They had heard so much, those three in the verandah, that Rose without a pause could step forward and strike at the very root of the matter with the question, "What is it? What is it that you want of me?"
The shifty, light eyes settled on her face with a look of relief before the old man bent to touch her feet.
"Madr-mihrban," he said. "Madr-mihrban--that is well!"
He was still breathless from his swift climb beside Dan"s long stride, and, as he straightened himself again, his long supple fingers, busied already about a knotted corner in the cotton shawl folded round him, trembled visibly.
"Lo, I sent it before," he went on in low excuse; "but it returned, as all things return at Hodinuggur. Then she was vexed and could not rest.
"Send it back! send it back," she cried all night long. Pity of G.o.d!
what a fever; but now she sleeps sound----" He paused, to fumble closer at the knot.
"You mean Azizan, your daughter?" suggested Rose softly, while the others stood silent, listening and looking, the whole world seeming to hold nothing for them save this tall girl with her bright, eager face, and that bent old man trying to undo a knot.
"Huzoor--Azizan!" came the quavering voice. "I looked for her so often till the Madr-mihrban came. Then I found her with the pot clasped to her breast, but the bad dreams would not let her sleep. "It is not mine; it is hers." It kept her awake always. So when I found her again, lying asleep by the river with it still in her bosom, I said to myself, "I will not set a writing on it, and put it in the box with a slit as I did last time, trusting it to G.o.d knows who, after the new fashion. I will take it myself in the old fashion and give it to the Madr-mihrban"s own hands, and pray her hold it fast so it return not to wake the child; for she sleeps sound at last in the dust of her father"s.""
The knot was undone. The shaking fingers held the Ayodhya pot for a second, the white glare of the mist shining in a broad blaze of light upon its intense glowing blue. The next it had slipped from the potter"s hand and lay in fragments on the ground!
Still fragments of sapphire colour--moving fragments of milky white, rolling hither and thither like drops of dew on a leaf seeking a resting-place for their round l.u.s.tre.
Pearls!--the Hodinuggur pearls!
And Gwen"s voice, with a triumphant ring in it, became articulate above the old man"s cry of distress and the low exclamations of the others.
"So Azizan stole them, after all!"
Rose turned on her sharply. "Who knows. This much is certain, she has brought them back, and saved George when we could not."
"Yes! she has saved him," a.s.sented Dan; "we have that she-devil on the hip now!"
Lewis Gordon stood silent a moment; he had grown very pale. "You are both right, I expect," he said quietly. "It settles--everything."
Gwen drew a long breath of relief, but Rose seemed lost in thought.
"No! not everything," she said absently, half to herself. "It does not tell us why George shot himself."
She scarcely knew she spoke aloud; she had forgotten everything but the dead boy.
"_Shot himself!_, The words came back to her in a sort of cry. "_Shot himself!_ What do you mean? What does she mean?"
Gwen stood as if petrified before those regretful faces. Then, as the truth struck at her, beating down her shield of self-deception, she turned at last, forgetful of all else, to the shelter of Dan"s kind arms. "Dan! Dan! it isn"t true--it can"t be true! say it isn"t true."
He drew her closer to him, looking down into her agonised face with a perfect pa.s.sion of tenderness and kissed it; forgetful in his turn, of everything save that she had come to him at last.
"It is true, my darling; he did it to save me and you. Gwen! Gwen! it wasn"t your fault--My G.o.d! she has fainted!"
"I"m sorry," began Rose, feeling paralysed by surprise, but Dan"s kind smile was ready even in his distress.
"Don"t worry. It"s best over, for I must have told her. You see we have been engaged for years, and George knew it. If I carry her to your room, Miss Rose, she will be better there. "Tis the shock, and she was so fond of him, dear heart."
Lewis Gordon, left alone in the verandah while another man before his very eyes carried off the woman to whom he supposed himself to be engaged, felt that the world had broken loose from its foundations altogether. So that was the explanation! And then a low murmur of moaning from the potter arrested his attention, which, as is so often the case after a shock, had lost its airt and become vagrant.
The old man, still crouched beside the fragments of the Ayodhya pot, was rocking himself backwards and forwards, and muttering to himself, "She will be angry; the Madr-mihrban will be angry, and then Azizan will not sleep."
Lewis walked up to him and laid his hand rea.s.suringly on the thin, bent shoulders. "I don"t think the Madr-mihrban will be angry. I"m almost sure she won"t." His own words made him smile, until, as he looked at the old man"s shifty, bright eyes raised to his doubtfully, he remembered the young sad face which George had painted. "And Azizan is asleep," he said gently; "she will not wake again."
As he stooped to gather up the jewels his eyes were dim with unwonted tears--why, he scarcely knew.
When Rose came back ten minutes after, leaving Gwen to Dan"s kind consolations, she found Lewis leaning over the railings looking at the rain lilies through his eyegla.s.s as if it had been a microscope. He turned to her with the air of a man who has made up his mind.
"You thought I was engaged to my cousin, Miss Tweedie," he said. "So did I. Apparently I was mistaken. So let us set that aside, once and for all, and think over more important matters. There is no lack of other surprises, thank Heaven."
The semi-cynicism of his words did not sit ill on him, and Rose recognised that he had certainly chosen the most dignified way out of the difficulty. At the same time it left her free, unexpectedly free, to consider the position as an outsider, and all involuntarily, yet naturally enough, her first thought expressed itself in words:
"I wonder what father will say?"
This was too much both for temper and dignity, fortunately, also for humour. He gave her one indignant look, then relaxed into a smile.
"Really, Miss Tweedie, in this Comedy of Errors I am only responsible for my part; and that, believe me, is rather a sorry one."
CHAPTER XXV
Whether Lewis Gordon spoke truth or not regarding the part he had to play, there could be no doubt that Dan found his anything but sorry. A subdued sort of radiance softened yet brightened the man as he came out to ask Rose for the loan of her _dandy_, Mrs. Boynton being anxious to get home as soon as possible. There seemed no need for words; the situation explained itself, and even Lewis, looking at his rival"s eager face, could not help acknowledging that Dan was more likely to give Gwen the support she evidently needed than he was. Besides, the sudden change for the future seemed lost sight of in that, which the opportune arrival of the Ayodhya pot had on the present, and on Chandni"s impudent claim. It was of course clear evidence against the truth of the story so far as Gwen was concerned, but whether it would prevent the woman raking up the true facts of George Keene"s death, out of sheer wanton malice, was another thing. Lewis felt himself rather helpless before the phenomenon of such a nature as hers, and confessed as much when Dan came racing back, breathless and excited after seeing Mrs. Boynton safely home, for a council of war. He brought a quick decision and intuition with him. The sluice had been opened by treachery of course, and now that he was free to speak of his engagement, Dan told the story of the open locket, which to him seemed proof-positive that George had voluntarily taken the blame on himself when thrown off his balance by the discovery that the happiness of the man and the woman he loved best in the world depended on Dan"s getting his promotion. How the sluice had been opened was another matter.
Chandni had always said by means of a key made after an impression sent from Simla; but this was manifestly impossible unless some servant had done it. Indeed he had never paid much attention to this a.s.sertion, for the woman in making it had contradicted herself more than once, and evidently had no definite story as to how the impression had been secured. In his own mind he had decided that the key itself had been stolen from the boy while he slept so heavily, and that the knowledge that this was so had had the lion"s share in bringing about his self-sacrifice. So that even if the real facts came out, nothing beyond carelessness could be laid to George"s charge, now that the potter was there to prove that Azizan had had the Ayodhya pot all the time, and that they were there to prove that the pearls had remained in the pot.
So much for Chandni and the only possible cause of further action--a woman"s wanton cruelty. For the rest, the old Diwan was dead, Khush-hal seemed to be out of it, and Dalel had everything to lose and nothing to gain by a scandal. Finally, these intrigues were always as a house of cards; remove one support and the whole structure disappeared.
"Nevertheless," said Dan, looking across the table with a grim smile, "I"m not going to take you down as a witness to my interview with that she-devil this afternoon. You are too fine for the work, and that"s the fact."
"Can I lend you anything peculiarly barbaric in the way of a knife?"
asked Lewis. "I"ve a Malay crease in my room which fills most people with terror, though personally I should funk a woorali dart more than anything."
"Ah! you may jeer; but "tis true. Sure! our fineness is at the bottom of half our mistakes in this country. Even in our kindness we treat these people as we would like to be treated ourselves--a poor philanthropy compared to treating them as they would like to be treated. And when we come to mere justice! Why, we might as well give a child who has disobeyed his mother the right to appeal against her in court. What chance would the child have to begin with, and then what good would it do? and what good is our complicated system of procedure save to put power into the hands of the educated few who naturally clamour for more? But there! This has nothing to do with Chandni. She wouldn"t care a tinker"s dam for what you"d say to her, because you would be regulating yourself by codes and sections instead of by the way she is made. I won"t. I don"t mind stooping to her level to get my will. So let me go with the old mad potter and his eyes, and see if between us we can"t make a settlement. And then, please G.o.d, we will have done with the whole bad dream from beginning to end. So if you have three thousand rupees you can spare on a loan, I"ll just have them handy in my pocket as a salve to her wounded feelings when I"ve got my own way."
What really happened at the interview Dan resolutely refused to say. On his return from the bazaar he asked for a whisky and soda and a hot bath to take the taste of it out of soul and body. Yet he returned triumphantly with a written declaration signed by Chandni, stating that she herself had stolen the key from George while he slept.
"It isn"t true, of course," said Dan with a rueful look at Lewis, "but upon my soul, no one could tell if it is, or not. My mind seemed a vast cobweb with lines going everyway into the outside world, but all beginning in that woman, and the only way was to smash through it. She has done worse things--that"s one comfort. Maybe the pearls should have gone back to Hodinuggur direct, but she will make her bargain there, never fear, and by G.o.d they deserve----"
He broke out then with curses into the tale of Azizan"s birth, which it seemed had been his strong card--that and the potter"s eyes. He had played the one against the other till he wormed the story out of his enemy, while the old man waited below, ready, if Dan failed to be told the truth, to bring his evil glance to bear on the question. That fear had really settled the matter; she had acknowledged the part Azizan had played in bringing her plans to naught, and confessed the wisdom of dancing to a different tune in the future.
"We parted on the best of terms. She offered me cinnamon tea and fritters, and I took some as a sign of peace," said Dan with a shudder.
"And now I must be off and tell poor Gwen "tis all settled for ever."
He lingered a moment as he rose, to add with a half shy, half happy smile, "Were you very much surprised, old man?"
"Very," replied Lewis with dignity. But Dan still lingered.