“Hullo, Nellie,” he called to her. “Someone has been having a bonfire in here!”
She entered, closed the door carefully behind her, and set her back against it. “Who do you think? What do you suppose it is that has been burnt?” she asked. Her face looked rigid and strained as she confronted him. “Yesterday I discovered why no one came near me. Julian, you have been guilty of the basest and most dishonourable conduct. In order to enjoy complete isolation, I have been humiliated before the world, my reputation has been sacrificed to the book. My good name has counted as nothing, in comparison with Semiramis!” She put her hand to her throat, and swallowed. “I shall send a copy of our marriage certificate to the parson, and request him to publish the truth.”
“So this is your revenge!” cried the Professor, who was trembling from head to foot. “For what was a mere ruse, to keep people at bay, and prevent tribes of women swarming in and out all day long, and disturbing me with their damned giggling, and shrill, high voices. Another wife would have thrown herself heart and soul into her husband’s task—instead of being jealous of his labour. This book, which you have burnt, meant everything to me. I have had the subject in my mind ever since I was a lad at Oxford. Now it is all gone,” and his face quivered with emotion, “my toil, my notes, that I have been collecting for years!” He completely broke down as he added, “It is as if you had murdered my child.”
“You should never have married me,” she answered, wholly unmoved; “and I will now leave you to replace Semiramis with some other monumental work. I have cabled to my brother, and taken my passage in the Empress line for Quebec. This is good-bye.”
“So be it,” he groaned, as he sank into a chair, and bowed his head in his hands. “So be it—so be it!”
But matters were not altogether as desperate as the Professor had been led to believe. The day before she left England Mrs. Serle posted to her husband the priceless manuscript that she had merely pretended to destroy, and his relief and joy were naturally beyond description.
Before Julian Serle abandoned Beckwell—which he did almost immediately—in figurative sackcloth and ashes, he went and confessed himself to the parson, and received the severe admonition which he most undoubtedly deserved. Subsequently the guilty man returned to his flat in London—to a home which was empty, not to say desolate. He was miserably unhappy, and missed his wife at every turn; her friends, yes, and his own, were full of insistent and embarrassing enquiries, to which he replied with a very halting tale about Helen having received a sudden and imperative summons to Montreal. Her absence weighed upon him heavily; after all, a live Helen was ten times more to him than a long-defunct Semiramis! So leaving his precious book to see itself through the press, he took ship for Canada, where he sought out his outraged consort, abased himself appropriately—and received a full pardon.
IX
THE RED BUNGALOW
It is a considerable time since my husband’s regiment (“The Snapshots”) was stationed in Kulu, yet it seems as if it were but yesterday, when I look back on the days we spent in India. As I sit by the fire, or in the sunny corner of the garden, sometimes when my eyes are dim with reading I close them upon the outer world, and see, with vivid distinctness, events which happened years ago. Among various mental pictures, there is not one which stands forth with the same weird and lurid effect as the episode of “The Red Bungalow.”
Robert was commanding his regiment, and we were established in a pretty spacious house at Kulu, and liked the station. It was a little off the beaten track, healthy and sociable. Memories of John Company and traces of ancient Empires still clung to the neighbourhood. Pig-sticking and rose-growing, Badminton and polo, helped the resident of the place to dispose of the long, long Indian day—never too long for me!