CHAPTER VI.
"I will but say what mere friends say-- Or only a thought stronger. I will hold your hand as long as all may-- Or--no very little longer." --Browning.
"No, I don't like her, and I don't believe I ever shall. One cannotdeny that she is beautiful, charming, complete; too complete for mytaste. _Cela me gene_. I know no other way to express it."
Quita Maurice balanced herself on the railing of her matchbox verandah,and gazed critically at the corner where the last of Honor Desmond's_jhampannis_ had not long since disappeared from view. Garth, theinevitable, stood close beside her, faultlessly equipped as always,even to the gold-tipped cigarette, and the violets that blossomedperennially in his coat. He grew them in pots expressly for thepurpose; and his bearer set them in a wine-glass on his breakfast-tableevery morning.
Quita's verdict on her visitor moved him to a smile of half-cynicalamusement. He enjoyed her occasional unabashed lapses into the eternalfeminine.
"I'm with you there," he answered, heartily. "The worst fault a humanbeing can commit is to be faultless. Poor Mrs Desmond! She will haveto subsist without our admiration."
"No need to waste pity on her, _mon ami_. I am convinced that she getsfar more admiration than is good for her as it is. She has only beenmarried a little over two years, I believe, and it is safe to presumethat her husband idolises her shadow. She is the sort of woman men puton a pedestal, and worship kneeling; and women mostly detest, because,in their secret hearts, they would like to be up there too! PersonallyI have no use for pedestals. I am content to be _bon camarade_! Asfor that sublime Desmond woman, I feel morally certain that she nevercommits an indiscretion, or has a knot in her shoe-lace, or loses herscissors!"
"Are you peculiarly lenient towards those three failings?"
"I am quite culpably lenient towards the whole tribe of human failings.They are the salt of life. I have never really understood thatincessant harping on the mystery of pain and sin. The question, Whyshould they be allowed to exist? seems to me simply fatuous. No worldworth living in could have been created without them. They are thebackbone of all drama; and I love drama inordinately. They put theiron into men's souls, and the grit into their characters. Think whata nauseating crew of sentimentalists we should be,
'If all had love, as every nest hath eggs, And every head of maize her feathery cap.'
I, for one, should beg to be excused from spending three-score yearsand ten on a planet full of sugar-plums and kisses!"
She left her perch on the railings, and stood erect, in an unconsciousattitude of defiance; and Garth watched her speculatively throughnarrowed lids. He was wondering whether Mrs Desmond's remark that shehad persuaded Captain Lenox to go shooting beyond Chumba, instead ofdeserting Dalhousie for the interior, might not be accountable for thisunusual burst of eloquence.
"I had no notion that you went in for studying big questions of thatkind," he remarked, with an amused air of interest.
"Studying them! But no! What call is there to study them? I have myears and eyes, and my priceless intuitions. It is enough. An artistwill learn more about life and character with the help of those three,than all the _savants_ in creation could imbibe from a hecatomb ofbooks. Michel--where are you? What has been keeping you so quietsince Mrs Desmond's departure?"
Michael, who promptly appeared on the threshold, held up a largedrawing-block for his sister's inspection.
"_Voila donc_! _Que dis-tu_? Is it not to the life?"
The picture was a rapid, delicate pastel study of Honor Desmond,presenting her, as Michael had said, "to the life." The broad brow,the short straight nose, the strength and tenderness of the mouth andchin, the smile that hovered like a light in her serious eyes; everydetail was faultlessly rendered. But Quita's cry of surprise expressedannoyance rather than admiration.
"What possessed you to do _that_?" she asked, sharply. "It is a livinglikeness--yes. Better send it to her friend, Captain Lenox. He wouldgive you a hundred and fifty rupees for it like a shot."
The instant the words were out she tingled with mortification at havingspoken them in Garth's presence. But he assumed a critical interest inthe picture, and Michael, in the first flush of achievement, had eyesand thoughts for nothing else.
"A hundred and fifty? _Parbleu, non_!" he answered, hotly. "It is apossession, a triumph. I do not part with it for money. All the whileshe talked to you, I never took my eyes from her face, and I struckwhile the iron was hot. _Mon Dieu, mais die est superbe_! _C'est unedeesse veritable_! _Rien non plus_!"
In ecstatic moments Michael deserted English altogether for the naturallanguage of the emotions; and Quita flashed a glance of amusement atGarth.
"The pedestal already, you see!"
But Michael, deaf or unheeding, continued his paean of praise.
"But the head alone is not enough. _Il faut le tout ensemble_. _Casera magnifique_. Now at last I have the centre figure for my greatpicture--Mater Triumphans. In a day or two I call on her. I ask herpermission to immortalise her and myself in one achievement. No womanin her senses could refuse so flattering a request; and her lips, hereyes, betray that, goddess or not, she is before all things a woman."
"But, my good Michel," Quita interposed, with a deliberate lightness,"ride your enthusiasm on the curb, I beg of you. Isn't one goddess ata time enough to fill your expansive heart? I warn you that if you aregoing to disgrace me by ostentatiously falling in love with this MrsDesmond, I shall give you up for good, and insist on a legalseparation! Now, I am tired of idling, and it's high time I went backto my picture." She held out a hand to Garth. "_A demain_," she said,with a gracious smile of dismissal. "But not till tea-time, please. Ihave a certain amount of work to get through every day if _you_ havenot!"
Garth's reply was conveyed to a lingering pressure of her hand. He wasa past master in this discreet method of expressing the inexpressible;and he had the satisfaction of seeing the colour deepen in her cheeks,as she released herself hastily, and passed on into the house.
During a long ride homeward, Garth found time for much interestedspeculation on the possible issue of events. The situation appearedsufficiently incomprehensible to afford scope for dramaticdevelopments; and he shared to the full Quita's taste for drama,provided always that it did not deprive him of sleep, or render himpersonally uncomfortable. He shared also her magnanimous attitudetowards human shortcomings; frankly acknowledging his own, andskilfully utilising those of other men--and women. But bad men are asoften tripped up by the unquenchable spark of good in human nature asgood men are by the equally unquenchable spark of evil; and James Garthwas not altogether devoid of the little leaven that leavens the wholelump. There were even moments--and the present was one--when itasserted itself to the detriment of his cool-headed schemes. Generallyspeaking, a husband in the background in no way disturbed hisaccommodating code of morals. But scruples, hitherto unknown, seemedset like a hedge of defence about this girl, who was, in every respect,so very much a woman.
For all her love of dangerous ground, her airy scorn of conventions,she had a knack of compelling some measure of uprightness, even from sounpromising a subject as James Garth. Thus, bone-bred gossip though hewas, his silence in respect of her astounding revelation was assured.Her words, "I trust you, as a gentleman," had quickened that good grainin him, which is the saving grace of us all. Also the knowledge itselfhurt him more than he could have believed. It seriously upset hisequanimity for no less than a week; not indeed to the extent ofdamaging his appetite, or his sleep, but enough to make her society adistraction more bitter than sweet; enough to drive him into dining atthe Strawberry Bank Hotel, though the cuisine of that mixedestablishment compared very unfavourably with his own.
Here he naturally met Lenox, and the meeting reawakened his consumingcuriosity; awakened also those primitive savage instincts which nosurface civilisation will ever annihilate while the world holds onewoman and two men. And ho
w should it be accounted theft to rob a manof that which, to all appearance, he neither possessed nor desired torecapture?
In twenty years of philandering he had never experienced so keen adesire for conquest; and if this inexplicable husband chose to leavehis wife in an equivocal position, he must be prepared to accept theconsequences, which are, in general, the last things that any averageman is prepared to accept. Shrewdness and vanity alike convinced Garththat Quita's attitude on Dynkund, viewed in the light of her subsequentdisclosure, counted for nothing; while the fact that for six months shehad readily accepted his companionship counted for much. Her finesense of honour had naturally compelled her to "head him off" dangerousground. But he consoled himself with the reflection that a woman'ssense of honour is rarely her strongest point. Pit her heart againstit, and the outcome is merely a question of time. A conviction foundedon his own complicated past!
In his esteem, then, nothing stood between him and his desire but apoor crop of scruples, readily trampled under foot; and by a finestroke of irony Lenox himself completed the trampling process. He, whorarely took an active part in the random, unedifying talk congenial toafter-dinner "pegs" and cigars, had one night been moved to administeradvice to a rapturous subaltern, in the shape of a few trenchantcynicisms in respect of women and marriage, bidding him not be foolenough to run his misguided head into the noose; and the subaltern hadcollapsed like a pricked air-ball. But Garth, to his own surprise,retorted with no little warmth; and Lenox, turning in his chair, lookedat him deliberately--a glint of steel in his eyes.
"I couldn't presume to cross swords with you, Major," he remarked, on aquiet note of contempt. "Your experience is as extensive as my own islimited; and you have the good luck to be popular. I have not. Butthat is simply a question of _metier_. Yours is to flatter women, evenbehind their backs; whilst I am blockhead enough to speak the truthabout them, even to their faces. And the last thing a normal womanwants from any man is--the truth."
From that moment Garth had hardened his heart. And now--a weeklater--as he rode down from the Crow's Nest, he chuckled to himselfover the satisfactory way in which Lenox was playing into his hands byadopting an attitude that would plainly act as a foil to his owndeferentially persistent courtship; a metaphorical walking round thewalls of Jericho, that must end in capitulation, soon or late.
From his point of view, Quita's unique position of personal freedom,coupled with legal bondage, added a distinct flavour to the wholeaffair: and so well pleased was he with the aspect of things ingeneral, that, before reaching Potrain, he headed his pony up anothercorkscrew path, that climbed to another doll's house bungalow. Here hespent a couple of hours, lounging in the drawing-room of one of thelesser lights in his firmament, flattering her by a delicately conveyedimpression that he found her the only woman in the station worthtalking to. And so, home to his own well-appointed house, where, twohours after an irreproachable dinner, he slept the sleep of the manwhose conscience has been trained not to make inconvenient remarks.