Voices in the Night. Flora Annie Webster Steel

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      He would go there and seek an audience.

      On his way out, however, he saw Jack Raymond riding up the drive. Jack Raymond, one of the few Englishmen he could count on to be kind, yet who, despite that, had never called on his wife. Was he going to do so now? As a matter of fact, Jack Raymond had had no such intention; he had come over to ask Chris himself about a post which was vacant, and which might keep John Ellison, loafer, out of more mischief; but seeing Chris coming towards him with a pleased expectant look on his somewhat pathetic face, a half-irritated pity made him ask if Mrs. Davenant was at home.

      'I'm sorry she has gone out with Lucanaster,' he repeated, unaware of the emphasis he laid on the qualification till he saw poor Chris flinch, when he said hurriedly, 'but I'll come in if I may. I've a question or two I want to ask.'

      Whereupon Chris, who, despite his five years of England and his wife's incessant instructions, had never been able to grasp that exclusive use of certain rooms to certain uses, took Jack Raymond straight into the dining-room, where, amongst the litter of an unfinished breakfast, a note, on which quite inadvertently the visitor set his riding-whip, lay face uppermost.

      That 'Dearest Jenny,' therefore, stared Jack Raymond in the face all the time he was settling that John Ellison should go for a week's trial as foreman on the new goods station which Chris was building. He knew the writing, and had, what poor Chris had not, a fixed standard of inherited and acquired experience by which to judge the writer. And so a curious mixture of pity and repugnance came to the Englishman as he looked at the face opposite him--the gentle face so full of intelligence, so devoid of character--and thought of that other coarser, commoner one. It was a question of the two men only; the woman, dismissed briefly as a bad sort, counted for nothing in Jack Raymond's mind.

      Yet if Lucanaster had been an Englishman, it is ten to one that Jack Raymond would not have said abruptly, as he did say when he rose to take up his riding-whip, 'If I were you, Davenant, I wouldn't let my wife be seen with that man Lucanaster. Of course you can't be expected to--to know--but he's an awful sweep!' As he spoke, his knowledge of himself made him clutch his whip tightly; but Chris only stood silent for a moment with a wild appeal in his soft eyes. Then he tried to speak; finally he sate down again, and buried his face in his hands.

      The straining of the long brown fingers, tense in their effort to keep back tears, the long-drawn breath trying to keep back sobs, made Jack Raymond's pity fly before impatient contempt.

      'I'm sorry. It's evidently worse than I thought,' he said; 'but that sort of thing isn't a bit of good, Davenant. Put your foot down. Say you won't have it.'

      Chris Davenant's face came up from his hands with the dignity of absolute despair. 'How can I? Didn't even you say just now I couldn't be expected to understand? She says it too. And I've no answer. How can I have one when there is no place for me--or for her? That is it. If she had friends--if there was any one to care--any one even to be angry; but there is no one.'

      His head went into his hands again, and the pity born of clearer comprehension came back to the Englishman, like the dove of old, with widespread white wings. And like the dove of old, it brought a suggestion of calmer days to come with it.

      'I hadn't thought of it that way,' he said slowly; 'but I see your point. A lead over keeps many a horse between the flags. And I'll get one for your wife if I can. Lady Arbuthnot is an old friend of mine,'--he was faintly surprised at himself for this remark, which came quite naturally--'and I'm sure she will send an invitation to the Government House garden-party. Then there's the fête and the Service ball. It may seem a queer cure to you----'

      'Everything is queer,' admitted Chris, trying to be cheerful. 'But I know she felt not being asked--I remember her saying----' He broke off; for the remark had been, briefly, that it was no use considering the proprieties if the proprieties didn't consider you.

      'Well! that's settled. She'll find the invitations when she comes back; then there'll be the dresses, you know, and all that.'

      Chris shook his head. 'I am not sure if I do. It is all new. But it is more than kind of you. If I could do anything for you in return----'

      The unreserved gratitude in his face was sufficiently womanish not to rouse the English distaste to all expression of emotion, though, even so, Jack Raymond put it aside jestingly.

      'Thank Lady Arbuthnot, my dear fellow; she'--he paused, a remembrance coming to him--'By the way--you're in, I know, with all the Voice of India scribblers--write for it yourself, don't you? Well, what is the meaning of those hints about the plague policy? What have they got hold of? anything definite?'

      'So far as I know, nothing,' began Chris. 'It is, I fear, a regrettable fact that there is seldom good foundation----'

      Jack Raymond, reins in hand, swung himself into his saddle lightly. 'Yes, thank God! Well! if you should hear of anything, or if you should have a chance of--say, burking anything likely to upset the apple-cart--the times are a trifle ticklish in the city--take your gratitude to me, or rather to Lady Arbuthnot, out in that.'

      Chris flushed up. 'Surely,' he began volubly, 'it is the bounden duty, as I have just been writing, of the educated portion of the community to leave themselves free for reasonable criticism by supporting Government, wherever possible, by throwing heart and soul----' The Englishman, holding his impatient mount in a grip of iron, looked down with a bored expression.

      'No doubt--no doubt; but the body fills a gap better on the whole. Good-bye. I'll see to the invites, and you can drop me a line if you hear anything definite.'

CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

THE MONEY OF FOOLS

       Table of Contents

      'Finally, sirs,' came a high straining voice as Chris Davenant entered Hâfiz Ahmad's house, 'the educated youngster of India refuses to let his soaring aspirations remain cribbed, cabined, confined, in the cruel shackles of a political despotism without parallel in the whole history of civilisation!'

      The peroration, though it seemed to afford the speaker much satisfaction, only induced that faint desultory clapping which in England is reserved for prize-days at school; that impersonal applause for the results of diligence which remembers that other pupils have yet to speak.

      This was the case here, and Chris had barely wedged himself into a chair between a writing-table and a waste-paper basket before another orator was in full swing of adjective.

      The row of bicycles in the verandah, and a knot of those green-box hired carriages outside on the road, had told Chris already that he had been right in calculating on an assemblage of young India; but this was a larger gathering than he had expected, and he remembered suddenly with a vague shame--since he was a prominent member of the organisation--that it must be the monthly meeting of the Society for Promoting the General Good of People. He had quite forgotten all about it; still here he was, and here was his audience for that roll of manuscript he held.

      He glanced round the double room,--for both dining and drawing-room had been thrown open, rather to Miriam-bibi's relief, since she could now sit unreservedly in the screened verandah and play 'beggar my neighbour' with her foster-mother, who СКАЧАТЬ