'What a woman you are when all is said and done!' he replied, smiling at her. 'Still I do think that poetic justice has not been meted out all round. Gwen, for instance, has everything she wants, and I am out in the cold.'
'Do you feel out in the cold?' asked Rose aggressively.
He hastened to assure her that on the contrary he was quite warm and comfortable, but in spite of this the conversation languished till Colonel Tweedie came in, full of his intention of recommending Dalel Beg's plan strongly to the authorities.
To call it Dalel Beg's was, however, as Lewis Gordon had suspected, to credit that gentleman with too much sense. It was Chândni's. When Dan Fitzgerald had left her after partaking in friendly fashion of cinnamon tea, she had put the pearls away in a safe place, and set herself, as she had been doing ever since she came to Simla, to amuse herself. She had looked after Dan as he rode away without the least malice, saying that there was a man indeed; one of the old sort like the Diwâns. If he had had her in the old days, say at Hodinuggur, there would just have been one order, and then silence. She nodded her head and smiled over the thought. But now she had three thousand rupees and the pearls. She could not sell them of course, could not at present let any one know she had them. They were too well known, these Hodinuggur pearls, for Chândni to traffic in them without fear of being accused of theft. By and by, perhaps, she might trade them off on Dalel; but nothing of that sort was safe as long as Khush-hâl was alive. So long too, as they thought the mem had them they would not dare to move in the matter, now that there was all this talk of a permanent water-supply; for Chândni, in the wooden-balconied house at Simla, heard all the latest talk, and had quite a bevy of respectable native gentlemen who drank sherbets at her expense. She heard also from a friend at court of this taking up of waste land, and as she listened to all the stir of intrigue after this thing and that thing, felt a pang of regret for that vanished dream of some day being a motive power in Hodinuggur. This court-life was as the breath of her nostrils, and if she had been in the place of that half-caste girl down in the house with the dahlias, she would not have been half starved and beaten; for if bazaar rumour said sooth, Dalel Beg had carried his occidental estimate of the marriage-tie to this almost incredible length.
Then one day, after a rich Hindu contractor had roused her wrath by claiming her more or less as his special property, by reason of the money he had chosen to lavish on her, came the news of Khush-hâl Beg's death in the odour of court sanctity. She could imagine it all down in the ruined palace out in the desert--the old ways, the old etiquette; poverty-stricken may be, yet still courtly. And why, in these pushing days when fat pigs like that Hindu made money, should they remain poverty-stricken? yet even so, it was better in a way to be Chândni of Hodinuggur, than Chândni of a bazaar, especially as one grew older.
That same afternoon a patchwork-covered dhooli went jolting down to the house with the dahlias, which was a miserable spot now; deserted, forlorn. A miserable room also, whence the indignant Parsees had reft the French clocks and the bric-à-brac. A most miserable pair of women too, reduced to cooking their own food at the drawing-room fire, lest their over-looking neighbours might see them in the degradation of the cook-room--since the deepest degradation of all in Eurasian eyes is to be servantless.
'Don't be a fool,' said Chândni to Mrs. D'Eremao's shrill abuse, as the former walked in upon them unceremoniously, and, squatting down, went on calmly chewing betel. 'You have nothing to do with the business. But, if she is wise, she will listen.' Beatrice Elflida Norma looked at her shrewdly and said, 'Be quiet, mamma, there is no harm in hearing what she has to say.'
It was not much, but to the point. No doubt, if they appealed to English justice, they could force the Diwân to support his wife. But how? At Hodinuggur under lock and key. It would not be nice, and Chândni had tales to tell which made Mrs. D'Eremao's hair stand on her head even while she protested that she was a freeborn British subject. Doubtless; but then they must give up all hopes of the position for which the girl had married such an atrocity. (Here Beatrice Elflida dissolved into tears.) Besides, that was not the way to treat a Mohammedan gentleman, an offshoot of the great Moghuls; but she knew how to treat him, and for a consideration, was quite willing to use her influence with Dalel to set things straight. She did not want him, and had flouted his proposals of peace a dozen times, but she was quite ready, for this consideration, to make herself useful. Briefly, that consideration was a free hand if she could get it, no cabals against her position, and an assignment, in case of Dalel's death, of a good slice of that state pension, which, in such case, would be given to the wife. If there were children, so much the better, since the pension would be larger. In addition, they had to remember that refusal would not amend the position, since Dalel would no doubt bribe her back in some other way.
So a week after this, her Highness Beatrice Elflida Norma of Hodinuggur's name appeared on the list of donors to a certain Fund, opposite no less a sum than one thousand rupees, and she herself appeared at the next viceregal squash in full native costume, with her hair quite straight, and many shades darker in colour. She sat and talked affably to a stout English matron about her husband's great desire to assimilate the lives of Indian women more closely to those of their European sisters; so that, on her return home, the stout English matron mentioned to her stout English husband, who happened to be a Commissioner, that the Hodinuggur creature seemed to have ideas and should be encouraged.
And that evening, Dalel said to Chândni, ere he left the little balconied room where so many grave and reverend gossip-mongers sat drinking sherbet, 'Thou wilt return to Hodinuggur as thou hast promised.'