CHAPTER XIV
THE INDISCRETION
Joyce had started out on her motor ride with the doctor as happy as a child on a holiday. Her baby was well and there was no cause for anxiety; in fact, all the world seemed smiling and kind. At last she was learning that a short absence from home made no difference to an infant in the care of so capable a nurse as her Madrassi ayah, trained in the way of infants by the remarkable "Barnes-Memsahib."
All things considered, there seemed no earthly reason why she should not be happy with the light-heartedness of youth helped by a kind friend to pass the time agreeably while she remained in India. In the spring——
But she would not look ahead. Why borrow trouble? When the hot, March winds began to blow, Ray himself would recognise the necessity of sending the little one home. No father could be so selfish as to allow his own son and heir to fade away under his own eyes, and neglect the only chance of saving his little life. As to the hills!—the innumerable infantile diseases incurred in the hills owing to the dampness of the climate made life a constant terror. No! It would have to be Home in March. Passages were usually booked long beforehand but people often dropped out at the last, and a passage for a "lady and infant" could easily be found at the eleventh hour.
Meanwhile, this was December, and she was capable of enjoying herself amazingly in circumstances that were innocent and harmless.
With a friend like Captain Dalton at her service, so to speak, and Honor to love her almost as a sister would, she was very lucky and could afford to be as happy as the season would permit.
Station gossip whispered that Dalton would not have spared so much of his precious time unless he were receiving some return by way of compensation; which was a logical deduction in estimating a masculine nature not governed by religious scruples; but with this Joyce was hardly concerned, having little comprehension of all that gossips implied. She was delighted to requite so much self-sacrifice on the doctor's part with all the geniality she could command.
As a matter of fact, Captain Dalton was finding a cynical amusement in the study of this—to him—new type of feminine creature: a married woman with the mind of a child, unawakened as yet to the deeper emotions, in whom the instincts of sex were still asleep. He was quite sure that, like most pretty women, she was vain and easily led, and, if it were not himself, it would be some other fellow who would undertake her awakening, since her husband was trustingly content to leave her mental development to chance and nature.
Having passed the stage of desperate infatuation for mere physical beauty, he could play at his leisure with the idea of encompassing her ruin, as he sat beside her in his car, watching the dimples come and go. Life had done him a bad turn at the beginning of his career, and he was envious of men who had escaped suffering such as he had known. Out of sheer devilry he would like to pull Meredith's house about his ears and teach him that no woman of extraordinary physical attractions was a safe asset as a wife. Sooner or later, vanity would be her undoing and she would join the ranks of the fast and free. His experience was fairly wide and his faith, nil. Already Joyce Meredith coquetted delightfully. In a little while she would be doing it dangerously; by and by, audaciously, and so on, till she developed into the accomplished flirt, the sport of men in the East. He had watched the evolution till he had arrived at the theory that, with time and opportunity, the generality of women could be brought to capitulate.