Star of India, Alice Perrin [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

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. But don't make false steps and imagine you can't suffer for them at the hands of the world. It's not good enough, believe me!"

From one point of view Stella felt he was right; from another, and a higher point, that his advocations were false. Had he told her to remember her marriage vows, to be faithful in thought as well as in deed to her husband, to shrink with shame from all thought of extracting consolation by devious methods.... She almost laughed as she imagined Sir George preaching such practice. Yet in substance his counsel was not far removed from the course she had mapped out for herself that morning on the hill side after her meeting with Philip in the ball-room; and Maud had[Pg 270] often said much the same thing, though not quite so plainly perhaps. Truly she was between the devil and the deep sea; but which was which? To do her duty by Robert honestly, squarely, meant a sort of death in life—the deep sea? To play a part while seeking underhand compensations—the devil?

"Look here," went on Sir George kindly. "Come and stay with me for the race meeting at my headquarters this November. You shall have the time of your life. A big party, all the prettiest women in the Province, and you'll be the prettiest. You shall do hostess if you like. People might talk, no doubt they do now, but that doesn't matter as long as they've nothing to lay hold of. Is it a bargain?"

It was an alluring invitation. But could she accept it with any hope of fulfilment? Perhaps—if she carried out her programme of false conciliation where Robert was concerned.

"I'm not sure if I could get away," she said doubtfully.

"The husband?" queried Sir George smiling. "Aren't you clever enough to get round him?"

Stella felt reckless. "Anyway, I'll try," she declared; and she determined, if humanly possible, to succeed.

"Very well, leave it at that, and let us hope for the best. Count on me to send you the right kind of letter, and we'll pull it off somehow. Cheer up, my dear, never say die!" He patted her hand, and lit his cigarette, persuaded her to take one too, and Stella felt comforted, almost convinced that he and Maud were right—that in time she might forget[Pg 271] Philip; she had all her life before her in which to do so!

Someone was shouting below them; it was the summons to tea. Figures emerged from all quarters, the valley resounded with voices, privacy was at an end. Stella rose readily. "We must go," she said, glad of the interruption; and they scrambled and slipped their way back to the meeting place. At sunset a procession started toward the station—a phalanx of dandies and ponies and more Spartan pedestrians who felt equal to the climb. It was almost dark when Stella and her friends reached their perch on the hill side, tired yet cheerful, ready for a rest if hardly for dinner after the superabundance of fare they had lately enjoyed. Maud rushed to the nursery, Dick hung about, smoking, in the veranda; Stella was making for her bedroom when one of the servants accosted her with a salver in his hand on which lay a yellow envelope.

"Telegram, Memsahib," he said stolidly; she opened it with a qualm of foreboding. It was signed "Antonio," and she read:

"Come down Colonel Crayfield ill."

[Pg 272]

CHAPTER VIII

"Diagnosis difficult," said Dr. Antonio pompously professional, yet clearly puzzled and disturbed.

Stella stood with him in the big drawing-room that looked dusty and neglected in the dim lamplight, trying to gather what had happened, what was likely to happen. From across the hall came a monotonous sound, a loud, delirious voice repeating some sentence over and over again. On her arrival, soon after midnight, she had scarcely been able to realise that it was indeed Robert who lay on his bed, so strangely altered, talking incoherently, paying no heed to her presence. Mrs. Antonio was there as well as the doctor; apparently the good couple had not left the house for the past twenty-four hours.

"Is it typhoid, do you think?" Stella asked helplessly.

"No, not typhoid, some kind of poison."

"Something he had eaten?"

"How can I say? One day quite well, playing tennis, then feeling ill, sending for me; and all at once very high fever, delirious. As yet not yielding to treatment. Typhoid, smallpox, cholera, malaria," he ticked off the diseases on his fingers, "none of them. I have grave suspicion, Mrs. Crayfield!"

"You mean you think someone has tried to poison my husband?"

"Yes, that is what I think."

[Pg 273]

"But who could it be? The servants have all been with him for years——"

"That is so. But where is that bearer, that Sher Singh?"

Mystified, Stella stared at the old man. "Isn't Sher Singh here?" In all the distraction of her arrival she had not noted Sher Singh's absence, had not thought of him.

"Not here! He has——" Dr. Antonio paused as though searching for a word, "he has bunked."

"But surely——"

He shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands. "Afim-wallah, you know!" he said significantly.

"Afim-wallah?"

"Yes, opium-eater."

"I don't understand. Dr. Antonio, do speak plainly. Is it your opinion that Sher Singh has been trying to poison my husband? But Sher Singh was so devoted to him!"

"That is just it. Jealousy, and you coming as bride, and the woman, his relation, sent away. Now, brain upset with opium, and you coming back again soon."

"Sher Singh's relation? What relation?" She thought impatiently that the old doctor's imagination had run away with him; then, from the back of her mind, called up by the mention of opium in conjunction with Sher Singh, came the recollection of all Mrs. Antonio had said that hot afternoon long ago in her stuffy, hookah-smelling drawing-room. She visualised the untidy form clad in a grotesque dressing-gown; the bath towel tied over the grey hair,[Pg 274] the mysterious nods, and: "Knowing too many secrets!" What was behind it all? The idea that Sher Singh had tried to poison Robert seemed to her too melodramatic and impossible to be accepted, whatever his provocation or mental condition; yet, according to Dr. Antonio, Sher Singh had disappeared, "bunked!" Why?

"What relation?" she repeated.

Dr. Antonio puffed, and fidgeted his feet. "Oh, no use going over old stories. All done with," he said evasively. "Only, putting two and two together, it is my suspicion that Sher Singh has done harm. But these things are not easy to bring home; at present we have just to think of curing."

He took out a large gold watch, for the clock in the room had stopped. "Will you rest now, Mrs. Crayfield? Not much change likely just yet. My wife, she must go home and get sleep, but I will remain."

"I am not tired," declared Stella, though she ached all over after the long journey. "It is you who ought to rest," and indeed the old man's fatigue was patent. "Let me sit with my husband while you lie down; there is a bed in the dressing-room, and I would call you at once if necessary."

Just then Mrs. Antonio joined them. She also looked well nigh worn out.

"He is dozing now!" she said hopefully; and Stella became aware that the sound in the bedroom had ceased.

A little later she was seated by Robert's bedside, and from the dressing-room came long-drawn, regular[Pg 275] snores which told her that Dr. Antonio was already enjoying his well-deserved rest.

Robert lay quiet, save for his quick, uneven breathing, and now and then a moaning sigh. The punkah had been stopped by Dr. Antonio's orders because, as he had explained to her, it had seemed to worry the patient; it was hardly needed now that the nights were growing cooler except to keep off mosquitoes, and Stella could do that with the palm-leaf fan Mrs. Antonio had handed over to her before her departure.

For an hour she sat fanning the mottled, swollen face on the pillow; the lights were turned low, and the long door-windows stood open. It was a bright starlit night; except for the cry of some restless bird, and the intermittent squabbling of animals at the base of the fort walls, there was little sound.... Stella tried not to think, she did not want to think; and to keep her mind quiescent she repeated to herself verses, songs, anything she could recall mechanically, but always with irritating persistency the words of the hymn that seemed to have been the starting point of her real life kept recurring, ousting all else: