Alice Perrin

“ If you imagine I am capable of doing anything that isn't cricket, we'd better agree to end our engagement. But I thought"--her voice broke and tears rose in her eyes--"I thought you really cared for me, and wanted me to be your wife and not your slave." She turned from him to conceal her tearful annoyance and agitation.
Instantly he was all remorse and repentance. "What a brute I am! Trixie, darling, do try to understand. It's only because I love you so deeply, so truly, that I can't bear to think of your having even a pleasure that I can't share with you. ”

“ He knew that for the moment, at any rate, he was being a kill-joy, a ghost at the feast, calling up the past, spoiling her pleasure. Yet the consciousness was mingled with a sense of revengeful satisfaction that he could not control. Her passing vexation of spirit was as nothing compared with the tortures of his own.
"Come along, Mrs. Crayfield," the General was moving his feet, impatient to be off again, "we shall miss the last part of the waltz." He made as if to place his arm about her waist.
Philip turned aside, not waiting for her to look at or speak to him further. ”

“ Whatever George, or Mrs. Greaves, or anyone else might say, she was not going to treat Mr. Kennard as though he were a scoundrel, nor to behave as if she had done wrong herself. Why should she forgo the pleasure of his society, and why should she deprive him of her sympathy and her friendship, which she knew was of comfort and help to him, merely because a few spiteful people chose to see evil where no evil existed? ”

“ How slack I feel. Dances are the devil!" Maud Matthews yawned and stretched amid a nest of cushions in a long chair. "I'm sure I must look about sixty. Do I, Stella?"
She appealed to her friend who at that moment joined her in the veranda of the Swiss Chalet-like habitation perched on the hill-side. Clear midday sunshine blazed over the terraced garden thick with dahlias, crimson and purple, orange-red, yellow, a wild, luxuriant growth. Pots of chrysanthemums fringed the veranda steps, an autumn odour pervaded the atmosphere, a smell of ferns and moss and pungent evaporation. ”

“ The rhythm of the immortal "Blue Danube" waltz swung through the big Indian ballroom. It was long before two-steps, Bostons, tangos were dreamed of, when, at any rate in India, the pas de quatre was still a novelty, and the "Washington Post" had not yet been introduced. Almost everyone was dancing; the only onlookers were a few partnerless, or non-dancing men, and a sprinkling of senior people whose exile in the East was nearly over. The aged white man or woman is seldom to be encountered in India; they have "done their time" and gone home--or to their graves. ”

“ Stella Carrington, for one, infinitely preferred the new seats. Though no longer a child—seventeen last birthday—she could never quite forget the hours of misery she had endured in the old pew; the smell of dust and hassocks, the feeling of captivity, the desperate impulse that would assail her to kick open the door, to fling a prayer-book over the barrier, to jump up on the seat; only the fear of grandmamma's wrath had restrained her from such antics. ”

“ Guy Greaves and Trixie Coventry drove through the gateless entrance to the colonel's compound, that was sentinelled by whitewashed pillars built of mud, and drew up sharply at the foot of the veranda steps. Standing at the top of the steps they perceived a tall figure, familiar even in the ghostly light of a dying noon. At first Trixie suspected that her imagination must have deceived her; the next moment she realised that in truth it was her husband. Why had George returned so much sooner than he had intended? ”

“ A wood fire had been lighted in a wide open grate; it smelt fragrant, comforting.... Stella's eyes drooped; the white-clad figures of the servants grew blurred to her vision; Robert himself, still eating heartily, seemed to recede in a mist. Then suddenly there arose, from somewhere outside, a succession of blood-curdling yells, and she started, wide awake, laid hold of Robert's arm. "Oh, what is it?" she cried in alarm. "Someone is being killed!"
He laughed and patted her hand reassuringly. "It's only hyenas and jackals," he told her; "you'll hear it every night—soon get used to it." ”

“ When he opened the letter he and Trixie were seated at their early breakfast in the veranda, attended by a greedy and devoted gathering of pets. Two well-disciplined fox terriers watched in quivering impatience for scraps of toast, obediently oblivious of a pair of Persian kittens that clawed and mewed and sprang in unmannerly fashion; a noisy green parrot in a dome-shaped cage; a monkey that jumped and jabbered on the back of the memsahib's chair; a tame squirrel that darted to and fro with bead-like eyes and feathery tail, even a greater trial to the dogs than the Persian kittens. ”

“ Now they were out of the garden, out on a common that was ablaze with gorse—the spongy turf was silvered with dew, the air fragrant and fresh; birds' voices, the distant lowing of cattle, echoed in the sweet stillness.
"But some day you will marry," prophesied Colonel Crayfield, in a tone of encouragement.
"Marry!" derided Stella. "Who is there for me to marry?" She thought of Miss Spurt and of the young porter at the railway station. ”

“ She looked so gay, so full of life and health, so pretty in her white silk blouse cut open at the neck, and her short drill skirt, and a Panama hat slouched over her forehead, that Coventry's anger melted to a sad regret. He had never felt quite sure of her, never certain that she cared for him; indeed, deep in his heart he knew that Trixie was yet ignorant of love; and he was tortured with the half-acknowledged dread [pg 123] that out of some thoughtless flirtation with another man there might arise a primal passion that would wreck his life again and hers. ”

“ The servants went off to their quarters in the compound for the customary midday meal and sleep, save for a couple of peons on duty who snoozed in the front veranda, and the ever present shift of punkah pullers. Since the downpour of rain the west wind had ceased to roar and rage over the land; Nature seemed motionless, as though waiting in patient expectance for the swollen clouds to discharge their burden of water.
Stella, torn with emotion, wandered from room to room, unable to rest, Jacob pattering at her heels. ”

“ Coventry--is that you?"
Involuntarily she started, though she knew she did not feel surprised. Kennard had come out of his gate, and was standing at her side; she had not heard his footsteps in the dust. His figure, in the starlight, looked black and indistinct, save for his white shirt-front and the burning end of his cigar. It suddenly struck Rafella that, since she had known Mr. Kennard, the odour of strong cigars was no longer repugnant to her--she who had always detested the smell of tobacco, who had never grown really accustomed to George's innumerable cigarettes! ”

“ She was a wicked creature! Oh, why had she married Robert? Why had she not stayed at The Chestnuts with grandmamma and the aunts, ignorant, safe, however dull? Nothing but evil had come of her yearnings for India, and there was no one to whom she could turn for help, for advice, for sympathy.
In trembling haste, but without purpose, she put on a hat and went out into the compound. Involuntarily she glanced around for Sher Singh, but for a wonder he was nowhere to be seen, and impulsively she decided to call on Mrs. Antonio—anything to escape from the harassing fancies that beset her. ”

“ Sometimes she mentioned to George that Mr. Kennard had looked in to lend her a book, or to leave her a bunch of his violets--he was famous for his violets, that bloomed in pots three deep in his veranda. More often she held her tongue; not that she had any feeling of guilt in the matter, but because George was unreasonable about Mr. Kennard. He had taken to sulking whenever he saw the man at her side in the club or in the gardens, and was cross if she danced with him more often than once, or if he joined her out riding. ”

“ Take what you can get out of life without losing your place in the ranks of the righteous, or you'll be trampled into the dust. Love as much as you like, but love wisely. Bide your time, Stella, my child; you'll forget this lover, whoever he is, and there'll be plenty more. Break hearts all over the place, they'll mend soon enough, and you'll have had your amusement without paying for it. ”

“ At any rate, in Coventry's eyes, and in the opinion of all present at the wedding, Rafella looked lovely as a bride; and, indeed, it was a very pretty ceremony, altogether, in its idyllic simplicity. The autumn day was radiant with sunshine, the kind of day when spiders' webs hang sparkling and perfect, as though spun with tiny crystal beads, and the air is still and humid; when the foliage, all red and gold, strikes wonder, and the blackberries [pg 34] are ripe and round and purple. ”

“ All the same Stella had never been far from his memory, and to-night she seemed to him painfully near. Again he went over that last scene in the Commissioner's house, saw Crayfield standing grim and contemptuous in the big drawing-room, Stella weeping and helpless, himself worsted, ashamed, without honest claim to defence. "Slink, you young hound!" The sentence forced itself backwards and forwards through his brain, hitting his pride each time like a shameful blow.... In his weak selfishness what misery he had brought upon himself and the woman he loved, would never cease to love. ”

“ Her vexation of mind, her disturbance of conscience, the annoying delay, the scene with Guy on the river, had all combined to harass her nerves and distort her perceptions; and now her companion's perturbing suggestion filled her with dread. Nevertheless her spirit rose up in defence of her husband.
"You know nothing about it," she told Guy severely. "How dare you quote gossip to me! And as to your insinuation about George's behaviour towards me, it only just proves how little you know him."
"They why make such a fuss?" he argued morosely. He did not believe that Trixie was telling the truth. ”

“ The culprit was sent to the station in the village wagonette to meet her godfather, and she welcomed the distraction, awkward though it would be to face Colonel Crayfield in the uncomfortable circumstances. The situation struck her as almost grotesque; here she was, driving through the familiar lanes in the late July sunshine, as an outcast and a sinner, to meet an old gentleman who had been summoned to sit in judgment upon her! And, after all, she had done nothing worse, nothing half so bad, as Maud Verrall; and Maud had not been expelled from school as a sort of leper. ”

“ The straggling line of elephants, lurching in leisurely progress across the bed of the river, showed like black blots among the boulders. The animals felt their footing with careful precision, splashing through narrow streams, avoiding the stretches of sand that might prove to be death-traps for ponderous beasts, tearing up wisps of scrub with their trunks and beating them free of dust before putting them into their mouths, or flinging them far in disdain.
Captain Coventry's elephant brought up the rear of the little procession. ”

“ Stella! the granddaughter, the niece, the child they had cherished and guarded and reared with such care—to think that she should have been detected in a vulgar intrigue, and could no longer be harboured at Greystones lest she should contaminate her schoolfellows! It was almost too terrible to contemplate, and for once the three ladies permitted themselves the freedom of natural behaviour. Augusta very nearly stormed; Ellen wept bitterly; grandmamma said: "Like mother, like daughter," in an awful voice, and "What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh." The household was steeped in gloom. ”

“ Probably Coventry was happier just now than he had yet been during his lifetime. He had always known, he assured himself, that, once the first excitement of her new existence had subsided, Trixie would settle down; that it could only be a matter of time for her to realise the responsibilities of a married woman's life; which self-assurance was not exactly genuine. But when doubt has safely turned to confidence, many of us are apt to forget that doubt has ever troubled us at all. ”

“ It was a picturesque scene alluring to a sportsman, yet Coventry was conscious of a sudden satiety of sport and all its appurtenances. He had enjoyed the shoot, had been thoroughly keen throughout, but whether the fever was to blame, or his annoyance at missing the tiger, or the nostalgia for wife and home that had been on the increase the last few days, he now felt he wished never to hear of a tiger or find himself in a machan or a howdah again. ”

“ With him were others, ghosts from the past, whispering names, magical names, that lived not only in the memories of those of their own race and colour but in the hearts of the people they had served and fought for, and saved; also great fighters with dusky faces and flashing eyes, faithful supporters, fearless and fierce, without whose allegiance all the strife and the sacrifice might have been useless; one in spirit with their leaders, East and West bound together by one high aim—that of justice and right.... ”

“ Charles's formal, austere old mother, his uninteresting sisters, the undrinkable wine, Charles's child of six or seven years old, who had sniffed and fidgeted and refused to make friends, and was no different from other children of her age; he even remembered that the village was a long distance from the station, and he hoped that neither of the Carrington spinsters had come to the station to meet him.
Stella, standing expectant on the platform, saw a powerful-looking man, clean shaven, blunt-featured, inclined to stoutness, who moved ponderously—rather like a big Chinaman, a mandarin. ”

“ Motionless he stood; then he laughed like a drunken man, and reeled back into the room that smelt of matting and lamp-oil and--violets.
The disappearance of Mr. Kennard and Mrs. Coventry came as a veritable bombshell to the station. Nobody knew exactly what had happened; there were so many different stories. Hitherto people had noticed and talked, some with jealous interest, others more or less good-naturedly, a few with real regret, but none with any expectation of a serious scandal; for domestic disaster is rare in India, in spite of popular delusion to the contrary. ”

“ Augusta, the carving knife poised in her hand, looked at her mother; Ellen stared at her plate and extracted her salts-bottle with stealth from her pocket; Stella found her own gaze drawn helplessly to the expressionless old countenance at the end of the table, and, despite her new-born courage, she quailed.
"My dear," said grandmamma smoothly, "you had better go and lie down. The weather has upset you. I think you require a powder." ”

“ Only those whose lives have been bound up with India can understand the dread of such a visitation, the anxious watching of the sky, the heaviness of heart when meteorological reports look bad. For a failure, or even a weakness, of the monsoon means grim combat with pestilence and famine, and most dire distress, not only at the time, but afterwards, when fever takes its toll from an enfeebled population. ”