'I'm afraid not. You see, once we begin to question outsiders we show our hand. There is no alternative between the silence and defiance which Gwen advocates so strongly, and a bold and open inquiry. In my opinion it is time for the latter. You see, my cousin is not quite a fair judge. She does not know that Fitzgerald and I have so far concealed George Keene's suicide, and that from purely personal motives we, or at least I, cannot have this scandal sprung by an outsider. He would take the risk, he says; but I, in my position, conceive that it is not my duty to do so. He, however, has suggested that we four shall meet and talk it over finally before I take any action, so I took the liberty of asking Gwen to come over tomorrow morning. It is Fitzgerald's last day, and something must be done before he goes down. I don't see the use of this meeting myself--we have all, as I said, had our chance--but it can do no harm, and it may satisfy Gwen--and you.'
'I am satisfied already,' she replied gently. 'You could have done no more than you have done; I see that now.'
'I am glad,' he began, and then stopped, realising that he was not in the least glad of the evident finality in her meaning. Was she contented that things should end as they had begun? Had her passionate interest in him died down with his obedience to her orders? A sorry reward, surely! A most perplexing result of his repentance!
'I shall be glad,' he corrected himself, almost angrily, 'when we can get out of this muddle. Of course I have heard before of such intrigues, but I never came in personal contact with that sort of thing before. It is maddening. I scarcely seem to know whether we are in the nineteenth century or the ninth. Ever since we went to Hodinuggur we seem to have got mixed up in some antique dream; the whole thing is absurd--scarcely credible.'
As he spoke the dinner-bell rang, and he held the door open for her to pass from the consideration of these things to the well-appointed table worthy of a house in Belgravia, where the dark-skinned, white-robed servants handed sherry with the soup, and vinegar with the salmon quite as naturally as Jeames or John in their plush liveries. But heredity was here also; Jeames or John's father may have been a day labourer or a gentleman at large, but not one of these could not have answered truthfully--'Huzoor, my father was servant to so-and-so or so-and-so in the great mutiny time, and his father served such and such a sahib in the Sutlej campaign, or in Cabul, or somewhere else.' Faithfulness or unfaithfulness to salt being, of course, a different question; though that also might possibly be one of heredity. Such thoughts strike one sometimes after years of complacent blindness, and on this evening they increased the sense of unreality which had already taken possession of Lewis Gordon. Nor did a remark of Colonel Tweedie's on his daughter's improved looks during the past few days amend matters. He felt that he might be living in that twenty-ninth century, when humanity may reasonably be supposed to have educated itself out of some frailties as, in the necessary glance at the young lady's face required by decorous assent, he met a perfectly unconscious, happy smile, so full of friendly confidence, that a positive gladness glowed at his heart that she should be content with him.
Nevertheless he made one more effort to get back finally to the every-day world by riding over to the Club after dinner and listening to the gossip of the day. But there was nothing wrong with the world; it was going on, he found, as usual. He played a game or two of pool, talked gravely with Major Davenant over some new rules intended to prevent such another fiasco as the last race-meeting, heard the latest official canards, and listened more patiently than usual to some boys--who had to go down from leave next day--bemoaning the general beastliness of the country as a residence for an English gentleman. It was only, so the verdict ran, fit for niggers.
Yet even this demonstration that life in the main was commonplace as usual, did not restore Lewis Gordon's general indifference. And the knowledge that this was so made him more than ever determined to carry his point when next morning the four met in Rose Tweedie's room, to settle the course of events.
The rain after a downpour during the night had ceased, or, perhaps, had become too light to make its way through the thick white mist which had settled down like cotton-wool upon everything, blotting out the world. There was not a breath of air, not a sound save occasionally a soft pit-pat, as the vapour condensing on the roof dropped into the hearts of the rain lilies which fringed the verandah with their upturned orange cups. Yet it was neither dark nor dull as on a cloudy day. The whiteness of the mist was almost luminous, and through the wide-set windows sent a faint glow, like that from newly-fallen snow, on the faces of poor George Keene's four friends, and showed still more clearly on the even surface of Azîzan's portrait as it stood upon the mantel-shelf. Rose stood beside it, looking beyond everything in the room, beyond the row of orange lilies, into the cotton-wool mist which seemed bent on suffocating the house and its inhabitants. There was silence in the room--the silence which comes to a discussion when the last objection has palpably fallen through, and a conclusion absolutely satisfactory to no one seems inevitable. Gwen, a flush of excitement on her cheek, lay back among the cushions of her easy-chair, nervously turning and twisting the rings upon her fingers. Dan Fitzgerald, who was seated close beside her, had evidently been the last to speak, and was now leaning towards her, his eyes fixed with kindly encouragement and sympathy on her face. Lewis Gordon, apart from the others, his elbows resting on the table, looked half regretful, half resentful,--the look of a man who knows he must take the initiative in a singularly disagreeable duty.
At last through the silence came Rose Tweedie's voice reluctantly, yet with a sort of challenge in it: 'I suppose that is settled, and that we can none of us suggest any other reason why we should delay longer?'
'I have told you before,' broke in Mrs. Boynton, 'that I have every reason to believe that no action will be taken by the woman; that she will never court inquiry.'