“Oh,” replied the beautiful woman, removing her gloves daintily, “there is not much to tell. Moreover, the story has not the merit even of novelty. The raw material is lamentably commonplace, and I am afraid I cannot make a very interesting thing of it. Wretched climate, horribly dull station, thirsty husband. Voilà tout!”
“To which, however,” suggested Mrs. Wylie with a peculiar intonation, “might perhaps be added military society and Indian habits.”
The younger woman shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed irresponsibly. “But all that is a question of the past, and the present is important enough to require some attention.”
She extended her feet to the warmth of the fire, and contemplated her small boots with some satisfaction.
“Yes … ?”
“I have bolted,” she said, replying to the inferred query, “and he is in all probability after me.”
Mrs. Wylie turned aside the screen which she was holding between her face and the fire. Her intelligent eyes rested for a moment on the speaker’s face, then she transferred her attention to Brenda, who stood near the mantelpiece with her two gloved hands resting on the marble. The girl was gazing down between her extended arms into the fire, and a warm glow nestled rosily round her face. The eyes were too sad for their years.
“I am very sorry to hear it,” said the widow with conviction.
“There was no alternative. I could not stand it any longer.”
“How did you manage it?” asked Mrs. Wylie quietly, almost too quietly.
“Oh, I got rid of some jewellery, and there was a Captain Markynter who was kind enough to get my ticket and see me off!”
A peculiar silence followed this cool remark. Mrs. Wylie sat quite still, holding the palm screen before her face. Brenda stood motionless as a statue. Mrs. Huston curved her white wrist, and looked compassionately at a small red mark made by the button of her glove. At length the uneasy pause was broken. Without moving, Brenda spoke in a cool, clear voice, almost monotonous.
“Alice,” she explained, “is a great advocate for masculine assistance. She considers us totally incapable of managing our own affairs, and powerless to act for ourselves. She has been regretting all day that Theo should be away, and consequently beyond our call.”
Mrs. Huston laughed somewhat forcedly, and drew in her feet.
“It is like this,” she explained. “If my husband catches me I think I shall probably kill myself! Theo is so strong and reliable, and somehow … so capable, that I naturally thought of him in my emergency.”
“Naturally,” echoed Mrs. Wylie mechanically.
At that moment she was not thinking whether her monosyllabic remark was cruelly sarcastic or simply silly. Her whole mind was devoted to the study of Brenda’s face, upon which the firelight glowed; but in the proud young features there was nothing legible—nothing beyond a somewhat anxious thoughtfulness.
“I think,” continued Mrs. Huston, “that we may count on a week’s start. My affectionate husband cannot be here before then.”
To this neither lady made reply. The servant came in, and in a few moments tea was served. Brenda presided over the little basket table, and prepared each cup with a foreknowledge of the several tastes. During this there was no word spoken. From the nonchalance of the ladies’ manner one might easily have imagined that the younger couple had just come in from a long day’s shopping.
“Have you,” asked the widow at length, as she stirred her tea placidly, “thought of what you are doing?”
“Oh yes!” was the laughing rejoinder, in which, however, there was no mirth. “Oh yes! I have thought, and thought, and thought, until the subject was thrashed out dry. There was nothing else to do but think, and read yellow-backed novels, all the voyage home.”
“Then,” murmured the widow, with gentle interrogation, “this Captain Parminter did not come home with you?”
Mrs. Huston changed colour, and her lips moved slightly. She glanced towards Mrs. Wylie beneath her dark lashes, and answered with infinite self-possession:
“No! And his name is Markynter.”
The palm-leaf did not move. Presently, however, Mrs. Wylie laid it aside, and asked for some more tea.
“Well,” she said cheerily, “I suppose we must make the best of a very bad bargain. What do you propose to do next?”
In the most natural and confiding way imaginable, Mrs. Huston looked up towards her sister, who was still standing. There was an almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders.
“Brenda,” she answered, “says that I must run away and hide in some small village, which is not exactly a cheerful prospect.”
“It would hardly do,” said Brenda, as if in defence of her own theory, “to go down to Brighton and stay at the Bedford Hotel, for instance.”
“If,” added Mrs. Wylie in the same tone, “you really want to avoid your husband, you must certainly hide; but I do not see what you can gain by such a proceeding. It can never be permanent, and you will soon get tired of chasing each other round England.”
“Perhaps he will get tired of it first.”
“If he does, what will your position be? Somewhat ambiguous, I imagine.”
“It cannot be worse than it is at present.”
“Oh yes,” replied the widow calmly. “It can!”
She set her empty cup on the tray, and sat with her two hands clasped together on her lap. She had not come through fifty years of life, this placid lady, without learning something of the world’s ways, and she recognised instantly what Alice Huston’s position was. It was the old story which is told every day in all parts of the world, more especially, perhaps, in India—the wearisome tale of a mistaken marriage between a man of small intellect and a woman of less. If both husband and wife be busy, the one with his bread-winning, the other with her babies, such unions may be a near approach to animal happiness—no more can be hoped for. The very instincts of it are animal, and as
