CHAPTER XVII
A COMPROMISE
Our modest ménage at No. 30 was a very happy one, at any rate for the first three months. We were like a pair of children playing at housekeeping, and often when we sat down to dinner at our daintily arranged table we would nod and laugh at one another, for somehow it all seemed unreal and too good to be true. Here was indeed “a place in the sun.”
I looked carefully after Ronnie’s comforts, ordered his favourite dishes, and was always up early, ready to give him chotah hazri in our shady veranda before he rode off to parade. I did my utmost to entertain his friends, especially Roger Arkwright, who soon became my friend as well. He was a tall fair young man, with square shoulders and a pleasant square face. He came in and out as often as he pleased and we called him “The tertium quid.” I wondered if, occasionally, his visits were not nicely timed so as to meet Mabel and Emily Grey—especially Mabel—who were often with me, practising new songs or just running over merely to idle and talk. However that may be, Roger Arkwright gave me valuable help with our garden. We had a splendid show of roses in pots, and a respectable amount of lettuce and tomatoes. He also took a personal and greedy interest in my flock of ducks, who every morning, after their early breakfast, departed en masse for some distant pond, returning quacking and hungry at sundown. So punctual were they that one could almost set a watch by these worthy and business-like birds.
Mrs. Mills, my next-door neighbour, would often step over the wall dividing our compounds and bring her work and talk to me. She had two small children with her and a boy at home, about whom she was always anxious, as he was a delicate little fellow and had no grannies. The Millses were not well off; she often discussed ways and means, the cook’s accounts and bazaar bills, and I agreed with her that in the East rupees seemed to vanish like mists in the sun!
“You see,” she said, “this is a smart regiment and the mess bills are heavy. The colonel will have everything done in the most expensive style, and when I see the monthly amount my heart goes into my boots—and yet I don’t want to be mean; as George says, ‘the reputation of the regiment and its traditions must come before everything else.’ For you it is all right, of course, as you and Ronnie have lots of money.”
“I don’t know about that,” I answered. “Speaking for myself, I have just a hundred and fifty pounds a year, besides an allowance from my uncle.”
“Oh, but your brother is well known to be wealthy. Why, last year he gave three thousand rupees for a polo pony! He offers prizes for the men’s sports, he entertains at the club, and is always most generous and open-handed.”
To all of which statements I could but assent. Ronnie and I did not interfere with each other’s arrangements, or rather I never interfered with his. We rode together, drove down to the club in the afternoon, and at balls danced the first waltz. When at home we were rarely alone; there was sure to be somebody dropping in for breakfast, lunch or dinner. In India these casual guests make practically no difference in the menu, just a little more water to the soup, another cutlet and another savoury. My cook was really a treasure; we were on excellent terms; I never cut him down, or weighed his purchases, or fined him, as Mrs. Mills did her man, and he took a real pride in his work. I, too, cooked, and had installed a small stove in the back veranda, where Mabel Grey and I experimented with recipes and made delicious meringues, rock cakes, and original savouries. The little dinners at No. 30 enjoyed quite a regimental reputation. Sometimes Ronnie dined at mess—always on Guest Night—sometimes there was a bachelor dinner at the club. On these occasions I dined with the Millses or the Soameses, or enjoyed in preference a quiet meal (such as a poached egg) at home, made up accounts and worked off arrears of correspondence. Somehow, now that I led such a busy life, with continual goings out and comings in, I was exceedingly thankful to have a short breathing space. Ronnie, too, had rarely a spare minute; what with parades, orderly room, guards, rifle-shooting, arranging polo matches, and playing cricket, he was always busy. Sometimes I had known him to sit up in his little den writing till midnight.
All our lives we had been the best of friends and comrades. Sad to relate, our first difference of opinion was about Mr. Balthasar. One evening Ronnie came home from the club looking alarmingly put out. At first I thought he might have had a bad evening at bridge, or that one of the polo ponies had broken down, but I knew I should hear all about it after dinner, when we smoked in the veranda—I too enjoyed a cigarette, an accomplishment I had learnt from Mrs. Hayes-Billington. I took to it by her advice on one of our gloomy, depressing wet days. She declared that smoking soothed the nerves. So far as I knew I had not any nerves to soothe, but I snatched at a new experience!
As soon as we were comfortably installed in two deep chairs Ronnie began: