The Potter's Thumb Part 39

'Dan! you will prevent it, won't you? You are so clever, and, really, it is for my sake as well as for his. For my sake you will, won't you?'

'I do everything for your sake--you know that,' he answered simply.

Gwen stared at him as if she had seen a ghost. Perhaps she did; the ghost of a dead boy who had said those very words to her in that very room not a month ago.

'Gwen! what is it?' came Dan's voice sharply, anxiously. 'What is the matter?--tell me.'

Yes! The past was repeating itself. _He_ had begged her to tell him also, and in her selfishness, her fear, she had yielded, and put a needless pain into his life at its close. She would not yield again; in denial lay her duty.

'Nothing is the matter,' she echoed, 'save this--that you say we can do nothing. I do not believe it. G.o.d will never let these lies prevail--He will never let my poor lad's memory suffer--never, never!'

If her mind could have been taken to pieces and strictly a.n.a.lysed as she gave utterance to this burst of real feeling, it would have afforded fruitful study to a whole college of psychologists. Yet the mental condition described as 'sitting in a clothes-basket and lifting yourself up by the handles' is quite common to humanity of both s.e.xes, though women are as a rule the greater adepts in the art. Mrs. Boynton was really a firm believer in a Providence which was bound by many promises to help the virtuous, and George, therefore, had a claim to its a.s.sistance. The fact that Providence might possibly have appointed her as its instrument was a totally different affair, and did not interfere with the confused good faith and good feeling which made her voice thrill as she went on fervently, in answer to Dan's doubtful yet admiring face.

'Oh, you mayn't think so--you perhaps don't believe as I do, Dan, in a Providence "which shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may"--you don't----'

'Don't I?' he asked, catching fire, as it were, more from his own thoughts than her words. 'Oh, Gwen! my dear, it's little you know of me, then, if you think that. Don't I see it?--who but the blind do not--in everything? Isn't it that which makes me content to go on as I'm doing? Gwen! it's because I know that it is bound to come--that sooner or later you will take my hands in yours as I take yours just now. Yes, Gwen! it's Fate--but when will it be, my dear? When will it be?'

She was never proof against this mood in the man, this tone in his voice.

'Oh, Dan!' she cried, in a petulance that was all feigned, 'didn't I say you would be asking me to marry you to-morrow if I was so rash as to tell you that you were a comfort to me? As if that had anything to do with it.'

'Sure it has everything to do with it!' replied her lover fondly. The future, in truth, gave him few fears: it was the present, with the chance of annoyance if that venomous woman remain unscotched in the bazaar, which caused him anxiety. On the other hand, it was the future over which Lewis Gordon frowned, as he sat trying to make up his mind about his own feelings, for though the present was palpably unpleasant, it seemed clear that the future would be worse, since they must face the possibility of a scandal boldly in the hopes that Chandni's story would break down; except perhaps as regarded George, and he, poor lad, had brought it on himself. And then, when all this was over, he--Lewis--was going to marry Mrs. Boynton. No doubt about it; for it was too late now to judge her for that other fault--far too late. He had condoned it with full knowledge of what he was doing, and the fact that Rose Tweedie's subsequent scorn had awakened a tardy blame did not alter the past. At the same time, he had an insane desire that Rose should be brought to see this as clearly as he saw it. In fact, the idea of talking over the matter with her, and perhaps taking her advice upon it, had an attraction for him; and though he heaped contumely on himself for the mere thought, it lingered insistently. It was partly that which made him pause to knock at her sitting-room door on his way to the drawing-room before dinner. She would be glad to have the last news of the miserable affair, he told himself, but in his heart he knew that was not the real reason--that he himself scarcely knew what the reason was. Reason? there was none! Only a foolish curiosity to understand better what this icicle of a girl meant by love. It did not seem to hurt her, at any rate. But as he entered to see her sitting by the fire, the reading-lamp on the table lighting up her dress, but leaving her face in shadow, he seemed to forget all these thoughts in the friendly confidence of her greeting.

'I'm so glad you have come. I was wondering if you would. What news?'

He shook his head. 'None. We have all had our chance, and failed.'

'Not all,' she answered quickly, pointing to Azizan's portrait, which showed dimly above the mantelpiece against which he leant. 'You forget the girl--she has not said her say.'

The unreality, the strangeness of it all, struck him sharply, not for the first time, as he replied after a pause--

'And never will. She is dead. Fitzgerald managed to get that out of the woman to-day. She must have been hidden away--as a punishment, most likely--in some dungeon of the old tower, for her dead body was found among the ruins--by--by the old potter. Yes! I know what you are thinking of; but that is impossible. He was always searching about, you see, and so he was more likely than others to find anything that was to be found. It is a coincidence, I admit; but the fact of the death seems undoubted. The woman let it out in her anger--Fitzgerald is not a nice cross-examiner, I expect--and tried to gloze it over afterwards.

Perhaps it is as well. That story may be best unknown.'

'I don't agree with you,' said Rose quickly. 'I have been counting on her help--perhaps more than I realised--and now that her chance has gone----' The girl's eyes filled with tears, and her voice failed for a moment, 'it seems as if we could do nothing more to save him.'

'I'm afraid not. You see, once we begin to question outsiders we show our hand. There is no alternative between the silence and defiance which Gwen advocates so strongly, and a bold and open inquiry. In my opinion it is time for the latter. You see, my cousin is not quite a fair judge. She does not know that Fitzgerald and I have so far concealed George Keene's suicide, and that from purely personal motives we, or at least I, cannot have this scandal sprung by an outsider. He would take the risk, he says; but I, in my position, conceive that it is not my duty to do so. He, however, has suggested that we four shall meet and talk it over finally before I take any action, so I took the liberty of asking Gwen to come over tomorrow morning. It is Fitzgerald's last day, and something must be done before he goes down.

I don't see the use of this meeting myself--we have all, as I said, had our chance--but it can do no harm, and it may satisfy Gwen--and you.'

'I am satisfied already,' she replied gently. 'You could have done no more than you have done; I see that now.'

'I am glad,' he began, and then stopped, realising that he was not in the least glad of the evident finality in her meaning. Was she contented that things should end as they had begun? Had her pa.s.sionate interest in him died down with his obedience to her orders? A sorry reward, surely! A most perplexing result of his repentance!

'I _shall_ be glad,' he corrected himself, almost angrily, 'when we can get out of this muddle. Of course I have heard before of such intrigues, but I never came in personal contact with that sort of thing before. It is maddening. I scarcely seem to know whether we are in the nineteenth century or the ninth. Ever since we went to Hodinuggur we seem to have got mixed up in some antique dream; the whole thing is absurd--scarcely credible.'

As he spoke the dinner-bell rang, and he held the door open for her to pa.s.s from the consideration of these things to the well-appointed table worthy of a house in Belgravia, where the dark-skinned, white-robed servants handed sherry with the soup, and vinegar with the salmon quite as naturally as Jeames or John in their plush liveries. But heredity was here also; Jeames or John's father may have been a day labourer or a gentleman at large, but not one of these could not have answered truthfully--'Huzoor, my father was servant to so-and-so or so-and-so in the great mutiny time, and his father served such and such a sahib in the Sutlej campaign, or in Cabul, or somewhere else.' Faithfulness or unfaithfulness to salt being, of course, a different question; though that also might possibly be one of heredity. Such thoughts strike one sometimes after years of complacent blindness, and on this evening they increased the sense of unreality which had already taken possession of Lewis Gordon. Nor did a remark of Colonel Tweedie's on his daughter's improved looks during the past few days amend matters. He felt that he might be living in that twenty-ninth century, when humanity may reasonably be supposed to have educated itself out of some frailties as, in the necessary glance at the young lady's face required by decorous a.s.sent, he met a perfectly unconscious, happy smile, so full of friendly confidence, that a positive gladness glowed at his heart that she should be content with him.

Nevertheless he made one more effort to get back finally to the every-day world by riding over to the Club after dinner and listening to the gossip of the day. But there was nothing wrong with the world; it was going on, he found, as usual. He played a game or two of pool, talked gravely with Major Davenant over some new rules intended to prevent such another fiasco as the last race-meeting, heard the latest official canards, and listened more patiently than usual to some boys--who had to go down from leave next day--bemoaning the general beastliness of the country as a residence for an English gentleman. It was only, so the verdict ran, fit for n.i.g.g.e.rs.

Yet even this demonstration that life in the main was commonplace as usual, did not restore Lewis Gordon's general indifference. And the knowledge that this was so made him more than ever determined to carry his point when next morning the four met in Rose Tweedie's room, to settle the course of events.

The rain after a downpour during the night had ceased, or, perhaps, had become too light to make its way through the thick white mist which had settled down like cotton-wool upon everything, blotting out the world.

There was not a breath of air, not a sound save occasionally a soft pit-pat, as the vapour condensing on the roof dropped into the hearts of the rain lilies which fringed the verandah with their upturned orange cups. Yet it was neither dark nor dull as on a cloudy day. The whiteness of the mist was almost luminous, and through the wide-set windows sent a faint glow, like that from newly-fallen snow, on the faces of poor George Keene's four friends, and showed still more clearly on the even surface of Azizan's portrait as it stood upon the mantel-shelf. Rose stood beside it, looking beyond everything in the room, beyond the row of orange lilies, into the cotton-wool mist which seemed bent on suffocating the house and its inhabitants. There was silence in the room--the silence which comes to a discussion when the last objection has palpably fallen through, and a conclusion absolutely satisfactory to no one seems inevitable. Gwen, a flush of excitement on her cheek, lay back among the cus.h.i.+ons of her easy-chair, nervously turning and twisting the rings upon her fingers. Dan Fitzgerald, who was seated close beside her, had evidently been the last to speak, and was now leaning towards her, his eyes fixed with kindly encouragement and sympathy on her face. Lewis Gordon, apart from the others, his elbows resting on the table, looked half regretful, half resentful,--the look of a man who knows he must take the initiative in a singularly disagreeable duty.

At last through the silence came Rose Tweedie's voice reluctantly, yet with a sort of challenge in it: 'I suppose that is settled, and that we can none of us suggest any other reason why we should delay longer?'

'I have told you before,' broke in Mrs. Boynton, 'that I have every reason to believe that no action will be taken by the woman; that she will never court inquiry.'

'I did not mean that,' replied Rose, still with the same note in her voice. 'I meant that if none of us have any further knowledge beyond what we have already discussed, then Mr. Gordon's plan for a private yet open inquiry with my father's knowledge seems best. I, for one, have none. I know nothing, absolutely nothing, in favour of delay.

Nothing that would prevent the possible danger to George Keene's memory.'

Lewis Gordon followed fast on her words in swift, vexed comprehension of her challenge.

'I fancy we are all able to say the same, Miss Tweedie. If we agree, I may have to speak of something I should not otherwise mention, but it is no reason for delay. On the contrary, it is a reason why open inquiry will be the safest, even for George Keene's memory. I know nothing better;--I wish I did.'

'Nor I,' said Dan Fitzgerald, then paused, and rising from his chair crossed to the open door, whence he looked out, as Rose had done, beyond the rain lilies to the mist. 'I know better than any of you what poor George was; I know better than any of you what he did. If this is settled, I, too, will have to tell something to his credit; something that will make inquiry the better for him. Yet I'd give all I possess to save the necessity for it. But I'm lost,'--he stretched his hands out impulsively into the mist--'lost, as one might be out yonder--lost, as the lad's own explanation is lost in the mystery of death. It's hard to say so, George, but I can't help it.'

He spoke as if to some one out of sight, and Gwen Boynton sate up suddenly, nervously, with a scared look in her eyes.

'I think you are all wrong,' she said querulously. 'The woman must know that proof is against her story; but you will not believe it, and so I cannot help it. I cannot, indeed.'

Her voice died away to a sort of sigh, and she sank back again, clasping her hands tightly together. Rose let hers fall from its grip on the mantel-shelf. Dan's tall figure leant more loosely against the lintel, and Lewis Gordon mechanically turned the pages of a book lying beside him on the table. The tension was over, and the relief of decision, even of helpless decision, held them silent in the silence for the moment. They had done their best. They had played their part in the strange play.

Then suddenly out of the mist came a quavering, chanting voice--

'It was a woman seeking something Through day and night----'

'Listen!' cried Dan, his face ablaze. Rose's hand went up again to the picture hurriedly, and Lewis started to his feet; only Gwen looked from one to the other bewildered:

'O'er hill and dale seeking for something.'

The voice grew clearer as if the singer was toiling up the unseen path below the lilies.

'Foul play! foul play!--look down and decide.'

'The mad potter!' cried Dan, with wonder in his tone.

'Azizan! it is her turn at last,' cried Rose, with a hush in hers, which sent a thrill through Lewis Gordon--though he only said prosaically--

'I'll go and see who it is.'

But Dan had forestalled the thought, and, vaulting the railings, had disappeared into the mist, whence they could hear him hallooing down the path to the unseen singer as they stood waiting by the lilies. Then came a quick greeting, a low reply, and so, clearer and clearer--though they could see nothing--every syllable of eager questioning and slow answer until, as if from behind a veil, the strange couple stepped into sight--Dan, eager, excited, towering above the bent, deprecating figure of the old potter.