"Thank you! Then I like to think this: you have been making love to my wife under my roof, taking advantage of her youth and inexperience; but mercifully you've been caught in time. Now go and pack your belongings and clear out. Consider yourself on leave. I want no scandal. Slink off—quick! You young hound!"
Stella had sunk into a chair. Her husband stood before her; Philip could not see her face. He was racked with humiliation, with helpless rage; his pride, his self-respect lay in the dust, since he could not but recognise the fundamental justice of his chief's accusation.... Must he leave Stella without comfort, without reassurance of his fealty and love? Driven to desperation, he tried to push Crayfield aside; he might as well have endeavoured to move a mountain.
"Stella!" he called hoarsely; but for answer to his cry came only the sound of stifled, terrified sobbing.
CHAPTER XIV
Colonel Crayfield stood silent, motionless, until all sound of Philip Flint's exit had ceased. When, with a dazed effort, Stella looked up at her husband, his face reminded her dimly of some monster depicted on a Chinese screen. She held her breath, half expecting him to kill her there and then. Instead, to her amazement, he merely spoke to her as he might have spoken to an unruly child caught in some act of mischief, ordered her to her room, watched her grimly as she rose in dumb obedience.
Passing through the hall, she encountered Philip's old servant; he looked harassed, bewildered, as he salaamed. "It is the Sahib's order," he said in querulous resentment, "that his belongings be taken back to the Rest House at once! Even but now hath he departed there himself, and on foot! Yacoub-dog also." Clearly the old man expected some explanation. What could she say? Only that she supposed the Sahib's orders must be obeyed. She left him standing puzzled, indignant, in the doorway of the bedroom his master had occupied.
For days afterwards Stella felt, as it were, "put into the corner" by Robert. This attitude on his part, humiliating to her though it was, came as a partial relief; it gave her time to revive in a sense from the shock she had suffered. The interval of disgrace, despite its ignominy, rested her nerves, and helped her to face Robert's forgiveness, which, when it pleased him to extend it, was far more unbearable than his displeasure. She dared make no further appeal for permission to join Mrs. Cuthell; she knew well enough, if she did so, what Robert would say: that she was not to be trusted! Her very pride gave her strength to conceal, often to overcome, her physical distress during the unhealthy, wearisome months that followed before the cold season set in.
The monsoon weakened, failed; the heat was diabolical, mosquitoes were a torment, the days and nights seemed endless, and there was always Sher Singh, watchful, malignant. Champa had begged leave to resign from the Memsahib's service once the disturbance caused by the episode of the pearls had subsided in the compound; she did so with crocodile tears and feeble excuses. The truth was, that having been frightened out of her senses, she felt unable to recover her pretentious position in the Rassih establishment. So Champa departed without great loss of dignity, and her place was taken by a humble person whose name her new mistress did not even trouble to inquire, since the word "Ayah" seemed to be the beginning and the end of her obtuse personality.