“Sorry, Miss Sahib—the time is up.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
HYDER ALI’S GARDEN
My new acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs. Hodson, were both very kind to me; she frequently called to take me for a drive into the country (Hibbal way). Afterwards we sat in her delightful garden with its spreading grass plots, clumps of bamboo and loquat trees, and profusion of English flowers. The sole drawback to this Elysium was the presence of convicts, clanking to and fro, as they watered and worked among the vegetables; but I suppose in time one grows accustomed to anything—as it is said of poor eels, with respect to their skins!
Thanks to Mr. Hodson, I had several private interviews with Ronnie. I was permitted to give him cigarettes, and to supply him with papers. He no longer gave way to an unreasoning frenzy of despair, but was more like his former self; his eyes had their old boyish look, and had lost their dull, glazed appearance. I had now been four months at Bangalore; the time had crawled like centuries, and as I gazed into my glass I told myself that I was almost unrecognisable. Undoubtedly the shocks I had received since I left England had told upon my appearance. My face was white and very thin, and my hair, of which I had once been rather proud, looked lank and dead. After all, although I kept up a certain amount of cheerfulness with Mrs. de Castro and her friends, I sometimes wondered that I was still alive. No one but myself knew of the nights and nights when I lay awake for hours or paced about my room. The weather was hot and I would have much preferred to walk in the compound, but for my not unnatural fear of snakes and bandicoots. A want of sleep, want of appetite, and a want of hope were my three chief ailments. I had to bear up against not one, but two heavy troubles. The overwhelming disgrace of my brother and the collapse of our little home; the cruelty of relations who had closed their ears to our appeals. Sometimes, with a sort of rage, I told myself that had Uncle cabled out the money to Ronnie, he would have saved him in time. Here was surely a sufficient load for one pair of shoulders. But besides all this, a grief that affected me even more acutely was the loss of my lover; this was a personal ache that nothing could deaden or alleviate. It had been my own fault that our correspondence had lapsed, but to what could it have tended after all? Brian and I could never be anything to one another. He was naturally the soul of generosity and chivalry, but we would have to face the Falkland family, public opinion and general discredit. How could Lady Louisa—said to be the incarnation of pride—receive a daughter-in-law whose brother was a convict, the subject of a notorious military scandal? Much as Brian might care for me, I could never be anything but a millstone round his neck.
Sometimes my feelings got the better of my convictions, and an intolerable longing surged up in my heart. At night I would sit down and pour out my soul in long letters. These letters gave me a wonderful amount of temporary relief, but when I read them over in the cool light of morning I invariably destroyed them. I had not had a line from Brian for more than six weeks, and such is the perversity of human nature, now that he had ceased to write to me I felt an almost irrepressible temptation to write to him! Nevertheless I did not yield to it, though I often debated the question—to write or not to write? Even if I wrote, and assured him, as before, that all was at an end between us, but that I was in Bangalore, and would be glad to hear from him occasionally—to what good would this tend? It was far better and wiser to drop entirely out of his life, but this resolve did not conduce to happiness or even consolation.
Kipper’s spirits were undoubtedly affected by my own condition of hopeless depression—it may have been the effect of a brain wave—but at any rate whenever we took our walks abroad he no longer bounded exuberantly in front of me, barking from purest joie de vivre, and challenging all creation from lizards to camels. Now he kept sedately to heel like a sober elderly dog, obviously on duty and in sole charge of an elderly mistress. When indoors he lay motionless beside my chair or bed, following my movements with anxious and adoring eyes, and occasionally heaving tremendous sighs.
He found his simple relaxation in killing bandicoots (a rat-like creature with a blunt repulsive face) and in the visits of the tall yellow and white pariah, who lived next door. I must confess that this intimacy filled me with amazement. At Beke, Kipper had kept coldly aloof from the society of his own kind, and had cruelly and even painfully snubbed the advances of second-rate dogs. If these could but behold him now!—abandoned to the fascination and blandishments of a hideous spotted alien, resembling a low class overgrown lurcher; rolling with him luxuriously in the dust, running mad puppy circles, and playing hide and seek among the shrubs and oleander bushes in Mrs. de Castro’s compound! I will say this for Kipper, he never returned the visits of his playfellow, and had still some lingering sense of les convenances and etiquette for “Europe” terriers.
Once, when the “Pi” had the audacity to join us in our walk, and came prancing towards us with a “Hallo, well met!” expression on his cunning long face, Kipper realised that he must draw the line here, and after a word or two in nosy dog talk, the intruder accepted a hint, and disappeared.
One evening we had been for a constitutional far beyond the high ground and racecourse, and I returned to the de Castro bungalow dusty, thirsty and tired, looking forward, I confess, to a good cup of Neilgherry tea. As we entered the veranda, Kip stood for a second motionless, and then flew like a wild creature into the cave-like drawing-room, and I said to myself:
“The Pi is there, lying in wait for him! He must not be allowed into the house.”