Читать книгу The Devil's Wind (Historical Novel) - Patricia Wentworth - Страница 10

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Yesterday’s fire is clean gone out,

Yesterday’s hearth is cold.

No one can either bargain or buy

With last year’s gold.

Greet the new as it passes on,

Bid Good-bye to the old,

Yesterday’s Song is sung to the end,

Yesterday’s Tale is told.

The Mortons had been in Urzeepore for a fortnight when Mrs. Crowther gave a dinner-party, to which they and all official Urzeepore were bidden. It was a warm March night, and the dinner was rather a tremendous affair, Mrs. Crowther desiring to make it quite plain that, Deputy Commissioner or no Deputy Commissioner, she herself was the leading lady of Urzeepore society, and intended to remain so.

She wore a fateful air, and a garment which was believed to have been her wedding-dress. It was now dyed grass green, and was adorned with seven little flounces of green tulle, edged with yellow tinsel trimming. Above all the expanse of green, Mrs. Crowther’s brick-red countenance looked several shades redder than usual. Her masses of brilliantly golden hair hung low on a sunburned neck. Her features were as harsh as the voice in which she was addressing much rapid conversation to faded, white-faced Mrs. Marsh, who sat on the sofa beside her.

On either side of the couch stood Carrie and Milly Crowther, and when their mother wished to make a remark unsuited to their youthful ears, she dropped into what she believed to be the French language. It had a most respectably British ring. It was many years since she had acquired this habit, and it had become second nature.

She rose in the middle of a sentence to shake hands with Mrs. Monson and Mrs. Elliot. The latter put her head on one side and said languidly:

“We are to meet the Mortons, are we not? I hear she is quite lovely, and dresses so well. Have you seen her yet?”

“No,” said Mrs. Crowther. She dropped Mrs. Elliot’s hand and sat down again.

“No,” she repeated, “I have not seen her; I don’t believe any one has seen her. I called. She has singularly ill-trained servants. The man I saw had been asleep. He actually yawned in my face. Insolence incroyable! And he said—he said”—Mrs. Crowther glanced to right and left, searched in her memory for a recalcitrant French word and decided upon her native tongue—“he said the Memsahib is in her bath. Dong song bang!” she repeated in tones of returning confidence.

Mrs. Elliot fixed her with an admiring gaze. “One always bows to courage,” she murmured in Mrs. Monson’s ear, to which that little lady responded with a severe “Do be good, Grace.”

“One never does know what they say,” complained Mrs. Marsh. She was fidgeting with the lace at her elbows, and had conceived a panic lest the hole she had discovered should be visible to Mrs. Crowther’s searching eye.

“I wonder if Mrs. Morton is as pretty as they say,” she said hastily.

Mrs. Crowther sniffed aloud.

“I never liked Captain Morton,” she said in virtuous tones. “I never liked him, but if all that one hears is true, I am sorry for him. He was a most interfering person as Adjutant. I am sure he used to make my poor Colonel quite ill. Always fussing about, and wanting to manage everything and everybody. But if half one hears is true, he can’t manage his wife. Elle est très vite,” she added in a thrilling undertone, and felt happily convinced that she had informed Mrs. Marsh of the scandalous fact that Adela Morton was fast.

“Oh, really!”

“Yes, I fear it is too true. Trop vrai. My friend, Mrs. Blacker, who was in Murree last year, wrote me des histoires très,—très—er—shocking, I do assure you. Had it not been for Captain Morton’s former connection with the regiment, I really do not know that I should have called. Je ne peux pas dire. Il faut considérer mes filles. As it is I shall not encourage any intimacy with Milly and Carrie, and I shall keep my distance. Mrs. Elliot, how is your baby?”

“I believe it is quite well,” said Mrs. Elliot indifferently. “The ayah would have told me if anything were wrong.”

“The ayah!”

“Yes—don’t you think it is so much better for one person to manage a child? I don’t interfere.”

“Grace!” murmured Mrs. Monson.

She turned to her hostess with a quick, birdlike movement.

“How curious that the Mortons should have been sent here!” she exclaimed.

“Very tactless, I call it,” said Mrs. Crowther. She drew herself up, and the green silk bodice, made in slimmer days, receded dangerously.

“Tactless?” inquired Mrs. Elliot. “Oh—of course—I see. Yes, it really is when you come to think of it. Of course he takes precedence of Colonel Crowther.”

“Oh, no,” protested Mrs. Marsh.

Mrs. Crowther inclined her head—just in time.

“But he is only officiating.”

“That makes no difference.”

“How wrong! And she?”

Mrs. Crowther once more imperilled her shoulder-straps.

“If any one imagines that I am going to walk out of any dining-room but my own behind my own Adjutant’s wife, well—je ne veux pas, c’est tout!” and Mrs. Crowther rose with majesty to greet a further instalment of guests.

“How do you do, Captain Blake. You are to take Miss Wilmot in to dinner; you have not met her, of course. Oh—you have—I should scarcely have thought it possible, since you only returned from Cawnpore yesterday. You must have called this morning—really you were most prompt. Mrs. Morton should be flattered. How do you do, Mr. Purslake; you will take my daughter Carrie. Carrie, show Mr. Purslake the last drawing you made. Milly, go and tell your papa that it is getting very late. Oh, here are the Mortons. How do you do, Captain Morton. And which of these two ladies is your wife? Oh, not this one. Really, Miss Wilmot, I should have taken you for the married lady; you look so much graver than your cousin.”

“A bad compliment to me,” said Richard Morton, laughing. “Why should I be expected to have a depressing effect upon my wife, Mrs. Crowther?”

“I alluded to the cares and responsibilities of the married state,” said the lady, in her most tremendous tones, and Captain Morton discovered some intention in the glance with which she favoured Adela.

He hastened to greet his old Colonel, who had just wandered into the room, convoyed by his daughter Milly. Colonel Crowther was small, and wore the worried air of a man whose digestion is not at peace within. He gave Richard two chilly fingers, and an absent glance, and was drifting in the direction of Dr. Darcy whom he wished to consult about a new symptom, when he encountered his wife, who despatched him to the dining-room with Adela.

Helen Wilmot, after admitting to Dr. Darcy that she liked India, and had been out nearly three years, applied herself to her dinner, and to making friends with Captain Blake. She found him hard to talk to, but she liked his shy ways, his deep-set eyes, and his obvious devotion to Richard Morton.

“Richard must find it curious, being here with his old regiment,” she said, after a while.

“He’s a deserter, and ought to be court-martialled,” said Captain Blake abruptly. Then he looked rather alarmed, and tried to cut through the bone of a cutlet. “Oh, you know, I don’t really mean that, Miss Wilmot,” and Helen laughed.

“I’ll tell him,” she said, and George Blake began to think her a charming person. In a vague, absent-minded manner he admired the way in which she screwed up her eyes when she laughed. He thought it made her look much younger. Suddenly he became aware that he was staring, and he blushed and made haste to say:

“We’ve all told him. It’s no good. And now he is the high and mighty Civil official, and much too grand for the poor old regiment.”

“And you don’t really mean that either, do you?” said Miss Wilmot, and after that they talked about Richard, and Richard’s doings, until Dr. Darcy insisted on his share of Helen’s attention.

After dinner she found herself next to a pretty little dark-eyed woman, with smoothly banded hair.

“I am Mrs. Monson; my husband commands the 11th Irregulars,” said this little lady. She had a very friendly smile. “It seems rather odd we should meet here,” she went on; “I mean it’s odd because we live next door to each other, and this is a mile away.”

“Oh, is yours the house with the roses?” exclaimed Helen.

“Yes,” said the little lady, dimpling. “Aren’t they nice? I am so fond of them. We have been here for two years, and I have begged, borrowed, and stolen cuttings from every compound in the place. We all love flowers.”

“I think I have seen your little girl in the distance,” said Helen.

Mrs. Monson laughed—a funny little laugh, with a gurgle in it.

“Oh! She won’t remain in the distance, I am afraid. We can’t keep her in our own garden. She will go off and pay calls! I only hope she won’t bother you, Mrs. Morton.”

Helen started.

“But I’m Miss Wilmot,” she said quickly, and Mrs. Monson blushed scarlet.

“My dear Miss Wilmot, what a stupid mistake! I am so short-sighted, you know, and I never noticed who went in to dinner with whom, and you are so much taller than your cousin, and—and——”

Afterwards she confided in Captain Monson:

“James, wasn’t it foolish? You can’t think how silly I felt, but she sat there looking so handsome and composed, and the other little creature had just fluttered out on to the verandah with Mr. Purslake, all smiles and blushes, and mauve and white ribbons, so of course I thought she was the unmarried one.”

“Which shows you don’t listen to gossip, Lizzie,” said Captain Monson, and his wife blushed and said:

“And why should I, sir?”

Mrs. Crowther had also watched Adela disappear into the soft dusk of the verandah. This was exactly the sort of behaviour that she had been led to expect. Mr. Purslake too—who had obviously joined the ladies early, in order to have a word with Carrie. Adela had intercepted him, in the most brazen way, and was walking away with her prize in a manner which bespoke considerable practice.

“I am sure your garden looks perfectly sweet by moonlight,” she murmured as she passed her hostess, and Mrs. Crowther became crimson.

“Worse than I expected,” she said in an awful undertone to Mrs. Marsh. “Worse, much worse. I regret having called. Levity I was prepared for, heartlessness I anticipated. It did not for an instant surprise me that she should be in colours so soon after Colonel Wilmot’s death, no—but some slight respect for me—pour la femme du Colonel—I did look for—I had a right to look for. Did you notice how she walked out of the dining-room, without so much as turning her head to see if I were coming? It was just as if je n’existais pas!”

“No, no, don’t say so.”

Mrs. Crowther turned to her daughters, and raised her voice.

“Carrie and Milly, you may join Mrs. Morton and Mr. Purslake upon the verandah. The night is extremely warm.”

“Well, did you have a pleasant evening?” inquired Captain Morton, as they all drove home.

“Pleasant!” Adela’s voice was distinctly cross.

“You didn’t, then?”

“My dear Richard—such dreadful people! Following one about! Interrupting one’s conversations! You and Helen may have been amused, but I’m sure I hadn’t a chance, stuck between Colonel Crowther and that stiff Major Marsh at dinner, and then interminable ages of that dreadful woman, who kept explaining to me that it would be quite absurd for me to go in to dinner before she did.”

“Oho, I hadn’t thought of that! Lord, what a joke! Of course you do.”

“Do what? I never can understand what you mean.”

“Why, go in to dinner before our Lady Crowther. Mustn’t she be wild? Was that why she looked at you so affectionately when you said good-night?”

“I don’t know which is worse, she or her husband,” said Adela.

“What did he enliven the dinner-hour with? He has only two subjects of conversation, you know—temperance and his own health—sometimes he blends the two.”

“He was perfectly disgusting,” said Adela, with a toss of her head.

“Oh, then you had the action of alcohol upon the human stomach. That’s a great favourite; he loves talking about alcohol, and always starts when Mrs. C. is safely out of hearing. She will have wine on state occasions, but it is so bad that it really does more to advance the cause of temperance than all old Crowther’s dissertations. He can’t call his soul his own, so she gets her own way, and he bears testimony on the sly, when she isn’t listening.”

“He was dreadful,” said Adela, quite shocked.

Richard laughed, and touched the pony with the whip.

“You should have heard him after dinner,” he said. “First he talked to Darcy, until Darcy went to sleep. Then he came over to me, and told me all about his malaria, and how he felt when he had a cold fit, and what Darcy said when he had a hot fit, and all about his liver.”

“Richard!”

“Well, he did, and finished up by asking me to feel his pulse.”

“I don’t think this is at all a nice conversation,” said Adela with decision.

“Quite right, my dear; we’ll talk about something else. How did you get on with Blake, Helen?”

Miss Wilmot turned from the moonlit landscape. There was a queer little smile on her face.

“Oh, I liked him,” she said.

“He’s a very good fellow. Not a lady’s man, of course.”

“I liked him very much. All of a sudden, you know, the queer way one does, sometimes. At least I do. One minute you don’t care in the least, and the next you like the person so much that you feel as if you had known him for years.”

“My dear Helen, are you trying to break it to us that you have suddenly formed an unrequited attachment?”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Helen, laughing. “Suddenly you know, in the middle of the pudding course, I felt as if he were quite an old friend. I wondered so much what he would do if I were to murmur: ‘A sudden thought strikes me, let us swear an eternal friendship!’ ”

“Really, Helen!” protested Adela.

“He’d probably have been delighted. You try him, and if he doesn’t respond, I’ll call him out. Under that shy manner of his, he’s the soul of romance.”

“What would he be likely to do?” inquired Miss Wilmot.

“Well, he might seize the nearest menu card, and suggest that you should immediately subscribe the most tremendous vows, with a pen dipped in your mutual gore, or he might drop his eyeglass into the finger bowl, and fly, taking the earliest opportunity of hinting to me that he feared you were not—not quite, er—right—in the—er—head—you know, Dick”; and Captain Morton imitated the shy, hesitating drawl which was Captain Blake’s medium when embarrassed.

“Well, I think you are both mad,” said Adela.

“What, poor George too? Well, you can tell him so, for he’s coming on to have a talk and a smoke.”

“To-night?”

“Yes, to-night. I’ve not seen him—to speak to—since he got back. So if you want to tell him he is mad, and if Helen wants him to swear eternal friendship, now’s your chance.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Wilmot; “I can wait.”

The trap drew up, and Adela spoke in a vexed tone as her husband helped her down.

“You are going to sit up and smoke?”

“We are. Imam Bux,” to the sleepy bearer who stumbled to his feet as they came up the verandah steps, “Blake Sahib is coming. Bring pegs.”

“That horrid tobacco! The house will be full of it next day.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Well, I do. Really, Richard, if I had only thought of it, I would have made you promise to give up smoking before I married you.”

“Would you?” said Richard, lifting the split bamboo screen for the ladies to pass into the house.

Helen went silently to her own door, but Adela hung back. “You would have done it to please me then,” she said. She was pouting a little, and inclined to flirt with her husband, since there was no one else available.

“I don’t think so, my dear.”

“You would. You were in love with me then, Dick——”

Captain Morton raised his eyebrows, and looked round to discover that they were alone.

“My dear Adela, suppose you follow Helen to bed.”

“You were—madly. You would have done anything that I asked.”

“I might have reflected that a woman who could make so unreasonable a request—” Richard Morton paused, and turned to the table. He took up the heavy cut-glass decanter which stood there, and measured out a peg.

“You would have done anything,” repeated Adela.

Richard looked at her, half absently. Perhaps he was trying to recall the memory of those hot days of passion. Perhaps he was trying to forget them. A proud man, whose feelings are at once deep and sensitive, may well shrink from recalling a passion which has humiliated him, and has failed to satisfy a single one of the cravings of his nature. Things were settling down now. Helen Wilmot was a comfortable third person in the household. Her presence made for safety and domesticity. Her influence with Adela was decidedly a success. Richard Morton valued peace in the domestic circle. Since his wife’s cousin had been an inmate of his house, there had been no more scenes.

Adela spent a good deal of money on clothes, but she was not always riding with some infatuated young man. She no longer passed whole mornings gossiping with Mrs. Carruthers, a person to whom Richard had the greatest objection.

He traced all these improvements to Helen Wilmot, and was duly grateful. But, whilst anxious for peace, he was very far from desiring to renew the old service of adoration. Of late he had thought that Adela resented this attitude. His temper stirred as he suspected a desire to employ some otherwise idle moments in bringing him once again under the yoke. He did not look at Adela now, and there was a little frown between his eyes as he crossed to the fireplace, reached for his pipe, and said rather shortly:

“Blake will be here in a moment. You had better go to bed, Adela.”

She went as far as the door and came back again.

“You are cross,” she said, “and you’ve never said a word about my new dress. I don’t believe you even noticed it. And it is so pretty. I designed it, and Helen stood over the dirzee whilst he made it. I am sure it looks just as if I had had it out from home. Don’t you think so? Don’t you like it?”

“Yes, it is very pretty.”

“And becoming, too, don’t you think? That pale mauve is a very trying colour, you know, but Helen said she was sure I could stand it, and it goes so well with my amethyst necklace. Do you remember when you gave it to me?”

Yes, he remembered. It was when the world seemed too little to give. Eighteen months ago in Murree, and she had just told him about the child. He could see the blue hills now, and the blue mist across the plains. Intimate memories which had been hushed away into silence woke a little, and whispered in him. There was only one lamp in the room, and it threw a hazy golden light over Adela in her soft white dress.

“Dick, don’t you ever remember?”

Adela was quite close now, her hand on the mantelpiece beside his arm, her bare arm brushing his shoulder. If he were to turn his head, and bend it ever so little more, he might kiss the dimpled hollow beneath her upraised chin.

Yes, he remembered—and with remembrance came a sharp stab of anger. That she should be capable of stirring such a memory for the sake of furthering an idle flirtation, would have served, had it been necessary, to divest Richard Morton of his last illusion with regard to his wife. But it was not necessary. During the two and a half years of their married life he had come to realise, at first dimly and with great pain, but later on with a certain hard clarity of vision, that Adela neither responded, nor desired to respond, to anything but admiration. For this she lived. For this she had an appetite so insatiable, that deprived of it she pined, and could be driven to seek it even from the husband whose prodigality in this respect had once awakened the tyrant in her. But any answer of the heart, any response of the intelligence, any home affection, Adela had not to give. That her beauty still had power to move him was a fact of which Richard Morton was aware—a fact for which he despised himself.

He had no desire that Adela should share either the knowledge or the contempt. He had given of his best, and it had not been received. He would not offer his worst upon the altar once held sacred. She had been the mother of his child—his son.

That bitter disappointment ached in him still.

“Dick, you might—look—at me,” said Adela’s soft voice, very softly.

Through the open doorway came the sound of wheels. Richard Morton straightened himself, with a breath of relief.

“There’s Blake,” he said; and as Adela turned pettishly away he moved to the table, and took a long drink before going to meet his friend.