Kate, however, found otherwise, and when the waltz was over, announced her intention of going off to take Sonny home, and see Mrs. Seymour and the new baby. But in this her cavalier saw difficulties. The mare was evidently too fresh for a lady to drive, and Major Erlton, returning, might need the dog-cart. It would be far better for him to drive her in his, so far, and afterward let the Major know he had to call for her. Kate assented wearily. Such arrangements were part of the detail of life, with a woman neglected as she was by her husband. She could not deliberately avoid them, and yet keep the unconsciousness her pride claimed. How could she, when there were twenty men in society to one woman? Twenty--for the most part--gentlemen, quite capable of gauging a woman's character. So Captain Morecombe drove her to the Seymour's house on the city wall by the Water Bastion. There were several houses there, set so close to the rampart that there was barely room for a paved pathway between their back verandas and the battlement. In front of them lay a metaled road and shady gardens; and at the end of this road stood a small bungalow toward which Kate Erlton looked involuntarily. There was a horse waiting outside it. It was her husband's charger. He must have arranged to have it sent down, arranged, as it were, to leave her in the lurch, and a sudden flash of resentment made her say, as she got down at the Seymours' house, "You had better call for me in half an hour; that will be best."
Captain Morecombe flushed with sheer pleasure. Kate was not often so encouraging. But as he drove round to wait for her at a friend's house, close to the Delhi Gazette press, he, too, noticed the Major's charger, and swore under his breath. Before God it was too bad! But if ever there were signs of a coming smash they were to be seen here. Erlton, after years of scandal, had lost his head--it seemed incredible, but there was a Fate in such things from which mortal man could not escape.
And as he told himself this tale of Fate--the man's excuse for the inexcusable which will pass current gayly until women combine in refusing to accept it for themselves--another man, at the back of the little house past which he was driving, was telling it to himself also. For a great silence had fallen between Major Erlton and Alice Gissing after she had told him something, to hear which he had arranged to come home with her for a quiet talk. And, in the silence, the hollow note of the wooden bells upon the necks of the cattle grazing below the battlement, over which he leaned, seemed to count the slow minutes. Quaintest, dumbest of all sounds, lacking vibration utterly, yet mellow, musical, to the fanciful ear, with something of the hopeful persistency of Time in its recurring beat.
Alice Gissing was not a fanciful woman, but as she lay back in her long cane chair, her face hidden in its pillows as if to shut out something unwelcome, her foot kept time to the persistency on the pavement, till, suddenly, she sat up and faced round on her silent companion.
"Well," she said impatiently. "Well! what have you got to say?"
"I--I was thinking," he began helplessly, when she interrupted him.
"What is the use of thinking? That won't alter facts. As I told you, Gissing will be back in a month or so; and then we must decide."
Major Erlton turned quickly. "You can't go back to him, Allie; you weren't considering that, surely. You can't--not--not now." His voice softened over the last words; he turned away abruptly. His face was hidden from her so.
She looked toward him strangely for a second, covered her face with her hands for another, then, changing the very import of the action, used them to brush the hair back from her temples; so, clasping them behind her head, leaned back on the pillows, and looked toward him again. There was a reckless defiance in her attitude and expression, but her words did not match it.
"I suppose I can't," she said drearily, "and I suppose you wouldn't let me go away by myself either."