Voices in the Night. Flora Annie Webster Steel
corrected another. 'Twenty to one! Ye Gods! What a chance for my widow and orphans!'--
'Who gave you the tip, Jack?' asked an envious voice.
'What tip?' replied Jack Raymond imperturbably.
'Oh! don't fizzle--I saw you--just at the last--you must have about broken the----'
'Totalisators don't break, my dear fellow,' interrupted Jack. 'Now, Jerry, if Miss Drummond is ready, we can go and claim your winnings.'
She made no answer till the comparative solitude of re-crossing the course was reached, then she turned to him and said, in a voice to match his own--
'And your winnings also.'
Their eyes met, and he took his cue once more from what he saw. 'I'll get them after. It is a good lot, for I backed the little mare properly because she had your name. Only depreciated rupees though! Jerry! can you do sums yet? What is five thousand rupees at one shilling and threepence farthing? That, I think, is to-day's quotation, is it not, Miss Drummond?'
His reflected defiance made the original stronger.
'Tell Mr. Raymond, Jerry, that you haven't yet begun his system of compound multiplication, and, as I hope you never will, he had better drop the subject.'
She had not looked at the straight line of those bushy fair eyebrows, or she might have realised the futility of high-handedness; but she did realise it, with a certain respect, from the first words he spoke.
'You have no right to object,' he said coolly. 'The coincidence of name was not your doing--nor mine! Nor are you responsible for the mare's win. Therefore, since neither Jerry nor I consider ourselves in your debt for our ill-gotten gains, we leave you out of the question, and for the life of me I can't see why you should insist on being in it when you dislike it.'
His sledge-hammer common-sense left her gasping, and ere she found words he had reverted to negligent banter. 'But, of course, if you feel guilty, I'll put the rupees into the poor-box---that is always the refuge of the conscience-stricken! I can afford it easily, for I've had a regular run of luck today. So let it be peace and charity with this man! Now, Jerry! for the rupees, and after your pockets are stuffed, I'll take you to your mother and explain.'
Lesley, feeling limp, admitted to herself that the suggestion was thoughtful. She also yielded the point of manners as she watched him standing before Lady Arbuthnot with Jerry's hand, as ever, tucked confidingly into a bigger one; and yet Grace Arbuthnot was one of those women who, as a rule, make men look rough.
'I'm sorry to begin by bringing you a bad boy,' he said, evading her set welcome rather abruptly, 'but Miss Drummond will tell you how demoralising I am, so you must forgive the young sinner for the sake of the old one.'
The words held no intent, and yet as Grace Arbuthnot stood listening and looking at those two--the man and the child hand-in-hand--the faint shrinking which tells of a sudden enlightenment, bodily or spiritual, came to her eyes. 'You can hardly be held responsible, Mr. Raymond,' she said slowly when the tale was done. 'It is Sir George's fault, and I will tell him----' Then, as if to escape from the situation, she turned to Lesley, 'By the way, have you seen him lately? Gone home, did you say! Why?'
The reply seemed to take her from the present and the past also, so that her manner had all the elaborate graciousness she accorded to mere acquaintances as she said, 'Then I will follow his example and say good-bye, Mr. Raymond. These English telegrams are so interesting, aren't they? Especially now the general election is on; for it means so much to India, doesn't it?'
'Possibly,' he replied coolly, 'but it means very little to me, Lady Arbuthnot. I am no politician nowadays.'
Lesley Drummond, as, driving away, she watched the haggard face pass under the big blackboard with its white sums which rose from the motley crowd to show clear against the dusty levels of India, wondered once more if his tone meant contempt or envy.
Grace Arbuthnot, however, did not notice the tone at all. She was absorbed in something else, and, as soon as they reached Government House, went straight to her husband's writing-room.
After ten minutes she was still standing where she had paused beside him, and was drawing her dainty pale gloves through her hands impatiently as she stared at the telegram Sir George had shown her. For he trusted her absolutely in such matters; and in so doing showed his sense. She came, to begin with, of an Anglo-Indian family which had written its name large on the annals of Empire. An only daughter, she had kept house for her father, the Lieutenant-Governor of his time, and so from her earliest girlhood had listened to the talk of the ablest men in India, and become familiar with the problems of its government. Then, of herself, he knew her to be as capable of giving a sound opinion as he was; knew that no one from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin took a keener interest than she did in the welfare of the people.
'Yes! I, too, thought they might perhaps withdraw it, but still it is mean, inexpressibly mean!' she said at last.
Her voice was loud and firm, and Sir George glanced uneasily at the door of his secretary's room; for the fear of a certain proverb about grey mares lingered with him. It dies hard in Indian bureaucracy.
'Horribly mean,' she went on, 'for it does not lessen your responsibility; or alter the position, so far as you're concerned.'
Sir George took up his pen a trifle irritably--a sign that he was beginning to weary of the discussion. 'Pardon me, I think it does. So long as these secret instructions were in my confidential box I was bound, in any crisis, to follow them; but now they are destroyed'--he paused at her look, pointed to a pile of grey ashes in the fireplace, and went on heartily--'upon my soul, it's a relief! The contents can't leak out now; and I've been awfully nervous about that ever since Ewebank took to asking questions about a secret plan of campaign in the House. Some one got a hint of it somehow; and, as you know, that pestilent paper here, the Voice of India, has been on the bad-faith tack. And I can't imagine anything more disastrous, just at present when the city is seething about the plague and the withdrawal of municipal powers, than that this policy--which, frankly, subverts all our professions--should be got at. Even at home it would be ruination during the elections; a regular party cry.'
'And yet,' said Lady Arbuthnot with a fine scorn, 'every sane man knows we can't proclaim everything from the housetops in India; knows we must have secret orders. And, paper or no paper, we have them still! If there is a row, Government will expect you----'
A sudden obstinacy came to her husband's face. 'I should telegraph home for orders.'
Her hands closed tighter; she frowned. 'No, you wouldn't, George; everything might depend on accepting the responsibility of immediate action--you----'
He drew his chair close to the table and dipped his pen in the ink--sign that he meant to hear no more.
'I should do what I thought best, of course; but I should also be more cautious to avoid doing'--he changed his phrase, 'to avoid receiving a slap in the face. Anyhow, I'm not exactly sorry the instructions have been withdrawn. Even delay in action seems to me to involve less risk--of permanent injury, I mean--than the upset there would infallibly be if our intention leaked out before the event.'
She paused at the door with a look of tolerant affection. 'But why should it have leaked out? Besides, it did strengthen your hands enormously--that is why I got father to speak to the Council--that is why I was so glad when he succeeded. And he was glad too--he knows the advantage of having it in black and white.'
She said the last words, half to herself, as she went slowly up the wide shallow stairs, so un-English, so still more un-Indian, which led to the upper story of Government House.
She was thinking, as she spoke, of her father's letter, in which he had told her of his success, and given her an outline of what the demi-official notification to follow would be. That letter was still in her jewel-box upstairs, where she had placed it as a sort of hostage against the more definite letter to come. And suddenly the temptation not to destroy that précis of policy came to her. Supposing she kept it just to show George--whose disinclination