did not move. He stood near to her, watching her face intently with his jaw rather set.
"Oh, I didn't say that to wound you," said Stella, and she sat down on one of the cushioned basket-chairs. "You mustn't think I wasn't glad to see you. I was—at the first moment I was very glad;" and she saw his face lighten as she spoke. "I couldn't help it. All the years rolled away. I remembered the Sussex Downs and—and—days when we rode there high up above the weald. Do you remember?"
"Yes."
"How long was that ago?"
"Eight years."
Stella laughed wistfully.
"To me it seems a century." She was silent for a moment, and though he spoke to her urgently she did not answer. She was carried back to the high broad hills of grass with the curious clumps of big beech-trees upon their crests.
"Do you remember Halnaker Gallop?" she asked with a laugh. "We found it when the chains weren't up and had the whole two miles free. Was there ever such grass?"
She was looking straight at the bureau, but she was seeing that green lane of shaven turf in the haze of an August morning. She saw it rise and dip in the open between long brown grass. There was a tree on the left-hand side just where the ride dipped for the first time. Then it ran straight to the big beech-trees and passed between them, a wide glade of sunlight, and curved out at the upper end by the road and dipped down again to the two lodges.
"And the ridge at the back of Charlton forest, all the weald to Leith Hill in view?" She rose suddenly from her chair. "Oh, I am sorry that you came."
"And I am glad," repeated Thresk.
The stubbornness with which he repeated his words arrested her. She looked at him—was it with distrust, he asked himself? He could not be sure. But certainly there was a little hard note in her voice which had not been there before, when in her turn she asked:
"Why?"
"Because I shouldn't have known," he said in a quick whisper. "I should have gone back. I should have left you here. I shouldn't have known."
Stella recoiled.
"There is nothing to know," she said sharply, and Thresk pointed at her throat.
"Nothing?"
Stella Ballantyne raised her hand to cover the blue marks.
"I—I fell and hurt myself," she stammered.
"It was he—Ballantyne."
"No," she cried and she drew herself erect. But Thresk would not accept the denial.
"He ill-treats you," he insisted. "He drinks and ill-treats you."
Stella shook her head.
"You asked questions in Bombay where we are known. You were not told that," she said confidently. There was only one person in Bombay who knew the truth and Jane Repton, she was very sure, would never have betrayed her.
"That's true," Thresk conceded. "But why? Because it's only here in camp that he lets himself go. He told us as much to-night. You were here at the table. You heard. He let his secret slip: no one to carry tales, no one to spy. In the towns he sets a guard upon himself. Yes, but he looks forward to the months of camp when there are no next-door neighbours."
"No, that's not true," she protested and cast about for explanations."He—he has had a long day and to-night he was tired—and when you aretired—Oh, as a rule he's different." And to her relief she heardBallantyne's voice outside the tent.
"Thresk! Thresk!"
She came forward and held out her hand.
"There! Your camel's ready," she said. "You must go! Goodbye," and as he took it the old friendliness transfigured her face. "You are a great man now. I read of you. You always meant to be, didn't you? Hard work?"
"Very," said Thresk. "Four o'clock in the morning till midnight;" and she suddenly caught him by the arm.
"But it's worth it." She let him go and clasped her hands together. "Oh, you have got everything!" she cried in envy.
"No," he answered. But she would not listen.
"Everything you asked for," she said and she added hurriedly, "Do you still collect miniatures? No time for that now I suppose." Once more Ballantyne's voice called to them from the camp-fire.
"You must go."
Thresk looked through the opening of the tent. Ballantyne had turned and was coming back towards them.
"I'll write to you from Bombay," he said, and utter disbelief showed in her face and sounded in her laugh.
"That letter will never reach me," she said lightly, and she went up to the door of the tent. Thresk had a moment whilst her back was turned and he used it. He took his pipe out of his pocket and placed it silently and quickly on the table. He wanted a word with her when Ballantyne was out of the way and she was not upon her guard to fence him off. The pipe might be his friend and give it him. He went up to Stella at the tent-door and Ballantyne, who was half-way between the camp-fire and the tent, stopped when he caught sight of him.
"That's right," he said. "You ought to be going;" and he turned again towards the camel. Thus for another moment they were alone together, but it was Stella who seized it.
"There go!" she said. "You must go," and in the same breath she added:
"Married yet?"
"No," answered Thresk.
"Still too busy getting on?"
"That's not the reason"—and he lowered his voice to a whisper—"Stella."
Again she laughed in frank and utter disbelief.
"Nor is Stella. That's mere politeness and good manners. We must show the dear creatures the great part they play in our lives." And upon that all her fortitude suddenly deserted her. She had played her part so far, she could play it no longer. An extraordinary change came over her face. The smiles, the laughter slipped from it like a loosened mask. Thresk saw such an agony of weariness and hopeless longing in her eyes as he had never seen even with his experience in the Courts of Law. She drew back into the shadow of the tent.
"In thirteen days you'll be steaming up the Channel," she whispered, and with a sob she covered her face with her hands. Thresk saw the tears trickle between her fingers.
Ballantyne at the fire was looking back towards the tent. Thresk hurried out to him. The camel was crouching close to the fire saddled and ready.
"You have time," said Ballantyne. "The train's not in yet," and Thresk walked to the side of the camel, where a couple of steps had been placed for him to mount. He had a foot on the step when he suddenly clapped his hand to his pocket.
"I've left my pipe," he cried, "and I've a night's journey in front of me. I won't be a second."
He ran back with all his speed to the tent. The hangings at the door were closed. He tore them aside and rushed in.
"Stella!" he said in a whisper, and then he stopped in amazement. He had left her on the very extremity of distress. He found her, though to be sure the stains of her tears were still visible upon her face, busy with one of the evening preparations natural in a camp-life—quietly, energetically busy. She looked up once when he raised the hanging over the door, but she dropped her eyes the next instant to her work.
She was standing by the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so that the light might shine into the breech.
"Yes?" she said, and with so much indifference that she did not lift her eyes from her work. "I thought you had gone."
"I left my pipe behind me," said Thresk.
"There it is, on the table."
"Thank you."
He put it in his pocket. Of the two he was disconcerted and at a loss, she was entirely at her ease.
The Reptons lived upon the Khamballa Hill and the bow-window of their drawing-room looked down upon the Arabian Sea and southwards along the coast towards Malabar Point. In this embrasure Mrs. Repton sat through a morning, denying herself to her friends. A book lay open on her lap but her eyes were upon the sea. A few minutes after the clock upon her mantelpiece had struck twelve she saw that for which she watched: the bowsprit and the black bows of a big ship pushing out from under the hill and the water boiling under its stem. The whole ship came into view with its awnings and its saffron funnels and headed to the north-west for Aden.
Jane Repton rose up from her chair and watched it go. In the sunlight its black hull was so sharply outlined on the sea, its lines and spars were so trim that it looked a miniature ship which she could reach out her hand and snatch. But her eyes grew dim as she watched, so that it became shapeless and blurred, and long before the liner was out of sight it was quite lost to her.
"I am foolish," she said as she turned away, and she bit her handkerchief hard. This was midday of the Friday and ever since that dinner-party at the Carruthers' on the Monday night she had been alternating between wild hopes and arguments of prudence. But until this moment of disappointment she had not realised how completely the hopes had gained the upper hand with her and how extravagantly she had built upon Thresk's urgent questioning of her at the dinner-table.
"Very likely he never found the Ballantynes at all," she argued. But he might have sent her word. All that morning she had been expecting a telephone message or a telegram or a note scribbled on board the steamer and sent up the Khamballa Hill by a messenger. But not a token had come from him and now of the boat which was carrying him to England there was nothing left but the stain of its smoke upon the sky.
Mrs. Repton put her handkerchief in her pocket and was going about the business of her house when the butler opened the door.
"I am not in—" Mrs. Repton began and cut short the sentence with a cry of welcome and surprise, for close upon the heels of the servant Thresk was standing.
"You!" she cried. "Oh!"
She felt her legs weakening under her and she sat down abruptly on a chair.
"Thank Heaven it was there," she said. "I should have sat on the floor if it hadn't been." She dismissed the butler and held out her hand to Thresk. "Oh, my friend," she said, "there's your steamer on its way to Aden."
Her voice rang with enthusiasm and admiration. Thresk only nodded his head gloomily.
"I have missed it," he replied. "It's very unfortunate. I have clients waiting for me in London."
"You missed it on purpose," she declared and Thresk's face relaxed into a smile. He turned away from the window to her. He seemed suddenly to wear the look of a boy.
"I have the best of excuses," he replied, "the perfect excuse." But even he could not foresee how completely that excuse was to serve him.
"Sit down," said Jane Repton, "and tell me. You went to Chitipur, I know.From your presence here I know too that you found—them—there."
"No," said Thresk, "I didn't." He sat down and looked straight into JaneRepton's eyes. "I had a stroke of luck. I found them—in camp."
Jane Repton understood all that the last two words implied.
"I should have wished that," she answered, "if I had dared to think it possible. You talked with Stella?"
"Hardly a word alone. But I saw."
"What did you see?"
"I am here to tell you." And he told her the story of his night at the camp so far as it concerned Stella Ballantyne, and indeed not quite all of that. For instance he omitted altogether to relate how he had left his pipe behind in the tent and had returned for it. That seemed to him unimportant. Nor did he tell her of his conversation with Ballantyne about the photograph. "He was in a panic. He had delusions," he said and left the matter there. Thresk had the lawyer's mind or rather the mind of a lawyer in big practice. He had the instinct for the essential fact and the knowledge that it was most lucid when presented in a naked simplicity. He was at pains to set before Jane Repton what he had seen of the life which Stella lived with Stephen Ballantyne and nothing else.
"Now," he said when he had finished, "you sent me to Chitipur. I must know why."
And when she hesitated he overbore her.
"You can be guilty of no disloyalty to your friend," he insisted, "by being frank with me. After all I have given guarantees. I went to Chitipur upon your word. I have missed my boat. You bade me go to Chitipur. That told me too little or too much. I say too little. I have got to know all now." And he rose up and stood before her. "What do you know about Stephen Ballantyne?"
"I'll tell you," said Jane Repton. She looked at the clock. "You had better stay and lunch with us if you will. We shall be alone. I'll tell you afterwards. Meanwhile—" and in her turn she stood up. The sense of responsibility was heavy upon her.
She had sent this man upon his errand of knowledge. He had done, in consequence of it, a stronger, a wilder thing than she had thought, than she had hoped for. She had a panicky feeling that she had set great forces at work.
"Meanwhile—" asked Thresk; and she drew a breath of relief. The steadiness of his eyes and voice comforted her. His quiet insistence gave her courage. None of her troubles and doubts had any place apparently in his mind. A nervous horse in the hands of a real horseman—thus she thought of herself in Thresk's presence.
"Meanwhile I'll give you one reason why I wanted you to go. My husband's time in India is up. We are leaving for England altogether in a month's time. We shall not come back at all. And when we have gone Stella will be left without one intimate friend in the whole country."
"Yes," said Thresk. "That wouldn't do, would it?" and they went in to their luncheon.
All through that meal, before the servants, they talked what is written in the newspapers. And of the two she who had fears and hesitations was still the most impatient to get it done. She had her curiosity and it was beginning to consume her. What had Thresk known of Stella and she of him before she had come out to India and become Stella Ballantyne? Had they been in love? If not why had Thresk gone to Chitipur? Why had he missed his boat and left all his clients over there in England in the lurch? If so, why hadn't they married—the idiots? Oh, how she wanted to know all the answers to all these questions! And what he proposed to do now! And she would know nothing unless she was frank herself. She had read his ultimatum in his face.
"We'll have coffee in my sitting-room. You can smoke there," she said and led the way to it. "A cheroot?"
Thresk smiled with amusement. But the amusement annoyed her for she did not understand it.
"I have got a Havana cigar here," he said. "May I?"
"Of course."
He lit it and listened. But it was not long before it went out and he did not stir to light it again. The incident of which Mrs. Repton had been the witness, and which she related now, invested Ballantyne with horror. Thresk had left the camp at Chitipur with an angry contempt for him. The contempt passed out of his feelings altogether as he sat in Mrs. Repton's drawing-room.
"I am not telling you what Stella has confided to me," said Mrs. Repton. "Stella's loyal even when there's no cause for loyalty; and if loyalty didn't keep her mouth closed, self-respect would. I tell you what I saw. We were at Agra at the time. My husband was Collector there. There was a Durbar held there and the Rajah of Chitipur came to it with his elephants and his soldiers, and naturally Captain Ballantyne and his wife came too. They stayed with us. You are to understand that I knew nothing—absolutely nothing—up to that time. I hadn't a suspicion—until the afternoon of the finals in the Polo Tournament. Stella and I went together alone and we came home about six. Stella went upstairs and I—I walked into the library."
She had found Ballantyne sitting in a high arm-chair, his eyes glittering under his black thick eyebrows and his face livid. He looked at her as she entered, but he neither moved nor spoke, and she thought that he was ill. But the decanter of whisky stood empty on a little table at his side and she noticed it.
"We have some people coming to dinner to-night, Captain Ballantyne," she said. "We shall dine at eight, so there's an hour and a half still."
She went over to a book-case and took out a book. When she turned back into the room a change had taken place in her visitor. Life had flickered into his face. His eyes were wary and cunning.
"And why do you tell me that?" he asked in a voice which was thick and formidable. She had a notion that he did not know who she was and then suddenly she became afraid. She had discovered a secret—his secret. For once in the towns he had let himself go. She had a hope now that he could not move and that he knew it; he sat as still as his arm-chair.
"I had forgotten to tell you," she replied. "I thought you might like to know beforehand."
"Why should I like to know beforehand?"
She had his secret, he plied her with questions to know if she had it.She must hide her knowledge. Every instinct warned her to hide it.
"The people who are coming are strangers to India," she said, "but I have told them of you and they will come expectant."
"You are very kind."
She had spoken lightly and with a laugh. Ballantyne replied without irony or amusement and with his eyes fixed upon her face. Mrs. Repton could not account for the panic which seized hold upon her. She had dined in Captain Ballantyne's company before often enough; he had now been for three days in her house; she had recognised his ability and had neither particularly liked nor disliked him. Her main impression had been that he was not good enough for Stella, and it was an impression purely feminine and instinctive. Now suddenly he had imposed himself upon her as a creature dangerous, beastlike. She wanted to get out of the room but she dared not, for she was sure that her careful steps would, despite herself, change into a run. She sat down, meaning to read for a few moments, compose herself and then go. But no sooner had she taken her seat than her terror increased tenfold, for Ballantyne rose swiftly from his chair and walking in a circle round the room with an extraordinarily light and noiseless step disappeared behind her. Then he sat down. Mrs. Repton heard the slight grating of the legs of a chair upon the floor. It was a chair at a writing-table close by the window and exactly at her back. He could see every movement which she made, and she could see nothing, not so much as the tip of one of his fingers. And of his fingers she was now afraid. He was watching her from his point of vantage; she seemed to feel his eyes burning upon the nape of her neck. And he said nothing; and he did not stir. It was broad daylight, she assured herself. She had but to cross the room to the bell beside the fireplace. Nay, she had only to scream—and she was very near to screaming—to bring the servants to her rescue. But she dared not do it. Before she was half-way to the bell, before the cry was out of her mouth she would feel his fingers close about her throat.
* * * * *
Mrs. Repton had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh. But he did not. He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but make it vivid in her words.
"I had more than a mere sense of danger," she said. "I felt besides a sort of hideous discomfort, almost physical discomfort, which made me believe that there was something evil in that room beyond the power of language to describe."
She felt her self-control leaving her. If she stayed she must betray her alarm. Even now she had swallowed again and again, and she wondered that he had not detected the working of her throat. She summoned what was left of her courage and tossing her book aside rose slowly and deliberately.
"I think I shall copy Stella's example and lie down for an hour," she said without turning her head towards Ballantyne, and even while she spoke she knew that she had made a mistake in mentioning Stella. He would follow her to discover whether she went to Stella's room and told what she had seen to her. But he did not move. She reached the door, turned the handle, went out and closed the door behind her.
For a moment then her strength failed her; she leaned against the wall by the side of the door, her heart racing. But the fear that he would follow urged her on. She crossed the hall and stopped deliberately before a cabinet of china at the foot of the stairs, which stood against the wall in which the library door was placed. While she stood there she saw the door open very slowly and Ballantyne's livid face appear at the opening. She turned towards the stairs and mounted them without looking back. Halfway up a turn hid the hall from her, and the moment after she had passed the turn she heard him crossing the hall after her, again with a lightness of step which seemed to be uncanny and inhuman in so heavy and gross a creature.
"I was appalled," she said to Thresk frankly. "He had the step of an animal. I felt that some great baboon was tracking me stealthily."
Mrs. Repton came to Stella Ballantyne's door and was careful not to stop. She reached her own room, and once in shot the bolt; and in a moment or two she heard him breathing just outside the panels.
"And to think that Stella is alone with him in the jungle months at a time!" she cried, actually wringing her hands. "That thought was in my mind all the time—a horror of a thought. Oh, I could understand now the loss of her spirits, her colour, her youth."
Pictures of lonely camps and empty rest-houses, far removed from any habitation in the silence of Indian nights, rose before her eyes. She imagined Stella propped up on her elbow in bed, wide-eyed with terror, listening and listening to the light footsteps of the drunken brute beyond the partition-wall, shivering when they approached, dropping back with the dew of her sweat upon her forehead when they retired; and these pictures she translated in words for Thresk in her house on the Khamballa Hill.
Thresk was moved and showed that he was moved. He rose and walked to the window, turning his back to her.
"Why did she marry him?" he exclaimed. "She was poor, but she had a little money. Why did she marry him?" and he turned back to Mrs. Repton for an answer.
She gave him one quick look and said:
"That is one of the things she has never told me and I didn't meet her until after she had married him."
"And why doesn't she leave him?"
Mrs. Repton held up her hands.
"Oh, the easy questions, Mr. Thresk! How many women endure the thing that is because it is? Even to leave your husband you want a trifle of spirit. And what if your spirit's broken? What if you are cowed? What if you live in terror day and night?"
"Yes. I am a fool," said Thresk, and he sat down again. "There are two more questions I want to ask. Did you ever talk to Stella"—the Christian name slipped naturally from him and only Jane Repton of the two remarked that he had used it—"of that incident in the library at Agra?"
"Yes."
"And did she in consequence of what you told her give you any account of her life with her husband?"
Mrs. Repton hesitated not because she was any longer in doubt as to whether she would speak the whole truth or not—she had committed herself already too far—but because the form of the question nettled her. It was a little too forensic for her taste. She was anxious to know the man; she could dispense with the barrister altogether.
"Yes, she did," she replied, "and don't cross-examine me, please."
"I beg your pardon," said Thresk with a laugh which made him human on the instant.
"Well, it's true," said Jane Repton in a rush. "She told me the truth—what you know and more. He stripped when he was drunk, stripped to the skin. Think of it! Stella told me that and broke down. Oh, if you had seen her! For Stella to give way—that alone must alarm her friends. Oh, but the look of her! She sat by my side on the sofa, wringing her hands, with the tears pouring down her face …" Thresk rose quickly from his chair.
"Thank you," he said, cutting her short. He wanted to hear no more. He held out his hand to her with a certain abruptness.
Mrs. Repton rose too.
"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly. "I must know I have a right to, I think. I have told you so much. I was in great doubt whether I should tell you anything. But—" Her voice broke and she ended her plea lamely enough: "I am very fond of Stella."
"I know that," said Thresk, and his voice was grateful and his face most friendly.
"Well, what are you going to do?"
"I am going to write to her to ask her to join me in Bombay," he replied.