The other lady, who had kindled the fire and was now making tea, was not, as might be supposed, the mistress of the house, but merely an old friend who had dropped in for a chat this cold March afternoon. She was a slight, delicate-looking woman, with dark hair, dark eyes, and numerous lines on her thin, careworn face, though she was barely thirty. No one ever dreamt of calling Mrs. Sladen pretty, but most women voted her “a darling,” and all men “a little brick.” Married in her teens, before she knew her own mind (but when her relations had thoroughly made up theirs), to an elderly eligible, she had become, from the hour she left the altar, the slave of a selfish, irascible husband, whose mental horizon was bordered by two tables—the dinner-table and the card-table—and whose affections were entirely centred in his own portly person. Milly Fraser’s people were on the eve of quitting India; they were poor; they had a large and expensive family at home; otherwise they might have hesitated before giving their pretty Milly (she was pretty in those days) to a man more than double her age, notwithstanding that he was drawing good pay, and his widow would enjoy a pension. They would have discovered—had they made inquiries—that he was heavily in debt to the banks; that he could not keep a friend or a servant; and that, after all, poor young Hastings, of the staff-corps, whom they had so ruthlessly snubbed, would have made a more satisfactory son-in-law.
Mrs. Sladen had two little girls in England, whom her heart yearned over—little girls being brought up among strangers at a cheap suburban school. How often had her husband solemnly promised that “next year she should go home and see the children;” but, when the time came, he invariably hardened his heart, like Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and would not let her go. If she went, who was to manage the house and servants, and see after his dinner and his comforts? He was not going to be left in the hands of a khansamah! And, moreover, where was the money for her passage to come from? He had not a rupee to spare (for her).
Colonel Sladen was a shrewd man when his own interests were concerned. He was alive to the fact that he was not popular, but that things were made pleasant to him all round for the sake of the unfortunate lady whom he harried, and bullied, and drove with a tongue like the lash of a slaver’s whip. Yes; if she went home, it would make a vast difference in his comfort, socially and physically. Many a rude rebuff she had saved him; many a kindness was done to him for her sake; and many a woman fervently thanked her good genius that she was not his wife. In spite of her uncongenial partner, Mrs. Sladen managed to be cheerful, and generally bright and smiling, ready to nurse the sick, to decorate the club for dances, to help girls to compose ball-dresses, to open her heart to all their troubles, and to give them sympathy and sound advice. “Oh, do not marry a man simply because your people wish it,” she might have said (but she never did), “and merely because he is considered a good match; far better to go home and earn your bread as a shop-assistant, or even a slavey. Take a lesson from my fate.”
Mrs. Langrishe, on the other hand, ruled her dear Granby with a firm but gracious sway. Their match had been made in England, and had proved in one respect a severe and mutual disappointment. Well, “disappointment” is an ugly word; shall we say “surprise”? Captain Langrishe had been attracted by Ida Paske’s handsome face, stately deportment, and magnificent toilettes. He was impressed by her superb indifference to money—rumour endowed her with a large income, and rumour had no real grounds for this agreeable assertion. Ida was one of a numerous family, was good-looking, self-reliant, ambitious, and eight and twenty. Her dresses were unpaid for, and her face was her fortune. She, on her part, believed the insignificant-looking little officer—whose pale profile looked exactly as if it were cut out of a deal board—to be enormously rich. He, too, affected to despise outlay, and kept hunters, and talked of his yacht. He was going to India, immediately, and the wedding was hurried on; but long ere the happy pair had reached Bombay, they had discovered the real state of affairs. He knew that his bride was penniless; and she was aware that the hunters had been hired, the yacht had been a loan, and that three hundred a year, besides his pay, was the utmost limit of her husband’s purse. They were a wise couple, and made the best of circumstances; and by-and-by Captain Langrishe came to the conclusion that he had got hold of a treasure, after all! His Ida was full of tact and worldly wisdom, and possessed administrative powers of the highest order. She understood the art of keeping up appearances, and laid to her heart that scriptural text which says, “As long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak well of thee.” She ensured her husband a comfortable home, studied his tastes, flattered his weaknesses, was always serene, affectionate, and well-dressed. Her dinners were small but celebrated; her entrées and savouries, a secret between her cook and herself. She did not dispense indiscriminate hospitalities—no, she merely entertained a few important officials, smart women, and popular men, who would be disposed to noise abroad the fame of her dainty feasts, and to pay her back again with interest. Shabby people, and insignificant acquaintances, never saw the interior of her abode, which was the embodiment of comfort and taste. Her dresses were well chosen and costly; diamonds sparkled on her fingers and on her neck; and though but till recently a captain’s wife, her air and manner of calm self-approval was such, that the wives of higher officials meekly accepted her at her own valuation, and frequently suffered her to thrust them into the background and usurp their place. Such was her ability, that people took the cue from her, and valued an invitation to afternoon tea with Mrs. Langrishe far above an elaborate dinner with less exclusive hostesses.
Neither the furious attacks of her enemies (and she had not a few), nor the occasional indiscretions of her friends, ever ruffled the even temperament of this would-be “grande dame.” It was an astonishing but patent fact that she invariably occupied, so to speak, a chief seat; that she was always heralded on her arrival at a station—met, entertained, and regretfully sped. Whilst ladies as worthy languished in the dâk bungalow, and drove in rickety ticca gharries, she had the carriages of rajahs at her disposal, and was overwhelmed with attentions and invitations. Surely all this was amply sufficient to make these women “talk her over” and hold her at arms’ length. Men who knew Captain Langrishe’s resources marvelled amongst themselves, and said, “Gran has very little besides his pay; how the deuce does he do it? Look at his wife’s dresses! And they give the best dinners in the place. There will be a fine smash there some day!” But years rolled on, and there was no sign of any such crisis. The truth was that Granby Langrishe had married an exceedingly able woman—a woman who thoroughly understood the art of genteel pushing and personal advertisement. She had persistently edged—yea, driven her husband to the front, and he now enjoyed an excellent appointment at the price of the two dewy tears that stood in his Ida’s expressive eyes when bemoaning his bad luck to an influential personage. The Langrishes were drawing two thousand rupees a month,—and were held in corresponding esteem.
Mrs. Langrishe does not look forty—far from it. She has taken excellent care of herself—no early rising, no midday visiting, for this wise matron. She is tall, with a fine figure, alas! getting somewhat stout; her brows are straight and pencilled; beneath them shine a pair of effective grey eyes; her features are delicately cut; if her face has a fault, it is that her jaw is a little too square. Whatever people may say of Ida Langrishe, they cannot deny that she is remarkably handsome, and as clever as she is handsome. As a spinster, she had not been entirely successful in her own aims; but it would go hard, if, with her brains, her circle of acquaintances, and her valuable experience, she did not marry her niece brilliantly.
CHAPTER II.
“TELL ME ALL THE NEWS.”
The French windows of Mrs. Langrishe’s drawing-room opened into a deep stone verandah embowered in honeysuckle and passion flowers, and commanded a matchless view, irrespective of the foreground, in which Mrs. Sladen’s rickshaw is the chief feature, or the gravel sweep, grass garden, and beds of pale wintry roses; but beyond the pineclad hills, among which red roofs are peeping, beyond the valley of rhododendrons, and a bold purple range, behold the snows! a long, long barrier of the everlasting hills, to such as the eyes of the psalmist had never been lifted. People may whisper that they were disappointed in the Taj, that Delhi was a delusion, and the marble rocks a snare; but who can declare that the snows were beneath his expectations? And if he were to say so, who would be found to believe him? The evening breeze is raw and chill, it has travelled sixty miles from those icy slopes, it creeps up the khud, and warns the shivering roses that the sun has set—it stirs the solemn deodars as they stand in dark outline against the sky.
Mrs. Langrishe, rising from her writing-table, letter in hand, sweeps back to her friend, who is again sitting on the fender-stool, staring into the fire, thinking, perchance, of those bygone days when she was a girl whose friends were anxious to get her settled.
“Milly,” said her hostess, “you are passing the post-office, and you can post this for me; you had better go now, dear, as you know you have had a sore throat, and it is getting late.”