CHAPTER II
JAN"S MAIL
_Bombay, December 13th._
My Dear Jan,
It was a great relief to get your cable saying definitely that you were sailing by the _Carnduff_. Misfortunes seem to have come upon us in such numbers of late that I dreaded lest your departure might be unavoidably delayed or prevented. I will not now enter into the painful question of my shameful treatment by Government, but you can well understand that I shall leave no stone unturned to reverse their most unfair and unjust decision, and to bring my traducers to book. Important business having reference to these matters calls me away at once, as I feel it is most essential not to lose a moment, my reputation and my whole future being at stake. I shall therefore, to my great regret, be unable to meet you on your arrival in Bombay, and, as my movements for the next few months will be rather uncertain, I may find it difficult to let you have regular news of me. I would therefore advise you to take Fay and the children home as soon as all is safely over and she is able to travel, and I will join you in England if and when I find I can get away. I know, dear Jan, that you will not mind financing Fay to this extent at present; as, owing to these wholly unexpected departmental complications, I am uncommonly hard up. I will, of course, repay you at the earliest possible opportunity.
Poor Fay is not at all well; all these worries have been very bad for her, and I have been distracted by anxiety on her behalf, as well as about my own most distressing position, and a severe attack of fever has left me weak and ailing. I thought it better to bring Fay down to Bombay, where she can get the best medical advice, and her being there will save you the long, tiresome journey to Dariawarpur. It is also most convenient for going home. She is installed in a most comfortable flat, and we brought our own servants, so I hope you will feel that I have done my best for her.
Fay will explain the whole miserable business to you, and although appearances may be against me, I trust that you will realise how misleading these may be. I cannot thank you enough for responding so promptly to our ardently expressed desire for your presence at this difficult time.
It will make all the difference in the world to Fay; and, on her account, to me also.
Believe me, always yours affectionately,
HUGO TANCRED.
_Bombay, Friday._
Jan my dear, my dear, are you really on your way? And shall I see your face and hear your kind voice, and be able to cry against your shoulder?
I can"t meet you, my precious, because I don"t go out. I"m afraid. Afraid lest I should see anyone who knew us at Dariawarpur. India is so large and so small, and people from everywhere are always in Bombay, and I couldn"t bear it.
Do you know, Jan, that when the very worst has happened, you get kind of numbed. You can"t suffer any more. You can"t be sorry or angry or shocked or indignant, or anything but just broken, and that"s what I am.
After all, I"ve one good friend here who knew us at Dariawarpur. He"s got a job at the secretariat, and he tries to help me all he can. I don"t mind him somehow. He understands. He will meet you and bring you to the bungalow, so look out for him when the boat gets in. He"s tall and thin and clean-shaven and yellow, with a grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes. Peter is an angel, so be nice to him, Jan dear. It has been awful; it will go on being awful; but it will be a little more bearable when you come--for me, I mean--for you it will be horrid. All of us on your hands, and no money, and me such a crock, and presently a new baby. The children are well. It"s so queer to think you haven"t seen "little Fay." Come soon, Jan, come soon, to your miserable FAY.
Jan sat on her bunk under the open porthole. One after the other she held the letters open in her hand and stared at them, but she did not read. The sentences were burnt into her brain already.
Hugo Tancred"s letter was dated. Fay"s was not, and neither letter bore any address in Bombay. Now, Jan knew that Bombay is a large town; and that people like the Tancreds, who, if not actually in hiding, certainly did not seek to draw attention to their movements, would be hard to find. Fay had wholly omitted to mention the surname of the tall, thin, yellow man with the "grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes." Even in the midst of her poignant anxiety Jan found herself smiling at this. It was so like Fay--so like her to give no address. And should the tall, thin gentleman fail to appear, what was Jan to do? She could hardly go about the ship asking if one "Peter" had come to fetch her.
How would she find Fay?
Would they allow her to wait at the landing-place till someone came, or were there stringent regulations compelling pa.s.sengers to leave the docks with the utmost speed, as most of them would a.s.suredly desire to do?
She knitted her brows and worried a good deal about this; then suddenly put the question from her as too trivial when there were such infinitely greater problems to solve.
Only one thing was clear. One central fact shone out, a beacon amidst the gloom of the "departmental complications" enshrouding the conduct of Hugo Tancred, the certainty that he had, for the present anyway, shifted the responsibility of his family from his own shoulders to hers. As she sat square and upright under the porthole, with the cool air from an inserted "wind-sail" ruffling her hair, she looked as though she braced herself to the burden.
She wished she knew exactly what had happened, what Hugo Tancred had actually done. For some years she had known that he was by no means scrupulous in money matters, and that very evening Sir Langham had made it clear to her that this crookedness had not stopped short at his official work. There had been a scandal, so far-reaching a scandal that it had got into the home papers.
This struck Jan as rather extraordinary, for Hugo Tancred was by no means a stupid man.
It is one thing to be pleasantly oblivious of private debts, to omit cheques in repayment of various necessaries got at the Stores by an obliging sister-in-law. One thing to muddle away in wild-cat speculations a wife"s money that, but for the procrastination of an easy-going father, would have been tightly tied up--quite another to bring himself so nearly within the clutches of the law as to make it possible for the Government of India to dismiss him.
And what was he to do? What did the future hold for him?
Who would give employment to however able a man with such a career behind him?
Jan"s imagination refused to take such flights. Resolutely she put the subject from her and began to consider what her own best course would be with Fay, her nephew and niece, and, very shortly, a new baby on her hands.
Jan was not a young woman to let things drift. She had kept house for a whimsical, happy-go-lucky father since she was fourteen; mothered her beautiful young sister; and, at her father"s death, two years before, had with quiet decision arranged her own life, wholly avoiding the discussion and the friction which generally are the lot of an unmarried woman of five-and-twenty left without natural guardians and with a large circle of friends and relations.
It was nearly two o"clock when she undressed and went to bed, and before that she had drafted two cablegrams--one to a house-agent, the other to her bankers.
CHAPTER III
BOMBAY
For Jan the next two days pa.s.sed as in a more or less disagreeable dream. She could never afterwards recall very clearly what happened, except that Sir Langham Sykes seemed absolutely omnipresent, and made her, she felt, ridiculous before the whole ship, by proclaiming far and wide that she had bestowed upon him the healing gift of sleep.
He was so effusive, so palpably grateful, that she simply could not undeceive him by telling him that after they parted the night before she had never given him another thought.
When he was not doing this he was pursuing, with fulminations against the whole tribe of missionaries, two kindly, quiet members of the Society of Friends.
In an evil moment they had gratified his insatiable curiosity as to the object of their voyage to India, which was to visit and report upon the missionary work of their community. Once he discovered this he never let them alone, and the deck resounded with his denunciations of all Protestant missionaries as "self-seeking, oily humbugs."
They bore it with well-mannered resignation, and a common dislike for Sir Langham formed quite a bond of union between them and Jan.
There was the usual dance on New Year"s Eve, the usual singing of "Auld Lang Syne" in two huge circles; and Jan would have enjoyed it all but for the heavy foreboding in her heart; for she was a simple person who responded easily to the emotions of others. Before she could slip away to bed Sir Langham cornered her again, conjuring her to "will" him to sleep and "to go on doin" it" after they parted in Bombay. He became rather maudlin, and she seized the opportunity of telling him that her best efforts would be wholly unavailing if he at all relaxed the temperate habits, so necessary for the cure of his gout, that he had acquired during the voyage. She was stern with Sir Langham, and her admonitions had considerable effect. He sought his cabin chastened and thoughtful.
The boat was due early in the morning. Jan finished most of her packing before she undressed; then, tired and excited, she could not sleep. A large c.o.c.kroach scuttling about her cabin did not tend to calm her nerves. She plentifully besprinkled the floor with powdered borax, kept the electric light turned on and the fan whirring, and lay down wide-awake to wait for the dawn.
The ship was unusually noisy, but just about four o"clock came a new sound right outside her porthole--the rush alongside of the boat bearing the pilot and strange loud voices calling directions in an unknown tongue. She turned out her light (first peering fearfully under her berth to make sure no borax-braving c.o.c.kroach was in ambush) and knelt on her bed to look out and watch the boat with its turbaned occupants: big brown men, who shouted to one another in a liquid language full of mystery.
For a brief s.p.a.ce the little boat was towed alongside the great liner, then cast off, and presently--far away on the horizon--Jan saw a streak of pearly pinkish light, as though the soft blue curtain of the night had been lifted just a little; and against that luminous streak were hills.
In spite of her anxiety, in spite of her fears as to the future, Jan"s heart beat fast with pleasurable excitement. She was young and strong and eager, and here at last was the real East. A little soft wind caressed her tired forehead and she drank in the blessed coolness of the early morning.
Both day and night come quickly in the East. Jan got up, had her bath, dressed, and by half-past six she was on deck. The dark-blue curtain was rolled up, and the scene set was the harbour of Bombay.
Such a gracious haven of strange multi-coloured craft, with its double coast-line of misty hills on one side, and clear-cut, high-piled buildings, domes and trees upon the other.
A gay white-and-gold launch, with its attendants in scarlet and white, came for certain pa.s.sengers, who were guests of the Governor. The police launch, trim and business-like with its cheerful yellow-hatted sepoys, came for others. Jan watched these favoured persons depart in stately comfort, and went downstairs to get some breakfast. Then came the rush of departure by the tender. So many had friends to meet them, and all seemed full of pleasure in arrival. Jan was just beginning to feel rather forlorn and anxious when the Purser, fussed and over-driven as he always is at such times, came towards her, followed by a tall man wearing a pith helmet and an overcoat.
"Mr. Ledgard has come to meet you, Miss Ross, so you"ll be all right."
It was amazing how easy everything became. Mr. Ledgard"s servants collected Jan"s cabin baggage and took it with them in the tender and, on arrival, in a tikka-gharri--the little pony-carriage which is the gondola of Bombay--and almost before she quite realised that the voyage was over she found herself seated beside Peter in a comfortable motor-car, with a cheerful little Hindu chauffeur at the steering-wheel, sliding through wide, well-watered streets, still comparatively empty because it was so early.
By mutual consent they turned to look at one another, and Jan noted that Peter Ledgard _was_ thin and extremely yellow. That his eyes (hollow and tired-looking as are the eyes of so many officials in the East) _were_ kind, and she thought she had never before beheld a firmer mouth or more masterful jaw.